A message to Smash Tournament hosts

[Mew2King]

so please tell me how that justifies an abuse of power? We already understand they can control the stickies, but that doesn't justify it as the right thing to do at all

 

[-Ran]

To my knowledge, the administration made the call about the stickies, not the URC. Whenever AZ speaks, he is often speaking from the platform of an Administrator of this website, rather than an URC member. There are higher powers on this website that dictate the policies that we must follow.

 

[Mew2King]

I don't really know what all that stuff that you are saying exactly means (by administration as opposed to URC, but it is irrelevent). But I do know that URC decided they would be the self proclaimed deciders, and now are threatening the rest of us that we can't sticky tournaments unless it uses THEIR rules. That is an abuse of power, and even though they have that power, there is no way that that can be justified as the right thing to do at all. That is going to piss a lot of people off. I already understand your point that they can do it, but they shouldn't have the right to do it. Just simply changing that sticky rule would end like half of the anger towards them. (And I heard alphazealot will make another rule after apex? but even right now it's bad that they are making threats/punishments to those that don't follow them)

 

[CT Chia]

dude, it's stickies. 99% of tournies don't even meet the requirements other than using unity to be considered for stickying. and of that 1%, I would say like 75% of the TOs are already in the URC lol

everyone needs to chill and realize they can still run tournaments however they want, but this is a way to help usher us to a standard with a weight factor on more important tournaments.

 

[vVv Rapture]

Also I'd like to see the opinion of more TOs that are affected by this. All I'm seeing are players that don't host tournaments complaining about stickies when I don't see it really affecting them at all.

I'd be swayed if TOs gave me evidence as to why this is bad.

 

[Prince_Abu]

urc can s my d i play melee son

 

[Mew2King]

Chibo i already understand that it's not a big deal, it's more of the fact that they are DOING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE (punishing people for not following them).

 

[Buddha Lova]

There are higher powers on this website that dictate the policies that we must follow.

So you're saying the community needs to follow the rules or find another site? How is that not bullying?

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

To my knowledge, the administration made the call about the stickies, not the URC. Whenever AZ speaks, he is often speaking from the platform of an Administrator of this website, rather than an URC member. There are higher powers on this website that dictate the policies that we must follow.

I don't really know what all that stuff that you are saying exactly means (by administration as opposed to URC, but it is irrelevent). But I do know that URC decided they would be the self proclaimed deciders, and now are threatening the rest of us that we can't sticky tournaments unless it uses THEIR rules. That is an abuse of power, and even though they have that power, there is no way that that can be justified as the right thing to do at all. That is going to piss a lot of people off. I already understand your point that they can do it, but they shouldn't have the right to do it. Just simply changing that sticky rule would end like half of the anger towards them. (And I heard alphazealot will make another rule after apex? but even right now it's bad that they are making threats/punishments to those that don't follow them)

I think Ran's trying to say it's the SWF admins that decided the stickying rule and the URC has nothing to do with it.

 

[Baro]

So you're saying the community needs to follow the rules or find another site? How is that not bullying?

Rules are rules. Deal with it. Don't like it, make your own site why don't you.

 

[Player-1]

M2K, we're not punishing anyone, we're just not rewarding them, there's a big difference there.

 

[Mew2King]

No, because before, we could use any ruleset we wanted, and if it was a good or big enough tourney it could get stickied. You're changing the rules now and now the only way to do that is to follow you. So you're punishing us

 

[Player-1]

punishingpresent participle of pun·ish (Verb)
Verb:
Inflict a penalty or sanction on (someone) as retribution for an offense, esp. a transgression of a legal or moral code


No such penalty or sanction is taking place. If I say "Hey junior, you can make $20 if you make all As and Bs" and then later I say "Hey junior, you only get $20 if you get A's" then that's not punishing anyone....

 

[vVv Rapture]

M2K you're not even a TO why do you care? No one's personal rights are being taken away. I don't see why this is such a big deal.

