Proposed Ruleset for Smash 4 Tournaments

[Overswarm]

Yeah, I'm loving this implication that liberal stage lists are the ideal here, and you are forced to begrudgingly compromise with stubborn, stupid conservatives, AA.

Pictochat is beyond stupid. Random transformations that affect the entire stage and, therefore, randomly give one player an advantage? No thank you. The safe zone is a ridiculous concept, not only does it completely ignore the static transformations that will suddenly place one player in a better or worse position regardless of where they are standing (there is no constant ideal way of playing, it is a matter of picking one of many potential "ideal" positions and hoping that your number comes up), the safe zone ALSO doesn't apply when the characters are fighting; therefore, a player who is worse than their opponent/uses a character that sucks at KO'ing/etc... is going to have a better chance of winning if he forces confrontation in-between stage transformations with the hope that luck is on his side.

Comparing it to Judgement is ludicrous - a single move of a single character is in no way proportionate to a stage that is constantly influencing the players randomly regardless of stage position, in terms of how much it affects results.

The fact that you have to play around random hazards immediately sets off alarm bells because it creates the following situation:
1. You anticipated a certain transformation would screw you over, and guessed correctly - you win!
2. You anticipated a certain transformation would screw you over, and it never appeared - you lose!

Being able to mitigate the effects of randomness by playing in an ideal fashion doesn't eliminate them.

So let's say you argued the above more coherently than you did. Reading it, I know you don't have much experience with Pictochat. You don't "suddenly get placed into a bad position" unless you allowed yourself to be. It spawns on a timer, it's no different than the klap trap in jungle japes. You know the place and time, if you got hit it's either your opponent hitting you there or your own mistake getting you killed.

But we'll break it down.

There's randomness in smash, period. Tripping, damage % in some cases (to our eyes), peach's down+b, G&W's over-b, Luigi's over-b, which transformation is showing up in pictochat, where items spawn, what items spawn, etc., etc.

So first thing is first, we can't remove all of it. Does this constitute removing what we can? This is the first "gap" that we have to cross. This is a bigger question than you'd realize. Why ban pictochat, but not ban Peach or G&W? You think a random bomb or judgement hasn't decided a match, set, or even tournament? Are characters somehow "more important" and thus defended from this? How can you justify banning Pictochat, but not Smashville due to the inherent randomness of its balloon or Yoshi's Island's Shy Guys and Roger?

It all comes down to severity.

First up, what are the actual effects? Inconvenience, loss of a stock, what? Pictochat's transformations could potentially put someone in a situation where they could be killed, right? That's severe. The balloon in Smashville has killed players before, in tournament. I've seen it. I d-smashed a Ness, he up+b'd, it hit the balloon, he died. That's pretty severe, but it's certainly uncommon and you can learn "oh, don't up+b in the path the balloon can be in".

So our mental process in "we should ban Pictochat" that doesn't fit into "we should ban Smashville and Peach and Yoshi's Island" isn't determined by the individual effect.

What about frequency?

Well we have numbers from Peach to start. If I recall correctly she has a 1/58 chance of getting a bob-omb and a 1/58 chance of getting a stitch face (4/58 of getting non-turnip total).

G&W's judgement doesn't allow you to pull the last two numbers pulled, so you essentially have a 1/7 chance of getting a 9, right?

So we've got some numbers to go on now with randomness. If something fits in that range, it fits in the frequency and it's within "acceptable bounds" as far as randomness alone goes (although random elements within that range can be considered bannable still).

But all this is dancing around the actual point.

Does it change results in a negative fashion?

You can talk about it "killing someone", but it doesn't have to. You can talk about it happening "too often", but we allow others that happen more often, and it doesn't really matter unless it changes results in a negative fashion.

You want to get saved by Roger on YIsland? You move to that area.

You don't want to get hit by the Bullets spawning on Pictochat? You move out of that area.

All that matters is "Does it change results in a negative fashion".

Pictochat has never done this more than other, more traditional stages, like Final Destination. You can crunch the numbers and see it pretty easily. You take the average win % for each matchup within a series of tournaments and when you have a large enough sample size, you see what affects the win % the most. If you take all the characters and see the average win rate on FD for most top tier characters is somewhere between 55-60%, but then you see Ice Climbers and Olimar jump up to 75-80%, you're in a tough spot if you can't find the same thing in Pictochat.

You can also look for consistent upsets. If Player Z is taking everyone and their mother to Pictochat no matter what but he beats everyone on that stage, it merits investigation because he's obviously figured something out. But that has never happened with Pictochat.

As such, you're presented with three options:

1) Arbitrarily ban Pictochat
2) Ban Pictochat and every other stage that has the same overall effect
3) Keep it legal and continue to collect data

Your stage ranking is absurd, by the way. Why would Green Hill Zone be as bad as Rumble Falls?
How is PS2 on the same level as Norfair? etc... etc...

PS2's ice zone doubles tripping occurrences, and the wind stage can severely alter certain matchups and make some super low % KOs. It also has the "diddy stall", in which Diddy jumps full height twice and then holds down his up+b for maximum charge and shoots straight up. He can stall the entire wind transformation this way. It's not that big of a deal because, ya know, you wreck his face when he lands, but people don't like it much.

