Is there an IRC I should know about before sigining up?

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And with the end of Ringo, the 2015 season is over.

And with it comes the 2016 season! Here are some of the highlights of what will be changing in this season:

• The now official usage of XSSv3. The set counts in Ringo will be the first piece of data for the new ranking system version.
• OP visual overhaul. (Gonna get to that soon)
• Yes, we're stating from X1 again.
• Stricter enforcing of replay rules up to and including entire season bans for repeat offenders.
• I want to introduce a new method of stage striking. More details below.

We livin.

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Details on new stage striking system
Here is the 2015 season's stage list:
3 Stage Bans in the counterpicking process.
Neutral
- Smashville
- Pokemon Stadium III
- Yoshi's Story
- Battlefield
- Final Destination/Nintendo 3DS
Counterpick
- Dreamland
- Warioware
- Dracula's Castle
- Castle Siege
- Tower of Salvation

Proposing 2016 stage list as this:
1 Stage Ban in the counterpicking process.
Neutral
- Smashville
- Pokemon Stadium III
- Yoshi's Story
- Battlefield
- Final Destination/Nintendo 3DS
Counterpick
- Dreamland
- Tower of Salvation
Conditional Counterpick
- Dracula's Castle
- Castle Siege
- Mirror Chamber
- Warioware
- Jungle Hijinx

Now what is a "conditional counterpick"?
Conditional Counterpicks are stages that can be added to the given set stage list at the beginning of any stage selection process.

Before the winner of a game bans stages, the loser may optionally add any other stage to the counterpick list for the current match. However, doing so gives the winner an additional stage ban for the current match. (So yes there can be a theoretical limit of six stage bans.)

Substitute WW for ToS and we're good. WW is too imbalanced in my opinion.

I honestly don't think we need two primarily flat stages.

No. The platforms on the sides do not count and I even got backlash for fusing ToS with FD/3DS. Maybe I should do that again.

The first data of XSSv3 is up!

https://onedrive.live.com/view.aspx?res ... rfoz0Ecjbs

Y'know one of these days I'm gonna get like a record number of consecutive posts in this thread. But y'know it's the Meta thread and it's my thread so it doesn't really matter.

So a large part of reforming and revamping the X Tournament Series is getting more involved with the players' requests. Alas, that's a really hard thing to do, considering the sheer number of communication paths. That is why I have created the X Players' Board.

The X Players' Board is a collective of various players: some TOs, some high-level players, some may even just be X Series regulars. The role of the X Players' Board is to present and make decisions based on the requests of the masses of players.

Right now we're based in the Refuge Smash Discord server (because we don't need a whole server to ourselves). You can find that here. When you join just DM me about the Players' Board and I'll see if you're qualified and capable of it. The only requirement I have is to check the channel regularly. Inactive Board members will be pruned.

Remember: I have the final say on all decisions. That said I'm pretty open to any suggestion by the Players' Board or even just the players.

----

e~ Due to a crapton of player requests, Tower of Salvation and WarioWare have been swapped on the stagelist.

I have no idea why players are so attached to Tower of Salvation. It's like Smashville but worse.

Cause we like those stages and they're the ones that lag the least. The ones who complain about those stages are the ones who lose most of the time on there or use there lag to win on stages that lag a lot.

That's a load of s***.

The reason why the stagelist is even there is to choose them. In optimal tournament play, there would be legitimate counterpicks based on the matchup at hand, not based on lag.

I mean, if I presented this as the stagelist:

Starter:
- Smashville

Counterpick:
- Tower of Salvation
- Dreamland

I'd get shat on for such a conservative list. That's why Conditional Counterpicks exist. Conditional Counterpicks are counterpick-viable stages that aren't on the main list for a number of reasons (controversial placement, lack of usage, lag?), but are available to to the players nonetheless.

I have also thought about implementing a rule to supersede DSR.... I think most people can guess its purpose.

I guess you are missing the point or forgetting that tournaments take place online where lag is a big factor.

I would have no problem not picking SV or ToS if it weren't for online.

Also it's not a load of s*** when we have players like you and Ermac complaining about SV because you guys lose on it a lot.

Also please get someone else to commentate.

Nah fam, I'm not. I'm basically saying deal with it.

Then don't? I mean not every stage is a laggy stage. If they are, your PC/Internet connection is garbage.

I have never complained about SV because I lose on it. As a matter of fact I do a fair bit better on Smashville, yet I hinder myself by never going there solely in the spirit of stage diversity. Because that's what the stagelist revamp is about: stage diversity. Because when people only play three stages in the game, that tells me as a TO that the other stages are crap and should be removed from the stagelist.

Gosick hasn't joined me on commentary since like X9. And like, nobody else is willing to join me.

Hmmm alright.

I saw a few of your posts complaining about it.

Zair says he wants to commentate.

no...?????

people play on three stages for a couple reasons.
1. people are too lazy to stage strike
2. being too lazy to stage strike is enhanced, enabled, and accepted by to's via gentleman's clause
3. stage lists, due to people being too lazy to stage strike, do not ever really test new stages because people don't pick them when they're added (and tournaments that force them to don't get taken seriously)
4. when people do pick them, the person that inevitably wanted to play on smashville and lost the match to the other person will immediately call the stage jank and john and blame their loss on it.
5. rinse repeat with other players until TO's think the stage is the problem and re-ban the stage.
6. outside of test tournaments, friendlies are almost always played on one, maybe two stages in extreme cases. people don't play friendlies on other stages to test them out when the stakes are low and there's no reason for johns.
7. since no one plays friendlies on different stages, more people fall into checkpoint #1, which then feeds into checkpoint #3, which then feeds into checkpoint #4, and then #5.
8. no one has done research on which characters are negatively/positively affected by stage counterpicks, and with the lack of research the meta has not expanded in this regard which makes checkpoint #1 seem acceptable.

really the only way to break this habit is for a tournament player to take the topic seriously enough to actually test it out and see which matchups for their character become easier on which stages and use that to their advantage. their success will make others follow suit.

That's what I've been doing the whole time, I just never get noticed because I am generally regarded as a bad player.

Eh. That's what X Qualifiers are for: experimentation.

I think you summed it up very well, but I might as well put it in my own words:
If the stage never gets picked, why is it on the list?

To which I reply the inverse:
If the stage is not on the list, how can anyone ever pick it?

Btw not including any other stages in the stagelist is not only admitting defeat but also preventing the situation from ever getting any better. Especially with a tour of this size and stature. It will have a blanket effect as other TO's look at X as the standard. It will affect the whole community.

The idea of conditional counterpicks is not a bad one. In fact I quite like your list. My problem mostly lies in the fact that the "conditional counterpicks" fall into the category of being, to put it nicely, actual counterpicks - meaning they have a decent effect on the playstyles of some characters. The fact that the regular counterpicks are big versions of neutrals will mean that only one true counterpick will be even considered per match. Which is kinda cancer.