Talk:Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitive play

From Talk:Golden age

Merge

Support as long as the resulting page is renamed to something like "History of Competitive Melee". Otherwise, adding this page to The Five Gods would feel a bit arbitrary IMO. Nyargleblargle (Talk · Contribs) 08:13, 14 September 2015 (EDT)

Weak Support. All I have to say is what is before this sentence. Pika, Wild Turkey Appeared! 09:38, 16 November 2015 (EST)

Bump, Support per Nyargle. Disaster Flare (talk) 21:19, 24 November 2015 (EST)

support per nyargle Nintendofan1653 (talk) 18:54, 5 December 2015 (EST)

I personally think a page about the History of Melee's competitive scene is nice. Having a very long history of 13 years and about three generations of Melee players (which consist of the Ken age, Dark age, and Rise as an Esport game age) I think we can merge this article and the Five Gods page together for the said history page. Dots (talk) The Windows 22:56, 5 December 2015 (EST)

I originally suggested that this be merged into the glossary, but this sounds like a better idea. John PK SMAAAASH!! 14:09, 6 December 2015 (EST)

Move

Ok so the idea with this one is to sorta define the way we name these 4 articles (one for each game, excluding PM). Consider that the name we currently have now does not translate well to the original SSB or Smash 4 (as calling it Smash 4 is a bit blech).

Here are the options:

Keep as is

1. I don't see any current problems Poultry(talk) the God-Slayer 20:14, 15 November 2016 (EST)

Move to "History of competitive Smash (SSBM)"

1. I am going to go ahead and go with this one. To me it seems to be the most concise yet still sufficiently descriptive title. Serpent King 15:48, 15 November 2016 (EST)
2. I'll support if we're making one for each game (or this is one of four sections in a "History of competitive Smash" page) oppose if not. Destructodon (talk) 18:58, 15 November 2016 (EST)
3. Weak support if we are indeed making pages like this for the other games. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 20:10, 15 November 2016 (EST)

Move to "Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitive play"

1. Seems like the clearest and most encyclopedic version of the page title by my judgment. Miles (talk) 15:56, 15 November 2016 (EST)
2. Professional title. Dots (talk) The Penguin 22:43, 15 November 2016 (EST)
3. This. The other two options have the problem of having the word "Smash" in the title twice. Toomai Glittershine The Chilled 07:01, 16 November 2016 (EST)
4. I'm going to have to support this one because this is what the Wikipedia article would be titled. When it comes to Smash 4 are we just going to write "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS in competitive gameplay" and devote maybe a paragraph to the 3DS game? John PK SMAAAASH!! 09:18, 16 November 2016 (EST)
5. Sounds the most professional among all the proposals, current title included. -Menshay (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2016 (EST)

Move to "Competitive Smash (SSBM)"

1. ...

Comments

Here's a thought, if we do call it "Super Smash Bros. Melee in competitive play", do we call SSB4's "Super Smash Bros. 4 in competitive play" or "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U in competitive play" (since the 3DS doesn't have a scene)? Serpent King 18:00, 16 November 2016 (EST)

I'd honestly say "Super Smash Bros. 4". As unlikely as it is, we should keep in mind the possibility that 3DS could have a mass revival, and even if it never does, there are still a few dedicated 3DS tournaments every now and then. Disaster Flare (talk) 18:03, 16 November 2016 (EST)

Add a "Criticism of Competitive Melee" section

Look, if Brawl, SSB4, and Ultimate can have these for basically not being Melee, I think it would be unfair to not at least represent the backlash Melee has gotten as the premier Smash fighter, especially with all the attention it gets. It could read something like "Despite Melee being touted as the most refined Smash game for competitive play by the community and even Sakurai, it has experienced heavy criticism and backlash for reasons such as blah blah blah". And no, I do not think the original game needs one, seeing its community is mostly unified and fixed, but if we're gonna report on what the community thinks, then I think we need to do more on reporting the other side of the spectrum starting with something like this. - EndGenuity (talk) 20:38, February 3, 2021 (EST)

Renaming and redefining the eras

This was discussed in Discord, and there seemed to be agreement there that the naming and defining of the eras here need to be changed, so I'm officially proposing we change them. There are two problems with them:

1: They're just hilariously pretentious, and makes the wiki and the Smash community sound like snobs who think their game is more important than it actually is. Not to mention how the naming keeps trying to "one-up" the last and make each era sound increasingly more grandiose, by going from "Golden Age" -> "Platinum Age" -> "Diamond Age", and raising the question of how silly the next "one-up" name will get. Is the next era gonna be called something like the "Alexandrite Age" or the "Netherite Age"?

2: These names aren't intuitive at all. If you use these terms outside the wiki or even on the wiki outside this page, no one who isn't already familiar with this specific terminology will have any idea what the hell you're talking about.

