The pro ban argument is weak, and I feel strongly that Meta Knight should not be banned. This will be the longest post of my life, but please allow me to make my case.
This should be fun
Okay.
In other words, your ban criteria aren't at all based on a theory of rulesets in competitive games? A sound ban proposition should have a theoretical basis. History is total bunk; by asserting there's a problem, you agree what we've done up to now is inadequate. We can't look to the past for answers. Popular opinion is also bunk; large groups of people can be and frequently are simply wrong. I don't see a reference to what truly matters, sound theory. By not placing a strong theory of competitive gaming first, the whole position lacks credibility.
Every single person won't have the same criteria for what is bannable. It is impossible, unless the SBR themselves had the same notion, which, in fact, they didn't. If the anti-ban side looked at with the definitions that the pro-ban side looked at it, and vice-versa, things would be different. However, you are two different bodies of intelligence, so you can't expect all opinions to be the same.
These seem like weak criteria. [1] is basically an argument that aspects of a game must be similar to each other; why? I see no reason this should be true; the outliers are often the most interesting characters in fighting games. It also suggests there would be an argument to ban a radically different character even if he were really bad. For instance, consider a character that automatically removes stocks when his attacks connect. This character on a basic level is nothing like the rest of the cast. However, consider also that his attacks are at fastest frame 50 and that he's lighter than Jigglypuff with Link's recovery. Okay, he'll never hit anyone and is obviously the worst character in the game. Should this theoretical character be banned? I suggest obviously not. He's horrible, and anyone who picks him is basically deciding to lose. Being different is NOT an argument to ban anything.
He doesn't mean different as in falco is different from marth. He is saying that aspects of MK alienate the way that aspects of other characters work. Your reference to the weird-like characters make no sense, you obviously must have mis-interpereted what the pro-ban side said. He meant that MK alienates factors in the game which everybody in the game has, including MK. He isn't saying that he is so different from the cast therefore he should be banned. Read it over a few times and maybe you will get what he meant.
As per point [2], quality is completely subjective. Mew2King says Meta Knight is the most fun character. Therefore, we can conclude that the overall gameplay is of higher quality in Mew2King's opinion with Meta Knight allowed. Therefore, [2] does not universally apply to Meta Knight since I have cited one person who disagrees strongly. [2] is really just bunk.
Opinions have no matter in this subject, it is all based on factual evidence that people are debating. It doesn't matter if some people have fun as MK or abhor playing against them. All that matters is that MK solely reduces the appearance of other characters in high level play. That is not opinion, it is fact.
I would point out that "what we have banned" is not very clear. Regional rules differ so much that only very obviously broken things could be called things we have banned in the past non-controversially. We banned the infinite dimensional cape and New Pork City sure. It's hard to say we've banned much more than that... Items even are debatable because we could argue easily they are NOT banned; they are a setting we simply choose to set to off for the sake of having a single tournament standard (all off with frequency set to "none" bans no more than frequency set to "high" with every item whose name begins with a consonant set to "on" with the ones whose names start with a vowel set to "off"; it's all arbitrary).
The competitive brawl scene is different from the ISP scene, and different from the hacked scene. We are talking about the competitive brawl scene that the SBR has made a ruleset to. Bringing up the ISP scene is irrelevant. Sure, regional rules change, but the changes are very slight. 2-3 more stages are allowed/banned, and time may be reduced by 1 minute. It doens't really matter, it isn't like people are changing the overall way the game is played (like items or Brawl+/Balanced Brawl etc.)
Our community, over 8-10 years, has managed to come to endless bitter arguments over rulesets with vast regional rule differences with the SBR imposing some vague order on the mess, though it's honestly pretty ineffective since large tournaments like Genesis blatantly flaunt SBR rules and ban stages not recommended for banning by the SBR (why does no one get upset over this?). Oftentimes arguments within our community about bans are very poorly formed and rely on emotional appeals such as "PictoChat is gay" [this means NOTHING] or "Corneria encourages camping" [you need to demonstrate why this is a bad thing]. Those are only two examples; we could find endless more and not just stages (look at arguments about infinites!). I don't really see that we're a success story. To be fair, smash rules are far harder to make than Street Fighter rules due to the large number of pre-game choices present in smash, but this isn't an argument to just follow the same path we've always followed. We need to instead formulate a very rigid theory for rulesets to apply, and it just happens that some elements of other fighting game communities (such as the oft-cited David Sirlin) have laid some good groundwork that we might like to cite. Of course we have to adapt things to the unique circumstances of smash, but to ignore the work of the greater fighting game community, a group to which we honestly belong like it or not, is foolish at best.
As is obvious, people will not agree with 100% everything that the SBR says. If MK was banned, TONS of people would say it is stupid, and vice-versa. However, the rule is still intact and is still a basis off which you can put your own spin on it. THe SBR did NOT make that ruleset thinking that everybody would follow it, but used it only as a mere guide to help the TOs in their rulesets.
I want to be clear I am not dismissive of our community; I engage myself in it because I am optimistic about the future of Brawl and its community. I do want to be realistic though, and that means we can't overlook our flaws even as we celebrate our strengths. In this, looking to other fighting game communities that are strong where we are weak may be valuable.
I dont' get this part...
We do NOT set the first stage to random. That IS unfair. We use a stage striking procedure, ideally among 7 starter stages (my region uses 7, and it works out super well).
This is true. Some regions don't implement stage striking (i know florida doesn't) but instead we cut down the amount of neutrals so that people will have an even chance regardless of which neutral is chosen.
