YAAAAY!!!


btw I love the title of this event! I can't wait!!!

I couldn't have said it any better Keby! I'm real glad this is up, and hopefully soon a date as well Thank you KDDR for beginning to set this one up!

are these the final rules or a proposed set?

Nice to see this kicking off!

Couple of things i'm curious about.

1 - With exp and standard having different price tags, so everyone would play qualifiers and THEN pay entry fee? 

2 - In exp division, what would be done with tie breakers?  Example Player A loses to B and ends at 5-1.  Player B loses to C and ends at 5-1.  But player C ends at 4-2.  Some would say B owns the tiebreaker and wins.  Others would say they should play out the tiebreaker.

3 - For the huge debate that was 'stamina vs tech', the standard division HEAVILLY favors tech players.  The qualifier is an 8/10, so a stam player can't use their strengths and will likely end up in the standard division...and then aren't even allowed to pick an 11+ until the 4th round...which is top 6 if my memory serves correct (winners finals/losers semis).  So a player that can tech easy things and has no higher difficulty stamina basically has nothing to worry about until the end of the tourney..where any stamina player who isn't well rounded will already have been knocked out by 6-10s.

To answer your question Sempai, I believe that's how the tourney fee would work and that's after the qualifiers, tracking fee registration should be a dusey.

I also share nekosempai's concern on #3. While I dont have any concern with qualifiers being 8/10. the difficulty cap for the first couple rounds in standard division is something I'm eyeing for the same reasons friend sempai stated.

I'm excited this is blossoming and can't wait to hear from kddr and bill for date and time. Thanks in advance for your effort and time

$15 is a bit high for the standard division, should be $10 IMO, but this is up to you all I guess.

     I like it for the most part, except that seeding should be done on 9/10 or 9/11 not 8/10. I'm not gonna play every hard chart on ITG to ensure that I seed right, nor do I want to rely on a sight read when a ton of hard charts are poorly written or kind of off or something. I realize you would probably pick "good" 8s, but this isn't a tournament for people who regularly play 8s on ITG. In fact I would be skeptical that very many, if any of the players who would be in this tournament ever play 8s on the ITG machine at Acme. Hard charts shouldn't be emphasized here. Allowed, but not emphasized.
     If the Expert and Standard divisions are entirely separate (and not the top 6 seeders do Expert, and the rest do standard), then certainly at least the Expert should be 9/11 seeding (since 8s aren't even allowed, and as I said never played by us). If it's separated like this, it's still probably fine to do the standard guys at 8/10.
     I also agree with Neko that the standard bracket as it is heavily favors timing players, and as such, the first round should allow for 10s (and especially if seeding is done on a 10 anyway), and possibly the third round allow for 11s. Just some ideas!

Thanks for getting this all set up Kevin!! I look forward to proving my mettle

Also,
My suggestion is any ties do tennis style round robin in a "second round" amongst the ties to determine an overall winner if there are ties after everyone plays everyone. But I can't imagine more than a 2way tie, so this should be just a single final matchup. Again, just an idea

I don't really see the problem with this. Someone like me, who is good at just about everything EXCEPT stamina, will likely loose to the "balanced" stamina player at the final rounds of the tournament.

The stamina player has to worry in the beginning, but as he progresses, each match favors him/her more and more. Conversely, a tech player has to worry near the end, with each match getting more and more challenging. It's balanced, just on opposite ends. If you don't think it's challenging for me in the finals, than you have no idea what it's like to be me. I'm having to usually play 10s and 11s, which push my absolute upper limits. I can maybe pass two of these in a row before I start to fall apart. All a stamina player has to do is keep pushing me until they win by default. Not much skill is needed at this point.

Oh come on. It's not that big of a deal.

And to act like so many hard charts suck is naive. Just as many expert charts have stupid patterns with ridiculous steps added in simply to make it more challenging. I'm sure you'll do fine, and a 8/10 difficulty spread will definitely filter people like me out of the expert bracket (assuming the 10 is challenging, instead of a straight-forward song like Wanna Do). Some people entering might not even be able to pass that 10 qualifier, so lets cut them some slack OK?

