Northeast Championship XV Anniversary in Philly. Home of Anime

[ElvenShadow]

Well I'm rusty as hell at +R but lack of Xrd from mid October onward will force me to practice it again. If I have the free time I think I want to make it.

[eric]

We would like to announce that ATLUS has added $1500 to the P4U2 tournament at Nec 15.

Welcome back Atlus

[RurouniLoneWolf]

Woo! Atlus providing godlike support for Persona as always. Time to train hard for these next 2 months!

[eric]

Ok everyone this is the last day to get the $30 early bird Pre-reg fee for Nec 15

http://bigegaming.com/pre-registration/

[St1ckBuG]

Touched up the OP for you Eric.

[eric]

Thanks sir.

[eric]

Where is the hype.

[Eshi]

I just registered yesterday, I look forward to bodying everyone in every game. Well, maybe not in P4U...

 

also, UNIEL is not an official tournament? It had the most entrants of any anime game at TFC, it's still got a lot of interest!

[eric]

UNIEL is a main game.

[eric]

Man the Anime Area Room at NEC VX is going to be crazy.

Good numbers so far in all the Anime games.

Players coming from all over the World. Mexico, Scotland, Japan, Canada, UK, Chile, Brazil and it's still early.

Over 12 players from Cali are coming so far.

Uniel has 48 players pre-reg so far.

Kof13 has 58 players pre-reg so far. ( $2100) pot bonus plus FREE entry. (64 man cap)

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk - now Free

[Zinac]

I just reserved by room and bought tickets to NEC.  Faust will be in the house!  Can't wait to see all the old men in December!
Registered for +R and Uniel.  I hope there will be a Xrd side tournament!

[Frostbolt]

UK'er reporting in!

Will be playing AH3LM, lets have fun and eat good food

[eric]

Yeah I see you guys are ready to invade. ^^^^^^

[pochp]

Is the Guilty Gear Accent Core +R 2v2 tournament character locked?

[St1ckBuG]

Teams are always character locked.

[Zinac]

So I just registered for a singles GGXXAC+R NEC tournament, bought my plane tickets, and reserved a hotel room this weekend.  And I found out today it's been changed to 2v2, because some Japanese players requested it.  This was done without any request from the community nor were we asked about it.  Is anyone else in a similar situation?

[DaiAndOh]

I do empathize with situations like Zinac's. There are quite a few others who are coming in similar situations, but I will let them post for themselves if they want their voice to be heard.

Of course you have my support regardless of what happens though.

[Essay]

I'm travelling to NEC specifically for +R and definitely am more in favour of a 1v1 tournament. 2v2 seem alright for regional monthlies where everyone knows everyone, but this is the +R tournament that has been hyped up all year, and is drawing all the international players like me, who are less likely to have a teammate, especially when some of us are travelling in odd numbers. I'll elaborate when I get off work.

[mynus]

Who are the international players? I only know of Abegen so far.

[Amadeous]

Alright, mulled it over, here's my piece;

 

In short, I'm not opposed to running teams, but making a sudden change like this is a bad idea.

 

As Zinac has already said, some people are gonna be screwed by this, player plans will have to be remade, people aren't going to get to team with who they actually want to team with, and so on. There's a lot of issues related to logistics alone that crop up from a sudden change in decision like this. I, myself, already made plans and reservations for a small room at the hotel, and not housing extra players. The two people I'd like to team with the most (Brandino and Circuitous, good friends from my regional scene and players I consider myself near to in skill and a mutual understanding of weaknesses and strengths) aren't able to go due to job, money, time, and what have you.

 

Now, my plans have already been made, reservations have been set. I'm not able to change these. Had I known this was going to be a teams event, I may have made plans differently. This is just a personal anecdote, yes, and I can plan on finding another teammate if I really want to, but I've been screwed out of my first picks for a team. As Essay said, people coming internationally or from farther out than East Coast can be fucked by this. I consider it a very good thing I hadn't preregged, because otherwise I'd be having to go through the process of asking for a refund and downgrade to spectator pass.

