Planning for Soulcalibur V Nationals 2012...

This is just a preliminary plan. Nothing has been decided yet and we don't even know if Namco-Bandai is planning anything. But if they are not, we need to have our own.

I have not had much discussion with others interested in running Nationals; but I was hoping to get support from Idlemind, AkazukinChaCha, Hates, and Neorussel. In efforts of transparency though, I'm posting my ideas publicly and hoping for approval, criticism or ideas from the tournament community.

So these are my initial ideas... Most have been determined based on past history...

• 8 regional events, open to NORTH AMERICAN players only!
  • North East America
  • South East America
  • North Central America
  • South Central America
  • North West America
  • South West America
  • Canada
  • Mexico + Caribbean
• We're only doing 8 because when we tried to do 16 in 2009, it was way too much; there were tournaments very close together while other regions had nothing close. The idea for this was to split the regions based on population; this time we are splitting straight geographically.
• Any North American player can attend any regional; so Caribbean players could enter the South East tournament if it's easier for them to get to. The same goes for Canadian players and Northern tournaments, or Mexico and South West tournaments.
• The top TWO players from each regional tournament will qualify for nationals.
• Players who have qualified at a regional, may defer their position to the next ranked player of that event. So if the player got 2nd at a regional and can't make it to Nationals; they can give their position up to the person ranked 3rd. No one below 4th may earn a deferred qualifier position.
• Once a player has earned a qualifier position (even if they deferred their position), they may not enter anymore regional qualifier events. For instance, if a player gets 1st at an event, and then defers their right to the 3rd; even though they are no longer qualified for nationals, they may not enter another event. This rule is specifically in place to prevent bracket rigging.

Each regional tournament has to charge $25 per player... All $25 goes to the National Funds.

• $15 of that $25 is reserved strictly for the Nationals pot and will not be used for anything else.
• The remaining $10 will be reserved for helping ALL Nationals qualifiers with their travel expenses. This does not mean it will FULLY pay for travel expenses; if this $10/25 fund reaches it's limit, qualifiers will be required to pay for the rest. If the $10/25 covers all travel expenses in full and money is left over; the excess will be added to the $15/25.
• Regional tournament organizers MUST use TIO to run their event... no paper brackets!
• Regional tournament organizers must send their funds to the National committee by cashier's check / money order within 1 week of the event, as well as send in their TIO file.

There will be a minimum of 2 months between the last qualifier and the Nationals exhibition; which will most likely be at Summer Jam 2012; in order to help qualifiers better schedule their travel situations. There will still be a regular tournament at Summer Jam open to all players, but the National exhibition will be open to qualifiers only; there will be no last chance qualifier. Obviously, during the minimum of 2 months layover, there will be EVO.

At After the Nationals exhibition; I would like to have an International Exhibition.

• The International Exhibition will be the best North American player, versus the best player from other regions. I don't care how the other regions come up with their best player; if they want to run their own Nationals series, they can; but that will have nothing to do with ours. Hell, if Europe wants to pick their "best" player randomly from a raffle out of hat... they can.

 

So... where will the southeastern regionals be?

 

I think Florida should have it's own regional. That 8 hour drive from Orlando to Atlanta is a bitch. Add another 3 hours for people in Miami that would want to go. That's way too far imo. We will have a solid player base too and alot of them do not want to make that long drive to Atlanta. For SC4 only two people from Florida went to regionals because of that. And that was a last minute decision. I beg for the consideration of the organisers.

 

I think Florida should have it's own regional.

I'd be there 5:00 AM.

 

Spoiler: Just another rant to piss Lobo off

Lobo,

Not trying to be argumentative, but since this is a thread that is supposed to be for nationals and you got to voice your reasons on why Dev should be thought of I feel it's important to air out the negative aspects of what happened there, meaning the cons. And I think that people should be able to read about it publicly if they so choose. Now there are a few pros, the location, timing, venue, and the fact that Phoenix is fucking beautiful at that time ( I LOVED IT SO MUCH I WANT TO MOVE THERE) I give you that. And I already stated I understood that there were bigger and better things there that more people were interested in, that's business.