Green Hill Zone has designated camp zones which can be considered "derivative gameplay". If you can make the case that the checkpoints because "safe zones" that you can't leave without giving yourself a disadvantage, the game becomes about using the safe zones properly. You stand within the hitbox so that they cannot approach easily. Rumble Falls is more or less the same issue; the stage isn't like Rainbow Cruise where there is just one path and you're fighting over it at a consistent speed, but rather there are multiple paths with inconsistent "speed up!" moments. Due to the variety of jump speeds and aerial mobility, some of the paths aren't open to the slower characters. This creates scenarios where the game becomes about "guarding" those paths specifically, except due to the layout of the stage it's not a result of player choice or randomness, but has actually been pre-determined.

If you want to get over the pendulum platform on Rainbow Cruise and someone is blocking your attempts, it's because they had the foresight to get there first. If you're trying to jump up the haystacks on Rumble Falls and someone is blocking you, it's because every time the game says "SPEED UP!" or gives them an easier path due to their aerial speed that they are freely given this opportunity.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Stopped reading at "it spawns on a timer".

Unless you give me a reason to read the rest of it, I'm not going to, because that is blatantly not true and has been proven as such numerous times.

 

[Ghostbone]

Well we have numbers from Peach to start. If I recall correctly she has a 1/58 chance of getting a bob-omb and a 1/58 chance of getting a stitch face (4/58 of getting non-turnip total).

Wrong
It's a 1/58 combined chance to pull any of stitch face/beam sword/mr.saturn/bob.omb.
Individually they're 1/232

It's really a 1/29 chance every time to get something better than a regular turnip (all the others are the same, one does slightly more shield damage than the others but it's still basically the same)
Dot eyes don't change that much, and stitch faces while strong still have a small hurtbox and can be grabbed and thrown back.
Bob-ombs are relatively easy to avoid, Mr. Saturns are weird but disappear quickly. Beam swords are rofl broken I'll admit, but not any more broken than ZSS's item pieces (in fact it's probably worse) so eh.
And consistent low chance like that is arguably the most balanced form of randomness anyway.

Ultimately the reason we don't ban Peach is because she isn't an overpowered character even with her items.
Just as G&W isn't overpowered (even if he only had 3 numbers, 1, 2 and 9, so he always knew what was next, he wouldn't be overpowered)
Characters provide far more depth than stages, so the limit of what's acceptable randomness for them is far higher than stages anyway (especially when the stage is essentially an FD clone with random elements tacked on)
And has been said, one move from a character that's random and a stage that makes every single action you make have a random element tacked onto it are far different things.

 

[DMG]

For stalling tactics with a grey area (circle camping, scrooging, sharking), it's probably better to remove the stages than to try and regulate it. When we try, we get ridiculous rules like the Ground Time Limit or the jankiness people have thought of to get around scrooging wording. Smashville is an exception to a lot of people because it's a perfectly fine stage if you stop scrooging: if you try to ban all stalling on Norfair you're still left with a massive stage that heavily disfavors the slower/forced to approach character.

Technically you could allow any stage if you slapped on x rules forbidding any gameplay that shows why the stage is horrible. No comboing or pressuring into the Fish on Summit, no running away or camping in cave of life on Hyrule, no picking blatantly faster characters and not approaching, etc. What you're gonna be left with is either people pushing the envelope and still being able to pull off degenerate/unhealthy strats, or you're gonna constrain gameplay so massively that people are afraid of "normal" waiting or retreating if it could be construed as stalling or unhealthy. OR...we can just ban the stage.

 

[MopedOfJustice]

The stage presented an advantage that wasn't there in a way that couldn't be predicted unless you had cycled through all of the drawings at least once (or if it happens to be the last drawing) and committed the order to memory. Just because the character caused the death doesn't mean the advantage wasn't random.

....
>No picture drawn, Player A grabs Player B
>Spikes randomly spawn
>Player A throws Player B into the randomly spawned spikes for a kill.

Do you not know what random means.

I understand the advantage was random, but it was still the opponent taking advantage of a (random) opportunity.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I understand the advantage was random, but it was still the opponent taking advantage of a (random) opportunity.

Still random.

 

[Overswarm]

I dont really understand the stage discussion at this point here.

Stages are generally chosen by those in which the player has absolute control over his character, ones in which allow all elements of skill into play ledges/decent boundaries/decent transformations that telegraph themselves at regular intervals/generally no hazards, and only offer slight advantages to characters and do not nearly guarantee an auto win. Basically ones that allow control due to predictability and play a factor in matches, but not one large enough to negate the players skill without the other players input.

Its why the majority of players prefer to play on stages that are generally flat, may or may not have platforms, have no hazards, and have ledges. These stages allow for techniques to be transferred to each other and playstyles mainly change to suit the opponent, not the stage itself. Like it or not having the stage play a large factor in your opponent winning; whether it be through large random events like Warioware/Pictochat, through the stage having mechanics that are detrimental to elements of play like Pirate Ship/Mario Bros/75M, or the stage playing such a large factor that you might as well not even be playing an opponent anymore like RC/Norfair are not fun to play on in a competitive aspect nor do they offer any skills that could be valuable anywhere else.

It is fairly easy to see why limiting stages to such a degree is the safest route to the competitive community, especially if the majority of competitive players like the general idea of them.

Lowering the stage list lowers character variety and lowering character variety lowers attendance. This has been true for both Melee and Brawl, and you can watch it happen in Smash 4 too.

