Is All-Brawl the future competitive standard?

[Dustlord]

Wait, are tournament matches played with all items off or with all items set to none, because that could make a difference to a Dedede player who enjoys using Side-B. I thought I saw someone say items are set to none.

 

[Xenesis]

Firstly, I'd like to say that Smashboards ego amuses me.

Wait, are tournament matches played with all items off or with all items set to none, because that could make a difference to a Dedede player who enjoys using Side-B. I thought I saw someone say items are set to none.

All Brawl is exactly that - All Items, Stages, etc. allowed. They're taking the Traditional fighting game approach of banning nothing unless it devolves into X vs. X only (See: Akuma).

 

[Dustlord]

I meant in a no item match, is each item set to off or is the item appearance rate set to none? Dedede is known to throw various items if the items are still turned on, despite the appearance rate being set to none.

 

[DRaGZ]

All items are disabled and items are set to "none".

We figured this would be a problem a long time ago.

 

[NinjaFoxX]

All-brawl?

scrub mentality,m i rite?

 

[popsofctown]

I don't think there is anything terribly wrong with no items+none items, 3 minutes, two stocks, 5 matches. The main opposition is that we aren't used to it, but i don't see anything wrong with it.

An important point i always bring up when people talk about changing stock numbers is that this DOES change character balance. Bowser slightly improves tier position (under SBR Bowsercide rule), because at 100% damage against 100% damage or so he can land a game ending Bowsercide, he can keep from falling behind easier in a two stock game. Sheik/Zelda lose tier position (de facto tier position, i don't their combination effects aren't listed in the tier list but i'm talking about the real abilities of characters) because the power of their in-game counterpicking abilities go down. To demonstrate the most drastic example in the game: Sheik has a horrific matchup with ICs because she can't avoid getting grabbed. Zelda has a much better, possibly advantageous matchup against ICs. So say i blind pick Sheik every match of a tournament full of people i don't know. I pick Sheik and the other person flips their paper to be ICs. If i'm at a two stock tournament I'm so totally screwed. I can transform into Zelda and get zero-death as punishment, or fight as sheik and get about 25% damage before zero-death. I get to be Zelda next stock (the invincibility lasts over transform), but i have to take 2 stocks without losing one. At a three stock tournament, same situation, i have to take 3 stocks without losing two, which is the same difficulty as "i bet you ten bucks i can two stock you".
I'm not a pokemon trainer expert, but i'm certain two to three stocks greatly alters PT's balance. The ability to totally ignore one pokemon probably makes it an improvement, although it might decrease a player's ability to cycle through and get a very advantages matchup twice in the match.

Lucario gets a slight bump up. Ideally, he wants to go through every stock killing his opponent slightly before he dies, since that's when it is easiest to kill. If he dies before his opponent once, he takes a huge loss because he has to rack up significantly more damage to get a kill. EX: If lucario is 120% to 120% against Mario, he will be penalized about 40% damage of work (that he'll do in low-aura) if he fails to kill first. Since Lucario can continue killing first over two stocks more easily than he can over three, i would expect him to be somewhat better.

Peach is slightly weaker, the game leaves less time to look for a blade sword of awesomeness. (10bladeswords)

And make sure sure sure not to forget this one: ZSS will be almost broken in two stock games. The suit parts are beast. ZSS is rare, so you might not have directly experienced this, but the suit parts are awesome. You have more time to make up that difference


These all may or may not make persons for or against two stock games. But NEVER swap between stock numbers mid-brawl

 

[Crystanium]

What part of what I said contradicts something else I said?

Let me speak in caveman for you.

SRK, smart fight game.

But, SRK no care Smash.

But, SRK want Smash popularity.

Thus, SRK pretend like Smash.

*grills a mastadon trunk in a fire*

Are you sure that's caveman speech? That sounded like an oriental fellow with bad English. You very bad at caveman talk.

 

[Swordplay]

Items are appropriate but not perfected.

