Alright guys - it's time that bury the hatchet with regards to this tournament; the scheduling of it has been my literal nemesis for the final round, and it unfortunately seems like the final result will be Cobo- winning the tournament by default. This is not the tournament ending that I wanted, and it's not the one that any of us deserve. It's going to especially hurt uploading the VODs to the YouTube and realizing that there will literally be no Grand Finals match to showcase for this tournament -- all of those matches scheduled intending on culminating in a final showdown and well, it's never going to happen. It's really sad for me to think about honestly, and despite there likely being no truth in this (and this just being an emotional response), it makes me feel strongly like this tournament was a failure. It makes me feel like the goal that I set out to do - to host this event, to get everyone excited and playing actively, to narrow the field down to two incredibly well rounded mania players to represent what this tournament was about, was never attained. I can't even look at the Voyage 1970 map that I made specifically for the grand finals stage of this tournament without being upset, because it never even had the chance of being played in a competitive light. I feel horrible for all of the people that spectated this tournament with the expectation of it having a bang of a finish. I especially feel terrible for Pope Gadget in this whole situation, who got knocked out by w1sp, only to have him not show up in the match against Urusai - a Pope Gadget/Urusai battle in that position would have been a hell of a battle, and in retrospect, I am a bit angry at myself for not giving Pope Gadget the chance to play in that match and represent the loser's bracket finals in the way that he could have. It gives me an idea for an additional ruleset in the event of a player getting eliminated and the winner of the match no-showing their next one.
Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I will say - it has been an absolutely incredible journey. I started this with very little experience and legitimately had no idea what I was getting into; what seemed to be a great idea in concept turned out to be one of the biggest trials of my patience and time that I have -ever- experienced; this tournament took away 11 weekends from me, and some of those weekends, I still tried to make do the best I could around scheduling (I had two exams on Saturdays of matches, it was interesting going to exam and then getting home to start stuff immediately, lol). Planning out this tournament was an absolute nightmare at first, but I managed to get my bearings a bit later on and got much more confident in handling organization when things got busy. I definitely got a bit lazier near the end, I am willing to admit that I was less than diligent in the last three rounds of the tournament, but most of you guys wouldn't have seen that - the only ones who saw that were staff. I wanted to make sure that users at least had a decent experience objectively, between getting invitations for rooms earlier than start times, having highly communicative referees, and an enjoyable commentary staff (Shoegazer roasts aside [p.s. i'm totally willing to make a compilation of that if he allows me to, lol]
). I've gotten lots of feedback from players, and I will say that there were certainly times where the feedback was negative to the point where I basically wanted nothing to do with the tournament, but the great support system of players and staff that I had made it worth while to keep going.
I'll definitely take the time to thank my tournament staff here:
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Azlynn - for putting up with our lives being interrupted by this thing for 11 weeks and offering to help whenever it was absolutely needed, despite having other obligations and not really having the biggest of interest in the idea of this tournament in general. I love you. <3
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juankristal - you are seriously a fucking god among men. I initially had you in as a back-up commentator and had you in place more for refereeing; let me tell you something, I was a complete moron for not moving you to where you ended up near the end of the tournament. You saved my ass big time on scheduling in the first two rounds of the tournament, and definitely gave me the confidence I needed to help with administrating staff, timing, and players in this tournament. I know that after the round of 64, I found myself a lot more comfortable and was able to handle things myself after not being able to do it the first time, and I definitely owe that to you. You were a goddamn trooper and basically stepped into the commentating, refereeing, or staffing roles whenever it was needed, and that's why I moved you up to a tournament coordinator midway through - giving you an attribution less than that was nothing short of an insult. You helped an incredible amount on logistics and made sure the best that you could that everything stood in line.
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-Kamikaze- - my inseparable goddamn partner in crime. At the start of this tournament, we really hadn't had -that- much contact and chit-chat with one another, but I knew over the little bit that I had seen, that you would be a good map selector. Holy shit, little did I know the fun we'd have in the process. It was an absolute blast strategizing on how we'd unleash hell on players while still being as minimally fair as we could, and I think that SOFT's unorthodox/stand-out map choices had a lot to do with the fact that we were able to really establish a great synergy. You and I are definitely a great fit when it comes to maps and we seem to know exactly what players will have to practice in order to improve (and this doesn't quite include the SV bullshit we threw in for additional fun).
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-Konner- - just a fantastic job overall in the process of refereeing, and you proved to be an absolute savior earlier on in the tournament as an additional streamer. This tournament likely would not have done as well earlier on without your commitment to streaming, even when it was on off hours. Your overall experience as a referee helped to make things a lot easier, and I learned a bit about managing rooms in and out of the client because of you. MIT was incredibly lucky to have you as a committed staff member before, and when I saw how much effort you'd put into that tournament, there was no way I was going to let someone like yourself just sit by.
