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[Dec 7, 2014] BIO! 5 (Finals Edition) (Tuscaloosa, AL)

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Hey smashers. The last BIO of the year is here. Side events are gone. Why? Because this time, there will be Melee Singles, Melee Doubles, Project M Singles, AND Project M Doubles at $2/person. That's right, things are getting intense up in Tuscaloosa. So come out on the 7th to prove your mettle as a smasher, and battle the best around. Location? The Riverside Community Center on Campus.

Schedule:
*Note, you can register for all events 30 minutes prior to the scheduled starting time
11:00 Venue Opens, registration begins
1:30 Melee Doubles Begins
2:30 Melee Singles Begins
4:00 PM Doubles Begins
5:00 PM Singles Begins
6:30 Dinner Break
7:15 Resume PM Singles
8:30 Crews/Money Matches
11:00 Venue closes

Stream: Top 4 of every tournament will be streamed on twitch.tv/uasmashleague. We will have dedicated commentators for this event to ensure a top quality stream.

Food: On campus within walking distance, there is a Dunkin Donuts, a Cane's, and a Wendy's. Domino's and Jimmy Johns are options for delivery.

Rulesets:

Melee Doubles ($2/person):

Payout will be 70%/30%. Games will be 4 stocks, 8 minutes, friendly fire ON, items off. Neutral stages include Pokemon Stadium, Battlefield, Yoshi's Story, Final Destination, and Dreamland. Any stage can be played on that both teams agree to. Every set will be a best of 3, with the exception of Winner's Finals, Loser's Semis, Loser's Finals, and Grand Finals. These will be best of 5. Wobbling is legal to 250%. All infinite stalling and stalling glitches are banned. Pause will be set to off. Mistakenly pausing the game will result in a lost stock at the nearest TO's discretion. If a game goes to time, the team with the higher stock count will be the victor. If stocks are even, the team with the lower cumulative percentage will be declared the victor. If percentage and stocks are equal, the game will go to a 2-stock, 5 minute game with the same characters and stages. Initial character picks will be done blindly at the players' request. Stage striking will be done in 1-2-1 fashion, with the team that wins RPS deciding whether they would like to ban 1st or 2nd. For best of 3 sets, the winning team of a game may ban 1 stage for counterpicks. The other team then selects their stage. The winning team selects their characters, and the losing team then selects their characters.

Melee Singles ($2/Person):

Payout will be 60%/30%/10%. Games will be 4 stocks, 8 minutes, items off. Neutral stages include Fountain of Dreams, Battlefield, Yoshi's Story, Final Destination, and Dreamland. Counterpick stages include the above as well as Pokemon Stadium. Any stage can be played on that both players agree to. Every set will be a best of 3, with the exception of Winner's Finals, Loser's Semis, Loser's Finals, and Grand Finals. These will be best of 5. Wobbling is legal to 250%. All infinite stalling and stalling glitches are banned. Pause will be set to off. Mistakenly pausing the game will result in a lost stock at the nearest TO's discretion. If a game goes to time, the player with the higher stock count will be the victor. If stocks are even, the player with the lower percentage will be declared the victor. If percentage and stocks are equal, the game will go to a 2-stock, 5 minute game with the same characters and stages. Initial character picks will be done blindly at the players' request. Stage striking will be done in 1-2-1 fashion, with the player that wins RPS deciding whether they would like to ban 1st or 2nd. For best of 3 sets, the winning player of a game may ban 1 stage for counterpicks. The other player then selects their stage. The winning player selects their characters, and the losing player then selects their characters.

Project M 3.5 Doubles ($2/Person):

Payouts will be 70%/30%. Games will be 4 stocks, 8 minutes, items off, friendly fire ON. Buffer is set to OFF. Neutral stages include the bottom row of page 1. Counterpick stages include the two bottom rows of page 1. Any stage can be played on that both players agree to. Every set will be best of 3, with the exception of Winner's Finals, loser's Semis, Loser's Finals, and Grand Finals. These will be best of 5. All infinite stalling and stalling glitches are banned. Pause will be set to off. mistakenly pausing the game will results in a lost stock at the nearest TO's discretion. If a game goes to time, the team with the higher stock count will be the victor. If stocks are even, the team with the lower cumulative percentage will be declared the victor. If percentage and stocks are equal, the game will go to a 2-stock, 5 minute game with the same characters and stages. Initial character picks will be done blindly at the players' request. Stage striking will be done in a 1-2-2-1 fashion, with the team that wins RPS deciding whether they would like to ban 1st or 2nd. The winning team of a game may ban 3 stages for counterpicks. The other team then selects their stage. The winning team selects their characters, and the loser team then selects their characters.

