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Focusing Community Turnout at SG Tourney Events

Zidiane said:
Are WCW and NorCal out of the window as far as Majors that'll treat us well go?
WCW notoriously had no BYOC area at all and only had setups for tourney iirc. NCR does the same thing now unless they change it up for next year. SCR is going all in on Esports this year, didn't include Marvel and somehow expects to host 1500+ people in the Esports Arena.

[e] +1 for NWM pls. CB/CEOtaku are the two other events I'd go out to for the year if I can afford it.
 
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Ok, a person wrote up a thing and sent it to me. Wanted to check nobody has any problems with it before posting it:

This is an open letter to Tournament Organizers.

The Skullgirls community is very much alive and well and we have a number of players willing to travel to events and support our scene. The strongest example of this is Combo Breaker, which the community as a whole has decided to support for giving us a chance to feel respected while playing the game we love.

However, our players are spread thin and don't have the ability make every Major on the calendar as big as Combo Breaker. After variable levels of support from some events and others that have put forward unrealistic expectations from the community, we have lately decided to plan out which events we want to focus attendance on ahead of time.

We do not mean to dismiss any event, and this is not because we are unwilling to accept opportunities to shine by Tournament Organizers, but as we currently are we simply cannot make every event a big one. Instead, we have chosen to focus on events in a way that allows us to have the most fun with each other and with our game, while also allowing more of our community members to make it out and more people to see why our game is great.

At present, the events on our Skullgirls Tour are as follows:
January: Frosty Faustings
February:
March:
April: NWM
May: Combo Breaker
June:
July:
August:
September: CEOtaku
October:
November: GUTS4
December:

lease take this list into consideration when attempting to add Skullgirls to your Tournament, especially as a Main Game. If your event is too close to one of these events (especially Combo Breaker) there may not be a strong showing from our entire community, so please adjust your expectations accordingly.

This list is not set in stone, however. We are always enthused by TO interaction with our community, so if you have a showing you want to make big for Skullgirls, regardless of where it falls on the calendar, please reach out to us and let us know what you want. Skullgirls has a very receptive community and we are always listening and watching for events that are willing to host us and treat us well, but at the same time we are limited by resources and players. Local players will do their best to make it to your events, and we will continue to shift towards the events that treat our players well.

Thank you for your understanding.
 
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I'm back from DTN. I was wrong, this tournament sucks, you didn't miss anything if you didn't go. Even for main games it wasn't great.
Mike_Z said:
It's still around 80% a joke...
Weren't you the one who said something like "don't make an april fools joke of something I'd actually want"? Not that this is april fools but it's a similar situation.

If you hold a tournament in a parking lot I would show up for it btw.
 
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mcpeanuts said:
I'm back from DTN. I was wrong, this tournament sucks, you didn't miss anything if you didn't go.
Was I still in the bracket twice when you got there?
 
Vadsamoht said:
Ok, a person wrote up a thing and sent it to me. Wanted to check nobody has any problems with it before posting it:

This is an open letter to Tournament Organizers.

The Skullgirls community is very much alive and well and we have a number of players willing to travel to events and support our scene. The strongest example of this is Combo Breaker, which the community as a whole has decided to support for giving us a chance to feel respected while playing the game we love.

However, our players are spread thin and don't have the ability make every Major on the calendar as big as Combo Breaker. After variable levels of support from some events and others that have put forward unrealistic expectations from the community, we have lately decided to plan out which events we want to focus attendance on ahead of time.

We do not mean to dismiss any event, and this is not because we are unwilling to accept opportunities to shine by Tournament Organizers, but as we currently are we simply cannot make every event a big one. Instead, we have chosen to focus on events in a way that allows us to have the most fun with each other and with our game, while also allowing more of our community members to make it out and more people to see why our game is great.

At present, the events on our Skullgirls Tour are as follows:
January: Frosty Faustings
February:
March:
April: NWM
May: Combo Breaker
June:
July:
August:
September: CEOtaku
October:
November: GUTS4
December:

lease take this list into consideration when attempting to add Skullgirls to your Tournament, especially as a Main Game. If your event is too close to one of these events (especially Combo Breaker) there may not be a strong showing from our entire community, so please adjust your expectations accordingly.

