Official Metaknight Discussion

[Kitamerby]

Ally be trolling

im not. its simply how it is lol. bet my crappy mk would beat your fox ;/ WC needs to step it up.

game and watch is mad
fox mains they be mad
but tkd ain't mad

...OR IS HE?

For the short of attention span, bottom line of this rambling mess is this: It's entirely possible that Meta Knight, or even other characters, might be grossly unbalanced if the game was designed with most of the focus on making sure that play seemed balanced in 4 play.

Unfortunately, Meta Knight is very, very broken in doubles play as well, arguably even moreso than singles by his overwhelming popularity as a makeshift doubles partner and the extreme popularity of the double metaknight team.

 

[PottyJokes]

lol @ kwekky dedicating an essay towards my joke posts.

 

[Kewkky]

It's obvious that it's not OBVIOUS, since many top ranking players of characters that aren't Metaknight have been antiban for a while. DEHF is a great example. If MK wasn't in the game I'm fairly confident that MikeHaze and DEHF would dominate the scene easily, but they are still antiban. TKD as well would have a very easy time winning without MK's, and it goes on and on. If it was OBVIOUS, as you said, then why is there such a divide in the community, and so many voices at the tops of power rankings that disagree with you?

You DO know that there are as many voices that agree with my point of view, right? They're from the other side of the debate, pro-ban. They might not have the same opinions as me, but the gist of it is exactly the same goal: Ban MK. Have you ever noticed how there's been much more changing from anti-ban to pro-ban, than pro-ban to anti-ban? Both top players and normal players alike?

And can you tell me why the Brawl Backroom gets some priority here?

They're the ones with the power to ban MK officially in the competitive scene. WHy SHOULDN'T they get more priority? I mean, the goal of this thread is pretty much to try and influence them to vote what we want them to vote if another decision was to be made eventually.

Side note to even more complainers, metaknight is not as bad, not worse, and not anywhere near the brokenness of Akuma, you people have to stop spouting that like a mantra as well.

Who cares? People who usually use that example aren't making a strong argument, or are trapped in the endless circle that is this thread and its constant revisits to previously discussed topics regarding the Official MK Discussion. Just stick to paying attention to strong rational arguments, and correcting people who show signs of wanting to contribute, and the discussion will finally head somewhere.

This whole thing is ridiculous. I never placed well, so you could say the same thing about my opinion, but at least I'm trying to look at WHO is saying what, and not a brawl backroomer saying this (forgetting that many brawl backroomers that are pro ban here are not freagin active or placing well anyways).

Ok, tell me then... Why are they in the BBR? I mean, there MUST be something they did that was good enough to capture the eyes of other intelligent players who were already in the BBR, am I right? They don't HAVE to be top-placers only, they can also be smart players who know how to make rational decisions for the betterment of the community that have SHOWN that they are smart players capable of rational decision.

lol @ kwekky dedicating an essay towards my joke posts.

Only the top of my previous post was dedicted to your "joke" posts which were clearly trolling and inciting angry responses.

yo guys armada who doesn't play brawl at all placed 17th at genesis. with sheik. yeah thats how bad the majority of you are. ban them euro sheiks that dont play brawl at all imo

Remember, the internet has no tone of voice. You might be joking when you troll, but other people will take it as you trying to piss them off, which is what I'm warning you that it will get you lots of unhappy moments if you keep it up... And trolling won't get us anywhere except off-topic.

 

[Kitamerby]

They're the ones with the power to ban MK officially in the competitive scene.

...No they aren't! O_o


BBR holds no power whatsoever. It's the TOs who have the power to ban/keep legal whatever they want. The BBR ruleset is just a guideline lol.

 

[Kewkky]

...No they aren't! O_o


BBR holds no power whatsoever. It's the TOs who have the power to ban/keep legal whatever they want. The BBR ruleset is just a guideline lol.

TOs use the BBR's recommended ruleset as guidelines, like you said. The TOs have the option of forming their rules around the BBR's recommended ruleset, while still maintaining the major rules intact (like stocks, timers, items, double elimination, counterpick system, other metagame-altering rules). If the BBR would recommend TOs to ban MK from their tourneys, it would be a metagame-altering rule, and it shouldn't be altered... Players also like the BBR's recommended rules, which is why we play with their 3-stock 8-minute no-items ruling, even though TOs have the option of raising/lowering the limits. Would you participate in a tourney where it would be single-bracket with random seeding, and there'd be pros here and there? What if after paying a whopping $20.00 you'd be pitted against one of the best players at the tourney? So much for your money, and all because the TO decided to change one of the BBR's recommended metagame-altering rules, huh?

They're just guidelines, but it should be noted that some rules are best not messed around with, due to how our metagame has formed around them. They can change stages, sure why not? They can stop standing infinites, they can apply LGLs, but they're not as gamepbreaking as raising or lowering the stock count by 1, or turning on items.

