Like actual crew battles with established crews, or draft crews on the day (or both)? Also, what are you not sure about with the ranbats?
-
Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!
You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!
Smash UK Discussion Thread - Check first post for tournaments, facebook info and videos!
- Thread starter Fuzzyness
- Start date
Like actual crew battles with established crews, or draft crews on the day (or both)? Also, what are you not sure about with the ranbats?
Teh-Shlurpie
Smash Journeyman
established crews. ranbats are great for those who live local. not so much for others. thats my only problem, majority rule though 
Fair enough. You can still come along to the ranbats and compete normally though, only difference is that you don't get ranked. Regarding crews: Yeah, I think established ones would be more hype. 
Hopefully more crews will start surfacing again and this will be possible.
Also, speaking of crews hype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX8XzUgkv2Y =D
Regarding crews: Yeah, I think established ones would be more hype. Hopefully more crews will start surfacing again and this will be possible.Also, speaking of crews hype: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX8XzUgkv2Y =D
Ranking battles are a bit of a double edged sword, they can encourage people to participate and they can put people off depending on the person
They promote competition between players as people want to improve their rankings, get a higher ranking than X player or just see where they stand. It also offers a quantifiable way to measure your improvement and being able to actually see the results of your efforts in a clear way like that can certainly be encouraging.
It can also offer a sense of reward and progression in that you can clearly see what your goals are, and when you compete in/win a tournament you feel more like you have something to gain/lose which could lead to people being more enthusiastic about attending.
On the flip side, it can also influence people to not attend.
Players at the top of the rankings might feel that they are better off not attending, to avoid a loss of ranking points. The same thing could happen with players who just aren't feeling confident that particular day and decide it would be better not to go in case they perform badly.
Inexperienced players as well could be put off by having a ranking system, new players know that they will be represented poorly in the rankings as they are not yet very good at the game and would consider not attending ranbats until they feel they are more experienced/likely to perform well.
As for my personal preference on the matter...
I don't feel too strongly one way or the other, but then I am an extremely bad player in all 3 games right now.
From a purely logical perspective; it would be nice to have some solid data about where everyone in the UK is skill-wise, therefore I support having ranbats.
That said, my opinion doesn't really matter much here because I'm not a player whose attendance or enjoyment of the game is going to be at all affected by having a ranking, there are players who are going to be affected by it and it is those people's preferences that should be considered.
One thing I will say though, if we do have a ranking system then please use ELO.
Ranbats without a decent ranking system are of no benefit to anyone.
Crew battles would be pretty cool, dunno if we have enough crews though.
Although hopefully having crew battles would encourage more people to form crews.
They promote competition between players as people want to improve their rankings, get a higher ranking than X player or just see where they stand. It also offers a quantifiable way to measure your improvement and being able to actually see the results of your efforts in a clear way like that can certainly be encouraging.
It can also offer a sense of reward and progression in that you can clearly see what your goals are, and when you compete in/win a tournament you feel more like you have something to gain/lose which could lead to people being more enthusiastic about attending.
On the flip side, it can also influence people to not attend.
Players at the top of the rankings might feel that they are better off not attending, to avoid a loss of ranking points. The same thing could happen with players who just aren't feeling confident that particular day and decide it would be better not to go in case they perform badly.
Inexperienced players as well could be put off by having a ranking system, new players know that they will be represented poorly in the rankings as they are not yet very good at the game and would consider not attending ranbats until they feel they are more experienced/likely to perform well.
As for my personal preference on the matter...
I don't feel too strongly one way or the other, but then I am an extremely bad player in all 3 games right now.
From a purely logical perspective; it would be nice to have some solid data about where everyone in the UK is skill-wise, therefore I support having ranbats.
That said, my opinion doesn't really matter much here because I'm not a player whose attendance or enjoyment of the game is going to be at all affected by having a ranking, there are players who are going to be affected by it and it is those people's preferences that should be considered.
One thing I will say though, if we do have a ranking system then please use ELO.
Ranbats without a decent ranking system are of no benefit to anyone.
Crew battles would be pretty cool, dunno if we have enough crews though.
Although hopefully having crew battles would encourage more people to form crews.