Look at it this way.  Even in the sake of where it's a later round and say 11s are involved, in a best of 3 format, the 3rd song is random.  Now...compare the number of 9s/easy10s in ITG 1-Rebirth to the amount of everything else.  The song selection alone already favors a tech player over a stamina one.  Putting such low difficulty caps on rounds basically gives a player like yourself a complete advantage over a 'stamina' player.  It'd be the equivalent of you playing in a round where you could only pick 12/13s, but the 3rd random song can be anything that comes up.  Basically you're hoping you even make it to a 3rd song...and THEN luck happens to be on your side.

Really, I just see it as lame that it's likely that a one dimensional player has the best odds of winning the standard division, unless there's just that many well rounded players in that they overflow into the standard division.  It'd be a shame to see a finals of a 9, a 12 that doesnt get played by one of the players, and then a random 9 being the decider.

This.  The point of a tournament is PARTIALLY to determine who the best player out of the pool of entrants is, but also (and I'd argue more importantly) to have fun challenging your friends.  Players can't do that if other players have to drop out of the tournament in early rounds from exhaustion.

Think of it this way: If a player can pass 12s, why not just expand the "Expert" tournament to include them?  Sure, they can't pass 13s without throwing up, and their timing on 12s will ensure they get eliminated immediately, but if they were the "best players" they'd be able to do it!

The point is to have fun.  Suko and I don't want the rules for this tournament to become more "stamina intensive" because at the point that 11s and 12s become available earlier on, this tournament is effectively the same as the "Expert" tournament for us.
 

This statement has a direct counter-argument in that a stamina player has liittle opportunity in the standard division to have fun challenging their friends in what they'd rather play.

It's also being seemingly implied in various statements that expert = being a stamina monster, which isn't the case at all.  Outside of upper tier tourneys like FR or RMT, you'll always have better odds getting further having good timing vs good stamina.  I'd be more worried in a tourney about the guy who just quadded a 9, not the one who flailed through a 14.


...Also, i'd like to add that though i'm throwing my inputs and opinions around all over this thread, that i'm in no way siding one way or another.  Just trying to make it fair for all entrants imo while questioning what seems to be skill biases. 

Pretty much this.

As I said, if the majority want it more difficult, then so be it. But I won't be showing up to something I know I have no chance in hell of winning, especially if it's going to cost me $15 and a 2 hour round trip to do it.

I just don't understand why this thing is going to have two divisions if they're almost identical to each other. It seems like the only purpose of the "Expert Division" is to give the elite players their own little tournament. Throw some more of those stamina players into the upper division if they're worried about how they'll fair playing the easier stuff.

I'm pretty sure the opinions of those involved thus far could change dramatically based on the number of participants who actually show up and can make it down to Acme in the first place...
Wouldn't it be amusing if only 3 people that our community considers "expert level" shows up while 20 standard-division players make it =p

I mean, the type of players who made it to the Supernova2 tourny in Seattle were vastly different from the group that played in the round1 national qualifier in Everett.

Once a date gets announced, we could potentially use a relative headcount to affect final parameters for this seeding process.

This as well lol.  If Suko/Laura/people that are all but saying they're not good enough for 'expert' divison end up in that division on accident / by default, THEN what?

If the whole point of expert division is 'we don't want to have to play 11+s' then just have a single 11 capped tourney and call it a day.

One could also think of it this way: If a player can quad-star a 8/9, why not make a standard tournament to include them? Sure, they can't quad a 11 without throwing up, and their stamina on 11s will ensure they get eliminated immediately, but if they were the "best players" they'd be able to do it!

Both statements above don't show much consideration for one another.

