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Steam Powered Dominicon : Fighting Game Tournaments

Laughing Marcus

Hey guys, I'm Marcus, the Con Director for Dominicon this year.

I'm posting this up, not to advertise the con as such (that'll come later today), but more to find out what the fighting game community in Ireland is mainly playing these days.

In past years Dominicon has had a poor Console turn out, limited to two rooms with 2 consoles. This year is different, we have a multitude of screens lining the wall of our new Venue and a hefty load of consoles including the 3 current gen platforms, a few N64s and maybe some more retro systems if we can track them down.

I'd love to get some input from the Irish console and fighting game community to see what we should be running in the form of tournaments.

It's easy to throw on SSB Brawl and Modern Warfare, but just because a game is popular at large doesn't mean it lends itself well to tournament play with 4 players (Well, I think Brawl does, and we probably will run that, because I love it so).

So, to finish, I'd love to hear what the major games are this year, what tournaments could we run that might actually draw in console players?
I know we won't be turning Dominicon's console reputation around in a single weekend, but with the right start this year we could get the ball rolling again for next year.

EDIT!!!!

Dominicon Info

I've added a link to our website.

The consoles page is blank, this I know.
I'll do the timetable for it on Monday and then upload it.

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Comments

Dreddybajs

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 always seems to do well at cons, I'd definitely suggest that. Tekken Tag 2 just came out as well, so that'd probably get decent numbers as it's new. The main other game in the Irish scene is Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition (Version 2012).

Other games to consider (not very popular in general currently but might get more casual players entering at a con):
Mortal Kombat 9
BlazBlue (not sure what the newest version is called)
Soul Calibur 5

A popular way to get fighting game peeps out to these cons has been to put the main fighting game tournament stuff on a single day and maybe also give a bit of a discount for people here who are only interested in going for a few fighting game tournaments - cons can often seem prohibitively expensive to just go to play in them.

Sairus

I wouldn't bother with Skullgirls for a tournament game, but it got a great response as a casual game at Nom-Con since it looks so pretty (opinion on stupid massive tits and ass aside).

Also, Catherine is an amazing con game for tournaments. Even if no one's played it before, leave it on Versus for a few hours beforehand and you'll have raving crowds. You'll need a save file with Versus unlocked though.

Nutrient

Sairus wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with Skullgirls for a tournament game, but it got a great response as a casual game at Nom-Con since it looks so pretty (opinion on stupid massive tits and ass aside).

Also, Catherine is an amazing con game for tournaments. Even if no one's played it before, leave it on Versus for a few hours beforehand and you'll have raving crowds. You'll need a save file with Versus unlocked though.

Let's all play SG while Sai is away ~3~

Sairus

I actually forgot to put in the part where I'm clearly heavily biased towards Skullgirls and all of my input in that area should be taken with liberal amounts of salt. :pac:

Ask Onion for some if you're out.

Doctor DooM

First of all it's probably not common knowledge but a long time ago our very own Ayjayirl and I ran a Dominicon. I wrote 5 White Wolf games for it. We both played live in the Students Union with different bands on the Saturday. Those were the days!

I would say that Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 would be must haves. UMvC is very popular with both competitive and casual fighting game fans, and Tekken has always been hugely popular with casual players.

If you want to attract the tournament players, you'll probably need to have a Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition ver. 2012 tournament on. The SF4 series has been the back bone of the FG community in Ireland for about 4 years now.

There's a downside to SSF42012 though: you'll need to either have the paid for DLC (arcade edition) or a Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade edition disc (not JUST Super Street Fighter 4. That requires the DLC) and then you'll need to briefly hook up to the net to download the free DLC to update the latest, free version, which has huge differences to the older ones.

If you're serious about attracting the competitive scene though we will try and help with this. I can provide an AE disc for one. Depending on the date I may alo be able to attend and record the tournament in glorious HD, with commentary, which you can feel free to use for promotion next year. We're well known for doing this, other cons have started working quite closely with us in some cases to do so.

I would echo previous comments about trying to get as much on the same day as possible, but if you can't I would strongly recommend playing SSF42012 and UMvC3 on the same day as the same crowd would attend both and there's crossover. It'll also give a better "buzz". I would also strongly suggest these games happen on the Saturday, as that from past experience is the best day to get the most bodies.

As for other tournaments- I would say Mortal Kombat 9 would be a strong contender, as would be the latest Blaz Blue (back when I was involved in running it, there wasn't much of an anime influence on Dominicon, no idea now. Regardless, BB is popular with the otaku). However, despite Maynooth being pretty much as close as any other college to the city by train or bus, you may struggle to get people from outside the area to attend for these games.

