Oh yeah, finally got the time to reply to your long'ish post from a few days ago.
Firstly and foremost I absolutely agree that we should try and post as much information into this and try and bug a mod into stickying it. Whether it would go in the Melee Tournaments or Melee Discussion section, I wouldn't know. So if there's a mod out there reading these past few posts, have a think about it. It could quite possibly build this already established community up even further.
Building a Super Smash Bros Melee Community. The key.
Will add onto what was posted a few days ago. Where to begin? Probably the most difficult part of all. Suppose I can go back to the way I found Smashboards, which was sheer luck; nearly a year ago, I just decided to type Smash Bros Tournaments into Google and whoa and behold there was Smashboards.
There are potentially tens of thousands of other SSBM players out there who may be interested in playing more competition. Unfortunately, they don't know a community like Smashboards actually exists. Fortunately there are other methods to finding an otherwise "minority within a minority". Basically video gamers playing in competitive tournaments. My favorite idea out of the three posted was:
Hang out at local video game stores and ask around, or ask if you can play Smash on a TV there.
Add on - ask the employees at the local video game store if they are willing to host a tournament in the store and possibly advertise a flyer near one of the Nintendo shelves.
Next step - After finding players.
Agreed that the idea of "loser trades off" when trying to promote the game is definitely a bad one. Essentially what happens is the quick learners soon dominate the game thus causing all the slower but potentially better players to turn their heads the other way. In a gathering of multiple players, having two or more tv's and Gamecubes set up is optimum.
Try and get every player to match up against every other player. This can build the base, so to speak, of a foundation of skills. Playing the same people, or person, over and over again gets easily repetitive and really limits adapting and play styles.
Another example of players with potential but undeveloped ideas would be when me and practically the only other person I played against for a long time, my friend Zach, used to play several months ago. The two characters we pretty much played all the time were my Fox vs his Falco. Now back before we knew about Smashboards, tiers, L-cancelling, item catching, block-throws, even C-stick smashing, and when we used to consider rolling back and forth "cheap", we still liked the game because it was competitive. Soon after, we found out about a tournament called Meleepalooza and lets just say it was a learning experience. After going two and out in singles in nearly 10 minutes I was in sheer disbelief. My first match against Botsu...? (not even sure it was him) ended with me taking one stock off him in both games. The style he used with Falco I had never imagined in my life: Short hop lasers, short hop spike into reflector to aerial-A combos. Knowledge was definitely the reason why I lost both matches so quickly and easily. Zach actually won a match by the skin of his teeth, which I might add is one of the only reasons why we continued to play on afterwards.
Basically what I was trying to get at in my example is with more variety of players, we would have gone into that tournament, known a lot more, and done much better. We knew about ground dodging, directional influence, shines, and various other skills, just not how or when to use them.
Training Players:
This is a tricky part of the process, but I agree with most of what you said. Firstly, showing the new players how to L-cancel, DI, and some tricks with certain characters is essential. Other newbie manuevers would be chaining smash attacks, constant dash attacks, being extremely aggressive and not stopping to think once, and generally complaining - "that's cheap, that's stupid". All of these can be overcome though with time. Heck, even I still abuse the C-stick with Marth upon getting frustrated.
I'd be careful about focusing extra time on certain players just because they are better than most newbie players starting out. The ones who show the most enthusiasm towards the game should be favored if any, but still favoritism isn't a smart move in the early stages.
Last Notes
Because I'm a step ahead of the other UK players knowledge wise in the game I have thought about using my worse characters against the other England players or even playing at 90% of my skill level just to "train". I haven't actually done it but have thought about it. Could be a bad idea but not really sure.
Alright reply back when ya can. Also sorry if I'm spamming this thread, maybe an idea to just start a new one and try for a sticky.
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