Ban Criteria List: What it should/should not take to get something banned

[JackieRabbit5]

So following the MK ban decision and the "What does it take to be banned?" thread, I think for the sake of the entire smash community we should make a list of specific things that it should and should not take to get something banned. Hope this is the right place for this heh, may want to advertise to Brawl players too.

I will now list the elements to be accordingly placed. Keep in mind this is just generally for a particular character, stage, item, setting, or even single technique, or whatever part of the game in question. Some may even need to be split, combined, or retitled. I'll include definitions too for clarity, these can also be argued.

Overcentralization- the whole metagame is practically based around how to beat it or do well against it.
Dominance- it causes the most wins (and money gained).
Overuse- it is used mostly all of the time, compared to others.
Diversity- if by not banning it similar things aren't used as much making the game less interesting, or on the other hand if by banning it, it would actually lessen the diversity unnecessarily. Either way this criteria is for if you think diversity is important.
Majority rule- most players agree about banning it.
Inability to counterpick- if it has no agreed reliable way to counter.
Hard evidence- would be like any relevant frame data or other empirical, unarguable, nontheoretical backing evidence.
Staying true to the original game- the idea that we shouldn't change much otherwise its like a different game altogether, and banning would go against this.
The hacked game option- the idea that we can just change something in the code of the game itself to fix any problems of something considered banworthy, resulting in an alternate version.
Maintaining a consistent ruleset- the idea that we should pick something and stick to it to prevent confusion, too many different rulesets, or too many arbitrary decisions.
Sirlin competitive gaming theory- the idea of playing to win and the problem of the scrub mindset, especially in a ban decision.
Randomness- the thing makes luck far too much of a deciding factor in who wins when it should be skill.
Enforcement- whether it would be hard to enforce the ban, or if it even should be. Maybe just better left to TO's.
Effect on community- how the thing may negatively effect the competitive community, and how banning might improve it or just make things worse; all pros, midlevel, newbie players, and spectators alike. Can be hard to predict.
Proban burden of proof- need for proban people to prove beyond any doubt that said thing needs to be banned.
Imbalance- in a perfect world the game should be balanced as possible so skill is the deciding factor and not just the choice of the thing, and if the thing skews that balance and can't be corrected otherwise with other rules, it should be considered for banning. Some of the best competitive games offer online patch updates for the purposes of correcting specific imbalanced things, but since smash doesn't we have to work with what we have.
Proper effort and time put into ban discussion- pretty self explanatory heh. The need for a good, long discussion over the ban issue.
Multiple criteria need- the idea that any of these criteria alone may not warrant a ban, but many together do.

Actual brokenness- ?? hard to declare on its own (unless its pretty obvious) because of so many factors and theoretical arguments. As such maybe impossible to add, otherwise it would definitely be good ban criteria.


I'll take suggestions for any other banning criteria, we should try to include everything for the sake of completion, any idea is good. And we should discuss how they should be sorted into these categories, i'll start with some of the obvious ones and put the rest in other for now:

GOOD/IMPORTANT BAN CRITERIA (what it should take/should be considered in getting something banned)
-Randomness
-Hard evidence
-Enforcement
-Proper effort and time put into ban discussion
-Maintaining a consistent ruleset
-Proban burden of proof
-Multiple criteria need

BAD/UNIMPORTANT BAN CRITERIA (what it should NOT take/should NOT be considered in getting something banned)
-Staying true to the original game
-Overuse

OTHER (unsure, inbetween, or could be considered either)
-Overcentralization
-Dominance
-Majority rule
-Diversity
-Inability to counterpick
-The hacked game option
-Sirlin competitive gaming theory
-Effect on community
-Imbalance


All this may be a matter of personal opinion but I think it would help to try and discuss. And actually it may be better to just order them from best to worst ban criteria if its too hard to categorize them.. Although if we want a more definitive way to decide what to ban it would help to categorize them like this. If nothing else I think this will help the collective community organize the common thoughts that keep being brought up in ban debates.

You can propose your own way to categorize them but please try to justify your choices. Like I put Randomness into good because I think we have all already agreed that items for example are terrible for competition, because anyone can just collect an item that randomly spawns close to them and use it for a lucky win when skill should decide. And I put Hard evidence into good because its like the only sure thing we have in a ban discussion.

