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So there seems to be a recent freakout about the ICs because of Wobbles' performance at Evo.

DrkRoxas

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 18, 2010
Messages
85
Location
Venezuela, Maracaibo
You say that high level players can as easily set up a grab, but it's definitely harder than you make it to be to land a grab in a high competitive play, an ICs player can lose for being dependent on grabs and trying to always land them, despite all this Mango still beat Wobbles pretty solidly and wobbles only landed one or two wobbles I think, in the 7 matches. Since the technique was discovered this is the farthest "wobbling has gotten" anyone, why is it that after a lot of years in Wobbles career, this is the farthest he's gotten? Because he grew as a player. It's really undermining to say that "wobbling got him 2nd" if it was just for the wobble he would place 2nd or win every tournament.
There are a lot of factors that mess up the wobble and wobbles itself has let go of many, many infinites. And how can you call something broken if even the people that use it don't win tournaments? I'm sorry but wobbling doesn't win tournaments, you need to have a very high level of skill to master the gameplay as an IC main and even if you can wobble, you can't ever depend on it. You only have to study the matchup like with everyone else.
And to have 4 ICs wobbling at EVO, using a "game-breaking" technique, certainly that only 1 made it to top 8 isn't very "game-breaking" at all. Call it game-breaking when someone with a skill level considerately below his opponent can land wobble after wobble and win, because it's so easy that anybody can really do it.
 

exarch

doot doot doot
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
3,333
Location
Usually not playing Brawl. Location: Enterprise
[collapse="Response"]Aw I didn't get to respond to that last set of posts, I was going to last night, but alas, my internet was completely screwy. And Fenrir said most of what I would have.

an edited version: Brawl IC CG is much much more difficult to complete. Grab setups are harder because mobility is lower and more characters play zoning projectile based games, and mashing out is easier. And there's 9B who's like the best in Japan. And there's planking which is a tactic that directly counters grabs that has had to be limited/banned. Wobbling should have been banned long ago, but it wasn't; now the topic should be hot again and we should be talking about it, because what was the previously highest placing of an Icy in a major?, but we're not. Stupid community.

Oh and hey that guy who beat wobbles also lost to him earlier in the bracket.

Also I'm not sure what you mean by 4 Icys at Evo. 4 who made bracket? Or 4/696? If the latter (which I hope it isn't,) do you think we as a community have a good understanding of the Icys capabilities? When <1% of our players play the character? 4 making bracket is probably an accurate representation and I hope that's what actually happened. (Though again we can compare 4 icys to 23 fox players...)[/collapse]

[collapse=Grabbing difficulty]Sometimes I think that we say and treat "High level play" like it's some mystical thing. I don't think high competitive play changes much in essence than lower levels--assuming the two smashers are on the same relative skill level, or that the absolute difference between the two smashers skill is the same. That's why it is easy to confuse skill level of people playing when just watching videos. If you saw PP vs Mango at Evo, and if you ignore the little things, how much does that match look like upper-mid level fox v falco? This is also why we've made mistakes as a community like the Myko thing.

Another thing to think about is how easy it is for us to land grabs right now. Those worse than us are easier to land grabs against, and those better than us harder. As we improve as players, those players we considered grabbing (assuming constant skill level) become worse players relative to us. That means that they all become easier to grab.

And my point here is this: Theoretically, grabbing someone at high level play is insignificantly different than grabbing someone at any other level, if you are also playing at that level. Or, Difficulty of grabbing is a function much more dependent on the difference between the two smashers skill levels than the absolute level of play. That's theory, but I wanted you to understand my logic behind it (hence the explanation.) (We can't really discuss how true this is, only whether it makes sense or not and whether we agree with it or not.)[/collapse]

[collapse=Community abuse]Let's also be clear here and establish that we are not and never have been the brawl community. Wobbling has been known about since I entered the community, but was not popularized until... um... much later. At least 2007. I think later than that even. It was not because Icys were unused or not doing well at tournaments; it was because icy players refused to use it (Chu was significant before wobbling was named as such.) We have a Doctor Mario player who placed in the top 8 at Evo who, last I knew of, refuses to CG FFers because he thinks it's cheap (or something). We have a game that planking could be abused in (Don't know if you've seen the EU jigglypuff/falco match on FD or not... can't find it.) We have a game where ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTNaAUJZz5k ) that is possible. But we don't do these things en masse; that's not who we are as a community. Many Icy players I've gotten opinions from prefer wobbling to be banned. And that's why there isn't a line to start abusing this tech, because we don't like it. And for good reason.[/collapse]

[collapse=Wobbles skill and Data]While it is undermining to say Wobbling got him second, the sad thing is you don't have any way to truly refute it. (Other than stubborn insistence that he could've gotten 2nd without wobbling.) And, I agree that he has the capability to get second without wobbling, but we can't ever know that for sure (unless we play the tournament over again (one more year!)) I also think it's unlikely wobbles would have gotten second without the infinite. Honestly a lot of your last post sounds like a defensive Wobbles fan :c And if 25% of the people who play icys get top 8 at evo, that sounds pretty overpowered (I can manipulate numbers too!) We should agree that our data is problematic.[/collapse]
I'm also not claiming wobbling is "broken," in the traditional sense. I think Fenrir slipped and said it was in his last post, but the community understand of "broken" is probably something like Ivan Ooze ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-g4TqMFemY ) and wobbling is obviously not on the same level. I am saying it's unhealthy--both for the development of the Icy's metagame and for the entire cast vs Icys meta, unfair--the risk/reward/demand for the move explosively fails to match with other strats of similar strength, and uncompetitive--as previously discussed. If that's what broken is, then wobbling is broken. Whatever we call it, I call for it to be banned.
 

Armada

Smash Lord
Joined
Mar 28, 2010
Messages
1,366
People always freak out and "understand" more when someone is doing surprisingly well.
I would say ICs are 7th in the game (said it long before EVO too) with wobbling allowed and even if they would be something like 3rd we can say good bye to spacies anyway.

Wobbles did AMAZING at EVO and played his heart out. He is way better then people understand and one day I hope that everyone understands that.
 

Wobbles

Desert ******
BRoomer
Joined
Oct 9, 2006
Messages
2,881
Location
Gilbert, AZ
[collapse="Response"]Aw I didn't get to respond to that last set of posts, I was going to last night, but alas, my internet was completely screwy. And Fenrir said most of what I would have.

an edited version: Brawl IC CG is much much more difficult to complete. Grab setups are harder because mobility is lower and more characters play zoning projectile based games, and mashing out is easier. And there's 9B who's like the best in Japan. And there's planking which is a tactic that directly counters grabs that has had to be limited/banned. Wobbling should have been banned long ago, but it wasn't; now the topic should be hot again and we should be talking about it, because what was the previously highest placing of an Icy in a major?, but we're not. Stupid community.