Check out the ISP (Item Standard Play) Thread. You'll find a good communit including myself that finds some items are well dare I say acceptable????

Though we are in the minority.....

 

[Yeniths]

There rules are awesome

>_>_>_>_>

 

[Crizthakidd]

dont post the worods lets play with items, srk, whats wrong with accepting this new way to play

 

[Megavitamins]

Any ruleset with items = garbage

 

[MarKO X]

I don't mind playing with items, but there are many issues with playing with items competitively.

Right off the back, you cant play with Dragoon... it's an autokill, all day every day. get the pieces, then spam the A button.

Final Smashes are imbalanced in the attacks themselves and the way to get them. Super Sonic is awesome, but Sonic himself has quite a hard time breaking the smash ball open. The Spacies, on the other hand, seem to ALWAYS get the ****. WTF.

Random explosives are no good.

Spring is unblockable. Seriously, you toss it, you cannot block it.

And the lightning and timers... omfg, why the **** should I be punished for getting them by shrinking me and/or enlarging my opponent or having me go slow and my opponent go fast?

Items are too weird. If you really wanna play with them competitively, then go ahead, but 1) know what you're going for, and 2) don't think playing with items will replace not playing with items as a tourney standard.

 

[ph00tbag]

Ok, I think I get it. The 3/5 matches are supposed to reduce the luck aspect of items, but from what you're saying it's better to take the luck factor out entirely. Also, I didn't really understand why some of the stages were banned, and I thin k I must be hallucinating, because I thought someone posted a link to a thread about why stages are banned, but now I can't find it =/. Though it seems a lot of people just blindly agree to what the SBR says than argue with it, I'm gonna go hunt down that thread and give it a looksie.

The SBR ruleset thread in Tournament Discussion gives a reasoning behind every ban. There are only something like 15 or so hard-banned stages, and in every case, they are banned for very good reasons. The reasons are so good that SBR need not explain why they're banned to the community at large. They're hard banned because they simply are bad stages for competition no matter how you slice it. They're meant for FFA itemfests, not mano i mano tests of skill. The latter are the reason that stages like FD and BF exist.

The funny thing is, the SBR has to actually explain why many stages aren't on that list. In fact, the SBR is incredibly good about avoiding bans, and a quick perusal of their ruleset will show that. They're much less ban-happy than the community at large. They also understand the way smash works, and how it can be abused, much better than the people designing the all-brawl ruleset.

I'd like to hear both sides of the argument, but it's hard not feel defensive when I feel like I'm being yelled at online, even if that wasn't anybody's intention. So barring items and stages, is there anything wrong with a 2 stock 3 minute time limit? I have heard some opinions that it's too short for a real game, but in a competitive setting which is better, a quick match, or a slower paced fight with more stocks? The standard here seems to be on 3 stock fights, though.

Actually, 2-stock 3/5 seems to be the standard in the west and midwest regions, and it seems to be spreading. I'm still on the fence about it, but that format is certainly acceptable, even if it changes the game slightly.

All Brawl is exactly that - All Items, Stages, etc. allowed. They're taking the Traditional fighting game approach of banning nothing unless it devolves into X vs. X only (See: Akuma).

You see, Smash has already gone through the process where we determine that certain things aren't permissible. Circle camping is broken in every iteration of Smash. It has happened, and the potential for the metagame to devolve into such a thing has been shown pretty definitively in the past. This is something that we can ban outright without testing because it's something that's easy to see. Even then, a few stages where circle camping is possible are still counter-pickable, because they're less camp-heavy than the banned ones.

There's also the question of community-wide preference. These things can really only be decided by concensus, and the opinion of the community is almost unanimous on most stages that are banned. I don't know anyone that actually seriously wants to play a tourney match with money on the line on WarioWare. It's essentially a universal soft ban that has been standardized. and I don't think that's much different from the traditional way of doing things.