Also maybe once we think we have all the possible ban criteria it would be helpful to discuss each element one by one if you think that's a good idea, or whatever works best. And like if one of the criteria is agreed to be slightly bad but mostly good then it can still go into good, unless its too debatable.

Keep in mind the elements in the good/important criteria category may not necessarily lead to banning something, but are just important to consider (for example Maintaining a consistent ruleset is more likely to lead towards not banning something actually). The list may need to be restructured around what leads to a ban if the element is inherent within the thing up for ban discussion tbh. Still contemplating, may just need to rephrase the criteria points. Or maybe the good/important criteria can be split?


tl;dr: Please try to read, but lets think of ban criteria and how to sort them as good or bad, justifying and discussing these choices. (well maybe not necessarily good or bad, but important or unimportant)

 

[Mew2King]

It's just going to come down to who is in self proclaimed power and votes anyway, so most of that doesn't matter at all

 

[t3h Icy]

You're extremely depressing.

 

[hotdogturtle]

It's just going to come down to who is in self proclaimed power and votes anyway, so most of that doesn't matter at all

Aaaaand topic over.

In reality I don't think that there's anything in Melee that needs to be discussed for banning, or else it would have been banned already. Besides, nothing in Melee has been argued for banning nearly as much as Meta Knight in Brawl (not even Wobbling).

 

[Mew2King]

I'm sorry but this realization came to me recently and that is seriously how it works. In general, most things are a popularity contest. If you ask 10 people if they should ban brinstar or not, and 8 of those 10 use it themselves in counterpicks, then they are going to vote to keep it legal. Very little is about what things should be, compared to the amount of personal bias that most people have for themselves or threats of attendance from other people that won't go unless you do as they wish.

 

[christianizcool]

I'm sorry but this realization came to me recently and that is seriously how it works. In general, most things are a popularity contest. If you ask 10 people if they should ban brinstar or not, and 8 of those 10 use it themselves in counterpicks, then they are going to vote to keep it legal. Very little is about what things should be, compared to the amount of personal bias that most people have for themselves or threats of attendance from other people that won't go unless you do as they wish.

Reminds me of Rawls' philosophical concept "Veil of Ignorance". He says people vote and make policies in whatever way advances them the most.. but the veil of ignorance is the idea society would be just if everyone was unaware of their position in society, and made decisions based on ignorance of their role.

Sadly, it can never work ;_;

 

[SamusPoop]

I'm glad someone wrote this up however I think you should go into broken more. Fox on hyrule rule is broken other than maybe vs fox and falco maybe even a few others or hiding on the bottom platform bowser waiting to sheild an air move to up-B and get a lead is it's counter. but a single hit means you lose both sides which can ALSO be compared to higher level gameplay when the control/combos start like falco dittos.

Also some stges are only broken in some match-ups making it only broken in say only 30 match-ups out of 676. How much should we care about the whole game or just the main metagame?

Also Mew2King the more people aware the more likly it will be overruled. : )

 

[Massive]

Responding to the actual thread,
I'm going to argue tooth and nail that "Majority Rule" and "Staying true to the original game" are bad criteria.

The Majority is not always right, many times they're biased *******s. For example, Peach players are in the minority. There are actually not that many Peach players active on the scene right now. If the majority of people who don't play peach overrule the people who do, it can severely reduce their ability to play properly. They could ban bobombs or mummy turnips trying to reduce the randomness of the character, and it would only serve to hurt the few people who play and empower the majority who do not. Losing game diversity is not something we want, if anything we want more.

Staying true to the original game is a joke anyway. Melee was an accident. Sakurai's competitive gaming condom broke and melee emerged as a decent fighting game. We cannot use this as a criteria unless we're talking about restoring items and unbanning flat zone.

 

[JackieRabbit5]

Hmm good point hotdog, maybe this should be moved to like Brawl Metagame Data & Ruleset Discussion afterall heh...although Melee players would still be welcome to contribute. Agreed or other ideas on this?

Also Mew2King the more people aware the more likly it will be overruled. : )

He's right M2K, raising of awareness could really help.

And I think organizing the discussion in a clear framework like this is needed. And its not like we even have to talk about the banworthiness of the specific thing (unless when used for examples), just deciding what are legitimate arguments to use in a ban discussion. This should help avoid too much flaming and promote more reason.


