Feelings on MK and the MK ban after Apex

[Spelt]

This is the main factor that makes this debate sort of useless since whatever argument we, anti-ban, you guys can counter "Well guess what? we have the rest of the community on our side so the ban automatically makes sense"

LOOOOOOOOOOOOL

That's how it's been for pro-ban for the last 3 years, and now that the shoe's on the other foot all anti-ban can do is complain about it even though they were doing the exact same thing to us JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO.

 

[John12346]

Having character diversity increased isn't a ban criteria, but it is definitely a benefit gained through a character ban, usually.

A game with more viable character diversity means more important matchups to learn, for example.

 

[DMG]

Can you or any other pro-ban please explain to the importance of character diversity in a COMPETITIVE environment? I still have yet to understand that part.

Well competitively you'd assume we'd like to strike a nice balance between diversity and complete balance. There's no point having a diverse game if it's off the hinges, and there's not much point in having a balanced game if it lacks variety.

1. A game with only 1 character is inherently as balanced as possible (even if the characters are Ivan Ooze or wimpy Ganondorf). Both players get the same tools, and it boils down to whoever uses them the best. However, this will likely be a dull game. Could you imagine any ditto right now, that you would like to see extensively played out for 4+ years?

2. A game with a larget cast tends to offer more variety (besides true/near true clones or characters with very minor differences between them). However there's also more room for imbalances. It's near impossible to truly balance out a cast of 40ish and make them all go roughly even with each other. Bad MU's and even ridiculous MU's are probably expected to be found.


Diversity character wise is good because that slows down the rate of "staleness" that the game develops. If the only 2 truly viable characters were MK Snake, and all we basically cared about were those 2 MU's because everyone else literally sucked THAT bad, the game would progress and reach its peak much quicker than if you had 6+ viable characters. That's why you want diversity: the larger amount of reasonable viability you have across the cast, the harder it is for the game to "be solved" or get completely dissected or stale to players. A game that consisted of Ganondorf only dittos frankly would not be played or liked as much as "this" version of Brawl. Swap Ganon with any character in the cast and it's true, through no fault of their own.



TL:DR

Need a mix of balance and diversity. Ideally you want a game that is diverse and also fairly balanced. You don't want a game with 500 characters but most of them suck balls, or a game with only 1-2 characters total (even if completely more balanced than another game/larger cast) and the game becomes over dissected/stale extremely fast. That's why Diversity is important. And why Balance is important as well; fixating on 1 over the other leads to trouble.

 

[Black Mantis]

PS) I don't know any character who counterpicks Frigate BUT an MK.

Frigate is ROB's best stage.

 

[Luco]

Probably the main problem I have with the ban is that now everyone's flocking to Marth, which means incredible death for the PK kids.

Anyway, I think i'll mainly be observing this discussion rather than participate. That isn't to say I'll never post here, it's just I can't quite pick a side, maybe never will. :-P

 

[shaSLAM]

Well competitively you'd assume we'd like to strike a nice balance between diversity and complete balance. There's no point having a diverse game if it's off the hinges, and there's not much point in having a balanced game if it lacks variety.

1. A game with only 1 character is inherently as balanced as possible (even if the characters are Ivan Ooze or wimpy Ganondorf). Both players get the same tools, and it boils down to whoever uses them the best. However, this will likely be a dull game. Could you imagine any ditto right now, that you would like to see extensively played out for 4+ years?

2. A game with a larget cast tends to offer more variety (besides true/near true clones or characters with very minor differences between them). However there's also more room for imbalances. It's near impossible to truly balance out a cast of 40ish and make them all go roughly even with each other. Bad MU's and even ridiculous MU's are probably expected to be found.


Diversity character wise is good because that slows down the rate of "staleness" that the game develops. If the only 2 truly viable characters were MK Snake, and all we basically cared about were those 2 MU's because everyone else literally sucked THAT bad, the game would progress and reach its peak much quicker than if you had 6+ viable characters. That's why you want diversity: the larger amount of reasonable viability you have across the cast, the harder it is for the game to "be solved" or get completely dissected or stale to players. A game that consisted of Ganondorf only dittos frankly would not be played or liked as much as "this" version of Brawl. Swap Ganon with any character in the cast and it's true, through no fault of their own.



TL:DR

Need a mix of balance and diversity. Ideally you want a game that is diverse and also fairly balanced. You don't want a game with 500 characters but most of them suck balls, or a game with only 1-2 characters total (even if completely more balanced than another game/larger cast) and the game becomes over dissected/stale extremely fast. That's why Diversity is important. And why Balance is important as well; fixating on 1 over the other leads to trouble.

I think you mean this is what the smash community wants/ is assuming will happen.
how long did people play marvel 2 again? ive never heard this argument come from anyone at SRK ever or any other competitive community ever.

ZMX got all your ***** when he said that people like to ****ing john and will go to any point and make up and "argument" or "rebuttall" (wtf why are we having to sound like a ****ing courtroom) to prove their john.

thats all i can get man cuz in every other fighting game community the mindset is basically balls up and deal with it or you arent a good player.
but in smash for some reason we like to argue and debate and provide cases and act like we are in a murder trial or some **** and i think its allllll because people literally can not mentally handle getting scraped up in this community for whatever reason that may be (most of them are whiny 14 year olds maybe).
MK is clearly banned for aesthitic purposes in the US. That and the combined fact that the communtiy, for whatever reason, can not mentally handle having a clearly defined best character in the game. if you cant admit that or see that....

BASICALLY WHAT WENT DOWN WITH THE BAN A BUNCH OF SALTY PEOPLE GOT TOGETHER MADE A GROUP OF SALTINESS AND DID THINGS

 

[John12346]

Well, if you want to put it that way, I could always argue that MK has a "SSF2HD Akuma air fireball."

Planking...