Project M 3.5 Singles ($2/Person):

Payout will be 60%/30%/10%. Games will be 4 stocks, 8 minutes, items off. Neutral stages include the bottom row of page 1. Counterpick stages include the bottom two rows of page 1. Any stage can be played on that both players agree to. Every set will be a best of 3, with the exception of Winner's Finals, Loser's Semis, Loser's Finals, and Grand Finals. These will be best of 5. All infinite stalling and stalling glitches are banned. Pause will be set to off. Mistakenly pausing the game will result in a lost stock at the nearest TO's discretion. If a game goes to time, the player with the higher stock count will be the victor. If stocks are even, the player with the lower percentage will be declared the victor. If percentage and stocks are equal, the game will go to a 2-stock, 5 minute game with the same characters and stages. Initial character picks will be done blindly at the players' request. Stage striking will be done in 1-2-2-1 fashion, with the player that wins RPS deciding whether they would like to ban 1st or 2nd. The winning player of a game may ban 3 stages for counterpicks. The other player then selects their stage. The winning player selects their characters, and the losing player then selects their characters.

Parking: As per UA policy, you may park in any legal spot on campus on Sundays. No handicapped spots. There is a parking deck ~ 3 minutes walking distance from the venue, and a lot located across the overhead bridge also ~ 3 minutes walking distance.

Setups: Our goal is to have 16 setups. We have a fair few among us, but any extra would be much appreciated.
 
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j00t

Smash Champion
Joined
Jul 16, 2006
Messages
2,194
Location
North AL
I told Winnar I'd come to this one if he would come, so if you get him then I'm there.
 

Saki-

Reset Project
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
3,206
Location
Glencoe, Al
NNID
iTasya
Granted it says no side tournaments but what are the odds of smash wii u being am event of sorts?
 

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Granted it says no side tournaments but what are the odds of smash wii u being am event of sorts?
Very unlikely. It would require multiple people to bring setups completely different than any of the ones that we can use for Melee and PM.
 

Saki-

Reset Project
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
3,206
Location
Glencoe, Al
NNID
iTasya
Ahh, well HaSL did manage to have 7 set ups this weekend to make a 28 man tournament run pretty smoothly. But that's if you're willing to trust the community on it. Bringing that game would easily guarantee some players from Huntsville and myself.
 

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Ahh, well HaSL did manage to have 7 set ups this weekend to make a 28 man tournament run pretty smoothly. But that's if you're willing to trust the community on it. Bringing that game would easily guarantee some players from Huntsville and myself.
Due to the game still being in its infancy, the decision that we made is to continue with the events we have planned. Doing WiiU would require us cutting 1 or 2 other events.
 

Saki-

Reset Project
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
3,206
Location
Glencoe, Al
NNID
iTasya
Due to the game still being in its infancy, the decision that we made is to continue with the events we have planned. Doing WiiU would require us cutting 1 or 2 other events.
I see, well that's no problem hopefully it makes a spot next monthly. Gl and make sure to bring your crew around again for melee!
 

HsvASL

Smash Cadet
Joined
Sep 16, 2014
Messages
28
Location
Huntsville, AL
We can't wait for this event! We're ready to stream and hope to see a lot of smash players come out! It's going to be hype!
 

Chongo

Smash Rookie
Joined
Oct 3, 2013
Messages
9
I'll be back from Bama's game in time to play and maybe even do some commentating for this! Can't wait!!
 

dav3yb

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 7, 2014
Messages
431
With all of the big names set to appear at BIO! 5, you really have no excuse not to come.
Except for the fact that this group apparently does not know how to host a proper tournament.

I had the extreme dishonor of attending this tournament (if you could call it that), and as someone who traveled from out of town, it was very much a waste of my companions and my own time. We made sure to arrive early, since we were not completely sure where the even was being held, but we did eventually find it, and we signed up 2 hours before the Project M brackets were going to start. So we sign up for the events we intended to enter, and paid our entry fee's, and we went to kill some time before things started. We showed back up with about an hour to spare before Project M was scheduled to start.

Things did not start on time at all. This can be understandable at times, if other games are running long, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to this particular delay. The entire time we were waiting around, there were multiple stations that were either unoccupied, or occupied by people playing casual matches. Once you get a tournament and brackets running, there should certainly not be any casual play at all, unless there just happens to be plenty of space for it. The first focus should always be the tournament.

There did not seem to be much knowledge or communication between the TO's and the players. They were very lack-luster in announcing any of the upcoming matches, to a point it would have been easy for someone to not hear their name being called, and miss out entirely. And they did not communicate rules to players very well, as even some of the regulars were unsure of certain aspects of how things were being run.

Another thing that tipped me off that people are not completely sure what they're doing, is that they're drawing brackets out on large poster boards, and even though there are an even number of people in the bracket, there seemed to be multiple by's for the first few rounds. Granted, people might have signed up, and later found out they were unable to make it, but having been there an hour ahead of scheduled start time, which was later than expected, I would assume there would be enough time to fix the brackets accordingly. I asked one of the TO's if they had ever heard of challonge, which as most people know, is a site that allows easy creation and management of tournament brackets. He claimed they use to use it, but that the site crashed a lot? First, this is an issue I've never heard of or come across, and Two, the site can be run and managed quite easily for any number of smartphone or tablet devices, so someone who was helping run the tournament had access to the site. Not to mention that if the website if crashing your computer, you might want to get your computer looked at, because something is clearly wrong there, and no the site.

