Nationals: What Went Right/Wrong

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I've known DFG a while, since SC2, and am heavily disappointed on how everything turned out.

Gladius: If Denver throws a major tourney, hopefully it's near the airport, at a hotel and overall, convenient for both local players AND out of town players. I can't speak for everybody else, but it would take a lot for me to come back to Denver because of how much I paid in Taxis/Shuttles because nobody was available to drive anybody around.
 
Thank you from the NVGA

This entire post reminds me of when Bank of America sends me bad news. It sounds very corporate and fake. There are simple basic things that should have happened and didn't. I have some pretty big questions if you don't mind answering:

-Why was the venue SO far from the airport? I don't mind paying a taxi for a 20 minute drive. But 40 minutes away? That's unacceptable for people who couldn't get a ride.

-How many CO players were able to actually pick up and drop off people at the airport? Anybody that got picked up by Egg and dropped off can vouch he looked like a corpse.

-There are MANY hotels (I'll gladly find you one if you need help in the future) that will provide a gigantic room for under $2k. There was no reason to have it at University of Denver with no food in walking distance, not being at a hotel, and 40 minutes from the airport.

-Why use money (either NVGA, or your own, not sure which, both are bad) to pay a DJ? There was no need for one. None of us wanted to go to a club when it came to SC4. The number of TVs were great. So was the projector. Anime and Video Games should ALWAYS be separate.

-There was supposed to be 3k in the pot. Why did Thuggish only get 1k? And why was the money not ready to be handed out, why was a check being offered to be mailed? That's also unacceptable


I'd love some answers on these questions. The better the answer, the better chance people come back for future Colorado NVGA tourneys
 
Thank you from the NVGA

For events like this, it'd probably be a good idea to scrap the noise like the DJ etc, and charter a shuttle bus for the competitors to get to and from the venue if a hotel is too pricey/space challenged for the actual event. You could probably work it out with a hotel or something. It'd help take pressure off the locals for transportation.
 
Well something i think is bad (good for ME, bad for Supercon) is when i got there, i didn't pay the venue fee at all. Nobody told me too or asked me too after them saying "oh he's a national qualifier, he's fine" so I got my wrist band and went on. On top of this i didn't pay to get into Blazblue as i was told to fill out a thing for which games i'm participating in before they just told me to go on.

Even better is during the BB tournament i told 1 of the 2 guys that i'm also in Nats, so hold my matches if you can and he said sure. Right after i was knocked out of Nats, i decided to walk around and was actually forced into the Anime Trivia room since they needed poeple. So for half an hour later (and WINNING that damn trivia contest) and me assuming i'm DQd from BB tournament i come BACK, walk over to the BB area and told guy #2 that i was forced into an anime room and so he gave me my "5 bucks back" (the 5 bucks I didn't actually pay nor asked for lol) and then even better guy #1 whom i told about Nats comes over and tells the other dude that i'm allowed back in since i was in Nats and he knew about it lol. So I gained 5 bucks and played out my BB tourney matches anyway.

NOW when I paid for the NVGA champs, which then happened the next day. I went and got my 10 bucks back from the front desk (which i did pay for) just in case i didn't make it to the next day tourney. I go and try my burrito task, come in late to the tourney, but after asking if I could get in anyway, they allowed me to take over a missing spot after assuming I already paid. So i didn't pay for the 2nd tourney either, and got to play, even though I started in Losers Bracket.

Point here is, the tournament needed better communication between the bracket runners, and the front desk on whom actually paid and what not for these dang tournaments.
 
Ceirnian said:
Again, community voted on last qualifier. DFG said if more people than showed up than spots he would do the qualifier, since not even 64 people filled the tournament it's safe to say that wasn't an issue. If the community did not want this happening then everyone should have said something when the idea was first brought up with letting the french in and DFG talking about the last qualifier details. It's too late to start down this road, so talking about something else would be more constructive.
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Just wanted to point out, that the community did raise their voice on this
http://www.8wayrun.com/f51/nvga-supercon-last-qualifier-for-nationals-t4258/
It's practically every post on the second page.
 
Ceirnian said:
Again, community voted on last qualifier. DFG said if more people than showed up than spots he would do the qualifier, since not even 64 people filled the tournament it's safe to say that wasn't an issue. If the community did not want this happening then everyone should have said something when the idea was first brought up with letting the french in and DFG talking about the last qualifier details. It's too late to start down this road, so talking about something else would be more constructive.
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Ceirnian, wtf are you talking about? The community voted to let them compete in a QUALIFIER. A qualifier means a final FOUR players will be admitted to nationals! NOT TWENTY-THREE! The issue is that no one has any idea wtf DFG was doing.
 
