Proposed Ruleset for Smash 4 Tournaments

[LiteralGrill]

I typed a reply but my phone died.

We have lost knowledge on this day...

 

[FalKoopa]

Whoa, calm down guys...

This thread began pretty lighthearted, let's keep it that way.

 

[Ghostbone]

Back up your statements, pros and cons of your system vs pros and cons of the other. Let's compare them then see which may be better. Use some data, do something to back up your argument other then "we like it more".

Pro, Majority likes it and agrees with it
Con, Small minority doesn't like it or agree with it.

That's what it comes down to whether you like it or not.

We all probably know some ruleset making is subjective, but you need to actually back up why you used your subjectivity. He makes a fair point here, I even made the same point in another thread talking to you specifically. What makes smash special where it can magically ignore the rules of other fighting games, then expect to be accepted in the fighting game world?

Melee got into Evo, tournament with lots of fighting games , with 6 stages legal.
That's a pretty small stagelist, ignoring the so called rules of other fighting games (according to you guys), and only being 2nd in stream viewers to Marvel iirc. So uhh, it seems pretty successful, it was really hype, it got "accepted in the fighting game world," I don't see the problem.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Whoa, calm down guys...

This thread began pretty lighthearted, let's keep it that way.

I do not wish to be rude, but this thread did NOT start out lighthearted. It was inflammatory from the very beginning.

Pro, Majority likes it and agrees with it
Con, Small minority doesn't like it or agree with it.

That's what it comes down to whether you like it or not.

I want evidence, not just opinion. A lot of this minority you speak of may have been driven away by such arrogance and rudeness too which is why they are not as well represented here too.

Evidence, actual why one is good and the other is not. I could actually argue for your side, I'm capable of realizing there ARE advantages to your side of the argument! However, I too have advantages to MY side and I find these to be more important. Give reasons before you give the reason as to your preference.

 

[Jack Kieser]

I don't think Ghostbone CAN argue for his side with evidence. Literally everything he has to say on the matter he's already said, or else he'd say it. As far as he's concerned, whichever side has more people on it is right, regardless of any other circumstances. There is no arguing with him because he doesn't want to debate this, he wants to bludgeon us with assumptions and yelling with his fingers in his ears until we submit and "admit" he was right all along, and that's not a discussion. You'll never get him to use any sort of actual evidence because not only does he not have any, but he really, honestly doesn't think he needs any because his position is "self evidently true". So, I think there's no reason to talk to Ghostbone about this anymore; that's not a conversation, and nothing will be gained by it on any side except to make the thread more inflammatory than it already is.

On another note, I'm legitimately saddened by Grim's data loss, as I've been checking back after each day in Pikmin 3 waiting for his post. T_T

 

[LiteralGrill]

I don't think Ghostbone CAN argue for his side with evidence. Literally everything he has to say on the matter he's already said, or else he'd say it. As far as he's concerned, whichever side has more people on it is right, regardless of any other circumstances. There is no arguing with him because he doesn't want to debate this, he wants to bludgeon us with assumptions and yelling with his fingers in his ears until we submit and "admit" he was right all along, and that's not a discussion. You'll never get him to use any sort of actual evidence because not only does he not have any, but he really, honestly doesn't think he needs any because his position is "self evidently true". So, I think there's no reason to talk to Ghostbone about this anymore; that's not a conversation, and nothing will be gained by it on any side except to make the thread more inflammatory than it already is.

On another note, I'm legitimately saddened by Grim's data loss, as I've been checking back after each day in Pikmin 3 waiting for his post. T_T

That's the tough part. If Ghostbone sat down and truely wrote down real pros and cons for this mindset, there may actually be something worth debating here. I can think of a few things off the top of my head just to start: lower skill ceiling = fasting top level play reached, lower skill ceiling = less depth for one. Look, I just did a pro and con myself, Ghostbone, go for it!

I also wish I had Pikmin 3... Playing Minish Cap right now as my wife likes to watch.

 

[Ghostbone]

Mean stuff

D:

Condescending stuff

D:

Anyway my philosophy is this

Stages that put you into disadvantaged positions that your opponent didn't earn should be banned.
This is pretty much every moving camera stage (RC, Poke floats, Big blue, etc.), and every stage with hazards (as they force you to shield or jump, an abusable position that your opponent didn't earn).

Walk-off stages are their own kind of weird, and technically they don't fall under the criteria above, so I suppose you could argue for their legality, but in general they're just all kinds of janky and throw the recovery dynamic of smash out the window causing major imbalances.

Smash is a game built around limiting your opponent's options and punishing them for that.
When a stage does that for you, it just detracts from the game.

 

[LiteralGrill]

D:


D:

Anyway my philosophy is this

Stages that put you into disadvantaged positions that your opponent didn't earn should be banned.
This is pretty much every moving camera stage (RC, Poke floats, Big blue, etc.), and every stage with hazards (as they force you to shield or jump, an abusable position that your opponent didn't earn).

Walk-off stages are their own kind of weird, and technically they don't fall under the criteria above, so I suppose you could argue for their legality, but in general they're just all kinds of janky and throw the recovery dynamic of smash out the window causing major imbalances.

Mean and condescending...

From the person who just posted this in another thread?

Let's say Ganon randomly blew up and died 50% of the time each time he shielded on FD.
FD would stay legal because Ganon is terrible, and FD's worth more than him.
Similarly, Ness gets approximately no usage because he's bad, so nobody cares that he can get randomly screwed over when he recovers in an already extremely vulnerable position.

Don't use ad hominem, you open yourself to allow us to do the same. And your opponent CAN earn those advantage by forcing you into a position where you must deal with the hazards. Janky, and what your concept of balance is vs how Sakurai actually balances are also not points, you are in the realm of only opinion again.

You are closer though I admit, change some wording and you may be onto presenting your point in a better way.

 

[Jack Kieser]

I don't think Ghostbone thinks that stage control and stage knowledge are legitimate skills, though. Seriously, it sounds like the closer Smash is to SSFIVAE2012 the better. No stage interference of any kind, nothing but two people fighting. Which, if you're paying attention, isn't what Smash is at all. What is or is not "janky" is totally up to the perception of the player, because "jankiness" is a trait that is perceived due to inadequate knowledge about a mechanic.

If I don't know that Pokemon Stadium transforms on a timer, it may seem janky to me. The Bulborb on DP seems "janky" until you learn what triggers its movement, in which case it ceases to be janky. Sure, some things, like Pictochat's transformations, or to a lesser extent Pokemon Stadium's, may seem unfair at first because they can't be 100% predicted due to random chance of them appearing, until you realize that the skill we're testing isn't predicting the stage transformation as much as it is testing how well the player adapts to the transformation and how well she controls space as not to get screwed on transform (for instance, many people still don't know that there's a safe spot on Picto that NO transformation can touch you on spawn; controlling that space is key on that stage).

Ghostbone legitimately does not think that stage control is a skill worth testing, the whole time ignoring that the stage control skill is one that can be trained and honed and is one that the Smash series is built from the ground up to test. The evidence is peppered in every single stage. Hell, it's in the very fact that the win condition is knocking the opponent off the stage. If you think that edgeguarding is a skill, then you think that stage control is a skill, whether or not you realize that you agree.

