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EVO 2017 Line Up Announced, Big Changes For Smash


On January 24, Joey Cuellar, head organizer of the EVO event series, announced the game line-up for this year's iteration of the series on Red Bull eSports's Twitch channel. The tournament, which is set to happen on July 14 - 16, features games both familiar and new, including;​
  • Tekken 7
  • Street Fighter V
  • Super Smash Bros. Wii U
  • Guilty Gear XRD Rev 2
  • The King of Fighter's XIV
  • Injustice 2
  • BlazBlue: Central Fiction
  • Super Smash Bros. Melee
For the ninth game, fans have the opportunity to choose between any of the below mentioned games. A donation drive for charity will be held wherein the game community that raises the most money will have their game featured at EVO. This is similar to the process that got Melee into EVO 2013. Not only will the winner be featured at EVO, but they will in fact have a Sunday time-slot and a prize pool starting at $10,000. These games are:



Cuellar also mentioned that they will be using Smash.gg as their new bracket/player register system. The change comes in response to the horrible bracket system used during EVO 2015. Tony Cannon, co-founder of EVO, addressed these problems in a Reddit post last year.

Evo uses paper brackets to run the event [...] This means the online brackets are updated much much later than systems like smash.gg or challonge.com. This is bad for players who are scouting their next matchup and bad for people who are following the event; especially those watching on stream. We are planning an overhaul of our bracket making software to address some of the other issues (e.g. seeding beyond top 32). Adding realtime bracket updates is something we want to put in as well.

Perhaps the most shocking news as it pertains to Smash is the removal of Melee from Championship Sunday, the last day of EVO which many consider to be when the finals of the most 'important' games are held. Super Smash Bros. Wii U will take its place, with Melee finals instead set to occur on Saturday.

Professional Melee player William "Leffen" Hjelte has tweeted his thoughts about the change, saying;

"Personally don't mind EVO having Melee on Saturday. We have better tournaments and this will stop people from calling it "THE EVENT". But yeah, I agree that melee easily deserves Sunday, but more importantly I think its hilarious that they refuse to put both smash games. To me its just another decision by EVO that I heavily disagree with, not at all surprised. Will still be there to support the community."

"Melee is doing better than ever and we do NOT need EVO anymore. 2013 we did, but now its a worse tournament in a bigger arena. EVO is a tournament with ad breaks every 2 minutes, no analyst desk, no interviews, no friendly setups, bad bo5, bad seeding, no doubles."

Do you agree with Leffen? Do you agree with this change from last year? Does it really matter? Let us know in the comments.
 
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William "Wncozens" Cozens

Comments

Why can't both the second and third most entered event from last year's EVO just be held on Sunday? There's really no reason NOT to host them on Sunday. They both get a heavy amount of views and now EVO is using Smash.gg. Come on.

Also, support Pokken, the 4th most entered event last year.
 
Leffen is right, both melee and sm4sh deserve Sunday spots. Last year they were third and second respectively in player count and both can easily pull in massive viewership numbers, definitely more then Tekken 7 and Blaze Blue at least, so this was a pretty bad move by EVO. But like Leffen said it is poorly run, no friendlies set-ups, and poor seeding. Also they traditionally don't treat smash players very well, e.g. the way sm4sh was handled last year. Smash has outgrown EVO at this point IMO.
 
I play Smash 4 and even I disagree with Melee being considered "Less Important". The game gets more viewers at every event and anywhere ranging from almost as many (as seen at least year's EVO) to twice as many (Genesis 4) entrants as Smash 4. Just why?
 
I'm skipping the question of why since the answer is just going to be something relating to Wizard being blind to what's in front of his face. At least the "check in with other communities" tournament still exists for the underdone formality it is.
 
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Both Smash games being on Sunday is an issue because Smash matches just generally run longer then other fighting games overall. The thing is it's not just us on Sunday, but about 4-5 other games as well. Look no further then the 0.9 incident where nothing could be done to fix that due to time constraints to understand how costly long Smash sessions of Top 8 can be.

Now as for the voting option, while I have to give massive respect for putting Nidhogg and ARMs there and my heart wants Skullgirls, let's face facts-UMvC3 will win. not only because it is consistently the most viewed event at EVO 3 years in a row, but this may in fact be the LAST EVO that carries the game as MvC Infinite is on the way, and many will want to see it go out in glory one more time.
 
Leffen is right, both melee and sm4sh deserve Sunday spots. Last year they were third and second respectively in player count and both can easily pull in massive viewership numbers, definitely more then Tekken 7 and Blaze Blue at least, so this was a pretty bad move by EVO. But like Leffen said it is poorly run, no friendlies set-ups, and poor seeding. Also they traditionally don't treat smash players very well, e.g. the way sm4sh was handled last year. Smash has outgrown EVO at this point IMO.
no
 
One could see this as a litmas test for the Smash games in terms of viewership. The criticism last year is that Smash 4 viewership was hampered by a Saturday time slot, while Smash Melee got a prime time slot. This year the reverse will be put to the test.

Incidentally, this could be the last year for Smash Melee on Gamecube and Smash 4 on Wii U, if the rumors of Melee remakes and Smash 4 remakes on Nintendo Switch are true.
 
D
Meh, let the newer games shine. Melee got last year.
 
D
I'm honestly concerned how Smash 4 and Melee will be treated.
Last year, Smash 4 was treated poorly from what I heard. There were so many entrants and it pools had to be done in one day leaving players to rest for 6 hours before top 32, there were limited setups, some setups didn't include some DLC characters and stages, among other problems.
I am glad Smash 4 will get the arena this time, but who's to say history won't repeat itself? With the same game no less?
This also raises concerns for Melee since it's now going to be done in 2 days. Will the Melee community be treated poorly now?

Honestly, with the amount of entrants and views Smash gets, I wonder why they both can't be in the arena. Sure, they're games both within the same franchise, but these games had more entrants combined than SFV.
 
One could see this as a litmas test for the Smash games in terms of viewership. The criticism last year is that Smash 4 viewership was hampered by a Saturday time slot, while Smash Melee got a prime time slot. This year the reverse will be put to the test.
I very much doubt that smash 4 will outdo melee. The only major that smash 4 outperformed melee at in viewership is ceo 2016, where there was kind of a lack of top level talent with mango, leffen and westballz all dropping out from "personal issues". Even at majors like smash con that run melee before wiiu, melee still does better. And with hax and pp back im sure it will be more exciting than ever. We'll see tho
 
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Honestly, with the amount of entrants and views Smash gets, I wonder why they both can't be in the arena. Sure, they're games both within the same franchise, but these games had more entrants combined than SFV.
Cuz then r/kappa would cry
 
In all honestly Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 deserves it the most. At least it would be that perfect sendoff and last bit of hype until whenever Infinite is out.

As for Arms, just save it for next year when the game has an established competitive meta game. It's too early for now and even those that played it early haven't discovered good tech or skills.
 
Wasn't expecting Smash 4 on Sunday, only reason both aren't on sunday my guess is maybe rationalizing time? Idk, seems odd to me.

They both should be on Sunday.
 
So many great games contending for the last spot... that's rough.

Smash might have out grown EVO but the publicity from EVO is still very valuable in my opinion.
 
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