Post by Masahiro Sakurai on Feb 9, 2022 21:56:34 GMT 10
Welcome to...
The 22 characters playing in Super Smash Arena: Ultimate are:
Mario Donkey Kong Link Samus Yoshi Captain Falcon Falco Marth Dark Pit Wario Ike Squirtle King Dedede Wii Fit Trainer Robin Duck Hunt Richter King K. Rool Isabelle Piranha Plant Pyra & Mythra Kazuya
You've all gathered here to participate in a tournament that will span a touch over four weeks. Most of you will lose in The Ring and be eliminated. Three of you will survive long enough to plead your case to a jury of ten of your peers, where one of you will be crowned Super Smash Arena: Ultimate Champion! How exactly will this happen? Read on and find out!
As I'm sure you're all aware by now, this game will use the Arena format! At the start of the game, there will be three teams. Every round, you will vote one player from your team into The Ring. The outcome and tally of the vote will be revealed at around 8:00 pm board time. Every person voted into The Ring will compete in a challenge on one of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate stages, where the worst performer will be eliminated. These challenges will be non-live, with the deadline for completing them being 7:00 pm board time the next day.
Once they've completed a challenge, players in The Ring will rank the teams in the order of which they'd most like to join should they survive, to least. To aid them in this task, players in The Ring have the right to exchanges PMs with any player remaining in the game. Once everyone in The Ring has completed the challenge, I will reveal the results. The surviving players will choose a team to join; each team can only accept one player, so the player who performed best in the challenge will choose first.
Eventually, the teams will be dissolved into one, at which point the top two vote-getters will be voted into The Ring. This will continue until three players remain; this core format will never change throughout the game. In devising the format for this game, I aimed to create an environment where players have access to high levels of information, with minimal twists or random, unforeseeable events. Having said that, there are a number of extra bells and whistles to discuss.
A unique twist for this game is that the duel concepts will all be known from the start of the game. These 21 concepts can be seen in the Stage Select subforum, and if you're short on time, there is also a TL;DR thread describing each in brief. The duel for each round will be chosen by one player, after the duelists in The Ring, plus some other players ban a duel from being selected. I will outline how this happens in further detail later on, so keep reading! Once a duel has been picked, that concept will be removed from the pool. At the Final 4, only three concepts will remain; the final duel will be a Best-of-3 contest on these three remaining duels.
In a shift from typical non-live settings, we've decided to implement a different system for participating in duels to order to preserve game integrity. Each duelist will be given the option to add themselves to a group to begin the duel. This is done by navigating to your profile, then the Groups tab. Returning to the home page will give you access to a new subforum that contains everything you need to complete the duel. We will be able to see when you joined this group in the forum's security log, but in duels with time limits, you will need to keep track of your own time. I recognise that this solution isn't perfect, but I thank you for your understanding.
Every round, you will participate in Training. This is done by using some of your 22 attack cards on one of three Sandbags. These attack cards deal 1-22% damage, and each player has one of each to last the whole game. You can play up to two cards in any one round, for up to two of the Sandbags. The player on each team that bids the highest by dealing the most damage to each Sandbag will claim the power that each Sandbag holds. Any ties will be broken by whoever played the highest damaging individual attack of the players involved in the tie. If there is still a tie on the highest card, then nobody will claim the power for the round. If there's a tie between members of different teams for certain powers (see below), the winner will be from the team that received a duelist earliest, if at all, in the most recent duel. In the case that nobody claims a power in a round, either by nobody bidding or a tie, it will remain with its previous owner.
Attack cards that you use in a round will not be returned to you, so you'll need to use them carefully in order to get the most out of them throughout the game. Attack Cards cannot be exchanged between players.
You can use attack cards at any time during a round, but the deadline for using them is at 7:50 pm board time. At 8:00 pm board time when I reveal votes, I will also reveal who claimed each power for each team, and the total damage dealt to each Sandbag by each player. I will not reveal the specific cards played to reach that value, however. Like with votes, the whole game will be made aware of who obtained each power, but the attack totals will be exclusive to each team.
In addition to attacks numbered 1-22, a Smash Ball will be hidden somehow for each team. Finding the Smash Ball will give you access to your Final Smash, an extra Attack Card that deals 40% damage. It can be played just as with any other card. The way in which they are found will not be made explicit; you'll need to be observant to find one.
I will take the opportunity to establish some rules around Smash Balls and Final Smashes for everyone. Like ordinary cards, they are non-transferable, and like the Final Smash in Super Smash Bros, you may not claim a Final Smash while you already have one unused. Using your Final Smash will allow you to claim a different Smash Ball, but only after the 7:50 pm deadline.
The three sandbags you will be bidding on each have the following powers:
- Gives the holder immunity from votes in the next round
- This is non-transferable, and can't be assigned to another player
- Each person that wins this power wins the right to go to the Spectator Stands
- The Spectator Stands are a meetup forum for players from different teams
- Each meetup will last from just after powers are revealed until 7:00 pm the next day, excluding weekends
- These meetups will have post-counts disabled and will be archived once they're closed
- The Spectator Stands will also hold clues to the location of the Smash Ball
- For the highest bidder on each team, it grants the ability to ban a duel from being selected
- For the highest bidder in the game, it grants the ability to select the duel for the round from all non-banned duels
These sandbags will be available in almost all rounds. The Shield Sandbag will be available in every round. The Grab Sandbag will be available until the merge, though its power will be different in rounds where the number of teams changes. The Attack Sandbag will be available in every round until the Final 5.
That is all of the info-dumping for now! Check out and sign the Rules thread, and if you're a bit overwhelmed by all of this forum stuff, check out the guides in the How To Play section of the board. Once you're done with all of that, look at the Day 1 Events thread to see how the teams will be decided!
