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Why MK Needs Its Own Majors + Some Suggestions

funkdoc

Apprentice
Since many of the big names from the Capcom world were only in MK for the PDP money, I feel that we would be best off in the long run if we build up our own big tournaments that focus just on MK. This is exactly what every other non-Capcom game has had to do in order to survive in the US, so there is no shame in us going this route; Tekken's done it with events like Strongstyle/Trashday/TiT, Guilty Gear had its own great event in Southeast Regionals, etc. Another way to put it - rather than pining for established stars like Justin to grace us with their presence, we need to create our own stars!

So, how to do this? I already posted a bit about this and offered one tournament idea there, so please read that first:

http://testyourmight.com/forum/showthread.php?12462-Article-Mortal-Monday-3...WATCH-NOW!&p=192267&viewfull=1#post192267

For now, I'm just going to flesh out the MK9 Nationals idea that I mentioned in that post. For those not in the know, Namco's arcade division used to run national tournaments for a number of their games - basically all the big arcade fighters from Tekken Tag through Tekken 5.0. These were formatted very much like SBO, with regional qualifiers spread throughout the country and a final 32-man bracket at Nationals. However, since Soul Calibur 3 did not originally have an arcade release, Namco did not run nationals for it and the SC community took it upon themselves to organize one with essentially the same format. The same occurred with SC4, albeit with a lot more issues that I won't get into here.

Anyway, I think this general idea could be fantastic for MK9 as an official TYM tournament series (or perhaps a collab with other MK sites). With that in mind, I'll explain some more of the details of the SC nationals to give you ideas:

- All regionals and the final Nationals bracket are double-elimination, standard rules etc. etc.

- Generally, there are 8 regional qualifiers throughout the country (SC4 also had qualifiers in Mexico and the Dominican Republic, I believe). The top 4 from each regional qualify for the Nationals bracket, with those just below as possible alternates. I would highly recommend adding an extra match to separate 5th and 6th place for this.

- Often, the pot from the regional tournaments goes toward travel expenses for the qualifiers. This is not always the case but it's what I would recommend. You also need to deliver big pot bonuses and such at Nationals, of course!

- Your placing in the qualifier determines your seeding in the Nationals bracket, kinda like how Devastation top 8 worked. In the first round, 1st place finishers would play 4th place finishers and 2nd's would play 3rd's. Alternate a 1 vs. 4 matchup and a 2 vs. 3 in each spot on the bracket; have separate hats/jars/etc. with all the players in each seed and pick randomly to fill out the bracket at the event (do not predetermine which regions go where in the bracket!). I understand that this will present some issues with players in stronger regions earning lower seeds, but I still think this is far better than making the entire bracket randomly.

- The location varies, but I'm inclined to believe that somewhere in the middle of the US would be best for us given the player representation. Most importantly, we must keep this a community-run event and not hand control over to an outside organization. Again, SC4 Nationals is quite the cautionary tale here...


I'll stop it here for now since this is getting plenty long already. My next post will make the case for a 64-player Nationals instead of the traditional 32 and create a hypothetical distribution for the regionals.
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
Lead Moderator
I thought about doing this 5 years ago here in Columbus, but it didnt materialize much (obviously)

I still want to do this, and i have some good ideas ive been kicking around over the years, and now with the success of MK9, it can definitely happen.
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
Lead Moderator
Im also gonna talk to a lot of my contacts and see about some kind of sponsors etc etc

Money is the biggest issue with making this legit, thus taking it from an idea to reality.
 

Ermaculate_Slim

We are Many but we didnt make MK11 not one
MK definitely needs its own scene.I've come to the conclusion that the SF community and the MK community can't co-exist with each other.If you think I'm lying read the stream chat when Mk is being streamed during a major.It makes it almost impossible to chat about the matches with other MK fans because the Capcom boys bitch and troll the entire time.Absolutely terrible to be in there as a MK fan.I for one would love for this to happen but like static said we need the funds to do this.Not hating on the SF community by any means but the selfishness and disrespect they show us is just inexcusable and uncalled for.
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
Lead Moderator
MK definitely needs its own scene.I've come to the conclusion that the SF community and the MK community can't co-exist with each other.If you think I'm lying read the stream chat when Mk is being streamed during a major.It makes it almost impossible chat about the matches with other MK fans because the Capcom boys bitch and troll the entire time.Absolutely terrible to be in there as a MK fan.I for one would love for this to happen but like static said we need the funds to do this.Not hating on the SF community by any means but the selfishness and disrespect they show us is just inexcusable and uncalled for.
What people say about tourneys and games from the comfort of their own home, never coming to tourneys or events can suck a dick. I dont care what fanboys of SF or MK have to say, and it should never deter what goes on in the scene. But sadly, this kind of attitude will never stop 100% :/

Hell if i had it MY way, MvC3 wouldnt be there and UMk3 would get top billing.

But i have a strong love for SF (pre-SF4) and have many many friends who play SF/Capcom fighters, but also play/love/respect MK. You wont find that on any stream or online whatever.
 

funkdoc

Apprentice
Alright, continuing on...

