What IS Competitive Smash?

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.

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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.

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?)
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 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.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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).

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i stopped reading here.
brawl was made to be a casual game, everybody knows this.
i don't get what's so special about this thread.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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?

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Smash was designed so we could play the game the way we want. Now, the notion that we could say, "no matter what, we never play these stages" can be deemed scrubby, but in some cases, I agree that certain stages are simply broken. The same assessment comes out of choosing the winner by % in the event of a tie: yeah, ideally we'd go with what the game was programmed with, but Sudden Death in Smash is broken.

The rest of it all literally up to us within the design of the game. And contrary to popular belief, that is the creator's intent. The creators didn't really have one particular way of playing the game in mind, which is why they created so many different ways of playing the game. They just wanted people to have fun with the game.

@Spelt: So what if it's casual?
@Phootbag: I suppose that makes sense. However, why is competitive smash only ever considered playable in this one way?

Even if you say Brawl was designed to be a casual game, it's still cannot be assumed it was designed to be anti competitive. You know why? No one likes losing, really no one. As Smash is all about "pick your favourite character and play", it is clearly not the best thing to make the game unbalanced as someone who wants to play this game as say Ganondorf will be frustrated by an ubalanced game very fast, resulting in that person giving the game a bad review, not buying a sequel etc., thus resulting in less profit.
All in all, the more unbalanced a game is, the less people will buy it, regardless of whether they play the game for fun or in tourneys.
So, can we assume that this game has no balance whatsoever when we played it entirely differently than it was intended by the developers (and I don't mean a slight change as setting the timer from 2 to 3 minutes or something like that)? Take this as you wish, but I doubt it.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

So what if it's casual?

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Yeah nevermind, you're right. Obviously I overlooked the Cooking Mama/super mario bros/wii sports tournaments happening weekly.
My mistake.

I actually read all of this... But I didn't get too much of it O.o...

Anyway, does it really matter what the game was created for? Hope I'm not setting off a mine here... but we aren't obliged to follow their wishes or anything. The game may have been made for casual purposes, or even competitive purposes but that doesn't stop us from changing the rules to what we believe to be fair.

Now obviously, how we play the game won't be interpreted as "fair" for everyone. I for one think a certain character should be dropped, some stages could be added in, but thats just me.

Everybody's opinion won't be the same, but they try to get it as fair as possible.

Spelt said:

wii sports tournaments happening weekly.
My mistake.

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How ironic seeing as there have actually been wii sports tournaments.

Also Budget, just like Chsal I'm struggling to understand what your getting at.. are you trying to make us understand that competitive smash is gone..?

He's trying to say that depending on the definition of 'competitive', the ruleset can change accordingly, founded on the discussion going on in the Stage Legality thread between ADHD and basically everyone else who posts there... I think.

We define competitive smash how we want to because we can, and because people agree with us.

KillerJawz said:

How ironic seeing as there have actually been wii sports tournaments.

Also Budget, just like Chsal I'm struggling to understand what your getting at.. are you trying to make us understand that competitive smash is gone..?

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Basically this is trying to support the concept of "ban only what is truly necessary".

It's clear that, as Ph00tbag said, we have the options to choose how we want to play. However, should we not do everything in our power to play it in the most competitive way, if we are going to play it competitively? How do we know that 1v1s are more competitive than 4-player free for alls? How do we know that banning certain stages is the right move? How do we know if banning certain characters is the right move? We don't; we can't. We can hazard educated guesses (in some cases, it's almost certainly right, but only with the condition that we are playing a 1v1 with no items on!).

Basically, this is saying, "choose how we want to play, but ban as little as possible while doing so". Following the principles of competitive gaming.

1v1v1v1 is bad because in practice attacking will never pay off and thus the matches will be campfests where whoever happens to get randomly gangbaned the least will win. Items are bad because they spawn randomly, it doesn't matter how good you are at items when one player will allways be closer to the item that spawn because whether or not you get to use said item will ultimately be random. Random stuff allways sucks because only skill should determine who wins a game.

