Jack Kieser
Smash Champion
The OP has been updated. Edits and updates are in Red. They are at the bottom of the post.
--Jack
This is GrimFandango's idea, but since it hasn't been posted in Ruleset Disc. yet, I figured I'd go ahead and post it; it needs discussing.
Thesis: Many people, especially in Stage Disc. (which more people need to read), think that the time out rules that are in place now cause more problems than they fix. GrimFandango thinks he, with helpful edits from Stage Disc., has found a rule that will fix those problems. The Fandango Time-out Clause aims to fix the problems added into the game by the necessity of having a timer for practical tournament purposes.
History of the Timer
Originally, Smash started out as a game with only one win criterion: have more KOs than your opponent at the end of two (2) minutes. This caused numerous problems: the timer wasn't long enough to allow for meaningful battle, and winning solely by time out put too much emphasis on speedy, campy characters and nerfed characters without good ground/air speed, as well as with bad approaches. Thus, the win condition was changed to a stock battle, in which the SOLE win condition was to remove a preset number of stocks from the opponent before he did the same to you.
This, however, caused its own problem. Without a predefined timer, matches could, potentially, go on forever. Within the context of competition in and of itself, this was not a problem; given infinite time, a stock match could accurately find out which was a more skilled player... however, the PRACTICALITY of tournaments required a fixed schedule, so a timer had to be implemented in order to keep tournaments from going over time.
Note that this is the ONLY reason that timers were added to Smash. Timers were NOT added for the purpose of adding a win condition by time-out... but this, necessarily, was the outcome.
Problems Caused By Adding a Timer
Unfortunately, by adding a win condition by time-out, we needed a way to determine ties when taken to the timer (since it is impossible to have a tie in a solely stock match), which is where the "lowest % damage wins" clause originated from; this was an attempt to model Smash's time out win criterion around the time-out wins of more traditional fighters. Brawl is a campy game, with a focus on stopping approaches. This caused numerous problems, specifically, within the context of Brawl, namely that a skilled player could do minimal damage and simply NOT ENGAGE (therefore, subverting the natural win criteria of stock matches) and still win the match. This caused the rise of circle camping (since banned), various projectile stalls and camps, air camping, and most notably planking.
These are all problems caused not by Brawl naturally, but by adding a win criteria to the game that subverts the game's inherent win conditions and that circumvents the game's built in results screen.
The Fandango Time-Out Clause
The Fandango Time-out clause aims to restore the win condition of Brawl to as close to the original as possible, namely, the requirement that a player removes all of his opponent's stocks. The rule is as follows:
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters; both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature. If this match goes to time, the player with the lowest % at time wins. It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
Let's analyze the rule's component parts and determine how exactly it achieves its goal.
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters"
This ensures that winning solely by the timer is NOT an option at all, much in the same way Brawl does naturally. In a purely stock based setting, ties are not possible; the game continues until one player wins, eternally. When a timer is introduced, however, the game eradicates ties by adding a Sudden Death round. The problem with Brawl's inherent Sudden Death is that it forces the players to start at 300% and introduces falling hazards randomly; it doesn't take much thought to see how this is anti-competitive.
By circumventing this sudden death round, our current ruleset has allowed players to time out by, essentially, not continuing the match, which is also anti-competitive (because it can be abused to circumvent inherent skill checks required for the game to even BE competitive). However, simply forcing a new match allows a losing player to, in the event of evident loss, force the game to time to get a rematch, which is also anti-competitive (it gives the losing player and ADVANTAGE). Luckily, Grim's next sentence fixes this problem.
"... both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature."
Here is the brilliance of the Fandango clause. By utilizing the handicap feature, it is possible to, within an acceptable margin of error, carry over the original advantages and disadvantages of the main match into the tiebreaker, thus removing the advantage the current system unfairly awards the losing player! It must be noted that, because rounding must happen to use this system, not all advantages are carried over, but this system has a built in safeguard that assures that the maximum advantage differential between the main match and the Sudden Death round is no more than +/- 5%, more than acceptable, given the alternative.
"If this match goes to time, the player with the lowest % at time wins."
Unfortunately, even this match has to end in something that isn't a tie, and chaining Sudden Death rounds infinitely would be redundant and meaningless. This is the only carryover from the current system. The idea is that getting to the point in which this actually decided a match is made SO DIFFICULT that it is an impractical way to win, thus minimizing its abuse.
