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BLueSS
November 16, 2009, 02:21:54 AM - ORIGINAL POST -

This review is more for anyone who wasn't at the tournament, but wanted to know how it went. Smiley

1) Konami hired people who knew nothing about the game.
2) Konami didn't ship the tournament parts/supplies to Seattle Gameworks. (apparently they did - conflicting reports)

Coming into the tournament, nobody from the Seattle area had high expectations, due to the horrible news we had heard about the previous tournaments. Overall though, most of us were fairly impressed with how well things actually worked out, despite everything that could have gone wrong.

There were 34~ entrants, with the majority of players (including the top ones) being from our PNWBemani forum here. The top picks going into the tournament were our top players, several of whom were practicing for a couple weeks for the tournament. They were Keby (Kevin), Amber, and Suko, all of which placed in the top 4, with the exclusion of Andy Burns, who was a surprise entrant who did very well!

As said earlier, the staff knew nothing about DDR. This led to some humorous lines, such as "Keep your stuff off the DDR," and an announcer who was funny, but knew nothing about the game. This also led to some bad parts, such as the staff 1) Not knowing you can't play a tournament song on Extra Stage, 2) Accidentally choosing the wrong song half of the time, 3) Not knowing why players were complaining about the pads.
Seattle Gamework's pads have never been in tournament condition, although to their credit - the pads were repaired several times the day of the tournament, and were almost to the level of Bill's (Masterman Vending) machines during tournaments ran at his venues.

The tournament staff were temporary hires from craigslist, with the exception of the Konami Rep who was intent on having everything done her way. To their credit, we were very thankful that they acknowledged that the pads needed repaired several times, however they only started caring after Kevbo (Kevin Boddy, who was here from out of town) talked to them. Since he was the winner from one of the other Regional DDR Tournaments, apparently he had enough credibility for this lady to listen to him. Thankfully he was there, because they let him even test the pads after the repairs to make sure they were ok... but if he wasn't there I have a feeling our tournament wouldn't have been so good.

For a tournament that started at 1PM, they were still at the final 8 at 6PM. I had to leave at that point, so I don't know how the rest of the tournament went. It was long because the staff didn't know what they were doing for two of the parts, and took a 1hr break to eat, a 30 min break to figure out who moved on/bracketing... and the bracketing wasn't seeded properly, so several players went over to get that fixed.

All the songs were chosen from the official song lists provided, with the tournament staff spinning a prize wheel to choose which song got chosen. The wheel was not very well calibrated, as there was about 40 minutes of The Least 100 Seconds played during the tournament. And she had to rewrite the songs on the wheel several times to get them evenly distributed.

The winners/placement was:
1) Amber
2) Kevin (Keby)
3) Andy Burns
4) Suko

It was a fun time, as the majority of our Seattle DDR Community was there. This will probably be the biggest tournament we will have in our area, as it also had some entrants from outside the community. It was a good time, and thankfully didn't turn out as bad as we were expecting. The Seattle Gameworks staff and manager were very nice and helpful at making sure the tournament ran ok, the tournament staff were ok once Kevbo showed them the pads sucked, and almost everyone had a good time.

Hopefully we can get enough community support to have a few more tournaments with a good sized turnout!

Some pictures are already uploaded in our photo gallery, and I'll be adding mine in a few days. If anyone else has some feel free to upload them as well!

Thanks to everyone who showed up to the tournament. It was a fun time!  Cheesy

Edited based on the info Laura posted below.

« Last Edit: November 16, 2009, 07:33:50 PM by BLueSS »
 
Laura
Read November 16, 2009, 03:11:35 AM #1

Jon: A quick correction. The woman who wanted things done her way was actually a Konami rep. The other girl, the young one, told me that that woman was the one who was doing all of the Craigslist hiring, and was an actual Konami employee.
 
BLueSS
Read November 16, 2009, 09:00:21 AM #2

aah!  Corrected then. I had asked at one point and either the younger girl or the guy said they were all temp staff, so I had apparently heard wrong. Thanks.
 
I AM ERROR
Read November 16, 2009, 09:11:21 AM #3

i think it would've ran smoother if they had another sn on standby in case the primary sn machine crapped out (which did happen)...there wouldn't have been so much downtime.

despite the setbacks, it was probably one of the better tournaments throughout this whole process...

and the fact that none of us picked brazilian anthem should be an indication that they should put some variety in the song selection...i think i had midnight special burned in my head for a good couple hours after i left...
 
Suko
Read November 16, 2009, 11:10:18 AM #4

Quote
...i think i had midnight special burned in my head for a good couple hours after i left...
Midnight Special and Insertion were the two most common qualifiers chosen.

Quote
Konami didn't ship the tournament parts/supplies to Seattle Gameworks.
I'm not sure what you entirely mean by this. I saw a box which had replacement parts in it (CD Drive, sensors, brackets, etc). They pulled a spare sensor out of for use in the machine after one of the pad disputes pointed to a weak sensor. Granted, that might've been a box from Gameworks, but they had replacement parts.

