Help organizing a tournament

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
There's a pretty cool gaming even coming in my country. The thing will be happening in the last days of November and the first ones of December. Some of my friends actually know the organizers and they're helping me request permission to hold the first official DOA5 tournament in Venezuela. As I mentioned in a previous thread asking for advice on how to build a successful, though small, competitive scene, I was aiming to have at least eight decent players to show up in a hypothetical tourney but after speaking to some people and knowing how they feel I've come to realize that there are more gamers interested in our title than I previously thought, which makes me believe that, if the request does get approved, I might get lucky enough to gather 16 players in our first national tourney.

Now I know that's nothing compared to the 128 that showed up to today's tourney in Philadelphia but it's actually twice what I expected and it makes me very excited for the event. This brings me with some questions to you guys who have much more experience with these kind of things than me. Which should the rules of the tournament be¿ I already found a bracket for a 16-man double elimination tournament which would work perfectly but I'd like advice on the rules. In my "official" request letter I wrote this:

- Double Elimination.
- Best out of five rounds.
- Round time: 40 seconds.
- Random stage.
- All characters available.
- Best of three sets moves forward in the tourney (best of five starting semifinals)
- Loser of a set can change character.
- Participants can use their own controllers.

The tournament would be held on PS3 because it's the most popular console used here, especially for fighting games. But now I come with a serious issue I have. What if I get extremely lucky and gather more than 16 but less than 32¿ What should I do to avoid refusing to let the rest of the interested players play¿ I just don't want to turn anyone down and lose a potentially good player in a tournament.

Also, I don't think I'd have the resources to stream the event but I'd like for at least half of the matches to go into YouTube to post here and in other places. I thought about establishing a rule "Save Replay" every match and then select from there but I truly have no idea if the PS3 consoles I have have enough room in their HDD to save all matches. So what do you recommend¿
 

IceMage95

Active Member
About the extra people. I would just create more brackets until you can't have more matchups. Then you can give byes to the odd ones out.
 

CyberEvil

Master Ninja
Staff member
Administrator
Premium Donor
Challonge is awesome for running brackets and it's what we ran on this weekend. Highly recommend it. Good luck and let us now if you need help with other things. Only way to get a scene going is to throw some kindling onto the pile and wait for the spark that ignites it all.
 

UnD34D

Active Member
I use Tio Tournament Organizer, and it's pretty legit, but Challonge is good as well.

Edit: Not to mention dude, you know if you have any questions, myself, Cyber Evil, Mr. Wah, Virtua Pai, or Blackula would be happy to help you.
 

EMPEROR_COW

Well-Known Member
Premium Donor
My advice ..
Don't rely on anyone.. make sure all the planning and most importantly the application of the planning .. goes through you..

Your layout is very legit good luck!
 

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
OK I downloaded Tio and it looks very good. Didn't know software like these even existed, so thanks for that Undead. With this I won't have to ignore any extra requests in case I do get any. I'm still waiting for the tournament to be approved by the organizers. I hope they don't give me much trouble.

I'm thinking about having maybe two PS3 and two TVs for it. Since it's a small tournament, and the first "official" one it'd be more than enough. Do you think the prices are good with 70,20,10¿ I'd also give a small trophy to the champion and subchampion.
 

N0rdicNinja

Active Member
If you're unfamiliar with "bracket math" I suggest you use Tio and seed by location. Makes life a lot easier. Also Tio has a station manager, one of the most underused but awesome features of Tio!
 

UnD34D

Active Member
OK I downloaded Tio and it looks very good. Didn't know software like these even existed, so thanks for that Undead. With this I won't have to ignore any extra requests in case I do get any. I'm still waiting for the tournament to be approved by the organizers. I hope they don't give me much trouble.

I'm thinking about having maybe two PS3 and two TVs for it. Since it's a small tournament, and the first "official" one it'd be more than enough. Do you think the prices are good with 70,20,10¿ I'd also give a small trophy to the champion and subchampion.

Yeah, 70/20/10 is the norm, despite the numbers. My tournies up here in bumfuck Misawa are usually around 8-10 people and I do 70/20/10 and then usually throw in a prize for first and second (usually because I know I'm going to get first, so the prize is really for second lol.) The only question I had about your format was the time, I can't remember the settings we finished on in DoA4, but I could of swore it was 60 seconds, and I'm even more-so sure it should be 60 seconds in DoA5, but I definitely could be wrong; I just realized I never once looked at the timer during any of the tournaments.
 

