Ottawa: Why have fundamentals when you have gimmicks?

[Essay]

I wanna play GG. Bring a station. D:

I got yo back.

[Rigel Cyrosea]

Hosting on Saturday. Noon till whenever.

[Essay]

Going to grab Bruce and swing by in a bit so we can get our Faust on.

[Hash]

Rolled by at around 6 but there was no one there. Guess I came a bit too late.

[Essay]

Rolled by at around 6 but there was no one there. Guess I came a bit too late.

D'oh, yeah, we all broke for dinner out at the same time. If you had come about 30 minutes later I think you would've caught people returning. Best bet is to text someone if you're coming at potential dinner hours just to confirm where people are at.

[lofo]

GGs all, let's figure something out for that ranbat idea. :3

[lofo]

oh I said I'd post some Testament stuff. here's a pretty cool match of kl vs te http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GSbCSsN2qQ&t=44m01s

[Dagwood]

yeah I went ahead and bought +R. Getting in some good lab time now

[Rigel Cyrosea]

So, ranbats. They were suggested last week. I think these days we have enough people that we could run a reasonable bracket.

Weekly, random seeded double elim? They shouldn't take long to run, given our numbers. I could probably scrounge up a minor prize for most points after a month or something.

What do you all think? Worth doing? Format? Location? Not sure whether more people tend to come out to my place or Algonquin. We usually have more stations at my place, but I can't guarantee being able to host every week (though it looks good for the next while).

[lofo]

gonq meetups feel a bit more official/structured. the sat meetups are more laid back imo, and people tend to come and go whenever for those. maybe we could figure something out such that we can get 2 setups going at gonq? i'll do whatever to help with that if i can. whatever happened to that huge CRT? i havnt seen it in a while.

@dagwood: sick. are you trying out a bunch of chars or sticking with one?

[Dagwood]

Yeah i think gonq would be better, because if other people see us doing the ranbat, they might get more interested in the game and want to try it.

If its more consoles we need I could bring my ps3 now that I have +R.

@lofo: Definitely sticking with dizzy, i love her. But trying out others too, i learned a lot of Testament and Zappa stuff.

[Essay]

We're talking about GG ranbats, right? Like weekly tournaments? Or a league table to play out, ala Topanga Asia League?

The latter makes more sense to me, as it's more flexible in terms of organizing matches, since people could run their matches at either 'Gonq or other meetups, depending what people can actually make it to. Gotta keep in mind blizzards and other seasonal obstacles will start to get in the way soon, so the more flexible the format, the better.... (What to do if new people want into the league? Run a bunch of catch-up matches?)

Personally, I'm only lukewarm to the idea of mini tournaments for points like what they tried last month with AE. I'm not all that interested in seeing 'Gonq turn into a set weekly commitment to worry about, mostly because my future is murky and there will be bad weather days. :scared:

EDIT: I'm curious what those who haven't chimed in yet think. Phil? Adam? Bruce? Joe?

Edited November 20, 2013 by Essay

[Rigel Cyrosea]

I'm personally completely open to other formats. I don't know how Topanga works, though.

Basically the point of this is to have a few matches a week that matter more than a random set of casuals. It gives us all something to work towards between other tournaments. Ideally also we would record them to review later, but I'm not sure we can manage that right now.

[lofo]

I think the ideal format is something where you can miss a week or whatever and it's not a big deal, and new players aren't penalized much (or at all) for not having been there before. Mini weekly tournaments could fulfill that, but I don't know how workable that is. I'm also open to other formats, and don't know how this league thing works. Can you explain?

@Dagwood: Cool.

[Essay]

I think the ideal format is something where you can miss a week or whatever and it's not a big deal, and new players aren't penalized much (or at all) for not having been there before. Mini weekly tournaments could fulfill that, but I don't know how workable that is.

Yeah, I've got the same concern. The problem with weekly tournaments that we add the points up from is just that: missing a week entails missing potential points. If each tournament is just its own thing, with its own prize, it's not a problem, but then they stop feeling like big deals.

I'm also open to other formats, and don't know how this league thing works. Can you explain?

