Cliffhangers

[Hax]

after today I definitely think Cliffhangers should be enforced in tournament rulesets. for those who don't know, Cliffhangers is a statistic at the end of a game that calculates how many times a player grabbed the ledge. the reason I believe this should be enforced is because of some stuff M2K showed me. last year at Apex 2 I played some friendlies vs his jiggs and got 4 stocked multiple times when he ledgecamped with fair. jiggs is the most severe case of ledgecamping, but sheik is a problem also. today at a No Johns biweekly I watched M2K 3-0 Linguini, a great player, by taking the lead and then ledgecamping for the entire game. the level of skill required to execute this technique is obscenely low, while the advantage it gives is massive.

versus sheik, it is definitely feasible to wavedash onto the ledge before she regrabs, but this places her opponent at a horrible disadvantage. this isn't a 50-50 guess; attempting to steal the ledge from sheik is probably 75-25 in her favor.

that's for fast characters; slower characters like ganon don't stand a chance

as for jigglypuff, I don't doubt that M2K (or whatever jiggs has the patience to ledgecamp for 8 minutes) would win Genesis 2 if he ledgecamped with fair. there literally isn't a way around it if it's done correctly.

this is in no way meant to attack M2K; I'm actually happy he revealed this to me so that I can attempt to prevent it from being a problem at a major tournament.

I don't know how many ledgegrabs one should be permitted in a match. I'd say ~15 a stock is reasonable, so 60 ledgegrabs = loss of match? if you're going above 60 without ledgecamping with sheik/jiggs, then there's a 99% chance you lost the match anyway.

 

[Max?]

Tight tanight

 

[crush]

Can someone record m2k doing this? It would be very enjoyable to watch ieo

 

[Blacknight99923]

its unfortunate ledge stalling exists in both games.

i hope the issue can be dealt with by the melee community far more efficiently than it has been with brawl.

I don't know much about melee specifics but how many seconds of stalling would 60 grabs give?

 

[VGmasta]

That's fouled up. How you gonna pitch a tent like that on Linguini?!

 

[Pi]

i don't think just any ol jiggs is going to take the lead on linguini then succesfully stall/plank for the rest of the match succesfully

and while wavedashing to grab the ledge vs sheik is an option, is is not the only option.

as for jigglypuff, I don't doubt that M2K (or whatever jiggs has the patience to ledgecamp for 8 minutes) would win Genesis 2 if he ledgecamped with fair. there literally isn't a way around it if it's done correctly.

peach, samus, ylink, link, marth come to mind when faced w/ a ledgestalling jiggs...



i really think you're jumping to conclusions here about a technique that may be 'broken' in certain matchups, but a non-viable strategy in others

jiggs isn't invincible the whole time she's planking

and while sheik is, she still has to 'guess' if someone is going to be on the edge or not
so even if you chose not to wavedash onto the ledge, if you faked like you were, or even jumped and came down from above, or some other form of grabbing the ledge and made her ub onto the stage, that's a free punish of your own

and not every character is at a terrible disadvantage from the ledge vs. sheik
at that point you can still make it a guessing game that you can win

i think you're blowing matchup speicific techniques way out of proportion here, and i also think that's why you don't see these techniques employed by bad to mediocre players to win tournaments =|

 

[tarheeljks]

regardless of whether people want to address ledgestalling, instituting a cap on the # of ledge grabs seems tricky/dangerous. i suspect a max that is low enough to prevent stalling carries the potential to force players to play sub-optimally, though i obv don't know ledge grab stats. anyway, my point is that grabbing the ledge is not inherently stalling-- in the sense that you are trying to time out your opponent or something to that effect-- so it's better to address the issue outright, rather than limiting a useful tactic to prevent its abuse. yeah, it's probably the case that most people who grab the ledge more than x times are truly attempting to stall the match*, but throwing a ceiling on the # of ledge grabs feels like a shortcut that may produce unintended effects. the number of ledge grabs doesn't say a great deal without context. if you legitimately-- obv what is legit is the rub--must grab the ledge more than x times then you should be able to do it. stalling influences time constraints so a rule should address the issue of time manipulation directly. rather than limiting the # of ledge grabs, what about limiting the amount of time someone can spend regrabbing the ledge? a shotclock of sorts



