Unlimited tournament entry with random seeding?

redlinederby Monday, 6/3/2013
Site manager

Had a thought over the weekend to remove the 16-person limit on tournament entries and allow anyone/everyone to enter a car. The tournaments will still only be 16-car brackets so the seeding would happen by pulling 16 random entries.

So if 50 people entered cars for a tournament, the game would randomly select 16 to be entered. The cars not used would return to general population for future entry.

Only exception I was thinking would be if it's your first time entering a car you would automatically be entered (unless there were 16 new entries for the same bracket, however, unlikely). There could be achievements/bonuses for some of these actions.

Thoughts?

Does the random selection sound more or less fun?
How turned off would you be if your car isn't selected?
Do you think this would make for more interesting brackets?


Discussion

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SummerSpeed 6/3/13

I think, in order to grow, it would be better because one would think of it as an achievement. However, I'm of the opinion that a player must have entered a bracket in a previous race to be eligible. That way they can be deemed "real" players.

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Stroller 6/3/13

This system would give the illusion that the cars not picked were eliminated in the preliminary rounds and did not make it to final sixteen. Just like it happens in real life. So it sounds fine to me. This also would assure that everyone had at least a chance to get a car "in the race".

Not crazy about this at all.

Does that kill the garaged cars that we have now? What happens if your car is not selected? Back to your garage or back to the general public? Would hate to lose a car because it wasn't part of a random selection.

There is a strategy that I use now that goes out the window with entering certain cars at certain times based on my standing position/tracks we are racing at.

Are too many good cars going to be left out at the end of the year and we don't have a true HOF car because we get some funky random selection each race?

If too many people are being locked out, then just expand it to 32 cars instead.

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redlinederby 6/4/13
Site manager

Good points, Iowa, I totally didn't think about the impact on garage cars, good call. This idea does throw a wrench in that a bit.

This is just a thought and nothing is for-sure yet so you won't see this next season (or probably even season after).

Maybe entering a garage car guarantees entry? But maybe at that point it won't matter if there are 16 garage entries...hmmm...I'll have to crunch some numbers and see what the trend is.

I was just thinking if the 16 entry limit is too limiting. I know the whole entry part was designed as a "reward" for those that were attentive enough to get in early but I started to wonder if that was really good for the game in the long and for getting new players involved in the whole process.

We can't expand to 32 cars at this point, we're stuck at 16. The theory is that players will enter a car they think can win, so I don't think it would open the doors on "funky" cars being in the HOF.

Good input, guys, keep it coming!

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FOTF 6/5/13

I'm with ISC. It could end up in a less-than-worthy champ car--if the race was, say, pickup trucks (as an example) the fastest pickup might not make it through the random selection, and then not get a chance to race again for the rest of the season.
Randomness gives more people a chance, but it makes it a bit unfair to the diehards that try and get cars in immediately after the tournament opens.

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shadowracer 6/6/13

I don't really have a horse in the race...in fact I don't quite even understand the concept of having a car in your "garage"

But basically I think that its pretty much ok the way it is. As long as the guys that miss the pick aren't at a HUGE disadvantage, it's basically ok IMO.

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redlinederby 6/6/13
Site manager

I was talking about this with some guys at work and one of them suggested having the players vote for the 16 that get entered. So as many people that want to can enter and then everyone can also vote up the cars they'd like to see - top 16 get in, rest go back to the pool (or garage).

After reading the feedback and thinking about it more, I'm leaning to just keeping this as-is but just wanted to throw out some other ideas that came in. Although I do like the thought of having a garage car guarantees you entry so you don't lose the strategy involved...plus it means there's more motivation to unlock cars, which I like.

But I've also been thinking about my (game) strategy in having all cars be locked when they enter the league. New players would get some credits to be able to unlock cars immediately to try it out but then you just earn credits by picking like you do now. So the "free" cars would slowly become a thing of the past. This would make the garage mechanic a more important part of the game since you couldn't avoid it then.

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