9.95
Champion
Wall of text incoming... be prepared to read the entire thing before you comment or else you're simply commenting without knowing anything.
If you know me, then you know I don't like the spotlight. I don't like going on shows to tell people how I'm going to do this, that or the other thing.
I deal in resolution, not in entertainment. I won't be going on any shows to "explain myself", and especially not to appeal to the court of public opinion. None of that matters to me. My reputation doesn't matter to me. What the community thinks of me doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that people didn't enjoy themselves. I was trusted to facilitate the best possible experience players could have, and because I dropped the ball, people felt like they wasted their time and their money. THAT matters to me.
As I said, I will not be appealing to the court of public opinion. That court is filled with trolls and know-it-nothings who prefer drama and entertainment..and would rather see us stumble over our words and be put in awkward positions for the sake of a laugh at the expense of actually resolving problems. Resolution is the dirty work...and ultimately it's boring. But I deal in resolution.
My point in this, is that I have already contacted GGA Soonk GGA 16 Bit and Showtime to begin the process of true resolution. Our conversations were critical, but most importantly they were constructive and productive.
I need to personally thank GGA Soonk for taking the time to write such a well worded and eloquent post about the pervasive problems that are fixable in FGC tournaments. Your post was very powerful, and there are definitely things that can be better, and they will be. I appreciate you taking the time to make it clear that these truly are pervasive problems and not just lay into us as if we are the only group that has fallen victim to these mistakes.
Thank you as well to GGA 16 Bit for making me realize that, while I thought I was doing the right thing, the train of thought was wrong...ultimately making what I did wrong. This will be fixed immediately. I will not be part of a tournament in the future that continues this practice. It is unfair and not right.
OK... So on to the meat and potatoes:
Things went wrong at NEC. Some were unavoidable, some were totally avoidable.
Here is a list of problems, guided very much by the post by GGA Soonk, and a list of resolutions. It also includes a few extra things.
1. Players not being willing to speak up. I applaud soonk for being willing to risk being the bad guy. By doing so, he is more the champion of the players than anything else. He wasn't the bad guy at all. He was very much the good guy. He stepped up and told me there was a problem when I didn't know that a problem existed. Once I was aware of the existing problem, I was sensitive to it and continued to make sure that the problem was resolved for the remainder of the tournament. Players need to stop worrying about the "court of public opinion" and what these trolls and know-it-nothings will call them if they complain about something. You paid good money to get to the tournament, to get INTO the venue, the have a hotel room, and to compete. You are entitled to say something and ENCOURAGED to say something(as long as it's civilized) so that you don't feel cheated. Simply put: I can't fix it if you don't tell me it's broken.
2.
3.
This train of thought is still wrong, and it's unfair to the rest of the players in the tournament.
When we take the full list of players off to somewhere quiet to make the brackets, we intend on making fair, balanced pools...to the best of our ability. We choose the top 8 seeds to be separated, and we do this, not randomly, but definately arbitrarily...we have no interest in the outcome of the tournament, so who plays in what pool doesn't matter to us. The problem is, all those players we were seeding are at the mercy of the TO's who are creating the pools. They play when we TELL THEM to play. The time they play is ENTIRELY in our hands....they are at our mercy regarding the time they play. Everyone except for the one guy who ASKED to be put in a later pool. Everyone played when we told them to play, except one player who got to cherry pick his own timeslot.
That's not fair, nor is it right, and I hope you can see the slippery slope it can create by allowing this. This time it was Riu48 who had to work till 7pm... next time it'll be someone else who has pick up his kid from kindergarten, then it'll be someone who has to work overnight and would like to come to the tournament right from work and play in the first pool then leave, then it'll be someone who has sleep problems and needs to play in the afternoon. It'll be come excuse after excuse as to why people can't play at specific time slots....and because we accommodated Riu48 this time, people will think it's ok next time...and it simply is not ok, nor will it ever be ok. It is going to change, and I will not be part of tournaments that continue this practice.
It's also not Riu48's fault, nor would I hold him accountable for us not realizing we were being unfair to the other 116 players in the tournament. Do not crucify him for it. I will be watching the forums about this, any people who holds him accountable for my mistake will get a vacation.
4.
1. Registration at NEC starting so late. I have addressed this with Big E. He is well aware that I wasn't happy that registration for MK9 started at 2pm when the tournament was scheduled for a 3pm start. He has told me that this will be rectified for Winter Brawl and that registration will begin much earlier.
