9th Official Tournament: Post-Competition, Closing, and Suggestions

[TC_Halogen]

The 9th Official FFR tournament is finally over. Those 8 weeks absolutely flew by, and personally -- I am glad it is over. Managing this tournament was a bit more time-consuming than I expected. At this point, I really want to take the time to talk about the positives and negatives of the tournament, as well as discussing what everyone involved can do to make the tournament a much better experience. I feel like an open discussion about the overall tournament as a whole can give everyone the chance to speak their mind. Please keep in mind that this thread is still subject to any and all forum rules -- just be intelligent and make sure that your post is respectful.

Positives
- On an external level, the timing on the tournament was executed really well. Pushing the start date back a day was the best idea that I had this tournament, because it allowed me to make sure that rounds ended at 11:59 PM EST, and that rounds started at 12:00 AM EST. None of tournament rounds were put up late, and players had full access to their songs right from the get-go, with one exception (will be listed in the negatives).

- On an internal level, the timing was also quite well handled, but I am going to take very little credit for that. I owe a huge thanks to Dossar and One Winged Angel for doing their absolute best despite their constrained college schedules for getting frame fixes and difficulties out to me in a timely manner. Any instance that frame fixes were late had absolutely nothing to do with Dossar. I also owe bmah thanks for getting me song genres way ahead of time so that I could fill out data/song information. I also owe EzExZeRo7497 for supporting with difficulty placements in the last two rounds when everyone's time was stretched to their limits.

- The elimination structure promoted growth while still being competitive. I set up the eliminations to be as even as possible so that the people barely surviving the cutoffs continued to have the time to flourish and improve. I will definitely use this same cutoff structure for the next time this tournament is hosted, because it gives the underdogs a fighting chance.

- moches did a fantastic job keeping some of the users engaged with his great front page posts, and I absolutely would not hesitate to use him for something like this -- his attitude was absolutely fantastic and he was a pleasure to work with. Thanks bud!

- Communication with users was literally as high as I can manage. I did my best to answer absolutely every tournament-related private message, and I'm pretty sure I had at least a 95% success rate with responses. Granted, some of these responses might have been a bit blunt due to overall exhaustion/frustration, an open line of communication matters a lot to me. This good practice keeps users in the loop and can resolve situations well.

- For the most part, users were actually quite tame this tournament. Many users did a really good job bringing their issues to me via private messages as I requested, and users also did a nice job keeping their thoughts respectful both in the main tournament thread and discussion threads as well.

- The events team was PHENOMENAL behind the scenes before the start of the tournament. Huge thanks to foxfire667, PrawnSkunk, YoshL, and psychoangel691, because you guys were absolutely slaying placements, and at an incredible pace. I owe a lot to YoshL's spreadsheet mastery, because he made the placement process a lot smoother and organized. Without him, the tournament likely wouldn't have started on time due to my work schedule ramping up literally right at the start of the tournament.

Negatives
- Time was VERY largely against me in this tournament. I don't like to make excuses, but anyone that was in any sort Skype chat with me can vouch for the fact that I was beyond stretched.

- Communication with my team was not great, and it was 100% my fault (100% my fault in that it wasn't my team's fault -- I will revert the issue back to time again). My communication was largely intermittent with Dossar and OWA -- sometimes I would get in touch with them a few days before the next round's start, and other times, I would be rushing to get in touch with them literally hours before the round's start. This did hurt me in a round where I mixed up the D3 round's song with the D5 tiebreaker (more specifically the uploads).

- Major issue: because I had to use 56 files in the tournament, and just barely over that in the active queue while leaving some Song of the Week releases prior to the start of the tournament, it took a really stupid amount of manipulation to try and get things work. According to many users, the structure of the songs simply didn’t work. I don’t completely agree, but I will level with the fact that there were certainly structural issues in different divisions. I will definitely be taking really small bits of files from upcoming batches to ensure that I can start building a tournament lineup early without detrimentally affecting Song of the Week releases.

