[Joslimity]

Hey guys,

For those who don't know, there was a SC2 HotS tournament hosted at Melbourne's Respawn LAN over the weekend. The bracket can be found here. The tournament was open to anyone who attended Respawn, and as you can see, there were some highly skilled players participating. (Also, a score of 99 to 0, represents a disqualification / forfeit of the loser.)

Due to the sign in process, a few attendees were signed up under different aliases (you sign up using the Respawn website, which automatically enters you using your Respawn site username). So here's a translation (this is off the top of my head, so I hope it's right):

• faijunsoo = Rival
• Ling Chou = Kez
• CheezyFluffball = Arrival

Firstly, I just wanted to say congratulations to Rival for winning the tournament! He walked away with $250, out of the total prize pool of $650. Thanks to everyone else who played, you were really friendly, easy to deal with, and I hope you had fun.

Previously, I haven't been involved with Respawn at all, though I put my hand up and offered to run the SC2 tournament. It is the first tournament I have ever run, and the purpose of this post is to get some feedback. All in all, I feel like it went pretty smoothly, but considering the low number of participants and the fact that most of them know each other pretty well, my job was relatively easy.

• For those reading this that didn't attend, is there a reason that you didn't?

As you can tell by the bracket, the turnout was pretty small. Ideally if there is anything about the tournament that can be changed to make it more inviting, I'll do what I can. If it's simply because you were unaware of it, then I can work to help promote it more heavily in the future.

• For those that did attend, are there any suggestions for improvement?

I'm really hoping we can get more people involved next time, and potentially get a caster on board, so those who aren't there can catch the action online.

Thanks for reading,

Joslimity

[RivaL]

I'd say the main reason alot of people did not attend was due to the reason that the event was BYOPC, which can be an extreme hassle for alot of people. I'm pretty sure that most of the starcraft 2 players in the Melbourne scene were quite aware of this tournament, so i don't think promotion was the big issue here. Many lans such as cydus, MC Lan (which requires mostly just a keyboard/mouse) have shown to be fairly popular with brackets upto 30 players.

The only suggestion for improvement about the tournament i can think of was that seeding needed to be implemented, but i do understand that without seeding it allows everyone to have a chance at winning and not get completely destroyed in the first round or second round and feel demotivated. Other than that it was a really well run tournament.

[SLCN.ARze]

What Rival said about the seeding is one thing. Although some players might get owned in the first or 2nd round, it does allow them to have more games in the LB as 'top seeds' don't get knocked down as quickly, so it works both ways. Not to fused about this however as it was a pretty casual tournament.

In terms of awareness however, I do think that there we're some issues. The event itself was well advertised. However there wasn't much information regarding the prize pool which was fairly large and would have attracted more players for sure.

Overall a well run event, had a lot of fun and thanks for organizing it!

[SLCN.Kez]

Other than obvious power outage issues which you had no control over I thought it was ok. Probably better to seed it but I understand that seeding is hard to do for a once of tournament and you may not even know the players and who should be seeded where, and asking random players who should be seeded can be risky given bias etc, so having it random isn't the biggest deal I think.

As for distribution just having the prizepool extremely obvious is usually the best way to get people to attend. At previous respawns where a lot of people have attended it was because either TT esports flew pig down to play some games and stuff as well as generate a lot of hype by advertising prizes heavily. But like rival said having it BYOC does affect attendance but there isn't really a lot you can do about that.

Overall a nice tournament and would definitely compete in the next one

[SLCN.CautioN]

All da silicon

[RivaL]

i'd like to agree with what arze said that if the large prizepool was advertised with the tournament it mightve attracted more players/attention, the last respawn i played in, i wasnt aware of the prizepool either until the last minute.

I think this will be better instead of emailing the players the day before the tournament the prize details. Another thing i wanted to say was that i noticed in the email that the prizes were listed as $250/$200/$150/$50, but at the actual event it was $250/$150/$100/$50 i believe, so i don't know what happened there.

[x5.RunaMoK]

Also getting a stream set up for the event is awesome. with maybe even a small give away and have the event cast by the general public or something.

