Season 6 Rankings: #50-41

By SBS — May 16, 2022

Welcome to the North American RCS Season 6 Top 50! Each year we look back on the previous competitive season and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. The rankings are created by a community panel that considers data from across the season to construct a comprehensive list that highlights our top players and their accomplishments.

View more articles in the Season Six NA Rankings Series:

Introduction & Methodology
#50-41 (You are here.)
#40-31
#30-21
#20-11
#10-1

50. Death By Hugs

Death By Hugs rings in the Season 6 Top 50 as a returning force to be reckoned with. His season consisted of three online events with wins on players such as Sparx21 and Landkon2. Since the season’s conclusion, we were treated to his performance at Low Tide City, where he put on an aggressive showing with Etalus, placing 7th with wins over CRSDCrusader and ITS A CAT :D.

“NFT son? or Astrology daughter?”

49. Shotti

Shotti is a Forsburn main from New York returning to the Top 50 this season. He collected wins on old school players such as FullStream, Dam Danny and Mr. Olsen with his return to locals at Heat Wave 4 showcasing his best performance of the season. We hope to see Shotti’s Forsburn make appearances and make more upsets in Season 7.

“Shoutouts to 4o4 Esports and Greg for being the best venue and host, you are literally the reason why the rivals scene in Georgia is alive and well.”

48. AdamGMAJ

AdamGMAJ is a Kragg from Georgia that picked up Rivals during the pandemic. AdamGMAJ has quickly leveled up over the years with the help of players such as CakeAssault, soulrifle211, and TacocaT. AdamGMAJ has been able to pick up wins in Season 6 on players such as HKP and PlushyPanic, while also collecting a massive upset over MSB in Southeast Mayhem 2022, a non-RCS event in Georgia. Next season, AdamGMAJ aims to improve his consistency and tournament endurance at multi-day events.

“Your best teacher is your last mistake.”

47. Lucius

Lucius is a New York Ranno known for his methodical neutral and for competing at a high level in full fursuit at local events. Lucius strives for improvement and that drive can be seen following every event he attends. Outside of the game, Lucius is a voice actor and singer with goals to voice a fighting game character in the future.

“Frenchyy is the soulja boy of Rivals” -@wack-Aj

46. Frenchyy

Frenchyy is the founding member of the Tampa Rivals scene (hosting GoTE 4TheKids 7 to open RCS Season 7 this weekend!) and has been playing since 2017. After entering CEO Dreamland, Frenchyy decided he wanted to be more active in the scene and began cultivating what is now one of the most feared regions in the world. It wasn’t until 2020 that Frenchyy set his sights on the Top 50 rankings. Since then, his goal of traveling more and improving at a fundamental level have been at the forefront of his play. We look forward to seeing him at more events in our heavily locals-focused Season 7 kicking off this weekend.

“Per ardua ad astra.”

45. Rift

Rift is the head TO in Georgia and has been hard at work to put his state back on the map by building his community. Throughout Season 6, Rift has utilized his B.S. in Astrophysics to pilot his way onto the Top 50 as the only solo Shovel Knight main to make the list. Rift’s goal is to grow the Georgia Rivals scene and to see even more players from the region break into the rankings.

“The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it?
It’s the next one. Always the next step.”

44. Syzygy

Syzygy is a software engineer in Northern California, on a mission to remind the greater Rivals scene of West Coast talent. Syzygy collected consistent placings throughout the year with a second place finish in the Heat Wave 4 Intermediate bracket, blossoming into a breakout 17th place at Genesis 8. Born and raised in Wisconsin, Syzygy enjoys rock climbing, chess, card games, and is also learning game development on the side. Syzygy’s continued improvement indicates that they’re a force to be reckoned with in Season 7.

“Yeehaw.”

43. Sawtooth

Sawtooth is a former community leader for the Colorado scene, and now one of the most fierce players in Arizona. Sawtooth has been an active member of the community since mid-2017 and has been playing Sylvanos since his reveal at Genesis 5. Season 6 has been a busy time for him, with a focus on competitive growth in a new scene, mindset on the big stage, and content creation to bridge the gap between platform fighter communities. Be on the lookout for Sawtooth in Season 7, as he aims to prove his breakout event at Genesis 8 was no fluke. In the meantime, check out his YouTube and maybe even gain some insight to building a local community of your own.