- Major issue: while many people didn’t voice an issue about this, I personally was getting really frustrated with the types of files I had to use. Nothing against the stepartists who created the files at all, but as a tournament host, I was having an extremely difficult time avoiding jumpstream heavy files – I didn’t have a lot of purely technical, perfect-for-tournament files that didn’t give people a considerable advantage. Again, this is something that can definitely be alleviated through early planning.

- Minor issue: D7 simply had way too easy of a time in this tournament. Next time around, I’m going to probably open D7 up in the lower 80 range (82/83) as opposed to starting with a (not quite) 77.

- I was actually quite upset and disappointed at the number of cheating instances I had to deal with. I really sincerely hope that users think a bit more about their integrity as a player as opposed to trying to circumvent tournament rules.


At this point, I would like to open SERIOUS discussion about the tournament, what you would like to see, and what I can potentially do for you guys to make the experience better for everyone. Thanks to everyone who participated, and I look forward to seeing you guys participate in another official tournament!

Also, I will be working on prize distribution tonight and tomorrow. Those of you that placed well enough will see your tokens very soon (within the next hour or so).

[Kibblre]

Timing was a setback for some I think. Thanksgiving and finals especially were a problem for me at least.

[omega_grunt666]

I'd like to see some competition between the non-prize positions if at all possible. Like instead of being completely eliminated you still post to the leaderboards (or a second leaderboard for eliminated) since it all updates automatically anyways. Then you still get all the fun of an elimination tournament, but people who die 1st/2nd/3rd round don't sit through the rest of the tournament twiddling thumbs, and still get that rivalry/improvement/participation factor.

But yeah, other than timing etc. This was pretty great, awesome job!

[Gradiant]

Originally Posted by TC_Halogen

It goes without saying: CHEATING IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN. Anyone caught cheating in this tournament will receive a minimum punishment of forum banishment, and will be considered for more severe punishment. As mentioned in the FFR forum rules, using a bot or trainer is grounds for score removal, and other implicit methods of score boosting like account sharing will result in further reprimand. Do not try to circumvent rules with loopholes. Chances are, if it’s questionable, it shouldn’t be done. In addition to this -- if you have cheated in previous tournaments, I reserve the right to deny your entry in the tournament. Decisions are FINAL, and if you are told that you are not allowed to enter, you are NOT allowed to enter.

People that cheated weren't banned.

Also, when issues about certain players are brought up, you can't say it's too late to bump them up when they have already AAA'd the file in the higher up division. Wasn't much of a surprise who the winner was (you know what division I'm talking about). Or maybe I'm just bitter that I was two D7 players away from Fractured Sunshine.

Other than that, really fun tournament and I loved the file choices in this official a lot more so than the eighth official.

[Xx{Fallen}xX]

I had tons of fun during this official, i cant wait until the next one. My only disappointment was not getting to see an epic D7 tiebreaker, lol GG everyone!

[TC_Halogen]

Originally Posted by Gradiant

People that cheated weren't banned.

Also, when issues about certain players are brought up, you can't say it's too late to bump them up when they have already AAA'd the file in the higher up division. Wasn't much of a surprise who the winner was (you know what division I'm talking about). Or maybe I'm just bitter that I was two D7 players away from Fractured Sunshine.

Other than that, really fun tournament and I loved the file choices in this official a lot more so than the eighth official.

Way to nab me there, Gradiant. Yeah, they haven't been banned yet, and it's a tough situation for me to handle, especially in the case of YoshL. As mentioned in the first post, he was an incredibly huge help at the start of the tournament, and he made a really stupid mistake. I don't know what his thoughts were, but I really can't come to terms with banning YoshL (or at least, banning him for an extended length) when he's had an overall positive impact on the community with good simfiles, a few hosted events, and his overall positive attitude.

Then there was Ninjacide, a D2 player who decided to just bot on an alternate account for no reason; even then, he didn't get banned, but he was blacklisted. I really should just change the rules next time to implicate a person being blacklisted as opposed to massacred/banned.

