Flashy Play vs Playing to Win

[Alex Strife]

Here is another thing we must consider food for thought.

What I have noticed is that a lot of times instead of taking a stock there is a urge towards looking flashy while playing. This can be a very bad affect on the game that we all enjoy and play. Here is why:

When some people play to win the game becomes campy. We shun those players and make them feel like they are doing an injustice to the community. This can cause those who are really great at what they do to change their styles and thus changes due to an urge to be that " combo video" type guy.

It may also affect our stage list. As we shrink our stagelist we remove stages like Corneria , green greens , and also jungle japes to avoid camping? I never felt camping was a terrible strategy and I want to know what is it about Camping that bothers this community so.

Yes I do believe if you have the talent go for it but Playing to Win should always be the main thing and seeing how some people play bothers me where a simple shine spike will do.


Thoughts?



Appendix : This also goes into my view of wobbling as a legit tactic. When I watch players camp a ICz they do better vs some who just rush into a shield ready to be grabbed. If we just think a tactic is "gay" why not avoid it by camping more?

 

[Fly_Amanita]

I strongly dislike the stigmas against camping, wobbling, and any other "gay" tactics; players do not deserve contempt for doing what they believe is in their best interest.

I don't know how I would go about eliminating said stigmas on a broad scale, though.

 

[Deleted member]

It may also affect our stage list. As we shrink our stagelist we remove stages like Corneria, green greens , and also jungle japes to avoid camping? I never felt camping was a terrible strategy and I want to know what is it about Camping that bothers this community so.

Stages are usually decided to simply be a medium of competition. By that, I mean we generally cater to what the community at large considers acceptable for tournament play. It's not that we dislike those stages for what they provoke from the players as it is that a good number of people simply dislike them because they do not provide a "fair" aesthetic for the players. These stages can be seen to undermine the legitimacy of the tournament. Let's take a fairly obvious example:

Umbreon: Look Greg, I won a tournament!
g-regulate: All you did was laser camp all of your counterpicks at Termina. Why was that stage even legal?
Skler: Make money, fuck bitches.
Umbreon: You're right, that stage list was wack.

Notice that even though it's a legitimate argument to say "your opponents could have camped you back" or "your opponents should have banned Great Bay" or a variety of ways to actually deal with the tactic, the tournament victory is undermined by the qualifier directly because the medium of competition, the stages in this case, was not seen as quality by the community. Unfortunately, this idea is completely arbitrary and different for pretty much every person.

Going back to Wobbling, the players I know that want it banned do not want it banned because it makes the Ice Climbers better as a character or because they're worried about stalling or whatever. They just want it banned because "wobbling is bullshit" because they feel that a "no-skill" tactic has no place in a tournament. This is where all of the IC players come in and say "but (valid reason here)" or "why don't you just pick ICs and win then?" when those players aren't looking for a valid reason, nor do they think that Wobbling as Ice Climbers is their personal optimal way to win when they have substantially more experience at another character. They simply don't think a tactic as high reward and low risk should be a part of their competitive scene.

edit:
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10944797&postcount=158
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10952314&postcount=159
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=10987844&postcount=177

are you seeing some of what I'm referring to?

 

[Alex Strife]

When you think about it as high reward low risk it makes a lot of sense. Also I think we need to really try to figure out how to connect more to our community. Unlike Brawl, the Melee community should have more brains to think about things that we discuss.

 

[Zankoku]

Yo, the flashy CV player is always gonna be the crowd favorite. While results make the money and fuck the bitches, as Skler as imagined by Mow puts it, technique and drama is what gets the audience all excited. Just how things work.

I mean, sure, people can be intelligent enough to discuss post-game how the match went, but in the moment, they're more wanting to see that absurd 0-death combo happening an absurd number of times. In absurd situations. Absurdity!

 

[Mew2King]

I don't do it to be fancy lol, I do it to stay warmed up, and when I'm not in tournament I do it to practice to make sure my movement is/stays good.

 

[Silent Wolf]

^^^^^^ word

 

[N64]

What ankoku said pretty much sums up my sentiment. People who want to play to win will play to win, regardless of how their actions may be viewed by the crowd. People who want to be flashy will be flashy.

