With the group stages of the tournament in the twilight, I guess I should open up a discussion on what we can learn from what has happened.
Personally, I felt that this format is fine but the one thing I honestly thought should have been improved on was the tiebreaker system. The DMG Dealt ÷ DMG Taken expressed as a system, despite being a solid tiebreaker that I wanted to use for specific advantages related to the DQ problem not being as prevalent (or so I thought) and other things over the DMG Difference that I cannot remember atm apart from early DQ's or something. I also did it like that to make it far more difficult than difference to be able to "game" the system because things are expressed as ratios. It in practice did see several people (Me, Leethoof, Rediamond) get screwed by early DQ's and other things I did not like. It was also the only tiebreaker which means someone could advance despite losing to the user that he/she was tied with.
If we are to do something like this again, I would definitely advise putting Head to Head as a primary tiebreaker and possibly find a different secondary tiebreaker, idk. I will be sticking to DMG Dealt ÷ DMG Taken for the finals though since Head to Head does not exactly work as well in a three-way.
The swiss pairings? I feel there is nothing wrong with it, as it adds a bit of predictability to it (Win two from two, expect to fight someone with a similar record) and stops crazy scenarios like three people having 2-0 records after two rounds and in the case of a top three cut, make the entire pool a dead rubber. My main issues are that three rounds could be deemed a little short, but I feel it is fine length wise and given the tendency of ASB tournaments to drag on, it was fair.
Which then leads to the stance of DQ. My main policy was player discretion on DQ and to be lax at the start of the round only to get more strict as we got closer to the "deadline". The 1 Day DQ after x days (40 days) was taken from the first ASB Tournament and 40 was chosen with the idea that in a perfect world, we could get the tournament done in eight months (which we are well behind on hahaha damn slow people). I feel it has worked well but ergh some people are really slow... >_>
I will continue with this policy during the knockout stages.
Finally I apologise for the mid-tournament change for cuts. I understand it left a few people salty (waterwarrior) and in hindsight, I really should have sat down and asked people during the first round and made the decision for top two in the first place if it was the superior cut (there was no difference, just round robin). Really bad hosting on my part.
What have you guys learned?