Tournament rules for edge camping (Serious discussion)

[Eggm]

After last weekends tournament in philly a lot of people including myself were upset at m2k's playstyle as it was extremely campy and involved abusing the ledge and how it gives an overwhelming advantage to a character who is good at gimping that refuses to leave it and around it with the life lead. M2k didn't abuse it to the point he could have however you can see easily by watching the videos how it could easily be done to the point where its completely imbalanced. Now you might say well get the life lead and then do it yourself first, but is that really how we would like to see the metagame develop? M2k has already inspired me to play that way its not going to be long before this trend picks up in popularity or if it doesn't it at least has the potential to. The melee community is while doing ok not exactly thriving or big enough to warrant not making any changes to this problem as the metagame advances and more and more people play like this its not fun or entertaining and will only hurt the community or stunt its potential growth, which I hope none of us want. Now none of us imo can blame m2k for doing this because under the current ruleset and with the character he chooses (sheik) there is LITERALLY no reason not to do this endlessly if you want to win once you have the life lead if you are playing to win. In fact we should applaud him for exploiting this and showing us that there is an inherent flaw in melee's design as a platform for a competitive fighting game. That flaw being this game has no incentive to approach once you have the life lead aka it is always advantageous to run. That being said i'd like to have a discussion about how to fix this problem or to discuss if this is even a problem at all.

Here are the example vids i'm talking about from last weekend and you can read the comments to see that i'm not the only one who feels this way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib3v1kLmbcY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yEQAQCDS6o
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNLTNG2lGU8


I'll get started on how I feel and my thoughts :

Let's compare this game to super street fighter 4 (i'm using this cause its the only other fighter i have experience with) theres almost no way to argue that it is better fighter than melee at least in terms of a platform for balanced competitive fighting game. One of the reasons for this is running away while effective eventually puts you in a bad position (the corner) so you have to be careful to balance offense/defense. In melee that need to be careful and balance that does not exist past who gets the first hit as once you have the life lead with the current rules there is NO REASON not to run/camp/abuse ledge invc etc.. So I think that something does need to be changed in either the game or the rule set to fix this flaw or eventually the game will become really boring and attract less players to start playing as the metagame progresses.

Anyway in conclusion I made this thread to hopefully have a serious discussion on how to fix this problem, because I can't really think of one outside of changing the game which is kinda unreasonable cause we'd first have to think of a way, then find a way to hack and mass distribute that hacked version and play it in tournaments. So i'm hoping that through discussion some one can find using the rule set that everyone agrees on which would solve this problem. Alternatively I hope that some one can argue that it doesn't need to be changed during the discussion that makes me change my mind that this flaw doesn't need a rule and is fine the way it is, but i'm doubtful. Either way I think this thread is warranted and look forward to your replies.

Current accepted melee rule set : http://cloti-aikou.net/apex/melee.html

The only thing against camping in there is Stalling a match is not allowed (such as wall-jumping under Battlefield), but recovery tactics such as Peach's Wall-Bombing, and Jigglypuff's Rising Pound are allowed.

However this isn't specific or easily enforceable enough to be an acceptable rule to meet the solution to the problem of camping in melee IMO. If this isn't the current general accepted rule set atm please direct me to them and show me where it shows a good answer for this problem and we can discuss that.

*disclaimer I love melee over any other fighting game the most but even so cannot ignore this flaw and am only making this thread for what i feel is the good of the community's future. I'm not also saying since I think this needs to be changed it NEEDS to be changed right away(or at all) or anything like that but I think theres a definite need for at least a discussion to see the community's thoughts on the subject.

 

[-Ice-]

i got your point but i think its not that kind of a big problem people just need to understand that they have a advantage whene the openent is camping the edge

their options are limited and its useal realy easy to bait something whene they are there

just space better

but if you aproatch that whole thing with the mindset " ohh he is camping the ledge whene he grabs me im dead . i dont care i just aproatch " of course you going to get grabed gimped/edgeguardet :D

 

[TheZhuKeeper]

Ledgestalling isn't much different from a spacy getting a lead and running away / waiting until they have a combo opportunity. In the end you just have to outplay the other person when you're behind or just never get in that position in the first place. It sucks but that's what the game has become. Everyone is too good / there's no room for error anymore. I'm actually not sure if this is a good or bad thing LOL.