In reading your post alexstrife, it sounds like you want us to change the minds of the community as to what looks cool to them. You want us to get the community to support play-to-win strategies regardless of how exciting or not it is. You want them to be excited in something that isn't inherently exciting. That's well and fine and i support the view in my own watching/playing of melee, but I don't think it's easy at all to give a crowd that mentality while watching. Some tactics just aren't that exciting to watch.

How are we supposed to change that? TOs giving out warnings to those who boo during campy matches? A general "Mbr thinks the community should adopt a play-to-win attitude" post in the general section? I don't see how we're supposed to change it.

In relation to our rule set, and most specifically stagelist, I haven't seen that mentality have much legitimacy in determining things. Of course we want to ban stages that too drastically change the game so that essentially one or two tactics become disproportionately powerful on that stage. This can be seen as "getting rid of campy stages because camping is dull", but I don't see that at all. On these stages, a certain camping strategy becomes powerful enough that a character or characters can abuse a single technique to essentially make it near impossible for someone of equal (or greater) skill to win. It allows the potentially lesser skilled person to win simply on stage and character selection, and the ability to do one tactic specific to that stage (or small number of stages). It's anti-competative.

 

[unknown522]

I will have input when not on iPod

 

[Alex Strife]

I dont think we can change it but I just want to also gauge the views here to really understand the people here. This is a lot of great info and I want to use this to further my rules and how to make them properly

 

[KirbyKaze]

Ryan, you have an iPod now?

When did this happen LOL?

 

[unknown522]

I'm at chrisshan's place. Sev got an itouch for his birthday

 

[KirbyKaze]

Oh w/e then

 

[KishPrime]

This topic makes me chuckle. We were as play-to-win as anyone, and because of that we got the reputation of being horrible players. We focused on being technically sound rather than technically flashy and used unpopular stages that were to our benefit. After I beat Neo and Wife at a Michigan tournament, someone told me that it was considered a terrible stigma to lose to a Kish on the EC.

Ultimately, we won far more than we lost (and inflicted our stigma on many ECers in the process), so I had to be content with that. Still, I don't think there was some magic way to convince everyone that our style was a "good" way to play. Play-to-win isn't meant to make you friends. As far as affecting the mindset of the community, if it hasn't changed yet, I have little hope that there's a solution out there. Education only works if people are willing to be educated.

 

[Alex Strife]

I feel that certain people really get shafted despite being really good players. If only there was a way to educate people it would help out in the end.

 

[KishPrime]

Shrug. Hate to repeat it, but you can't educate people who don't want to be educated. Let's face it, a lot of people that play competitive video games are young or immature (please note I didn't say most or all). They want other people to play by their rules, and could care less about trying to see things from another point of view.

That's all well and good, but my point is that you're not going to be able to make a single post anywhere that magically changes attitudes. It takes significant amounts of time and debate to reshape attitudes.

 

[Alex Strife]

Its just hard, for me, to deal with it. I handle it well when people complain but inside I just do not like being blamed for someone not doing well cause of a cheap tactic I allow. It is something I will have to learn to deal with better in the future.

 

[Marc]

I think people have a hard time accepting that Melee is just as bad as other fighting games in terms of campy/gay play. The flashiest players are rarely the most succesful ones, although you can still get relatively far like that in the current metagame (mostly because technical prowess is such a big factor). Playing against M2K when he's all serious probably isn't much fun, but he's my favourite player to watch because of sheer efficiency and effectiveness. I think most people have this kind of love/hate relationship with top level play. I overheard Amsah and Remen saying how much they like Hbox' spacing and I can appreciate that too to a certain extent, even if his matches against Armada at APEX were close to unwatchably boring for me.

The stigma for stage abuse is kind of understandable considering most regions think stages shouldn't play a big role in matches. I did a silly random character ditto tournament with some fellow smashers last week with all stages allowed and it's ******** how overcentralizing and dumbed down camping strategies on many stages are (including stages that have been legal for a long time in the US). I won because I actually knew why we banned all those stages and it made me grateful we did because it really took far less skill for me than winning on normal stages would have.

