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 Fafnir wrote:
That generalization was started by people who have no idea how the competitive environment actually operates.

No, it's pretty much spot on from my experience.

I still remember a kid screaming that another kid should be banned from a tourney because the latter used Jigglypuff

 Melissia wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
That generalization was started by people who have no idea how the competitive environment actually operates.

No, it's pretty much spot on from my experience.

And your experience with the competitive community is clearly extremely limited.

I still remember a kid screaming that another kid should be banned from a tourney because the latter used Jigglypuff

Newsflash: screaming kids are annoying little sociopathic buggers.

Jigglypuff is a top tier character with a strong selection of tools that make her incredibly viable at top level play. That said, she is incredibly annoying to actually fight against.

Why can't you guys just agree that you like different things when it comes to super smash bros rather than getting mad at each other, where's the love?

Because it's always the complaints of the casual community about systems that they don't know or should even care about (99% of the time, those advanced mechanics and gameplay styles that keep getting harped on won't even affect you) that end up leading to hurting the competitive gameplay.

For example, it's not unlikely that the complaints about wavedashing lead to its removal in Brawl. The sad thing thing is that most of the people complaining about it don't even know what it is.

I think you'd better better served by simply realizing that you are being trolled and not playing along, Fafnir.

Because I don't like that so-called "competitive" players have such a massively abusive subculture associated with them.

I'm fine with agreeing to disagree, though.

 Fafnir wrote:
Because it's always the complaints of the casual community about systems that they don't know or should even care about (99% of the time, those advanced mechanics and gameplay styles that keep getting harped on won't even affect you) that end up leading to hurting the competitive gameplay.

For example, it's not unlikely that the complaints about wavedashing lead to its removal in Brawl. The sad thing thing is that most of the people complaining about it don't even know what it is.

I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid like I feel game mechanics wise Melee is better but there's more content in Brawl so Brawl is my preferred super smash bros game atm plus I've have been playing Melee on and off for 12 years (casually mind you) so Brawl has that fresher feel to it

too. That being said you and mel should just agree to disagree as you both probably have different ideas in mind when it comes to an enjoyable super smash bros experience.

 Cheesecat wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
Because it's always the complaints of the casual community about systems that they don't know or should even care about (99% of the time, those advanced mechanics and gameplay styles that keep getting harped on won't even affect you) that end up leading to hurting the competitive gameplay.

For example, it's not unlikely that the complaints about wavedashing lead to its removal in Brawl. The sad thing thing is that most of the people complaining about it don't even know what it is.

I'm not saying your concerns aren't valid like I feel game mechanics wise Melee is better but there's more content in Brawl so Brawl is my preferred super smash bros game atm plus I've have been playing Melee on and off for 12 years (casually mind you) so Brawl has that fresher feel to it too

Which is fine. Have fun with Brawl if you have fun with it. Have fun with items on, on what stages you want. Have fun with it in a house, have fun with it with a mouse. By and large, the competitive community doesn't regard it as anything of much value. But that's not any concern to you or anyone who's not actually interested in competitive Smash.

That being said you and mel should just agree to disagree as you both probably have different ideas in mind when it comes to an enjoyable super smash bros experience.

Mel's simply trolling.

 Monster Rain wrote:
I think you'd better better served by simply realizing that you are being trolled and not playing along, Fafnir.

That's a pretty damn good advice for handling a very certain user of ours

On the entire discussion, the point is that there's the competitive and the casual crowd, both wanting different things. Casual players might want to play with Metaknight because they like his looks, competitive players play him because he is bat-poo broken (try shooting MK off the stage, have fun. His air recovery is insane.). Crying about the evil, evil competitive scene is stupid though, especially when you're using anecdota, extremely lacking and subjective experience to back it up.

 Melissia wrote:
Because I don't like that so-called "competitive" players have such a massively abusive subculture associated with them.

I'm fine with agreeing to disagree, though.

Agreed.

Myself, I find the whole "Only these maps are allowed, no items or anything that leaves things to chance allowed" ridiculous. To me, the hallmark of a good, genuinely skilled player is one who can do well with any character in any situation, and can adapt and change tactics depending on the situation/turn of fortune, catching the curveballs thrown by the fickle hand of fate and using them to his or her advantage. Someone who can consistently win matches played with almost no chance or luck involved at all, using the same tier list approved character and the same tactics on the same stage is not a skilled player. They are merely good at carrying out a programme. Such play is also very, very boring. I mean, who honestly wants a game where every match is exactly the same, with everything that happens constrained to a list of possible, sanctioned events?

