West Coast Warzone II - Long Beach, CA - Apr. 2-4 2010

[IkeTakeda]

Render post all of tat doing his break time. Too good.

[ZONG_one]

Everything you could want to say, and more.

He's going to write my wedding vows for me.

[Teppelin]

Advice, feedback, and general notes

Thanks for all the pointers render. I'll try and make sure I get to all of these:

1. Don't throw BB first: I threw BB first because of all the feedback last year. I recall a lot of players saying that they didn't want to wait for the other games that they didn't care about and just wanted to get their finals done. If the community wants, I can look into a later start time for BB next year.

2. Too costly: I'm not sure where to go about this one. Even at the current price I'm losing money, and the point of all of this was to get SoCal a major. When I first joined the SF4 community and guys like Gootecks and Combofiend were traveling to events like East Coast Throwdown, Sinsation Fightclub, Final Round, NEC, Season's Beatings, etc, I asked around to see why SoCal didn't have a major. No one had the money to throw one, so I thought I would dip into my pockets to host the event. Those east coast majors are generally $20 if not more for a venue fee. WCW is honestly the only tourney in SoCal right now with any claim to being a major. With the other communities in mind, I don't think I can downsize at this point. I'm really not sure what to do about that. If the price point is what's killing BB, I may have to drop it.

3. BB Bonus Pot: I think offering the incentive pot is something I can do, but clearly not until both the community and I are on the same page. I can't go offering a bonus pot for 16 players. I failed the community at Warzone I, and I thought I delivered on most of my promises for Warzone II. Maybe Warzone III is where we can all meet in the middle. Should there be ample interest, I can look into throwing together a bonus.

3.5 Telling how many people signed up: I suppose in retrospect, that was a failed idea. Point taken. I will ignore those questions from now on.

3.7 Commentary: I was hoping it would end up being Sanchez and Mike Z, but Mike wasn't there that early I think. I'll make sure to solidify this and ask the people in advance for next year.

4. At site signups: We did have at the door sign ups, but they were restricted to Friday night before the tournament. I thought that point was stated rather clearly. And the drink ticket night was there to make sure that it was still a good night to come out and have a good time while you register if you wanted to do so. We wanted to have all brackets posted a few hours before the 1pm start time. This being the case, even if I did try and leave Saturday with at the door sign ups, they would have been from 9am to maybe like 10am. Then we make the brackets, go to Kinkos to print them out on the large papers, and then drive back to post them by 11:30 or 12. Though I understand that SF4 is the big concern, even the BB tournament to start on time, along with the other brackets we have to make for the other games, we have to stick to this kind of schedule.

5. Version Selection: I agree I should have given Aksys a stricter cut off time. This was my bad. Fortunately, this shouldn't be an issue in the future with console definitely out by the next event. I totally blanked on the Calamity Trigger picture. Ugh, that was dumb of me. A thousand apologies here.

6. Easter: This was definitely not a choice I liked either. But unfortunately, this was my circumstance: It was either throw it this weekend, or wait till 2011. My work schedule has me dying right now till the end of the year.

7. Raffle: The room prizes were distributed ultra late into Sunday. Fatbear from Oregon got the ASUS monitor, some white guy got the XBox, and some asian kid got the PS3. 4 Madcatz sticks were given away. Filipinochamp from Norcal got one. I don't recall the other 3 people. They were just people. We didn't expect all the matches on Sunday to go to last round, last game, last set almost every time. This pushed us back.

8. Stream Slot: I'm not sure what you mean on this one render. BlazBlue started promptly at 3pm and the website states that BlazBlue starts at 3pm. I don't think I advertised anywhere else that the stream of BlazBlue would be at a later time.

I honestly do welcome all the feedback. I hope you guys know that I do care and want to make sure that everyone gets a good tournament experience. This is going to be an iterative process. The best I can do is take all feedback and incorporate from one event to the next.

Should anyone have any further questions, please let me know. Hopefully, WCW3 will be the tournament that everyone can be happy with.

Also, would adding GG: AC help? I think I recall someone posting that coming for just 1 game wasn't worth it. I may be moving Marvel to PS3 so my standard def TVs would free up. Just a little food for thought. I'm not sure if I can really swing that schedule anyhow.