Of course it's all a matter of drawing lines between what's reasonable to ban and what isn't. Gordos are kinda lame but you can't ban all the characters that have random elements in their attacks because that would be lamer than the actual random elements.

Personally I think one should either ban Metaknight and keep a liberal stagelist or keep him and restrict the stagelist to make him less dominant. I would prefer the latter though.

Hippieslayer said:

1v1v1v1 is bad because in practice attacking will never pay off and thus the matches will be campfests where whoever happens to get randomly gangbaned the least will win.

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Show that it will be so in high-level gameplay. Or that that would be anticompetitive.

Items are bad because they spawn randomly, it doesn't matter how good you are at items when one player will allways be closer to the item that spawn because whether or not you get to use said item will ultimately be random. Random stuff allways sucks because only skill should determine who wins a game.

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Here's a few competitive games where luck plays a deciding factor:
-Poker
-Magic: The Gathering and any other TCG ever
-Any board game based on dice (heard something about Settlers of Catan being played competitively)
-Dungeons and Dragons (yes, it's played competitively)

Look at brawl and tell me that "the ability to react to random events, with more or less sufficient warning" is not a necessary skill! Go ahead! I mean, we have loads of stages with purely random events, item drops are completely random, many items are in and of themsevles random (assist trophies, pokeballs, timer, lighning, mushrooms, etc.), Several characters have randomized moves...

Of course it's all a matter of drawing lines between what's reasonable to ban and what isn't. Gordos are kinda lame but you can't ban all the characters that have random elements in their attacks because that would be lamer than the actual random elements.

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Really? Aren't we setting a double-standard if we ban randomness everywhere except within characters? (I'm aware there's a good explanation–read: one that makes sense and that I accept–for why randomness in these characters is accepted).

Personally I think one should either ban Metaknight and keep a liberal stagelist or keep him and restrict the stagelist to make him less dominant. I would prefer the latter though.

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WHY? Have we proven that MK is completely broken, and that the game basically comes down to "Pick Metaknight" if there are liberal stagelists? Have we shown that MK is so broken on any stage that it deserves to be banned for him alone? NO!

Competitive smash is what we feel (or apparantly have felt b4 os and friends) is BEST for us competitively. The sheer sake of dueling it out between characters undisturbed by as many other factors as possible.

Well, that's what it's been. Not saying it's right or wrong (although you know what I think is right) but merely stating a summed definition.

Some people just hate liberal movements. Why not "try" things for knowledge's sake.

Don't forget what happened to China.

@ADHD, but the knowledge to know what's right for the game isn't all there imo. There are more ways to play the game that I haven't seen in tournaments.

To anyone knocking this thread , I'd argue that it is actually incredibly important topic. I feel our ruleset is based on preconceptions that we've never validated.

Anyway I would say there actual concrete reasons for why stocks and the timer are needed. As for stages, a stage with circle camping or excessive randomness is bad. Randomness is always anti competitive, but testing more skills is good because it adds depth. So intrusive stages add randomness, which is bad, but force you to have a wider skill set, which is good; you have to look at each stage looking at both of those factors.

Anyway to answer this threads question I'd say, competitive (in general, not just for smash) is making sure that the most skilled opponent wins. Since we have no real guidlines for what skills should be tested we should test the skills that lean towards the healthiest metagame (a variety of viable options, depth, etc.). The problem with this, is it gives us a lot of options and we will want to stick to the core game as much as possible, but why should we when we know that it isn't intended for competitive smash? The interesting thing is that tournaments were made to find out who is the best at smash, but all they test is who is the best at smash under the "competitive ruleset." I guess I didn't really answer the question, but its tough.

Side note: Items should be legal.

GunmasterLombardi said:

Some people just hate liberal movements. Why not "try" things for knowledge's sake.

Don't forget what happened to China.

