Dragoomba
Smash Lord
I figured this belongs here rather than Tournament Discussion, because this is really specific to the nature of Project M and its updates, and I would really appreciate input from avid Project M players and community leaders.
I'm from the Idaho Smash community, and we're having our first big regional; Gem State Rumble. We have presence from Utah, Washington, and Oregon coming up to our state. This is going to be a 2-day tournament that features Melee and Project M as its main games. Although Melee will have a good showing, Project M will be the main event as that's our state's primary game, and most of the out of state players are attending primarily for Project M.
As you know, Project M had a surprise release date of November 14th. Now, in any other situation, Project M 3.5 would be the obvious choice, however, coincidentally Gem State Rumble is being held on the 15th to the 16th of November. So this gives us two options.
I'm from the Idaho Smash community, and we're having our first big regional; Gem State Rumble. We have presence from Utah, Washington, and Oregon coming up to our state. This is going to be a 2-day tournament that features Melee and Project M as its main games. Although Melee will have a good showing, Project M will be the main event as that's our state's primary game, and most of the out of state players are attending primarily for Project M.
As you know, Project M had a surprise release date of November 14th. Now, in any other situation, Project M 3.5 would be the obvious choice, however, coincidentally Gem State Rumble is being held on the 15th to the 16th of November. So this gives us two options.
- Run Project M 3.5 - With this we have a chance of getting publicity by being among the very first regional tournaments to run 3.5. This also would prove to be a good tournament from the viewers standpoint, as it'd display the first high level Project M 3.5 matches in a tournament setting, showing off many of the new changes in a practical environment. With this said, it would also be good publicity for Project M. However, this means that the competitors have literally less than a day to practice and get a feel for the new game. There are players traveling out of state to this event, for them to make the distance to play a major update they've never touched would be questionable, and might damage the authenticity of the tournament.
- Run Project M 3.02 - With this, we have a game everybody is comfortable in - the game everybody who registered for this tournament originally intended to compete in. As the previous option is optimal for a viewer and casual standpoint, this option sits well with the small minority of players that have a shot to actually win a good amount of money from this tournament. Secondly, no disrespect to the Project M playtesting crew, but we all know 3.02 is a stable release, there's no saying that 3.5 won't have any sort of obscure bugs that would unfairly determine a match's outcome or even hold up the tournament (remember, 3.0 had a couple of patches before it was truly stable). The cons to this, of course, would be missing out on a big opportunity of being among the first regional tournaments to run 3.5 along with giving the new meta a head-start (and the potential publicity that would come from it considering our scene, although strong, is still relatively unknown), and some believe it would just be less exciting running a tournament for the same game when an updated version is accessible to everyone.