This isn't even about having 12s/11s available earlier on, the fact is not even 10s are available early on. If one cant be adept in both a 9 and 11/12 in the final round, then I'd have to ask what they're doing in the final round anyway.

"having no chance in hell of winning" is quite a bit further than "having no chance in hell of making it past a round or two". To see it as a money gamble with odds of winning the finals (high or low) isn't the way ANY of us should perceive a tournament. I certainly don't. Though I do want the tournament to be fair for everyone, whether fun means a 9 or 11/12 song with their friends ( i see both as fun ).

I completely agree with the points Gerrak and Sempai bring that the first round should at LEAST allow for 10s, but I am content with the first loser's bracket being able to do 10s (that was neat of KDDR to put in). One of the seeders is a 10, I'd imagine it'd be available to the first round if participants play a 10 to simply seed. Even in the final rounds, there is no guarantee someone is going to bust out a 12 unless they are quite adept at it. Also the random songs will also more likely pick an easier chart. to reinforce sempai's point of what an expert is: Look at Amber, who was a monster in quadding lots of songs, but didn't necessarily play 12/13s+ too much. She finished 1st in a couple tournaments i believe.

I'm okay with the entrance fee, that's exactly how much i've paid in other tourneys also. I'm not in it to win, I'm in it to play in a tournament, and challenge myself.

Okay guys, I'm glad to get some feedback. I think I'm going to change the difficulty ranges tonight. I'll post again when I do. Also, would anyone have objections to raising the "Expert" division entrance fee to $25 or 30? I know that's a load of money, but I really want this to be hyper competitive in the top division, and I might change the prize split if we get a significant amount of money.

Awesome, thanks for checking back Kevin. Looking forward to seeing the revision.

As far as the expert division price, some of the likely competitors in that bracket will give their imput soon.

Oh yeah, I unfortunately can't tell people the date until Thursday. The main problem I have right now is that I have two auditions for University of Michigan and New England Conservatory scheduled this weekend, but there's a ton of snow right now cancelling flights to Chicago (which I stop at on the way) and I might not manage to get out. If that happens I'll have to reschedule my auditions for March, and that might knock out a weekend that I would have otherwise used for the tournament. Hopefully that's alright. I'm going to give Bill a list of possible dates on Thursday as soon as I know whether or not I'm flying. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Few issues I have with the rules as proposed:

1. Entry fees.  $15 is a bit high for trying to encourage the community to gather as is.  Having expert be higher is dumb - it's cool that the prize money would be a little higher, but if a player who was going to seed right around the division cutoff were weighing the cost/benefit of struggling in the expert division or having a good odds in the standard division, then the huge split in cost is incentive to sandbag.  The standard division would still be a fun competition, you'd still get to play a bunch, etc., and the worst case is that you're out $15 instead of $25.  The expert division would be a cool honor and all, but, if I  I'd have a equal amount of fun for less money to drop a division.

If we want to make the Expert division more exciting, I see two main options.  First, we can siphon from the standard division - it's not as weird as you might think; without the division split, the top three would get everything, but we've imposed the split to compensate for that.  From that standpoint, saying that 25% of Standard Division fees go into the Expert pool is not really illogical; outside the arcade realm, many tournaments would involve slicing some of the fees off to go to the organizers or venue, so there is external precedent.  Secondly, and probably the better option of the two is sponsorship.  I don't have any great ideas off hand, but it's probably not too hard to get a few prizes thrown in by companies looking for some reasonably cheap advertising - you often just have to ask.

