Improving our Community (ATL South Logo?)

[Purple]

Hell, just having a grill in general might be pretty dope

 

[thegreatkazoo]

1. Local Semi-Regular Smashfests/Tourneys: If they are not already happening in your community, this should be the first priority. Also maybe 2-4 times a year, putting banners up around the community to advertise the upcoming local tourney would probably be a good idea to keep drawing in new people.
2. More (tournament) videos: this requires individuals to have two things: a laptop, and video recording equipment. Most people already have laptops, so all you’d have to do buy recording equipment. We should keep an index of recommended recorders for different levels. (Cheap to High End.)
3. Improved intros to videos: Another easy one. Just need someone who is artistic to at the very minimum, make an intro for the Atlantic South. The opportunity for growth is huge, becoming as specific as intros for individual tournaments.
4. A reliable commentator: This person should be someone very knowledgeable about the game (on many levels including history and character matchups,) who can augment a match rather than steal the show. The person also must be at most tournaments. We probably will need ~1/state. Dogy is great, but I always think of the teams match he commented on with Merck where he stole the show. Even more ideally, there should be 2 people, probably one to specialize on each game, but who work as a team.
5. Awards/Trophies: Maybe based less on performance than role in the community.
   Spoiler

   In Gainesville circa 2006, Solitas hosted tournaments in which he gave out trophies to top players, as well as the “Biggest ***” award. Those who remember him remember him as one of the best TO’s ever.
6. Sponsors: Going up the list in difficulty, first we need to identify whose target market we are. Then we should go to those companies and have them compete for us.
7. Cooperation: I’m not entirely sure what Pappy originally meant by this, because the melee community has always worked to aid themselves. How it works in the Brawl community I’m not sure of, and between the two communities there seems to be toleration but certainly not synergy yet. I’m not sure how to start going about this, but I think if we start working for improvement, we’ve gotten somewhere.
8. A HUGE tournament (in Atlanta): This will probably be the most difficult, and will require some cooperation before it can happen (which is why it’s last on the list.) There’s still a lonnng way to go here. First thing that needs to happen is building up the ATL community with (advertised) regular local tournaments at a consistently location. I have many more ideas for how to approach this but will leave them off for now.

None of what I said is an absolute truth. Other suggestions are welcome. If I missed an idea for improvement that we’ve discussed or that you have, please suggest it.

We can do this, one thing at a time.

If we can get our ideas organized and tight, we should write up an “Improving your smash community” post.

In response to one--So, what I did in order to solve the transportation issue with WABA (prior to their move) was host two tourneys of my own in the Georgia Tech area. The turnout was decent, and I think with a little more preparation, the rest of the Tech people (I'm leaving in three weeks, so count me out), can improve on the process.

Two--I actually made a recommendation for a high (and low) end recorder here. For those a little lazy to click on the link, my high end recommendation is the Hauppauge HD PVR and the low end is the Pinnacle Video Transfer. I would highly recommend the HD PVR for livestreaming as it comes out quite nicely and isn't as pixelated.

Three--I could help out with this after I master Sony Vegas. I'm still learning the ins and outs, so it may be a little while longer.

I'm interested to hear your take on six. I'll hit you up on aim sometime to hear about that.

Honestly I was ready to be like "Thanks for the games, peace *****es!", but I think as a combination of the recent **** I've dealt with on SRK combined with the love CS is blah, blah, &c.

1) Why Gatech? Our school is smack dab in Metro Atlanta, which means that it's a (theoretically) fair drive for everyone. I know that not everyone can come out every time, and I know that some people loved that Waba was way out on 85 or that USGA is way out on 400, but the fact is that people from EP or whereever else they're from (Umby - my condolences) have a much crazier drive over there. No location is perfect for everyone, but I think a place like our school is a pretty good start. Additionally, if you're not familiar with the kinds of people that inhabit our school, they are nerds. Which means that we not only get the usual appeal of college kids being like "oooo video games" but you get a lot of people who may play (and likely suck) at those games. When tech hosts their little free tournaments, even games like TvC bring out more than 10 competitors. It's a decent starting point, is all.

