A Bo3 alternative?

[Attaxer]

So I've been experimenting with a different way to decide the victor in a match. Something that might play in a completely different way from your traditional best 2 out of 3, and I wanted to know what the people here had to say about it.

So the idea is Stock Point battles. You have 3 matches, 3 stock, 8 minutes. You get a point for every stock you have remaining when you win a match and the player with the most points at the end of the set wins.

I've only ran one round robin with 5 people on this system so far, but from what I could see it did 4 major things when factoring it in to the competitive meta.

1. Players were more cautious, and generally had better reads because of it, and it didn't affect the length of the individual matches all that much. Most of the matches still clocked in around 5-6 minutes.
2. The overall length of the tournament was effected by quite a bit, because in this system requires that all 3 matches be played.
3. There we some wonky things we had to do with the rules, because this system allowes ties to be possible. I handled ties by doing just another match with 1 stock and 2 minutes. Only happened twice throughout the whole round robin.
4. This system punishes SD's waaaay harder than the standard system.

What do you all think? Is there an alternative way that it could work better and be easier to implement? The reason for this is that I feel a player should be rewarded for not just beating their opponent but beating them hard core. It makes that extra stock worth something when you just annihilate someone.

 

[Pyr]

In what way, besides feels, is this better then Bo3?

Completely discounting the fact that it'd make some sets 33% longer by default (and longer in the event of ties), adding a large amount of time to tournament run times, which is enough to make this not viable all on it's own.

 

[Attaxer]

I didn't necessarily advertise it as "better." I advertised it as different. Just as a way to change up the way the matches are playted. Like a variant format.

 

[Doval]

The reason for this is that I feel a player should be rewarded for not just beating their opponent but beating them hard core. It makes that extra stock worth something when you just annihilate someone.

If you annihilate someone odds are there was an imbalance between the player's skill level. Why should player A be given more points than player B just because A fought more scrubs?

 

[Attaxer]

It's designed for players to just care about how many stocks they win with. Making the game a bit more cautious. SD's happen less often as a result, and it means a 3rd match comeback can happen. I agree it's often an imbalance in skill level but if player A is more skilled than player B, then he was going to win in a Bo3 anyway. Honestly if the imbalance between skill level is higher the tournament actually moves faster. You 3 stock them on match 1, and on the first stock of match 2 they've lost. Doesn't take as much time as a Bo3 in that instance.

Like I said I've only tested it on a round robin with only 5 people, but it worked really well and people enjoyed themselves.

 

[Jaxas]

Not sure I'm a fan of it, but it could be an interesting idea for speeding up tournaments if you take the main idea and add it to the current system.
Something along the lines of "you need either <X> points or 2 Match wins to win the Set".

Say it's 3 points required, and a 3-stock game - if you manage to 3stock your opponent game 1, you fully win the match. If they're closer, then it's either decided during game 2 or by the current standard.


The other version I thought of would be a crew-battle type system; each player starts with a total of 4(?) stocks and once 4 full stocks are lost (even if each game is 2 stock) then that's match.



I'm personally not a fan of this, but just pointing out that these are probably the only versions (that I can think of at least) that people would even consider; the original form is something no one would use simply because of the time issue.

 

[COLINBG]

For some characters who can kill/get killed really early, it would be a total gamble. It's not rare for Luacrio, Mac, or Jiggly players to two stock a player of the same level, or get two stocked by a player of the same level. This is also true to an extent with characters like Wario or Shulk, for example. The reward or disadvantage that losing/taking extra stocks gives would be too ridiculous on certain characters.

On more ''traditionnal'' characters, it would either change nothing, or make the tournament longer. If the two players are of the same skill level, it would almost always go to game 3, and take more time than it already takes. Time is an isue in smash tournaments. It's even one of the reasons why we decided to start the custom moveset project. If one player is clearly better than the other, it will always be over by game two, making it no longer than a normal set. The only thing it would change is that the better players will have to play more conservatively, and it would probably be more boring for everyone involved.

I still love the idea, and I can see it work in friendlies, but not in a tournament setting.