My awful experience at Evo - share stories - share pain!

Evo Championship Series
1

Well, I must say that in my 12 years competing in tournaments of all genres, this was the worst tournament (Evolution 2005) I’ve ever experienced!

  • Even the time Geoff, Ed and I drove up to Vegas in the Summer for a Second Impact tourney to this shit hole-in-the-wall arcade with no A/C, where it was 120 degree heat (no exageration), the arcade was narrower than a hallway so nobody could move in or out, sweaty and smelly as fuck, and the 64 man tournament was being run on ONE arcade cabinet. Even then, Evo was worse.

  • Even the time where I drove with my friends: Dan, Josh and Amanda from Tucson to Colorado NONSTOP to compete in a Tekken Tag Tournament the very next day. I got insanely sick while driving there for 20 hours straight. We got there an hour before the tournament started, so I had to sleep and vomit between every match because I was so sick and tired. The people had to wake me up for my matches because I was knocked out from sleeping/puking in the corner of the arcade. Even then, I still consider Evo to be worse.

For starters, Evo was supposed to start at 9AM but did not get under way till about 11AM. Even then, you had to wait in this ridiculously long, Disneyland line just to see what pool you were in which took another 90 minutes. Come to find out that I wasn’t even signed up for one of the tournaments, and the other tournament (Super Turbo) I was pooled up with one of my best friends (Neil, who basically taught me how to play the game) and Mike Watson who is also a friend of mine and also considered to be one of the best ST players in North America. (And also is from LA like I am. Nice!) So that tournament is a lost cause. Now I need to find out why I am not in the other tournament 3rd Strike.

I wait in this other line (the “we fucked you over line”) for another hour and tell them that we (me and my roommate) are not in the 3S tournament. They put us in the last pools and everything is fixed. (pools 66 and 67. At this time I do not know who is in my pool but I’m sure it will be shitty)

ST: 10 and a half hours later, my ST pool comes up but I’m not caring that much since I already know that I’m going to get slaughtered. The pool was: Me, Mike Watts (firend), Neil (friend), unknown player, and a no show. So I got to play three matches and obviously didn’t qualify but it’s fine since I was more interested in 3S. To recap: So far I’ve played 3 matches and 2 of them were friends of mine.

3S: The next day was my pool for 3S and the wonderful fantastic news that the tournament rules were changed from best 2 out of 3 matches to 1 match. (Fucking bullshit!) So any random shit could happen. I come to find out that my pool consisted of Ken-I who is a member of the US Third Strike team and someone who plays at the same exact arcade that I play/practice at. YAY! The pool was: Me, Ken-I, 2 scrubs and a no show. I qualified on the losers side and was advanced to the semi-finals. To recap: So far I’ve played 6 matches and 3 have been against people that I know.

3S SEMIS: The semi-final brackets were posted and low and behold, they have me playing against MY ROOMMATE 1st round! Fucking fantastic! My roommate graciously forfeits the match so that I may move on and I lose to a random Yun that I shouldn’t have lost to. (my bad.) So in total I played a grand 8 matches in which 4 of them were against my friends/people I play against all the time.

I find it really hard to believe that I entered an international tournament with over 1000 entrants from East Coast, Japan, Canada, Korea only to fight against people that I play with on a daily basis. This truly was the most ridiculous tournament I’ve ever been to and I sorely/regretably remember why I dropped out of the tournament scene to begin with. I just wish I would’ve come to that realization before I went.

Taking two days off work to attend EVO - $310.00

Paying for gas, food and hotel rooms - $286. 63

Standing in line to pay your entry fees - $45.00

Competing in a international tournament of 1000 entries to only fight against your friends - PRICELESS

2

they probably would have floated you if you bitched a little more

3

Man that really sucks especially the 1 match in 3S but you at least went and tried to have a good time. Trying to look at the bright side of it.

4

I liked Evolution 2005.

A lot.

5

Or you could have bitched to them and had them float you.

But obviously it’s EVO’s fault for doing completely random brackets and having shit luck for the draw, and them OBVIOUSLY knowing you play at arcades with these people.

6

Evo was alright, just wish halo didn’t take over the byoc room. I’m sure if the room was bigger, that wouldn’t of happend (been more like TS5, MLG had one side of the room and TS had the other).

7

I was in the semi losers bracket too, and someone next to me noticed he was paired up with one of his friends and told James Chen, he swapped him right away for a different player, no questions asked :party:
But yeah, first day they opened up, the lines were gigantic and started late. Seems like they’ve underestimated the entries for 3s obviously :wasted:

8

That’s why you have regional seeding, ass, like MWC or any other decent tournament of that calibur. Also if you really think that those brackets were “completely random” as you put it, then there is no hope for you.

9

Wait how many California players were there again…

I’ll bet far more than anyone else.

