I talked to an event coordinator today and Acme is in support of our doing a tournament! Provided we do it on a weekday evening. I asked if Friday evenings count as weekends and they are talking it over for final authorization. The date I have initially requested is FRIDAY JULY 24 (in the conversation I requested as first pick fri the 24th, 2nd pick fri the 17th 3rd pick thurs the 23rd and 4th pick thurs the 16th). I don't really know what time we should start it, my first impulse is to say check in from 4-5 and we start at 5? What do you guys think?

Not in my mind. I still bust a move whenever a crowds around

My best is like 86% hehe. But this won't be a song we play the steps are too erratic and the song is just kind of ridiculous. Even for the final rounds.

Flower Forever v2 is what I'm thinking for last song. 2200 steps, 6min long, and very doable competitively for some of us. God damn epic

Not a problem for me. My husband, however, is at work until 6 usually, as are many other employed players. I argue that being a housewife IS a legitimate job, but at times like this I feel lucky that, starting very soon, I can leave "work" early whenever I want to play DDR

Edit: In all seriousness, I have legitimate concerns about the "no weekend" thing; there are lots of great players in Bellingham, Oregon, etc etc. who could come on a weekend and not a weekday, because they can't get from school/work to ACME before like 9/10 PM, if not Saturday morning. Have Bill and ACME negotiated yet? Maybe if we give them a cut of the prize pool they'll consider giving us better scheduling options. :<

Yeah I'm aware we would have much rather had it on a weekend, but realistically we can't expect them to cut out their paying events to have our tournament we're doing for free. Best I can probably get really; I gunned for Friday so that out-of-state players might be able to have a bit more flexibility than on a random weeknight and since they still close at 1am as to allow us to go longer than expected if need be. Might just have to request the day off in advance. Sorry =(

If we can't get any better, Friday is DEFINITELY the best option, and I appreciate you trying for that kind of a timeslot and putting the thought into it. I was just suggesting this as another option...


I know we can't expect them to do it for free, that's why I'm suggesting that it might be worth it to not do it for free; even a Saturday at 10 AM before they're busy would give some more players a chance to come.

As a sidenote, as long as I know you and you're clean (as in, your habits... but if I know you, you know about my OCD and therefore what I meant...), all you out of staters are welcome to crash Friday night regardless of what day the tourney is on. Or play Pop'n all night, I don't care

If you'll allow check-ins thru email or the forums, I might be able to do that. As I mentioned earlier though, I'm in Lynnwood, and 5 PM traffic on Friday means I won't be at ACME anytime before 6...and that's if I'm lucky.

Traffic to/from Tukwila sucks anytime around rush hour.


Gerrak, how long have you played dancing games? 
How long have you been part of a DDR community, and which ones?
How many tournaments have you been to?
What expertise in running an event do you have?

Along with ancsik's concern about the "if this fails, goodbye future tournaments", I really don't know who you are and what your qualifications are. I'm not saying you aren't qualified; I'm saying I don't know if you are or not, and I want to make sure this tournament happens well, and by someone who knows what they're doing.

1) FFv2 is like 4 years old, no modern competitive player is still playing that shit.
2) Not enough people are high level by ITG standards in the PNW. Deal with it.
3) Who the fuck even are you. Why should anybody enter a tournament from some random scrub who talks big online.
4) Weekdays are about the least logical days for a tourney ever. You cannot have a counter argument against the point that people have jobs and weekends are most people's weekends. If you even try to argue this weekday thing after this point you're completely retarded.

Lastly, if this thread is about gauging interest, look at the interest you have! Are you more interested in gathering feedback or defending your stance? There are so many better points that I could argue, but you can't even wrap your mind around tourney basics. Have you ever even run a tourney with entrants that are not your mom, dad and brother?

thanks to BlueSS for pointing out the innacuracies in the rest of this post, I stand corrected.

Umm Acme is not owned by Bill at all. He provides the arcade machines because the placed begged him to do it because Bill actually knows what he's doing and they didn't want an idiot taking care of the arcade. The amount Acme really cares about the arcade? about 5%, and that's a high estimate. The majority of their revenue doesn't come from it, but it's a mandatory part of any good bowling alley and so they have it.