One final thing I would say, and I am going to stress this- when it comes to the rules for these games, listen to us. Every game has its own set of rules which have built up over time and experience. Creating your own will put off a lot of players (and has done in the past) and make you appear amatuerish, but even worse it'll give people reason to bitch about you on the net. You don't need that! Again, when you pick your games we can help with this.

ayjayirl

STFU Quigs - Showing our age! That was back when most on this forum where 12 and I'm pretty sure Gus & Ladnochoka were sperm.

Yeh, echo the lads above.
Our rules (these are pretty much the international standard)
One day for the tournaments with Marvel & SF on the same day (crossover etc)
SSF4AEv2012 and the others do have DLC and patches. If you want the tournament scene to show, you'd need to have them in place.
Use xbox. PS3 is ok, but we use xbox for much of everything except TTT2 & MK9
Take Doom himself up on the recording and commentary option - the media is useful for promotions etc.
Book a pub/union and entice them with drink fuel'd madness

You will possible have to deal with the illogical argument of Maynooth not being in Dublin.... Leaving Dublin is traumatic for these Dubs. You need to hold their hand a bit.

25 mins on a train translates to a trip to Mordor apparently.

Is Moxie still interfering helping with it?
Aj

Doctor DooM

ayjayirl wrote: »

Is Moxie still interfering helping with it?

Lol, if Kiki heard about Moxie's family business he'd probably wet himself...

K.O.Kiki

Do they make cosplay Mikus?

ayjayirl

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Do they make cosplay Mikus?

Don't they own all the arcades in Ireland or something?

Doctor DooM

ayjayirl wrote: »

Don't they own all the arcades in Ireland or something?

They owned barneys, an arcade which hosted VF2, Vf3, WW, CE, HF, Super, ST, SFA1 and 2, COTA, MSH, pretty much all the KOfs, MK 1-3U, KI 1 and 2, and probably a few I'm forgetting...

Laughing Marcus

(For the Tl;Dr Version scroll to the bottom.)

Okay, lots of helpful information here, most of which, luckily, already fits in with out basic plan for the convention.
Apologies in advance for the rest of this quote-tastic post, it's just me making sure I address each reply.
I'll start with Doctor DooM since that was the longest.

Doctor DooM wrote: »

First of all it's probably not common knowledge but a long time ago our very own Ayjayirl and I ran a Dominicon.... Those were the days!

I did not know that, 'twas before my time. The days of Dominicon in the SU are mythic these days. Why did we ever stop?
All the booking issues this year are a blessing in disguise since it means we've ended up using the SU again.
ALCOHOL AND TELEVISIONS! ALCOHOL AND TELEVISIONS EVERYWHERE!

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I would say that Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 would be must haves.
If you want to attract the tournament players, you'll probably need to have a Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition ver. 2012 tournament on. The SF4 series has been the back bone of the FG community in Ireland for about 4 years now.
...
If you're serious about attracting the competitive scene though we will try and help with this. I can provide an AE disc for one.

UMVsC3 is top of the list, everyone, casual and tourneyfolk alike, love it. The society doesn't have a copy of TTT2 to my knowledge, but I've asked if anyone could lend in a copy.
We do have a copy of SFIV, but I'm not sure of the version, again, I've asked about our edition and if anyone in the soc has the required version.

Doctor DooM wrote: »

Depending on the date I may alo be able to attend and record the tournament in glorious HD, with commentary, which you can feel free to use for promotion next year. We're well known for doing this, other cons have started working quite closely with us in some cases to do so.

Well, I'm not sure if the SU bar has changed much since your time at NUIM, but that's where all our TVs are, we'll probably use the upstairs section for tournaments since it's got a good bit more space than the downstairs area.
Would that give you room to set up what you need if you could make it?
Oh, and the Consoles will ALL be on Saturday 17th of November.

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I would echo previous comments about trying to get as much on the same day as possible... I would also strongly suggest these games happen on the Saturday.

Well, it was always the plan to have all our console tournaments on the Saturday. We weren't allowed the bar on Sunday for a while, then when they said we could we didn't have the budget left.
So everything will be happening on that day.

Doctor DooM wrote: »

I would say Mortal Kombat 9 ... Blaz Blue (back when I was involved in running it, there wasn't much of an anime influence on Dominicon, no idea now. Regardless, BB is popular with the otaku). However, despite Maynooth being pretty much as close as any other college to the city by train or bus, you may struggle to get people from outside the area to attend for these games.

