Nintendude
Smash Hero
Here's the post with the beta software:
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=12563300&postcount=76
Not sure if this was mentioned in this forum yet but I think that the Smash community can learn a lot from competitive chess. That is, we should adopt their Elo ratings system based on tournament performance. Certain tourneys should be "approved" by the BR or some other committee to be eligible for ratings and then all matches that occur in pools or brackets will contribute towards everyone's ratings.
There's some really great things that can come from such a system:
1. Seeding can be based solely on player strength rather than bias. This is particularly useful in locals where you have a big pile of players of roughly the same strength and you don't know how to properly seed them.
2. Amateur brackets can have a certain cutoff for rating (like <1800, for example). Different tiers of amateur brackets or round robins can be created with ease.
3. Amateur players will have a better idea of where they stand within the community, simply based on their Elo rating. When I play people in chess, they will ask what my rating is, not "how good are you?" It's easy to gauge how skilled someone is based on ratings instead of handwaving.
4. The question of ranking the top players can be easily solved.
5. People of all skill levels will have more to play for. Not only are they competing for prizes, but they are competing to boost their rating.
6. Bracket manipulation and splitting might be discouraged since throwing matches will have consequences for your rating. Splitting is effectively a draw which can have negative consequences depending on the circumstances.
7. Implementing this kind of sophisticated system will increase the legitimacy and professionalism of competitive Melee.
I'm currently working to get a really similar system implemented for Smash 64's online play. Melee's much bigger community can gain even more from it.
Also I want to point out that this is different from Brawl's ratings system. Brawl's appears to attempt to measure absolute skill rather than relative skill. They weight things like tournament size and tournament results rather than just the individual matchups that occurred. With Elo new players can achieve high ratings very quickly by defeating good players. In Brawl's system they will have to place well in a bunch of large tournaments.
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=12563300&postcount=76
Not sure if this was mentioned in this forum yet but I think that the Smash community can learn a lot from competitive chess. That is, we should adopt their Elo ratings system based on tournament performance. Certain tourneys should be "approved" by the BR or some other committee to be eligible for ratings and then all matches that occur in pools or brackets will contribute towards everyone's ratings.
There's some really great things that can come from such a system:
1. Seeding can be based solely on player strength rather than bias. This is particularly useful in locals where you have a big pile of players of roughly the same strength and you don't know how to properly seed them.
2. Amateur brackets can have a certain cutoff for rating (like <1800, for example). Different tiers of amateur brackets or round robins can be created with ease.
3. Amateur players will have a better idea of where they stand within the community, simply based on their Elo rating. When I play people in chess, they will ask what my rating is, not "how good are you?" It's easy to gauge how skilled someone is based on ratings instead of handwaving.
4. The question of ranking the top players can be easily solved.
5. People of all skill levels will have more to play for. Not only are they competing for prizes, but they are competing to boost their rating.
6. Bracket manipulation and splitting might be discouraged since throwing matches will have consequences for your rating. Splitting is effectively a draw which can have negative consequences depending on the circumstances.
7. Implementing this kind of sophisticated system will increase the legitimacy and professionalism of competitive Melee.
I'm currently working to get a really similar system implemented for Smash 64's online play. Melee's much bigger community can gain even more from it.
Also I want to point out that this is different from Brawl's ratings system. Brawl's appears to attempt to measure absolute skill rather than relative skill. They weight things like tournament size and tournament results rather than just the individual matchups that occurred. With Elo new players can achieve high ratings very quickly by defeating good players. In Brawl's system they will have to place well in a bunch of large tournaments.