MBR Official Ruleset Revisions

[Pink Reaper]

So as some of you may have heard, there was little RoM 5 kerfuffle and because whiny self-entitled kids seem to think they're owed something for a tournament they weren't even a part of there's a lot of people asking for MBR stances on rules and regulations. So it's probably a good time to really get down and hammer out an official ruleset, or at least revise the one we have. And because i have to stay awake for the next 2 and a half hours it will give me something to do.

For reference here is the current(though for some reason tentative) Melee Ruleset:

Spoiler

Foreword:

The contents of this ruleset are still up for debate. If you see anything you disagree with, have questions about, or we missed and you would like to see, you are strongly encouraged to speak your mind. Posts that give a thorough explanation of your opinion and the reasoning behind it will be noticed. Posts that complain with no basis for said complaint will be ignored. I will be participating in the discussions as much as possible.

That said, this is what we have so far:

MBR Recommended Rule Set
Super Smash Brothers: Melee (Singles and Teams)​

Singles Stage List

Spoiler

Starters/Neutrals:

• Yoshi’s Story
• Fountain of Dreams
• Battlefield
• Final Destination
• Dream Land

Counterpick:

• Pokemon Stadium

Stage Bans

• For Best of 3 sets, each player gets 1 stage ban.
• For Best of 5 sets, there are no stage bans.
• For Best of 7 sets, DSRM is enabled for the 7th match, but the winner of the 6th match is allowed one stage ban, to be used after the 6th match is played.

Doubles Stage List

Spoiler

Starters/Neutrals:

• Yoshi’s Story
• Pokemon Stadium
• Battlefield
• Final Destination
• Dream Land

Counterpick:

• DK 64
• Jungle Japes

Stage Bans

• For Best of 3 sets, each team gets 2 stage bans. Teams may ban up to one neutral stage and one counterpick stage. One team cannot ban both counterpick stages.
• For Best of 5 sets, each team gets 1 stage ban.
• For Best of 7 sets, there are no stage bans.

General Rules

• Items are set to off.
• Stock and Time are set to 4 stock and 8 minutes, respectively.
• Double Blind*: If elected.
• Contest Port Priority*: If elected.
• Neutral Start*: If elected.
• Standard DSR*
• Gentleman’s Clause*
• Forced Character Selection*: Off
• Matches that time out will be determined by the remaining number of lives, then percentage of the current stock. In the event of a percentage tie, the match should be replayed in full. Sudden Death is not to be played, and will not count.

Additional Rules for Teams Play

• Team Attack: ON.
• Life Stealing is allowed.
• If the game is paused accidentally while attempting to steal a life, the opposing team may deem that life forfeit. Wait until the announcer has finished saying defeated before pressing start, or turn pause off prior to beginning the match.

How to Play a Set

1. Players select their characters. Either player may elect to Double Blind.
2. Use Stage Striking* to determine the first stage.
3. The players play the first match of the set.
   Prior to starting this match, either player may elect to Contest Port Priority or Neutral Start.
   
   Spoiler

   Note: Only one of these two may be used, as both have a built in Port Selection mechanism using RPS. If there is a situation where a player would like to change which option they elected after playing the game of RPS, it is the opponent’s choice to allow it. The results from the previously played game of RPS will carry over.
   
4. Winning player of the preceding match bans a stage/stages (if applicable).
5. The losing player of the preceding match picks a stage for the next match.
6. The winning player of the preceding match may choose to change characters.
7. The losing player of the preceding match may choose to change characters.
8. The losing player of the preceding match gets first pick of port. Either player may elect for a Neutral Start, but RPS will not be played to determine first pick.
9. The next match is played.
10. Repeat Steps 4 through 9 for all subsequent matches until the set is complete.