We can debate as to whether players should fight on a static environment (so that any stage effects are something they can deal with and have no change in how they do so) or a dynamic environment back and forth. I think a dynamic environment is better because it takes more skill, is more fun, and is a much deeper game. You think static is better because you don't think the bar for predictability is the same as mine; I see the brinstar acid come up at static and regular intervals, shown by the background animations in advance, you see something random. You say playing on Norfair/Rainbow Cruise is fighting the stage, I say I've never actually had to fight the stage because I took the time to learn them.

But bottom line is.... the majority of players don't prefer to play on stages that are generally flat/plat. They don't. The majority prefer a much larger stage list and these people leave the community very quickly.

People like me and you stick around more or less over time and we debate back and forth about what should be in and what should be out, we experiment and observe other's experiments and try to come to conclusions that make sense.

The majority of players want to have more stages and don't want them to disappear. When the stages disappear, they do too.

Here's a tournament result list from 2009. I've highlighted in red the people I don't see anymore that just stopped playing/traveling/attending in the same region this tournament was in and green the people I don't see any more but have moved or aren't from the region. I may miss some of the OoR people and put them as red.

1: Anther (Pikachu)
2: Overswarm (MK/ROB)
3: Domo (MK)
4: AlphaZealot (Diddy)
5: Needle of Juntah (Game and Watch)
5: Ripple (Donkey Kong)
7: King Joshu (King Dedede)
7: Kirk (Ike)
9: Lain (Ice Climbers)
9: SamuraiPanda (Snake/Olimar)
9: Blood Hawk (Lucario)
9: Kel (MK)
13: Chewey
13: Jordan
13: Rowan
13: Clel
17: Fino
17: Chris
17: Tactical
17: Hilt
17: Legan
17: Nope
17: BYAA!
17: ACE853
25: Zeton
25: Holms
25: KY
25: Mr. E
25: Dr. X
25: Omniswell
25: 8-Bit
25: Oranos
33: MachineGunNorm
33: ITT
33: King Yoshi
33: Bowyer
33: ArkiveZero
33: Steeler
33: Cake
33: Andre
33: Mr. Sir. Dr. Daddy
33: Paladin
33: Spec
33: Y.b.M.
33: Gammage
33: Nicole
33: Kit
33: Asdioh
49: Themann
49: Crash
49: JoshKip
49: Infern Angelis
49: Xisin
49: TheBlueBlade
49: Calic
49: Ty Reed
49: Vayseth
49: Meneal
49: Rich Lewis
49: Xero
49: Epic
49: Mr. 9
49: Eric
49: Riddler

If we held that tournament today with the same group, 5 people would show up. Maybe. If people hadn't moved and were willing to travel again, we'd get maybe 10.

The vast majority of players in all regions are people who liked the game we played then. I know why the majority of those people quit. Stage lists shrunk, Meta Knight increased in prevalence. They lost their counter-picks, then they lost their characters. Their options were to switch characters and CPs, power through, or just quit. Most quit.

That's just how the game goes. People don't play smash because they want a typical fighter. We have the option of catering to a small group that's going to stick around no matter what.... or a group that will leave and increases our tournament size when they attend.

It's a no-brainer for me because I've looked into the win rates on all those "janky stages" that people like to complain about. They can joke about fighting the stage all they want, but at the end of the day the win % is what matters. When people say "MK is the CP stage problem, he destroys everyone on Rainbow Cruise", feel free to write them off. Rainbow Cruise was not one of MK's best stages, and was a good CP for several characters.

Fun fact: Norfair was one of the worst stages in terms of results for MK. This isn't counting MK dittos that were a result of someone switching off their character (hard to accoutn for), but you can still guarantee that certain characters (G&W, Snake, Ganon, Wario, are 4 I remember) that did way better on that stage than on others.

That's the situation I'm dealing with.

Stages that benefit the metagame and increase tournament attendance and player retention and increase character variety that have no negative or atypical effects on results

vs.

"I don't believe people should have to fight the stage"


It's a no-brainer.

That Wario clearly chose not to camp, especially to someone with as poor air speed as Luigi

He did, and he timed him out. >_>

He timed several people out and has frequently, that's how Wario's designed. If you have other video's, post 'em.

 

[Overswarm]

Stopped reading at "it spawns on a timer".

Unless you give me a reason to read the rest of it, I'm not going to, because that is blatantly not true and has been proven as such numerous times.

Proof? Because I tested it myself. It has a variable time window and can only spawn after the previous transformation has been gone for that time window. On top of that, there are safe zones, so I'm not sure what you were talking about before.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Proof? Because I tested it myself. It has a variable time window and can only spawn after the previous transformation has been gone for that time window. On top of that, there are safe zones, so I'm not sure what you were talking about before.

Okay, I was being overly harsh, while it's not on a precise timer like Japes you can predict roughly when the stage will transform, so I will dignify the rest of your post with a response.

Your spiel about randomness ultimately boils down to: whether it affects results or not is the only thing that matters. I 100% agree with that, so I'm glad we're on the same page.
As much as I'd love to crunch the numbers on whether Pictochat does that, we have no concrete, relevant data that I'm aware of. I can deduce that it will randomly alter results from my knowledge of the stage and the current metagame.

The example you gave was: You don't want to get hit by the Bullets spawning on Pictochat? You move out of that area.
The problem is that there is no safe zone on Pictochat, it affects the entire stage far more regularly than any of the other examples you gave - completely incomparable. I'll demonstrate the lack of safe zones with an example:

Saying I have no experience on it is laughable. Ghostbone and I played two sets of grand finals and the stage popped up once in each set. We know the optimal strategy and all the data, and we played "the way you are meant to" - know what happened? Momentum was constantly and randomly stuffed by stage hazards appearing in our way, our successful reads were either enhanced or made irrelevant by transformations that occurred after we landed the hits (often in succession, which was hilarious).