In regards to SaFyre/Nekogon -- all I can say is that there are high level players in each division, and (at the start) they weren't inside of the D7 threshold as set. You can't sit there and say that a person belongs in the division up when they AAA the songs a division higher, especially in D6 -- you'd have to be AAAing really far into the 80s (up to like round 6) or absolutely decimating 90+ files to be put in D7, and they simply didn't have it.

SaFyre and Nekogon placements were literally the most frustrating things about this tournament to me, because I didn't want to put them in D6, but I didn't want to put them in D7, either. Regardless, they'll easily be in D7 next time around and this won't be a issue again.

[Poison-]

I liked having the competition of such high-tier players in the same division as me when I was playing. But once I couldn't continue playing and was eliminated, it became really clear that those two should have been D7.

AJ did a great job with the tournament though. Placements will always be controversial, there's no way of avoiding it.

Hopefully I can play in the next one and give it a real shot of winning.

[HalfStep]

no d7 tiebreaker = hype killer
idc if ji didnt wanna play, I think you should've posted the song anyway

[yo man im awesome]

mmhmm. There needs to be those who are the top of a division, and the bottom. If there weren't, it would just be ties all around, and besides, it gives everyone something to work towards; those at the bottom of the division are pressed to stay alive and improve their overall performance, while those at the top need to work to maintain their image and make sure they don't fall behind.

There always has to be someone who's eliminated first. It's how elimination structure tournaments work. Can't accept that, you shouldn't participate in an elimination tournament.

Overall, this was easily the best Official Tournament I've been a part of, topping even my D4 run. I didn't make it as far technically speaking, but from a personal standpoint, 7th place is still unbelievable to me.

You did a fantastic job hosting this, AJ, don't be too hard on yourself. Your goal was to make and keep everyone happy, and I'd say that you did a damn good job of that overall. That's one of the reasons I'm never really all that happy really, I'm more concerned with making other people happy than I am myself, and it kills me when I know I can't make somebody happy. I wouldn't blame you for your time constraints at all; everyone was begging for an Official tourney, and you're the #1 person to host one. It was unlucky timing for you, but in the end, I'd argue that it was definitely worth it in the end.

My only disappointments (if you could call them that) were the lack of the D7 Tiebreaker (although, please, as fun as that would be to see, it wasn't all that necessary, besides, it was written in the final tourney FPP that there would be two winners in D7 ) and of course, like you said, the fact that we started on hella easy files. But other than that, there's really nothing to complain about from our end.

Nice job AJ.

[smartdude1212]

Next time I'm studying in a different country you have to delay the tournament for 8-10 weeks okay thanks.

I agree that D7 had a relatively easy time. As fun as it is to see AAA-or-die in higher rounds, it's inherently less fun for a player when you either AAA immediately (and then have to wait a week) or are staring at a wall of green after the first day and start to get frustrated because you know you should be nailing the AAA too but nerves, frustration, etc. kick in. D7 needs brutal hardpain files where it comes down to a PAing contest... that would be fun to see, and it would make for great, week-long competition.

(I am glad that this wasn't a cumulative tournament though, since Luis basically knocked the wind out of everyone's sails with a round 8 slam dunk last official and nobody else had a hope of tying for first.)

As for the file issue, it would sure be nice to have more than just zzz jumpstream zzz for 95% of the hard files and then one or two questionable, spiky parts to fuck with everyone (see: Epidermis v2). I realize that this may make it more difficult to fill the quota given the song selection out there, but I thought some of last official's D7 songs (Ordeal and Stinger) were amazing on the variation front. But fuck the song selection shit, we've got an enormous list of permissions for a reason.

This is why I'd like to see Robotomy in-game, and especially as part of an official... it'd be a hardpain PA fest for D7, with all kinds of wonky colours and shit to fuck with all the kids. Stop spoon-feeding us the AAA fodder and give us Robotomy! WE'RE HUNGRY FOR PAIN AND EXPLODING COMPUTERS.