Oh and hey that guy who beat wobbles also lost to him earlier in the bracket.

Also I'm not sure what you mean by 4 Icys at Evo. 4 who made bracket? Or 4/696? If the latter (which I hope it isn't,) do you think we as a community have a good understanding of the Icys capabilities? When <1% of our players play the character? 4 making bracket is probably an accurate representation and I hope that's what actually happened. (Though again we can compare 4 icys to 23 fox players...)[/collapse]

[collapse=Grabbing difficulty]Sometimes I think that we say and treat "High level play" like it's some mystical thing. I don't think high competitive play changes much in essence than lower levels--assuming the two smashers are on the same relative skill level, or that the absolute difference between the two smashers skill is the same. That's why it is easy to confuse skill level of people playing when just watching videos. If you saw PP vs Mango at Evo, and if you ignore the little things, how much does that match look like upper-mid level fox v falco? This is also why we've made mistakes as a community like the Myko thing.

Another thing to think about is how easy it is for us to land grabs right now. Those worse than us are easier to land grabs against, and those better than us harder. As we improve as players, those players we considered grabbing (assuming constant skill level) become worse players relative to us. That means that they all become easier to grab.

And my point here is this: Theoretically, grabbing someone at high level play is insignificantly different than grabbing someone at any other level, if you are also playing at that level. Or, Difficulty of grabbing is a function much more dependent on the difference between the two smashers skill levels than the absolute level of play. That's theory, but I wanted you to understand my logic behind it (hence the explanation.) (We can't really discuss how true this is, only whether it makes sense or not and whether we agree with it or not.)[/collapse]

[collapse=Community abuse]Let's also be clear here and establish that we are not and never have been the brawl community. Wobbling has been known about since I entered the community, but was not popularized until... um... much later. At least 2007. I think later than that even. It was not because Icys were unused or not doing well at tournaments; it was because icy players refused to use it (Chu was significant before wobbling was named as such.) We have a Doctor Mario player who placed in the top 8 at Evo who, last I knew of, refuses to CG FFers because he thinks it's cheap (or something). We have a game that planking could be abused in (Don't know if you've seen the EU jigglypuff/falco match on FD or not... can't find it.) We have a game where ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTNaAUJZz5k ) that is possible. But we don't do these things en masse; that's not who we are as a community. Many Icy players I've gotten opinions from prefer wobbling to be banned. And that's why there isn't a line to start abusing this tech, because we don't like it. And for good reason.[/collapse]

[collapse=Wobbles skill and Data]While it is undermining to say Wobbling got him second, the sad thing is you don't have any way to truly refute it. (Other than stubborn insistence that he could've gotten 2nd without wobbling.) And, I agree that he has the capability to get second without wobbling, but we can't ever know that for sure (unless we play the tournament over again (one more year!)) I also think it's unlikely wobbles would have gotten second without the infinite. Honestly a lot of your last post sounds like a defensive Wobbles fan :c And if 25% of the people who play icys get top 8 at evo, that sounds pretty overpowered (I can manipulate numbers too!) We should agree that our data is problematic.[/collapse]
I'm also not claiming wobbling is "broken," in the traditional sense. I think Fenrir slipped and said it was in his last post, but the community understand of "broken" is probably something like Ivan Ooze ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-g4TqMFemY ) and wobbling is obviously not on the same level. I am saying it's unhealthy--both for the development of the Icy's metagame and for the entire cast vs Icys meta, unfair--the risk/reward/demand for the move explosively fails to match with other strats of similar strength, and uncompetitive--as previously discussed. If that's what broken is, then wobbling is broken. Whatever we call it, I call for it to be banned.
Your arguments are basically wrong.

1) "I don't think high competitive play changes much in essence then lower levels." You are thinking incorrectly. Because even when two players are of comparable skill, that doesn't mean they will play a situational game that resembles in any way lower level play. They will use and become accustomed to a different set of options that invalidates certain strategies. So my grabs against much better players look nothing like the ones I land on lower level players. For starters, Nana is dead a lot more.

YES I still get grabs, obviously. But the circumstances totally change. Half the time I don't have Nana present to make anything of it. Most of the time these guys won't play in grabbable positions when there's a clear and present danger of a sync'ed Nana, because they know better. When they goof up and make poor decisions, I go in hard and try to make it count, because I won't be getting many of them.

2) I didn't get second because of Wobbling. I got second because of wobbling combined with everything else I did right. If you want to point out the big powerful thing that gave me awesome punishes, you should also point out the times where I had to win on the strength of a single ice-climber. My 3rd game against Mango consisted of 3 stocks that I took without landing a grab. There's no dispute I wouldn't have gotten second without the infinite! Does that mean we should look for every strategy that has ever made a difference in somebody's placing and force people to replay the matches without them, to see who is TRULY BETTER?

No. Because that's dumb.

3) You are trying to pigeon-hole Melee into your own definition of "what Melee is truly all about, deep down." You're using fuzzy, emotional arguments that don't bear on actual competitiveness. When you start saying "that's not what the game is really about" your argument becomes about as valid and intellectually fulfilling as "edge-guarding is too cheap," and "stop using glitches and exploits" and "projectiles are for pansies, fight up close like a man."

Do you know what Melee really is? Melee is the closed set containing all things programmed into the game. Anything else is your construction. We did not make the gamespace, we just explored it. So when you pick random **** in the game and say "that's not Melee," you're being goofy. Stop being goofy.

We banned things for being unbeatable and granting overwhelming advantages, or for completely degenerating gameplay. Wobbling doesn't do that. You still need to understand Nana, and combo-weights and CG options and a billion other things to make it a genuinely useful tool rather than a stupid gimmick and at the point you're... you know, playing the game.

4) Fun fact, Chu didn't do the infinite because he thought it was too hard. I had a conversation with him at MLG Dallas and he said, "I heard two ice-climber players were here doing their crazy infinite or whatever!" Then I told him, "it's actually not hard. Once you learn the timing it's really easy," and he looked at me like I was crazy. Guess who was using it at Zero Challenge like a year later? Same with Fly; he didn't bother practicing it because it was banned. Then even when it was unbanned, he was just more confident in his other chaingrabs. He's explicitly said, "I find it weird when people use me for an anti-wobbling argument."

