Getting Back to the Basics: Why are the Standard Rules 'Standard'?

[tsilver33]

Alright, now hear me out here. Why exactly are the standard, most basic rules of Competitive Smash, the way they are? After trying a few times with Google and finding no results, and seeing no posts here on the matter, I would like to know. (It's quite possible I just missed something, if that's the case, please point out the thread, thanks. )

Basically, what I'm asking for is...

1. Why are competitive smash matches 1 V 1 as opposed to free for all matches?

2. Why should matches be stock limit, instead of timed?

3. Why three lives? Wouldn't a single life be quicker?

4. Why are some stages banned at all?

5. Why are items banned (In standard play)?


Now listen, I'm not making an argument for these things, I'm just rather curious as to why they are the way they are. I'm SURE there are reasons out there, I just need to hear them. Lately local libraries around here have been hosting tourneys with very abnormal rules, free for all matches on a random stage with time limits, namely. I just want to be able to make an actual argument for the standard rules. With enough convincing I could make competitive smash popular locally, and that would be excellent. :D

 

[Zankoku]

I'll try to answer these as best I can.

1. Why are competitive smash matches 1 V 1 as opposed to free for all matches?
There are a few answers to this.
One is that FFA does not reward the one who necessarily "plays better" so much as it rewards the one who fewer people end up playing against - that is, if you stay out of the fight for as long as possible, you tend to be at an advantage when it's just down to you and one other (unless everyone else ended up killing themselves, in which case you win without having done any work at all).
Another possible answer is that FFA ends up getting a little political - while you cannot guarantee your own victory, you most certainly can assist another player in ensuring that a third one has no chance of living to the end. This, of course, diminishes the value of FFA in terms of fair measures of skill.

2. Why should matches be stock limit, instead of timed?
The simplest answer is to save time. Matches tend to have both a stock and a time limit; however, the time limit only serves to have a maximum cap, and the large majority of matches end by a player running out of stocks. Note that in a time match, one doesn't necessarily need to get as many KOs as possible - he simply needs to end the game with at least one more point. This justifies stalling the game out because whether you put in the effort to land a KO or not will not really help affect the outcome of the match.

3. Why three lives? Wouldn't a single life be quicker?
Consistency. If you only flip a coin twice, the likelihood of getting exactly one Heads and one Tails is 50%, and if you were to judge whether a coin were weighted based solely on those two flips, it goes to follow that you have a 50% chance of being completely wrong. The same applies here. Also the same argument for multiple games rather than best of 1.

4. Why are some stages banned at all?
Stages that affect the match strongly enough to the point that it overpowers skill (Wario Ware's random rewards, for example), or those that alter gameplay enough that most players feel it detracts from the game rather than adds to it (Mario Bros.), tend to get banned. Stage lists are always hotly debated and changing, though, so the closest thing you can get to a "standard" here is probably Unity.

5. Why are items banned (In standard play)?
Items randomly reward players. Some items are so powerful that in effect it emphasizes luck over personal skill. There are a few arguments around this and attempts to create an acceptable items-on rules set (see Jack Kieser's Item Standard Play or whatever), so you should make your own decision regarding this.

 

[Life]

In regards to #3 and #5... three guesses as to what's in the collapse box, for those of you who know me well.

Spoiler

There's a certain amount of pressure (and as one of its more vocal proponents I can't fairly judge how much) to adopt a ruleset which changes the format from three-stock best-of-three and itemless to one-stock best-of-(usually 9, sometimes something else) with food turned on. I'll save discussion of this to more-appropriate topic, but the point is to reduce the effectiveness of stalling tactics as much as possible. It's a huge change, though, so not likely to occur anytime soon.

Mostly, Ankoku's pretty much got it.

Quick comments on the stage thing.

Stages that are universally banned have an overpowering tactic (such as circle/walkoff camping/wall infinites) or rely too much on luck (pretty much just WarioWare). Special note goes to Mario Bros, which... well, it wasn't pretty, but there was a thread on it not long ago. It has a circle and walkoffs, but the hazards counterbalanced those. Turns out that it was still pretty much banworthy because Falco was nearly untouchable while walkoff camping (and Pit was pretty good as well). It's usually banned on the premise of "the game is too different here", which is an odd deal but I'm not going to go there.

Stages that are debated have a powerful tactic for a handful of characters (this is why Unity banned Japes IIRC), are "too random" (kind of a subjective line, but the only stage that usually garners that kind of discussion is Picto), or have particularly "intrusive" hazards (which half of us think are uncompetitive and half of us think are MORE competitive than static stages).

Also, somebody talk about the starter list.

 

[Jack Kieser]

I can go ahead and expand on #5.

As Ankoku said, items, in a very general sense, are random in nature. Now, this doesn't mean that individual items are all random; in fact, the vast majority of items are not, mechanically speaking, random at all. Items do spawn at random intervals (though the interval length can be influenced by the item switch screen) and at random points on each stage (although there is a "valid spawn area" on each stage that can be viewed with Brawl hacking tools; although items will spawn at a random point within the valid area, they will never spawn in an invalid zone), and it is usually this random factor that most people cite as why items are banned.

That being said, most players can (begrudgingly) agree that items in-and-of-themselves are not all broken; as Ankoku said, the ISP project attempted to create a ruleset that separates fair items from unfair ones using a preset and universally applied criteria. If we could, for instance, control the spawn time of items down to the second and the spawn point down to the pixel and make each spawn predictable, players might see item play differently. Without hacking, though, that is a total impossibility, and so it's doubtful that item play will ever see widespread tournament usage.

