SonicMario
Star Spirit
Helly everybody, this is SonicMario providing you with a guide to hosting and participating in the newest of the 3 games kept in recording in Nega-Man's thread. I am making this guide so that people who are new to the concept of vote to wins knows what it takes to host it. Because compared to both Hurt and Heals and KO a Characters, Vote to Wins are difficult to host especially if there's quite a bit of characters. I waited until my Forum's Choice game finished so that there would be a good example of a long Vote to Win for you guys to study.
Now I'm not trying to call anybody out but there are a few times where some Vote to Wins were started and they had odd stuff going on with votes like making the matches only one hour long, having a first to whatever number that wins it. What are the problems with that you may ask?
Well for the only hour long matches, you have to think on what the time is and the 2 characters. Let's say the Matchup is Jeff Vs. Nick (Just 2 random names, not picking out 2 characters in particular), and you decide to run a match for less then 12 hours and say you run it in the morning. Most of Jeff's fans are online in the morning because perhaps they all live in the same time zone you do. The problem can begin here is that you gotta think that maybe people who prefer Nick won't be able to vote until later in the day thus leading to some voters were somewhat mad because they didn't get to vote just because they couldn't get online at the time because of School, Work, etc. which is why it's recommended you put a full 24-hour matchup.
Having the first to 10, 7 or whatever numbers comes to mind? I don't need to say much besides this: That isn't a Vote to Win. That's basically a Heal to Win. Especially if you let a personheal Vote more then once.
Another issue I see is that some people start a Vote to Win however for whatever reason they forget to change the matchup without telling people that there might be a break. I'll get into how to fix this into the guide pretty soon. But it's just something I notice.
There will actually be 2 parts to this. The first part will be way larger of course because it's about hosting a game. But the 2nd part is important too because it's for actual voters themselves. So without further adieu, we'll begin.
GETTING STARTED
The first step is getting a theme for your Vote to Win. Pick a subject that you know quite a bit of people are also into at the forum that hasn't been done yet. Try not to pick any series where you'd get like less then 5 votes on every matchup. A 2-1 win in a Vote to Win is a boring win. And because Vote to Wins are fairly new, there's a lot more to choose from since Hurt and Heals and KO a Characters slowed down because there aren't too many things that haven't been done already. For the most part though, Vote to Wins has more of a blank slate. I'd just say to be careful on what subjects you choose. Obviously most Video Games or Cartoons will do fairly well with voting numbers. To look at an example of the difference between something unpopular and popular. One needs to look no further then my forum's choice game. Stuff like Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and Formula 1 racers obviously aren't going to get many votes (Except if they have funny names, Schumacher got into Round 2 over another racer easily because it seemed like "Shoemuncher" to them). Stuff like New York Mets or Star Trek: The Next Generation are better but they're far too specific. Especially regarding the Mets because it's never a good idea to make a game just based around one team. As the better idea would be all the teams in MLB or star players from each team (Though although I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it as I am one myself, not too many people are Sports fans here)
So you have your Vote to Win idea set, but you're not quite done yet. You gotta make sure of a few things. Like how many characters does your Vote to Win have? The larger it is, the more longer the game is and you also have to weigh that on how long do you think you can keep up with updating the game. If you're making your first vote to win. I suggest go small and have a Vote to Win that's no bigger then 80 characters (The perfect beginner's Vote to Win I'd say is 32 or 64 characters. But anywhere between 20-80 is fine for people making their first ones). When you have some experience and the dedication for long games that's when you can get into Vote to Wins that are 100 characters or more. But I beg you not to do something drastic like a 150 character one for your first vote to Win unless you're absolutely sure you think you can take hosting it for that long (My forum's choice lasted for a little over 2 months and it had 100 characters. If you go to 150. You're basically setting up a game that will last the whole season of a year. That is if you do the same pace that I did.). If you still really want to get a Vote to Win started but you're afraid there will be days where you can't get the next matchup started. Ask a fellow user who has Vote to Win experience (Like me or Smasher for example) to be a back-up when you know you're not going to be able to set up the matchup at the right time. Just make sure not to get lazy and get others to do the rest of the game for you.