As for "everybody knew about it..." I'm gonna have to say that's false as well. Because nobody knows a darn thing about the Ice Climbers, and nobody was saying "wow you're actually using their infinite," They were saying, "whoa what is that?" People didn't use it because the trade-off is you have to play the Ice Climbers and nobody wants to do that because they're hard and confusing. I cannot tell you how many people try picking them up and then they look at me and say, "do you seriously play this character?"

Picking ICs gives you a giant advantage in terms of grabbing, but disadvantages elsewhere. You can't evaluate their touch-of-death in a total vacuum, no matter how much you really want to. If I had Marth's grab range and movement capacity for landing grabs, then we'd be talking some serious nonsense. That would be out the window in a heartbeat, and good riddance to it.

6) Sorry Shroomed, but not CG'ing space animals is silly. Three out of our top 8 are relentless CG'ers--Armada vs. Spacies/Falcon, M2K depending on his matchup, and myself against everybody. So I don't know why you brought this up.

HBox can't chaingrab but he's happy to use u-throw rest and oldschool wall-of-pain edgeguards. Mango will gladly shine you while he has ledge-invincibility. PP loves d-throw d-air. Ice and M2K and Shroomed are happy to hit you with invincible inescapable b-airs from the edge when you can't do anything about it. These players are all willing to lock you down and hit you with inescapable stuff.

There is a reason you practice without powerful tools, and that's so you can learn how to play the game in the event they aren't available to you. But guess what? In do or die situations, it's not about being flashy and giving your opponent a chance, it's about WINNING. You don't see Fox players stop using u-throw u-air because it's so good, even though we've known about it SINCE THE PREVIOUS INSTALLMENT OF THE GAME. Don't you find it abhorrently ridiculous that Fox players would stoop to using such a brutally efficient combo when they have so many more tools, and it would truly demonstrate their skill as a Fox main if they didn't rely on such an old and already explored combo?

I don't, because I expect my opponent to try and shaft me at every turn. When somebody finds a braindead way to kill Nana, I expect them to use it. When a Falco finds out that his f-smash is safe on my shield half the time, and there are situations where they can literally just use it over and over again because I can't regain stage control around it, I expect them to do it. I don't cry about it and tell them to play in a way that demands more skill and looks more like Melee. Guess what happens when people know I can't infinite? They camp me just as hard as they did before, and fish for Nana gimps.

Every player, in developing their character, is hunting for the strongest tools and most BS combinations imaginable so they can crush each other. It's our game's peculiar version of natural selection. That's what you do.

7) I think Wobbling is stupid. I think it reflects a poor balance between punishment/playability for the character, that at high levels they end up playing extremely defensive while looking for big openings.

You can think something is awesome but banworthy, and you can think something is stupid but still keep it legal.

It's stupid. It's not broken. Don't ban it.
 

DrkRoxas

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Dec 18, 2010
Messages
85
Location
Venezuela, Maracaibo
I know I sounded A LOT like a wobbles fanboy, not my intention really, don't want that to be the argument here. What you say is true that when you are better than somebody is easier to grab them and when worse, it's harder, but I don't agree to be insignificantly different, and here enters the other point you made about <1% of the community using them, clearly one of the biggest problem here is getting used to the ICs since so many people have little to none experience on the matchup, but that's not a reason to ban something, it's a reason to adapt, players that know the matchup can space well enough and not be grabbed, I play with all the people here and they all support wobbling, if you play well enough and have the philosophy of "don't get grabbed", get a good spacing, you won't be grabbed. That's what Mango did in GFs and also in KoC2 tournament where he beat Wobbles 3-0 using Cp Falcon. Overall I think this discussion won't manage much, pro-wobbling people will still root for it and people against it will root the other way, it's different opinions of the game, I just think that a lot of people say its easy to land a grab, easy to start a wobble, easy to have nana synched all the time for that, but don't base your thoughts on what you see, try to do it agains a player that knows good spacing, they'll keep you at bait, punch nana away and even gimp her after 2 attacks after which the ICs not only lose the wobble and a lot of other grab combos, but half of their damage as well.
I think what people need to do is just get used more to the matchup and get better at it.
 

Removed By Request

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
Messages
324
except for the fact that there are characters who can deal with it, which is the same as Fox's waveshine infinite, which has been effectively banned.
Thanks for making my point for me. There are definitely characters who can deal with it, which is why it's not "broken."

This is 2013. Any decently high-level competitive IC player is capable of landing grabs, given the IC's pretty great setups. Also btw, Popo has solo CG setups on some characters to allow Nana more time to get back to him, so it's not like they have to always be synced at the start.
If it were truly that easy, then IC players would never whiff grabs or fail trying to execute infinites. Most of the time, the other player is going to be resisting getting grabbed to begin with, not to mention that Popo's solo chain grab doesn't work against a pretty decent chunk of the cast. I've never seen any perfectly reliable set ups into the infinite that are completely inescapable, unavoidable, and impossible to counter, have you?

1. This isn't Brawl.
2. MK exists in brawl... that's a similar situation to if Peach were the best character in Melee.
I was drawing a comparison to Brawl, not saying that Melee is Brawl. All I was saying there is that in both Brawl and Melee, Nana is very easy to gimp, which renders infinites unusable.

Now THAT is a slippery slope... suggesting that every player must now second Peach to counter an infinite is a ridiculous argument.
Again, just an example. Most characters have moves that can separate the Icies, Peach's dsmash is just the first one that came to my mind.

and IC's can pretty much grab any character... IC's are a complicated character, I get that. But it isn't nearly as hard as you say to setup grabs with them. And it's not like we're saying Kirby has an infinite here... IC's have legitimately good pressure and setups that work amazingly well on MOST of the cast. Because Fox, Peach, and a couple other characters can manage against them and separate them ok doesn't mean that the tech isn't game-breaking in nearly every other matchup
You're completely blowing it out of proportion. If it were actually true, then like I said earlier, Icies would dominate every tournament and place first all the time. They don't, so there must be a problem here....

whoa whoa... winning winner's finals and getting 2nd place is not a "loss" at Evo.. because 1 player out of 700 figured out a way to beat it (by playing the best character in the game, btw) doesn't mean that the tech isn't broken..
A loss is a loss. Wobbles did not beat Mango, he lost to him. Therefore, he lost at Evo. By the way, your statistic is incorrect: Wobbles did not face all 700 participants in the tournament.