 

[Mew2King]

dude you can word it however you want, but the fact is you are taking away something that used to be a standard for a very long time. You are making it so now, the only way to get this ability, is to follow your ruleset. We had the ability to get this before, but now that the all great higher ups of URC came along anyone who isn't a dog to them cannot get that reward

I care because it's an abuse of power and it's wrong to do

 

[CT Chia]

Chibo i already understand that it's not a big deal, it's more of the fact that they are DOING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE (punishing people for not following them).

It's not punishment at all. It's more like not giving a bonus. If you walk into a store, and they don't give you something for free, is that punishment? lol

Smashboards is ran by whoever runs Smashboards. Whether it be JV, MLG, the Admins, etc. Stickies are a simple feature of this site, and they are free to do what they want with this, and they have chosen to basically only allow Unity events. It's no different than when during MLG the giant MLG stream box appeared at the top of the site, it's what MLG wanted so it's what they get.

Everyone is still 100% capable of hosting tournaments fine on this site. TOs should be more thankful that they are able to use SWF to help advertise their event, because without it, tourneys would then truly be hurt.

dude you can word it however you want, but the fact is you are taking away something that used to be a standard for a very long time. You are making it so now, the only way to get this ability, is to follow your ruleset. We had the ability to get this before, but now that the all great higher ups of URC came along anyone who isn't a dog to them cannot get that reward

I care because it's an abuse of power and it's wrong to do

The URC members were not the ones that chose this rule.

 

[Tesh]

The thing that really disappoints me here is that the URC has been around all years and people are suddenly complaining about the process. If people like M2K had gotten their way and RC/Brinstar were banned along with adding 2 minutes to the timer, none of them would be *****ing about tyranny or how unfair it is that TOs have banded together.

As for stickies, large tournaments that didn't run "normal" rulesets haven't been stickied in the past either. Even large tournaments with normal rulets but not much talent expected to attend don't get stickied. URC is just redefining what a "normal" ruleset is. Half of these nooby anime con tournaments with 60+ people don't get stickied, but 30-40 man tournaments do. Think back and ask yourself if you cared in 2009 to early 2011 if an MK banned tournament didn't get a sticky. Or if you cared earlier this year if a tournament with Pictochat legal got a sticky. None of you did.

Its really pathetic that you all found problems with the process the instant it didn't favor you.

 

[Mew2King]

Chibo I already understand all of that. That is TOTALLY not the point. You can word punishments and rewards however you want, but what URC or URC+the higher ups of the site or whatever are doing is totally wrong

 

[CT Chia]

It's not a punishment lmao

a punishment would be like making it something arbitrary like all non Unity tournaments are forced onto Page 2 or something.

And the quality of the tournaments on the sticky list is no worse than they have ever been in the past. Nothing has really even changed.

 

[Player-1]

Alright, so if a parent gives a child $20 for getting A's and B's ever since elementary school and then on the kid's senior year they change it so only A's get $20 then is that an abuse of power?

 

[vVv Rapture]

The URC doesn't control any of this, why do you keep blaming them.

 

[Mew2King]

I SAID YOU CAN WORD IT HoWEVER YOU WANT

YOU ARE STILL TAKING AWAY SOMETHING THAT WAS ONCE BEFORE A RIGHT TO ALL TOs AS LONG AS THEY RAN A BIG GOOD TOURNAMENT

it's an ABUSE OF POWER. That was all the point I was trying to make was

 

[-Ran]

I don't really know what all that stuff that you are saying exactly means. But I do know that URC decided they would be the self proclaimed deciders, and now are threatening the rest of us that we can't sticky tournaments unless it uses their rules.

Your knowledge is flawed. As I already stated, the website itself made the URC. It was the decision of the administration of the website to create a unified rule set committee which is what the URC eventually became. The staff decided what would be entailed in this, while the URC members focused on the construction of the rule set that they were tasked with.