General Knowledge

Players are responsible for their own general welfare in regard to the tournament environment. In other words, players are responsible for:

1. Stage List and Rule Set Familiarity
2. Venue and Entry Fees
3. Arriving On Time
4. Maintaining Personal Hygiene
5. Controllers and Character Knowledge
6. Minimizing Whining

Tournament Hosts should keep the following in mind:

• Tournament sets are usually based on bracket positions, which may be seeded at your discretion. If your tournament is to be run in any other format, you must advertise it accordingly.
• Some kind of stalling prevention is highly recommended. Since a definition of stalling is too potentially ambiguous here, all instances of stalling are determined by you.
• Unnecessary delays in a set should be discouraged. These delays can occur before (players not playing the set), during (players taking an unnecessary amount of time to counterpick) or after (players not reporting results) a set. The tournament Host is recommended to keep tabs on set status and completion.
• No more than the previous match should be replayed in the event of a rule violation. It is recommended that any disputes be brought promptly and quickly to the Tournament Host’s attention. Special exceptions may be made to this rule per your discretion.
• When running a pool, the game count of each set should be recorded (whether the set was 2-0 or 2-1). Ranking in a pool is determined by the number of sets won. There are several methods of determining a tie-break, but each has advantages and disadvantages. It is the TO's responsibility to determine which method they will be using, advertise which method they will be using in the tournament thread, and to consistently use that method across all pools during the tournament.
• The semi-final and championship sets should be, at minimum, Best of 5.
• Wireless controllers should be discouraged or banned due to interference, unreliability, and time hindrance.
• The Tournament Host reserves the right to, at any time, make anyone leave the premises of the tournament.
• For all Melee Tournaments, Metaknight is banned.

***Term Definitions***

• Double Blind: Either player may request that a double blind selection occur. In this situation, a 3rd party should be told, in secret, each of player’s choices for the first round. Both players are to then select their first round character, with the 3rd party validating that the character selected is the same as their word.
• Contest Port Priority: If an agreement cannot be made as to who gets what port, the players may enact a best of 1 game of Rock Paper Scissors. Winner gets their port selection, loser selects any other port.
• Neutral Start: Either player may enact this rule. Once enacted, both players may only use one of the two “Neutral Starting Positions”. A best of one game of Rock Paper Scissors may be used to determine who gets the higher port. If one player elects to Contest Port Priority and the other elects to Neutral Start, Neutral Start takes priority.
  Singles:
  
  Spoiler

  Stage|Port 1|Port 2|Port 3|Port 4
  FD|*|*
  FoD|*|*
  YS|*|*
  DL||*||*
  BF|||*|*
  PS|||*|*
  
  
  Doubles:
  
  Spoiler

  Stage|Port 1|Port 2|Port 3|Port 4
  FD|Team A|Team B|Team A|Team B
  PS|Team A|Team B|Team B|Team A
  BF|Team A|Team B|Team B|Team A
  YS|Team A|Team B|Team B|Team A
  DL|Team A|Team B|Team B|Team A
  

  For the counterpick stages not listed here: Take the 20 seconds to figure it out. This will get updated later.
  
  
  
• Standard DSR: A player/team may not counterpick to a stage they have won on.
• DSR Modified: A player/team may not counterpick to the stage they last won on.
• Gentleman’s Clause: Any stage may be played on if both players agree to it. This rule takes priority over DSR.
• Forced Character Selection: The losing player once had the option to select Random Stage as their counterpick and remove the option to change characters from the winner of the previous round. This is no longer legal. If a player wishes to select Random Stage as their counterpick, the winner of the previous round may choose to change their character.
• Stage Striking: Players eliminate stages from the Starter/Neutral list until there is one stage remaining.
  Players strike stages in this order:
  
  Spoiler

  Strike|Player 1|Player 2
  Strike 1|*|
  Strike 2||*
  Strike 3||*
  Strike 4|*
  
  
  

ArcNatural Edit: If required here is a link to the Old MBR Ruleset

The big revision i want to bring up is this:

Winning player of the preceding match bans a stage/stages (if applicable).