TL;DR: I knock you off the stage, you're recovering. I probably won't be able to gimp you... but a Star Rod spawns next to me and I use it to spike you while you are recovering. The deciding factor in that kill very well might have been the Star Rod spawn, which I got using no skill of my own. That's bad.

 

[Tin Man]

For the stages, yes its about preventing over powering techniques because they will end up being over centralizing to the meta game. The fact of the matter is, having DDD on Shadow Moses Island is one of the only viable strategies as its rather strong considering you either get a wall infinite or a walk off regardless of the situation. Going a lighter character does beat this however, but it effectively shuts down a large percentage of the cast due to an over centralizing technique. Not to mention thats not the only technique that benefits from walls and walk offs.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Yoshi on Eldin/stage with walkoffs is also a problem against about a third of the cast.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

You know what I like about this thread?

We never tend to question things like this. There are so many things that are just assumed as true by the smash community, but never questioned. Like the existence of a truly neutral stage.

Good thread, ask more questions.

 

[tsilver33]

Thank you everyone for your very intelligent responses. It's nice to know that the rules aren't the way they are because of some guy going "Because time matches are so stupid moron LOL!" These answers will be great when pleading my case. I also crunched some numbers to figure out exactly how long tourneys would take following a few variables(Namely number of participants/ Best of three rounds vs. best of one/ number of stations available.) to show them, I'm hoping that will help my chances quite a bit as well. If anyone else has anything to add to these questions, by all means answer. Having more points to support your opinions never hurt.

As for more questions, there are very few that are the 'basic' rules of brawl. Though two do cross my mind in particular...

According to the Unity Ruleset v1.1, General Gameplay Rule 4 states that all infinites and chaingrabs are legal.

1. First of all, why is this legal at all?

2. If ALL chaingrabs and infinites are legal, why are walls that provide opportunities for infinites or chaingrabs on stages used to back up banning such a stage?

The Ice Climbers, last I remember, can chaingrab any cast member to death. Many more characters can chaingrab different members of the cast until very near so. If some characters can infinite to death other characters anywhere on the stage, why should stages that allow this only on very small sections of it banned?

Once again, I'm sure there are answers out there, but I do want to hear them.

As Budget Player pointed out, these questions aren't asked often, which would make finding the reasoning for them difficult to new players, but they feel dumb asking them. So, I would like to take this opportunity to say, if anyone else has some seemingly obvious questions that need answered, this would be a good place to do it, so feel free to post them.

 

[Life]

Infinites and chaingrabs (chaingrab being any throw that you can guarantee another grab out of; not necessarily infinites) are legal for a couple reasons. But before I get into them, I just want to say that, in terms of banning stuff in Brawl, if Meta Knight can't do it, it's probably legal. This is because MK is the most powerful character in the game by a good margin and logically should be the first to get hurt if we start swinging the nerf bat. (We're not supposed to talk about banning MK by the way. There was a huge series of discussions on the subject a while ago and we simply weren't mature enough as a community to discuss banning MK without devolving into flame wars. I could explain further if you like, but I'd like to ask a mod's permission before I do (RR, you in here?).)

Also, http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned.html for further reading on this subject.

Something should be banned if the ban is discrete (meaning easily defined), enforceable (meaning you can definitely tell if someone's doing it or not), and warranted (as in powerful enough to be worth banning).

First, they're pretty difficult to pull off. For non-infinite chaingrabs, they require a grab and don't usually KO. It's a lot of free damage if you get that grab, but in return people learn to avoid getting grabbed.

Infinites vary, but there's three main sources of infinites in Brawl.
1. Ice Climbers. First, they rely on chaingrab infinites to exist at all. To ban their infinites is to practically ban the character. Furthermore, separating and KOing Nana makes the infinite impossible. Combine these with a high technical barrier (meaning very few people can do the chaingrab under tournament pressure) and the fact that Ice Climbers have big issues with most non-flat stages (any hazard ruins the combo), and a ban is not warranted.
2. Diddy Kong. He has banana infinites. They can be turned against him, and are also very difficult (but not quite as difficult as IC grabs, other than the single-banana one) and require a lot of setup. Not warranted.
3. King Dedede. He has one important infinite on Donkey Kong (and a really difficult one on a few others, but it's borderline impossible to do; I can describe it if you like) and maybe a couple other sources I don't know about. Again with the worse-than-MK logic, but it's possible (though very difficult) for Donkey Kong to avoid getting grabbed. This is really the only controversial one.

A couple other characters have 1-2 infinites (Marth on Lucas/Ness comes to mind) as well.

Infinites also have the enforceable issue. Unless a TO is watching the match actively, it's virtually impossible to prove that one player is actually doing an infinite on another, from the TO's perspective.

As for stages with walls, most of them have other issues anyway. Shadow Moses Island's walls are very tall and make it difficult to be KO'd since you can DI into them and tech (this is known as a "cave of life"). Corneria's wall is shaped in such a way that it's nearly impossible to safely approach someone who's standing next to it ("fin camping"). Some legal stages do have temporary walls (Pokemon Stadiums, Delfino).

To summarize: in order to ban something, you have to describe exactly what it is, you have to be able to actually enforce the ban, and the tactic has to be actually worth banning in the first place. Chaingrabs and infinites only fit one of the three, that being the first. Powerful, not overpowering.

EDIT: And here's Ankoku with your TL;DR. Ankoku?