This doesn't define skill at all. The argument about skill means nothing because it doesn't define what it's talking about. I would argue that skill at competitive game X is whatever allows you to win at competitive game X with greater frequency. Therefore, arguing that anything is not skill that makes you win is non-intuitive. This post does not present a counter for this simple position because it chooses not to define basic and ambiguous terms.
I don't have the original post you are quoting so this right now doesn't make sense...so i'm going to rant about skill. Skilled players will do good. However, skilled players that play good characters will place even better. If a character is really over-powered, everybody will play him. As somebody else has said, 30% of what you will see at tournaments will be MKs. 30% of AN ENTIRE TOURNAMENT is made up of ONE CHARACTER. That % is ********, and warrants a ban itself.
That point about Luigi's Mansion is truly absurd. Is the author not aware of the plethora of trajectories that avoid the surfaces or, more significantly, the fact that you can destroy the mansion? Teching is very frequently tested anyway; when Donkey Kong does his cargo stage spike on you on a stage such as Final Destination of Smashville (both legal everywhere), your ability to tech could very well determine if you live or die. The point about stalling is the most inane of all because we DO allow time wasting tactics such as just jumping around and airdodging a lot as Wario. Only when the tactics are uncounterable (such as the Luigi ladder in teams) do we consider it banned stalling.
Yes, you can destroy the mansion, but you are missing the point. The skill of the players shouldn't be dominant to one thing, ie teching and grabbing items. It should be an overall performance of everything the gameplay has, with whatever rules are in effect. If you can't tech and you play in luigi's mansion and your opponent can, you are at a disadvanage. This isn't fair, but it also has merits of a counterpick, that is, to adhere to the player's/character's strength. However, compared to MK, your skill as a player shouldn't be shown as how good you are able to deal with metaknight. It should be how well you can deal with THE ENTIRE cast, not just one character of it.
This isn't true at all. Your opponent can pick any character he wants. If you are amazing at fighting Meta Knight and terrible at fighting Diddy Kong and your opponent picks Diddy Kong, what do you think happens? Meta Knight isn't even half of what you fight in a tournament; statistically only about 1/3 of your foes will use Meta Knight. Do you think it's mindlessly easy to beat the other 2/3? It's an insult to the mains of every other character to argue this, honestly. If you run into me, you had better know something about fighting Mr. Game & Watch or I'll steamroll you no matter how great you are at fighting Meta Knight. If you run into Ally and aren't versed in navigating grenades (since Meta Knight doesn't have those), the only real question is whether he'll 2 stock you or 3 stock you.
Your opponent can pick any character they want, yes, but nobody with half a brain is going to pick more than a handful of characters against metaknight and hope to win. If 1/3 of your opponents are MK, you need to learn MK more than you do any other character, BY FAR. Yeah, you don't ONLY need to know about metaknight, but you mostly do, which is still overcentralizing him. Yes, people without character experience will lose to players who main the characters which they lack experience against, but in this day of brawl it is the equivalent of death to not know how to fight against MK. You can be lucky at a touranment and not play against a character you don't know how to play, like marth, G&W, or Olimar, but you WILL NOT avoid Metaknight because too many people play him. That is the problem. Metaknight, as well as strategies against him, is most of the metagame. You can throw your money out the window rather than go to a brawl tournament without MK experience. It is basically the same thing. The fact of the matter remains that MK is too overcentralized and it is out of hand, and has been for a long time.
Meta Knight having no negative matchups is also extremely non-obvious. It's very easy to see a reasonable person arguing that Snake beats Meta Knight 55-45. Even if you disagree, can you assert for ABSOLUTE CERTAIN that Meta Knight has such a clear advantage? You also have to consider stage-character combos. Mr. Game & Watch beats Meta Knight 60-40 on Green Greens and 55-45 on Norfair. I know him better than anyone else, but I'm sure such circumstances exist in every matchup at least among the good characters (if you want to use Captain Falcon against Meta Knight, you can't expect the rules to help you).
No, snake DOES NOT beat Metaknight 55:45. There is no way that Metaknight would be dominating as much as he is with a bad matchup. Sure, Ally has beaten M2K, but that doesn't mean that M2K hasn't beaten him back. I would be interested to see a match count of them. However, Metaknight is even or has the advantage in every matchup. Just playing Metaknight at an equal skill level as any other character already guarantees that, at worst, you will win an equal amount of times as your opponent. That is pretty absurd.
Anything that matters decreases how much everything else matters. Mr. Game & Watch can frequently make the game VERY spacing intensive. By doing this, he decreases how much your timing abilities matter (no timing helps you if you're out of range!). Fox, on the other hand, stays in your face and forces precise timing which makes your spacing abilities matter less (if someone can quickly move in and interrupt you every time, your ability to position yourself isn't so useful, is it?). There is a point that we do have to decide which skills we are going to be testing at some point, but the game largely dictates that by what it rewards with us at best giving a subtle hand. This is really a non-argument.
What does this have to do with anything? Citing other characters doesn't negate the fact that Metaknight outplays every other character in the game.