 

[Smasher89]

I agree with it being like running away tactics, but utilizing these kinds of tactics do reduce your familiarity with alot of situations, and can be exploited by a very fast rush style kind of play(which is very rare nowadays, but should be more effective due to that).

I thought this would be a topic about puff on the ledge and not the most common shiekstrategy against fastfallers, if a puff takes the ledge at 0 % (outsmarting the projectileuser, since laser can stop it in theory), it´s avoidable and beatable, mango for example proved this by beating M2K with falco.

Unbanning stages like mute city makes this strategy get less weight in play due to no ledge.

 

[Beat!]

I watched the first link, expecting excessive Up-b stall or something like that, but all I saw was M2K playing close to the ledge a lot of the time. Do you seriously want to enforce rules that prevent that playstyle?

This just sounds like the same type of johns as "Hbox plays gay" to me. I wouldn't support such a rule at all.

But then again, I'm a scrub, so what do I know.

 

[t3h Icy]

So what you're saying is Armada is the best player in the world?

 

[Beat!]

I'm not PoundSlap.

 

[Metal Reeper]

I get at what your saying Eggm. I played M2K for 2 hours the night before MAD and he REFUSED to approach my Fox/Falco even though I was lasering him, so I said **** IT! I would approach him, he would DD>Bthrow and it would be over, there is no option he doesn't cover and it was just extremly gay.

I still love M2K though but its just so fgjdgjdhghdg annoying.

 

[Eggm]

i got your point but i think its not that kind of a big problem people just need to understand that they have a advantage whene the openent is camping the edge

their options are limited and its useal realy easy to bait something whene they are there

just space better

but if you aproatch that whole thing with the mindset " ohh he is camping the ledge whene he grabs me im dead . i dont care i just aproatch " of course you going to get grabed gimped/edgeguardet :D

The problem is that we DO know they have an advantage and a massive one at that which is wherein the problem lies. I know those videos don't display this exact scenario happening, but they show the potential to and how m2k only didn't because everyone would have boo'ed or whatever. What I was saying is imagine the scenario where m2k did never come of the ledge and if that is a good direction for the melee metagame to be going to attract new players that's all.

Ledgestalling isn't much different from a spacy getting a lead and running away / waiting until they have a combo opportunity. In the end you just have to outplay the other person when you're behind or just never get in that position in the first place. It sucks but that's what the game has become. Everyone is too good / there's no room for error anymore. I'm actually not sure if this is a good or bad thing LOL.

I would agree with your argument on with spacies if there was no way for other characters to catch up to them and put them in a situation where they are going to get hit 50% of the time if you chase them down which theres plenty of ways to do and the likeliness that you are going to do more damage in lasers before that 50/50 chance happens is very low unless you yourself utilize excessive ledge camping and then we are faced with the same question yet again.

I agree with it being like running away tactics, but utilizing these kinds of tactics do reduce your familiarity with alot of situations, and can be exploited by a very fast rush style kind of play(which is very rare nowadays, but should be more effective due to that).

I thought this would be a topic about puff on the ledge and not the most common shiekstrategy against fastfallers, if a puff takes the ledge at 0 % (outsmarting the projectileuser, since laser can stop it in theory), it´s avoidable and beatable, mango for example proved this by beating M2K with falco.

Unbanning stages like mute city makes this strategy get less weight in play due to no ledge.

This actually can't be overcome with just better rush down play style unless you are like 900x better than the player which isn't fair. Case and point shiz vs m2k getting gimped at rom 2 losing even tho hes great at rush down type play and mango beating m2k despite him playing like this vs mango cause mango is just THAT much better as a player. Its kinda unfair to argue that if you are so much better than the player you can overcome this, because the game should be aiming to be balanced to where players of equal skill have the same shot at winning (obviously no game will ever achieve that 100% but it should work towards it through balance or rule changes).

I watched the first link, expecting excessive Up-b stall or something like that, but all I saw was M2K playing close to the ledge a lot of the time. Do you seriously want to enforce rules that prevent that playstyle?

This just sounds like the same type of johns as "Hbox plays gay" to me. I wouldn't support such a rule at all.

