Melee Counterpick Stages Debate

[Mogwai]

edit: **** this thread is too busy



FD improves ICs/dr. mario/others' chances against 90% of the cast

and you can "eliminate" stage edge by playing on exclusively set stages without any room for choice, because to this point, advantages afforded by the stage are all relative, and if there's only one stage, there's nothing for it to be unfair against

spam i'm sure you have me ignored but the point everyone is making is that you THINK you are "massacre"-ing everyone's points when you're just bringing up anecdotal and irrelevant evidence and strawman-ing all over the place, and when it's hard for others to see the relevance of your post, it's even harder to "respond" to it while staying on topic

p.s. the fact he has me blocked because i disagreed with him is the epitome of his mindset

quoting for spam.

 

[g-regulate]

NJ sucks at melee

 

[Pakman]

NJ sucks

Come on G-Reg I know you are better than that. Fixed.

 

[JFox]

chibo- to clarify, its one ban from neutral and one ban from CPs.

its just like when u strike a neutral and ban a CP, except here ur just banning it for that round only. 2 general bans would mean people could just get rid of both CPs that their character is bad on, which is not what i intended. This is meant to be a compromise ruleset, so to allow someone to ban too many banned stages would lessen the ability of the opponent to properly counterpick.

IMO the 5 non-neutral stages are almost as perfect as u can get. Fox has two good cps, floaties have 2 cps. chaingrabbers have fd. marth is so good on neutrals that i dont even feel bad for him not getting more CP stages. Some characters do very poorly on Kongo jungle but than they usually do well on brinstar so thats fine. Corneria is kinda lame, but its not really any worse than brinstar is to spaceys.

 

[EmuKiller]

G-reg sucks at melee.

 

[teh_spamerer]

spam i'm sure you have me ignored but the point everyone is making is that you THINK you are "massacre"-ing everyone's points when you're just bringing up anecdotal and irrelevant evidence and strawman-ing all over the place, and when it's hard for others to see the relevance of your post, it's even harder to "respond" to it while staying on topic

Irrelevant evidence?

These are the main points for banning counterpick stages

1) Counterpick stages give an unfair advantage to characters

So what is irrelevant about bringing up things that ACTUALLY happened on counterpick stages when I was at the receiving end of the supposed disadvantage instead of just saying "LOLOL COUNTERPICK STAGES ARE FREE WIN IN THEORY SMASH!"

What is irrelevant about talking about specific counterpick stages and stating strategies that can be used against the characters that gain advantages on that specific stage?

2) Players who use characters who have good counterpick stages have an unfair advantage over characters that don't have an unfair advantage

What is irrelevant about saying that the only characters that don't have gay counterpick stages are bad and saying that the reason they're losing is NOT because they're being counterpicked to gay stages but rather that the characters themselves are bad?

3) Counterpick stages take away from the spirit and fun of the game

I never addressed this since others did a good job of doing so.

I'll be honest though, I think this is a lot more fun than this.

p.s. the fact he has me blocked because i disagreed with him is the epitome of his mindset

pocky, I have you ignored not because you disagree with me. If I ignored people for that, I would only be able to see mods' posts. I have you ignored because you went into a lot of threads and trolled. You would post your side of an argument and then when someone intelligent would respond to it you wouldn't argue against them. You'd just ignore it and only respond to what weak points other people would bring up.

That's the problem Spam. You argue, not debate.

2 : to contend or disagree in words

2 a : to contend in word

 

[pockyD]

Irrelevant evidence?

These are the main points for banning counterpick stages

1) Counterpick stages give an unfair advantage to characters

So what is irrelevant about bringing up things that ACTUALLY happened on counterpick stages when I was at the receiving end of the supposed disadvantage instead of just saying "LOLOL COUNTERPICK STAGES ARE FREE WIN IN THEORY SMASH!"

What is irrelevant about talking about specific counterpick stages and stating strategies that can be used against the characters that gain advantages on that specific stage?

...because your experience in 3 matchups on 3 stages doesn't account for the other 600+ matchups or 20 stages

arguing whether SPECIFIC stages grant lopsided advantage is a different discussion altogether. If he had snuck in hyrule in his list of counter-pick stages, then would the fact that it's blatantly unfair (I'm sure even you can agree with that) be disproven simply because you don't find brinstar to be unfair?

you can't lump the stages in a group when determining whether counter-strategies exist // whether they are unfair... and that's not even the point of the argument (as usual, you miss the point)

the argument that scar presents, misguided or not, is that our set of counter-pick stages are less fair than our set of "neutral" stages relative to an idealized truly neutral stage, which would happen to be some amalgamation of our that existing "neutral" stage set (given that we assume "neutrals" are neutral, this is indisputable simply by definition). In that context, he contends that the advantage afforded is too much for competitive play. It doesn't matter whether it is surmountable or not, simply that it exceeds what he deems acceptable.

Now, I don't agree with that POV either (simply because "acceptable" would be over-the-top vague and subjective), but you can't use your view of acceptable (which is something like whether a matchup is surmountable) as a baseline when attempting to disprove his view of acceptable (which is strictly that the stage is inferior balance-wise to our existing neutral set)

tl;dr - your specific examples don't matter because you're missing the underlying concept. they are anecdotal and tangentially related, at best

2) Players who use characters who have good counterpick stages have an unfair advantage over characters that don't have an unfair advantage

What is irrelevant about saying that the only characters that don't have gay counterpick stages are bad and saying that the reason they're losing is NOT because they're being counterpicked to gay stages but rather that the characters themselves are bad?

I agree with some of your points, you just do a poor job of explaining them which tends to derail the conversation and, when combined with your stubbornness, turns people off from bothering to read your thoughts. This is an example of something I agree with, but when you explain this by claiming peach is unplayable, people will gloss over it

3) Counterpick stages take away from the spirit and fun of the game

I never addressed this since others did a good job of doing so.

