Well, it's kind of disappointing to hear the this "Daigo" isn't the real deal. I mean, it's not surprising, but I still would have liked to see the real Daigo get his hands dirty with Brawl; I'd have LOVED to see what he could do.
As for the topic at hand...
As well thought out and fair as this sounds, I can't help but take it somewhat lightly considering your signature, which is asking to ban something else...
Learn to separate me from my arguments. The first rule of debate is "Don't make things personal." Just because I seem to be contradicting myself doesn't mean my arguments aren't sound. Even though I seem to be acting hypocritically, I could also have logical reasons for doing so (because the second rule is "never show all of your cards at once" ^_-).
Quoting my post because the pro item group has yet to respond and I'm curious as to their thoughts.
First off, there IS NO Pro-item group. People misconstrue this in EVERY ARGUMENT items are brought up in. I can't speak for anyone else, but I am not, in fact, pro item. I hate items. They annoy me, and make me worse at this game than I already am because I'm REALLY bad at multitasking. That being said, all of my arguments for PREEMPTIVE BANNING still hold true, and that, by default, includes how we treated the subject of items. If my argument is to hold sound, we have to give up our banhappy nature towards EVERYTHING, and items would be included.
Now, I'll continue with your post.
In a competitive scenario, the objective is to enter into competition with your opponent and emerge victorious. When its a sporting competition like video games, its meant to see whether you or your opponent is the more capable competitor.
So far, so good.
When you enter into competition, you want to reduce the element of chance as much as possible so that you are the one affecting the outcome of the match, and not a random variable. Thus you attempt to remove these outside factors in order to be sure that this competition is begun on a level playing field, with the winner being ascertained by skill alone.
See, THIS is where most people get hung up. Random chance. Is it good or bad? Necessary or not? How much is too much? In a way, these are ACTUALLY scapegoat questions.
Take that in for a second.
The concept of "don't get any random in my Brawl" is really a moot point, in the long run. Let me ask you, are you a game designer? Have you crafted a game, in any form, before? I have experience making small text games for programming assignments, but other than that, I don't, and I'm willing to bet that most of the pro players in Brawl haven't, either (if they did, they wouldn't be playing; game design takes a LOT of time). Why is this important? Because we, as players, don't have PERSPECTIVE. We are looking at the game from the inside, out. We see the game as it is happening, and we have a goal, and we want that game to allow us to achieve that goal. For US to modify the game, necessarily, demonstrates a
conflict of interests between us and the game; in theory, we could modify the rules so much so that we ALWAYS achieve a win state, couldn't we?
We, in essence, are screwed from the start.
Now, why does this matter when it comes to random chance? Let's look at the critically-acclaimed and award winning board game,
Settlers of Catan. In this game, the win state revolves around resource collection. It's actually a very cerebral experience. However, the game board AND the resources collected, revolve around cards drawn and dice rolled. Now, we, as players playing competitively, may say, "Even the inkling of random chance means that I have less of an effect on how I win the game. Random = bad". However, we're saying this from the inside, out. Our objective is to win, and as good players, we want to do anything in our power to do that... even if it means degrading the game! Our allegiance isn't to game integrity, it's to OURSELVES. As such, we are biased. Players, necessarily, CANNOT MAKE THE RULES to a game they play, because of this essential conflict of interest. The game, in essence, is OUR ENEMY.
The designer, however, has no personal stake in wins or losses. His job is to design a game where there is a discreet win state and an objective way to achieve it. Sometimes, such as the case of SoC, random chance is A NECESSARY COMPONENT of the game, in order to create the necessary rules AS A COLLECTIVE that allows for a discreet win state. We, as players, will NEVER know this. We have to trust that the game is not out to get us, that there is a discreet win state, and that we can achieve it.
How does this apply to Brawl? It applies to ALL competitive fighting games in the mantras "don't ban until gamebreaking" and "ban as little as possible". Why is this? Why ban at all? First of all, no designer, however good, is perfect, and no game is either. Oversights happen, especially in video games, and sometimes those oversights (such as the IC freeze glitch in Melee) have to be corrected after the fact or else the game loses its discreet win state (and thus, its integrity). However, the reason we should only ban the most egregious offenders is because we, as players, are BIASED AGAINST THE GAME. If we allow one change to lead to another, and another, and another, we can destroy the integrity of the game without knowing it. This is personified BEST in Brawl with stage bans.
By banning stages preemptively, we remove elements from the game and CHANGE IT INTO ANOTHER GAME. Brawl, in its native state, is about multitasking. It's about juggling many different opponents (in whatever form) at once and coming out on top. Sometimes your opponent is a foe, sometimes it's a stage hazard, and sometimes it's an inanimate object, just as a Waddle Dee or banana peel... but, IN ITS NATIVE STATE, Brawl is a game about multitasking. Now, is our CURRENT game about multitasking? Most of the interactive stages are gone. Items are gone. It's 1v1.
We, through overuse of bans, have literally changed the win conditions of Brawl.
Because we are PLAYERS and not DESIGNERS, we have NO IDEA whether what we are doing is helpful or not... all we know, as players, is that our changes allow us an EASIER time of achieving our (now modified) win state, and that we, as players, enjoy the game more... but as to whether the game has its original integrity, we cannot say, because we lack PERSPECTIVE.
Finally, how does this relate to our original scapegoat questions about random chance? Simply,
whether a game has random chance or not is irrelevant. A game is designed as is, as a complete product. All of the rules of chess, poker, Settlers of Catan, SFIV, and Brawl have been crafted from the beginning by people who have MORE PERSPECTIVE THAN WE EVER WILL to work together to achieve a goal. Modifying ONE THING has massive repercussions that we, as players, will never understand, and CAN NEVER understand because of out CONFLICT OF INTEREST with the game.
In essence, random chance? Who cares? As long as the game has a discreet win state and gives consistent results, we, as players, CANNOT CARE about random chance. Once the game starts handing out inconsistent results, we can take action, BUT NOT BEFORE... and unfortunately, we've ALREADY committed an offense here because we banned all items and over half of the stages without even PLAYING WITH THEM, purely because we, as players, allowed ourselves the hubris of thinking that we knew what was best for ourselves.
As long as the mods don't mind, lets continue the discussion- I'm learning a lot from Jack and Budget, who provide some sound and reasonable arguements for items.
I agree that this thread should continue. Good discussion IS happening here, regardless of whether the OP is a troll or not.