I believe with our current stagelist being as small as it is(only one real counterpick and it's mostly just so we can have an odd number of stages for striking) stage bans should be removed entirely. The fact that we define all of our stages(bar PS) as neutral means that there is no reason that they should not be played on. We have long since left the days where bans were necessary because of stages like RR or Brinstar that heavily favored one character and now are limited to very specific things(Spacies on FD, falcon's complaining about FoD) Because of this bans no longer help to keep specific stage counterpicks from being overpowered and instead are simply used so players never have to leave their comfort zone. This is competitively backwards in my opinion as players should be encouraged(read: Forced) to have experience on all stages and match-ups and learn to cover their characters weaknesses rather than relying on a crutch like a stage ban. If anyone has been reading the MD TheCrimsonBlur has made some great arguments against stage bans, to the point where I truly wish we could add him to the MBR, but unfortunately MLG Sucks.

If we do move to a No Ban ruleset I also feel that Standard DSR should be the only option for tournaments. This means that while you will be forced to play on your worst stage at least once in a set, it will never be more than once, and will again encourage players to have more experience with all legal stages.

The other big change to look at would be an addition to the ruleset as follows:

All players may, at any time during the tournament, forfeit from the tournament. Upon forfeit the player will be completely removed from the tournament and will also forfeit any winnings currently owed. Any prizes a forfeiting player may have earned will thus be split among the players below them.

I actually went back and forth on the loss of winnings thing. On the one hand I feel like a player should at any point be allowed to quit the tournament should they so feel. However allowing a player to forfeit into losers bracket feels far too much like bracket manipulation, especially if it happens late into the bracket. To this end I wanted to make forfeiting legal, but also discouraged. To this end it felt like the loss of monetary gain was necessary. It also somewhat discourages splitting as a player cannot simply quit out of a match and then still get paid out for it.

There's also one other thing I would like to address, and it's honestly something I have contemplated since RoM 1

Any player found to be intentionally losing a set will be considered guilty of bracket manipulation and will forfeit the tournament and current winnings.

Despite how it seems this isnt directed at any canadian players. At RoM 1 M2K basically threw his match against Cort so that he could play Shiz in loser. However by the very definition this is bracket manipulation. I've seen it in other tournaments as well, but this one stands out the most as it was not only intentional bracket manipulation but also completely encouraged by the community simply because rather than resulting in players winning money when they shouldnt it resulted in a set that was actually pretty terrible but people still think it's amazing to see Shiz play stupid and lose(idk, i wasnt that hype for it)

But one could argue that it did affect payouts. M2K argued that he lost to Cort because he wanted to play shiz but didnt think Shiz could be Cort, but we'll never properly know because M2K made it so that match wouldnt happen. He did not lose into losers bracket, he placed himself there. This needs to be discouraged. Players should be where they are in a tournament because of their own skill, not for anything else.

I also feel that a combination of heavy forfeiting penalization and this rule would help to encourage players to at least play out their sets.







While these are the things I feel need to be most addressed there are other things I'd at least like to take a look into. Not necessarily full rules but recommendations. Im just going to kind of throw these out:

-For any tournament with more than "X" number of entrants, Best of 5 sets for all bracket matches are recommended(Where X is whatever arbitrary number we feel makes a large tournament. I was personally thinking 100-120 entrants)

-For any tournament with more than "X" number of entrants, a Round Robin pool for top 8 to determine Top 2 is recommended(I honestly feel the Kishes had it right with this. This more reasonably puts the two best players into Grand Finals, allows for more sets to be played by the top players and means that Regional Seeding is a non-issue for the end of brackets. Again the "X" number of entrants is arbitrary and i only feel like it should be recommended for larger tournaments simply because they usually have longer schedules that can accommodate the extra sets)

-For any grand finals out of a top 8 Round Robin, the winner of the tournament will be decided by Best of 3 Sets where Sets are Best of 5.(Im going to be honest, I never understood why we do grand finals the way we do. Why do we give the person in winners such a large advantage? This is a serious question, if someone could explain it to me that would be great. But this and that are two different things. This goes back to the top 8 pool wherein the pool helps put the two best players into grand finals, Bo3 sets helps more clearly prove who is the better of the two players.)