I'll be honest though, I think this is a lot more fun than this.

ok

pocky, I have you ignored not because you disagree with me. If I ignored people for that, I would only be able to see mods' posts. I have you ignored because you went into a lot of threads and trolled. You would post your side of an argument and then when someone intelligent would respond to it you wouldn't argue against them. You'd just ignore it and only respond to what weak points other people would bring up.

takes one to know one?
i'm rubber you're glue?
i know you are but what am i?

i never intentionally ignore points; if someone makes a good one, i'll acknowledge it and move on; i don't dote on it because a good point needs no elaboration since we'd clearly be in agreement already and thus it doesn't need to be expounded on.

it's not trolling if you're right

...and even when i'm not clearly right (which NEVER happens!), i'll accept the fact that the more intelligent smashers like scar, pakman, mogwai, etc. will all respect my opinion and at least hear me out and have a reasonable back-and-forth, even when we openly disagree.

I do what you perceive as "trolling" because learning how other people see things is incredibly interesting and frankly, the entire point of internet message boards. too bad not everybody sees it the same way

 

[teh_spamerer]

...because your experience in 3 matchups on 3 stages doesn't account for the other 600+ matchups or 20 stages

I stuck to talking about two of the stages that people complain about the most: Brinstar and Mute City. And there are only 5 counterpick stages being debated here: Brinstar, Mute City, Corneria, Poke Floats, Rainbow Cruise, and Kongo Jungle 64. I haven't heard anyone in support of CP stages who thinks Green Greens and Jungle Japes are anything other than extremely ********.

arguing whether SPECIFIC stages grant lopsided advantage is a different discussion altogether. If he had snuck in hyrule in his list of counter-pick stages, then would the fact that it's blatantly unfair (I'm sure even you can agree with that) be disproven simply because you don't find brinstar to be unfair?

Arguing whether SPECIFIC stages grant lopsided advantage is EXTREMELY relevant because SPECIFIC stages are either going to be included or not be included in the ruleset.

you can't lump the stages in a group when determining whether counter-strategies exist // whether they are unfair... and that's not even the point of the argument (as usual, you miss the point)

This is a thread where an argument is taking place about whether or not counterpick stages should be allowed.

the argument that scar presents, misguided or not, is that our set of counter-pick stages are less fair than our set of "neutral" stages relative to an idealized truly neutral stage, which would happen to be some amalgamation of our that existing "neutral" stage set (given that we assume "neutrals" are neutral, this is indisputable simply by definition). In that context, he contends that the advantage afforded is too much for competitive play. It doesn't matter whether it is surmountable or not, simply that it exceeds what he deems acceptable.

Now, I don't agree with that POV either (simply because "acceptable" would be over-the-top vague and subjective), but you can't use your view of acceptable (which is something like whether a matchup is surmountable) as a baseline when attempting to disprove his view of acceptable (which is strictly that the stage is inferior balance-wise to our existing neutral set)

As you said, Scar's argument is bad because it is subjective. A stage's fairness is NOT determined by how "fair" it is compared to the neutrals. That is a terrible way to decide what stages are fair for a number of reasons, not least of which is that if you want to start a stage discussion from scratch of what is allowed and what is not allowed, you don't have ANY neutrals.

I agree with some of your points, you just do a poor job of explaining them which tends to derail the conversation and, when combined with your stubbornness, turns people off from bothering to read your thoughts. This is an example of something I agree with, but when you explain this by claiming peach is unplayable, people will gloss over it

Well I don't want to go into detail on how Peach is unplayable because that is 100% irrelevant to the discussion. The only two good active players who use her in tristate agree she is not a good character by any means and so I see no reason to spend time to further explain that point. I don't particularly care how people perceive what I say because they'll either agree that I'm right now or in two years from now they'll know I'm right, because that's generally what happens.

i never intentionally ignore points; if someone makes a good one, i'll acknowledge it and move on; i don't dote on it because a good point needs no elaboration since we'd clearly be in agreement already and thus it doesn't need to be expounded on.

I don't really want to go searching through your posts to find what you argued about so I'll just pretend this is true for now.

it's not trolling if you're right

...and even when i'm not clearly right (which NEVER happens!), i'll accept the fact that the more intelligent smashers like scar, pakman, mogwai, etc. will all respect my opinion and at least hear me out and have a reasonable back-and-forth, even when we openly disagree.

I do what you perceive as "trolling" because learning how other people see things is incredibly interesting and frankly, the entire point of internet message boards. too bad not everybody sees it the same way

It's not "back-and-forth" with you though. It's smart person saying something, you responding, smart person responding, you ignoring. That's trolling, not debating. Keep up posts like this last one.

 

[pockyD]

I stuck to talking about two of the stages that people complain about the most: Brinstar and Mute City. And there are only 5 counterpick stages being debated here: Brinstar, Mute City, Corneria, Poke Floats, Rainbow Cruise, and Kongo Jungle 64. I haven't heard anyone in support of CP stages who thinks Green Greens and Jungle Japes are anything other than extremely ********.

[/quote]Arguing whether SPECIFIC stages grant lopsided advantage is EXTREMELY relevant because SPECIFIC stages are either going to be included or not be included in the ruleset.[/quote]

This is a thread where an argument is taking place about whether or not counterpick stages should be allowed.

it was fairly clear going in that the "discussion" (and the reason it drew so much attention) revolved around an "All-or-Nothing" viewpoint with respect to the counter-pick stages (with KJ64 excepted for some weird reason that I still don't fully understand). There have been countless threads and posts over time debating whether mute city was broken or whether poke floats made matches last too long. This specific topic wasn't about which stages to ban; it was whether to keep neutrals only.

