Please read the tourney guide first before you look at
this. I am not recreating the guide in this faq, just trying to
answer some questions that I think need to be answered. (Plus a few
others)
Q. Why did you write this FAQ? Can't you just
leave Europe and other US players alone or something?
A. I
watched the two fights break out on ddrsverige.com &
ddreurope.com. It was obvious that this was not going to go away
anytime soon. This guide was designed to settle those fights in a
fashion that I think tourney organizers will listen to. But yeah, US
tourney organizers that did not know how to run one can benefit from
this as well.
Q. What exactly qualifies you to write this?
Have you ran any tourneys before?
A. No I have not run
tourneys myself, though I do want to do one in the future. I have
helped run a number of them, and I have competed in over 20 of them.
(Go to my tourney page if you wish to see my whole history, or click
here)
Q. What if two or
more people have an exact tie on the qualifier?
A. Then
those players will play another qualifying song to break the tie.
Q.
What if a player fails a song in the elimination rounds?
A.
Anything can happen depending on what the tourney organizer wants to
do. It can range from no penalty to loss of the song. Sometimes I've
even seen matches forfeited due to failure of the song! It's up to
the organizer, plain and simple. My advice: If you really want to
penalize a player, maybe take away 10 or 20 points or perfects from
their final score.
Q. What if both players fail the song in
a match? (Assuming autofail is on)
A. Once again, it's up
to the organizer. If both players fail at different times, but still
get through the song, then go ahead and record the results as usual.
To avoid this, put the machine on event mode, in which autofail will
be turned off. In fact, fail is turned off as well, and so you will
get the results even if both players fail.
Q. In fighting
style matches, I've seen times where one player just doesn't play a
song at all, and just tries to win the next 2 songs. Can this be
avoided?
A. Yes. This is a big flaw in fighting style. One
Texas player (which I won't name, you know who you are if you are
reading this) is notorious for this. One way you can remedy this is
that players that do this would lose the song automatically and the
other player would stop playing right there. I have also seen tourney
rules in which if a player deliberately stopped playing they would
forfeit the match. This doesn't happen very often, and most players
will usually not resort to this strategy, so it should only be
considered if you know someone who does this.
Q. Why modify
the scoring system that Konami made?
A. I outlined the
reasons for not using the machine score in my guide. I believe Konami
did not create the game with tournaments in mind. The other methods
(Perfect Attack & Dance Point) are more fair to players in
tourneys. In other words, WHO GIVES A CRAP WHAT KONAMI THINKS!
Q.
Speaking of which, did US tourneys ever use machine score?
A.
I can't answer this question, as I wasn't around the scene when DDR
first came out, in 1998. I started in February 2001. My belief is
that they started with machine score, but I have not seen a major US
tourney that uses machine score in their elimination rounds the whole
time I have been playing DDR.
Q. Konami wanted the bar not
to be used for bar hugging while playing!
A. Eh, what was
your question? Oh yeah, I can see where this is going. You are
correct, Konami did not originally design the bar for bar hugging. It
was made so people could grab on to something if they lost their
balance. I know Konami said not to hold the bar while playing, but
what is Konami going to do? That's right, nothing. You play how you
wish. If you want to bar hug, fine. If not, fine. YOUR CHOICE!
Sometimes bar hugging can be a disadvantage. (Just as an FYI, bar
hugging I believe didn't become that popular until the Max 300 AAA
video of Yasu from Japan bar hugging came out.)
Q. Well,
what do you recommend in a tourney with regard to bar hugging?
A.
Simple. LET THE PLAYERS DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES! I hear all this
about how "Oh my opponent gets sdg's on this song but doesn't
deserve to beat my double digit greats because he bar hugged" or
something like that. Bar hugging does not necessarily get you more
perfects. They do at times, but not always.
Q. What about
speed mods?
A. Another huge topic where no one seems to
agree. The compromise I suggested in my guide is that everyone gets
to pick their own speed mods, so that everyone is able to do their
best. And yes, the player that plays with 2x and gets sdg's deserves
to beat the player that plays without speed mods and gets double
digit greats.
