Legality Bones' Ruleset (w/ a DSR alternative)

[hectohertz]

you can't stall indefinitely with rising pound, you lose height. sing stalling is also easily interruptable by grabbing ledge

 

[Xyzz]

I don't think rulesets need to specify minor technicalities as to what constitutes stalling or the exact method for generating pseudo-randomness (gaw hammers, rps, whatever).

I think the counterpicking / initial character selection ideas are pretty interesting, didn't give it much thought though, sorry

 

[Bones0]

you can't stall indefinitely with rising pound, you lose height. sing stalling is also easily interruptable by grabbing ledge

I know you can't stall indefinitely with it, but it stalls long enough that someone with a stock lead could take out a huge chunk of time. Sing stalling refers to when the opponent is caught in the sing. You can repeatedly put them to sleep if they were by the ledge, and there's nothing they can do. You could just sing and ledge cancel all game if you're winning.

I don't think rulesets need to specify minor technicalities as to what constitutes stalling or the exact method for generating pseudo-randomness (gaw hammers, rps, whatever).

I think the counterpicking / initial character selection ideas are pretty interesting, didn't give it much thought though, sorry

Specifying what constitutes stalling is extremely important. I don't want players coming up to me saying their opponent stalled because they shino-stalled on the ledge with Sheik all game or that a Fox circle camping them is stalling. If only a handful of things are considered stalling, why not just list them so everyone knows EXACTLY what is going on? It's not like it takes a long time to read, and it doesn't really differ from that status quo anyways.

As far as being random, it's also necessary because if there's a dispute (for whatever reason), it's just going to mean more TO intervention is required if a call has to be made. Clearly laying out in the rules that Judgement Hammer is the default gets rid of that issue.

I don't care if people give it thought. I'd just like people to try it out in friendlies. Just play some bo5 sets with this rule set and see how stage selection works. Try to get broken cps or "trap" your opponent into a decision and see how much the ruleset can be abused. That would be the best help at this point.

 

[DerfMidWest]

Lolol why us wobbling even being discussed? There arent very many IC mains.
And wobbling is easy to avoid (unless the IC is really good and works for a grab or if you do something dumb)

If you ger wobbled, its you fault.
300% cap is fine.
If wobbling is banned, no more than 3 tilts seems acceptable, though it doesnt matter because you can mix mini wobbles with CGs and get a semi-wobble going.

 

[Bones0]

Wobbling isn't banned so it's a non-issue.

 

[rjgbadger]

dont really understand a 10 minute match

hardly understand 5 minute match

i dont enjoy counterpicks in general either unless there are more stages

revive mute city/pokefloats/kj64/

regarding wobbling i really dont think it should be banned but i do understand its ban

if wobbling is ban there should be a distinct definition like how many times you can tilt, and what, if any, regrab combos are too ghey

 

[Bones0]

Wobbling isn't banned.

 

[enCouRaging Bear]

although your ruleset seems fair i don't think it works that well logistically
i've always thought that matches in melee can last too long already (personally i think we should play with 2-3 stocks)
but then you not only extended the timer but also added a tiebreaking rule that could potentially make individual matches last indefinitely. regardless of whether or not its likely to happen the possibility is still there

 

[Bones0]

The concept of how long games and sets should last is really interesting. If you look competitive Halo, tournament players play matches that frequently break the 10-minute mark, and also often go the full 15 minutes (with another 15 minutes as a sudden death tie breaker for CTF). Then they also play quite high set counts late in the bracket (iirc, almost all of MLG's Halo finals were at least bo7). So that is easily 45 minutes for a set even if you have one team 4-0ing the other. Melee comes nowhere close to that, averaging around 8-10 minutes for a 2-0. I think the most important aspects of match lengths are:
1. Variance is reduced as much as possible, within reason.
2. It is a reasonable expectation for players to play at 100% the entire set.

1 makes you increase the set time, but 2 keeps it in check because I doubt many people are interested in how much stamina players have when forced to play 100-stock matches. Some sports do focus on stamina a lot, but for a game like Melee, I think most people would agree that we're more interested in testing skills at their absolute peak. We'd rather see 4 stocks where both players are so intently focused that you are nervous for them than 20 stock matches where players are literally rationing their concentration.

I don't think 10 minutes is an unreasonable length of time for players to be focusing. Especially when you consider that the matches that go 10 minutes long are often between floaties who are spending a lot of time recovering back to the stage. It may just be a few seconds, but it greatly reduces the amount of actual focus that is being spent on engaging the opponent. We could reduce the stocks, but I don't think players would be able to focus any harder throughout the set than they are now, so all we would be doing is increasing variance without actually benefiting the competition.


I wasn't very happy with the tie breaker either. I guess I will settle with a 2 stock, 5 minute tie breaker, and if that also ties, just send them into a 1 stock match with % and port priority as a tie breaker. That way it's impossible for there to be infinite matches for whatever reason.

