9 Stage Starter System: a way to prevent stagnancy in brawl

[Smash G 0 D]

MLG made a 9 stage starter system to try something new. A lot of people like it. I'm not a big fan of it. These five stages are the most tourney viable imo.

FD
Battlefield.
Smashville
Yoshi's Island
Lylat Cruise.

With the acception of the shy guys getting in the way of projectiles minimally, and the Lylat tilting a bit, there's no gimmicks with any of these stages. Here's my argument vs the 9 stage system (I'm basing it off of T block's ideal stage list).

PS1.

Wall CG's up the anus, and that freakin windmill getting in the way of great KO's is not something I love...

Castle Siege.

In the first transformation, there's no big issue, aside the weird ledge on the right side. The second one is broken. The statues suck for projectiles. Walk of CG's are a huge no no. And the third transformation isn't bad, just don't like the EXTREME tilting of the stage (in comparison to Lylat)

PS2.

Even more of a problem than PS1. The WTFOMG air stage F's up all normality. I HATE the treadmills, and, even though it's not a huge problem for me, the ice stage's slipperyness (if thats how you spell it) gets annoying.

Frigate.

Not too much of a problem, but what makes me think it's not starter viable is that in the first transformation, there are NO ledges, killing ivysaur, oli, and ZSS. And if you just so happen to be under the stage, Frigate has a way of transforming right when you don't want it to. And you were able to easily recover, but now you're caught under the stage.

Rainbow Cruise.

MK MK MK MK MK MK MK MK. That's what the stage screams. Plus, I don't really like scrolling stages, because you need to keep up with the stage, sometimes deterring you from the fight.

Oh, and T block, did you purposely leave out Yoshi's Island, or just forgot?

PS1: If you get wall CG'd, then you're either very unlucky or you aren't paying attention. Windmill doesn't last that long, and you can just jump on top of it.

PS2: Well if you hate treadmills it definitely shouldn't be legal. And god forbid you get annoyed by ice.

CS: The second transformation isn't terribad. If you get walk-off CG'd, then, again, you're either very unlucky or you aren't paying attention. It's more than easy to camp at one of the three high platforms on this stage.

Frigate: You are warned when it transforms. You should have enough time to recover, or you probably couldn't have recovered anyways. If you COULD, and the transformation time is really unfortunate and you die, well that's just one of those situations where you got the bad end of the stick. It's rare that that will actually happen, though.

I'm not really arguing anything, I just saw lots of flaws in your reasoning.

EDIT: I just realized I quoted a post from page 2. Whoops.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Interference should be as limited as possible because it distracts from each player's skill in actuality. Player skill should not be determined by who can avoid each obstacle better than the other, or who can abuse the objects better. That is flatout the most anticompetitive viewpoint I have ever seen in this game. It is one thig if you have trained on a counterpick that is legal, and another to have 2 free games that win the set merely because your character is versatile and you started on a counterpick game 1.

Bull****. Bull**** bull**** bull****.

Who are you to say that the stage should interfere as little as possible? Who are you to say that, for example, the ability to work around the movement on RC while dealing with your opponent does not require skill?

Also, who's getting "2 free games", the metaknight who ends up on Lylat Cruise (or, more realistically, Halberd or CS), or the Diddy who ends up on Battlefield or Smashville? SEE MY POST REGARDING ICS ON FD VS. MK ON BRINSTAR AGAIN, AND EITHER REFUTE OR ACCEPT IT. It seems to have gone ignored by almost everyone here, although it's a fairly critical argument. And again, you're assuming that we're giving chars like MK counterpicks game one. WE ARE NOT. If you want to claim that Lylat Cruise, Halberd, and Yoshi's Island (Brawl) are top counterpicks for metaknight, be my guest, by all means.

The only differences between a fight on FD and a fight on Rainbow Cruise or are who gets a benefit, and how much thought you have to put into fighting your opponent.

 

[ADHD]

Bull****. Bull**** bull**** bull****.

Who are you to say that the stage should interfere as little as possible? Who are you to say that, for example, the ability to work around the movement on RC while dealing with your opponent does not require skill?

Also, who's getting "2 free games", the metaknight who ends up on Lylat Cruise (or, more realistically, Halberd or CS), or the Diddy who ends up on Battlefield or Smashville? SEE MY POST REGARDING ICS ON FD VS. MK ON BRINSTAR AGAIN, AND EITHER REFUTE OR ACCEPT IT. It seems to have gone ignored by almost everyone here, although it's a fairly critical argument. And again, you're assuming that we're giving chars like MK counterpicks game one. WE ARE NOT. If you want to claim that Lylat Cruise, Halberd, and Yoshi's Island (Brawl) are top counterpicks for metaknight, be my guest, by all means.

The only differences between a fight on FD and a fight on Rainbow Cruise or are who gets a benefit, and how much thought you have to put into fighting your opponent.

Well then who the hell are you to say they should?

