Requesting Feedback - A Potential Alternate Rule Set

[Strong Badam]

I propose that Falco be banned

 

[Kal]

I second that.

 

[Dan Salvato]

Would this ruleset make Kirby viable? Because that would be awesome. Plus, I could laser camp Fox. Or at least, I could try to.

Sorry, I can't see anything making the bottom 5 or so viable.

 

[da K.I.D.]

Sorry, I can't see anything making the bottom 5 or so viable.

At least people would have at least willing to try once ina while. just like djn said.

 

[Jonas]

If the whole point of this ruleset is to test "real skill", you should be forced to use your full repertoire of characters and stage knowledge. If you are a one trick pony, oh well, turns out you suck at this game.

Thank you, but we are not interested in your arbitrary definition of "real skill." Like, if I could beat everyone and anyone with one character, It wouldn't matter if I sucked at all other characters.

I agree with you on stages though, since often you don't get to choose for yourself what stage to play on (that is, both players in a match kind of have to agree what stages to play on, since they're both going to play on it, whereas character choice is individual). If the person who makes the ruleset considers all stages to be part of the game (and he wouldn't have any reason not to, except for stages that unquestionably broken), the players must also be good at playing on all stages.

 

[Divinokage]

I'd like to see all these Fox mains/Top Tier users pick up low tiers for a few months and then talk about what kind of options they have. Especially on stages that benefit Fox to a monstrous degree.

A rule I would propose to improve this ruleset would be once you use a character and then switch mid set, you cannot return to characters previously used. So let's say you start off using Falco, win game 1, your opponent takes you to Brinstar or something, you switch to someone else, you cannot return to Falco from that point on.

If the whole point of this ruleset is to test "real skill", you should be forced to use your full repertoire of characters and stage knowledge. If you are a one trick pony, oh well, turns out you suck at this game.

That's an interesting concept. I kinda thought about this earlier but I couldn't figure out how to apply it. Sounds like you have a good idea, I'll keep this in mind to try out. =)

Jonas, who's "we" in your explanation. I was interested and thus you are exposed. This is for fun, remember?

In March, we have a tournament here most likely, I already proposed to everyone here to try this out as a side event since we'll have 2 days to ourselves, it should be awesome.

 

[Jonas]

Me and everyone else who thinks everyone should be able to play with whatever character they choose...

 

[ShroudedOne]

Well, I don't think join date means that much. You could have been around since 2004, but only decided to join SWF in 09. Similarly, you could join the site in 03, but you may not have actually started Smash until 10.

That being said, when I say "old ways," I generally mean ways that we remain attached to, the familiar ways.

 

[Divinokage]

Me and everyone else who thinks everyone should be able to play with whatever character they choose...

Well with his idea, you'll still be able to play all your characters if you need to or choose a character according to the level except the one you decided to change first. Everyone who has a main right now will likely remain their main anyways lol.

Shroudedone, well that isn't surprising as humans resist change by nature unless they are completely open to it.

 

[Cactuar]

Yeah, someone else suggested the idea of being able to "exhaust" characters out of your roster. This would make having a long series of counterpicks more strategic, as you could hypothetically force someone off of their main early in a set. Knowing that you are going into a bad stage for your character, you would either have to decide to try and fight it out on that stage at a disadvantage, or switch characters knowing that you won't be able to switch back to your main for the rest of the set.

This idea would really separate people who have only a main and a secondary from people who have a huge selection of characters. It is an interesting proposal, to say the least.

 

[FrootLoop]

Haven't been keeping up with the thread, but me sanchaz and xeylode tried it last night (2 stock 3 minute all stages). I think icicle mountain should be banned since you don't really fight the other player for the first minute and a half. Brinstar Depths and Big Blue both had problems with players falling straight through the level/main ship. I'm not sure if I want to ban hyrule temple, but sanchaz def does. All other stages were fine, even if there were a few I didn't want to play on much.

My matches never got past 1:30, but sanchaz' never took less than 2 minutes, so I think the time is fine as it's all about style/pace of play.

It was a lot of fun, I'm going to do it more tonight and our madison fest. Would definitely go to a tournament with this ruleset.

 

[Cactuar]

Glad to hear the feedback man, thanks. And yeah, the stages that allow circle stalling are going to be out automatically, which is unfortunate but necessary.

