Taking a Stance on Infinites

[Padô]

Pro-Ban:

In fact, we got a lot of infinites, in prol of evolving our technics and the pro-play with EVERY character would be better if ALL infinites get banned, in other words, the only character that would be pickable would be the ones which can actually do an Infinite or the ones which can avoid effectivelly the grabs with a good ledge game like MK(I don't know why but this seems familiar...).

COnsequently, there will be more choosable options for all player to pick with it banned, without fearing the player to choose a character that cain Infinite your character. Ex. DDD vs. DK (poor BUM)

 

[camzaman]

Anti-ban:

1. What do we gain, in terms of tournament and community, by allowing all true infinites?


We force individual players to come to individual solutions, as opposed to asking them to rely on community decisions as a crutch. It is individual achievement that drives the development of any community, and by inserting community decisions we are in effect creating a false metagame. If DK is unplayable against D3, so be it; that's an individual problem. The individual should be forced to either find a way around it or pick up another character, not ask the community to make the match-up playable.


I don't think they should be regulated. If any aspect of a tournament game (besides stalling) is so broken that it needs to be regulated, then why are we playing the game?

This is a good point, and I agree with it. I think some of the most inspiring community stuff comes from these things (eg: NL beating M2K and Gimpy's bowser, Ref's discovery of how to get out of Marth's death grab). However, I think we need to determine at what point individual solutions are impossible. It is a question of degree (which is why this discussion is so difficult, because we are trying to quantify a qualitative thing). No matter how good he was, Michael Jordan could not win for the Bulls if the other team got a 100 point head start. Some things are just not possible for a human being to physically do. Therefore, I think that D3's infinite should be banned. The others are less of an issue, if we want we can ban them for consistency's sake.

And to address the 2nd paragraph, most of us are playing Smash because we have an emotional attachment and investment in the characters. The main reason we are playing it is because it combines (relatively) competitive fighting and Nintendo mascots. Some of you are just fighting game fanatics, but lots of us play Smash because it's Nintendo and it's fun.

This is where the character diversity argument comes in. IF having as large a smash community as possible is our goal as a smash community, then I don't think we can deny that having unviable characters due to infinites will eventually hinder community growth. The diversity of smash (# of characters) is one of it's greatest appeals to many people. There are so many possibilities that you never get bored. We want to preserve this as much as possible, and so will ban oversights that render several characters unviable.

 

[Paul Hoffman]

A few points / food for thought:

As far as competitive gaming goes, nothing legitimate should be banned until it begins to over centralize the meta-game. Has ANY infinite over centralized the meta-game (yet)? No, and that alone should be enough NOT to warrant a ban.

This is why items are banned. Without consistent, defined spawn rates, they add random chance to matches, which in itself over centralizes any match.

This is why flat stages are banned. The ease of DDD's CG combined with such stages would lead to over centralization (not to mention all the other horrible implications flat stages have to offer).

This is why MK isn't banned- overpowered, undoubtedly, but not to such an extent that he's unbeatable by top players using other cast members, and as such isn't over centralizing the meta-game. However, I admit he does come close due to his ease of playability.

Furthermore, "Anything that can be mastered, will be mastered." True, but the difficulty of any technique must also be considered. This is why we don't see a plethora of IC players in the tournament scene, and also why DDD's infinite is so devastating.

Another thing that must be considered is that these decisions are made from the perspective of top level tournament players. What I'm getting at is while the existence of DDD's infinite might discourage the usage of a few low tier characters, there will still be individuals who will progress the meta-game of these characters, though, slower than that of high tier characters since this will only be readily achieved on a regional basis.

As has been mentioned, banning infinites:
1) Is difficult to achieve (at what threshold do we label something an infinite?)
2) Leads to a slippery slope (why not ban Pika's CG against Fox?)
3) Arguably hurts the progression of the meta-game (nobody searches for solutions to these infinites, possibly leading to fewer discoveries...?)

The main problem that seems to be stemming from these infinites is rofl match-ups, correct? Why aren't we taking a more proactive approach to this problem instead of trying to make such a blatantly polarized decision?

My suggestion would be to take a strong evaluation of clearly biased character match-ups, and then make a revision on how character picks are made in a tournament setting. In the first match of a set, when the blind picks lead to such a rofl match-up, the disadvantaged player should have the opportunity to counter-pick, followed by the opportunity for a counter-pick from the other player. Rinse and repeat until there's no rofl match-up. For obvious reasons, this rule would only be applied to the first match of a set. Just an idea, as this would easily allow for more character diversity in the tournament scene, but still preserves the techniques in question.

 

[adumbrodeus]

Furthermore, "Anything that can be mastered, will be mastered." True, but the difficulty of any technique must also be considered. This is why we don't see a plethora of IC players in the tournament scene, and also why DDD's infinite is so devastating.

The reason is IC's grab range sucks, they can't reliably grab characters otherwise they WOULD be top tier.


How do I know this is true? Wario ridiculously kills Ganondorf both in practice and in theory.

But Ganondorf has an infinite release grab on wario, what's going on?

Ganondorf players CAN'T GRAB WARIO! This applies for a number of Wario's match-ups, and I believe the only character that can expect to get a few grabs off Wario that can infinite him is Yoshi. Yoshi is a tether grabber with an insane pivot grab.


So the reason why ICs aren't dominating tournaments is they can't grab MK, they can't grab Marth, they can't grab wario, etc. Not because it's hard, if it were good enough, people WOULD'VE learned it.

 

[CR4SH]

I'm going to leave most of this alone, but as for regulating D3's infinite in tourny, all you have to do is ban his standing chain grab. He can't Dthrow to another Dthrow without moving. Very simple.

 

[M15t3R E]

As far as competitive gaming goes, nothing legitimate should be banned until it begins to over centralize the meta-game. Has ANY infinite over centralized the meta-game (yet)? No, and that alone should be enough NOT to warrant a ban.

That is your opinion. The poll in SamuraiPanda's thread on this matter indicates that most of us do NOT believe it needs to over-centralize the game to be ban-worthy. This philosophy is that if it enriches the competitive (skill) aspect to the game by banning it, and doesn't negatively impact the game by banning it, then it might as well be banned.