The No-Johns Ruleset

[Life]

inb4 everywhere but USA.

inb4europeansposting*
(that better?)

 

[mers]

This ruleset is inherently different because Kish's ruleset assumes that each of the 12 stages is just as acceptable as any of the other ones, whereas your ruleset assumes that some stages (i.e. the "neutrals") are better to play on than others (the"counterpicks"). What I'm taking from this thread is that that mentality isn't true when you have a strong standard to judge stages by, as Kish provided in the first post. Each of these stages are just as fair as any other stages, so there isn't really a mechanism by which we can divide "neutrals" and "counterpicks" to make your ruleset work, without making up additional arbitrary standards.

Ultimately, this ruleset is simply creating a stagelist under the core criteria of what makes a stage fair to play on, and isn't considering any of these other factors (character balance, counterpick strength, etc.) As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing, because it's not our place to legislate any of these other things anyway.

Quoting for awesome. Everyone needs to read this.

 

[UltiMario]

Liking the approach of this. I've always favored large stage picks over smaller ones.

If I had to do some input on the stage list... I'd say...

Corneria- Two terrible characters can camp here pretty well, otherwise there are few issues IMO. Blast zones are a bit wonky, but I find that to be an interesting attribute of the stage, and what would make it a good counterpick. I do admit matches on it would be probably boring to watch unless both players (for whatever reason) opted away from camping under the wing, but that certainly doesn't make it a bad stage.

Poke Floats- Just as linear as RC, just a hair glitchier. I admit space animals are always a concern.... but I like the stage. People will always scream "X character doesn't need another good counterpick!" as an anti-stage thing.... but where the effect isn't nearly as pronounced as other stages that are annoying for fighting Fox/Falco like Great Bay or Temple, certainly see this as viable... besides that, it's a pretty fun stage to play on as long as you don't fall through a float.

Kongo Jungle- Camping on this stage is high risk, high reward. But how I see it, the risk is insane- you make one mistake and you've most likely lost your stock, where you might have to wait and bait more than 1 hit to get a kill, someone that knows how to counteract rock camping will basically win over the camper. It's just what's safe and what's not IMO. It' a perfectly neutral stage other than that, even.

Peach's Castle-...I don't think anyone would want to even play on this stage unless it gave some ridiculously strong match-up advantage... It's a pretty terrible stage in layout, and the giant *** bullet bill forces fleeing to one side or another, which could give a character an easy positional advantage.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

It does make counterpicks more powerful, but I don't think it necessarily devolves down to Bo1s. Still, if that's your fear, then that is a fine reason not to use this ruleset.

It's true that this ruleset does nothing to legislate any kind of character balance. That's my disclaimer. It's about playing as much of Melee as possible under already accepted community standards (hence the "Turnip Threshold" concept) and testing players as thoroughly as possible under the harshest conditions. Fox or Falco may be completely ridiculous. Or it may be like 2006 where they aren't. I don't think anyone can say with certainty.

If someone wants to put together a "balanced characters" ruleset, I think that would be an interesting and excruciatingly difficult exercise.

Nowhere in my ruleset do I try to make character balance my criteria for choosing the legality of stages either. I have posted a number of times that doing so would be a faulty way of managing a ruleset.

I just think that there needs to be a second threshold. I think its rather silly to say that Jungle Japes and Battlefield are the same just because they are both less random than turnips. There should be a separation between the more neutral and less neutral but still legal stages. Criteria for it would be easy; simply ask if the stage hazards are more or less intrusive than Pokemon Stadium's transformations (the "stadium threshold" lol). If they are more intrusive, then it is declared a counterpick, if they are less intrusive, then it is declared a neutral.

This ruleset is inherently different because Kish's ruleset assumes that each of the 12 stages is just as acceptable as any of the other ones, whereas your ruleset assumes that some stages (i.e. the "neutrals") are better to play on than others (the"counterpicks"). What I'm taking from this thread is that that mentality isn't true when you have a strong standard to judge stages by, as Kish provided in the first post. Each of these stages are just as fair as any other stages, so there isn't really a mechanism by which we can divide "neutrals" and "counterpicks" to make your ruleset work, without making up additional arbitrary standards.

