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The Big House 4 feedback thread

Juggleguy

Smash Grimer
Premium
Joined
Aug 16, 2005
Messages
9,354
Location
Ann Arbor, MI
Thank you everyone who attended or watched The Big House 4. We set records for attendees and spectators this year, and obviously it was a learning experience for the entire TO staff. While I think the tournament went very well overall, I'm already thinking about some things that could be done better. I take feedback seriously and always aim to improve for the future; I'm sure players who have attended multiple Michigan events can attest to that. With that said, I want to open up the lines of communication and provide an opportunity for everyone to give us feedback.

Here's how you can help. Let's do this EVO-style: we want to hear your MOST favorite things and LEAST favorite things about The Big House 4. Pretend you have $3 to spend on investing in your MOST favorite things, and $3 to spend improving your LEAST favorite things. You can put all the money into one thing or distribute it, but please limit it to three things each. I'm interested in hearing from both attendees and spectators, so please don't hesitate to post.

Example:

Most favorite
* Tons of setups at the venue, $2
* RR pools format, $1

Least favorite
* Lack of food options at the venue, $1
* Sunday ended two hours late, $1
* Teams had to be set two weeks early, $1


If you thought something was really good or really bad, be honest, that's what this thread is for. I will try to address as many talking points as possible in the next few days, as I read about the feedback, and answer below.

--

Topics of interest:

Project M pools downgrading from top 3 advance to top 2 advance
This was a result of not enough setups being brought by the PM community. According to registration numbers, 55 PM setups were committed by attendees. We only got 30 PM setups by the start of the tournament, which is unacceptable and cost several attendees the $20 penalty charge for reneging on committed equipment.

We estimated that 40 PM setups were required in order to run the entire Day 1 on time. When only 30 PM setups showed up, we had to adjust accordingly. Keep in mind there has always been a clause in the code of conduct that states the TO staff reserves the right to modify the ruleset or tournament format in the best interest of the event. This is an unfortunate necessity when crowdsourcing equipment to run a tournament.

While Phase 1 ran on time, it would have been extremely difficult to do the same for Phase 2 without the necessary 40 setups. We could have ran it anyway and forced everyone to stay until 2am, but that's not what we're about. So we decreased the Phase 1 PM cutoff from top 3 to top 2, which meant the number of players in Phase 2 was decreased from 192 to 128.


Project M 3 stock ruleset
3 stock PM was in the best interests of this tournament. It's not necessarily what's best PM overall (I'm not qualified to speak on that), but I can assure you it was what's best for TBH4.

Several factors contribute to the running time of a tournament:
#1. Number of setups
#2. Venue size, floor plan efficiency, etc.
#3. TO staff manpower
#4. Average gameplay time

We had #1 and #2 taken care of, to the greatest efficiency that anyone could reasonably expect. Those areas essentially couldn't have been improved very much. #3 was a bit of a concern because most of my own recruited TO staff was working the Melee side, but it still ended up very good thanks to Strong Bad and Rat and others. The only factor left was #4, which really had to be addressed in order to ensure that PM finished each wave on the Day 1 schedule in a similar amount of time that Melee finished (and it did). Multi-game schedules contain a huge number of constraints and requirements that must be met.

People will complain about 3 stock PM in hindsight, claiming that it was a cop out, but that couldn't be further from the truth. We could have run bracket pools on Day 1 and stream significantly fewer matches on Day 2 under the 4 stock ruleset. Or we could do what we did, which was run round robin pools on Day 1 and stream significantly more matches on Day 2 under the 3 stock ruleset. To me, the choice is obvious given the boost in both in-person attendee experience and stream viewer experience. It wasn't a cop out. It was a necessary ruleset adjustment based on the Day 1 tournament schedule.