But that isn't even the cherry on top of this mountain of ****. Even though my partner and I signed up, and paid, TWO hours early into the Project M doubles bracket, we did not even get placed in it. The only excuse we got is that whoever was running it must have ****ed up. It was at this point i dropped entirely and got a refund, even from the singles event.

At best this tournament was simply a dorm level lan-party, and outside of having some lines drawn into pages, did not resemble much of a tournament what-so-ever.
 

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Except for the fact that this group apparently does not know how to host a proper tournament.

I had the extreme dishonor of attending this tournament (if you could call it that), and as someone who traveled from out of town, it was very much a waste of my companions and my own time. We made sure to arrive early, since we were not completely sure where the even was being held, but we did eventually find it, and we signed up 2 hours before the Project M brackets were going to start. So we sign up for the events we intended to enter, and paid our entry fee's, and we went to kill some time before things started. We showed back up with about an hour to spare before Project M was scheduled to start.

Things did not start on time at all. This can be understandable at times, if other games are running long, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to this particular delay. The entire time we were waiting around, there were multiple stations that were either unoccupied, or occupied by people playing casual matches. Once you get a tournament and brackets running, there should certainly not be any casual play at all, unless there just happens to be plenty of space for it. The first focus should always be the tournament.

There did not seem to be much knowledge or communication between the TO's and the players. They were very lack-luster in announcing any of the upcoming matches, to a point it would have been easy for someone to not hear their name being called, and miss out entirely. And they did not communicate rules to players very well, as even some of the regulars were unsure of certain aspects of how things were being run.

Another thing that tipped me off that people are not completely sure what they're doing, is that they're drawing brackets out on large poster boards, and even though there are an even number of people in the bracket, there seemed to be multiple by's for the first few rounds. Granted, people might have signed up, and later found out they were unable to make it, but having been there an hour ahead of scheduled start time, which was later than expected, I would assume there would be enough time to fix the brackets accordingly. I asked one of the TO's if they had ever heard of challonge, which as most people know, is a site that allows easy creation and management of tournament brackets. He claimed they use to use it, but that the site crashed a lot? First, this is an issue I've never heard of or come across, and Two, the site can be run and managed quite easily for any number of smartphone or tablet devices, so someone who was helping run the tournament had access to the site. Not to mention that if the website if crashing your computer, you might want to get your computer looked at, because something is clearly wrong there, and no the site.

But that isn't even the cherry on top of this mountain of ****. Even though my partner and I signed up, and paid, TWO hours early into the Project M doubles bracket, we did not even get placed in it. The only excuse we got is that whoever was running it must have ****ed up. It was at this point i dropped entirely and got a refund, even from the singles event.

At best this tournament was simply a dorm level lan-party, and outside of having some lines drawn into pages, did not resemble much of a tournament what-so-ever.
As for the delay, we started each event 30 minutes late. Now, starting the event may have been having 1 or 2 bracket matches being played due to setups being taken, but each event started 30 minutes late. This was originally because the Huntsville Crew said that they were running late, so everything was pushed back a little bit by that. You are certainly right, there were a lot of open stations. One of the problems that we ran into is that we had a lot of people bottlenecking the bracket, to the point where certain parts of several brackets couldn't advance due to several individuals having matches to play. This is on us as the TO's.

As for calling out the matches, yeah, it was tough. That's one of the reasons we do the paper brackets as well (I'll address that in the next paragraph). We were supposed to have a megaphone, but that fell through. That's on me. Concerning people missing out on their matches, we only had one DQ during the tournament, and it was from people who left to get food and didn't come back. Yeah, the TO staff was poorly organized. That was very eye-opening. Concerning the rules, the only discrepancy that I can think of from the regulars was what stages were legal in PM, which was caused by this being our first tournament since 3.5 released (which changed the stages). Other than that, it's in my view as a TO that if the rules are on the event page, the players should also be responsible for knowing them.

So, the reason that everything was on poster boards was so that people could visibly view the brackets without having to be crowded around a computer. The paper brackets were not any source of ****-ups. They're simply a visual aid. So, unless an event has 16, 32, or 64 entrants, there will be first round byes no matter what. That's just how brackets work. Now to address Challonge and Tiopro (the two free tournament makers). Challonge makes generating a bracket a nightmare. You have to manually seed each individual, it's not particularly user-friendly, and if you don't have a stable internet connection (as is a problem on campus), then it can really slow things down. Tiopro is notorious for crashing all the time, and on top of that, has a mess of a time running multiple tournaments from the same computer. Because of that, we ran things from an excel spreadsheet I made that seeds people and generates brackets from a registration page. Aside from a few bugs that we had to fix as we went, it worked fairly well.