-Button checks are allowed before any set for up to 1 minute, at which point the button check will be forcibly ended and the set started.(Just because people keep bringing it up)

Again these are more just things i feel we should discuss and possibly encourage rather than straight add to the ruleset. If any of this seems extremely stupid feel free to point it out and correct me. Im really really tired so I may have made some poor arguments.

 

[Deleted member]

i like that you're moving idea into action, but i think you're a step ahead of where we need to be. we really need to discuss the community and how it's growing to make a suitable rule set for it. specifically, we need to decide how much we can ask our players to do what after they've hit a certain point in the bracket. we need to determine the role of the stream, how to enforce splitting, and many other things. i'd like to come back to this in maybe 2-3 days after we have more posts in the other thread, but then we can do this.

 

[Lovage]

don't give a **** about "the role of the stream" or about splitting

keep stagelist the same, no bans bo5, mdsr or regular dsr works just pick one

 

[Cactuar]

The stagebans and DSR arguments are exactly the same as what I've already used for BO5 sets. I prefer keeping the stage ban in BO3, as lower level players should not be expected to be comfortable with all the stages the way a high level player should. We want to encourage growth and recurring attendance. Exposing low level players to M2K on FD does not do that.

When an individual forfeits, they may only forfeit out of the entire tournament. They may not forfeit from winners and still play in losers. That is a reasonable rule.

All of those recommended practices for tournaments based on size will need to be discussed directly with TOs.

 

[Pink Reaper]

If a low level player has to play m2k they're going to be absolutely ruined anyways. A 4 stock on BF isnt any different than a 4 stock on FD.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

except you didn't get chaingrabbed, and everyone knows chaingrabbing is cheap/gay/lame/nooby

 

[KirbyKaze]

Being CGed is boring more than anything else

 

[Pink Reaper]

Sheik is gay.

On a more(but not much more) serious note, im with Oscar. The stream can go **** itself, they have literally 0 impact on a tournament.

 

[Deleted member]

Sheik is gay.

On a more(but not much more) serious note, im with Oscar. The stream can go **** itself, they have literally 0 impact on a tournament.

kudos and +1, but that doesn't mean we're all on the same page about it. sadly.

 

[DoH]

back in my day we had to wait like 4 weeks for vids to trickle out on the hub. kids these days are ****ing spoiled

/getoffmylawn

 

[Teczer0]

Sheik is gay.

On a more(but not much more) serious note, im with Oscar. The stream can go **** itself, they have literally 0 impact on a tournament.

I have to disagree.

There are plenty of players that strive to be a part of the stream and hope that it can help them get their name out there its also just an exciting experience for many.

To some players especially ones who have built their reputation sure doesn't matter but for others its a good opportunity.

Also streams for us are like a giant advertising ad that tries to interest players to come play our game. With proper commentary and match scheduling I think we could really make an impact. I think it would be a shame to ignore one of the best possible chances to expand the community because it doesn't add much to some of the player's experience.


On a separate note, I was talking to Alukard at RoM about how melee tournaments are run in general.

Why do large scale regional/national tournaments run RR pools? So many of these tournaments have went way past the scheduled time simply because RR pools takes freaking forever and a day.

I'd really be interested in seeing how adopting the FGC's double elimination pools would work out for us. It would help solve a lot of time constraints and we could actually probably run an effective amateur bracket with the leftover time.


For those that aren't familiar with the double elimination pool its essentially creating a 16 man pool and doing a mini-double elimination tournament with that said pool.

