Blast Zones and Game Time is Fine (Compiled Data from Tourney Locator's Invitation Tourney)

[Conda]

I think it's been seen enough in melee and brawl that being at one stock and then making a comeback, due to factors that happen during a match, are common enough and worthwhile enough to warrant 3-stocks being strongly considered for Smash 4.

Things like changes in stage control, pacing, adjusting, pulling off a great combo, the player in the lead getting too confident and making mistakes, etc are things we'd lose a lot of in shorter 2-stock matches.

If 2 stocks proves to still have these elements, then it'll work. But if it doesn't, then we'll lose a big part of what makes Smash 4 fun to play and watch competitively. Certain playstyles will also be favoured in 2-stock matches - notable, the moreaggressive ones.

Players can just take 1 stock, and then go super aggressive (in a stupid overconfident way) to take the second stock to win, and it will likely be worth it more often enough to do this. For example - bowser gets 1 stock off, and then murder-suicides to end the match. Or a character going offstage in a risky way to get the last stock off -- it's less risky in a 2 stock match than in a 3-stock match, where there's still more fighting to do after you take the first stock off.

Characters good at doing this will become much better and safer to use in the 2-stock meta.

 

[Overswarm]

I think the point is that your events can only be so good without good advertising, good marketing, and enough capital to buy consistent setups, streaming equipment, and rent the best venues. Now, that's not to say that, maybe, you're satisfied with your events. That very well may be the case.

But, for a lot of us, our goal isn't one TO being satisfied. It isn't even one TO running good events. Our goal is widespread viewership, membership, and wide and deep player base capable of supporting a game for a decade. And, as much as I'd love to say that the only thing that matters is accurately determining the top player in [SUBJECT HOMETOWN HERE], for a lot of us, that's not the only thing that matters by a long shot.

We've come a long way, as a game and a community, from holding finals in someone's bedroom to the Main Stage at EVO and a Nintendo sponsored invitational event. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say, we'd rather not go back to that bedroom bull**** just so that our rankings can be .001% more accurate. I'd much rather have accurate rankings, hype, worldwide recognition, developer support, and millions of players.

And, as tough and inconvenient as this may be... we're only going to get that by, wouldn't you know it, testing the hell out of things and letting the game grow organically, not by butchering things day one and making some Franken-mess of rules from 4 generations of games because, hey, that's what we're comfortable with and screw change, damnit.

The people making the fraken-mess of rules are the people asking for 2 stock. Not those asking for 3.

3 stock is literally the default, both for Brawl and Smash 4.

 

[Jack Kieser]

The people making the fraken-mess of rules are the people asking for 2 stock. Not those asking for 3.

3 stock is literally the default, both for Brawl and Smash 4.

Now you're just trolling. You know just as well as I do that's not true. The default in Brawl is no stocks / 2 minutes (which is irrelevant since Brawl), and the default in Sm4sh FG is 2 stock / 5 minutes. IIRC, the default in non-FG modes is no stock / 2 minute as well, but all the streams I've been watching are ranked streams, so don't quote me on that.

The point is, 3 stock has never been a default setting in Smash. In ANY game in the series. And even if it WERE, that doesn't override the consideration that, since this is a new game, it's time to ignore all the previous rulesets and start from scratch.

 

[Overswarm]

Now you're just trolling. You know just as well as I do that's not true. The default in Brawl is no stocks / 2 minutes (which is irrelevant since Brawl), and the default in Sm4sh FG is 2 stock / 5 minutes. IIRC, the default in non-FG modes is no stock / 2 minute as well, but all the streams I've been watching are ranked streams, so don't quote me on that.

The point is, 3 stock has never been a default setting in Smash. In ANY game in the series. And even if it WERE, that doesn't override the consideration that, since this is a new game, it's time to ignore all the previous rulesets and start from scratch.

*clicks options*

*switches from time to stock*

*sees 3 stock*

Oh hey, look. The default setting for stock matches.

I'm a big fan of data and testing things, don't get me wrong. I'm all for testing one stock, two stock, three stock, four stock, whatever. My first tournament for Smash 4 is October 11th and is 4 stock, round robin and will have significant data collect. HUGE fan of experimentation.

But I'm also a fan of logic. While it might be fun to say "we have to test absolutely everything" and start testing every stage legal, then N-1 with each possible variation, then all those variations with Character-(character X), then the same variations all with I-1 for items, so on and so forth into infinity, it's preeeeeeetty easy to make some pretty basic jumps.

