DLC 5 tournament

[Grefter]

We didn't really suffer from people other than Geoff or Super getting up and walking away from the game though, but yes it really did suffer from the lack of a seperate room dedicated to awesome and Elder Gods.  Still best part of the Con.

But Arkham isn't gathering the whole group to do something, it is getting 6 to 8 people depending on various factors such as if I am playing or just watching and flittering about like a little fangirl.

[metroid composite]

Arkham...I don't always jump into it, but more because it's a really long time commitment and I want to make sure there isn't other stuff I'm missing going on at the same time.  If there was a dedicated time set aside where everyone played Arkham, I'd totally be in for that without question.

(yes, knowing the times is important for scheduling purposes too but it sounds like you're disqualifying some games just because they're too long)

Since apparently I haven't made myself clear the first five times I addressed this point:

NO, I'M NOT DISQUALIFYING GAMES BASED ON TIME.

Clear enough?

If a game has long length but really heavy support, we'll cut some other stuff and run the game.  Long length is a downside (it's a downside because very few non-RPGs are liked by more than half of the DL, probably not even Smash.  Hence you will always have people thinking "is this game over yet?  Let's get to the games I like.")  But note that I say downside, NOT disqualification.  If it's one of the best choices for other reasons, it will be run.

[Taishyr]

If Grefter starts flittering around like a fangirl next DLCon can we put little pixie wings on him?

Also to actually address the topic, I can't really say what should be in the fighting tourney because I won't be playing in the fighting tourney, but I'd approve of splitting it by day somehow if a good method can be found of doing this (two friday night, three saturday morning?)

[metroid composite]

Ooh, going back to a point I want to address:

Can you name a single other thing that a group of people were doing for more than an hour or two at a time before they split off to do something else(there's probably something but nothing comes to me off the top of my head)?  Even the things that go that long almost everyone is actively participating as opposed to watching.

Yes.  We watched the Big Lebowski at DLC1 (which, notably, is pure spectatorship, a full two hours long, and more than half of the audience came out not terribly appreciative of the movie).

Now, granted, this falls within your "hour or two at a time" condition, but two hours is enough time to run five games (as long as a couple of the games are shorter in length like 2v2 Smash, and as long as we plan in advance to get enough TVs, enough copies of games, etc).

[Hunter Sopko]

and more than half of the audience came out not terribly appreciative of the movie).

I question this claim on the grounds that the DL isn't that lame.

[Yakumo]

Do you seriously think you can run five games of any sort in a large group in two hours?  More power to you if you think you can but I'm pretty sure the rest of us that are talking about splits are going on the assumption that's not happening with our group. <_<  That's 24 minutes per game even discounting setup time, and in 1vs1 games you need to fit 15 matches into that time.  The only way you're going to do that is by doing what you insist you aren't going to do and disqualify games by time.  Also, don't forget to factor in the human element, people celebrating wins or the crowd congratulating the winner and whatnot.  This isn't just about the games, it's about the people too.

[Grefter]

There is nothing to fear here, these men are cowards.

Tekken 6 is fine if we want a Tekken game, but it is still very very much a Tekken game, so if you didn't like them people I would keep that in mind.  The changes are good though.  The characters I played pretty much were close enough exactly to how they always have been that pick up and play with a character you used to know in 3 should be fine (Other than Jin, but I think Devil Jin controls the same way as old Jin?).  I have other issues with the game, but that is all single player stuff and is for a General discussion topic.

So... yeah take that as you will.

My 5 suggestions not in order of preference

Tekken 6 - Yeah it honestly works is available and is on the controller people know.
Soul Calibur 1 - Available if we have the X-Boxes, but on the odd controllers for people again, better game than Tekken 6 though.
OMF 2097 - Serious about this one, it is great finals material where you are going to have one or two matches.
Marvel Vs Capcom 2 - I would really like to see this there.  If someone is good enough to know how to stomp people then so be it.  Watching people get stomped in MvC2 is entertainment in and of itself.
Street Fighter 2 - Preferably HD Turbo Remix which is awesome.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I haven't done the math, but just eyeballing it from following the topic closely so far, it's looking like the best mix of games is Smash 2v2 w/ Limited Items, MvsC2, and Tekken 6. While no Melty Blood or BlazBlue makes my inner weeaboo sad, I'm good with these games too.

