The Japanese Ledge Grab rule

[pockyD]

"planking at the end of a match" isn't planking

 

[HyugaRicdeau]

When I lose to it I will be pissed, but my position won't change on whether it's gamebreaking or not. For me it comes down to the fundamentals of fighting games. If you lost to a tactic that some think is "too good", then you lost because you didn't do it first, better, faster, whatever. Others share this opinion.

I see where you're coming from, but if there is one singular dominant strategy, then the game ceases to be a test of what we generally consider to be "skill" in Brawl and becomes just a test of who can use/beat that one strategy the best, which does not make for a deep competitive game. This is the reason stages like say, Electroplanton are banned. The dominant strategy there is to get stock/% lead and to camp the top/bottom left. The stage is otherwise fine. Based on my experience with that stage, it's a bit harder to do successfully than to plank for a whole match. Which suggests to me that the reason Electroplankton is banned and planking isn't is that it's much easier to ban a stage than to come up with a rule to limit planking, because that is a much more ubiquitous thing. That is to say, the objection is primarily on practical and not philosophical grounds. I believe the Japanese rule takes care of the practical aspect.

Also, I think 70 is way way too high. Allow me to quote myself from earlier:

The Japanese also use a 10 minute timer, so that's 70 grabs in 10 minutes, meaning the equivalent in a 7 minute game is about 50 grabs. We did some tests where one of us would play MK, and ONLY use ledge camping when up in % as a strategy. I think the most we ever got up to was about 62 which was when I played Zelda and did nothing but attempt to Din's Fire him off the edge or somehow force him onto the stage for the majority of the match. That's 62 grabs where the strategy was explicitly ledgecamping for nearly 7 minutes. If that is an accurate assumption, then a 50 regrab rule is the equivalent to banning ledgecamping for about 5:30 of a 7 minute set, i.e. ~80% of the match.

So far we haven't had a tourney in Norcal use it explicitly that I know of, but that's probably a function of the lack of planking in Norcal, so there haven't been enough complaints to warrant a TO implementing it.

 

[Stevo]

EDIT: this is in response to PockyD

what is it then?

Pockying?

Plankking isnt even a defined term. If you would rather, I will call it "stalling for 3 minutes when you are up by 40% at the end of a match" ing.

perhaps you meant it in the sense that stalling for 2-4 mins isnt game breaking and should not be penalised. Although I can see where you are coming from, can you elaborate a bit?

 

[pockyD]

EDIT: this is in response to PockyD

what is it then?

Pockying?

Plankking isnt even a defined term. If you would rather, I will call it "stalling for 3 minutes when you are up by 40% at the end of a match" ing.

perhaps you meant it in the sense that stalling for 2-4 mins isnt game breaking and should not be penalised. Although I can see where you are coming from, can you elaborate a bit?

sure

stalling out the last 30 seconds on a match isn't strictly "better" or "worse" than hanging out on the edge for 30 seconds in the middle of the match in an attempt to gain a positional advantage; maybe waiting for a hazard to pass, the stage to transform, etc.

the overall duration is what matters

 

[ssbbFICTION]

sure

stalling out the last 30 seconds on a match isn't strictly "better" or "worse" than hanging out on the edge for 30 seconds in the middle of the match in an attempt to gain a positional advantage; maybe waiting for a hazard to pass, the stage to transform, etc.

the overall duration is what matters

I said last 3 minutes lol.

 

[pockyD]

i wasn't responding to you

anyway, the point is that this hypothetical "banworthy" "planking" isn't simply edgecamping; it's a certain amount of it, and 30 seconds of it is different from 3 minutes of it... while 30 seconds at the start of the match and 30 seconds at the end of the match is not a significant difference

 

[MidnightAsaph]

That's really stupid. The more rules ANY game has the worse the game is, imo. I'm not saying I'm laying down the rules, and this is fact, but it's pretty ridiculous.

 

[pockyD]

The more rules ANY game has the worse the game is, imo.

how is this even close to being true?

 

[MidnightAsaph]

how is this even close to being true?

It's hard to believe that I have an opinion? The more rules a game has the more I don't like playing it. I don't want to have to watch my *** every five seconds to make sure I'm not breaking some rule that I find pointless anyway. I've never experienced it as a problem personally, although I've only been to one real tourney. I could be wrong, maybe grabbing the ledge is a real problem/nuisance. If that's the case, don't have some stupid EXACT limit, just have someone say, "You know, you're really stalling, you'll have to stop, or you'll be DQed."

The problem with that is not every station can be watched by those enforcing the rule.

So, really, all I'm saying is leave the game be. More rules, less fun. It's my opinion that the rule is pointless, but if anyone else sees fit otherwise or knows I'm wrong because they have more experience on the matter, let it be. My opinion doesn't matter anyway. I'm a no one.