That's why he mistakenly thinks that Smash is a game around limiting options, just like every other competitive fighter. It's not. Yes, that is a skill you use, and one that is helpful in the majority of circumstances. And yes, at times, it becomes crucial to winning a match. But, that's not the core skill of Smash. The core skill is controlling space. And, the way that Smash tests that skill is by, every now and then, sometimes predictably and sometimes not, messing with the stage space balance through transformations and hazards and seeing how the players adapt.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I'll reply to stuff when I get home, don't be too saddened fellas.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Yeah, I get that a lot. Tell me that someone shouldn't be idealistic, though. You say it like it's a bad thing to have ideals. Also, I'm a philosopher by trade. Having ideals is sort of my job.

Philosophy is my forte as well, I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with having ideals, but it's conventionally unwise to have unrealistic ideals.

Sure, there is. "Everything is allowed until it is determined that it either stops gameplay entirely or has no counters and thus becomes the only viable option, in which case it is banned." There, done. Now, it's just finding those things, which only happens by playing with them.

This criteria is incredibly vague. For starters, what exactly does 'stops gameplay' and 'no counters' mean? Extending Dimensional Cape doesn't stop gameplay, it just changes the skill-set to "whoever mashes up on the c-stick better wins". You could say that it has no counters/is the only viable option, but everything can be broken up into separate skills/tasks - for example, with the Dimensional Cape glitch you have to first get the lead for it to be useful - which encompasses a wide range of skills - and even mashing the c-stick could be broken into the individual thumb movements if we wanted to go that far. You can call this reductio ad absurdum if you'd like, but I'm just trying to illustrate that your proposed criteria is incredibly flimsy. Even if we look at it in a more realistic situation; how does your criteria determine item legality? That is a matter of how consistent we want our results to be vs. how much competitive depth we want the game to have, and that is completely subjective.

I believe ban criteria should always stem from competition. We get the game in the box, determine that it is uncompetitive in it's purist form and we have to change it to make it viable for competition - so all of our decisions should come from that. Looking at things that way is more liberating than constricting, however, because whatever changes we make can be directly suited to how the community at large wants the game to turn out - a tournament won't be competitive if no one shows up, so things like banning "janky" stages may seem foolish in a vacuum, but in the real world it is actually a more competitively viable option, just due to the mindset of the community. This is what I meant when I said that there is no objective ban criteria, you can honestly justify everything if you have enough people behind it (which is what Ghost is getting at, even though I disagree with using overly specific criteria like "stages that put you above your opponent should be banned" or whatever it is.

Yes, I was there for the transition (I joined before the game was even released, dude). I'm sorry, Grim, but I'm the last person who's going to accept a self-fulfilling prophesy as evidence in a debate. "Oh, we said we would ban things and did! Look how perfectly we predicted the future!" Meanwhile, we're the MOST biased people in determining if that prediction is true. You predict the character list, then you've done something pretty impressive. You predict actions that you, yourself, not only decide to take, but decide how to take? That's not prediction, that's you doing what you said you were going to do. You approach the game with a ban-happy mindset, you're going to ban things; you just taught me the most obvious thing in the world, awesome. But, just because you banned something, that doesn't mean it was worthy of a ban. Surely, you don't think that we made 100% perfect decisions with Brawl. If you do, you're irrational, because no one is perfect. You don't, then you agree with AA and me that there are things we could do better.

We're just saying that a change in mindset really facilitates the whole "doing better next time" thing.

I meant to imply that the whole situation was the same, not just the people saying "Oh, we will ban things". There were also people like yourself suggesting that we try out more stages, try out items, etc... So yeah, I don't see anything changing because posts like the ones you've made in this thread will just be ignored, or latched onto by the minority that is slowly weeded out - just as it was weeded out in the Melee and Brawl communities over the years.

I have my personal views on stage legality, but I don't want to force them on anyone else by appealing to objective declarations like "It's a competitive stage!" I would've done that a few years ago, but my views on things have changed now, I don't believe there is a right or wrong way to go about this, only preferences. If you honestly believe that your method for ruleset creation is the best, then you aren't going to bully people into supporting you by calling them childish - you're going to need to explain why your idea is worthwhile.

One thing I would definitely like to see when the new game comes out is thorough research into every stage, the expulsion of stupid ideologies that just lead to hypocrisy, and a greater understanding of the benefits of a large stage list - but I also wouldn't want to see the community torn apart by a dogmatic governing body of liberal-minded TOs deciding to test out every stage when that's not what the players want to do. It's the equivalent of forcing someone to play tennis because you know that it's fun - give them the option, explain to them why you believe it's fun, but forcing people into things with black and white statements of "right" and "wrong" doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

It works for Marvel. How many people WANT to play Chris G's stupid *** Morrigan? Filipino Champ's incredibly cheap Phoenix? Answer: no one. But, now Chris G's on the decline because people were adults and found out a counter, even if that counter took months to find. I got the joy of seeing that stupid smirk wiped off F-Champ's face by a relative newcomer, which means that sometimes, the traditional wisdom is flat-out stupid. I'm not asking people to like anything. When you play at the top level, it's not because you like it: it's because you're the best, and you're willing to do anything (within the rules) to win. Sometimes those things match up, and we try our best to make it so they do, but sometimes games have unfun things in them.

Someone who really loves the game works past those things and maybe has a hand in finding technology that turns something unfun into something fun. Once we get a viable counter to Chris G's Morrigan, then fighting him will be fun, because it will be (as Yipes likes to say) a real match.

Why is everyone here so damn impatient? Jesus, are you all 15 year olds with no concept of delayed gratification? Take your damn time, smell the freaking roses. -_-

Marvel is playable out of the box, that's the main difference. Even if it's not a large difference in and of itself, it's triggered a widespread mindset about ruleset creation in the Smash community that a small minority would have no hope of purging, really.

 

[Ghostbone]

I don't think Ghostbone thinks that stage control and stage knowledge are legitimate skills, though. Seriously, it sounds like the closer Smash is to SSFIVAE2012 the better. No stage interference of any kind, nothing but two people fighting. Which, if you're paying attention, isn't what Smash is at all. What is or is not "janky" is totally up to the perception of the player, because "jankiness" is a trait that is perceived due to inadequate knowledge about a mechanic.

You're right, smash isn't at all like street fighter, and nobody would want it to be.
Even if Smashville is the only legal stage, Brawl would still be a completely different game from Street fighter.
You're literally not making any point, you're just pointing out that smash is different, which will all know and agree on.

And who are you to define what "Smash is". Smash can be played in a multitude of ways, to say your way is the best and everyone should follow it is incredibly elitist and why casual players tend to avoid the competitive community.