Is it really universally unquestioned? That's a bold claim. Can you demonstrate it? After watching Ally's Snake in action, I personally don't think it's clear that Meta Knight is better than Snake (you're already completely wrong since you made a universal claim and one person disagreed). Your definition is vague at best. Mr. Game & Watch is an aspect of the game, and Captain Falcon is an aspect of the game. Ganondorf is a third aspect of the game. Therefore, we could consider Captain Falcon and Ganondorf jointly as "aspects of the game". Warlock Punch and Falcon Punch could be considered "mechanics of the game". Mr. Game & Watch as a game element is above Captain Falcon, Ganondorf, Warlock Punch, and Falcon Punch as "aspects or mechanics of the game". Since he exists, there's really no reason to use any of those other things (though there are many other game elements that are above those four; they're really just terrible). Is Mr. Game & Watch broken as well? This definition is simply unclear, and I could use it to argue that almost anything is broken depending on how I choose to interpret it. It's not a sound basis off which to argue Meta Knight should be banned for sure.
Okay, you cannot state that Metaknight<Snake just because Ally beat M2K. One positive matchup doesn't make the other character better. Snake has SIGNIFICANTLY harder matchups than MK, and is a less complete character overall (with momentum cancels, killing potential, recovery, blah blah). Also, your analogy that G&W beats falcon and warlock punch doesn't make G&W broken. Sure, he can beat those things, but he doesn't beat 99% of everything in the game like MK does. Against MK you have to play perfect just to have a chance of beating him. His pressure/spacing/comboing game is too much for one package, and is CLEARLY imbalanced to a high degree.
Allow me to address those sources head-on.
Praxis's document...
Transcendent priority is a blessing and a curse. On one hand, it does indeed allow him to pass through other attacks. On the other hand, it does not allow him to use his attacks defensively. As a Mr. Game & Watch main, I'm very familiar with using my aerials to protect myself from projectiles. I might, for instance, stick my turtle out to eat Pit's arrows as I approach him. Meta Knight cannot do this; if he sticks out his own back aerial, Pit's arrows will pass through and hit him. Not so great, is it?
Have you ever heard of the shield? Realistically, people will not use attacks when they know they will fail, because there are plenty of other options in your example. MK can jump and airdodge, shield, or tornado.
The point is wrong anyway since not all of his sword attacks have transcendent priority. His glide attack is a sword attack, and it does not.
His glide attack may not have transcendent priority, but it will never lose to an attack. It may clink with some attacks, but it will never lose. Therefore, it is semi-transcendent.
Meta Knight's up aerial is not a momentum cancel as it does not alter his momentum in any way that any slower aerial also could not. It does allow him to potentially use a move that cancels his momentum, but Meta Knight does not have particularly good options in this regard. Mr. Game & Watch may not have any aerials that finish as quickly as Meta Knight's up aerial, but his bucket clearly gives him better momentum canceling options.
MK's up air is the best momentum cancelling AERIAL. The faster the aerial ends, the better it is for momentum cancelling. Also, fastfalls are brought into the equation yeah. Snake doens't have fast attacks, but he has a good momentum cancel because his fastfall makes his momentum decrease significantly. However, the fact remains that uair is the best MOMENTUM CANCELLING AERIAL, regardless of the other mechanics of momentum cancelling
Meta Knight's nair and dair are indeed good moves. Many characters have good moves.
But not a plethora of very useful moves like MK does. He has too many for one arsenal to possess.
Meta Knight's forward smash has exceptionally long start-up, allowing many characters to "punish" by simply attacking Meta Knight before it comes out.
Almost every person will not be able to attack on reaction, considering their attacks take time to come out as well.
Yes, Meta Knight's down smash is very good. I could say that Snake's up tilt is also notoriously fast for a kill move (6 frames, and it kills significantly lower with less cooldown than Meta Knight's down smash).
Ok, but does Snake have 3-4 other kill moves that also come out fast/have very little to no punishing opportunities?
Shuttle Loop is indeed an exceptional move, but it should be noted that those invincibility frames are from frames 5-8 so it is far inferior as a protective out of shield measure to moves such as Marth's Dolphin Slash that have frame 1 invincibility (Meta Knight will get hit if he tries to up special out of shield right before a hit).
So it isn't a perfect attack, just a ridiculously good one. Good point for anti-ban.../sarcasm
Just because a move isn't 100% broken doesn't mean it isn't too good considering every other option MK has. What you are doing is breaking down every single move and saying that somebody has a move comparable to it. However, no character COMES CLOSE to having as many good moves that are comparable to Metaknights.
Mach Tornado is indeed good, but it's also extremely high commitment. Drill Rush is the same way.
Both poke shields and are extremely hard to punish, therefore they are good moves. Added to the other phenominal moves that MK has makes them even more frightening. You seem to forget that the moves separately are very good, but together they are, in a sense, broken. The abundance of options/moves that MK can use with incredible success is incomparable to any other character in the game.
Dimensional Cape is just a terrible move other than the banned IDC. Why bring it up?
I agree with this. OH NO, ONE BAD MOVE? METAKNIGH MUST NOT BE BANNED THEN!!!
Yes, Meta Knight has a very good airdodge, but it overall has less utility than another good air dodge such as Wario's due to Wario's more useful physical properties that afford him more mobility while airdodging.
We are not adding his air-dodge with anything. When we analyse the air-dodge, we are analyzing ONLY the air-dodge. Sure, he doesn't have great aerial mobility, but that is the plus of characters like wario and jigglypuff. That doesn't make MK's airdodge, along with all of his other options, too good. If you are trying to single things out, single them out, but then don't, in another similar point, say "Hey it isn't as good as this person's because of his mobility." Keep it to one point or add them all together or you look like an imbecile
Fiction's document is in a horrible file format I don't intend to open (why not .txt?). Praxis's was already just a list of "these are good moves" that didn't really do much to say anything other than the fact that Meta Knight has good moves so I'm doubtful it's that interesting.