The 22 characters playing in Super Smash Arena: Ultimate are:
Mario Donkey Kong Link Samus Yoshi Captain Falcon Falco Marth Dark Pit Wario Ike Squirtle King Dedede Wii Fit Trainer Robin Duck Hunt Richter King K. Rool Isabelle Piranha Plant Pyra & Mythra Kazuya
You've all gathered here to participate in a tournament that will span a touch over four weeks. Most of you will lose in The Ring and be eliminated. Three of you will survive long enough to plead your case to a jury of ten of your peers, where one of you will be crowned Super Smash Arena: Ultimate Champion! How exactly will this happen? Read on and find out!
As I'm sure you're all aware by now, this game will use the Arena format! At the start of the game, there will be three teams. Every round, you will vote one player from your team into The Ring. The outcome and tally of the vote will be revealed at around 8:00 pm board time. Every person voted into The Ring will compete in a challenge on one of the Super Smash Bros Ultimate stages, where the worst performer will be eliminated. These challenges will be non-live, with the deadline for completing them being 7:00 pm board time the next day.
Once they've completed a challenge, players in The Ring will rank the teams in the order of which they'd most like to join should they survive, to least. To aid them in this task, players in The Ring have the right to exchanges PMs with any player remaining in the game. Once everyone in The Ring has completed the challenge, I will reveal the results. The surviving players will choose a team to join; each team can only accept one player, so the player who performed best in the challenge will choose first.
Eventually, the teams will be dissolved into one, at which point the top two vote-getters will be voted into The Ring. This will continue until three players remain; this core format will never change throughout the game. In devising the format for this game, I aimed to create an environment where players have access to high levels of information, with minimal twists or random, unforeseeable events. Having said that, there are a number of extra bells and whistles to discuss.
A unique twist for this game is that the duel concepts will all be known from the start of the game. These 21 concepts can be seen in the Stage Select subforum, and if you're short on time, there is also a TL;DR thread describing each in brief. The duel for each round will be chosen by one player, after the duelists in The Ring, plus some other players ban a duel from being selected. I will outline how this happens in further detail later on, so keep reading! Once a duel has been picked, that concept will be removed from the pool. At the Final 4, only three concepts will remain; the final duel will be a Best-of-3 contest on these three remaining duels.
In a shift from typical non-live settings, we've decided to implement a different system for participating in duels to order to preserve game integrity. Each duelist will be given the option to add themselves to a group to begin the duel. This is done by navigating to your profile, then the Groups tab. Returning to the home page will give you access to a new subforum that contains everything you need to complete the duel. We will be able to see when you joined this group in the forum's security log, but in duels with time limits, you will need to keep track of your own time. I recognise that this solution isn't perfect, but I thank you for your understanding.
Every round, you will participate in Training. This is done by using some of your 22 attack cards on one of three Sandbags. These attack cards deal 1-22% damage, and each player has one of each to last the whole game. You can play up to two cards in any one round, for up to two of the Sandbags. The player on each team that bids the highest by dealing the most damage to each Sandbag will claim the power that each Sandbag holds. Any ties will be broken by whoever played the highest damaging individual attack of the players involved in the tie. If there is still a tie on the highest card, then nobody will claim the power for the round. If there's a tie between members of different teams for certain powers (see below), the winner will be from the team that received a duelist earliest, if at all, in the most recent duel. In the case that nobody claims a power in a round, either by nobody bidding or a tie, it will remain with its previous owner.
Attack cards that you use in a round will not be returned to you, so you'll need to use them carefully in order to get the most out of them throughout the game. Attack Cards cannot be exchanged between players.
You can use attack cards at any time during a round, but the deadline for using them is at 7:50 pm board time. At 8:00 pm board time when I reveal votes, I will also reveal who claimed each power for each team, and the total damage dealt to each Sandbag by each player. I will not reveal the specific cards played to reach that value, however. Like with votes, the whole game will be made aware of who obtained each power, but the attack totals will be exclusive to each team.
In addition to attacks numbered 1-22, a Smash Ball will be hidden somehow for each team. Finding the Smash Ball will give you access to your Final Smash, an extra Attack Card that deals 40% damage. It can be played just as with any other card. The way in which they are found will not be made explicit; you'll need to be observant to find one.
I will take the opportunity to establish some rules around Smash Balls and Final Smashes for everyone. Like ordinary cards, they are non-transferable, and like the Final Smash in Super Smash Bros, you may not claim a Final Smash while you already have one unused. Using your Final Smash will allow you to claim a different Smash Ball, but only after the 7:50 pm deadline.
The three sandbags you will be bidding on each have the following powers:
- Gives the holder immunity from votes in the next round
- This is non-transferable, and can't be assigned to another player
- Each person that wins this power wins the right to go to the Spectator Stands
- The Spectator Stands are a meetup forum for players from different teams
- Each meetup will last from just after powers are revealed until 7:00 pm the next day, excluding weekends
- These meetups will have post-counts disabled and will be archived once they're closed
- The Spectator Stands will also hold clues to the location of the Smash Ball
- For the highest bidder on each team, it grants the ability to ban a duel from being selected
- For the highest bidder in the game, it grants the ability to select the duel for the round from all non-banned duels
These sandbags will be available in almost all rounds. The Shield Sandbag will be available in every round. The Grab Sandbag will be available until the merge, though its power will be different in rounds where the number of teams changes. The Attack Sandbag will be available in every round until the Final 5.
That is all of the info-dumping for now! Check out and sign the Rules thread, and if you're a bit overwhelmed by all of this forum stuff, check out the guides in the How To Play section of the board. Once you're done with all of that, look at the Day 1 Events thread to see how the teams will be decided!