If I don't know that Pokemon Stadium transforms on a timer, it may seem janky to me. The Bulborb on DP seems "janky" until you learn what triggers its movement, in which case it ceases to be janky. Sure, some things, like Pictochat's transformations, or to a lesser extent Pokemon Stadium's, may seem unfair at first because they can't be 100% predicted due to random chance of them appearing, until you realize that the skill we're testing isn't predicting the stage transformation as much as it is testing how well the player adapts to the transformation and how well she controls space as not to get screwed on transform (for instance, many people still don't know that there's a safe spot on Picto that NO transformation can touch you on spawn; controlling that space is key on that stage).

I'm going to quote myself from back in 2011, where most people started to realise Pictochat was a terrible stage if they didn't already, not quite warioware tier but close.

"Yea guys we should totally judge a stage's worth in a fighting game based on what happens when the characters don't fight."

You can't stay in the safe zone on pictochat, and fight your opponent. It's not possible. If you think it is possible, you're delusional and don't understand how gameplay even works. When you're fighting your opponent, you space attacks, you get hit into the air, you have to recover, you edgeguard, you punish their landings, etc. All situations where pictochat can and will randomly screw you over, or give you a free pass back to the ground by screwing your opponent over. Grabbing someone, having missiles appear and throwing them into it for free huge damage isn't skill, it's pure luck, it isn't any variation of "stage control" even if you try to warp it so it is.
I can't believe you're trying to argue that Pictochat is a legitimate stage.

Ghostbone legitimately does not think that stage control is a skill worth testing, the whole time ignoring that the stage control skill is one that can be trained and honed and is one that the Smash series is built from the ground up to test. The evidence is peppered in every single stage. Hell, it's in the very fact that the win condition is knocking the opponent off the stage. If you think that edgeguarding is a skill, then you think that stage control is a skill, whether or not you realize that you agree.

Of course I think stage control is a skill in this game, where the hell would you get the idea that it isn't.
It's evident in every single matchup on every single stage in the game.
Taking out Halberd because it randomly screws people over doesn't mean I don't value stage control, taking out Rainbow Cruise because characters with low mobility can't do anything about being put in a disadvantaged position (inb4 oh but they're just bad, yea, and everyone but sonic and MK is just bad on temple) doesn't mean I don't value stage control, taking out WarioWare because minigame rewards are stupid doesn't mean I don't value stage control, banning Bridge of Eldin because walk-offs lead to unbalanced gameplay doesn't mean I don't value stage control.

Banning stages doesn't mean we don't value stage control. Stage control is a skill tested on every single stage in the game.

That's why he mistakenly thinks that Smash is a game around limiting options, just like every other competitive fighter. It's not. Yes, that is a skill you use, and one that is helpful in the majority of circumstances. And yes, at times, it becomes crucial to winning a match. But, that's not the core skill of Smash. The core skill is controlling space. And, the way that Smash tests that skill is by, every now and then, sometimes predictably and sometimes not, messing with the stage space balance through transformations and hazards and seeing how the players adapt.

No other fighting game has aerial combat quite like smash (find me another game with an air-dodge, inb4 playstation all:stars, i honestly don't know what the mechanics of that game are, but it's hardly played competitively so it doesn't matter), most don't even allow you to change your momentum in the air (without using up air-dashes).
Smash is a game based around limiting options, and reading your opponent. Yes that's like most fighting games, because that's the core of any fighting game, rofl. But the way you do it in smash is clearly different to traditional 2D fighters.

If you're going to try to make me look like an idiot, actually try to understand the opposing argument before you say things that aren't relevant and that everyone already agrees with. It doesn't strengthen or support your argument.

Don't use ad hominem, you open yourself to allow us to do the same. And your opponent CAN earn those advantage by forcing you into a position where you must deal with the hazards. Janky, and what your concept of balance is vs how Sakurai actually balances are also not points, you are in the realm of only opinion again.

rofl
I never used ad hominem, and using ad hominem on someone using ad hominem would still be a fallacy.

They can earn the advantages
The situation still occurs where they don't earn the advantage, which is what gets the stages banned.

 

[Jack Kieser]

You're right, smash isn't at all like street fighter, and nobody would want it to be.
Even if Smashville is the only legal stage, Brawl would still be a completely different game from Street fighter.
You're literally not making any point, you're just pointing out that smash is different, which will all know and agree on.

Actually, I disagree. If Smash had only one stage without any kind of hazards or a very minimal level of interference or stage interaction, it would be different from traditional fighters in the barest, most trivial of ways: the win condition would be upon ring or time out, instead of ring (in 3D fighters), time, or heath out. That's it. Smash has combos, as do other fighters. Smash has footsies, as do other fighters. Smash has yomi and positioning and spacing and everything else they have. The defining characteristics of Smash are 1) that the win condition is different, and 2) that where you play is just as important as who you play as. To a lesser extent, items could be considered a 3rd difference, although I can only imagine the head explosion you have to fight off whenever someone mentions those. Strip away stages and you've effectively gutted 50% of what makes Smash unique. Which means that for every stage we ban, that's another way we've made our game less special.

And who are you to define what "Smash is". Smash can be played in a multitude of ways, to say your way is the best and everyone should follow it is incredibly elitist and why casual players tend to avoid the competitive community.

Dude, it's the freaking manual. You win by ring out. That's... that's the name of the game. I'm not redefining anything here. All I'm saying is that an expanded way of saying "win by ring out" is "who controls space better in the stage". You can't control space, you literally can't win this game.

I'm going to quote myself from back in 2011, where most people started to realise Pictochat was a terrible stage if they didn't already, not quite warioware tier but close.

"Yea guys we should totally judge a stage's worth in a fighting game based on what happens when the characters don't fight."

You can't stay in the safe zone on pictochat, and fight your opponent. It's not possible. If you think it is possible, you're delusional and don't understand how gameplay even works. When you're fighting your opponent, you space attacks, you get hit into the air, you have to recover, you edgeguard, you punish their landings, etc. All situations where pictochat can and will randomly screw you over, or give you a free pass back to the ground by screwing your opponent over.
I can't believe you're trying to argue that Pictochat is a legitimate stage.

First of all, you've made a big mistake with your self-quotation in that, yes, in Smash, the stage acts separately from the fighters, so to some extent, it's important what the stage is doing independent of the fighters. Smashville's platform moves independently of the fighters, regardless of whether they're fighting or not. Yoshi's (Brawl) is the same way. Remember how people were complaining about the ghost platforms? Well, those come up or go down independent of the fighters, whether they're fighting or not, so yeah, that judgement is made about the stage regardless of the fighters, in some context. So, really, if you think that stage considerations can't be made irrespective of the fighters (in the context of Smash), you have no idea what you're talking about, because we do it all the time.

Second, you can totally control access to the safe zone and fight at the same time. The fighting is what assures you have control of the safe zone. It's not like stage control is entirely divorced from combat. They're inextricably linked. If you're fighting at a top level in Smash, your attacks control space, in addition to hitting or damaging the opponent. I'd argue that a top level player who knew the stage and practiced could easily control the safe zone and fight at the same time. It'd be slower than on other stages, campier, and more careful, but it can be done.

All of this is not to argue about Picto itself, but about the greater concept of what it means to control space in a stage. The player who knows the game well and can play at the highest of levels will be able to work with a stage on the fly to control space; the fact that a player has to evaluate positioning in relation to stage changes in real time is a skill we should be fostering, not stripping out of the game because "we don't like it". That's what scrubs do.

