Hive
Smash Lord
The recent attempts to universalize rulesets in various geographic regions for major tournaments by TOs was probably one of the most important changes to come to brawl tournament organization in over a year, and was subsequently met with little enthusiasm to carry the process further. The biggest disappointment from mlg isn't why we as a community got kicked, I don't intend to pursue the subjest further here, but it is that we were unable to develop and learn from the other gaming communities and the league on ways to innovate our own system. Its time to carry the community forward, we've been slacking on development too long, with the major projects of the community over the last two years being only subjective tier listing and pr systems, and decentralized ruleset decisions. Widely time separated national tournaments are one of the only ways for players to gauge player and character success in our system, and until recently the rulesets of different regions carried wide variances. What makes a gaming scene like Halo or Starcraft really able to carry the attention that it does? One of the hugest differences between a scene like Starcraft and the fighting game communities is structure, and in its centralization. The power of mlg was in its ability to gain attendance and hype for events, and to be able to gauge player success through an organized circuit and visibility.
I'm going to put out ahead of time that I haven't for some time actively attended tournaments since I left the brawl scene, although I have kept a semi active interest in the community. What I say about the brawl scene I realize may be subject to some inconsistencies with lack of perception on some of the more recent changes. Having said that I extremely doubt that what I say isn't an applicable step forward. I truly believe, if acted upon, it can be one of the most important changes to the brawl community in its lifetime But for those of you who do not want to hear any of this then, yes, here is your strawman/ad hominem argument out of it.
What's wrong with the current tournament system?
The current tournament system isn't necessarily a bad one, but it can be improved upon. What are the factors that gain attendance to tournaments, what kind of hype do we have for interegional travel? How do players gauge success in the system? Basically brawl tournaments start with the TOs, individuals who want to start brawl scenes in the area who individually try to gain access to venues, resources, and are in charge of advertising the scene. They are also largely responsible for rulesets, tournament structures, tournament events and payouts with influence from pressure from local players. Larger tournaments featuring out of region players are usually dictated by chance and precedent towards tournaments which have been able to draw in larger crowds in the past. They are largely unorganized in timing and the attendances are unpredictable and vary widely depending on the power of word of mouth through largely unfocused channels for marketing. The PR systems, with the exception of Texas' well drawn out system, which players use to gauge their success, are also usually subjective and have both varying time periods in which they represent, and varying regions. The only way for players to really gauge success is by a tournament to tournament basis, and in larger national tournaments that are very rare, this makes perceived player success and character rankings very unpredictable. The problem with such a decentralized and localized sytem is in its ability to utilize its true tournament potential. Brawl is a very popular game, as the recent gamefaqs poll should have made us realize, but we are severely underutilizing the amount of players that can show up to the scene and motivation to continue in the scene by having a largely decentralized tournament structure.
What I propose.
Turning the brawl community into a national system seems like a daunting task, but it is actually very simple if we use a group effort with support of TOs and the BBR to make it happen, we already have the resources really its just accepting a common format and for authoratative bodies to accept responsibility. The BBR has a lot of room to increase its activity in the community, its recent rulesets, etc.. have been somewhat out of touch with the community tbh. One of the things to start off a system of change is by adopting the TO accepted universal ruleset as an official one. The TO accepted ruleset is a huge step forward towards comparability in results and data across the scene. Its absolutely necessary that this sort of comparability be achieved to create a universal system in the future, and with many of the TOs adopting it this is really the only time to be able to achieve a national system that has some level of enforcement/support. The BBR has had too much of a subjective approach to rule making and procedure in the past. But my vision for the brawl community only starts here: what I propose involves doing a series of steps that create a structured tournament scene, incentive to come, and visibility for the scene. It involves:
1) Creating a league that spans across all relevant areas, and are sectioned into geographic divisions (Midwest, West, Northeast, etc.. for example). One of the major goals of the league is to split an annual or semiannual season into parts and divisions that have an overriding structure. Divisions should each have a uniform system for determining rankings within their system within a season and determining top players and maybe have playoffs at the end of the season, using a format similar to the Texas PR system since it places value on who you play and is an objective system (The Texas PR system also makes tournament size largely unnecessary because winning 50 really small tournament won't necessarily have a large impact since success is tied more to player interactions) . It is by far the best system out there. At the end of the season, which has a regular time interval, there should be a national tournament which is highly advertised by each division and tos. The goal of this is to be able for members to gauge their success within a region, for the BBR and TOs to agree on which tournaments should be highly advertised and recognized as "official" to focus resources and gain uniform support, and to establish an objective system that continually rewards and recognizes improvement. Timing out large tournaments is key to gaining consistent support for them. We don't need to revolutionize the entire tournament system, we just need to time out large events, and have official recognition for certain tournaments. We can still use existing tournaments like Whobo, etc... as well as creating new events to fit the league structure.
