Feelings on MK and the MK ban after Apex

[Budget Player Cadet_]

No, my feelings haven't changed. I'm still quite for the ban.

In fact: if MK hadn't been banned I wouldn't be here discussing it with you right now. I left Brawl a while back after getting tired of people losing one match to Luigi then switching to MK because they knew it was a way easier match-up to dodge my short range with. This would be fine if this was the exception instead of the rule, but after awhile I just got sick of coming to tourneys just to fight one match of a random character, then two losses to MK followed by a losers bracket where everyone has also decided to pull out MK.

You know what?

Get. Better.

Hell, Luigi-MK sucks, but it could be worse. You aren't using DK, who needs to deal with DDD and ICs's bull****. You could be using Ganon, where basically the winning strategy is "pick Olimar and spam pivot grab". But you're using Luigi... and johning about Metaknight. Yeah, the matchup sucks. You know what? You picked a pretty ****ty character in a game with ****ty balance, a character that would be just as shut down by pocket snakes or G&Ws or Marths, and you're blaming everyone else for being ready for your ****ty character choice. You're pushing your failure onto a popular, powerful character, who happens to **** your character of choice.

Well, let me give you a tip. If you are losing to random pocket Metaknights, you are a bad player. Does Boss lose with Luigi to random pocket MKs? No. He destroys them. Does Desti drop sets to random pocket MKs? No! He feeds them dragon punches until they bleed fire. Hell, you think you have it bad? Ocean plays a character who gets ***** almost as hard by MK, and he placed top 16 at APEX. You know, the most stacked tournament ever. Call me crazy, but I think the problem isn't Metaknight. It's you, and people like you who encourage this attitude. "Nah, the problem isn't me. It's Metaknight!" No! The problem is you, and until you and people like you start to accept that, we're going to keep this ****ing scrub mentality going.

It's a sad Irony that, in the USA, the problem seems to be simultaneously a ridiculously overblown play-to-win mentality, and at the same time such utter scrubbiness.

On one hand, we're doing everything we can not to be the better player, but to win – it's all we care about. We counterpick to RC and Brinstar and camp and scrooge and shark just to get a game up, without really struggling to out-think our opponents... Japan takes us right back to SV and tries to get into our heads, figure out what we're doing. We all pick up Metaknight in the hopes that he'll lead us to an easy victory and are surprised when our tournaments become overcentralized and we fail miserably against a more even, well-developed metagame. We all stop using our mains because "what's the use, right? Metaknight's the best anyways", pick up MK, and are suddenly shocked and appalled to see that the Metagames of said characters have stagnated and nobody uses them... We stopped playing to be the best and simply focused on winning above all else.

And yet, somehow, on the other hand, we still have the gall the john and complain about anything that went wrong. It wasn't us, it was something else! I'm not too bad to beat random pocket metaknights, the character is so broken! When Mew2King lost to OCEAN, it was not "he got outplayed" it was "he didn't know the matchup". A matchup which is ****ing terrible. When Nietono lost to Otori, it was somehow because Otori was using Metaknight.

Guys, we have got to be better than this. The problem isn't MK, it's our community's ****ing pathetic mindset. Until that's fixed, the ban is really kinda unavoidable, but it's still really disappointing to see this kind of crap.

 

[Jdietz43]

If anything, it should convert people back away from their pocket MKs IMO. I've since dropped mine in favor of practicing more Lucas again, though that's honestly more due to the "ban".

It should inspire people to get better rather than just pick higher. I think the ban is no longer necessary after all of US's MKs getting rocked by such a tight Olimar. He'll always be massively popular, but thats not justification for banning if we do end up finding strong counters to some of our best MKs.

Sponge I am dissapoint. Isn't the return of your ol' pal Dietz good enough for ya? XD
S'allright, you're my sig after all. It can't be all bad.




And for those people calling me bad, the answer is yes: I am bad. You can call my friend bad too I suppose, though I'd say that isn't really true in my opinion, MK just s***s on D3. I never expect to win money, nor will I probably ever. The problem isn't that I don't win against MK (though I don't). The problem is everyone was him after a certain point, and I definitely wasn't going to have fun being gimped at 20% once or twice a match. When a good MK wins most of the tourneys in a region, people start trying him out. When more than three fourths of your matches are another MK the game stops being fun. I came to fight and have fun, it's why I put up my 10 bucks that will obviously go to someone else at the end of the day, but if that day is just me being tornadoed there's no point.

I used to have a saying. There's three types of Brawl players in the world: Those who stick it out with their mains and try to beat MK by being better. Those who get tired of that and try to make MK a second to counter it. And those who realize the second option is even worse than the first, and that a pocket MK will almost always lose to an MK main and become MK mains themselves. I call the third group tourney winners.

It's k, you can ignore me as a bad player, I said my piece, like the ban, and probably do for half selfish reasons and half legit information; but I do know one thing:

I can beat Sponge though. He mad. That's a fact.

 

[Mekos]

Agree with Budget so much

 

[Steam]

You know what?

Get. Better.

Really easy for a mk main to say. It's really discouraging when your best option is to just pick up mk for the mu. And honestly I don't blame him for quitting. It's still a game and if you don't enjoy it there's no point to playing it.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Get. Better.

Excellent point.

 

[Steam]

You know what?

Get. Better.

Really easy for a mk main to say. It's really discouraging when your best option is to just pick up mk for the mu. And honestly I don't blame him for quitting. It's still a game and if you don't enjoy it there's no point to playing it. Personally I wouldn't enter a mk legal tourney unless it was free money for me because where there's brawl there's melee :D. And ganon might get wrecked but it's much more exciting to me than fighting more mks.

