Another music tournament?

[Yakumo]

I've been considering running the next one of these, assuming nobody else jumps in first.  Not planning to do it for a while, but I'm wondering a few things.

One, what type of music?  I was figuring I'd just do another straight game music tourney since it's been about a year since the last one, but if anyone has other ideas I'd like to hear them.  I was also considering running a sort of mini-tourney of anime music alongside it, maybe like one match per pool of the main tournament, since there's some good music there but not enough of us really watch enough anime for a full tournament of it.  Thoughts?

Two, I was considering removing the top four or eight songs from CK's run from contention and then doing some sort of match up between those and the top group from this one near the end.  Possibly round robin style or something, I haven't decided yet.  This way we definitely get new blood through the whole thing but still give the top group a chance to shine at the end, and a way to see how tastes have changed.  Good idea?  Bad idea? 

Third and probably most important, I've noticed a rather large decline of interest over the course of a tournament so large over the course of the whole thing for the two others.  Some of that is inevitable, but I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about how to keep things fresh over the months it would take to run it.  Should I record myself failing at Audiosurf to the music?  Run some sort of contest?  I only have a couple ideas so far and I could use more.

Oh, and one other thing.  There's been people whose abrasive comments about the songs that make it to latter rounds in the other tournaments have kinda turned people off the whole thing.  I'd rather like to discourage that, but I can't exactly censor what people decide to post either.  If anyone has suggestions on ways to encourage playing up your favorites instead of bashing the songs you don't personally like, I'd love to hear those as well.

So, questions?  Comments?  Concerns?  Feedback is greatly encouraged here, I want this to be enjoyable for everyone.

[Taishyr]

The speed of the AGMT tournament and the abrasive comments kinda did that one in for me.

As for ways to keep it spicy, I... don't know, honestly.

[Sierra]

I was gonna outright suggest an anime music tourney when I saw the title of this thread, yeah. Most of the fun of the last two was encountering new music, for me at least. Dunno if there's enough interest here to support such a tourney on the same scale as the gaming ones, though.

In the event of another straight-up videogame music tourney, I would indeed support measure #2.

Also, your final paragraph seems to expect DLers to do something other than mock stuff they don't like. This does not compute.

[Excal]

Honestly, I think the only way you'll avoid people getting pissed off through commentary is to ban commentary.  I know I find hype for stuff I don't like more annoying than trash talk about the stuff I do like.

Not entirely sure how to keep it interesting though.

[Luther Lansfeld]

I would vote in a non-remix tournament, I wasn't interested in it. And bitching doesn't bother me of course.

[Yakumo]

Tai:  Speed?  You think Tonfa's was too fast or too slow?

Cid:  Anime music would be cool, hence why I want to at least run a mini version of it.  I just don't think we would get enough noms/interest to support it being the main attraction.  If enough people want me to try I'd be fine with that.

Excal:  I dunno where I really stand on that.  On the one hand, just completely trashing someone's personal favorite music probably isn't going to stand well with most people.  On the other hand, that's kinda the point of these things is that you personally think one song is superior and one is inferior.  Eh, I'll just listen to overall feedback.

Not much to say to Ciato, that's pretty straightforward.

[Lance]

I would love to see an anime music tournament simply because we haven't done it before. (I was actually thinking of running one myself over the summer, but hey, if you're going to do it, be my guest. Less work for me.) I honestly don't think we'd have a problem getting the required number of tracks nominated for it. And if you think we will, just ask people to submit pools of 25 or 30 songs instead of the usual 20. Problem solved.

As for the abrasive comments...well, it comes with the territory. Everyone has different musical tastes; one person's masterpiece is another person's garbage. Of course it can be upsetting when someone bashes a song you really like, but what is there to do about it? It's not like they're attacking you personally, so getting offended is kind of silly. Just my thoughts on the matter.

[Cmdr_King]

I'd say that one of the shortcomings of the arranged music tourney is that basically no one was familiar with even a fraction of the songs involved.  While one of the benefits of these tourneys is the exposure to new music, at the same time looking at a list of 8 matches and seeing maybe one song in the 16 you actually know, and the resulting hour+ required to properly vote on everything, is incredibly daunting.  So a mix of known and unknown music is key.  So doing something besides RPG music would probably be best as a small tourney (say, 32 songs.  Maaaaayybe 64.)

The concept of finding praise for songs you don't like bothersome is strange to me.  Largely because praise tends to be "this is why I like this", unlike hate which is usually more "this fails and anyone who likes it deserves to die".

[Talaysen]

Heh, was planning to do it myself, but if you want to, go for it.

The last one was in the middle of summer, I believe.  Or was it the beginning?  So probably best to do it around then, I'd think.  However, doing an anime music tournament in the next few moths to keep something going would be cool.  I'm sure I could dig up some tracks to nom for that!

For suggestion two, I like it.  I support it.