@Massive: yeah i agree about "Staying true to the original game" being bad criteria, especially if the game's not meant to be perfectly competitive in the first place. On the flipside there's the idea that we should try to make and use like our own hacked versions of the game (like Brawl+, Balanced Brawl, etc) but many would say thats going too far because how can we come to consensus on every little thing?, and besides its something Nintendo wouldn't approve of so no chance of much growth or sponsors. I could also add that as bad ban criteria.
EDIT: added "The hacked game option" criteria. Now that I think about it actually, if its just a minor change (like removing tripping in Brawl) that could be arguable.. I'm not sure for now so i'll leave it in other.

I may have to argue majority rule though. If most people agree then it should at least be considered because then how else can you make a decision? Its the most democratic way. And a lot of people may complain about Sheik for example in Melee, but I think if you actually put it to a poll there wouldn't be a majority that would want her to go so far as being banned. Yes the majority can be, but isn't necessarily just ignorant people banding together or deciding what should be banned on a whim. If effort has been put into discussing the ban over time then the majority has to count for something at least.

Also thanks for mentioning Diversity, I may have to add that.

 

[Mokumo]

Ever since I saw the thread about what it takes to be banned it made me think about street fighter. now I know a lot of people here don't like involving SF on this website, but I think it would be interesting/useful to mention how Akuma is banned in SF2 turbo. Unless there's a conspiracy like what M2K is talking about in the SF community as well, it seems that it was decided unanimously by the top players that the character was simply broken as ****.

I took this from the SF wiki:
"In Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Akuma is banned in U.S. tournaments. This is because, as David Sirlin writes, "Most characters in that game cannot beat Akuma. I don’t mean it’s a tough match—I mean they cannot ever, ever, ever, ever win. Akuma is 'broken' in that his air fireball move is something the game simply wasn’t designed to handle. He is not merely the best character in the game, but is at least ten times better than other characters. This case is so extreme that all top players in America immediately realized that all tournaments would be Akuma vs. Akuma only, and so the character was banned with basically no debate and has been ever since." In Japan, Akuma is not officially banned, but there is what is called a soft ban. In other words, all top players in Japan agree not to play Akuma without there being any official enforcement of this agreement. However, on the remake Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, Akuma is toned down to ensure he's more "balanced"; his "flaws" like the very low defense clause reappear in this game and he has a much weaker Shun Goku Satsu as the only super move available (it's worth noting that he didn't have a super move in his original appearance Super Street Fighter II Turbo, but he was so powerful that these weren't considered a weakness). His air fireball forces him to bounce back. Some top players claim that he is still broken, claiming that Akuma has far too many devastating setups, especially with setting up the Shun Goku Satsu. It is still currently in debate whether or not Akuma is still broken or balanced. However, Akuma is banned in tournaments in Super Street Fighter II HD Remix while but is not banned in Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike or Super Street Fighter IV."
http://streetfighter.wikia.com/wiki/Akuma

While I think there are some characters in this game can be broken, I think we've limited them with certain rules, the banning of stages, and other limitations. Despite that, matchups like vs fox falco or sheik aren't totally unplayable, it's just hard.

 

[Kal]

Overcentralization- the whole metagame is practically based around how to beat it or do well against it.

There's nothing wrong with being focused on how to beat a single strategy. If we had started off by banning Sheik in 2003, we would have been justified on "overcentralization." Now, Sheik is clearly not broken, and instead is regarded as difficult to start off with because most players have learned the matchup against Sheik.

Just because there's a community fixation on some issue doesn't mean the issue itself is worth banning.

Dominance- it causes the most wins (and money gained).

Unless a game is perfectly balanced, there will necessarily be something generating the most wins. As a rule of thumb you assume things are unbroken until proven otherwise, i.e., that they don't destroy the game's balance. Until we've proven that this strategy is unbeatable, and that its dominance will severely impact the game, then everyone banning it is basically just agreeing "screw finding a counter strategy, let's get rid of him."

Overuse- it is used mostly all of the time, compared to others.

Not relevant really. If everyone used a mediocre strategy all the time, we wouldn't ban it. You need to separate the community's actions from the game itself in the same way you'd separate a religion's teachings from the actions of its followers.

Majority rule- most players agree about banning it.

No.

Inability to counterpick- if it has no agreed reliable way to counter.