[Dacidbro]

I guess all I can say now is that I was deeply emotionally hurt when you misrepresented me on the stream dude

When you were like "Dacid blaming the buttons" my soul was in pain

In the next warzone tournament, I promise you there will be many salty tears if you hurt me like that again

but OTHER THAN THAT, which is a grudge that I am really serious about, thanks for helping out with the stream commentary, if you weren't even planning on doing it in the first place. I really did have a lot of fun, too.

[ZONG_one]

Also, would adding GG: AC help? I think I recall someone posting that coming for just 1 game wasn't worth it. I may be moving Marvel to PS3 so my standard def TVs would free up. Just a little food for thought. I'm not sure if I can really swing that schedule anyhow.

I know a couple people who would love you for this.

Only thing is the SoCal scene is half dead, so you may have to make sure people are willing to pay/enter.

[Teppelin]

I guess all I can say now is that I was deeply emotionally hurt when you misrepresented me on the stream dude

When you were like "Dacid blaming the buttons" my soul was in pain

In the next warzone tournament, I promise you there will be many salty tears if you hurt me like that again

but OTHER THAN THAT, which is a grudge that I am really serious about, thanks for helping out with the stream commentary, if you weren't even planning on doing it in the first place. I really did have a lot of fun, too.

Hey Dacid,

Sorry if I offended you with that. It was just smack talk that I do in other commentary. I didn't say it with malicious intent in any way. You looked down at your buttons and started tapping at them hard after losing a round. I would have said it to any other player there also. But as it offended you, I'm really sorry.

[mooyang90]

16-25 people are about the turnout of most AI ranbats. NorCal SVGL ranbats are also averaging about 20 people. While the $30 venue fee might have deterred some people, I don't think it would have made a significant difference. So TBH I think 16 people was pretty solid for a BB major this early, considering the majority of California has not even gotten a chance to try the game out.

If you have BB next year when console hits, you'll get a lot more players guaranteed. Speaking from a person who plays BB at AI semi-regularly, there's a lot of spectators for the game here. I have a feeling all they need is a training mode and they'll be playing the game in no time.

In closing, if you compare everything to SFIV, the turnout for any game isn't going to be too stellar. Right now the FGC is SFIV, then everything else. That game is a different beast entirely. It's like a varsity baseball team trying to compete ticket sales with the MLB, not gonna end up too well. The BB turnout wasn't that bad compared to the turnout for games such as MvC2 and T6.

[OrionXElite]

Also, would adding GG: AC help? I think I recall someone posting that coming for just 1 game wasn't worth it. I may be moving Marvel to PS3 so my standard def TVs would free up. Just a little food for thought. I'm not sure if I can really swing that schedule anyhow.

Actually the GG scene in NorCal is pretty prominent. We've been having monthly ranbats and we've been getting on average about 30 people for GG just from NorCal. I'm certain there is some amount of people who play in SoCal as well who be all over this so this is something that should definitely be taken into consideration.

[Dacidbro]

Hey Dacid,

Sorry if I offended you with that. It was just smack talk that I do in other commentary. I didn't say it with malicious intent in any way. You looked down at your buttons and started tapping at them hard after losing a round. I would have said it to any other player there also. But as it offended you, I'm really sorry.

Nah dude, I'm totally bullshitting you back

Believe me I'll get you back one day; when you get into Blaz (Let it happen bro), I'm gonna troll you HARD on commentary sometime.

[Prototype-03]

Nah dude, I'm totally bullshitting you back

Believe me I'll get you back one day; when you get into Blaz (Let it happen bro), I'm gonna troll you HARD on commentary sometime.

Don't let him fool you. He plays Bang. He only lost to another Bang. What does that tell you about Bang?

I always troll Dacid because I have only beaten him once on Saturday by time out

[Teppelin]

Nah dude, I'm totally bullshitting you back

Believe me I'll get you back one day; when you get into Blaz (Let it happen bro), I'm gonna troll you HARD on commentary sometime.

Fuck, I got trolled...

Don't let him fool you. He plays Bang. He only lost to another Bang. What does that tell you about Bang?

I always troll Dacid because I have only beaten him once on Saturday by time out

I wanted to try picking up that gun chick once CS comes out on console. Is she any good?

[CopperDabbit]

She's mid-ish tier, but can be used to great effect if played smartly.

[Teppelin]

I just like her from that image of her laying down with her hair down and listening to something while looking into an invisible camera looking slutty.