I made a terribly valid point. The broader area of skill: matchup knowledge, technical ability, moveset knowledge =\= ability to work around obstacles. IT'S HORRIBLY DUMB TO SAY OTHERWISE, when the majority of brawling comes from experience IN MIND TO MIND FIGHTING--which tournament sets are an assessment of.. The difference between rainbow cruise and FD is that one does not give an extreme edge to conquer practice on that stage and adaptibility! You constantly shout "learn the stages!" when in fact, the counterpick stages are too strong to be simply brushed over by petty practice and knowledge!

DMG made great points, too.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Well then who the hell are you to say they should?

My assessment is only slightly more valid than yours. The reason it is though, is because if you look at brawl, it's clearly not meant to be a 1v1. And I don't mean "two players only is not good", I mean the stage and items are supposed to be P3 and P4. Look at it! How many stages "interfere" with play? If an item drops, how do you react? The game clearly has multitasking in the foreground.

I made a terribly valid point. The broader area of skill: matchup knowledge, technical ability, moveset knowledge =\= ability to work around obstacles. IT'S HORRIBLY DUMB TO SAY OTHERWISE, when the majority of brawling comes from experience IN MIND TO MIND FIGHTING--which tournament sets are an assessment of.. The difference between rainbow cruise and FD is that one does not give an extreme edge to conquer practice on that stage and adaptibility! You constantly shout "learn the stages!" when in fact, the counterpick stages are too strong to be simply brushed over by petty practice and knowledge!

What?
I beg your pardon, what? You're basically saying here, "you're wrong because you're wrong". It's stupid to say otherwise? Have you played basic brawl recently? 99% of the time, it's gonna be items on high, 4 players going wild, crazy random stages. Have you seen casuals play? Same ****. The only way you have a game where it's truly one player against one other player is when you turn off all items, 90% of all stages, and truly fulfill the classic "Fox only, no items, Final Destination".

I don't get what you're saying in one sentence, are you saying that the difference between FD and RC is basically that if your practice a lot on both stages, one is going to reward you more? Well duh. One is made to require more skill in PvPvS, one requires more skill in pure PvP, where the S element is completely noninteractive. One rewards you more than any other stage for the skill set that you so value and essentially claim is the only skill set you should ever have to need for competitive brawl-PvP zoning and spacing. Why aren't you advocating a 1 (or rather 3)-stage stagelist again? And that's stagelist, not starter list.

How can you look at a game like brawl and even begin to believe that the only skill set the game asks you to have is 1v1 zoning, spacing, and trapping? That would be Street Fighter. Just a casual glance at Brawl reveals that it demands more than that of the player. Any casual could figure this out. I figured this out years ago, when I was playing melee casually and my friend said, "the ultimate test of skill is 1v1 on FD with no items", and I replied, "Why? Doesn't it also require skill to react to things like items dropping? Don't I need skill to survive well on Icicle Mountain or Poke Floats?" (Obviously not advocating that as a legal stage; it's bad). And I had never even heard of smashboards, nor delved into competitive gaming theory! When all it takes is the casual glance of a scrub to see something like this, then something is clearly wrong with your theory.

FD is a fine competitive stage in the same way Mario Bros or Norfair is. FD puts the PvPs in the center, whereas Norfair, Mario Bros, and similar stages put the PvPvS in the center. And you know what? They're equally fair for brawl itself. And if you want to bring competitive brawl so far off track from the actual game itself, I recommend picking up a different game.

 

[Raziek]

The biggest issue I have in this is that most of you see no problem with compensating for a character flaw (lack of versatility), by rigging Game 1 so that 4 of your 5 possible stage choices don't even care about it. Why is it fair to give ground characters 4 stages for game 1, when air only gets 1?

Why is that even SLIGHTLY fair?

I understand that part of it lies in the idealistic difference of whether or not adaptation should matter. I think it should, most conservative players think it shouldn't.

But why is it fair to completely skew the system towards ground characters, instead of having an equal balance of ground and air stages?

 

[DMG]

"FD is a fine competitive stage in the same way Mario Bros or Norfair is. FD puts the PvPs in the center, whereas Norfair, Mario Bros, and similar stages put the PvPvS in the center. And you know what? They're equally fair for brawl itself. And if you want to bring competitive brawl so far off track from the actual game itself, I recommend picking up a different game."

Are they equally fair for the most important game of the set, Game 1? Norfair cannot even dream of being as fair as FD is overall for Game 1.

Brawl is not an out of the box, ready to go with little modification competitive fighter. We have to make quite a few changes to shape it into a competitive fighter. We HAVE to bring it off quite a bit from the actual game to make it a somewhat respectable game. Items, stages, techniques, almost MK. Do you want more of the Brawl essence, or the competitive Fighter essence? If you prefer Brawl, then turn on items, fool around with Coin mode, play on Temple, handicaps on various levels, etc. If you want more of a competitive fighter, you will have to sacrifice some of that to shape it more in that direction.

You can try to have both. That's what most people want, some drawing from each side. If you think people should be tested more by stages, fair enough. However that certainly looks like it leans more on the Brawl side than the competitive side.