Edit: And moches for dictator, he and plopadop could plop out masterpieces any day.

[~Zeta~]

If people are borderline between a division, I'd much rather see them bumped up than sit back. It seems to happen way more often than not that they improve beyond expectations.

[choof]

I didn't have too much to do with this tourney, however I will say this:

YoshL doesn't deserve to be banned from the forums. Barred from joining the next tourney? Definitely. The forums and the game are two separate entities; I don't think one case of cheating is grounds for a sitewide ban.

[TheSaxRunner05]

I must say placements were better than the past.

[Fantasticone]

Would like to see the next tourney to be cumulative scoring for all divisions. Just wanna see how it would turn out.

[Devilchilly]

10th anniversary of the Official Tournament :3

[Xiz]

In my eyes, I'll be short and to the point:

Pros:

- The amount of dedication by ALL of the staff to get this set up was well done. A huge thank you is in order, especially you AJ who somehow didn't explode and rage-quit though everything this tournament.

- The songs were fun. I enjoyed the files in every division a lot more this year. While they might have not been technically challenging as others would suggest, they still were fun to play.


Cons:

- Placements were a tad off, that's obvious

- The timing of this tournament. Over thanksgiving is something I wouldn't recommend. Can we go back to starting at the start of the summer or something? Everyone won't be happy with that, but I find it might be better.

- Lack of files to choose from I guess


Suggestions?

(A lot of these might be stupid, but they will get the ball rolling perhaps...)

- Perhaps make a separate Tourny batch, and keep it more secret. Like PM batch notes secretly and hide the submissions so only the step-artists and judge team know the files? Makes the surprise more interesting haha

- For the people who get out rounds 1-3 ... perhaps a looser bracket of something can be taken into account? Like have them play the lower division until the end? (This will require a different spreadsheet for those put in the looser bracket, like a second chance at the tourny?)

- IRL prizes. I wanted to do some this year but financially I sadly couldn't. I could perhaps do prizes next year though. That would be such a nice little bonus.



Overall, great work staff. Looking forward to the 10th

[EzExZeRo7497]

As someone who was somewhat behind the scenes (file selection), I really felt that you started the tournament with insufficient preparation and prior planning (both in files and the fact that you had a really tight work schedule), so I really didn't expect the tourney to go all that well. But it is remarkable that you managed to make the tournament as enjoyable as it is for most people, even though you had a rough schedule and a very limited selection of files to pick from.

D7 really had it easy this time round, although D7 is supposed to be the division that will destroy everything, they shouldn't be having such tight cutoffs at the latter part of the tournament (there wasn't any cutoff that's worse than a blackflag in the entire tourney), so I think you should've used harder files for the tournament overall. You might say that it would put too many hard files into the game, but if you think about it the only time we actually get difficulty 90+ files are from tournaments. But seeing that the hardest file in the batch (aside from tiebreakers) was Heterochromia Iridis (and with frame fixes/your fix the file is easier) and you really didn't have enough hard files that weren't over the top (Bolt Thrower <_>), I can see why you couldn't do that.

I'm really surprised with how D5 performed this tournament, you guys are absolutely insane. Although they were a couple of files that are overrated (such as Shatterscape) and even if they weren't overrated (Umbral Ultimatum), you all had ridiculous cutoffs that I don't think anyone would have anticipated before the tournament. Good job to all of you guys, jesus christ.

All in all, it was a good tournament. I still feel that the tournament should've started later so that the experience would be better and it wouldn't cause as much stress to you (AJ) than it really caused, but I'm pretty sure everyone's satisfied by your efforts. Placements were generally fine (there are some iffy people, such as NekoGon and SaFyre), the files used for the tournament were okay but could use a little more diversity, but I'd say the tournament structure turned out fine, it could be worse, not to mention considering the limited file selection it's really difficult to make a really good tournament structure with what you have. A lot of people skill boosted from the tournament and I'm pretty sure most of the competitors enjoyed themselves.