[Prototype-03]

She's fun, imo. You have to be really good at mixups though, which I'm not that great at. Though if you mixup and bait well, I'd say you'd be fine 'cause she's full of shenanigans. Once you get the momentum going, she's unstoppable.

[Dacidbro]

I just like her from that image of her laying down with her hair down and listening to something while looking into an invisible camera looking slutty.

Well dude at least you did your homework, some people put no thought at all into their character choice. The things fighting games go through, nowadays, I tell ya

[Teppelin]

Fuck, I gotta stop giving you ammo. LoL.

[Dacidbro]

:]

[render]

First off, I really appreciate you responding to my post. Just to make it really clear, I had a TON of fun at Warzone II, and will definitely be at the next one. I think you vastly improved the event over the last year, and Warzone II was, in my mind, an overall big success. If I sounded harsh at all, I'm partially just frustrated at the snail's-pace momentum that the BB:CS community is going right now, and that's mostly because of the lack of arcade cabs anywhere but at AI. (Side note: FUCK YOU, Family Fun and Denjin. Enjoy your AIDS/SF4.)

Thanks for all the pointers render. I'll try and make sure I get to all of these:

1. Don't throw BB first: I threw BB first because of all the feedback last year. I recall a lot of players saying that they didn't want to wait for the other games that they didn't care about and just wanted to get their finals done. If the community wants, I can look into a later start time for BB next year.

Next year it might not even be a problem, since by that time the console version will be out. This was not necessarily a comment about BB, but a comment about what to do with ANY game that you run that gets a low turnout.

2. Too costly: I'm not sure where to go about this one. Even at the current price I'm losing money, and the point of all of this was to get SoCal a major. When I first joined the SF4 community and guys like Gootecks and Combofiend were traveling to events like East Coast Throwdown, Sinsation Fightclub, Final Round, NEC, Season's Beatings, etc, I asked around to see why SoCal didn't have a major. No one had the money to throw one, so I thought I would dip into my pockets to host the event. Those east coast majors are generally $20 if not more for a venue fee. WCW is honestly the only tourney in SoCal right now with any claim to being a major. With the other communities in mind, I don't think I can downsize at this point. I'm really not sure what to do about that. If the price point is what's killing BB, I may have to drop it.

3. BB Bonus Pot: I think offering the incentive pot is something I can do, but clearly not until both the community and I are on the same page. I can't go offering a bonus pot for 16 players. I failed the community at Warzone I, and I thought I delivered on most of my promises for Warzone II. Maybe Warzone III is where we can all meet in the middle. Should there be ample interest, I can look into throwing together a bonus.

I totally understand. Again, once there's more exposure via console release, there will be more people willing to spend $20 for BB. But $30/$40 with nothing in the pot is a little steep.

As I said above, I think you topped last year in terms of the overall event, but it's kind of a tough call. If you don't put up any money for the pot, you rely on sign-ups for the pot money, and a low turn-out makes it not worth it. If you DO throw some money in there, you may have gotten more people to go, but you'll never know until the day of if it was actually worth it.

I think this part is all trial and error. No one's suggesting you drop $500 for the pot if you can't take it. But at the VERY least guarantee that if you place in the top 3, you make back the money you spent to enter the tourney.

3.5 Telling how many people signed up: I suppose in retrospect, that was a failed idea. Point taken. I will ignore those questions from now on.

I used to organize tours to Japan for people in the US, and the tour would hinge completely on whether or not we had the minimum number of people (usually 15-20) to operate the tour. Because of that, people would ALWAYS ask "well, how many people are signed up?", and I'd have to be like "uhh, allllmost enough to go!" so they'd feel confident that it would actually happen and help them to decide to actually go. If I told them "uhh, only like 5 so far", they'd balk and decide not to sign up.

Customers are fucking fickle.

3.7 Commentary: I was hoping it would end up being Sanchez and Mike Z, but Mike wasn't there that early I think. I'll make sure to solidify this and ask the people in advance for next year.

I personally like Xie (James), Bang Camaro, Spirit Juice, DacidBro, Sanchez, and Purrin's commentary. Just some suggestions. But yeah, definitely a good idea to have this decided in advance if possible.

And Mike had other stuff to worry about with the Skullgirls stuff, so it's cool. Your hands were tied and you did what you could. No worries.