My Point: Fine, have a rule, but don't have some 'specific' number of times you can grab the ledge before being DQed, that's ridiculous. Again, I'm no professor on the subject, so by all means, ignore me.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

Fine, ignored.

 

[OverLade]

Fine, ignored.

Owned.

If "no ledgecamping" was enforceable, then that'd be preferred, but if it's not, we need the next best thing.

If people start abusing loopholes in this rule it'll just have to be made stricter/more specific etc...

That's really stupid. The more rules ANY game has the worse the game is, imo. I'm not saying I'm laying down the rules, and this is fact, but it's pretty ridiculous.

Without rules we would all be dead because people would just fire nuclear weapons all across the world.

The rules of Mutually assured destruction is that nobody fires or we ALL DIE, therefore it's in nobodys best interest to fire nuclear weapons....

 

[MidnightAsaph]

Without rules we would all be dead because people would just fire nuclear weapons all across the world.

The rules of Mutually assured destruction is that nobody fires or we ALL DIE, therefore it's in nobodys best interest to fire nuclear weapons....

But we have the Falcon Punch. There's no need for rules if we have those.

In regards to thread subject, just make sure not to make any stupid rules. Actually, a good way about going about this whole issue is to average out the number of times people usually grab the ledge and then the average of those who grab the ledge TOO many times. That's the only way I'll play comfortably, if I know I'll never reach that number.

 

[OverLade]

But we have the Falcon Punch. There's no need for rules if we have those.

In regards to thread subject, just make sure not to make any stupid rules. Actually, a good way about going about this whole issue is to average out the number of times people usually grab the ledge and then the average of those who grab the ledge TOO many times. That's the only way I'll play comfortably, if I know I'll never reach that number.

You'll never reach 50 unless you're hardcore planking.

There you go.

The average ledgegrabs per game is about 15 across the entire cast of characters....

 

[vicious1990]

man this rule should be enforced. there is to many players planking now and its causing problems.

 

[Xyro77]

ALL future HOBOs after WHOBO will use the 55 ledge grabs limit.

 

[OverLade]

ALL future HOBOs after WHOBO will use the 55 ledge grabs limit.

DAYUM!!! TASTY!!!


<3 Xyro.

 

[Orion*]

As it is now, people put "no planking" in their rule sets and then people like Dark Peach at COT4 get planked for a few minutes in a match and lose, and when he tries to get the rule enforced nothing can be done because no judges were around to watch. This wasn't just a problem with Dark Peach, apparently this happened to many people, including in matches in the top 16 or so.

this is the Worst possible example to use.

A, it was for approximately one minute. or 60 seconds. as much as i respect him as a smasher, you know that dark pch. hypes up stuff.
B, i didnt do a "real plank". i just ran from one side of norfair to the other, and then waited, when Pch came close i tornado'd to the otherside. thats called timing someone out, not planking. its not my fault he picked a character that cant stop tornado for 60 seconds on norfair.
C, all the matches (me vs pch, NL vs Dojo i assume is the other you mentioned) that you are complaining about happened on NORFAIR. ban the stage. having both that and rainbow cruise gives 95% of the cast a free loss vs mk (honestly i feel both stages should be banned). >_>

2ndly. i dont need a ledge to time anyone out

edit; i know this is waaaaay back pg. wise.

 

[OverLade]

this is the Worst possible example to use.

A, it was for approximately one minute. or 60 seconds. as much as i respect him as a smasher, you know that dark pch. hypes up stuff.
B, i didnt do a "real plank". i just ran from one side of norfair to the other, and then waited, when Pch came close i tornado'd to the otherside. thats called timing someone out, not planking. its not my fault he picked a character that cant stop tornado for 60 seconds on norfair.
C, all the matches (me vs pch, NL vs Dojo i assume is the other you mentioned) that you are complaining about happened on NORFAIR. ban the stage. having both that and rainbow cruise gives 95% of the cast a free loss vs mk (honestly i feel both should be banned). >_>

Real talk.

Even this rule doesn't stop planking on NO FAIR because you don't have to grab the ledges that often to plank because there are so many ledges. Stage is rediculous.

And RBC should also be banned.

 

[AlphaZealot]

I don't understand. On nofair, the lava basically forces both characters to one side of the screen every 30 seconds. If you can't get something on the opponent when they are confined to 2 platforms...well you suck.

Orion: I don't really care about banning all this stuff. I simply want tournaments to stop using the "no planking" rule and instead of the 70 edge grab rule (or 60 or 50 or whatever). If COT4 had this rule instead of no planking/stalling, then Drk. Peach wouldn't have been able to say anything about your match at all. And likely nothing could be said about other matches too, because the rule is clear, go over the limit and you lose if the match goes to the timer. Basically, if you read the other parts of the thread, this is a rule to REPLACE the "no planking" rule. This isn't the thread that advocates for this rule to be implemented everywhere. For that, go to M2K's apocalyptic "EVERYONE BAN PLANKING" thread.