It isn't the fact that Metaknight has good moves. It is the fact that Metaknight has so many GREAT moves incomparable to any other character in the game.
I'm doubtful, but let's save it until the following points.
I killed a Meta Knight off-stage with Mr. Game & Watch's forward aerial at a tournament last Saturday; it was not something that would have been easy to avoid. Meta Knight does indeed have an exceptional recovery, but "perfect" is an exaggeration at best. I have already demonstrated his momentum cancels to be non-excellent (at the very least worse than Mr. Game & Watch's, though I'd love to see an analysis of the momentum altering properties of Meta Knight's specials, the thing that really matters for momentum canceling ability that this argument simply did not address... though I doubt it's that good since all four ultimately terminate in a helpless falling state).
The Metaknight, then, didn't recover the correct way to avoid the fair. Yes, you can edgeguard him, but if the MK knows what he is doing, he shouldn't ever be edgeguarded. Yes you can still outsmart him, but you will have to guess perfectly, while the MK doesn't.
I watched several minutes and saw a large series of tricks to use... on stage. Where is the recovery aspect? Stop being wimps and chase him actually off-stage; this is just an argument against trying to greet Meta Knight at the ledge... something that was really obvious (even the fiercesome recovery of Ganondorf has good counters to people trying to do that).
Many characters lose off the edge against Metaknight because of his amazing edgeguarding game and ability to return to the ledge to refresh his jumps. Just because you happened to edgeguard MK a few times doesn't mean that every character, including yours, can do it all the time. The fact of the matter remains that you have to get lucky in order to edgegurad Metaknight, because he can just mix it up either way.
We'll see.
Ledgestalling is incredibly unsafe. Consider this. While it is indeed hard to hit a Meta Knight, Mr. Game & Watch, or Marth player correctly ledgestalling, they too are at great risk. If they get hit, they are extremely likely to be stagespiked and possibly killed. You can only force an approach to the ledge when you have a lead, and in those cases you are forcing a mutually risky situation at best. You want to avoid risk when winning and create risk when losing. I'm not seeing the advantage here. At absolute best it's powerful only in select matchups; I certainly don't fear anyone ledgestalling me when I play as Mr. Game & Watch (I'll happily join MKs off-stage where I easily outrange them with my superior set of aerials and invincible up special), and I stopped ledgestalling myself because it was losing me matches, not winning them.
Playing against Metaknight, you cannot be right on top of the ledge when MK is ledge-camping, because he WILL hit you with an up air or 2, depending on if it is hitting shield or the actual character. NO character has an OOS option that both outranges Uair and is fast enough. I have tried as several characters to get passed ledge-camping, and it would work 1 out of 20 tries. Those 20 tries included me getting edgeguarded/receiving unnecessary damage as pikachu, samus, and diddy kong. Ledgecamping is too strong of an option, especially for this one character. Since his recovery is good, the times when he actually does get hit out of ledgecamping he can just get back to the ledge, or even glide around to the other one.
Testimonial agrees with me anyway. Plairnkk, the innovator of these tactics, claimed not to use them against Azen because Azen is smart and beats them. In general, he abused such tactics to the limit and never dominated the tournament scene with them. This suggests those tactics to be non-broken.
And if Plairnkk tried, he could've figured out a way around Azen's smarts since Lucario has no option that can be used above him that can effectively counter Metaknights Dair. Hell, Metaknight could jump and dair camp, and then be moving towards the ledge which would give no time to the chaser to actually attack the metaknight.
Yes, such situations exist.
This is just not true. Meta Knight has very poor aerial mobility which puts him in a bad situation quite frequently. Sure he has several jumps, but they just don't move him very fast. Let's say Meta Knight was just pushed upward by the wind hitboxes of Mr. Game & Watch's up aerial. He is now high in the air and needs to get down. If he tries to use his air control and jumps to get out of the way, Mr. Game & Watch can continue to up aerial him until he has no more jumps, further limiting his options. Gliding is really unsafe from that high, and all of his specials will leave him in helpless which is sure to get him hit. If he tries to airdodge through, Mr. Game & Watch can simply fishbowl on top of his airdodge, get some good damage, and send him upward again! If he tries to plow through with dair, Mr. Game & Watch can reset with uair or go for some sure damage by plowing through with Fire (doing 6%) and then putting Meta Knight in a situation in which it will be very hard to avoid a key, most ways to avoid it resulting in Mr. Game & Watch being below him again (that's bad, remember?).
Yes, his DJ isn't simply amazing, and yes his aerial mobility is less than great. However, that combined with Metaknight's amazing aerials, overall the best in the game by far, it makes most of the cast unable to even touch metaknight when he is air-camping. G&W may be one of the characters that don't really lose to it, but that is a big reason for the matchup being near even IIRC.
The Genesis match is basically a joke. DEHF was playing as Falco, and he chose to pursue a strategy that amounted to "spam lasers and camp". Dojo, as Meta Knight, secured a lead and used assorted defensive maneuvers to simply avoid the lasers. Other characters could have done the same even easier (top tier Lucas defeats this strategy by simply holding down + B). Regardless, it's clear this isn't a very effective strategy, and Dojo was defeating it. In this situation, the correct thing for DEHF to do would have been to stop spamming lasers and to approach in an attempt to hit Meta Knight. He did not and chose to continue to spam. He also continued to fail to hit and then lost to time. His loss was to the fundamental reason that he was using a non-aggressive strategy when he was losing, saw it was not working, and chose to continue to pursue that strategy in the face of the evidence. He lost, and it seems only right and proper.