4. At site signups: We did have at the door sign ups, but they were restricted to Friday night before the tournament. I thought that point was stated rather clearly. And the drink ticket night was there to make sure that it was still a good night to come out and have a good time while you register if you wanted to do so. We wanted to have all brackets posted a few hours before the 1pm start time. This being the case, even if I did try and leave Saturday with at the door sign ups, they would have been from 9am to maybe like 10am. Then we make the brackets, go to Kinkos to print them out on the large papers, and then drive back to post them by 11:30 or 12. Though I understand that SF4 is the big concern, even the BB tournament to start on time, along with the other brackets we have to make for the other games, we have to stick to this kind of schedule.

I hadn't considered the conundrum that making the brackets at the last minute presents. That's a good point. Not sure how to work around that. Maybe make a bracket for those that pre-reg'd, byes and all, and then stick the late sign-ups in wherever there are holes (letting them know ahead of time that they could end up with shitty seeding as a result - their fault for not pre-reg'ing).

As far as printing goes, couldn't you print out large-size brackets ahead of time and write the names onto the printout by hand? No need to have everyone's name printed out.

Re: the low turn-out, even if it was only a 16-man tourney, I think the competition was pretty fierce. There were a lot of really good players repping their respective areas. I was not disappointed at all with the tournament itself - only disappointed at the BB community showing lackluster numbers, making the community look kinda bad.

5. Version Selection: I agree I should have given Aksys a stricter cut off time. This was my bad. Fortunately, this shouldn't be an issue in the future with console definitely out by the next event. I totally blanked on the Calamity Trigger picture. Ugh, that was dumb of me. A thousand apologies here.

It's understandable that Aksys would want more time to decide, since I'm sure they were genuinely interested in helping out, since it'd be great publicity for them. Unfortunately, they don't have to give a shit about whether or not -your- event info is clear to people. Only you do. For those that frequent DL, it was well known that you would have CS. For those that come here only sparingly, it wasn't quite as clear.

One suggestion might be to update the first posts in your tourney threads whenever solid updates come up (by which I mean, final decisions/changes, not "hey, more info soon - don't know yet!" updates). You may have been doing this and I just didn't notice, but others would.

Regarding the logo, it's okay. No one let you know about it, and to be honest, it may not have made THAT much of a difference, but it's definitely something to keep in mind.

Again, to be clear, I'm not saying at all that you failed the community for any of these issues. Just trying to give honest CC.

6. Easter: This was definitely not a choice I liked either. But unfortunately, this was my circumstance: It was either throw it this weekend, or wait till 2011. My work schedule has me dying right now till the end of the year.

Yeah, I remember you mentioning this when you first announced the dates, and it makes perfect sense. I don't think it made TOO much of a difference, and I think in the end you benefited more from going for it and holding the tourney than waiting all the way until 2011. More experience running it all, more exposure. Warzone is on people's minds.

7. Raffle: The room prizes were distributed ultra late into Sunday. Fatbear from Oregon got the ASUS monitor, some white guy got the XBox, and some asian kid got the PS3. 4 Madcatz sticks were given away. Filipinochamp from Norcal got one. I don't recall the other 3 people. They were just people. We didn't expect all the matches on Sunday to go to last round, last game, last set almost every time. This pushed us back.

Aww, bummer. If I'd known when it was going down, I would've stayed longer. You should mention the raffle earlier on during the events of the last day!

8. Stream Slot: I'm not sure what you mean on this one render. BlazBlue started promptly at 3pm and the website states that BlazBlue starts at 3pm. I don't think I advertised anywhere else that the stream of BlazBlue would be at a later time.

I meant on Saturday. Maybe I'm confused. Wasn't there a stream on Saturday. I had absolutely no problems with how the stream was handled on Sunday, and I think having us go set up on Sunday morning to make sure everything works was really smart. Struck me as really professional.

I honestly do welcome all the feedback. I hope you guys know that I do care and want to make sure that everyone gets a good tournament experience. This is going to be an iterative process. The best I can do is take all feedback and incorporate from one event to the next.

Should anyone have any further questions, please let me know. Hopefully, WCW3 will be the tournament that everyone can be happy with.

