My thoughts on Evo2k8

[Orb13]

Before I say anything I wanna make two things very clear.
1. Evo is awesome
Evo2k7 freakin rocked! I'm sure everyone remembers the famous HugS vs. Ken matches. 4 big tournies held across the united states with a huge final tourney in Vegas. Free of charge with big cash prizes, what's not to love? Even Evo2k8 wasn't a total letdown, 4 brand new fighting games premiered including street fighter 4 (which looks freakin amazing).

BUT...

2. Evo seriously let us down
Poor prize structure and horrible ruleset lead to low attendance for what is supposed to be the biggest fighting game event of the year. I'm not a top player, but I think that items can be used without breaking the game (granted a lot of in depth analysis has to be done to make items playable) However the way evo implemented items was simply myopic. I mean cmon medium spawn!?!?!?!? Smash balls??!?!?!?!?

I expect that like myself Evo has left a bad taste in your mouth. But I came to realize something, we don't need Evo. The smash community is self sufficient, we don't depend on anyone. So Evo sucked, so what? We still have big tournies ahead of us, a strong community, and a ****load of fun. We can always hope that Evo will improve for the rules for next year, but if they don't or if they drop brawl altogether, we'll live. Smash will always be alive as long as there's some dude playing with his buddies saying "Man today's just a bad day for me." and everyone in the rooms says "No johns!" As long as C. Falcon's knee is ridiculously manly and awesome smash will freakin rock! As long as someone gets a charge beam in the face and says "Cheap ****!!!" smash will be alive and well. Yes smash will be awesome along as someone somewhere is kicking his friends *****.

SOOOO guys let's move on! Don't listen to srk forum members saying that smash is kiddie game! And don't mind Evo being ****ing moronic!

VIVA LA SMASH!!!

 

[RebelStarRL]

I was primarily a MvC2 player but has enjoyed playing Smash ever since then.

I was at Evo also. My brother and I were expecting the typical Smash rules without any items but were surprise when the rules came out. Overall from the tournament experience, I thought items weren't that bad to be included in a tournament. It created some excitement to have some random factor for lower tier characters to come back. Otherwise, the finals could be full of top just top tiers and that can make the game stale and boring which is how most can games can die down without a strong fanbase.

Solution: It doesn't hurt to mix up playing tournaments with items. Why not try it occasionally?

 

[nothingxs]

I was present at Evolution 2008. All I have to say is that the actual Smash tournament at Evo was definitely amazing. Items are part of what made the tournament exciting to watch (and apparently to play according to a good amount of the attendees that I managed to speak to), and it's been proven time and time again that Smash is a much deeper game when items are on.

There's more to fighting games than the actual "fighting," and items add an element of positioning, baiting and a little surprise to a game that was already being accused of being somewhat stagnant in its play. It's clear from the results this year that items don't dominate the game like people say they do, and that there is skill in using items as opposed to items being a replacement for skill (or else Ken would not have been so high in placement as he was).

Your post, in my opinion, is what is "myopic" -- there is a huge game waiting to be played when items are active and it seems to me that people are too busy complaining about having to actually learn to play with the possibility that items may not just be anywhere as broken as people think they are than to just learn and move ahead.

After Evo, a lot of people at SRK don't think Smash is a "kiddie" game. The only thing we're left with is that a lot of the people playing are "kiddie" players. People have been playing fighting games for 15+ years and we have learned to realize that some games are actually better for having some things that may or may not be somewhat broken. Look at Street Fighter 2 (ST, to be precise), Marvel, Guilty Gear. Those games all have things that are somewhat broken. They did not get banned or turned off. The only thing that was really ever banned was something that was incomprehensibly broken to the point of being completely unbeatable (Super Turbo Akuma). There is nothing like that in Smash and there is definitely no real items like that except for the higher % healing items, which won't probably ever be enabled. Everything else is avoidable, beatable and counterable, and it took Evolution to show it.

So hate less and look towards your game more and see if there is more to it than you think there is. Right now there's a ton of possibility, but everyone insists on being stuck in the past. Will you be able to learn to move on?

 

[Orb13]

RebelStarRL,
Dude are you seriously accusing brawl of having only a few chars do any good in tournies, when you play mvc2? Are Mvc2 matches boring? I don't think so.

nothingxs,
I didn't say item play was always broken and impossible to play I said that evo's rules were pretty half *****. Their logic was if item doesn't make big boom it good! Items can be used but you have to do a lot more work than that.
for example:
http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=164675
Also time and time again? name one other item tourney that had 100+ attendance. Give me examples of how ssb's metagame is improved by careless item play! Also SRK forum members do say plenty of degrading things about smash like how it's a "break" from real fighting games. BTW I didn't say ignore srk just the ones who say smash sux.
Mods this getting nowhere I suggest you close the thread. I didn't want this to turn into a items fight but looks like it has, my bad guys!

 

[Flex]

Items should never be on.Ever.

 

[nothingxs]

nothingxs,
I didn't say item play was always broken and impossible to play I said that evo's rules were pretty half *****. Their logic was if item doesn't make big boom it good! Items can be used but you have to do a lot more work than that.
for example:
http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=164675
Also time and time again? name one other item tourney that had 100+ attendance. Give me examples of how ssb's metagame is improved by careless item play! Also SRK forum members do say plenty of degrading things about smash like how it's a "break" from real fighting games. BTW I didn't say ignore srk just the ones who say smash sux.
Mods this getting nowhere I suggest you close the thread. I didn't want this to turn into a items fight but looks like it has, my bad guys!

What does "have to do a lot more work than that" even mean? What rules exactly did you not agree with and why? Do you have any concrete proof as to why X, Y or Z would be broken other than your own theories? What precedent is there for your statements?