2) You trying to compete with Min and Haywood?! Trying to steal them tournament goers?! No. I want these gatherings/(hopeful!) tournaments to be something that the players want. I want a scene that is run by the players, with other players setting things up and running brackets. I've seen complaints here and there about the way tournaments should be run, but in my mind, if you have the equipment, actually RUNNING the tournament is the easy part. You just have to stay there and stay focused. I've been to countless Smash tournaments where I knew more about how the bracket was running than the TO did. But all that nonsense aside, it seems like the pissing contest (which surprisingly has not ended yet) between those two can remain as it is. I want to create something which GA (and hopefully OoS) want(s), where we play games we want to play and constantly challenge ourselves to get better.

Any thoughts? Open to questions/flame wars.

Thanks plenty for not mentioning the two tourneys I hosted for the 2009-2010 School year. :bigthumbu

It's almost as if I wasn't @ Tech two years before you, but I digress...

@ Point 1: Which is why I hosted two tourneys. However, getting a bigger location may take some arm wringing on our part. I do know a good bit of the Housing people, so if you need help with that, give me a shout.

@ Point 2: I do feel that there should be more than one person running the tourney. It seems to me that if you're the TO, then you will not play friendlies, which is kinda crummy. So, we should look for a solution for that.

 

[Moses.]

Hey guys I had an idea for a logo. It's pretty basic, but I think it serves to identify the region (at least rudimentarily). I'm not that great with GIMP, but I spent a little bit of time of this. Also, I know it is a Smash ball, which is only from Brawl, but it is very visually appealing. Thoughts?

I'm sure we could add the words ATL South or Atlantic South somewhere if we wanted to.

 

[thegreatkazoo]

I like it!

 

[Exdeath]

Isn't Texas considered part of the South?

 

[Anomic_Punk]

Isn't Texas considered part of the South?

When it comes to regional crew battle time it usually is.

 

[Purple]

[collapse=your info]Hey guys I had an idea for a logo. It's pretty basic, but I think it serves to identify the region (at least rudimentarily). I'm not that great with GIMP, but I spent a little bit of time of this. Also, I know it is a Smash ball, which is only from Brawl, but it is very visually appealing. Thoughts?

I'm sure we could add the words ATL South or Atlantic South somewhere if we wanted to.[/collapse]

*commented on, however knowing the picture you used I see why you used it* That's more of a brawl logo than a overall smash logo (because of the rainbow).

I'm looking more along the lines of a simple black and white (maybe grey) image that can be laid upon a black background for intros and endings of combo vids/ tourney vids

@anomic_punk/fmtl - Do you know any emblems that would describe the south as a whole?

As for the text of Atl South, I feel the text would be something more western and less high tech correct?

 

[Moses.]

On the page for Regional zones, Texas is included in the Southwest.

 

[Purple]

On the page for Regional zones, Texas is included in the Southwest.

Ah well **** them then lol

Let me edit that post.

 

[dashdancedan]

No offense but this is stupid

 

[Exdeath]

On the page for Regional zones, Texas is included in the Southwest.

SWF is not necessarily indicative of the actual Southern community. If Texas plays with South then they should be recognized as such.

No offense but this is stupid

Thank you for your intelligent and helpful contribution.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

Hey guys, thought I'd like to throw my input in. I confess I don't frequent Smash Boards often. I don't play the game competitively nor could I hold my own against most 8 year old children. I am, however, both a competitive player and Tournament Organizer for Street Fighter and, not only do I frequent the Shoryuken forum, I am the thread creator and by far the most frequent poster of the Arkansas Shoryuken thread. What does this have to do with SWF or this thread? Well, there is a large number of us among the AR SRK community that are actively trying to "improve our community."

