Is there a Pop'n tournament too?

There's going to be an experimental tournament - Pop'n Battle Mode! The DDR and ITG tournaments required a lot of advance rules clarification, which is why I'm posting about them nearly a month before the event. The Pop'n Battle Mode and Challenge tournaments require a little bit less explanation, and the rules are a little bit less debatable, so I'm delaying those posts until after I'm done with finals.

Oh god...Tennis style!? I have bad memories from the last time I did that.

Suko: It's only the final four in DDR, and we took everyone's input from last time into account - you will never play more than 9 songs.

Tennis style makes things intense even if its capped off at 9 songs =P

Ironically, I will be cosplaying the viper-guy from Prince of Tennis to match. Sorry..
Link~

   Laura I don't mean to bitch much, but it seems like you're giving a lot more love to the DDR tournament than the ITG tourney. Since the ITG tournament is supposed to be for the "expert players" anyway, and it's sure to be some of the closest and most intense matches of both days, plus the fact that we have DDR tourneys all the time but pretty few ITG ones, I would strongly suggest for a 16man bracket you make it double elimination. If not for the first round, then from the 2nd round on make it 8man double-elim or something. I know for a lot of songs people like me keby nsxx tom and james could feasibly be within a few excellents, and I'd hate to see one of us seed weird and get knocked out completely without really getting to compete.

edit: And you should release a list of possible qualifiers in advance like the DDR tourney

I agree with Allan. If you can make ITG Double elim that'd be super freakin awesome, but I also understand time constraints at sakura-con, so if it's finalized, it's finalized.

Allan, also understand that there is what? 4 of us here in washington that can pass 13's? That's mainly the reason why the ITG tourny is probably less important.....because honestly less people play it from a general stand point.

I don't think many (if any) 13s would be played, I'm willing to bet all 16 players will be able to at least handle themselves on what will end up being played. In any case, for a 32man DDR that turns tennis style round robin in the semis we could at least get a normal double elim ITG. Especially considering the last ITG tournament was 6 months ago. The last DDR was like 3 weeks ago Give ITG some love!

Allan, no hard feelings or anything... I don't take it as bitching - you have some legitimate concerns. In fact, all of them were concerns that I have already thought long and hard about. I hope that you understand my reasoning and everything is cool! I really can't budge on #1, but if a lot of people disagree with #2, I'd be willing to re-consider.


Sakuracon is an anime convention, and ITG is not very popular with the general anime convention population. I got it because I know that you guys love it, but let's be honest - anime people, who are a large number of the tournament entrants, are only going to enter DDR. DDR is getting more love because it's my job to make sure that it does, and also because the number of DDR players at a high enough skill level to enter a tournament is MUCH larger than that same number of ITG players.

So put a little bit differently: ITG is only a 16 man bracket because there aren't more than 16 of you guys, and this is something just for you; no general con attendees are going to want to enter it. It is single elim because of time constraints: I can't start anything before 6 PM on Friday, because half of the community can't get off of work in time to make it anywhere before then. I also can't go past 1, because they kick all of the minors out at 1 and I don't want anyone to be prevented from entering any of my tournaments because of their age. I also needed to schedule the challenge tournament after the ITG tournament. So I have from 6 PM to 1 AM to run two tournaments with enough time to grab a snack in between the two of them. I just flat out can't make time for double elim.

I'd be happy to run a longer ITG tournament in the traditional "you all go to an arcade and pay a 5-10 dollar entry fee" sense at some point in the near future if you guys all want one, but I just can't make it happen at this anime convention.

As for the qualifier, there's a specific reason I'm doing it the way I'm doing it. DDR is supposed to be the "easier" tournament, which means giving people a chance to practice - this is for the benefit for the anime people who the hardcore dance game people would obliterate otherwise, NOT the hardcore dance game people. With ITG, I found a chart that I think would make a great qualifier, but I know that it'd be well within the reasonable skill level of anybody entering an ITG tournament. If I announce it in advance, it would go from a song that nobody would do embarrassingly poorly at and would do a good job of ranking people to a song that the people with the most money and practice time would win on, regardless of general skill level at the game. Basically, I think not announcing the qualifier until the day of is MORE fair at the skill level that we're talking about with ITG expert players.

Thanks a lot for making the challenge tournament just as important as ITG... You have 7 hours supposedly, you can fit in double elimination. Put it after the first round if you need so it's 8man double elimination but single elimination is insulting. The last ITG tournament we had was 6 months ago, and I doubt we can just 'hold another one' considering how stingy Acme is. We had to plan months in advance for the last one we held there. And forget Narrows, the machine is not really where it should be for tournaments. We have DDR tournaments all the time, but ITG is rare. Point and fact I'm going to have to pay 60 bucks just for these 2 tournaments and the arcade play I'll get outside them. I think for that we should be able to get a decent ITG tournament if you're going to make the machine otherwise unplayable for the weekend.

