Pads and Sticks, the Evo dilemma

[Skillkill107]

So recently there's been a bit of debate and shit talking about pads versus sticks as of late thanks to issues at EVO. As someone who wasn't terribly interested in the tournament at the time here's what I remember what happened:
 

Pads had technical difficulties and massively long set ups. The tournament time they had was finite and they had to pack it up relatively quickly once things started wrapping up.

 

The result of this was that pads were banned for the shuffle tourney and in the hold tourney matches had technical difficulties, restarts and all sorts of fun stuff.  Brett sent a tweet as well as openly discussing on stream that he was not very hot on continuing it. A lot of pad players were frustrated at the revelation, and caused a fair bit of tension where I was discussing it and ....

 

Basically the arguments for and against it were:
For ban:
Sticks can be set up universally for players while pad players can have multiple button configs (IE:Shoulder buttons for melee and main shots) so a reconfig has to be done every match. Given it was a 10-15 minute reconfig every time this is the most legitimate argument I've heard on the issue.

Bluetooth interaction with pads is wonky. I don't know why this isn't the case with sticks but someone can elaborate for me but supposedly one of the matches had a situation that messed things up

Against the Ban:

The community is still really small and alienating the player base for any reason is suspect. I have no statistics on what the community's pad to stick ratio but it seemed to happen so often that it didn't seem like pad players were the minority

A player's preference should come first and foremost. This is my stance on the issue and sort of where I don't really see the pad ban being a legitimate decision but I can't speak beyond this as I mentioned I have no idea how many pad players there were.

 

I wanna hear more people's stances on it but generally speaking this seems more of a playability argument versus a feasibility argument for the sake of the tournament. I don't know if they need to allot more time or what but discussion should probably be had. D:

[ANhiro]

There was another incident that happened during the tournament that was quite questionable involving the pads, which was probably what made the TOs consider the pad ban in the first place, I'm not sure on the exact details, I believe brett or dakanya have the full and accurate story. Personally, I have no problems against pad players, JDG-King, Yoyolon, and Lastinnovator and their friends are all very strong pad players, and it's fun to fight against strong players regardless of their control scheme. 

 

The Shuffle tourney pad ban was because the tournament was already running late and there was no time switch between control layouts in between matches.

[LukewarmHoliday]

Just decide fast, because it looks like I'm quitting this game.

[ANhiro]

Quite an overreaction, SCR was a tournament where there were pad players as well, it ran smoothly because in all honesty it doesn't take that long to set up pad controllers provided there are people that mash out the invites to the ps3 setups.

 

TL;DR pads are probably gonna be allowed even though it's extra work on the TOs. They might have the normal rules of wireless controllers being banned so pauses don't happen; usually in FG tournaments a disruption like that will result in a DQ of the offending party :V

[LukewarmHoliday]

I'm not playing this game if I have the risk of being excluded from events.  Sorry, this is a big deal.

 

This game isn't big enough for me to pick and choose where I participate.

[billngjp]

I know the 00 Daki was alluring, but its very unlikely pad will be banned for future events. Im sure come next EVO it will be properly organized and you can play on your dinky pad. 

[Dakanya]

Wireless pads will be banned. To accommodate for pad players, there is, unfortunately, too much room for user error and as a result, too much responsibility is placed on TOs like myself to ensure that everything will run smoothly. However, pad players should be responsible as well. At EVO this year, I was very offended at the lack of respect and apology from team "Bear Cat" as they failed to understand the gravity of the situation until I fucking told them off. Fortunately, most of the concerning issues that come with pads can be avoided by simply banning the usage of wireless pads.

 

If you want to play on pad, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING THAT HAPPENS AS A RESULT OF YOUR PAD. The same applies to stick users as well! To ensure that everything runs successfully and smoothly, participants need to do their part as well. We may be an unofficial side tournament but we are at EVO, an internationally renown event, and we will try our best to adhere to EVO standards. I was very ashamed that I failed to DQ team "Bear Cat" but they did not give me a proper explanation right away and I was in a rush so I made the wrong decision. Failing to properly DQ them ended up dicking over our Japanese guest as he did not understand that it was a proper rematch.

 

I cannot be at four places at once, especially with multiple things happening at the same time. I need the full cooperation and understanding of everyone who enters our tournaments.

[doubletaco]

From an outsider view requiring wired pads seems like a very reasonable compromise. When the aftermath opinion seemed to be "ban pads" I was really concerned. I know there are quite a few people that play regularly in the Beginner/Casual Night lobbies that either currently use pads or have used pads in the past before finally investing in a stick. I'd say they're a minority, but not an ignorable one.