Let me also point out that, while some people think that the do-all/end all is pre-registration, there are definitely some limitations to it. Players like SonicFox then have to rely on their parents for Paypal or credit cards. Situations like that give predators like Pimpuigi the opportunity to pull their con-man acts to try and get into the tournament for free. We are not the first people that Pimpuigi has pulled this on...he apparently did it at Final Round as well.
Big E is never going to change his policy of door sign ups. His motto is "for the players, by the players" and he is all about the players. He won't turn away door registrants as long as they register on time for their games. He encourages pre-reg's...as do I, but I personally agree with the policy of not turning away door registrants.
2. See, the stream has become SO important to this community that we crucify Tournament Directors if they don't give us a hard line for internet to stream. Likewise, when we provide our own 4g card as an alternative and that begins to have problems...or when Twitch.tv has problems, the onus falls right back on us for not providing a good stream...or not being allowed to provide a good stream.
Well, what I'm saying is that the stream is gravy. It is unnecessary. It's great to have, but it can no longer, and never will be, my first priority. My first priority will always be the players and the tournament. In the future, I will have someone to back me up to run my stream the way I can so that I can be out in the trenches with the players making things work.
This is NOT the fault of Dark_Rob or SwiftTomHanks. The two of them did a PHENOMENAL JOB of running pools. They are two of the best I know at it. What they lacked was the experience that Shock and I have when it comes to the "bottleneck". The bottleneck is defined as when you have EXACTLY the amount of matches remaining to fill up all your provided setups. When this happens, and you have a stream station, you then send all the remaining players to the stream station to play their matches out there...those will be the best players remaining in the pool at that point anyway so they will all be streamable matches. This avoids the situation where stations are being used for casuals instead of tournament matches.
In the scenario when you CAN'T send those players off to a dedicated stream station, then the problem arises where you are going to have free setups while those matches in those pools finish up. For the sake of the sanity of the bracket runners and players, you can't just arbitrarily start pools early because you now have free setups. If pools 1/2 start at the same time, and 3/4 start at the same time, etc with 5/6 and 7/8...then they start at the same time. The problem becomes that if pools 1/2 have bottlenecked and we have free stations... if I start pools 3/4...what happens when players from pools 3/4 are using too many stations and I can't provide a station for the players from pools 1/2 who are rightfully entitled to those stations for tournament play? You simply don't do it...you either send the bottleneck to the stream, or you play it out on your setups and let a few be free for a small period of time while you finish up and move on to your next set of pools.
Rob and Andrew simply didn't know to do this. I did...but I was stuck behind the stream machine. This was my fault and I won't make the stream my main priority again. The players and the tournament are my main priority.
5.
Now, it is possible that I have a lemon ASUS and it needs to be replaced. If that's the case then i will hate to spend the extra money, but I will so that my monitor won't lag.
I think good practice by all streamers should be to power cycle their monitors once an hour and to have the players check for lag during their button checks. It may also be a good idea to power cycle the PS3's.
With regards to the PS3 vs. 360. The majority of us have invested a great deal of money on collecting the parts necessary to have EVO identical setups. Only a few other majors use the 360 for MK9, and maybe that's the future of MK9 when Injustice comes out. As long as the PS3 is the system of choice for EVO, then that's what I'll personally be using so that players do not have to buy multiple sticks/pads/converters to bring with them everywhere they go.
The other major issue with the 360 is that it's literally built like a glass house. It's cheap, it's flimsy, and it breaks AND breaks down easily.
OK, so I have a few other things to address.
Let me start with the way Rob and Andrew have been crucified for this.
-This has all been on my shoulders...at least the things that were within our control. We can't help that the registration started so late and we can't help that the hotel, which allowed us to set up our equipment on Friday night until 4am, kicked us out at midnight. The other stuff that was within our power...well, Rob and Andrew were only doing what was asked of them, which was asked of them by me.
Staff Responsibilities
-I can't begin to tell you how skewed of a story you're getting from Arez GOW. Eric is a friend of mine, but at some point he has to hit rock bottom. Arez COULD be a good staff member if he learned to be accountable, and learned to not drink during a tournament. The problem is that when I first saw him on Saturday, which was at or around 2pm, he ALREADY had a beer in his hand and only continued to drink from there.
