http://www.sendspace.com/file/tyf03f
^pictures from event. Sorry if you aren't on there, sorry if you are.
I also have a video of Husband playing the piano, but I won't post that out of respect and fear. He wasn't too bad though.
Darkrain played the piano (anyone that plays Mad World on the piano gets an A+ from me), AOB played the piano (Mario 64 water theme = instant nostalgia), Big D, Me, Husband, and like 4 other people were all playing the piano.
That puts SMYM tournaments above all others. SMYM is
classy. Host another one, AOB, and charge $3 for a housing fee and pocket some cash for yourself!
I was really pleased with the tournament. I've made top 32 in singles in every event I have ever gone to at the very least, with the exception of FC6, and I really thought this was going to be the event that was going to break me, but somehow I made it through.
I can't believe I lost to you Joel! Your game & watch scared me so I was worried about starting off with Fox, which I should have done. We'll rematch soon.
As for the round robin format......
It's great. It has a lot of rough edges, but it is great and is much, much better than instant brackets.
I got to play against a larger number of people with a strong variety in actual tournament matches (none of that sandbagging crap, except from people who wouldn't win anyways and wanted an excuse), which was great. The last SMYM was nothing but friendlies with the same 3 people on one TV, trading off after sets.
I also enjoyed not going into a bracket and playing Dope first round. Dope has 3 stocked me every time I've played him. EVERY TIME. On every stage, against every characters, always a 3 stock. I've done better consistently against Ken and Azen.
I'll make it easy on you guys...
Things I liked about the tournament:
more official matches
Official matches = things that matter. I could beat anyone in a friendly and have the knowledge that it didn't really matter because they might have been sandbagging, might have been a fluke, etc., etc., but with official matches only the worst players "don't try".
more playing time for everyone on average
Scenario. Darkrain and Drephen are sitting at a TV playing each other. 25 people are standing behind them watching. How many people are going to have the balls to say "I've got next"? How many are going to hear the response "okay"?
Pro players get a lot of game time against one another, and that's good, but there are so few TVs that it severely limits the amount of friendlies people get. I know Darkrain and Drephen would both allow people to play if they asked, but it is difficult for many players to do that. I know my little brother didn't play very often there because he couldn't get it around his head to just walk up and say "is it alright if I have next".
There's no real way to fix it, but having round robin formats like this with so many matches out there mean that you don't have to approach that problem hardly at all.
Showed more skill, less luck (for the most part)
If Tink goes into a 32 man bracket and plays Forward first round, has a close game, and loses, the next match he plays is a big one. Imagine Tink plays Dope first round losers bracket and then gets beaten. Tink, a consistent top finisher, is in 32nd place.
We have remedied this, for the most part, with points and seeding. This makes it really good for the upper level players, but for lower level players it is a wall that prevents them from joining the "good smasher" group.
Playing in the pools meant I got to see where I stood. I beat Iggy, and did a pretty good job against Trail. I recognized mistakes when playing Dmac, and was happy with my first game against Husband (my second game I got friggin *****, on my own counter-pick. I ain't gonna lie). Big C was using Ganondorf's down-b into bombs on green greens, so I don't know what he was smoking.
That was a much more pleasant experience for me than past tournaments. I had a LOT of close games that showed me where I stood, and what I needed to improve on. It's much better than in brackets where you come in, you play, and if you make top 8 then you can make an impression.
Got to see a lot of good matches
If you really liked one smasher's style and wanted to watch his matches (see: Darkrain, Forward), you were able to. If they won, if they lost, didn't matter. You got 8, maybe 16, maybe 24 sets to watch if you just followed them around. Paying a $3 fee to watch 24 sets of your favorite smasher is a good deal in of itself. How many people here wouldn't pay $3 to watch 24 sets of (insert name of personal smash hero of reader)?
It was FASTER
It was slow to start (like all tournaments), but after that you had periods of lots of matches, then short break periods, followed by more matches. It was a good fluctuation of on and off, and things went really fast.
The reason we were on schedule is because with pools, you don't leave until all your matches are done. Once you beat one guy, you don't have to wait half an hour to play. Instead, you just point to someone in your pool and say "let's play".
You are either playing, or you aren't. You are never "waiting to play" with pools.
Things that I did not like about the tournament:
Too much randomization
Yeah, one of the things I liked was that it showed more skill and less luck, and it does, but there was still too much randomization.
