Legality Tentative: MBR Official Ruleset for 2012

[Bing]

In all Melee tournament, Metaknight is banned.

 

[Bones0]

RBC is on a predictable, very easy to adjust to and remember pattern, with no lasers shooting you, no shy guys flying through
the only thing that was ever argued about this stage is that it forced approach

on brinstar, the lava comes up, oh no. it doesn't just appear, it rises slowly from below and may force you to reposition yourself on the stage

with enough playtime on these stages, enough time devoted to learning their nuances, i can see neither of these events, the rotation of RBC, or the lava on brinstar ever producing inconsistent results between two players

at the very least, no more than when people don't account for shy guys or randall on YS
or platforms shifting on FoD

the same goes for most of the CP/banned stages

I never said RC was random, but I believe Cactuar's example of how Kage essentially screwed himself by killing Cactuar at the wrong time is a perfect example of the types of things that occur when the stage is actively forcing players to move. It's simply unreasonable to expect people to be able to take into account how much time has elapsed before making already complex decisions. Someone trying to tech chase on RC can get screwed by the boat quickly dipping down, and while you can argue "he could see that the boat was stopping," it doesn't prevent another player from being in the same situation only seconds earlier and being able to finish executing the tech chase. There is a clear best decision for both players, but why is one player rewarded MORE for a grab at 7:45 while the other is PUNISHED for grabbing at 7:35? It's these sort of inconsistencies in the gameplay's interaction with the stage that leads to more inconsistent results. When you look at the neutrals, the gameplay done by players has a consistent result every time.

Why do people get mad at Shy Guy DI? It's because something different happened despite the fact that given the same situation at a different time, the result could have been very different. Luckily, Shy Guys and Wispy result in substantially less interference than things like all of RC moving, disappearing, and reappearing, or lava engulfing almost the entire stage and doing severe damage to anyone who gets hit by it.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

thats a pretty good way to put it bones0

 

[ShroudedOne]

Bones is easily one of the best posters on the Melee side of this website. That was very well-explained.

 

[hot$]

I love bones.

<3

 

[Strong Badam]

Bones is easily one of the best posters on the Melee side of this website. That was very well-explained.

He doesn't have much competition.

 

[Pi]

bones i understand that,

but where's the line?

i've seen edgeguards get ****ed up by FoD platforms, and wispy's wind
i've seen stocks lost and taken and saved by randall
i've seen edgeguards and recoveries nullified by shy guys

where is the line? and what about KJ64, the barrell is a non-issue if we compare it to acceptable levels of random in tourney play, but it only affects some matchups, but it affects them enough to be banned as a whole?

stages like green greens, or mk1 or 2, whatever doesn't have the blocks everywhere, or pokefloats, why have these been deemed unacceptable in tourney play vs. our current neutrals?

i doubt it's because the levels of random affect the outcomes of the match far too much. they have other reasons, primary reasons, for being removed

the distinction between what is too random has always been foggy, the iffy situations you list on RBC will occur more frequently than those listed about our neutrals, without a doubt, but in the same instance how can an instance that could affect both players at any given time be cited as providing inconsistent results? from how big a pool are we extracting the results? a one time occurance that favors the side of the argument?

because sheik relies more on tech chases than other characters, does she now lose more frequently on RBC because the platforms move or disappear?

the stage itself is inherently a neutral agent, it does not favor 1 player over the other, certain characters may be able to abuse aspects of the stage moreso than other characters, but that is always going to remain true, it's not a variable like the lasers on corneria which actively target and shoot players

i just am not seeing that particular aspect of RBC being worth removing it from competitive play altogether.

Has there ever been an issue of RBC being chosen, in hopes that your opponent will be affected by the moving stage more than you, and used to win sets?

or on brinstar, have people been picking that stage in the hopes the lava will **** up your opponent more than you?

and i'm not talking about matchups that are significantly shifted due to these stages (IE fox and jiggs), i'm talking about let's say a marth wants to take a falcon to brinstar

or a samus wants to fight a ganon on brinstar

or a kirby wants to fight a yoshi on RBC

in cactuars example, both players were taking the same amount of risk by going to that stage, the instances very easily could have been shifted

are we removing RBC because these instances occur? or for other reasons that can be solved by different means

and does the same apply for all the recently banned/CP'd stages?