 

Having rules clearly posted for entrants that wireless pads are banned is fair. Perhaps as  a last line of defense would it be possible to maybe keep a few (really cheap) wired pads on-site?

[Mahouko]

I heard a majority of the Evo players for gundam were pad players

[Tari]

It wasn't a majority, if I recall rightly, but it was a large number. The large number of pad players is where the problems stemmed from. The pad players didn't even all share the same button layouts, so we sometimes had to let pad players leave the lobby and reconfigure their buttons even after another pad player had just finished playing.

It really, really sucks that Gundam doesn't allow button configs in the lobby.

That aside, wireless pads are obviously problematic since players cannot seem to respect the need to disconnect their controllers and keep them off when not playing. I had expected that to not be an issue, but it appears that not all people are as willing to put in the miniscule amount of effort needed to ensure smooth gameplay for their fellow competitors.

On an unrelated note, players changing the comm messages during the tournament or during casuals right before the tourney is a bit annoying. I use default comm messages quite a lot, and I'm not going to check the comm messages when I sit down to play.

[Mahouko]

pad players not playing on pad layout? Now that is crazy

[akai_GO]

pad players not playing on pad layout? Now that is crazy

 

Well, the default pad layout is pretty inefficient period, and for a couple of suits it's almost impeding to play the suit at a high level.

 

 

I wasn't at the tournament, and I didn't see or hear any of the drama, so I shouldn't and am not going to speak to that. What I will speak to is that I'm a pad player. I recently purchased a stick, but having basically never used an arcade stick for ANYTHING in my 20-something years of life as a gamer, it is very, VERY difficult retraining your hands and brain how to play the game naturally on the stick, at the same level of play as pad if you've been playing the game (and every other game on pad) for years like I have. It's actually extremely frustrating going from being decently proficient at the game and its more nuanced mechanics on pad, then sitting down to a stick and your brain fucking going "wait, how do I use my assist??"

 

If the US had maxiboost boxes, or ANY actual arcade boxes of the game like Japan does, then you could maybe start to make the argument of people should learn to play the game on stick. But, it doesn't. The only way people in the US can play the game is on console, and so it shouldn't be surprising or odd that people play the game on pad. The community is small. When new people see the game and think "wow that looks awesome!" and buy it, are they supposed to somehow on their own instinctively know "wait wait wait! learn to play the game on stick while you're still learning the game"?? It just is not reasonable or viable in my opinion to expect the whole community to just switch to sticks for the game.

 

So how then is it fair to explicitly bar pad players from playing against others and enjoying the community just like stick players? It's not. 100% it's not. It's frankly blatant elitism. And if I'd been one of the players that spent money on conference registration, transportation, lodging, and then came to play my game to be told with no more prior warning that pads were prohibited?? You can damn well bet I'd be pissed and would make a scene about it. That is no less inconsiderate than some of the behavior that is described above that a couple of pad players did, and if that is what happened here I'm quite disappointed in some of the higher ups of our community for it. ("New shit has come to light, man" This is not what happened as revealed further down in the thread)

 

Now...that being said, I'm not so short-sighted on this matter that I can't see and appreciate the legitimate complications and difficulties using a pad can add to a large tournament like this, simply because of how the game is poorly designed in this area. But again, are we supposed to fault players for the game having a piss-poor online lobby/interface for making adjustments easily?

 

The fair thing then is there just needs to be ground rules, and these ground rules be known well in advance. And banning pads is obviously not a desired ground rule here. Pad players similarly should recognize the difficulty of the situation, and respect this need for some ground rules.

• No wireless controllers was suggested above and is a totally fair stance to take in my opinion, and is something pad players should have no problem with.
• Default pad config only is an option. It's a very sketchy option imo, having already said first thing that the default pad config is not very good. But everyone that plays pad I would bet money has at some point played the default config to realize it's bad and want to change it. And so players can put in some practice time on it again if told well, well in advance it will be required.
• Have one Custom alternative that seems to be common among players and let that be the alternative to the default config.
• Default comms only doesn't really have much to do with stick vs pad, but if people were actually spending tournament time to change their comms as well as controller config? Come on guys. Default comms work fine enough for something like this, given the time crunch there is.

 

I recognize however how this can still be unfair to letting someone play the game at their peak ability using their preferred controller and layout, which I agree should be a top priority, and there just has to be a compromise from both the players and organizers with regard to how to go about maximizing that as best as possible given technical constraints.

 

I'd also in the skype chat last night suggested having stick-only PS3s and pad-only PS3s set up, but now that I'm more awake realize that tournament seeding doesn't necessarily work well with that, unless you like 100% split the tournament into "stick players side" and "pad players side", but I think it's been made clear that doing anything that forcibly splits the already small community is not ideal...

