why me

Azer wrote:

why me

everything's your fault alex

Forum unlocked to allow community to post questions based on changes, please keep discussion on-topic, this thread will be heavily moderated.

Copying reasoning for this first set of changes from the github pull requests for easy viewing:

1. Formally disallow async matches. The Tournament Committee made this change to preserve competitive integrity across badged tournaments.
2. Allow eliminated players as refs, playtesters. The Tournament Committee made this change due to lack of concern over either of these roles compromising the competitive integrity of well-run tournaments. In cases where competitive integrity is compromised, hosts of well-run tournaments are expected to resolve the issue or have their support revoked.
3. Currently and over the past 5 years, many new tournaments have used one experienced administrator as a way to badge a first iteration.
4. These experienced administrators usually do very little or no work in running the tournament. Effectively, these tournaments are run without the support of an experienced staff or administration.
5. In spite of that, due to having an experienced administrator on the staff team, these tournaments still get badged.
6. Many of these tournaments would likely be unbadged with further encouragement of use of the official report function.
7. Additionally, there are many tournaments with fully experienced staff teams that would not be able to be badged if the second iteration requirement were kept, e.g. the Perennial or the Roundtable.
8. Judging tournaments based on their execution ensures a fair playing ground for all tournaments regarding eligibility for official support.

epic

this is nice

Hi! I have some issues with this update, specifically the rule stating to disallow asynchronous matches under any circumstances. Some of these issues include what an asynchronous match is defined as, and the potential of fully asynchronous tournaments that are now unbadgeable.

Please read the full document here!

YokesPai wrote:

Hi! I have some issues with this update, specifically the rule stating to disallow asynchronous matches under any circumstances. Some of these issues include what an asynchronous match is defined as, and the potential of fully asynchronous tournaments that are now unbadgeable.

Please read the full document here!

This document raises a lot of questions, especially with how much it feels being done in purely bad faith.

Obviously this was made as a rule to avoid asynchronous matches during a tournament where the matches are synchronous. However, this was decided way too fast.

So, you're already admitting that as a tournament host, you fully understood what the rule was made for, hence it should end at that, but let's continue.

In a qualifier, you are competing against every other player/team. And you can bet that there is no tournament where all players/teams play at the same time for said qualifier. Simply put, qualifiers aren’t allowed anymore.

Where in the name of hell did you even read qualifiers were not allowed.
Was it said point blank said explicitly at any point in the new rules?
Was it said by any of the Tournament Committee members at any point?

The fact this is a point even being brought up, when every person in the committee is a tournament host using qualifiers.
Why would we decide to shoot ourselves in the foot with that??

This would make existing tournaments such as Ladder Cup unviable for a badge which uses an asynchronous format during the bracket stage

So a tournament from October 2019 is the only last argument you've been able to find. Interesting how that seems like a non-issue in this case, and could just be sorted out on a case-by-case basis.

And also, personal take here, but if the tournament's format is completely experimental is nature, does it really need a badge that badly?

Therefore the rule is already flawed. But let’s ignore that. I assume the tournament committee made the rule assuming experienced tournament hosts know that qualifiers are exempt. Either way, specifying this would not hurt.

I think badged tournament hosts should not be having their hands held every single step of the way.
If you need that, then you shouldn't be looking at getting official support to begin with.

- No roll/pick/ban timer (as those are done beforehand).
- Waiting time between maps is decreased (fewer players/teams per lobby).

Some of these benefits also just sound like it's not that much worth the hassle of having two lobbies at once for a single match as a staff.

- Fewer maps to practice (maps that didn’t get picked aren’t played after all, you can also have huge mappools this way!)

I'm sorry but don't you literally need to practice most of the mappool to know what to ban or pick anyway???
How does this change anything?
As a staff and tournament player I am not seeing the benefit here in the slightest.

- Less worry about scheduling and availability issues (usually referred to as “schedule hell”).
- This allows people who aren’t available at 14-16 UTC to play international tournaments.

Probably the only decent arguments here, but also: If you can't get to schedule anything, don't join tournaments if you're not gonna have a large enough availability.
Also don't join a billion tournaments like a lot of osu!standard tournament players seem to do for whatever reason.