I propose the following changes:

• Early history (2001-2003)
• The MLG era (2004-2007)
• The Brawl era (2008-2012)
• The EVO era (2013-2018)
• The modern era (2019-present)

These names are much more intuitive in their meaning, not requiring pre-existing terminology knowledge to understand the actual time span they cover, and don't have any air of unwarranted self-importance to them. The first four are set, the last one is of question and currently merges the last two "eras" described on this page, but I'm not completely sure how to handle it. Covid and Slippi do make a sort of cutoff point, but defining two years as a whole era doesn't seem right to me, while the end of Melee at EVO is a definite era cutoff point. Open to suggestions on if we should continue to define the last two as separate eras, and if so, what to rename the "Chaos Age", as well as if the most recent era should be named something other than "The modern era". Omega Tyrant 00:36, July 12, 2023 (EDT)

I'll preface by saying sorry this is a bit of a ramble, lol, but I definitely have heard the "Golden Age", or era, and "Dark Age" fairly frequently. More broadly, I've heard these collectively called "pre-doc", referring to Samox's documentary, and the page's named "Platinum Age" or EVO era referred to as "post-doc". I do definitely think that Slippi/COVID (2020-2021) is deserving of an "era". Even though it was short comparatively, it was just certainly it's own thing that doesn't fit into the others. Pre- and post-Slippi is also often thrown around in a similar manner to pre- and post-doc. The issue is then though that you're left with 2019 in a sort of limbo where it's not EVO and it's not Slippi, if we're using those wordings. So then you could just go with the Five Gods falling off convention like the page currently does (2018-2020). There's a bunch of ways you could go with defining them, I don't know which is best. I admittedly don't hate the ones on the article, given that the platinum, chaos, and diamond titles are removed/changed, but your proposed ones are good as well. Levii (talk) 02:09, July 12, 2023 (EDT)

I think a new era should be started for a Slippi era or Quarantine era, with a major metagame change of online only then a gradual return to offline. The starting date is March 11th, 2020 when it was recognized as a pandemic by WHO, and MPGR was frozen the following day. Maybe Quarantine and Post-Quarantine split into two eras, though ~1 year for an era is a little short. Though the return was gradual, an ending cutoff could be July 14th, 2021, the day before Smash Summit 11 as the first post-quarantine offline major. --Meester Tweester (talk) 02:11, July 12, 2023 (EDT)

@Levii: I do know that "Golden Age" and "Dark Age" are actual terms that get used within the Melee community and they are less egregious than the terminology used for the subsequent eras on this page, though I still think they're guilty of the problems I described, and so should be replaced with "MLG era" and "Brawl era" respectively (I know the former is also a term that gets used, the latter less so but is certainly much more descriptive of the time span for anyone not already innately familiar with Melee's history). As for "Post-doc era", I thought about something like that for an alternative title, my problem with it though is there isn't a clean intuitive cutoff with it as there is with "EVO era" (which cleanly ends in 2019 when EVO is announced to have no Melee that year), while Melee getting into EVO 2013 was the clear catalyst that led to the explosion in size of Melee's competitive scene (while EVO was also the most prestigious tournament every year from 2013-2018, or at least for most of them). I'm also not quite onboard with separating the Covid period as its own era; true tournaments were only online at that point, but the best players during that era would go on to largely be the best players once offline tournaments started happening again, so that time was basically the precursor for what Melee became post-Covid. Either way, we are left with that awkward period of 2019-early 2020 that doesn't cleanly fit into either way you define eras before or after, and is too brief to really call its own era, I still don't quite like defining it how the page currently does but I don't have a good solution for it. Omega Tyrant 02:42, July 12, 2023 (EDT)

I'd say at least keep Golden Age and Dark Age for their community use, with something in brackets to give them a sense of time scale. The rest are made up dross that can absolutely be dropped for better time scale and intuitiveness. While I like most of your suggestions, I'd wager a "Post-Slippi" era is more appropriate over "Modern" era, as it's more future-proofed. -Plague von Karma 06:03, July 12, 2023 (EDT)

I do agree that "Golden Age" and "Dark Age" does tend to be used as actual terms; "Golden Age" especially is often used to represent what we'd end up calling the "MLG era." However, as a good compromise I do think we can go with the new names for the section title and reference "Golden Age" and "Dark Age" as other names for the era in the body paragraph.

As for the other eras, while I do like the "post-doc" era, I do also feel like this term is a bit broad since it would cover almost everything after 2013, including the era of the Five Gods and the rise of the "Doc Kids" who ultimately took their place, so I'd just stick with "EVO era". Also while I think the "modern era" is a safe alternative, I do believe "Slippi era" or the "Netplay era" also works well, mainly due to how the metagame and top 50 shifted during the online metagame, how its effects are still being felt today, and how netplay tournaments are still a pretty major part of competitive play today (eg the Slippi ladder and Coinbox tournaments). But, if we end up going with "modern era" I believe having "Slippi/Netplay era" and "Post-Slippi/Netplay era" as subsections would work the best, especially when the former feels like a transitional period to the latter. CookiesCreme 08:41, July 12, 2023 (EDT)

Late on this, but I agree with the renaming of the sections for sure. Chaos Age, Fall of the Five Gods, and Diamond Age are extremely fringe terms that hardly anyone uses. Golden Age, Dark Age, and Platinum Age are commonly used terms in the Melee community but still the previously suggested names are much better, we can put the other terms in the body paragraphs. The "Five Gods" era has overlap with the other time periods, and I believe pre- and post- EVO 2013 is a much better dividing line. As for the most recent timeline, I feel that Melee has been split into three different periods: post EVO (2018-2020), COVID/online play (2020-2021), and post lockdown (2022-2023). Two years is rather short but I don't think every era needs to be as long as four years (some games like Brawl have eras that basically last for only one year), all three of those could be their own sections. Also the COVID era completely changed the way that Melee was played even if the makeup of the top players didn't change, I definitely think it's capable of holding its own section.

From a semantics standpoint, I think calling 2018-2020 "Post EVO era" is fine even if there's no hard cutoff date. For example when you say "postgraduate" everyone knows you're talking about the few years after you graduate college or pursue a tertiary degree, even though technically everyone who has a bachelor's degree is a postgraduate until they die. Awesome Cardinal 2000 19:30, December 22, 2023 (EST)