 

[KishPrime]

In a random character silly tournament, I don't see how you could possibly have players who really understand the mechanics of each stage enough to abuse and counter-abuse them properly, and then make a judgment call that suggests that you were justified in your decision making based on those matches. That's a really silly statement to make.

See, where we disagree is that I believe stages play a big role in every match.

People also define "campy" horribly. Safe play is campy now? In any high-level play, you always do as much offensively as you can while simultaneously protecting yourself. It's that way in any game. Do you call high-level chess play "campy" too because players don't take silly risks?

 

[Marc]

Are you seriously suggesting stages like Hyrule Temple and Corneria are too complex for Melee vets who actually played on those stages in tournaments? Which character you play really doesn't matter that much for the tactics. If you want to be anal about it, it was a verification of a judgement call made 5 years ago. We didn't ban those stages without extensive experience on literally all of them (even early bans like Hyrule Temple). It was funny to see how the abuse has only gotten easier as we became better players.

Safe play often boils down to camping because attacking isn't as safe. I'm also willing to wager Fox can do more offensively than run away and laser, yet that's still what many players do almost exclusively. It's not the exact same though, who is saying that?

It depends on the chess player, there definitely have been top level players who went with offensive styles and preferred high risk high reward situations to low risk mid reward ones.

 

[KishPrime]

"I did a silly random character ditto tournament" - Marc
"it was a verification of a judgement call made 5 years ago" - Marc

I'm just saying, this juxtaposition of statements does not make any sense. I don't think it's terribly anal. It's like if I said:
"I played on FD with my crewmates one night, but we weren't playing our real characters."
"Just like we always suspected, we discovered that Yoshi is horribly broken, none of us could beat him!"

I'm not arguing on specific stage bans here, I just think you're better than to lower yourself to making this kind of self-justification. It also implies that you feel your point of view is obvious enough to be seen even when people aren't playing their real characters.

I still am more curious as to whether or not you really believe your implication that the layout of FD or Battlefield don't heavily affect matches.

 

[Deleted member]

After I beat Neo and Wife at a Michigan tournament, someone told me that it was considered a terrible stigma to lose to a Kish on the EC.

Well, we had no idea back then how broken Jigglypuff is. Really, if you think about losing to a terrible player backed solely on the broken piece of trash that Jigglypuff is, it's more of a slap in the face than anything. How good do you really have to be to beat people as Jigglypuff?

For the record, at Pound 2, me and KM played a match on Hyrule Temple and talked and discussed how it's his favorite stage and mine as well. Then KM proceeded to money match several of the better players there on Hyrule Temple. He made a lot of money.

I more or less have to go with Marc on this one. I'm skeptical to believe that the two coasts had substantially more tier 1 players than the MW for any reason other than the one regional difference that differed them: the stage list. I remember watched several FC sets in which I'd watch my EC friends play and just abuse the weird CPs and still win (PC Chris) or lose the weird CP and just win the neutrals much, much harder (almost every set Chu had). Even debating brawl stages (MUCH worse than melee stages), I know my EC peers and myself know those stages just fine and we still banned them a long time ago.

Anyone who saw my set with Overswarm at FCD should know exactly what I'm talking about. lol.

 

[KishPrime]

I more or less have to go with Marc on this one. I'm skeptical to believe that the two coasts had substantially more tier 1 players than the MW for any reason other than the one regional difference that differed them: the stage list. I remember watched several FC sets in which I'd watch my EC friends play and just abuse the weird CPs and still win (PC Chris) or lose the weird CP and just win the neutrals much, much harder (almost every set Chu had). Even debating brawl stages (MUCH worse than melee stages), I know my EC peers and myself know those stages just fine and we still banned them a long time ago.

I lost to KDJ because he went to Peach's Castle fifth round. I beat him on two neutrals prior. But yeah, Jigglypuff broken.

This doesn't make sense to me. Our best players in the Midwest HATED most of the funky stages and countered on mostly neutrals - Tink, Dope, Dark, Vidjo among them. I've heard people try to make that argument, and I think the EC just used it to justify their own views on stages. There's no evidence to support that kind of correlation.

I also don't understand how any of what you said has anything to do with what I'm arguing with Marc about.