(edit also pokestadium)

also i'd like to say that i do not believe random aspects such as these should be grounds for removing them entirely from play, but, if they are the grounds being used then you have to make a distinction between what is and is not an acceptable level of random (turnips, g&w hammer, luigi misfire all factored in)

also, if we are removing these stages now because of inconsistent results, are we then assuming that any tournament that uses or has used these stages in the past is or was some how less of a true test of skill than another?

i may be branching off too far here, but i think this stigma of random occurances being completely anti-competitive has gone a little too far
the whole argument of 'you vs. your opponent, not you vs. your opponent vs. the stage' has never been a big selling point for me when you factor in inherent strenghts and weaknesses faced by characters on ___ stage

do we want our game to shift more toward removing all random/un(reasonable to)predictable factors and just being happy with the characters that dominate on BF, and FD? or do we allow for a touch of randomness/variance which also allows for more diversity in the dominant characters

 

[Kal]

I never said RC was random, but I believe Cactuar's example of how Kage essentially screwed himself by killing Cactuar at the wrong time is a perfect example of the types of things that occur when the stage is actively forcing players to move. It's simply unreasonable to expect people to be able to take into account how much time has elapsed before making already complex decisions. Someone trying to tech chase on RC can get screwed by the boat quickly dipping down, and while you can argue "he could see that the boat was stopping," it doesn't prevent another player from being in the same situation only seconds earlier and being able to finish executing the tech chase. There is a clear best decision for both players, but why is one player rewarded MORE for a grab at 7:45 while the other is PUNISHED for grabbing at 7:35? It's these sort of inconsistencies in the gameplay's interaction with the stage that leads to more inconsistent results. When you look at the neutrals, the gameplay done by players has a consistent result every time.

You have a point here, but the typical response is, of course, what you've already explained: he could see the boat was stopping. The fact that the player was in the same situation seconds earlier, at a different time, is exactly the point. Mileage will vary as to what you're ok with; it becomes an (arbitrary) degree of "interference" which players decide should be worth banning. Platforms moving on Fountain of Dreams is ok, while the boat moving (in a less random fashion, even) is not.

And if some sort of real methodology (preferably one which does not appear contrived) were made to differentiate between the "interference" from the wind on Dreamland and the "interference" from the boat's movement on Rainbow Cruise, I'm sure we would have less of an issue (we would only go as far as to debate the methodology, or its application). However, no methodology is in place; people mandate that some "interference" is not ok because it's "gay" or "janky," while others are ok.

If you ask me, the distinction, in reality (though not officially), is that Fountain of Dreams looks like a "neutral stage." Rainbow Cruise does not, so people have a tendency to want to ban it on the premise of "interference," but not Fountain of Dreams.

In fact, the only person I've seen take this notion to its true logical end (and, of course, I've mentioned my absolute disdain for the notion altogether, because I think it's poorly defined in the first place) is Hax (and that Roneblaster guy). Hax argues that, if you have some well-defined notion of "interference," or "player vs. stage," then Brinstar, Mute City, Pokéfloats, and Rainbow Cruise should be banned. And the MBR is in agreement. What Hax (rightly) does is apply this logic further: FD allows for chaingrabs, Yoshi's has the cloud and shy guys, Dreamland has the wind, Fountain of Dreams has the moving platforms, and Pokémon Stadium has the transformations. Thus, Battlefield only.

Of course, I'm hugely against such a ruleset altogether, but I respect the logical consistency, at the very least.

Pi: I dig the account name, and the sig, and the avatar, and the fact that the sum of the inverse squares is pi^2/6, but if you're going to argue with Bones (who's shown, at the very least, a talent for good debating, if not having posited an altogether good argument in favor of the current ruleset), you should consider having better grammar and syntax. I know it's just an internet forum, but it's hard to parse your text the way it's written. However, I wholeheartedly agree with your point that the line drawn on what "interferes too much" is arbitrary, and I think it's an important point to make.

 

[Bones0]

bones i understand that,

but where's the line?

i've seen edgeguards get ****ed up by FoD platforms, and wispy's wind
i've seen stocks lost and taken and saved by randall
i've seen edgeguards and recoveries nullified by shy guys

where is the line? and what about KJ64, the barrell is a non-issue if we compare it to acceptable levels of random in tourney play, but it only affects some matchups, but it affects them enough to be banned as a whole?

I'll be the first to admit the line is certainly arbitrary. That's why it has taken 9 years for people to finally agree that these stages are not acceptable for tournaments. I recognize the faults with some of the neutrals, but it simply comes down to my opinion, which is that the relatively small amount of randomness present on the neutrals is more than made up for by the different skills they require. Obviously once we get into a discussion about how much skill is actually required to play a different stage vs. how much skill is negated by random events, things get very opinionated very fast. There can be no objective determination for the value of a stage to the stage list, which is why we've banned only stages that are largely accepted as "too" random by the community. I think PS is fairly clear depiction of where the community's general tolerance for randomness ends. Most people accept it as being more random than the rest of the neutrals, but not as much as the more extreme counterpicks. And so it remains the sole cp. If, in the future, the community largely feels it has become detrimental to game play, I think it is safe to say that it will be banned as well.

