Our community's reaction to splittings/"bracket manipulation"

[jiovanni007]

First off I'd like to start by saying this thread is 100% serious.

As a frequenter to SRK I noticed a little article that had made its front page. It was about infractions being handed out to players. So at a smashfest last night I inquired about what happened. I was told M2K was red carded for bracket manipulation...again.

But wait, he won Genesis right? So how did he manipulate the bracket? Apparently while in pools he allowed a female smasher win a set so that she could advance out of pools.

It's obvious to me that the BBR-RC doesn't get much action with the ladies if they really red carded M2K for this. If the situation happened as M2K forfeiting for ****s and giggles then okay, dish out the pain.

The problem is that rules are objective and take no subjectivity into account. We just say "well he forfeit so card him.". The real question is why did this event happen. I'm more than sure if I as a large black man went up to M2K and asked him to forfeit out pools match he would politely decline.

This situation is different however. Instead of a sweaty, nervous male, the accomplice was a female. We all know (or should know) that women have power over men and can persuade them to do things they normally wouldn't.

My point is that M2K did nothing wrong. He did just as most males would do and fell victim to female persuasion. If that was a crime, most men would have done time before they turn 18. M2K is a victim and his red card status should be repealed and instead the female persuader should be issued a yellow card. She is the true guilty party as she manipulated M2K into performing an action he normally wouldn't.

This objective viewpoint has created a victim when it was meant to protect them.

From a thread that I made earlier that got locked. Just my opinion on the whole Genesis situation.

tl;dr version:

Girl charms M2K into "breaking the rules" and M2K gets ****ed for it.

 

[Flayl]

Sorry but if the only way you can "get action" is by forfeiting to/sandbagging on girls in videogame tournaments, you need to step up your ladies' game.

Don't go hating on the BRC if they think you should take your flirting somewhere else lol

 

[Player-1]

I loled all over that post.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Wait... was... was that a serious post?

...I can't tell. I hope it wasn't. I really hope it wasn't.

 

[NiTEZ]

Wait... was... was that a serious post?

...I can't tell. I hope it wasn't. I really hope it wasn't.

It was a serious post to be elaborated on later.

 

[Chuee]

Wait... was... was that a serious post?

...I can't tell. I hope it wasn't. I really hope it wasn't.

First off I'd like to start by saying this thread is 100% serious.

Your reading skills need improvement good sire.
This post is 100% serious.

 

[Bizkit047]

This post is 100% serious.

FD should be the only legal stage because it is completely flat and has no platforms or hazards.



That was easy.

 

[jiovanni007]

Sorry but if the only way you can "get action" is by forfeiting to/sandbagging on girls in videogame tournaments, you need to step up your ladies' game.

Don't go hating on the BRC if they think you should take your flirting somewhere else lol

So do you treat every woman you meet just like every man you meet? If you say yes then I immediately call bull****. If the chick that proposed M2K to sandbag for her then why isn't she guilty as well? If I create a plan to rob a bank but have other people go through with it but still profit am I innocent?

 

[Bizkit047]

I'm PRETTY sure it was M2K's idea first...

 

[ADHD]

Eh. I don't know if it was so much the the forfeiting that actually made the difference.

Alot of people in the BBRC hate Mew2king and want to get rid of him. They'll do it any way they can, and the lower members of that group will go with whatever the higher ones say. They'll get him for anything he does, no matter how minor it is.

 

[Bizkit047]

Eh. I don't know if it was so much the the forfeiting that actually made the difference.

Alot of people in the BBRC hate Mew2king and want to get rid of him. They'll do it any way they can, and the lower members of that group will go with whatever the higher ones say. They'll get him for anything he does, no matter how minor it is.

I don't hate M2K, but I supported the decision to give him the Red Card. He just should stop forfeiting honestly.

 

[ADHD]

I don't hate M2K, but I supported the decision to give him the Red Card. He just should stop forfeiting honestly.

For something minor as sade who forfeited out of pools herself? Let's deal with real problems, shall we?

 

[Bizkit047]

For something minor as sade who forfeited out of pools herself? Let's deal with real problems, shall we?

We also carded two players who split grand finals of like a 10 person tourney. Why should it being minor matter? If you tell people you forfeit or split, you're going against the rules that the tourney states.

