New Player Recommendation thread.

[Hunybear]

With the growth of the smash community comes a lot of new players. I was wondering what can already established players in the do to help new played better enjoy their experience going through the smash scene? Whats the hardest part about getting in to smash and what can we do to improve upon that? What can we do to make the game more accessible and approachable to a larger audience while maintain their attention over time? Tell me your experiences and grievances so we can better understand and help improve our community as a whole.

 

[EPsilon933]

I think most of everything is good as it is. Look at how fast our biggest tournaments are getting. Last year's EVO had 970 players, this year's has 1869

 

[Hunybear]

I think most of everything is good as it is. Look at how fast our biggest tournaments are getting. Last year's EVO had 970 players, this year's has 1869

We are growing but from what i understand is that the majority of people who are hard core games and most all the casual market don't know that we exist and even when you do it's really not easy to break in to smash or any competitive gaming scene. Things are going good but they are not fine the way they are.

 

[EPsilon933]

We are growing but from what i understand is that the majority of people who are hardcore gamers and most of the casual market don't know that we exist and even when you do it's really not easy to break in to smash or any competitive gaming scene. Things are going well but they are not fine the way they are.

I think Smash is becoming a really well known esport these days. Tell me something that's growing as fast as Smash is. Even Nintendo recognizes us and put pro players on stage at E3 twice

Competitive gaming is hard. Everyone is trying to win every game they can. That demands everyone to play at their best. Getting active in a scene involves going to in person tournaments, which take research to find, the desire to travel to them, and money. Despite the inherent difficulties, Smash is growing fast. I think it's fine

If you don't, maybe you could share http://smashboards.com/threads/facebook-groups-links.325058 to people who express interest in the game. They might discover a scene in their area to play the game with. Or you could share tournament stream links on site where there are likely to be a lot of gamers interested in Smash

 

[Hunybear]

I know we are growing but it's not at the extent that we could. I feel as if there's a huge base of untapped players that were missing as a result of competitive gaming being so close knit despite everyone always talking about expanding. The majority of people I've talked to say they've gotten into competitive gaming from a close friends recommendation. If smash (particularly melee) wants to ever reach the numbers of street fighter or even MMOs we need to be a lot more proactive in reaching out to newer players instead of this a friend of a friend, stumbled upon it, ways of recruiting new players. The smash franchise has sold over 30 million games. I figure theirs bound to be a handful of players that are interested in what we're doing here and we should make a more concerted effort to reach out to those players.

 

[Plunder]

I'd say we are already exceeding expectations by an incredible margin.

This game is 14 years old almost....and it has almost 2000 entrants at EVO? That is insane.

You can't force people to like something they aren't interested in, and for such an old game you can't expect people to put aside all the other new modern games they want to play just to dedicate so much free time to it.

All that said I'm all about expanding even further but I don't want to saturate too much to the point where people burn out on it and move on.

 

[EPsilon933]

I know we are growing but it's not at the extent that we could. I feel as if there's a huge base of untapped players that were missing as a result of competitive gaming being so close knit despite everyone always talking about expanding. The majority of people I've talked to say they've gotten into competitive gaming from a close friends recommendation. If smash (particularly melee) wants to ever reach the numbers of street fighter or even MMOs we need to be a lot more proactive in reaching out to newer players instead of this a friend of a friend, stumbled upon it, ways of recruiting new players. The smash franchise has sold over 30 million games. I figure theirs bound to be a handful of players that are interested in what we're doing here and we should make a more concerted effort to reach out to those players.

