CPL loses all sense of reason
One of my character flaws is my giddy delight when I get to expose retarded ideas. I'm calling you out personally Justin Blanchard, Commissioner of the CPL, for posting this rule:
"In one-versus-one deathmatch competitions, the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) expects all players to remain competitive and engaged in combat throughout the entire match. Stalling and/or hiding in an effort to keep your opponent from finding you or to stall game play, is unprofessional and not acceptable during tournament matches.
"This also includes hiding in locations not normally accessible or visible during standard game play (via normal running/jumping). A player using these tactics to prevent an opponent from engaging in battle or hiding in map locations not normally reached or seen during regular game play will be penalized based upon the tournament administrator's discretion.
"If a tournament administrator has reason to believe that any unsportsmanlike tactics are being used, the player will face penalties, which may include forfeiture of the match, expulsion from the tournament and/or suspension from the league."
http://forums.thecpl.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=27;t=000343;p=
I don't even know where to begin. As I wrote in my articles, something must be Discrete, Enforcable, and Warranted for it to be banned. This fails all 3 of those tests. Hiding in corners is a part of the game. Sniping from secret locations is a part of the game. The game does not need vague rules imposed on it, creating many situations where the player can do something the game itself deems legal, but the tournament organziner deems illegal.
Not only is the rule completely impractical, but it flies in the face of Playing to Win at all. Do you think Sun Tzu's Art of War has a section explaining that when you are close to victory, you should expose yourself to possible loss? If you are ahead in points and time is running out, it's only common sense you should do everything possible to avoid the opponent. Yet now, you must "sort of avoid him" because if you "avoid him too much" then you will be banned. The natural forces of the game tell you to do one thing (run and hide) and the Commissoner of the CPL tells you to do another thing (expose yourself to the enemy).
I guess the CPL needs to take a hint from the Evolution Fighting Game Championships (www.evo2k.com) which I help run. We encourage our players to do whatever they need to do to win, short of a few game-ending bugs. Some players attack relentlessly, some players run away relentlessly. It's all part of the tournament experience to face radically different play styles.
A few players wrote me asking for advice on this issue. I guess I'd have to say "play to win anyway and ignore this new rule. If you or anyone else actually gets penalized for it, then the entire tournament becomes invalid, and you should find another tournament." Sorry guys.
--Sirlin
June 11th, 2005 at 12:08 am
“Character flaw”?? Please don’t even joke about that- how sad that people in positions of power such as Blanchard need to be schooled on the basics. He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing and he needs to be exposed. This is like those creationists calling themselves “scientists”.
June 11th, 2005 at 10:54 am
This reminds me of the situation with professional volleyball, especially beach, around ten years ago. It sounds to me like the higher-ups running the show are more concerned with making the game more “fun” for casual spectators to look at. I would be willing to bet that this move comes in conjunction with a large push to have some of their tournaments shown on television or some other form of mass media. I find it infuriating that the quality and integrity of a sport would be compromised by its most powerful benefactors in an effort to increase “watchability” for the sake of increased market share. Sad.
June 11th, 2005 at 1:54 pm
I can’t believe these rules are in place. :S I’m waiting for the case that someone loses because he camped just a bit too much…
June 12th, 2005 at 8:19 pm
Why do people that make games/run tournaments seem to know nothing about them and what makes them fun?
It seems to be happening a lot, a notable example being the noobing up of Halo 2.
June 12th, 2005 at 8:23 pm
>It sounds to me like the higher-ups running the show are more concerned with making the game more “fun” for casual spectators to look at.
That’s exactly what it sounds like to me. So, in the interest of appealing to the casual spectator, let’s take a look at some things that need to be changed.
…expects all players to remain competitive and engaged in combat throughout the entire match. Stalling and/or hiding in an effort to keep your opponent from finding you or to stall game play, is unprofessional and not acceptable during tournament matches.
If you’re not engaged in combat throughout THE ENTIRE MATCH, then certainly you must not be playing competitively or in a professional manner. Let’s strip the game of anything that could lead to this kind of unprofessional play. Forget teleporters, elevators, and difficult-to-find powerups. In fact, hunting down ammo similarly detracts from the game’s excitement, so let’s encourage players to use their fists–those that don’t are probably being unsportsmanlike, and should be banned. Finally, let’s release the special CPL-edition map–something akin to a boxing ring with ammo at your feet. Who’s game?