Friday night power situation
TBA
 
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TaFoKiNtS

Smash Lord
Joined
Jul 21, 2005
Messages
1,027
Favorite:
$1 Audience setup for viewership
$1 Plethora of setups for friendlies
$1 Hotel Shuttles to and from Airport

Least Favorite
$1 Sound System
$1 No food options nearby after the tournament
$1 Two hours late, so no food on Sunday
 

KanyeRest

bair-condtioned nightmare
Joined
Aug 21, 2011
Messages
585
Location
Cleveland Heights, Ohio
when announcements needed to be made, "shut the **** up" isn't exactly the best way to tell 600 people to comply

bring a megaphone next time

also the venue was pretty small in comparison to the amount of attendees, shape of melee 5 was way bigger and it only had 100 people there

other than that, perfect tourney!!
 

standardtoaster

Tubacabra
Joined
Nov 26, 2009
Messages
9,253
Location
Eau Claire, Wisconsin
Most favorite
RR pools format $2
Good amount of setups for friendlies after pools $1

Least favorite
Sunday Melee top 32 going over their time slot by 2 hours delaying PM and Melee top 8 $2
I heard there was some questionable seeding for Melee top 32 like leffen playing hbox so early $0.5
Telling people to shut the **** up instead of having some other way $0.5
 
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Arcalyth

GLS | root
Joined
Oct 1, 2012
Messages
650
Location
West MI
The good: extremely well-promoted tournament with a huge showing of players from around the country and beyond. The community is amazing. The TO staff was very helpful and well organized. Pretty much everything went smoothly and the format was pretty neat.

The bad: I came only for Project M and felt extremely cheated by the top 2 out in pools after being promised top 3. Most of my region got 3rd in pools so we all went home completely empty handed. I understand the power failures had a big role in that decision but I was still extremely disappointed and frustrated. Overall it felt like Project M got shafted for the entire weekend.

Melee was godlike though so props to that. I suppose it IS primarily a melee tournament after all.

Oh... and like a few posters above me said, screaming profanities is not the way to get an audience's attention. Be respectful to the attendees and they will respect you.
 
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FrootLoop

Smash Lord
Joined
Jan 22, 2011
Messages
1,551
Location
Madison, WI
$3 didn't get sick
$3 our wave 1 melee dubs didn't finish and had to play through the dinner break
 
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Windrose

Smash Lord
Joined
Mar 22, 2009
Messages
1,470
Most favourite:
* Venue inside hotel and near other hotels which made logistics a lot easier for travelers $1
* Excellent scheduling and organization for a juggleguy tournament as usual $1
* venue close too highway for people driving in $1

Least favourite:
* Lost tags from Friday check-in due to no ID checking before people took tags and tags stuck together that needed to be peeled $3
 

M@v

Subarashii!
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
10,678
Location
Pittsburgh, PA
Favorites:
$1 Lots of time for friendlies
$1 Easy to understand pool schedules
$1 Friday night check in

Least Favorites
$2 Layout of setups, especially the melee rows behind the spectator section. There was 0 room to maneuver there, and it was a cluster ****. 2-3 of the spectator rows likely needed to be cut to give players and pool captains more room to manuver. The rows at the doors and the way back seemed ok.

$1 Locations of the secondary streams, as they had little to no room. This kind of ties into the layout issue, but the hype matches that happened on those streams, especially losers top 32 matches, gathered a lot of attention and there was almost no room to view them. They had more attention than the main stream matches sometimes.


I won't gripe about the lack of food/running 2 hours late; Food isn't your fault; venue was good, and only 2 hours late on a national is actually still really good.
 
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pooch182

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Sep 22, 2013
Messages
253
Location
Naperville
3DS FC
4227-3177-9014
Let me premise this by saying that this was the best tournament I've ever attended, and I really appreciate the hard work put in by all the staff involved.

Pro's:
Ease of access to venue $2
Huge space $1

Con's: Organization and Design of PM tourney $3


Round Robin pools were phenomenal, and for the most part, most of the pool captains seemed competent. Both of my pools went very smoothly, and relatively quickly, which allowed for plenty of extra time to play at the open setups for finished pools, or just time to spectate bigger sets.

For PM, I was relatively disappointed with the organization. I recall hearing that the goal number of set ups for PM was 40, of which we had a total of 35. 5 set ups short does not seem like enough to justify changing the cut from top 3 to top 2 in phase one pools, especially with 3 stocks. It came across as extremely unprofessional, especially considering the change happened after the completion of Wave A, which means that all 3rd seed players would surely be rather upset. Pools finished so fast that we actually had to stream MMs on TLoc to fill air time (Shout outs to all the phenomenal streamers btw).