You're pulling results from an outdated metagame, by the way. I'd like to see any player beat ZeRo on Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar or Norfair.

 

[Ghostbone]

"I think a dynamic environment is better because it takes more skill"
What exactly do you have to back this up.

Brawl is a game with a neutral footsies game and follow-up game (whether that be juggling, punishing your opponent after they commit to an option, catching someone's landing, or edge-guarding).
All dynamic stages do is automatically put people in a disadvantaged position their opponent didn't earn, which they can then follow-up on.
That doesn't make a stage take more skill, it devalues the neutral game and instead further values someone's follow-up/punishing game.

Oh and Overswarm, you're also trying to spew bull**** about how we think that Brinstar's acid is random when we know it isn't and know it's predictable (well mostly, the specific level it rises to can't be predicted accurately and the timer shifts by up to like 15 seconds) , despite that, we still think it should be banned, why do you think that is?

 

[MopedOfJustice]

Still random.

More like semi-random, it had player based influence. There are other things that he could have done too, like a wall-based chain grab (depending on the characters picked).

 

[Grim Tuesday]

It's random enough to affect results beyond a level that I personally consider acceptable, regardless of player influence.

 

[Overswarm]

Okay, I was being overly harsh, while it's not on a precise timer like Japes you can predict roughly when the stage will transform, so I will dignify the rest of your post with a response.

Your spiel about randomness ultimately boils down to: whether it affects results or not is the only thing that matters. I 100% agree with that, so I'm glad we're on the same page.
As much as I'd love to crunch the numbers on whether Pictochat does that, we have no concrete, relevant data that I'm aware of. I can deduce that it will randomly alter results from my knowledge of the stage and the current metagame.

We had the entire MLG series data written down by hand and then calculated and analyzed by multiple people, for one. I did the same thing with midwest sets of consequence (top 8 sets).

The example you gave was: You don't want to get hit by the Bullets spawning on Pictochat? You move out of that area.
The problem is that there is no safe zone on Pictochat, it affects the entire stage far more regularly than any of the other examples you gave - completely incomparable. I'll demonstrate the lack of safe zones with an example:

Stand above the yellow text on the left. Don't move. Watch as nothing happens to you.

Saying I have no experience on it is laughable. Ghostbone and I played two sets of grand finals and the stage popped up once in each set. We know the optimal strategy and all the data, and we played "the way you are meant to" - know what happened? Momentum was constantly and randomly stuffed by stage hazards appearing in our way, our successful reads were either enhanced or made irrelevant by transformations that occurred after we landed the hits (often in succession, which was hilarious).

You're pulling results from an outdated metagame, by the way. I'd like to see any player beat ZeRo on Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar or Norfair.

I would too. The problem is that in this 'old metagame' people made the same arguments you're making now... and then banned the stages despite having no real evidence to do so. The onus of proof should be on you to ban the stage, not me to defend it.

 

[Ghostbone]

Oh I'd also like to respond to "Lowering the stage list lowers character variety and lowering character variety lowers attendance. This has been true for both Melee and Brawl, and you can watch it happen in Smash 4 too."
This with.....

THE RESULTS FROM SKTAR2

And character variety will naturally go down as the game ages, and people often quit after hype dies down, tournament attendance from 2009 doesn't mean anything.

Oh, and your comment about Melee is so wrong it's hilarious.
All the old counterpicks in Melee are Fox/Jiggs/Peach land.
Most mid tiers do far better on the neutrals against these characters (see Pikachu, Doctor Mario, Young Link)
Ice climbers are also far more viable in the game without stages like Brinstar and RC.
And guess which biggest melee tournament of all time (i think?) had a stagelist with a measly 6 stages?

 

[Overswarm]

For stalling tactics with a grey area (circle camping, scrooging, sharking), it's probably better to remove the stages than to try and regulate it. When we try, we get ridiculous rules like the Ground Time Limit or the jankiness people have thought of to get around scrooging wording. Smashville is an exception to a lot of people because it's a perfectly fine stage if you stop scrooging: if you try to ban all stalling on Norfair you're still left with a massive stage that heavily disfavors the slower/forced to approach character.

Technically you could allow any stage if you slapped on x rules forbidding any gameplay that shows why the stage is horrible. No comboing or pressuring into the Fish on Summit, no running away or camping in cave of life on Hyrule, no picking blatantly faster characters and not approaching, etc. What you're gonna be left with is either people pushing the envelope and still being able to pull off degenerate/unhealthy strats, or you're gonna constrain gameplay so massively that people are afraid of "normal" waiting or retreating if it could be construed as stalling or unhealthy. OR...we can just ban the stage.

lol wat?

"For stalling tactics with a grey area, it's best to ban the stage unless it's a stage you like"

Good one

 

[Overswarm]

Oh I'd also like to respond to "Lowering the stage list lowers character variety and lowering character variety lowers attendance. This has been true for both Melee and Brawl, and you can watch it happen in Smash 4 too."
This with.....

THE RESULTS FROM SKTAR2

You're joking, right? You pick one data point and say "ha HA! There isn't lower character variety!" because the chunk of MKs were around 7th-9th this time instead of 1st-5th?

