Meta Competitive Smash Ruleset Discussion

[Jaxas]

Changing the basic rules based on the position in the tournament seems very undesirable to me. 2 stock to 3 stock is a much bigger difference than best of 3 vs best of 5 because it changes the progression of each individual match.

Honestly, while I sympathize with the tournament time argument to some extent, I think the Rage mechanic basically forces us to 3 stock. Its effect is just too strong and one-sided in a 2 stock match. 2 stock also makes SDs or lucky gimps too impactful as well.

I disagree that SDs or lucky gimps would be too impactful; if you SD that's your fault, you screwed yourself. As for the gimp thing, all it does is raise the reward, so we'd probably see more people going for them.

However, the only way that I think 2-stock should be allowed is in a Bo5 setting, which comes with its own problems that overwhelm any potential upsides to the 2-stock format.

With that (and some other reasons, but they've already been stated a bunch) I'm an advocate for 3stock and 6-8min (I've yet to see a consensus on this anywhere, though 8min seems more prevalent because that's how it's been in the past).

 

[Thinkaman]

Changing the basic rules based on the position in the tournament seems very undesirable to me. 2 stock to 3 stock is a much bigger difference than best of 3 vs best of 5 because it changes the progression of each individual match.

Bo3 vs Bo5 has huge implications with stage selection though... even without DSR.

Edit: To be clear, I agree. It's weird to have a tourney where people play different games in different rounds, even if those games are very similar. (But not the same!)

 

[Terotrous]

if you SD that's your fault, you screwed yourself.

That's true, but it's pretty anticlimactic when someone SDs and you know that they have zero chance to catch up (which is basically the case in 2-stock match). Part of the reason people play 3 (or 4) stock matches is so that unfortunate / random events have less impact on the match as a whole.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Bo3 vs Bo5 has huge implications with stage selection though... even without DSR.

Edit: To be clear, I agree. It's weird to have a tourney where people play different games in different rounds, even if those games are very similar. (But not the same!)

Is there a reason finals matches are BO5 in the first place?

Also with the Wii U looking like it'll have a fairly large list of viable stages, would BO5 be feasible there in any sort of capacity?

 

[Terotrous]

Is there a reason finals matches are BO5 in the first place?

It's mainly just to ensure that the best player has the best chance to win. Since the final usually features the highest level of competition at the tournament, that's the one where they want to spend some extra time to make sure they get the best result.

Also with the Wii U looking like it'll have a fairly large list of viable stages, would BO5 be feasible there in any sort of capacity?

It's certainly feasible from a DSR perspective, but it takes a long, long time to run a tournament that's BO5 the whole way unless you have very few participants.

 

[popsofctown]

Based on discussion I've seen about the Rage mechanic, I'm starting to strongly feel that 1-stock is the only right choice for this edition of smash. Let me explain.

Rage has a weird effect on respawning players, which I didn't realize until other posters pointed it out. If two players are at 130%, and one gets a kill first, one guy loses a stock and respawns. The killer got the right read first and deserves a slight edge for that. But instead the killer gets a huge edge, because he's now no longer at kill % himself because his opponent's moves do less knockback at 0%.

Since comeback mechanics are anticompetitive, you might assume stay-ahead mechanics are opposite and therefore competitive, but both are actually anticompetitive. Both comeback mechanics and stay-ahead mechanics make tests of skill less important, with stay-ahead only the first tests are most important, with comeback only the last tests are important. It's a weighted average of skill tests instead of a true average of skill tests. The former fluctuates more because the additional tests don't counterweigh quite right.

Rage actually functions quite fine in time matches, the default for the game. And it also functions quite fine in one stock games. It's not a stay-ahead mechanic and one stock games, and is somewhere between neutral and slight comeback mechanic in one stock games depending on how you view it. It's kinda like since a tenth of your damage buffs your opponent's knockback, all damage values are just nine tenths as useful across the board.

A nifty side effect of one stock games is they don't have the respawn invincibility mechanic at all, which I won't assert as being bad for competition but I will assert as being unfun for me personally and an anecdotal handful of people.