Plus, seing as the Brawl Back Room is the "elite group" of the Brawl scene in SmashBoards, and SmashBoards is the leading competitive smash website by a long run, then we can safely say that they actually do hold power. The powerless ones are us, who are nothing more than normal members of the competitive scene. TOs revolve around players' willingness to participate, and players depend on TOs running tourneys... Both of them depend on the Back Roomers of their respective game to be the leaders of the competitive scene and provide an enjoyable competitive ruling to play with. With no Back Room and no recommended ruleset, TOs would be throwing out rules without rationalizing together if it would be a good idea to do so in the first place. And if the TOs would join up and discuss these things so as to make a proper set of rules, then guess what: another version of the Back Room has been created in the world where Back Rooms don't exist.

 

[volume]

Quote:
Side note to even more complainers, metaknight is not as bad, not worse, and not anywhere near the brokenness of Akuma, you people have to stop spouting that like a mantra as well.

ok wtf akuma isnt broken he is balanced he has LOW hp and he can be easily countered if times right and you play a lil on the defencive side you can win.

 

[Akaku94]

lol @ kwekky dedicating an essay towards my joke posts.

Oh sure. Now they're joke posts... you should have just quit the trolling six pages ago.

Anyway, back on topic, Anti-ban only has so many arguments they can use, and they have... over and over and over...

- MK's not broken!
- Diddy's a counter!
- Quit whining and get better!
- It's not fair to MK Mains!
- Let's put more limits on him!
- Lol @ your arguments!
- Post count +1!
- Is not!
- LALALALALA! I can't hear you!


Besides those (and a few of those are ridiculous... come to think of it, all of those are ridiculous) there hasn't been really any discussion, while pro-ban keeps giving layer upon layer of evidence...

Ignoring the opposition's arguments does nothing for you but prove your lack of understanding or unwillingness to have an intelligent discussion.

Seriously, grow up.



EDIT - I'm going to bed...

 

[ThatGuyYouMightKnow]

Note: It's the TO's tourney. You have no control over it, foo. Go or don't go. rofl

And yeah, so far, what Akaku said. I guess.

 

[Eternal Yoshi]

normally yes, you have to keep in mind that this wasn't intended to be a fighting game though and that it's creator went out of his way in other area's, admitting himself that he was doing it, to prevent if from being competitive. given the circumstances I think a lot of things like MK/snake in general, chain grabs, were probably intentional

Bolded being most imporatant. That might have done more damage to the game than anything else.

I don't think we should compare MK to anyone since he a special case that isn't comparable.

Not to mention that Smash and the habits and logic used in Smash, like other Nintendo Games in General, don't transfer over into other games of the same genre very well.
Sorry Nintendo, it's true.

Most of the arguments in Akaku's post have been debunked, most recently a few pages ago.

 

[AvaricePanda]

Oh sure. Now they're joke posts... you should have just quit the trolling six pages ago.

Anyway, back on topic, Anti-ban only has so many arguments they can use, and they have... over and over and over...

- MK's not broken!
- Diddy's a counter!
- Quit whining and get better!
- It's not fair to MK Mains!
- Let's put more limits on him!
- Lol @ your arguments!
- Post count +1!
- Is not!
- LALALALALA! I can't hear you!


Besides those (and a few of those are ridiculous... come to think of it, all of those are ridiculous) there hasn't been really any discussion, while pro-ban keeps giving layer upon layer of evidence...

Ignoring the opposition's arguments does nothing for you but prove your lack of understanding or unwillingness to have an intelligent discussion.

Seriously, grow up.



EDIT - I'm going to bed...

...

Long post warning. The three bolded posts are my concerns.

How much dominance is too much?

This has been brought up before and quickly dismissed, but it's a serious question. The pro-ban argument has shown a lot of information that Meta Knight is dominating; this is something that shouldn't come as a surprise. However, we don't know if the dominance is banworthy because we don't know how much dominance is too much. The cutoff would be different from person to person, so the information shown could be overdomination to some and perfectly fine to others

Any dominance cutoffs created by this point would be biased — that much is obvious.

What happens after Meta Knight is banned?

Again, this is another point that's been brought up. We only know a few things for certain:

1)An MK ban will force a large chunk of the Brawl community to change their mains for MK banned events.
2)An MK ban (should) bring in more varied tournament results.

The former is the only thing we really know for sure. There's no true proof of the latter happening, but it's hard to argue against with the character rankings and match-ups presented. What happens past then — increased tournament attendance, a split in the community, past MK mains remaining top pros, new players coming, Brawl lasting longer, etc — is all speculation. We have no way of knowing what will actually happen, but there are definitely many concerns about what would happen to the community.

Suppose you take a region, like Atlantic North, that has a good amount of MK mains, and it's after the MK ban. Would all of the TOs follow through with the ban? Suppose they all or mostly don't, and within Atlantic North the competitive scene remains as it usually has been. What happens if they try to host a national, or MK players want to compete in a national out of region? They probably won't be able to well because of the MK-banned vs. MK-legal tournament attendee discord. Suppose some TOs follow the ban and others keep MK legal. What happens to attendance within region with all of the MK mains? Will they only go to MK allowed tournaments? Will non-MK mains go to those same tournaments, or will they keep to the MK banned ones? Will they just switch mains? Suppose most or all TOs follow the ban. What happens to the large chunk of MK mains in the region? There probably won't be enough people that quit because of MK and are waiting to come back to fill in their shoes, so does the region just suffer if all the MK mains decide to quit? Or do they just switch mains?

