I facepalm every time I see someone post something about this being some kind of democratic system.
This is expert opinion vs opinion. The majority of the opinions involved are based around how we perceive the competitive game of SSBM vs the base game of SSBM and how it should and can potentially be played.
I facepalm every time I see someone post something about how it should and can potentially be played. The game is constantly evolving, and trying to mandate what sort of gameplay is "best" is absolutely absurd. Combine that with the overwhelming (arguably infinite) number of possible rulesets to choose from, and you're going to tell me that this ruleset is reached by some sort of well thought-out discussion? Bull ****: this ruleset is reached because players get together and decide "what I don't like is what's not worth playing." When enough people agree, that is how Smash is
meant to be played.
In my opinion, as a player vs player purist, I believe something doesn't need to be 100% "broken" to be banned. It needs to be confirmed as having a solidly negative influence on the results of competitive play, as defined by those shaping the game. This can mean a result suffering from slightly randomized output due to stage influence, a strategy without counter, or a shiny little light that you could turn on for no reason that happens to distract the players.
It's great that you feel this way, but what makes this a fair ruleset? In my opinion, as a defensive gameplay purist, I believe something doesn't need to be 100% "broken" to be banned. It needs to be confirmed as having a solidly negative influence on the ability to successfully play defensively, as defined by those shaping the game.
I believe in seeing two opposing parties fight on as equal ground as possible. Doing that with the base game is not possible.
None of the banned stages provide an unequal ground. What you mean by "equal" is "flat, and without cars." Which is arbitrary.
I would much rather find the competitive base through complete elimination and expanding on that than play guessing games with what we should or should not remove because you want to preserve some sense of the original game, but that isn't how we do things and I work with what I have instead of dwelling on the shortcomings of the system in place.
This isn't how we do things? Really? And yet every other competitive game assumes things are not worth banning until proven otherwise.
The way you've described things is also quite the strawman. In fact, what you've suggested, "complete elmination and expanding on that," is the guessing game: how will you properly figure out what should be "added?" And suppose you add two things, and those two things interfere with each other, but not the rest of the game?
It's an inherently flawed methodology. What will instead happen is we will simply ban more and more, or leave things as they are now. We won't be tacking on individual stages, as though there would be some formal announcement from the MBR
MBR said:
Dear Smash Community,
We have discovered that Mute City is actually kind of cool. The cars are exciting because C. Falcon drives a car. Thus, we have decided to add it to the counterpick list.
Sincerely,
MBR, the Faux-Authority
On the other hand, banning as little as possible will necessarily avoid any guesswork at all. Is it broken? If yes - it's banned. If no - **** off.
We do not play Super Smash Brothers Melee. We play Competitive Super Smash Brothers Melee.
While I agree with this insofar as being able to disable things which are not necessarily broken (like items), this leads to too much nonsense. The majority gets together, agrees on what competition is "worthwhile," then decides that everything else has to go. And so, while there is nothing inherently flawed with a stage like Jungle Japes, Mute City, Brinstar, or Corneria, we end up having them banned because the faux-authority all share the same subjective preference.
Post script: There is no "majority" telling you that you can't play Mute City in tournament. There are TO's that agree with the path our idea of CSSBM is going who are telling you that Mute City is harmful to the results of competitive play and that their tournaments will not use that stage. You are more than welcome to play that stage in your free time, or if you so choose, at your own tournaments.
I'm sensing you didn't read
this link earlier, so I'll provide the link a second time. Obviously, I'm not claiming that you're going to hire private security to enforce this ruleset. The point is that these self-proclaimed experts get together and ban things they dislike (and that's literally all it ever is; there is absolutely no good argument to be provided for why one sort of gameplay is superior to any other, which further cements that minimalist banning is a fair methodology), and these self-proclaimed experts derive an air of legitimacy by proclaiming themselves experts. This results in a contrived faux-authority which makes any dissent out to be illegitimate.
tl:dr - Haters gonna hate.
tl;dr - Falcon mains telling us we can't have counterpicks because they can't have counterpicks.
(I have no idea if the brawl boards here are currently laughing at this new ruleset)
