Who thinks X Wing Tournaments are way too long?

[Slugrage 5,007]

There is a problem, I think: as the game grows more popular, more people show up for sanctioned events, and tournaments are getting long.

There's a lot that can be done to minimize the problem, though. If rounds are a strictly enforced 75 minutes, and you stick to 10 minutes between rounds, you can run 6 rounds in about 8 hours 30 minutes. (Even if you slip a couple of times, 12 hours for just Swiss rounds is excessive.)

And stores need to be realistic about the size of the event. If the tourney staff is very experienced and can manage more people efficiently, great. But if they're novice or inexperienced about handling large groups, then they need to put a self-imposed cap at a specific number. We ran 4 rounds of swiss, plus a top 4 cut, yesterday and we opened for reg at 10am, started the first matches at 11:15am, and we were out by 8:15pm.

[barriecritzer 479]

It has always be an issue for me how long tournaments are becoming. Played in a store championship yesterday with 6 rounds of Swiss cutting to top 8. Starting at 11 am 6th round of Swiss finished at 11 pm. Top 8 was going to start after that. At that point the game isn't fun...it is torture a test of stamina and endurance. I don't know if anything can be done about it especially in a large tourneys. But I believe something has to change...60 min. rounds, making them 2 days, etc. Anyone else feel this way?

were you at the stuffnpodunk store championship?

[higgie301 41]

Yes is was the Stuffnpodunk event. Maybe the answer is a cap.

[Estarriol 1,649]

Ran across a similar issue in Dark Sphere, London last year. I was relying on public transport so I couldn't have stayed for the top cut even had I made it (lost my last game which would've got me in!). It started late and took ages between rounds. Apparently if was better this year but I wasn't willing to invest in the possibility it might run to time.

[higgie301 41]

So maybe have pre-qualifier events that lead to capped Championship events. 4 rounds of Swiss cut to top 4 sounds like the sweet spot.

[InterceptorMad 1,920]

Most places in the UK a) don't have people just showing up, it's always pre-register/pre-pay and b) have caps as our gaming stores/gaming places are mostly small.

 

So I've not found that too many people arrive and therefore slow down the day.

[AlexW 2,902]

Just found out the final game finished at 4 am. I like competition so I do see it as an amazing problem to have to have a 17 hour day plus drive time to get to play against the best competition. Again you get the best competition on vassal without the torture.

You're still sort of missing the point. The problem is how the event was run, not the recommended number of rounds, etc... The FFG event center hosted

87 players for six rounds of Swiss followed by four more after a top 16 cut and were done around 1AM. Swiss was done about 8PM, a full three hours before your event. The final game ended two hours before yours with an extra elimination round.

Now, that's still a long day, even for Swiss, but that's pretty much as big as a store championship gets. If the store can't host the recommended number of rounds and cut, they should cap it. If the competition is too long for players they should probably attend other, smaller events. There may be a point where they need to look at two day events, etc., especially for regionals, but for now the number of rounds isn't quite enough enough at certain numbers and the x-1 cut is pretty rough. I would like to see earlier starts, though.

Edited March 6, 2016 by AlexW

[barriecritzer 479]

I don't really want an event starting earlier than 10/11 am, I have to get up early every weekday for work, last thing I want to do is have to get up at 5 am on a Saturday because the tournament is starting at 8am

[xanderf 6,626]

I'm less annoyed with length -- for big events, you'll have more rounds -- than start times and readiness to run the tournament.

If you're a store hosting a store champs, and in my area they regularly draw 25+ people, then don't plan to start the event at 1 PM, especially on a Sunday. Or worse, be the store that advertises a 2 PM start but doesn't actually start until 3 when you have 46 people show up to play.

 

Yeah, this is a really big problem.

 

If the store is running a major event (store championships, regional championships, etc) where you are expecting 40+ people - you HAVE to be open at 10am, no later.  And maybe that means the store is opening outside usual business hours, but you really have to be able to do that to run an event that large (so sure, increase the registration fee to cover that extra employee cost, but you've GOT to open and have registration well under way no later than 10am)

[DailyRich 3,346]

I know someone who was at the Stuffnpodunk tournament. They started an hour late and had a two hour lunch break, and it wasn't well organized in general from the sound of it.

[Strikesback 147]

I don't see the point of this. As a TO you can put restrictions on events. Take my store they told me to cut the store event to 24 pepole for time. I can really only run on Sundays so I followed what they told me to do. Better to play x-wing then not at all. And as long a TO is quick with his stuff it should flow easily.

[ParaGoomba Slayer 3,180]

It has always be an issue for me how long tournaments are becoming. Played in a store championship yesterday with 6 rounds of Swiss cutting to top 8. Starting at 11 am 6th round of Swiss finished at 11 pm. Top 8 was going to start after that. At that point the game isn't fun...it is torture a test of stamina and endurance. I don't know if anything can be done about it especially in a large tourneys. But I believe something has to change...60 min. rounds, making them 2 days, etc. Anyone else feel this way?

There are two tournament formats in my area. Weekly Thursday, Friday, and Sunday tournaments that cost $5 and are 3 rounds.

Then there are Store Championships and the occasional special "Hey wave X just came out, top prizes are the new ships" event. These have top cuts/go on longer than 3 rounds.