- You can even have teammates play asynchronous if their team has a big range of time zones (i.e. Suiji).

Oh great, so what now, 1 lobby per player per team?
Won't be a mess at all.
Asynchronous matches just don't feel like tournament matches at all at that point, it's just a practice lobby with your own team, or on your own.
So why even bother?

And for the cons, I personally agree on most of them. As an host, this just makes me not want to ever have them in, just like in the past 5+ years I have.

Therefore I propose that we simply change the wording of the rule:
“The tournament must have a consistent match format, however, qualifiers are exempt from this” (so no switching between async and sync)

So now to the actual part that matters at all.
Why did you make a whole 4-page document for this when the only thing that would require any change is a literal 3 sentences?

This ruling was always intended for tournaments actually using asynchronous matches as a cop-out from trying to bother scheduling at all.
Once again, this should not even be a thing as long as you, as a tournament player, is able to manage your schedule properly, so that you don't need to remove the entire point of a tournament match to be able to play it, being that tournament matches, when played in a synchronous manner, have so much more strategy involved than just making your entire draft and calling it a day, when in matches, your plan can completely change depending on your mental, which depends on things like, who gets the first pick, if your opponent wins an unexpected pick, making you need to change your picks, etc...
Ignoring all of that feels silly.

And on top of it, the main way it is used, which is not fully asynchronous matches, as is made obvious within your own document that it is merely a gimmick because, if it was something to think about...

Why has no one hosted anything like that properly in 3 years?

And if they want to, they could always go ahead and try to badge it if they think it deserves it. This ruling shouldn't stop that by any means.

If it is as confusing as you imply it is, maybe it should be changed, yes. But as of now, I have not seen anyone be concerned with that.

The main way it is used makes it so that the way matches are played within a tournament is just changed on the whim of players, which is just something that should not happen.

Hosting a fully asynchronous tournament and expecting it to be badged could happen, if it's consistent with all the quality requirements this game will require.

May I ask what are the consensus on a host's own eligibility? If a tournament organiser is currently restricted on osu!, or has an ongoing tournament ban, can they receive official support for a badge? And if it's not a complete no, where is the line drawn? If support is eligible even if you have a tournament ban, would that still apply if you have a permanent tournament ban that's given from cheating in a tournament?

Personally I think that anyone who is restricted or has an ongoing tournament ban should not be given official support no matter what. I hope this can be clarified and added to the wiki, thanks!

megumic wrote:

May I ask what are the consensus on a host's own eligibility? If a tournament organiser is currently restricted on osu!, or has an ongoing tournament ban, can they receive official support for a badge? And if it's not a complete no, where is the line drawn? If support is eligible even if you have a tournament ban, would that still apply if you have a permanent tournament ban that's given from cheating in a tournament?

Personally I think that anyone who is restricted or has an ongoing tournament ban should not be given official support no matter what. I hope this can be clarified and added to the wiki, thanks!

Considering the current state of tournament banned players as helpers/staff, as shown on the wiki, depends fully on the host's discretion as of now, tournament banned players would not be allowed by any means to do that by themselves.

And well for restricted players, that's another obvious no..

YokesPai wrote:

Hi! I have some issues with this update, specifically the rule stating to disallow asynchronous matches under any circumstances. Some of these issues include what an asynchronous match is defined as, and the potential of fully asynchronous tournaments that are now unbadgeable.

Please read the full document here!

While Kasumi has already done a good job explaining Tournament Committee's official stance on this, I'd like to expand to clarify why the wording on this rule should not be changed.

Match is never defined in the official tournament support wiki for a reason. Hosts are in charge of determining what constitutes a match in each of their tournaments. Most tournament hosts describe qualifiers with something close to "Each team/player plays through the qualifier mappool once in a lobby with a referee. Scores from all teams/players are then compared against each other." Note that it is often explicitly stated in one form or another that teams/players play through the mappool independently of other teams. This makes qualifiers as it is usually done a format that has 1-team matches where scores from each match are later compared across all matches.