How is what Evo did "careless item play"? I saw a lot of fighting for positioning on better portions of certain stages and clever ways to keep Smash balls out of other characters' hands by smacking them away (and many had numerous clever ways to GET the Smash balls -- CPU sniping it away in the finals is one very cool moment from the tournament itself). Certain items are only better in some situations, and no item included in the tournament was undefeatable (not even Smash Balls).

Since when did the words of some SRK forum members immediately become the norm for how SRK feels about everything?

This isn't an items discussion. I don't particularly care how the overarching Smash community decides to handle items from here on out. All I know is that any Smash tournament I run will be using the Evo ruleset from here on out, and that the Smash tournament at Evolution was extraordinarily well run, thoroughly entertaining and a huge success.

 

[StrippersandBeer]

keits = best m.c. (:

see what happens next year.

evo was a great time. definately enjoyed.

 

[Orb13]

ok dude! Have fun doing that! Best of luck to you but I have officially lost all interest in this conversation! see ya!

 

[Harbinger631]

I wonder what SK92 thought about EVO. He comes here, doesn't he?

 

[SamuraiPanda]

This isn't an items discussion. I don't particularly care how the overarching Smash community decides to handle items from here on out. All I know is that any Smash tournament I run will be using the Evo ruleset from here on out, and that the Smash tournament at Evolution was extraordinarily well run, thoroughly entertaining and a huge success.

I'm not quite sure how you define "huge success" in this situation. Last year, Melee brought in 270 people and the top players from around the country. This year, a game that is routinely bringing in numbers bigger than Melee ever did for nearly every tournament (even local ones), brought in 105 players and very few notable top players. While it may have been "thoroughly entertaining" or "extraordinarily well run," it was not a "huge success" by any means.

And in all honesty, I'm quite annoyed at the holier-than-thou attitude I'm noticing at SRK right now. They're all puffing their chests and pretending that they somehow proved something with their tournament. There are quite a few things that are being said by SRK that are overly cocky or just plain untrue. Also, for the record, nobody cares about what happened at Evo. Whenever I talk to people about it, their response is always "Oh. Ok." Evo didn't change a single thing.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Also, for the record, nobody cares about what happened at Evo. Whenever I talk to people about it, their response is always "Oh. Ok." Evo didn't change a single thing.

You know, that really sucks. I noticed that someone linked to one of the 'ISP' threads up there, and I have to say, as the head of that project, I was watching EVO very carefully. The biggest block, I think, to our SWF project is a mental one; people have been predisposed to no-item play for so many years now that we block ourselves from looking at items with anything other than the kind of contempt reserved for zealots. I knew going into EVO that the ruleset blew and that they really didn't go through the motions the way they should have (sure, I'm no SBRoomer, but at least the people in 'ISP' did experiments, had rigor, and documented all of our findings). Even so, I knew that if a ruleset as bad as theirs worked in a large-scale tournament, then our ruleset, which was well defined, well crafted, etc., would work just fine, too.

And now here we are. After watching some of those matches, I can honestly say that I think it worked; maybe not for us all, but that tourney worked. And when this knowledge should be proving that item play gets a bad rap and that we should look into the subject some more (SBR, pretty please? I've done like half of the work for you.), now no one cares. 'Oh, it's just EVO and their crappy rules.'

It's disconcerting to say the least.

 

[EnigmaticCam]

And now here we are. After watching some of those matches, I can honestly say that I think it worked; maybe not for us all, but that tourney worked.

You can honestly watch those matches and walk away from that thinking it worked? It was a complete joke! Most of the KOs were by items alone, half the matches were spent fighting over items, not against each other. It was the mess I, and many others, predicted it would be.

And as SamuraiPanda said, they're over there in the srk forums flaunting their supposed "success" as if they've proved something just because it was interesting to people who never played smash at all. Wanna know what they really proved? They proved that the necessity to prove a point to the SWF community is far more important than the atrocity of forsaking a competitive environment for the lulz of playing with items.

"Ooo, pretty! That final smash was amazing! Lots of bright and shiny colors!" I should have held a side slot-machine tournament. I could've made tons of money.

 

[BigRick]

I thought video games were about lulz

if items on tourney bring more lulz, then it is success

 

[EnigmaticCam]

I'm sure a Mario Party tournament would wreak of the lulz necessary to give it the spotlight at evo.

 

[Viscant]

You can honestly watch those matches and walk away from that thinking it worked? It was a complete joke! Most of the KOs were by items alone, half the matches were spent fighting over items, not against each other. It was the mess I, and many others, predicted it would be.

I think the main problem here is that we have a fundamental disagreement on acceptable elements in fighting games. The past few times I've met Smash players at Evos, I've had the chance to speak with some of them and it just seems like there's this impassable wall here.

Primarily the element of objectives in fighting games. A lot of Smash players (at least that I talked to, I won't pretend to say that I'm the Gallup poll or anything) I spoke to echoed the above sentiment almost exactly and that's the whole reason I decided to post.

Alternate objectives in fighting games is perfectly acceptable to almost everyone in every fighting game community. Fighting over positioning is common to virtually every game, whether position guarantees instant victory such as guaranteed ringout setups in Soul Calibur/Virtua Fighter, or whether position ensures a very dominant corner trap in various Street Fighter variants, or even whether position guarantees nothing and instead sets up different mixup options as in Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Regardless of what advantage position sets up, in all of these various accepted and beloved fighting games, fighting over the alternate objective of space control and positioning can supersede the actual combat between different characters and could echo your exact sentiment that "half the matches were spent fighting over (the corner/the edge), not fighting each other". But people are OK with this.