You cannot assume that every strategy will work against every character. However, in Metaknight's situation, there is ALWAYS a strategy that beats every single character, whether it is pressure, ledge camping, air camping, defensive (shielding attacks and up-b OOS when they whiff attacks on it) or spacing. At least one of all of these work against every character.
I'm not seeing it.
Counterpicking is indeed important, but few players learn counterpick characters. The two best players in the world are Mew2King and Ally. Mew2King uses Meta Knight and only Meta Knight. Ally uses Snake and only Snake. As I look at my local smash scene, almost all of the players use only one character, including Steeler and Zeton who mains the definitely not top tier Pokemon Trainer and Fox (yes, Zeton plays Fox vs Pikachu in tournament, and he has won before). The people who use secondaries are unpredictable too. We have MetalMusicMan who uses King Dedede, Meta Knight, and Falco last I checked (certainly a high tier fiend). We also have Thinkaman who mains Jigglypuff and does indeed use a secondary. His secondary is Ness. Our most character diverse player, InfernoRage (claims to use everyone except Zero Suit Samus), does not use primarily Meta Knight even; at the last tournament, he used mostly R.O.B.. The appeal to numbers that most players pick up secondaries is simply not true regardless of whether you look at Meta Knight uses or not.
THis point is irrelevant. Do any of the people you mentioned place high? Unless the only character you play is high tier, you will never place high in any tournament. YOu will just be thwarted with bad matchups and near unwinnable scenarios. The fact of the matter remains that people who main Metaknight DO NOT HAVE to pick up secondaries, ever. They do not have to deal with bad stages or bad matchups, because there simply aren't any. That is clearly unfair and very ban-worthy.
Stages are the main counterpick factor I see around here. Midwest-West has more liberal stage rules than some other regions which I credit as being one of the main factors of our healthy diversity in all aspects of Brawl (characters included!). I still remember a few months ago annihilating a decent Meta Knight who didn't know what to do on Green Greens (and then winning on Luigi's Mansion due to stage knowledge, overcoming his character advantage). I do see people try to character counterpick sometimes, and it ends up just not working. Try picking Mr. Game & Watch against Thinkaman (the Jigglypuff main) if you aren't a real G&W main and expect pain. Even try picking Pikachu against Zeton the Fox. For one, good luck grabbing him; he's not just going to let you. For two, good job getting him to 80%. Now kill him. If you aren't good with Pikachu, you are going to find this hard since he'll fight back very hard, and other than chaingrabs Fox has a natural advantage on Pikachu that he knows how to exploit.
This point is 100% irrelevant. People who don't have matchup experience will obviously not do good against people that do. That much is common ****ing sense. However, the matter remains that a Metaknight player, having equal knowledge and skill as a non-metaknight playerwill always have the advantage, or, at worst, be even with them (*gasp gasp shock shock*)
Green Greens is a reasonable stage in general (SBR suggests it as counterpick/banned) and Meta Knight is pretty poor there. Yoshi's Island (Melee) is quite mediocre for him in general. Anyway, like I said, different characters want different thing against Meta Knight. Sure Meta Knight will love Norfair against Snake. He will like it a lot less against Mr. Game & Watch; experience has taught the local Meta Knights to ban Norfair against Mr. Game & Watch.
Metaknight is NOT poor on green greens, it is just not as good as most other stages. Same thing goes for yoshi's island. IT is still good for Metaknight, just not as good as a stage like smashville, frigate orpheon, or delfino plaza. Yes, some stages are more difficult to win on in certain matchups, but the Metaknight can ban a stage he is uncomfortable playing on.
Meta Knight is definitely really good and does not have hard counters, but can't we say the same for Pikachu in smash 64 and Sheik in melee? In general all the good characters have pretty winnable matchups against each other anyway; the character matchups are really not nearly as big of a deal as they're made out to be. If Diddy Kong meets Marth, who wins? Some people want to say "Marth", but I think the more obvious answer is "the better player" with the matchup difference being small enough that it's honestly just not that big of a deal.
Comparing brawl to the other smash games is stupid. THe games are different. I never compare brawl to any other game because they are differnet. In SSB64, pikachu is the best character, yes, but all the characters that have 0-deaths have 0-deaths on pikachu too. He isn't exclusive. Sheik in melee also has difficult matchups. She had AT LEAST 1 disadvantageous matchup, which makes her already worse than Metaknight, so stop comparing metaknight to top tier characters in other games. It is pointless.
Meta Knight is possibly the best character. Someone has to be.
Possibly? Hah!
My Meta Knight is awful; I can't play him at all. I lose to players I generally beat with Mr. Game & Watch if I use Meta Knight. Meta Knight is a character that many players find natural. It's definitely not universal though; his poor aerial mobility, absolute lack of a projectile, and generally extremely non-lingering hitboxes are very awkward for some players.
Just because you can't play Metaknight doesn't mean that he isn't good. I can't play Olimar, but he is still a good character. Also, matchup experience comes into play. You can't say "I beat somebody as my main because I have a lot of experience, let's try somebody I don't even play. Oh whoops, i lost, G&W is definitely a better character" which is basically what you are saying. It honestly sounds like you have no idea what you are talking about sometimes.