 

[Thino]

It's really discouraging when your best option is to just pick up mk for the mu.

You mean the easiest option.

 

[Jdietz43]

You know what?

Get. Better.

Hell, Luigi-MK sucks, but it could be worse. You aren't using DK, who needs to deal with DDD and ICs's bull****. You could be using Ganon, where basically the winning strategy is "pick Olimar and spam pivot grab". But you're using Luigi... and johning about Metaknight. Yeah, the matchup sucks. You know what? You picked a pretty ****ty character in a game with ****ty balance, a character that would be just as shut down by pocket snakes or G&Ws or Marths, and you're blaming everyone else for being ready for your ****ty character choice. You're pushing your failure onto a popular, powerful character, who happens to **** your character of choice.

Well, let me give you a tip. If you are losing to random pocket Metaknights, you are a bad player. Does Boss lose with Luigi to random pocket MKs? No. He destroys them. Does Desti drop sets to random pocket MKs? No! He feeds them dragon punches until they bleed fire. Hell, you think you have it bad? Ocean plays a character who gets ***** almost as hard by MK, and he placed top 16 at APEX. You know, the most stacked tournament ever. Call me crazy, but I think the problem isn't Metaknight. It's you, and people like you who encourage this attitude. "Nah, the problem isn't me. It's Metaknight!" No! The problem is you, and until you and people like you start to accept that, we're going to keep this ****ing scrub mentality going.

It's a sad Irony that, in the USA, the problem seems to be simultaneously a ridiculously overblown play-to-win mentality, and at the same time such utter scrubbiness.

On one hand, we're doing everything we can not to be the better player, but to win – it's all we care about. We counterpick to RC and Brinstar and camp and scrooge and shark just to get a game up, without really struggling to out-think our opponents... Japan takes us right back to SV and tries to get into our heads, figure out what we're doing. We all pick up Metaknight in the hopes that he'll lead us to an easy victory and are surprised when our tournaments become overcentralized and we fail miserably against a more even, well-developed metagame. We all stop using our mains because "what's the use, right? Metaknight's the best anyways", pick up MK, and are suddenly shocked and appalled to see that the Metagames of said characters have stagnated and nobody uses them... We stopped playing to be the best and simply focused on winning above all else.

And yet, somehow, on the other hand, we still have the gall the john and complain about anything that went wrong. It wasn't us, it was something else! I'm not too bad to beat random pocket metaknights, the character is so broken! When Mew2King lost to OCEAN, it was not "he got outplayed" it was "he didn't know the matchup". A matchup which is ****ing terrible. When Nietono lost to Otori, it was somehow because Otori was using Metaknight.

Guys, we have got to be better than this. The problem isn't MK, it's our community's ****ing pathetic mindset. Until that's fixed, the ban is really kinda unavoidable, but it's still really disappointing to see this kind of crap.

You know I agree with all that you said mostly. It's 100% true, I'm a bad player and I'm venting plain and simple. I definitely never said I wasn't. Actually most of what I'm doing at this very moment is venting, you have to understand that. I'm playing the *** to my normally calm demeanor for my own benefit so that I can start my new attempt at Brawl on the right foot with myself. You pretty much have a free pass to ignore me as a self troll of sorts.

What is also true though is that I tried for two solid years to get better. Legit. I tried hard, I tried long, I saw some success, I saw much failure. I tried, I cried, I died. That isn't really why I ACTUALLY think MK should be banned, but it does contribute to my negative feelings about the character in general. When I level about the character and take it all away, I really do feel like he's too good for the rest of the cast. I know smash has some super lenient rules, but in many other fighting games he'd be ban material pretty fast and I'd like to think this was a step in the right direction. Frame data loves MK just as much as the people who use him do (or don't, many people are verbally unhappy playing him but do so for wins). When I showed MK gameplay to a friend in the competitive Blazblue scene to try and get them to understand that Nu wasn't a big deal in comparison, they took one long hard look and proclaimed it "quite possibly the gayest thing I've ever seen" and understood immediately that what they were talking about wasn't such a big deal. Even at the high levels of play it just seems like MK dominated. I don't have much more to contribute to the discussion on a technical side. I'll leave that to the people who know the game's ins and outs better than I. (I am also silently noting that the two biggest supporters of anti-ban are also using the very next high tier characters to MK... don't you think that could contribute to your "it's not that big a deal" feelings? We can't all play MK just like we can't all play Diddy, Snake, and IC's to compete with him. The rest of us still CAN play against him with the characters we like, but if our characters are characters like Luigi or DK or D3 then forgeeeetabouuutit, you aren't having any fun today and if fun is your measuring stick (which it is for me) it's not a very hard contest to figure out which character is ruining the party for everyone. SEARCH YOUR FEEELINGS YOU KNOW IT TO BE TRUUUE)

What Steam said is how I feel. No fun: no go. I'm absolutely sure that a bunch of Marths are going to pop up and **** the hell out of my Luigi even with the ban. And I'm fine with that. At least I know the Marth has to use a little finesse. MK just has to use Fair to Dsmash ad nauseum then smash B when he feels like I might be anywhere on the same continent as him... the real problem was that sort of lame auto strategy was legit for pretty much every matchup to at least some degree. It killed the fun and it killed the competition in one fell swoop of his swishy dimension cape.

Silly silly man out.

