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Info/Rules

What is ECS9.5?

ECS9.5 is the seventeenth tournament in the East Coast Stamina series. The objective is to try to clear as many of the hardest stamina charts as you can within the format of the tournament. It is a team tournament, and you may enter it on a team of up to three individuals.

NEW FOR ECS9.5: The event will be split into THREE divisions this year:

  • Lower Division
  • Mid Division
  • Upper Division

Each division has its own set of songs and marathons.

When:

Entrants can submit their sets at any time BEFORE May 17th, 2021 (May 16th @ 11:59 PM EST is the latest you can submit) to count towards the ranking. Within that timeframe, when and where they do this is at their discretion, so long as they adhere to the rules detailed further on.

Where:

Wherever. Any ITG machine that's running an ITG theme. Stepmania 5 is acceptable as long as you're using ITG's life/scoring mechanics (using the Simply Love theme and selecting ITG mode is the easiest way to accomplish that).

Please be conscious of the fact that there is a pandemic going on; if you're planning on doing a team with someone you don't live with/have regular contact with already, consider doing your set with them remotely.

What are the prizes?

  • The members of each team in lower division that breaks 1200 total points between their marathons and their Raw Output set get an ECS9.5 shirt.
  • The members of each team in mid division that breaks 300 total points between their marathons and their Raw Output set get an ECS9.5 shirt.
  • The members of each team in upper division that breaks 100 total points between their marathons and their Raw Output set get an ECS9.5 shirt.
  • Each member of the winning team of each division gets a trophy.

Keep in mind it'll probably take me a while to mail everything once the tournament is over. I still haven't gotten prizes for ECS7.5 or 8.5 mailed out, but it's a priority of mine to make sure those get mailed in the next few months, even if I have to pay someone else to do it (the events I run take up a lot of my time, and mailing these things out is very time consuming-- there are also delays involved with art being created, as the involved artists often are involved with creating art for the other tournaments and have a life/other work outside of doing stuff for ECS).

Format:

ECS9.5 is a team tournament split into an Upper Division, Mid Division, and Lower Division, with two portions to the tournament for each division.

  • Teams are comprised of up to three individuals total; deciding who to team up with is up to you.
  • Each entrant can enter on up to two teams for EACH division, but they are not eligible for duplicate prizes (meaning if I were to enter on the maximum of six teams, and all of the teams happen to win the same prize, I only get that prize one time rather than six times)
  • The lower division has songs in it from 12s-17s (as well as one 18) and marathon courses made up of 12s to 14s.
  • The mid division has songs in it from 17s-22s (as well as one 23) and marathon courses made up of 17s to 19s.
  • The upper division has songs in it from 22s-27s and marathon courses made up of 21s to 25s.
  • C-mods are legal. Mirror/other turn mods are legal. No Mines is legal. Any mods that add or subtract arrows, holds, or rolls-- those are NOT legal.
  • You may rate mod songs, but only at rates that are at or above 1.0x, and you will not receive any point bonus for doing so.
  • Bracketing/mashing is not permitted in any portion of the tournament.
  • You must compete on ITG settings. You may not compete on a theme that uses different life and scoring metrics.
  • NEW FOR ECS9.5: You may turn off way-offs and decents in lower division ONLY. They MUST be enabled in Mid Division and Upper Division.

Set 1 - Marathon:

You have two options on how you approach the marathon.

  • Play the full marathon as a group. You may switch between team members between each song. You may not switch team members mid-song-- you can only do it at the beginning or end. Each member must pass at least one song.
  • Each team member plays at least one of the provided marathon splits in its entirety solo. If you're a team of three, that means each member plays one. If you're a team of two, one person plays one and the other plays two. If you're a team of one, you play all three. I'll be calculating your team's points based off of the combined scores across the three splits.

If you're going with option 1, during the marathon ONLY, you may have team members play on the unused pad to stay warm. You are still not allowed to do this during Raw Output.

You or your team can spend as much time as you desire warming up for any marathons you attempt. If you fail, or you are just dissatisfied with your score, you may reattempt the marathon(s) as many times as you like or can manage before the event ends.

You can attempt marathons as many time as you like in the same day.

The points yielded by the marathons/splits are based off of the max points for each marathon/split * the score obtained on it.