There are too many questions that we can't answer because we don't know for sure what will happen with an MK ban. The game could turn out better or worse, but we don't know.

(One thing that an MK ban will not do, however, is magically increase tournament attendees. While some increase may happen over time, a bunch of new players won't join the competitive scene simply because MK is banned. Attendance is somewhat different only in the sense that if a region is literally turning into MK dittos and people are quitting in the region because of that, then an MK ban would increase the attendance. It won't bring in new players or tournament goers. That's more of the issue of the tournament itself. I'll expand on this later.)

A possible solution for the “We don't know anything!” dilemna is a temp ban. Banning MK for a time period like 6 months could provide the evidence we need to make a final verdict. However, I'm very wary about a temp ban because we don't know for sure if the evidence and results we find would show what we'd get with a permanent ban. It's all up to what the TOs and players do; if there's a split with MK-banned and MK-legal tournaments, we won't get very accurate results. If certain players just stop playing, or only go to MK-legal tournaments, etc., it's the same result.

Is Meta Knight a real problem in the Brawl community right now?

Think about this question for a second before you instantly say “yes.” This question is ignoring the theorycraft, the ban criteria concerns, the LGL rule specifics, all of that stuff — looking at the real picture of actual tournaments, is Meta Knight a real problem?

MK ban threads usually only come around the time of a national. CoT4, Genesis, SNES, Pound 4, etc, and there's usually not much commotion about the MK ban until then. When the thread comes up and we see tournament results, everybody goes frantic. Why? The results of nationals shouldn't be surprising; top players get top spots, a lot of top players main Meta Knight, Meta Knight gets a lot of top spots.

People like to throw around blanket statements of how much MK is destroying the community, how MK is overcentralizing the metagame, how MK is decreasing tournament attendance — I even heard that the game wouldn't last until 2010 (which is obviously false). However, what MK actually does to the community seems to be quite region specific. For example, I heard that New Mexico (from Dekar), GtaN (from Swordgard), and Puerto Rico (from Kewkky) have all had MK problems or overcentralization to the point where they had to ban the character. He would consistently be taking 6-7 out of the top 8, and people have stopped going to tournaments because of him in the regions. In that case, a ban is completely understandable.

What about everywhere else?

What about places like Atlantic North, where a lot of people main MK but a lot of people are fine with it, and a ban of MK would cut a large chunk of the playerbase? What about places like Eastern Midwest, where MK exists but isn't really dominating? In most places, sure MK has the top results since he's the best character in the game, but he's not a real problem. People have mentioned the slow decline of tournament attendance and have correlated it with the slow increase of MK's results. Honest question: Do you think a ban of MK will boost tournament attnedance in your region?

If you answered yes, stop and think for a bit. I said before in a parenthetical remark that a MK ban wouldn't bring any more new attendees, and except for special cases such as New Mexico, GtaN, and Puerto Rico, his ban wouldn't really bring much more tournament attendance. Certain regions have been having trouble with attendance recently, and more likely than not it isn't because of MK dominance that attendance is declining, but of tournaments themselves.

The MD/VA tournament scene was struggling a few months ago (not sure if it's the same now) mainly because of how tournaments were run. They usually had $10 venue fees, not great venues, top 3 payouts, and sometimes no pools. This is horrible for anybody who isn't around top 5-10 in the region, and it's especially horrible for the worse players. Imagine being new to the competitive scene (AKA probably not good), driving a good distance to go to a tournament, shelling out $30 for entry+gas+food, having the tournament go slowly because of the lack of set-ups, and when it's all said and done you only play two matches because of the lack of pools. That's not even worst case scenario — that happens in quite a lot of tournaments (I'm not taking a stab at MD/VA by the way, this is just in general). They're set up and run badly, and as a result the lower end of the player spectrum has a bad experience and no motivation to go to future tournaments. They don't see much hope of getting better, and it just isn't fun for them. This leads to tournament attendance decline. Things like losing to a planking Meta Knight may contribute a small bit to this, but it's hardly the main reason why attendance is lacking.

Now let's take a look at Ohio. Ohio's tournaments are amazingly well run, and as a result they have a huge and very competitive scene. If you have the time, I'd advise you to read this thread (it's the chat between AlphaZealot and Takeover, and AZ gives great advice on how to run a tournament. How his tournaments are run are pretty much how most of Ohio's tournaments are run).

Anyway, I've heard from pretty much all sources, from AIM, on SWF, and in person, that Ohio tournaments are just fun experiences. TOs and helpers such as AZ, Nope, Keist, and OS all do the suggested things for smooth and fun tournaments, so it caters really well to everyone. They have cheap entry fees, tournaments that run on time, pools, and tournaments in each region: Springfield, Cincinnati, Columbus, NEOH. The result is a large amount of good players all competing for the Ohio Power Rankings.

I don't know from experience, but I heard that SoCal was in a slump similar to MD/VA, but Champ with 2GoodGaming has stepped it up with tournaments and helped boost the scene there.

