Honestly, we have an opportunity to standardize our ruleset compared to the normal playing experience of the game. I know "For Glory" being 2 Stock 5 Minute is a bad reason to change to it, but standardizing our competitive Ruleset with Nintendo's gives the community a better chance at collab events. On top of that, we can actually standardize having 3/5 for sets for as large as like top 32 in a tournament, since 3/5 5 minute sets is, at worst, a minute longer than 2/3 8 minute-sets, and very very frequently, much faster. It also lowers the importance of game 1, something that's always been an issue in smash.
I do think this could be good for the game if we switched to this. We don't HAVE to adhere to the tradition of balancing each Smash games to the 8 minute match, and we need to get it out of our heads that we need to do this. We can significantly speed up tournaments (that will be bogged down by tons of new players) and reduce the difficulty of new players transitioning from the game into competitive by having the same stock/time rules as "For Glory". Theres just so much to gain from doing this transition I think we really should consider this first and then look back at 3 stock 8 minute if this ruleset is disliked.
This 10000x. Lots of people are basing this off of how long past smash games took, but you guys don't have to look far to realize that smash tournaments running too long is one of the biggest problems in our community due to it's increased size. Like UltiMario said, there are
so many benefits both in and out of the game that come from having the ruleset at 2 stock 5 minutes. Let's do some math real quick.
Keep in mind that this is looking at the maximum amount of time a round takes (what TO's are forced to schedule around) instead of a guessed "how long games are taking" value.
3 Stocks 8 Minutes (Standard Ruleset)
Best of 1: 8 minutes
Best of 2: 16 minutes
Best of 3: 24 minutes
Best of 4: 32 minutes
Best of 5: 40 minutes
Best of 6: 48 minutes
Best of 7: 56 minutes
2 Stocks 5 Minutes (Smash 4 Ruleset)
Best of 1: 5 minutes
Best of 2: 10 minutes
Best of 3: 15 minutes
Best of 4: 20 minutes
Best of 5: 25 minutes
Best of 6: 30 minutes
Best of 7: 35 minutes
So let's make a reasonable assumption that in a 64 person tournament,
at least one of the matches each round goes to time, and we have our relative round lengths for each game. Times that by the number of rounds you have (and add in any extra matchmaking times or breaks), and you have yourself a framework for a tournament schedule. Assuming there's around 15 rounds in a 64 man double elimination bracket plus 4 for pools (total of 19 rounds), our tournaments start to look something like this.
3 Stock 8 Minutes (Full Bo3): 7 Hours, 12 Minutes (456 Minutes)
3 Stock 8 Minutes (Bo5 Semis to Finals): 8 Hours, 40 Minutes (520 Minutes)
2 Stock 5 Minutes (Full Bo3): 4 Hours, 45 Minutes (285 Minutes)
2 Stock 5 Minutes (Bo5 Semis to Finals): 5 Hours, 25 Minutes (325 Minutes)
This is all without adding on the independent time additions such as lunch breaks, bracket delays, etc. that would happen regardless of game or ruleset.
Now let's look at the game itself
. While we shouldn't base our ruleset off of past games, for stock/time purposes we can make an exception.
The main push for 3 Stock 8 Minutes is the idea that characters in Smash 4 can rack up damage and combo more efficiently than in Brawl, implying that stocks will be taken faster and 3 stocks will be timely enough. While it appears to be true that characters have an easier time dealing damage,
Smash 4's stage boundaries are almost universally huge, causing most characters to live anywhere from 150% to 200+% on a
regular basis. With the limited amount of data we have of Smash 4 matches (we still haven't seen two proficient Smash 4 players playing for money in a tournament), we can't say for sure yet if these two factors balance each other out entirely.
Is 3 stock the way to go? If stocks start being taken at 64 level speeds, then yes. If it's any slower than that, we should really consider making some changes for the reasons both UltiMario and I have highlighted. Using Brawl's ruleset as a base when it's considered the slowest (and arguably the worst) ruleset in the series' history just doesn't make coherent sense in the long run.