Just felt like there was almost no attention to sc2 at all at respawn. Normally we get a reserved area but seems all the LoL fags got it.

BYOPC Also as others have said limits some section of players.

Overall i Feel there needs to be more Stage Events set ups for the main titles to really fuel their spectator experience. Unfortunately i dont know of a area to really cater to this and keep to the purpose of respawn

[inFeZa]

I wanted to play other games, like MTG, CS:GO, GunGame, HL2DM, Poker etc.

SC2 takes up too much time to have fun at respawn.

[Joslimity]

• Publicity of prize pool

  I don't believe the prize pool was completely finalised until the last minute. I can push next time to get some figures earlier, in hopes that we can attract more people.

• BYOC event

  This is the nature of the Respawn event, and is something that is hard to get around. If there was an option to pay $35 to attend the tournament and play on another attendees PC, would this be acceptable? Or is $35 too steep to attend the event without having a dedicated PC for the entire time?
  

• Stream

  This can definitely be organised for the next event, as I could even stream games from my own PC, or potentially get a caster to spectate and cast the games from the comfort of their own home. The worst case scenario is having an inexperienced caster covering the games.

• Seeding

  Going into the tournament, I didn't realised the number of highly skilled players that would be attending (I should really have checked SC2SEA before the event!). I was hoping there would be a good mix of high and low level players, but it was mostly high level. I was also unhappy that certain players got byes and that this was randomly decided. Unfortunately, I don't see how this can be objectively determined (as seeding players based on opinion of skill is not ideal). Would it be a possibility to have a few online games before the event to determine seeding? Or would this take up too much time?

I wanted to play other games, like MTG, CS:GO, GunGame, HL2DM, Poker etc.

Did you guys come just to play in the SC2 tournament, or did you want to play other games as well? (I know that at least Infeza and Kez both participated in CS:GO). I'd be happy to see if we can make the tournament single elimination in the future, so that it is shorter and more flexible, and that time can be made for players to participate in other events.

Another thing i wanted to say was that i noticed in the email that the prizes were listed as $250/$200/$150/$50, but at the actual event it was $250/$150/$100/$50 i believe, so i don't know what happened there.

I wasn't aware that there were any inconsistencies, I will look into this to see if I can shed some light on the issue.

[SLCN.ARze]

You could use a few things for basic seeding, such as ACL Points, SCS points, or just overall ladder rank. A tourney to seed a tourney isn't really that practical I feel, but would be fun :P

[ToRChoboSniper]

While the innaccessibility due to whole BYOC concept is a large reason why I've never been able to make it to a respawn LAN, and while I understand that there's nothing you can do about it, it poses a rather large problem where there's really not much reason for a non-competitive player to go. LANs are as much a social activity as a competitive one, and while Respawn is very good at incentivize competitive players to go, a low masters player, for example, would likely just lose 0-4, as other people of similar levels don't have much incentive to go due to the whole BYOC structure being too prohibitive. The online community is segragated into clans and in other LANs many people come simply to meet their clanmates in real life. Multiple people meeting up in a LAN is easy, but in a BYOC setting less people can make it and makes it less likely for other clanmates to rock up. I honestly don't know what to do about this, and it might be inherent problem with the structure of Respawn LAN that you cannot fix, but it's a huge factor as to why this LAN gets slightly lower numbers than other ones, in my opinion.

Seeding based on opinion seems like a horrible idea but from experience it works far better than the objective methods. There's really no proper objective way to measure skill, but most of the subjective measures that players use to gauge relative skill-levels are actually quite accurate, relatively speaking. Of course, using something like ladder rank would still work and have relatively few top level players playing in the first rounds, but using opinion seems much more optimal in a local LAN.

[Mayo]

Originally Posted by IXLRunaMoK

Also getting a stream set up for the event is awesome. with maybe even a small give away and have the event cast by the general public or something.

Streams are good!

Originally Posted by IXLRunaMoK

Just felt like there was almost no attention to sc2 at all at respawn. Normally we get a reserved area but seems all the LoL fags got it.

Usually I set up the reserved area, but I had nothing planned for SC2 at this Respawn. If you guys are interested in having more comps, let me know in advance and I can work it out with the LAN admins.

