[NZism SFIV National Tournament 15.08.09] Questions and Answers

[Hydro]

Hey all, just asked Alan if I could start a thread for those who had specific questions about our upcoming tournament. Al gave the all clear, so this is the place to do so.

I appreciate the efforts of the organisers to answer when they can, so without further ado:


Q: In regards to 'seeding' particular players, how is this going to be determined?

(I understand there's a couple of shoe-ins for the seeded positions, but there feasibly could be as much as 12 players who could also fit into this category)

Q: Would it also be possible to make a tenative list of those likely to be seeded for the tournament?



Q: What is the prize distribution likely to be?

(Top 3? Top 8?, obvoiusly this would change with the number of attendees)



Q: Will there be spot prizes?



Q: As for playing arrangements, several people have talked about tables etc for playing on, is there a particular position people will have to play in?

(I asked this because each of us perfers different things when it comes to playing a match, some people perfer to play with the stick on their lap (sniff. . . LAP STICKS) while others feel better about having the sticks on the table or on the floor in front of them (such as myself))



Q: We've been asked to bring our own sticks if we have them, however, if we're playing on an XBOX as a PS3 user, can we set up buttons etc as we're familiar with on our own?



Q: Will the matches be recorded?



Q: Just to clarify character selection, (cause I'm such a jib) the current rules are free selection unless one party opts for double blind, is that correct?



My many thanks in advance for the answers, I'm sure this will get a few others thinking about questions they may have had about the tourney. Chur!

[fluxcore]

Q: In regards to 'seeding' particular players, how is this going to be determined?

(I understand there's a couple of shoe-ins for the seeded positions, but there feasibly could be as much as 12 players who could also fit into this category)

Q: Would it also be possible to make a tenative list of those likely to be seeded for the tournament?

Probably not going to be too anal about seeding, just going to try to keep the few people that people keep bitching about raping everyone from playing each other. We've got some idea from the last tournament and training sessions, along with the Yifan's regular beatings, but if people are particularly concerned about this feel free to make suggestions.

Q: What is the prize distribution likely to be?
(Top 3? Top 8?, obvoiusly this would change with the number of attendees)

Q: Will there be spot prizes?

The number of prizes is more dependent on sponsors than anything else. Top 3 will definitely get something. #1 prize as we've announced is an NZism custom built arcade stick with sanwa parts for the system of your choice.
We do intend to have spot prizes.

Q: As for playing arrangements, several people have talked about tables etc for playing on, is there a particular position people will have to play in?

(I asked this because each of us perfers different things when it comes to playing a match, some people perfer to play with the stick on their lap (sniff. . . LAP STICKS) while others feel better about having the sticks on the table or on the floor in front of them (such as myself))

I don't see that there should be any particular issue with setting up your preferred playing position.

Q: We've been asked to bring our own sticks if we have them, however, if we're playing on an XBOX as a PS3 user, can we set up buttons etc as we're familiar with on our own?

Are you asking if you're allowed to remap buttons before your match? Absolutely.
The stick issue is going to be a problem I think, since we kind of need to have both 360s and PS3s to be able to cover the number of setups we intend to use, it means that people either have to use sticks that will be there (graciously provided by... well, us and you), or get lucky and play on the system their stick works on. I can imagine some people getting uppity about this, but there's not really much that can be done.
It would be preferable from our perspective to just have ONE system (which would be 360) and say 'bring your 360 stick', but of course that would piss you ps3 people off even more.

Q: Will the matches be recorded?

We intend to have one main setup which has all the matches played on it recorded - this will be used for all the finals, and we'll try to pick 'interesting' matches to play on it as well. We'll probably have a camcorder wandering around recording player talk/random stuff, as well as some other matches.

Q: Just to clarify character selection, (cause I'm such a jib) the current rules are free selection unless one party opts for double blind, is that correct?

Correct. This seems to allow the ability for less hands-on admin if both parties don't really care, but if someone has a stick up their ass then that's covered as well. It's also the way the Evolution tournament has done it for years, so it's a proven method.

[zos'la]

Q: We've been asked to bring our own sticks if we have them, however, if we're playing on an XBOX as a PS3 user, can we set up buttons etc as we're familiar with on our own?[/b

I am in the possition of organizing something, if this all work out as we should have enought sticks for xbox 360 setups and not need to have PS3 and as Alan mention, some Ps3 players will be pissed but that just how thing are done sometimes. We will see and follow up with this further in a later date, but for now please take Alan (Fluxcore's) advice.

[CptMunta]

Isn't there a driver for your PS3 stick to work PC? Also I know the PS3 SE SF4 stick works.

Maybe in the future PC will be the way to go?

[HoneyBadger]

My TE worx on my PC I heard if you don't have the right chipset it doesn't though.

[zos'la]

Not sure about TE stick, tho my stick works on pc with a converter.
It might be PC in future to go as it is more compatible with most sticks etc...
But for now lets just do this one.

[Hydro]

Q: In regards to 'seeding' particular players, how is this going to be determined?

(I understand there's a couple of shoe-ins for the seeded positions, but there feasibly could be as much as 12 players who could also fit into this category)

Q: Would it also be possible to make a tenative list of those likely to be seeded for the tournament?

Probably not going to be too anal about seeding, just going to try to keep the few people that people keep bitching about raping everyone from playing each other. We've got some idea from the last tournament and training sessions, along with the Yifan's regular beatings, but if people are particularly concerned about this feel free to make suggestions.

O.k, some ideas:

After much thought and discussion on the seeding of players for the upcoming tournament I wanted to run some thoughts and ideas past the attendees & organisers. Realistically there's only one way for this to be done fairly, and by fairly I mean it will result in those who should be seeded being seeded for the tourney.