This is very different from the interpretation YokesPai presents, which is a match with all teams competing at once. This is also the working definition of qualifiers that Tournament Committee and those approving badges for tournaments are using, so there is no issue with the ability to badge tournaments with qualifiers.

Also, note that your proposed wording also would render Ladder Cup unbadgeable, as well as any and all other tournaments with any change in match procedure between rounds.

The tournament must have a consistent match format

One could argue this wording also invalidates all tournaments whose Best Of or ban counts change between round, or which change format from group stages to a bracket stage if they were to argue in bad faith.

Kasumi-sama wrote:

This document raises a lot of questions, especially with how much it feels being done in purely bad faith.

If you think this was done in bad faith, I will provide some context. This document stemmed from a discussion of me pitching an idea and getting responed (by a tournament committee member, by the way) that it would not be badgeable.


I simply started questioning what it actually meant for a match to be asynchronous at that point, seeing as another person in the discussion started questioning what types of tournaments would/would not be badgeable.

Kasumi-sama wrote:

So, you're already admitting that as a tournament host, you fully understood what the rule was made for, hence it should end at that, but let's continue.

Yes, as a tournament player, I got to see a few asynchronous matches in my career. However, I saw members of said Discord server ask what an asynchronous match was, so I naturally thought "what else could an asynchrounous match refer to?"

This further reinforces my point that the current statement about aynchrounous matches isn't clear enough. If the tournament committee encourages all users - players and staff alike to use the tournament report form, then the expectations for a badged tournament should not be unclear for anyone.

If you truly want to play the "common knowledge" argument, you must also know that a majority of players in tournaments have never witnessed the type of "aynchrounous match" that this rule very specifically targets. So therefore this type of "aynchrounous match" should be further defined.

(Edit) Truth be told, we can all just "give examples" of people who know/don’t know what an asynchonous match is, and be no closer to figuring out if the current rule is vague or not. The best course of action in my opinion is polling answers from players, tournament players and staff alike to see how people interpret this rule. I am willing to hold one, but I would prefer one of you to help me with that to remove biases from both sides.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

Where in the name of hell did you even read qualifiers were not allowed.
Was it said point blank said explicitly at any point in the new rules?
Was it said by any of the Tournament Committee members at any point?

I got my conclusion by using the very definitions of the words "match" and "asynchounous" from Google (which is what one should do if they're confused about the wording). This was again an argument for how unclear the current rule about asynchrounous matches are. Was it presented badly? I don't know, but hopefully this cleared it up.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

The fact this is a point even being brought up, when every person in the committee is a tournament host using qualifiers.
Why would we decide to shoot ourselves in the foot with that??

Because I decided to take a step back and remove all prior notions about what I already know. It's very easy to do something that doesn't shoot your own foot, but looks like you are shooting your own foot to others. For example in this case, you guys know exactly what you mean by this new rule, but I saw some players who are and have been participating in tournaments still ask what it meant for a match to be asynchrounous.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

So a tournament from October 2019 is the only last argument you've been able to find. Interesting how that seems like a non-issue in this case, and could just be sorted out on a case-by-case basis.

I used Ladder Cup because it was brought up in the Discord. If you want more tournaments that use interesting formats that aren't your type of "matches", but would go under Google's definition of "matches", then I can refer to omct5 (osu map clearing tournament 5) and Banger Bonanza 2022 (where the 4-week qualifier stage was my favorite part, by the way).

Kasumii-sama wrote:

I think badged tournament hosts should not be having their hands held every single step of the way.
If you need that, then you shouldn't be looking at getting official support to begin with.

Considering how easy it is to search around for examples of well-run tournaments, I do agree overall. For this rule in particular though, can you name a tournament that had an asynchrounous match (your definition) on the top of your head? How many? When compared to the full amount of badged tournaments, it's not that many. Again, both players and staff alike should know what an asynchrounous match is. A specific rule like this has no reason to be vague in any way.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

Some of these benefits also just sound like it's not that much worth the hassle of having two lobbies at once for a single match as a staff.