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Steins - I'm also really thankful to have had you in this process as well. There were a few times where you'd apologized to me about issues you had in refereeing, but I don't ever feel like you needed to. You were always very proactive, asking me when schedules were and saying that you'd be able to dedicate a large amount of time; this is not something that I expect people to just largely go out of their way and commit time to. Like -Konner-, MIT was very lucky to have you as a committed staff member and when I'd seen the amount of time you'd given to that previous tournament without much complaint, I knew that you'd be a viable member for the core staff.
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Hydria - You were someone who was added onto the staff a bit later, and you were also another one that I am glad that I added. Your previous experience in tournaments basically made it so that I didn't really have to explain much of anything - you just hopped on, did your thing,
caused a few win by defaults thanks for that and you were done.
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Daikyi, Gazelle, Arf - the voices of SOFT, right here. I know that Arf came a bit later, but he came in with a lot of intent to work, and never really had any issues with scheduling - fantastic reliability on his part. Daikyi/Gazelle - you guys put a ton of time into doing this, weekend after weekend, and you guys always seemed to make sure that users were engaged in what you were talking about. Between the boats, the warnings of ghost-tapping, and all of the crazy matches that were separated by three digit points (or two because Rewrite Nightmare, thanks for that one too Daikyi :p), at least one of you were there to talk about it. It wouldn't have been nearly as memorable without you guys for sure.
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Shoegazer - You did a really good job of being a technical commentator for the event, and were the one who usually gave insight about the players in question; for many matches, and even the showcases, you sought to make sure that you were delivering accurate information about the players and/or content in question, and that commitment to making sure that the information you deliver is correct is commendable. You were also very helpful when I got a bit strained on time in the later rounds, assisting in the referee helper spreadsheets and adding all sorts of other cool statistical information that otherwise would not have been exposed. Additionally, you gave some good insight into the last two pools of the tournament, and I appreciate that a ton.
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XeoStyle - You were brand new to refereeing at the start of this tournament, but I was recommended to take a look at you by someone else, and I will say that I'm glad that I did. You helped come through in a pinch when match times were a bit outlying a few times and saved what would have been some headaches from having to do multiple things at once.
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Smoothie World - You really didn't get much time to do much of anything because of timing with personal events, but you did manage to help on a few matches when I really needed someone to fill a time; you being on the same time zone allowed me to get things done pretty easily. I wish you'd have been around a bit more near the end to experience what high-level mania play is like, considering your reactions from the round of 128 pool, but it wasn't meant to be.
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EtienneXC - you're a pain in my ass. You got sick and ended up eliminated from my tournament, and then went on to tear your hamstring, I mean - who fucking does that? I'm kidding, aha. You did have a short time in commentating during the qualifiers, which was incredibly hectic, but you managed to at least give your (minor) contribution. Next time, don't be such a bitch. :p
I am also really thankful to have had so much attention pointed in the direction of this tournament. Getting featured on osu!weekly was great. I'm also additionally happy to see a few other people who consult me about questions regarding their tournament, because it does show that I managed to at least stick to my word and make something worthwhile like I said I'd do all the way back in December. After experiencing a rather unpleasant tournament experience as a player, I wanted to make sure that the mania community (or a subset of it) at least got something they deserved. My only regret is not getting more in the way of prizes - though to be fair, with how this tournament ended, it was probably for the best that I didn't anyway. I'm also glad to see someone working on another tournament that plans on engaging the entire community (referring to
2016 HARD; p.s. everyone should sign up for it when the actual tournament thread goes up, I'm going to as well :3) rather than just the 4k community.
As I've said before, I have a ton of videos sitting on my desktop computer; it recently just had Sony Vegas installed to it, so I will be using that to cut the longer streams up into separated matches for easier findings. That should be happening in the coming weeks, but I will do this at a more leisurely time; I suppose that's something to look to.
I'll be finalizing this tournament by sending off the results to tournament staff, so that the top 3 can receive their supporter status. Cobo-, Urusai, and bumpinho will receive 6, 4, and 2 months of supporter for their efforts in this tournament. Again, it seems like a bit of an underwhelming prize, but honestly - I think it will do for this tournament, and something is certainly better than nothing.
If you guys have any sort of other questions about this that you'd like to ask me, feel free to do it in here. I'll still be poking in this thread a bit because it's likely that I will post links to videos over the next little bit.
EDIT: fixed, shut up _underjoy :p