This ties in with other concepts. It could just be a character strength, but not an indication of brokenness.

Hard evidence- would be like any relevant frame data or other empirical, unarguable, nontheoretical backing evidence.

This is more of a "meta" question: what justifies the criteria we use in banning? Regardless, hard evidence is a must; you can theorycraft your way to a lot of conclusions. Until it becomes proven true by means of hard evidence, it should be dismissed.

Staying true to the original game- the idea that we shouldn't change much otherwise its like a different game altogether, and banning would go against this.

To a degree, this is a sound concept. Not so much "staying true" as "maintaining a consistent ruleset." If we're coming up with contrived, arbitrary rules, then we're doing a bad job, essentially. So it's not "let's keep developer's intent in mind," because we all agree that Sakurai can eat it a ****. It's "let's try and avoid having 40 different 'standard' rulesets for the game."

Not changing rulesets too much in general- the idea that we should pick something and stick to it to prevent confusion or too much unnecessary heated discussion, and banning would go against this.

If you want to avoid changing rulesets too often because that would suggest a fickle standard for bans, then I would agree. But I don't think avoiding bans simply because we're doing it too often is necessarily a good idea.

Also, I couldn't care less about heated discussion. Discussion is important when you make a ruleset: when you want to ban something, you explain why it's broken, and you see what others have to say. In some sense, the more people agree with you, the better your argument, and thus the more likely your ban is to be "correct."

Randomness- the thing makes luck far too much of a deciding factor in who wins when it should be skill.

Opinions vary on this. Some players say "leave as is" because there is no real argument for banning randomness. Others say "if it's effect is too large, we should ban it." Others still take it farther and want to eliminate all forms of in-game randomness.

Myself, I don't see randomness as inherently bad. If the random event can be accounted for (i.e., Brinstar's lava and Mute City's car) in a realistic way, then I see no reason to ban it. On the other hand, something like falling explosive capsules is not something you can really account for, so I would lean towards items-off.

Enforcement- whether it would be hard to enforce the ban, or if it even should be. Maybe just better left to TO's.

If you can't enforce a rule, there's no point in having it. "No camping" would be impossible to enforce because there is no rigorous definition of the term. Even if we had a TO that were capable of analyzing every set at his tournament in depth, the TO would still be at a loss for whether something was truly "camping."

Effect on community- how the thing may negatively effect the competitive community, and how banning could improve it; all pros, midlevel, newbie players, and spectators alike. Can be hard to predict.

I've explained before my problem with banning things to try and make scrubs happier. This includes spectators. However, in general I feel that, if something is worth banning, it's worth banning. Similarly, if it's not worth banning, it's not worth banning. I don't feel we should consider how the community feels about it .

I also enjoy the way you've worded this in favor of an MK-ban "and how banning could improve it." Banning often has a negative effect on the community, especially one which is no longer receiving new members.

Proban burden of proof- need for proban people to prove beyond any doubt that said thing needs to be banned.

This is just common sense. If you don't want burden of proof to be on the people who want to ban something, then at my next tournament I'll simply ban:

1) Everything except Marth

Moreover, even if it were somehow feasible to list all of the not-ban-worthy things, you would have to ask how you would prove something is not broken. How do you make such an argument?

Imbalance- in a perfect world the game should be balanced as possible so skill is the deciding factor and not just the choice of the thing, and if the thing skews that balance and can't be corrected otherwise with other rules, it should be considered for banning. Some of the best competitive games offer online patch updates for the purposes of correcting specific imbalanced things, but since smash doesn't we have to work with what we have.

Many, many competitive gamers hate online patches for game-balance, and for good reason. Even Blizzard, our sort of white-knight of balance-patches for Brood War, has somewhat screwed the pooch for SCII.

Regardless, balance is a concept which needs to be looked at, but only if the gameplay breaks as a result of it. If the game would necessarily boil down to Meta Knight vs. Meta Knight, were Meta Knight legal, then he should be banned. But a simple imbalance problem is not something to worry about.

Moreover, you can take the line of logic that imbalance creates problems and use it to ban a lot of ****.

Actual brokenness- ?? hard to declare on its own (unless its pretty obvious) because of so many factors and theoretical arguments. As such maybe impossible to add, otherwise it would definitely be good ban criteria.

