Apologies for the delay, I've been away from my computer for a while.
Asking "are you saying that..." is pushing burden on of proof on me.
You said they are "completely random" and I disputed the "completely" part of that by stating they appear at an exact time every time and only within a specific area.
Nice try with the Burden of Proof shot though.
Okay, I see what you're saying; I should have specified that I meant random in the ways that are actually relevant to the topic at hand (namely horizontal spawn coordinates).
As they spawn randomly in this way, they can randomly heavily favor one player or the other by spawning bomb-ombs around them, even potentially exclusively.
it is disputed that hitting your opponent before bombs drop and being able to react to the bombs is actually much more skill-based than random wins based on who randomly has a random % that is randomly greater/lesser in relation to another random %.
it is still debatable that handling the bombs is "random" instead of "reactionary" (that is to say skill-based)
You mean the problem with the hype surrounding a next-hit KO which is skill-based and not random at all? Or ability to dodge an attack through pure reaction?
I don't believe anyone advocated for a coinflip to determine a test of skill.
Got hit by a bomb? Get better.
This is why the dropping of bombs would not be considered "random" because the players should know the time they will start dropping and how to react accordingly
Stop. Please, actually read what I write.
My problem with sudden death is (mostly) the influence of the
bomb-omb's random spawning location potentially heavily favoring one player due to no act of their own skill.
How well one player handles the bomb-ombs is completely irrelevant if the other is not tested by them whatsoever.
Please stop ignoring this fact.
Until you can prove that bombs do not spawn randomly across the map in a way that can randomly, hugely favor one player over the other, or admit that this is a problem, it is unlikely that we will get anywhere. And if you choose to simply gloss over my main point again, then you've proven incapable of having a proper debate and so I won't bother responding.
(Also, if Sudden Death is legal, then we have no reason not to have WarioWare legal, as it's problem is randomly assigning advantages.)
Once again the %-based ruling cannot determine a winner when % is tied. This is the ultimate ruination of such a ruling and additionally it is disputed that hitting your opponent before bombs drop and being able to react to the bombs is actually much more skill-based than random wins based on who randomly has a random % that is randomly greater/lesser in relation to another random %.
Those two points make Sudden Death a more competitively viable option - I am not saying it is a popular opinion right now, nor am I saying I like it, but just showing you that it is a stronger stance than your position in the argument from what I see. I am open-minded about it (which is where I got to playing out Sudden Death, something I was against originally).
The %-based ruling cannot determine a winner with tied percent, that is definitely true. That is also why the fail-safe of "if a match goes to time and both stocks and percent are even, play a 1-stock 3min rematch with the same characters on the same stage" is there, to work around that problem.
A problem is only "the ultimate ruination of such a ruling" if a suitable solution cannot be found for it.
As for the disputing over sudden death's content, I agree that hitting your opponent before the bombs drop is an indication of skill (though as previously mentioned it has incredibly skewed matchups) however once the bombs start falling it is no longer a test of "who has better skill at the game", as both players are not tested evenly. If the game decides to randomly drop 12 bombs on one player and none on the other, and the person who has bombs dropped on them loses, what does that show? That the game decided to drop bombs on them, not that they are the worse player.
This is the same argument as with items in competitive smash, only hyper-focused as a single item spawn often equates to a full game loss. As items are not legal (people can react and catch items to in theory, but "Randomly spawning item catching" is not one of the skills we as a community have decided to test), neither will Sudden Death be, or at least if it is it will have it's work cut out for it (and/or come with a drastic change in rulings in competitive Smash).
Oh yes, and as for being
much more skill-based than random wins based on who randomly has a random % that is randomly greater/lesser in relation to another random %"
A character's percent is (almost) exclusively decided by interactions between players, which is
not random. Where bombs/items/etc spawn are random, player interaction is not. If you are claiming that player interaction is random, then you are claiming to compete in random chance.