And for the last time, items off is not a ban. It's a setting. I could very easily say that you are banning a no-items playstyle, because you are choosing the setting of all items on, frequency set to medium, and my statement would be equally invalid as one that we have banned items.

 

[DRaGZ]

Lol.

How can you say settings item spawn to off is not a ban? That's like staying modifying the random stage select is not banning certain stages.

 

[ph00tbag]

Lol.

How can you say settings item spawn to off is not a ban? That's like staying modifying the random stage select is not banning certain stages.

Ok. We've also banned coin battle. We've banned time battle.

We've banned heavy mode. We've banned angled camera mode. We've banned Superspicy Curry, Flower and 1HP Stamina mode with bunny hood and metal. Hey, y'know what? So has All-Brawl! So much for not banning anything until it's devolved into just that.

You see where that kind of argumentation takes us? Almost every competitive fighting game has standard competitive settings. Most of them use the arcade settings as their standard. We don't have an equivalent arcade version, so we're forced to create our standard from scratch, and this is what we do.

And no, I don't think of changing the Random stage settings as a ban. That's another setting standard. A ban is saying that the loser is not allowed to pick Hyrule Temple. And that is a warranted ban, as I have shown.

 

[DRaGZ]

Yes, those are all banned.

If something is not allowed in tournament, it is banned. You don't have to say something is "not banned" just so you can be more PC.

Why is that such a difficult concept for you to accept?

 

[Xenesis]

Right off the back, you cant play with Dragoon... it's an autokill, all day every day. get the pieces, then spam the A button.

Uh, Spotdodge? Dragoon misses more than it hits.

 

[SwordmasterXXXI]

I stopped reading when I saw "All items set to ON". I really hope that they're joking.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Firstly, I'd like to say that Smashboards ego amuses me.

Secondly, I'd like to say that people who have no idea what they're talking about amuse me.

And ph00tbag: Yes, Keits is an idiot when it comes to Smash.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Dark Sonic]

Uh, Spotdodge? Dragoon misses more than it hits.

Waits for spotdodge to end.

Presses A.

Win?

Seriously, a skilled player using Dragoon will simply not miss. It activates in 1 frame, so if there is any frames of vulnerability (especially those as predictable as a spotdodge or airdodge vulnerability), then you will be hit. And if you decide to not spotdodge and simply run around, then you will still be hit because it activates in 1 frame and thus cannot be dodged on reaction, and would still be rediculously hard to dodge on prediction (you'd litterally have to dodge before he fires, and hope that he doesn't react to your dodge and delay his fire).

 

[Xenesis]

Too bad we'll never see a skilled player ever using the dragoon and cause it to make a difference in a game that you care about because of the stigma against items.

Until then, what you're saying is pure theory. Wake me up when it happens.

 

[Lord Yawgmoth]

Too bad we'll never see a skilled player ever using the dragoon and cause it to make a difference in a game that you care about because of the stigma against items.

Until then, what you're saying is pure theory. Wake me up when it happens.

even a scrub can use dragoon and hit an opponent. You don't need a skilled player to show you how. You have to be pretty ****ed predictable NOT to hit with it.

Yes. I played with Items on when I first got the game.
Im sure everyone did.

but luck should not be encouraged in a skill-based game.

If you are playing for fun, alright, and ONLY if you have more fun with items (I don't)
If you are playing in a tournament and don't mind losing hundreds of dollars of prize money because of bad luck.... well, then, again, alright.

...and I have one small request, please don't assume you know more about Smash than the SBR.

 

[Tenki]

Dragoon isn't meant for 1v1 anyway. Seriously.

I'm sure you've noticed that the Dragoon crosshair STARTS RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SCREEN.

And when there's only one player in the screen, the player remaining is put into the middle of the screen.

It's so easy to just leave it in the middle of the screem lol@ people who airdodge, then shoot them after they airdodge.

 

[ph00tbag]

Yes, those are all banned.