Set 2 - Raw Output:

Each team gets 4 hours to try to pass as many of the songs on the list for the team's respective division. Each member must pass at least one song. Score does not matter. Each song counts only one time, so there's no reason to replay anything. You may change out whoever is playing at any time, provided it is not during a song. You may not play while someone else is playing a song to warm up-- part of the challenge is coming up with a strategy for your player rotation to stay warmed up without burning out!

UNLIKE THE MARATHONS, YOU MAY ONLY ATTEMPT YOUR RAW OUTPUT SET ONE TIME.

If you are competing remotely, you may divide up your 4 hour block however you would like between your team members. You can also still use the full 4 hours and alternate songs and such to be more efficient to avoid downtime, but you must make sure that you coordinate and avoid playing songs at the same time as your other team members, as that is still against the rules.

You can warm up however you like and for as long as you like BEFORE your team's raw output.

PLEASE use the in-game timer for your set. You can use an external timer if, for instance, you're playing in a public location and can't change the settings, but be aware that you will likely be at a disadvantage time-wise if you do so.

Each song is worth a certain amount of points, and that is determined as follows:

$$ Points = \frac{(Steps^{1.05} \times Stream\% \times BPMMultiplier^{1.1}) ^ {\LARGE{{1+\frac{Difficulty-LowestDivisionDifficulty-1}{100}} }}}{PointsConstant} $$ $$ \displaylines{Points = \\ [(Steps^{1.05} * Stream\% * BPMMultiplier^{1.1})^{\large{\wedge}} \\ ({1+\frac{Difficulty-LowestDivisionDifficulty-1}{100}})] \\ \div PointsConstant} $$

...where:

Steps = Number of steps in the chart
Stream% = Percent of measures of stream versus total measures in the chart
BPM Multiplier = \(\large{1 + (10 \times \frac{BPM_{song} - MinBPM_{division}} { MaxBPM_{division} - MinBPM_{division}})}\)
Difficulty = Block level of chart.
PointConstant = This is just a value to scale things such that the 'best possible set' in each division is worth roughly 1000 points (This helps us avoid having to normalize scores).

Basically, though, all you need to know is that denser, longer, faster songs at higher ratings are worth more than shorter, less dense, slower songs at lower ratings. Also, to reiterate, you only get points if you pass the song.

The spreadsheet provided with the pack handles all these calculations for you-- all you need to do is take the ID from the first column on the Songlist tab and enter that into the second column on your scoresheet for each song your team passes. You can optionally enter the name of the team member who passed the song in the first column on the scoresheet, which will automatically calculate some extra metrics just for fun if you also fill in the team members on the far right section.

IMPORTANT: The spreadsheets linked under 'Downloads' are good for planning but your team captain (the person who registered the team) will be expected to use the 'Manage Scores' page to submit scores. Upon being reviewed, they'll be added to the ranking.

ALSO IMPORTANT: You may ONLY select a song if you have enough time left to complete it. I don't expect you to predict song load time or anything, so as long as the timer says you have enough time when you proceed from the last menu before gameplay, that's fine.

MORE IMPORTANT: If you exit a song without playing it to completion, you do not get the points for the song.

EQUALLY IMPORTANT: Each song is only worth points once. Duplicate passes on a song do not get you additional points.

Acknowledgments:

Thanks to everyone who contributed content for the event, as always. The Raw Output portions this year are basically free of anything used in previous ROs (excluding resteps, different difficulties, For Business/For Pleasure, etc.). Thanks to those who sent me unreleased content to consider, regardless of whether it was used or not, and thanks to everyone who released content that I selected for the event. Along these lines, special thanks to Zaia, Kyy, and ExJam10 for writing a few new charts specifically for the event, and Levitas for stepping/helping pick a lot of the selections for the Upper Division.

Thanks to the following people for providing translations for the rules:

  • Okami (French)
  • Rems (French)
  • feedbacker (Korean)
  • StarrySergal (Spanish)
  • Made_itg (Spanish)
  • aminuteawayx (Japanese)

Shoutouts to Pluto as usual for helping with the art!

I also want to thank Dom for helping me with site stuff for the event! Thank you Dom!

Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns-- I'll usually respond quickest if you reach out to me on Discord or Facebook. There may be playing scenarios I haven't thought of or something I haven't explained clearly enough, so definitely speak up; it'll be helpful to everyone if you do so.

--Ian/Archi