Z-I-v Summer Contest 2020

Well, I tried.

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VIP Week 3 Results
Click here to go to the scoresheet
Reminder: ties are broken by number of higher votes, starting at 5 and going down

1st - Last Dress [djVERTICAI] - 30
2nd - IN [Telperion] - 23 (Four 3's)
3rd - Imagine [DDRDAIKENKAI] - 23 (Two 3's)
4th - Hoshikuzu Struck [talkion] - 22
5th - Left & Right [ledgam3r1279] - 21
6th - PhilosopheЯ's Stone [Van Eden] - 14
7th - TRIUMPH [Pandemonium X] - 13
8th - Nisemono Chuuihou [KexMiX] - 12
9th - STOIC HYPOTHESIS [tsugaru7reveng] - 11
10th - AKASHIC BREAK [FoRCeDNaTuRe] - 10





10th Place: vincentw - 6pts

9th Place: Van Eden - 7pts

8th Place: CLOUDIO - 12pts

7th Place: brunobg24 - 13pts

6th Place: KexMiX - 15pts

5th Place: DDRDAIKENKAI - 20pts

4th Place: djVERTICAI - 30pts

3rd Place: ledgam3r1279 - 38pts


Runner Up
talkion - 40pts


Congratulations to the 2020 Ziv Summer Contest Winner
Telperion - 47pts



Thank you to everyone once again for participating, it's hard to believe this has been going on since June. Congrats to Tel for taking it home and to all of our finishers. At nearly 400 submissions, we've seen too many amazing files to count, so I'm grateful to have everyone contribute. I hate leaving everyone in suspense, but I'm going to be out the rest of the day. I'll be back either tonight or tomorrow to write up my final thoughts for the contest and what I'll be doing moving forward.

Huge thank you as well to tak, who has been my apprentice, advisor, collaborator, and press secretary. You guys might not realize the work he put in to not only help out what I've been doing, but to contribute his own ideas as well. I don't know how much credit he'll want to take to keep this operation afloat, but I can tell you he deserves a lot.

Thank you. Everyone stay safe!

- Daniel

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these pending results have me anxious

nevermind, good job you guys! good charts all around :0

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And we only nearly shut down the website about twenty times!

Jokes aside, congratulations to Tel. I didn't participate but there were some pretty wild 18s and 19s this last round.

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Wow. I knew this would be tight between led, Telperion and I, but 23-22-21 though

Congrats to Telperion for the well-deserved win! His file was by far my favorite this week, and it's exciting to see more and more tech make its way into contest files. Even though I didn't end up winning this one, I'm really hopeful for what this means for the future of Z-I-v meta.

Congrats to led as well for taking 3rd! We were all in a spot where any of us could've won, so it wouldn't have been surprising to see a result where you took 1st instead.

I'd like to thank Van Eden for everything he's done running this contest. From creating all the graphics and assets to handling drama to implementing new ideas into the contest, he's juggled a lot of work through these past few months. It was a lot of fun collaborating with him in Week 9 as well.

And to everyone else, VIP room or not, thank you for playing. This has been my first time (co-)hosting a contest here, and although there's been a lot of drama I'd like to think it went a lot better than I expected. There was a lot of variety in charting this time around, and a lot of you took my themes farther than I ever could've imagined. I'd certainly like to host a contest by myself in the future!

Congrats to Telperion! You earned it, buddy!

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Haha, I hate myself. I would ranked first in the final week and tie first in total if I had vote. Well, congratulations to everyone! It was a nice this year

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I have to admit, I'm pretty surprised by this result haha. Thanks everyone! And great work to both talkion and ledgam3r1279 for making it a nailbiting finish.

Those with sharp eyes may have noticed that I was (mostly) sticking to songs produced for BMS, which are what the IIDX simulator scene runs on. It's a treasure trove of rhythm-game-styled tracks, and I love following their yearly competitions too!

I'm probably going to go back to Zenius lurker mode now that SC '20 is over - I mostly joined because chewi and pie-kun and tamtamino and a bunch of other stepping veterans were like "hey let's get together like we did in old times and have a fun summer" 😅 About that...
But I'm glad Z-I-v contests are still running and I hope they continue to do so. Shoutouts to VanEden and talkion for sticking with it even when the going got rough. I wrote my first "real" simfiles for Summer Contest '10...there's something comforting about being able to pop my head back in and see that, even though the game and the scene have changed a lot, that opportunity still exists for new folks a decade later 😎

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Didn't see the results until now, but gg. Personally, I don't like this new trend of people making more overly difficult tech charts (or just overly difficult charts in general) all of a sudden, but at least my top 3 finish shows that they're not entirely meta just yet. After all, I didn't submit any 15s or higher for the entire contest, it turns out (only one and a half 14s and the rest are 13 and below), and I still made it close until the very end. Not to mention the plethora of "easy" files made by others that can compete with the harder stuff as well.