If something is not allowed in tournament, it is banned. You don't have to say something is "not banned" just so you can be more PC.

Why is that such a difficult concept for you to accept?

It's not being PC. It's knowing the difference between a standard setting and a ban. Why is it such a difficult concept for you to grasp, let alone accept? A ban is when something normally open and not preventable in-game is externally disallowed. A setting is something you change in-game. Just because I use the game's settings to make something inaccessible doesn't mean I've banned it. You're overextending the meaning of the word ban here, and it's ultimately dragging us into a very stupid and unwarranted discussion of semantics.

 

[Xenesis]

even a scrub can use dragoon and hit an opponent. You don't need a skilled player to show you how. You have to be pretty ****ed predictable NOT to hit with it.

Fun fact, it's easier for bad people to hit other bad people. I'm pretty mediocre at this game, I'd get pasted at a tournament (And I have when I've been involved the odd time or two I did). The only reason I hit the people I play against is because they're bad too. But someone who's perfected attacking and dodging skills? Like I said, it's more interesting that way and hasn't been tested much. Heck, I wouldn't be so sure either - Ken apparently tried to slice up CPU's ROB during the recent All Brawl that happened during a final smash so it's not like the best are even that familiar with items.

Yes. I played with Items on when I first got the game.
Im sure everyone did.

but luck should not be encouraged in a skill-based game.

I disagree, if just because it makes games sterile in the long run. I feel that the less perfection that is possible in a game, the better. But that's just an opinion.

If you are playing for fun, alright, and ONLY if you have more fun with items (I don't)
If you are playing in a tournament and don't mind losing hundreds of dollars of prize money because of bad luck.... well, then, again, alright.

I live in Australia - there isn't going to be any smash tournaments here ever that have hundreds of dollars in prize money apart from the nintendo sponsored events which blatantly ignore SBR's rules anyhow. Maybe if I played Halo and Counter-Strike it could happen, but it's unlikely.

...and I have one small request, please don't assume you know more about Smash than the SBR.

I don't know more about Smash than they do. I'm just amused by the arrogance of their followers.

 

[CR4SH]

OK, tell me if this is familiar to you
" OH **** WTF?"
"what?"
"I just died out of nowhere"
"What? How?"
"Maybe a bomb spawned next to me when I was doing an attack?"
"lame"

Yes? No (you haven't played with items on yet?)

In other words, anti-competitive. In fewer words, sakurai.

 

[Xenesis]

OK, tell me if this is familiar to you
" OH **** WTF?"
"what?"
"I just died out of nowhere"
"What? How?"
"Maybe a bomb spawned next to me when I was doing an attack?"
"lame"

Yes? No (you haven't played with items on yet?)

In other words, anti-competitive. In fewer words, sakurai.

I haven't turned them off since I got brawl in Feb (Nor were they ever really turned off in Melee since uh, 2002?). No, that's not familiar to me.

Better Example:
OHSHI IT'S HO-OH. RUN AWAY.

 

[DRaGZ]

It's not being PC. It's knowing the difference between a standard setting and a ban. Why is it such a difficult concept for you to grasp, let alone accept? A ban is when something normally open and not preventable in-game is externally disallowed. A setting is something you change in-game. Just because I use the game's settings to make something inaccessible doesn't mean I've banned it. You're overextending the meaning of the word ban here, and it's ultimately dragging us into a very stupid and unwarranted discussion of semantics.

Why does something have to be externally disallowed to be a ban?

If that's true, then nothing in sports are ever banned, because it's all done within the confines of the sport.

 

[MarKO X]

Dude, dragoon's death cursor zeros in on the opponent at the first sight.

So you spam A when you get all three pieces and you are GUARANTEED!!!!!!!!! I repeat GUARANTEED!!!!!!!!! to get the KO. I promise, it won't fail. I'll give you a million e-cookies if you go try that and miss your opponent.

As for all-brawl, I've already said my piece.