 

[Zankoku]

1. Why not? Tournament results have shown that these tactics are neither overpowered nor over-centralizing. In terms of mechanics, they definitely do not break any rules of the game itself. Typically, we aim to only remove things that are easily detrimental to competitive gameplay (glitches that freeze the game or prevent it from being played whatsoever).

2. That alone is not reason enough to ban a stage, though it may be a small contributing factor. Again, stages that affect gameplay enough in a way perceived as detrimental (everyone wants to camp at this point because there's a cave of life and a wall to infinite on) tend to be banned.

 

[xDD-Master]

and in the end it's all subjective and everyone can and should play the game on its own way

and we can create whatever ruleset we want to use


damn, fd, bf, sv only

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

and in the end it's all subjective and everyone can and should play the game on its own way

and we can create whatever ruleset we want to use


damn, fd, bf, sv only

Not if you want to be competitive.


Also, regarding the first question on infinites: wrong question. You never ask "why is something legal" until its legality comes into question. The correct question is always "why should we ban something". Nothing is banned by default. We have to go through and apply a certain "burden of proof" to ban certain things. For example, you don't go around asking "why is FD legal"; you go around asking "why should we ban it", if anything.

(On a side note, it's almost hilarious how many parallels I've found in stage discussion to theological debates)

 

[xDD-Master]

Also, regarding the first question on infinites: wrong question. You never ask "why is something legal" until its legality comes into question. The correct question is always "why should we ban something". Nothing is banned by default. We have to go through and apply a certain "burden of proof" to ban certain things. For example, you don't go around asking "why is FD legal"; you go around asking "why should we ban it", if anything.

awww man
We don't, we never had and we will never have to.
Just ban it, if you don't want it. Easy as hell.

Not if you want to be competitive.

Don't be a fool

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

awww man
We don't, we never had and we will never have to.
Just ban it, if you don't want it. Easy as hell.

K, I'll ban every stage except Temple and every character except ganondorf.

OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A COMPETITIVELY IDEAL SETUP!

Don't be a fool

 

[Spelt]

Because the BRC says so.

/thread.

 

[xDD-Master]

K, I'll ban every stage except Temple and every character except ganondorf.

OBVIOUSLY THIS IS A COMPETITIVELY IDEAL SETUP!

YOUR DEFINITION OF COMPETITIVELY DON EXITS!

Competition is the only thing that matters, the more, the better. Deal with it.

 

[Life]

I'm confused. Did someone just tell BPC that more competition is better?

OP, ask more questions.

 

[WindMajor]

Competition is the only thing that matters, the more, the better. Deal with it.

I like this.

OP ask more questions plzzzzzz.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

YOUR DEFINITION OF COMPETITIVELY DON EXITS!

Competition is the only thing that matters, the more, the better. Deal with it.

...




Are we even arguing? I agree 100% that more competition is better. Your assertion seems to directly contradict that.

 

[Life]

WTB sarcasm font PST.

I'll ask one: I think I know the answer to this already, but why do other fighting game communities seem to look down on Smash? (Or is this subject taboo?)inb4tabuu

 

[Gust14]

Make a 500$-first-price tourney and competitiveness is assured.

Either it having a ruleset with everything banned except for ganon and temple or an everything available ruleset, wich btw would turn into a dedede, shadow mosses only fest.

The thing is that some techs are considered legit and others not and the rules are made to favor a gameplay where the players use only legit techs.

What determines is a tech is legit or not? well, here's when everything gets messed up cause everyone has diferent opinions. And all the problems conserning rulesets are resumed within this.

Example: Stagebans based on easy infinites don't eliminate competitiveness, in the second situation the dedede with the better reflexes and speed will be the one that lands the wall-chaingrab infinite first and will be the winner. He showed more skill than other player by choosing the best strategy to win and perfecting it, so he deserves to win. Now, NOONE would like that the best player is determined by his skills at landing an infinite chaingrab. That's considered a nonlegit tech.

Same with items. It requires skills to use them. But NOONE would like that the best player is determined by his skills at catching and throwing stuff.

Same with ledgegrab limit. It requires skills to camp. But NOONE would like that the best player is determined by his skills at hit-and-running.

The rulesets try to find a point where to succed the players have to master skills like spacing, diing, reading, canceling attacks, etc., and not camping, landing infinites, chasing items, etc. So that's it, at the end everyone wants entertaining competition.

Sorry, for WALLOFTEXT, but i'd like to see your what you think about my thoughts. (Also sorry about my english)

 

[Zankoku]

WTB sarcasm font PST.

I'll ask one: I think I know the answer to this already, but why do other fighting game communities seem to look down on Smash? (Or is this subject taboo?)inb4tabuu

Because Smash Bros. is a series of bad games

Our community as a whole doesn't exactly play nice with the other FG communities, either. It's most likely just a history of bad blood between some poor examples of both sides.

 

[Jack Kieser]

If at all possible, this thread should stay as argument / flame free as humanly possible; I know that certain topics are contentious, but the OP obviously wants practical information, and flame-fest debates and wall-of-text rants aren't going to provide the clear information that the OP wants.

Now, let's be completely clear, here: for all practical intents and purposes, there is a precedent for what BPC is saying in regards to ban procedure. Competitive Smash, as a series, historically follows BPC's thinking until about a few days after Brawl's Japanese release. When Smash64 came out, obviously there wasn't much banning going on, if any at all. S64 was a very bare-bones game, and 0-deaths were pretty much the name of the game. When Melee came out, too much of the game had changed to make any concrete assumptions about if anything should be insta- / auto- banned; the physics and movesets were totally different, few stages carried over and the ones that did were totally overshadowed by the dearth of new stages, and many mechanics were either overhauled or added from scratch.