I don't think you can really do anything about people trashing music other than tell them to not trash music.  And even then it might not work but it might.  Whatever.  Best I can say is to not get too attached to it.  Completely subjective tournament having clashing of opinions ONOES.  People do have the right to be wrong!

Edit: Oh, and I think Tonfa's tournament was an alright speed, but warnings a day before the pools close would be very helpful.

[Yakumo]

Actually, looking at the topics, it started in April last year, he started taking noms at the end of March. >_> 

[VySaika]

Tonfa's simply went too fast for me. I missed a few pools due to that POOL RUSH he did at one point and after that lost all interest. As for the abrasive comments...well, see Cid. I don't engage in such mockey myself as I'm simply not wired that way, but I've long since gotten over most DLers being hate based lifeforms.

[SnowFire]

To the extent that these threads are an excuse to talk about pieces of music, they are cool.  It's neat to compare what you think of a piece to what others do.

So I can't help but think that a tournament is the wrong way to do this.  It gets boring to listen to the same songs again and again in the later rounds - I know I started losing interest around round 3, as I'd had my fun by then.  (To be clear, I did enjoy the tournament and appreciate the work that went into setting up the first two rounds - I just stopped after it wouldn't be enjoyable for me.)  The artificialness of "yes the two good songs in the pool of eight got paired against each other" doesn't do it for me either - this isn't a pretend dueling match, so there's just no reason for that to happen.  I guess there's something to be said for giving a second listen to pieces, but still.  

So I'd recommend just picking some pieces and talking about them.  That's it.  Okay, sure, fine, add in ratings for each piece as well, like in the rate-the-character-in-game rankings threads elsewhere, if you want.  But I imagine that would be interesting enough as is.  Or, to keep it to a more tournament flavored feel...  use the format of the List tournaments.  64 songs can be 4 pods of 16, with the top 4 of each pod advancing to a final 16.  There's still a second listen phase for the best, but there isn't the stamina-destroying hell march that the later rounds would be.  (Or for a huger tournament, 128-> 8 pods of 16, top 4 advance -> 2 pods of 16, top 4 advance -> top 8 finals).  Either one of those two options would be my preference.

Also we're totally owed a failure round of pain from the original game music tournament, one of these days.

[Yakumo]

I'll just say this straight up:  I don't know about the rest of the group, but I personally hate list topics and won't touch them, so I'm sorry but you're not going to see that type of tournament out of me.  Maybe somebody else will want to do that, but I don't.  It's a lot more effort to try and sort out which one of, say, the four tracks in a field of 16 you think are really good than it is to pick one of a pair.  Then you get to the end and have to try and figure out what order to put the last 16 good tracks in or whatever.  Also, I don't know about everyone else but personally unless I really don't like something that's winning I don't see it as a bad thing to listen to those songs again.  I hear the same songs a lot on my playlist but unless I hear them like a dozen times in two or three days I don't personally get sick of them.  Your mileage may vary, obviously, but most of what makes it past two rounds is going to be pretty good music and worth hearing again.  Hell, these tournaments have created additions to my playlists. >_>

As for the failure round or whatever, I did say I intend to run a mini-tourney of something.  I'm personally leaning toward anime music, but I could run failure instead, or really failure concurrently, if people wanted.  I'm open to suggestions.

[Talaysen]

Actually, looking at the topics, it started in April last year, he started taking noms at the end of March. >_> 

Oh, really?  Didn't realize it was that long ago.

SnowFire: By the end of the tournament, you don't really have to listen to the songs anymore, since you know what they are.  Especially in a straight up game music tourney like this (remixes are different because people are less familiar with those).  I also echo Yakumo's comment on list topics being made of lose and fail.  I could see a vote 1-in-4 thing, but anything more than that is just annoying.

On the other hand, another forum I used to go to had a "Let's Review" series of topics, where we took some OST, and basically reviewed every track on it.  Generally we just had a bunch of people sign up and went in order, IIRC, but I wouldn't force that on it here.  Better to probably pick an OST and have people pick tracks they want to review, and then do it when those come up.  We could post the completed product on the wiki or something if we wanted to.  Was thinking of dragging it over here in some form or another, but wasn't sure how many people would want to do it, so I guess I'll throw it out here now and see if anyone bites.  (This would be completely separate from the tourney, obviously.)

[Sierra]

Thirding the whole being underwhelmed by list tourneys thing.

And failure brackets are always cool, as long as they don't take over the tournament or something.

[SnowFire]

Re List topics: Hmm, so that seems unliked.  I will point out that that was only the second option I mentioned (and the lesser of the two to me as well, though I would prefer lists over the current tournament structure).  I'd be fine with just chatting about tracks, probably with including a numerical score at the end.  I'm most familiar with the "take apart an OST" version that Talaysen alludes to, but it could certainly be done with "here's 16 random tracks" too.  This also entirely obviates the need for a list ranking as scores sort themselves and ties are fine.

