(This is about the competitive community, which started on the forums and still is here, but is largely on discord now. So sorry to those who don't understand some of the context.)

First of all, as a member of the BR and all, I'm sure I'm indebted to the leaders of this community enough to not cause a s*** with this post. But I felt it had to be made, so please hear me out if you're willing to. I'll try to make my point clear but not start drama by doing so, which given myself being me, may be hard to do regardless of intentions.

Anyways, that put aside, I was in this community for quite the long time in a lot of different positions(bad player, good player, top player, TO, streamer, youtube content creator, slack user, discord user, forum user, etc.) so my experience tends to give me quite a lot of perspective for topics pertaining to this community. This acknowledged, I just have to say a couple things regarding the aforementioned perspective and what it's constantly told me about this community.


This community is on a downward slope, and it has been for a while, and it constantly has these downward slopes, though they usually "end" due to a patch/new version. This is an occurrence of some artificial hype that, while is well intended, isn't going to serve as a magic fix-all forever. The active userbase dying down happens faster and faster after each "hype" peak caused by new game content- indicating that people aren't being drawn by patches or version updates they don't feel satisfy themselves any more.

There are various issues we can talk about, though I'm going to stay brief on them. I'm like 16 and I have physics hw, let's be real for a second- I can't be the fast-paragraph-typing s*** I used to be forever.

1) This community heavily discourages new members.

I'm not going to blame this one on devs. This is everyone's L- including mine. In fact, this one is probably largely caused by my alt antics in 2015 and 2016, which the community really no longer cares for, seeing as I've reconciled with many community leaders and (regardless of how they feel about me) apologize generally to the rest. Either way, I'm willing to take the blame, but not without partially stating a warning to those who also deserve partial blame imo.

There is no need to assume new good players are alts, logically speaking- they maybe/probably are alts. But the more you guys go out of your way to assume guilty until innocent instead of the other way around, the more time you lose good faith in the community, start more awful drama(which I did in my time, I'm not above this) and propagate the type of behavior that makes new people inclined not to join or just not to stick around.

There are plenty of people who were accused of being alts at first but ended up actually being new users. These users had their community experience partially ruined do to this, and we're lucky to even still have them. (i.e. RiVer, who actually left, Vash, Ace2020, Rik.O iirc, Apex_ , 7upX, etc)

A lot of you guys that were accused of being alts also later on end up going around accusing others just to act cool too. It's really lame and you guys just look like you're thirsting for validation. Like feel free to do it, because it doesn't impact me, but you're shooting yourself in the foot. Especially considering 90% of the members of the community are really bad at finding alts, pretend like they knew all along after the alt was made public, and just end up inaccurately accusing like EVERY single new half decent member that doesn't get 4 stocked by them.

2) This community blindly respects "old" members and seniority too much. Also we clique up in to our own friend circles a little too hard.

The social ladder in this(the competitive SSF2) community is drastically skewed to users who just have happened to have joined earlier. Many (now senior) members can pretty much agree to the following
"When most of the users around me were older in join date than me, I really got treated in a second-class manner. From TOs, players, and pretty much everyone that wasn't a dev, and even some devs had slight bias"

After many changes in mentality from my own perspective, I really don't understand this mentality that we should suddenly ignore the new users that are in essence the lifeblood to this community. ESPECIALLY if they play a character or play in a way which makes them unappealing(i.e. maining Zelda/Fox/Marth/etc in 9b, maining Tails/Samus/etc in beta or "spamming").

All that happens to these users is that they end up forming their own social groups with people actually willing to accept them despite whoever they main or however they play. So if they're 'bad', 'spam', and play a 'lame' character, they're going to group up with the only other people that are in the same scenario as them and actually willing to be cool with them. So you have social division by how people play and who they play, and nobody actually improves.
'Top' players end up losing on MU experience and the ability to give proper feedback to devs on what exactly is actually broken about the 'busted' characters, and the new players end up stuck in their old spammy habits and just switch to whatever new buffed character is busted enough to win without any fundamentals.

3) Nobody really improves or tries to push the meta.