42. Yeggy

Yeggy is an Ohio Elliana main, known for his devastating punish game and being the top PR member of his region. Yeggy has been playing Rivals for over six years now, and has breached the Top 50 Rankings for the first time. Yeggy’s season consisted of a pretty wide range of results, with victories over players such as Mentos, Death By Hugs, hoppyKnitz, and more. In his Season 6 journey, Yeggy only suffered losses to Top 50 players and proved to be a potent threat to anyone in his path. Yeggy intends to shift his focus more towards content creation and commentating with Season 7 on the horizon.

“Watch me play Dead by Daylight live at ttv/plastic_dinos.”

41. Zora

Zora is an old head in the Arizona scene, wearing several hats as Co-TO, community ambassador, owner of Maypulcord, and a long time AZ PR member. It may be hard to believe for some, but, this is Zora’s first appearance on the Top 50 Rankings. This Season, Zora collected wins on Zora(TK), Mentos, and many more (even collecting a non-RCS win against Koda). His improvement throughout the years has begun to skyrocket his Maypul to all new heights, with experience and an analytical approach to the game colliding with more travel experience than ever before. Zora aims to continue this trend with his goal of traveling the nation and bringing back knowledge to his own local scene. Be on the lookout for this Maypul in Season 7.

Categories: Community, Esports, News | Comments: 9

Season 6 RCS Top 50 – Introduction

By SBS — May 16, 2022

Each year we look back on the previous competitive season and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. Season 6 (September 2021 – April 2022) was an exciting return to form, with our first offline Majors since COVID in 2020 sharing the spotlight with four unique online events.

Our first event back, Riptide, shattered records in both offline attendance and in registration speed – capping our 256 player Rivals singles event just hours after it was announced! Meanwhile online events let players all across the country get involved, with new competitors and old vets alike. The RCS Finals at Genesis 8 saw a delay from its initial January date due to COVID concerns before finding a new home in April and becoming our largest in-person finals to date.

The power rankings this year are a unique case from previous seasons due to the balance of online and offline events in a truly hybrid season. Our adaptation of mixing four online events and three offline events during the post-vaccine period of the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped Season 6 into a truly one-of-a-kind experience. Our wonderful community full of competitors, tournament organizers, volunteers, commentators, and spectators have made Season 6 an incredible ride. Thank you to everyone that has been a part of such a beautiful and complicated era of Rivals.

Before we delve into the rankings this year, here’s an introduction on how the list was formed along with our events list and hidden bosses.

View more articles in the Season Six NA Rankings Series:

- Introduction (You are here.)
- #50-41
- #40-31
- #30-21
- #20-11
- #10-1

Player Qualifications

Our goal for Season 6 initially was to require a minimum of three events in order to be ranked on this year’s Top 50. Given the difficulty of accurately placing players with only two events under their belts, and the variety of available online events, this seemed like the best option. We announced every event that would count towards the rankings at the start of the season, but an unexpected delay to our Finals at Genesis 8 threw a wrench into things.

After some deliberation, it was decided that players who would miss our Finals due to the date change should not miss out on their opportunity to be ranked. The decision was made to lower our required events to two, since players could have been counting on their ability to attend Genesis 8 as their last event.

For the Season 6 RCS Rankings, we only considered players with two or more events from the list below to be eligible for the Rivals Top 50.

Season 6 Ranking Events
Riptide
RCS Hot Springs
Heat Wave 4
RCS Fireworks
RCS Melody
RCS Crystal
Genesis 8

Methodology

This year we brought back the panel system from Seasons 3, 4, and 5 with a bit of a twist to accommodate the hybrid season. Players were ranked based on their best three eligible events, including consideration for their wins and losses to land them at their results. Disqualifications from losers bracket were considered as losses for the player that DQd, while not giving their opponent an artificial bump beyond their better placement. Finally, players who entered the minimum number of events (two) were scrutinized more heavily than others due to the lack of data to go off of. In the end, neither the considerations for DQs, nor the minimum event considerations affected player placements too heavily.

Events carried the same weight potential between online and offline except for the RCS Finals, which was weighted heavier due to the high stakes and the fact that it was our grand finale. While the overall weight of the six majors had the potential to be the same, it was clear that some events were strictly more competitively stacked than others. The weight of events in order are as follows: Genesis 8, Heat Wave 4, Riptide, RCS Crystal, RCS Fireworks, RCS Hot Springs, RCS Melody. In general, the council favored consistency among events above individual peaks.

