Character Tournament Format

[Scraptor]

One of the strengths of Smash 4 is the strong lineup of characters. We should be doing tournaments that promote using different characters.
(Shout out to anyone that played the WWF TCG back in the day this is where I got part of the idea from)
The Character Tournament Format reserves a slot in what I call the “Character Finals”, meaning there is 1 spot for player to represent and use 1 character for the rest of the tournament. This is the “normal” portion of the tournament meaning double elimination best of 3 rules.
How do we determine what player gets that reserved slot for that character?
With “Pre tournaments” here a few ideas:

1. Players could register 2 characters and play a single elimination 1 set dido tournament for each character against everyone else that registered that character. Anyone that registered a character that no one else did they automatically advance to the Character Finals. Any player that lost both their characters in the pre-tournament they can re-registered by paying half of the entry fee to pick a character that doesn’t have a player representing it in the “Character Final”. (The idea here is that all the players will see final list of players and know how many picked which character once registration is complete. Players can change one of their characters. If players don’t choose a character that no one picked they are willing to bet their tournament on those 2 matches. The re-buy is to get players to pick characters no one is picking and limit the dido matches.)
2. Or a single elimination 1 set matches to figure out a draft rank. The player rank from the pre-tournament matches will create the order players will pick the character they will use for the “Character Final”

What about just skipping to the “Character Final” without doing a Pre tourney?

1. it’s a first come first serve selection reservation
2. a player can pay more than the entry fee to outbid for that character.
3. Random pick out of the hat of the players that want that character.
   1. In B and C scenarios the players that didn’t get the character can pick a non-selected character.

What if we have more than 52 people and all the characters are picked. At that point to make everyone feel they got their money’s worth going. I would recommend a version of the “A” Pre Tournament with single elimination best of 3 matches.
I really like to generate some conversation about some form of this idea to promote people being incentivized to have a strong less popular character to help the diversity early in the games life. What this also will do is breed interesting high level match-ups.

 

[Nexin]

I see what you are trying to do, but there are too many flaws for this to work out, the biggest of which being that it naturally gives a massive advantage to players that already play uncommon characters. Lets go over each of the suggestions for ideas.

1. In my local scene, for example, I'm the only person who plays either Palutena or Olimar. If my local scene were to to hold a tournament using that format, I would certainly make it to the character finals with the characters I'm most comfortable with simply because I'm likely the only person who would sign up with either of those characters. On the other hand, there are a lot of Ganondorf players around where I live, one of which is a good friend of mine. If she were to sign up with Ganondorf, then she would have to compete against all the other players who signed up for Ganondorf. If she wins, she gets to play Ganondorf in the finals, but had to compete in way more matches than me. If she loses, then she has to pay if she wants to select a new character for the tournament, meaning that she either will have to pay more money than me just to get to the same position as myself or she will drop out if the tournament all together. Either way, she would be understandably upset.

2. This one is also not a good idea at all. In this case, you are letting the person who is already the most skilled player get to select their character first. In this case, there are two ways this could go wrong. First, still using my local scene as an example, whichever Ganondorf main did the best will be able to completely stop a very large portion of the participants from playing their best or second best character, as well as the people who did worse getting stuck with characters they probably aren't good with. The second issue, which is somewhat connected to the first, comes with the likelihood of collusion occurring. Lets say that it is the last set of matches before the rankings are determined, and I'm aready in such a massive lead that I'm guaranteed to be able to pick my character first. Now lets assume that my last match is against my friend, and in order to guarantee that she ends up in second place and is able to pick Ganondorf, she needs to beat me. I am already guaranteed to get to pick my character first win or lose, and because we are friends, I will likely end up letting her beat me just so she gets to pick her main.

Don't get me wrong, the idea of having a side tournament where everybody plays a different character actually sounds kind of interesting, but in order for that to work, it will have to be set up so that everybody that signed up is assigned a character randomly instead of letting them choose which one they get to use.

 

[Pyr]

I went to quite a few locals that followed a format like this.

They were easily my least favorite tournaments.

 

[Scraptor]

@ Nexin

Well the point is to get everyone playing different characters or you will be that good at didos. The rules will be before so people get better at other characters. The thought is that out of the 2 characters you would pick at least one that no one is using in case you lose the one that you really want to play. Now if you pick 2 characters that have a lot of people playing them then you run that risk of being out quickly and have to re-enter and maybe no re-enter fee but the idea is to get people to pick those uncommon characters
Honestly if he/she is most skilled player gets to pick the characters he is already playing then you are losing to the same player using the same characters anyway. This format is trying to breed changes in meta game, but I do see your point. On the collusion I mean you got me if you had that scenario sure you could do that. I hope your good at throwing games that is won’t look obvious but if you have it that bad then the dido tournament would be better or you just go to first come first serve in character choices forces people to get there early.

@ Pyr
Why didn’t you like the way they did it? Would there be some way to make it better?

 

[Nexin]

I understand that you want the metagame to evolve and for people to pick up new characters, but neither of those is going to occur if people are forced to play characters they aren't comfortable with in major tournaments, plus people are more willing to play characters they don't normally use in friendlies or when money isn't on the line.

The metagame is going to evolve over time. What it looks like right now is not what it is going to look like in a few years. It took five years after Melee's release for people to realize what the Ice Climbers were capable of doing. When Brawl was first released, R.O.B was considered high tiered due to his fast projectile attacks, but after a year or so had passed, R.O.B. dropped a few tiers due to the more experienced players discovering a blind spot in his offense.

People will also possibly pick up characters in their own time. I started out as a Lucina and Little Mac player, but when I started using Palutena, I began to prefer her over my other two mains and used them less and less until I dropped them both completely. It was only recently that I began using Little Mac again, and I mostly only did that so I could get better at adapting to my opponent's playstyle.

When money is on the line, people are going to play whoever they feel most comfortable with, whether that is Diddy Kong or Palutena. Your best chance to getting something like this to work is, once again, in a side tournament or in friendlies.

 

[digiholic]

I can see it now:

"I'd like to sign up as Falco."
"We already have a Falco, you'll have to fight him"
"Nevermind, I'll just go home."

 

[Teh Sandwich]

This is lame.