Being part of the crew who have talked to Acme about events in the past, they are not very open at all to most tournament/event ideas, and in the past Bill has constantly encouraged us to have them at Narrows instead of Acme; but Narrows is a further drive for most the community.

Tony's argument actually does have some weight, so if you haven't dealt with Acme than quit talking like you do.

Nor will Acme ever see this thread.

I stand corrected then.

I will not come to an expert tournament.  I also will not travel 400 miles rt unless someone with sound tournament experience is running it or corunning it. 

also, i'm a little offended that seattle apparently didn't notice the 31 competitors and 10 or 20 spectators that were at dsr^2 last june.  I guess major tournaments only count if they're in seattle.

You know that Oregon doesn't matter to Washington so I really don't understand how you could be offended by this.

Unfortunately, we do live in our own little bubble in Western WA. We usually don't even know/care what the eastern side of the state is doing. haha

It's nothing personal against Oregon, dsr^2, or you Tofu.
The only people in WA (in general) who are aware of stuff going on in Oregon are the ones that live across the border in Vancouver.

It's more not that we don't care about other stuff, but Western WA gets wrapped up with itself and moves too quickly to keep up with itself, let alone trying to keep up with anyone else. lol

Good day all - friendly neighbourhood Canadian here!

KevinDDR just mentioned this tournament to me tonight, and I am interested in coming, though, with the new passport requirements starting in June for land/sea travel it might be a bit more annoying to arrange a trip.

If I do come, I will likely bring at least 4 other people, possibly more! Though, looking at the format it definitely doesn't favour the Victoria player type (Read: Players other than me) as they are the..."FIFTEEN FOOTER TEAM DRAGONFORCE, WHAT YOU CAN'T PASS A 14 YET YOU SISSY?"-type. I must say that keeping things mostly at 10/11 and below sounds tame even for me though, and I'm definitely not a stamina player myself.

Nonetheless, it does sound like fun, and playing less stamina songs probably works out better for me anyway. xD I'll be honest in that I didn't read through a lot of this since it seemed like debate over stuff, but I'll be interested to hear what the rules look like once they've been fleshed out a little more...

Oh...one thing that I've found has worked to help balance out stamina/accuracy players is to make it a "best out of 3" so that, even if a stamina player picks a song you can't pass, you still have a decent chance of beating them since, chances are you can beat them on an accuracy song unless they're outright better than you, and second, if the 3rd song goes to random, odds are in favour of a 9 or a 10. Just a thought there for ya, makes for a bit of a compromise.

I think the grand total of people who are actually close enough to come to this are a vastly different crowd than was there. My ex drove down for DSR^2 (and although he's a Seattlite, he won't go to any tournament I'm at, so we have to count him out), and other than that, you have to factor some of the people who came were closer to Eugene than WA by far - Robby is in Utah, I-Gene is in California, Phylicia is in Japan, etc etc. Sure, many of them were Portlanders, but not the majority, and I think it's a bit of a stretch to assume that anyone is going to drive more than 3 hours to enter a weekday night ITG tournament, let alone fly in. We haven't forgotten about Oregon, Tofu, we <3 you guys! We just don't want to be overly optimistic and assume as many people are willing to travel.

ddrcrono - thanks for your end of the input. In Seattle, we definitely don't have many of those players, and if we do, they're from elsewhere, so it's nice to know that if we do have these hard rules, SOMEBODY will like them.

As for best 2 out of 3, I would assume this was the only way to do it anyway, unless you're doing it Tennis match style, which you can't do with more than like 5 players unless you want to be there for 5 days.

EDIT: I also want to note that I slightly disagree with the AMOUNT of criticism aimed at Gerrik in this thread. Maybe he is qualified. He is definitely trying to do something good for the community, so while we don't want a tournament that discourages addition to the community, we don't want to make Gerrik want to leave either.

@ Gerrik: I DO agree that when you ask players for input, and they give their input, you have an obligation to factor it to some extent if you want to be considered a credible event coordinator, and I think that's where lots of people have doubts about you so far.

