How does something get banned?

[stcyadams]

I found out the other day that meta knight was banned from Brawl tournaments. How does something like this actually happen????

 

[Mikkelmann]

Meta Knight was unbanned a while ago. Cause when he was everybody was like "finally other characters are viable" then Ice Climber chain grabs were just destroying everybody so they were like "unban meta knight pls". But bans don't really happen that often other then stages bans. The brawl backroom will do the banning and changing the rule sets for brawl if i'm correct. You can see a thread were the meta knight ban first happened it was in 2011 so it's outdated but it shares good history.

 

[Dastardly Ridleylash]

Usually something gets banned because it unbalances something; either gameplay (like how Hyrule Temple encourages campy gameplay) or characters (like how Poke Floats can screw over characters with poor recovery without input from another player, thus meaning the superior recoverer almost always wins on that map). Glitches like the Soul Breaker are also banned because of how destructive they are to competetive play.

Meta Knight was banned in Brawl tourneys because there was almost no hard counters for him outside of a ditto match, so everyone was maining or subbing him. He only became legal again because the Ice Climbers began dominating as mains and they had to do something to counteract it. They had to release the OP character just because others were starting to become a problem.

tl,dr: Meta Knight was too damn good for Brawl, and he was only unbanned to try and balance out the roster again.

 

[stcyadams]

Well while I'm not good at smash competitive-wise or good with meta knight in general, I think that character bans seem somewhat unreasonable, and that instead people should practice fighting that character, with all due respect. I completely understand stage bans, there's no question in my mind about that, (and even "no items" I understand), but I feel that if someone wants to play as their favorite character, then they should be able to play as them.

 

[20YY SS | Saiblade]

Either absurdly OP, or completely gamebreaking or boring.

 

[trash?]

an easier way to think about this is with these questions (assuming aspect = character, stage, or a tactic such as planking):

1. when this aspect is brought into play, what do top players do with it?
2. once top players use it effectively, how do choices work within it? does this aspect limit choices, or does it simply create more?
3. are there counters to this aspect? how does this counter operate when this aspect is not involved?
4. how about things that this aspect counters in itself? do they still function well in the metagame?
5. with all of those above things in mind: does it create a more evolving and interesting metagame, or does it create a stale and devolving one?
6. assume you attempt to permanently remove this aspect through a ruleset. how? keep in mind, you must be as precise as possible, without potentially allowing for easy loopholes, otherwise the rule serves no purpose.

keep in mind, only points five and six have an objective good/bad answer. for example, just because something creates options does not make it good; indeed, it could possibly create too many options, thus making a character considerably too good as a result.

at the end of the day, they all lead into point five; a metagame that devolves is one that will lose all competitiveness over time, and ensuring that it does not devolve is the only major reason to ever justify a ban within rulesets. point six, similarly, holds importance; how often have you ever seen a rule such as "no stalling" ever been enforced? likely never, because it's far too vague to easily be enforceable. when stalling tactics such as planking in brawl warrants ruleset changes, it's very specific, going as far as having a specific number of times you're allowed to grab the ledge in a single game.

if you need to know more about point six, I'd recommend the section about rulesets in david sirlin's "playing to win". keep in mind, though, the "warranted" section is intentionally vague, due to the major lesson of that book being "get good and adapt", which is why I focused so much on that end to make up for it.

http://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/what-should-be-banned