The 9th Official FFR tournament is finally over. Those 8 weeks absolutely flew by, and personally -- I am glad it is over. Managing this tournament was a bit more time-consuming than I expected. At this point, I really want to take the time to talk about the positives and negatives of the tournament, as well as discussing what everyone involved can do to make the tournament a much better experience. I feel like an open discussion about the overall tournament as a whole can give everyone the chance to speak their mind. Please keep in mind that this thread is still subject to any and all forum rules -- just be intelligent and make sure that your post is respectful.
Positives
- On an external level, the timing on the tournament was executed really well. Pushing the start date back a day was the best idea that I had this tournament, because it allowed me to make sure that rounds ended at 11:59 PM EST, and that rounds started at 12:00 AM EST. None of tournament rounds were put up late, and players had full access to their songs right from the get-go, with one exception (will be listed in the negatives).
- On an internal level, the timing was also quite well handled, but I am going to take very little credit for that. I owe a huge thanks to Dossar and One Winged Angel for doing their absolute best despite their constrained college schedules for getting frame fixes and difficulties out to me in a timely manner. Any instance that frame fixes were late had absolutely nothing to do with Dossar. I also owe bmah thanks for getting me song genres way ahead of time so that I could fill out data/song information. I also owe EzExZeRo7497 for supporting with difficulty placements in the last two rounds when everyone's time was stretched to their limits.
- The elimination structure promoted growth while still being competitive. I set up the eliminations to be as even as possible so that the people barely surviving the cutoffs continued to have the time to flourish and improve. I will definitely use this same cutoff structure for the next time this tournament is hosted, because it gives the underdogs a fighting chance.
- moches did a fantastic job keeping some of the users engaged with his great front page posts, and I absolutely would not hesitate to use him for something like this -- his attitude was absolutely fantastic and he was a pleasure to work with. Thanks bud!
- Communication with users was literally as high as I can manage. I did my best to answer absolutely every tournament-related private message, and I'm pretty sure I had at least a 95% success rate with responses. Granted, some of these responses might have been a bit blunt due to overall exhaustion/frustration, an open line of communication matters a lot to me. This good practice keeps users in the loop and can resolve situations well.
- For the most part, users were actually quite tame this tournament. Many users did a really good job bringing their issues to me via private messages as I requested, and users also did a nice job keeping their thoughts respectful both in the main tournament thread and discussion threads as well.
- The events team was PHENOMENAL behind the scenes before the start of the tournament. Huge thanks to foxfire667, PrawnSkunk, YoshL, and psychoangel691, because you guys were absolutely slaying placements, and at an incredible pace. I owe a lot to YoshL's spreadsheet mastery, because he made the placement process a lot smoother and organized. Without him, the tournament likely wouldn't have started on time due to my work schedule ramping up literally right at the start of the tournament.
Negatives
- Time was VERY largely against me in this tournament. I don't like to make excuses, but anyone that was in any sort Skype chat with me can vouch for the fact that I was beyond stretched.
- Communication with my team was not great, and it was 100% my fault (100% my fault in that it wasn't my team's fault -- I will revert the issue back to time again). My communication was largely intermittent with Dossar and OWA -- sometimes I would get in touch with them a few days before the next round's start, and other times, I would be rushing to get in touch with them literally hours before the round's start. This did hurt me in a round where I mixed up the D3 round's song with the D5 tiebreaker (more specifically the uploads).
- Major issue: because I had to use 56 files in the tournament, and just barely over that in the active queue while leaving some Song of the Week releases prior to the start of the tournament, it took a really stupid amount of manipulation to try and get things work. According to many users, the structure of the songs simply didn’t work. I don’t completely agree, but I will level with the fact that there were certainly structural issues in different divisions. I will definitely be taking really small bits of files from upcoming batches to ensure that I can start building a tournament lineup early without detrimentally affecting Song of the Week releases.
- Major issue: while many people didn’t voice an issue about this, I personally was getting really frustrated with the types of files I had to use. Nothing against the stepartists who created the files at all, but as a tournament host, I was having an extremely difficult time avoiding jumpstream heavy files – I didn’t have a lot of purely technical, perfect-for-tournament files that didn’t give people a considerable advantage. Again, this is something that can definitely be alleviated through early planning.
- Minor issue: D7 simply had way too easy of a time in this tournament. Next time around, I’m going to probably open D7 up in the lower 80 range (82/83) as opposed to starting with a (not quite) 77.
- I was actually quite upset and disappointed at the number of cheating instances I had to deal with. I really sincerely hope that users think a bit more about their integrity as a player as opposed to trying to circumvent tournament rules.