This list is not set in stone, however. We are always enthused by TO interaction with our community, so if you have a showing you want to make big for Skullgirls, regardless of where it falls on the calendar, please reach out to us and let us know what you want. Skullgirls has a very receptive community and we are always listening and watching for events that are willing to host us and treat us well, but at the same time we are limited by resources and players. Local players will do their best to make it to your events, and we will continue to shift towards the events that treat our players well.

Thank you for your understanding.

where you posting this at?
 
clawmaster said:
where you posting this at?
I believe it would be somewhere pinned on the front page, with maybe a link like Skullheart.com/dearorganizers or something for us to easily hand to TO's who are thinking about running SG
 
clawmaster said:
where you posting this at?
Was originally going to make this its own page on the site, but now I'm thinking that It'd just be better to make it a news article with comments disabled and then create a PHP redirect or something so that there's an easy-to-remember URL for it (e.g. skullheart.com/TOletter or something).

EDIT: I'll be waiting a day or two, if nobody has a problem with it by then I'll just go ahead and post it.
 
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I have NO problem with that.

If you support the game we will support you; if you expect us to support you without equivalent effort on your part, TS.
 
Deer said:
Was I still in the bracket twice when you got there?
lol you were but we didn't go off the smash.gg bracket, we made one in challonge.
 
@Vadsamoht The CEOtaku tournament itself is October 1st-2nd.

BL put Sep 30th as a date for the SGC to do non tournament things together.

I'd put the tournament itself though in October to avoid confusion.
 
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Mike_Z said:
Big E just asked for game codes, so here's hoping that signifies it's not BYOC this time at least. :^)

I'm pretty sure we're going to be required to bring PS4s to the next BigE event.
I tried talking to him about it at the last three events of his I went to and he stated "if we want [PS4s], we're responsible for bringing [PS4s]"

Glad the community is moving away from events like this, tbh.
 
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If there's anything positive to be taken away from the *sigh* events of this past weekend, the silver lining would be that this has given us some reinvigorated focus & a stronger sense of unity/organization. The "Dear TOs" letter (or mission statement, not really sure how to classify it as of yet) is a wonderful idea... it puts the prerequisite terms of engagement right there on the table, out in the open, for all to see.

On a different note, as Mike Z stated earlier, Big E did reach out for PS4 codes. Also, he is plenty aware of Skullheart now. I'm not even going to form an opinion of that information because I feel the only one that would come out is "day late and a dollar short" & I don't want to come off as snide. However, given how things have played out, I can't help but feel somewhat complicit in all this. In particular, I was the one who started banging the DTN drum after the first meeting with Andy. On the larger scale, I'm the guilty party that championed the idea of you coming back to these events, despite the prior treatment you received, and you still got the short end of the proverbial stick.

I know there will be those who read this & tell me that none of what's happened was my fault or that I'm being too hard on myself and, rest assured, I appreciate the sentiment. I just wanted apologize for how my original intentions paved this road to hell.

Carry on & keep playing Skullgirls.
 
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Pot bonuses are a fun reward for engaged communities and for establishing a higher level of prestige at a tournament. They also have a nice habit of producing additional spectator interest. I have yet to discover one, particularly in less active regions, that magically ensures sizable attendance though.

As for the 2017 tournament line-up I strongly think the community should focus on 1 event per season. Having 4 tournaments during the year that the entire crew shows up for is more impactful than 3/4ths of the community showing up 6 times. This doesn't mean that advocacy for, and attendance of, other events shouldn't be pushed on - but as a community I think its smart to keep a few wallet recoup and vacation-day-build-up months in-between events. This also lets content creators and spectacle donators within the community help build up storylines while avoiding burn-out or resource drain.