 

[DMG]

More like Smashville happens to be a pretty good Neutral when you take care of the stalling, and the issue is a lot less grey on that stage. The same can't be said of Delfino, Norfair, etc. You can call it hypocritical, but it's not solely based on "liking" the stage

 

[Ghostbone]

You're joking, right? You pick one data point and say "ha HA! There isn't lower character variety!" because the chunk of MKs were around 7th-9th this time instead of 1st-5th?

Err
Yes I do
That's exactly what I do.
Thank's for pointing that out.

If you can say why that's a bad thing or doesn't count, go ahead.

 

[Ulevo]

Lowering the stage list lowers character variety and lowering character variety lowers attendance. This has been true for both Melee and Brawl, and you can watch it happen in Smash 4 too.

We can debate as to whether players should fight on a static environment (so that any stage effects are something they can deal with and have no change in how they do so) or a dynamic environment back and forth. I think a dynamic environment is better because it takes more skill, is more fun, and is a much deeper game. You think static is better because you don't think the bar for predictability is the same as mine; I see the brinstar acid come up at static and regular intervals, shown by the background animations in advance, you see something random. You say playing on Norfair/Rainbow Cruise is fighting the stage, I say I've never actually had to fight the stage because I took the time to learn them.

But bottom line is.... the majority of players don't prefer to play on stages that are generally flat/plat. They don't. The majority prefer a much larger stage list and these people leave the community very quickly.

People like me and you stick around more or less over time and we debate back and forth about what should be in and what should be out, we experiment and observe other's experiments and try to come to conclusions that make sense.

The majority of players want to have more stages and don't want them to disappear. When the stages disappear, they do too.

Here's a tournament result list from 2009. I've highlighted in red the people I don't see anymore that just stopped playing/traveling/attending in the same region this tournament was in and green the people I don't see any more but have moved or aren't from the region. I may miss some of the OoR people and put them as red.

1: Anther (Pikachu)
2: Overswarm (MK/ROB)
3: Domo (MK)
4: AlphaZealot (Diddy)
5: Needle of Juntah (Game and Watch)
5: Ripple (Donkey Kong)
7: King Joshu (King Dedede)
7: Kirk (Ike)
9: Lain (Ice Climbers)
9: SamuraiPanda (Snake/Olimar)
9: Blood Hawk (Lucario)
9: Kel (MK)
13: Chewey
13: Jordan
13: Rowan
13: Clel
17: Fino
17: Chris
17: Tactical
17: Hilt
17: Legan
17: Nope
17: BYAA!
17: ACE853
25: Zeton
25: Holms
25: KY
25: Mr. E
25: Dr. X
25: Omniswell
25: 8-Bit
25: Oranos
33: MachineGunNorm
33: ITT
33: King Yoshi
33: Bowyer
33: ArkiveZero
33: Steeler
33: Cake
33: Andre
33: Mr. Sir. Dr. Daddy
33: Paladin
33: Spec
33: Y.b.M.
33: Gammage
33: Nicole
33: Kit
33: Asdioh
49: Themann
49: Crash
49: JoshKip
49: Infern Angelis
49: Xisin
49: TheBlueBlade
49: Calic
49: Ty Reed
49: Vayseth
49: Meneal
49: Rich Lewis
49: Xero
49: Epic
49: Mr. 9
49: Eric
49: Riddler

If we held that tournament today with the same group, 5 people would show up. Maybe. If people hadn't moved and were willing to travel again, we'd get maybe 10.

The vast majority of players in all regions are people who liked the game we played then. I know why the majority of those people quit. Stage lists shrunk, Meta Knight increased in prevalence. They lost their counter-picks, then they lost their characters. Their options were to switch characters and CPs, power through, or just quit. Most quit.

That's just how the game goes. People don't play smash because they want a typical fighter. We have the option of catering to a small group that's going to stick around no matter what.... or a group that will leave and increases our tournament size when they attend.

It's a no-brainer for me because I've looked into the win rates on all those "janky stages" that people like to complain about. They can joke about fighting the stage all they want, but at the end of the day the win % is what matters. When people say "MK is the CP stage problem, he destroys everyone on Rainbow Cruise", feel free to write them off. Rainbow Cruise was not one of MK's best stages, and was a good CP for several characters.

Fun fact: Norfair was one of the worst stages in terms of results for MK. This isn't counting MK dittos that were a result of someone switching off their character (hard to accoutn for), but you can still guarantee that certain characters (G&W, Snake, Ganon, Wario, are 4 I remember) that did way better on that stage than on others.

That's the situation I'm dealing with.

Stages that benefit the metagame and increase tournament attendance and player retention and increase character variety that have no negative or atypical effects on results

vs.

"I don't believe people should have to fight the stage"


It's a no-brainer.





He did, and he timed him out. >_>

He timed several people out and has frequently, that's how Wario's designed. If you have other video's, post 'em.

Yeah. I couldn't imagine why people would stop playing Brawl.

I want to point out that my intention here isn't to trash talk Brawl yet again, but to not raise an eye brow at a post like this involuntarily is impossible at this point. You're not the only person here who has had their competitive community leave Brawl (or Smash for that matter) in droves for various reasons, and it isn't due to having a smaller, fairer stage list.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Overswarm:
I recall at least two sets from mlg being decided randomly by Pictochat. The fun thing is that Pictochat doesn't drastically skew results at all, it subtly skews them, so the minute amount of data from mlg won't help. The skewing is still more frequent than Smashville's balloon, and the characters with random elements.