We actually knew what DFG was doing.

We had a large amount of people absent from Nats. (Like 30 open slots or something along those lines)

DFG Held a final qualifier to fill in those ~30 spots. (Yes, ~THIRTY spots qualifying. This was understood as the purpose of this qualifier was to fill in the void of no-shows.)

The top ~30 would qualify to fill in the blanks of the Nats brackets.

There weren't 30 people who signed up for the final qualifier so everyone who signed up qualified without the need for any play at all, but if hypothetically they had, let's say, 60 people sign up for the final qualifier the NVGA would have held a tourney to determine who the top 30 were.
 
Only about 25 qualifiers showed for Nats... If what you are saying is the case, the event should have been closed off at 32, NOT 64.
 
Thank you from the NVGA

For events like this, it'd probably be a good idea to scrap the noise like the NVGA. Sorry DFG, but this post of yours (more like a political press release) is utter bullshit. "a step back to take two steps forward"? Yeah right, more like 5 steps back, and one step forward. Even ChaCha is worried that this was our last chance to do nationals "right", and you and the NVGA have ruined it. This post of yours addresses none of the serious issues and overlooks the true problems that we are having with nationals.

Negatives:

YOU have been completely unprofessional this entire time while planning Nationals. You kept changing things as the year went by; without discussion from myself, ChaCha or the Nationals Commitee. Everything became overly beaurocrasized. We could be having a great convo over email, and you will show up and say "this is a great, lets put this conversation on hold and have a conference call on Thursday!" WHY!? Things were going just fine without the conference call, and all you seemed to do was bog things down. By the end, the nationals committee had ZERO decisions on anything, because people didn't want to participate your bullshit conference calls. Then as the months go by, you change rules little by little, so no one knew what was going on. Rules? Pot Distribution? ChaCha asked you not to make Nationals part of the Supercon; but you insisted because you wanted to make money.

Gaps in plane ticket costs? WHY? BECAUSE YOU KEPT CHANGING THE RULES. At the start of regional planning, you told us that every regional must charge $20 for the nationals pot; which covers costs of plane tickets without any issues. The lowest attendance regional would still have covered $200; my regional covered $940 alone. You also said that no regionals could be run at someone's house; because of this I had to secure a venue and charge my participants a high priced venue fee. Then after my regional YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND; you said regionals could charge only $10 (so now plane tickets weren't getting covered anymore?) and you said people could run them at their house. You fucked me over, as well as anyone who attended my regional.

What was the point of regionals again? You insisted on having Nationals at Supercon, which stretched the regional dates from 2 months to 6 months. Regionals should not be across a 6 month span! They should be in 2 months, in a gridiron style of two regionals a weekend till its all over. Nationals should not be in the same month as EVO; but we had to play second fiddle to NVGA and you ignored our objections. But what was the point of regionals if you were just going to open the nationals tournament to anybody? The community voted to allow you to run a last chance QUALIFIER; the community voted to allow international players into this QUALIFIER. Nowhere did ANYONE say it would be a good idea to open nationals to everybody; in fact, when people heard this is what you were going to do, they firmly objected to it. But you ignored them, because you wanted to make more money. You didn't just fuck over people who attended my regional, but people who attended ANY regional.

The pot situation? What was the pot? $2000? Thats it? You guaranteed to ChaCha that the corporate sponsorship you had been recieving for the event would total at least $4000 distributed amongst all the tournaments. Did SC4 get ANY of that; or were you full of shit? I understand that plane tickets cost money, but it doesn't cost THAT much. If prices of tickets were high, its because YOU were unprofessional and waited so long before buying them. And by that account, not everyone who earned free plane tickets went to nationals! What about people like Junior who turned down his plane ticket? What happened to that money? You mean the nationals could have been even LESS? We have been asking you for MONTHS for a firm list on the appropriation of funds, but you refused to give it to us.

You told me sometime last month that the pot was going to be $2000, and still, refused to give me any explaination to how that number made sense when I asked. But what about the fact that you let everybody enter Nats by simply paying $20. What happened to that $20? How come that money wasn't added to the pot? That should be an extra $500 on top of the bullshit $2000. But reading the Extra Fresh League forums, it appears that this isn't the first time you've ripped people off; you've been doing it for years. From what I am hearing, there was a $250 bonus for HDR, which you REFUSED to pay out; and then you added to the Supercon website AFTER THE FACT: "bonus pot is dependent on the amount of entries".