 

[ADHD]

We also carded two players who split grand finals of like a 10 person tourney. Why should it being minor matter? If you tell people you forfeit or split, you're going against the rules that the tourney states.

Because it's ******** to dish out punishments for things when they only cause more drama for insignificant acts.

 

[Bizkit047]

Because it's ******** to dish out punishments for things when they only cause more drama for insignificant acts.

It's also ******** to openly forfeit when that person already had splitting/forfeiting problems that has done damage. The reason his red card only lasts for 4 weeks is because of how small it was. If he were to try splitting/forfeiting at Ktar6, then he'd probably get carded longer than 4 weeks (although Keitaro said he won't allow splitting/forfeiting this time anyway).

I know the whole infraction system seems silly to you and others, but you have to look at the principal and purpose of it, which is to stop the splitting/forfeiting. Choosing to allow players to do it just because it didn't affect anything is a double standard.

 

[Tesh]

There is also alot of drama when you put murderers on trial. Hell most of the time when people get killed I don't know about it until some DA/reporter makes a big deal of out it. If anything, CNN has hurt this country alot more than criminals have.

Simple solution to this problem. Next big regional/national with pools. Put ADHD, Anti, M2K, Ally etc. all in the same pool.

 

[choknater]

we also get mad crap from the fighting game community at large for this stuff hahaha

 

[Player-1]

Have all the top players in the pools play their matches first, that should at least help the issue.

 

[Deleted member]

This post is 100% serious.

FD should be the only legal stage because it is completely flat and has no platforms or hazards.

That was easy.

Strawman arguments: still terrible.

We also carded two players who split grand finals of like a 10 person tourney. Why should it being minor matter? If you tell people you forfeit or split, you're going against the rules that the tourney states.

That you're acting like police and hunting people down like criminals when no wrong was done is evidence enough that it's a stupid set of rules. I agree that being minor doesn't matter, the rules are universally stupid. Point proven.

It's also ******** to openly forfeit when that person already had splitting/forfeiting problems that has done damage. The reason his red card only lasts for 4 weeks is because of how small it was. If he were to try splitting/forfeiting at Ktar6, then he'd probably get carded longer than 4 weeks (although Keitaro said he won't allow splitting/forfeiting this time anyway).

I know the whole infraction system seems silly to you and others, but you have to look at the principal and purpose of it, which is to stop the splitting/forfeiting. Choosing to allow players to do it just because it didn't affect anything is a double standard.

Yes, we should definitely base our decisions upon intent and principle, both of which are highly speculative in nature to begin with. Choosing to allow players to do it is still ultimately competitive in nature, whereas banning players is strictly anti-competitive in nature.

It's only stupid to openly forfeit when secrecy is the primary goal. Again, if you wanted to improve community image with respect to this topic, you'd make it as trivial as possible instead of blowing it up with a full penal system. Your message is not congruent with your actions.

 

[Bizkit047]

That you're acting like police and hunting people down like criminals when no wrong was done is evidence enough that it's a stupid set of rules. I agree that being minor doesn't matter, the rules are universally stupid. Point proven.

How was no wrong done? Are you saying it is not wrong to split or forfeit? Just because in this specific situation the TO made the right call and fixed it on the spot does not change the fact that there was a forfeit. The TO forged the pools results to what would have likely happen without the forfeit. That comes off as a pretty serious problem when the TO has to step in like that and change a pools set result so that 2nd & 3rd seeds don't change due to a forfeit.

Let's not forget this same person openly split at MLG, causing a gigantic amount of backlash on our entire community in so many ways. Even after that, he was yellow carded for splitting at Ktar5.

Yes, we should definitely base our decisions upon intent and principle, both of which are highly speculative in nature to begin with. Choosing to allow players to do it is still ultimately competitive in nature, whereas banning players is strictly anti-competitive in nature.

So allowing, lets say Grand Finals, what is supposed to be the most hyped set of a tourney to degrade into a joke set where both players ruin the tension of who is going to win is not anti-competitive? Here is a real example: Remember Apex 2? Imagine if Grand Finals, which were incredibly hyped, was reduced to a forfeit, because Larry & Brood decided to split. You think that's competitive and good for the scene? I can't imagine that you'd see that as being okay.

