Project M Recommended Ruleset

[Narpas_sword]

Guys, we had 10 pages of arguing character first or stage first in the 'proposed standardised ruleset' thread.

What it came down to was this:

Both methods (Stage Character, or Character > Stage) have their situations where something may make the counterpick awkward.

The other good reasons for Character first are as follows:

It's the SAME as the first game. -(Having the first game in a set character>stage, then the subsequent stage>character is silly)
It's easier to navigate. no backtracking through menus.
It prevents accidental stage starting LRAStart, then back to characters.
It's Faster for decision making for stage bans. (the player knows the character he is playing against, and doesn't have to sit there thinking about what main or secondary the other player might have)

 

[RIDLEY is too SMALL]

I really don't understand the arguments for keeping the ruleset stage first. Character first is a ****ing MASSIVE improvement in the PM ruleset and it makes sets better and more fair.

 

[Deleted member]

perhaps most importantly, it eliminates blow-out CPs in a heavily MU based game

 

[4tlas]

V
@Rawkobo
All in all, I think it deserves some testing in weeklies. Since smashing grounds experiments with new stagelists every season, maybe they will try it. @ The_NZA

We're looking at it as an option, but I doubt we are going to do character-first at this time. We might try "loser offers a pool of stages as counterpick, winner picks their poison" instead of the current ban system. Still talking both out for now.

 

[Narpas_sword]

We're looking at it as an option, but I doubt we are going to do character-first at this time. We might try "loser offers a pool of stages as counterpick, winner picks their poison" instead of the current ban system. Still talking both out for now.

Why not experiment with what's been well discussed and agreed upon to be a good change?
Run the proposed ruleset for a few tournies then get feedback?

If it doesnt work, it's something we need to know as a whole, not have everyone make their own rules again.
this way we can fortify the rules with changes once we have used them for a while.

 

[4tlas]

Why not experiment with what's been well discussed and agreed upon to be a good change?
Run the proposed ruleset for a few tournies then get feedback?

If it doesnt work, it's something we need to know as a whole, not have everyone make their own rules again.
this way we can fortify the rules with changes once we have used them for a while.

We are likely to have 3.6 drop soon. Our venue is also moving to a new location. We are also switching management. We are also soon going to have the 100+ entrants from summer months. One thing at a time would be the main reason not to experiment right now.

We'll look into trying the ruleset before the 100+ participant summer starts. Are you suggesting we try the ruleset as written in the OP, or are we talking about some variation thereof?

Edit: Ok, somehow I saw the OP as saying stage first. I, personally, am happy it says character first. Now that I see there is a vague consensus in favor of this change, I will re-propose it. We may be able to test such a thing (no promises).

 

[Narpas_sword]

Make all the changes at once, and tell everyone to harden up =p

 

[4tlas]

Make all the changes at once, and tell everyone to harden up =p

As new management, I would rather not have a riot on my hands, or be forever blamed for everything that goes wrong when we make such drastic changes. =P

Even if we were to implement some of the ruleset, I am pretty sure we will not implement this stagelist during the upcoming rotation. We have already decided upon a list, and while we will re-evaluate it when 3.6 comes out, the particular list proposed in the OP will have to wait. The rotation is partly for variety's sake, and we recently ran a similar list (if not that exact list...I'll check)

 

[RIDLEY is too SMALL]

As a side note, I think that a ruleset/stagelist that is the most optimally fair and balanced is what our community as a whole should aim for, not necessarily the ruleset/stagelist that's most popular.

 

[Cubelarooso]

The large and small stages need to be available. If it at least forces a ban from the generalist character, the small/large-preferring character gets a chance to shift the bans toward a neutral stage (the smallest or largest of the middle-sized stages, for example). If all starter stages (or, in an extreme example, the only stage) were middle-of-the-road, some characters would never have a chance.

