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Event - Apex 2015 Apex Pools are looking like a huge joke right now.

Laijin

Smash Hero
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Oct 10, 2004
Messages
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Rylai the Crystal Maiden's Igloo
I hope everyone is fully aware on how Apex pools are gonna be ran.
630 players. Second largest Melee tournament of all time.
32 pools. top 2 make it out.
That's about 20 players per BRACKET pool.

Compare this to EVO.
696 players.
46 pools. Top 2 make it out.
Around 14 people per pool.

Comparing the two tournaments, EVO is ran about 8 or 9 different games with hundreds of players in each of them. Apex is running 10 different games, with less than 100(most will probably even get less than 50) players in most of those games.

As far as setups go, there will probably be 50+ setups at the tournament(My guess is way more, considering how many Alex Strife promised and how many the community will probably bring).
EVO on the the other hand only had about 16 setups to run ALL of pools and the entire tournament.

My point is. I'm finding it really hard to figure out why there are so few pools for such a large tournament. Every single player I've spoken to this about feels like they wasting their money entirely with this tournament and the way its setup. Generally in a pool you have 2 or 3 very good players who are likely to make it out. In this tournament, that number will probably reach to about 5 or 6 very good players. Nobody wants to go to a national, spend hundreds of dollars getting there and entering and then going 0-2 because of how the tournament is structured and set up. There is no excuse, or even time constraints wise as to why there are only 32 pools.

Thoughts?
 
Last edited:

EEvisu

Smash Lord
Joined
Sep 18, 2006
Messages
1,898
Didn't even notice this, dayummmm.

Follow me @ThephenomenalEE to voice your rage at this madness!

:017:
 

Darkseid

Smash Rookie
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
6
Location
Fredericksburg, VA
I agree top two of pools is BS! I think with a 14 man pool top 6 should make it out. I might even settle for top 4, but top two is just ridiculous.
 

Darkseid

Smash Rookie
Joined
Dec 17, 2013
Messages
6
Location
Fredericksburg, VA
I agree top two of pools is BS! I think with a 14 man pool top 6 should make it out. I might even settle for top 4, but top two is just ridiculous.
 

PB&J

Smash Hero
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Apr 25, 2007
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lawrenceville, GA
Man O Man.. Seen this Coming.

I think we should be fine though. I feel if I cant beat everybody in the tourny then i dont deserve to make it out and having the pressure of only top 2 might make some people play better. Thats my opinion after thinking about this for a while now.
 

smashbroskilla

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Man O Man.. Seen this Coming.

I think we should be fine though. I feel if I cant beat everybody in the tourny then i dont deserve to make it out and having the pressure of only top 2 might make some people play better. Thats my opinion after thinking about this for a while now.
Your "a while" is 2 minutes apart. I wonder what you consider a short period of time.
 

Captain Smuckers

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Nov 5, 2010
Messages
492
Location
Mount Vernon, NY
It'd be nice if more people could make it out of pools, but honestly I feel like making it out of pools is somewhat of an arbitrary goal that people make for themselves (and I've done it too). It's not like the placings go:

people who made it to bracket
----------------------------------------------------
people who didn't

Sure, there is a clear divide among the two groups, but it isn't like everyone who didn't make it to bracket are equal. You can still out place other people that don't make it out of pools. Obviously, there's the whole thought process of "your goal should be to get first at everything", but for those of us with realistic expectations, we try to set slightly smaller goals. I can see why making bracket would be one of those goals, but why not just focus on getting a certain placing, beating a certain amount of people, or even a certain amount of people that are considered "better" than you.
 

Revven

FrankerZ
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Laijin is claiming to have psychic powers and knows just how many people will sign up at the door for the other fighting games when last year's Apex clearly shows there's a good 100+ that will show up for the other games (hell probably even more now that Apex has a reputation for itself with last year's event) -- even if pre-reg numbers are exceptionally low for those games. And they're only so low because guess what? The other fighting game communities are used to signing up at the door and not being required to pre-reg (even though pre-regging makes it easier on TOs). You can't really blame Alex Strife for that because it's really the other numerous fighting game TOs for not making that change (pre-reg being the only way to sign up for the tournament) -- he's not the one who should be leading that charge for change for those communities.