2. Expert division has a lower difficulty limit of 9.  The theory is that only the top, well distributed players will place in this division.  There was a time when that meant both Quadding Hustle Beach and 99ing 11's on demand.  I can understand cutting Medium and Easy since they would really only come up as desperation tactics, but the theory is that we're trying to determine the best players across a wide range of factors; there's plainly no reason to restrict a huge portion of the game arbitrarily.  Allowing the full range of Hard charts will not allow a player to sneak by, they'll still have to qualify, handle harder charts selected by opponents, as well as the tiebreaker, but it will force all players to be confident across a wider range of potential challenges.  Additionally, I take issue with the fact that this rule completely disallows songs which lack an Expert chart are not rated highly enough on Hard; I feel that such a rule is akin to saying "No Pandemonium" - the only justification that can be made is that Expert starts at 9 foot charts, but that was a developer decision, just like the decision to add the set of songs being limited by this rule.  I'd hope there aren't too many top players who are afraid of how badly they'd score on an 8; ultimately, this one is purely personal opinion about the proper way to set up the constraints, and it should follow general opinion - I just have a feeling that, had it not been highlighted, nobody would have said anything, so there's no need for a rule.

3. Standard division capping.  The caps are just in the wrong places.  There should be no need to scroll them so much; saying that it advantages certain types of players in early rounds and others in later rounds is a flawed approach.  The rule set should be relatively balanced across the whole tournament, since two players could conceivably face each other in any given round, and therefore a rule set advantaging the first in certain rounds, but not in others is not going to be very fun.  You should not walk away from a tournament saying "If only I had faced X in round 5 instead of round 1"; you should walk away saying "X is better than me, I need to practice".  The more consistent the rules from round to round, the more the latter case is liable to happen; following all of the discussion thus far, I agree with capping (additionally, that's the point), but capping should be viewed as a necessary evil and handled as non-intrusively and consistently as possible - the lower limit should be fixed, the upper limit should start at a reasonable place such that player concerns are addressed while requiring the cap to shift by an absolute minimum in subsequent rounds.

4. Honestly, these last two are handled via the classic DMN rule: if both players agree and no extra time is taken, then it's allowed.  If a player suggests they both play on Beginner Stealth and the other agrees to it, why is the organizer stepping in?  The two players have explicitly said they feel this is a fair gauge of skill between them, for this single song, and they can deal with the consequences.  The rules then just have to set a reasonable baseline for what is appropriate and a stamina player can go ahead and put three 13's on their round one card if the other player said it was fine.  Hell, they can agree to great attacking.  The point of the rules should be to set a framework since ITG represents a massive body of options, not to restrict players to a few common options; I would be shocked to see two players actually agree to great attacking, but that's no reason to restrict it (see above regarding the lower limit in the expert division).  We can't have players agreeing that a fair measure is playing 2 marathons back-to-back, because of how long it would take, but as long as they are able to fit their choices into a pair of 2 minute time slots and both players are happy with the agreement, then it is a valid measure of skill between them.

My issues with stamina charts are not quite as severe as others' issues (hell, I was a stamina player before my knee starting acting up) and I might be inclined to accept a request for a 10 or 11 in round one if I have sufficient time to train my knee before the tournament; we've now solved the issue of the 9 foot cap being too low for many players at the same time we've not screwed over anyone aid rule was meant to protect.

5. The idea of locking rules in place on a fixed date.  If somebody was out of town for two weeks, came back Feb 11th, then noticed something glaringly wrong that was skipped because everyone was bickering over level caps, but this input was flatly rejected because it was Feb 11th, then there's a problem.  The organizer should obviously have final say and if discussion of a specific topic goes on long enough, the organizer will get to step in and make a final ruling without locking the full set of rules.  Again, the goal is to make the minimum restriction possible at the time it becomes necessary.  It should even be possible to make small changes on the day of the tournament if necessary, but that should not come up as we have a whole lot of people closely scrutinizing the rules and discussion so nothing glaringly wrong should persist until then - again raising the question of why we need an arbitrary cutoff rather than knowing the ability for the organizer to lock single rules as needed will be enough to curb non-productive bickering to the point that nothing should be in the air by the day of.

Thursday sounds cool with me Kevin, well be looking forward to hearing the date. (soon as a date is known I'll request it off work). Hopefully the snow won't interfere with your tasks and if it does let me know, I'll send some hot Sri Lankan curry, Chicago will melt real quick.

