Proving Whether or Not MK is bannable with Data: A community to do list

[adumbrodeus]

Rather then continue this endless back and forth on 3 threads that are about 400 pages each, I think it's time that we established whether or not MK is actually bannable, not with arguments (yet) but with raw data.


However, we simply don't have the data required, so in order to firmly establish the data required I propose this community "to do list". Basically I am asking the community's overall help in heavy match-up discussion and data gathering in order to make this possible. In addition several things with have the beneficial side effect of helping other area's of our community. So without further ado I present the:



Prove MK Banworthy or Not Banworthy to do list




1. Make a better theoretical model for match-ups. The current one really doesn't suffice because it neglects to take into account human error as far as I've observed, possibly a great deal more. I've attempted to help with my thread on "Mindgames Potential", though we still need a concrete understanding of how often a player should fall victim to mindgames, and to what degree before it can be finished.

2. Using the new theoretical model, make accurate match-ups.

3. Illustrate based on the match-ups, that MK makes 50% of the cast +1 nonviable, independent of any other characters to ban, if this does not occur, MK is not banworthy.

4. Figure out a reasonable margin of error for tournament results to vary from the theoretical match-ups.

5. Illustrate that empirical results are the same as your match-ups would suggest or within the pre-determined margin of error. (Note this functions primarily as a self-check to make sure the theory is actually grounded in reality, aka we're not missing something). (The current Empirical Matchups thread is designed to do exactly that, so feel free to contributed)


So, if MK, based on Match-ups, renders 50%+1 or more of the cast nonviable, that makes him banworthy, fair enough.




Since this is crucial, let me define when a character makes another character nonviable:

1. A hard counter to that character at least (80-20 min would probably be more proper).

2. Has to be either:

a. Omni-present enough in the metagame that not being eliminated by this character is near impossible given the hard counter status (even if you're a superior player).

OR

b. the match-up is easy enough that an opponent can virtually pick up the character to beat you.


3. No other character fits these attributes.

4. This pattern has to be backed up by tournament data.



This is based on Sirlin's criteria of "overcentralization" and has been pretty well received so far, I would ask that we consider it as a way to solve the question once and for all, especially since it should help us gain otherwise useful information along the way.

So, thoughts?


Note: this is NOT a thread to debate whether MK is bannable, there's another thread for that. This is to deal with figuring out whether characters are bannable in generally which is meant to be applied to MK at some point in the future.



Edit:

Important threads:

As this project comes to fruitition certain threads will either be created independantly or be created by the project in order to further this objective that will be extremely useful. I will maintain a list as this occurs here.


Keep in mind that you don't have to agree with the standard itself necessarily, what portion of the cast MK needs to make nonviable and what constitutes nonviable are open to debate. What's absolute however, is that data is needed, no matter what the eventual standard is. In light of that understanding, please participate in developing the data that's needed for the eventual conclusion, data is viewpoint neutral (and having more people on this keeps people honest).

Without further ado, the threads.

Empirical Match-ups: Assists in proving or disproving MK's actual match-up dominance when completed.

 

[SpongeBathBill]

80-20 seems somehow steep to me. A quick scan at the latest (as far as I know) MU chart shows that according to current data, MK has only two 80:20 matchups: CF and Link. With a handful of exceptions, everything else is in the range of 70:30 and 50:50.

EDIT: I do realise that the numbers are fairly loose estimates.

 

[Crizthakidd]

the great ally once said,

" F*** YOU META BANNERS"

look if ur any good at this game, you will overcome most mks. only at high lvl of play does it matter or affect YOU in anyway lol and i dont see why you just dont get good and exploit weaknesses. and if u know how this game is played and your char has no chance vs mk you pick up diddy,mk,snake, or wario

 

[adumbrodeus]

the great ally once said,

" F*** YOU META BANNERS"

look if ur any good at this game, you will overcome most mks. only at high lvl of play does it matter or affect YOU in anyway lol and i dont see why you just dont get good and exploit weaknesses. and if u know how this game is played and your char has no chance vs mk you pick up diddy,mk,snake, or wario

...

lrn2read, this isn't a thread to debate whether or not to ban MK, this is a thread to point out the ban standards that we as a community (supposedly) follow, and an attempt to derive a concrete course of action to actually figure out whether MK is bannable logically and analytical.


Instead of resorting to people just shouting "mk is beatable" and "mk has no counters", because that won't get us anywhere and is irrelevant.

If you wanna debate MK's banworthyness as it stands now there's a thread that's over 400 pages for doing just that.


However, if you wanna talk about the methodology presented or are interested in actually resolving this in the long term, you come here.

80-20 seems somehow steep to me. A quick scan at the latest (as far as I know) MU chart shows that according to current data, MK has only two 80:20 matchups: CF and Link. With a handful of exceptions, everything else is in the range of 70:30 and 50:50.