One cannot err to a "perfect" solution otherwise that in itself is a fallacy to dismiss something because it might not be absolute in every sense.
What is the stronger argument? <= We go with that until a stronger argument displaces it.
The strongest solution is to simply not have a time limit, as this way the match will simply continue until a winner is decided. This is infeasible to do in a tournament, however, as these things have time constraints. Therefore it won't be part of the ruleset.
The next strongest argument is theoretically to have these players do a 1-stock match with same characters/stage/etc, as this is simply a short match with even standing; if the players decide to stall to time (if possible) though, then we're back at needing another ruling ("Whoever has lower % at when Time is called for the tiebreaker wins" -> Why not do that in the first place and save time?). If there is no time limit to the rematch, then it's completely irrelevant and the original match should have just been played through.
After this comes the percent-based win, which is also non-optimal mostly because % does not actually display how close to death a character is; 100% to Jiggs/Kirby (who dies early) is very different than 100% to Bowser/Ganon (who normally die past 100%). With the percent-based ruling, if Kirby was at 90% and Bowser was at 91% then Kirby wins, despite actually being much closer to death (in theory; gimps and the like play into this as well of course).
And then you add cases like Lucario, who is only really relevant once they're at high percent, and it becomes a total mess to determine who's truly "ahead".
The upsides to this version of determining the victor is that it is both faster than the 2 'better' options, and that it is up to the player interactions to determine who actually has the higher percent at the point when time runs out.
Next comes playing out Sudden Death. It has the advantages of being both quick (in theory; bombs do not spawn under the stage however so you could avoid combat by 'planking' ((obviously not as effective as in Brawl)) and or occasionally grabbing the ledge while hanging out under the stage as villager/whoever. Also, SD has no time limit so if both players do this it could potentially never end) and of being what the game does automatically; note that this second advantage is an advantage that can be used as an argument point for why we should change to this, but not as a reason why we should expect it to be this way; the "default" for competitive smash, as it currently stands, is to not play out Sudden Death and to determine the victor through percent-based methods.
The downsides to this being that the winner can be determined in an extremely random way ("Who does the bomb drop on first?" has very little bearing on player skill), as well as the fact that there is potential for it to also take an excessive amount of time. Sudden Death has no timer, meaning that if both players can exploit sudden death (such as through planking ((obviously weakened heavily from Brawl)) or similar tactics such as hanging out under the stage where the bombs don't spawn using things such as Diddy's wall cling, Villager's Balloon Trip, etc and only grabbing the ledge when they have invincibility) then it can continue indefinitely, which means it has the same problem as the best option. Now obviously it is unlikely for this to happen, however it is still possible and that's a major problem.
This applies only to when it is impossible to determine a winner based on skill. For instance, port priority is to be determined by a random drawing of lots because the system itself cannot allow for two players to have the same exact physical port (i.e. "advantage").
So if I disagreed with you then I'd have to somehow select ports based on "skill" before competition could even start.
Indeed, certain allowances need to be made to have the competition within the system, and other have to be made so that tournaments can happen successfully. And that's also why there are rules in place to minimize the effect of things such as port priority, for example the ability (whether people often take advantage of it or otherwise) to re-select port priority if you just lost the last game (as part of the counterpicking process).
If there were a way to make everything purely come down to player skill, that would be optimal, however that is legitimately impossible with the current games. As such, our goal should be to
minimize the impact of everything except for player skill.
When professional competitions use a coinflip or similar method it is generally due to an extreme situation, this differs from your "coinflip argument".
When theorycrafting we come to extreme situations. Does it happen in practice? Practically, no.
But even in the realm of theorycrafting it still does not follow:
When we have no %-based ruling and no time limit the chances of a stalemate is a practical phantasm. Add in playing out Sudden Death and it becomes practically non-existent. Now whoever gets the first successful hit in (skill-based) is the practical norm for sudden death, making the "random argument" a small fraction of a practically non-existent phantasm AND it is still debatable that handling the bombs is "random" instead of "reactionary" (that is to say skill-based).
