He will have another chance at offline regionals, at least
The transition to holding virtually all online fighting game tournaments in the past year has brought with it some growing pains that can lead to some headaches and unhappy situations, although this is probably the worst fear for all players.
During an intense grand final set today in the Smash World Tour Oceania Online Qualifier, one of the players ended up being disqualified after a key reset due to internet problems.
FURY | RaZe struggled to reach the winning side of the grand finals with his exceptional use of Dark Pit and Link, where he would face GG | Kinaji to determine everything.
The Kinaji Snake quickly proved to be a literal minefield of explosions, however, which saw them take the first two games closely, thanks to some excellent grenade and bait launches around them.
That leadership would wear out, however, as RaZe began to adapt and force Kinaji to come to him after winning shares at the start of the remaining games.
The fifth game reached the last stock, where a doubly intelligent trap would seal the support reset for Kinaji, while they planted grenades in the recovery zone.
Congratulations to @ kinaji7 for winning the Oceania Ultimate Online Qualifier! # SWT2021 🏆 pic.twitter.com/A7bwwSiKP8
– Smash World Tour (@SmashWorldTour) March 21, 2021
RaZe went to reflect the explosives back to the soldier that worked, but Kinaji had already fired a blow that landed at just the right time to end the set.
The next round of games seemed to start quite differently than before, with Kinaji swapping Snake in favor of Shulk, but RaZe seemed to be in control of almost everything.
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That was until the match froze and it was clear that RaZe’s internet had gone down at the worst possible time.
The organizers gave the player about 10 minutes to return to the lobby, but unfortunately they had to end the tournament with a disqualification – presumably as soon as RaZe’s internet went back online.
My network died during the grand finals and came back seconds after I had done the DQd. I’m very sad 🙁
– FURY | RaZe (@RaZe_SSB) March 21, 2021
He logged on to Twitter shortly afterwards to express his disappointment at the results, understandably.
Kinaji entered the Twitch chat after the DQ to say that he felt he hadn’t really won, but RaZe congratulated his opponent and praised his ability.
What is lucky about all of this is that RaZe was already qualified to join the offline regionals for Oceania, so his defeat mainly resulted in him obtaining a seed inferior to that of Kinaji.
These regional finals are where the Smash World Tour will begin receiving payments, with the world finals offering a grand prize of $ 150,000.
As we continue to navigate the evolving path of online events, problems like these will be inevitable, although something like this happening in the grand finals is extremely rare.