Cobrevolution
Smash Master
(note: this is something I wrote based on a bunch of notes I made during and after apex, and the main goal of this thread is to address the problems everyone had and try to get them fixed by next year. i'm hoping that these things have already been addressed behind the scenes, but the more things brought to the attention of staff, the better. also i figure ~12months is enough time for them to respond...)
I. The Pools Format
We’ve gone over and over the issue of bracket pools being used in place of round robin pools. We’ve weighed both the pros and the cons, but one of the main problems I had with bracket pools is the increased chance for players to compete against the same people twice, as evidenced by KeroKeroppi and Jam. I think this only happened once, though.
I also do not like the idea that uniformity should be the reason for all games to share bracket pools format. Again, this has been argued over, and we have a year to discuss it again, but this is a quote I found that I think sheds some new light on the situation.
“You guys can also blame me for Smash pools being brackets instead of round robin. Because I'm the guy who demanded that change as well.” – Jaxel, 8WR streamer. (http://smashboards.com/threads/why-is-brawl-not-being-streamed-this-apex.346155/#post-16223245)
Which is to say, why in the hell was this guy responsible for the changes, when his primary job is streaming? I find it sketchy that staff seemingly had to obey him or something, or couldn’t talk about it and refute his “demand”.
In terms of size, we also had 30-some odd person pools. Every other game was given 16 man pools – I believe it is much easier to run smaller brackets with promotions than it is to run four relatively large ones, and by that token, one gigantic bracket. Running smaller brackets also promotes diversity among competitors.
I was also sad that each bracket only had bo3s. The rules do say that GF, WF, LF, LS, WS, LQ and 5th Place Tiebreaker are bo5s – but that’s only for the top8. In any case, 5th place tiebreaker was not played, and the first round of loser’s (which was not LQ, as shown by the top8 bracket) was bo5 as well.
At the very least, I don’t think there should be an issue with allowing WF and LF to have bo5s in bracket pools; ideally, it would include semis as well, but if we’re pressed for time, perhaps only the finals should be prioritized.
This brings me to the problem of time.
II. Time and Scheduling
I said before that time would be an issue if we started late and people didn’t play their matches. Lo and behold, we started an hour late, and because of the bad setup of the venue, it was extremely difficult to get players to the TO tables to find their matches.
We were told that the schedule is final and nothing would change, yet PM proceeded to be bumped up six hours to compensate for their quintuple cap raise.
64, on the other hand, was not given any additional time at all.
The problem, then, became apparent when we were holding up brackets because of non-hype matches being played on stream, people leaving without notifying TO’s, people being unable to hear their names being called over three loudspeakers and microphones and hundreds of music stages and shouts.
This resulted in something that should never happen, in my opinion – which was the match between Star King and Wizzrobe for top8 being played out at 9am the next morning. When staff came by and told us to clear all of our stuff out, a lot of people still had matches to play, and went ahead and rushed through them – Banze and Kefit, Jam and Nintendude, and Star King and Firo all come to mind. I was trying to get everyone to play on time so that we wouldn’t have matches left over. It is the organizers’ jobs to delegate enough time to an event to account for lateness and brackets being held up, and that did not happen.
Further, staff should have mandated the top8 match to be played that night while they were cleaning up, with one TO present. It is grossly unfair to other players who were not able to delay their matches or simply didn’t wish to, and I believe both players will go cold after not playing for a few hours. It should also be noted that, at large smash events, practically nobody sleeps until the late hours of the morning because of the sheer amount of hotel fests going on. Leaving an incredibly important match until the morning is unfair to the other participants, and staff did nothing to remedy this situation.
Of course, blame can also be applied to multiple players. We need to figure out a system that is more reliable than shouting on loudspeakers to play matches, and we need to have more time to run our event.
It simply is not fair that 64 was given 6 fewer hours to complete our tournament than the other games (one could argue that we were given a whole less day, but it’s understandable).
Our stream was cut off, as well; I really don’t understand why we could not have been slated to start at 2pm. We started late anyway because of problems with brackets and last minute changes.