Icicle mountain is an amazing stage for learning the importance of zone control. No matter how the stage moves, if you are aerial, you stay in your aerial position. This makes it important to choose a character that can protect themselves vertically, both up and down, and to be able to position yourself properly during movement. I'd like to have a variety of characters tested out there before we rule it out completely.

 

[Kal]

But Icicle Mountain is so gay, Cactuar.

 

[Divinokage]

Yeah, someone else suggested the idea of being able to "exhaust" characters out of your roster. This would make having a long series of counterpicks more strategic, as you could hypothetically force someone off of their main early in a set. Knowing that you are going into a bad stage for your character, you would either have to decide to try and fight it out on that stage at a disadvantage, or switch characters knowing that you won't be able to switch back to your main for the rest of the set.

This idea would really separate people who have only a main and a secondary from people who have a huge selection of characters. It is an interesting proposal, to say the least.

I think I'm going to apply it when a tournament comes around here.

 

[Jethrotex]

I disagree with this and have an entire essay response to state my points... but I just wrote one in class and don't feel up to it at the moment. I'll edit this later, if I remember.

 

[Cactuar]

I disagree with this and have an entire essay response to state my points... but I just wrote one in class and don't feel up to it at the moment. I'll edit this later, if I remember.

What a useful, informative post. Thank you for providing your opinion and letting us know that you will be making points to back your opinion at a later time. We have all learned something here today.

...

 

[Divinokage]

"With this" The ruleset or the idea of not being able to switch back to your main after switching a character out? I mean regardless it doesn't really matter lol. It's FOR FUN, FFS!!!!

 

[Metal Reeper]

Glad to hear the feedback man, thanks. And yeah, the stages that allow circle stalling are going to be out automatically, which is unfortunate but necessary.

Icicle mountain is an amazing stage for learning the importance of zone control. No matter how the stage moves, if you are aerial, you stay in your aerial position. This makes it important to choose a character that can protect themselves vertically, both up and down, and to be able to position yourself properly during movement. I'd like to have a variety of characters tested out there before we rule it out completely.

THat would open up a huge selection of different matchups that we've never seen before. Sounds great.

 

[-ACE-]

We should do 10 stocks. Hypothetically speaking, it may cause matches to be longer, but we should definitely play test it first. I mean, it could make matches shorter!

 

[ORLY]

every stage legal except for big blue and brinstar depths.. oh my

cactuar, you're making me choose between my loyalty to four stocks and my love of unconventional stages

 

[Jethrotex]

What a useful, informative post. Thank you for providing your opinion and letting us know that you will be making points to back your opinion at a later time. We have all learned something here today.

...

Anytime! ^^

The only reason I did that, was because I tend to forget if I don't write it down on the post. I also just wanted to at least present my stance on the matter in case you were going to be acknowledging whether or not people agreed or disagreed anytime soon.

 

[Kal]

Before he worries about whether people agree or disagree, he wants people to playtest the ruleset.

 

[FrootLoop]

Glad to hear the feedback man, thanks. And yeah, the stages that allow circle stalling are going to be out automatically, which is unfortunate but necessary.

Icicle mountain is an amazing stage for learning the importance of zone control. No matter how the stage moves, if you are aerial, you stay in your aerial position. This makes it important to choose a character that can protect themselves vertically, both up and down, and to be able to position yourself properly during movement. I'd like to have a variety of characters tested out there before we rule it out completely.

Yeah circle stalling seems unfortunate. I love stages like great bay because they have aspects that make player interactions more interesting/different like the cramped bottom and the higher platform that you can't jump through. I guess those same aspects can be abused to avoid interaction but we didn't really test those out. I'll give icicle mountain another fest before declaring it unplayable. It probably didn't help that we were just randoming from all the stages so we got stage screwed from time to time.

 

[Cactuar]

Anytime! ^^

The only reason I did that, was because I tend to forget if I don't write it down on the post. I also just wanted to at least present my stance on the matter in case you were going to be acknowledging whether or not people agreed or disagreed anytime soon.

Lol, its cool man, I was just poking fun. I do the same thing once in a while.

 

[exarch]

So I scanned many of the opening pages, and several of the most recent, and I didn't see any explanation for why the current melee ruleset is what it is. So I'd like to try to clear up some misconceptions as to where our reasonings come from:

[collapse=Why we play 4 stock]
Originally, we started at 5 stock matches. You can see this if you look at any video from the community which is old enough (that's gonna be pre-2005, as when even I entered the community, 4 stock was already the norm.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsDwz0JaeWI#t=20s

We changed from 5 to 4 stock was for a couple of reasons: 5 stock matches took too long, and 4 stock matches were found to produce very similar results as the longer version.