* determining x also seems tricky b/c different characters, and different play styles for that matter, may lead to fairly wide ranges of how often a player can "reasonably" grab the ledge on average during a match

 

[Metà]

I don't think edge-stalling has proven itself to be a problem in tournament settings to the point that it over-centralizes the meta-game, so there is no reason to pre-emptively ban it. I'm kind of disappointed to see this coming from you, Hax. Maybe once we see a rise of players who are solely using this strategy to win matches, we can talk about putting limits on it, but right now it just seems unnecessary.

In Brawl, we did see this come up as a problem, and when it got too far, restrictions were put on the number of ledge grabs. The key thing is that by that point, we already had players winning against very prestigious players by using this strategy almost exclusively. IMO it's far too early to put this rule in effect until we see some hard evidence; and by evidence, I don't mean you complaining about Mew2King's ledge-grab proficiency. I mean this needs to become somewhat of a trend in high stakes tournaments, pretty much.

 

[T.J.]

If a rule like this is made for melee it should at least be lightly enforced.
Like if it's a real match and one player goes over the limit but wasn't exactly trying to stall out or be insanely gay, the player wouldn't get a loss or whatever.

 

[Hax]

I figured someone would argue that it has to become a common problem for it to be banned/restricted. the problem with that is that a bunch of players who've experienced jiggs ledgestalling already know how broken it is, so why not prevent it from ever happening?

 

[Metà]

Because that's not how rules are made in competitive games. It needs to prove itself broken to the community as a whole, not just a small group of people who think they know what's best for the community.

 

[Ripple]

if a strategy is truly broken it should be banned regardless if its practiced by the majority of people.

ledge camping in melee isn't as broken as you think hax. if it was we'd see m2k's puff against players he can't beat with marth/sheik like PP/armada.

I doubt we'd see that at genesis II also.

 

[tarheeljks]

Because that's not how rules are made in competitive games. It needs to prove itself broken to the community as a whole, not just a small group of people who think they know what's best for the community.

eh, initial rulesets in games/sports almost always attempt to limit/prevent angleshooting and exploitative strategies, with rules being added/amended as new information becomes available and as new exploitative strategies are uncovered. the initial versions of games would not be playable (competitively) if this were not the case. it just so happens that a lot of the time people don't see problems until they occur on a wide scale.

edit: not arguing in favor of banning anything fwiw; however, i agree w/ripple that if it's broken then there's no reason to wait until everyone abuses it

 

[Metà]

I guess that's true. I'm also arguing that it's not very broken though. There are some things that obviously should just be banned regardless of whether they're commonly used or not (see Ice Climbers' freeze glitch). There is a line that needs to be drawn.

 

[Massive]

Your entire argument is based on "M2K is good at this game".

If he had been gimping with fox you would have thought of shouting "Fox is broken!" but you already know that. I'd posit you're just shouting "ledgeguards are broken!" because you hadn't been exposed to the truly ******** things Jiggs/very skilled players can do.

Do not be suprised when very, very good players make the odds look impossible. I can assure you they are not.

 

[Jonas]

as for jigglypuff, I don't doubt that M2K (or whatever jiggs has the patience to ledgecamp for 8 minutes) would win Genesis 2 if he ledgecamped with fair.

How about we bring this up if M2K (or anyone else) actually does this?

 

[Beat!]

This reminds me of Eggm's thread.

