Smash Ultimate Ruleset Philosophy

[Hylian]

Also consider triplats with walls are different for characters with walljumps/clings.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Haven't seen all the stages but probably something like:

Starters: FD/SV/BF/PS2/Lylat(?) (I'd like Fountain of Dreams but that stage might not be starter-worthy)

CPs: FoD/T&C/Wario Ware/YI:B/Frigate

That's 10 stages. I can't really recommend any other stages without knowing how the hazard off toggle affects them.

Like falln said the hazard toggle is going to overload us with triplats that we gotta add if we start adding more than just battlefield. Like OK we add Dreamland. So what about YI:M? And Midgar? None of these extra triplats are adding anything outside of minor differences.

On Halberd, I'm not convinced unless the ceiling is increased significantly. I'd rather dab on it.

Mushroom Kingdom U has the same blastzone data as Battlefield so I don't think size is the issue for that stage. It may require testing.

On the topic on stages, stage morph drops hella frames (think 20+ over a second) so we're dabbing on that too.

Edit: 3DS Wario Ware has -180,180,180 blastzone data which is smaller than Smashvilles -220,220,180. Don't know how to feel about that.

 

[Hylian]

Do the triplats not differ much in smash 4? In melee the difference between yoshis/battlefield/dreamland is pretty significant for match-ups.

 

[falln]

Do the triplats not differ much in smash 4? In melee the difference between yoshis/battlefield/dreamland is pretty significant for match-ups.

you can find differences between stages like bf and dreamland in smash 4. battlefield and miiverse are almost entirely interchangeable, so miiverse was banned outright. battlefield and dreamland are treated as the same after game 1, because even though there are differences between the stages and those can impact some matchups, the layout is heavily exploited by some characters to the point where those differences pale in comparison.

it's a bit of a different climate than melee since there are more non-triplat stages to choose from, it's considered an unfair advantage to let tri-plat abusing characters bypass the counterpick system.

but this also isn't a universally agreed upon decision. GOML notably keeps tri-plat stages separate

 

[Trent]

Hey all! Despite what my old user name back from Melee, Brawl & PM might tell you, my name is Austy. Competitive player since 2006, T.O. since 2011 (Now I just help T.O. locals), Commentator since 2013.

Quick blurb about my thoughts on the past topics before I dive into stages; Final Smash Meter, Rage Toggle, etc. should be experimented with when the game releases before passing judgement. Its good to get our thoughts out into the air now, but we'll see what happens come December 7th. I pretty much agree with falln on these subject matters. Stocks seem like they should start at 3, but should experiment at locals pending on how easy it becomes to kill, if FMS is on, etc. Could also break tradition and experiment with 3v3 King of Fighters style but again that's something we'd have to wait and see on.

STAGES. Let's tackle it. Take the multiple rule sets that falln proposed in the first post and let local weeklies experiment with them, but here are my takes on them:

-One giant list, follow standard procedure
Allows a huge variety of stages to appear; I don't think we should ever use "Too much to learn" as an excuse to remove stages, especially there's already 5,000+ character match-ups we have to learn anyway.

-One small/medium list, follow standard procedure
Limits the amount of stages, but makes it extremely easy to decide on bans and picks, similar to past Smash games.

-Rotating Stage List
Allows the huge variety of stages to appear while keeping the list at small/medium. Seems unnecessary and creates even more headaches as the seasons move on; who decides the stages for that season? How do we get everyone on the same page each season? What if one season favors certain characters over others based on stages? Overall I think its a messy idea.

-Lumping Stages into Categories and banning clumps of stages
Allows the huge variety of stages to appear while making the bans and picks easy, similar to past Smash games. I haven't really formed an opinion on this idea yet.

-One giant list, but loser picks 2-3 stages as a counterpick and the winner agrees to one stage from that subset
Same as above; I do feel, however, that this can get complicated and extend how long it takes in between games.

Ideas I want to add to the table if we end up having a giant stage list:

-Stage Morphing
We're used to the 5 starters stages where each stage represents a "type" of stage, and I believe if we push this direction we should keep this at 5 and no more to keep it easy and quick to get the set started. However, an idea that has been floating around is just having both players pick a legal stage and have them stage morph between them both for Game 1. Obviously this would have to be tested when the game releases to see if it would even be viable or not, but its something I would love to see experimented with.