Whoa, calm down buddy. Game elitism is bad mmkay? The only people who got reserved seating afaik is Ozfortress. Who booked ~60 seats before the LAN

Originally Posted by IXLRunaMoK

BYOPC Also as others have said limits some section of players.

We've had up to 32 at Respawn previously I believe

Originally Posted by IXLRunaMoK

Overall i Feel there needs to be more Stage Events set ups for the main titles to really fuel their spectator experience. Unfortunately i dont know of a area to really cater to this and keep to the purpose of respawn

You have to remember that this is primarily a BYOPC casual LAN, not an eSports event. Therefore all the income is generated by the 'casuals' and Respawn wants to respect and help continue this relationship. We have run a stage before, but there was no real point without a spectator area.

If you have any ideas on how to integrate some kind of stage setup that you think will be worthwhile, please let me know and I can pass it on to the organiers.

Please don't take this as me picking your ideas apart and attacking you, I was just trying to address everything bit by bit! I'd love to help SC2 get bigger at Respawn

[x5.Armi]

The location coupled with BYOC is unfortunate, no car means I can't take a screen to go with my laptop, maybe I can carpool with someone for the next one to make it easy.

I will be planning to attend these in future, uni is just a bitch atm.

Even with casual LANs you can normally get a fair few people watching a match on stage I've found, even if you just do it for winners finals, losers finals and grand final.

In order to increase signups you could offer like a small prize for the best placing gold player and the best placing diamond maybe? Might get some extra signups?

Quick Comments

MezjE:

There is parking like 50m away :P

[SLCN.ARze]

Suggestions:

Structure: Round robin, split into groups. Allows more games for weaker players so you don't get knocked out immediately.

BYOC: Allow 2 players to share 1 PC and organize structure to facilitate that (i.e., 2 players sharing 1 PC will play their group stages)
This may take a bit more time, but if organized I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Viewership: Have stream organized, Designate an area within respawn that has a little bit more space, and allows for spectating.

Quick Comments

MezjE:

+1 for round robin idea, I think most people go to play as well not just make money.

[zardoz]

Hey guys,

Big Kahoona here. I'm glad to hear that people enjoyed the event.

A few things.

Prize money - whoops! The actual prize money that was correct was what we awarded on the day. It seems I got a case of the not-enough-sleep in the mad rush leading up to the event and I stupidly announced larger prizes than what we should have.

Seriously, my bad there. If the prize winners could contact me, I'm happy to get the extra cash to them.

Sorry about the power outages - for some reason, a bunch of people who all sit in the same area decided to upgrade their PCs at once or something. We're going to re-engineer our power layout to ensure this doesn't happen again - or at least reduce the chances of it.

Re: BYOC, that's what Respawn LAN is. We're looking at possibly setting up some tournament PCs on the stage - but this will have limited availability. If we had PCs set up for people, we'd have to say no to a lot of BYOC attendees. Still, food for thought- and if we can keep it casual, then it might be something we can pursue with the right partners ;-)

Quick Comments

rezyn8:

Tristan +1

[SLCN.CautioN]

Originally Posted by zardoz

Hey guys,

Big Kahoona here. I'm glad to hear that people enjoyed the event.

A few things.

Prize money - whoops! The actual prize money that was correct was what we awarded on the day. It seems I got a case of the not-enough-sleep in the mad rush leading up to the event and I stupidly announced larger prizes than what we should have.

Seriously, my bad there. If the prize winners could contact me, I'm happy to get the extra cash to them.

Sorry about the power outages - for some reason, a bunch of people who all sit in the same area decided to upgrade their PCs at once or something. We're going to re-engineer our power layout to ensure this doesn't happen again - or at least reduce the chances of it.

Re: BYOC, that's what Respawn LAN is. We're looking at possibly setting up some tournament PCs on the stage - but this will have limited availability. If we had PCs set up for people, we'd have to say no to a lot of BYOC attendees. Still, food for thought- and if we can keep it casual, then it might be something we can pursue with the right partners ;-)

sounds like the nicest admin / organisor of all time "i'm happy to get the extra cash to them" NICE GUY!