 

[Black Mantis]

Well, if you want to put it that way, I could always argue that MK has a "SSF2HD Akuma air fireball."

Planking...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xy1EJtce1fI
its like the mk of street fighter

 

[Rykard]

I don't know if anyone has brought this up before (so i apologize for this if that is the case) but since this discussion is largely based on metaknight post-apex, i felt the need to take a look at apex results to see just how dominant or non dominant he was.

if we take a look at bracket results, we can see that 21 out of 64 people either used metaknight as a main or a secondary at some point in the tournament. this translates to roughly 1/3 of the best players in our community using him to enhance their chances at winning the tournament. These people though are not randoms that nobody has ever heard of before. These names are consistently the top players in our community who just happen to use the character. So for everyone saying that metaknight is an auto win, clearly that is not the case because a hefty amount of the top players in our community are doing just fine without him and most likely had to beat out plenty of other metaknights in pools to make it to bracket.

Now, i think it is pretty safe to say those 21 people using him are essentially the top level of play metaknight can offer at this current time. So if we expand this scenario to take into account the entire brawl attendance in singles at Apex, we will have 21 out of 400 or essentially 5.2% of people actually being successful with the character. even if we subtracted the 43 other entrants that made bracket and said for the sake of this that the everyone else in the tournament mained metaknight, the number still is a very small 5.6% of people actually being successful with the character.

The point of this all is that no matter how good this character is, there is still only a small number of people in our community that can actually demonstrate truly solid play with the character. And in all honesty, that is because they are good players, not because of metaknight. If we did a role reversal and told all the people who main metaknight to use a different character and told all the ones who didn't to use metaknight, i guarantee that the names that made it into the bracket would look incredibly similar to what they are right now.

Even if metaknight is a broken character, and even if we made a huge assumption by saying he was over centralizing to the metagame, the most recent tournament results suggest otherwise. Clearly, if the majority of our best players can place highly at a national tournament using characters that are not metaknight, you are capable of doing that too, you just are not good enough yet or too lazy to try.

 

[DMG]

shaSLAM: I dunno what you're talking about lol. That would generally apply to any game. What's your point about Marvel 2? That game took a long time for the "more established' metagame/character traits to be extensively used. There was a lot of room to explore, evolve, and refine in that game. 3 characters on each side, different assists and hyper combos, multitude of gameplay options (guarding/in the air, super jumping, push block, etc) Even then, the game still has a fair amount of viability to spread among the cast. Every top set you see isn't MSS dittos or Double Magneto leads or blah blah.

Seriously I got nothing out of your post besides your belief that our community talks too much like a court room lol.

 

[Kimidori]

I don't know if anyone has brought this up before (so i apologize for this if that is the case) but since this discussion is largely based on metaknight post-apex, i felt the need to take a look at apex results to see just how dominant or non dominant he was.

if we take a look at bracket results, we can see that 21 out of 64 people either used metaknight as a main or a secondary at some point in the tournament. this translates to roughly 1/3 of the best players in our community using him to enhance their chances at winning the tournament. These people though are not randoms that nobody has ever heard of before. These names are consistently the top players in our community who just happen to use the character. So for everyone saying that metaknight is an auto win, clearly that is not the case because a hefty amount of the top players in our community are doing just fine without him and most likely had to beat out plenty of other metaknights in pools to make it to bracket.

Now, i think it is pretty safe to say those 21 people using him are essentially the top level of play metaknight can offer at this current time. So if we expand this scenario to take into account the entire brawl attendance in singles at Apex, we will have 21 out of 400 or essentially 5.2% of people actually being successful with the character. even if we subtracted the 43 other entrants that made bracket and said for the sake of this that the everyone else in the tournament mained metaknight, the number still is a very small 5.6% of people actually being successful with the character.

The point of this all is that no matter how good this character is, there is still only a small number of people in our community that can actually demonstrate truly solid play with the character. And in all honesty, that is because they are good players, not because of metaknight. If we did a role reversal and told all the people who main metaknight to use a different character and told all the ones who didn't to use metaknight, i guarantee that the names that made it into the bracket would look incredibly similar to what they are right now.

Even if metaknight is a broken character, and even if we made a huge assumption by saying he was over centralizing to the metagame, the most recent tournament results suggest otherwise. Clearly, if the majority of our best players can place highly at a national tournament using characters that are not metaknight, you are capable of doing that too, you just are not good enough yet or too lazy to try.

I love your points here. Slap in the face for people not willing to try to best Meta Knight. People shouldn't blame characters for their losses, but need to realize it's their fault for losing.

Whenever someone loses, they should try to improve instead of johning or blaming Meta Knight. We need to forget about the money and think more about being good at the game, or best with our character.

 

[Gadiel_VaStar]

Final Verdict: MK legal next ruleset.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

I want DMG to answer this:

Do you honestly think that Brawl would devolve into a bunch of MK dittos? Or do you think it'll devolve into MK vs. ______ ?

Smooth Criminal

 

[Bobwithlobsters]

I don't know if anyone has brought this up before (so i apologize for this if that is the case) but since this discussion is largely based on metaknight post-apex, i felt the need to take a look at apex results to see just how dominant or non dominant he was.

if we take a look at bracket results, we can see that 21 out of 64 people either used metaknight as a main or a secondary at some point in the tournament. this translates to roughly 1/3 of the best players in our community using him to enhance their chances at winning the tournament. These people though are not randoms that nobody has ever heard of before. These names are consistently the top players in our community who just happen to use the character. So for everyone saying that metaknight is an auto win, clearly that is not the case because a hefty amount of the top players in our community are doing just fine without him and most likely had to beat out plenty of other metaknights in pools to make it to bracket.