And this year's Evo put on display other alternate objectives in very clear view also involving various meters. Street Fighter 2 Super Turbo finals at Evo involved O.Sagat vs. Chun-Li for grand finals. The objective in that match for Chun Li was to get a super meter as fast as possible. Until she had the meter, she couldn't fight O.Sagat's tiger shots. Once she had the meter, O.Sagat was literally taking his life in his hands any time he threw a fireball. So the battle over the meter became essentially what the final was about. The O.Sagat player (John Choi) changed his strategy of throwing tiger shots halfway through when he learned what the Chun Li player (Nuki) was doing. John stopped trying to actually HIT Nuki with tiger shots and changed his pattern to make getting the meter as difficult as possible. John was literally fighting the super meter for the first 30-40% of every single round. Similar battles happened over the super meter in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and over the guard meter/super meter/custom meters in Capcom vs. SNK 2. And these are all perfectly acceptable strategies to 99.99% of participants involved.


I know that the default counter-argument to this is "well, those games are fine for what they are but Smash is Smash". I think what disappoints me and a lot of the other traditional fighting game players is that it's really dodging the fundamental question here which is:

"Why are alternate objectives acceptable for ________ game and not for Smash, especially when they're in the game in the first place."


It seems like a fundamental difference in our communities as to what different role strategy should play in a fighting game. Simply pointing out that alternate objectives become available doesn't answer the question as to whether or not said alternate objectives are broken or somehow make the game less deep/interesting/strategic. A lot of people quickly become frustrated/disappointed with the discussion when people just point out that there ARE alternate objectives and stop before considering whether the game becomes broken/less competitive because of them.

Like I said, this is a fundamental difference in how our communities feel about what a fighting game actually is. I think this has the potential to be an interesting discussion and could lead to bigger things for the Smash community as a whole, but only if all parties involved are willing to listen and actually consider the fundamentals of the discussion instead of just pointing out a (basically irrelevant) point and considering their side already proven.


--Jay Snyder
Viscant@aol.com

 

[inkblot]

As one of the Evo guys, I'll try to explain what we're trying to accomplish with this items business. Please bear with me.

It's important to understand our perspective on gaming. Our culture is rooted in Street Fighter arcade tournaments. This environment is totally different from a modern console game with editable settings. In the arcade you don't get to tweak the game to your liking, and as a result players competed using every trick and technique that the game allowed, including bugs. After over 15 years of this style of gaming over literally dozens of fighting games, we have found only a tiny handful of features worth banning, even including game glitches that were originally thought to be game breaking. Players adapt, and in almost every case the game becomes richer and more interesting.

With this mindset, placing any artificial limit on the game as designed is a very slippery slope and should be done with extreme caution. Since Brawl was a new game, we treated it like every other new fighting game and played the tournament by default rules, with a small number of exceptions. Many in the Smash community see this as an insult to Smash. In fact, we are showing Smash with a great deal of respect by treating it the same as every other game on our roster. Disabling items, to me, would be like saying "normal Smash is not worthy of tournament play. We need to cripple the game to bring it up to competitive standards."

IMO the Evo Smash tournament was a success because it proved that "item luck" does not determine the outcome of the match. It is true that the matches revolved around item related strategies like positioning and baiting, but different does not necessarily mean bad. Smash with items is a different game than normal smash, and I think it's a better game. I know lots of you disagree, and that's ok.

In the end, neither items vs. no-items is "right" or "wrong." They're two different flavors of the game, which will appeal to different kinds of players. To use a sports analogy, tennis can be played on grass or clay, which changes the style of the game dramatically, but it's all still tennis. Turning items off runs counter to Evo culture and we were happy with how the tournament went, and hopefully we can open a few people's eyes to a different brand of Smash play. If this isn't for you, enjoy the many other no-item tournaments that are available to you.

 

[SamuraiPanda]

As one of the Evo guys, I'll try to explain what we're trying to accomplish with this items business. Please bear with me.

Thank you for actually helping us understand the situation. Mr. Wizard was frustratingly tight-lipped when it came to explaining anything. Getting some perspective on the matter helps quite a bit.

It's important to understand our perspective on gaming. Our culture is rooted in Street Fighter arcade tournaments. This environment is totally different from a modern console game with editable settings. In the arcade you don't get to tweak the game to your liking, and as a result players competed using every trick and technique that the game allowed, including bugs. After over 15 years of this style of gaming over literally dozens of fighting games, we have found only a tiny handful of features worth banning, even including game glitches that were originally thought to be game breaking. Players adapt, and in almost every case the game becomes richer and more interesting.

Being a huge fan of 2D fighters before I moved to Smash, I was raised in arcades playing these arcade fighters, so I perfectly understand your perspective here.

With this mindset, placing any artificial limit on the game as designed is a very slippery slope and should be done with extreme caution.

Absolutely, which is why we are so careful with things like stage or technique banning. The SBR recommended ruleset that was released was much more liberal than most people wanted it to be, and it is mostly because those people don't understand the concept of the slippery slope you described.

Since Brawl was a new game, we treated it like every other new fighting game and played the tournament by default rules, with a small number of exceptions.

This is our problem right here. What are the default rules? 2 minute matches with all items on medium spawn and all stages on. These "small number of exceptions" completely disregard everything you've said above. How can you justify selectively banning items? How are the stages you've banned actually broken? Why is the first match played on Smashville and not just by hitting the random button with everything on? If Evo truly played by the "default rules", there should have been a completely different ruleset to what we saw.

Many in the Smash community see this as an insult to Smash. In fact, we are showing Smash with a great deal of respect by treating it the same as every other game on our roster.

The insult to Smash was not merely the fact items were on, but in how that decision was made. The circumstances surrounding the decision were, literally, a spit in the face to the community. I'm not going to bother getting into them right now, as it would just take too long. Suffice to say that I truly believe that, aside from the rules themselves, the Smash community has plenty of legitimate reasons to feel insulted by what happened.

Disabling items, to me, would be like saying "normal Smash is not worthy of tournament play. We need to cripple the game to bring it up to competitive standards."

