I think SF4 had at least 128. During the steam Art was asking if top 8 got paid since the bracket had 128 players, which seems to be the requirement to pay out top 8. Don’t know about Marvel though.
Marvel had about 90~ players.
Thanks to all that endured the fighting games portion of Apex2012. We would like to thank all the players that respected our Xboxes, monitors and games. It’s that mutual respect that allows us to consider future collaborations on other tournament projects.
Best Regards,
Twitter @JonathanLoor / @localbattles
You obviously haven’t attended a CEO event before ;).
Are we going to get full results for this tournament? I’m interested to know who all got EVO points, at least.
This tournament’s planning started in June.
We took a venture into the FGC side of things this year, but this decision came in September. We needed some kind of sponsor for equipment to be able to get it done in time. When I approached Local Battles about doing it, they started off excited, but then eventually became apprehensive due to Alex Strife being a part of the tournament. This was a major speed bump for me, and I couldn’t get this posted up until I knew I’d have the equipment. Finally, when I convinced LB that Alex’s past was exaggerated by members of the community, it was late late October. By this point, our floor plan for Smash had been done, and we were running out of space. But, that was fine.
Despite our efforts to tell people that we were giving the attention to the FGC as Smash, the FGC wrote us off as a “Smash Tournament” and constantly posted things like “No way I’m going to that. Baby’s first fighting game? Chill, I’ll wait for Winter Brawl.” and ect. That’s fine though! We weren’t planning for 300 people anymore, so we shrunk the space a bit.
But then, on December 31st, I saw: "Congratulations! You’re receiving this mail because we would like your event to be part of the Road to Evo this year."
Suddenly, two things popped into my head:
[LIST=1]
[]HOLY SHIT, SOMEHOW I HYPED THIS UP ENOUGH TO GET IT DONE. TIME TO CALL EVERYONE. (Yeah, I’m hyped, what about it.)
[]Holy shit, we do NOT have the space for this.
[/LIST]
We got about 70 unique players registered for the FGC stuff, and before this we estimated another 80 or so. Our very inaccurate estimation was 150 players. We got 293.
Friday night, after Super Smash Bros Melee started winding down, Doom and I drove over an hour north to Local Battles, to pick up the Monitors and XBOXes (and ps3’s for MK) to bring back to the venue and start setting up. We got back at around 2:30, and we had to be out by 3am (of face rather expensive charges.), so we set them aside for the morning. We had about 15 people help bring stuff in, and had a staff of about 35.
The next day, seven of my staff didn’t show up, six of whom were supposed to help with the FGC stuff. I felt like an idiot, because these were people I trusted, and I even paid some of them in advance. Yeah, I know, I’m a moron. But, hey, milk was spilled, so I just needed to clean it up. So, I found myself some volunteers and we got things set up so fast. (Major thanks to everyone who helped that morning. Especially Maxout, I owe you lunch, man.) Here is where things started getting hairy.
A lot of the Staff for the Smash event was late. idkwtf they were doing, but whatever, I know I got this. So I started doing registration. I got more helpers, and we handled it! We had to push back opening the venue by 20 minutes (WHICH I AM SO SORRY FOR, IF I MADE YOU WAIT.) but we finally had enough people to get it done. Registration lasted almost 3 hours, due to the enormous number of people who came through the door. (It was somewhere around 1300 @_@) Everything was shaping up, until I waled through the door to the venue again (Reg was done in the hallway.) when I saw the amount of people crowding. I knew I was in some fucking trouble.
My initial estimate was HALF OF WHAT CAME THROUGH. Effectively making me the biggest idiot in the room. It was also then that I noticed that my staff hadn’t didn’t show up.
What was my fault:
[LIST]
[*]The Heat. I should have expected more people, seriously.
Once we realized how hot it was, we made out best efforts in getting more fans and delegating space to the area by having more refs who you could report matches too. I didn’t come up with this, and whoever did, I thank you greatly.
[*]The layout.
I had a clear layout, and instructed a few people on where they should be, but I was not clear enough. I was frantically running around trying to fix everything, and somehow I missed it. I should have told people specifically, and while I hate doing it, I should have Micro managed the event a bit more.
[*]The seeding.
Like this thread says (Which I should have been more clear about.) you get seeding points for this event if you attended SoCal Regionals. That cause a few people to be seeded in places they normally wouldn’t have been, which is the reason Chris G and CJ fought early, and why Sanford Kelly and Dieminion fought before finals. (Realistically, Sanford, it was late into the tourney, but I should have been much more clear about my methods, and should have taken that into account before I started.)