June 13th, 2005 at 10:45 pm
Sounds like scrub rules to me.
June 17th, 2005 at 5:19 pm
Sounds like Justin Blanchard needs to pop open a map editor and make some maps without corners and only one room. That is the only way this is going to happen fairly. Would be sad to see pro gaming turn into soccer (where the refs can just add extra time because they feel like it) before pro gaming actually becomes pro gaming.
This rule needs to be neutered down to its intention, which is to prevent unfair play such as a player from knocking over another person’s monitor or punching them in the face.
-JIM
June 18th, 2005 at 2:49 am
Before I found Sirlin, I would have found this to be a reasonable rule. Nowadays I know better after getting enlightenment through reading Playing to Win.
I can’t believe this rule was even considered.
June 18th, 2005 at 11:05 pm
I’m sure there is a ‘reasonable’ explanation. There was a tournament somewhere and someone got ahead then ran to some far off corner that was only reachable via jet pack or shield jump or whatever, and it got really boring.
The solution there is to choose a different game, or choose a different map. Sometimes games played at a high level are not fun to watch, or even to play. That’s when you find a new game.
It’s one thing to say “jet packs are illegal”, at least that’s enforceable and understandable. “You can’t hide out in corners too much” isn’t really understandable or enforceable. Anything that requires discretion on the part of judges is a bad idea.
James M
June 21st, 2005 at 7:21 pm
I don’t know if anyone saw this, but someone posted some quotes from the comments here and mentioned Sirlin over on the thread in question at the CPL forum. That post has already been removed by their admin. Sad. Not only do they have very questionable rules in place, but they suppress discussion of their decisions as well.
June 27th, 2005 at 9:29 am
Yeah the forums rules seemed alfully opressing. :(
July 6th, 2005 at 7:34 pm
Hey, Sirlin, always been a big fan.
Just wanted to comment on this that, I think one of the reasons for some rather silly rules of late from the CPL is basically just having no good FPS games to play. The FPS scene is pretty rediculous, at the moment. Quake 3 died ahead of it’s time because everyone thought either Painkiller or Doom 3 would easily take it’s place. But, they didn’t, and now we’re stuck with them and due to group thinking complex we can’t go backwards back to Quake 3. Luckily, id Software and Raven seem to have a clue about this as they’re going as far to revive quake 3 as copy/pasting old code into quake 4, which is just terrific in my opinion. Quake 3 died way ahead of it’s time, and deserves to come back.
Rambled at the end, but yeah. :)
July 17th, 2005 at 7:49 am
Wow, Many many years ago, I wasnt any older then 14.. I helped run a tounramanet with Golden Eye for my school. I enforced a no camping rule. Looking back, I was idiot. Sad thing is, the man who made that rule will probably never make that realization…
July 19th, 2005 at 1:33 pm
It’s an interesting dillema. I’m sure that this rule was created to make the games more interesting for spectators. However, without spectators, the tournament becomes less fun, people don’t watch/come to it…
You know, that isn’t actually a compelling reason to make this rule. Justin Blanchard should go resign or whatever.
July 20th, 2005 at 1:36 pm
Two weeks ago, the Anime Expo Smash Bros. Melee Tournament made a very similar decision.
There first bad decision came with only having two GameCube consoles to run a tournament they knew would have at least 128 players simply from precedent. The fact that about 256 people showed up wasn’t expected, but certainly shouldn’t have been a surprise.
The tournament organizers, who quite obviously have never played the game , ever, decided to run the tournament how they’d initially planned–3 stock, 4 player FFA on Final destination. This is in no way an actualy tournament at this point because it in no way measures a person’s skill in the game.
First, the decision to go stock comes from them wanting to have more exciting finishes. Their, “we want the game to last a certain amount of time” explanation was a bullshit cover for this. (After all, with a timed match you can determine exactly how long the match will last.) Though with time (SD -2), you run in to the problem of kill-stealing, you don’t have the (much worse) problem of people avoiding fights to better last longer. Had I actually waited around to participate, I would’ve played to win, and done exactly that; I would’ve selected a light character (Most likely Jiggly Puff) and floated off to the side for at least the first round. A game where that happens routinely I can tell you is a hell of a lot less crowd pleasing that the game to finish at a time marker instead of a death. Secondly on the stock, 3-stock is too few to really measure skill even in a 1 on 1 situation. 5-stock is almost the universally accepted minimum.
