Exactly the same way I felt progressing through, though im not far into 13s+ yet, i'll stop at nothing to make my way up there. Our goals forever change, i went from wanting to play heavy (called Maniac), then 9 footers, then....oh gosh, 10 foot ddr songs, then on itg, somehow crack 11's, then 12's, now im onto 13's and everything 12 and under is something i enjoy playing and score nicely on (used to perceive it as death). Others have different goals such as exploring 10's and fun charts as Laura stated. But one thing is clear: it's real clear why people have contempt for the labels "stamina" and "tech", I'd even feel offended if deemed as one of these labels, when I feel I just love the game, and embody both traits to a degree, maybe not as much as the best players I see around and look up to. Setting our minds and feet to it will possibly one day make us join them, that's how each of them got there. But guess what, we all embody both of these traits to a degree. The love for the game means we're willing to put ourselves to the test in these tournaments. To Sempai's point, Amen.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for the standard and expert division tournaments, but just because one can't multi-star a 9, and another can't make it through an 11or12 doesn't mean these songs shouldn't be played. (once again: i'm totally cool if 12's are held for later rounds, but the rules as of now have the first round cap at a 9 though if you notice, not even 10s or 11s are game in first round). I speak not from a stamina or tech perspective, just one in the community. This is quite a vivid discussion, and I hope KDDR is doing okay with all the snow, and I'm healthily anxious to hear the revisions/date soon.

Hey guys, I hear there's a tournament going on somewhere in this thread? 

Trying to plan one, having it quickly devolve into irrelevance.

It's one thing to debate regarding the rules, it's another to say that one region plays correctly or not; it's entertaining to talk about the time that Lith showed up in CA and beat everyone (especially given that he was decisively not a stamina player and had a severely bad knee which kept him from him from practicing the most stamina intensive songs in DDR all that regularly), but the relative skill levels of regions and the notion of playing the game "correctly" per some national or worldwide standard are not relevant to this tournament.

PNW players fall across a spectrum from tech to stamina, just like every other community, but as mentioned, in other places, the definitions are set a little differently.  Due to a lot of our top ITG players quitting in the last couple years, yes, we are not competitive on a national scale like we had been at various points, so it makes sense that the bar is a little lower.  However, there's no need for us to set rules per external standards; a tournament which gets the bulk of our current players competing according to their own strengths will do more to help our community than to measure ourselves against external standards - actual head to head competition tends to drive people more than simply seeing high scores posted - and therefore an emphasis on inclusiveness is a good thing.

Furthermore, while opinion varies on what makes the game fun, I am willing to assume that most players play because they find the game fun, and that those discussing the tournament right now are doing so because they think that a tournament would be fun (especially given that discussions of high entry fees for higher prize pools have been shot down).  The tournament should then be oriented around that idea, and, to be honest, if capping standard at 11 instead of 12 is a key deciding factor on whether to enter or not for 3 timing players and 1 stamina player, then the cap should be 11; if instead, it's the different between 3 timing players and 5 stamina players, well, then we should allow 12's.

The essay length posts are getting a little ridiculous and I'm trying to not post anymore myself, but the sheer amount of debate is obviously indicative of interest and persistent disagreement and needs to be resolved, but I'm tired of people thinking that the state of outside communities has any relevance on this tournament.  If the goal was to get Midwest players to fly out here and compete, then, yes, it would matter; the issue is that the goal is not anything like that, it's to have a local ITG tournament, tailored to local players because we currently don't have that many tournaments and there is interest in having more of them.

I am furthermore tired of people saying that the rules need to be X because that's the way they play.  You are one person, if everyone disagrees with you, then the rules should probably be something else.  I would like to see us distill the perfect PNW rule set out of this discussion, but we are just going in circles now.

There are three general points in the air right now that are getting decent amounts of mention:
1. Upper caps in the standard division (11 vs. 12)
2. Lower caps in the expert division (9+ vs. allowing Hard vs. god-knows-what-mish-mash of specific rules)
3. Qualifier difficulty


To everyone, let's start fresh and go with this:

1. If one or more of these points will have some bearing on you entering, then speak up and state explicitly what conditions would keep you from entering.  If you will not pay the entry fee without 12's in standard, they say that; if 12's in standard will prevent you from entering, then say that.  We'll all state our opinion and personal preference; do not defend your opinion, just state it.  If somebody tells you that your opinion is wrong or tries to directly convince you to rethink it, they will be dealt with.  Post such opinions in BOLDED RED.

2. If something gives you reason to hesitate to enter, say you think that allowing Hard charts in the expert division would completely ruin the fun involved or undermine the validity of the event, post that you don't like that possibility in BLUE.