I think it's important to note that this process of determining how "random" stages are may not seem like the best system, but when it comes down to it, the sheer amount of time put into all stages should be considered. This is not some tyrannical mission to destroy all "abnormal" stages. The community has been phasing out stages deemed uncompetitive since day 1, so it makes sense that eventually we would reach a point where people start to become uncomfortable with which stages are being removed. There are minorities who believe stages should be added back in and more stages should be removed, but by and large, most people have determined through a collectively insane number of hours that the 6 stages we have left are the best for competition.

stages like green greens, or mk1 or 2, whatever doesn't have the blocks everywhere, or pokefloats, why have these been deemed unacceptable in tourney play vs. our current neutrals?

i doubt it's because the levels of random affect the outcomes of the match far too much. they have other reasons, primary reasons, for being removed

I can't comment on the original reasons for the removal of those stages, but I can make convincing arguments that all of those stages are detrimental to competition. It would largely come back to the whole preference of what is too random, and what level of randomness is tolerable if it means another stage to be skillful on.

the distinction between what is too random has always been foggy, the iffy situations you list on RBC will occur more frequently than those listed about our neutrals, without a doubt, but in the same instance how can an instance that could affect both players at any given time be cited as providing inconsistent results? from how big a pool are we extracting the results?

because sheik relies more on tech chases than other characters, does she now lose more frequently on RBC because the platforms move or disappear?

As I have expressed above, I am certainly not debating the issue of tolerable randomness is foggy. Things like stage interference can obviously happen to either player, but the fact that it rarely screws over each player equally is what leads to the inconsistency. As far as the Sheik example, it isn't about how it affects Sheik but the match as a whole. The stage messing up Sheik can be viewed as making it a less useful stage for Sheik, but the disadvantages are rooted from Sheik's gameplay being less consistent on that particular stage. If you had a stage like FD where random trap doors appeared in the ground, clearly the stage would have less inconsistency in Jiggs dittos (where both players are often airborne anyway) compared to Falcon dittos (where both players rely on ground-based movement). If there were no characters in Melee whose gameplay was not affected by moving stages and disappearing platforms then these stages would probably not be banned.

the stage itself is inherently a neutral agent, it does not favor 1 player over the other, certain characters may be able to abuse aspects of the stage moreso than other characters, but that is always going to remain true, it's not a variable like the lasers on corneria which actively target and shoot players

i just am not seeing that particular aspect of RBC being worth removing it from competitive play altogether.

Has there ever been an issue of RBC being chosen, in hopes that your opponent will be affected by the moving stage more than you, and used to win sets?

or on brinstar, have people been picking that stage in the hopes the lava will **** up your opponent more than you?

and i'm not talking about matchups that are significantly shifted due to these stages (IE fox and jiggs), i'm talking about let's say a marth wants to take a falcon to brinstar

or a samus wants to fight a ganon on brinstar

or a kirby wants to fight a yoshi on RBC

in cactuars example, both players were taking the same amount of risk by going to that stage, the instances very easily could have been shifted

are we removing RBC because these instances occur? or for other reasons that can be solved by different means

and does the same apply for all the recently banned/CP'd stages?

Even assuming both players are taking the same risk, the game should not be based around "risk-taking." You've essentially admitted that there is a significant level of inconsistency if choosing a stage is viewed as risky. Bad players should not be able to take good players to inconsistent stages in the hopes that the risks presented by stage hazards will fall in their favor through sheer chance.

 

[ShroudedOne]

Kal. Smash Debater. Make it happen.

 

[Kal]

I am currently in the proving grounds of the debate hall, and have found no interesting discussions with which to prove my worth. I luckily have enough opposition (read: everyone) to start debates on pretty much anything. I will acquire that pink name tag soon.

 

[Bones0]

You have a point here, but the typical response is, of course, what you've already explained: he could see the boat was stopping. The fact that the player was in the same situation seconds earlier, at a different time, is exactly the point. Mileage will vary as to what you're ok with; it becomes an (arbitrary) degree of "interference" which players decide should be worth banning. Platforms moving on Fountain of Dreams is ok, while the boat moving (in a less random fashion, even) is not.

And if some sort of real methodology (preferably one which does not appear contrived) were made to differentiate between the "interference" from the wind on Dreamland and the "interference" from the boat's movement on Rainbow Cruise, I'm sure we would have less of an issue (we would only go as far as to debate the methodology, or its application). However, no methodology is in place; people mandate that some "interference" is not ok because it's "gay" or "janky," while others are ok.

If you ask me, the distinction, in reality (though not officially), is that Fountain of Dreams looks like a "neutral stage." Rainbow Cruise does not, so people have a tendency to want to ban it on the premise of "interference," but not Fountain of Dreams.

In fact, the only person I've seen take this notion to its true logical end (and, of course, I've mentioned my absolute disdain for the notion altogether, because I think it's poorly defined in the first place) is Hax (and that Roneblaster guy). Hax argues that, if you have some well-defined notion of "interference," or "player vs. stage," then Brinstar, Mute City, Pokéfloats, and Rainbow Cruise should be banned. And the MBR is in agreement. What Hax (rightly) does is apply this logic further: FD allows for chaingrabs, Yoshi's has the cloud and shy guys, Dreamland has the wind, Fountain of Dreams has the moving platforms, and Pokémon Stadium has the transformations. Thus, Battlefield only.

