Well, some of those 42 are too busy running tournaments, the arcade itself, or live thousands of kilometers away, so you can't really include the whole memberlist.

This isn't counting people we've seen playing at arcades that would be interested in participating but don't know about any of the stuff in the community at all. If you see someone who looks like they might be interested tell them about the site and the community, they'll probably be interested if they've been playing for a while.

Perhaps put up flyers?  I know we did that in the old days too, advertising our boards.  In recent times, we aren't even putting up flyers advertising tourneys.  That may also be to blame.

EDIT: I edit my posts a lot.  Noticed yet?

C'mon Tada, it's possbile!

And thanks BlueSS for the optimistic answer! Let's round 'em up!

(Too enthusiastic for 11:13, eh?)

I wasn't being pessimistic, I was just pointing out a technicality.  Global BBS had over 2,000 members; by your logic, we should at least have had attendance in the hundreds.

32 people is definitely possible if we expand the community a bit, and just keep the feel of being a community.

I haven't had time to work on any yet, but I'm at least going to get one in the UW HUB here soon for sure.
This is on the list of things to do though!

If someone else makes one up though, go ahead!

As you can tell from the tourney turnout from ITGFreak ALONE, not everyone is interested in participating in a tournament.  This factor didn't used to be as big, but recently, the skill differential is way too high and I'm sure nobody who "plays every now and then" wants to pay money to not qualify.

Wrong. There ARE some people that know for a fact they'll lose and still participate in tournaments.

I am one of them.

My two cents.

That statement doesn't make James' any less true.

Laura and I were both two examples of people at DS2 who didn't enter.

I think another problem is that at every tourney these days, we are dumping everyone into one division.  If there were two divisions (i.e. Basic Tech and Maniac Tech) like at the older tournaments, maybe everyone wouldn't feel so left out.  Not only has the gap between the rich and the poor (in tech ability) gotten larger, but having only one division serves to only amplify the problem.  Add in a Challenge Mode/Double Dare Revolution-like division and you have something to please everyone.

Sure, this may result in smaller brackets, but tournament entry overall would increase, and perhaps the lower division might work their way up and narrow the gap now that they have competition within reason, instead of always feeling like they suck if they can't get 198% on a song.

Tyrgannus> I guess the quantifier "nobody" in my post got the message mixed up.  What I meant should be easy to understand by reading everyone else's posts.

Tada> The problem is that the number of players is so small that we'd be getting brackets with single digit players... which I guess isn't too bad of an idea.  I mean lets face it, currently we can divide people by skill into groups of about 5, I think.  
We should try it in a smaller/possibly "informal" tournament to see how it goes.  Also, advertising is a huge factor, which this forum/BlueSS is attempting to help.  
A partially or wholly luck based tournament (to the tunes of a challenge mode) to get people to meet eachother could be helpful too.  Nobody knows eachother.

For my part, I know for a fact that I would enter most, if not all, DDR tournaments. This is because I know that my PA playing has room for improvement, and my timing is constantly improving, and I can set feasible goals for myself, such as  "Place in the middle" or "Take eighth" or something, thus making DDR tournaments a fulfilling experience for me.

On the other hand, my body is literally just not cut out for anything over ten feet. This isn't some kind of defeatist attitude or anything, it's just that I'm generally physically weak and have low blood sugar AND low blood pressure, such that trying to play 11 foot songs (unless they're rated that way purely for technical reasons) is pretty much a recipe for making me faint, or pass out, or just generally sick. Since most ITG tech tournaments START at nine feet, there's no reason for me to enter them, since by round two I'll not only be disqualified, but actually physically unwell for even trying.

Basically what I'm saying is "needs more DDR" or "needs more hard mode tech on ITG" if I'm going to start competing again. But I have no problem just showing up to hang out or anything, and as BlueSS said, we did that during DS2 and, for my part, it was a lot of fun.

Separate brackets may help to get a higher number of people entering overall.  The way I see it, the almost all the people that enter tourneys regularly now would be the upper division.  Making a lower division (that tops at 9 feet, maybe) would maybe take one or two people from the upper division bracket, tops.  The people who were at DS2 who didn't enter, as well as some casual players, might feel like entering now that they have a bracket where they won't just immediately get their ass handed to them and have no fun.

Here's my thoughts:

Have a monthly semi-official get-together, rotating around 3-5 of the better arcades (Narrows, Acme, Lloyd Tilt!, and somewhere easternish, maybe?) in the PNW, and every, say, 4th time we hit each arcade, we have a mini-tournament.
I've only actually met a couple of the people here in the flesh, and web-talked with plenty with a few others, but I'd really like to have a chance to meet everyone.
I also don't like the fact that I only have a chance to lose a game of DDR maybe once a year, despite the fact that I'm one of the worst DDR players on this forum, and I think my mom would be more inclined to let me go to the arcade to meet up with people I've actually met before.

For the separate divisions, my vote is a yes.  For every person at my level or better that I've encountered in an arcade setting, I've encountered 20 heavy players worse than me.  I think I'm kind of a good borderline between the upper and lower division too.
Also, if we have an upper division and a lower division, the people who can AA/AAA 9's and 10's like cake can at least have 9 or 10-ft qualifiers, instead of having an easy 7 as a qualifier and having half the people not qualify just 'cause they had 3 or more greats due to a pad error.

Rotating arcades is really flawed.  For me, I do not have the time or money to drive 200+ miles each way to go to other arcades every other month, and that's probably the case with almost everyone.  Narrows also has an upgrade cab, which is really bad for R21.  Let's just go with having more tourneys.  With tourneys, we'll get a chance to explore other arcades if we have the time to put aside to go to them.

If I did have the time for a 200+ mile trip (possibly people to go with me), I'd probably make my way up to Canada instead.

Yeah, but there's the fact that not everybody's in or near Seattle/Tacoma.
In fact, quite a ton of us are in Portland.
Or Bend, or somewhere that makes Seattle a really undesirable place to go for a tourney.
I for one don't have the time, money, or legal certification to drive to Northern Washington.
I do have the time, money, and legal certification to get on a bus and take it 5 miles to Downtown Po.

Obviously, very few of the Western Washington DDR players would come to Portland, or Spokane.
But I think the majority Oregon DDR players would come to Portland without a fuss, and the Idaho players would be happy to go to Spokane.
I was trying to be more inclusive.  Sure, we Oregonians could just all get together and have fun at Tilt! or in Eugene, but it'd be nice to not be completely isolated from our neighbor states.