There really is no other worthy criterion. With every other criterion you're forcing people around you to adhere to rules which are arbitrary and don't make the game worse in any well-defined way. Yes, it's hard to declare something broken, but that's the point: we want to be absolutely sure something is worth banning before we do so.

 

[Massive]

I may have to argue majority rule though. If most people agree then it should at least be considered because then how else can you make a decision? Its the most democratic way. And a lot of people may complain about Sheik for example in Melee, but I think if you actually put it to a poll there wouldn't be a majority that would want her to go so far as being banned. Yes the majority can be, but isn't necessarily just ignorant people banding together or deciding what should be banned on a whim. If effort has been put into discussing the ban over time then the majority has to count for something at least.

What you describe isn't a majority.

People will often have personal agendas in their votes, and many times they will convince their friends to back them up, not based on the quality of the idea but the fact that they're friends and they have each other's back. Even a minute opposition should be given substantial weight, decisions made to the contrary of a moderate sized minority cause people to become alienated, ultimately shrinking our community (sort of like what's happening in the brawl community right now).

 

[Mew2King]

i just lost to vinnies ICs twice this weekend in 2 close sets =/ I guess we ban ICs now? do you see how redundant it is

the truth is, all banning stuff comes down to is votes and popularity (or in other cases more specifically, the people in power, even if they don't deserve that power). If someone like me, ally nairo anti lived in europe instead of EC, ppl in USA wouldn't want to ban MK. doing that helps the majority of people, by removing us as threats, but it's for all the wrong reasons. But if you think about it from a personal standpoint of each individual person, of course it is in their best interests, for most people, to vote that way, even if they don't care that much at all, it still helps them to vote that way

"should we ban the best character which beats your favorite character?"

what do you think most people will do?

I'm sure this same concept applies to A LOT of things

 

[the_CAM_factor]

the minority need a say regardless of the situation. we are an old enough community to at least respect each others beliefs and let them speak their mind. im all for smaller tourneys trying new rule sets and experimenting with how they work. change can be a good thing.

 

[Mew2King]

brawl community is not a mature

 

[JackieRabbit5]

Whoa k lots to discuss now heh.

You make many good points Kal. For now lets see what I can agree with.
Overuse- yeah just because its overused doesn't necessarily mean its the best. By itself this would be bad ban criteria.
Hard evidence- yep already agreed its important, and even if its like a "meta" question like you said, I still want to include it for the sake of completeness.
Randomness- good point, it does have a lot to do with degree, but yeah I think it's important to consider anyway in a ban decision.
Enforcement- true true. I'll put to important ban criteria then, because before banning something you have to consider whether it can even really be enforced.
Proban burden of proof- yeah thats kind of a given so I'll add it to good/important. I just want to point out the problem is when standards are too high or that any proof is denied without proper consideration.

About your point on Staying true to the original game, maintaining a consistent ruleset is more in line with Not changing rulesets too much in general, at least with how I meant it. I could retitle and redefine that as such actually..

Also, I couldn't care less about heated discussion. Discussion is important when you make a ruleset: when you want to ban something, you explain why it's broken, and you see what others have to say. In some sense, the more people agree with you, the better your argument, and thus the more likely your ban is to be "correct."

I agree here. The problem is when it degenerates into flame wars. What you say after almost supports the Majority rule which I thought you disagreed with though so you may want to clarify.
Hmm I could also add "Proper effort and time put into ban discussion" as a criteria.

I also enjoy the way you've worded this in favor of an MK-ban "and how banning could improve it." Banning often has a negative effect on the community, especially one which is no longer receiving new members.

My bad, I don't mean to be biased at all. I've reworded the Effect on community criteria now to include the negative effect possibility.

And so I noticed you dismissed a lot of the proposed criteria, but you didn't address the point about Multiple criteria need which I was thinking was one of the biggest points.. I'm interested in knowing what you think about that.

I think Overcentralization, Dominance, Majority rule, Inability to counterpick, Effect on community, Imbalance will require more discussion or other opinions, just to be sure we can all mostly agree.

@Massive
Well if a majority is for a ban decision but we decide not to ban, wouldn't that mean the minority wins? Is that fair?