"All competitive smash games have used stock since the dawn of smash" is a pretty easy spot to land on. Could time work? Sure, coin matches could too. Those are perfectly fine to test. But it's not a giant leap in logic to start with stocks.

What's the default amount in stock matches? Three! That's a pretty good place to start. Plus, we used 3 stock for Brawl for almost its entire lifespan -- at the beginning we used 4, but found after testing it in tournament that the matches dragged on too long. If Smash 4 is the same speed as Brawl 3 is a pretty safe bet to start with. If it's faster than Brawl then 4 might be okay. Since we don't know how fast it'll be, I'm starting with 4 stock and we'll see how long it takes and move down from there (since the limit is 1 stock, it makes sense to start higher and move down -- if you start with 2 and it has too much variance you have no way to extrapolate that data to determine if 3 or 4 stock is better. With more stock you can easily track how long a match and how much variance a match will have based on stock count).

We also know that there are high-variance scenarios in Smash bros. Suicides, lucky reads, strong reads, gimps, 9s by G&W, bombs from peach, and now even a OHKO by Mac. Because of these high-variance scenarios, we have actual reported variance in results regardless of player input. Some variance will occur, but we want as little as possible; it's why we don't play with all items on high. It's also why a 0% SD is more a determining factor than a 100% SD.

To reduce variance, we want as much stock as possible so that individual aspects of variance don't matter that much. If M2K is much better than you but SDs, in a 1 stock match you win the game and in a 99 stock match it's not even relevant. Our goal is to be closer to 99 stock, but we obviously can't fit it into tournaments.

So some pretty basic assumptions on how smash has been run for the last decade shows that starting with stock is a pretty good bet -- and that's starting from scratch and merely using observations.

Oh -- we also have two sets of tournament data showing that 3 stock sets finish in a reasonable amount of time, so that helps too.

 

[Conda]

*clicks options*

*switches from time to stock*

*sees 3 stock*

Oh hey, look. The default setting for stock matches.

I'm a big fan of data and testing things, don't get me wrong. I'm all for testing one stock, two stock, three stock, four stock, whatever. My first tournament for Smash 4 is October 11th and is 4 stock, round robin and will have significant data collect. HUGE fan of experimentation.

But I'm also a fan of logic. While it might be fun to say "we have to test absolutely everything" and start testing every stage legal, then N-1 with each possible variation, then all those variations with Character-(character X), then the same variations all with I-1 for items, so on and so forth into infinity, it's preeeeeeetty easy to make some pretty basic jumps.

"All competitive smash games have used stock since the dawn of smash" is a pretty easy spot to land on. Could time work? Sure, coin matches could too. Those are perfectly fine to test. But it's not a giant leap in logic to start with stocks.

What's the default amount in stock matches? Three! That's a pretty good place to start. Plus, we used 3 stock for Brawl for almost its entire lifespan -- at the beginning we used 4, but found after testing it in tournament that the matches dragged on too long. If Smash 4 is the same speed as Brawl 3 is a pretty safe bet to start with. If it's faster than Brawl then 4 might be okay. Since we don't know how fast it'll be, I'm starting with 4 stock and we'll see how long it takes and move down from there (since the limit is 1 stock, it makes sense to start higher and move down -- if you start with 2 and it has too much variance you have no way to extrapolate that data to determine if 3 or 4 stock is better. With more stock you can easily track how long a match and how much variance a match will have based on stock count).

We also know that there are high-variance scenarios in Smash bros. Suicides, lucky reads, strong reads, gimps, 9s by G&W, bombs from peach, and now even a OHKO by Mac. Because of these high-variance scenarios, we have actual reported variance in results regardless of player input. Some variance will occur, but we want as little as possible; it's why we don't play with all items on high. It's also why a 0% SD is more a determining factor than a 100% SD.

To reduce variance, we want as much stock as possible so that individual aspects of variance don't matter that much. If M2K is much better than you but SDs, in a 1 stock match you win the game and in a 99 stock match it's not even relevant. Our goal is to be closer to 99 stock, but we obviously can't fit it into tournaments.

So some pretty basic assumptions on how smash has been run for the last decade shows that starting with stock is a pretty good bet -- and that's starting from scratch and merely using observations.

Oh -- we also have two sets of tournament data showing that 3 stock sets finish in a reasonable amount of time, so that helps too.

