something I've been thinking about lately is the prospect of doing more distance TOing (after running two events back in 2019 but then having to stop for three years and counting due to life stuff), but I'm sort of internally debating whether or not I should focus most of my TO efforts on Sprint mode, or Reverse Tag
(long post)
Sprint mode, being the regular speedrun/time trial mode, feels a bit better to me conceptually, since part of the reason I want to host tournaments is to hopefully give the game some more exposure and Sprint is like, the main mode. it's what the game is. but I'm insistent to, admittedly, a fault, that I should run Sprint tournaments in a 1v1 format. essentially i'm pretending it's a fighting game when it's not, which is perhaps a weird way to run a speedrun mode that's completely non-interactive, but I do like the simplicity of a 1v1 format from a TO perspective, since it's already widely supported across most tournament platforms, and there's more freedom for formats you can pick (round robin, swiss, single/double elim, two-stage tournaments with two of these, etc.) - also, I think in a non-interactive mode, the main form of interactivity would be some kind of map counterpicking format, so you can directly strategise your map picks against your opponent. i think 1v1 is a much better format for counterpicking compared to free-for-all; i think adding more opponents would make it too difficult to make strategic picks based on what maps your opponents are weak on; you could still kinda pick based on what maps that you yourself are strong on, but it wouldn't have as much strategic depth, in my opinion.
I also mostly just couldn't find a free-for-all Sprint format that I actually liked, given that each individual map takes maybe only 2 to 3 minutes at absolute maximum, and that's not really long enough for a tournament set. There was just no way to actually do multiple maps in a format I liked, there's options such as:
- You play the same map a set number of times and you win based on the best time you get. Refract Studios, the developers, have used this format, but I personally dislike it since if you get a really good time in the first round, you have less incentive to take the replays seriously. I also don't like playing the same map more than once; I kind of prefer a more consistency-focused format, where you only get one shot so you gotta make it count.
- Using a points system across multiple maps, Mario Kart style. I guess this works but my main issue is that using points makes it easy for people to tie by the end of the set; that's not super great in my opinion. I guess I could try to find a way to make ties mathematically unlikely, but it seems contrived.
- Use an "elimination race" style, where each group of players plays multiple maps but in each map, the one to two bottommost players get dropped. This is the format I like the best, but the viability of it is entirely dependant on how many players are present in each group, and if the player count doesn't allow for all groups to be evenly sized, some groups would play less maps (or have some contrived rule where they still play the same number but drop less players). You can minimize that issue by using smaller groups, but smaller groups don't allow for as many maps per set, and larger groups might have the opposite problem to 1v1, where it takes too little time to really be engaging.
main issue is that it just gets a bit difficult to run a 1v1 format in terms of logistics, since that more or less requires running matches concurrently, and while it's not necessarily a problem to tell people to host lobbies themselves, people might not have the necessary maps unlocked for the tournament sets. also people could leave the "shuffle playlist" option on by accident and end up playing the maps in the wrong order, which would be funny but not the greatest for a competition. It's also slighly nervewracking to not be able to monitor everything going on in the tournament at once, admittedly, but I'm sure people can figure things out.
I did think that like... since the mode is pretty non-interactive, there would be potential to just stuff more than one match into the same multiplayer lobby, and that would allow for more control and less runtime. With no mods, the game allows for a maximum of 12 players in a multiplayer lobby, which would allow for five 1v1 matchups and 2 spectators. But it would possibly be a bit confusing trying to keep track of everything. From the TO side, I've already made a mod for the game that adds some spectate features not present in the vanilla version (such as a split-screen spectate view that was made specifically for the purpose of 1v1 matches), so I could probably add something in there that would help keep track of things, but that does add some extra work I'd need to do at some point. It also would only work with fully pre-set maplists, but I suppose the solution there is that you'd use preset maplists in early rounds to save time, but once you get to, say, top 8, then you start putting people into individual lobbies so you can do counterpicks.
In contrast to all that, though, Reverse Tag is a lot eaiser to run logistically. The whole thing is that, like the name suggests, it's Tag but reversed; instead of everybody running away from It, everyone is running towards It, since the win condition is to be It for a cumulative amount of time (3 minutes by default). It's actually a really fun versus mode, and most people in the community really love playing Tag, it's just hard to play since the Distance community's pretty small and I think it only really works if you have three or more players in the lobby.
I digress, though. One other thing that Tag is good at is that Tag matches can last quite a while; if we assume we use lobbies of 6 players for a tag tournament, then a single game could last between 3 minutes at minimum, and up to about 18 minutes at absolute maximum. It'll probably be closer to around 10 to 12 minutes in practice, which I think is a good amount of time for a tourney match. The game also has built in ways that we can handle set length; in Sprint, you'd want to increase set length as the tournament goes on by increasing the number of maps, which in a FFA format would give rise to the issues I mentioned above, but in Tag mode, the game just gives you the option to change how long you need to be It for in order to win. If you need shorter matches, you could set it to 2 minutes; if you want a longer match for the final showdown, you could increase it to 5. It's a lot easier to make FFA work in this context.
It still does have some limitations, in that FFA formats don't seem to have a huge amount of support on tournament platforms yet. Challonge does have a FFA format option, but it's relatively simplistic and not as fully featured as I would like. I would personally enjoy the idea of being able to implement some kind of double elimination or redemption system, where players who lose in the main bracket get put into a redemption bracket, and if they make it out of redemption they can rejoin the winners in a final stage. That format does have issues since like... you can't really do the "losers side player must win twice in grands" tradeoff in a free-for-all format, and it'd just be slightly annoying to try to run that in general since I would probably have to sort and keep track of the brackets myself due to lack of support from major platforms. I'm not sure if other platforms like Battlefy or start.gg would have better support for this kind of thing; I know they've got more advanced multi-stage support than Challonge, but not sure if there's a free-for-all format option that can be used for something like this.
Anyway, the other problem I have with Tag is despite being easier to run logistically and arguably a better fit for a tournament mode since there's actual player interaction (mainly in terms of mindgames and positioning, trying to set yourself up in the optimal position to cut It off and become It yourself), there's a sort of impurity to my mind of focusing TO efforts on what is, essentially, a side mode. It's fun and deserves recognition but I'm not sure I necessary want that to be the main public exposure since it's not how the game is "normally" played. Perhaps that's a bit of an irrational hangup, and it probably is - I guess it's kind of an issue in general where sometimes it's difficult to give every single playstyle that exists in a game the recognition it deserves, and alternate ways to play sometimes get looked down upon or neglected because it's not attractive to or reflective of the "core" audience or gameplay loop. I'm not really sure.
Most likely, the reality is I'll probably end up doing tournaments for both modes, perhaps even in a theoretical "major" for Distance, there could be events for both of them there too. Not sure when exactly I would get around to doing that since there's still life stuff that's kind of gotten in the way of things, but I think it was kinda fun doing the two events that I did do and I think I'd like to do more of them eventually. Plus, a lot of people in the community are saying that we need more events but noone is actually running any so lol I guess I have to be the one to change that