Remember, the most contentious part of Smash, the items, were played in full competition for a few years.

BPC's logic of "ban when necessary, and prove the ban" is most evident in how Melee handled the item debate. After playing with items on in tournaments for years, months of rigorous testing and argumentation went on. EC v WC debated the issue for a long time before a decision was made, and all sides, points, and tournament results were considered before a full ban was put into place. This was how Smash dealt with bans historically: assume something is legal and prove why it should be banned.

Unfortunately, Brawl added new content and changed old mechanics in such a way that it wasn't nearly as drastic a departure from Melee as Melee was from S64, and that's what changed our ban procedure. Just enough stayed the same by just enough of a margin that we felt confident in taking shortcuts and assuming things that were banned in Melee should stay banned in Brawl (a disingenuous assertion, because even changing the physics leaves the possibility that something banned is no longer banworthy), and taking shortcuts on day one made the community confident that it was ok to take shortcuts in other areas of our ruleset.

So, that's the historical context that brings us to the OPs question: why are infinites and such legal?

At first, it seems illogical to keep a tactic that takes complete control away from one of the players legal. We have to remember, though: nothing is banworthy until it is proven banworthy, and although the concept of infinites seems distasteful, simply being a tactic that induces an emotional response in players is NOT a good reason to ban something.

Remember, bans must be discreet (targeted and easy to understand), enforceable (if you make a rule that cannot be consistently and efficiently enforced, then why have the rule at all?), and warranted (if you don't need the rule, why did you make it?). In order for a ban on infinites to be warranted, we would need to see the game consistently broken because of them, and the fact of the matter is that the Ice Climbers are not sweeping tournaments. No infinite is causing players OR characters to sweep at all. Because of this, we have to allow them, unilaterally so, until they become a problem in actual tournaments, regardless of how "distasteful" the tactic may seem to us.

It is always important to remember when building rulesets: the person / people making the rules are forcing the rules of play onto other players, many times for money. It is simply unethical to manipulate rule creation simply because of personal preference, just like it's unethical to manipulate bracket outcomes because you want guaranteed money. The OP brings up an important question here, because we are, for all intents and purposes, now a community business; Smash pulls in hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. xDD-Master is technically correct when he states that there is nothing forcing TOs or players from playing how they want, but when we're dealing with such vast sums of money, a modicum of decorum must be followed simply because of ethical standards.

So, OP, that is why we ban things the way we do (or should do, at any rate).

 

[MK26]

To add to Jack's point and provide an example, the final verdict on banning items was that, unless you turned every item off in Melee there was always a random chance of containers falling. And where theres a random chance of containers falling theres a random chance of exploding containers falling. And where theres a random chance of exploding containers falling, theres a random chance that theyll fall onto your smash attack and kill you.

So that was why items were banned in melee - to remove that random chance of explosions.

But in brawl, we have the option of turning all containers off, and thus remove that random chance of spontaneous combusion. Technically, one can play brawl competitively with a subset of items on, but the community was happy with items off in melee for several years, so nobody wanted to challenge the status quo.

In fact, Evo 2k8 (i think it was 2k8) tried to run an items-on brawl tourney, and the backlash from the community was pretty massive.

The tourney was won by a player by the name of CPU, who used the ingenious strategy of grabbing a spicy curry and grab releasing his opponent, creating an impromptu grab release chaingrab. CPU beat Ken (yes, the Ken) in the grand finals of the tourney, and as far as I know neither of the two have done anything noteworthy with brawl since. Neither has Evo. Likewise, SWF has done nothing with items in Brawl (besides Jack's own Item Standard Play), and that doesnt appear to be changing any time soon.

 

[san.]

A small subset of 1-2 items are perfectly acceptable and usable, since they barely affect anything and only add more depth.

Keep in mind that many stages were designed with items in mind.

I tried food only, set on low, for a few days and it was quite nice.


Items, in general, promote onstage control, so there is a natural lean towards those types of characters.

 

[xDD-Master]

I'm completely fine with items.
But I PREFER fighting without them.
And most people PREFER fighting without them.
I'm not talking about your friends, or you neighbor, no, I'm talking about the tournament goers, the people that play about money, the people that "study" the game inside, out, the people that know all of their characters options, mechanics, etc. etc.
These people mostly prefer fighting without items, or even more, they try to minimize the randomness to a degree that they don't decide the winner of a match.
These people play the game competitively because they like it, many of them wouldnt play it if it was items on very high + 90% of all stages allowed.
Don't you want to see M2K vs. Ally giving it's best on SV, a Stage that doesn't interact that much with the players, so that it's clearly the better players who'll win?
Sure you can test "who is best @ controlling items" or whatever.
But what if the most of the people just don't want that?
There is a reason why Item Brawl isn't the standard, while there are people who like it, and try to run it as a tournament (Side-Event for example), it still doesn't have that much people who are interested in this and supporting it, just based on the fact, that people prefer non-items of items on.
More people would go to items-banned-tournaments than to items-on-tournaments.
Is this bad? No totally not.
Nobody is holding us back, from changing the game in any way we (The people that really care about the game) want.
The only thing that would really be a objectively logical "no don't ban this" reason, would be something like "it will make the game boring for everyone, so they'll quit soon". While this reason can't be back-up'd well, since we can't look into the future, we can only asume if things are good or bad.
I could say that Ganon/Link/Zelda/Sheik+Temple ONLY will be fun ->forever<-, and the only thing you really can say objectively is "no I don't think so".
So... coming back to basics. I'm highly sure that Jack Kieser for example prefers Item Play, because normal Brawl bores him. BPC likes PTAD, RC, JJ, PS2 etc. over other Stages, because he is bored of them.
It's so simple. Everyone wants to play a game that doesn't bore them. And there is nothing wrong with banning stuff, if it keeps the people feeling bored or annoyed by the game.
So the best ruleset would be the one, that keeps the most people in the community, that is the most attractive for new players, so they'll go to tournaments in the future, and that won't bore/annoy them.
By saying this, you may realize that there can't be such any ruleset, that makes everyone happy. BUT (!) it is possible to find the happy medium.
This truely is the most competitive ruleset then, since it's appealing for the majority.
I hope you understand my point.

