I remember the old days of Smash64 when my brother was my only competition. We were still casual players then. It was around then that I learned people are essential to keep the magic of smash going, and fighting computers just isn’t the same. In order to get some competition, I had to throw a tournament on my 13th birthday.
<p align="center"><a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/tournament.jpg" title="tournament.jpg"><img src="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/tournament.jpg" alt="tournament.jpg" /></a></p>
After I had wiped out the competition in my school I sought challenges else where. Unfortunately I didn’t find any. But when Melee came out, I ran into a popular fellow named Silas Elias, one of the fathers of the smash community. For the next three years we smashed with Silas and the D-crew (Dallas crew) in many house tournaments. At first, I lost bad. But afterwards, I had to rethink my game, or the way I played, to make improvements. It wasn’t long before I had everyone in the house beat. That’s when the D-crew hosted MOAST1, the largest Texas tournament at the time. We had smashers driving up from San Antonio and flying in from California just to test their skills. To make a long story short, I lost again. Afterwards, I went home and practiced to improve my game once again. Somewhere among those tournaments, I became a competitive smasher. But how does a casual become a competitive smasher during these times?
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The biggest difference between a competitive and casual smashers is the competitive smasher always seeks to improve himself. Both have their place under the all encompassing umbrella that is Smash. Some people simply aren’t competitive, and they only want to have fun especially when playing a videogame. But the casual smasher who wants to become competitive might have a harder time making the transition. It’s nearly impossible to become competitive if your only competition are computers. It’s also hard to find the motivation to improve one’s skills if you play in mostly “fun matches” where winning and losing are all the same and everyone can play as long as they want. Perhaps going to tournaments (of any size) turns a casual smasher into a competitive smasher.
Going with this theory, it’s time to discuss one of Brawl’s most important potential modes. <u>Tournament Mode.</u>
I never realized how complicated running a tournaments was until now. Between the brackets, the TVs, the games, systems, the location, the rules, and the people, sometimes it takes a small well trained task force to get the job done. Tournament mode in Melee was designed to take the work out of the hands of the player so they can focus on having fun. What a brilliant idea! But why is this mode hardly ever used?
There are several glaring flaws in Tournament mode that prevent it from being used much by the casual or competitive gamers.
<ul>
<li><strong>There is only one style of bracket:</strong>The brackets don’t allow for double elimination brackets or any other styles (pools/round robin). Most of the touranments I’ve been too are double elimination because it gives the players more than one chance. This allows the player that gets paired up with the best smasher in the house in the first round, a chance to make it to the top.</li>
<li><strong>There is no “best out of 3″: </strong>The mode doesn’t’ support multiple matches between combatants. They only get one chance to win or lose. Having a best out of three, like having double elimination, gives the player more chances to play matches. Having a best out of three also gives the player the chance to change the stage and their character which can significantly shift the situation.</li>
<li><strong>64 man cap:</strong> Though this probably would never affect small house tournaments, in other situations tournaments can exceed 64 people.</li>
<li><strong>One TV at a time:</strong> The entire tournament is contained on only one TV. This allows for only one match to be carried out at a time. This can turn any decent size tournament into an exorbitantly long tournament.</li>
<li><strong>Complicated Set up:</strong> Setting up the tournament takes a bit of work. Navigating menus, setting up names and characters all takes time. Everything could be a little more visual and intuitive so that younger more casual players could still use it with ease.</li>
</ul>
All of these problems can be fixed with the Wii. By using the internal memory, the tournament program can be updated with additional options. Using the Wii’s wireless networking capability, all the Wii’s in the room can be linked to contribute to tournament. This would easily allow multiple TVs to be used. In this way, all the Wii’s can be set up to run off of the same memory card data so that all the rules and settings would be congruent. Because everything is run by the program, all matches, free TVs, and other organizing efforts can be taken care of easily taking all the stress out of the hands of the players.
A custom data or identification card for each player can be made before hand and stored inside each players wiimote. If the player isn’t using a wiimote, they can use friends codes and an internet connection to transfer their data. The ID card can easily keep track of stats that are generally lost when playing on systems that aren’t using your memory card. It can also make setting up tournament data faster. The ID card can store data like…
<ol>
<li>Name</li>
<li>Handle</li>
<li>Mii</li>
<li>State</li>
<li>Preferences (rumble on/off ect.)</li>
<li>Time played</li>
</ol>
<p align="center"><a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/smash-data-card.jpg" title="smash-data-card.jpg"><img src="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/smash-data-card.jpg" alt="smash-data-card.jpg" /></a></p>
Maybe with a competent tournament mode in Brawl, the number of competitve smashers will reach new and unprecedented levels. All the simple improvements the Wii can offer Brawl is exciting, and it doesn’t stop there. By networking Wii’s, the possibilities for exciting new game types explode! But that’s another entry for another day.
