GO MODE PODCAST:
MENTOR TOURNAMENT 2021!

NEW FOR 2021 In the past we have relied on racers’ self-assessments to determine if they are eligible to participate in the tournament. This year, we will also be asking all potential racers to run two seeds asynchronously and submit their times. The seeds and submission form can both be found in the #mt-async-seeds channel of our Discord. These times (kept private until the end of the tournament) will give us a better idea of how to initially seed entrants in the 1st week of the group stage of the tournament. Please submit the results of both seeds before Friday, June 4th.

These async seed results also help us determine a reasonable cutoff for entry. There are no lower limits, meaning a Racer could be brand new to the game and still eligible. However, admins may reserve the right to ask an applicant who is interested in Racing to instead consider mentoring if their skill level seems like it may be too high compared to the rest of the Racers, especially if their inclusion would result in an unfavorable number of total Racers.

Hypotheticals

• We have 34 Racers apply. Solution: Cut the 2 most experienced applicants and start the tournament.
• We have 45 Racers apply. Solution: Allow all of them, and extend the sign-up period until we recruit 3 more Racers.
• We have 70 Racers apply. Solution: Cut the 6 most experienced applicants and start the tournament.

Mentor Selection Process Considerations

• Has the Mentor submitted an application at any point?
• Does the Mentor have some justification to demonstrate their ability to mentor a new Racer?
• Do they have some degree of availability?

There will be no cap to the number of Mentors allowed to participate. Additionally, we would encourage folks who may be on the fence about this to go ahead and apply if interested. Even Mentors with “intermediate” knowledge of the game can still make great Mentors, especially for newer Racers!

Tournament Overview

The Basics: Two self-professed rookies (aka our Racers) of A Link to the Past Randomizer speedruns will go head-to-head in a race of the same seed, starting at the same time and calling .done once finished. Fastest completion wins the race. HOWEVER! Instead of being on their own as in a typical race, each Racer will be aided by one volunteer Mentor, who will observe the progress of the Racer on stream and act as their tutor, co-pilot, and cheerleader throughout the race via voice or text chat. This Mentor will, for all intents and purposes, be on the Racer’s team throughout the race, giving them advice and coaching them to the fastest finish time achievable.

Setting Up a Race: Racers will be given an opponent to race once per week for 6 weeks in a Swiss-system of group rounds. Once an opponent has been identified, Racers will be responsible for securing a Mentor for the race.

NEW FOR 2021 Async Aptitude Seeds: During the period of sign-ups and our new Boots Camp (more on that below), participants will be asked to complete two async seeds on their own and report their finish times to the admins (Async, short for asynchronous, means that you will play these seeds on your own time and offline.) These seeds, as well as the submission form, can be found in the #mt-async-seeds channel of the GMP Discord. Once completed, participants will report their In Game Time, which can be found on the final ending screen.

Before Group stages begin, we will take both async seed times for each participant into account and use them to help inform preliminary seeding for Week 1. This will ensure that Week 1 races are evenly matched, and also help us to match up racers with appropriately skilled mentors. These seedings will also have a small effect on future Swiss week seeding as well (described below under “The Format”)

Failure to complete one or both of these async seeds before the end of the day on June 4th may result in a Racer’s exclusion from the tournament. If you are concerned that you may not be able to complete these seeds in the time allotted, please reach out to a Mentor Tournament Admin in the GMP Discord.

NEW FOR 2021 Boots Camp: In the week after sign-ups, we will be holding a weeklong series of five interactive demonstrations taught by different guest mentors on the GMP stream, Monday through Friday. Each night, the mentor will demonstrate a topic designed to help newer racers learn the basics of ALTTPR play. These topics include:

• Movement and tricks
• Basic dungeon routing
• Boss strategy
• End game strategy in GT, Agahnim, and Ganon
• Mock Mentor Race

Participation in Boots Camp activities is 100% optional.

Racer/Mentor Matching Process

1. If you have a specific Mentor from the community in mind, feel free to reach out to them directly to confirm them as your Mentor.
2. If you don’t have a Mentor in mind, you’ll head to the #mt-racer channel of our Discord to find one. We will have a list of all registered Mentors and some info about each of them to peruse, including a Mentor Availability Schedule. We recommend considering both availability and areas of expertise when choosing a Mentor to reach out to.
3. Once you know the Mentor you’d like to work with (along with 1-2 backups in mind), ping them in the channel or DM them to ask. PLEASE! Be respectful of Time Zones! Keep pings and DMs between 9:00 AM – 9:00 PM THEIR TIME as a courtesy.

