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Last event run by these guys was poorly run according to other people in the LA Smash community. Are you guys going to at least use CRTs this time?
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I'm glad to see some PM attention on TL. The community here seems to be all about Melee, which I've lost interest in. So it's nice to see a thread for PM popping up.
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@OnceKing,
I'm disappointed to hear that the word on the street with the "LA Smash community" is that we produce poor events. If we have a reputation for running poor quality Smash tournaments, that's particularly unfortunate... considering we've never run one. This will be our first.
We are always trying to improve our processes, so if you could give some specific feedback about where we fell short in previous events we'd definitely like to apply it towards making our future tournaments better for the community. We know we had some technical problems with the video on the stream at the beginning of our big SC2 event, and now we own the gear we need to never have those problems again. We learned the hard way that you can't trust an off-site venue when they say "broadband" internet at our last League event, so we're hosting our next one at our own facility, where we have 50 megabit fiber. We're certainly not perfect, but we always try to apply what we've learned to make each event better than the last for the players and the fans.
So on your next point, I'm not familiar with the acronym CRT so you could start by enlightening me there, unless you mean Cathode Ray Tube. Is it common to play Smash on decades old CRT televisions? If that is the case, unfortunately I doubt it will be possible because we only have one old CRT screen for our arcade machine, and we will need at least four identical game stations for the amount of players we're expecting for this event.
We play our console competitions on 40" Sony LED HDTVs, and we've never had a problem with screen control lag, even on twitchy shooters, except for one time when we used Plasmas and it was pretty bad. Lesson learned. Anyway if CRT means something else let me know, but if you're interested in playing and you prefer a CRT TV, you should practice up on a TV similar to the one I just mentioned, because that will be the hardware everyone plays on at this event.
One final thing to consider, we're a car dealership, not an esports franchise. We don't make any money from this, in fact we spend tens of thousands of dollars each time we produce something like this for the community. Every event we produce is free to enter, and includes free food, cash prizes, and high quality production value. Considering the rest of the TL and (our local) Smash community seems excited to have some interest for the game, we would appreciate it if you would shift your tone away from ungrateful trolling, and more towards constructive criticism.
Thanks.
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Shrug someone said the same person who ran the last event in Lake Charles is running this event. And yes, it is typical to play smash on decade old big clunky CRTs. They're like, 10 bucks at good will.
In any case it's not a big deal as the community is used to bringing setups so if you just ask for people to bring setups to the tournament then you'll probably be fine.
I think it's pretty amusing that you just assume that I'm trolling when you don't even know that CRTs are the norm, and that you're also the new kid on the block as far as hosting tournaments here in LA goes but that's neither here nor there since that wouldn't prevent you from being able to have a good event.
edit: looked it up You guys are using the same guy who ran cyphacon, which used only 4 setups and didn't use CRTs (which I reiterate, are the norm). Apparently the same TO who ran cyphacon took an unannounced 10% cut of the prize pot too. These aren't even my own words, they're from the facebook page of LA Smash as testimonial from DrinkingFood, who went to and won that event.
That event used the Unity Ruleset (which is for brawl and not PM) and single elimination with random seeding.
Actually I heard good things about your SC2 tournament so I'm sure you can have a good event with a bit of open-mindedness. So, suggestions: - ask smashers to bring setups. They'll probably do it. Just have people who are bringing setups post on your event page to confirm so you know exactly how many you have. If you want to be BIG you need more than 4 setups. Godlike two weeks ago in New Orleans had about 40 attendants and like 8 setups. Over the summer LAGG had about 60 entrants and 17 setups. There's nothing wrong with having more setups unless you guys are running out of room because then people can play friendlies and have more fun. - Look up and use the APEX Ruleset. PM is different from Brawl. Pretty much every large tournament uses this. - Standard tournament format is double elimination and nonrandom seeding. If you don't know how skilled someone is, ask well-respected players in attendance. They won't have a problem helping you out and helping you out with seeding. Matches are typically best of 3 until Winners' Finals, Losers' Finals and Grand Finals which are 3 out of 5.