EDIT: Wait He's an MK player? LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

I rest my case with silly irony hat on top of it.

 

[Goast]

not that this is a notable opinion but the idea of banning MK just bugs me. On paper I can understand the reason behind the decision.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Sponge I am dissapoint. Isn't the return of your ol' pal Dietz good enough for ya? XD
S'allright, you're my sig after all. It can't be all bad.




And for those people calling me bad, the answer is yes: I am bad. You can call my friend bad too I suppose, though I'd say that isn't really true in my opinion, MK just s***s on D3. I never expect to win money, nor will I probably ever. The problem isn't that I don't win against MK (though I don't). The problem is everyone was him after a certain point, and I definitely wasn't going to have fun being gimped at 20% once or twice a match. When a good MK wins most of the tourneys in a region, people start trying him out. When more than three fourths of your matches are another MK the game stops being fun. I came to fight and have fun, it's why I put up my 10 bucks that will obviously go to someone else at the end of the day, but if that day is just me being tornadoed there's no point.

I used to have a saying. There's three types of Brawl players in the world: Those who stick it out with their mains and try to beat MK by being better. Those who get tired of that and try to make MK a second to counter it. And those who realize the second option is even worse than the first, and that a pocket MK will almost always lose to an MK main and become MK mains themselves. I call the third group tourney winners.

It's k, you can ignore me as a bad player, I said my piece, like the ban, and probably do for half selfish reasons and half legit information; but I do know one thing:

I can beat Sponge though. He mad. That's a fact.

Your not that bad Dietz. Your pretty smart when you apply your self, missed ya dude.

It seems a lot of arguments revolve around APEX, why are people using one sample to say whom is better? I usually would think multiple tests, aka tournaments, would show who is better.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Really easy for a mk main to say. It's really discouraging when your best option is to just pick up mk for the mu. And honestly I don't blame him for quitting. It's still a game and if you don't enjoy it there's no point to playing it.

THIS IS ENTIRELY MY POINT!!!

Holy ****, how can one so ironically miss the point?! Yeah, you know what? The easiest option is just to pick up MK for the matchups. And you know what else? In doing so, you are making a conscious decision, "I am using MK because it is easy". You're not trying to become a better player, or outplay your opponent; you're relying on your character choice. This is ****ing stupid. This is what happens when "Play to Win" rather than "Play to be the best" runs rampant in its most corrupt form. Is it an argument against the ban? Not really. But it sure as hell is one against the American brawl community.

 

[Jdietz43]

Your not that bad Dietz. Your pretty smart when you apply your self, missed ya dude.

It seems a lot of arguments revolve around APEX, why are people using one sample to say whom is better? I usually would think multiple tests, aka tournaments, would show who is better.

Awww RedRyus got my back.

I missed the gang too dude.

*is giving you the Fonz finger snap point from beyond the interwebs*

 

[Elessar]

Budget, I applaud you, really I do, standing ovation. I agree with what you said 140%. You sir, won the thread and my heart.

 

[Jdietz43]

And yes Ryu brings a pretty good point. (and the one I base my actual MK ban feelings on past the rageface ones)

MK basically won every major tourney since the dawn of the day people realized what he was capable of. We've got a huge sample size to choose from, and pretty much every piece of evidence pointed to "Yes, MK was good and he won: pretty much every time".

It's very hard to stare that down and not think the character is just too good for his own good. In a healthy game with good players you'd think that at the very very least 50% of the total tourney wins would come from a character other than the one considered "best". But as far as I know, MK victory is a staggeringly higher amount than that. Something more around 80%.

That doesn't sound like fair odds to anyone who dares not play him. (or at the very least the highest of high tier). For a long time now high tier status has basically been determined by the MK matchup in relation to a character.

Hell I think the very fact we're all discussing it FOR OVER TWO YEARS may give a little credence to the fact that he's quite questionably good.

SUPER SPECIAL REDRYU EDIT: Yo! I think your 10,000th post was just made defending my timeless honor! WAY TO GO MAN! Super XD
Talk about fantastic useage

 

[Elessar]

I'd even take it a bit further dietz and say that, the entire ruleset, or most of it, exists specifically because of him, to limit and control him as to make the game more fair for the rest of the cast. When one character, who is also the unanimously accepted best, has such a heavy impact on the rules of the game as to have them all revolve only about him...that's a whistle in my book.

In any case, MK can be beaten, but for that you need a solid metagame with the rest of the cast, and that's something that simply won't happen when people are either quitting their mains in favour of MK, or quitting the game because of MK (both of which are inexcusable attitudes imho).

Edit: And I realize that the problem here is that tourneys cost money, and people aren't willing to give away money, which is what they feel they're doing by maining a mid to lower tier.

 

[Thino]

Your not that bad Dietz. Your pretty smart when you apply your self, missed ya dude.

It seems a lot of arguments revolve around APEX, why are people using one sample to say whom is better? I usually would think multiple tests, aka tournaments, would show who is better.

And yes Ryu brings a pretty good point. (and the one I base my actual MK ban feelings on past the rageface ones)

MK basically won every major tourney since the dawn of the day people realized what he was capable of. We've got a huge sample size to choose from, and pretty much every piece of evidence pointed to "Yes, MK was good and he won: pretty much every time".

see zmx? I told you that's the counter-argument they would bring up

I agree, but my point still stands that its still too easy for them to counter, they just have to say:

-This is just one tournament, it doesn't prove that Japan has in fact a better metagame than U.S
-Japan has won with MK, which further proves that MK is broken and, therefore, should stay banned.

and since, in this case, most of the group of TOs that is the URC follow that reasoning, it will be hard to convince them just by stating that Japan won Apex.

