Tournament Etiquette: How players can help tournaments run smoothly (and other things)

I've known for a long time that tournaments in the Crusade community can be long, drawn-out endeavors that take forever to actually finish. However, it didn't become apparent to me until Kirby's tournament yesterday just how bad the situation was.

Speaking as my state's primary Smash tournament organizer, tournaments take a lot of time and effort to run. I typically run 5 or 6 events with upwards of 30 unique entrants in the span of 10 hours. And this is with a sub-optimal number of setups.
A "Setup" is defined as a TV/monitor and a console with the game being played. I tend to have between 5 and 8 setups for my tourneys, on which I run singles (and sometimes doubles) brackets for four different games in a single day. An "optimal" number of setups is one setup per two people in a tournament, because this means that a match can always be played because there are enough places to play. This is hard, if not impossible, to achieve normally because a small fraction of the entrants own a TV they can bring (generally everyone has a system with the game because otherwise they probably wouldn't be playing it competitively).

This is not the case with Crusade.

To be playing in an online tournament for Crusade, each player needs their own computer. Crusade's online tournaments have the optimal number of setups by definition. This means that, granted that the players are available at all times, matches can always be played on-time. There is never a wait to play the next match due to not having a setup to play on.

An 8 man bracket with the optimal number of setups can be completed in about an hour, maybe an hour and a half if most of the sets go to third game and Grand Finals goes to 5th game or a second set. It shouldn't take four hours after several people don't even show up or leave early into bracket, and it shouldn't take two weeks for 13 people to play out all their sets.

Entering a tournament is a commitment. You, as a player, by entering the tournament, are showing that you are committed to being present and continuing to play your matches until you are knocked out of the bracket. If you have to leave, you have to let the tournament organizer know for what reason and for how long. If you have to be gone for more than 15 minutes when your match is coming up soon (such that you delay the bracket by being absent) the TO has every right to disqualify you so that the tournament can continue running. If you choose to delay the tournament, you're not only wasting the time of the TO, but also every other player who cleared out their entire schedule to play in the tournament.
Common reasons for having to leave are getting food, going to the bathroom, being called by parents, etc. Sometimes things like parental interruptions are unavoidable, and that's fine. But you should never have to delay the bracket for a reason you can control, like food or bathroom breaks. Prepare meals that you can eat at your computer (nachos or sandwiches are good examples) before the tournament starts. Go to the bathroom before the tournament starts so you aren't holding it during your matches or holding up the bracket while you go. Personally, I try to eat something just before a tournament starts and then I barely eat anything until the tournament is over because I feel obligated to be present at all times.


I dunno if there's anything else worth saying but this is just a basic overview of tournament etiquette you should keep in mind.

If everyone followed this, there would be no problems what so ever

Pretty much got it all covered. I would also say;
- Know the tournament rules so you don't waste time asking questions to the TO or opponent about them
- Report the results of your match IMMEDIATELY to the TO

Another big problem we tend to run into that delays matches and does not apply to traditional smash tournaments is lag, hosting and outside hosts. A lot of times players have trouble setting up a match with playable lag they can agree on for both parties, and then sometimes outside hosts are needed, and there are usually too few of those on hand. This tends to delay matches for long stretches of time while the players are trying to set up their game in the first place. The solution to this problem is going to need more discussion for sure.

@Det; On a side note, what tournament series do you run?

Perfect Hell wrote:

@Det; On a side note, what tournament series do you run?

elaborate pls

I'm asking for the name of your events that you TO

I'm a TO of Crossfire Smash Tournaments, which has sub-events you may also have heard of, WarZone and Shockwave

o

CO Smash
previously ran the Summit series due to complications with other TO's (Summits 1, 2, and 4 were run by other TO's, while I ran 3, 5, and 6)
ran two Foothills Fest tournaments (basically smashfests with brackets)
currently running the Mario Party series (the name of each tournament is taken from a minigame in a Mario Party game, mostly from 9; this is because we're also running Mario Party 9 Doubles tournaments at our Smash tournaments); first tournament was Peak Precision (8/31), next one is Smash Compactor (9/21)

I've heard of some of them, cool.

Next up: back on topic with hosting issues

Gotta give Det credit where its due for this topic. Its about time too.

But to be blunt, most participant will probably ignore all this here since they pretty much dont even bother to pay attention to the rules or brackets of the tourney they applied for.

Also, this may sound a bit extreme, but there are cases where the host of the tourney should take blame for it. Think about it. People can't enter unless agreed to by the host. And on many occasions, we have host who allow those who have a history of call-outs and such in tourneys. I think moving forward, tourney host need to have better judgement on who they allow in their tourneys.

SK, it's not the hosts place to just "ban" players from entering their tournament. Anyone is allowed to join that. You don't see smash TO's just banning players when they feel like it just because the player has a history of being late or not having enough money or ignoring TOs. The only player banned from smash tournaments was Leffen, and that's for a long list of really serious offenses before he finally got his ban. Players are not to be denied entry into tournament brackets.

Honestly, I never seen a official Smash tourney. So I can't really share any input on that.

But then again, what your describing is a real Smash tourney. The ones we have here online are quite different as far as how people enter and get to the tourney since its all through online.

Idk, maybe its just me.