The player that wins in WFs makes it out into winners side of the bracket and the winner of LFs makes it into the losers side of bracket.

I'm sure variations can be done to include like top 4 or have less entrants per pool if needed.

 

[Pink Reaper]

RR pools is so players get more matches in. Because of the way the community is and our lack of online play, for a lot of people Tournaments are the only way to actually play against other players and having Pools gives them the chance to get significantly more out of a tournament than going 2 and out. Plenty of tournaments have ran pools and bracket and finished on time. Honestly if you want to do something about tournaments running too late we should start reminding TOs to start their damn tournaments on time. I've been to way too many tournaments where they advertised Doubles starting at like 10am and then dont start until 1pm. It's not the format it's the TOs

And getting on stream is a terrible way to earn yourself rep. I've seen a lot of players on stream or in vids, but unless you actually place then it doesnt really matter. And what I meant with that post was that the people who watch stream have no right to dictate anything that happens at a tournament. You dont like what you see? Go **** yourself. You're not at the tournament, you have no right to try and influence it in any way, shape or form. Having a stream is fine.

 

[Strong Badam]

Bracket pools don't save much time compared to RR pools, their main advantage is requiring fewer setups to run. Assuming you have # of players/2 setups per pool, bracket pools are even sometimes longer because matches need to be waited for.

 

[Zankoku]

RR pools have their own inefficiencies, mostly caused by stuff like players playing all their matches in a row, limiting possible pairings; or players waiting until everyone else is done, thus bottlenecking the number of possible simultaneous matches to one.

 

[Strong Badam]

Most of those issues are user error rather than an issue with the system itself.

 

[Teczer0]

Speaking purely numerically RR of 8 players requires what 28 games.

Double elim takes 14? I'm trying to do this in my head but I'm sure a little off.

Unless you have 4 tvs per pool RR can't be played out maximally anyway. Also thats optimally, like waits are bound to happen.

DE does force some waits to occur but still cutting the number of necessary games by half is pretty large and will only improve as number of players increase.

The upside to RR pools is that it will ideally without manipulations give the most accurate representation of seeding of that pool.

I personally think an amateur bracket would be more interesting and fun for the lower level players since monetary incentive could be given for them. Or you can make a giant single elim amateur tourney for like a spot in the real bracket.

 

[Strong Badam]

with 8 players in RR, you can have 4 matches going each round. for double elim bracket, you're only able to do 4 matches for 2 rounds, after which you have like 2 or 3 matches going on for multiple rounds in a row. so "halving the amount of matches" isn't as attractive as it sounds.

anyway, I think what we're discussing is a little.... unproductive? the MBR doesn't really suggest which methods of elimination TOs use, just the rulesets by which players play.

 

[Deleted member]

i've always wanted to enter a tournament with 8 man pools for the entire tournament, up until the top 8 is just a RR.

not practical at all.

=/

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

FC pools had matches pre-ordered to solve this. It worked very well, too.

 

[Zankoku]

i've always wanted to enter a tournament with 8 man pools for the entire tournament, up until the top 8 is just a RR.

not practical at all.

=/

It can be practical given two things:

1. You have enough TVs to run as many simultaneous matches as possible (this part gets increasingly difficult as number of entrants approaches infinity)
2. You schedule the order in which matches happen so that no bottleneck involving "free" TVs occurs (takes attentive TOs and players at least somewhat respecting the TOs' wishes)

 

[KirbyKaze]

RR pools have their own inefficiencies, mostly caused by stuff like players playing all their matches in a row, limiting possible pairings; or players waiting until everyone else is done, thus bottlenecking the number of possible simultaneous matches to one.