Now, i think it is pretty safe to say those 21 people using him are essentially the top level of play metaknight can offer at this current time. So if we expand this scenario to take into account the entire brawl attendance in singles at Apex, we will have 21 out of 400 or essentially 5.2% of people actually being successful with the character. even if we subtracted the 43 other entrants that made bracket and said for the sake of this that the everyone else in the tournament mained metaknight, the number still is a very small 5.6% of people actually being successful with the character.

The point of this all is that no matter how good this character is, there is still only a small number of people in our community that can actually demonstrate truly solid play with the character. And in all honesty, that is because they are good players, not because of metaknight. If we did a role reversal and told all the people who main metaknight to use a different character and told all the ones who didn't to use metaknight, i guarantee that the names that made it into the bracket would look incredibly similar to what they are right now.

Even if metaknight is a broken character, and even if we made a huge assumption by saying he was over centralizing to the metagame, the most recent tournament results suggest otherwise. Clearly, if the majority of our best players can place highly at a national tournament using characters that are not metaknight, you are capable of doing that too, you just are not good enough yet or too lazy to try.

I'm sorry but the math in this post is very misleading saying out out of the 400 people only 5.6% play mk at the highest level when lets assume all of the 64 players in the bracket play mk that would still only new 16% which is the most this odd comparison could produce.

I do think that a heavily truncated stage list could produce a useable metagame with mk less prevalent but he would still be the best best but just by less of a large margin. But we are giving up a lot of diversity.

Diversity greatly increases the competative depth of the game. Sirlin has a great article that I will try to link. But it increases the number of possible interactions between the players. This includes depth added by characters and stages.

 

[CowboyFromHell]

homie. like... you live in a region where this wouldnt even be like a significant problem though.

Ah, well I had no idea. I just assumed after the ban everyone who used MK just switched. I figured it was equal in all regions, that's what I get for not being in the community long enough.

 

[Jdietz43]

Ah, well I had no idea. I just assumed after the ban everyone who used MK just switched. I figured it was equal in all regions, that's what I get for not being in the community long enough.

Lol, but it was still suckish nonetheless let me tell you, even if other places had it worse. It made me feel super bad for anyone who lived on either coast and had an even more stilted ratio.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Lol, but it was still suckish nonetheless let me tell you, even if other places had it worse. It made me feel super bad for anyone who lived on either coast and had an even more stilted ratio.

Did you even go to these regions that had it so badly? Or are you just going off of hear-say?

Or are you basing it off of the fact that a few players in your region decided to switch to MK and trounced you because, well, you suck? I bet they didn't even "abuse" the character to the same extent as everybody else, what with planking and all of that nonsense. Assuming they "abused" MK like everybody else, of course.

/vicarious

Keep it up, pro-ban. You got this.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Jdietz43]

Note how I qualify the fact that the stipulation had to be true before feeling sorry for them. It's airtight, extra light trolling all the way.

Besides that, you're making the new guy feel bad for no reason which I def. can't abide by. The same vicarious logic can easily be applied to Orion's comment, whom I've never seen in the area. I'm just setting his personal record straight from a local's view. I come from a time when even Kain was quitting because of MK, and he's the best Wolf in the business (and the region for that matter).

Welcome to the real world outside of your fantasy, it's called the Wisconsin/Illinois state line, where kids learn to troll before they're out of diapers.

#devildigimontaughtmeeverythingIknow

(don't worry people, I'm 100% done now lol, I think it's all out of my system. You can go back to actual serious discussion free from my sillyness from now on. It's just too good to be back around here, I can't contain my own nonsense... in a good way. Hope people understand)

 

[Kimidori]

I'm sorry but the math in this post is very misleading saying out out of the 400 people only 5.6% play mk at the highest level when lets assume all of the 64 players in the bracket play mk that would still only new 16% which is the most this odd comparison could produce.

I do think that a heavily truncated stage list could produce a useable metagame with mk less prevalent but he would still be the best best but just by less of a large margin. But we are giving up a lot of diversity.

Diversity greatly increases the competative depth of the game. Sirlin has a great article that I will try to link. But it increases the number of possible interactions between the players. This includes depth added by characters and stages.

Diversity and depth don't make us good at the game. If we wanted to increase "depth", we would add in items or something crazy like that. I get where you're coming from, but more diversity will just make us worse at the game. It's like adding another variable into a science experiment. It ruins the goal experiment and just messes with the outcome to the point of something completely different. Which, what we want is to play the game and be good at it, right? Or at least, that's what I want. Diversity prevents the bettering of our gameplay.

 

[DMG]

I want DMG to answer this:

Do you honestly think that Brawl would devolve into a bunch of MK dittos? Or do you think it'll devolve into MK vs. ______ ?

Smooth Criminal

Well frankly the game would die before that would ever happen. Even then, my point wasn't that the game would devolve specifically into MK dittos if he's legal. It MIGHT, it's definitely a LOT more likely without additional rules like LGL. I think you could make a solid case for that if we were stupid enough to drop LGL or any kind of rule like that and said Here ya go MK.


The main point was to use that extreme example (where the game is extremely limited in viability, either through an extreme character or through limited in game character selection) to show why character diversity is important. MK doesn't strangle the game to the point where it's just him or him vs Diddy. But, if he has enough influence where, say you have 8 characters viable, remove MK and it goes up to 12-14, I think that's at least worth seriously considering. Especially if removing him leads to more RPS instead of "slight dis vs MK, 1-2 characters barely even, etc"




A game with MK dittos only is more balanced than regular Brawl, since you'll always have the same tools as the other guy and it will boil down to who uses them better. BUT, that game would be boring as **** and the freshness of the game would evaporate. That was the point I was making since Thino seemed to be OK with even extremely limited viability. The man who enjoys or see's no problem with Ivan Ooze dittos.