Once this ranking system was completed, a council made additional adjustments to the order based on head-to-head results, activity, and other data. This group consisted of players and tournament organizers from across the country in order to accurately represent the various regions of North America: Jack Ryan (formerly EDC | Junior), MSB, Nbad, Protagify, SBS, and Sparx21. Additional data was provided by Menace13, who had no input regarding final placements of the Top 50.

We’d like to thank all of our panelists for dedicating their time to putting this together for the community, as well as Tax1k for our sleek Season 6 steampunk player cards, and CyberHex for additional graphic design support.

Hidden Bosses

Players given the title of Hidden Boss were recognized by the panel as major threats to tournaments this season that just didn’t quite meet the requirements to be ranked.

Bullets, Halite, Lattim, Proux, Squanto

Categories: Announcement, Community, Esports, News | Comments: 1

Patch 2.1.2.1 Out Now on Switch!

By SBS — April 20, 2022

Our major update for the Workshop Four-Pack is out now on Nintendo Switch. In addition to the latest bugfixes, this update also includes the latest balance updates for the four newcomers. Check out the balance changes for versions 2.1.1.0 and 2.1.2.0 that have been added to Switch from previously released updates for PC.

Switch Bugfixes and Improvements

- Entering Abyss mode after reaching level 10 with a character will no longer crash the game.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when adding/removing joycons or other controllers in the console menu.
- The stats menu should no longer cause a crash when scrolled through.
- Portrait and other various menu and victory art has been updated to correct odd shader behavior and/or stray pixels.
- Multiple tutorial improvements made for the four newcomers. Improved descriptions, controls, and reduced difficulty of some steps.
- Fixed multiple rune and gameplay related issues in Abyss mode.
- Fixed odd animations when moonwalking as Olympia, Pomme, Mollo, or Hodan.
- Fixed Olympia, Pomme, Mollo, and Hodan not getting an animation when you unlock their milestone.
- The Random Stage button should now be able to choose from any stage skins you’ve unlocked.
- Closed up a gap in collision boxes on Neo Blazing Rail that let players go under the main ground.
- Fixed dash dancing desyncing replays.
- Multiple small visual bugs in menus and gameplay have been fixed.
- Fixed Kragg’s pillar persisting under the bottom blastzone.
- Addressed various other bugs.

Mollo balance changes included in this Switch patch can be found at 2.1.1.0 and 2.1.2.0.

- Adjusted how Mollo bombs blow up in his hand, which also fixed a crash. (The fuse does not tick down during hitpause if it triggers this way, so moves that modify hitpause afterwards like Bash don’t desync the bomb’s timer.)
- Bomb and explosion readability has been improved.
- Super armor now armors through Mollo’s flashbang, but will be put into the same amount of hitpause as the flashbang normally does.
- Bug Fix: Fixed the Flashbanged double-visioned effect not displaying correctly.
- Bug Fix: Fixed various issues with Ori bashing Mollo bombs.

Hodan balance changes included in this Switch patch can be found at 2.1.1.0 and 2.1.2.0.

- Increased BKB of Hodan’s Ustrong grab hitboxes: 0.1 -> 4. While this doesn’t really affect the move’s balance (slam hitboxes have their own BKB), this fixes crouch-cancelling it on platforms.
- Things that destroy projectiles (Vince/flowers/etc.) will now destroy sweatwhirls instead of only destroying their hitbox.
- Fixed Hodan keeping a grabbed sweatwhirl after respawning.
- Fixed Hodan’s O rune not being able to consume fire on some strongs.

Pomme balance changes included in this Switch patch can be found at 2.1.1.0 and 2.1.2.0.

- Bug Fix: Updated Pomme’s portrait colors to match shaders better. (Also got rid of a red pixel on her custom color sprite.)

Olympia balance changes included in this Switch patch can be found at 2.1.1.0 and 2.1.2.0.

- Olympia’s crystal now has an additional color option in the custom colors menu.
- Adjusted Olympia’s tutorial so hitting bair into another aerial should be easier.
- Bug Fix: Olympia’s walljump should no longer cause a crash.
- Bug Fix: Olympia’s crystalized effect should now use consistent colors instead of blinking between swapped colors.
- Bug Fix: Mollo’s flashbang no longer causes Olympia to zoom offstage if she armors a flashbang.
- Bug Fix: Fixed a bug allowing Ori to bash Olympia’s Crystal repeatedly.