This whole thing is starting to get serious yo...

I'm probably just going to chill, wait, and see what happens with this. I'm giving Gerrack a thumbs up for attempting a tournament with the current state of the community/genre. In the end I might not love the style of the tournament, but any tournament is better than no tournament at all.

What's an Oregon?

@DDRCRONO: 2 out of 3 is the default way of running these, but only helps so much depending on the rest of the details.  Some players feel that walking off the machine means you forfeit the song/round instantly, so either it can't be done, or the other player can stop as soon as you do; said players then write that into the tournaments rules, negating the ability to walk away from something meant to sap your stamina.  This happened to Laura at Sakuracon '07, where she pleaded to not have to play a 10 no-bar (we were playing on a PS2, so no bars at all) because she couldn't really do it in the first place and was starting to feel sick, but her opponent forced her to play it anyway.  I suppose with a you-pick-it-you-pass-it setup it would be fine because walking does affect your opponent still, but it's always kind of hard to say for sure.

Something else I remembered that is worth suggesting: Jerrad switched to California style song selection wherein both players write down multiple choices (song/difficulty, possibly left/right/mirror if rules allow) on a card and the other player picks one of those.  Admittedly, even with 5 slots on a card, you can put three 13's and two 12's, but it general, it keeps people from doing that because people tend to not be universally good at 12's and 13's.

Definitely have to agree with the last couple posts - any tournament is better than no tournament and we're thankful for whatever we can get, but when the response to "is there even any interest" is a whole bunch of players crawling out of the woodwork trying to guide the tournament toward a ruleset they generally agree on, the organizer should at least pay some heed.  We've all been a little too rough on Gerrack for standing his ground, but Gerrack, you do need to be willing to work with people for a tournament to work out to something worthwhile.  Additionally, everyone should ask any decent ITG players they might if they'd be interested and follow up with some basic format questions, or just refer them to this thread.  The more input and interest the better.

Gerrak, if this is your first tournament, or even your second or third, find someone to help you run it.  I just ran my tenth and I still consider myself new to running tournaments.  Also, you never want to run a tourny alone if there are more than 10 or 12 people there.  It's a handful.  I would be glad to help you build a fair ruleset, set up a bracket, and set up a nonstop random caprice tournament on SNOVA on the side for players like Laura and Suko to demonstrate their strengths as well.

Dude, you can come to Seattle any time, seriously. You can stay at my house, even.

Sorry for the double post, but I just had a stroke of... well, I just had a stroke.

As far as the Friday thing goes... I think we could convince ACME to let us have a Saturday if we made the argument properly, namely:

1. On any given weekday night, there are tons of random stragglers practicing. I know, because I go to ACME on weekday nights.

2. On any given Saturday morning, the arcade is empty. This usually persists until about 6 o clock.

3. If you take up an arcade for a tournament where the machine is on freeplay, and that's the machine people are coming to play (see: weekday nights,) that's bad for business.

4. If you attract a crowd who will play other games during tournament rounds with a free tournament on a day that nobody was going to be there anyway, that's a VERY good thing for business.

Basically, ACME stands to make more money out of a large tournament that starts Saturday at 10 AM than it does on a weekday night tournament, ESPECIALLY Friday. They're reluctant, not idiots. We should write them some kind of formal request. (I'd be happy to do this, as that's what I studied in school. Alternately, somebody else can.)

Laura - The other way of doing it, as far as I know, is total percentage, which obviously favours stamina players much more. I've also done hybrid rules that have a bit of both. (4 songs, 1 picked by each player, one random hard, one random expert, if you win 3+ songs you win the match, otherwise highest overall % wins)

ancsik - Typically the rules I've used are just strictly best 2/3, and if you get 0% that's the same song loss as 96% to 96.1%, to me if you penalize someone for bailing/failing you might as well be using overall % rules, pretty much. Though our policy with this formats we use in Canada is that you must pass a song you pick, or you lose the song no matter what.

I think if you look at it realistically, ~even without~ level caps (though I'm sure they'll be used) best 2/3 works out pretty evenly for stamina/accuracy players.