Have you ever looked at EVO 2015's entry numbers? https://twitter.com/EvilMrWizard/status/616140347278688257 Tell me what last year's Melee EVO entry numbers were http://shoryuken.com/2014/07/01/evo...r-iv-leads-the-pack-with-nearly-2000-players/ and the EVO entry before that http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2013/...game-ssf4-ae-v2012-umvc3-smash-sfxt-and-more/ . Tell us with a straight face that you're concerned about Smash not reaching Street Fighter's EVO entry numbers. I dare you

http://socialblade.com/twitch/user/vgbootcamp Look at the rate people are learning about competitive Smash. Look at how many people follow the biggest competitive Smash twitch channel. Look at what they have on youtube too http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/videogamebootcamp

Tell us how we can make those numbers increase faster like they're not fast enough

 

[Hunybear]

Have you ever looked at EVO 2015's entry numbers? https://twitter.com/EvilMrWizard/status/616140347278688257 Tell me what last year's Melee EVO entry numbers were http://shoryuken.com/2014/07/01/evo...r-iv-leads-the-pack-with-nearly-2000-players/ and the EVO entry before that http://www.eventhubs.com/news/2013/...game-ssf4-ae-v2012-umvc3-smash-sfxt-and-more/ . Tell us with a straight face that you're concerned about Smash not reaching Street Fighter's EVO entry numbers. I dare you

http://socialblade.com/twitch/user/vgbootcamp Look at the rate people are learning about competitive Smash. Look at how many people follow the biggest competitive Smash twitch channel. Look at what they have on youtube too http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/videogamebootcamp

Tell us how we can make those numbers increase faster like they're not fast enough

I'm not saying were not growing at an incredible, exponential rate. I'm not saying that this growth isn't good or impressive but i am saying this growth is not the result of the community reach out to a new player base. It is the result of a newly released smash game and Nintendo advocating the smash scene. People have to stumble upon us by chance and i'm not saying to shove something their face that they're not interested in, but rather let the general gaming community know that e-sports is an option. I think these numbers are incredible. I've seen them already and it wow'd me but i want smash to garner an even larger fan base then what it has. Complacency is a trap and despite things going miraculously good it should never be enough. I don't have an answer as to how to dramatically increase the amount of new players but i do know from my experience and a lot of newer players that smash is difficult to find.

Tell us how we can make those numbers increase faster like they're not fast enough

Fast enough for you. I want more from smash and e-sports in general.

 

[suddenZenith]

I think the biggest problem with new players getting into Melee is obtaining a functioning set-up. Wii's and ssbm discs are not easy to find, and some people are uneasy with installing the Homebrew Channel and pirating an ISO. At least the new controllers do the job and are fairly accessible and cheap.

If Nintendo wanted to expand the Melee scene, they could re-issue hardware that supports it. Hell, they could even make a "remastered" version of Melee conceptually similar to Halo Anniversary. The thing is, they probably don't want to divert attention from their Wii U game, and they would probably make the remastered melee only playable on the Wii U. That would still be good for both Nintendo and the Melee community.

Maybe a third party could make a portable, durable, gaming CRT-TV. Old CRTs are fine but I'm sure recent technologies could make them more compact, lighter, etc. Maybe I haven't searched well enough but I haven't seen that product yet.

In any case, this matter is out of the community's hands, but I still wanted to bring it on the table because it seems like a significant problem for new players.

 

[EPsilon933]

I'm not saying were not growing at an incredible, exponential rate. I'm not saying that this growth isn't good or impressive but i am saying this growth is not the result of the community reach out to a new player base. It is the result of a newly released smash game and Nintendo advocating the smash scene. People have to stumble upon us by chance and i'm not saying to shove something their face that they're not interested in, but rather let the general gaming community know that e-sports is an option. I think these numbers are incredible. I've seen them already and it wow'd me but i want smash to garner an even larger fan base then what it has. Complacency is a trap and despite things going miraculously good it should never be enough. I don't have an answer as to how to dramatically increase the amount of new players but i do know from my experience and a lot of newer players that smash is difficult to find. Fast enough for you. I want more from smash and e-sports in general.