-No Bans after Game 1
Depending on how the meta evolves we could potentially remove stage banning in general. Loser just picks a stage and then the character counter picking begins. Obviously this can have a downside if there are "unwinnable" match ups in the game (Marth vs Spacie on FD in Melee is close to this?) but as of right now we don't know which characters are strong on which stage. Maybe start the meta with no bans and once it becomes a problem where the meta over centralizes over a particular character on a particular stage we introduce the bans again? The idea is definitely controversial but I think its worth experimenting with. Another thing of note is people only picking the same stage every set when its their turn to counter pick.

-Random Stages with the Legal list
Similar to Tekken 7 or Injustice 2, easiest for a new comer to grasp and pick up. It depends on the game we end up getting and has huge RNG factors thrown in, but if we select Random, it shows us the stage we're going to, and THEN we can pick characters based on the stage? Might be an interesting idea when there's 73 current characters to pick from so you aren't pigeonholed into a bad stage for a particular character. Again, would like to see experimented, but I could see it getting shot down.

Those are my thoughts for now. I think the most important thing we all should keep in mind is to remember and protect our roots and culture in Smash while also being brave enough to venture and try new things. I'm glad we have a civilized and ego-free environment to discuss ideas and thoughts! Thanks for having me.

EDIT- Another thing to keep in mind is the rule set used by Nintendo themselves, their online ranked mode, etc. could influence what we use in tournaments

 

[Hylian]

you can find differences between stages like bf and dreamland in smash 4. battlefield and miiverse are almost entirely interchangeable, so miiverse was banned outright. battlefield and dreamland are treated as the same after game 1, because even though there are differences between the stages and those can impact some matchups, the layout is heavily exploited by some characters to the point where those differences pale in comparison.

it's a bit of a different climate than melee since there are more non-triplat stages to choose from, it's considered an unfair advantage to let tri-plat abusing characters bypass the counterpick system.

but this also isn't a universally agreed upon decision. GOML notably keeps tri-plat stages separate

Thanks for the info! This makes me wonder if stage grouping is something worth considering for bans, or how one particular triplat would be kept over another. I guess I'll have a much better opinion about this once the game actually comes out.

 

[Trent]

I made a template for when we discuss stages. Honestly I would mark everything as "Wait and See" until the game came out, but its an easy thing to grasp atm

 

[PracticalTAS]

The stage list is going to have a lot of possible redundant stage layouts. Here are just the likely ones:

Battlefield: Dreamland, Yoshi's Story, Fountain of Dreams, Midgar
Final Destination: Port Town Aero Dive, Pictochat 2, Wily Castle, Umbra Clock Tower
Pokemon Stadium: Pokemon Stadium 2, Unova Pokemon League

This doesn't even include the transforming transitioning stages like Delfino Plaza, which all could easily have a redundant layout depending on how the hazard toggle affects them.

In Smash 4 we dealt with redundant layouts because of what I like to call The Law of Legal Stage Minimums: in the case where there are fewer than 6 actual good stages on the stage select screen, the least bad 6 will always survive throughout the length of the game's competitive scene.

In Ultimate, where we already have 8 unique layouts on highly likely stages (Battlefield, Final Destination, Lylat Cruise, Pokemon Stadium, Smashville, WarioWare, YI: Brawl, Town & City), that won't be an issue, so we could safely drop the redundant stages.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Yoshi's Story specifically might be too small anyway ceiling-wise. Admittedly it may be fine without rage but it's a massive see what happens.

2 topics worth mentioning are the FLSS vs CP system argument (I despise FLSS but it needs discussion regardless), and if we pick characters or stage first in the first game of the match. Unfortunately since Smash 4 rules illogically put stages first it seems like Sakurai just decided to accommodate us and makes us pick stages first... Obviously there's a whole host of problems with that but that's neither here nor there.

 

[Mayday]

Right now if you put a gun to my head and made me decide

Starters:

Battlefield, Final Destination, Smashville, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Yoshi's Island Brawl. Potentially gives the most variety in terms of layout. 1 triplat, 1 FD, 1 single plat hybrid, 1 2-plat and a stationary 1-plat.