 

[fkacyan]

BPC: Why does Brawl have to have PvPvS? It seems like an arbitrary distinction that the game should have it just because it's possible for us to have it.

I want to add that the public appearance of our game is very important right now. it looks extremely bad for the game when the PvS part of the game kicks in in the form of a lava wall appearing on the left side randomly to hit a guy who got grabbed before the lava wall appeared and was b-thrown on reaction. It looks like arbitrary punishment - And it is! - and can't possible help the public viewpoint of our game which, despite the increasing hype, is still extremely poor in the sponsored community as a whole outside of MLG.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

BPC: Why does Brawl have to have PvPvS? It seems like an arbitrary distinction that the game should have it just because it's possible for us to have it.

Good question!

I think that the game is designed to be: (some combination of PvP/CvC/PvC)vS(vI or not). If you look at how it is played, there is clearly a switch to turn off items, so they aren't inherently requested. There are switches to turn off players 3 and 4... But just a mere look at the game seems to beg the question, "isn't there supposed to be more to this than just PvP?". Look at everything we have to ignore and turn off to make that happen in the first place (items, extra players, interactive stages), and even then you have the issue that you have to ban a lot of the remaining stages to make it work. Temple, for example, isn't interactive at all, it is in fact one of the few stages in the game where there is nothing random or moving. But it absolutely does not work in 1v1 with no items and a time limit.

The fact remains that it is **** near impossible to make the game purely PvP, and it literally guts the game of what it is. In order to be truly PvP alone, the only legal stages would have to be... Um... FD, BF, and... Is there any other stage that allows pure PvP? Hell, even those stages have factors that make them PvPvS (FD's ledges come to mind, and BF's platforms). Even that fact alone should be a sign that PvPvS is the very minimum requirement for multiplayer in this game, and that raising the vS factor is not a consideration we should take.

TL;DR: It's not arbitrary because it's literally impossible not to have it.

I want to add that the public appearance of our game is very important right now. it looks extremely bad for the game when the PvS part of the game kicks in in the form of a lava wall appearing on the left side randomly to hit a guy who got grabbed before the lava wall appeared and was b-thrown on reaction. It looks like arbitrary punishment - And it is! - and can't possible help the public viewpoint of our game which, despite the increasing hype, is still extremely poor in the sponsored community as a whole outside of MLG.

The lava wall on norfair has 7 seconds of startup before the hitbox appears at all, and then 3 seconds before it reaches its apex at the center of the stage. 7 SECONDS! If other people believe that this game is stupidly random, point them to Poker, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, or any other game where arbitrary randomness is a built-in element of the game, and where getting rid of it completely guts the game. Because as much as you don't like to admit it, that's how this game is. You have to take almost every stage, several characters, and hack the engine to make this game non-random.

Are they equally fair for the most important game of the set, Game 1? Norfair cannot even dream of being as fair as FD is overall for Game 1.

Define "fair". Do you mean balanced to character matchups? If you do, then I have some bad news for you... If you mean balanced as far as random elements go, I'm arguing against that theory right now!

Brawl is not an out of the box, ready to go with little modification competitive fighter. We have to make quite a few changes to shape it into a competitive fighter. We HAVE to bring it off quite a bit from the actual game to make it a somewhat respectable game. Items, stages, techniques, almost MK. Do you want more of the Brawl essence, or the competitive Fighter essence? If you prefer Brawl, then turn on items, fool around with Coin mode, play on Temple, handicaps on various levels, etc. If you want more of a competitive fighter, you will have to sacrifice some of that to shape it more in that direction.

This means one of two things.
1. Brawl was not intended to be a competitive fighter, it is impossible to make it a competitive fighter without gutting it, and we should all find a better game
2. (This one I find more likely We never gave parts of the game a chance, we never really discovered how good items are, or how good FFAs are competitively. We never realized how **** works. HOW DO YOU KNOW that a 4-way FFA on random banned stages with the ISP item list on high is less competitive than our typical 1v1 with no items? Also, banning MK is a terrible, TERRIBLE idea.

You can try to have both. That's what most people want, some drawing from each side. If you think people should be tested more by stages, fair enough. However that certainly looks like it leans more on the Brawl side than the competitive side.

They're not mutually exclusive, you know. If the natural (Brawl) part isn't destroying the artifical one (like, if a part from the "Brawl side" doesn't completely destroy competitive gameplay), you shouldn't **** with it. Other way around: If the artificial one is ****ing with the natural one, then you should drop what you're doing and go natural.

 

[fkacyan]

TL;DR: It's not arbitrary because it's literally impossible not to have it.

This doesn't mean we have to add stages simply because the PvS is an element of a game. I for one view PvS as a necessary evil, not an element of the game to be preserved.

Poker

This comparison is completely invalid! Poker is constricted with randomness at its core, where the objective is to play your opponent's reactions! It's not like Smash at all.

Magic the Gathering

The current metagame is actually constricted around cherrypicking things out of your deck, and deckbuilding for MtG has always involved reducing the aspect of randomness as much as you possibly can. Once again, an invalid comparison.