In beta, I- alongside with many underappreciated other users who don't get nearly as much credit as I do- pushed the meta early after Beta's creation until near the end of 1.0.2. Nowadays(speaking as of mid Feb, as that's when I last was on discord), aside from random breakout players, nobody tries to push the meta. Those breakout players usually end up just finding something really underrated and busted with a character that really should have more endlag.

No shade, it's just the truth, I did the same thing when I was new in 9b too. But I just sucked back then more than you guys do now, lol.

Especially now that other people are leaving, we should have people try and develop the meta in new ways. I have a bunch of resources and replays left over from SSF2 maybe I'll post later, maybe some frame data, a lot of top-8-tourney/friendly replays with top players etc. But you guys won't always have people like TSON(who has done so much for the comp meta but never gets credit because of how much he's recognized as "just a dev"), NyxTheShield(who invented dash cancelling, so y'all should be thanking this man so damn hard for basically inventing the modern neutral game), a lot of 9b vets, Gax, some BR members in particular and myself(I really don't care about being humble when it comes to this, regardless of how you guys feel about me, I've done a lot for late 9b and beta's metas.)

4) Stop with all this fake humble s***.

Pardon my French for the above, but when did everybody get so reserved and lame about how good they thought they were?

I know many of you guys think you're good, and a lot of you guys definitely think you're better than your peers, but choose to only say it when other people can't see. Instead of confronting and maybe just playing each other, you guys spend so much time talking about how X person sucks or how you're so much better than Y, which causes drama and junior high level pettiness. This isn't f*** mean girls guys, just talk it out with each other or play each other. Unless you're that insecure or having your ego hit by the reality of losing to someone you thought you were better than.

What a really unfortunate expression of something that would otherwise breed good competitive rivalry, that breeds tournament activity and potential ways to solve drama.

(I'm not immune to any of this, I especially used to have some of this pettiness when I first joined, and it's my fault too. Although I was 12/13 when I first got into ssf2, so that partially explains it)

At this point, with no offense to anyone, I don't really care about making people's egos feel better by staying humble or whatever. Lets be real, I don't have to.
After winning 5 majors within a month span in 1.0.2 and only missing like 3-5 top 8s in all of beta not including dropping out randomly, all I can say is- most of the top players in this game aren't ever going to touch my dominance at my peak. Nobody is touching how influential I was to the current top level players(Prol/Gax/Chaos/Oreo/NoS/etc). I'm secure about how good I think I am, and I don't need to start random drama and I am completely open with how I think about myself. So if anyone wants to criticize my said ego, they can, and you guys should have the right to.


That bit might start some drama, so I'm going to tl;dr that by just saying 'don't start drama, but be confrontational and open'.

Open communication and honesty(very ironic coming from me, I know, it's a lesson I had to learn by taking a LOT of Ls lmao) is always the key to a long term healthy community.


Feel free to reply or curse me out or whatever lol, I'm not going to get mad and idk if I'll reply.

At the end of the story we could all work on being more inclusive. Myself included.

Agreed but I'm not really sure how it could be fixed, although the main problem is the community veterans tbh.

stfu

I kinda agree to this. More or less agree. Everyone just goes busted till the character ain't busted anymore.

Solution

I wish it were as simple as telling you all to stop, but me being me, you would keep doing the same s***, and ignore me and this message 100%. So it’s more of a plead. Please stop. We are labeled as one of the worst communities. Doesn’t that say anything? Every smash chat, sm4sh, melee, PM, even brawl and 64. And brawl is half dead. There even other communities that are outside of smash that think we are cancerous. The 3rd strike Street Fighter community thinks we are f*** atrocious. Rivals of Aether thinks we're a bunch of “plebs” as stated by a few players.
Even f*** crusade. CRUSADE. When f*** CRUSADE thinks we’re cancer, it’s gotten way too f*** far. It’s time to stop. FF STYLE. It makes no sense how even more cancerous communities think we are cancerous. If we could dial it down a few notches, that would be fantastic. HAHA coming from me, right? But I’m serious. Take it into consideration at least.