 

[AvaricePanda]

...this entire dilemna really sucks.

People can still easily plank with a 50-70 ledgegrab rule, granted not as often, but they still can. Some matches where you think, "Wow, that planking is $@#$ing insane," you still only count 60 edgegrabs. But if it goes lower, around 30, then legit matches can start getting DQed. Do normal matches likely get to 30 edge grabs? No. But can they? Yes, I've had it happen a few times.

Judges watching over stations would be nice, but there aren't enough of them to watch every station, obviously. Plus, opinions differ. How many edge grabs at once is too many? Opinions will change for everyone you ask.

Doing a rule like "you can only grab the edge 4 times, then you must touch the ground" is unfair AND easily exploitable. Sometimes I do grab the edge 3 or 4 times in succession because I just want to wait...but let's not even think about the innocent people. The people planking can easily do 4 edge grabs, hop on the stage, hop back off, and it's refreshed. It's too easy to get around.

The best solution would be to just say, "Hey people, don't plank excessively." And you would think people would actually follow that rule, like how we've followed the MK infinite dimensional cape glitch rule...but no.

>_>

 

[swordgard]

...this entire dilemna really sucks.

People can still easily plank with a 50-70 ledgegrab rule, granted not as often, but they still can. Some matches where you think, "Wow, that planking is $@#$ing insane," you still only count 60 edgegrabs. But if it goes lower, around 30, then legit matches can start getting DQed. Do normal matches likely get to 30 edge grabs? No. But can they? Yes, I've had it happen a few times.

Judges watching over stations would be nice, but there aren't enough of them to watch every station, obviously. Plus, opinions differ. How many edge grabs at once is too many? Opinions will change for everyone you ask.

Doing a rule like "you can only grab the edge 4 times, then you must touch the ground" is unfair AND easily exploitable. Sometimes I do grab the edge 3 or 4 times in succession because I just want to wait...but let's not even think about the innocent people. The people planking can easily do 4 edge grabs, hop on the stage, hop back off, and it's refreshed. It's too easy to get around.

The best solution would be to just say, "Hey people, don't plank excessively." And you would think people would actually follow that rule, like how we've followed the MK infinite dimensional cape glitch rule...but no.

>_>

Let the rule be at 45 since it will only happen in 2 cases

A) First the person needs to call the judge to DQ them, which will only happen if the person is really stalling.
B) The clock needs to run out for this rule to apply.

 

[ssbbFICTION]

The clock needs to run out for this to happen. The only time someone would go over 30-40 grabs is if they planked the entire match. Also, if someone is planking, the other player will not likely be on the ledge much, so that is out of the question 2 :D

 

[Remzi]

I decided to record the amount of times i grabbed the ledge per match in some friendlies with Marth and Link.

Marth:
7
18
16
14
6
21
13

Link:

26
20
14
26

For what its worth, i never even came close to reaching that 70 limit even with some minimal ledge stalling...

 

[DtJ Hilt]

The clock needs to run out for this to happen. The only time someone would go over 30-40 grabs is if they planked the entire match. Also, if someone is planking, the other player will not likely be on the ledge much, so that is out of the question 2 :D

^this

this rule is legit. it seriously needs to be considered by the SBR if it isnt already.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

I decided to record the amount of times i grabbed the ledge per match in some friendlies with Marth and Link.

Marth:
7
18
16
14
6
21
13

Link:

26
20
14
26

For what its worth, i never even came close to reaching that 70 limit even with some minimal ledge stalling...

TY for this. It helps a lot of people complaining about the tethers

 

[MajinSweet]

I think this is probably the biggest flaw with the Brawl community. When ever a tactic pops up that appears to be strong, everyone scrambles to try and ban it or make rules to avoid the issue. Just play the **** game and see what happens. It might turn out that planking can be stopped, we won't find out though because no one will have to fight against it again. It reminds me of that scrubby TO in Texas that was banning the Ice Climbers chain grabs. And sure, maybe Planking will be a dominant strategy, doesn't mean it's full proof with no way around it. There is always a dominant strategy, banning one only makes the next best thing the dominant strategy.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

So you figure out how to beat it. All the high level players have, and the only way to stop planking is to never let your opponent get the lead, but that is impossible in a match against a planker. The only way to retain the lead safely is to, you guessed it, plank yourself! So, in a high-level tournament match, whoever has the highest lead and the better planking character will normally win. Once you find away around planking, idt this rule will need to exist, but YOU MajinSweet need to find one, because all of us have, and we failed. Go ahead.