For example, I am quite a fan of Soul Calibur V. As much as I love the game, it is overrun with people who take the game and "competitive play" far too seriously. Such players will inevitably play as Natsu or Mitsurugi all the time, in the case of the former relying far too much on Natsu's ground bomb ability. They didn't pick these characters because they liked them, they picked them because they are the "strongest". I, on the other hand, prefer Nightmare (because he's a badass with a great big sword he wield with 1 hand), Voldo (because he's just so unpredictable, flapping like a fish on the floor one moment and impaling his opponent of his Katar the next) and Tira (because A: She's an awesome character, B: She fights with a RAZOR SHARP HULA HOOP for crying out loud, and C: she has gloriously random gameplay, alternating between defensive, hit-and-run tactics one moment, and savage, all out offense the next). None of these 3 are in the top tier, and in the case of Voldo and particularly Tira, they rely quite heavily on chance-indeed, the main tactic with Tira is to hold out until you can change from Jolly to Gloomy, and then kneespank the opponent by either cutting them to ribbons or slamming them out of the ring.

I think that competitive players forget that the main point of these games is, at the end of the day, to have fun. Tournaments, in my eyes, should be about getting together, having fun and testing one's mettle against any and all scenarios, random or not, rather than the current model, which is about fulfilling an official approved outcome (so, "Jimmy beat his opponent Ted, who was using Ganondorf, with Kirby, with a Final Smash, on Final Destination with no items"-if someone somehow manages to win using unconventional means, then the audience and judges bitch and moan about it being "too random")

/rant

 Squigsquasher wrote:

Myself, I find the whole "Only these maps are allowed, no items or anything that leaves things to chance allowed" ridiculous.

And that's fine. Don't play with competitive players then. No one's stopping you from playing how you want to play. They have nothing to gain from playing with you, and unless you're interested in competitive play, you have nothing to gain from playing against them.

To me, the hallmark of a good, genuinely skilled player is one who can do well with any character in any situation, and can adapt and change tactics depending on the situation/turn of fortune, catching the curveballs thrown by the fickle hand of fate and using them to his or her advantage.

And the best players can do well in any situation, and do adapt and change tactics depending on the situation. That is what competitive play is all about. The situation being dictated by the actions of themselves and their opponents. Competitive play is about playing against your opponent, not against random chance or the whims of the stage. You're confusing dynamic and thoughtful play with a slot machine.

Someone who can consistently win matches played with almost no chance or luck involved at all, using the same tier list approved character and the same tactics on the same stage is not a skilled player.

"Tier list approved character?" The tier lists approve nothing. All a tier list is is a listing of each character by order of dominance in the current metagame. If you look at the list of notable players entering Evo this year (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iWsXGHo6SC_G4QkN5CGGDPaEj1rJwtA_Fdzpjb2MPCo/edit) that there are a fairly diverse set of players who play a fairly diverse set of characters, not just limited to Fox/Falco. Hell, there are even a couple of interesting Yoshi(!) mains.

And I assure you, even though the top tournament players do tend to lean towards higher-to-top tier characters (Although it is worth noting that the best player in the world right now primarily plays Peach, the 6th best character in the game, a character not even considered top tier), they can do well with just about any character in the game.

They are merely good at carrying out a programme. Such play is also very, very boring. I mean, who honestly wants a game where every match is exactly the same, with everything that happens constrained to a list of possible, sanctioned events?

If all of your matches end up exactly the same, I suggest you find better opponents, or stop playing. One of the most important marks of a good player is how skilled you are in predicting your opponent's actions (yomi). As such, a major element of the game revolves around playing with your opponent's predictions and expectations. One of the most important parts of competitive play is making sure that you remain as unpredictable as possible for your opponent. As such, if a game ends up being "a programme...exactly the same," that probably means that one of the players is very unskilled. General rule of thumb: if your gameplay is predictable, you become punishable.

