'Item Standard Play' Game Trade 1v1 Tournament (Mesquite, TX) (Saturday, May 24th)

Welcome to the discussion/organization thread for our May 24th Brawl tournament, hosted by Game Trade in Mesquite, TX. This thread will go into detail on the organization of the tournament. Let's get started!


DATE/TIME:
Saturday, May 24th, 2008. Registration from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM. First round matches beginning ~12:00 PM.

VENUE:
Game Trade, located at 1425 Gross Rd. Mesquite, TX 75149. In the shopping center across the road from 'On the Border'.

TOURNAMENT DETAILS:
Entrance fee = 10.00$
Pot Distribution Stands at 60/30/10 for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place (after venue cost)
Double-Elimination bracket, randomly seeded with match order prefrence given to pre-registered entrants
Best of 3 sets, with a Best of 5 Finals
Matches will be 3-stock, 6 minutes
'Item Standard Play' 1v1 rules will apply (explained below)
Controllers will NOT be supplied, and only non-modded controllers will be permitted for play


'Item Standard Play' 1v1 Ruleset:

The first match of every set will be played on a stage randomly determined from the 'Neutral' stage list (below). Before the beginning of the first match, the higher ranked player will choose first character (in this case, the player listed first on the bracket), followed by the lower ranked player's charcter selection. Next, the lower ranked player will choose one item (from the approved 'ISP' list) to be stricken from the entirity of the set, followed by the item strike selection of the higher ranked player. A coin will be flipped to decide which player gets first pick in selecting a single stage to be stricken from the counterpick list for the entirety of the set, with the losing player getting second pick. After selections have been made, the first match will be played. The loser of the first match will choose the stage for the second match, after which the second match will be played. If a third match is necessary, the loser of the second match will select the stage on which the third match will be played. The first player to reach two victories in any set will be declared winner of the set. Ties in any match will be broken by lives, then by percentages; if both players have equal lives and percentages at the end of a match, both players will go to 'Sudden Death', consisting of a match of one stock, no time limit on Final Destination, with both players handicapped at 300%. The winner of 'Sudden Death' will be awarded the set.


Approved Item Listing / Item Ban List:

The following items are approved for play in this 'Item Standard Play'-sanctioned event:

Sandbag
Food
Warp Star
Metal Box
Bunny Hood
Lightning
Beam Sword
Home-Run Bat
Lip's Stick
Star Rod
Super Scope
Ray Gun
Fire Flower
Motion-Sensor Bomb
Gooey Bomb
Freezie
Smoke Ball
Pitfall
Mr. Saturn
Green Shell
Banana Peel
Spring
Unira
Soccer Ball
Franklin Badge
Screw Attack

The following items are banned during this 'Item Standard Play'-sanctioned event:

Smash Ball
Assist Trophy
Pokeball
Container
Blast Box
Maxim Tomato
Heart Container
Dragoon
Super Mushroom
Poison Mushroom
Starman
Superspicy Curry
Timer
Fan
Hammer
Golden Hammer
Cracker Launcher
Bob-Omb
Smart Bomb
Deku Nut
Hothead
Bumper


The 'Crush Siblings' Stage Ban list will be in effect:

Neutral: The stage that the first fight of a match takes place on is to be decided randomly, with only the following stages turned on on your random stage select. These stages are considered to be one hundred percent fair and unintrusive.

Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
Lylat Cruise
Smashville
Battlefield
Final Destination
Pokemon Stadium

Counterpick: If you lose a fight in your match, you can select any of these stages, along with the Neutral stages, for the next fight to take place on. These stages are considered to slightly favor one type of character or another, or encourage somewhat unconventional playstyles.

Pokemon Stadium 2
Norfair
Onett
Bridge of Eldin
Mario Circuit
Frigate Orpheon
Distant Planet
Green Hill Zone
Corneria
Green Greens
Brinstar
Pirate Ship
Pictochat
Shadow Moses Island
Yoshi's Island (Melee)
Rainbow Ride
Halberd
Isle Delfino
Castle Siege
Luigi's Mansion

Banned: These stages are deemed too unfair or intrusive to be allowed into the Counterpick category.

