Can we have a serious discussion on Suicide Moves?

[Lavani]

This is a really situational suicide, but what about using Kirby, Meta Knight, or Charizard's uthrow while an explosive is active (Crash Bomber, [Toon] Link bombs, etc)? Both characters die off the upper blast zone at the same time, but the three different possible death animations (star KO, screen KO, standard KO animation from longest to shortest) makes it completely random as to who wins, or if it goes to Sudden Death.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

That would follow the same logic with a specific ruleset; if it goes to Sudden Death, follow the rule in question (initiator wins/loses). If not, go with what the game says.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

That would follow the same logic with a specific ruleset; if it goes to Sudden Death, follow the rule in question (initiator wins/loses). If not, go with what the game says.

But who counts as the initiator? The person who used uthrow or the person who owns the explosive?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

The character who "owns" the bomb, I assume. The throw didn't KO anyone--The bomb did. Mega Man/Link/Toon Link would be the initiator.

 

[Uniit]

In my (unpopular) opinion, rules should favor gameplay over "what the game said". Like in the case of the upthrow with explosive item, if he don't messed up the timing and if his opponent cannot break up while he wait for the time spot, he should be winning, no matter what the random says. Like with Jiggly rest, as you can be punished hard by successfully killing your opponent if he insta-KO at the roof. I would make a rule stating that in this case, you must stay on the respawn platform until Jiggly makes up. Heck, it would specify that if bowser dies because of his B-side, his opponnent should too.

But i do understand that i don't makes rule all by myself, nor impose them to other. I realise too that adding rule make thing complicated, like determining when people actually break them, and not imediatly clear for new smashers. So for the sake of simplicity and consistency, i do agree to follow with the popular opinion (suicide is a loss for the initiator). My only hope is for a patch, but this is very unlikely, as last patch actually change suicides move to be in this state.

EDIT : The initiator is the one who can avoid it, if the owner loss, his error was to be grabed after puling out his bomb/whatever. If the "thrower" loss he can just decide to throw elsewhere and follow up with the explosion. Again, would prefer to be this case, but this is not consitent with other cases.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Why? How is that any different from saying "if your opponent suicides/SD, you have to suicide/SD as well"? Competitive play dictates that all of your moves have an inherent risk/reward ratio. If I D-Air -> Rest combo someone as Jigglypuff offstage and I'm counting on a screen KO to KO the opponent before I fall to my death, that decision should fall on me, not on my opponent.

If it doesn't work out, perhaps I chose wrong and should have used a more reliable option to win. There will always be RNG involved in Smash, and so there's no reasonable way to impose rules against it. What if Peach pulls a Bob-omb when I land what would be a killing blow, and I die first from the Bob-omb explosion? Or the difference between a G&W doing an all-or-nothing Forward-B and getting either a 1 or a 9?

 

[Uniit]

For me, it's the gambling part of the risk/reward that need to be handled. I mean, your two first examples are not RNG dependant. A player's mistake is not RNG, nor is bad decision.

After that, for the turnip pull or the judge, there is no way to handle this. A peach player pull out a bob-omb, so what ? We're not going to restart the match or anything. The same goes with a 9 judge. The rule "If Jigglypuff Rest you, stay on the platform (so you don't waste your invicibility) until she wakes up" is not hard to apply, it just fair. Is tripping in Brawl a competitive thing ? Does it help distinguish the good from the very good ? Back in the days, if there was a tripping switch in the game, you can be sure that it would turned off day one. But, there wasn't, and there is no rule that counter that mechanic (like "Don't punish a tripping opponent" ? impossible, there is so many case to handle, like if you was charging a smash or whatever). Anyways, here i'm not talking about removing all randomness, I'm talking about reducing it.

Imo, Rest is a super high risk / high reward move, because of the super high endlag and the small hitbox. You actually landed it at killing percentage, and your opponent is dead ? Good... Oh, nevermind, he was insta-KO, now your gonna eat that fully charged Fsmash. Too bad... Now look a the judge, it's like a normal attack, it come up decently fast, can be executed mid air or grounded, has "normal" range/end lag/damage output. But his high risk / high reward comes from the number, and there is not need to change that. The judge only pulling out the 6 like in HRC would be bad for fight plays, resulting in a just "ok" attack.

