Tournament photos have been uploaded!

http://www.pnwbemani.net/media/?sa=album;in=32

If you have any more, upload them.

I have to agree that having high entry fees only encourages cutthroat play.  I do go to tourneys mostly for the fun in them, and it's a good way to get the community together for a bit.  But it's not fun if the upper-tier players are just going to take the path of least resistance in order to get the money.

Having small entry fees (i.e. $1) or no entry fees at all like for this tournament is a good thing.  We were all still intrinsically motivated to play our best.

I have to jump in and agree with Laura - even if there's little question who will take the top spots, tournaments can still be plenty of fun.  Had I seeded in the Expert bracket at PADMISS, I may well have entered rather than dropping down to the standard bracket, since it doesn't matter that much who wins, but I had improved noticeably and wanted to see how I'd hold up against the top players.  I don't like formats that allow (or encourage) stamina players to rely purely on their stamina - Expert only is a horrifically unfair rule in that capacity - but I also don't want to see players blocked from playing to their own preferences, since that denies them their fun.

This format was less fair than a fully open format, but the top three spots still went to players who are strong overall, so even though some players, like Laura, were advantaged, the format wasn't that unfair.  Furthermore, it's worth noting that Laura's upsets against stamina players consistently went to a tiebreaker - even with the cap in place, players weren't so restricted that they couldn't pick something that they would decisively win - usually a CZ 9, which happens to be what most of tiebreakers were, so in order to pull through that many matches, she had to be able to win on the majority of easier CZ charts, the same pool of charts which were seen as the surest way to beat her.  I personally measure the degree of unfairness by how much the outcome breaks from what people who expect to see, and having the big surprise be who got 4th place (out of 10) tells me that the format didn't actually change the outcome that much.

I honestly think that random seeding had a lot to do with the perceived balance - maybe more so than the caps.  Matt and I were a round one match, then I got a bye and Ben got a bye a couple rounds in - players who would have seeded high played each other early and got byes in some weird placed, and players who would have seeded low and therefore not played against each other were instead matched up immediately.  The caps definitely helped prevent matches against top players from turning into "you can't pass 13's, so I'll pick one", but the current set of tournament entrants has, in general, proven to not be complete assholes when picking charts and will pick a guaranteed win without picking something their opponent can't even play, so the main strength of the capping system was to inform players what constitutes being an asshole.

The general lightheartedness of the tournament was probably also a factor; it admittedly stemmed from the rules not being built around serious top-level competition, but the tournament was meant to be a way for us to hang out for a few hours, not a way to determine who is decisively the best player.  Personally, I hate having high entry fees (and therefore a large prize), since it encourages cutthroat play from start to finish and I go to tournaments because they are fun.   I admit that when I'm playing off for a top spot, I get pretty cutthroat myself - that intensity is fun it its own way because of how closely matched the top players are, I just don't want it to be that intense from the start, since that tends to push people away with the curbstomp matches that result, and then we get back to the '06-'07 era when good turnout for a tournament was 10 people.

I dunno, I always enter tournaments that span a difficulty range that I find enjoyable to play, even if I know for a fact who the top four will be.  There will always be a handful of "best players," and it is a competition, so the best players should win.  My problem is more just that the "best players" tend to set the bar high enough that the playable tournament charts are inaccessible to me.  This tournament solved that problem by ensuring I never had to play anything over a 9. 

It was fun, and I would love for there to be more tournaments like this, but I can't really say that this is a "fair" format.  It was great for what it was - a fun, informal tournament - and I'd love to see more like it.  But while it was fun to challenge some of our best players on my terms, I am fully aware that I never had to face them on theirs, and that made my epic climb through the ranks a little bit less epic. 

This tournament was AWESOME and I'd love to do it again.  We should have more tournaments like this.  But the reason I liked it was that it allowed me to compete on stuff I find fun, not because it allowed me to compete on stuff I could win, which is a distinction I want to make.

Very true; it was really bad around 2006-2007 when there basically was an uber tier and there really wasn't any point to anyone besides them competing.  I know I didn't compete in most tournaments around that time after realizing that fact.  I really couldn't justify paying $5 just to play one game of ITG where I get my ass kicked, or if it was double-elimination, two games of ITG where I got my ass kicked twice.  It got so bad and I got so burned out and discouraged that I literally didn't set a single foot on a DDR or ITG pad from early 2007 to late 2008.