Many would argue that recent performances make Ally arguably the best player in the world. Ally does not use Meta Knight. The community wide soft-ban argument is simply absurd. The real reason everyone doesn't use Meta Knight is that he's not right for everyone, and switching to Meta Knight is just a check for who has the better Meta Knight... a check to which you'll surely fail against the people who are serious Meta Knight mains. I believe that no matter what investment I put I could never do as well against Meta Knight in a ditto as I do with Mr. Game & Watch. That's why I use Mr. Game & Watch and not Meta Knight. I play to win. I do not believe I am alone in this.
Metaknight not being "right" for everybody doens't mean he isn't the best character by a considerable margin. If you started with Metaknight and not G&W, you would be in a completely different position. If you had equal time in 2 characters, the better character would be the one you did better with OVERALL. That doesn't mean that in certain matchups you will do better as the worse character, but overall the better character will do better. If you put the same amount of time into Metaknight as you do any other character, your Metaknight will do better than the other character, no questions asked. Your points are scarily invalid.
Meta Knight is already open to stage-counterpicks. At a tournament with liberal stage rules with me using Mr. Game & Watch, he must face either Green Greens or Norfair. Both put him at a disadvantage. He's not guaranteed anyway since you probably "click" better with some other character and will be able to play better with them. Ignoring personal player abilities is a tragic flaw, and it's also the reason multiple characters are used in any fighting game, not just Brawl (every game has a best character, or at best a 2-3 best characters... yet virtually all of them see far larger casts being played).
Again, Metaknight isn't BAD on any level. He may be worse on that level than another character, but this doesn't make the level bad. Pikachu is good on Frigate Orpheon. That doesn't mean that no character is as good as pikachu against pikachu on frigate orpheon. Also, stop mentioning the character preferences, for that has NOTHING to do with metaknight. If you like link the most out of any character, metaknight is still a better, even if you are partial toward link.
It's also common for smaller regions to be dominated by other players. Iowa's scene is dominated by Joker the Snake main. Missouri is extremely disparate with no one clearly dominating, and I can say MetalMusicMan, the only Meta Knight player, doesn't "dominate". The Wichita scene does have the case of having Domo being extraordinarily powerful with -Affinity- sometimes very close on his heels, both Meta Knight mains, but they are also very clearly the best players (though not so good that they can't lose to other players from within their small area). Small areas are just dominated by whoever is the best there sometimes, and Meta Knight is a commonly used character. It's only natural that several of these scenes would be Meta Knight dominated.
EXACTLY!!!! Regions are dominated by Metaknight players. You wanna know why? The players are good, yes, but the fact that they play Metaknight helps them sooo much. If the players mentioned above played low tiers, i bet your *** that they wouldn't be the top player in that region. The character makes a huge difference, no matter how skilled you are. You can be a great player and play a sihtty character, and you become mediocre in the placings. You can be a great player and play a great character, and you will do amazing in placings, simply because of the character. Yes, your skill helps, but it is the character that makes you the dominater.
I'm very doubtful that the Meta Knight mains are worse than the people they're beating. Did you consider they may actually be the top players if they are dominating?
They aren't always worse, but in the Matchups where Metaknight has an advantage (nearly all of them) the metaknight doesn't have to be better. As I said before, good players are still good, but their character is very important.
I have literally never seen anyone benefit from this. The only time I remember someone trying that stunt was Clel switching from Marth to Meta Knight, a move that ended up having him knocked out of the first tournament he tried it at. Meta Knight isn't simple or easy to use; I don't know where this myth comes from. Consider all those tricky ways to make his specials safe; do you think someone at mid levels can just pick him up and instantly do those? If you don't do those, you can punish him all day... Also, Meta Knight mains need teching powers to avoid dthrow to dsmash from Mr. Game & Watch. At mid levels, many players fail at that. How rosy are his prospects if he eats a free smash out of every throw with Mr. Game & Watch having an option to try to tech chase for usmash which kills very low?
Dude, being able to tech G&W's D-throws is completely irrelevant to MK. You can play any character and get ****ed up by those throws if you don't know how to tech. Also, Matchup experience peaks its head out of the corner again. YOu most likely had more G&W vs MK experience than he did, therefore you had the advantage. YOu also could be the better player, but the fact of the matter remains that MK is strong in basically every counterpick option. Sure, some characters might be better in specific circumstances, but overall MK is clearly the safest character to CP with by a large margin, if you have experience that is.
I watched what characters the less skilled players were using at the last tournament I was at, and NONE of them were using Meta Knight. I saw lots of Sonic and Pit but not really any Meta Knight. Of course several of the better players were using Meta Knight (though more of them were using other characters), but among the lower skills, I wasn't seeing this at all. It sounds like some regions are doing it wrong, and I suspect this may be largely due to the empty hype Meta Knight has. Maybe if someone explained to these less skilled players that they will lose anyway even if they switch to Meta Knight, they might pursue their actual best winning options instead of hoping to overwhelm other bad players while losing even worse to anyone actually decent.
You still are missing the point, and you contradict yourself a lot. Low level players will play characters they like more than characters who will allow them to win. Regardless of which character you use, if you are bad, you won't do good against the higher level players. HOWEVER, if you are bad and play other bad people with metaknight, the bad players who play metaknight will do better than the bead players who play pit or sonic. The hype metaknight has is not empty, you are just too ignorant to accept it.
If you listen to posting on the boards, the community also favors melee over brawl... yet brawl tournaments routinely have double the attendance of melee tournaments. These polls are and will continue to be skewed in favor of vocal minorities, and in this case, that's people who want to ban Meta Knight. These polls are certainly non-scientific in any case; they aren't compelling evidence.