Finally, it juste about making move balanced by influcing the game by applying rules. I'm pretty convinced that many people prefer refer to the game mechanics, and i'm fine with it, it's already the case.

 

[Jebus244]

"If Jigglypuff Rest you, stay on the platform (so you don't waste your invicibility) until she wakes up" is not hard to apply, it just fair.

It's not about what's fair... it's about what you CAN DO. Can a Puff rest be punished off a insta KO? Yes! And it's going to happen. You can't expect a player to wait until she wakes up because it's FAIR. Making one player perform differently because of his/her opponent's decision is not how competitive play works.

It would be like banning certain moves in an imbalanced MU.
NEW RULE: Sheik vs Ganon
-Sheik isn't allowed to Fair, Utilt, or stage spike.

 

[Uniit]

Why do people keeps showing up example or arguments that aren’t related, and not even close. Was talking about randomness and how *I* think that isn’t that fair in particular case, and Voilà, now I’m the guys who want to make rule for everythings...

Back to the topic, aren’t we gonna make a rule changing how the game works ? Why aren’t we plataying another match in case of sudden death ? It’s fair to declare that someone lose because of a rule, despite the game showing a draw ?

I can too make dumb argumentation.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Jigglypuff can also benefit from an instant death off the top via Rest, though. I have Rested someone offstage in a position where I would have died first but didn't due to the RNG killing them quickly.

That's just part of the decision-making process when you choose to use the move--That's totally RNG-dependent, as is Peach's dropping a Bob-omb when hit (it isn't a guaranteed drop, after all).

 

[Praxis]

That would follow the same logic with a specific ruleset; if it goes to Sudden Death, follow the rule in question (initiator wins/loses). If not, go with what the game says.

I just want to point this out:

Bowser will either lose or go to sudden death depending on the stage. Kirby will lose or go to sudden death depending on which direction he's facing. (Seriously!)

If the rule is "initiator wins in sudden death", then you have extreme inconsistency where on some stages bowser wins and some stages bowser loses.

If you choose to follow the results screen (which IMO we should, we only ignored it in Brawl because it used port priority), we have to make initiator lose in sudden death. It sucks for Bowser, but it's the only way to not have crazy inconsistency.

 

[Sodo]

@ Praxis , I like that you started this thread. You've been in on the discussion over in the Bowsercide thread (offering informed, clear opinions), and although we fundamentally disagree on the clause itself I like that we are at least having the discussion. Hopefully this comes to a resolution shortly, regardless of the result.

 

[Jexulus]

I just want to point this out:

Bowser will either lose or go to sudden death depending on the stage. Kirby will lose or go to sudden death depending on which direction he's facing. (Seriously!)

If the rule is "initiator wins in sudden death", then you have extreme inconsistency where on some stages bowser wins and some stages bowser loses.

If you choose to follow the results screen (which IMO we should, we only ignored it in Brawl because it used port priority), we have to make initiator lose in sudden death. It sucks for Bowser, but it's the only way to not have crazy inconsistency.

Here's my stance: whether or not the game goes into Sudden Death is still determined by an arbitrary factor; it's just different in this one. Not only that, but it's an obvious programming flaw/oversight. What logical reason is there for the game to react differently depending on something as arbitrary as a stage boundary behaving differently from stage to stage or what direction Kirby is facing? There is none. It is my belief, then, that in this instance, we cannot follow what the results screen tells us because the way it determines the winner is flawed, and there is evidence to support that statement beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Either way, there is -no- instance in which the game says that Bowser wins after a Bowsercide post-patch, and it's still determined by elements that are reliable and entirely controllable. It makes more sense to say that Sudden Death counts as a loss for the suicider, since then games are not decided by what direction you were facing when you decided to throw yourself off the level.

I think that going to Sudden Death should just do what time-outs do--The player with the lower percentage wins.

 

[TheHypnotoad]

Should we move the discussion about suicide clauses from the Bowsercide thread to this thread?

