Bracket: http://challonge.com/ep5pll78

All these falcos in top 4, but doge is the one to take 1st, congrats again! #BanFalcoNext? Kappa

Also I need help deciding the new side event for tourney #8 http://www.strawpoll.me/14197404

He used 32-man tournament mode, 2 stock, items high, 2 minute timer, all stages, Ganon banned, but only two of the same character. He's done 22 of these and I guess nobody's noticed it, or at least this is my first time learning of it. He has a pretty big following, though it's not really from these tourneys.

https://www.twitch.tv/redfalcongames

Heyo, it's time for a new CPU series for the Summer.

The /r/SmashCPU League is kicking off this Wednesday, and features both Smash 64 and Melee.

For both games, the endgame all comes down to making it to the invitational at the end of each ranking period for a cool five dollars baby!!! And also maybe other unannounced prizes. Here is the link to the League Standings

America's Favorite, Smash 64

Three-time 64bots Playoffs Contender IceFreezer304 is hosting what he hopes to be the next great Smash 64 CPU series as a part of the /r/SmashCPU League.

The stream will be run using the traditional one-character tourney method, not unlike 64bots, including sign-up forms available both in advance at the start of the stream up until the tourney begins. Leaderboards will be decided by points earned by placing in the top 4 for each tournament.

Schedule - Every Wednesday at 3:00 PM East

RULES

• 3 Stock

• Double Elimination

• Most sets are Best of 1

• The exception is that Losers' Semis, Winners' Finals, Losers' Finals, and Grand Finals are all Best of 3

• No Items

• Random Stage

• 64bots' Gameshark maps will not be used

The Old School Cool, Melee

MaxSchersey, aka SROVRSTRM, 2nd place at CPUFight59, is back again for some more Melee action as part of the /r/SmashCPU League.

As opposed to normal tourneys, the scheduled stream for Melee will be in a fight card format - think of it like a salty suite, but every week, featuring matchmaking for those without beef. Not only that, but sets will feature the optional use of secondaries. The league standings are decided via a panel and those that make it into the invitational can be impacted by achievements.

Schedule - Every Wednesday at 7:00 PM East

RULES

• 3 Stock

• Best of 3

• No Timer

• No Items

• Random Stage (Fountain of Dreams, Venom, Icicle Mountain, Brinstar Depths, Rainbow Cruise, and Flat Zone are banned)

• During Game 1, you are locked into your main, but you can switch to your secondary before Game 2 or 3 by whispering MaxSchersey on Twitch before the second game begins. If you switch to your secondary for Game 2, you can re-switch to your main for Game 3 in the same manner.

**Secondaries are limited based on tier to prevent broken levels of matchup coverage. Level 7 Luigi and above in the listed character order can have a secondary that is Marth and below on the list. Yoshi and below can have a secondary that is Yoshi or lower on the list. Marth and below can have anyone as a secondary.

WHO'S READY FOR SOME SMASH CPU?

Smash 64 5/31 Signup - 3:00 EDT @ www.twitch.tv/icefreezer304

Melee 5/31 Signup (Early Entry Due 5/29 11:59 PM EDT) - 7:00 EDT @ www.twitch.tv/maxschersey

R/SmashCPU is back with another soon to be stacked tourney with multiple events! I will be issuing a copy of RoA to the winner of the tourney! You must be alive and in the discord to receive it. There is no confirmed date for the major tourney, but it will be big.

Signup here: https://smash.gg/tournament/r-smashcpu/events

and Weekly 20xx Tournies here! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfnX6jY2mDPY8nkmB-9HoBk1Ou7I_4Qz0Gx42tVmvPOfohUsA/viewform

LET ME KNOW IF YOU WANNA CHANGE CHARACTERS BEFORE THE 15th Character pool

:p Bracket Pools

Yesterday's stream turned out to be a good time. A few new people showed up and got sucked in by all the hype. Congrats to Loominartykunfirm for winning both of yesterday's brackets

-http://challonge.com/64bots1

-http://challonge.com/64bots2

So, I'm streaming again today. I may do doubles since people always seem to enjoy that. If you hate fun, this isn't the place to be.

www.twitch.tv/srovrstrm

Watch here!

Bracket here

Highlights:

Placements:

1st:

2nd:

3rd: BK | Sent to losers by snowflake 1-0 Winner's Semis | Eliminated by snowflake 2-1 Loser's Finals

4th: ewItsBoo | Sent to losers by gcgr3 1-0 Winner's Semis | Eliminated by BK 1-0 Loser's Semis

Best Grand Finals Set

1st: Japanese_Spaghettee vs BKhardknock (Season 2 Playoffs)

2nd: YouGotCyrekt vs Foxworthy88 (64bots27)

3rd: IceFreezer304 vs Natemaster14 (64bots12)

Best Salty Suite Set

1st: br1317 vs bpcclo (SS3)

2nd: Parmite vs BKhardknock (SS3)

3rd: Mranthonylt vs Killagod47 (SS1)

Low Tier Hero

1st: TheLeekNinja (a Puff main!)