 

[Marc]

I don't really get the analogy about Yoshi and was ninja'd.

Many stages in the game were banned for boiling down to procuring a lead and circle/wall/walkoff ledge camping. Do you not agree with this? I also, personally, believe this is easier than fighting my opponent for an entire match. My point is that, despite the context of silliness(!), we were very able to employ the strategies those stages were banned for on probably an even higher level than it was in the time that they were banned. This has nothing to do with which characters we played (top tier characters and mains were in play also btw, if that's "real" enough) or it not being for money, as a true competitive setting doesn't exist anymore for playing with all stages allowed. We simply replayed those stages 1 vs 1 with no items or whatever, even if we didn't always use characters we use regularly. I thought it silly we ever played tournaments on the full stage list considering how painfully obvious the weak spots are to us now and how bad matches would turn out if we still had them. The word "justification" never came to mind, seeing how every tournament runs on a small fraction of the stage list. Justification of this is kind of a 2006 thing.

But yeah, I'm not sure why there is a disconnect here, unless you insist using the dominant stage strategies is so very very hard. I can see how some stages require a more specific skillset and can respect that, but most of them... not so much. This comes into territory of rediscussing why stages were banned and I don't really feel like doing that unless the MBR at large wants to go into that again. Another part is me talking about every stage in the game and even the more liberal stage lists being a subset, I doubt you're aiming to use 100% in a competitive setting.

Final Destination and Battlefield don't have an overcentralizing strategy to the extent a stage like Corneria does. If you watch a tournament match on Stadium, you'll notice it usually comes to a complete standstill during several transformations because people procure advantaged situations quickly and don't want to attack the other player under those conditions. Several of the banned stages are just like that, except all the time. The layout will always play a role, but the line isn't as arbitrary as you might think. I guess you're not satisfied with consensus justifying these opinions, but there really is consistency to be found. People are re-evaluating Final Destination as a "neutral" stage over here by the way, but the fact is that you'll have to use some stages or there's no game left.

 

[Skler]

Me as imagined by Mow is awesome.

I do love watching flashy players. I also love watching Hbox **** people and tell great jokes.

The reason stages that are campy are banned is because they give campers a disproportionately huge advantage. No stage makes it so an aggressive player is unstoppable, but I'll be ****ed if you can catch a laser camping Fox on Hyrule temple.

I think that's what the thread is about, I'm rushed right now. Zoooooom.

 

[unknown522]

****, skler said it first.

But yeah, stages are not only banned because of the camping, but also because they make some characters overpowered. Usually fox, but still other characters as well.

 

[Marc]

Yeah, Fox got many stages banned on his own. Kind of like Dedede and MK in Brawl, I suppose. Also doesn't help Fox is probably the best with items, there's no way to have fun with him around.

Anyway, enough derailment from my side.

In direct response to the OP: TOs should cater to their communities to a certain extent and I think the Melee rulesets currently have a fine balance between community preference and reason. Wobbling is pretty much the only debatable issue left and we've gone a long way to reach this state. Readding stages isn't something I'd encourage, but as a TO you do have that power. Also, for my own interest: I've heard you regret allowing wobbling at APEX, is this true or false?

 

[KishPrime]

All I did was post two Marc quotes next to each other that didn't make sense to me as a rational thing to say. I didn't dispute any of the changes in the current stagelist, though I probably would dispute a very small few.

Many of the banned stages are overcentralizing, and that's why we were the first to ban many of the stages in the US. No one really notices that when they think about us, they just assume we want all stages on, all the time. My point is that just because there are strong spots in a stage doesn't make them "overcentralized" automatically. The wall in Corneria centralized the play on that stage, but did it "overcentralize" it? I don't think you can automatically say yes. There were other problems with the stage, but that's the argument I always heard, and I think it's a false argument.

 

[Alex Strife]

I regretting allowing wobbling because a lot of people came to me upset that wobbles or another ICz beat them cause of wobbling. For the most part, it was people not involved in the match but rather on lookers. Many of which did not understand what we are talking about. For the most part I felt like I was being yelled at by others for mistakes a player made. It was rather frustrating. I kept it in for the most part but I really got bothered by it.

