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Registration is now live at the smash.gg link above. There is both a 1v1 Swap bracket and a 2v2 Versus bracket.

(Not sure if I'm supposed to post this here or in Arena, but I'm putting it here since I saw the EVO thread in this subforum.)

Puyo Puyo Tetris will have a dedicated tournament at the CEO 2017 fighting game event (Orlando, June 16-18), ran primarily by AdmiralFunk and yours truly and held in the BYOC area of the arcade room. While some of the finer details have yet to be ironed out, I figured that I'd share what I can so far:

Smash.gg Event Page - Rules and other general info can already be found here. Once the full CEO schedule has been released (ETA: shortly after June 5), then this page will be updated with a precise schedule for the PPT tournament as well. At that time, you'll also be able to pre-register and pre-pay for the PPT tournament if you wish. (On-site cash registration will also be available.)

Facebook Event Page - This is the main place where I'll be looking for input from players on things that have yet to be decided, such as preferred entry fee, preferred tournament schedule, equipment inventory, and so forth. If you have any questions or concerns about the PPT tournament, then this is probably the first place that you should post them, if possible. I'll be checking back here and on Twitter as well when I can, of course.

tl;dr on details so far: 1v1 Swap, to be run entirely on Saturday June 17 if possible. Will be streamed if 4G signal is usable in venue; archives to be posted to Youtube afterward regardless. A CEO attendee badge is required to enter, but it doesn't have to be a "competitor" badge since this isn't a main CEO event; a "spectator" badge would also suffice.

The big question mark right now regarding basic tournament stuff is what the set length is going to be. Low-level play takes forever in this game compared to pretty much any fighting game, so the early rounds of the bracket might be kept particularly short in terms of number of games/rounds. This detail probably won't be finalized until very close to the day of the event, once we have a better grasp on how many setups and players will be present. In the meantime I'm just rummaging through Youtube archives to get an estimate for how long single-rounds tend to last in Swap mode.

Ideally, I'd like to split this tournament into at least 2 separate pools at 2 separate times, so that attendees participating in other CEO events wouldn't be forced to play in multiple games at once. This will be worked on once the full CEO schedule is released. 1v1 Swap is the only guaranteed format at the moment, but once the schedule is done we'll see if there's room for more. The most-likely additional format to appear would be 2v2 Team VS (PTvPT), with perhaps 1v1 Fusion or 1v1 segregated VS (PvP & TvT) after that.

Check the above links for more details and let me know what you think.

A proposal, if there has to be more than just a Swap bracket:

- Two 1v1 VS brackets on Friday, one for each game.
- Anyone who places in the money for either bracket on Friday is obliged to pony up some of those winnings to enter the Swap bracket on Saturday.

That's a concession that I'd still rather not make because I feel it's still relegating Puyo to the sidelines, but at least this way anyone who's already made travel plans on the assumption that there will be a 1v1 VS bracket still gets to play his game of choice, but anyone who's hot shit has to actually play the whole game.

[owo]

EDIT: Dammit, why don't the quote tags work?

Just going to chime in here even though I've said a lot of this in discord previously; it'd be nice to have it in writing on a forum.

When evaluating 1v1 mixed VS from the perspective of a fighting game player (which is kind of relevant when we're talking about EVO), you can sort of treat the two selectable puzzle games as different "characters" with match-up specific strategies, where the proper tactics for a PvT match can be quite different from those of a TvT or PvP "mirror match," forcing you to play either game in different ways depending on which game that your opponent selected. Being a fighting game player myself, this is honestly kind of intriguing to me and not something that I dismiss outright; I do think there's some value in that concept. I just don't think it works well when there's only 2 different "characters" to pick from. Maybe if this game wasn't just Puyo Puyo and Tetris, but something with more selectable puzzle games where a true counterpick wheel could develop from multiple selectable games that each had their own strengths/weaknesses/counters, then the concept would be more appealing. But you don't really get that when there's just a binary choice, and there's not much strategic depth to be found through the game choice as a result. At low to mid level PvT, Puyo buries Tetris because a 5-chain stairs combo just obliterates someone whose only skill is slowly stacking for tetrises. At high to top level, Puyo can't keep up with Tetris's speed without some particularly favorable RNG.

Which leads me to this:

owo: "Do you truly believe the TvP matchup creates compelling and desirable gameplay situations? All I ever hear are Puyo players complaining about the overwhelming DPS of Tetris, or Tetris complaining about the exponential damage curve of Puyo, how much players of both games hate the mixed format, and very little about how mixed VS is actually pretty dope. On the other hand, I hear nothing but praise for Swap mode as the most entertaining mixed mode in PPT."

This is also important. I find PvT at least intriguing in theory because I like Puyo, I like Tetris, and I like the concept of playing each component game differently based on the match-up. But what do you think the average mixed VS participant would think? The average player who enters the VS bracket but not the Swap bracket would be doing so because he only feels comfortable with one of the two games (Tetris in most cases). So, when a player like this is forced to play against Puyo in bracket when not only does he not know TvP match-up specific strategies, but he doesn't even really know Puyo as a game at all, he's going to have the same gut reaction as every unskilled streamer has when this happens to them on ranked online matches: "Hurrr Puyo is bullshit durrr why can't I just filter to TvT?"

Regarding the suggestion of permitting Quick Drop (Hard Drop) for Puyo: Like I said before, it would really sour the whole experience if a Puyo player happened to squeak by a Tetris player in tournament just barely because of a non-standard crutch like this. That is not at all fair to the Tetris player. It would also screw up PvP matches a bit because it significantly changes the dynamic of countering a chain in-progress; Quick Drop is non-standard for a reason. Rule changes of this magnitude should stay quarantined to the Smash Bros community. No need to spread around that kind of stink elsewhere. Play the game you have, not the game you wished you had.

Blink: "Which brings me to the next point, SEGA will be there and the tournament will have exposure. This is the perfect opportunity to show any flaws in the balance early on and bring to light any strategies that might be OP (4wide or combos in general) so that the developers can see and hopefully adjust the game balance."

Let's be real here: Sega doesn't even make balance changes based on top-level tournaments specifically focusing on this game in Japan, such as the Red Bull 5G. So, they sure as hell aren't going to make balance changes based off of a side-tournament populated by EVO attendees who don't even train seriously for this particular game in the first place.

CH4F: "Like I said on Reddit, Swap restricts and intimidate the players.
For me, if you wanna do 2 tourneys, the best choice is to do PvP and TvT. Maybe some exhibition matches with PTvPT. Swap is totally and at 100% a competitive mode and it shouldn't be banned. But while the game has 3 years in Japan, here, it will begin its 4th week. It's way too soon to eforcee both Guidelines and Tsu players to learn Tsu and Guidelines. Maybe later, but even later, Swap should not be the main competitive rule in PPT. PvP and TvT, should. Then Swap and Doubles."

I don't think the "too early" argument holds much merit when both of these games are decades old and PPT brackets at every FGC tournament I've been to in the past 2 years that have featured the game in some capacity have run Swap mode as the tournament format. TOs weren't scared to focus on Swap when this was a super-niche import-only title. Why the cold feet now? (I mean, I'm pretty sure that I know why, but I'll get to that in a minute.)

owo: "Oh, there is one potential way to deal with the logistical issue of Tetris matches taking a long time to complete -- have a 3P match with one player set to Puyo, which turns on the margin time mechanic which acts as a "sudden death" after some amount of time has passed. The Puyo player immediately suicides and lets the two Tetris players continue as normal."

Using a 3P Puyo player to introduce Margin Time into TvT matches is kind of interesting, but I'm against it for the same reasons you brought up: the UI is terrible and the deviation from guideline rules isn't necessarily desirable. It's also another logistical hassle; since TvT mirrors are bound to be common, you'd have to find volunteers and controllers that are dedicated to be the dummy 3P in every match.

A hard time-limit manually enforced by a ref would be better, though still undesirable and prone to its own logistical issues. And speaking of time limits:

jackh1771: "Long tvt games aren't a problem, they are intense and exciting for the spectators and players.  They show off the best parts of the skill in timing and blocking attacks."

Long matches are absolutely an issue when you're trying to coordinate with an event as huge as EVO and you can't keep players wrapped up too long in one game when they might be needed for a match in another game. Fighting games avoid this issue by having a hard built-in time limit for their matches. Puyo handles this issue somewhat by having a Margin Time mechanic that gradually increases attack strength so that basic scrub chains eventually become OHKOs once a round drags on too long. Tetris doesn't really have a built-in solution, and while high-level Tetris usually doesn't drag too long, a failsafe rule is probably necessary to keep low-level Tetris matches between equally skilled scrubs from dragging on for an eternity. And you're going to have a lot of low-level matches since this isn't going to be a playerbase full of Guideline Tetris experts.

Kiyobi's suggestion of 2/3 games per match (3/5 for finals) makes the most sense for the EVO crowd, since that's the common format for the other games at the tournament. There might be some merit in discussing whether each game should be 2/3 rounds per game or 3/5 rounds per game, though. Time permitting, of course.

Blink: "I've tried Swap.  If it becomes the tournament standard the winner would be the best Swap player.  Not the best Tetris player and not the best Puyo player, and not even necessarily the best that can play both as Swap has small differences that set it apart from Versus on either game."

Isn't that kind of the point, though? A Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament shouldn't necessarily crown the best Puyo player, or the best Tetris player, but the best Puyo Puyo Tetris player. And if there's one single game mode that encompasses the most of PPT, it's Swap mode.

Kiyobi: "I'm probably a little out of line when I say this, as a low level Puyo player, but I'm assuming that those who complain just aren't willing to play the Tetris matchup."

I'm going to be cynical here and suggest that this post is projection. The most transparent reason to push for a 1v1 VS bracket in the first place is to give Tetris specialists an excuse to not actually have to learn how to play the other half of Puyo Puyo Tetris. I'd go so far as to say that pushing for the 1v1 VS format is to not run a Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament at all, but rather a Tetris tournament with some Puyo pushed off to the side. The existence of a mixed VS bracket siphons away some entrants from Swap by giving Tetris-only players the option to ignore it.

And I'm not even saying that that's the worst thing in the world or anything. Running a Tetris tournament via PPT is harmless in itself; it's a perfectly competent iteration of Guideline Tetris on current-gen hardware. I'm not going to pick up my ball and go home, whining that you might as well run an older Tetris game instead of PPT if you're not equally interested in the PP side of the game. No one should be forced to run Tetris Ultimate. (Is that game still a dumpster fire, btw?)

But I do think it'd be kind of unfortunate to de-emphasize the very crossover nature of this game when that's the entire thing that makes it a uniquely great experience in the first place.