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PAX Faced Killa: This Year and Beyond
Zig21
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Yup, I survived. My voice hasn't returned yet and my ears are still a litte sore, but it was worth it.
For starters, a big, fat "THANK YOU!!!!" to everyone, both the staff+volunteers and PAX attendees. Ane, Dave, Vataire, Mark, Tyler, Andrew, Keough, Ryan, Webb, Skypal, all the Enforcers and console room volunteers, Meydebauer staff, Princess Red Dot, Gabe, Tycho, and of course, Mr Khoo himself, I wouldn't have done it without you. If I forgot anybody or couldn't remember your name, still, thanks so much. And sorry to that one guy for accidently smacking you in the face.^^ My hands are lethal objects when I'm gesturing wildly.
Thanks to everyone who came to play. I'm especially pleased at the fact that NOBODY complained about the rules for Smash Brothers. I thought I was gonna get an ear full over that. Same with the fact that SC2 was on X-Box. You guys just took it like it was, and for that, I'm so thankful.
Oh yeah, and to whoever "procured" my copy of Metroid Prime.....fuck you.
This thread will now serve for my thoughts of what to change for next year, so expect more shit later.
For starters, a big, fat "THANK YOU!!!!" to everyone, both the staff+volunteers and PAX attendees. Ane, Dave, Vataire, Mark, Tyler, Andrew, Keough, Ryan, Webb, Skypal, all the Enforcers and console room volunteers, Meydebauer staff, Princess Red Dot, Gabe, Tycho, and of course, Mr Khoo himself, I wouldn't have done it without you. If I forgot anybody or couldn't remember your name, still, thanks so much. And sorry to that one guy for accidently smacking you in the face.^^ My hands are lethal objects when I'm gesturing wildly.
Thanks to everyone who came to play. I'm especially pleased at the fact that NOBODY complained about the rules for Smash Brothers. I thought I was gonna get an ear full over that. Same with the fact that SC2 was on X-Box. You guys just took it like it was, and for that, I'm so thankful.
Oh yeah, and to whoever "procured" my copy of Metroid Prime.....fuck you.
This thread will now serve for my thoughts of what to change for next year, so expect more shit later.
Born to Duck
Zig21 on
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Posts
-robert
A strange thing about most gamers. Once people start playing, anything they may have felt about the rules or conditions for play just ceases to matter. There are exception, but that's something I've noticed. Once you see a little high-level Peach vs Falco action, you don't really remember all the whining you planned to do about not being allowed to play on PokeFloats.
twitch.tv/Taramoor
@TaramoorPlays
Taramoor on Youtube
Comrade Bean from Canada
Anywho, on to my thoughts for next year.
Registration
This was easily the worst problem we had. With that in mind, I have two ideas.
One solution would be to just improve online registration, specifically for team games. I need to know who's with who so I can finish seeding and assignments for everybody who signed up online ahead of schedule, and that wasn't possible this year.
Another solution, which I personally like better, is to only use online registration as a means of roughly gauging the turnout. "Official" registration for tournaments won't be till the day-of, in the console room, and will officially end about two hours before the first tournament starts. For team tournies, we'll have a no-team signup list, and all teams will be represented by either a team name or one team member's name.
Console room layout
While this year's layout was great for LAN games like Halo and Mario Kart, I want to try something more like Evo, with each station against the wall and a large space in the middle. This would be much better for spectators, and it'd be harder to steal stuff as well, but I'm not sure if it would work with the wiring setup, and it'd be harder to get all 32 TV's to fit.
Tournaments
Some of the rules will definitely change. If possible, I'd wanna make Smash best of 3 games (maybe do 3 stock, 5 minutes). All tournies will likely stay single elim, though.
Mario Kart should be Circuit or whatever, not one race. We could just do the longest option possible, then take only the top 2 instead of top 4.
Halo is going bye-bye. Why? 'cause Halo 2 will be out by then (in theory at least, lol), and it looks faster, so, yeah.
I really don't care for Splinter Cell, to be honest, but Rob ran it for me and it seemed to go pretty quickly.
Guilty Gear XX is out, and #Reload for X-Box is in. Hell yeah.
As much as I hate Soul Calibur 2, might as well bring it back next year.
I want Tekken 5, bitches. That game is HOT!!!!