The Big House 2 managed this by having pool captains and preset pairings

 

[Marc]

Running pools efficiently is doable, but most big events fail horribly at this and setbacks like a lack of setups have significant consequences if there are that many matches to process. At the same time you can't immediately go to a DE bracket with so many people, so I'm not really against bracket pools as a faster alternative. I believe it was done at a large Brawl tournament successfully and Brawl events that size running within time constraints usually requires some kind of miracle. Bracket experiences are more worthwhile than pools anyway, though I would definitely hope for there to be an amateur bracket as well, that way everyone is guaranteed at least 4 sets.

And what I meant with that post was that the people who watch stream have no right to dictate anything that happens at a tournament. You dont like what you see? Go **** yourself. You're not at the tournament, you have no right to try and influence it in any way, shape or form. Having a stream is fine.

I don't quite understand what stream viewers are supposedly dictating right now. If they perceive something as bad sportsmanship they have every right to complain, have you ever seen a football crowd? Streams are also where part of the money comes from for big events and it's our primary way to advertise the game. So yeah, while viewers should not affect rulings at the actual tournament, it's in our best interest to consider what we're putting up for them to see. I also think it's probably best not to have too much interaction with the chat while the event is ongoing except to answer questions or whatever, that's where some of the sour stuff comes from and it's too crazy to really pay attention to. But yeah, run the stream in a way that they're getting a good show.

 

[Pink Reaper]

Im not talking about complaining.

GIMR and others in the ROM5 thread have openly stated that players have to play a certain way when on stream specifically because they are on stream. Literally they want the stream to dictate how a player should play because "You have to put on a good show for the stream." But no, our players have to do literally nothing for the stream. The stream is entirely disconnected from our tournaments, nothing about them should dictate our players decisions or actions.

 

[Marc]

You shouldn't play differently as in undermine your chances of winning, but it's probably best to either play on a non-stream setup or not at all if you're gonna half-*** matches deliberately and don't want to win anymore. I guess there's no law that says you have to and there shouldn't be one, but it saves a lot of drama and disappointments.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Thats not what he means. People on stream, and in the crowd, don't want to see players try their hardest. They want to see a combo video. They want to see constant action and zero to death combos. But anyone who has played this game seriously knows that the person who attacks first tends to lose and being impatient will make you lose. The crowd doesn't want to see YL vs Puff time outs, and they are very vocal about it. They don't want to see a fox laser camp a peach on dreamland. I think he means that people on stream should have no influence over how the players play.

 

[Marc]

Well, then I agree per my first sentence, but that's pretty far removed from ruleset discussion.

 

[Deleted member]

Well, then I agree per my first sentence, but that's pretty far removed from ruleset discussion.

it should be removed from the rule discussion, but it isn't when the streamers force people to "play for real" or to use specific characters.

****

 

[Pink Reaper]

So how about those ruleset revision?

 

[KirbyKaze]

Can we get a rule that states a competing player can request for an agreed upon amount of space between themselves and the crowd?

I mean, Unknown did the worst thing he could have possibly done but that said this sort of thing (people screaming into people's eardrums during sets like right next to the player - I'm looking at you, New York) has been a problem numerous times and while we're talking about ruleset revisions we might as well take a look at some of the basic etiquette of player vs spectator since a lot of the community doesn't abide by them unless they're in print.

 

[HyugaRicdeau]

We shouldn't need a rule that says players get to request TOs do their common sense jobs, but hey, I guess we're learning more and more about what we do actually need.

 

[Deleted member]

We shouldn't need a rule that says players get to request TOs do their common sense jobs, but hey, I guess we're learning more and more about what we do actually need.

i remember when chu paid forward to scream in m2k's ears point blank for all of GF at pound 2, and plank said he hated both m2k and chu and that they deserved each other.

now all people do is use pound 2 to legitimize wobbling because wobbling was banned at pound 2 but an ICs player won it, disregarding the bogus GF and that chu was the best player in the room anyway. clearly the result is a statement about wobbling and not in any way a convenient means to push one's agenda on the issue of its ban.

we have a lot of shameless stupidity to filter though before anything can be taken as "factual".

