What is seeding?

Since the Oceanink Series splits teams into separate divisions based on registration numbers and skill, the admins require data on each team prior to the weekly matches to accurately place teams within divisions.

In this context, seeding is the admin process of sorting teams into skill-based divisions. All registered teams must participate in the required seeding activities to provide data to ensure placement into the correct divisions. Inability to do so will result in disqualification.

How to seed your team

All teams can participate in multiple seeding activities. Each seeding activity option provides a different amount and quality of data.

Therefore in order of priority, the options for seeding activities are:

1. Primary seeding events:
   • Official Oceanink Seeding Tourney 1: Feb 4th (2PM AEST) – register here
   • Official Oceanink Seeding Tourney 2: Feb 17th (6PM AEST) – register here
   • Primary Seeding Community Tournaments
     • Blue Ring Rumble 3: Feb 3rd (5PM AEST) – registration and discord
     • Crimcup 12: Feb 11th (5PM AEST) – registration and discord
2. Secondary seeding events:
   • Secondary Seeding Community Tournaments:
     • Blue Ring Rumble 1 and 2 – Jan 6th & Jan 20th
     • Crimcup 11 – Jan 14th
     • Zones Weekly – Jan 19th, Jan 26th, Feb 2nd, Feb 9th and Feb 16th (6PM AEST) – discord here
     • TSS Pacific 3 and 4 – Jan 21st and Feb 18th (3PM AEST) – register here
   • Seeding scrims: Jan 26th to 11PM AEST Feb 18th

Teams need to participate in at least one primary seeding event or two secondary seeding events with their Season 10 rosters to be eligible. 

If you participate in community-run tournaments or seeding scrims, you must submit the Seeding Activities Form by 11PM AEST on Feb 18th. The form is available here.

Types of Seeding Activities

Official Series Seeding Tournaments: 

• The preferred collection method for staff to collect seeding data. We encourage teams to attend at least one official seeding tourney. There are always two in a season.
• The format is optimised for data collection: a swiss bracket with a large pool and no top cut.
• Note: Teams who have only participated in official seeding tournaments and no other seeding activities do not have to submit any further information regarding seeding.

Eligible Community Tournaments

• These are tournaments run by community members are are specifically approved for use as seeding events.
• Community tournaments can be further categorised as such:
  • Primary community tournaments have a similar structure and ruleset to official seeding tourneys. Teams who play at least one of these do not need to play in other seeding events to be considered seeded.
  • Secondary community tournaments provide less easily usable seeding data compared to other primary seeding events. Teams who have only participated in a secondary seeding event need to supplement their data via participation in another seeding activity.
• For the results to count teams must play community-run tournaments with their Series roster. If teams use any substitute players in a tournament, it will not count towards seeding.

If a team has only participated in a seeding-eligible community tournament and no other seeding activities, they must validate their results by completing the Seeding Activities Form by Feb 18th 11PM AEST or face disqualification.

Seeding Scrims

• Seeding scrims are team-organised scrims that can count towards seeding. 
• Although seeding scrims are usually organised as a last resort to generate seeding data for unseeded teams, teams who have played in other seeding-related tournaments can use seeding scrims as supplementary data. This is particularly useful for supplementing data from a secondary community tournament.
• If a team is relying on seeding scrims to be seeded and cannot find a relevant opponent, please contact a Series Admin in the Oceanink Competitive server.
• Requirements for a seeding scrim to be considered for seeding:
  • The approved maplist and format must be used (as seen in the #s10-maplist channel in the Oceanink Competitive discord)
  • At least one team must participate in an Official Series Seeding Tournament or another primary seeding event (which can be considered retrospectively).
  • The seeding scrim results must be:
    • Reported in the seeding scrims results channel and confirmed by both teams
    • Submitted to the Seeding Activities Form within 24 hours of the scrim
  • The results have to be validated via one of the following:
    • Submission of replay codes 
    • Be otherwise supervised by Series Staff.
  • Subsequently, a staff member’s confirmation on the validity of seeding scrim’s results must be obtained 

If a team cannot participate in a seeding-related tourney then they are required to submit the results of two valid seeding scrims by Feb 18th 11PM AEST or face disqualification. Series Staff will validate the scrim results within 24 hours and confirm if they can be used in seeding.

Conclusion

For Series Staff, the ideal situation is if all teams could play in an Official Series Seeding Tournament. We understand this is not possible and therefore offer other options for teams to generate data for seeding purposes. 

However, these options are only possible because: 

1. The majority of teams participate in official seeding tournaments
2. Some teams participate in multiple seeding activities, allowing Series Staff to use them as valuable reference points between official seeding tournaments and seeding-eligible tournaments
3. A few teams go out of their way to participate in seeding scrims to help seed other teams.

The more overlapping data we have, the more accurate division placements are. We appreciate our community’s tournament organisers who run events that are greatly useful during the seeding process. If your team has the availability and the energy, we encourage investing your time in playing community-run seeding-eligible tournaments alongside official seeding tournaments.