"It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
This last sentence ensures that it is the PLAYER'S RESPONSIBILITY to remain honest and to keep track of his/her % damage accurately at the end of a main round. This is already the case in the current ruleset, however a point is made to explicitly state it here for clarity.
Conclusion / TL;DR
The conclusion that has been reached after much deliberation is that the Fandango Time-out Clause is able to restore the native win condition of Stock Brawl to its rightful and original significance, while also reducing the INADVERTENT addition of a possible win by time-out.
The full rule is as follows:
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters; both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature. If this match goes to time, the player with the lowest % at time wins. It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
Discuss.
OP Update: The Concept of Lose Conditions
It seems that, instead of fixating on what this clause does right, people are fixating on the relative little it gets wrong, which I hope to rectify by proposing a change to our mindset on what it means to win a match, and how wins are carried out. After mulling it over, it seems to be the case that, in an attempt to act more like large-scale competitions like pro football or MLG, we have forgotten certain facets of practical competitive play; this, I think, is what is causing the current unease about the Fandango clause. Beware: the OP is getting longer.
What It Means to "Win"
What does it actually mean to win a match? We, in various threads and debates, often talk about the "win conditions" of Brawl as we know it now, and as it once was. This thread covers the concept in detail, but leaves out one very important issue that, until recently, just never came up. So, in order to address it, let's first go over what a "win condition" really is.
When people talk about "win conditions", they are really referring to what is required of a player by the game in order to win, or an action that the player must take or complete in order for him o be considered a "winner". These conditions, though it doesn't always seem like it, are dependent only on the actions of the player being charged with winning; what this means is that, even though there are at least 2 players in any given match of Brawl, each player has a separately tracked win condition; the win condition is only dependent on YOUR own actions, not your opponent's.
For instance, the most widely known win condition in Brawl is "Remove all of your opponent's stocks". Most people add the conditional statement "before he removes all of yours" to the end, but that's actually unnecessary. While you are trying to remove you opponent's stocks, he has his own win condition, being separately tracked (the removal of HIS opponent's stocks). This is a very important distinction to make because it means, simply, that this concept is the one that makes it possible to have ties in any game. If two players of any game complete their own win conditions separately, but simultaneously, the game must award a win to both players (because they both completed their objective)... but game's can't have two winners (most of the time), so instead we call the state the game is in when both players complete their win objective a "tied state", or simply a "tie".
So, why is all of this important? Because by realizing that the game assigns, essentially, two separate win conditions, one to each player, we must also accept that there is a corollary to the win state that must also exist to give each win condition context.
The Lose Condition
In order for a "win condition" to have any meaning, you must know what it means to succeed AND to fail at the condition. That means that, in order to be able to award one player with a win and one player with a loss, each win condition must be paired with a corresponding lose condition that, upon being met, causes a player to automatically lose the game. Without this lose condition, winning has no meaning, in a practical sense, and so no competition can happen. So, what is Brawl's lose condition, if the win condition is to remove your opponent's stocks?
Simply, Brawl's lose condition is for a player to "fail to remove his opponent' stocks". If a player does not remove his opponent's stocks, he fails the win condition, but achieves the lose condition, thus awarding the player with a loss. This seems like a simple concept, but it has surprising implications aside from giving us the ability to discern the difference between a win and a loss. Just like with how win conditions are tracked, loss conditions are also tracked separately, yet simultaneously, by the game. A player can achieve his loss condition independently of his opponent, and in fact both players can independently achieve their fail conditions simultaneously, exactly how two players can achieve their win conditions simultaneously. As in the case of a simultaneous win, a simultaneous loss of both players results in a tie... but in a completely different tie!
Simply, if both players won match one, the score would be 1-1 (which cannot happen). But, if both players lose match one, the score is 0-0... still a tie, but a totally different kind of tie!
Brawl, Win/Lose conditions, and Ties
When a player completes his win condition, we award that player a point, in bracket. In a best of 3 set, a player "wins" the set when he accumulates 3 points, creating a layered win condition, or a win condition inside of another win condition. Assuming a hypothetical set in which a player has achieved his win condition twice, while his opponent has achieved it once, the final score of a set would be 2-1 (two points to player 1 and one point to player 2). When players tie, if ties were allowed, both players would be awarded a point; however, simultaneous win conditions in the event of two winners are competitively invalid (two players cannot advance in any given round of a bracket) so when two players achieve win conditions simultaneously, a "tiebreaker" is played.
