Official Metaknight Discussion

[Ripple]

there is only one good player for each character for most of the characters

however the top 4 or 5 players in the game are still me, ally, adhd, dehf, and then it's up in the air for who would be after that. Maybe some order of TKD/Dojo/Tyrant or something. It's pretty balanced at the top.

just curious but has TKD ever traveled to a major tournament and placed well?

 

[Crow!]

@M2K:

We're not throwing you out of the data (except when you explicitly ask us to). We're comparing, when we can reliably identify them, specific groups of players of who appear to differ only in which character they select.

If I understand your argument, you are saying that we shouldn't be comaring groups which are medium high because they aren't the best they could be. But consider: you trained hard for MLG Orlando. You, presumably, entered that tournament as a better player than you were even as recently as Pound4. There's evidently room to go up from where you are or else you wouldn't bother to practice.

So, suppose we compared, as you suggest, only the best player of each character, one to the next. We're looking at the best player of those players that play that character; we have no idea how much more talent, skill, and practice one player from this group has compared to any other. But what we do know is that each of these players can still improve; these players aren't truly at the top of their character's metagame!

In other words, doing this kills our ability to actually compare the players to each other while still not solving the problem you set out to accomplish by focusing on the best player of each character.


@Thiocyanide: the character rank distribution charts I've posted before can give you that information. Those charts are also better because they show, as well as data possibly could show, which players of character A might be comparable to which players of character B.

Notice, however, that there is little to no statistical sensibility in comparing the top (small number) of players of one character to another, for reasons noted above plus the horrendously low sample size you would be imposing on yourself when you do so.

I'll update those charts once the next wave of data comes in.

 

[fkacyan]

No, Crow, I want just that data extracted specifically. Remember the dominance spread you did for the MLG results? I want something like that but just comparing character mains. I'm not going to bother parsing through your old data; I'll just assume that if you don't want to take said data out, that it's for some reason bad for you and treat it as such.

Arigatou ne~

 

[Roie]

If we aren't the best we can be, what is the point of banning someone if we don't even know there is a problem?

 

[o-Serin-o]

What is in these 800+ pages that AREN'T repetitive o_o

 

[Crow!]

Remember the dominance spread you did for the MLG results? I want something like that but just comparing character mains.

I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean here.

As I hinted before, at the moment I'm delaying extracting new stuff from the data until I have new data; I expect this to happen soon, it being the end of the month and all, so anything I do right now will be obsoleted almost immediately, which would be a waste.

@Serin: for a start, you can peruse through the links in this post:
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=9870164&postcount=9756

 

[Raziek]

If we aren't the best we can be, what is the point of banning someone if we don't even know there is a problem?

"Just wait it out."

This has been one of the Anti-ban sentiments from the very beginning, and we've waited it out for over a year. It's clear that MK is a problem that is here to stay.

Besides, there is no "best". Ever. Perfection is an unattainable goal.

 

[fkacyan]

I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean here.

As I hinted before, at the moment I'm delaying extracting new stuff from the data until I have new data; I expect this to happen soon, it being the end of the month and all, so anything I do right now will be obsoleted almost immediately, which would be a waste.

@Serin: for a start, you can peruse through the links in this post:
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=9870164&postcount=9756

I'm talking about giving %dominance amount, by character, when only including the top point scorers, the top 2, and the top 3 (i.e. a data set for each)

Example:

Top Player Only:

Char A: 40%
Char B: 30%
Char C: 25%

This would be comparing M2K's score to Ally's score to ADHD's score, essentially.

Top 2:

Char A: 42
Char B: 28
Char C: 21

This would be M2K + Second best MK's score comparied to Ally + Second best snake compared to ADHD + second best Diddy

And so on.

EDIT: Also wondering how you deal with people tourneyflooding results, or rather, gaining points simply because they attend more tourneys? Wouldn't a better dominance model just be comparing the percentage of points characters get per tourney rather than the actual point value?

 

[Crow!]

