The Great Chaos Caper
2025 Winter Tournament
Rules & Guidance
Welcome to the 2025 Winter Tournament, The Great Chaos Caper! Runners will participate in group races to determine seeding for a single-elimination bracket with “Midway Last Chance” group races allowing willing eliminated runners the chance to re-enter the bracket in the Quarterfinals, so down is not out!
About the Tournament
This year’s Winter Tournament has two-and-a-half parts: The Qualifier stage, and the Brackets/Last Chances stage.
- For Qualifiers, twelve matches will be scheduled across three weeks. Players are required to participate in at least three races to qualify.
- For Brackets, the scores from the Qualifier stage will be used to determine the seeding of all entered players into a single-elimination bracket. After each round of the bracket through the Round of 8, the eliminated players will be invited to a Midway Last Chance group race alongside the winning portion of the players from the previous Midway Last Chance group race. The Top 4 finishers of the last Midway Last Chance group race will be seeded back into the bracket after the Round of 8, creating a second Round of 8 as the Quarterfinals. From there, the tournament continues as expected.
All live races will be conducted on the Winter Tournament 2025 leaderboard on racetime.gg, and all asynchronous (async) races will be run through the FFR discord. Players will need to have a Racetime.gg account, and a Twitch account, if they wish to participate in the tournament.
Important Dates:
- Sign-Ups: December 9, 2024 - January 4, 2025
- Qualifiers begin on January 5, 2025
- Weekly Race 1: Sundays at 3:00 PM EST
- Weekly Race 2: Tuesdays at 10:00 PM EST
- Weekly Race 3: Thursdays at 7:00 PM EST
- Weekly Async: Opens Sundays at 10:00 AM EST, Closes Thursdays at 10:00 PM EST
- Bracket Seeding Reveal Stream: Friday, January 24, 2025 at 9:00 PM EST (tentative)
- Start of Brackets: January 25, 2025
Tournament Structure:
Qualifiers
To be seeded into the later Bracket stage of the tournament, runners will have to participate in at least three Qualifier races, the first of which will be on January 5, 2025, at 3:00 PM EST. Each live qualifier will be a race on racetime.gg, and each asynchronous qualifier will be a race through the FFR Discord server, both where all participants run the same seed, and scored as follows:
Races will be evaluated using the bin system as described in the General Rules and Guidance for Tournaments and Leagues, then
Final Score = 1500+(-500/(Average Initial Score - Highest Initial Score)*(Initial Score-Average Initial Score)
Initial Score = (Bin Score * 1000) / Average Bin Score
This formula makes it so that a 1st bin finish is always worth 2000 points, and subsequent finishes are weighted against the relative strength of said finishes.
(01/09) Errata: To better ensure the scores reflect the relative difficulty of the seeds as intended, DNFs will not count against a runner, nor will they count for their requisite races, but a DNF will be counted as a score of 2, unassigned to any runner. This rule retroactively applies to the qualifiers up until this point, and will hold for the remainder of the qualifying period.
After the conclusion of the final qualifier on January 23, 2025, each player who received a score in 3 or more races will have their final score counted as their average score, from all completed races. Any submitted DNFs will not count towards score nor towards the requisite 3 finished races. These scores will be sorted such that the player with the highest score is Seed 1, the next-highest is Seed 2, and so on.
Async Races
As noted, async races will be run on the FFR Discord. The links to the seeds for the async qualifiers will be published on Sundays at 10:00 AM EST, and open for submissions of finishing videos and times for 108 hours after the seed is published (this makes the deadline for submission Thursdays at 10:00 PM EST).
Your time and video for an asynchronous race can be submitted using the async submission form.
Like with a live race, the only prior knowledge of a seed a racer may obtain before beginning their attempt is that which they can obtain from the race-legal Blursing Spoiler Tool. Any time proven to have obtained other prior knowledge will be voided, and the runner disqualified from the tournament.
Async races must be completed in a single attempt - time begins on the button press where the party selection is confirmed and the screen tranistions to player control on the overworld, and ends when the “Terminated” textbox appears in the fight against Chaos, with no allowance for pausing of the timer in between.
As with live races, the attempt of an asynchronous race must be streamed live to Twitch, with the runner’s stream chat set to Emote Only. Unlike live races, a stream delay of 600 seconds is not required, and amount of delay will not be enforced.
Brackets
After the end of the final qualifier and the assignment of seeds, players will be populated into a Single-Elimination Bracket. Each match within that bracket will be determined by a Best-of-Three (Bo3) series between racers, where the first racer to win two races moves on to the next round and the other racer is eliminated from the bracket.
To keep within the time frame allotted for the tournament, rounds must end by certain dates:
- The Round of 64 must have all matches conclude by January 30th
- The Round of 32 must have all matches conclude by February 5th
- The Round of 16 must have all matches conclude by February 11th
- The Round of 8 must have all matches conclude by February 17th
- The Quarterfinals must have all matches conclude by February 25th
- The Semifinals must have all matches conclude by March 3rd
so that the Finals can conclude by March 9th.
Racers are encouraged to reach out to their opponents to schedule their races as soon as they are aware of their next opponent. These races can be scheduled as synchronous (live) races on specific dates and times, or, through the round of 16, as async races which will be opened to the racers for a 24-hour period of time that both runners determine to be agreeable. Threads will be opened in #winter-tournament in the FFR Discord to facilitate communication between racers, and as such communication between runners outside of these threads will not be honored in case of dispute.