Ultimately this puts the "coinflip" argument to bed.
Again, not saying it's popular or that I have personal opinion of liking it, just pointing out the stronger argument, competitively speaking.
(Although Sudden Death is hype when I see it played out)
Who said I was advocating it? I enjoy pointing out stronger arguments, I leave opinion to the individual.
You are correct, "When we have no %-based ruling and no time limit the chances of a stalemate is a practical phantasm". But that is not what we have.
What we currently have as the default way of determining the victor in the case of a stalemate is indeed a percent-based ruling, and as your stance is that Sudden Death is better you are trying to change it. Therefore you are in fact advocating for it, as "pointing out stronger arguments" is a way to advocate for said argument.
Anyways, I fail to see how your mention of the uses of coinflips in different sports and the like is relevant to the conversation at hand...
Also, we do indeed come to extreme situations in theorycrafting, because it doesn't matter if it happens in practice, a good ruleset has to be able to handle even the most extreme of corner cases. It doesn't matter until they show up, theoretically, but there has to be a ruling in place in case any such extreme situation does end up happening.
The "random argument" is still in fact relevant, because while rare, time outs can potentially (and do in fact) happen. As such, there has to be a rule in place to handle it.
Also, you're missing a very important part of what I'm saying: I am not claiming that handling the bombs is random, at all. I am claiming that
where the bombs drop (horizontally, and therefore which player they effect more/first) is random, and that is not acceptable - especially due to how influential the bombs are.
Normal gameplay is how the software functions.
The proof is in the pudding.
If you just made a statement to the contrary then you're going to need the proof how the software declares a winner based on damage%, because I am going to say I don't believe the software functions that way.
If we did not have a general ruleset in place, nor a history of game rulesets to go from, this would be true as we would be creating a ruleset completely from scratch. And it is indeed how the software functions, I'm not claiming otherwise.
However, as of this moment what the Smash community at large uses to determine the victor in case of a timeout is "If time runs out, the winner is the player with more stocks upon time out, and if stocks are tied then the player with the lower percent upon time out. If both stock and percent are the same, or both players are KO'd on the same frame, then a 1stock 3min tiebreaker match is played with the same characters/stage.".
This is what the vast majority of tournaments currently run, and this is one instance where popularity is in fact extremely relevant. It does not make it correct, however it is extremely important to note that this is the "default" that the community is using at this time. At some point in the past, this was decided to be better than Sudden Death. It is now on you to convince people that SD is better if you want that to change back to how it was.
Ah, but it is much easier to KO a high percent opponent (what you mistakenly labeled "losing") thus resulting in a reset where the players try to battle it out again for winning.
But I believe there's all too much evidence showing how much stalling happens when time is ticking down.
Yes, it is easier to KO a high-percent opponent. This is only slightly relevant to the conversation, however. If you're a Villager who can simply run away under the stage, or Sonic on a stage where you can run away for the next, say 45sec, it's not going to matter if you're at high percent if you're not going to land a kill move on them. And either way it still gives the player who has more percent (has been damaged more on this last stock, which in our current ruleset is losing) an incentive to run away, to the same level as the (current ruleset) winner currently has (if not more, as they already don't want to approach if they don't have to).
It is up to the player to not get hit/damaged more than the opponent before time runs out, and they shouldn't be artificially rewarding for being put at a disadvantage.
Are you advocating not to use time as it would entail to do so in your example?
I wouldn't mind that nor would I really mind time, but what I do mind is some arbitrary ruling like %-based wins and I think we are both agreeing to that opinion.
I am not advocating for no time, though I do believe that would be better purely for deciding the victor.
However, that is completely infeasible to do while trying to run a tournament, because they need to finish within a set amount of time.