Overall, what I'm trying to say is that region's tournament success or tournament troubles doesn't seem to have anything to do with MK. All of those regions have their share of MK mains, good and bad. Their existence doesn't have an effect on the tournament scenes.

Those are my three viewpoints on those questions. I feel that MK's dominance is region specific and we can't put a broad blanket over how MK performs in the world. I feel that we can't know what will happen afterwards if a ban was instituted, and there's no evidence to suggest the ban will improve the community. I feel that MK isn't even a problem in the community right now, and while we can argue over specifics about him on SWF, he doesn't have actual impact on a region's tournament attendance — other factors do and we should be addressing those. Because of all this, I'm anti-ban.

I know for a fact I left something major out I wanted to say. I also lost focus towards the end of this and rambled on some points. This is much wordier than I hoped. Hopefully anyone who wants to say anything about my points won't nitpick at small things and will get the big picture of what I'm saying, but hopefully people aren't strictly arguing against my points anyway; it's exactly what we shouldn't be doing. We've been having redundant arguments over the MK ban since fall of 2008, and we haven't accomplished much or anything since then.

...



...

lol

To Dekar, BPC, and everyone else:

There are stupid people on both sides of this argument, but the main reason this argument exists in the first place is because both sides are concerned about the health of competitive smash. Pro-ban wants to ban MK for the better of competitive Brawl, anti-ban wants to keep MK for the better of competitive Brawl, and both sides are trying to prove to the other why.

I honestly think that, at least before MLG was introduced, banning MK was too much of a leap of faith to commit to (with the only realistically confirmed thing being more character diversity, which I can't see relating to prolonged tournament attendance), and there was as much of a chance of community split or nothing changing as there was more overall tournament attendance. That could easily change after MLG, and I could easily be pro-ban if I think it's going to significantly prolong and/or save its life.

But I don't understand why this discussion's even going on now. With MLG being a large part of the scene, banning MK now would be disastrous. I can't see it as being an possible option until after MLG, so I don't understand why people are wasting their time getting frustrated over the issue really, or why people are talking about things that have been talked about 500 times.

+1 post count

boy generalizations sure are fun and get so much accomplished and I haven't heard this 200 times already.

+1 post count while this thread remains unlocked for whatever reason.

 

[volume]

Oh sure. Now they're joke posts... you should have just quit the trolling six pages ago.

Anyway, back on topic, Anti-ban only has so many arguments they can use, and they have... over and over and over...

- MK's not broken!
- Diddy's a counter!
- Quit whining and get better!
- It's not fair to MK Mains!
- Let's put more limits on him!
- Lol @ your arguments!
- Post count +1!
- Is not!
- LALALALALA! I can't hear you!


Besides those (and a few of those are ridiculous... come to think of it, all of those are ridiculous) there hasn't been really any discussion, while pro-ban keeps giving layer upon layer of evidence...

Ignoring the opposition's arguments does nothing for you but prove your lack of understanding or unwillingness to have an intelligent discussion.

Seriously, grow up.

^ perfect now we need more people to stop defending him and people to stop saying ally wants easy money. remember rob+pit+almost all characters have more of a chance to beat snake then they do to beat meta knight. (assuming ALL characters are at max level in play)

 

[Eternal Yoshi]

If it gets locked, chances are, the tactical board will be flooded with Ban MK/Don't Ban MK threads again.
The multiple threads from OS/Omni/etc. from earlier in the year post Pound 4 prompted this thread to be made.

 

[Kewkky]

Note: It's the TO's tourney. You have no control over it, foo. Go or don't go. rofl

And yeah, so far, what Akaku said. I guess.

TOs run out of business if players don't go. PPlayers run out of tourneys if TOs host none. TOs are as dependant on players, as the players are of TOs. Accept it, it's true.

And where do you think today's metagame's rules originated from? Sakurai? A group of players came together and made the first recommended ruleset, and people started using it. The more the game matured, they decided to update it, and v2.0 happened. Later in the future, v3.0 will probably happen, and you'll see players wanting to use this and praise the Back Room because of the nice rules, kind of like the newest Melee Ruleset thread in Tournament Discussions (if you want to see what I'm talking about, check out the replies on the thread). Players enjoy the official rules, and TOs base their rules around the official ones (or just copy+paste them). So, yeah, the Back Roomers have power over the competitive scene.

 

[volume]

If it gets locked, chances are, the tactical board will be flooded with Ban MK/Don't Ban MK threads again.
The multiple threads from OS/Omni/etc. from earlier in the year post Pound 4 prompted this thread to be made.

oh so they made this just so they didnt have to listen to the other people of the community? sounds like they're avoiding it? or what? if you want to lock this why did they make it? it's just one thread compared to the many people would make after locking it.

 

[Eternal Yoshi]

No. Many of the threads were from Overswarm(BBR member) and they almost completely filled the first page of the forum.

 

[adumbrodeus]

You mean Overswarm (defacto head of the pro-ban movement), cause that's what's relevant here.

 

[volume]

You mean Overswarm (defacto head of the pro-ban movement), cause that's what's relevant here.

makes sence

 

[ThatGuyYouMightKnow]

TOs run out of business if players don't go. PPlayers run out of tourneys if TOs host none. TOs are as dependant on players, as the players are of TOs. Accept it, it's true.