Okay.. I can do that, but the results wouldn't necessarily be useful because there's no guarantee the top X players of each character are comparable to the top X players of each other character for every X.

Why don't I be more direct and show what the score of the X highest player of each character is for every X?

Edit response to ninja-edit:
All sorts of problems exist with doing that. As a comical example, following that paradigm, Link would probably have been rather highly ranked for a while: one of his precious few tourney results was a 1st at a largeish tournament Meanwhile, better characters which regularly place top8 get punished because they regularly get top8.

 

[fkacyan]

Okay.. I can do that, but the results wouldn't necessarily be useful because there's no guarantee the top X players of each character are comparable to the top X players of each other character for every X.

If this is the case then proving MK's dominance as a function of the character is an exercise in futility because to actually do so you would have to have the MK mains play other chara - oh wait! Temp ban. ****, same conclusion every time.

@Second part: So how do you deal with a character having more points simply because the good mains attend more tourneys? Your problem with the other method I mentioned can be solved with a decent weighting system, so I'm interested in how you solve a character just simply having more oppurtunities to play based on the players' schedules.

 

[Orion*]

k thats most definitely faulty logic. Its always based off of the highest level because it shows what the character is capable of.

If every single snake sucked, but then there was "alley", we wouldn't take the average or some shiz, u just look at the highest. Every other snake wouldnt matter. You have right in front of you what snake can do. Practice more.

Same during the early melee days when there was just ken. He proved marth what marth could do and it was up to other players to catch up.

agreed, i really cant agree with what RH is saying atm

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Since the issue has come up, here are the specifics.

Using 6 months of data, ending with March:

M2K accounts for 15.2% of MK's tournament score.
Ally accounts for 27.6% of Snake's tournament score.
ADHD accounts for 45.5% of Diddy Kong's tournament score.

Using the data unaltered, Meta Knight:
Has 1.95 times the score that Snake has.
Has 3.46 times the score that Diddy Kong has.

Removing each and every point M2K scored without removing Ally or ADHD (totally unfair, but we can play M2K's game here), Meta Knight:
Has 1.65 times the score that Snake has.
Has 2.93 times the score that Diddy Kong has.

More realistically, removing M2K, Ally, and ADHD, Meta Knight:
Has 2.21 times the score that Snake has.
Has 5.20 times the score that Diddy Kong has. <-- LOL
(Note: to be fair I also had to subtract points from Meta Knight here because Ally has scored Meta Knight points)


(off topic edit)
Hey, an image taken from my series of Zero Suit Samus hitbubble .pacs has become an avatar? Neat.
Notice how UTilt is a little less than two Squirtles wide.

Oops crow did it again
He ***** something up the ***

So in short, MK's dominance is not M2K-specific.

im just going to say it then

99% of you suck and aren't at the level where it would matter or become closer

outliers are some of the only good players

if you took out the 2 or 3 jiggs outliers in melee, she wouldn't be nearly as good would she (actually she sort of would), but then if you count them, you realize she wins top 2 at every large tourney every time

also Tyrant and Ksizl are my apprentices. Esp tyrant. I trained with him for 3 weeks straight during summer of 2009. He improved drastically in that time period.

also diddy beats MK. IF you guys are going to bring up rusty ADHD (since he said he has not been playing much after Pound4) then I'm going to bring up Felix beating like everyone at mlg. It's plenty obvious by now that MK is overrated (except with the current stage lists from MLG he becomes better, but those were never standard before MLG happened)

...Diddy beats MK... Why are you the only person really saying this? The Diddy backroom all agree that MK beats Diddy, most sane players agree... maybe diddy has a slight advantage on FD?

I don't usually meatride crow... but that was ****. XD


So you're saying that outliers are the only one that don't count, but you shouldn't count? Are you like a super outlier?

and please explain how mk beats diddy. Try not using the word "I" while you do it.

This

We're just doing exactly what you were going to do.