Keep in mind that a character doesn't have to be KO'd or saved for Pictochat to influence results, as every single transformation affects the game randomly.
When I stand above the yellow text, I can guarantee that I won't be hit by anything randomly.
HOWEVER, my options, and the risk/reward of each of them changes randomly with each transformation. Platforms appear above me, behind me, wind blows in my face, a wall appears between me and my opponent, ceilings appear above me (stripes transformation), a hitbox appears above me, etc... Hopefully you understand that every single one of these things randomly give one player an advantage.

And you know what? Maybe the player who gets that advantage is the one in the safe zone - that doesn't make the stage okay. The player outside of the safe zone is going to have a random chance at taking back the safe zone, or getting hit/stopped by something ridiculous. The player inside the safe zone CANNOT remain motionless and react to the transformations as they come, because he will be fighting off the other player that is trying to take the safe zone from him. Even when he successfully protects the safe zone and knocks the opponent away, he is forced to choose between staying where he is (which will randomly benefit him if the stage transforms into something that would've hurt him should he have chosen to pursue) or to try and capitalize on his advantage (which will randomly benefit him if the stage doesn't transform into something that would mess him up).

Gee, all this combat over random rewards is starting to remind me of another stage... WarioWare.

 

[Ulevo]

You shouldn't be forced to play on a stage in tournament that whimsically gives any advantage or disadvantage that could alter the outcome of a match. Particularly because the TO left it legal and you as a player were forced to ban stages that made strategic sense for your character and your match up, but couldn't account for a stage that might involuntarily cost you the game.

The bottom line is that even if the stage has a subtle or profound affect in this regard, no one wants to be sent to losers bracket or eliminated from the tournament for it, and people will remove them as long as they have an "OFF" button.

 

[Overswarm]

Yeah. I couldn't imagine why people would stop playing Brawl.

I want to point out that my intention here isn't to trash talk Brawl yet again, but to not raise an eye brow at a post like this involuntarily is impossible at this point. You're not the only person here who has had their competitive community leave Brawl (or Smash for that matter) in droves for various reasons, and it isn't due to having a smaller, fairer stage list.

I knew them and talked to them specifically.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

50 people told you they quit due to the stage list?

 

[Overswarm]

50 people told you they quit due to the stage list?

More than that. Stage list and Meta Knight. Some I'm still friends with and see regularly. They'd enjoy playing Brawl, but MK was just such an uphill battle that they couldn't play their favorite characters anymore. Everyone had zany CPs against MK and people were constantly looking for that "anti-MK stage", but they started getting banned left and right. It wasn't a slow process.

 

[LiteralGrill]

50 people told you they quit due to the stage list?

I actually really want to know this too. If things like this really are the case, that's frightening, even from my perspective of wanting more stages for personal reasons, if people left in numbers like that in one area, what about others...

More than that. Stage list and Meta Knight. Some I'm still friends with and see regularly. They'd enjoy playing Brawl, but MK was just such an uphill battle that they couldn't play their favorite characters anymore. Everyone had zany CPs against MK and people were constantly looking for that "anti-MK stage", but they started getting banned left and right. It wasn't a slow process.

Edit: Well... Are we gutting the community with what we are doing/did? We have a serious question now.

All this "do what the majority says" talk and look what happened to the previous majority. If those are the rules, why didn't we play by them?

 

[Ghostbone]

Yea unfortunately Brawl's pretty gay and MK caused a lot of people to quit.
But other people would quit if he is banned too.

But Overswarm, if it's true that the majority just didn't like MK and quit, wouldn't it be better to ban him? Even if he's not nationally banned, the activity of your scene is more important than competing your best at a national level.

 

[DMG]

That's sorta not true. National level is incredibly influential: how many regions/tournaments took up the Apex ruleset so that their players would be familiar and prepared? Same thing for MLG.

Story time: In the early days of Brawl, Xyro wanted to ban MK in Texas for good after OOS came (HOBO 11 iirc is around the time) and the tourney was dominated by MK in all forms lol. He initially had some decent support for the idea, people had been loathing him a bit for months now, but in the end 80-90% of our community said no to it because it would be crippling on the national stage where MK would be legal (for both our MK players and for others who needed to prepare vs MK obviously). We probably could have had a bigger scene overall, but it was unacceptable to basically handicap ourselves for when we traveled to an Apex, COT, etc

 

[Ghostbone]

But the way Overswarm's making it sound like, MK killed the entire scene
Better to have a scene that's weak than none at all.

 

[LiteralGrill]

But the way Overswarm's making it sound like, MK killed the entire scene
Better to have a scene that's weak than none at all.

I think (not to put words in mouths) that he was saying MK would have been easier for those players to handle had they had the bad MK stages still legal, but as they were banned everywhere that's when the problem happened.

 

[HugS™]

Yes, because we all know that the person with the most to gain dictating the ruleset doesn't introduce conflicts of interest at all.

It's an opportunity that's open to everyone. It's not tax law where the rich make the rules to stay richer. All you have to do is be good in what liberal smashers allege to be a shallower version of play. I mean, if you're out there mastering the fight AND the stages, there should no problem in you all taking over the scene and implementing the rules.

 

[Overswarm]

I actually really want to know this too. If things like this really are the case, that's frightening, even from my perspective of wanting more stages for personal reasons, if people left in numbers like that in one area, what about others...



Edit: Well... Are we gutting the community with what we are doing/did? We have a serious question now.