Later on, you said that items-on vs items-off is merely a preference, and I completely agree with that sentiment. In fact, if you go to the Evo rules thread, you'll see that I made several essay-length posts explaining that exact concept. I was fighting for people to recognize that we are NOT "banning" items by playing without them. But given that you agree with me, I don't understand what you are saying here.

IMO the Evo Smash tournament was a success because it proved that "item luck" does not determine the outcome of the match. It is true that the matches revolved around item related strategies like positioning and baiting, but different does not necessarily mean bad. Smash with items is a different game than normal smash, and I think it's a better game. I know lots of you disagree, and that's ok.

If you look back to the rules thread, and only take into account the intelligent people of this community that were involved in the conversation, we said multiple times that despite having items, the best player will still win. And in fact, the best players will all be people from the competitive Smash community that play without items normally. We never said that the "best player won't win." Also, I respect your opinion that you think its a better game, and I agree that it is merely a different game, but it annoys me when people make sweeping statements saying that it is a better game. That is just an opinion, not a fact by any means.

In the end, neither items vs. no-items is "right" or "wrong." They're two different flavors of the game, which will appeal to different kinds of players.

Agreed. But do keep in mind that the players to which this appeals to are NOT the community that would truly add to Evo's competitive spirit. The community that meshes well with Evo's, and that truly embody the ideal that Evo upholds through its tournament, is THIS community.

To use a sports analogy, tennis can be played on grass or clay, which changes the style of the game dramatically, but it's all still tennis. Turning items off runs counter to Evo culture and we were happy with how the tournament went, and hopefully we can open a few people's eyes to a different brand of Smash play. If this isn't for you, enjoy the many other no-item tournaments that are available to you.

That is Evo's choice to make, but it is still dissapointing on many levels to many people in our community. Personally, I've always looked up to Evo and thought of it as a pipe dream of my own. I've always wanted to someday go to Evo as a competitor, ever since the very first Evo was held. When I chose Smash as my favorite fighter, the one I would take competitively, one of my biggest regrets was that Evo would never run it. Seeing Melee last year was a huge surprise to me, and it astounded me how well it went. Then seeing Brawl announced was a godsend to me, and I was giddy with excitement when I realized that something I thought of as a pipe dream was actually achievable. But then Evo decided to run a different game than the Brawl that I actually play. Try to imagine my disappointment.

If Evo decides to run with items again, then there is nothing we can do. Evo is their own tournament and can decide to use anything they want to. But I implore that you at least take into consideration how many more people you would make happy by simply using a ruleset that is more widespread. Even with everything that happened this year, I'm still looking forward to next year and I haven't lost my respect (or admiration) for Evo at all. I just hope that Evo decides to run my preferred game, items-off Brawl, next year.

 

[Vayseth]

This is the same debate we've always had. For some reason, SRK and SWF fight, for no reason, and many on each side think they're right simply because "MY game is better." I It's unfair, but it's not uncommon. Many communities do this and no one ever agrees.

However...

I believe what needs to happen is everyone on both sides needs to reevaluate their rules. The SBR rule set is out but it lacks in many ways. We need to have a universal rule set for everyone to use. This is mainly because Smash is so different, with so many different rules and ways to customize the experience that it MUST be looked into on a deeper scale. By the time next year's evo rolls around, we should have a better understanding of brawl in general, and a concrete rule set to use which is fair for everyone.

 

[AltF4]

Disabling items, to me, would be like saying "normal Smash is not worthy of tournament play. We need to cripple the game to bring it up to competitive standards."

Well... that's the truth.

 

[nothingxs]

Well... that's the truth.

So the end result here is why not use the rule set that least cripples the core of the game?

 

[Ponder]

So the end result here is why not use the rule set that least cripples the core of the game?

Please stop trying to turn this into an items vs. no-items debate. Your chance of convincing someone on this board that items is better than no-items is zero It's as if a Smash player came onto Shoryuken.com and tried to convince you that infinites should be banned in MvC2. It's not going to happen. Your repeated efforts will only be seen as trolling, which frankly they are.

That being said, I'm interested to hear whether or not there's a possibility of coming up with an items ruleset that the SWF community could embrace. I hear this was tried earlier, but I wasn't around for that discussion. Thoughts? (from the SWF people. SRK people: quiet).

 

[M3D]

IMO the Evo Smash tournament was a success because it proved that "item luck" does not determine the outcome of the match. It is true that the matches revolved around item related strategies like positioning and baiting, but different does not necessarily mean bad. Smash with items is a different game than normal smash, and I think it's a better game. I know lots of you disagree, and that's ok.

Are you really sure that you "proved" that the luck involved with items does determine the outcome of a match? I spoke with Ken about the finals. He said there were matches where the ONLY kills CPU got against him were Final Smashes. Now, you can argue about "item strategy" if you want, but I'd be willing to bet that at least a few of those Smash Balls fell into CPU's lap and gave him freebie kills against Ken. I would argue that "proves" that items don't belong in serious competitive play. It's silly that randomly appearing Smash Balls helped CPU win the finals. That's exactly the kind of scenario that Smashers were looking to avoid and the kind that we warned might happen.

You are right. They are different flavors. People are free to enjoy whatever flavor of the game they want to play, but I don't think the randomness injected into the game by the spawning of items fits with a truly competitive environment. Best of luck to you guys, but don't expect any support from the greater Smash community. Evo has clearly demonstrated it doesn't have our best interests at heart.

 

[inkblot]

Are you really sure that you "proved" that the luck involved with items does determine the outcome of a match? I spoke with Ken about the finals. He said there were matches where the ONLY kills CPU got against him were Final Smashes. Now, you can argue about "item strategy" if you want, but I'd be willing to bet that at least a few of those Smash Balls fell into CPU's lap and gave him freebie kills against Ken.

