Kong Off 4 machine gets rolling

[marinomitch13]

I agree with Ethan. Have the bracket system for entertainment, but keeping the high score format from past years is a must. And... let's just be honest... even with the high score format from past years, there was no lack of excitement (e.g. Wiltshire's final game at KO3, just to name one)

tl;dr: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgk-lA12FBk

[lakeman421]

I'll throw a couple of cents into this discussion.  I have talked to Richie and  about the next Kong Off.  One of the top goals for them is to have a way of getting the crowd involved and keep them entertained(I can't go too much into detail).  The bracketed system would work best for this idea to get the crowd involved.  From a spectators standpoint the matches in the bracket system would be shorter and less boring.  After doing live kill screens at arcades and events I realized people don't really care too much about what the end score is.  The excitement of the kill screen is great for the spectators and people who don't really know much about the game.  Any format that increases    chances of winning would also be a crowd pleaser.

Now here's the other side.  The players are spending their time and money to attend this event, and they want to play.  Why travel that far to play just one game?  Nobody wants that.  The bracket system may test people's ability to handle pressure and it may not represent who the best player is that weekend.  In my opinion crowning a Kong Off champion who ran boards all day is not a good thing.  The prize money involved for the winners of the event is another thing to consider.  The top prizes shouldn't go to people who ran boards and won a bunch of coin flips since that doesn't ever win Kong Offs or DKOs.  Going for high score still has its exciting moments like Hank and  finishing a game 100 points off.  The chance at seeing a new world record is something that gets people excited and talking about before every Kong Off.

So here's what I think we should do.  We should keep the old high score format to determine the Kong Off champion and who wins prize money.  Those things should go towards the players to truly earned it for pushing the winning score as high as it can go.  We should also do the bracket system as a side event for the spectators to keep them more involved and entertained.  There could also be a side game where spectators have prizes that they could win depending on which player they picked.  Every March Madness bracket people always have money on the line so we could try to do the same for this event.  If we are doing a four day event we could do one or two matches towards the end of each day.  So we all go for high score during an allotted time the first day and then play a match or two towards the end of the day.  Then the second day the winners of each match get to play and possibly give the other players more time to go for a high score.  And so on after that.  If a spectator sees the player they have prizes riding on win the first day chances are they will be back the next day to see their player play the next match.

Thats my take on it and my suggestion.  I honestly don't care too much about how it goes down.  I am just happy we are having a Kong Off, and will do what the players and organizers decide to do.  Going to events and socializing with other players and enthusiasts is what its mostly about for me. 

[ChrisP]

One thing that's confusing me a little about this reaction is that some form of bracketed competition has been the plan since KO4 was first announced, which was quite some time ago, and everybody seemed to like the idea of it up to now.

So it seems strange to wait until now, when the event is relatively soon, to voice objections to the idea.

That said, there is merit in the objections!

[Xermon54]

I do agree with Chris. At first, people seemed very positive about the bracket style.

Personally, I do agree with everything Ethan said about the bracket tournament. But I also agree that head to head competition needs to happen. To combine both, we could do like 2 days of normal gameplay (who gets the highest score), and the last day, the four highest scorer of the first 2 days goes head to head against each other (all four players play one game against each player, head to head), then the 1st and 2nd position of the most wins battle in a last game head to head in a 2 out of 3.

Personally, I think having a top 4 players for bracket tournament instead of top 8 players could be better, like that people would need to point press very hard the 2 days to get in top 4 (we would most likely need to get 1.05m+ to get in top 4). And having 4 top players going head to head with each other would add more emphasis on the best players.

That's just my thoughts. I will obviously be very happy the way it will be!

[VON]

I thought this had already been resolved as well...

It was my understanding the first few days of the tournament would be a high score competition to seed the final bracket competition and eliminate low scoring players.

Yes? No?

Another suggestion I remember recommended having a high score competition for the players knocked out of the bracket competition.

Whatever the final format, I am sure it will include elements of both bracket style and high score competition, so rest easy.

[VON]

The more I think about it the more I feel the KO should absolutely include a bracket playoff.

Make the first two days a high score competition, then cut to a top 8 bracket playoff for the last day.

By only including the top 8 qualifiers in the bracket playoff, a lot of the aforementioned problems with boring play and low risk strategy actually begin to make things very interesting...

Do you really want to run boards against someone who qualified with a 1 million plus score?  OK, that's fair, but the million player can easily outpace the board runner so long as they survive.  In fact, the player running boards runs the risk of having their game end earlier than the point-presser (either because of seeing more bad rivets/pies or hitting the killscreen in less time), at which point the point-presser can just cruise in for the win.  Similarly, if both players decide to run boards, the more efficient player will still win out, and the point-presser can still turn it up at the end if required.

Whether or not the bracket playoff should be single-elimination, double-elimination or best two-of-three will depend on how much time we have to run the competition, and that decision will ultimately fall to the organizers.

I agree it would suck to have your day end early due to bad randomness on the early barrel boards, so I'm inclined to think a double-elimination bracket might be best, as two-of-three would just be too time consuming and tiring. 

My 2 cents.

[lakeman421]

I think we can all agree that both formats should happen.  As long as the event organizers are aware of that and can find a way to make it happen in the given amount of time.  It seems like time is a big factor in making both formats happen.

[VON]

We should also remember how much fun the NH single-elimination bracket competitions were to watch, and that the best NH player won both times.

Of course, NH is a different game altogether, and exciting for different reasons, but if anything it is more random than normal play, so maybe single-elimination isn't such a bad thing, especially as it will reduce the time required to run the tournament.

[marky_d]

http://replayfx.org/competitions/kong-off-4/

[Xermon54]

Thanks Mark, nice to see it official on the website. 5k looks like a pretty nice start, but I'm sure the prize will go up after finding other sponsors. And I think it's quite funny to see they mentionned Dean's score as being the World Record.  Robbie is gonna go Sczerby mode and call replayfx and tell them being mentionned on their website as being the WR holder would've changed his life for the best