A staff member's first job is to know when a game starts and where the game is being played on BOTH DAYS. Eric didn't know what time MK9 started on Sunday, even though he was in one of the pools(the picture of the PC screen you saw with pools was a preliminary draft, not the real deal...the real deal was done on Tio Tournament Organizer, not on MS Excel) that played on Sunday, a STAFF MEMBER DID NOT KNOW WHAT TIME HE WAS SUPPOSED TO REPORT FOR HIS STAFF DUTIES. If he had known...if he had ASKED... he would have shown up 1/2 hour before his pools were to start so that he could have handled STAFF RESPONSIBILITIES...thus eliminating the problem that arose when he walked into the venue at 10:30am when his pool was scheduled for play at 10am. He was called very early for his match. He was DQ'd. He wants to skew it so that it makes it look like we gave REO, CDJR, Maxter, and other VSM members all the time in the world to show up...but the simple fact is, when they were called, they were there to play their matches or showed up within mere minutes.
Seeding
-Pool seeding should be done by the tournament staff that are not directly involved in playing in the tournament, or the ones who are only pot monstering(adding to the tournament number and prize pot but have no real chance/need/desire to win). If these people don't exist, then Previous tournament results and NFG can be used to come up with a relatively fair seeding. There is no need to create some "seeding committee" to do this. The SF community would be laughing at us right now for even the thought of this.
Another word about Rob and Andrew: The two of them have left our community...likely permanently. We have lost invaluable members of our community and invaluable members of our NorthEast tournament staff. Those of you who sent Andrew death threats, and those of you who chose to browbeat Rob... the NE tournaments may now run WORSE as we train and acclimate new staff members...should they choose to even stay after their first tournament. You don't know what you have until it's gone...
Thanks everyone for reading this. Things are going to change... this is a call to arms for change. Some things can't or won't change, but I will be working diligently to change the things I can.
If you know me, then you know I don't like the spotlight. I don't like going on shows to tell people how I'm going to do this, that or the other thing.
I deal in resolution, not in entertainment. I won't be going on any shows to "explain myself", and especially not to appeal to the court of public opinion. None of that matters to me. My reputation doesn't matter to me. What the community thinks of me doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that people didn't enjoy themselves. I was trusted to facilitate the best possible experience players could have, and because I dropped the ball, people felt like they wasted their time and their money. THAT matters to me.
As I said, I will not be appealing to the court of public opinion. That court is filled with trolls and know-it-nothings who prefer drama and entertainment..and would rather see us stumble over our words and be put in awkward positions for the sake of a laugh at the expense of actually resolving problems. Resolution is the dirty work...and ultimately it's boring. But I deal in resolution.
My point in this, is that I have already contacted GGA Soonk GGA 16 Bit and Showtime to begin the process of true resolution. Our conversations were critical, but most importantly they were constructive and productive.
I need to personally thank GGA Soonk for taking the time to write such a well worded and eloquent post about the pervasive problems that are fixable in FGC tournaments. Your post was very powerful, and there are definitely things that can be better, and they will be. I appreciate you taking the time to make it clear that these truly are pervasive problems and not just lay into us as if we are the only group that has fallen victim to these mistakes.
Thank you as well to GGA 16 Bit for making me realize that, while I thought I was doing the right thing, the train of thought was wrong...ultimately making what I did wrong. This will be fixed immediately. I will not be part of a tournament in the future that continues this practice. It is unfair and not right.
OK... So on to the meat and potatoes:
Things went wrong at NEC. Some were unavoidable, some were totally avoidable.
Here is a list of problems, guided very much by the post by GGA Soonk, and a list of resolutions. It also includes a few extra things.
1. Players not being willing to speak up. I applaud soonk for being willing to risk being the bad guy. By doing so, he is more the champion of the players than anything else. He wasn't the bad guy at all. He was very much the good guy. He stepped up and told me there was a problem when I didn't know that a problem existed. Once I was aware of the existing problem, I was sensitive to it and continued to make sure that the problem was resolved for the remainder of the tournament. Players need to stop worrying about the "court of public opinion" and what these trolls and know-it-nothings will call them if they complain about something. You paid good money to get to the tournament, to get INTO the venue, the have a hotel room, and to compete. You are entitled to say something and ENCOURAGED to say something(as long as it's civilized) so that you don't feel cheated. Simply put: I can't fix it if you don't tell me it's broken.
2.
