Connecticon Forum

Hello, new forum member here, I found out about ConnectiCon last year after I went to visit my family in CT and had a friend and fellow PMS Clan member ask me if I was in CT for ConnectiCon.  I did a quick search on the name and found the main site.  Now this year I’m a little more interested in the event and since we’re planning to be in CT visiting again the same week of the Con I figured I’d join the forum and see what’s up, hehe. 

I’ve read up on some of the past posts regarding the Rock Band Tournaments, my you guys look like you have fun with it.  Here in North Carolina, we’ve only found one event that has a RB Tourney, Carolina Games Summit, but even through some problems with equipment and controversial decisions with the winners placements, we’ve had a fairly decent time there and have placed in the top 3 the past three years we’ve gone.  One of the things I wish they would implement (that I don’t think the people who run CGS can or will make room for) would be the Individual Awards for the 4 instruments.  I like this idea and it seems to have been a hit with the ConnectiCon tourney in general.  I will admit that I prefer High Score Wins tournaments, but I can understand the appeal of performing during a tournament for a game like RB.

I took a look at the tournament listings for this year’s CTCon, and I noticed that it’s listed as a RB2 Tourney.  Is this just outdated info or are they sticking with RB2 this year as well? 

I can’t say with a certainty that I’ll be able to make it to this year’s event, it really depends on our schedule during that vacation week and whether we can afford to stay in the area since the tournament lasts more than a day.  I do hope to be able to attend though, I have been wanting to go to something like this since I first started getting really serious with Rock Band vocals and the idea of going to Cons/gaming events in general <!—s:)—><!—s:)—>

jo

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Hello!

I’m the person who’s in charge of the Rock Band 3 tournament this year (If you post on Scorehero, you may have seen the name, although I haven’t posted there in quite awhile).

To answer your first, biggest question, it’ll be a Rock Band 3 tournament this year. The website is outdated, but hopefully that’ll be corrected soon. The ruleset is going to be pretty similar to years past, with some allowances made for the Rock Band 3 setup (Keyboards/Harmony Vocals/etc).

As for High Score Wins versus Performance, song difficulty and how well you do is a part of the equation, it’s just not the only part. Adding a performance element makes it fun for not only the contestants (Who, don’t forget, also have to stay around and watch the other bands), but anyone who happens to be watching as well. We do try and get an audience as much as we can, and while Highest Score Wins has its place, at a convention may not be the best place for it, if you know what I mean.

Either way, though, I hope I’ll see you and your band there!

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Hello there, I kinda recognize the name from ScoreHero, but I mainly lurk there, and not regularly, hehe.  I had a feeling the website hadn’t been updated, but I wanted to check anyways.  I could understand using RB2 for 1v1 Score Duels or something but figured people would want to try the newest game out.  So that’s cool.

The reason I prefer HSW over performance, is because at the CGS tournament in 2010, we had similar rules where it was a HSW tournament, with a performance “bonus”, and in the rules posted on the site, it was stated that a band that didn’t have a good score but performed well wouldn’t beat out a band that scored well but didn’t perform as well, basically score was the majority of the deciding factor for who won, and performance added a few points, IIRC up to 30pts.  Well, my band had a score that should’ve placed us in 2nd place, but due to the technical 3rd place band having an 8 point lead for performance, they got moved up to 2nd and us down to 3rd, even though we had them beat by over 320,000 on score.  The tourney director said it was because he was pressured by the head’s of the Summit to really make the performance aspect stand out.  So we kinda got burned with a Performance tournament.  Half my band didn’t even show up for this year’s tournament, but my guitarist and I found some people (that actually told us how much it sucked that we had been cheated the year before) to help us out and ended up winning 1st place in a blowout.  I have videos from our tournament for 2010 and 2011 on my Youtube channel if you’re interested in how they were done. 