That is an abuse of power, and even though they have that power, there is no way that that can be justified as the right thing to do at all. That is going to piss a lot of people off. I already understand your point that they can do it, but they shouldn't have the right to do it

It is a choice of the Administration of Smashboards to do it, not the URC. This is what they want.

In my eyes, I believe that the Administration is currently looking towards the future of Smash. By laying down the infrastructure now for a consistent rule set, you will have trained your Tournament Organizers to work together when the next game comes out. This brings more legitimacy to Smash as a competitive environment if everyone is utilizing the same rule set. It is a paradigm shift from what has been utilized by the community as a whole throughout its lifetime. Everything was recommended before, which meant that no region, or even city was on the same page. This doesn't aid the public perception of Smash being a competitively viable game.

Right now, with the aid of Unity, I know that I can go to a Texas tournament and play on the same stages and rules in regards to -everything- that I have at my own events. This is tremendous. One clear example of the negative nature of everyone crafting their own rule set is it effects the viability of a character that a player is using. We can all agree that stages have a profound impact on play, and when you give a character such as Falco Jungle Japes, he gains the ability to counter pick to either FD or Japes.

There were times whenever we'd travel to Texas tournaments when everything was recommended, and our rule sets didn't mesh well [We were pretty conservative in Louisiana]. They had stages legal that we didn't usually have in Louisiana. Due to this, many players in our car pool would make mistakes banning stages since they were trained to believe that certain stages weren't allowed in competitive play. Or, since they had never witnessed a character on a stage that wasn't legal in our metagame, would mistakenly counter-pick it assuming that they had the edge.

Beyond the impact of stages, you also have rules such as Infinites limiters that would dramatically increase the viability of specific characters [Ness/Lucas/Dk.] When local metagames banned these, players gained an extra incentive to stay with the character that had a glaring weakness that wasn't always protected by other regions. Since it wasn't consistent nationally, a player could find himself in a tournament where Lucas was completely safe to utilize against Marth, while at another in a city a few hours away, may have resulted in him walking into a near no-win situation unless he carefully read over every rule.

The same can easily be said about ledge grab limits, which were never recommended by the BBR. Some TOs immediately started to put limits on it most notably after Lee and Dphat ledge grabbed a few hundred times during a teams tournament to utilize the Anubis strategy. Due to the random utilization of this rule, some characters gained buffs while others were nerfed pending what events you went to. Linear characters such as Falco no longer had to worry about his laser game being negated by someone [notably DK] hovering on the edge.

At some point, our community needed to form a coherent rule set that would be utilized by the majority of the players on it. There were too many variances in the competitive metagame that dramatically clashed when cities/states/regions met at tournaments. To see the results of having an unstable rule environment, all you need to do is look at the rule set that was utilized for MLG. Remember the public discord that occurred during the release of that rule set? The biggest Smash tournament pay outs in Brawl were vastly dictated by a metagame of MLG's own creation. This [as mentioned, this has all been my opinion] is what most likely brought about the creation of the URC.

 

[-ShadowPhoenix-]

really?

you guys are calling it a reward? lmao

it isnt fair because other tournaments that deserve a stickey wont get one just because they wont use Unity

that is totally a unfair/punishing non Unity TOs

 

[CT Chia]

It's not an abuse of power since we didn't choose to do it

Also it's not an abuse of power at all since Smashboards owners can do what they want with Smashboards

An abuse of power would be some random dude walking into a restaurant that has a 60 minute waiting line and flashing $1,000 to be seated right away. But if the owner of the restaurant came in and got a seat right away, that's not an abuse of power, he owns the freicken restaurant lol

 

[-ShadowPhoenix-]

It's not an abuse of power since we didn't choose to do it

Also it's not an abuse of power at all since Smashboards owners can do what they want with Smashboards