Thank you for making the distinction between "item strategy" and "freebie kills" due to items. I ran one of the tournament pools and watched all of the finals, which is a total of about 40 matches. I did not see one "freebie kill." Even when a smash ball appeared very close to one player, there was a positional battle for control of the ball because that player can't break the ball instantly. I saw plenty of matches where a player would actually have dominant position on the ball and while trying to break it would hit it over to his opponent, who would then break it and destroy them. In the first match of the finals CPU stole a smash ball from Ken from clear across the screen my sniping it with a laser blast. Good stuff.

 

[AltF4]

Cripple? Why, what an outwardly loaded term. If by "cripple" gameplay, you mean "enable high level depth without random occurrences" then yes, it does.


And for the record saying "Better players always find a way to win" is just simply a dumb thing to say. Players being better or worse is based upon whether they win or lose. So of course the "better players" win, that's what defines a "better player"!

But this speaks nothing of the competitive nature of the game in question. If you took turns playing Pokemon Snap, and competed for high scores, someone has to win and someone has to lose. Does that make the game "competitive"? Certainly not. The existence of winners and losers does not make a game competitive.

Brawl on "default" settings is simply not a game worthy of competition. Indeed, the game developer(s) have specifically made the game with the intention of it being anti-competitive. They intentionally made the game such that any two players of any skill level can play a match without anyone winning by too much. (and anyone's feelings subsequently hurt.) This community has been trying their best ever since the game's release to undo these effects and make it as competitively viable as possible, despite an uphill battle.

If Evo had run a Pokemon Snap tournament instead of Brawl, Ken still probably would have placed in the top group... because he's Ken. This is neither an indication of the competitive depth of a game, nor its popularity within the community. If you just look at the turnout of Evo2k7 versus Evo2k8, you'll see that the community has decided a long time ago that items are anti-competitive.

 

[MrWizard]

Can we stop comparing the Evo Melee tournament to the brawl tournament? It is apples and oranges. Melee had a game that was out for a few years and we had a guarenteed prize pool. This year was a new game and pot based winnings. Im sure if we put 5k up on the line again, we would have seen close to melee numbers.

 

[Vayseth]

All characters with projectiles can do that though. I would EXPECT a R.O.B. player to do that. Some people thought of that as the "EVO moment" of this year. If that is, it's a disgrace to every other EVO moment out there.

You don't have to try to explain how smash balls work to the smash community. We all tried using them and we all tried to incorporate items in the beginning. We've decided as a community, with sweeping support that items decrease the overall competitive nature in smash. Does Japan use items in their tournaments? Does ANYONE other than EVO use items? I'm not sure where EVO gets its information from, but it seems every single community in the world seems to think items are broken and decrease competitive play but EVO, and a majority of all EVO entrants do not even play smash.

If we were to use an item rule set, there is one on the boards and it is pretty good. However, the metagame has evolved so much over the summer without items. Introducing items now would only hurt the metagame the community has created thus far. I believe that we need to first agree on a definitive rule set and second we need to keep playing the game to see where we can it. Melee did not have Marvel-like rushdowns until much later in its lifetime. We'll see if we can make this game better over time and the best way to do that is to play without items.

 

[EnigmaticCam]

Viscant:

The effort of you (and others) coming to these boards, creating a username, and posting your opinion should be well commended as it's certainly more than 99% of the rest of the evo group were willing to do.

Your thoughts on alternative objectives has already been discussed many times both here on swf and on srk. Basically, it boils down to the fact that alternative objectives beget alternative strategies (as you described in your examples), which I'm pretty sure is the whole point, but with items it begets very little. The players just play as they always would until an item appears, and then it's a mad rush for it if the item is of any value. And if it's not, it's completely ignored, or grabbed as an after thought after a KO, defeating the whole purpose altogether.

Items add nothing to the table, and only serve to randomly award someone who was in the right place at the right time, or they simply get in the way and serve no purpose but to look pretty and shiny.

We can keep going on and on about this, as I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "What about strategic stage control," or "What about baiting and dodging techniques?", but I really don't have the patience to continue these discussions. My patience ran out a long time ago when the evo discussions turned into, "Your opinon doesn't mean anything if you're from SWF," and now I just don't have the energy and ambition that I used to.

 

[DanielRGT]

Viscant:

The effort of you (and Inkblot) coming to these boards, creating a username, and posting your opinion should be well commended as it's certainly more than 99% of the rest of the evo group were willing to do.

Your thoughts on alternative objectives has already been discussed many times both here on swf and on srk. Basically, it boils down to the fact that alternative objects beget alternative strategies (as you described in your examples), which I'm pretty sure is the whole point, but with items it begets very little. The players just play as they always would until an item appears, and then it's a mad rush for it if the item is of any value. And if it's not, it's completely ignored, or grabbed as an after thought after a KO, defeating the whole purpose altogether.

Items add nothing to the table, and only serve to randomly award someone who was in the right place at the right time, or they simply get in the way and serve no purpose but to look pretty and shiny.

We can keep going on and on about this, as I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "What about strategic stage control," or "What about baiting and dodging techniques?", but I really don't have the patience to continue these discussions. My patience ran out a long time ago when the evo discussions turned into, "Your opinon doesn't mean anything if you're from SWF," and now I just don't have the energy and ambition that I used to.

I can't say I really agree. The players that saw an item appear and did a mad rush for the item usually got punished for doing so. It happened to Ken several times vs CPU, and it happened everywhere against players who knew that rushing for an item leaves you really open to certain attacks.

There's strategy and technique in no-items play, and yes it's probably a little less "random" then items play. But items play has its own specific strategy and technique too it as well, and it isn't just having a mad rush for a particular item that might be really good. There were tons of people who got punished for getting the Smash Ball.