 

[Luigisama]

So in Japanese ruleset
10 min timer
No scrooging
LGL 50
no glitches or infinite dimensional cape
Starters
FD, SV, BF
Counter picks YI, LC, and PS1

Well looks like Mk is forced to fight. Also he can't shark since Halberd, Rainbow cruise, and Delfino aren't legal.

USA is this except the scrooging rule, time, and LGL. But added to it is Halberd, Rainbow cruise, Delfino, Frigate, and Castle siege.

As someone who was at apex. From what I saw and concluded. By playing on neutral stages where mk couldn't abuse the stages the japanese learned how to read. If a japan player does lose a match he doesn't stop and think "hmm now which stage can screw this character over?" they actually thought about what their opponent was doing or downloaded their opponents playstyle then won. They adapted and read their opponent and outplayed them. Banning stages like Rainbow cruise will make mk easier to fight. Also if Japan has a LGL and a scrooging rule I think it is fair to say we both agree mk is pretty broken, but with these limits he's actually beatable.

Along with this there is "get better" but that comes naturally players can't become the greatest player in 2 weeks. Everyone grows differently. Every character has the tools to beat mk, players just aren't using these tools right and make mistakes during their matches.

 

[Kimidori]

So in Japanese ruleset
10 min timer
No scrooging
LGL 50
no glitches or infinite dimensional cape
Starters
FD, SV, BF
Counter picks YI, LC, and PS1

Well looks like Mk is forced to fight. Also he can't shark since Halberd, Rainbow cruise, and Delfino aren't legal.

USA is this except the scrooging rule, time, and LGL. But added to it is Halberd, Rainbow cruise, Delfino, Frigate, and Castle siege.

As someone who was at apex. From what I saw and concluded. By playing on neutral stages where mk couldn't abuse the stages the japanese learned how to read. If a japan player does lose a match he doesn't stop and think "hmm now which stage can screw this character over?" they actually thought about what their opponent was doing or downloaded their opponents playstyle then won. They adapted and read their opponent and outplayed them. Banning stages like Rainbow cruise will make mk easier to fight. Also if Japan has a LGL and a scrooging rule I think it is fair to say we both agree mk is pretty broken, but with these limits he's actually beatable.

Along with this there is "get better" but that comes naturally players can't become the greatest player in 2 weeks. Everyone grows differently. Every character has the tools to beat mk, players just aren't using these tools right and make mistakes during their matches.

This is what I've been saying. Also, this is very well put. I think that, the URC should've analyzed WHY MK was broken before they considered him "broken" in the first place. j/s.

 

[Brisinger581]

I know that I am mostly a beginner and that my opinion on this might not matter all that much, but I do not really feel that MK should of been banned in the first place. Now before people jump on me let me explain.

I was at Apex and witnessed the entire event. MK players were a plenty, but there were a ton of upsets against MK mains as well. I feel those pushing for the ban to start were just not determined enough to understand how MK works. Yes he out matches a good portion of the cast, but then to be honest most people don't use those characters that can't fight MK in tournament that often anyone....or they don't usually make it that far and it isn't usually because of some MK player, but normally and Olimar or IC takes them out of their respective tournament. MK is able to be beaten as Apex's bracket has shown us.

It comes to either learn to play better or cheaper so you can beat MK or just personally don't cry about it to everyone just because you lost to a MK. He is able to be beaten, but if you play like you always do and never try anything different then no you are not going to beat MK. He isn't a god and can be killed and the ban was just unnecessary.

 

[Kimidori]

I know that I am mostly a beginner and that my opinion on this might not matter all that much, but I do not really feel that MK should of been banned in the first place. Now before people jump on me let me explain.

I was at Apex and witnessed the entire event. MK players were a plenty, but there were a ton of upsets against MK mains as well. I feel those pushing for the ban to start were just not determined enough to understand how MK works. Yes he out matches a good portion of the cast, but then to be honest most people don't use those characters that can't fight MK in tournament that often anyone....or they don't usually make it that far and it isn't usually because of some MK player, but normally and Olimar or IC takes them out of their respective tournament. MK is able to be beaten as Apex's bracket has shown us.

It comes to either learn to play better or cheaper so you can beat MK or just personally don't cry about it to everyone just because you lost to a MK. He is able to be beaten, but if you play like you always do and never try anything different then no you are not going to beat MK. He isn't a god and can be killed and the ban was just unnecessary.

Again lol, this is what I've been saying. Don't worry, your opinion matters a lot. (Or at least to me lol)

 

[Bobwithlobsters]

Diversity and depth don't make us good at the game. If we wanted to increase "depth", we would add in items or something crazy like that. I get where you're coming from, but more diversity will just make us worse at the game. It's like adding another variable into a science experiment. It ruins the goal experiment and just messes with the outcome to the point of something completely different. Which, what we want is to play the game and be good at it, right? Or at least, that's what I want. Diversity prevents the bettering of our gameplay.

Yes diversity does decrease our skill at a game that doesn't have our diverse rule set. When the Japanese come here we specifically truncated our stage list, had a lgl, and still mk won. admittedly the Japanese did beat our best players but not to take away from their victory we did play by a rule set that catered to their game play style.

You say we are worse at the game but we are playing two different games with different levels of character viability. We are definitely worse at their game but judging from previous tourney results I would say that we are better at our game, but I don't know if that is still the case.

How is greater diversity bad? Allowing for greater variety in character interaction is a great thing. Decreasing the number of viable options in a game is definitely a bad thing, and assume you would agree with that. The discussion of item viability is not what we are discussing right now because they add a large amount of game changing randomness that is specifically avoided in our current stage list. As such they are really two different topics which should be discussed separately.

why do you keep saying get better? the personal performance of an individual player is not what this debate is about. Do you honestly think the reason people are for the ban is because we just can't beat mk? do you hear a whole lot of wa wa I can't beat mk so he sucks? no I have seen repeatd posts from both sides that say YES HE IS IN FACT BEATABLE. Do you concede he has no bad matchups? and as such a significantly greater skill gap is needed to beat mk players than if that player played any other character? as such from a performance standpoint there is no reason to use any other character?