The teams thing was also trivial to me, but I at least can appreciate the firm establishment of the rule with plenty of time for people to deal with it. If you needed to set a cap, it seemed like a sounf way to ensure people sign up early and give you plenty of time to accommodate.

Overall, I loved the tourney. Let's not have 3 stock for PM again, and everything else will be amazing.
 
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Canadian SpuD

Smash Rookie
Joined
Apr 21, 2014
Messages
1
Location
Hamilton, Ontario
Pros:
- lots of setups $2
- RR pools format $1
Cons:
- seeding in the second round of pools.. i had to play my teammate first round of bracket pools in PM.
easily the biggest piss off of the tournament because it happened to 2 other ppl in our pool and although it
would have been an easy fix to switch, all the T.O.'s were busy running the tournament..which is understandable.
But **** that sucked. $3
 

Caleb Cole

Smash Rookie
Joined
Feb 11, 2014
Messages
18
Location
Toledo, Ohio
Favorite:
2$ The audience setup. Watching those games live was incredible.
1$ tons of setups.

Least favorite:
1$ Not very much food in the area to choose from
1$ No time for friendlies on day 1
1$ Tourney ending late

Another thing that bothered me about the tournament was when people would scream to be quiet in the microphone. I have TO'd events so I understand the frustration that comes with it, but when someone yells "shut the **** up" into a microphone, I just want to get up and leave. It's not only irratating, but it's just downright unprofessional. I know how disrespectful people were being, but there has to be a better way that doesn't embarrass our professional scene.
 

Juggleguy

Smash Grimer
Premium
Joined
Aug 16, 2005
Messages
9,354
Location
Ann Arbor, MI
The good: extremely well-promoted tournament with a huge showing of players from around the country and beyond. The community is amazing. The TO staff was very helpful and well organized. Pretty much everything went smoothly and the format was pretty neat.

The bad: I came only for Project M and felt extremely cheated by the top 2 out in pools after being promised top 3. Most of my region got 3rd in pools so we all went home completely empty handed. I understand the power failures had a big role in that decision but I was still extremely disappointed and frustrated. Overall it felt like Project M got shafted for the entire weekend.

Melee was godlike though so props to that. I suppose it IS primarily a melee tournament after all.

Oh... and like a few posters above me said, screaming profanities is not the way to get an audience's attention. Be respectful to the attendees and they will respect you.
I added a section in the original post to address why PM pools were downgraded from top 3 advance to top 2 advance. It was due to a shortage in setups, not due to the power situation on Friday.

Keep in mind there has always been a clause in the code of conduct that states the TO staff reserves the right to modify the ruleset or tournament format in the best interest of the event. When only 30 out of 55 committed PM setups end up at the venue, that's on the attendees.
 

DoH

meleeitonme.tumblr.com
Joined
Jul 1, 2004
Messages
7,618
Location
Washington, DC
Pro:

Lots of setups $2

The key to a successful tournament. Though I feel like I didn't get to play a lot of people out of state due to the waves of pools.

Venue layout $1

Great audience engagement

Con:

Seeding: $2

Me, Milkman, and Redd were all in the same pool when we are in the same region and came together. There were only 5-6 MD/VA people who made bracket, and to have three of us in the same pool, especially when the round 2 pools are basically predetermined, is absolutely ridiculous. There were some changes made to the pools to cover (such as Chu dropping out) so I don't know why ours was left untouched, especially when I emailed you a few days before the event. I was incentivized to throw my round 1 pool to get a different seed (and almost did) but decided against it once I heard the crowd and I recall you saying that there was a chance they would be fixed. Also with doubles it seems like there was no seeding at all outside of 4 or so teams.

Everything being streamed: $1

This caused Melee to run way over and therefore PM and we had to miss out on top 8 live because we had to get on the road. This seems to be a broader symptom of "eSports" but with an appropriate number of recording setups we could have captured all of the top 32 without waiting as much to stream everything, delaying the whole tournament.

It was still a fantastic tournament overall, and I really commend you for making it happen.
 

