Season 1 Feedback and Season 2 Poll of a VFDC-organized League

I'm glad I'm part of the VFDC. It's something new to me and everyone I met is so awesome. Different people and personalites, but VFDC brings us together. I'm hoping a Season 2 will come, it's definitely needed in my opinion.

 

I'm all for a 2nd season, and I'm down for whatever ideas anyone has to increase the number of participants going forward!

 

I cast my vote for participated and will participate in future. A bit stretched for time at the moment, but I wanted you to know that I'll write something up as far as feedback goes when I get time.

 

Alright, I've already given feedback in the various bracket threads (can't remember what I've said - I tend to ramble on), but I'll just put down whatever thoughts come to mind as I write this.

Overall, I think the league thing worked out almost as well as it could, given the logistics of managing such a thing.

I was initially against the idea of having brackets separated by time-zone, but after experiencing it, I've enjoyed it a lot - it's allowed me to gain acquaintance with the regular people in my bracket (namely, Exzety and Radon), and learn a bit about their play-styles, and develop a bit of a friendship with them - something I wouldn't have done if I were to play different opponents every event.

I also like the mix-up of the 'casual' events, where everyone just gets one point for participation, and the 'proper' events, where points are awarded based on performance. It allows the lesser-skilled players to remain competitive with everyone by turning up each week, and also allows the more-skilled players to be rewarded for their wins - the ideal players therefore being the more-skilled players who also turn up a lot (Koenraku, as a decent example). It also allows the brackets to have 'friendlier' matches on the nights where it's just participation points - people can goof off a bit, play with their non-main characters, try out new stuff etc, instead of it always having to be 'ZOMG SUPA SRSBIZNZ!'

The sponsorship has been a nice touch. Actively having rewards for the league as well as having a set time/day where we can get together and play - I think the combination has been a nice incentive for people to try to turn up each time and earn their points. I've not been a fan of the 'lottery' thing when it comes to being able to win a boon of points just for guessing correctly - it kind of diminishes the efforts of those who turn up each time and perform well if someone with 50% attendance and average performances comes along and steals a placement prize with a lucky guess.

Not sure what happened with those 'Z rankings' - might just not have been applicable to a bracket of our size or if it was scrapped. After observing how the league went, I don't really think it was necessary to use it.

The organisation all seemed to be handled well - all the threads and posts from Akai and the countdown timers and the 'challonge' website thing all made it easy enough to navigate.

As far as offline events go, I'd like to attend them, but I just don't have any money or means to travel at the moment. Seattle is only an hour away, but even that is just out of my means - I don't think there'd be a fair way to incorporate offline events without alienating the people who can't make them, and it might put those people off from turning up to the online stuff if they know they're going to be at a disadvantage. I'm figuring that the people who can and are able to travel and meet up for offline play will already be doing that because of the enjoyment and fun of it - the Circuit's main use seems to be as a tool to organise people to play in an online capacity, since we all usually log on at different times and days, so without something to structure them, the games between VFDCers will be less frequent than if we have our weekly Circuit meetings.

Regarding this feedback, I think mid-week events aren't a good idea. Personally, I can probably attend any day/time, but I know there are people who work and have week-based responsibilities - it's a lot easier to find free-time at the weekend rather than having to cram it in after work, before bed, and around dinner and seeing to your kids/wife/deranged mother-in-law.

I don't think I like the idea of having to seek out my opponent to play a set with them. Firstly, there's risk of pulling/D/Cing etc (not that I think many would) and without third-party observers, there's nothing to keep it in-check. Secondly, there might be a bit of a stalemate if person A can only be available from Y-Z times, and person B only from W-X times, where neither overlap. Currently, there's a structure and a set time, and the onus is on the individual to make it, not on the rest of the group to accommodate. There is also that 'special exceptions' bracket that is sometimes run for those who can't meet their usual times - I think that's a nice courtesy extended to work with people, and I know (from first-hand experience) that players in a given bracket will try to afford leniency with people if they're having issues on the day (I had issues with my wife at some point, and I know Exzety lost connection at a different time - we worked around it as best we could).


Honestly, I don't think many things need to change for the second season. We have to anticipate that there's going to be an attendance drop-off as people just generally lose interest in the game and move on to new pastures. The dedicated faithful will always be around, and will likely form the core group for each bracket, with newcomers and casuals joining in as and when we find them.

I think a good thing will be to make sure the newcomers to the site are well-informed and encouraged to join the Circuit - a standard welcoming email from Akai when they join, as well as another when sign-up for the next season opens, will go a long way towards making sure we get as many VFDCers into the mix as we can. People should always be on the lookout for new talent in ranking/player/room matches whenever they're on (I've pulled a few people in myself).