But my problem is what I feel was a lack of respect for us in general as if we were an afterthought. Now I'm not talking about the last day so much but how shit was run initially when we first got there. We were promised our own space with a minimum of 4 stations the entire time for casuals. This stems from what happened last year and how we were bounced around, made to move numerous times, and ultimately had our stations taken away for some jabroni game.We were told they were figuratively rolling out the red carpet for us and that we wouldn't be an afterthought, but when the time came we had ONE station the first day.

On the second day, the day we were starting our tournament, we all get there on time at least 60 of us and we have no idea what the hell is going on. There are TWO stations being run and no T.O in site. Finally we get some poor boy who looks as if he has no idea on what the hell is going on and tells us it being pushed back an hour. This disperses all the people there who go off to eat, play in another tournament, or whatever the hell they were doing. Which was a good thing as we had to go and beg for another couple of set ups so we could get the 4 set ups we had been promised. There was no Dr. Dogg in site, no Jedi Robb, no anyone who came on here promoting Dev beforehand stating how they were going to take care of us. It seemed as if everyone of those guys were more involved with the Roshambo tournament than what was going on with ours.

They then start the tournament 25 minutes earlier than stated and of course they announce nothing. They started DQing people before they even announced anything! It took us 30 minutes to get through to those guys and have them get over the goddamn loudspeaker and mention that the SC tournament had started early. They had a dude who had no idea how to run a bracket running our tournament looking lost. He had us playing on one freaking set up at most two almost the entire time until we shouted at him and told him to start matches on the other two. Frankly I could go on and on.

I find all this very disrespectful to our community and I'm not even getting into what happened on the final bracket which was the only time we got any of those guys to get involved and that was due to a horrible fuck up on their part. If they had told us this was how the shit was gonna be run, people would have told them to stick it up their ass and saved their money for NEC.

Now I see your point of view as far as the audience, the stream, and how they threw us a bone and actually let us commentate our own shit but I still call bullshit. That's like me saying, "Hey baby here's this diamond ring that you could get nowhere else but through me." But you get it after I slap the shit out of you and piss on your face. I'm not partial to that and I'd tell them to stick that ring up their ass sideways if I knew I was gonna have to deal with that.

My point is they would never have treated any other community like that. Granted we are smaller but if we don't speak up and say we aren't standing for that shit, who will?

Okay so that was my rant on Dev, but it got me to thinking. I really do think we need to set-up our own nationals tournament. Where it's a stand alone event. We don't need to have 2nd billing to any game with this new one coming out. I'm hoping for big things for this community after SC V comes out and the only way we can accomplish this is by putting ourselves out there as top billing. Not behind these other games that will be competing with Soul Calibur for players. If we can't even do that for our own National championship (which I do believe should include at least our surrounding neighbors because come on now, they're all wanna be Americans anyway) how can we be taking seriously? We'll always be looked at a 2nd tier kind of community far short of the Capcom and Tekken communities. If we can do this right we'll show that we aren't some 2nd rate piece of shit. We will be taken seriously and who knows what we can get started.

Now I understand there are a lot of roadblocks. What with us having to get our own venue, setting up the right location, supplying our own equipment, advertising the event correctly, and handling all the money but I'm sure we have a few people in this community who can stand up to the task. I'll put my faith in someone like Idlemind who ran the largest and most legendary independent Soul Calibur tournament here in the States to figure it out with the help and input of the community of course. I'll put my faith in Jaxel who when all that shit happened for our last national tournament he was the first to holler for transparency and was the loudest about the underhanded shit that went down. Not to mention he has more to gain from anyone if SC gets really big.

Which leads me to my point incalling these two guys out. Agendas. Everyone when they are giving their input have some sort of agenda. Whether it's the date and they want to have it during a more convenient time for themselves. Or the location and they want to have it in their own back yard. I'm sure there are a lot more than my simple brain can come up with but I'm sure you can all get the point. But with these two they want this to work out gloriously. Whenever it is, wherever it is, however it's set up, because they have the most to gain from it working out. Now I've typed to goddamn much already and my head hurts so I won't get into all the reasons but I'm sure if you think on it you'll figure it out.

So let's get shit going and stop talking about bullshit. What I know I don't want is people who are wishy washy or someone who has left and feels the need to come back to have their input let they have the most to contribute. We need to come to a consensus and I call for those who know how to take charge to do what they need to do and set the shit up already. Figure out the logistics, the equipment, and a whole bunch of other shit that my lil peabrain won't think of and get us to the top like we're supposed to be.