I truly am sorry for what happened to your entry. The answer is that someone took your money, and did not enter you on the registration. And that sucks. One of our main TO's didn't show up today because he's studying for finals, and for a large part of the day, other TO's were occupied in matches. It's all something that hasn't been a problem in the past, but it was a problem this time. So, we're going to make sure it's not a problem in the future by coming up with a better TO'ing schedule and having more TOs.
 

dav3yb

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 7, 2014
Messages
431
As for the delay, we started each event 30 minutes late. Now, starting the event may have been having 1 or 2 bracket matches being played due to setups being taken, but each event started 30 minutes late. This was originally because the Huntsville Crew said that they were running late, so everything was pushed back a little bit by that. You are certainly right, there were a lot of open stations. One of the problems that we ran into is that we had a lot of people bottlenecking the bracket, to the point where certain parts of several brackets couldn't advance due to several individuals having matches to play. This is on us as the TO's.

As for calling out the matches, yeah, it was tough. That's one of the reasons we do the paper brackets as well (I'll address that in the next paragraph). We were supposed to have a megaphone, but that fell through. That's on me. Concerning people missing out on their matches, we only had one DQ during the tournament, and it was from people who left to get food and didn't come back. Yeah, the TO staff was poorly organized. That was very eye-opening. Concerning the rules, the only discrepancy that I can think of from the regulars was what stages were legal in PM, which was caused by this being our first tournament since 3.5 released (which changed the stages). Other than that, it's in my view as a TO that if the rules are on the event page, the players should also be responsible for knowing them.

So, the reason that everything was on poster boards was so that people could visibly view the brackets without having to be crowded around a computer. The paper brackets were not any source of ****-ups. They're simply a visual aid. So, unless an event has 16, 32, or 64 entrants, there will be first round byes no matter what. That's just how brackets work. Now to address Challonge and Tiopro (the two free tournament makers). Challonge makes generating a bracket a nightmare. You have to manually seed each individual, it's not particularly user-friendly, and if you don't have a stable internet connection (as is a problem on campus), then it can really slow things down. Tiopro is notorious for crashing all the time, and on top of that, has a mess of a time running multiple tournaments from the same computer. Because of that, we ran things from an excel spreadsheet I made that seeds people and generates brackets from a registration page. Aside from a few bugs that we had to fix as we went, it worked fairly well.

I truly am sorry for what happened to your entry. The answer is that someone took your money, and did not enter you on the registration. And that sucks. One of our main TO's didn't show up today because he's studying for finals, and for a large part of the day, other TO's were occupied in matches. It's all something that hasn't been a problem in the past, but it was a problem this time. So, we're going to make sure it's not a problem in the future by coming up with a better TO'ing schedule and having more TOs.
So, I don't mean to call you out on some things, but the Internet is stable enough to support a twitch stream but not a website like challonge? Something doesn't add up there. And I don't know how you're using challonge, but I've never had issues with it generating brackets or using the app at all. I know you want to make sure certain matches don't happen on the front end of the bracket, but the initial set up on challonge is just as much a nightmare as figuring it out on paper, not to mention you can also make the challonge bracket public and give a short url to people and they can check them when they're 100 yards away from the venue on a phone. The entire idea of having a bracket drawn up for visual is fine, but it was kept at the table where people were crowding around anyways.

As for rules stuff, I know specifically I saw a winner of a round counter pick a character against the looser. I don't know who it was, but I know it was a violation.

And if one or more TO's are unable to perform their duties and also play a match themselves, they need to choose what they would rather do, play or organize. If there is no one who can step in and perform any of the TO's duties while they are playing a match, then the entire TO staff is uninformed on what needs to be done to run things as smoothly as possible. The entire event reflected poorly on UA smash league.
 

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
So, I don't mean to call you out on some things, but the Internet is stable enough to support a twitch stream but not a website like challonge? Something doesn't add up there. And I don't know how you're using challonge, but I've never had issues with it generating brackets or using the app at all. I know you want to make sure certain matches don't happen on the front end of the bracket, but the initial set up on challonge is just as much a nightmare as figuring it out on paper, not to mention you can also make the challonge bracket public and give a short url to people and they can check them when they're 100 yards away from the venue on a phone. The entire idea of having a bracket drawn up for visual is fine, but it was kept at the table where people were crowding around anyways.

As for rules stuff, I know specifically I saw a winner of a round counter pick a character against the looser. I don't know who it was, but I know it was a violation.

And if one or more TO's are unable to perform their duties and also play a match themselves, they need to choose what they would rather do, play or organize. If there is no one who can step in and perform any of the TO's duties while they are playing a match, then the entire TO staff is uninformed on what needs to be done to run things as smoothly as possible. The entire event reflected poorly on UA smash league.
The last time we ran a twitch stream, it dropped several times. I wasn't involved in the stream running process this time around, so I don't know if the internet was better this time. Also, we didn't have problems generating the bracket, other than a few people not being entered because of a mistake on our part on recording them. That had nothing to do with the bracket. Addressing the "figuring it out on paper," we didn't do this. The brackets weren't figured out on paper. We made the bracket on the computer, and then copied them onto the paper. Nothing was figured out on paper.

Again, the rules are on the event page. If players have questions, that's fine, but we can't go around looking out for people breaking/misinterpreting rules. It's the responsibility of the players to either know the rules, or ask us if there's something contestable.

