Talk:List of largest Smash tournaments

Rank

I'm no pro with the wiki code and can't find a way to edit the grid to make it changeable so it's possible to look at each parameter individually. Like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_running_events —Preceding unsigned comment added by PFFP (talk • contribs) 20:33, June 24, 2015‎ (CDT)

Why I desagree with this page's deletion

With the recent increase in numbers for Melee since 2013 and with Smash 4 release, many tournament pages are adding entrance records for each game. This page could serve as main reference for fact checking those records while keeping track of overall growth of the scene across many events.

I do agree some of the records are hard to keep track, or maybe are not even needed, like "largest Super Smash Bros. for 3DS tournaments", but still, I think at least Melee and Smash 4 deserve this treatment. —Preceding unsigned comment added by PFFP (talk • contribs) 21:14, June 24, 2015‎ (CDT)

First of all, sign with four tildes, not three. Four adds a timestamp, which is necessary so we can tell when a post is made.

Second of all, new posts go on the bottom.

Now for my thought on the deletion. I don't think we need this page. Even with accurate information, so many tournaments go on that add to the volatility of the information. Berrenta (talk) 23:36, 24 June 2015 (EDT)

I think the hard part is the initial survey of the current top 10 largest tournaments for each game. I just saw an edit who said "There have been SEVERAL other large tournaments in Japan and USA" while deleting the content instead of just updating, while I was checking for data already inside the smash wiki. After the preliminary data the next step would be fact checking.

Again, this is all the initial hard part. After the current top 10 are set, it's all a matter of occasionally updating the page with the current entrance numbers. It's not like will have 5 record breaking tournaments in less than 6 months. EVO 2015 will break the overall record next week, but after that there's nothing until 2016.

This page could help keep track of tournament records and overall growth of the scene. Cut it to make smaller, but why throw away data? PFFP (talk) 23:48, 24 June 2015 (EDT)

I think the problem is that it's too much of a hassle trying to find out exact entrance numbers for every tournament with how many tournaments there are nowadays, and is pretty much the reason why Juggleguy stopped doing "Year in Review". The main reason I removed the Smash 4 section was because the game is not even a year old at this point, and there are way too many tournaments to keep track of; as for Melee and to an extent, Brawl (even though it's not played as much as before), the history of their tournament scenes is much more established in comparison. Also, you say there's nothing until 2016, but The Big House 5 will almost certainly break records in both Melee and Smash 4, seeing as how the tournament series has grown bigger every year in every game they host there. On top of that, Super Smash Con and SKTAR 4 may potentially make it on as well for Melee, and very likely will for Smash 4. PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 00:21, 25 June 2015 (EDT)

I don't see it as too much hassle. People already keep track of numerous tournament results, going as far as posting top 16 or 32, with alt. characters, instead of the usual top 8 placings. The Smash 4 situation is for me just a case a case of updating the page with numbers already available. The Final Battle numbers you mentioned for example. While I was gathering fo the initial top 10 largest numbers I noticed many of the Smash 4 events didn't have a page, so I had to look for their entrants numbers online. That's a case of improving a page by doing research on a subject that's not in the wiki yet.

I think it's crucial to any wiki to have references for much of the data. If you see the Smash 4 section with out of date numbers, or just flat out incorrect numbers, don't simply erase the data. Put a "citation needed" tag. If you KNOW of other events with higher entrance numbers than those listed, don't simple erase what's already on the list. Bring those higher numbers with reference and update the list.

About The Big House 5, Super Smash Con and SKTAR 4, for that's one more reason to keep track of the numbers. I like to do it, and other people like it too, that's why I created this page. I saw many pages with "largest to date" claims, WITHOUT ANY REFERENCES to the info. That's why the matter of "questionable notability" for me is so funny.