 

[Krynxe]

Pretty good ruleset. But you see Bones, there's a problem...

Simply put, we urgently need to discuss wobbling.

On a serious note, regarding you definition of coaching, what would result of a crowd member shouting a piece of advice to players in a match? It wouldn't be at the fault of the players, however it is informative and could change the flow of the match due to still being viable advice that the player(s) may take into account. Would it merit a rematch, despite that no players were directly responsible? And also, punishments for said crowd member

 

[Bones0]

Pretty good ruleset. But you see Bones, there's a problem...

Simply put, we urgently need to discuss wobbling.

On a serious note, regarding you definition of coaching, what would result of a crowd member shouting a piece of advice to players in a match? It wouldn't be at the fault of the players, however it is informative and could change the flow of the match due to still being viable advice that the player(s) may take into account. Would it merit a rematch, despite that no players were directly responsible? And also, punishments for said crowd member

I have thought a lot about that. Obviously, the first thing I would do is apprehend the individual. Depending on the severity of what they yelled, I would give them a warning or if I believed they might do it again, I would just ensure they aren't within earshot of the players for the rest of the set. From then on it'd just be one more strike and you get ejected from the venue.

The match would not be replayed. It would certainly be unfortunate, but it is also not as bad as coaching right next to someone. The primary difference is that both players can hear the advice when it's being screamed. If you keep rolling and my coach whispers to me to wait for your roll, I will start punishing it and you'll have to take time to adapt. If my friend yells "HE'S ROLLING" over the crowd, I can look to punish those rolls, but you can also expect me to look for those rolls and avoid doing them to throw me off potentially even more.

Yes, it still has an influence on the match because it might have been a tactic that I would never have adapted to or something, but I think this is a rare enough problem even without a rule in place that I wouldn't try to punish the person getting the advice.

 

[KrIsP!]

Rereading this ruleset. I like BSR, I mean it serves the same purpose but doesn't require people to remember where they won and avoids confusion.

As for coaching, I agree coaching needs a rule implemented but I think it should have a soft ban and fall under gentleman's agreement. I don't know how banned banned is for coaching in this ruleset, but I think it should be the opponents decision if coaching is allowed.

I also would like to know what would happen in the result of a tie during pools(not from a set but a tie in pool wins) in a battle for seeding. Are players required to remember the stocks of each match, play out another game, etc.

 

[Bones0]

Rereading this ruleset. I like BSR, I mean it serves the same purpose but doesn't require people to remember where they won and avoids confusion.

As for coaching, I agree coaching needs a rule implemented but I think it should have a soft ban and fall under gentleman's agreement. I don't know how banned banned is for coaching in this ruleset, but I think it should be the opponents decision if coaching is allowed.

I also would like to know what would happen in the result of a tie during pools(not from a set but a tie in pool wins) in a battle for seeding. Are players required to remember the stocks of each match, play out another game, etc.

I agree BSR is much simpler than DSRm, but it also has other benefits besides that.

A soft ban is effectively no ban. If both players have to agree to no coaching, then it's effectively making coaching legal. Obviously if two people want to allow coaching, they can use GA.

I think most TOs use win % or something else I can't remember. I do remember a thread where someone explained why one was better than the other though (if anyone remembers what the thread was, a link would be great). Stocks won't affect it, and matches probably won't have to be replayed.

 

[Kadano]

I have to admit I initially overlooked this thread, but now with the DSR discussion back again, I remembered this thread and how alternating bans solve everything much more elegantly.

The only thing I don’t like is the 10 minutes time limit. I get your logic and agree that it makes more sense than 8 minutes, but there’s also the option of keeping 8 minutes and decreasing stocks to 3. What do you think about it?

 

[Bones0]

I have to admit I initially overlooked this thread, but now with the DSR discussion back again, I remembered this thread and how alternating bans solve everything much more elegantly.

The only thing I don’t like is the 10 minutes time limit. I get your logic and agree that it makes more sense than 8 minutes, but there’s also the option of keeping 8 minutes and decreasing stocks to 3. What do you think about it?

I actually was geeking out when the commentators at TFC were so confused by M2K being allowed to go to FD twice because I was just thinking how it all could have changed (for the better if you ask me) if they had used my ruleset.

Okay, here's the way I see the timer. As we currently have it, the timer is designed simply to prevent matches from going to eternity. It forces the rare stalling matches to a conclusive victory for logistical purposes, and it is not designed to have any impact on what most players would perceive as "regular" matches (simply defined as a match where both players are a actively engaging each other). My only reasoning for increasing the timer is I feel that it can sometimes impact matches that it was not designed to have an effect on.