This is irrelevant in basically every way possible. What does melee/brawl tournament attendance have to do with Metaknight being banned?
This is indeed a problematic fuzzy rule, but in the end simple risk-reward enforces it. Execute it a bit and get a small advantage. Get caught ever and be disqualified and possibly blacklisted from future tournaments. There are other, more insidious ways people could cheat to a similar effect, such as booting the game through homebrew to give certain characters subtly tweaked mechanics (like a Ness back throw that kills 5% lower) that people are unlikely to notice. They aren't a problem because the risk is too high for being caught.
You are missing the point. The fact that you can dimensional cape slightly longer and avoid punishment is still good. Yes, it is high-risk high-reward, but you could say the same for a lot of attacks in this game. Most people will not OFTEN do things that have bad risk-reward, but if it means life/death in a big match, in the dimensional cape instance, you will be more likely to slightly do it to live longer. It isn't often worth it, but it is sometimes, and that sometimes is enough for it to be mentioned.
There is simply no evidence that any of this is broken. Sometimes players do decently with such tactics, but do they ever win against the top players? I know a lot of players try these tactics and lose too. I see here a case of a tactic sometimes working (and sometimes not!) but never beating the best players. Why is this a concern at all?
Again, if the players who used those tactics were used to playing top-players and had more experience and a different mindset, those tactics would probably work a lot better. Skill is very important, so saying that mid-level players can't use cheap tactics on pros is obvious. If top players started to implement those tactics, i'm fairly certain they would have tremendous results, but people have too much respect for the game or simply get bored of doing the same tactics over and over again.
None of these rules (including a Norfair ban) are in place in my region, and we don't have a Meta Knight problem. Some rules, such as banning Norfair, may overall actually help Meta Knight! I would go so far as to suggest that conservative stage lists inspired by a fear of Meta Knight are one of the biggest things helping Meta Knight win in the modern metagame. I agree these rules are a non-solution, but they are also a non-solution to a non-problem. We need strong, scientific evidence of these tactics being truly dominant, not a few players placing highly but not at the top using them. Before such evidence exists, I don't know of any way to proceed other than to rule this all a series of non-issues.
Seibrik picked up metaknight and immediately started ****** Florida. Yes, he was always a top player in the state, but not by such a considerable gap. For months after Seibrik picked up MK, Floridians had to come up with tactics in order to beat this new play-style of Metaknight (especially considering Florida's Metaknights were basically spammers for a very long while). He used all the gay tactics said above, and ***** Florida. Recently, he has stopped doing those tactics out of boredom/lack of care to do them anymore, and is now losing more matches. Yes, the players can be also getting better, but it is a strong possibility that it is a combination of Seibrik not using those tactics and the players getting better.
The last point in this conclusion wasn't really argued, but I'll say that banning Meta Knight would make our community look extremely bad (the shoryuken people already think we're scrubs now!) and would cause endless angst from the Meta Knight mains, potentially even driving top players like Mew2King to quit Brawl. I'm dubious at best that allowing him is doing more harm than good to the community.
Meta Knight is a good character that it is good to do well against. There's no doubt there. I do, however, fail to see this playing out. Donkey Kong does pretty well against Meta Knight and is barely used because of King Dedede, as a good example. FOW has demonstrated that Ness can challenge Meta Knight well; how much does this tend to help Ness in tournament placings? Ankoku's chart is just a popularity chart in which good characters are generally more likely to do well than bad characters; it's not compelling evidence. At most, I see this as saying "Meta Knight is the best"... which is fine. Being the best is allowed; if it weren't, we'd have to ban every character except the worst.
In the FOW example, who the **** has Ness experience? Honestly. FOW obviously has tons of MK experience, and most of the MKs don't have a lick of Ness experience. Matchup experience is still a very key part of brawl itself. THe point the pro banners are making, however, is that if the MK has equal skill and equal knowledge of any particular matchup, the MK will win more times than the other character will no matter what.
22% is pathetic for a broken character. If he's so dominant and necessary, how is it that 78% of the community gets on fine without him? I threw out the number 1/3 earlier, but 22% isn't even 1/4 so I was overestimating Meta Knight. All these other numbers show is that there's extreme diversity so 22%, a number that would be pretty petty in some fighting games, towers over the numbers for other characters in Brawl.
For one character out of 37 to have 22% of ALL THE MONEY is staggering. 11/50ths of every top 3 placing shouldn't belong to one character. Hell, how do you even know that some of those didn't even have 3 good metaknight players. The best players of the region may play somebody that isn't metaknight. Yes, it is possible. However, if there is somebody tied in skill with the best player who plays metaknight, and has the same matchup experience in all the matchups that the best player in the state has, the metaknight will instantly do better due to his character.
AlphaZealot also once demonstrated that Marth's numbers in melee were higher than 22% among MLG large tournaments. I can't be bothered to find the link right now, but anyone who knows high level melee wouldn't find that hard to believe. It's also not a sign that Marth is broken; 22% is just not a very big benchmark for top characters to pass.
MLG tournaments doesn't mean every tournament. Yes, marth/fox/sheik/falco are clearly the best, but they all have bad matchups, at least 1. That already makes them worse than metaknight in that regard.
Now I will formulate my own argument to demonstrate simply why Meta Knight should not be banned. Here is my theory for rulesets in a competitive game.
This should be interesting
An element in a game (character, stage, tactic) is deserving of a ban if it meets either or both of the following criteria:
1) It is "broken". This means that it is so powerful that other elements are not worth using and the game as a whole degenerates into who can use that element the best.