I'm curious to hear YOUR opinion on how it went (not just BB, but Warzone II in general). Thoughts? Numbers? Anything that went particularly good/bad? Anything you want to do different? Share with us. :3 (if you have time, that is)

Also, would adding GG: AC help? I think I recall someone posting that coming for just 1 game wasn't worth it. I may be moving Marvel to PS3 so my standard def TVs would free up. Just a little food for thought. I'm not sure if I can really swing that schedule anyhow.

My finger is no longer on the pulse of the GG community, so I can't tell you. That's definitely a game that has more cross-over with BB, though, so I think running it along with BB would mutually benefit both games.

[Dacidbro]

Dacidbro

:D!!!!

[Teppelin]

I meant on Saturday. Maybe I'm confused. Wasn't there a stream on Saturday. I had absolutely no problems with how the stream was handled on Sunday, and I think having us go set up on Sunday morning to make sure everything works was really smart. Struck me as really professional.

I'm curious to hear YOUR opinion on how it went (not just BB, but Warzone II in general). Thoughts? Numbers? Anything that went particularly good/bad? Anything you want to do different? Share with us. :3 (if you have time, that is)

Ah, understood. For Saturday, HD-R ran a bit long and I didn't want to interrupt the tourney in progress for BB. Also, since there was only one setup, I didn't want to pull the setup inside the streaming area and not allow other players to crowd in and watch the matches. Also, since we hadn't had the opportunity to test the equipment that day, I didn't want to delay the tournament in the case that we needed something extra. Since next year should be on PS3, it should be a lot simpler.

In terms of how I thought things went: I was much much happier with Warzone this year than last year. All the tournaments, save SF4 singles, started on time. SF4 singles was like, 45 minutes to an hour late or something like that. I think we had a room count at 700 people in attendance at one point and 220,000 viewers on the stream for the weekend. I was pleased that I hit most of my goals for this tournament, especially starting on time.

The earthquake was fun. SoCal people just kind of kept watching the match on the screen and the east coast folk ran out of the building pretty damn quickly.

All in all, I was very happy with how WCW2 improved over the previous year. I'm hoping only for better things come next year.

[Virulent]

took me forever to get to my 1st post and account verification lol, but just wanted to give my thanks to everyone I met at WCW2. Actually, I was one of the suckers who pre-reg thinking it'd be CT until I saw the switch to CS and decided instead of asking for a refund, to just give the game and the tourney a kick.

It was kind of hard going in solo, but I ran into old friends I didn't expect to see and still had a decent time making new friends overall minus the fact that I had to leave early.

Shout outs to:

@Render: for breaking the ice for me and introducing me around the crowd. Congrats on upsetting the match against MikeZ, my hero, and making top4.

@TheBiter: who knew after 10+ years we'd run into each other again? that old condo that you used to live in on diamond st. is still there. I don't even know how to explain the nostalgia or just remembering you from my childhood and now just seeing each other as adults now, I guess it's kinda weird and kinda cool lol.

@BangCamero: Yes, I've seen you play before and yes I know you, only cause MikeZ has some pretty pwnage vids of you from AI lol. But it was great meeting you and your Bang that everyone apparently loved to play so much.

@Zong1: Always great to see your Carl in action, I'm never sort but amazed at what you can do. Thanks for being a chill and down-to-Earth guy to talk to.

@go to Brett, Soniti (btw, that's my name you have scribbled that starts with a G -> Gavin lol), Dacidbro, Goryus, Jason (playing Rachel), and the guy that was playing Hazama for also showing me around, sharing the arcade, and making me feel more welcomed into the community.

Also, thanks to Combofiend for kicking my ass

Thanks all for really showing me a great time. Overall, I was disappointed at the low turnout like everyone else but was glad to know that this SoCal community has been very friendly, more than I expected.

Unfortunately, with SSF4 coming out, I'm going to retire BB a bit to focus on that and StarCraft2 because frankly, the time, money and energy for me to go to AI for bbcs is currently not worth it for me. But I hope to see you around once bbcs is out on console this summer.

P.S. - I'm that Asian guy with a tattoo on his neck.

[ZONG_one]

Hey Virulent, I remember you!

It was nice to meet you.

[Jason D.]

Welcome, Gavin/Virulent.

And I have to say, I like your attitude. "Oh, this isn't the game I know how to play. Fuck it, I'm entering anyway!" Hope you enjoyed the sneak preview. See you in July!