As you said, Scar's argument is bad because it is subjective. A stage's fairness is NOT determined by how "fair" it is compared to the neutrals. That is a terrible way to decide what stages are fair for a number of reasons, not least of which is that if you want to start a stage discussion from scratch of what is allowed and what is not allowed, you don't have ANY neutrals.

Well you'd have exactly ONE neutral, anyway.

And yes, I agree with this point somewhat, although at the same time, it's clear that 90% of the community disagrees and does truly hail the "neutral" stages as neutral. With that in mind (whether you were overtly aware of it or not), you should make a bigger effort to bridge that gap of what determines whether something is "fair" rather than hand-waving it and assuming you are on the same page from the start and jumping right into your little stories.

Well I don't want to go into detail on how Peach is unplayable because that is 100% irrelevant to the discussion. The only two good active players who use her in tristate agree she is not a good character by any means and so I see no reason to spend time to further explain that point. I don't particularly care how people perceive what I say because they'll either agree that I'm right now or in two years from now they'll know I'm right, because that's generally what happens.

I don't want you to go into detail about it again either, but you definitely posted a big long story about how fox sleepwalks all over peach earlier... and it was as irrelevant then as it would be now. Even if we do assume that fox does fine vs peach on mute city, that doesn't bode well for the 20 other characters that stand no chance at all... and this is just one character and one stage.

I don't really want to go searching through your posts to find what you argued about so I'll just pretend this is true for now.

my posting style is pretty static

It's not "back-and-forth" with you though. It's smart person saying something, you responding, smart person responding, you ignoring. That's trolling, not debating. Keep up posts like this last one.

Setting aside instances where i had to respond to two pages worth of posts and then did respond when my omissions were pointed out to me, please let me know when this has ever happened

I already have a feeling that I know where that would head...

"Wobbling is easy; no other character has a guaranteed 0-death from a grab; I grab M2K all the time; the IC player doesn't even need to look at the screen; it works on everybody"

which is indeed something I responded to

I'm not "addressing" any of those posts because I DON'T DISAGREE with them; I only disagree with the conclusion. It's a powerful tactic, yes. It's easy to do, yes. It can be done on any character, yes. It can be done on any stage, no, but it's not relevant. I don't get how this is so hard for you to understand, but those don't relate to the case I'm making.

I "ignored" it to make a point; that it wasn't relevant in determining whether such a tactic was banworthy (a point that I had made in a previous post, so it's not like I felt it was implied without ever having brought it up - it was in fact the people bringing up these vacuous arguments that had first ignored my original point). When prodded on it again, I clarified.

and yes, I remember the stupidest things

 

[Cactuar]

You guys are... still... arguing about this?

:sigh:

 

[Heart Break Kid]

ahh classic spam/pocky debates...

 

[pockyD]

i went back and read the wobbling thing and it was fun

just killing time, but i do genuinely believe most of the things i say (even if i wouldn't bother to say them if i had something better to do right now)

 

[JFox]

you guys just wasted so much time arguing who is the better debater without really making on topic points that havent already been stated. get back on subject please

Spam, you still have yet to convince me that the current ruleset is MORE fair than Scar's. you bring up all kinds of points, but i feel that this is the core argument scar has on his side.

Here's what you keep arguing "Counterpicks are supposed to be biased towards certain characters" and here's what scar keeps on saying "why should anyone get an advantage after losing a match? Where is the logic behind giving a character a big advantage over their opponent and undoing all of the hard work done in game 1." So he knows what counterpicks are supposed to do, and he is arguing that its a garbage system. Counterpicking a neutral stage may give some small advantages out in certain matchups, but there isnt a perfect stage for all matchups so this is the best we can do.

When it comes right down to it, I think anyone who argues for the current ruleset (CP stages) have 1 of 2 motives. Either A- they believe that CP stages make the game more fun interesting because theres more variation. To them i say you are free to play friendlies on them whenever u want, but having fun comes second to making a tournament fair in the mind of a good tourney director. Or B- in the past these people have taken advantage counterpicks while others have refused to do so (for mixed reasons), giving the them an advantage that they dont wish to lose. Spam I would honestly put u in this second category more than the first. Now sure u can point the finger at many other people who do this all the time, but that doesnt make u right. Theres no doubt in my mind that eggm wants to see CP's out cuz they work against him, but his side actually happens to have a pretty strong argument.



Scar I have a few problems with SSS that u should consider. Mainly that Marth (and any other chaingrabbers) will always get a free CP onto FD vs spaceys. Also, I find it hard to believe that you really feel DK64 is a neutral, and it seems like u just threw it in because u need an odd number of stages. Maybe your character doing well here influences this decision a bit too much, because I know marth mains certainly dont find DK64 as neutral as stadium. I would def rethink having FD and DK64 as neutral if you really are serious about making this a fair system.

 

[EmuKiller]

Marth sucks.

 

[CanISmash]

reasons for rewarding a player for losing.
1. neutrals aren't neutrals.
2. this system is in place for like... every fighter.
3. more matches more fun.
4. if you lose you get the same option.

 

[Mogwai]

Scar I have a few problems with SSS that u should consider. Mainly that Marth (and any other chaingrabbers) will always get a free CP onto FD vs spaceys. Also, I find it hard to believe that you really feel DK64 is a neutral, and it seems like u just threw it in because u need an odd number of stages. Maybe your character doing well here influences this decision a bit too much, because I know marth mains certainly dont find DK64 as neutral as stadium. I would def rethink having FD and DK64 as neutral if you really are serious about making this a fair system.

SSS has 1 ban for the CP games, which means that you can deny Marf FD in Fox vs. Marf. PS is less tourney worthy than FD due to randomness on top of the whole Fox-is-busted-as-**** thing. And besides, getting 1 ban does really fix this up quite a bit. Cutting it to 5 takes away the possibility for a ban (since that would ruin DSR in Bo5 matches) which I don't like as it means that one of FD, PS, or KJ64 will be always be available which will effectively tip the balance of some matchups.

