Chatting with the BBR! Today's session cancelled :(

[da K.I.D.]

Im gonna play devils advocate on this for a second.

1. said ceiling is breakable

2. said ceiling is also techable.

 

[Jack Kieser]

For the record, I wasn't arguing for or against skyworld. I was just curious.

 

[Luigi player]

Why are people saying the suicide stuff is fixed in the pal version? It's exactly like in the NTSC one, this isn't Melee...

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Im gonna play devils advocate on this for a second.

1. said ceiling is breakable

2. said ceiling is also techable.

I wasn't really using sound reasoning there, that was more of my personal preference.

I think stages are probably the most subjective thing in this game and probably the only area where it's relatively okay to lack objectivity, since there can never really be any agreed upon criteria for banning or allowing them. It's all fairly gray area.

If I were to make such an argument, though, it would be that, while technically manageable, the results on Skyward are often "less consistent than ideal for competitive play". Even that has a lot of subjectivity to it, though.

I've always felt that it is nearly impossible to completely remove arbitrariness and subjectivity from stage discussion; it's not like character or game balance, which we can and should be completely objective with.

With stages though, technically we have little or no sound-reasoning to ban most of the stages that we do, except a perceived "gayness" level. Some stages have a legit reason for ban, but many/most do not. Over-centralization is often cited, but even that has no objective number for a percentage of "acceptable centralization".

Even saying "well Walkoffs on stages like Bridge of Eldin are damaging to a large portion of the cast" isn't really a sound and objective reasoning. Stages like that or even Shadow Moses and all of its wall-infinite issues could easily be countered with, "well, then the Metagame rewards characters who can't be chain grabbed by DeDeDe" and there could still be a "healthy" but vastly different metagame.

Often something like that gets responded to with "but then 50% of the cast isn't viable!" To many, that is unacceptable, but in a lot of games that is totally acceptable and unavoidable. I'm not talking about "bad" games either. There are many games where the majority of "characters" or "weapons" or "classes" are innately completely worthless, yet they still have healthy competitive gameplay.

Saying 50% is unacceptable technically isn't any better reasoning than 10% or 90% of the cast being nonviable. Any way you look at it, all 3 of those numbers are completely arbitrary, there is no accepted standard so you can't be objective.



It's why there's always so much fuss about it. Some think that the game is designed to be played on many stages, some think the game can only be played on a few. In the end, there really isn't a wrong answer, because we are given the CHOICE of which stages to pick. The beauty of Smash is that it can be played many different ways.

A lack of understanding of this concept is exactly why people get such an urge to Flame regarding the new stage list. They fail to realize that there literally is no wrong answer when it comes to stages.

 

[da K.I.D.]

Often something like that gets responded to with "but then 50% of the cast isn't viable!" To many, that is unacceptable, but in a lot of games that is totally acceptable and unavoidable. I'm not talking about "bad" games either. There are many games where the majority of "characters" or "weapons" or "classes" are innately completely worthless, yet they still have healthy competitive gameplay.

Im curious, can you give me an explicit example of this? 2 if possible.

 

[Crow!]

isnt there 4 ledges on skyworld(6 if you count the bottom scrolling platform)? keeping all 4 of them broken at once (or even the two on the side your edgeguarding) seems unfeasible.

On the other hand, MK can't UAir as safely / flexibly on Skyworld ledges due to the hitlag associated with damaging the stage.

Planking aside, the stage has very abusable properties that I could easily imagine turning into brokenness in a large number of matchups (in this case, when I say "broken" I mean "one side has no reasonable chance to win"). I wouldn't vote "ban" on it before more testing, but I'd be surprised if my vote ultimately went any other way.



@Kieser: We didn't write up public statements about the other stages because we figured leaving them banned would be generally uncontroversial. You can see my personal list talking about most of the banned stages here: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?p=10894579#post10894579

Now that the discussion is a bit tamer, I will now supplement that list by showing my "Unclear" category mini-writeups.

AS BEFORE, THESE DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE BBR AS A WHOLE. THESE ARE MY PERSONAL VIEWS.

Big Blue: Unclear.
Certainly a very different stage from all others, but I can't think of anything truly broken about it.

Green Greens: Unclear.
I am neutral on this matter. The apples' identities being random and not immediately obvious is my biggest complaint.

