Unity Ruleset Committee Comes to an End

[Omni]

Source: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=321154
[rightw]

[/rightw]
The Unity Ruleset Committee (known as the URC) has officially phased out as of April 16, 2012.

The URC was an entity of well-known tournament organizers who established the first ruleset that was officially supported by Smash World Forums. The group, initially created and formed by AlphaZealot, was responsible for several monumental moments such as the Red/Yellow card system, assembling the largest group of TO's, and the controversial banning of Metaknight in Brawl.

The decision was made by SWF's Senate who operate as a council of advisors for the website's GM.

MikeHaze, a previous member of the URC who left the committee during its early phases had this to say:

[glow]"I am glad to see the disbandment of the URC. The URC was a force that hindered the communities growth overall, using harsh incentives such as advertising to attract other TO's to use the ruleset. The overall goal of the URC was a great idea in theory, but in application it proved to harm the community moreso than anything else. "[/glow]
You can check out what people think by visiting the Announcements Discussion forum. The biggest concern for most people is what becomes of the fate of Metaknight's ban?

Without a standard ruleset to follow the region's TO's are ultimately responsible for that decision.

 

[Aposl]

I dont like the Mike Haze quote. It's not fair to argue that a group you were a part of was a force that hindered community growth, when he left only because MK got banned. (I mean it obviously wasn't just that) but I never have seen a complaint of his against the power of the URC pre MK ban. ( he may have complained, I just dont know)

I also believe the URC disbanding is a bad move, we will look like a weaker community now, despite their poorly timed decision to ban MK. They should of muscled on and probably done something like, Japanese rule set tournaments and URC rule set tournaments are the only ones allowed. Doing both of these would make sense seeing as we were dominated by the Japanese and some of us want to train to beat them.

Lastly me and my bro got a whiff of the ban before it was announced and begged the few people we knew to wait till after Apex to make that decision, if we had, not only would they have been able to make a more informed decision after the Japanese beat us (which is apparently the main reason people are against the ban now,) the top MK's mains of the U.S. might of done better against them because its reasonable to assume, that during the months leading up to Apex players were doing the ding dong the witch is dead dance. That could not have left our Mk's at tip top condition, (even though that is still their own responsibility) this clearly affected them.

 

[MetalMusicMan]

I completely agree with Mike on this one.

 

[Player-1]

I'm really shocked that this article was even allowed to go up on here. Written by one of the most anti-URC people on smashboards with the ONLY quote coming from an ex-URC member that also disliked us. Obvious bias is obvious. I was PMed 20-40 minutes the article was evven posted asking if I'd like to give a quote for the article. I wasn't even able to see the PM before this was up. Glad the other side of the was given a chance to speak /sarcasm.

 

[Bones0]

URC be mad.

 

[Omni]

I'm really shocked that this article was even allowed to go up on here. Written by one of the most anti-URC people on smashboards with the ONLY quote coming from an ex-URC member that also disliked us. Obvious bias is obvious. I was PMed 20-40 minutes the article was evven posted asking if I'd like to give a quote for the article. I wasn't even able to see the PM before this was up. Glad the other side of the was given a chance to speak /sarcasm.

There is no one side, Player-1. Mike was the only one to respond.

To clarify, I supported AZ in his endeavors. I was against how the URC ran, but I was not against its underlying goal.

There is no bias involved. The only things presented in this article are facts.

If you would like to share your thoughts on the issue feel free to do so here or in the Announcements Discussion. I recently also sent you a PM saying that I would not mind editing a small response from yourself into the article as well. *Edit* You have denied this request. The same procedure for Mike also went through to you. Please do not play the unfair card.

I'm not here to take sides, play favors, or to be bias my friend. I hope you take this good nature.

 

[MCOrange]

There is no one side, Player-1. Mike was the only one to respond.

To clarify, I supported AZ in his endeavors. I was against how the URC ran, but I was not against its underlying goal.

There is no bias involved. The only things presented in this article are facts.