Rumble Falls
Warioware
Spear Pillar
Mario Bros.
New Pork City
Big Blue
Flatzone 2
75m
Hyrule Temple
Skyworld
Summit
Mushroomy Kingdom
Port Town Aero Dive
Hanenbow
Jungle Japes

If you have any questions/concerns, please contact Jack Kieser by PM or AIM. Pre-registration is open up until the evening of the 23rd; PLEASE ONLY PRE-REGISTER IF YOU ARE SURE YOU CAN ATTEND. To pre-register, post or PM your real name, SWF username, and Brawl nickname.

We also are in need of additional Wii's/copies of Brawl, approx. 4 of each. If you are able to bring either, please contact Jack Kieser; entrants that bring additional supplies will receive a reduced entrance fee.

I got real excitedd until i saw items. I had about ten smashers in mind. Noone plays items. We will come if there are no items and will there possibly be double team?

I'll consider going just to see how terrible items are in actual tourney play, since Mesquite is kinda close to me.

Not only are items in general worse than they were in melee (turning off explosives permanently is nice but the items themselves are just so bad...) but everyone (at least everyone I know in DFW) hates them.

I can understand trying to give them a chance but... yeah everybody just hates them lol.

Also will there be teams? (hopefully with team attack on lol...)

ew.

no.

what are you doing? items are terrible for competition.

Ok, people, please stop coming in here and saying 'items =/= competition'. I've heard it all before, as have everyone involved in the 'ISP' project... and we have over 6k thread views in Tourney Disc. that says that plenty of people care about item play and are willing to work something out; we even have some tournament directors trying to help sort out a balanced item list. So, either post something positive or don't post at all.

Jack Kieser said:

and we have over 6k thread views in Tourney Disc. that says that plenty of people care about item play and are willing to work something out; we even have some tournament directors trying to help sort out a balanced item list.

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Well of course, thats because its a tournament, people will naturally come. That doesn't mean they feel that items > no items. Sure, if you want a tourny full of scrubs, host an item tourny. But of course actual competitive players will dislike it.

Heres a way to balance items though, turn them all off. But eh, thats too easy and effective isn't it?

Imp said:

Well of course, thats because its a tournament, people will naturally come. That doesn't mean they feel that items > no items. Sure, if you want a tourny full of scrubs, host an item tourny. But of course actual competitive players will dislike it.

Heres a way to balance items though, turn them all off. But eh, thats too easy and effective isn't it?

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Maybe if YOU weren't such a scrub, I'd agree with you.

"actual competitive players"? Whatever. I'm a competitive player and I welcome people doing new things with tournaments.

The truth of the matter is, we don't have enough info on items to make a solid call. And if someone wants to host a tournament to test things, then it's certainly welcome. We've only had the game for a few months. Chill out and stop pretending like you know.


Hey OP, is there any way to throw in teams? If you need extra TV's or Wii's just to make it happen, then I'll support some of that action.

I'd love to have a Team's Bracket going! As far as I'm concerned, it's simply a matter of having Wii's/copies of Brawl (the TV's are covered, thanks to the venue) and enough participants to justify a teams bracket; I'm using tio to make the brackets, so it'd be uber simple to add a doubles bracket to the event. Either way, we'd be delighted to have you. ^_^

kirbykid said:

Maybe if YOU weren't such a scrub, I'd agree with you.

"actual competitive players"? Whatever. I'm a competitive player and I welcome people doing new things with tournaments.

The truth of the matter is, we don't have enough info on items to make a solid call. And if someone wants to host a tournament to test things, then it's certainly welcome. We've only had the game for a few months. Chill out and stop pretending like you know.


Hey OP, is there any way to throw in teams? If you need extra TV's or Wii's just to make it happen, then I'll support some of that action.

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I never claimed to be more than a scrub. I don't fall into the "actual competitive players" because I'm not, I'm just sympathizing with the three people that posted above me. I'll be at the tournament either way, because I just enjoy playing.