It seems like they strike a decent mix of
-flashy (MvC2 is frantic is nothing else, and T6 has a lot of really hilarious abilities),
-multiple genres (2D/3D/Platform fighter),
-familiarity (people know Smash and Capcom, and even Marvel/Tekken to some degree),
-serious competitive ability/accessability (T6 is well-balanced and not enough people are experts at it for the skill gap to be a big problem, Smash 2v2 and MvC2 are easy to pick-up and play even if the balance isn't as great),
-availability (MvC2 is PS2 at least, and Gamecube controller availability is the biggest hurdle to Smash)
-time (MC has pointed out that Smash 2v2 and T6 have some pretty quick matches)
-novelty (we've never done Smash team matches before and MvsC2 is too classic to never be one of our tournament options. Tekken as a series hasn't gotten a showing yet, either? Also, T6 is brand-spanking-new in the states, right?)
-lack of hate (well, I haven't seen anyone really roast these titles like NEB's disdain for BB, so I'm assuming most people are open to giving them a shot)

Keeping it to just three games keeps the length down, too, and personally I'd -really- prefer to get it all done in one day. There will be plenty of fighting games at the con anyway, we don't need to devote more than one day's group-time to them.

[Grefter]

Better yet, MvC2 is on the Playstation Network, so we either donate some cash to someone to buy it/someone has already bought it/someone should totally buy it for way cheaper than a PS2 copy will go for and it is on controllers people are used to this time.  Same goes for SF2Turbo HD Remix.  Soul Calibur 1 is only on X-Box Live though (Unless someone wants to get their hands on a Dreamcast and bring that and only have like me and Shale used to the controller?)

[AndrewRogue]

I own the PS2 MvC2.

[Grefter]

Fuck that shit dude.  I am trying to get you a free copy of it installed on your PS3.  You suck at this game.

[AndrewRogue]

Psh. My hard copy is so much cooler.

[Grefter]

No it isn't.  You will take my hard copy and like it.

[Hunter Sopko]

No it isn't.  You will take my hard copy and like it.

Still a douche...

[Grefter]

Why is that table upside down?

[Hunter Sopko]

Why is that couch outside?

[metroid composite]

<_<  That's 24 minutes per game even discounting setup time, and in 1vs1 games you need to fit 15 matches into that time.  The only way you're going to do that is by doing what you insist you aren't going to do and disqualify games by time.

Or, y'know, multiple TVs and multiple copies of a game.  Also, alternating between systems so that if we have, say, two PS3 games, we have one of them setup at the start, switch to a GC game (which is already set up and waiting) then while the GC game is running, hook the PS3s up to a spare monitor and get the next game setup.  Preferably have a component switchbox so that we can get the PS3s pre-connected and merely need to flip the switch when we're ready to go to the next game (I can provide at least one if not two of these boxes).  ...Alternatively I've seen a decent number of TVs that just have more than one component in, or just plain separate connections for different types (if we ran an NES or SNES game, we could probably even pull this trick by switching between RF and RCA).

Also, don't forget to factor in the human element, people celebrating wins or the crowd congratulating the winner and whatnot.

I've been factoring in some down-time between matches, yes.  (For that matter, I've also been assuming 22 people rather than 16).  Right now a lot of my assumptions and estimations are relative guesswork, however--clearly I must devote more study this so-called "human emotion"!

(Okay yes, obviously I'm being silly here, but the point is I have been trying to factor this stuff in).

The only way you're going to do that is by doing what you insist you aren't going to do and disqualify games by time.

I already said that if we're going to run a significantly longer game, we may have to drop two shorter games to do so.  So yes, we could run a game with 8 minute matches, but then we'd only run two games in the period of two hours; maybe three if the other two games were incredibly short.  Though...granted, I guess there technically is an absolute upper disqualification limit.  Like...if the game has matches longer than 24 minutes, yeah, there's no technical way to do that under two hours.  (Nnnnoooooo, not 1v1 Starcraft!!!  But it's so exciting to watch newbies who don't know when to gg ).

[Luther Lansfeld]

inner weeaboo

what

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

There's something inner about Djinn's weaboo?

[Yakumo]

Even if you do two TVs and two game copies that's still only going to cut it down to eight blocks of time, which is three minutes per match.  This has to include getting the game set up for the first match and getting the players out of the way and the next players in for later matches, plus the in-game setup time.  I still don't see it happening in that timeframe unless you straight up boot long games, which I don't think is a good idea.

[metroid composite]

Even if you do two TVs and two game copies that's still only going to cut it down to eight blocks of time, which is three minutes per match.  This has to include getting the game set up for the first match and getting the players out of the way and the next players in for later matches, plus the in-game setup time.  I still don't see it happening in that timeframe unless you straight up boot long games, which I don't think is a good idea.

I already addressed game setup and how this can be done by the tournament staff while other games are running.

We can go over three minutes per match for some games provided we go under three minutes per match on other games.  For instance, 2v2 Melee with items on (again with two copies of the game on two TVs) is going to be...well perhaps around three minutes per match once you account for controller passing and character select, except with half as many matches due to 2v2.