Let me just say that something to keep in mind is that we're running these tournaments for free. I got up at 8 AM and got back at 1 AM on Sunday so that I could make this tournament happen. Yeah, we had more TO problems than we had before. We probably had more than we will in the future. But we're not running these events to make a profit. We run them because we love the game, and we want people to have tournaments to go to. I'm sorry that your experience with us was so negative, but many people have had a very positive experience. If you think that this tournament was so atrocious as to give you the "extreme dishonor of attending," then I think you have unrealistic standards out of what you expect out of a tournament, and I encourage you to run your own to at least show us how it's done.
 
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Mvushaji

Smash Rookie
Joined
Aug 1, 2014
Messages
2
Location
Montevallo, AL
I personally would like to say that I had a great time at this tourney (even though I got REKT pretty hard haha). I've never been to BIO before this, but I will definitely be coming back. Yes, it was a little chaotic, but I had no problems figuring out who I was supposed to be playing and finding a station to play at. Great turnout, a lot of highly skilled players, and a cheap entry fee - my kind of tournament! I got to meet and play against several members the smash club at UA, and I look forward to (hopefully) playing against them in the near future!
 

dav3yb

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 7, 2014
Messages
431
The last time we ran a twitch stream, it dropped several times. I wasn't involved in the stream running process this time around, so I don't know if the internet was better this time. Also, we didn't have problems generating the bracket, other than a few people not being entered because of a mistake on our part on recording them. That had nothing to do with the bracket. Addressing the "figuring it out on paper," we didn't do this. The brackets weren't figured out on paper. We made the bracket on the computer, and then copied them onto the paper. Nothing was figured out on paper.

Again, the rules are on the event page. If players have questions, that's fine, but we can't go around looking out for people breaking/misinterpreting rules. It's the responsibility of the players to either know the rules, or ask us if there's something contestable.

Let me just say that something to keep in mind is that we're running these tournaments for free. I got up at 8 AM and got back at 1 AM on Sunday so that I could make this tournament happen. Yeah, we had more TO problems than we had before. We probably had more than we will in the future. But we're not running these events to make a profit. We run them because we love the game, and we want people to have tournaments to go to. I'm sorry that your experience with us was so negative, but many people have had a very positive experience. If you think that this tournament was so atrocious as to give you the "extreme dishonor of attending," then I think you have unrealistic standards out of what you expect out of a tournament, and I encourage you to run your own to at least show us how it's done.
The first impression is the one that lasts. I'm sure things have gone much better in the past and that I was incredibly unfortunate to be stuck in the middle of some poor organization.

All the tournaments I've helped with have done a simple roll call to ensure everyone is on the list and where they're supposed to be, and to make sure everyone who paid into it are counted. And this is with a similar turnout, so number of participants should not be an issue for that, and even if it is, there should certainly be a check-in system in place 15 or 20 minutes before the start of the bracket. I guess giving the TO's the benefit of the doubt, since it looks like several of these have been done well, was my own fault.
 

Zoma

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jul 14, 2014
Messages
330
Location
Tuscaloosa, AL
In the past we've had sign up sheets so that we could double check that everybody got entered into the system. We didn't have that this time and there's no good reason why, so I won't try to justify it. Needless to say, that will be back at all future events.

I know that doesn't help the situation you had yesterday, but then there's really nothing Zylo or I can say that will. It's about us getting better so it doesn't happen again.
 

Merk

Smash Rookie
Joined
Apr 6, 2014
Messages
23
Location
Tuscaloosa, AL/Marysville, OH
Hey, finals-studying TO/Melee singles 30th-ish (30ish-th?) place, here. Normally I'd discuss this internally with you guys (@ Zylo Zylo and @ Zoma Zoma ) before bringing the result of it to a public forum but I figure since this tournament caused some strife, I think there should be some transparency here with what I'm seeing and what I'm suggesting - plus we can get input from the people who it apparently affected. Sorry if you disagree or see this as a faux pas or whatever.

Before I begin: Major shoutout to the HASL folks for coming in with the stream equipment. Sorry you had to deal with UA's network infrastructure during finals week; that was a double whammy for sure. But your stream had really great production and a good degree of chat interaction (I had you guys up in a Chrome tab while I was hammering out a lab report). The commentator(s) you brought was/were really solid too. Also thanks to everyone who came from out of town and made the trek up here. I didn't get to talk to as many of you as I'd like, but we really appreciate it.

Now, TOing thoughts:

1) Ordinarily, I'd be really happy to help out, but it was slightly less than chill that I had to man the TO table for the little while that I did. I came to get 0-2'd out of Melee (somehow won one set and took another to Game 3 after a semester of little to no practice outside of screwing around with items on at Pokéfloats on an HDTV at the fraternity house, but I digress), watch some comparatively high level stuff because of the star-studded lineup we had, maybe network a bit, and then leave to keep studying. If it were something like BiO1 or BiO4* in terms of out of town entrants, I wouldn't have even gone in the first place.

* Actually, I heard the Mississippi people were great, but I had other plans the day of that event as you'll recall.

