Is an hour too short for a tournament?

[Dspyder08]

Hello, I desperately need the forum's help, all of you, most of you, either way some advice is definitely needed!

I work at a Library and was put in charge of the Anime Club here. Next month I am planning to put together a Brawl tournament, I hit a problem with scheduling, it got mixed up...so in about two weeks I have to throw the tournament. My biggest problem is......I only have an hour to do so.

I've been reading the tournament threads on here and i'm trying to figure out how I should work it all out, this would be my first tournament I am hosting and I am not expecting that much of a turnout being a noob and having it so last minute but I wanted to ask the masses.

Is an hour too short of time?

Here is my plan, and what I've come up with:

The maximum people I could have is 24 so it would start off with 4 pools of 4 people.

The tournament would start with a 4 v 4 free for all within the pools. 3 stock for each person, and 3 minute rounds. Each pool will get to play 3 games.

the players would receive points based on what place they get in the match
1st place = 30 pts
2nd place = 20 pts
3rd place = 10 pt

Stats from the match will effect scores as well:

(added points) deduct points
- how much damage they were able to inflect within the matches - how long they hung on the edges
- how many kills they committed - how many deaths they received


Players with the biggest scores would go into Brackets like the NBA playoffs

If players have tied scores we will go by who had better stats during the free for all games. Or the "season" since I am taking the idea of the playoffs from the NBA.

Person with highest score would be seed one so the matchups would be:
Seed 1 against seed 6
Seed 2 against seed 5
Seed 3 against Seed 4

The Playoffs will be 1 V 1 best out of 3 games with 3 stock, and 3 minute rounds

I will have at least two TVs, a projector from the library (so three tvs)
and three wii's

If I calculated everything correctly and in a perfect world, the tournament should only last for 45 minutes. That means I have plenty of time for people to choose characters, choose stages, an intro before the tournament, and a ending where I will be handing out the prizes to the winners.

In case you are curious the prizes are

1st place: A hood gangster ass 24 X 9 SSBB poster
2nd place: A splatter painted Link 5 X 7 Poster
3rd place: A....umm...snake in a box....it'll make sense in the long run.


So what do you think? Is an hour too short of a tournament? I am afraid of people leaving the tournament thinking that they were robbed out of winning the prizes because time was so short during the tournament.


Please help me out, I really REALLY want to set up this tournament at my library.


And if you are in the area I couldn't post the event up because I am so new but here is the information:

26982 Cherry Hills BLVD
Sun City Library
Sun City, California
November 13,2014 at 4:00 pm
951-679-3534 I have a sign up sheet to figure out who is gonna be coming to Brawl or just partake in friendlies, so....call ahead if you are in the area.

I would be SHOCKED if anyone called in and told me they saw my thread on SmashBoards, then probably sob on the phone.

Thank you for reading this guys and gals, I look forward to hearing your responses, criticisms and what nots.

 

[Mokumo]

An hour sounds way too short, but don't give up.

This guide doesn't use the same kind of tournament format that you're describing, but it's definitely still a great resource:

http://smashboards.com/threads/how-do-i-manage-time-for-a-double-elimination-bracket-toing.360606/

 

[victra♥]

An hour allocated for a tournament is really short. Based on my experiences having organized tournaments for the past 8 years, it's fairly common to experience delays at the start of tournaments from 30-40 minutes if not longer. Nothing ever goes as expected. We've always given an hour just as a buffer time before our tournaments.

It seems like your rules are adjusted to accommodate for it, I'm not too sure if it's realistic to see games of 3 stocks complete within 3 minutes, in both FFA (that's at least 1 stock every 15 seconds) or in a 1v1 (best case scenario is 1 stock every minute for only one player). Especially if it's for Brawl, then it would be even more unrealistic. At this point, you might as well organize them as time matches rather than stock with time.

Yesterday we had an event with 22 players, and 8 set ups. We did a swiss style tournament for Melee where there are just 5 rounds of matches and all the players played in each of the rounds in a best of 3 fashion. We had all 8 set ups going the whole time. We finished in about 3 hours.

I would suggest either going for FFA time matches the whole way through, requesting to extend the time you're allocated, or reschedule.

 

[Dspyder08]

Thank you so Much Mokumo, I actually learned a lot from the link and hopefully I can tweak my plan for the tournament if I need it but as of right now Six people have signed up for the tournament. If it stays a single digit tournament I should be able to do it within an hour using my layout.

 

[Dspyder08]

An hour allocated for a tournament is really short. Based on my experiences having organized tournaments for the past 8 years, it's fairly common to experience delays at the start of tournaments from 30-40 minutes if not longer. Nothing ever goes as expected. We've always given an hour just as a buffer time before our tournaments.

It seems like your rules are adjusted to accommodate for it, I'm not too sure if it's realistic to see games of 3 stocks complete within 3 minutes, in both FFA (that's at least 1 stock every 15 seconds) or in a 1v1 (best case scenario is 1 stock every minute for only one player). Especially if it's for Brawl, then it would be even more unrealistic. At this point, you might as well organize them as time matches rather than stock with time.

Yesterday we had an event with 22 players, and 8 set ups. We did a swiss style tournament for Melee where there are just 5 rounds of matches and all the players played in each of the rounds in a best of 3 fashion. We had all 8 set ups going the whole time. We finished in about 3 hours.

I would suggest either going for FFA time matches the whole way through, requesting to extend the time you're allocated, or reschedule.

Thank you so much Victr for replying. I really appreciate it I might just do a time limit, I'm just afraid that people will think the entire tournament is unfair because there isn't enough time.