Good job on the tournament AJ.

[YoshL]

Originally Posted by Xiz

Suggestions?

- Perhaps make a separate Tourny batch, and keep it more secret. Like PM batch notes secretly and hide the submissions so only the step-artists and judge team know the files? Makes the surprise more interesting haha

- For the people who get out rounds 1-3 ... perhaps a looser bracket of something can be taken into account? Like have them play the lower division until the end? (This will require a different spreadsheet for those put in the looser bracket, like a second chance at the tourny?)

- IRL prizes. I wanted to do some this year but financially I sadly couldn't. I could perhaps do prizes next year though. That would be such a nice little bonus.

This...may be interesting? although much more effort. With a tourney batch, estimating at about 100 files, maybe on average everyone submits 2 songs. that's 2 reviews per group of 4 judges that need to be sent to 50 different people.

that's a lot of management, just for the sake of keeping the batch secret. In any case, round previews were nice, and no-one really knew 100% what was coming up in rounds

--

loser bracket, didn't reuben have his thing going? i didn't exactly follow the thread so i don't know how that tourney worked, but there could easily be an unofficial side thing like that

--

irl prizes are tough because there've been past years where people didn't recieve the prizes that they were told that they were gonna get (cough choofers cough cough cough), so unless one of the event staff (probably Kayla) has the prizes physically so she/AJ can make sure that they're properly distributed at the end of the tourney, it's probably just easier to not?

[awein999]

Very interesting tourney, well done, especially considering this is all non-profit. All song choices were logical and it went smooth enough that there are no real cons imo.

I'd like to see an easy batch and 1 song+ of lvl 20 or lower added to the game every week during an official. I want the site to try to be a little more newbie friendly during this event. It's easy to forget about that.

Edit: I don't really know what "batch" entails. I just mean 1 easy song minimum to go with all the competitive songs every week.

[Xiz]

Originally Posted by YoshL

This...may be interesting? although much more effort. With a tourney batch, estimating at about 100 files, maybe on average everyone submits 2 songs. that's 2 reviews per group of 4 judges that need to be sent to 50 different people.

that's a lot of management, just for the sake of keeping the batch secret. In any case, round previews were nice, and no-one really knew 100% what was coming up in rounds

--

loser bracket, didn't reuben have his thing going? i didn't exactly follow the thread so i don't know how that tourney worked, but there could easily be an unofficial side thing like that

--

irl prizes are tough because there've been past years where people didn't recieve the prizes that they were told that they were gonna get (cough choofers cough cough cough), so unless one of the event staff (probably Kayla) has the prizes physically so she/AJ can make sure that they're properly distributed at the end of the tourney, it's probably just easier to not?

Agreed, this requires more effort. It's mostly to surprise everyone, instead of everyone guessing what is next, ya know?

--

Kinda-not really. While Rubens thing was fucking sweet, I'm proposing something different. For example, lets say during the tournament round 1, this happens:

I'm just choosing random names, to show point lol

Example D5:
Dossar
AlexDest
YoshL
Sweet Angel
Fission (Out round 1)
Danceguy117 (Our round 1)
Charu (Our round 1)
Poison- (Our round 1)


^ Take those four who got eliminated, and put them in their own bracket one division lower for next round (Instead of them ghosting their current bracket)

D5 Looser bracket (Playing current D4 song)
Fission
Danceguy117
Charu
Poison-


Every round add in the eliminated from the previous round, till a 'Loser Bracket Winner'

Fission
Sweet Angel (Out round 2)
Danceguy117 (Out round 2)
YoshL
Charu
Poison-


...Not sure if that makes sense. Let me know if not. But that's kinda what I was thinking

---

Yeah, I get what'cha mean. The prizes need to already be done and ready to go. Like already in the hands of Mr & Mrs. Halogen or something prior to tourny start instead of during or whatever.