If one racer wishes to run their match as a best-of-one game instead of a best-of-three series, they can reach out to a member of the Tournament Staff.
In the case where three races cannot be scheduled, Tournament Staff will evaluate the situation and decide whether a match should be run as a best-of-one game, as a forced loss to one runner, or a forced loss to both runners.
Please note that bracket is not officially populated until after qualifiers are over.
Midway Last Chance
After the end of the Round of 64, the Round of 32, the Round of 16, and the Round of 8, group races will be held, with qualification dependent on when a racer was eliminated from the Bracket, and how they did in any applicable previous group race.
- The Round of 64 Last Chance will be held amongst any willing participant who lost in the Round of 64. It will be held as an Asynchronous race opening on January 31, 2025, at 10:00 AM EST, and closing on February 1, 2025, at 10:00 PM EST.
- The Round of 32 Last Chance will be held amongst any willing participant who lost in the Round of 32, and any willing participant who finished in 16th place or better in the Round of 64 Last Chance. It will be held as an Asynchronous race opening on February 6, 2025 at 10:00 AM EST and closing on February 7, 2025 at 10:00 PM EST.
- The Round of 16 Last Chance will be held amongst any willing participant who lost in the Round of 16, and any willing participant who finished in 8th place or better in the Round of 32 Last Chance. It will be held as an Asynchronous race opening on February 12, 2025 at 10:00 AM EST and closing on February 13, 2025, at 10:00 PM EST.
- The Round of 8 Last Chance will be held amongst any willing participant who lost in the Round of 16, and any willing participant who finished in 4th place or better in the Round of 16 Last Chance. It will be held as an Asynchronous race opening on February 18, 2025, at 10:00 AM EST and closing on February 19, 2025, at 10:00 PM EST.
- The 4 top finishers from the Round of 8 Last Chance will be reseeded into the Bracket, entering at the Quarterfinals. The first place finisher of the Round of 8 Last Chance will face the fourth place finisher, the second place finisher will face the third place finisher, the winners of those two matches will face each other, and the remaining runner after that will advance to the finals.
The Flags
Flags this year center around fighting for every piece of progression in a Shard Hunt, with boss scaling and world openness both increasing as the tournament progresses. The incentive structure focuses on fiend dungeons and places in proximity to key NPCs - places you’d be going anyway to chase shards, fetch quests, and other progression.
The “Last Chance” asyncs will use the flagset from the Bracket round they happen concurrently with - the Round of 64 Last Chance uses the Round of 32 flagset, the Round of 32 Last Chance uses the Round of 16 flagset, the Round of 16 Last Chance uses the Round of 8 flagset.
Drafting and Other Allowances:
Players may also choose to modify the flags with the below set of approved changes (and only these approved changes). Players must agree to the changes before the seed is rolled.
- Enemies:
- Warmech:
- Change Patrolling to Required.
- Astos:
- Buffed may be turned on.
- Shuffled Location may be turned on.
- Fiends:
- Shuffle Fiends may be turned on.
- Alternate Fiends may be turned on, with any pool and any number of pools of Alt Fiends enabled. (Please note this can lead to some pretty difficult ToFRs.)
- Bahamut:
- Fight may be be turned on.
- Fight + Buffed may also be turned on.
- Warmech:
Sign-Ups:
Please sign up using the Winter Tournament Participant Form. All entrants must be a member of the FFr discord server.
By signing up, you agree to be held to the Final Fantasy Randomizer Discord’s Code of Conduct while engaged as a participant of this event. Violations of the Code of Conduct may result in consequences ranging from a warning to bans from the discord, the tournament, all further events; these consequences may extend to other communities as well.
Scheduling Matches:
Use the below form to schedule your matches. As a reminder, players should avoid scheduling matches on days that are already busy on the schedule to avoid over burdening the broadcasting crew.
Broadcasting and Restreaming:
If you are being restreamed, the following Quality of Life flags will be required:
This request is to accommodate spectators who may be photosensitive. If you fail to make this accommodation, you will not be featured on future restreams unless you enable these features in your next race.
The Use of Trackers:
- The Autotracking of items is explicitly allowed for the duration of the tournament, in all rounds.
- The Autotracking of a map is explicitly allowed for the duration of the tournament, in all rounds.
User beware: Emotracker does not have updates for all the map progression edits throughout this tournament. The map may feed you erroneous information throughout a given seed. Use at your own peril.
We expect that your Autotracker is Bizhawk w/ Emotracker. If you require the use of (or have access to) a different autotracker, we ask that you provide everyone the link here so that it can be vetted, and so that it may be accessible to anyone who may choose to use that.
Tournament Staff:
If you have any questions, feel free to shoot them at: budgemano, LordFizzlebeef, shoombabi, Skar, and/or WindFox.
¶ Past Winter & Spring Tournaments
- 2024 Winter Tournament: Winter Robot Wars Chaos Wing X
- 2023 Winter Tournament: Chaos's Winter Carnival
- 2022 Spring Tournament: Kraken Games
- 2021 Spring Tournament: Chaos's Comedy Tour
- 2020 Spring Tournament: Monte Chaos's Casino
- 2019 Spring Tournament: Sail the High Seas
- 2018 Spring Tournament
- 2017 Spring New Player Tournament