 

[JFox]

thanks mogwai, i overlooked the one stage ban.

 

[GOTM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enough_Is_Enough

Listen to Chumbawumba guys.

 

[Eggm]

Falco/fox are both very good on FD vs marth as well. I don't see them as auto win for marth or even a huge advantage. Maybe going from 50/50 to 55/45 in favor of marth. And that's only if the marth is really comfortable there and the spacie isn't. I feel that both FD and DK 64 are more neutral than PS. Also, I won't argue that I don't want CP's gone cause it benefits me, cause that is def part of it. But its certainly not 90% of why I want it that way, maybe more like 50%. The other 50% of me wants it gone cause its a stupid system in general. There's no reason people who don't main peach should have to always 100% of the time have to win r1 and r3 to win a set. And there's no reason anyone who loses r1 to a fox should have to chase a fox around on pokefloats for 8 minutes to win a set. That's just not competitive or fun for anyone but a few select 1% of the community who are gay. I also hate watching high stakes crew battles or even for fun crew battles having a CP stage and a fox or peach every other match. Boring as hell. It would be much more fun to see a good DK main going FD or something and doing some fun crazy 0-deaths, but that would never happen cause then some one would throw out a medicore peach on mute and the DK would get practically 4 stocked. I would also be dissapointed at any major tournament if I'm already knocked out and am watching the top like 8 people go at it in brackets and seeing mad bombs exploding on green greens or camping on corneria or constant r3 wins of lava to rests or lava to knees or a fox running around shooting lasers on cruise vs jiggs. Or any number of gay things when I could be watching really good players duke it out using real skill on much more fair stages. Luckily this doesn't happen much since the top 8 at big tournies don't pick CP stages much at all, but who knows what the future might hold?

 

[JFox]

tim ur debate skills are pathetic

<3

 

[teh_spamerer]

it was fairly clear going in that the "discussion" (and the reason it drew so much attention) revolved around an "All-or-Nothing" viewpoint with respect to the counter-pick stages (with KJ64 excepted for some weird reason that I still don't fully understand). There have been countless threads and posts over time debating whether mute city was broken or whether poke floats made matches last too long. This specific topic wasn't about which stages to ban; it was whether to keep neutrals only.

It might have been about whether to keep neutrals only but I was saying that specific counterpick stages didn't grant completely unwinnable advantages to the person who picked them, thus making them fair enough to not be banned.

Well you'd have exactly ONE neutral, anyway.

No, you'd HAVE to have at least one neutral but if you start from scratch you have ZERO neutrals.

And yes, I agree with this point somewhat, although at the same time, it's clear that 90% of the community disagrees and does truly hail the "neutral" stages as neutral. With that in mind (whether you were overtly aware of it or not), you should make a bigger effort to bridge that gap of what determines whether something is "fair" rather than hand-waving it and assuming you are on the same page from the start and jumping right into your little stories.

A stage's fairness should be determined by looking at it. Do random events that can decide matches happen? Is there a single unbeatable strategy that someone who is bad at the game can use to beat anyone who isn't using that? If the answer to both of these questions is no, then it shouldn't be banned. But even IF anyone else has different criteria for what makes a stage fair, that criteria should be applied to ALL stages. It shouldn't be arbitrary criteria that make stages neutral because they went out of their way for that and then say anything that isn't on those stages is unfair and should be banned.

I don't want you to go into detail about it again either, but you definitely posted a big long story about how fox sleepwalks all over peach earlier... and it was as irrelevant then as it would be now. Even if we do assume that fox does fine vs peach on mute city, that doesn't bode well for the 20 other characters that stand no chance at all... and this is just one character and one stage.

All I gave were strategies that Fox could use on that stage. I didn't really go into detail about how he sleepwalks all over Peach. You say it doesn't bode well for the 20 other characters that stand no chance at all. Ganon and Falcon shouldn't make it back to the stage anyways unless they go for platforms so the stage doesn't hurt them *that* much. Falco can use a lot of the strategies Fox can like stalling with shine and upbing into the road. Sheik and Marth **** Peach so hard on neutrals they probably still have a chance to beat her. Jigglypuff is self explanatory. Most of the characters that stand no chance to her don't stand a chance against her on neutrals either.

I "ignored" it to make a point; that it wasn't relevant in determining whether such a tactic was banworthy (a point that I had made in a previous post, so it's not like I felt it was implied without ever having brought it up - it was in fact the people bringing up these vacuous arguments that had first ignored my original point). When prodded on it again, I clarified.

Your point was that it didn't affect results, right? That's a terrible point because almost no one uses Ice Climbers.

Besides, there are OTHER things that affect whether or not something should be banned besides it affecting results. In this case, time is also an issue as Mow brought up. It could be interpreted that you need 300% at least on every stock, maybe more, to legitimately kill someone, which takes a lot of time off the timer and as he also brought up, tournaments often end up going later then they are supposed to.

just killing time, but i do genuinely believe most of the things i say (even if i wouldn't bother to say them if i had something better to do right now)

Same.

Here's what you keep arguing "Counterpicks are supposed to be biased towards certain characters" and here's what scar keeps on saying "why should anyone get an advantage after losing a match? Where is the logic behind giving a character a big advantage over their opponent and undoing all of the hard work done in game 1." So he knows what counterpicks are supposed to do, and he is arguing that its a garbage system. Counterpicking a neutral stage may give some small advantages out in certain matchups, but there isnt a perfect stage for all matchups so this is the best we can do.

