Pre-registration is REQUIRED for FBA9. Reg. deadline is 12/24 at noon———-> smash.gg/FBA9REMOTE QUALIFYING IS MANDATORY FOR FBA9———-> See post body for submission rules and e-mail address for qualifier submissions
Welcome to the Facebook event page for FBA9: The 2018 Freeplay DDR Championship! FBA9 will be the finale of the 2018 season of the FBA series of monthly DDR tournaments at Freeplay Bar & Arcade, and we’re doing it big to send everyone off into another year of tournaments in 2019! This will also be the first FBA tournament to move to a Saturday from our usual Sunday dates!
Due to the success of dance games and the FBA series at Freeplay Bar & Arcade, Freeplay has made a big investment into a professional streaming setup, and FBA9 will be the first FBA tournament to be live broadcast on Twitch! Two commentators will be covering the tournament from start to finish, and the tournament stream will feature a direct video lineout of the game screen, a camera on the two players, and a camera on the commentators. The live stream will also feature player stats and matchup data accumulated throughout all DDR tournaments in New England in 2018.
To cap off the event, there will be a pizza party thrown after the tournament (included in the registration fee), at which time we’ll be doing announcements for 2019, and then an awards ceremony! The awards ceremony will feature superlatives for particular player accomplishments, and most importantly, the top players of the FBA series will be recognized with awards and the champion of the 2018 FBA season will be crowned! NOTE to regular FBA players: Player stats are NOT final as of right now, and the top players of the 2018 season will be calculated immediately after the tournament using FBA9’s match data to determine the top rankers. If you’ve been rocking it at the FBA series, you’re in the running! Don’t miss out on the last tournament!
—————–FBA9 Pre-Registration Policy:
Players must pre-register to compete at FBA9 so the Freeplay and New England Rhythm Games team know what to expect in terms of headcount. Registration will run through smash.gg/FBA9. If you’re interested in checking out the tournament but don’t want to compete, you can register as a spectator which will cover you to join in the pizza party / awards ceremony after the tournament! The registration deadline is December 24th at noon.
Note: FBA9 will not be using smash.gg’s bracketing system and will instead be hosted on Challonge as usual.
—————–Contact info and 21+ policy
TOURNAMENT IS 21+
Tournament Director: Nate Lemoi, contact on FB with any questions/comments/concerns
Like the “New England Rhythm Games” FB page to get the most up to date information about the FBA tournament series and community meetups!
——Address, Pricing, and Prizes
Address: 182 Pine St, Providence, RI 02903
(401) 316-4299
Date: Saturday, December 29th
Time: Doors open at 11 AM for check-in and last minute qualifying, tournament starts at 12 PM sharp
$10 Freeplay admission at the door
$25 Registration fee ($15 NERG registration fee, $10 to prize pool)
$10 to register as a spectator (pays to cover your spot at the pizza party and awards ceremony, no tournie registration, does NOT include Freeplay’s $10 cover)
Prizes:
1st: 60% of prize pool, $25 Freeplay gift card, Freeplay Swag
2nd: 30% of prize pool, $10 Freeplay gift card and Freeplay Swag
3rd: 10% of prize pool, Freeplay Swag
NOTE: The New England Rhythm Games and Freeplay team are actively seeking out sponsors for FBA9, prizes are very likely to shoot up between the event announcement and the day of the tournament. The prize structure is also subject to change. Check regularly for updates.
————————–RULESET:—————————————
—————–Qualifiers:
Qualifiers:
Programmed Universe (EXPERT 12)
Osaka Evolved TYPE 3 (DIFFICULT 13)
This tournament welcomes players of all skill levels! If the given qualifier is too difficult, players may qualify on a lower difficulty.
NOTE: REMOTE QUALIFYING IS MANDATORY FOR FBA9.
For the sake of consistency, only remote qualifying scores from DDR Ace will be accepted, and the picture/video must be of the score screen not your E-Amuse record on the song select screen. We do not have the time available to do any more than a strictly minimal amount of day-of qualifying for players who couldn’t make it out to a qualifying location due to work/life obligations, or out-of-region players without access to public DDR Ace machines. The places to qualify in New England are at one of the three DDR Ace locations:
Round 1 @ Silver City Galleria, Taunton, MA
Dave n’ Buster’s, Braintree, MA
Round 1 @ The Maine Mall, Portland, ME
For those New England players who live further out west in the region and have a longer drive to make it to one of the central Ace locations, the best day to make a trip would be during the Nintendo-themed community meetup that will be hosted by Rhythmcore Gaming at Round 1 (Taunton) on Saturday, December 15th. Make the most out of a Round 1 trip and come hang out with the community! The FB event page for the meetup is below:
https://www.facebook.com/events/573425906441799/
You can send your two qualifying scores to newenglandrhythmgames@gmail.com.