EDIT: Here is a post (http://smashboards.com/threads/re-apex-feedback.347397/#post-16294914) that surprised me quite a bit. Why in god's name was Melee Doubles allowed to continue until 2 in the morning, but 64 was being ushered out at midnight? And why weren't the matches that were happening from 12-2 in Melee rescheduled to the next day?
III. Day Two
Day two was a lackluster event for many people.
The biggest problem I and many others had – participants in top8 and spectators alike – was the fact that it was held at 10 in the morning.
For comparison, here’s this thread: http://smashboards.com/threads/what...g-streamed-at-10am-and-12-on-saturday.345967/
The above thread highlights the fact that games with less than half the entrants of 64 were given better stream time and event time despite not pulling in as many viewers and not being as important. Before you jump down my throat for that, allow me to explain: Apex is THE premiere smash tournament. Melee finals were held at the prime spot of 5 or 6pm on Sunday and Brawl was held beforehand, also in the afternoon. PM finals started at 1pm, I believe, and the only other smash game remaining is 64 – which started at 10 in the morning, which means everyone had to be present by 9:45ish to get a decent seat.
As a spectator, it was awful having to wake up at an ungodly hour and go sit through sleepy smash. I have asked those who competed in the top8 and they have expressed their distaste at doing so – there’s very little warmup time and often people don’t get enough sleep, as mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I don’t think anyone wants to play their most important matches of the tournament in a half asleep, dazed state. People in general are often more sluggish in the morning with lowered reaction times and more disinterest in things.
Holding the top8 at an unreasonable hour leads to a diminished performance from the top players. This is not saying the outcomes would change, necessarily, but that the performances would be better, and the players would feel better about their performances.
We were also told that the entire left wall of the venue would have 64 setups on it all day, and there were zero. We then had to move everything to the small parlor room down the hall, only to have half of the people move next door to a larger room, albeit with fewer outlets. To make matters worse, the venue decided to shut both rooms down at 3am, despite us being told that we could stay there as long as we wanted. When we moved to the Mirabelle room, again after being told it was 24 hours, we were met with a condition – if we’re too loud, we’re kicked out.
This leads into problems with the venue.
IV. Venue Issues
I do not think many people enjoyed the way the venue was setup initially. Space was a huge issue in terms of sitting and walking. We were constantly told that we were causing a fire hazard by crowding the “aisles”. I was wondering why the parlor rooms weren’t used for bracket pools for the other games, as there certainly seemed to be enough; same with the Mirabelle room – it could have been used to centralize players who had to play in bracket and breeze through them; i.e., locate all the players in W1P1 and tell them to move to the Mirabelle room, wherein they would play through their bracket with a TO. This is of course just a suggestion, but I didn’t see much organization besides screaming into a microphone.
There was a massive problem with parking – there just wasn’t enough of it. The lot outside of the hotel filled up extremely quickly, and we were not given any prior information on what to do if that happened. It seems that staff did not accurately account for over 1200 unique people coming to the venue, and I had to scout out chain-ace to find out where I could park where I would not be towed or receive a ticket. It would have helped greatly if, ahead of time, staff had informed us that the other lots were alright to park in provided there were no signs saying otherwise.
V. Game-based changes and Misc.
I think there are multiple points of contention now that Apex has passed, including the reevaluation of Hyrule as a legal stage, the institution of outside factors such as timers and TO’s willing to examine and enforce the stalling rule, and even perhaps devising new a ruleset (something like Firo’s, for instance).
I think we can brush up on our commentary as a community and I plan on making a thread in the future that will get everyone’s feedback and advice, and hopefully we’ll be able to deliver.
I would appreciate it if any changes that happen are discussed with the community and not expressed in an iron-fist manner or presented in such a way that makes them completely final and closed to discussion. This leads to heavy backlash from the community and generally makes those in power appear less than admirable.
I would also appreciate it if anyone else has concerns and can voice them so we can strive to make next Apex a more incredible experience. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the weekend and it was perhaps the best smash time I’ve had, but there are certainly changes that can be made and problems that can be fixed to make things run better and smoother.
Statements by Other Players in this Thread (paraphrased instead of quoted to save space):
Numbered setups
Collect phone numbers from people to alert them as to when they need to play their matches?