On the surface, all of this would seem to be the same if both players achieve their LOSE conditions simultaneously, as well, but that's not actually the case. A match can only have one winner, but it can have two losers without repercussions. How is this possible? Simply analyze what happens to the bracket in the case of two disqualifications in a set. If two players are DQ'ed for a breach of tournament procedure (for instance, both use a banned tactic, or both are accused of match fixing), neither player advances, and the opponent in the next round receives a "bye", or is awarded a free win. Thus, it is impossible, within the context of a bracket, to have two winners, but it is logically permissible to have two LOSERS.
What does this mean in terms of set scoring? Simply, if both players are awarded a loss for any given game, they are simply both denied a point for that match. So, if we have a hypothetical set in which round one is awarded to player 1 and round two is awarded to player two, yet round three is lost by both players, the final set score would be 1-1 (out of 3). This means that neither player achieved the win condition for the set, and thus neither player can advance to the next round. This is, in the context of a bracket, both logically valid and competitively permissible.
Simultaneous Losses and the Fandango Clause
How does this relate to the Fandango clause? The Fandango clause attempts to mirror the game's results screen as much as possible, yet runs into a stumbling block when the Sudden Death match reaches time. This is because Brawl's native Sudden Death does not have a timer, and could theoretically go on forever, which cannot be allowed in a traditional tournament setting; the tournament, unlike an NFL game or a MLB game (which has virtually unlimited funding and a viewer base which is willing to watch indefinitely), has practical time limits which must be adhered to. The Fandango Clause's failure is in its inability to deal with this necessity to end, but has, until now, been logically unable to end without a winner.
I propose that the clause be allowed to award both players a loss at the end of the timer, if they have not completed the win criteria of removing the opponent's stock. This is, as proven above, logically permissible and competitively valid. In addition to this, it fulfills it's goal of mirroring Brawl's native results screen as much as possible.
Now, people may try to make the argument that, if this can be done, why it cannot simply be done at the end of the main match, and save 5 minutes of overtime. Simply, the reason is because the results screen would have given a second change, and so should we. If Brawl, at time, simply called the match a draw, then we would, too, and simply award both players a loss. This is not the case, however. The game would continue into a Sudden Death round, so in the interest of mirroring Brawl's native results screen, so should we.
Thus, I postulate that the clause be changed as such (change in bold):
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters; both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature. If this match goes to time, both players are awarded a loss. It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
--Jack
This is GrimFandango's idea, but since it hasn't been posted in Ruleset Disc. yet, I figured I'd go ahead and post it; it needs discussing.
Thesis: Many people, especially in Stage Disc. (which more people need to read), think that the time out rules that are in place now cause more problems than they fix. GrimFandango thinks he, with helpful edits from Stage Disc., has found a rule that will fix those problems. The Fandango Time-out Clause aims to fix the problems added into the game by the necessity of having a timer for practical tournament purposes.
History of the Timer
Originally, Smash started out as a game with only one win criterion: have more KOs than your opponent at the end of two (2) minutes. This caused numerous problems: the timer wasn't long enough to allow for meaningful battle, and winning solely by time out put too much emphasis on speedy, campy characters and nerfed characters without good ground/air speed, as well as with bad approaches. Thus, the win condition was changed to a stock battle, in which the SOLE win condition was to remove a preset number of stocks from the opponent before he did the same to you.
This, however, caused its own problem. Without a predefined timer, matches could, potentially, go on forever. Within the context of competition in and of itself, this was not a problem; given infinite time, a stock match could accurately find out which was a more skilled player... however, the PRACTICALITY of tournaments required a fixed schedule, so a timer had to be implemented in order to keep tournaments from going over time.
Note that this is the ONLY reason that timers were added to Smash. Timers were NOT added for the purpose of adding a win condition by time-out... but this, necessarily, was the outcome.