 

I also don't understand why expecting a fully paid flight to a National event is out of the question, especially for first place. I can understand not having a fully paid flight for 2nd and absolutely not if the number of spots were increased with the number of participants. It's like you're assuming anyone who is good enough to qualify has money, or a steady job in general (stupid grown up ideals lol). Not to mention there are some that have actual reasons for not having a job, like myself. I mean i stay home and watch my bedridden grandma so my great uncle and cousin can keep their jobs and we can't afford a nurse of any kind to stay. So i have no way of making money unless i'm an asshole to my family.

So if I were to win whatever regional i make it too, i'd totally assume that i'd get flown to the NATIONAL event for it. Whether we're sponsored or not has a huge effect on this, but i feel the event in general shouldn't be. Meaning the even runners would have to shell out cash...... Which of course im totally fine with lol.

 

I apologize for the length of this post beforehand, but I couldn’t sit by and not add something to the discussion.

While discussions like these are inherently divisive in nature, it is because of that that very divisive nature that this particular discussion be as transparent as possible. The SC community is a collegial one, and the last thing that any community needs is the perception that there is an oligarchy making decisions and controlling the interests of the collective without considering the input from others in the community. The members of this community should read what ideas are bandied about and what decisions are made, and they (the members) should be able to add their arguments, questions, opinions, and comments to the discussion, and all of it should be weighed as necessary. It should almost go without saying that not all replies to this thread will be worthwhile, but, again, that should be obvious. Specifically, adults should be able to have rational discourse in an intelligent manner without unproductive sarcasm, adolescent carping, or derisive insults. For the most part, I think that this has happened so far.

Now, I’m neither a neither a Nancy nor a Cassandra (sorry—I couldn’t resist the pun; it’s the English teacher in me), but I will say this: Back when we were still at Caliburforums and we learned that there was going to be a release of SC4, there was a great deal of discussion about a national tournament and a series of qualifiers for this national tournament. I gave Jaxel my opinion about those qualifiers, certain organizers, and the national tournament all together. I asked him to listen to me—not as 350z the nondescript Ivy player who is obsessed with CS—but I asked him to listen to me as the older man who has had a bit more experience dealing with group dynamics and, when appropriate, evaluating character (I am making a reference to my misgivings of DancingFighterG’s public persona—not disparaging or maligning his character-or anyone else’s for that matter). Sadly, every one of the problems that I thought would happen, indeed, happened. Please don’t misconstrue what I am saying. I am in no way congratulating myself or wagging the proverbial “I’m older than you are, and I know more than you know—de facto: you should do what I tell you to do because I am older and wiser” finger. I just couldn’t let another national tournament happen without sharing my opinion.

With that said, as an elder statesman in the community, I will make the same plea again.

A national tournament is a wonderful idea; however, excluding members of a community in any form is counterproductive for the growth and health of a community at best and ultimately destructive for that community. Have the national tournament—have the qualifiers. But limiting participation in this national tournament or exhibition to only those persons who have qualified is not a good idea. First, the SC community is not large enough so that it should be excluding any of its players from participating at any time whatsoever (as a hold-over from SC3, I remember just how small many of the tournaments—even the major tournaments—were). Next, there will be growth in every player early in the game cycle. A player who wins or places in a qualifier weeks or months before a tournament will clearly improve during those weeks and months just as those players who will not place or win a qualifier. That is, holding a tournament for a select few who have qualified weeks or months prior to a tournament does not reflect an accurate accounting of what players may actually be the best players at that point in the evolution of the game. Finally, there will be inevitable unforeseen problems with attendance and other ancillary elements around player participation that can be neither accounted for nor controlled. Now, I could extend my support, but I think I have made my point clear so far.

So my solution is a simple one. My solution is to give the winner and placers of the qualifiers what Jaxel has proposed, but I also propose that we give those players a seed or byes in the tournament to decide the national champion. They (the qualifiers) can have their entrance fees to the tournament already paid as well, so the importance and incentive to win a qualifier would remain the same. If anything, the qualifiers become even more important. As a player, I would be incredibly motivated to win a qualifier, knowing that the win would net: identification of being one of the best players in a region, a monetary prize, help with my travel costs to the national tournament, paid entrance fee to the national tournament, and a seed or bye (or both) in the national tournament.