That's about it for now, I think.

 

<Something that i had in mind for the 2nd season were organized character battles, <where basically an even number of players (either 3on3 or 4on4 depending on if anyone's <in the room to stream it) who main the same character would fight it out similar to how <the circuit runs now, and the winner of the event would earn a title of Jacky of the <month, or Shun of the month, something along those lines & the title would be displayed <in someone's avatar preview. Just a thought.

 

That's in interesting idea, but I think it'd have to be modified a bit to suit the smaller brackets (mine only has three regular attendants). On nights where points are not based on performance (so that it doesn't matter too much who wins/loses), each bracket will be assigned a random character (by Akai), or maybe two or three characters. Everyone in that bracket then has to play as that character/one of those characters, rather than picking their main. Of course, it suits players who have knowledge of many characters (like Exzety), and doesn't suit players who only know one or two (like me!), but if there' no repercussion for losing, I think it might add a nice element of fun.

 

That could be something to think about i'm basically in Eileen jail right now not knowing anyone else being assigned random characters to work with could be good for me. Cept Taka i aint usin that thing.

 

I would definitely participate in a 2nd season.

One piece of feedback can't really be changed - the Japanese circuit has (at max) 5 people. The one major where Super, Reno, Adversity, Shou and I participated was really exciting - but in later weeks it was just Super and I. He's my twin brother I've been playing VF with for almost 2 decades, so when it's just the two of us it really isn't that exciting for me. But hey, if the sponsors keep on forking up prizes, I'd be fine if it's just the two of us.

Maybe it's because we have such few competitors, but it seems like participation in events weighs more heavily on your point total (as compared to doing well in the events). In other words, I feel like your point total is punished too heavily for missing an event. (Although the point of the circuit is to get people interested in & playing VF, so it does make sense to reward those who show up)

Also, maybe it's just me, but it seems like something in my personal life almost always comes up on a VF night. Having a week to play someone anytime during that might week might work, but then it's more personal hassle to try and organize everything. But again, with less than 5 players in the entire Japan circuit, it might be worth it to try and work out schedules with everyone individually if they can't make a scheduled event due to real life coming up.

 

Could possibly allow the smaller brackets to decide their own day/time, and have it default to Akai's choosing if a consensus can't be reached by the members.

 

VF Circut is great, I will definately take part in the second season )

Though I think it would be better to change the registration process for not english-language countries. For example, not all people in russia know english well and not all of them want to register at some american site just to participate in event. Maybe we could just gather the players' info right at our site (fighting.ru) and then send it to you, Akai? It will make the registration easier for them and the event will probably have more participants. And having similar thing for Japan probably will make japanese players interested in the circut since not many of them know english well, as I know.

 

I think the results/winners could be reported on the front page, or some kind of summary could be posted. That way more people would probably read about it and I think it would give more cred to the circuit. This, rather than the app, would be important. It would also show the circuit is something this site takes seriously, an attitude that might because of this spread to more players.

I'd also like to play both of my games against the same opponent right efter each other, and not wait for the whole bracket to be played before I get a rematch. My bracket did that once and I believe it worked out better.

No random characters or anything like that. Would just feel like a waste of time for me, and it might take away from the level of play hence make the streams boring to watch and leave players frustrated. In the round robins you are free to change characters anyway. I believe the current format is great tbh. I'd go for giving it more spotlight rather than changing it into something "less serious" or weird.

 

Have major events where you have best 2 out of 3 matches to advance in the tourney. It would have a winners and losers bracket too so people that get owned early aren't out of it right away. You could have a best 3 out of 5 format for the winners final champion and loser's final winner and have that as the major so to speak instead of the round robin set up from the very beginning of the night as well. Starting them as close to 7 PM as possible would be a nice touch to make sure it doesn't drag on too far into the night too.

It would be like the tourneys we see on streams from other games basically. Of course the set can be changed so its best 2 out of 3 the whole time as well based on the situation or 3 out of 5 the whole time. It would be an interesting twist to things It I do say so myself. I also like each bracket to have a slightly smaller number of people no more than 6 to keep it at a reasonable size to speed up the process of getting it done faster. The round robins are just fine as is from my point of view and mid week events should be added as part of it to make sure people that can't make it on the weekends can still take part to increase the attendance. There are many people that can't play on the weekends as often as they want to if they have the time to do it at all.

I would love offline events but timing is a big issue for me and I don't have the money to travel very far from my house right now unless someone can give me a ride and it would have to be on a day I don't work too. I love offline play alot but my current situation doesn't let me travel much anywhere aside from my home and work right now. I can travel if I really need to but it would really need to be something worthwhile and close to my home money for me is very tight and I have to hang on to as much of it as possible.

