Meta Competitive Smash Ruleset Discussion

[MajorMajora]

Wrote this about rules, seemed like an appropriate place to drop it -

http://smash4u.net/what-happens-in-vegas-should-stay-in-vegas/

So pretty much you don't like that not all combinations of customs are legal? Well, we can't have them all legal until we devise a new system that allows for it. And we aren't really banning 86% of the game, since there aren't 81 different custom moves, just 81 sets, many of which are nearly identical to others. Second, we are banning the ones people want to use the least, so it's less of a problem than you think. People still tend to use only 2-3 sets ing general, most sets aren't used anyways.

I agree that it doesn't encourage experimentation, and it definitely has flaws, but it's the best we have. AA's system does allow for bringing in your own sets, but it's not allowed at majors due to logistics. It's the best we have. It's good that you point out the flaws, but we aren't going to get a better system until someone makes a better system.

I'm hoping we take this out of vegas, at least till we get something better.

 

[DeLux]

So pretty much you don't like that not all combinations of customs are legal? Well, we can't have them all legal until we devise a new system that allows for it. And we aren't really banning 86% of the game, since there aren't 81 different custom moves, just 81 sets, many of which are nearly identical to others. Second, we are banning the ones people want to use the least, so it's less of a problem than you think. People still tend to use only 2-3 sets ing general, most sets aren't used anyways.

The number of things banned for no reason is immaterial to the fact that things are being banned for no reason.

I agree that it doesn't encourage experimentation, and it definitely has flaws, but it's the best we have. AA's system does allow for bringing in your own sets, but it's not allowed at majors due to logistics. It's the best we have. It's good that you point out the flaws, but we aren't going to get a better system until someone makes a better system.

it's not the best we have. The best would be a system with Wii U's prepped with the common sets, with all customs being legal. There is no reason to ban uncommon options since that contribute towards systemically stagnating the metagame.

 

[MajorMajora]

The number of things banned for no reason is immaterial to the fact that things are being banned for no reason.



it's not the best we have. The best would be a system with Wii U's prepped with the common sets, with all customs being legal. There is no reason to ban uncommon options since that contribute towards systemically stagnating the metagame.

I'm confused to how this differs from the current system. Do you mean the inability to upload sets? Honestly I say our best option is to go with this, develop some way of getting all customs on all systems and let people make a new set if they want to. Whether this be by automatic custom farming or by a power save I don't know.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

@ DeLux : In case you forgot, the custom sets were chosen after several months of discussion and feedback from the character boards on these very forums. The first project started in...November or December, I believe, and EVO's announcement that customs would be legal lead to a somewhat-hasty announcement of a second project in January or February. While I agree with you insofar that EVO limiting players to preset builds and only preset builds is unfortunate and doesn't do wonders for diversity, you do have to acknowledge that AA and co. have done everything in their power to try and ensure that the selected presets are the ones that users of each character would want to use in the first place at the time of the project's finalization, short of getting the top players for each character in a room together and labbing them all out exhaustively. (Patches since then have called a few of the sets into question -- Sonic's various Spin Dashes come to mind -- but there is literally no way to account for that sort of thing in advance. EDIT: Likewise, meta advancement/labbing can turn once-loved specials into liabilities, or vice versa. I believe Pac-Man and Duck Hunt are examples.)

As best as I can tell, and do forgive/correct me if this is wrong, your argument boils down to "the moveset project does not allow free selection of all possible permutations of customs, therefore all customs should be banned. (Until such time as free selection of all custom permutations is possible/feasible?)" At the risk of accidentally strawmanning you, this sounds awfully close to "it's not perfect so scrap it entirely." And that is not something I can agree with.

I also want to emphasize that the ONLY reason EVO is disallowing on-site custom set creation is due to the time pressure such a huge event entails. There is no reason that smaller events should not be able to permit players to make their own sets as they please, given that either a) a fully-unlocked 3DS is on hand to transfer sets (easy with powersaves) or b) the Wii U actually has all customs unlocked (tedious but doable, I did it myself in a month). And such a system would truly allow all permutations of custom moves to be allowed as the players wish, which seems like exactly what you want. At which point all you seem to be arguing against is that nationals like EVO are too big to really allow that and risk players wasting time, which I'm not sure is really fixable without god-tier TO skills.

