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Unless the host gets really picky then we should be able to start WITHOUT having 16 full teams let's face it only the big we'll known tournaments get that many official competitors
Guys i don't want to bring your hopes down but this isn't the first tournament he announced and then didn't do anything with. He also hasn't been online here in like 10 days, so i'm gonna guess this isn't actually happening.
Guys i don't want to bring your hopes down but this isn't the first tournament he announced and then didn't do anything with. He also hasn't been online here in like 10 days, so i'm gonna guess this isn't actually happening.
I know what you mean I remember he did one at the beginning of the month but he cancelled it as he didn't organise it well I thought he would do this one better but I could guess this would happen again but you never know what might happen because to be honest with I just wanted my team to enter a tournament soon
I know what you mean I remember he did one at the beginning of the month but he cancelled it as he didn't organise it well I thought he would do this one better but I could guess this would happen again but you never know what might happen because to be honest with I just wanted my team to enter a tournament soon
I. Think he means that he set up a totally different tournament but couldn't be bothered to pull it off you know what I'm just going to try and find a more reliable tournament and replace his one I don't want my members to be dissapointed if it never happens
i don't maybe a few other do but if he doesnt come back as said before i think maybe we should all come together to sort it out as it would be a shame for it all to be cancelled when the teams are ready to play
Hey OP, if you plan on pushing this back more or running it this weekend, you've got to let us know because there is at least one TO that is set to run this weekend and mid december in particular is quite busy for tournaments. So you should probably communicate with us to see when you can best have your actual time/day. Since your actual rules document hasn't been updated since what I can assume was november 1st since the date in that is still the 2nd, I don't know exactly what to expect.
Also, you should probably read the following. it's from a guide I haven't currently finished, but I think this particular section (as well as the whole guide I'd assume) will do you good.
Advertising: Making your Tournament Attractive
There is absolutely NOTHING that will bomb your tournament more quickly than having a pathetic, unprofessional, and boring topic about it. I’m dead serious: it doesn’t matter how much experience you have under your belt or how amazing your tournament is going to be, if your topic looks lazy and pathetic, then you simply won’t have anyone sign up. Luckily for you it doesn’t take a special amount of creativity or effort to make a topic that’s eye catching and gets people to read on and ultimately sign up.
First things first: the title
A good title is one that’s simply intriguing, sometimes a little funny, and gets people to wonder “wow, what is this? Maybe I should click on this and read it more.” Remember in English class when your english teacher was talking about writing a good essay and mentioned the ‘hook’ that draws the reader in and gets them to read on. That’s pretty much what you want your topic name to be. Luckily this isn’t this hard to think up.
Inkstorm, Booyah Battle, Messtival, Calamari Cup, even SCL’s crazy dumb names like “SCL Super Ultra Turbo Edition”; All are attractive names that make the person want to sign up over other generically named tournaments. Why? Because they’re interesting and show effort. They’re all also a little silly and feel really casual: When you think of something called “Booyah Battle” you don’t think of a stressful tournament. Compare that to a generic tournament name. “Splatoon Tournament One” or something equally mundane. It makes it feel almost like signing up for the tournament and competing will be work. It doesn’t show any individuality, or effort, or fun. If the name of the tournament feels like a slog, why should the person expect the tournament not to be?
Ok, so next is the topic. If you’ve came up with an awesome (or really ****ing stupid) name, you’ll probably be able to turn some eyes, even if you’re a new tournament. How can you keep them attached?
It’s simple. The topic needs to be relatively concise, well written, entertaining, and professional. It also is a great idea to make use of pictures and other artistic garnishes to brighten it up.
Allow me to compare a well worked tournament post with one that isn’t so well worked. First I will discuss one I’ve made up myself that is meant to be extremely horrible. Then I will do the same with one of my SCL posts, discussing what I did right and ways that it may be improved.
And note, a lot of what goes into tournament posts is rules, framework information, etcetra. For the bad post this has all been left out, but I will go over proper rules format when discussing the good example. The bad one will mostly focus on hooking the player and all the mistakes it makes within the first paragraph.
First, the bad post:
Topic name: Squidboards Splatoon Tournament, This November 5th
Hey everyone. My name’s Fightersword, and I’m here to bring u an amazing tourney, straight from the hands of SCL. This Sunday on November 5th we’ll be hostin’ a splatoon tourney for anyone interested. Just drop a signup post down below, the signup rules can be found here (Link), and we’ll get you added in as soon as we can. Remember to check out the rules for the matches and when the exact time the tournament starts here (Link). Make sure you’re on time, and have a great day everysquid
Let’s begin with the topic name, shall we. It’s the epitome of bland, lazy topic names, and isn’t going to make any team take a second glance. At the very least he included a date, something I personally like to do but that is by no means necessary so long as it's in the topic.