The wiki already has questionable claims for record numbers while it shows no reference for any of those claims. When those three events you mentioned come by, I'll look for numbers and update the page if needed. And I look forward to update other events pages that don't even exist yet, especially those mentioned with higher entrance numbers than those on the list. PFFP (talk) 20:31, 25 June 2015 (EDT)

reset indent I do not see a problem with keeping this page... Serpent King (talk) 20:42, 25 June 2015 (EDT)

As the person who tagged the page, I just wanted to make clear: I'm not explicitly supporting its deletion. Rather, I wasn't sure whether it was a good idea, and wanted others' thoughts on the subject. Miles (talk) 22:30, 25 June 2015 (EDT)

This isn't a bad article of course, but having to make sure how many players actually attended a massive tournament seems to be impractical (like with Apex 2015 where 200 of about 1050 were reported to have not made it to the Melee tournament). Dots (talk) The Silent 00:05, 26 June 2015 (EDT)

We've done some decent work here. I have confidence that Jamal and PFFP will continue to update this page as tourneys get larger and larger. Am I good to remove the delete tag? Serpent King (talk) 22:12, 29 June 2015 (EDT)

Sugestion: Adding Winners

Thinking on ways to improve this page, I started to think it would be nice to add the champion of each of the tournaments. Those are the largest smash tournaments after all, and the winner of those tournaments could receive some highlight on the page.

The information is already detailed on each event page, but featuring the winner of those tournaments could also highlight the dominance/consistency of a player across important events. Here's an example, for the overall section

Rank	Name	Date	Entrants	Champion
1	EVO 2015	July 17th-19th, 2015	1,869	Armada
2	Apex 2015	January 30th-February 1st, 2015	1,037}}	PPMD
3	EVO 2014	July 11th-13th, 2014	970	Mango
4	EVO 2013	July 12th-13th, 2013	709	Mango
5	Apex 2014	January 17th-19th, 2014	629	Dr. PeePee
6	The Big House 4	October 4th-5th, 2014	574	Mango
7	Super Smash Con	August 6th-9th, 2015	570
8	CEO 2015	June 26th-28th, 2015	467	Leffen
9	B.E.A.S.T 5	January 9th-11th, 2015	375	Leffen
10	Pound 4	January 16th-18th, 2010	347	Mango

—Preceding unsigned comment added by PFFP (talk • contribs) 19:22, July 22, 2015‎ (CDT)

I think this would be an excellent addition, actually, and it lessens the need to have to click each page to see who won. I support this. PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 19:26, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

In addition, we should also insert in doubles winners as well. Dots (talk) The Oreo 20:43, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

But not all of these have doubles tourneys. It would be very patchy... Miles (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

Agree. Doubles is complicated. Most of the entrance numbers I got from SmashBoards rankings, but they don't list Doubles brackets. That could get quite complicated across all 5 games.

My concern right now is the balance of tournaments ranks. I feel like ranking only 5 tournaments for Brawl and SSB64 is a disservice to each game legacy, but there's so little info on SSB64 tournaments and Brawl never got over Apex 2012. The overall section needs to expand to Top 15 or Top 20 soon IMO. PFFP (talk) 21:53, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

If you can find reliable sources for more 64 and Brawl tournaments, by all means add them. The overall section would be fine either way. Miles (talk) 22:26, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

IMO, either SSB4, SSBB, and SSB need 10 listings, or SSBM should be cut to 5. PM can stay at 5, as it's not official, and it's losing popularity fast (VGB isn't even streaming anymore) Serpent King (talk) 23:35, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

I think Melee would be fine with 5 as well. For the overall section, I think it could stay at 10 or expand to 15. PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 00:38, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

...wouldn't it make more sense to have each game's section bigger, rather than the shared section? Miles (talk) 01:01, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

Good point. All I am saying is that Melee does not need to be bigger than the others. I get that Melee basically is the scene, but still. Consistency rules. Serpent King (talk) 01:23, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

I agree with Serpent King on this. Ideally, yes, it would be great to have all of the main games with 10 tournaments listed. However, Smash 64 is unfortunately not exactly well-known for having documented tournament results, and the current list we have may not be entirely accurate either (due to the scene in Japan having a few large tournaments that are also not well-documented). I also agree that Melee doesn't need to be bigger than the other games, so I feel like 5 tournaments is fine for now. PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 01:35, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

I think it's better to have more tournaments listed for Melee which has had more big tournaments than to deliberately shorten it to be consistent with 64, the smallest competitive scene. On top of that, two of the biggest 64 tournaments are this year, suggesting there will be more in the near future to expand that list. Miles (talk) 02:00, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

While you have a point that deliberately shortening Melee's list to be consistent with 64 sounds a bit silly, I also don't feel the need to really expand past 5 tournaments for the other games. Melee's ten largest tournaments all exceed the 200+ (actually, 300+ in this case) marker, but the same can't be said for the other games (especially 64). PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 02:11, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

Hence why I think the current layout is fine for now, barring potentially expanding SSB4-U's table now or soon. As more tournaments with cite-able attendance happen, we can expand the tables as is convenient. In other words, I think the two most prominently active metagames in terms of attendance, Melee and Wii U, deserve bigger tables than the less attendance-drawing ones, but the latter can be expanded over time. Miles (talk) 02:52, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

Expanding each game list

Ok, this discussion needs a reset and its own section.

