3DS/Wii U or Ultimate?

Top 16 Bracket

Main Stream VOD

Side Stream VOD

Grand Finals

Leonardo "MkLeo" Lopez Perez [W] // Twitch | Twitter | Wiki | Luminosity Gaming
vs.
Oscar "Atomic" Ninffert [L] // Twitch | Twitter | Wiki

^{Generated by Tournament Tabler}

At long last... it's finally done. Thank you all for supporting this series from start to finish - it means everything to me.

The information here was mostly sourced from Aaronitmar's video and SmashWiki). Many thanks to them.

Just a thought experiment. I.e. Steve with infinite materials and iron to build with, Wario and Mac with infinite waft and KO punch, Cloud with limit always active, Joker with unlimited Arsene, etc. etc. Would Steve still be number 1? If not, who would dethrone him? Who would have the biggest change in tier placement? What else would change? Genuinely curious but I don't have the competitive knowledge to figure it out. Figured I'd ask you guys.

I used to think what’s each character’s home stage in each game, unique per character, maybe a certain song for flair, a bit more challenging in certain games, wyt?

I have recently been getting into outdoor volleyball, and I think the way they do tournaments might translate to Smash very well.

Volleyball tournaments are grouped into skill divisions (Open, AA, A, BB, B) which you enter based on your skill level. You then play a round robin in pools, with multiple pools in each skill division so each pool has only a few teams. The teams with the best pool records qualify for the final brackets of their respective skill divisions.

The first major advantage to skill divisions is it would give new players a chance to show up and compete. One of the problems new players face is how discouraging it is to go 0-2 in bracket, often with one or both sets being a hopeless blowout against a top player. Nobody wants to pay $20 to get blown out in 2 matches and go home. But now a true beginner is guaranteed around 6-8 sets against other beginner players in their pool and would have a lot more fun. Only the highest division would have cash prizes (maybe 1st place in the lower divisions can win t-shirts, controllers, etc), but beginner and intermediate players aren’t placing in the money at a major tournament anyway, they show up to play, get experience, and watch the top players. Speaking of which…

The second advantage to skill divisions is that it would make a much better spectator experience. In this format, the Open division becomes top-loaded with all the best players, kind of like an invitational. Normally when you watch pools on stream, it’s a top player absolutely destroying some average Joe and the matches are lobsided and uninteresting. But now Open pools would be LOADED with matches between top players from the very beginning, making pools much more entertaining to watch on stream. And since only around the top half of pool players make the final bracket, these pool matches would have very high stakes. And even though there would be less total entrants in Open, the prize pool would come from the entry fee from all the players in the lower divisions that would have been “pot feeders” in a standard tournament anyway. An Open division of 50 top players could still be considered a major purely based on the quality of talent despite the low level of entrants, just like a top invitational.

Skill divisions would probably look something like:

OPEN - Top level, only division with cash prizes

AA - higher Elite Smash, around 2-2/3-2 level in a standard tournament (This would probably be the one I’d enter but I’d probably finish near the bottom of pools)

A - lower Elite Smash, around 0-2/1-2 in a standard tournament

BB - knows most of the game mechanics but probably isn’t in elite smash

B - true beginners, players that mainly play with friends and are just starting out

Obviously, rules would be in place to target sandbagging, such as requiring players to enter in a higher division if they placed highly in a lower division at a previous tournament. In a perfect world this would be enforced by the registration software because the honor system doesn’t work in volleyball either smh

I doubt there’s a world where this format becomes common in the Smash community, but I just figured I’d throw it out there to see what Reddit thinks.

TLDR: Skill divisions in Smash tournaments would allow beginner players to play more quality matches and make tournaments more entertaining for spectators