 

[MajinSweet]

You act like people have actually spent lots of tournament time fighting this strategy. Brawls been out a year. If I remember correctly people didn't even start using MetaKnight heavily for a month or two. (The character that ledge camps the best) it was still a while after that when we had players using this strategy. And to top it off, even after all that, there are only a few players that really abuse it. So to say that "WE ALL TRIED, NOTHING WILL EVER WORK", is non sense. Are you going to suggest that Plairnkk has dominated the tournament scene since he started using this? Even in a worst case scenario, where you are right, and ledge camping really is theoretically an unbeatable strategy, then people will just grab the ledge 69 times or what ever. Which is a stupid way to base tournament play around. Hell, the best Brawl players don't even use this to there advantage, so how can we even know exactly how powerful it is?

 

[MaxDeUh]

What a terrible idea. =\

 

[Ripple]

, then people will just grab the ledge 69 times or what ever. Which is a stupid way to base tournament play around. Hell, the best Brawl players don't even use this to there advantage, so how can we even know exactly how powerful it is?

no one would ever consider doing that because then you have to hope you never got hit off stage again.

top people do use it *coughoverswarmcough*

and yes this tactic is that powerful, if M2k really wated to he would never lose a game again but he doesn't because he wants to win his money fast and get out of there

 

[MajinSweet]

no one would ever consider doing that because then you have to hope you never got hit off stage again.

top people do use it *coughoverswarmcough*

and yes this tactic is that powerful, if M2k really wated to he would never lose a game again but he doesn't because he wants to win his money fast and get out of there

Yeah, because in Brawl it's really hard to get back to the stage without the ledge. Especially with MetaKnight and his wide range of recovery options. Not to mention this dodges the real issue. Oh noez, they can only grab the edge 65 times or so! If ledge camping is as strong as you claim, people will still do it depsite these types of rulings.

M2K isn't invincible, if he can plank, others can plank. He isn't untouchable, even in that scenario he can be beaten. And really, the notion that he doesn't plank because he wants to go "fast" is just silly. Brawl matches just don't go fast, regardless of match ups, tactics, ect. The game just isn't like that. He doesn't do it because he thinks it's "dishonorable".

 

[FalseFalco]

I agree with MajinSweet

Not gamebreaking.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

False, have you ever been planked at a tournament? If not, you have no idea.

 

[OverLade]

I've been planked, and I lost a match to someone I shouldn't have lost to.

I won the set, but I could've lost just as easily if I didn't keep a damage lead. It was the least legit thing that's ever happened to me.

 

[AvaricePanda]

MajinSweet, for like 2/3rds of the cast of characters, the only way to get past planking is to deliberately put yourself in a bad position that can easily lead to your death. A few select characters can get by it with ease. The rest of the cast can get past it without dying, but it's pretty difficult.

For the majority of characters that planking wrecks, the only possible way to get around it is not letting your opponent get any percent lead. Oh wait. That's near impossible. Unless you're M2K facing some random casual player who only plays once a week, your opponent will most likely get a % lead somewhere in the match. And when they do, you're screwed.

And not only does it make people lose in the stupidest way possible, but it also (obviously) runs out the clock. Doing this runs out the time of the tournament, making matches take longer than they should. People have to stay awake much longer than they'd need to if a match takes half as long as it should. And quite possibly, the tournament either lasts until 3 in the morning or they get kicked out of the venue. This is an extreme example, but it can happen.

It doesn't take months of playing to know that planking means that there are frames of invincibility and frames where getting close would mean being attacked/dying.

Planking is inane. Period. And what sucks is that even though this is listed as stalling, you can't really enforce it. There aren't enough judges to watch every TV at all times. And when a judge does come over, the person can just hop back on the ledge and say, "I wasn't planking, what are you talking about?" Or they could just say they were waiting for a moment to attack, but lol.

There's a difference between planking and waiting. Planking is trying to run out the clock when you have a lead and the clock still has a long way to go. Waiting to attack is precisely that, and usually doesn't last more than 10 seconds.

Ideally, people should just not plank period. Just like people don't do MK's infinite dimensional cape glitch, they shouldn't plank. But people don't. And that sucks. So the next best thing is to impliment a rather iffy ledge grab rule: too high of a number like 70 means they can still plank, and too low of a number like 30 means that someone like me who grabs the ledge often, or a tether character, could possibly be counted as planking.

tl;dr: People should have the integrity not to plank.

 

[AlphaZealot]

I don't really care about planking. This thread is just for a rule to replace a bad rule in case you are one of those TO's who actually does care about planking.

 

[AfroQT]

You know the game is good when you have to implement a Ledge Grab rule.

 

[Flayl]

You know the game is good when you have to implement a Ledge Grab rule.

You can also read that as "you know the other games were lucky enough to not need a ledge grab rule".

Of course this only applies to smash.

 

[[FBC] ESAM]

No other fighting game has ledges to grab...

 

[aeghrur]

The bawrl community should just be called Jason's *****.