Counterpicks:

Fountain, Pokemon Stadium 1, Lylat Cruise, Town & City.

TBD:

Wario Ware, Yoshi's Story, Frigate. The blastzones for Wario Ware and Yoshis Story reallyyyy need to be tested first as both are infamously small.

Alphas/Omegas can be gentlemen to but we need to test more for anything else.

In terms of metered FS, everything would have to fall in place almost perfectly to be really considered which is pretty unlikely.

 

[PracticalTAS]

Considering Dream Land went from one of the largest blastzones in Melee to below average blastzones in Smash 4, I don't think we can make any assumptions about blastzones, period.

 

[Scribe]

I'm not a huge fan of banning something just for being too similar to something else. From an outside perspective, it seems kinda weird and arbitrary to have a bunch of stages that are perfectly serviceable for a competitive environment but not allow people to play on them just because we have other stages with a similar layout. If having multiple stages with similar layouts causes problems with stage striking then I don't think it's the stages that are the problem, it's stage striking.

One of the biggest problems we ran into with Smash 4's stage list that I'd hate to see repeated was trying to tailor the stage list to the selection method, rather than the other way around. It's why we kept Lylat around when we probably shouldn't have, and why we had that weird back and forth as to whether Dreamland should be legal or not and if so, whether it should be treated separately from Battlefield. I get that back and forth stage strikes have kinda been Smash's "thing" for quite some time, but they evolved out of circumstances that might not necessarily apply to Ultimate. I think that assuming that we have to select stages like that just because it's what we did in the past is gonna hold us back.

Personally, I'd say we should narrow down a list of stages that are viably competitive first, then hash out a way of choosing counterpick stages based on that.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Scribe I do not understand what you are trying to say. I can't envision how having 6-7 BF/FD clones with minor differences is the fault of the striking system.

 

[Trent]

According to the direct, Alphas & Omegas are supposed to have the same sizes and terrains https://youtu.be/luIDGAKbYyo?t=20m12s It'd be nice to just allow them all (pending music rights) to give the spectator a nice variety of backgrounds while changing nothing in the core gameplay. We'll have to test to make sure it's 100% accurate when the game comes out.

It seems to me that the reason people wish to remove stages of similar caliber (Battlefield & Midgar for example) are because they come off as redundant. While I'm not a fan of doing a Giant List of stages with like 5 bans, ideas we should start thinking about is either clumping stages into categories so a player can ban a category, or not allow players to ban stages at all for counter picks.

I don't think stages should be banned from competitive play just because they're similar to other stages; variety is good.

 

[Pudgetalks]

Hey guys, my name is Pudge, I'm the closest thing to a head TO of Australia (Its a big place) and I run the BAM Majors (biggest Smash event in Oceania)

Currently, I'm not super interested in talking about the specifics of rulesets since we have very little information, but I think it would be very beneficial to talk about how Smash 4 went and see what lessons we can learn from that.

For me personally, I've learned 3 core things when it comes to rulesets

1) Sometimes you need to compromise
Something Hylian touched on a few days ago. Unless Mr. Sakurai comes out and makes our rules for us, we aren't ever going to agree on everything, I think its pretty important that we realise our own opinions aren't objective. I know this seems pretty obvious but the amount of time we wasted in Australia because 2 or 3 people very opposing ideas and couldn't let go of it was an incredible drain on all the TO's. Obviously, there's a limit to what we give legitimacy to but I think its always good to discuss stuff

2) We know what makes a stage degenerate
We've had 4 smash games and I think its pretty obvious bad stage traits are almost identical throughout
I think the big offenders are things that promote camping (this includes caves of life, circle camping and camping uneven parts of a stage) and make it hard to consistently enact a gameplan. Two good examples of this are Kongo Jungle and Lylat. I think figuring out what needs to be cut faster will be a key skill we're going to want to have when we move in to Ultimate

3) Meta's Change
S4 in 2015 looks very different from 2018 S4, not only because of patches but DLC and top players grapsing the in's and outs of the mechanics.
In the last point I said its important we learn to cut things early, but I think we have to realise that its alright if we later cut a few stages and change some rules, it just means (hopefully) we're working towards a better ruleset. I know these seem contradictory but what I'm trying to get at its a very delicate juggling act.

anyway I look forward to discussing rulesets, and all that, I hope to help make Australia/Oceania a more relevant scene and I'm very excited to get to know you all better.