Face it: all of the people disputing Crow!'s findings are people who don't understand how important sample size is when it comes to research. In science, replicability is key! If you can't replicate results, then who knows what real reasons you had those original results to begin with? Sure, you, M2K, are the current "top of the metagame"... but (obviously) no one ***** with MK quite like you can, and the numbers prove it. For whatever reason, you buck the trend, and when we're looking at dominance, we're looking at things from a macro sense, not a micro sense.

This means that in the little microsphere of M2K, ADHD, and Ally, MK is totally not over dominant.

But...

In the macrosphere of all of Smash, he very well may be. And THAT is what we're concerned with. You have fantastic results with MK, but if the greater population cannot replicate those results, there must be something special to your circumstances that allows you to do so. And so, we take you out of the equation. Same for Ally and ADHD.

Simply put: a sample size of three people is nowhere near enough to isolate out all of the possible variables as to why MK is doing as well as he is in the placings and leave just MK as a character. Same with Diddy and Snake. We need a larger sample size than you three to get anything worthwhile to the rest of us who very well never reach the level you play at, for whatever reason that may be.

Be flattered: it's putting you on a pedestal.

And the key to this, the reason we look at the macrosphere? Well, allow me to follow this argument to the absurd...

We have a game. Game X. It's a very unconventional fighting game with a ridiculous amount of tech skill required. Like, as in, to be good with any character, you had to be able to mash that R button better than a pro melee fox player in grand finals. Like, really hard tech skill. There are a bunch of players, like, 10-20 who can reasonably play the average character in this game, and when you can play everyone at a ridiculously high level, they're all very balanced, in fact. However, there's one char who can do what the others do, but without the tech skill required. He may not be the distant best at the very human pinnacle of play, but everyone else will find him broken. So what do you do? Do you protect the people who are all sick of him, or do you protect the top 0.005% and say "nope, everyone else: get better"? I'll tell you what, the latter option is going to make the game lose following very, very fast. And that's kind of what we're doing here... except that it isn't proven that MK is worse at the very top, but in fact still better.

So, basically, you're saying we cater to the people who wouldn't win tournaments with MK gone because they aren't at the level of M2K, Ally, ADHD, DEHF, NickRiddle, TKD, etc? Or am I misunderstanding?

We cater to the largest group of competitive smashers.

We all suck at brawl. In 5 years, every matchup will have been revolutionized. No one is going to play the same way. (this, of course, is assuming brawl is a strategically deep game)

Similarly, 2 years ago, we knew even less about brawl. We might have said something ******** like, snake or falco are the best characters in the game? Even if 100% of tournaments won were by snakes and falcos. We don't go banning them because of statistics. They aren't overpowered characters.

Therefore: you don't rely on statistics in regards to balance.

edit:


Yeah actually that's true.

Saying something like that is completely baseless though. We have miles of statistics showing that MK is way better. It's a rising and continuing trend and has been for the last two years.

Read the next sentence.

Not only do you know anything about balance, but you don't know how to argue. Don't call people thick; it is only detrimental to debate.

Also, popular opinion and intuition are, in fact, more reliable sources of balance than anything.

...This is so ****ing terrible, it's not even funny. The "popular opinion" at the beginning of smash was that snake was far and away the best character in the game. Popular opinion is a TERRIBLE source of balance. And intuition is even worse.

There's no point arguing anymore. I brought my best reasoning and you cling to really bad insults as if they are doing anything.

In case you're not a bad troll, I'd like to refer you to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOHJa5Vj5Y
It has to do with something called the "Dunning-Krueger Effect". You're being consistently told that your arguments are wrong/pointless, and continuing to say that you're debating well... Sounds like it to me.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH NOOOOOOOOOO. NONONONONONONONONONONONONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. OH MY GOD YOU MAKE ME ANGRY.

Whether or not something is an outlier depends heavily on what curve you're trying to make the data fit! Something on a one-X function might be a huge outlier but is almost on the line if you're using x^3!

Part of why people keep calling them 'outliers' is that people like Crow! are making the assumption that not placing is the norm, which from a basic statistical point is the case, but M2K makes the rather cogent argument that the metagame is the peak and not what the people below it are doing.