Precisely. A player whose skills are in the 'stage control' and 'mindgames' department may excel more in a 3 stock match compared to a 2 stock match, which favour aggressive skillsets. 3 stocks will likely allow for a great variance in the skillsets that rise to the top, which likely makes the competitive landscape more interesting as players will have to learn to play against a wider array of playstyles.

 

[Rᴏb]

Both Melee and Brawl sped up non-trivially over time. I don't have any hard data to back that up, but enough experience in tourneys for both over the years to feel it was definitely the case. It was very noticeable in both.

Some how, I don't think the same applies to Smash 4.

Also, these arguments for/against a 2 stock ruleset are laughable.

 

[Untouch]

Something I've noticed from people who are taking to long to kill, they're trying to rely on throws for kills.
Throws don't seem to do too much is smash 4, they're used for setups, and no one appears to be following up.

 

[smashbroskilla]

Excellent data collecting. Thank you

 

[wannabe33]

Dangerous to infer anything conclusive from these statistics. Smash 4 might speed up if people edgeguard more aggressively, high level play becomes more offensive, players find ways to spike more reliably, etc. Smash 4 might slow down if edgeguarding effectively is deemed too dangerous, high level play becomes more defensive, people learn to VI better, etc.

We really don't know. I will say that it's easier to add a stock than it is to remove a stock- just look at how Brawl's metagame developed- so it'd be prudent to stick with two stocks at least long enough for top players to get better at the game, for more tournaments to happen, and for more data to be collected.

 

[[TSON]]

I support 2 stocks simply cos the game is more speedy than Brawl, otherwise I would be leaning towards 1 stock. 1 stock Brawl is super fun to watch, as is 2 stock SSB4 from what I've seen from For Glory on streams. High tension for sure.

 

[KingBroly]

I feel like the 1v1 2s/5m setup Nintendo created is the "Balance" for this game, competitively, for better or worse. It's just too bad that the Blast Zones are ridiculously huge to create a longer timeframe with that same kind of balance.

 

[Strong Badam]

This data is approximately useless, sorry. The players showcased aren't good at the game. When we fully implement VI, KO percents will be sooo much later. In a way similar to Brawl, I'm sure that game time will only increase as we become better at it, not decrease.

Do data mining when players are good at the game please!

 

[TTTTTsd]

I'd say, in the interest of promoting experimentation as the game grows, alternate between 2-3 stocks and see what makes the game more exciting or pleasing, both time wise and organization wise. Once people get good it'll be even easier to do this, for now I argue 2-3 should be great, leaning on 2 though cause of For Glory.

 

[iLink]

Wait, someone complaining about Little Mac ko'ing quickly? Have you tried tossing him off the stage? He has like nothing to retaliate with as soon as he's off stage. Let him be an all or nothing character.

 

[MitoRequiem]

I think we should potentially alternate between the two? Or do 2stocks for pools and what not and have 3 stock for quarter, semis and Finals. But I'm confident that 3 stock will be the better choice in the end when we all have the game and we all know how to kill and mess with edges etc etc.

 

[Overswarm]

This data is approximately useless, sorry. The players showcased aren't good at the game. When we fully implement VI, KO percents will be sooo much later. In a way similar to Brawl, I'm sure that game time will only increase as we become better at it, not decrease.

Do data mining when players are good at the game please!

That's dumb. Data mining is beneficial at every stage as it defines the stage we're in.

You're making as assumption -- that KO % will be "sooo much later". We're stating facts. "This is how long a set takes on average given our data set". The more data we get, the more accurate it will be.

You don't get to say "your data doesn't count" while prophetically declaring how long sets will be in the future. In the past 5 days we've already discovered two drastically unique mechanics, who knows what else we'll find?

 

[SamuraiPanda]

*clicks options*

*switches from time to stock*

*sees 3 stock*

Oh hey, look. The default setting for stock matches.

???

"Hey guys, I think Sakurai should determine our ruleset for us"

said no one convincingly, ever

 

[Overswarm]

I'm not the one who wanted the default. But if someone else uses it as justification, they should at least get it right.

It'd be like someone saying "Apple pie is the greatest american invention" as opposed to me saying "No way, it is the oculous rift" and telling them "Apple pie isn't an american invention". It does not condone my support, but it does undercut theirs!

 

[Shaya]

Statistics are very important, at every stage they exist they give us objective information.
How statistics are derived may be dangerous though, but I think people can agree to literal match lengths and percents at which stocks were taken being relevant to the discussion.