The one tournament statement doesn't work here as it works for the poll. Allow me to explain lest you think I'm proposing a double standard. I now realize I worded that poorly. The poll was not advertised enough nor was it allowed enough time imo. And even if it was there's still the ad populum fallacy.

Apex however isn't just one tournament. It's the biggest smash tournament period. The biggest smash tournament that's ever occurred in history. It's been advertised longer and has been more hyped than any other tourny. Therefore, it accounts for a lot more than any regular national. What is more Japan beat out ALL of our top players using only SOME of their top players. I stress this because it shows how heavily the odds were in America's favor to win but they couldn't. It's a much bigger deal when you think about it.

An MK winning it is serves to further anti-ban's argument not pro-ban. The reason being that it was Japanese MKs and their region is all anti-ban. So if they don't feel the need to ban him what justification could we possibly have?

Lastly, Otori has lost to Nietono and 9b before both which are considered the best Japan players overall that don't main MK. In fact he's never gotten more than second before.

 

[Jdietz43]

I'd even take it a bit further dietz and say that, the entire ruleset, or most of it, exists specifically because of him, to limit and control him as to make the game more fair for the rest of the cast. When one character, who is also the unanimously accepted best, has such a heavy impact on the rules of the game as to have them all revolve only about him...that's a whistle in my book.

In any case, MK can be beaten, but for that you need a solid metagame with the rest of the cast, and that's something that simply won't happen when people are either quitting their mains in favour of MK, or quitting the game because of MK (both of which are inexcusable attitudes imho).

Edit: And I realize that the problem here is that tourneys cost money, and people aren't willing to give away money, which is what they feel they're doing by maining a mid to lower tier.

I used to feel that way... but then I took a MetaKnight to the knee...

(sorry sorry, I couldn't resist XP)

See that's the thing. I used to feel EXACTLY like that. When we have to make rule after rule about just MK, something probably isn't right. When other games see a problem they ban characters. When we realized what D3 could do we banned stages. When we realized what MK could do we...... all became MK? It just doesn't quite seem right.

The switching and quitting also seems really lame (and to a certain point is) when it isn't you, but when you've given it your all and are just sick of it you do what you do. I gave it my two years of dedication, it didn't pan out. What else am I supposed to do but suddenly become a different person who already mained MK or is named M2K, you know? It's so hard because I can see both sides. The side that says "Give it your all it you'll be alright", and the side that says "Unicorns aren't real kids, stop pretending."

In MK's case I've gotta say: that ain't Falco, and unicorns aren't real.

 

[Elessar]

I know what you mean, but I'm not trying to comfort people by saying "just give it your best and you'll win!" because it's a lie. What I mean is that people quitting the game or switching mains stagnates the metagame and thus, it just reinforces the OPness of MK. Again, he can be beaten (possibly not by the entire cast), but for that you need to be a great player, and that takes a lot more dedication and commitment to the game than most people are willing or capable of giving it.

Plus, Verm mains freaking ganon and he hasn't given up, but keeps on going and has done amazing things with the character, just like San. They stuck to their character even though people said it's impossible and they now lead the metagame. That's what the entire cast needs, passion and commitment, and that's probably the only thing the Japanese have on top of the US, hence why they haven't banned MK.

But in the US? It is necessary imho.

 

[Jdietz43]

Yeah, on the entire other hand we had DLA: pretty much the hands down best Ganon switch to MK because DAMN IT GANON ISN'T GOOD. And we can respect that, but we all died a little inside when it happened.

On an entirely different note: I've found my old conversation I had with RedRyu on this very topic back in Feb. 2010.

Here's a snippet from it as food for thought. A blast from the past if you will of how we felt a year ago vs. now and whether or not it's changed. (only one of my paragraphs unless others request more reading material, I don't know how much Ryu really wants his side of the convo broadcast to the world.)


"Yeah no thats fine, that was hardly a rant by any stretch. Heres some food for thought that you can really call a text wall lol: Yeah I can see where you're coming from with the planking data now. It was never an issue for the most part because of MAS's ledge grab limit, but in other areas where there is not a limit (or even here if you can do it intelligently) its a major problem. Considering the ease that MK can poke it isn't a stretch to say I could create a 30% lead and plank for 5 minutes even with a limit on edge grabs. Overall I still support my idea of a two bracket system, let the M2Ks of the community deal with what they have created if they so choose, but I'd gladly enter a bracket where people can't pull out an MK trump card (though personally I'm not good enough for it to be a major issue yet).