What I've been saying is that the advantage you get for counterpicking is a fair advantage and NOT some gargantuan advantage the way Scar is saying it is. Dreamland 64 is hard for slow characters to deal with fast characters because it's big and has high platforms that you can run away to. This doesn't make the stage banworthy, that's just the way the game is. You can make similar arguments for all other neutrals. Since it is IMPOSSIBLE to take away the effect on a match that a stage has, every character should be allowed to pick a stage where they can get the same advantage some other character has them on some other stage unless the stage in question is completely 100% broken.

When it comes right down to it, I think anyone who argues for the current ruleset (CP stages) have 1 of 2 motives. Either A- they believe that CP stages make the game more fun interesting because theres more variation. To them i say you are free to play friendlies on them whenever u want, but having fun comes second to making a tournament fair in the mind of a good tourney director. Or B- in the past these people have taken advantage counterpicks while others have refused to do so (for mixed reasons), giving the them an advantage that they dont wish to lose. Spam I would honestly put u in this second category more than the first. Now sure u can point the finger at many other people who do this all the time, but that doesnt make u right. Theres no doubt in my mind that eggm wants to see CP's out cuz they work against him, but his side actually happens to have a pretty strong argument.

Regardless of what you believe, that doesn't make my argument that counterpicks make the game fairer incorrect.

As for me personally, I only really counterpick Poke Floats and Brinstar. I don't actually like Brinstar that much but I know how to use it and I know a lot of people are terrible there because they can't be bothered to learn anything other than the neutrals because they are under the delusion that they stand no chance to win there so why learn it. Most people ban Poke Floats on me anyways. I like Corneria in teams too but I usually team with characters that are bad there but I don't like it in singles. You gave that sarcastic argument that Marth can camp under the wing and said how that doesn't change that Fox has a huge advantage there but if someone is winning, especially by a stock, winning becomes extremely difficult if they camp under the wing. I don't really like risking something like that happening and having my counterpick turn completely against me.

btw, nice avatar Cactuar.

 

[xyt]

Falco/fox are both very good on FD vs marth as well. I don't see them as auto win for marth or even a huge advantage. Maybe going from 50/50 to 55/45 in favor of marth. And that's only if the marth is really comfortable there and the spacie isn't. I feel that both FD and DK 64 are more neutral than PS. Also, I won't argue that I don't want CP's gone cause it benefits me, cause that is def part of it. But its certainly not 90% of why I want it that way, maybe more like 50%. The other 50% of me wants it gone cause its a stupid system in general. There's no reason people who don't main peach should have to always 100% of the time have to win r1 and r3 to win a set. And there's no reason anyone who loses r1 to a fox should have to chase a fox around on pokefloats for 8 minutes to win a set. That's just not competitive or fun for anyone but a few select 1% of the community who are gay. I also hate watching high stakes crew battles or even for fun crew battles having a CP stage and a fox or peach every other match. Boring as hell. It would be much more fun to see a good DK main going FD or something and doing some fun crazy 0-deaths, but that would never happen cause then some one would throw out a medicore peach on mute and the DK would get practically 4 stocked. I would also be dissapointed at any major tournament if I'm already knocked out and am watching the top like 8 people go at it in brackets and seeing mad bombs exploding on green greens or camping on corneria or constant r3 wins of lava to rests or lava to knees or a fox running around shooting lasers on cruise vs jiggs. Or any number of gay things when I could be watching really good players duke it out using real skill on much more fair stages. Luckily this doesn't happen much since the top 8 at big tournies don't pick CP stages much at all, but who knows what the future might hold?

this is just a small thing that i've noticed over this debate.. and that is that you don't seem to understand that not everyone shares your definition of fun = / just a thought..

 

[JFox]

spam, no stage in the game is "completely 100% unwinnable." Do you think onett is a fair CP stage? there's nothing unwinnable about that stage, it just gives fox a huge advantage (and no, a wall infinite doesnt make a stage 100% unwinnable.). Stages arent banned because they are unwinnable, they are banned because they give larger than usual advantages to certain characters. this is the same logic that we are using here to say what stages are ban-worthy. any stage that gives one character a big advantage should be banned because its not conducive to fair play. why should anyone have to fight an uphill battle when it can be avoided?

You have yet to prove HOW counterpicks make for a more fair system. And if ur only argument is "neutrals favor top tiers" i will counter that argument before it is claimed. Scar has mentioned numerous times that neutrals arent good for top tiers because of something about the stage layout, top tiers just are best at them because they are top tiers. Nothing about the stage influences the match, except maybe that its flat? I'm not sure how strong that argument is going to take u.

And the fact that you START each set on neutrals means that you MUST win either on a neutral or on ur opponents counterpick. So it really doesnt even make sense to claim that CPs balance out the stage system. Thats such a weak argument.

 

[pockyD]

here's a crucial question, spam

if it weren't for time constraints and confusion, do you think it would be more fair to use ALL stages for the game 1 stage strike? (including current CP stages like floats, mute city, etc, but for the sake of this argument I say ignore the current banned stages like hyrule, flatzone, etc) ... that is to say, strike down from a set of 13 stages instead of 5-7?

I think that if the CP stages aren't deemed "too" game-changing/random, then there's no reason they shouldn't be under consideration for game 1 given that we have already eliminated the big ol random button

and on a side note, I think it would be interesting to do game 1 stage strikes prior to character selections (I'm unaware of whether or not this is already done anywhere, but in my experience, we still pick character first)

edit: as far as the one neutral stage goes, the fact is that the host can simply designate any single stage as "neutral" and compare all other stages relative to that one in terms of fairness... this is just a technicality though (but it goes towards my point of if the ultimate goal is fairness and determinism, stages, especially for game 1, should be locked in stone)

edit2: i'm not really interested in the IC debate that much anymore, but frankly, time is the least of the concerns, or we should really just straight up ban samus... and the two prominent IC players (more than the 'no one' you're asserting) fared just as well, if not better, when wobbling was banned as opposed to allowed

 

[teh_spamerer]

spam, no stage in the game is "completely 100% unwinnable."

