Papapaint
Just your average kind of Luigi.
A brief background on myself: I have been playing on and off for nearly ten years. After the release of Brawl, I stepped away from Smash until I happened across the Apex 2013 live stream. Though I’d been to a few MD/VA tournaments throughout my entire time playing Melee, I had never really had the opportunity to travel out of state for a major tournament. I’m not an amazing player by any measure, but I’m working on improving my play and doing as much as I can to be a more active member of the community.
There are pages and pages of complaints being written about the tournament organization on twitter, facebook, reddit, etc. I apologize for contributing to the tiresome collection, but I think it’s problematic when I could have played a good chunk of moneymatches with some excellent players in the free play room instead of entering singles. I would have enjoyed it more, learned more, been less frustrated, and wouldn’t have wasted three hours listening to assorted repetitions of “don’t stand in the ****ing walkways.” Posts from Apex staff made it clear that they felt the massive number of entrants justified using bracket rather than round robin, and that anyone who disagreed just shouldn’t enter. After the utterly **** tournament experience shared by so many players this weekend, I will be sure to heed their suggestion in the future. Next year, I’ll probably save my vacation days and travel funds for a tournament that values its entrants, rather than forking over my cash to someone who sees my entry as just a minor addition to their organizational headache.
I signed up for apex as soon as I found out registration was open. At the time, I was expecting Round Robin pools. After finding out that the tournament was straight bracket (the term “bracket pools” is utter horse****), I began to regret entering. That regret turned to bitterness when it became clear that the tournament was an extremely poorly organized waste of time. The power to our TVs went out not once, not twice, but three times, mid-matches, and it took close to 30 minutes in each instance for a TO to come over with an update. It also didn’t help that S2J showed up extremely late, holding up his part of the bracket long after he should have been disqualified. He was in no way the sole exception, too… not only were top players the only ones who deserved an enjoyable tournament experience, apparently, but they were also allowed to do it on their own time.
It’s essential for smash players to enjoy their tournament experience as much as possible, regardless of their skill levels or experience. One poster on Smashboards suggested that such an opinion was “naive,” pointing out that other FGC tournaments are frequently straight bracket. This opinion ignores a great deal of differences between the melee community and other fighting games. Street fighter, for example, enjoys massive support from Capcom, the ability to play online, cross-platform releases, and are still current enough to generate sales at a steady pace to new players. With the exception of some buggy netplay options, Melee is played in person, on bulky and ancient televisions that are hooked up to a 13-year-old console, and has had to fight pressure to shut down from Nintendo on several occasions. When PR_Balrog loses to someone thousands of miles away in a tournament, they can play with relative ease and limited lag online the very next day. Not so for our community, which has historically depended on the willingness of people to wander around carrying 600-pound televisions.
Part of the problem with no online is well-known in Southern VA, where most of our “locals” are nearly four hours away. Being able to play several people in a tournament setting is a large part of what makes playing the game worth the drive, entry fees, etc. If we do not recognize and nurture this aspect of smash, we will be laying the groundwork for our own dissolution. Players will follow the Apex staff’s advice, and they won’t enter. New players are the lifeblood of our community. They are the ones who bring us massive stream numbers. They are the ones who set record breaking entry numbers. They are the ones who revitalize local scenes, who tell their friends about this amazing game, who are willing to fork over cash to enter tournaments and take their lumps until they improve. Telling them that they are nigh worthless until they’re good enough to make it out of bracket is a surefire way to dampen their enthusiasm.
I’m making it sound as though Apex was a bust, and that’s certainly not the case. No matter how hard the TOs tried to make it a miserable experience in the actual venue, I could not possibly be happier with my experience outside of tournament. I want to recognize VGBC in particular; not only was GimR working like a madman to get things running smoothly, but the Salty Suite itself was absolutely incredible. I don’t know if people realize how much love goes into productions like that, especially when it comes at the cost of being able to play the game itself. I won’t go into details, but there were moments where the Salty Suite was nearly shut down by forces outside of VGBC’s control, and the whole staff damn near lost their minds working overtime to make it happen anyway. That’s passion.
