Should the FFR Official Tournament Only Use New Files?

[psychoangel691]

So for the last 5? officials at this point we've been using all new files for every round in every division. As you can imagine this can sometimes make things tough and hold up start dates trying to fill in all those slots with files that are of proper difficulty.

I was thinking about maybe going back to how it was done in (I believe it was the 5th official) where the files were selected from those in game already aside from the final round. I think this may be better with summer already creeping around the corner but I wanted to see what everyone's opinion was on this.

Leave a vote in the poll above and mention why you feel that way.


Thanks!

[YoshL]

can you create an option for "i don't mind what happens", because I'm okay with either structure for the tournament

[ilikexd]

I think new charts make it more exciting, fun, and competitive and that it increases the interest or "hype". It, to me, is one of the things that makes it stand out the most from the unofficial tournaments.

The only two reasons I can think of for not doing this are that not enough new charts have been through submission and acceptance to fill all round slots, and at a certain point the game becomes flooded with content.

I don't think there's a good reason to change how it currently is unless there is actually no prospect of filling slots, which is not really a good reason as much as doing so out of necessity. Although judgement has stagnated, there is still the option of creating some streamlined process strictly for the official that still ensures a sufficient level of quality control.

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by ilikexd

I think new charts make it more exciting, fun, and competitive and that it increases the interest or "hype". It, to me, is one of the things that makes it stand out the most from the unofficial tournaments.

The only two reasons I can think of for not doing this are that not enough new charts have been through submission and acceptance to fill all round slots, and at a certain point the game becomes flooded with content.

I don't think there's a good reason to change how it currently is unless there is actually no prospect of filling slots, which is not really a good reason as much as doing so out of necessity. Although judgement has stagnated, there is still the option of creating some streamlined process strictly for the official that still ensures a sufficient level of quality control.

As of right now there's no way the official will happen in the summer if it's all new charts. There's not enough in queue and things are backed up. Finding the right charts to fill out that many rounds in that many divisions that are of appropriate difficulty is difficult when things are running normally. How things are now I would anticipate the tournament wouldn't start till late September.

[Gradiant]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

How things are now I would anticipate the tournament wouldn't start till late September.

I would be fine with this if it means getting new material every week for the tournament, that's one of my favorite parts of participating in them. The backlogging of files should start getting taken care of soon too as the judge applications recently started which should help out.

[ilikexd]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

As of right now there's no way the official will happen in the summer if it's all new charts. There's not enough in queue and things are backed up. Finding the right charts to fill out that many rounds in that many divisions that are of appropriate difficulty is difficult when things are running normally. How things are now I would anticipate the tournament wouldn't start till late September.

I don't mean to hijack this thread by going too far off onto a tangent, but I think that, as a whole, the mass of submissions that are still pending judgement could cover the greater part of what would be at most 7x10 slots, and that slots at either end of the difficulty spectrum can be specifically filled if needed as per usual. It's just that the ratio of the amount of effort it takes to process and accept content for the game to the ratio that it takes simply to create that content is so monstrous that it has historically reflected in backups and lateness and now in this case stagnation. I simply don't think that the current process under a reduction in activity can persist; in fact, it already has ceased, and that doesn't bode well for organizing activity-producing events such as the official tournament. But I know that it's a quite inopportune time to implement or even contemplate such drastic changes given the calamity of recent events.

[mrpreggers]

guess i'm the only no here rip i'd rather wait a few months for you guys to amass new files than play old files we've scored well on/mindblocked

[ilikexd]

Originally Posted by mrpreggers

guess i'm the only no here rip i'd rather wait a few months for you guys to amass new files than play old files we've scored well on/mindblocked

Originally Posted by Gradiant

I would be fine with this if it means getting new material every week for the tournament, that's one of my favorite parts of participating in them. The backlogging of files should start getting taken care of soon too as the judge applications recently started which should help out.

For what it's worth, I also agree with this. If needed I think it would be better to wait.

However I would stress that summer really is the best time for the official given it's when everyone has the most free time and activity and the community peaks.

[badman7772]

C'mon guys. You got over 1700 public songs and you need more for an official? It just shows how spoiled the community is. Even I feel like some songs are new when I'm asked to play them in a tournament nowadays.

[psychoangel691]

I had to run out so I'll reply more when I get home. I'll add poll options for neutral as well as mix of new and old files.

[Deadlyx39]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but official last year was late September right?
Anyway it seemed to me as a spectator last year that the new files made everything look so much nicer to me as a person who hadn't been on the site in quite a while.
It makes it look like the community cares a lot about the official to people who may be like me who haven't been on the site in a long time.

[Zageron]

There is always an option of reducing "Songs of the Week" to "Song" of the week, to help accelerate the growth of the back-log. Is that a feasible idea?