Ask yourself, if nintendo patched the game to add the KO healer effect to every character, would you want one stock games? Because really that's what's happening under the hood, it's just less obvious. It's something that's going to become even more evident as players master this game at a higher level.
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An unrelated reason 1 stock format is good for this game is that it has so much gimping and SDs. The new ledge mechanic encourages some really aggressive offstage, and some of the spikes and SDs can have the feel like a home-run in a 3 inning game of baseball in a Bo3 set. 1 stock format obviously frees up time to go beyond Bo3, and using additional games is a better way of adding sample size on some of the high impact home run plays like Mario fair. If you land a Mario fair spike in 2 stock or even 3 stock Bo3, you just have to trade damage for the rest of the game to win, and then you only need to win 1 of the other two games while your opponent needs to win 2. If you land a Mario fair spike in a 1 stock Bo5 (or Bo7, Bo9..), you don't need to trade damage to finish out the win, but trading damage and breaking mostly even isn't hard anyhow. But now your advantage is reduced to needing to win 2 games while your opponent needs to win 3. That means that now you need to show you can pull off that Mario fair spike consistently and prove you deserve the win!
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The drawbacks to 1 stock smash is:
1: There's a new tempo to get used to, which is a little bleh.
2: The competition process itself is slowed down by the loading screen.
3: The stage selection rules have to be restructured

1 is an unavoidable cost, but one that hopefully evaporates after an acclimation phase.
2 is a cost we don't know the exact nature of yet for wii U. I have noticed that games load faster in Smash 3DS if players don't change characters though, so that's something to keep in mind. For speed purposes, the character counterpicking freedom should perhaps be reduced to keep the loading screen swift. Reducing character counterpicking would really just bring the format back to the same feel as 2-3 stock counterpicking, since you can't counterpick between stocks.
3 is an initial cost but not really a longterm one. Some games should probably just be played on a repeat of the same stage, for speed of play and possibly loading time effects too. The current stage selection method adds more time spent stage selecting the more games a set contains, but my favored stage selection method takes the same amount of time regardless of how many games are in the set (FLSS, game one on unstruck stage, game N+1 on the new stage that the winner of game N struck latest during stage striking.)


Well, that's my .02$

 

[Terotrous]

Not sure if the post above is a joke or not. It's really detailed for a joke, but 1 stock is never going to happen. The fact that fighters get more than one life is one of the most important parts of smash. Limiting it to one stock each would vastly alter the neutral game as the parts where you come back form having lost a stock and need to try to even it up would be totally removed, and it would likely make the game much more defensive in general since committing to anything is so risky. Also, Little Mac KO Punch now instantly wins the entire game if it lands, which is lulzy.

 

[popsofctown]

Not sure if the post above is a joke or not. It's really detailed for a joke, but 1 stock is never going to happen. The fact that fighters get more than one life is one of the most important parts of smash. Limiting it to one stock each would vastly alter the neutral game as the parts where you come back form having lost a stock and need to try to even it up would be totally removed, and it would likely make the game much more defensive in general since committing to anything is so risky. Also, Little Mac KO Punch now instantly wins the entire game if it lands, which is lulzy.

KO punch already -almost- instantly wins the entire game. The margin of advantage KO punch generates is huge. It's like Mario fair, which I discussed.

Making comebacks with blue shells is a huge part of the way Mario Kart is played, but if 1 lap games removed blueshells from Mario Kart, that is more competitive and that is how I would want to play the game.

 

[Terotrous]

KO punch already -almost- instantly wins the entire game. The margin of advantage KO punch generates is huge. It's like Mario fair, which I discussed.

Not in 3-stock.

Making comebacks with blue shells is a huge part of the way Mario Kart is played, but if 1 lap games removed blueshells from Mario Kart, that is more competitive and that is how I would want to play the game.

