Notes regarding brackets

[tooomm]

Double Elimination:

• The trophy is not shown in the final table/round (unlike in single elimination and swiss option) [red circle].
• The match numbering is not 100% in chronological order [red numbers] to how games/rounds [yellow] should play out in parallel over the course of a tournament

Swiss:

• Having a standing table (or points next to their names) would help a lot to understand and follow the matchmaking.
  Unlike the other two tournament structures it is not as easy to understand just by looking at the brackets.

General:

• All brackets are pre-populated right away when generated, instead filling them up step by step (round by round) after results come in and get confirmed. That way tournament progress is better understood and everything looks more clear. Trophy could also just show up when winner of finals is decided.
• For viewers/followers of a tournament (bracket link) it would be way easier as well, as they only have the outside view with no additional information. Additional idea: Automatic refresh/update of the bracket page on new content or every ~5min?
• The option to lock the brackets to the owner only uses a checkbox, an icon and a label.
  Following other places in the UI, it should be sufficient to go with a toggling unlock (or lock-open) icon with a explaining tooltip.
• The 3 re-generate buttons take up a lot of space and have recurring wording, even though only one is relevant at a time. The amount of text takes the focus away from the actual button action as well.
  What about a dropdown with the 3 types and a Re-generate button next to it? Another nice side effect is that the current selection acts like a title for the shown brackets - something that is not available currently.
  
  
• Display bracket type in view bracket screen for clarity, e.g.:
  

[Senryoku]

Double Elimination:

• The trophy is not shown in the final table/round (unlike in single elimination and swiss option) [red circle].

• The match numbering is not 100% in chronological order [red numbers] to how games/rounds [yellow] should play out in parallel over the course of a tournament

• This should only be the case when there's only one player (which is a non-issue)

• There's multiple ways to order the matches, the numbering here is just a way to label the matches.

Swiss:

• Having a standing table (or points next to their names) would help a lot to understand and follow the matchmaking.
  Unlike the other two tournament structures it is not as easy to understand just by looking at the brackets.

Could you show me an example?

General:

• All brackets are pre-populated right away when generated, instead filling them up step by step (round by round) after results come in and get confirmed. That way tournament progress is better understood and everything looks more clear. Trophy could also just show up when winner of finals is decided.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean it would be easier to have to manually confirm a change? I get that the current behavior is a little unusual, but I feel like it's pretty intuitive (you have immediate feedback, should be easy to understand).

• For viewers/followers of a tournament (bracket link) it would be way easier as well, as they only have the outside view with no additional information. Additional idea: Automatic refresh/update of the bracket page on new content or every ~5min?

Mmh, sorry, same thing, I'm definitely missing something ^^"

• The option to lock the brackets to the owner only uses a checkbox, an icon and a label.
  Following other places in the UI, it should be sufficient to go with a toggling unlock (or lock-open) icon with a explaining tooltip.

Yeah it would be cleaner but I had the space and I think it's clearer (& more visible/discoverable) this way.

• The 3 re-generate buttons take up a lot of space and have recurring wording, even though only one is relevant at a time. The amount of text takes the focus away from the actual button action as well.
  What about a dropdown with the 3 types and a Re-generate button next to it? Another nice side effect is that the current selection acts like a title for the shown brackets - something that is not available currently.
  
  

I was already on the verge of doing that, you convinced me ^^ (Edit: Done with 706d213)

• Display bracket type in view bracket screen for clarity, e.g.:
  

Why not! (Edit: Done with 706d213)

[tooomm]

I've to admit that some issues are not relevant when you test with more than 1-2 players. My bad. 🙈 😄

Double Elimination:

• The trophy is not shown in the final table/round (unlike in single elimination and swiss option) [red circle].

This should only be the case when there's only one player (which is a non-issue)

The trophies are only shown in double elimination when the result for the final is entered:

• The match numbering is not 100% in chronological order [red numbers] to how games/rounds [yellow] should play out in parallel over the course of a tournament

There's multiple ways to order the matches, the numbering here is just a way to label the matches.

For all bracket types the numbers have a straight forward logical order, for double elimination those 3 don't. :)
This is not super important, just something that I wanted to mention.

Swiss:

• Having a standing table (or points next to their names) would help a lot to understand and follow the matchmaking.
  Unlike the other two tournament structures it is not as easy to understand just by looking at the brackets.

Could you show me an example?

I guess it mostly matters if there are more players and more than 3 rounds need to be played to find a clear final standing for the tournament in order to distribute e.g. prizes correctly.