Game Over

Well-Known Member
Yeah, 70/20/10 is the norm, despite the numbers. My tournies up here in bumfuck Misawa are usually around 8-10 people and I do 70/20/10 and then usually throw in a prize for first and second (usually because I know I'm going to get first, so the prize is really for second lol.) The only question I had about your format was the time, I can't remember the settings we finished on in DoA4, but I could of swore it was 60 seconds, and I'm even more-so sure it should be 60 seconds in DoA5, but I definitely could be wrong; I just realized I never once looked at the timer during any of the tournaments.

Wasn't the typical Life/Time setting for DOA4 Normal/40s?

I'm sure DOA5 should be 60s to go with the increase in standard life from 180pts to 240pts. BTW, in DOA4, the equivalent life setting for 240pts would be Large.
 

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
I remember DOA4 being played on 40 seconds and normal life so that's why I'm throwing that for the DOA5 tourney but it could change. I want to use the official settings.
 

UnD34D

Active Member
Wasn't the typical Life/Time setting for DOA4 Normal/40s?

I'm sure DOA5 should be 60s to go with the increase in standard life from 180pts to 240pts. BTW, in DOA4, the equivalent life setting for 240pts would be Large.
Like I said, couldn't remember what we ended the scene standards on, but I think DoA5 should be run on 60 seconds for sure. I was pretty sure we toned it down to 40 seconds to give characters like Jann Lee and more viable way to win since they couldn't put out damage like Hayabusa, but could play keep away relatively well.
 

CyberEvil

Master Ninja
Staff member
Administrator
Premium Donor
Forty seconds actually works pretty well for DoA5, but 60 is looking to be the sweet spot this time out due to differences in what 'Normal' and 'Large' actually represent from game to game. At GVN we ran more or less default settings and didn't run into situations where matches ran over-long or had a lot of time outs.
 

Matt Ponton

Founder
Staff member
Administrator
Standard Donor
To clarify a few things:

  • We officially played DOA4 on 60 seconds even though the default was 40 seconds. Hindsight would suggest we kept it on 40 seconds but luckily we're looking towards the future.
  • I have not been informed on what the default timer is set to in DOA5. It should be noted that the GVN/IPL/i45 build forced players on 60 second time limit
  • The build also had it on normal life (270 now)
  • For a tournament greater than 16 players you'll be fine with two setups. The hard part is keeping track of your players and making sure everyone knows who's the next one up should a match finish.
  • It is my suggestion to run first to 3 matches throughout the tournament. I'm not saying you have to, but that's the current decision by American players after playing first to 2 in DOA4. Also, we used this method in the 128 man tournament and I received positive results by the hardcore DOA players that they liked it as it gave them time to adapt.
 

UnD34D

Active Member
How long did it run though? You guys had a really big turnout, so I imagine it ran forever, I just know every other game does first to 2 for all early brackets, and it does fine for both time and learning to adapt. Personally I would go with first to 2, 60 seconds, normal health, and the first to 3 in finals, but thats just me. If Sorwah has had good results with first to 3, ya know, I'm not gonna argue.
 

CyberEvil

Master Ninja
Staff member
Administrator
Premium Donor
As a player, first to three is the best possible format. Time to adapt but not so long you get burned out or feel you overplayed your hand. The tournament did run long but the numbers had more to do with that. Insanely good turnout.
 

TRI Mike

Well-Known Member
The thing is the following, if my tournament gets approved for that event, DOA5 would be a very minor game because it's new and because pretty much no one outside my circle of friends plays it. The big games in the event will be Brawl, TTT2, SSF4AE, Marvel and probably SC5 and I bet some of the players who want to play DOA5 will want to play some of those other games so I need to be done with the DOA5 tourney rather quickly. That's why I'd prefer to go with first to 2 until the semifinals.
 

N0rdicNinja

Active Member
The thing is the following, if my tournament gets approved for that event, DOA5 would be a very minor game because it's new and because pretty much no one outside my circle of friends plays it. The big games in the event will be Brawl, TTT2, SSF4AE, Marvel and probably SC5 and I bet some of the players who want to play DOA5 will want to play some of those other games so I need to be done with the DOA5 tourney rather quickly. That's why I'd prefer to go with first to 2 until the semifinals.

You wont get any complaints from anyone running it that way, it's a fairly accepted standard across most FGCs.
 

ChampTang

New Member
make sure you let everyone know that it's on the ps3. If some1 really want to use a 360 controller then tell them to buy a converter for it.
 
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