3/26 (3/27 in Japan) International Tower Challenge

[Porcupine]

Our first western Tower Challenge event is coming up! We need as many western players as possible to set up a 6~7 player Tower, for the Japanese players to challenge. Their goal is to beat us all in a row. It will start on 3/26/16 in America at the usual time, now 17:00 PST (daylight savings time has passed since the previous Team Battle event). Hawaii, Finland, and Japan don't observe daylight savings time so in those places the time didn't change. Unlike most events, this one is flexible so Tower hosts and challengers can show up anytime the event is active.

I plan to be ready early, so feel free to show up at 16:00 PST or earlier. The Japanese players generally wake up and swarm in the Ranked lobby at 16:00 PST so we can invite some early challengers, or challenge our own Tower.

If possible I'd like for our Tower not to have repeat VRs in it. The order of our Tower will take into consideration player skill, as well as the VR order in Score Attack and Arcade modes. We tower hosts can change VRs and ordering when we feel like it, especially for challengers we don't expect to be a threat. However, we must determine our choices before a challenger starts fighting. We don't want to counterpick them, it's just for variety.

An example of candidates for making our Tower:

Raiden (Exorcet)
Apharmd C (Schooly D)
Cypher (Schooly D or Zaarock or Exorcet)
Temjin (PhantomPhotonX)
Apharmd S (Schooly D)
Apharmd B (Schooly D)
Specineff (PhantomPhotonX or DaveRudolph)
Angelan (Zaarock or Porcupine)
Fei-Yen (Porcupine or Zaarock)
Grys-Vok (MentholMoose or FlyExponent or Porcupine)
Ajim (VarryoChoco)
10/80 SP (VarryoChoco)
Stein-Vok (VarryoChoco)
Apharmd B (Darkrai)
Temjin (Shamanic Beat or Darkrai or VOTwinstick or PhantomPhotonX or Porcupine)

One person should definitely stream so that the Japanese players can watch and know the event is still going on, while they are waiting for the party invite. Whoever streams should be in the Tower most or all of the time. Can Schooly stream? That way Zaarock can record instead. If we get enough players, VOTwinstick can stream a second tower or casual lobby.



Here's what I wrote in Japanese to advertise the event. I think it says:

March 27, 9:00 Japan Standard Time
Welcome to the Tower of Death!
Japanese players please challenge the foreigners' tower one by one.
A fun game!

Rules:
Challenger cannot change VR.
2 attempts are allowed.
Winner can become the Tower Boss.
Tower Boss please use Raiden.
The last Boss is the champion.
Those who want to participate please wait in the lobby.

Prize:
<Achievement> Defeated all the GAIJINS.

Grand Prize:
Kiss from Porcupine.

[shamanic_beat]

So how many Japnaese players even know about this? And of those how many of them actually think the tournament is happening despite the lack of much updates?

And is tower battle a thing with Japanese players? If they aren't familiar with the rules it's gonna be one hectic situation. Cuz Katen was super confused the last time and that was just one Japanese player in a tournament with relatively simpler rule compared to this one.

[Porcupine]

I think a few of them know about it. At a minimum there will be the normal amount of people in Ranked match on that day and we'll invite all of them. There may be a few extra people. Katenasasosu said the Japanese player whom I beat in the last tournament might come to get revenge on me.

Tower battle rules originated with them, supposedly. That's why I called it Tower of Death, because I heard that is their name for it. I expect there will at times be confusion, or people won't follow the rules, so we'll just have to roll with that.

[VarryoSchwert]

Here for our team.

[Schooly D]

I'll be there

[Porcupine]

VarryoChoco said he painted that picture himself, it looks awesome.

Schooly, can you stream?

[PhantomPhotonX]

I hate to say this, but I won't be able to attend. Sorry! I'm curious to know how it goes though. Hopefully there is enough interest on the other side of the pond to justify making this a more regular thing.

[shamanic_beat]

Do we stay on the tower after we are defeated by the Japanese players?

[Porcupine]

Phantom, I don't know if this will make a difference but you don't have to be there the entire time. Pretty much any time on Saturday can work, including slightly before, or way after the official start time. As long as we are there playing.

shamanic, yeah we stay on permanently. The only one of us who might get kicked off is Exorcet, as the default Raiden boss. He could be replaced by the first Japanese player to beat the tower, if they understand what is going on, and want to become the new Raiden boss.

