So, we now know a lot more about the new game. There are still several important things we don't know, critically actual release dates, but we know enough to begin to have a few serious discussions. Some of these have already been touched on elsewhere, but I feel a centralized topic that directly addresses these issues from the start is going to be more useful.
1. 3DS vs Wii U
This is kinda a huge problem that I think is easy to overlook. The 3DS version is going to come out several months before the Wii U version, but the Wii U version is currently favored by most players. This is going to create a bit of an awkward gap in which many things might happen, and that could make things awkward for us. I believe that, to avoid significant community strife, we need to have a common understanding on the dynamic between the two games and what is in the interests of the competitive community.
That the Wii U version will be the eventual single standard is simply inevitable. The 3DS version is on the small screen and completely unspectatable either locally or over a stream. Most of the 3DS stages look really crazy to the point it's likely we'd ban all of them. On a technical level, the 3DS version is likely to significantly struggle in chaotic situations (60 fps in teams with all ICs with that console's power... it will drop frames, sorry). For multiplayer, far more data must be passed over wireless which not only creates the real potential for latency issues in local play but also will make wireless interference a far more real factor at large scale tournaments. The 3DS is the only controller the 3DS can use, and it's over a $100 piece of equipment. Playing smash destroys all controllers; who can afford that?
I wanted to lay that out there because I know a substantial subset of the community has really put their hearts into the 3DS version, and it will likely seem to have a real shot at success at first. Then any scene it is beginning to have will really collapse, and it would be really easy for those who have invested into it to be bitter over that. I think a lot of the people already pushing for 3DS are great guys, and I don’t want to lose them over this issue so I think we need to be clear about what the broader community’s position on this version is now.
We need to look at the 3DS version not as the real release of the game; it is instead the most awesome demo ever. We aren't getting to play the full game until the winter, but we are getting to get a lot of experience in with the characters and the engine through online play and local friendlies and maybe even some small scale local tournaments. Due to the transient nature of this version, I wouldn't suggest any TOs attempt to organize regionals or nationals around the 3DS version since turn-out will probably be severely disappointing (though if you were having a Melee or Brawl event already, it would make a great side event). If we can look at the 3DS version this way, we can turn the asynchronous release of the versions into an advantage for the community. If we allow it to turn into a competition between the versions, I see just one inevitable outcome and the potential for a lot of hurt feelings.
2. Formulating rulesets.
We didn't get a lot of new info in this direct that's relevant, but the release date timing is actually going to have a huge bearing on early processes in our favor if we play it right. I'd like to remind everyone of my previous extraordinarily detailed proposal on rule sets that boiled down to community wide voting over the first few months of the game‘s lifespan:
http://smashboards.com/threads/my-proposal-for-how-we-handle-stages-in-smash-4.346594/
If we look at the 3DS version as simply a demo, we won't need to worry about competitive rules at all for it, and any TOs who want to do locals can pretty much run with whatever since those stages aren't going to be in the main game anyway. When the main game does come out, we'll be learning all new stages, but we will have the benefit of not just the years of Melee and Brawl experience we already expected but also several months of familiarity with the characters and the engine of smash 4. That should allow for the accelerated timetable I proposed to be far more viable; since we will already have how the game plays advanced by several months, we'll be able to figure out how the various stages impact that a lot more quickly and efficiently allowing for any voting procedure to be done with a lot more confidence in quality of results.
We also have to consider the timing; winter 2014 basically means either November or December and probably not early November. That means that, with a 2-3 month timetable for formulating a ruleset, we could have something ready by early February. That's just in time for the EVO and MLG 2015 seasons, and having a strong and serious showing for smash 4 in its first year at these kind of major events (I believe smash 4 has a strong chance of making both) will be a huge leg up for the community so we are going to need to figure out some kind of ruleset that quickly that, if nothing else, we're going to be using for several months from that point though I think it's mostly prudent to aim for something permanent since if we used one unity ruleset throughout any EVO and MLG affiliated events we could get the game into that would present a strong and early case for a standard. These organizations require substantial advanced planning so we can’t just cobble something together at the last minute and expect them to take note; we’re going to have to have at least a plan well in advance.
We still have some time to figure out exactly how we're going to do this, but since we'll have so much more work to do come the summer in figuring out stuff about the game, it would probably be most wise to really get most of this sort of work out of the way in the next few months.