Categories: Announcement, Community, Development, News, Patch notes | Comments: 6

Get Ready for the RCS Finals at Genesis 8

By George — March 22, 2022

We’re just about a month out for the Rivals Championship Series finals and we can’t wait to return to the big stage! The historic finals event was on hold due to COVID concerns, but things are launching back into action on April 15th – 17th where our Season 6 Champion will be crowned.

This event has tons in store and plenty to look forward to for players and spectators alike. In addition to a player being crowned the season 6 champion, they’ll also be getting the lion’s share of our massive compendium pot bonus – currently sitting at over $12,000 dollars thanks to our amazing community.

Make Your Finals Preparations!

1. For those planning to watch from home make sure to stay tuned for the final stream schedule coming soon. We’ll be announcing the stream schedule along with commentators in the coming weeks. Due to the date change, we have also had several commentator slots open. If you’d like a chance to do commentary for Rivals at Genesis 8 please apply via our commentary and volunteer form.
2. For those attendees and competitors coming in person – please double check your travel information, event registration, and hotel reservations to ensure everything goes smoothly. Due to the date change we urge you to double check that your reservations are all set for the correct dates: April 15th – 17th.
3. Familiarize yourself with the rules. This year will be the first year that a finals event has special character legality rules. A new section has been added to account for the Workshop Character Pack:

It was decided before Genesis 8 took place that due to the Workshop Pack release date – Olympia, Hodan, Pomme, and Mollo would not be legal by default at Genesis 8. Upon review we have decided to uphold this ruling even in light of Genesis 8’s date change. However, in the interest of allowing willing players to play the full cast – Olympia, Hodan, Pomme, and Mollo may be played by Gentleman’s Rule. This means that these characters may be chosen provided both players consent to their use. Once players agree that any one of the four new characters listed above are usable during a set, all characters are legally allowed to be used from then on for the entirety of that set. As with any gameplay rules violation, it is the player’s responsibility to stop the game immediately if an opponent is breaking the rules (e.g. playing Olympia, Hodan, Pomme, or Mollo without the consent of both players).

Get ready for the return to offline events with our biggest stakes and stage of the season with the Rivals Championship Series Finals at Genesis 8. We can’t wait to see everyone there!

Categories: Community, Esports, News | Comments: 1

Workshop Character Pack Release Date

By SBS — January 31, 2022

The time has come! Last April, we announced the inclusion of four community-created characters into the base cast of Rivals of Aether. After an intense year of development we’ve worked internally, with the original creators, and with our closed beta team to finally bring these characters to life in our next free update on February 3rd, 2022 on PC and Nintendo Switch.

What’s Included

Our latest FREE update.

The workshop character pack is filled to the brim with new content. Each of our four new characters come with their own stages, music, and Abyss Runes right out of the gate. Players familiar with their Steam Workshop versions will find updated kits, animations, sound effects, and much more.

Players who already own Rivals of Aether on Steam or Switch will automatically receive the Four-Pack update for free.

Check out that fancy new Character Select Screen!

Mollo

The Smoldering Rage from the future is here! Mollo is taking a break from the rebellion against the treacherous Loxodont to utilize his explosive arsenal of weapons in an all new battlefield. Item management and stage control are key to mastering this moth, as he can do serious damage from a distance, or up close and personal.

Hodan

The Hot Springs Sage cannonballs into Rivals of Aether! Hodan uses his expert technical abilities to empower himself when the time is right. Build charge by holding a downward directional input, then unleash the beast with powerful secondary versions of key moves.

Pomme

The Superstar Songstress has arrived on the scene and is ready to put on a show! Pomme’s unique understanding of sound waves allows her to quite literally float through the air, making her a potent threat in even the hardest to reach corners of the battlefield.

Olympia

The Amethyst Fist puts her deep understanding of martial arts to the test as she brawls her way through Aether! Olympia is a fundamental warrior with a clear game-plan of hitting her opponents hard and making each hit count. Stand your ground and strike fear into your opponents, because this one is going to hurt.

Rollback Netcode

Finally for those playing on Steam, we are excited to announce that Rollback Netcode is leaving our open beta branch to officially become part of the base game with the February 3rd update. Experience the Workshop Character Pack in all its glory with the launch of the long awaited rollback netcode update on PC.

We hope you check out the newest additions to Rivals of Aether this Thursday on Switch and Steam. Thank you to our wonderful community for being with us on this journey. These new characters would not have been possible without the fantastic Workshop community that has blossomed over the years. We hope everyone will have as much fun with them as we have.

Categories: Announcement, Community, Development, News | Comments: 14

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