I have seen long matches between two players occur simply because their characters live for a long time, their characters do not have very strong KO moves, the stage is large, both players are evenly matched (meaning you are essentially playing an 8-stock match as opposed to a JV 4-stock which only has to play through 5 stocks), or any combination of the above. I don't think any of these matches should be affect like a timer because they have a reasonable natural ending time. When you get to something like Hbox vs. Armada, it is very clear that the average match length is warped because of the play styles of the players. This is all fine and dandy from a competitive standpoint, but of course tournaments have to worry about finishing on time, so I think drawing a line after 10 minutes is a very fair amount of time to be judging skill on. I also think 8 minutes is plenty of time to make that skill determination, but like I said I feel that an 8-minute timer starts to change how "normal" matches work.

I realize that I am not providing a very clear difference between normal matches and stalled matches, but I guess the main thing you can look at is the intent of the player. It is usually quite obvious if a player intends on engaging his opponent in physical combat or not. Simply put, matches where it is the goal of the player to win by timeout are the only ones that should be affected by a timer. If neither player is going into the match trying to win by a timeout, I don't think that situation should arise. They should be allowed to play the match out with its natural ending time. Extending the timer to 10 minutes allows these situations to occur more often, but it also allows a safety net for situations where players decide mid-match that they no longer want to physically engage their opponent.

 

[SwiftBass]

meh an interesting take but I am not a fan of the extra time on the clock. Anything that makes matches longer I am against. Personally I have been an advocate of 3 stocks for a very long time, but that's another convo.

The counter picking seems interesting. Loser seems to get a bigger edge which I think kind of takes away from the winners ability to adapt to their settings and "prove" as to why they are better. I just feel that being able to pick character that plays well after the loser picks their stage is a very desirable trait and a strong statement. I think its something that not everyone can do. This fundamentally promotes character diversity among players, which I have also been an advocate for.(multiple mains)


I agree with your ban rule. I think its good

 

[JKJ]

I love BSR
if that was implemented that would be sick
The clock being ten minutes is fine, but i dont get the rematch. It doesn't make sense why we wouldn't just call the stocks/percent differences and declare a winner at the end of the ten minutes.

anyone saying 3 stocks

WHYYYYYYYY

 

[Bones0]

meh an interesting take but I am not a fan of the extra time on the clock. Anything that makes matches longer I am against. Personally I have been an advocate of 3 stocks for a very long time, but that's another convo.

The counter picking seems interesting. Loser seems to get a bigger edge which I think kind of takes away from the winners ability to adapt to their settings and "prove" as to why they are better. I just feel that being able to pick character that plays well after the loser picks their stage is a very desirable trait and a strong statement. I think its something that not everyone can do. This fundamentally promotes character diversity among players, which I have also been an advocate for.(multiple mains)


I agree with your ban rule. I think its good

As the winner, you no longer get to pick a character to suit their stage choice, but since you know what the character matchup is before you ban a stage, you usually have a good idea what stage they will want to play anyways. Picking stages after characters also means you'll never get blindsided by a cp. If a set occurs between two Fox mains and one of them has a Marth secondary, the player with the secondary can't get a surprise FD cp because the other Fox will be able to ban that when he sees him switch to Marth. Too often these days, players are completely unaffected by their opponent's ban because the player was making a ban based on a guess about which character they would play. Many players don't even decide to cp until after their opponent bans the stage they wanted to go to, which seems really random and messy to me. It's not unlike striking stages before picking characters. How can you possibly determine what stage to strike if you don't know the matchup? It's much less often that players ask themselves "How can I know what character to pick before we pick stages?" It's just really unintuitive because of how little stages change relative to characters. Players have learned to base their character selections off of the stage only because that is the system we have been using for so long. Unless you think stages have a greater influence on the matchup than the characters, you will find more fair matches overall by choosing characters first.

 

[Cactuar]

I'm going to run through this real quick. Two fox players.

Fox One vs Fox Two.
Fox Two has a pocket marth specifically for use on FD.
Fox Two loses Game 1.
Fox One Selects Fox.
Fox Two Selects Marth.
Fox One Bans FD.
Loser of Game 1 suddenly has a disadvantage going into Game 2.

This strongly discourages picking up pocket characters for character+stage combinations.
Having those pocket CPs and the threat of a potential FD pick results in a benefit that we have designed and encouraged. Do you ban that player's best fox stage or do you ban FD? The player being forced to make that decision is in that scenario because the opponent has developed a pocket character strong enough to be a legitimate threat.

In a set under current rules, Fox Two selects FD, and then Fox One can either change characters if he cannot handle the shift in punishment game, or stay Fox. In a BO5, this doesn't even come into play because we straight encourage the idea that you should have to play on your opponent's best counterpick once in a set, with your own character diversity being the potential mitigation of that advantage.

 

[Bones0]

I'm going to run through this real quick. Two fox players.