Xykness

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 31, 2010
Messages
337
Location
Columbus, OH
NNID
XYKman
Most Favorite
* Getting a name tag was nice $1
* People taking pictures throughout the event $1
* Easy-to-understand schedule $1

Least Favorite
* Changing the PM rules so last minute $2
* Pool bracket seeding $0.50
* Sound system $0.50

Overall, I would go back again! Thanks for hosting!
 

shnizalwizal

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jan 10, 2014
Messages
9
Location
Wyandotte
3DS FC
2681-9046-0901
Favorite:
$1 Good location of venue.
$1 T-shirts.
$1 TO staff

Least Fav.
$1 Stream setup in the middle of the venue was in a bad location. I could not watch any of those games. Also on finals day two projectors should have been used so more people can watch up close (if possible).

$1I understand the TV size rule, but making the small tvs sit outside was a mess.

$1 announcements were terrible.

Amazing tournament. The solutions to my "complaints" are pretty obvious so i will leave it at that.
 

FrootLoop

Smash Lord
Joined
Jan 22, 2011
Messages
1,551
Location
Madison, WI
yeah there were enough setups but tournament waves were just neverending. 3 days would chill it out and have more time for friendlies but I can also appreciate the benefits of doing straight business the whole way through and cutting a day lets more people come.
 

Coffeemug

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jun 19, 2013
Messages
232
Location
Kent, OH
Favorite:
2$ Hotel and price was very nice. Split between 4 people was insanely reasonable for the quality.
1$ RR Pools I am always in favor of these

Least Favorite:
2$ venue size I was a little underwhelmed with the size of the venue. granted, I may have set my expectations too high.
1$ Pool captain organization was a little underbaked. I ended up watching over 2 pools at once and captains seemed confused. earlier panning could have avoided this. Maybe make a captain sign up during the registration process.

Other points:
Good:
• Plenty of setups for melee. I felt comfortable when playing at the setups not behind the spectator section. and while I didn't get to, I felt I had many opportunities to play friendlies.
• Clearly laid out expectations for each phase. I knew what to expect.

Bad:
• Food Selection. McDs, and Subway get old when you need to be quick about food
• PM organization. I didn't participate in it but a PM player was scheduled to be a pool captain at the same time as their pool. I heard another PM captain say he wasn't sure what he had to do cause no one told him anything. And most importantly, hearing "Shut the **** up" during their announcements was extremely unpleasant. I get the sound system was bad but the first round of announcements went fine.
• Last minute schedule change. I'm conflicted on whether to put this as good or bad but I'm siding with bad cause it ultimately put me in a position that bummed me out. What I liked about it was recording all of top 16. those were incredible matches to see. What I hated is that it prevented me from being able to watch top 8. I had to still drive home and my entire car had to work monday morning. This of course meant I missed the most crazy matches. And my reasoning for not putting this into my "invest my money into fixing" is I realize that this is something pretty specific to me so it might not be a problem for anyone else

Otherwise I still recommend Big House 100% as the most worthwhile tournament to go to. And I think this thread shows your dedication to growing this the right way.
 

Professor Pro

Smash Legend
Joined
Apr 30, 2007
Messages
10,261
Location
England, South London
The only thing I wasn't happy about was getting put in Wave E for Melee and Wave E for PM.
Meaning I couldn't concentrate on one game and I had to switch between both.
Other people were in Wave E and Wave F for both games so I was salty about that.

Other then that it's easily the best tourney I've attended lol.
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
Most favorite
$0.50 Effective scheduling of stream matches highlighting virtually every interesting match from R1, and many from R2
$1 Excellent care given to seeding throughout the tournament, while still ensuring no conflicting player obligations (minus the MD/VA conflicts in R2)
$0.50 Every top-32 match was recorded
$1 Airport shuttle

Least favorite
$0.50 Lack of a proper food break on day 1. I had literally just finished my 4th and final wave of events, plus spillover teams, and was told I didn't have to grab food before R2 began even though there was a break built into the schedule. Shoutouts to CTL for sharing his sketchy fried rice.
$0.50 Poor communication during the event itself
$1 One of the projectors did not work and the situation was never addressed
$1 My character of choice was arbitrarily nerfed
 
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vrud

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Nov 8, 2007
Messages
163
Location
Montreal
Ok first of all huge thanks to juggleguy and his staff for hosting a phenomena tournament! That being said there's def lots of room for improvement.