Let me take the last MAS as an example: Me and YoshQ were both in the same pool with Wafles. As you probably know my Luigi isn't something to scoff at, but YoshQ's is a monster, comparable to Boss. Wafles has a fairly good Falco, not Arty good, but good. I mention this as it makes for an interesting study on the nature of MK in the current metagame, though I'm not sure what point it exactly makes, thats sort of up to the observer to decide. (all of these matches are available for veiwing on Ankoku's Youtube channel) Me and Wafles have our pools matches, he uses his main Falco while I use Luigi for both matches. We go fairly even, with me gaining an early lead and losing on the last stock in both matches. Though it's safe to say I'm not experienced at fighting Falcos as I've fought very few, we can safely say I did well but Wafles did better. Now the pools matches with YoshQ come up. It can be reasonably assumed by my previous results that it would take only a slight increase in skill level for Luigi to overtake his Falco (if the matches had unfolded that way I may have been able to say this more concretely but they didn't) Instead of attempting to use his Falco against YoshQ Wafles switches to MK from the get go. Now logically theres only one reason he would attempt this: He thinks he has a legitimately better chance at a win against YoshQ with MK. As I watched I could tell Wafles's Meta was not up to par with his Falco on skill level, but it managed to stay roughly even with YoshQ for game 1 and nearly beat him game 2, both games ending at high percents on the last stock. Can I for sure say that his Falco would have fared worse? No. But his motives for choosing MK are quite clear. In my matches he used Falco because he likes Falco (thus he mains him) and knew he had an acceptable chance of winning against me as he didn't know my skill level prior to the first match. When YoshQ, a competitor he knew was above his skill level despite using the same character as me (thus not a character factor), came up for his matches it was MK all the way. Clearly Wafles used MK as a fall-back to attempt and secure wins that otherwise wouldn't have been his. It's safe to say that If I had taken the first match instead of whiffed it, MK would have been present in match 2. I noticed Wafles using the same logic against ChuDat and BMX when the time for their matches came.

Though technically I'm only speaking of Wafles in this example the mentality of "If I can't beat em MK" is present for other individuals and frankly disturbs me. Lain has exhibited this trend recently, as well as Ally to some extent. An example more close to home can also be found in Kenni. How many times has he lost round 1 and decided "F it lets throw MK at em and see what happens". Though usually when this strategy is used the MK is a bit subpar it's not a difficult mental leap for any one of these competitors to decide that if they just spent as much time on MK as they have with their respective mains they would win the matches they were throwing MK at before. Fatboy for instance, does he even have a main? Not that I've ever seen, but I'll bet I could beat him if he had one. This game really has three separate tiers of competitors already:

1. Those that don't use MK on any level and excel with a character to moderate success against the members of the same group.

2. Those that have tried this, hit a wall, and decided that MK could be used to trump players that are better than them in the first group.

3. And players who have dropped their other characters entirely to raise their MK above those of the second group and compete with others of group 3.

In reality nothing is stopping any random person from being an MK pro then their own sense of enjoyment of the game / metal objection to using MK. At higher levels of play it comes down to who has the least shame to win the MK pissing contest. The individuals who are the most willing to throw away game enjoyment or sense of dignity gain an edge on those who feel fine using the characters they like to. You could make the argument that if they want the wins more they deserve them more, and should be able to use whatever means they wish to gain those wins. But do I personally want to play a game where skill can be trumped by pure desire and ruthlessness? This is like playing a game of Stratego where it's perfectly acceptable for a person to bludgeon the other competitor with a ball peen hammer mid-game. Sure I COULD just use the hammer as well, but I don't really WANT to play a game where all you have to do is be more cold-blooded than the opponent if I don't have to. I like to play Stratego, not hammer wars, but if such a game did exist I guarantee the Grand Finals would be two guys throwing the board to one side, grabbing two hammers and whaling on each other. Same goes for Brawl. Though you could just say "Tough, deal with it. Other people seem to deal with the bludgeoning just fine and still win." I don't think I should have to. I came to play and see others play a thinking game, not be the biggest b*****d they can be.

In summary: Hammer free bracket please? I'm tired of the threat of brain damage."

EDIT: What does that all mean? I have no idea. I was just one guy and still am. I guess that I felt the same way a year ago as I do today, just now I'm arguably as rage-ish about it as Budget Player_Cadet is about apparently everything. Soooo ban 'em up baby. It can't be worse for the scene than MK was right? (famous last words) If the MK's want competition and meta-game advancement they just got their chance I guess, time to find another character and try to be as good as they once were and see if it's harder or not. *shrug* Welcome to the "everybody else" club. Who knows, with MK gone it might actually be more fun for you, you might even remember why you liked Smash in the first place: The fun.

 

[Martinsmith]

This site has a lot good information on it, I check on it whenever I’m online. I wish other sites spent as much time as this one does making information clearer to readers like myself. I recommend this site to all of my facebook friends. This site will make some massive passive profit I’m sure.

 

[Elessar]

Wow...long read. In any case, this is all moot since MK is banned and I don't think that the ban will be lifted before some considerable time has passed. And really, one of the anti ban arguments is "you want to ban him because johns". Well, for 4 years it hasn't worked, why don't we give the other option a shot, right?

 

[Jdietz43]

I thought the whole point of this thread was the fact people didn't want the ban to be permanent. I'm throwing it all out there because why not.

EDIT: Nevermind, I get what you're saying now. I'm slow tonight.

Yeah it's a hard life either way. Anti-ban feels like we all just gave up, and Pro-ban feels like they just don't understand how hard we've all already tried.

 

[Hylian]

Really easy for a mk main to say.

I don't and never have mained mk and I agree completely with BPC. I also would make more money in tournaments with MK banned. I'm a high level player, I've played the top players in every region and I have a ****ton of experience with smash considering I've been playing competitively since 2003.

Is that enough credentials to say banning mk is a scrubbish thing to do for all the reasons listed above? Please, find my bias. Find where keeping mk legal will help me in any way. It's dumb and petty to just discard peoples LOGICAL points because of the character they play.

 

[Elessar]

It was, they don't want to. And the Johns comment is because the anti ban claim that pro ban want to ban MK rather than working on improving, thus, MK became a johns to not get better.

 

[Thino]

Wow...long read. In any case, this is all moot since MK is banned and I don't think that the ban will be lifted before some considerable time has passed. And really, one of the anti ban arguments is "you want to ban him because johns". Well, for 4 years it hasn't worked, why don't we give the other option a shot, right?