Obviously the scene here has grown exponentially since that first tourney, and there a ALOT of great players regularly playing at Yifans, via Xbox or on PSN. I personally would be disappointed if only players of a particular environment were seeded while others were left out. Great players such as Marc/Cptmunta, Myke/MJT, Eru, and Ioane/Kingpiccolo honestly deserve places among the top players at yifans, and it would an oversight to deny them as such because of a lack of a notorious 'arcade reputation'. Simon/Crazymobius and I came up with the idea of a grind session set sometime shortly before the tournament purely with the purpose of working out who our seeded players 'should' be. Of course this is time consuming, and leaves those out of Auckland (Or NZ in Ioane's case) from participating, which, I believe negates the point of holding them such a session in the first place after consideration.

The best and by far the easiest (and most legitimate) way of seeding our top players would be based on the results of the first SFIV tourney we had a few months back. This is really the only true representation of official competitive results in this sort of a setting, and I think it would be the most fair way of seeding players; The top 8 -12 players from the last tourney should be the only ones to be seeded in the upcoming one. This should be the method employed for this upcoming tourney because, simply put, it respects the results of the previous tournament by doing so.


I ask if it would be possible to list the top 8 - 12 from our first tournament here, as the official seeded line-up?


I hope I have given all of us some food for thought, and I really would like to thank the organisers again for their consideration of the above idea. I hope you will freely debate the points raised here, I really look forward to the ensuing discussion.

[[8-----D] Toots]

I think your idea of seeding the tourney according to the Top 8-12 results from the previous tourney would work well in almost all cases except this one.

It would mean that half of arguably the top 10 players in NZ would not be seeded(You, Simon, Hue, Cody and Kevin) one of them being the favourite to win at the mome.

I don't personally mind how it is seeded but I like the fact that your idea is based on fact rather than opinion.

[fluxcore]

Just some thoughts off the top of my head...

Seeding isn't really especially important, it's just trying to minimise the number of 'best players' playing each other right off the bat, and better players are going to get byes first. Anyone who is going to win has to play against the other best players anyway, so it's not like you're skipping anything by getting seeded high.

We're probably also not going to have a huge number of people enter that makes it necessary to seed more than 4-8 people.

Here were the people I was thinking of seeding (in rough order)

Kevin (because he's a fucking beast)
iMagneto (won the past tourney)
Simon (probably would have won the past tourney if he'd stuck around)
Ben
Hue

Mostly off of tourney results, obviously the sore thumb is kevin, but seriously... who wouldn't seed him?

[[NIUE] BIRRY WONG]

I personally don't think there is going to be any easy way to do this, and unfortunately there can't really be any official results used because, like ben says, we omit results that should be taken into account. I think were gonna need to look more at a kind of 'soft' seeding. People who  we can all generally agree are worth seeding should avoid facing each other in round 1. Not necessarily seeding them bynumber etc, but just keeping them as far away from each other as possible. I also think we need to start looking at this asap since it's probably going to involve a lot of opinions etc.

[fluxcore]

Well, by its very nature it's a numerical ranking, because #1 and #2 are furthest away in the brackets (so they will first meet in the winner's finals, if they both win all the games up till that point). Doesn't actually matter so much who gets ranked first and who gets second. Similar story for #3 and #4.

It's really not as big a deal as people might think it is though, so not worth considerable time and dispute imo. It's more just to have the exciting matches nearer the end.

[Hydro]

Just some thoughts off the top of my head...

Seeding isn't really especially important, it's just trying to minimise the number of 'best players' playing each other right off the bat, and better players are going to get byes first. Anyone who is going to win has to play against the other best players anyway, so it's not like you're skipping anything by getting seeded high.

We're probably also not going to have a huge number of people enter that makes it necessary to seed more than 4-8 people.

Here were the people I was thinking of seeding (in rough order)

Kevin (because he's a fucking beast)
iMagneto (won the past tourney)
Simon (probably would have won the past tourney if he'd stuck around)
Ben
Hue

Mostly off of tourney results, obviously the sore thumb is kevin, but seriously... who wouldn't seed him?

Thanks for the replies Ben, Alan and brother Will:

As it's a matter of opinion, I personally think the fairest way is to go by the results of the last, as it would honor the participants AND sets a precedence for the tournaments to come in the future. And, like we all pointed out, top players are going to be playing other at some stage, so why seed someone like Kevin, who's only there on reputation/opinion, and not others who would equally deserve a spot?

You see, I'm asking to put aside opinion, and go for something concrete that can be implimented easily for future tourneys.

If you aren't going to follow the results, and if wer'e going to seed Kevin then the following also would NEED to be seeded by the same token:


Cptmunta, Erugoodwin, MJT, Crazymobius, Zosla, I_Got_Paid, Cody, Kingpiccolo, Weazzyeff & Lightweight.


Cause they're all as capable as Kevin for 'being a beast' from what we've all seen.



So really, you could fesibly seed no one or everyone. My wish would be a for a precedence to be set and followed on for the future. otherwise any old guy who gets 61 wins at yifans is a shoe in, right?

[fluxcore]

Yep, fair enough. I'll get the full bracket back up tomorrow, and post the top 12 or so.

[Lennysaurus]

Since I am in the unique position of having played everyone on both xbox live and psn, and most of the guys in yiffans.

If you all agree I can probably do a fair job of seeding the tournament.  I have a fair idea of who should be where.  I hate you all equally, and as such will be unbiased.

Would anyone have problems with me seeding it?

[kingpiccolo]

i think you would be perfect to seed it as you pretty much are the only person whos played the majority of the scene.

but thats just my 2c.