People like SleepyK and Hbox ( who should be in the backroom btw ) talked with me but others were very hostile about it. I never felt it was a big issue and I'd ban it for the sake of my own personal health as I do not like dealing with people being so hostile over a move.

 

[Marc]

Arwings are a nuisance too, but centralizing vs OVERcentralizing is where consensus comes into play. Smash is simply not as clear cut as other fighting games with these things.

It's a bit of a john, but one of the weaknesses with my English is that I often don't mean to put things as strongly as they seem, I just lack some nuance. I do think I've backed up and put what I said into perspective with my additional posting. And we got some decent conversation out of it. :3

tl;dr: replaying old stages with a somewhat competitive mindset made them seem silly

EDIT: Alex, I see. I think in practice wobbling is usually banned and I flip-flop a lot on it. It sucks people gave you such a hard time for that decision, because I really think you'd be justified either way.

 

[Alex Strife]

It is a pain to deal with. It upset me more that people were *****ing the whole time meanwhile everyone had a great time. You cannot please everyone though. I am happy with Apex overall and I will improve a lot more for this coming year...hopefully I see more of EURO

 

[KishPrime]

Alex, you're good. If people aren't giving you crap about something then you're wishy-washy and no one likes a wishy-washy tournament host. Learn to handle the critiques because if you actually have to DQ a top player you're going to have to be ready for it.

Yeah, I think there are enough things wrong with Corneria to make it bannable, but I think it's really close and I like a lot of the features. I think the wall is actually the awesome thing about the stage, though it would be better in my opinion if it wasn't grab-able. I like Smash, among many reasons, because of the altered geography and the strategies that come into play. Yes, it leads to altered gameplay, but that's what I like. As long as there's something about the stage that forces a crossover, I'm ok with people running all day long.

And your English is great, though I'm sure there are miscommunications from time to time.

 

[Marc]

Thanks, I try.

I think that when you get the lead on Corneria and start fin camping when you get to high percentages yourself you should only increase your lead. Even if you do die you can force your damaged opponent to fight you on the flat upper part again and basically be in control of where the fight's at for the entire match. This wouldn't be the case if there was no timer, but then the match would probably never end.

That's how I've seen it play out many times over the years at least, even fairly recently at a German smash tournament.

 

[KishPrime]

That's the case on Battlefield as well. Whenever you have a lead, you have control over where you fight the match. I don't have a problem with that. The varied terrain of Corneria is what makes it a fascinating and unique stage.

The only exceptions to this is if you have a severe projectile disadvantage, and on FD somewhat.

 

[Deleted member]

That's the case on Battlefield as well. Whenever you have a lead, you have control over where you fight the match. I don't have a problem with that. The varied terrain of Corneria is what makes it a fascinating and unique stage.

The only exceptions to this is if you have a severe projectile disadvantage, and on FD somewhat.

Corneria is a fun situation in which your opponent has to approach you from an extremely disadvantageous position. Not only do you have the option to poke through the fin, you are also effectively forcing the opponent to come down on top of you upon passing the fin, which is probably the worst approach in the game outright, even for something ridiculous like Falco's dair. Then take an already crappy situation and add in edge invincibility.


...

 

[Marc]

Yeah, you really can't compare standing under a platform on Battlefield to that. Like I said, there's a reason Stadium matches come to a complete standstill with several transformations, it's too unreasonable to approach someone under those conditions.

 

[Skler]

If you're in the lead on Corneria and are at a high % while your opponent is at a low % there is absolutely no reason not to go directly to the wall and start camping (except maybe if you're falco and want to laser spam some more?)

I think that's overcentralizing a bit. No other (legal) stage has a position that is always that much better to be in.

 

[KishPrime]

Well, as I've said, I still probably come down on the ban side, but just barely. That said, I do think it is one of the most interesting stages, and definitely one of the better ones to have a lead on.

 

[hungrybox]

I enter tournaments to win.

I attend tournaments to watch Flashy, amazing play.

My fingers aren't fast enough to do cool, amazing stuff.

Sorry =/

 

[KirbyKaze]

I U-smash OoS on getup attacks.

That's how baller I am.