3. The pitfalls of additional options.
Some of the reveals in this direct implied a wide range of customization options, and honestly there are serious pitfalls we could make here.
Basically, we need to stick to defaults on stuff unless we are presented with very compelling reasons to do differently. A lot of people in Brawl's early days wanted to tweak the gravity or the damage ratio, but that never caught traction since those changes are pretty weak options. Smash 4's options are likely to have a lot more appeal, but this really is the road to ruin. If the character customization is a deep system of balanced trade-offs around which the game is clearly balanced, we can consider it as analogous to the CvS2 groove system as giving us an additional layer of depth on the character select screen. Far more likely, it is just going to be a way for us to damage the game or end up with a ruleset nightmare in which we could maybe very slightly improve the game with complex rules after 3 years and 10,000 pages of forum posts. We can now turn every stage into Final Destination. That's a really bad idea. For Glory is time mode matches against random strangers on WiFi; it's not a competitive mode and shouldn't be viewed as significant to our decision making. The metagame doesn't need a million Final Destinations with very subtle differences either; we need to take each stage as it is and evaluate them on their merits as such. This could only be the start of what wild new options we may have; I would be surprised if Sakurai had already shown all of his cards.
I'm not saying to totally close our minds to the cool things smash 4 may allow us to do, but we have to be aware that a lot of this stuff is basically presenting us with choices that have mostly foregone conclusions but are just compelling enough to draw a vocal minority ready to fight for them. While reaching a consensus on how we're going to do things will inevitably introduce some degree of strife and disagreement, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we have internal conflicts over options that were only there to allow for more casual fun in the first place. If these new options or anything unrevealed prove to be so overwhelmingly compelling that most of the community ends up falling in love, we may have a new and awesome layer to competitive play. If we see a lot of community apprehension over these options growing with each reveal about them, it's probably wisest to accept the inevitable and move on.
This basically concludes all the stuff I'm thinking about; if anyone else has any major topics related to how we need to proceed as these games come out, it would be well worth it to bring up. I hope we can work together to make this new game the great opportunity for growth and success the smash community deserves, and I hope we can reach a strong consensus on how we're going to walk the path forward together.
1. 3DS vs Wii U
This is kinda a huge problem that I think is easy to overlook. The 3DS version is going to come out several months before the Wii U version, but the Wii U version is currently favored by most players. This is going to create a bit of an awkward gap in which many things might happen, and that could make things awkward for us. I believe that, to avoid significant community strife, we need to have a common understanding on the dynamic between the two games and what is in the interests of the competitive community.
That the Wii U version will be the eventual single standard is simply inevitable. The 3DS version is on the small screen and completely unspectatable either locally or over a stream. Most of the 3DS stages look really crazy to the point it's likely we'd ban all of them. On a technical level, the 3DS version is likely to significantly struggle in chaotic situations (60 fps in teams with all ICs with that console's power... it will drop frames, sorry). For multiplayer, far more data must be passed over wireless which not only creates the real potential for latency issues in local play but also will make wireless interference a far more real factor at large scale tournaments. The 3DS is the only controller the 3DS can use, and it's over a $100 piece of equipment. Playing smash destroys all controllers; who can afford that?
I wanted to lay that out there because I know a substantial subset of the community has really put their hearts into the 3DS version, and it will likely seem to have a real shot at success at first. Then any scene it is beginning to have will really collapse, and it would be really easy for those who have invested into it to be bitter over that. I think a lot of the people already pushing for 3DS are great guys, and I don’t want to lose them over this issue so I think we need to be clear about what the broader community’s position on this version is now.
We need to look at the 3DS version not as the real release of the game; it is instead the most awesome demo ever. We aren't getting to play the full game until the winter, but we are getting to get a lot of experience in with the characters and the engine through online play and local friendlies and maybe even some small scale local tournaments. Due to the transient nature of this version, I wouldn't suggest any TOs attempt to organize regionals or nationals around the 3DS version since turn-out will probably be severely disappointing (though if you were having a Melee or Brawl event already, it would make a great side event). If we can look at the 3DS version this way, we can turn the asynchronous release of the versions into an advantage for the community. If we allow it to turn into a competition between the versions, I see just one inevitable outcome and the potential for a lot of hurt feelings.