What I'm saying is that while not perfect, the current rules are superior to playing out Sudden Death, and therefore that we should not use it.
I would answer that by pointing out it is a leading question, the usual response to leading questions is "I do not give a hangman rope."
People get hyped when Sudden Death is being played out - this is simply what I see happen (crowds of people gather and shout/cheer). Usually this is a welcomed thing at events, so I encourage it and I don't seek to explain the phenomenon.
Then how would you rather me ask it after you already dodged my question twice based specifically on
how I asked it rather than the content of the question? If you honestly cannot tell what I'm asking then that's one thing, but I really don't believe that to be the case here.
And choosing not to look for reasons behind something is foolhardy; using purely anecdotal evidence to support your claim after specifically stating that you don't care to look for why is almost insulting. However, in response to your claim of seeing 'Hype sudden death matches', I've seen people get hyped when a match is coming down to time because it's 'intense' there too.
You mean the problem with the hype surrounding a next-hit KO which is skill-based and not random at all? Or ability to dodge an attack through pure reaction?
Kind of a low-blow to present a "problem" that doesn't seem to be there as a red herring, I thought our discussion would be above that kind of rhetoric.
How many times must I state that my main problem is with the
bombs, and not (well, just a lesser amount actually) with the 300% portion? Kind of a low-blow to completely ignore what I've said multiple times, isn't it?
Psychology of players is outside the scope of rule-crafting, just the same as explaining why people get hyped when Sudden Death is played out.
I'm sorry?
You made a claim, and when I point out that you fail to say why (or otherwise prove) that this happens, you say you don't need to prove it?
That's not how discussion works, let alone debate...
Again, the perfection fallacy here. The reason why it is a stronger argument is that of Practicality is greater than Theory.
That is what I was saying. No-time stock matches would be ideal, but they won't work because we have time limits out of game.
That is what I said, and the point I was making. That isn't a fallacy, you are
saying exactly what I said. What is the purpose of this?
Theoretically the %-based ruling could have NO ENDING and thus take INFINITE TIME.
If your conditional what-if scenario is used then reasonably we still have a stronger argument than the %-based ruling (again, we seem to be agreeing with the flaws inherent with a %-based ruling so maybe we can dispense with the formalities there).
Sudden Death could as well, especially as there is no timer. Also, one potential answer to both of these problems is to say that "Neither player hit a win condition, thus both have lost" if it really comes down to it.
If that is the whole debate then it would be up to someone to show why something needs to be changed, not the other way around.
Yes. I agree. What you're not understanding, however, is that in this specific case (Sudden Death), the in-game ruling has been externally changed by our ruleset, similar to how we do all of our matches with a set number of stocks (and stock mode itself). As you are arguing to change
back to Sudden Death, you are the one who must show both why the current method needs to be changed, and why your proposed method is better.
Well, there you go.
Either ban the move or admit random does not violate competitive principles. The other course of action is to demonstrate how the principle itself neds to change which I am hard-pressed to do so.
Thank you for once again completely ignoring my point...
Random, in and of itself, is not inherently uncompetitive.
The distinction between Sudden Death's random and Judge is this:
- Judge is a move where one player
decides to take a risk, and that must be skillfully used to gain any form of reward
- Sudden Death is completely random in which player it favors, and as such does not make for a fair grounds for competition
One of these things falls under PvP interaction, which is our goal, and the other has absolutely no influence from player skill.
NOTE: I am, once again,
NOT saying you cannot react to the bombs. I'm saying that they favor a player at random, which is unacceptable.
Seeing as you did not cite your source one may come to the conclusion it is cherry-picked.
Lucky for you I have read up on the definitions and etymology of "random" and am intimately aware of its communication, so I'd like to know why you didn't include:
(1)
The word itself is meaning "run" as in a wild, stampeding horse whose direction is not known due to how fast it is. Random is simply stating it is beyond the human brain to comprehend.