HOW DO YOU KNOW that a 4-way FFA on random banned stages with the ISP item list on high is less competitive than our typical 1v1 with no items?

Implying we haven't all played a ton of FFAs with items?

Other way around: If the artificial one is ****ing with the natural one, then you should drop what you're doing and go natural.

Translation: If making Brawl competitive makes it less like what I think Brawl should be, then we should stop trying to make it competitive.

Translator Note: What the ****?

 

[Raziek]

Apparently my post may have been skimmed over.

The biggest issue I have in this is that most of you see no problem with compensating for a character flaw (lack of versatility), by rigging Game 1 so that 4 of your 5 possible stage choices don't even care about it. Why is it fair to give ground characters 4 stages for game 1, when air only gets 1?

Why is that even SLIGHTLY fair?

I understand that part of it lies in the idealistic difference of whether or not adaptation should matter. I think it should, most conservative players think it shouldn't.

But why is it fair to completely skew the system towards ground characters, instead of having an equal balance of ground and air stages?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Apparently my post may have been skimmed over.

No, it's the same thing we've kept on saying and they keep on ignoring. So I'm trying a different way.

This doesn't mean we have to add stages simply because the PvS is an element of a game. I for one view PvS as a necessary evil, not an element of the game to be preserved.

Read Jack Kieser's post about how we're biased against the game. Worthwhile read, there.

This comparison is completely invalid! Poker is constricted with randomness at its core, where the objective is to play your opponent's reactions! It's not like Smash at all.

Tripping. 90% of all stages in the game. Several characters' attacks. A COMPLETE ELEMENT OF THE GAME (items). Randomness is a core mechanic of the game, and removing it is essentially gutting it.

The current metagame is actually constricted around cherrypicking things out of your deck, and deckbuilding for MtG has always involved reducing the aspect of randomness as much as you possibly can. Once again, an invalid comparison.

But the randomness is still there, at the very core of the game. I find this perhaps the most valid comparison-just like them, we do everything in our power to cherrypick the random out. But they, unlike us, are given the tools to do so from the developers, and recommended to do so. In our case, it's no secret that the people who created the game created it with randomness in mind.

Implying we haven't all played a ton of FFAs with items?

At the very peak of the possible metagame?

Translation: If making Brawl competitive makes it less like what Brawl was designed to be, then we should stop trying to make it competitive.

Fix'd. It's possible to eke a competitive fighter out of this. It's probably even possible to do that without completely ruining the concept of the game as created. But are you really going to argue that just because the game was created without competition as a basic tenant, it's impossible to follow the ideas of the developers and still have it be competitive? Have you seen ISP?

 

[ADHD]

What?
I beg your pardon, what? You're basically saying here, "you're wrong because you're wrong". It's stupid to say otherwise? Have you played basic brawl recently? 99% of the time, it's gonna be items on high, 4 players going wild, crazy random stages. Have you seen casuals play? Same ****. The only way you have a game where it's truly one player against one other player is when you turn off all items, 90% of all stages, and truly fulfill the classic "Fox only, no items, Final Destination".

This is useless to me. We can still seek to get as close as possible to PvP game 1, and have been.

I don't get what you're saying in one sentence, are you saying that the difference between FD and RC is basically that if your practice a lot on both stages, one is going to reward you more? Well duh. One is made to require more skill in PvPvS, one requires more skill in pure PvP, where the S element is completely noninteractive. One rewards you more than any other stage for the skill set that you so value and essentially claim is the only skill set you should ever have to need for competitive brawl-PvP zoning and spacing. Why aren't you advocating a 1 (or rather 3)-stage stagelist again? And that's stagelist, not starter list.

Because I do believe in counterpicks, just simply not game 1 because that's basic logic when you do the math, 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. If you start off on a counterpick obviously advantageous to you and win game 1 because of that, then lose game 2 on a PvP-oriented stage, and win once more game 3 because of another counterpick, you outplayed your opponent? I am not talking about just the 9-starter system, but the 11 and 15.
Also, because metaknight wins on Rainbow Cruise against a non-metaknight, he had more skill? I don't quite get how in this scenario, PvPvS required more skill when metaknight clearly needs a whole lot of less skill to win on RC.

How can you look at a game like brawl and even begin to believe that the only skill set the game asks you to have is 1v1 zoning, spacing, and trapping? That would be Street Fighter. Just a casual glance at Brawl reveals that it demands more than that of the player. Any casual could figure this out. I figured this out years ago, when I was playing melee casually and my friend said, "the ultimate test of skill is 1v1 on FD with no items", and I replied, "Why? Doesn't it also require skill to react to things like items dropping? Don't I need skill to survive well on Icicle Mountain or Poke Floats?" (Obviously not advocating that as a legal stage; it's bad). And I had never even heard of smashboards, nor delved into competitive gaming theory! When all it takes is the casual glance of a scrub to see something like this, then something is clearly wrong with your theory.