Some of the things we do include

1) Gatherings - We both host and coordinate gatherings with players around the state. If you're in AR and you want to play Street Fighter, chances are we have contacts in your area that host meetups. All of the competitive players are networked in such a way that directions or phone numbers are just a text message away (or a PM). In addition, our OP is neatly organized and clearly describes the location of each meetup as well as the day/time of meetup and what goes on at each gathering.

2) Tournaments - We both host and attend regional tournaments. However the goal is not only to win, but more importantly, to network. If we travel, we'll stay at another player's house. Sometimes we'll carpool. We'll discuss strategies, discuss life, call each other out, challenge each other. We'll become closer as people. All in the name of building a better community. In fact, we recently attended Evo and instead of watching much of the semi-finals, we instead just hung out clubbin' or playing casuals in a hotel room.

3) Be Friendly - This is perhaps the most important. There are several scenarios where being an a-hole in the fighting game community is important. It breed competitiveness and can create better players. However, to new players, being rude is often detrimental. It's easy to say "oh, if anyone walks up to me and asks me about Smash, I'll be extremely helpful with them!" What about the noobies who post on your thread? Are you the first to greet them? Give them helpful advice? I don't know how it is here, but on the SRK forums, I've seen countless regional threads where people are quite often ignored, turning them off to the whole community. I make it a vital point to answer absolutely every single post that hasn't been answered adequately within a given time frame. Being ignored makes people feel slighted which could make an already small community even smaller.

Now I know what I stated above consisted mainly of simple things that the Smash community already knows and adheres to. As someone who's still walking the path of trying to improve the community for my state, I do have some advice for others.

1) Organization - While I'm over-generalizing, in my experience many of the OPs of threads (both here and SRK) are not very "noob-friendly." That is, they don't tell nearly as much information as they need to. One of the absolute easiest ways to intimidate a newer player is to give them a 900 page thread with only a random picture as the OP and tell them to make themselves at home. The way most threads go, it's not uncommon for new posts to become buried in 2-3 pages over the course of a day. In addition, a quick note stating how friendly everyone is and that it's alright to ask any question you want is a big plus. It's like having a welcome mat on your door.

2) Leadership - It's easy to be a follower. It's easy to attend tournaments. It's easy to be the second poster of a new thread. Which of you can make the step up? Which of you can host your own tournaments? Create your own threads with up to the date information on upcoming tournaments, meetups, players, etc.? To be honest, almost each and every one of you CAN do it. But will you? I'd argue the Arkansas Fighting Game Community (minus Smash) was nearly dead before me and my buddies jumped on board. We got our *** handed to us by professional SF players and when we asked how we could get better, they told us to build a community. Get competition. Play multiple times per week. And you know? We did it. Our state game convention had probably 6-7 Arkansas SF players. Less than six months later? We hosted our own tournament with probably 30 Arkansas SF players. We can't take full credit for what the community we helped build did, but I'd like to think that if we weren't there to start things off, perhaps our community would be less active than it is now. So what I'm trying to say is, if there's nothing going on in your area, make things happen!

3) Networking - As stated before, networking is extremely vital to building a better community. I believe it's what allowed us to have such strong numbers at our last Arkansas tournament, at least for Arkansas standards (over 70 gamers from five different states with a total prize pot of over $1000). We are close friends with one of the Oklahoma TOs. We know some of the top Memphis, TN and Dallas, TX players. And we managed to get lucky and pull in some Missouri players. In addition, we were able to count on almost every single one of our Arkansas contacts to come support the scene.

Anyway, sorry guys. I kinda rambled on and I probably said things that everyone already knows, but I figured I'd throw my perspective in there. Also, while we're on topic of "improving our community" I'd like to invite everyone to our Arkansas Regional Knockouts tournament being held on July 31st in Conway, AR. We had gamers from 5 different states last time and we'd love to expand on that if anyone wants. The official thread is here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=281258

Thanks guys!