What exactly "hasn't worked" to give the other option another shot though? that's what used to be the problem.

Not anymore though since the ban passed now and johns won.

 

[Jdietz43]

It was, they don't want to. And the Johns comment is because the anti ban claim that pro ban want to ban MK rather than working on improving, thus, MK became a johns to not get better.

Yeah for some reason I read that "Pro-Ban" and got confused. It makes sense now lol.

What exactly "hasn't worked" to give the other option another shot though? that's what used to be the problem.

Not anymore though since the ban passed now and johns won.

I believe we mean the meta-game catching up to MK hasn't worked. No one has reliably beat him and it's been a very solid amount of time to progress. Japan is clearly better than us, yet they still have MK at the top of their players as well. There isn't a silver bullet of skill level or technique that can stop the MK in its current form, so a ban was needed.

 

[Thino]

I believe we mean the meta-game catching up to MK hasn't worked. No one has reliably beat him and it's been a very solid amount of time to progress. Japan is clearly better than us, yet they still have MK at the top of their players as well. There isn't a silver bullet of skill or technique that can stop the MK in its current form, so a ban was needed.

Yea but what I mean by that is why does the metagame needs to catch up to MK in the first place?

What exactly do you mean by reliably since MK is actually beatable and why the need for a silver-special-easy-antiMK technique to beat MK instead of practicing to beat him?

and lastly, HOW is Japan better than us while agreeing with what Red Ryu said?

 

[Zero_Saber]

I may be a lowly scrub who's opinion doesn't matter much but I agree with pretty much everything Hylian, Mekos, BPC, and Omni have been saying.

I think the most important argument that anti-ban hasn't refuted (in the last few pages) is that the easiest way to deal with MK is to pick MK. That's completely wrong because to many people believe that. There are so many MK's that the good MK's know that match-up like the back of their hand and while the technical MU is 50-50 if you can't get as good with MK as you already were with your main it doesn't matter. And even if you make your MK just as good MU knowledge would still make your main a better pick on anyone who doesn't play against your main excessively.

TL;DR Picking a non-MK character gives you a better chance to win due to MU knowledge.

 

[Strong Badam]

nah man MK still won the tourney, broken character

 

[Jdietz43]

Yea but what I mean by that is why does the metagame needs to catch up to MK in the first place?

What exactly do you mean by reliably since MK is actually beatable and why the need for a silver-special-easy-antiMK technique to beat MK instead of practicing to beat him?

and lastly, HOW is Japan better than us while agreeing with what Red Ryu said?

Because MK stands on top of the hill in such a way that playing any other character is either extremely difficult or unattainable to the average player. Getting a win against a competent MK means you either had an incredibly good match, or are exerting some seriously MAD SKILLZ which most of us can't hope to have.

I'm not talking about quick-silver-speical-easy. I'm talking about real things you can do. So far short of "Be a high tier character" there's not much to be said on the MK matchup. It's been pray you don't get on the wrong end of the **** stick today or the highway. There hasn't been anything to level any fields, no meaningful advancement to speak of, no real progress of any kind. The reason this is important is that it's Super Smash Brothers Brawl, not Super Smash Brothers MetaKnight. I came to play a game where there was a ton of fun characters and people were entertaining and skilled with nearly all of them, not MK vs MK. I don't play MK, I play Brawl. And if I don't play MK or one of the very slim few who can reliably have a MU better than 35:65 or something in MK's favor, then I'm apparently just SOL. This isn't the case with other characters, there's always something to be at least done about them. Against IC's you don't get grabbed and stage select carefully, Snake has counter picks, Falco can be played against with practice and effort (e.g. you can eventually learn how to even up with his laser game and frame traps to make the match go in a way that actually may favor you for it). MetaKnight isn't any of those things. He has no bad matchups, every stage he's better than you on, and his moves are basically the frame and priority equivilant of "God hates you." There aren't so much smart decisions to be made about the MK match in depth as there is prayer to be had if you get what I mean, it's a very no win situation no matter what no matter how much concentration and training you put into it. The best you can hope for with training is simply less ownage coming your way, never an upper hand. There will always be a top character, but he need not have so much of an advantage over the rest. The people who play to win and win alone will find new characters to play with since it's what they care about: but for those of us who like to play Brawl for Brawl's sake and fun, we have no other option.

Japan has a long history of being hilariously good at fighting games, that probably stilts my opinion, but it seems to me since we only have a few cases to look at they've been doing pretty well. If not on our level then very close or better based on tourney results and general fighting ability. You work with the sample size given. In this case the sample size is small so the margin for error is large. That doesn't mean I don't get to formulate an opinion though.

 

[Strong Badam]

idea: you're being overly pessimistic about your character's match-up with MK and instead of complaining about him or other characters you could be working on developing your metagame against him.

or i guess find a bunch of people who also hate mk and try to get him banned with a majority instead

 

[Elessar]

The "get better to win" hasn't worked out since Mk kept dominating consistenly despite how much any one improved. Now, as to why that is it's another topic imho, but, it's what happened.

 

[Jdietz43]

idea: you're being overly pessimistic about your character's match-up with MK and instead of complaining about him or other characters you could be working on developing your metagame against him.

or i guess find a bunch of people who also hate mk and try to get him banned with a majority instead

Problem: Tried that for two years straight, didn't work one bit. It's also more than just my character, but in fact an overwhelming majority of the cast if not arguably all.