 

[MajorMajora]

@ DeLux : In case you forgot, the custom sets were chosen after several months of discussion and feedback from the character boards on these very forums. The first project started in...November or December, I believe, and EVO's announcement that customs would be legal lead to a somewhat-hasty announcement of a second project in January or February. While I agree with you insofar that EVO limiting players to preset builds and only preset builds is unfortunate and doesn't do wonders for diversity, you do have to acknowledge that AA and co. have done everything in their power to try and ensure that the selected presets are the ones that users of each character would want to use in the first place at the time of the project's finalization, short of getting the top players for each character in a room together and labbing them all out exhaustively. (Patches since then have called a few of the sets into question -- Sonic's various Spin Dashes come to mind -- but there is literally no way to account for that sort of thing in advance. EDIT: Likewise, meta advancement/labbing can turn once-loved specials into liabilities, or vice versa. I believe Pac-Man and Duck Hunt are examples.)

As best as I can tell, and do forgive/correct me if this is wrong, your argument boils down to "the moveset project does not allow free selection of all possible permutations of customs, therefore all customs should be banned. (Until such time as free selection of all custom permutations is possible/feasible?)" At the risk of accidentally strawmanning you, this sounds awfully close to "it's not perfect so scrap it entirely." And that is not something I can agree with.

I also want to emphasize that the ONLY reason EVO is disallowing on-site custom set creation is due to the time pressure such a huge event entails. There is no reason that smaller events should not be able to permit players to make their own sets as they please, given that either a) a fully-unlocked 3DS is on hand to transfer sets (easy with powersaves) or b) the Wii U actually has all customs unlocked (tedious but doable, I did it myself in a month). And such a system would truly allow all permutations of custom moves to be allowed as the players wish, which seems like exactly what you want. At which point all you seem to be arguing against is that nationals like EVO are too big to really allow that and risk players wasting time, which I'm not sure is really fixable without god-tier TO skills.

If we have powersaves and can get all customs on any console, then I don't think the occasional new set being made in console is much of a time sink, especially since we already have things like changing buttons and custom name tags.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

If we have powersaves and can get all customs on any console, then I don't think the occasional new set being made in console is much of a time sink, especially since we already have things like changing buttons and custom name tags.

All fair points, and I'm actually inclined to agree. However that was Mr. Wizard's reasoning at the very least IIRC and I can only assume other large-scale TOs would at least consider it a concern.

 

[MajorMajora]

Even without powersaves we can use 3ds's. It's really dumb, though. We have trivial things like hand warmers and name changes, but when we need to cut for time restraints the first thing to go is something that actually benefits gameplay and comes up almost never.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Commentators complaining about FLSS. hhhhhngggggggggg

 

[adom4]

Commentators complaining about FLSS. hhhhhngggggggggg

about what?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

about what?

FLSS = Full List Stage Striking, i.e. no distinction between starter and counterpick stages. All legal stages can be picked from game 1. Apparently the commentators didn't like it.

 

[MajorMajora]

What did they say?

 

[DeLux]

My argument is more to the effect that we can't rest on EVO running the custom pre-approved sets. A majority of what should be legal is still banned in that ruleset, so rather than "scrapping entirely" I'm saying we aren't pushing custom legal as the option hard enough.

It is also pointing out the same arguments people are using for why "customs should be banned" is the very reason why they should be legal lol

 

[hypersonicJD]

Our Character competitive discussion got shut down. Could you please help us? D: Sorry for the spam. We do need to have another thread for those discussions.

Also, Customs have been helping the meta game pretty nicely. So many characters participating. Even Low TIers like Charizard, Zelda and other ones.

 

[Pazx]

@ DeLux this is an EVO-only thing. Most other tournaments allow you to use any combination of custom moves, it's unfortunate that EVO wasn't able to do the same.

 

[DeLux]

@ DeLux this is an EVO-only thing. Most other tournaments allow you to use any combination of custom moves, it's unfortunate that EVO wasn't able to do the same.

Proof of this? Most of the "custom legal" areas have used the Evo ruleset as Evo prep. This includes not allowing custom uploads. I've heard people give all kidns of arguments why only the evo sets should be allowed lol

 

[Pazx]

Proof of this? Most of the "custom legal" areas have used the Evo ruleset as Evo prep. This includes not allowing custom uploads. I've heard people give all kidns of arguments why only the evo sets should be allowed lol

I can only speak from my experience, I've watched and attended custom tournaments that allow you to import sets from a 3DS. @Amazing Ampharos and the OCMP itself both encourage allowing people to transfer sets, so it's disappointing to hear that other tournaments don't allow it.