EDIT: @Razeik, I read your post after this, and it is amazingly appropriate. I award you one internets,.

Yes, we should aim for the top. But not at the cost of the rest of the monkey mountain.

Excuse my intrusion. Has anything changed on the stance of the MK ban issue so far

Well, anti-ban gained a little ground with the MLG Orlando results, but pretty much more of Crow! ****** any anti-bans who stray too close to making a false point.

@ Crow!

Could you possibly post dominance percentages for the top four characters if you only take into account:

- the highest scoring player for that main
- the two highest scoring players
- three three highest scoring players

In other words, three data sets using the peak of the metagame as the sole standard for dominance. I'm just interested in seeing what the dominance looks like. ^_^

Just take his graph from
http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=9585809&postcount=5530
And set a bar wherever you want to.

If we aren't the best we can be, what is the point of banning someone if we don't even know there is a problem?

Statistical trends show that he's dominant at every level of play, including the current very top.

 

[fkacyan]

@BPC: First, no graph in that link.

Second, his graph doesn't show what I want. I'm redefining the player groups, and I don't think his graph shows said player groups.

Third, he has yet to address my point-flooding issue.

 

[Crow!]

@Second part: So how do you deal with a character having more points simply because the good mains attend more tourneys? Your problem with the other method I mentioned can be solved with a decent weighting system, so I'm interested in how you solve a character just simply having more oppurtunities to play based on the players' schedules.

Not a problem for at least two reasons:

First of all, we DO care more about players who attend more tourneys! If Ken randomly waltzes into one big Brawl tourney and wins it all then never comes back, his impact on the community is limited to that one tournament. If Joe Schmo roams the country playing three tournaments a week and places well, he DOES represent an unusually large portion of the community and of tournament placements.

Is traveling more representative of more skill? Well, no, but this brings us to the second point: unless the character itself makes mains of that character attend tournaments more often (say, you play more often because the character lets you win more often, which is what we're looking for anyway), there is no reason to believe that players of one character will attend tournaments more often than the players of another. As such, as long as we compare reasonably sized groups of players to each other, the effect should even itself out.

As is usually the case, the best way to avoid letting an uninteresting parameter bias our results is to not give in to the urge to modify our results with respect to that parameter (that, after all, would be introducing bias).

Edit:

Third, he has yet to address my point-flooding issue.

Dude, you gave me less than 20 minutes. Patience.

 

[OverLade]

You can't defeat crow in a battle of logic. He is entertainer.

 

[fkacyan]

You can't defeat crow in a battle of logic. He is entertainer.

See, this is the type of mentality that makes me angry. CYANIDE-CAPS-STYLE ANGRY

I am not in this to win, I am in this to make Brawl the best possible competitive game so that it lasts as long as possible so the community endures as long as possible. I value the continuation of the community more than winning an argument about whether or not certain dominance stats are correct or not.

When I ask Crow! for clarification or data, it is less to injure his argument and more to understand why things are presented the way they are so that I can make more informed decisions going forward.

@Crow! : That said, ken would not be statistically irrelevant. I see what you mean though.

Both methods are flawed in their own ways. Poo.

 

[Espy Rose]

The winner gets the vantage point in this discussion, Thio!

Play to win!
Main Meta Kn-

 

[Jack Kieser]

I am not in this to win, I am in this to make Brawl the best possible competitive game so that it lasts as long as possible so the community endures as long as possible. I value the continuation of the community more than winning an argument about whether or not certain dominance stats are correct or not.

Pro post, people. Read it... smell it.... smell it...

Now take it!

 

[Crow!]

When I ask Crow! for clarification or data, it is less to injure his argument and more to understand why things are presented the way they are so that I can make more informed decisions going forward.

This. Not sure if I've said this publicly before or not, but I really appreciate the criticism Thiocyanide brings to this thread. I am not immune to skipping steps in logic without realizing I've skipped over it; as much fun as having an army of meatriders is, having someone who identifies things which need to be double checked or explained more carefully is actually useful.