 

[Kimidori]

Yes diversity does decrease our skill at a game that doesn't have our diverse rule set. When the Japanese come here we specifically truncated our stage list, had a lgl, and still mk won. admittedly the Japanese did beat our best players but not to take away from their victory we did play by a rule set that catered to their game play style.

You say we are worse at the game but we are playing two different games with different levels of character viability. We are definitely worse at their game but judging from previous tourney results I would say that we are better at our game, but I don't know if that is still the case.

How is greater diversity bad? Allowing for greater variety in character interaction is a great thing. Decreasing the number of viable options in a game is definitely a bad thing, and assume you would agree with that. The discussion of item viability is not what we are discussing right now because they add a large amount of game changing randomness that is specifically avoided in our current stage list. As such they are really two different topics which should be discussed separately.

why do you keep saying get better? the personal performance of an individual player is not what this debate is about. Do you honestly think the reason people are for the ban is because we just can't beat mk? do you hear a whole lot of wa wa I can't beat mk so he sucks? no I have seen repeatd posts from both sides that say YES HE IS IN FACT BEATABLE. Do you concede he has no bad matchups? and as such a significantly greater skill gap is needed to beat mk players than if that player played any other character? as such from a performance standpoint there is no reason to use any other character?

No, diversity does NOT increase our skill. It adds so many variables to the game that it distracts us from our true goal; to get better at the game. Unless of course your goal is to time out your opponent, or gay them out to the point of winning all the time. As for the rules, we did in NO way cater to Japan's ruleset or needs or whatever. They play with 6. Apex played with ten. The only reason that RC and Brinstar (the only off stages) were off is because it was in the reccomended changes in the Unity Ruleset thread.

Also, there is only one game we're playing here. In other words, one science experiment. The Japanese decided to keep all variables simple. Manipulated: Characters Controlled: Stages Responding: Outcome and player skill. America, on the other hand, is making stages have an impact on the outcome of the game, thus affecting player skill negatively.

One other thing I would like to say is, we want a balanced game, don't we? Well it's not going to happen with the horrible unbalanced stages we have legal (RC, Brinstar, even somewhat Frigate and Castle Siege. Definitely Delfino and Halberd, also). That leaves the big 3, PS1, LC, and Yoshi's Island. Also, if you think FD favors ground characters, it doesn't favor them as much as you'd think. I mean really, Falco, D3, and IC's can CG on any stage. It's just apart of what makes them the character they are. If you want balance, say goodbye to variety. And MK isn't easy to play as nevertheless win with either. Sure his basic tactics are easy and stuff, but when you actually want to play him at a high level, you have to know how to use your tactics against a player, and adapt to use them. It's the exact same with EVERY other character. Every other character just doesn't have as many options. It doesn't mean MK is overpowered or banworthy.

Actually not at all. It just means he's a good character. But who cares? It's like comparing Fox and Pichu in Melee. Both are still very good when it comes down to it, Fox just has more easily accessible options, therefore he is a "better" character. Doesn't mean if all characters besides Fox were as good as Pichu means we should ban Fox. It just means we should get better at the game and try to balance him out.

Edit: And the changes we can make are NOT at all specific towards Meta Knight either. It would be an improvement for everyone if we reduced the stages to the more basic ones which help us practice getting better at the game instead of relying on gimmicks that give us a big advantage in the situation. When you choose a character, you are aware of the risk and reward that's involved with them. You don't just choose stages that will make a win easier, you tough it out and try harder to improve your character as a whole.

 

[Bobwithlobsters]

No, diversity does NOT increase our skill. It adds so many variables to the game that it distracts us from our true goal; to get better at the game. Unless of course your goal is to time out your opponent, or gay them out to the point of winning all the time. As for the rules, we did in NO way cater to Japan's ruleset or needs or whatever. They play with 6. Apex played with ten. The only reason that RC and Brinstar (the only off stages) were off is because it was in the reccomended changes in the Unity Ruleset thread.

Also, there is only one game we're playing here. In other words, one science experiment. The Japanese decided to keep all variables simple. Manipulated: Characters Controlled: Stages Responding: Outcome and player skill. America, on the other hand, is making stages have an impact on the outcome of the game, thus affecting player skill negatively.

One other thing I would like to say is, we want a balanced game, don't we? Well it's not going to happen with the horrible unbalanced stages we have legal (RC, Brinstar, even somewhat Frigate and Castle Siege. Definitely Delfino and Halberd, also). That leaves the big 3, PS1, LC, and Yoshi's Island. Also, if you think FD favors ground characters, it doesn't favor them as much as you'd think. I mean really, Falco, D3, and IC's can CG on any stage. It's just apart of what makes them the character they are. If you want balance, say goodbye to variety. And MK isn't easy to play as nevertheless win with either. Sure his basic tactics are easy and stuff, but when you actually want to play him at a high level, you have to know how to use your tactics against a player, and adapt to use them. It's the exact same with EVERY other character. Every other character just doesn't have as many options. It doesn't mean MK is overpowered or banworthy.

Actually not at all. It just means he's a good character. But who cares? It's like comparing Fox and Pichu in Melee. Both are still very good when it comes down to it, Fox just has more easily accessible options, therefore he is a "better" character. Doesn't mean if all characters besides Fox were as good as Pichu means we should ban Fox. It just means we should get better at the game and try to balance him out.

Could you please explain how these stages are unbalanced? Seeing as how the status quo has them in our stage list it is on you to show that they are in fact game breakingly unbalanced.

 

[Thino]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOL

That's how it's been for pro-ban for the last 3 years, and now that the shoe's on the other foot all anti-ban can do is complain about it even though they were doing the exact same thing to us JUST A FEW MONTHS AGO.