@dekillsage - CB is looking at modified prize distributions for 2017. I'm not unhappy with what we did this year but if I can tweak percentages to better reward the success of players like yourself without unweighting the championship I'd like to do so.

P.S. This is a topic I care a lot about and have tried to be involved enough to have perspective on. Please feel free to hit me up for extended chats on it.
 
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thehadou said:
CB is looking at modified prize distributions for 2017. I'm not unhappy with what we did this year but if I can tweak percentages to better reward the success of players like yourself without unweighting the championship I'd like to do so.

P.S. This is a topic I care a lot about and have tried to be involved enough to have perspective on. Please feel free to hit me up for extended chats on it.


Prize distribution is something we've had a few discussions about among the Maxout T.O.s. I'll have to hit you up about it sometime if we revisit the topic.
 
thehadou said:
@dekillsage - CB is looking at modified prize distributions for 2017. I'm not unhappy with what we did this year but if I can tweak percentages to better reward the success of players like yourself without unweighting the championship I'd like to do so.

P.S. This is a topic I care a lot about and have tried to be involved enough to have perspective on. Please feel free to hit me up for extended chats on it.

The main thing I was trying to get across was that some tournaments are very expensive and CB falls on an expensive weekend for people who fly, so pot bonuses for other events right after don't really mean anything for people who don't expect to place in the money as it can be very hard for them to make the next event so soon

I'm not unsatisfied with my payouts, though it helps not knowing how much Sonic made compared to me~
How much 2nd - 7th get is very important to me, and I'm currently working with my friends to try and figure out payouts based on the numbers of entrants + any potential pot bonus. I'll let you know, would love feedback on it.
 
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thehadou said:
Pot bonuses are a fun reward for engaged communities and for establishing a higher level of prestige at a tournament. They also have a nice habit of producing additional spectator interest. I have yet to discover one, particularly in less active regions, that magically ensures sizable attendance though.

As for the 2017 tournament line-up I strongly think the community should focus on 1 event per season. Having 4 tournaments during the year that the entire crew shows up for is more impactful than 3/4ths of the community showing up 6 times. This doesn't mean that advocacy for, and attendance of, other events shouldn't be pushed on - but as a community I think its smart to keep a few wallet recoup and vacation-day-build-up months in-between events. This also lets content creators and spectacle donators within the community help build up storylines while avoiding burn-out or resource drain.

@dekillsage - CB is looking at modified prize distributions for 2017. I'm not unhappy with what we did this year but if I can tweak percentages to better reward the success of players like yourself without unweighting the championship I'd like to do so.

P.S. This is a topic I care a lot about and have tried to be involved enough to have perspective on. Please feel free to hit me up for extended chats on it.

I agree with this, and I think this is something that we were already kinda planning. Having to focus on a few tournaments to attend for everyone to go to is a great idea. Builds time for everyone to train up for the next big event, gives us time to take time off of work, save money for the event, and showcase the best of what the SG scene can bring. The saying goes "Less is More" can be applied here. Question is should we keep it to the same tournaments we deemed to go to, or change it up once in a while to other tournaments?
 
@thehadou
Why not make CB SG "if you go 2-and-out you get $2 back" out of the pot bonus, then distribute the rest? Or like, have a separate bracket for all those players that went 2-and-out so you can be king of the bottom 50% and they're not just sitting around watching for two whole days?
This is mostly a joke, but it's kinda not. I'd actually like to see a tournament do more to reward the rest of the players that don't win...I really liked that one Evo that did the "player that gets the farthest being a character loyalist for each character gets $100" thing.

[edit] I'm pretty sure top8 wouldn't really care if some of the pot bonus went to stuff like this. At least SG top 8 wouldn't...
 
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Mike_Z said:
Why not make CB SG "if you go 2-and-out you get $2 back" out of the pot bonus, then distribute the rest?

One argument against this would be that by giving a solid number you're subliminally encouraging people to do a value calculation, which is never going to work in your favour. IMO a better option if you're going that route would be to give the prize in a form other than money, e.g. a free drink/food item from a given local outlet of about that price (naturally I have no details for specifics). Of course that requires more organization, but it might be received more positively that what is basically a partial refund.
 
