The Royal Catfight Series - Judging, Rules and Bracket

(This post is earlier than I said because I’m really excited about this. I swear that won’t happen for the actual match threads.)

Continuing setup for the Royal Catfight Series, the trashtalk tournament featuring the romantic interests of the series’ lords. Yesterday we had qualifying polls to fill out the bracket. Today, an explanation of the scoring system, the rules, and finally the bracket for Round 1.

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Judging System

As with the Royal Slapfight Series, after each match I’ll go through every single freaking comment and tally up all the points made for each participant, sorted into one of three categories:

High-effort (a.k.a. Sickest of Burns): Comments, simply put, that have a high amount of effort put into them. You don’t necessarily need to type paragraphs and paragraphs to qualify for this level - comments are given a little extra boost if they include things such as creative arguments, high energy or basically any content that makes you go like this.

Mid-effort (a.k.a. Midrange Burns): Comments that make a solid point or diss but don’t quite go that extra mile.

Low-effort (a.k.a. Weakest of Burns): Comments where the user just shows token support for a participant.

Generally speaking, parent comments will be given higher weight than replies to other parent comments. A comment that would otherwise be considered high-effort might only count for mid- or even low-effort depending on how deeply nestled it is into a comment chain. As we progress in rounds, the bar for earning mid- and high-effort points will be raised.

Also, don’t just spam the thread hoping to get a million points because if I catch on I’ll just start ignoring your comments.

After each round I’ll make a wrap-up post detailing the scores for each match and the corresponding bracket for the next round. For example, back in the RSS, Round 2 Hector vs. Eirika looked like this:

Hector
High-Effort: IIIIIIIIII
Mid-Effort: IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Low-Effort: IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Eirika
High-Effort: IIIII
Mid-Effort: IIIIIIIIIIIIIII
Low-Effort: IIIIIIII

Clearly Hector won, but often it’s a lot closer than that. Obviously, high-effort points count for more than mid-effort points which count for more than low-effort points, which is often the deciding factor.

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Rules (which will be posted in each match thread)

1. Be civil to each other. Trash-talking the participants is fine, but trash-talking other users is a dick move. This whole thing is supposed to be about having fun, and it defeats the whole purpose if people choose to be rude or salty.

2. Tag your major spoilers. Especially for Fates and games with major spoil-able plot points - you probably know the ones I’m talking about.

3. There are no stupid arguments. This is the big one. Any argument will earn you points, as long as there’s effort put into it. If your favourite character is facing a seemingly-unbeatable opponent, get unconventional: rather than talking about the merit of their character, talk about how they’re a better unit, or vice versa. Insult their husbando, insult their hairdo. Just remember to keep it all in good fun.

4. Upvote indiscriminately! All comments will be considered when determining each match’s winner, regardless of the upvote distribution, so you might as well spread the love around.

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Finally, the bracket. Based on community feedback, I’ve chosen to seed the participants based on expected popularity instead of randomly like the RSS, and as a result Round 1 seems like it has a few one-sided stomps coming. But hey, that’s all the more reason to prepare, and if Ike vs. Eirika taught us anything, it’s that you never know what’s going to happen.

Bracket

As for the wildcard position, I chose to include Elincia (despite the fact that she lost her poll) because she was the only real “leading lady” not to make it into the bracket conventionally. Soren, who won the poll, is still in there, meaning Ike has two waifus in the running.

The first match, Seth vs. Celica, will be posted tomorrow at 2 3 p.m. EST. See you then.