If the system were to be implemented then there would be a degeneration in points if you did not attend a tournament (in order to prevent people who retire from staying on top and to prevent people from hogging their top spot without attending anything), this would hopefully motivate people into attending events on a more consistent basis as well since your ranking will become worse over time if you don't attend things.
I think you have a good point that some new players may be put off by the competitive ranking aspect of it, perhaps this will be fixed if we stress that the best way to improve is by attending events? Not sure. Would also be nice if some of the newer players could tell me their thoughts on how a ranking system would make them feel. =]
My knowledge of ELO is pretty limited, but it was a point system I was going to look at. There is also the old one that Aiko made, but it probably won't be better than ELO is since it's popular with other competitive games such as Chess/LoL.
I was hoping that crew battles would entice people to form new crews again, once people get involved with the hype it might create more regional rivalries and local scenes playing/improving with each other.
Anyway thanks for your feedback, I don't think it's fair to say your opinion "doesn't matter much" because being on the fence about something doesn't really exclude what you think, and you bring up good points. I do understand what you mean about how people who feel more passionately for/against this should be taken into consideration, though.
Brado
Smash Lord
LC LC LC LC everyone else will get wreckeddddd
Loz8ichimaru
Smash Apprentice
I like the idea of Power Rankings, could encourage competition between similarly ranked players and give slightly lower ranked players something to aim for. As for newer players... well you're always gonna start from the bottom ranking-wise regardless of skill so I don't really understand if that's considered a deterrent... if you attend many events and dedicate yourself to improving your results will likely improve over time and therefore your ranking, or if you're naturally really good you'll be high ranked quickly... just my thoughts.
SnareRush
Big Loada
Ye, as a new player I would really welcome this.
I think it would just give me more motivation if I had smaller short term goals to work on, and a big long list of better/worse players would really help with that.
I think most players who decide to stick with the game after that initial realisation of like "****, I'm actually crap at this game", know that they have to put in work, so I don't think they would get discouraged.
Crew battles would be sweet. Even if there are no established crews I'm guessing we could throw together regional crews easily enough at tournaments. North of the river vs south of the river at the next Blastzone?
I think it would just give me more motivation if I had smaller short term goals to work on, and a big long list of better/worse players would really help with that.
I think most players who decide to stick with the game after that initial realisation of like "****, I'm actually crap at this game", know that they have to put in work, so I don't think they would get discouraged.
Crew battles would be sweet. Even if there are no established crews I'm guessing we could throw together regional crews easily enough at tournaments. North of the river vs south of the river at the next Blastzone?
In an ELO system you start with a certain number of points and gain/lose points from there.
Every match you play gains or loses you points and the number of points you gain or lose from a particular match is dependant on your current number of ranking points and the number of ranking points your opponent has.
So if a previously unranked player starts dominating immediately, they would rise to the top of the rankings very quickly.
I would suggest we count every single game as a separate win/loss rather than just the full match, it will lead to more accurate rankings since 2-0 can be a very different result than 2-1.
Auro: Wouldn't counting games separately make a higher ranked player lose ELO if he beats someone in a set, say, 3-1? I think it'd make more sense to have points that portray your tournament placement more accurately.
Brado
Smash Lord
Me and Cal have been playing again and should be going Sams next weekend yeee. Willz said he'll probably make it as well, LC is back
Sick. I'll see you at a national sometime.
Yes, if a high ranked player were to win 3-1 against a very low ranked player they could overall lose points from that set, but that isn't a bad thing.
As long as that high ranked player goes on to do well in the tournament, he will gain back points from the other high ranked players and ultimately the rankings will be more accurate.
Distributing points in a way that portrays tournament placement can only lead to a broken and inaccurate system.
An issue that many people seem to have with accurate PR systems is that they can't understand how someone who places lower than them can gain more points than they did, and that is because they are looking at it as a reward system.
That's not the purpose of the system, the purpose of the system is to represent the skill level of each player compared to every other player as accurately as possible.
If you make a graph of the skill of every player in a community you will almost certainly get a bell curve (few very bad players, few very good players, most people somewhere in the middle) and accurate points distribution should represent that.