It's only stupid to openly forfeit when secrecy is the primary goal. Again, if you wanted to improve community image with respect to this topic, you'd make it as trivial as possible instead of blowing it up with a full penal system. Your message is not congruent with your actions.

If you have a better system of cutting down on splitting/forfeiting that's feasible, the BBR-RC would gladly listen.

 

[jiovanni007]

I know the whole infraction system seems silly to you and others, but you have to look at the principal and purpose of it, which is to stop the splitting/forfeiting. Choosing to allow players to do it just because it didn't affect anything is a double standard.

It doesn't seem silly, but discretion is always necessary. You say you're pretty sure that it was M2K's idea to forfeit but are you sure beyond of a shadow of a doubt? If not then you can't hold it against it since this is America.

 

[CT Chia]

Because it's ******** to dish out punishments for things when they only cause more drama for insignificant acts.

If it's an event seen by the community, advertised on our sites, it becomes an issue. Tournaments are tournaments, they all are. They all represent our community at large.

And that's without mentioning in M2K's case, this was Genesis 2, the largest smash tournament of the year. The biggest news after Day 1 was not oh wow look at ____'s placement. It was did you hear about M2K? Do you know what happened? What happened? I heard he went Ganondorf? I heard he threw the set to someone? It may seem miniscule, but it was really quite important.

And as Bizkit brought up, we understand it was a smaller thing than usual, and because of such, the ban is very miniscule, basically a slap on the wrist. Most players don't even get the luxury of going to more than one event a month lol.

 

[Bizkit047]

It doesn't seem silly, but discretion is always necessary. You say you're pretty sure that it was M2K's idea to forfeit but are you sure beyond of a shadow of a doubt? If not then you can't hold it against it since this is America.

What does this being America have anything to do with anything? M2K admitted the forfeit to the TO, whose idea was it does not matter in that case. He wasn't carded because "we were pretty sure it was his idea", just like how he wasn't carded because he didn't go MK.

 

[Ussi]

If you make one exception, you always will then..

Then people go "why do you even have rules if they aren't enforced?"

You know some people think they are helping someone out even if it is wrong the method of helping. You can't not punish them because of their intension. So what if he was being friendly or whatever, he did it against the rules.


My friend is in debt so i'll go steal money to help him out... :| intension is good, action is bad.

 

[Clel]

Splitting + Bracket Manipulation shouldnt be punished at all.

One of the main arguments is that grand finals of a tourney is like the climax, and when people split what's supposed to be the most hyped match of the tourney becomes a joke. I agree with this argument to a point. Unfortunately you're playing for money and it's not right for the people who throw the event to say what can or can't be done with that money by the person who earned or is earning it.

I know people hate splitting and people get screwed by bracket manipulation, but with the way tournament competition is designed it's bound to happen. Money is the incentive, money creates the tensed grand finals matches everyone wants, but if you can split logically the incentive goes down. If P1 and P2 are planning to split, somebody needs to beat one of them to stop them otherwise P1 and P2 essentially win singles together. If you're waiting in Grand Finals for P1 and P2 to finish LFs but P1 gives P2 the win so he can beat you while they split first and third, tough luck you should be able to beat both P1 and P2.

This hits a major point, would you really deserve first place if P1 beat your toughest opponent for you or because you can dominant any and everybody who stands in your way? Tournaments are a free for all pretty much, and in any FFA system it's more beneficial to combine strengths. Suddenly many in-bracket strategies come to mind, so why not just legalize splitting+bracket manipulation and see tournaments more as crew battles? LMFAO

 

[Tesh]

Careful Clel, I got infracted for basically saying the same thing.

 

[V]

Because tournaments aren't crew battles they're a test of who the best single player is at that moment in time. If bracket manipulation alters that objective then it should be punishable. Bottom line.

 

[Deleted member]

How was no wrong done? Are you saying it is not wrong to split or forfeit? Just because in this specific situation the TO made the right call and fixed it on the spot does not change the fact that there was a forfeit. The TO forged the pools results to what would have likely happen without the forfeit. That comes off as a pretty serious problem when the TO has to step in like that and change a pools set result so that 2nd & 3rd seeds don't change due to a forfeit.

Let's not forget this same person openly split at MLG, causing a gigantic amount of backlash on our entire community in so many ways. Even after that, he was yellow carded for splitting at Ktar5.



