Online Virtual-On Force tournament, fall 2014

[Zaarock]

Checking interest for an online tournament for Virtual-On Force.

Post if you have interest in joining! you can already apply teams if you like. Anyone is welcome to join, especially beginners are encouraged to. If you are interested please post dates that would work for you for the tournament.

You can sign up as a teamless player if you haven't yet decided on a partner.

The date for the tournament is undetermined but I'm thinking a weekend in October or November would work.

If you want to be an organizer for some aspect of the tournament please contact me.
I'll add more details to the thread after Vector Strike 2, and as players & other organizers give input.

sign-up status: open

Date: undecided, preliminary 2014/11-12/XX

Organizers:

Zaarock - twitter - sign-ups, forum thread, ingame, art(?)
...

Signed up teams & players

[Teamless]:
Fallsmyer/KBMF
Porcupine
VOTwinstick
Zaarock
...

Tournament rules
Rules are essentially the same as Vector Strike, barring online specific details.

2v2 team format
Double elimination
Sets are best out of 3, but best of 5 for grand finals.

round timer: (default)
round count: (default)
stage select: random

VR selection: all virtuaroids are allowed, excluding save edits/hacks

VR change: at the start of a set, or after losing a match in a set

Connection test (the format for this is mostly copied from jp tournaments)

There will be a 'organizer team' consisting of two people who are known to have a stable internet connection and will host the lobbies for the tournament. This team doesn't have to be a participant team but it could be.

Whenever a new team is to about to have a match in the tournament a test match is played to make sure their connection is stable enough (no huge lag spikes/freezes). The host team can use Temjin 747T for this purpose to make the tests quick (lowest hp in the game).

Procedure in case of connection problems
In case there are major lag spikes or game freezes in a tournament match:

preliminary: If it's still the first round of the set there will be a rematch. Otherwise or if the connection is still unstable in the rematch the team with connection problems will lose the match. If the cause of the lag is uncertain the winner will be decided by random.

Hopefully we can avoid this scenario entirely (it's not that common). I'm unsure what a good way to handle this would be, feel free to post recommendations.


Video stream & Recording

Volunteers:
Live stream: Fallsmyer/KBMF
Recording: Zaarock

If you want to stream video for the tournament post about it here contact organizers via PM or other channels.

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Organizer comments

Zaarock
I thought this would be a good idea since most VO4 players won't be able to attend Vector Strike 2 (Aniking, VOTwinstick, non-US people etc.). It could be a lot of fun and the lag online is slightly less of of an issue than in VOOT. If anything the tournament could keep the community a bit more active following Vector Strike.

If people have a lot of trouble finding matching dates we could even have flexible dates for individual matches. I'd rather this tournament not be cancelled like the last few people have tried to hold on the forum. If there is a big problem getting sign-ups there might be one or two japanese player teams who want to join even if it's laggy.

[Porcupine]

I will participate. Unfortunately, Darkrai and Red Randsel no longer have Xbox 360s and they would both be (relatively speaking) major powers if they participated. Getting the news out to people who don't talk on oratan will be important, I'll message people at some point.

Can Japanese players enter?

If the cause of a stuttery match is uncertain, I think it is better to just fight it out than to decide the winner randomly. Or to have both players forfeit in the tournament.

On the other hand, it is an option to just play any crappy matches no matter who is the cause of it. I know a number of fighting games' netcode where it is simply not possible to have stable matches all the time. The worst for me are Darkstalkers (official GGPO netcode) and Street Fighter 4. I cannot even play with 75% of the people in the world with these 2 games. The worst (most unstable) matches end up completely frozen, advancing at 4 fps, then are disconnected every time. I've had that happen in Force once or twice with Japanese players and we just struggled to crawl over to each other to kill someone as fast as possible. Then I had to leave and hide in shame.

[Zaarock]

I've never seen stuttering lag happen in VOOT or VO4 where it's not caused by a single party's connection being unstable or being bad overseas. As long as the lag is stable it's fine (at least as the rules are now). Having 0.5 second stutter randomly is obviously going to mess with peoples timing and ruin the flow of the game, I really don't think it should be acceptable in a tournament even if this isn't super-serious.

Japanese players can join for sure.

[DarkraiZero]

Ughhh. I would love to do this but like Porcupine said, I no longer have a Xbox.
I been trying to find time to host a tournament for OMG on PS3.

[Fallsmyer]

Don't forget to count me in as a fighter.

[Porcupine]

If I'm not mistaken, both Darkrai and Red Randsel have Xbox 360s again so we could consider trying this again sometime. VarryoChoco has also since become a major power in Force. We might want to play actively a bit before doing it though to give some people a chance to get back in shape.