Of course, I'm hugely against such a ruleset altogether, but I respect the logical consistency, at the very least.

Pi: I dig the account name, and the sig, and the avatar, and the fact that the sum of the inverse squares is pi^2/6, but if you're going to argue with Bones (who's shown, at the very least, a talent for good debating, if not having posited an altogether good argument in favor of the current ruleset), you should consider having better grammar and syntax. I know it's just an internet forum, but it's hard to parse your text the way it's written. However, I wholeheartedly agree with your point that the line drawn on what "interferes too much" is arbitrary, and I think it's an important point to make.

I agree with pretty much everything you've said, and I definitely get what you mean by the logical inconsistency of keeping "some" randomness, but as I touched on in my last post, the "methodology" (a term which I realize I am applying loosely) for determining competitive stages has almost always been through community opinion based on play testing. Thousands of hours have been put into testing every facet of these maps, and time and time again we have found that a majority of players views randomness exceeding PS to be too much to be viable for competition.

I DO realize the flaws that will inevitably occur in this system. Some people are simply too dumb to think a stage's legality through logically. Some people will throw a stage out immediately for things as simple as how it looks or whether their character is good on it.

So while not all players are deeming stages bannable for the right reasons, I DO believe these biases are exaggerated in the sense that there are significant numbers of players who do not fall into those types of categories, but who will still consider the stages currently banned as being too random.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

I am currently in the proving grounds of the debate hall, and have found no interesting discussions with which to prove my worth. I luckily have enough opposition (read: everyone) to start debates on pretty much anything. I will acquire that pink name tag soon.

yeah im still a temp debater too. The topic were really lame when i still cared about sophistry

 

[ShroudedOne]

I've thought about doing it, but it seems really legit, and too difficult for me. Or maybe I'm just lazy. I dunno.

 

[Kal]

I assure you that you are more than capable, ShroudedOne.

 

[ShroudedOne]

Well thanks. Perhaps I'll give it a go, then. I at least type well, sometimes.

 

[Kal]

I agree with pretty much everything you've said, and I definitely get what you mean by the logical inconsistency of keeping "some" randomness, but as I touched on in my last post, the "methodology" (which I realize I am applying loosely) for determining competitive stages has almost always been through community opinion based on play testing. Thousands of hours have been put into testing every facet of these maps, and time and time again we have found that a majority of players views randomness exceeding PS to be too much to be viable for competition.

I DO realize the flaws that will inevitably occur in this system. Some people are simply too dumb to think a stage's legality through logically. Some people will throw a stage out immediately for things as simple as how it looks or whether their character is good on it.

The major flaws, in my opinion, have nothing to do with stupidity or fickleness. It's more about the biases players have, and the fact that biases shared by the majority become mandated as rules when your criterion for what should be legal comes down to majority opinion.

It's important to realize that all subjective criteria are biases. There really isn't much difference between thinking that it's unfair to expect a player to appropriately respond to the boat's position on Rainbow Cruise and thinking that Falco's laser makes for unworthy competition. In essence, it's boiled down to "this is how I think the game should be played." But what the game is, is what the game is, and a rule forbidding edge guarding because you think fighting should take place on stage is not really any different than a rule forbidding Rainbow Cruise because you think the stages should not "interfere" with the match.

So while not all players are deeming stages bannable for the right reasons, I DO believe these biases are exaggerated in the sense that there are significant numbers of players who do not fall into those types of categories, but who will still consider the stages currently banned as being too random.

And, of course, I'll shamelessly plug the notion of fairness I've discussed before, where the majority tells the minority that they have to play the game their way with the sole justification being the proportion in favor.

Well thanks. Perhaps I'll give it a go, then. I at least type well, sometimes.

Grammar and syntax are hardly important. Yeah, it's nice when an argument has some flare because of its clever wording (and that's something I've been working on, particularly using alliteration and word repetition in my arguments), but they add no actual content to the debate itself.

You're capable because you're smart and not a pompous ****tard. The latter quality being the more important one.

 

[ShroudedOne]

Oh? Well thanks, I think.

You also have something against Falco, huh? But that's fine. He's my worst matchup; I understand.

 

[Kal]

It's just a personal frustration with the character. I'm not fond of a character who effects the approach game that way, as the approach game is my favorite aspect of the game (which is why I enjoy Marth vs. Sheik, despite it being slightly in Sheik's favor). If I had designed Melee, I definitely would not have included Falco's laser.

But, as I mentioned, I didn't design it, it's not my game, and I'm not going to tell others to play it how I think it should be played just because it's my opinion, regardless of the proportion of players who agree with me.

 

[Strong Badam]

I also hate Falco. Hey Kal, let's start a committee to get him banned so we can do better in tournament.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

I'm too lazy for the DH.

All I ever do is post fluff anyway.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Strong Badam]

You've been hit by, you've been struck by, a

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Nobody!

A freakin nobody!

