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What is your opinion of "time out" strategys and their affect on the meta?

Ninj4pikachu

Smash Journeyman
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When I say the phrase "time out" I mean intentionally running out the clock with a percent and/or stock lead rather than attempting to actually ko the opponent. One day on anthers ladder I came across a particularly good cloud main, and toward the end of the fight I felt too pressured to try anything risky for fear of being KOed by rage cloud. So I decided to play evasively and wait for him to make a mistake. As a Pikachu main I have a high damage out put, great mobility, and some mild zoning, this allows me to camp particularly easily. So I decided if he wasn't going to give me any openings I wasn't going to try anything risky and that inevitably lead to a time out with me winning. my question is, is this a good strategy? is it a healthy strategy for the meta? is it a looked down upon strategy? what are your thoughts?

If you are a fan of this strategy please tell us your preferred method of time out, how you do it, the characters who are best at it (besides sonic and pikachu), and what you think would happen if more sonics like 6wx started to use this underutilized strategy

additionaly if you hate time outs, what do you feel are the best strategys to counter this lame play
 

Envoy of Chaos

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Is it a good strategy? Yes if you have a significant lead or time is running out and your up there is nothing wrong with going for it, if I'm up by a lot I don't play as aggressively so to reduce my chance of making a mistake and giving the lead up. I won't go full time out mode but I'll play more passively.

Is it a healthy strategy? Absolutely not. There aren't many people you'll find that are willing to watch or play a game of nothing but time outs. In a 6 minute set going for nothing but time outs can lead to a set lasting a maximum of 18 minutes in BO3 and 30 in a BO5. That's mentally taxing and just plain not fun.
 
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Ninj4pikachu

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Is it a good strategy? Yes if you have a significant lead or time is running out and your up there is nothing wrong with going for it, if I'm up by a lot I don't play as aggressively so to reduce my chance of making a mistake and giving the lead up. I won't go full time out mode but I'll play more passively.

Is it a healthy strategy? Absolutely not. There aren't many people you'll find that are willing to watch or play a game of nothing but time outs. In a 6 minute set going for nothing but time outs can lead to a set lasting a maximum of 18 minutes in BO3 and 30 in a BO5. That's mentally taxing and just plain not fun.
It IS mentally taxing, and that might be the point. Sometimes if I play passive enough I can simply wait for them to get frustrated and eventually throw out an unsafe move that I can punish. I think it was Zero who said that campy sonic is underutilized.
 

DunnoBro

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The ability to do it is undesirable, however players shouldn't be discouraged from doing it. Any game where timeout is a viable strategy is an inherently flawed one, and should be intuitively solved instead of just discouraged socially.
 

Frihetsanka

Smash Champion
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It's only really lame if you play super-defensively just to time them out, by, say, jumping from the tree to the bush and back to the tree, and then back to the bush, etc, on Duck Hunt. If you have the lead then you have no obligation to approach. If your opponent chooses not to approach then they lose.

If people go into the match thinking "I will attempt to time out", then I find that kind of boring and anti-fun. If there is a lot of money on the line it might be a decent strategy*, but if you're mainly playing for fun I'd recommend against doing it.

*You probably won't become a very popular player if you rely on this strategy though.
 

mountain_tiger

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Any game where timeout is a viable strategy is an inherently flawed one, and should be intuitively solved instead of just discouraged socially.
Just for the record, that encompasses practically every fighting game, even the highly respected ones like Tekken and Street Fighter.

IMO, Smash 4 is in a good space in this respect, since you rarely see tournament-level matches ending with a time out, but it's a significant enough threat that it adds an extra dimension to the gameplay. In fact, it's a little bit like how shield breaks almost never actually happen, but the fact that they can happen forces you to play the game differently.
 

DunnoBro

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Just for the record, that encompasses practically every fighting game, even the highly respected ones like Tekken and Street Fighter.
No fighter is perfect, I didn't mean to make it sound like timeouts being viable or possible was an indication of toxicity or anything like that. Just that players themselves shouldn't be encouraged to avoid it, developers should.
 

Ninj4pikachu

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Just for the record, that encompasses practically every fighting game, even the highly respected ones like Tekken and Street Fighter.

IMO, Smash 4 is in a good space in this respect, since you rarely see tournament-level matches ending with a time out, but it's a significant enough threat that it adds an extra dimension to the gameplay. In fact, it's a little bit like how shield breaks almost never actually happen, but the fact that they can happen forces you to play the game differently.
THIS is what I'm talking about! If there are lots of specific strategys with specific characters to shield break then by that logic there should be the same amount of effort put into a time out meta and list of strategys that can accomplish that. I believe in learning every aspect of you character and I believe that as pika, there is a RIGHT way to time some one out effectively. It would be ignorant not to at least learn how to optimize your characters defensive game and yet this topic is usually one that is discouraged because time outs aren't considered a favorable outcome however viable it may be. What if some characters could actually win unfavorable MUs if they planed for time outs instead of stocks? idk but I am curious....
 

Nidtendofreak

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Part of the game. Players who pull it off shouldn't get trashed for it like they frequently do.

If you don't like that happening to you, pick a character that can stop it.
 

Egghead

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Oct 6, 2016
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I think that timeouts are okay as long as the time-out game play(camping, running away, etc) does not start too early, I think that it is a good tactic.
 

Scribe

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To be quite honest, I think the poor perception of time outs in Smash is in part because of our relatively long time limits in compared to traditional fighters. A game running to 6 minutes is absolutely exhausting from both a player and viewer perspective. Compare that to Street Fighter or Guilty Gear where a time out can be incredibly hype - just watching two players at low health with only seconds left on the clock scramble to gain the health advantage, if not finish off their opponent, can be absolutely thrilling. In part, this seems to be tied to the fact that in many traditional fighters, the timer resets between rounds. Games like Killer Instinct and Vampire Savior, where the timer does carry over between rounds, tend to be much more fast-paced, with long combos and high damage that let players finish off a round quickly, and time-outs typically only occur on a game-deciding round. The winner's health and player positions also tend to carry over between rounds in a game. Smash - both Smash 4 specifically and Smash as a series - has a much slower pace in terms of how long a game or even a single stock can last. This is combined with us having long time limits in proportion to our stocks, in comparison to how much time you might have per round in traditional fighters.

In short, timing someone out is uninteresting to watch in Smash less because of the strategies involved (though that is definitely a factor) but because of how long it takes. A game that ends with a player losing every stock in Smash can be as long as if not longer than than a game where every round goes to time in Street Fighter or Guilty Gear. A game that runs to time is even longer.

That said, I have had conversations with other people from my local competitive scene regarding the matter. We have a number of good players who main characters who can effectively and consistently time people out, so it's far from an uncommon occurrence around here. One player - someone who was relatively new to the local scene - suggested doubling the time limit. He figured that upping the time limit to 12 minutes for 2 stock or 16 for 3 stock would discourage time outs by making it unfeasible to do so. I pointed out that doing so would just mean that, when a time out did occur, it would be even more unbearable and would likely hold up bracket for quite some time. If you want to cull boring time outs, it would actually be preferable to decrease the time limit. It would make time out strategies more viable, and matches running to time would certainly be more prevalent. Nevertheless, matches that run to time wouldn't be the long, drawn-out affairs that they currently are. They would be just as quick and decisive as matches that end in a lost stock.

Mind you, cutting it in half would, based on my experience with the 2 stock 3 minute format, result in the vast majority of matches ending in time outs, but 2 stock and 4 or 5 minutes and 3 stock and 6 or 7 minutes could be feasible.
 
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Crystanium

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It's a game of tag. I prefer fighting in a game where fighting is meant to take place. It's also not a good indicator of who is actually good. Imagine someone winning because they run off and are in the lead by a percent difference, and then that person who ends up winning, loses the next set. What a waste.
 

#HBC | Red Ryu

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Players discourage time out and honestly aren't really viable in most situations. Smash stagelists for the most part help curve against this but it can still happen in each game with a timer.

Melee with two floaties on Dreamland and go to the clock pretty easily.

Smash 4 it's mostly just Duck Hunt in some match-ups.

It's possible but in general you won't see it as a main goal for one player or another.
 
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Rizen

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Timeouts are legit and players shouldn't be dissed for using them. I personally dislike the timeout rule in terms of playstyle but it helps keep tourneys on schedule. Like Red Ryu said, SSB4 is pretty good about timeouts not being too prominent except on DH but that's a stage issue.
 

Ninj4pikachu

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I feel like there are two distinct parts to successful camping, that is zoning, and mobility, you need to have both of these tools to some extent in order to be able to consistently out camp most the cast. But the point I'm trying to make is that I think a lot of characters like pikachu, pacman, wiifit, and shiek could easily over come their lack of KO potential by playing a super patient neutral that inevitably causes the game to play at a slower pace and thus making time outs more viable. If i play with a zony, campy mindset right from the beginning and only engage in what I think will be favorable interactions I can easily make a game go at least close to time out. Sometimes for a full 20-30 seconds in the match I play exclusively just to not get hit, I throw out no attacks at my opponent and I simply avoid them or punish there attempts to catch me. shiek, sonic, and pikachu can do this quite well. I find this strategy of "playing simply to not get hit" can be very mentally taxing on my opponent, especially if they are used to playing a balls to the walls with other aggressive styles. throw needle camping or TJ camping on top of this and you can hold your lead and force unsafe approaches or shut down approaches.

Another thing you can throw on top of this is taunting, not necessarily to antagonize or demoralize the opponent, but more so to bait out a punish. most people don't study the frame data on taunts, so they don't know how long they last or how fast someone can act out of their taunt. performing your fastest taunt from across the stage can sometimes fool your opponent into thinking they will get a free hit only to realize that some taunts are in fact quite fast. Many a time I have down taunted with capt falcon only for my opponent to run head first into my jabs. No joke check out the frame data on greninjas taunt with the water, It can actually be deceptively hard to punish if timed properly.

aggression has always been the crowd favorite style and is also the most popular style for players to use. But zero himself said the he believed that campy sonic is underutilized in the meta. Unfortunately (or fortunately) nobody wants to be known as "the time out player" so I feel this strategy is avoided by top level sonics unless they feel they have to.
 
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