3 stock was found to be too short, and that if a player was to SD during the match, the ensuing 2 usable stocks to 3 deficit was found to be insurmountable unless the players were grossly different in skill level. That is to say, that if you were playing someone worse than you and you SDed, you frequently did not have enough time or opportunity to come back and win the game. Any stock count less than this suffered the same problem, but worse.

While ideally a 99 stock match would allow the more skilled player to win the most frequently, 4 was found to be the least number of stocks that would give the same result as the 99 stock game within the error bound of 1 SD per game.[/collapse]
Commentary on the new suggested set:
Here's oldschool problem with this suggested ruleset. I hope that all thinking still agrees that you are supposed to win on your counterpick. It's why the couterpick system exists, to give an advantage to the player who lost the previous game. If we disagree with this idea, then we should just say that every set should be 3 games played on whatever level you stage-striked to (which, in actuality, we are not far from.)

But if you are supposed to win on your CP, say the first game you win because you're the better player. The rest of the set should go 4-3 in your favor. However, with 2 stock matches, if you SD once during any of your 3 counterpicks--or even during the first game, you have effectively lost the set.

The suggested system puts an even heavier emphasis on winning the first game, and penalizes more for any mistake.
[collapse=Why we only play on certain Levels]
Here is where I think the community has most betrayed itself in recent years.

Historically, there have been two main reasons for banning a level:

1. The random elements of the level interfere in such a manner as to make the predictable outcome of any game played on it be random. That is, the level is so random skill is removed as the deciding factor.
2. One character is shown to be ridiculously overpowered on that level. Meaning, if you do not pick that character when playing that stage, you have essentially forfeited the match. A set of characters larger than 1 being obviously better than the rest was never been grounds for banning.

The first reason is why stages such as Brinstar Depths (characters randomly falling through the stage), Mushroom Kingdom 1 (Uncontrollable helpful ceiling blocks and other tech/no tech nonsense), Flatzone (Falling tools, etc), and partially Icicle Mountain (Up and down movement) have been banned.

The second reason is why Hyrule Temple (Fox), Yoshi's 64 (Fox), Yoshi's Island/Pipes (Fox), Fourside (Fox) are banned.

But then we began to disservice ourselves and our community. It began to be believed that if a single strategy was considered overpowered on a stage, that we should ban it. We banned venom and PPC because everyone camped when on them. (While fox was the best at camping PPC and Venom, I never encountered the same level of nonfox mains who would cp those levels then switch to fox as with Pipes or Onett.)

We banned Kongo Jungle because camping the rock was lolsilly and frustrating to play against.
We banned MK2 because people didn't like the walkoff camping.
We banned Green Greens because the bombs explode on people.
We banned Mute City because sheik players are whiny.
We banned Mushroom Cruise because no one actually likes playing on a moving level.
We banned Kongo Jungle 64 because the backroom felt like it.

And so we now have a grand total of 6 legal stages in the 2012 recommended ruleset, when many of those banned were never justifiably shown to be overly biased towards one and only one character.
[/collapse]
We could also go into all the gory details about double blind, stage bans, dave's stupid rule, and stage striking, but I hope that the reasons behind those are far more obvious than our arbitrary stock and level select can seem to be.

There has been way too much ignorance over our current ruleset in this thread for me to pass by and ignore it.

 

[Kal]

So, to clarify, I spent 47 pages arguing with the MBR about unbanning stages and you never backed me up?

I think the point of playing two stocks is exactly to emphasize the "problem" your bringing up: when you SD, you're ****ed. There is nothing wrong with not allowing players to make up SDs. The difference will in fact be how you measure skill. Whereas, in the current ruleset, not SDing periodically isn't particularly important, in this ruleset not SDing will become much more important. The frequency with which the better player wins won't necessarily change; what constitutes a better player will.

 

[da K.I.D.]

Whereas, in the current ruleset, not SDing periodically isn't particularly important, in this ruleset not SDing will become much more important. The frequency with which the better player wins won't necessarily change; what constitutes a better player will.

Thats actually pretty deep. quoting to show my immense agreement with this.

 

[G.L.]

definitely a good idea. 2 stock might be to quick, but the idea of quick games with more stage options and more matches is awesome

 

[Psychoace]

Bring back pokefloats! That **** gets everyone hype.