If you would like to share your thoughts on the issue feel free to do so here or in the Announcements Discussion. I recently also sent you a PM saying that I would not mind editing a small response from yourself into the article as well. *Edit* You have denied this request. The same procedure for Mike also went through to you. Please do not play the unfair card.

I'm not here to take sides, play favors, or to be bias my friend. I hope you take this good nature.

exactly. i agree

 

[WindMajor]

I think that the URC being disbanded was a move made too soon without looking at any real alternatives. Like Aposl said, doing a move like this is a move that ultimately makes our community look weak, therefore, if one is going to push for abandonment, one should seek out other alternatives first because abandonment is a huge move, and after that's done, there's no turning back (unless you want our community to look weak AND indecisive).

A lot of people can agree that the underlying goal of the URC was a good one, getting the Smash community to use one single unified ruleset. What was questionable was the method in which the Smash community and the URC would get there. There were a lot of things that the URC could've done to improve, but ultimately, they were just cut short of time too soon. This becomes glaringly apparent when you read about Unity 3.0, a completely revamped ruleset and URC infrastructure, having been under wraps for a while now and just about to be unveiled, fall short because the Senate decided to pull the plug too early.

Even if Unity 3.0 could be completely community driven the way DeLux describes it in the second post I linked, I still think that dropping support for the Unity Ruleset was a bad move, because that leaves a negative impression on the community as a whole when things didn't have to be like that in the first place.

 

[Player-1]

There is no one side, Player-1. Mike was the only one to respond.

To clarify, I supported AZ in his endeavors. I was against how the URC ran, but I was not against its underlying goal.

There is no bias involved. The only things presented in this article are facts.

If you would like to share your thoughts on the issue feel free to do so here or in the Announcements Discussion. I recently also sent you a PM saying that I would not mind editing a small response from yourself into the article as well. *Edit* You have denied this request. The same procedure for Mike also went through to you. Please do not play the unfair card.

I'm not here to take sides, play favors, or to be bias my friend. I hope you take this good nature.

You didn't exactly give the rest of us a warning to respond. 20-40 minutes on a Tuesday morning barely gives us any time at all. Having one quote from one person's opinion that was really anti-URC is bias since you're only putting up one side of an opinion, I'm not sure how you can't call it that. You could have waited for more people to respond. I didn't want mine edited in since it doesn't have as powerful of an effect as it would when it's released with the article.


But my comments would be:

I think the URC was good in theory, but not as good as it could have been. I still don't think it warranted it to be disbanded though. We were still running strong with, I believe, 60%ish of tournaments running URS at our last statistics check which I believe was beginning of March or late February. A month or two out of date so it wouldn't be terribly off.

The 3.0 system I thought was a great idea, it gave more power to the community and would eventually lead into a singular ruleset over the course of time and I thought that we should at the very least try it, but we weren't given that opportunity.

There were some faults with the URC. After the MK ban I feel like some of the members got extremely lazy when this should have been one of our most active periods. It was very hard getting people to skype meetings or to get people to discuss or vote on certain issues, this was my biggest problem with the URC.

I also disagree with Mike's quote, I think the URC did some great things. We saw MK banned which now has opened the door to MK ban and MK legal being the standard. This did divide the community a bit, but the community was already divided a lot before so, MK being banned and legal both being a standard makes it so at least people can just choose which events they'd like to go to. We've also created all of those "what if" worlds people always argued such as character diversity coming in. Many people argued that MK should be legal because it would create more character diversity while it was countered with "well D3 and Marth wreck those chars anyway", well now we'll actually be able to see those statistics instead of just playing the hypothetical game. It would be amazing if the community could unite under one ruleset, but if that can't be achieved then at least we took a step forward in making the community happier. I also think the URC has unified the country in other rules though, so even if did divide the country in one aspect in unified it in another.

Aposl and Twinkie make some good points also, it does make us look a bit weaker. After the URC was announced we saw some positive feedback from MLG. Outright disbanding the URC was a bad move, an alternative should have been looked at beforehand or to wait and see how the 3.0 system went.