Has anyone noticed the decline of 1v1 challenges lately?

[Rango the Mercenary]

I live in a place that currently has a growing tournament scene. I don't see many strong challenges at my level, but we're working to have more tournaments so players can train against others. Most of my practice comes from online. It used to be from taking challenges in Free Play chat on Nintendodojo. I feel that, since the ladder has been unpopulated due to a number of glitches and lack of player support, many of the top level players are gone. Between Free Play and Reddit's SmashConnect, I feel it's becoming harder and harder to find solid 1v1 challenges.

Free Play on NDJ is actually garnering a hefty number of 2v2 challenges, however. Reddit just seems to be inactive with responding to challenges. But for a game known to be quite well balanced, yet its online 1v1 mode gets a bad rap for bad players, no stage picking, and overall not very good practice, where does the tournament player turn to? If you're looking to play 1v1 to practice for tournaments and your local scene isn't strong enough to help you train, where can you go?

 

[Xermo]

http://smashladder.com

 

[erico9001]

Oh yes, definitely Smashladder (Anther's Ladder). I recommend this site ×10 for what you are looking for.

 

[Rango the Mercenary]

You guys think so? As in better than NDJ? I could really use the challenge practice.

 

[erico9001]

You guys think so? As in better than NDJ? I could really use the challenge practice.

Yep! You won't find any of these issues at Smashladder.

has been unpopulated due to a number of glitches and lack of player support, many of the top level players are gone. Between Free Play and Reddit's SmashConnect, I feel it's becoming harder and harder to find solid 1v1 challenges.

There are a lot of people on smashladder, and it's not buggy. The players are generally pretty skilled. The site even has a rank system worked into it, so you can check ranks before accepting or requesting battles. I think the average rank is around 1250, so if you start playing you can use that as a gauge. Oh, and it's all 1v1.

But for a game known to be quite well balanced, yet its online 1v1 mode gets a bad rap for bad players, no stage picking,

Something neat is Smashladder has a built in striking/counterpicking system.

Also,
-the players are usually very kind
-it has real-time textual chat with players
-you can easily see their locations to make sure to get relatively local connections (avoid the lag)
-you can also check how other players rate their connections if you really need to
-it's free
-has a lot of cool features

 

[NGUY (guitarstage)]

some people even stream matches from there