These new mechanics may force us into lowering the stock count. But right now there is no logical reason to stray from 3 stocks other than the online default.
That online default may override any logic/statistics in the long term as it just becomes an overwhelming preference outside of "our control", or statistics will back up the reason for changing.

 

[wannabe33]

But right now there is no logical reason to stray from 3 stocks other than the online default.

There's a very logical (and obvious!) reason, actually: that it's easier to add a stock than take off a stock. Metagames "stick," so to speak. Look at what happened with Brawl, which really should have been two stocks but remained with three because that's what competitive players got used to. Smash 4 characters live even longer so the problem might be even worse.

Anyway, there's another TourneyLocator tourney going on right now and I'd really like to see some more data collection. Seems like these three-stocks are taking quite a bit longer.

EDIT: We just had two straight nearly-six minute matches between Villager and Rosalina -- neither are particularly campy. This is exactly why so many people are worried. (Welp, make it three matches in a row; third match was seven and a half minutes on Battlefield!)

 

[Shaya]

"Brawl should've been 2 stocks" based off of what logic? We started Brawl with 4 stocks like Melee.

How are two characters that are blatantly long range zoning characters not equating to a campyish match up? I'm saying this rhetorically.

But yeah, we'll see. I'll wait for the stats to build up before giving full impression; I maintain that there still is no sound logic for it; but the proof can very well build up opposing me in a short space of time.

 

[wannabe33]

"Brawl should've been 2 stocks" based off of what logic? We started Brawl with 4 stocks like Melee.

I know. I recall reading some analyses of Brawl sticking with three stocks despite good reason to lower it even further, but as you're a Brawl back-roomer, I'd trust your judgment here.

Anyway, I'm going to be using this post to update how long these TourneyLocator matches are taking.

Villager/Rosalina 1 -- Semi-camp versus not really campy. Six minutes.
Villager/Rosalina 2 -- Six minutes.
Villager/Rosalina 3 -- Seven and a half minutes. Jesus.
ROB/Villager 1 -- One semi-campy and one ultra-campy character. Six minutes.
ROB/Villager 2 -- Some early kills and a small stage. Camping reduced. Still six and a half minutes.
Little Mac/Sheik 1 -- Mac vs. another up-close fighter. Probably one of the quickest matchups in the game: Mac kills easily and dies easily, and there're no camp options to stall out the match. Still lasted over four minutes.
Little Mac/Sheik 2 -- Three and a half minutes. Reasonable pace, woo!
Little Mac/Sheik 3 -- See above.
Little Mac/Sheik 4 -- See above. Four minutes.
Villager/Little Mac -- Four minutes. Mac trying his best to speed up the camp, but without a couple of quick kills, this probably would have lasted five+ minutes. Tree KO was hype.
Villager/Little Mac 2 -- See above. You'd have to think that without the early KOs and early deaths of Little Mac, games involving Villager would routinely go to 6-7 minutes. Campier than I expected tbh.
Villager/Little Mac 3 -- Early Villager SD, but still a relatively brief three and a half minutes. Man, I love how much Mac makes Smash 4 matches go by quicker. It's so exciting! Pains me he'll probably end up unusable in competitive play due to crippling recovery.
Villager/Little Mac 4 -- See above. Mac hype [Kreygasm]
Villager/Little Mac 5 -- Smart Villager counterpick. Five and a half minutes. I guess not even Mac can guarantee matches stay below the five-minute mark!
Little Mac/Sheik 1 -- Back to one of the fastest Smash 4 matchups! Unfortunate Sheik SD. Three minutes.
Little Mac/Sheik 2 -- Two gimps on Mac. Two and three quarters minutes.
Little Mac/Sheik 3 -- Three gimps on Mac. Two and a half minutes.
Peach/Sheik -- I dunno what to even make of this match. Obviously a desperate counterpick, but some really questionable play from Bwett. I don't think I saw a single turnip pulled. Three and a half minutes.

 

[Shaya]

Maybe very later in it's life time, but early? Not at all. That's why I'm bringing that up.

