So is the system still usable, or has it been shut down? It seems to be exactly what people who have been talking about national rankings would want.
When you say the fizzling reflected the state of the scene, do you mean things were just generally dead, and no one had any desire to keep up with rankings? I would think it may work now, but once '09 is over and all the big games are out of the gate the big boom may give way to a shrinking spell. Tricky business, rankings, even if they are completely results oriented.
APEX sucked, because the way they made the rankings made it so that who ever participated in the most tournament would be ranked very high (they wouldn’t necessarily be the best players). You wouldn’t really see many top players on the APEX top 10, since some of them didn’t really go to every tournament they could, and you had that two-man tournament that happened (can’t remember where it was).
As far as an official Midwest ranking, I understand that it is a subject that is hard to talk about, and it would require input on all sides on whether to go through with it.
I’m sure I have no business talking about rankings after having gone 4-20 this morning in HDR, but I think that if we wanted to rank ourselves we should have midwest “majors” perhaps four a year. You could have a ranbat or some form of qualifier before each one to seed everyone, and then points should be dispersed based on where you place. The more tournaments you win, the better you are. Also having several major events a year would place more of a spotlight on each event.
The best thing to do with these would be to make sure that Powerup covered each of them as extensively as possible. Player bio’s, updates on the blog, video feed whatever… it could be done, we would just have to get enough of us together to do it.
Fight out 3 is going to be pretty hype, its a great venue for tournies.
Also I think we should setup a vent server for MW players to set up matches for SF / BB / HDR / Insert game and pass the info around to the whole MW community only.
On a side Note Chicago tournie scene is pretty crowded ATM but I was really thinking of implementing the revival of Midwest Challenge, if anyone remembers them we usually ran 2 of those per year in Nickel City and did very well at bringing together MW regions together. Also when I do revive those tournaments( Ill give a HUGE heads up on them for everyone to come ) I would like to declare a region challenge, which would pit 5 of the best players of each state against each other in a format where everyone would play each other(round robin I think), and would be point based depending on who won more. Im not sure if they would be at Nickel City though but this is something im brewing up currently, some feedback would be great :).
I’d say that a part of Midwest’s disadvantage is geography. We have many different scenes scattered about, but we don’t exactly have the opportunity to frequently play each other. I believe that proximity to different styles of play and differing mains increases the players’ experience at a much faster pace.
Consider Japan, or even SoCal. Japan’s entire area is less than that of California, (not to mention having superior internet connection) so they aren’t short on variety. With SoCal, their main arcades are have high concentrations of players that continuously play against high level, varied competition.
That being said, there’s no way to ever bridge that distance gap. Obviously, distance isn’t everything in determining skill, I just believe it affects the rate of improvement. The best solution to this is what has been mentioned by D and Handsome Dan. More majors each season can only increase the speed at which we evolve.
If you want to get as good as East Coast/West Coast/Canada you have to go to majors in those areas. Having 12 majors in the Midwest isn’t give players the experience they could get from one major in EC/WC. People have the misconception that just playing more gets you better. This is only the case at on an incremental level. Ranking tounies in the MW doesn’t encourage people to travel to actually level their game, it says “keep playing in local 16-man tournies to increase your MW Gamerscore”.
The Midwest stretches from NE to Ohio – why people want this idea of ranking ourselves, when this is the like the fourth-tier zone but the biggest spread of distance for fighters in terms of national top play, I don’t understand. Ranking work for one location (FFA or CTF). Or in a game you can play solo and post your score online. Or in a game with flawless online (not us).
Like, if I win more 3s tournies than Antwan, but I lose to him everytime I play in tourney the rare times we face each other, should my ranking make me feel like I’m better? My personal goal should be matching him, not winning more locals I feel pretty confident I’ll win. He didn’t do it obviously for his APEX score but to win $$ and just play, but it was just kind of a goofy other thing to do that nobody took seriously.
I don’t see how this helps players other than artificial bragging rights, when your goals in tourney should just be to win and learn as it is.
Yeah, sflegend Nash was in that APEX thing – he said it was pretty silly. He was #2 in Tekken for a loooong time he said just because they traveled to pretty much any Tekken event around.
This isn’t all to hate on our hard-working players. MW has a lot of players who work hard at their games, get together, are good people and play a lot. But most the fact remains there is a large gap btw MW and other regions, which it’s hard to understand unless you play these people in your game and see the different things they’re doing, that you can’t see on video, that makes up their gameplay style. The more people we have going to Evo/Final Round/EC tournies/MD-VA events, the more skill we’ll have back home.
I’m sure it’s a good time though for Midwest Challenge to make a comeback though
Yeah im not really saying the 5 v 5 region to be point based in terms of ranking, just point based depending on who wins the most vs each other to decide the top state for that tournament(love brewing comp!). Its just for fun as it always was a part of midwest challenge.
But I do agree with you very much about the point based system for having rankings, its not going to do a damn thing. Traveling is indeed the best thing you can do, reading up all the countless information online, focusing on trying to beat everyone in the country not just locally,and as well as getting into the habit of training everyday at least like 3-5 hours if possible. I dunno if im wrong or not but thats the way I see it, perhaps Floe could shed some light on this subject more.
On the lighter side of things though, alot of the Chicago SF comp these days is fairly new and young, alot of them are going to school and/or dont have jobs. But its nice to see them all showing interest and starting to get into the scene that much that they are starting to travel. I hope the ones that go to Evo this year will have their eyes open and the shit that makes competition brew inside of them comes out. IT sucks to get older as its very hard to make it to tournaments outside of state specially if you have a new family such as I(cant wait till they grow a bit more so I can go to travel again! hah). So if you’re young take advantage of having no responsibilities and get the fuck off your state and go get some experience and bring that shit home!
