Local Battle of the Bands Format

[Crash]

I've got family coming into town this week for the holidays and wanting to have a "battle of the bands" for the holidays. Anybody have a format for organizing a competition of mostly new players in 3 member bands - probably 2 or 3 bands - and scoring a winner? I was thinking about maybe having the other bands draw band names of another band and give them 3 or 4 songs they have to play, so many out of each difficulty level, and the highest total score wins. The problems I see is that score totals can differ based on luck of the draw. I'm looking for some good suggestions for organizing this as I think it will be a big hit with the family.

Appreciate everyone's input!

Crash (formerly Makomachine under the old board)

[dfjdejulio]

My suggestion is, don't score it. A score just discourages the less skilled folks.

It rewards the more motivated folks, but the more motivated folks aren't the ones who need a reward to enjoy participating anyhow.

Depends on what your goal is though, I suppose.

[KingNuclear]

So, I got roped into running the Rock Band tournament at Funde Razor Brooklyn. I think it went as well as could be expected, given the facility problems (no bullhorn/PA system, so it was very hard to get the bands to realize what was going on.) Here's my thoughts on running a Rock Band "Battle of the Bands", which is significantly different from a GH tournament. I only know of two other sizeable Rock Band tournaments, and both of them aren't workable in the "Battle of the Bands" style tournament:

1. PAX's Omegathon, which had a Rock Band round; however, it was an individual competition where the best individual percentages moved on rather than teams moving on. Not really in the Rock Band spirit, but how else are you going to work it into a tournament that's really a gaming pentathlon for individuals?

2. The Harmonix Battle of the Bands: Right idea (bands progress and score as bands, not as individuals), but since it was online and there was no audience, you could have all the bands play the same songs simultaneously without anyone walking out in disgust.

So, here's my thoughts on what factors go into designing a Rock Band live tournament format:

1. No head to head. The game doesn't allow it, and no tournament organizer is likely to have the peripherals anyways. Also, who ever heard of two real life bands playing at the same time? Head to head works in individual GH, but not so much in RB.

2. Bands still have to play the same songs to compete against each other. It's just not fair otherwise.

3. But, the audience doesn't want to hear the same song over and over again.

4. Also, no head to head means that there's no reason everyone has to play on the same difficulty. This is particularly important because all expert bands are hard to come by, and if you force an RB competition at that difficulty, no one will want to play.

5. No head to head also means that there's no reason to restrict round competitions to 2 team matches. 3 or 4 teams can all compete for a top slot, which can speed up a tournament quite a bit.

6. The core unit of Rock Band isn't the song, it's the setlist. It's a lot more fun for people when bands are playing sets, rather than just one song and then lots of rearranging as the next group sits down.

So, with that in mind, here's my suggested format:

1. Tournament brackets: No need to restrict yourself to powers of 2; you've got as much flexibility as you want to make your tournament run faster. At Funde Razor we had 19 bands; Round 1 was 6 brackets of 3-4 bands, Round 2 was 2 brackets of 3 bands, which led to a 2 band final.

2. Round format: Each team within the same match plays the same setlist, but different matches will have different setlists. Setlists can be as little as 1 song, or as big as the audience will tolerate (by 6, it may get unpleasant) Possible ways of choosing a setlist:

A: Each band chooses a song, either from the full list or from a sublist (i.e., for an early round, you might want to restrict song choice to the lower 3 difficulty tiers). If you have fewer songs/setlist than bands/match, flip a coin to decide who gets to choose.

B: Organizer picks the songs; this is particularly useful if you have time problems and need to make sure everyone plays short songs rather than Green Grass & High Tides

C: Random songs; you have that feature to use now. The downside is that you could get stuck having a beginner band playing Won't Get Fooled Again, Ride the Lightning, and Run to the Hills.

D: Combination of A, B, and/or C. For the final round at Funde Razor, each side played a 3 song setlist, consisting of one song chosen by each team and Next to You (because I'm cruel).

3. Matches however are staggered so that the crowd doesn't have to hear the same songs over and over again. For example:

Round pairings: A vs. B, C vs. D, E vs. F, G vs. H

Order of play: A, C, E, G, B, D, F, H.

So, A and B will play the same setlists, but before it repeats, C, E, and G will all play their different setlists and the audience isn't so bored.

4. Teams can play on whatever difficulty they want for each part, and total score is all that counts at the end, but as per BWT rules, you can't switch difficulty or parts mid-setlist. This adds a tricky strategic element for bands, which played out at Funde Razor when a band tried to make it through the final setlist with drums on Expert, and lost their chance to win when they failed out on Next to You.

5. The match winner is determined by the highest total score. A band failout counts as a 0. If all bands in a match fail, the winner is determined by who failed out later.

Other possible house rules that can be cute:

1. No original vocal track; all singers have to sing without a safety net. I think this is more entertaining for the audience, but it can be tricky in a weaker group of players. But definitely a good rule for a championship caliber tournament.

2. Performance judgment as a way to break effective ties: A bit of a WSVG type idea, but really, what's the point of declaring a winner by 10K points in a 1M point setlist? If the margin of victory is less than a certain amount, the match is considered a tie and broken by a more general judgment of the performance. Great for audiences, not so much for score purists.

Anyways, that's what I've got for now. Add thoughts to this thread.



http://rockband.scorehero.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2254



KNuclear


;)

[Kyahx]

Note: I'm making this up as I go, feel free to revise as you see fit.

I'd personally base your "scoring system" on Stars, seeing as how that will be a somewhat even measurement regardless of what combination of difficulties or song they are playing. To make the scoring system a bit more precise, mark down to the 1/8th of a star (this will have to be taken from the end of each song, before the game shows the final score sheet).

To add some incentive for people being good, set a base difficulty (Hard) and then adjust their song score accordingly. For example, any person in the band playing on expert will give them a free 1/8th of a star added to their final song score. Two people on expert net a free 1/4th of star. So the same for penalization (someone on medium is -1/8th of a star from the score, easy is -1/4th). This way someone who wants to play on medium can be balanced out by someone on expert. If your family sucks at video games or has no rhythm, you could set the base difficulty to medium, and adjust accordingly :P

Round One: Opener
- Each band is allowed one song of their choosing

Round Two: Main Set
- Bands go in order based on their scores from round one (Highest to lowest)
- This forces the band who's "winning" to sightread this round, while other bands can get a preview of their songs
- Bands will play two random songs selected by the game and then one more song of their choosing.
- Bands 2, 3, etc... will play the same two random songs that the first band did and one song of their choosing. They may be played in any order (to avoid everyone having to hear the same song 3 times in a row)

That seems like it would work, without having too much audio repetition, and would allow people who are "less skilled" to still participate without too much hindrance.