By the way, was there any word as to whether this would be single or double elimination? Actually...have you guys ever used Swiss? Makes for much closer matches throughout all the rounds, and is much more fun for everyone involved. (And less need for level caps too)

This is exactly what I was talking about earlier to make this more fair! I'm glad you guys support this format; it makes it a LOT nicer to both groups of players I think.

I would definitely attend a tournament for ITG2.

However, I have to agree with some of the sentiments here that this community would be better served by a tournament on Extreme or a tournament with a twist.

I have never actually participated in tournaments here, but the ones I did in Rhode Island/Boston were fairly well run, and I'd be able to assist anyone if they needed it.  

Additionally, the way our tournies were run were as follows:

Double elim, 16 seed

Random qualifier

2 for perfect, 1 for greats, 2 for freezes (no negative points for non-combo steps)

Best 2 out of 3, higher seed gets to pick whether they want first song choice or not.

Any pad disputes, unless something concrete is proven (sticky sensor, etc) then players will switch sides and repeat the song.  Best scores of both players are taken for that song.

You must pass the song that you pick, even if the other person fails or even forfeits.  That way, if someone decided to pick PSMO on a n00b, the n00b would at least get the benefit of that person getting a bit tired out.  And that person deserves it because he's a douche for picking psmo.  

No picking a song twice in a tournament, all mods allowed (with note that if solo or flat is picked, both players must agree to it).

---------

I don't believe in capping difficulties.  I feel like if a player worked hard enough to pass 13s, they deserve to use it in a tournament.  However, I reserve the right to mock that person heavily if they use a 13 to take out a scrub, when they could've done it with a 10 or 11.  If someone picks a song knowing the other player can't even pass it, they should be forced to wear a fluffy maribu boa for the rest of the tournament.

no


(Seriously, I kind of like it)

Allow me. 

Firstly, it makes the tournament boring at higher levels.  Personally, I'd pee my pants to watch two pros go head-to-head with Energizer, followed by Summer in Belize, followed by HOLY CRAP VERTEX HYPERCUBE.  No one should be forced to pick a 7, because they picked a 13 and were awesome at it.  It's just a fancy way of capping, which I still don't like the idea of.

Also, forcing me to hit a limit, as you suggest, can wreck my strategy against a particular player.  Since I am not as familiar with ITG as I am DDR, I'll give an example from Extreme.  One of my friends sucked at rhythm songs, so I would always use something like L'amour or Tears.  And since it was always a tight match, I would want to pick another rhythm song.  But their difficulties are all similar, so I would be forced to pick something else, and therefore, couldn't use her weakness against her.

Finally, 5 songs is a long tournament.  You would have to forsake double elim, which I would not recommend for so few people in a tournament, as I don't think Acme wants us there till dawn.  Also stamina wise, that can really hurt players.

So that's why I don't like that.  Fancy caps and longer tournament does NOT equal fun.

Ok.

Time for the guy whose been doing this for almost 10 years to chime in.

High end difficulty caps are a flat-out bad idea. I've done them in tournaments and it makes for boring final matches. It's all about balancing skill and strategy in the final rounds. I've found the card system to be the most beneficial; say you have a Bo5 match; you let each player write down three songs, switch cards, and allow the opponent to knock a song off, and then the remaining four songs get played.

Also, doing a victory margin with a set list of songs is also interesting. This is something I have done solely for final matches. Gerrak, if I do end up running an event this summer and you would like to assist, so you know hoe these things go, I'd be happy to oblige.

The problem with straight percent or PA matches is that it's hard to stay fresh with ideas, to the point where if I run another tournament, I'm going to do a modifier tournament, or something different, or just bring Double Dare Revolution back, because those events are more fun for both the player and the crowd, since it's something unusual.

I would advise Narrows anyways for tournaments, while it is in Tacoma, the facility itself caters better to tournies, and the staff are not as high and mighty.

Acme's good is that there's more of a central location, there's bonus rooms for silliness, and people seem to like the dedicab.

If anything, this is motivating me to run a tournament again, but if