Wi-fi Warrior Rank v2: The Final Online Smash 4 Ranking
Cloudhead - November 22, 2018
At the beginning of 2018, the online community set out to create a definitive ranking for its very best players. Therefore, the Wi-fi Warrior Rank was born, and released in June of this year to unanimously mixed opinions. Now, it's the end of 2018, and almost all discussion has shifted to the oncoming release of Smash Ultimate. But what of the Wi-fi community? Fear not - we're still alive, thriving, and calling for lag tests as aggressively as ever! For the last half of the year, the biggest Wi-fi series have come together once again for the second ranking of its kind: the Wi-fi Warrior Rank v2!
In the wake of an imperfect debut, we've worked hard to create something that not only addresses the problems from the WWRv1, but adds and improves to what we had in every way. We're beyond excited for another season of hype reveals, and we hope that you all are, too! The last reveal was rocky, but no amount of ridicule and memes could ever stop us from shining a light on the community we love. Now, without further ado... let's step right into it!
Release Schedule
The Wi-fi Warrior Rank v2 will be released in tens every other day beginning on Tuesday, November 27th. This will allow our release to segway perfectly into Ultimate's release!
- #41-50: Tuesday, November 27th
- #31-40: Thursday, November 29th
- #21-30: Saturday, December 1st
- #11-20: Monday, December 3rd
- #1-10: Wednesday, December 5th
All articles will be hosted by SSBWorld and posted on my (Cloudhead's) Twitter account, CloudheadLive. They will also be advertised in the discords of all included tournament series, as well as the dedicated WWR discord, Wi-fi Warrior Central! If you want to keep tabs on the WWR or the Wi-fi scene in general, we highly recommend you join the WWC discord for updates.
Overview
The core structure of the WWRv2 is the same as it was last season: we've collected data from the biggest Wi-fi series and combined them in a massive rankings sheet. The Wi-fi Warrior Rank includes six currently active weeklies, collectively grouped into the Wi-fi Warrior Central (WWC); as well as a number of series that are currently inactive, but were active at some point during the season.
| Series | Day(s) | Status |
| Smashing Legends | Wednesday, Saturday | Active |
| Eclipse Smash | Monday, Friday | Active |
| Smash Station | Thursday, Saturday | Active |
| TVSeries | Friday, Sunday | Active |
| Sunday Smash Attack | Sunday | Active |
| Take the L Tuesdays | Tuesday | Active |
| Dragonborn | Thursday | Hiatus |
| Smashurai Dojo | Tuesday, Saturday | Defunct |
| King's Court | Wednesday | Defunct |
Methodology
Each tournament is entered into a Tournament Tier System (TTS) to determine its relative value; the biggest tournaments are deemed S-tiers, with A, B, and C tiers being progressively smaller tournaments. Players get points for their placings and wins at tournaments; a placement cap exists to prevent players from stacking points indefinitely just by attending events.
Changes from the WWRv1 System
Most changes from the WWRv1 system are in place for the aforementioned reason: to prevent point totals from inflating off prolific attendance. To do this, we have made a few important changes.
The original system was heavily based on a ranking that tracked offline events to mirror the PGR season. However, the WWR includes a far greater amount of tournaments per season than the PGR, making it much easier for players to "farm wins" across many tournaments and inflate their total. For this reason, individual wins are now worth fewer points. This results in a more balanced relationship between placements and wins.
In addition, C and B-tiers outnumber A and S-tiers by a large ratio, much more than they do in the PGR system that served as the basis for ours. The result of this was that consistent attendance at smaller tournaments was worth much more than standout performances at the season's biggest events. Due to this, regular weeklies' tournament values have been reduced, and major tournaments remain unchanged. Once again, this creates in a better balance between "majors" and smaller tournaments, so that neither overpowers the other too much - the intended end result is that majors hold slightly more weight.