That said, ken would not be statistically irrelevant. I see what you mean though.

Right; my best guess as to how much he matters would be to treat him like we treat any player who wins a big tournament.

Both methods are flawed in their own ways. Poo.

This I will agree with.

 

[swordgard]

---


edit!

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Why'd you edit THAT out?

 

[OverLade]

See, this is the type of mentality that makes me angry. .

 

[Raziek]

Why'd you edit THAT out?

The plot thickens!

 

[The Truth!]

@M2K:

If I understand your argument, you are saying that we shouldn't be comaring groups which are medium high because they aren't the best they could be. But consider: you trained hard for MLG Orlando. You, presumably, entered that tournament as a better player than you were even as recently as Pound4. There's evidently room to go up from where you are or else you wouldn't bother to practice.

So, suppose we compared, as you suggest, only the best player of each character, one to the next. We're looking at the best player of those players that play that character; we have no idea how much more talent, skill, and practice one player from this group has compared to any other. But what we do know is that each of these players can still improve; these players aren't truly at the top of their character's metagame!

In other words, doing this kills our ability to actually compare the players to each other while still not solving the problem you set out to accomplish by focusing on the best player of each character.

You arent supposed to fix for talent, skill, and practice. The best player of that character is the top of that characters metagame. When m2k played at pound 4, he was at the top of MK's metagame. When he played at MLG Orlando, he was still at the top of MK's metagame. If he were to somehow get worse between Orlando and his next major tournament while remaining the best MK, then once again, he remains at the top of the metagame.

 

[etecoon]

k thats most definitely faulty logic. Its always based off of the highest level because it shows what the character is capable of.

If every single snake sucked, but then there was "alley", we wouldn't take the average or some shiz, u just look at the highest. Every other snake wouldnt matter. You have right in front of you what snake can do. Practice more.

Same during the early melee days when there was just ken. He proved marth what marth could do and it was up to other players to catch up.

I have to agree with this. I've never liked how this has become statistics ****ery where we just ignore what the best players do, HOWEVER

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-19NssjjZQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZCuKkdUv20

when the best players play, MK is still clearly better than snake. I dislike the outlier argument but either way, the two aren't that close IMO

 

[Black Marf]

You arent supposed to fix for talent, skill, and practice. The best player of that character is the top of that characters metagame. When m2k played at pound 4, he was at the top of MK's metagame. When he played at MLG Orlando, he was still at the top of MK's metagame. If he were to somehow get worse between Orlando and his next major tournament while remaining the best MK, then once again, he remains at the top of the metagame.

This isn't what a metagame is. A metagame is based around the trends and strategies which exist in the competitive environment of the game. Individual talent, skill, yomi ability, etc have nothing to do with trends and strategies.

Both methods are flawed in their own ways. Poo.

If I know what methods you're talking about, this is true. However, it seems instinctual to follow basic statistical analysis for this event. It's good enough for scientific experiments, it should be enough for deciding whether or not we should ban a character in a vidjagame.

That said, I've found it interesting that even though MK is almost unanimously considered by and far the best character in the game, the top 3 players all play different characters. Or top 4, if you agree with M2K.

 

[Mew2King]

top 2 in melee play the same character

 

[Turbo Ether]

On the subject of matchups changing at various levels of play, i'd like to say...

WE DON'T HAVE COMPREHENSIVE FRAME DATA FOR EVERY CHARACTER IN THE GAME, so we're missing important, objective information that could be used to compare characters tools.

By comprehensive, I mean the whole 9 yards. Not just startup and recovery.

You wouldn't need to weigh matchups differently, based on level of play, if you knew exactly what every character was capable of in every situation, in general.

 

[Mew2King]

a game like smash is wayyyyyyyy harder to make matchups than something like street fighter

 

[Turbo Ether]

a game like smash is wayyyyyyyy harder to make matchups than something like street fighter

This is 100% true, and why we need as much information as possible. We're missing fundamental data.

