We are now done with SSBMRank2015. It was an exciting 3 weeks to see the unveiling of players and the reception of it. This year we partnered with HTCeSports, who generously provided the resources to increase our production values and contract Papapaint to make those exciting Top 10 montages. Before I continue, I wanted to give thanks to the several people that helped with projects

• First and foremost, Nick “Dark Dragoon” Konstantino was a workhouse throughout this endeavor, creating all 100 of the graphics that you saw for each of the players. He also helped with hot fixes and was on call when I couldn’t get a task done. Give him a round of applause!
• To every single blurb writer for signing up, taking initiative, and volunteering to taking on the daunting task of writing blurbs. It’s a thankless job and even though there were some slip ups here and there, I couldn’t ask for a better team.
• To every editor that took initiative and were proactive in making a quality product, I thank you guys that you take pride in your work to make the blurbs awesome.
• To the fact and picture finders, I thank you guys so much. It seems like mundane work, but allowed for me to finish other tasks. This couldn’t have been done without you guys.
• To the photographers, thank you for allowing me to use your phenomenal photos

Some Highlights

• Getting hacked by the “Moroccan Revolution Team” on Christmas.
• Despite missing on two days of page views due to the aforementioned hacking, we managed to hit an astonishing 922,693 page views. In comparison, we had 477,373 page views for 2014’s edition of SSBMRank. It’s awesome to see Melee grow.
• We expanded our production values tremendously. Look at the 2013 edition and you’ll see what I mean.
• Videos for Top 10. Hopefully, we can expand this to Videos for all of the Top 100 by 2016.
• 42 panelists from all across the world

General Post-Stuff

Despite the complaints that I will always get from running a subjective ranking chart, I am very happy with how the project panned out this year. Two years ago, we had no rankings. Other than the top 10, maybe top 20, no one really knew how players stacked against each other. Furthermore, outsiders could only recognize people from their own region and perhaps the usual power players such as Armada and Mango. I recognize that the list will never be perfect, but the ability to create discussion is ultimately what I desired from the list.

Objective vs Subjective Lists

Many have asked me why I never do a completely objective list, so here’s my answer:

There’s a strong connotation to a “completely objective list”. The general perception is that it is completely fair and reasonable, to which I would disagree. If melee had an online ladder system where players interacted with each other 10,000s of times per year, I am very confident that would give me the data to appropriately rank the Top 100 players. Unfortunately, the top players rarely interact with each other. There are several pairings in the top 25 that have not happened in all of 2015 despite the increased number of majors.

With the interactions being limited, the primary owner of an “objective-based” system has to make decisions on how to weigh data with measurements such as K-Values. Furthermore, data collecting becomes tedious and even the current one floating around Reddit, makes arbitrary cut-offs to events. Why only certain events? Why cut off to top 64 only? These decisions require some subjective judgment and ultimately some biases. Furthermore, these values are adjusted until it fits a general subjective notion of “correctness”.

So while, I think the results are interesting in tandem, it’s tough for me to sell a SSBMrank on a pure objective system, given the limited information.  I don’t want to discourage any separate effort towards it though.

Activity vs Inactivity

Drawing a line on players was arguably the toughest portion of this project. I debated with myself and several others for hours to determine what an appropriate activity line is. With the exception of Twitch (who will get his own post eventually), I think we did a good job determining this. People will get upset as always if their local hero is not properly represented, which is why I also released a list of players who didn’t make the cut due to activity, so that they at least get recognition.

On the flip side, we also saw the consequences of introducing players who judges were largely unfamiliar with. In large part, the rankings of the Europeans created a large amount of controversy. I will have to reevaluate how to rate international players for 2016.

Judges

Some people had complaints about the uneven distribution of judges. Generally speaking, I will always value people that have large amounts of interaction with players at majors over a player. In 2013, I had open enrollment for judges that led to less than desirable results, which is why I don’t feel comfortable with letting anyone become a judge.

For regions that are less represented, I have asked several players/figureheads from their respective regions that either outright rejected a ballot or didn’t turn a ballot within the 3 weeks when asked. Rest assured, I did make a tremendous effort in trying to recruit people from these regions. Every year there are judge applications and, although I don’t accept everyone, I hope people take more initiative in filling out an application rather than complain after the fact about exclusivity.

Blurbs

I will always defend my blurb writers regardless of social media complaints. This year, I had a volunteer form for people to fill out. Every blurb writer filled out these forms and took tremendous initiative to get the job done. Even though the quality was spotty at times, I value these people for their time rather than the backseat redditor who offers to write blurbs after the fact. For the most part, most of these were very solid blurbs and I can’t thank them enough.