And where do you think today's metagame's rules originated from? Sakurai? A group of players came together and made the first recommended ruleset, and people started using it. The more the game matured, they decided to update it, and v2.0 happened. Later in the future, v3.0 will probably happen, and you'll see players wanting to use this and praise the Back Room because of the nice rules, kind of like the newest Melee Ruleset thread in Tournament Discussions (if you want to see what I'm talking about, check out the replies on the thread). Players enjoy the official rules, and TOs base their rules around the official ones (or just copy+paste them). So, yeah, the Back Roomers have power over the competitive scene.

There's still the fact that players don't have to go, TO's don't have to go by official rules.

It happens. Ye, usually they do though. Saying you have power over the competitive scene isn't the most correct statement you could make. lol

 

[volume]

ok know what ill just wait til i see meta finnaly banned because no matter how much they fight back there is only maybe 3 good reasons not to ban him and like 20 good reasons to ban him. the more they defend him the more pissed off they will get. then they will give up on the matter and ban him all the people who stop playing after will break the community because they cant *** out and win every tourney with that **** character. so see yea we ban him and we lose and we dont ban him we lose so together = failure

 

[Judo777]

Ok seriously I'm sooo tired of reading "Why isn't this thread locked yet?" This thread as stated in the first post is here so that it is the only thread on the topic that will pop up many more times of not for this thread.

SO NO the thread should NOT be locked cause its serving its purpose. Idk why people get on this thread... and then say why isn't it locked? you dont have to read it if you dont like it so why are u if u dont? The only people who should ask that question are mods who can actually lock the thread and are doing their job.

Sounds to me like there are alot of people who are saying "Dang i wish they would close this thread so we can forget about the possibility of a temp ban......"

 

[etecoon]

most of those threads were OS's, he's gotten bored with this again so there's not much point.

 

[giuocob]

Because the majority of this thread is now post count whoring.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

PottyJokes, you're not doing ANYTHING in this thread worth reading. I would suggest you should stop posting here and lurk the thread instead, all you're doing is looking to derail topics and piss off people.

I hate going into this thread and reading your posts because they are literally worth nothing. They haven't contributed a thing, and all they do is up your post count worse than what other people are doing. At least THEY are serious more times than they're not.


Just a warning.

I <3 you

PS: On-topic, a quick rebuttal... Metaknight is too good. It's obvious. The problems people have when playing against Snake compared to the problems people have when playing against MK screams "MK is way better", and the character is, not the players. The top mainers might be skilled (and they are), but the truth is that MK is giving them a boost larger than the boost Snake gives to his mainers. Just glimpsing at his option pool at all times and the speed of his attacks is enough to point out this conclusion. And not just that, but he's insane in more areas than one, two or three. Not to mention he has a legitimate strategy (which I still call pseudo-stalling) that can only be properly countered by himself, as well as an option to avoid pressure from other characters by accessing a route which a vast amount of the cast would be stupid to follow him through.

I still think that MK has to be dealt with. A few pages back (today I read 5 pages of 40-posts-per-page to get back on track), there were a number of pro-ban BBRs talking here against M2K, the only anti-ban representative of the BBR seen here for a while, and his stance was skewed due to his opinions being based on his inability to understand what others see (which I consider to be a form of elitism, he believes he's right and refuses to accept that everyone else who isn't him is right in this case). It was a funny sight, but I'm glad they're actively participating and keeping an eye on the discussions of this thread. It made me feel like there's still a possibility that MK will be banned (which is still "dealing with MK"), and made me wonder that if there's actually a majority of the BBR who are anti ban, where are they and why aren't they acting like leaders of the metagame and telling the players WHY they're anti-ban (besides the obvious "get better" remarks and the such)? Or WHY they view MK as non-banworthy?

I think this one is pretty simple. People who don't see MK as too good (there aren't many) are either noobs who haven't seen the top metagame/beat their friends' ****ty MKs with ganon every week, or those who have a **** good reason to not see him as too good. I already explained a couple times that TOs lose money for hosting MK-banned tournaments when it is not the official norm. MK Mains? Yeah, they definitely lose money.

Quote:
Side note to even more complainers, metaknight is not as bad, not worse, and not anywhere near the brokenness of Akuma, you people have to stop spouting that like a mantra as well.

ok wtf akuma isnt broken he is balanced he has LOW hp and he can be easily countered if times right and you play a lil on the defencive side you can win.

Actually, MK is far more broken than akuma with no limits set on him. MILES more broken in fact. A more accurate comparison would be to Ivan Ooze.

lol

To Dekar, BPC, and everyone else:

There are stupid people on both sides of this argument, but the main reason this argument exists in the first place is because both sides are concerned about the health of competitive smash. Pro-ban wants to ban MK for the better of competitive Brawl, anti-ban wants to keep MK for the better of competitive Brawl, and both sides are trying to prove to the other why.

I'm doubting the motives of many anti-bans (ESPECIALLY M2K, who still seems to support a position similar to that of creationists-no evidence for, all evidence for the contradicting theory, "LALALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOUR EVIDENCE"). Seriously. But okay...