It's for the best, IMO, that these huge tournaments run more quickly and smoothly than arbitrarily change the amount that advance based on poor FGC pre-reg numbers.

I'd argue because of how smoothly they'll run with top 2 advancing or whatever that you'll be likely to get a lot of friendlies in -- pending on the amount of setups available after Round 1 of pools (which are actually bracket pools like EVO).

The important point is it's bracket pools anyway and this is something that I'm pretty sure has been told to you, Laijin.
 

da K.I.D.

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Rochester, NY
It's just a straight bracket ya'll. It's split into pools for better organisation, especially with multiple games.
Tinny has a point here.

It really doesnt matter how many pools there are or how many people are in the pools or how many rounds of pools there are. Because it has no bearing on us as players. As far as anybody entering the tournament is concerned you lose two sets and youre out of the tournament. Doesnt matter if you get out of pools or when you lose, that is inconsequential. If you lose twice youre out. And that doesnt change based on the pool structure at all.

This just sounds like needless complaining to me.
 

Player-1

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Rainbow Cruise
It doesn't matter that much between top 2 making it out and top 4 making it except for WHEN you play since the "pools" are pretty much a straight bracket like how EVO was done. If you lose twice you're out. Making it top 4 get out instead of top 2 is just delaying when the matches will be played.

Making more pools is also just subdividing the "big bracket" even further so I don't think that does anything practical either, they should have just done it like last year and had those kinds of bracket pools where your losses are reset going into the main bracket.
 

Anomic_Punk

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Sep 20, 2006
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Lawrenceville , GA
As the melee TO for Apex, I always invite constructive criticism and feedback- so I don't mind that some people are upset about it being 20 man "pools" with top 2 making it out. The point is that this will be the 2nd largest melee tournament to date, and people need to bring their "A" game. Personally I enjoy round robins, or even multiple waves of pools. But its simply not something that can be fit in with a tournament of this size. Anyone who is upset because they want more matches, can fulfill that goal via friendlies or money matches.
Bracket is GO time. I don't think its unreasonable to say that internationals of this size are not centered around "improving" as a player. You come to a tournament of this size and caliber because you want to see how you stack up against the best. Method aside, I doubt that the placings would be that much different if I were to use smaller pools.
 

smashmachine

Smash Lord
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Messages
1,285
As the melee TO for Apex, I always invite constructive criticism and feedback- so I don't mind that some people are upset about it being 20 man "pools" with top 2 making it out. The point is that this will be the 2nd largest melee tournament to date, and people need to bring their "A" game. Personally I enjoy round robins, or even multiple waves of pools. But its simply not something that can be fit in with a tournament of this size. Anyone who is upset because they want more matches, can fulfill that goal via friendlies or money matches.
Bracket is GO time. I don't think its unreasonable to say that internationals of this size are not centered around "improving" as a player. You come to a tournament of this size and caliber because you want to see how you stack up against the best. Method aside, I doubt that the placings would be that much different if I were to use smaller pools.
they wouldn't be different AT ALL, because it changes nothing in the larger bracket
 

Nintendude

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San Francisco
As others have said, it's just straight bracket regardless of how many subdivisions there are. I don't see why it matters how big the pools are. "Making it out of pools" is no different from making it past some arbitrary threshold in a huge bracket.
 

Fireblaster

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Sep 17, 2003
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Storrs, Connecticut
You guys have it easy compared to 64. We're getting FOUR 40-PERSON POOLS where top two promote to the final top 8. I'm not complaining since it's like nintendude said, bracket pools are just arbitrary cutoffs in a huge bracket anyways and they don't affect anything. But our arbitrary goals are much more brutal than yours :awesome:
 

da K.I.D.