Of course you gotta set up matches somehow. Most people use the randomizer.org Integer generator to set them up. If you don't know exactly how to use it. Ask me here in this very thread. As it might be a tad complicated to try to explain it all in one place here.
Another thing you gotta do is decide the pace in which you go through the matchups. It's recommended that if you have any more then 30 Characters in your vote to win that at least for Round 1 that you do multiple matchups in one day. I'd like to say you can go at 4 different paces
1. Slow Pace (1 Matchup per day) - This is the simple 1 matchup per day. If you have more then 30 characters I recommend you don't use this pace until Round 2 or 3.
2. Normal Pace (2 Matchups per day) - This is what I'd call the normal pace. It's not too fast but it's not exactly too slow either. If you remember this is the pace I used for Round 1 and 2 of Forum's Choice. I however don't recommended using this pace if you have any more then 100 characters
3. Fast Pace (3 Matchups per day) - This is a Quicker pace and I recommend it for at least for Round 1 if you have more then 100 characters or if you want to make your game a little quicker. Don't use this if you have more then 120 characters.
4. Fastest Pace (4-5 Matchups per day) - This should only be used if you have a huge Vote to Win to go through. I really hope you don't have to use this. But if your character count is crazy huge. You should have Round 1, Round 2, and maybe even Round 3 with at least 5 matchups per day
Also depending on how many characters you chose. You may have to deal with rounds that have an odd number of characters. You can do multiple things with this.
1. Have the last match in that round be a Triple-Matchup. If you remember, in my Forum's Choice game there were 2 Triple matchups in my game. One between Mario Vs. Banjo, Vs. Zero Two at the end of Round 3 and the final between Luigi Vs. Wario, Vs. Rainbow Dash. How I did it was have it last for 2 days. Each day would eliminate only one of those 3. You can also do it that the one with the highest votes wins anyway and the other 2 are eliminated at the same time. But I think the way I did it in Forum's Choice gives more of a chance. (In Forum's Choice if I had done that, both Mario and Banjo would of been eliminated because Zero Two had 12 votes, Mario had 7, and Banjo had 1. On the 2nd day though, Mario beat Zero Two 11-10. Mario wouldn't have advanced if it weren't for the fact the Triple matchups last 2 days.
2. Set up a Poll to return a popular character from the first round. This can be done for characters that has the toughest luck of drawing one of the mega-popular characters in an early round and gives them another chance hopefully for a better matchup in the next round. It's not really my preferred option as if they were eliminated then they probably wouldn't do much better later in the game. If however you don't want to deal with triple matchups this might be a nice alternative. Oh and make sure not to have a return poll just suddenly happen in the Final or something. Because there is a reason why those characters didn't make it into the final. If you're going to have revives have it consistently throughout any round that may have odd amount of characters if you didn't use it.
3. This is a somewhat advanced option and by no means should it be used for a first Vote to Win IMO. But this is something I plan to introduce in the next Forum's Choice game: A BYE. This must be done through PM, ask your voters to PM you multiple characters (I'd say 5, because if you say only 1. There's no guarantee that the character will make it that far) and whoever's name both is the most said and makes it past the first 2 rounds gets to completely skip an entire round and make what would of been an odd numbered round into even again. I suggest only running it through Round 1 so that people get an idea on what Characters are more likely to to make it past Round 2 but at the same makes it a gamble. Because those same voters will not know what those characters will get in terms of matchups in Round 2. A popular character could be matched with another character that was said alot in the PMs and could potentially result in matches that are basically matchups for the BYE. This also leaves the opportunity for any Dark Horse characters to get the BYE. However it goes, the voters won't know who got the BYE until the Host announces who got it at the end of Round 2 or whatever round the Host decides is the one before the BYE.