Furthermore, those who did not qualify would have to attend the national tournament and pay a tournament fee, adding to the pot for the venue and placers at the tournament (or to be used in another manner). For those that would argue that allowing those persons who did not qualify to the tournament is somehow “diluting” the event (in terms of the quality of competition), I would have to disagree. The best players will rise to the top—period. Great players, competition, and matches are still going to happen. The last sixteen—eight—four—two—players left at the national tournament will be great players—whether or not they have proven themselves at a qualifier or not. They will have fought and won their way to the top at the national tournament.

I understand that whatever is decided that not everyone will be satisfied with the decisions and choices made, but I believe that making decisions that don’t alienate members of the community is best. My simple proposal doesn’t change the format of the qualifier system, and it is not so radical or offensive that I believe that it should be dismissed without consideration. I believe that what I propose doesn’t harm the SC community but serves to help it.

I sincerely thank everyone who has taken the time to read this; I appreciate what everyone has added to the thread, and I hope I have offered something worthwhile.

 

Don't think anyone here could have said that better, 350z. Someone, give this man an award.

 

I had written a long post here; but upon reflection I decided to delete it and will just say this:

We (as a community) can stand on our own.
We don't need this outdated model to succeed.
There is a better way.
This isn't the kind of thing we make public discourse until we have some kind of plan- that is the fastest way to make it a mess.

I'd rather we had talked in person at NEC, Jaxel, then see this dragged out onto the front page. Now it's not about the planning of nationals on a logistics level- it's about the flag-flying "emotional" connection to how important nationals is, and everyone trying to hedge themselves in and citing these bad things as a reason to do things in some way.

Let me tell you, as a person who got all worked up over some bad shit that went down as an organizer... that isn't the way to go about it. That was wrong, and I made that mistake, and I'd rather not see it played out here.

SC4 Nats failed. That has nothing to do with SC5 Nats.

This needs to stop, no offense to anyone who posted some good ideas here.

 

If I "like" SCV, which is a very big IF, I will help with Nationals. Getting a venue shouldn't be too hard.

I assume North Central tourney will be ran in Madison (JimmyPikaChuChoi has that covered I'm sure) and/or Chicago again (I ran Chicago SC4 regionals with zero issues...its the least I could do for the worst game I've ever played LOL :p )?

 

350z post=great idea, imo.

That pretty much guarantees that the Nats/NA Championships will have (at the very least) FSAK level of attendance (talking high percentage of tournament players attending, rather than raw numbers).

EDIT: I'm also in favor of having Nats end mid-year, or at least not last all year long, simply because I don't want foreign players to be locked out of our best tournaments, and would love for them to have reason to come over to our shores. :END EDIT

Also, I'm glad the Nats idea was posted by Jaxel, as it gives the community input on the event, helps conjure up ideas for the tournament (that otherwise probably might not have been thought of), and most important of all, displays transparency that was totally unheard of in the last Nats. Not that I know best, but if I was Jaxel, the best way to run a thread like this imo, is to start it like he did, make sure that productive discussion is going on (which there is), and mark a cutoff date to where the public discussion is to end (probably a month after start?), and the private planning begins.

We all understand that not every minute of planning an event this big needs to be publically documented/discussed. But I also believe that it's very important to conduct a public discussion like this as it's easier to stomp out/prevent problems early, than it is when it's time for people to sign up/venue is picked and paid for/event layout timeline is chosen, etc.

 

I'll keep this brief:

I hate the plans that have been outlined in this thread because they're outdated, exclusionary, out of touch with the community, and small when we should be thinking big.

Whatever happens, we don't need to rush into it. It's not like there won't be events for SCV. Plus we are getting ahead of ourselves by talking about a national tournament before we even have people to actually compete in it and when scenes for the game still need to be built. Plus it would be detrimental to try and squeeze it in before EVO.

It's best to discuss things in person at NEC, then present those plans to the rest of the community to discuss.

 

So... can we lock this until some things are discussed at NEC, then toss something up outlining what the people who spoke thought and get community feedback that way?

There is tons of good and bad ideas, but we'd need some structure to the discussion or it will become chaos.

 

Jaxel can lock this thread if he wants. Just stop responding to it.

