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Smash Back Room Launched for Wii U Version

Smashboards is proud to announce that the Smash Back Room has officially been launched for Smash Wii U. In the past Smash Back Rooms have existed for Smash 64, Melee, and Brawl. These rooms have served the purpose of centralizing and organizing leadership within the community in order to come together for projects such as tier lists and match-up charts. Players, organizers, content creators and theorists have all come together in the past to push the scene forward through a collaborate outlet. In addition to providing the medium, Smashboards will also be providing the group with a monetary budget to allow the group to have more ability to see projects through.


Spearheading the group are three leaders: @Camalange, @Neo Zero, and @TheReflexWonder. Camalange has shown proven leadership both as a moderator on Smashboards and within the Smash 4 Sonic community. A dedicated content creator, he has provided a plethora of resources for the scene and works hard to push the community in the right path. Neo Zero dove into the Smashboards Rankings project, creating and training a dedicated team to compile the largest collection of tournament data for the Smash scene. This has allowed him to gain knowledge and connections with a multitude of local scenes in the smash community. TheReflexWonder has been a longstanding contributor to Smashboards with experience in discussing the theory-crafting necessary for modeling tier lists and match-up charts. In addition he has put his knowledge to the test and proven himself to be a top player with significant placings at national tournaments such as MLG.

The decision to delay the launch of the Smash Back Room was a careful one. With the Smash Bros series delving into new territory thanks to downloadable content, balance patches, and an ever-changing landscape with the transition from grassroots to eSports launching a group without a clear purpose and direction would have been ineffective. Now that the community has come together for projects such as community patch notes and more, Smashboards feels prepared to better facilitate these projects as well as given time for players to experience the meta before creating a premature tier list.

Well known and respected players from the Smash community included in the initial batch of members include @Dabuz, @Seagull Joe, @NAKAT, @MVD, @TSM ZeRo, Mister Eric Mister Eric and more. Once the group has time to establish direction and outline project plans more members will join the team. Users who utilize Smashboards as a resource have been primarily tapped for the group, however those who favour other mediums will still be tapped for input on important issues such as voting on tier lists. Smashboards hopes to continue to foster communication within the smash community and the 4BR is just one step towards providing the scene with the tools necessary to succeed.
 
A. "Xiivi" Brando Corsaro

Comments

We finally have a backroom. Hopefully this'll let us find the unity we've been needing instead of being dragged around by our vocal minorities.

Although hopefully the tier lists and rulesets aren't affected too much by personal bias...
 
I would rather wait a bit more, considering no one really experiments enough with the entire cast or at least the ones generally perceived mid and low tier. I don't expect concrete discussions out of the lower half of things until more development is made on certain characters, as there's still plenty that keep coming out of nowhere to surprise everyone and making everyone reconsider.
 
We finally have a backroom. Hopefully this'll let us find the unity we've been needing instead of being dragged around by our vocal minorities.

Although hopefully the tier lists and rulesets aren't affected too much by personal bias...
Yeah, I hope that tier lists don't get messed up, most characters in the game are viable, but it's easy to spot the characters that aren't and the characters that do extremely well at tourneys, but then that leaves 30+ characters in the middle grounds, where people will say "This character should be higher" or "This character should be lower". Not to mention patches which can nerf or buff any character. Making a truly accurate tier list is going to be an arduous task. Good luck to you guys back roomers...
 
As long as the "leadership" focuses on moderating the path the masses want to take (so long as it's not harmful) instead of guiding them to their personal preferences them it's fine.

I just see the back room as more of a network coordination system than outright leadership. But as long as they're not stifling the community Im ok.
 
Not into the idea of a backroom right now, especially at this stage in the game's life, and it won't really effect my thoughts on the roster.
 
I'm sorry if this seems misinformed, but remind me again. why can't regular members read the backroom? I totally get why we can't post there, but doesn't its existence now render a lot of discussion and research threads in the competitive discussion forum moot?
 
How to bowdlerize this...I really appreciate the art of whoever made the image for the smash 4 br in this news article. However, I think it looks crass, and I'm looking forward to seeing an even better one in the future.
 
I'm sorry if this seems misinformed, but remind me again. why can't regular members read the backroom? I totally get why we can't post there, but doesn't its existence now render a lot of discussion and research threads in the competitive discussion forum moot?
Because then you have a general discussion thread where people discuss what everyone else is talking about what the backroom is discussing.

Then a backroom member gets pissed off about a one-off comment, replies to it, and it slowly devolves until the entire conversation is a general.

And then the BR becomes virtually nothing more than a color to your name.
 
I've never been around SmashBoards when the back room was established, so I was wondering how it worked. Looks like it's finally happening, and I look forward to what comes of the decisions made by the group.
 
Because then you have a general discussion thread where people discuss what everyone else is talking about what the backroom is discussing.