 

[Jexulus]

Either way, there is -no- instance in which the game says that Bowser wins after a Bowsercide post-patch, and it's still determined by elements that are reliable and entirely controllable. It makes more sense to say that Sudden Death counts as a loss for the suicider, since then games are not decided by what direction you were facing when you decided to throw yourself off the level.

I think that going to Sudden Death should just do what time-outs do--The player with the lower percentage wins.

At this point, I've come to not care whether or not Bowser loses when he suicides. All I'm trying to establish is that we can't depend on the game's judgment in this instance, on the basis of demonstrating a flaw in programming based on arbitrary factors. A consistent ruling is going to have to be established by whoever organizes each tournament. It'll eliminate confusion and mis-communication in that instance.

 

[Flamecircle]

The only argument remaining is what sudden death means, correct?

Sudden death probably should not be "1 stock tie breaker" for tourney speed, I think.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

The only argument remaining is what sudden death means, correct?

Sudden death probably should not be "1 stock tie breaker" for tourney speed, I think.

If you use previous percent as the decider, it runs by the same rules as a time-out. 1-stock tiebreaker if both people are at the same percent, a winner already decided otherwise. Time-outs almost never end with the same percent; I'd expect this to be much the same.

 

[TheHypnotoad]

At this point, I've come to not care whether or not Bowser loses when he suicides. All I'm trying to establish is that we can't depend on the game's judgment in this instance, on the basis of demonstrating a flaw in programming based on arbitrary factors. A consistent ruling is going to have to be established by whoever organizes each tournament. It'll eliminate confusion and mis-communication in that instance.

As I mentioned in the other thread, everything in the game is based on arbitrary programming. The rules of the game are decided by Sakurai, if we decide to ignore that just because his reasoning behind those rules is weird, then we're not playing the same game anymore.

 

[Jexulus]

As I mentioned in the other thread, everything in the game is based on arbitrary programming. The rules of the game are decided by Sakurai, if we decide to ignore that just because his reasoning behind those rules is weird, then we're not playing the same game anymore.

I'm not talking about disregarding the game's ruling because I disagree with a decision made by the programmers. I'm talking about disregarding a game's ruling because it's not working as intended. If you look at this logically, there is no explanation as to why Bowsercide at one stock yields different results (in this case, either loss or moving into Sudden Death) across different stages, with the exception of faulty programming being at play. I'm arguing that, for the sake of consistency in a tournament environment, TOs should not defer determining whether or not Bowser loses to what the game tells them. There needs to be an rule put in place so there's no room for confusion.

 

[popsofctown]

Reflex has come to the same conclusion that I did in a "aha" moment regarding this issue in the other thread. Sudden Death should be resolved by % lead just like timeouts.

It really leaves you with a pretty well designed game, suicide moves let you push a lead all the way to an immediate victory, but don't let you reverse/ignore your opponent's lead for an instant victory.

Kirby's facing direction is totally controllable, and the stagelist blastzone quirks are totally controllable. It's a really intuitive rule for new players too, the game gives you a tie, so there is a tie-break. If it happens the first time for a newbie, "You started it as Bowser, so since he yoinked you offstage you lose because the initiator of a move always dies" is pretty nasty and feels kinda crappy if the game gave you sudden death. "The game went to sudden death, which is the game's unsuitable tiebreak, so instead the player with percent lead wins and you lose because you didn't deal enough damage like you were trying to" will leave a better taste in your mouth.

And of course, no one outside the community is going to have an issue following the results screen whenever it just says the initiator loses.

 

[1FC0]

I'm not talking about disregarding the game's ruling because I disagree with a decision made by the programmers. I'm talking about disregarding a game's ruling because it's not working as intended. If you look at this logically, there is no explanation as to why Bowsercide at one stock yields different results (in this case, either loss or moving into Sudden Death) across different stages, with the exception of faulty programming being at play. I'm arguing that, for the sake of consistency in a tournament environment, TOs should not defer determining whether or not Bowser loses to what the game tells them. There needs to be an rule put in place so there's no room for confusion.

The explanation is that that is how the game works. What other explanation could you possibly want? An explanation why it is physically impossible?

Kirby having to face the right way and Bowser only being capable of winning by bowsercide on some stages is weird but not overpowered nor luck based so I see no reason to deal with it as a special case.