Smash doesn't really have a blueshell mechanic (and rage certainly isn't comparable). It'd be akin to just making all races 1 lap only, so whomever got off to an early lead would always win. There's a reason most races tend to be around 2.5 minutes long in MK, it's so there's a decent amount of room for player skill to close any early gaps.

 

[Ryu_Ken]

1-stock matches would actually slow the pacing of the game IMO since you are given less room for error and you basically have one-shot at winning. If everyone were to play carefully, the match would drag on for a good amount due to heavy defensive play, making them boring to watch.

That's just looking at things simply, of course.

 

[Pazzo.]

1-Stock has far too many negative consequences.. as my posting predecessors have pointed out.

3-Stock is probably the best way to go, as the rage mechanic really won't effect too much that way.

 

[Ryusuta]

So, a tournament I was thinking of going to seems to not have any interest in custom moves. I kind of thought that the consensus was that custom moves are tournament viable while equipment is (obviously) not.

Their rationale is that custom moves are based on RNG grinding, and while that's true, given the home button exploit - and even without it - it should never take more than a half hour tops to get every move for a character if you just take it a couple of times through classic 7.0.

I think that with the whole item fiasco of a decade ago, there seems to be a pre-programmed response against anything "RNG." So... is this the end of custom moves? That would be heartbreaking if it is, because the tournament videos I've watched with them at Clash Tournaments for example have been very entertaining and exciting. Plus it would give other options to characters that need them.

 

[guedes the brawler]

So, a tournament I was thinking of going to seems to not have any interest in custom moves. I kind of thought that the consensus was that custom moves are tournament viable while equipment is (obviously) not.

Their rationale is that custom moves are based on RNG grinding, and while that's true, given the home button exploit - and even without it - it should never take more than a half hour tops to get every move for a character if you just take it a couple of times through classic 7.0.

I think that with the whole item fiasco of a decade ago, there seems to be a pre-programmed response against anything "RNG." So... is this the end of custom moves? That would be heartbreaking if it is, because the tournament videos I've watched with them at Clash Tournaments for example have been very entertaining and exciting. Plus it would give other options to characters that need them.

nah, with the 3DS-Wii U connection it won't be hard to make the full 380+ moves easily available to everyone.

 

[T0MMY]

Equipment is tied in with Custom Moves - to turn on Custom Moves the setting "Customization" is set to "On", which brings along with Equipment.

I have a personal inclination towards Custom Moves, but I am not fond of Equipment.
Rather unfortunate, but to I reason to run serious competitions with Customization: OFF and leave it at that. If I want to run a Customized Moves event it will be separate from the other event and also have Equipment made available, which should be plenty of fun and I'll see how that event compares to a For Glory type of event.

 

[Ryusuta]

Equipment is tied in with Custom Moves - to turn on Custom Moves the setting "Customization" is set to "On", which brings along with Equipment.

I have a personal inclination towards Custom Moves, but I am not fond of Equipment.
Rather unfortunate, but to I reason to run serious competitions with Customization: OFF and leave it at that. If I want to run a Customized Moves event it will be separate from the other event and also have Equipment made available, which should be plenty of fun and I'll see how that event compares to a For Glory type of event.

You can tell if a person is using equipment because they'll have a colored badge on the bottom left of their character.

 

[The_Altrox]

I love custom moves, but they're kinda hard to implement if somebody doesn't have them all unlocked on his wii u and they're hard to find all of them in the game and making them takes more time.

That's actually a strength of the 3DS where a person sets up their customs on their own time.

 

[T0MMY]

You can tell if a person is using equipment because they'll have a colored badge on the bottom left of their character.

Yes, that is how my attendees should know if their opponent has Customization on. Problem for me as a TO is enforcing it when my attendees don't notice it. That is why I have Customization: OFF and be done with it, competitively speaking.
In a Customization: ON event, it doesn't matter.

Pretty simple how I'm handling it.

 

[Djent]

That's true, but it's pretty anticlimactic when someone SDs and you know that they have zero chance to catch up (which is basically the case in 2-stock match). Part of the reason people play 3 (or 4) stock matches is so that unfortunate / random events have less impact on the match as a whole.

