Interested in hosting a Tournament on these forums?

[Dave880]

If anyone is interested in hosting a tournament on these forums, please follow these steps.

#1. Must PM me with a organize detail plan. This plan must be presented to me formally (pretend your trying to sell me your product, don't be sloppy! I will ignore any plan that seems like a joke).
#2. You must have at least three to four people working with you in hosting this tournament
#3. You must be a long term member on this forum with a good background (must be seen as a respectable and trustworthy person)
#4. You must be a Active member (same goes for the other 3-4 individuals) that is willing to upload replays, post and update brackets/match-ups and is capable of handling problematic situations.
#5. If your tournament plan gets accepted, please follow the schedule I give you. If more time is needed, just PM me and I'll work things out with you.

Good luck and have fun! Anymore questions can be sent to me through PM.

[Spyder]

“A Critical Review and Challenges of Hosting an Online Tournament”

Abstract:

This post/article describes some of many challenges a tourney host would need to overcome in order to prepare, execute, maintain, and see the tourney from start to finish. Furthermore, this post/article focuses on the responsibilities of the host, involved parties, and participants; cited examples of solutions are stated from previous “Dissidence” and “Ninja's Playground” Tournaments.


Acknowledgment:

Before we begin, I would like to thank the Dissidia Forum and Community for providing a medium for tournament events. I would like to thank my team for all the help and support you have given me. I would like to also thank Dave and Ghurdrich of Team SOLID for their support, as well as incredible ideas for making the “Ninja's Playground” rock. And lastly, a thank you to all who participated in the “Ninja's Playground” Tournament and “Dissidence” Tournament for staying active and making it happen.


Introduction:

Hosting an online tournament is not an easy task, but rather a challenging project which requires careful planning, proper execution, accurate data analysis. You, the host, depending on your action, will either suffer or enjoy the agony of hosting a tournament. You will spend long hours burning the midnight oil, cranking ideas, and overclocking your brain. Despite all the challenges and hurdles, what will determine the fun factor for both you and your participants is both cooperation and trust. If you are willing, able, ready then read on.


The Stage of Planning:

Before you can host a tournament it is crucially important to get the planning right. Without careful planing and great effort you gamble between misery and joy. You must have a solid idea of the structure of the tournament, the rules, and most importantly the scheduling.

In your planning stages, the structure of the tournament should be as simple as possible. One should try to avoid any complexities and complex logical deductions. Everyone needs to be able to understand and get the structure right. If it sounds confusing, awkward, or has too many assumed premises chances are that confusion and chaos would ensue.

Believe it or not most people are incapable of seeing anything beyond simple logic or too lazy to read. In an attempt to simplify conditions and rules you should consider rewarding or careful choice of words.

Lastly, consider the most important aspect, even more important then the rules, the scheduling. Scheduling will determine how long and how effective one's tourney would be. Consider things like how many participants will the tourney have, how quickly the matches have to be done, what will be done to offenders, how will disputes and extensions, if any, proceed. All in all, it would be impossible to foresee every possible situation, but try to plan as much as possible, that way you would need to do less in terms of improvising—that is thinking on the spot. Try to consider things like what group your target audience falls into: people who work 8 hour jobs, college students, or school students. When will they have time? Does anything collide with tournaments scheduling like big holidays, midterms, finals, etc. Using this data adjust and expands the schedule as needed. This is why this is an extremely difficult task. And if it is an online tournament, it's very important to agree what timezones the times are relative too. Look into GMT.

One aspect I learned from scheduling is that most people procrastinate until the last minute. In my tourney, I attempted to solve this problem by imposing the deadlines, so that participants would at least start playing by that deadline. Obviously, deadlines must have teeth or no one will respect them. Decide how disqualification process will work. So, in my discoveries it seemed like strict deadlines cannot be just thrown at people because it creates a tense environment on top of everything else, and people are likely to drop out. Some teams and members had to leave because they were unable to make it. So in my attempt to solve the deadline issue, I relaxed the deadlines and left the final deadline. The outcome was rather nasty, as most non-dedicated players started to procrastinate again, waiting for that last deadline. So where does this lead? One must find a fine balance between a good deadline and a one that just doesn't make sense. Making a deadline too long is as bad as making it short. So plan accordingly.

