NORCAL INSTALL! [Main Information and Ranbat Update Thread]

[Crosell]

Critisms are suggestions for how to fix what went wrong and not personal attacks. Please separate the differences. And you know what, its good you are getting this because it means the community fucking cares. I'm not writing a big long post because you guys get that from me every month trying to discuss what went wrong. Take these, think them through, talk to other TO's who want the event to succeed to be respected. And one thing to take at heart, people want dustloop to be the primary source of communication. So let it be the primary source of communication.

[Shining Aquas]

I think everything that needs to be said about SNCI (as well as a few things that weren't entirely needed) have been said and acknowledged. The overall consensus is that great times were had, but there's plenty of room for improvement.
Let's move forward here.

The big issue that currently stands to me is the holding of the next NCI. April is within about a week's time, which means the predetermined date for April NCI is supposedly in 11 days.
Are we delaying it, skipping it, or meeting again in barely over a week's time? I don't care which of these is the case, so long as that decision is fully followed and jumped on, and soon.

Consider the following:
Skullgirls is "supposedly" coming out in April. It may be beneficial to either delay or skip April NCI to wait for Skullgirls release, while simultaneously planning out our new schedule of games with Skullgirls in it.
NCI has on a number of occasions been a decent outlet for the stream to see Skullgirls in action before release, and this is an opportunity to be one of the first tournaments to have Skullgirls post-release.
Alternatively, run NCI like normal, first Saturday of the month. If that's the decision, then it would be worth it to use this NCI as an experiment. Since this one is so close to SNCI, I don't expect the turnout to be all that impressive (but it's a bit hard to tell since it hasn't been solidified as a date), but with fewer people it might be a good idea to try using as much of the previously mentioned criticism towards the next NCI to see how it runs.

So that leads to things like:
1) Stricter Time Enforcement - Got to uphold the deadlines stronger. We usually talk about NCI having registration start roughly around 12:00-12:30, but then the tourney doesn't start until around 2:30-3:00. If people are really showing up that late, we just have to cut them. It sucks, but I don't see any other way to run everything on time. If registration starts at 12, we really should have tournies started by 1:30 at the latest. It doesn't take that long to set up a bracket, especially with computers.
2) Ramen Run Restrictions - I completely agree that the food run thing is ruining a lot of tournies. At the very least, people have started being more courteous about telling the TO's, but we might need to go beyond that. I'm in favor of plan "tell them to wait until after the tournament", but maybe we could also try "Give me your phone number and I'll call you when your next match comes up" or possibly "You only have about X minutes to get food, and if you aren't back by then I'm DQ'ing you".
3) Which Games are Really Important? - I love GG and it's probably one of the biggest reasons I come, but I do agree that the numbers are lower than I'd like. At no point do I think it should ever be given up, but side tourney status may be realistic in the near future. What does that leave us with exactly? BBCSE, SC5, KOF13, Cat, and Gundam are the current lineup (+GG). I support the motion to remove Catherine 100%, and taking out SC5 makes sense given how well that scene is sustaining. I don't know about moving Gundam to side tournament or not, if anything I feel that game is growing in popularity as people try it. So with the future looking like SG and P4U, our lineup is still at least 4 games, 5 if we keep either GG or Gundam. In this regard, I feel like waiting for Skullgirls to come out might be good for us to get a feel for tournament length with SG. P4U doesn't come out until summer, so we have some time to work these things out, but the sooner we implement SG in the better.

Ultimately, I just hope everyone that's coming is enjoying themselves. Lots of us will get salty from time to time, but the appeal is in the fun games we play and the people we play with. We're all here to show off our grinded out training modes and get some solid matches in, while learning new things in the process. We're also here to meet with folks that we don't see on an everyday (or everyweek) basis; NCI is the event that pulls us all together to hang, chill, and reunite under common ground, which in this case is the NOS-covered floor of Myung's establishment. NCI is a big deal to some of us, and I just want to see it improve and grow like any major event.

Hopefully some hard decisions will be made soon, and we can aim to make the next NCI perfect.

Also, I think I left my PS2 at Gamecenter. It's a thin silver with a modded flip-top.

[STenSatsu]

Have results been posted yet? Just wanted to see who got what outside of GG lol.

[Yggjrasil]

Have results been posted yet? Just wanted to see who got what outside of GG lol.

This. Results from the last 2 NCI haven't been posted yet either...Whats up with that?

[qwerty]

Just to throw this out there, if I had to schedule the next SNCI, assuming it retains its two day format, it'd be something like this:

Saturday:
BB up to Top 8 starting at noon on the dot
P4U start to finish immediately after (assuming it gets AH3-levels of entrants, which I'm guessing it would)
SG either ran simultaneously or starting an hour into P4U, start to finish (again, assuming a comparably low turnout vs BB)

Sunday:
Gundam at noon, start to finish
BB Top 8 at whatever designated time it'd be at

Whether GG and MB would be side tournaments or not, they should both probably be ran on Sunday, as well.

My rationale behind this is simple: get the games that take longest to run out of the way first. Gundam is the exception to that because those setups would be used to expedite the BB/P4U/SG tournaments.

The issue with the setups at GC lagging is a whole other matter altogether, though. I haven't played on the cabinets enough to notice, but I'd be willing to help in whatever way I can to determine how much those displays are lagging.

[Chun]

The world looks a lot clearer with academic responsibilities finally out of the way for a Spring Break.

Thank you to everyone that gave me feedback about the way things were run in SNCI, I've already started a plan for the next event which will be posted in a new thread, because I think this one is getting too long, after using it for the past 1.5 years.

I read every post about SNCI that has happened in the past few pages, your voices are heard, and I'll continue to have updated threads since people are adamant about external sources for information.

Also, I'm looking for people that can help me in the administrative part of updating tournament content, particularly keeping the dustloop thread updated, getting me the questions that need answering regularly, and people willing to update facebook content as well. This also will include posting the final brackets/getting that information up so people can view them the day after the event. If you're interested please PM me or send me a message at norcalinstall@gmail.com with what responsibilities you'd like to assist with.

Thanks for your time guys.

[PhaethonH]

I recommend a mailing list (Google Groups, perhaps), maybe two. For the LUG when I was at school, there were three distinct sublists:

• general (public, low/no access restrictions)
• announce (low-volume, "read-only")
• admin (staff, restricted subscription)

Seems like suitable lists for now are:

• norcalinstall-staff (this stuff)
• norcalinstall-announce (event dates, organizational changes, commendations, etc.)

(the equivalent of norcal-general would be here on DL...)

[totoroslayer]

I've been meditating on this for the better part of a week, and I have a long post/rant I'll inflict upon you all later tonight. In the mean time, however, Dacidbro, ApologyMan, and Copperdabbit are all back from Japan. In honor of their homecoming (and to extract the Japanese secrets from their brains), GC will be holding an impromptu BB session tonight. Check out www.facebook.com/gamecenterarcade for details and comments. If we get enough people there, we could even start a small bracket. Hope to see you there, and I'll get to editing this post of mine.

-Myung

[qwerty]

Just to clarify, my previous post regarding your involvement with the promotion of NCI was answered by Chun via email and as it turns out, I just looked too much into that. No harm intended on my part, it just seemed odd at the time, given the little information I had about how NCI is promoted. Keep doing what you're doing.

[ehuangsan]

Somewhat off topic, but:

Fred - looks like hour 1 and hour2 of station 1 are all tourney footage, so you may want to break them up and post HQ for each.