ZIv Simfile Tournament of Immortals 2

I should point out that the qualifier (Ranking) week will be a free week. The themes do not start until we start match ups.

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Not everyone steps double.

Gross. Not everyone steps ITG style. You might as well call this "no spins" week.

Not everyone steps double, what's the point of having an incomplete file.

Support +1

Meh, it's the same themes every contest. I could literally start simming right now based on what themes were in past contests. Let's get at least a couple of new themes this time.

My personal suggestions:

Remix week (no original versions)
Long/Full Version Week (2:31 to 5:00)
Classical (remake of a "classic" song, made before 1900)
Seasonal (we did an entire contest based around Winter/Christmas, expanding this to any season is definitely possible)
Roots (original version of a song that has appeared on bemani games)

A file without doubles is an incomplete file :A

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It was a failure the only time Doubles Week appeared. Participation and voter turnout were at its lowest during this week.

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In the summer contest, I tried to make catagories that gave everyone tons of options, and encouraged people to use originality, instead ox boxing them into choosing from a finite list of songs. I have no clue how well they were received, though?

I thought "You Won't See This In DDR" was the best example. Instead of choosing from finite list of Pump / DJ Max songs, you could use songs from either of those games. You could also interperate the catagory another way, and enter licenses that were unuitable for any number of reasons, like vulgar lyrics. A couple of people entered files which had charts or gimmicks that Konami have never used. Essentially, it's upto your imagination to figure out what kind of files you'd never see in a DDR game.

The goal of this tournament is to test contestant's ability to step songs, not their ability to find a song that matches a restrictive category. New themes? Sure, but let's make sure people can find songs for the themes in a matter of minutes, not hours.

Non-restrictive new themes aren't that difficult :/

Pop Songs - Step a song that hit the top 40 in your native country
Speed Week - Step a fast song. 180bpm +
Remix Week - Step a remix (fan-made or official) of ANY song, not just in BEMANI (so video games, pop songs, instrumentals, etc.)
Boss Week - Step a DDR-Styled boss song

See?

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Restrictive, as a VAST majority of songs have BPMs much below that.


Restrictive step wise.

Speed week can be lowered to 150 if need be (there's a vast pool of songs in BEMANI alone that are above 150bpm). Boss week is restrictive but if done later in the tournament wouldn't be too difficult to execute.

The problem is that except for a few wide-reaching themes, most are restrictive to a point. Part of the fun (for me anyway) is finding a song that fits that restriction.

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I agree but what's the point of even having theme suggestions if they are the SAME themes every contest? Wanting new themes != wanting restrictive themes. I agree something like "songs at 150BPM" is restrictive, but technically "Video Games" week can be just as restrictive, especially to those who don't really listen to or know of many steppable video game songs (I almost always skip this week because of this issue). I would just like to see new themes is all, not restrictive.

I feel like the spirit of a contest is being missed by some of you. It's not suppose to be super duper easy and predictable, it's suppose to be a challenge that we all step up to. To use Doubles as an example, instead of going "Ow, I'm not good at Doubles" go "I'm going to do my best to beat everyone else". Otherwise sit that week out.

If you just want to sim whatever you want, then go sim whatever you want. You don't need to wait for an organized contest for that.

To be honest, I don't see why every week can't be a free week. One can argue that themes test versatility, but what exactly is versatile about stepping a song featured in a video game or stepping a pop song? For the summer contest I understand due to its length and in order to spice things up, but this is a relatively short bracket-style tournament.

In my personal opinion, every week should just be free week.

Fun sucked out.

Think about it differently. If every week were a free week, that would be way too difficult for the voters. I always thought, personally, anyway, that the themes were there in order to limit the pool of possible songs that people could step by forcing variety. It's easy to compare Evans to Elisha--it's tougher to match Evans with Étude in C Minor by Brahms or something like that. The themes don't force anything, really, just set a few common boundary lines so instead of comparing apples to oranges, everyone's on the same playing field. In this way, I don't think that having Boss Week or Doubles Week is good (some people are MUCH better at stepping boss or doubles charts), but I do think that there's nothing inherently wrong with Video Games, Top 40, or BEMANI Crossovers.

Restrictive? You could look at it that way. Same? Sure. But if it isn't broken, don't fix it.

Think of the themes as guidelines rather than restrictions and it's much easier to swallow.

Except take a look at the track record for the Summer Tournaments and see how many people participate in the first round vs the last round.

Also, I think most of us are smart enough to judge two different sounding songs and styles of stepcharts and pick the better one. Heck, it's not like the themes will help with that all that much anyways. Video game week could include everything from 80's pop featured in Grand Theft Auto to a Final Fantasy orchestra song.

You honestly think that's related to the presence of themes and not just that most people didn't see the contest all the way through (myself included)? War Games was free week every week and had the same degree of fall out.

I think it plays a part. I know that for myself, I often saw a theme I didn't like or knew I would have a hard time finding a song for and decided to skip the week, only to completely forget about the contest for several weeks after. There's always expected fallout from these tournaments considering the length, but I think it could be lessened.

Removing one the bigger elements that makes these contests fun in the first place is not a good way to increase participation. I found it harder to pick a song for War Games because I didn't have anything to go by. I had fun, but I had more fun during the Summer Contest.

Did you notice, in War Games, how after the first couple of DDR Edits showed up there was suddenly a steady stream of them? That's good and all, but it made for far fewer originals to play. A degree of guidance is a good thing in a simfile contest.