 

[kackamee]

Tourneys haven't been letting people upload their own sets? I thought the EVO sets were just a recommendation of the 10 most likely sets people would use, and if your preferred set wasn't there, you could just change one of them really quickly.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Proof of this? Most of the "custom legal" areas have used the Evo ruleset as Evo prep. This includes not allowing custom uploads. I've heard people give all kidns of arguments why only the evo sets should be allowed lol

Then those areas are stupid and should not be emulated.

 

[DeLux]

The point of all of this being, if you ask someone if it's cool to ban 86% of the game as a national standard, the gut reaction ought to be no. And that's the Evo Standard. By extrapolation, banning all customs is worse since it's banning 98% of the possible builds of the game.

I am wondering why we don't do some sort of occupy movement for customs, since we are 98%.




Relevant - http://smash4u.net/from-the-evo-2015-floor-custom-moves/

 

[dav3yb]

FLSS = Full List Stage Striking, i.e. no distinction between starter and counterpick stages. All legal stages can be picked from game 1. Apparently the commentators didn't like it.

What i heard from a few of them was mainly how so many people just kind of agreed to smashville or battlefield, because it takes too long to strike a full list. i'd say 95% of the tournament was contained to smashville battlefield, or FD. I think i saw some delfino in pools, and maybe a town and city sprinkled within, but i honestly can't recall any other stages i saw. (oh, and i saw duckhunt once)

Anyways, i had somewhat an interesting idea concerning customs. make it less of a "choose what set" and instead, try and find a "new default" for each character. This would mainly only affect one or two moves for some characters, and would only be worth changing if a certain custom was just absolutely miles better than the original.

one example i could maybe think of would be Wario's fast bike. It seems like it's pretty much the best bike he has, allowing him much better horizontal recovery, even the ability to fly under stages nearly seamlessly. So just make a single set for Wario that has all his defaults + custom bike, and call that the new default that must be used over the 1111 set, and no other sets will be available either. but this was just a random idea, so dont take it too seriously.

Also, i think customs should stick around for teams at the very least. I think teams is where some of that crazy **** needs to be abusable.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

What i heard from a few of them was mainly how so many people just kind of agreed to smashville or battlefield, because it takes too long to strike a full list. i'd say 95% of the tournament was contained to smashville battlefield, or FD. I think i saw some delfino in pools, and maybe a town and city sprinkled within, but i honestly can't recall any other stages i saw. (oh, and i saw duckhunt once)

This always confuses me because if I'm told I have X stages to work with, you better believe I'm going to seriously consider which one(s) benefit my character the most and do everything I can to go there. Settling for Smashville just because sounds like laziness.

 

[dav3yb]

This always confuses me because if I'm told I have X stages to work with, you better believe I'm going to seriously consider which one(s) benefit my character the most and do everything I can to go there. Settling for Smashville just because sounds like laziness.

seems to be the prevailing thought process of the community though!

what even were the legal stages for evo?

 

[ParanoidDrone]

seems to be the prevailing thought process of the community though!

what even were the legal stages for evo?

Battlefield
Final Destination
Smashville
Town & City
Halberd
Duck Hunt
Delfino Plaza
Lylat Cruise
Castle Siege

Stage striking for game 1 was from that list, winner got 1 or 2 stage bans for game 2 (can't remember which) and loser picked their choice from the rest. (Was DSR in effect?)

 

[A_Kae]

This always confuses me because if I'm told I have X stages to work with, you better believe I'm going to seriously consider which one(s) benefit my character the most and do everything I can to go there. Settling for Smashville just because sounds like laziness.

The fact that so many people only play on smashville, battlefield, and FD is just disgusting. What's even the point of the counterpick and stage striking systems if that's what we're doing?

seems to be the prevailing thought process of the community though!

what even were the legal stages for evo?

It's really too bad that that's the case. It'd be a lot more interesting to have more stages played on.

Legal stages are: Battlefield, Final Destination, Smashville, Lylat Cruise, Town & City, Castle Siege, Delfino Plaza, Duck Hunt, Halberd

 

[dav3yb]

i know i NEVER saw halberd. Lylat i think i saw in one match, and castle siege i did see in a match.

it certainly got me thinking about the stage select system, as i'll be helping with a tournament soon. last time we did one we used the somewhat "standard 13" and did FLSS. For the next one, i was considering cutting a few, and doing the starter/counter split.