The community growth is the result of primarily 3 key events; EVO tournaments, the documentary, and Nintendo/Smash4. Before they happened, Melee national tournament entry numbers stayed between 180 - 350. Big streamers like VGBC'S shouldn't be discredited, of course. There might be a few other, smaller things I'm not thinking of. Apex tournaments have done a lot too

EVO showed off Melee to the FGC (Fighting Game Community) which plays the same game genre that Melee is, are competitive gamers, and once relentlessly hated Smash Bros because it was cool to do so. Now their preception of Smash is pretry reversed. The documentary showed off the scene's competitive history to Smash fans active enough to be curious enough to watch it. Nintendo and Smash 4 refreshed a lot of old fans and created new fans of the Smash series. Some of them went competitive and some of them went to Melee. New games in a series can revive or significantly boost tournament scenes

Before EVO 2009, Street Fighter at EVO could only bring in 200 - 300 entrants. Once SF4 happened, the latest SF game at EVO was pulling in reliably more than 1000. Now it's at its record of 2200. That game also boosted the popularity of others series played by the FGC. Smash 4 is kind of doing the same thing for Melee

The general gaming community knows very well about esports and some of them aren't interested. A lot of gamers love to even make fun of MLG. Jokes like Mountain Dew and Doritos are really popular

Wait, didn't you previously comment that the only competitive Melee players you knew in person played because their friends introduced them to the scene? I sense a contradiction

If you just simply wait patiently, Smash will keep growing bigger. What's stopping it? If the growth rate ain't broke, dont fix it. Smash probably isn't difficult to find. Compared to other competitive games, Smash is cheap. Also, Smash is very popular. There is a large pool of players who may potentially be interested in the scene

It's also a casual fighting game series, unlike Street Fighter and Guilty Gear. A lot of its players will want to play casually. Other fighting games with active tournament scenes aren't popular, except Mortal Kombat, because fighting games (that aren't Smash (at a casual level)) are difficult to learn. They get higher prevalence rates of competitive players because they don't get many casual gamers. Popularity among casual gamers helps boost a games competitive popularity. Smash looks ready to usurp Street Fighter as the most played competitive Fighting Game (series)

 

[Hunybear]

The community growth is the result of primarily 3 key events; EVO tournaments, the documentary, and Nintendo/Smash4. Before they happened, Melee national tournament entry numbers stayed between 180 - 350. Big streamers like VGBC'S shouldn't be discredited, of course. There might be a few other, smaller things I'm not thinking of. Apex tournaments have done a lot too

EVO showed off Melee to the FGC (Fighting Game Community) which plays the same game genre that Melee is, are competitive gamers, and once relentlessly hated Smash Bros because it was cool to do so. Now their preception of Smash is pretry reversed. The documentary showed off the scene's competitive history to Smash fans active enough to be curious enough to watch it. Nintendo and Smash 4 refreshed a lot of old fans and created new fans of the Smash series. Some of them went competitive and some of them went to Melee. New games in a series can revive or significantly boost tournament scenes

Before EVO 2009, Street Fighter at EVO could only bring in 200 - 300 entrants. Once SF4 happened, the latest SF game at EVO was pulling in reliably more than 1000. Now it's at its record of 2200. That game also boosted the popularity of others series played by the FGC. Smash 4 is kind of doing the same thing for Melee

The general gaming community knows very well about esports and some of them aren't interested. A lot of gamers love to even make fun of MLG. Jokes like Mountain Dew and Doritos are really popular

Wait, didn't you previously comment that the only competitive Melee players you knew in person played because their friends introduced them to the scene? I sense a contradiction

If you just simply wait patiently, Smash will keep growing bigger. What's stopping it? If the growth rate ain't broke, dont fix it. Smash probably isn't difficult to find. Compared to other competitive games, Smash is cheap. Also, Smash is very popular. There is a large pool of players who may potentially be interested in the scene

It's also a casual fighting game series, unlike Street Fighter and Guilty Gear. A lot of its players will want to play casually. Other fighting games with active tournament scenes aren't popular, except Mortal Kombat, because fighting games (that aren't Smash (at a casual level)) are difficult to learn. They get higher prevalence rates of competitive players because they don't get many casual gamers. Popularity among casual gamers helps boost a games competitive popularity. Smash looks ready to usurp Street Fighter as the most played competitive Fighting Game (series)