Re repeat listening: It just isn't my thing, though apparently others are okay with it.  Sure I could not re-listen and just drop off a vote but what's the point then?  I've already said my thoughts on the track in an earlier round as far as sharing my own opinion and I'm guaranteed to have nothing new to say if I don't re-listen.  Who actually "wins" is kind of irrelevant, especially in a music tourney (unlike duelers, there are no rock-paper-scissors interactions - some pieces you just like better).  This comes down to these topics - to me at least - being at best "chat about music" topics with the later rounds being stale "chat about the same music" topics.

[Cmdr_King]

Hm.  I'd say two things in favor of the tournament format.

1) Gives the topics focus.  Straightforward, having deadlines and matches keeps everything organized and discussion, if you want to view it that way, moving.

2) Deeper appreciation for the standouts.  In theory.  I mean, if you have to pick between two songs, and determine which one is more worth of your vote, then this is very critical, active listening.  What makes the song work, what speaks to you (if even in a given moment) is much clearer when forced to pick decisively between two options.

[SnowFire]

But isn't the exact same thing true of the options I presented?  You can still have deadlines, and if you're ranking in a list you still have to pick which one is better.  If ranking by score, well, you can give the same score to two pieces I guess, but I don't see that as a big deal.

On the other hand in a match you only have to critically listen if the pieces are "close."  A 8ish piece beats a 4ish piece no questions asked.  The thinking only comes when a 7.5 fights a 7.  I felt I *didn't* have to critically listen many times when I hated the other piece.  That wouldn't be true if I was able to point out how much better I thought a piece was by just giving a score to both tracks.

[Cmdr_King]

Well.  Think of it this way.  You can kinda guess how a dueller will fare based on their stats, skillset, similarity to other duellers. B ut you can never say for sure until you actually get the in the DL with matches.  How critical was that inability to block Petrify?  hard to say until you see them in a few fields.

Similarly, I could quickly assign a piece of music a score.  If I look at all the scores in a session, or over multiple, I can refine and shuffle into scoring tiers even.  But the nuance is lost until faced with that close match, an actual decision.

[Yakumo]

Thirding the whole being underwhelmed by list tourneys thing.

And failure brackets are always cool, as long as they don't take over the tournament or something.

Well, the way I was planning on doing the mini-tournaments would be right alongside the main one.  Let's just say for the sake of example that I do what CK did, 16 pools of 16 songs each.  In addition to this, I would pick say 32 failure songs and run one match of those in each pool, as that would be 16 matches.  Possibly 64 and run two.  Either way, it would just be a little aside to the main tournament, and if I did 32 the finals for both would end up happening at the same time.

One question, though.  Do we want to vote for the best of the worst or the worst of the worst if I do that?  I assume the point of the failure bracket is to find the absolute worst song we can, personally.

[Talaysen]

One question, though.  Do we want to vote for the best of the worst or the worst of the worst if I do that?  I assume the point of the failure bracket is to find the absolute worst song we can, personally.

Worst of the worst.  Other way doesn't even make sense!

[VySaika]

One question, though.  Do we want to vote for the best of the worst or the worst of the worst if I do that?  I assume the point of the failure bracket is to find the absolute worst song we can, personally.

Worst of the worst.  Other way doesn't even make sense!

This.

[Ranmilia]

Tournament issues...

- Trash talk
Happens.  Is fun, even, for most people.  Especially in something like music, which produces strong emotional reactions one way or the other.  I don't really see the point in getting upset about it.  For those that do dislike it, a worst of the worst bracket seems like it'd solve the issue, though.

- Pacing
Biggest problem with both music tournaments so far in my opinion is that they took way, WAY too dang long to finish.  But then you get folks like Gate saying they moved too quickly... and I kinda agree with that too.

The real issue here is pacing, not timing.  The early stages of a music tourney are pretty involved and take a fair amount of time - you need to listen to a lot of songs in each pool, many of which you probably aren't familiar with, and actively judge them.  In the later rounds, though, you're familiar with everything already and probably don't even need to listen to the songs in most matches, just check em off down the list.  There are quite a few possible solutions to this, but just running rounds sequentially with the same time in each isn't something that works well.

[Lance]

As for the failure round or whatever, I did say I intend to run a mini-tourney of something.  I'm personally leaning toward anime music, but I could run failure instead, or really failure concurrently, if people wanted.  I'm open to suggestions.

I'm still in favor of a straight-up anime music tournament -- same size and format as the last two. If everyone decides to go a different route, hey, whatever. Music tournaments are fun all the same. Just figured I'd throw out my two cents one last time.

[Yakumo]

Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't see a full size anime music tournament working here.  One, it has the same problem the remix tournament did, most of the people on the boards won't know most of the music.  Two, there really aren't that many heavy anime watchers here to put in noms.  I would be hard-pressed to find 20 anime songs I know that I like enough to nom, and there's a fairly large number of people that don't watch it at all.  Thus, even if I were to make a tournament based off anime music I would almost certainly need to cut the size way down, so running it as a small side tournament of sorts seems like a decent compromise to me.