Fox One vs Fox Two.
Fox Two has a pocket marth specifically for use on FD.
Fox Two loses Game 1.
Fox One Selects Fox.
Fox Two Selects Marth.
Fox One Bans FD.
Loser of Game 1 suddenly has a disadvantage going into Game 2.

This strongly discourages picking up pocket characters for character+stage combinations.
Having those pocket CPs and the threat of a potential FD pick results in a benefit that we have designed and encouraged. Do you ban that player's best fox stage or do you ban FD? The player being forced to make that decision is in that scenario because the opponent has developed a pocket character strong enough to be a legitimate threat.

In a set under current rules, Fox Two selects FD, and then Fox One can either change characters if he cannot handle the shift in punishment game, or stay Fox. In a BO5, this doesn't even come into play because we straight encourage the idea that you should have to play on your opponent's best counterpick once in a set, with your own character diversity being the potential mitigation of that advantage.

If your secondary is only advantageous to you on a single stage, then that's not much of a secondary... Manipulating the rules so that you can play on really good cps with secondaries doesn't make much sense. If you truly encouraged the type of secondary use you are saying, then do you also think we should choose characters after stage striking? It is the exact same logic as choosing them after banning and counterpicking.

 

[kalamazhu]

I honestly love Bones0 ruleset. it should probably be standard

 

[Kadano]

In a BO5, this doesn't even come into play because we straight encourage the idea that you should have to play on your opponent's best counterpick once in a set, with your own character diversity being the potential mitigation of that advantage.

I’m not sure if that’s what you were saying too, but in a Bones-bo5, the Fox-Marth player also gets to pick FD once. So it’s only in bo3s that the rulesets differ, and I personally think it’s at least not worse that the stages are +0, +1 and -1 instead of +0, +2 and -2.

 

[Cactuar]

I don't agree with that being the exact same logic because the purpose of the decision making in those two instances is very different.

Stage striking is intended to result in the selection of a stage both you and your opponent feel is the most even between your already selected characters.

The intent of counterpicking is to give the loser of R1 advantages going into R2. The extent of this advantage is the only difference promoted between rulesets that alter the counterpicking mechanism and its entirely opinion.

Picking up a Marth secondary to use on only FD isn't some small task if your goal is to use him against another high level player, so downplaying it as being not much of a secondary doesn't affect my points.

@Kadano: I don't understand what you mean. Between any players that have been in the scene for longer than a tournament or two (read: players where the stage influence on the matchup might actually have significance), they will know if their opponent has a pocket character for FD CP purposes. If you use your ban properly/intelligently, you mitigate the possibility of having those +2/-2 matchups already. This change doesn't affect anything. Bones is simply trying to avoid using a ban on FD in case his opponent has a secondary. He feels that the counterpicking player has too many advantages. I don't see support for that opinion from individuals whose opinions have weight. Speaking directly at using this in a BO3 set, this largely dissuades motivations towards developing a pocket character+stage combo because you will never be able to select the stage necessary unless your opponent makes bad decisions.

 

[Bones0]

I don't agree with that being the exact same logic because the purpose of the decision making in those two instances is very different.

Stage striking is intended to result in the selection of a stage both you and your opponent feel is the most even between your already selected characters.

The intent of counterpicking is to give the loser of R1 advantages going into R2. The extent of this advantage is the only difference promoted between rulesets that alter the counterpicking mechanism and its entirely opinion.

This is the source of our disagreement. I don't think counterpicks should be ways of giving advantages to players at all. They should be ways of increasing stage variety while still maintaining a fair balance throughout the set. The only reason we default to giving the losing player their advantageous stage FIRST is because a lot of sets that end 2-1 would be played out as 2-0 because the winning player would get his advantageous stage first.

My motto through pretty much any stage discussion is "have the competitors play on the 3 most evenly matched stages". If you rank stages 1-5 in terms of advantageous-ness, it's a no-brainer that a bo3 should be played on stage 3 game 1 followed by 2 and 4. If one of the players wants to use a secondary, that's obviously a huge advantage. It can help you in troublesome matchups, allow you to better deal with an opponent's style, prevent the opponent from adapting to your main before the set ends, and many other ways. To add in an element of the secondary getting a really good cp (largely based on guessing/luck) is to add unnecessary advantage to one player.

Going by ruleset, the losing player already gets to pick his character second and his stage after the opponent has already selected a character. These are huge advantages. In fact, I hate to jump around in your quote, but this struck me as interesting:

He feels that the counterpicking player has too many advantages. I don't see support for that opinion from individuals whose opinions have weight.

