London Anime Con 4 (Sunday 12th February 2012) MELEE + BRAWL

[Professor Pro]

u mad guys

LOL The troll aspect doesn't work as good when you lose interest and attendees.

 

[Fuzzyness]

lol well im not doing it

 

[Professor Pro]

LOL Fair enough, and if you were to do it then that would mean that you think Brawl matches and stock are too long and you should be reducing their game to 1 stock and Bo9

You know there is something wrong with a ruleset when Melee stocks gets put lower then Brawl stocks.

 

[rustediron]

our stocks are just worth more

 

[Fuzzyness]

ionno there isnt anything wrong with it imo, feels like a fighting game with more rounds (matches)

 

[Professor Pro]

OK, so 1 stock Bo9 in Brawl...I feel the points trying to be made for changing Melee to that ruleset actually make more applicable in Brawl

So Brawl 1 stock Bo9???

 

[Cactuar]

I namesearch.


@Fuzzyness: Yeah, it does feel a lot more like a fighter with 2 stock. The matches are a lot more fast paced, or it feels that way.

1) They further separate viable and non-viable characters. giving low tiers a helping hand is a poor reason to change the rules so drastically. You play who you want and try and win regardless.

Spoiler

The thing is, changing it to 2 stock and opening the stages isn't giving them a helping hand. It is removing an oppressing one. The current standard really only exemplifies one set of skills/combo ability. The characters that do best are partially determined by the stages available. This restores the ability to choose stages that are good for your character, rather than "less bad" for your character.

2) They provide accident forgiveness for the stronger player. if the better player has a lead then he has earned that saftey net

Spoiler

You don't understand what this actually means. The longer a match is, the less important mistakes are because of normalization. If a player makes a mistake as large as an SD, the punishment should fit the crime. The best way to view this is as a series of stock.

Let's assume that player A takes 1 1/2 stock for every 1 he loses naturally. Over the course of a 4 stock match, this translates to being able to take 6 from the opponent. In that four stock match, he can completely **** around, sandbag, sd, whatever, for one entire stock, and still be able to take 4 1/2 with 3 stock. In a two stock match, if he SD'd this suddenly becomes his 1 stock being able to take 1 1/2. His punishment is that he has to make up the difference, which is suitable for his mistake.

Matches being longer do lead to the better player winning, so much so that they win nearly every match. We have given so much room for error that the level of play is lower than it would be otherwise, due to us being able to play sloppy and get away with it.

3) They increase the importance of individual matches. Individual mathes should be important. They take a lot of skill, concentration and consistancy with 4 stocks. That would be lost with 2.

Spoiler

You are saying you would promote endurance as an indicator of player skill rather than play ability. Think about it.

Individual matches are still important, just slightly less than they were before. Individual stocks are now MUCH MORE IMPORTANT, and the outcome of the set is unaffected.

4) Individual matches take too long. (2-8 minutes) The average match length I'm sure is about 3 minutes anyway. Anything longer than 5 minutes are pretty rare.

Spoiler

Matches being allowed to go to 8 minutes has an artificial invalidation effect on using timeout as a legitimate strategy, as well as using the timer as a pressure tool. Having the timer too low encourages time outs, while having it too high creates a null zone, where players who would wish to time out there opponent will play increasingly passive until the point where the timer can apply pressure. The difficult thing to do with the timer is find the happy medium. This part needs playtesting.

5) Reduces combeback potential. actually if there are 4 stocks, then it allows comebacks to potentially happen. This isn't a bad thing either as if you comeback from a big deficit, then you deserve to win anway.

Spoiler

Comeback potential and comeback amount are two different things. Comebacks can happen beyond a 2 stock deficit. It is really cool when they do. But it happens extremely rarely. Comebacks in general happen more rarely in smash than in any other competitive medium. At a 4 stock to 2 or 3 stock to 1 deficit, the gameplay suffers while the winning player does the smart thing, which is to beat the opponent through attrition. Players either give up and feel defeated for the rest of the match, or the burn a huge amount of effort trying to make up the difference. This is an effect of REDUCED comeback potential. As in the likelihood of a comeback happening is much lower.

At 2 stock, this feeling never happens, as the nature of the game is that a single stock can come and go quickly (gimps, death combos, etc). The possibility of a comeback is much higher, forcing both players to play much more precisely. There is argument around this causing campier play, but imo, it promotes smart, careful, and accurate play. Single mistakes matter more.