Again, you can have multiple players/teams play in the same lobby (like a qualifier) if you wish to reduce the amount of lobbies. Players/teams can simply leave when a pick comes up that is not in their playlist. I've seen this work well in tryouts where players only pick x maps in the tryouts mappool, but have lobbies which go through all of them.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

I'm sorry but don't you literally need to practice most of the mappool to know what to ban or pick anyway???
How does this change anything?
As a staff and tournament player I am not seeing the benefit here in the slightest.

This was more of a benefit for experienced players, since they are well used to the usual mappool meta anyway. However, it is quite easy to play a map once and tell "I think I can do better" or "No, I will not be able to play this". In addition, many players I know are lazy and simply don't practice pools until the last second anyway, so if there are less picks there is less stress about what you're playing.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

Probably the only decent arguments here, but also: If you can't get to schedule anything, don't join tournaments if you're not gonna have a large enough availability.
Also don't join a billion tournaments like a lot of osu!standard tournament players seem to do for whatever reason.

This argument just feels like an argument for the sake of being an argument. I'm not going to make any assumtions based on your time zone, but it is pretty ridiculous that international team tournaments, 90% of the time force players who live in America, Asia and Oceania to play at early, late or straight up 3AM.
You also have no control of others, and if players wish to add asynchronous-type tournaments to their list of matches because they're more free to schedule, then they should do so.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

Oh great, so what now, 1 lobby per player per team?
Won't be a mess at all.

Qualifers aren't a mess, so this shouldn't be either. I will again refer to the argument 3 quotes above this one.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

Asynchronous matches just don't feel like tournament matches at all at that point, it's just a practice lobby with your own team, or on your own.
So why even bother?

They don't need to? Tournaments like omct and Ladder cup were very successful despite having little to no "actual tournament matches". And I personally loved the qualifier stage of Banger Bonanza. Not every tournament needs to the "adrenaline rush" of beating your opponent in a multi lobby. To be blunt, this argument sounds like a bias, rather than an actual argument.

Kasumii-sama wrote:

Why has no one hosted anything like that properly in 3 years?

After actually thinking about it (thanks to Dio's post), I realized that the type of tournament I'm proposing is literally just a score attack with a gimmick. It's happening in Lazer, it's been done in omct as a "pass attack", the qualifier stage in Banger Bonanza would count as consecutive score attacks which turns into a bracket stage. The difference between my concept and these tournaments do end up being a gimmick, where the gimmick is that instead of comparing your score to everyone in the tournament, it's compared to one other player/team.

So the argument about losing potential for "asynchrounous tournaments" does end up being void, and so does your argument about hosted a type of "asynchronous tournament" for 3 years.

So in the end, my document mostly came from a misunderstanding. Oh well. I still do wish it was more precisely defined, since some players I knew were initially confused until someone else specified it to them.

D I O wrote:

One could argue this wording also invalidates all tournaments whose Best Of or ban counts change between round, or which change format from group stages to a bracket stage if they were to argue in bad faith.

This is true, so after some thought, this is my next proposal:

- The tournament must have a consistent match format within the same stage.

This could allow for dynamic and interesting tournaments in my opinion, and would be a more precise wording of "Don't have a random asynchronous match when your tournament is fully synchrounous".

Either way, thank you both for responding seriously, because I really appriciate it.

Might me misunderstanding... so staffs no-longer needed to be scanned after this update?

Hey,

One of my club's officers is interested in playing in my university's upcoming LAN's Mania 4K tournament. However, they are also enlisted as a staffer. With these recent changes, then I have a few questions/concerns.

1) As long as they do not staff one osu! Mania 4K match before they are eliminated, then the chances of the tournament getting badged are still fine even if they were enlisted as a staffer before registering as a player? They also have never seen the mappool until it was publicly released.

2) Because this staffer is not playing in the LAN's standard tournament, can this staffer referee the LAN's standard matches at any point during the event (even if they are not yet eliminated from the Mania 4K tournament) without compromising badging prospects?

Thanks!

freddiiieeee wrote:

Hey,

One of my club's officers is interested in playing in my university's upcoming LAN's Mania 4K tournament. However, they are also enlisted as a staffer. With these recent changes, then I have a few questions/concerns.