An abuse of power would be some random dude walking into a restaurant that has a 60 minute waiting line and flashing $1,000 to be seated right away. But if the owner of the restaurant came in and got a seat right away, that's not an abuse of power, he owns the freicken restaurant lol

it might not be your decision, but youre still going along with it instead of trying to correct something that isnt fair

 

[Mew2King]

hmmm I see Ran, but I still disagree heavily with the way you are all handling it. It should be a recommended ruleset, and they shouldn't act like they are the ultimate deciders of how the game will be. No offense to TOs but in general a lot of them shouldn't have the power that they do, at all, and if people don't want to follow them they shouldn't have to not get the same advertising chances as other events have. I see that as unfair

I am still glad there are TOs to run events of course (there ALWAYS will be though), but the power they have in making decisions about this game is far too much. That is my other issue with it

 

[-Ran]

By utilizing recommended rulesets, you are going to place the power in the hands of individuals that aren't taking the time to explore the game to the extent that we are. In the URC, we have members of Smash Labs, the Back Room, notable high level players, and we observe the trends of what the community wants/feels about what is currently legal/illegal. We take the time to discuss rule implementation based upon the facts that we have, and due to our connections with the Smash Lab and the Back Room can explore further than a single TO.

By placing the word 'Recommended' in the rule set, you are encouraging TOs to make their own changes to the rule set, rather than creating a competitive standard that players will strive to utilize. We need to become better than a community that has everyone on different pages because of the egos of various regions. There is no reason why one stage can be competitively banned in one area, while in the bulk of the country they decided that it is completely legal.

As a member of the URC, my personal goal is to strive for one cohesive metagame where regardless of distance between tournaments, players are sharing the same experience. As a player that traveled tremendously, you should be one of the first ones to realize the boon this provides for the players. No longer do you have to scour through poorly written tournament threads to see if a common tactic or stage you utilized is now banned, or perhaps a powerful tool that is usually banned [ledge grabs, stages] are suddenly legal. The options for a player shouldn't change to where they are can shoot themselves in a foot due to the random shifting of a rule set.

 

[Mew2King]

But everything you guys do (most of you guys anyway) are based on either votes or your own personal opinions. I think that is VERY flawed because a lot of you don't understand the game as well as a lot of other players do, and most of the people are just going to vote to whatever benefits them regardless. It's a good goal, but a bad way of doing it and a flawed system. I don't feel like most all of the people back there in power should have it. In fact I think having different tourneys do different things is better than one ruleset to force everyone to do the same thing, and for anyone that disagrees with it it will just be like OH WELL SUCKS FOR THEM. That's going to make a lot of people very unhappy.

btw, I've been saying this for over 2 years, but your rules would be a lot better if your timer was 10 minutes (maybe even 12), and RC and Brinstar (DEFINITELY brinstar since rainbow is more debatable) turned off. But in BBR whenever I tried to make polls for those changes, the same people who kept trying to vote to ban MK and bringing up polls over and over to ban MK, those same people kept voting against all the ruleset changes which would be better for the game. That's another issue I have about it. The intentions are obvious (and yes I am biased too, but I would still have voted to make the timer 10 min and get rid of those stages REGARDLESS, and I've been trying to get rid of them in melee for a very long time but no one listens, even MBR is voting to keep them in their newest rulest which sucks too). If this was all announced as like a recommended ruleset instead of trying to make it a requirement that would be totally different

 

[VSC.D-Torr]

Shoutouts to GAMME for failing hardcore

Shoutouts to Plank, HungryBox, and Alex Jebailey for taking the mess that was GAMME and creating CEO
*CEO 2010 featured Hungrybox, Dr. Peepee, Yayuhz, Darkrain, Colbol, ChuDat, Tope, Cyrain, Husband, RockCrock, and more*

Shoutouts to Jebailey for planning and running CEO 2011 to become a legit event for not only the FGC but for the Smash Community as well (due to CEO 2010 being a success with only 3 weeks of preparation due to the community efforts of the FGC and Smash community combined)