At some point, this was no longer SC4 Nationals, but instead some random NVGA tourney that you CONNED people into travelling for and attending. The only critizism you did take was from people complaining that nats shouldn't be on a FRIDAY (what situation would EVER make you think this was a good idea?) and that nats shouldn't be winner take all (exactly why did you decide THIS was a good idea?)! And with the winner take all, no one even knew if you changed it back to proper pot distrobution or not, until the tournament itself! People who did earn free plane tickets got screwed. You waited till the last minute to buy plane tickets, so they weren't given proper options for flight times. Don't tell us there was nothing you could do about it, it was YOUR fault.

I don't care about the other complaints I have been hearing: "DJ was too loud", "Food was hard to find", "Taxis were expensive", "Hotels were too far"; those are trivial matters and don't really affect the community. Those issues are growing pains and will probably be fixed at the next event you run. But the unprofessionalism and the misappropriation of funds; it appears you have been having THOSE problems for YEARS. Next year, if we run nationals, we will NOT be assosciating with NVGA in any way. EVO was a HUGE step forward for the Soulcalibur community, and you have single handedly set us back.

When I set up 8WR, it was for the effort of having FULL TRANSPARENCY from the leaders of the community. I have even commented many months ago about the way Nationals was getting run, in that if you weren't a member of this "elite" nationals commitee, you had no say in the way Nationals was getting handled. Unfortunately, it was even worse than that; even if you were a member of the nationals commitee, unless you were a member of NVGA, you didn't matter. Even in the post you just made, it pretty much says, "If you want a say in the matter, create a local NVGA chapter, and then and ONLY THEN will we listen to you".

Positives:

People in the community are very respectful, and its nice that besides the glaring issues, players had a good time playing others during casuals, money matches, and even during the tournaments themselves. There was definately good competition built around a large list of players you conned into attending, and for this reason, I won't be discounting the results to the NVGA competitions from the ladder; as long as you ever sends me the results. I've been asking you for the results from the Houston and ATL regionals for MONTHS; but you haven't sent them yet.
 
Jaxel said:
Only about 25 qualifiers showed for Nats... If what you are saying is the case, the event should have been closed off at 32, NOT 64.
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This. The bottom line is that it's a slap in the face to everyone who travelled for regionals. If you guys didn't step up and say something at the event, then maybe that says something about you as people or about gamers in general not doing the right thing. It doesn't make it OK however, just because a few of you were there and went "meh, I'll just do my thing" instead of speaking up about this.
 
Thank you from the NVGA

ChaCha and I will be discussing some things first, then we will post our dicussions and open it up for public debate.
 
I don't see it as a slap in the face if it's the community itself that didn't fully stand behind the Qualifiers.

Would we have been in this situation if every single one of the people who qualified went to Nats? No.

Let's say everyone who qualified did show up. We'd have like ~4 open spots due to a botched online tourney (which was, in my opinion, a bad idea anyway) and we'd then hold a qualifier on Friday as intended with just enough qualifiers to fill in the gap of the remaining spots in Nats (64 players total).

That would mean a full 64 man bracket with everyone happy and not enough room for all of the international travelers and, arguably, that final qualifier would be the HARDEST qualifier.

...but this isn't a perfect world and people can't travel due to one reason or another. (Mainly because lazy, poor gamers are... lazy, poor gamers.)

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So why not have a more robust tournament by supplementing it with the people who are on hand with a very open and generous qualifier?

Let's say someone was God Matching everyone before all of the tournies.
Let's say this person could not be beaten by anyone, at any time.
Let's then go along with the '32' man scenario and no one else was allowed in, and of course, our God Match player was excluded for one reason or another.
Would the tourney winner really feel like he was the best there that day?

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Sure it sucks that you possibly traveled and didn't qualify only to be told that some guy in CO paid $20 to enter and, due to the circumstances, was let in.

When you look at it though it was all a gamble. You could have just gone to Denver for the competitive casuals and the promise of ONE tournament you were guaranteed to enter (The International NVGA Championship after Nats) and , by happenstance, this would have allowed you to enter the final qualifier and ultimately let you into Nats as well.

Hindsight is 20/20. Don't get mad that you didn't come out just for the love of the game and at least one great tourney.

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Also Chickenwing, is your baby here yet? Hit me up mang.
 
Thank you from the NVGA

DancingFighterG said:
Yo, this is DancingFighterG
Phil Bond's 7th grade English​

Everyone involved in the NVGA cherishes the Soul Calibur community, and being able to host this national event for Soul Calibur 4 has been a blessing all along the way. Thank you to all the players and people that supported the event. As the NVGA, we work hard to help gamers organize there their communities, as well as get back to more then than just developing your skills in a game. We focus a lot on building friendships, uniting players for community growth and personal growth. Competitive games can help make you a better player and a better friend. Another trait that is true, but hard for people to sometimes understand, is that building a gaming community can actually help you become a better leader. As being a leader, you learn a lot of things about the community that you try to cater too to.