Our definition of "major" is currently somewhat loose. The WWR defines a Wi-fi major as any tournament that:
- Is branded differently than the standard weekly series they're a part of
- Features an increased prize pot or some incentive to increase attendance
- If it is recurring, must not repeat more than once per month.
The former two criteria are looser, and a tournament may be deemed a "major" if it only has one or the other; the third criteria is a necessity. The full list of Wi-fi majors this season are as follows:
| Tournament | Series |
| Eclipse Smash #50: RobinGG Edition | EC |
| The Smash Bash #100: Mushroom Kingdom Edition | EC |
| Smashing Legends Monthly 11 | SL |
| Smashing Legends Monthly 13 | SL |
| Smashing Legends Monthly 14 | SL |
| Smash Station 100: Zenkai Saga | SS |
| Smash Station 119 | SS |
| TVSeries: Elite Saga | TVS |
| Sunday Smash Attack Anniversary Tournament | SSA |
| One More Game | Various |
| Smashurai Summit: EVA^ Monthly | SD |
| Smashurai Dojo Finale | SD |
| Dragonborn Season 2 Finale | DB |
In addition, the final feature we're adding is an X-factor survey! This survey, acting as a more traditional panel-voted ranking, will include the top 100 finishers on the WWR. It will be handed out to tournament organizers of the WWC, as well as top Wi-fi players selected by each series. Each player will be scored on a scale of 1-10, with an option to skip players, and the average scores will be recorded and ranked.
When the WWR is released, each player will be given an "X-factor," which is the difference between their actual ranking and the ranking given by the panelists. To paraphrase the description of its PGR-based namesake: A player with a very positive X-Factor would theoretically be a notable figure in the community feared by top players, but would not have the results to back them up. On the other hand, a player with a negative X-Factor would be somewhat of a "hidden boss," showing impressive results and wins with a lack of acknowledgement from the community.
In addition to just being interesting, we hope the addition of an X-factor can acknowledge discrepancies between players' perceived skill and results. Activity and results both fluctuate on Wi-fi more so than they do elsewhere, so hopefully this new facet of the rankings will highlight these intricacies.
Omissions from the WWRv2
Tournaments/Series
- As was the case last season, series that restrict their entrants are not counted. This includes sub-only tournaments, such as Naifu Wars, and region-locked tournaments, such as the EU BootCamp.
- In addition, we are omitting any tournaments that don't follow the Smash 4 recommended ruleset. This does not include discrepancies such as custom Miis, but does include major sticking points like "items off". In short, Naifu Battles has not been included either, despite how much fun we had with it!
Players
- We have omitted any players who fall under any of these categories:
- Attended fewer than four WWR-ranked tournaments over the course of the season.
- Are banned from multiple WWC series as of the season's end (November 17th, 2018).
- Have explicitly requested to not be included on the WWR.
The WWR and WWC in Ultimate
Each series included in the WWR and WWC plan to continue full-force into Ultimate, so the decision was easy to continue our project and make the WWRv3 the first ever SSBU Wi-fi ranking. It will include all tournaments up until the end of June 2019, and will officially start some time between the game's release and the new year. No date is settled on yet, but until there is an official announcement, we are effectively in an off-season, and all tournaments are just for fun and to get used to the new game.
We also expect the new game to bring many more up-and-coming series and tournaments into the fray. We'll be looking hard for these, not only to potentially include them in the WWRv3, but also to support them as they grow into future mainstays of the online scene. We hope that the Wi-fi Warrior Central will become a hub for not just the WWR, but all of the Wi-fi community; and in a perfect world, for the two to become synonymous. That might be a long ways away, but our goal is to facilitate growth in players and series alike, so that the Wi-fi community becomes better than ever before. We're going to work hard all through Ultimate to make that happen!
We're looking forward to unveiling the final product and moving on into this amazing new game. We'll see you for the releases next week... and see you in Ultimate!
-The WWR Team and the Wi-fi Warrior Central
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