Items must be active for the match or both players will be disqualified.
Mio:
2. They give players abilities that they normally would not have. This makes it so that previously studying, practicing and correctly integrating match-ups, strategies and individual character techniques will often become pointless. This is not a good way to encourage or promote high level competition.
There's competitive games that do this already, namely, DoTA. You have to constantly adjust your build based on the items/weapons build that your opponent has, which drastically changes the strategy that you use and makes the game that much more complex. It's because of this complexity and depth that high-level play is encouraged. And if you want to take fighting games into account, think of the way Kara-cancels and Roll-cancels changed the way 3rd Strike and CvS2 are played. Instead of banning these techniques that changed the way the characters played, Japanese players embraced them and took the skill level of these games to the next level. Back to DoTA, if I suddenly have to remember that Mageslayer now has a sheepstick or that Drow Archer has a blink dagger, or Huntress just picked up an Invisibility rune, I can either complain (and get killed) or adjust my tactics so I can GTFO.
If you have to run away and turtle until the advantage is gone, then so be it. And if I have to kick a Green Shell or a Banana Peel into an enclosed area where DeDeDe is so he can't lure me inside there to chain-grab me to oblivion(I think the chain-grab is pretty ********, but who's going to ban it?), then so be it.
This is like in 3rd Strike if (after pressing jab over a box on the ground)....
- a character were to be given one super on their meter
-Yun was to be temporarily given a shoryuken
-Akuma was to be temporarily given 75% stronger defense
-Hugo was to be temporarily given speed
You know what? I'd think it'd be pretty interesting. If SBO or EVO had a 3s Items tournament, I'd train for it because there's money to be had. And then I'd try to figure out if Yun gets any new combos with his Shoryuken, or Hugo with his increased speed, just in case I happen to get that particular ability. I wouldn't be able to rely on it every time since it's a random chance I'd get it, but I'd capitalize on that chance. If I didn't, I'd be foolish.
Sure, items can be used strategically once they're picked up, but because of the fact that there is no balanced system as to how each player initially receives an item (and which one), it is terribly unbalanced and unfair.
I do agree that the random spawning isn't anywhere close to ideal. However, that makes stage-control that much more important since keeping my opponent cornered increases my chances (but not guarantees) of getting the next item since I dominate 70% of the stage. That territory control makes techniques like wave-dashing (or its current equivalent with cancelling Smashes) critical for winning.
I will say this though- 3rd Strike's been out for almost ten years already, so it's probably easier to accept new changes to the 3rd Strike formula because we're so bored with it. The same can't be said of Brawl since it's a brand-new game, but I think there's plenty of non-item tournaments that you can attend alongside our FFA Brawl tourneys (which may or may not have items). Furthermore, if MLG or some world championship decided to include items in their tournaments, players with items-experience will have a huge advantage over non-item players in memorizing spawn times, item deployment and countermeasures, especially if Nintendo decides to change the way Items are spawned (place-specific or order-specific).
Since you're familiar with the SRK scene and this is related to EVO, check this thread out as well:
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthread.php?t=148844
And if it turns out that EVO will run 2v2 Teams with No Items or Final Smashes, then that will be exactly the series of tournaments that we will run to prepare our local players for competition. But it's the actual results of Item Tournaments like the one we're holding at FFA that will help determine the decision that EVO makes for the Brawl ruleset. We have on video a last-set, Grand Finals match where Lucky lost that critical combo opportunity against DSF due to a Hothead. Once we have rock-solid proof like this to make your case, we can make progress on these sorts of issues.
And even if there were a balanced system, I think a majority of the seriously competitive players would still agree that items suck.
Well, nothing's set in stone and you're entitled to your opinion. Let's see how it goes and leave it at that.
