Hey everyone. Hope you all are doing well and staying safe! This past Summer was definitely an eventful one and I first and foremost would like to once again thank everyone who either help support and or participated in my first batch of online events for this year – STRIVE For Glory Series 2021 (YOTP). I definitely learned a lot and was able to refamiliarize myself quite a bit as far as T.O’ing goes, and heavily look forward to bringing about the next set of events; which is primarily what I would like to touch on in this update today.

I’m hype to announce that OUT FOR BLOOD SAGA, will be my next official tournament series of 2021 (YOTP), and will be kicking off this October! Since it’s VERY hard to gain traction as a small T.O and otherwise unknown individual, I’ve decided to “halve” the lineup size this time around not only to squeeze more events into one month, but to also keep the momentum going week to week for certain events, rather than cycling between a lengthy lineup, ultimately forcing players to wait weeks before an event for their desired title comes back around.

Speaking of the lineup, in case you couldn’t guess by the series title, the headlining game this time around will be the recently released “Melty Blood: Type Lumina”. A rather niche anime fighter franchise if I can say that, but one that I’ve always thought to be very fun to watch and visually appealing despite it’s somewhat “basic” character designs. There’s some charm in that I tell ya. As far as the other games go, GUILTY GEAR STRIVE will be making it’s return, and Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown will be the third and final title in the lineup. All fighting games this time around!

It’s also worth mentioning that this tournament series is “currently” planned to be the shortest of the planned 3 I had planned to run this year. As of now, OUT FOR BLOOD SAGA will take place throughout the duration of October. Despite it being a shorter series, players will still receive PR depending on their performance in each title/event – which actually leads into the next major thing I wanted to touch on today.

WHERE IS THE SFG PR?!?!?

So initially the goal was to have all Player Ranking up for the Strive For Glory Series by the end of August; and while I am definitely still working to have it out as soon as possible, I’m stuck in a position where I’m waiting on entitles other than myself to move forward with the process, or making the incredibly stressful choice of going about it on my own and creating my own PR system from scratch. Definitely not something I want to do without software. Assuming things go the former, which would essentially be worst case scenario; I’m pretty set on the decision that PR will have to become a 2021 (YOTP) round-up ranking sort of release, rather than an evolving PR for the remaining 2 tournament series for this year. This will basically make things much easier for me as I can rely less on having to make a dedicated points system and simply track say “the top 4 or 8” performers for each game in each series that I’ve held in 2021. It would essentially become what would originally be the final PR update, if things were already on track. Rest assured however, one way or another the PR system is STILL being worked on and is STILL coming sooner or later. I’m hoping for the best, but I will choose whatever is easiest for me to work with.

In closing, there are a handful more of thing’s event related (and some not) that I’d still like to kick off this year, but I’ll save those for a separate update, or perhaps the November update? In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled on the official Smash.GG page for the upcoming OUT FOR BLOOD Saga series of tournaments and spread the word! October is definitely going to be a crazy month!

Thanks for reading as always,

~ Peace!