[dippa]

Originally Posted by deL

dippa sure half the players are casuals who come and they keep the LAN events afloat, but I'd argue that the competitive or hardcore players are more important. They are the ones who come to EVERY LAN event where most of the others they cater to with these prizes will turn up once or twice and never again. Also the hardcore players are going to tell their friends and get more people to come to the LAN and help advertise it to other like-minded players. If you neglect the needs of this core group in any way you are damaging the longevity of such events - it doesn't mean throwing huge prizes at them, just a modest prize distributed in a well thought-out manner in a tournament that has a fair, seeded format is enough to keep these core players interested.

Thing is, they're not neglecting the 'core community' by throwing PCs and a (good) netbook at them.

I've also found 'word of mouth' is a misnomer. If you promote the event properly, you don't need to rely on 'word of mouth' because you're in contact with everyone that wants to attend in the first place. Good promotion is part of advertising in places that aren't natural starcraft hubs, because there's a lot of forums that have starcraft fans unwilling to post or visit the normal sites (either because they feel alienated from the community, it's not their normal hangout or it's a multi-focus site like Whirlpool or something).

It's these people that are best served by the second division, and it's also these people that are best served by the competitions. Everyone here needs to understand: for the prizes to be really substantial, you need a healthy, strong turnout. I'm not talking 16, 32 people - I'm talking to the level where you're actually turning people away on the day. Once you get to that stage, then you can really start putting up prizes that make mouths drool.

As my little breakdown pointed out, the prize for the second division is modest. It's completely in line with prizes handed out for other second divisions at Cityhunter; it's certainly by no means the largest, which I would know since I've had the experience of running several competitions and a LAN league at their venue in Sussex St.

This is where the insularity of the community starts to breakdown. If you compare the prizes for this compared to what's been handed out for CH's DotA or previous CS tournaments, this is perfectly fine. There's nothing extravagant about it whatsoever. It's exactly what you're asking for; but you guys are just lacking the experience from other scenes to realise that.

Originally Posted by deL

dippa sure half the players are casuals who come and they keep the LAN events afloat, but I'd argue that the competitive or hardcore players are more important. They are the ones who come to EVERY LAN event where most of the others they cater to with these prizes will turn up once or twice and never again.

I've come across this problem a lot. The answer is pretty simple: value.

If you give people value for money and the admins do a decent job - make sure rules are handed out fairly, don't let players have the run of the venue and make sure that the event runs on time - then people will have a good enough experience that they will want to come back.

There are pricing issues. When I was running LAN leagues at and Cityhunter, I found that CS'ers were willing to accept a $10 weekly rego fee to play two matches. (This is a different format; I'll come back to the topic in a second, but bear with me here.) When we ran a second one at , I found that offering players three games a week for $15 - the same value, $5 a game - was actually worse.

Our specific problem there (my mate and I, genesis, wonderful bloke) was that two games gave people enough time to play their games without preventing them from doing things in the city. All-day competitions do that. Most of the time you'll be busy playing, eating or waiting to play your games. You certainly won't be able to go shopping or see a movie - there's just no room in the schedule for that. Players also felt drained after the first two games, particularly if they'd lost both of them. Losing one game doesn't really bother anyone - you know you have another game in reserve - but for some reason, that third was too much.

For the one-day competitions - which ran on a similar format to this - we found that the tipping point was to keep with the group format. That's exactly what Cityhunter's doing. I'm not surprised; it's the smartest option available. The value is about the same (I'm presuming there's no BO3 for groups, as it's not listed), with a minimum of three games costing players $10, or $3.33/game.

I think the 4 player groups might be a little small. BO1 + LAN + dirty cheese is not the best combo in the world. But Cityhunter have always been fantastic at melding competitions to the community's will, something you've already seen a little in this thread. If you allow around 45 minutes maximum for each game (which is a real upper limit) you could probably squeeze the groups to 5 or 6 and resolve things a lot sooner. It depends on how many PCs CH intends on using.

Also, a crucial question is: will CH have their own SC2 accounts available for use? I've been to events where hackers have forced the tournaments to be cancelled - and I'd hate to lose my SC2 account to a dodgy PC.