 

[wannabe33]

TourneyLocator weekly finished. Since this topic is all about drawing sweeping conclusions from single tournaments, I wanna throw my hat into the ring:

We absolutely must go with two stock since three stocks are definitely not fine. Of the final few sets, any match that didn't involve Little Mac or Sheik (in-your-face offensive characters) lasted at least six minutes. Even matches that involved Mac- a character who kills quickly and dies quickly, and can be gimped with some reliability- didn't go under three minutes (with two exceptions, both involving 2+ gimps). Three to five minutes for Mac matches, perhaps the quickest in the game, is deeply worrying. The fact that he probably won't be tourney viable and campy / spacing characters will likely dominate the upper tiers exacerbates the problem further.

 

[RedEyesKirby]

To be honest, I think we're going about this all wrong. It shouldn't matter if it's 3 stocks @ 8min or 2 stocks @ 5min. It's all about how exciting and hype the matches are. In the TourneyLocator that just ended, the last Villager vs LittleMac match was long, but it was exciting and hype as heck. Even though it lasted longer than the average match, the commentator and chats exploded. I jumped up as well watching it.

If matches are going to be like that it can be 5 stocks 20 min for all I care.

 

[Kuraudo]

This data is approximately useless, sorry. The players showcased aren't good at the game. When we fully implement VI, KO percents will be sooo much later. In a way similar to Brawl, I'm sure that game time will only increase as we become better at it, not decrease.

Do data mining when players are good at the game please!

God you're rather negative about this, aren't you? Like Shaya said, all data is helpful.

 

[wannabe33]

To be honest, I think we're going about this all wrong. It shouldn't matter if it's 3 stocks @ 8min or 2 stocks @ 5min. It's all about how exciting and hype the matches are. In the TourneyLocator that just ended, the last Villager vs LittleMac match was long, but it was exciting and hype as heck. Even though it lasted longer than the average match, the commentator and chats exploded. I jumped up as well watching it.

If matches are going to be like that it can be 5 stocks 20 min for all I care.

Also known as the Little Mac effect.

 

[TTTTTsd]

I still believe in my suggestion of run both(perhaps side by side) and see what pops more. I think they both have their merits and downsides.

2 stock pros
- May promote riskier, cooler play when someone's up a stock(may push meta forward further but too early to tell?)
- May provide a healthier pace(subjective)
2 stock cons
- Little Mac and fast gimps
- Young meta means it might seem too pre-emptive

3 stock pros
- Ideal for young meta, matches Brawl standard and since this game may emerge to be faster, may be the best idea
- Little mac and fast gimps don't essentially close a set early on.
3 stock cons
- Living % could be too high, meta might not cover early tourneys, could be a rocky start(subjective)

Honestly either one, IMO, is a good idea. Personally I'd like 2 stock more but I can deal with 3, so long as matches are exciting.

 

[Thinkaman]

I finally watched the TL weekly. Average (3-stock) game length was 3:40, or 1:13 per stock.

 

[Overswarm]

I finally watched the TL weekly. Average (3-stock) game length was 3:40, or 1:13 per stock.

They do swiss 2 stock to bracket 3 stock, right? This would be a pain but if they had swiss you could compare the swiss times to the bracket times. The bracket players will undoubtedly be better, so you can compare the time difference based on skill (to a degree).

 

[Deleted member 245254]

Now you're just trolling. You know just as well as I do that's not true. The default in Brawl is no stocks / 2 minutes (which is irrelevant since Brawl), and the default in Sm4sh FG is 2 stock / 5 minutes. IIRC, the default in non-FG modes is no stock / 2 minute as well, but all the streams I've been watching are ranked streams, so don't quote me on that.

The point is, 3 stock has never been a default setting in Smash. In ANY game in the series. And even if it WERE, that doesn't override the consideration that, since this is a new game, it's time to ignore all the previous rulesets and start from scratch.

Not sure if you've actually played the game but the default stock in Smash 4 is in fact 3 stocks when switched to stock mode.

You went and cited Brawl's literal default turn-on-the-game setting and then completely neglected that Smash 4's is essentially the same, instead citing the FG mode's setting, which has any number of other reasons for its stock choice that are not intuitively meant to define competitive play in a tournament setting.

One of those reasons is very likely to keep matches shorter so that players can keep their play sessions short and sweet. It's likely that the mode is engineered for brevity above all else while still throwing the competitive crowd a bone by giving them stocks and a time limit.

 

[Conda]

Not sure if you've actually played the game but the default stock in Smash 4 is in fact 3 stocks when switched to stock mode.

You went and cited Brawl's literal default turn-on-the-game setting and then completely neglected that Smash 4's is essentially the same, instead citing the FG mode's setting, which has any number of other reasons for its stock choice that are not intuitively meant to define competitive play in a tournament setting.

