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Fighting Game Headquarters |4| Cheers Love, the Anime's Here!

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V

vulva

Member
Sinatar said:
It's doubly odd as I'm pretty sure Mandalay seats have headphone jacks, they use it to pump commentary to people at live UFC events, they should have just used that.
Click to expand...

missed this post, at the event the seats didn't have headphone jacks. They were standard fair folding chairs on the floor and the GA seats were like anything you'd find in a hockey rink.
 
S

Skilletor

Member
vulva said:
missed this post, at the event the seats didn't have headphone jacks. They were standard fair folding chairs on the floor and the GA seats were like anything you'd find in a hockey rink.
Click to expand...

It was good seeing you, man. :)

We'll have to actually get some games in one of these EVOs.

Sandy says the same, minus the games thing.
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
Tripon said:
Eh, Tekken 7 also has the perspective change and allowing people to play head to head on two monitors. I'm sure with the NX version will allow you to do the same thing with only one console. It'll be fine. Namco-Bandai knows what they are doing.
Click to expand...
Most are expecting the NX Console to be within the PS4/XB1 ballpark (likely to keep costs down), so I wouldn't get your hopes up. Can the PS4 handle such a feature?
 
P

Professor Beef

Banned
ShadowSoldier89 said:
completel hearsay, but I heard pokken had a lot of entrants problems. A lot of DQs, apparently one pool only had 4 people that showed up.

Could be nothing though, and it could be back
Click to expand...
I didn't show up to my pool so I'm partially to blame. Fuck 8am pools though, that was the main reason I didn't bother setting my alarm.
 
N

N4Us

Member
ShadowSoldier89 said:
completel hearsay, but I heard pokken had a lot of entrants problems. A lot of DQs, apparently one pool only had 4 people that showed up.

Could be nothing though, and it could be back
Click to expand...

Eh, in all fairness EVO tends to have a good amount of people missing pools no matter what the game. One of my friends TO'd an SFV pool that they said had a guy go to Winners Finals after playing only one match. Even my Xrd pool had nearly half the entrants missing and that was a 2 PM one. Not that it wouldn't be an issue but there's more of "if I feel like showing up" than at other majors.
 
K

KidA Seven

Member
Sixfortyfive said:
You say that, but there's plenty on GAF, Reddit, etc. who talk about Daigo like he's still on his 2009-2010 era dominance.
Click to expand...
Nobody does that. Just because we say Daigod, Daigoat, and shit doesn't mean we think he's pulling off an infil 2012. This is the first year Daigo isn't arguably top 5 in the world since he came back from retirement.

Most of the scene is just ignorant of the tournament results or they let a narrative influence their opinion of player ranks.

Having said that, I don't see much to complain about from Mike and Floe's comments.
 
P

pizzacat

Banned
Evo should have those seats that I watched fast and furious in, they would vibrate and move with each action scene, the scene where the rock flexes his arm cast off the chair did a swerve and I was lucky to be alive
 
L

Line_HTX

Member
pizzacat said:
Evo should have those seats that I watched fast and furious in, they would vibrate and move with each action scene, the scene where the rock flexes his arm cast off the chair did a swerve and I was lucky to be alive
Click to expand...

Do those seats amplify the Bass though along with its movement?

:lol
 
M

miku

Member
KidA Seven said:
Nobody does that. Just because we say Daigod, Daigoat, and shit doesn't mean we think he's pulling off an infil 2012. This is the first year Daigo isn't arguably top 5 in the world since he came back from retirement.

Most of the scene is just ignorant of the tournament results or they let a narrative influence their opinion of player ranks.

Having said that, I don't see much to complain about from Mike and Floe's comments.
Click to expand...

Our lord and savior will win Capcom Cup this year ^o^/
 
C

CO_Andy

Member
Count Black gonna win Cap Cup?!
1.0
 
M

Master Milk

Member
Kumubou said:
You know how some game critics go on about ludonarrative dissonance? Would a game where a match in a fighting tournament in front cheering crowds in a sold-out arena being played at a fighting game tournament in front of cheering crowd in a sold-out arena be the ultimate in ludonarrative consonance?
Click to expand...