My friend Kel lost one set the entire tournament, and that was to Forward, who won it. Kel had lost other games in his pool, but only one set. In a traditional setup, he would have advanced. I kind of feel bad, because I'm the one who came in and pushed him out. I only lost one set, and that was a set where I won a match. Add in that I have two points and I'm pushed onto the list, and Kel, who had lost a few matches, had been bumped out.
Now, he "deserved" his lack of advancement in a sense because other players did do better than him ("Every match counts", as Prime said on the bullhorn). It is possible to just say "you deserve what you got. Shouldn't have lost those first matches", but at the same time you have to be a little more careful about this stuff. I heard Wife say something that put a lot of it into perspective. "I just really don't think the third match should be so important".
Losing sets, not games, is what we normally are used to being important. If Husband/Wife had beaten Dope/Dark, they would have gotten first (I believe), but instead got 4th. Fair? Yes, they earned it. Conducive to a fun tournament experience? No.
It's possible to let stuff like that slide at the very tip top, as that is when competition is expected to be fierce. Earlier in the tournament though....
Some people had easy pools. I know mine wasn't difficult. It has been in the past and I managed to get by with second and having lost a few games but only one set. Might not have happened this tournament.
This isn't an inherent problem with the pools, but a problem with how the pools are made.
We have power rankings to seperate the good kids from the bad, so that only one or two really good players get in a pool, but after that it just seems like they throw random people in there.
What I propose is to do away with power rankings and things like that, and instead just make an all-encompassing "tier list" of players. Just like the normal tier list we have, it would be a guide and wouldn't show everything, but it would be a better way of splitting up players than points and recent performances.
Put people like Ken, Azen, Dope, Isai, Wife, etc., etc., in the "Top tier" category. People that you know are tremendously powerful and you don't want to pair them together early in the tournament for no reason.
After that, get all of the up and coming players, the players that are a threat but aren't expected to win. The underdogs. Stick them in the "upper tier" category.
Middle tier would be players (like me) that place consistently towards the upper end of the spectrum, always making it to brackets, always performing consistently decent, but would be such a huge upset if they won that Mars would explode.
Low tier would be players that have gone to many tournaments, but have sporadic records. Sometimes they go and get top 16, sometimes they get nothing. Players you might have to say "this guy could be a problem", but are more than likely not a threat. Any past highlights this smasher might have had would more than likely be a fluke, and not something you would expect to happen again.
Bottom tier would obviously be the smashers that aren't even in the list. People that are going to a first tournament, people that no one knows, the wild cards that everyone expects to suck.
The list could easily be created with a little time and effort by tournament organizers. Take any name that places top 16 in your regional tournaments consistently, and you've got a player that is up in the Top tier or Upper tier. It might be hard to do on a national level, but even that could be done.
I know the rankings were discontinued due to people complaining and whatnot, but this really shouldn't be something anyone can argue over. The biggest things people could argue about are between two tiers. Someone can say that Dope should be Top tier, someone can say Upper tier, but regardless he is at least close to where we would put him.
A list like this would help tournaments with round robins a lot. Have 8 people in a pool, throw in one top tier, one upper tier, two middle tiers, 2 low tiers, 2 bottom tiers, and BAM. Instant balanced pool.
Too much downtime for people not playing in first rounds
Poor top 8 in the midwest. They had nothing to do at all for a longass time.
Just a result of them getting to automatically advance, but wasn't much of a reward. Probably should have attempted to get a TV set aside for them to play some friendlies on or somethng.
Your losses matter more than your wins
That statement isn't really true, but it feels like it. It isn't something that can really be changed, it is just a negative effect that tons of round robins will have. One loss, not of a set, but of a game, will haunt you.
If there was time, there could always be a round robin of the "almost" players. All the players that lost one set but couldn't advance due to other losses could duke it out, but there is never time for that. Win % will have to do.
It makes stupid people show they are stupid
This wasn't that confusing of a process. Really.
No Finals
The crowd sitting around and cheering watching the final two? The single best part of a tournament. This takes it away.
Easy solution: Take the top two winners in your pool and make them play a set of 5. It takes only a short while longer and gives us the 'Final Match'.
The top 8 in the Midwest got to sit out the first round
I know you guys were trying to do a good thing and make this a "finals" sort of event, but this was just a bad idea. Yeah, they would probably move on anyways, but the word is
probably.
The chance to beat one of those good people in your pool is an amazing thing, and even more amazing if you win. Having a straightforward "top 2 in your pool move on" is so much easier, less stressful, and doesn't deal with points. Let people play the good players, get destroyed if they deserve it, and then just point to that good player and say "that is why you didn't advance".
Can't really think of anything else off the top of my head.