Like I said, make it 8man double elim if you need to save time. Or else move the stupid challenge tournament to saturday. Or else AT THE VERY LEAST make the ITG best out of 5 songs. The challenge should be LAST priority, not equal with ITG. There is more you can do with this tournament, so please just figure out a way to make it better. With how close our entrants in the ITG tournament are, a single elimination is sure to have some seriously disappointed people when the time actually comes.

It's a silly anime convention.  I'm excited to have a challenge tournament just to have some fun and goof around with a cool community.  Laura has put a lot of work into this whole event, and I really appreciate the great job she has done so far.

Chill.

Whoah. We've never had a problem in person, so I don't really appreciate you taking that kind of tone with me over the internet.

1. Your main argument is that we held an ITG tournament 6 months ago, but we had a DDR tournament a month ago. Last time that we had a challenge tournament was... 2006? People always have fun at these tournaments and I've had a lot of requests for one. There are a lot of "less serious" players who want a silly tournament, just as there are a lot of more serious players who want an ITG tournament. You may think that the challenge tournament is stupid, but you're not speaking for the community - you're speaking for yourself. I'm not going to shuffle around my entire con schedule for one person, no matter who they are.

2. ACME is letting Bill remove the machine for the weekend. Clearly there's SOME way to run another ITG tournament at ACME; maybe we could pay a rental fee that gets deducted from entry fees. Sure the prize would be worth less, but... oh wait, the prize at THIS tournament is some coupons to go buy anime DVDs. Can't be worth less than that!

3. I'm making the ITG machine "unplayable" for the weekend because my Bemani friends wanted to play it 24/7 on freeplay. Anyone who wanted to be staff and play it for free while on shift was welcome to do so; I opened up this offer months ago. I'm sorry if this doesn't work as well for you as others, but don't try to paint me as a villain who's taking your machine away.

I'd like to reiterate that I really don't like the way you're talking to me - and at the very least, I wish you'd have the courtesy to save it for the next time we're together in person, so that neither of us are veiled in the cloak of internet invincibility. If you're really upset with me, let's try to work it out for real rather than posturing with condescending language and air quotes.

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ALL THAT SAID, I do understand that single elim is not the best choice, and I have come up with one alternative. If I could get everybody who WILL be at the con prior to 6 to agree to start qualifying at 5, we could start the tournament rounds a lot earlier, and I could probably modify the format in a way that would extend the tournament for 45 minutes. This would probably either be best 3-5 instead of best 2-3, or adding the same round robin tennis style deal to this tournament as the DDR tournament has. ITG does have much longer songs than DDR, though, so we need to keep this in mind, also.

How many of you are willing to get there early and qualify early?

I noticed no complaints with regard to the day-of qualifier. Is that because there aren't any? That's the one part of the format that I DO have legitimate  power to change if people disagree with my assessment about fairness, but I need to do it soon if that's the case.

Whoah, buddy.

I'm Laura's final superior at con, and I back her on this.

You're being done a favor with having ITG there in the first place. It's a niche game. You're not even close to being the most important set of fans at the convention. If even 16 people enter ITG out of an anticipated 20000, that's 0.08% of the convention populace. Less than one tenth of one percent.

DDR is a Japanese game. Sakura-Con is a Japanese cultural and anime con. ITG is American. The only reason it's at con is 1) I used to have it in arcade when I ran gaming and 2) it gives us access to more songs and gives us a third 4-panel dancing game.

Also, when we run a tournament, it means the general public cannot use the machine. Meaning, you want us to fuck the other 19984 people off. That's just not happening. Not only does Laura have to juggle a few other events, she has a job to do in which she has to make sure 20000 people have a fair shot of using and enjoying our arcade. Her job isn't to cater to the niche Bemani crowd exclusively.

People like you are why I never liked the ITG community so much. You think the world revolves around you. It doesn't. If you don't like it, well, go to Narrows for the weekend. You'll get the machine to yourself.

lol internet

cant we all just get along and play peggle

Wish I could be staff .__. ~sigh

Methinks I could get there early. If there are more than 16 ITG competitors, my chances of even getting to participate in the ITG tourny are slim. Heh. I'll be happy to observe the events and film a bit at least.

What you mean is how they got annoyed at your repeated attempts to talk to them about hosting a tournament instead of going through the right channels.