@Gust14: I pretty much agree with you
If people want to messure the player's skills at playing Ganon/Link/Zelda/Sheik+Temple only, there is nothing wrong with it.
But we (Again the people that really care about the game) just don't want that.
And thats good.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I'm completely fine with items.
But I PREFER fighting without them.
And most people PREFER fighting without them.
I'm not talking about your friends, or you neighbor, no, I'm talking about the tournament goers, the people that play about money, the people that "study" the game inside, out, the people that know all of their characters options, mechanics, etc. etc.
These people mostly prefer fighting without items, or even more, they try to minimize the randomness to a degree that they don't decide the winner of a match.
These people play the game competitively because they like it, many of them wouldnt play it if it was items on very high + 90% of all stages allowed.

Don't you want to see M2K vs. Ally giving it's best on SV, a Stage that doesn't interact that much with the players, so that it's clearly the better players who'll win?
Sure you can test "who is best @ controlling items" or whatever.
But what if the most of the people just don't want that?
There is a reason why Item Brawl isn't the standard, while there are people who like it, and try to run it as a tournament (Side-Event for example), it still doesn't have that much people who are interested in this and supporting it, just based on the fact, that people prefer non-items of items on.
More people would go to items-banned-tournaments than to items-on-tournaments.
Is this bad? No totally not.
Nobody is holding us back, from changing the game in any way we (The people that really care about the game) want.
The only thing that would really be a objectively logical "no don't ban this" reason, would be something like "it will make the game boring for everyone, so they'll quit soon". While this reason can't be back-up'd well, since we can't look into the future, we can only asume if things are good or bad.
I could say that Ganon/Link/Zelda/Sheik+Temple ONLY will be fun ->forever<-, and the only thing you really can say objectively is "no I don't think so".
So... coming back to basics. I'm highly sure that Jack Kieser for example prefers Item Play, because normal Brawl bores him. BPC likes PTAD, RC, JJ, PS2 etc. over other Stages, because he is bored of them.
It's so simple. Everyone wants to play a game that doesn't bore them. And there is nothing wrong with banning stuff, if it keeps the people feeling bored or annoyed by the game.
So the best ruleset would be the one, that keeps the most people in the community, that is the most attractive for new players, so they'll go to tournaments in the future, and that won't bore/annoy them.
By saying this, you may realize that there can't be such any ruleset, that makes everyone happy. BUT (!) it is possible to find the happy medium.
This truely is the most competitive ruleset then, since it's appealing for the majority.
I hope you understand my point.

I'm just going to highlight everything that's stupid here with bold, intellectually dishonest statements in green, and everything that's factually wrong with red. I've covered literally every argument in here oh so many times. Except one. And I'd like to touch on that.

I don't actually like PS2, JJ, or even Brinstar. I hate LM, I hate JJ, and Orion is not being very nice about PS2-nothing broken, but a bunch of things that are super turbo gay and which I don't like.
Jack Kieser hates items. He started ISP because of a bet, and it turned out that it was, from a competitive and design aspect, really ****ing good.

But we're not stumping against these stages. You know why? Because we're bigger men than that. We enjoy playing brawl so much that we feel that even the elements that we personally dislike should be present if they raise the competitive depth of the game.

Look, if the smash community truly thought purely in this way, you think ICs would still be legal? NOBODY likes ICs! Every single player in the history of smash that I have met that did not main ICs despised the character when asked about it. There is nothing remotely fun about ICs, especially not on FD. But you know what? We recognize that banning a character because we don't like it is a stupid idea. Figured that one out with MK, where a literal case study of this phenomenon was done, and people didn't go for it despite a majority. Most people in the community that are likely to leave (read: low/mid-level tournament players) still hate MK, but he's not banned.

Why? Because some people are willing to look beyond "what I like" and into "what is best for the game". And clearly banning two non-broken characters is bad for game depth.

But you? Not only are you so selfish to believe that things you don't like should be banned just because you don't like them, you openly admit it, and advocate others to share that opinion.

Akuma. Let's get something straight here. 5000 people competing in professional coin-flipping is not more competitive than 8 competing in professional Street Fighter 2 HDR.
5 Million people competing in "professional" checkers is not more competitive than 2 people competing in starcraft.
The entire population of the earth competing in tic-tac-toe (with cash prizes!) is not as competitive as a two people playing a single set of Bo5 rock-paper-scissors.

More competitive does not mean more people competiting.