Competitive play isn't about dodging random stage hazards or items, it's about out-playing and out-thinking your opponent. Getting in their head, figuring out what they'll do next, and countering that (and hoping that they weren't planning to actually counter your counter). Certain stages get in the way of that, by making certain matchups too one-sided, or drawing focus away from the actual fighting itself (remember, fight the player, not the stage).

For example, I am quite a fan of Soul Calibur V. As much as I love the game, it is overrun with people who take the game and "competitive play" far too seriously. Such players will inevitably play as Natsu or Mitsurugi all the time, in the case of the former relying far too much on Natsu's ground bomb ability. They didn't pick these characters because they liked them, they picked them because they are the "strongest".

Most players you meet on line don't pick Natsu because she's the strongest (although she is S tier), they pick her because her abilities are extremely abusable against unskilled opponents. Most games tend to have their scrub stompers. The Natsus you'll see online spamming the same move over and over again play very differently from the higher level competitive players, who understand that, as good as one move may be, its overuse leads to predictable and punishable gameplay.

I think that competitive players forget that the main point of these games is, at the end of the day, to have fun.

It's fairly obvious that you've never been to a tournament then. Because that's what the entire point is. Most people don't go in expecting to actually take home any prizes (although it's nice when it happens). It's all about getting together and enjoying some good matches with one another.

Tournaments, in my eyes, should be about getting together, having fun and testing one's mettle

Which is exactly what they're for.

against any and all scenarios, random or not, rather than the current model, which is about fulfilling an official approved outcome

The only "official approved outcome" is the setup of the match itself. It's about players and their skills setting up scenarios, not random events which could alter the match unfairly.

How can you test your mettle against a scenario where a bomb drops in front of you in the middle of an attack on the last stock? That's not winning through any skill. Of having a high-level pokeball spawn right next to an enemy player? That has nothing to do with skill either. There's no real play against your opponent in either scenario, it all comes down to chance. And that's not good for competitive environments.

(so, "Jimmy beat his opponent Ted, who was using Ganondorf, with Kirby, with a Final Smash, on Final Destination with no items"-if someone somehow manages to win using unconventional means, then the audience and judges bitch and moan about it being "too random")

/rant

No... no they don't. Gimpyfish was a player who garnered a huge following on the basis that he was a hugely unconventional player. And there were no items or unbalanced stage selections that made that happen either (Because "race for the bomb-omb" is not 'unconventional,' it's just a slot machine). He managed to be unconventional through strategy, tactics, and player skill. Armada, the best Smasher in the world right now, is similarly unconventional in his playstyle.

The entire basis of competitive play in Smash was built upon unconventional playstyles. Ken, the "King of Smash" was hugely responsible early on for unconventional strategies that pushed the competitive gameplay to new levels. The game continues to evolve continually on the basis that new, effective, unconventional strategies keep pushing the envelope, requiring players to develop to adapt and react to them.

Items are not unconventional strategies, nor are hazardous stages. There's no tactics to bomb-ombs, stars, and pokeballs.

Rant all you want, but it's all a bunch of whining about a metagame that you don't even understand.

While I'm not even close to a competitive player you make good points Fafnir (I agree with them ) and I hope the next super smash bros game will be designed well enough to satisfy both the casual and competitive crowd like melee did.

Ugh, items in SSB? No thanks.

Ultimates are SO COOL!

They are pretty cool actually, but if you want a competitive match, best to limit the amount of randomness.

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
Ugh, items in SSB? No thanks.

Ultimates are SO COOL!

They are pretty cool actually, but if you want a competitive match, best to limit the amount of randomness.

Exactly.

I don't agree that limiting the "randomness" increases the quality of a competitive match. That's too much of a sterile environment and turns the fight into more of a laboratory experiment with strict and unyielding atmosphere.

There's a reason why you don't see any "Top 10 Plays/Wins/Comebacks" in competitive gaming. People are so vested in curtailing "randomness" they create an environment where people always pick the top characters and do the same combos/openers that everyone else does. That is until a new combo/strat is discovered then everyone piles onto that bandwagon and the cycles starts anew.

Shh, not so loud, Wesker, they'll start accusing you of trolling because you have a different opinion than them.

 daedalus-templarius wrote:
Ugh, items in SSB? No thanks.