2) As a result of (1), I think we need to guarantee at mininum one TO that isn't playing at all times. Not just "Oh no I can't do my bracket match right now because the other TOs are unavailable", I mean something like half of us should only enter PM, and half of us should only enter Melee, or something along those lines. Other than the quirky losers bracket bottlenecking that happened because of doubles finals and other unforeseen stuff (e.g. not having an assigned food break, see point 5), I feel like BiO3 (at least, for Melee. PM we might've needed more setups) went incredibly smoothly because I didn't enter hardly any events, and was able to field any questions people had - and there were a lot of them. I'm trying not to come off as narcissistic with that point, I think if you had put Clay or Jason or whoever was qualified in the same situation, you'd get the same result. We need permanent staff fixtures.

3) As much as I like the casual atmosphere of our monthlies, we need to be stricter TOs. I'm not talking about being mean for the sake of being mean, because that drives away people, but if you look at the bigger tournaments, the ones that are successful don't put up with any crap. Your match gets called, you have X minutes, you don't show up, boom, you forfeited. And this extends down to the lower levels, too. I used to play some CCGs back in the day, and the only reason that would work out and run fairly smoothly was because the mom and pop shops had judges and organizers that treated the days just like they would a regional or national - and that rarely took away from the positive atmosphere among the players and event staff, because everyone was there for the love of the game. The delaying business does not reflect positively on us, for sure.

4) As much as I love the Excel spreadsheet and appreciate the amount of love that went into making it, yesterday showed that as with anything else, the computer is only as smart as the user. We had people left out of PM doubles, PM singles, and Melee singles who apparently had signed up - and there was no real way to make sure check whether "I don't have you down as having entered that tournament" was on the participant not being clear about what events they wanted to enter or the organizer sucking at entering the information. The solution is that we absolutely need to make sure everything is worked out according to the players. Drawing up the tournament bracket is like woodworking in that we need to have a "measure twice, cut once" mentality, instead of "oh **** um okay I guess we'll just make you play into this game round 1" What I'm thinking is:

- in addition to the Excel spreadsheet which was more or less fine for figuring out seeding automatically, we need a master paper copy that we will then SHOW TO THE PLAYER to confirm the details of which tournaments they're entering, with the whole "is all this information right?" and a smile. It would work similarly to the way we had them fill out the cards themselves at BiO3, and then we looked at it and took their money. Hard copies are vital.
- Those nametags that the Huntsville people brought were a brilliant idea, and I also think that we should list what tournaments they were entered into on the tags, just as a method of checking. Written off in the corner you could have an MS for Melee Singles, MD for Melee Doubles, PS for PM Singles, etc.
- As @ dav3yb dav3yb suggested, I think a roll call is a fantastic idea. It obviously wouldn't work in the 100 entrant range, but we're small enough at 20-30 entrants that taking the time to do that is perfectly feasible. It'd be tough to get people to stop playing their tournament matches from a previous event since we stagger the events, but if we have just a list of entrants for a single event, we could post it as we end registration for said event, and announce that people should come up and ensure they are on the list, as you are still able to remake/fix a bracket before anyone has played.

5) Having the dinner break is a good idea, but we should really advertise to bring outside food. For an all-day shindig like this, it's just a smart idea, but not everyone is going to do it - and yet the RCC is in a bit of an awkward spot compared to the food places on campus. Ergo, for quicker access to food, we should put some of that responsibility on the attendees.

tl;dr: 1) I came to study and play smash. Bruh. 2) We should have a permanent TO, and force ourselves to not enter events sometimes. 3) We need to be stricter for the sake of the tournament. 4) We really, really, really need to take measures to ensure that people are in the events they want to be in. 5) We need to encourage bringing outside food. Shoutout to trail mix being the secret to getting 2nd at major regional tournaments.
 
Last edited:

Basseidon

Smash Cadet
Joined
Nov 21, 2014
Messages
35
Location
Jackson, Mississippi
NNID
Baaseidon
Hey, finals-studying TO/Melee singles 30th-ish (30ish-th?) place, here. Normally I'd discuss this internally with you guys (@ Zylo Zylo and @ Zoma Zoma ) before bringing the result of it to a public forum but I figure since this tournament caused some strife, I think there should be some transparency here with what I'm seeing and what I'm suggesting - plus we can get input from the people who it apparently affected. Sorry if you disagree or see this as a faux pas or whatever.

Before I begin: Major shoutout to the HASL folks for coming in with the stream equipment. Sorry you had to deal with UA's network infrastructure during finals week; that was a double whammy for sure. But your stream had really great production and a good degree of chat interaction (I had you guys up in a Chrome tab while I was hammering out a lab report). The commentator(s) you brought was/were really solid too. Also thanks to everyone who came from out of town and made the trek up here. I didn't get to talk to as many of you as I'd like, but we really appreciate it.