@ADHD, but the knowledge to know what's right for the game isn't all there imo. There are more ways to play the game that I haven't seen in tournaments.

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I agree, but I don't feel this liberal idea change is a positive change for the metagame, plus, this isn't an exploration, it's merely forced upon us without the public's consent and was there to stay at MLG's.

KillerJawz said:

How ironic seeing as there have actually been wii sports tournaments.

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i think you misread a key word of my post there.

ADHD said:

I agree, but I don't feel this liberal idea change is a positive change for the metagame, plus, this isn't an exploration, it's merely forced upon us without the public's consent and was there to stay at MLG's.

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Well define an "exploration". Would you even consider testing a stage like norfair or pictochat at your tournaments if it wasn't for MLG? Would you even look sideways at players who requested it? You certainly aren't listening to the (good) reasons given, and holding to your whole "Final destination, fox only, no items". Ideal.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

Well define an "exploration". Would you even consider testing a stage like norfair or pictochat at your tournaments if it wasn't for MLG? Would you even look sideways at players who requested it? You certainly aren't listening to the (good) reasons given, and holding to your whole "Final destination, fox only, no items". Ideal.

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There is a difference between exploring one stage and abruptly having multpile show up out of nowhere with massive alterations to the starter system at a major series of upcoming tournaments. I've heard your reasons and understood them, but whether they are good or not is entirely opinionated.

Let me put it to you this way. If I was to go to one of your regional NY/NJ tournaments and say, "Hey guys, let's do some serious testing on PTAD (or norfair, or Green Greens, or any similarly 'borderline' stage)", how would people react?

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

Let me put it to you this way. If I was to go to one of your regional NY/NJ tournaments and say, "Hey guys, let's do some serious testing on PTAD (or norfair, or Green Greens, or any similarly 'borderline' stage)", how would people react?

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They'd assume you main link. Stage testing has been done before, and still declined for usage.

ADHD said:

They'd assume you main link. Stage testing has been done before, and still declined for usage.

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It's been done before, but when was it done? And how do you know it was enough? How do you know there weren't new metagame developments that show that that testing gave out bad/incorrect results?

Basically, whenever you give the excuse, "it's been tested before", unless it's a stage where the only possible metagame change that could fix it would be something like "teleport to your opponent: the AT", then your testing should be questioned rather consistently. And the stage should remain unbanned.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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.

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).

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This tends to happen when you make a game into something it's not meant to be.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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?)

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The reason Coin Battle doesn't exist is probably because it's more focused on picking up coins than defeating your opponent. Timed battles with no stocks would probably end up as killing your opponent once and then running off until the remaining time runs out.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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).​

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The problem with Free-For-All and Three-For-All is that those tend to turn into a match where two (or three characters) team up on one guy. That really isn't fair. It happens in Team Battle, but the only valid reason I can see that happening is because you're playing on teams.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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 ********).

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It still resorts to camping, though. Characters who can glide are able to escape and run the timer. Don't forget which character is top tier and how many people use that character. Four Meta Knight's on Hyrule Temple would probably get nowhere.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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).​

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There may be players who are good at dealing with items, but that's not really the problem itself, I think. Turnips and Gordos aren't items. They're character projectile. The Bomb-Omb, Beam Sword, or Mr. Saturn that Peach plucks out are items. Diddy Kong's Banana Peels are also items. There isn't much we can do about those since they're still character projectile. When it comes to turning on items, crazy things happen. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose had this problem before, but items appear at random, which may or may not kill you. Sometimes during those random appearances, capsules are hidden explosives, which kill you. Take a player's skill to determine the outcome, not random explosives.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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).

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These are called counterpicks for a reason. Norfair and Brinstar would probably be good for a character with bad KO potential, or bad recover, while a stage like Rainbow Cruise would be good against a character with bad recover.

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

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?