And let's say we are running one game that's much longer than the others; we can take more aggressive steps with that game to get the time down (say, three copies instead of two).

Not to mention something that I've brought up like...four times now: if the games we really want to choose are longer, then we can just run fewer games.  It's not that much of a paradigm shift.  Instead of saying "our budget is 5 games, we need to select 5 games", I'm doing something more like "our budget is 2 hours, we need to select X number of games that fit in that timeframe."  It's just a different cost-weight mechanism.

[DjinnAndTonic]

There's something inner about Djinn's weaboo?

Well it's not like I have an anime character tattooed to my face or anything. You guys get the full brunt of my japanophilia because it's on-topic around here. >.>;;


As for fewer games, I'd be fine with that. 3 games seems like it'd satisfy what we intend to accomplish with this little exercise... If we want MOAR fighting games in a tournament format, we could let some of the lower-ranked competitors have rematches or something.

[Yakumo]

Even if you do two TVs and two game copies that's still only going to cut it down to eight blocks of time, which is three minutes per match.  This has to include getting the game set up for the first match and getting the players out of the way and the next players in for later matches, plus the in-game setup time.  I still don't see it happening in that timeframe unless you straight up boot long games, which I don't think is a good idea.

I already addressed game setup and how this can be done by the tournament staff while other games are running.

So what, you're going to have four TVs so that your "tournament staff" can set up the other two while your current game is running on the first two?  I have no idea how else you can address game setup while you're still playing the last game.  And this is assuming you have people helping out that aren't still playing themselves.

We can go over three minutes per match for some games provided we go under three minutes per match on other games.  For instance, 2v2 Melee with items on (again with two copies of the game on two TVs) is going to be...well perhaps around three minutes per match once you account for controller passing and character select, except with half as many matches due to 2v2.

And let's say we are running one game that's much longer than the others; we can take more aggressive steps with that game to get the time down (say, three copies instead of two).

Not to mention something that I've brought up like...four times now: if the games we really want to choose are longer, then we can just run fewer games.  It's not that much of a paradigm shift.  Instead of saying "our budget is 5 games, we need to select 5 games", I'm doing something more like "our budget is 2 hours, we need to select X number of games that fit in that timeframe."  It's just a different cost-weight mechanism.

Why are you budgeting time so strictly, though?  It seems obvious to me that there's more than three games people want to see, so why not look at other methods of scheduling that fit the games that people are interested in?  It really wouldn't be that hard to put two games late Friday night and three at the originally planned Saturday time or something like that.

[Grefter]

Even if you do two TVs and two game copies that's still only going to cut it down to eight blocks of time, which is three minutes per match.  This has to include getting the game set up for the first match and getting the players out of the way and the next players in for later matches, plus the in-game setup time.  I still don't see it happening in that timeframe unless you straight up boot long games, which I don't think is a good idea.

I already addressed game setup and how this can be done by the tournament staff while other games are running.

So what, you're going to have four TVs so that your "tournament staff" can set up the other two while your current game is running on the first two?  I have no idea how else you can address game setup while you're still playing the last game.  And this is assuming you have people helping out that aren't still playing themselves.

Something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvm_switch this would probably do the job I believe, think that is what Met is describing here.  They are pretty cheap.

[metroid composite]

Even if you do two TVs and two game copies that's still only going to cut it down to eight blocks of time, which is three minutes per match.  This has to include getting the game set up for the first match and getting the players out of the way and the next players in for later matches, plus the in-game setup time.  I still don't see it happening in that timeframe unless you straight up boot long games, which I don't think is a good idea.

I already addressed game setup and how this can be done by the tournament staff while other games are running.

So what, you're going to have four TVs so that your "tournament staff" can set up the other two while your current game is running on the first two?  I have no idea how else you can address game setup while you're still playing the last game.  And this is assuming you have people helping out that aren't still playing themselves.

Something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvm_switch this would probably do the job I believe, think that is what Met is describing here.  They are pretty cheap.

Yeah, that except for consoles and TVs.  I have at least one to work with.

Why are you budgeting time so strictly, though?  It seems obvious to me that there's more than three games people want to see, so why not look at other methods of scheduling that fit the games that people are interested in?  It really wouldn't be that hard to put two games late Friday night and three at the originally planned Saturday time or something like that.

Why are you budgeting the number of games so strictly, though?  There are, in fact, more than five games that people want to see.  By your own logic, why not run like...eight games?

My point is this: we need some kind of maximum.  Using time as a maximum makes more sense to me than using a number of games as a maximum.