@M2K
Oh yeah that IC chaingrabbing infinite **** can spark some bad debate too heh...and MK is like one of few best possible counters to that which I suppose would be unfortunate to lose


EDIT: Hmm we may need to rephrase the categories or the criteria points themselves so its a little less confusing what leads to ban and what doesn't heh. (Some don't really lead either way, they're just important to consider) Any ideas?
Well I rephrased it a little and i think it works as is.

 

[Kal]

I agree here. The problem is when it degenerates into flame wars. What you say after almost supports the Majority rule which I thought you disagreed with though so you may want to clarify.

I said "in some sense." If you want me to be less ambiguous, then what I really mean is:

When more people agree with your argument, it suggests a better argument. You have to look at it case-by-case. In the case of Brawl, the argument being agreed with has nothing to do with what should going into a ban in the first place.

And so I noticed you dismissed a lot of the proposed criteria, but you didn't address the point about Multiple criteria need which I was thinking was one of the biggest points.. I'm interested in knowing what you think about that.

All I recall dismissing is the "majority rules" criterion. The "multiple criteria" point was easily your weakest point, because all it suggests is that no single objective criterion can be used to prove brokenness.

Well no ****.

I think Overcentralization, Dominance, Majority rule, Inability to counterpick, Effect on community, Imbalance will require more discussion or other opinions, just to be sure we can all mostly agree.

You haven't really addressed any of my points you disagree with. Half of the criteria you've mentioned basically go hand-in-hand or are almost equivalent: brokenness, "overcentralization," and balance are roughly all the same concept when it comes to banning.

You still haven't made any real case for majority rule. All you've said is that it's democratic. Because, as we know, people never vote for reprehensible ****.

 

[the_CAM_factor]

brawl community is not a mature

i think the melee community knows that

 

[Masmasher@]

Damn m2k you need to watch 12 angry men or something

 

[Oracle]

Out of what's listed, the only real criteria for a ban are overcentralization and randomness. Most of your other points are offshoots of that. The problem with anything other than those is that they end up getting bogged down into opinions. A common example of this is how many have called metaknight broken, or say that he breaks the game, with no concrete evidence because concrete evidence cannot be provided to support something that subjective.

And even then, people interpret overcentralization loosely. Overcentralization means that your options to do well in that meta are to a) play the overcentralized character or b) play a counter to the overcentralized character (and in some games b isn't even an option). I don't know much about brawl but (correct me if i'm wrong) the metagame doesn't seem overcentralized on MK (in that there are a handful of other viable characters).

 

[JackieRabbit5]

I said "in some sense." If you want me to be less ambiguous, then what I really mean is:

When more people agree with your argument, it suggests a better argument. You have to look at it case-by-case. In the case of Brawl, the argument being agreed with has nothing to do with what should going into a ban in the first place.

So I believe what you're saying is that majority isn't always justified. This may be true, but for the sake of making a decision I think majority is important. And like I said to Massive, are you saying the minority should win out? Because that doesn't seem fair either.. Maybe we need to more clearly define Majority rule.

All I recall dismissing is the "majority rules" criterion. The "multiple criteria" point was easily your weakest point, because all it suggests is that no single objective criterion can be used to prove brokenness.

Well no ****.

Well I guess I meant refuted instead of dismissed. But so you would agree then though that even if some of the points you refute such as dominance alone are bad/unimportant criteria, coupled with other points they can make good/important ones?
If you can agree with that then I would be willing to put more into the bad/unimportant category.
I guess I'll go ahead and move Multiple criteria need into good now then too, because it is pretty obvious and necessary.


And yeah I know I haven't addressed everything you disagreed with. I just have my doubts because I think when those things are taken to the extreme they can be a big problem. And I just want to see more discussion from others on it, particularly more people more in tune with like the MK ban issue. I may ask a mod to move this thread to Brawl Metagame Discussion sooner or later..

Its also true that many of the criteria are interconnected, but I just want to try and distinguish every little point to be clear.


@winged angel
Right good point, Actual brokenness is too subjective most of the time and hard to support with concrete evidence because of that. If only this was the only criteria we needed and could practically use, but since it isn't we have to consider all these other factors.

So if the thing truly means the only way to do well against it is to pick the same or pick a counter to it (if there even is one), you think you'd agree with Overcentralization being good/important criteria then?