This is completely based off your interperetation of the game. It is evident to at least me, that when you throw in other sources of interferences that it becomes back to what it originally was, a party game. But, if we want it to be competitive, then as a competitive game we will mimmick others like street fighter which have been very successful. Melee, and brawl fail to see any lack of success by doing so. If you're here to make the game devolve competitively, get out.

FD is a fine competitive stage in the same way Mario Bros or Norfair is. FD puts the PvPs in the center, whereas Norfair, Mario Bros, and similar stages put the PvPvS in the center. And you know what? They're equally fair for brawl itself. And if you want to bring competitive brawl so far off track from the actual game itself, I recommend picking up a different game.

No, I recommend you go to gamestop and start playing Mario Party, because PvP is more competitive by COMPETITVE GAMING STANDARDS. I don't know who this guy is, that doesn't show up to tournaments and comes demanding we change past traditions despite how it's been for two years straight. It's been this way because we obviously wanted it to be, and you claim your stagelist has now flaws. How is that any less biased than me advocating FD only for every set?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

This is useless to me. We can still seek to get as close as possible to PvP game 1, and have been.

Yeah, but why?

Because I do believe in counterpicks, just simply not game 1 because that's basic logic when you do the math, 1 + 1 + 1 = 3. If you start off on a counterpick obviously advantageous to you and win game 1 because of that, then lose game 2 on a PvP-oriented stage, and win once more game 3 because of another counterpick, you outplayed your opponent? I am not talking about just the 9-starter system, but the 11 and 15.
Also, because metaknight wins on Rainbow Cruise against a non-metaknight, he had more skill? I don't quite get how in this scenario, PvPvS required more skill when metaknight clearly needs a whole lot of less skill to win on RC.

Okay one thing at a time. "Extremely advantageous counterpick" is not synonymous with "pvpvS". ICs on FD, remember? Diddy on FD, Falco on FD, ring any bells? Just because it is as close to PvP alone as you can get in Brawl does not make it a fair, non-counterpick stage. And again, how strong of a counterpick is Lylat Cruise, or Castle Siege, or any other "middle of the road" stage between air and ground for MK or G&W? Hardly a hardcore counterpick. If you strike against MK, you will more often than not end up on Lylat (NOT a fantastic stage for MK), YI (also not great for MK, this is a traditional ground stage), or if you ****ed up, Halberd or something (again, not one of MK's really great stages). Why is it so critical that you start on BF or SV, instead of a grand total of... 2 or 3 stages down the list on your "top stages" list?

And again, PvPvS requires more stage knowledge to function correctly. It's probably not fair to claim that it more challenging, seeing as you're mainly changing the focus from "how do I beat my opponent" to "how do I beat my opponent while dealing with the stage"; it requires stage knowledge but it slightly mitigates your "pentultimate competitive masterwork" of spacing, zoning, and trapping.

This is completely based off your interperetation of the game. It is evident to at least me, that when you throw in other sources of interferences that it becomes back to what it originally was, a party game. But, if we want it to be competitive, then as a competitive game we will mimmick others like street fighter which have been very successful. Melee, and brawl fail to see any lack of success by doing so. If you're here to make the game devolve competitively, get out.

We will mimmick other games in their gameplay, but not in their basic philosophy. Wow, that's a great idea. YOU CANNOT KNOW THAT 1V1 ON STARTERS ONLY IS MORE FAIR THAN FREE-FOR-ALLS ON TEMPLE WITH ITEMS ON HIGH. Not at the highest level of the metagame. You can decide (as the community has decided) that it's more fun as 1v1s. The game designers left that choice in. But when you go against that... well, do you know more about SSBB than the people who created it? NO ONE, not even the almighty Phantom Wings, can remotely claim that.

Whenever you ban something, you are actively saying, "I know more about this game than the developers did". (Either that, or the developers intended it directly to be something you shouldn't use-Mario Bros could make for a really interesting counterpick stage for all we know, but it's clearly not designed for us, and it turns the game into almost pure PvS-the antithesis of FD).

No, I recommend you go to gamestop and start playing Mario Party, because PvP is more competitive by COMPETITVE GAMING STANDARDS. I don't know who this guy is, that doesn't show up to tournaments and comes demanding we change past traditions despite how it's been for two years straight.

Prove it. Show me one other fighting game where there are effectively more elements than two players that is played competitively. There certainly aren't many. Tekken 4/5, Soul Calibur, and to a lesser extent Mortal Kombat (not a good competitive game), but all but that last one have imaginably minor factors.

PvPvS is completely reasonable by competitive standards. Randomness makes this remotely questionable, but if a stage is non-random and you know it like the back of your hand, it becomes as if you didn't have to fight against it at all.

 

[fkacyan]

Fix'd. It's possible to eke a competitive fighter out of this. It's probably even possible to do that without completely ruining the concept of the game as created. But are you really going to argue that just because the game was created without competition as a basic tenant, it's impossible to follow the ideas of the developers and still have it be competitive? Have you seen ISP?

YOU ARE ARGUING AGAINST MAKING THE GAME COMPETITIVE.