 

This ties me nicely into my next point, and the main point/question I have: How is this affecting the tournament? Everything was set up and scheduled from the start as being a singles, double elim event. Preregistration has been open for over a month now IIRC. What is the TO going to do with the preregistrations? They're effectively worthless as they are now, as no teams are noted on the lists, and people may be dropping out due to a change in event type. The only method I can think of to recover here is personally contacting every single entrant on the prereg list, informing them of the change, and asking them 1) are they still going to enter and 2) if yes, who will their team compose of. You have a LOT of work to do here. I have no doubt it can be done before NEC, but remember this will have to be down for every prereg entrant and will take a lot of someone's personal time (I'm going to assume no one would be paid for this task).

 

If this isn't done, I can guarantee it now; people will show up, day of the event, and be pissed off because they thought it was a singles, double elim, and they don't have a team. At this point refunds will be demanded and the tournament will be a mess. Teams would also have to be recorded at the door, meaning brackets would be made the day-of the tournament, giving no time for proper seeding and adding enormous stress to TOs. I'm merely concerned for the health of the tournament, and wanting it to be run on-time and run well. No one will walk away happy if the tournament starts 4 hours late and your first match is against your buddies. Please, elaborate on how you're going to address these problems, so we can face this event in confidence.

 

There are also some minor points I have, but are irrelevant to the main point above:

 

This is discouraging newer players. No one wants to "drag down" someone good. No one wants to be "carried". People want to see how good they can do on their own when they're starting out. On a personal level, I already know a handful of players that have decided against entering for these reasons. Are they newer players, who maybe don't "understand" how hype teams are? Sure. Are they still willing to give money to travel to an event and play the game, and do their best to prove themselves? Of course.

 

This is some HEAVY favoritism. Knowing that the event was changed because "the JP guests requested it" (quote St1ckBuG, from Twitter) and there being no dialogue, no discussion with the main scene and playerbase that will be arriving is really sad. If there was any sort of discussion or even heads up, I'd let this pass, but literally changing the rules of an event less than 2 months out because a few strong players wanted it is morally ambiguous at best. I understand the want to cater to the JP players and ensure they have a good time. But this is the kind of stuff that has to be decided before the event goes live and before people start making plans and spending cash on it.

 

This is bad business. I think this should go without saying, but I'll reiterate: When people have spent money on a product or service as a "pre-order" or expecting something specific, and that product or service is changed and different from what was initially paid for, people get pissed. It's natural. I'm sure PLENTY of entrants won't care about the change in format or will even be happy about it; but people that preregged and in a situation with no easy partner, or unwillingness to partner, are not going to be happy.

 

Anyway; that's my view. Teams are fine, and great fun even! Changing an event type with no dialogue with your own scene, after people have already made plans and spent money? Does not make sense.

[Zinac]

I'd like to point out that if the final call for this event is teams, it's a bit of a logistical nightmare to ask for the team assignments at the door.  Are you going to make the brackets at the last minute?  Is there going to be pools?  How will I know when my pool starts?  How are conflicts with other events going to be resolved?

 

If you're going to run teams, refund the existing preregistration fees for GG and ask for people to register again as a team.   Otherwise I don't see this going well at all.

[Zidane]

Are you going to make the brackets at the last minute?  Is there going to be pools?  How will I know when my pool starts?  How are conflicts with other events going to be resolved?

 

How WILL you know when your pool starts? How will anyone know? If only we had things like phones or twitter or maybe people were at the venue. Maybe if tournament organizers made a time for when tournaments started.

 

The Jetsons said we'd have flying cars in 2000s. We can't even run video game tournaments. Thanks Obama.

[Jourdal]

I'd like to point out that if the final call for this event is teams, it's a bit of a logistical nightmare to ask for the team assignments at the door.  Are you going to make the brackets at the last minute?  Is there going to be pools?  How will I know when my pool starts?  How are conflicts with other events going to be resolved?

 

If you're going to run teams, refund the existing preregistration fees for GG and ask for people to register again as a team.   Otherwise I don't see this going well at all.

iirc, team sign ups for BB last year were done the day of, brackets made the day of, and that tournament ran smoothly to top 4. (There were 50 or so teams of three)

[Amadeous]

iirc, team sign ups for BB last year were done the day of, brackets made the day of, and that tournament ran smoothly to top 4. (There were 50 or so teams)

 

...And GG started hours late.

[Zidane]

GG started hours late because of Persona, not BlazBlue. Persona ran SUPER late because SKD just couldn't accept his loss like a fucking man.