Of course I think stage control is a skill in this game, where the hell would you get the idea that it isn't.

Oh, I don't know, only every post you make about the subject.

It's evident in every single matchup on every single stage in the game.
Taking out Halberd because it randomly screws people over doesn't mean I don't value stage control, taking out Rainbow Cruise because characters with low mobility can't do anything about being put in a disadvantaged position doesn't mean I don't value stage control, taking out WarioWare because minigame rewards are stupid doesn't mean I don't value stage control, Bridge of Eldin because walk-offs lead to unbalanced gameplay doesn't mean I don't value stage control.

Banning stages doesn't mean we don't value stage control.

It does when your justification is "stage control is hard on this stage". Which is the only justification you've given for anything. "Screws over low mobility characters"? Then, don't play them. I'm not going to argue about WW because I know little about it, and I don't open my mouth about stuff I don't know about. BoE, like all walk offs, are a problem only for characters that can be chain grabbed, and even then only in certain locations, which wouldn't matter if you controlled the stage space better. Pick a character with projectiles.

Banning stages because controlling space is hard means you don't value stage control.

No other fighting game has aerial combat quite like smash (find me another game with an air-dodge), most don't even allow you to change your momentum in the air.
Smash is a game based around limiting options, and reading your opponent. Yes that's like most fighting games, because that's the core of any fighting game, rofl. But the way you do it in smash is clearly different to traditional 2D fighters.

Again, it's not based around it. You can win at Smash without ever limiting your opponent's options. I can stand in the middle of the stage and let my opponent come at me, and if my D is strong enough, she can have all of her options, and I'll just weather the storm, counter, and after enough time, amass enough damage to kill from mid-stage. Not at high level, of course, but it can be done. What you completely ignored in my post was that, as I said, option control is a skill that's useful, but it's hardly the most predominant skill in Smash, nor is it the most core skill.

If you're going to try to make me look like an idiot, actually try to understand the opposing argument before you say things that aren't relevant an that everyone agrees with.

Oh, I understand you just fine. You don't understand just how many holes your argument has.

Philosophy is my forte as well, I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with having ideals, but it's conventionally unwise to have unrealistic ideals.

I don't think there's anything particularly unrealistic about claiming that we should actually play the game before we ban stuff. -_-

This criteria is incredibly vague. For starters, what exactly does 'stops gameplay' and 'no counters' mean?

I'll give you that it's vague, because I was proving a point, not building a workable ruleset in 5 minutes. Peach stops gameplay when she spams Bomber on the wall of FoD because the actual fight is over; neither play can engage any longer, even if they wanted to. IDC does the same thing, to preempt your next paragraph a bit. "No counters" means the same thing it did for Akuma: when a strategy cannot be beaten by any tech known to us at the time whatsoever. That one can at least evolve; if new tech is found, something can become legal again. That one is harder to use as a ban justification, accordingly, and requires a greater burden of proof (for instance, frame data on every single attack or something).

Extending Dimensional Cape doesn't stop gameplay, it just changes the skill-set to "whoever mashes up on the c-stick better wins". You could say that it has no counters/is the only viable option, but everything can be broken up into separate skills/tasks - for example, with the Dimensional Cape glitch you have to first get the lead for it to be useful - which encompasses a wide range of skills - and even mashing the c-stick could be broken into the individual thumb movements if we wanted to go that far. You can call this reductio ad absurdum if you'd like, but I'm just trying to illustrate that your proposed criteria is incredibly flimsy. Even if we look at it in a more realistic situation; how does your criteria determine item legality? That is a matter of how consistent we want our results to be vs. how much competitive depth we want the game to have, and that is completely subjective.

Green Shell, for instance, is banned in ISP because you can do a modified Pound stall off stage with it, which stops gameplay, just to give you an example.

I wouldn't call it a reductio, per se, but I do think that you're missing the forest for the trees a bit. 'IDC' is a thing unto itself, even though it's made up of different skills. If we can't agree that making yourself (effectively) invincible until you choose to stop is overpowered and stops the fight, then we can't agree on any rules, can we? It's literally a tech that removes one player from the match; it's like purposefully injuring an opposing team-member in American football, only you do it to yourself. I mean, come on: I think you're overreaching just a tad if you're honestly saying that it's not obvious how IDC would fit into my framework.

I believe ban criteria should always stem from competition. We get the game in the box, determine that it is uncompetitive in it's purist form and we have to change it to make it viable for competition - so all of our decisions should come from that.

We're on the same page so far.

Looking at things that way is more liberating than constricting, however, because whatever changes we make can be directly suited to how the community at large wants the game to turn out - a tournament won't be competitive if no one shows up, so things like banning "janky" stages may seem foolish in a vacuum, but in the real world it is actually a more competitively viable option, just due to the mindset of the community.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you on there, because we live in the 21st Century with the greatest tool for mobilizing and organizing people in the history of humanity (spoiler: I'm talking about the Internet). If there can be Mallrats movie fan clubs and stuff, there's plenty of people who will play this game with "janky" stages, and we have the tool to find them. Look how many people play Marvel, the most broken game in history. If you're honestly arguing that keeping Distant Planet or something legal actively drives away anyone but the most hardcore conservative East Coast players, I can't possibly agree with that. If I can scrounge up 70 teams to play items tournaments on a national level, then the scene can survive with "janky" stages. Again, I think you're overstating the effects here.

This is what I meant when I said that there is no objective ban criteria, you can honestly justify everything if you have enough people behind it (which is what Ghost is getting at, even though I disagree with using overly specific criteria like "stages that put you above your opponent should be banned" or whatever it is.

I think you should clean up your terms, then, because what you mean is what you just said: that you think anything can be justified. First of all, part of the problem is that everyone argues different metrics; once everyone in a discussion agrees on the terms and the metrics used, you'll find consensus on the outcomes.

(Just for the two of us, it's like trying to get a Kantian and a Consequentialist to argue ethics together; they already disagree on the most base part of the argument, so of course they'll disagree on everything else. Force one of them to argue using the other's terms, though, and they'll agree a lot more, even if not entirely. But, we still don't think that ethics shouldn't be debated at all or that there's no "objective" way to argue ethics just because Kantians and Consequentialists don't get along.)

Just because we don't all agree on the metrics doesn't mean that objective metrics don't exist, nor does it mean that we can't agree on them, or even find a majority consensus.

I meant to imply that the whole situation was the same, not just the people saying "Oh, we will ban things". There were also people like yourself suggesting that we try out more stages, try out items, etc... So yeah, I don't see anything changing because posts like the ones you've made in this thread will just be ignored, or latched onto by the minority that is slowly weeded out - just as it was weeded out in the Melee and Brawl communities over the years.

Hey, if I could convince M2K to play with items and have him actually enjoy it, I don't think we're too far off from making real progress. Change is gradual, you know that. Again, I'm not trying to get everyone to play with every single stage here, I'm trying to get them to think before they ban. If a ban is necessary, it's necessary. But, we won't know that 3 days after release.