Uh-huh! That says a lot about how competitive matters are handled in the community, regardless of which side we are on.

How about scratching the idea of having things such as BBR and URC and have the TOs have whatever ruleset they want without any attempt to standardize it in that case?

Having character diversity increased isn't a ban criteria, but it is definitely a benefit gained through a character ban, usually.

A game with more viable character diversity means more important matchups to learn, for example.

Define "important" in that pre-ban context.

According to your data, the MK matchup should be the most important since this is the character you are most likely to fight in the U.S when he's legal.

Well competitively you'd assume we'd like to strike a nice balance between diversity and complete balance. There's no point having a diverse game if it's off the hinges, and there's not much point in having a balanced game if it lacks variety.

Yea but I believe that there is a difference between what we like or we'd like and something having a point in a competitive environment.

So when you say "we'd like", it's completely understandable and I agree.

But when you say there is no point, you need to explain why there is no point, competitively speaking.

1. A game with only 1 character is inherently as balanced as possible (even if the characters are Ivan Ooze or wimpy Ganondorf). Both players get the same tools, and it boils down to whoever uses them the best. However, this will likely be a dull game. Could you imagine any ditto right now, that you would like to see extensively played out for 4+ years?

Same as I mentioned above, you use the word "dull" and "like", this makes your argument about diversity being based on personal taste, which is exactly what I would like more people to be honest about.

What is so hard about saying "Metaknight needs to be banned because I like diversity" instead of "Diversity benefits the game, therefore Metaknight needs to be banned"

Competitiveness is not about dullness or liking, you're thinking about fun when you say those things.

2. A game with a larget cast tends to offer more variety (besides true/near true clones or characters with very minor differences between them). However there's also more room for imbalances. It's near impossible to truly balance out a cast of 40ish and make them all go roughly even with each other. Bad MU's and even ridiculous MU's are probably expected to be found.

I agree.

But I hope you're not trying to say that banning MK is an attempt to balance the game, because balancing a game that way is impossible especially

Diversity character wise is good because that slows down the rate of "staleness" that the game develops. If the only 2 truly viable characters were MK Snake, and all we basically cared about were those 2 MU's because everyone else literally sucked THAT bad, the game would progress and reach its peak much quicker than if you had 6+ viable characters. That's why you want diversity: the larger amount of reasonable viability you have across the cast, the harder it is for the game to "be solved" or get completely dissected or stale to players. A game that consisted of Ganondorf only dittos frankly would not be played or liked as much as "this" version of Brawl. Swap Ganon with any character in the cast and it's true, through no fault of their own.

Good, I think we're reaching the core of your argument.

Basically you think the least character are viable, the faster the game would die and nobody would play it, right?

That still takes us back to how the game was before the ban aka what do you consider viable or not? Was Metaknight the only viable character before the ban?

Need a mix of balance and diversity. Ideally you want a game that is diverse and also fairly balanced. You don't want a game with 500 characters but most of them suck balls, or a game with only 1-2 characters total (even if completely more balanced than another game/larger cast) and the game becomes over dissected/stale extremely fast. That's why Diversity is important. And why Balance is important as well; fixating on 1 over the other leads to trouble.

fixation =/= viability.

Just because people are fixating on one character is very far from meaning that a character or the game reached its peak.

How is greater diversity bad? Allowing for greater variety in character interaction is a great thing. Decreasing the number of viable options in a game is definitely a bad thing, and assume you would agree with that.

"Great thing" "Bad thing" that's a bit vague, care to explain why greater variety is a "great thing" and why why decreasing the options is "definitely a bad thing"?

Because you haven't explained a single thing by saying that.

Do you concede he has no bad matchups? and as such a significantly greater skill gap is needed to beat mk players than if that player played any other character? as such from a performance standpoint there is no reason to use any other character?

That 3rd statement is the typical North American way of thinking

What do you think of it if I replace it by "as such from a performance standpoint I need to put much more effort in that matchup than in other matchups instead looking for a shortcut to increase my performance the easy way and place good at tournament which would be the only reason to use Metaknight?"

 

[Kimidori]

Could you please explain how these stages are unbalanced? Seeing as how the status quo has them in our stage list it is on you to show that they are in fact game breakingly unbalanced.

Yes, and I shall do it easily so. Let's go stage by stage. RC - Completely RUINS characters that like the ground more than the air. Gives a completely unfair advantage to air based characters and takes away most ground character's options. Oh, and it allows for sharking.
Brinstar - Inconsistent acid flow. Ruins CG's, also allows for sharking, involves a walkoff in one point of the stage.
Castle Siege: Involves a walkoff for 1/3 of the whole stage. In other words, D3 wins.
Delfino Plaza - Water, akward positioning on platforms, multiple walkoffs, and to top all of that off, sharking is easily possible.
Battleship Halberd - Sharking is possible, Canon, Laser, Claw, and, if it matters, a walkoff in the beginning.
Frigate - The flip is more than helpful for air based characters, and also gives a disadvantage to characters on the edge. Also contains an ungrapplable/ungrabbable ledge.
TThen finally, PS2 - every transformation changes the gameplay (icy ground, float-like ground, and moving ground). All transformations are gimmicky.

