Future of online tournaments

[UnseenWombat]

Let's put this in perspective.

A tourney match takes ~10 mins out of your day. Double elim still shouldn't take more than a month.

I wish that were true in practice. I don't know why, but some people just can't seem to be buggered to schedule one darn day out of the week to play a serious match with someone. Part of the problem is possibly that they have to schedule 2 matches, but I've decided I'm going to start limiting people to only one system or the other. I think we know now it's not like there's not enough interest.

I would positively love to give like a 4 day deadline for each round, but then I'd end up disqualifying half the people if I stuck to it. Maybe I need to be more selective in the sign ups. Make people write an essay about why they feel they should be allowed to participate. I don't know how to weed out the guys who just play a few matches, or no matches at all, before they decide they're bored with the tournament and fall off the face of the Earth.

Prizes seem to be the most likely solution, in my own mind anyway. The first month we had the 8WR premium membership as a prize (I'm not sure if Xeph & Enk ever got it or not), and people seemed to take that one pretty seriously. Though as we know, there were a lot of other variables that changed between the first and second tournament. If I offered a token $10 gift card to PSN or XBL as a prize, do you think that would make people not want to blow it off? I could pony up $20 a month I reckon. It would be worth the cost to avoid the frustration of herding all these cats.

 

[DrakeAldan]

I'll probably not be playing this game (by extension these online tournaments) after EVO, but I wanted to contribute.

The first two online tournaments I entered, they were hosted by one "TheNobleEskimo".

The tournament took place on 1 day (usually a weekend). all participants went to an empty Global Colosseo room.

The TO dispensed match listings and received statistics via PSN chat (which I didn't particularly like, as messages from randoms would show up while you were fighting).

Both of these tournaments finished. I believe it is because everyone was gathered in one place at one time.

The way scheduling is now, it offers flexibility to the participants. However, as you know, scheduling can be difficult if not impossible. People are at work/school, they've got stuff to worry about, the game is the last thing on their minds. At the least, on an off day, they can be committed to playing.

You could probably use messages to communicate and set up matches. You could even set up DQ times like in real tournaments for people who walk away from their system, to keep things fluid.

And, if you became efficient at running these smoothly, you could have multiple tournaments a month.

If you make everyone abide by time constraints, I think you'll have a lot more control over the situation.

 

[UnseenWombat]

That's a pretty good idea and certainly an option. What do you guys think about implementing that somehow? We don't necessarily have to have a marathon 4 or 5 hour tournament--I know I would have a hard time participating in something like that, no matter which day it was on, but for example, we could maybe let people schedule their first round matches like before, then have the losers all gather on the last day of the deadline in GC and finish up the whole first round. Then do the same for 2nd and 3rd rounds. Then at least the losers wouldn't lag behind so badly--that's what really drags these tournaments out worse than anything.

I kinda like that idea. What do you all think?

 

[Wandrian]

GC sounds good. It's almost like they were setup for this kind of thing in advance...hmm.

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

I think it would make it harder for people to commit to that. having a week deadline should be more than enough time. Even I can make something like that happen, and my work/family schedule is fuckin crazy.

Time to start being a hard ass. Dont give anybody any tolerances at all. If they dont make the deadline.....not your problem. If you have one person desperatly trying to schedule something with no response from the other person....fuck em, homedude gets an auto win and moves up, other homedude is in losers or is out.

I actually really liked the relaxed "You have a whole week to get it done" type thing. Was real easy for me at least.

Offering the free 1 month membership i thought was the norm. Were we not offering it in round 2? Offering a XBL/PSN card is a great (and even better) idea, but I would hate to see that money come out of your pocket. That just dont seem right.

 

[Synraii]

Personally, I think there should be a rule where if you don't complete at least one match per day without a good reason, which can be posted here, then you are instantly disqualified.

 

[Fahros]

Eeeeek where is this going...

Personally, I think the most important thing to do here is find out what works best for the players actually participating. In my opinion, the first round of tournaments we had went rather well. People were excited, and a lot of the matches were recorded and uploaded for all to see. People loved the videos, and it went great!

I think what we need to focus on improving upon is the planning. In my opinion things just need to be set out in advance. Nothing silly like "ONE MATCH EVERY DAY" or anything like that...that's nonsense. IMO, things would run better if we just set dates, checked to make sure they didn't interfere with offline tournaments, so those players can participate as well, and ran with it.

So for example, we could say...

