Big D did not go to this tournament. In fact no real notable DDD players went at all! Personally I went 2-2, ChrisTheHatman ended up not being able to go, Pluck from the discord went 3-2, a DDD I met there named Swamp went 4-2 I believe, and TortillaThePun from the discord was the best performing DDD there as he made it out of round one pools, I believe getting 5-2! There were a few other DDD players there but sadly most went 1-2 or 0-2. I met one DDD who said that EVO was his first tournament ever! Talk about diving straight into the deep end!
Anyways I still had fun, and despite everything we missed out on, Grand Finals was still hype. But even though I was glad I went and had an overall great time, I really want to rant about one thing, so hang with me here if you will:
One thing that really bothered me about finals, I don't mind the time slot, I don't mind the location, I don't even mind the lack of seating that caused this problem, but I really do mind how they treated the people not lucky enough to find one of the limited seats. There were probably a couple hundred seats, I would guess around 500, and there were over 3000 entrants for Smash Wii U I believe, but I think only about 1000 woke up early enough to come back day 2 to see the finals. So we had a few hundred people forced to sit on the concrete off to the side of the main seating area, and they were fine with doing so. But other games were having important matches going on at that time too, and smashers had to compete for floor space with other FGC fans, so there were probably about 200 people still with nowhere to sit after the sides filled up. So they did what any normal person without a seat would do: stand behind the last row of seats or sit in the aisles. However, the EVO staff went out of their way to somewhat rudely force these people to move. They people asked where they need to move to, and they got no answer. There was nowhere else within a decent range of the projector screen, so they were forced to move pretty dang far away, so eventually they all came back and filled the space again, so the staff yelled at them again. Then in Grand Finals, the staff LEGIT STOPPED A GAME IN PROGRESS just to yell at the people standing and sitting in the aisles. Nobody was mad at them for sitting there except for the staff, everyone sitting in the seats was fine with the aisles being filled, but the staff straight up stopped game one of grands to yell at these poor folks who never found a seat. Personally, I was lucky enough to have someone hand off their seats to me and my girlfriend in the back row, so I didn't even experience this firsthand, but I could feel the disrespect that the fans were getting from the EVO staff. That is the one thing I cannot let slide. No pools projector? Fine. Only 2 setups per pool? Fine. Pools running late? FINE! Disrespecting the people who came here from hundreds of miles away just to spectate in this subpar grand finals viewing area that didn't have enough seats to begin with? Now you've crossed the line!