Green Hill Zone: Unclear.
Clearly worse than YI: pipes, but possibly with some merit. My main qualm is that, despite having played here a lot (my friends liked it), I never figured out how hitting the ground actually worked.. it just seemed random and quite game changing. Also, stalling by hanging out near the spinning post might be too good, maybe.

Port Town Aero Dive: Unclear.
Though easily avoided, I'm very wary of just how low a % the cars can kill. The rest of the stage is annoying (to a Link main, anyway) but not necessarily banworthy.

Skyworld: Unclear.
Hugely different from other stages? Certainly. Broken? Probably, but I don't know for sure. Maybe there's circle camping here, maybe the destructibility prevents it. Every surface being destructible could conceivably sway certain matchups into dangerously close to unwinnable, too.

The Summit: Probably ban.
I ceratinly don't like this stage, but that's not a reason to ban. It probably enables unstoppable circle camping, though. Can someone confirm? The hazards are clearly not an issue.

[EDIT]: Wow, I just realized that Mario Circuit somehow failed to meet my analysis at all. Rather than make something up on the spot, here's a recent public thread about it. http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=278355

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Im curious, can you give me an explicit example of this? 2 if possible.

Off the top of my head, the best example is probably Marvel vs Capcom 2. A HUUUUGE portion of the cast in that game is nearly worthless compared to the top tiers, of which there are only a handful.

Probably only ~20% of the 56 total characters are often used, if that. That game was always very popular and even now, 10 years later, is making great sales on XBL/PSN and is still being played at EVO with top level competition.

Another less popular example could be the Mechwarrior series. A game with many stages, weapons, and "mechs" (characters) to choose from. I played MW3, MW4, and Mercenaries competitively for several years in what was generally considered one of the top 2 or 3 clans around at the time. There were nearly 100 different Mechs to choose from, not to mention the ability to completely customize them with different weapon loadouts from the hundreds of different weapon types in the game.

Many of the mechs were useless compared to others, and drilling down more into it, many of the individual weapons were worthless. There were thousands of different mech/weapon combinations; some amazing, some viable, some useful only in niche areas, and many flat out sucked.

I could really talk about it for days, but the point is that in addition to the seemingly infinite Mech/Weapon combinations, the game also had a huge variety of maps. Many of the maps were harsh and catered to specific styles of play.

Despite this, the metagame was extremely healthy without ever "banning" hardly anything. There were even "hard counters" like picking a desert stage and using flame throwers to shut down and disable enemy mechs, or picking a mountainous map and using an entire team of sniper mechs with anti-radar addons.

There was no need to "ban" a particular strategy, and those who did were generally laughed at. If someone took you to a desert map and used flame throwers, you outfitted your Mechs with flamethrowers too. Problem solved.

I could think of plenty of other examples given the time, but those two are usually my favorite.

...**** it, now I want to play Mechwarrior.


Oh, just for clarification, the terrible Xbox game "Mech Assault" is not what I am talking about. That was an arcade-style game that was in no way affiliated with the "real" mechwarrior games.

 

[demonictoonlink]

Sky world is pretty good for Tink actually. I'd be for it.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Sky world is pretty good for Tink actually. I'd be for it.

This is just exactly why we don't want people like you or ADHD (many top players) in the backroom. Incredible bias.

 

[da K.I.D.]

lolmvc2
viable fighting character (the first two spots)
-Magneto
-Cable
-Sentinel
-Storm

viable support characters (usually only the 3rd team spot) and werent used to actually fight and generally picked exclusively for their amazing assists
-Cyclops
-Psylocke
-Doctor Doom
-Captain Commando
and like 4 other characters.

out of 55+ characters 4 are viable and another 8 or so are situationally usable.

what a goofy game.

 

[Life]

Then again, apparently within that 4-12 characters it can't be that bad. I saw a vid of a Cyclops player winning a 3v1 (I think it was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAdtFRs2yhA )

Disclaimer: never played MVC2, I have no right to talk about the series.

Also, this thread is awesome.

 

[T-block]

Hey guys, feel free to hit me up with questions too:

MSN - the.t.block@gmail.com
AIM - tblock7
Skype - tblock7

If Pierce wants to let me know when larger chats are happening, I'll try to make those as well, and of course, I'll be checking this thread fairly regularly.