[Trumpet63]

Originally Posted by Zageron

There is always an option of reducing "Songs of the Week" to "Song" of the week, to help accelerate the growth of the back-log. Is that a feasible idea?

I agree... Yes, we have enough songs for the userbase to play the game, but the point of a tournament is to have fair competition. Do we really want to roll the dice on whether a player will have an advantage? There's no shortage of music and charts, the team just has to allocate and prioritize their budget of work time. So yes, please keep the official tournaments as competitive as possible.

[psychoangel691]

Originally Posted by Trumpet63

I agree... Yes, we have enough songs for the userbase to play the game, but the point of a tournament is to have fair competition. Do we really want to roll the dice on whether a player will have an advantage? There's no shortage of music and charts, the team just has to allocate and prioritize their budget of work time. So yes, please keep the official tournaments as competitive as possible.

I already mentioned that this solution wouldn't do anything to help the problem, reducing songs of the week when there's only 29 in queue and likely only a few that actually fit what we need isn't going to make this work.

How exactly is it a roll of the dice for someone to have an advantage with only old files? There can still be an advantage with new files based on the skillset that it stresses. What if I end up with nothing but jumpstream files for like the whole tournament in a division? Yes that's almost happened in the past. It would be better to have the option to change up the different skillsets each round with the huge amount of files that are available.

Originally Posted by Trumpet63

There's no shortage of music and charts, the team just has to allocate and prioritize their budget of work time.

This part struck a nerve, I'm not going to lie. I've busted my butt for how many official tournaments now? You have no idea the time that already goes into it. It's not about a budget of time when basically all the ffr judges had to move on to different things and there's been no one to judge the batches. I've offered to help out with it, but they still need more people. This isn't about prioritizing time. They're working on getting new judges in which is going to take time, then they need to catch up on everything that's backlogged, then finally we'd be able to try to get to special batches for the tournament.

[Trumpet63]

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

I already mentioned that this solution wouldn't do anything to help the problem, reducing songs of the week when there's only 29 in queue and likely only a few that actually fit what we need isn't going to make this work.

I'm not saying this is an immediate solution. If we took the three songs that are released roughly each week and saved them up for an entire year (the official tourney is annual right? I might be mistaken), that's like 150 songs. On the long term, if the team started filing away songs for the tournament really early, then there could be all new songs. But yeah, as far as an immediate solution, it's just not possible, given what you've told me about the state of things.

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

This part struck a nerve, I'm not going to lie. I've busted my butt for how many official tournaments now? You have no idea the time that already goes into it. It's not about a budget of time when basically all the ffr judges had to move on to different things and there's been no one to judge the batches. I've offered to help out with it, but they still need more people. This isn't about prioritizing time. They're working on getting new judges in which is going to take time, then they need to catch up on everything that's backlogged, then finally we'd be able to try to get to special batches for the tournament.

I promise, I had no intention of insulting the efforts of the judgement team. I do apologize for how what I said came across. I'm saying, take the same amount of songs that were released this year and put as many as possible into the tournament. "There's no shortage of songs" was the wrong way to word that. :/

Originally Posted by psychoangel691

How exactly is it a roll of the dice for someone to have an advantage with only old files? There can still be an advantage with new files based on the skillset that it stresses. What if I end up with nothing but jumpstream files for like the whole tournament in a division? Yes that's almost happened in the past. It would be better to have the option to change up the different skillsets each round with the huge amount of files that are available.

Ideally we can mix up the songs so that there is a balance of the different skillsets, but what your saying makes total sense. If we had all the songs to pick from, maybe we could make a better tournament. That said, I can't help but think of the inevitable, when someone has been playing a song for weeks, and that song just happens to be picked for the official tournament. Song variety is something we can fix in the long run by getting more awesome people behind this site, but allowing any number of players to have practiced the tournament songs beforehand just breaks it for me. I don't think it's something we should compromise on.

[lurker]

Originally Posted by Trumpet63

There's no shortage of music and charts, the team just has to allocate and prioritize their budget of work time.

you have no idea what you're talking about

[Trumpet63]

Originally Posted by lurker

you have no idea what you're talking about

Probably true, lol, but I tried to fix that statement just above.

[choof]

i would be perfectly fine reusing old files and not putting players on a more level ground
i would also be perfectly fine reusing old files and not clearing up the backlog of files

[Wayward Vagabond]

I much rather prefer playing old files with only the last two rounds being the only rounds with new songs. The game is over saturated with files that receive very little plays because of all the songs that the game currently has already. So unless we start retiring files I would much rather recycle songs for the tourney than use new ones all the time. There were no complaints with this before I don't see why there should be any now

[choof]

Originally Posted by Wayward Vagabond

I much rather prefer playing old files with only the last two rounds being the only rounds with new songs. The game is over saturated with files that receive very little plays because of all the songs that the game currently has already.

this is a flawed argument

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