So allowing, lets say Grand Finals, what is supposed to be the most hyped set of a tourney to degrade into a joke set where both players ruin the tension of who is going to win is not anti-competitive? Here is a real example: Remember Apex 2? Imagine if Grand Finals, which were incredibly hyped, was reduced to a forfeit, because Larry & Brood decided to split. You think that's competitive and good for the scene? I can't imagine that you'd see that as being okay.



If you have a better system of cutting down on splitting/forfeiting that's feasible, the BBR-RC would gladly listen.

1. Yes, I am saying that it is not wrong to split or forfeit. I think you're stupid if you do it, but that doesn't make it wrong, it just means you're willing to sabotage your own chances of winning.

It is not wrong to split or forfeit. It is your decision to do so.

It is not wrong to split or forfeit.

2. Even if the finals degrade into a joke, at least the sets leading up to the finals were competitive. As opposed to banning a top player, where every set they should have been in but were not is a joke instead. 1 set vs at least 4+ in the smallest regional bracket. Not hard to see which is the lesser evil. Gnes definitely would have been in MLG finals if M2K and ADHD hadn't been banned right? Keep telling yourself that.

3. My suggestion to the BBR-RC is to ignore splitting and to accept it as an unfortunate byproduct of a flawed bracket design. I agree that it is an evil, but it is a small one when compared to banning players, punishing people on actions that aren't even unanimously considered bad, or even lesser anti-competitive practices that have already been toyed with in the recent past, such as banning characters or standardizing an unpopular stage list. All of them are strictly more anti-competitive than "underperformance".

Even worse, right now the BBR-RC has two opposing policies being told to us in this discussion: 1. "don't do it" and 2. "it's okay if you don't tell anyone" which are totally contradictory for all practical purposes and morals (what you're apparently appealing to as a group). We're not even being given a clear-cut direction between the two messages, and yet you want the grassroots TOs to collectively enforce your anti-competitive practices? It's certainly not reasonable to ask TOs to ban top notch players since that's how they advertise tournaments.

If you absolutely cannot tolerate bracket manipulation and refuse to ignore it, there is a second alternative in a different type of tournament formation. If you've ever studied basic behavioral patterns, you'd have a general sense that punishment doesn't work. It just doesn't. Nagging wives never get what they want, criminals still break the law, children will still exhibit poor behavior in the face of punishment. Even if you wanted to stop splitting, you'd first understand that punishment isn't the way to do it. Instead, you should appeal to incentive. How do you give incentive to stop bracket manipulation? I can think of two bracket types that make every single victory matter, those being Swiss and Round Robin. Swiss sucks, don't use it. Round Robin is impractical. Instead, I think tournaments should be run such that it's only pools until a top 8, in which case the top 8 is just a round robin instead.

In short:

Ignore it, what you're doing is worse

or

Try something where it can't possibly work instead.

Even if you do a round robin for the top 8, if you end up with two undefeated players, they still have strong incentive to split. It's simply not worth it to lose $500 based on one set. It's much safer for both players to split the winnings, even if one player is fairly sure he can beat the other. It's called "risk aversion" and it operates under the same pretenses as insurance. You don't have any way to get players to want to risk thousands of dollars. It is never really under your control. My posts in the other thread with the rule set said something to the effect that "you're trying to exert control where you don't really have any", and that is why.

 

[Ussi]

Spliting being right or wrong.. Can't say either one is true. Spliting does degenerate a tournament atmosphere. Which we want to keep. In order to preserve that, we made spliting wrong by our subjective views.

Now that spliting is wrong by our rules, those who enter are subject to the consequence of breaking them regardleas of their intension.

So a top player ends up getting banned? It won't be the first time in history of competition

 

[Bizkit047]

1. Yes, I am saying that it is not wrong to split or forfeit. I think you're stupid if you do it, but that doesn't make it wrong, it just means you're willing to sabotage your own chances of winning.

If this is Grand Finals, you're not sabotaging your chances of winning. Any case earlier, yes...UNLESS, it's a top 3-4 split, which is essentially what happened at Ktar5...

It is not wrong to split or forfeit.

You need to look at the bigger picture of splitting/forfeiting. I'll bring up Ktar5 again, as an example. Streams are important for Brawl these days. More and more people are expecting it, and it is a great way to bring the hype of a tourney to people who cannot attend, and even to players who may not be fully into the competitive scene.