Wow, I just realized Pierce locked the v3.0 thread and moved the discussion here. Well played, sir. I'm glad to see this thread is devoid of trolling / flaming.

I have a couple of questions. First of all, I noticed that T-block is only posting writeups of certain stages (I guess the most controversial), but all of those stages are ones that ended up legal. Are there any plans to get writeups for stages that were just narrowly banned, too?

I ask partly because my second question is, what was the Skyworld discussion like in the Back Room? I've always been confused about Skyworld and why it was considered as bad as it is... Just a curiosity of mine.

As always, please and thank you.

I believe AmazingAmpharos is working on Norfair and Yoshi's Island: Melee at the moment. Those two are the last of the ones we intended to do a writeup on, but if you are wondering about any other stage, whether it's more solidly banned or more solidly counterpick, feel free to request it. It might not be as good a writeup though, as the stages done were stages that received an extra phase of voting/discussion - these writeups are intended as a summary of these discussions, so if you ask for another stage we'll have to either go off of older discussions, or off no discussion if you want something like Spear Pillar.

Side note, how do you get away with such a large signature? Maybe you should shrink it a bit =P

As for Skyworld, I think the majority of issues comes from the ceiling. It is destroyable, but unlike Luigi's Mansion, the presence of the ceiling can actually kill you via stage spikes, whereas Luigi's Mansion's ceilings mostly save. This allows for strategic manipulation of the state of LM, as it's clear that at high percents you want the mansion standing, and when your opponent is at high percents you want the mansion destroyed, etc. On Skyworld it's not as clear, since at high percents the ceiling can still kill you, while at low percents it can also kill you if you bounce off it, especially if the bottom floor is destroyed. This shifts the death condition from being-hit-by-a-KO-move to failing-to-tech-a-KO-move, which can lead to variance in the outcomes of matches on this stage. It's present on LM too, but can be avoided through strategic play, whereas avoiding it on Skyworld is not as obvious. There's also the issue of being too strong a counterpick, particularly for Meta Knight, but since this stage wasn't legal for very long, I'm hesitant to give that as a ban reason.

 

[Kewkky]

lolmvc2
viable fighting character (the first two spots)
-Magneto
-Cable
-Sentinel
-Storm

viable support characters (usually only the 3rd team spot) and werent used to actually fight and generally picked exclusively for their amazing assists
-Cyclops
-Psylocke
-Doctor Doom
-Captain Commando
and like 4 other characters.

out of 55+ characters 4 are viable and another 8 or so are situationally usable.

what a goofy game.

So 4 viables, and 4 supports. Thats a total of 8 characters that can work for you in a tourney. 1 of the support per 2 viables... That makes a total of 28 different teams.

Spoiler

1) Magneto + Cable + Sentinel
Magneto + Cable + Storm
Magneto + Cable + Cyclops
Magneto + Cable + Psylocke
Magneto + Cable + Doctor Doom
Magneto + Cable + Captain Commando
7) Magneto + Sentinel + Storm
Magneto + Sentinel + Cyclops
Magneto + Sentinel + Psylocke
Magneto + Sentinel + Doctor Doom
Magneto + Sentinel + Captain Commando
12) Magneto + Storm + Cyclops
Magneto + Storm + Psylocke
Magneto + Storm + Doctor Doom
Magneto + Storm + Captain Commando
16) Cable + Sentinel + Storm
Cable + Sentinel + Cyclops
Cable + Sentinel + Psylocke
Cable + Sentinel + Doctor Doom
Cable + Sentinel + Captain Commando
21) Cable + Storm + Cyclops
Cable + Storm + Psylocke
Cable + Storm + Doctor Doom
Cable + Storm + Captain Commando
25) Sentinel + Storm + Cyclops
Sentinel + Storm + Psylocke
Sentinel + Storm + Doctor Doom
Sentinel + Storm + Captain Commando

That's a lot of viability.

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Right, but it is still less than 20% of the cast / available character/team choices. What is it, 15%?

The point is that there is no "acceptable number" of viable characters. They are all arbitrary, which is why using artificial rules to make certain characters more viable or others less viable is not a good idea.