Ansick brings up a good notion on point #3 relating to the standard division caps. No one will want to think that they couldve beaten someone in a given round, they'll want to know they had a good match and should hone their skills. But as in kddrs last post, it looks like the capping will be revised Thursday/sooner.

I don't exactly agree with siphoning from
the standard division, BUT I have personally been approached yesterday with person(s) wanting to donate to the prize pool without entering. I highly encouraged they do that for the expert division.

     I thought we covered this in the other thread, but if you play at Acme at all, you will know the kind of people that will enter the "Standard" tournament. Almost none, except for a very few timing players, ever play songs on Hard. Not some, but most can at least pass some 12s, and there will be a good number of entrants (at LEAST a dozen+, most of whom never go on these forums) who are in this threshold. The fact is, if you can't either 99 some 9s, or pass some 12s, you aren't going to be good enough for this tournament (i.e. you won't stand a 'chance in hell' of winning). And since nobody in the tournament except Suko and Laura play charts semi-regularly on Hard, the seed shouldn't be on a Hard song that WILL be a sight read for 90% of the players. Sight reads mean a huge luck factor, and that's not at all desirable for seeding. Make the seeds an easy 9 and a hard/technical 10, and announce the possible songs before the tournament.

The point of the Expert division is that Rudo, NSXX, Gerrak, Keby, etc. will absolutely crucify the rest of the competition if they were put with us because the top few have a VAST skill difference over the majority of the current community. There are many many players who will enter the standard division and are able to do 12s, and so they should be allowed; the point is to give most of the community a tournament that they will stand a 'chance in hell' of winning, or at least advancing a decent ways. That's going to mean not exclusively catering to the few lingering players of old who never play 'hard' things but have exceptionally experienced timing. And if you can 99 a 9 but can't pass an 11, you're out of shape, sorry. Play stuff that actually challenges your stamina regularly, go run, go lift weights, diet, and do what we "expert" players all do to be good. Shit, I go to Acme 5-6 times a week for hours, play Racquetball twice a week, lift weights 3 times a week, and diet and do basic core exercises every day. Similar to the above condition, if you can't pass 11s, you're not good enough for even the standard division, and need to demonstrate real dedication to your health and the exercise part of the game and not just trying to stomp out another AAA or SDE on a 7 or 8.
 
I don't mean to be rude about it (again), but go play in a DDR tournament if you're worried about the "hard" stuff. A 12 difficulty cap is very reasonable, I can no bar most 12s and get at least a solid pass and I'm hardly naturally built for this game. And as we already established, the tournament favors timing players anyway so please quit complaining that it's "too hard" and go do the work and make it happen. I apologize if this is harsh but damn, this is the same thing we already covered in the other thread. I can't stress enough that probably 80-90% of the players who will enter this won't ever post on this tournament thread So it's up to those of us who know the relative skills of people in the area (i.e. actually play where other people do) to construct a fair tournament format.

So in a nutshell:
-Don't seed on a Hard chart. No one ever plays Hard charts... Ever... Not even the standard division people... As I said before, it should be allowed, but not emphasized in any way. The only people who I ever see play these songs are DDR players, not ITG players, see below:

-This is an EXPERT ITG TOURNAMENT for BOTH divisions, just the "Expert" division quads 10s and 99s 12s, and the "Standard" division 99s 9s and passes 12s. ALL of the entrants of BOTH tournaments should be EXPERT ITG PLAYERS. Not Expert DDR players looking to play to their strengths on a game they don't/can't/won't play half the songs on.

-Keep the difficulty cap at 12 for standard, and allow 10s in the first round if seeding's done on a 10. I don't care if the expert division allows for hard charts that don't have an expert chart, but any of you (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE) pick one of these, it's gonna be a stupid stomp off that'll come down to the luck of the day as to who wins anyway, and hence you should find something better and more fun to play or else don the ass-hat...