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Rochester, NY
Also, for the record. Since smash began adopting FGC standards like bracket pools for majors, I have noticed a distinct lack of "Mew2King threw his match to a pretty girl and I didnt make it out of pools because of it" style complaints. When you only get one chance to lose before you get knocked out, everyone has to go all out and nobody gets soft balled. which is a big plus in my book.
 

Bones0

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Also, for the record. Since smash began adopting FGC standards like bracket pools for majors, I have noticed a distinct lack of "Mew2King threw his match to a pretty girl and I didnt make it out of pools because of it" style complaints. When you only get one chance to lose before you get knocked out, everyone has to go all out and nobody gets soft balled. which is a big plus in my book.
I've literally never heard a single complaint about match fixing in Melee pools. Maybe that's just me though.

With 2 full days (leaving aside 1 full day for crews and top 8) and 50+ setups, I'm skeptical of these claims that there is not enough time to run RR pools for the first round or at the very least increase the number of people making it out of pools and don't carry any losses over into the actual bracket.
 

W.C.N

Smash Lord
Joined
Jun 14, 2012
Messages
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Apex is running 10 different games, with less than 100(most will probably even get less than 50) players in most of those games.

This is where I stopped reading the op, what games do you see with only 100 entrants?

Also EVO had hundreds of players but they didn't have nearly as much crossover, people only play 2-3 games at EVO generally apex we have the usual person entering steady 2 and then players like m2k who enter 7
 

Bones0

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Apex is running 10 different games, with less than 100(most will probably even get less than 50) players in most of those games.

This is where I stopped reading the op, what games do you see with only 100 entrants?

Also EVO had hundreds of players but they didn't have nearly as much crossover, people only play 2-3 games at EVO generally apex we have the usual person entering steady 2 and then players like m2k who enter 7
RR pools are affected much less by players entering multiple events than bracket pools. If M2K has to play his Melee and barlw pools at the same time, he can play Melee while the rest of his barlw pool plays each other, and then vice versa. If he has to play a bracket pool for both games at the same time, the entire bracket gets held up because they can't play matches until M2K plays his. They can play as far into the bracket as possible without him, but it doesn't save any time because they still have to sit and wait for M2K to stomp his way through his barlw bracket, and then he has to come stomp through his half of the Melee bracket. Only THEN can they play out the rest of the bracket pool.
 

Renegade

Smash Journeyman
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Feb 8, 2005
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347
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Richmond, VA, USA
OMG, you guys are so weak complaining about double elim bracket "pools".

Show up with your A game, and don't suck. It's that simple. This is a premiere tournament, best of the best.

If you go 0-2, you don't need to be wasting everyone's time in RR pools. Save the coddling for locals.
 

Renegade

Smash Journeyman
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Feb 8, 2005
Messages
347
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Richmond, VA, USA
Oh yeah, and when you compare APEX to EVO...

EVO- 46 pools/top 2 make it out, 14 players per pool
APEX- 32 pools/top 2 about 20 players per pool.

In the EVO system, since the # of pools are NOT a power of two (they insist of 14-16 man brackets to make things manageable)... BYEs are awarded in the semi final rounds, after approximately 90% of people have been eliminated. Obviously, having byes when the competition is among the top 10% of the tourney is a huge deal.

Also, with smaller bracket pools, the chances for double jeopardy goes way up.

When # of pools is a power of 2, that doesn't happen and the only byes are in the first round of the tournament, where the number of weaker players makes this not a big deal at all.
 

Reioumu

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Muppetland 64
Don't even think of them as pools. It's just 32 brackets put together that just continue into the next part of the bracket. If you don't make it out, then you weren't meant to be in that top bracket in the first place.
 