I appreciate this post.
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
The EVO guys heard our complaints about Smash 4's treatment at EVO 2016.

Tony Cannon (Ponder) said:
Yo

Hey guys. I’m Tony Cannon (Ponder), the Tournament Director and one of the founders of Evo. Thanks for supporting Evo in record numbers again this year. I know the experience was disappointing for many of you; especially those of you who made it to top-32.
Our goal at Evo is to hold a great tournament for the community. I’ve seen reports that Evo is trying to exploit the community for profit, or skate by with just a “good enough” tournament. Over the next year, we aim to prove to you that this is absolutely not the case. We want everyone to leave the experience thinking “wow, that was an awesome event! I can’t wait to come next year!!”. Obviously we did not achieve that this year.
But to hold a great Smash 4 event, we need your guys constructive feedback and cooperation. I’ve read through all the feedback online and wanted to respond to your specific pain points, explain how they happened, and let you know how we’d like to improve upon them for next year. In no particular order, here’s what I’m hearing from you about your biggest pain points. Please let me know if I’ve missed any; I’d be happy to respond to those, too.


The Convention Center Felt Cramped on Friday and Saturday

There was definitely a lack of space in the convention center at peak hours, which caught us by surprise. We believe we had booked more than enough room for the event. Evo 2015 was held in two ballrooms at the Bally’s Event Center totaling 79,251 sq ft. We were greatly concerned that this would not be enough space for 2016. Evo attendance has historically grown by about 25% year-over-year. We also knew this would be the first year for Street Fighter V, which would certainly spur additional growth.
Last last year we cancelled the contract with the planned venue and booked the 150,000 sq ft venue in the Las Vegas Convention Center, nearly double the space from 2015. Unfortunately, the event grew faster than our most aggressive estimates. Registrations for the Street Fighter tournament grew by over 100% year over year, and Pokken (the first time at Evo) interest was much more than we anticipated. Pokken also required twice as much space as other games, further exasperating the space problem. Finally, over 4x as many people bought day-passes to Evo this year compared to 2015, greatly increasing the number of people actually in the event hall at a time.
The result was that the event felt cramped in spite of our best efforts. We are currently investigating ways to fix this for 2017, including booking a single hall larger than 150,000 sq ft, booking additional tournament halls as we did in 2015, or making better use of the space we have.


Viewing Experience in the Convention Center was Bad

Smash 4 did not have a projector for a majority of the tournament. This caused a lot of crowding around the tournament stations which made the Smash area feel more cramped than any other tournament. Even when Smash 4 was on the main screen, there was not enough seating for everyone who wanted to watch, resulting in crowding of the isles leading between the two tournament sections.
Many of these problems are caused by the aforementioned space problems, but even in a space-constrained environment we need to do better. For example, we could have setup a dedicated stream-viewing room for spectators in an adjacent hall or conference room.
One thing we certainly need to do for 2017 is to ensure all tournaments have a big-screen somewhere (ideally in the tournament hall, but perhaps in another room if we’re space constrained) where they can view their tournament. This is one of my highest priority issues to fix for next year. Everyone at the event should be able to watch their game of choice without having to restore to looking at a game station monitor.
Finally, games which had their finals in the Las Vegas Convention Center did not have the level of in-house production they had come to expect from Evo. The big screen was much smaller and the main stage much more modest. The seating area for the main stage was also smaller than what we had in 2015. Most of these changes were the result of increased complexity on the production side. This was the first year where Evo produced the Sunday finals in an arena setting and a live television broadcast, simultaneously. Rather than stretching ourselves too thin trying to do everything (and potentially failing at everything), we elected to focus on Sunday to make sure we did a good job there. In hindsight, that was a mistake. Sunday went off well, but people’s Friday and Saturday experiences were too greatly compromised. Next year, we’re going to increase the staff and budget for Tournament Hall production to ensure the level of spectacle is what you have come to expect from Evo.