10

i liked evo2k5, actually i think it was better than 2k4

PRO
-online registration was an awesome idea
-i got to be in a great environment where i have access to a lot of entertainment(casino stuff)
-got to see the world premier of sf:generation
-i think this is the first time they had a program handed out?
-more TVs for cvs2 matches(last year was like 4 max?)
-the big screens to view matches while you wait

CON
-they made cvs2 best of one. it’s undestandable, but that really sucked ass.
-i think last year’s byoc was better because they had both a gameroom and a separate room for byoc. the separate room for byoc is better because some people just hang out in the grand event center all day, even while their pool is almost up, so it was a really long ass wait, plus there were less money matches and grudge matches going on compared to last years(imo).
-SF:generation(although we got to see it it’s first debut), sucked a lot of ass.
-there was too much shit to do in vegas, i actually felt really tired all the time, plus i didn’t get to play as much casuals as i wanted to cuz i went out to do “vegas” stuff and that took up a lot of my time.
-had a hard time checking into my hotel room, because they were giving me hella shit about doing the $150 a night. i even ask if there was any option i can do AFTER they denied the deal that mr.wizard made had ever existed. Thanks, mr.wizard for helping me clear that shit up though. thanks for taking your time from organizing shit to fix up something like for us.

some side comments:
i think the evo hyped felt lower than previous evos. maybe it’s just me becoming more of a “veteran” with fighting game. but i remember the first evo i went to, everything was hella more hyped up. mvc2 finals seem like the only “crazy” final that was really worth watching. everything else, it was kind just like “it was good to see, but nothing spectacular”.

combofiend OWNS.

11

Seabass in all honesty no one knew that OHT was you. And you had no name regestered or location. It was shit that we had to play eachother in teh ST tourny. I didn’t want to have to eliminate a friend and im sure you felt the same way.

As for me, Evo was way to good. But it was beacuse of my cabinet not all of evo. The 3v3 ST tourny and then the 16man ST tourny in CaliPower and ShadowCharlies room.

12

Sup OHT, i was in the same boat with you. I travelled all that damn way to play watson, cigarbob, and you…i wasnt lookin forward to it. Extremely wack brackets but i still had fun. Maybe we can get some ST games in on xbox live.

Cigarbob - u whooped my ass in the pools haha. That ken is too intelligent for me.

13

You’re obviously some no-name scrub that had NO chance whatsoever, and likes to make excuses more than fix the problem at hand. I had the EXACT fucking problem as you, and HEY GUESS WHAT? I didn’t fucking cry and finger my twat about it. I went to the judge and told him what was going on like any social human being and it was fixed LIKE THAT. WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD.

But I guess EVO should just accomidate dumbass scrubs like yourself? Please fucking choke and die. ???

14

Sebastian: I’m really sorry what happened to you in the 3rd Strike semi’s. I ran the entire thing, and I did float one person very early on, when only, like, 6 out of 128+ people showed up. It helped me get some matches started, too.

And THEN I tried my best floating some other people to avoid similar conflicts, and I regret even trying it in the first place. Why? Because then EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER came by and complained and wanted to be floated. It became this huge gravy-chain of people saying they wanted to be floated, and when I floated some people, I floated others who weren’t playnig their friends to brackets where they did play their friends first round. It was a disaster. Mike Watson took me to the side and told me exactly what was right: I had made a grave error floating anyone in the first place and I really needed to reset everything back to the original state and just have people deal with it.

I couldn’t reset the original person I floated, because they played already: as I said, behind schedule, I was desperate to get SOME matches played. Those that were there saw how hard it was for me to play the bracket with 60% of the people missing and me trying my hardest not to DQ anyone. But I reset everyone else. I had no location information and didn’t have time to go and look it all up. And the truth of the matter is this: that bracket sucked ass in terms of preventing friends from playing friends. Texas played Texas, SoCal played SoCal, and worst yet: Japan played Japan. EARLY ON. I had about 10 out of 128 people ask me to float them, including some of the Japanese. If anyone has the right to complain it’s the Japanese, having flown ACROSS AN OCEAN to play someone they could have stayed home to play. But you know what, when I told them I couldn’t float them, they nodded, played their match, and didn’t complain any farther, let alone think this the worst tournament ever.

I would have been more than happy to float people, in fact that’s exactly what I tried to do and made it far far worse. Because now I’m playing favorites when I float people, picking randomly who goes where using educated guessing. We had an overwhelming amount of players sign up for 3S this year, with OVER 128 players in the semis. But I’m not a hardcore follower of 3S, and I don’t know all the players, so I didn’t know where all 128+ players were from. What was I supposed to do?

Again, I’m really sorry it happened, but it happened to everyone. And most people were angry about it at first, but afterwards they chatted with me, hung out with me, and accepted it and even went so far as to enjoy the rest of the tournament. I’m sorry you feel like this was the worst gaming tournament you’ve ever been to, but people will end up playing their friends. It happens. I’m not trying to be mean, but seriously: turn the sob story down a notch. Feel free to complain, it’s very much justified: I’d hate to have traveled a huge distance to play my friends as well. But don’t tell me it’s the worst tournament ever because of something that happened to you personally. 'Cause the finals were fucking awesome.