I also have much love in my heart for most of the players I met during the trip. I won’t turn the spotlight onto the few players who were unkind or disrespectful, as they were vastly outnumbered by some of the most pleasant people ever to lay their hands on a gamecube controller. My memory is far too poor to recognize people individually, but I definitely walked away from the tournament with a newfound respect for the community in general. I’m hoping to attend ROM 7, and I hope to see many of them again there.
There are pages and pages of complaints being written about the tournament organization on twitter, facebook, reddit, etc. I apologize for contributing to the tiresome collection, but I think it’s problematic when I could have played a good chunk of moneymatches with some excellent players in the free play room instead of entering singles. I would have enjoyed it more, learned more, been less frustrated, and wouldn’t have wasted three hours listening to assorted repetitions of “don’t stand in the ****ing walkways.” Posts from Apex staff made it clear that they felt the massive number of entrants justified using bracket rather than round robin, and that anyone who disagreed just shouldn’t enter. After the utterly **** tournament experience shared by so many players this weekend, I will be sure to heed their suggestion in the future. Next year, I’ll probably save my vacation days and travel funds for a tournament that values its entrants, rather than forking over my cash to someone who sees my entry as just a minor addition to their organizational headache.
I signed up for apex as soon as I found out registration was open. At the time, I was expecting Round Robin pools. After finding out that the tournament was straight bracket (the term “bracket pools” is utter horse****), I began to regret entering. That regret turned to bitterness when it became clear that the tournament was an extremely poorly organized waste of time. The power to our TVs went out not once, not twice, but three times, mid-matches, and it took close to 30 minutes in each instance for a TO to come over with an update. It also didn’t help that S2J showed up extremely late, holding up his part of the bracket long after he should have been disqualified. He was in no way the sole exception, too… not only were top players the only ones who deserved an enjoyable tournament experience, apparently, but they were also allowed to do it on their own time.
It’s essential for smash players to enjoy their tournament experience as much as possible, regardless of their skill levels or experience. One poster on Smashboards suggested that such an opinion was “naive,” pointing out that other FGC tournaments are frequently straight bracket. This opinion ignores a great deal of differences between the melee community and other fighting games. Street fighter, for example, enjoys massive support from Capcom, the ability to play online, cross-platform releases, and are still current enough to generate sales at a steady pace to new players. With the exception of some buggy netplay options, Melee is played in person, on bulky and ancient televisions that are hooked up to a 13-year-old console, and has had to fight pressure to shut down from Nintendo on several occasions. When PR_Balrog loses to someone thousands of miles away in a tournament, they can play with relative ease and limited lag online the very next day. Not so for our community, which has historically depended on the willingness of people to wander around carrying 600-pound televisions.
Part of the problem with no online is well-known in Southern VA, where most of our “locals” are nearly four hours away. Being able to play several people in a tournament setting is a large part of what makes playing the game worth the drive, entry fees, etc. If we do not recognize and nurture this aspect of smash, we will be laying the groundwork for our own dissolution. Players will follow the Apex staff’s advice, and they won’t enter. New players are the lifeblood of our community. They are the ones who bring us massive stream numbers. They are the ones who set record breaking entry numbers. They are the ones who revitalize local scenes, who tell their friends about this amazing game, who are willing to fork over cash to enter tournaments and take their lumps until they improve. Telling them that they are nigh worthless until they’re good enough to make it out of bracket is a surefire way to dampen their enthusiasm.
I’m making it sound as though Apex was a bust, and that’s certainly not the case. No matter how hard the TOs tried to make it a miserable experience in the actual venue, I could not possibly be happier with my experience outside of tournament. I want to recognize VGBC in particular; not only was GimR working like a madman to get things running smoothly, but the Salty Suite itself was absolutely incredible. I don’t know if people realize how much love goes into productions like that, especially when it comes at the cost of being able to play the game itself. I won’t go into details, but there were moments where the Salty Suite was nearly shut down by forces outside of VGBC’s control, and the whole staff damn near lost their minds working overtime to make it happen anyway. That’s passion.
I also have much love in my heart for most of the players I met during the trip. I won’t turn the spotlight onto the few players who were unkind or disrespectful, as they were vastly outnumbered by some of the most pleasant people ever to lay their hands on a gamecube controller. My memory is far too poor to recognize people individually, but I definitely walked away from the tournament with a newfound respect for the community in general. I’m hoping to attend ROM 7, and I hope to see many of them again there.