Overall I am pleased to see what happened here and it must continue to bring more new players to the game and make them want to hang around longer playing VF. I mainly use the circuit to learn about who else is playing and it serves that role very well and it should continue to do that as well. New players can use it to see who else is playing too and asking the better players in their bracket to help them out in their training too. That is 1 good thing that can come from the VF Circuit overall.

 

I loved being member of the circuit despite me being owned nearly every match. It would be nice if the league was also class best so low skill players like can't grow against similar players. It was nice fighting against rodnutz and kingofcarnagevf but it is hard to compete with a gdlk warrior as well not feeling like their time is being wasted. This is why I participated in only one major because in the in I wasted the good players time.

 

Also i prefer that the ps3 & 360 alternates weeks instead of being on the same week. Makes it lot easier to edit video and have it ready in time. Also be able to control the nerves and get focused for event get over the results then reset for the following weekend.

 

First of all a big thank you to Akai for running the circuit. Its allowed me to meet some new people and encouraged me to improve my game. I don't know if I would be as interested in the game if not for the circuit. On to the feedback.

I would like to see some sort of team event if we can get enough people interested. I was thinking this would be the kind of thing where you create some teams, maybe based on the standings from the first circuit to balance them out, and then we would have the whole circuit season to play them out.

Instead of a fixed date it would be up to the teams to get together and play and they would have to make sure they played each other before the end of the circuit. I think this would be easier since to play teams you would have to get everyone together in one day and that might impossible.

After every team had played each other we could all just contact you with the info and you could update a bracket or something. Maybe we could have some finals for bonus points if there are enough teams. I'd like to know if anybody else is interested in this idea and if so how big should the teams be?

Like Daydream said, the circuit should be on the main page. Both as a reminder and then as a score update. This way any new players would immediately see it and know that there is a tournament running that they could enter. It might entice people to join and we could get our numbers up since they have steadily been dropping since the beginning.

I don't think we should mix offline and online. I think the circuit should mainly focused on people who don't have an offline scene. It might discourage people from competing if they know certain people will always have a point advantage over them just because they have an offline scene. Even if there are no prizes in the second season there will be points and people are competitive by nature.

I don't know if an app is necessary. If its going to cost money I think the money would be better used to pay for some streaming so we can get the game out there and promote the circuit. I guess it would come down to how many people would actually use the app, but our numbers are fairly low right now, it might not be worth the investment.

 

I agree about the application and the online/offline thing.

The teams thing seems like it might be interesting... if we could get it to work. I think teams of two or three at the most would be better than allowing large groups, otherwise it might be hard for some people to get into a group, and there'd be the problem of either forcing people to team with people they don't want to, or having the teams be massively imbalanced (Koenraku, Rodnuts, Cha-mame3, Shidosha, and Exzety, teaming up to fight a team full of players at my calibre would be... not quite so fun).

By keeping the teams small, we could just kinda make our own teams with one or two of our friends, and if you don't happen to know anyone, a quick 'looking for teammates' thread would quickly see people matched up.

Could also recommend people try to team with other people on a different timezone, so it's easier to organise one member from each team to fight and represent their group. If both/all the team-members were in one timezone, it'd be hard to organise against a team half a day in front/behind you.

I like the idea of it - I'm just not sure if the logistics of organising and maintaining such a thing would work out - I can see a lot of situations where each team waits for the other to make initial contact, or can't work out a suitable time to play, and just end up not playing.

 

Something that came to mind that i thought might be exciting would be a monthly FT10. Ok let me explain,
1.At the beginning of every month members would enter themselves in a drawing

2.For example lets say 20 different members enter in this drawing, afterwards a moderator would randomly select 2 out of the 20 for that month to battle in a FT10

3.However this fight would not take place until the end of the month to generate hypeness (the match thread would be front-paged.... for example..."PLAYER A vs PLAYER X Predictions?" It would be kinda like a Paid-Per-View thang.
if that classic HBO paid per view music could be played whenever someone opens the thread that'd be epic!
Moving on...

4.The winner of the FT10 would rightfully hold the title vfdc ft10 champ (i know thats cheesy maybe yall can come up with something better)

5.The champ would then have the choice to challenge another member for the following month, or reset the cycle & start the random drawing process over again

5B.OR The champ would not get to choose who their next opponent would be & that decision would be left up to the community to decide who the'd like to see fight the champ

This is just something i dreamt about i know this would take a lot of work, but i wanted to share it anyway, and idk what this has to do with the current configuration of the vf circuit so bare with me on this one.