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Incorporating Food in Competitive Play

JRC LSS

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Jan 7, 2010
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I was curious about the item spawning favoring certain players so I did some tests on it. I just put one player on one edge of FD and and the other player on the other end and set food to medium. I did two control tests (after the first one I decided 2 min wasn't enough), a percent test, a stock test, and then I went for broke with an extreme in stock and percent difference. Here's the data I came up with:

Control 2 min p1 right p2 left
Left:
Left quarter:11
Left center: 1
Right center: 1
Right quarter: 1111
Right: 1

Control 4 min p1 left side at 0%, p2 right side at 0%
Left:11
Left quarter:111
Left center:111
Right center:11
Right quarter:1111111
Right:1

4 min P1 left side at 100% p2 right side
Left:1
Left quarter:1111111
Left center:111
Right center:1111
Right quarter:111
Right:

4 min p1 left side down 2 stocks at 0%, p2 right side at 0%
Left:1111
Left quarter:111111
Left center:111111
Right center:11
Right quarter:11
Right:

4 min p1 right side down 5 stocks at 300%, p2 left side at 0%
Left:111
Left quarter:11111111
Left center:11
Right center:11
Right quarter:11
Right:111

The 1's represent a food falling in that area ("quarter" being the area roughly a quarter of the way in on that side and "left/right" being very close to that edge). During the stock test, I was sure there was a connection, but then when I set player 1 to be losing by 5 stocks and at 300%, the spawns seemed to favor player 2 more. Anyway, make of it what you will but I don't see a clear correlation between item spawns and who is winning/losing.

tl;dr I don't believe item spawns favor anyone
 

EpixAura

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Hmmm... well I don't think this would work, but I definitely think I can't judge until I try. But even if I find it to work well, with no real bias for either side, I still don't think it would garner much support.
Still, I would love to see how this turns out.
 

Life

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Use [.collapse][./collapse] without the periods to make a collapse box.

Anyway, food does NOT reward a player for losing UNLESS the person with the lead is planking (except at the very beginning of the stock, when one player is still at zero percent and gains nothing from picking up food). In which case the planker (and other camping I suppose, to a MUCH lesser extent) puts themselves in a position to not get the food--a player choice. What food DOES reward is control of the stage--if you can keep your opponent to the sides, you'll be able to get to food spawns faster than they.

The data above looks like a result of small sample sizes--notice how the food seems to favor one side in nearly every test, regardless of which side has the losing player. In a larger sample size you'll likely get far more even results.
 

Tesh

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Food rewards the player with stage control. So if you get a lead and you want to hold it without being aggressive, you most camp the hardest spot to defend (the middle). No camping the easy isolated spots.
 

JRC LSS

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Use [.collapse][./collapse] without the periods to make a collapse box.

Anyway, food does NOT reward a player for losing UNLESS the person with the lead is planking (except at the very beginning of the stock, when one player is still at zero percent and gains nothing from picking up food). In which case the planker (and other camping I suppose, to a MUCH lesser extent) puts themselves in a position to not get the food--a player choice. What food DOES reward is control of the stage--if you can keep your opponent to the sides, you'll be able to get to food spawns faster than they.

The data above looks like a result of small sample sizes--notice how the food seems to favor one side in nearly every test, regardless of which side has the losing player. In a larger sample size you'll likely get far more even results.
Thanks for the tip. Anyway, I realize that the person in control of the stage will benefit more from the food. I was just trying to debunk beliefs like this:

Item spawns are biased towards the losing player. :V
As far as the sample size goes, you're probably right in that the data would level out more with larger tests. Testing like this isn't exactly fun and so I figured four minutes per round would be enough. Even though the spawns tended to favor one side or the other, they don't favor the loser (or anyone for that matter), which was what I was testing for.

I like this idea and I think it could work in nerfing planking as a strategy. It won't replace the rulesets of normal tournaments, but it might work as a side event.
 

Tesh

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3 stock matches do that as well. We really should be doing 9 stock Bo1 sets so momentum stays fluid.
 

Life

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And that's another thing: BoWhatever one-stock uses more stages than Bo3 3-stock so it gets closer to the median of bias in its matchups (well, more like a mean really).
 

Vyse

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Because I am totes lazy.

Real talk - I'd like to draft a ruleset because I want to run a 1 stock, food tournament soon. Totally calling it the Strawberry ruleset in honour of the item trivia from earlier in the thread. Plus I like the name.

What frequency items should I use? And what settings for that matter. What are the implications of items on for food? I'd do research now but I'm at work lol.
 

Life

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Vyse, if you go through with this, you are my new hero.

Either Medium or High for the items. IDR the exact spawn rate for each, I believe San posted earlier that High is roughly once per ten seconds (not bad at all).

I personally recommend High+Bo7 with B013 finals, but the others seem to think Medium and/or Bo9+Bo15 is a better option.

Only thing is, you need a lot of stages legal for it to work and/or nerfed DSR, not sure how comfy your players would be with that.
 

Tesh

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Get vids. If its 1 stock 3 minutes matches, you should be able to record EVERYTHING!

Also check out the stage discussion social, we got started in there , Vyse.
 

Vyse

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I want to consider keeping it as low as bo5 - One of the interesting things to me is looking at a way of speeding up tournaments. However, I agree with Bo7 for regular rounds.

I'm concerned though, does turning on food and thus items affect characters like dedede?

As for when it will happen, it'll be at least a month away. I'm helping parents move and I myself am moving into a house at the end of the month. If I get a sooner opportunity I will run something.