 

[CR4SH]

I haven't turned them off since I got brawl in Feb (Nor were they ever really turned off in Melee since uh, 2002?). No, that's not familiar to me.

Better Example:
OHSHI IT'S HO-OH. RUN AWAY.

That's SERIOUSLY never happened to you? Really?

 

[Xenesis]

It's happened to me about twice. Once was fatal. Tripping has killed me more often than the exploding bob-omb/capsule appearance will ever hope to.

 

[Ravepulse]

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAbNzsYmbqA
:40, 1:00 and 2:46. :40-First Big Blue Kill. 1:00 Big Blue kill. 2:46 lucky Big Blue kill gives Wario the match even though he was playing terribly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ngr8V7TzXE
At 1:00 an item appears and the match switches from trying to kill each other to trying to get the items.

More later.

Big Blue ruined it for me. I'm not sure what happened last round.

All Brawl was fun. The randomness wasn't too bad, but it definitely can ruin your match. I had problems with stages rather than with items. I also got ***** by metaknight because of the subsequent rule. I could only change character or change the stage D:

I'm not against this ruleset, but it definitely needs some work. You can't really judge until you try.

 

[Col. Stauffenberg]

"Don't knock it til you've tried it" is not a valid argument here. You don't need to experiment even a little with items to know that they amplify the luck involved in winning and, by extension, reduce the skill involved in winning. Nobody cares to hear you argue that it doesn't amplify the luck as much as people think it does, because you cannot give a good argument as to why the luck factor should be amplified at all in a tournament. You never will.

 

[Xenesis]

But does it really reduce the amount of skill in the game? Can you prove that? Or is it just posturing?

 

[NinjaFoxX]

But does it really reduce the amount of skill in the game? Can you prove that? Or is it just posturing?

yes, it does,for evey ITEM you have on, you increase your luck factor by 5-25% or even 100% due to 1hkos

 

[zamz]

But does it really reduce the amount of skill in the game? Can you prove that? Or is it just posturing?

Let's theorize.

Let's imagine a game--for pure example's sake--that relies 100% on the capabilities of each player. The winner is the player who can play better: who can predict, control and punish more aptly than their opponent. This isn't Smash, this is ideal, perfect, 100% skill-based game.

Now, let's throw a bomb into that game that can appear anywhere on the stage and explode to 1-hit KO the opponent. It randomly spawns, and can spawn where players are already attacking (and thus causing unintentional explosions). Or it can spawn near opponents who can pick this bomb up and throw it at a recovering (and thus defenseless) opponent for a free kill. In other words, it can cause instant deaths that are often unavoidable. Would I not be fair to make the claim that the "better player" has less of a gaurenteed chance of winning the second version of the game, than the first? Am I fair to claim that the second game has a very distinct chance that the "better player" will fall on the ill-side of a bomb and explode to oblivion?

If I'm fair to make those assumptions, than I ask you, what sets 1 match from another? What stops a random string of strange events from occuring and having 3 games influenced by items? "It's very unlikely?" The fact that it can happen period is evidence alone to remove it. Why? Because it WILL happen. There is no "we can hope it doesn't" because it will. And when competitive matches, be it the finals, or the semi-finals, or the quarter-finals, are being lost due to the ill-fall of an item, money exchanges to the undeserved hands and disrupts the 'balance.' If you're to win a 1st place pot, and you lose to a very undeserved, unskilled, lucky player who merely won due to a item falling from the sky and killing you with 100% no chance of you reacting to stop it, you will likely not be happy. If this occurs more than once in more than one of your matches, and you begin losing consistantly due to this random mechanism, then you will grow tired of losing your money and quit the competitive scene. Unlike now with items off, you CAN'T improve your luck. You can't get better. You can't learn to not-explode due to bad drops. With item's off, you can improve your game and come back better than ever. With items on, there will always be that chance you'll lose not for how you play, but merely because luck is against you.