4. The only other option I believe is to make it so that no matter what each round will have even characters. Which would mean finding precise numbers. Ones that go on top of my head is 16, 32, 64, 128. I don't know if there are any other numbers that are less then 100 and more then 20 that lead to even numbers being in all rounds. But if you'd rather not deal with odd numbers I suggest you pick something like 32 or 64 characters
Now that you have your matchups and your game set to go. You can start your game anytime that you may wish. This is the time to choose what time your matchups start and end. Make sure you pick a time that's most comfortable for you to make the new matchups. For all of Forum's Choice I always updated it on Midnight but I know not everyone has the luxury of staying up to Midnight. If you can't go Midnight or even 11 PM I suggest you go with anytime between 8:00 PM-10:00 PM. Don't worry too much about Time Zones, if it's a 24-hour matchup people will find a way to vote. If they missed it because they forgot to account for time zones, that isn't your fault.
If you know alot about the forums syntax like adding images, shrinking Image size, etc. You can add something like adding pictures of your characters when it's time for their matchup. It's not absolutely necessary, but sometimes when the characters aren't exactly well known a simple picture could sway some voters to one or the other. But again, this isn't the important part. As you can now start the actual voting process.
VOTING TIME
You have everything set so all you have to do now is set up the matchup. It's as easy as doing this:
If you want, you can include your vote the first time you set up a matchup giving someone immediately a 1-vote lead. I personally like to wait until someone else votes first but it's perfectly fine to kill 2 birds with one stone by doing that.
Also I suggest having a little security on you. Most people will just vote and say nothing else. But sometimes there will be people who forget that insulting a character could lead their vote getting in danger. Later in the guide I'll tell what is generally acceptable or not. But unless you want your Vote to Win to end up in a flame war I suggest you draw the line on how you'll tolerate insults to any of the characters. And be sure to be fair, if you allow an insult on a character you also don't like yet you revoke a vote because it was an insult on one of your favorites. Then that's just poor officiating and clear bias. As the host you must specify what will get votes revoked in your game. Another thing you can watch for is how voters are treating other voters. Insults to other voters are actually worse then insulting any characters and should be punished much more if they do so. Like perhaps a ban from voting from the game for a little while, or if they refuse to stop banning him or her from voting in the game at all. Whoever it is could still post as you can't ban them from threads, but if they ever tried to vote their votes would not count.
Besides watching for comments though, for the most part you can just sit back and wait until everybody's done voting, sleep, and then set up the new matchups when it's that time again the next day. The only thing during voting you have to worry about is the possibility of any matchups heading into a tiebreaker. Which can and has already have been dealt with by different ways:
1.+1 Day - This is what I used in the Forum's Choice game for Tiebreakers. If there was a tie, I simply reset the poll at 0-0 and have people vote again, in the hopes that a different result like voters switching sides or new voters to turn the tide. For the most part, it works everytime. If the rare case goes where it ties again (Luckily it never happened in my game though it got fairly close from happening twice) try once more. As I just doubt that one matchup will have the same result for more then 2 days. The Overtime poll will also run with the other matchups that day.
2. Sudden Death - Technially there's 2 ways to do a Sudden Death matchup. One where until a new voter comes in to give a winning vote or whoever has the fastest finger to vote again (Though I'm not really a fan of that because that's essentially letting someone vote twice). It's more for the people who are too impatient to have a matchup go another day longer. But it's still better then what the 3rd option is.
3. Flip a Coin - You have no idea how much I loathe this idea for a Tiebreaker for Vote to Wins. Sure it's a 50/50 chance that could go anywhere. The main problem with this is that we don't actually see the coin flip. How do we know the host didn't just choose one because he or she likes that character more? The host can try to say thats what they got from the flip but the problem is he or she can't prove it. And even if you could who really cares that much to see photos or a video of a coin flip for just one game? Let's say you're a normal voter who has a favorite that got in a tiebreaker. If they lose in a Sudden Death or the +1 Day style, yeah it disappoints you but at least they had a chance to win. Also Win or Lose, a Coin Flip is just a very disappointing and anti-climatic way to solve a tie to begin with and very exploitable for dishonest hosts. I say that this should be the absolute last option for solving ties. As it just isn't fair.