For the MK community at this point, I believe a 64-player Nationals would be a much better fit than the usual 32. It would do a lot more to encourage people to come out to the tournaments, both because "top 64" is much less intimidating than "top 32" and because this would allow us to spread qualifiers around more widely - remember, if we stick with 4 qualifying players per tourney, this would give us 16 qualifiers instead of 8! It would also have the additional benefit of allowing more qualifiers in the strongest regions, and it would give us more matches and more hype at Nationals itself.

Aside: If you ran Nationals Friday through Sunday, would it be feasible to stream every match of the tournament? Play down to top 32 on day 1, then down to top 8 on day 2? I admit to not knowing much about tournament scheduling, hence why I ask. Even if not, I would have to imagine you could at least stream every match after the 1st round of winners & losers...maybe then you could make it a 2-day tourney if you wanted. Just thinking out loud here!

Anyway, here's some very tentative thinking on how you could distribute the qualifiers for a 64-man tourney. Note that my tourney experience in this game is almost all in the east coast and midwest so I'm likely biased and missing info on a lot of other areas (esp southwest). This is just to get the ball rolling, so feel free to give constructive criticism!

- 2 qualifiers in NYC. This should be a no-brainer. REO, the CD brothers, Erik Warda, Chris G., Arturo, Riu48, Classy Sasquatch...and it goes on and on.

- This will probably be a controversial suggestion...2 more East Coast qualifiers. I'm thinking Philly and New Jersey. Both areas have good players of their own (off the top of my head, Philly = SwiftTomHanks/Teef, NJ = KHunter/DarthArma/MagnetoHalfway/ZeroEffect) and they're well within reach for the killers who missed out in NY.

- At least 1 Ohio qualifier. Ohio has a lot of strong players but they're mainly in the northern part of the state. Pittsburgh also has some players and is not extremely far from Cleveland...let's say 1 qualifier in Cleveland for sure and MAYBE 1 in Pittsburgh.

- Atlanta and Florida both deserve to rep this for sure, but I don't know how deep the talent pool is there. Let's give them 1 qualifier each for now, want to hear more from people there!

- We already covered Ohio, but for the rest of the Midwest I like 1 qualifier in Chicago and 1 in St. Louis. Chicago has a pretty active scene and 16 Bit is in the state (albeit pretty far away). St. Louis has Slips, AKA (beastly Mileena a lot of people don't know about), KTH, and others.

- I know Texas also has a good community but again don't know what the numbers are like etc. I could see them deserving 2 spots but need Nori or someone to shed some light here. I know Oklahoma has a couple very active people on here such as Gamerblake and K7, but I don't know where the best MK9 spots in TX are or how far they would be from OK.

- I know a little bit more about Arizona than Texas since they stream regularly, but I still don't feel qualified to say whether they deserve 1 or 2 spots. Maybe 1 here and 1 in Vegas if travel is possible...see below.

- I think Las Vegas could deserve a qualifier. Denzell Terry & his brother, Trophy Club, Nick T., Ruin...there's definitely enough there to merit it, I think. Not sure how feasible travel would be for any AZ players who missed out in the event they only get 1 qualifier.

- California has to be in there. I would assume 2 qualifiers but I'm not totally sure. I almost feel like having 2 in southern CA would be more fair overall...Norcal has Michaelangelo but no real scene at all from what I've heard. Then again, I've given the southwest a bunch of quals as is so maybe 1 in Norcal would work better? Need suggestions.

If we assume 2 quals in TX and CA and the 1 each in AZ/Vegas, that would make 15. I'm not including Pittsburgh, so that would be in competition with 2nd qual in ATL or FL going off what I have here.


Man, doing this made me even more convinced we need 64 qualifiers! Hopefully it gets some good discussion going, back to schoolwork for now...
 

Hitoshura

Head Cage
Josh The funkdoc does it again! Tbh i think if we end up having something like this we should host one in NYC. Seeing tht NYC is sch a well known place it be perfect!
 

Ashenar

Just a slightly above average player.....
An MK only tournament would be nice for sure. We could actually get exposure for the entire community. Great idea for sure.
 

funkdoc

Apprentice
Thanks Hito, but I think it would be better for the community overall if Nationals were not on one of the coasts (think of travel costs etc.). SC3 Nationals was in Chicago, while SC4 was in Colorado.

Actually Chicago seems like a very fitting choice here as well given, you know, NRS and all.
 

Verstande

Kombatant
The only way I see this happening is if we have Mortal Kombat centralized in Los Angeles, anywhere else I don't think it would work.
 

STORMS

Co-founder
Administrator
Some key things to think about:

- Where would this major be located?
- What time of the year?
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
Lead Moderator
Good shit as usual, Josh.

Also, i think every state that has a scene should be given an automatic qualifier then use a seeding system to fill out the rest of the bracket.

also, at the actual tourney, have something like 2-4 spots available in a side tourney involving anyone who didnt qualify or seed to win their spot.

man, this could be huge. Mortal Madness in March?