[brett_]

I am currently away so I cant talk at lenghth. I'll write something detailed later.

I would not like to be forced to ban pads.

I had simply entertained the notion of it.

Regardless, if you think as a pad player you are ENTITLED to being allowed, you ought to reconsider.

Also if you are considering quitting the game because you wouldn't be allowed to participate in ONE tournament a year, please just do so and spare us.

[Tari]

Please read carefully, akai, before making any potential accusations. No one was prohibited from playing this year. The sheer number of problems caused by allowing pad players this year is the cause for_consideration_ of banning pads (and especially wireless pads).

If ever there is a tournament held that prohibiits players from entering with no prior warning, that tournament does not deserve to be held. EVO's Gundam side-tourney is fortunately NOT run that way.

As far as allowing pad is concerned, I think that, even before we discuss the possibility of a full pad ban (which is an issue we can circumvent by running pools on a separate day), it is completely reasonable to believe players will provide their own wired controllers in lieue of the continued issues regarding wireless pads obstructing gameplay. Either that or, as a community, prove to us that they will be responsible and respectful with their controllers and towards their fellow competitors. This is two competitions now in which we've had players interfering with stream stations because of wireless controllers. It was fortunately a non-issue at SCR, but that was purely down to lucky timing.

[Kazamura]

banning wireless should be a given as it's evo standard.

 

that said threatening to quit the game over a event is an overreaction and drama bait

[Skillkill107]

Regardless, if you think as a pad player you are ENTITLED to being allowed, you ought to reconsider.

Isn't it unfair to say anyone is entitled to do so given the entry fee and registration?  I'm not trying to be provocative and I'm aware there are...problems as mentioned but yeah unless you have someone flown in, and pay them to compete I don't think anyone is entitled, this is just the discussion of preferable or not.

 

banning wireless should be a given as it's evo standard.

That's fine, it's closer to being an issue from the actual pad layout itself than anything else and frankly a wired controller barely costs 15 bucks. If you can make your way to evo you can probably fork out 20 bucks for a decent pad if you insist on playing on pad.

[HDKirin]

Just a heads-up, I'd like to stress Dustloop Rule #11 (Being a giant whiny crybaby or otherwise being insufferable about something stupid will get you banned because frankly, nobody wants to listen to you complain. Likewise goes for being thickheaded or making massive jumps to conclusions about shit.) in this topic. I will not tolerate any violators, so please keep this in mind.

[akai_GO]

Please read carefully, akai, before making any potential accusations. No one was prohibited from playing this year. The sheer number of problems caused by allowing pad players this year is the cause for_consideration_ of banning pads (and especially wireless pads).

 

Sorry. Again, I wasn't there, so I obviously am not certain. But still, that seems to be in direct conflict with this:

 

The result of this was that pads were banned for the shuffle tourney 

 

Unless you're saying that no person was banned from the shuffle tourney - just the use of pads. But...if a pad player shows up to the event, registered, paid, and then is told upon arrival he can compete but only if he plays on a stick, severely handicapping himself against other players...that's really barely better than telling him "you can't play."

 

I think it would really help to have this statement/situation cleared up. Maybe I'm missing or misunderstanding something? It was said in the Skype lobby too that pad was banned from shuffle, and all I'm saying is - acknowledging and understanding the legitimate problems that were encountered in the hold tournament with pads - that's kinda unfair to a number of players IF this played out the way it seems like it played out.

 

I never said that anyone should be "entitled" to play on pad. But if they paid the same entry fee, did the same methods everything as a stick player, and there was nothing said before any of this registration, can we honestly sit here and say they shouldn't expect to be able to play the game with a pad when they get there?

[Tari]

There was no shuffle tourney planned originally. We decided to run it on the spot, so it was completely a bonus to the actual tournament that was held on the next day. We thought it would be fun to run an extra little tournament, but it feels really unrewarding to do so if people are just going to complain afterwards. :/

It was held late in the day and we decided we had no time to allow pad players and configuration hassles. I would hope players can respect these decisions, as I think they are both reasonable and fair.

Edit: shuffle tourney was free, as well.

[akai_GO]

There was no shuffle tourney planned originally. We decided to run it on the spot, so it was completely a bonus to the actual tournament that was held on the next day. We thought it would be fun to run an extra little tournament, but it feels really unrewarding to do so if people are just going to complain afterwards. :/

 

Ah I see. Then yes, that's completely different from what I was under the impression of as to what occurred. Thank you!

