Badge Weighted Seeding in its current state has a flaw. With BWS having become a standard for osu! tournaments, and osu! staff handing out badges like candy, it's important to address this flaw.
If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, just read the headings and the bold text.
A couple of hosts have already used other badge appeal methods. Huge thanks to those hosts, and I hope to see more hosts use badge appeals in future tournaments!
If there are any questions, I'll definitely be responding to this thread or any Discord DMs.
If you can't be bothered to read the whole thing, just read the headings and the bold text.
The Problem
- Tournaments typically use a mathematical formula to artificially "rank up" a player based on his/her badge count, called BWS.
- However, BWS by itself does not take into account a player choosing to gain ranks.
- Players with badges have little incentive to gain rank, because badges continue to count against them even after ranking up.
- This leads to some players further deranking, while other players who choose to rank up after winning badges are doubly punished.
Proposed Solution: Badge Appeals
- A player who has ranked past 55% of a badge's upper limit may appeal the badge, and disregard it in BWS by DMing a host. (That's the sentence that would go on a tournament forum post)
- The actual percentage can be changed, but some hosts I've talked to agree 55% is fair.
- With a 55% "buffer", as written above, a player could rank past 5,500 to appeal a badge from a 10k-50k tournament.
- With a 55% buffer, a player could rank past 2,750 to appeal a badge from a 5k-25k tournament.
- More examples can be found on this spreadsheet.
- Hosts are NOT expected to hunt down tournament forum posts. Players who wish to appeal badges are expected to provide a link to the forum post of the badge.
A couple of hosts have already used other badge appeal methods. Huge thanks to those hosts, and I hope to see more hosts use badge appeals in future tournaments!
If there are any questions, I'll definitely be responding to this thread or any Discord DMs.