 

[Blacknight99923]

you can't prove a game is better with 20 characters viable or 2 but that doesn't change the fact that some people will say 2 and others will say 20. I don't see how you can make a rulest that doesn't cater to either


I mean after all even a conservative ruleset still caters to MK with brinstar and RC legal, so in the end any ruleset you make WILL be abritary.

 

[Kewkky]

Right, but it is still less than 20% of the cast / available character/team choices. What is it, 15%?

The point is that there is no "acceptable number" of viable characters. They are all arbitrary, which is why using artificial rules to make certain characters more viable or others less viable is not a good idea.

It depends on how you look at it. The statistics may be less than Brawl/Melee/other fighting game's, but in actuality, 28 viable choices is a lot of options compared to these other fighting games, where you're given around 3-10 viable options generally. Saying "This is 30% character viability, but this other one's 20% so it's worse off" is the same as saying "You have 20 skittles and 6 blue ones (30%), but I have 100 skittles and 20 blue ones (20%) so I'm worse off than you".

Statistics create the illusion that there's less or more than what there actually is. Once you get past that illusion and go for the raw numbers, you tend to understand how misleading statistics can be.

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

There is also the cave of life problem at skyworld.

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Sometimes that is true, but in this instance, it's really not misleading at all. You can easily take a sample as small as the "better" 10 or so characters in Smash and come up with just a similar amount of possibilities in terms of matchups. That's a generously small sample size anyway, considering that you see a lot more than just the top 10 characters in smash.

 

[Kewkky]

Sometimes that is true, but in this instance, it's really not misleading at all. You can easily take a sample as small as the "better" 10 or so characters in Smash and come up with just a similar amount of possibilities in terms of matchups. That's a generously small sample size anyway, considering that you see a lot more than just the top 10 characters in smash.

I wasn't really trying to argue that Brawl has less viability than MvC2, I was just saying how MvC2 actually has more options than people make it sound like.

 

[sunshade]

The percentage of viable characters is irrelevant.

Lets say we have brawl and then brawl without ganon in the game.

Is brawl less balanced than brawl.w.g?

The percentage of viable characters is different but the actual game itself is just as balanced since the only part of the games balance that matters is the apex of the metagame.

For a well written article on just this topic you can check out http://sonichurricane.com/?p=2930 but because I know people are lazy I am going to quote it into this thread.

Derisive words like “unbalanced,” “overpowered,” and “broken” get thrown around so much these days, you’d think every fighting game was expected to have a 90% competitive roster ratio. It’s true that modern game developers can benefit from studying a long history of tournament-tested titles, but the fundamental problem remains the same: character diversity naturally fosters imbalance. There’s no escaping it.

How are designers supposed to tackle this issue? Every experienced player will tell you that concrete strategy is all about matchups. If you start with two characters, you’ll want to give them a complex array of options with the ultimate goal of staging dynamic battles while ensuring that the most skillful player wins consistently. Whenever you upgrade one move, you’ll have to match it with the appropriate adjustment on the opposite side.

When you introduce a third character, the number of matchups triples. Now when you institute an upgrade, you have to cautiously strengthen two potential rivals to that exact same degree, then compare them with each other to make sure their matchup doesn’t suffer. Every minor tweak can snowball into a series of adjustments echoing back and forth. We’re still talking about three characters here. Well, if you have a cast of 56 diverse characters to balance, you’re basically screwed. Nobody’s that smart.

Clearly, demanding 20+ evenly matched characters is an unrealistic expectation. What would be considered a reasonable number? Looking through the Classics, i’d say any “good” fighting game with a legitimate top tier of four or more characters is perfectly acceptable.

The real question is, at what point do tier rankings factor into the perceived value of a game? Certainly they don’t matter in the beginning, because early impressions almost always turn out laughably inaccurate. It takes everyone three to six months to grasp the game’s true nature. Is it offensive? Defensive? Structured? Chaotic? Technical? Intuitive? Tactical? Instinctive?

If we’re lucky enough to find a deep, rewarding game on our hands, the next step is running it through the tournament gauntlet to ensure it doesn’t degenerate into a one- or two-character affair. As long as its top tier holds steady at four or more characters and the game itself doesn’t break down into abusing one narrow tactic, it can survive indefinitely as a competitive mainstay. This is a proven fact, because numerous such games have thrived for nearly a decade in the tournament circuit, until a sequel or upgrade was released.