Friday Night Pools Ran Late While Stations Were Available for Friendlies

This should not have happened. The plan going into Friday night was to use every available station to accelerate Round 2 brackets to finish the tournament as soon as possible. Friendlies were to be allowed only on stations which were not being used for the tournament. I’ve spoken with Bear (the head TO for Smash 4) and have confirmed that they executed that plan to the best of their ability, and that he was personally unplugged joysticks of players who refused to stop their friendly match to make room for a tournament one.
In Bear’s opinion, the biggest reason we ran late was because of poor scheduling and delays caused by paper brackets. Round 2 matches were scheduled to start at 8:00 PM, immediately after the 6:00 PM Round 1 matches. This meant when Round 1 brackets ran late, a significant number of Round 2 brackets were delayed as well. The manual process by which we moved qualifiers from Round 1 into Round 2 delayed the start of some Round 2 brackets even further.
We certainly need to do a better job of scheduling. In hindsight, it would have been much better to start Round 2 on Saturday morning instead of Friday night. This would have given people who finished Round 1 pools early the rest of the day off and given the TOs time to propagate changes from Round 1 to Round 2 overnight. If Round 2 had started Saturday morning instead of Friday night, I don’t think we would have had this problem.
In addition, we need to switch from paper brackets to a fully-online system to eliminate the delay in propagating players from one round to the next. We plan to do this for next year.


The Schedule for Event Competitors was Oppressive

Many Mortal Kombat XL and Smash 4 players were required to play their last match late into the night one day followed by an 8:00 am match the next. That’s just not acceptable and was not our intent. Had everything gone according to plan, both MK XL and Smash 4 would have finished by 10:00 PM and players would have had 10 hours of between matches.
Our biggest mistake here is that we need to do a better job of scheduling to make sure competitors have an ample opportunity to rest even if things do not go according to plan. Even if our schedule is running late, players should have at least 12 hours after they finish their games on one day before we ask them to play again the next. This is something we will absolutely fix for next year.


The Bracket Seeding System Was Limited and Cumbersome

This year we asked each fighting game community to provide the top 32 seeds for their tournament. Once the initial brackets were created, we put them up for public review and asked representatives from the community for feedback to make them better.
By putting the brackets up for review, the community caught an egregious bug in our software which resulted in double jeopardy in late rounds when creating brackets for tournaments featuring between 2048 and 4095 players. This affected both Smash 4 and Melee, and we were able to fix the bug and re-create the brackets before the tournament started.
We also asked for a “swap-list”, which was used to swap two players in the bracket to provide better structure (e.g. fixing seeding problems). The initial swap-list was limited to 32 players, but we continued to accept player swaps throughout the preview week before brackets were locked down. In total, we processed 97 swaps for the Smash 4 tournament, including swaps to realign the seeds after the Round 2 brackets were fixed.
By processing all 97 swaps volunteered by the community, we collectively were able to seed the bracket much deeper than we had originally requested and fix some issues which happened after seeding; including swapping Ally into a seeded position after we accidentally forgot to include him, and swapping PPMD out when we learned he wasn’t going to attend.
Overall, the system we had in place had good results. After all the swaps are processed and the Round 2 issue were fixed, Bear and the community leaders he worked with were satisfied with the structure of the brackets.
The biggest problem here is that the swap system is painful. It’s very, very painful, and the brackets don’t actually look “good” until the very end of it. This makes it difficult for players to know exactly who their opponents will be, and for community to generate pre-EVO content and hype (e.g. top 32 fantasy brackets). Next year we want to revamp the system to take a much longer list of seeded players and streamline the bracket tweaking process so that the brackets look good from the very beginning.


Brackets Take Too Long to Update Online

Evo uses paper brackets to run the event (if you want to know why, scroll down). This means the online brackets are updated much much later than systems like smash.gg or challonge.com. This is bad for players who are scouting their next matchup and bad for people who are following the event; especially those watching on stream. We are planning an overhaul of our bracket making software to address some of the other issues (e.g. seeding beyond top 32). Adding realtime bracket updates is something we want to put in as well.


Best of 3 Is Meh. Best of 5 Would be Better. So would Sunday Finals.