Using percentage lead as tie breaker in every case where the game gives Sudden Death and otherwise following the result screen seems like a good rule to me. This rule leaves very little room for confusion.

 

[warriorman222]

You slightly misunderstand the point I'm trying to make, I think. Going strictly by the ingame results, the initiator of a suicide move will either lose, or go to sudden death. Now, we agree that sudden death is not ideal for a variety of reasons so we need to decide a winner by other means in that specific situation.

Option 1: If a suicide move results in sudden death, the initiator wins.
Option 2: If a suicide move results in sudden death, the initiator loses.

Option 1 creates a situation where suicide moves literally "sometimes win, sometimes lose" based on admittedly deterministic criteria but it still creates an utterly bizarre and ultimately arbitrary table of where they result in a win or a loss. Option 2 produces a much cleaner result: suicide moves result in a loss. Always. (Except for Ganondorf because apparently Sakurai thinks he's special. Whatever.)

At this point I think we're just arguing in circles. I value the consistency, you value the ability to keep suicides as an ace on a subset of stages.

I has nothing to do with Ganon being special it has to do with you not being able to literally gimp Ganon by being hit by his recovery, and winning for getting hit by a recovery move. That'd be beyond stupid. In Time it doesn;t matter because since you do no dmg, If P3 hit P2 and you Flame Choke them offstage, you don't get the point unless you had hit P2 before the Flame Choke.

 

[1FC0]

I has nothing to do with Ganon being special it has to do with you not being able to literally gimp Ganon by being hit by his recovery, and winning for getting hit by a recovery move. That'd be beyond stupid.

SSBB Ike says hi.

 

[warriorman222]

SSBB Ike says hi.

And it was beyond stupid. Simple as that. Just like how Bowser dying/ losing for landing one of his hardest reads, while allowing the enemy the chance to get back of stage if they are one of 13 characters, not much but the fact that you can intentionally get hit by a hard read, control the trajectory because chances are your % is higher than the heaviest and largest character, kill him, and possibly get back and lose nothing, not even take dmg is absurd. Ike was stupid, but at east you took damage, and at least the move wasn't a hard read. Oh, and it requires you being offstage, not you simply being outside the middle of the stage.

 

[Teshie U]

Tbh, Ganon and Falcon have been getting punished for landing their recovery moves since they first existed. In Melee and Brawl its extremely common to tech their Up B attack and punish the remainder of the animation with anything you want.

 

[warriorman222]

Tbh, Ganon and Falcon have been getting punished for landing their recovery moves since they first existed. In Melee and Brawl its extremely common to tech their Up B attack and punish the remainder of the animation with anything you want.

If you are reffering to that we should also make Ganon lose: Yeah it means consistency, doesn't mean it should be further punished with losing instead of winning, when the game says you should win, when Ganon is a low tier anyways, and when Ganon actually survives for an extra 5 seconds, and therefore doesn't die at all.

If you are referring to how dumb this is, I agree.

 

[LaunchStar]

This could be my inner 10-year old talking, but I feel that if a suicide move is used to decide the final stock, the initiator should lose.

Yes, keeping your opponent's options in mind is very important, but if you slip up once, you get pulled into a move that you have no option to break out of.

A player who's been guarding and pummeling away at someone can get KO'd in an instant by something that is impossible for even the most skilled Smash player to escape.

For instance, Bowsercide is awful. You can't break out of a grab (even one as painfully long and torturous as Bowser's) so you have no choice but to lose because your opponent decided they had places to be.

It can be an extremely unsatisfying and anti-climatic way to win/lose a match, not just for the loser, but for the audience as well. So all of that dodging and skillful attacking is instantly negated by one good grab, and I'd honestly be pretty pissed off if that happened to me.

But please take this with a grain of salt.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

This could be my inner 10-year old talking, but I feel that if a suicide move is used to decide the final stock, the initiator should lose.

Yes, keeping your opponent's options in mind is very important, but if you slip up once, you get pulled into a move that you have no option to break out of.

A player who's been guarding and pummeling away at someone can get KO'd in an instant by something that is impossible for even the most skilled Smash player to escape.