Once both Racers have a Mentor lined up, it’s time for all four parties to coordinate a race time that works for everyone. In the event that 2 Racers and 1 Mentor can make a time work but the 2nd Mentor cannot, that Racer’s Mentor may then choose to reach out to a different Mentor who is available at that time if they wish.

Time Commitment, Racers: One race per week for 6 weeks starting June 6th, then (an average of) 2-3 races a week for 4 weeks in brackets.

Time Commitment, Mentors: If and when a Racer reaches out, Mentors will be expected to try to make an effort to attend the race and participate if possible. Racers and Mentors may also work out “practice time” on their own time if desired (though this is not a requirement by any means)

The Format

After Boots Camp and the two asyncs are finished, the tournament proper will be divided into two phases: Group Swiss Rounds and Finals Brackets.

Group Swiss Rounds: Once the final pool of Racers has been locked in, the admins will use the results of the two async seeds to determine initial seeding for Week 1 of the Swiss rounds. Due to the nature of the Swiss-system, matchups in subsequent weeks will be determined by each Racer’s win-loss record so that matchups stay relatively even throughout the 6 weeks. Furthermore, like records are matched up in opposite seeding order. For example, the highest seeded 1-0 winner will play the lowest seeded 1-0 winner in Week 2. The 2nd highest 1-0 winner will play the 2nd lowest 1-0 winner, etc.

No stream delay will be required for the Swiss rounds.

NEW FOR 2021 All six Swiss rounds will be played as Open mode with an assured sword, and racers will be mentored each week.

• Week 1: June 6 – June 13
• Week 2: June 14 – June 20
• Week 3: June 21 – June 27
• Week 4: June 28 – July 4
• Week 5: July 5 – July 18 (Two weeks to accommodate SGDQ2021)
• Week 6: July 19 – July 25

CLARIFIED FOR 2021 Bracket Tiebreakers: Because there are only six weeks of Swiss, there will be many racers who have identical win-loss records. To place racers in their proper brackets, we will be using a set of tiebreakers at the end of the Swiss stage.

1. Swiss system points (1 pt per win)
2. Wins vs Tied Participants (of the same point value)
3. Buchholz (strength of schedule, sum of points of all opponents the racer faced)
4. Wins minus losses
5. Head to head scores
6. Time difference vs opponents

All races will have a time difference capped at 15 minutes. A forfeit match will have a time difference of 15 minutes.

Brackets: Standings at the end of the Swiss Group Round will seed Racers into brackets. All Racers will make it to a bracket since we plan to host tiered brackets; one for each group of 16 Racers. This means we could have 2, 3, or 4 brackets depending on the final Racer count. But no matter how many brackets are filled, the bracket consisting of the 16 Racers with the best record will be considered the “Main” bracket.

NEW FOR 2021 All Bracket races will be unmentored.

NEW FOR 2021 A ten minute stream delay will be required for the bracket stage.

NEW FOR 2021 All four rounds of playoffs will be a best of 3 series, Open mode with randomized swords.

• Round of 16: July 26 – August 1
• Round of 8: August 2 – August 8
• Semi-finals: August 9 – August 15
• Finals: August 16 – August 22

Racer & Mentor Pairing Details

Requesting a Mentor by Name: Racers will request specific Mentors by name, but please note that a Mentor’s time is not guaranteed; Mentors will presumably do their best to accommodate specific mentoring requests but if they are unavailable, the Racer will be responsible for reaching out to choose another Mentor.

Requesting a Mentor Generally: If a Racer does not feel comfortable requesting a Mentor by name, they may simply put out a general message in the #mt-racer channel stating that they’re looking for a Mentor to step up. However, at the end of the day, securing a Mentor will be the responsibility of the Racer. Racers will be encouraged to reach out to Admins with any problems or issues during the pairing process.

Voice Chat vs. Text Chat: We will officially recommend that each Racer and Mentor engage in a 2-way voice chat in order to most effectively communicate through a seed. However, Racers are allowed to request any of the following for any reason:

• 2-way voice chat (recommended)
• Mentor on voice, Racer w/ no mic
• Mentor in Discord or Twitch chat

The reason for this rule is to provide Racers with no mic or racers who are anxious about participating in a voice chat an opportunity to still participate in the tournament.

Partial Mentoring: If agreed upon by both the Racer and the Mentor, a Racer may “dismiss” their Mentor before a seed has finished with no penalty. Furthermore, if a Mentor is running late and joins a seed already in progress, that is also allowed, provided that the Mentor has not been “spoiled” on the seed in any way (See cheating definitions below). However, once a Mentor leaves a Racer’s voice or text chat, they may not join again for the rest of the race and are effectively finished in their mentoring duties for that race.