 

[Illuminose]

The thing that's abundantly clear to me is exactly what I suspected. FLSS is a complete waste of time. We start on our normal starters anyways. Literally nothing changes.

 

[ぱみゅ]

i know i NEVER saw halberd. Lylat i think i saw in one match, and castle siege i did see in a match.

it certainly got me thinking about the stage select system, as i'll be helping with a tournament soon. last time we did one we used the somewhat "standard 13" and did FLSS. For the next one, i was considering cutting a few, and doing the starter/counter split.

"Standard 13" works fine.

The thing that's abundantly clear to me is exactly what I suspected. FLSS is a complete waste of time. We start on our normal starters anyways. Literally nothing changes.

People don't know how to use it, and still choose to take Sheik to Smashville.
It's crystal clear that players are ignorant when it comes to stages, take poor decisions, and deny to think Smashville is a problem.

 

[Kaladin]

"Standard 13" works fine.

People don't know how to use it, and still choose to take Sheik to Smashville.
It's crystal clear that players are ignorant when it comes to stages, take poor decisions, and deny to think Smashville is a problem.

Let's be honest here. Smashville is a temporary/transforming walkoff.

 

[b2jammer]

I've played around with a few stages myself, and while I haven't really gotten into them yet (especially on Anther's, since that's the closest to tournament play I can get), I can definitely agree that there is untapped potential in the lesser-used stages; Falco on Castle Siege in particular seemed to be a good match, complimenting Falco's very vertical air game, especially in the first phase.

 

[Skarfelt]

There's not much point in having a ton of stages if no one's actually going to them and all they're doing is adding more bans, making counterpicks weaker. There is an argument that top players are being silly in their stage choices and I while I agree, Nairo kept taking ZeRo to Smashville because he had Battlefield and Town and City banned out. He could have taken him to Halberd or Delfino but those stages are just so risky, even for the top players - it's sooo easy to just get grabbed at a really bad timing and die off of it on Delfino or for RNGesus not to be on your side for Halberd. Ironically, the bigger stage choice is actually hurting stage choice right now.

All that said, Dreamland wasn't there that time so things would have changed for sure in the counterpicking process but mish.

 

[Ghostbone]

Top players don't like to go to Delfino or Halberd because it randomizes the results (low % kills and hazards in the case of Halberd), they'd rather be able to outplay their opponent because if they want to win the set they'll need to learn to outplay them anyway, getting a lucky win game 2 doesn't help there. (and if you beat your opponent on a static stage game 1 you'd feel most comfortable going to a similar stage game 3)

Also, Smashville isn't that strong for Sheik, she's the best character in the game and has strengths on literally every stage. (out of the evo list, I'd say Castle Siege, Delfino and Halberd are potentially better for Sheik than Smashville, while other stages are basically just preference)

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Also, Smashville isn't that strong for Sheik, she's the best character in the game and has strengths on literally every stage. (out of the evo list, I'd say Castle Siege, Delfino and Halberd are potentially better for Sheik than Smashville, while other stages are basically just preference)

Not according to the Sheiks here. I quote their stage thread (emphasis mine):

TL;DR:
This stage is absolutely amazing for Sheik.

Advantages:
It's wide enough that you can play defensive/needle camp when needed, while also being small enough that people can't easily escape you if they're trying to camp. It's long enough that you can Fair string pretty well across it, but easily the best thing about this stage is that if you catch someone in a Fair string while the platform is off the stage, you can 0-death them incredibly easily by just carrying them up to the platform and off from there.
Bonus advantage:
for some reason everyone likes going here because it's the 'most neutral stage'. It isn't at all, but luckily for us it's one of Sheik's best stages, and people like taking us there.

Disadvantages:
The Downsides to this stage are small things like not being able to BF into the stage to recover (unlike Siege and some Omegas, for example), but nothing really major.

Other notes:

• You can BF onto a balloon and bounce off of it, either to cover options or escape (or just look flashy, of course).
• Blast Zones are average size.

EDIT: To clarify, they say Castle Siege is good for her too (and Delfino is oddly absent from the OP), but when Smashville is explicitly called out in the Sheik subforum stage thread as one of her best stages, I'm inclined to believe them. They also claim that Halberd, while not a bad stage per se, tends to help the opponent more than Sheik. (She falls fast so she can't shark very well is my interpretation.)

