My argument? I'm not arguing anything. You asked how I would prove statistically that the neutrals are a host to less extreme matchups compared to other stages, and that's how I would do it.
"Argument" here meaning more like "point" than indicating that we are arguing. There is no need to react with hostility. I'm sorry if my vernacular implied something negative, as I meant nothing by it.
If you and Kish are just going to go "nah, the stages aren't that bad," then obviously how I would analyze the data is irrelevant.
This isn't what I am saying by any means. It should be clear that, of the 351 matchups, most are unaffected by Brinstar. If you were to use the standard deviation of matchups to measure neutrality, it would be clear that Brinstar were pretty close to neutral.
Again, if you favor an analysis in which you only consider the top 6-8 characters, this changes significantly. But I would never approach the question of which stages to ban based on the
current tier list.
Personally, I have no desire to compile all of these statistics because it's quite clear, to me and most people, from tournament play, which stages favor which characters and which stages are considered more/less neutral.
As I've said before, you need a comprehensive argument to suggest that these stages are "non-neutral" in a meaningful way. What's the difference between Brinstar favoring Peach and Yoshi's Story favoring Marth? Most matchups are identical (or vary barely) when compared from stage to stage. What makes any stage more neutral than any other?
Earlier, I pointed out that you had a good method of defining neutrality for stages: a stage is "more neutral" when the standard deviation of matches on it is lower. However, you haven't really shown this, and instead have blown up in a fit of spinning-chair rage when I simply explain why your argument (or point, since "argument" seems to be a word you dislike) is nowhere close to comprehensive enough to prove anything.
You can argue all day that people are too lazy to learn how to play on counterpicks or that how bad they are is blown out of proportion, but your opinion is in the minority.
Why are you bringing up how many people share my opinion? How many people do you think feel that .999... is not equal to 1, or that -4^2 = 16? Majority opinion means nothing. Let's face it, when the majority gets together, they ban what they dislike, not what's warranted.
Spacies ban Brinstar vs. floaties all the time, but it never happens the other way around. Either this is some absurd form of stage favoritism within the community, or they really are bad.
Yeah, spacies do worse against floaties on Brinstar. I don't think I, nor KishPrime, have every said otherwise. This doesn't really prove anything.
The entire point is irrelevant anyway. I've never argued stage should be banned because they are biased towards certain characters, so even if Brinstar was 100% undeniably neutral in every matchup, I still wouldn't think it should be legal in tournament because of how the design affects game play. Stuff like random lava interrupting fights is what makes it ban worthy, not the fact that floaties do well on it.
This has been gone over before many times in the thread. Why are you bringing this up when it has nothing to do with the current discussion (which is on the neutrality of stages like Brinstar)?
The only reason I bothered explaining the concept of neutrals in the first place is because you seem to view this discussion as a game to be won, rather than a way of coming to an agreement.
I don't view this discussion as a game to be won, and I'm not sure why you're acting like such a childish *** about a perfectly reasonable discussion. It should be clear that something like rulesets should avoid compromise, at least when it comes to bans, which is why I continue arguing my point. Of course, it's the ****ing internet, and it's a ****ing forum, and it's just a ****ing discussion, so I don't see why you're overreacting so ****ing hard.
You understood perfectly why everyone considered these stages neutral, but you waited for me to point it out before going "oh wow, someone finally gave the really obvious argument for why they're called neutrals!"
Firstly, be realistic: "everyone" considers these stages neutral because they don't move and because they don't have "stage hazards." Virtually no one goes into the process of actually looking at matchups and deciding what stages make matchups closer to even. The closest thing to such an analysis is usually looking at a very narrow set of matches and deciding that they differ too much from what "should" happen.
Thus, I thought analyzing the stages and noting which ones had a larger standard deviation was a good idea.
It's clear the thread has simply devolved into people who don't mind dealing with random stage hazards vs. people who think dumb stuff that is almost impossible to anticipate ruins the player vs. player aspect of the game. This idea that players who prefer to remove randomness from their competition are johning is ridiculous. When you remove the randomness, you are largely removing the number of valid johns available to the player because the less randomness present, the less excuses they have to justify their loss.
I like that you've concluded with a summarized point we've provided valid arguments against many times, as though we're clearly just in the wrong and are unable to appreciate the other side of the argument.