At Ktar5, we had 3 of the top 4 players split before Grand Finals. This was more than one important set being turned into a streaming joke. The people who went out of their way to spend money to travel to this tourney to set up streaming equipment were very upset when what was supposed to be the most hyped sets of the tourney were turned into clear jokes, as all players involved openly forfeit/split. This also frustrated the viewers watching the stream, causing them to stop watching. Think of how bad this makes our community look. The TO did not enforce their split/forfeit rule, and all it did was cause people to be angry.

This is not even mentioning what happened at MLG, the start of what made splitting/forfeiting such a big deal for our community. What is worse is that at Genesis 2, by the time Brawl got to Grand Finals, the stream had about 800 viewers. Think about how many viewers 800 is before you dismiss the number so quickly. Clearly, it likely is not just "800 regular tourney Brawl players." When they went to get M2K to play Ally, he wanted to just forfeit Grand Finals. This upset virtually everyone in the stream, and M2K did not finally play until he was begged to 20 minutes later of a stream of 800 people.

If Brawl's best player cannot enter a tourney, Grand Finals hype will be replaced by the next best placer, which is much preferable to than a split/forfeit at the cost of it being slightly less competitive than if this player, or say every top player in the country, were to all attend that same tourney.

These are only a few of the examples of the problems splitting/forfeiting cause...essentially it is bad for the tourneys image, the scene, and the entire community.

2. Even if the finals degrade into a joke, at least the sets leading up to the finals were competitive. As opposed to banning a top player, where every set they should have been in but were not is a joke instead. 1 set vs at least 4+ in the smallest regional bracket. Not hard to see which is the lesser evil. Gnes definitely would have been in MLG finals if M2K and ADHD hadn't been banned right? Keep telling yourself that.

Correct, Gnes likely wouldn't have gotten to Grand Finals if they were in bracket. However, the Grand Finals set was still hyped because it had no signs of splitting or intentional forfeiting. To the viewer, this situation was no different than M2K/ADHD not being able to attend anyway. The idea of tourneys being fully competitive would require all top players to consistently enter. This never happens. So a player, such as M2K, not entering a tourney from being Red Carded is not as anti-competitive as you make it out to be. Personally, I rather have M2K not in a bracket than him be in bracket and split top 3. At least then the finals of a tourney would not be seen as a joke.

Even worse, right now the BBR-RC has two opposing policies being told to us in this discussion: 1. "don't do it" and 2. "it's okay if you don't tell anyone" which are totally contradictory for all practical purposes and morals (what you're apparently appealing to as a group). We're not even being given a clear-cut direction between the two messages, and yet you want the grassroots TOs to collectively enforce your anti-competitive practices? It's certainly not reasonable to ask TOs to ban top notch players since that's how they advertise tournaments.

Yes, I do not agree with some of the BBR-RC members that post constantly to just "split under the table" and such. They usually post out of frustration of how splitting sometimes is inevitable and will still happen regardless of the rules, but cannot figure out why some players (M2K) admit to splitting or intentional forfeiting constantly. Regardless of what is posted in the random threads by BBR-RC members, the Ruleset thread itself is quite clear on the situation.

If you absolutely cannot tolerate bracket manipulation and refuse to ignore it, there is a second alternative in a different type of tournament formation. If you've ever studied basic behavioral patterns, you'd have a general sense that punishment doesn't work. It just doesn't. Nagging wives never get what they want, criminals still break the law, children will still exhibit poor behavior in the face of punishment. Even if you wanted to stop splitting, you'd first understand that punishment isn't the way to do it. Instead, you should appeal to incentive. How do you give incentive to stop bracket manipulation? I can think of two bracket types that make every single victory matter, those being Swiss and Round Robin. Swiss sucks, don't use it. Round Robin is impractical. Instead, I think tournaments should be run such that it's only pools until a top 8, in which case the top 8 is just a round robin instead.

The only problem with doing anything different than what we normally do is time restraints at tourneys are an issue most of the time.

 

[Player-3]

If Chibo A ever faced Chibo B just one of them would progress after a 24 minute set full of sweet ledge on ledge action.

If I was good enough to get both Chibos in top 2... Well, I guess so lmao. Take it up with the organizers, I didn't make the rule lol.