[akai_GO]

I doubt anyone paid close attention, but just curious: despite the numerous times people probably changed the config setup for their pads, were there not any common themes observed in Custom configs ([A] being mapped to R1? L1?) that could lend themselves to maybe trying to lay down an accepted standardized Custom alternative to the Default layout for future events? It's probably not feasible to run some kind of poll of the community's pad users...

[brett_]

@Skill: You misunderstand me. I am saying that if you are someone acting entitled to pads being allowed IN GENERAL to a given tournament, you should reflect. I am not putting words in your mouth.

Id also like to point out that no one actually mentioned the details behind the shuffle tournament. First of all, it's free, and only something I mentioned doing if time allowed.

I specifically polled who would play on pad if we did, and two people out of around 24 players said theyd play pad. I then asked those players if they didnt mind having stick only, and only after hearing their agreement and weighing things did I make a decision.

This entire discussion of banning pads without warning is absolutely absurd, and a baseless emotional reaction from people who weren't even at the event. If you are assuming this is what will happen in the future, you are out of your mind. If you are talking about the shuffle tournament, you are misinformed. Regardless, you are being extremely rude and spitting in the face of the dozens of people who helped put this event together by calling it elitism or unreasonable. I am at my limit in terms of being polite, so if you are making a simple misunderstanding you had best apologize for leaping to conclusions. I am looking at you Akai_GO

If you want to talk about creating division in a community, how about people making up drama and being rude. There was seriously no issue on-site.

Also this is in no way meant to support a pad ban, but I will disagree with stick being hard to learn for this game. I have witnessed someone come to our locals and play on stick for the first time and perform above average.

If I see people being childish and unproductive I will simply close this thread.

Confirm your facts before making accusations, because in case you don't realize it, that is exactly what people were doing.

[akai_GO]

I already said previously that from the beginning here I was only speaking on what was laid out information wise. There was no backstory given on the event until Tari did so, and both here and in Skype all that was said was "pads were banned." The information being MUCH more clearly stated now than it was to begin with, I obviously do not still think anyone was being unfair in the situation. 

 

I've also gone back to my first post and struck-through the portion where I spoke based on misinformation.

[brett_]

Since 99% of this thread is based off of miscommunication spread by people leaping to conclusions, I am closing it, since there doesn't seem to be any productive dialog. If you would like to discuss a topic that is actually RELEVANT (i.e. when there actually ends up being a tournament that bans pads or something), feel free to make a new thread. Let's stop discussing a hypothetical that most likely wont happen.

 

===========

 

In an attempt to reduce time-constraint restrictions (which coincidentally happen to be the main conflicting issue with pad usage), we will most likely attempt to run Gundam EXVSFB @ EVO2015 with Pools on Day 1, and Top 8 on Day 2. Nothing is set in stone obviously, and you can feel free to discuss this when the EVO2015 thread pops up (Early 2015). Be aware that this will obviously require pre-regging AND/OR extremely early on-site registration. This will also mean we wont have time for a shuffle tournament, unfortunately. It's really fortunate that we're on Dustloop officially now, as it makes logistics for this kind of stuff actually feasible.

 

IF we do this, it will most likely mean that teams are RECOMMENDED to pre-register on our dustloop thread and pay beforehand (paypal). OR show up and register on Day 1 before the cut off time (most likely Noon). This year, tracking down the people who pre-regged for registration fees was a bit chaotic, and it would be even more so if we ran pools, so pre-regging will probably require paying entree fee as well, as unnecessary as it may seem.

 

Of the 25 teams that signed up this year, only 9 or 10 of them registered before hand, and of those teams, the vast majority of them were Stick players. We generally like running the whole tournament on Day 2 to give people time to register / hear about the tournament / get stragglers in. It would be nice if in exchange for this sacrifice, pad players can be prudent next year about registering in accordance with this accomodation meant to help keep pads viable.

 

A random example of what you might see next year:

 

Day 1

10:00 - 1:00 PM - Casuals, Open Registration

2:00 - 3:30 PM - Pool 1

3:30 - 5:00 PM - Pool 2

5:00 - 6:30 PM - Pool 3

6:30 - 8:00 PM - Pool 4

 

Day 2

10:00 - 3:00 PM - Casuals

3:00 - 6:00 PM - Top 8

 

Just to put things in perspective, this year's EVO had twice as many tournament setups (8 instead of 4) and took nearly DOUBLE the amount of time not including technical difficulties / breaks. That's on top of us being way more organized this year compared to last.

 

Please do not panic under the assumption that pads are banned: we will most likely not be banning pads in the foreseeable future, hence why we are looking for alternatives.

 

I will say this though: If we have more than 40 teams enter next year, running the EXVS tournament in one day while allowing pads may be physically impossible.