Budget Player Cadet_
Smash Hero
This post made me make this thread. It made me realize that, unlike almost any other fighting game, or almost any competitive game at all, we don't have a clear definition of what makes the game competitive. The designers of smash never intended for it to be a competitive game in the first place (in any smash game, in fact), so we ignore the whole designer intent factor of when to ban things. What? Designer intent, you say? Read this post by one of the people here on the board who understand the whole "when to ban things in games" factor the best.ADHD said:This idea will never catch on out of Midwest-hosted events in which the stagelist is thrown in our faces without our opinions valued or assessed--not because we are unwilling to change, but because we are willing to play the game in a manner where our only concern is pressure based off of spacing, and baiting. When you add random elements where each stage is introducing new obstacles to deter from from spacing and baiting from ground pressure, we will slowly become tired of maining the same 4 characters over and over merely because they are the most versatile. That is why the strongest regions: EC, and WC are the strongest. Our metagames evolved the fastest due to our conservative stagelists, and midwest is left to shame with only three top players that are constantly outclassed by the top players from the two other regions.
There is a fine line between being open-minded and weakening competitive play. This [liberal stagelists] is not a tactic to advance the metagame AT ALL.
We seem to have taken Brawl and reduced it to a completely different game. This "competitive" brawl has all but lost the original purpose of the game (JK put it in the post I linked to above, read it).
Yes, of course, Stock is the correct way to play SSBB all the time, and we need a timer to keep us from going to time (of course, there's no real reason to think this other than tradition; the game in itself defaults to time battles, and why doesn't coin battle exist?)
Yes, of course, 1v1v1v1 FFAs are not exactly a competitive "who's the best" situation (or are they? I'm willing to bet you could make the competitive game into 4-player free-for-alls in time mode and we'd still have certain players doing moderately well-specifically those that are good at playing carefully and safely, and those that are good at 3v1s against them, and a few others who are just amazing at smash).
Of course if we're doing 1v1s, certain stages like Temple Hyrule are just too stupid to allow (fox dittos on temple, anyone? Again, though, has anyone noticed that the whole problem of stage loops becomes completely irrelevant when you're in a 4-player free for all? You can't circle camp 3 players at once, unless they're all clinically ********).Of course items are anticompetitive if you put them all on and all on high in a 1v1 environment due to excessive randomness (although players who are good at dealing with said problems could still triumph; some items are genuinely stupid, but reacting to randomness seems to be a major factor designed into super smash bros itself; look at items, look at several attacks such as judgement, turnips, or gordos, look at almost every stage in the entire game).
Of course keeping stages such as Norfair, Brinstar, Rainbow Cruise, PS2, Pictochat, PTAD, or Green Greens legal is a bad idea, seeing as they move the game away from the real competitive play of 1v1 zoning, spacing, and ground baiting (do I really need this, or can you see where I'm going with this? If you can't, then you're probably clinically ********, but I'll spell it out for you anyways-this claim makes no sense when you look at the overall design of the game-zoning and spacing are not necessarily the be-all, end-all; in fact, one would think that in the developers' eyes, they hardly mattered at all).Who are we to say when to ban something, when we don't have a vision into the game anywhere near what the developers have to say? Why do we define competitive brawl as "1v1, no items, 3 stock, 8 minutes, FD only" as the meme proclaims, and not "1v1v1v1, all items on high, 2 minutes, any stage?" Ask the developers, and that's almost certainly going to be brawl to them. What IS competitive smash? Why do we get to define it?
Also, don't see this as me supporting the aforementioned "1v1v1v1, all items on high, 2 minutes, any stage?"; I actually really enjoy the general tournament play of 1v1 with stocks, no items, a timer, and only stages that don't provide a provably broken tactic (including ones that are borderline like Luigi's Mansion, PTAD, and YI:M) I just think this is a discussion that's worth having.