The FFA decision again wouldn’t have been so bad had matches been timed (after all, there is a different skill to playing FFA as there is to 1v1), but if your going to run a Smash Brothers tournament, and only one, one on one is deffinately a more standard, and usually more exciting practice.
As a quick aside, items were turned off, which is probably a good decision. Though some characters (Mewtwo in particular) are built around items partially, items tend to add a degree of randomness that, were there more time or 1v1 stock, wouldn’t be too great. (After all, the characters were balanced with all items on medium, not with them off.)
Finally, the decision to stick to Final Destination not only made the tournament boring, but a lesser test of skill. Trouble levels (namely Poke Floats, Flat Zone, Big Blue, and arguably Hyrule Temple) can always be turned off at random anyway, so to deprive the tournament of the variety it could’ve had only makes things worse. Instead of a well-rounded player being favored, the tournament favors the person that plays on the most generic and basic of levels. This would be akin to hosting a FPS tournament and selecting only the most basic, generic map in the name of ‘fairness’.
I heard the whole thing was pretty pathetic. Those who played to win did pretty much what I suggested I do, and everyone else (many of what people would call more skilled) fell to the way-side (of course most of the best players played to win).
John Bono
July 26th, 2005 at 5:39 pm
wow, that sounds like a terrible ssbm tournament. You should actually look into ones at smashboards.com if you want real ones.
Just the fact that it was a FFA tournament is mind-boggling. FFA stock even more so. Any REAL tourney should be 1v1 or 2v2 (or have both).
And um, Hyrule is THE most broken level in SSBM, so saying “arguably” Hyrule is kinda strange.
On the main topic of this… ugh. Just imagining someone actually enforcing rules like that is sickening. There’s no excuse to dumb down competition and strategies for the amusement of spectators - if the game isn’t played at the highest level possible, its going to die and get a lot less spectators that way.
Here’s hoping MLG doesn’t screw that sort of thing up.
July 27th, 2005 at 11:00 am
Heh, actually, I consider Flat Zone and Poke Floats much worse (Flat Zone because it’s unbalanced towards characters than can knock better than damage, and Poke Floats because characters randomly fall through the stage).
I’ll probably actually be running the SSBM tournament at Anime Vegas because of this, and we plan on running 2 or 3 separate tournaments (1v1 stock, 2v2 stock, and FFA time, the first two being stock for reasons of drama and not really detracting from the skill of the game).
John Bono
July 27th, 2005 at 2:59 pm
well, now we’re just getting off on a tangent here. Flatzone is one of the more likely to be banned stages simply because its edges and the randomness of falling objects on the stage.
Poke floats is actually one of the stages that most tourneys allow, at least as a counter-pick (best 2 out of 3 matches, first stage from a list of “neutral” randoms) because it is NOT random. It repeats its precise loop every 3 and a half minutes. It also changes so frequently that overall the stage is fair and balanced.
The reason that Hyrule (and to a lesser extent, great bay) are banned is because of infinite stall tactics. Play a stock time match (stock with a long timer to make sure it ends). Have one player be fox, and the other be… oh lets just say bowser. Fox shoots bowser once from across the stage. Bowser is now losing. Fox runs away. Bowser can never, EVER catch fox. He’s too fast, and can stay on the opposite end of the big loop in that level. Furthermore, while bowser gives chase, fox can whittle his damage up to a kill level slowly while running away. Eventually, fox uses one other attack to kill bowser at 300% or more, then proceeds to run away again until either time runs out or bowser runs out of lives. That’s why, rather than try to impose any rules about the stage and tactics, the SSBM community has basically unanimously decided to ban the stage altogether.
If you want to discuss this sort of thing further with people who know what they’re talking about, www.smashboards.com is the place to go.
Also, I’d argue that an FFA tourney is not a show of skill at all, but a show of politics. Hey, look, this yoshi player is 5 times better than everyone else here! We don’t want him to win! So some players let others kill them or suicide or whatever to avoid having yoshi get any kills.
October 3rd, 2005 at 8:45 pm
“First, the decision to go stock comes from them wanting to have more exciting finishes. Their, “we want the game to last a certain amount of time” explanation was a bullshit cover for this. (After all, with a timed match you can determine exactly how long the match will last.)”