 

Well there's another thing. This thread within itself is to discuss ideas. Nothing concrete will be achieved until you guys sit in person. So let people discuss. In the midst of all it you will find good ideas.

I agree heavily with 350z. Having some kind of small nationals with 16 top players is exclusionary and frankly lacks hype. MK nationals was hype and what did you notice, the room was packed, tons of people competed. The 16 qualifiers can get seated into an upper bracket and expenses paid but to say that the entire community can't compete at nationals seems off.

And honestly why wouldn't the top 2 players want the entire community standing behind them cheering as they go through grand finals? And the national tournament is also advertisement for the community. If non community members tuned in to see what SC nationals was all about they'd think "16 players in an half empty room? The SC community is never going anywhere, no need to try and take this game seriously"

Lastly I just want to say don't just go into a corner come up with something that you think is best and ignore what the community wants. I sometimes get the feeling that a popular belief of those in power is "we know what we're doing, no need to pay much attention to anyone else," and "yea we see what went wrong before, we have it all figured out". This kind of thinking worries me because it seems like the community has been going through the same cycles with every game.

Now this is from an outside perspective since I wasn't around way back when. This is not an insult to those in power, I truly appreciate all that you guys do for the community. This is merely a plea because I truly want a prosperous community. That's the basis of a community in FG anyway, compile the best ideas to grow as players. So by that logic a few individuals probably won't think of everything and it is best to consider the opinion of others.

 

I'd keep an eye out for CEO 2012 my friends. Some big stuff in the works for SCV that's all I can say for now. I'd love to see this game do really well in general and it will get my full support. And you can ask anyone who attended CEO 2011, the venue and everything about it was top notch.

 

I think Florida should have it's own regional. That 8 hour drive from Orlando to Atlanta is a bitch. Add another 3 hours for people in Miami that would want to go. That's way too far imo. We will have a solid player base too and alot of them do not want to make that long drive to Atlanta. For SC4 only two people from Florida went to regionals because of that. And that was a last minute decision. I beg for the consideration of the organisers.

Whether or not these guys want to Support Florida is on them. Me being on Board with EVO and big things happening on my end for SCV with Namco (:read the SCV finals won't be the first finals of Sunday at CEO 2012).

I'm reading everyone's ideas and they are all very sound and the right ideas, but setting up a major on your own for just one game will cost a ton of money without any gain to keep supporting it. You have to be careful if you decide to just do your own thing and not work with organizers that are already putting on majors.

I understand some places care more about 3D than others so that is always a factor, But I know the East Coast(Final Round, Big E, ECT and CEO) care about every scene when the players come out to support. And we'll all do our best to push SCV and support it, but it's on the players to make a big splash.

On that note, trying to create your own majors rather than supporting EVO or other majors and letting players know about those will only hurt you in the end. All the best SC players come to 8wayrun with good reason, but to create something and market it entirely to your own site will never get it to grow. You need other events that have been successful in the past to extend your reach to new players.

It's really simple if you want to continue your ideas on your own, You don't have to extensively talk about it, You just need trustworthy people to lead the pack, Agree on a Venue or number of venues, Start promoting, Hope the game sells well and then the rest is all on the players themselves to make it out there. If they care enough they will show and support anyone who works hard to create something special. But Trust me when I say, creating a tournament just based on One fighting game is not the smartest idea in the world.

 

That's another one of my concerns is that we don't need to plan our own event right now when there's several major events that will have SCV that people should go to. You got Winter Brawl in Philly, Final Round in Atlanta, CEO in Florida, UFGT in Chicago, Power Up in Cincinnati and possibly EVO all within the first couple of months of the game coming out, and who knows where else if more people get into the game. These are the places we should be making a presence at instead of segregating ourselves with our own event and forcing people to spend money to travel to just some regional.

 

A little off topic, but who does Chicago have to run tournaments..or, rather...what tournaments that support SC does Chicago even have? I can't remember the last time someone announced an SC tournament around here...

 

If there is a SC5 tourny in Massachusetts I'll flip. I'll probably hijack my neighbors car and go if I can't twist my parents arms into driving me.

 

If there is a SC5 tourny in Massachusetts I'll flip. I'll probably hijack my neighbors car and go if I can't twist my parents arms into driving me.

You realize that when SC5 drops there are going to be tournaments... every WEEK. You say this like its a rarity :P