How is "winning every tournament" suddenly the basis of labeling a tech broken? Placing top ten in a tournament of 700 primarily because of an infinite (when no other character is allowed to have infinites) is exactly an example of tournament data "backing it up". Again, 2nd place is not a "loss"..
You're making it sound like Wobbles took every stock using the infinite. "Primarily because of an infinite" is the biggest overstatement of all time. Did you read Wobbles' AmA on Reddit after Evo? He actually said he avoided using the infinite AT ALL during the beginning of the tournament because he didn't want to rely on it. Then he beat Hungrybox later on in the tournament, with most of the stocks he took due to legitimately good playing, rather than grab spamming and infiniting (because that's just not viable in a competitive scenario!). I almost feel offended on Wobbles' behalf because you essentially just said that the only reason he placed high in the tournament was because of the infinite.

Also: "how is winning every tournament the basis of labeling a tech broken?" If the tech were actually broken, it would lead to a major victory in every tournament it was used in. If it doesn't do that, then clearly it's preventable or even counterable.

I'm not responding to what you said to DrkRoxas because his points are not mine, in case you were wondering.
 

exarch

doot doot doot
Joined
Feb 15, 2005
Messages
3,333
Location
Usually not playing Brawl. Location: Enterprise
Hey glad for the reply Wobbles.

1) Except you're holding your skill constant in this comparison. I'm saying that two players who both play at the exact same level with uppermid skill would get similar opportunities for grabs as two who played at the exact same level of the highest skill. Grabs we get on better or worse opponents look different definitely, but that's because our skill level doesn't change like our opponent's.

For instance, a mid level icy player vs another mid level player will have their nana alive for longer, but they will also make more mistakes which will cause nana to be in the wrong position, or on the wrong synch, or will not know how to effectively stall out the time needed for nana to get resynched. A top level icy player vs another top player will have nana around less, but when she is alive he will not make the same mistakes and will be able to get the most out of his grabs more often. Each case is different situationally, but I'm arguing that the grabs in both matches are similar.

2) I do not, in any way, mean to diminish what you accomplished at Evo. It's amazing and I sincerely congratulate you. And I think you are the envy of every smasher not named Mango. So congratulations. I also respect the hell out of you as a player skill-wise (I hope that wasn't unclear, or that you think I think I'm better than you or other nonsense.) But we cannot say that you definitely would have gotten 2nd without wobbling for the same reason we can't say the Patriots would have won the superbowl if they'd beaten the Ravens, or that Chris Davis wouldn't've hit that homerun if the umpire had called the first pitch a strike and not a ball. It didn't happen, so we are limited to only speculation.

And of course, to make everyone replay the match without things that gave them advantages is absurd. I'm not asking that we ban all tactics that give you an advantage. Just wobbling. (Idea! New tournament rules: both people start the match and set their controllers down for 8 minutes. No one gets any advantages! xD)

3) A good point. And I agree that's what Melee is. But as a community we've also defined what competitive melee is, which is not just the stuff on the disc. We don't play melee, we play competitive melee. (Semantics perhaps, but it makes clearer our subset of rules we've decided is allowable in tournament conditions. Anyway if we don't call it that, then as a community we've decided what is and isn't melee since just about the very beginning of tournaments and we're all guilty of being goofy.) And of course, I am arguing that wobbling completely degenerates gameplay (to an unacceptable competitive level,) and is "unbeatable" in that once it starts you lose control of your character. (Sidenote: I am aware that we argue what you do to stop it is before the grab.) Still a good point.

4) Good to know, I think I've heard this from you before. I didn't say "everybody knew about it," I did say "has been known about." The information has been available for anyone who cared to look for really strong strategies since '05 (at least.) It wasn't used partially because no one knows about the icys and no one wants to play the icys but also because no one wants to do it. You're probably aware of this, but our community still frequently boos people when they see it. :088:

And I can evaluate the infinite in a total vaccuum because once it starts it creates a total vaccuum of skill on screen! (Ohhhhh) :p But yes it is problematic. I can evaluate Icys game with wobbling compared to Icys game without wobbling. I don't think they are a terrible character without wobbling (7th best even without wobbling, I think Armada and I agree on this, Armada, you said "with wobbling allowed and even if they would be something like 3rd" maybe you meant with no wobbling 7th, 3rd with wobbling?) Therefore this is not a case of "this character is useless without this technique" or "icys need wobbling to stay relevant." I think you agree with this since you say you'd get 2nd without wobbling (and I think you certainly have the capabilities as a player.)

Another important thing here is that how can we, as a community, be so sure that wobbling should be (un)banned when we don't know a darn thing about the Icys? I think I have a better knowledge about the icys than most of the community, and that's why I'm adamant about this. But I admit you almost certainly have a better knowledge about them than me. But that's also why I would love to convince you. (and Fly.) ^_^

5) No 5)? :c :D

6) Oh yea not CGing spacies is RIDICULOUS. But I used it as an example of what we as a community do and how we lean. Bringing up counterexamples doesn't eliminate the relevance of the first though. We haven't, as a community, abused some strategies which would have been exhausted by virtually any other FGC in short order after discovering, and we've been around for 10 years. For instance, we have no rule for what to do in a match where neither player takes damage or dies for 8 minutes. It's been 10 years, why don't we have a rule for that? You stray from the community a bit here, in the direction of Pink_Shinobi (or more accurately, he strayed your direction.) I stray in the direction of Shroomed a bit. Maybe this is something we should be ashamed of as a community. But that's who we are. This is not a super important point here because I don't think wobbling is super duper incredibly strong anyway.

----------------------------

And to reiterate here: I am a peach player. I lived across the street from an Icy player who beat DaShizWiz twice in the same tournament when Shiz was the best in Florida. I played with him a lot. I know how to beat the icys and I know what they look like with and without wobbling. Wobbling is bad for our game in a similar way that Venom is bad for the game. It's not broken, but it's not good.

This discussion won't amount to much. But I can hope. It has already exceeded my expectations when Grim said that he'd changed his mind about wobbling, even though it was a minor change. And when I do hold tournaments--rare though it is, wobbling will be banned, as it has been for every other tournament I've held.

Meh done adjusting this one, posting it.
 

Fenrir VII

Smash Master
Joined
Sep 9, 2005
Messages
3,506
Hey hey I get to respond to the man himself.. who (unsurprisingly) makes the most reasonable arguments of any supporter I've seen. I'm only quoting the parts that I actually want to respond to.

EDIT* lolol got super-replied by Exarch and me... ah well.

2) I didn't get second because of Wobbling. I got second because of wobbling combined with everything else I did right. If you want to point out the big powerful thing that gave me awesome punishes, you should also point out the times where I had to win on the strength of a single ice-climber. My 3rd game against Mango consisted of 3 stocks that I took without landing a grab. There's no dispute I wouldn't have gotten second without the infinite! Does that mean we should look for every strategy that has ever made a difference in somebody's placing and force people to replay the matches without them, to see who is TRULY BETTER?