I don't really think there's an argument to be had here, items play is different than no-items play. A lot of people, including myself, just happen to think items play makes the game more interesting, especially to watch.

 

[Ponder]

The players that saw an item appear and did a mad rush for the item usually got punished for doing so. It happened to Ken several times vs CPU, and it happened everywhere against players who knew that rushing for an item leaves you really open to certain attacks.

I will post some videos from the top 8 to YouTube as soon as I get the footage. We usually reserve this stuff for the DVD, but there's probably enough interest on the part of people who won't buy the DVD that I'll go ahead and post it.

 

[EnigmaticCam]

I can't say I really agree. The players that saw an item appear and did a mad rush for the item usually got punished for doing so. It happened to Ken several times vs CPU, and it happened everywhere against players who knew that rushing for an item leaves you really open to certain attacks.

That's beside the point, and not really what I meant by "mad rush". Would you like me to rephrase it to "actively attempt to grab the item while preventing your opponent from getting it?" It doesn't change the logic of the argument.

 

[da K.I.D.]

the OP of this thread has basically just stated:
"F*ck Evo"
and after hearing opinions from both sides, i have to agree, if the people who run evo wont listen to all the different communities, forums and TOs that dont use items. than forget em, i watched some vids of ken vs sk92 on youtube, some people think that items make things more fun to watch. but i personaly believe that watching one guy picking up a baseball bat and throwing it at a guy to kill him at 80%. than having the guy come back just to pick up the same bat and kill the first guy at 60%, is pretty lame and not fun at all to watch. the only good thing i saw out of evo, was that they gave people 4 lives. and that was semi negated by FS's.
if thats what i have to do to get into evo. i dont think its worth it

 

[AlphaZealot]

That being said, I'm interested to hear whether or not there's a possibility of coming up with an items ruleset that the SWF community could embrace. I hear this was tried earlier, but I wasn't around for that discussion. Thoughts? (from the SWF people. SRK people: quiet).

I'm a big fan of Jack Keisers "Items Standard Play". I'm okay with items, but when I see someone throw a homerun bat and get a KO at 70%...its just not very interesting/intense. If I see someone using, say, lipstick, then its a different story.

Can we stop comparing the Evo Melee tournament to the brawl tournament? It is apples and oranges. Melee had a game that was out for a few years and we had a guarenteed prize pool. This year was a new game and pot based winnings. Im sure if we put 5k up on the line again, we would have seen close to melee numbers.

Its not apples and oranges. Brawl tournaments have just as much attendence as Melee ones did, and EVO was supposed to be the first much hyped Brawl tournament.

A 60% drop in attendance and going from the 2nd most popular game out of 8 to the 5th most popular game out of 6 can't be attributed just to a lowered prize pool (and especially not online registration, because thats almost a normal thing in the Smash community with all 4 MLG sponsored events using it last year (and 3 capping) and all MLG events from previous years using it).

As said, and I'm wondering if Inkblot actually borrowed this analogy from my PM's with Jchensor or some of the posts I had made on SRK, it comes down to essentially which do you prefer: hard court tennis or clay tennis. The difference is one type of "tennis" in this case has 10X the interest. EVO is also supposed to be the championship event for fighting games, where winning it essentially makes you the current US champion. Unfortunately, with the items ruleset for Smash, no matter who wins it will be seen as illegitimate, unless of course the top players get convinced enough to show up. Having only 1 of the previous years top 8 players show up would be seen as a failure to appeal to the top gamers if this were about any other fighting game other than Smash.

My point which I made to Jchensor in PM's (unfortunately I can't access the PM's now that I'm banned on SRK for "trolling", though all I pointed out was basically everything I'm saying right here) is merely that the community by and large is for no item play, regardless of what type of play is legitimate or better, what the players want to attend are no items tournaments, and many of the players that attended the items tournament would have shown up for a no items event, along with likely an addition 50-100 other players.

This somewhat reminds me of the CGS, where they took CSS instead of CS1.6 as their tournament, for almost no other reason that its better for TV . The difference is that CGS is appealing to a massive outside audience and wanted the better graphics for viewing purposes. EVO is appealing pretty much just to those who are attending the tournament.

Speaking of which, from my work with MLG and from what I've observed with the CGS, the biggest thing for getting competitive gaming to the next level are live web broadcasts. I would highly recommend EVO look into this, as it could increase the interest, draw, and revenue their events bring in, something that, from what I understand, is badly needed right now. Streams of Halo 3 on MLG, though they are aided largely by ESPN now, have reached upwards of 300,000 unique viewers (apparently WoW got around 400,000 unique viewers in over 100 countries). Even a live web broadcast with 50,000 unique viewers (a more realistic goal for EVO on their first try) would bring in good resources from online advertising, plus it will add growth, entertainment, and legitimacy of EVO as a professional organization/league. Heck, get a live stream to be embedded on Smashboards and your guaranteed probably 5-10k unique viewers, not to mention Smash takes awhile to watch, meaning those viewers will likely be hooked for awhile (and embedded stream on Smashboards will still generate the hits toward EVO/SRK, not just toward Smashboards, both entities benefit, this is one of MLG's new additions to getting more viewers online).

If items play appeals to the audience at EVO for all fighting games, which apparently it does, then I suppose items are the way to go. However, if the appeal is suppose to be to the at large Smash community, no items play is the way to go. From what Inkblot said, I think its for the former instead of the latter, which is where the confusion comes in, because most players thought EVO was going to be for the at large scene (after all, if it were not for the "no items" scene, would Smash even be at EVO in the first place?).

 

[forward]

To understand what makes Smash we need to look at the game at the most fundamental levels. What defines a winning strategy, and what gives that strategy the depth to win? This is assuming that your purpose of playing the game is to win, and not to create a game that is fun, enjoyable to watch, unique, or anything else that does not somehow directly relate to winning.