EDIT: I do realise that the numbers are fairly loose estimates.

I don't think it's too steep. Only at 80-20 or worse is the number of players removed enough to totally render the character nonviable based on a single character, otherwise it has to be a combination of factors that renders the character non-viable.


As I pointed out beore, current match-ups suck, so it's pointless to reference to them.

 

[Jupz]

MK doesn't render many characters inviable, let alone 50%. All the characters he pwns get pwned just as hard (usually) by someone else. MK is not banworthy imo.

- I know you weren't asking for my opinion, but I was just stating that no lower tier characters would be MUCH better off without him. Dedede has a much larger impact.

 

[xDD-Master]

Nice Thread.

MK Ban when:
- No bad Match-Ups
- No bad Stages (One bad stage wouldnt change something because of stage banning rule)
- Soft Counter to >90% of the cast (Soft Counter = 60 : 40 or more)
- Hard Counter to >60% of the cast (Hard Counter = 70 : 30 or more)
- Very Hard Counter to >40% of the cast (Very Hard Counter = 80 : 20 or more)
- Hardest MU for >70% of the cast
- Making ~50% of the characters not tournament-viable anymore
- Lots of Hard MUs for other good characters (Top / High Tiers... middle / low / bottom doesnt matter) ... Many good characters that get destroyed by him
- He wins more than 70% of all tournaments
- More than 50% of all players play him
- Techniques that makes it impossible to win against (Very Easy Infinits and something like that... Infinits with hard setups dont count) ---> If the technique wouldnt get banned (Like Infinit Cape ^^)

If ALL of this would be, then he should be banned... in my opinion. As for now he doesnt fit to all these points.

 

[Delvro]

Wow... everyone seems to missing the point of this entirely.

"Hi, my opinion is...." is not the point of this thread.

Although you are going to have a LOT of trouble rendering 50% of the cast according to your data. I'd say that approx. 50% of the cast have meta-knight as their worst match-up... BUT... there are other characters that hard-counter these characters also.

Example is Luigi. Luigi vs MK is borderline unwinnable, and is Luigi's worst matchup (at least according to some). But take MK out and that leave Luigi with other hard-counter matchups like DDD (with infinite only), Marth, etc...

It seems likely that many other characters will fall into this category. So taking out MK would remove their biggest threat, only to leave other characters that do the job of rendering characters almost, but not quite, as unviable.

 

[adumbrodeus]

Wow... everyone seems to missing the point of this entirely.

"Hi, my opinion is...." is not the point of this thread.

Lol, who actually reads?

Although you are going to have a LOT of trouble rendering 50% of the cast according to your data. I'd say that approx. 50% of the cast have meta-knight as their worst match-up... BUT... there are other characters that hard-counter these characters also.

Example is Luigi. Luigi vs MK is borderline unwinnable, and is Luigi's worst matchup (at least according to some). But take MK out and that leave Luigi with other hard-counter matchups like DDD (with infinite only), Marth, etc...

It seems likely that many other characters will fall into this category. So taking out MK would remove their biggest threat, only to leave other characters that do the job of rendering characters almost, but not quite, as unviable.

It's supposed to be difficult because overcentralization is a high standard.

That said, we'd have to prove that Marth (or a combination of other characters) would render him nonviable regardless.

Just keep in that King DDD's infinite can be broken out of prior to killing percents (reflex illustrated this in a match with M2K, breaking out at 127 I believe off 1 pummel), and without a 0-death I believe the match-up is more like 60-40 (he still gets a good 5 chaingrabs in before it stales enough to release Luigi) which really isn't bad.

MK doesn't render many characters inviable, let alone 50%. All the characters he pwns get pwned just as hard (usually) by someone else. MK is not banworthy imo.

- I know you weren't asking for my opinion, but I was just stating that no lower tier characters would be MUCH better off without him. Dedede has a much larger impact.

Then prove it with accurate data.

Nice Thread.

MK Ban when:
- No bad Match-Ups
- No bad Stages (One bad stage wouldnt count because of stage banning rule)
- Soft Counter to >90% of the cast (Hard Counter = 60 : 40 or more)
- Hard Counter to >50% of the cast (Hard Counter = 70 : 30 or more)
- Techniques that makes it impossible to win against (Very Easy Infinits and something like that... Infinits with hard setups dont count) ---> If the technique wouldnt get banned (Like Infinit Cape ^^)

If all of this would be, then he should be banned... in my opinion. As for now he doesnt fit to all these points.

Then prove it, with accurate data.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I disagree with point 3 of the criteria in the OP. 50% + 1 unviable characters are not enough to ban MK at all. This takes the ******** idea into account that character diversity means anything in competitive play, which is obviously not the case. Making half of the cast unviable isn't even remotely enough to warrant a ban...
If you look at other comeptitive games you'll quickly realize that 3 or 4 viable characters is nothing to worry about ... I myself have played Tekken competitively for a while and the whole game boiled down to three characters (Steve, Nina, Bryan) and Tekken still does well competitively. You don't really need more viability than that to have a competitive game ... people, who want MK banned because of diversity shouldn't play competitive.