If this became the mandatory "end all, be all" ruleset, everyone would quit. There would be no more scene. You can already see how many people are opposed by this ruleset and you can see the popularity is not on their side. I'm a fond believer of "don't fix what isn't broken" and the occasional player who leaves due to items being off will forever be less than the landslide of loyal players who leave due to items being turned on.

Back to my original point, am I fair to claim that the "second game" I proposed earlier has a very distinct chance that the "better player" will fall on the ill-side of a bomb and explode to oblivion? If so, then I should be able to make the claim that items add an element to this kind of fighting game that takes away from the skills of the players. You quote: "does it really reduce the amount of skill in the game?" I would say yes, without a sliver of a doubt. Throwing in items reduces the amount of skill in the game. Smash isn't perfect, and it's by no means "100% based off the skill of the player." But throwing in 1-hit KO items and boxes that can own a metaknight just because it randomly appeared at the wrong time (lol @ that video btw) ruins competition. It makes this less a competition of "skilled players" and more a lottery. I can increase my chances of winning this lottery by buying more tickets (or practicing with items to have a better feel of the way they spawn and the nature of their being) and it will make me slightly more apt to do better in this chaotic atompshere. But no matter how many tickets you buy, (or how many items you experiement with) it's never in your control. The outcome of the match lies in the game's random generator and not the players.

You can say: "it's just theory." But it's a fact that matches WILL be determined not by the players that are playing, but by the random item-gods that be. This is unacceptable in our competitive game. Every competitive game has their own needs and their own desires. Just because a group are experienced with the "competitive" genre does NOT mean they automatically know the best possible ruleset for Brawl. Items off worked fine with melee, and they'll work fine with brawl. Don't fix what isn't broken.

 

[Col. Stauffenberg]

But does it really reduce the amount of skill in the game? Can you prove that? Or is it just posturing?

Go ahead, try and tell me how items don't increase the luck involved in winning. Just try.

 

[Sneaky Yoshi]

I'm not saying I want Luck to be a bigger factor in Brawl, but the way things are now, Brawl players are quitting and either going back to Melee or quitting Smash altogether, and that's with the rule set of no items and stages being banned. It doesn't matter how competitive or balanced a game is, even if there is no luck involved, if it's just not interesting to play. However, I'd like to think that Brawl with Items and Brawl without items are both valid ways to play. I'm suggesting that a Brawl with all items and stages on is the future because that seems to be what a majority of people are leaning towards.

And it seems some people are more forgiving about allowing all stages than all items, with the noticeable exception of 75m. Than again, if 75m is such a bad stage to pick, why would anyone pick it in a money match anyway? So, why is it that you're more accepting of stages than items?

unbanning all stages and addind all the items would just increase the amount of players leaving.
As has been previously said, items just bring to much luck into the game and those people who actually go to tournaments DONT want items or these bizzarre levels into the scene.

There are more people playing with items on (but arnt at tournaments) because the way nintendo and sakurai are going/went about this was to make it more "casual" for all thoser little kiddies to hand their money over to them.

So smash on a large scale is dominated by all these little kids playing casual (look at online brawl, omg wtf please?).
But just because all these little kids who cant really play, play with items, doesnt mean we should introduce it into our metagame.

SRK may know alot of information about fighting games and what not, but the future of smash and its compeettive aspect will and has always been with SWF, no other place will you find such detailed and accurate information dealing with what is the true meta-game of smash.

EDIT: really tired while writing this, didnt realise tehre was more then 2 pages in the thread... =\

 

[Mota]

Ohkhay may! Items on would be downright stupid...

Some guy playing as The Omega Manly Captain Falcon could just speed around the whole match, not approaching or attacking, relying soley on:
DRAGOON
SMASH BALL
HAMMERS
ASSIST TROPHY
etc

So the game would then be about who could get the super killing items first? Not Skill?
WASTED! no dice. Khong. NO!