I'm curious, does SwiftBass not qualify as an individual whose opinion holds weight? Your criticism seems pretty silly when a very experienced player such as him raised those very concerns about counterpicking having too many advantages a mere 3 posts before your own. It's kinda confusing to be reassuring one player that I have indeed prevented as much advantage during cps as possible while simultaneously debating with another that there should be more advantage to a player who has done nothing to earn it (lost game 1). I'm sure there's also plenty of other top players who will express concerns about better cping. We've already seen an aspect of this come into play with the stage list as we've eliminated many radical cps because people felt they provided too much of an advantage when cping. To see this ruleset change and then turn around and say no one is worried about cps being too strong is downright naive.

Furthermore, this whole idea of giving benefits to the person behind seems directly contradictory to your opposing (albeit completely separate) position that a lower clock serves a good role in the game by giving an advantage to the player in the lead. I'm not trying to say that makes your opinion is invalid, but I think some clarification would really be useful. When timers are concerned, you believe the winning player should be given advantages. This hasn't struck me as being too strange because every decent competitive game in history has given advantages to the better player. So with that, I get it, we just have different opinions on how much winning neutral at the beginning of the game should reward players.

But why on Earth would any competitive game or community seek to provide advantages to the losing player? Is that not exactly what tripping was designed to do in barlw? Ofc, cping isn't random and isn't technically unfair because the opponent will get an identical level of advantage for their own cp, but at that point you're simply making game 1 disproportionately more important which I think everyone can agree leads to less consistent results.

Picking up a Marth secondary to use on only FD isn't some small task if your goal is to use him against another high level player, so downplaying it as being not much of a secondary doesn't affect my points.

@Kadano: I don't understand what you mean. Between any players that have been in the scene for longer than a tournament or two (read: players where the stage influence on the matchup might actually have significance), they will know if their opponent has a pocket character for FD CP purposes. If you use your ban properly/intelligently, you mitigate the possibility of having those +2/-2 matchups already. This change doesn't affect anything. Bones is simply trying to avoid using a ban on FD in case his opponent has a secondary. He feels that the counterpicking player has too many advantages. I don't see support for that opinion from individuals whose opinions have weight. Speaking directly at using this in a BO3 set, this largely dissuades motivations towards developing a pocket character+stage combo because you will never be able to select the stage necessary unless your opponent makes bad decisions.

There are always tons of macrogame strategies (tricky striking, cping, character switches, timeouts, stalling, gimmicks, etc.) that players will want to implement to win. The ruleset should be determined completely separate from these because they aren't inherently part of Melee. They are simply a part of playing Melee in tournaments. There is a difference, and Wobbles actually touched on that difference in his blog if you are interested in his thoughts on the subject.

Picking up a low tier is an even larger task than a secondary. Does that mean we should allow players to ignore bans if they use a low tier? Or perhaps if a player uses at least 3 characters in the same set they can take their opponent to a stage they've already won on? These are all advantages that we could provide that would make using low tiers or more characters more viable, but it's all artificial and can quickly get out of hand. That's why I prefer to take the game as is and simply let the players figure out what's worth doing or what isn't. If it's too much work to get a secondary that is viable at top level play because of my ruleset, then so be it, secondaries just weren't meant for Melee. You could apply this same argument to people who play 3, 5, or 10 characters. They aren't being rewarded for developing those extra characters, so should we change the ruleset to a bo19 just to allow those players to abuse all of their characters to the fullest extent?

This is why I prefer to provide as little advantage as possible across the board. Players want to abuse timeouts? Extend the timer so that Melee can be played as close to its raw form as possible. Players want to abuse cps? Adjust the system so that the stages they are allowed to choose are based on their value for the given matchup, not based on how they tricked their opponent outside of the game.



Side note: Some may just think I'm being biased about disliking FD or something, but I've been training my own Marth for spacies for a while now and this part of my ruleset does nothing but damage my chances of getting to play Marth vs. spacies on FD. To see that I'm not biased against secondaries in general, look no further than my "Alternating Character Selection" for the initial characters. It provides a significant benefit to players with secondaries by ensuring they get their best possible matchup vs. players with no secondaries who might otherwise call a doubleblind.

 

[JKJ]

^this
Bones0 for president of Melee

 

[Cactuar]

My interpretation of what your changes accomplish is different than swifts. Don't be surprised at having to have two different conversations with two different people, you'll find it happens a lot. For instance, in my play experience against high level players, having a shorter timer forces the opponents to interact with higher frequency because the losing player will always be under pressure to take the lead, whereas with a longer timer, the pressure of the timer becomes a non-issue, so the average length of the games actually increases. In my play experience against low to mid level players, they don't understand how to effectively attack a player playing an avoid/defend/counterattack, so they use words like "encourages camping" to try and associate a negative feeling with strong defensive play when really it is simply a shortcoming of their own play.

My personal beliefs on how the game should be played are different than what the intent of the recommended ruleset is, and I'm just stating what my opinion of the difference. I'm going to fast forward to the end of the conversation, where it results in me saying the same thing I've had to say over and over. If you believe in and want your changes to be made, specifically target and convince noteworthy players and then talk to the TOs with your list of support. Posting it on here and then taking the agreement of random people as some sign of success is holding you back from getting changes made more than any counterarguments are.