SSB4, PM and Brawl

I agree SSB64, PM and Brawl can't be expanded to top 10 right now, taking in consideration that those games have smaller scenes and few noticible events with a large turn out. The SSB64 problem of few documented events is valid, but it seems the game is gaining mommentum, I mean, take a look at the current Top 5, they're all tournaments from the last 3 years. If this keeps up, we might need to expand next year. But that's a talk for next year

Smash 4

For now I agree there's no need to expand the list to more than 5, after all the game is not even 1 year old. But I do believe we'll have to expand this section next year, when Apex and EVO comes around again. The 4th largest event has more than double the entrants of the 5th largest event, while the largest event also has more than double of the 2nd largest event. I say we leave it like that for now and bring this conversation again next year, when Apex numbers come in.

Melee and the Overall rank

Downgrade Melee to Top 5 makes sense for consistency, but lets be real here: if we only rank the top 5 for melee and the top 10 overall, the list will still rank the top 7 largest melee events, two more than Melee's own list. The point of expanding the overall section to Top 15 is to give a chance to other games, who show up beyond 10. Expanding to Top 20 right now might be a stretch, but if the overall growth of the scene keeps with this momentum till 2017, it will be inevitable.PFFP (talk) 08:33, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

I agree that Melee should be kept at Top 10 and we'll also have Smash 4 at Top 10 soon within 8 months or so but not right now. Brawl might have a Top 10 but since it started to die out by 2013, its hard to find anything after Apex 2012. Dots (talk) The Omega 11:06, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

The general consensus, it seems, is keep Melee at 10, expand Smash 4 soon, and, once Smash 64 and Brawl have enough large tournaments, expand them. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 11:23, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm not really all that too sure if Smash 64 and Brawl will have more tournaments nowadays besides Apex but you could still try finding some past tournaments. Dots (talk) The Melee 11:26, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

If it will change anyone's mind, Smash 64's seventh largest tournament had 60 entries and Brawl's tenth largest had 210. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 11:52, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

I think the better argument is that Brawl's 10th has more than SSB64 largest of all time. (but srly tho, where did you find that 10th largest Brawl tournament with 210 entrants? The 10th on SmashBoards rankings is Pound 4, with 194) PFFP (talk) 12:34, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

Apex 2009. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 12:37, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

I've updated the Brawl section just now, expanding it to 10 tournaments. PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 12:41, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

Updated the Overall rank to Top 15. The main reason is to highlight the other games tha show up beyond top 10. With that said, I don't think we need a Top 20 right now. Lets keep the ranks the way it is for now, and wait for the next batch of big tournaments. Actually, before Apex 2016, there's any other big Smash event after Super Smash Con? PFFP (talk) 18:51, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

The Big House 5 will probably make this list, if only for one of the events. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 18:53, 23 July 2015 (EDT)

Sortable by dates

I want to make the lists sortable by date, but it seems to only work when I use the 01/01/2015 format. I want to use JAN/01/2015 format, or the current one. Does anyone knows how make it work? PFFP (talk) 19:49, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Rank	Name	Date	Entrants	Champion
1	EVO 2015	Jul/17-19, 2015	1,869	Armada
2	Apex 2015	Jan/30-Feb/01, 2015	1,037	PPMD
3	EVO 2014	Jul/11-13, 2014	970	Mango

Rank	Name	Date	Entrants	Champion
1	EVO 2015	07/17-19, 2015	1,869	Armada
2	Apex 2015	01/30-02/01, 2015	1,037	PPMD
3	EVO 2014	07/11-13, 2014	970	Mango

this is a thing you can do Miles (talk) 19:54, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

By year...

It's too much. Serpent King (talk) 17:56, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

I support keeping it, but only if the order is reversed. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 18:04, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

I wouldn't mind but it kinda looks pointless. Dots (talk) The Smasher 19:14, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

I also feel like it's too much, but while looking at some of those events, taking out the fact that those events were the largest to date, at the time and/or year, felt like a disservice to the events and overall legacy of the competitive scene. The overall list of Largest Smash Tournaments is completely dominated by post 2013 events, with Brawl's largest to date being the only from the pre-EVO 2013 era to make the cut. This page currently shows only how big the scene is today, but gives no attention to how big it has become across the years, or even how fast. The largest Smash event from 2012 is two times bigger than the largest from 2011, and the largest from 2013 is almost twice as bigger as 2012 largest.