And don’t you dare say that there is no problems with the community because you know goddamn well there is.

I risk a warning, or even a ban for posting, this, or some edgelord mod will try to seem as if he knows what he’s talking about and lock the topic, but if we can all sit down and figure out why this is happening, and fix it, maybe people would feel more welcome in joining. Let's see if that’s what we can do at least.



Taken from Mac's Beta Rant 2017


Kinda sad how it still applies in 2018.

2 much sauce. When's Atlanta doe??? I DONT HAVE A WAY 2 WATCH SEASON 2

Well, this is something new.

Let's address these points as someone who has really been on both ends of the community's favour and done a lot of different s***.


This is something I'll admit we've done a little bit too much, especially centring around alt accounts. Whilst I really do think alt accounts are definitely a problem for this community, (and one that I'll agree you did largely contribute to, so kudos for actually sucking it up and admitting it), the philosophy of guilty until proven innocent should be a little more...restrained.

That bolded point is really self contradictory. You said there's no need to do that, but then effectively do. I'll agree with everything else. Whilst we have managed to find methods of detecting alt accounts via discord, I think we should probably look at holding off on that. I'll also add that from what he told me, RiVer actually left because he was losing interest in Smash.

Again, this is what I feel is wrong with your points on this rant. You seem to be actively discouraging it, but then you just say "Oh, well feel free to do this". If anything, people are just going to take this s*** as an encouragement because it's a community full of kids - and reverse psychology is a thing.


First of all, that quote is so true it's not even funny.

Second thing. We do this a lot, people in this community take the approach of complaint rather than adapt and generally, we'd rather write off people's skill as their character being busted rather than us not knowing how to play against a character. Additionally, as a community, we also are elitist as f***. Nobody helps anyone, people generally clamour to the top players (which can go really badly for a community, look at ZeRo) and don't really accept any other opinions and we don't really have anything that helps newer players get better. The community is getting better, with some people trying to create resources and/or offer character teaching for these newer players (which I'm also doing myself).


Agree 100%. A really good example of this is the start of 1.0.3's metagame when people started yelling and complaining about how Tails was broken, overpowered etc. You had literally nobody doing s*** like labbing how to specifically counter the character or deal with the characters zoning tools or literally anything else. Heck, the discord full of Tails mains, who might have actually labbed this s*** with other players in JMUs or done it themselves for their own benefit were completely discouraged because of the server raids and that server has basically been killed.

Heck, people will often be outright put on blast for advancing the metagame. Kyoz showcasing that glitch (yes, it counts, have you seen PAC-MAN lol) pretty much led to him dropping PAC-MAN and likely quitting and honestly, you could spend about 5 minutes testing the glitch after watching a replay where he uses the glitch and find out that it's really nowhere near as good as people were making it out to be.

I definitely think we need to get more people labbing and trying to push the metagame. Revitalising the character discords would be really good, but I don't see that happening any time soon post-raids and post-MG channels. I'm certainly gonna try and push for more s*** amongst this.


I'm just not gonna address anything and just say "agreed".

*********************************************************************************************************************************************
I do agree with a lot of this, however, I've just dumped all my thoughts there. I'd also say, in a perhaps overly cynical way, that I really don't believe that this community can improve without some serious, serious changes that need to come from everybody. I can hope, and I can try to assist with some s***, but realistically, this is something we all need to do.


Whilst I'm not going to pull the immediate s*** starting, I certainly did think this was a little rich coming from you. The main thing I want to say that specifically applies to you is that you s*** stir a lot. That's all I'd really say. We are one of the worst communities, and I'd definitely say using your influence to assist would help, however, the issue is s*** really doesn't help. As I said, I'm not gonna start pulling a "laugh at Mac" because I do agree with what you're saying. However, simply pleading never works, and in this community it'll likely be met with derision.

pretty decent points.
problem is nobody is really willing to put the time/effort in to correct this - me, the BR, and other "community leaders" (hate that term) have a lot of IRL stuff goin on and ssf2 unfortunately isn't a priority.
I love this game and really enjoy playing/talking about it but I don't have the time/inclination to lab matchups, make resources, watch replays etc.
so yea I guess I'm p. much a casual at this point lmao.

