didn't your grand data sincerely try to tell people that bowser is s-tier in project m?
your way of getting data is awful, stop blaming everyone around you for that
Uh... no. My data for Project M showed who
was winning. It didn't matter what you thought, Bowser was the most successful. Period. As in it wasn't an argument, it's what happened. Whether he was actually S tier or not was up to discussion. It wasn't a tier list, it was a success tier list.
Lol I understand the ridiculous nature of this post, considering the game isn't out yet. But I think it's necessary to throw out the argument against pointless experimentation. And I did it in a way that'd get people talking.
For the record, I'm not against an expanded stagelist, but I am against wasting time experimenting on stages like Japes, Peach's Castle, etc. You can see the new stages and know pretty quickly that they're not fit for competitive play for reasons that have been mentioned several times on this thread already.
I completely and fully support throwing out posts in a way that gets people talking, even if the post itself is dumb. It's hard to get people to talk about anything.
You can learn pretty quickly what stages that NEED to be banned can be banned, but a lot of people bring stages that really don't have that problem into it. Like, ya know, Japes. Peach's Castle needed to be banned because it had a pseudo-circle camping thing going on. I remember because I got to sit down with Iggy and show him at FC. Characters like Fox could run away from characters like Marth, hop over the side, and repeat ad infinitum. Corneria needed to be banned because you could run away and laser camp with Fox and Falco and then, when at a high %, camp the fin area and
wall jump tech to get a free "get out of jail free card" that started the cycle over again. On top of all of this, Young Link could crouch on the guns when he had the lead and block any of the guns shots. Most characters couldn't reliably make it down there to attack him and, if they could, couldn't reliably make it back.
I get banning stages like Hyrule Temple quickly. I don't get banning stages like Jungle Japes
at all, and you've put it in your list.
I freely admit I don't have the data that Overswarm has. One question though, I briefly read over the argument regarding Norfair as a better equalizer of stock differences than Smashville. In my experience, I recall counterpick stages being used as a way to equalize skill differentials between superior and inferior players. So, the decrease in 3 or 2 stock victories may be more indicative of the stage mitigating one player's superior skill over another's. Knowing that's how counter stages are often used, in my experience, I've come to believe there's something wrong with someone trading ability for stage knowledge, and being rewarded for that decision.
This comes from an ignorant perspective. ALL stages are counterpick stages, depending on the character. I don't have all my data in front of me anymore (I don't have access to my back room thread and I don't know what imgur account I uploaded images to, and I don't have the excel files anymore), but I can tell you that your "guess" is incorrect.
We saw consistent data from what people considered counterpicks. If a character did better on the stage he not only had more wins, he won with more stocks. There's no such thing as a counter-pick that grants you 1 stock high % victories.
If what you were saying was true we'd have found that ALL starter stages had more 3 stocks and 2 stocks and all CPs had closer to 1 stock... except not only does this make no sense, but we found the opposite. The data didn't support it.
Diddy did better on FD when he got it. Wario did better on Norfair.
It's not rocket science. There's no room for "well I'd guess that...". It's numbers. Cold, hard numbers.
You think Jungle Japes should be banned? I can respect that you think it needs looking into.
But here's the question you have to ask:
If your theory on Jungle Japes is correct, what data could you collect to confirm it?
Because people said that Jungle Japes biggest problem was that it "forced timeouts", but those same people weren't willing to ban PS1 despite Japes having virtually no timeouts and PS1 having several.
Solution? Don't ban Jungle Japes because it forced timeouts because, well, it didn't.
That's how it should work. You think Japes is too strong a counterpick for character X? Let's observe character X, crunch the data, and see how well he does on OTHER stages and then how well he does on THAT stage. If we see a discrepancy in the data that indicates he's doing MUCH better on that stage we can consider it a "strong counterpick".
Too strong? Well let's compare it to other people's CPs! Looking at the data, if you want to ban Rainbow Cruise because it's "too strong" for MK then you would need to ban Smashville, Battlefield, Halberd, and Delfino. Those too sacred? You still need to ban FD due to Ice Climbers and their obscene win % on the stage.
That's how data works. People make assumptions, smarter people look into it, show the data, and then we move on.