Random brackets are THE FAIREST FORM OF BRACKETING there is without an official ranking system nor people whose full-time job it is to run tournaments. And even with ranking systems, like in Tennis, they end up with shitty match-ups. They aren’t gonna float Venus and Serena apart from each other, nor separate the 547 gazillion Russian women players. Friends play friends in professional competitive events. I regret very deeply that it happened to you, and I wish that it hadn’t. But tht’s all I can offer is my sincerest apologies. I hope it’s enough.

  • James
15

A no-name scrub? Like that shit even matters, but just so YOU fucking know, he’s pretty fucking known. How the fuck is he a “dumbass scrub” because they fucked up his seeding (random as it is)? You’re a fucking idiot. I love random little kids calling people “no-name scrubs” when they have no idea who they are talking to.

16

u can bitch but that shit happens
Josh and Qudan( flew all the way from korea) had to play each other in losers. 1 had to be elim no way around it
cant help shit like that

17

What in the fuck??? Dude you really need to be bitch-slapped for saying the words: “no-name scrub”

18

KUGLER: Jesus, you are an idiot. I’m not complaining about the fact that I got beat down or that I didn’t win Evo, I know that I had no chance in winning and you know what, maybe I am a “no-name scrub”. I’m just upset because I didn’t sacrifice my money and my time to play people in my own backyard, let alone live with.

You go to tournaments to play against other people that you otherwise would never play in your life, to test your skills against people of various styles. That is what the tournament experience is supposed to be about, and apperently most of the people have forgotten that. Everyone just wants to see Wong vs. the MvC2 flavor of the month and have videos to bite off of, not caring about the people that are actually coming to the tournaments and supporting the scene, only to have their tournament experience overlooked to make this happen. And yes, Evo should accommodate “dumbass scrubs like myself”, nobody (no matter how “scrubby” they are) should be fighting their friends and their arcade regulars in an international tournament unless there is no avoiding it. There is no excuse for that kind of thing to happen in an epic tournament such as Evo, and the fact that JChensor said it occurred with the Japanese, Texas and SoCal just proves that the tournament was poorly organized in that respect. Regional seeding should of been in place to avoid such unplesentries, and hopefully this example should illustrate what to avoid in tournaments to come.

**JCHENSOR: ** I’m sorry and you are right. Rereading my post, I feel like an ass about my extreme wording but I am also very frustrated at my experience there. I remember you sitting on the floor with the crazy taped up bracket with people barking at you about various things. I’m sure that the frustration was unbearable and I would not want to be in that situation either but it just further proves my point that the tournament structure was not thought out properly.

I mean, with such a great reputation as Evo has, I as well as many others would expect that the greatest care be executed when handling seeding, bracketing, organization and whatnot and I feel that it just wasn’t there. It’s the biggest SF tourney in North America for Christ sakes! I’m sure that everyone that went was looking forward to this event for several months, and when screwy things happen like: tourney starting late, pools getting pushed back due to “marquee” players not showing up on time, rules getting changed mid-tournament, fighting against people you specifically traveled to NOT fight, it tends to become a very frustrating experience for the tournament goer, especially when so much is expected out of a prestigious tournament such as Evo.

I should of made a more structured point about this instead of my previous post and for that I am sorry. But I think that this problem needs to be addressed since this isn’t the first time this has occurred to me in an SRK major tourney (This happened last time at B4 where I had to fight KP and Jason Wilson back-to-back in A2 in the early rounds… two people I drove up to the tournament with.) and I wasn’t the only one that had this problem. I just decided to be vocal about calling this problem out…I think that it is an important issue.

*Edit - misquoted JChensor

19

Sebastian: It’s tough being staff at such an event. It’s our jobs to make it run as smoothly as possible. It’s also our jobs to make it appear as if we have the budget of World Series of Poker and to hide all of the problems that we run into from the people who attend the event. We want people to enjoy it as much as possible.

The best way I can say it is this: the late starts, the random brackets, and all the random shitty stuff you see is all happening because we’ve done our jobs masking all the even WORSE shit that is happening that you don’t see. Just as an example: about 5 or so of the PS2’s that we had bought for the event this year decided to up and die on us overnight from Friday night to Saturday morning. They just decided to stop working completely. That coupled with the fact that we had to move the machines to a new location so MLG could run Halo (and this is not a slam on MLG, we knew this would happen from the start) was problematic, especially because (since PS2’s are pretty shitty in terms of hardware quality) SOME machines were strangely only playing certain games… some of the PS2’s were having trouble reading the PS1 Super Turbos or even the Anniversary Edition discs.

We are a group of about 12 to 20 ordinary gamers with other full-time jobs trying to run a tournament that looks like 500 full-time employees ran it. And I honestly have to say we are doing a pretty good job, as I think it gets better every year. I’m already looking forward to next year, and I’m sure it’ll spring up on us like nobody’s business, like this year did. :slight_smile: But every small fire you saw this year was most likely the residue of some big wild bursh fire that we managed to put out elsewhere. Believe us, we want Evo to be as prestigious as you want it to be. No… in actuality, we probably want it even more prestigious than that.

  • James
20

i like how the staff was super nice in answering my dumb questions.