Favorite things:
1$ RR phase1 -> phase 2 -> top 32 great format easy to follow
1$ lots of setups & clear schedule
1$ juggleguy and his staff are very approachable. If there's a problem I wouldn't hesitate to approach you or staff to inquire for help.
Sad things:
1.75$ I had to play vs another Canadian first round of bracket pools ): that sucked (melee)
.50$ my memory card was stolen mostly my fault for forgetting to take it out but I would've appreciated if the staff reminded me to take it out
.50$ I would've like more room so that I could spectate random matches
.25$ I want more than 3$ to complain about things

Very much looking forward to tbh5 and wow thank you so much for taking criticism instead of just pouting about ur attendants feedback (a few jerk TOs come to mind)
 

Napkin

Smash Cadet
Joined
Feb 2, 2014
Messages
61
Most favorite
RR pools format $2
Good amount of setups for friendlies after pools $1

Least favorite
Sunday Melee top 32 going over their time slot by 2 hours delaying PM and Melee top 8 $2
I heard there was some questionable seeding for Melee top 32 like leffen playing hbox so early $0.5
Telling people to shut the **** up instead of having some other way $0.5
Hungrybox playing Leffen so early? It was Winner's quarters, pretty much as late as it could reasonably be, without one of them beating a god first.
 

Dre the Ace

Smash Ace
Joined
Jun 7, 2007
Messages
850
Location
West Bloomfield, MI
Favorite:
$1 - RR Pools
$1 - Venue Set Up. I don't recall ever having to squeeze my way to get somewhere.
$0.5 - Lots of set ups for friendlies
$0.5 - Anti-stink bouncers. Only once did I have to leave a set up because someone smelled.

Non-Favorite:
$2.98 - RR Pool seeding. I didn't make it to 2nd round pools...that's ok...until I found out some people who I know I am better than (in MI, they will remain nameless) made it to 2nd round pools and made it seem like it was the easiest thing in the world. I also heard that only the top 2 were seeded for each pool. So why not just make it top 2 advance? There were others in my pool who could have made it to 3rd seed but didn't. The 2nd seed in my pool lost to someone who didn't make it to 2nd round! This pretty much destroyed my motivation for the first day. Maybe I'm just being a little ***** about it, but I would have liked to play a few more matches in bracket.
$0.01 - Sound system mic clarity was shoddy most of the time. Very hard to understand what was being said.
$0.01 - 2nd projector ****ting out...but I'm sure this was out of your control.
 
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Juggleguy

Smash Grimer
Premium
Joined
Aug 16, 2005
Messages
9,354
Location
Ann Arbor, MI
$0.50 Lack of a proper food break on day 1. I had literally just finished my 4th and final wave of events, plus spillover teams, and was told I didn't have to grab food before R2 began even though there was a break built into the schedule. Shoutouts to CTL for sharing his sketchy fried rice.
I feel that if someone is going to enter 4 out of 4 events, they should be prepared to play nonstop on Day 1 and pack a lunch/dinner to eat when they have an ounce of time. The break built into the schedule was for spillover matches that didn't finish in Waves A-D, not really for a food break; I don't that's even possible for a 500+ Melee tourney and 300+ PM tourney with round robin pools that must finish in two days. Just my two cents. The rest of your feedback is perfectly reasonable.
 

kellyk1035

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 5, 2010
Messages
437
Location
louisville ky
The ppl that worked for you that yelled stfu at the top of there lungs looked so ******** and unprofessional. I can think of a thousand other ways to get ppls attention but other than that great tourney!
 

Kaysick

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Jan 7, 2014
Messages
343
Most Favorite:
$1 Definitely Round Robin pools. Its a ton of fun being able to play against everyone instead of starting out in bracket.
$1 Venue was great and the space was definitely utilized well.
$1 Allowing me to help by being a Melee pool captain. Kinda sucked having to play PM Wave A then captain Melee Wave B & C, but that's only because I couldn't really eat. I still enjoyed it though.

Least Favorite:
$1 Friday's Power issue. Definitely stopped a ton of friendlies for the PM side so people couldn't really play.
$1 Sound system for announcements. A megaphone would've definitely worked since when the hype got real, you couldn't hear anyone. Except when Samox got people to quiet down without a word.
$1 PM didn't have the projector up until Sunday.