No. Because that's dumb.
Completely true... and let me clarify something. I blame you none for using the tactic when it's allowed... anybody who argues with that is dumb. I do have one issue with your last point, but I'll get to that in a second.

3) You are trying to pigeon-hole Melee into your own definition of "what Melee is truly all about, deep down." You're using fuzzy, emotional arguments that don't bear on actual competitiveness. When you start saying "that's not what the game is really about" your argument becomes about as valid and intellectually fulfilling as "edge-guarding is too cheap," and "stop using glitches and exploits" and "projectiles are for pansies, fight up close like a man."

Do you know what Melee really is? Melee is the closed set containing all things programmed into the game. Anything else is your construction. We did not make the gamespace, we just explored it. So when you pick random **** in the game and say "that's not Melee," you're being goofy. Stop being goofy.

We banned things for being unbeatable and granting overwhelming advantages, or for completely degenerating gameplay. Wobbling doesn't do that. You still need to understand Nana, and combo-weights and CG options and a billion other things to make it a genuinely useful tool rather than a stupid gimmick and at the point you're... you know, playing the game.
Here we go. The problem I have with this point is that by making the ruleset as limited as it is, we essentially DID make the gamespace... We banned certain stages completely to limit Fox's waveshine infinites (which I think was the correct decision), and I honestly fail to see how Wobbling is a different argument, except for the fact that stage doesn't affect it. (We did the same thing in Brawl, but that's some of the same community tackling a slightly different game, so not completely relevant)

I also disagree with your statement that wobbling doesn't grant overwhelming advantages.... at least in regards to most of the roster. While the top tiers mostly seem to have decent options of avoiding grabs and splitting Nana, most of the lower characters don't have those options, and simply can't avoid grabs and IC setups.

Again, there's a parallel, in my mind, with Wave-shine, which works against a large part of the cast, but has "counter characters" that fall down when shined.

4) Fun fact, Chu didn't do the infinite because he thought it was too hard. I had a conversation with him at MLG Dallas and he said, "I heard two ice-climber players were here doing their crazy infinite or whatever!" Then I told him, "it's actually not hard. Once you learn the timing it's really easy," and he looked at me like I was crazy. Guess who was using it at Zero Challenge like a year later? Same with Fly; he didn't bother practicing it because it was banned. Then even when it was unbanned, he was just more confident in his other chaingrabs. He's explicitly said, "I find it weird when people use me for an anti-wobbling argument."
Interesting... never knew that.
I think the point of the Chu argument is that he was really the first IC player to make a huge national impact. Heck, I watched him take 2nd at MLG Orlando (2007ish), barely losing to Azen. He (and a few others like him) developed the tools to effectively deal with tournament level play without using Wobbling. Truthfully, I don't think the IC's lose a whole lot of options against MOST of the cast even if wobbling is banned. Of course, this isn't true for every matchup.. and I'm not an IC player, so I can only comment on what I've played against and seen.


6) Sorry Shroomed, but not CG'ing space animals is silly. Three out of our top 8 are relentless CG'ers--Armada vs. Spacies/Falcon, M2K depending on his matchup, and myself against everybody. So I don't know why you brought this up.

HBox can't chaingrab but he's happy to use u-throw rest and oldschool wall-of-pain edgeguards. Mango will gladly shine you while he has ledge-invincibility. PP loves d-throw d-air. Ice and M2K and Shroomed are happy to hit you with invincible inescapable b-airs from the edge when you can't do anything about it. These players are all willing to lock you down and hit you with inescapable stuff.

There is a reason you practice without powerful tools, and that's so you can learn how to play the game in the event they aren't available to you. But guess what? In do or die situations, it's not about being flashy and giving your opponent a chance, it's about WINNING.
Anybody who argues with this doesn't understand competition.
I don't think anybody here is actively blaming you, though... and nobody should. if the tournament allows it, and money is on the line, there shouldn't be a sense of "honor" in picking Kirby as your tournament character or something... Had to learn this one myself.

7) I think Wobbling is stupid. I think it reflects a poor balance between punishment/playability for the character, that at high levels they end up playing extremely defensive while looking for big openings.

You can think something is awesome but banworthy, and you can think something is stupid but still keep it legal.

It's stupid. It's not broken. Don't ban it.

Completely agree with the reasoning... but again, you can apply the "It's stupid. It's not broken. Don't ban it." logic to a large number of things that the official ruleset has...banned.
 

Armada

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exarch: Sorry if I was unclear. I meant that they are 7th in the game with wobbling allowed (my opinion). I just tried to make a point that even IF they would be 3rd that's still not the best char and then they can't be seen as broken if we already have better chars.
 
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exarch: Sorry if I was unclear. I meant that they are 7th in the game with wobbling allowed (my opinion). I just tried to make a point that even IF they would be 3rd that's still not the best char and then they can't be seen as broken if we already have better chars.

Disagree, and I believe after you see where I'm coming from you will agree with me. Broken characters are not necessarily characters that are too good, but rather they "break" game play that is typical to the game at hand by some merit. The resulting degeneracy tends to warp the perception of how it impacts competitive play, either by notably changing how players approach the game or simply by that tactic being banned.

So for instance, we can quickly conclude that Falco is a broken character. Falco, by merit of what he is able to do, fundamentally changes how the game is typically played by mitigating/eliminating typical gameplay elements, primarily those based on horizontal approaches, dashdancing, and blocking. A player that relies on those tactics is at an inherent disadvantage not because of the character that he/she has chosen, but rather because Falco breaks the ability of a player to use those tactics. This does not imply that Falco is the best character by its own merit. However, were the game to be centralized around those tactics, it would likely make Falco the best character as a result. It is through this type of association that "broken" is typically synonymous with imbalance; game play that is rightfully degenerate in a notable way. But to assume that "broken" and "too good" are always synonymous is a false stance.

Case in point is the Ice Climbers. ICs certainly break standard game play by invalidating most grab games and DI for their grab combos. But does this degeneracy make them too good? I doubt many people will agree with this idea. At this point in the game's life span, I would say that Fox, Falco, Jigglypuff, and Ice Climbers are the broken characters in this game. Does Wobbling as a tactic break the Ice Climbers? I would say no, at least not in any meaningful way. Wobbling does not fundamentally offer the character a way to change how the game is played because the ICs already have the ability to make game play degenerate in the same manner with or without wobbling. It offers a margin on their potency, but not much more.

The real question at this point is "How much better are Ice Climbers with wobbling?" and frankly even that idea operates under the assertion that tier lists matter in any way when they probably don't. I personally agree at this point that ICs are 7th best, but that's with or without the tactic. Wobbles himself played absolutely amazing all weekend, and anyone who caught me in the stream will remember that I had bet on him winning the event based on how everyone was playing on Saturday.
 