I had to play M2K in losers twice in a row. The winner of M2K and Chibo played Chibo.

you've learned

 

[V]

I have the same thought process as intuition in regards to free will and not making rules against it. I do however believe that we should try to preserve the competitive quality of tournaments. Doing rounds of pools and narrowing down to a top 8 round robin would be legit, but like he said, if 2 people tie there's no stopping a split.

The only problem with an 8 man round robin is that bracket manipulation can have greater impact since you can pick and choose who to beat and lose to (if you're good enough to do that) among 7 other people whereas with double elimination bracket you can only lose once on purpose.

If you truly want to get rid of the problem then perma ban people who do it from any national at the moment forward. I think that will straighten people out. A 4 week, 6 month, or whatever period of time ban is essentially a slap on the wrist. Get harder on them if you really want to change the problem. Obviously right now its not hard enough because M2K is still doing it. Ban him permanently if he does it again. I guarantee that will be the last time anybody ever does it.

 

[Clel]

Because tournaments aren't crew battles they're a test of who the best single player is at that moment in time. If bracket manipulation alters that objective then it should be punishable. Bottom line.

Testing to see who's the best player with a tournament bracket fails because different players could win under different seedings. There you have it, built right into a tournament is a mechanic that works against the top player finishing first. The point is, there are multiple "best" players each having weaknesses and whomever has to face their weakness first gets the short end of the stick. (Unless there's a huge skill gap of course).

And that's trash if I get an infraction for my posts, but oh wells what can I do?

 

[Player-1]

you've learned

no, because there actually was a chibo a and chibo b instead of a hypothetical example >.>

 

[Deleted member]

If this is Grand Finals, you're not sabotaging your chances of winning. Any case earlier, yes...UNLESS, it's a top 3-4 split, which is essentially what happened at Ktar5...



You need to look at the bigger picture of splitting/forfeiting. I'll bring up Ktar5 again, as an example. Streams are important for Brawl these days. More and more people are expecting it, and it is a great way to bring the hype of a tourney to people who cannot attend, and even to players who may not be fully into the competitive scene.

At Ktar5, we had 3 of the top 4 players split before Grand Finals. This was more than one important set being turned into a streaming joke. The people who went out of their way to spend money to travel to this tourney to set up streaming equipment were very upset when what was supposed to be the most hyped sets of the tourney were turned into clear jokes, as all players involved openly forfeit/split. This also frustrated the viewers watching the stream, causing them to stop watching. Think of how bad this makes our community look. The TO did not enforce their split/forfeit rule, and all it did was cause people to be angry.

This is not even mentioning what happened at MLG, the start of what made splitting/forfeiting such a big deal for our community. What is worse is that at Genesis 2, by the time Brawl got to Grand Finals, the stream had about 800 viewers. Think about how many viewers 800 is before you dismiss the number so quickly. Clearly, it likely is not just "800 regular tourney Brawl players." When they went to get M2K to play Ally, he wanted to just forfeit Grand Finals. This upset virtually everyone in the stream, and M2K did not finally play until he was begged to 20 minutes later of a stream of 800 people.

If Brawl's best player cannot enter a tourney, Grand Finals hype will be replaced by the next best placer, which is much preferable to than a split/forfeit at the cost of it being slightly less competitive than if this player, or say every top player in the country, were to all attend that same tourney.

These are only a few of the examples of the problems splitting/forfeiting cause...essentially it is bad for the tourneys image, the scene, and the entire community.



Correct, Gnes likely wouldn't have gotten to Grand Finals if they were in bracket. However, the Grand Finals set was still hyped because it had no signs of splitting or intentional forfeiting. To the viewer, this situation was no different than M2K/ADHD not being able to attend anyway. The idea of tourneys being fully competitive would require all top players to consistently enter. This never happens. So a player, such as M2K, not entering a tourney from being Red Carded is not as anti-competitive as you make it out to be. Personally, I rather have M2K not in a bracket than him be in bracket and split top 3. At least then the finals of a tourney would not be seen as a joke.



Yes, I do not agree with some of hte BBR-RC members that post constantly to just "split under the table" and such. They usually post out of frustration of how splitting sometimes is inevitable and will still happen regardless of the rules, but cannot figure out why some players (M2K) admit to splitting or intentional forfeiting constantly. Regardless of what is posted in the random threads by BBR-RC members, the Ruleset thread itself is quite clear on the situation.