Maybe we should have characters that don't require specific stages to be viable???
(that they can't go to every match anyway so they're not viable even with the stages and also the stages make already-viable characters absolutely unbearable and they don't contribute any variety to the stagelist but just distill selection into mechanically picking the distinctly best option)

 

[4tlas]

Maybe we should have characters that don't require specific stages to be viable???
(that they can't go to every match anyway so they're not viable even with the stages and also the stages make already-viable characters absolutely unbearable and they don't contribute any variety to the stagelist but just distill selection into mechanically picking the distinctly best option)

One of the most beautiful parts of Smash is that different stages MEAN something. That is, they play differently. Due to the fact that different characters play differently, this combination results in stages affecting the strength (and thus viability) of characters. Homogenizing stages or characters to remove this effect would be a shame.

41 different characters cannot be equally viable on all stages. Without homogenizing the cast, some characters will have to be in the area of play where the "average" stage for the cast is bad for them. Altering the stagelist to even out the viability of those characters is a valid and necessary measure to allow play of those characters.

In some matchups, the extreme stages get played because they are not extreme in all aspects (or because they are extreme in different aspects). For example, we may go to Dreamland because I want the recovery space but my opponent wants the movement space. But in a different matchup where I want recovery space but my opponent doesn't care as much for movement space, Dreamland needs to be on the list so that he bans it and I ban the small stages, leaving us with Pokemon Stadium 2. Without Dreamland being available, even though my opponent would ALWAYS choose to ban it, I would never be able to get enough recovery space, as he would ban PS2 instead and leave me with Smashville.

 

[4tlas]

For the record, I have purposely chosen or willingly been taken to every stage that is remotely legal. There is a time and a place for each stage, and sometimes the extra stages are needed to open up those opportunities. Remember, counterpicks are meant to be "pick your poison", and if you didn't have extra stages with the counterpick attribute this would not work. We could instead have no bans and always let you get counterpicked to Dreamland, but then DSR would mess things up so... (also now there's no variety)(also the COMBINATION of counterpick attributes is what you're picking from).

 

[Cubelarooso]

This doesn't really pertain to rulesets as-is, so let's move it to a more appropriate thread, to not clutter the rererediscussion of "What does 'characters before stages' again?"

 

[MegaMissingno]

Maybe we should have characters that don't require specific stages to be viable???
(that they can't go to every match anyway so they're not viable even with the stages and also the stages make already-viable characters absolutely unbearable and they don't contribute any variety to the stagelist but just distill selection into mechanically picking the distinctly best option)

Brilliant idea!

Now how do you propose we accomplish that?

 

[4tlas]

I am dropping by to inform you that Smashing Grounds is running a trial period for these rules. This week we did character first, and the coming few weeks we will do character first, pool bans, and 7 minute timer.

Feedback I have received so far: most people didn't notice a difference (because people didn't switch characters anyway), but people don't like change. Any players who did switch characters were either long-time Melee players and forgot to do characters first, or only have multiple mains because of the ability to negate/double-down stage picks and ignored the new rule because they don't like it.

Pretty sure the same thing is going to happen next week. Sigh.

 

[The_NZA]

It's only been two weeks but people at SG seem to hate this ruleset. Many feel it prevents counterpicks from feeling truly like counterpicks. People were in general more receptive to character first then stage than all of these rules taken together.

 

[Narpas_sword]

It's only been two weeks but people at SG seem to hate this ruleset. Many feel it prevents counterpicks from feeling truly like counterpicks. People were in general more receptive to character first then stage than all of these rules taken together.

Can you elaborate on the part where you mention 'it prevents counterpicks from feeling truly like counterpicks'?
Are you able to tell us about some of the situations that caused this feeling?

From our testing it does the opposite.
The loser gets to truly counter-pick a stage for the following matchup. as opposed to counterpicking and the winner being able to simply not care and pick a different character.

What rules are clashing when you say taken together?

Will you press on and keep trying until people become more comfortable? as you say, it's 'only' been 2 weeks. it could be a matter of 'i don't like change' being displayed.

Keen to hear your opinions.

 

[4tlas]

Can you elaborate on the part where you mention 'it prevents counterpicks from feeling truly like counterpicks'?
Are you able to tell us about some of the situations that caused this feeling?

From our testing it does the opposite.
The loser gets to truly counter-pick a stage for the following matchup. as opposed to counterpicking and the winner being able to simply not care and pick a different character.

What rules are clashing when you say taken together?

Will you press on and keep trying until people become more comfortable? as you say, it's 'only' been 2 weeks. it could be a matter of 'i don't like change' being displayed.