All this "do what the majority says" talk and look what happened to the previous majority. If those are the rules, why didn't we play by them?

You're gutting the community, one way or another. At the molecular level, so to speak, it comes down to opinion.
Do you want larger tournaments, or a more condensed competitive scene where everyone is a threat?
Do you want a lot of variety, or would you prefer something like Melee with just a handful of characters and even less stages?
Believe it or not, a lot of people enjoy Melee because it's easy. In Brawl to play the best character far and away, you still have to have talent. You have to know how to fight MK, Snake, Falco, Dedede, ROB, Ice Climbers, Marth, Olimar, Peach, G&W, etc., etc., all with their own styles and there is no "auto combos" that you can rely on as your bread and butter. With Melee, playing Fox you can nair or drill to shine on anyone without too much trouble. Most unique matchup is probably gonna be Fox vs. Jiggs and it's still not that far removed, the stakes are just higher.
It's difficult to answer those questions because both are important.
Want to know the most popular gametype for smash? Stocks with items, no timer, FFA, all stages legal.
You probably think that's more fun than the competitive version too. But it wouldn't stick around as a real competitive scene.
People will always find a reason to leave and you can't stop all of them, and by the nature of competition not everyone can be winners.
In my view, it's simplest and gets the best results to
A) Leave everything legal
B) Ban techniques and stages that have shown to be overly centralizing to the point where it damages the metagame
C) Encourage abuse of possible banned techniques to accelerate the process
This way you end up with the perfect game every time. It might take a long time, but if we had done that for Brawl we'd have the perfect stagelist right now. There'd be no confusion whatsoever, if someone said "this stage should be banned" we could just show years and years of experience showing that it shouldn't. It's acting too fast that keeps us in a bad spot. The downside is that this way, while perfect in results, is slow. Very slow. If you do this, will people leave because Luigi's Mansion is legal?
It's a question of values and what the bottom line is.

Yea unfortunately Brawl's pretty gay and MK caused a lot of people to quit.
But other people would quit if he is banned too.

But Overswarm, if it's true that the majority just didn't like MK and quit, wouldn't it be better to ban him? Even if he's not nationally banned, the activity of your scene is more important than competing your best at a national level.

MK banned numbers were generally much higher and we did ban him locally, but....

That's sorta not true. National level is incredibly influential: how many regions/tournaments took up the Apex ruleset so that their players would be familiar and prepared. In the early days of Brawl, Xyro wanted to ban MK in Texas for good after OOS came (HOBO 11 iirc is around the time) and the tourney was dominated by MK in all forms lol. He initially had some decent support for the idea, but in the end 80-90% of our community said no to it because it would be crippling on the national stage where MK would be legal (for both our MK players and for others who needed to prepare vs MK obviously). We probably could have had a bigger scene overall, but it was unacceptable to basically handicap ourselves for when we traveled to an Apex, COT, etc

Bingo!

Our tournaments with MK banned would be bigger locally, but it'd hurt OoS attendance and our own ability to travel.

A big part of the smash community is hype; what happens when East Coast vs. West Coast happens? What happens when Ally comes from Canada and Mew2King from Jersey and DSF from California? Without the possibility of future OoS conquests and challenges, hype is diminished. Your "largest tournament" will be in the 50s.

The regions have always had their flavor and people always come out for the same events anyway, but when it comes to banning something like MK it's not like losing your CP or having to deal with the fact you never learned Mute City or Jungle Japes. If yuo main MK and they ban MK, you just can't go.

I know firsthand because I was a ROB main how stupid and frustrating it was to deal with MK and how much easier it was to play MK. I didn't have to practice anymore!

I know firsthand because I switched to MK how much better he was than the other characters.

I know firsthand because I played MK, got him banned, and then got to play other characters in tournament that it is HARD. You learn a lot about a character and matchups over time and it's hard to switch from MK to someone else without a lot of dedicated practice.

So I'm in a unique position of having been at all spots on the spectrum and I can tell you being an MK main and then trying to switch to another character cold turkey while everyone else simply knows their character is the hardest. MK is a crutch!

What happens when the masses lose their favorite stages and characters? They quit.

What happens when the elite has the same happen to them? They quit too! The majority of MK mains would just not play. A few would, but the majority would see no success and fade away.

If MK was banned universally it'd have helped quite a bit; we had a lot of renewed interest and people were excited about all sorts of stuff again, but then people want to travel and can't.

 

[Problem2]

I love this thread

 

[Overswarm]

It's an opportunity that's open to everyone. It's not tax law where the rich make the rules to stay richer. All you have to do is be good in what liberal smashers allege to be a shallower version of play. I mean, if you're out there mastering the fight AND the stages, there should no problem in you all taking over the scene and implementing the rules.

I DID do that and I DID change the rules for my region. It doesn't work when someone from OoR plays Falco and only wants flat/plat stages, comes here, loses on a stage like Rainbow Cruise and gets pissy. What's more, when it happened in Melee with players like Mew2King the OLD guard were more numerous and said "we don't like these stages" and banned them! You were there!

I wish I could find the doubles match of me and Kel vs. Boss and his guy on Japes. Was hilarious, they just kept running into the klap trap.

 

[Overswarm]

But the way Overswarm's making it sound like, MK killed the entire scene
Better to have a scene that's weak than none at all.

It wasn't MK specifically, but the combination of events that lead to them not being able to play their characters. They lost their CPs which made the matchup even harder, and MK excelled on flat/plat stages and was an easy character to pick up.