I made the Raiden rule for a couple reasons. One, because he is the boss in single player modes. Two, I don't want a top level Japanese player to beat our tower and then rule it forever with their main VR. They have to be vulnerable so they can be overthrown. This favors Raiden players, but we'll just have to see what happens. I've never played against a top Raiden player before, so I'm not expecting to see any this weekend.

seabass hunter just said he will join us. So we've got an S-rank Temjin challenger. He's also been playing Raiden lately for some reason and beat me with him in ranked last weekend.

[shamanic_beat]

>seabass hunter

Watch out for his stun-style AphB. I tried a weird strategy out and beat him last time, but I'm not sure it'll work again.

[PhantomPhotonX]

Would 9 PM Pacific time be too late? Because that is when I would probably be getting back home. Is there any chance of this lasting 5 hours? And I would be leaving around 2 PM.

[Schooly D]

I'll only be available until 8PM Pacific

[Zaarock]

I should be able to make it & record.

I think we should all use our main VRs instead of whatever arbitrary limitations or we'd be holding back against the opponent. There's a good chance some of the challengers can beat the tower why not go all out. Judging from the response to the team battle by soyoka & others they want us to try our best rather than seeing gimmick vrs.

Raiden rule makes no sense to me, if someone beats the tower and doesnt know raiden extensively he might as well become some random other player. Anyone is vulnerable

[Porcupine]

PPX, probably not but it would be worth it to check anyway. We might still be playing casually and if any challengers are around we can set up a tower again.

I guess no one has to follow the rules, they are more like guidelines! I request parley arrr.

[VOTwinstick]

Latest notice given to our brothers in the East. Got the attention of Espoir, I'll die happy haha

[Porcupine]

Event is over. Our western turnout wasn't bad, but we didn't get enough Japanese challengers. Thanks to everyone who participated!

We were able to rotate available western players in and out to make a single, full tower for most of the day:

Schooly D (???)
Zaarock (Cypher, Fei-Yen)
Shamanic Beat (Temjin)
Porcupine (Fei-Yen)
FlyExponent (Grys-Vok)
Darkrai (Temjin, Apharmd B)
holystarofdeath (Stein-Vok, Dordray)
VOTwinstick (Temjin)
InfernoNinpo (Temjin)

holystarofdeath obeyed the rules at first but eventually did his usual thing and we had to kick him out of the party haha!

No one beat the tower, a couple key defenses were put up by Zaarock and me. Schooly D challenged our tower at the end and beat it with Cypher.

[Schooly D]

Thanks for hosting Porcupine, but I'll be honest: I think you need to get more of a handle on these events. Both the team battle and yesterday's tower suffered from a lack of planning, a lack of coordination, and even a lack of caring on your part regarding what the rules are, who does what, etc.

We are not the Japanese, so I think it was a mistake to try to run our tower similarly. I'm sure the Japanese tower had plenty of people beating down the door to get into the lobby, but we're not them. It was always going to be slim pickings for us. Additionally, the ones that did join don't speak our language, so that presented its own set of difficulties for something as orchestrated as a tower challenge. On both points I think it would have been better to contact tower challengers ahead of time so we'd know whom we're fighting, and we'd be able to hash out the rules/proceedings with them (you join, you challenge this guy, then this guy, etc)

And that's to say nothing about the fact that it often felt like we didn't even have any rules. There was a point where we had two Japanese challengers and they were both just fighting whomever, and then when they lost they got to challenge the tower again in whatever order. I often felt like I had no idea what was going on, and that was reinforced when you expressed thoughts along the lines of "um, I don't know, I guess A challenge B, or B challenge C, whatever"

I appreciate the fact that you're settings these events up, but in the future I think it'd behoove you to engage in more thorough planning, especially for complicated things like tower battles against people we can't easily communicate with.

[Porcupine]

I'll try to plan Team Battle better next time, though I'm not sure Tower Challenge can go any better unless we have a person who is fluent in both Japanese and English organizing things. It was a fun idea, but I'm guessing we aren't going to do it again anyway.

I won't be hosting any more events until after you host another tournament. We need to see who is going to show up to these things and go from there.