 

[falln]

my biggest issue with the redundancy is that you can already pick battlefield with a midgar background. so if the only real difference ends up being hazardless midgar has a slightly different lip than omega BF midgar, then what are we actually gaining here? you get all the same music and aesthetics still. the gameplay will look mostly the same except once in every X games someone will miss a finicky recovery because in the moment they lose track of which of the 2 twin stages they're playing on.

i understand the hesitancy to remove things from competitive that seem fine based on older metrics, because in the last few smash games we're normally starved for stage lists and options, but i really don't see how adding borderline battlefield clones improves the game when you can already play BF on every map.

it reminds me of the 2015 tourneys that allowed every omega and half the time someone CP'd an omega it was to try and get some cheese with the pyrosphere/smashville/boxing ring lips

 

[Scribe]

Scribe I do not understand what you are trying to say. I can't envision how having 6-7 BF/FD clones with minor differences is the fault of the striking system.

I guess I'm not on the same page as everyone else, then. I mostly had some of the older debates around Dreamland in Smash 4 in mind - whether it should be allowed at all, if it is, whether it should be treated separately from Battlefield for purposes of counterpicking, and if so, whether there should be one or two bans counterpicks.

Allowing it and keeping it separate caused problems with stage striking whether there were one or two bans in counterpicks - if there was one ban, if you banned BF to avoid going to tri-plats, you'd get taken to DL, and vice versa. If there were two bans, then anyone who fared poorly on tri-plats effectively only got one ban. Hence the decision to have one ban, but having DL count as BF for the purpose of banning.

Though I now that I think about it a bit more, in the context of Smash 4, Dreamland also wasn't nearly as meaningfully different from Battlefield as it is in Melee or PM thanks to the blast zone changes and the difference in both games' speed and systems mechanics.

I guess that raises the question: for cases of two stages sharing a layout, are they meaningfully different enough to be treated separately? e.g. FoD's moving platforms, if they're still present with hazards turned off, will probably make a big enough difference to warrant it being considered separate from Battlefield.

On the flip side, if it's not meaningfully different enough to be considered separate, is it worth allowing players to use it as an alternative version of another stage - e.g. stages with weird lips might be worth banning outright, but what about stages that are just walled versions of other ones? Do those get banned outright or do we let people opt to play on, say, Wily's Castle instead of Final Destination, or Unova Pokemon League instead of Pokemon Stadium 2?

 

[Toronto Joe]

Sup everyone! I'm the head TO of GOML/ Smash @ EGLX/Canada Cup/DHMTL18, lead a North American Collegiate Smash league for Melee/Smash4 and also am a competitive player/content creator for Even Matchup Gaming, looking forward to discussing the ruleset and how to best serve the community come Ultimate's release. Though I ultimately(heh) think we need more info before I can be certain on some of the subjects mentioned, I believe firmly that stages like Town & City and Lylat should be banned in Ultimate with the number of options we have & that the triplats rule for stage striking should be potentially removed as well. First and foremost though I think the main thing that needs to be addressed for Ultimate is creating inclusive and transparent dialogue with the community that involves TOs+players+content creators

 

[Hylian]

I kind of understand Scribe.

Changing the striking system might be worth looking into with so many stages. Just an example, but having everyone start on battlefield(or w/e is deemed the most neutral stage) first for every set solves a lot of complications with the stage list. Even things like not having stage bans at all, always starting on the same stage round 1(which maybe can be changed depending on season or tournament?) allows for a large stage roster without worry of duplicates and such.

Not saying that idea exactly is good, but I think considering things from different angles such as above is worth some discussion. It's easy to stick with what we know, but we don't want to miss out on opportunities to improve spectator and player enjoyment by considering new ideas like this. If the majority of the community *does not* want the same old formula of 1v1 on a small stage list then it's worth to examine why I think(not saying this is the case,but doing things for novelty isn't inherently bad is the point).