I understand why it’s fun to have the performance aspect to the tournament, and as long as it’s added in fairly and evenly like the CTCon’s seems to be, I don’t have a problem with it, I just prefer going for score alone, it’s more straight-forward and leaves less questions.  It does get tiring hearing the same songs played over and over like the CGS tournament does, lol.  We got so sick of The Trees last year!  Surprisingly I didn’t get tired of Roundabout this year, but if they had picked Rock Lobster I probably would’ve walked out, that song irritates me, lol.

I’m hoping I can go, but I know that I won’t have a band to play in, so if I do happen to make it I hope they’ll be a few other “freelance” players that won’t mind joining up on the fly.  Thanks for replying back, I read some of your other posts and your blog of last year’s CTCon and you seem like a pretty cool cat <!—s:)—><!—s:)—> (and some kind of hero, what with the cape and all, lol).  Take care and hope to see you in July!

jo

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Yeah, there’s enough new stuff in Rock Band 3 that, even if we end up not using all of it (Because I didn’t feel like going through the nightmare of trying to judge performances on Pro Instruments versus that of “normal” instruments, if anyone even uses Pro Instruments that is, we decided to just not allow them. I don’t know how popular/unpopular a decision this will be, but the convention doesn’t own any Pro instrument stuff, which is another factor).

I’ll have to check your videos out when I get more time..I’m busy trying to put stuff together for this tournament! And I can understand the preference for HSW tournaments…I trust you’ll know I mean this with all due respect when I say “That doesn’t surprise me; you’re from Scorehero.” <!—s:P—><!—s:P—> That said, the performance element has always been the “thing” about the Connecticon tournament that makes it different from all others. The participants enjoy it, and the formula works out such that people don’t generally complain about the results.

As for not having a band, there’s been a “Freelancers” sheet in the past, though I don’t know how much it was ever used. There are always a couple “free play” stations throughout the weekend; your best bet is probably going to be to ask other people who sit and down and play if they want to form a band. Hopefully I’ll see you there!

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Yeah I agree it’s a good idea to stick with the normal instruments.  Best to keep things simplified if possible, hehe.  People had the option of using the keyboard for our tournament, as long as they brought their own.  Only problem with that was the last song was Roundabout and most everyone who brought a keyboard attempted it on Expert.  And failed.  Which is a shame cause it was fun to see the keyboard in action, cause at that point I hadn’t seen or used one and was curious about it. 

LOL, I would like to think I’m not as bad as some of those SH people, lol.  Honestly, when I first joined SH and joined my first season of Leagues (I think it was 10) I felt like using the vocal paths posted on the site was cheating, so I didn’t use them.  I didn’t fare so well, lol, and learned that if it was cheating it wouldn’t be posted publicly for anyone to use, so I started using them after that.  I don’t grind songs for the highest score tho, that just makes it less fun.  I’ve been trying to get the RB3 goal for getting 100% on 20th Century Boy for months and I won’t play it more than 4 times cause I don’t want to grind and get aggravated.  I don’t have anything against performance tourneys, they are fun to watch (I’ve seen people take of their shirts, as well as walk out of the auditorium during the Battery solo and then slide back onto stage just in time to miss the next phrase, lol) so if it works well for CTCon, then that’s awesome <!—s:)—><!—s:)—>

I’ve been telling my hubby about the Con and the tournament (didn’t tell him the tourney costs $20 though, just that the Con was $40-50) and he seems interested, although he didn’t sound too interested in the entrance fee, but I think if I can get him to look at some of the other attractions of the Con he may go along with it.  Hopefully I can at least go and see the tournament if I can’t participate, that way maybe we can make better plans to join in next year.  Take care!

jo

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Well, regarding the price, I should point out the tournament is $20 a band, not a person. So that’ll in all likelihood work out to $5/person, unless you want to try with a 3-person (And technically there’s nothing stopping you from doing it with a 1 or 2-person band, but good luck covering all the instruments in that case <!—s;)—><!—s;)—>) band.