This is inane. The professional SSBM community uses timed stock matches, usually at 8 minutes. To say stock is only for “exciting finishes” is completely wrong. Stock is THE standard in competetive Smash play.
“Secondly on the stock, 3-stock is too few to really measure skill even in a 1 on 1 situation. 5-stock is almost the universally accepted minimum.”
Again, completely wrong. 4 stock (infrequently 5) in the US, and 3 stock in Japan.
“The FFA decision again wouldn’t have been so bad had matches been timed (after all, there is a different skill to playing FFA as there is to 1v1)”
No, there is a lack of skill in FFA. No tournament, ever, worth its salt had an FFA component. 1v1 and 2v2 are the only areas where the game requires skill.
Seems like you need to go to www.smashboards.com, as the other commenter stated, and open your eyes. :)
–MikeMan
November 3rd, 2005 at 5:58 am
Smashboards tends to be a festering pile by nature.
4-Stock matches are still quite low in a situation where it’s not 2/3.
Yes, there is skill to a FFA game. There are a lot of BS factors thrown in to obscure that, but there is still a competative game to be had with FFA. (It just happens to be a bad game.)
And Stock will never be a good idea in FFA for SSBM. Yes, 1v1 and 2v2 are run that waybecause the make them more fun with more interesting game experiences. But in FFA, it makes all the BS factors even worse.
-John Bono
March 21st, 2006 at 10:55 pm
re: Smash Bros. tournaments
Dunno if I should pipe in at this late a stage, but what the hell.
Anyway, I’m gonna have to stick up for FFA time tournaments. They are not bad, and are perfectly competitive. There is just a different skill set to be used in FFA than in 1 on 1 or 2 on 2 (e.g. keeping your eye on more opponents, knowing where to be in order to steal kills, etc.). There is a higher component of randomness, true, but across the board, the better player will still come out on top 95% of the time, so it matters little. The other 5% is just a factor you have to accept. In return, you get to have 4 players competing at once.
My crew at RIT in Rochester, NY ran FFA tournaments for years. I dunno if/when they switched to a more “standard” 1v1 stock setup (I left there in 2002), but while I was there, we thought that 1v1 (stock or time) was too boring for this game type. I think it was grudgingly accepted eventually, but whenever we play, it’s always FFA time. And we play to win, even if there’s not an actual tournament going on.
I agree that FFA stock is *horrible* though. Absolutely awful, and should never be used.
March 25th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
re: Smash Bros. Tournaments
SSB:M is an iffy game to bring up in this discussion anyways, because the game shifts around so much depending on what the rules are- not to mention that most people only consider it ‘tournament worthy’ when you remove more then you leave on. I always thought it worked best with Timed Stock, Items:Low and the healing and self-activating items removed (Tomatoes, Hearts, Mushrooms, Starman) and only the two stages completely broken in competitive play completely banned (Hyrule Temple and Yoshi’s Island 64) Every following rule-cut after that just became worse and worse until it reached the state it’s at now (no items/3-6 stages) where it’s reached the point where it’s not terribly clear if tournament players want to play Smash at all, but rather some game they made up that uses some of Smash’s features but trims away anything unpopular-but-viable strategy wise.
To a lesser degree, Competitive Smash is pretty much in the same boat as the CPL. It’s still a playable, competitive scene, but it’s so nerfbatted, neutered, and restricted that it’s not a real representation of the game.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Somehow, Locke, I get the feeling you don’t know all that much about competitive SSBM.
Nearly all competitive SSBM matches are played 4 stock, 8 minutes, 2 out of 3 (3 out of 5 for semis/finals), items off, with 6 or so stages banned. No handicaps, 1.0 damage ratio. One tactic, by the Ice Climbers, which freezes your opponent in place and which is pretty much impossible to do accidently, is banned. There are also a few stalling tactics that are sometimes banned. (More on this later.) Guess what? That’s about all the limits you have.
The whole “there’s only 3-6 stages you can choose, how stupid” is an easy misunderstanding. There are many ways to choose stages, but I’ll clear up this, at least. Players/tournament directors can elect to choose a random stage. These are: Final Destination, Pokemon Stadium, Dreamland 64, Fountain of Dreams, or Battlefield. I’m probably forgetting one, but it doesn’t really matter, since rules can vary.