Smooth Criminal

 

[Summonedfist]

interesting thread

i remember the time when mute city was a huge cp for faster fallers...then silentspectre goes and makes combo vids out of that stage

only read the first 30 pages but w/e. i like how some of the major points i read were (tho paraphrased):
-fox has to learn to play on fd so he doesn't lose to chain grab
but no one argues that they have to learn stages like brinstar which has a set lava pattern

sorta sad about the decreasing variety in stages. why do teams have such a low variety? doesn't 2v2 help avoid camping that occurs in 1v1s on certain stages?

not that i'm upset about losing the list of cps. but the no banning/DSR modification in Bo5s or w/e is a bit saddening

 

[JPOBS]

whats the point of being in the debate hall. There are hundreds of other websites better suited for that kind of stuff. coming to smashworldforums to talk about abortion seems kinda dumb. Plus you have to "prove yourself"...lol

 

[Pi]

I'll be the first to admit the line is certainly arbitrary. That's why it has taken 9 years for people to finally agree that these stages are not acceptable for tournaments. I recognize the faults with some of the neutrals, but it simply comes down to my opinion, which is that the relatively small amount of randomness present on the neutrals is more than made up for by the different skills they require. Obviously once we get into a discussion about how much skill is actually required to play a different stage vs. how much skill is negated by random events, things get very opinionated very fast. There can be no objective determination for the value of a stage to the stage list, which is why we've banned only stages that are largely accepted as "too" random by the community. I think PS is fairly clear depiction of where the community's general tolerance for randomness ends. Most people accept it as being more random than the rest of the neutrals, but not as much as the more extreme counterpicks. And so it remains the sole cp. If, in the future, the community largely feels it has become detrimental to game play, I think it is safe to say that it will be banned as well.

the community, the majority, 'most people', i would argue aren't exactly reliable sources. i don't recall there ever being a communal vote on what stages should and should not be reccomended by the MBR
i'm pretty sure a couple of players got together to host a tourney and agreed amongst themselves what the stage list should look like, and from there it has always been a handful of players deciding what stages get used and what stages don't,
at the very least if we were to poll 'the community' on what stages should not be used and why, well i think what we would get is a lot of opinions.
and you can't exactly deny that once a stage has been 'generally accepted' (aka banned, or moved to CP by a big tournament, or the MBR) as unfit for neutral play the 'majority' or 'most people' are just going to go w/ it without asking questions.

not to take away from the decision making power of the people we put in charge, they do, and should have, a larger insight and impact on the way our game is played. naturally.

but they are just people, and i feel that this direction isn't the only one to take

I think it's important to note that this process of determining how "random" stages are may not seem like the best system, but when it comes down to it, the sheer amount of time put into all stages should be considered. This is not some tyrannical mission to destroy all "abnormal" stages. The community has been phasing out stages deemed uncompetitive since day 1, so it makes sense that eventually we would reach a point where people start to become uncomfortable with which stages are being removed. There are minorities who believe stages should be added back in and more stages should be removed, but by and large, most people have determined through a collectively insane number of hours that the 6 stages we have left are the best for competition.

again ur citing unreliable (at best) sources
how many old school competitive players do you know who only play on FD? i know there was a time when I and all my competitive friends only played on FD
it just seemed like the natural choice, flat stage, fight ur opponent
and during those times, i would have argued against inclusion of dream land, yoshis, battlefield, citing platforms as being disruptive to the standard of gameplay i was used too

there's also the fact that since our 'neutrals' have been determined, YS, PS, FD, BF, DL, FoD
there has been immensely more time spent playing on these stages than any would be CP or banned stage. how many friendly games get played on FD vs. KJ64, or BF vs. RBC?

if it took 10 years of play to determine that our neutrals are still neutrals, and that in fact one of our neutrals wasn't neutral, then who's to say with more time spent playing on our CP's or banned stages the outlooks on them wouldn't change?

it's not like there is a definitive basis for what is and is not a legal stage, there never has been

I can't comment on the original reasons for the removal of those stages, but I can make convincing arguments that all of those stages are detrimental to competition. It would largely come back to the whole preference of what is too random, and what level of randomness is tolerable if it means another stage to be skillful on.

competition is ill-defined as well, you have our general standard for competition
and then countless # of competitive games which directly contradict some of the values of competition we live by
is poker non-competitive because it's to some extent a game of chance? or do we recognize that the skill of a player encompasses factoring in the random aspect of the game and playing off that?
are there not competitive games out there that promote camping more than RBC, KJ64, or pokefloats?

before we start saying that a stage is 'not competitive', our basis for competition should at least be attempted to be defined.

As I have expressed above, I am certainly not debating the issue of tolerable randomness is foggy. Things like stage interference can obviously happen to either player, but the fact that it rarely screws over each player equally is what leads to the inconsistency. As far as the Sheik example, it isn't about how it affects Sheik but the match as a whole. The stage messing up Sheik can be viewed as making it a less useful stage for Sheik, but the disadvantages are rooted from Sheik's gameplay being less consistent on that particular stage. If you had a stage like FD where random trap doors appeared in the ground, clearly the stage would have less inconsistency in Jiggs dittos (where both players are often airborne anyway) compared to Falcon dittos (where both players rely on ground-based movement). If there were no characters in Melee whose gameplay was not affected by moving stages and disappearing platforms then these stages would probably not be banned.

