isnt that an absolute? lol
It is, and it's from the movies. Which makes it even more lawl worthy.
In more serious, boring news. I need to write a post on Meta Knight and the ban with my full attention. I wrote an earlier post on the subject on my phone, and I don't feel that it touches on everything properly. This was that post:
This further proves the ban worked. The precedent for the future of Smash has been set:
1) We can create a third party group to spearhead tangible change in the community.
2) We can ban a character.
3) We can dissolve a group with the power to make such changes.
4) The community can make judgments on what it wants based off the collection of actual data.
5) A character can be unbanned.
6) We can attempt to make large changes to the game, and revert or keep what was necessary.
7) We altered the metagame for other characters by giving them a chance to catch up.
I would love to write more, but I am currently at work. I have a lot to say on the subject for obvious reasons. Lol.
Now, there's something very important to touch on. The ban as a process of removing a character from the Metagame
worked in a physical sense. We created a community lead initiative, we voted as a community, we produced a rule set based on metrics, and we published it. The Unity Rule Set was passed through the scene, and the character was banned. This then created a precedent for the future of Smash, as listed above. We even saw a dramatic jump in diversity in tournaments with other characters being used, and a complete shift in the tier list due to Meta Knight not being around to hold back the grab centric characters. That much is all true; however...
It is important to note that all precedents are good. We know we can do the process, and we know what the results are. We can sit down in the future and go, "If we want to do do X, this is how it was done before," and use it as a blue print. But... '
Worked' is not the same as
successful or the right thing to do.
One of the key components to banning Meta Knight was that I believed that the temporary fracturing of the scene was going to be mended by the increase of players that were on the disenfranchised by Meta Knight being an active character in the scene. There were numerous players that all spoke of friends, or previous tournament players that swore they would enter if MK was removed.
This really did not happen as it was expected. Though we had a small influx of new players, we have a vast exodus of players who were now forced out of the scene because they were forced to make a choice between learning a new character, or departing from the scene. I honestly thought that due to the relatively low learning curve of characters that most people were going to opt for the first choice. This was wrong, because there was no character that matched how Meta Knight played, despite most players that used him were average. The players that did return, found out that they weren't terribly good at the game, regardless of Meta Knight and thus left.
The end result was a functional ban of a character with a highly fractured scene without new players to counteract the lose. I was very optimistic when I worked towards getting Meta Knight banned, and though I truly believe I did operated with the best facts at the time, the ban was a
failure. I made a classic business mistake. I did looked at the potential rather than the reality. Poor business decisions are often made at the sacrifice of your current customer base on the possibility of bringing in new customers from a different demographic. I made a
bad call.
How can something that was a
failure be a precedent? Well, the future Smash Leaders can look onto what the Meta Knight Debate brought to the scene. We had a character that was constantly on the verge of this discussion point for years, and finally the trigger was pulled to remove him. They can look at the steps that were required, the amount of community involvement that was used, and finally the actual health of the community after the ban.
I believe that if I am going to start to host tournaments again, that Meta Knight will be completely legal because that is the direction that everyone is moving in, and it is what is right for our state's scene. At the end of the day, if you have ten people attending tournaments, and another ten players that would attend if their character is legal... Then well, you make that character legal. I feel it is my Smash Civic Duty to run these events, and if work will provide me with a Saturday off a month, I will certainly try.
So let's recap. The ban
worked; the ban
failed.
People playing are more important than players that might play on contingencies. As they say, "You don't go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you have." In case it isn't clear: I am sorry; my poor choice ruined Smash for many, many people that were actively involved with it. The scene was incapable of handling the ban, and I hope lessons are learned from it. I've learned a few.
Don't even burn energy on the Meta Knight debate. Seriously, just don't.
TLDR:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SFbB4LtbXo
Then again, I haven't really played Brawl in awhile. So you can take what I say with a grain of salt. =/ You trusted me once, so hopefully you'll trust me again. It's hard to say that something I applied so much effort to was a failure, but it's the truth. It was a successful failure: the worst kind. I cannot say that I would have done things differently, because it was all done functionally right. It sucks, because I know I burned a ton of bridges in during the whole process. I know that I'm going to get the cold shoulder from thirty-six percent of the community because of it, and that was a risk that I was willing to take. I wasn't trying to make money, or fame from it. Some people that were pushing for it were, but I honestly felt it was the right thing; the results just weren't what I expected.