 

[Trent]

I'd love to get peoples' thoughts on Stage Morphing for game 1. Both players pick a stage and then you jump in; obviously it would need to be tested to make sure that Stage Morphing isn't broken and people die for no reason during transition. I'm also in favor of players not being able to ban stages, at least in the beginning.

The main reason you put rules in place of competitive gaming, such as allowing players to ban stages, is to prevent the over centralization of the meta revolving around one tactic (always switching to the same character on the same stage dominating the meta, for instance)

I'm in agreement with Joe and Max concerning removing stages that interfere with the fight, Smash Wii U needed Town and Lylat due to an extremely small stage list. Obviously that doesn't mean ban Town and Lylat for Ultimate right out; we need to test those stages out first. I heard Lylat is actually good with Hazard's off now but we'll see.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

There is currently no good reason to ban Lylat or T&C right off the bat when the Hazard Off toggle likely fixes the problems with the stages.

 

[Trent]

Agreed 100%. Ban stages after we test them and find faults with them; thats how it works.

 

[falln]

I'd love to get peoples' thoughts on Stage Morphing for game 1. Both players pick a stage and then you jump in; obviously it would need to be tested to make sure that Stage Morphing isn't broken and people die for no reason during transition. I'm also in favor of players not being able to ban stages, at least in the beginning.

i addressed these points in different twitter threads so ill copy my responses here:

"[stage morphing gives] a pretty big advantage to whoever gets the morph first. the direct made it look like it can be made to either transform randomly (no thx) or transform at minute intervals. so in a 3 minute match, we might play on your preferred stage for 2/3rds of it. that's not fair "

wrt to removal of stage banning:

if you look at smash 4, all of our neutral stages are exploited by some character or another to the point where it doesn't even feel like a neutral. i think the players should have a protection against that. i don't think people need to be terrorized in bracket to understand that zss abuses triplats or that sheik can chain you off the side in smashville. that will be acquired naturally as people practice and as people get counterpicked.

 

[Pudgetalks]

Changing the striking system might be worth looking into with so many stages. Just an example, but having everyone start on battlefield(or w/e is deemed the most neutral stage) first for every set solves a lot of complications with the stage list. Even things like not having stage bans at all, always starting on the same stage round 1(which maybe can be changed depending on season or tournament?) allows for a large stage roster without worry of duplicates and such.

Not saying that idea exactly is good, but I think considering things from different angles such as above is worth some discussion. It's easy to stick with what we know, but we don't want to miss out on opportunities to improve spectator and player enjoyment by considering new ideas like this. If the majority of the community *does not* want the same old formula of 1v1 on a small stage list then it's worth to examine why I think(not saying this is the case,but doing things for novelty isn't inherently bad is the point).

I think its definitely a good mindset to have being open to these ideas, but I think most people agree that what stage is neutral for 1 specific match-up might skew things drastically for a specific match up like if we were to make battlefield the neutral stage, foxs would be salivating all over the world.

I think our current system of banning while not perfect is pretty robust. The issue of having lots of repeating stages that aren't super different will be the biggest challenge to deal with imo. I dont have that many great ideas with how to deal with it

 

[Scribe]

There is currently no good reason to ban Lylat or T&C right off the bat when the Hazard Off toggle likely fixes the problems with the stages.

I've heard that T&C actually has *more* problems with hazards off, since apparently the City form's platforms are frozen really far offstage. I hope that's no longer the case by the time the game launches (was that still the case in the demo build you played?), especially since T&C is one of my favorite stages, but as it is, I don't think it's gonna make the cut.

Anyways, since a lot of folks - myself included - are talking about using locals and side events as testbeds for alternate formats, I'm thinking we should coordinate efforts to test these out. Off the top of my head, I know folks have brought up:

• Stage Morph
• Squad Strike
• Hazards On w/an alternate stage list
• Final Smash Meter on
• Whatever Custom Balance does
• alternate stock counts/time limits

any others I'm forgetting?

 

[vVv Rapture]

Are people seriously considering Stage Morph? Because I'm surprised if that's the case. I don't see how Stage Morph can be taken seriously in a standard competitive format:

1) Player who wants second stage is at a massive disadvantage
2) Player who wants second stage can camp/run away until their stage shows up.
3) Transformation is likely based on loading times, which varies from console to console, and having to deal with a transformation time in it of itself is far from ideal
4) Transformation could kill a player if they aren't in the right position.