I honestly think that, at least before MLG was introduced, banning MK was too much of a leap of faith to commit to (with the only realistically confirmed thing being more character diversity, which I can't see relating to prolonged tournament attendance), and there was as much of a chance of community split or nothing changing as there was more overall tournament attendance. That could easily change after MLG, and I could easily be pro-ban if I think it's going to significantly prolong and/or save its life.

But I don't understand why this discussion's even going on now. With MLG being a large part of the scene, banning MK now would be disastrous. I can't see it as being an possible option until after MLG, so I don't understand why people are wasting their time getting frustrated over the issue really, or why people are talking about things that have been talked about 500 times.

+1 post count

It makes sense not to ban Metaknight until after the MLG season is over. Changing the rules before then will alienate a ton of top players who main Metaknight. This we agree on.

Long post warning. The three bolded posts are my concerns.

How much dominance is too much?

This has been brought up before and quickly dismissed, but it's a serious question. The pro-ban argument has shown a lot of information that Meta Knight is dominating; this is something that shouldn't come as a surprise. However, we don't know if the dominance is banworthy because we don't know how much dominance is too much. The cutoff would be different from person to person, so the information shown could be overdomination to some and perfectly fine to others

Any dominance cutoffs created by this point would be biased — that much is obvious.

"Dominance is subjective". The problem? It will STAY subjective. Most of the evidence is there-it's up to us to create a point where we say "enough is enough". However, a lot of people think that 75% isn't enough. Some think that 100% isn't enough (the really biased ones). This is not going to change, sadly.

What happens after Meta Knight is banned?

Again, this is another point that's been brought up. We only know a few things for certain:

1)An MK ban will force a large chunk of the Brawl community to change their mains for MK banned events.
2)An MK ban (should) bring in more varied tournament results.

The former is the only thing we really know for sure. There's no true proof of the latter happening, but it's hard to argue against with the character rankings and match-ups presented. What happens past then — increased tournament attendance, a split in the community, past MK mains remaining top pros, new players coming, Brawl lasting longer, etc — is all speculation. We have no way of knowing what will actually happen, but there are definitely many concerns about what would happen to the community.

If the old MK mains remain top pros, pick up other characters and then turn around and pull the same kind of (or even similar results to) results that they pulled with Metaknight, this would be a sign that "wow, MK mains really are just better at smash" as opposed to what the evidence is pointing to, that MK is just way better than other characters. Should this be the case, then the ban is wrong and there is no reason to keep Metaknight banned. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Suppose you take a region, like Atlantic North, that has a good amount of MK mains, and it's after the MK ban. Would all of the TOs follow through with the ban? Suppose they all or mostly don't, and within Atlantic North the competitive scene remains as it usually has been. What happens if they try to host a national, or MK players want to compete in a national out of region? They probably won't be able to well because of the MK-banned vs. MK-legal tournament attendee discord. Suppose some TOs follow the ban and others keep MK legal. What happens to attendance within region with all of the MK mains? Will they only go to MK allowed tournaments? Will non-MK mains go to those same tournaments, or will they keep to the MK banned ones? Will they just switch mains? Suppose most or all TOs follow the ban. What happens to the large chunk of MK mains in the region? There probably won't be enough people that quit because of MK and are waiting to come back to fill in their shoes, so does the region just suffer if all the MK mains decide to quit? Or do they just switch mains?

And here we have the biggest problem, and the strongest argument against a ban. I'm going to formulate a simpler version of this:

"As long as all of the largest and most important tournaments do not agree to follow the BBR ruling on banning metaknight, and as long as a majority of TOs do not agree to ban Metaknight in their tournament, Metaknight-banned regions lose money, face, and skill against metaknight."

There are too many questions that we can't answer because we don't know for sure what will happen with an MK ban. The game could turn out better or worse, but we don't know.

(One thing that an MK ban will not do, however, is magically increase tournament attendees. While some increase may happen over time, a bunch of new players won't join the competitive scene simply because MK is banned. Attendance is somewhat different only in the sense that if a region is literally turning into MK dittos and people are quitting in the region because of that, then an MK ban would increase the attendance. It won't bring in new players or tournament goers. That's more of the issue of the tournament itself. I'll expand on this later.)

One goal is kinda to bring back people who quit about MK. Remember when PR quit for a while? Like, the whole region? Then they came back and started learning metaknight.

A possible solution for the “We don't know anything!” dilemna is a temp ban. Banning MK for a time period like 6 months could provide the evidence we need to make a final verdict. However, I'm very wary about a temp ban because we don't know for sure if the evidence and results we find would show what we'd get with a permanent ban. It's all up to what the TOs and players do; if there's a split with MK-banned and MK-legal tournaments, we won't get very accurate results. If certain players just stop playing, or only go to MK-legal tournaments, etc., it's the same result.

We'd have to set up a condition for when the temp ban turns into a permanent ban, but this runs into the problems I mentioned above. Plus, it has the same problems as a permanent ban-if not everyone goes with it, ESPECIALLY if the nationals don't go with it, ESPECIALLY if MLG doesn't go with it, then MK-banned regions lose skill, money, and face.