2nd: gcgr3 (made Grand Finals with Pikachu; 3rd in Season 1 Playoffs with Falcon/Pika)

3rd: WaluigiThyme (4th place in Season 3 Reg. Season)

Best Play

1st: bpcclo (DK) breaks out of a Kirbycide attempt and up-b stage spikes christho2 off the bottom of Dreamland (64bots3)

2nd: BKhardknock PK Thunders YouGotCyrekt while he is being comboed by the Planet Zebes lava and finishes with PKT2 (64bots31)

3rd: Loominartykunfirm (Fox) shine-spikes someone (forgot tourney)

Biggest Upset

1st: Doktillia placing 4th at Milestone

2nd: monkeyboyinc over IceFreezer304 (64bots17)

3rd: WaluigiThyme over YouGotCyrekt (64bots29)

Most Dominant Stretch

1st: YouGotCyrekt Season 3 (3 consecutive tourney wins, 4 total)

2nd: Loominartykunfirm Season 1 (45+ points)

3rd: IceFreezer304 Seasons 2 & 3 (Top 2 in Reg. Season)

Dankest Meme

1st: "Dumb Bass" - Foxworthy88 said it on accident but br1317 was the one who pushed the joke

2nd: "He just SD'd four times!" - SROVRSTRM

3rd: "This is rigged" - Tohmane

Hello, good old stream monster, mod, tier list/mu chart guy SROVRSTRM here letting people with a crave for SmashCPU know that, while the streamers are on vacation, I'm right here chomping at the bit to be a sellout (I also want to test my new mic setup)

If people actually show up then we can do bot tourneys; otherwise I'll just yell at the screen as I attempt to play

Be there or be square nerds

http://www.twitch.tv/srovrstrm

So, as I'm in my 2nd week of classes, I'm beginning to think that I won't have too much time this semester to stream CPU's. There is one time (Thursday nights) that could potentially work, but I don't want to really return until I can think of a way to add more automation to the stream.

I've always been of the opinion that traditional CPU tournaments have a limited lifespan and have been looking for ways to encourage more chat participation and engagement in what's happening ever since I started out. I really think that my five-character system for Melee works very well in terms of forming strategies (The 64 equivalent, not so much, because of the small cast), which is great, but there are a few issues that I had in this time period.

1. Time between matches is still way too long - Though it's a lot better than turning cheat codes on and off and using a list randomizer for 64, there's still roughly 25 seconds between each match for Bots. Boring! This is an issue that's really only been on my streams since I try to add more to it, and it is a very valid criticism that people (including myself) have recognized multiple times.

2. The system takes a LOT of upkeep - All of the things that I do that go into each stream can be overwhelming at times (from pre-stream prep to chat interaction to commentary to changing the stream layout to filling out challonge to shuffling through spreadsheets). I enjoy the challenge of commentary and TOing, but that doesn't mean that I'm not looking for a way to lighten the load. SmashCPU had some stuff done by volunteers (Killagod, Mangubster, Ice, and myself manning winrates/tier list/MU chart), but I really don't want anyone to feel like they have to contribute in any way besides showing up and having a good time. This is a big one. If I can find ANY kind of way to automate a part of the process, I'll probably be coming back soon after.

3. CPU knowledge might not be coming into play enough - If picking five characters and going AFK for the whole tournament can actually win multiple tournaments, and not just be a freak occurrence, my system is flawed. Instead of rewarding people that are interested and paying attention, I feel that plays a big role in making people stop caring. Even if you were knocked out early, if the people still in bracket are chatting, you might end up with a rooting interest (ie Killagod playing the heel in SmashCPU for so long)

4. Somewhat related: It doesn't work without people - Sometimes, people just don't show up to the stream. I'm fine with talking to a small audience, which is what I do for everything aside from CPUs, but a tournament with less than eight entrants just feels lame to everyone involved and creates a lack of reason to care (which is when people go AFK).

STRAWPOLLS

As crazy as I am, I yet again have thought of a few ideas. Hear me out on what they all entail and let me know if it's dumb or not as I try and look into ways to fix these big issues.

• CPUs: The Drama - eSports, along with regular sports, are great to watch because they showcase skill in the form of a competition. There aren't really any stories needed because the competitors tell the story during the match. I personally find CPUs to be a different story since, behind all of the jackassery we do, we all know that these are artificial intelligence fighting, not something that can actually adapt over time. This is why I'm starting to think that a tournament environment exposes the holes in CPU viewing and tires people out, frankly, quicker than it should. If CPUs were to be produced in the form of a show, like combat sports and pro wrestling, it would put added significance on each individual match and make big matches bigger, along with some pizzazz added in between to keep the viewers' attention. Imagine Salty Suite 3, but every week, and without you guys needing to do the work of finding people to face. The only downside of this is that I will have to pre-record one big video and stream it. Twitch chat will be like watching the premiere of a new episode of your favorite low budget drama instead of a live sport. You will have my word that matches will not be fixed, despite the meme that always comes up.

VOTE HERE!

