popsofctown
Smash Champion
So, game 1, 80+% of the time one of the guys playing always plays X and everyone knows he always plays X so he picks his character and then the other guy picks his character.
The other 20% of the time, both players are comfortable with more than one character, and this can result in blind pick getting invoked: both players pick a character at the same time, and then they play.
This rule is fair, in a way similar to using sudden death mode to resolve ties is fair. Sudden death tiebreaks and the blind pick rules share an issue in spite of their fairness, though, they have an extremely small sample size for the skill they are testing, and they have a major impact on the result of the match.
With sudden death mode, a single hit resolves the match. The better player probably gets the first hit like 55% of the time, off a single rock-paper-scissorsish interaction, but it resolves in entire game of a best of 3 on its own, and a 45% failure rate for rewarding the better play is considered unacceptable. One stock rematches are used instead in every ruleset, sudden death mode has been abolished.
I feel that similarly blind pick should be abolished. Game 1 is the most important game of the set. Letting a player get a +2 matchup because he got into the other guys head on character picks is very dramatic. I don't even consider it a skill that we should desire to test, but even if you do consider that a skill you desire to test it should be evident that the stakes are too high in the way you test that skill. It'd be like making tennis players lose a set for each double fault or giving out five points for stealing second base.
I propose an alternative procedure:
Choose a first player by coin flip (minimally important).
First player picks a character.
The other player picks a character.
Repeatedly: The other player may accept the matchup. Otherwise, he picks a character that he has not ever picked against his opponent's currently selected character at any previous point.
This system has more consistent results than the current one. Character diversity is rewarded more, and characters with one or two incredibly bad matchups never get locked into a terrihorribad matchup.
In theory the drafting could last a long time, but in practice, players don't know that many characters.
As an example, I'll describe a set I played in the past in Brawl when I mained Pikachu, ROB, and D3, and blind picked against a Falco/Marth player.
In blind pick, the most dramatic possible matchup is Pikachu vs. Falco, which is rather harsh. With my proposed system, drafting would go something more like this:
(D3 softcounters Marth, Pikachu hardocounters Falco)
Foe: Marth
Me: D3
Foe: Falco
Me: Pikachu
Foe: Marth
Me: Rob (I can't pick D3, I did that before)
Foe: Accept
The possible outcomes of the game one drafting are toned down, as Falco v Pikachu is nigh impossible. It's impossible for my opponent (Ryker, actually) to be forced into the 30/70 matchup, which would be too brutal a reward for getting into his head or guessing which character to use correctly.
This system applies to all smash games, but change is easiest moving from title to title. I wanted to post this because it's on my mind.
The other 20% of the time, both players are comfortable with more than one character, and this can result in blind pick getting invoked: both players pick a character at the same time, and then they play.
This rule is fair, in a way similar to using sudden death mode to resolve ties is fair. Sudden death tiebreaks and the blind pick rules share an issue in spite of their fairness, though, they have an extremely small sample size for the skill they are testing, and they have a major impact on the result of the match.
With sudden death mode, a single hit resolves the match. The better player probably gets the first hit like 55% of the time, off a single rock-paper-scissorsish interaction, but it resolves in entire game of a best of 3 on its own, and a 45% failure rate for rewarding the better play is considered unacceptable. One stock rematches are used instead in every ruleset, sudden death mode has been abolished.
I feel that similarly blind pick should be abolished. Game 1 is the most important game of the set. Letting a player get a +2 matchup because he got into the other guys head on character picks is very dramatic. I don't even consider it a skill that we should desire to test, but even if you do consider that a skill you desire to test it should be evident that the stakes are too high in the way you test that skill. It'd be like making tennis players lose a set for each double fault or giving out five points for stealing second base.
I propose an alternative procedure:
Choose a first player by coin flip (minimally important).
First player picks a character.
The other player picks a character.
Repeatedly: The other player may accept the matchup. Otherwise, he picks a character that he has not ever picked against his opponent's currently selected character at any previous point.
This system has more consistent results than the current one. Character diversity is rewarded more, and characters with one or two incredibly bad matchups never get locked into a terrihorribad matchup.
In theory the drafting could last a long time, but in practice, players don't know that many characters.
As an example, I'll describe a set I played in the past in Brawl when I mained Pikachu, ROB, and D3, and blind picked against a Falco/Marth player.
In blind pick, the most dramatic possible matchup is Pikachu vs. Falco, which is rather harsh. With my proposed system, drafting would go something more like this:
(D3 softcounters Marth, Pikachu hardocounters Falco)
Foe: Marth
Me: D3
Foe: Falco
Me: Pikachu
Foe: Marth
Me: Rob (I can't pick D3, I did that before)
Foe: Accept
The possible outcomes of the game one drafting are toned down, as Falco v Pikachu is nigh impossible. It's impossible for my opponent (Ryker, actually) to be forced into the 30/70 matchup, which would be too brutal a reward for getting into his head or guessing which character to use correctly.
This system applies to all smash games, but change is easiest moving from title to title. I wanted to post this because it's on my mind.
