User blog:CSWooly/A Statement on the Smash Flash Back Room

Hey everyone, this is Tenebrae/Strife/DSwift/CSWooly. I used to effectively run the Back Room in Beta and now I just figured I'd put this statement down so you could adjust your information regarding tier lists etc. accordingly

Due to a number of internal incidents and other circumstances, including a lull in the competitive scene due to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate's release as well as incidents including, but not limited to:


 * A lack of any real developer support due to the sub-forum section being entirely removed with none of the members being able to access it. We'd been asking TSON, who was our only developer contact within the discord for help on this matter and we basically received absolutely nothing back on it. This also removed Back Room Applications, so we basically had to canvass the unofficial chats for applicants with the apps server invite link because nobody in the official server was willing to advertise.


 * An attack from a hacked admin account on the discord courtesy of Monte which led to a total loss of pretty much everything, including all applications and all data from within the back room. This account was also in charge of the applications server and was supposed to be an anonymous source for applications that would allow for people to not be able to ask for help from other members etc, but it didn't work. Annoyingly for us, we lost all the tier list discussion, matchup chart discussion and literally anything else that wasn't on the file and multiple members were banned because of it.


 * A planned mass exodus that was orchestrated by Monte (notice a theme here) that never went on board, but I really think this goes to show the kind of atmosphere we had in the Back Room tbh.


 * A number of internal incidents that caused various members to leave the Back Room. At one point, the crew of top players were effectively planning a takeover of the BR by vote-bombing various members of their crew and actually helping them with the answers for any application questions that they had. Meanwhile, the leader of this crew (not Monte, surprisingly) effectively went out of his way to just harass, demean and effectively drive out anyone who they didn't deem fit for the Back Room. Most notably, this was targeted at Suli Hyuga, but Doqtor Kirby and Cookies/Skailler also left immediately after this was stopped.

The Smash Flash Back Room is almost entirely dead at this point. There are maybe 15 people in the discord who are all either dead, have other commitments or are playing Ultimate as most people in this scene are. The likelihood of us getting a tier list for 1.1 is extremely low, because honestly, nobody's posting anything and yeah. It's sad, but this is what the Back Room has had to deal with since Beta.

Also, a small addendum for people who are interested in the current tier lists.

We got what I like to call false alarmed a lot by the developers. Certainly as we drew closer towards finishing the discussion for each of the tier lists, the developers, namely TSON would tell us something along the lines of "Oh by the way, a new balance patch is dropping within the next week" which would effectively render each tier list completely invalid. As such, the natural response we had was to push the tier list out as quickly as we possibly could because making the tier lists takes a hell of a lot of time and I, like most of the people there, didn't exactly want to have a couple of months work go to waste because a new patch came out. As a little side note, everything on that tier list image I've shared below that isn't scribbled out was what we agreed on as a group over a couple of months. Everything else that IS scribbled out was made by me within the course of a couple of hours using the data we'd gathered plus some general opinion. We didn't even have time to adjust the placings of characters we'd decided a month or two before (depending on how the meta changed) as we basically had to put this out within a week. Now, as was the case with BOTH tier lists (yes, this happened a LOT), the patch didn't drop afterwards. 1.0.3 dropped a good few months after tier list 1 was released and 1.0.4 (which was supposed to be a Pichu-less balance patch) didn't even exist. But by then, we couldn't do jack about it. We'd just released an unfinished tier list into the public eye because we got fed false information.

Rather hilariously though, most of the top players who were bashing the tier lists were either actively involved in making them or just chose to ignore all the reminders to take part in the discussion and so did not contribute.

So regarding a 1.1 tier list, unless the Back Room suddenly decides to become active again, it's almost certainly not happening. If the devs decide to bring back the BR subforum and "revive the Back Room", I'll happily come and lend assistance to them once again, but I honestly doubt it will happen. It's a shame.