... Why is Mantis so useless? It can't take in to effect win rates, honour, rank, etc... It can display it but not for any good reason...

Todays wonderful effort from it... Puts me against the national champ, then someone else who I went to the last turn of time (1 win each) then ran to a seven deep chain to lose by 1 hp (so you couldn't get any *** closer) only to then for it to put me against someone who is 1 win 1 loss, lose the first, win the second, and the third game goes for 40 minutes with me top decking since turn 4 and I eventually lose it by a few HP (as Illidan, who is *** useless when you have nothing to play against, shock, yet another downloaded BlackIce)... So now I'm last because of the way Mantis decides how to match people up...

Honestly... Why do we have rank if it doesn't mean anything except bragging rights? Shouldn't it have some sort of effect on Mantis? Shouldn't Mantis be able to note down that a game was 2-0 or 2-1? Why does that make zero difference to it yet they do the stupid tie breaker based on who you beat/lost to and where they ended up and nothing else?

Why is JUST losing worth exactly the same as getting wiped or just conceding?

Wow, sounds like you're really upset. But, you're beef isn't with the software program MANTIS, it's with the way tournaments are run. MANTIS is just an implementation of the tournament rules that were created by Upper Deck. If you're going to be so angry, at least be angry at the right thing.

2278176:

.Why do we have rank if it doesn't mean anything except bragging rights? Shouldn't it have some sort of effect on Mantis?

No. It IS just for bragging rights. Just because you play in every event within a 6-hour radius does not necessarily make you a better player. Rating is more equivalent to "how good" of a player a person is, but again this is not a perfect determiner. The best player in the world might not have enough events to go to in order to gain rating points. There is no TCG pairing system (to my knowledge) that factors in a player's overall rating into the pairing for the individual tournament.

Shouldn't Mantis be able to note down that a game was 2-0 or 2-1?

I personally think this would not be a bad adjustment. I would be willing to bet that UDE originally designed MANTIS without this feature to help differentiate their reporting software from that other company up the "Coast"

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www.ccgscards.com

CCGs Cards Comics and Games, in Pittsburgh, PA - home to Pat Eshghy, DMF Boston Champion!

OK yes, not upset with the software as such, just how it's been put together. In the drafts today I managed to get the bye (which I find the worst situation, you are down a test run on your new deck and end up against the highest rank in your pod afterwards). Then won, 2-1 then lost 1-2, both times by under 4hp. Again would have been nice to be able to report the closer games in Mantis as they really should be worth less then a complete win / worth more than a complete loss.

The other thing, unrelated to Mantis so may do a new post for it, is Draft byes. We just ran 8, 7, 7. Wouldn't have 8,8,6 been better so no one had a bye (instead of two people in two seperate pods?). Is there any standard for this sorta thing in the rules?

2278176:

Why is JUST losing worth exactly the same as getting wiped or just conceding?

The answer is pretty simple.

We want to avoid any situation where players can get an advantage over other players by manipulating the way results are reported.

For example, two friends are paired in the last round and they are on the bubble with players playing in another match. They can agree to report the match as a 2-0 win regardless of the actual outcome. This puts players that don't know each other and aren't willing to manipulate the results at a disadvantage, as they may have a natural 2-1 result. This extends to other situations like weighing a close match differently than a blowout. This is almost impossible for judges to enforce, as friends can easily set up an arrangement ahead of time.

We don't base pairings on ratings and rankings because we want everyone at a tournament to be on equal footing during that tournament. If we paired higher ranked players against each other, it would often put new players at a disadvantage during tiebreakers. As the tournament proceeds, you would expect higher rated players to win more often, so people who were paired against them would have better tiebreakers.

Pairings and byes in MANTIS are completely random. It's the fairest way and avoids most of the easy way to manipulate tiebreakers.

BD

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Ben Drago
Marketing Manager, Organized Play

If you need assistance or have any other comments, please send it to my attention at player@upperdeck.com.
Read my blog post about one-game match format here.