TBH4 was hands down the best tournament I've ever been to and I'm definitely going to show up for next year. Melee was super hype. Not a big fan of 3 stock PM, but I hope it'll be 4 stock next year(especially with the updates that are going to happen before TBH5). The lack of food variety was there, but it wasn't my least favorite thing. I'm fine with eating pizza and Subway for lunch/dinner every night. I'm repeating myself here, but thanks for letting me help out by being a pool captain.
 

Nintendude

Smash Hero
Joined
Feb 23, 2006
Messages
5,024
Location
San Francisco
I feel that if someone is going to enter 4 out of 4 events, they should be prepared to play nonstop on Day 1 and pack a lunch/dinner to eat when they have an ounce of time. The break built into the schedule was for spillover matches that didn't finish in Waves A-D, not really for a food break; I don't that's even possible for a 500+ Melee tourney and 300+ PM tourney with round robin pools that must finish in two days. Just my two cents. The rest of your feedback is perfectly reasonable.
Fair enough - I think the confusion would have been alleviated if instead of an empty hour on the schedule, it was clearly labeled as a spillover wave.
 

CTL17

Smash Lord
Joined
Oct 25, 2008
Messages
1,511
Location
EC or a mitten
I'll try to make this a TOing perspective that pertains to Staff-Player relationships.

Most favorite:
$3 Extreme cooperation with other pool captains and players to go on stream. We rarely had any issues here, only time being fighting about who would go on MeleeMilwaukee vs VGBC during Phase 2 (had to snatch darkrain for VGBC just for the Juggleguy). And trying to force WF before LS that didn't happen. Also big shoutouts to BigWenz and emoDinosaur for assistance.

$1 I get one more dollar for being staff. :088:

Least favorite:
$1 Having to deal with the missing nametags

$1 Trying to get in contact with the pool captains in between the two center islands by weaving through a hamster maze. MeleeMilwaukee's location was a little bad in terms of crowd control, but at least the TOs could watch all three streams from the TOing desk on Sunday.

$1 Trying to track down who was in PM while they also had a Melee obligation. Chad and I communicated via microphones... decently well, so I hope in the future the PM overseer would also have a microphone to answer. This also requires the PA system to be more clear

$1 The 3rd and 4th floor were like college dormitories: sweat and alcohol
 

ShinsuYavi

D-Tier Melee Rookie
Joined
May 7, 2014
Messages
50
Most Favorite
$2 - Round Robin Pools. As a low tier player (not character), more opportunities to play is always greatly appreciated!
$1 - Hygiene. Seriously, not once did have to stop just to think, "Ugh, what's this smell?" This was great!

Least Favorite
$1 - Tournament ended 2 hours late.
$1 - Speaker system for announcements was terrible.
$1 - Venue was a little bit crowded for how many people there were.
 
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elephantoe

Smash Rookie
Joined
Oct 9, 2014
Messages
2
Pros:

$1 - tons of setups for friendlies
$1 - good viewing setup
$1 - well located (plethora of hotels and food places; go Big Boy)

Cons:

$2 - I didn't get an actual tournament tag
$1 - minor communication and organizational issues

After 15 hours of driving to Detroit, there was nothing I wanted more than to g to the venue, play some friendlies, watch the podcast, etc. but I couldn't because my tag wasn't there. I was told to come back in the morning. When I did, my tag still wasn't there, AND they told me I should've gotten a temporary tag the night before and been let in. Someone shouted, "why are we giving temporary tags if they don't serve a purpose?" I mean I get that I signed up last minute, but I was denied entry because of something that wasn't at all my fault, then handed paper and a sharpie and told to write my own tag...

I had a great time otherwise, but I was seriously pissed off that I not only didn't get a tag, but wasn't allowed in an then told I should've been.
 
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Game 'n' Watch

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Sep 23, 2005
Messages
274
Location
Midland, Michigan
Pros:
$1 Lots of time for friendlies
$1 Easy to understand pool schedules
$1 Easy access to venue
Cons:
$2 Melee Doubles setups, and especially the Melee singles rows behind the spectator section. I was getting bumped often during matches and the pool captain was completely lost. I ended up starting sets against people that I wasn't suppose to even play.
$1 Running behind the schedule, Top 8 Melee was mad hype though. Maybe we could have PM in another room separate from Melee to clear up clutter...
 

G.L.