Now, TOing thoughts:

1) Ordinarily, I'd be really happy to help out, but it was slightly less than chill that I had to man the TO table for the little while that I did. I came to get 0-2'd out of Melee (somehow won one set and took another to Game 3 after a semester of little to no practice outside of screwing around with items on at Pokéfloats on an HDTV at the fraternity house, but I digress), watch some comparatively high level stuff because of the star-studded lineup we had, maybe network a bit, and then leave to keep studying. If it were something like BiO1 or BiO4* in terms of out of town entrants, I wouldn't have even gone in the first place.

* Actually, I heard the Mississippi people were great, but I had other plans the day of that event as you'll recall.

2) As a result of (1), I think we need to guarantee at mininum one TO that isn't playing at all times. Not just "Oh no I can't do my bracket match right now because the other TOs are unavailable", I mean something like half of us should only enter PM, and half of us should only enter Melee, or something along those lines. Other than the quirky losers bracket bottlenecking that happened because of doubles finals and other unforeseen stuff (e.g. not having an assigned food break, see point 5), I feel like BiO3 (at least, for Melee. PM we might've needed more setups) went incredibly smoothly because I didn't enter any events, and was able to field any questions people had - and there were a lot of them. I'm trying not to come off as narcissistic with that point, I think if you had put Clay or Jason or whoever was qualified in the same situation, you'd get the same result. You need permanent staff fixtures.

3) As much as I like the casual atmosphere of our monthlies, we need to be stricter TOs. I'm not talking about being mean for the sake of being mean, because that drives away people, but if you look at the bigger tournaments, the ones that are successful don't put up with any crap. Your match gets called, you have X minutes, you don't show up, boom, you forfeited. And this extends down to the lower levels, too. I used to play some CCGs back in the day, and the only reason that would work out and run fairly smoothly was because the mom and pop shops had judges and organizers that treated the days just like they would a regional or national - and that rarely took away from the positive atmosphere among the players and event staff, because everyone was there for the love of the game. The delaying business does not reflect positively on us, for sure.

4) As much as I love the Excel spreadsheet and appreciate the amount of love that went into making it, yesterday showed that as with anything else, the computer is only as smart as the user. We had people left out of PM doubles, PM singles, and Melee singles who apparently had signed up - and there was no real way to make sure that "I don't have you down as having entered that tournament" was on the participant not being clear about what events they wanted to enter or the organizer sucking at entering the information. The solution is that we absolutely need to make sure everything is worked out according to the players. Drawing up the tournament bracket is like woodworking in that we need to have a "measure twice, cut once" mentality, instead of "oh **** um okay I guess we'll just make you play into this game round 1" What I'm thinking is:

- in addition to the Excel spreadsheet which was more or less fine for figuring out seeding automatically, we need a master paper copy that we will then SHOW TO THE PLAYER to confirm the details of which tournaments they're entering, with the whole "is all this information right?" and a smile. It would work similarly to the way we had them fill out the cards themselves at BiO3, and then we looked at it and took their money. Hard copies are vital.
- Those nametags that the Huntsville people brought were a brilliant idea, and I also think that we should list what tournaments they were entered into on the tags, just as a method of checking. Written off in the corner you could have an MS for Melee Singles, MD for Melee Doubles, PS for PM Singles, etc.
- As @ dav3yb dav3yb suggested, I think a roll call is a fantastic idea. It obviously wouldn't work in the 100 entrant range, but we're small enough at 20-30 entrants that taking the time to do that is perfectly feasible. It'd be tough to get people to stop playing their tournament matches from a previous event since we stagger the events, but if we have just a list of entrants for a single event, we could post it as we end registration for said event, and announce that people should come up and ensure they are on the list, as you are still able to remake/fix a bracket before anyone has played.

5) Having the dinner break is a good idea, but we should really advertise to bring outside food. For an all-day shindig like this, it's just a smart idea, but not everyone is going to do it - and yet the RCC is in a bit of an awkward spot compared to the food places on campus. Ergo, for quicker access to food, we should put some of that responsibility on the attendees.

tl;dr: 1) I came to study and play smash. Bruh. 2) We should have a permanent TO, and force ourselves to not enter events sometimes. 3) We need to be stricter for the sake of the tournament. 4) We really, really, really need to take measures to ensure that people are in the events they want to be in. 5) We need to encourage bringing outside food. Shoutout to trail mix being the secret to getting 2nd at major regional tournaments.


Yes this guy gets it! Look I saw some excellent players there and the people I went up against were very friendly, so no disrespect individually. As a whole, lack of leadership was evident. The tournament was running well beyond 30 minutes late (closer to the 1 hour and half mark, maybe 2). What you said about having TO managing the tournament at all times is right on! I get it, TOs for these more local/regional tournaments want to participate, and that’s fine by me! It’s just someone needs to be managing it at all times, all the TOs don't need to play at one time, whether that means delaying a single match or not. I had a discrepancy about a rule, wasn’t a major rule but I went to ask before the match started, I was told "The only 2 people who know the rules are currently in a match". That shouldn't happen.


As for the brackets, Excel, poster paper, Challonge, I don't care. What I do care is for someone to be managing this at all times. I literally was not aware of whom I should even report a match too; there was no one at the table. I am not sure what even happened to PM doubles, it seemed to have been swallowed up by PM singles. I did have three matches in singles, but I ended up walking before finishing because I could not stand the lack of organization that would promote competition. Being a TO does require leadership, it does require a since of authority, and it does require to be informative and strict on certain rules.