3. If it doesn't affect you in any significant way, say nothing.

4. If you have some reasonable proposal to resolve a major point of contention and the idea has not be discussed before, feel free to post a brief description so people may post support for it if they agree; do not heavily justify the idea, only post what is needed for somebody to understand it - if it makes sense as a proposal, people should be able to make the appropriate connections on their own.  Do not color any such proposals.

--------------------

If anyone cannot allow others to state their opinion and attack them for it or tell them they are wrong, I will request they are banned, at least temporarily, from the forum.  I would furthermore not feel bad if they were barred from entering the tournament, but will not ask the organizer to do something like that.

The goal here is to get everyone's opinion stated cleanly so we can make decisions based on what actually matters to them.  I will make my own post like this in a followup post as to help separate it from this description.

NOTE: I am fully aware Kevin promised revised difficulty caps/progression/etc., so let's leave out the low lower level details and talk only about very firm limits, like the 11/12 cutoff.

Lower expert caps: Hard mode should be fully included

Qualifiers: An 11 as one of the qualifiers is a bit much, I prefer the proposed 8/9 + 10 combination

Standard:

Upper caps: 11. If 12s, make sure the rule about "only in the last round" stays.
Lower caps: I think 7 is appropriate.  No lower than 8.
Qualifier: For Standard, a qualifier above a 9 is excessive, but an 8 might be too low.  Therefore, a 9 seems good. 

Expert:

As a tournament organizer, it occurs to me that a good compromise about Hard charts for the Expert tournament could be "The hardest chart on each difficulty level may be played." So basically, Hard charts only if there is no Expert chart. This does not affect me as a Standard player, I just wanted to share.

Make sure you know the new rules for posting in Tournament Event threads before posting any replies in this thread.

http://www.pnwbemani.net/ddr-itg-tournament-rules/rules-for-this-forum-for-posting-in-tournament-event-threads/

I'm finally in Boston after going to my University of Michigan audition and then subsequently getting snowed in and having all of my flights for the Michigan -> Chicago -> Boston part of my plans cancelled. Anyway, I've updated the thread with revision 2. Changes are in red, and I added the "Marvelous Division". No prizes have been set for the "Marvelous Division" yet. I'm aware of that. Sorry for the delay in posting stuff. I think I'll have a date down by Friday. I know that's yet another delay, but please keep in mind that the future of my life is being determined by these auditions and I would really like to focus on them for the next two or three days. I've been reading the commentary, and I would just like to point out that I've honestly never seen such disagreement and vitriol regarding a tournament rule set before. Maybe it's been building up for a long time. I don't know. It's just not exactly encouraging for me. I know people want the tournament rule set to result in a fair competition that will accurately reward skilled players with prizes, and I also know that people want to have fun. I'm trying to make that happen. Although my last tournament had a few issues, I didn't expect anything like this to happen with this one. Hopefully things will turn out well and we'll all have a good time. I'm planning on entering the tournaments myself if no one has a problem with that.

Not to delve too deeply, but it had been.  It was the directly identified reason behind some of the decisions in the last few tournaments we had, yours included.

Anyway, as to not deviate from the rules I laid out too much:
4. Entry fees: $25 entry for Expert is prohibitively high

5. Regarding organizers entering their own tournaments, there have generally been two issues:
1. If the qualifiers are chosen by the organizer, then the organizer has a severe advantage.  It's kind of a minor point, but it has symbolic importance regarding the potential quality of the event.
2. If there is only one organizer, there are a lot of issues, including conflict of interest during the organizer's matches and general organizer distractedness, since a tournament is lot of work to run smoothly.  We've definitely had issues with the latter, even with two people on staff, so make sure you have a very reliable partner or two.
As long as these can be addressed, then I don't care about the organizer entering

Similarly, in response to the rule change,

Qualifier: 11 foot qualifier for the standard division is prohibitively high and doesn't make much sense given that 11s aren't even allowed that early in the tournament

Edit> Bolded red means I should use the bold tag. 

I understand and am okay with waiting until Friday for the date. I'm glad you made it through the weather Kevin, and best of luck on your auditions, and thanks for setting this up in all the business you're taking care of.

In response to the rule revision, the diff. caps I feel are respectable and fair at this point, that was previously my primary concern. I have no objections/concerns.

     I like the rules as they are now revised except:

The $25 Expert fee is somewhat excessive.
I'll pay it still, but given that we all know each other and just want a tournament, I'd just as well knock this down to $10 or $15. There's really no good reason to have it that high.