 

[-ShadowPhoenix-]

Come on guys we dont need a ledge grab limit...
our game doesnt need these silly rules

 

[Hax]

one day you guys are gonna realize i wasn't kidding lol

M2K says he would never do it in tournament because the day its exposed and becomes known as an unbeatable strategy is the day melee is ruined for him

even though jiggs ledgestalling hasn't ruined the game for you guys yet, I'm surprised you're all fine with sheik ledgestalling, which we've all seen. Amsah vs Jman 3 is a prime example of a no-risk, high-reward strategy being used to run the clock. last time I checked, the timer wasn't meant to be abused. our ruleset states that strategies such as rising pound are illegal if used to stall; why should we permit sheikstalling, a much more prevalent problem?

to clarify, you guys shouldn't need for a strategy to be unbeatable for it to be banned. my criteria for a ban is when a strategy takes a ridiculously low amount of skill to run the clock while giving someone a massive advantage. the only way around sheikstalling is to wavedash once/twice onto the ledge before the explosion on her up-b. you have to initiate the wavedash(es) while out of range of a ledgehop fair, and then you have to react to sheik initiating her up-b during the upwards part and make it onto the ledge before the explosion. for faster characters, it's very difficult and an extremely unfair advantage. for characters like ganon, it's not possible. that is completely unreasonable, and the reason you see M2K 4-stocking/jv5-stocking people after using the same strategy over and over

 

[-Jumpman-]

one day you guys are gonna realize i wasn't kidding lol

M2K says he would never do it in tournament because the day its exposed and becomes known as an unbeatable strategy is the day melee is ruined for him

even though jiggs ledgestalling hasn't ruined the game for you guys yet, I'm surprised you're all fine with sheik ledgestalling, which we've all seen. Amsah vs Jman 3 is a prime example of a no-risk, high-reward strategy being used to run the clock. last time I checked, the timer wasn't meant to be abused. our ruleset states that strategies such as rising pound are illegal if used to stall; why should we permit sheikstalling, a much more prevalent problem?

to clarify, you guys shouldn't need for a strategy to be unbeatable for it to be banned. my criteria for a ban is when a strategy takes a ridiculously low amount of skill to run the clock while giving someone a massive advantage. the only way around sheikstalling is to wavedash once/twice onto the ledge before the explosion on her up-b. you have to initiate the wavedash(es) while out of range of a ledgehop fair, and then you have to react to sheik initiating her up-b during the upwards part and make it onto the ledge before the explosion. for faster characters, it's very difficult and an extremely unfair advantage. for characters like ganon, it's not possible. that is completely unreasonable, and the reason you see M2K 4-stocking/jv5-stocking people after using the same strategy over and over

Amsah told me it's quite easy to beat actually.

 

[Eggm]

Lol, don't waste your time hax. Until they see m2k do it in person they can't realize how ridiculous it is lol. You'll get nowhere. <_<

 

[-Jumpman-]

Lol, don't waste your time hax. Until they see m2k do it in person they can't realize how ridiculous it is lol. You'll get nowhere. <_<

Didn't Hax just say M2k won't do it? Lawl, bull***** thread.

 

[Jonas]

You keep bringing up Mew2King. Is he the only one who is capable of ledge-stalling perfectly with Puff or Sheik? If no, why aren't other players winning more tournaments with these stalling techniques?

And no, we shouldn't act before it's proven completely broken and unbeatable in a tournament setting. It would definitely suck, but it wouldn't cause completely irreparable damage if a tactic like that won a major tournament - just ban it before the next one comes up. Until then, just relax and play Melee cuz it *****.

PS: If you take the ledge from Sheik, she has to land on the stage with up B. There's no way that's unpunishable.

 

[CloneHat]

For literally years M2K has been whispering about his "game-destroying tactic" that he refuses to do on principle and that everyone else is too dumb to realize.

Every now and then, some player complains about it, that they have "seen the light" or whatever. In reality, it's going to be irrelevant until it happens at a major tourney. The information and incentive have been around forever.