Shoutouts to SWF/BRC/URC for not giving CEO 2011 a sticky due to Brawl not following a "standard" ruleset until 4 months after the thread was made

Shoutouts to SWF/BRC/URC for giving SIIS5 a sticky before CEO 2011 despite CEO having the weekend set before by 2 months

The listing was up since January on SWF. We were denied a sticky for so long despite having whatever ruleset we were supposed to(this event being Brawl and *Melee*. I don't understand why multi game events were forced to wait for just one game). SiiS5 got an instant sticky a week or so before Unity came out(early April) and we didn't get one until a day or after it released. That was a couple months of potential exposure wasted.

OoS attendance was pretty much killed off outside ATL South for that. I mean the tourney is going to be huge for other fighter communities(Jebailey said 800+), but I'm just explaining why it's lacking for Smash.

I was disappointed about mostly because of how much Jebailey could've did for smash in the future if smash attendance was bigger(the man got a sponsorship from Namco for this event). It's whatever though, it'll still be a nice regional for ATL South + some players in other regions. Come if you can~

Also, I'm not hating on SiiS5. I hope everyone that goes there has a great time. I just can't help my disappointment a bit that we weren't given as much a fair chance to compete against it.(Not saying we would've won more attendance or anything, but you get what I mean)

Link: http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=112676

 

[-Ran]

You keep saying that we're basing things off our own personal opinions, which is a baseless statement. We don't simply do a vote on something major [MK] without first exploring the information that we can find. For example, with the MK situation, we received a tremendous amount of information from the Back Room [400+ posts.] In every decision that we make, we look at what the community has been creating in terms of data. If we're discussing a stage, we'll research the opinions of the BBR [which is published], and look through the treasure trove of information that is spread throughout the board.

We are making our judgments based on the information that the community brings to the table as well as information that we gather on our own. Since I'm personally not a top player, I don't view my opinion as completely educated on most subjects, so I take the time to do read others research as well as craft my own through the tools I have from being a member of the Smash Labs.

Unfortunately, your opinion about what you view as best [everyone has their own rule set] is different from mine, and I know that you are very staunch in your beliefs. All I can do is write how I feel about the subject, and clearly I support the efforts of the URC since I feel that one metagame is better than a few hundred.

On a side note, I've never had a sticky for my events.

 

[Mew2King]

sorry Ran but even though you say that and I know you mean well, there is far too many people that is going to just simply click on the option that benefits themself, regardless of if it's fair or right or wrong or not, and I have explained in GREAT detail how this all worked in tons of other smashboards posts of mine in the past few weeks, so I could never really take this as seriously as you can when you say things like doing something better for the community when there's so much incredible amounts of bias involved. If you want me to explain some more of this in detail I gladly could but you could just read my last like 100 posts or so to get the idea and an update of how it really works.

 

[황미영]

Holy ****, M2K is such a little kid.

 

[Luma]

kinda funny that all that comes form the URC-guys are really poor examples and they are always talking around the issue, but oh well, what can you expect of a group that bans a not-broken char anyway ;-)

 

[John12346]

M2K, how can you say for sure that the URC is simply looking to increase their tournament placings when an equally as likely scenario is that they're trying to model the ruleset in order to help the community out as much as possible? Without anything that points toward either conclusion, both scenarios are possibilities at this point, and equally as likely, no less.

Of course, I have evidence that at least points in my favor. In regards to the MK ban(I'm not really sure about the other ruleset changes, since no information on those were really given publicly like the MK ban was), the URC looked into BBR discussions, data like mine, Ripple, and Rajam's, and held a public poll to get a firmer stance on what the community wanted before acting on a conclusion. At the very least, we can conclude that the URC definitely BASED their final decision on something.

Or... do you have something that says the members of the URC are prioritizing victory in tournament over my suggestion?