I could play this game all day. This is why I don't understand why Alex Davy and the design team in general doesn't do a better job of balancing the game, they're literally paid to play it.

Anyone who has problems playing this game all day doesn't actually like it that much/should lose some weight. Or the store should be open early and be strict with start times so that they don't last all day. One of the problems with X-Wing is that it's not Magic The Gathering, so store owners don't care to learn anything about and are clueless so the events trigger 47 minutes after the advertised start time and there is always some retarded scoring issue that slows everything down 3-4 rounds in because the person doing the scoring doesn't calculate MoV properly or something.

Doesn't help that all the tournament software is non-existent/apparently sh*tty. You think someone at FFG could just be given a day or two to make some software for it.

Edited March 6, 2016 by ParaGoomba Slayer

[Blail Blerg 7,335]

There is so much sick in here it's disgusting.

[higgie301 41]

I love playing this game but people are going to quit playing because of how much time tourneys are taking. Standing for 12 or 14 or 17 hours isn't a badge of loving this game. At that point it is a sickness and unhealthy. Poker tournaments don't let you play that long and your sitting the entire time. At some point the comfort and enjoyment of the majority of players is going to have to take precedent over how many people you can cram into one space. And a reasonable amount of time in one day is paramount.

[barriecritzer 479]

I know someone who was at the Stuffnpodunk tournament. They started an hour late and had a two hour lunch break, and it wasn't well organized in general from the sound of it.

It did start late but there was no 2 hour lunch break

[Slugrage 5,007]

I love playing this game but people are going to quit playing because of how much time tourneys are taking. Standing for 12 or 14 or 17 hours isn't a badge of loving this game. At that point it is a sickness and unhealthy. Poker tournaments don't let you play that long and your sitting the entire time. At some point the comfort and enjoyment of the majority of players is going to have to take precedent over how many people you can cram into one space. And a reasonable amount of time in one day is paramount.

I think you're projecting your personal, and possible one-time(?), experience and presuming every tournament everywhere has the same issue. I think it's pretty apparent from the resulting discussion off your first post that this is not the case.

[higgie301 41]

Nope I never been in a in person tournament without delays.

[kellyj 191]

My 9 year old boy and 11 year old girl just did a 6 game Store Champs (she went 2-4 and he went 3-3!!!). And this wasn't a small town event. It was LA and had several top players from Worlds competing. If they can power through and be willing and able to play top 8 (if and when they get to that level) then the rest of us need to suck it up and man up.

The 75 minute time was established because 60 minutes allowed to many wins via slow playing your opponent. Don't like it? Blame the poor sportsmanship of someone who takes 5 minutes to set his single YT-1300 dial. The number of rounds are due to the number of people now playing (a victim of their success?).

45 minutes between round for setup??? we don't even take that much time for a lunch break.

Ultimately, if you don't like the length of time to get a tourney done, either run it yourself or don't go.

[higgie301 41]

The biggest delays have always been waiting for the 75 min. Limit to be over after the majority of games ended 15-20 min. earlier.

Edited March 6, 2016 by higgie301

[Slugrage 5,007]

The biggest delays have always been waiting for the 75 min. Limit to be over after the majority of games ended 15-20 min. earlier.

I think you're mixing up a "delay" with a "that's how long the game is designed to take" concept.

[InterceptorMad 1,920]

Yeah and again that is on the organiser.

 

If the TO has had everyone's results in and everyone is finished, announce that everyone has a 5 min break and the next round will start.

 

Waiting for 75 mins to be up when EVERYONE is done isn't an FFG rule problem, it's a disorganised TO problem.

[Vorpal Sword 14,685]

The biggest delays have always been waiting for the 75 min. Limit to be over after the majority of games ended 15-20 min. earlier.

If that's the case, it's not really clear to me how 6 rounds of Swiss play took 12 hours. That's 7.5 hours of actual play time and 4.5 hours of delay--almost an hour between every round.

Again, I actually agree that tournament length is becoming a problem. But in your particular case, it seems like the more fundamental problem is a badly managed event.

[higgie301 41]

It seems reality doesn't bear the 75 min. design...but you know as a game it can be whatever we the players want it to be.

[Squark 2,539]

... You are actively ignoring the fact that the 12 hour tourney was an aberration caused by TO incompetence. Discussing tourney length is a good idea, but your continued repetition of that one outlier is turning this into a straw man argument, and that's a waste of everyone's time.

Regarding the 75 minute round time: Did you play during the last two year's competitions? I ask because the 75 minute came about because the fat ships that were positively everywhere pre-TLT were very good at stalling for time. Swarms also really suffered from the short time limit, as did highly technical lists like Nathan Eide's pre-Poe Dameron build (With 15 more minutes, Nathan would have beaten Paul Heaver during the 2014 Worlds... Granted, if X-wing had had 75 minute rounds then, Paul might have brought a different list).

Your current metagame might tend towards quicker play, but the 75 minute round needs to remain to keep certain parts of the meta in check.

Edited March 6, 2016 by Squark

[skotothalamos 3,626]

More X-Wing tournaments need to start at 9am like Magic tournaments do.

 

And more TOs need to actually practice running a tourney before Store Championships hit them in the face.