Problems Caused By Adding a Timer
Unfortunately, by adding a win condition by time-out, we needed a way to determine ties when taken to the timer (since it is impossible to have a tie in a solely stock match), which is where the "lowest % damage wins" clause originated from; this was an attempt to model Smash's time out win criterion around the time-out wins of more traditional fighters. Brawl is a campy game, with a focus on stopping approaches. This caused numerous problems, specifically, within the context of Brawl, namely that a skilled player could do minimal damage and simply NOT ENGAGE (therefore, subverting the natural win criteria of stock matches) and still win the match. This caused the rise of circle camping (since banned), various projectile stalls and camps, air camping, and most notably planking.
These are all problems caused not by Brawl naturally, but by adding a win criteria to the game that subverts the game's inherent win conditions and that circumvents the game's built in results screen.
The Fandango Time-Out Clause
The Fandango Time-out clause aims to restore the win condition of Brawl to as close to the original as possible, namely, the requirement that a player removes all of his opponent's stocks. The rule is as follows:
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters; both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature. If this match goes to time, the player with the lowest % at time wins. It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
Let's analyze the rule's component parts and determine how exactly it achieves its goal.
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters"
This ensures that winning solely by the timer is NOT an option at all, much in the same way Brawl does naturally. In a purely stock based setting, ties are not possible; the game continues until one player wins, eternally. When a timer is introduced, however, the game eradicates ties by adding a Sudden Death round. The problem with Brawl's inherent Sudden Death is that it forces the players to start at 300% and introduces falling hazards randomly; it doesn't take much thought to see how this is anti-competitive.
By circumventing this sudden death round, our current ruleset has allowed players to time out by, essentially, not continuing the match, which is also anti-competitive (because it can be abused to circumvent inherent skill checks required for the game to even BE competitive). However, simply forcing a new match allows a losing player to, in the event of evident loss, force the game to time to get a rematch, which is also anti-competitive (it gives the losing player and ADVANTAGE). Luckily, Grim's next sentence fixes this problem.
"... both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature."
Here is the brilliance of the Fandango clause. By utilizing the handicap feature, it is possible to, within an acceptable margin of error, carry over the original advantages and disadvantages of the main match into the tiebreaker, thus removing the advantage the current system unfairly awards the losing player! It must be noted that, because rounding must happen to use this system, not all advantages are carried over, but this system has a built in safeguard that assures that the maximum advantage differential between the main match and the Sudden Death round is no more than +/- 5%, more than acceptable, given the alternative.
"If this match goes to time, the player with the lowest % at time wins."
Unfortunately, even this match has to end in something that isn't a tie, and chaining Sudden Death rounds infinitely would be redundant and meaningless. This is the only carryover from the current system. The idea is that getting to the point in which this actually decided a match is made SO DIFFICULT that it is an impractical way to win, thus minimizing its abuse.
"It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
This last sentence ensures that it is the PLAYER'S RESPONSIBILITY to remain honest and to keep track of his/her % damage accurately at the end of a main round. This is already the case in the current ruleset, however a point is made to explicitly state it here for clarity.
Conclusion / TL;DR
The conclusion that has been reached after much deliberation is that the Fandango Time-out Clause is able to restore the native win condition of Stock Brawl to its rightful and original significance, while also reducing the INADVERTENT addition of a possible win by time-out.
The full rule is as follows:
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters; both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature. If this match goes to time, the player with the lowest % at time wins. It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
Discuss.
OP Update: The Concept of Lose Conditions
It seems that, instead of fixating on what this clause does right, people are fixating on the relative little it gets wrong, which I hope to rectify by proposing a change to our mindset on what it means to win a match, and how wins are carried out. After mulling it over, it seems to be the case that, in an attempt to act more like large-scale competitions like pro football or MLG, we have forgotten certain facets of practical competitive play; this, I think, is what is causing the current unease about the Fandango clause. Beware: the OP is getting longer.
What It Means to "Win"
What does it actually mean to win a match? We, in various threads and debates, often talk about the "win conditions" of Brawl as we know it now, and as it once was. This thread covers the concept in detail, but leaves out one very important issue that, until recently, just never came up. So, in order to address it, let's first go over what a "win condition" really is.
When people talk about "win conditions", they are really referring to what is required of a player by the game in order to win, or an action that the player must take or complete in order for him o be considered a "winner". These conditions, though it doesn't always seem like it, are dependent only on the actions of the player being charged with winning; what this means is that, even though there are at least 2 players in any given match of Brawl, each player has a separately tracked win condition; the win condition is only dependent on YOUR own actions, not your opponent's.