Keen to hear your opinions.

I'm still collecting opinions and we will hold a proper poll after 3 more trials (June 4th, June 11th, and June 18th). We are currently running Character First, Pooled Bans (Loser offers a pool of 3 stages, Winner chooses one to play), and 7 mins.

There seems to be no consensus, but players who dislike the rules are very loud and players who like them or don't care are silent. When I specifically ask for opinions from individuals, I so far have gotten an equal enthusiasm and hatred for the rules. Unfortunately, either way the reasonings for their opinions were misinformed, almost 100% of the time. When actually asking people to explain what they loved/hated about the rules, very few were able to explain why, at least without me poking holes in their arguments.

When NZA says people felt like counterpicks weren't counterpicks, he is referring mostly to the Pooled Bans rule. Some people were confused by it, thinking that the Winner chose the pool and then the Loser had to pick from that. Even among those players who were not confused as to the actual rule, the words "winner chooses which stage to play" sounds like the winner has more choice than the loser, and thus it is not a counterpick. When I point out that it is the same as "winner bans 2", most arguments against the rule are left with "the loser still has to show their hand, and I don't like that", which is a valid argument.

As expected, the character first rule makes dual mains unhappy and solo mains happy, but not for the obvious reasons. Instead of everyone realizing that this weakens dual mains by making character counterpicks separate from stage counterpicks, all of the dual mains say "now I can't switch when I get a bad stage" (as the winner) and all of the solo mains say "yay now they can't switch when I get a bad stage" (as the winner). It seems like everyone feels that switching to negate the stage is an acceptable consequence of stage first, but everyone either doesn't care or dislikes when someone doubles down on the stage counterpick with a character counterpick. This is quite interesting. Also note that anyone who dislikes getting surprised by an unknown secondary appreciates this rule for removing the "research my opponent" aspect of character counterpicks.

Again, as expected, there are very few supporters of the 7 min rule, and a grand majority of players do not care. I think that, in general, most Smashers do not want to support timeout as a victory condition, as Smash plays differently from other fighters. The ability to run away without being forced into a corner makes timeout uninteractive, the ability to get invuln frames when pushed into a corner (ledge) makes defensive camping a legitimate strategy, and having multiple stocks makes hype timeouts extremely unlikely. As much as I personally would love to support timeout as a win condition (if only because it gives the person who is "losING" an incentive to interact), I believe it is objectively inappropriate for Smash.

Furthermore, and again as expected, there is a LOT of resistance to change. I have heard many complaints about the "stupid TOs" making "stupid rules" and "messing with something nobody was complaining about". The "why fix what ain't broke" sentiment is strong, and the players that are convinced that the current system is best are the best players. In other words, these are players who are used to playing by these rules (for many, many years), have been legitimized by these rules, and believe in these rules. If change were made I'm sure they would at worst grudgingly accept while constantly grumbling about the good ol' days. They would get used to the new rules, become re-legitimized with the new ruleset, and maybe come to like them.


I will update when I have more data.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Thanks for the update.

I for one feel it's quite acceptable to semi ignore the protests of people who complain about change. Theyre already playing a different game, playing by different rules isnt much of a leap honestly.

In my circle, no one has even mentioned the 7 min timer. no one notices, and even me as a samus running away hasn't got it to the last minute (perhaps due to opponents getting sloppy and rushing me after i back up for about 30 sec)

And like you, the only complaint ive had about stage after character is from the people that purposely have a handful of characters for the sole purpose of ruining a counter-pick.

If people are complaining about the stage pool selection, perhaps changing that to what the recommended rules method is might alter some opinion?

keeping it to winner striking 2 stages is at least semi familiar.

 

[4tlas]

Thanks for the update.

I for one feel it's quite acceptable to semi ignore the protests of people who complain about change. Theyre already playing a different game, playing by different rules isnt much of a leap honestly.

In my circle, no one has even mentioned the 7 min timer. no one notices, and even me as a samus running away hasn't got it to the last minute (perhaps due to opponents getting sloppy and rushing me after i back up for about 30 sec)

And like you, the only complaint ive had about stage after character is from the people that purposely have a handful of characters for the sole purpose of ruining a counter-pick.