Gerrak, we know you love ITG. We know you'd probably marry it if you could; but you've got to chill.
You say that since we've had a recent DDR tournament, we need to put in ITG time? Obviously we don't care enough to have more ITG tournaments, or they would happen. To come with a longwinded post about how ITG is being neglected now, when the official rules have already been setup and the tournament info has been posted is really lame. While this is ran by the community, this is still a con that brings in WAY more people. We can change things on the fly at our local tournaments and nobody cares. A con is a completely different story.
If you are so concerned about ITG being neglected, be more proactive instead of responsive. Any by proactive that does not mean bugging Acme to have them let you run a tournament.

Focusing on DDR over ITG for the con will always make sense. ALWAYS.

Agreed.  Evidence:

Roxor + RedOctane had a booth at the con in 2006 as they tried to push ITG as hard as they could.  They succeeded in "expending energy" and "being physically present," whereas the desirable side effects like "making money" and "selling games" were conspicuously absent.

Precedent says that both DDR machines will, even at 3am, have at least 5 people waiting in line while ITG, at peak times, will only have about 5 people rotating through.  It's far more play than it would get at Acme over the same weekend, especially given that half the community goes to the con, but picking out the crowd favorite is pretty easy year after year.

In 2005 and 2006, the con did try to use ITG as the main event for arcade tournaments and did not get the desired interest - there's no debate to be had as for what should get the strongest focus at the convention.  In 2006, I believe close to equal headcounts were had the for ITG and DDR events.  ITG had two open qualifying times (one Fri, one Sat) totaling like 6 hours that you could stop by and enter, then the 16 slot bracket rounds started Saturday afternoon and ran into the evening; DDR was Sunday morning (at like 9am) with an 8 slot bracket; almost no one from the community entered because it was too early, so the headcount could have easily been doubled by switching those around.  There's just no question where the effort needs to lie.

Also con tournaments have ALWAYS been single elim.  Not because of any restriction by the managers (that I know of), but because one of the goals is to keep things moving quickly (double elim. directly doubles the number of rounds from single elim., so single elim allows twice as many players in the same amount of time) - we don't want people withdrawing in the last 3 rounds because there's something else they need to get to (this happened repeatedly in 2005 and 2006, IIRC); many Bemani players come for more than just the arcade and this has caused problems even when using single elim, because the tail hour of a tournament conflicted with some major con event.

Sorry I wasn't in the best mood for my last post. I was out of line Laura and I apologize. I didn't mean it to sound hostile.

BlueSS and DMN:
I haven't talked to Acme about tournaments in almost a year, since Kevin and Amber took over the last one. Get your fucking facts straight.

Shut the fuck up.

You don't even know me so also shut the fuck up.

The two of you just jumped on the opportunity to talk shit on me and don't know anything. And taking my words and putting them into entirely different context. Try saying some of that shit to my face or get your facts straight and shut the fuck up.



Anyway Laura please just do what you can, it really doesn't bother me that much if it's single elim. And I'll be there by 5 to qualify if needed.

Gerrak, again, chill.

Any further discussion in this thread regarding the above ITG tournament drama (not the actual, legitimate tournament discussion-that's more than welcome!) will result in a forum ban until the con is over.

Will do! Like I said, I'd be happy to start qualifying early. I finalized that schedule mostly because I was under pressure to get a final schedule out, but that doesn't mean I can't change it informally.

And thanks for your apology. No hard feelings.

Edit: I'd really like opinions on the qualifier thing! Should I come up with a few different options and post after all, or do people agree that it might be more fair to tell everybody the day of, given the skill level and highly variable amounts of free time the players might have in the next week and a half? I really am willing to listen to conflicting ideas, as long as they're well justified.

I don't see any problem with the qualifier as is.  Anyone else?

Hmm...I see reasons to put up qualifiers and to leave it a mystery until the actual qualifying. I'm a fan of being able to practice such things, but hey, I didn't practice for the last one and ended up qualifying 3rd so I suppose anything can happen. Honestly, I think the people who are going to, say, 99 the qualifier will be able to do it regardless of whether they practice it specifically in advance or not. I think that it would be good to have them available for those of us not likely to be in the final rounds just so we have more of a fighting chance at the beginning. Anyway, personally (since I'm in that category I just mentioned  ) it would make it more fun for me to have them.

You know, Gerrak, you've moved me to make a fantastically logical choice. I will not have ITG at con next year. Thank you for opening my eyes to how much drama that game brings and how much of said drama I want away from my gaming area.

Also, please let me know your schedule up until con. I will absolutely tell you what I said to your face if my schedule permits. In fact, if you'd like to arrange a time at con for me to tell this to your face, please PM me.

[removed]

I thank you once again for showing me a reason to get rid of ITG and put in a more culturally relevant game.