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jul 19, 2010
Messages
181
Pro
1. all the TOs/pool captains knew what they were doing, and did a good job at moving things along
2. Multiple streams! its always sweet to see yourself or a friend on stream
3. the hotel was amazing, really made it feel like a high stakes/high class tournament
con
1. the cutting to top 2 in pm after top 3 was supposed to get out.
 

Zanguzen

Smash Lord
Joined
Aug 17, 2004
Messages
1,223
Location
North Jersey
Thanks for doing this! Like others have said, this was a great tournament, so any faults I had with it were pretty minor.

Most Favorite
$1.80 Lots of setups for friendlies
$0.60 Great venue (hotel rooms right next to lounge, ample room for setups)
$0.60 Transparency of what's going on in the tournament (prepared pools sheet, up-to-date challonge brackets, explicit schedule that was followed into D2, etc.)

Least Favorite
$1.00 Lack of food options
$1.00 I feel like Wave F on Day 1 ended later than it should have (perhaps around 1:00 AM? Can't remember if this was expected in the schedule). This led to some sloppy final qualifier matches.
$1.00 There was a PM pool captain who would announce when her pool was over so that people could MM. I would have liked something similar with Melee, or at least have captains announce when their pools are available for friendlies. I had to scavenge the pools looking for almost-finished pools in order to get in extra friendlies D1.
 

Paran0id_Andr0id

Smash Cadet
Joined
Jan 17, 2013
Messages
37
Location
Kent, Ohio
Pros:
$1 Hella setups. Great for friendlies during "downtime" and it was so nice having 3-4(can't remember) TVs for the RR pools.
$1 RR pools at such a huge tournament. BH is the only national I go to/have gone to. From the horror stories I hear about Apex and whatnot, I feel like you're spoiling us Juggleguy, and it's fantastic.
$.50 3-stock PM and the cut-down on coaching between matches. **** was so annoying at CEO.
$.49 GOD-LIKE VENUE. Had so much fun outside the tourney area with my buds. The staff there was so nice, too.
$.01 Never seen a TV start smoking before, so that was hype. PM is a mod.

Cons:
$1 Like 80% of my interactions with TO assistants or whoever were pleasant, but there were a handful of times where they were sassy and stand-offish with me. I'm a pretty unassuming person. I can understand the stress of running/helping at tourneys, but part of the role is being personable unless under extreme circumstances.
Also, yelling at people to "SHUT THE **** UP" straight-up makes the person look like a man-child.
$1 We were packed in like sardines, which I certainly don't blame anyone for, really, but it was a bummer having sweaty dudes as far as the horizon.
$1 Melee top 8 getting pushed back. I'm sad that I wasn't able to be there to see it live.
 
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psythr

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jun 11, 2014
Messages
2
Location
Ann Arbor, Michigan
GOOD
$1 - Amazing Spectating. Very Hype.
$1- Food Nearby.
$1 - Bar in Venue.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
$1 - Sound System.
$1 - Better Way to Get Info Across. A Third Projector Maybe?
$1 - Not Enough Space Given the Amount of Smashers/Spectators.
 

tm

Smash Ace
Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Messages
819
Location
NWOH
good
$1 - Well scheduled and explicit about directions of each activity (nice venue too)
$1 - So many matches were on stream!
$1 - Great for spectating on sunday

not so good
$1 - running late on sunday
$1 - reeeeaaaaally difficult to hear them calling players over the mic, it was almost loud enough but the audio was so distorted that I couldn't tell what they were saying even when I was paying attention. Plus audio issues with top 8, like what
$1 - layout of the room was awkward (space-wise), and made for somewhat difficult stream watching on saturday (plus the speaker was in the way of the screen, that's a no-no)
 

Jolteon

I'm sharpening my knife, kupo.
Joined
Aug 9, 2006
Messages
6,697
Location
England
Favorite:
$1 Lots of set-ups/friendlies
$1 Ran well
$1 Great venue

Least Favorite
$1 Being in wave E for two games at once
$1 Event of this size/status really needs to be a 3 day event. Playing tournament matches for that long two days in a row is exhausting, also meant food breaks were not really a thing. Not everyone can pack food to circumvent this either, I attended OoC for example and I didn't eat until 4pm for day 2. <_<;
$1 Wobbling banned

Also, the food selection was bad (Subway, McDonalds and Bigboy), but I respect that it's not really your fault.
 