The main goal of this page is to serve as a hard data indicator of the scene growth. In an ideal situation each event would have a clear number of unique players across all games that it hosted, but we can only work with confirmed entrants for each tournament. Apex 2012 was the largest event of 2012, that's a fact, and adding this information only to the event page feels like trivia. We have a page dedicated to record events by size and sorting this information by another parameter adds perspective to the information itself.

What I'm not so sure is if we should feature only the largest by each year, or more than one by each year, like this:

Largest by year

2015

Rank	Name	Game	Entrants	Winner
1	EVO 2015	for Wii U	1,926	ZeRo
2	EVO 2015	Melee	1,926	Armada
3	Apex 2015	Melee	1,037	PPMD

2014

Rank	Name	Game	Entrants	Winner
1	EVO 2014	Melee	970	Mango
2	Apex 2014	Melee	629	PPMD
3	The Big House 4	Melee	574	Mango

2013

Rank	Name	Game	Entrants	Winner
1	EVO 2013	Melee	709	Mango
2	Apex 2013	Brawl	338	Salem
3	Apex 2013	Melee	336	Armada

PFFP (talk) 20:33, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

Definitely only the largest if the section is kept at all. Serpent King (talk) 20:52, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

I'd be willing to accept the biggest-per-year table of one each. More than one per year is out of the question, I think. Miles (talk) 20:53, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

I agree, it adds too much information and makes the page longer than it needs to be. I still think the "by year" section is important, considering the goal of this page, but also think it could be better presented and/or organized. I just don't know how, yet.

My end goal with all this attendance info is to showcase, in the best way possible, hard data on the scene growth to the average Joe who stumbles on this wikia. For example, I really wish I could implement a graph like this one, from the Game of Thrones page on Wikipedia. PFFP (talk) 21:31, 1 August 2015 (EDT)

Ties

What we do when two events have the same amount of entrants? I'm in touch with the guys running Heir II the Throne and they just confirmed 256 entrants for Project M. The problem is, SKTAR 3 also had 256 entrants, securing the 4th largest spot. Do we include both and bop Low Tier City 3 or we expand the rank to Top 6? PFFP (talk) 17:59, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Both that tie for fifth should be retained, and reduce back to 5 when there's no longer a tie. Miles (talk) 18:11, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Mayhem July 2015

Who added those numbers without source? We need a link at the very least! PFFP (talk) 08:48, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

Aha! Nyargleblargle (Talk) 10:31, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

Update Rule

It might be time to elaborate on some kind of rule for how to update this page, beyond the basic "Add event, entrance and source(s)". I think the constant update behavior is not ideal. I'm referring to the Genesis 3 updates. Registration is still open, so numbers are not final and keep on growing, which resulted on constant updates here. The history page is a wall of updates on small numbers for Genesis 3 various games.

I do think it's ok to update entrance numbers when registration is still open, after all this page started like that, when EVO already had the largest smash tournament title before registration had closed. But now I feel it would be better to hold those updates until registration is closed, to avoid spam of small updates.PFFP (talk) 08:15, 23 November 2015 (EST)

I agree. In addition, I think I will start enforcing edit summaries when adding to this page. This should make keeping track of the page much easier. Serpent King 08:26, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Updating milestones on entrance numbers is usefull, but there's no need to update constantly (1000, 1010, 1030, 1090, etc). No problem in pdating when the registration surpass one of the Overall Top 15, or if it breaks 1k (even if it doesn't surpass another even in rank. My point is to avoid update spam with small numbers. PFFP (talk) 08:41, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Personally, I think that these updates should wait until registration closes and we leave it at that. Serpent King 08:47, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Including Smash3DS

My strongest arguments are:

• The largest Smash3DS tournament is bigger than the largest Smash 64 tournament.
• The article says that it covers "each game in the series". Smash3DS is a game in the series. (For sake of argument, suppose Brawl's tournament presence was so bad that none of its events had 100 entrants. Would it still be outright excluded from the article?)
• The List of national tournaments article covers all five games plus Project M; this article is very similar in topic. Why should they cover different lists of games? Or would you say that that article deserves to have Smash3DS deleted as well?
• Same thing with the Banned stages article. I was the one who originally added the Smash3DS section to that article, then someone filled it out and now it's nicely informational. Delete?