 

[Scribe]

Are people seriously considering Stage Morph? Because I'm surprised if that's the case. I don't see how Stage Morph can be taken seriously in a standard competitive format:

1) Player who wants second stage is at a massive disadvantage
2) Player who wants second stage can camp/run away until their stage shows up.
3) Transformation is likely based on loading times, which varies from console to console, and having to deal with a transformation time in it of itself is far from ideal
4) Transformation could kill a player if they aren't in the right position.

I don't expect it to remain anything more than a side event format, but I actually hadn't considered that bit about loading times

 

[KuroganeHammer]

I sound like a broken record but Stage Morph also has massive FPS drops whenever the stage transitions and I don't think the Switch is powerful enough for that to be fixed. :3

 

[NickRiddle]

Hello, just learned I have access to this thread!
I'm Mr. Riddle/NickRiddle and I've been playing Smash since 2006 so I have seen 2 full games of ruleset/stage list implementation and the subsequent pairing down that is inevitable. Before I saw anything about this group I was already in a small group that includes Amazing Ampharos who I am sure you are all familiar with if you check the public ruleset discussions at all. You can check our Reddit post if you'd like. Happy to be here~

 

[Hylian]

Are people seriously considering Stage Morph? Because I'm surprised if that's the case. I don't see how Stage Morph can be taken seriously in a standard competitive format:

1) Player who wants second stage is at a massive disadvantage
2) Player who wants second stage can camp/run away until their stage shows up.
3) Transformation is likely based on loading times, which varies from console to console, and having to deal with a transformation time in it of itself is far from ideal
4) Transformation could kill a player if they aren't in the right position.

It's a new feature in the game, of course a lot of people are considering it. Your points are fine but being dismissive about it doesn't help anyone. Ultimately a lot of stuff like stage morph will need to be tested before having a sound decision on it because we don't know a lot of things. Saying things like one player will be at a massive disadvantage is kind of pushing it, considering you could do stage morphs from a striking system, and if you're at a massive disadvantage from two stages left over that you contributed to picking then there is probably something wrong elsewhere.

 

[vVv Rapture]

It's a new feature in the game, of course a lot of people are considering it. Your points are fine but being dismissive about it doesn't help anyone. Ultimately a lot of stuff like stage morph will need to be tested before having a sound decision on it because we don't know a lot of things. Saying things like one player will be at a massive disadvantage is kind of pushing it, considering you could do stage morphs from a striking system, and if you're at a massive disadvantage from two stages left over that you contributed to picking then there is probably something wrong elsewhere.

I think this might have grounds to be entirely dismissed. Even if you strike the first point for exaggerating (alright even if it's not a massive disadvantage it's still a disadvantage and an avoidable one at that), the other three (in my opinion) are sufficient to rule out using it.

I don't mind testing it in side events (was never against testing it btw) but for standard tournament play, considering how many other things are also going to be tested (the stages themselves, potentially a new system of selecting stages given the amount of potentially legal stages there are, and stuff like Final Smashes possibly), I'm worried it'd be a fool's errand to pursue incorporating Stage Morph, as well.

Personally it doesn't look like it works for competitive play but I don't mind testing it. Side events might be the way to go at first.

 

[Yikarur]

Hello I'm Yikarur from germany; I'm the Head-TO and Co-CEO of Team Calyptus and I've been a "Lend Head TO" for a lot of german majors in the past. In Brawl times I was the Co-Leader of Smashboards Smash Lab.

I'm playing competitively since 2008 so I've survived 3 Games and their ruleset creation.

If you want to create a competitive ruleset It's very important to create paradims beforehand and then we select stages according to those paradigms.
This way you have a consistent way to back-up your own arguments. Of course those paradigms are arbitrary, but if we discuss paradigms instead of specific stages, we can exclude stages more efficient and the discussion will bear better fruit.

I don't want to discuss stages first. I'd like to discuss the settings.

In my opinion, we should use whichever settings the official "Ranking" or "For Glory" mode uses, because this is what the normal user and newcomer will play tens or hundreds of hours. If "Custom Balance" is switched on for the official ranking/fg mode, then the tournament scene should do that as well, because it would create large inconsistencies in gameplay wether you practice online against unknown people or at a tournament.