Not much of an anime influence now either, I haven't a clue what BlazBlue even is.
I'd address the transport issue with this: It's one bus or train from the City Center, as much as getting to any other convention.
On top of that, Dominicon is among the cheapest gaming conventions in Ireland to attend and if it's for console tournaments then you'll only need one day ticket, with all of that it's cheaper than most cons to get into, even a weekend ticket is cheaper than some day tickets elsewhere.

Doctor DooM wrote: »

One final thing I would say, and I am going to stress this- when it comes to the rules for these games, listen to us. Every game has its own set of rules which have built up over time and experience. Creating your own will put off a lot of players (and has done in the past) and make you appear amatuerish, but even worse it'll give people reason to bitch about you on the net. You don't need that! Again, when you pick your games we can help with this.

Taking the expert advise on something? I dunno, sounds kinda risky to me.
But, in all seriousness, I'd completely be willing to submit to whatever rules you guys usually impose on these tournaments.
I'm not much of a competitive console player, nor is anyone I know of in the Maynooth Games Soc, so I'd be quite happy to let anyone who wishes take this cup from me.
I've trying to bring back a console presence at Dominicon, (unfortunately those plans have been pushed back because we didn't have a home for Dominicon until last week) so the last thing I want is to have a bad stab at it this year.
We need to get it all running as smoothly as possible and get things running in such a way that console players would want to come back again next year.
This year's committee (So, me and Quinzy) have noticed that poor console turnouts in previous years has resulted in the consoles coordinator canceling tournaments because there weren't enough players. None of that this year. If 2 people are coming to us for a tournament then those two people are getting a tournament even if it means we lose cash on the cost of prizes. It's worth making that loss rather than letting people complain about us not doing what we've promised.

Dreddybajs wrote: »

A popular way to get fighting game peeps out to these cons has been to put the main fighting game tournament stuff on a single day and maybe also give a bit of a discount for people here who are only interested in going for a few fighting game tournaments - cons can often seem prohibitively expensive to just go to play in them.

As I said up yonder in this post, all of our tournaments would be on the Saturday of the con (17th November).
As for the discount; not gonna happen. I can agree that going to a con for a single event can seem expensive, but if we reduced prices for console people we'd have to do the same for everyone else who'd only come for one section of the gaming.
The biggest drawback to this would be stopping people who claimed to only be there for one thing from signing up for all the other events. Even without this, reducing costs on the con any further would make turning a profit for the charity nearly impossible.

Sairus wrote: »

I wouldn't bother with Skullgirls for a tournament game...Also, Catherine is an amazing con game for tournaments.

I don't think we have access to either of these games. I didn't even know Catherine had a multiplayer side, damn but I'm out of the loop.
I'll see about getting a copy of Skull Girls for casual play, Catherine is probably a negative though.

ayjayirl wrote: »

STFU Quigs - Showing our age! That was back when most on this forum where 12 and I'm pretty sure Gus & Ladnochoka were sperm.
...
Is Moxie still interfering helping with it?

Yeah, near as I can tell this was all prehistoric Games Soc. You guys should throw yourselves up on the Irish Gaming Wiki. The people deserve to know!
Moxie's real name has been long forgotten, merely an ancient glyph on the Games Soc Boards.

We mainly have XBoxes for the weekend, so this suits us well.
If DooM can make it then it'd be great to get his media expertise in on it.

The con has a pub RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT. You could literally play sitting on a stool at the bar.

tl;dr Version :
Right, now the summing up, putting everything in a concise noted form.
1. Use official rules - To quote Antonio Banderas, "I can do that!"
We'd just need one of you guys to forward us the tourney rules for such things.

2. One day for tournaments.
Already done! It's Saturday 17th November!

3. Specific game versions.
This is a bit iffy right now, but I'll try and get it sorted.

4. Fueled by alcomahol.
Did I mention we have a bar dead center of the con? Because we do.

5. Console discounts.
Can't do, but our single day ticket (€9 + €2 per tournament entered) is pretty damned competitive.

6. DooM's Media Menagerie
If DooM can make it I'd love to take advantage of this.

7. Transport
It's one bus/train from the city center. Combined with our prices it isn't any more expensive than any other con.

8. ERMAGERD ALCERHERL!
We have a bar run by two kindly gentlemen, did I mention that?

9. You guys are old.
Hell yeah you are. Literally prehistoric Games Soc.

ayjayirl

Laughing Marcus wrote: »

9. You guys are old.
Hell yeah you are. Literally prehistoric Games Soc.

We are the reason it is a soc and not a club.