 

[xDD-Master]

"But we're not stumping against these stages. You know why? Because we're bigger men than that. We enjoy playing brawl so much that we feel that even the elements that we personally dislike should be present if they raise the competitive depth of the game. "

Thats not bigger men, thats just you beeing controled by the game, which is just wrong.
Competitive depth doesn't exist. Game depth does, but even then, it isn't everything that matters.
If it's about depth, SSB64 is is the least depth of all three games. And you know what? There are still people that play it. Would you try to convert them to Melee or Brawl? (I don't know which one is deeper)

"Look, if the smash community truly thought purely in this way, you think ICs would still be legal? NOBODY likes ICs! Every single player in the history of smash that I have met that did not main ICs despised the character when asked about it. There is nothing remotely fun about ICs, especially not on FD. But you know what? We recognize that banning a character because we don't like it is a stupid idea. Figured that one out with MK, where a literal case study of this phenomenon was done, and people didn't go for it despite a majority. Most people in the community that are likely to leave (read: low/mid-level tournament players) still hate MK, but he's not banned."

I hate ICs just like I hate playing vs. every character in Brawl. On the other hand, I love playing & watching nearly every character.
I love 9Bs Ice Climbers for example. Problem, BPC?
You really seem to have an Ice Climbers problem. (You brought them up in multiple discussions XD)

And it's not all about liking either. It's about what the majority thinks is best.
Even though most people don't like them, they still don't want ICs beeing banned.

"But you? Not only are you so selfish to believe that things you don't like should be banned just because you don't like them, you openly admit it, and advocate others to share that opinion."

Because there still is nothing wrong with that.
Nobody can tell you what you like and what not.

"Akuma. Let's get something straight here. 5000 people competing in professional coin-flipping is not more competitive than 8 competing in professional Street Fighter 2 HDR.
5 Million people competing in "professional" checkers is not more competitive than 2 people competing in starcraft.
The entire population of the earth competing in tic-tac-toe (with cash prizes!) is not as competitive as a two people playing a single set of Bo5 rock-paper-scissors. "

But thats not the case.
I can also do hypothetic examples:
Let's just assume that 5 mio. people like playing FD, BF, SV only and 5 people like playing all the others, it would be just stupid to play on the other stages, if this very big majority prefers FD, BF, SV over the others.
But does it show the realitiy? No.

Are there 5000 people competing in professional coin-flipping? No, because it doesnt exist (There probably are professional Coin Flippers anyway)
Are there only 8 people playing HDR? No.
Whats checker?
And there are more than 2 people competing in starcraft.
There is a reason why Starcraft is so big, because it has a big game depth, doesnt get boring for the people and they like it.
If Starcraft would be different, it would very likely have less people playing it.

What does this teach us? If we change the ruleset in stupid ways, that people don't like, we will have less people playing it. So what should we do? Simple. Creating a ruleset that will have the most people playing it. (Competitive playing people of course).

Competitive does not mean higher game depth either. (or how you would call it: competitive depth)

 

[Life]

Whats checker?

You have an 8x8 black-and-red board (like chess--the two games are often packaged together). You have handful of black pieces and a handful of red pieces covering all the squares of one given color three rows in. Each piece moves diagonally forward. Pieces can be removed from the board by "jumping" them. A piece that gets to your opponent's back row becomes a King and can move in all four directions. Game ends when somebody's entirely captured.

Chess is competitively better.

 

[Ghostbone]

Just wanted to point out that if your aim is truly to have the most amount of people playing, turning items on will definitely make it easier for new players to join the competitive community, more people will want to join, and thus you'll almost definitely see more people playing in tournaments than the amount that plays currently.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

"But we're not stumping against these stages. You know why? Because we're bigger men than that. We enjoy playing brawl so much that we feel that even the elements that we personally dislike should be present if they raise the competitive depth of the game. "

Thats not bigger men, thats just you beeing controled by the game, which is just wrong.
Competitive depth doesn't exist. Game depth does, but even then, it isn't everything that matters.

thats just you beeing controled by the game, which is just wrong.
Competitive depth doesn't exist. Game depth does

which is just wrong.
Competitive depth doesn't exist. Game depth does

Competitive depth doesn't exist.

...

You are so wrong on so many levels that it almost hurts.

I hate ICs just like I hate playing vs. every character in Brawl. On the other hand, I love playing & watching nearly every character.
I love 9Bs Ice Climbers for example. Problem, BPC?
You really seem to have an Ice Climbers problem. (You brought them up in multiple discussions XD)

They're the obvious example because their entire gameplay focuses on "camp until I can grab you and then OHKO you" and very few people enjoy playing against them. I don't mind, personally, and as I said before, wouldn't matter either way–what I feel is right does not matter in the slightest.

And it's not all about liking either. It's about what the majority thinks is best.
Even though most people don't like them, they still don't want ICs beeing banned.

What other possible reasoning is there to want to keep something you hate in the game? Come on, tell me! Why would you not want ICs banned, even if you hate them? Oh right, they think past your frankly astonishingly stupid line of logic in to mine.

Because there still is nothing wrong with that.
Nobody can tell you what you like and what not.

Spoiler

The point ---------------->











{five miles}














<Your head>

But thats not the case.
I can also do hypothetic examples:
Let's just assume that 5 mio. people like playing FD, BF, SV only and 5 people like playing all the others, it would be just stupid to play on the other stages, if this very big majority prefers FD, BF, SV over the others.
But does it show the realitiy? No.

It's an example. One that looks to prove a point and does so in grand style. I just proved your hypothesis, "more tournament competition -> more competitive", because this is clearly not the case.

Are there 5000 people competing in professional coin-flipping? No, because it doesnt exist (There probably are professional Coin Flippers anyway)
Are there only 8 people playing HDR? No.
Whats checker?
And there are more than 2 people competing in starcraft.
There is a reason why Starcraft is so big, because it has a big game depth, doesnt get boring for the people and they like it.
If Starcraft would be different, it would very likely have less people playing it.