That's why 1 stock Bo5 is superior. You get right back in the action on even footing without a drawn out "Will he catch up? No he won't." that happens in 90% of matches.

 

[Ryu_Ken]

That's why 1 stock Bo5 is superior. You get right back in the action on even footing without a drawn out "Will he catch up? No he won't." that happens in 90% of matches.

1 stock Bo5? Now THAT sounds pretty ridiculous. Every stock lost (that is, only one stock) resets the match, which would be kinda taxing due to having to go through the menus and such. And also boring.

Also, I love the "Comeback? Or NAH?" moments. It makes the matches more interesting to watch, even if it sounds cliche.

 

[popsofctown]

People wouldn't play campier in one stock. What, do they only play aggressive in 3 stock because sacrificing an early stock might give them an edge? no.

There's still cushion for risk because one stock lets you go Bo5, or Bo7 or maybe even Bo9 (Bo9 is the same number of stocks as 3 stock Bo3).


KO punch has a much higher impact on a -set- in 2-3 stock Bo3. It has way less impact on a -set- in 1 stock Bo7.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Yes, that is how my attendees should know if their opponent has Customization on. Problem for me as a TO is enforcing it when my attendees don't notice it. That is why I have Customization: OFF and be done with it, competitively speaking.
In a Customization: ON event, it doesn't matter.

Pretty simple how I'm handling it.

Sorry if this sound disrespectful, but that's the lazy way of solving problems that's crippling the competitive smash community.
This is why we have stuff like "No items, Fox only, Final Destination."

 

[T0MMY]

Sorry if this sound disrespectful, but that's the lazy way of solving problems that's crippling the competitive smash community.
This is why we have stuff like "No items, Fox only, Final Destination."

Because I stated a fact (Customization OFF affects both Custom Moves and Equipment) the statement is somehow a lazy way of solving problems which cripples the Competitive Smash Community.
I think I will happily disagree that stating verifiable facts do such things and leave you to your own opinions.

 

[Ryusuta]

Because I stated a fact (Customization OFF affects both Custom Moves and Equipment) the statement is somehow a lazy way of solving problems which cripples the Competitive Smash Community.
I think I will happily disagree that stating verifiable facts do such things and leave you to your own opinions.

The problem is, it's very, very easy to distinguish a person using custom moves from someone using moves AND equipment. So, while they ARE under the same heading, allowing custom moves and banning equipment is a VERY easy rule to enforce.

 

[T0MMY]

The problem is, it's very, very easy to distinguish a person using custom moves from someone using moves AND equipment. So, while they ARE under the same heading, allowing custom moves and banning equipment is a VERY easy rule to enforce.

I don't see how being "very, very easy" to distinguish custom moves from custom moves + equipment is a "problem".

The only problem I identified is that of your misuse of "enforce[able]". As it isn't "enforcement" as you described, but actually relates under the clause of "Identifiable" ("distinguishing custom moves").
Even if what you say were the case, the practicality of enforcing it may be described subjectively as "easy" while sitting at a computer thinking about it fondly, but my real events are short-staffed as it is and having a referee double check everything for the competitors is not going to happen.

But, I'll give you a chance to be honest here, I am under the impression you are simply a Custom Moveset proponent and anyone who brings up any kind of opposition is going to come under some form of rebuttal - you mistakenly took my fact as opposition and created a "problem" that is both misrepresented and impractical. Therefore I will have to clarify further for you:

I am not against Custom Moves - I simply stated a fact and that fact still remains. Ad hominems and other fallacies won't change that; for me, at my events, I have "Customization:OFF". When people have unlocked their moves and equipment and want to try them out I will gladly have a "Customization:ON" event that allows BOTH the moves and equipment.
​

Very, very simple.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

Because I stated a fact (Customization OFF affects both Custom Moves and Equipment) the statement is somehow a lazy way of solving problems which cripples the Competitive Smash Community.
I think I will happily disagree that stating verifiable facts do such things and leave you to your own opinions.