There are 6 or so banned stages, like Flatzone and Hyrule Temple. I’m not completely sure what the rules concerning these are; I think they might be able to be used if both players agree. (Fountain of Dreams is usually banned in team matches just because the game lags if you use it.)
THE REST OF THE STAGES ARE NOT BANNED, AND CAN BE CHOSEN IF BOTH PLAYERS AGREE TO IT. (methods for choosing these vary: Dave’s stupid rule, double blinds, advanced slob picks, loser picks, etc.)
Yes, items are fair, since in the grand scheme of things, each player will get an even amount of luck. Guess what? Anything below 30 matches definitely isn’t enough to even out the luck. One of the only two reasons items are banned is because it would be ridiculously unfeasible (word?) to hold a tournament with them. (I had a cool example involving a fighting/FPS game, but I forgot what it was. -_-) The other one is exploding containers, which serve to magnify the luck quotient so much that things get out of hand.
Of course, if you want to hold a tourney without using these rules, feel free to do so, and see how many people leave the building happy.
Oh, and about the Free-For-All thing…
I think I’ll just paraphrase what Ken (pretty much unanimously thought the best smasher in the world) said in an MLG interview:
“I used to go to these little tournaments that the local game shops would hold, but I stopped quickly. What ended up happening was, these tourneys were held in FFA format, so whenever I participated, the other participants would quickly realize that I was the best one there, and team up on me, leading to many first-round losses.”
Same issue with the items: completely unfeasible (word?).
What else, what else… oh right, time vs. stock. The thing about time is that it turns into a contest of “who can kill themselves in the most strategic manner?” Setting SD’s to -2 helps a little, but not enough: you can still time your deaths to get the most out of your starting invinciblity (since you do lose all your damage) as well as throw off your opponent. This, I suppose, wouldn’t really be a problem, but the alternative of timed stock matches is just better overall. One person on Smashboards suggested an alternative time mode that I found fairly interesting. I’ll post it later if you want me to.
“To a lesser degree, Competitive Smash is pretty much in the same boat as the CPL. It’s still a playable, competitive scene, but it’s so nerfbatted, neutered, and restricted that it’s not a real representation of the game.”
Go play “the real game”, then. nobody’s forcing you to do otherwise. I myself don’t use items in casual play except in appropriate circumstances (Hyrule Temple, Super Sudden Death, bobombs and motions sensor bombs on very high, 4 way FFA/2 vs. 2 team with friendly fire on. Teching is fun.).
You can find me at the GameFAQs (OH NOES TEH HORRORZ) SSBM forums under the name ycz6, or at Smashboards.com as ycz12.
March 29th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
I guess I forgot to explain the banning of the stalling tactics.
The tactics in question are Jigglypuff’s rising pound and Peach’s wallbomber. Both of these tactics allow a player to stall indefinitely in the air/against a wall, where in some stages (Fountain of Dreams in particular) it is literally impossible to get to them without killing yourself, and possibly not killing them anyway. In other words, it’s just as bad as freezing the opponent permanently. Note that these tactics can be used as recovery, just not to stall. Again we run into the problem of human error, but it’s usually pretty obvious when someone’s stalling.
March 29th, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Wow. I’m being lectured by some guy naming rules I was there during the invention of. I’d laugh if it wasn’t making me feel so… forgotten. (Fun fact; Dave’s Stupid Rule is named such because of a knee-jerk response to hearing Dave explain his rule, poorly, the first time around at the first of the Norcal Bi-weeklies. It was one of the better ideas the tournament scene had… once we identified it as such after Dave explained it in a way that made more sense.)
I was part of the Smash tournament scene since TG1, stayed through TG6, which was kinda the final straw on the camel’s back. While never one of the bigger names (My best TG finish solo was only top 16, although me and Pat ‘Cyntalan’ Barnard were constatly in the top 8 in Teams through TG5.), I was there from the word go. So no, I’m not a ‘Mr. Gamestop Tournament’ or whatever misinformed slur you want to toss at me in an attempt to write me off as uninformed.
I’ll start with stages, because it’s the point I’ll argue harder. The stages picked in the end were the ones that promoted aggressive gameplay and removed any real potental for stalling or stage-based defensive play. I know about the Fourside hip-smash stall tactic (and have beaten it- I’ll bring that up later), and I know people’s complaints about walls/cliffs/other nooks and crannies to hide under.