Capitation wars! The memories. I think we got 300% increase in signatures that year. MvC 1 I believe?

....and SSF4AEv2012 is a must. At least one.

Doctor DooM

ayjayirl wrote: »

We are the reason it is a soc and not a club.

Capitation wars! The memories. I think we got 300% increase in signatures that year. MvC 1 I believe?

....and SSF4AEv2012 is a must. At least one.

He aint joking. I believe one heroic figure drew a line and took on hundreds of people in the current versus game of the time. Tireless, he was, as like Cu Chulainn he took on an army, solo, one by one defeating them and taking their 1 POUND registration fee.

If memory serves the only people who beat him that day were the ones he got bored with and played tekken with instead. lol

UberPrinny_Baal

@Marcus

Hosting Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Street Fighter 4 AE2012; as well as giving Doctor Doom some space to do his thing will guarantee you a certain amount of attendees and general good will.

Just as a quick primer on the obscurer games mentioned so you're up to speed:

Skullgirls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a19A_nOPXM

Skullgirls is Western made/animation style game with a Street Fighter 2 button layout and Marvel vs Capcom 2 style (doesn't matter if you don't know what that means). It's download ONLY unfortunately no disc release, so that might be an obstacle. It's pretty visually appealing and nicely animated, but there are tits hanging out everywhere which might put off a lot of people. There isn't really a competitive scene for it here (which isn't necessarily a bad thing) but hosting the game won't attract you the "Skullgirls players"

Blazblue CS Extend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fiC-SDl_4

Japanese made/animation style game, more simple control style: Light, Medium, Heavy attack buttons and one "Cool stuff" button which does a unique attack per character. There have been a few disc release versions of this, so it should be pretty easy to find a copy. There used to be a Blazblue scene in Ireland which kinda died out, so I don't think anybody would really complain if the disc version used was one of the older ones. I don't know how "anime focused" your con is, but this seems pretty visually attractive for anime fans. I can't say hosting this game will guarantee you any Blazblue players either, but if one of them does show up, they're guaranteed to win and wreck everyone else.

I don't think there's a right or wrong choice with regard to hosting them or not. It's pretty much down to how "cool" you think your con attendees will find them.

I do like the sound of that bar though

Have you got a website for your con so I can see the content?

Laughing Marcus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

@Marcus

Hosting Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Street Fighter 4 AE2012; as well as giving Doctor Doom some space to do his thing will guarantee you a certain amount of attendees and general good will.

Just as a quick primer on the obscurer games mentioned so you're up to speed:

Skullgirls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a19A_nOPXM

Blazblue CS Extend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2fiC-SDl_4

I do like the sound of that bar though
Have you got a website for your con so I can see the content?

MVsC3 was the first game on the list, SFIV was there as well, though now I need to make sure it's the correct version.

I was already knew about Skull Girls, I'm out of the loop, not quite dead yet though :P

As for BlazBlue...That was quite, er, Engrish indeed.

As for the actual tournament list for consoles in general, not just the fighting games, (my main reason for posting here first was that you guys seem quite active) the list is as follows, no deadset times yet.

1. Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 - XBox
2. Street Fighter IV - XBox (I'm trying to make sure we have the right edition).
3. Halo 4 Griffball - XBox
4. Super Smash Brothers Brawl - Wii
5. Timesplitters 2 - Gamecube/PS2 if we can get a multitap.
6. Something Retro, probably Mario Kart on SNES or N64 or SFII on SNES

I'll check out if we can get Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and if we do I'll run that as well.

We have Mortal Kombat 9, but that seems fairly middle of the road so I'm not sure it'd be worth the running.

Any other things that'd be worth my looking into? Even in the non-fighting genres?

Dreddybajs

Didn't realise the con was so cheap to attend, that's definitely a fair price without any kind of discount. Won't be able to make it myself but best of luck to yiz.

Doctor DooM

Sonic 2 in 2 player speed run. Now there's a game.

UberPrinny_Baal

Laughing Marcus wrote: »

4. Super Smash Brothers Brawl - Wii

Swap this to Smash Bros Melee and you guarantee my attendance :P

/very biased

ayjayirl

I live in celbridge. I'll prob be there for it.

Yreval

Just to add to what's been said about Skullgirls; there was a tournament at Q-Con in Belfast back in June which I won - problem was, there were only four other players and I was clearly the only one who had practiced.

On the whole I'd agree with Sairus' assessment - definitely have it as a casual game, but I'm not sure it's worth your while to run a tournament for it.

