Lots of you guys have the wrong idea. Cutting BYOC is not the answer.
Although the tournament did explode last minute and cause problems, there are many other contributing factors to the time delay issues. One of the main, if not the main issue, was people not showing up for their games. 3S did not really have problems with tv’s. The number of tv’s was probably adequate, but if 4 tvs arent being used because brackets are at a stand-still, taking 4 extra t.v.'s from BYOC is not going to help that.
I know EVO staff isn’t perfect, but crunching numbers on how many t.v.s are going suit a 300-400 man tournament is not exactly rocket science, and these guys are the absolute best at it. Even 40 men signing up last minute, that kind of thing can be accounted for. But they can’t account for half of the contestants leaving the pool area for indiscriminate amounts of time, bogging down the whole process. When you have SO many people running in and out, or not showing up, it impacts the process worse than another few setups. Really, the only thing this more t.v.'s deal would work is if you had SO many tv’s that EVERYONE had to play immediately, or else get dq’d. As long as people have to wait between matches, they’re going to cause delays, but there are other things to address before piling on a bunch of t.v.s ineffectively, at the cost of alienating hordes of gamers.
Cut BYOC? Are you guys kidding me? BYOC was one of the sickest additions to EVO ever. The best BYOC, imo, was the first one which was held in a separate room in 2k4 iirc, but this set up unfortunately gives us more of the issue which I’ve already explained for obvious reasons.
But seriously, CUT BYOC? Are you guys even gamers? Lets take 20+ t.v.s away from masses that have dropped tons of money coming here to meet and play with each other, and tell them to hack it out in the hotel rooms? That place is gigantic guys. Please be serious.
Online registration next year is gonna be mandatory. More than likely, personal joystick issues aren’t going to be accepted. This year, and all previous years, another MAJOR contribution to time delays is “I don’t have my stick.” for whatever reason, followed by anywhere between 1 minute to an hour of shuffling around before a match finally gets played. Expect next year, “I don’t have my stick” to be same thing as not being there, and getting a dq, or maybe a short timer at best.
Seriously, all I really wanted to say was, throwing finals of the side tourneys on the big screen, I think is a great idea. Most of these tourneys are finishing during random times of the day, so it shouldn’t interfere with any other big screen action. But when I say finals, I mean grand finals only. 2 Guys go up, sit down play after a short bit of announcing what is about to happen, play their games and leave. No stick switching, minimal button config, no waiting for anything. I think it would be a good addition big screen pre-finals lineup, which is generally a stream of unidentified players in whatever game has a pool going on at the station next to the camera, and wouldn’t require a lot of maintenance.
Additionally, and I know you guys are surely aware, but a little bit of investigation into the/a P.A. system with the actual room acoustics and everything might help. I know personally, I couldn’t really hear anything anyone said on the mic until Tekken finals and afterwards, Im not sure if it was just the people speaking or if the issue was resolved. I know you guys hooked up like a bootleg speaker system output this year, if you run with that next year, maybe something like a really cheap set of speakers and some wire to run it more around the room, get a couple speakers back to the BYOC area, that might help. Also, more microphones to go around would be nice, maybe one for each side of the room and the scorers table, if not one for each pool.
And hey, if you’re going to make people sign up online next year, maybe a nice thing to work out would be taking cell phone numbers of willing entrants, and setting up a system where they can get a text message when their pool is going to begin or something? I dunno… something for like, the NEXT step…
I think thats all I got. [not] Sorry for the novel.