 

[ZIO]

What's wrong, then? Sounds very familiar to what I already see with our tournaments and smashfests.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

What's wrong, then? Sounds very familiar to what I already see with our tournaments and smashfests.

Well, I'm not calling out the Smash community. I'm just saying here are things that have helped me. If they're things everybody already knows, then great. If they're not, well then also great- I at least threw some new input into the thread.

I will say this: Smash has probably a much larger community than other fighting games in most states. Why doesn't it hold far more tournaments? All the tournaments that I've seen or heard of have either not involved Smash or Smash wasn't the main game. This is outside of SWF of course. It's obvious that most tournies posted in SWF will be focused on Smash, but it'd definitely help if there was some outreach into building a better fighting game community, not just Smash community. Ever hear some fan of another game say "Smash sucks!"? Why not make them fall in love with the game? Invite them in and show them why Smash is at least as deserving of love as Random Fighting Game Sequel with Adjectives 3. Get local game businesses involved with posting fliers up of upcoming tournies. Get the word of mouth out. And don't be afraid of going into SRK, TekkenZaibatsu, Dustloop, 8WayRun, or MeltyBread and saying "hey guys, we're hosting a tournament that's primarily catered to Smash, but may include side events of your games. Let me know if you're interested!" The worst that will happen if you're curteous is people will ignore you. But for every 10 people that may ignore you, maybe one will go to your tournament and have a great time.

 

[BBQTV]

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=280040

hype this ****!

 

[dashdancedan]

Thank you for your intelligent and helpful contribution.

Thanks for a whole page of designing an emblem. Great community improvement guys.

Nah, but really the advice in this thread is really good.

 

[exarch]

One small thing at a time, Dan.

We can't mass a 400 person tourney in Atlanta right now. But we can try to make our regional videos more uniform, with a logo.

Becoming more apparent is a good place to start for a huge tournament. The more organized and official we look, the more people hopefully will want to join the community. That's the idea we're working from.

@Matt: I like the logo, but am worried that the smash part of it gets lost behind the orbiting yellow flashes. Our states stick out, but "smash" isn't quite as obvious to me. Otherwise it looks nice and fancy, what do you think of mine? (found @ the end.)

As a community we are just those states listed. Our community feel is based on this child forum and the Atlantic South room itself. For those considerations, TX is not included. But certainly NC will feel closer to VA than to FL. I'm not sure what I really think; it'd probably be better to not exclude any one state from our logo.

SmokeMax makes a good point: We should go ahead and reach out to other games communities. It couldn't hurt.

I edited this in my last post afterward. I think some of y'all might've missed it.
Smash-Barbeque.
Obviously these aren't the final draft. I tried for simpler color schemes on the right side, so we could just display it on a black/white BG. The one on the left would ideally only be cracked and not 90 degrees open... but I'm working with paint so give me a break. On the right, it's cracked with heat things, cracked open, and closed. The heat lines could/should probably be warped into the bbq itself with a better program. It should also probably be bigger.

 

[ZIO]

I don't know why that just doesn't look right as a logo.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

SmokeMax makes a good point: We should go ahead and reach out to other games communities. It couldn't hurt.

Yeah, just don't be discouraged when people try to call Smash out. There are *******es in every community and SRK has its fair share of 'em.

 

[Moses.]

Thomas you should download GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/). It's basically a free Photoshop, and works just like it. It may take awhile to get used to a more complex image editor, but its probably a good skill to develop.

Also, thanks for the feedback. I really like the idea of having the outline of the states, though. I like it better than the barbeque idea. Do you have any ideas that could the states? Maybe just the states and a title like "Atlantic South Smash" or something. I'll try and work on something.

 

[exarch]

Hey Matt/anyone else toying with things still:
For use with Gimp

I'd DL gimp if I wasn't doing all this on my work comp. x.x

 

[ChKn]

The shape reminds me of a quote bubble. I think that it could stick. Maybe make the smash logo in the middle of it and put Atlantic South Smash around it.

lol A.S.S. oops...uhh find some other initials that work.