If you have a system where 1st place gives the most points and a player dominates every tournament (which is a pretty common trend) they will rack up huge amounts of points, If another player then starts to beat that player it will take a long time before they outrank the guy who was winning before because of the huge number of points they racked up.
When you are at the top you have little to gain and everything to lose, you won't gain many points from wins because you already have more than everyone else and you will lose a lot of points if you lose.
But that's what it is like in reality, when you are the best there isn't really anywhere to go but down.
As long as that high ranked player goes on to do well in the tournament, he will gain back points from the other high ranked players and ultimately the rankings will be more accurate.
Distributing points in a way that portrays tournament placement can only lead to a broken and inaccurate system.
An issue that many people seem to have with accurate PR systems is that they can't understand how someone who places lower than them can gain more points than they did, and that is because they are looking at it as a reward system.
That's not the purpose of the system, the purpose of the system is to represent the skill level of each player compared to every other player as accurately as possible.
If you make a graph of the skill of every player in a community you will almost certainly get a bell curve (few very bad players, few very good players, most people somewhere in the middle) and accurate points distribution should represent that.
If you have a system where 1st place gives the most points and a player dominates every tournament (which is a pretty common trend) they will rack up huge amounts of points, If another player then starts to beat that player it will take a long time before they outrank the guy who was winning before because of the huge number of points they racked up.
When you are at the top you have little to gain and everything to lose, you won't gain many points from wins because you already have more than everyone else and you will lose a lot of points if you lose.
But that's what it is like in reality, when you are the best there isn't really anywhere to go but down.
Loz8ichimaru
Smash Apprentice
I see the error of what I said, starting off at the same base points is how it should be. Agree with most of what Aurareus said. Would a system be able to incorporate characters used eg. beat a with x but had to use b to beat y? (essentially reflecting match-ups whether character or person) Or is that too complicated?
I think it would be too complex and everyone has their opinion of how much 'skill' a character requires, but I see no problem putting a character icon of their main/most frequent character choices near their name.
Heartstring
Smash Legend
exactly, having an MK main ranked 4th but a random mid-tier as 5th would still make most people look at it and think 'They've got skill in order to do that well with that character' in the same way people do when looking at tournament results.
Calzum!
LC | Team Heir
LC is back baby whooooooooo
Even though we'd get wrecked I wanna see a North Vs South crew battle at the next national, it'd be a way of getting North to step up it's game and not get embarrassed!
THE NORTH WILL RISE AGAIN
Even though we'd get wrecked I wanna see a North Vs South crew battle at the next national, it'd be a way of getting North to step up it's game and not get embarrassed!
THE NORTH WILL RISE AGAIN
Loz8ichimaru
Smash Apprentice
I can smell the beautiful ash residue from the burning carcass of the North's inevitable and humiliating dismemberment already. In other words, London accepts your challenge :D
Calzum!
LC | Team Heir
Fighting words are the only words
Its alright, the north have LC, the cockiest and ****test cru in the land, so obviously north will be triumphant!
Its alright, the north have LC, the cockiest and ****test cru in the land, so obviously north will be triumphant!
Willz
Smash Master
lc til i die muthfuukaz
Teh-Shlurpie
Smash Journeyman
on the Brawl side the north has ice climbers now.
don't be mad loz
don't be mad loz
Calzum!
LC | Team Heir
Am I the only one here who would prefer the UK scene reverts back to Smashboards? keeping the Facebook group for social aspects of the scene and Smashboards for tournament discussion, ranbat stuff( if that southern ranbat like Alex said goes ahead) and whatever else, I don't know if its just me but SmashUK just seems hella disorganised and just pretty messy.
I don't mind using the fb page, as well as Smashboards. However nowadays, I do feel like the fb page is pretty damn cluttered.
And yeah Jolt, the guy imma be training with has a couple of friends who want to learn so we might be able to get that going.
Also, what's with LC and the Wrestling faces?
And yeah Jolt, the guy imma be training with has a couple of friends who want to learn so we might be able to get that going.
Also, what's with LC and the Wrestling faces?
Calzum!
LC | Team Heir
you died years ago with your wife and your son in crossfaces, step up scrub
Nice, what capture card have you got? I'm guessing you've sorted it all out already. Also reminds me that I should really record some more stuff and put it on Youtube, I've gotten so lazy ever since I started streaming.