Maybe there will be Isuka, I don't care. That game's a joke anyways.
Fuck Black Arrow, seriously. No offense to the Frag Dolls, but damn, no split screen in LAN play? What is that shit? That tourney took, like, 5 hours.
Yeah, doing a full cup of Mario Kart would be interesting, take a little longer, but it would be more fun. And fighting for only the top two slots would certainly make things go faster, which depending on how many people are at Pax05, may or may not be needed. If theres around the same number Id still stick with top 4 teams move on, but a definate thumbs up on racing a whole cup, anything to get in more rounds of 16 player DD awesomeness.
And yeah, I just found out about #Reload and was going to suggest it for next year anyways, Ive never played Guilty Gear before but after seeing people playing XX I decided to get it, and found out XX #Reload is coming out for Xbox next week for 20 bucks, with Xbox live play, so, Ill definatly get that one. Though I would probably get my ass handed to me in a tournament.
Don't get me started.
Anywho, one last thing.
Freeplay
I'm all for more freeplay, but to be honest, it's not a priority for me. I'll do my best to accomodate for it, but my focus will always be on tournies, simply 'cause they take the most work.
With this in mind, I like the idea of a separate freeplay room better than anything else. There'd probably be less stations in there (I'll be damned if they want any of mine, hehe), but it could suppliment freeplay in the console room, which WILL still happen eventually.
During freeplay in the console room, priority will be giving to tournament games, and I will impose a strict rotation policy. The console room isn't there so you can play Halo nonstop with your friends, it's there so you can play Halo nonstop with other people. If demand is high, single player will NOT be allowed. I want people who set up on a station to being doing it for others, not just themselves.
And yes, seperate freeplay rooms would be a plus, even if it had less stations, it would still alleviate some problems. And the main console room should have more stations next year(possibly in a bigger room in the Meydenbauer?) since there should be more people in attendance, and probably more people in the tournaments. Any extra stations could possibly be used for freeplay, but the more stations the faster the first rounda can go, which seem to be the most chaotic.
*EXPLAIN*
And I totally agree on Tekken. Tekken is where it's at.
I liked Zig till he dissed MK.
Tekken is where it's at, though.
'sides, the series has never been that good. Right from the start, it was more of a gimmick than anything else.
Ok nevermind, I thought you meant MK as in MK:DD
I agree with your assessment of the other one.
Borfase, if you care to know why SC2 blows. PM me and ill tell you why.
Zig has a nazi hold on his thread...not to mention my post would have made like 30945890348509 replies it.
Anywho, Tekken 5...will that even be out on console by then?
If not, I'm fine with playing on an arcade cabinet :twisted:
Also for freeplay, we need to either have some kind of spreadsheet form (or on the computer?) for game checkout, or what might work better if we get a freeplay room (which is in discussion i think?) then to have stations designated for certain games (we tried to do this but things were crazy crazy and it didn't go as smoothly as one might hope).
Rotation didn't seem to be a huge issue, at least, no one complained to me at the desk (although I was in such a haze of telling people NO!!! that maybe they were afraid of the tired bitch girl hehehehe).
might i make a suggestion?
for freeplay, supply the consoles, controllers, and TVs, and then make it BYOG (bring your own games).
Or, during general freeplay, the secondary freeplay room could be the BRYOG room.
They'll be doing that for quite a while.
Trust me.
And they always push their console release date FAAAR back. Expect late 2005-2006.
The KB Life
As far as registration for PAX goes, I think what we're planning for next year, and this is just prelim, but we're gonna allow people to trickle in on Friday, maybe pre-reg's only, and do nothing tournament-wise for that day. Just allow free-play 'n the sort. That way, we don't have the same clusterfuck next year like we had with the Halo tournament this year. But, such is how things go sometimes, when this is the first year you go about running an expo. I honestly think that was our biggest problem; the fact that we ended up pushing EVERYTHING back because of how Saturday morning started.
PMing you, as well, about something else. But, all in all, was a hell of a time helping run those tournaments, will be glad to be back next year.
[10:24] * @BigRed-Worky cums the water
[12:32] <+prox> lawl you kickbanned me so hard my client crashed
Also, the only tournies that filled up early were Smash and Halo. You still had PLENTY of time to sign up for everything else most of Saturday and into Sunday.
More space == less complaining.