 

[ZIO]

Ugh. Give me a day or two, and I'll make a mock up of what I have in mind.

 

[DFEAR]

u guys should make the logo really gentlemen like

 

[Purple]

It's so weird, people want either something gentlemen like or ridiculous like fried chicken :X

 

[DFEAR]

well...what does the atl south represent? what face do we show ourselves to the rest of the community? i say were too good and classy and underappreciated lol

 

[Purple]

lol, well we -are- the gentlemen's club after all o.o

 

[BBQ°]

Those who are interested in improving our community themselves, personally, include:
Me, Pappy, BBQ, Aglow, Kazoo, Bears?, Moses, BBQTV, azianraven, hbox, Zio, Eikelmann/Mooney, DarkSonic, Xdeath, Harriettheguy, others.

--If you are interested in helping please post so we know who we can talk to regarding ideas and actions. It will go miles if we just know who wants to help. We by no means have a handle on this, so please say you want to help if you do. Or maybe better, just start helping!

We should also keep track of ideas for improving the community.

1. Local Semi-Regular Smashfests/Tourneys: If they are not already happening in your community, this should be the first priority. Also maybe 2-4 times a year, putting banners up around the community to advertise the upcoming local tourney would probably be a good idea to keep drawing in new people.
2. More (tournament) videos: this requires individuals to have two things: a laptop, and video recording equipment. Most people already have laptops, so all you’d have to do buy recording equipment. We should keep an index of recommended recorders for different levels. (Cheap to High End.)
3. Improved intros to videos: Another easy one. Just need someone who is artistic to at the very minimum, make an intro for the Atlantic South. The opportunity for growth is huge, becoming as specific as intros for individual tournaments.
4. A reliable commentator: This person should be someone very knowledgeable about the game (on many levels including history and character matchups,) who can augment a match rather than steal the show. The person also must be at most tournaments. We probably will need ~1/state. Dogy is great, but I always think of the teams match he commented on with Merck where he stole the show. Even more ideally, there should be 2 people, probably one to specialize on each game, but who work as a team.

1. 
   
   cool, I'm glad you agree with the intro thing. Sleepyk is really good at uploading and I record a lot of stuff but I'm like horribly slow at uploading lol. I've still got a lot of fun footage from SPSU smashfests that I'd like to upload soon. If I can get ahold of an intro so I can put that on my videos, that would be freakin sweet.

 

[Moses.]

Hopefully when Phanna moves to Gainesville we can really churn out some quality vids of Gainesville's finest.

 

[PB&J]

this is too good..keep it coming

 

[Moses.]

Here's another thing I thought about: what about the Smash Wiki? I think that if we had more professional articles on there, especially about our Smashers, Tournaments, and maybe crews, it would definitely make the South more legit.

I think it's a very good tool that we can us to spread information about us. For example, I recently (IE, today) made an article about my good friend and the people's champ RockCrock (http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Smasher:RockCrock). I included some basic history, and more importantly, some recent videos of his performance. I also updated one for another friend, Harriettheguy (http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Smasher:Harriettheguy).

I actually thought about making one for you Thomas, but I realized that I didn't know that much about your history, and I couldn't find too many matches online.

 

[BearsAreScary]

Thanks plenty for not mentioning the two tourneys I hosted for the 2009-2010 School year. :bigthumbu

It's almost as if I wasn't @ Tech two years before you, but I digress...

@ Point 1: Which is why I hosted two tourneys. However, getting a bigger location may take some arm wringing on our part. I do know a good bit of the Housing people, so if you need help with that, give me a shout.

@ Point 2: I do feel that there should be more than one person running the tourney. It seems to me that if you're the TO, then you will not play friendlies, which is kinda crummy. So, we should look for a solution for that.

Lol I honestly forgot about you....hmmm my bad.