The only problem with doing anything different than what we normally do is time restraints at tourneys are an issue most of the time.

Once again, I'll address points of interest in order to prevent confusion.

Concerning Ktar5, I sympathize with those who traveled some distance to stream videos and to create hype. But frankly, that's not what the tournament is all about. A tournament is simply to see who the most talented players are in a set amount of known players, and they are then ranked. In this way, the hype, videos, and streamers have exactly zero impact on the competitive aspect of the game. One would argue that if they did in some way impact the results, they should instead be disallowed. Publicity is extraneous to this debate, and when you pay your $10 to enter the tournament, you're not paying for videos later and you're not paying for tournament hype. You have your shot at winning whatever your relative skill dictates that you should earn. That's it.

If Brawl's best player cannot enter a tourney, Grand Finals hype will be replaced by the next best placer, which is much preferable to than a split/forfeit at the cost of it being slightly less competitive than if this player, or say every top player in the country, were to all attend that same tourney.

I quoted this paragraph again specifically because in it you admit openly that something that has no effect on tournament results should have some priority over something that does impact tournament results. In doing so, you acknowledge the move as anti-competitive. This debate is already over. You concede that my main points are correct.

So long as the BBR-RC has rules outlined, its members should be endorsing them consistently. That they are not is indicative that even the group does not agree on this topic entirely. If a position is open, I'd be interested in the functional group dynamic.

As for pools, they are designed to save time in the first place. The genesis bracket started at 32 entrants I believe? About equivalent to 3 sets of pools? We'd have to experiment, but it might actually be faster to cut out the bracket completely? It's not a bad idea to play with.

About half of your post was that I should look at the bigger picture concerning bracket manipulation. I think that is the wrong framing with which to approach the problem. Community interest, image, and other interests are all secondary to the tournament because our community labels itself as competitive in nature. Instead, all of those things you are endorsing should be low priority to the tournament itself. If you want to prevent someone in losers bracket from getting screwed into 3rd place, then bracket manipulation is a real problem. If you don't want people on a stream to be sad, well, too bad. They didn't go to the tournament and they're not entitled to anything. Get your priorities in order.

Obviously right now its not hard enough because M2K is still doing it. Ban him permanently if he does it again. I guarantee that will be the last time anybody ever does it.

I guarantee you that you would drive players from the community before you successfully drive splitting from the brackets. Punishment doesn't work, and it's just too risky to not split.

 

[Javon89]

As once pointed out in this thread, a good idea for this carding business is: even after the player is carded, attendance can still be decided by the T.O.

 

[BlueXenon]

I don't want m2k banned, I love watching him play against Ally.

 

[FoxFireMage]

Why is this the one fighting game community that has this kind of problem? Imagine SF tournies if Daigo had splits with Justin Wong, or if Kaqn were to do so in BB. Their community would be furious. Whether Mew2King likes it or not he does represent a respectable skill level in the Smash community since Melee. The way I see it if you're going to purposefully lose so you can sweep one side of the bracket and your cohort can do the same to the other side it is clearly bracket manipulation. If someone's excuse to not want to play is that they're tired or some such maybe they should honestly reconsider playing at all. The card system is flawed, that much is obvious, and it is still up to TO's whether to allow such people into their tournaments. However such information of bracket manipulation should be out out there so they can decide

 

[Gnes]

Even if the finals degrade into a joke, at least the sets leading up to the finals were competitive. As opposed to banning a top player, where every set they should have been in but were not is a joke instead. 1 set vs at least 4+ in the smallest regional bracket. Not hard to see which is the lesser evil. Gnes definitely would have been in MLG finals if M2K and ADHD hadn't been banned right? Keep telling yourself that.

Uh i may have loss to Jason, because he's ****ing m2k, but who's to say I wouldn't have beat him like I did Ally, tyrant, esam and whoever the hell else I beat there.

As far as losing to wyatt, we're 1-1 at the moment after I beat him at Ktar 4, a tourney right after mlg. Idk what makes you think that if they were there everything would have changed. Please don't play off your opinion as fact.

 

[Player-1]

Gnes u lose on RC at that tourney, u bad.