Those are just the 3 main ones that I have seen. There might be other ways to do it. One you could explore though I'm not interested in implementing it in any of my games. Is letting the characters that go into a tiebreak both go into the next round. Though depending how many characters you originally have you're setting yourself up with an odd matchup sooner or later. Though sometimes this can actually fix the odd problem. That way is a tad experimental and isn't the way I'll ever do it. But this is a possibility anybody can try. A downside might be is that if they're really both that popular the matchup will have to happen again sooner or later.
Until the next round starts it's just rinse and repeat for days.
INBETWEEN ROUNDS
There will eventually be a time where you gotta close rounds and make more matchups with all of the characters that made it through the previous round. I think it should be customary that you at least give yourself a 1-day break between rounds so you can properly prepare the next round. Even the rounds later on where you could easily make matchups when there's less then 20 characters left. If you set up the schedule during the break, it gives time for the voters to weigh each matchup and decide who they want to go further.
CHAMPIONSHIP
After a long while you will eventually have 2 (or 3) characters left in your game. And this important matchup decides what character wins the long Vote to Win game. I prefer to keep the Championship as normal as any other matchup. But if you'd like you can increase the length of the Final by more then one day. I'd suggest you go no further then 3 days if you're doing that though.
After this is over you can either start a celebratory party for whoever is the champion in the game thread (It's a long game, so why not have a celebration? Vote to Wins are the hardest games to win). You could also lock the thread as soon as it's over. But generally I think it's nice to at least have it open for a time where the people who worked hard to get a character to win have a chance to celebrate the victory.
MISC. / Optional stuff
If you thinks there's something you can do to make the Vote to Win go differently. Don't hesitate if you want to put a little twist on things. Maybe you want to put stuff like splitting the characters into "conferences" or sides like Heroes Vs. Villains to guarantee that the final is between one good guy and one bad guy. Or have a Battle of the Sexes where one side is all Male characters and the other is all Female. This is of course if you can find equal characters of each side. Perhaps you want to make a Vote to Win where whoever gets the most votes actually is eliminated rather then advancing to the next round (In other words, a Vote to Lose). If there's something else you can think of, feel free to post here what you have an idea for that hasn't quite been done in a Vote to Win as of yet.
Now I'm not trying to call anybody out but there are a few times where some Vote to Wins were started and they had odd stuff going on with votes like making the matches only one hour long, having a first to whatever number that wins it. What are the problems with that you may ask?
Well for the only hour long matches, you have to think on what the time is and the 2 characters. Let's say the Matchup is Jeff Vs. Nick (Just 2 random names, not picking out 2 characters in particular), and you decide to run a match for less then 12 hours and say you run it in the morning. Most of Jeff's fans are online in the morning because perhaps they all live in the same time zone you do. The problem can begin here is that you gotta think that maybe people who prefer Nick won't be able to vote until later in the day thus leading to some voters were somewhat mad because they didn't get to vote just because they couldn't get online at the time because of School, Work, etc. which is why it's recommended you put a full 24-hour matchup.
Having the first to 10, 7 or whatever numbers comes to mind? I don't need to say much besides this: That isn't a Vote to Win. That's basically a Heal to Win. Especially if you let a person
Another issue I see is that some people start a Vote to Win however for whatever reason they forget to change the matchup without telling people that there might be a break. I'll get into how to fix this into the guide pretty soon. But it's just something I notice.
There will actually be 2 parts to this. The first part will be way larger of course because it's about hosting a game. But the 2nd part is important too because it's for actual voters themselves. So without further adieu, we'll begin.