I really don't see why people are jumping aboard this new ruleset

Spoiler

That is more an issue with you being blind than those people not having reason.

**

 

[Jolteon]

k first of all, I think 2 stock/3 timer is really good for a lot of reasons. I actually think 3 mins might be a little long, but most of the matches we played involved lolfalcocombos so perhaps I would be inclined to think differently had we played a lot of Peach vs Jigglypuff instead. I do, however, agree that we should experiment loads with friendlies before running a tournament with it.

Hugo/Ben I actually agree with you when you say that some of those things aren't good enough incentives to change a ruleset, but I think it holds other advantages.

1. The main thing is a shorter timer, right now our timer is basically a pseudo-timer which does stop ridiculously long matches, but it's not really a threat to the losing player because it's too generous and he can afford to wait for a player with a lead to approach him by stalling for several minutes.

2. With more matches and less focus on each individual match you have a good amount of time to reflect over your current strategy after a match. I can understand if people dislike this, but I personally think it's a good thing.

3. Each individual CP holds less weight, I think it's fair to say that testing the players on a larger selection of stages helps us to decide who is the better player.

4. It encourages players to play better all the time (Charles agreed with me, he said he couldn't screw around at all).

5. Set numbers are more representative of skill. They go from close 2-0s to 3-2 etc.

6. It increases the number of valid ways to win a match, e.g. characters like Marth/Mario who struggle to KO can look to win by finishing the second stock with a suicide gimp, or maintaining a lead and winning via a time-out.

You're entitled to disagree with my points as several of them are subjective in nature, but I believe it's ignorant to believe that we must go with the status quo sheerly because people dislike the idea.

Already agreed with Cactuar's argument for 2 stock 3 minute games? Really? 3 minute timers almost promotes timeouts and will unlikely "make the game fast paced and fun again". To be honest, I'm not seeing how it will make low tiers more viable either; in fact it makes gimps (hi Fox!) even more game-turning. Bleh, it'll be interesting to see in a tournament setting I guess.

A shorter timer does promote time-outs, but that is not necessarily a bad thing in itself (it just means there are more viable strategies to win), the reason why 8 minute matches are a bad thing is not to do with time-outs but because the timer is TOO long.

Basic game theory dictates that the losing player should approach under a timed situation if they are losing, for if no one approaches, they lose by default. This isn't really the case with smash. Why? Because the timer is so long that the losing player doesn't have to worry about it and can camp back until the timer actually becomes relevant. This creates a stalemate situation if the losing player camps until the timer matters and he is finally forced to approach. A shorter timer helps to avoid this by shortening the stalemate. To take an extreme example, look at the first/last minute of hbox vs armada's matches that went to timeout and see how they played out compared to the middle section of the matches. tl;dr The matches are more fast-paced simply because one player is forced to approach.

Another thing of note is that none of our games went to time, this includes: Sheik vs Peach, Sheik vs Jigglypuff, Falco vs Zelda (lol), as most of you know I'm one of the more patient players in this community so any one who thinks that every game will take 3 minutes is HYPOTHESISING and I urge you to just try it out for yourselves before passing judgement.

 

[jjlinyard]

Hmmm I can't wait to try it out I have my doubts about it but I also can see benefits towards it it should in a way make a few more characters tournament viable to an extent (based on who they are playing against) however I really don't like the idea of 2 stock I feel it is really too little maybe 3 stocks and 4/5 min timer but I dunno guess we'll see what happens in the coming weeks with opinions on this system

 

[Professor Pro]

TL;DR the majority of what was said, this is all getting stirred up just because people are salty about Hbox vs Armada and now want to make drastic decisions to change everything for everyone

I might read it later but either way I think changing anything is dumb, not everything has to be analyzed for change, their is no major flaw or problem with the current rulelist for their to be such a drastic change...

And if you actually agree with the change then does that mean you feel Brawl should be
1 Stock
Bo7/9
2 Minutes???

 

[Jolteon]

And if you actually agree with the change then does that mean you feel Brawl should be
1 Stock
Bo7/9
2 Minutes???

I don't feel anything for that game, it's dead to me, they can do whatever they want.



@jj: 3 stock/5 mins is something else I wanted to try out, but we didn't do it so I can't really comment on it.

 

[Professor Pro]

But the same concepts you are applying for Melee actually apply for Brawl and so come argue actually more apply for that game, so i'm getting your opinion on it.

1 Stock Brawl
Bo7/9

 

[Jolteon]

It's brawl, I don't give a **** lol.

