3 on 3 Metagame Discussion

[The Legendary DJXYZ]

Please notify me if thread for this already exists... I don't think there is atm.

I run a small private local that generally gets between 12 and 20 players. Because of the awkward amount of participants, instead of a bracket I have swapped to Swiss rounds. This is normally followed by doubles, but it has proven a chore for most of the players to work with only one player, and it quickly dissolves into big team matches, which are always fun and challenging for every player. Because of this, I'm going to run a 3 on 3 Round Robin instead of doubles for the next installment. I'd like some advice regarding my tentative ruleset.

There are 7 legal stages. Each player bans one stage, in order of singles seeding from top to bottom. The stages are:
Big Battlefield, Omega Stage, Pokemon Stadium 2, Pyrosphere, Windy Hill Zone, Norfair, and Duck Hunt.
When counterpicking, each player on the winning team bans one stage, and the other team selects from the remaining four.

 

[Megamang]

It is not a popular competitive game mode; you're one of the first people Ive seen mention it. This means you are the one gathering meaningful data! As you said, you are doing it for fun, so just do whatever your participants think is fun. I like the way you have it set up personally, the bans and striking seem pretty well thought out.

I think you might want to consider Wuhu Island and Skyloft. (If the game allows those for 3's, im not quite sure). They are pretty fun, get large at the transitions, and don't have any particularly gruesome hazards, only thing that comes to mind is the occasional walkoff.

 

[Tinkerer]

Wuhu Island would definitely be good - also consider using Kongo Jungle 64, which is large yet simple.

It is not a popular competitive game mode; you're one of the first people Ive seen mention it. This means you are the one gathering meaningful data! As you said, you are doing it for fun, so just do whatever your participants think is fun. I like the way you have it set up personally, the bans and striking seem pretty well thought out.

I think you might want to consider Wuhu Island and Skyloft. (If the game allows those for 3's, im not quite sure). They are pretty fun, get large at the transitions, and don't have any particularly gruesome hazards, only thing that comes to mind is the occasional walkoff.

Wuhu Island and Skyloft aren't available in 8-player Smash, sadly. There's no transforming stages available in 8-player Smash.

Also, consider Kongo Jungle 64 - it's probably a bit more manageable than Windy Hill Zone.

 

[UR | Sage]

I'm a tournament organizer in Chicago. One of the biggest successes of side events we've run (and we run many) is the 3v3 VIP variant.

It works like this: one player on each team is designated the VIP. That player must have a tag that includes VIP in the name. We commonly see one as VIP and the other as V.I.P.

If your VIP loses all his/her stocks, the round is over and that team loses.

3 stock match. 8 minute timer. NO STOCK SHARING. That last bit is important.

We run pyrosphere as the starter and big battlefield and PS2 as the 2 counters. Stages could be experimented with though.

I encourage you to check it out and give some feedback. I'd love to see this event outside Chicago/the Midwest some more

 

[Eugene Wang]

At the very least, you get a buttload of additional legal stages. Pyrosphere is a starter, Norfair is a counterpick, and generally size shouldn't be an issue and a lot of stages lose their hazards.

Note: if you follow along with my idea, you might want to modify the rules to deter circle camping in situations where it comes down to a 1v1. One possible way of doing that is that if the game times out and there are equal numbers of players on each team, all on one stock, then the tiebreaker is that the players left on each team are rematched on a map that is similar to the map the main match was chosen, one stock each, rather than by percent.

Also, here are a list of stages that I could see being legal in triples. Maybe you'd like to run others, but I've gone with what most people say disqualifies a stage for legality (permanent walk-offs, ceilings, being badly sized).

Spoiler

• All Omegas (Not neutral, but neutral enough)
• Smashville
• Pokemon stadium (Sticks to one completely vanilla form) => Smashville for tiebreaker
  
• Pyrosphere (Yay, no Ridley!) => Smashville for tiebreaker
• Battlefield
• Midgar (Unless you hate stage clones) => Battlefield for tiebreaker
  
• Town and City
  
• Dream Land (Possible counterpick for wind)
  
• Lylat Cruise (Possible counterpick for tilting)
• Kongo Jungle (Possible counterpick, some people dislike cannons) => Town and City for tiebreaker
• Duck Hunt (Possible counterpick, no ducks, no dog)
  
• Big Battlefield (Possible counterpick) => Battlefield for tiebreaker
• Castle Siege (Counterpick, some people hate transforms and walkoffs)
  
• Norfair (Counterpick, unusual shape and sharking potential) => Town and City for tiebreaker

A few which I considered, but rejected. If you disagree with my reasoning, go ahead:

• Skyworld (Cloud platforms are bizarre, and some people hate ceilings with a passion)
• Hyrule Castle (Random hazards, walls and ceilings)
• Luigi's Mansion (Circle camping and caves of life can be broken down, but it's a pain to do so)
• Mario Galaxy (Are those walkoffs or not?)
• Peach's Castle (Super cramped)
• Windy Hill Zone (Still too big, could see as a quadruples counterpick)

 

[The Legendary DJXYZ]

I might consider Kongo Jungle over Duck Hunt.
The goal is not to have counterpick-exclusive stages, which is something I'd like to go without this time around, even in singles. (Skyloft will be legal for singles!)