Get. The. ****. Out. You no longer have ANY credibility.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I am arguing against arbitrarily changing the game to make it what seems more competitive to us, when we can't possibly know. Again, do we know that, with a "complete" metagame that 4-way FFAs with all items on high on mario bros is less competitive than 1v1s with no items on "neutral" stages? We can hazard an educated guess, but we don't know.

If you want to change the game like that, you are essentially playing a different game, in the same way that the people playing Brawl- or Project Melee are playing a different game. You are removing from the metagame surgically for potential balance. And if you can't make a game competitive without neutering it like we keep doing to brawl (yes, we are trying to de-neuter the game, starting with stages and ending who-knows-where), then you are supposed to move on to another game. If you can make the game a more or less competitive game by banning half the cast, you don't ban half the ****ing cast, you accept that it's a terrible competitive game and find a different game. In brawl's case, you accept that the competitive aspects may be hidden slightly and search for them without removing what makes brawl brawl.

To anyone arguing with me, this thread is a worthwhile read: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=281808
Yes, it's worth reading all of it. There's a lot of really interesting information in there.

This post is especially relevant at this moment, I suppose. http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10827857&postcount=126

 

[T-block]

Oh dear...

I am arguing against arbitrarily changing the game to make it what seems more competitive to us, when we can't possibly know. Again, do we know that, with a "complete" metagame that 4-way FFAs with all items on high on mario bros is less competitive than 1v1s with no items on "neutral" stages? We can hazard an educated guess, but we don't know.

Actually yeah I'm pretty sure we do know.

A very basic idea of competitiveness is that the better/best player will win. 4-player FFAs alone are not competitive because the option to team up against the "best" player is always there. The best player will not win with anywhere near as often as he would in a 1v1. Now, throw in powerful items that spawn randomly, and put it on a stage where you have to outplay your opponents fewer times to win (one outplay tends to lead to a stock), and you might as well be flipping coins. It might be fun, but it's clearly not competitive.

Seriously, what the hell is your definition of "competitive"?

 

[Raziek]

The biggest issue I have in this is that most of you see no problem with compensating for a character flaw (lack of versatility), by rigging Game 1 so that 4 of your 5 possible stage choices don't even care about it. Why is it fair to give ground characters 4 stages for game 1, when air only gets 1?

Why is that even SLIGHTLY fair?

I understand that part of it lies in the idealistic difference of whether or not adaptation should matter. I think it should, most conservative players think it shouldn't.

But why is it fair to completely skew the system towards ground characters, instead of having an equal balance of ground and air stages?

For the third time, would someone on the conservative side care to field this point?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Oh dear...



Actually yeah I'm pretty sure we do know.

A very basic idea of competitiveness is that the better/best player will win. 4-player FFAs alone are not competitive because the option to team up against the "best" player is always there. The best player will not win with anywhere near as often as he would in a 1v1.

Now define "best player" in terms of a free for all. Is it the guy who runs out front, destroys everyone, steals kills with things like fox's rapidfire laser, and then gets to fight a lovely little 3v1 for the rest of the game? Is it the guy who fights like normal, and then once he gets alone with a player, or gets a lead, he starts destroying the competition? Is it the fighter who has mastered the rabbit move and knows how to win without drawing attention? Is it the guy who excels in 3v1s? Who the hell knows!

Now, throw in powerful items that spawn randomly, and put it on a stage where you have to outplay your opponents fewer times to win (one outplay tends to lead to a stock), and you might as well be flipping coins. It might be fun, but it's clearly not competitive.

Oh, god no, free for alls really don't work with stock. I mean something like 5 minute time limit. In a 4-way, you don't have the whole "hit once, run away" jazz that you normally have (you have that in stock to an extent too, by the way, because it has a timer too...).
Powerful, randomly-spawning items... Certain items are just not fair, but how can we be sure which? Sure, the mushroom is bull**** in our normal 1v1s, where getting the **** away just doesn't work. When you fight on stages like 75M, however, you can run away. And on some stages and especially in a 4-way, being giant can be really, REALLY bad, with 3 people whacking you around at once until you shrink. (Some items though, admittedly, such as bob-ombs and capsules, are almost always bull****).

Seriously, what the hell is your definition of "competitive"?

A gameplay situation in which the player best equipped to deal with the aforementioned situation stands a very high chance of winning. We haven't shown that this is the case with a 4-way free for all-remember, the conditions are different! You require a totally different skill set! Your normal zoning, spacing and camping is suddenly not the most effective strategy when there are 3 other guys who could whack you out of the endlag of that tornado.
Throw items into the mix, and the player who is the most capable of reacting to random events has a higher chance of winning.

 

[T-block]

Now define "best player" in terms of a free for all. Is it the guy who runs out front, destroys everyone, steals kills with things like fox's rapidfire laser, and then gets to fight a lovely little 3v1 for the rest of the game? Is it the guy who fights like normal, and then once he gets alone with a player, or gets a lead, he starts destroying the competition? Is it the fighter who has mastered the rabbit move and knows how to win without drawing attention? Is it the guy who excels in 3v1s? Who the hell knows!



