So now what [The 2012 tournament season]

[hungrybox]

Greatest venue of all time was Pound 5 IMO

 

[hungrybox]

and I think giving Plank a chance to redeem himself and do things right is a good idea. People **** up, sometimes in a huge way. It happens. Forgiveness is a virtue.

 

[ajp_anton]

What do you have to gain by not letting Plank host tournaments? He's not going to make the same mistake again, so if you just hate him for past mistakes instead of (im)possible future ones, you're going to miss out.

 

[Strong Badam]

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=317154
it is time

 

[hungrybox]

talking to Plank atm

 

[Nintendude]

It really seems like 90% of the Plank hate was from the Brawl community rather than the Melee community, which kind of makes sense since most of them never experienced all of Plank's other great tournaments. I think the biggest challenge (other than planning the tournament obviously) would be convincing Brawlers to give Plank another chance.

...or this hypothetical Pound VI could just be Melee only lol

 

[KirbyKaze]

I would go to another *Pound*.

 

[Cactuar]

A melee only pound again? Hell yes.

 

[Juggleguy]

It really seems like 90% of the Plank hate was from the Brawl community rather than the Melee community, which kind of makes sense since most of them never experienced all of Plank's other great tournaments. I think the biggest challenge (other than planning the tournament obviously) would be convincing Brawlers to give Plank another chance.

...or this hypothetical Pound VI could just be Melee only lol

This is a really good point.

Most of the Melee community knows deep in their hearts that Plank is one of, if not the best, national Melee TOs of all-time. It's a lot easier to forgive him if you experienced the brilliance of all the previous *Pound* installments. I honestly think if Plank focused on a Melee-only national, secured an appropriate venue, and surrounded himself with a great staff, he could pull off something even better than *Pound 4*. After all, his one blunder simply reflected excessively optimistic planning and a poor financial evaluation of the proper venue... it says nothing about how he prepares for and runs the actual tournament.

 

[JPOBS]

Mad hype in here for tournies that don't exist yet

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

This is a really good point.

Most of the Melee community knows deep in their hearts that Plank is one of, if not the best, national Melee TOs of all-time. It's a lot easier to forgive him if you experienced the brilliance of all the previous *Pound* installments. I honestly think if Plank focused on a Melee-only national, secured an appropriate venue, and surrounded himself with a great staff, he could pull off something even better than *Pound 4*. After all, his one blunder simply reflected excessively optimistic planning and a poor financial evaluation of the proper venue... it says nothing about how he prepares for and runs the actual tournament.

Plus the fact that so many people called Pound 5 the greatest tournament ever right after leaving the venue....reading the shoutouts before **** went down is pretty jarring.

In the end, we could just have someone else handle the financials if thats whats necessary to convince people. MD/VA has plenty of people willing to help.

In the meantime, someone in the MW should kidnap the Kish's families and force them to host another FC.

 

[ajp_anton]

I think the biggest challenge (other than planning the tournament obviously) would be convincing Brawlers to give Plank another chance.

Let's not, so that

this hypothetical Pound VI could just be Melee only lol

 

[Wake]

If the people who actually lost a lot of money are ok with another Pound, I think that says a lot. I'd like to go to a Pound... missed all of the other ones.

 

[t3h Icy]

Have someone else handle financial business and Plank do the actual in-tourney stuff.

 

[Strong Badam]

melee only pound yeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

just sucks cuz there are a few cool people in the brawl community i get to see at nationals; oh well.

 

[Divinokage]

Another Pound huh? I'd be down... I had a blast at Pound 3 and 4!

 

[EPsilon933]

+1 vote for Pound6

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Revisiting this thread, we have a much clearer picture of the upcoming tournament season than we did a mere 2 months ago. The outlook is much more positive than before, especially with recent tournament announcements..

To recap, the first quarter of 2012 featured the following..

APEX 2012 (320)
Wintergamesfest (154)
Mass Madness 2A (60)
Shellshocked XII (60)
TSL: Rise (53)
Codename Epic (45)
SMYM 13 (85)
Northwest Manifest (88)

and we have these upcoming...

NYTE
Civil War 4
Melee FC: 10R
Zenith
RoM 5
IMPULSE
Smashers Reunion: Melee Grande
The Big House 2

I think 5 of those are guaranteed 100+, and I'd expect 200+ from 2 or even 3.

The recently announced FC: 10R is particularly interesting. Midwest is generally really good at traveling to their tournaments, even if it means driving across multiple states. The Ship of Fools have an extremely good reputation, with many oldschool smashers calling an FC their favorite tournament ever. Add to the fact that Indiana is known for being cheap to fly to, and we might just have a record breaking tournament..

 

[Bing]

I really hope you're saying that Impulse is one of those 200+

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Only one year in Melee history had more than two 200+ man tournaments (2007....which had FIVE lol). If we manage to get even three 200+ tournaments this year, we're doing very well for ourselves.

The fact that we are discussing possibly having FOUR is really exciting.

 

[Bing]

That still doesnt answer me XD

 

[Strong Badam]

we know you want to hype up impulse bing sheesh

 

[Bing]

Thank you Strong Bad <3

Just doin' my job.