Sometimes we all take a step back to take two steps forward. Why are we saying all of this? Just like people generally improve over the course of time, so is true for the NVGA. Sometimes we all take a step back to take two steps forward. Right now The NVGA has been watchful of this entire experience and overall the feedback for the event has been positive from the national players and the international players.

Some of the obvious steps back were plane ticket procedures, regional’s regionals not coming up with the needed amount of cash to fully cover the plane tickets, last place chance qualifiers, etc, etc. We knew that some of the regional’s regionals may not generate enough money for an airline ticket, so the NVGA covered the “gaps” of the cost in plane tickets. NVGA also covered the sizable gap in cash to guarantee the Nationals pot money. Please remember: the NVGA made no money from nationals. Players and the NVGA provided an event with the best talent EVER assembled for SC4 and did it with the love of the game and the community. As for the last place chance qualifier: we decided that since people were dropping out of Nationals left in and right, thus leaving people that were attending with a small bracket, with we openned opened up the national, with the votes of the community, to have one more qualifier too to fill the gaps for the event. It turned out that the that decision was a good one for the SC community overall.

Also: players have posted other legitimate constructive ideas that have been voice voiced, noted, and will be implemented to make a better event in the future. Ideas such as making nationals an open event, or changing the terminology to properly reflect what Nationals has already turned into… Internationals. All this and more will be discussed and we will be adjusted make adjustments.

Please also remember we truly are, "by the players, for the players." If you don’t like something about the NVGA process then get involved on a local level. As Our chapter leaders on the local level have a strong voice to help mold the NVGA. Think you can do it better? Know you can do it better? Then Join up, and grab your hammer and help mold a better organization, help mold the NVGA with your own local community.

We don’t want this to turn into a sales-pitch on why to start your own NVGA chapter. So we'll end this digression and will finish up with our conclusion from the experience.

We have identified ways to avoid some of the commonly voiced complaints. As We want to continue to be there to support players and their communities. We are looking to provide additional national championships for a few other games in 2010.

Again: we cherish our relationship with the SC community and want to make sure we are up-front, transparent, and honest with you at all times. We have enjoyed supporting the community and providing a home for the SC National event. We have enjoyed the time we have spent helping organize such a major event and will continue to support the SC community. We are definitely wanting those locations that were regionals to be part of the NVGA in an effort to truly have consistent national events THAT REFLECT THE TOURNAMENT PLAY OF PLAYERS ALL OTHER OVER THE NATION AND BEYOND.

We will be open to constructive criticism and constructive feedback. We will not listen to feedback that only looks to tear down our organization. As Remember this organization is built by players just like you.

Overall it’s obvious the goal of getting the best players in the nation (and in the world) together for Soul Calibur was successful! The main goal was achieved, and it is a good foundation to build upon to for the future.

Shoutouts from the NVGA:

All out of country players - I hope that the staff of Colorado Cutthroat and the NVGA provide you the best experience possible in the United States. We really thank you all of you from for coming from so far away to attend the SuperCon event. We will do our best to make the event even better hoping too to see you again next year, or even better, have you play a part in the NVGA. We can talk later!! Again, thank you so much for supporting the NVGA. The NVGA will always be supportive of all international players and welcome them with open arms. See all of you soon!!

Players that attended the event - The NVGA really thank all the players that attended the event and hopefully had a good time. Expect more events and more activities from Colorado Cutthroat and the NVGA next season.

NVGA Management!!



Thank you again for you this opportunity.

The NVGA management team
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C- See me after class.
-There are too many run-on sentences here. Try to use "and" less often.
-Are "nationals" and "regionals" proper event titles, or merely descriptive terms? Your capitalization is inconsistent.
-You seem to waver between a professional voice and an informal tone. If this is an official communiqué, then try to decide on a more firm role, and stick to that perspective.
 
Thank you from the NVGA

Caleb, have I ever told you that you're my hero? And everything I wish I could be?
 
Thank you from the NVGA

PhilBond said:

-You seem to waver between a professional voice and an informal tone. If this is an official communiqué, then try to decide on a more firm role, and stick to that perspective.
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If he knew how to do this, Jaxel's entire post may not have even been necessary. You and 350z should just hang out and shit on people's english together, lol.
 
MJ: To a point, I understand the problem with having that player "God Matching" everyone. What is the point of having Regionals, aside from paying for plane tickets for #1?

I like the idea you had CW about the ratio bit, but what about the ratio of a Regional determining how many plane tickets are given out, then doing a pool system for anyone that didn't recieve a plane ticket the day before Nationals?
 
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