At this point, I would like to open SERIOUS discussion about the tournament, what you would like to see, and what I can potentially do for you guys to make the experience better for everyone. Thanks to everyone who participated, and I look forward to seeing you guys participate in another official tournament!
Also, I will be working on prize distribution tonight and tomorrow. Those of you that placed well enough will see your tokens very soon (within the next hour or so).
Positives
- On an external level, the timing on the tournament was executed really well. Pushing the start date back a day was the best idea that I had this tournament, because it allowed me to make sure that rounds ended at 11:59 PM EST, and that rounds started at 12:00 AM EST. None of tournament rounds were put up late, and players had full access to their songs right from the get-go, with one exception (will be listed in the negatives).
- On an internal level, the timing was also quite well handled, but I am going to take very little credit for that. I owe a huge thanks to Dossar and One Winged Angel for doing their absolute best despite their constrained college schedules for getting frame fixes and difficulties out to me in a timely manner. Any instance that frame fixes were late had absolutely nothing to do with Dossar. I also owe bmah thanks for getting me song genres way ahead of time so that I could fill out data/song information. I also owe EzExZeRo7497 for supporting with difficulty placements in the last two rounds when everyone's time was stretched to their limits.
- The elimination structure promoted growth while still being competitive. I set up the eliminations to be as even as possible so that the people barely surviving the cutoffs continued to have the time to flourish and improve. I will definitely use this same cutoff structure for the next time this tournament is hosted, because it gives the underdogs a fighting chance.
- moches did a fantastic job keeping some of the users engaged with his great front page posts, and I absolutely would not hesitate to use him for something like this -- his attitude was absolutely fantastic and he was a pleasure to work with. Thanks bud!
- Communication with users was literally as high as I can manage. I did my best to answer absolutely every tournament-related private message, and I'm pretty sure I had at least a 95% success rate with responses. Granted, some of these responses might have been a bit blunt due to overall exhaustion/frustration, an open line of communication matters a lot to me. This good practice keeps users in the loop and can resolve situations well.
- For the most part, users were actually quite tame this tournament. Many users did a really good job bringing their issues to me via private messages as I requested, and users also did a nice job keeping their thoughts respectful both in the main tournament thread and discussion threads as well.
- The events team was PHENOMENAL behind the scenes before the start of the tournament. Huge thanks to foxfire667, PrawnSkunk, YoshL, and psychoangel691, because you guys were absolutely slaying placements, and at an incredible pace. I owe a lot to YoshL's spreadsheet mastery, because he made the placement process a lot smoother and organized. Without him, the tournament likely wouldn't have started on time due to my work schedule ramping up literally right at the start of the tournament.
Negatives
- Time was VERY largely against me in this tournament. I don't like to make excuses, but anyone that was in any sort Skype chat with me can vouch for the fact that I was beyond stretched.
- Communication with my team was not great, and it was 100% my fault (100% my fault in that it wasn't my team's fault -- I will revert the issue back to time again). My communication was largely intermittent with Dossar and OWA -- sometimes I would get in touch with them a few days before the next round's start, and other times, I would be rushing to get in touch with them literally hours before the round's start. This did hurt me in a round where I mixed up the D3 round's song with the D5 tiebreaker (more specifically the uploads).
- Major issue: because I had to use 56 files in the tournament, and just barely over that in the active queue while leaving some Song of the Week releases prior to the start of the tournament, it took a really stupid amount of manipulation to try and get things work. According to many users, the structure of the songs simply didn’t work. I don’t completely agree, but I will level with the fact that there were certainly structural issues in different divisions. I will definitely be taking really small bits of files from upcoming batches to ensure that I can start building a tournament lineup early without detrimentally affecting Song of the Week releases.
- Major issue: while many people didn’t voice an issue about this, I personally was getting really frustrated with the types of files I had to use. Nothing against the stepartists who created the files at all, but as a tournament host, I was having an extremely difficult time avoiding jumpstream heavy files – I didn’t have a lot of purely technical, perfect-for-tournament files that didn’t give people a considerable advantage. Again, this is something that can definitely be alleviated through early planning.
- Minor issue: D7 simply had way too easy of a time in this tournament. Next time around, I’m going to probably open D7 up in the lower 80 range (82/83) as opposed to starting with a (not quite) 77.
- I was actually quite upset and disappointed at the number of cheating instances I had to deal with. I really sincerely hope that users think a bit more about their integrity as a player as opposed to trying to circumvent tournament rules.
At this point, I would like to open SERIOUS discussion about the tournament, what you would like to see, and what I can potentially do for you guys to make the experience better for everyone. Thanks to everyone who participated, and I look forward to seeing you guys participate in another official tournament!
Also, I will be working on prize distribution tonight and tomorrow. Those of you that placed well enough will see your tokens very soon (within the next hour or so).
GG everyone!
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