"the fact that it rarely screws over each player equally is what leads to the inconsistency"
what? inconsistency on an extremely small scale, perhaps, but if both players are affected evenly then it means over time the outcome will still be the same.

there's also the argument that while RBC may cause you to drop a tech chase, if you get a grab near one of the edges, or the top of the screen, you could also finish that stock off 20% sooner than you would otherwise be able to.

are the positive impacts of this stage heavily outweighed by the negative? or should we just look at all the impacts of the stage as negative? or have we just not explored all the positive aspects of the stage?
player a: man i dropped that tech chase due to this crappy stage!
player b: man you killed me at 70 due to this crappy stage!
could the same argument not be made for instances on all of the stages?
'only reason you can chain throw me is because we're on FD'
'only reason you're still living is because we're on DL'
etc. etc....

you can't make an argument that a character suffers from 1 aspect of a stage, and ignore that hey may benefit in other ways from that same stage. that is the nature of our game, and stage list, and why it's not random neutral 100% of the time

Even assuming both players are taking the same risk, the game should not be based around "risk-taking." You've essentially admitted that there is a significant level of inconsistency if choosing a stage is viewed as risky. Bad players should not be able to take good players to inconsistent stages in the hopes that the risks presented by stage hazards will fall in their favor through sheer chance.

"the game should not be based around "risk-taking.""
i want you to stop for a second and think about what that quote, out of context, means.

as a samus player, i have to think about CPing foxes to DL because while it is a good stage for samus in terms of surviving, i was camped out by a fox on DL

so when i pick DL, i have to think for a second 'do i think this fox is going to camp me?', and i take the risk.

when you approach your opponent, who has not just forward smashed a bunch of shyguys and is going to be in hitlag for the next 2 seconds, are you not taking a risk that he may have anticipated your approach and will punish you?

this game is, ALL ABOUT taking risks, almost every aspect of play in this, and most every competitive fighter is about taking risks

in fact we have a thread going right now on how the fact that a less risky style of play is probably more dominant than a risky one. (melees flaw)

bones, i'm going to ask for your input on something, i'm going to make a list of reasons for why a stage should be banned and i want your input on it, things that we should add, or if you want me to elaborate/give examples of what i mean

Criteria for banning a stage:
-Stage actively attacks/inter-fears with players
--Corneria
-Stage overcentralizes the metgame for x character(s)
--Hyrule for fox


Also, have you read kish's thread, the no johns ruleset


also Kal, i went through a phase where i typed as properly as i could
i prefer, in most instances, how i'm received when i type like this
granted, if i were looking for access intot he debate forum, i would probably be more inclined to type gooder
but this is not the debate forum, and i am not looking for the general acceptance, bones is reading my posts and i hope is looking past some grammatical inconsistencies to what i'm actually saying

re-reading what i said, are we looking to limit a stages impact on a match as much as possible? and to what standard are we holding that impact too?
if RBC was the standard, we would look at BF and say 'well that's stupid, my opponent can just stay on his side of the map and doesn't have to come to me' or 'you mean short of spikes, everyones going to live to 120+? that's silly'
but since it's BF we look at RBC and say 'well that's stupid, you mean i have to move with the stage?' 'you mean if i'm out of position i can be killed at 60%? that's silly'

i think this is happening, and has been happening, every since the first popular fighting games were released
we look at fighting games and say '1v1, flat stage, go', and it's always been that way
with smash we have something unique that i feel we should explore, not only 26 unique characters, but quite a few unique fields to battle on, not just one battlefield.

also to re-state what i would like to see
is a reccomended ruleset that prioritizes variety more than what we have now.
if we look at the system as it is now, our current stage striking, bans, counterpicking system
it will not work to include more stages, we would be giving a small number of characters more hard CP's, which is not what i want

but that doesn't mean a system can't be thought up that retains the same, or almost hte same degree of balance, while also encompassing a variety of playable stages
even if it means you'll always have the same 3 bans vs. fox, if it allows you to have 3 more neutral stages to play other matchups on is it not worth it? (and i say neutral as in a match which doesn't heavily one character over hte other, not as in a 'neutral stage')

 

[Bones0]

competition is ill-defined as well, you have our general standard for competition
and then countless # of competitive games which directly contradict some of the values of competition we live by
is poker non-competitive because it's to some extent a game of chance? or do we recognize that the skill of a player encompasses factoring in the random aspect of the game and playing off that?
are there not competitive games out there that promote camping more than RBC, KJ64, or pokefloats?

before we start saying that a stage is 'not competitive', our basis for competition should at least be attempted to be defined.