(like this for example for regional divisions, which would all contribute towards a national one. I think canada and other international scenes need to be included too though)
2) Create an objective, constantly updating ranking system both per geographic division, and nationally (as noted above). Not like the one in tournament results now, but it can be improved upon to make it so. We should, and the bbr should, accept it as an official source and highly advertise the rankings and changes in rankings on smashboards, making it visible even at the top of the forums. When you look in a starcraft forum everyone knows who is on top and who is doing well, and who is improving and which are the large tournaments to attend. Why? Because they have a clear structure and ranking system. They got the support of Blizzard, yes, but we can't blame this on Nintendo, they made it very clear they never intended to support the community since the formation of the game, but we wanted to make a community anyways, we can't blame them in retrospect for not supporting a community which was formed clearly recognizing it wouldn't get support. Besides gauging player success clear rankings can also play a huge part in giving information for tier listings, and can be used to determine which players should be in the BBR.
3) Awards! Totally! With an objective rankings system we can clearly track improvements and the top players over time in regions, at the end of each season how cool would it be if the BBR recognized and gave prizes to certain players? The one who made the largest leap in rankings? The top low tier player? The top player in general (obviously the biggest award)? Biggest upset? etc.. By taking a small percent of money from national tournaments too everyone could fund the prize incentives for these awards.
4) Bring back regional crews! (and give them support/visibility/objective structure) And instead of players just guessing who they should use, and who they are familiar with, we can use the Divisional pr systems to give an objective ranking on who should be represented in a crew based on what players are at the national tournament. Regional crews should be a huge part of the national tournament, because, let's face it, region v region battles are some of the most exciting!
5) Making more podcasts, and videos talking about improvements in the scene and up to date issues. We have some already, but we should gain visibility for them and also make "official" announcements.
In Conclusion
Instituting a system like this would have numerous benefits, it would give players an incentive to keep trying to improve, advertise specific tournaments and gain visibility for them, create objective information for matchups and character rankings/potential, award achievements with prizes, create a unified and structured league and ranking system as other games have done and profit from, attract sponsors, increase visibility for the entire scene, etc.. etc.. etc..
Something as simple as this can be huge, and already HAS been huge in other communities. And I'm not saying this for people to read through and say "hey that's a good idea' and then click on the next thread. Just recognizing that things can get better doesn't make things better, it is actually harmful when we recognize something and don't try to do anything about it.
So we can do this. And at least trying it is a whole lot better than *****ing about how nintendo and mlg left us.
Sincerely,
Hive
ps feel free to flame me on this, and to disagree, I welcome it. But please try to make improvements with your criticisms and not just to knock it.
I'm going to put out ahead of time that I haven't for some time actively attended tournaments since I left the brawl scene, although I have kept a semi active interest in the community. What I say about the brawl scene I realize may be subject to some inconsistencies with lack of perception on some of the more recent changes. Having said that I extremely doubt that what I say isn't an applicable step forward. I truly believe, if acted upon, it can be one of the most important changes to the brawl community in its lifetime But for those of you who do not want to hear any of this then, yes, here is your strawman/ad hominem argument out of it.
What's wrong with the current tournament system?
The current tournament system isn't necessarily a bad one, but it can be improved upon. What are the factors that gain attendance to tournaments, what kind of hype do we have for interegional travel? How do players gauge success in the system? Basically brawl tournaments start with the TOs, individuals who want to start brawl scenes in the area who individually try to gain access to venues, resources, and are in charge of advertising the scene. They are also largely responsible for rulesets, tournament structures, tournament events and payouts with influence from pressure from local players. Larger tournaments featuring out of region players are usually dictated by chance and precedent towards tournaments which have been able to draw in larger crowds in the past. They are largely unorganized in timing and the attendances are unpredictable and vary widely depending on the power of word of mouth through largely unfocused channels for marketing. The PR systems, with the exception of Texas' well drawn out system, which players use to gauge their success, are also usually subjective and have both varying time periods in which they represent, and varying regions. The only way for players to really gauge success is by a tournament to tournament basis, and in larger national tournaments that are very rare, this makes perceived player success and character rankings very unpredictable. The problem with such a decentralized and localized sytem is in its ability to utilize its true tournament potential. Brawl is a very popular game, as the recent gamefaqs poll should have made us realize, but we are severely underutilizing the amount of players that can show up to the scene and motivation to continue in the scene by having a largely decentralized tournament structure.
What I propose.
Turning the brawl community into a national system seems like a daunting task, but it is actually very simple if we use a group effort with support of TOs and the BBR to make it happen, we already have the resources really its just accepting a common format and for authoratative bodies to accept responsibility. The BBR has a lot of room to increase its activity in the community, its recent rulesets, etc.. have been somewhat out of touch with the community tbh. One of the things to start off a system of change is by adopting the TO accepted universal ruleset as an official one. The TO accepted ruleset is a huge step forward towards comparability in results and data across the scene. Its absolutely necessary that this sort of comparability be achieved to create a universal system in the future, and with many of the TOs adopting it this is really the only time to be able to achieve a national system that has some level of enforcement/support. The BBR has had too much of a subjective approach to rule making and procedure in the past. But my vision for the brawl community only starts here: what I propose involves doing a series of steps that create a structured tournament scene, incentive to come, and visibility for the scene. It involves:
1) Creating a league that spans across all relevant areas, and are sectioned into geographic divisions (Midwest, West, Northeast, etc.. for example). One of the major goals of the league is to split an annual or semiannual season into parts and divisions that have an overriding structure. Divisions should each have a uniform system for determining rankings within their system within a season and determining top players and maybe have playoffs at the end of the season, using a format similar to the Texas PR system since it places value on who you play and is an objective system (The Texas PR system also makes tournament size largely unnecessary because winning 50 really small tournament won't necessarily have a large impact since success is tied more to player interactions) . It is by far the best system out there. At the end of the season, which has a regular time interval, there should be a national tournament which is highly advertised by each division and tos. The goal of this is to be able for members to gauge their success within a region, for the BBR and TOs to agree on which tournaments should be highly advertised and recognized as "official" to focus resources and gain uniform support, and to establish an objective system that continually rewards and recognizes improvement. Timing out large tournaments is key to gaining consistent support for them. We don't need to revolutionize the entire tournament system, we just need to time out large events, and have official recognition for certain tournaments. We can still use existing tournaments like Whobo, etc... as well as creating new events to fit the league structure.
(like this for example for regional divisions, which would all contribute towards a national one. I think canada and other international scenes need to be included too though)
2) Create an objective, constantly updating ranking system both per geographic division, and nationally (as noted above). Not like the one in tournament results now, but it can be improved upon to make it so. We should, and the bbr should, accept it as an official source and highly advertise the rankings and changes in rankings on smashboards, making it visible even at the top of the forums. When you look in a starcraft forum everyone knows who is on top and who is doing well, and who is improving and which are the large tournaments to attend. Why? Because they have a clear structure and ranking system. They got the support of Blizzard, yes, but we can't blame this on Nintendo, they made it very clear they never intended to support the community since the formation of the game, but we wanted to make a community anyways, we can't blame them in retrospect for not supporting a community which was formed clearly recognizing it wouldn't get support. Besides gauging player success clear rankings can also play a huge part in giving information for tier listings, and can be used to determine which players should be in the BBR.
3) Awards! Totally! With an objective rankings system we can clearly track improvements and the top players over time in regions, at the end of each season how cool would it be if the BBR recognized and gave prizes to certain players? The one who made the largest leap in rankings? The top low tier player? The top player in general (obviously the biggest award)? Biggest upset? etc.. By taking a small percent of money from national tournaments too everyone could fund the prize incentives for these awards.
4) Bring back regional crews! (and give them support/visibility/objective structure) And instead of players just guessing who they should use, and who they are familiar with, we can use the Divisional pr systems to give an objective ranking on who should be represented in a crew based on what players are at the national tournament. Regional crews should be a huge part of the national tournament, because, let's face it, region v region battles are some of the most exciting!
5) Making more podcasts, and videos talking about improvements in the scene and up to date issues. We have some already, but we should gain visibility for them and also make "official" announcements.
In Conclusion
Instituting a system like this would have numerous benefits, it would give players an incentive to keep trying to improve, advertise specific tournaments and gain visibility for them, create objective information for matchups and character rankings/potential, award achievements with prizes, create a unified and structured league and ranking system as other games have done and profit from, attract sponsors, increase visibility for the entire scene, etc.. etc.. etc..
Something as simple as this can be huge, and already HAS been huge in other communities. And I'm not saying this for people to read through and say "hey that's a good idea' and then click on the next thread. Just recognizing that things can get better doesn't make things better, it is actually harmful when we recognize something and don't try to do anything about it.
So we can do this. And at least trying it is a whole lot better than *****ing about how nintendo and mlg left us.
Sincerely,
Hive
ps feel free to flame me on this, and to disagree, I welcome it. But please try to make improvements with your criticisms and not just to knock it.