The minimun requirement should be: He hard counters all except 2 or 3 other characters and against those he still has the have advantage (55/45 or higher). Meta Knight fulfils neither of those requirement and with him in play Snake, Wario and Diddy Kong are still perfectly viable. 4 tourney viable characters is pretty good actually, especially since many other characters are arguably viable too.

Change point 3 is you want this to be discussed seriously.

 

[Nic64]

^ isn't that all pointless semantics? half of the cast are unviable and bad characters to begin with, they wouldn't be competitive with MK out of the game anyway. you may or may not be right but it's pretty pointless nitpicking if you ask me, he fails to meet the criteria either way.

 

[Marcbri]

3. Illustrate based on the match-ups, that MK makes 50% of the cast +1 nonviable, independent of any other characters to ban, if this does not occur, MK is not banworthy.

I disagree with that too, let's see how many characters does melee sheik hard counter:

Bowser , Falcon , DK,Ganon,Jigglypuff,Kirby,Link,Luigi,Mewtwo, Mr.G&W,ness,pichu,pikachu, roy, samus,yoshi, young link, zelda.

omg that's a hard counter on more than 50% of the cast. Is sheik banned? no, because he has some even/near even match-ups against the remaining characters and still some of the hard counters can beat Sheik if they are better at the match-up.

 

[.AC.]

I disagree with that too, let's see how many characters does melee sheik hard counter:

Bowser , Falcon , DK,Ganon,Jigglypuff,Kirby,Link,Luigi,Mewtwo, Mr.G&W,ness,pichu,pikachu, roy, samus,yoshi, young link, zelda.

omg that's a hard counter on more than 50% of the cast. Is sheik banned? no, because she has some even/near even match-ups against the remaining characters and still some of the hard counters can beat Sheik if they are better at the match-up.

Fix´d

Anyways then i guess it would also be part of the objective to prove he has at least a few characters that go somewhat even ar at least close to even.

 

[xDD-Master]

Then prove it, with accurate data.

What should I prove ? oô

Anyway I edited my post a little bit.

 

[Schwaumlaut]

This sounds like as good a time as any to ask for more contributions to my Empirical Matchups table (check out this thread http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=233428).

If you're going to be keeping track of how often MK wins in tournament games, please take another 5 minutes to write down the rest of the top 8, as well. Then take 30 seconds to PM me the info you've gathered. Everybody wins!

Most of our info on MK so far is Overswarm vs. AlphaZealot, so we really need more data to get an accurate picture of reality.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I disagree with point 3 of the criteria in the OP. 50% + 1 unviable characters are not enough to ban MK at all. This takes the ******** idea into account that character diversity means anything in competitive play, which is obviously not the case. Making half of the cast unviable isn't even remotely enough to warrant a ban...
If you look at other comeptitive games you'll quickly realize that 3 or 4 viable characters is nothing to worry about ... I myself have played Tekken competitively for a while and the whole game boiled down to three characters (Steve, Nina, Bryan) and Tekken still does well competitively. You don't really need more viability than that to have a competitive game ... people, who want MK banned because of diversity shouldn't play competitive.

The minimun requirement should be: He hard counters all except 2 or 3 other characters and against those he still has the have advantage (55/45 or higher). Meta Knight fulfils neither of those requirement and with him in play Snake, Wario and Diddy Kong are still perfectly viable. 4 tourney viable characters is pretty good actually, especially since many other characters are arguably viable too.

Change point 3 is you want this to be discussed seriously.

Banning because a character is the only viable character in competative play IS banning because of diversity, and Sirlin's criteria uses diversity, that's ultimately what overcentralization is.

We do not ban to MAXIMIZE diversity however, because maintaining consistency requires many other things to be banned, moving the game further and further away from the actual game.


Regardless, you seem to be misunderstanding, I was not talking about more then half the cast BEING nonviable.

I was talking about a single character MAKING more then half of the class. In other words, the single character is responsable for more then half the cast being nonviable (you can take a look below for my criteria for being nonviable).


The thing is, the issue with your criteria is, what if the next best character does the same thing? For example, MvC2, it's got only 4 viable characters (it uses teams of 3), but if they were banned, the next 3 or 4 characters dominates the remaining characters, until you're down to the absolute bottom. Ultimately, the game is still just as overcentralized in your criteria for the game.

That's why I chose a criteria that not only examines the characters that the suspect hurts but also examines whether or not the character's position would be improved if the suspect is banned (that is what point 3 of the "criteria for making a character nonviable" is about).


So, in conclusion, making more then half the cast singlehandedly non-viable is a legitimate reason for banning because it does in fact overcentralize the metagame.