For instance, Bowsercide is awful. You can't break out of a grab (even one as painfully long and torturous as Bowser's) so you have no choice but to lose because your opponent decided they had places to be.

It can be an extremely unsatisfying and anti-climatic way to win/lose a match, not just for the loser, but for the audience as well. So all of that dodging and skillful attacking is instantly negated by one good grab, and I'd honestly be pretty pissed off if that happened to me.

But please take this with a grain of salt.

I can understand this. It's sort of common sense to avoid getting hit by anything if possible but that's not actually possible in practice unless you just totally outclass your opponent. Except that a suicide move results in instant death if you get hit by it in the right circumstances, while most other moves just lead to damage or bad positioning or what-have-you. Basically it pushes the expectation to an extreme degree.

 

[1FC0]

And it was beyond stupid. Simple as that. Just like how Bowser dying/ losing for landing one of his hardest reads, while allowing the enemy the chance to get back of stage if they are one of 13 characters, not much but the fact that you can intentionally get hit by a hard read, control the trajectory because chances are your % is higher than the heaviest and largest character, kill him, and possibly get back and lose nothing, not even take dmg is absurd. Ike was stupid, but at east you took damage, and at least the move wasn't a hard read. Oh, and it requires you being offstage, not you simply being outside the middle of the stage.

Chances are? Only if you forgot to check dmg. If you do not, then it is not so much a matter of chance. Unless you get the weird case that I read about that apparently at random the opponent gets control even if he has much more dmg, which is stupid if it is really true and random.

Personally getting killed by opponents throwing themselves in my way like with Ike or Ness or by a tactical mistake like using B> at the edge with higher % would not bother me more than just losing. I played a lot of Ivysaur in SSBB and I also was not really annoyed by dying even after I Vine Whiped the edge hogger .

 

[warriorman222]

Chances are? Only if you forgot to check dmg. If you do not, then it is not so much a matter of chance. Unless you get the weird case that I read about that apparently at random the opponent gets control even if he has much more dmg, which is stupid if it is really true and random.

Personally getting killed by opponents throwing themselves in my way like with Ike or Ness or by a tactical mistake like using B> at the edge with higher % would not bother me more than just losing. I played a lot of Ivysaur in SSBB and I also was not really annoyed by dying even after I Vine Whiped the edge hogger .

I was, but that may be just me. But still, think of it like this: "You're trying to get back on stage now someone jumps and gets hit by you. You fall to your doom." This puts you in many die, or die situations. Fall to far to recover, or get gimped by landing the hit.

It didn
t happen much, but the very fact that you can in a match by letting them land a hard read(Bowser), their recovery on you(Still Ness, Ike, Ganon ) was not that great of a decision. They're already heavyweights! Don't need to make them further unviable, thy do that on their own!

 

[1FC0]

I was, but that may be just me. But still, think of it like this: "You're trying to get back on stage now someone jumps and gets hit by you. You fall to your doom." This puts you in many die, or die situations. Fall to far to recover, or get gimped by landing the hit.

It didn
t happen much, but the very fact that you can in a match by letting them land a hard read(Bowser), their recovery on you(Still Ness, Ike, Ganon ) was not that great of a decision. They're already heavyweights! Don't need to make them further unviable, thy do that on their own!

You can not beat Bowser by letting him have a hard read if he knows what he is doing. And being a heavyweight in Smash is an advantage.

I see nothing unfair about Bowsercides making you lose when you both have 1 stock . It is not luck based, nor is it OP. There are lots of cases in Smash where you get punished for hitting a move in a certain situation, just use other moves.

Though I would not mind the win going to Bowser either. I just think that it is weird and confusing to ignore the result screen and in this case I think that it is completely unnecessary.

 

[digiholic]

What I don't get is, if we enforce a non-result screen victory for the suiciding player, why can't we enforce a non-results screen victory for people who die while their opponent is in the star-KO animation? (See FOW vs. M2K in APEX doubles finals)

Seems silly to me to enforce an out-of-game ruling in some cases but not all.