 

[Bones0]

My interpretation of what your changes accomplish is different than swifts.

My point was that he wants less advantages for the counterpicking player while you want more advantages. Your perceptions of what my ruleset actually does isn't really relevant to the point.

 

[Cactuar]

Your point is that people want different things, yet me stating why what I want is different than what I perceive your ruleset to give is not relevant to that point?

 

[Bones0]

Your point is that people want different things, yet me stating why what I want is different than what I perceive your ruleset to give is not relevant to that point?

"He feels that the counterpicking player has too many advantages. I don't see support for that opinion from individuals whose opinions have weight."

SwiftBass is supporting ^that opinion. Not sure how much clearer I can make that.

 

[Cactuar]

Swift and I are both looking at it saying that you are removing incentive to develop character diversity, and that we disagree with the direction that moves towards.

He is looking at it and saying that the winner of R1 will never end up changing the matchup based on how the stage will affect it because instead of having an opportunity to pull out a secondary for that stage and display their proficiency with a different character (to adapt and to outplay their opponent), they will be able to ban any glaring disadvantageous stage if the opponent were to select a character that has a single strong CP stage in that new matchup against their main. This is removing incentive for the winner to develop a character that is strong on that stage.

I'm looking at it in terms of the losing player never getting to use a counterpick stage because the winner will always ban that stage as soon as the loser selects his character. This is removing incentive for the loser to develop a character that is strong in a certain matchup on a certain stage.

My statement regarding getting supporters that have weight behind their opinions could use some clarification though. I haven't gotten any feedback that supports your proposals. It might exist, I just haven't heard it. I'm not trying to shut down you having ideas and making suggestions, but you play internet warrior more than you play diplomat. You need to convince the right people, gather the right support. Randoms saying "This ruleset rox" or "bones for president" without saying exactly what they like and why they like it doesn't put you any closer to actually making changes. I'm trying to help you see past +1's to your ego and figure out what you actually need.

 

[Bones0]

I'm not seeking +1s for my ego. It's not like I periodically bump this thread trying to get approval for my ruleset. I'm not good at, nor do I enjoy trying to gather support for things. I don't mind arguments where I defend my points, but I'm just not the kind of person that can just put on his politician face and manifest connections with community leaders out of thin air. Other people are great at that and good for them, but I'm not going to waste my time trying to push my ruleset on people when I can't even get local TOs that I know irl to try using it for free <10-man tournaments. If a TO reads my ruleset and takes the initiative to try it, that's awesome. If a random person on SmashBoards wants to show he supports the ruleset, then that's also great. If not, then oh well, the community obviously doesn't care enough about the ruleset. It's like how the US still uses imperial measurements instead of metric. Metric is obviously superior in almost every way, yet we still use imperial. I could go around referencing distances and weights in meters and kilograms, but it's hardly going to start a revolution when everyone is satisfied with feet and pounds. Sure, I'd like to see my ruleset get adopted, but it's also kind of unrealistic that I'm going to convince the majority of the Smash population to make a change that will seem almost irrelevant to most players.

If you're wondering why I even bother posting the ruleset in the first place, it's mostly for my own purposes to clarify things in my mind. It's the same reason I enjoy arguing about tier lists or map/gametype settings on Halo forums. I'm not naive enough to believe I've completely changed the way someone's viewed the tier list. Arguing things out gives me a clear vision of stuff, and frequently people that challenge my ideas or thoughts teach me something and change my mind.

 

[Squidster]

I’ll play devils advocate in favor of DSR without bringing character diversity into it.

Scenario 1: people win on their counterpicks
Here’s the stage order taken from your earlier post with a number 1-5 dictating stage neutrality (theoretically) in terms of counter picks. 3 is most neutral, 1 is in favor of marth, 5 in favor of falco.

DSR
BF (3) Falco wins
FD (1) Marth wins
DL (5) Falco wins
PS (2) Marth wins
FoD (4)

BSR
BF (3) Falco wins
PS (2) Marth wins
FOD (4) Falco wins
FD (1) Marth wins
DL (5)

DSR results in game 5 being played on 4 (FOD)while BSR results in game 5 being played on 5 (DL). Essentially, both reward the reward the winner of game 1 because it is the most neutral stage (determined by striking), but DSR has less of an imbalance in the deciding match. This seems good to me…

Scenario 2: “Serve is broken”

DSR
BF (3) Falco wins
FD (1) Marth wins
DL (5) Marth wins
DL (5) Falco wins
FD (1)

BSR
BF (3) Falco wins
PS (2) Marth wins
FOD (4) Marth wins
DL (5) Falco wins
FD (1)

Both DSR and BSR result in game 5 being played on 1 (FD). The reason for this is that you reward the player who won on the stage that is imbalanced against him MORE than you reward the player who won on the most neutral stage. The problem with BSR, it rewards the player with (1) because he won on (4). DSR rewards the player on (1) because he won on (5). See the problem? BSR is a disproportionally large reward.

