Guild Wars 2

32 European teams and 19 North American teams played in the Pro League Open Qualifiers yesterday, after hours of play we got down to the top 8 teams from each region! On Monday, 16th November, those 8 teams will battle it out for a final spot in the Pro League. There are a total of four spots up for grabs in each regions, that means that teams just have to win one single match to secure their spot.
The action will be broadcasted live on Twitch from the ESL Studios in Leicester, England and Los Angeles, USA. The European broadcast will start at at 19:00 CET/10:00am PST and the North American broadcast which will kick off at 02:00 CET/5:00pm PST.

Prizes

• 1-4th for each region: Spot in the ESL Guild Wars 2 Pro League Season 1
  
  European Qualifier
• Teams: Purple Noise, Team Aggression, Celerius e-Sports, Chaotic Contingency, Pizza With Nutella, Car Crashed, We Inspire, More Guns Than Roses)
• Coverage: Brackets & Stream
• Casters: Daniel “Jebro” Littleton & Joe “Munchables” Fenny
  
  North American Qualifier
• Teams: Team PZ, ASAP Zerg, You Back In Time, Spoookie, Zero Counterplay, Auto Correct, Radioactive, Ez Pz Lemon Squeezy
• Coverage: Brackets & Stream)
• Casters: Joe “Storm” Nowasell & Christian “Heurix” Thomasser
  
  Quick Info
• Date: 16th of November
• EU Start: 19:00 CET // 10:00am PST
• NA Start: 02:00 CET // 5:00pm PST
• Coverage: Brackets EU, Brackets NA, Live Stream
• Pro League Portal
• Facebook: ESLGW2 & GuildWars2
• Twitter: ESLGW2 & GuildWars2

Acandis.3250:

And move on to the fact that you now toss double elim out the window.
How can you possibly excuse that?

It was always the plan to do single elimination for the Monday matches, check the forum post where we announced that Saturday would be double elim: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Pro-League-Open-Qualifiers/first#post5755165

We reseeded this bracket so that the WB teams will fight vs. the LB teams as that is in our, and many others, opinion the most fair way to do things.

In either format I would still expect the top 4 teams to make it through so I don’t think its that much of a difference. I am curious about some of the seeding arrangements though.

Eurantien.4632:

In either format I would still expect the top 4 teams to make it through so I don’t think its that much of a difference.

If e.g. the two best of those eight are fighting in the quarter finals, the second best team would NOT make it through, because it gets eliminated.

Another example: Abjured would not have won the last WTS without double elimination, because they got eliminated in the first round.

Brix.8461:

It was always the plan

Yes, it was completely clear from the beginning, that four teams are getting determined through single elimination, but this fact does NOT justify why single elimination got chosen in the first place and why this problem does not get solved.

If you really want to find the best 4 teams, you really need to have double elimination.

I concur with the others – seeding aside, single elimination is a very bad, unfair idea.

Let’s run a scenario. Let’s say we have a PvP tournament, much like this one, where there will only be two winning teams. The tournament is double elimination. However many teams show up, let’s say 8 teams, and they all duke it out. In the end, Team A and Team B win the tournament -they are the two top teams.

Now, back it up a bit. Let’s say the first match of the tournament pitted Team A against Team B. Team A won, perhaps by a small margin. Team A beat every other match they were in. Team B, now in the loser’s bracket, worked there way back up – showing that they were the second best team, by beating every team in their way as well.

In the end, there is no doubt that Team A and Team B are the two best teams of the tournament.

If it was single elimination? Team B would have lost against Team A, and despite being more skilled and more deserving of the second place spot, they would not get it. Some team not as worthy as Team B would get it, all because of the initial seeding and the silly single elimination rule.

When you choose single elimination, your seeding decides who gets to move on almost as much as the teams themselves. Let’s say Team Faded and Apex Prime are in this tournament. Let’s say that they both have the capability to beat every other team in the tournament, they are both deserving of the #1 and #2 spots in the tournament. But no. Single elimination. Your seeding just happens to pair them up. You decided that one of them will absolutely, definitely not move on from the tournament. All because it wasn’t double elimination.

Please don’t make the tournament single elimination. We’re just getting into our first Pro League, don’t start it like this. Thank you.

Single elimination is always a bad idea.

Period.

Rather what I meant was (at least for NA) whether we use the old double elim brackets or the new single elim brackets both scenarios have a very high probability of the same teams making it to the top 4. Granted, I understand and recognize the possibility that one of the “top 4” teams have a higher chance of losing with the single elimination as there will be no second chances.

There’s always going to be a chance that teams are going to be knocked out before they deserved to be. However, as long as the seeding is unbiased and fair, that gets put on the team. If these teams had all been competing and proven how good they were, they would have been given a corresponding seed. My only complaint there would be that seeding methods weren’t announced sooner.

Rather what I meant was (at least for NA) whether we use the old double elim brackets or the new single elim brackets both scenarios have a very high probability of the same teams making it to the top 4. Granted, I understand and recognize the possibility that one of the “top 4” teams have a higher chance of losing with the single elimination as there will be no second chances.

All it takes is two of the top 4 teams (top 4 through double elim) being paired up against each other in the single elim tournament for one of the top 4 to not go to the deserving team. There’s a, what, 3 in 7 chance that that happens with random seedings?

Just a reminder that there is a lot of logistics going into this cup like Josh previously stated in another post, especially now that it’s live from the ESL Studios: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Pro-League-Open-Qualifiers/first#post5756856

Also there’s already kind of established a “top 4” going in to the tournament tomorrow from the winners bracket and none those teams will face each other. The 4 other teams from the losers bracket however have a final shot at getting to the Pro League if they beat one of the winners bracket teams.

Align.5479:

Just a reminder that there is a lot of logistics going into this cup like Josh previously stated in another post, especially now that it’s live from the ESL Studios: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Pro-League-Open-Qualifiers/first#post5756856

Also there’s already kind of established a “top 4” going in to the tournament tomorrow from the winners bracket and none those teams will face each other. The 4 other teams from the losers bracket however have a final shot at getting to the Pro League if they beat one of the winners bracket teams.

The problem with that argument is that it assumes the seeding on Saturday was done accurately. Radioactive, for example, is arguably one of the stronger teams in the qualifier but were placed against another very strong team, forcing them to win out in the loser’s bracket to make it through.

In any case, I’m not thrilled about the format, but we did know that this would be the case when the ESL admins agreed to do double elimination on Saturday. The only question this leaves is how the seeding for Monday was done. At first glance it looks like they just read seeds off of the order in which teams appear in the bracket top to bottom, which makes no sense whatsoever.