Round one of the tournament has to be completed by the Saturday of July 14th,
Round two has to be done by the Saturday of July 21st,
Round three has to be done by the Saturday of July 28th,

Then we could schedule and do all the semifinals, and finals on the Sunday/Monday following the last deadline, July 29th and 30th.

That's just an example. I haven't checked dates to make sure they don't run in to tournaments or the like, that's just an example. That way, if we had a solid schedule, people could see it before signing up and know if they're going to be able to play their matches or not. I don't think anybody will sign up if they know they're not going to be able to make it, so things should run smoother that way.

This gives players time to play their matches, and keeps things in running order; without going tournament-nazi mode, and telling people they have to play every day, or on specific days, or all at once. Also this sort of schedule would allow for videos to be made. If people don't care about the videos, or building hype, you could easily round everybody together on one day and duke it out, but it's going to just be wam, bam, done deal and over with in a flash. I don't personally think that would be half as exciting, especially since nobody could get to see the actual matches.

Just my two cents!

 

[Marginal]

Syn, people do other stuff like work and all. Not everyone's schedule will match up on a daily basis. We should try to keep these suggestions practical.

What would really be nice is an automated scheduling/reporting system. If you don't report by the end of the week, you're locked out. Double DQ if neither party has contacted the TO before the time limit expires. It could spit out matchups via PM etc so there'd be less confusion.

That'd take a ton of work off the TO in general.

Set a hard time for the finals so people can try to schedule some time for 'em in advance...

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

Fahros and Marginal have it put brilliantly.

Give people a dead line. If they dont meet the deadline. Then they bounce. There will be no more lienency as far as any extra days or anything.

I dunno, at my job, if I have a customer that wants thier engine done by a certain date......guess what, Im having to give discounts and all kinds of other shit. Thats my penalty for not completing something on time.

 

[Solo]

I almost feel like a part of the problem. Pisses me off I had to move during the tournament before I knocked off of losers. Then I didn't even have internet for like a week. >.<

 

[UnseenWombat]

Solo, I can understand something like moving, or people like OOF who didn't realize that it would totally screw with your offline mindset. It's just the people that were like, I'm bored with this, or for whatever reason just vanished that rustle my jimmies.

Fahros, that's exactly what I did. I did screw up and forget a holiday (again), and I had to extend all subsequent deadlines, and I think there was a tournament in there somewhere that I didn't notice, but people had a concrete schedule at the very beginning to plan from and they still couldn't handle it. I definitely don't want to just have people smash out their matches with no chance for recordings or commentary, that's what was the most fun IMO about the first tournament, (except maybe for watching Hardwire self-destruct in the PM's. That was fun too.) So we'll probably not do the GC thing.

Syn, sorry, but no way am I gonna set one day deadlines, but I'm thinking of maybe 4 or 5 days, except possibly in the case where they're all weekdays, then I might make that round longer to give people a couple weekend days in case they're busy all week. This is supposed to be fun and build excitement for SC. I agree with Fahros that the first tournament did exactly that, and that's probably why the second one had such a huge response. It was trying to accommodate all of that that caused everything to implode I think.

HRD, I thought that was the way to go with this last one, but tons of DQ's undermine the already-shaky legitimacy of these online tournaments. I'll try to be tough on people who obviously don't care about the tournament, but if someone is really trying, I'd like to at least try to be flexible. Then, of course, that isn't really fair to the next round player who's waiting for the previous two shmucks to get done. IDK what to do. Anyone have any suggestions, other than just do it on a case by case basis?

Marg, that would be great. I have absolutely zero skills in setting up something like that though. Maybe Jaxel could, if he cared enough about online, but I don't think he or any of the admins really do.

Probably I'll just try to run it as close as possible to the way we did the first tournament, since that one seems to have gone pretty smoothly and people liked it. I think I only had a hard time with people scheduling or missing deadlines once for each side.

 

[Tha_Rhynoman]

I almost feel like a part of the problem. Pisses me off I had to move during the tournament before I knocked off of losers. Then I didn't even have internet for like a week. >.<

I literally had to drop out after I won my first match due to personal reasons too, so I know how you're feeling :/

 

[Hot Rod Dave]

HRD, I thought that was the way to go with this last one, but tons of DQ's undermine the already-shaky legitimacy of these online tournaments. I'll try to be tough on people who obviously don't care about the tournament, but if someone is really trying, I'd like to at least try to be flexible. Then, of course, that isn't really fair to the next round player who's waiting for the previous two shmucks to get done. IDK what to do. Anyone have any suggestions, other than just do it on a case by case basis?