I like the swiss-style tournament but I feel like it would add time that I don't have. My plan for the beginning is a lot like the swiss-style of scoring but instead of 1v1s it is 4v4s where the points trickle. But they would only play three games instead of having to go through rounds. I would love to do this tournament right but I just have too much of a time restraint.

 

[popsofctown]

I would recommend tweaking your scoring system and rules to make it more intuitive. I would say go with 4000 pts for first, 3000 for second, 1000 for third, and simply add damage inflicted (essentially a tiebreaker) to the scores. It's not terrible to have the other mechanics able to add up to the difference between 2nd and third, it'd be a different kind of strategy, but it could be tough for players to expect intuitively or really plan around.

Then I would say make them time matches at least before finals, which would remove the need for -ledge points. You could run a couple free for alls and let players accumulate points in this format, then have a one on one grand finals between the players with the highest cumulative scores. You could change up who fights who in the first and second free for alls so that everyone gets a chance to interact.

I would say a couple 8 minute games and then an 8 minute stock match grand finals would be good to start out with. You need so much cushion time for all the other logistics that goes on in running a tournament, especially your first time.

 

[Dspyder08]

I would recommend tweaking your scoring system and rules to make it more intuitive. I would say go with 4000 pts for first, 3000 for second, 1000 for third, and simply add damage inflicted (essentially a tiebreaker) to the scores. It's not terrible to have the other mechanics able to add up to the difference between 2nd and third, it'd be a different kind of strategy, but it could be tough for players to expect intuitively or really plan around.

Then I would say make them time matches at least before finals, which would remove the need for -ledge points. You could run a couple free for alls and let players accumulate points in this format, then have a one on one grand finals between the players with the highest cumulative scores. You could change up who fights who in the first and second free for alls so that everyone gets a chance to interact.

I would say a couple 8 minute games and then an 8 minute stock match grand finals would be good to start out with. You need so much cushion time for all the other logistics that goes on in running a tournament, especially your first time.

Thank you for your response popsofctown:

That's what makes me so nervous about this tournament. I know I am gonna have a hic up somewhere, as much as I am going to try to make sure everything works out flawlessly, it isn't so I'm trying to have a super cozy, cushion.

Right now I'm planning on keeping it at 3 minutes so that people don't dilly dolly about getting kills. Sort of like Street Fighter 2 Turbo. There was so little time to plan when I use to play that I would just end up desperately trying to kill the other player, and I think that would make for a very entertaining brawl tournament. Right now there are 9 people who have signed up which means I could try to do 5 minute games before having the finals. Or I could stick to my plan. If ten people sign up then I can have it be everyone in brackets, two tvs will be used for the tournament while one is used for a 4 v 4 for people who didn't want to partake in the tournament but wanted to play with some people.

I also like your tweak on my scoring system. Would it just be points from where they placed in the match plus damage inflicted or how would it work?

I notice I talk a lot but thank you thank you thank you for your responses, for everyone's responses. it is truly helping me out so very much!!!

 

[popsofctown]

Yeah, that's it, simple. If you make third and dealt 685 damage you get 1,685 points
If you do two rounds of the tournament someone might get 1,685 points one round and 4,922 points the next round, so there total score would be 6,607. If that's the second best score or best score you put that person in grand finals.

3 minutes is actually probably fine, but I would encourage you to make sure to pick a somewhat small stage with 3 minutes to make sure there's enough interactions. Yoshi's Island or Smashville should be good (lylat and battlefield are probably too small for comfort.

 

[Dspyder08]

Yeah, that's it, simple. If you make third and dealt 685 damage you get 1,685 points
If you do two rounds of the tournament someone might get 1,685 points one round and 4,922 points the next round, so there total score would be 6,607. If that's the second best score or best score you put that person in grand finals.

3 minutes is actually probably fine, but I would encourage you to make sure to pick a somewhat small stage with 3 minutes to make sure there's enough interactions. Yoshi's Island or Smashville should be good (lylat and battlefield are probably too small for comfort.

I used Chain-ace's flyer outline to make the rules for my tournament so the list of levels they can use are


Battlefield
Pokemon Stadium 1
Final Destination
Castle Siege
Lylat Cruise
Smashville
Yoshi’s Island

and the counter picks are

Delfino Plaza
Brinstar
Halberd
Frigate Orpheon
Pictochat
Pokémon Stadium 2
Rainbow Cruise

I'll make sure they don't do lylat or battlefield when it is a 4v4 but do you think rainbow cruise could get crowded too?

 

[popsofctown]

Yeah, I think RC is a little crowded for 4v4 too. In particular there's transitions when the boat crashes and you must de-board, or the last chance to move from the see-saw to the stable platforms, and such, that create a bottleneck where all 4 characters want to be in the same transition area and it's a little much. Delfino's not like that
RC's fine for 1v1 though.

 

[Lukingordex]

Honestly, I doubt it's possible to do a tournament in just one hour no matter how much you try to create rules to make it possibly.

Try to convince them to give you more time, it's really unfair to give you such little time.

 

[Dspyder08]

Honestly, I doubt it's possible to do a tournament in just one hour no matter how much you try to create rules to make it possibly.

Try to convince them to give you more time, it's really unfair to give you such little time.

I totally agree with you Lukinhasss, I hate that I only got an hour but my boss told me that a little while ago, they would let Anime club go for two hours until closing but then rides would not show up on time and so some workers would have to wait with them. He got heat from HR and it was just, a massive mess so, to make sure everyone leaves on time and what not I only get an hour to do my anime club which means I only have an hour to run the tournament. :/

So far there are only nine people who have signed up for the tournament which means that with such a small group showing up I should get it done within a 36 minutes using my plan. That gives me plenty of time for warm ups, friendlies, and any hiccups that might come around, at least I hope so.