If people are complaining about the stage pool selection, perhaps changing that to what the recommended rules method is might alter some opinion?

keeping it to winner striking 2 stages is at least semi familiar.

Sadly, not everyone takes the time to think logically and objectively about these rules. After all, they're here to play a fighting game, not Chess or Civilization. As much as I would love to explain the rules in-depth in order to get people's actual opinions rather than their kneejerk reactions, we are hitting over 100 participants at the venue each week (not all PM, some Melee) and I am swamped. It is also difficult to ensure people actually follow the rules or even get feedback under these conditions.

As much as I'd like to ignore people with invalid complaints, at the end of the day our "job" is to satisfy the participants. If change would cause a problem that severe, we need to plan for that. And if their uninformed opinion or kneejerk reaction is what causes them to not have fun, our options are either to inform them or do what makes them have fun. Unfortunately, I don't have time to inform everyone right now, and generic speeches usually just push people away as opposed to individual debates.

I have also gotten a few people who said that removing some of the secondary incentive will be sad because then we will have less diverse play. On the other hand, that might encourage people to get better with their main instead.

And the 7 min timer is a pain to set up with 100 people. Even though all it takes is 1 moment to change it, if any Wiis get reset they have to remember to reset it again, and nobody remembers to check the timer.

As for the Pooled Bans, I think we will continue to test it for the remainder of the trial just like the other rules. Hopefully people can dissociate their opinions about one rule from another.

How many players do you get usually?

 

[Narpas_sword]

All fair points. it is hard to keep everyone happy when it gets to large numbers like that.

I only run a small local with 10- 15 players these days, unfortunately, though a pocket of other players has emerged with about another 25 players. so keen to get them onboard.
Our full scene is around 100 people, but most of them are on the melee train with no care about PM =/.

The thing is, the secondaries still play a part, they're there for character matchups. sure the winner has to pick first, but it's always been that way. It's just not a cheesy 'character counters the stage pick' anymore.

 

[Deleted member]

i am...also confused by the idea of pooled bans. but i appreciate the experimentation, both the ruleset posted here, and the other stuff as well.

as a reminder, i dont necessarily think the player base needs a reason to dislike something. the idea of a standardized rule set is to have a medium of competition, whatever that means, to have legitimacy in the competitive community. if our player base hates it, no amount of logic will save it.

 

[4tlas]

We're hoping we can finish this trial period before we start getting over 100 PM participants each week, at which point we will hold a poll. If opinions are heavily in favor or against a particular rule, we will probably implement (or not) that rule. If the poll is inconclusive, we will probably implement just character first. It has the most support, the least angry opposition, is easy to understand, easy to implement, and I think the most sensible change of them all (and personally, I think a good change to make). The other changes cause confusion, frustration, or annoyance, and are at least not worth running when we have over 100 PM players during weeklies unless there is overwhelming support for them. Of course I am not the only person running the show, so other opinions will be taken into account,

Remember we are not using that stagelist. Our current stagelist is getting some flak as well, but they always do. You can't please everyone all the time. In case you are curious, I'll list our current stagelist below.

Starters
Green Hill Zone
Pokemon Stadium 2
Battlefield
Smashville
Dreamland

Counterpicks
Norfair (Likely to be swapped with Delfino's Secret if 3.6 drops suddenly)
Final Destination
WarioWare
Yoshi's Story
Skyworld

i am...also confused by the idea of pooled bans. but i appreciate the experimentation, both the ruleset posted here, and the other stuff as well.

as a reminder, i dont necessarily think the player base needs a reason to dislike something. the idea of a standardized rule set is to have a medium of competition, whatever that means, to have legitimacy in the competitive community. if our player base hates it, no amount of logic will save it.

Pretty much exactly this. If the players agree on what they want to be legitimized by, then those are the "best" rules for competition. I mean, who came up with the rules for, say, Olympic Ice Skating? I'm sure everyone thinks some of them are stupid, but at the end of the day people want to compete under that ruleset and everyone agrees that the winners deserve to win.