And game trade has about 10-15 tvs if I recall correctly, and very comfortable chairs. I can bring a Wii/brawl, and a few people from my group can as well.

If items are worse in brawl then they were in melee site examples and give evidence otherwise you're just being a scrub.

If I could afford to go to texas I'd go to this. LOL

Man, Aesir, I'm just going to have to follow you around with links, aren't I? How's this for citing examples? I'm not done with it yet, but we've been doing a lot of discussing trying to hammer out the kinks, and I based the (rather conservative, in comparison) item list for this tournament off of the discussion in that thread.

Jack, I think Aesir was referring to Dr Drew's post. Kinda hard to tell though

Imp said:

I never claimed to be more than a scrub. I don't fall into the "actual competitive players" because I'm not, I'm just sympathizing with the three people that posted above me. I'll be at the tournament either way, because I just enjoy playing.
.

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Try sympathizing without writing stuff like.........................

"Sure, if you want a tourny full of scrubs, host an item tourny. But of course actual competitive players will dislike it.

Heres a way to balance items though, turn them all off. But eh, thats too easy and effective isn't it?"

............. that. You made too many assumptions and erroneous statements.

Well, the majority of competitive players, from what I've noticed of course, dislike the use of items. That statement wasn't intended to be 100% true, as it would be impossible to categorize every competitive player to one view of how the game should be played. But I do agree, I should have worded the statements a little better, for that I apologize.

^^If you stop posting for a while I'm sure people will forget about you.

Anyway, most competative players are against items being forced into their tournaments, but just the existance of an item tournament is not really a big deal. I'm actually glad that someone is taking the initiative to make this work, because I'm sick of all these people complaining that we should use items in our tournaments. If this actually becomes popular, they may even get their own forum and be able to discuss stuff there. I'd imagine it would be a nightmare to get intelligent discussion going on there because, lets face it, there would be a lot of newcommers flocking in there all the time. Kinda like the Brawl General Discussion forum.

Best of luck on your tournament, kinda sad that I don't live in Texas.

Jack Kieser said:

Man, Aesir, I'm just going to have to follow you around with links, aren't I? How's this for citing examples? I'm not done with it yet, but we've been doing a lot of discussing trying to hammer out the kinks, and I based the (rather conservative, in comparison) item list for this tournament off of the discussion in that thread.

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Yeah, Aesir's the guy standing up for items and your tournament here. You need to work on your aim.



I would enter teams if there were teams, but I would not enter singles.



Edit: Don't ban pokeballs! They're items' only redeeming feature! Instead ban smoke bomb; what a stupid idea for an item.

Well then, I apologize to Aesir; this is a message board, after all, and it's easy to misinterpret. As for the Pokeballs... I tried, man. Really I did. But there's just no way we can allow an item like that (throw and forget, no semblance of balanced risk/reward, some Pokes vastly overpowered, etc.).

All I gotta say is if I'm going to enter an items tournament, it's because I think the items will make things more fun, not less fun. I know you've got big dreams about revolutionizing tournament rules, but it will never really take off simply because most people are just irritated by items. Most competitive players got bored of items long, loooong ago. To get any amount of smashboards people, you need to emphasize fun. Pokeballs are darn fun. Assist trophies suck, though; leave those off.

Ill come if theres doubles!!! Even with items.

How do you justify item play while at the same time banning port town for being 'too disruptive'?

DaRkNeSsOfHeArT said:

How do you justify item play while at the same time banning port town for being 'too disruptive'?

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As far as the stage listing goes, I know that the SBR is still working out the kinks on what they want to support, so I just said 'screw it' and went with the crushsiblings.com stage list (not as official, but it works for now). We'll have to work out an official supported stage list for the 'ISP' project, but we aren't quite to that point yet.

Down With Altf4!! Viva La Rebellion!