But then again, I'm a scrub, so what do I know.

I'm not sure what I expect but I know its a problem that needs to be discussed further. And like I said i don't expect anything to be done NOW, but the videos point were to get people to see the underlying problem in melee and how m2k could have easily played the way i'm talking about in theory.

Good discussion so far. I'd like to hear more thoughts.

Edit : beat stick the difference between this and the hbox scenario is that hbox isn't abusing a broken game mechanic (aka abusing ledge invc frames forever) hes just working his characters play style the best way possible which can't be changed unless you ban the character, but thats a whole different discussion.

Edit 2 : Yeah guys i'm not saying change this right NOW but i think the potential problem is closing in and could be a problem in the near future so i'd like to at least have the discussion started in the case that the community does agree in the future at change needs to be made. So we won't be really far behind.

 

[Metal Reeper]

POUNDSLAP HACKED EGGM'S ACCOUNT!

Maybe make a rule against Sheik ledge stalling? A set number? I do agree this would slowly discourage melee and turn it into something horrible.

I like what Smash89 said. Maybe unban Mute city? and maybe have brinstar illegal? Since a lot of people were talking about Brinstar's legability awhile back.

 

[Beat!]

I think I need to rephrase myself, because I think I misunderstood the topic at first.

I'm all for banning excessive Up-b ledge stall with sheik and other similar things.

I'm against a rule that wouldn't allow people to play like M2K did in those matches.

 

[LLDL]

I agree that we should try to stray away from abusing ledge grabs when we're ahead. However, something that I've always been proud of is that we don't have ledge grab rules. I always glance at Brawl rulesets and I LAUGH at it when I see something along the lines of "Metaknight 50 ledge grab rule in place". I find it funny and then think to myself, "Melee doesn't need that, why would Brawl."

Tbh there are only a select few players that know how to abuse the ledge to the level. M2K also does it effectively enough to force you to approach. Out of all of the sheik/puff player's that I have ever played, most of them are aggressive and just go for zero to death's. I don't want Melee to end up as aggressively running away. After all, the point of the game is to rack up damage and smash them and make them fly away -> death. Some players just can't play on the spot, so grabbing the ledge / backing off and gaining distance lets them collect their thoughts.

I don't think a ledge grab rule is necessary. I think bringing back counterpicks like corneria (which I still don't agree with being banned) would help to greatly reduce that issue, as long as you're familiar with the stage.

 

[Eggm]

I think I need to rephrase myself, because I think I misunderstood the topic at first.

I'm all for banning excessive Up-b ledge stall with sheik and other similar things.

I'm against a rule that wouldn't allow people to play like M2K did in those matches.

I agree. However I think in the near future a sheik mimicing m2k or m2k might decide to play even gayer to where it becomes a problem soon so we need to keep this discussion up. Thanks for your feedback.

 

[Metal Reeper]

I agree with Chain I also laugh at brawls ledge rules.

I felt sooo bad for strict though when M2K REFUSED to approach and PS'd like 6 of strict's lasers. Basically saying "Yeah your screwed, your gonna approach, I'm M2K. Yeah I really did just 4 stock you before I have 1%"

There are only a afew players that camp like that I can think of also. But it has grown. I know everyone knows Pink Shinobi etc as camping but like Eggm said atleast they are not abusing a game mechanic to completely win.

Is there anyway we can get around this? I think we should answer that question first, and if there is no way to get passed what M2K did then there should def be something about it.

 

[Cactuar]

I don't think the counter strategies vs this have developed very much, considering M2K is really the only person who is gay enough to do it all match long in every match he plays, at high enough of a level that it actually matters.

IF more people were doing this effectively, I think it would be more of a priority to address. Fortunately, it hasn't really been a problem aside from M2K and occasionally a Jigglypuff player being an *******.

 

[jreed]

i think m2k is just disgusting at this game lol hes amazing the sheik ledge stalling was homo but hes a robot lol he doesnt feel bad if he ***** u and he will continue to do so if he can which he can... he did this to me in friendlies as well

 

[Jonas]

No action should be taken until this is conclusively proven to be broken. I don't really think getting beaten by M2K counts.
The only thing you can do to an Up B stalling Sheik is to take the ledge from her. I know this is much easier said than done, but she really doesn't want you to come too close to the ledge because ledge options in Melee are limited.

I don't think a ledge grab rule is necessary. I think bringing back counterpicks like corneria (which I still don't agree with being banned) would help to greatly reduce that issue, as long as you're familiar with the stage.

Bringing back Corneria would help reduce camping?

 

[Vegard]

Eggm, that video of you vs m2k wasn't really the best example, but I do see what you mean and I kinda agree

 

[0Room]

I mean this has already been covered in our sibling's tournaments: Ledge grab rule.

However
I was going to say I didn't see the problem until I was SWF game 3
Then it was just kinda sad. However, we could also do what M2K did in the first match: grab the ledge before they do, make them mess up and do something else :]

I mean it's a part of the game, Brawl has already dealt with this [thanks to our friend Plank] and so I don't really see the discussion.

 

[JPOBS]

Im not sure I understand the problem.

How is what M2k did at the tourny last weekend any different than what he's been doing since 06?
And if your biggest concern is that this style will gain in popularity because people want to win and thus make melee a boring game (and hence stunting its potential growth), then why hasn't it already caught on? He's been doing this for literally almost 5 years.


Furthermore, I don't see how you could possibly create a rule around preventing someone from playing near the ledge, its literally impossible.

M2k didn't exhibit excessive use of specific ledge grab stalling in those matches so I won't commentate on the need for a ledge grab rule, because theres no evidence of such a problem.

also, I agree with cactuar

 

[Stevo]

I see where this is going, but those matches do not get the point accross very well.

Someone needs to legitimately abuse the ledge to the point where it is broken before this can really become an issue.

I know Eggm is probably trying to address it BEFORE that happens, but it is the nature of the beast, people don't care until it is a big problem.

 

[EpixAura]

Quite frankly, I'm amazed this didn't come up sooner. M2K JUST NOW starts to abuse it? Why didn't he do this earlier? He has no conscience to stop him, and I can't imagine that he just came up with it. I mean, he's always abused it more than most players, but it takes until now for him to get serious about it?

Really, there's no reason NOT to implement a LGL. It's not like MK in Brawl, who can 'plank without planking.' If the LGL is considered effective in Brawl, where it limits stall, it would work perfectly in Melee by downright preventing ledge-stall.

Just set the LGL to a reasonable number. One that couldn't be reached by accident, but definitely prevents stall. No one enjoys ledge-stall, so look at it as more fun for everyone =)

 

[Roneblaster]

its an easy fix and apex had a terrible ruleset. rising pound and peaches wall booty-bump is banned at pretty much every tournament i've been to.


apex also had wobbling legal, liberal tournament was liberal.

 

[Kira-]

I don't think the counter strategies vs this have developed very much, considering M2K is really the only person who is gay enough to do it all match long in every match he plays, at high enough of a level that it actually matters.

IF more people were doing this effectively, I think it would be more of a priority to address. Fortunately, it hasn't really been a problem aside from M2K and occasionally a Jigglypuff player being an *******.

Pink Shinobi

Fly Amanita

 

[CableCho57]

but in the end its not impossible to outplay that playstyle

this set of zhu and m2k is the perfect example i think

match 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6eqa850P1I&feature=related
at 0:35 you see zhu be really smart with his recovery

match 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t_v_YwEc84&feature=related
zhu goes to ledge a lot gets gimped

match 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t_v_YwEc84&feature=related
you can see how much more patient he was playing and how he adapted between game 2 and 3
not to mention 2:49

 

[Cactuar]

Pink Shinobi

Fly Amanita

The point stands that it is a very small percentage of players, down to just a handful. Make a more meaningful argument than just throwing names around.

 

[Metal Reeper]

^ I agree. And I even talked about Pink Shinobi earlier.

I also agree with Cable. Zhu did play amazing <3

But theoretically couldn't Sheik just infinite ledge stall ALL match? Seriously I wanna go to my next tourney, and just hit B once with Sheik, hit em with a needle. Then infinite stall for 8 minutes!

Also, couldn't we just take the stupid timer off? That way we wouldn't have to think/deal about stupid timeouts etc? That would eliminate all this crap.

 

[Druggedfox]

First of all, edgecamping is an entirely beatable strategy; if it was worth actually addressing, I'd like to see m2k beat PP/armada/mango/etc using this strategy. No offense to you or stric9, but mew2king is a more skilled player which is what adds to making it seem like such a ridiculous strategy. I personally refuse to believe that what m2k is doing would work against an equally skilled player to an extent that we would consider actually modifying the ruleset to address it.

Additionally, if you know what he is going to do, you can take countermeasures to prevent it. Fox and falco have a goddamned projectile; pick a bigass stage and run the hell away. If mew2king is able to outplay you to the point where he gets a percentage/life lead, then clearly he has the ability to do that regardless, and hes just taking a less risky route by edgecamping rather than fighting you head on (which he is clearly capable of if he was able to get a percentage lead).

If what he's doing is "abusing the ruleset" then you should abuse the ruleset as well. Pick rainbow cruise or KJ64; KJ64 exacerbates the effects of camping, so you should be able to maintain a percentage lead on that stage if you can outplay him. RC is self explanatory. Alternatively, you could switch characters; his strategy by no means eliminates the possibility of succeeding with fox/falco, but if you think it does for you personally then you can use a different character. His strategy is not forcing your hand, however, so I don't believe this is necessary.

 

[Seikend]

Sheik's UpB stall is overrated.

Sheik needs to pretty much commit to it straight away to get full invincibility. And there's like a 30 frame (1/2 second) delay between when you ledge drop and when the Up-B hitbox first appears. Lots of characters could easily steal the ledge then.

Even with a perfect stall, you're going to get caught out if all you do is up-B stall. Just Up-B stalling is not unbeatable itself. To effectively stall, the Sheik needs to mix up what they do. There's Up-B stall, ledgehop fair, ledgewaveland>whatever. All of these are individually beatable.

With a ledge-stalling sheik all you have is a usual baiting-prediction scenario, except high risk for both characters (opponent is easily gimped, Sheik can have the ledge stolen, and needs to be technically sound consistently or risk Sding/being easily edgeguarded). It's probably heavily in Sheik's favour, yes. But it's definitely not unbeatable.

 

[Pi]

Lol
You are fox.

Why no thread for this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI_hGcWjTKA

Oh that's right, because both players played 'gay'.

It's alright for fox, the best character in the game, to abuse what he has (lasers) by running around and camping, but as soon as someone takes advantage of the one thing fox has weak about him (ability to be gimped/edgeguarded) it's a problem?

Let's have a projectile rule, fox can't shoot more than 200 lasers
Problem?

Shino "stall" isn't even a stall, it can be punished easily.
If you can use it to stall a match indefinitely then your opponent is a ******.

 

[KirbyKaze]

poofstall counter is grab edge

with like almost every character

idk how good like dk is at stealing it or someone really bulky and slow but idc the important characters can do it

 

[Beat!]

I totally knew what match that link would lead to.

 

[Jonas]

But theoretically couldn't Sheik just infinite ledge stall ALL match? Seriously I wanna go to my next tourney, and just hit B once with Sheik, hit em with a needle. Then infinite stall for 8 minutes!

The ledge is a terrible position for every character in the game, including Sheik. You can edge hog her or force her to do something to avoid getting edge hogged. When you are on the ledge, you are no longer controlling your own options.

Now close to the ledge, but on the stage, is a much better position for Sheik, but her just standing there waiting for an approach isn't exactly unbeatable.

 

[Lawrencelot]

There is no problem, at least not a big enough problem to consider changing rulesets and such. Reasons:
1. Camping the ledge is not unpunishable. Against sheik for example, there are even counters that have no risk at all, and if there aren't there are always riskier and less riskier ways to counter this strategy.
2. The whole essence of the game is to keep a lead, by having a lower percentage and more stocks. If your opponent has a lower percentage, it is up to you to change this: you already have a disadvantage here because a lower percentage means your moves won't hit him as much as his moves will hit you. This is the core mechanic of smash, and since changing this is absurd, so is changing the ledgestall rules.

 

[JPOBS]

i don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

You guys are going on about ledge stalling and planking and M2k doesn't even ledge stall in those matches. He just plays near the ledge and goes for gimps like how he has been doing for 5 ****ing years.

wtf is this thread about?

 

[Beat!]

I don't want to ban excessive up-B stall anymore.

I'm too easily convinced.

:C

 

[Jonas]

i don't even know what we're talking about anymore.

You guys are going on about ledge stalling and planking and M2k doesn't even ledge stall in those matches. He just plays near the ledge and goes for gimps like how he has been doing for 5 ****ing years.

wtf is this thread about?

Apparently people want to ban playing 'gay.'

 

[Zodiac]

First marth was gay, we dealed with it...then sheik was gay, we also dealed with it. And then spacies were gay...we dealed with it. Then jigglypuff was gay....we dealed with it... see where Im going with this?

 

[Eggm]

I don't think the counter strategies vs this have developed very much, considering M2K is really the only person who is gay enough to do it all match long in every match he plays, at high enough of a level that it actually matters.

IF more people were doing this effectively, I think it would be more of a priority to address. Fortunately, it hasn't really been a problem aside from M2K and occasionally a Jigglypuff player being an *******.

I totally agree however once totally developed the advantage is still going to be to the person on the ledge because no matter how good you get at the ledge mixup game due to the invc frames. Even if you can bring it to 49% to the guy on the ledges 51% its still ******** for the person on the ledge to have the advantage AT ALL the ledge should equal a severe disadvantage the same way for the sake of making the game more strategic and deep. Once the ledge gives a disadvantage being on the edge of the stage is far less desirable and all the positioning and everything else going on in the center and pushing some one back slowly suddenly becomes far more meaningful and more entertaining to watch. Cause right now the best strategy is clear cut and that is just to run once you have the lead always cause even if you get into a bad position near the end of the stage you can grab ledge and have the advantage again. Thats just dumb.

No action should be taken until this is conclusively proven to be broken. I don't really think getting beaten by M2K counts.
The only thing you can do to an Up B stalling Sheik is to take the ledge from her. I know this is much easier said than done, but she really doesn't want you to come too close to the ledge because ledge options in Melee are limited.



Bringing back Corneria would help reduce camping?

Absoultley agreed but once some one does decide to practice these techniques and abuse them in a way that's obvious we should have a rule everyone agrees on in place to stop it. And yeah I agree that corneria comment was dumb despite chain-ace being my friend lol.

I mean this has already been covered in our sibling's tournaments: Ledge grab rule.

However
I was going to say I didn't see the problem until I was SWF game 3
Then it was just kinda sad. However, we could also do what M2K did in the first match: grab the ledge before they do, make them mess up and do something else :]

I mean it's a part of the game, Brawl has already dealt with this [thanks to our friend Plank] and so I don't really see the discussion.

We aren't talking about brawl here the solution that fixes this the best way might not be the same as the one you guys implemented so we need to discuss it.

I see where this is going, but those matches do not get the point accross very well.

Someone needs to legitimately abuse the ledge to the point where it is broken before this can really become an issue.

I know Eggm is probably trying to address it BEFORE that happens, but it is the nature of the beast, people don't care until it is a big problem.

I agree we should probably get better videos to show this like back when plank coined the term planking on me by stalling for a good like 4 minutes in a match to beat me. I don't know if that was on tape but anyone who saw that live at the tournament should be able to attest to how dumb it was. The videos were to show that m2k is willing to play gayer than ever before to win against average players like me and stric 9 because average players are getting better, who knows what he or some one else following his current example will do now in the future against players better than him. M2k turns the game into whoever can get the lead first and then play the ledge mixup game the most consistently which is boring as hell and i can only see the trend getting bigger.

Quite frankly, I'm amazed this didn't come up sooner. M2K JUST NOW starts to abuse it? Why didn't he do this earlier? He has no conscience to stop him, and I can't imagine that he just came up with it. I mean, he's always abused it more than most players, but it takes until now for him to get serious about it?

Really, there's no reason NOT to implement a LGL. It's not like MK in Brawl, who can 'plank without planking.' If the LGL is considered effective in Brawl, where it limits stall, it would work perfectly in Melee by downright preventing ledge-stall.

Just set the LGL to a reasonable number. One that couldn't be reached by accident, but definitely prevents stall. No one enjoys ledge-stall, so look at it as more fun for everyone =)

Its gay right now, but not enough to justify changing the rules yet.

but in the end its not impossible to outplay that playstyle

this set of zhu and m2k is the perfect example i think

match 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6eqa850P1I&feature=related
at 0:35 you see zhu be really smart with his recovery

match 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t_v_YwEc84&feature=related
zhu goes to ledge a lot gets gimped

match 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t_v_YwEc84&feature=related
you can see how much more patient he was playing and how he adapted between game 2 and 3
not to mention 2:49

You can beat anything in melee if you try hard enough and make enough more reads than the opponent mango is proof of that, but its unreasonable to ask people just to step it up so much so that they have to be nearly twice as good as the player to win just cause some one decides to use a broken mechanic of the game and abuse it. You ideally want the game to give the player who plays better the win the majority of the time and this mechanic turns it into whoever can get the lead and do this one tactic the win between players of equal skill. Other games have companies that care about the competitive balance and fixing broken game mechanics and release updates every now and then like street fighter 4 got super and now is getting arcade edition, since we don't have this we should try using rules to balance it as best as we can and make it as close as reasonably possible to being a platform for competitive fighting gaming that awards the player of more skill the win as close to 100% of the time as possible. Not the player who does this mechanic the best the win as close to 100% as possible. see what i'm saying?

First of all, edgecamping is an entirely beatable strategy; if it was worth actually addressing, I'd like to see m2k beat PP/armada/mango/etc using this strategy. No offense to you or stric9, but mew2king is a more skilled player which is what adds to making it seem like such a ridiculous strategy. I personally refuse to believe that what m2k is doing would work against an equally skilled player to an extent that we would consider actually modifying the ruleset to address it.

Additionally, if you know what he is going to do, you can take countermeasures to prevent it. Fox and falco have a goddamned projectile; pick a bigass stage and run the hell away. If mew2king is able to outplay you to the point where he gets a percentage/life lead, then clearly he has the ability to do that regardless, and hes just taking a less risky route by edgecamping rather than fighting you head on (which he is clearly capable of if he was able to get a percentage lead).

If what he's doing is "abusing the ruleset" then you should abuse the ruleset as well. Pick rainbow cruise or KJ64; KJ64 exacerbates the effects of camping, so you should be able to maintain a percentage lead on that stage if you can outplay him. RC is self explanatory. Alternatively, you could switch characters; his strategy by no means eliminates the possibility of succeeding with fox/falco, but if you think it does for you personally then you can use a different character. His strategy is not forcing your hand, however, so I don't believe this is necessary.

I'd like to see m2k come as close as he has been to beating those players without abusing this tactic so much. For your second point that is how the matchup SHOULD be played on the stage positioning around and fighting with projectiles/moves and using strategy and mixups and everything else that comes in a normal fighting game all while avoiding the edge of the stage cause that SHOULD put you at a disadvantage. I don't consider fox/falco laser camping and running the whole time on a couterpick stage a true representation on who is better at melee either, but that's whole different beast to be discussed elsewhere. We shouldn't all have to play sheik and practice being able to do ledge stalling mixups in favor of us for 7 minutes consistently just because of 1 broken game mechanic that can be fixed in the rules somehow. I mean we could but then the game would die and i love this game.

Sheik's UpB stall is overrated.

Sheik needs to pretty much commit to it straight away to get full invincibility. And there's like a 30 frame (1/2 second) delay between when you ledge drop and when the Up-B hitbox first appears. Lots of characters could easily steal the ledge then.

Even with a perfect stall, you're going to get caught out if all you do is up-B stall. Just Up-B stalling is not unbeatable itself. To effectively stall, the Sheik needs to mix up what they do. There's Up-B stall, ledgehop fair, ledgewaveland>whatever. All of these are individually beatable.

With a ledge-stalling sheik all you have is a usual baiting-prediction scenario, except high risk for both characters (opponent is easily gimped, Sheik can have the ledge stolen, and needs to be technically sound consistently or risk Sding/being easily edgeguarded). It's probably heavily in Sheik's favour, yes. But it's definitely not unbeatable.

Its not overrated at all. Lol.

 

[Pi]

Different positions on the stage give you an advantage? This is 2012 **** right here