Smash SMASH: The Competitive Update

I'm sure nobody was expecting another SMASH update this soon after the last one, but here we are! Last month we focused on the Halloween celebration which brought some small gameplay tweaks with items and map changes. This month I'm excited to share the details regarding the "Competitive Update"!

Full Patch Notes

Return of Rating

It's no secret that ELO (aka Rating) hasn't been seen since the Anniversary Update, and since then we've taken a step back regarding competitive play, and taken a good look at Ranked.

Rating

Previously, rating was only gained/lost through games in the Ranked playlist. However, in order to start those games at least 4 players were needed, and very seldom were games started within the past 2 seasons. We've thought about simply reducing the amount of players needed to start matches for ranked, but that doesn't solve the issue entirely; so we're opting to take a different route to ELO, and allow it to be gained through any public match. The calculation will be staying the same for this season, however we may opt to change it up in the near future.

We are hoping that introducing rating into public matches incentivizes players into playing public matches more often, and trying to rack up the highest elo! Previously the scoreboard was dominated by a select few players who participated in ranked, and this change should give everyone a shot at being on top of the stats leaderboard.

Rating cannot be gained through any party games. In addition, if you are found to be intentionally farming ELO with alts, your ELO will be reset and locked for the season. Rules regarding intentionally boosting and farming will be added to the Rules forum page prior to the Winter Season, they are present in-game via tips at the moment.

Seasons/Rewards

We won't be changing seasons up regarding length or date at the moment, however the remainder of the Fall Season (46 days left as of when this post is written) will be purely for experimental and testing purposes. This means that no rewards will be given for top placement for the current season. By the time the Winter Season rolls out, we plan to have rewards, calculations, and other features of the matchmaking system set in stone.

Please let us know if you have any feedback on ELO calculation alternatives, rewards, or anything of the sort!

Media Matches

I'm sure everyone's missed the huge party games on large maps, and we have too! Media creators and Staff will now be able to host custom matches from the Youtube Head in the lobby. (Media matches will not result in the gain or loss in ELO)

Misc Changes

We've also made some other small changes to the matchmaking system GUI; matches will now show the game status as either In Lobby, Running, or Ending. Additionally, for those who just can't pick a game to join, there's now a random join item in the top left of the GUI.



Concluding

This update isn't exactly chock full of new content, however the reintroduction of ELO and Media functionality puts us in a good spot to build off of. There's still a lot of additional features that we'd like to add to the rating system, such as a stats tracker, 2x ELO weekends, a proper tournament system, better rewards, and more! Those are all just ideas on our little roadmap, but we'd like to hear feedback on how public rating matches goes before introducing things like that.

Additionally, we're looking into opening Mini Admin Applications in the next month or two, more news on that later!

As always, thanks for flying Shotbow, and we're excited to see what the future of Smash holds o/
- The SMASH Team

That map was almost used for the Arena update too, but we wanted to try out the gif thing MineZ had done with their update and it didn't fit as well back then
Super amazing to stare at with shaders, 10/10