 

[Professor Pro]

Look forward to hear about you all changing your minds about this like a few weeks down the line and me standing their smiling and laughing that you all actually took this troll ruleset seriously.

 

[rustediron]

It's brawl, I don't give a **** lol.

^^^This

Though I'm starting to see the appeal
Especially about going for the timeout on the 2nd stock with Marth, that sounds pretty cool

 

[Professor Pro]

So does this Troll Ruleset also mean 2 Stock 3 Minutes in Doubles as well out of curiousity

 

[Yeniths]

lol 2 stocks

Seriously tho, been thinking about this a lot. I can see 3 stocks being pretty decent.

 

[Fuzzyness]

whats so lol about 2 stocks, there are 2 rounds in fighting games

 

[rustediron]

Yeah, but most fighting games you don't lose a round by pressing side+b

 

[Fuzzyness]

you can lose a whole round in fighting games by pressing 1 wrong button / direction

if you think 2 stocks is harsh you should play ultimate marvel vs capcom 3 lol, get hit my zero with sentinel assist and your char dies, next char gets 8 way mixup

 

[Professor Pro]

Too bad this is Smash and Not MVC

 

[Cactuar]

@ProPro: My proposal has nothing to do with the Armada vs HBox set. Ignorance is cool though.


@Fuzzy: I was actually thinking about Killer Instinct, as far as game to compare 2 stock to. You had two 100% life bars, but if you killed the opponent's first one, they "died", reset to standing with another life bar, while you still had your remaining life from the first one. Super similar to having stock.

 

[Bullet Bill]

whats so lol about 2 stocks, there are 2 rounds in fighting games

This is smash. Smash is different. Why the sudden need to be like other fighting games?

 

[Bullet Bill]

I namesearch.


@Fuzzyness: Yeah, it does feel a lot more like a fighter with 2 stock. The matches are a lot more fast paced, or it feels that way.

The thing is, changing it to 2 stock and opening the stages isn't giving them a helping hand. It is removing an oppressing one. The current standard really only exemplifies one set of skills/combo ability. The characters that do best are partially determined by the stages available. This restores the ability to choose stages that are good for your character, rather than "less bad" for your character.

---- I cannot think of any stages that low tier characters would have had that would have given them a big advantage. A lot of the stages I can think of would actually help the top tiers more than the low tiers e.g. camping with fox, infinites with fox. I do agree that the stages need to be more varied but a lot of stages that would be legal with this new ruleset (Hyrule temple, Flatzone, Brinstar Depths) can very easily be exploited by certain characters and should definitely not be legal.


You don't understand what this actually means. The longer a match is, the less important mistakes are because of normalization. If a player makes a mistake as large as an SD, the punishment should fit the crime. The best way to view this is as a series of stock.

Let's assume that player A takes 1 1/2 stock for every 1 he loses naturally. Over the course of a 4 stock match, this translates to being able to take 6 from the opponent. In that four stock match, he can completely **** around, sandbag, sd, whatever, for one entire stock, and still be able to take 4 1/2 with 3 stock. In a two stock match, if he SD'd this suddenly becomes his 1 stock being able to take 1 1/2. His punishment is that he has to make up the difference, which is suitable for his mistake.

Matches being longer do lead to the better player winning, so much so that they win nearly every match. We have given so much room for error that the level of play is lower than it would be otherwise, due to us being able to play sloppy and get away with it.

---- I don't believe that 4 stock matches favor the better player. If I were playing you for example with 4 stocks, I would at least have time to get settled into the match and an opportunity to come back. With 2 stocks I can get steamrolled much more easily. In any case, it's the players skill that determines whos more likely to win not the number of stocks. What I don't like about this ruleset is that SDs would be game breaking and any element of chance or luck would be much more important with 2 stocks each. If I was playing against a player that was much better than me, I could have a very big chance of beating them just by them SDing. That shouldn't be the case. With 4, I would have had a very big helping hand in coming back, but it wouldn't be too significant. Matches should favor the better player not chance.


You are saying you would promote endurance as an indicator of player skill rather than play ability. Think about it.

Individual matches are still important, just slightly less than they were before. Individual stocks are now MUCH MORE IMPORTANT, and the outcome of the set is unaffected.

----Consistancy is a part of player skill, not seperate and its a very important part at that. Just look at any tournament. The winner of the tournament would have had to win multiple matches while still maitaining his high level of skill. This is a pretty important measure of a smash player and should be represented in the games.