Items in SSB produce the most epic matches ever, though. No item matches are kind of samey.

Well when you say competitive players are boring, abusive, pig headed and refuse to accept new ideas it kind of comes across as inflammatory.

 AWesker1976 wrote:
I don't agree that limiting the "randomness" increases the quality of a competitive match. That's too much of a sterile environment and turns the fight into more of a laboratory experiment with strict and unyielding atmosphere. There's a reason why you don't see any "Top 10 Plays/Wins/Comebacks" in competitive gaming.

Are you kidding? There are tonnes of memorable happenings in competitive environments. Just because you don't pay attention to the competitive environment doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I'm sure there are plenty of notable, interesting events that happened in the history of tennis. But just because I have no interest in tennis, don't play tennis, and have never followed tennis and thus have no knowledge of it, doesn't mean those upsets and crazy things never happened in it.

People are so vested in curtailing "randomness" they create an environment where people always pick the top characters and do the same combos/openers that everyone else does.

Except that's not how it works. At least, not in a well made game. People who gravitate to the same top tier characters can still have entirely different playstyles. Mango, one of the top Smashers, is well known for his insanely aggressive and technical playstyle, while another player like Jman is known for his patience.

Different peoples' playstyles vary immensely, which makes prediction and mind reading such a big part of the game. The people who always pick the same combos and openers are the people who will always lose once decent opponents show up.

That is until a new combo/strat is discovered then everyone piles onto that bandwagon and the cycles starts anew.

Except that's not how it works. At all. There are the scrub-stomper strategies that are successful in low level play, but actual competitive play revolves around a lot more than the hottest new toy on the block. Technical knowledge and strategies evolve and develop as time goes on and the community experiments, but the concepts of prediction, punishment, and reading remain constant, dependent on how the individual player plays.

There's a reason why M2K, known as one of, if not the best technical player out there ("the robot"), ends up losing consistently to Armada.



Personally find items to be incredibly boring. They reduce any sense of tactics and strategy to a race for the most powerful item that spawned. And if you're unlucky enough to have the item spawn near your opponent, or have a slower character, tough luck. There's no real thought involved, no engagement with your opponent.
Even worse, once your opponent does get a powerful item and you don't, the entire paradigm of gameplay shifts. Suddenly, it becomes much more passive and defensive, as the player at the random, forced disadvantage has no real choice but to play defensively until the item is gone. It leads to boring gameplay and boring matches.

Do items really reduce strategy or increase them?

Being forced to divide your attention between the opponent and the environment around you is second nature to physical sports. Is it that much of an inconvenience to the competitive gamer?

I would rather watch a tourney where people used random items/strats/maps than watch one where everyone chose the same 4 characters and did the same 3 combos on the same map for hours on end.

 AWesker1976 wrote:
Do items really reduce strategy or increase them?

Read my post again. Because of the inherent advantage that having a potent item gives, the player without is forced to into an inherently defensive position, which will reduce the game to a much more passive affair. And this is assuming optimal conditions.

Being forced to divide your attention between the opponent and the environment around you is second nature to physical sports. Is it that much of an inconvenience to the competitive gamer?

You already need to divide your attention between your opponent and your environment. As a Peach player, I'm constantly trying to get my opponent to attempt to approach from above, or to get them on a platform, since my punishment opportunities in both situations are considerably greater there. The rising/lowering platforms of Fountain of Dreams can allow me to lure my opponents into some truly devastating punishes.
The slight decline on Yoshi's Story allows me to get much more bang for my buck if I manage to hit my opponent from above with my Dsmash, and on the defensive side, it can provide a great shelter from projectiles. The entirely flat area of Final Destination makes it great for projectile zoning, but it's also fantastic for freestyle combos, making it very easy for a character like C. Falcon to do incredibly damaging combos.

And then you have to consider how your position on the stage will affect your DI, which is incredibly important for surviving and getting out of combos. DI outwards, and risk getting hit further towards the blast zone, or DI inwards, and risk getting caught in an even more damaging combo? The decision will vary quite a bit, depending on your percentage, position on the stage (you'll be more inclined to DI outwards from the center than you would from the edges), and even what your opponent thinks you think they're thinking.