All I have is experience though. I don't have a whole lot of hard data. And experience is not something that's very easy to sell to those who don't have it. Am I to list each and every experience? I'll throw one out every now and then that applies. I'll share one now:
I had a rule at "Nice Shot Hugo", where you could only counter pick a neutral if you were up against a mid-tier character. As far as Melee goes, many of the counterpick stages allowed at the time would be used strictly to hard counter lower tiered characters. If I complained about the improbability of winning as a mid-tier on these stages, I'd be told to pick a new character. It was a funny suggestion. This came at a time when character diversity wasn't viewed as a healthy, necessary thing. I declined their advice. I once even had a strategy where I'd forfeit my opponent's counter pick and move on to mine, to avoid frustration and the loss of momentum on a stage that heavily favored higher tiered characters. The top 4 at this tournament ended up being Falcon, Fox, Pikachu, and Samus.
Now the Melee stagelist reflects the same stagelist that was at my tournament. I'd have to dig into results to get the bigger picture, but at EVO, the top 8 consisted of Doc, Peach, Fox, Falco, Sheik, Jiggs, Marth, and Ice Climbers. That's damn good diversity at the largest stage of all time. Rainbow Cruise, Pokefloats, and Kongo Jungle would have mucked that all up, as these stages have in the past.
This is known as "cherry picking". People did it in the MK ban debates all the time.
What you're suggesting here is that a
diversity of character selection is a good thing. I can agree to that wholeheartedly; overcentralization is bad.
What you're suggesting is that two tournaments eons apart somehow invalidate the rest of tournament history. Not only that, one was a local and one was a national. And you used top 4 in one and top 8 in the other. It's like cramming as many cardinal sins of data as possible.
There are
rules to using Data. When I use the MLG data I use ONLY the MLG data. When using MLG data I don't talk about how Norfair hasn't ever been a problem in the midwest or how Japes has done just fine here (although I do laugh about how badly Boss got owned on the stage when he visited because he didn't know a thing about it).
You want to discuss diversity as an important factor?
You need to determine...
- character usage in the tournament (a higher number of Foxes will equate to a higher number of Foxes in the top 8, for example)
- Skill ratio between players (I could win my local events with lots of characters and alter results and some players are just better than others; you think Taj's mewtwo being in the top 8 has anything to do with diversity?)
- What an ideal diverse result looks like (how many characters in top 8? Do secondaries count?)
- What a BAD result looks like (if you have 4 Foxes and 4 other characters, is this diverse? What about 2 Foxes, 2 Falcos, 2 Marths, 2 Jiggs? Is that diverse? What about top 3 being Marth and r-8th being different? Top 3 being different but 4th-8th being Peach?)
- A large enough sample size
It takes all of that to even make an educated guess that's worthwhile.
If you can't give numbers, you're guessing.
Since this will be a new game, we'll have to assess the strengths of the characters, and figure out how those apply to certain stages. However, we can easily take a hatchet to about 60-70% of the available stages without missing anything. As I've said before, we have 2 metagames of empirical data to go off of. My concern is that we'll ignore that for the sake of experimentation on the things we should already know, similar to how we experimented with items at the beginning of Brawl even though it was as obvious as ever that they had no business existing in competitive tournaments.
We can't take a hatchet to anything. Your "empirical data" is a bunch of people using anecdotal evidence and personal preference as to why stages should be banned. Most people don't even know why most of the stages are banned to begin with!
Hell, I'd bet you'd fail the quiz on "why this stage is banned" too.
Items could have easily saved Brawl and improved tournament attendance. Do you remember the start of Brawl, with everyone complaining about how campy it was? Items would have fixed that instantly.
Remember planking? Items would have fixed that. Hell, FOOD spawning would have fixed it.
MK scrooging under the stage? Might as well use this time to get a good item.
MK too good? He probably wouldn't be such hot stuff due to his weight when other characters could use projectiles against him that have actual knockback.
Your character have a good glide toss but no projectile? Problem solved.
That would have solved all of Brawl's early problems. ALL of them, instantly.
You don't think that's worth testing? You don't even know what the items will be or how they'll work. It takes skill to use items well and you can see some ridiculous stuff with Peach's turnips in Melee.
More importantly, stages determine the tier list. You think it's an accident that characters like Olimar, Falco, ICs, Marth, and Snake are all top contenders in Brawl? It's because they're good on flat/plat stages. Look at the tier list! It's Meta Knight and then "everyone who does good on flat/plat stages".
Banning a stage because "you know" it isn't competitive would result in a garbage stage list that would serve only a select few characters. You probably think Frigate Orpheon should be banned. -_-;;
How can you support diversity in results but then go towards the stage list that produces the
opposite effect?[/quote]