Kyu Puff

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2) I do not, in any way, mean to diminish what you accomplished at Evo. It's amazing and I sincerely congratulate you. And I think you are the envy of every smasher not named Mango. So congratulations. I also respect the hell out of you as a player skill-wise (I hope that wasn't unclear, or that you think I think I'm better than you or other nonsense.) But we cannot say that you definitely would have gotten 2nd without wobbling for the same reason we can't say the Patriots would have won the superbowl if they'd beaten the Ravens, or that Chris Davis wouldn't've hit that homerun if the umpire had called the first pitch a strike and not a ball. It didn't happen, so we are limited to only speculation.

And of course, to make everyone replay the match without things that gave them advantages is absurd. I'm not asking that we ban all tactics that give you an advantage. Just wobbling. (Idea! New tournament rules: both people start the match and set their controllers down for 8 minutes. No one gets any advantages! xD)

If you read his post carefully, you'll find he said that he wouldn't have gotten second without wobbling, but that you can't attribute his entire performance to wobbling. There were other ICs in bracket. I know at least one of them is highly proficient at the infinite. He got 25th.

The point is that Wobbles didn't just wobble his way to 2nd place at the biggest melee tournament of all time; he worked extremely hard, made amazing reads, and won several crucial stocks using a low tier character. Sure, you could make him worse by banning the infinite. But what justification is there to do so? There was a period of time when most large touraments were dominated by two Jigglypuff players. We probably could have knocked them down a few notches by taking away Jigglypuff's b-air (or u-throw rest or whatever else). It would've been stupid, because generally you don't reward people for developing an obscure character by nerfing said character. In this case, the strategy you want to ban has never even propelled someone to 1st at a national tournament.

Bolded part: why? That's incredibly arbitrary.
 

ant-d

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I think the similarities between the Freeze Glitch and the Grab Infinite ought to be stated in this thread.

Grab Infinite:
1. Grab with Popo (with Nana alive and in position)
2. Tilt Forward + press A repeatedly.
3. The opponent cannot move until the player messes up the timing, or is released.

Freeze Glitch:
1. Grab with Nana (requires a desync)
2. Press Forward+B when Nana's hammer collides with the opponent (4 frame window).
3. The player cannot move until they are re-grabbed.

Both can be used to indefinitely stall the match, which is rightly not allowed in tournaments.

The main differences being that the Freeze Glitch takes one input, whereas the Grab Infinite takes repeated input by the player.

Once the Freeze Glitch is initiated it requires no more input from the player. Although I don't think that is a good argument for banning it. Plenty of 1 input attacks can result in death. The Freeze Glitch looks nasty because the player is frozen.

The effective result of the two techniques is the same; the opponent will lose a stock unless the IC player messes up.

The Grab Infinite technically has more input to mess up. However, many that posted here, have stated that 'ease of use' isn't a reason to ban a technique. I think you will also find that the Freeze Glitch is not trivial to set up; requiring a desynced grab with Nana.

Also, the Freeze Glitch is risky to initiate. A frozen opponent can be accidentally pushed into a position that makes it impossible to unfreeze them. This essentially means a loss for the IC player, as they will have stalled the game.

It seems, if the Grab Infinite is not banned, the Freeze Glitch should not be banned.
 

Kyu Puff

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I might be wrong, but I believe the freeze glitch gives the opponent less time to escape. The freeze glitch can be initiated by a d-throw handoff; Nana doesn't have to be perfectly synched when you land the grab, as long as she is free to grab by the time the opponent is released from the throw.

Also, the Freeze Glitch is risky to initiate. A frozen opponent can be accidentally pushed into a position that makes it impossible to unfreeze them. This essentially means a loss for the IC player, as they will have stalled the game.

That's a bit of an understatement--the frozen opponent can intentionally smash DI upwards, making it impossible to unfreeze them*. You can circumvent this by only racking up damage with d-throw, but I believe it takes longer to kill someone using this method than it does to wobble them. I agree that the freeze glitch could be unbanned provided the rules against stalling are well defined, but I'm not sure it would ever be worth using over wobbling. If anything, it might just be another way to start an infinite from low percentages.

*Also, off the top of my head, I'm not sure that you can regrab them if they are frozen out of a u-throw.
 

Fly_Amanita

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The thing I dislike about the freeze glitch is you have a lot of control over how quickly you choose to damage the opponent, which makes it really easy to blur the lines of an arbitrary stalling clause, whereas with wobbling, you could just set a percentage cap.
 

Kyu Puff

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Again, I don't believe you have much of a choice because if you use anything besides throws to deal damage, they can smash DI out of your grab range, forcing you to forfeit the game.

Edit: I guess you do still have some control over how fast you execute the throws. Maybe the stalling rule could place a limit on the amount of time you can keep your opponent frozen for?
 

Fly_Amanita

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Time limits are incredibly hazy since this is a 60fps game, so judgment calls based around time limits aren't really feasible to make if the player is sticking near that limit.
 

Binx

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Exarch, you keep using the term you cant do anything against it, but you really can. You can avoid being grabbed, you can avoid being grabbed as every character, I see Mango and Dr PP and Armada and M2K all killing players after 1 grab, maybe they have a tech chase in there, but its remarkably consistent, the difference is that the characters those people play are all WAY BETTER at grabbing than ICs, they are faster have more shield pressure or more aerial control, more lead ins.

ICs have the best punishment game from grabs but they make up for it with disadvantages in other areas of their character. I personally dont like to wobble because I think it looks dumb, but I dont think for a second that using it makes the metagame stale, and the people who can beat me would beat me just as hard if I wobbled.
 

Kyu Puff

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Time limits are incredibly hazy since this is a 60fps game, so judgment calls based around time limits aren't really feasible to make if the player is sticking near that limit.​
True; it would also be hard to prove that someone is or isn't stalling if the match isn't being carefully monitored.

What about something like, "if a player uses the freeze glitch at any point during the match, and the time limit runs out, the player who used the freeze glitch loses regardless of stock count"? It's kind of a forced rule, and wouldn't work for matches with more than one IC, but it certainly gives the player incentive to end the stock as quickly as possible.

And let's not even think about freeze glitch in teams...
 
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if a player actually lands a freeze glitch mid-match, he/she should be congratulated.
 

ant-d

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There's a variation on the traditional freeze glitch that I called the 'Soft Freeze Glitch'. The name isn't important however.

Someone did land it during a tournament game. The video is on youtube somewhere. And I don't believe they were disqualified because it was previously unseen (or at least was not widely known).