Also reminds me that I should really record some more stuff and put it on Youtube, I've gotten so lazy ever since I started streaming.
Brado
Smash Lord
oh **** willz on smashboards again. come play maylayyyyyyyy
Calzum!
LC | Team Heir
Lc wrestling crew
Loz mentioned factoring in matchups in the rankings formula, which is technically possible but not a good idea.
Firstly it's fairly difficult to do properly, but mostly matchups and character viability is not an exact science as the data is subjective and based on estimation and experience rather than objective hard data. The two should never mix.
Adding other relevant variables to the formula is a slightly better idea, such as regularity of attendance and length of time since last attendance acting as a multiplier for points gain/loss.
There are a few of those kinds of variables that could increase the accuracy of the formula, but there are a few of major downsides to incorporating them.
1. Incorporating them correctly is difficult and requires a solid grasp of the maths involved.
This isn't going to prevent us from doing it though as there are several members of the community (I assume), myself included, who have the ability.
2. Whilst it can potentially increase the accuracy of the rankings by making the formula more relevant and tailored to smash, it also means that more data is required for the ratings to become accurate.
As a few of you probably know, I once made a PR system that was designed to be extremely accurate as it was essentially the same concept as ELO but specifically tailored for smash.
It was a complete failure because there simply wasn't enough data for it to become accurate, this sort of leads into my next point...
3. We can't be sure of the accuracy and effectiveness of a modified formula until it has been tested for a while with enough data.
The ELO system has been used for a very long time and it's accuracy has long been established. It works.
Many rankings systems have tried to use a modified version of ELO to make it more relevant to their application, and more often than not it proves to be problematic.
As for taking into account each game separately...
It was pointed out on SmashUK that the actual outcome of a set is potentially not taken into account, a score of 2-0, 1-2, 1-2 for Player A is seen as the same result as 0-2, 2-1, 2-1 for Player B, they both won 4 games and lost 4 games and even though Player B actually won the set, the player with the lower ranking is the one who will gain points regardless.
I can see why people don't like the idea of that happening, but I think it is actually a positive.
Both players won 4 games, that is the hard fact here, technically they were equally successful.
Now sure, you can argue that Player B may have been better able to handle the pressure and apply himself where it counts which proves him to be the more skilled player, but again you are introducing subjectiveness into an objective system.
I know this is not a popular opinion in the smash community, but these kind of results are why I actually don't like the tournament format at all.
Player A has probably been knocked out the tournament here, when really he beat Player B as many times as Player B beat him and the closeness of the last 2 sets is almost always an indicator that the two games that lost him the match came down to the wire and really it was either players game, Player A just happened to land the hit first.
In a tournament, these kind of close results are far too common as many people are at around the same level of skill and a best of 3 set is not even nearly enough to prove one player better than the other.
So my response to set outcome not having an effect by itself is that that's a benefit and not a problem.
Lets get back to the basics for a minute here, think about the fundamentals of the game.
In order to be victorious over your opponent, you have to cause them to lose stocks, if you can make them lose all of their given stocks before you lose yours, you win a game.
The more more fundamental the level you measure success with, the more accurate that measurement will be (I shouldn't have to explain why).
Measuring every single stock loss would then be the most accurate way we can measure success, but it is too impractical in the real world, the next level up from that is measuring every game you win and we can measure from there.
At the moment, we measure from tournament placements, which is many levels up from game wins and thus far less accurate.
For these reasons, if I had my way, we wouldn't have tournaments at all.
We would just have smash fests where people can just sit down and play, with every game result recorded for rankings.
As explained above, it would be a far more accurate measure for success, everyone would actually get to play more games, the whole atmosphere would be more chill with no one running around trying to organise bracket matches and pools and matches would be taken more seriously than friendlies.
But don't worry, I'll never have my way and that will never happen.
tl;dr
Ranking each game of a set individually is more accurate because it provides us with more data. This is a fact.
The only logical reason not to do so is the practical one, there are going to be occasions where outcomes of each set aren't recorded, but it's not an issue.
When that happens we can just use the match results, it will be less accurate, but some data is better than no data.