HOSTING
GETTING STARTED
The first step is getting a theme for your Vote to Win. Pick a subject that you know quite a bit of people are also into at the forum that hasn't been done yet. Try not to pick any series where you'd get like less then 5 votes on every matchup. A 2-1 win in a Vote to Win is a boring win. And because Vote to Wins are fairly new, there's a lot more to choose from since Hurt and Heals and KO a Characters slowed down because there aren't too many things that haven't been done already. For the most part though, Vote to Wins has more of a blank slate. I'd just say to be careful on what subjects you choose. Obviously most Video Games or Cartoons will do fairly well with voting numbers. To look at an example of the difference between something unpopular and popular. One needs to look no further then my forum's choice game. Stuff like Sultans of the Ottoman Empire and Formula 1 racers obviously aren't going to get many votes (Except if they have funny names, Schumacher got into Round 2 over another racer easily because it seemed like "Shoemuncher" to them). Stuff like New York Mets or Star Trek: The Next Generation are better but they're far too specific. Especially regarding the Mets because it's never a good idea to make a game just based around one team. As the better idea would be all the teams in MLB or star players from each team (Though although I wouldn't be entirely opposed to it as I am one myself, not too many people are Sports fans here)
So you have your Vote to Win idea set, but you're not quite done yet. You gotta make sure of a few things. Like how many characters does your Vote to Win have? The larger it is, the more longer the game is and you also have to weigh that on how long do you think you can keep up with updating the game. If you're making your first vote to win. I suggest go small and have a Vote to Win that's no bigger then 80 characters (The perfect beginner's Vote to Win I'd say is 32 or 64 characters. But anywhere between 20-80 is fine for people making their first ones). When you have some experience and the dedication for long games that's when you can get into Vote to Wins that are 100 characters or more. But I beg you not to do something drastic like a 150 character one for your first vote to Win unless you're absolutely sure you think you can take hosting it for that long (My forum's choice lasted for a little over 2 months and it had 100 characters. If you go to 150. You're basically setting up a game that will last the whole season of a year. That is if you do the same pace that I did.). If you still really want to get a Vote to Win started but you're afraid there will be days where you can't get the next matchup started. Ask a fellow user who has Vote to Win experience (Like me or Smasher for example) to be a back-up when you know you're not going to be able to set up the matchup at the right time. Just make sure not to get lazy and get others to do the rest of the game for you.
Of course you gotta set up matches somehow. Most people use the randomizer.org Integer generator to set them up. If you don't know exactly how to use it. Ask me here in this very thread. As it might be a tad complicated to try to explain it all in one place here.
Another thing you gotta do is decide the pace in which you go through the matchups. It's recommended that if you have any more then 30 Characters in your vote to win that at least for Round 1 that you do multiple matchups in one day. I'd like to say you can go at 4 different paces
1. Slow Pace (1 Matchup per day) - This is the simple 1 matchup per day. If you have more then 30 characters I recommend you don't use this pace until Round 2 or 3.
2. Normal Pace (2 Matchups per day) - This is what I'd call the normal pace. It's not too fast but it's not exactly too slow either. If you remember this is the pace I used for Round 1 and 2 of Forum's Choice. I however don't recommended using this pace if you have any more then 100 characters
3. Fast Pace (3 Matchups per day) - This is a Quicker pace and I recommend it for at least for Round 1 if you have more then 100 characters or if you want to make your game a little quicker. Don't use this if you have more then 120 characters.
4. Fastest Pace (4-5 Matchups per day) - This should only be used if you have a huge Vote to Win to go through. I really hope you don't have to use this. But if your character count is crazy huge. You should have Round 1, Round 2, and maybe even Round 3 with at least 5 matchups per day
Also depending on how many characters you chose. You may have to deal with rounds that have an odd number of characters. You can do multiple things with this.
1. Have the last match in that round be a Triple-Matchup. If you remember, in my Forum's Choice game there were 2 Triple matchups in my game. One between Mario Vs. Banjo, Vs. Zero Two at the end of Round 3 and the final between Luigi Vs. Wario, Vs. Rainbow Dash. How I did it was have it last for 2 days. Each day would eliminate only one of those 3. You can also do it that the one with the highest votes wins anyway and the other 2 are eliminated at the same time. But I think the way I did it in Forum's Choice gives more of a chance. (In Forum's Choice if I had done that, both Mario and Banjo would of been eliminated because Zero Two had 12 votes, Mario had 7, and Banjo had 1. On the 2nd day though, Mario beat Zero Two 11-10. Mario wouldn't have advanced if it weren't for the fact the Triple matchups last 2 days.