 

[1048576]

one day you guys are gonna realize i wasn't kidding lol

M2K says he would never do it in tournament because the day its exposed and becomes known as an unbeatable strategy is the day melee is ruined for him

even though jiggs ledgestalling hasn't ruined the game for you guys yet, I'm surprised you're all fine with sheik ledgestalling, which we've all seen. Amsah vs Jman 3 is a prime example of a no-risk, high-reward strategy being used to run the clock. last time I checked, the timer wasn't meant to be abused. our ruleset states that strategies such as rising pound are illegal if used to stall; why should we permit sheikstalling, a much more prevalent problem?

to clarify, you guys shouldn't need for a strategy to be unbeatable for it to be banned. my criteria for a ban is when a strategy takes a ridiculously low amount of skill to run the clock while giving someone a massive advantage. the only way around sheikstalling is to wavedash once/twice onto the ledge before the explosion on her up-b. you have to initiate the wavedash(es) while out of range of a ledgehop fair, and then you have to react to sheik initiating her up-b during the upwards part and make it onto the ledge before the explosion. for faster characters, it's very difficult and an extremely unfair advantage. for characters like ganon, it's not possible. that is completely unreasonable, and the reason you see M2K 4-stocking/jv5-stocking people after using the same strategy over and over

Instead of complaining about it, why don't you win the next national tournament using this strategy? It's free money for you, and then the rest of us have some evidence that it's broken.

As Ganon, why not move near the ledge and shield? At that point, every option the Sheik has can be predicted and punished. As for puff fairs, no idea why that works, so a vid would be nice.

 

[Hax]

Melee definitely *****, but the ledge is its one flaw. aside from that i think it's a perfect game

Jonas, there's also an extremely disadvantageous, risky process someone has to go through in order to take the ledge from sheik. when M2K is ledgehop fairing perfectly to keep you out of range, you're faced with a nearly unbeatable strategy. other sheiks seemingly give up the ledge whenever its contested; M2K doesn't. don't act like this takes skill, either. up-b'ing over and over and ledgehop fairing when they come close is an elementary, yet broken strategy.

if one's ability to punish sheik if they successfully take the ledge from her is your reason for this not being broken, then how about jigglypuff? with 5 jumps, she's not getting punished even if you accomplish the impossible feat of taking the ledge from her

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPk1MRX0SD4 (ChiboSempai vs Tag) is an example of someone that doesn't even play this game stalling out Tag, a very good local player. keep in mind that this isn't even a good jiggs, nor was he ledgestalling properly. he also never took a % lead. still, Tag knew that attempting to take the ledge from jiggs is a futile effort

 

[1048576]

You really think that video shows anything? It looked to me like the falco was perfectly content to let puff have the ledge, to the point it may as well have been bowser camping it there. I mean, at the very least spend some time on the left half of the level, or shoot little brother bullets for a minute. For example, I'd like to see what wavedash -> low angled ftilt does once Jiggs leaves the edge.

 

[Brookman]

Clock matches using independent time pieces and pause the timer when people are edge stalling. problem solved.

Allow the player being stalled a bathroom break. Maybe let him go play friendly matches with other people but make the stalling player continue to stall till he gets back. TABLES TURNED.

 

[OverLord]

Here in Italy we got a Cliffhanger's rule.

Penny's stupid rule:

If during a tournament set one of the player thinks that his/her opponent is trying purposely to stall the game by grabbing the ledge, at the end of the match he/she can call this rule to be applied. If so, the "Cliffhangers" stat is checked by the TO/Referee, and if the cliffhangers are more than 50, that player lose the match.


Thankfully it seems that no one ever needed to call this rule to be applied 'til now.



However in Europe there are a couple of smashers that sometimes try to stall games with Jiggs/Sheik, but it's really rare to see them win a single match that way.

Against Sheik it's not that difficult to steal the ledge, but I understand that against Ganon could be gamebreaking.

Against Puff though, I can't see how it could ever be so terrible. In the match you posted that Falco isn't even trying to do something, probably because of fear, but that's not so smart, he could've at least try something, considering Chibo isn't M2K, so I don't see what's to fear about.

 

[Hax]

"it might as well have been Bowser camping there"? I didn't know Bowser had multiple ledgehopped aerials that come out almost instantly and let him safely regrab the ledge.

the Falco wasn't trying to do anything because he has zero options versus an invincible fair that lets Jiggs c0ck back so much that's she's completely safe, even before she grabs the ledge.

wavedash ftilt doesn't beat an invincible move

 

[ph00tbag]

Just because Fox, Falco and Marth can't beat a strategy doesn't make it broken.