2. Formulating rulesets.
We didn't get a lot of new info in this direct that's relevant, but the release date timing is actually going to have a huge bearing on early processes in our favor if we play it right. I'd like to remind everyone of my previous extraordinarily detailed proposal on rule sets that boiled down to community wide voting over the first few months of the game‘s lifespan:
http://smashboards.com/threads/my-proposal-for-how-we-handle-stages-in-smash-4.346594/
If we look at the 3DS version as simply a demo, we won't need to worry about competitive rules at all for it, and any TOs who want to do locals can pretty much run with whatever since those stages aren't going to be in the main game anyway. When the main game does come out, we'll be learning all new stages, but we will have the benefit of not just the years of Melee and Brawl experience we already expected but also several months of familiarity with the characters and the engine of smash 4. That should allow for the accelerated timetable I proposed to be far more viable; since we will already have how the game plays advanced by several months, we'll be able to figure out how the various stages impact that a lot more quickly and efficiently allowing for any voting procedure to be done with a lot more confidence in quality of results.
We also have to consider the timing; winter 2014 basically means either November or December and probably not early November. That means that, with a 2-3 month timetable for formulating a ruleset, we could have something ready by early February. That's just in time for the EVO and MLG 2015 seasons, and having a strong and serious showing for smash 4 in its first year at these kind of major events (I believe smash 4 has a strong chance of making both) will be a huge leg up for the community so we are going to need to figure out some kind of ruleset that quickly that, if nothing else, we're going to be using for several months from that point though I think it's mostly prudent to aim for something permanent since if we used one unity ruleset throughout any EVO and MLG affiliated events we could get the game into that would present a strong and early case for a standard. These organizations require substantial advanced planning so we can’t just cobble something together at the last minute and expect them to take note; we’re going to have to have at least a plan well in advance.
We still have some time to figure out exactly how we're going to do this, but since we'll have so much more work to do come the summer in figuring out stuff about the game, it would probably be most wise to really get most of this sort of work out of the way in the next few months.
3. The pitfalls of additional options.
Some of the reveals in this direct implied a wide range of customization options, and honestly there are serious pitfalls we could make here.
Basically, we need to stick to defaults on stuff unless we are presented with very compelling reasons to do differently. A lot of people in Brawl's early days wanted to tweak the gravity or the damage ratio, but that never caught traction since those changes are pretty weak options. Smash 4's options are likely to have a lot more appeal, but this really is the road to ruin. If the character customization is a deep system of balanced trade-offs around which the game is clearly balanced, we can consider it as analogous to the CvS2 groove system as giving us an additional layer of depth on the character select screen. Far more likely, it is just going to be a way for us to damage the game or end up with a ruleset nightmare in which we could maybe very slightly improve the game with complex rules after 3 years and 10,000 pages of forum posts. We can now turn every stage into Final Destination. That's a really bad idea. For Glory is time mode matches against random strangers on WiFi; it's not a competitive mode and shouldn't be viewed as significant to our decision making. The metagame doesn't need a million Final Destinations with very subtle differences either; we need to take each stage as it is and evaluate them on their merits as such. This could only be the start of what wild new options we may have; I would be surprised if Sakurai had already shown all of his cards.
I'm not saying to totally close our minds to the cool things smash 4 may allow us to do, but we have to be aware that a lot of this stuff is basically presenting us with choices that have mostly foregone conclusions but are just compelling enough to draw a vocal minority ready to fight for them. While reaching a consensus on how we're going to do things will inevitably introduce some degree of strife and disagreement, we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot if we have internal conflicts over options that were only there to allow for more casual fun in the first place. If these new options or anything unrevealed prove to be so overwhelmingly compelling that most of the community ends up falling in love, we may have a new and awesome layer to competitive play. If we see a lot of community apprehension over these options growing with each reveal about them, it's probably wisest to accept the inevitable and move on.
This basically concludes all the stuff I'm thinking about; if anyone else has any major topics related to how we need to proceed as these games come out, it would be well worth it to bring up. I hope we can work together to make this new game the great opportunity for growth and success the smash community deserves, and I hope we can reach a strong consensus on how we're going to walk the path forward together.
![[TSON]](/data/avatars/l/114/114196.jpg?1360761019){kind=avatar}
