TTO Playoffs (PLAY ASAP!) + Prize photos

[myndzi]

All in all this tournament might have many problems and make a bad first impression.
Assuming that we are able to get people to play their matches all across the world and time zones and make the matches easily understandable with minimum confusion, there is still the problem with lag for a lot of people on TF. I can load an HD 1080p video on YouTube in a matter of seconds but I still get lag spikes from Tetris Friends. Players from Japan will even have it worse through proxies.

Other than that I'm positive that we as the HD community will be able to help out with commentaries (when needed) and help with information to lead people to where to sign up.

I believe a lot of people misuse the term "lag" and it leads to confusion. When the game isn't responsive, people call it "lag"; when some piece glitches people call it "lag"; when there actually IS network latency, people call it "lag". It makes it difficult to identify and correct the problem when nobody bothers to determine what exactly the problem is.

As for turnout, while turnout is important, I'm sure that the people at TF can understand the basic fact that more promotion = more participation. If this is a test, then where we really need to shine is in the execution.

Blink, since this seems to be moving along again, would you like me to draw up a draft of the tournament format description and/or my suggestion for scheduling rules?

[chopin]

When tournament registration starts, let's change our status messages to the tourney signup page

Ok, sounds good

[massi4h]

So what's the format?

I really like the format that we are currently using for fighting game majors.

Basically break everyone down to a certain amount of pools: (8 or 16 most likely) and fill those pools up with hopefully 20+ people. And instead of doing round robin in the pools, treat each pool as it's own double elimination tournament.

From that get the top 16 or 32 and put them in a top 16/32 double elimination bracket. To save time even more, you can make whoever comes second in each pool put straight into the loser's bracket of the top 16/32 which effectively gives everyone in the tournament 2 lives. Surely it can't be that hard to implement and I guess just get people to choose what times are most suitable for them when they sign up and put the players who are similar in that aspect in the same pool (but probably seed the pools by 40 line time or rank as well).

[Someone2knoe]

So what's the format?

I really like the format that we are currently using for fighting game majors.

Basically break everyone down to a certain amount of pools: (8 or 16 most likely) and fill those pools up with hopefully 20+ people. And instead of doing round robin in the pools, treat each pool as it's own double elimination tournament.

From that get the top 16 or 32 and put them in a top 16/32 double elimination bracket. To save time even more, you can make whoever comes second in each pool put straight into the loser's bracket of the top 16/32 which effectively gives everyone in the tournament 2 lives. Surely it can't be that hard to implement and I guess just get people to choose what times are most suitable for them when they sign up and put the players who are similar in that aspect in the same pool (but probably seed the pools by 40 line time or rank as well).

http://harddrop.com/tourney

[Ravendarksky]

Do we have an idea for a start date yet? 5th of November is drawing near.

I've been practising and managed to send 76 LPM using only Tspins yesterday on TF =D Hopefully I can recreate somewhere close to that for the tourney! ( I think my average is about 36  )

Also is there anything stopping us saying in the advertising where the prizes are coming from? Sure you can't say its an official tournament, but surely that doesn't stop you from saying that the prizes are provided by an official tetris source?

[Arias]

First round to 15 is really not necessary.  Let's do first to 10 win by 2 in the first round.

[XaeL]

I believe a lot of people misuse the term "lag" and it leads to confusion. When the game isn't responsive, people call it "lag"; when some piece glitches people call it "lag"; when there actually IS network latency, people call it "lag".

all of those are lag. just different forms

[myndzi]

all of those are lag. just different forms

Game glitches are not lag. Unresponsive interface ... well, it could be considered a type of lag, but by far the most common use of the term lag is network latency. Anyway the point is that the term is muddled and if you are going to complain about something, be specific if you expect anyone to have a chance at addressing the problem.

I just read the /tourney page, and I like how concise it is, but I think there should be a detailed rules page linked from it for all the reasons I mentioned before about participants' expectations and whatnot. I was going to suggest that before we actually run the tournament we have a 'beta' test of sorts just with whoever we can rope in from the forum, just to see if we run into anything unexpected.

Anyone who might be commentating needs to get all the software installed and test the setup before the tournament begins. We don't want live technical problems with that sort of thing.

I may have changed my mind about the best timing and arranging matches. Setting one specific default time and day is useful in one sense, but it will not be good to have moderators try to verify no-shows on dozens of games all at the same time. Plus, if there's any day that a majority of people will be able to break their normal schedules, it's on a weekend. I don't recall anyone responding to my original suggestion of setting a deadline for the players to arrange the match on their own, but I'd like to reiterate that suggestion here for consideration. (If they haven't submitted a date/time for the match at that time, moderation staff will choose the date/time; I would start with something moderately early in the day on Saturday, for example, and add 5 or 10 minutes per match after that.)

Another thing worth considering: it may pay to recruit volunteers starting right now in such a way that we can have maximum coverage throughout the days of the tournament as far as witnessing matches or no-shows goes. All they have to do is be at the computer, and hopefully Blink can rig up a form on the site to notify them audibly or whatever if somebody is requesting a mod's presence for whatever reason.

[Someone2knoe]

We just say lag to encompass the fact that there are tons of problems. Even if it is a glitch, we see the unresponsive/slow interface and call it lag. It doesn't really matter if its the incorrect usage. You just want us to be specific.

So from now on you can interpret me saying lag as:

1. My autorepeat slows down
2. My pieces sometimes take 1 second before they move
3. Sometimes my controls don't work at all for a few seconds
4. The delay before autorepeat increases drastically
5. Some inputs are never accepted

[Kitaru]

@myndzi: Tetris Friends suffers from at least two of three things commonly referred to as lag. (In fact, it feels like these two things are closely related when it comes to TF.) It definitely suffers occasional input lag, which is a delay between player input and game response. It also clearly suffers from performance lag, which is the game falling behind in the execution of game frames. Closely related to these problems is dropped inputs -- the failure of the game to receive and act upon player inputs entirely. Having very little experience with Arena, I can't say whether it suffers from network lag, or synchronization issues caused by latency from player to the server. It's probably difficult to isolate this issue given the prevalence of the other two, so these should be addressed first.

You ask for specifics, but it is pretty much the whole bag, haha.

[Arias]

Seriously, can't we do it like HDO2 when the prelims are 10 games and the playoffs are 15? If the games are close, win by 2 takes care of the problem.  However, if the games are not close, 15 games just add unnecessary games.

[myndzi]

What I'm saying is that if you want to have them fix a problem, you need to be specific about what the problem is. I could give a sh** if you call it "lag" when you b**** to players about it, but if you are trying to submit these things to TF for them to fix, you have to give them something to go on.

We just say lag to encompass the fact that there are tons of problems. Even if it is a glitch, we see the unresponsive/slow interface and call it lag. It doesn't really matter if its the incorrect usage. You just want us to be specific.

So from now on you can interpret me saying lag as:

1. My autorepeat slows down
2. My pieces sometimes take 1 second before they move
3. Sometimes my controls don't work at all for a few seconds
4. The delay before autorepeat increases drastically
5. Some inputs are never accepted

[Someone2knoe]

If they were willing to fix the problem they would be the ones asking us to be specific.

[ohitsstef]

if it's not official, do we still have to have it on tf?

[myndzi]

if it's not official, do we still have to have it on tf?

Yes, they are still providing prizes, right? Also exposure for competitive Tetris and all that.

I'm a little bit concerned about the lack of finalizing all the rules and stuff in detail, I would like to see this go as smoothly as possible. I don't care if it gets put off until late November if that's what it takes.