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Personally I would rather see a separate bracket for 0-2 for a cut of the pot than to say "ok everyone who goes 0-2 gets <x>". Not only for the reasons Vad said, but also because IMO it would feel better to be more like a "chance at redemption" rather than "consolation prize".
 
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This could get messy though. I'd be in round 1 losers contemplating whether to see how far I can get here or just throw the match so I can see how much farther I'd get in double-losers bracket.
 
The 0-2 bracket in theory would be fun but it sounds like a logistical nightmare since you'd be increasing the amount of tournament that'd have to be run while also still doing the rest of it as normal. There are downtimes where the setups aren't in tournament use but A. I rather like having tons of casual setups in place most of the time cause already most of the setups at CB when it wasn't late at night were in use, and B. It's bound to open up some shitty scheduling times somewhere down the road with more cross players playing longer (see Smash 4 EVO this year having pools last beyond midnight on Friday and playing the next morning for how bad it can get).
 
missingno said:
This could get messy though. I'd be in round 1 losers contemplating whether to see how far I can get here or just throw the match so I can see how much farther I'd get in double-losers bracket.

valid point, which is why I would vote against giving any prize for 0-2. Even if its not cash, I'm sure there are people who would decide a free lunch might be worth more than a win in tournament. The 0-2 bracket would be 1/4 of the total entrants (right?), which at a big tournament like combo breaker, I would think would be enough people to hopefully discourage trying to put yourself in to that bracket for a shot at a small prize.
 
I'm going to argue against monetary rewards for losing tournament entrants. I have philosophical issues with that as it amounts to participation awards - which I think discourage actual competition/rivalry.

I wouldn't be against attempting to figure out 0-2 boot camps or something that take place after the initial blocks of pools but they would need to be scheduled away from Top 32. In regards to sitting around and watching for 2 days; I'm a big fan of casual stations, panels (when financially possible), and people theory crafting with community members at local fast-food spots.
 
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Having teacher sessions would be fucking dope. Like if you went 0-2 1-2 whatever or just want to learn the character a bit more we could schedule character tutorial panels or something.

Like complete examples not saying these are willing to do it or that this is happening but...

McPeanuts and Fenster teach Big Band

Duckator and Cloudking teach Valentine

dekillsage and TJ teach Cerebella

Skarmand and (Me ;_;? or Shade or whoever) teach Parasoul

etc etc etc etc etc
 
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Pat's idea for 0-2 clinics sounds really cool. Not sure how it'd work, but I like it.
 
Fizzxwizz said:
going 0-4 in one game sounds like a bad day. I think efforts would be better spent on casuals, or separate side-thing tourneys like bellaball, fugazi, and typing of the skullgirls. Some of those would probably be a pain to set up and run though.
From what Mike told me, PS4s wouldn't accept keyboard at all without going through extensive lengths that he elected to not do. That would require PS3 and/or PC setups to do a TotSG side tournament, unfortunately.
 
Kai said:
Pat's idea for 0-2 clinics sounds really cool. Not sure how it'd work, but I like it.

I see how it is. I mention boot camps, Pat follows up, and I lose my share of the credit.

This is vengeance for not scheduling you to cover every minute worth of CB commentary isn't it?
 
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Dolfinh said:
I'm afraid I don't understand this joke.
IT'S FINE end of thread derailment.

So, less rewards for losing, more encouragement for losers. ?
 
I'd just like to say to keep in mind that this community is pretty small and that most people who enter pretty much gravitate to here. People who go to tournaments know that they're competent enough to enter and not like, day 2 beginners. They've watched matches, seen combo and reset things, but maybe just couldn't put it together in tournament that day.
 
Rick had the idea yeah its lit.

Yeah I feel like if you have the right people teaching the characters that could be a beautiful thing for people starting out.

While we're at it heres the PSA of "our top players are all really sweet and you shouldn't be scared to go up to one f them and ask questions."
 
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