100% agree with the fake humble s***.
I'm probably the biggest s*** talker in this community, and always have been, but literally nobody ever says anything back to me other than "gg".
the community is rly missing the fire/rivalries of old - remember the salty suite thread I made on the forums in 9b?
s*** was exciting and made you want to improve.

I also believe this is a result of the cliques - people really do only play vs. people they're familiar/friendly with.
crews don't do anything other than play within themselves.
if I ask for a 1v1 in SSF2U or even the MG discord, I'll often get no reply - especially from players who are considered decent.

honestly think this is the main reason the community is stagnating, like people just don't PLAY the game anymore outside of tourneys.
it's f*** hard to improve when the best players only play against their mates - even I've experienced this when trying to improve my own play, and I'm probs the oldest active player and pretty well known.
maybe this is just an EU timezone problem but I don't remember it being this way back in the forum/slack days.

but yeah I'd love to see:

• more open communication
• people playing others outside their groups/crews
• crews actually DOING s*** e.g organising crew battles and tournaments
• less focus on obtaining "roles" in the community - being a BR member or a tutor in a discord shouldn't be a status symbol that you want for your ego, it should be obtained cause you actually want to help people or do s***
• organised salty suites in tournaments

end of disorganised rant

I'll keep it short and say that no matter how hard I try as a community manager to fix these problems they won't go away without everyone's help. I tried to merge ssf2u and mgofficial so our veterans were with the new players so they could be treated better and moderated over better and it was blockaded by their mods even though the community voted 70% in favor. I try to encourage out of the box thinking in many respects to try and make the meta advance easier including making stage striking more important because people refuse to do that bc with current stagelists it barely matters what stage you're on and I get written off as not having competitively viable opinions. I try to encourage larger tourneys sponsored by mg discord and TO union brings up a proposal to block them from the rankings because they're "too big/powerful/influential". our veteran players actually are the problem and the sooner we realize that the sooner we can push forward

A lot of these things have been said before, but they do bear repeating. The message just isn't sinking in.

hahaha arent you the psychopath that faked his own death and did all that other s***

dude you of all people dont really have the right to criticize anyone, much less this community

tson and cleod and the other people running ssf2 and the forums are doing a fantastic job. in any large online community there's gonna be cliques and upset. its just facts. get over it imo

I don't really see how the things Monte has done negates all the arguments he has made regarding the community you are simply ignoring all the points he made and pretending the community has no problems and that monte is still the bad guy. Like it or not the community has major issues that need to be addressed and not glossed over by faulting a guy who has already been forgiven by the majority of the community. People like you are part of the problem and if your gonna act like what monte did is relevant to this discussion instead of giving actual input on how the comunity should grow you should f*** right off.

Congratulations. You all (except for Luke) have addressed the issue and acknowledged that it's a legitimate problem in the community.
Time to come up with s*** to do about it.



To summarize Monte's point, long time members are getting overhyped and giving up on SSF2 when they realize their expectations will never be met. First, it's important to identify what exactly they expect.

"The next patch is gonna be so great. *Insert meta changing glitch here* will be patched, characters are gonna be balanced, the top tiers won't be cheap as f*** anymore, my main will be more fun to play, there'll be more combos, it'll be less campy, man, it's just gonna be amazing."

It's relatively common knowledge that SSF2's balancing is taking a direction similar to that of Smash 4, but many are still in denial. Grabs have become much more important to the meta, camping is such a vital part of the meta that I've been bashed and called a trash player for being bad at it, and "free combos" (or as I and several others of my perspective view it, "combo freedom") are being restricted to create a much smarter meta as a whole. I disagree with these balancing philosophies, but the fact of the matter is that's where SSF2 is going.