I very much agree with this. I was wary of letting someone who was competing have that level of involvement in creating the pools. People who are playing in the tournament can be bracket/pool runners, but they can no longer be involved in seeding the pools. I have even developed a way to randomly seed the 8-16 seeds so that there is no longer a question mark on why someone gets to play in an earlier pool and someone has to wait till 10pm to play. Now those top seeds will be determined by the machine and it's all luck of the draw.
3.
The "Riu48" issue is also a real and true problem. I didn't think it was....but I also didn't think about it because this has been a practice by us, and other TO's for many years. Our thinking is that if we seed him in a later pool, but still seed him FAIRLY in that later pool so that he doesn't have an easy path... then it's ok to do so. This thinking is wrong. I know we're trying to have a heart and accommodate players. This was not a VSM conspiracy, nor was it something we would have only done for a VSM member. If the GGA guys called us and said that their flight was running late, please seed them later, we would have tried to accommodate them as well.
This train of thought is still wrong, and it's unfair to the rest of the players in the tournament.
When we take the full list of players off to somewhere quiet to make the brackets, we intend on making fair, balanced pools...to the best of our ability. We choose the top 8 seeds to be separated, and we do this, not randomly, but definately arbitrarily...we have no interest in the outcome of the tournament, so who plays in what pool doesn't matter to us. The problem is, all those players we were seeding are at the mercy of the TO's who are creating the pools. They play when we TELL THEM to play. The time they play is ENTIRELY in our hands....they are at our mercy regarding the time they play. Everyone except for the one guy who ASKED to be put in a later pool. Everyone played when we told them to play, except one player who got to cherry pick his own timeslot.
That's not fair, nor is it right, and I hope you can see the slippery slope it can create by allowing this. This time it was Riu48 who had to work till 7pm... next time it'll be someone else who has pick up his kid from kindergarten, then it'll be someone who has to work overnight and would like to come to the tournament right from work and play in the first pool then leave, then it'll be someone who has sleep problems and needs to play in the afternoon. It'll be come excuse after excuse as to why people can't play at specific time slots....and because we accommodated Riu48 this time, people will think it's ok next time...and it simply is not ok, nor will it ever be ok. It is going to change, and I will not be part of tournaments that continue this practice.
It's also not Riu48's fault, nor would I hold him accountable for us not realizing we were being unfair to the other 116 players in the tournament. Do not crucify him for it. I will be watching the forums about this, any people who holds him accountable for my mistake will get a vacation.
4.
This is a direct result of 2 things:
1. Registration at NEC starting so late. I have addressed this with Big E. He is well aware that I wasn't happy that registration for MK9 started at 2pm when the tournament was scheduled for a 3pm start. He has told me that this will be rectified for Winter Brawl and that registration will begin much earlier.
Let me also point out that, while some people think that the do-all/end all is pre-registration, there are definitely some limitations to it. Players like SonicFox then have to rely on their parents for Paypal or credit cards. Situations like that give predators like Pimpuigi the opportunity to pull their con-man acts to try and get into the tournament for free. We are not the first people that Pimpuigi has pulled this on...he apparently did it at Final Round as well.
Big E is never going to change his policy of door sign ups. His motto is "for the players, by the players" and he is all about the players. He won't turn away door registrants as long as they register on time for their games. He encourages pre-reg's...as do I, but I personally agree with the policy of not turning away door registrants.
2. See, the stream has become SO important to this community that we crucify Tournament Directors if they don't give us a hard line for internet to stream. Likewise, when we provide our own 4g card as an alternative and that begins to have problems...or when Twitch.tv has problems, the onus falls right back on us for not providing a good stream...or not being allowed to provide a good stream.
Well, what I'm saying is that the stream is gravy. It is unnecessary. It's great to have, but it can no longer, and never will be, my first priority. My first priority will always be the players and the tournament. In the future, I will have someone to back me up to run my stream the way I can so that I can be out in the trenches with the players making things work.
This is NOT the fault of Dark_Rob or SwiftTomHanks. The two of them did a PHENOMENAL JOB of running pools. They are two of the best I know at it. What they lacked was the experience that Shock and I have when it comes to the "bottleneck". The bottleneck is defined as when you have EXACTLY the amount of matches remaining to fill up all your provided setups. When this happens, and you have a stream station, you then send all the remaining players to the stream station to play their matches out there...those will be the best players remaining in the pool at that point anyway so they will all be streamable matches. This avoids the situation where stations are being used for casuals instead of tournament matches.