Matches being allowed to go to 8 minutes has an artificial invalidation effect on using timeout as a legitimate strategy, as well as using the timer as a pressure tool. Having the timer too low encourages time outs, while having it too high creates a null zone, where players who would wish to time out there opponent will play increasingly passive until the point where the timer can apply pressure. The difficult thing to do with the timer is find the happy medium. This part needs playtesting.

----If the timer is too long, then I fail to see why changing the stocks down to 2 is a good idea. The timer for matches has never been particularly important until the Hbox Armada match (which is so obviously the reason for this). Those that wanted to play the timer could do so, but most matches finish well before a timeout. Do you really think matches should be rushed this much just for the sake of a few long matches?


Comeback potential and comeback amount are two different things. Comebacks can happen beyond a 2 stock deficit. It is really cool when they do. But it happens extremely rarely. Comebacks in general happen more rarely in smash than in any other competitive medium. At a 4 stock to 2 or 3 stock to 1 deficit, the gameplay suffers while the winning player does the smart thing, which is to beat the opponent through attrition. Players either give up and feel defeated for the rest of the match, or the burn a huge amount of effort trying to make up the difference. This is an effect of REDUCED comeback potential. As in the likelihood of a comeback happening is much lower.

At 2 stock, this feeling never happens, as the nature of the game is that a single stock can come and go quickly (gimps, death combos, etc). The possibility of a comeback is much higher, forcing both players to play much more precisely. There is argument around this causing campier play, but imo, it promotes smart, careful, and accurate play. Single mistakes matter more.

Any 2,3 stock lead that a player will get indicates that the player is much better. There is nothing wrong with this as the better player should win. Comebacks have never been an issue in smash that I have noticed. If you are good enough, you can comeback and if you're not, you don't. There doesn't need to be any more of them aas the better player probably deserves to win more than the lesser player anyway. Any advantage they have over the other player isn't caused by the game having 4 stocks.

That is more an issue with you being blind than those people not having reason.

----The people that are blind are the people that can't see that this is a result of the Armada Hbox match which is such a poor reason to change a ruleset especially when it's so drastic. No-one has been complaining about 4stocks before. Everyone has been happy with it and it has never been an issue so I really don't understand why the sudden need for change. If we're trying to make smash like other fighers as well then, I don't see why. Smash isn't like any other fighter and so it's ruleset is different.




Basically, there is no need for the rules to change and 2 stock all stages is just a pretty bad idea

 

[Fuzzyness]

im not changing the stages

 

[X1-12]

Falco becomes seriously broken in this ruleset, at least with the normal stages. If we tried to add more stages so we have ones so its not always possible to suicide spike on it would, imo, become a too drastic change to make as people would have to start playing on 2 or 3 times as many stages as possible, as well as start including some seriously dubious stages

 

[Professor Pro]

Bullet Bill post was WAYYY too long, im pretty sure his POV is supporting mine but forget reading that, sorry Ben lol.

Also Charles, what are the official rules for this tournament so I can decided if i'm coming or not.

 

[Cactuar]

Camping with Fox is not a legit complaint to have, considering that is possible regardless of stage list or rules. Infinites are also not a concern. Wobbling/IC grab chains are the threshold to base this on. A single technique is only broken if it can take more stock than a single wobble(this is a half-joke, but seriously the threshold). The only stages that Fox truly becomes broken on are stages that have circles, as he can run away forever. As such, Hyrule and Great Bay are out, at minimum.

That you think I should be able to win despite SDing is your own opinion, and one that I don't agree with. I already showed you the math. SDs combined with the increased importance of a single stock in a match makes an SD very costly, while actually decreasing the impact of that SD on a full set. Between two even players in a best of 3 with 4 stock each, if a player SDs, they have basically just lost 1/3rd of the set. In a best of 7 with 2 stock each, they have only lost 1/7th of the set. Again, increased stock importance in individual matches, decreased stock importance in overall set. It is win/win.

Consistency between matches and sets is an important skill. Consistency is different than endurance. Endurance has an effect on consistency, but endurance is not something that we generally focus on when we think of a player. We think of their play at optimum and at average. Endurance over the course of a tournament is also different than endurance during a single match. Once again, you do not seperate the factors out properly, and make statements that have nothing to do with your argument.

I already said this, but the Armada HBox set had nothing to do with this ruleset being put forward. This was thought of independently of that set. As a side comment: I literally do not care about all the complaining about that set. It is one matchup between two defensive players. Two sets out of an entire tournament. How long those matches took is a non-issue. This was more the result of me wanting to experiment with different approaches to the game, and having decent knowledge of what problems do exist in the current recommended. This proposal is only an alternate to, not a replacement for.

