Why has the skill level in Queensland dropped?
Hello there, my name is Aerodrome, some of you might know me by my title; Kurogane Hammer.

This blog post is going to outline three major problems which have contributed to the skill decline of Queensland. Our state was one of the best, but recently there has been a massive fall from grace. Our state has gone from top 2 (either 1st or 2nd, I'm not interested in arguing which) to easily the worst state in the country.

I know that Queensland is going through their "we gotta hate KH!" phase so I half expect this to fall on deaf ears, but hopefully some people are listening and at the very least this will be a good example of what not to do for other states.

And so it begins.

#1 PLAYER EXODUS


Number one reason is the player exodus we've had recently. Fairly self explanatory, and not something that can actually be fixed because sometimes life gets in the way of Smash events and there's not much you can do about it. But recently Queensland lost their best player, Jezmo, alongside other regulars like AzureWolf, Shitashi, and Seymour among others.

You might be wondering, "but why does this matter, KH?!"

Well the answer is simple, less good players = less competition = less advice given = less improvements seen in players.

It's a devastating domino effect.

But like I said, we can't do anything about players leaving, but this does bring me to my second point!

#2 LACK OF DRIVE TO GET BETTER


One of the problems with Queensland is that they are a very casual minded state. No one is really that interested in getting better, partially because of their own arrogance (quite a few Queenslanders believe they're very good at the game), or maybe they just don't really care. Our state is blessed with a stream setup and regular VODs, however I believe that no one actually watches the VODs of tournaments that they attended. No one studies up on their characters. No one has the motivation to get better, which means that they can't fill the shoes of those good players who left.

It's another domino effect. This one can be fixed though, but it requires the PLAYERS THEMSELVES to stop being lazy and lab, watch streams, practise, and analyze their gameplay!

I strongly believe something that would be beneficial to Queensland would be something akin to the #Duon40, which is a ranking system which encourages new player talent and growth and competition between players who otherwise wouldn't have a chance to get on the PR; as exceedingly weak as it currently is.

#3 TOURNAMENT DIFFERENCES


Our third problem is something that we've encouraged for a while for whatever reason and it probably needs to stop. We currently have two big tournament series, our weekly, GUF, and our monthly, UQ.

Both of these tournaments have different rulesets, and (I believe) tournament organizers who think that their tournament series is better, or more important than the other (This applies to GUF AND UQ). I feel like these two things are super unhealthy for the scene. Both tournaments are equally as important as each other, but they fulfill different roles.

GUF is the weekly that's for practice/grinding, while UQ is supposed to be the monthly where your results are generally valued more highly, but that doesn't seem to be the case at the moment.

I strongly believe that a ruleset merge would be beneficial for the scene, as I think that's one of the reasons why GUF TOs think GUF is more important than UQ and vice-versa.

by Aerodrome 01/09/2017 00:00:00

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