Thoughts on EVO 2017

[KirinKQP]

How did you feel about this year's events? Upset, happy, not surprised by a match's outcome?

Personally, it felt short and the grand finals was not very hype. Not to mention the issues with Hbox and coaching in top 8.

 

[Dolla Pills]

It's my first time trying to watch Evo when having a 9-5 summer job on the east coast, so actually I was asleep for most of it lol

 

[Ty Gillis]

For melee, the chat was pure hatred aimed at everybody... Instead of being happy for mang0, people would bombard hbox and his fans for being "lame" and cheaters. Instead of popping off for Armada, people would rub his victory in mang0 fanboys' faces. The chat really kinda ruined the experience for me personally.

 

[ScythZ]

It was my First EVO after really playing the game and following the melee community (started following the community around 8 months ago, but started playing around a month ago) so I really enjoyed it. That said I don't think that EVO really treated Melee very nice with the Grand Finials not being on the big stage, or it being of the shoddy HBox coaching call. Either way i'm happy for (A)rmada for winning his second evo as I think he is easily the strongest player at the moment!

 

[Here Rests A Cemetery]

What happened to SFAT was just pure grime. He didn't even have any control of the situation, and G$ didn't even really coach, he was just being silly.

 

[-ACE-]

For melee, the chat was pure hatred aimed at everybody... Instead of being happy for mang0, people would bombard hbox and his fans for being "lame" and cheaters. Instead of popping off for Armada, people would rub his victory in mang0 fanboys' faces. The chat really kinda ruined the experience for me personally.

This is one of the things I think about when people act like the viewers are more important than the players when determining legality.

 

[Ty Gillis]

This is one of the things I think about when people act like the viewers are more important than the players when determining legality.

Evo has turned into a company rather than a tournament. They'll put money before the competition. Hbox rakes in views as he is very popular so it would be a poor business decision to kick him out. This is one of many reasons smash players think evo is overrated

 

[JagerCrush]

1) I wasn't thrilled about no Melee sunday but that's whatever 2) Being on the east coast it really sucked that Grand Finals were happening at like 1:30am. Like that to me just seemed like a really bad time to have top 8. But condensing Melee into 2 days at a huge tournament with lots of entrants what else can they do in that situation. People are more likely to stay up late than get up early. 3) The TO's and players I think deserve more of a break than what the tournament allotted. Very little down time for anyone.

It is honestly at the point where fans of Melee want to create a civil war with Sm4sh. They also want to create a civil war between fans of the gods and high level players. People have strong feelings on wobbling and Puff and HBox and other people are hating on mang0 nation. It's honestly kinda sad to see it all happen bc it is just a big distraction.

As far as the Melee vs Sm4sh competitive scene considering Melee was 1:30am on Sat and Sm4sh was 8 or 9pm on Sun the viewership numbers were pretty close. I think peak for Melee was about 130k and Sm4sh may have hit 140k but it kinda shows that Melee still has a larger fan base still, and that I think lead to a lot of irritation on the side of Melee fans. It felt like Melee deserved the Sunday slot and Sm4sh didn't deserve it as much. But people acted very negatively towards this instead of just accepting it bc your avg fan has no control over such things. IDK about the whole Disney XD showing Sm4sh or if there was Youtube streaming going on to compare.
It seems strange that Nintendo is like finally taking a small interest in esports but it honestly to me personally felt like they just wanted to use Sm4sh to try to sell Arms on the Switch. Realistically there's no money for them as is in Melee. They might still be making some money off of Sm4sh with DLC and such but it sure feels like they are pretty much done with both smash games and on to the switch (barring a sm4sh port on switch).

As far as Melee top 8 a lot of the matches were pretty lopsided and only having top 3 be bo5 still feels a little weird. I only watched the very end of Sm4sh and let's just say it was a very Sm4sh ending to the tournament and leave it at that.

To go from 220k viewers to 130k mostly bc of the schedule just feels like a blow to Melee. Like 130k viewers at a Super Major/Premiere is still good numbers but there's a what if taste left in your mouth if Melee had gotten the Sunday slot. Overall, not the best tourney, not the most exciting, being on east coast the time was a big factor in a bad way.

 

[iAmMatt]

Frankly, I'm not here to spread hate, but let me just say what hbox did was underhanded and slimy. If he honestly didn't know that coaching was banned in top 8, I'd forgive him. However, hbox has a history of doing some sneaky stuff to gain an advantage on his opponent. For example, vods in the past have shown him looking at his opponent's controller to try and get a read on their di. Not only that but many people believe he tried to hide it by wearing sunglasses to a lot of tournaments a couple years back. I remember writing about this in a thread a year or so ago, but I'll say the exact same thing I did back then: what hbox did was sneaky and underhanded. Again, it may not have been intentional but with hbox's history of looking at opponent's controllers and whatnot, I wouldn't be surprised if he intentionally broke the rules.

EDIT: hbox looking at opponent's di

 

[Plunder]

I was actually just about to post about this, it was underwhelming for me.

I don't think it was because of the loss of Sunday or the lack of viewers and production.

I think it just came down to many one sided feeling matches, tired mistake-ridden playing, and unlucky pairings in bracket. G4 was incredible, DPoTG was such a hype new tournament, SnS3 was the same, Royal Flush was a breath of fresh air....EVO just felt like going through the motions. It was weird; the whole time I was wanting to feel more hype than I was.

Still though a mediocre Melee EVO is far better than most things.

 

[akseltennis]

A lot of the matches didn't really excite me as much as I'd hoped, being the first EVO I was able to catch live, though some of the upsets like The Moon over Leffen and Abu over Plup were hype, not much outside of it really entertained me. I felt bad for M2K, so closet to beating Armada, that would have really shaken things up.

As far as no Sunday slot, I definitely felt like the two Smash games should've flip-flopped. Melee deserved to have it and it was given to Sm4sh anyway, which I didn't think was the right call.

Hbox should've known better, SFAT should have been given the W. They handled that situation terribly.

 

[duckey]

Super impressed with The Moon getting top 8, really shocked me. Didn't watch anything live (EU time LUL) but vods are chilling