Ultimately, this ruleset is simply creating a stagelist under the core criteria of what makes a stage fair to play on, and isn't considering any of these other factors (character balance, counterpick strength, etc.) As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing, because it's not our place to legislate any of these other things anyway.

If all stages were equally fair to play on, then we should just go random every round, and take away stage striking and bans.

But they aren't all equally fair to play on. And Kish's ruleset does not assume they are equally fair to play on. Thats why those mechanisms (striking, bans, counterpicks) are in place. All I would propose is that you regulate counterpicking more, because it has become too strong with our current ruleset, and would be even worse with this ruleset.

 

[kalamazhu]

this **** is stupid... mushroom kingdom 2?

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

this **** is stupid... mushroom kingdom 2?

Why'd you pick the most reasonable suggestion of the bunch lol.

 

[N64]

People inherently john, and it feels like Melee has been going out of style for a while. Given these two things, I think enacting this kind of ruleset in a widespread way would be difficult and potentially harmful to melee's success in general, but I'm unsure. Let me explain further.

Some people will obviously like having access to additional stagse, and i think there's good merit to trying out a lot of these stages in a modern competative environment to see what comes of it. I like the idea for a number of reasons personally, but where I worry is its acceptance by the general melee community, both current and prospective players. People like to john and like to blame losses on something, be it the stage, char matchup, controller, sun in my eyes, whatever. This applies to those playing and also those watching other players.

Certain matchups become almost unwinnable on some stages. What may already be a tough matchup can be pushed to an extreme here. If that match happens, then not only is it unlikely for one of the players to win, but to the audience (tourney watchers, stream watchers) it's generally not very interesting to watch. If the disadvantaged player pulls out a victory or manages to keep things even, that can be exciting yes, but the extremely more likely outcome of them having a few strong moments but ultimately losing pretty badly isn't that interesting to watch for most of us. What some of us will see as some combination of good counterpicking, good use of stage properties (including recognition and adaption to random elements), lack of character roster diversity from the opponent, and overall use of options to win, others will see as the stagelist having too strong of an influence on matches, random (or perceived-as-random) elements having too strong an influence, and generally that the outcome of that match was not determined by the skill of each player (or at least what most would consider skill) but by factors less in their control.

If these counterpicks become commonly used and more of these situations occur (where the first match on a current neutral is relatively close, and the following counterpicks turn into complete domination one way or another), it can lead to less satisfaction for the viewers, and may be a factor in some quitting competative melee. It may also bring others into melee who are intrigued by a broader stagelist, or get some current melee players to have a renewed interest figuring out (or seeing others showcase) some stage metagame. You may call it pessimistic, but I think overall it would push more players away than it would attract. Competative melee is already kinda weak compared to previous years (personal opinion) and I don't think this would help.

These are just my expectations. I look forward to beneficial discussion on what the rest of you think.

tldr: I like the idea, I think it has its merits, and having a stageset like this wouldn't deter me from attending tournaments with it in place. I don't think it would overall make melee more exciting or fun to play and watch by the majority of the community, however.

 

[tarheeljks]

Quoting for awesome. Everyone needs to read this.

i disagree quite strongly with his implication that it being difficult to draw the line means we should be reticent to try. we just have to try harder and recognize that it is a process. ideas are thrown around, people argue, changes are implemented, and over time we hopefully converge to a solution. i also find his observation of the lack of banning in other gaming communities specious-- it's not a surprise that games possessing strong(er) developer support, as well as foundations tailored to competitive play, require fewer tweaks to be "competitive." often, more of the legwork has been done in the process of creating the game.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

omg kish father my babies this **** is awesome

 

[SnakeMan]

I like this. The moar stages, the better. I believe the big reason why was stated by kish in the OP. Having to be prepared to play on a variety of stages in a tournament can only make you a better, more well-rounded player. One of the things that keeps me interested in this game is not only striving to perfect my game, but also tracking everyone elses progress, ie, the metagame. I really want to see the envelope pushed, and having to deal with drastically different stage topograhy would force players to be more creative and learn one or more new characters probably. Zoning would become even more important on a lot of stages. Moves that you wouldnt normally use a lot could suddenly be good options.

I also agree with crimson on the best of 5 point as well.

Idk, maybe im just trying to justify my nostalgia and desire to play on all those oldskool stages again. They were pretty fun lol

 

[KishPrime]

shoutouts to the days when midwest got bodied by dope's falco on rainbow cruise

I miss Dope. He was one of the guys I space animal slayered twice without getting hit there and still lost the round. :/ Had a pretty good record against him overall, though!

<3 Midwest

If this was Youtube this thread would probably be like 500 likes 500 dislikes.

 

[The Star King]

Niko's posts have completely won me over.

 

[Doser]

If it's okay to legislate a game based on all these other considerations, where do we stop?

Slippery slope fallacy, how cute.

 

[Wobbles]

Slippery slope fallacy, how cute.

Except... it's not a fallacy in this case, because that's exactly the problem with a lack of criteria; people can justify banning anything because it doesn't fit the game they want to play. More and more stuff gets banned as people decide they like less and less.

Solid criteria creates a line, and the only thing that changes the line is more information about the game.

 

[Doser]

Yes, because pretty soon we are going to ban every stage and thus we will stop playing melee altogether, look at the Euros ever since they decided on FD, FoD, YS, DL64, BF, and PS as a counter pick they have been itching to remove more parts of the game. Oh wait, they don't do that at all and are perfectly happy with that stage list. Probably because they are the most fun stages.

Spoiler

If you think that you play games, or do anything other than for enjoyment in some form, get your head checked.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

If you don't think Mushroom Kingdom II is fun you need to get your head checked.

 

[KishPrime]

Yes, because pretty soon we are going to ban every stage and thus we will stop playing melee altogether.

Extreme-case scenarios aren't really what anyone is talking about. It's more like what Wobbles went through with "the Wobbles." He started winning matches, some people with authority (Mostly TOs, not the Back Room) decided they didn't like it, and they purposely crippled his gameplay with a rule targeting that action.

Could happen with a character, could happen with a stage, could happen with a strategy. If you don't have a criteria to go back to, anything is suspect if it becomes unpopular enough, and some people can get unfairly targeted. Heck, some people wanted to ban Jigglypuff after Hbox started winning.

Who's to say we won't have one-stage Melee in another year when there is some more leadership turnover? The movement has already got its fans; I see Battlefield-only suggested in every stage thread, and there are a number of people that already support three-stage Melee among leadership.

Can you believe that a game with 30 different playing stages could be dragged down to only one stage, and not only that, that some people would actually claim this is the "correct" way to play the game of Melee?

That's slippery slope in action.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

I think its particularly alarming that the stage list has gone from 18 to 6 in the last 2 and a half years.

2008 MBR stage list (though it was widely used until late 08-early 09)
Random select: FoD, Stadium, Cruise, Dreamland, Kongo, FD, Battlefield, Yoshis
Counterpicks: Green Greens, Japes, Mute, Floats, Corneria, Peach's Castle, Mushroom Kingdom II, Brinstar

to

2011 stagelist
Neutral: Yoshis, FoD, FD, Battlefield, Dreamland
Counterpick: Pokemon Stadium

The majority of our community's history we've had a much more liberal stage list. This trend of reducing the stage list is a recent phenomena. We've made stages that were argued neutral (Rainbow, Kongo; though Brinstar was a neutral for a long time too) to ban and our entire counterpick list is gone. It pretty hard to discount the trend since its fairly blatant.

And yes, some people do want a 3 or 1 stage ruleset. Its a small (but vocal) minority, but since any sort of *****ing seems to make TOs reduce their stagelist, I don't think its that farfetched to see that kind of stagelist become standard.

 

[tarheeljks]

Extreme-case scenarios aren't really what anyone is talking about.

seems like extreme case scenarios are exactly what a slippery slope defense is talking about?

 

[Strong Badam]

Yes, because pretty soon we are going to ban every stage and thus we will stop playing melee altogether, look at the Euros ever since they decided on FD, FoD, YS, DL64, BF, and PS as a counter pick they have been itching to remove more parts of the game. Oh wait, they don't do that at all and are perfectly happy with that stage list. Probably because they are the most fun stages.

Spoiler

If you think that you play games, or do anything other than for enjoyment in some form, get your head checked.

strawman fallacy, how cute

 

[OTFake?]

We all need to just play on 1 stage. OTGland...

Swagg!!!

 

[Wobbles]

Good stuff Doser! Guess you ignored the part where people mentioned IN THIS THREAD wanting to play on BF and FD only because they are the most fair and have ZERO interference of any kind compared to DL64, YS, PS, and FoD, four stages you think are A-OK with everybody.

And then there are people who say "BF only" because it's the most commonly struck-to stage, since FD puts extra emphasis on chaingrabs while BF can mitigate them to a certain extent. One stage out of the entire list. Pretty terrific.

 

[Druggedfox]

I haven't read this entire thread, so if someone asked this, sorry.

So, is the lava on brinstar not random? Edit: nvm read the thread, aka you have no clue when its coming up, just where >_> Though I guess that leads me to say... how can you so easily say "brinstar fails no test" when it clearly fails the "random" test; unless you think the lava has less effect on the outcome of matches than peach's turnip randomness?

Also, you can be aware of where randall is 100% of the time due to the timer (which I'm sure you know, but would have been useful to say in the OP). I'm pretty sure the barrel operates on KJ64 operates on a timer as well, but I got too lazy after outlining a basic pattern to remember it (due to almost never playing on the stage).

There's also a potential argument to be made against your criteria that is related to the one-character/strategy rule. If two characters dominate a stage, you think its fine, and is fine according to your criteria. If that's the case though, then we sacrifice the usage of 24 (though effectively 6-8) characters for one game each round. If thats fine with you, fine; I just think, that fundamentally, a minimum of 1/3 (to a maximum of 1/2) of my games being determined on the basis of how well I can spacy matchup or peach/puff/ditto is undesirable. Its not random, but it suggests that one values the spacy matchup on rainbow cruise (if we were to hypothetically say that this stage is broken for fox/falco) over character variety enough that you would be okay with one's spacy matchup skills being a proportionally significant part of every set.

Of course, one would have to prove that the game would indeed degenerate into this state first, but its a very realistic potential scenario that I believe you disregard.

Double edit: So it's not random? >______> Either way not being random doesn't mean the effect on the matches isn't undesirable... but that's a different argument. Lack of randomness alone isn't enough to warrant ignoring.

 

[Wobbles]

Brinstar's lava isn't random at all. Same timer every game.

Posted it in a different thread awhile ago. Just hop into training mode for about two minutes and jot it down.

 

[KishPrime]

Though I guess that leads me to say... how can you so easily say "brinstar fails no test" when it clearly fails the "random" test; unless you think the lava has less effect on the outcome of matches than peach's turnip randomness?

That's exactly what I'm saying. You can disagree.

Also, you can be aware of where randall is 100% of the time due to the timer (which I'm sure you know, but would have been useful to say in the OP). I'm pretty sure the barrel operates on KJ64 operates on a timer as well, but I got too lazy after outlining a basic pattern to remember it (due to almost never playing on the stage).

Hence why I use the term "random effect." You may know that Randall is on one side of the stage, but that doesn't mean you are always able to control how he affects the match. Yes, some people can strategically plan around it. Same with barrel. Either way, not really worth arguing about.

Of course, one would have to prove that the game would indeed degenerate into this state first, but its a very realistic potential scenario that I believe you disregard.

This ruleset says that if the game degrades to two-three characters per stage (I think at least three-four characters are solid even on Mute/Brinstar/RC/PF, when they know the stage), then that's Melee. Shrug. A lot of good competitive games have only 1-2 "S Tier" characters, and since you play on multiple stages per round, then more characters can be played on those stages.

I'll say it again - this ruleset does not do any character balancing. If you think that's a weakness, then try to design a "balancing" ruleset. There's your rational design criteria.

Even then, in 2006 there was plenty of character diversity in the top ranks. Just because theory says one thing doesn't mean that it will be that way.

 

[Pi]

most of our stages are banned cause 'we don't like to watch play-to-win styles on them'

 

[Mr P]

I didn't read everything in this thread and i dont intend to, i also dont intend to get into any debates because i cant be bothered so this will probably be my only post (or near enough)

I would just like to make the point that first and foremost Super smash bros melee is a computer game and it is supposed to be fun, this is the reason why we have this community and also why people travel to go to tournaments. You have created a ruleset under a set of criteria that does not take that into consideration. Some stages and regulations that people make for their tournaments are in place not necessarily because something is broken but because it is detrimental towards the way the game is played (as a general concensus) let's not get into the semantics of what people do or not consider to be detrimental to gameplay.

What i mean for example is that whether the lava on brinstar is random or not is mostly irrelevent to the fact that most people do not like playing on that stage. It is difficult to make the case that the stage is "broken" but why should anyone even have to when most of the community does not even like playing on the stage ? On brinstar for example the battle can devolve to a point where the game becomes about finding a safe point to avoid the lava and the opponent, on pokefloats if you are playing against a campy fox the battle becomes about trying to chase your oppenent around the stage and beating him before the timer runs out. If you are playing against a wobbling ice climber the battle can devolve to not getting grabbed the whole match. This is not how people want to play the game because it is not fun, COMPETITION or not. People spend thousands of dollars travelling each year to play this game and why would they do so anymore if the gameplay was allowed to devolve into a state of who can time who out or who can wobble the best. This is not what smash is about.

Dont get me wrong, there is nothing wrong per se with your rule set but over the last ten years the rules have changed and evolved because certain things have been found to be broken, but also because some thing's have been considered detrimental towards the spirit of the game, people are generally happier with a minimalist rule set and i dont why it such a bad thing ? Most people play this game with the focus of trying to outwit their opponent without having to worry about the stage getting in the way too much, there are items in this game that could be considered not to be broken but we do not play with them because we believe the game most fun played under certain conditions.

If people did not enjoy the conditions in which the game is played then they would not play it. Just because we play this game competitively and for lots of money does not mean we necessarily need to take a "no johns" approach to the game and allow everything in the game to be on. Melee is all about fun and the people have spoken LONG LIVE MELEE

 

[KishPrime]

Melee is all about fun and the people have spoken LONG LIVE MELEE

People should run and attend events that they'll have fun at. That's what this should come down to, more than anything else. On this, I think we are in agreement.

I wish you could also see that some people do enjoy playing on stages like Brinstar and Rainbow Cruise so you would understand the other side of it. Not everyone enjoys the same stuff as you.

 

[Mr P]

People should run and attend events that they'll have fun at. That's what this should come down to, more than anything else. On this, I think we are in agreement.

I wish you could also see that some people do enjoy playing on stages like Brinstar and Rainbow Cruise so you would understand the other side of it. Not everyone enjoys the same stuff as you.

I completely agree and i understand that their are people who do like playing on those stages. If a tournament host wants their rule set to play those stages then that is upto them but i would say that the majority of people do not.

 

[KishPrime]

There you go! And note, I actually say "I also don't think there are too many people that think this way anymore in the community, so it will be interesting to see if anyone does" at the end of my first post.

If no one thinks this way, then no one will run this ruleset or go to a tournament like this, so you have nothing to worry about. I have no power to impose it on you, nor would I attempt to suggest this is the "right" or "only" way to play.

 

[TheZhuKeeper]

People should run and attend events that they'll have fun at. That's what this should come down to, more than anything else. On this, I think we are in agreement.

I wish you could also see that some people do enjoy playing on stages like Brinstar and Rainbow Cruise so you would understand the other side of it. Not everyone enjoys the same stuff as you.

It's interesting that you bring up the idea of "fun" and having absolute standards such as your "turnip threshold". Do the two just happen to be the same for you or is fun just a genuine desire to push the game as far as you can?

 

[Varist]

I think its particularly alarming that the stage list has gone from 16 to 6 in the last 2 and a half years.

just saying

 

[KishPrime]

It's interesting that you bring up the idea of "fun" and having absolute standards such as your "turnip threshold". Do the two just happen to be the same for you or is fun just a genuine desire to push the game as far as you can?

It's a balancing act. You can't make a "fun-based" ruleset for the exact reasons we just went back and forth on - everyone is different. You've got to start with a concept of something that's fun - for me, yeah, I like pushing a game as far as possible and seeing other players push a game to its limits. I was hoping and praying that Wobbles would come to FC at the height of that debate and push that technique as far as it'd go, because I wanted to see what would happen, and if top players did have ways to beat it.

After you know what you want, then you should establish rational standards so that you don't have the "Wobbles" problems, things that get banned and players that get targeted just because a few vocal people don't like them.

The Turnip-Threshold was my idea to demonstrate that rulesets often use inappropriate justifications to make their case for bans - in this case, stages/randomness - while ignoring that same justification when it comes to characters. Thus, they are arbitrarily allowing Peach as a character while simultaneously punishing players who like stage adaptation and variety for the exact same reason. That bugs me.

Standards help prevent this kind of arbitrary behavior. They link the rules back to a purpose, which people will either enjoy or not enjoy, and hence use or not use.

I think it makes sense.

 

[BigD!!!]

I think its particularly alarming that the stage list has gone from 18 to 6 in the last 2 and a half years.

2008 MBR stage list (though it was widely used until late 08-early 09)
Random select: FoD, Stadium, Cruise, Dreamland, Kongo, FD, Battlefield, Yoshis
Counterpicks: Green Greens, Japes, Mute, Floats, Corneria, Peach's Castle, Mushroom Kingdom II, Brinstar

i'd just like to say i've never ever been to a tournament with 8 neutrals

i've done 5, 6, 7, and 9, but never 8

i'll say that, in my experience playing on these multitudes of levels, the vast majority of them are not nearly as crippling to matchups as posts on smashboards would lead you to believe. falco can do quite well on brinstar with a trick here and there and surviving the majority of would be gimps, floaties can navigate around cruise pretty well and then just focus on wrecking spacies on the boat (on which they really arent that great), floats is basically the same. (and corneria even, but i think corneria is awful)

mute is tough, but falco can actually do a lot of good stuff there, falcon can still do most of his game (i definitely prefer most other levels with falcon, but generally youre not living if youre off the ledge anyway with him so now its the same for the other guy)

mk2 can be pretty wack, but not necessarily gamebreaking just due to its offering equal opportunity ridiculously high rewards to everyone

i used to hate these stages but now nobody knows how to play on them anymore and they really dont have nearly the effect people think if you just think a little bit and play on them 6 times in a row or something

 

[KishPrime]

Weren't you at the massively complained about Flame of Bowser 5: Flame of Bowser 6? Didn't we do Ship 10 Neutrals? It may have been 9.

Fox can do some nice stuff in parts of Mute, too, though I think it works better against Puff than it does against Peach.

 

[BigD!!!]

i remember it was supposed to be ship 11:

Final
pokestadium
battlefield
fountain
dreamland
yoshis
mute
cruise
floats
brinstar
dk64

but we whined for like a million pages and eventually you guys made joshu take off floats and then one more that was up to him, and i think he picked brinstar

i still dont like that as a random, which was the problem back then, but ive been saying for a while that now that we have stage striking theres no need to differentiate between neutrals and counterpicks, there should just be a list of legal stages that are all considered equal

i'd prefer a list of 9 or 11 or something, but that logic makes most other people run to a list of only 5

strike from 9 or strike from 3 is the way i look at it, anything else isnt really logically consistent

yeah fox can do some stuff on mute but i actually think falcos recovery is a little better there than fox's, higher priority forward b paired with a shorter, harder to react to up b. you play off the mixup of upb'ing up as opposed to straight at them, and you have time to get back down with falco but not with fox. also, on a level with absurdly small horizontal space, falco can take advantage of his really high jumps and still manage to keep away from opponents, and if they chase him high enough they risk trading and getting spiked right off

 

[KishPrime]

I think we'd already cut out Poke Floats at that point from the Ship 11 list (making it the Ship 10), and Joshu was just being stubborn because it was his tournament. I know it was a counterpick because I remember that Jeff and Dope had some match there that came down to some weird kind of one-frame thing...don't remember what. A powershield or clank or something.

If we took another one off, it probably was Brinstar, but I still think that's the most neutral of the "non-neutrals."

I agree that Falco is better on Mute than Fox, in any case. Fox is just good everywhere, even with CARS.

 

[Druggedfox]

That's exactly what I'm saying. You can disagree.

Disagree.



Hence why I use the term "random effect." You may know that Randall is on one side of the stage, but that doesn't mean you are always able to control how he affects the match. Yes, some people can strategically plan around it. Same with barrel. Either way, not really worth arguing about.

Yeah I'm not arguing anything; if anything, what you're outlining here is why I think brinstar should be banned.

This ruleset says that if the game degrades to two-three characters per stage (I think at least three-four characters are solid even on Mute/Brinstar/RC/PF, when they know the stage), then that's Melee. Shrug. A lot of good competitive games have only 1-2 "S Tier" characters, and since you play on multiple stages per round, then more characters can be played on those stages.

I'll say it again - this ruleset does not do any character balancing. If you think that's a weakness, then try to design a "balancing" ruleset. There's your rational design criteria.

I fully understand that a lot of good competitive games have only 1-2 S tier characters. Look at SSF2T though, for example. In the case of that game, the japanese competitive community placed a soft ban on Sagat not because he's "too good", but because the game gains a significant amount of diversity purely by banning him. In melee, banning a single, or even several characers would not really add significant diversity to the game. Even if we were to ban fox, falco, sheik, AND marth, puff peach falcon etc would still **** the bottom tiers. On the *other* hand, banning stages allows us to maintain a diverse game without really significantly affecting the natural amount of balance in the game. Note that regardless of whether or not RC/mute city/etc are legal, fox, falco, jigglypuff, peach, falcon, and sheik still would dominate the lower tiered characters. Also, I really don't see 3-4 characters being viable on RC, I see two.

Either way, I don't see why "one broken character" is the arbitrary cut off point for stages. You're already inherently making a balancing ruleset the instant you ban any stages; by banning stages where one character is broken, you're doing nothing different than someone who bans a stage because 2 or 3 characters are broken on it. Its the exact same mentality, just to a lesser extent. ***There's no reason we should ban hyrule because fox dominates on it, but not ban rainbow cruise because fox/falco dominate on it (just an example; replace RC with any stage where only 2 characters are good).***

Even then, in 2006 there was plenty of character diversity in the top ranks. Just because theory says one thing doesn't mean that it will be that way.

We could always test it out in today's metagame, but we'll just disagree on the outcome if we discuss it.

Everything's located above

 

[BigD!!!]

it depends on what you mean by "viable"; theres a huge difference between fighting a fox on cruise and fighting a fox on onett. even if fox and falco are undoubtedly better than anyone else on cruise, theyre a lot more beatable there than they are on onett. if you dont think so then i promise you havent tried both scenarios enough with enough of a range of characters, the lack of kill options for basically everyone but fox on onett is really frustrating

also, for real everybody should just spend half an hour learning to play on brinstar, its not hard and spacies are just as good there as anywhere else. getting bounced on the lava 5 times in a row sucks, but, to put it in perspective, it only happens as an alternative to dying. i dont think my falco has ever lived to less than 180% on that level

 

[Doser]

Brinstar's lava isn't random at all. Same timer every game.

Posted it in a different thread awhile ago. Just hop into training mode for about two minutes and jot it down.

Please stop spreading incorrect information.