Spoiler

The point ---------------->













































































































































































































































































































{approximately the distance from here to andromeda}





























































































































































































































































































































































<Your head>

What does this teach us? If we change the ruleset in stupid ways, that people don't like, we will have less people playing it. So what should we do? Simple. Creating a ruleset that will have the most people playing it. (Competitive playing people of course).
Competitive does not mean higher game depth either. (or how you would call it: competitive depth)

It does and I've shown why. Now shut up, sit down, and learn something.

I get your point. "If nobody wants to play it it's not really going to have much luck with competition". Gotcha so far. It makes perfect sense. But here's the thing: we're not proposing things that would make the smash community leave en large. That's the whole point of the unity ruleset. And I've already demonstrated that your method, while common-sensible, is severely faulted when taken to an extreme.

Tell me, Akuma. Where is the difference in competition between:
-Tic-Tac-Toe and Checkers
-Tic-Tac-Toe and Chess
-Tic-Tac-Toe and Super Smash Bros Brawl
-Pong and Super Smash Bros Brawl

Why are some of those considered competitive masterpieces and others laughed at? Why could you not hold a tournament in Tic-Tac-Toe but could hold one in chess? I can give you my explanation:

-Tic-tac-toe is easily solved; the game has almost no depth. Checkers has at least trivial depth (but is also solved)
-see above
-Tic-tac-toe is easily solved; Brawl is unsolvable and contains trillions of possible scenarios in-game.
-Pong (like brawl) contains many, many possible scenarios, but has far less reasonably different ones (the true measure of depth)

Look, I'm sorry, but throughout the history of competitive games, depth has proven itself deciding for the game's competitive value. This is a fact, and you can't redefine competition for this argument. In fact, lemme call up Jack Kieser. JACK KIESER, PAGING JACK KIESER (Keiser in case he namesearches it spelled wrong) TO THE THREAD! He can tell you all about this and why it's factually accurate.

But back to my previous point. If we wanted the most technically sound ruleset, we'd be working towards BBR 3.1. stagelist, 1 stock, 3 minutes, Bo7, food on high. Clearly, this is not going to happen. People aren't willing to even consider many of the changes necessary for that. No, we just want to push it in the right direction without throwing people overboard. We don't want people leaving; I admit that while actually wrong, your theory has at least in effect a few useful things. But I honestly have to say, using it as a counter to the claim that "more deep = better" is ****ing ******** and you should know better.

 

[xDD-Master]

Just wanted to point out that if your aim is truly to have the most amount of people playing, turning items on will definitely make it easier for new players to join the competitive community, more people will want to join, and thus you'll almost definitely see more people playing in tournaments than the amount that plays currently.

I said more then 1 time, that the ruleset should aim the people that want to play for money. The people that actually care about the mechanics of the game, the people who study it. The people who care about winning/losing and try to maximaze their chances of winning, by improving skill- and knowledge wise. The people that would travel for away or even fly to other countries to play Smash Bros.
The casuals don't care about their characters strength, their ATs, the Stages we play, the Items (on or off) etc. pp.
They just don't ****ing care about competition. They don't see the difference between professional gaming and casual gaming. And they would never fly for any tournament.

Casual Players wouldn't join our community automatically just because we use items, since they just don't care, they never did, and the never will, otherwise they would've already done that. There are no casuals that don't go to tournaments because the tournament turns items off. The are casual don't go to tournaments because... well, because they are casuals.
Yes I have MANY friends playing SSB, so I know what I am talking about.

 

[Gust14]

Yeah, iff tic-tac-toe was played by a lot of people, and tourneys surged, and the prices, in popularity and mone, would be high then it would become higly competitive

Of course the rules obey the compeitive plyers, we are talking about rules for competitive play, for tournaments. Casual play is played wih custom rules

The only factors that makes a game more or less competitive are: individual competitiveness of its players and PRICES IN TOUNEYS (popularity and money)... if the rules said that to win in ssbb you have to smash your head aginst a wall, and the price was international prise and $1000 there would be strategies, at's and a fierce competitiveness on how to smash your head better/suffering less damage, etc... It isn't too deep and it wouldn't be popular except to bizarro people, but it would be very competitive.

There are rules and strategies that people seem as right form of play, and the are others that people cosinder wrong play...The rules satisfies the mayorities, who commonly chose spacing, at's, not-too-random and not-too-cheap strategies as the best form of play, because that way the game is more entertaining, or fast, or "balanced", or whatever cause this is higly subjective...and that's it.

 

[xDD-Master]

^ agreed

Nice post. Good points.

 

[John12346]

Gust, your points don't exactly work when the subset of games we use only extends to the ones that don't break laws/might kill someone or put them in the hospital...

 

[MK26]

@xdd: you might know checkers as draughts

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Yeah, iff tic-tac-toe was played by a lot of people, and tourneys surged, and the prices, in popularity and mone, would be high then it would become higly competitive

I'm sorry, but this is a crock of ****. It would not happen. You know why?

Because someone who has been playing Tic-tac-toe competitively for 50 years could not beat someone who just started and learned 10 simple, logical moves.

You moron.

I don't know how clear I can make this. Your statement is utter bull****, and because of that pretty much the entire rest of the post which follows from it is wrong. At least to a certain degree, game depth is decisive for game competitiveness.



In case you're wondering why I'm getting so angry about this, it's because I'm pissed that this argument is still alive. It's monumentally stupid and goes against everything even remotely known about game design.