Metaknight basically does this. You will never succeed in a tournament if you don't play one of the characters that go near even with metaknight. It is an impossibility.
2) It increases the variance of the game unacceptably much. Variance is best approximated as the randomness in results in play between two similarly skilled but not equally skilled players, and random game elements are the most common source of variance increases (extremely high risk high reward tactics, like camping the top of Mushroomy Kingdom 1-2, can also cause variance, however).
I don't get this part...
Meta Knight just obviously does not satisfy 2) so 1) is the only point to really consider. The evidence simply does not suggest this as 78% of the points from Ankoku's tournament result data are owned by non-Meta Knight characters. It is very hard to imagine a metagame in which 78% of the characters actually used and placing top 8 are inviable; I dare say it's simply completely implausible.
The tournament counted could be metaknight banned or low tier only. How do you know that a good metaknight was even at that touranment. Every single tournament doesn't have a good metaknight because every single region has good players that don't play metaknight. However, you are still disregarding the fact that IF those top players DID play metaknight and DID put the same amount of effort into metaknight as they did into their respective mains that they would be doing better than they are doing now!
Also, as a last point, consider several of the following weaknesses Meta Knight has.
-Meta Knight has extremely low aerial mobility.
His fast ground speed neutralizes this. Also, he doesn't need to move fast in the air.
Once Meta Knight jumps, he is far less mobile than most other characters. This puts him at a big disadvantage in the air against someone like Mr. Game & Watch, and characters even as low tier as Jigglypuff can leverage this against Meta Knight. In a game in which many characters can use jumping as their primary form of movement, having to be cautious when you jump is a big concern.
The characters who have better air games that Metaknight have VASTLY superior ground games. Metaknight doesn't always want the battle to be int he air versus every single character. As I said, every situation wont' work against every character, but there is always at least one situation that metaknight has that is clearly advantageous to metaknight.
-Meta Knight has no projectiles at all.
Again, his dash speed neutralizes this. He can approach and power shield very quickly, and his close-range attacks are PLENTY to make up for it.
Most characters in Brawl have some form of a projectile. In fact, only the following characters have no projectile at all:
Donkey Kong, Ganondorf, Meta Knight, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff, Marth, Ike
Ganondorf and Captain Falcon are hopelessly inviable (IMO obviously the two worst characters by a big margin) so they can practically be factored out. Ike's Aether is so ridiculously disjointed from him (multiple body lengths) that it is practically an upward projectile. That leaves Meta Knight with only three true peers in this weakness (Donkey Kong, Jigglypuff, Marth); it does matter, and it really does limit Meta Knight's ability to fight long range.
Metaknight never wants to fight long range. "every situation wont' work against every character, but there is always at least one situation that metaknight has that is clearly advantageous to metaknight." Quoting myself for obvious reasons. Metaknight can take the game to spacing in characters that have a projectile but short ranged attacks. He can bring it to close-range against characters that have inferior close range games. He can take the game to the air against characters who have inferior air games (which is most of them btw). The point is that metaknight ALWAYS has an advantageous situation against every charcter.
-Meta Knight's attacks have extremely short durations.
Most of Meta Knight's attacks only have a duration of 2 frames which is extremely short. That makes them poor at punishing spotdodges and airdodges, and it requires Meta Knight players to be very precise in their attacks since they can't ever throw out a hitbox and hold it as a wall.
SInce the attacks are short they can be used multiple times. Also, in the situation where an airdodge or spotdodge is coming, the metaknight will be good enough to punish with either a grab, a longer attack (nair, tornado, jab) or another short attack when they are vulnerable (like repetitive up airs)
-Meta Knight has a bad jump break and is short.
Meta Knight's jump break from grabs is poor, and his small stature means many characters can hold him up in the air and force him to jump break. This allows some characters such as Yoshi to chaingrab him, and it generally sets him up for follow ups in several matchups. Among high tier characters, only Wario is in a worse situation with grab breaks.
Not every character can capitalize. Also, the ones that can still have disadvantageous matchups so it doesn't really matter.
-Meta Knight is poor at killing vertically.
Meta Knight has a difficult time killing upward, and this puts him in a difficult spot in many matchups when he finds himself on a stage such as Halberd, Brinstar, or Green Greens with a low ceiling. It gives characters with strong vertical kill potential the chance to try to center the match around center stage and therefore to focus on Meta Knight's difficulty in this regard.
Metaknight is in no means bad at killing vertically. Maybe from the ground, but Metaknight is one of the best characters at getting his opponents in the air. Hell, he can probably kill earlier up than all of the cast! At low %s he can string u-airs to tornado. Yeah, tornado is escapable, but with short ceilings who knows whether or not popping out before the last hit of the tornado will still kill you. Also, Metaknight's U-tilt is really strong, and has a ton of range which makes it very useful for surprise vertical kills.
-Meta Knight has an awful jab.
Meta Knight's jab is a rapid slash attack that is just not very useful at all and tends to leave him open. The point in bringing this up is that not all of Meta Knight's moves are good. Like all characters, he has some good moves and some bad moves.
OH NO, ONE BAD ATTACK?!?!?!? HE IS CLEARLY NOT BANNABLE NOW!
In conclusion, Meta Knight should not be banned, and I have voted as such.
![[FBC] ESAM](/data/avatars/l/92/92614.jpg?1365783210){kind=avatar}
that wasn't even fully intentional..... I just didn't see the point of the above post...