I have my personal views on stage legality, but I don't want to force them on anyone else by appealing to objective declarations like "It's a competitive stage!" I would've done that a few years ago, but my views on things have changed now, I don't believe there is a right or wrong way to go about this, only preferences. If you honestly believe that your method for ruleset creation is the best, then you aren't going to bully people into supporting you by calling them childish - you're going to need to explain why your idea is worthwhile.

I think I've done a pretty good job of dealing with Ghost, even if he doesn't think so. Aside from simplicity (an overly burdensome ruleset that bans 53782435789 things is more intimidating and harder to learn than a ruleset that bans 1 thing), I think it's trivial to argue that you need proof of a problem before you ban something. -_- If you don't agree with that, you probably shouldn't be in charge of making any rulesets...

One thing I would definitely like to see when the new game comes out is thorough research into every stage, the expulsion of stupid ideologies that just lead to hypocrisy, and a greater understanding of the benefits of a large stage list - but I also wouldn't want to see the community torn apart by a dogmatic governing body of liberal-minded TOs deciding to test out every stage when that's not what the players want to do. It's the equivalent of forcing someone to play tennis because you know that it's fun - give them the option, explain to them why you believe it's fun, but forcing people into things with black and white statements of "right" and "wrong" doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

Well, at the end of the day, as always, it's up to the TOs. But, it also would help if we were more a part of EVO, for instance. I mean, the more structure we have, the closer to an actual sport we are, the more legitimate we are, the more players and money we can attract, etc. That is incompatible with 100 rulesets for each region because TOs are more concerned with making a few loudmouth players happy than with actually fostering the game. As a TO, I'm more than happy to tell players to shut the hell up at my events; sometimes, I don't care what they want. I've actually had players try to convince me to change rules mid event becaue they didn't like something! That being said, again, the point of this was never to convince anyone that 100% SSB4 is the way to go; it's to convince them that bans should be applied judiciously, not like how we did things in Brawl, banning literally anything that pissed one person off without even playing it first.

Marvel is playable out of the box, that's the main difference. Even if it's not a large difference in and of itself, it's triggered a widespread mindset about ruleset creation in the Smash community that a small minority would have no hope of purging, really.

But, the point is that Marvel players could ban things if they wanted to, but they don't. They didn't ban Phoenix in Vanilla when she was on literally every team, and they didn't ban Morrigan when Chris G was sweeping every event for, like, 2 years. They understood that sometimes games have stupid things that takes years to overcome. Besides, it's really a chicken / egg problem at the end of the day, one that is best solved by appealing to the TOs. If the heads of every major tournament can be convinced to use a ruleset, then the players, by default, will use it. I don't care how much ******** there is, no one's going to miss APEX because Norfair is legal, especially if all the nationals have the same thing.

 

[ぱみゅ]

This thread.... OMG this thread....

 

[ぱみゅ]

yay Xenforo random double post!

 

[Ghostbone]

Actually, I disagree. If Smash had only one stage without any kind of hazards or a very minimal level of interference or stage interaction, it would be different from traditional fighters in the barest, most trivial of ways: the win condition would be upon ring or time out, instead of ring (in 3D fighters), time, or heath out. That's it. Smash has combos, as do other fighters. Smash has footsies, as do other fighters. Smash has yomi and positioning and spacing and everything else they have. The defining characteristics of Smash are 1) that the win condition is different, and 2) that where you play is just as important as who you play as. To a lesser extent, items could be considered a 3rd difference, although I can only imagine the head explosion you have to fight off whenever someone mentions those. Strip away stages and you've effectively gutted 50% of what makes Smash unique. Which means that for every stage we ban, that's another way we've made our game less special.

Stages aren't as important as characters. You don't main stages, you play on them with characters.

And if randomly deciding a victor is a unique aspect of smash (pictochat), we'd want to avoid that. If unavoidably putting someone in a bad position is something unique, we'd also want to avoid that.

Just because something's unique doesn't make it intrinsically good.

First of all, you've made a big mistake with your self-quotation in that, yes, in Smash, the stage acts separately from the fighters, so to some extent, it's important what the stage is doing independent of the fighters. Smashville's platform moves independently of the fighters, regardless of whether they're fighting or not. Yoshi's (Brawl) is the same way. Remember how people were complaining about the ghost platforms? Well, those come up or go down independent of the fighters, whether they're fighting or not, so yeah, that judgement is made about the stage regardless of the fighters, in some context. So, really, if you think that stage considerations can't be made irrespective of the fighters (in the context of Smash), you have no idea what you're talking about, because we do it all the time.

No you're completely wrong.
Stages are a medium for gameplay, judging stages irrespective of the gameplay is meaningless. Temple isn't intrinsically bad, without characters playing on it, nothing bad happens, it's when sonic's running away forever that you realise temple's bad.
Similarly, when you have people on pictochat, spacing, punish, etc., you know playing the game, and it randomly screws people over, you realise that the stage isn't conducive for good competitive play.

Judging stages irrespective of gameplay is impossible (well i guess you could go, oh FD's background is pretty.....maybe if a stage caused seizures with its flashing, then you could ban it irrespective of the gameplay on it, rofl, as an actual example, I think Melee Jungle Japes has some legitimate concerns of being too dark? idk), the gameplay on them is what tends to get them banned.

Second, you can totally control access to the safe zone and fight at the same time.

Have you ever played a real match on the stage, because it sounds like you haven't.
There are plenty of vids with people getting randomly screwed over just because they were actually playing the game and fighting their opponent.

The fighting is what assures you have control of the safe zone. It's not like stage control is entirely divorced from combat. They're inextricably linked. If you're fighting at a top level in Smash, your attacks control space, in addition to hitting or damaging the opponent. I'd argue that a top level player who knew the stage and practiced could easily control the safe zone and fight at the same time. It'd be slower than on other stages, campier, and more careful, but it can be done.

You're assuming the risk/reward is in favour of staying in the safe zone forever. If you try and just camp the safe zone, you'll lose most of the time to someone who's actually playing the full game. Sure you'll win occasionally because they get randomly screwed over while punishing you, and you'll get less randomly screwed over, but the price to pay to have to stay in the safe zone the entire game is limiting your options severely and dooming yourself to defeat unless you get lucky.
That's not depth, at all.

All of this is not to argue about Picto itself, but about the greater concept of what it means to control space in a stage. The player who knows the game well and can play at the highest of levels will be able to work with a stage on the fly to control space; the fact that a player has to evaluate positioning in relation to stage changes in real time is a skill we should be fostering, not stripping out of the game because "we don't like it". That's what scrubs do.

Except Smashville, Pokemon Stadium, and Fountain of Dreams are all examples of this, without also being accompanied by the degenerate gameplay stages like Poke Floats comes with, or the extreme randomness Pictochat and Warioware come with.

Even if the skill's tested to a lesser extent on them, it doesn't mean we should legalise Poke Floats, PokeFloats is still a terrible stage for multiple reasons.
Nobody's banning it because it tests the skill of evaluating positioning with a changing stage, which for some reason you seem to think is the case.