 

[Pink Reaper]

We shouldn't need a rule that says players get to request TOs do their common sense jobs, but hey, I guess we're learning more and more about what we do actually need.

Real talk, it's not like anyone was there at genesis to stop Tope from screaming at Romeo at Genesis.

This is something that has actually become pretty common at tournaments, especially since a lot of regionals dont have large venues to keep the crowed back from the main stage. Though it's definitely more of an East Coast thing than anything else.

 

[HyugaRicdeau]

Real talk, it's not like anyone was there at genesis to stop Tope from screaming at Romeo at Genesis.

This is something that has actually become pretty common at tournaments, especially since a lot of regionals dont have large venues to keep the crowed back from the main stage. Though it's definitely more of an East Coast thing than anything else.

I don't know that the situations are that comparable, but according to Romeo's comments, it doesn't seem like it was a big deal to him. I understand that a TO can't be everywhere at once, so it's partly on the player to inform someone of the problem. From what I understand (I could be wrong), the TO knew about what Inui was doing, made a token effort to stop it, and yet it continued unabated. If that weren't the case I would have made a less snarky comment.

 

[Pink Reaper]

Im not holding the Tope thing against you or anyone at genesis, especially since i was literally watching it live and i could see Romeo didnt really care, but it's more of the point that you cant really be everywhere to stop it. Moreso there's plenty of people who would back the people screaming with statements like "crowed interaction is part of the game"

To draw a parallel i guess, there were a lot of people who called out Kevin for popping off at the crowed after winning KoC, as if it's entirely the point of the crowed to actively make someone's tournament experience less enjoyable and then it's wrong for them to react negatively to it.

That said, more and more RoM5 is showing me that things we used to just assume were TO basics are things that a lot of TOs dont seem to understand and maybe we should address them

 

[Deleted member]

That said, more and more RoM5 is showing me that things we used to just assume were TO basics are things that a lot of TOs dont seem to understand and maybe we should address them

honestly i think these things were always an issue, people just weren't as *****y about them.

of course, there's a lot of legitimacy to be discussed for all that *****ing, i'm not writing it off.

but yeah that's my guess.

 

[Nintendude]

I think DSR should simply be "you can't counterpick to a stage you won on that you previously picked." Otherwise there can be weird situations having to do with the order that you won your games in, particularly if you win on your opponent's counterpick.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Theres no objective way to choose between the variations on DSR. Its up to the TO to make the decision. I see nothing wrong with that version, but it isn't really any better or worse than other versions

 

[HyugaRicdeau]

Nothing in our rulesets is truly objective, they're based on what kind of principles we agree upon in making it competitive. Rules can be better or worse depending on how well they follow those principles.

The question of what version of DSR you want depends on one question, do you think the order in which stages were counterpicked should matter? I can't see any reason why they should, so to my mind, there's no reason to ever use Standard DSR.

 

[Nintendude]

Wouldn't that be a reason to use standard DSR? Consider the m2k vs. unknown ROM 5 set. It went as follows:

Game 1 - YS - Unknown wins
Game 2 - m2k counterpicks FD and wins
Game 3 - unknown counterpicks FoD and m2k wins anyway
Game 4 - unknown goes back to FoD and wins

Now, as you recall the controversy was over which DSR was in effect, but for the sake of argument let's just say that they used the status quo (DSRM) and m2k is allowed to go FD for game 5. That doesn't make any sense to me. m2k is allowed to pick FD again because unknown lost on his own counterpick? That's like double jeopardy. If it didn't take unknown 2 tries to beat m2k on FoD, m2k would have never had an option to pick FD again.

Furthermore, why should a player not be allowed to counterpick the same stage as game 1 if he won there? The point of stage striking is to find a mutually agreeable stage.

 

[Cactuar]

Because it might end up being lopsided in one player's favor due to the player who lost not knowing that the stage struck to would be so disadvantageous for him.