That's not true. I'm pretty certain I'd beat anyone using not Fox on Hyrule Temple.

Do you think onett is a fair CP stage? there's nothing unwinnable about that stage, it just gives fox a huge advantage (and no, a wall infinite doesnt make a stage 100% unwinnable.)

It is extremely difficult to the point of almost impossible for most characters to catch Fox on Onett, he can infinite a large percentage of the cast, he can waveshine them off the walkoff part. Add all of this to the fact that he is already the best character in the game and he is basically invincible on the stage. Peach and Jiggs are not invincible on Brinstar and Mute City.

Stages arent banned because they are unwinnable, they are banned because they give larger than usual advantages to certain characters. this is the same logic that we are using here to say what stages are ban-worthy. any stage that gives one character a big advantage should be banned because its not conducive to fair play. why should anyone have to fight an uphill battle when it can be avoided?

What I've been saying is that the advantage you get for counterpicking is a fair advantage and NOT some gargantuan advantage the way Scar is saying it is.

You have yet to prove HOW counterpicks make for a more fair system.

Since it is IMPOSSIBLE to take away the effect on a match that a stage has, every character should be allowed to pick a stage where they can get the same advantage some other character has them on some other stage unless the stage in question is completely 100% broken.

And if ur only argument is "neutrals favor top tiers" i will counter that argument before it is claimed. Scar has mentioned numerous times that neutrals arent good for top tiers because of something about the stage layout, top tiers just are best at them because they are top tiers. Nothing about the stage influences the match, except maybe that its flat? I'm not sure how strong that argument is going to take u.

Not that this is my argument, but Scar is once again wrong. If Mute City was the only playable stage in Melee, the tier list would be different.

But anyways, let's talk about Fox vs Falco. Fox vs Falco is in Fox's advantage on every "neutral" in various amounts except FD. What stage is played on, even talking about only neutrals, even talking about only top tier characters has a very visible effect on matchups. Why is it so unreasonable to suggest that other stages where this also happens should be allowed?

And the fact that you START each set on neutrals means that you MUST win either on a neutral or on ur opponents counterpick. So it really doesnt even make sense to claim that CPs balance out the stage system. Thats such a weak argument.

Actually you can win on a neutral and still lose the set . But really, I don't get what you're trying to say here.

if it weren't for time constraints and confusion, do you think it would be more fair to use ALL stages for the game 1 stage strike? (including current CP stages like floats, mute city, etc, but for the sake of this argument I say ignore the current banned stages like hyrule, flatzone, etc) ... that is to say, strike down from a set of 13 stages instead of 5-7?

To be honest, I don't really like the stage striking system because it's annoying and gay. That aside, I don't see too much of a problem with that in terms of fairness.

edit: as far as the one neutral stage goes, the fact is that the host can simply designate any single stage as "neutral" and compare all other stages relative to that one in terms of fairness... this is just a technicality though (but it goes towards my point of if the ultimate goal is fairness and determinism, stages, especially for game 1, should be locked in stone)

I see your point for ultimate fairness/determinism but I think that just helps support the notion that we should have CP stages because there is no possible way you can have the ultimate "fair" stage.

edit2: i'm not really interested in the IC debate that much anymore, but frankly, time is the least of the concerns, or we should really just straight up ban samus... and the two prominent IC players (more than the 'no one' you're asserting) fared just as well, if not better, when wobbling was banned as opposed to allowed

Samus isn't as time consuming as wobbling. As for the two prominent IC players, I think a big part of why they didn't do any better/worse with it allowed/banned was because most people can't DI out of the normal CG. Against them wobbling being allowed or banned made no difference since they died anyways from a grab.

 

[Eggm]

this is just a small thing that i've noticed over this debate.. and that is that you don't seem to understand that not everyone shares your definition of fun = / just a thought..

I acknowledged the gay people who think that Cp stages are fun when I said 1%.

 

[xyt]

I acknowledged the gay people who think that Cp stages are fun when I said 1%.

wow... this sentence is so ignorant on so many different levels lol

 

[EmuKiller]

It's really 'whatever it takes to win' that the 'gay' people want to still have control of. In brawl these debates are very valid too, so I understand. Having a stage to help you win is a great relief especially if you aren't better than the opponent. I can testify to that...mostly in brawl.

 

[Wschl]

however, mute city ist not too unbalanced imo. counterpicking & playing on stages, which u dont face everyday is also part of your skilllevel.

 

[pockyD]

To be honest, I don't really like the stage striking system because it's annoying and gay. That aside, I don't see too much of a problem with that in terms of fairness.

Then what would you think if all stages (CP included) were on random, and somehow (magically, or via slow and cumbersome resets, since this is hypothetical anyway) the stages were chosen before the characters?

I see your point for ultimate fairness/determinism but I think that just helps support the notion that we should have CP stages because there is no possible way you can have the ultimate "fair" stage.

But given the understanding that the average of the existing "neutral" stages is an ultimate "fair" stage, it's pretty trivial to state that any stage in the CP set is strictly less fair than any of the "neutral"s (because proximity to the "neutral"s are how we measure fair). Then, it comes down to a completely subjective judgment of "how unfair is too unfair?"

If we throw out this notion that neutrals are more fair, then all "legal" stages should really be treated equally, either by all being on random/strike, or by having all (or almost all) of them be restricted from game 1, arbitrarily choosing a set stage to be used for game 1, of course known in advance so that all players know of it and won't complain.

Samus isn't as time consuming as wobbling.

that's debatable, as the time it takes samus to recover once or twice from a strong hit on dreamland is approximately equal for the time it takes ICs to take someone zero to death

...and it was meant as a joke anyway. We allocate 8 mins per match already, so the TOs should have no problem with matches taking that long; if it's a problem, then shorten the timer.