 

[xDD-Master]

BPC rages. Then let me rage too.
Stop picking always only those sentences you can bash and try to interpret **** into it, while bashing the people that they don't understand.
He just used tic-tac-toe as an example to stress something out. Yes, it was an exaggeration.
Just like your stupid example

"Akuma. Let's get something straight here. 5000 people competing in professional coin-flipping is not more competitive than 8 competing in professional Street Fighter 2 HDR.
5 Million people competing in "professional" checkers is not more competitive than 2 people competing in starcraft.
The entire population of the earth competing in tic-tac-toe (with cash prizes!) is not as competitive as a two people playing a single set of Bo5 rock-paper-scissors."

Which is just entirely wrong in real world. There are reasons why it isn't like that, because people are able to realize a good game and a bad one. Nobody says: "Well I want to play something competitive... hmmm yeah lets choose Starcraft I heard it's good". No **** doesnt work like that. People play SSB. People enjoy SSB. People want to play tournament for SSB. Easy as hell.
Stop putting interpretations into lines that don't exist. This is like the 83873498734879 time I realized all of you Stage-Discussion Rage Guys (c) BPC have done that and THAT rages me A LOT (But I'm mostly editing it, because I don't want to lower the niveau).

Just like this:

Gust, your points don't exactly work when the subset of games we use only extends to the ones that don't break laws/might kill someone or put them in the hospital...

How can someone don't see that it CLEARLY was an exaggeration. Explain me guys.
Really, this is annoying as hell. Stop this bull****.

And then this:

Because someone who has been playing Tic-tac-toe competitively for 50 years could not beat someone who just started and learned 10 simple, logical moves.

YEAH thats exactly the reason why tic-tac-toe isnt played competitively. No one is that stupid to not realize that.
But it was as well an exaggeration, so again you failed.
There are reasons behind banning stupid stages or items or whatever.
People want it this way. They don't care if 5 people are crying if 5000 are happy.
So if there really would be 5 million competitive tic-tac-toe player, then let them play, they don't care if you don't like their game. I know that they will know their game has a depth barrier, but if they still play it for whatever reasons, then let them play this ****.
But you know what? You could change Gust's example to any "low depth but still playable" game you want and his post would still have all good points and you couldn't bash him anymore. Take that advice.
It really is that simple.


E: Oh I realized that BPC answered to my post. Will answer it later
And btw. I edited a lot of insulting rage out of my post anyway. I hate insulting other people
Even if they annoy me hardcore, and when I disagree with their actings or opinions D:

 

[Zankoku]

I honestly think Brawl is lasting as long as it is because it still follows the general "Smash mechanics" of percent, rising knockback, and Nintendo characters - all fun elements. Competition's about being good at something that's fun, after all.

The level of true competitive depth it has is... somewhat questionable, but thanks to just how much one can do regardless of positional/situational disadvantage (minor lack of positive feedback for winning player), the fact that humans can't predict literally everything that someone else is about to do (hopefully) keeps the game from just being figured out and killed. So we are, in effect, making competition out of the game because enough of it is user-input based to do so, and there is enough variety of inputs. Pretty much what happened with Melee and 64, though admittedly with much more emphasized loss of options when at a disadvantage - in other words, much stronger positive feedback.

With that in mind, removal of competitive depth (yes, there is a difference between this and general game depth) is affordable because as far as we know, the skill ceiling has not been reached yet. Giving out poor examples like Checkers, Tic-Tac-Toe, and the like nevertheless serve to show that if we want to figure a game out, we'll figure it out - and the moment that happens, there's no longer true competition behind it. You can claim that it's because "people aren't stupid enough to not realize that," but the reality of the matter is that no game with a very easily reachable peak of skill will attain any sort of competitive following to provide a valid example... hence the resorting to exaggerations to attempt to prove a rather meaningless point.

Let's cut the bull**** here, and talk about something real now, please.

 

[Orion*]

You know what I like about this thread?

We never tend to question things like this. There are so many things that are just assumed as true by the smash community, but never questioned. Like the existence of a truly neutral stage.

Who is we?

Not if you want to be competitive.

Broad word with many interpretations is broad. Cool story bro

Because the BRC says so.

/thread.

THIS^^^^

the OP obviously wants practical information

Ops question was answered in in the first few posts very clearly, if we devolve on a different subject or whatever as long as it's not completely off topic who cares. If it was all completely useless or whatever that's one thing and I'm all for non mod posters to say if they don't think somethings right. But in this situation it's not really anything worth complaining over.

Orion is not being very nice about PS2-nothing broken, but a bunch of things that are super turbo gay and which I don't like.

?? rephrase please

if they raise the competitive depth of the game.

reasons why this is ********

1. I already explained how many times you clearly have different values for what competitive means in comparison to other players. Rephrase it to "I think" or something since it clearly is not a fact.

2. Ironically the more "competitive" it gets, the more degenerate game play and strategy wise it gets...

It's like

"**** stage control we want MK on Rainbow!!!"
"FD is gay I actually have to outskill my opponent"

LMAO

get that garbage out.

Most people in the community that are likely to leave (read: low/mid-level tournament players) still hate MK, but he's not banned.

It's surprising because most top players I talk to really don't care if he's banned or not. He's not SF4 akuma broken or something but he's clearly degenerate, easy to use and in many situations very "skill less" in comparison to other characters.

Nobody has even mentioned banning IC's. At least they can be CPed, and have bad MUs. MK's worst mu on his worst stages is even...

I don't particularly think he should be banned, not even just because I use him. But I could reasonably understand if that's what it came to, lol.