Man...I was thinking about driving up there with a few friends for the tournament, until I saw items =/. I know you may not like to hear it, but the items part is causing you to directly lose potential players from entering your tournament. I sure hope the number of people playing only because items are on outweigh the ones that aren't coming only because items are on. I have a feeling that's not the case, though.

I used to play items all the time when I was a mindless noob. Then, when I entered the world of competitive smash, I learned something. Items can appear anywhere on the stage at virtually anytime. This adds a sense of luck to the game that can easily alter the outcome of any match. When you have noobs beating pros just because they used a cheap item, then you have a problem. That is the main reason why I do not feel that item play is fair. The winner of a match should be decided by who has more skill, not who has more luck.

I agree with my bro Jumpman!

I certainly don't want this to turn into a debate thread (as if its not going in that direction already), but I have to say that, on the whole, a large portion of the influx of new players are open minded, so much so that they are actively questioning what we know about conventional play. I wouldn't be a part of the 'ISP' project if I thought that there weren't people vested in its outcome. Times are changing; I love what competitive Smash was, but I also am learning to love what it might become, and I can't allow myself to be so closed-minded as to think that things can't change.

I may not love item play personally, but others do, and so I'll host tournaments for them and learn to be a part of that part of the community, for no other reason than to be an open-minded person.

Jumpman__ said:

I used to play items all the time when I was a mindless noob. Then, when I entered the world of competitive smash, I learned something. Items can appear anywhere on the stage at virtually anytime. This adds a sense of luck to the game that can easily alter the outcome of any match. When you have noobs beating pros just because they used a cheap item, then you have a problem. That is the main reason why I do not feel that item play is fair. The winner of a match should be decided by who has more skill, not who has more luck.

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In a sense, I agree... And that is why "cheap items" are not in this tournament. Read the first post. The items being used are not cheap or broken. They both have pros and cons. Any skilled player can easily deal with them without it altering the match much. They serve a purpose upon which strategy and skill can feed off of. For example, say a DK grabs the Franklin badge against a Falco. Now the Falco is forced to switch their style of play to deal with the lasers being reflected off for the next 30 or so seconds. That means the Falco player will need to adapt and fight the DK up close, which is not an issue if the Falco player is skilled. Even if items are thrown, it's not much different than Peach throwing turnips, Diddy throwing banana peels, or DDD throwing Waddledees, etc. A skilled player can shield or dodge. No big deal. None of the items used in ISP can one hit KO anyways (unless at very high % in which case a smash attack will do the same thing so no difference really - use shield or dodge). You can even knock off items from another player and use them yourself or catch things that are thrown at you or reflect them and send them back at your opponent which is using great skill and tactics, plus imagine the mind games possible. If an item appears that you know your opponent wants, you can set up a trap in luring them to it, or you can simply throw it off the stage if you don't want them using it and it's not useful to you. Or if they get it, knock it out of their hands and then proceed. It really makes the play styles almost unimaginable and diverse. So, the random spawn of items is no big deal really. A skilled player will use what is available and make it work in his favor. Besides, how is it any different from Peach's stitch face or DDD's Gordo? In fact, ISP approved items can help balance the game. It helps even out the obvious difference in character TIERS, and makes the match outcome rely on the players SKILL, not on the character's tier position and that is truly competitive in the definition of the word. It tests the true skill of a player based on their strategy, knowledge, terrain control, item usage, and dodge/perry/reflect/shield reactions. It's far more competitive.

Imagine a huge field where the object of the game is to get to the other side. Well, obviously the fastest characters are top tier leaving the slow characters at a distinct disadvantage. And no matter how skilled the player is, using a slow character will always result in loss. But now throw in an obstacle course and suddenly it no longer matters if the character is fast or slow. It's all about the player's skill in using every single move, offensive and defensive, plus strategy, tactic and skills to get past the obstacle course and to the other side of that field to win. Smash is like that, especially Brawl.