The Soft Freeze Glitch is FAR tamer:


It only allows the IC player a single free attack; after which the opponent is unfrozen.
There is also no 'suicide DI' in order to stall the match either. The opponent cannot move at all.

I have seen some players use a throw on Nana, sometimes accidentally, sometimes purposely. The Soft Freeze Glitch should make the opponent think twice about doing this.

It's also interesting because it doesn't require the IC player to grab at all. It requires the opponent to grab Nana (or Up+B with Falcon/Ganondorf). So, it actually could be useful, in addition to the Grab Infinite.

This should almost certainly not be banned in tournaments. Actually, I would suggest that the TO's specifically amend the clause in their rule-set in order to differentiate it from the 'Hard Freeze Glitch'.
 

Iron Dragon

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Real quick, pretty sure you shouldn't make blanket statements like that because I'm sure that Chu has won a major before back in his prime. (directed at b_awal).
 

Xyzz

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e2nd place is not a "loss
Getting 2nd is a loss. If one thinks otherwise, it's really hard to get first. It's a loss one can be extremely happy about a lot of the time, but it's still a loss :D

I don't think ease of execution / lack of opponent interaction / diametrical for the development of a character are banworthy criteria, and didn't read anything here that would convince me otherwise. Sure, I would prefer the game to look different, but that's just a personal preference thing and doesn't warrant anything, imho.
 

Fenrir VII

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Getting 2nd is a loss. If one thinks otherwise, it's really hard to get first. It's a loss one can be extremely happy about a lot of the time, but it's still a loss :D
well, the way it was originally posted, he said Wobbles lost at EVO as part of his argument...

Well that's not exactly true. Wobbles kind of wrecked the entire bracket (including beating Mango, iirc), and only got 2nd once Mango went full beast mode on the whole loser's bracket.

I don't think that getting 2nd due to a loss to one player is the same argument as "Wobbles lost at EVO"

I don't think ease of execution / lack of opponent interaction / diametrical for the development of a character are banworthy criteria, and didn't read anything here that would convince me otherwise. Sure, I would prefer the game to look different, but that's just a personal preference thing and doesn't warrant anything, imho.

Again, the only true parallel that I've seen in the game is Fox's waveshine... and we effectively banned that by banning stages with permanent walls & walkoffs. These stages were originally banned at least in a large part to reduce Fox's advantage on them, which "banned" waveshine infinites on all but PS, because it is fairly easy to camp out the transformations with walls.

So my question is this... If wobbling were somehow stage-dependent, would we think twice about banning the stage to "reduce their advantage", etc? Let's say it could only be done on FoD. would that stage be legal? Given our past decisions, I don't believe it would.
 

Xyzz

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Wobbles totally won at life during Evo, judging from his writings. In terms of competition, I personally treat these things as a loss. I'm happy to beat people who have defeated me in the past, and write it off as "good job me, you're making good/decent/at least some progress", but the ones who beat me, no matter how far I go or how good they are in relation to the world top, are losses and mean I still have way to go. So yeah, it definitely IS a loss to me.

Fox waveshine is arguably worse than wobbling if it leads to certain death by walk off edges / walls, because it's a lot easier to set up, and the character attached to the infinite is already at least the 2nd best character in the game. One could argue that PS is okay because the infinite gets really situational there (which wobbling is in the first place), and that the walk off edges are pretty stupid even without fox to abuse them.
Also banning a stage is easily enforceable, wobbling gets pretty sketchy as to what we will allow ICs to do before they have to throw an opponent. And banning stages affects the whole cast; not perfectly the same for everyone since obviously some characters gain more from playing with a given stagelist than others, but at least it's not a "hey IC players, we don't like your technique X, and we have some supportive arguments that make it somewhat reasonable. Guess what, you're not going to use it at my tourneys".
And yes, we should think twice (or rather a lot more than that) before removing FoD if the only downside to is it that "wobbling works there and not on other stages".
Also: "look there we banned X as well" is not a very good argument to ban Y. Y should be looked at individually and then decided whether it's a banworthy thing (in general I think those should be "good to the point of overcentralizing" (There are apparantly not exclusively ICs players, hell they are pretty rare... so no I don't see this given here) and "enforcable" (which I also don't see given too easily here))
 

The Darkness

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If this was THAT broken, we would have seen a lot of IC on high places all the way from 2006..... i mean even if Wobbles made to the final at EVO, he didnt won, he just won 1 match again Mango.

just saying.....
 

Removed By Request

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well, the way it was originally posted, he said Wobbles lost at EVO as part of his argument...

Well that's not exactly true. Wobbles kind of wrecked the entire bracket (including beating Mango, iirc), and only got 2nd once Mango went full beast mode on the whole loser's bracket.

I don't think that getting 2nd due to a loss to one player is the same argument as "Wobbles lost at EVO"
Again, Wobbles didn't win those matches solely because of the infinite. In fact, he spent a far greater amount of time... actually playing well.

Beyond that, if he lost even one match during the tournament, it's clearly possible to defeat the strategy he employed. He landed some grabs on Mango and he still lost. Doesn't sound unbeatable to me.
 

knightpraetor

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i play peach now so i don't really care that much, but honestly I think the choice of ban/not banning is a lot harder than people make out, precisely because it does not break ICs vs the top chars but makes them significantly better (so ICs would like to have it around), while screwing over those that play worse chars and making them struggle harder. Evaluating balance is always difficult, but I don't really see how IC's wobble is worse than falco's laser at top level.

and I am fine with adjustments to the game balance as long as is it best for the community(it screws over whoever is getting nerfed, but if you've played wow or lol or most other competitive games you are probably used to this). The bigger question is who has the authority to do such a ban. I don't think back room really represents the players, so I think that the current system of letting tourney hosts decide is fine. I guess if official rulings were needed for top tournaments that the top players 30 players or so would vote on the issue. The problem with letting the tournaments themselves decide is that (EVO and other big hosts) don't actually care about the success or failure of melee as much as the top players do. But for local tournaments I think that most tournament organizers will do what they think is best for the scene around them. A lot of local tournaments do ban precisely because wobbling is so overpowered in the lower levels and creates an entrance barrier to playing other chars when you are starting out.

banning or not banning it both seem quite arbitrary as it is pretty easy to come up with reasons for either viewpoint.
 

LKratos

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Scrub giving his input here.

The kind of player who wobbling is unstoppable against is the kind of player who wobbles would also destroy without wobbling. If you get what I'm saying.

Also, I really feel like this is a meta thing. Wobbles is the only consistently high placing IC's player in melee, so other high level players haven't spent a high amount of energy into developing anti-IC's strats.