Oh, I don't know, only every post you make about the subject.

Provide an example of any post I've made where I've said that stage control isn't a core aspect of smash or we should ban stages because they test stage control.
I don't think I ever have, and I certainly wouldn't ban a stage because it tests stage control, that's ludicrous.
And you should realise just because stage control is an important aspect of a stage doesn't give it immunity to the banhammer.

It does when your justification is "stage control is hard on this stage". Which is the only justification you've given for anything. "Screws over low mobility characters"? Then, don't play them. I'm not going to argue about WW because I know little about it, and I don't open my mouth about stuff I don't know about. BoE, like all walk offs, are a problem only for characters that can be chain grabbed, and even then only in certain locations, which wouldn't matter if you controlled the stage space better. Pick a character with projectiles.

Banning stages because controlling space is hard means you don't value stage control.

I don't ban stages because stage control is hard, you're misunderstanding things.

If RC or BoE should be legal, then temple should be legal, you can just pick Sonic or MetaKnight right? People should just get better and not pick bad characters. Gotta stick to the vanilla game as much as possible.
That's literally what you sound like.

You can win at Smash without ever limiting your opponent's options.

Ladies and Gentlemen, JackKieser2013

You realise even forcing someone to shield is limiting their options
Hitting them in the air is limiting their options
Forcing them on the ground so they have to roll or get-up attack etc is limiting their options.

Edit:
I just realised that if there was a stage that caused seizures you'd probably just argue that being resistant to seizures is a natural skill of the game that we should test.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Before I go to bed, I'd like to point out that only one of us is chopping out large parts of the other person's posts to make his points. Have fun with that.

 

[ぱみゅ]

You know an argument is wrong when you read
a) "You don't main stages" - A very flawed argument that means someone just is not planning on adapt.
b) "Pictochat randomly screws people" - Just happens when they do not play carefully (I want to reply to this further later though, you have some good points I'd like to address).
c) Puts RC in the same level as BoE and Temple.

 

[HugS™]

I'm willing to bet no proponent of items or oddball stages would be able to maintain dominance over the competitive community. Mastering these skills related to gimmicky item/stage practices do not translate to any type of fundamental fighting game abilities. You're all fooling yourselves if you think learning these skills are practical. Find me one player. One.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I'll give you that it's vague, because I was proving a point, not building a workable ruleset in 5 minutes. Peach stops gameplay when she spams Bomber on the wall of FoD because the actual fight is over; neither play can engage any longer, even if they wanted to. IDC does the same thing, to preempt your next paragraph a bit. "No counters" means the same thing it did for Akuma: when a strategy cannot be beaten by any tech known to us at the time whatsoever. That one can at least evolve; if new tech is found, something can become legal again. That one is harder to use as a ban justification, accordingly, and requires a greater burden of proof (for instance, frame data on every single attack or something).

Green Shell, for instance, is banned in ISP because you can do a modified Pound stall off stage with it, which stops gameplay, just to give you an example.

I wouldn't call it a reductio, per se, but I do think that you're missing the forest for the trees a bit. 'IDC' is a thing unto itself, even though it's made up of different skills. If we can't agree that making yourself (effectively) invincible until you choose to stop is overpowered and stops the fight, then we can't agree on any rules, can we? It's literally a tech that removes one player from the match; it's like purposefully injuring an opposing team-member in American football, only you do it to yourself. I mean, come on: I think you're overreaching just a tad if you're honestly saying that it's not obvious how IDC would fit into my framework.

Green shells fall neatly under your criteria; what of Bob-Ombs?

I'll cover the whole 'objective/subjective criteria' thing later on in my reply, cause it comes up a few times and I don't want to repeat myself.

Well, I'll have to disagree with you on there, because we live in the 21st Century with the greatest tool for mobilizing and organizing people in the history of humanity (spoiler: I'm talking about the Internet). If there can be Mallrats movie fan clubs and stuff, there's plenty of people who will play this game with "janky" stages, and we have the tool to find them. Look how many people play Marvel, the most broken game in history. If you're honestly arguing that keeping Distant Planet or something legal actively drives away anyone but the most hardcore conservative East Coast players, I can't possibly agree with that. If I can scrounge up 70 teams to play items tournaments on a national level, then the scene can survive with "janky" stages. Again, I think you're overstating the effects here.

Hey, if I could convince M2K to play with items and have him actually enjoy it, I don't think we're too far off from making real progress. Change is gradual, you know that. Again, I'm not trying to get everyone to play with every single stage here, I'm trying to get them to think before they ban. If a ban is necessary, it's necessary. But, we won't know that 3 days after release.

I think I've done a pretty good job of dealing with Ghost, even if he doesn't think so. Aside from simplicity (an overly burdensome ruleset that bans 53782435789 things is more intimidating and harder to learn than a ruleset that bans 1 thing), I think it's trivial to argue that you need proof of a problem before you ban something. -_- If you don't agree with that, you probably shouldn't be in charge of making any rulesets...

etc...

As I've mentioned, you're welcome to try and standardize a ruleset. I personally don't believe anything will come of it (the internet existed when Brawl was released as well, you know ), but I'm not a soothsayer. I just think that you should be supporting your position with claims of why you think it's a good idea, rather than trying to say "this is logically the best move, and that's all there is to it", you know?

I think you should clean up your terms, then, because what you mean is what you just said: that you think anything can be justified. First of all, part of the problem is that everyone argues different metrics; once everyone in a discussion agrees on the terms and the metrics used, you'll find consensus on the outcomes.

(Just for the two of us, it's like trying to get a Kantian and a Consequentialist to argue ethics together; they already disagree on the most base part of the argument, so of course they'll disagree on everything else. Force one of them to argue using the other's terms, though, and they'll agree a lot more, even if not entirely. But, we still don't think that ethics shouldn't be debated at all or that there's no "objective" way to argue ethics just because Kantians and Consequentialists don't get along.)

Just because we don't all agree on the metrics doesn't mean that objective metrics don't exist, nor does it mean that we can't agree on them, or even find a majority consensus.

Scientifically speaking, ethics is a product of evolution, it's not some abstract concept but rather an observable thought pattern in humans that can be predicted, analyzed, etc... So while we can't really say that objective morality exists, in the sense that there are universal, constant laws of good and bad (I really hope you're not religious, or this discussion just got a whole lot more confusing >_>), but we could always consider 'objective morality' to be majority consensus or average.

It feels to me like you're trying to assert that objective criteria for ruleset construction exists (correct me if I'm wrong).

I wouldn't fault someone in an ethics discussion on having specific ideals (rather than a general acceptance of the entire situation), a view that goes against the majority, or anything like that - but I would fault them on making their position sacred, which is what you do when you say that "Rainbow Cruise should be legal because it doesn't destroy the game competitively" (just as an example). There are no "reasons" a stage shouldn't be banned, there are only reasons why you do not believe a stage should be banned.

I hope I've followed your analogy correctly.