Even with four evenly matched fighters, we’re looking at ten possible matchups, including mirror matches. That’s plenty! Five viable characters give us fifteen potential matchups. When we’re talking about classic-caliber games, each of these matchups can stay interesting for years on end. How long have people been playing Ryu vs Guile in SF2: Hyper Fighting?

To be clear, it doesn’t matter how many squares there are on the character select screen. Who cares whether five useless portraits remain in the game or fifty? Percentage-based breakdowns are meaningless. Only two factors count when considering balance: whether there are four or more characters in top tier, and whether the matchups between them measure up to our high standards. When either of these criteria ceases to be true, that’s when we should stop playing the game.

Until then, there’s nothing to complain about. You simply can’t expect much more than this. Yes, you may have to switch characters to accomodate the realization that your original choice can’t compete against top tier. However, if you enjoy the core game and you have four diverse characters to choose from, just pick one and continue enjoying it.

Real examples of broken and overpowered characters are ST Akuma and CvS Nakoruru. They single-handedly shut down over 90% of their respective rosters and have no unfavorable matchups to speak of. There’s literally no reason not to pick them, which forces players to choose between banning them or retiring those games. That’s what unbalanced really means. Someone like SF4 Sagat is nowhere near this dominant. The term simply doesn’t fit.

Furthermore, convincing others to boycott powerful-but-not-overpowered characters is a disservice to your local community. It’s one thing to play obscure characters because you honestly feel they give you the best chance to win. However, strictly avoiding a strong character simply because he’s strong not only weakens your game, but also any friends who rely on you for competition. This is how Japan almost lost in ST at the first USA vs Japan invitational team tournament and how SoCal became a non-factor in CvS2.

 

[MetalMusicMan]

Gotta love Maj / Sonic Hurricane.

 

[Justblaze647]

Idk if this was addressed already or not, but what are you guys planning to do about your problem getting members of the BBR to vote? I approve of your diplomatic approach towards coming to a like minded opinion, but you can hardly pass off your decisions as collectively agreed upon by the group if only 16 members vote on a stage (as was the case with Jungle Japes). Honestly, imo, that's too small of a portion of the BBR's participants to come to any sort of justifiable conclusion. I'm just wondering.

Upon looking closer at this post, I realize that this may fall into the category of infringing on your privacy or whatever. So you don't necessarily have to say specifically what your doing, just a confirmation that steps are being taken.

 

[Kewkky]

Idk if this was addressed already or not, but what are you guys planning to do about your problem getting members of the BBR to vote? I approve of your diplomatic approach towards coming to a like minded opinion, but you can hardly pass off your decisions as collectively agreed upon by the group if only 16 members vote on a stage (as was the case with Jungle Japes). Honestly, imo, that's too small of a portion of the BBR's participants to come to any sort of justifiable conclusion. I'm just wondering.

Upon looking closer at this post, I realize that this may fall into the category of infringing on your privacy or whatever. So you don't necessarily have to say specifically what your doing, just a confirmation that steps are being taken.

Inactive members of the BBR get kicked out all the time, as well as members who don't perform up to the expectations set for a BBR member. Hopefully in the future (hoping for the near, not the far), we get a very active BBR instead of "20 votes with 100 members there".

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

What do you mean by BBR "standards" (hope you don't take this as a personal insult)?

 

[sunshade]

So I just noticed that the brawl backrooms percentage of active members is kind of like the character viability we were just talking about.

If the back room only had 25 members would people still be complaining over those 20 votes? Why do those votes become less legitimate if only 20% votes as apposed to 80%?

 

[Triforce Of Chozo]

Is the BBR going to start purposely specializing--creating groups to discuss and vote on each different topic, such as stages or characters, rather than just allowing people to participate in whatever they feel like? The impression I'm getting right now is that BBR members just vote on/discuss things they're familiar with, and if only twenty people feel confident enough to vote on a stage's viability, then only twenty will vote. With over around 100 members, this makes people think that the backroom is extremely inactive, when the reality may be that most people aren't complete experts on the topic and don't feel confident enough to make an entirely informed decision that can affect tournament rulesets nation-wide. If the BBR were to create specialized groups or branches, then having twenty-three of a twenty-five member group vote looks much better.

 

[Justblaze647]

@Sunshade: You're asking the difference between 1/5 of a whole versus 4/5?