One of those reasons is very likely to keep matches shorter so that players can keep their play sessions short and sweet. It's likely that the mode is engineered for brevity above all else while still throwing the competitive crowd a bone by giving them stocks and a time limit.

Precisely. I would not be surprised if FG has 2 stocks because the team felt "3 stocks is the competitive rule, so 2 stock would be a good compromise for quick online play ."

 

[Jack Kieser]

Not sure if you've actually played the game but the default stock in Smash 4 is in fact 3 stocks when switched to stock mode.

You went and cited Brawl's literal default turn-on-the-game setting and then completely neglected that Smash 4's is essentially the same, instead citing the FG mode's setting, which has any number of other reasons for its stock choice that are not intuitively meant to define competitive play in a tournament setting.

One of those reasons is very likely to keep matches shorter so that players can keep their play sessions short and sweet. It's likely that the mode is engineered for brevity above all else while still throwing the competitive crowd a bone by giving them stocks and a time limit.

I haven't actually played Smash 4's full version yet, but I should have been more clear; I was referring to the default settings in FG mode, not party mode. I thought I didn't have to state that explicitly, since we were talking about competitive play and not party play, but it makes sense that I'd be misconstrued because previous Smash games didn't HAVE competitive modes, while Sm4sh does. Either way, I was unconcerned with Sm4sh's default party settings, only with the default ranked settings; whatever party settings are out of the box are irrelevant, as far as I'm concerned, since we're not making party tournaments.

You could possibly be right that FG mode has 2 stocks for outside considerations, however, that's not something you can PROVE, and so I don't really care about the literally hundreds of theories one could dream up about what motivated the design of FG mode. All we know for certain is that it is a ranked mode that is intended for serious play, because we've been explicitly told that in the Sm4sh Direct months ago, and so that's what I'm going to go on. If you have some evidence you could post (developer interviews, being on the dev team, design document scans, etc.) proving your theory, I'd be more than happy to lend it more credence, but until then, I'm going to ignore it.

 

[Thinkaman]

Keeping session length shorter online reduces the chance of a disconnect or desync for any given session substantially.

 

[Kuraudo]

I haven't actually played Smash 4's full version yet, but I should have been more clear; I was referring to the default settings in FG mode, not party mode. I thought I didn't have to state that explicitly, since we were talking about competitive play and not party play, but it makes sense that I'd be misconstrued because previous Smash games didn't HAVE competitive modes, while Sm4sh does. Either way, I was unconcerned with Sm4sh's default party settings, only with the default ranked settings; whatever party settings are out of the box are irrelevant, as far as I'm concerned, since we're not making party tournaments.

You could possibly be right that FG mode has 2 stocks for outside considerations, however, that's not something you can PROVE, and so I don't really care about the literally hundreds of theories one could dream up about what motivated the design of FG mode. All we know for certain is that it is a ranked mode that is intended for serious play, because we've been explicitly told that in the Sm4sh Direct months ago, and so that's what I'm going to go on. If you have some evidence you could post (developer interviews, being on the dev team, design document scans, etc.) proving your theory, I'd be more than happy to lend it more credence, but until then, I'm going to ignore it.

Jack, with all due respect, I don't give For Glory mode a lot of credit. It's a nice feature, but the only stage is literally Final Destination and the only differences we have on the versions of them are how the sides behave. 2-stock, 5-minutes as a practice in of itself is a potential, but basing it off of For Glory mode in of itself is a bit short-sighted.

In competitive Smash, we have ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) made up our own rules to create a standard. There's a "Tournament" mode in Melee and Brawl and we don't use that for obvious reasons (always random seeding). For Glory mode is missing stages like Battlefield, Smashville (the Wii U version), Yoshi's Island, and many more.

For "serious" play, it sure is missing a lot that we play seriously on. If I want to get better practice in the 3DS/Wii U versions for tournaments, I'll play with friends through friend codes like in Brawl or offline obviously.

--

tl;dr - For Glory mode is both good and bad at the same time. Do not limit yourself just because of a ruleset that Sakurai and his development team has given us when we have deliberately IGNORED IT ALL in the past every time.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Jack, with all due respect, I don't give For Glory mode a lot of credit. It's a nice feature, but the only stage is literally Final Destination and the only differences we have on the versions of them are how the sides behave. 2-stock, 5-minutes as a practice in of itself is a potential, but basing it off of For Glory mode in of itself is a bit short-sighted.