So at this point most teams are already turned away, but the few that actually decide to click into it anyway are met with about the same amount of effort that was obviously put into the topic name. There’s still no name for the tournament even within the topic, and there’s no information at the top of the post, meaning teams looking for a quick reference to how many teams have signed up, when the tournament actually is (the hour), and more are **** out of luck and have to read through the boring, generic paragraph that follows to get any information. That’s not where the paragraph’s problems end either. It hasn’t been grammar or spellchecked at all, with the imposter! Fightersword even shortening words like you to u. This isn’t a ****ing text conversation, you’re trying to convince people to play in your tournaments. But that’s not where it ends, either. All of the actual information for the tournament is in a bunch of poorly inserted extra links, which means teams are going to have to open up new tabs just to find any actual information about your tournament. It’s nice when that information is posted in a separate document in addition to being put into the topic, but if it’s only over at another link it becomes a chore at best. The conclusion for the topic ends just as un-excitedly as the opener, and most teams are likely to be left with an overwhelming feeling of ‘meh’ before moving on to the next tournament topic. Plus it doesn’t even end in a period. Shameful Display.
Now let’s cheer ourselves up a bit and look at an example of a good topic, ripped straight out of the second SCL BI weekly. I have omitted the things I put within the spoilers and marked those as (in depth rules)
[Note, I removed the colors and just centered all of it. The original thread, for full reference, is Here
Squids and Squidettes:
We at SCL are proud to announce our second Splatoon community League tournament
SCL: Supreme Edition (Bi-weekly Live #2)
current signups: 12/16
Riding on the coattails of SCL's first, successful tournament comes the wildly improved, even MORE bombastic second entry in the SCL Live series: SCL: Supreme edition! Promising to be an even smoother, even more exciting tournament, with an updated ruleset that is easier to understand and fairer and faster for everyone involved, this tournament will host a number of improvements from the previous tournament while ramping up everything good about the first one. Put your skills to the test once again in this 16 team, single elimination tournament on Sunday September 20th at Noon EST.
How to Sign up
Team captains are expected to post a roster in the following format. This roster will not only be used for this tournament, but it will also be entered as a team in SCL: our custom ranking system, so that you may be ranked when playing against other SCL teams during this tournament and in the future. If you are already signed up for SCL, you can simply post your team name down below. This second option will hopefully be applicable for most of the teams returning from the previous tournament.
All signups need to be made following the rules and format below. Make sure all the information is there and correct. Your team will be edited into the bottom of this post after you are added, and we will let you know if you mess something up.
Rules for signups. If you're not already signed up with SCL, read these carefully
(In Depth Rules)
Signup Format Reference
(In Depth Rules)
How the Tournament will be Run
On Sunday the 20th at Noon EST, teams are expected to be prepared to play. Team leaders or another designated representative will also be expected to be present in the Discord chat, where the TOs will be communicating with them. We will provide the means to access the discord chat in this topic, later, so keep an eye out for that.
Teams will be asked to play against each other as laid out in the challonge bracket which will be provided ahead of time. This tournament is not taking place over an extended period of time. As such, teams are expected to remain active until they are knocked out of the tournament. If a team is not responsive when their match is set to be played, they will be disqualified from the tournament.
Games are played as a best of 5 set, until the top 4, which will be played as best of 7 sets. There will be a bronze match (third place tiebreaker)
For this tournament, one of the major improvements we are introducing, is introducing Halo Map Rules. In short, this means the mode and map combinations you will be playing on will be provided to you by the TOs in a way that is not biased for any team. For more information on Halo Map Banning rules, check out the topic by clicking Here. If you'd like to know my opinions, which do reflect the opinions of SCL for Halo map style, look for my post in the thread.
You may also sub up to 2 players from your roster in between games, every time. You may of course sub in less than that or no one at all.
Map/Mode Comboes For Tourney: These shouldn't need to be changed, but if they are it will be made known.
(In Depth Rules)
Disconnect Rules
(In Depth Rules)
Reporting Problems
(In Depth Rules)
We hope this tournament goes even better than the previous one, and that the rule changes and additions made help foster an even better tournament. We hope that you all enjoy yourself, and come out of this feeling it was a positive experience. Good luck to every team involved, and we hope you bring home the gold.
Also, As hinted at by the name, we plan to do these tournaments Bi weekly on Sundays from here on out. This is to maintain a sort of regularity without having them being too close together
Teams signed up will go here, in an unfinished bracket that will be added after two signups. quick number check: current signups are 12/16 since last update
(Bracket)
Finalized unless someone else signs up.
So there’s a lot to say about this topic. First thing you may note is that this tournament didn’t actually manage to reach its cap of 16 players. This was mostly due to a scheduling conflict we had with Calamari Cup, something I will discuss more of in later sections. To put it short we actually managed to finish the tournament extremely quickly after pushing it to one hour earlier to avoid the conflict, something I am very proud of my staff for managing to accomplish. For now though we should focus on the actual meat of this topic.