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Rizner

Smash Ace
Joined
Apr 18, 2010
Messages
642
Location
FL -> AZ -> OH
Just like last year, this is the best tournament I've been to. Seriously, throughout it all I had a great time and everything ran smoothly.

Pro:
$3 rr pools the best

Cons:
$2 Bracket pools in phase 2 - I understand the reasoning, but I hate bracket pools. Would prefer bracket to start then, and for it to play through to top 32 that night
$1 Pm Doubles being 3 stock. Was fine with singles like that, but I think doubles could have run as 4 stock.

Other things I liked: not getting super sick.
 

Solharath

[ZTD] CEO
Joined
Aug 7, 2007
Messages
1,603
Location
North Muskegon, Michigan
I added a section in the original post to address why PM pools were downgraded from top 3 advance to top 2 advance. It was due to a shortage in setups, not due to the power situation on Friday.

Keep in mind there has always been a clause in the code of conduct that states the TO staff reserves the right to modify the ruleset or tournament format in the best interest of the event. When only 30 out of 55 committed PM setups end up at the venue, that's on the attendees.
I saw enough working setups off to the side and unused to know this doesn't 100% add-up. Seeing all those Wiis and mismatched TV/Consoles with different names raised a red flag, but in the end I'm really not sure the 30 or 55 or 40 or what-have-you matters here. PM Side was literally packed to the hallways during all the waves, especially when you tried to run doubles alongside it, so the lack of setups, from where I'm standing, seems like a convenient excuse over the fact that the venue lacked the space and the electrical situations to deal with more than what we had going. Those daisy chains were ridiculous.

I know I never once heard the setups claimed as a problem all weekend, especially with a large majority of players talking about them and asking any available TO to explain the situation to them. I'm sure if the call had gone out, the multiple setups I had seen per room while walking the hotel room hallways would have happily donated their setups for a promised $10 waive on Friday, and a $5 waive on Saturday.

Am I blaming you, personally, for it? No, not really. Miscommunication happens, after all, and TO assistants could have easily pointed to the harsh electrical problems of Friday to explain why their weren't as many usable setups rather than relaying the issue direction to the TOs themselves for the full, real story. But that's besides the point. There is still going to be a lot of lingering salt for a lot of players, explanation or no, but I hope all the good points from everything else outweighs any potential misgivings for this tournament series.

tl;dr there were unused, working setups off to the side, hiding under tables with crts following Friday night. No feasable extra room for PM for those setups.

GOOD THINGS:

$1. Very pretty venue. The large lobby area made for great ambiance to stretch out and take a break while still remaining near the action.
$1. Rigid time format Day 1. Pools were quick, with some exceptions, and generally ran close to on time when it wasn't brushed up against Doubles.
$1. Doubles. It was run near flawlessly, and even though our matches were postponed, the TO assistant there(mostly Rat, tbh) was attentive and smart with his direction.

BAD THINGS.

$1. Rude/Disinterested TO assistants. There is little you can do about this, but some pool captains and TO assistants were downright rude to players, straight up ignoring players, their matches, and reports. I saw numerous pool captains complain about how they were stuck with a game they didn't personally play, and players walking away in disgust when the captains were much more interested in some conversation they were having then running their pool.
$2. No PM hype. Kind of an amalgam of everything, but with no PM in any of the leading trailers, the Top 3 to Top 2 cutoff, the lack of backup projectors(or whatever made that projector unusable for the entirety of Day 1), PM was treated noticeably different and with far less respect. When a match was going on to decide who would get into the Day 2 Top 32 bracket, TOs were constantly screaming fro the crowed to be quiet when they were trying to watch and react to two high level players attempt their set. For 'Announcements' to be so important that screaming right next to two players for the entire crowd to shut the (eff) up in the middle of a high stakes match going on not five feet from where they stood was a better alternative than just waiting for them to be between matches was just ludicrous.

I know this sounds like a largely negative view, but there was a lot to like for a lot of people. My issues do stem from a good amount of PM bias, but as a national tournament I just felt like we'd be treated better. I have high hopes for next year, regardless, and I have 100% faith that many of the problems I have had with TBH4 aren't going to be repeated at TBH5 with a change in venue and a year of new hype leading straight into it.
 
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