Being aware of your environment is a huge factor in Smash. Stages aren't banned because the players don't want to pay attention to the stages, they're banned because they either force the match too far in one character's favour to be considered fair, or they have random elements that have too much impact on the outcome of a match to be considered fair.

I would rather watch a tourney where people used random items/strats/maps than watch one where everyone chose the same 4 characters

Except they don't use the same 4 characters. There are a few dominant characters, but for the most part, there are around 10 characters that are competitively viable. And even then, there are always surprises. Tournament player Axe ended up surprising people everywhere when he started winning tournament sets with Pikachu, the 12th character on the tier list. Gimpyfish, who I mentioned previously, managed to be surprisingly effective in the competitive scene with Bowser, the third worst character in the entire game. You have people like Vectorman being able to compete against M2K's Shiek (one of the top four players in the world) with Yoshi, who's not very far from Bowser. There's Aniki managing to beat Ken's (King of Smash) Marth with the normally forgotten Link.

Just because a bulk of the competitive community will center itself around the dominant members of the tier list does not mean that everyone does by default. In certain cases, going with the top characters isn't even the optimal solution. In a hilarious play of counters, Armada learned how to use YLink (another low tier character) specifically to fight Hungrybox's Jigglypuff (top tier character). What makes that even more amusing is that Hungrybox then took up Ness to beat Armada's YLink.

and did the same 3 combos on the same map for hours on end.

Who the hell actually does that? I mean, aside from awful players. Good players will piece their combos together as they go, and as the situation demands. There are certain 'rules' to follow for putting a combo together, but in a game like Smash, sticking to a basic approach for every situation is extremely ineffective.

 AWesker1976 wrote:
I don't agree that limiting the "randomness" increases the quality of a competitive match. That's too much of a sterile environment and turns the fight into more of a laboratory experiment with strict and unyielding atmosphere.

There's a reason why you don't see any "Top 10 Plays/Wins/Comebacks" in competitive gaming. People are so vested in curtailing "randomness" they create an environment where people always pick the top characters and do the same combos/openers that everyone else does. That is until a new combo/strat is discovered then everyone piles onto that bandwagon and the cycles starts anew.

Look up a video for an amazing comeback from Hyper Street Fighter II ken vs chun-li.

One of the greatest combacks in competitive gaming and it was all pure skill, no randomness.

Actually I managed to find a top 10 list, check number 1.

http://kotaku.com/5820907/the-10-best-moments-in-pro+gaming-history

 Madcat87 wrote:

 AWesker1976 wrote:
I don't agree that limiting the "randomness" increases the quality of a competitive match. That's too much of a sterile environment and turns the fight into more of a laboratory experiment with strict and unyielding atmosphere.

There's a reason why you don't see any "Top 10 Plays/Wins/Comebacks" in competitive gaming. People are so vested in curtailing "randomness" they create an environment where people always pick the top characters and do the same combos/openers that everyone else does. That is until a new combo/strat is discovered then everyone piles onto that bandwagon and the cycles starts anew.

Look up a video for an amazing comeback from Hyper Street Fighter II ken vs chun-li.

One of the greatest combacks in competitive gaming and it was all pure skill, no randomness.

It was SF3, and the matchup is Daigo vs. Justin at Evo 2004.

It was awesome.

There is room for items; its like dizzying in Super Turbo. You see Daigo get some amazing comebacks in that game.

I find Super Turbo more fun to watch than the more combo heavy games.

The items are selectable. Why not just keep the less crazy ones? There's room for some random chance otherwise competitive poker wouldn't be a thing.

Dizzy states in SF aren't random. Each attack does a certain amount of 'stun,' and when a certain amount is reached, the character enters the dizzied state.

It was ran for a few small test circuits, to see if it was something that would be worth actually doing. It wasn't received too well. The items that were deemed mostly non-harmful to competitive play were found to be largely pointless, and the lower tier characters that could have possibly benefited from them were largely too slow to grab them before the largely faster higher tier characters.
Essentially, it centralized the metagame in a place where it really didn't need to be centralized, and wasn't useful for much else.

In the SF2 engine games, dizzys are quite random. Any hit or throw has a predefined base dizzy amount. To this is added a random value (which may be negative).

Other and later games use 'set' quotients, but SF2 games are random.