The format I mentioned (which worked pretty well back when I played in competitive 8-ball leagues) I think is most commonly referred to as a Round Robin, and sees every player play against every other player a set number of times for points/wins. The advantage of this format is that if someone falls behind on playing out their matches, they can catch-up another time. It can work well with long sets, and can really be played out in as many "rounds" as we'd like, depending how long we want the league cycles to last. No one has to worry about administration beyond recording results, and we just generally pace ourselves so no one gets too far ahead of the rest in the number of matches played (so the weekly standings mean something). If someone wants to join late, we just finish up the remaining matches of the cycle, find our winner and start a new league, or else we let the new player into the already-running round robin and they play extra matches per week to catch-up.

[Rigel Cyrosea]

Alright, here's the +/- for tournaments vs. league that I see.

Weekly tournaments

+ No organization required outside of the event. You run a bracket for the people who show up and don't worry about anybody else.

+ Having a grand finals is more hype than a bunch of round robin matches

- If you miss a week you miss out on any possible points

- New people need to wait for the end of the month (or however long the points accumulate) to join in or they'll be at a large disadvantage

- Running brackets with 5-7 people isn't ideal, and those are pretty common numbers for us.

League

+ Missing sessions doesn't lose you points.

+ Adding new players is easy.

+ Ordering is generally more flexible

+ It's easier to practice for a match because you know who you'll be playing ahead of time

- If we figure out a recording setup, this format might be harder to record

- There's bookkeeping required outside of actual meetups (informing people who their next matches are, keeping track of what's been played, etc...)

I think I'm with Scott on this one, a league sounds a bit better to me. Anybody else want to add anything?

[TheRealDaddy]

http://store.aksysgames.com/collections/philippine-disaster-relief

[Rigel Cyrosea]

Hosting on Friday this week instead of Saturday. Same time as usual.

[Hash]

Might be better to do this at the gonq since there's the chance that it might attract new players.

[Dagwood]

I think tournaments are better. More hype. And It feels more like a real tournament, so its good practice.

[lofo]

Tournament brings more hype and helps get used to "tournament nerves" yeah. Maybe we could still cut to grand finals or top 4 or something at the end of the league? This idea isn't really thought out properly, just thinking out loud.

[Rigel Cyrosea]

Agreed on the gonq location.

What about doing something like, we run the league like normal, then at the end of each league (say, every month or so) we run a tournament that gets seeded through league results. I feel like tournaments that happen too often quickly become not very hype, especially if they're small and the results are usually similar. Ideally we'd have some small prize each for most points in the league and for winning the tournament, so they both feel somewhat meaningful.

[lofo]

Oh another thing. I assumed free char pick, no lock, 2/3 games with 2/3 rounds. That all fine?

[Essay]

Maybe we could still cut to grand finals or top 4 or something at the end of the league? This idea isn't really thought out properly, just thinking out loud.

What about doing something like, we run the league like normal, then at the end of each league (say, every month or so) we run a tournament that gets seeded through league results. I feel like tournaments that happen too often quickly become not very hype, especially if they're small and the results are usually similar. Ideally we'd have some small prize each for most points in the league and for winning the tournament, so they both feel somewhat meaningful.

Yeah, this is kind of how the World Cup is run. The lower half of the league table gets eliminated and the upper half gets seeded in a tourney (though a single elimination one). I think this could be a good approach.

Might be better to do this at the gonq since there's the chance that it might attract new players.

Agreed on the gonq location.

Definitely for a tournament at the end, but we still want to leave openings for catch up outside of Gonq in playing out the league matches, right? Gotta allow for some matches taking place off campus for those times when someone has to skip Gonq, because DQ's don't determine who's da bess.

I think tournaments are better. More hype. And It feels more like a real tournament, so its good practice.

Tournament brings more hype and helps get used to "tournament nerves" yeah.

Haha, yeah, but considering these are going to be casual, informal, low-stakes tournaments in front of no one you don't know, don't you go banking on them legitimately preparing you for the real thing...

...until we start streaming them and become instant-Twitch sensations, of course!

[Essay]

Oh another thing. I assumed free char pick, no lock, 2/3 games with 2/3 rounds. That all fine?

Hmmm, I dunno. I definitely agree with free character pick (except after a win), and standard 2/3 rounds (so it doesn't alter the value of Bursts), but it might make sense to play for more games during league matches so it's not all over in a flash. I think Topanga was doing something like first-to-seven games, but that's probably too much for our purposes. I'd personally vote for at least first-to-3 games for the round robin phase.

Not for the league-end tournaments though. We don't want those dragging. Oughta keep them standard.