Because you stated a fact (You ban customization since your attendees might not notice when their opponent is using equipment and you would have problems enforcing the "No equipment" rule.) I said you were taking the lazy way out since instead of letting the attendees search for infractions, you should be the one doing it.
(Or at least leaving some people responsible for doing it. I'm sure that it is impractical to check every game yourself.)

 

[T0MMY]

Because you stated a fact (You ban customization since your attendees might not notice when their opponent is using equipment and you would have problems enforcing the "No equipment" rule.) I said you were taking the lazy way out since instead of letting the attendees search for infractions, you should be the one doing it.

I don't believe it is the attendee's job to do the TO's job. They are there to play.
Since you understand it is not about being "lazy" but being "impractical", I'll once again disagree and go about my more simple and reasonable way of having both Customized and non-Customized events being separate.

 

[Ryusuta]

I don't see how being "very, very easy" to distinguish custom moves from custom moves + equipment is a "problem".

The only problem I identified is that of your misuse of "enforce[able]". As it isn't "enforcement" as you described, but actually relates under the clause of "Identifiable" ("distinguishing custom moves").
Even if what you say were the case, the practicality of enforcing it may be described subjectively as "easy" while sitting at a computer thinking about it fondly, but my real events are short-staffed as it is and having a referee double check everything for the competitors is not going to happen.

Dude, you don't NEED to check each individual person.

You have player 1 and player 2 playing locally with one another. Player 1 picks Rosalina and Luma with a custom move set and no equipment. No badge is visible. Player 2 picks Yoshi, but with custom equipment. All player 1 needs to do is LOOK AT HIS BOTTOM SCREEN and tell the other person "that's not a legal character" because it's clearly identified with the badge. You don't need to get someone else involved at all. It's really, really simple. It's like someone choosing a banned stage. You don't need the TO to come over, the other player can simply look at it and say "no, this stage is banned. You can't pick it. Read the rules, man."

If the person doesn't say anything about a rule being broken and they play a match anyway, it's on them and they have no one to blame but themselves.The only time the TO needs to be involved AT ALL is if the person tries to continue breaking the rules in spite of being told.

 

[chipndip]

Now that I've been to a tournament (and am going to another one for Wii U next month), I have this to say:

1) 3 stock/8 minutes is TOO DANG LONG. I got there by 10:50 a.m., we started by maybe noon or so, and we were playing matches until like...past 10 o'clock p.m., which I think is absurd. A tournament shouldn't have to go on for 10 hours just to finish. Couldn't even watch the grand finals. By the time I left (near 10 p.m.), they still had to do all of the 3/5 sets (Winners, Losers, Grand). For 3 stocks/8 minutes, this is downright uncanny. That's anywhere up to 40 minutes per set to decide a winner. Not saying it has to take 40 minutes, but the point of the message is that the possibility of it taking close to 40 minutes to finish 1 of 3 sets that can possibly take that long...just...why?

2) I can get over the fact that Smashers play on more than Final Destination, regardless of my opinion on the matter. Still, this doesn't mean bad stages should be forced in for the sake of having more stages to play on. Arena Ferox needs to freaking go. Someone got downright robbed in his match because a KO hit was blocked by a construct and the Shiek player took control of the match from there (in the tourney I referenced in the first bullet). I personally was robbed of 3 separate KO blows before because of those stupid constructs (not in tourney play, but still legitimately stupid). I can somewhat bypass the thought that people don't care about the Shy Guys in Yoshi's Island slowing down attacks when they hit them (actually got me punished before), but Arena Ferox needs to freaking go.

3) Custom moves...I just don't think they're a good move. Some people are saying some of them are broken (like Pikachu's custom Thunder), and if anything, it'll make tourney times run way longer on the Wii U version. They already take a long time now on 3DS even when custom sets can be preset. I don't want my tournaments bleeding into midnight.

Long story short: 2 stock/5 minutes bo3 > 3 stock/8 minutes bo3 since 3 stock/8 minutes takes way too long, Arena Ferox is the worst tourney legal anything I've ever heard of, and we should probably cut custom moves before they become a thing we'll miss.