 

[Xenesis]

Go ahead, try and tell me how items don't increase the luck involved in winning. Just try.

That would be a rather idiotic assertion to make. I'm however uncomfortable with the idea that skill is finite and it is somehow consumed by chance events. This isn't a time-share villa by the beach where one can't coexist with the other.

Let's imagine a game--for pure example's sake--that relies 100% on the capabilities of each player. The winner is the player who can play better: who can predict, control and punish more aptly than their opponent. This isn't Smash, this is ideal, perfect, 100% skill-based game.

Well, your premise is flawed from the beginning. Smash isn't a perfect, ideal 100% skill-based game.

Now, let's throw a bomb into that game that can appear anywhere on the stage and explode to 1-hit KO the opponent. It randomly spawns, and can spawn where players are already attacking (and thus causing unintentional explosions). Or it can spawn near opponents who can pick this bomb up and throw it at a recovering (and thus defenseless) opponent for a free kill. In other words, it can cause instant deaths that are often unavoidable. Would I not be fair to make the claim that the "better player" has less of a gaurenteed chance of winning the second version of the game, than the first? Am I fair to claim that the second game has a very distinct chance that the "better player" will fall on the ill-side of a bomb and explode to oblivion?

Firstly, any player worth their salt would be trying to edgeguard the recovering person anyhow. Which for a good bunch of characters means leaving the stage or chucking projectiles. Secondly, someone trying to grab a bomb to ensure a death will give the opponent more time to recover, hit the ledge and get key invincibility frames. Thirdly, unless they're under the stage the use of the air dodge will place the item in the recoverer's hands as air dodging while rising upwards is often unwise. Allowing the recoverer to retaliate against the other person, I might add.

So no, your claim isn't as reasonable as it looks at first glance.

If I'm fair to make those assumptions, than I ask you, what sets 1 match from another? What stops a random string of strange events from occuring and having 3 games influenced by items? "It's very unlikely?" The fact that it can happen period is evidence alone to remove it. Why? Because it WILL happen. There is no "we can hope it doesn't" because it will. And when competitive matches, be it the finals, or the semi-finals, or the quarter-finals, are being lost due to the ill-fall of an item, money exchanges to the undeserved hands and disrupts the 'balance.' If you're to win a 1st place pot, and you lose to a very undeserved, unskilled, lucky player who merely won due to a item falling from the sky and killing you with 100% no chance of you reacting to stop it, you will likely not be happy. If this occurs more than once in more than one of your matches, and you begin losing consistantly due to this random mechanism, then you will grow tired of losing your money and quit the competitive scene. Unlike now with items off, you CAN'T improve your luck. You can't get better. You can't learn to not-explode due to bad drops. With item's off, you can improve your game and come back better than ever. With items on, there will always be that chance you'll lose not for how you play, but merely because luck is against you.

Problem is, you're not fair to make the assumption because there's a significant degree of non-randomness in the randomness.

Firstly, all items have discrete spawn points on every stage. The player who controls the areas of the map that have spawn points will obtain more items. It might be a less tactically useful position to fight from, but that's a risk vs reward thing.

Secondly, item spawns are weighted. Surely even you have noticed you'll see 50 smoke balls for every bob-omb that spawns, right? The more items are on, the more this pool is diluted and you'll end up with very predictable sets of items appearing throughout most matches. Thirdly, (as is especially apparent with Smash Balls and the Dragoon) the game takes a pool of the available items each round and won't spawn other items each round.

Fourthly, items spawn at pretty regular intervals. On medium, items will spawn approximately every 10-20 seconds. Considering how closely people keep track of the clock anyhow, this should be trivial.

Considering you guys use a best of 3 format, the argument against item gimpage becomes weaker. With a full set of items, you're about as likely to get bomb-screwed as a peach is going to win all of her matches in a set by pulling bob-ombs.

No - you can't control the random number generator behind the luck. But you can make intelligent decisions and actions that put any actions by the random number generator in your favour. A player who does this will gain the advantage over an opponent who doesn't.