This is why the dropping of bombs would not be considered "random" because the players should know the time they will start dropping and how to react accordingly. This is why when someone gets hit with a "random" Forward-Smash we don't redo the game and say "look, dude, that attack was just too fast for him to react to, play it again".
Sorry about that, I found the definition by going to
google.com and searching "Define:Random".
The dropping of bombs, as a whole, is non-random. Big whoop.
The location where they drop, and who they randomly favor, is random.
And hey look, that's by both definitions, too! How many times must I say this?
In a competition of skill, leaving the winner up to random chance is completely against said skill-based competition.
As for the "Random" Fsmash, that
is not random. You even cite a second source, then provide an example of a player
choosing (conscious decision) to throw out an Fsmash (not an event where all outcomes are equally likely) as an example of non-random, when said example is
non-random by both definitions? What?
Got hit by a bomb? Get better.
And if bombs fell on players at the exact same time rather than randomly favoring one or the other, I would completely agree with this statement.
Can you say though, that if the game decides to drop all bombs on one player and not a single one on the other, and the first player gets killed by a bomb, that he should have gotten better (than his opponent, as the whole goal of the competition is to prove yourself better than the opponent within the rules of the system)?
They may have been better than their opponent, but their opponent wasn't tested at all.
What happened was you used the coinflip argument, which was put to bed. At best it can be argued as a matter of opinion, at which case someone should competitively just say "lol, get better, scrub".
Where was the coinflip argument "put to bed"?
The "coinflip argument" that I was making is, once again, in extremely clear language (hopefully no more misunderstandings? Please?), this:
"The random location in which the bombs in Sudden Death spawn can be roughly equated to a coinflip, in that they marginalize player skill from the time they spawn forward and are likely to decide the winner of the match through random means as opposed to player skill."
Again, not advocating one side or the other, I simply followed our reasoning out to that point and allow individuals to make their educated choice in the matter to determine just how competitive their competitive tournaments are.
By arguing that Sudden Death is superior to percent-based rulings, you are advocating for Sudden Death.
Here, look!
I'll even use your site for the definition this time
"V: To speak, plead, or argue in favor of."
"N: 1) One that argues for a cause; a supporter or defender.
2) One that pleads on another's behalf; an intercessor.
3) A lawyer."
I'm afraid an "absolute law" would be beyond the scope of the discussion here as it goes on to a deeper philosophical discussion which is actually where my academic studies are and from there is my source of epistimology regarding these discussions.
That is my point, you are citing "competitiveness" as a purely designed concept without explaining what you define it as. Please explain how things are more competitive in the future, rather than simply going "It just is".
And it is from the many generations of great thinkers who dug the wells of knowledge from which I prefer to go to drink.
Once again I do not err to an absolute perfection but instead see the wisdom that someone like David Sirlin has provided and I take up where to best go from there. At this point in time I am lead to believe that %-based win is a weaker solution and there are at least two greater solutions provided both in this thread and discussed elsewhere.
Hide it behind 'fancy' phrasing all you like, however all you're saying here is that you're going by Sirlin's word while admitting that it's not perfect.
Please show me the other method you consider superior, however, as it may interest me.
Also, just to reiterate once more, Sudden Death will interest me if you can prove that the bombs do not randomly favor one player over the other.
It's up to the public to find the well of knowledge presented here and make an educated decision "how to resolve a stalemate".
(The short answer very early on is that stalemates don't practically happen in Sudden Death).
Agreed, people should be expected to draw their own conclusions; this is both a great thing and necessary.
Where do you get that stalemates don't practically happen in Sudden Death, though? If a stalemate-esque situation is reached in SD, there is no reason for it to not continue indefinitely, as there is no time limit.
Certainly it holds true assuming everyone charges at their opponent or waits on-stage for bombs to drop, but that is not something we can assume; if so, we wouldn't need a time-out ruling.
(Also, DANG are these getting looooooooooong...)