I disagree with that too, let's see how many characters does melee sheik hard counter:

Bowser , Falcon , DK,Ganon,Jigglypuff,Kirby,Link,Luigi,Mewtwo, Mr.G&W,ness,pichu,pikachu, roy, samus,yoshi, young link, zelda.

omg that's a hard counter on more than 50% of the cast. Is sheik banned? no, because he has some even/near even match-ups against the remaining characters and still some of the hard counters can beat Sheik if they are better at the match-up.

...

When did I say anything about hard-countering more then half the cast being the criteria for banning?

I didn't, what I actually said was "makes more then half the cast nonviable", and I defined that as requiring that no other character fits all those attributes.

In the case of Sheik ALMOST EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER SHE HARD COUNTERED WAS HARD COUNTERED BY ONE OF THE OTHER HIGHLY POPULAR CHARACTERS.

That's what makes her not banworthy, because her removal would have no effect on the metagame simply because her effect is replacable.

What should I prove ? oô

Anyway I edited my post a little bit.

Hmm, I did misread, you're disagreeing with my criteria.

May I ask how you came to those conclusions?

This sounds like as good a time as any to ask for more contributions to my Empirical Matchups table (check out this thread http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=233428).

If you're going to be keeping track of how often MK wins in tournament games, please take another 5 minutes to write down the rest of the top 8, as well. Then take 30 seconds to PM me the info you've gathered. Everybody wins!

Most of our info on MK so far is Overswarm vs. AlphaZealot, so we really need more data to get an accurate picture of reality.

Listen to the man.

I specifically referenced your thread before in regards to this topic, so yes, that is a major part of the tournament evidence to back things up.

 

[Schwaumlaut]

Actually, would you mind putting a link to my data thread in the first post? Sometimes people jump straight to the end or don't read the thread beyond the first post. Thanks!

 

[adumbrodeus]

Actually, would you mind putting a link to my data thread in the first post? Sometimes people jump straight to the end or don't read the thread beyond the first post. Thanks!

No problem, it's done.

Anything to draw more attention to such crucial data.

 

[Mortimer]

So, in conclusion, making more then half the cast singlehandedly non-viable is a legitimate reason for banning because it does in fact overcentralize the metagame.

Not really. What happens when >50% of the cast is already nonviable? Would a character who makes the other 49% nonviable be not bannable?

 

[RDK]

Not really. What happens when >50% of the cast is already nonviable? Would a character who makes the other 49% nonviable be not bannable?

What part of making 50% of the roster unviable do you not understand? I assure you it's really not that hard of a concept.

I disagree with that too, let's see how many characters does melee sheik hard counter:

Bowser , Falcon , DK,Ganon,Jigglypuff,Kirby,Link,Luigi,Mewtwo, Mr.G&W,ness,pichu,pikachu, roy, samus,yoshi, young link, zelda.

omg that's a hard counter on more than 50% of the cast. Is sheik banned? no, because he has some even/near even match-ups against the remaining characters and still some of the hard counters can beat Sheik if they are better at the match-up.

There's an enormous difference between non-viable and hard-countered. Although I suppose it's a little foolish of me to expect random board users to know that.

 

[Mortimer]

What part of making 50% of the roster unviable do you not understand? I assure you it's really not that hard of a concept.

Why don't you explain it, then?

 

[Schwaumlaut]

Thanks, Adum!

On topic, it turns out that if you have 37 characters, making 19 nonviable would be 51.3%. That's really convenient.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

A problem is that we like to think of viability as boolean when really it's a spectrum. Like, we can safely say that Meta Knight is viable, and we can probably safely say Lucario is viable. We would perhaps even claim that Meta Knight is more viable than Lucario. Likewise, you have cases like Pokemon Trainer where he's not particularly inviable but not really an appealing choice.

Meta Knight's effect on character viability is complex anyway, and I dare suggest he has a not very clearly negative impact on the low tiers. I had a long post stemming from this point, but I don't want to talk too much about characters I don't understand well. I will point out that he's probably one of the best high tier matchup for both Bowser and Yoshi (regardless of how good you think it is for them, it's definitely worse for them against random other high tiers). It's also hard to think of a low tier character whose single worst matchup is Meta Knight.

Among better characters, I think the extent to which he renders characters "inviable" is overblown. People say Marth and R.O.B. are, but are they really now? They still make some good tournament results. Meta Knight is used a lot at those tournaments. Something doesn't fit here, and the simplest explanation is that Meta Knight damages their viability a lot less than some people like to claim. Given that most of the cast has demonstrated itself capable of making top 8 at a major tournament, I really just don't see what Meta Knight is destroying at all. The 50% + 1 criteria this topic looks for will certainly never be met no matter how you define 50% + 1 (there is an argument for whether you consider it among the cast as a whole or among characters who are otherwise viable).