Planning in itself would probably consume much of one's time and effort. As an example, I was cracking my head over the little of most possible details and combination of conditions. Most of the time was spent on things like editing while burning the midnight oil. Previous tournaments, like “Dissidence”, helped me see what worked and didn't work. It is very important to be very open minded to the public and people who are possible participants. Always keep in mind that the tourney is more for the participants then oneself—so make sure to incorporate all the input and have active discussions especially while one is in the planning stages. Spend couple of days to a week polishing out the details with the rest of the community. On the level of planning, cooperation builds trust factor between the participants and the host, as active discussions show interest and greater chance of participation.

In the last stages of planning think about the tournament as the best possible outcome at its time. You are setting an example for future events. Just like courts set precedents for future rulings, every tourney is a precedent for the next. Other hosts will build and try to improve on the previous tournaments. In a word, what will your tournament be remembered for and how will it effect the rest to follow.


The Stage of Execution:

This second stage of any tournament is what I call plan execution. You have a plan, and now you need to put it in motion. But before you can put it into motion you need to do some preparations: sign sups, roll calls, and all administrative trivia. After all, you need participants and order in place before the tournament starts.

Now your tournament is about to start. The host's job is to watch and guide the tournament into proper direction. Think of the participants as the orchestra, and the host as a conductor. With conductor's baton in hand, you are responsible for making your tourney as epic as it can be.

Regulating, answering questions, resolving conflicts, watching over the tournament, and aggregation of data is the job the host is tasked with. It is important that you have someone to help you out should you find it difficult to handle on your own.

During the execution of your tournament, you must deal with all irregularities that may come up in a timely manner so that your tourney may survive.

It is important to uphold the scheduling and pace the tournament. Should you find any offenders, deal with them accordingly—as one rotting apple, spoils the basket. In my own experiences, it is important to notify the users on your actions to avoid the confusion. If you going to DQ someone, let them know via PM; if you make modifications to the rules or the scheduling make sure everyone sees it and make it ahead of time.

Lastly since a match is usually between two parties or people, make sure to proceed in the most fairest of ways when dealing with an offender(s). It can happen that some parties have a good track record, and only to be faced with another party with multiple offenses. Find a balanced way with dealing with these offenders rather then punishing both parties. As an example, during the “Dissidence” and “Ninja Playground” tournaments, members and/or teams that were disqualified had more offenses and/or bad reputation.

The Stage of Data Analysis:

The last stage of the tourney is data analysis. In this stage your task as a host is to calculate the wins, losses, and other statistical data. Once you aggregated the data and have the final scores it is suggested that you have them posted as soon as possible. You may, also, choose to use the time to build up anticipation and excitement for the conclusion of the tournament. Now your job as a host is almost done. What comes next is cleaning up and reflection.


After Math:

It is important to complete your tournament and leave some sort of history behind. Write up your thoughts, reviews, and critiques. Your reflections will help stimulate the community and help others make improvement for future tournaments. Congratulations you have completed your task as a host. Use your wisdom and experience to perfect future tournaments you hosts and/or help others make theirs. And lastly, always remember that as a host, you can only do so much, and the rest lies with the participants.

[Spyder]

“If you join a tournament, you are making a commitment”

It is very hard and challenging to make a tourney happen. A lot of work and thought goes into this process. It takes time, effort, and resources. Perhaps, the best way to understand is to host a tournament and go through the process yourself. In the end the tournament is about making everyone come together and have some competitive fun time.

The host has sacrificed the time and put in a lot of effort so you and everyone else can have fun. Your duty as a participant of any tourney is at minimum respect other participants like you. Be on time, keep to the schedule, and always respect your opponent, no matter what. Have common courtesy and respect. Notify proper parties about problems instead of keeping quite and absent. No one likes their time wasted waiting. Do you like your time wasted waiting? In the end you will either make it or break it. Remember, if you join a tournament, you are making a commitment.