Competitive is just a reference to consistent results. I was just annoyed by the word consistent because it leads into a bunch of arguments on semantics about what is or is not consistent.

As far as Poker, don't even get me started. lol Is it competitive? Obviously. The results are, for the most part, somewhat consistent. It's hard to judge because they have such a vast pool of players at any given tournament. However, it's not even debatable that luck comes into play. There have been many great players who went home on the first day of the tournament simply because they had bad luck. It is also important to keep in mind that Poker plays an INSANE number of hands. If you played 100 games in a set, obviously the impact of any randomness on stages would be greatly reduced in importance. However, tournaments currently use bo5s as the most, so having even 1 stock be decided randomly can have a huge effect on a set. The less repetition you have, the lower the tolerance for randomness.

And like I've said, I admit that most of what is determined to be the most competitive or consistent is largely opinionated. One person is going to say it takes more skill to take random stage hazards into consideration, one person will say it doesn't. Neither is right or wrong because the judgement of what is the most consistent is impossible to determine objectively.

"the fact that it rarely screws over each player equally is what leads to the inconsistency"
what? inconsistency on an extremely small scale, perhaps, but if both players are affected evenly then it means over time the outcome will still be the same.

there's also the argument that while RBC may cause you to drop a tech chase, if you get a grab near one of the edges, or the top of the screen, you could also finish that stock off 20% sooner than you would otherwise be able to.

This mostly goes back to what I said above. How big of an impact the inconsistency has on matches is completely subjective.

are the positive impacts of this stage heavily outweighed by the negative? or should we just look at all the impacts of the stage as negative? or have we just not explored all the positive aspects of the stage?
player a: man i dropped that tech chase due to this crappy stage!
player b: man you killed me at 70 due to this crappy stage!
could the same argument not be made for instances on all of the stages?
'only reason you can chain throw me is because we're on FD'
'only reason you're still living is because we're on DL'
etc. etc....

You can't apply this same logic to the neutrals because they are consistent. People john about the stage moving messing them up because it only happens some of the time. On FD, when you are getting chain grabbed, it is not a result of a stage hazard being present. If you get grabbed and your opponent makes no mistakes, you WILL get chain grabbed. It is brutally consistent, and you can see how it is much more player vs. player oriented than on other stages.

you can't make an argument that a character suffers from 1 aspect of a stage, and ignore that hey may benefit in other ways from that same stage. that is the nature of our game, and stage list, and why it's not random neutral 100% of the time

I have expressed multiple times that this reasoning is independent of character advantages. All of my explanations would apply to the game just as equally as if people only played Mario dittos.

"the game should not be based around "risk-taking.""
i want you to stop for a second and think about what that quote, out of context, means.

as a samus player, i have to think about CPing foxes to DL because while it is a good stage for samus in terms of surviving, i was camped out by a fox on DL

so when i pick DL, i have to think for a second 'do i think this fox is going to camp me?', and i take the risk.

when you approach your opponent, who has not just forward smashed a bunch of shyguys and is going to be in hitlag for the next 2 seconds, are you not taking a risk that he may have anticipated your approach and will punish you?

this game is, ALL ABOUT taking risks, almost every aspect of play in this, and most every competitive fighter is about taking risks

in fact we have a thread going right now on how the fact that a less risky style of play is probably more dominant than a risky one. (melees flaw)

There is a big difference between making risky decisions and simply relying on randomness. If a player is worse and is probably going to lose, choosing a stage with random elements in hopes that the stage works in his favor isn't risky at all. It's not going to work every time, but it will work more often than taking them to another stage where they will get out-skilled 100%.

bones, i'm going to ask for your input on something, i'm going to make a list of reasons for why a stage should be banned and i want your input on it, things that we should add, or if you want me to elaborate/give examples of what i mean

Criteria for banning a stage:
-Stage actively attacks/inter-fears with players
--Corneria
-Stage overcentralizes the metgame for x character(s)
--Hyrule for fox

Honestly, I think I view developing rule sets and banning stages MUCH differently than most Melee players, or even fighting game players in general. I think Sirlin has largely brain washed a lot of people, and while I truly agree with his "don't be a scrub"/"no johns" mentality, I only support that as a player. When I am playing to win, I recognize that it is beneficial to not make excuses. When you make excuses, you don't learn, and when you don't learn, you don't win. Simple as that.

When he gets into what makes certain things ban-worthy, I begin to disagree a lot. I don't really support this notion that we should just deal with the box out of the game, and you can only remove something when it is super-duper unstoppable. Especially with newer games that have A LOT of increased customization, I just find it dumb to go with default stuff.