Here’s what I find interesting. Scenario 1 is how things should go. People win on the stages that are imbalanced for them, and therefore the winner on the most balanced stage wins the series. Both DSR and BSR have the same results of winner on battlefield being the winner of the series. I personally prefer DSR’s order because you’re essentially saying “ok, falco won on the most neutral stage, now, if falco is MUCH better than marth, he’ll win on FD next and the series will be a wrap quickly. If falco is only a little bit better than marth, he’ll lose on the +2 counterpick (as expected) and the series plays out.” Essentially, you identify a large skillgap sooner than you do with BSR. Just because he won on stage 3 and on stage 5, doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll win on stage 4. With BSR, once falco wins on FOD it’s pretty much a warp. He won on stage 3, he won on stage 4, of course he’ll win on stage 5.

Scenario 2 is the weird scenario. Someone “breaks serve.” The difference is that DSR makes it a big deal if you do an “upset” and win on either stage 1 or 5, while BSR makes it a big deal if you do an “upset” and win on either stage 2 or 4. DSR makes more sense to me because, it IS a bigger deal to win on stage or 1 or 5.

It really is like tennis. When you win on your opponents serve, it’s on your opponent to not only continue to win when he’s serving, but to then break serve on you. M2k won on DL? PP now has to prove he can win on FD. It doesn’t make sense to say m2k won FoD? PP now has to prove he can win on FD.

 

[Kadano]

With BSR, it isn’t so much of “m2k won FoD? PP now has to prove he can win on FD” but more like “m2k won on his best stage PP didn’t ban? PP now has to prove he can win on his best stage m2k doesn’t ban”.
If PP doesn’t want the last match to be se FD, he can simply keep his FD ban and ban PS first. Other than under DSR, he can choose the stage order, albeit slightly.
Also, BSR’s non-alternating-wins stage advantages of 12345 are more diverse than DSR’s 11355.

 

[Bones0]

I’ll play devils advocate in favor of DSR without bringing character diversity into it.

Scenario 1: people win on their counterpicks
Here’s the stage order taken from your earlier post with a number 1-5 dictating stage neutrality (theoretically) in terms of counter picks. 3 is most neutral, 1 is in favor of marth, 5 in favor of falco.


DSR results in game 5 being played on 4 (FOD)while BSR results in game 5 being played on 5 (DL). Essentially, both reward the reward the winner of game 1 because it is the most neutral stage (determined by striking), but DSR has less of an imbalance in the deciding match. This seems good to me…

Scenario 2: “Serve is broken”


Both DSR and BSR result in game 5 being played on 1 (FD). The reason for this is that you reward the player who won on the stage that is imbalanced against him MORE than you reward the player who won on the most neutral stage. The problem with BSR, it rewards the player with (1) because he won on (4). DSR rewards the player on (1) because he won on (5). See the problem? BSR is a disproportionally large reward.

Here’s what I find interesting. Scenario 1 is how things should go. People win on the stages that are imbalanced for them, and therefore the winner on the most balanced stage wins the series. Both DSR and BSR have the same results of winner on battlefield being the winner of the series. I personally prefer DSR’s order because you’re essentially saying “ok, falco won on the most neutral stage, now, if falco is MUCH better than marth, he’ll win on FD next and the series will be a wrap quickly. If falco is only a little bit better than marth, he’ll lose on the +2 counterpick (as expected) and the series plays out.” Essentially, you identify a large skillgap sooner than you do with BSR. Just because he won on stage 3 and on stage 5, doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll win on stage 4. With BSR, once falco wins on FOD it’s pretty much a warp. He won on stage 3, he won on stage 4, of course he’ll win on stage 5.

First of all, there is nothing inherently wrong with ending the set on an advantageous cp. Whether you play the harder cps games 2 and 3 or 4 and 5 doesn't affect the balance of the set. You could possibly consider it "less hype" for spectators if game 5 has a tendency to be one of the more lopsided games in the set, but sets hardly play out that exact to expectations, and spectators aren't the primary concern anyway.