1) As long as they do not staff one osu! Mania 4K match before they are eliminated, then the chances of the tournament getting badged are still fine even if they were enlisted as a staffer before registering as a player? They also have never seen the mappool until it was publicly released.

2) Because this staffer is not playing in the LAN's standard tournament, can this staffer referee the LAN's standard matches at any point during the event (even if they are not yet eliminated from the Mania 4K tournament) without compromising badging prospects?

Thanks!

1) The new rule states that eliminated players can only become so after being eliminated. As long as they have no power as a staff until they're eliminated, I see no issues in keeping him.

2) The standard and osu!mania tournaments are not connected together whatsoever, so I don't see why badging prospects would be compromised.

YokesPai wrote:

The tournament must have a consistent match format within the same stage.

I think this could be a little bit better as follows:

Any deviation in the format of a match must be publicly announced before the tournament's registrations close.

This would preserve the ability of hosts to badge any well-run tournament with variable match formats that are SUPPOSED to be variable. The only reason async sucks is because it deviates from the intended match format of the tournaments where async matches occur. I'll see if the other t-comm members are willing to push this change.

Bump cause new changes

Bump, new changes as of today

In conjunction with the new changes today, I will provide the reasonings the Tournament Committee had for these changes.

Reasoning

1. The Tournament Committee believes that only tournaments without any restrictions, such as being limited to specific rank ranges or a specific geographic location, should be eligible to receive prizes for all top three finalists.
2. The wiki page on restrictions already mentioned that players under an active restriction are ineligible to staff for tournaments. This has now also been clarified on the Official Support wiki.
3. Players who play qualifiers but afterwards don't end up participating in the remainder of the tournament, should not be awarded with any prizes, should their team end up winning the tournament, due to lack of participation.
4. The current deadline of 2 weeks to send a badge request was quite strict. This change was made to prohibit hosts from requesting badges for very old tournaments. The new deadline of 2 months should make things easier on hosts while still allowing for this.
5. Main menu banners are the next form of support after badges. The criteria may not have been all that clear, and this is an attempt to clarify them.
6. In conjunction with clarification on main menu banner criteria, we are happy to offer the possibility to be featured on the front page of the osu! website with your very own news post should your tournament qualify. The requirements are almost the same as those for main menu banners. We are looking forward to receiving feedback from the community how they feel about this.
7. The Tournament scene is bustling with creativity and cool tournament ideas. We want to further allow for more creativity to be possible by allowing asynchronous matches as long as it's a major part of the tournament's format. We want to emphasize, however, that tournaments should always adhere to the ideals, regardless of whether the matches are done synchronously or asynchronously.
8. Bot refereeing has been experimented with in qualifiers and we believe the use of automation is ready for the next step. Though match-play automation will still be heavily regulated, we want to open the door slightly to allow for its use. Approval from the osu! support team will be required for every instance where a referee bot/automation is used for the time being.

New changes were made to how the staff list needs to be communicated.

New changes were made with regards to asset usage in badge designs.

New changes were made requiring preliminary events leading into a main competition to also adhere to the same expectations as standalone tournaments.

We just updated tournament support eligibility criteria to require no use of prohibited tracks or artists in the tournament. This change was made while consulting with NAT on their procedures for ranked beatmaps.

Tournament badge status spreadsheet added to official resources. This shows all tournaments dating back to early 2023 which have been tracked by tournament committee and their status.

New changes are in effect:

1. Documentation on the Tournament Committee's workflow
2. Clarification on expectations and requirements for programs used for registrant filtering, seeding, and automated refereeing
3. Clarification on news post expectations for officially-supported beatmapping contests and tournaments

New changes are in effect with respect to draft tournaments:

1. Add Round of 8 support for specific types of draft tournaments

To clarify this change, draft tournaments may opt to start with a Round of 8 double-elimination bracket if:

1. The tournament is open rank.
2. The tournament features a minimum team size of 8 or more.

Further clarification:

1. This only applies to one division, should there be multiple divisions. If there are multiple "open rank" divisions, this bracket may only be applied to a single open rank division of the tournament. It is expected that said division is the most competitive one of the tournament with the best players participating.
2. This change applies to both international and region-restricted drafts.
3. This change applies to auction-style draft tournaments so long as all of the requirements are met. For example, the auction system must not allow teams with less than 8 players to be formed.