-Keep the money costs low. There's no reason to make it a "high stakes tournament," this just encourages things like sandbagging, greed-driven (rather than friendly) competition, bad sportsmanship, arguments, etc. More cost will drive players away, not entice them. And I'm willing to bet everyone in the Expert division would show up if there was no pot at all. Because we just want to have fun and play against each other for once. An entry fee (which shouldn't be more than $10 or so) is really just for shits. I'd say $10 for both tournaments, and don't bother siphoning some from the standard to the expert players.

Sorry if this post was rude in any way but we're repeating the same arguments...

Now that I look more closely at the specific caps, there are a couple of concessions I have to make:

1. Don't cap it below 10 for any round if the qualifier is a 10.  I don't think anybody entering this tournament has any opposition to playing 10s.

2. The lower caps can definitely move up as the rounds go.  I think restricting the final couple of rounds to expert only wouldn't be a terrible idea, and this would also help make the "luck of the draw" thing more fair when it comes to ties. 

I understand your frustrations Allan, and I don't take them personally at all.  I think a lot of what you've said is right on.  That said, there's just one thing I can't let go:


Tony, Suko, and I would all beg to differ, and hell, I've even seen Keby play Hard charts.  I agree that Hard charts shouldn't be emphasized, in the same way that 12s shouldn't be emphasized, but saying that nobody plays them is factually incorrect and kind of makes it sound like you're devaluing the (not insignificant) number of people who do play them.

I have a question for clarification 

For the standard player division, players would also have the option of choosing Easy or Medium charts' difficulties so long as they fit within the given block range, correct?
And to expound on that question further.. say hypothetically it's the final round and the 3rd random-song is Pandemonium. Would they only play it on Medium mode if both players prefer that? Or if one prefers that they play it on Hard mode then does the decision favor the stamina player.. 

Edit: I wrote some nasty stuff that didn't need to be said.

Long story short: I'm out. Gerrak's comments and attitude really got under my skin. It's views and comments like his that really turn me off from the "hardcore" ITG crowd.

Enjoy your tournament. Maybe someday we can have an In the Groove tournament that can be enjoyable for ALL the players in the PNW.

Peace.

First, I definitely have to jump in and say that any claims about what defines an ITG player should be disregarded.
- An ITG player is one who plays ITG, a game which (unless hacked) has an attract sequence emphasizing multiple difficulty levels and play modes (E/M/H/Ex, Single/Double, Dance/Marathon/Survival) all get mentioned.  The players have unofficially chosen, by general play habits, to emphasize the Dance Single Expert combination, but using one slice of the game as a requirement for claiming that you play that game makes no logical sense and is just a way for elitism to seep through.  Rebirth is a player-driven expansion that still fills out the entire difficulty range, so obviously their definition of ITG and ITG player does not match "Expert charts only" and "only plays expert charts", so we can further disregard any claim that the players went in a different direction than Roxor had intended.
- Correlating the label "Expert Player" to exclusively playing the Expert difficulty mode is an equivocation fallacy, plain and simple.  Until Supernova renamed the difficulties, DDR's lack of an Expert difficulty did not prevent the existence of "Expert" players.  Two players are ranked relative to one another by the likelihood one would beat the other in general play and an Expert player is simply one who falls into some high percentile amongst those players; extending the previous point about the definition of an ITG player, an expert player is one who should have a high chance of winning when a random song (e.g., a tiebreaker) is presented to them; since the tiebreaking rules already emphasize certain play styles (by agreement among players), a decisively better player should not have to care about what their opponent picks as they will win their own selection and the tiebreaker.  By further agreement, we have put upper and lower limits on players' selections to avoid any tendency towards cutthroat, unsportsmanlike play (e.g., memorizing a few Easy charts when Easy is played by almost nobody), because, by agreement, the tournament is intended to be enjoyable in general, rather than a cutthroat contest of "who can exploit the rules for personal gain".