Let's take an example; at one point in their winner's finals match, hbox and wobbles are on dream land. With a de-synced ice climbers, popo short hop icicles at hbox. Hbox thinks that this is safe to shield. Wobbles then sends nana into a full hop blizzard, which keeps hbox stalled long enough to run up with popo for a grab.

In essence, wobbles used a grab setup that hbox was not entirely prepared for/did not know how to properly respond to. What if hbox had been fighting high-level IC's with wobbling legal for years? Perhaps he would have known from that first icicle that wobbles was fishing for a grab set up, and rather than shielding would have resumed the whole short-hop spacing game. He wouldn't have gotten grabbed/lost that stock.

This is the kind of mindset the community should adapt. Instead of running away from the problem, study it. Study what is/isn't completely safe for IC's. Look at your character and study how you can safely approach/separate them.


tl;dr quit ********, if you out-play your ice climbers opponent, you'll beat their wobbling. Figure out *how* to do so. Get better.
 

exarch

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TL;DR for basically all of my posts: (Because they must all be)
Pretty sure I've said "nothing you can do against it once it starts." Pretty sure I know the icys matchup well enough to not be dismissed as someone who's whining or needs to learn the matchup better. I said that we can't know how wobbles would have performed without wobbling, that he could have taken first without it or even last because everything is only speculation on that subject. I also thought I've gone into great detail about how just wanting to only ban wobbling as a tactic is not arbitrary, or alternately that every rule we make in competitive smash bros must be arbitrary (whichever outlook you prefer.) And I've discussed how although 0-deaths are possible and even "common" at high level play the player performing the death combo has a significant burden of execution which is nonexistent during a wobble.

I'm also pretty sure I've said multiple times that I don't think Icys are incredibly better or worse with or without wobbling. We're not banning wobbling because the Icys need to be nerfed; it wouldn't accomplish that very well anyway. We should ban wobbling to make the competition within the game better.

ICs already have the ability to make game play degenerate in the same manner with or without wobbling
Adding onto this that it's the same manner but not the same degree. The difference between having 0 opportunities to escape (or DI) and a positive number is a huge change in psychological outlook by the opponent.

Shoutouts to Xyzz for actually reading and processing what he read. Thank you. (Every change in competitive melee has been at least in part because we want the game to look differently e.g., no items, no walkoffs, no flatzone.)

PS. Free Freeze Glitch.
 

Binx

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I think wobbling greatly increases ICs effectiveness vs Peach, Marth and Puff and without it those already difficult matchups become kind of ridiculous. I agree wobbling isnt always exciting to what but if we banned it for that I think we should ban jiggs as a character as well. Just my opinion on the matter.
 

ph00tbag

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We, as a community, used to ban things that negatively effected the metagame--Hyrule Temple is a great example of that. Hell even the brawl section of our community banned planking. Wobbling negatively effects the metagame. I am deeply disappointed that this is the only discussion I have found on the boards that relates to this topic.
Stage bans are much easier to countenance. The primary reason they're so defensible is because they are, first and foremost, discreet. Furthermore, there's an in-game mechanic for making stages unplayable in random select, indicating that preventing play on certain stages because their impact on gameplay is undesirable is an intended part of the game. Turning off items is a similar situation.

I would also argue planking is a bad ban that was only brought around because bandwagon MK mains complained that they wouldn't get out of pools for free anymore if the real problem, MK, were banned. Wobbling and Planking both suffer from the fact that they aren't discreet. There is no clear line where you begin to do either of them. Furthermore, there's no in-game mechanic for removing them. Besides, Planking isn't the problem with Brawl; Metaknight is. The difference here is that neither is Wobbling as difficult to overcome as Planking (which still isn't bannable in its own right), nor are the ICs as much of a problem without Wobbling as MK is without Planking. These are two different situations. Brawl banned an unbannable technique to retain a deeply problematic and singularly bannable character. Banning Wobbling would be simply because you find it to be aesthetically undesirable, and it would affect a character that isn't even a problem to the metagame in and of themselves.

And yeah, aesthetics is really the only reason to ban Wobbling. That's what you're saying when you spout platitudes on "what Melee is all about." I don't even know what you mean when you say that. I doubt you do, either.
 

Archangel

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I don't understand how IC's Wobbling is compared to lasers, Chain grabs, Combos, stages, and at times entire characters....what is going on?

Wobbling should be legal under the condition that you get a special counter pick vs IC's no matter what. I think it's fair that way. Since they can infinite everybody in the game they should be forced to endure a bull**** counterpick stage...lol

nah real talk though...Wobbling is bull****, and I've been ****ed up by every character in the game who's capable of ****ing people up, including IC's(non wobbling) and there is without a doubt nothing compared to being wobbled. The only thing that is remotely in the same ballpark is Fox on a walled stage. However, that can only be done on 1 stage under 2 transformations and that stage can be banned. your only hope vs IC's is that the stage somehow interferes otherwise you are doomed. now...some combos, chain grabs and ....characters are kinda good and at times frustrating but bopping someone in the head over and over again until 300(why 300?) is on a whole different level. Why don't IC mains just get good without it? Why are their no more Chu dats? That man got top 5 at a national without it! step your game up IC players and really try to push your character farther and stop relying on an infinite crutch.

my 2 cents.
 

Double Helix

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Location
Southern Illinois
I am really bad at facing the ICs. I prefer being wobbled to other techniques if I am just going to die anyways for the exact reason everyone else says to ban it. The execution level on the other grab combos make it so that with DI and/or them messing up, you can live long enough to get baired and die. At least with Wobbling I can contemplate how I will later approach the situation (next stock) and only input something like wavedash back if they mess up. That way if they **** up the timing I can play again, but I really don't have to be engaged all that time for an inevitable death.

That being said, I will just learn the matchup and move on. As a Ness main. The answer to it all is simply "Play better."
 

HoChiMinhTrail

Smash Master
Joined
Aug 1, 2004
Messages
4,731
Location
Michigan State/Chicago, Il
Good **** at evo wobbles, wobbling is for *******, but so is having a one frame move that can kill people at 0%. One thing, when people stand up and go to shake your hand, u can stop wobbling and shake their hand, don't just sit and continue to wobble for another 5 minutes, **** drives me crazy when you do that lol, learn some god damn real world manners for Christi sake wobbles lol. Good **** boo
 

Binx

Smash Master
Joined
Jul 19, 2006
Messages
4,038
Location
Portland, Oregon
I think hes just concentrating and zoning everything else out, when one of the people tapped him on the shoulder he stopped to look and shook his hand haha.
 
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