What do you think?

 

[KuroganeHammer]

We don't even know what rules Ultimate's "For Glory" will even use yet. I think we should go with whatever is best for the competitive integrity of the game, rather than lazily follow what Nintendo decides is acceptable (Let's not forget what FG's ruleset is currently: 2 stock, 6 mins, Random FD Omegas, Sudden Death).

If the sun, moon and stars align and our preferred ruleset happens to match up with For Glory's ruleset, then that's great! More power to us.

 

[vVv Rapture]

I do think there is a large advantage to having a ruleset used for online play and then using that ruleset for competitive play. It makes competitive play a hell of a lot more accessible for new players, and gives them an easy window into viewing and participating in those kinds of matches without having to go to events, be part of the community, or even know where to look online to know of that kind of play. Of course, there are valid reasons not to use it as well. And obviously if that "official" ruleset isn't entirely ideal, we should use a modified version or not at all. I definitely don't think we should entirely reach to exactly copy an online mode such as this, but if the jump to make it the same isn't much, I think it'd be worth doing.

All the Ultimate demos that had a "competitive" setting seemed to run 3 stock 6 minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what For Glory used. For Glory would probably just use all Omega and FD variants.

EDIT: Also to put things in perspective -- for years several communities begged developers to give them competitive modes/rankings/playlists for online play to have an official ladder or online multiplayer mode/playlist for tournament settings. That way they could grind the game at home with matchmaking (not like For Glory would have it though) and make it easier to introduce new players to the game, or hope new players would naturally start playing on their own. I think it's pretty significant to have at least one online playlist or otherwise standard/common ruleset available for online and/or local play that mimics what is ran in tournament.

 

[B.A.M.]

Fortunately for all of us. It seems like For Glory will more than likley be 3 stocks 6 mins, Battlefield and Omega variants for Stages. We may not get the exact same ruleset that they will have, but being even this close is very nice for us. Less of a hurdle for our new players.

 

[falln]

https://twitter.com/AllSourceGaming/status/1032286878387470337

more information on FS meter. it's looking pretty RIP to me

 

[Trent]

Yep, been seeing that all over twitter. It was a fun dream while it lasted.

 

[KuroganeHammer]

Polling over various twitter and google polls suggested only a minority of people actually wanted FS Meter with the people saying yes being almost exclusively spectators.

Good riddance, that's one less topic that needs to be decided on.

 

[Scribe]

That's good to know going forward.

Also this and the age-old question from outsiders of "why don't Smash tournaments use items/stages with hazards" have me thinking.

Since this is a ruleset philosophy thread, I think once we actually hash out whatever guidelines we're gonna follow for the Smash Ultimate ruleset, we should actually take the time to put together formal explanations for certain aspects of it. It probably shouldn't be included in the same document as the ruleset proper (those can be long enough already), but maybe as part of a separate document to use as a reference.

And I don't just want this for stuff specific to Ultimate or for changes between iterations, but also just general Smash tournament rules like no items, no stages with certain properties, etc. to explain to outsiders why we use those rules. As Smash grows going forward, we're gonna be working with more and more event organizers who don't fully understand the reasoning behind our rules, and it'll be helpful to have some proper documentation to reference rather than trying to do so off the cuff.

For instance, going back to the items and hazards thing: we kinda take it for granted that they're banned, so it's pretty rare to see someone properly articulate why they're banned in a way that addresses common arguments from outsiders who think we should use them, like "they would add more variety to the game" or "wouldn't it take more skill to deal with them?" Hell, it took me four years to figure out how to put it into words.

So an explanation in this formal write-up would hone in on the actual impact they have in play - how while they do add some surface-level visual variety, and learning how to play around them does raise the skill floor of the game, they centralize the metagame in such a way that their presence makes the game more shallow and lowers the overall skill ceiling. It might also be worth including the fact that this isn't because of some design oversight, but a deliberate decision - that items and stage hazards are designed to reduce the impact that differences in skill have on the results of a match.

 

[PracticalTAS]

The philosophy of banning items is very interesting to me because you have to try really, really hard to make your explanation not just boil down to "cause we don't like them". I'd really like to see what you come up with.