That said, there's a major patch coming out for it soon and maybe that will get players interested in it again (I hope so - it deserves far better tournament support than what it's had so far, at least here in Ireland, although I can certainly see why some people wouldn't want to bother with the game).

Laughing Marcus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Swap this to Smash Bros Melee and you guarantee my attendance :P
/very biased

Why the preference? Brawl is much more well balanced for tournament play, with more characters, items and arenas for people who like having the craic.

Doctor DooM

AFAIK, and I stand to be corrected on this, but Brawl features tripping and many people think that renders it useless for tournament play.

UberPrinny_Baal

I don't want to go into a massive off-tangent rant about Smash Bros (I can if you really want), so to be super brief:

Laughing Marcus wrote: »

with more characters, items and arenas for people who like having the craic.

This is true, Brawl has more content.

Laughing Marcus wrote: »

Brawl is much more well balanced for tournament play

This is not true, Brawl is considerably LESS balanced, especially for tournament play.

Laughing Marcus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

This is not true, Brawl is considerably LESS balanced, especially for tournament play.

I thought that the very opposite was true because of the multitude of Melee glitches. I have Melee anyway, so a game of that can be arranged pretty easily anyway.

Does tournament play require Fox only for Melee? I remember a lot of that going around back at the time.

Scavenger XIII

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

I can't say hosting this game will guarantee you any Blazblue players either, but if one of them does show up, they're guaranteed to win and wreck everyone else.

Xinkai confirmed. :pac:

UberPrinny_Baal

Laughing Marcus wrote: »

I thought that the very opposite was true because of the multitude of Melee glitches. I have Melee anyway, so a game of that can be arranged pretty easily anyway.

Does tournament play require Fox only for Melee? I remember a lot of that going around back at the time.

Only the American version of Melee had prominent glitches, and also in the American version of Melee Fox and Falco were a bit more powerful than in the EU versions (we have a more balanced and bug-fixed version than the USA).

"Fox only, no items, final destination" is a joke/meme that came about in American to make fun of how tournament play often looked. Fox wasn't the only character allowed, he was just the clear best in the early life of the game. That doesn't accurately reflect reality now. All characters are allowed in Melee, and a lot of them are really viable.

Brawl on the other hand has a much more compacted top tier, a banned character, and a lot of mechanics in the system that unbalances gameplay in general

Just to try and be honest:

Is Melee more balanced than Brawl: Absolutely yes
Am I personally biased in favour of Melee: Very much yes (this doesn't change the balance question)
Will Melee draw more people than Brawl: Probably not, because it's an older game that doesn't have a currently active scene (I'll show up though )

So it's more down to your preference as an organiser for if you want to run a game that is technically "better", or if you want numbers. I imagine you want numbers.

The primary logistical advantage of Melee is that you can run infinite consoles off the save data of one memory card; but for Brawl every console used needs a 100% character save separately played and unlocked (the save data is non-copyable, non-transferable).

Laughing Marcus

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Just to try and be honest:
Is Melee more balanced than Brawl: Absolutely yes

Am I personally biased in favour of Melee: Very much yes (this doesn't change the balance question)

Will Melee draw more people than Brawl: Probably not, because it's an older game that doesn't have a currently active scene (I'll show up though )

I was totally under the impression brawl had been rebalanced. Shows what I know I guess.

Personally I'd run the game with all items on a random stage, I enjoy the chaos and I've always been under the impression that if people can't learn to work with the game mechanics it's their issue. But that's probably why I'm not on the competitive circuit for anything. :P

I was at Gamescon at UCD this year and that was the style of Brawl tournament played and everyone enjoyed it, no one complained.
I think a bit of chaos would be welcome, it'd be different.
I don't think anyone looking for a serious fighting tournament would bother with Brawl anyway, a room of drunken gamers on the other hand...

We'll probably be going with Brawl, we have a few Wiis with everything unlocked on them so that part's not an issue.
As for the strictness of the rules, that'll need to be looked at for a while, perhaps left to be decided on the day.

Edit : Of course, we'll still be going with the rules you guys supply for the other games. It just doesn't seem that Brawl is a big issue for tournament play. More of a drunken Saturday evening gig.

UberPrinny_Baal

If you're running Brawl, chaotic drunken Brawl is totally fine.

Definitely just go with the community rules for SF, Marvel and Tekken specifically.

K.O.Kiki

Brawl doesn't have sausage mirror matches, therefore it is inferior.

[/chopperbyrne]

UberPrinny_Baal

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Brawl doesn't have sausage mirror matches

It actually does :P