Well, this has been a fun waste of time, but I think I'm done for now. I've gotten my point out there for people to mull over, but I've got work, and I'm probably going to forget about this post in a few days.
I'm not sure why people can't structure argumentation more like AZ... I wrote this wanting people to argue intelligently with me, but it seems like the majority of the board doesn't really know how to argue.
So, whatever, chew me apart. I understand the practical reasons for why infinites are still around, but I fail to see why people tolerate them on a theoretical level.
Anyway, hope to see you in game, challenge me on GB, etc. Peace, here's my last post:
We can make this really simple: do infinites break the game?
No.
If you disagree, feel free to point to how Wobbles and ChuDat were sweeping the competition in Melee in tournaments where wobbling was allowed.
Oh, right, they didn't, because "don't get grabbed" was a viable argument and wobbling proved not to be as big a deal as some of the whiners and moaners claimed.
"Don't get grabbed" should not be taken literally, its the thought behind the argument, it means, basically, "try your ****ed hardest not to be grabbed". Its entirely possible to avoid being grabbed for much of your stock, a grab at 80% =/= being grabbed at 0%. To frequently those who are against infinites make the assumption that everything takes place at the beginning of the stock, when that simply isn't the case.
Why should we wait to see it break the game?
Because if it doesn't, we are arbitrarily limiting certain aspects of certain characters just because some people think something is to difficult to deal with. All the DDD CG arguments on walk off stages are void if you, for example, play a character who can't be CG'd, and some characters that can be CG'd (Snake and Diddy Kong) have easy strategies to prevent being killed from the walk off edges (keep mines or bananas behind them). If no one is winning tournaments with these techniques then we know some people posess the ability to get around it. That there are work around, even if they are really hard, then infinites should not be banned.
From reading your first post, it seems like your entire argument boils down to: infinites are to easy to perform and are to hard to get by, the lopsided risk/reward situation means we should ban it.
People use to have gripes about Peach's D-Smash in Melee because everyone learned to L-cancel. Same thing with Link's Up-B out of shield before L-Canceling. They argued that it was to easy to do and the reward for doing it was to high. Take another example from another game, the zerg rush in Starcraft is tremendously easier to pull off than it is to counter. Under much of the logic in your first post, it should have been banned. Yet, it wasn't, and all the people who are actually good at the game can get around it.
Difficulty in performing something does not have to equal high reward.
Ease of performing something does not have to equal low reward.
This is, I think, where you are tripping up.
Alright, let me preface my response.
I did not intend to completely reverse the way tournaments are run now. I know a post by a guy on the forums, especially with little tourney experience, isn't going to change much.
What I intended to do was have people think about why infinites are allowed at tournaments. I know infinites on their own haven't won people tournaments, and I don't have a case if we're going purely off empirical evidence. I'm just attacking the theory behind it, and I don't think it's been adequately responded to.
Ok, now to your post.
I've seen some videos of ChuDat and Wobbles. I've seen them grab people and intentionally not wobble them the whole match. They don't really rely on infinites completely. I don't know what the reason for it is (my guess would be that people aren't really fans of seeing a player win using purely infinites, and that they wouldn't enjoy the game if all they did was infinites), but, they have gotten grabs off PLENTY of times, especially early in a stock, and decided not to infinite. It's not because the other people avoided the grab, it looks like; they've gotten it off before their opponent really did any damage.
But I can see the point of your example. Infinites aren't that big of a deal, people avoided them. But you have to realize that not everyone who had the capability to infinite utilized that ability whenever they grabbed.
I have consistently said, though, that I'm attacking the theory behind the infinite. I don't care if it can be avoided early on. My question has always been 'Why is the concept of an inescapable death move allowed?' I can understand that you're saying there's no empirics to actually deal with it as of yet. And, to be honest, there probably won't be, because people seem to not try to get all their kills from infinites. I was discussing the theory behind the move, and, now, I understand that it's not appreciated as much. But, still, I don't think its been answered fully yet.
That's fine if people base infinites off of whether they affect tournaments. I'll go to tournaments even if they allow it. What I am saying, though, is that I think I gave a lot of theory behind why the concept behind it is negative. And I don't think people have decided to engage me at that level, yet.
Why should we wait to see if it breaks the game? (By the way, I'm not saying CGs are bad, just the infinites. Let's keep it to that).
I kind of answered the question of imposing arbitrary limitations on competitive gameplay in my first post, so I'd read that.
Next, you say we shouldn't limit aspects of a character's game. We already have, though. We don't allow people to stall using their abilities to wait for someone to fall of the edge. Why? I would be unfair, and we need things for time limitations.
That's the main problem. It's not fair. No, unfair does not mean difficult. It means impossible. It is not possible for me as a DK player to do ANYTHING until I die when being infinited by DDD. It is not possible for me to do anything in the same conditions when an IC gets a ICG off on me. They aren't combos. They are insta-wins, and I spent 3 paragraphs explaining why that's not fair in my first post.
"From reading your first post, it seems like your entire argument boils down to: infinites are to easy to perform and are to hard to get by, the lopsided risk/reward situation means we should ban it."
That's part of it. But I'm mainly criticizing the act of an infinite itself, as you can see in the post before this. I don't care that it can be avoided. My argument is, that's not a justification for why infinites should exist.
And I think you need to recognize what I've been saying about infinites. They don't have the same nature as a strategy or a singular move. They're not like any of your examples (in fact, you even say during your examples that they are counterable/escapable). Infinites are not escapable or counterable (meaning, once you're in them). They are avoidable, and I think that distinction is critical. You can't L-cancel them, you can't tech them, you can't build some Terran structural defense to counter them, they're impossible to escape. That's why I don't think your examples hold water, at least to what we're talking about.
I hope that clears things up.
This brings back the question as to "How much is considered bannable?" Is it 4 consecutive CGs? Infiniting on a wall for more than 3 seconds? It all seems very abstract, "You're banned because you CG'ed with DDD until his stale moves took over! Baah!"
I answered this in the OP.