I also strongly advise against attempting to modify ELO to make it better suit our needs.
Firstly it's fairly difficult to do properly, but mostly matchups and character viability is not an exact science as the data is subjective and based on estimation and experience rather than objective hard data. The two should never mix.
Adding other relevant variables to the formula is a slightly better idea, such as regularity of attendance and length of time since last attendance acting as a multiplier for points gain/loss.
There are a few of those kinds of variables that could increase the accuracy of the formula, but there are a few of major downsides to incorporating them.
1. Incorporating them correctly is difficult and requires a solid grasp of the maths involved.
This isn't going to prevent us from doing it though as there are several members of the community (I assume), myself included, who have the ability.
2. Whilst it can potentially increase the accuracy of the rankings by making the formula more relevant and tailored to smash, it also means that more data is required for the ratings to become accurate.
As a few of you probably know, I once made a PR system that was designed to be extremely accurate as it was essentially the same concept as ELO but specifically tailored for smash.
It was a complete failure because there simply wasn't enough data for it to become accurate, this sort of leads into my next point...
3. We can't be sure of the accuracy and effectiveness of a modified formula until it has been tested for a while with enough data.
The ELO system has been used for a very long time and it's accuracy has long been established. It works.
Many rankings systems have tried to use a modified version of ELO to make it more relevant to their application, and more often than not it proves to be problematic.
As for taking into account each game separately...
It was pointed out on SmashUK that the actual outcome of a set is potentially not taken into account, a score of 2-0, 1-2, 1-2 for Player A is seen as the same result as 0-2, 2-1, 2-1 for Player B, they both won 4 games and lost 4 games and even though Player B actually won the set, the player with the lower ranking is the one who will gain points regardless.
I can see why people don't like the idea of that happening, but I think it is actually a positive.
Both players won 4 games, that is the hard fact here, technically they were equally successful.
Now sure, you can argue that Player B may have been better able to handle the pressure and apply himself where it counts which proves him to be the more skilled player, but again you are introducing subjectiveness into an objective system.
I know this is not a popular opinion in the smash community, but these kind of results are why I actually don't like the tournament format at all.
Player A has probably been knocked out the tournament here, when really he beat Player B as many times as Player B beat him and the closeness of the last 2 sets is almost always an indicator that the two games that lost him the match came down to the wire and really it was either players game, Player A just happened to land the hit first.
In a tournament, these kind of close results are far too common as many people are at around the same level of skill and a best of 3 set is not even nearly enough to prove one player better than the other.
So my response to set outcome not having an effect by itself is that that's a benefit and not a problem.
Lets get back to the basics for a minute here, think about the fundamentals of the game.
In order to be victorious over your opponent, you have to cause them to lose stocks, if you can make them lose all of their given stocks before you lose yours, you win a game.
The more more fundamental the level you measure success with, the more accurate that measurement will be (I shouldn't have to explain why).
Measuring every single stock loss would then be the most accurate way we can measure success, but it is too impractical in the real world, the next level up from that is measuring every game you win and we can measure from there.
At the moment, we measure from tournament placements, which is many levels up from game wins and thus far less accurate.
For these reasons, if I had my way, we wouldn't have tournaments at all.
We would just have smash fests where people can just sit down and play, with every game result recorded for rankings.
As explained above, it would be a far more accurate measure for success, everyone would actually get to play more games, the whole atmosphere would be more chill with no one running around trying to organise bracket matches and pools and matches would be taken more seriously than friendlies.
But don't worry, I'll never have my way and that will never happen.
tl;dr
Ranking each game of a set individually is more accurate because it provides us with more data. This is a fact.
The only logical reason not to do so is the practical one, there are going to be occasions where outcomes of each set aren't recorded, but it's not an issue.
When that happens we can just use the match results, it will be less accurate, but some data is better than no data.
I also strongly advise against attempting to modify ELO to make it better suit our needs.
Willz
Smash Master
shut up aurawateva
LCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLC ma niguhh
LCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLCLC ma niguhh
Heartstring
Smash Legend
Meanwhile, I've actually become a wrestler.
Step it up scrubs.
Real talk though, whats bad about the facebook page? I can give it a go at fixing it