Beginning & Ending Each Race

The 2 racers of each race will ultimately be responsible for setting up & starting each race, as well as reporting the race’s outcome to admins.
DO NOT WORRY if you’re new to racing; not only are there lots of step-by-step guides to help you with these tasks, but Mentors will also be responsible for helping newer Racers work through all of these.

Pre-Race responsibilities include:

• Individual Racer streams (OBS Setup Guide Here)
• Acquisition of a voice chat channel for Racer/Mentor pairs
• Generating the seed (in racetime.gg)
• Setting up a race in racetime.gg (generates the seed, handles the pre-race countdown, and accepts !done’s)

NEW FOR 2021 Beginning a race: Open a race room at racetime.gg/alttpr by clicking on the “Start New Race” button. For Swiss (mentored) matches, choose the option “Beat the game (assisted).” For Bracket matches (unmentored), choose “Beat the game.” Generate a race by typing !race open_assured (Swiss stage) or !race open (Brackets) in the racetime.gg room. Once you load your seed you should double check that your game hash/code matches what is listed in the racetime.gg room. Once racetime.gg recognizes that your Twitch stream is live and you are ready, you can click the Ready button. When both racers are ready, the race countdown will begin.
If the race is being restreamed, your restreamer will gate the racers and be the last person to ready/drop.

Ending a race: Once a race is complete, the winning Racer will be responsible for reporting the victory to the admins. This will be done via a designated #mt-race-results channel in the Discord in which the winning and losing times & Mentors will be reported.

NEW FOR 2021 TIES: If the runners finish within 2 seconds of each other, a VOD review will be conducted to determine who finished first.

Restreaming/Watching Races

The Default: Given that this is a relatively small community tournament run solely by volunteers, restreaming every race is not feasible. However, racetime.gg makes watching a multistream easier than ever with the click of one button. Viewers of these multistreams should feel free to react to the race along with other community members in our #live-races Discord channel.

When Restreams are Possible: In the event that a restream is possible, admins will coordinate with all of the necessary volunteers ahead of time to ensure that an acceptable quality stream can be produced. The Racers will be notified and consent will be gained to broadcast the race. These races will take place on the Go Mode Podcast Twitch Channel.

Winners

The Winning Racer: will receive an opportunity to be interviewed by timp, Daaanty, and/or Hurfydurfy on an episode of Go Mode Podcast, and will receive much praise by all of us and the community at large.

Mentors: The admin team will choose 1 or 2 “VIP Mentors” to invite onto the show to share their experiences. Criteria for this is fluid, but factors considered may include number of races mentored, number of matches “won” as a Mentor, repeated willingness to help out in a time of need, etc.

Cheating

Cheating will result in immediate expulsion from the tournament. Do everything in your power to avoid accusations of cheating. We do not tolerate public accusations of cheating. If you have a concern, please DM one of the admins with your concern. The admins reserve the right to forward any cheating concerns to the Racing Council for evaluation. The following will be defined as Cheating:

Stream Sniping – Watching your opponent’s stream while you play.

Co-op Play – Having someone else play the seed at the same time as you and relay information to you about item locations, routing, etc.

Listening in – Either the racer or mentor listening to/reading the communication between the other racer/mentor team

Intentional Use of Major Glitches – Exploration Glitch, Door Glitches, Wrong Warps, Out-of-Bounds, Fake Flute, YBA, etc. In the event of accidental activation of a major glitch, the racer is to immediately save and quit, or if not possible trigger a console/emulator reset, and the mentor needs to notify a tournament admin about the accidental glitch activation.

Asymmetric Knowledge Exploitation (the “Insider Coaching Rule”) – Due to mentors being privy to information about ALL participating racers, using knowledge of another racer’s Rando knowledge (or lack thereof) to gain an unfair advantage for your own racer will not be allowed. If a mentor uses information in an opponent’s bio to guide their own racer in a way that provides them an advantage, that mentor will be disqualified.

Emulator-specific Hacks – Use of Save States, Fast Forward/Rewind, turbo buttons, etc.

Anything else that creates an unfair advantage or otherwise violates the spirit of the tournament as determined by the tournament admins.

We Can’t Wait to Get Started!

Please feel free to email us at email@gomodepodcast.com, tweet at us @GoModePodcast, or ping us on the Go Mode Podcast Discord with any questions or concerns.

Thanks and we’ll see you in Go Mode!