 

[exarch]

-snip-

I honestly don't care what the recommended ruleset is or what the MBR says. You've been around long enough to know that what we argue about in threads never actually gets implemented. If and when I hold another tournament (although it's been many years), the stages will be the ones I think are fair enough to play on; that's really the only thing I can do about it.

I have no problem with losing one game of 7 due to one SD. The problem is that the counterpick system is too strong and can warp a single SD into the loss of whole set. This level of penalty is beyond what i think the suggested ruleset wants. The combination of the counterpick system with the new suggested ruleset is the problem.

Hell, while I'm at it I'll go ahead and indulge myself:
[collapse=Which player should win the game?]
I think the basic understanding (for all smashers) of who should win any individual game is the player that would have won if it had been 99 stock no time limit. When we talk about skill in this game, all of our understanding of "wow I should (not) have won that," is based around the belief that if the game went longer, the result would have been reversed.

This is, in fact, the basis for all competition. A game within a set of rules is established, the person or team considered to be better at it is the one who would win if it could be played to infinity. All timers, then, are artificial limitations which should correspond to the statistically significant sample size of time. (In statistics, you need multiple samples to calculate anything within a degree of certainty, and it turns out that 30 samples gives the same results as infinite samples. So teams don't have to play for infinity, but for some time much less.)

The problem with melee is that it is so many games: Marth vs Fox on BF, Peach vs Falcon on YS, Jigglypuff vs Ylink on DL, etc. So who should win a tournament set, or who is better at melee become far more difficult questions to answer.[/collapse]

 

[Kal]

I honestly don't care what the recommended ruleset is or what the MBR says. You've been around long enough to know that what we argue about in threads never actually gets implemented. If and when I hold another tournament (although it's been many years), the stages will be the ones I think are fair enough to play on; that's really the only thing I can do about it.

I was only making a joke.

I have no problem with losing one game of 7 due to one SD. The problem is that the counterpick system is too strong and can warp a single SD into the loss of whole set. This level of penalty is beyond what i think the suggested ruleset wants. The combination of the counterpick system with the new suggested ruleset is the problem.

What's stopping you from making a comeback? The options available to your opponent, as far as counterpicking, are available to you as well. That is what the ruleset emphasizes: if your opponent is going to win by picking Mute City and using Peach, then be better than him at it.

Claiming that a single SD would cost you a set would require you to show that a single game would cost you a set. This seems unlikely.

Hell, while I'm at it I'll go ahead and indulge myself:
[collapse=Which player should win the game?]
I think the basic understanding (for all smashers) of who should win any individual game is the player that would have won if it had been 99 stock no time limit. When we talk about skill in this game, all of our understanding of "wow I should (not) have won that," is based around the belief that if the game went longer, the result would have been reversed.

This is, in fact, the basis for all competition. A game within a set of rules is established, the person or team considered to be better at it is the one who would win if it could be played to infinity. All timers, then, are artificial limitations which should correspond to the statistically significant sample size of time. (In statistics, you need multiple samples to calculate anything within a degree of certainty, and it turns out that 30 samples gives the same results as infinite samples. So teams don't have to play for infinity, but for some time much less.)

The problem with melee is that it is so many games: Marth vs Fox on BF, Peach vs Falcon on YS, Jigglypuff vs Ylink on DL, etc. So who should win a tournament set, or who is better at melee become far more difficult questions to answer.[/collapse]

Sorry, but this is not the basis for all competition. The "better" player can be defined in multiple ways, but the usual one is "the better player is the one whose probability of winning is higher." This has nothing to do with length of time played, which I think you are confusing with the Law of Large Numbers (that, as the number of games played increase, the actual average will approach the expected average). The person or team considered to be better is the one more likely to win the game at hand. The game at hand includes the time limit.

Moreover, it's important to realize that each ruleset results in a different game. There isn't one Melee to be the best at.

 

[Rubyiris]

I agree. I was just using him as an example as I know a majority of space animal mains hate that stage with a fiery passion. Doesn't mean Falco is bad there persay, just that the players who main him are uncomfortable there.

I'm definitely uncomfortable there as a player, but if a rule set like this became commonplace, and especially if the concept of exhausting character options was adapted, I'd begin to practice on stages like Brinstar on the regular, for the same reason why I like to stay Falco vs characters like Peach/Puff/Samus.