Small new change:

Add wiki pages as a valid location for a staff list.

Content Usage Rules have been reworked and clarified. The current wording is as follows:

1. DMCA'd maps are strictly prohibited.
2. Maps that violate the content usage permisions are strictly prohibited unless the maps are Ranked, Approved or Loved. If the use of the song was permitted by the artist, proof of permission must be included in the email sent upon tournament conclusion.

These changes were also announced here: Official Support Changes - Content Usage Rules

Are there any plans to use the Discord bot (Skill Issue#0973) for tourney rating and match players based on rating instead of rank? Would be nice to see that become the norm since it greatly reduces chances of being matched against derankers and other unfair matchups.

cozyin wrote:

Are there any plans to use the Discord bot (Skill Issue#0973) for tourney rating and match players based on rating instead of rank? Would be nice to see that become the norm since it greatly reduces chances of being matched against derankers and other unfair matchups.

The Skill Issue bot must abide by the official rules on programs before being allowed for use in officially-supported tournaments. See here: wiki/en/Tournaments/Official_support#programs

Once the program itself follows these rules, each tournament host who wishes to use it in an officially-supported tournament must explicitly request to use it.

Hellosu tournament community! As of today, our first wave of wiki changes for this quarter have been released!

These changes include the following:

1. LAN tournaments are now allowed to operate at a Round of 8 double-elimination or Round of 16 single-elimination format. We also codify that all tournaments may operate with a Round of 32 single-elimination format (which was already common knowledge but did not have an official rule).

2. Tournament organisers are now instructed to include links to the public wiki page, website, or spreadsheet in their email requesting badge prizes where users can find the match history with mp links (including qualifiers where applicable), mappools, and qualifier results (where applicable).

3. Removed the term "cooldown" and replaced it with "ban" in the staffing ban section to reduce confusion.

4. All public staff listings must be in sync with each other.

5. Some conflicting language regarding automated refereeing has been corrected. The use of any tools/automation still must be approved ahead of time.

The largest change of them all is a new rule which will be enforced for tournaments posted on or after January 1, 2025. This rule deals with what information hosts may or may not collect from players:

6. The tournament organisers do not collect, allow the submission of, or utilise any personal information from any registrants for any reason outside of specific exceptions.

You can find the exact changes in the following PRs:

1. Personal information collection PR
2. Other minor changes PR

Last but certainly not least, please view our full write-up of the changes, including insight from the committee as to why these changes were made, in our new changelog forum post!

Thanks for following along, and thanks for hosting awesome tournaments!

Greetings, traveler! I'm back again to report a small update to our support page. This change relates to automated tools which hosts can use for registrant filtering and seeding. Here's the update:

1. Clarify what a "dataset" actually means with respect to these tools. A dataset means any collection of osu! multiplayer matches, player scores, or anything else which is used to formulate how the tool does its job. For example, is the tool grading how well players perform (such as ETX/SIP/o!TR)? If so, then all of the data which gets "fed into" the algorithm must be public. The same is true for any context by which data goes in and a result comes out. It all has to be public.

2. Specify that these datasets must be timestamped, remain publicly downloadable for at least 6 months, and have the most recent archive be no more than 30 days out of date. Should an archive be unavailable during the tournament review process, the burden falls on the host to produce the archive. Without data archives being available well after the average tournament concludes, third parties will have no way to verify the legitimate use of the tool.

3. Define that tournaments using these tools (again, AFTER being given explicit approval in writing to do so) must also disclose any dates in which these tools are used. So, hypothetically if you use an approved tool for filtering on date A and use it again to seed on date B, you need to disclose both dates on your forum post. Data could have changed between these two dates. Without the dates, reviewers won't know which archive to download and check your tournament against.

Click here to view the PR with the exact changes.

These changes were made to further refine our expectations of these tools. This change ensures there won't be any confusion about how long to retain archives and similar surrounding processes. We hope this helps you in your journey to develop / use these tools in your tournaments!

Thanks for following along

why me 😫