Okay, I'm glad almost everyone had a good time. I was on edge during the tournament, and I'm a little salty now. At the risk of sounding one-sided, I do need to get this off my chest.
This is the 13th or so tournament that I've had a big hand in hosting, and that's not counting OoS tournaments where I pulled a lot of weight. The reason I've grown to love AL tournaments so much is that we usually have a group of TOs ready and willing to assume responsibility for jobs that need to be done; this tournament broke from that pattern, and I was extremely irritated by it. By this point, most of us know that there's a very simple Timestamp program that has to be run during the brackets so that we can organize the replays for uploaders later. It is not a hard program to understand, but people always look confused when I show it to them. They throw their hands back and say "I don't know how to do that." Yeah right. We've done this over and over and over again. You input two players' names and the setup they are fighting on; that's it. During past tournaments, I could rely on people to watch the desk and pull their weight in helping to run the bracket and the Timestamp program. This time, when I stepped away from the desk and asked someone to watch it, I often came back to find that the desk had been abandoned. I ended up carrying the money in my pocket the entire tournament because I was afraid it would be taken while no one was watching the desk. I also found that several matches had been omitted in the Timestamp program, and I had to go personally track them down to get them recorded. I can't record things on the Timestamp program and go play my tournament matches all at the same time.
Also, at past tournaments, people could come to the desk to ask questions. It was common practice that someone knowledgeable was manning the desk at all times and wouldn't abandon it unless they could find someone to take their place, but again, not this time. This time I had people coming to me during several of my tournament matches to interrupt and ask a question related to tournament functioning. I can't be handling this while I'm in a tournament match. Until the end of the tournament when I was playing matches with Kevin (when nothing else needed to be done), I couldn't get much time without someone shouting my name. I'm used to it, but not to such an extreme degree. I don't blame the new players because who else do they know to ask if no one is at the desk? I'm mainly disappointed that the veterans didn't pull their weight in running things. No one wants to run everything all the time, and I'm not asking anyone to run things indefinitely. I just thought we had come to an understanding that we were running things together, something I didn't think I needed to explicitly state anymore.
I think part of it is that Brannon and Drew were so focused on the stream that they couldn't help much with anything else. I don't blame them either. The stream and the online bracket took a lot of work to set up, and they did a good job with it. I have heard a lot of positive comments already on the stream. But we weren't the only three veterans at the tournament.
So am I mad? No. I'm frustrated. I'm frustrated because I would like to enjoy the tournament too, just like when I come to Iron Brawl I give Ryan a reprieve or when I come to Resist I always give Drew the help he needs so that he can go play matches without worrying about the money or the bracket (at least for a decent amount of time). I'm frustrated because I feel like I'm being taken advantage of. I think when people see that I will do the work when no one else steps up, they decide that they will avoid it because I'm the safety net. I'm frustrated because I was the only one available to help players when they had questions or problems, even when I was in a tournament match. I'm frustrated because I was the only one who showed up when the venue opened in order to set up the room. And I'm frustrated because everyone seems more than happy to let me do pretty much everything on my own.
Did I have zero help during the tournament? No, that would be preposterous, I had some help. Luis, Hunter, and Brannon helped seed the brackets. Luis and Ben helped me set up some of the sd cards. Brannon and Drew did all of the livestreaming. However, during the bulk of the tournament, I felt like the only one really handling any problems or taking any initiative to keep the tournament going.
We've got a good thing going in the AL community, but I'm not eager to do the bulk of the work on my own or even with one or two other people. Unfortunately, that's the trend I've been seeing more and more in the past several weeks. I've seen a select few people that are willing to step up to the plate, and a lot of people who shirk their responsibilities as citizens of this community.
On top of that, I had several occasions where people refused to get off setups when we needed them for the tournament. If everyone does this all the time, then the tournament will run over time, and we will be kicked out, perhaps not even allowed to return for another event. It was my job to get everyone out by 10 'o' clock, which meant cleaning up by 9:30. That also meant being able to call out matches without having everyone talk over me. Admittedly, I don't have a very loud voice, but the room was uncooperative whenever I tried to announce brackets.
All of these things together made me become a real hardass in order to get things done. I don't like being that guy, and it's the type of thing that makes me want to quit TOing altogether. Half the time, I'm treated like the bad guy because I'm the one keeping the tournament on track and on schedule, and that frustrates the heck out of me. Other TOs can vouch for this problem.
Okay, rant over. I'm not giving you guys a tl;dr because tl;dr exemplifies the very attitude that has me riled up.