What about the Inability to counterpick criteria then. It kind of ties into Imbalance in that for every advantage there should be at least a little disadvantage. And Kal's point that it could be just a character strength, well lets take this for example, a heavy character may live longer but can also be more susceptible to combos because of fastfalling. Therein lies a chance to counter it. And even if he doesn't have that weakness as a result of being heavy, some other attribute should at least make up for it a little like being slow. If the thing picked has all positive attributes and little to no negatives, shouldn't that be considered for banning? How else could you beat it then without fighting fire with fire? I guess my point is winning should not just include straight up skill, but some strategy. And when the thing ruins that strategy, its just not good. Thats why even if you have amazing tech skill, it doesn't guarantee you'll win without the mindgames.

 

[Kal]

My biggest problem is that your post isn't well thought-out. I feel like there should be categories. For example, a list like:

What Should Be Banned
In order for something to be banned, the ban must be

• Enforceable
• Discrete
• Warranted

In order to prove something should be banned, you must provide

• Hard evidence, particularly tournament results
• Explanation for why this hard evidence suggests brokenness
• Theory which explains why said thing is broken

is much better in my opinion than simply listing a bunch of things, some of which are interconnected. For example, you could write:

• Warranted - In order for a ban to be warranted, it must fall under any of the following
  
  1. Dominance - the strategy dominates too heavily
  2. Randomness - the thing to be banned skews results too often

But simply piling a list of things, some of which are equivalent (I would say that, if you mean the correct thing by "overcentralization," then it's equivalent to "dominance"), is not the right way to go about creating a list of criteria for what should be banned. Your post feels very rushed and unpolished.

Right good point, Actual brokenness is too subjective most of the time and hard to support with concrete evidence because of that. If only this was the only criteria we needed and could practically use, but since it isn't we have to consider all these other factors.

For many people, brokenness is the collective set of qualifications for ban-worthiness. Your post just suggests a misunderstanding of what it means to be broken.

It's like people are *****ing because requiring something to be broken in order to ban it ends up allowing gameplay they don't personally like. That's the ****ing point. Responding with things like "yeah, but if we only banned **** that was broken we'd still have Mute City and Pokéfloats" just reiterates my point: this notion of "majority-preference = law" can eat a ****.

 

[JackieRabbit5]

Yeah true it feels like the ban criteria could be organized better... I'll try to think of something and will take any suggestions.

But at least with the list we have a simple framework of discussion with all the different thoughts/points clearly noted and distinguished so people don't just keep bringing the same things up over and over again like its new, and debate can logically move forward.

 

[Kal]

In truth, most of the stuff has already been discussed in way too much depth all over the internet. SWF excluded, there's obviously Sirlin's Website.

Frankly, M2K's point is more or less correct: the majority mandates how we do things. The only question is to what extent. This is why I continually try to teach people about playing to win, in the hopes that they'll be less scrubby and learn to actually play the game. We can't just ban things because we dislike them. That's the scrub's way. There are different types of skills tested in different ways, and simple preference of one type over the other does not necessitate a ban. A winner accepts this and learns to overcome his obstacles by whatever means necessary; if your opponent is beating you with some strategy, you learn to counter it. But a scrub denies the legitimacy of the strategy by virtue of a subjective notion of "true skill" not defined by the game itself.

However, because I'm willing to tell all of Texas to **** off if they don't like my ruleset, the majority does not effect my tournaments, generally. So I think an adequate response from M2K would be to host his own tournaments and to get his own anti-ban circuit or committee going.

Going back to your list: I just think you should try and organize it better. I don't know if you're legitimately inquisitive about whether the MK ban is justified, or if you're simply looking to reconcile the ban with the idea that the URC's decision-making is not entirely scrubby, but either way I think the topic-post was made hastily. Simply listing a bunch of concepts won't lead to in-depth discussion.

Take a look at this post. In it, KishPrime explicitly states what he's going for and explains the logical consequences: he states three criteria for banning and shows what should be banned because of it. You can debate the criteria (almost necessarily, the criteria chosen for any standard will be arbitrary, but this does not mean that the standard itself is arbitrary; keep this in mind), but the point is that the thread he made with regards to the ruleset and criteria is well thought-out and well organized, and I feel that is part of what allowed for discussion. Regardless, you can use it as a good example for how to reorganize your topic-post.

 

[Oracle]

@Jackie Rabbit
Yeah, inability to counter pick falls under overcentralization as well. If there is only one option to do well with, then that is because there are not significant counters to it. If there were, then it wouldn't be the only option.