[*]The fact that it turned out to still be a Smash event.
We had 400 people for Brawl, and 308 for Melee (With less than 100 playing both games.) and we had a scant 70~ for the FGC side of things on December 31st. I made the call to shrink the space, because I didn’t think we got enough done. Clearly, I’m an idiot.
[*]The goddamn delays.
I thought we had it covered. But the Red rings, and TERRIBLE PA system added to the fact that I was undermanned. I immediately got my ass into a gear I didn’t know I had, but by this point, we were in the weeds. I struggled and struggled until we finally got a system that accommodated the players with the amount of space that we had.
[*]Young Link vs Jiggs:
I really should have shit talked one of them during the previous matches, so that one of them may have lost earlier. XD
[*]Everything else.
[/LIST]
I’ve been planning for months. Perhaps I didn’t plan hard enough. Maybe I didn’t put my faith in the right people. I do know that I was eventually able to catch us up, with the help of amazing people like Alukard, Phire, Dynicksty, Ether, Ninja Edd, Jon and Sam from LB, LI fucking Joe (If you ever need me to help out, man, you got this.), Big E (Same as Joe! thanks for the pizza idea ^^)and of course the Kombat Network. (If I forgot anyone, I’m sorry. I love you all.)
Real talk, shit got hairy. My favorite and most respected player Josh Wong had such a shitty morning at my event, that he left. My pride, my wallet, and my hopes were fucking killed by this tournament, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up.
Frankly, around 7pm, once everything started catching up, I would say that it was a pretty awesome and standard event. And Sunday was definitely on point, with the small exception of two DQs I had to hand out. (Which KILLED ME to hand out and enforce.) Major thanks to Art and Ski for coming through and helping the stream be godlike, and of course Bifuteki who I had previously seriously underestimated.
Finally, to Min: I’m sorry your experience on Saturday wasn’t absolutely perfect. Anytime I’ve been to something you’re in, you’ve been a great guy and great host. I’m sorry that I couldn’t reciprocate to that end.
To everyone who enjoyed the event, thanks for sticking with us through the hardships. It’s taken a large toll on my personally, but I was able to get through it only thanks to the amazing people that helped me.
When we do this again, I promise our mistakes will be have engraved in us, and the lessons we were taught will be strongly held, along with that fucking L, to our chests.
Major props to Alukard for busting out the Skrull, Dieminion for that Grand finals sweep, Chris G for being a great sport at all times, Demon Hyo for using bottom tier ass chunli, Mastah CJ for going absolutely insane and everyone else.
This is why all major tournaments should be held in the Midwest. UFGT, Season’s Beatings, Frosty Faustings this past Saturday. We do things right, hype, and on time.
Orlando is part of the Midwest. The regional designations for the FGC were based on the NFC divisions circa-1996.
Thanks for the detailed explanation and apologies. Yeah, there were bad mistakes made, but like I said previously, I appreciate you and Alex Strife being super apologetic about everything that’s happened. Everyone did a good job trying to recover lost time in the evening.
Also, the local gaming club at Rutgers, UGS, was in attendance that weekend and we would have been more than happy to help out. Sorry we didn’t speak up about this before hand or during the event. Hopefully you guys come back to the Rutgers area to do another event.
Props to ownin up for the mistakes of course. I still didn’t have a great time at the event but they didn’t rip off anyone. It was just one mistake leadin into another into another until it snowballed lol.
The cat from the tourney apologized and in the world of the #FGC that really means a lot. The community is growing and even though there was issues at this event, there were many things we can take away from it, with the hopes that we can create bigger and better tourneys to further meet the needs of the ever-expanding community of competitive gamers. It was not nearly as bad as The 895 Incident, and I admit I was enjoying a significant degree of elevated hype for Smash (but disappointed about the serious lack of Kirby usage). Also…Outs must be shouted to CEOJebailey for maintaining a nice chat environment, Mr.Quotes for enabling the hype on the commentary apparatus, and Jaxelrod for NOT talking about shitty animurrrrrrrrrrr. #Kappa
Please stop trying to rip the EC using the apex thread, please let this thread die.
The Apex staff know what they did wrong and im sure they will change it.
Also Smash part was done great, i must learn what the hell is going on in that game. lol lol.
hey man dont lose faith in east coast majors. Expect big improvements in Big E’s stuff as well as the others. sanford played dieminion when he was supposed to and put him into losers bracket on saturday.
I had a pretty good time actually because the tournament was only 10 minutes from my house =]. I hope everything can be worked out and all my friends can come to a major so close again in the future!