The Pooled Bans are trying to speed up bans by having both players think "what do I want" rather than "what the hell could my opponent possibly want". It does this by essentially forcing the picker (loser) to just admit what they want to the banner (winner) by giving a pool of the 3 best stages, and then says ban 2. This way the loser still gets the third best stage, like in the normal ruleset. Unfortunately (depending on your point of view) this means the banner can't screw up and throw away bans, and it also means the picker can't choose some completely different "3rd best" stage and then switch characters. But since we have character first anyway, the only "downside" to this rule is that the banner can't really screw up. At the theoretical level, the banner won't screw up, but at that level we also won't save any time with this rule because everyone already knows what to do. So really this only hurts the picker when the banner is uninformed (which is a wash at a lower level, or when its low vs. high level players the low level player loses despite his lack of knowledge), and the tournament runs faster because of all the low level players who pick faster.

I hope that explained the point of the rule pretty well.

 

[Narpas_sword]

hmm, thats a strange way of pool stage selection.

I thought of it more like how i used to play FPS challenges:

Challenging team (in this case, the loser from the previous game) would nominate 3 stages to play on.
The winner would then chose the stage of those 3.

The winner doesn't ban 2 of them.

 

[4tlas]

hmm, thats a strange way of pool stage selection.

I thought of it more like how i used to play FPS challenges:

Challenging team (in this case, the loser from the previous game) would nominate 3 stages to play on.
The winner would then chose the stage of those 3.

The winner doesn't ban 2 of them.

Those are the same thing!

 

[Narpas_sword]

Those are the same thing!

uhhhhh.

forget i said that.


*goes to get more coffee*

 

[4tlas]

uhhhhh.

forget i said that.


*goes to get more coffee*

But its a good point nevertheless. I explained it as "winner chooses 1" but people didn't like that (and got confused as to who did what). I might start explaining it as Winner bans 2 so people go "oh its like the same thing as normal" and stop ******** at me lol

 

[DMG]

I don't like pooled bans if characters are already picked for both sides. If the Winner of Game 1 is allowed to see what character you are going to CP with, why should he also deserve to know what 2-3 stages you exactly want?

Pooled bans/picks and regular bans operate the same IF the assumption is that the same stages would be selected due to optimal MU traits, and not vary based on player preference or traits. If there are 3 good stages for the MU, the same 2 "worst" ones would be banned and the 3rd one would always get played on. However, any player preferences or nuances from the loser of Game 1 aren't given away in the current proposal where you ban 2 normally and he picks whatever. If the best remaining stage is YI, but he prefers BF, he would have to inform his opponent about that in the pooled ban system. I see no reason to do that unless we're super concerned about CP strength, which is something already highly (possibly) addressed by doing characters first before stages anyways.

Arguably if you're doing characters first, there shouldn't be many stage "surprises" that we need to mitigate by doing pooled bans/picks. If there are legit surprises or issues somehow, that should be seen as an acceptable trade off for the Winner knowing ahead of time exactly what character he's going up against (which is already huge)

 

[4tlas]

I don't like pooled bans if characters are already picked for both sides. If the Winner of Game 1 is allowed to see what character you are going to CP with, why should he also deserve to know what 2-3 stages you exactly want?

Pooled bans/picks and regular bans operate the same IF the assumption is that the same stages would be selected due to optimal MU traits, and not vary based on player preference or traits. If there are 3 good stages for the MU, the same 2 "worst" ones would be banned and the 3rd one would always get played on. However, any player preferences or nuances from the loser of Game 1 aren't given away in the current proposal where you ban 2 normally and he picks whatever. If the best remaining stage is YI, but he prefers BF, he would have to inform his opponent about that in the pooled ban system. I see no reason to do that unless we're super concerned about CP strength, which is something already highly (possibly) addressed by doing characters first before stages anyways.

Arguably if you're doing characters first, there shouldn't be many stage "surprises" that we need to mitigate by doing pooled bans/picks. If there are legit surprises or issues somehow, that should be seen as an acceptable trade off for the Winner knowing ahead of time exactly what character he's going up against (which is already huge)

I do know some people that insist on banning *insert odd stage here* every time rather than ban for the MU, and those players would have an advantage with Pool Bans. It is something I had not thought of before, thank you for pointing it out. However, I don't think you should think of the Winner knowing what he's up against as a huge benefit, because it also means the Winner can't switch his character after knowing what stage he's up against. That's a trade-off.