In the scenario when you CAN'T send those players off to a dedicated stream station, then the problem arises where you are going to have free setups while those matches in those pools finish up. For the sake of the sanity of the bracket runners and players, you can't just arbitrarily start pools early because you now have free setups. If pools 1/2 start at the same time, and 3/4 start at the same time, etc with 5/6 and 7/8...then they start at the same time. The problem becomes that if pools 1/2 have bottlenecked and we have free stations... if I start pools 3/4...what happens when players from pools 3/4 are using too many stations and I can't provide a station for the players from pools 1/2 who are rightfully entitled to those stations for tournament play? You simply don't do it...you either send the bottleneck to the stream, or you play it out on your setups and let a few be free for a small period of time while you finish up and move on to your next set of pools.
Rob and Andrew simply didn't know to do this. I did...but I was stuck behind the stream machine. This was my fault and I won't make the stream my main priority again. The players and the tournament are my main priority.
5.
I discussed this directly with soonk. My personal setup uses an HDMI from the system to a POWERED HDMI splitter/amplifier which goes directly to the monitor. There is no signal degredation from system to monitor.
Now, it is possible that I have a lemon ASUS and it needs to be replaced. If that's the case then i will hate to spend the extra money, but I will so that my monitor won't lag.
I think good practice by all streamers should be to power cycle their monitors once an hour and to have the players check for lag during their button checks. It may also be a good idea to power cycle the PS3's.
With regards to the PS3 vs. 360. The majority of us have invested a great deal of money on collecting the parts necessary to have EVO identical setups. Only a few other majors use the 360 for MK9, and maybe that's the future of MK9 when Injustice comes out. As long as the PS3 is the system of choice for EVO, then that's what I'll personally be using so that players do not have to buy multiple sticks/pads/converters to bring with them everywhere they go.
The other major issue with the 360 is that it's literally built like a glass house. It's cheap, it's flimsy, and it breaks AND breaks down easily.
OK, so I have a few other things to address.
Let me start with the way Rob and Andrew have been crucified for this.
-This has all been on my shoulders...at least the things that were within our control. We can't help that the registration started so late and we can't help that the hotel, which allowed us to set up our equipment on Friday night until 4am, kicked us out at midnight. The other stuff that was within our power...well, Rob and Andrew were only doing what was asked of them, which was asked of them by me.
Staff Responsibilities
-I can't begin to tell you how skewed of a story you're getting from Arez GOW. Eric is a friend of mine, but at some point he has to hit rock bottom. Arez COULD be a good staff member if he learned to be accountable, and learned to not drink during a tournament. The problem is that when I first saw him on Saturday, which was at or around 2pm, he ALREADY had a beer in his hand and only continued to drink from there.
A staff member's first job is to know when a game starts and where the game is being played on BOTH DAYS. Eric didn't know what time MK9 started on Sunday, even though he was in one of the pools(the picture of the PC screen you saw with pools was a preliminary draft, not the real deal...the real deal was done on Tio Tournament Organizer, not on MS Excel) that played on Sunday, a STAFF MEMBER DID NOT KNOW WHAT TIME HE WAS SUPPOSED TO REPORT FOR HIS STAFF DUTIES. If he had known...if he had ASKED... he would have shown up 1/2 hour before his pools were to start so that he could have handled STAFF RESPONSIBILITIES...thus eliminating the problem that arose when he walked into the venue at 10:30am when his pool was scheduled for play at 10am. He was called very early for his match. He was DQ'd. He wants to skew it so that it makes it look like we gave REO, CDJR, Maxter, and other VSM members all the time in the world to show up...but the simple fact is, when they were called, they were there to play their matches or showed up within mere minutes.
Seeding
-Pool seeding should be done by the tournament staff that are not directly involved in playing in the tournament, or the ones who are only pot monstering(adding to the tournament number and prize pot but have no real chance/need/desire to win). If these people don't exist, then Previous tournament results and NFG can be used to come up with a relatively fair seeding. There is no need to create some "seeding committee" to do this. The SF community would be laughing at us right now for even the thought of this.
Another word about Rob and Andrew: The two of them have left our community...likely permanently. We have lost invaluable members of our community and invaluable members of our NorthEast tournament staff. Those of you who sent Andrew death threats, and those of you who chose to browbeat Rob... the NE tournaments may now run WORSE as we train and acclimate new staff members...should they choose to even stay after their first tournament. You don't know what you have until it's gone...
Thanks everyone for reading this. Things are going to change... this is a call to arms for change. Some things can't or won't change, but I will be working diligently to change the things I can.