 

[leffen]

lmfao hax your such a scrub at times, no offense. You literally have no idea what so ever on what makes something bannable and your examples are even worse than Eggm's.
Seriously, learn how to ****ing present your thoughts and learn how to use good examples and reasoning for it to be implemented.

Oh and Sheik's ledge stalling is ****ing horrible, even Ganon has very good tools against it (roll-> lightshieldhog, bair clanking with up b hitbox to slipoff to grab ledge is a few examples that work extremely well and sheik has no counter to). What does sheik "gain" when ganon fails that is comparable either 0-80% chaingrab, stomp-> **** or just edgehog (for ganon).
She has fair and up B that both deal a mere 12% unstaled. Fair from ledgehop is HORRIBLY unsafe and is ridiculously easy to punish.

I could make a video if you still believe that Sheik's stalling is anything less than a waste of time. It's ****ing horrible compared to Yoshi's and Fox's.


But nvm, Hax/Eggm is gonna go with the "MY DAD WOULD OWN YOUR DAD" type of argument so why do I even bother.

That said, I don't see any problem what so ever with enforcing a ledgegrab rule, I mean, who would actually be against playing in an environment with it implemented? We don't have a perfect, reasonable explanation on why we ban pound stalling, ban certain stages, wobbling etc, why not just implement a rule that, I can assure you, very few people would protest against and that would benefit the community immensely.

On another thought tho, Yoshi would suffer.... :<

Keep in mind though, that you would only by your cliffhanger **** if the match goes to time.

 

[leffen]

Shameless double post.


Hax, did it occur to you that Jigglypuff actually has to grab the ledge again?

Did occur to you that IF the, in this case, fox/falco fails to grab the ledge somehow Jigglypuff HAS NO GOOD PUNISHES. What are you gonna do, fair them? Tech and punish. At lower percents you wont be able to tech fair, but since you will still have your jump you can jump and punish that too. Meanwhile, Falco has dair, and hes invincible.

When people are on the edge they are at a disadvantage. You have zero stage control, and please dont use LOLBACKTHROWGIMPSALA2006 as a argument, you have better chances of gimping your opponent if they are on the edge because they have no stage control. M2K owning everyone by camping the edge is simply him being way more comfortable in that zone and them being worse.

Don't you think its funny, how he has never camped the edge successfully vs PP huh? Oh wait, thats because its a horrible position and PP knows how to abuse it.

 

[Ripple]

lol @ m2k not wanting to ruin melee.

he already ruined brawl for so many people

 

[OverLord]

Brawl was ruined by Sakurai.

 

[Dark Hart]

Hax did you really use JMan vs Amsah 3 as your in tourney example, and chibo as another? Lol

 

[dudutsai]

Jigglypuff on the edge is pretty broken vs characters that don't have a projectile.


I find that against Falco/Falcon/Ganon it's probably a winning strategy.

Vs Fox it gives you a large but not unbeatable advantage.

Vs Sheik/Peach/Marth/Puff it's pretty easy to counter.


I do have some experience in this matter....

 

[Mew2King]

it's broken with jiggs, it certainly isn't broken with sheik though hax. You can easily get the ledge from sheik, and she can't reach as far. Jiggs has farther reach, less commitment, and you have to shinespike her at least 3 times to kill her. You didn't even try to get the ledge from me when I was sheik and the time you did you successfully got me off it. When I did it with jiggs you only did 23% in 2 stocks.

 

[Mew2King]

the tactic is broken with jiggs guys. Instead of just explaining it out, any fox falco or falcon can money match my jiggs while i use this tactic and I'll show you first hand.

 

[Jonas]

Or you could win Genesis 2 with it and show everyone, earning even more money in the process
Honestly, "any Fox, Falco or Falcon" would probably lose in a match with you, regardless of whether you use a broken Jiggs tactic or not.