All jokes aside. I know I said these tournies are more for fun than anything else. At the same time, it IS a competition. Theres only so much "nice-ness" to go around. Specially with prizes involved that everyone in the tourney wants.

I agree there are "good" excuses that should be considered. But for the most part, aside from being stuck in a car upside down in a ditch......Your gonna be assed out if you dont follow the rules! Im not saying be "hitler" about it. But be somewhat of a hard ass!

 

[Kvasir]

If you split the tournament up it would make scheduling easier as well as make the matches playable. I'd suggest a split based on time zones. PST + MST and CST + EST. Not having 3 hour time gaps between participants would make scheduling smoother by itself.

Also, I don't see any logic in the arguments against this so far.

"Killing hype" - More so than shitty connections and DCs?​

"It's not a true test of skill" - So it should be even less so?​

 

[UnseenWombat]

Another advantage would be that with the pool of players we have, splitting it up into 8 and 8 would make the tournament shorter and easily done in 1 month. (I think we can probably do it with 16 though if we stick to deadlines of slightly less than a week.)

A possible disadvantage would be that we might end up with 12 people from california and 4 from the eastern side of the country. I don't know how that will line up.

 

[Inori DWF]

I will no longer be participating due to the fact that I have a horrid connection with everybody in existence, but I will give my two cents:

Having an event that "isn't a true test of skill" shouldn't be called a tournament imo. A tournament in nature is to draw people who want real competition. The competition could never be proven as solid if your inputs are being delayed for 1 or more seconds.

I believe we need to find some sort of alternative to having this sort of "group fun" session these tournaments are becoming. Maybe if we all scheduled a time to have a nice long online session for the lols... I would totally be down for that. We could use the GC idea that was mentioned earlier to do this.

Just think of it as a casual offline session...with lag. XD

 

[Force-Destruct]

Well, whatever happens to resolve (and if there's gonna be any future tourneys), I'm all in.

I'd say to schedule your matches ahead of time; if something happens, PM Wombat and PM Your opponent. If not then ask yourself "Why did I enter in the first place?"

 

[Fahros]

I will no longer be participating due to the fact that I have a horrid connection with everybody in existence, but I will give my two cents:

Having an event that "isn't a true test of skill" shouldn't be called a tournament imo. A tournament in nature is to draw people who want real competition. The competition could never be proven as solid if your inputs are being delayed for 1 or more seconds.

I believe we need to find some sort of alternative to having this sort of "group fun" session these tournaments are becoming. Maybe if we all scheduled a time to have a nice long online session for the lols... I would totally be down for that. We could use the GC idea that was mentioned earlier to do this.

Just think of it as a casual offline session...with lag. XD

That's all well and good for you, but I think a lot of people really enjoy online competition. Not everyone's internet is so bad that online cannot be competitive for them.

Online not being competitive is an expression of the past in my opinion; and it's going to continually become more and more outdated as time goes on. Soul Calibur V is definitely a step in the right direction; this game's netcode is amazing. Two people with solid wired connections, that don't have anything else running on their network can play with a practically non-existent level of lag.

It's really disheartening that people still try to invalidate online competition, just because they lag, or they have bad experiences online.

For people with a stable connection, an online tournament for this game can definitely be measured as a test of skill. Calling it anything other than a tournament wouldn't be fair to the competitors, because that's exactly what it is.

 

[MKHSpartan]

^But what if you live in Oklahoma? :P

What if you live in New Zealand? Connection to America is far worse from here bro.

 

[UnseenWombat]

Yeah, I'm not really interested in organizing casual group sessions. If anyone else wants to, feel free. You probably already do that anyway. That's what the PSN/XBL match finder threads are for. Everybody understands online tournaments don't have the same legitimacy that offline ones do. Still it's interesting how (usually) the guys in the finals here are the same ones that make it far in the offline tournaments too.

Don't worry Force, there's still going to be online tourneys. I'm just trying to get the format right this time and do better with organization.

What does everyone think about the Eastern and Western divisions idea? I'd be willing to give it a try if everyone wants it and we can get enough competitors from each side of the country to fill at least an 8 man bracket. I'm not sure if I want to try four 16-man tournaments or not. This last one was pretty taxing, (though that's probably more due to the dropouts and non-playing of matches than the number of people). But anyway, since I'm no longer going to allow people to play on both systems, I doubt we'll have 64 unique people who want to play. Can anyone think of any other disadvantages to this?