Shoutouts to dmbrandon and rutgers university for hosting, sai, demonhyo for getting 4th, mastacj for winning his first major, dieminion for winning another major(YOU OWE ME FOOD!!!) and korean bbq buffet.
For ECT, it wasn’t even anyone’s fault. It was the venue’s doing and everything was done to help alleviate the building pressure of a tournament running behind schedule. Yeah I wasn’t happy my 5 p.m. pool was at 8:00 p.m. or whatever but I’ll take a 3 hour delay over eight.
As the head TO of Brawl, I’d like to clarify something–
The PA system was not intended to be exclusive to Smash. All I knew is that my room would have a microphone so people could hear shit; I assumed that since the Rutgers staff had more than one portable mic, the other room would receive similar treatment. There was absolutely no intention to shaft the FGC and favor Smash at this tournament (seriously, please stop attacking us on this), and the microphone dilemma was no exception. I’ve run many a tournament at which I have to shout matches, and it isn’t easy, so I know your pain. Also, nobody thought the venue would get hot enough to red ring any 360s… Fortunately, things smoothed out immensely on Sunday and the tournament finished on a good note.
I play and follow Marvel quite regularly, as well as a bit of AE, and I respect the games and their players a ton. Please don’t pin any mishaps at this tournament on the Smash players or hosts, because we’re not as self-centered and clueless about the FGC as you guys seem to think. It’s rather personally offensive to someone who makes a genuine effort to follow both games; I’ve seen a few people saying that we only cared about Melee and Brawl getting finished/hyped when in fact I was sitting in the TO section watching AE and Marvel top 8 as I called my side’s matches.
I’ve hosted with Diem many times and I can guarantee that he’s a fantastic TO–like Arturo said, all of the errors made were minor and some outside, uncontrollable factors ended up snowballing in a way nobody could have reasonably foreseen. He did the best anyone could reasonably do with an undermanned staff. I hope these mishaps don’t paint the Apex series with a bad reputation among the FGC, because we intend to rectify any issues rather than repeat them.
Thank you, and I’m glad that those who stuck around had a good time (at least from what it seemed)! I’m looking very forward to the next time Smash and the FGC get to work together, and hopefully it isn’t under such stressed and unfortunate conditions.
Since everyone covered all the bases, thanks again everyone for coming, and sorry for any problems during the event. It was definitely a great learning experience and we can only get better from here on out. Many shoutouts to the people that actually went outta their way to come down to New Brunswick, its a pretty deep commute.
Last but not least, Sunday was pretty damn hype.
Say that again. I don’t even play Smash, but Winners Finals was the hypest damn thing I’ve seen in a fighting game in a long ass time.
Too bad the kid got emotionally guardbroken at the end.
Thank you Diemme and Doom for your posts. Your candidness gives me confidence that Apex will be bigger and better next year.
And apologies to Jebailey, I have a liberal definition of “driving distance” but Florida is still too far for me to make CEO.
Glad the admin explained everything about APEX, I watched it all weekend and the stream was enjoyable including even Smash to me.
However with all those trust issues it should be a lesson learned, you can’t trust Smashers to do a good job running Street Fighter/FGC games when they probably don’t care about them as much as the people putting on APEX. Same thing could go otherwise. Just hard trying to mesh together 2 completely different communities, even if the genre is the same. Both Smash and the FGC are strong enough to stand on their own. Smash proved it can still draw numbers, but next time if you want to include other games, make sure you work with people that actually care about said games and less problems will arise.
I know Strife and other APEX admins asked for help and I was glad to answer any questions because you guys genuinely cared to put on a great event overall, and seems you’ve learned from your mistakes for the next time. Best of luck with any future endeavors guys.
PS please take risks and invest in bigger venues for any events from now on, If people aren’t comfortable and are cramped inside of a venue it’ll ruin their entire weekend. This isn’t 2005 anymore, people will come out in droves, but if they physically aren’t enjoying an event it’ll scare a lot of new blood from coming back.
PPS next time don’t allow exhibition matches on stream for the hell of it, Could of saved at least an hour or so by taking control and not allowing those during finals. If the crowd wants them, do them after all tournaments are done.
Just to chime, Evo runs on paper brackets every year. Paper, when compared to a laptop or tablet is:
[LIST]
[]Easier to enter data
[]More convenient to carry around
[]Longer battery life
[]Easier to undo the occasional, inevitable mistake
[/LIST]
These advantages become more important the larger the tournament. If one guy can manage your whole bracket, then a laptop with challonge is just fine.
^^^^ thank you sir.