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We've never even run a Smash tournament and you started out by telling everyone we do a bad job. Sorry for jumping to conclusions and getting defensive, but it's easy to assume you're trolling when you start your post with:
Last event run by these guys was poorly run
Especially when you were actually criticizing us for tournaments we didn't even know about or have anything to do with.
You can provide constructive criticism with a bit of friendliness.
So, a few things:
Troy's job is to put on the best tournament possible, and if the community has input for him, he'll do his best to listen. If you feel like his events in the past haven't been great, let him know what you think can be improved. Nobody wants to produce a sub-par event, especially not us, considering we're spending a ton of money and aren't getting anything back except the goodwill of doing something positive for our community. The last thing we want to do is put on an event people aren't pleased with.
We're not the new kids on the block. We've been organizing esports events in Lake Charles for four years. This is not our first rodeo. I think we have a reputation for doing our best to give the people of the gaming community what they want. In fact, that's exactly what our Mission Statement says. This is the first time we've done Smash, which is why I made the point earlier that we're always trying to get constructive criticism about how we can make our events the best possible.
I assure you we will absolutely not be taking a cut of the money, because again, there is absolutely no cost to enter.
We will certainly investigate CRT TVs, and if it seems logistically feasible, we'll do it. Keep in mind that there are bigger concerns in putting on an event like this than what best meets your specific preferences. There's more to running large events with dozens of game stations, hundreds of players, and hundreds of fans, than there is to a few guys sitting around at home or in a bar playing a video game for a cash pot.
If there is a "generally accepted best" rule-set, stage selection method, tournament format etc. for PM, please feel free to share so as we are researching we can investigate your suggestions.
Next time, if you'd like to help us organize a really great Smash event, consider applying for the position of administrator that Troy applied for... we announced to the public that we were looking to hire an admin for each game several weeks before we selected Troy.
We value your input, because what we really want to do is put on a great event that everyone enjoys. Sorry if we started off on the wrong foot. The internet tends to be quite the efficient flame thrower factory and when somebody comes out with what appears to be an unprovoked attack it's easy to immediately get defensive, especially since we're really passionate about what we do. Thanks again for your input.
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No offense, but you're the new guys as far as Smash goes. Here is the APEX ruleset. CRTs are the norm, not a random specific preference, seriously you can even ask around on TL or smashboards.
I apologize for mistaking you for the other organization; previously when things were suggested to that group we were mocked so I came in here with a pretty negative impression to begin with which wasn't fair.
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Ok thanks for the info. We'll stay in touch.
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smash is not playable on pretty much all non-CRT TVs especially at a tournament level. this is the standard
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On September 30 2014 00:06 ScionGorilla wrote: We play our console competitions on 40" Sony LED HDTVs, and we've never had a problem with screen control lag, even on twitchy shooters, except for one time when we used Plasmas and it was pretty bad. Lesson learned. Anyway if CRT means something else let me know, but if you're interested in playing and you prefer a CRT TV, you should practice up on a TV similar to the one I just mentioned, because that will be the hardware everyone plays on at this event.
Something that is often passed over in talks regarding HDTVs vs CRTs is that a twitchy shooter will be fine, provided that it is being played on a console that outputs in HDMI, as you can expect the current console generation to do, as well as PS3 and Xbox360. It's not the response time of the TV itself that causes the main component of the input lag, it's the upscaling. A CRT can take as long as 6ms to display any frame advance that is sent to it, whereas a modern gaming monitor can have a gray-to-gray response time of as little as 1ms. Each frame of SSB is calculated at 1/60 of a second, which equals out to 16.667ms. The 6ms response time of a CRT is judged to be ideal for tournament gameplay, as this is only a little over a third of one frame. If the gamecube was capable of outputting at resolutions and formats that an HDTV natively outputted, most any HDTV would be fine. I think the worst HDTV one I ever played on with an HDMI output was rated at 13ms response time, which was barely noticeable, if at all. Once you start hosting SSB4 tournaments, the problem will take care of itself.