 

[brinboy789]

ummm

MK does not SINGLWEHANDIDLY make ANY character unviable. sure he ***** several chars, but they get ***** by the MAJORITY of the cast anyways. even if he does **** 50%, which i doubt, these chars get ***** abyways. this does not prove anything

 

[adumbrodeus]

Thanks, Adum!

On topic, it turns out that if you have 37 characters, making 19 nonviable would be 51.3%. That's really convenient.

That is pretty weird and useful.

A problem is that we like to think of viability as boolean when really it's a spectrum. Like, we can safely say that Meta Knight is viable, and we can probably safely say Lucario is viable. We would perhaps even claim that Meta Knight is more viable than Lucario. Likewise, you have cases like Pokemon Trainer where he's not particularly inviable but not really an appealing choice.

I agree, viability is a spectrium, but nonviability is not, at least not as far as I've defined it.

There's an obvious argument that could happen as to whether my criteria is the right one, but ultimately, nonviability comes down to this, "where in the spectruim does the community define as ban-worthy?"

Meta Knight's effect on character viability is complex anyway, and I dare suggest he has a not very clearly negative impact on the low tiers. I had a long post stemming from this point, but I don't want to talk too much about characters I don't understand well. I will point out that he's probably one of the best high tier matchup for both Bowser and Yoshi (regardless of how good you think it is for them, it's definitely worse for them against random other high tiers). It's also hard to think of a low tier character whose single worst matchup is Meta Knight.

Among better characters, I think the extent to which he renders characters "inviable" is overblown. People say Marth and R.O.B. are, but are they really now? They still make some good tournament results. Meta Knight is used a lot at those tournaments. Something doesn't fit here, and the simplest explanation is that Meta Knight damages their viability a lot less than some people like to claim. Given that most of the cast has demonstrated itself capable of making top 8 at a major tournament, I really just don't see what Meta Knight is destroying at all. The 50% + 1 criteria this topic looks for will certainly never be met no matter how you define 50% + 1 (there is an argument for whether you consider it among the cast as a whole or among characters who are otherwise viable).

Well, if you believe that, then help get the data to prove that. It might be that people are missing something, or MK players are weaker then they should, or the stigma of using MK is reducing him more then he should.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the result is, the trick is to actually prove it, one way or the other, and if you're right, MK will remain unbanned when the dust settles, if you're wrong, then he'll be banned and fully deserve it.

ummm

MK does not SINGLWEHANDIDLY make ANY character unviable. sure he ***** several chars, but they get ***** by the MAJORITY of the cast anyways. even if he does **** 50%, which i doubt, these chars get ***** abyways. this does not prove anything

Of course it doesn't prove anything, it's a model for conclusive determination not a pro-ban argument (and remember, it's me).

If you're right, the evidence will bear out your point of view in the long run.

 

[brinboy789]

Of course it doesn't prove anything, it's a model for conclusive determination not a pro-ban argument (and remember, it's me).

If you're right, the evidence will bear out your point of view in the long run.

oooo i c what you did thar. but i thought it was already proven by the antiban that MK does not singlehandidly make any character unviable?

 

[adumbrodeus]

oooo i c what you did thar. but i thought it was already proven by the antiban that MK does not singlehandidly make any character unviable?

It's more an issue of, "the match-ups are hopelessly out of date and we don't even really have a good theoretical model to go on", so no, we really don't know if MK makes any characters nonviable or not.

 

[Deadweight]

Heres the current list of chars who have "Difficult" match-ups. All of which IMO need to be re-evaluated and given a more up to date ratio.

13
60-40 Matchups
Marf
Olimar
G@W
DK
Yoshi
Bowser
TL
Peach
Ness
Shiek
Zelda
ZSS
Jigs

11 65-35 matchups
Wolf
Lucario
Pikachu
Sonic
Ike
Fox
Lucas
Luigi
Mario
RoB
PT

3 70-30 Matchups
Spamus
Gannon
Cfalc

Need to start from somewhere amirite?

 

[Wild ARMs]

I think that in my area, MK is ALREADY banned... I heard this from a friend of mine. The tournament in our area is not allowing MK, he said.
He could be wrong, but I don't know. But I don't think much of it. It's not like TN has alot of brawlers....

 

[Kain6th]

Before we even continue with this topic, can we get confirmation from people of the SBR to use the valuable data we find out in this topic? I just want to make sure we aren't wasting our time with this. It's a great idea, but its ultimately their decision on how they should go about banning or not banning MK is it not?

I think I could help gathering some data for this btw. I'll see what i can do.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I already did gather data to establish him not totally ruining Marth and R.O.B. (and assorted other characters).

I went back and compiled the more detailed statistics for the major tournaments. I should point out that claims that his level of dominance were at any point unknown are silly since the data is publicly available. Predicably, he didn't do so well if you define "well" as demonstrating himself to be broken in any way whatsoever.