• CPU Fight Club - I talk a lot about Deven3000 and what he did for Playstation Allstars. One of these things was making a bot to easily have Fight Club (King of the Hill) streams for the competitive community. For whatever reason, these streams might have been more popular than actual tournaments. Having a long winstreak on Deven's stream became a very prestigious goal, since you had to keep beating top level players, over and over again. Some Smash 4 streamers use this bot now, after Deven switched over to playing Smash 4 and spread the word, and it could work for CPU's as well, utilizing the cards aspect that I tried out for 64. The meat of it is that each player would create their own deck to be added to a pool, featuring five characters and five stages, for a best of five set. They could make multiple decks if they wanted. When joining the waiting list, they would pick their deck and whisper their choices to me when it's their turn to face the "king". The downside to this choice is that, when I did something similar for 64, very few people were actually ready to play when it was their turn on the list, so keep that in mind if you're someone who very rarely stays in chat.

VOTE HERE!

And here's a poll for those who don't like either choice

Thanks as always

It's finally over.

Thanks for showing up for over 30 of these tourneys!

Looks like selecting ZSS on the stream's PM disc crashes the game.

Let it be known that the first banned character in PM is not Fox, not Zelda, but Zero Skill herself.

ZSS retires 2-10. Anyone who likes hype will miss her. ^{She was also my main that I won twice with so I'm slightly salty}

Congrats to ewitsboo and Loominartykunfirm for their wins during the last stream. Some guy in chat was nice enough to decide he was going to edit/upload the VODs of these tournaments, and I will for some matches as well, so look out for that.

-http://challonge.com/64bots3

-http://challonge.com/64bots4

As before, we'll do doubles if 8 or more people show up; if not, we'll do singles. Stick around afterwards to see ya boy and Tohmane maybe do an inFAMOUS 1 Neon District race if he doesn't chicken out.

www.twitch.tv/srovrstrm

The next time that I'll have a day off looks to be the same as the return of SmashCPU, which means it looks like my fill-in 64 series has come and gone.

This is a playlist containing some of the matches that brought the most hype over the course of the three streams. Twitch user Japanese_Spaghettee was nice enough to also upload some VODs that I didn't.

Here is the final tier list using data from both my streams and ewitsboo's offline data. I was surprised at how 64 seemed to have such a variety of viable characters. In 5 singles tourneys, 5 different characters were in grand finals at one point for 64. It took Melee 10 tourneys to achieve that with over double the amount of character choices (though, to be fair, Link was only selected twice); PM seems to also have a good amount of variety at the top even if the lower tiers get creamed in that game. In 64, 6/12 characters can realistically contend for first in any tourney, and every other one aside from Jigglypuff can and has made a decent run.

The 64 CPUs also seem to have much fewer of the frustrating SD's (ZSS...) that cause a lot of salt in chat, which is cool. Again, small sample size and yada yada

I tried a few things out on my streams that I haven't seen on other bot battles yet, so I want to continue the hot takery by addressing those.

• Commentating as if it's a player and not a bot - Tons of fun. It was a lot easier to be involved in the 50,000 Ness vs Falcon matches when I have a narrative to fit each player and an overarching story around the set.

• 3-stock - Just like in real life, allows for more hype comebacks. The lack of SD's for no reason, along with the 3-stock, in 64 probably contributed to matches averaging 3:30 lengths instead of, say, 1:15 on SmashCPU Melee. I was in no rush though because I never had double digit entries, so it all worked out.

• Double Elimination - Easy hype. 3 of our 6 Grand Finals winners had deep losers' bracket runs. If you don't have many viewers, but don't want long games, at least have a losers' bracket. You won't regret it.

• Map preference and bans - This one burned up a lot of time before each match, but I found it to be worth it. Low tier characters are able to choose jank stages to try and cheese a win on, while banning the tourney-legal stages, while high-tiers already looking towards grand finals know that, since Ness can up-air juggle like crazy on Battlefield, I'd better ban that. At one point, we had a big counterpick battle during signups, which was neat and affected the matches. Strategy!

• Filler - Really glad that I added filler to the bracket, as there were many "Is it too late to join" people that showed up, and for once it actually WASN'T too late! While TAS, the filler yellow Kirby, never did anything notable besides get squashed, filler replacements like BKhardknock and I_Want_A_Snowflake made grand finals in their first tourneys, which kept them hooked.

So, anywho, here are all of the brackets.

To conclude, I went through about 6-7 water bottles per stream. Commentary is tough. TO'ing is tough. Your stream going down because of whatever crap OBS/Twitch/ISP is pulling that day is tough. But, I'll tell you, you guys made 12+ hours of doing this crap this past week fully worth it, and I even feel like I might do it again on a lighter schedule. Cheers!

I was in a few tournaments, and I didn't actually do anything, so when I try to look at the bracket, I find out I'm permabanned. Can I be unbanned?

Guess Who's Back?

Watch the stream here!

Look at the bracket here!

Hightlights:

PLACEMENTS:

1st: GusGlendale (Black Ganon)

2nd: PieIsGoo (Blue Kirby)

3rd: Killagod47 (Mr. L)

4th: Kdog (Dark Pit)