Our metagame has a decent variety of characters, but a lot of 'oh, bad match up, time for mk'. Although our last tournament was won by a pit main lol.

We have a high placing samus main at the very least, so we should see some good matches where it'll demonstrate its strengths.

Recording shouldn't be a problem.
 

san.

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I do know that Diddy gets his peanuts back. I wouldn't be surprised, though.. Not sure how much of a problem DDD's items are.
 

John12346

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If we do this, Dedede gets a chance to throw out capsules which CAN explode or release food iirc. The probability of a capsule is allegedly the same as the probability of a Gordo, and the frequency ratio for Dee : Doo : Gordo is 35:10:4.

So we can say the frequency ratio of Dee : Doo : Gordo : Item would be 35:10:4:4.

Capsules have a 1 in 8 chance of exploding, so we should take that into account too, changing the ratio number of 4 into 3.5 for food and .5 for explosion.

So we can assume the Waddle Dee : Waddle Doo : Gordo : Food Capsule : Exploding Capsule ratio is 35:10:4:3.5:.5.

Giving us an overall probability of
Waddle Dee - 66.03%
Waddle Doo - 18.87%
Gordo - 7.55%
Food Capsule - 6.60%
Exploding Capsule - 0.94%
 

Tesh

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DDD is gonna be pro. I would totally main him with inifnites legal and capsules.
 

UltiMario

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IIRC Dedede will throw Capsules if any items are on.

That's me pulling stuff from my memory back from 08 though, so I may be wrong >.<
 

John12346

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That's right, Dedede will throw a capsule containing any item that's on, or an explosion. D:

Capsule doesn't necessarily have to be on for this to happen.
 

Supreme Dirt

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If only he could throw crates XD

But yeah, this sounds cool. If you can run a whole tournament with this, I might try it myself.

Oh wow, my tourney, such a weird ruleset.

Custom stages, food, one stock, 3 minutes.

I wonder how people will take it.
 

Life

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D3 thing does not sound right at all (Peach item pulls disregard item settings). But I'm at home with nothing to do, might as well test it. BRB

Test 1: D3 vs. GnW on Picto. Basically threw stuff at him the whole game. Several Gordos, no capsules, food was on high but nothing else.
Test 2: Same settings, except both capsules and food on high. Got ~4 capsules within the first couple minutes.

Either you're wrong, or I just got MASSIVELY mindscrewed by probability.
 

Mr.Jackpot

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I play with food sometimes simply because its takes some skill to take advantage of, but only gives some small change to the game compared to something like a starman or even a capsule. I think it'd be a good thing to try out, because Brawl already has some random factors to it that affect gameplay as least as much.
 
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I have a question.

Why do we keep trying to steer the game in a direction we want instead of just accepting it for what it is and playing it? If planking is the future, either we will learn to adapt and counter it and move past it, or the game will simply degenerate into ****, meaning it wasn't a very good game.

Or, we could just ban MK. :)
 

Tesh

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I have a question.

Why do we keep trying to steer the game in a direction we want instead of just accepting it for what it is and playing it? If planking is the future, either we will learn to adapt and counter it and move past it, or the game will simply degenerate into ****, meaning it wasn't a very good game.

Or, we could just ban MK. :)
Why did we steer the game away from 2 minutes, all items on, hyrule temple? Smash has ALOT of options for how you want to play. They wanted us to steer it in alot of directions. Thats why its a great series. No one has to just accept a certain set of options for what it is you know. Especially since we clearly couldn't accept most of what was available for what it was and just play.

Good talk.


Back on topic, I am interested in how food being on affects specials. Someone go find the ISP guy?
 

Vyse

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I've had a quick look at his old threads but I couldn't find anything outside of the item drop line editor thingy and the analysis of each item for isp etc.

It'd be good if we could develop a set of definite facts about what changes when items are turned on.
:phone:
 

Tesh

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Not like Zelda could get any lower in low tier. Ganon still gonna suck, don't worry.
 

Vyse

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So I want to run this as a house tournament. Meaning 8+/- entrants which is more than most could ask for lol.

What I'm thinking is that for each round I'll switch up the settings since I'll have the luxury of time.

I want to test:

Stock: 1 Stock only
Items - Food Only: High/Medium/Low
Time: 3 Min/4 Min/5 Min
Rounds: Bo5/Bo7 Quarters-On
Dave's Stupid Rule: On/Off/You may only choose a previous counter-pick after losing on another counter-pick

I think I'll just try running the Unity Stage List.

This is still almost a month away from happening though. Helping parents move this weekend - Signing Lease next weekend - Moving into new place - House Warming?

Idk.
 

JRC LSS

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So I was wondering how much of an effect food can actually have on a short match and so I did some testing on it. Anyway, here's what I came up with:

3 minute matches (the numbers are the total percent healed that match)
Food on low: 57, 40, 32, 25, 50
Food on medium: 95, 108, 67, 95, 84
Food on high: 170, 150, 170, 129, 164

Averages
Low: 40.8% per match or 13.6% per minute
Medium: 89.8%/match or 29.9%/minute
High: 156.6%/match or 52.2%/minute

I'd still say that food on medium would be the most appropriate for tournaments. You'd need more than a 30% lead to plank away the last minute and even then it's no guarantee. It's also probably worth noting that the results are less consistent the higher the frequency of items is (low/med/high).
 

Life

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My concern is that 30% is too low, but I can't really justify it given the variance in spawn %--it's still a gamble to stall out from there.
 
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