Probably the qualifier should be on an 'easy 9' and 'hard/technical' 10 rather than even an easy 11. It would be fine for the Expert players but if it's not allowed in the first round (as 11's aren't) it shouldn't probably be a qualifier. I'd also steer away from 'hand songs' (maybe a song could have hands, but not hugely emphasized like Queen of Light or Hearts of Ice, as this tends to favor certain types of players) and should be somewhat sight-readable (so don't have like Stop&Go for example) for the qualifiers.

My only opinion on the matter

Oh the color coding .

Nonetheless,
The qualifier makes perfect sense to me.
Being that we're using the same set of quals to determine standard and expert, making one qualifier an 11 allows for a less likely chance of people that don't 'want' to qual for expert doing so.  At the same token, both divisions allow for 11s, so everyone that is entering this with a hope of placing should be able to do 11s.  Also, announcing the songs beforehand allow everyone to practice them as much as they see fit, thus eliminating any potential of qualifying through a sight read or it being a chart one isn't particularly good at.  It's not hard at all to practice 8 charts.

Also, I think the note in the rules stating that if one doesn't qualify for either division get a refund isn't necessary, as due to two different dollar caps for the tournaments, people will seemingly pay after they've determined what division they're in....Unless everyone will pay for standard initially and the top 6 throw on more for expert.

I will not be attending this tournament.  However, I do anxiously look forward to more light-hearted tournaments in the future and am excited to meet more and more people in the community as it grows.

I hate all this arguing.

I wanted a fun tournament that included everyone.

At this point, I'm casting my vote in favor of whichever way has the greatest good. I don't want to lose members of this community that's really so rare and should be carefully cultivated instead of harshly divided by ideas that, in the end, don't matter. We love this one stupid game for various reasons, but we all love it.

Let that love bring us to the same place and time to play it together.

I'm happy to play 11's, 12's, 7's or whatever in the second division. I don't care as long as everyone comes and plays too.

See hollie has it right.
No hate, only love.
Come on Hollie, lets go have fun optimism land.

I'm not from Seattle and thus don't really care what happens with this tournament, but Neko posted about this on Facebook a while ago and I'm not saying someone would necessarily do this, but the more you bring down the entry fee, the easier it is to sandbag, win the standard division, and make more profit. If you're trying to keep the standard division at all friendly, then giving people more of a motivation to sandbag probably isn't smart.

For example:

6 players @ $15 each => 1st place gets a $48 profit. Meanwhile, in the standard division, to profit $48+ with a $10 entry fee, you only need 11 entrants.

6 players @ $10 each => 1st place gets a $32 profit. To profit $32+ with a $10 entry fee in the standard division, you only need 8 entrants.

The $25 entry fee is thus a pretty decent way to give people less motivation to be dicks.

Edit: In the small chance this is during my spring break and sfxazure is around to be visited I might randomly show up. I have a big tax return and a friend to visit at some point :X

I wouldn't end up in the Expert division, but my husband might, so I just want to post the other side of this, which is that some people can't afford to enter a $25 ITG tournament, which could also encourage sandbagging.

Still, we welcome input from other seasoned tournament-goers.

On the note of entry fees, I don't mind the higher expert division entry fees being that people tend to take things more seriously when there's more money on the line.  6 people playing for a 1st place $70 profit will be taken more seriously by those involved than 6 people playing for a first place $32 profit if entry fees were 10 bucks.

There's no point in a secondary expert division if everyone that enters expert isn't entering with the mindset of winning it.

Ditto ._.

I don't mind sacrificing the stamina-end of the song choice by a couple notches if it will be encouragement for players like Tricksy & Suko to participate.
It could be as simple as setting 9-footer songs as the cap for the Standard division, and then along the way.. if both players are okay with playing 10 to 13-footers, have them do so at the beginning of the match-up *shrugs*

This is true, but it's less of a dick move, and I'm an intentions over actions kind of person. "I'm gonna sandbag this qualifier because I can profit more from winning the standard division" is different in my eyes from "I'm gonna sandbag this qualifier because I can't afford to enter the expert division," even though both would probably cause a similar inconvenience to players in the lower division.

Also yo Mannycakes posting on a Seattle forum just to make fun of Sara isn't cool.

I walked out of this mess a while ago. Once all the dust has settled, if this looks half-way interesting to me, then I will join. I'm just waiting to see.

lol...the drama

Side note: At every tournament I compete in, I end up against the other decent girl.

4th tourney division.  Round robin between Talia, Sara, Laura, and any other decent girl in the area.  Gentlemen, place your bets.

If we could get at least five girls together to do this, I would so enter.  Only if it's HARD X CORE though... 1x NO BRA.