The problem with "I pick a song without restriction, you pick a song without restriction, tiebreaker if needed" DDR/ITG tournaments (which seems to be the format for almost every tournament we've had) is that there really isn't a point to them.  The players with more stamina win because they can simply pick songs that they know the other player physically can't pass, or will play very sub-optimally knowing that it will exhaust them and they give up.  Even if the player with less stamina wins their song, the tiebreaker will overwhelmingly favor the player with more stamina since there are songs there that they'll automatically win.  This all leads to a whole hell of a lot of one-sided matches, and ultimately one-sided tournaments which aren't interesting at all.

This tournament, however, pretty much nipped the problem in the bud with its difficulty caps.  With the difficulty caps, it got rid of all the boring, curb stomp, one-sided matches yet remained fair, forcing everyone to be good all-around players.

This is why I've kind of stopped feeling the desire to attend tournaments (this one not included 'cause I had to pick up my dog from the vet). I'm just tired of attending events where the outcome is decided once you know who's entered.

I'm glad you all had a great time, I wish that I could've participated.

This was a fun time!

Congrats to Matt, who now has a 1st Place tournament achievement.

I need to participate in more tournaments with you guys. That was an exhilarating experience!

Very glad to hear y'all had fun.

Thank you, everyone who came. We had about 15 attendants at one point or another & the 10 who competed were great sports. The owner was kind to chip in a 2nd prize & hang out with us for a little while too.


If anyone's curious about how the tourny progressed, here's what I came up with [ LINK ]

Let's do it again sometime~

Agree. 

Granted, it's not really fair for me to comment, since this format WAY worked in my favor.  But honestly, I don't like really stressful, serious tournaments - I like fun ones, where the best players still usually win, but players like me can give them a run for their money on what we're good at.  Matt won and Ben took second, which IMHO is a completely fair ranking (those two are very close in skill level!)

At the same time, players like me, who decide whether or not to enter tournaments based on "Will I have to play charts that I find obnoxious and or physically painful to attempt" could still participate and have fun (and at the end of the day, take fourth. )

I have to say, this tournament was awesome.  Even though it worked against me, I have to say I loved the difficulty cap rule; it was a great equalizer, and a completely fair one; players should have to be good not only on being able to pass hard charts, but should also have to time simpler charts.  It was a way to sort of have divisions and not have them at the same time.

There were a lot of close matches, unlike other tournaments where... there's little point to having them, since players with more stamina win and it's pretty obvious who will win before it even starts.

I second that. I enjoyed it most when I lost to Laura and watching her take down 2 more of our best dance game players. What a pump pro!

Thanks for running this, Zach!  It was a blast!

Sure, I shall edit the first post. The Facebook event page is also edited.

Zach, can you finalize a bit of the information about the tournament, like start time?

Updated title to reflect this is happening TOMORROW!

EDIT: Zach, I didn't know you had a FB Event for this already.
You've got to post stuff like this! 

GO SAY YOU'RE GOING HERE: https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=168806539870543

Since seeding is random (or we're doing round robin), you can start the tournament without everyone present (since we don't need to wait for everyone to play through a qualifier to determine seeding) - just postpone any matches where a player is missing until that player shows up.

That should be enough to start and end at a reasonable time without preventing the few players who can't get there on time from entering.

Elimination brackets obviously have a bit of a cascade effect when missing players do finally arrive (since later matches depend on the results of earlier matches), but it shouldn't be too hard to come up with some reasonable way of scheduling matches as people show up to compensate.  I'd be glad to help sort things out if it does end up being a bit tricky.

The one disadvantage to beginning/finishing later is that we run the risk of Powerplay turning up the room music (which they do every Friday) before we complete the tournament.

I would be fine with starting later though, especially since we will be doing warm-up sets around 5. There just might not be time for you to have warm up time.

-edit- Noticed that I misread your post originally, Ben, & a couple people appear to need the tourny to start closer to 7. The earliest that you guys could arrive would be great, since starting at 9 or after wouldn't be possible.

I wouldn't be able to make it that early.  Can't guarantee that I'd get there before 7.  Is there any reason it can't start a bit later?

Going to change my vote for Friday O.O
Sorry 'bout the late notice, but we've found out that the 2¢ per play deal ends on Friday, so methinks it would be more logical to gather on Friday in the late afternoon/early evening.

Official warming up would start at 5 & hopefully we could get things started by 5:30 or 6pm & be finished up by 8.

I voted for Friday, but I should be free on either day.

Would those who put Friday as their preferred day be able to meet Saturday instead?

Going to edit rules into the first post, which are open to revision.... [edit] Done.

@,..,@

Lucky Star  XD

good