There are 8 other games running at Evo besides Smash 4, and all of them need to make compromises to finish within the allotted time. We’d like to work with you to figure out what the best compromises are. For example, we want all Finals brackets to fit into about 2 hours. Smash 4 finals are currently bo3 until Winner’s finals to fit that schedule. Is that the correct solution? What about changing the stock/timer rules to make matches run faster? What about going to 3/5 and running some losers’ bracket matches off stage (but on a secondary screen)? What about only doing top 6 instead of top 8? You probably hate all those ideas. What are some ideas you don’t hate which can help us have a good event and still meet our time constraints? We want to reach the best format for you guys that fits the constraints of the event. To do so, we need to establish a stronger line of communication between the Evo tournament staff and the Smash community leaders much farther in advance of the tournament.


Outro

Once again, thanks for coming out to Evo again. Hopefully this post has given you a greater understanding of how we want to make things better for next year. We’d like your help in making sure we do the right things for your community. Quite honestly, Tom, Joey and I are not Smash players, which makes it impossible for us to know how best to cater to your event without a lot of input from you. Until now, a lot of that communication has happened on social media (Reddit, Twitter, etc.) and has not been effective. I’d like to find a better channel for us to work on to make sure we deliver an event you’ll be happy with. We can do this in whatever forum you’re most comfortable with (Facebook, Discord, etc.), just let me know. I’m looking forward to making Evo 2017 better for you guys.

Thanks,
Tony Cannon (Ponder) Evolution Tournament Director


Addendum: About those paper brackets

The Evo tournament software was originally written 15 years ago to automate the process of making paper brackets to run the event. In that era, running brackets on paper was the only way to run an event of Evo’s scale; smart-phones didn’t exist, and even if they did internet in a hotel ballroom was extremely spotty.
As technology advanced (say, in 2008), we continued to use paper brackets. They were reliable, flexible, and we were absolutely, 100% sure we could finish the event with them. Hotel internet was spotty, and the risk of a loss of internet causing the tournament to grind to a complete halt was too great.
Around 2012, smart phones were prevalent enough and hotel internet reliable enough that it seemed possible to run a tournament online with a smartphone per bracket, but by now the tournament software was over 10 years old. Paper brackets were still working great, and the value from shifting to all online just wasn’t there.
Fast-forwarding to 2016, Evo is finally at a scale where paper brackets are no longer a viable way to run the tournament. There are now hundreds of thousands of people potentially interested in following the tournament online in real-time and the manual process of moving players between rounds is starting to become a bottleneck. Changing Evo to use online brackets first (falling back to paper brackets only in extreme emergencies) is one of my biggest priorities for 2017.
Click to expand...
 
S

StriKeVillain

Banned
One thing we certainly need to do for 2017 is to ensure all tournaments have a big-screen somewhere (ideally in the tournament hall, but perhaps in another room if we’re space constrained) where they can view their tournament. This is one of my highest priority issues to fix for next year. Everyone at the event should be able to watch their game of choice without having to restore to looking at a game station monitor.
Click to expand...

This was my biggest issue with Evo this year. Reducing the number of projectors from last year was so so sooooo stupid.
 
S

skLaFarebear

Member
EVO shouldn't even consider Bo5 for Sm4sh in pools. Even with more setups/staff, it'd still take a ridiculous amount of time to finish the day.
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
There are two things I noticed when thinking about the possibility of Smash 4 on Sunday.
  • On the positive side, we'd have better exposure as a competitive game. On top of that, it would allow us to have more flexibility in terms of how the overall tournament for Smash 4 is scheduled. And while granted, we probably won't get televised (possibly due to a lack of support from Nintendo, which I hope changes if the NX port happens), we'll at least get the big stage.
  • On the flip side, having 2 Smash games on Sunday may piss off a good number of the traditional fighting game players. And while you could move Melee to Saturday, you'll just end up with about as many pissed-off Smashers (as well as a cramped schedule for Melee like what happened to Smash 4 this year). Also, what would Smash 4 replace? The most common answer would be UMvC3, but Namco may push for Tekken 7 to take that slot. The only other candidate would be Guilty Gear Xrd (or BlazBlue if that replaces Xrd, next year), but I'm not sure if the anime fighting game community would take kindly to that.
So while I would love for Smash 4 to get a Sunday Top 8, I'd be willing to compromise with Smash 4 Top 8 being scheduled for Saturday night. This would likely be the best course of action in terms of keeping both sides happy.