Then a backroom member gets pissed off about a one-off comment, replies to it, and it slowly devolves until the entire conversation is a general.

And then the BR becomes virtually nothing more than a color to your name.
So the argument is that under the hypothetical that a backroom member acts immature in arguing with people who have proven to not be as knowledgeable as the rest of the backroom (via the distinction of not being part of the backroom themselves), that renders the entirety of the backroom no different from a general discussion board? So, this assumes that both parties contain immature members, which given the state of the Smash community, is quite likely. I'm assuming that you don't think the entirety of the community to be immature however, which would insinuate something very different. But I see your point.

A question in regards to that however; would it then be possible to have applicants for reading the backroom? If one could potentially prove their worth as being a mature, knowledgeable member of Smash (maybe throwing in a non-disclosure agreement while you're at it), would it be possible to gain insight on the backroom without living up to the admittedly difficult requirements to become a contributor? I see it as a university and student body analogy. Obviously, students attending a university are not learned enough to become meaningful contributors of knowledge (otherwise, they'd be professors, not students), but those attending a university still had to be rooted out via a selection process to determine their maturity and ability to learn in the first place. why couldn't the same be applied for the backroom?
 
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Please don't create an official tier list. The mid tiers in this game are impossible to put in an actual order, and there probably won't be a single person who will agree with every placement you make. I think Smash 4 should remain without a tier list.
 
While I retract the remarks below, I'm leaving them up for completeness and remain cautious about this situation.

I've always compared the so-called 'top players' to a mafia-esque back room that bullies people into running things their way (see the Mii debacle, where they pitched a fit over Miis at MLG). That we're actually calling it a Back Room is very fitting.

And disappointing.

RIP Mii Mains. If these are the 'top players' in charge of rules that protect their Smash paycheck because they're unwilling to learn a few more matchups, then they're probably about to ban our characters of choice, in effect ("1111 only") if not in outright declaration. All in the name of their absurd definition of 'fairness.'
 
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I've always compared the so-called 'top players' to a mafia-esque back room that bullies people into running things their way (see the Mii debacle, where they pitched a fit over Miis at MLG). That we're actually calling it a Back Room is very fitting.

And disappointing.

RIP Mii Mains. If these are the 'top players' in charge of rules that protect their Smash paycheck because they're unwilling to learn a few more matchups, then they're probably about to ban our characters of choice, in effect ("1111 only") if not in outright declaration. All in the name of their absurd definition of 'fairness.'
You are making an awful lot of assumptions here.

First, that the backroom is ONLY top players. It isn't. As with previous back rooms it is also prominent TOs and community members.

Second, that everyone opposes such things. I, at least, support #FreeMii
 
Will being a top player be a requirement on the back room, at all stages of its growth?

Perhaps like WritersBlah WritersBlah was discussing, active users who have proven to be mature and make positive contributions can read the back room posts? I definitely see why it would be closed off, especially in the initial stages, but perhaps later on members who have proved themselves in regards other than tournament results will have a chance?
 
If the 4BR is looking for applicants, I have a few projects that may benefit the community at large. I can't really contribute significantly until I graduate this term, but I think there's a lot of potential for creating tools that improves the general community's access to smash bros research.

I understand that the decision for membership is up to the current founders. I just wanted to make my intent known here since there were no other announced methods for doing so.

----

As for the concern with bias in the back room... well, my prior experience in the BBR shows that compelling numerical evidence can sway emotional arguments. They tend to tackle problems in a focused manner that isn't always possible on fully public forums.

That said, communication with the community was a persisting issue and I hope that's taken into consideration in this iteration of the backroom. I'd also be concerned with the number of extraneous threads created that generally detracted from the focus I applauded above.

In any event, best of luck to the 4BR. I hope this is the start of a positive force for the community.
 
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You are making an awful lot of assumptions here.

First, that the backroom is ONLY top players. It isn't. As with previous back rooms it is also prominent TOs and community members.

Second, that everyone opposes such things. I, at least, support #FreeMii
That's good news.

And yes, I was making assumptions based on the info in the article. When some of the most visible names in that article are outspoken Mii opponents and I saw few Mii proponents listed, well... you can imagine what it looked like.

I remain cautious, but my remarks were probably too sweeping. Sorry about that.
 
To people saying it's too soon, do you realize the game has been out for over a year already? Other games had tier lists months in.

I'm more excited for some sort of standardized stage list - such a mess as is.
 
First, that the backroom is ONLY top players. It isn't. As with previous back rooms it is also prominent TOs and community members.

Second, that everyone opposes such things. I, at least, support #FreeMii
I guess that makes me a community member because I suck. IDK if I should accept or not, I lurk in the competitive boards a LOT and was in the Test BR last year but I always feel there's too much pressure/I don't know I can personally add.

#FreeMii
 
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