<p align="center"><a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/tournament.jpg" title="tournament.jpg"><img src="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/tournament.jpg" alt="tournament.jpg" /></a></p>
After I had wiped out the competition in my school I sought challenges else where. Unfortunately I didn’t find any. But when Melee came out, I ran into a popular fellow named Silas Elias, one of the fathers of the smash community. For the next three years we smashed with Silas and the D-crew (Dallas crew) in many house tournaments. At first, I lost bad. But afterwards, I had to rethink my game, or the way I played, to make improvements. It wasn’t long before I had everyone in the house beat. That’s when the D-crew hosted MOAST1, the largest Texas tournament at the time. We had smashers driving up from San Antonio and flying in from California just to test their skills. To make a long story short, I lost again. Afterwards, I went home and practiced to improve my game once again. Somewhere among those tournaments, I became a competitive smasher. But how does a casual become a competitive smasher during these times?
<!--more-->
The biggest difference between a competitive and casual smashers is the competitive smasher always seeks to improve himself. Both have their place under the all encompassing umbrella that is Smash. Some people simply aren’t competitive, and they only want to have fun especially when playing a videogame. But the casual smasher who wants to become competitive might have a harder time making the transition. It’s nearly impossible to become competitive if your only competition are computers. It’s also hard to find the motivation to improve one’s skills if you play in mostly “fun matches” where winning and losing are all the same and everyone can play as long as they want. Perhaps going to tournaments (of any size) turns a casual smasher into a competitive smasher.
Going with this theory, it’s time to discuss one of Brawl’s most important potential modes. <u>Tournament Mode.</u>
I never realized how complicated running a tournaments was until now. Between the brackets, the TVs, the games, systems, the location, the rules, and the people, sometimes it takes a small well trained task force to get the job done. Tournament mode in Melee was designed to take the work out of the hands of the player so they can focus on having fun. What a brilliant idea! But why is this mode hardly ever used?
There are several glaring flaws in Tournament mode that prevent it from being used much by the casual or competitive gamers.
<ul>
<li><strong>There is only one style of bracket:</strong>The brackets don’t allow for double elimination brackets or any other styles (pools/round robin). Most of the touranments I’ve been too are double elimination because it gives the players more than one chance. This allows the player that gets paired up with the best smasher in the house in the first round, a chance to make it to the top.</li>
<li><strong>There is no “best out of 3″: </strong>The mode doesn’t’ support multiple matches between combatants. They only get one chance to win or lose. Having a best out of three, like having double elimination, gives the player more chances to play matches. Having a best out of three also gives the player the chance to change the stage and their character which can significantly shift the situation.</li>
<li><strong>64 man cap:</strong> Though this probably would never affect small house tournaments, in other situations tournaments can exceed 64 people.</li>
<li><strong>One TV at a time:</strong> The entire tournament is contained on only one TV. This allows for only one match to be carried out at a time. This can turn any decent size tournament into an exorbitantly long tournament.</li>
<li><strong>Complicated Set up:</strong> Setting up the tournament takes a bit of work. Navigating menus, setting up names and characters all takes time. Everything could be a little more visual and intuitive so that younger more casual players could still use it with ease.</li>
</ul>
All of these problems can be fixed with the Wii. By using the internal memory, the tournament program can be updated with additional options. Using the Wii’s wireless networking capability, all the Wii’s in the room can be linked to contribute to tournament. This would easily allow multiple TVs to be used. In this way, all the Wii’s can be set up to run off of the same memory card data so that all the rules and settings would be congruent. Because everything is run by the program, all matches, free TVs, and other organizing efforts can be taken care of easily taking all the stress out of the hands of the players.
A custom data or identification card for each player can be made before hand and stored inside each players wiimote. If the player isn’t using a wiimote, they can use friends codes and an internet connection to transfer their data. The ID card can easily keep track of stats that are generally lost when playing on systems that aren’t using your memory card. It can also make setting up tournament data faster. The ID card can store data like…
<ol>
<li>Name</li>
<li>Handle</li>
<li>Mii</li>
<li>State</li>
<li>Preferences (rumble on/off ect.)</li>
<li>Time played</li>
</ol>
<p align="center"><a href="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/smash-data-card.jpg" title="smash-data-card.jpg"><img src="http://smashboards.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/smash-data-card.jpg" alt="smash-data-card.jpg" /></a></p>
Maybe with a competent tournament mode in Brawl, the number of competitve smashers will reach new and unprecedented levels. All the simple improvements the Wii can offer Brawl is exciting, and it doesn’t stop there. By networking Wii’s, the possibilities for exciting new game types explode! But that’s another entry for another day.