To be clear, I considered major tournaments only which I defined as tournaments with at least 90 entrees that occurred in 2009. Here are the results...

Of the 11 major tournaments that were won by someone using only a single character, Meta Knight won FOUR. Snake won two, and five other characters each won one (Diddy Kong, Mr. Game & Watch, King Dedede, Zero Suit Samus, Lucario). Of the number of characters placings total among tournaments won by multiple characters, Meta Knight only gains one placing out of the six (to be more clear, there were actually three tournaments that were won by people using two characters, and the combinations were Marth/Snake, Wario/Ice Climbers, and Meta Knight/Snake). At absolute best, Meta Knight wins 4.5/14 tournaments of this size; in other words, he wins about 32%. Discounting splits moves him all the way up to about 36%. Snake, including splits, is worth about 21% and "other" is worth about 46% (rounding error accounts for the other 1%).

Let's do a similar analysis of 2nd. Meta Knight again has 4 2nd places by himself while Snake has 2, but this time six other characters have a single 2nd place (Diddy Kong, Mr. Game & Watch, Falco, Wario, Pikachu, Luigi). The splits this time were Meta Knight/King Dedede and Wario/King Dedede. Meta Knight is again worth 32% with Snake taking 14% and "other" taking 54%.

I'll cut to the chase and post the full stats.

Meta Knight:  (1st: 4, 2nd: 4, 3rd: 2, 4th: 2, 5th: 3, 7th: 5, 1st*: 1, 2nd*: 1, 3rd*: 4, 4th*: 4, 5th*: 2, 7th*: 2)
Snake: (1st: 2, 2nd: 2, 4th: 1, 5th: 2, 7th: 2, 1st*: 2, 3rd*: 2, 4th*: 1)
Diddy Kong:  (1st: 1, 2nd: 1, 3rd: 1, 5th: 2, 7th: 2, 4th*: 1, 5th*: 1, 7th*: 1)
Mr. Game & Watch:  (1st: 1, 2nd: 1, 4th: 1, 5th: 1, 7th: 1)
King Dedede:  (1st: 1, 4th: 1, 5th: 3, 7th: 1, 2nd*: 2, 3rd*: 2, 7th*: 1)
Zero Suit Samus: (1st: 1, 5th: 1, 7th: 2, 3rd*: 1, 5th: 1)
Lucario: (1st: 1, 5th: 1, 3rd*: 1, 4th*: 1, 5th*: 2)
Falco:  (2nd: 1, 5th: 2, 3rd*: 1 4th*: 1, 5th*: 1, 7th*: 1)
Wario:  (2nd: 1, 5th: 1, 7th: 1, 1st*: 1, 2nd*: 1, 3rd*: 2, 4th*: 1, 7th*: 1)
Pikachu: (2nd: 1, 7th: 1, 4th*: 1)
Luigi: (2nd: 1, 7th: 1)
R.O.B.: (3rd: 1, 4th*: 1, 5th*: 1, 7th*: 1)
Sonic:  (4th: 1, 7th: 2, 7th*: 1)
Lucas: (4th: 1, 3rd*: 1)
Donkey Kong: (4th: 1, 7th*: 1)
Samus:  (4th: 1)
Marth:  (5th: 2, 7th: 1, 1st*: 1, 3rd*: 2)
Pit: (5th: 1, 4th*: 1)
Toon Link:  (5th: 1)
Ness: (5th: 1)
Kirby: (7th: 1)
Ice Climbers:  (1st*: 1, 3rd*: 1, 4th*: 1, 7th*: 3)
Zelda & Sheik: (3rd*: 1)
Pokemon Trainer: (3rd*: 1)
Peach: (3rd*: 1)
Wolf: (5th*: 1)
Fox: (7th*: 1)

21 characters are represented among those who placed by themselves, and 27 are represented among characters represented at all. Given that there are only 36 characters, that's not bad. As you might notice, while Meta Knight does the clear best, it's REALLY spread out after 2nd place. Those who are just impressed by a big margin might think it's representative of poor balance (look at how much higher that one place is than any single one of the others!), but an actually rational view of it shows that's not the case at all (would it be better if only 2-3 characters took all of the placings from the lowest 24?). Also remember that these are MAJOR TOURNAMENTS. Even one single placing means a lot. It's easy to look at Kirby and go "only one 7th means Kirby sucks", but consider that that Kirby player had to beat at least 82 other people performance wise with only Kirby to go that far. Any character who can enable someone to do that can't be that bad.

If you still don't believe me about how this isn't that bad at all, look at the data from the 2007 MLG events for melee put into this format.