It certainly seems that getting a room rented out on the cheap is a total ***** at our school. I remember trying to get a bunch of rooms for a debate tournament was an absolute nightmare. But I know it's different dealing with RHA vs. Gatech space, right? I heard that RHA were complete ********s about it, and some douchebag in RHA got console tournaments taken out of the GT LAN one semester. I of course have only heard such things (I knew a few of the guys who ran the LANs back then, but they've all moved on now...), so I don't really know where to begin. I was looking at contacting those ESP folks as an idea, although who knows how on-board they'd be with such an idea. Maybe they'd think I was trying to undermine/usurp them? All I want is some actual club backing up renting a room (I know it's quite a bit cheaper if you do it that way). Who knows, it's worth a shot I guess.

Secondly, I'm not at all suggesting that I single-handedly run everything. I feel that if ESP would get on board with the idea, it might appeal to a couple of them to come and promote their club (or Gatech, since many players are still in HS), even if they're just selling pizza or putting their name on the event or whatever. I listed a few of the folks I know around the area, and I'm sure they'd be willing to simply run tournaments in their respective games. I know that one man can't do it all, and I'm not on any kind of power trip here, all I suggested was that I will volunteer to do all that ****ty legwork (talking to Gatech people, different clubs, RHA, blah blah) to get the room secured. I know everyone can take care of themselves come tourney time From my experience, communities would rather run themselves at tournaments than have fools who know nothing about how their games proceed to run brackets for them. Somebody will always step up and volunteer, and if they do it right it usually won't hold up the tournament when they play :D

But.....baby steps. Ben's got his Capcom thing going, Micaelis has his Smash thing, and I'm gonna start up the BB thing. Eventually, we will come together and hopefully make beautiful magic.

 

[GA Peach]

i think the biggest issue with this, at least in GA, is that the larger community(SRK) has tried quite a number of times to help accommodate the SWF community and help them be a part of the SRK community. i helped to organize this so that we could have a unified community in our state, since i am on both sides of the spectrum. But, the issue for us seems to be a lack of interest and attendance. Smashers just don't come out to the events unless it is held by a select couple of people. In GA, i actually find most of the SRK community to be more accepting of new hosts or venues and flexible than the SWF guys. i don't know how the scene is in other states, but it's hard enough to get people to do stuff in GA, and even harder to get the SWF guys of GA to do what you propose doing. I wish you all the luck in the world, however. Hopefully you can succeed where I have failed, lol.

 

[SmokeMaxX]

i think the biggest issue with this, at least in GA, is that the larger community(SRK) has tried quite a number of times to help accommodate the SWF community and help them be a part of the SRK community. i helped to organize this so that we could have a unified community in our state, since i am on both sides of the spectrum. But, the issue for us seems to be a lack of interest and attendance. Smashers just don't come out to the events unless it is held by a select couple of people. In GA, i actually find most of the SRK community to be more accepting of new hosts or venues and flexible than the SWF guys. i don't know how the scene is in other states, but it's hard enough to get people to do stuff in GA, and even harder to get the SWF guys of GA to do what you propose doing. I wish you all the luck in the world, however. Hopefully you can succeed where I have failed, lol.

I have had what seems like a similar experience. Granted I'm a Street Fighter player mainly and so I'm probably an "outsider" on these boards, but yeah we ran a tournament previously that had 10-15 Smashers come out (many of them from out of state!). While it wasn't a total loss, I know the Smash community in Arkansas is much larger than that. We made Brawl/Melee main games at our tourney and still failed to pull in good numbers. A poorly run, more expensive tournament than us managed to pull in over 30 Smashers! Very frustrating to say the least.