All fighting games have a risk-reward ratio on attacks. Moves or characters that are said to be broken have an unbalanced ratio, specifically that the reward is outstanding compared to the risk involved. I can save us a lot of time and tell you that items are not broken, there are not even strategies with the items considered broken once you get them. They all have an element of strategy.

If this is as far as you are willing to examine the subject, then by all means, items should be a standard part of tournament play. But items are not standard, there is something that stops 97% of the smash community from using them, why?

Randomness: I would say this is the only reason to prefer one style of play over the other, do you like randomness or do you prefer controlled? Over the years players have decided that having complete control over the game is a superior route to winning than to allow random elements of strategy over a course of a match.

Example: Player A is ledge guarding Player B. Player A is ledge guarding aggressively because Player B is close to death. The strategy here is that even though Player A is playing aggressively and taking a risk of the situation being reversed on him, he is willing to take this risk because of the difference in %'s. Even if Player B does reverse the ledge guard, Player A can still take about 60% in damage before he is seriously threated of being killed, which means he has 60% worth of damage to take in order to re-reverse the ledge guard. He is risking a considerable low amount to gain the ultimate reward, victory. This is a common strategy you will see in tournaments, but this is with out items, let's look at this if items were involved.

The same situation, where Player A is ledge guarding Player B. Player B reverses the situation with a shield grab, again, this is a common occurance. As Player B gets the grab, an item spawns and Player B does a throw to put Player A in a bad situation. If Player A does a bad DI to get close to the item than he is going to take a follow up attack from Player B, worth about 10-20%, and then Player B will still get the item. Player A's best choice is to take the safe route out of the throw and let Player B take the item. Player B's possession of the item changes the situation, he now has a better reward from his reversal, and is at less of a risk because of his item. Would Player A have taken the risk if he had known the item would spawn? What if the item wasn't even useful for the ledge guard? What if it was the best item for ledge guarding? Should Player A have played safer to claim the item spawn for himself?

Our answer to these questions is that we would rather not deal with these headache questions, and why should we? This game is incredibly deep with out items, and with no items we have complete control over the strategy. We keep the game away from poker, no one is going to suck out on us on the river when the odds are in our favor.

I respect what the SRK community is doing in attempting to use items, after all, that's exactly what the Smash community did in the beginning of melee. Rules were tested and tested and tested untill we came up with the dynamic rule set that we have now. If the SRK community continues to develop Smash I believe they will come to very similar conclusion as the Smash community on rules concerning items and stages, just like every region in the country finding out very similar tiers, combos, match ups, etc in Melee. If it doesn't happen, well then the showdown between best item player vs non-item player would be very interesting. Needless to say my money is on the non-item player under any format.

 

[DoH]

Please stop using the tennis court analogy; that's best reserved for different stages and doesn't apply. Competitive smash would be like regular tennis; item smash is like if you're playing tennis and random upgrades and power ups would spawn mid-match.

I've always thought of smash as sort of a duel; you come as you're equipped. Items seems contradictory to that idea, as it's no longer a fight between two players, but there's an element of randomness that's not inherently present that can't be controlled, unlike Judgment and turnips.

 

[RebelStarRL]

To Orb13

MvC2 is still fun to some extent but just getting tired of it, which is why I'm playing Smash now. Note: I've been playing MvC2 since it came out with the Japanese version. It does get boring occasionally.



Anyways, I like Smash now. I'll play it with or without items. =)


And Inkblot, Ponder, and SRK staff are cool because they allow Smash to be at Evo.

 

[nothingxs]

Please stop trying to turn this into an items vs. no-items debate. Your chance of convincing someone on this board that items is better than no-items is zero It's as if a Smash player came onto Shoryuken.com and tried to convince you that infinites should be banned in MvC2. It's not going to happen. Your repeated efforts will only be seen as trolling, which frankly they are.

That being said, I'm interested to hear whether or not there's a possibility of coming up with an items ruleset that the SWF community could embrace. I hear this was tried earlier, but I wasn't around for that discussion. Thoughts? (from the SWF people. SRK people: quiet).

It was not done with the intent of trolling and I sincerely apologize if it ended coming off that way.

That said, I'm also interested in seeing what kind of rule set could possibly be adapted that everyone would be comfortable with and it would be great if some sort of agreement could be reached.

 

[Dastrn]

I emailed the following to viscant. I post it here for reference.

Jay,
I appreciated your thoughtful post on smashboards today. I respect what your community has done for competitive fighters in general, and I especially appreciate that you and Inkblot are respecting our community enough to discuss your thoughts on the Brawl ruleset with us directly. We did not receive the same respect from Mr. Wizard.

The issue regarding items is a lot more complex than most people give it credit. It is not an accurate summary of our stance on items to just say "we think they are broken." or "we think they are too random." You know how obsessive gamers can be about their respective games. I'm sure it's not unique to the smash community that we have players playing 8-10 hours a day or more. We've done A LOT of studying and testing to understand how this game works and what kinds of elements were added to the code to accomplish the purposes of Masahiro Sakurai.

Sakurai expressed that it was not his goal to make a balanced fighting game. He intended for Brawl to be a really good party game. He did not really like what he saw in the competitive Melee scene and actively tried to make sure he could make Brawl different.

We've done a lot of statistical analysis to find out just how far Sakurai went to achieve his goals. We discovered that Sakurai attempted to use Smash balls to even the playing field. What he did was design the smash balls so that, on average, they tended to hover towards the player who was losing and away from the winning player.