Zowayix (talk) 22:49, 11 December 2015 (EST)

Counterpoints:

• You say that the largest Smash 3DS tournament (Umebura 9, with 192 entrants) is bigger than the largest Smash 64 tournament (Apex 2015, with 187 entrants)... however, I can just as well say that there have been more 100+ entrant tournaments for Smash 64 (at least six of them in the past, with a seventh one coming soon in GENESIS 3).
• The reason why I referred to this talk page was to demonstrate that wording on pages is not always literal (since, after all, wikis are editable). As I've stated before, the creator of this page as well as the one who wrote the sentence in question stated that 3DS tournaments probably don't need to be listed. (I'm not specifically using this as my basis for being against not including 3DS, just that you can't always go by wording alone on articles.)
• Yes, while List of national tournaments is quite similar to this one, I don't see why that means we have to remove the list from there as well. There have been four 100+ man tournaments in Smash 3DS's lifespan, and all of them are listed on that page because they were national tournaments. This page just focuses on tournament size (which more often than not, correlates to whether a tournament is a national, but not always; for example, Northeastern Smash Attack 2 and BUST 3 both had over 200 entrants, but neither of those tournaments had anyone who was considered Top 20 at the time, so they're considered to be regionals). It's similar to the reason why Smash 64 only has 5 tournaments listed instead of 10: there just haven't been enough decently-sized tournaments to extend it to 10. As for Banned stages, that page and this page don't really have anything in common outside of both being related to competitive play, so I don't really think that's a fair point. PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 00:57, 12 December 2015 (EST)

I fully oppose this on the grounds that Smash 3DS doesn't really have a notably big scene, at least compared to its Wii U counterpart. Serpent King 01:11, 12 December 2015 (EST)

per SK and Jamal i OpposeNintendofan1653 (talk) 08:21, 12 December 2015 (EST)

Oppose because Smash 3DS hasn't even had five national tournaments. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 08:42, 12 December 2015 (EST)

Smash3Ds and SmashU should just be consolidated under "Smash 4" for tournament and results listing. There's no need to separate them when they're just different versions of the same game, and when the 3DS version doesn't have its own scene once SmashU appropriately took over upon its release. Omega Tyrant 12:12, 12 December 2015 (EST)

Agreed. I've felt this for a while. On Smasher articles we should just have a "Smash 4" section rather than separate the two. John PK SMAAAASH!! 12:22, 12 December 2015 (EST)

I Agree with Omega Tyrant too. Smash 3DS and Smash Wii U listings should be consolidated under the name "Smash 4" for tournament and results listings. They're just different versions of the same game, I definitely agree to that IMHO. INoMed ^{(Talk • Contribs)} 12:24, 12 December 2015 (EST)

Just converted this article's SmashU heading to Smash 4 per the above. I'm still wondering though: Suppose Brawl's tournament presence was so bad that none of its events had 100 entrants, or that it never had more than 4 events. Would it still be outright excluded from the article on the same basis as Smash3DS? Zowayix (talk) 21:18, 24 December 2015 (EST)

I don't really see the point in this hypothetical question, especially considering that there were quite a few 100+ events in 2008 alone. Smash 3DS and Smash Wii U are also essentially the same game with the same characters, while Brawl is its own game. The argument right now is to include Smash 3DS and Smash Wii U under the same category of "Smash 4". PokemonMasterJamal3 (talk) 22:14, 24 December 2015 (EST)

My opinion on this as the one that originally created the List of Largest Tournaments page.

• First, the point of this page is to make it easier for people to quickly see the largest smash tournaments currently active in the scene. This list is not perfect but it has a clear goal: who are the big ones?

• Second, if we added 3DS separately from Wii U, the only thing this list would show was something obvious: "wow, when it comes to tournaments people prefer to play Smash 4 on Wii U". Duh. So for me there's no point on adding 3DS since it's only a portable version of Smash 4. There's no Super Smash Bros for 3DS scene separated from a Super Smash Bros for Wii U scene, there's only the Smash 4 scene, that plays competitively mostly on the version the whole smash series is more associated with, the current Nintendo Home Console, the Wii U.PFFP (talk) 22:30, 24 December 2015 (EST)