If this became the mandatory "end all, be all" ruleset, everyone would quit. There would be no more scene. You can already see how many people are opposed by this ruleset and you can see the popularity is not on their side.

I never even mentioned anything of the sort. I'm just talking about items on the whole here, and the stigma about them. The SB community is too stubborn to budge unless the gods of the SBR decree it to be so and I never intend to bother to change that.

I'm a fond believer of "don't fix what isn't broken" and the occasional player who leaves due to items being off will forever be less than the landslide of loyal players who leave due to items being turned on.

In case you didn't notice, members of the Brawl scene are frothing at the mouth to turn on the hacks and make Melee 2.0. There's a lynch mob on Meta-Knight's door that's growing day by day as tournaments become who has the best Meta-Knight and everyone else is giving up and quitting or going back to Melee. I'm not so sure you can qualify the brawl scene as 'not broken'.

Regardless, I'm a scientist. I like to break things just to see what happens, learn and improve. It's a risk, but it can be fulfilling.

The outcome of the match lies in the game's random generator and not the players.

I thought the rhetoric of the anti-item players was that the better players would still consistently win and place in tournaments compared to those who were bad. Regardless, like I outlined above there is a lot less random in the random. Bad players will still lose. Good players will still win. It's not like the game suddenly becomes Pokeballs, Smash Balls, Assist Trophies and Bob-ombs on High.

You'll widen the standard deviation by a touch (The lower rankings of a tournament might shuffle around a bit, but I wouldn't expect much) but the average's going to remain dead centre where it is. The best will still win, time and time again.

You can say: "it's just theory." But it's a fact that matches WILL be determined not by the players that are playing, but by the random item-gods that be. This is unacceptable in our competitive game. Every competitive game has their own needs and their own desires. Just because a group are experienced with the "competitive" genre does NOT mean they automatically know the best possible ruleset for Brawl. Items off worked fine with melee, and they'll work fine with brawl. Don't fix what isn't broken.

Strangely enough, most game communties are fond of banning as little as humanly possible - the only thing other games actually tend to ban are Akumas.

Secondly, you're giving item appearances far too much weight. If it were really true, Peach should be causing far more upsets than she does in both games. Secondly, although you might not know this having not used them much but most of the items have had massively tweaked properties from the previous game. A thrown star-rod is no longer a guaranteed insta-spike for example. The Warp Star is slower. Pokeballs now have a specific pokemon rotation that usually results in masses of goldeen, bonsly or piplup.

An appropriate equivalent would be applying Melee's Tier list to Brawl's characters from the get go. Falcon was pretty good in Melee, so he's pretty good in Brawl, right? Items were broken in Melee, so they must be broken in brawl right? They're both equivalently valuable statements. Eg, worthless.

It is just a theory that the game is "better" without items for competition for brawl- there's no rigour to it. No results to back it. No research to confirm it. It's as valid as a politician's election campaign speech when push comes to shove.

There are more people playing with items on (but arnt at tournaments) because the way nintendo and sakurai are going/went about this was to make it more "casual" for all thoser little kiddies to hand their money over to them.

Strangely enough, these people you deride are the future of your community. Unless you're converting people from other hardcore fighting game communities. Which is unlikely considering what they all think of Smash in general.

Ohkhay may! Items on would be downright stupid...

Some guy playing as The Omega Manly Captain Falcon could just speed around the whole match, not approaching or attacking, relying soley on:
DRAGOON
SMASH BALL
HAMMERS
ASSIST TROPHY
etc

So the game would then be about who could get the super killing items first? Not Skill?
WASTED! no dice. Khong. NO!

So why is their opponent just sitting there, twiddling their thumbs waiting for Falcon to grab these killing tools again? Has his opponent gone to take a leak? Can you really envision that allowing a Falcon to smash a Meta-Knight who will pressure him to death?