As for the possibility of EVO switching Smash 4 to the NX (with the rumors of a port for Smash 4 being out there, one of which is gaining some accuracy thanks to the same source leaking RE7), Ponder had this to say...
Tony Cannon (Ponder) said:
It's hard to reason about a theoretical NX port, but whether we switched or not would largely be determined by what the community deems to be the most tournament-worthy version of the game.
Click to expand...
 
L

Line_HTX

Member
skLaFarebear said:
EVO shouldn't even consider Bo5 for Sm4sh in pools. Even with more setups/staff, it'd still take a ridiculous amount of time to finish the day.
Click to expand...

That is seriously the most unreasonable demand they could do. A tournament of this size cannot have enough time for best of 5 games in pools. It's logistically impossible and stupid as hell. They need to recognize that pools aren't that special.
 
L

Line_HTX

Member
A long time ago I would've advocated without hesitation that Tag 2 Top 8 be all best of 5, but I have seen the light after that one Final Round Top 8. Even though matches go by way faster in T7FR, I have conceded that only Winners, Losers, and Grand Finals should be best of 5. You better bring your A Game beforehand when everything is best of 3.
 
T

ThatCrazyGuy

Member
This is my opinion of the EVO experience (which mostly the Cannons have already talked about in that above post).

- The hall was (felt) too crowded on Friday/Sat. And a tad warm.
- And even with all the extra room, the pool stations were still really close and got crowded a lot when people are watching matches.
- Not enough seats in front of the big screens. They should had had more and spread them out and just have the main huge one in the middle for the Sat Final games and have screens in the corners or something.
- This is just a personal thing, but it felt even more like a convention than a serious tournament (not saying that's a bad thing). Maybe seeing actual sunlight through the windows contributed to this. Or maybe I am used to carpet on the floors from hotel ballrooms.
- There was lag with some of the headphones in relation to what happened on screen. I would do the action on the screen, then a moment later finally, it would play in the headphone.

- on Finals day, I felt the sound mix was way off all night. The in-game sounds effects were really low, the BGM level was too high, and there was this constant low end bass rumbling after matches started (maybe this was because I was sitting).
- The screen on the back side of the arena was brighter and washed out, and had a shadow of one of the top railings against it (I was too lazy to move, lol).
- I do not like the decision to pipe the commentary into the arena. Didn't feel right.
- I felt the lighting was too bright and all the spotlights. I felt the arena should had been darker, to have the focus on the screens, the fighting and the match.

- All this combined above kinda made it feel like I was just watching a stream with a large group of people, instead of taking in a live event. I am used to the big dark ballrooms, focus on the screen. The game sound effects are loud, powerful and clear. You can feel those fireballs and fierce punches. I felt more like I was watching a live sporting event. I thought the event center would drive that feeling even more, but it didn't for me.

Overall, I still had a lot of fun and will be back next year.

And the summer league NBA games are Saturday were dope (for summer league), hehe.
 
shaowebb

shaowebb

Member
Man fuck those bracket systems, use burningmeter.com It archives, can self seed, and works offline and as soon as you get connections it updates the online. Shit is awesome and the AnimEVO folks were using it nicely.
 
O

Osu 16 Bit

Member
I'm really happy with that message from EVO staff. They covered all the problems. EVO was bad this year but I'll definitely give them the benefit of the doubt. Pleased they didn't just say "deal with it"
 
N

Neoxon

Junior Member
Osu 16 Bit said:
I'm really happy with that message from EVO staff. They covered all the problems. EVO was bad this year but I'll definitely give them the benefit of the doubt. Pleased they didn't just say "deal with it"
Click to expand...
But as others have said, doing 3/5 for Smash 4 for longer than what they have now wouldn't end well for the other games. Both it & Melee already go on for long enough.
 
Kalamari

Kalamari

Member
maybe it's time to split the event, give Smash players their own EVO since they have so much trouble getting along with others, and have a separate event for the other games.
 
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