I don’t know about the midwest ranking ideas or anything… I’m just glad to see Mr. Nigga D is back! Haha! This is Brent from the Fort Wayne crew. Not sure if you would remember me (and I don’t really play 3S anymore) but hopefully we’ll meet up again at a tournament sometime!
Back to the midwest ranking thing I guess I don’t have any ideas. Just play as many matches as you all can online and in person, and travel to tournaments when it’s possible to do so. When at tournaments just go all out and play a shit-ton of practice matches with anyone and everyone and try to learn. Don’t hold back and play stupid “fun” characters that won’t get you anywhere for tournaments. Then of course step up when called and play your tournament matches. Just the common sense basics folks! That is how it has worked for me so far anyway.
And like Chris said it really helps when you get your cracks at the best players. For me it was NKI and Justin Wong, amongst others, in ST. Pay attention to everything when watching the top players from YOUR respective game as they play practice matches before the tournament, play tournament matches, and of course if they get matched up with you at any time. Be very alert as you are watching these players so as to not let stuff pass you by and of course be very alert in all your matches even if you are just playing some bum who is nothing compared to your own skill level. Everyone has something, maybe even just one little thing, that they can teach us so don’t pass anyone off as being useless to you.
you’re saying like having several sets of king of the hill (winner stays and gets a point) style?.. one for each region?.. that could work… as long as the premium players from each state compete… F.I.O.3 is gonna be primetime… hoping i can get a nice rounded level of skill between now and then so i can drop some jaws… lotsa good advice in this thread guys keep it flowing for the up in coming kids… i’ll send in my questionnaire here in a few hours so i can do my part…
wow 5on5 state vs state would be hype. I was just thinking about wanting to come up to chicago too, but its hard to know what tourny to go to when you guys have like 2 on the same weekend and shit :looney: You should make this happen :tup:
I like this idea too.
edit- umm, seems like everyone thinks D ment that states will play each other in 5on5? I took it as each states 5 best playing ala the regional 5on5 at evo this year?
Yeah in other words everyone will play each other once. And yes Rex each states best.
Or
We could do it traditional 5v5 where the man that wins stays, but Id have to think of a way on how to determine who would win as id really like for every state to play each other. Guess I could just do it that way and just post results on how each state fairs against each other. Dunno gimme some better ideas if not im going to go with the first one probably ><.
So far this is what im thinking for around January for Elvenshadow / Bozac’s Frosty Faustings, I will run the Street Fighter Side of things. Ohh and ill be talking to Bozac about calling it also Midwest Challenge for the SF side.
State vs State 5 on 5 would be nice, but something tells me that quite a few good players would get left out.
NOT NECESSARILY SAYING I’M A GOOD PLAYER (disclaimer)
I play mostly in Chicago, but I’m from Indiana. Unfortunately, most of the Indiana scene is in Indianapolis. I’d guess that the 5 from Indiana would probably all come from there, leaving out the good NWI players and Fort Wayne and whatever.
I think the cool thing about rankings is that it gets people motivated to play face to face and off that weak online. Yea, ranking battles mean little in terms of realistic rankings considering we’re in the MW but I might just get people motivated to travel once they get more comfortable with playing IRL. Canada had ranbats and they still travel.
We’ve got some top players in other games just not 3s as it lacks popularity. I’m gonna send my info in for the roundup. I’ll see if I can get some other Indianapolis players to submit profiles too.
It is all too true that the coasts have higher level play than the Midwest, so how do we get people out to those events? I think this is a much more important question than a ranking system, as Ghaleon rightfully points out.
While having many Midwest majors wouldn’t bring up our players to the level of the coasts, I do believe that it would help the winners gain the confidence and ability (monetarily) to travel to areas with higher level players. The more majors we have in the Midwest, the more money that can be won, and the more likely that our top players can then travel and play the coasts’ top players.
If these top MW players then come back (and don’t decide to move to the coasts, lol), then they can bring back their experience to share with the rest of us. Barring the secretive players, I’m sure most would be willing to teach others, even if it’s unconscious. They learn new ways to play the game and it just trickles down as they play people back at home in the MW.
I believe the first step is to get MW players organized. That’s the biggest problem right now; just getting players together across these vast distances. TOs in all the different states hosting some sort of statewide major would be an excellent start. Majors in every state is probably an impossible dream, but you get the general idea. With a greater number of regular majors across the region, players have more opportunities to practice and get winnings.
The more close knit the MW becomes, the easier it will then be to convince our top players that it’s worth it to travel to, say, the EC at first. Take a trip to Final Round and some of the MD/VA tourneys. Then, as that becomes a comfortable practice, expand to include regular trips to the WC. I’m not talking once every month, or even once every three months, but at least twice a year not counting EVO.
We have to fix our community’s organizational problems first. Then, with that complete, and people traveling, we can grow from there. Not many people will know this here on SRK, but the SSBB community has two Midwest leagues, one for the MW East and one for the West. From what I’ve heard MW Brawl players are at a relatively high level. Perhaps a similar web of tournaments could be created in the MW for SF, BB, KOF, etc.
And I emailed you back. Like I said, other responsibilities keep me from updating the Roundup right when I get the emails, so please be patient. I’ll send you another email when your page is done, which should be today.
just because they traveled to pretty much any Tekken event around.