[Malice]

Originally Posted by zardoz

Hey guys,

Big Kahoona here. I'm glad to hear that people enjoyed the event.

A few things.

Prize money - whoops! The actual prize money that was correct was what we awarded on the day. It seems I got a case of the not-enough-sleep in the mad rush leading up to the event and I stupidly announced larger prizes than what we should have.

Seriously, my bad there. If the prize winners could contact me, I'm happy to get the extra cash to them.

Sorry about the power outages - for some reason, a bunch of people who all sit in the same area decided to upgrade their PCs at once or something. We're going to re-engineer our power layout to ensure this doesn't happen again - or at least reduce the chances of it.

Re: BYOC, that's what Respawn LAN is. We're looking at possibly setting up some tournament PCs on the stage - but this will have limited availability. If we had PCs set up for people, we'd have to say no to a lot of BYOC attendees. Still, food for thought- and if we can keep it casual, then it might be something we can pursue with the right partners ;-)

I'm not too fussed about an extra 50 bucks, and I don't think kez would mind either tbh. Despite a few issues I had a lot of fun. These competitive LANS are 50/50 competition and social events for most of us, so I enjoyed myself in the tournament as well as playing overnight. This was my first respawn and I think the whole event was run amazingly. I do think for the sc2 tournament you should be running a round robin type system though, it's a good tournament structure for a low amount of players, which is generally going to be what you get with a BYOC LAN, and it has been used at past respawn LANs for Starcraft 2.

The tournament took a bit longer than we all expected to complete, but that was due to a number of issues such as delays at the start, and games having to be restarted after the power failures. We did complain about the unseeded bracket at the start and we were told that better players should play each other at the start so the lower level players don't get smashed and have a sort of sour taste in their mouth about the tournament. But if a decent player gets knocked down to the lower bracket straight away, they're going to be knocking easy players out of the tournament completely, so it doesn't really make a difference. But then I guess it's hard to have somebody objectively seed with such a low amount of players, but that's where round robin is quite good.

I had fun, and I'll definitely come to future respawns, despite it being a 3 hour trip from my town to Melbourne

[SLCN.Kez]

MALICe THIS iS E-SPORTS DOLLARS WE ARE TALKING HERE

Quick Comments

Malice:

OH GOD NOT THE E-SPORTS DOLLARS!

[SLCN.ARze]

I can testify to this - Shoutouts to Tristan as he was really reasonable when it came to getting a spot at Respawn. It was apparently full but he allowed me to take a spot as the sc2 tournemant was only running for a portion of the event, with the condition that I give my spot up should their reserved spots run out. Shows great organizing ability able to compromise without turning down others should that scenario pop up.

Originally Posted by SLCN.CautioN

sounds like the nicest admin / organisor of all time "i'm happy to get the extra cash to them" NICE GUY!

[Joslimity]

Originally Posted by SLCN.ARze

Structure: Round robin, split into groups. Allows more games for weaker players so you don't get knocked out immediately.

I'll definitely have a look at changing the structure of the tournament for next time, and seeding the players.

Originally Posted by x5.Armi

In order to increase signups you could offer like a small prize for the best placing gold player and the best placing diamond maybe? Might get some extra signups?

Having a way to reward lower levels players would be great.

Originally Posted by SLCN.ARze

BYOC: Allow 2 players to share 1 PC and organize structure to facilitate that (i.e., 2 players sharing 1 PC will play their group stages)
This may take a bit more time, but if organized I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Viewership: Have stream organized, Designate an area within respawn that has a little bit more space, and allows for spectating.

Allowing 2 players to share 1 PC is tough, because I believe Respawn only facilitates enough space for the people that book. On a small scale it would work, but imagine if people who wanted to play in other tournaments did the same thing, we could end up with 50-100 extra people at the LAN with no where to sit. Without additional space and sufficient planning, I'm not sure that this will work, I'll have a chat to the organisers and see what we can do.

We should be able to organise a stream fairly easily, as the internet at the LAN is pretty good. Finding room for spectators will be tough due to sheer number of people occupying the hall, but again, we'll have a look.

Thanks for all the feedback, I look forward to seeing you at the next one!