Is Meta Knight a real problem in the Brawl community right now?

Think about this question for a second before you instantly say “yes.” This question is ignoring the theorycraft, the ban criteria concerns, the LGL rule specifics, all of that stuff — looking at the real picture of actual tournaments, is Meta Knight a real problem?

MK ban threads usually only come around the time of a national. CoT4, Genesis, SNES, Pound 4, etc, and there's usually not much commotion about the MK ban until then. When the thread comes up and we see tournament results, everybody goes frantic. Why? The results of nationals shouldn't be surprising; top players get top spots, a lot of top players main Meta Knight, Meta Knight gets a lot of top spots.

Causation? Are these MK mains incredible smashers? Well duh. But how far is Metaknight carrying them? If M2K mained Marth, or DDD, would he still dominate tournaments like he does with Metaknight? Just pointing this out.

People like to throw around blanket statements of how much MK is destroying the community, how MK is overcentralizing the metagame, how MK is decreasing tournament attendance — I even heard that the game wouldn't last until 2010 (which is obviously false). However, what MK actually does to the community seems to be quite region specific. For example, I heard that New Mexico (from Dekar), GtaN (from Swordgard), and Puerto Rico (from Kewkky) have all had MK problems or overcentralization to the point where they had to ban the character. He would consistently be taking 6-7 out of the top 8, and people have stopped going to tournaments because of him in the regions. In that case, a ban is completely understandable.

What about everywhere else?

Wait hang on, this isn't enough? I'm just gonna say that when that many regions are having trouble with overcentralization, and it's proven that the character has the tools to be this overcentralizing... isn't the problem that the MKs in other regions just haven't caught up yet?

What about places like Atlantic North, where a lot of people main MK but a lot of people are fine with it, and a ban of MK would cut a large chunk of the playerbase? What about places like Eastern Midwest, where MK exists but isn't really dominating? In most places, sure MK has the top results since he's the best character in the game, but he's not a real problem. People have mentioned the slow decline of tournament attendance and have correlated it with the slow increase of MK's results. Honest question: Do you think a ban of MK will boost tournament attnedance in your region?

My region does not play smash. Germany ****ing SUCKS.

If you answered yes, stop and think for a bit. I said before in a parenthetical remark that a MK ban wouldn't bring any more new attendees, and except for special cases such as New Mexico, GtaN, and Puerto Rico, his ban wouldn't really bring much more tournament attendance. Certain regions have been having trouble with attendance recently, and more likely than not it isn't because of MK dominance that attendance is declining, but of tournaments themselves.

The MD/VA tournament scene was struggling a few months ago (not sure if it's the same now) mainly because of how tournaments were run. They usually had $10 venue fees, not great venues, top 3 payouts, and sometimes no pools. This is horrible for anybody who isn't around top 5-10 in the region, and it's especially horrible for the worse players. Imagine being new to the competitive scene (AKA probably not good), driving a good distance to go to a tournament, shelling out $30 for entry+gas+food, having the tournament go slowly because of the lack of set-ups, and when it's all said and done you only play two matches because of the lack of pools. That's not even worst case scenario — that happens in quite a lot of tournaments (I'm not taking a stab at MD/VA by the way, this is just in general). They're set up and run badly, and as a result the lower end of the player spectrum has a bad experience and no motivation to go to future tournaments. They don't see much hope of getting better, and it just isn't fun for them. This leads to tournament attendance decline. Things like losing to a planking Meta Knight may contribute a small bit to this, but it's hardly the main reason why attendance is lacking.

Now let's take a look at Ohio. Ohio's tournaments are amazingly well run, and as a result they have a huge and very competitive scene. If you have the time, I'd advise you to read this thread (it's the chat between AlphaZealot and Takeover, and AZ gives great advice on how to run a tournament. How his tournaments are run are pretty much how most of Ohio's tournaments are run).

Anyway, I've heard from pretty much all sources, from AIM, on SWF, and in person, that Ohio tournaments are just fun experiences. TOs and helpers such as AZ, Nope, Keist, and OS all do the suggested things for smooth and fun tournaments, so it caters really well to everyone. They have cheap entry fees, tournaments that run on time, pools, and tournaments in each region: Springfield, Cincinnati, Columbus, NEOH. The result is a large amount of good players all competing for the Ohio Power Rankings.

I don't know from experience, but I heard that SoCal was in a slump similar to MD/VA, but Champ with 2GoodGaming has stepped it up with tournaments and helped boost the scene there.

Overall, what I'm trying to say is that region's tournament success or tournament troubles doesn't seem to have anything to do with MK. All of those regions have their share of MK mains, good and bad. Their existence doesn't have an effect on the tournament scenes.

This argument makes a lot of sense. Just out of curiousity, how are tournaments run in places with MK problems? Does Ohio have MK problems at all?

Those are my three viewpoints on those questions. I feel that MK's dominance is region specific and we can't put a broad blanket over how MK performs in the world.

Hang on a second. He gets anywhere from 3-7 spots in top 8 in almost every national.