Marth: (1st: 7, 2nd: 2, 4th: 1, 5th: 2, 7th: 1)
Falco: (1st: 1, 2nd: 4, 3rd: 1, 5th: 2, 7th: 5)
Ice Climbers: (1st: 1, 2nd: 3, 3rd: 4, 5th: 2)
Fox: (3rd: 2, 4th: 3, 5th: 7, 7th: 5)
Captain Falcon: (3rd: 1, 4th: 2, 5th: 2, 7th: 2)
Jigglypuff: (3rd: 1, 5th: 1)
Sheik: (4th: 1, 5th: 1, 7th: 1)
Peach: 4th: 1, 5th: 1)
Samus: (7th: 3)

Of the 9 events, Marth won 7 with Falco and Ice Climbers each snagging one. Those three are also the only characters to ever get 2nd. Of the remaining places left for the rest of the characters, Fox gobbles up a pretty massive number of them. This isn't a statement that melee is a bad game or is horribly balanced or anything; it's just a statement that at the highest levels you tend to see extreme disparity in character performance. It's really true in any fighting game; even if the best is only a little better than the others, the best will come out on top in the long run with all else being equal (when in reality cultural factors are likely to draw the best players to the best characters which further skews results in favor of the best characters). The fact that you see so many random characters still getting top 8 in major tournaments in Brawl is indicative of extremely healthy character diversity.

To be blunt, if you think Meta Knight needs to be banned, major tournament results are not a helpful factor. They are a factor you need to explain away.

The short version of this is that if Marth and R.O.B. were truly inviable they would have 0 top 8 placings at major tournaments. Instead they each have several, including at least one by themselves. I'm just going to assert this; if a character is capable of being used to get top 8 in a major tournament by itself, that character is in no way inviable. The following characters meet this criteria:

Meta Knight, Snake, Diddy Kong, Mr. Game & Watch, King Dedede, Zero Suit Samus, Lucario, Falco, Wario, Pikachu, Luigi, R.O.B., Sonic, Lucas, Donkey Kong, Samus, Marth, Pit, Toon Link, Ness, Kirby

We have the characters who have gotten in top 8 at major tournaments with secondaries who are very good suspects for viable though perhaps just counterpick viable or even inviable and just drug along by the performance of the superior characters.

Ice Climbers, Zelda & Sheik, Pokemon Trainer, Peach, Wolf, Fox

Given their number of placings, including a win, I think we can probably safely claim the Ice Climbers are no worse than partially viable. The other five here are up in the air with just a single partial placing each.

Then the last set of characters are those who haven't been top 8 in a major tournament this year. It's possibly just a coincidence (they just haven't been used), and it's possible they're inviable. We simply have a lack of data on these characters.

Mario, Bowser, Yoshi, Link, Ganondorf, Olimar, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff, Ike

I think most of us would suspect Olimar's lack of standing is just a coincidence while Captain Falcon's is likely caused due to inviability.

This is the basis on which I think your 50% + 1 criteria is automatically not met. 50% + 1 is 19 characters, and 21 characters are 100% definitely viable in the current metagame. Before we even have to argue the status of the remaining 17 characters (at least one of which we have very strong evidence is at least partially viable), your criteria fails. Of course, I also think it's very obvious that Meta Knight should not be banned so it isn't surprising to see him fail to meet criteria to be banned.

 

[Deadweight]

marth and R.O.B. were truly inviable they would have 0 top 8 placings at major tournaments. Instead they each have several, including at least one by themselves. I'm just going to assert this; if a character is capable of being used to get top 8 in a major tournament by itself, that character is in no way inviable. The following characters meet this criteria:

What tournaments were used
And how recent is this?
How many entrants?
What was the average skill of the entrants.
Who did each player play against? Did the Rob/Marth ever have to play against an MK? Did they get the rainbow/sunshine bracket?
You can't just look at placings and assume that the characters are viable because of it.

----
I live in a tough region,(Not near as tough as NY or SoCal but still) If i went to a WY tourney, my placings may be higher (No offense to WY residents).

TL;DR
We can't judge Viability by Standings alone with out raw data of matchups through out the tournament along with skill levels of each player playing.

 

[1048576]

IMO, if a character 51/49s the entire cast besides him/herself, that character is banworthy. Such a character would overcentralize the meta because the only stable equilibrium is everyone uses that character. If you use a different character, you are hurting yourself.

I don't know where this 80-20 thing is coming from.

 

[demonictoonlink]

Oh my god this community is starting to annoy me...
I've been strong anti-ban always, but at this point, I just don't care.
**** it... If Meta is banned, I'll have a better chance beating Flux at tournaments.
Woop-de-****ing-doo for me...
At least if we are going to have this discussion, limit it to the legitimate thread.
You can't just make up your own criterion, especially when it shows a heavy
anti-ban bias. (80-20 on 51+%...really...)

 

[ShadowLink84]

IMO, if a character 51/49s the entire cast besides him/herself, that character is banworthy. Such a character would overcentralize the meta because the only stable equilibrium is everyone uses that character. If you use a different character, you are hurting yourself.

