General Clip-Off Discussion (2,462 views)

[Baronessa]

This thread may be used to sound off on ideas and concepts you have for potential future Clip-Offs to come.

Recently there's been some traction in regards to a Clip-Off season being entirely a team contest. My initial thought was that, in order to avoid uneven teams right at the start, people would pair up prior to signing up and sign up their pair for the CO. The teams may be switched up throughout the course of the competition based on averages and the like.

The reason I like this is that if everybody has covered every category perfectly the interesting bit would be the actual verdict in the end, because I've found the obvious dud clips to be one of the most soul-crushing parts of the competition personally. From what I've observed they also got some people to drop out because they'd run out of their haymakers, too.

Thoughts on this? Thoughts on something else? Let us know!

[Breakfast in D-sharp]

To be honest I probably wouldn't join if it were a team game for every round. If we do it with one team round again I'd also prefer that to be near the start, to give players more of a chance to recover from an unsuccessful team round. If you feel that dud clips are "soul-crushing", I guess the team format might decrease the chances of having nothing whatsoever to suit a category, but then if it did happen, wouldn't it feel even worse? Would people feel more obliged to pick "safer" singers at the start and less inclined to make niche/memey choices which can add to entertainment value? I was the worst possible teammate for round 7 this time round and I feel bad about that. I don't want to risk spending much of the tournament feeling either regretful that I let my team down or resentful that my teammate did. I can imagine it could also end up very much more time-consuming for competitors.
I wouldn't mind having the alt team round reintroduced though, which might slightly mitigate the issue of running out of the best clips too early, and maybe also (I think someone suggested this before, but I forget who and when) allow the option of swapping one of your singers for a new one halfway through the contest (though I suppose that would mess up the singers' league table).

[Baronessa]

Honestly, I've always taken losses way more positively when it's been a team round, because I don't feel as embarrassed if there's someone else to diffuse that feeling between. It also seems intuitive to me that team formats would potentially decrease the amount of time teammates would have to look for their clips, since all singers have different niches and as such more clips for their niches. And I mean I never really enjoy giving clips low scores but if anyone's intent on choosing meme singers for entertainment value it seems like double the fun for going with even more meme singers at the start. It's not like the people who do that sort of thing really care about their averages anyway. I agree that a team round should probably be during the first leg of the competition if we were to do it the old fashioned way, though.

I guess if we were to try singer swaps I'd probably want it to have some sort of qualifier, like being in the bottom three competitors in the CO or something. I did miss the alt team round this time around, too.

[BassSquared]

Dang, it's been over a year since the last one started- pretty crazy. I kinda miss this (and have ideas for possible singers I'd like to see in competition)- any plans to bring it back this year?

also I'd prefer it if it weren't team rounds all the time please and thank you

[themriron2]

Seconded, even months later there seems to be no word. I've seen a few people talk about it happening again but it seems to have just fallen aside silently. I wonder what happened to it sometimes, but no better time than the present to talk about the possibility of another one soon.

[Baronessa]

This has historically been Alex61's thing, so I've mostly just been waiting when inspiration would strike. I would basically have all my singers decided for the next one as well.

[Alex61]

We seem to have some interest this time so I am more than willing to work with Baronessa to run this again - historically speaking, Clip-Offs have been kind of a thing where everyone's very interested in it and then by the end everyone says if there's one the next year they'll likely sit out, hence my initial ambivalence towards running one again. If we have enough support, however, of course I am down to do this again

[Baronessa]

So, since we only have two categories to vote on nowadays, what are people's thoughts on requiring to vote three times instead of the standard two? It probably wouldn't be implemented during this Clip-Off (unless people wanted that to happen), but it would be sort of another fail-safe for drop-outs in future Clip-Offs.

[Baronessa]

This is a question involving the upcoming Round Six, but also kind of a general question about how people feel about the way we decide match-ups.

The usual way we decide match-ups is by ranking users by the amount of points they've achieved in a round and then slotting the most evenly matched users together. So, how would people feel about it if we instead prioritised matching up people who have not faced each other yet? These would still be as evenly matched as possible, for what it's worth.

This would be effective immediately for the remainder of this Clip-Off, but I'm also wanting to know if people would prefer if we did it this way in future Clip-Offs as well.

[Baronessa]

Okay, so here's another terrible idea by me.

We've so far mandated that our clips be two minutes in length (and five minutes in the final round). But get this, what if instead of setting a duration for individual clips, we'd set a collective duration that your clips could have in a given matchup? So, for example, in a normal two-category round you would have four minutes for all of your clips, for the High/Low/Mid round you'd have six minutes and in the final round you would have fifteen minutes to showcase your Studio/Live/Free Choice clips.

I think this would quite fundamentally change the nature of our clips and make the outcomes of these matchups a little more interesting. I've personally always been frustrated by my singers having great material in a song, but spreading it out so wide that you couldn't possibly fit it into two minutes, and on the other hand my second clip would be like ten seconds long. I think this would alleviate some of that kind of disappointment and boredom that goes into choosing clips as well.

[BassSquared]

An interesting idea for sure, and one I'd be fine with trying out next year! It would make clips longer on average and make it a bit harder to moderate what is and isn't overtime at a glance, but the concept of being able to split "time budget" across multiple categories could make for some interesting tactical decisions.

[BassSquared]

(Possible) major change alert!

After hearing some folks say that an eight-round competition with half its slots taken up by predetermined categories doesn't leave enough room for the user-voted categories to shine, I have come up with a proposed solution. I call it: The Second Chance Round.

Basically, this will be an extra round slotted in between the Alt-Teams round and the finale (making the overall competition nine rounds long) in which we will vote amongst all the categories that had some support in previous rounds, but were ultimately outvoted. Hopefully this'll give some people an extra opportunity to use clips they didn't get the chance to earlier, and keep others on their toes.

I know this is a bit of a big change to be pulling with this short of a notice, so if you have any objections, let me know! Otherwise this will go into effect as our newly instated Round Eight, with the final round pushed to Round Nine.

[Baronessa]

I support it. If nothing else, a round like that has been discussed often enough in the past that it would be a great addition to future Clip-Offs.

[Breakfast in D-sharp]

Idk if I should save this for nearer the time, but I would like to propose a slight change for next year: I would like the category vote deadline for the One Singer Wonder round to be at least a day before the clip deadline for the previous round. Since the singer not used in the previous round must be used for the next we're effectively selecting our OSW singer in the preceding round, and if some people change their category votes after the singers are locked in (as happened this year), it could potentially leave someone up the proverbial creek (hypothetical example: suppose the categories ahead in the vote are Pleasant Tone and Duet, so on that basis, someone with Art Garfunkel on their team decides he's their best contender for the round and so uses their other singers in the preceding round, then a couple of players change their votes and suddenly the categories are Sustained Low Notes and, worse, Harsh/ Heavy/ Distorted).
Alternatively, the OSW round could be either Round 1 or right after the full house High/ Mid/ Low round, then the singer not used thing wouldn't apply.