Secondly, the set with my rule only ends on DL if the players ban their worst stage first. If you are okay with playing their preferred cp stage early in the set, then you can feel free to ban your second worst stage after your first or second win. Here is a simple example of how both players can adjust their bans to play on the more evenly-matched stages at the end of the set:

BF (3) Falco wins, bans PS
FD (1) Marth wins, bans FoD
DL (5) Falco wins, bans FD
PS (2) Marth wins, bans DL
FoD (4)

If Falco wants to play on Marth's best cp early but Marth wants to play on Falco's best cp late, it will look like this:

BF (3) Falco wins, bans PS
FD (1) Marth wins, bans DL
FoD (4) Falco wins, bans FD
PS (2) Marth wins, bans FoD
DL (5)

Vice versa:

BF (3) Falco wins, bans FD
PS (2) Marth wins, bans FoD
DL (5) Falco wins, bans PS
FD (1) Marth wins, bans DL
FoD (4)

Scenario 2 is the weird scenario. Someone “breaks serve.” The difference is that DSR makes it a big deal if you do an “upset” and win on either stage 1 or 5, while BSR makes it a big deal if you do an “upset” and win on either stage 2 or 4. DSR makes more sense to me because, it IS a bigger deal to win on stage or 1 or 5.

It really is like tennis. When you win on your opponents serve, it’s on your opponent to not only continue to win when he’s serving, but to then break serve on you. M2k won on DL? PP now has to prove he can win on FD. It doesn’t make sense to say m2k won FoD? PP now has to prove he can win on FD.

Winning on your opponent's cp with BSR is no more or less of a big deal than with DSR. At the end of the set, you'll still have to win on stages of equal difficulty. DSR simply reduces the stage variety by allowing both players to repick their best cps. With BSR, if M2K wins on DL, PP will have to win on FD at some point in the set. If PP beats M2K on FD, that is a huge reward with BSR because that will be the last time he has to play on FD that set... With DSR, PP winning on FD basically ENSURES he will have to play it again the very next game...

 

[Cactuar]

That element of DSR is actually discussed in the last MioM. Scar takes your position of "if you lose on your counterpick stage, your penalty is that you lose that counterpick stage", while Hyuga takes the position of "if you lose on your counterpick stage, the penalty is that your opponent is one match closer to winning the set, you don't need to further penalize the player who lost".

 

[Squidster]

Yeah Hyuga's stance makes sense to me. I also like that a 3-0 with DSR means you won on 3, 1, 1 (battlefield, FD, FD in falco vs marth.) vs a 3-0 with BSR where you won on 3,2,1 (battlefield, PS, FD.) Basically, it’s less impressive with BSR than DSR. I feel like DSR does a better job of identifying not only who won, but by how much. It’s all subjective in the end though. DSR is indeed less stage variety but that just doesn’t matter as much to me.

 

[Bones0]

Yeah Hyuga's stance makes sense to me. I also like that a 3-0 with DSR means you won on 3, 1, 1 (battlefield, FD, FD in falco vs marth.) vs a 3-0 with BSR where you won on 3,2,1 (battlefield, PS, FD.) Basically, it’s less impressive with BSR than DSR. I feel like DSR does a better job of identifying not only who won, but by how much. It’s all subjective in the end though. DSR is indeed less stage variety but that just doesn’t matter as much to me.

3, 1, 1 may seem impressive when it's a 3-0, but then sets between equally skilled opponents (you know, the only ones that really matter) end up being decided by the first game, which is a lot less impressive than winning on 3 different stages.

 

[kalamazhu]

In the end Bones0 ruleset prevents people from getting cheap wins by picking a character that has an overpowered matchup against the opponent on a specific stage. If they do decide to switch characters, they should win because that player's specific character can beat the opponent straight up, not by trapping them into a bad matchup on a terrible stage.

For example:
sheik/marth main plays a fox player.
sheik wins game 1 vs fox on BF
fox counterpicks FD
player changes to marth and traps the fox who effectively counterpicked himself and therefore loses.

I don't think this type of scenario shoudl be appropriate, the one who counterpicks should get a slight advantage, not a huge advantage and not a disadvantage.

 

[The Star King]

I still think Bones is the biggest noob on this earth

but, I actually kinda like him *blush*

not really. eff you buddy *runs away giggling*

 

[Bones0]

That element of DSR is actually discussed in the last MioM. Scar takes your position of "if you lose on your counterpick stage, your penalty is that you lose that counterpick stage", while Hyuga takes the position of "if you lose on your counterpick stage, the penalty is that your opponent is one match closer to winning the set, you don't need to further penalize the player who lost".

I finally got around to watching the episode, and I actually agree with Scar's position. I think the whole view of wins and losses as penalties is a flawed way of looking at a set. If you don't lose your best cp after losing on it, it leads to the same lack of stage diversity we see with M2K's Stupid Rule. Here's an example set with DSRm without bans (players can't pick any of the stages they won on):
Falco vs. Marth
1 - Strike to BF, Falco wins [1-0]
2 - Marth cps FD, Falco wins [2-0]
3 - Marth cps FD AGAIN, Marth wins [2-1]
4 - Falco cps DL, Marth wins [2-2]
5 - Falco cps DL AGAIN

Adding bans into the mix doesn't help with stage diversity. It simply means FD and DL counterpicks will be replaced by PS and FoD respectively.