In competitive Smash, we have ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) made up our own rules to create a standard. There's a "Tournament" mode in Melee and Brawl and we don't use that for obvious reasons (always random seeding). For Glory mode is missing stages like Battlefield, Smashville (the Wii U version), Yoshi's Island, and many more.

For "serious" play, it sure is missing a lot that we play seriously on. If I want to get better practice in the 3DS/Wii U versions for tournaments, I'll play with friends through friend codes like in Brawl or offline obviously.

--

tl;dr - For Glory mode is both good and bad at the same time. Do not limit yourself just because of a ruleset that Sakurai and his development team has given us when we have deliberately IGNORED IT ALL in the past every time.

You made a very important (and wrong) assumption here, though: that I ever insisted that the For Glory rules will be the end-all-be-all of Sm4sh. I never said that. In fact, if you re-read my post, I lay out exactly what conditions it is OUR responsibility to satisfy before we should legitimately begin discussing deviating from the FG ruleset.

I fully expect that we'll deviate from it, for no other reason than there is nothing wrong with Battlefield. We'll be adding stages left and right. But, unlike past games, where we (should have) started with a full stage list and banned stages as we discovered problems, because of the way the game has been presented to us, we'll have to start from FD and Omega formes and prove that each added stage is worth the effort of adapting because it adds some meaningful amount of gameplay without detracting from what is already there (for instance, fixes a 0-10 matchup without affecting other matchups / gives meaningfully interesting counterplay to a matchup / introduces fun or interesting mechanics without affecting matchups too heavily / etc.). Unlike previous games, we should keep items banned unless we can prove that adding individual items grants meaningful counterplay without sacrificing consistency.

We'll definitely change things... with time. All I'm arguing here is that we should give it time before we change a bunch of stuff, and be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR as to what justifies changing things so that we don't run into the same problems we had in Brawl: TOs changing literally everything they're ordered to change by their player bases (read: top players) and causing a mass schism in the community that kills all real competition.

From earlier in the thread. Reading is fun-damental! *rainbow*

 

[Kuraudo]

From earlier in the thread. Reading is fun-damental! *rainbow*

I read what you said. And I'd appreciate it if you responded to me without the condescending remark. It makes me wanting to discuss this not worth it if you're gonna treat people talking to you like that.

You may have said that, but you also did state that we should START with FG settings (due to how many people could be training using this mode). And as people have said, we are just throwing opinions at one another, but don't you see a problem with starting with literally Final Destination (and Omega FD forms?) when even in Brawl's life cycle we had more to pick from. Also what's stopping people from doing the same thing that All is Brawl (and SMashboards here for that matter) did with creating rooms with different rules? Do we HAVE to start with 2-stock 5-minutes and expand from there? Brawl didn't get as neutered as you think it did when we went from 4-stock to 3-stock. And on top of that, if we are still so worried about time, while Melee is fast, WHY do we have an 8 minute time limit still if we're not so worried about how long that game will take?

Yes, I'm comparing Smash 4 to Melee/Brawl/etc. and see no issue with it as we all establish a foundation. We want Smash 4 to be its own game, of course. But people talk about using past games as reference for rules as if you're becoming the next Hitler or something.

My point is that, IMO, we shouldn't be taking For Glory mode as the base because it's a shallow ruleset that leaves only ONE STAGE. In Brawl, you know how many times that stage was talked about in becoming a counterpick? It never happened, but due to powerhouses like Falco, Pikachu and Ice Climbers reigning supreme on stages like that, it had been a thought before. People that use For Glory only to train (since that mode unless patched is never changing) will never fully prepare those online warriors for the full stagelist and potential shift in rules that ARE made in the future.

Yes, you believe we will change- but what you are forgetting? Is that For Glory, the mode catered to us as "competitive" players, WON'T change unless stated otherwise.

Training with For Glory when you have no access to other stages that we eventually set up will set you up for failure or put you at a disadvantage. IMO what we should be doing is collecting data for the first couple+ months. Heck, WAIT FOR THE WII U VERSION (not stating this at you as an internet yelling this, just as an important statement) because there's a good chance that will be the staple tourney game. We won't have a true tournament standard yet until both versions are out, due to controls and many other factors.