Thoughts on majority rule:
Majority rule is dumb because the majority of people who play are uneducated about the game, melee included. The only time majority rule should be considered is when a huge section of the community threatens to stop playing or attending tournaments, and even then, come on it's melee. Don't even pretend like you could ever stop playing.

In bigger gaming communities they have huge organizations like MLG, as well as a large number of incredible, experienced hosts for large tournaments. As a community I think we're really blessed to have an organization like the MBR to help set a course of action.

 

[Smasher89]

As a community I think we were 3-5 years ago really blessed to have an organization like the MBR to help set a course of action.

Since then this unmotivated(or the strategy debate to win, not play in the game strategy) bans has happened in banning stages.


Earlier had a wierd idea about that that strategy was applied by CF players (since I´ve seen quite little positive( gimmicks or anything real applied in the game) random information from them comparing to other boards) and the stagelist came to fit that character only more and more.
Just see that KJ64 is left when alot of other stages has gone, which char benefits the most from that and only playing on the so called neutrals?
Got that proved wrong though which was nice since when the game turns into debating rules over improving theres not much to gain from it for either player.


So my current thougt is that it´s just the players not caring/playing enough to have a strong secondary if playing a "crappy character", it has proven to be a effective strategy going for vote for their benefit/preferable play to win strategy stages. Or that just some characters is too underrated that people just ignore to learn them.


The power of voting is very effective for players not wanting to change style/learn a secondary, or even not using the more effective counter there is to the strategy.

Example from pokémon, read paragraph 2: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36558

Notice that it just lists common/not effective options (NO same type attack bonus at all).

Kals post close to summarises what I feel needs to be used for banning criterias.




EDIT: If you agree about Kals post, working on it to be more informative and clear might be a good step to actually achieve something from this discussion^^

 

[BigD!!!]

stop saying its futile because the majority decides

those people can read this thread and think about things differently themselves

just cause m2k thinks everyone is evil and lacking emotion or logic doesnt mean you should agree with him

 

[Kal]

Maybe we agree with him because he's right?

 

[Kal]

Since then this unmotivated(or the strategy debate to win, not play in the game strategy) bans has happened in banning stages.

This is so true. Basically, we never have any explicit evidence anymore to prove something deserves to be banned. We just take single examples or theorycraft and say "thus, it's broken." The MBR is a pointless authority. In my opinion, it's never been necessary.

Earlier had a wierd idea about that that strategy was applied by CF players (since I´ve seen quite little positive( gimmicks or anything real applied in the game) random information from them comparing to other boards) and the stagelist came to fit that character only more and more.

Yeah, lots of Captain Falcon players basically QQ because they have no counterpicks. "If we can't counterpick, no one should be able to!" Que Hax coming in and explaining his "Battlefield Only" ruleset.

Just see that KJ64 is left when alot of other stages has gone, which char benefits the most from that and only playing on the so called neutrals?

Yeah, that and the fact that people have this absurd notion that "not moving + no 'hazards' = neutral." They fail to realize that there is no such thing as a neutral stage.

The power of voting is very effective for players not wanting to change style/learn a secondary, or even not using the more effective counter there is to the strategy.

Sadly, with something not designed for out-of-the-box competition, the majority ends up having a very large say in what's worth banning.

I always refer to this post when I explain why we shouldn't ban things to increase turnout. In fact, the post is probably getting stale from how often I link to it.

 

[AllyKnight]

i just lost to vinnies ICs twice this weekend in 2 close sets =/ I guess we ban ICs now? do you see how redundant it is

the truth is, all banning stuff comes down to is votes and popularity (or in other cases more specifically, the people in power, even if they don't deserve that power). If someone like me, ally nairo anti lived in europe instead of EC, ppl in USA wouldn't want to ban MK. doing that helps the majority of people, by removing us as threats, but it's for all the wrong reasons. But if you think about it from a personal standpoint of each individual person, of course it is in their best interests, for most people, to vote that way, even if they don't care that much at all, it still helps them to vote that way

"should we ban the best character which beats your favorite character?"

what do you think most people will do?

I'm sure this same concept applies to A LOT of things

there's a difference between losing ONCE to one of the best ICS (out of what 3 LOL) >.>. If you happen to **** him next time, then I unno. lol

Ban Marth