In my many years in and out of the Smash scene, I have seen a few events that have really gone above and beyond in differentiating their event experience, but there are still way too many bread-and-butter tournaments out there when we have more events than any time in the history of Melee. While rulesets have long been standardized to the point where most TOs would be hesitant to make alterations, there are many more opportunities to make your event unique, which can make you stand out in a crowded event landscape!

Tournament Format – When FC launched, one of our differentiating factors was that pools would be as massive as possible to reward people who traveled in, unlike other majors at the time which were straight double-elim. At FC3, we had 3 sequential rounds of round-robin pools leading to a double-elimination tournament. At FC Legacy, we ran 10-man initial pools and a round-robin for our final 8. Round-robin pools became a staple of FC that helped to define our identity. Tournament format can become a staple of your event, if you are willing to try something new! At weeklies, run with a league structure that earns points week over week. Run SINGLE ELIMINATION best of 7. Play a stock count round-robin. Even if it is just a side event, find something you are excited to play with and add it!

Experience – FC was born in a church where we had the privilege to create a lock-in environment. We charged an up-front fee for everything and brought all the food in with scheduled mealtimes. Dodgeball and torpedo ball became, in some cases, as big of a draw as the Smash, and we’ll be bringing the dodgeball to the Notre Dame quads at FC Return. I see complaints about the balance between community and “e-sports,” so establish ways for players to interact outside of the game. 8-12 straight hours of Smash is a long time and diminishing returns are real; “real-life” activities give people the chance to build relationships that transcend the game.

Rules – Yeah, a post from KishPastHisPrime is not going to ignore this facet entirely. FC is an old-school tournament brand, so we are proud to be running a Melee side event with legacy rulesets. That said, weeklies and biweeklies in particular offer so much ability to experiment that running the default ruleset every time is a bit crazy to me. Add more stages, or take some away! Run fixed-stage events where round 1 is always FD, etc. Randomize the first stage. Run a low-tier tournament. Make it so that players can only use a character for so many rounds in a bracket. Even if you just slap on alternate rulesets to a single-elimination side event, these take little-to-no time to run in comparison to a full main event schedule.

Not every tournament has to have the branding of hardcore edginess that we’ve all come to know and love. 95% of players invest money into this game rather than gain money, and if events aren’t also enjoyable and fun for them, it hurts the top as well. Find unique elements of your local community to highlight, pick a venue in an unusual location, or do something within the event itself as described above to differentiate yourself. These all help to foster vibrant relationships that create a strong community.

Please note that FC Return’s venue fees will be increasing after June 15 – so please register today! Armada, Leffen, and Hungrybox are all confirmed for Melee along with a number of other Top 50 players, and VGBootcamp will be streaming live!