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If you ask the developers this question, their answers will probably be, "A party game." The reason the rules are the way they are is because the veterans who started competitive Smash are the ones who made these kinds of rules. They moved onto Melee, providing the same idea, and then brought it to Brawl. Should we have Meta Knight and his Infinite Dimensional Cape? Wall infinites? Walk-off infinites? These rules were most likely created to allow the players to show their true potential.

Hm... Well, I do agree that we have banned more than necessary, but as for other things, such as 1v1v1v1, and coin battle, people know on a gut instinct that its not a good measure of skill.

Op you miss the point, it doesn't matter how good you are at responding to random elements because then theese elements occur they will allways occur so that they benefit 1 player more than the other. Of course a player who is good at responding to random elements may defeat a player who is bad despite the random elements occuring favouring the bad but that's irrelevant. The point is that if two fairly equal or equal players battle it out then whoever is favoured by the random elements will win. The second scenario is inductively known to be quite common so random elements would indeed determine the outcome of many games.

What is most interesting about the Super Smash Bros series is that it has always been the gamers that have had to define its competitive bounds. Therefore, it actually makes sense that the community that plays smash defines what is competitive and what is not. That being said, Cadet, you are technically right in saying that "1v1v1v1, all items on high, 2 minutes, any stage" could actually be considered competitive, depending upon the community that defines it.

By actual definition, competitive means "involving of based on a rivalry," which basically suggests that if something can give rise to a rivalry, it can be considered competitive. As ChaosMaster said, playing as Ganondorf in a game unbalanced against him will only make the Ganondorf player aggrivated. However, to add to that, generally an aggrivated player will try to perform better with the character they became aggrivated with, giving birth to a rivalry.

As long as a rivalry can be created, a game can be considered competitive. The fact that the Smash Community decided that 1v1, selected stages, timed, no items as competitive is just as arbitrary as saying that 2v1, Hyrule Temple, no time, and hammers, smash balls, and smart bombs on medium is competitive. It just happens that the smash community came by that standard because it saw it as the most "fair." Basically, the smash community has as much right to define the competitive rules of Brawl as much as a group of friends who meet periodically do. It is our choice as to which group we want to belong.

Uffe, you pretty much stole everything I wanted to say, good post.

I would like to say this though:

Budget Player Cadet_ said:

It's been done before, but when was it done? And how do you know it was enough? How do you know there weren't new metagame developments that show that that testing gave out bad/incorrect results?

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It's been pointed out to you a time or two that MW and WC, among other regions, tested most of those stages for extensive periods at tourneys. Since you like to bring up the metagame since then changing as your counter-argument, what's changed in it since 2009 that would make any of these stages a good idea to allow? Specifically?

inb4 Norfair and LGLs

..........

so i'm supposed to throw/kick balls at people.
maybe i should main toon link.

..........

Hey, BPC. I wanted you to know that I just made a MONSTER post in the MLG thread (you know, the fake Daigo's thread). I'll make a (probably) equally monstrous post in here, but my brain hurts a little, so I'm going take a break first. I promise I'll get around to it, though. I also have a post to make in the BBR ruleset thread, so... jeez, I'm too busy for being on vacation. lol.

Okie dokie. Good to hear, lemme go read that.
After reading that: wow, I don't even know how much of that I even understood.

Did I not make much sense? If you have time, would you be willing to PM me with what isn't clear? I'd be more than willing to fix it...

Nah, my brain is just a lil' on the fritz at the moment and was screaming "TL;DR" while I beat it with a whip saying, "no, I am GOING to read this! SHUT UP.". I'm gonna reread it when my brain stops being a ****.

Man, I don't know if it's the large volume of posts I've had to make lately, or the lack of sleep, or the fact that I've already tackled two other threads today, but I'm just having a hard time making a GOOD post for this thread. I'm' still working on it, but this is an important subject, and I don't want to post crap. I'm sorry, BPC... I'm working on it.

...man, we need more thinkers on Smashboards. Distribute the **** workload.