The real question is "How much do you want to take?" and most of us reached our limit.

But maybe I shouldn't feed the trolls... I should probably just leave it at what it is now.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

But maybe I shouldn't feed the trolls... I should probably just leave it at what it is now.

Perhaps you should try coming up with a better counterargument aside from "MY CHARACTER SUXORZ" and "MK DA BESS, BETTER THAN DA RESS!" Maybe, just maybe, you won't be patronized for your lack of one.

Ah, y'know what?

It's all good, Dietz.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Jdietz43]

It's all good, Dietz.

High fives all around! We're leaving on a high note people!

*fiesta music plays long into the night*

 

[Thino]

Because MK stands on top of the hill in such a way that playing any other character is either extremely difficult or unattainable to the average player. Getting a win against a competent MK means you either had an incredibly good match, or are exerting some seriously MAD SKILLZ which most of us can't hope to have.

I'm not talking about quick-silver-speical-easy. I'm talking about real things you can do. So far short of "Be a high tier character" there's not much to be said on the MK matchup. It's been pray you don't get on the wrong end of the **** stick today or the highway. There hasn't been anything to level any fields, no meaningful advancement to speak of, no real progress of any kind. The reason this is important is that it's Super Smash Brothers Brawl, not Super Smash Brothers MetaKnight. I came to play a game where there was a ton of fun characters and people were entertaining and skilled with nearly all of them, not MK vs MK. I don't play MK, I play Brawl. And if I don't play MK or one of the very slim few who can reliably have a MU better than 35:65 or something in MK's favor, then I'm apparently just SOL. This isn't the case with other characters, there's always something to be at least done about them. Against IC's you don't get grabbed and stage select carefully, Snake has counter picks, Falco can be played against with practice and effort (e.g. you can eventually learn how to even up with his laser game and frame traps to make the match go in a way that actually may favor you for it). MetaKnight isn't any of those things. He has no bad matchups, every stage he's better than you on, and his moves are basically the frame and priority equivilant of "God hates you." There aren't so much smart decisions to be made about the MK match in depth as there is prayer to be had if you get what I mean, it's a very no win situation no matter what no matter how much concentration and training you put into it. The best you can hope for with training is simply less ownage coming your way, never an upper hand. There will always be a top character, but he need not have so much of an advantage over the rest. The people who play to win and win alone will find new characters to play with since it's what they care about: but for those of us who like to play Brawl for Brawl's sake and fun, we have no other option.

Japan has a long history of being hilariously good at fighting games, that probably stilts my opinion, but it seems to me since we only have a few cases to look at they've been doing pretty well. If not on our level then very close or better based on tourney results and general fighting ability. You work with the sample size given. In this case the sample size is small so the margin for error is large. That doesn't mean I don't get to formulate an opinion though.

The "get better to win" hasn't worked out since Mk kept dominating consistenly despite how much any one improved. Now, as to why that is it's another topic imho, but, it's what happened.

hold on hold on hold on.. make up your mind guys..

is Metaknight hard to beat or is Metaknight downright completely unbeatable?

 

[Kimidori]

Problem: Tried that for two years straight, didn't work one bit. It's also more than just my character, but in fact an overwhelming majority of the cast if not arguably all.


The real question is "How much do you want to take?" and most of us reached our limit.

But maybe I shouldn't feed the trolls... I should probably just leave it at what it is now.

***WARNING, LONG READ***
Hello. I'm Kimidori, or at least you may refer to me as such. I made this backup account for posting on special threads. I've been extremely into competitive play since Summer of 2008, and recently got very interested in Brawl and the Brawl Metagame. I've been watching this thread like crazy the past few days, and am finally going to speak my own opinion. Now, I may not be Hylian or someone as important as that, but hear me out please.

Now, I've been extensively studying both sides of Meta Knight's banning in Unity Ruleset 2.0and by looking at what both Jdietz43 and Elessar have been saying and I think you both have it all wrong. You both need to understand that the whole reason anti-ban just struck after Apex is NOT AT ALL because of the results, in fact the whole entire tournament is not at all a proof, but it just gives us a greater chance to look at the Japanese players and how much more they understand about the game than us Americans.

One point brought up by Elessar is that for the past few years, a Meta Knight legal competitive environment has not been working. One thing I would like to point out also is the reason it has not been working like Japan has made it work. The stages.

Counterpick stages have become so ridiculous that I'm incredibly surprised few people see this obvious side of the arguement. I'm not just talking about Brinstar and Rainbow Cruise, but some of the stages that are legal in Unity Ruleset are just ridiculous. And you wonder why Meta Knight dominates American tournaments? He wouldn't be as good as he is if people just looked at the facts and realized that half the reason Meta Knight is so amazing in America and not so much in Japan is that America has WAYY too many stages to choose from (over 10), and in case you didn't know, Meta Knight has no counterpicks whatsoever.

The "Big 3" as I've heard it's called (FD, BF, and SV) are basically completely fair to pretty much every character in the game. All the stages we have allowed in America subtract from the skill it takes to win a match. As I've also seen it posted, The Japanese player's ability to master the big 3 translates into the impressive gameplay they can use in other stages.
@Elessar - I don't think you understand that banning Meta Knight will just crush the metagame and the community as a whole. We could easily ban stages. RC was banned from Melee just like that, if you didn't notice. Why not edit our stagelist to make it more fair for other characters than editing our character roster to make it fair for all characters but Meta Knight. I also don't think you understand that taking away Meta Knight is a dumb move because, while your point to make people focus on other characters DOES make sense, but it's totally shielding them from the best character in the game, which they will have to beat eventually anyway.

