It is true that we are not entirely sure what to fill the RZ's with. That basics we have planned are Smashfests, State Threads, and PR threads. Other more serious threads will go in this forum too.
The point of this change was to make all Tournaments move to one place. I personally think, (and have a few others who agree with me) that this is a huge improvement.
Bear with us as we figure out how we will use our Regional Zones (Atlantic South Room) now that they are free to be filled with things other than tournaments.
If you are curious as to why this happened and intend on posting in this thread/participating in the discussion, read the following collapse bracket.
If you're not curious, don't read it, but there are plenty of reasons behind it, I can assure you:
[collapse=significant wall of text be afraid!]Why having two threads for one tournament is bad:
- Having two threads open means the TO has much more to check, and requires many many extra clicks (to get to different forums, open both threads to the first page with potential updates, copy pastaing new edits, reading new pages of both threads, and many more.)
- Both threads would have to compete in both forums for attention. One thread could easily fall off the first page of one forum. If it's on the second page of the RZ, locals don't see it. On the second page of TL and it's not considered big or national. Either one of these happening severely hurts attendance/hype.
- If two threads are made and one dies out (as would frequently happen,) the same problems are experienced as listed in the last bullet.
- It also increases the number of threads on smashboards (this is a minor point but still holds a small amount of weight.) There becomes duplicate threads, one of which is useless.
So really, any tournament
should only be in one place. Historically it hadn't been done that way, but that doesn't mean it isn't done poorly, (I mean historically humanity has traveled on foot rather than by car, but don't you think flying is better?) Yes things worked--more or less--before the change. But we can improve them anyway. The change improves all of the problems I just mentioned. That allows me to my first point:
All tournaments should only have one thread. I certainly hope we can all agree that having one thread in one room is better than having multiple threads for one tournament in multiple rooms.
If you think that having 2 or more threads for one tournament is better than having 1, please let me know and explain why. The only potential argument I can see for it is that having only 1 thread means that less people will see it, but when everyone must go to one place to view any tournament, this argument is invalidated. Now that Atlantic South lurkers and Tournament national-ers must go to the same place to see upcoming tournaments, the same amount of people would see the one thread now, compared to the amount of people if there were two threads a week ago.
So then, why have we put all tournament threads in one room?
All tournaments in one location means that upon entering TLings to view your regions tournaments, you must see at least one tournament from another region. These would be the stickied tournaments, and so more people actually see RoM3's thread.
Why this is better than before:
- Under the old system, very few (and shrinking) people went into TLings, so this change decreases the potential for someone to have no idea that the next Pound has already been scheduled. It makes national tournaments more public.
- It is also better because if all tournaments were located only in their regional zones (I have already discussed why having them in both locations is not optimal,) this means you would have to potentially search up to ~7 more forums to check for national tournaments. When looking through those forums you may even have to pass over a few PRing threads, which increases your scanning workload even more. If you are attending a national tournament, it means that you do not have to load a different forum to check the thread. (Even if you don't go there often.)
- It discourages regional separatism. Let's face it: as a community, we aren't exactly the poster-child of competitive gaming. If we want to continue to play our favorite games, and attend tournaments, we need to be as unified as possible. The more separation that happens, the more individual pockets die out, and the more 64/Melee/Brawl fades. Think about the smashers who don't play anymore. Most of them didn't announce "I'm retiring," but just kind of stopped coming to tournaments... slowly. We need to be connected as much as possible. Putting tournaments in one room allows easy contrast to the activity of other areas, and can encourage people to get their stuff together. (This is slightly a minor point, but I think it has a significant affect. You're allowed to go lolstupid to this one though.)
- Having them in one room helps people who may live on or close to the edge of a region. Shouldn't have to explain why. Obviously Florida doesn't run into this problem/benefit.
- In one room means we can link one calendar. From what I know, we cannot link multiple rooms to one calendar. Having them in TL means you can easily see national tournaments happening on the same weekend as local tournaments. This helps Tournament Organizers specifically, but also assists attendees, by potentially sparking their interest in that out of region tournament.
So for at least all of those reasons, (there are probably others I'm missing,) I can make my second assertion: All tournaments belong in one location. At least, for those reasons, having them in one location is better than having them in many.
One tournament, one thread, one room for all tourneys.[/collapse]