 

[John12346]

I just want to mention, I just got back from a ~20 man local with customs legal and it ran very, VERY quickly. We just use our premade sets and make a brief mention of what we're using if asked. No one runs into the accidental equipment problem and to my understanding, no one at this weekly has as of yet, so...

I want to say that I am completely for having custom moves legal. Just from my experience, there isn't really much of an enforcement issue and it really doesn't cause tournaments to run any longer than normal. Unlocking them can be a pain I suppose, but I can guarantee it takes about 30 minutes to an hour to unlock all customs for your specific main. And we can't discount the added level of depth customs can bring to this game. Some of them are really good but I really can't account for any *broken* ones. Everything appears to be fine tuned on that front.

 

[The_Altrox]

2) I can get over the fact that Smashers play on more than Final Destination, regardless of my opinion on the matter. Still, this doesn't mean bad stages should be forced in for the sake of having more stages to play on. Arena Ferox needs to freaking go. Someone got downright robbed in his match because a KO hit was blocked by a construct and the Shiek player took control of the match from there (in the tourney I referenced in the first bullet). I personally was robbed of 3 separate KO blows before because of those stupid constructs (not in tourney play, but still legitimately stupid). I can somewhat bypass the thought that people don't care about the Shy Guys in Yoshi's Island slowing down attacks when they hit them (actually got me punished before), but Arena Ferox needs to freaking go.

Wasn't this a frequent thing in PS1 for Melee and Brawl? The windmill, tree, and mountain of life? I would still say that Ferox should be a counterpick at best, though that may be precedence talking.

 

[DanGR]

Based on discussion I've seen about the Rage mechanic, I'm starting to strongly feel that 1-stock is the only right choice for this edition of smash. Let me explain.

Rage has a weird effect on respawning players, which I didn't realize until other posters pointed it out. If two players are at 130%, and one gets a kill first, one guy loses a stock and respawns. The killer got the right read first and deserves a slight edge for that. But instead the killer gets a huge edge, because he's now no longer at kill % himself because his opponent's moves do less knockback at 0%.

Since comeback mechanics are anticompetitive, you might assume stay-ahead mechanics are opposite and therefore competitive, but both are actually anticompetitive. Both comeback mechanics and stay-ahead mechanics make tests of skill less important, with stay-ahead only the first tests are most important, with comeback only the last tests are important. It's a weighted average of skill tests instead of a true average of skill tests. The former fluctuates more because the additional tests don't counterweigh quite right.

Rage actually functions quite fine in time matches, the default for the game. And it also functions quite fine in one stock games. It's not a stay-ahead mechanic and one stock games, and is somewhere between neutral and slight comeback mechanic in one stock games depending on how you view it. It's kinda like since a tenth of your damage buffs your opponent's knockback, all damage values are just nine tenths as useful across the board.

A nifty side effect of one stock games is they don't have the respawn invincibility mechanic at all, which I won't assert as being bad for competition but I will assert as being unfun for me personally and an anecdotal handful of people.


Ask yourself, if nintendo patched the game to add the KO healer effect to every character, would you want one stock games? Because really that's what's happening under the hood, it's just less obvious. It's something that's going to become even more evident as players master this game at a higher level.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

An unrelated reason 1 stock format is good for this game is that it has so much gimping and SDs. The new ledge mechanic encourages some really aggressive offstage, and some of the spikes and SDs can have the feel like a home-run in a 3 inning game of baseball in a Bo3 set. 1 stock format obviously frees up time to go beyond Bo3, and using additional games is a better way of adding sample size on some of the high impact home run plays like Mario fair. If you land a Mario fair spike in 2 stock or even 3 stock Bo3, you just have to trade damage for the rest of the game to win, and then you only need to win 1 of the other two games while your opponent needs to win 2. If you land a Mario fair spike in a 1 stock Bo5 (or Bo7, Bo9..), you don't need to trade damage to finish out the win, but trading damage and breaking mostly even isn't hard anyhow. But now your advantage is reduced to needing to win 2 games while your opponent needs to win 3. That means that now you need to show you can pull off that Mario fair spike consistently and prove you deserve the win!
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The drawbacks to 1 stock smash is:
1: There's a new tempo to get used to, which is a little bleh.
2: The competition process itself is slowed down by the loading screen.
3: The stage selection rules have to be restructured