And your line of thinking matches up with what I said above, which is that players accept the character-negating-stage part of stage first, but think of combining character and stage as a big deal, and thus "already huge".

 

[DMG]

He can't switch once he knows the stage, but because he knows the opposing character, that already gives him information to strategically ban better than if he had to ban immediately in the dark. The more often that players stay the same characters, the more likely that the winner benefits from any additional information more than the loser does. Characters locked and stage bans, vs characters locked and "tell me what 3 stages you want". The first format lets the losing player decide at the end whether he wants to lean into a preference that might not be optimal, while the second format forcefully tells his opponent what his interests are.

Your opponent should not be given a guide book on what stages you want IMO. That's basically what pooled picks/bans are.

 

[4tlas]

He can't switch once he knows the stage, but because he knows the opposing character, that already gives him information to strategically ban better than if he had to ban immediately in the dark. The more often that players stay the same characters, the more likely that the winner benefits from any additional information more than the loser does. Characters locked and stage bans, vs characters locked and "tell me what 3 stages you want". The first format lets the losing player decide at the end whether he wants to lean into a preference that might not be optimal, while the second format forcefully tells his opponent what his interests are.

Your opponent should not be given a guide book on what stages you want IMO. That's basically what pooled picks/bans are.

I agree that that's what they are, but I don't agree that they should not be given such a thing. I don't disagree either. It would speed up the process, and over the course of a large tournament that may be worth it. Ultimately, its up to the players to decide if this is a decision-making corner we can cut to make a tournament run better.

 

[DMG]

I would ask players to be on time, and not waste as much time between sets, if a TO or tourney is crunched on time. Not rule changes in that vein.

 

[4tlas]

I would ask players to be on time, and not waste as much time between sets, if a TO or tourney is crunched on time. Not rule changes in that vein.

Both is better, no? (I'm still not arguing in favor of the change, just discussing it)

 

[DMG]

Not if the main benefit is related to tournament speed. If there's a demonstrated benefit in gameplay, and it is also superior to the alternatives, then sure use it. I don't think the pooled system operates any better than the regular system, and has the potential to also give worse outcomes.

 

[Narpas_sword]

The thing that has sped up my tournaments the most has honestly been the 'character then stage' rule. the menu navigation is faster and people spend less time thinking, as they dont have to account for everyone's possible secondaries.

 

[4tlas]

So far, I think the rules changes have been actually slowing tournament down, as players have to remember there are new rules, check what they are, interpret them, explain them to each other, verify them, undo whatever they'd done under the old rules already, then think about what the new rules mean strategically, all before even DOING anything.

This is one of the reasons why we're trying it before we get a ton of people.

 

[Narpas_sword]

i guess that's the difference between explaining it to 15 players, and explaining it to 100 =p

 

[Deleted member]

So far, I think the rules changes have been actually slowing tournament down, as players have to remember there are new rules, check what they are, interpret them, explain them to each other, verify them, undo whatever they'd done under the old rules already, then think about what the new rules mean strategically, all before even DOING anything.

This is one of the reasons why we're trying it before we get a ton of people.

any transition takes a bit of time. this is an acceptable loss imo. the goal is to smooth out the tournament experience in the long run, small hiccups are a normal part of hosting a tournament and perfectly acceptable, so long as everything is reasonable.

 

[4tlas]

any transition takes a bit of time. this is an acceptable loss imo. the goal is to smooth out the tournament experience in the long run, small hiccups are a normal part of hosting a tournament and perfectly acceptable, so long as everything is reasonable.

I agree, but as I said when this experiment was proposed, it is compounding on our new venue, greater turnout, and new management. It hurts me so much!

 

[mimgrim]

Also note that anyone who dislikes getting surprised by an unknown secondary appreciates this rule for removing the "research my opponent" aspect of character counterpicks.

This has happened to me again, recently, by the same guy who did it to me last time. Last time I didn't know he played Ganon so I had no reason to really ban Warioware. Well the more recent time I took the right precaution for Ganon but this time I didn't know he played DDD and he was able to take me to Dreamland. That broke my morale like crazy and made me play worse the third round. It feels so cheesy.