Come to think of it, I don't remember if there are any ZIv contests that actually focus on DDR-style charts exclusively rather than a mix of different styles. And even if there are, I don't know how much the lower difficulties actually matter when it comes to voting either.
Lately, I've actually been thinking about hosting my own contest as well, but more on that later if and when the time comes.

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Agreeing with led here. This might be better for the other thread but I’d suggest separating DDR and ITG styles in the future though. It seems like majority prefers the ITG tech style charts which is why those ones keep winning while the DDR ones stay in the middle of the pack with only led scoring high enough.

Nonetheless congratulations to the winners and thanks again VanEden and talkion for hosting! It’s been a wild 3 months for sure.

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The best files win each week, place top 3 each week, are winning because they are the highest quality files on a week to week basis.

If you're dissatisfied that your files aren't winning, the only thing to do is improve. It's 2020, you can't make 4th mix style charts and expect to win.

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I can't really think of the last time I saw a round that was heavily lopsided towards harder difficulties, and it was the final round. People wanted to give a big finish.

Wanting to "seperate" them because they're too good is about as far from competitive as it gets. And it's not like there's a concrete definition for what really makes up the DDR meta vs the ITG meta, so...

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Would rather play 30 "4th mix" files than 30 boring 14+ ITG/Tech/New DDR files that all blend together.

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It's 2020 and a basic charting style from 20 years ago does not win over more creative, intricately thought out charts. They are well-received, but they aren't winning. We're not handicapping a contest because people that make easy files don't get their way. Restricting creativity and what you're allowed to do doesn't make sense. This isn't BEST-mix, people can chart however they want and make their charts as hard as they want so long as they are reasonably paddable.

tl;dr adapt

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WRESTLE

WRESTLE

WRESTLE

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Well that whole spiel doesn't apply to me, I don't do this shit to win. Lmao

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Well...

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After 4 months, we’ve finally arrived at the conclusion of the Summer Contest. I want to give my final thoughts on the tournament. Sorry if this is a few days off from when I said I would do this. Also sorry for the wall of text.

What went right:
I believe the good and the bad for this contest are pretty cut and dry. The best part about the contest were the files themselves. While every year there is the opportunity to see so many people’s style on display, I think this year in particular raised the bar for quality, maybe due to the number of different contestants. Even the graphics some of you guys made were absolutely out of this world. The entire tournament download file is available on the category page if you want the whole 4gb pack. For some of you, the files are all that matters, and I believe in a vacuum, that aspect was pulled off phenomenally. When archeologists dig up this website 100 years from now, they will hopefully find that page and not the forum thread.

What went wrong:
To say this year was unlike any other is an understatement. Things are quite different from last year, from the Battle Royale, even day to day things are uncertain for many people. For me, I was called back into work about half way through the tournament. Having exponentially more free time may have been one of the things that led to the unexpected success of the Battle Royale, whereas more and more throughout the summer contest I felt spread thin. Real life uncertainty, the vast number of contestants and competing ideologies (stepchart-wise), and a bunch of other things all led to a few personal conflicts, of which I will unceremoniously admit to being involved in. I don’t feel the need to elaborate any more, as you already know how I feel about this issue. My hard headed decision making was more often than not at fault and I wasn’t thinking of the people affected by it. For me the best solution is to really get to know everyone better in the future.

The Final Verdict:
Do I believe the 2020 Summer Contest was a success? My mindset when I upload a video is even if only 10 people watch it, as long as one person says they enjoyed it, that to me personally is a success. I think the same sentiment holds for these last few months. The fact that we made it from start to finish is more that can be said of some other events. Like I said, whatever happened throughout the contest, what matters in the end is that final 400 file pack. Could the journey there have been a bit smoother? Of course.

What’s Ahead:
There are a lot things I want to do moving forward. Running the 2020 contests has been eye opening for me. Going from pretty much flying under the radar being afraid to talk to anybody online a few years ago to engaging with everyone on such a large scale has helped me to grow immensely. But, and I’m sure some of you have felt this in the air for a while, I will have to step down as head tournament hosting guy. I’ve been dying to get back to personal projects, working on music and growing my YT channel among them, and between that and working full time I can’t with confidence commit to holding any more big events. I’d love to participate as just a fellow competitor once again in the future. I’ve heard a lot of great ideas from so many people these last few months, so please don’t think you need to rely on me for your sole source of contest stuff. My right hand man for this tournament would be a perfect candidate. I showed him what to do and he completely took off with it way faster than I expected, so it's safe to say he's got the formula down. Now I’m not saying everyone go hound tak incessantly for their contest fix. I'm just saying if and when the next contest may happen, he has my blessing to continue the ZIV tournament tradition.

Thank you guys once again for an exciting year, it was an honor to be able to host in 2020, and I hope to see what everyone has to offer in the future.

- Daniel

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Z-I-v Summer Contest 2021 When will you come? I will join as well.