 

[-ACE-]

The best player = the guy that never camps but knows how to play defense, isn't afraid of intense, in your face pressure that surpasses that of mango/armada, has unparalleled patience and matchup knowledge, can combo and read opponents like no other, has near-perfect tech skill, unabridged knowledge of all tournament viable stages, never misses edgeguards, hardly misses techchases, never SD's, and punishes them with the best options available at all times.

^^ figure out which ruleset would be more likely to put whatever player is the closest match to this description at first place more often than any other player, and you have your ruleset, imho. It really depends on which skills you feel are more important and should be tested for.

Cactuar, sorry for speaking hypothetically. LOL psych!!!!!

 

[Divinokage]

But I don't think we ever catered to the "perfect" player or TAS player.

 

[JPOBS]

I think people should stop pretending that SD'ing is entirely player dependent, and that "just get better" is a reasonable solution to the problem. There's a difference between messing up a ledgehop waveland and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEBB3A1-ae4#t=4m18s

The latter would pretty much ruin a 2 stock match and I honestly don't want to see tourny matches last 20 seconds with a ******** SD.

 

[exarch]

-snip-

If you lose the first game or one of your CP's due to an SD, then you must win on one of your opponent's counterpicks to win the set. The cp system is heavily biased towards the one CPing (especially when more stages are available,) so I would argue that losing one of your 4 matches (random and counterpicks) should lose the set. But I guess playtesting would be the only way to verify. Atm, I think the counterpick system is too strong to work with anything less than 4 stock matches.

I think my mistake came from the assumption that if someone wins a game more vs someone else, that first person must have a higher average score. P(A win)>.5, meanA>meanB. While this is not true (if A scores 1 every game, and B scores 0, then 0, then 4 every three games) in a mathematical sense, I wonder if, given a large enough number of games, this would ever happen in practice. (The best chance of it happening must be in baseball, where the starting pitchers work in a rotation.) If it does not happen in practice, then there's no significant difference between the two.

And even if it did happen, (and when it does happen during small series) would/do we not often feel a little cheated that the team which scored more, lost? (Alternately that the team which scored less and won, got away with one?)

I appreciate and understand the sentiment of the last line, but that one Melee is the one I put in my gamecube (1.0 NTSC, in case anyone's wondering )

 

[Kal]

If you lose the first game or one of your CP's due to an SD, then you must win on one of your opponent's counterpicks to win the set. The cp system is heavily biased towards the one CPing (especially when more stages are available,) so I would argue that losing one of your 4 matches (random and counterpicks) should lose the set. But I guess playtesting would be the only way to verify. Atm, I think the counterpick system is too strong to work with anything less than 4 stock matches.

Like I said, you and your opponent have the same options available, more-or-less. The only actual advantage the losing player has is the second choice of character. If your opponent picks Mute City, you can go Peach. If he picks Green Greens, you can go Fox. You just have to actually be capable of executing these strategies. I don't think it will boil down to the first match determining the set.

I think my mistake came from the assumption that if someone wins a game more vs someone else, that first person must have a higher average score. P(A win)>.5, meanA>meanB. While this is not true (if A scores 1 every game, and B scores 0, then 0, then 4 every three games) in a mathematical sense, I wonder if, given a large enough number of games, this would ever happen in practice. (The best chance of it happening must be in baseball, where the starting pitchers work in a rotation.) If it does not happen in practice, then there's no significant difference between the two.

And even if it did happen, (and when it does happen during small series) would/do we not often feel a little cheated that the team which scored more, lost? (Alternately that the team which scored less and won, got away with one?)

Not sure I'm following what you're going for here. Could you elaborate on this?

I appreciate and understand the sentiment of the last line, but that one Melee is the one I put in my gamecube (1.0 NTSC, in case anyone's wondering )

I agree largely, which is why I take a minimalist banning attitude (that, and because it's just the only fair, objective ruleset). However, certain choices are necessarily arbitrary, and so even taking this stance won't provide an argument for four stock over two, or even stock over time.

 

[Warhawk]

I think people should stop pretending that SD'ing is entirely player dependent, and that "just get better" is a reasonable solution to the problem. There's a difference between messing up a ledgehop waveland and this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEBB3A1-ae4#t=4m18s

That was totally S2J's fault...

 

[Bl@ckChris]

i run people off ledges like that all the time for fun.

sucks when you try to do something oos against it though. but thats what made the dash attack safe.

 

[Max?]

That was totally S2J's fault...

Agreed. What was he trying to do there? Dsmash? Dtilt?