 

[WolfieXVII ❂]

I didn't know the Apex rules regarding suicide moves
As a Kirby main, I like it

 

[Octagon]

I didn't know the Apex rules regarding suicide moves
As a Kirby main, I like it

I don't main Kirby but i like it. If they're unregarded players will just take advantage of them

 

[Cronoc]

This could be my inner 10-year old talking, but I feel that if a suicide move is used to decide the final stock, the initiator should lose.

Yes, keeping your opponent's options in mind is very important, but if you slip up once, you get pulled into a move that you have no option to break out of.

A player who's been guarding and pummeling away at someone can get KO'd in an instant by something that is impossible for even the most skilled Smash player to escape.

For instance, Bowsercide is awful. You can't break out of a grab (even one as painfully long and torturous as Bowser's) so you have no choice but to lose because your opponent decided they had places to be.

It can be an extremely unsatisfying and anti-climatic way to win/lose a match, not just for the loser, but for the audience as well. So all of that dodging and skillful attacking is instantly negated by one good grab, and I'd honestly be pretty pissed off if that happened to me.

But please take this with a grain of salt.

You misunderstand the situation in regards to Bowser. The only way an opponent can be caught by a Bowsercide is through inattention or inexperience. If they get killed by it, Bowser deserved that kill. Most of the time the grabbed person has as much, if not more control than Bowser, allowing them to force a Bowsercide if they want to. That's the real danger of the move. The person with less % has more control. If I'm Bowser at 0%, why would I attempt a Bowsercide? I wouldn't. If I'm Bowser at high % and the opponent is at low %, that's when I would attempt it. And that's when the opponent has more control than I do.As a Bowser main I have only ever Bowsercided intentionally a few times in 1500+ matches, when I was up a stock and my opponent made one of the errors I'll now explain. I've been forced to Bowsercide by the opponent far more often than I've ever intended.

The ways people die to Bowsercide:
-trying to break out of it like a normal throw and not attempting to steer it at all (inexperience)
-sitting there waiting for it to end so they can get back to fighting, no attempt to steer, realize too late they're going off the edge (inattention)

In exceptional cases Bowser uses his klaw right on the edge of the stage and holds his stick towards the edge, moving him slightly forward before the opponent reacts and tries to steer it back, and their percentage differences aren't enough to give one more control than another, resulting in a stalemate just over the edge and a Bowsercide. That's what a successful, intentional Bowsercide looks like in a competitive environment. How many times have I gotten this in all my time playing as Bowser? Probably twice, only ever in for glory. In a tournament setting I would be amazed if I pulled it off.

Now, why was this patched? Inexperienced players were getting Bowsercided online, so they disincentivized the tactic. Fine. But from a competitive standpoint, Bowser had to land a klaw and manage to steer him and his opponent off-stage, which is very difficult to do without the opponent's help in a competitive setting. I completely disagree with how the game penalizes it. I'm just glad that in tournament most players won't force the issue, I get my 18% damage and we move on. If I use a klaw and my opponent steers me over the edge as it usually happens, you can bet I'm calling over a TO to argue about it, especially because of the lack of consistency from stage to stage. Remember who's on top when Bowser slams down...

 

[Yong Dekonk]

If the rare case happens where someone claims that they broke out of the attempted suicide move right before hitting the blast zone then just have a third party review the replay and decide. It's probably not very hard to determine. In all other instances I like brawl's rules that the person who initiated the suicide move gets the kill simply because I would love to see people win in a tournament with it. People can say it's unfair to lose that way but I think it's more unfair to lose to a broken character like Diddy.

 

[1FC0]

If your opponent forces you against your will to make a Bowsercide than you made a mistake yourself. No getting around it. You used B> at the wrong moment. You can tell who gets to control it before you use the move. So no point blaming luck. If you see that the opponent is going to get control and you do not want that, then do not use B>.

Perhaps this is more about balancing than anything else. Is Bowser (and other SD-killers) bad enough to make a special rule for them to buff them? I think not. Even Mewtwo did not get a special rule to buff his B> and both his B> and Mewtwo himself were much worse than Bowser.

 

[anikom15]

This rule doesn't apply to Bowser.

 

[thehard]

Thank god there's no suicide clause at EVO