 

[Bobwithlobsters]

Yes, and I shall do it easily so. Let's go stage by stage. RC - Completely RUINS characters that like the ground more than the air. Gives a completely unfair advantage to air based characters and takes away most ground character's options. Oh, and it allows for sharking.
Brinstar - Inconsistent acid flow. Ruins CG's, also allows for sharking, involves a walkoff in one point of the stage.
Castle Siege: Involves a walkoff for 1/3 of the whole stage. In other words, D3 wins.
Delfino Plaza - Water, akward positioning on platforms, multiple walkoffs, and to top all of that off, sharking is easily possible.
Battleship Halberd - Sharking is possible, Canon, Laser, Claw, and, if it matters, a walkoff in the beginning.
Frigate - The flip is more than helpful for air based characters, and also gives a disadvantage to characters on the edge. Also contains an ungrapplable/ungrabbable ledge.
TThen finally, PS2 - every transformation changes the gameplay (icy ground, float-like ground, and moving ground). All transformations are gimmicky.

you have shown that a number of these stages have advantages and disadvantages for different characters but what characters break these stages or are broken to the point of being unviable by these stages? DDD? is that why he is S tier? cause he auto wins on castle siege and delfino. and Olimar and ICs are clearly F tier because Frigate and Rainbow completely wreck them? the only character placement that really seems effected by these stages is mk and just how wide of a margin he has between him and the rest of the cast.

I'm sorry but im not seeing how these incredibly imbalanced stages are deciding our tier list because mk and maybe wario are the only heavily aerial based characters on our tier list that show any evidence of your theory.

Except for mk our tier list is extremely ground based and Japans is even more heavily ground based, once again except for mk.

 

[Kimidori]

you have shown that a number of these stages have advantages and disadvantages for different characters but what characters break these stages or are broken to the point of being unviable by these stages? DDD? is that why he is S tier? cause he auto wins on castle siege and delfino. and Olimar and ICs are clearly F tier because Frigate and Rainbow completely wreck them? the only character placement that really seems effected by these stages is mk and just how wide of a margin he has between him and the rest of the cast.

I'm sorry but im not seeing how these incredibly imbalanced stages are deciding our tier list because mk and maybe wario are the only heavily aerial based characters on our tier list that show any evidence of your theory.

Except for mk our tier list is extremely ground based and Japans is even more heavily ground based, once again except for mk.

Yes because I totally said it means auto win. No, I meant he wins a stock if he grabs, sorry if that didn't translate well. Either way, tier list does not have very much to do with stages. Somewhat, but not THAT much. MK is not the only one effected by those stages, and he does NOT AT ALL have a wide margin between him and the rest of the cast. Maybe with those totally game changing stages he does, but not with regular stages. Did I ever talk about the tier list? Like, relevantly at all? No, I didn't. So I don't know why you're going there in the first place. Like, that was all that was in your arguement. I never said ONE thing about the tier list(s). So going there does not at all argue what I've stated. Also, you're somewhat ignoring my other posts.

Also, at your statement of the "wide margin" between him and the rest of the cast, Why do you think such a wide margin would exist in the first place (even though it doesn't)? In other words, why would one even THINK a character is so far ahead of the others in the game? I'll give you a hint. It's the terrain you fight on and it can give an advantage to some characters over others.

 

[Bobwithlobsters]

Yes because I totally said it means auto win. No, I meant he wins a stock if he grabs, sorry if that didn't translate well. Either way, tier list does not have very much to do with stages. Somewhat, but not THAT much. MK is not the only one effected by those stages, and he does NOT AT ALL have a wide margin between him and the rest of the cast. Maybe with those totally game changing stages he does, but not with regular stages. Did I ever talk about the tier list? Like, relevantly at all? No, I didn't. So I don't know why you're going there in the first place. Like, that was all that was in your arguement. I never said ONE thing about the tier list(s). So going there does not at all argue what I've stated. Also, you're somewhat ignoring my other posts.

Also, at your statement of the "wide margin" between him and the rest of the cast, Why do you think such a wide margin would exist in the first place (even though it doesn't)? In other words, why would one even THINK a character is so far ahead of the others in the game? I'll give you a hint. It's the terrain you fight on and it can give an advantage to some characters over others.

Tier placement is good evidence to back up a claim as possibly are earnings.

where is the evidence that these stages are so destructive to our metagame? in japan where they have your desired stage list mk is still S+ tier. other characters move a bit but not mk, he is still sitting pretty in S+ tier all by himself. He is beatable in both stage lists so why is yours so much better? if the stages don't matter that much as to how good the characters perform then what are we achieving by decreasing the number of viable options and therefor decreasing overall depth of the game?

added variety increases the number of viable options available to the players and therefor increase the overall depth. I believe we can agree that added depth to a competitive game is a good thing? -directed to Thino as to why variety is good.

 

[Kimidori]

Tier placement is good evidence to back up a claim as possibly are earnings.

where is the evidence that these stages are so destructive to our metagame? in japan where they have your desired stage list mk is still S+ tier. other characters move a bit but not mk, he is still sitting pretty in S+ tier all by himself. He is beatable in both stage lists so why is yours so much better? if the stages don't matter that much as to how good the characters perform then what are we achieving by decreasing the number of viable options and therefor decreasing overall depth of the game?

Your arguements are repetetive and this is turning into a circle arguement (much expected considering you are pro-ban, but titles aside).

We all know that MK is S+ tier. THERE'S NO CHANGING THAT. No matter what. He's the best character. We all freaking know that. My point is he wouldn't be as amazing as you think he is (or even worthy of discussing his ban) if the stages were limited to the big three and possibly the other three counterpicks. No duh he is beatable in both lists. It's not mine, btw. And also, it's better because it doesn't allow such an easy win. You're focusing on diversity and fun, while I'm focusing on skill. The stages DO matter that much. Decreasing the number of "viable" options which honestly I don't think counterpicks are necessary or good at all will not make our game better for any reason at all. Tell me one thing, how is variety going to make us better at the game? Because it will help us learn to adapt to stages better? No, Japan has proved it's easily possible without these lame stages. Also, we shouldn't have to adapt to stages in the first place. Again, variety completely takes away skill.