Oh, god no, free for alls really don't work with stock. I mean something like 5 minute time limit. In a 4-way, you don't have the whole "hit once, run away" jazz that you normally have (you have that in stock to an extent too, by the way, because it has a timer too...).
Powerful, randomly-spawning items... Certain items are just not fair, but how can we be sure which? Sure, the mushroom is bull**** in our normal 1v1s, where getting the **** away just doesn't work. When you fight on stages like 75M, however, you can run away. And on some stages and especially in a 4-way, being giant can be really, REALLY bad, with 3 people whacking you around at once until you shrink. (Some items though, admittedly, such as bob-ombs and capsules, are almost always bull****).



A gameplay situation in which the player best equipped to deal with the aforementioned situation stands a very high chance of winning. We haven't shown that this is the case with a 4-way free for all-remember, the conditions are different! You require a totally different skill set! Your normal zoning, spacing and camping is suddenly not the most effective strategy when there are 3 other guys who could whack you out of the endlag of that tornado.
Throw items into the mix, and the player who is the most capable of reacting to random events has a higher chance of winning.

So you agree that a competitive game gives the best player the highest chance of winning, and then still fail to see how flawed your arguments are? Is this for real? ._.

No matter what you define as the qualities that makes a player "good" (and therefore, what makes a player "the best"), the best player with these qualities does not have a higher chance of winning in your FFA situation. It's very easy to come up with a realistic situation that shows this is not competitive: let's say FFAs on Mario Bros. takes off, and we see a national competition for it. At the end of it, there is a winner decided (whether he won by skill or by luck is irrelevant). Now, the next year, the national event is held again, and everyone who was there last year comes to try again. What are the chances of this guy winning two years in a row?

 

[DMG]

Why react to random events when you can react to the opponent?

 

[chaosmaster1991]

Why not dividing stages based on how heavy they favour grounded and respectively aerial characters, then choose one stage from each section and horray, a balanced list... actually divding might not work, so maybe rather ordering... unless you already did that and I didn't notice, in that case, ignore this...

Would someone please be so kind to give me a short answer?

 

[ADHD]

YOU ARE ARGUING AGAINST MAKING THE GAME COMPETITIVE.

Get. The. ****. Out. You no longer have ANY credibility.

LMAO! *High Five*

I think we've found his true intentions over the other fascades.

Also BPC, you claim that castle seige and lylat are not beneficial for MK or GnW, but that point is meaningless when Diddy, ICs, and Falco are = to them there on battlefield.

Chaos, that's what they attempted to do, and I've been trying to explain why it's negative for the metagame.

 

[Raziek]

Would someone please be so kind to give me a short answer?

This is what most of liberal has been suggesting all along, but people continue to ignore my post on this matter.

The biggest issue I have in this is that most of you see no problem with compensating for a character flaw (lack of versatility), by rigging Game 1 so that 4 of your 5 possible stage choices don't even care about it. Why is it fair to give ground characters 4 stages for game 1, when air only gets 1?

Why is that even SLIGHTLY fair?

I understand that part of it lies in the idealistic difference of whether or not adaptation should matter. I think it should, most conservative players think it shouldn't.

But why is it fair to completely skew the system towards ground characters, instead of having an equal balance of ground and air stages?

I'm going to continue to post this until someone tells me why it's fair to give ground characters a huge advantage for Game 1.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

LMAO! *High Five*

I think we've found his true intentions over the other fascades.

Also BPC, you claim that castle seige and lylat are not beneficial for MK or GnW, but that point is meaningless when Diddy, ICs, and Falco are = to them there on battlefield.

Yes, it's clearly meaningless that on one or two stages, your characters have the advantage, and on EVERY OTHER STAGE, the more varied characters do. Oh, and you're guaranteed one of these stages game one. Yes, that's definitely a sensible fair first game of the set.

 

[chaosmaster1991]

This is what most of liberal has been suggesting all along, but people continue to ignore my post on this matter.



I'm going to continue to post this until someone tells me why it's fair to give ground characters a huge advantage for Game 1.

I just thought you might have made a classification and then went from the middle stage (that is included of course), then went X steps to one side and X to the other and included those two... actually the number of starters doesn't even matter as long as it evens out...
But when you already did that, ok.

It isn't.

 

[ADHD]

I'm going to continue to post this until someone tells me why it's fair to give ground characters a huge advantage for Game 1.

Because every character should have an equal advantage and battlefield does not give a huge advantage to them, unlike FD. It shouldn't even be in the same category as FD, or smashville, and yet that is always the starting stage. W.e BPC, just add smashballs in your arguments already.

 

[Raziek]

Because every character should have an equal advantage and battlefield does not give a huge advantage to them, unlike FD. It shouldn't even be in the same category as FD, or smashville, and yet that is always the starting stage. W.e BPC, just add smashballs in your arguments already.

Equal advantage? Why? I'll say this again. Bad characters are bad. Why are we rewarding characters who aren't versatile by stacking the odds in their favor for Game 1? Furthermore, the fact that the starter stage is always Battlefield doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that they still gain a large advantage by basically always forcing the FD/SV strikes for Game 1, which they SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO DO. They aren't versatile, so they shouldn't have the same capability of forcing strikes as the more versatile characters.