The main problem, as I mentioned, comes from converting the analog signal into digital, and upscaling, where larger TVs and TVs with higher resolutions both trend towards laggier display, especially with those two qualities in conjunction with each other. I've played on some that seemed to have roughly 3 to 4 frames of lag, which was okay enough for casual play, but I certainly wouldn't want to deal with that in a tournament. The worst I've played on was between a third of a second (333ms or 20 frames) and half a second (500ms or 30 frames), and it was miserable, even for casual play.
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@ScionGorilla:
The reason the xbox (360/One) and playstation (3/4) games run perfectly on your TVs you have is because the consoles use a digital output into a digital displays, resulting in almost no lag. However, Wii's only have an analog output. This means that there is a slight lag when the TV upscales the analog output from the Wii to a digital display.
Now, we understand you don't have a bunch of CRT's lying around. This is why most tournaments ask people to bring setups. You can absolutely count on the community to do this for you (especially because you're providing a free tournament).
For further proof of the importance of CRT's, here is a picture from this year's MLG in Anaheim's smash setup
http://static.ongamers.com/uploads/original/0/4293/12904-mlg6.jpg
I went to your SC2 tournament and it was one of my favorite experiences in Starcraft, so I just want to make sure this one goes just as well. Let me know if you have any questions and I would be happy to answer them all.
The best way to get in contact with me is by email at cbizzell@gmail.com.
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Ok, I'm researching CRTs, and what I need to be able to do that is going to be extremely difficult is acquire four of the same TV. They don't have to be exactly the same, but we insist on playing our events on house hardware, and we insist on each gamer having the same equipment... so they would all need to be very similar. For example, all 32" flat (or all curved) screen, same approximate generation of tube, same inputs (composite), etc. I do have a budget that will allow us to acquire them without any problem... we just need to find them. I've checked craigslist and ebay, there's plenty of them but nobody will ship due to the heavy weight. Any ideas? I really need some genius idea of how I could acquire some locally.
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Ugh... seems pretty difficult. Have you guys checked out Goodwill and other thrift stores? You can find some there, I dunno about 32" lol. I don't know how close to identical you're looking for but since CRTs aren't being made anymore that does sound like the biggest issue. You could see if anyone in the area has similar CRTs they are willing to donate for the tournament -- the more the better to make the event run as quickly as possible.
Most of the smash community in LA is around Lafayette, Baton Rouge and New Orleans/Metairie so unfortunately if you want to check out their setups ahead of time it may not be without lots of bending over backwards from both parties.
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It is really a problem having different CRTs as long as they aren't much different. It's a 1v1 game where the 2 players will be playing on the same CRT, no big deal.
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We were able to acquire a setup that we think will work for you guys: 8 matching Zenith 27" curved screen CRT TVs with Wii consoles connected via composite video (RCA) cables and using GameCube controllers.
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Awesome. How are you guys planning on doing the seeding?
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Not sure yet, we will either do a placement round of random matchups to develop a score for seeding into the tournament, or possibly just random seed into a double elimination tournament, or something else. We're not sure yet until we get a feel for how much involvement we'll have, which is why we need to get an idea of how many players we are going to have to start to put together the structure, which is why we need everybody who is planning to come to register ASAP!
http://www.scionesports.com/registration-forms.html
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Would you be opposed to asking some of the players how to seed the bracket? I don't know how the scene is in Lake Charles but BR/Laffy/Nola are pretty well united and familiar with each other's skill levels.
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We will definitely have some merit based seeding, it won't just be putting people where it seems like they should go. We're just not sure how we're going to do it yet. So if you're offering to say what players deserve what seed, then no, that probably isn't something we would consider. However, if you have thoughts on seeding methodology, like structure for placement/qualifier games, then yes, please share your ideas and we will do our best to integrate them.
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