In case of a qualifier tie, a random 13 will be selected as a tiebreaker.
Depending on time constraints, there may or may NOT be a warmup song allowed for last-minute in-person qualifiers. Normally we do not do warmups at the FBA series and that is the most likely scenario. For this reason, remote qualifying is HIGHLY encouraged. We want to keep last-minute day-of qualifiers to an absolute minimum. If warmups are granted, you may not play one of the qualifiers as your warmup. Just a note on fairness, if warmups are granted, all players will be granted a warmup. There won’t be a scenario where warmups are granted and then taken back, putting those players without a warmup at a disadvantage.
—————–Format:
30 or less players: Double Elimination
More than 30 players: Single Elimination to top 16, then double elimination
The tournament will be using DDR X3.
The tournament will be seeded using the two qualifiers and run best 2 out of 3 songs using a random card draw for the song picks and a veto/protect system detailed below. Winner of each song will be determined by EX score (3 points for Marvelous/O.K., 2 points for Perfect, 1 point for Great)
[Note for new players who are unfamiliar with tournament seeding: Seeding is the method used to pair the players’ matches in the first round so that the strongest players do not face each other until later rounds. For this tournament, each player’s qualifying scores are added together and ranked from highest to lowest, then paired with their opposite ranking player. For example, in an 8-player tournament, pairings would be 1st ranked player and 8th ranked player, 2-7, 3-4, and 5-6.]
Grand finals will be best 3 out of 5, each song guaranteed to be a 14 thru 19. In the grand finals, 7 songs will be random’ed, and then the normal veto/protect sequence will occur.
*********NOTE: The format for grand finals may change to a longer format, possibly match rules or other format, before or during the tournament based on time constraints.
Each round will have an increasingly difficult range of difficulties that the songs will be selected from. The specific difficulty range per round will depend on the size of the bracket. A full breakdown of the difficulty ranges can be found here:
32-player bracket difficulty ranges: https://i.imgur.com/Cln2lKj.jpg
The difficulty ranges for a 64-player bracket are currently being finalized, will be released asap
FBA9 will utilize weighted randoms, the difficulty weights for each range are as follows:
9-11 (2, 4, 3)
11-15 (3, 5, 7, 4 , 3)
12-15 (3, 4, 4, 3)
12-16 (5, 8, 9, 7, 6)
13-16 (7, 11, 10, 9)
13-17 (4, 5, 7, 6, 5)
14-17 (5, 7, 8, 7)
14-18 (7, 9, 10, 9, 8)
14-19 (10, 13, 15, 13, 10, 5)
—————–VETO SYSTEM:
Prior to each match, 5 songs will be random’ed. From there, the players will each select a song to veto-protect (meaning they pick a song that may NOT be vetoed in the veto round), and then each player will veto one of the remaining 3 songs to give the final 3-song set. The remaining three songs will be played in the order they were selected.
At the beginning of the match: higher seed will choose one of the three following preferences:
-Pad preference (left side/right side)
-Veto-protect order (first or second)
-Veto order (first or second)
Higher seed gets the remaining option not selected by the lower seed.
————–Other rules:
All songs will be on Expert or Challenge, except that any non-Expert or Challenge chart that is a 13 or above in difficulty will also be included in the random draw.
Cut, no freezes, and no jumps are not allowed as modifiers as they affect total EX score. Life gauge modifiers are not allowed. All other mods including turn mods (right, shuffle, etc.), appearance mods (sudden, hidden, etc.) and arrow movement mods (boost, brake, wave) are allowed.
If a player fails a song, their EX score at the time of failure will be used as their final score for the song.
Barring extreme circumstances, there will be no pad arbitration. In the event of close matches with clear pad errors, players will switch sides and play the song again, using their highest score to determine the winner.
***************NOTE: All rules are subject to change, please check the event page regularly for update announcements. While this is highly unlikely and will be avoided at all costs, number of songs per match may be changed in case of a very large player turnout endangering time constraints.