 

[Skarfelt]

Totally agree re: why players don't go to Delfino etc.

Gotta disagree re: Smashville though. I definitely think it's her best stage but she is good on basically every stage in the game. Banning Shei's Smashville is not akin to banning, say, Battlefield against Rosa when she can juggle in the matchup well. I don't think she really cares about stage but she shouldn't be allowed Smashville for most matchups. The thing is though that a lot of people would be very reluctant to take her to FD just because some characters physically can't land against needles if they're caught at an awkward position landing. During striking, it's very rare a character will get BF vs Sheik unless they're like Mr R and favour that stage. They're unlikely to want to go to FD if they're playing someone like Mario or Luigi who get destroyed by needles so the whole "smh why do people take Sheik to Smashville" is honestly really understandable.

The fact is that Halberd, Delfino and Siege are doing absolutely nothing but strangling stage choice right now in the stagelist. I mean yeah, okay, if you were to actually counterpick using those stages you'd find that they're probably more effective than going to Smashville most games but on the big stage, I would neeeever want to risk going to Halberd or Delfino like that - their nature means that small mistakes can translate into huge mistakes.

The other thing is that I don't really see how they're necessary for a balanced stagelist any more. Before Dreamland, there were only two stages that favoured vertical pressure in the traditional way (BF and T&C) so I could understand having Halberd/Delfino around (even if it made NO sense to give Diddy three godlike stages) but now that there's three stages like that, there's not really any reason to allow them. They don't add anything to the stagelist besides more bans for the winning players and less chance of the better player winning when actually picked. There's a pretty fine balance between super flat vs super platformed with FD/DH vs BF/DL plus Smashville/T&C as two representatives of the two styles which still favour the other style at least a little bit. Lylat Cruise sits in the middle as a stage that doesn't necessarily favour either. Those seven stages compliment each other extremely well on a stagelist. Counterpicks should have a purpose and the winning player shouldn't really be able to ban out every good option for the other character and force them onto Smashville (this is ignoring the fact that Halberd is a good option for ZSS etc. - good option it may be, but if no one actually picks it then it's not really an option).

Castle Siege should never have been legal in the first place. Trash stage is trash.

If the community really wants some moving stage legal, Wuhu and Skyloft are MUCH better than Delfino/Halberd imo. I still don't think either stage is that good but their blast zones aren't total garbage, the stages rarely actively pick one player and try to kill them eand so on. It's just that everyone's used to Delfino/Halberd cuz Brawl.

 

[Terotrous]

The point of all of this being, if you ask someone if it's cool to ban 86% of the game as a national standard, the gut reaction ought to be no. And that's the Evo Standard. By extrapolation, banning all customs is worse since it's banning 98% of the possible builds of the game.

The thing is, those non-allowable movesets aren't 98% of the game, they're like 0.1% of the game because no one ever picks them.

Realistically, we could restrict everyone to a single set and we'd still be accommodating about 85% of people. There's really not that much variety in custom sets, sadly.

 

[b2jammer]

The thing is, those non-allowable movesets aren't 98% of the game, they're like 0.1% of the game because no one ever picks them.

Realistically, we could restrict everyone to a single set and we'd still be accommodating about 85% of people. There's really not that much variety in custom sets, sadly.

Not to mention we've been essentially doing the same thing with stages since Melee and we've been doing just fine for the most part.

 

[MajorMajora]

Not to mention we've been essentially doing the same thing with stages since Melee and we've been doing just fine for the most part.

Melee has a strong competitive scene. It has few legal stages. It does not have a strong competitive scene because it has few stages.

 

[EnGarde]

Hi, not sure if this is the right place to ask this question, and I haven't read responses back far enough to see if it's already been answered.

Anyways, I was looking at the rules for Smash Con (link), and I don't see it mention the DLC characters or stages at all. Will Dreamland, Roy, Ryu, and Lucas be legal at Smash Con?

 

[dav3yb]

Has any upcoming tournaments announced what they'll be doing with regards to custom moves being on or off?

 

[Illuminose]

Has any upcoming tournaments announced what they'll be doing with regards to custom moves being on or off?

Paragon LA is on. Super Smash Con, Big House 5, and SKTAR 4 are off.

 

[SuperDavio]

Could someone enlighten me as to why the 3DS is a banned controller in many tournaments, while the Pro controller is still allowed? This seems inconsistent to me, just wondering if someone could shed some light on it.