Frankly, if they earned the lead, they deserve the ability to defend it however the eff they want, as long as it’s not in such a way that breaks the game. Yes, the Fourside thing is lame, but only one character can do it, and it’s not like it isn’t obvious five seconds in what the Peach player is trying to pull. (Jigglypuff’s pound trick doesn’t work nearly as well there, but then again, JP can do her trick anywhere she can put herself out of the opponent’s reach, including off the top of the screen on ANY GIVEN LEVEL and far, far to the sides of stages like Final Destination against anyone without a screen-reaching, pure horizontal stunning projectile) That gets filed under the ‘bad sportsmanship’ rule, like using Captain Commando’s glitched punch throw to hold a ‘corpse’ until the end of the match when in the lead in Marvel vs Capcom 2.
In Smash Tournament logic (Remove anything involved with the problem) Captain Commando would be banned. Forget the fact that, otherwise, he’s a perfectly playable character if the player doesn’t do that one gamebreaking glitched throw. It’s the same case with the banning of 80% of the levels. They weren’t banned because they were gamebreaking. Fourside was ousted for the potental Peach issue, but why were stages like Great Bay, Rainbow Cruise, or Princess Peach’s Castle removed other then they focused on aspects of the game that some people didn’t like? They were banned because he people in charge of the tournaments wanted to push the game in a direction that made it closer to any other fighting games. These same other fighting game, by the time all was said and done, I’d rather play (and have gone off to play) then nerfSmash.
The fact that the other stages are still avaliable is a myth. The problem with agreeing on other levels is that nobody agrees. We play, I win round 1 on Random, they take me to FD and win Round 2, I go ’sup, how about Onnet?’ Onnet was a long time go-to stage of mine. It gave me stage obsticles to impede overly-aggressive Shiek/Marth/Fox/Falcos, a stage hazard I could try to work into my offensive plan, and didn’t have a bottom-out, letting me cover for Ness’ weak recovery or Pikachu’s mediocre side-out ability where pits are involved. All in all, usually what I was looking for after a loss to aggressive pitbull tactics. Of course, the other guy generally knows this, so they go ‘lol no Onnet’s ghey.’ Then try Cornaria. And then in the end I just would up picking Pokemon Stadium or Fountain of Dreams. Because of the remaining six or seven, they’re probably the ones I like the most when I want to try and slow my opponent up a bit.
Containers I understand the beef of However, common sense would generally deter all but the most rare and unlucky examples. (Don’t flail around for no reason- don’t break containers at your feet. If you’re REALLY paranoid, don’t fight around item spawn points, of which each stage has a definate set location for.) ‘Random Item Luck’ less so, because it was always the same people doing the dominating with the items. They were better at using them, they were better at avoiding them, they were better at getting to them first. More importantly, items actually favor the aggressive game people want to see. Items rewards mobile, space-controlling gameplans and punishes turtling in a single defendable spot. The major catalyst for stages being removed was BECAUSE items went and people starteg finding things like Peach’s Fourside manuver (Which I’ve seen and beaten before- with Ness of all characters, using a mix of Ness’s projectiles and items. ANYONE can stop Peach on Fourside with items. Without them, it’s limited to characters capable of manuvering something into the hole- Pikachu, Ness, crazy wall-jumpers) The fact of the matter is, Items brought the balance that made Smash playable as a whole and, without them, the tournament hosts have gone to lengths to sap power from the defensive game which would have been extremely effective- if not dominant to the point where a lot of people less dedicated to the game would have gotten bored and quit because learning how to deal with a good defensive player on Venom was akin to… learning how to cope with an encamped sniper in a hard-to-reach place in a first-person shooter maybe? Hmm… parallel lines, parallel lines.
Some people prefer six stage/no item Smash. Bully for them. I’m not saying that it’s not right to do what’s fun, but I think the Smash tournament scene is the laughing stock of the gaming world because, of bitterest ironies- the very fact that they tried to push themselves closer to being more like any other fighting game, and in the process gave up a lot of what made it Super Smash Bros: Melee, leaving just the fraction of the game that the tournament players thought other fighting game players could take seriously. (Another fun fact: a big part of the push for the rule changes to six stages/no items was to get SSB:M accepted into Evolution 2k4 and again for Evo 2k5. Is anyone actually surprised at this point that it never happened?)