The devs need to manually crush all hope of long time fans relating to the direction SSF2 is taking.
I'm talking a public statement, be it a forum post, an announcement in Official, or some other outlet, the devs need to explicitly state changes in the balancing philosophy since 9b, tell people that this is where SSF2 is going, and tell people that SSF2 will never be as punish-game centric as 9b. I think if this happens, people will finally just face facts and try to adapt to Beta's meta.

I would also like to bring up a controversial topic: mods.

Mods are a way to shape the game into something more enjoyable for a specific group of people, whatever the group of people the mod appeals to may be. Mods can shape the game into something that goes against the direction that the devs plan to take it, whether a mod replaces all of the characters in the game with Sonic characters or rebalances the cast to play more like 9b. And don't pretend modding SSF2 isn't popular for even a second. There are YouTube channels with thousands of subscribers that get thousands of views per video dedicated to SSF2 mods. It's a whole other part of the community.

I think it would be a good idea to legitimize mods.

I understand the dev team's current position on mods loud and clear: it doesn't belong in official outlets and you would prefer that people not do it at all, but if mods were legitimized, we could satisfy the fans who want Beta to be more like 9b, along with the thousands of silent fans who form the modding community. Legitimizing mods would allow the devs to say "Hey, here's the direction we're taking Beta. If you don't like it, here are countless alternatives for you to take." All it would take is an open mind and a channel or two in Official.





Alright, hear it out from our perspective:

After I jokingly brought up that Rivals of Aether is better than SSF2 and justified my argument with something relating to Sword Drills in a lighthearted joke discussion with Refurin, the user Foxx started unironically saying that Rivals of Aether was better than SSF2. He pointed out the things that RoA does really well, along with the things that RoA does better than SSF2. This, unfortunately, led to him s*** on SSF2 quite a bit in a direct discussion with a developer, which is undeniably disrespectful. He continued doing this, angering Ref quite a bit, until Bedoop finally banned him.

I bring up this anecdote because it shows off an aspect of Official that I think deters a lot of fans: people can get banned for s*** on the game.

In order for a merge between SSF2U and Official to ever happen and work, the devs would need to turn the other cheek at people s*** in their game or just flat out ignore them, rather than banning or punishing them. Until then, a merge between SSF2U will not happen because it would put too much power into the hands of those known to abuse it on those who disagree with or disrespect them. It's also probably part of the reason why the TO Union brought up a proposal to block Official tournies.

That being said, a merge between SSF2U and Official would be great, as it would help unite the community and, if the devs de-escalated situations and ignored people when they s*** on SSF2, it would lead to a much less antagonistic (s/o to Strife for originally describing it this way) relationship between the devs and the players. I would love to see the day it happens.




Yeah... At this point we're all guilty of this. I'm going to try and get a rule passed in SSF2U that bans "crying alt". Hopefully others will follow suit.




I think one of the ways in which older members get far more respect than newer players is with seeding in tournaments, as it operates, more often than not, based on FCR results and "personal experience." The FCR judges stuff based on results in the past year, so I think if an alternative ranking system closely associated with the FCR that updates each time a new big tournament comes out that's optimized for the past 4 months to show who's relevant would provide a way for newer members who are still extremely good to be respected.





I've noticed this especially. I'm basically a middleman for a bunch of different cliques, and we all need to branch out a bit. People laugh at matchmaking channels often times, but whoever's reading this: next time you wanna play someone in SSF2, go to a matchmaking channel and ask who wants to play. Make some new friends.




Everything you said in this paragraph is correct. People need to lab s*** more and adapt. I'm guilty of not trying to push the meta hard enough. I'm gonna see what I can do for Sheik.





Problem and solution. Organized Salty Suites in tournaments would be great. Also, bringing back crew battles would be pretty cool.

I love how it's the site mod that is acting the most immature and didn't even read the whole post before replying with no decent critisim or anything. It honestly just bolstered how ignorant you are of the whole situation so you should really just "nize ur beak" as the kids say out of this conversation.

This essentially tears the community to pieces though. Although I think I understand where you're coming from the eventual thing this will spawn that instead of players adapting to an excisting metagame they will just, in extremes, modify their own metagame. Kind of like how Project M caused a split in the Brawl community.