Q. You said there were tons of other ways
tourneys can be run in the US. Can you list them?
A. I
would never be able to list all the ways tourneys can be run. If you
look at ddrfreak.com's tournament forum, you can take a look at them
yourself. I took enough time to write this guide.
Q. What
mix should I run the tourney on?
A. Once again, there was
a major debate on this. You can run it on any mix you want. I don't
care.
Q. (For Europe only) But we have Euromix all over the
place, and this is an Extreme tourney!
A. Once again, you
didn't ask a question. But again, I saw the argument on the DDR
Europe & ddrsverige (Sweden) boards. If I was asked to play a
tourney on a Euromix 2 machine (fyi, i've never played on one before)
all I would do, was buy a usb adapter for my dance pad, download the
dwi's from ddruk.com, and play the songs that I haven't seen on Dance
With Intensity and learn them. Of course everyone doesn't share the
same rhetoric as I do. You could hold it on Extreme, but my guess is
turnout might be lower than on a Euromix machine, because a lot of
people will wuss out because they might not have seen extreme
before.
Q. (For Europe only) The PA & DP system does
not take into consideration the difficulty of the song!
A.
I've seen the type of tourneys that you do. While it does not do
that, that doesn't mean you can't use the DP system. WHY NOT GRADE
THEM THROUGH PERFECT PERCENTAGES OR DANCE POINT PERCENTAGES? Take the
total number of perfects they score, or total number of dance points
they earn, then divide that into the number of perfects or dance
points possible to get the percentage. It's very simple. I am in the
process of creating a sheet with the amount of steps and dance points
in DDR Extreme. For example:
Suppose you are doing Perfect
Attack, and let's take a song, let's say, um, Can't Stop Fallin In
Love (Speed Mix) Heavy.
The song has 443 steps total, and no
freezes.
Let's suppose I get 415 perfects. (Other non-perfect
steps do not matter in the PA system)
Take the 415 perfects
that I have, and divide it into the total amount of steps in the
song, 443.
415/443 = 0.9367945...
In percentage, that
is about 93.679%, or 93.68%. IF you want, you can increase the
decimals in case of ties.
Let's see an example of the DP
system here. We will use the normal DP system for DDR
Extreme:
Perfect = +2
Great = +1
Good = 0
Boo =
-4
Miss = -8
OK = +6
NG = 0
We'll take the same song,
CSFIL (Speed mix). But let's say, I got this as my
score:
415/23/1/2/2/0
That is 415 perfects, 23 greats,
1 good, 2 boos, 2 misses, 0 ok's (Of course, CSFIL Speed Mix has no
freezes in it)
The equation is :
(Perfects * 2) +
(Greats * 1) + (Goods * 0) + [Boos * (-4)] + [Misses * (-8)] + (OK's
* 6)
Now we take my whole score, and calculate it in:
(415
* 2) + (23 * 1) + (1 * 0) + (2 * -4) + (2 * -8)
830 + 23 + 0 - 8 -
16 = 829
The total amount of dance points you can get in the
song is:
(443 * 2) = 886
How did I know that? Simple.
Take the total number of steps, and multiply it by 2. If you have
freezes, take the total number of freezes and multiply by 6.
Now
take the amount of dance points earned and divide it by the total
amount of dance points possible.
829/886 =
0.9356659...
Again, taking a percentage, it is 93.567% or
93.57%.
As I have said before, time and time again, THERE IS
NO EXCUSE NOT TO USE THE DP OR PA SYSTEM.
Q. But why do
this? It won't be fun!
A. Running tourneys are a lot of
work. Tourney organizers, you have to be prepared to do these things,
because it is better off in the long run, as it is much more fair to
all the participants. That should be your #1 priority. If you do not
have rules which are fair, then the participants will certainly not
have much fun.
Q. I have a question to ask you, how can i
contact you?
A. My contact info is on my index page. But
just in case you are lazy:
AIM : Ch421600
E-mail :
lildrchris25 at gmail dot com (This is being written as it is to
prevent e-mail grabbing bots)
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