As for the two prominent IC players, I think a big part of why they didn't do any better/worse with it allowed/banned was because most people can't DI out of the normal CG. Against them wobbling being allowed or banned made no difference since they died anyways from a grab.

that's actually precisely my point... "they died anyways from a grab". wobbling changed nothing in those cases, which was incidentally the highest level of play

 

[Scar]

@jfox this is a trial run for the experimental ruleset but i feel that you may be correct in saying that FD and KJ64 provide some imbalance that was not a problem under previous rules

So according to you, DIRECTLY proving every point you make is 100% wrong is turning point D into something I read last week in a Dr. Seuss book(oh man you're soooooo clever), typing lots of garbage, and ultimately taking everything out of context and proving a tangential point that has no relevance to anything at all. lmao, I'm sorry Dr. Seuss is the only author you've read before, but that doesn't make anything you said accurate.



You know what's REALLY hilarious? How I MASSACRE everyone's points time and again and people don't respond to my arguments and instead just post something like "LOLOL UR RONG!!!!" as a response

k here's the thing buddy

you never prove any important points wrong

you just take a general rule and say, "sometimes this rule does not follow" OR out of 2 points you take 1 and say "this one is wrong THEREFORE the other one is wrong," neither of which do anything irl

if EVERYONE doesn't respond to your **** and says lol ur wrong and EVERYONE has the same understanding that you say nothing that makes any sense, don't you think that maybe it's YOU that's not making sense instead of EVERYONE ELSE

tl;dr - your specific examples don't matter because you're missing the underlying concept. they are anecdotal and tangentially related, at best

spam this is you. if you don't get it, go to dictionary.com, clear up whatever if bothering you, and figure out what this statement means. then l2argue

 

[JFox]

If neutrals aren't actually neutral, than as pockyD stated, using only neutrals round 1 is unfair. In the past you have claimed that "there is no universal fair stage", which means that picking a set stage for round 1 would not be fair.

That leaves u with two alternatives- either u put all the legal stages on random OR you do the SSS rules BUT with all of the legal stages instead of the neutrals. Now the first would leave who gets the advantage in the set up to luck, which doesnt make for a good system. The second could work, but the problem would be spaceys would just auto-strike the stages they arent good on , which would probably leave you at a neutral stage regardless. (peach strikes greens, floats, rainbow, and corny-area. fox bans brin, mute, DK64)

So unless u can think of a better way of choosing game 1 then the strats ive mentioned, you will be doing a neutral stage Round 1, cuz theres no real way around it. Now as I have stated already, if ur opponent is up 1-0 because they get an advantage on neutrals, than winning round 2 does almost nothing for you, because next round ur *** is about to be on THEIR counterpick, which is statistically worse than a whole set of neutrals.

Now if you are still in favor of this ruleset than it must be because you play spaceys, and this system actually makes it easier for u to clutch the win so long as you win round 1 (which statistically you claim you should cuz spaceys have advantage). In other words, you are voting for the system that favors u not the low tiers, whether u realize it or not.

Game, set, match.

 

[Overswarm]

If neutrals aren't actually neutral, than as pockyD stated, using only neutrals round 1 is unfair. In the past you have claimed that "there is no universal fair stage", which means that picking a set stage for round 1 would not be fair.

No stage is "neutral". However, some stages have less overall influence on the match. PS1 and FD, for example, have more of an influence on a match than Battlefield.

What we do in Brawl is find stages that have less of an effect than other stages, and then use stage striking so the stage is chosen first. In this way, we can choose our character based on the stage. This helps balance it out.

That alone isn't enough though, so we're working on making custom stages.

So unless u can think of a better way of choosing game 1 then the strats ive mentioned, you will be doing a neutral stage Round 1, cuz theres no real way around it. Now as I have stated already, if ur opponent is up 1-0 because they get an advantage on neutrals, than winning round 2 does almost nothing for you, because next round ur *** is about to be on THEIR counterpick, which is statistically worse than a whole set of neutrals.

You are assuming a player doesn't play multiple characters and/or their character doesn't do well on their opponent's CP stages. If they play a character that does poorly on many of the non-flat stages (see: Marth, Captain Falcon), their counterpicking abilities are lessened.

 

[Scar]

if you strike down on round 1, it doesn't matter how many stages you have on

for example if you had all 8 million stages available for round 1 but you do stage striking down to 1 stage, even if flatland is on SOMEONE will strike it before it gets down to the last two stages, and if no one does then, if both players have used their strikes intelligently, flatland is indeed the most neutral stage for r1 to be played on

overswarm wtf is PS1, and please stop posting your incorrect facts about melee, CF does just fine on non-flat stages, in fact he does well on every stage in the game besides maybe fountain of dreams

 

[pockyD]

my point behind the one-stage thing is that a stage is only as neutral as everybody accepts it to be

there's really no indication that poke floats is any less "neutral" than yoshi's story; however, the community finds a "less intrusive stage" to be fair/neutral, and so we have accepted that

if the host unilaterally decides that, say, battlefield will be used for all game ones (and if we ignore the 'boring' factor of always using the same stage), while people would initially complain, eventually they (and the metagame as a whole) would adjust to accommodate the rules change.

When you go into a set with random stage 1, you definitely have a different mindset than that of a stage striking stage 1; that doesn't mean one is more or less "fair" than the other (although stage striking *****)... and similar rules apply for a set stage 1.

If starting off on battlefield slightly nerfs peach and slightly buffs marth, then so be it; that will become the "true potential" of the character as we all perceive it. As is, the tier list is generated with the neutral stage set in mind (in particular marth's placement), so with a different method of selecting stages, we would expect a different character hierarchy, and there's nothing wrong with that except that people hate change

and yes, this quite frankly applies to choosing ANY existing legal stage to be the set first stage. Even if it's mute city, is the edge peach has over marth in the new character order really any more significant than that which marth has over peach now on all non-dreamland stages?