My personal opinion: While this would've probably been ran better had a true DDR pro been in charge of it, I have to give Konami credit for what they were able to do. The Gameworks techs were quick and prompt to address the pad issues when they arised. In all honesty, no one but a hardcore player would've been able to "fix" the pads any better than that. I understand why they have the rule of "no outsiders" messing with the pad. These are two large corporations running a national tournament. They want to keep interferences to a minimum, so preventing players from messing with the pads is a no-brainer.

Quote
All the songs were chosen from the official song lists provided, with the tournament staff spinning a prize wheel to choose which song got chosen. The wheel was not very well calibrated, as there was about 40 minutes of The Least 100 Seconds played during the tournament. And she had to rewrite the songs on the wheel several times to get them evenly distributed.
I agree with this. I can't count how many times I played and heard Least 100 Seconds. My advice would be to use a giant oversized dice (die?) and roll that to determine the song. 1-5 represent a song, 6 = roll again. Once you're down to 3 remaining songs, 1-2 = song1 and 3-4 = song2 & 5-6 = song3. You can see where I'm going with this. It's a lot quicker, more random, and less.....cheesy(?) than the spinner wheel.

I don't recall the Konami reps name, but I really appreciated her effort to try and balance being a corporate rep, a tournament organizer, and a player advocate all in one. The staff, while maybe only being Craigslist hires, did their jobs well and made the event entertaining.

There were some cameras setup by the event staff to record the screen and the players for the whole tourny. I was interviewed by one of the staff before the event began and he said that it should go up on the website sometime in the next week or two. When I asked which website (ddronlinecommunity.com or ddruschampionship.com), the woman seemed confused for a moment and then said the "tournament" website. As of yet I can't seem to find a location on the DDR Championship website that has interviews, videos, or anything like that, so perhaps these are things that will appear after the finals are over in December?

I gotta say that the "show" they put on for the tournament was fun. The MC, spinning disco ball and giant DDR tournament banners all combined to create a fun and entertaining atmosphere. This might not have been the best ran tournament ever, but it was the most showy and enjoyable one I've seen for a regional competition and it seems like most of the participants had a great time, myself included.

« Last Edit: November 16, 2009, 12:18:00 PM by Suko »
 
ancsik
Read November 16, 2009, 05:22:29 PM #5

I'm not sure what you entirely mean by this. I saw a box which had replacement parts in it (CD Drive, sensors, brackets, etc). They pulled a spare sensor out of for use in the machine after one of the pad disputes pointed to a weak sensor. Granted, that might've been a box from Gameworks, but they had replacement parts.

Konami had promised free parts to each location involved.  GW has been running DDR machines for a long time and does keep a handful of stuff around, but the staff did admit that there was a package of brand new parts and possibly some more tourney materials (like a pre-made bracket with proper ordering) never arrived.  Konami was trying to give GW no excuse to not fix stuff up ahead of time, but then again, DukAmok did the pre-event repairs at the other locations even when the parts showed up.

Staff could have been trained a little better, but they really did do a good job for non-players hired the day before.  The "random 3 of 5" format was terrible, especially given how long people have been playing this game (meaning most players should be very hard to surprise with something they've never played before, and that's the only reason I can see for this format, the number of spins it took to pick one song started getting absurd by the end of some matches).

@I AM ERROR: At the point a location has duplicate machines in tournament condition, you put them near each other and run multiple matches in parallel rather than keep one as a backup.  Jerrad ran multi-machine tournaments (2 Extremes and even 2 Extremes plus ITG with only 2 active matches at a time) at Narrows with 2 helpers just fine, and the machines were spread throughout the arcade.  The extra staff were mostly there to keep an eye on things so players couldn't complain about something going unnoticed, normally one person running the desk (getting the next pair of players ready, updating the bracket, handling disputes, etc.) and one scorekeeper per active round is all you'll need as the other players keep a pretty good eye on the machines in case the staff did miss something.
 
BLueSS
Read November 16, 2009, 07:32:55 PM #6

I saw a box which had replacement parts in it (CD Drive, sensors, brackets, etc). They pulled a spare sensor out of for use in the machine after one of the pad disputes pointed to a weak sensor. Granted, that might've been a box from Gameworks, but they had replacement parts.
Again, I was told by the staff (again either the younger girl or the camera guy) that they didn't receive the parts sent from Konami (I believe it was the girl). So if you guys saw or heard otherwise, then I guess they did.  Tongue 
 
neempoppa
Read November 23, 2009, 01:13:33 AM #7

I am glad they did do something about the pads there. I truly wanted to go, but I unfortunately had to work past scheduled time to
make up for losses of staff that day (at the mall across acme). I really am glad lots of people came, and look forward so much to the next tournament of any sort, though it might not be on the large scale like this one was.
 
 
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