Go take a math course

 

[sunshade]

...you missed my point entirely.

I am saying in the same way that a game with 10 viable characters and 50 nonviable is equally balanced to a game with 10 viable and 20 nonviable the Backroom having 20 votes is not an issue.

People see a percentage and not a total number of votes and this is causing things to be taken out of proportion.

go take a reading comprehension class.

 

[gallax]

Aight guys just calm down here. No more need for flaming.

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

It's not as bad flaming as the last place. At least they could provide reason.

Is this flaming?

 

[StarLight]

when the reality may be that most people aren't complete experts on the topic and don't feel confident enough to make an entirely informed decision that can affect tournament rulesets nation-wide.

I hope not. The bbr is supposedly renowned for having a larger knowledge of Brawl than your average competitor/poster on here. This would suggest otherwise.

 

[Justblaze647]

...you missed my point entirely.

I am saying in the same way that a game with 10 viable characters and 50 nonviable is equally balanced to a game with 10 viable and 20 nonviable the Backroom having 20 votes is not an issue.

People see a percentage and not a total number of votes and this is causing things to be taken out of proportion.

go take a reading comprehension class.

You seem to not understand my point

If I am to take your suggestion at face value, it would bring up an alarming amount of discrepancies that I personally would have with the back room. What is (generally) expected of the back room is a collective opinion. One that takes into account the majority of the BBR members. That is where they get respect from the community: taking a plethora of mindsets, experiences, and dispositions, and combining them into one, easily referenced and accessible medium.

What you allude to as 'not an issue' is the non cooperation and/or participation of up to 80 percent of the current leading authority of the competitive Smash scene. This, imo, is unacceptable. Why waste the energy maintaining a group of 100 people if 20 is enough to get the job done? People back there need to step it up, or relinquish their title.

This also differs from you game reference because, once published, the game, it's characters, it's design, and virtually all of it's elements (save for a few option tweaks) are final.

Spoiler

A major exception to this being Brawl, because ******* figured out how to hax the *** outta this game lol

The BBR on the other hand is a constantly changing and evolving body. As Kewkky said inactive members are being removed all the time, and there are times when people are permitted to apply to membership, adding to the cast.

tl;dr: lrn2proveyourpointbetter

Aight guys just calm down here. No more need for flaming.

I'm cooler than ice cubes here... no need to slap me on the wrist lol

 

[Eddie G]

I hope not. The bbr is supposedly renowned for having a larger knowledge of Brawl than your average competitor/poster on here. This would suggest otherwise.

Why? Because you don't agree with their decision?

 

[Kewkky]

What do you mean by BBR "standards" (hope you don't take this as a personal insult)?

Well, if you apply for the BBR, you're pretty much saying "Hey, i want to spend time making the competitive scene a better place for competitive smashers!". If you don't do this, and don't show that you're capable of logical arguments, or testing (and other types of small things that would make you a good theorist), you know you're gonna get kicked for sub-par performance of a BBR member.

Is the BBR going to start purposely specializing--creating groups to discuss and vote on each different topic, such as stages or characters, rather than just allowing people to participate in whatever they feel like? The impression I'm getting right now is that BBR members just vote on/discuss things they're familiar with, and if only twenty people feel confident enough to vote on a stage's viability, then only twenty will vote. With over around 100 members, this makes people think that the backroom is extremely inactive, when the reality may be that most people aren't complete experts on the topic and don't feel confident enough to make an entirely informed decision that can affect tournament rulesets nation-wide. If the BBR were to create specialized groups or branches, then having twenty-three of a twenty-five member group vote looks much better.

I don't wanna leak anything, so I'll try to be real foggy while still sheding light on something. The BBR may only have "20 votes", but that's more votes than a combination of a couple of character boards. Some people aren't computers in there, so it's only natural some members don't know about EVERYTHING in the game. When the number of people get real even concerning a topic, or it becomes too controversial (like the MK debate), then we bring it to the public for input. Thing is, when we let the public talk, we get lots of morons and trolls posting crap in our threads and that just makes us not want to post anything and ask the community at all. Sometimes it's not even deserved, we're just human, yet people treat us like a holy entity that must bring the perfect answer to problems without making any mistakes.