1 is an unavoidable cost, but one that hopefully evaporates after an acclimation phase.
2 is a cost we don't know the exact nature of yet for wii U. I have noticed that games load faster in Smash 3DS if players don't change characters though, so that's something to keep in mind. For speed purposes, the character counterpicking freedom should perhaps be reduced to keep the loading screen swift. Reducing character counterpicking would really just bring the format back to the same feel as 2-3 stock counterpicking, since you can't counterpick between stocks.
3 is an initial cost but not really a longterm one. Some games should probably just be played on a repeat of the same stage, for speed of play and possibly loading time effects too. The current stage selection method adds more time spent stage selecting the more games a set contains, but my favored stage selection method takes the same amount of time regardless of how many games are in the set (FLSS, game one on unstruck stage, game N+1 on the new stage that the winner of game N struck latest during stage striking.)


Well, that's my .02$

These are fair points.

However I'm concerned about tempo, stage selection and DSR, and how both the timer and rage impact some characters in 1-stock matches.

Lucario has his built in rage mechanic.

Wario makes use of respawn time to charge his farts.

While you're right that landing lil mac's KO punch would theoretically have the same impact when stretched over many matches, we haven't touched on how long it takes to fill up the bar. This is a nerf to lil Mac because a partially filled KO bar won't transfer over into another match.

This is also a small nerf to anyone who uses time between KOs to charge B moves or set up a camp: Robin, potentially wii fit trainer, Villager, Donkey Kong, etc. The list goes on. Although this is partly accounted for normally by respawn invincibility.

 

[popsofctown]

These are fair points.

However I'm concerned about tempo, stage selection and DSR, and how both the timer and rage impact some characters in 1-stock matches.

Tempo: most valid of concerns, it's possible that the one stock tempo just doesn't *work*. But you don't know if you don't try?
Stage selection: It doesn't take a lot of creativity to make stage selection work for longer sets, and there's lots of different ways to do that. I've mentioned my favorite solution offhand, but there's lots of possibilities and I doubt none of them work.
Character impact: No matter what number of stocks you choose, that number impacts the relative power levels of the members of the cast. If you want to theorycraft which stock count generates the most balanced cast though, it's actually quite likely that one stock is the answer to that, since Japan and their head start consider Sheik the best in the game, and charging six needles is one of the absolute best things you can do between stocks. Nerfing the strongest character in a game generally balances it more so than affirmative action for its weaker characters (pobrecita Robin) does, so that would be the optimal stock count.

 

[Judo777]

Don't get me wrong, I am currently very in favor of making custom moves legal. Simply from the competitive play aspect I think it adds a lot of depth that is good. But what Tommy is saying does need addressing. Putting custom moves set to on in the game does allow for the ability to use equipment. Which bring up the issue of what happens if one player has equipment set and the other player doesn't notice. With it set to off it becomes extremely apparent if it gets turned on on (when you select your player it will ask you to pick your custom set) also if it gets switched to on after characters are selected it warns you the rules are being changed.

With custom moves set to on, the only way to tell if the opponent is playing illegally is to check the equipment pane on their character. A quickly thought of (but not good enough) solution is to put a large penalty on using equipment(if caught dq from game or set or w/e) but then you run into the issue of what if the player had it turned on on accident. I don't know about you but I use the same custom moves in equipment gameplay that I do with just custom moves on. Someone could easily pick the wrong one on accident. Do we dq that guy? I suppose you could say its everyones job to make sure they have the correct custom set before the match starts. But it IS complicated.

You also have the issue of, custom moves will be more difficult on the WIi U version. DO we want different rulesets between the platforms? is turning them on now going to sway rules in the wii u version (obviously this one isn't as big of a deal).