Sorry for the long post, and thank you all for reading.

Edit: I think that instead of banning Meta Knight (whether we can undo it or not), we should start to ban stages. That way, we can focus on making our characters better than just winning. See what I mean? Why don't we reduce our stage list to at least SV, FD, and BF. In fact, we can even keep in Halberd and probably even Pokemon Stadium 1.

 

[Gea]

I think the real solution here is a revised rulset where at the beginning of every tournament each brawl player rolls a die. 1-5 means you have to play DK, while 6 means you play D3. The only stages are FD, Smashville, and BF. After a year of this metagame we should be so good at manipulating dice rolls that we won't have to play Brawl anymore.

 

[Blue Warrior]

@Kimidori I'm a smash scrub, but I've also been keeping light tabs on the competitive scene as well, so I guess I'll bite.

The counter-pick stage portion of Brawl to me seems like an interesting source of depth to the amount of strategy required on each player's behalf and is a way of making the competitive scene more interesting. While I think it's a valid source of concern, I must also ask this: what other characters have no counterpicks? Is Metaknight the only character who commits this offense, or does it apply to Diddy Kong or Falco as well, or some other such currently high-place character? If Metaknight is the only one that a player can't choose an effective counter-pick against, then that kind of says to me that the problem is the character itself, not the stage ruleset.

Also consider this: Even with Japan's simplified and completely neutral stage selection, Metaknight is still rated S+ tier. This is coming from the nation with players that are clearly superior to ours. Smashville didn't change this for doubles; I watched the finals of APEX, the singles were great, but MK+MK+MK+MK is without question the worst bit of video I have tried to sit through and stomach in recent history. And unless counter-pick stages are a huge factor of what is put into consideration in the Brawl tier lists, banning counter-pick stages isn't going to change the fact that Metaknight has no disadvantageous matchups (unlike any other class, not even a 45:55), is relatively easy to do well with competitively, and because of these two facts causes competitive Brawl to be extremely centralized around that specific character. Melee may work perfectly fine with the competitive setup it has, but Fox was duking it out with Falco, Jigglypuff, Shiek and possibly Marth for years before solidifying his stance as number one, and his skill curve is completely incomparable to Metaknight's. Melee is to apples as Brawl is to oranges. Or bananas, even.



I respect Japan's decision to simply the stage setup, and that might actually be a good idea for some US tournaments as well if the host wanted to focus solely on Brawl's characters without any complications introduced by counterpick stages or even gimmicky neutrals. I don't think it will change the fact that Metaknight's presence will make the viable character selection less diverse and the experience less enjoyable for anybody playing or watching the tournament, and it CERTAINLY won't stop MK from being the best character in the game.

 

[Elessar]

hold on hold on hold on.. make up your mind guys..

is Metaknight hard to beat or is Metaknight downright completely unbeatable?

I never claimed he was unbeatable, so no, he's obviously not unbeatable by a long shot.

Edit:

Now, I've been extensively studying both sides of Meta Knight's banning in Unity Ruleset 2.0and by looking at what both Jdietz43 and Elessar have been saying and I think you both have it all wrong. You both need to understand that the whole reason anti-ban just struck after Apex is NOT AT ALL because of the results, in fact the whole entire tournament is not at all a proof, but it just gives us a greater chance to look at the Japanese players and how much more they understand about the game than us Americans.

But they are struck by it, since this all began by "look at how japan destroyed our meta's with rob and oli, see, he's not that broken".

One point brought up by Elessar is that for the past few years, a Meta Knight legal competitive environment has not been working. One thing I would like to point out also is the reason it has not been working like Japan has made it work. The stages.

Counterpick stages have become so ridiculous that I'm incredibly surprised few people see this obvious side of the arguement. I'm not just talking about Brinstar and Rainbow Cruise, but some of the stages that are legal in Unity Ruleset are just ridiculous. And you wonder why Meta Knight dominates American tournaments? He wouldn't be as good as he is if people just looked at the facts and realized that half the reason Meta Knight is so amazing in America and not so much in Japan is that America has WAYY too many stages to choose from (over 10), and in case you didn't know, Meta Knight has no counterpicks whatsoever.

The "Big 3" as I've heard it's called (FD, BF, and SV) are basically completely fair to pretty much every character in the game. All the stages we have allowed in America subtract from the skill it takes to win a match. As I've also seen it posted, The Japanese player's ability to master the big 3 translates into the impressive gameplay they can use in other stages.

I and a few others agree with this.

@Elessar - I don't think you understand that banning Meta Knight will just crush the metagame and the community as a whole. We could easily ban stages. RC was banned from Melee just like that, if you didn't notice. Why not edit our stagelist to make it more fair for other characters than editing our character roster to make it fair for all characters but Meta Knight. I also don't think you understand that taking away Meta Knight is a dumb move because, while your point to make people focus on other characters DOES make sense, but it's totally shielding them from the best character in the game, which they will have to beat eventually anyway.

Keeping MK has crushed the metagame already, how could it crush it even more when there's currently a semi stale development of metagame along for over half the cast of characters? Also, I'm also a supporter of banning some stages, like RC or Brinstar so you're preaching to the choir here. Yet in any case, again you're modifying the entire game's rules to accommodate one character. Not three or four, but one single character.

I don't think it will change the fact that Metaknight's presence will make the viable character selection less diverse...

This is also another reason.