But yeah, again, this was mostly an issue on my end when testing with only 1-2 players and there was no (TBD L2) etc. shown. With that hints available it's ok for now and players should be able to understand the connection between matches.

If you're still curious what those lists look like...
In case you played in an official paper tournament already (could even be a pre-release at your LGS), they are always run in Swiss Mode. In well-organized tournaments or when there are some stakes - they should present the players such a standing table from time to time in order to see their current position in the overall field.
I found two articles where you can see such a printed table from the official wizards tournament organizer software:
https://blogs.magicjudges.org/playerexperience/2016/04/02/how-to-read-standings-and-deal-with-tiebreakers/
https://premodernmagic.com/blog/euro-champs-2019-organizers-report/

General:

• For viewers/followers of a tournament (bracket link) it would be way easier as well, as they only have the outside view with no additional information. Additional idea: Automatic refresh/update of the bracket page on new content or every ~5min?

Mmh, sorry, same thing, I'm definitely missing something ^^"

Nah, it was me trying with too few players. :)

But: Updated results are immediately available to other players in their Display bracket dialog and update live, but not if the view bracket link is copied to the clipboard and shared. There, the viewer has to manually refresh the https://mtgadraft.tk/bracket?session={sessionid} page to see the current results.

• The option to lock the brackets to the owner only uses a checkbox, an icon and a label.
  Following other places in the UI, it should be sufficient to go with a toggling unlock (or lock-open) icon with a explaining tooltip.

Yeah it would be cleaner but I had the space and I think it's clearer (& more visible/discoverable) this way.

My observation was that there are either [checkbox] Label (e.g. "[ ] Pick on Doubleclick"), (icon) Label (e.g. some buttons) or (icon) toggles (e.g. "Sound" or "Notification") combinations on the page. No [checkbox] (icon) Label compositions.

Either "[checkbox] Lock brackets" or the mentioned toggle "(icon)" would both match the rest of the UI better.
The later allows the nice use of a dynamically adapting icon according to the status with a closed/open lock.
For clarity reasons and to be even more supportive it could be a dynamic "(icon) Label" combination as well, e.g. "(open-lock) Lock Bracket"/"(closed-lock) Unlock Bracket".

The new drop down selector looks good, I like it!

Other things to mention:

• Brackets do only work for max. 8 player games.
  If you do e.g. a 10 player game and create a bracket for 9/10 or 10/10 players some will simply not appear without warning.
  If Brackets are only supported for (up to) 8 player games, the interface should tell the user and don't let the owner open the dialog via "generate bracket" at all.
  
  In general it would be cool to allow a group of friends or online community to play a Sealed tourney with e.g. 10 or 13 participants and use brackets as well - Single Elimination at least. Up to 16 or even 32 players should look ok without too much scrolling.

• The View bracket page does not display "Team Draft" correctly: (Done db9ea04)
  

• Matches that one did not participate in should not be changeable by other player/non-owners.

• Hitting Re-generate should shuffle the pairings up to mix things up in case a Round 1 pairing seems unfair right away for example, or adding some randomness when there are byes because the bracket doesn't fill up completely.

• Own player name is not highlighted in bracket.

• Round Robin is a missing option and common tournament system where all participants play each other. Especially if the group is not too big and friends want to play against everybody, they are guaranteed to play a certain amount of matches. 5 friends who want to play their own pre-release with a new set would love this:
  

	Player 1	Player 2	Player 3	Player 4
Player 1		[] : []	[] : []	[] : []
Player 2	[] : []		[] : []	[] : []
Player 3	[] : []	[] : []		[] : []
Player 4 🏆	[] : []	[] : []	[] : []

[Senryoku]

• Hitting Re-generate should shuffle the pairings up to mix things up in case a Round 1 pairing seems unfair right away for example, or adding some randomness when there are byes because the bracket doesn't fill up completely.

This is intended, the randomness comes from the order of players in the session, but once it's set the bracket is organized to avoid players seating next to each other to battle in the first round.

• Round Robin is a missing option and common tournament system where all participants play each others. Especially if the group is not too big and friends want to play against everybody, they are guaranteed to play a certain amount of matches. 5 friends who want to play their own pre-release with a new set would love this:

  Player 1 Player 2 Player 3 Player 4
  Player 1 [] : [] [] : [] [] : []
  Player 2 [] : [] [] : [] [] : []
  Player 3 [] : [] [] : [] [] : []
  Player 4 🏆 [] : [] [] : [] [] : []

Could be an interesting addition, especially because it's easy to adapt to any number of players.