I didn’t have unrealistic expectations, but just expected common sense and leadership. So yeah, I am the one who invited a group to come out of town with me too this tournament, and all had a negative experience at the tournament, which means that's on me. Which I HATE that we did, because we were so excited! We haven’t done an out of state tournament before and this one seemed to be well promoted and organized in advanced! Yet, the tournament itself was lacking of many key elements are required to even be considered a basic tournament. I personally lost all interest in competing that night and unfortunately this has made me extremely reluctant to ever return. I wish it weren’t the case, because I want to see the smash scene grow in the south, especially the twin states.


I know plenty of people had fun, but it seemed to be only for UASL and HASL, not for outsiders. So no johns, no excuses, just take this as criticism and learn from it. I do hope to participate in some fashion with yall again, I don’t want it to stay a negative experience, but I literally can’t afford to take time off again unless I know for sure, that the next tournament I would possibly participate in, is meeting the minimum or basic expectations of a tournament. A tournament doesn’t have to be fancy or complex, just use common sense leadership skills. And @ Merk Merk you seem to understand this, and hopefully they can have you in charge next time!
 
Last edited:

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Yes this guy gets it! Look I saw some excellent players there and the people I went up against were very friendly, so no disrespect individually. As a whole, lack of leadership was evident. The tournament was running well beyond 30 minutes late (closer to the 1 hour and half mark, maybe 2). What you said about having TO managing the tournament at all times is right on! I get it, TOs for these more local/regional tournaments want to participate, and that’s fine by me! It’s just someone needs to be managing it at all times, all the TOs don't need to play at one time, whether that means delaying a single match or not. I had a discrepancy about a rule, wasn’t a major rule but I went to ask before the match started, I was told "The only 2 people who know the rules are currently in a match". That shouldn't happen.


As for the brackets, Excel, poster paper, Challonge, I don't care. What I do care is for someone to be managing this at all times. I literally was not aware of whom I should even report a match too; there was no one at the table. I am not sure what even happened to PM doubles, it seemed to have been swallowed up by PM singles. I did have three matches in singles, but I ended up walking before finishing because I could not stand the lack of organization that would promote competition. Being a TO does require leadership, it does require a since of authority, and it does require to be informative and strict on certain rules.


I didn’t have unrealistic expectations, but just expected common sense and leadership. So yeah, I am the one who invited a group to come out of town with me too this tournament, and all had a negative experience at the tournament, which means that's on me. Which I HATE that we did, because we were so excited! We haven’t done an out of state tournament before and this one seemed to be well promoted and organized in advanced! Yet, the tournament itself was lacking of many key elements are required to even be considered a basic tournament. I personally lost all interest in competing that night and unfortunately this has made me extremely reluctant to ever return. I wish it weren’t the case, because I want to see the smash scene grow in the south, especially the twin states.


I know plenty of people had fun, but it seemed to be only for UASL and HASL, not for outsiders. So no johns, no excuses, just take this as criticism and learn from it. I do hope to participate in some fashion with yall again, I don’t want it to stay a negative experience, but I literally can’t afford to take time off again unless I know for sure, that the next tournament I would possibly participate in, is meeting the minimum or basic expectations of a tournament. A tournament doesn’t have to be fancy or complex, just use common sense leadership skills.
FWIW, everything operated on a 30 minute delay as I stated above. If you check the HASL twitter, https://twitter.com/HsvASL, they tweeted out that PM Singles started at 5:37. So a little more than 30 minutes.

Yep, we need TO's manning the station at all times. Definitely a change to implement. Very constructive criticism.
 

Basseidon

Smash Cadet
Joined
Nov 21, 2014
Messages
35
Location
Jackson, Mississippi
NNID
Baaseidon
FWIW, everything operated on a 30 minute delay as I stated above. If you check the HASL twitter, they tweeted out that PM Singles started at 5:37. So a little more than 30 minutes.

Yep, we need TO's manning the station at all times. Definitely a change to implement. Very constructive criticism.
The singles might have been then, but the issue was that we were just starting doubles around that time as well. As I mentioned doubles got "swallowed up by singles".
 

Zylo

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 23, 2013
Messages
433
Location
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
The singles might have been then, but the issue was that we were just starting doubles around that time as well. As I mentioned doubles got "swallowed up by singles".
Yep. We played a couple of the doubles matches on time, but a few of the 1st round doubles matches got pushed back pretty far because of people playing their melee matches.
 
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Saki-

Reset Project
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
3,206
Location
Glencoe, Al
NNID
iTasya
I'll get some insight on TO'ng during the upcoming tournaments. I'd really like to help out from now on like ASL used to during the circuits and what not. Totes forgot to sign up for PM but had fun playing some WiiU with some doods. Looking forward to the next event, I'm sure mistakes will be fixed and with Keno usually being eager to go I could make this carpooling thing a habit.
 
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