It was this discovery that ultimately drove our decision to turn off Smash balls in our tournaments. (note that I didn't say "ban"...I said turn off. I'll make the distinction in a moment)

You spent some time discussing alternative objectives in fighters. This is an idea that is well-understood by any of the top smashers out there. Your illustration regarding Chun-Li's super meter is a very useful one to help the average smash kid understand your point of view. I, for one, really enjoy the depth that these sorts of elements add to competitive gaming. I played WoW competitively for several years, and I often won based on my ability to outlast my opponent's mana pool (discipline priests used to be really good at that.) My frost mage build was designed to handle rogues by forcing them to use up all of their cooldowns without being able to guarantee that they could stay close enough to me to keep their damage on. I'd run in large, lazy circles and trick them into wasting cooldowns until they were easy to "kite" when they ran out or tricks to get me in close. These secondary objectives are absolutely essential to making a game fun at a competitive level.

We could keep rolling examples out like soul gauge in SCIV, or controlling a certain staircase in Rainbow Six Vegas 2, etc. but we both get the point.

What it ultimately boils down to is that whether we accept the default settings as acceptable for tournament smash. Both Evo and SWF have resoundingly said "NO" to that question. The default settings for Brawl, for example, only contain about half the cast, half the stages, set the timer to 2 minutes, with no stock limit, items set to medium, all on, smash balls on. Your rules are very different from the default settings, as are our own. We both have decided that the default settings are not ideal for competitive gaming, and we have both decided that it is acceptable to adjust the default settings as allowed by the game to establish an ideal competitive environment.

It is true that we differ in what we believe the ideal is. The SWF crowd says "We've spent thousands of hours determining what the ideal competitive smash environment looks like and it is X." What the EVO crowd seems to say is "We don't know what the ideal competitive smash environment is, so we'll keep items on."

We should distinguish between banning something and turning something off, or deciding on a setting among many options. It is a very positive ideal to pursue to maintain the values that Sirlin presents in his various competitive gaming articles/blog posts. But there are certain things about Smash that either fall outside of his generalities, or introduce unique element that he did not take into account on a competitive level when composing his influential articles.

Inkblot explained that your culture is rooted in SF arcade tournaments, where there are no settings to change. Understanding where your community came from is helpful for me to understand what motivates your crowd to make the decisions that they do. I don't need to tell you that times have changed, gaming has developed, and the rules of play, as defined by Sirlin, need to be expanded a bit to keep up.

Regarding items, there are many different settings available to us. The fact that Sakurai picked one set as the default should not influence an experienced competitive community from making an informed decision about what is the ideal set of options. We know for a fact that Sakurai was not trying to make a competitive fighter. (He failed, because the character roster in Brawl is even MORE balanced than Melee, which was more balanced than your average 2D fighter.) But with Sakurai's intentions in mind, we as the competitive Smash experts should absolutely feel empowered to make informed decisions about what version of Brawl is most conducive to a proper competitive environment. Sirlin has done this. You do this. We do too.

You have joined us in restricting which settings should be turned on. You (i'm using the plural you...don't feel singled out) turned off certain stages and certain items because you deemed them to be unfit for competitive play. We share much more in common than we disagree on. Your community has made decisions to adjust various settings in the game options to increase the likelihood of accurate results representing skillful competition. So have we.

The only difference is that you've stopped slightly short of where we have. It comes across to us that your community made that decision just to say "see, we care about REAL competitive gaming. We don't cry about things being unfair, we leave items on...etc." It's hypocritical to us, because your ruleset is similar to ours in that be BOTH turn off most items and about 1/3 of the stages.

I have to be honest and express that the SWF(and particularly the SBR) feels disrespected by your peers because no one knows more about competitive smash than we do. Mr. Wizard's attitude was that we should simply "respect our elders" as if he knows more about our game simply based on the fact that he knows more about HIS games, and they are vaguely similar.

We as the Smash community would love to see Evo take competitive smash seriously, but you all have to understand that we will treat your tournaments the same way we treat any items-on tournaments: we will ignore them. (I wrote off EVO after the ruleset was announced, and didn't even know it had happened until today.)

I hope that I don't come across as angry (I'm not) or disrespectful, but ultimately just an interested party in the ongoing conversation.

 

[nothingxs]

It is true that we differ in what we believe the ideal is. The SWF crowd says "We've spent thousands of hours determining what the ideal competitive smash environment looks like and it is X." What the EVO crowd seems to say is "We don't know what the ideal competitive smash environment is, so we'll keep items on."

I think the distinction we are trying to make is not what the "Ideal Competitive Smash Environment" is, but what the "Ideal Competitive Brawl Environment" is.

We do not really currently KNOW what the ideal competitive brawl environment is at this point. We don't have years of testing in Brawl. In fact, we are barely about to hit six MONTHS of Brawl. I'm not entirely sure what we accomplish by simply writing everything off immediately as "broken" or not viable for competition. Items are a lot less broken than they were last iteration.

The biggest problems right now are that neither side can see the others' point, almost entirely by choice. I'm not even entirely sure why anymore.

There's space for a dialog here.

It's like we got the chessboards out, but we're all just dead set on playing whac-a-mole.

Let's play some chess and see what kind of a compromise and middle ground we can reach.

 

[Zankoku]

Items are a lot less broken than they were last iteration.

You're joking, right? I'm sure there's a very good reason why EVO actually banned certain items, and even then there's nothing in Melee that could possibly compare in power to the Smash Ball, and no projectile items in Melee that came close to the level of Cracker Launcher. Items have been made stronger overall, how are they less broken?

 

[ubersaurus]

You're joking, right? I'm sure there's a very good reason why EVO actually banned certain items, and even then there's nothing in Melee that could possibly compare in power to the Smash Ball, and no projectile items in Melee that came close to the level of Cracker Launcher. Items have been made stronger overall, how are they less broken?

I believe his reasoning is that you don't have to deal with randomly spawning carrier items that will explode, as you can flip em off in Brawl.