For the first part of this game's life, due to the circumstances of the 3DS version, experimenting and playing and discovering are going to be the biggest things to do before setting a foundation. And I feel if we SET the foundation as For Glory before we inevitably move on from it could set us back because people that trained with FG will feel alienated when practicing other stages and other stocks/times if needed isn't available to them.

There is Friends fighting like in Brawl where you make your own rules, but with FG being there, how many players in the wild out there will establish that? IMO we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot by starting on FG and moving on. I don't think it'll be the definitive rules we use, but it's a very "small" start that could be hard to expand from.

[EDIT]

As for the bracketed part about everyone being used to FG format (stock-wise) for training purposes, i know it's something SamuraiPanda said, but the remark still holds true IMO. If you feel as if I was putting words in your mouth on that note, I apologize.

 

[wannabe33]

Rather than make a new thread, in the interest of data compilation I'll be making notes of how long some of these Shockwave 2 tournament matches last. This tournament is three stocks, eight minutes. All updates will be edited into this post.

Character / Character // time left // time taken

Toon Link / Dark Pit // 2:36 // 5:24
Toon Link / Dark Pit // 2:51 // 5:09
Villager / Palutena // 0:00 // 8:00 [note: final stock count was 2/2]
Villager / Palutena // 1:46 // 6:14
Megaman / Samus // 1:53 // 6:07
Megaman / Samus // 3:12 // 4:48
Little Mac / Toon Link // 6:05 // 1:55 [note: "Little Mac factor" of quickening matches is in effect]
Little Mac / Toon Link // 5:13 // 2:47
Sheik / Sheik // 2:45 // 5:15
Sheik / Sheik // 1:30 // 6:30
Mario / Sheik // 2:16 // 5:44
Mario / Sheik // 2:17 // 5:43
Little Mac / Palutena // 2:49 // 5:11
Little Mac / Palutena // 5:40 // 2:20
ROB / Sheik // 4:00 // 4:00
Luigi / Sheik // 2:36 // 5:24
ROB / Sheik // 0:01 // 7:59
Villager / Mario // 4:35 // 3:25
Villager / Mario // 2:49 // 5:11
Villager / Mario // 5:25 // 2:35
Palutena / Sheik // 0:00 // 8:00
Sheik / Sheik // 0:51 // 7:09
Villager / Sheik // 3:41 // 4:19
Villager / Sheik // 5:02 // 2:58
Sheik / Little Mac // 5:52 // 2:08
Sheik / Little Mac // 6:11 // 1:49
Sheik / Little Mac // 6:03 // 1:57
Sheik / Little Mac // 4:00 // 4:00
Villager / Little Mac // 3:51 // 4:09
Sheik / Little Mac // 5:45 // 2:15
Sheik / Little Mac // 4:03 // 3:57

 

[Kit Cal-N]

I finally watched the TL weekly. Average (3-stock) game length was 3:40, or 1:13 per stock.

But.... but my cherry picking!!

 

[Ryuutakeshi]

Rather than make a new thread, in the interest of data compilation I'll be making notes of how long some of these Shockwave 2 tournament matches last. This tournament is three stocks, eight minutes. All updates will be edited into this post.

Character / Character // time left // time taken

Toon Link / Dark Pit // 2:36 // 5:24
Toon Link / Dark Pit // 2:51 // 5:09
Villager / Palutena // 0:00 // 8:00 [note: final stock count was 2/2]
Villager / Palutena // 1:46 // 6:14
Megaman / Samus // 1:53 // 6:07
Megaman / Samus // 3:12 // 4:48
Little Mac / Toon Link // 6:05 // 1:55 [note: "Little Mac factor" of quickening matches is in effect]
Little Mac / Toon Link // 5:13 // 2:47
Sheik / Sheik // 2:45 // 5:15
Sheik / Sheik // 1:30 // 6:30
Mario / Sheik // 2:16 // 5:44
Mario / Sheik // 2:17 // 5:43
Little Mac / Palutena // 2:49 // 5:11
Little Mac / Palutena // 5:40 // 2:20
ROB / Sheik // 4:00 // 4:00
Luigi / Sheik // 2:36 // 5:24
ROB / Sheik // 0:01 // 7:59
Villager / Mario // 4:35 // 3:25
Villager / Mario // 2:49 // 5:11
Villager / Mario // 5:25 // 2:35

We really should invalidate that first villager/palutena match. They were deliberately playing the game like that and their methods should not reflect those of other villager and palutena players. Though this is showing to me that villager is rather easy to camp with.