Anyway, I come bearing some news with this post.  here’s the current list of songs that will be available for the tournament. 661 songs worth, so plenty of DLC to pick from. If there’s something you don’t see on the list that you really want, let me know and I’ll try and make it happen.

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Okay that sounds better than it being $20 a person, lol.  I wish I could say I’d have definite band members that could be there with me, I posted a topic at the PMS/H2O Clan website seeing if anyone was planning on attending, but noone has replied yet.  Maybe it’ll work out though <!—s:)—><!—s:)—>

That looks like a lot of fun songs to play, it’s nice to have DLC to choose from, all our tournaments have been on-disc only.  I would’ve loved to play Don’t Stop Believing or something, lol.

jo

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Okay, here are the more specific rules for the tournament. Let me know if you see any glaring areas, even though I did my best to proofread this.

-A band may try to qualify multiple times, but must pay the entry fee each time.
-A band must cover exactly four instruments.
-Instrumentalists may not change difficulty (Easy/Medium/Hard/Expert) once they have selected it.
-Switching instruments mid-set is not allowed.
-Pro instruments are not allowed.
-One person must be the “leader” of the band. This is the person who, at a minimum, we will need contact information from should their band make the Finals. This person should be available Friday night between 9:30 and 10PM to be able to make song selections for their band before midnight, if possible (Ideally, all four members would be available for this task).
-Having multiple singers is allowed, even if all they do is sing harmony vocals. However, one singer must be designated the “lead” vocalist, and they are the only ones who will be judged individually.
-In the preliminary round, bands will select three songs. One will have a band difficulty of 0 through 2 (Warmup, Apprentice, or Solid), one will have a band difficulty of 2 through 4 (Solid, Moderate, or Challenging), and one will have a band difficulty of 4 through 6 (Challenging, Nightmare, or Impossible). The songs may be played in any order.

-This means that, if the band chooses, they can play two songs of difficulty 2 (Solid) or 4 (Challenging). The two must be different songs.
-Once you have finished a song, DO NOT press any buttons until the person manning the booth tells you to. If you press a button too quickly, any percentages, stars, etc. that were not already recorded will be counted as 0. This applies to both preliminaries and finals.
-Scoring in the preliminary round will be based on the following factors:

-Number of difficulty dots for each instrument (Devil heads = 6)
-Difficulty (Easy, Medium, Hard or Expert) the instrumentalists selected.
-Number of stars the band got (Gold stars = 6)
-Number of stars each individual band member got (Gold stars = 6)
-Percentage of notes each individual band member hit

-Should a band fail a song, they will be given the option to either play the rest of the song, or move onto the next song. In either case, the band will get how many stars they had at point of failure. Individual band stars/percentages will be entered as zero in this case. In the finals, the band can still earn performance points by continuing with the song.
-The top 4 bands will move onto Saturday’s finals.
-Song selection will be determined by qualifying scores in the preliminary round—the top-scoring band will select a song, followed by the second-place, third-place, and fourth-place qualifiers. Then the process will repeat three more times, giving each band a total of four songs. No song may be selected twice in the finals.
-The fourth-place qualifier will play first, followed by the third-place, second-place, and top-qualifying band.
-In the Finals, the following will be scored in addition to the factors mentioned above.

-Performance, IE how much you look and act like actual rock stars.
-Band performance, IE how well you’re playing as a band as opposed to a collection of instrumentalists—hitting unison bonuses, activating overdrive at the same time, etc. If you have multiple vocalists, hitting double and triple harmonies will help here. The performance scores will count 20% towards your overall score.

-Besides the Best Band award, individual awards will also be given to Best Instrumentalists (Vocalists, Bassists, Guitarists, Drummers, and Keyboardists)

     

Re: Rock Band Tourney ‘11

Just a note that the trophies are in, and they look pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Here’s a shot of one of the “plates”, and here’s a full shot of a trophy. They all look like that.