I'd like to preface my post by apologizing to Susa: apparently my last post was very unclear as we have had several misunderstandings and miscommunications (if that is even a word, lol). I'd like to ask your forgiveness and to please to bear with me so that we might resolve the conflicts in our understandings of the current counter picking system.
Hmmmmmm...
Define "competitive."
It might be easy to sort of just shrug off this post as insignificant, however, I believe it is crucial to take some time to examine this, as this definition is foundational to any argument about the rule set (or at least as I understand it) and as such should not just be reduced to an ill fitted, common, denotative definition (this would be just relating competitive to the root word competition).
I will argue that there are two levels of relevant competition. (I am doing this because I believe some level of misunderstanding and conflict has arisen as we do not have an adequate base as to converse about what is and isn't competitive so on with the wall of text.
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The first level is competitive play. This is what we are generally discussing when we colloquially throw out the word competition or competitive. Competitive play is what we actually do at tournaments (or at least attempt to). Competitive play has been famously characterized by Sirlin's philosophy: competitive play is playing to win. The goal of competitive play is to win within the tournament system, (or any other medium) while forgoing any self made ideals such as "I don't want to play (or have you play) in a specific way because I find it to be lame, unfair, unfun, etc." Therefor I will define this first level of competition or competitive play as actively playing with the practical and realizable goal of winning. Competition at this level has no room for ideals whatsoever as the practical reality of the goal of winning cannot be resolved with them.
The second level is competitive organization. By this I don't mean we fight each other to be the best at organizing, no, what this level of competition is is how we control, promote, and operate our competitive play(which in this community and all gaming communities is done through the tournament system). I would assume, because at the level of competitive play there is a clear and practical goal guiding that which is competitive(the goal of winning), that there are also overarching goal(s) that characterizes what is competitive at the level of organizing competitive play, or competitive organizing.
If we stop and think about the nature of competitive organizing it breaks down to is this: the competitive community(everyone who attends tournaments) is attempting to create most successful rule set possible for competitive play. So the objective goal should be that which benefits competitive play, the competitive community and tournaments in general. When you consider that which is necessary and advantageous for all three you are left with the one factor that becomes the objective standard of what is competitive at the level of organizing: the number of people you have.
Consider the character ranking or how people generally gauge the caliber of a tournament: its is done via number of attendants. Without people there are no tournaments and there is no competitive play. So it is obvious that tournaments need some people but after a certain base minimum does getting more people actually increase the quality of the competitive play?
To this, I would argue it does. Think back to to when you first picked up the game and played with several friends. You learned the game, enjoyed it, and wanted to get better and test your skill. So, logically, you attend or host tournaments. At this point you realize you suck and start working to get better, how do you do this? Among many other things you go out and play different people and THIS is a chief way of getting better(A.K.A. you continue going to tournaments). The more people you have the bigger the pool of play styles is you have to play against, thus instead of staling your game around a few people's play styles you learn to deal with new and different styles, characters etc and your game improves.
Yet there is another factor here that has yet to be discussed: time. The medium for competitive play is the tournament system. And how does this work? Do we have one tournament only for the entire life of a game? Obviously not. We have several tournaments over a long indeterminate span of time, thus you wouldn't want to aim to get as many people as possible for one tournament but instead to get as many people as possible over the average life of a competitive game(this number is debatable... perhaps 1-2 decades).
Thus, we arrive at the definition for competition at the the level of organizing competitive play or competitive organizing. Competitive organizing is the manner in which the competitive community promotes, controls and operates tournaments with the goals of getting as many people as possible to attend tournaments and to get people to continue to attend tournaments for as long as possible. (From here you can argue about the ideal frequency of tournaments and which factor is more important but that is another discussion.) Therefor what determines if a rule is competitive or is uncompetitive is based solely on the amount of people it brings to a tournament and the number of times it facilitates people to go tournaments.
Now let's take a some time and examine the ramifications of this theory of competitive organizing and its consequential definition of what makes a competitive rule set. At first, this might seem insane as any rule set could be viewed as competitive if it gets a significant amount of people to consistently go to tournaments. For example items on high with bomb-ombs only turned on could be considers highly competitive under this rule set.
Theoretically this is true, yet the stabilizer of this system is human nature and thus this would never realistically happen. To further expand on this let's imagine that a tournament actually adopted the above rule set. A few people might go along happily, yet the majority of the players would be extremely frustrated by the arbitrary and nigh unavoidable hazards. Over time(most likely after one tournament) everyone would stop going to such tournaments and it would kill competitive play. When people enter tournaments they hold an assumption that the main determinant of the tournament is their skill at the game under the rule set. Understandably, when the rule set of the game betrays this assumption and people waste several hours of their life training and traveling to a tournament, as well as their money, just to lose to an unpredictable event they will cease to attend tournaments.