March 29th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
“In Smash Tournament logic (Remove anything involved with the problem) Captain Commando would be banned. Forget the fact that, otherwise, he’s a perfectly playable character if the player doesn’t do that one gamebreaking glitched throw. It’s the same case with the banning of 80% of the levels. They weren’t banned because they were gamebreaking. Fourside was ousted for the potental Peach issue, but why were stages like Great Bay, Rainbow Cruise, or Princess Peach’s Castle removed other then they focused on aspects of the game that some people didn’t like? They were banned because he people in charge of the tournaments wanted to push the game in a direction that made it closer to any other fighting games. These same other fighting game, by the time all was said and done, I’d rather play (and have gone off to play) then nerfSmash.”
Actually, none of the stages you stated, save for Great Bay, are banned. Some tournaments actually put Rainbow Cruise and, to a lesser degree, Princess Peach’s Castle in the random list. Great Bay is banned because of the stall/roof kill tactics. Sure, you can roof tech it I’m sure, but it’s a pretty boring game that doesn’t show much skill if you’re just going to stand on the platform and just try to smash/throw me over in that direction. Fox/Falco, for a fact, can kill people at 0% because of this.
“The fact that the other stages are still avaliable is a myth. The problem with agreeing on other levels is that nobody agrees. We play, I win round 1 on Random, they take me to FD and win Round 2, I go ’sup, how about Onnet?’ Onnet was a long time go-to stage of mine. It gave me stage obsticles to impede overly-aggressive Shiek/Marth/Fox/Falcos, a stage hazard I could try to work into my offensive plan, and didn’t have a bottom-out, letting me cover for Ness’ weak recovery or Pikachu’s mediocre side-out ability where pits are involved. All in all, usually what I was looking for after a loss to aggressive pitbull tactics. Of course, the other guy generally knows this, so they go ‘lol no Onnet’s ghey.’ Then try Cornaria. And then in the end I just would up picking Pokemon Stadium or Fountain of Dreams. Because of the remaining six or seven, they’re probably the ones I like the most when I want to try and slow my opponent up a bit.”
Some stages allow the loser of a match to counter pick a stage they want without any complaints from the winner. Just try to keep that in mind, because it sounds like you’ve only been to TG and nowhere else.
Gauntlet in NYC, held by Deadly Alliance, holds a different ruleset that allows stages that are normally banned or “not in the random list” to be played, simply because the point was that you were knowledgeable about the stage and you used it to your advantage. Brinstar, Mute City, DK64, Onett, Princess Peach’s Castle, Rainbow Cruise, Pokefloats, and more stages were added into the game. So really, it all depends on the kind of tournament you go to. If you don’t like the rules, simply deal with it or don’t go.
As for items, my personal preference would be to keep it on low, with certain items taken off the list. When it’s low, you don’t have a player who’ll hunt around looking for items all the time, especially when his opponent might be right on his face. But otherwise, playing without items isn’t something I complain about either.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Heh, sounds like New York might be a step ahead. I admittingly have fallen out of the scene for about a year, but whenever Cynt tries to convince me to go to another tournament, I see the same stages and rulesets and my interest goes down faster then a cheap hooker. Around the time I quit, it was the quickly becoming the same case everywhere. If people have been beating back the 6S/NI ruleset (Particularly the Stage issue) then there may be hope for the future yet.
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March 30th, 2006 at 10:42 am
I don’t follow… if kill stealing is the best strategy for a timed FFA in SSBM, then why is time superior to stock in a FFA?
March 30th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Well all right then, Locke. I could have sworn I’d seen your name somewhere… But you didn’t say anything, how was I supposed to know about you? I only learned about competitve smash like a year ago, and besides, you sounded pretty stupid.
I have to contest your point about Fourside being playable with items. So the other character throws down an item, Peach gets hit and techs/doesn’t get hit/uses toad and continues to wallbomb. Your point? Even with characters like Fox, it can be near impossible to kill a wallbombing Peach, especially on Fourside: Fox jumps down to shine Peach. Peach uses her parasol to ram right into him. Because of Fox’s falling speed, he ends up under Peach and is forced to use his up-b to recover. It hits Peach and she (first techs and then) continues to wallbomb. Sure, this tactic can be defeated, but it’s damn hard to do so.