And being bored at work.

Its resulting in this.

help meee

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Sounds like you are not doing your job actually.

tee hee

 

[Bing]

Oh I see what you did there. har har har

THE CRIMSON CHIN.

Edit: Actually, on a serious note, I sit on here all day, and Im 3rd in sales for this month, and I got 1st last month. So Boss <3

 

[Slhoka]

Revisiting this thread, we have a much clearer picture of the upcoming tournament season than we did a mere 2 months ago. The outlook is much more positive than before, especially with recent tournament announcements..

To recap, the first quarter of 2012 featured the following..

APEX 2012 (320)
Wintergamesfest (154)
Mass Madness 2A (60)
Shellshocked XII (60)
TSL: Rise (51)
Codename Epic (45)
SMYM 13 (85)
Northwest Manifest (88)

and we have these upcoming...

NYTE
Civil War 4
Melee FC: 10R
Zenith
RoM 5
IMPULSE
Smashers Reunion: Melee Grande
The Big House 2

[OCD]TSL:Rise had 53 entrants [/OCD]

Also, this weekend, Germany is hosting OSmash, a 50-people tournament. They didn't advertise it on Smashboards because they knew that the 50-entrant cap would be reached quickly with German players.

Then in France, we'll have Epita Smash Arena 5 in late April. My estimate would be between 70 and 100 entrants. Besides top French players, big European names such as Zgetto, Adam, Amsah, Jeapie, Armada, Leffen, Ice, Over or Strawhat Dahean are already confirmed or have at least shown interest.

One month later, HF-Lan 3 should reach its 64-player cap, with all the top Frenchies, but also other Europeans : Fuzzyness and a few other Brits already booked their trip, and top players such as Armada have shown their interest.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Whats with Europe pumping out consistent 50-90 person tournaments.

Such a tease.

Is there gonna be another BEAST? Anything other than Smashers Reunion which could break the 100 mark?

(TSL: Rise says 51 singles entrants but 55 total entrants....which is it? lol)

 

[Slhoka]

Whats with Europe pumping out consistent 50-90 person tournaments.

The scene is really active since last year over here. I don't really know why, but that's amazing.

Is there gonna be another BEAST? Anything other than Smashers Reunion which could break the 100 mark?

As far as I know, nothing annouced yet, and I haven't heard of anything that could be big.
Although I expect a good surprise in the last quarter

Edit : 53 entrants for singles at TSL:R.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Edit : 53 entrants for singles.

"Singles :
51 players : 8 pools of 7 or 6, top 4 advancing to a 32-man bracket"

I got mindgamed. It really is 53 entrants :o

 

[Slhoka]

"Singles :
51 players : 8 pools of 7 or 6, top 4 advancing to a 32-man bracket"

I got mindgamed. It really is 53 entrants :o

Meh. Typo fixed, now it's 53

 

[Juggleguy]

Thanks for compiling this stuff, Crimson, it's very useful. I gotta ask for your input on this: do you think the Melee community is once again ready for multiple 100+ person tourneys in the span of a few months? Like you noted, I plan to host The Big House 2 in late October, and I'm hoping for 100+ like last time, but it's a modest two months away from FC10R, which already follows IMPULSE, and both of those events are in the same four-hour driving radius as Michigan, so there is a little bit of concern there. Of course, if we were living in 2007 it wouldn't have been a problem, seeing as the community produced a jaw-dropping four 200+ person tourneys in the span of three months (Pound 2 in June, FC-Diamond and OC3 in July, EVO World in August)... still blows my mind lol. Just wondering what you thought about the state of the Melee community at the moment in terms of attending multiple nationals / mini-nationals over a short timespan. And if you had any recommendations about how I should present The Big House 2... ex: I want to make the thread before FC10R, but don't want to interfere with it at all.

 

[Strong Badam]

just do it in october, we'll come.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

Its funny you ask that. The reason why I originally made this thread was because I was compiling a ton of statistics on the smash community and smash history at the time. I had planned to release my results, but the lack of access to international data & the emergence of the smash database kinda killed my ambition; anything I could do would be trumped by the database.

My preliminary conclusion is that Melee is on a major, major upswing. Region to region smash is growing (Northwest, Florida, MD/VA, Texas, Japan, MIDWEST, EUROPE)...everyone's numbers are up across the board from a year ago with few exceptions (..tristate, Norcal). Say what you will about APEX as a tournament, but it brought a ton of hype into the community, and the Road to APEX series (which often highlighted Melee only tourneys) really helped, even if the sponsorship was only by name. There is also another major trend I observed when comparing results....we have much, much more OOS at tournaments nowadays. Just look at Northwest Manifest. Over half the attendees weren't from Washington. This simply wasn't the case before; I think the fact that the smash community is getting older has helped a ton. You look at the average Melee player nowadays and they're probably what, 22 or 23? When everyone was 16-18 there were much more limitations. We have much more disposable income. When most smashers look at FC: 10R, with ticket prices under 400 across the board (yay Indiana!), they see a tournament well within their budget and thus can realistically expect to attend.