Just because something is the status quo and nobody has complained, doesn't mean there are no problems. You basically wrote up a short wall of text and said nothing constructive in response to my original post.

All I took out of it was "clearly the result of hboxarmada", which is straight wrong, and "i dont think we should change smash because i dont understand cause and effect and reasoning, and smash is different, so it is different and we shouldnt change it, therefor changing the ruleset is a pretty bad idea", which is like a combination of circular logic and ignorance. You wanna try again?

 

[Professor Pro]

As I said in the SmashUK page (for those who aren't part of the group or just didn't see it)

Some of us tried this out in the community

Alpha Dash
&
Professor Pro (Myself)

Hugo
&
L-J

And we all came to the same conclusion, we are not a fan of it and we feel it should never take over the official ruleset, Me & Alpha Dash actually approached it with an open mind and we didn't enjoy it that much, the 1st match we played was LITERALLY 19 seconds lol of course we enjoyed playing because it's Melee but it became a lot less enjoyable because matches were SOOO short and it was the biggest relief when we went back to 4 stocks.

There was no mental endurance needed during matches which is something which I feel people enjoy and they won't see how much they enjoy until their stocks are cut in half, it made the game so much less enjoyable, and I didn't like the fact that when you died once, the match was nearly over.
Of course it meant you had to play more serious to win, but that doesn't neccesarily make it a better game, since 3 stock you play more serious then 4, 3 then 2, 2 then 1 etc.

We didn't try it with all the stages, mainly because some of the stages are just silly and I will just be waveshining Dujuan on a wall all day...so we just did the normal 6...

So as I predicted before we played it 'It won't be that good, it's a Troll Ruleset'...and I said after we played 'As I predicted, it was a Troll Ruleset'

If this rule becomes active the game will become dead for me and I will actually stoop as low as to playing Brawl COMPETITIVELY
Charles will probably be sensible though and not put it into play

 

[Professor Pro]

In short, I don't care what anyone says, it actually makes the game less enjoyable for me and I think that it's a silly not needed change...the only thing I think that should be debatably changed is the timer...

Not stocks cut in half & every stage apart from like 4/5 played.

 

[rustediron]

Ny impression was that it's not a bad ruleset for dicking around, because you get through a lot of characters on a lot of stages quickly

4stock is much better though

 

[AmcD]

Using "Ignorance", is an awesome defence mechanism.

I won't be attending due to it being on a Sunday.

 

[Bullet Bill]

In short, I don't care what anyone says, it actually makes the game less enjoyable for me and I think that it's a silly not needed change...the only thing I think that should be debatably changed is the timer...

Not stocks cut in half & every stage apart from like 4/5 played.

Seriously prof, the only people that agree with it are here are Jolteon and Charles (and tbh I can't quite understand why). Catuar is obviously defending his own idea but hasn't really convinced me that 4 stocks is a problem especially as it's been working just fine for years and years (until Armada and Hbox played).

 

[Cactuar]

Hey man, as long as you have tried it before saying you like it or not, I'll respect the opinion.

 

[Mr_Hero]

Yeah, it needs to be cleared up if the adapted ruleset will be used at LAC4 or not. Someone said on Facebook a random guy came up with a similar ruleset a while ago, but was immediately flamed by virtually everyone who read it. Dunno why it is different this time.

 

[Bullet Bill]

Yeah, it needs to be cleared up if the adapted ruleset will be used at LAC4 or not. Someone said on Facebook a random guy came up with a similar ruleset a while ago, but was immediately flamed by virtually everyone who read it. Dunno why it is different this time.

because Cactuar said it so apparently it must be good.

 

[j3ly]

I'll be there! So i presume will be atleast 3 others from my crew.. potentially 5

 

[Cactuar]

because Cactuar said it so apparently it must be good.

Yeah, this really is the reason, sadly.

Basically, how well known and respected you are translates into being like a plow, while mental obstruction to accepting an idea is essentially a field (and how hard the ground is). Regardless of how good an idea (seed) is, you need to be able to plow the ground before you can plant the seed.

 

[Fuzzyness]

yo cactuar, WA - ER

im sure you and someone else will get the joke lol, one wont find it funny tho :D

 

[Professor Pro]

Guarantee I can get Top 3 at this tournament only going Roy & Link.