For those that dont want/cant get into discord, according to Ivy´s post, the reasoning for the tournament is:
"I don't tend to make these kinds of posts, as I usually leave them for TFG to post once a full write up has been done. That being said, by now you've probably seen that there is a knock-out-tournament forum ongoing. So I'm going to jump the gun a little. Please note, that this is not for the January poll. THIS IS PREP WORK FOR THE JANUARY POLL. RESULTS ARE NOT FINAL. So. We're going to have a little knock out tournament based on the votes from last time around. Those that lose their vote will be removed from the characters-poll forum and be disqualified for the January poll. Those that win will have their reactions reset back to 0, and over the next 2 months you can suggest new characters as per usual, but we'll be actively bumping older threads to ensure that everyone gets a chance. There is no more 'outfit' suggestions as per Henry decree, so all outfit suggestions now count as a brand new character suggestion. In late November/December, ready for January, we'll run another tournament similar to this one, where we'll knock down the suggestions ready for the January Patreon Poll. There'll be more rounds as we eliminate other characters, but the rules for it will be posted at a later date. tl;dr VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE CHARACTERS. CHARACTERS WHO LOSE ARE DQ'D FOR JANUARY'S DISCORD TOURNAMENT
Back in October/November, we removed the restriction on one suggestion per person, and in the November poll, there was over 100 suggestions to go through. Because of how Discord works that meant that some characters got buried and some characters that were struggling to be seen were further buried along the way. Some suggestions saw far too much attention due to conversations that were ongoing in their threads 'bumping' them back up to the top, or we'd see what I'd call "less than sincere" suggestions crop up that caused them to get more and more bumps due to people joking in the thread, further burying more sincere suggestions. The intent is to reduce the 85+ girls down to around 40, and the male suggestions to have less Final Fantasy and some more serious suggestions."-Ivy
(i dont know if Ivy is here, im just sharing for the wider community)