 

[Scar]

yeah well pocky yes the rules do dictate how good characters are, the tier list is in fact a result of the framework we have set forth

wouldn't you agree, though, that less intrusive stages promote more predictable results with the primary deciding factor being player skill?

if we played all matches on pokefloats i agree that this predictability would remain because the stage is non-random, but it does change the tier list very significantly for that one round and most notably makes fox better than he already is, which is (more/less undoubtedly) the best character in the game

it further hinders slow characters, who are already slow so that sucks for them, and it further hinders characters with no projectiles. it exaggerates both the strengths and weaknesses of many characters, which places more emphasis on character choice than player skill

i simply don't see why doing that benefits competitive play

it could be argued that player skill is subjective, but i feel that encouraging a rainbow cruise/pokefloats matchup emphasizes one skill TOO MUCH while ignoring many other skills that are key to play on the 7 "neutral stages"

also if we wanted to make the tourney standard a moving stage that would be fine, but then we'd be limiting ourselves to floats and cruise only and we'd further exaggerate the hierarchy--in which many characters already don't stand a chance

i feel that our current system realizes the value in both settings but since cruise/floats cannot be played on round 1 it's saying that that's less important than the "neutral" stages... but we should still allow both. i also feel that this indecision is stupid and takes away from the integrity of a system that chooses one or the other.

if we played all matches on corneria then the tier list would still change, but there would certainly be less consistency in results, primarily because of the lasers being random, certain times arwings take you off the top, and great fox laser kills are broken.

so in my perfect world, the primary deciding factor in who wins each set would be player skill.

it certaily would NOT come down to stage select, since the stage rules should encourage wise counterpicking while maintaining an unbiased and non-random environment

i say wise counterpicking because as i've further modified DSR, only stages that you choose and win on cannot be repicked by you. in other words if you try to pick yoshi's story and it turned out to be a stupid decision on your part, you will be punished for it because your opponent can re-choose it.

i believe that with that system, broken stages are prevented from being a major deciding factor in a set since you are afforded 2 stages to auto-lose on without losing a set: 1 from your ban and 1 from either round 1 or round 2.

and if it were up to me it would also NOT come down to character select, but the tier list is what it is and player skill doesn't always matter when you go up against a player whose character hard counters you. this factor still exists no matter what the stage rules are, which is why learning lots of different characters IS STILL BENEFICIAL. right spam?

 

[JFox]

pocky, i agree with you 100%, but where are you going with this? Are u saying we should stop thinking about what stages are fair and just pick one stage and let the metagame adapt and change? I doubt you honestly believe that.

Regardless of your smash knowledge, most people would say that the most fair stage to play is a flat one. Now due to CG's people no longer believe that, but its no coincidence that we chose all flat stages to be "neutral".

 

[pockyD]

right, like i agreed, the general consensus is that the less "intrusive" the stage (whatever that means), the more "neutral" it is

frankly if you want my "ideal" solution, it's the strikeout from all legal stages, but that's simply impractical

also, i'm just generally less concerned about "fair" than most of you are, since as a **** player with no chance of really winning, i'm more concerned about fun and interesting matches when i go to tournaments, and to me, that entails variety.

On the flip side, if poke floats grants an insurmountable advantage to fox (which I don't believe it does, although personally I've only beaten a fox there once ever), then it should be banned period, not simply allowed for what seems to be a "less relevant" game but still counts as 1 in the scorebook (especially factoring in that there is no stage fox can't win on).

What's the difference between the advantage afforded to fox on floats and that given to marth on yoshi's story? Stages are fair on a sliding scale; they aren't either "fair" or "unfair" - they are judged as they deviate from the norm.

If we weren't already married to our existing 6 stages for the past 6 years and had to come up with a "neutral" stage set from scratch ("neutral" being unintrusive), we'd likely end up with a smaller set than 3 anyway; just look at brawl's general rules (which in my recent experience, feature only THREE "neutral" stages).

I think almost all of us can agree that yoshi's story is strictly less "neutral" than battlefield, so why is it allowed? On the other hand, KJ64 is only slightly less "neutral" than dreamland, but it has been traditionally NOT a neutral stage to this point. What gives?

tl;dr - If a stage is fair enough to be played on in any game of the set, it's fair enough to be played in game one. If it's not fair enough for game one, then it should never be played in any game of the set. This is why it seems like I moderately support the 7-stage only system (which uses the same stages for game 1 as for the counter-picks), but don't really agree with the details

 

[Scar]

yeah idk i dont get it either, with yoshi's and kj64 and fountain and stadium.. they all hang in the balance for completely different reasons, while dl64 FD battlefield are relatively more neutral

idk i don't really see a big problem with FD except vs characters who can chaingrab like 0-death, in which case that is your ban and that's the end of that discussion, and if players don't think that that's fair well i mean that's what they do right now anyways, and they trust that the other player has a sufficient enough advantage on the other "neutral" stages that they won't pick a cp stage that affords them an even greater advantage, though one in all probability does exist (OR they just get boned on FD or the cp stage that is really bad for them)

also the difference between fox on floats and marth on yoshi's is very apparent -- fox gets an advantage on floats by adding in a new factor, a moving stage. marth gets his advantage on yoshi's by manipulating already existing factors, smaller stage length, tighter platforms.

finally i don't think fox is unbeatable on floats, "unbeatability" really isn't an issue for me because among the high tiers (which is where most of the magic happens anyways) more/less all of the matchups are winnable, they just change the basis of the win from one that is entirely skill (skill as tested on a "neutral" environment, that is) to one that is part skill, part random factors, and increased emphasis on character choice (in a game where many players play one character at a tournament level, a fact that should not be overlooked)

 

[EmuKiller]

looooooooooooooooooooooooooool

ROFL indeed!