The Royal Retainer Rumble - Bracket, Judging System and Rules

Here's the bracket.

As expected, all of the actual "Jeigans" made it into the top 16 and after reviewing suggestions for ones I'd missed, I made the executive decision to replace most of the non-Jeigans who made it with Finn, Jakob and Felicia. Because, uh... fuck democracy, yo!

The first match, Seth vs. Dagdar, will be posted tomorrow at 3pm EST (26 hours from the time of this post). If this is your first rodeo of this sort, an explanation of the judging system is below!

tl;dr: hype up the participant you prefer and/or trash-talk the one you don't, every argument is valid no matter how dumb it sounds, higher-effort comments get more points

If you're still not entirely sure what this is supposed to look like, check out an example thread like I K E B O W L from the Royal Catfight Series. There, uh... usually there aren't as many caps. That was a very tense match.

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Judging System

As with the previous two 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, waaay back in the Royal Slapfight Series, 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 Shadows of Valentia 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 waifu, 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.