The large majority of people don't know about competitive games. The only thing EVO did was prove to another relative small fraction of the gaming community (FGC) that we are legit. The problem with already established members in the community is that they have been doing it for years and so have all their friends. Its second nature and something so familiar to them is completely foreign to most. Competitive gaming is taboo in a sense. Especially to the casual market. What makes smash amazing is that it is easy to pick up and for lots it was a gate way into competitive traditional fighters and competitive games in general. It's an approachable game that, on surface level, seems to be nothing more than a party game. It dramatically out sells all the other traditional fighters as a result of its much MUCH larger consumer base. The biggest problem with e-sports is that we think were so much bigger that what we really are. 2000 thousand entrants with what will probably be half a million spectators. That is AMAZING relative to what we could previously achieve yes, but relative to other sports not unlike our own it gives perspective. Like ping pong. a game crated for casual fun that's relatively familiar turned competitive. I believe they get 50 million views on their championships. Understandably they all rally around one game as e-sports is very fractured, but it's just some perspective. We as smashers are a very very very small minute fraction of hard core gamers. I believe smash has an integral part to play in bringing the FGC to a much larger audience. Things are going good and were on the rise no doubt about that. It could be so much bigger than what it is and this gross miss potential to be something bigger is unnerving at that.

 

[EPsilon933]

The large majority of people don't know about competitive games. The only thing EVO did was prove to another relative small fraction of the gaming community (FGC) that we are legit. The problem with already established members in the community is that they have been doing it for years and so have all their friends. Its second nature and something so familiar to them is completely foreign to most. Competitive gaming is taboo in a sense. Especially to the casual market. What makes smash amazing is that it is easy to pick up and for lots it was a gate way into competitive traditional fighters and competitive games in general. It's an approachable game that, on surface level, seems to be nothing more than a party game. It dramatically out sells all the other traditional fighters as a result of its much MUCH larger consumer base. The biggest problem with e-sports is that we think were so much bigger that what we really are. 2000 thousand entrants with what will probably be half a million spectators. That is AMAZING relative to what we could previously achieve yes, but relative to other sports not unlike our own it gives perspective. Like ping pong. a game crated for casual fun that's relatively familiar turned competitive. I believe they get 50 million views on their championships. Understandably they all rally around one game as e-sports is very fractured, but it's just some perspective. We as smashers are a very very very small minute fraction of hard core gamers. I believe smash has an integral part to play in bringing the FGC to a much larger audience. Things are going good and were on the rise no doubt about that. It could be so much bigger than what it is and this gross miss potential to be something bigger is unnerving at that.

Competitive gaming has become so popular these days, it's difficult to imagine that most gamers don't know about it. Maybe if we're talking about most people as in all people, you'd probably be right. Do you have a source behind your claim of how unknown competitive gaming is?

Proving to that relatively small fraction known as the FGC about Smash's/Melee's worth dramatically increases Melee's tournament scene every time it happens. There are of course confounding variables (the documentary, E3/Smash4)

Smash is gaining floods of new members to establish themselves. Smash has very good player retention that isn't matched in any other series. Tell me something wrong about either of these things

Smash is not a gateway to traditional fighters. Smashers don't play fighting games that aren't Smash. Maybe it's an intro to competitive gaming in a more general sense

Esports is a really big thing. If you want numbers instead of hype, look at these links
http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments
http://www.riotgames.com/articles/20141201/1628/worlds-2014-numbers
http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/29/5949773/dota-2-the-international-tournament-20-million-viewers
Fighting games can't reach these numbers because, as I've already mentioned before, too few gamers play this genre. Smash has sold 30,000,000 copies throughout its history. The most popular MOBA has 27,000,000 players online daily http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/29/league-of-legends-now-has-27-million-players-daily

This is how much concurrent viewership EVO got last year for its games https://public.tableau.com/views/Ev...ry?:embed=y&:display_count=no&:showVizHome=no . So what if other esports are more popular? That doesn't stop fighting games from being popular on their own

Source for the pong 50,000,000 viewers during its championships, please?