2. Set up a Poll to return a popular character from the first round. This can be done for characters that has the toughest luck of drawing one of the mega-popular characters in an early round and gives them another chance hopefully for a better matchup in the next round. It's not really my preferred option as if they were eliminated then they probably wouldn't do much better later in the game. If however you don't want to deal with triple matchups this might be a nice alternative. Oh and make sure not to have a return poll just suddenly happen in the Final or something. Because there is a reason why those characters didn't make it into the final. If you're going to have revives have it consistently throughout any round that may have odd amount of characters if you didn't use it.
3. This is a somewhat advanced option and by no means should it be used for a first Vote to Win IMO. But this is something I plan to introduce in the next Forum's Choice game: A BYE. This must be done through PM, ask your voters to PM you multiple characters (I'd say 5, because if you say only 1. There's no guarantee that the character will make it that far) and whoever's name both is the most said and makes it past the first 2 rounds gets to completely skip an entire round and make what would of been an odd numbered round into even again. I suggest only running it through Round 1 so that people get an idea on what Characters are more likely to to make it past Round 2 but at the same makes it a gamble. Because those same voters will not know what those characters will get in terms of matchups in Round 2. A popular character could be matched with another character that was said alot in the PMs and could potentially result in matches that are basically matchups for the BYE. This also leaves the opportunity for any Dark Horse characters to get the BYE. However it goes, the voters won't know who got the BYE until the Host announces who got it at the end of Round 2 or whatever round the Host decides is the one before the BYE.
4. The only other option I believe is to make it so that no matter what each round will have even characters. Which would mean finding precise numbers. Ones that go on top of my head is 16, 32, 64, 128. I don't know if there are any other numbers that are less then 100 and more then 20 that lead to even numbers being in all rounds. But if you'd rather not deal with odd numbers I suggest you pick something like 32 or 64 characters
Now that you have your matchups and your game set to go. You can start your game anytime that you may wish. This is the time to choose what time your matchups start and end. Make sure you pick a time that's most comfortable for you to make the new matchups. For all of Forum's Choice I always updated it on Midnight but I know not everyone has the luxury of staying up to Midnight. If you can't go Midnight or even 11 PM I suggest you go with anytime between 8:00 PM-10:00 PM. Don't worry too much about Time Zones, if it's a 24-hour matchup people will find a way to vote. If they missed it because they forgot to account for time zones, that isn't your fault.
If you know alot about the forums syntax like adding images, shrinking Image size, etc. You can add something like adding pictures of your characters when it's time for their matchup. It's not absolutely necessary, but sometimes when the characters aren't exactly well known a simple picture could sway some voters to one or the other. But again, this isn't the important part. As you can now start the actual voting process.
VOTING TIME
You have everything set so all you have to do now is set up the matchup. It's as easy as doing this:
If you want, you can include your vote the first time you set up a matchup giving someone immediately a 1-vote lead. I personally like to wait until someone else votes first but it's perfectly fine to kill 2 birds with one stone by doing that.
Also I suggest having a little security on you. Most people will just vote and say nothing else. But sometimes there will be people who forget that insulting a character could lead their vote getting in danger. Later in the guide I'll tell what is generally acceptable or not. But unless you want your Vote to Win to end up in a flame war I suggest you draw the line on how you'll tolerate insults to any of the characters. And be sure to be fair, if you allow an insult on a character you also don't like yet you revoke a vote because it was an insult on one of your favorites. Then that's just poor officiating and clear bias. As the host you must specify what will get votes revoked in your game. Another thing you can watch for is how voters are treating other voters. Insults to other voters are actually worse then insulting any characters and should be punished much more if they do so. Like perhaps a ban from voting from the game for a little while, or if they refuse to stop banning him or her from voting in the game at all. Whoever it is could still post as you can't ban them from threads, but if they ever tried to vote their votes would not count.