About the time vs. stock thing for FFA: the thing about stock mode is, the game turns into a stallfest. (Everybody shut up for the moment.) Jigglypuff and Peach become absolutely broken, and sudden death has to be played out nearly every single time. (That is, if all players play optimally.)
And yes, LordLocke (did you post on the Maplestory forums at GFaqs?), the tourney scene appears to have changed since TG. And about that “Smash in EVO” thing, I heard it was killed because the Smashers were utter morons when it came to other competitive games. Like one person tried to get it in “because it had different weights and falling speeds.”
I suck at concluding.
March 30th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Meeh, no harm, no foul. Just look before ya leep next time before tossing out the slander- you never know when you’re going to have to eat your words because that senile old man happens to be something unexpected.
(I don’t post on Maplestory on GFaqs, considering I think Maplestory is trash even as MMOs go- and I have a really low opinion of most MMOs not containing ‘City’ in the title-, but I pop up from place to place where the seasons take me- I’ve popped in at varying times on the GFaqs boards- mostly for console RPGs like FF Tactics and DQ8, or the occasional Mega Man forum.)
The problem with your example is that you’re assuming Peach does everything perfectly- AKA- theory over execution- A fact of tournament play is, she won’t, and it only takes one real goof to put her into a fatal scenario when someone’s chucking stuff like Star Rods, Freezies, and Screw Attacks down at her. Stalling in that scenario is risky, because Peach can lose her lead to one mistake. Better then to focus more on Peach’s small platform and wall game, where she puts fear into the opponenrts because of the difficulty to un-trench her in those scenarios.
FFA is just busted, period. Time comes about who’s best at denying other people points while getting the last word on as many people as possible. Stock becomes stallfest ‘06. Lose-lose. FFA is great casually. It’s not tournament-worthy at all.
The person fronting the Evo push- MattDeezie- was actually a name in the Tekken world BEFORE Smash, so one can’t even really use the ‘clueless about other fighting games card’ to excuse what happened- it was just a series of bad judgement calls on the part of trying to ‘modify’ the game to become Evo-worthy. He just didn’t think out that perhaps part of the reason Evo wasn’t taking him seriously was BECAUSE of how much houseruling he and other tournament hosts were forcing upon the game. Now that it’s over and it sounds like some regions are opening at least many of the stages back up, I can hold out hope that trickles into Norcal. I might actually be damned to play again.
But until Smash goes back to being Smash- complete with the return of items and any stage that isn’t totally broken from it’s very conception like Yoshi Island 64- it’s still going to suffer from the stigma of a game that has to be heavially houseruled in order to be justifiable as a tournament game- which it doesn’t- and it’ll never really be able to make the next step up.
April 2nd, 2006 at 11:33 am
“The problem with your example is that you’re assuming Peach does everything perfectly- AKA- theory over execution”
MikeG once crossed Pokemon Stadium as Peach in 2 seconds by wavedashing. That’s pretty damn close to perfect.
While we’re on the subject of perfection in SSBM, anyway, you may want to check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg0GE0uBzWo
I’d say something devastatingly clever and punishing here, but I’ve got nothing. I know Sirlin wrote about SSBM in his book; what did he say about it?
May 3rd, 2006 at 1:06 pm
I think the new CPL rule pertaining to “camping” is just to let the game progress in a timely manner. Take chess for example, it’s common for each “move” to be timed with clocks during chess tournaments. The standard rules of chess don’t include this, but it makes the players react in a timely manner and make split second decisions; rather than just stare at the board for minutes and find the best move just because he had all the time in the world to make the decision.
June 3rd, 2006 at 8:49 am
“The problem with your example is that you’re assuming Peach does everything perfectly- AKA- theory over execution”
Don’t make that mistake. A gamer will spend his whole life perfecting that maneuver if it means s/he will become unbeatable in a certain situation. Wavedashing requires incredible split-second timing, but now every Smasher worth his salt knows it, along with shffling and probably some other technique discovered two days ago by someone with no life.
Although I will admit that perfecting your reaction for an object to fly at you at any given situation is nigh-impossible, “nigh” really doesn’t mean all that much in the very upper level of play.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:13 am
hahaha thats just hilarious trying to ban camping??? sounds more like the scrubs are complaining
February 5th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
ban camping? lol