 

[Mew2King]

i memorized most of MKs stuff long time ago

 

[The Truth!]

This isn't what a metagame is. A metagame is based around the trends and strategies which exist in the competitive environment of the game. Individual talent, skill, yomi ability, etc have nothing to do with trends and strategies.

No one was defining the term, the subject was what it means to be at the top of a characters metagame. Also, reread the bold. Those qualities in the top players definitely help determine the trends and strategies, as well as that characters metagame.

 

[Judo777]

Did someone say that we should compare every character using their best representative? I hope not cause if so C Falcon is like number 8 on the tier list.

 

[Raziek]

No one was defining the term, the subject was what it means to be at the top of a characters metagame. Also, reread the bold. Those qualities in the top players definitely help determine the trends and strategies, as well as that characters metagame.

Talent and skill do NOT directly affect the metagame. Technical skill, if anything. They influence the strategies developed, but do not play a direct role.

Yomi doesn't either. I feel it pertinent to clarify that Yomi and Mix-up potential are not the same concept, and should not be treated as such. Mix-up potential is what permits effective Yomi, but Mix-up is character-specific (and thus affects the metagame), while Yomi is players.

 

[Black Marf]

No one was defining the term, the subject was what it means to be at the top of a characters metagame.

And yet you came up with a perfect example of things that have nothing to do with a metagame, and talked about them being part of a character's metagame.

Also, reread the bold. Those qualities in the top players definitely help determine the trends and strategies, as well as that characters metagame.

So my ability to read and abuse your behaviors has to do with how good of a character MK is?

My ability to zone and space has to do with how good of a character Snake is?

No, you determine how good a character is by a complex combination of frame data, hit boxes, weight, current trends, etc. What determines a metagame is what is interpreted from that data. Yes, a character's metagame is usually derived from the methods and tactics that top players (plural) perform, but to say that their individual talents are part of the metagame is absurd. The metagame is discovered by their skills, but the trends and strategies performed by players is a separate entity from what any individual player does.

 

[Allied]

metaknights broken!

 

[Goldenadept]

no he's not dude he's just a bat wearing a mask

 

[The Truth!]

And yet you came up with a perfect example of things that have nothing to do with a metagame, and talked about them being part of a character's metagame.

So my ability to read and abuse your behaviors has to do with how good of a character MK is?
Yes

My ability to zone and space has to do with how good of a character Snake is?
Yes

No, you determine how good a character is by a complex combination of frame data, hit boxes, weight, current trends, etc. What determines a metagame is what is interpreted from that data. Yes, a character's metagame is usually derived from the methods and tactics that top players (plural) perform, but to say that their individual talents are part of the metagame is absurd. The metagame is discovered by their skills, but the trends and strategies performed by players is a separate entity from what any individual player does.

I see you're having some trouble with this, but I think I see your problem. You believe there is some objective standard by which metaknight is the best character in the game, or that similar things can be judged. There is none. Nor would it be in any way useful to establish such guidelines as you seem to believe already exist.

If players are unable to make use of what is technically possible of their character, then it is NOT part of the current metagame. Making arbitrary judgements on what is or is not possible of each character is something that any person with a 2bit opinion can argue in their favor. There is a much simpler perspective, place a characters technical limit on what the best player (or on occasion, players) are capable of doing at any given moment. And that will depend on the players talent, skill, and practice. That is the only pragmatic approach to a metagame, and pragmatism is all we care about. If you wish to talk about possibilities, lets step back 9 or 12 months when it was only a matter of time before ICs would counter MK.

 

[WindMajor]

I only read your answers in your quote.

You are confused.

When we refer to metagame, we refer to trends between a large group of people. One player doesn't make up the metagame. The metagame is composed of a large group of people. All that being at the top of the metagame means is that you are the best out of that large group of people. Being at the top of the metagame =/= being the metagame.

One person's individual skill, ability to read, punish, and win doesn't define the metagame. It's trends within the group.

 

[AllyKnight]

M2K aint really smart when it comes to MU lol. MK beats Diddy.