My distress when creating this thread was that I believed that we were wasting this opportunity. We need to keep the momentum APEX built and roll onto the next national. What I found tragic about the APEX stream is that it didn't advertise any upcoming smash tournaments; if FC was announced BEFORE APEX and announced as the next big thing right then and there, you'd have 200+ registrants already. Its too late for that, but right now I think the tournaments are behind the interest and not the other way around. You look at my own region, MD/VA, which ran tournaments from basements for a good 6 months but then had a regional at a college and boom 60 entrants. I think there will be a similar effect for FC (but with INTERnationals, with everyone in attendance), and I expect it to get monstrous numbers.

So I would use that to your advantage. Make sure everyone who is watching/going to FC knows about Big House. Your audience is the same. Advertise on stream and at the tournament. You are two months removed from FC. Thats perfect for local attendance; its far enough away that no one will choose one or the other but close enough that the hype/salt will carry over. I can see the worries for OOS attendance but frankly thats usually dictated on a case-by-case basis. If you talk to leaders in each community you'll get results. Thats what Alex did and thats why he was so successful.

You have a lot of things working in your favor. First, you hosted a very well-received Big House 1. Everyone who went to that tournament had nothing but praise for how you or your TO staff ran things. Two, you're in Michigan: that automatically gives you 80 people between Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Ann Arbor. Regardless of OOS attendance, you WILL get 80. Third, you bumped it up to 2 days. There is something about multi-day tournaments that make it more serious, so you'll naturally attract more contenders.

Focus on your strengths and you'll hit 150 easy. 200+ will be hard but tbh I don't know if any tournament can do that without Armada (as a side note, if I was Kish I would lock Armada up at any cost as soon as possible and watch the OOS attendance funnel in. You get AR and you get Hungrybox, PP, Mango, Shroomed, S2J, etc....once hes there the top players follow).

 

[Juggleguy]

Oh, I'm actually not aiming as high as 200, haha. I'd like to keep it at a similar level as the first one, because the venue can't really handle over 150 or so without getting crowded. It's funny, I was just thinking to myself a few weeks ago that TBH2 might even get too hyped for its own good, so hopefully FC10R will balance that out a bit in a strange sort of way. I do agree that Apex missed an opportunity by not advertising future Smash events, but in their defense, Apex wasn't really given the chance to do that due to several nationals remaining unannounced until afterwards. In any case, thanks a ton for the input. I really think we should start some sort of news/article system on Smashboards that lets people know about the immediate future and direction of the scene more. The "Upcoming Tournaments" and "Featured Topics" on the top are a good step, but they can be expanded upon.

 

[Beat!]

Is there gonna be another BEAST? Anything other than Smashers Reunion which could break the 100 mark?

Lolex has mentioned BEAST 3, but nothing's announced yet. Will probably be late 2012 if it happens.

 

[KrIsP!]

B3ast, Be4st, Bea5t, Beas7, 8east
Cause were cool like that.

 

[Bing]

Wow, that was a really good write up Blur, I enjoyed reading that.

And Juggleguy, I agree, dont be afraid to post it early, I mean, another bonus to posting it so far in advance is that it gives people the oppurtunity to save for these things, which is part of the reason we announced Impulse so far in advance, we wanted to pool in players from everywhere, and give them the chance to consider it.

You were fairly fortunate last time to have Lovage and s2j attend, they helped your turnout quite a bit, then add in The group that Toronto brought, and you had a good mixture, now that the Big House has a name and Reputation, expect and anticipate more.

 

[Nicknyte]

I am pretty Hype that NYTE will perhaps get to 100. Think our proximity to California helps a bit, but If Melee entrants reaches the 80+ high that NWM did, that would be insane, especially since my tournament has both Brawl, Melee, and 64.

 

[hectohertz]

before this thread, i was worried. my fears have been quenched. i agree with TCB's analysis, we are actually doing surprisingly well. i think over the next couple years we will continue to break records in terms of tournament attendance/scope.

i think something that would be great for the community would be to have a yearly/once every two years event that would be "the" international (like how SF has Evo). Apex/Genesis/Pound seemed potentially posed to be that, but all of them have doubts/problems on whether they're going to happen again. Obviously organizing this is an enourmously complicated problem, but if any one of them could be resurrected with some guarentee of recurrence, i think it would really help to glue the community together around an event.

also, since armada has now repeatedly come here and ***** ****, it does seem that we should send some players to europe. obviously it's not feasible for tons of random american players to go to smasher's reunion, but it would be good to have a good player fund to send maybe our top 4?

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

I really think we should start some sort of news/article system on Smashboards that lets people know about the immediate future and direction of the scene more. The "Upcoming Tournaments" and "Featured Topics" on the top are a good step, but they can be expanded upon.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'd really like the front page of smashboards to be a blog/news section rather than a board listing...

I think there are a lot of interesting writers in the smash community, and a proper frontpage would help guide the narrative.

(thats like one of my billion ideas to improve smashboards. *sigh*)