Edit: Oh, and if this so called "depth" takes away from the skill involved with the game (which in this case, it does), then it is in almost no way a good thing for the competitive scene of the game itself. We want skill, not variety and cheap gimmicks controlling our wins.
Double edit: Oh, and is variety really your arguement here? Because that's very pathetic. As I've said a billion times before, variety is NO GROUNDS WHATSOEVER for banning a character, or keeping unfair stages.

 

[Steam]

I personally favor Japan's approach. They almost ENTIRELY only play on 3 stages, the problem isn't Meta Knight, it's the counterpicks available to him.

Rainbow Cruise and Frigate? Just eliminating those two will fix the game.

PS) I don't know any character who counterpicks Frigate BUT an MK.

I cp frigate all the time as lucario

And of course mk isn't that much of a problem when the game is limited to 3 stages that play much differently than the others. The problem is clearly mk when he's the only one that "breaks" the stages. The current stage list has been shown to be easy to adapt to and balanced. Yes everyone has to use their ban on rc against certain characters... Just like they all have to ban fd against the likes of falco and ice climbers.

Kimi- fd gives an unfair advantage to ground based characters. It's one of two stages without platforms in the game. Ban please.

There also is no walk off on brinstar

And water is not a reason to ban a stage.

D3 does not auto win on castle, it's easy to just air camp the 2nd transformation as anyone

Sharking is a mk only issue.

Halberd weapons give you several years to react.

Nothing is wrong with acid ruining Cgs, Lylat can do it, so can ps1.

Everything about frigate is hilariously stupid. Learn to adapt please.

Stage interference is something inherent to smash. We ban stages when they interfere at random without ample time to react, have serious balance issues, or have a ******** risk reward related to some hazard (a centralizing strategy)

 

[Strong Badam]

Yes diversity does decrease our skill at a game that doesn't have our diverse rule set. When the Japanese come here we specifically truncated our stage list, had a lgl, and still mk won. admittedly the Japanese did beat our best players but not to take away from their victory we did play by a rule set that catered to their game play style.

No, Alex Strife was just the first TO in this community that finally made a good stage list that wasn't full of bull****.

 

[Ghostbone]

No, diversity does NOT increase our skill. It adds so many variables to the game that it distracts us from our true goal; to get better at the game.

So if I'm understanding you correctly we should ban every character but MK and every stage but FD to limit diversity so we can get better at the game faster.
Cool

Spoiler

Hint, all those variables are a part of the game, and if you want to get better at the game, you shouldn't be banning them. With your science example, it'd be like testing a reaction between two substances and not including one of the substances in the experiment to limit complexity, you're going about it the wrong way

Doesn't mean if all characters besides Fox were as good as Pichu means we should ban Fox. It just means we should get better at the game and try to balance him out.

LOL
You can't be serious.
Please tell me you're trolling.
If every character was as good as Pichu, Fox would be just as broken as Super Turbo Akuma.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

+1 to Lucario CPing Frigate.

Double edit: Oh, and is variety really your arguement here? Because that's very pathetic. As I've said a billion times before, variety is NO GROUNDS WHATSOEVER for banning a character, or keeping unfair stages.

Uh...yes it is.

There are characters who may severely limit viability because they are too good and force a spread that over centralizes the game to play me or people that do well against me alone. Variety is usually why you ban a character, because they ruin it for being too good.

 

[theunabletable]

^the game might have more variety without DDD

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

^the game might have more variety without DDD

0:
1:
2:
3:
4:

vs


-3:
-2:
-1:
0:
1:
2:
3:
4:

Doesn't seem to be the case here actually.

 

[Orion*]

Ah, well I had no idea. I just assumed after the ban everyone who used MK just switched. I figured it was equal in all regions, that's what I get for not being in the community long enough.

It's np

Lol, but it was still suckish nonetheless let me tell you, even if other places had it worse. It made me feel super bad for anyone who lived on either coast and had an even more stilted ratio.

East coast was pretty bad I will admit this.

However... outside of east coast there are NO OTHER REGIONS dominated top player wise by MK.

Midwest Is like Shugo Lain? Shugo mains falco and goes MK sometimes but for the most part you don't see him going MK unless it's a tournament w/ no LGL or it's vs Ice Climbers.
nicole got 2nd w/ peach in a regional in MW LMAO.

South is Razer/Gnes with the very rare dojo actually showing up and the rarer event that he even ends up winning

West coast is Larry/Tyrant usually taking first and you see players like Rich brown, Mike haze and TKD also placing very high with them. Havok/Tearbear also place very high but are known to go other characters outside of metaknight (havok using snake in grandfinals vs TKD, ect.)

MD/VA has like no metaknights bar omni who never wins ish.

NE is dominated very solidly by fatal.

I'm pretty confident upstate new york has no good MKs but I haven't checked their results/rankings in a while so unless like some new magical MK started popping I'm going to assume the same. feel free to correct me though...

MK is popular yeah but like he's not dominating high level play.

I also think it's funny that Anti and Tyrant the two best MKs in the two best regions also won MK banned tournaments in said region... :| (I'm leaving m2k out of this because it's hard to say what region he is due to how me travels and the fact that well... he doesnt even play any other characters.)

Besides that, you're making the new guy feel bad for no reason which I def. can't abide by. The same vicarious logic can easily be applied to Orion's comment, whom I've never seen in the area.

Like, honestly I didnt even aim to make him feel bad. I didn't insult him, I just pointed something out. He even responded positively... like who do you think you are LMAO.

I've traveled to a lot more areas and

fd gives an unfair advantage to ground based characters. It's one of two stages without platforms in the game. Ban please.

This is not a solid argument in anyway. FD doesn't automatically or RANDOMLY give advantages to any character by changing or altering gameplay.

This means that bad characters generally get exposed here because they generally have no options and hard CPed anyway yes... but there are no viable characters in this game that can't perform well on FD. There are some that dislike the stage much less than others (MK or Wario for example), but they are perfectly viable regardless of stage choice.