I can't specify or guess anything that we're gonna be doing in the future, but at the very least I'd like to say that the vast majority of us don't think the community is worthless. We value the majority's opinion, but sometimes the topic gets so much controversy, we're forced to take it back into our forum and keep the discussions there, with the rest of "the most outstanding members brought together to make an overall best, brightest, and most organized group around pertaining to Brawl's competitive gameplay", or Brawl BackRoom.

 

[StarLight]

Why? Because you don't agree with their decision?

80 out of the 100 most 'brilliant minds in smash' don't vote on one of the core mechanics of the game. That would suggest their knowledge isn't what it's cracked up to be. However there were obviously many other factors involved with non-voters, namely inactivity. My post had nothing to do with my opinion of the new ruleset.

Brilliant job taking my post out of context though, here's a cookie.

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

Well, if you apply for the BBR, you're pretty much saying "Hey, i want to spend time making the competitive scene a better place for competitive smashers!". If you don't do this, and don't show that you're capable of logical arguments, or testing (and other types of small things that would make you a good theorist), you know you're gonna get kicked for sub-par performance of a BBR member.

Ah, I see. So basically it's "If you lack the motivation, you might as well leave"?

 

[Kewkky]

Ah, I see. So basically it's "If you lack the motivation, you might as well leave"?

That's the gist of it. Nice to know my explanation went through well.

 

[Justblaze647]

I don't wanna leak anything, so I'll try to be real foggy while still sheding light on something. The BBR may only have "20 votes", but that's more votes than a combination of a couple of character boards. Some people aren't computers in there, so it's only natural some members don't know about EVERYTHING in the game. When the number of people get real even concerning a topic, or it becomes too controversial (like the MK debate), then we bring it to the public for input. Thing is, when we let the public talk, we get lots of morons and trolls posting crap in our threads and that just makes us not want to post anything and ask the community at all. Sometimes it's not even deserved, we're just human, yet people treat us like a holy entity that must bring the perfect answer to problems without making any mistakes.

Not trying to be a ****, Kewkky, but If someone is in the back room, they should at least be able to provide an opinion on whether a stage should be legal or not. You're right, they're not computers, and they don't have to know everything, but stages are something so universal in the game that they almost have no choice but to have at least some wherewithal of the stages... especially being in the back room.

 

[The Real Inferno]

So 4 viables, and 4 supports. Thats a total of 8 characters that can work for you in a tourney. 1 of the support per 2 viables... That makes a total of 28 different teams.

Spoiler

1) Magneto + Cable + Sentinel
Magneto + Cable + Storm
Magneto + Cable + Cyclops
Magneto + Cable + Psylocke
Magneto + Cable + Doctor Doom
Magneto + Cable + Captain Commando
7) Magneto + Sentinel + Storm
Magneto + Sentinel + Cyclops
Magneto + Sentinel + Psylocke
Magneto + Sentinel + Doctor Doom
Magneto + Sentinel + Captain Commando
12) Magneto + Storm + Cyclops
Magneto + Storm + Psylocke
Magneto + Storm + Doctor Doom
Magneto + Storm + Captain Commando
16) Cable + Sentinel + Storm
Cable + Sentinel + Cyclops
Cable + Sentinel + Psylocke
Cable + Sentinel + Doctor Doom
Cable + Sentinel + Captain Commando
21) Cable + Storm + Cyclops
Cable + Storm + Psylocke
Cable + Storm + Doctor Doom
Cable + Storm + Captain Commando
25) Sentinel + Storm + Cyclops
Sentinel + Storm + Psylocke
Sentinel + Storm + Doctor Doom
Sentinel + Storm + Captain Commando

That's a lot of viability.

Actually most of those team combinations ARENT viable. You have to have certain characters on certain teams for them to work right. You can't just throw together any random three.

This is not the MvC2 thread, guys.

As for inactivity, there is much house cleaning to do, and that is all I will say.

 

[T-block]

Can we stop censor bypassing please?

Stages are not really universal with the way competitive Brawl has evolved. Many people I'm sure have no experience on Distant Planet other than four player FFAs with items, etc. If someone is gonna come in with "PTAD should be banned because the cars kill at 0% and are impossible to avoid for the entire course", then honestly I'd rather their vote did not count, because they are voting based on false information.

That said, the level of activity is a concern, and as has been stated several times already, we will address it.