L+R+A+St
Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash is temporarily cancelled. Due to circumstances well beyond my control and far-removed from anything smash-related, I do not have the capacity to administer the tournaments in this fashion at this time. My sincerest apologies to everyone involved, especially the newer players who haven't had the chance to attend as many events as the regulars.
And now for the FAQ:
Since I've developed a reputation as someone who puts more effort into fueling the smash community than most, a sudden cancellation of bi-weeklies and halt of progress in general appears to be the result of taking on too much responsibility and I'd like to assure everyone that that isn't the case. I try very hard not to take on more hobbyist work than I can handle and although this particular facet of it expanded quicker and larger than I anticipated, that's not why the bi-weeklies are cancelled. Instead, as important as smash is to me, I have to resolve my more immediately relevant personal problems before anything. The main thing to understand is that the only reason they're being cancelled now is so they can return soon, bigger and better than ever. If I continue to host them under these circumstances, there's no guarantee that will happen.
- Just how long is "temporary"?
The competitive SSBM community is getting to be more popular than ever and I'll be the first to admit that this is the worst time for me to cancel progress and tournaments. Smashers don't wait, so my temporary leave can't be
too temporary. On the other hand, I can't give you an exact date either because deadlines and scheduled tasks are precisely the kinds of things I'm trying to avoid during my leave.
I can tell you that there
will definitely be tournaments in the summer, hopefully as early as June. With the likes of Fox Machine in town, it's best to get as much collaborative smashing going on as possible; plus, people just seem to be more likely to be able to attend during summer months.
- What about the bi-weekly results/requested match videos/pending highlight reels/ProImpact.ca/PICoinage, etc?
Due to an overheated video card, the computer that stored the results from
Pro Impact BI-WEEKLY Smash #14 made short work of the saved data and I lost it all. Thus, before I can post those results, I will have to watch the tournament again. They will be posted eventually, but I'm not setting myself a due date for anything smash-related right now, so bear with me.
Your requested videos from previous matches
will be uploaded some time over the duration of my break, again with no specific deadline. Additionally, there will be separate highlight reels for both March
and April.
ProImpact.ca has been a heavy source of industrial and financial stress since its inception, however it too will be brought fully online by the time the tournaments have returned. All the profiles will finally be completed to properly represent each smasher and the win-loss data will be updated, as well as the Coin Banks for each of you.
- What's in store for future tournaments? And what do we do in the meantime?
I've been playing catch-up with this local smash scene for awhile now so the main thing you can look forward to for future bi-weeklies is hopefully...well...everything. When I originally started doing this, I tried to do everything in my power to elevate the tournaments to a better-than-average level of professionalism and marketed the "Pro Impact" name as one of dignified class and universal appeal for all smashers regardless of skill and experience. Since I have been unable to do that up to my own standards in recent months, I'm going to use this break to idly poke at the things on my to-do list whenever I feel like it rather than every day. This way, I'll be better able to clean up the website, get those videos done and uploaded and be all ready for when the tournaments start up again. I'd like to be able to approach it with a clean slate and now that we have an established community of smashers that probably aren't going anywhere anytime soon, it allows me the chance to catch up on things without having to worry about the whole idea disintegrating due to a lack of interest. Odds are, if I had decided to cancel after the third bi-weekly, the community itself might not have the strength to start up again and I hope and expect that you can all perpetuate your enthusiasm in the meantime.
This probably sounds like pretty bad news, but I must stress that it is
temporary and I'm not exactly going to disappear off the face of the earth, either. In fact, during this leave, I intend to host as many tournaments as I can! Odds are we'll at least see
Pro Impact Random Rumble II before the bi-weeklies come back in full swing. For those of you who don't make it to every tournament, you likely won't even notice that they stopped!
But as for future tournaments...
I've made a lot of observations from the tournament director standpoint since starting these events and I can hopefully use them to improve future tournaments in what ways
I see fit, but I would like some feedback from you guys as to how the whole operation is running. The main question that seems to have hindered the growth of the community (if only minutely) in my opinion is this one:
Is Sunday good for you guys?
We are one of VERY few SSBM communities that has bi-weeklies running on a Sunday and the more tournaments I run, the more I get to thinking that there's probably a pretty good reason for that. Sunday was perfectly okay when there was no other competitive play at all in the city, but since more people have begun to take interest, we seem to continually run into the problem of Sunday just not being a good day for a lot of people. Even players who haven't expressly stated that Sunday is a bad day yet still haven't been to tournaments are probably more likely to be available on a Saturday.
The only reason I chose Sunday is because it happened to be a good day for me at the time, but I think I'm changing my time management in general, so I'm open to suggestions for another day. Most people probably aren't too warm to the idea of a bi-weekly on a weekday; that would probably hinder attendance even more than Sunday, you never know. Nevertheless, let me know what you think about Saturday or any other day you feel like suggesting.
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A big thank you to everyone for showing up to these and providing the very lifeblood of what makes this sort of thing work. Again, I'm sorry that I have to cut them off for a little while and I most definitely do not
want to, but sometimes that's just the way things go.
Time for a reset...