Easy character + advantageous stages + losing your CP + hard character to play = "I quit"


Like can you imagine a Falco main if all the TOs in the world banned FD, Battlefield, and Smashville? They'd just quit.

 

[LiteralGrill]

It's an opportunity that's open to everyone. It's not tax law where the rich make the rules to stay richer. All you have to do is be good in what liberal smashers allege to be a shallower version of play. I mean, if you're out there mastering the fight AND the stages, there should no problem in you all taking over the scene and implementing the rules.

It kinda sounds like you are suggesting we have to be amazing players to become dictators of a scene. Like actually dictators where what we say is the only way, am I misinterpreting?

 

[Ulevo]

More than that. Stage list and Meta Knight. Some I'm still friends with and see regularly. They'd enjoy playing Brawl, but MK was just such an uphill battle that they couldn't play their favorite characters anymore. Everyone had zany CPs against MK and people were constantly looking for that "anti-MK stage", but they started getting banned left and right. It wasn't a slow process.

Well I'll resolve some of the misunderstandings for you right now.

1) There is no anti-Meta Knight stage.

2) They didn't quit because their stages were being removed. They quit because their supposed chances of dealing with Meta Knight, a blatantly well known obnoxious balance problem Brawl has, were being removed.

 

[Ghostbone]

What happens when the masses lose their favorite stages and characters? They quit.

Losing their characters? I've never heard of anyone besides MK being banned.

Or are you suggesting we arbitrarily buff lower tiered characters (keeping broken stages legal just to help certain mid tiers counts as that) to appease a few people?

Like I'd like you to expand on that point before I assume you mean something you don't, and say something irrelevant.

 

[[Corn]]

Um, im once again confused.

What the hell stage puts MK at a disadvantage?

 

[Overswarm]

Well I'll resolve some of the misunderstandings for you right now.

1) There is no anti-Meta Knight stage.

2) They didn't quit because their stages were being removed. They quit because their supposed chances of dealing with Meta Knight, a blatantly well known obnoxious balance problem Brawl has, were being removed.

The "anti MK stages" are an individual basis. Jungle Japes, for example, is great for Snake, Lucario, and DK (in reverse order now that I think about it) vs. MK. They all live forever on it and can kill MK fast there and it's harder for MK to approach. MK however DESTROYS Olimar on a stage like Japes and doesn't necessarily do too poorly on it on his own.

So while it's not a bad MK stage in the sense that "Captain Falcon would prefer not to play on Pokefloats", it's a stage those characters could keep in their pocket vs. an MK.

Losing their characters? I've never heard of anyone besides MK being banned.

Or are you suggesting we arbitrarily buff lower tiered characters (keeping broken stages legal just to help certain mid tiers counts as that) to appease a few people?

Like I'd like you to expand on that point before I assume you mean something you don't, and say something irrelevant.

Let's say you play Mewtwo in Brawl. Mewtwo does fine on the flat/plat stages, but they aren't built for him like they are for other characters. Mewtwo, however, has some awesome mobility and projectile pressure. He really loves moving vertically, and because of this does very well on stages that present that feature. Think of it like an opposite Falco; Falco likes to move horizontally, Mewtwo vertically.

Mewtwo has a bad MU with MK, but with a lot of skill, practice in the MU, and some luck you have a shot to take MK out on these stages where he already has an advantage. But more importantly, you have awesome CPs against MK! You do fantastically on Rainbow Cruise because of your great aerial mobility and vertical combos and don't even get me started on how awesome Norfair is for you. You're able to hit through the platforms safely and actually approach because of the vertical difference, and your lack of horizontal speed isn't a huge disadvantage here.

A bunch of Falcos, Snakes, and Dededes complain because they're bad on Rainbow Cruise and Norfair, just like you're bad on Final Destination and Battlefield. FD and Battlefield remain starters and Rainbow Cruise and Norfair are banned.

Your Mewtwo experience is now hampered quite a bit. You still have trouble with MK, but now it's even MORE difficult because you don't have the counterpicks that worked so well for your character!

Your favorite stages are gone, your favorite character is now worse than before, and because of this your character is no longer viable in tournament.

 

[Overswarm]

Um, im once again confused.

What the hell stage puts MK at a disadvantage?

Depends on the matchup.

Final Destination vs. ICs puts MK at a disadvantage due to no platforms, for an example. It's why they ban it.

MK wrecks G&W on smashville, but Rainbow Cruise puts G&W in an awesome spot.

Ganon is gonna get 3 stocked on most stages, but on Norfair can hold his own.

Wario gets destroyed in tournaments except for a select few, but was one of the few characters that had an above 50% win rate against MK on ANY stage; Norfair was the stage he got it on.

Ike does a lot better vs MK on Pirate Ship. Olimar can wreck face on Luigi's Mansion vs MK.

So on and so on.

MK does fine on all those stages, just not in those matchups. Think from the other side and lots of stages suddenly become good vs. MK because they help that character's strengths, not enhance MK weaknesses.


It's one of the reasons a small stage list is so detrimental to the game. The characters that liked the stages to begin with see no real change except their weaknesses aren't exposed; Falco can't be taken to non-horizontal stages anymore and the like. The characters that DON'T like flat/plat stages get far less CPs if any at all and their weaknesses are exposed for the majority of the stages, lowering their viability. Wario is a good example. He's designed to be a campy in-and-out character and the stage list has shrunk to have less stages with larger sizes or mobility as a focus.