Let’s start with the title. The title isn’t as ridiculous as some of our other names (Super Ultra turbo Edition comes to mind), but it does a lot to say “hey, we’re a tournament with effort put in, and we’ve got one hell of a serving for you”. We also went with supreme because it started with an S, like SCL, similar to what Booyah Battle and Calamari cup did. Finally I added in Edition to say that this is the ‘better’ version that was much improved on compared to the past tournaments. Overall my intent was to communicate that this tournament was an improved upon version of the original, with a somewhat cheesy name that would keep people from feeling like it was taking itself too seriously. The name in the parentheses is my ‘sub-name’ for the tournament, which is something completely optional that I like to do so I can keep all of my tournament names fairly original while making sure they’re all under the same series. Since this was part of my SCL Bi-weekly AKA SCL Live series, I indicated that in the sub name so people knew it was part of that series. You can also just put it under the first name in slightly smaller font. Sub names are something I recommend using when running a series of tournaments that you want to all have fairly different names.
Let’s move on. Immediately under that is the signup count. This was put here specifically so if we fill up we don’t waste teams’ time who come in when the topic is full. They can come in and glance, see if there’s a place open, and if not not have to waste any more time going through just to see that it’s full. This is really something I do mostly out of courtesy and professionalism, and is typically a good idea if you don’t want to have your preview lineup at the top of the topic. If you don’t have a cap you should still do this.
Next is the intro, or where I really want to try to hook the player to read more. I immediately confirm that, yes, it is a tournament in a series, and it’s an improved on version. I try to hype up the players and get their blood boiling with sort of typical calls to honor and fun while I promise this is going to be the better tournament. It’s frankly written to be professional and interesting. Who wouldn’t want to play an improved version of the original tournament, which was already relatively successful? Who doesn’t want to battle it out for glory? Doesn’t this all make it sound like the tournament is going to be fun. Truly that’s the goal of the intro, to make it seem like this tournament is going to be fun and that you should play. I feel this intro is a pretty typical example of this in action.
Next I immediately delve into signup rules. The order here is important. You’re trying to convince them to sign up with that intro, and if you’ve done so they’ll be like “how will I sign up”. They look down two inches and there’s this nice neon green title that catches the eye. “How to Sign up”. Once we get past that I slow down and get more professional in my language. I want the information to come across clearly and smoothly, without too much wordiness. You’re not trying to hype people up in this stage. You’re trying to communicate information, which means you don’t want to bury it under much more hotblooded language. It could cause confusion if you’re not careful, and is generally unneeded in my experience.
Next I have the signup format reference and a more in depth version of the signup rules, both sectioned under bright orange (another eye catching color) headers and inside spoilers. The spoilers mean if someone doesn’t need to or doesn’t want to check those rules, they don’t have to (though they’re still expected to adhere to them). It also keeps the topic seeming concise. Also note the rules are included in the topic, so the players don’t have to open up new tabs and separate documents to read them. However, it never hurts to have a seperate rules document so long as you make sure the rules are also presented inside the topic.
The topic repeats the same pattern for the next set of framework and rules, which is the set for use during the tournament. This also includes the map/mode combination list for the tournament, though this is something I have dabbled with giving out on the tournament day instead. It’s important that you keep the floor rules separate from the signup rules for online tournaments so teams don’t have to dig between signup rules to find the tournament rules the day of. It also feels cleaner, smoother, and more professional to keep them separate.
I end it with a conclusion right above the signed up teams list. A good tournament is one where the teams enjoy themselves. We are there to make sure that happens. We know it may not be perfect, but we work harder every time to make sure it is better than the last. We are the servants of fun and promise to bring a smooth and enjoyable tournament to everyone who signs up.
The conclusion doesn’t have to be about that, but it’s where I like to discuss how I feel about the tournament and how I hope it goes. Feel free to use it to hype them up more or whatever else you want to. Below the conclusion I have a preview bracket (which isn’t seeded until signups close, and which I consider separate to signups) and another reference with signup numbers and the names of teams signed up. This can probably go on the top too or at the bottom of the signup rules section, but I personally prefer it at the bottom where it is.
The topic was also spell-checked and formatted before posting. This is something I highly recommend doing, because nothing says “I don’t give a ****” more than misspellings. Get your other TOs to give it a read too before you post it so you can get their opinions as well. They might catch something you missed.
So to quickly summarise, a good tournament topic is one that grabs attention with a hotblooded, maybe somewhat cheesy title and introduction, and then follows it up with refined, non-confusing, concise explanations of what will go on and the rules surrounding such things. While making a topic like the one above is far from a guarantee of gathering interest in your tournament, having a bland one is a good way to turn people who would otherwise join your tournament away.