Separate rooms for ease of brackets
A later start time for finals (3pm or later is ideal)
Be very clear on stream display as to who is who via controller ports/colors/etc.
Player nametags
Better communication between staff and community
I. The Pools Format
We’ve gone over and over the issue of bracket pools being used in place of round robin pools. We’ve weighed both the pros and the cons, but one of the main problems I had with bracket pools is the increased chance for players to compete against the same people twice, as evidenced by KeroKeroppi and Jam. I think this only happened once, though.
I also do not like the idea that uniformity should be the reason for all games to share bracket pools format. Again, this has been argued over, and we have a year to discuss it again, but this is a quote I found that I think sheds some new light on the situation.
“You guys can also blame me for Smash pools being brackets instead of round robin. Because I'm the guy who demanded that change as well.” – Jaxel, 8WR streamer. (http://smashboards.com/threads/why-is-brawl-not-being-streamed-this-apex.346155/#post-16223245)
Which is to say, why in the hell was this guy responsible for the changes, when his primary job is streaming? I find it sketchy that staff seemingly had to obey him or something, or couldn’t talk about it and refute his “demand”.
In terms of size, we also had 30-some odd person pools. Every other game was given 16 man pools – I believe it is much easier to run smaller brackets with promotions than it is to run four relatively large ones, and by that token, one gigantic bracket. Running smaller brackets also promotes diversity among competitors.
I was also sad that each bracket only had bo3s. The rules do say that GF, WF, LF, LS, WS, LQ and 5th Place Tiebreaker are bo5s – but that’s only for the top8. In any case, 5th place tiebreaker was not played, and the first round of loser’s (which was not LQ, as shown by the top8 bracket) was bo5 as well.
At the very least, I don’t think there should be an issue with allowing WF and LF to have bo5s in bracket pools; ideally, it would include semis as well, but if we’re pressed for time, perhaps only the finals should be prioritized.
This brings me to the problem of time.
II. Time and Scheduling
I said before that time would be an issue if we started late and people didn’t play their matches. Lo and behold, we started an hour late, and because of the bad setup of the venue, it was extremely difficult to get players to the TO tables to find their matches.
We were told that the schedule is final and nothing would change, yet PM proceeded to be bumped up six hours to compensate for their quintuple cap raise.
64, on the other hand, was not given any additional time at all.
The problem, then, became apparent when we were holding up brackets because of non-hype matches being played on stream, people leaving without notifying TO’s, people being unable to hear their names being called over three loudspeakers and microphones and hundreds of music stages and shouts.
This resulted in something that should never happen, in my opinion – which was the match between Star King and Wizzrobe for top8 being played out at 9am the next morning. When staff came by and told us to clear all of our stuff out, a lot of people still had matches to play, and went ahead and rushed through them – Banze and Kefit, Jam and Nintendude, and Star King and Firo all come to mind. I was trying to get everyone to play on time so that we wouldn’t have matches left over. It is the organizers’ jobs to delegate enough time to an event to account for lateness and brackets being held up, and that did not happen.
Further, staff should have mandated the top8 match to be played that night while they were cleaning up, with one TO present. It is grossly unfair to other players who were not able to delay their matches or simply didn’t wish to, and I believe both players will go cold after not playing for a few hours. It should also be noted that, at large smash events, practically nobody sleeps until the late hours of the morning because of the sheer amount of hotel fests going on. Leaving an incredibly important match until the morning is unfair to the other participants, and staff did nothing to remedy this situation.
Of course, blame can also be applied to multiple players. We need to figure out a system that is more reliable than shouting on loudspeakers to play matches, and we need to have more time to run our event.
It simply is not fair that 64 was given 6 fewer hours to complete our tournament than the other games (one could argue that we were given a whole less day, but it’s understandable).
Our stream was cut off, as well; I really don’t understand why we could not have been slated to start at 2pm. We started late anyway because of problems with brackets and last minute changes.
EDIT: Here is a post (http://smashboards.com/threads/re-apex-feedback.347397/#post-16294914) that surprised me quite a bit. Why in god's name was Melee Doubles allowed to continue until 2 in the morning, but 64 was being ushered out at midnight? And why weren't the matches that were happening from 12-2 in Melee rescheduled to the next day?