Uhm. Restate your example please, I don't think I'm reading it properly.
The point was you evaluated the system's two aspects(counter picking stages and then counter picking character) separately and in that painted an inaccurate picture of the system when it was merged; to quote a line of your argument against the stage aspect:
The only disadvantage your opponent is placed at depends on the character whom they choose to use.
I was pointing out that in the current system the stage is picked before your opponent's character is chosen. This system rewards people for knowing how to play several characters (for example Olimar for a flat stage then Wario for a more areal stage) but still allows you to stick with a singular character if you are willing to shelter the clear stage disadvantage. Ergo the stage facet of the current system isn't an uncontrollable disadvantage but something you can work around through practicing several characters and strategy based on what characters your opponent is savvy with.
Please note the underlined, and explain to me in any way how that is any more competitive than picking something at random.
I believe you are referring to:
They have control over this factor so they are willingly placing themselves ata disadvantage. However...
It is
because that they have control over this factor as opposed to no option why it has competitive value: as above it rewards players for playing several characters to minimize the damage done in the counter picking system. If we return to the definition a rule is competitive when it attracts more people to a tournament or facilitates people attending more tournaments. Simply anything that adds more depth to general game play is a bonus as you are always fighting people getting bored of the game. Think back to some of the great melee players like Azen who just stopped playing because he and his friends got bored.
It does intrude on the game, and it gimps the top tier characters. Without the counterpick system, many characters would simply be unviable. Why? Because of their matchups with _________ from the top/high tiers. By allowing counterpicks - you are nerfing the top tier by making certain ones of them have to deal with low-tier-but-even/disadvantage matchups. Is this neccessarily bad? That's something you have to look into our community for. It's a standard in the community to allow counterpicks - so many people would see this as a "good nerf"; but that doesn't change that it is, in fact, a nerf.
With a counterpick system, the number of viable characters rises. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but we don't just add rules to make characters more viable. If we did that, there would be a few more rules in place.
This is another mistake in communicating on my part. I understand that it effects the match but it does not intrude into the literal game play such as changing physics or limiting what a character may do mid play(which is what intended to refer to). Any who you are correct that enacting rules to boost characters for the sake of boosting characters has no precedent and more over that reason onto itself is not a justifiable reason to do so.
I should restate (and fix that) sentence to say many BBR members state he breaks the counterpick system (although it isn't honestly anything any one of the could deny... it's a widely accepted fact that having no counterpicks breaks a counterpick system...) and if I have some freetime I'll go find links, although they are scattered around all over the place. Would be easier to just ask a few BBR members yourself.
There is no need to go through the trouble; I was only concerned with the aspect of the BBR officially commenting/announcing that the system being broken by MK. Also, I can take it on good faith that several BBR members have that opinion; I do not really see you blatantly lying to help your argument.
It doesnt effect MK dittos, because how do you effect a ditto with counterpicks? Although if competitive play wants to avoid overcentralization - you don't want the only good/fair/even matchup you can always get; be Meta Knight.
Despite the fact that MK breaks the system on paper the reality is that not everyone uses MK, hell, for the first time at MLG a MK didn't win it. The only argument that I can make is that as a matter of fact that not everyone has converted to using MK yet even though he is the best option. I suppose the only thing from keeping MK from truly breaking the system is the over-dominance of the strategy to stick with one mastered character completely and the resiliency of people to stick with sub optimal characters either out of conviction or a queer strategy.
Also - the time out clause is to ensure tournaments run on time. I do not agree with how they are done (1 stock, 3 minutes) seeing as Lucario get's a nerf from this (compared to his 3 stocks) due to how his Aura works. However timeouts don't happen that often and I've yet to see a Lucario get timed out.
Sudden Death is not competitive due to the random Bob-omb factor. Nobody should lose a set because a Bob-omb decided it wanted to spawn right on top of their character.
Having a time out clause is existant because we have a timer. A timer is needed to make sure tournaments run in a course of allotted time. Without this, some tournaments may not finish on time and lose their venue. No venue = no tournament = no winners = no competition = needed for competition = timer = timer clause.
Follow that train of thought?
Again my inability to accurately identify what I meant has hurt my intended argument.
By the time out clause I was referring to general rule of granting a win by stock and then percent lead(which I then contrasted with sudden death.) The point of this being, which you yourself accurately concluded that this is a useful in it practicality despite that fact it is not technically needed. Several times you used the rhetoric that the system was not needed; while this has some appeal it is fallacious to say that which not needed should not exist(hence my argument.)
Also how do you feel about Dave's stupid rule?
:leek:
