The No-Johns Ruleset

[Fried Ice Cream]

My treshold of randomness is much lower than Prime's.

 

[Kal]

Then you would agree with banning Peach? Or do you feel that this threshold should only be lower for stages? And what about stages with little or no randomness, which are still "janky," like Jungle Japes, Kongo Jungle, Rainbow Cruise, Mushroom Kingdom II, and (contentiously) Mute City?

 

[Fried Ice Cream]

Well, the problem is that I also believe that more than just two characters should be viable on the stage.
The only one of those I'd be willing to try out was Kongo Jungle. Also, nah, I'm against characters, I believe it should be only for stages.

But you should know, a looot of my arguments for stages are just personal preferences.

 

[Kal]

We can change the viability requirement: a strategy is broken if x characters become unviable, with x varying as we please. However, it would be clear that the upper limit on this x is quite high; Sheik makes most of the cast unviable, really, and it would be absurd to almost every player to ban Sheik on the premise that two-thirds of the cast becomes unplayable in her presence.

As for thinking it should only apply to stages, doesn't that seem a little arbitrary to you? A strategy which makes two-thirds of the cast unplayable should be banned, unless that strategy is "pick Zelda, hold A."

And finally, a remark on the fact that these arguments are personal preference: we all have personal preference. I don't like Falco, and I feel the game is better without him. I feel the game is also better without Fox and Sheik, because I feel that characters who have approaches with minimal risk and high reward make the approach game noticeably shallower, and the approach game is my favorite part of Melee (with the combo-system being severely less important to me). However, I would never, in good conscience, try to ban these things, because personal preference is not something I can argue with; I can't convince someone who disagrees, who prefers watching a good Falco combo over Marth spacing fairs, that my preferences are what we should go with. In the same fashion, I would never ban a stage on the premise that I dislike it, even if this view is held by the majority.

 

[ILoveKe$sha]

Alright this what I think. Stages should for the most part not effect character matchups. I know even with nuetrals it does a little but with counter picks large advantages are given greatly reducing the skill needed to win. It may not be broken but it's definately not fair.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Alright this what I think. Stages should for the most part not effect character matchups. I know even with nuetrals it does a little but with counter picks large advantages are given greatly reducing the skill needed to win. It may not be broken but it's definately not fair.

I love how the Smash community has become so accustomed to neutrals that they view them as the standard, center-piece to base everything off of.

Despite the fact that neutrals are a VERY small group of stages, instead of the majority.

 

[Kal]

Alright this what I think. Stages should for the most part not effect character matchups. I know even with nuetrals it does a little but with counter picks large advantages are given greatly reducing the skill needed to win. It may not be broken but it's definately not fair.

What do you mean when a stage effects a character matchup? Peach does worse on Yoshi's Story than in Brinstar, so which should we ban?

This logic is circular. A stage must be chosen in order to decide who is favored in a matchup. However, there is absolutely no reason for selecting one of the 5 neutrals as the stage to do this.

However, there is a slight ambiguity in your post. If instead you mean that we should ban stages because they allow for matchups which are heavily skewed in one character's favor, then every stage should be banned. There is no stage on which this does not occur. Nor is it our responsibility to balance the game past removal of broken strategies; it's impossible to choose a ruleset which attempts to balance the tier list, or even become "most balanced," for the notion of "most balanced" is poorly defined, and the tier list is constantly changing. If we were to try and balance the game in the past, we would have to have balanced according to how well Sheik or Marth did. Now we must balance according to how well Fox, Falco and Jigglypuff do. It's clearly not within our realm of responsibility to choose a ruleset (especially when you consider the overwhelming number of possible rulesets to choose from) in an attempt to reach a maximum level of balance.

It's a scrubby attitude to ban stages because they're peculiar (and ironically there are more "peculiar" stages than "neutral" ones). It's not any different than telling your cheap friend to stop hitting you before you get back on the stage. But somehow (primarily, in my opinion, because something like the MBR exists, but also likely due to newer players mindsets as they enter the scene), we've managed to ban virtually every stage in the game on this premise alone. When stages are not banned on this premise, and are banned because they are "broken," the justification is almost always terrible: "those walk-off edges are so scary, we best avoid them."

In fact, with only possibly a couple of exceptions, every stage not listed as banned in KishPrime's ruleset has not been proven to be broken, even by a drastically more liberal set of criteria.

 

[Stevo]

I feel like the game has been played a cerain way for far too long to be able to do such a major shift back towards allowing more stages.

At this point it would be better to argue for smash 4 to allow more stages.

I agree the stage list bannings have gone too far, but "stay out of my combos, stage!" is too popular a feeling. People have practiced comboing characters on yoshis and battlefield for years and years. Whereas some people have probably played on brinstar under 100 times. I know I have personally only played on MK2 probably 2 dozen times myself. In comparison, I have played on dreamland thousands and thousands of times. (I still hear that song in my dreams)

10 years in people do not want to have to relearn that much.

I am not saying what is being discussed here is wrong, I just don't see it happening

Spoiler

quoting yourself ftw

I posted this earlier in the thread, and I think your tournament shows it is somewhat true.
Like you said, it would be almost impossible to go back the other way.

I would also like to add that, in general, even when more stages were allowed, lots of players chose to practice only on a select few stages. There are many players that have felt this way about stages since the beginning.

 

[Kal]

Yeah. Besides MBR having an influence on stage selection, the way we've gone about practicing for the past 10 years has hugely influenced our ruleset. In particular, since people practice on only "neutral" stages, they end up losing on counterpicks in tournament and surmise that the counterpicks are "gimmicky." In reality, they're as legit as any other stage; people are just unfamiliar with them. But there's nothing you can do to stop this scrubby attitude when it's present in such a large proportion of the community.

 

[ILoveKe$sha]

What do you mean when a stage effects a character matchup? Peach does worse on Yoshi's Story than in Brinstar, so which should we ban?

However, there is a slight ambiguity in your post. If instead you mean that we should ban stages because they allow for matchups which are heavily skewed in one character's favor, then every stage should be banned. There is no stage on which this does not occur

I know even with nuetrals it does a little but with counter picks large advantages are given greatly reducing the skill needed to win.

Hey I'm good with bringing a lot of stages back (Brinstar, Mute City, Green Greens, MAYBE Corneria, Poke Floats and Rainbow Cruise ) but all the rest are definately not. Walk offs take away the edge game, which is really deep so that'd be getting rid of alot strategy, to instead have combos getting kills at very low percents and possibly major Fox brokenness. Jungle Japes is also a horrible stage. When I want to play or watch a match I want to see a true test of skill not the wackness on stages like that. Even if both players learn it really good klap trap is still gay and the water is the worst thing ever.

And everybody has to agree nuetrals are from the most part the most balanced. And its obvious why they are nuetrals so I don't want to hear how we can't consider any stage nuetral.

 

[Kal]

Hey I'm good with bringing a lot of stages back (Brinstar, Mute City, Green Greens, MAYBE Corneria, Poke Floats and Rainbow Cruise ) but all the rest are definately not. Walk offs take away the edge game, which is really deep so that'd be getting rid of alot strategy, to instead have combos getting kills at very low percents and possibly major Fox brokenness.

This hasn't been demonstrated in the least. Yes, the edge game is deep, but no, it hasn't been shown that walk-off edges make the game dramatically shallower, or even shallower at all.

Jungle Japes is also a horrible stage. When I want to play or watch a match I want to see a true test of skill not the wackness on stages like that. Even if both players learn it really good klap trap is still gay and the water is the worst thing ever.

What is a "true test of skill?" This attitude is scrubby.

And everybody has to agree nuetrals are from the most part the most balanced. And its obvious why they are nuetrals so I don't want to hear how we can't consider any stage nuetral.

Bull ****. In what way are they "for the most part the most balanced?" Seriously, just think about this for one ****ing second. They're not inherently balanced at all; some characters do better on them, and some characters do worse.

And, again, it's not our responsibility to balance the game. If you ban Sheik, quite a few characters become much more viable. In fact, much more so than banning these stages. So why don't we just ban Sheik at tournaments? And for that matter, Falco, Fox, Marth, Peach, and Jigglypuff?

The answer: because you're biased as all ****. You're so convinced that these stages are "janky" and that winning on them is not a "true measure of skill," that you're willing to circumvent the normal standards for banning in order to get rid of them. You know what that is? It's scrubbiness.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I love Kal so much.

 

[BigD!!!]

im pretty sure fox benefits potentially less than a lot of characters from walk off edges, waveshines off the side arent really gonna happen too much

all stage tests aside, i have seen the wackest **** ever go down on jungle japes and, despite having decent success on it myself, i cant really support it in tournament. ive played on it a lot, and its a lot of fun, but it really seems to affect results to a crazy degree, and not in any predictable manner

the klaptrap may be on a timer, but it often comes from offscreen when it gets you and basically constitutes an automatic death, which is way crazier than cars on mute (or any other stage hazard in the game, im pretty sure they all fit the following description) which you see coming for a long time and dont kill you

 

[Kal]

It saddens me that this thread has essentially died. I know it's unrealistic to expect this ruleset to pick up, but I'm despondent about this scrubby attitude and its prevalence. It persists everywhere. I'm frequently arguing with the rest of my city about what stages should be legal, and it seems like there's no changing this.

I guess I should just accept the ban-happy ruleset as standard.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

It's too late in the game's lifetime now, I'd suggest just trying with the next game (assuming it is actually good).

 

[Destiny Warrior]

This has p.much died, but as a new player, I think I'd like to share my opinion.

When I practice my Falco/Fox, I don't pick the standard stages. I like to experiement even with the banned stages. While this is partly because I have close to nobody to really play competitive melee with, it in my opinion improves my game. "Randomness" of Jungle Japes? Do a somewhat long practice session there with someone, and you'll know it off the back of your hand. Your instincts will learn the Klaptrap timing, and you'll be able to adapt your game.

You don't need to spend days on it; just accustom your instincts to any "randomness" factors on a stage and you'll learn to react even in the heat of battle if you are actually watching the stage and not focusing only on where the action is going on. That's my experience at least. Try a few 4 man FFAs against the comp; while it w on't improve your gae, it'll give you a rough idea of how to work with the "randomness" of stages.

/n00b crapshoot

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I was told that Jungle Japes was random in Melee.

 

[Kal]

I believe the Klaptrap is on a timer.

 

[Geenareeno]

If JJ has taught me anything it's that the clap trap comes out when you are in the spot it bites. I seriously think that it activates when you pass through a zone.

 

[Kal]

Hey everyone, I've been thinking about this "Peach's Turnip Threshold" and have discovered a similar threshold to replace the second criterion. This would allow for more liberal stage banning and still maintain an agreeable set of criteria.

2. Bans distributed against brokenness – we use the "Sheik Criterion." Anything which makes unviable more characters than Sheik does shall be banned.

With something like that (because we can acknowledge that Mute City is not as broken as Sheik, but is still banned, but that Hyrule, Green Greens, and Onett are arguably more broken than Sheik), we can create a more liberal ruleset in which more stages are banned if one prefers.

I haven't gotten into the rigor of it all, so there are probably serious holes in the above "Sheik Criterion." Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Acryte]

Jungle japes only gets inconsistent results from players that don't play on it. Which is what they should expect. Understand that being in a spot where the Klap Trap can get you is a hazardous area and avoid it at all costs. Look at aftermath's vid "Oregon Smash DI" I believe it was called. He gets hit by Klap Trap and still survives a few times in a row. It's called not coming up with stage johns and learning to play it.

Japes opens up some characters spikes and meteors due to the gaps between the side platforms. Oh, and in the year 2015 when 90% of players go planking jiggs, we can cp japes and pray to the god of Klap Traps

 

[PEEF!]

I believe minimizing randomness is a higher-order goal than "preserving as much of Melee as POSSIBLE", so I don't agree with the premises of the argument, so I don't like the conclusion either.

 

[Kal]

It's called not coming up with stage johns and learning to play it.

This is something I try to stress, but frankly too many players are ok with making stage Johns and simply justifying it with really bad argument.

I believe minimizing randomness is a higher-order goal than "preserving as much of Melee as POSSIBLE", so I don't agree with the premises of the argument, so I don't like the conclusion either.

I believe banning Falco is a higher-order goal than "preserving as much of Melee as POSSIBLE," so I don't agree with the premises of the argument, so I don't like the conclusion either.

Regardless, we've explained the difference between banning randomness (which isn't inherently bad) and banning random elements which you cannot adapt to. You can adapt to the randomness on Mute City (hint: the cars always come from the bottom, so stay on a platform). You can't adapt to explosive capsules being able to fall from any spot on the stage. So, while you could create an anti-randomness argument to ban the latter, for the former I would say:

Stop getting hit by the ****ing cars!

 

[PEEF!]

I believe banning Falco is a higher-order goal than "preserving as much of Melee as POSSIBLE," so I don't agree with the premises of the argument, so I don't like the conclusion either.

Regardless, we've explained the difference between banning randomness (which isn't inherently bad) and banning random elements which you cannot adapt to. You can adapt to the randomness on Mute City (hint: the cars always come from the bottom, so stay on a platform). You can't adapt to explosive capsules being able to fall from any spot on the stage. So, while you could create an anti-randomness argument to ban the latter, for the former I would say:

Stop getting hit by the ****ing cars!

Banning falco is not a premise that is intuitive or self-evident without many many premises of its own. Don't point out people making bad arguments when your analogies are sh*t.

Randomness is inherently bad to this game. Randomness in any form is a negative. To illustrate this point, if we were making the PERFECT competitive smash game, and we could choose to make FoD platforms shuffle around like they do OR NOT, we would be compelled to choose not.

You can adapt to explosive capsules being able to fall from any spot of the stage, if I follow your own argument. An answer like "calculate the risk vs reward of all of your attacks" is something that follows from your own argument's style.

 

[Kal]

Banning falco is not a premise that is intuitive or self-evident without many many premises of its own. Don't point out people making bad arguments when your analogies are sh*t.

Wow, your understanding of the entire issue is terrible. My analogy works fine; unjustified starting premises are all equally good, and that's the point. If you want to make an argument against randomness, then make it and conclude that randomness should be minimized over preserving more of the game. But if you simply start off with "I believe [thing] is a higher-order goal than [other thing]," you can't expect me to respond with anything but "**** you."

Randomness is inherently bad to this game. Randomness in any form is a negative.

Randomness is not inherently bad. Look at a game like Poker, where randomness is essential to the game, yet tournament placings are very consistent.

To illustrate this point, if we were making the PERFECT competitive smash game, and we could choose to make FoD platforms shuffle around like they do OR NOT, we would be compelled to choose not.

All this does is exemplify one example where you would choose to avoid having platforms move. I, on the other hand, very much think the platforms should move.

Even if you are absolutely correct, and any sensible person would want to keep the platforms stationary, this does not prove anything. It only gives a single example where players prefer a non-random aspect to a random one.

You can adapt to explosive capsules being able to fall from any spot of the stage, if I follow your own argument. An answer like "calculate the risk vs reward of all of your attacks" is something that follows from your own argument's style.

How the hell does this follow from anything I've said? There is no way to account for falling explosive capsules. Compare to a stage like Mute City, where you simply avoid the ground floor where the cars can come.

Seriously, if you're going to make an argument against randomness, then please do so. But all you've done so far is make unfounded claims about how bad randomness is in every form.

 

[PEEF!]

unjustified starting premises are all equally good

Okay then. Justify this unjustified claim.

 

[KishPrime]

Randomness is inherently bad to this game. Randomness in any form is a negative. To illustrate this point, if we were making the PERFECT competitive smash game, and we could choose to make FoD platforms shuffle around like they do OR NOT, we would be compelled to choose not.

On the contrary, this is not self-evident. Your statement is filled with hubris. Random effects test the skills of improvisation, ability to adapt, ability to weigh risk/reward, and ability to mentally recover. You can disagree that these are important skills to test, but your opinion is not law, and it is perfectly fine for a game to test these skills. The entire combo system is based on some degree of improvisation and your ability to adapt and react, so this is entirely in line with the central concepts of the game.

Now, some types of randomness test these skills better than others. Corneria lasers are not great at this - they eliminate the risk/reward component almost entirely. The only decision you can really make on it is whether or not to drop your shield, and you can't really position yourself to alter the risk posed by the lasers. Brinstar lava, on the other hand, allows someone with those skills to apply them. This even applies to Green Greens blocks, for the most part.

If you disagree with this, you can always run a different ruleset, but it's not any more valid.

 

[Acryte]

I agree a lot with improvisational skills being inline with the central concepts of the game and its combo system, true that sir. stage hazards have existed since smash64, but they didn't start banning stages because hyrule has whirlwinds! And all that. Really, that was a major aspect of the game, that each stage had stage hazards, however many of these aren't enough to justify banning the stage. Japes, corneria, mute, etc are decent stages with minor hazards that can be entirely avoided or utilized intelligently.

 

[BigD!!!]

ive never taken anybody seriously who had a picture of their own face for their avatar

examples off the top of my head: peef, overswarm, p.c. jona

peef unless you want to ban peach, game and watch, and luigi, then your goal is not to take as much randomness out as possible and therefore your argument has no coherency

man up and say you want peach, game and watch, and luigi banned; or concede that to some degree, randomness is tolerable, and then the real debate over the degree of randomness that is acceptable can resume taking place

since i'm pretty sure you dont feel this way, this shouldnt take long

 

[PEEF!]

Its not my own face. its half of my own face doubled.

 

[Varist]

And what do you do when randomness would actually be competitively preferable? Port priority.

 

[sulliman1]

And what do you do when randomness would actually be competitively preferable? Port priority.

QFT, was actually thinking about this earlier today. only thing ports should decide is starting spawn points

 

[Sinji]

I still see randomness happen in neutral stages.

 

[Smasher89]

Define randomness, in pokemon people abuse the "random" number generator to get good IVs on their pokemon.

Even though applying that to melee and abuse peach bombs probably takes some work (depending on how the "randomness" is created). But when that mechanic is abused will make peach semibroken due to her low risk high reward projectiles.

Also, banning Luigi would be neccesary since the recovery(side b) is "randomness", no matter if you can position yourself to get a good advantage or not, people has won matches because of lucky bombs or misfire. Just to make the game less randombased.


Randomness will have to be in different kind of "ladders", since even the risk reward system in approaching, has a bit of randomness and pure guessinggames, often influenced by the metagame.

 

[Bones0]

In reference to the argument that the neutrals are only the most neutral subjectively, I posit that if you rated every matchup on every stage (assuming there is no disparity in experience on stages), the standard deviation of matchups from 50-50 would be significantly larger on banned stages than on the 5 starters. Do match-ups change based on the stage? Clearly. But to say match-ups are skewed by the same amount on the starters than on the currently banned stages is ridiculous. It's been commonly accepted by experienced players that, in most match-ups, BF is the most neutral stage. FD is probably a slight exception due to chain grabs skewing certain matchups heavily, but in non-CGing match-ups it is just as even as the other neutrals. I'm sure other match-ups have different stages that bring the match-up closer to 50-50, but in a large majority of match-ups (if not all of them), they are most even and fair when played on the 5 starters, hence the label of "neutrals."


Side note to the current argument:
Prediction of DI, teching, spacing, approaching, etc. are NOT random. They are the result of the choices made by each player, and because they are 100% player controlled, they cannot possibly random. If someone techs in place 15 times in a row and the 16th time they tech roll left, it wasn't random, it was a conscious decision by the player, and if you miss a tech read or DI read, you made a mistake; it isn't like you were afflicted by randomness. The only scenario where something like that could be considered random is if the player teching just mashes his stick left and right so that neither player can accurately predict where they will end up. Of course, some options are a lot more dangerous than others, which makes it a ****ty way to play the game if you don't want to get ****ed up constantly.

 

[The Star King]

Random effects test the skills of improvisation, ability to adapt, ability to weigh risk/reward, and ability to mentally recover. You can disagree that these are important skills to test, but your opinion is not law, and it is perfectly fine for a game to test these skills.

Uh, these skills are already tested to a high extent in competitive play, with or without random effects.

stage hazards have existed since smash64, but they didn't start banning stages because hyrule has whirlwinds!

64 is starved for decent stages. Now, the tornados may not have been enough to ban the stage, but that doesn't mean it's a good thing. I'm pretty sure most people in the 64 section would agree that they harm competitive play at least a little.

 

[Sinji]

Define randomness

Randomness happens in a lot of neutral stages whether we are aware of it or not. Their are times when randall saves you while recovering, or the shape shifting map on Pokemon stadium gives you the advantage; for example, the turning windmill messes up your mobility and your opponent gets an easy kill. Or a fox player on FOD usmashes you under the platform while your on the platform after it descends.

Here is an example of (what i like to call the Randall baseball mit).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=i3FuXUARkRM#t=275s

 

[Kal]

Randall is on a timer. Whether you would call this "random" is open for debate: you could probably model Randall's ability to save you with a probability distribution, but in theory you could also completely account for it by looking at the timer.

Pokemon Stadium is no longer regarded as neutral. I am also not fond of the terminology: what do you mean when you call a stage "neutral?" If you mean that it follows some specific architecture, then I would say that your requirements for neutrality are arbitrary. If you mean that it "minimizes matchup variance" or something of the sort, then I have to ask:

What does this mean? You would say something like "Peach wins on Brinstar when she shouldn't," perhaps, but in order to declare that she "shouldn't," you are already assuming gameplay on the "neutral" stages when you assess the matchup. So your logic is circular: you're assuming the correct judgment of who should win is made on the starter stages, then claiming that the non-starter stages skew results.

Regardless, the "randomness" (whether you want to call certain explains random is sort of subjective) you've mentioned can all be accounted for. This is why we feel stages like Mute City have nothing to warrant a ban. Yes, there is an element of randomness, but it's either small enough or able to taken into account well enough that gameplay in the short-term is unaffected by it, i.e., remains consistent enough.

Uh, these skills are already tested to a high extent in competitive play, with or without random effects.

Just state your point of view so we can tell you you're incorrect. Should we make an attempt to ban all randomness, or are you just pointing out that the game is "deep" without these stages we want to legalize?

In reference to the argument that the neutrals are only the most neutral subjectively, I posit that if you rated every matchup on every stage (assuming there is no disparity in experience on stages), the standard deviation of matchups from 50-50 would be significantly larger on banned stages than on the 5 starters. Do match-ups change based on the stage? Clearly. But to say match-ups are skewed by the same amount on the starters than on the currently banned stages is ridiculous. It's been commonly accepted by experienced players that, in most match-ups, BF is the most neutral stage. FD is probably a slight exception due to chain grabs skewing certain matchups heavily, but in non-CGing match-ups it is just as even as the other neutrals. I'm sure other match-ups have different stages that bring the match-up closer to 50-50, but in a large majority of match-ups (if not all of them), they are most even and fair when played on the 5 starters, hence the label of "neutrals."

This is what I've been waiting for people to say forever. Because, as far as I can tell, it's the only legitimate way to declare a certain stage neutral. Instead of "neutral" being discrete, it would be more of a sliding scale: the lower the total-sum standard deviation across all characters on a particular stage, the more "neutral" it becomes.

However, without an actual study done here (I might be willing to test it later, but it could take a while), I wouldn't jump to conclusions. The total-sum deviation could very well be quite minimal: frankly, most of the cast will get ***** just as hard by the characters who **** them. So, based on my subjective analysis (which is about as rigorous as yours), I would expect quite the opposite: there would be the same, or less, deviation on these stages.

More importantly, for most of the cast, stage-specific strategies have not been developed on many of these stages because of their status as counterpicks for particular characters. You don't see anyone but Jigglypuff or Peach picking Mute City, so we can't really know how matchups like Marth vs. Fox or Fox vs. Falco change on such stages. In fact, I would guess Fox vs. Falco to be somewhat (if not hugely) in Fox's favor on Mute City. So these "standard deviation" measurements would seem juvenile.

 

[The Star King]

Just state your point of view so we can tell you you're incorrect. Should we make an attempt to ban all randomness, or are you just pointing out that the game is "deep" without these stages we want to legalize?

I don't think we should try to ban all randomness, and I'm not sure if we should ban these stages or not. I just think Kish Prime trying to argue that randomness can be a good thing in a fighting game is kind of ridiculous.

 

[Kal]

I think that it's absurd to say randomness can't be a good thing. Randomness tests the skills Kish has mentioned, and your only response is that they're already tested. So what?

And you could easily create a game where they're not tested without randomness, in which case you would have a counter-example to the idea that randomness can't be a good thing.