III. Day Two
Day two was a lackluster event for many people.
The biggest problem I and many others had – participants in top8 and spectators alike – was the fact that it was held at 10 in the morning.
For comparison, here’s this thread: http://smashboards.com/threads/what...g-streamed-at-10am-and-12-on-saturday.345967/
The above thread highlights the fact that games with less than half the entrants of 64 were given better stream time and event time despite not pulling in as many viewers and not being as important. Before you jump down my throat for that, allow me to explain: Apex is THE premiere smash tournament. Melee finals were held at the prime spot of 5 or 6pm on Sunday and Brawl was held beforehand, also in the afternoon. PM finals started at 1pm, I believe, and the only other smash game remaining is 64 – which started at 10 in the morning, which means everyone had to be present by 9:45ish to get a decent seat.
As a spectator, it was awful having to wake up at an ungodly hour and go sit through sleepy smash. I have asked those who competed in the top8 and they have expressed their distaste at doing so – there’s very little warmup time and often people don’t get enough sleep, as mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I don’t think anyone wants to play their most important matches of the tournament in a half asleep, dazed state. People in general are often more sluggish in the morning with lowered reaction times and more disinterest in things.
Holding the top8 at an unreasonable hour leads to a diminished performance from the top players. This is not saying the outcomes would change, necessarily, but that the performances would be better, and the players would feel better about their performances.
We were also told that the entire left wall of the venue would have 64 setups on it all day, and there were zero. We then had to move everything to the small parlor room down the hall, only to have half of the people move next door to a larger room, albeit with fewer outlets. To make matters worse, the venue decided to shut both rooms down at 3am, despite us being told that we could stay there as long as we wanted. When we moved to the Mirabelle room, again after being told it was 24 hours, we were met with a condition – if we’re too loud, we’re kicked out.
This leads into problems with the venue.
IV. Venue Issues
I do not think many people enjoyed the way the venue was setup initially. Space was a huge issue in terms of sitting and walking. We were constantly told that we were causing a fire hazard by crowding the “aisles”. I was wondering why the parlor rooms weren’t used for bracket pools for the other games, as there certainly seemed to be enough; same with the Mirabelle room – it could have been used to centralize players who had to play in bracket and breeze through them; i.e., locate all the players in W1P1 and tell them to move to the Mirabelle room, wherein they would play through their bracket with a TO. This is of course just a suggestion, but I didn’t see much organization besides screaming into a microphone.
There was a massive problem with parking – there just wasn’t enough of it. The lot outside of the hotel filled up extremely quickly, and we were not given any prior information on what to do if that happened. It seems that staff did not accurately account for over 1200 unique people coming to the venue, and I had to scout out chain-ace to find out where I could park where I would not be towed or receive a ticket. It would have helped greatly if, ahead of time, staff had informed us that the other lots were alright to park in provided there were no signs saying otherwise.
V. Game-based changes and Misc.
I think there are multiple points of contention now that Apex has passed, including the reevaluation of Hyrule as a legal stage, the institution of outside factors such as timers and TO’s willing to examine and enforce the stalling rule, and even perhaps devising new a ruleset (something like Firo’s, for instance).
I think we can brush up on our commentary as a community and I plan on making a thread in the future that will get everyone’s feedback and advice, and hopefully we’ll be able to deliver.
I would appreciate it if any changes that happen are discussed with the community and not expressed in an iron-fist manner or presented in such a way that makes them completely final and closed to discussion. This leads to heavy backlash from the community and generally makes those in power appear less than admirable.
I would also appreciate it if anyone else has concerns and can voice them so we can strive to make next Apex a more incredible experience. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the weekend and it was perhaps the best smash time I’ve had, but there are certainly changes that can be made and problems that can be fixed to make things run better and smoother.
Statements by Other Players in this Thread (paraphrased instead of quoted to save space):
Numbered setups
Collect phone numbers from people to alert them as to when they need to play their matches?
Separate rooms for ease of brackets
A later start time for finals (3pm or later is ideal)
Be very clear on stream display as to who is who via controller ports/colors/etc.
Player nametags
Better communication between staff and community
Last edited:
