In the interest of a more interesting meta game, I see two options. Namely, people can't be trusted not to stall the **** out of matches. Which is fine in that they're playing to win, but on the other hand, it's literally killing the metagame...and if we let it continue then Brawl will die in a year or two.
Just think about Pound 4, and all the stupid stalling **** that happened there. Atomsk/Lee vs. Ling Ling/Excel, M2K/Ally, Ksizl/Ally, etc...the way Brawl is going now is just plain
uninteresting. None of us get excited over systematic, deliberate, and unbeatable stalling. If you say you do, you're a liar. I dare you to sit through an 8 minute match of nothing but watching M2K scrooge some ICs on Smashville and tell me that the match grabbed your attention the whole time.
Ban scrooging? Oh, well then he counterpicks FD next time and planks the ledge.
Ledge grab rules? Oh, he'll just go to back SV and platform camp him the whole time. He bans SV? Oh, he'll just pick one of his many other campable stages, like Rainbow Cruise, or Battlefield, or Brinstar, or Delfino or Halberd...there's no way to stop it. And let the metagame continue to evolve in the direction
we are already watching it go towards and I can guarantee you that Brawl will be dead within a year, 2 at max.
If you don't see a problem, you sincerely lack foresight. There has been enough precedent set already that what I said cannot be called baseless conjecture. There have been too many times where the Brawl Community has said, "Oh, just let the metagame evolve and it'll all work out in the end." Anyone with this mindset is supporting the death of the game, because we all know now what an evolved metagame looks like. Barring some extremely convenient glitch being found that will rid us of these problems, we need to act now. Here are the two options I
PERSONALLY (!!) see. If you have any other ideas, please share them. If one of your other ideas is to do nothing, then just don't say it, because it's not working.
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1. Legalize items and keep MK
Why do I think that items are the solution to the problem? Take a look at Jack Kieser's Items Standard Play thread to look at what they currently consider legal items.
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=164675
(Sandbag) (Food) (Warp Star) (Bunny Hood) (Beam Sword) (Lip’s Stick) (Star Rod) (Super Scope) (Fire Flower) (Motion Sensor Bomb) (Freezie) (Smoke Ball) (Pitfall) (Mr. Saturn) (Green Shell) (Banana Peel) (Franklin Badge) (Screw Attack)
With the following items available as Counterpick items (read the thread if you're confused about the idea of Counterpicking items):
(Assist Trophy) (Dragoon) (Metal Box) (Home-Run Bat) (Hammer) (Ray Gun) (Cracker Launcher) (Gooey Bomb) (Hothead) (Spring) (Unira)
Now, considering just the items on random. How could these items collectively change the metagame enough that MK's Planking isn't an issue? Instead of going through them one by one, just look at them enough to see how many of them can be used to SAFELY combat 1. A character on the ledge, 2. A character in the air, and 3. A character under the stage.
The only major problem there is #3, none of those items can effectively combat a character under the stage. Of course, through the beauty of Counterpick items, Hotheads (or Dragoons, maybe) become situational but effective anti-scrooging options. However, this all relies on random spawn, right? Of course, but you have to consider that merely by stalling in a manner that prevents you from reaching them, there's a 99% chance that they're also giving up the opportunity to grab an item before you. This actually gives
decisive, fullproof ramifications to avoiding combat on or off the stage. And I'll leave it at that.
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2. Ban MK and leave things the way they are
This has been debated to hell and back, and you all have an opinion on it. I'll just ask you to consider what you've already read in this post, and I'll remind you that MK is the only problem character that has ways of getting around the ledge grab rule. Pit and Charizard can both glide (making scrooging possible), but neither of them have safe recovery options outside of that, making it riskier (I'd argue that Pit's Up B isn't considered safe when you're dealing with being off the stage 100% of the time). Kirby and Jigglypuff are the only characters besides MK that can really air camp (Pit and Charizard both have 3, IIRC, which doesn't really give them enough airtime to safely camp the way MK can), however, they don't have the safety that MK has during the eventual retreat back down to earth that makes MK's air camping so dangerous.
Anyway, I hope that people read this and give a serious opinion on what I just said. I'm writing this purely in hopes of a better Brawl metagame, because nobody likes the one we're facing today. Thanks.