I play a lot of Halo, and I've always been intrigued how different they are from other fighting games. Halo has thousands of different game type combinations, so it's unreasonable to expect players to play all of them at a tournament. So how can you possibly determine who is the best at the game? You make a limited number of game types. MLG, for example, has 11 games types on just a few maps (~5). These game types are not some default set by the game creator, but rather they are customized game types designed to bet test the skills of Halo players. This wasn't too difficult in Halo 2 where customization was limited to basic things like respawn times and the types of weapons on the map. In Halo 3/Reach, Forge mode was introduced as a way to edit a large number of variables to a great extent. You can change where weapons spawn, you can change how long they take to spawn, you can change where players respawn, and you can even build entirely new maps. In addition to Forge editing, the actual game rules have a high level of customization options. You can change how high the score goes, how long the time limit is, how far away from a flag you have to be to return it, how fast you move, what weapon you start out with, how much damage weapons do, how high you jump, how fast you fall, etc.

THERE ARE ALMOST UNLIMITED OPTIONS.

So what do players do with Halo? How can you possibly determine what is ban-worthy and what is not? What base can you even start from? Should we all just play default even though we can customize a MUCH more competitive version of the same game? Is it "scrub" mentality to remove elements of the game that are least competitive to maximize the skill gap? Of course not. So even as we speak, a group of Halo: Reach players have been testing multiple game types because MLG has been using horrible game types that cater to more spectator-friendly crowds. The game types and maps they are playing are drastically different from what MLG is playing, let alone from what default Reach is like.

So essentially, I have the same attitude towards Melee. I don't care what's in the game, what is default, etc. I have designed my ideal rule set based around my opinion of what makes the most competitive game out of Melee. I believe this attitude is also why I seem to be much more open to stuff like modding. If there was a way to mod a memory card to stop PS from transforming, I would be SCREAMING to make that **** the tournament default. A lot of people will be like "OMG! If you're willing to strip down 95% of the game, where will you stop?" My answer is I will stop whenever I feel the game cannot get any more competitive. Do not get me wrong, I do not think banning or changing things willy-nilly should be encouraged at all, but I do think there is some obscure fear of changing something from what we originally knew it to be, even if a variation of it is obviously much more competitive.

Also, have you read kish's thread, the no johns ruleset


also Kal, i went through a phase where i typed as properly as i could
i prefer, in most instances, how i'm received when i type like this
granted, if i were looking for access intot he debate forum, i would probably be more inclined to type gooder
but this is not the debate forum, and i am not looking for the general acceptance, bones is reading my posts and i hope is looking past some grammatical inconsistencies to what i'm actually saying

ya man is no big dlea to type like this, i just place commas and people know to take a breath its all good man lulz woops forgot a comma back there, hope ur still breathin bro

 

[ShroudedOne]

"i prefer, in most instances, how i'm received when i type like this"

What in the world do you mean by that?

 

[Bones0]

"i prefer, in most instances, how i'm received when i type like this"

What in the world do you mean by that?

One word: "lackadaisical."

 

[FerrishTheFish]

"i prefer, in most instances, how i'm received when i type like this"

What in the world do you mean by that?

It's kinda like my voice. I have a really deep voice. The way people react to me when I speak in my "natural" speaking voice is exactly the way they would react to someone with a more normal voice who added, "...and I'm gonna kick your ***," after every sentence. So, I talk very high in order to sound like someone with a more normal voice.

I'm just confused as to why he would want to be seen as someone who can't spell/type correctly, especially since he says he actually can spell/type correctly.

 

[FerrishTheFish]

Double-post because SWF didn't post my thread-relevant signature for some reason.

 

[ShroudedOne]

I guess he thinks that he might come off as condescending or something? I'm not sure. But he's a really smart guy, I can tell from reading his posts (I can deal with the grammar and things, even though they break my heart a little), so I guess it doesn't really matter, anyways.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

That picture of Collette breaks my heart, too.

It makes me want to apologize over and over again for stupid ****.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Wake]

I didn't really like Collette :/ Sheena and Raine were cooler!

 

[Kal]

I also hate Falco. Hey Kal, let's start a committee to get him banned so we can do better in tournament.

I don't struggle against Falco in tournament, I just hate him.

 

[Devil Ray]

cactuar call*

why are there no bans in BO5 sets? if people end up switching chars or want to ban the first stage they played on, things can get tricky.

 

[sulliman1]

If there was a way to mod a memory card to stop PS from transforming, I would be SCREAMING to make that **** the tournament default. A lot of people will be like "OMG! If you're willing to strip down 95% of the game, where will you stop?" My answer is I will stop whenever I feel the game cannot get any more competitive.

what if transformations were only 30 seconds long or 20 seconds long as opposed to the 40 seconds long they are now? transformations can lead to some really creative and unique gameplay, but modding the game in this way ensures that the stage imbalance will affect the total match less. it would make the game more competitive while keeping the intrinsic character of the stage.

 

[Bing]

It makes me sad to see Cruise and KJ64 gone. Cruise was a lot of fun, an KJ64 was always my CP.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

cactuar call*

why are there no bans in BO5 sets? if people end up switching chars or want to ban the first stage they played on, things can get tricky.

Something about stage diversity and playing every stage once

 

[Devil Ray]

waaat...you serious? Oh man, that's terrible. i better pick up some secondaries