Another issue you run into (a bigger one). What happens when a player lies about which cutsom moves he has? On purpose or not. It could be a non staple move (like a counter) that only gets used maybe twice a game. 2 stocks into the match "oops i have the wrong counter" what happens then? I personally don't mind the idea of not having to tell the player what moves you are using, but there may be a problem with that as the game develops.

I really hope custom moves can work (like i said, it adds alot of competetive depth) but we have to work hard on making a very good ruleset because it WILL be difficult to get right.

 

[Ryusuta]

With custom moves set to on, the only way to tell if the opponent is playing illegally is to check the equipment pane on their character.

This is where you're mistaken. On the bottom of the character's picture on the character select screen, there is a grey circle icon. If they are using equipment, there will be either a blue shield, an orange boxing glove, or a green boot over their portrait instead. If they have ANY of those three colored icons the character is illegal. If they don't, it's legal. It's a very, very simple way of telling if equipment is being used in local multiplayer.

 

[CupofT]

Can't a custom character with equipment still have a grey icon? If you put equipment and the character still has "balanced" stats the icon still appears grey. I believe I made a Ganondorf like this. Do not have access to my 3DS right now so I cannot take a screenshot/picture to confirm.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I know it appears gray if you manage to make a character with all negative stats, although this usually involves non-stat perks that will become obvious in a match. Don't know about perfectly balanced positive stats.

 

[Judo777]

This is where you're mistaken. On the bottom of the character's picture on the character select screen, there is a grey circle icon. If they are using equipment, there will be either a blue shield, an orange boxing glove, or a green boot over their portrait instead. If they have ANY of those three colored icons the character is illegal. If they don't, it's legal. It's a very, very simple way of telling if equipment is being used in local multiplayer.

That's actually what I meant. The circle in the character pane.

 

[popsofctown]

It's not adding hardly anything to check the circle in the character pane. You already oughtta look at that square to see what character your opponent is playing, y'know?



All negative stats is an issue since the badge could be gray. Most special effects are obvious, but air attacker is 1.15 extra air damage, and that's pretty subtle. There might be some other stuff.

It's a lot of effort just to farm the kind of items you would need to cheat with a gray badge for a marginal advantage. To make it any harder, I would suggest a rule that no one should be allowed to have a gray badge equipment setup anywhere on their console at any time. Unlike normal equipment setups, they are useless for single player modes and serve no apparent purpose distinct from cheating. I think they should be treated like a cheating tool that they are and warrant DQ from the entire tournament if found.

That rule makes the risk reward on sneaking an air attacker or shield regenerator into play a lot steeper. If your setups get auditted because you won the tournament, something seemed off, or your that guy that splits pots all the time, you have a huge negative risk, and you might not even have been using the contraband item that round.

 

[Terotrous]

Can't a custom character with equipment still have a grey icon? If you put equipment and the character still has "balanced" stats the icon still appears grey. I believe I made a Ganondorf like this. Do not have access to my 3DS right now so I cannot take a screenshot/picture to confirm.

The way it works is that the circle is divided among your positive stats. For example.

If you had Power + 50, Defense - 10, Speed - 10, your circle would be 100% red.
If you had Power + 50, Defense + 25, Speed - 10, your circle would be 66% red and 33% Blue
If you had Power + 50, Defense + 50, Speed + 25, your circle would be 40% red, 40% Blue, and 20% Green


The problem is that if you have Power - 5, Defense - 5, Speed - 5, your circle will be gray. And you might think "why would anyone want to lower all of their stats?", but the thing is that most equipment that gives effects lowers stats more than it raises. So you could have 3 positive effects and a gray circle.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

If people ever figure out how to sniff at replay files to see everyone's setup, we could just require everyone to save a replay of their matches to be provided on request if the match is suspect. Failure to provide the replay when asked would come with some sort of penalty. But that's a fair bit in the future.

This is something the Wii U version will avoid almost completely since shared setups are harder to game like this.