:confused:
 

aj1701

Champion
Two qualifiers in NYC and one in Philly and NJ? Philly / NJ are not that far from NYC, players could go there. You've also excluded pretty much the entire North East. What about Boston and that area? Where do you envision people from NH, VT, ME going to go? Just throwing it out there.. NYC would be the closest one for me, and that'd be six hours driving. Boston is about three.

Of course, I'm willing to accept there's not enough players to make it worth it for this area.
 

funkdoc

Apprentice
Location was already brought up briefly, but that's something that needs input from a lot of players to really determine.

The timing is a great question. One of the many, many mistakes of SC4 Nationals was scheduling the event very soon after Evo - I think it might have been the week after!

The tournament season seems to be at its busiest in the first half of the calendar year...January up until Evo, basically. I'm thinking that you should give people time to recover + save money after Evo, so maybe late in the calendar year? The question is how much earlier you want the qualifiers to be, and I personally am not sure of the fairest answer to that. Probably shouldn't have to wait several months, of course!

EDIT: aj1701, I know very little about MK in the New England area. I know CT has a good Nightwolf player named Phoenix, but I've seen a tournament there and it wasn't that large + none of the other players seemed that great. I can't name any other players from that area except mcpeanuts (he's MA right?). This turned out to be much tougher than I thought even going with 64 players, as we would likely still have to stick to regions with more established scenes.

I will grant that 4 quals in the tri-state area might be excessive, but there should be no less than 3 given how many strong players are there.
 
I think it would have to be vegas. That way it gives people more of an incentive to come. Evo works in vegas, so why not try doing it there?

or NYC? or alternate it between coasts would work too. that way nobody gets butthurt on location, and people would get even more hype cheering for their local players against any invaders.

umm..

Also, MK is at tournaments. People should work on showing up to THOSE tourneys before even thinking about making our own. Those capcom fan boys? We want them to play. Those people that know nothing of MK and troll it? We want them to play.

In short, WE NEED TO EXPAND OUR PLAYER BASE BEFORE EVEN THINKING ABOUT SPLITTING FROM SSF4, and MVC3. Why not try to make the players of SSF4 and MvC3 want to play? From my experience, I find MK players LOVE their game. SSF4 and MvC3 players do nothing but BITCH about their game. More hype moments, more players inclined to try the game out.

If you were to do it SBO style, I'd expect two tourneys in canada. East coast (toronto), and a qualifier out west, (canada cup maybe!?)
 

rev0lver

Come On Die Young
Actually Chicago seems like a very fitting choice here as well given, you know, NRS and all.
Maybe get NRS involved in some way? They could help with some funding and market it better than the FG community can, both with competitors and viewers.
 

Tim Static

Adminerator
Lead Moderator
Location was already brought up briefly, but that's something that needs input from a lot of players to really determine.

The timing is a great question. One of the many, many mistakes of SC4 Nationals was scheduling the event very soon after Evo - I think it might have been the week after!

The tournament season seems to be at its busiest in the first half of the calendar year...January up until Evo, basically. I'm thinking the Nationals event should be late in the year - give people time to recover + save money after Evo. The question is how much earlier you want the qualifiers to be, and I personally am not sure of the fairest answer to that. Probably shouldn't have to wait several months, of course!
I was teasing with the Mortal Madness in March, more so because of how it should be run is kinda like NCAA Basketball's March Madness tourney.

Anywho, what better month to do it than September? If Season's Beatings wasnt always a mid October event, i'd say then but I still dont like how Devastation moved themselves so close to SB. anyways, we cant have it much later because when the weather gets colder, it can really hamper traveling...etc etc
 

aj1701

Champion
or NYC? or alternate it between coasts would work too. that way nobody gets butthurt on location, and people would get even more hype cheering for their local players against any invaders.
This is good. Alternate, or move it among several places. No reason it always has to be in one spot. At least none that I can think of. If you want to get out of the shadow of Evo (Street Fighter), maybe NOT having it in Vegas is the best idea. You wouldn't want MK's main event to be know as mini-Evo.
 

STORMS

Co-founder
Administrator
Maybe get NRS involved in some way? They could help with some funding and market it better than the FG community can, both with competitors and viewers.
It would be great to have NRS involved and I'm sure they would probably and fucking hopefully stop in but I would not rely on them for anything... IMO, this should remain "by the players".

Basically, we shouldn't be dependent on NRS, we should rely on ourselves.
 

funkdoc

Apprentice
Burzy, like I said, you can't count on the established big Capcom tourneys to be your sugar daddies. That's why I made sure to mention the examples of other non-Capcom games doing things like I'm describing here.

EDIT: A big issue here is stream time. Sure, it's not a problem with an event like Summer Jam where you can run an entire stream just for MK, but look at Season's Beatings. The internet isn't good enough to handle multiple streams, so MK is not going to get very much screen time there. Big MK-only tourneys would guarantee that we can show all facets of the game, not just iAGB's.