 

[ADHD]

Equal advantage? Why? I'll say this again. Bad characters are bad. Why are we rewarding characters who aren't versatile by stacking the odds in their favor for Game 1? Furthermore, the fact that the starter stage is always Battlefield doesn't matter. What DOES matter is that they still gain a large advantage by basically always forcing the FD/SV strikes for Game 1, which they SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO DO. They aren't versatile, so they shouldn't have the same capability of forcing strikes as the more versatile characters.

The first game to a set should start out where each character remains unhindered. Then, in the following game, versatility and all that will shine through. The better player wins, so of course I see nothing wrong with this.

Oh, and when you claim versatility, you're talking about metaknight. The only other versatile character I see in both the MLG results threads' top 8 is pikachu, and ESAM might have made it that far anyway if a conservsative list was used.

I standby that this game be about player to player as much as possible without being overly conservative.

 

[Raziek]

The first game to a set should start out where each character remains unhindered. Then, in the following game, versatility and all that will shine through. The better player wins, so of course I see nothing wrong with this.

Oh, and when you claim versatility, you're talking about metaknight. The only other versatile character I see in both the MLG results threads' top 8 is pikachu, and ESAM might have made it that far anyway if a conservsative list was used.

I standby that this game be about player to player as much as possible without being overly conservative.

Why should versatility only matter in the following games? That doesn't seem fair that a character quality should only count on Games 2 and 3.

 

[DMG]

Because games 2 and 3 are not as important as Game 1. If Game 1 was the same importance as those two, it would allow CP stages galore.

The very nature of picking starter stages signifies that Game 1 means so much that rules be put in place for it.

 

[Tesh]

If all the interfering competitively inferior gimmicks belong in game 2 and 3, everyone should play metaknight dittos game 1. Then whip your your gimmicky bad characters on your gimmicky uncompetitive stage on game 2 and/or 3.

Game 1 will be fair and as competitive as possible. Game 2 and 3 will be for "redemption" with the odds in your favor.

 

[Raziek]

Because games 2 and 3 are not as important as Game 1. If Game 1 was the same importance as those two, it would allow CP stages galore.

The very nature of picking starter stages signifies that Game 1 means so much that rules be put in place for it.

That just gives even more reason not to skew the balance if it's the most important game. Why is 4-1 in favor of ground a fair fight?

 

[DMG]

How is 2-3 fair? Air characters would now be in the same spot as ground characters. Strike the ground stages, WHALA get Delfino or whatever. MK would love that shift.

You can't completely balance the stage list to be "1 for ground, 1 for aerial" since it's odd numbered; someone is gonna have that 1 stage guaranteed for them either way. The thing is that most aerial favoring stages are stages like Delfino where you have Sharking, different terrain, multi platforms, or a general emphasis on air fights. There are VERY few clearly aerial leaning stages that are not also clear CP stages. The few that are are ones like Lylat (and on a minor note the PS stages).

There's no way to come up with 3 flat and 3 aerial starters without adding in clear CP stages. This is basically what happens when you get to 9 stages, and past that no one sane would argue otherwise. Past FD BF SV Lylat PS1/2 YI, you start getting into stages that are questionably or clear CP stages. Castle Siege, Delfino, Halberd are the ones most people think are ok for a 9 stage starter (Delfino is the most questionable out of the 3 by far), and past that point there's not a single stage that most people would not say is a clear CP. Frigate, Distant Planet, Norfair, Japes, whatever is left.

Most aerial stages are CP's. If you really want to try and get a balance between ground and air, you frankly will have to dip over into the CP section and draw them over to starter. I think that is stupid, maybe you disagree. CP stages should stay CP regardless of who happens to do well on them IMO. Just as regular starters should stay as starters regardless of who performs the best on them.

 

[Raziek]

I actually think Frigate is a completely legitimate choice.

If you've read any of my research on it, you'd know that it spends the majority of its time on second transition, which is much more balanced than the first.

And of course I know that you can't have it completely even, which is why we add stages that are mostly aerial, and then it usually ends up on a mixed stage like Lylat, or Halberd. That's the point. You get a stage neither character really wants, but neither really hates.

 

[ADHD]

That's the point. You get a stage neither character really wants, but neither really hates.

I'm pretty sure everyone ****in hates lylat and yoshi's.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I'm pretty sure everyone ****in hates lylat and yoshi's.

If both players in the matchup hate it, then that works too. As long as neither (or both) likes it. The trick is not having a stage that one player favors above the other.

 

[T-block]

DMG, what's your definition of CP?

 

[Raziek]

I see where T-Block is going.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

This could be good. *grabs popcorn*

...

...

I don't see it...

 

[Raziek]

This could be good. *grabs popcorn*

...

...

I don't see it...

I know exactly where he's going with it, but I don't want to spoil his fun.

It's basically a loaded question that DMG can't really answer without losing his point.