 

[JPOBS]

It's not a punishment lmao

a punishment would be like making it something arbitrary like all non Unity tournaments are not stickied.

See what I did there?

Yea, you're full of s***.

 

[Mew2King]

johnnumbers ive been in the BBR since the VERY beginning, and I've watched countless people say hey we should vote to ban MK, then try to pass it, then it fail like 6 times and I ask things like well why do you want that, and then they say he times out too easily, or counterpicks too hard, so I make threads (polls) saying to increase the timer, and polls to decrease the stage list, and guess what they do? THOSE SAME PEOPLE VOTE AGAINST IT EVERY TIME.

 

[CT Chia]

I think that is VERY flawed because a lot of you don't understand the game as well as a lot of other players do

This is something I'm personally striving to either:
A) Change according to some members currently in the URC
or
B) Validate for the members currently in the URC and any future ones we may have

Or well, a combination of both really. Prove to the public that those back there are valid enough to be making such decisions, and prevent hosts that are not valid enough from being back there. It's just something I've felt strongly about as well from the very beginning of the BBR-RC creation. I actually used to be one of the naysayers as well. I have been convinced though that going with a room of TOs is the way to go - but I still feel that it shouldn't just be any TO. I think the admission structure for the URC is a little too lax at the moment personally.

I feel that a room of TOs only makes sense because since the start of Smash tournaments, it's the TOs that have always made the rules. When someone hosts a tournament, no matter what ruleset they use - if it was one they made on their own or it was one recommended to them (the old BBR Rec'd Ruleset or the now Unity Ruleset), they are still giving a straight Yes or No to every part of the ruleset.

Should the game be 3 stock matches?
Should the game run on a 5 minute timer?
Should infinites be allowed?
Should items be on?
Which stages should be legal?
What should happen if the game is paused?
Should any characters be banned?

Every single little thing is answered solely by the TO and no one else. If a TO is answering these questions based solely on their own personal preference like a Falco or ICs main saying the only stage on at their tournament is FD, then people probably shouldn't attend their tournaments if they are against that.

So now we find the successful tournament organizers out there, and bring them together to form the URC. They are now taking the success of the tournaments they have ran and are now working together, in unity. When a Tournament Organizer becomes successful, it's through the success of their events. Successful events generally come from listening to their community, and making intelligent and fair decisions. While for now people basically have to take our word on this or look at the tournament history of each member of the URC, I hope to validate this into a more concrete process (I'm solely speaking only on my own terms here, I am not speaking on behalf of the URC when I say I want a process like this) so we (the URC) can know a new applicant is valid enough to make such decisions, and so we can then prove to everyone that they are valid enough. I'm not saying everyone currently in the URC is valid, though I'm not saying any of them aren't valid. Simply my goal personally in the future is to prove to all of you that the members in the URC are valid, however it (current membership) may change in the future.

Just remember that forever the TOs have been the ones making the rules, so really nothing is changing here with the URC. If you think top players are the ones who know the most about the game to make the best decisions, they aren't the ones making the decisions on the ruleset. They instead need to convince the TO to change a rule a certain way. This is further seen in how the URC works because
1) We have worked with the BBR in the past, SWF's collection of knowledgeable players
2) We do read and listen to what the community has to say, by this I mean people not in the URC
3) Have members that are multi-talented in various forms of SWF, such as URC members that may also be in the BBR, in the Smash Lab, or part of Staff.

 

[King Funk]

This is something I'm personally striving to either:
A) Change according to some members currently in the URC
or
B) Validate for the members currently in the URC and any future ones we may have

This should have changed a long time ago.

But nah "you hung a man and discussed things later".

 

[Mew2King]

the main thing I've learned from the past 3 years, especially past few months, is that the most important thing to getting a rule changed isn't about what's right or wrong, it's about having the most number of people on your side. And that really sucks to have learned.

and chibo that's nice but at this point it doesn't matter and you know it

I'm going to bed, I have school 4-5 hours. night