Secondly, I have to jump in and point out that Gerrak fails to live up to his own bar.  The greater requirements stemming from maintaining balance and moving your entire body mass over a greater distance make a reasonably hard double charts yield better exercise than single charts.  If all that mattered was getting the most exercise possible, single charts would be reserved for days when Acme was busy and avoided at all other times.  Playing on the brackets minimizes energy burn, as do most player techniques meant to enhance speed or timing.  Of course, freestyling is yet better exercise on top of everything...

Take the above as flames or insults if you must, but I won't allow opinion to be presented as fact or for flatly fallacious logic to be used when justifying claims.  I try very hard to avoid it myself, and feel that conceptualizing the rules as a very open framework which can be narrowed down as issues arise is a better means to general enjoyment that making sweeping claims about what players want to do.  If the majority opinion is explicitly that my feeling is wrong, I will happily concede the point, but I firmly believe that trying to accommodate the widest variety of players, with minimal restriction on anyone, should be our stated goal as this time; if it turns out that many felt their enjoyment suffered because a few people were tending towards Hard charts for the one third of each of their matches they have the ability to influence, then a future tournament can be more restrictive and I won't complain, but right now the emphasis should, as far as I am concerned, be on opening the competition up, while minimizing the disenfranchisement of any subset of players, so that we can maximize the player pool and have a strong position when it comes time to request the next tournament date - put more simply, if the tournament is objectively successful and generally enjoyable, then we are liable to have them more often, and we can use later tournaments to set restrictions based on observed failings of previous tournaments.

To date, I have not gotten word of a PNW ITG tournament that players generally felt suffered for lack of restrictions on song choice and furthermore, at the last Acme tournament, Hard charts were chosen in early rounds despite an Expert only rule, due to some organizer oversight; there is no empirical justification to deviate from past precedent, which encouraged openness.  Timing players are currently arguing that the protections granted for them go too far and will interfere with the general enjoyment of the event, while the response they get is that they don't play the game correctly; as noted, alienating players so that they do not enter will be detrimental to future tournaments.  To be a little less theoretical, at Sakuracon '10, I picked a Hard chart against Keby and beat him by a decent margin; his response was not to complain about the inclusion of Hard charts, but to admit that he had not been training his timing well enough - that I deserved to win that song through a combination of skill and strategy - and, more importantly, that when all was said and done, we had a very fun, surprisingly close round.  I guess, to drive the point home, I don't remember any complaints about the Sakuracon ITG rules - unlike the last Acme tournament which, again, had stricter difficulty rules - so what possible reason is there to add new restrictions arbitrarily?  To extend the previous point I had made, if we start close to that which we know to work, and iterate based on observed issues, we are likely to have more enjoyable tournaments and may even have them more often.

I never post here, but I'd like to chime in with my opinions about this tournament. First, I more or less agree with ancsik's mega-posts, particularly this snippet:


Second, I also agree that the difficulty window for the Standard tournament shouldn't shift very much, if at all. The only reason I can think of to have the difficulty window shift is to account for people warming up; putting difficult songs early in the tournament can unfairly tire some players out. This is especially true in the early rounds, where each player will likely have a long pause between playing. I know I wouldn't like to play a 12 in round 1.

Other than that, though, too much shifting of the difficulty window doesn't make sense. ancsik, again, makes a great point here:


Finally, I agree that the entry fee should be dropped to $10, at least for the Standard tournament. $15 is a bit high, IMO.

Overall, I think we should really focus on being inclusive with the Standard tournament. Creating a competitive environment is important, but creating a fun environment is perhaps just as important. This is supposed to be a community building event. I'd rather lose a really fun tournament than win the last ITG tournament that there ever will be in the PNW.

Edit: Also, 6 seems a mite low for the lower bound of song difficulty. I'd be more inclined to set it to 7. I'm undecided as to what the upper cap should be; 11 and 12 are both acceptable for me personally, but I don't think I have a good perspective of what the Standard crowd is going to be like.