Besides watching for comments though, for the most part you can just sit back and wait until everybody's done voting, sleep, and then set up the new matchups when it's that time again the next day. The only thing during voting you have to worry about is the possibility of any matchups heading into a tiebreaker. Which can and has already have been dealt with by different ways:
1.+1 Day - This is what I used in the Forum's Choice game for Tiebreakers. If there was a tie, I simply reset the poll at 0-0 and have people vote again, in the hopes that a different result like voters switching sides or new voters to turn the tide. For the most part, it works everytime. If the rare case goes where it ties again (Luckily it never happened in my game though it got fairly close from happening twice) try once more. As I just doubt that one matchup will have the same result for more then 2 days. The Overtime poll will also run with the other matchups that day.
2. Sudden Death - Technially there's 2 ways to do a Sudden Death matchup. One where until a new voter comes in to give a winning vote or whoever has the fastest finger to vote again (Though I'm not really a fan of that because that's essentially letting someone vote twice). It's more for the people who are too impatient to have a matchup go another day longer. But it's still better then what the 3rd option is.
3. Flip a Coin - You have no idea how much I loathe this idea for a Tiebreaker for Vote to Wins. Sure it's a 50/50 chance that could go anywhere. The main problem with this is that we don't actually see the coin flip. How do we know the host didn't just choose one because he or she likes that character more? The host can try to say thats what they got from the flip but the problem is he or she can't prove it. And even if you could who really cares that much to see photos or a video of a coin flip for just one game? Let's say you're a normal voter who has a favorite that got in a tiebreaker. If they lose in a Sudden Death or the +1 Day style, yeah it disappoints you but at least they had a chance to win. Also Win or Lose, a Coin Flip is just a very disappointing and anti-climatic way to solve a tie to begin with and very exploitable for dishonest hosts. I say that this should be the absolute last option for solving ties. As it just isn't fair.
Those are just the 3 main ones that I have seen. There might be other ways to do it. One you could explore though I'm not interested in implementing it in any of my games. Is letting the characters that go into a tiebreak both go into the next round. Though depending how many characters you originally have you're setting yourself up with an odd matchup sooner or later. Though sometimes this can actually fix the odd problem. That way is a tad experimental and isn't the way I'll ever do it. But this is a possibility anybody can try. A downside might be is that if they're really both that popular the matchup will have to happen again sooner or later.
Until the next round starts it's just rinse and repeat for days.
INBETWEEN ROUNDS
There will eventually be a time where you gotta close rounds and make more matchups with all of the characters that made it through the previous round. I think it should be customary that you at least give yourself a 1-day break between rounds so you can properly prepare the next round. Even the rounds later on where you could easily make matchups when there's less then 20 characters left. If you set up the schedule during the break, it gives time for the voters to weigh each matchup and decide who they want to go further.
CHAMPIONSHIP
After a long while you will eventually have 2 (or 3) characters left in your game. And this important matchup decides what character wins the long Vote to Win game. I prefer to keep the Championship as normal as any other matchup. But if you'd like you can increase the length of the Final by more then one day. I'd suggest you go no further then 3 days if you're doing that though.
After this is over you can either start a celebratory party for whoever is the champion in the game thread (It's a long game, so why not have a celebration? Vote to Wins are the hardest games to win). You could also lock the thread as soon as it's over. But generally I think it's nice to at least have it open for a time where the people who worked hard to get a character to win have a chance to celebrate the victory.
MISC. / Optional stuff
If you thinks there's something you can do to make the Vote to Win go differently. Don't hesitate if you want to put a little twist on things. Maybe you want to put stuff like splitting the characters into "conferences" or sides like Heroes Vs. Villains to guarantee that the final is between one good guy and one bad guy. Or have a Battle of the Sexes where one side is all Male characters and the other is all Female. This is of course if you can find equal characters of each side. Perhaps you want to make a Vote to Win where whoever gets the most votes actually is eliminated rather then advancing to the next round (In other words, a Vote to Lose). If there's something else you can think of, feel free to post here what you have an idea for that hasn't quite been done in a Vote to Win as of yet.