But, the point is that Marvel players could ban things if they wanted to, but they don't. They didn't ban Phoenix in Vanilla when she was on literally every team, and they didn't ban Morrigan when Chris G was sweeping every event for, like, 2 years. They understood that sometimes games have stupid things that takes years to overcome. Besides, it's really a chicken / egg problem at the end of the day, one that is best solved by appealing to the TOs. If the heads of every major tournament can be convinced to use a ruleset, then the players, by default, will use it. I don't care how much *****ing there is, no one's going to miss APEX because Norfair is legal, especially if all the nationals have the same thing.

We could've banned MK in 2009, or Ice Climber's chain-grabs, etc... There are different degrees of tolerance, and I don't think it's fair to call the Smash community childish for banning things possibly preemptively, we have to draw the line somewhere.

No one will miss Apex because Norfair is legal, but they sure as hell will run their own tournaments where Norfair isn't legal. Smash tournaments are an open market, and you're going to have to appeal to a majority (either by changing your rules to match their desires, or changing their desires to match your rules) if you want to get your way

 

[Venus of the Desert Bloom]

Hey guys,

Debating is all fine and dandy but please keep personal attacks/flaming to a bare minimum. That way, everyone can be happy and enjoy this marginally controversial thread. I don't want to see this thread locked since it does bring up some good points.

 

[TheWhiteBowser]

Whoa, calm down guys...

This thread began pretty lighthearted, let's keep it that way.

The universe just imploded N3ON

 

[clubbadubba]

I mean look at 64-you don't exactly see Pikachu being the reason for stage bans, now do ya? the only stage banned because of a character there was Saffron city,and that was only because that character(Ness) had a horribly unfair disadvantage there (so bad they had to make a double stage strike rule just for him at a point.)

In 64 Saffron is banned mostly because helipad camping is virtually unapproachable, and kirby is the by far the biggest offender of that. Some top 64 players want Hyrule banned because pikachu can use up-b to stall infinitely. Just saying

 

[MopedOfJustice]

I don't think Ghostbone thinks that stage control and stage knowledge are legitimate skills, though. Seriously, it sounds like the closer Smash is to SSFIVAE2012 the better. No stage interference of any kind, nothing but two people fighting. Which, if you're paying attention, isn't what Smash is at all. What is or is not "janky" is totally up to the perception of the player, because "jankiness" is a trait that is perceived due to inadequate knowledge about a mechanic.

If I don't know that Pokemon Stadium transforms on a timer, it may seem janky to me. The Bulborb on DP seems "janky" until you learn what triggers its movement, in which case it ceases to be janky. Sure, some things, like Pictochat's transformations, or to a lesser extent Pokemon Stadium's, may seem unfair at first because they can't be 100% predicted due to random chance of them appearing, until you realize that the skill we're testing isn't predicting the stage transformation as much as it is testing how well the player adapts to the transformation and how well she controls space as not to get screwed on transform (for instance, many people still don't know that there's a safe spot on Picto that NO transformation can touch you on spawn; controlling that space is key on that stage).

Ghostbone legitimately does not think that stage control is a skill worth testing, the whole time ignoring that the stage control skill is one that can be trained and honed and is one that the Smash series is built from the ground up to test. The evidence is peppered in every single stage. Hell, it's in the very fact that the win condition is knocking the opponent off the stage. If you think that edgeguarding is a skill, then you think that stage control is a skill, whether or not you realize that you agree.

That's why he mistakenly thinks that Smash is a game around limiting options, just like every other competitive fighter. It's not. Yes, that is a skill you use, and one that is helpful in the majority of circumstances. And yes, at times, it becomes crucial to winning a match. But, that's not the core skill of Smash. The core skill is controlling space. And, the way that Smash tests that skill is by, every now and then, sometimes predictably and sometimes not, messing with the stage space balance through transformations and hazards and seeing how the players adapt.

That's, in my biased opinion, an outstanding argument. I'm THAT guy who thinks that the only stage that should be banned is Spear Pillar (and Rainbow Cruise) simply because they are so obnoxiously screwy (control screwing and camera rotating, Platform spawning/despawning respectively) that it takes away from the fight. Even that Metriod stage with the lava and the bunker isn't that bad, because it's about competing for that safe area. Am I the only one who misses the Mushroom Kingdom stage in 64? You can use the Warp Pipes! Why has it never come up before? We need a stage that can do stuff like that. One that introduces using the stage to people who can't handle hazards yet (I'm looking at the OP). Walk-off aside, it has nothing these people object to, and a type of mechanic that is a tool to be implemented rather than a hazard to avoid. That mechanic should definitely make a glorious return in Sm4sh.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I'm willing to bet no proponent of items or oddball stages would be able to maintain dominance over the competitive community. Mastering these skills related to gimmicky item/stage practices do not translate to any type of fundamental fighting game abilities. You're all fooling yourselves if you think learning these skills are practical. Find me one player. One.

Alright, I have a proposal.

I will create a thriving scene around a larger stagelist. You must agree to a few things however, in an effort of fairness.

You will not constantly bash my side of the argument. A lot of supporters are long gone because they were basically abused by the other side, treated horribly about having this opinion. None of that. If I'm to take your bet we do it on fair grounds, I won't go bashing you either.

Sounds fair? Then accept and we'll see what happens. A large social experiment where we see if a community can hold strong and coexist. Do you accept?

 

[MopedOfJustice]

Alright, I have a proposal.

I will create a thriving scene around a larger stagelist. You must agree to a few things however, in an effort of fairness.

You will not constantly bash my side of the argument. A lot of supporters are long gone because they were basically abused by the other side, treated horribly about having this opinion. None of that. If I'm to take your bet we do it on fair grounds, I won't go bashing you either.

Sounds fair? Then accept and we'll see what happens. A large social experiment where we see if a community can hold strong and coexist. Do you accept?

Could you also add the condition of encouraging the discouraging of bashing on both sides? I don't think 1 person not bullying (I use the term liberally and lightly) will make everyone else stop as well.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Could you also add the condition of encouraging the discouraging of bashing on both sides? I don't think 1 person not bullying (I use the term liberally and lightly) will make everyone else stop as well.

I agree, HugS take this into consideration as well.

 

[Ghostbone]

On the Marvel players not banning things point.
They have patches and updated versions of the game to wait for. If vanilla marvel was the final version, with phoenix being on literally every team (like top 4 usually being filled with her, first place always have her), she'd probably end up being eventually banned. (though possibly not, because Marvel's team dynamics make one character easier to deal with, and it also depends on how the viability of the rest of the cast is, if there's only like 4 other characters used at top level, there's no point banning one as everyone will just move onto the next best character)

That's something Brawl doesn't have, and stages can't really be compared to characters anyway. Banning morrigan or phoenix is a far bigger change to the game than banning green greens is. I the reason for possibly banning them is completely different anyway.

 

[LiteralGrill]

On the Marvel players not banning things point.
They have patches and updated versions of the game to wait for. If vanilla marvel was the final version, with phoenix being on literally every team (like top 4 usually being filled with her, first place always have her), she'd probably end up being eventually banned. (though possibly not, because Marvel's team dynamics make one character easier to deal with, and it also depends on how the viability of the rest of the cast is, if there's only like 4 other characters used at top level, there's no point banning one as everyone will just move onto the next best character)

That's something Brawl doesn't have, and stages can't really be compared to characters anyway. Banning morrigan or phoenix is a far bigger change to the game than banning green greens is. I the reason for possibly banning them is completely different anyway.

