First of all, I’d like to thank the NE1 Center and its staff for throwing this tourney. It was great seeing familiar faces, new faces, and the pretty faces (for the 3 seconds that they were there, lol)
James aka Jive Turkey Jones: Been like what? 6/7 years since NC? Good seeing you again and doing what you do… beasting. It seems like NC grew wings and flew to different parts of the country. P.Gorath is in Cali, SaBrE is back in AZ, I went to Oki, then CA, then back here to TX, and I know there are a few more. You’re Urien is still top tier!
Fro: Thanks for teaming up with me and good games, we could have taken top 2 for sure. I dropped that one round when it counted, but I’m not salty about it…
Rudy: As always, good seeing you around. I’m always learning something new with Sim by watching you play and through our conversations.
Jose aka Banana Ken: Good seeing you there, knew you were going to take it. I’ll be seeing you at AUFO and I would like to learn that Ken matchup better.
K-Town: Shout out for the three of us who made it out here and repped Central Texas. I wish we had more representation and some of our better players, we would have taken a lot of spots in the top 8 in SSFIV and then more in the other games. < :sad: no UMK3!
Those I forgot, sorry, but I’m rushing to do this during my lunch time before I have to get back to work.
Now for some critique.
Overall, it was a successfully ran tourney. Good job you guys!
What would help you out more is getting organized (better). By that I mean, using your resources more efficiently. With multiple games spread out over a ‘set’ schedule, you want to assign individual staff members for each game, maybe two if they can multi task (this will depend on the entrants per game of course)
Scheduling:
Start times must be enforced without exceptions. Many players drove for hours to come down and enter tournaments and cannot be kept waiting for a tournament start 6 hours later, then expect to drive home that same night. It isn’t fair to them. If anything, that tournament may need to get canceled and everyone’s entry fee returned. Most matches can be passed for the next if said player isn’t able to be found and issued a five or ten minutes countdown to show up for their match before getting disqualified. That way you are being fair enough. Skipping their match (1), player other available matches (2), and giving them time to show up (3)… everyone is happy, until you run out of matches to play, then it begins to hold up the tournament and you must disqualify them and send them to losers, or if they are in losers, then they are out, period.
Crowd control:
Spectating at the NE1 Center is not going to work out well, unless you guys move to a larger venue. I don’t know how many I heard the other players, and myself, getting frustrated with people walking back and forth, bumping chairs, and etc throughout the matches. It was really irritating and caused us to mess up and more importantly focus on our matches. I’m not using that as an excuse, but when you’re in a deadlock match, final round, and a group of people walks from behind you and bumps your chair causing you to throw out a jab or kick and get punished for it, causing you the match, you are not going to be a happy camper. In all honesty, you are going to have to limit the spectating until the semi/grand finals because you do not have the room to have the players AND spectators cramped up in there.
Tournament Brackets:
You want to have these done asap for each tournament. What held you up where doing all the ‘last minute calls’ to sign up, thus delaying the start times of these tournaments. Tonamento is cool (I have an account) but I’ve been using CHALLONGE! - Tournament Brackets - Generate / Manage Online / Publish on My Website and find it easier to manage. Arcade UFO uses challonge too. With challonge, you can post a link for people so sign up and bam… they are entered into the tournament and put in a bracket. [Players can be shuffled and the brackets refreshed as many times as you like in order to avoid as many local to local matchups and such. Also, with the link they everyone is able to see the current standings in the brackets and etc… I believe tonamento has the same options too. Instead of having them ‘available’ all the want to the front, where people are already crowding to get to certain stations, use the office to offer those services and you can print out a 8/16/32/64/128 man bracket, blown up and laminated by FedExKinkos, OfficeMax, Office Depot, and Staples and for an affordable price too. That way, once you have the brackets done in the system, you can have the large one up by the entrance so that everyone can see and are not bum rushing the stream station or the office/concessions window.
Setups/Stations:
These were good to go. I’d only suggest to invest in a few laptop speakers for the stations that had no volume. Some games you just need it. In MvC2, once you hear ‘Hyper…’ you react… I had a real difficult time playing without audio on one of the MvC2 stations and refused to play on any other setup other than the one with the PSP Nodus speakers hooked up to it, lol. I touched on the part with people walking back and forth during the matches and bumping into the players and telling them to move and not respecting that there is a tournament in process. Yes, you said excuse me, but if I’m in a middle of a freakin game in a tournament I’m not going to move, just so you can talk to your homie or hang out by a certain station. I would try to keep those setups/stations in the front corners so that they aren’t bothered as much. You’ll have the aisles available (for the most part) and won’t be much of a nuisance to the players.
Rules Enforcement:
This needs to be addressed more vocally for those that don’t know. Excessive pauses during the match in not acceptable at all. Which brings me back to the brackets topic real quick. For those rare occasions with people who happens to the share name… please use their nick/handles and try to scan for those before finalizing them. It would help avoid confusion and and frustration.
These are only my suggestions and opinions, so please take what you want from them. I’m looking forward to be at the next tourney, but I’m sure as hell not looking forward to the damn drive :lol: You guys will only get better by practice, implementing people’s ideas/tips, and experimenting to see what works best for you. Be sure to hit up Central Tex when we host our next tourney :tup:
-Rotendo