I feel that we can't know what will happen afterwards if a ban was instituted, and there's no evidence to suggest the ban will improve the community. I feel that MK isn't even a problem in the community right now, and while we can argue over specifics about him on SWF, he doesn't have actual impact on a region's tournament attendance — other factors do and we should be addressing those. Because of all this, I'm anti-ban.

I know for a fact I left something major out I wanted to say. I also lost focus towards the end of this and rambled on some points. This is much wordier than I hoped. Hopefully anyone who wants to say anything about my points won't nitpick at small things and will get the big picture of what I'm saying, but hopefully people aren't strictly arguing against my points anyway; it's exactly what we shouldn't be doing. We've been having redundant arguments over the MK ban since fall of 2008, and we haven't accomplished much or anything since then.

This is definitely the best (partially because it's really good, partially because it's the ONLY) anti-ban argument. Anyone else wanna take a crack at it?

EDIT: I hold to my previous blanket statement that Anti-ban eats babies.

EDIT2: And now I'm late for school. Thanks for making such a ****ing huge post for me to respond to, you inconsiderate jerk. :V

 

[Turbo Ether]

MK is too ingrained in Brawl culture at this point. Maybe you guys can ban him in the next game.

 

[ANTi_]

Lol @ How fast the Brawl scene will decline if MK gets banned.

 

[-Ran]

Lol @ How fast the Brawl Scene will decline if MK doesn't get banned.

 

[etecoon]

Lol @ How fast the Brawl Scene will decline

 

[ANTi_]

Lol @ How fast the Brawl Scene will decline if MK doesn't get banned.

I don't see **** declining right now and Meta Knight has been around for like 2 years lol.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I don't see **** declining right now and Meta Knight has been around for like 2 years lol.

It has been.

 

[etecoon]

It has been.

you would have a lot of experience with this LOL

 

[Judo777]

really cause i dont know very many people that would quit if Mk got banned. Infact i dont even know that many MK mains that would quit if MK were banned. Lol @ M2K (who i don't believe would quit either)

 

[-Ran]

I don't see **** declining right now and Meta Knight has been around for like 2 years lol.

I'm aware of countless players in numerous regions that have all stated that they quit because of Meta Knight, and would return if he wasn't here. I know of many players that were at 'pot feeder level' that quit because they couldn't stand getting constantly tornado spammed. I'm not saying the best of the best players quit Brawl, but rather many players that would otherwise be increasing the tournament turn outs have. Meta Knight has been demonized to the extent of a grade-school bully and is mentally demoralizing to many players, which results in lower tournament numbers.

 

[solecalibur]

Look a metaknight main defending his main
old ****
anti and ececoon backing nothing up other then Lol Im an idiot and I dont have a valid argument so im going to yell random **** and pretend my option is right with nothing backing up my argument

 

[PottyJokes]

rofl @ bpc acting as if he knows whether the scene is declining or not. the dude lives in the middle of nowhere germany and plays with computers and planks them.

 

[etecoon]

Look a metaknight main defending his main
old ****
anti and ececoon backing nothing up other then Lol Im an idiot and I dont have a valid argument so im going to yell random **** and pretend my option is right with nothing backing up my argument

uh, I'm in favor of a temp ban wtf you talking about

and you claiming that anyone elses posts are ignorant and baseless LOL

 

[Espy Rose]

rofl @ bpc acting as if he knows whether the scene is declining or not. the dude lives in the middle of nowhere germany and plays with computers and planks them.

Declining? Not sure. I can't say too much about that.

But at least in my general area, the game is getting incredibly stale.
Staleness is one simple stone throw away from significant decline.

 

[ANTi_]

I'm aware of countless players in numerous regions that have all stated that they quit because of Meta Knight, and would return if he wasn't here. I know of many players that were at 'pot feeder level' that quit because they couldn't stand getting constantly tornado spammed. I'm not saying the best of the best players quit Brawl, but rather many players that would otherwise be increasing the tournament turn outs have. Meta Knight has been demonized to the extent of a grade-school bully and is mentally demoralizing to many players, which results in lower tournament numbers.

I lol'd at the last sentences so imma let you have it.

and solecalibur shut the **** up idiot i just stated my opinion if you dont like it hop off my nuts you nobdody..

who the **** names themself after a game?

GUYS CALL ME TEKKEN 6.

 

[-Ran]

You're more of an Ehrgeiz to me.

 

[AllyKnight]

I lol'd at the last sentences so imma let you have it.

and solecalibur shut the **** up idiot i just stated my opinion if you dont like it hop off my nuts you nobdody..

who the **** names themself after a game?

GUYS CALL ME TEKKEN 6.

lmao anti <3

**** MK still.

 

[Gnes]

I lol'd at the last sentences so imma let you have it.

and solecalibur shut the **** up idiot i just stated my opinion if you dont like it hop off my nuts you nobdody..

who the **** names themself after a game?

GUYS CALL ME TEKKEN 6.

LMAFO...simply incredible.

If declining=turnout, then possibly. Ever since mk has been unbanned hobos have been slightly declining. Of course this is brought along by other factors as well, but mk is still one of the more "influential" elements.

(writing at 3 am basically )