A lot of fighters in the past never had a patch as well, what about those games? I don't see many things being banned constantly in them either.

 

[lordvaati]

On the Marvel players not banning things point.
They have patches and updated versions of the game to wait for. If vanilla marvel was the final version, with phoenix being on literally every team (like top 4 usually being filled with her, first place always have her), she'd probably end up being eventually banned. (though possibly not, because Marvel's team dynamics make one character easier to deal with, and it also depends on how the viability of the rest of the cast is, if there's only like 4 other characters used at top level, there's no point banning one as everyone will just move onto the next best character)

That's something Brawl doesn't have, and stages can't really be compared to characters anyway. Banning morrigan or phoenix is a far bigger change to the game than banning green greens is. I the reason for possibly banning them is completely different anyway.

yeah about that patch part...you know Sakurai said he wouldn't mind using patches for Smash 4, ya? the thing about the past Smash game is that their design overall is always constant(with excpetions like NTSC/PAL Melee and US/JP 64), and as Mario Kart 7 has shown, they do make patches for their games now. What'smore is that they now have the whole Miiverse thing which they use for feedback, a team with people who worked on Namco fighters(and Tales) on it, and are aiming to have a more hardcore friendly experience then Brawl,

Let me give a hypothtical example. let's say you have a stage that is pretty much tournament friendly, but has a walled section that a character can throw infinite on. well now it banned-but wait, a patch happens and now that character's throw has been changed so now it no longer infinites in that section and they just pop out after the first throw-now all of a sudden the stage is opened up for legality!

 

[Ghostbone]

A lot of fighters in the past never had a patch as well, what about those games? I don't see many things being banned constantly in them either.

Most fighters are designed to be tournament ready out of the box

Smash isn't
That's a pretty massive difference that consequently leads to many things needing to be banned (items and most stages) in smash to have a tournament viable game.

This has already been mentioned several times in this thread why would you try and bring it up again.

 

[lordvaati]

And what of Injustice? I have seen no stage bans mentioned in that game, and it's quite clear the stages give advatages to characters.

This does not mean that ALL stages should be legal of course, but that we shouldn't just see a stage with an element and go "yep,ban."

 

[LiteralGrill]

Most fighters are designed to be tournament ready out of the box

Smash isn't
That's a pretty massive difference that consequently leads to many things needing to be banned (items and most stages) in smash to have a tournament viable game.

This has already been mentioned several times in this thread why would you try and bring it up again.

Because if that is the case we should be trying to follow what other fighters do to make the game competitive: do not ban until game breaking and ban as little as possible.

 

[Ghostbone]

Because if that is the case we should be trying to follow what other fighters do to make the game competitive: do not ban until game breaking and ban as little as possible.

Smash would never get into Evo if we still had **** like Corneria and Poke Floats legal that have degenerate strategies and nobody likes to play on (and yes that's a legitimate argument, you can't have a competitive scene without people to play the game).

So you're just completely wrong.

 

[Jack Kieser]

What are you blathering about? Melee got into EVO because we raised money, not because of any of its own merits.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Smash would never get into Evo if we still had **** like Corneria and Poke Floats legal that have degenerate strategies and nobody likes to play on (and yes that's a legitimate argument, you can't have a competitive scene without people to play the game).

So you're just completely wrong.

How can you prove a the game couldn't get to evo with a larger stagelist? Degenerate stages? Sure, getting rid of those is good we don't disagree. It is what constitutes as degenerate we have issue with, and I'm not enjoying this argumentum ad populum either. Plus, there are people who WOULD and DID play on those stages. Look at Amazing Ampharos's post earlier, look at how we may have lost many players who would play these stages due to a minority trying to force changes. If you want you use "we have more people so we are right" which is a fallacy to begin with, explain the alienation of those who don't agree with you causing less people who would argue against you because of bad treatment. The kind like "Ness doesn't matter", and not backing up information without real facts.

 

[Ghostbone]

What are you blathering about? Melee got into EVO because we raised money, not because of any of its own merits.

You really think a game that nobody plays would have raised enough money to get into EVO

And whether you like it or not, people don't like to play on Rainbow Cruise/PokeFloats/Mute city etc.
They just kill hype.

In the end, it doesn't matter what arguments you or I make, rulesets are still going to be determined by what the majority wants, and you haven't done anything to convince people that they should want to play on Rainbow Cruise or Pictochat or with items.
You might as well accept the fact that smash 4's stagelist is going to mirror Melee/Brawl's now, instead of setting yourself up for disappointment.

 

[LiteralGrill]

You really think a game that nobody plays would have raised enough money to get into EVO

And whether you like it or not, people don't like to play on Rainbow Cruise/PokeFloats/Mute city etc.
They just kill hype.

In the end, it doesn't matter what arguments you or I make, rulesets are still going to be determined by what the majority wants, and you haven't done anything to convince people that they should want to play on Rainbow Cruise or Pictochat or with items.
You might as well accept the fact that smash 4's stagelist is going to mirror Melee/Brawl's now, instead of setting yourself up for disappointment.

What about that point I keep making that this line of thought alienates players who would play that way, as well as the fact many were treated so poorly the left so they wont be here to argue anymore, but would come back if things changed?

 

[Ghostbone]

What about that point I keep making that this line of thought alienates players who would play that way, as well as the fact many were treated so poorly the left so they wont be here to argue anymore, but would come back if things changed?

Do you have any evidence that people are being treated poorly.
Not getting the ruleset you want isn't being treated poorly, the smash community in general is really chill (at least offline), and there should be very few people that would leave the game just because some stages they like aren't legal (if they truly cared for and were invested in the game they would play on the stagelist the majority prefers)

 

[MopedOfJustice]

What about that point I keep making that this line of thought alienates players who would play that way, as well as the fact many were treated so poorly the left so they wont be here to argue anymore, but would come back if things changed?

I second this.
I got into Smash because I liked the characters and it seemed different from a normal fighting game. I stuck with it because I liked, among other things how it's a platformer as well as a fighting game and how, unlike other fighting games, it's dynamic on a big scale, with items that can be picked up and used, stages that actually matter in game play and just the way it's all presented (Melee had the best presentation, what little presentation Brawl had outside of SSE was ripped from Kirby's Air Ride). I never got into the competitive scene because a lot of this was taken away, and being taken away by the month. I'm not saying that Items off, ban 60% of the stages is inferior, but I don't like it as much. To me, and this is just my opinion, it takes away from what the game was intended to be about, as people try to turn it into a Guitar Hero Fighter. I don't like how everyone is pressured into compliance with these standards. It seems to me, like what Capps said earlier, that there should be a different division, where all (or at least the vast majority) of stages are allowed.
That's just my 2 cents.
Again, I would like to say: I am not arguing for my preference to replace yours, nor am I arguing for items to be on. I want the co-existence of people who play the full game and Guitar Heros who can't adapt.