Bones0

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Don't even think of them as pools. It's just 32 brackets put together that just continue into the next part of the bracket. If you don't make it out, then you weren't meant to be in that top bracket in the first place.
No one cares about making it out of bracket pools. They care about getting more than 2 horribly unbalanced tournament matches for the cost of a $30 entry fee. If time constraints were really an issue, they should have seeded out the top 4th of the bracket so less people go 0-2 vs. a pair of pro players.
 

Archangel

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This is kinda silly. Not gonna lie, I was pretty sure it would be at least top 3 but top 2 and it's bracket? That's just like...1 random person who happens to get the better of you combined with one of the top 10 players in the world being in your pool and suddenly you wasted your money and want to go home. If you really just want to whack so many people out now then why even allow people to register? why not just do some old school MLG where only the top 8 players in the world make bracket?
 

smashmachine

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No one cares about making it out of bracket pools. They care about getting more than 2 horribly unbalanced tournament matches for the cost of a $30 entry fee. If time constraints were really an issue, they should have seeded out the top 4th of the bracket so less people go 0-2 vs. a pair of pro players.
and how does this solve ANYTHING from a time perspective
 

W.C.N

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You don't go to apex for the bracket matches when you suck, you go to play friendlies when able, watch all the amazing matches that happen because this is THE event that will have the top players from all over the world, and also to hang out and get to know the players you watch on streams every week
 

Bones0

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and how does this solve ANYTHING from a time perspective
I'm going to assume you just misunderstood my suggestion. I'm saying they should take the players who are being seeded (i.e. "ranked" players) and just put them into the main part of the bracket which will later be filled in by the players who make it out of the RR/bracket pools. Let the pros skip pools, and they will simply be made up of randoms fighting more equally skilled opponents. It's an absolute waste of time to seed the top 64 players into bracket pools when their advancement to the normal bracket is virtually a foregone conclusion. Of course there are plenty of players outside the top 64 who may cause an upset, but if they are that good then they should have no problem getting 1st seed in their pool at which point they go into the main bracket and get an opportunity to upset a ranked plyer.

How big of a chunk you want to take off the top of the seeding list to skip to the main bracket is debatable, but the idea is that for every ranked player you remove from a pool, you give a newbie one more set that isn't hopelessly unbalanced against him. It allows you to give worse players more games without the tournament needing to run more sets overall. The only thing being lost is ranked players' pools matches, which can hardly be considered a loss at all based on how many top players express total disinterest or even mild annoyance at having to play their pools matches.

You don't go to apex for the bracket matches when you suck, you go to play friendlies when able, watch all the amazing matches that happen because this is THE event that will have the top players from all over the world, and also to hang out and get to know the players you watch on streams every week
If this becomes the most prevalent attitude among lesser skilled players, less people will enter. More importantly, they may not enjoy their experience because they will feel cheated and be less inclined to come to future tournaments at all. I refuse to believe this community is simply incapable of designing a tournament experience that is both competitive, timely, and also generous to unseeded players in terms of games played. I realize the mainstream FGC has been doing straight bracket for years, but tbqh I think we are better than that. I also think we can find a way of meeting those demands without asking for a ton more things from TOs. It is strictly a tournament design issue that can probably be run just as, if not more smoothly than these hardcore straight bracket tournaments.
 

W.C.N

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your forgetting that there isnt just the tournament matches at apex, Its about the whole experience which will make everyone come back, the artist ally and watching of games keeps you entertained and when you see the skills used in the high level play you understand why you lost and how much you need to improve to not be going 0-2 next year
 

Bones0

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your forgetting that there isnt just the tournament matches at apex, Its about the whole experience which will make everyone come back, the artist ally and watching of games keeps you entertained and when you see the skills used in the high level play you understand why you lost and how much you need to improve to not be going 0-2 next year
The artist alley and spectating are great, but they have no real impact on what tournament format works best. It's also a mistake to think that side events will ever make up for an underwhelming tournament experience. Even the sentiment that players can play friendlies or MMs after getting knocked out does not always satisfy players who wanted to get matches that were actually competitive as opposed to stomping ground warmups for world class players.
 
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