Some of the blame goes to the TOs of our tournament of course. We don't have very deep roots within the Smash community, but we definitely ARE trying to network. When you have dedicated Smashers like we have managed to befriend (too many to count, but I'll single out VTS here for promoting our event in the Memphis thread) then all is not lost. I feel we are making baby steps, but I also feel as if it would be easier if things weren't as you described. I guess that's part of the Smash community (or this may be my misguided perception of it): that the community is so tight-knit that there seems to be a lack of acceptance for those that they aren't familiar with. Of course, I know from first-hand experience that Smashers are some of the nicest gamers in the fighting game community and they'll go out of their way to help newer players learn the game, but when it comes to being a TO, I think it can be more frustrating than games like Street Fighter, Tekken, etc.

Anyway, I can say that I'm with you in that I failed during our first tournament. The local Smash community is too strong to only have pulled in 10-15 players. I hope I do better in our upcoming tournament in central Arkansas (July 31st). If anyone wants to come out and support us, we'd greatly appreciate it.

Here's the link: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=281258

 

[shaSLAM]

a few people establish notoriety and dominance early on.

everyone else is scrubs.

no scrub is going to want to put forth effort for another scrub.

because theyre scrubs.

and scrubs dont care about anything but not looking like scrubs anymore.

 

[ChKn]

Basically, what we're doing in LA the past two tournaments is charging a $2 dollar venue fee, then letting all entrants compete in pools for just paying the venue fee. The top 4 in pools would advance to the main bracket in which each participant would have to pay an additional 10 dollars into the pot. I think it has worked out pretty well the past two tournaments. Last week, we were able to get 31 people to participate.

Tournaments just need to look appealing for locals to come.

 

[exarch]

That's pretty clever, actually.

I've been toying recently with having subtournaments after/during tournaments.

Most basically, once the 5th and 7th placers have been eliminated, it is easy to have them go play another set on another TV to determine 5/6 and 7/8. Seriously, any tournament can do this. And everyone can still watch LFs and GFs. It takes just a little forethought by the TO.

[collapse=Less basically]This can be done for any group of placers, but organizing another double elimination bracket. 9th placers can play for their four spots, and so on and so forth. However, without enough TVs, doing this for the entire tournament can slow things down considerably. The trick is to know, ok, the 17th'ers and down can't play, but everyone above them we've got time for individual placings.

The optimal number of TVs to have is 1 for every 2 smashers. With that much equipment, this will not slow the tournament down at all; but some people playing in the finals of their brackets (for 9th/10th, or 17th/18th) will be playing during LFs.

In a 32 man tourney, there will be eight 17th places, this can be organized into its own tournament bracket, resulting in 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 21, 23, 23. Obviously you can have the 21's and 23's play each other. In even large tourneys, sub-sub brackets happen.

This would be even easier to do in doubles, where you need only 1 tv/4 smashers.
[/collapse]
Benefits are

• Everyone gets more tourney sets: while just the regular double elim bracket maxes at 4 sets per smasher, a 32 man tourney ran this way gets 6.75 tournament sets per smasher.
• Because it seeds all 17th placers in a bracket together, you can guarentee that everyone will have at least one knucklebiting match. Probably more.
• It will also minimize the potential to be bracket screwed/helped: someone placing at the top of their group could have very well be knocked out by a bad matchup; someone at the back of their placing may have had the luck of the draw on their side. (Not always.)

Potential problems

• The person who gets dead last will not be able to say, I placed 25/32, but will very realistically understand they were the worst at the tournament.
• That person will have also lost 5 tourney sets instead of just 2--which may be disheartening. (5 for 32 man bracket.)
  
  Whether those last placing players would enjoy the closeness and having more tournament sets MORESO than being last and losing all of them, I don't know. Also, both problems can be avoided by not subtourneying the last 2 or 3 placings.
  
  Either way, TO's should at a minimum play out for 5th/6th and 7th/8th at every tournament.

 

[BBQTV]

mine goes all the way to 5th

im trying to lower the door fee because right now it's 5 door,5 pot

 

[DC]

I'm sure this has nothing to do with the quality of the games attracting players (and thus, a community) of a similar quality.

 

[Masky]

..........