Regardless, a stun system like that in Smash wouldn't go over too well, because punishment in Melee is so much harsher than it is in the SF games.
What's more, even if the numbers had some randomization to them, you still had to actually hit your opponent a few times. It wasn't delivered straight to your door.

It's similar to how Peach's turnip pulls are tolerated in competitive play. Yes, she'll sometime pull some items, or the dreaded stitchface, but you still have to go through the act of repeatedly pulling turnips, and the 'spawning' of the item itself is controlled to a specific instance that the player has control over. Nothing silly like bomb-ombs spawning in the middle of attacks, or racing around for a pokeball.

Concerning how items slow down and pacify gameplay, think of it like this: Samus has a fully charged beam. The opposing player will, in most cases, tend to play safer and more defensively, so as not to give Samus the opportunity to hit them with the beam. This is much the same situation that a player is in when their opponent has a potentially lethal item in their hands. But there's a big difference here. Samus has her beam fully charged because she got the opportunity (either through negligence on the opponent's part, or by forcing her opponent into a position, such as death or recovery, where she was able to charge). As much as the momentum of the game was changed, it was changed deliberately through the actions of the players, and it will change back, once again, deliberately and through the actions of the players.

Yeah, stuns wouldn't directly work but it's the effect of the mechanic on the game rather than what it does in the game itself, which is what I was trying to say.

Could the frequency of items make a difference? Would making them too frequent make the game too based around them? (as making them more frequent will 'even' it out somewhat).

Some items need to go, as do the 'Super smash balls', which IMO is worse than quite a lot of the items.

What happened when they tried Time as the standard, rather than Stock? Was it too turtley, or was it never seriously tried?

I think the 'player veto' they do for stages was a reasonably good idea, as some characters are weak in certain stages. Rather than having set 'tournament stages' (Final Destination isn't fair considering the game is designed around platforms and multiple levels), have the variety there but players are allowed to 'veto' a set amount each so the stage should be fair for both sides.

 Daba wrote:

Could the frequency of items make a difference? Would making them too frequent make the game too based around them? (as making them more frequent will 'even' it out somewhat).

Not really, you're lowering the frequency of the problem, but the potential for it still exists. That alone is enough to make it just better off to ban them entirely.

Some items need to go, as do the 'Super smash balls', which IMO is worse than quite a lot of the items.

Oh, I cannot believe how much of a missed opportunity Final Smashes were in Brawl. Granted, I'm not a huge fan of supers in Smash (given the extremely fast pace and already incredibly punishing nature of the game, I don't think it's particularly necessary, at least for singles matches, although doubles could be worthwhile), but there had to be a better way to put them in than that.

What happened when they tried Time as the standard, rather than Stock? Was it too turtley, or was it never seriously tried?

I have no idea if they ever tried Time as a tournament standard, but I have no doubts that if they did, it was filled with nothing but turtling and stalling. With some people opting to run out the clock on the standard stock matches (for those not in the know, the standard length of a tournament match in Melee is 8 minutes), it seems like it would only be abused even more with a system built entirely on the clock.

I think the 'player veto' they do for stages was a reasonably good idea, as some characters are weak in certain stages. Rather than having set 'tournament stages' (Final Destination isn't fair considering the game is designed around platforms and multiple levels), have the variety there but players are allowed to 'veto' a set amount each so the stage should be fair for both sides.

The way it works now is that one player vetos one stage, then the other player vetos 2, and then the first player vetos one more, leaving one stage left (in the case of counterpick, the second player gets to veto one additional stage at the beginning of the round). Having to go through a similar veto system for every stage would take a long time, and can still be open to considerable abuse. And really, if you're going to go so far as to do that, you might as well just enact the Gentleman's clause and play on whatever stage you want.

tl;dr: Items are eeeevil and they must be gotten rid of instead of requiring the players to adapt!

Sad really. The most fun and memorable games I've had were ones involving hilarious item drops. Like managing to trick a friend who had the metal mario upgrade in to falling off the map

I bet you're really good at slot machines.

EDIT: If anyone's actually interested, the Evo stream for Smash is online right now. The current commentators are really good, and explain a lot of what's going on for the uninformed.
http://shoryuken.com/2013/07/12/evo-2013-the-largest-fighting-game-tournament-in-the-world-streaming-live-from-las-vegas/