If Mantis did do something weird during a match where is a good place to report it so people can look into why did it happen?

For example the Tanaris Realm Champs it paired the same people in rnd 5 and rnd 6.

I don't see the difference between two friends allowing the one with the better current standings to "win" (which does happen far too often) as opposed to your suggested "rigging of results", would there really be any difference?...

I hardly think this is a reason to disregard making 2-1 and 2-0 different results.

Although you do raise another point which Mantis should take into account.  Generally speaking people from the same local area will "team up" against other areas.  I know here in Brisbane we would much prefer to see any of us win it over any other city, or even store, players.  That said we don't lose on purpose to each other but I'm sure Mantis could easily have an option where it wouldn't pair people of the same local area together, at least for the early rounds where so many people are on the same number of points.  At the very least this would get people to meet and play against someone new.

2278176:

. The other thing, unrelated to Mantis so may do a new post for it, is Draft byes. We just ran 8, 7, 7. Wouldn't have 8,8,6 been better so no one had a bye (instead of two people in two seperate pods?). Is there any standard for this sorta thing in the rules?

This is the most valid point you've raised here, and it is very much related to mantis.  We had a similar situation at our recent realm championships, where Mantis decided to divide the 35 people in the event into five pods of seven.  That means that there were byes given out in pod one, which is ludicrous.  It could have easily made the pods 8,8,7,6,6, which would have been far more fair as it would keep byes away from the top tables and help ensure that the top 8 would not be decided by random assignment of byes.

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Check out my Article Series "Tools of the Trade" here at wowtcg.com!

1326613:

2278176:

. The other thing, unrelated to Mantis so may do a new post for it, is Draft byes. We just ran 8, 7, 7. Wouldn't have 8,8,6 been better so no one had a bye (instead of two people in two seperate pods?). Is there any standard for this sorta thing in the rules?

This is the most valid point you've raised here, and it is very much related to mantis.  We had a similar situation at our recent realm championships, where Mantis decided to divide the 35 people in the event into five pods of seven.  That means that there were byes given out in pod one, which is ludicrous.  It could have easily made the pods 8,8,7,6,6, which would have been far more fair as it would keep byes away from the top tables and help ensure that the top 8 would not be decided by random assignment of byes.

Last season I believe UDE published a table of what the pods should be for different sizes so as to prevet the top 2 pods or so from having byes.  Were those not given out this time?

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My deckbox says "Other Matt"
Northwest WoW messageboards - Northwest WoW forums

1312007:

1326613:

2278176:

. The other thing, unrelated to Mantis so may do a new post for it, is Draft byes. We just ran 8, 7, 7. Wouldn't have 8,8,6 been better so no one had a bye (instead of two people in two seperate pods?). Is there any standard for this sorta thing in the rules?

This is the most valid point you've raised here, and it is very much related to mantis.  We had a similar situation at our recent realm championships, where Mantis decided to divide the 35 people in the event into five pods of seven.  That means that there were byes given out in pod one, which is ludicrous.  It could have easily made the pods 8,8,7,6,6, which would have been far more fair as it would keep byes away from the top tables and help ensure that the top 8 would not be decided by random assignment of byes.

Last season I believe UDE published a table of what the pods should be for different sizes so as to prevet the top 2 pods or so from having byes.  Were those not given out this time?

I remembered that too, and asked the TO about it.  He told me that whatever Mantis did was what he was doing, and that was pretty much that.  Its entirely possible he didn't hear about them at all.

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Check out my Article Series "Tools of the Trade" here at wowtcg.com!

1753131:

If Mantis did do something weird during a match where is a good place to report it so people can look into why did it happen? For example the Tanaris Realm Champs it paired the same people in rnd 5 and rnd 6.

its important to note this was in pod 1 with top 8 implications. I still made it, but kind of ridiculous...