I don't know where this 80-20 thing is coming from.

Wrong.
If a character was tio go 51:49 against everyone it wouldn't overcentralize around that character.

The degree to which the character deals with the cast is also important.

Akuma in SF2 goes 9-1 on everyone. THat is ban worthy.
Yun in SF3 foes 6-4 and 5-5 with ken. This is not ban worthy.


@DTL: how is it heavily biased? 80-20 is a hard counter. I would er for 70-30 but regardless, the rest of the criteria is very solid. Even then the 80-20 is a suggestion.

@rehab: If you can't say it nice don't say anything at all. We don't need 300+ pages of one liners and the like.

 

[rehab]

IMO, if a character 51/49s the entire cast besides him/herself, that character is banworthy.

Your opinion sucks and is overly dramatic

 

[Swordplay]

Question:

Lets say I deem Link to be non-viable Only due to metaknight and I claim this because the matchup is 80:20 or worse for Link.

Another person comes along and says "Well Link would be un-viable anyway"

As and example: Take this "passionate" Mk user

MK does not SINGLWEHANDIDLY make ANY character unviable. sure he ***** several chars, but they get ***** by the MAJORITY of the cast anyways. even if he does **** 50%, which i doubt, these chars get ***** abyways. this does not prove anything

But I disagree. I think he is "ignorant" and I claim that Link would become viable, just not an optimal choice. I hope you arn't expecting Link to somehow just start winning lots of tourneys if meta is banned. That's unreasonable, but of course one would expect better placings and performance.


Should I present Non-metaknight data like match ups against other characters such as Snake, One of Links best top tier match ups (Extremely winnable), to prove otherwise that in a meta game with out MK, because he is such a hard counter, Link will become viable? Of course I would present data from more than just snake. I may include a few other matchups and tournament matches such as Falco D3 GW ROB and Marth, maybe even more.

Edit:

This^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Due to this using Cfalc/Gannon as an example is garbage, because MK/no MK hes going to stay trash no matter what.

You should let the Falcon/Ganon mains decide that.

I won't do Falcon/Ganon because Link is my main and I don't know enough about Falcon/Ganon to back my claims up. I only can prove its true with Link but my question has not been answered yet. Before I start and begin to ask Link mains for help I'd like my question answered by the Original Poster.


Edit:2

...no. link would not become viable. if he has any more 70-30+ matchups, which im sure he does, then hes unviable. his all around average, wiht a slightly better projectile game, and trash recovery. no, hes not viable.

and i dont mean viable like winning major tourney viable. i mean like, a rational person would enter a tourney with him

I would consider myself a "rational person" and you VERY biased.
70:30 is winnable with enough skill. I've proven that. 80:20 is too much.

I've beaten very good people and very good characters with Link including ROB's Falco's and D3's despite those matchps. I even almost beat Chompy's diddy and he wins tourney's. If you don't believe me, if I am allowed to bring in non-meta related data I will prove it.

 

[Deadweight]

Question:

Lets say I deem Link to be non-viable Only due to metaknight and I claim this because the matchup is 80:20 or worse for Link.

Another person comes along and says "Well Link would be un-viable anyway" but I disagree. I claim that Link would become viable, just not an optimal choice. I hope you arn't expecting Link to somehow just start winning lots of tourneys if meta is banned. That's unreasonable, but of course one would expect better placings and performance.

Should I present Non-metaknight data like match ups against other characters such as Snake, One of Links best top tier match ups, to prove otherwise? Of course I would present data from more than just snake. I may include a few other matchups and tournament matches such as Falco D3 GW ROB and Marth, maybe even more.

This^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Due to this using Cfalc/Gannon as an example is garbage, because MK/no MK hes going to stay trash no matter what.

 

[demonictoonlink]

@DTL: how is it heavily biased? 80-20 is a hard counter. I would er for 70-30 but regardless, the rest of the criteria is very solid. Even then the 80-20 is a suggestion.

A more practical cut-off would be 70-30
If a character HARD COUNTERS more than half of the staff, he should be banned.

Again...please let this end...Arguing won't made Meta banned...Professional opinions and tournament results will guide us...

Just for once I want to see a time where the last posted in thread doesn't have "Metaknight" in it... Come on, people... post some new techniques or something...

 

[Deadweight]

A more practical cut-off would be 70-30
If a character HARD COUNTERS more than half of the staff, he should be banned.

Again...please let this end...Arguing won't made Meta banned...Professional opinions and tournament results will guide us...

Just for once I want to see a time where the last posted in thread doesn't have "Metaknight" in it... Come on, people... post some new techniques or something...

This thread should contain no arguments, simply raw data for others to utilize when arguing.
There is another thread where people can argue mks banworthy-ness.

 

[CRASHiC]

Is this evidence?