Format Discussion for 2018 BGE

[Kong Wen]

I reckon we're going to do unlimited weighted nominations for the main event like we did in 2015, and we'll cap them at 10 nominations per participant for each of the user-submitted categories.

[SkyPikachu]

I noticed we got a lot less nominations this year and was wondering if next time a tiering system would work better. Instead of the more games you nominate the less weight they get (which encouraged nominating less games) you could have a system where you could nominate up to 5 tier 1 nomination which had a greater weight to them then have a tier 2 list which had a lower weight but you could nominate unlimited amount of games.

This way if little Jimmy really adores Hello Kitty Island adventure and wants it to get a good weight it can be nominated in tier 1 while he can then go and nominate 100 other games that all have a smaller weight to them.

This would solve the issue of people not nominating top 32 games as "someone else will" and so we wouldn't have games as team fortress 2 getting the highest weight.

I originally nominated a lot less games but after long said a lot of the top 32 hasn't been nominated I nominated all the big name top 32 games that I enjoyed and in doing so it made a lot of the games I nominated fall into round 1.

Not sure what people's thoughts are about this. Obviously this would be for the next event not the 2019 event.

[Kong Wen]

I noticed we got a lot less nominations this year and was wondering if next time a tiering system would work better. Instead of the more games you nominate the less weight they get (which encouraged nominating less games) you could have a system where you could nominate up to 5 tier 1 nomination which had a greater weight to them then have a tier 2 list which had a lower weight but you could nominate unlimited amount of games.

Two points: getting fewer nominations is not necessarily a bad thing (as we discussed when we planned this format, we wanted to discourage scattershot massive nominations with little thought behind them), and is informed more by lower population than any kind of strategic consideration.

This would solve the issue of people not nominating top 32 games as "someone else will" and so we wouldn't have games as team fortress 2 getting the highest weight.

Team Fortress 2 getting a high seed isn't a problem, because it's a good game that a few people valued highly enough to make sacrifices. People not nominating the games they think are the best games ever isn't a contest structure problem, it's an individual strategy fail. I'm not worried about correcting for people's forgetfulness.

EDIT:

I originally nominated a lot less games but after long said a lot of the top 32 hasn't been nominated I nominated all the big name top 32 games that I enjoyed and in doing so it made a lot of the games I nominated fall into round 1.

Just to elaborate further on this, there are pros and cons to either strategy (nominating few games or nominating many games). It's not like nominating few games has all the benefits but you have to neglect games to do it. There are benefits of nominating many games, too. As Shoe is seeing right now, he gets a whole voting round for the community to refine his choices. Not only that, but every single game that wins this round and progresses into the next is a Shoe nomination! Winning the field early allows a game to pick up steam, especially when it's a game others realize they neglected in their own nominations (hello, Hollow Knight!) And it's not like highly-seeded games are getting a bye into the finals. Team Fortress 2 and the other heavily-weighted games will come into the competition and have to run against games that have won polls for multiple rounds in a row.