Another example, say IC vs Luccas. An item appears and IC grabs it. It's both a pro and a con. Pro: IC gains the ability to use the item; con: IC looses the ability to chain grab. At the same time, the Luccas player's pro: won't get chain grabbed; con: the IC now has the potential to use the item against him. Or say IC, passes up the chance to get the item in preference of chain grabbing, he can now bait/mind game the Luccas into getting it and set up a combo with the knowledge that the Luccas is going to be in a specific spot at this one time. Now, let's say, the Lucass gets the item, the pro: has the potential to use the item; con: is affected by IC's chain grab. The IC's pro: can bait and chain grab; con: has the potential to get the item used against him. Each situation must be carefully analyzed and in the heat of battle, the player to quickly figure out the best course of action is the victor. Items play isn't about "get the item, use the item", that's a unskilled players view of the game. A truly skilled player can see past that and at the truly complex form of play that arrised instead. Without items, the IC player would simply chain grab the Luccas player to death and three stock him, big whoop. The IC player would have the character advantage and the Luccas would have the character disadvantage. That's not competitive. That's called taking advantage of tiers, so that even a skilled Luccas player can get three stocked by a noob IC player that does nothing but the chain grab (which is NOT hard to do at all). ISP items work to destroy the tiers and make the outcome of a match based solely on the SKILL of a player, not on the predecided tiers of characters. Like ask yourself, what makes Snake so good? His power and projectiles (which are like items). Put him in a ISP tourney and he's suddenly not top tier anymore, because all the non-powerful of projectile type characters can better stand a chance against him, but it will be based on the player's skill now.

In a ISP tourney, it's easy to say that any CHARACTER can win (this is true), any character has the POTENTIAL to win - but only the most skilled PLAYER will win. THAT is the purpose of the ISP tournaments. Please consider this before you post anything else.

If you don't like items, then OK, that is your preference. Don't attend the tournament and that's that. If you are intrigued or interested in the idea behind the ISP project, then please attend. We'd be very glad to see you there, regardless of if you play or not. If anything, it'll be lots of fun. That can be guaranteed.

The funny thing is that even the items wont stop me and my brother (Jumpman) from coming. I forget that how we used to always play before discovering competitive melee/brawl. This will be fun tourney and good luck to everyone who will come. Im interested because I have won 8 SSBM tourneys at gametrade. Jared is a funny big guy. LOL

Well, I'm glad to hear you guys will be joining us, |_Melee1_|. Looking forward to it. ^_^

Ill also try to get more people involved. Items may change the outcome of who wins but who cares it could be in my favor.

Alright, less than a week left. ^_^ I have two people bringing Wii's/Brawl, but we might need more. Please let me know if you plan on coming/bringing a Wii.

If I come this will be my first Tourney of my life!
I plan on coming regardless if items are on or not.
Sorry, but I don't think I can spare a Wii/Brawl though.

i just hope infinity or melee1 dont go....
also nice kirbykid did u get 3rd at melee1s tourney? I wanted to play you (the lucas from the gamestop tourney) but i left after i lost. too tired

Wow @ the first few people who posted on this topic.
Don't go off shooting down the idea, douche bags.

If you don't like the idea of no items and are not interested because of this, then don't go.
Don't have to insult the guy for hosting a tournament, jeez.

****in' smash community...

Im coming and my brother will probably easily win the whole thing. Hes number 1 on singles and doubles for MLGpro. Just letting people know. Im scared even though hes my partner.

i kinda wanna learn ice climbers for this tournament

I can't wait to go to this tournament. I have a 90% chance of coming and I was wondering if there was still the possibility of a doubles tourney. My bro Melee 1 and I would definately play doubles.

If we have enough people interested in having a doubles bracket (and it sounds like there might be) and we have enough time/Wiis (also sounds good so far), then I'd LOVE to host a doubles bracket. Of course, the rules we have so far were made with 1v1 in mind... but I'm sure it'd be a good test to see how things hold up in a 2v2 setting, and I can tweak things a little. ^_^

I shall most def probably be attending!

l_Melee1_l said:

Im coming and my brother will probably easily win the whole thing. Hes number 1 on singles and doubles for MLGpro. Just letting people know. Im scared even though hes my partner.

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Online play means nothing.