For instance, the most widely known win condition in Brawl is "Remove all of your opponent's stocks". Most people add the conditional statement "before he removes all of yours" to the end, but that's actually unnecessary. While you are trying to remove you opponent's stocks, he has his own win condition, being separately tracked (the removal of HIS opponent's stocks). This is a very important distinction to make because it means, simply, that this concept is the one that makes it possible to have ties in any game. If two players of any game complete their own win conditions separately, but simultaneously, the game must award a win to both players (because they both completed their objective)... but game's can't have two winners (most of the time), so instead we call the state the game is in when both players complete their win objective a "tied state", or simply a "tie".
So, why is all of this important? Because by realizing that the game assigns, essentially, two separate win conditions, one to each player, we must also accept that there is a corollary to the win state that must also exist to give each win condition context.
The Lose Condition
In order for a "win condition" to have any meaning, you must know what it means to succeed AND to fail at the condition. That means that, in order to be able to award one player with a win and one player with a loss, each win condition must be paired with a corresponding lose condition that, upon being met, causes a player to automatically lose the game. Without this lose condition, winning has no meaning, in a practical sense, and so no competition can happen. So, what is Brawl's lose condition, if the win condition is to remove your opponent's stocks?
Simply, Brawl's lose condition is for a player to "fail to remove his opponent' stocks". If a player does not remove his opponent's stocks, he fails the win condition, but achieves the lose condition, thus awarding the player with a loss. This seems like a simple concept, but it has surprising implications aside from giving us the ability to discern the difference between a win and a loss. Just like with how win conditions are tracked, loss conditions are also tracked separately, yet simultaneously, by the game. A player can achieve his loss condition independently of his opponent, and in fact both players can independently achieve their fail conditions simultaneously, exactly how two players can achieve their win conditions simultaneously. As in the case of a simultaneous win, a simultaneous loss of both players results in a tie... but in a completely different tie!
Simply, if both players won match one, the score would be 1-1 (which cannot happen). But, if both players lose match one, the score is 0-0... still a tie, but a totally different kind of tie!
Brawl, Win/Lose conditions, and Ties
When a player completes his win condition, we award that player a point, in bracket. In a best of 3 set, a player "wins" the set when he accumulates 3 points, creating a layered win condition, or a win condition inside of another win condition. Assuming a hypothetical set in which a player has achieved his win condition twice, while his opponent has achieved it once, the final score of a set would be 2-1 (two points to player 1 and one point to player 2). When players tie, if ties were allowed, both players would be awarded a point; however, simultaneous win conditions in the event of two winners are competitively invalid (two players cannot advance in any given round of a bracket) so when two players achieve win conditions simultaneously, a "tiebreaker" is played.
On the surface, all of this would seem to be the same if both players achieve their LOSE conditions simultaneously, as well, but that's not actually the case. A match can only have one winner, but it can have two losers without repercussions. How is this possible? Simply analyze what happens to the bracket in the case of two disqualifications in a set. If two players are DQ'ed for a breach of tournament procedure (for instance, both use a banned tactic, or both are accused of match fixing), neither player advances, and the opponent in the next round receives a "bye", or is awarded a free win. Thus, it is impossible, within the context of a bracket, to have two winners, but it is logically permissible to have two LOSERS.
What does this mean in terms of set scoring? Simply, if both players are awarded a loss for any given game, they are simply both denied a point for that match. So, if we have a hypothetical set in which round one is awarded to player 1 and round two is awarded to player two, yet round three is lost by both players, the final set score would be 1-1 (out of 3). This means that neither player achieved the win condition for the set, and thus neither player can advance to the next round. This is, in the context of a bracket, both logically valid and competitively permissible.
Simultaneous Losses and the Fandango Clause
How does this relate to the Fandango clause? The Fandango clause attempts to mirror the game's results screen as much as possible, yet runs into a stumbling block when the Sudden Death match reaches time. This is because Brawl's native Sudden Death does not have a timer, and could theoretically go on forever, which cannot be allowed in a traditional tournament setting; the tournament, unlike an NFL game or a MLB game (which has virtually unlimited funding and a viewer base which is willing to watch indefinitely), has practical time limits which must be adhered to. The Fandango Clause's failure is in its inability to deal with this necessity to end, but has, until now, been logically unable to end without a winner.
I propose that the clause be allowed to award both players a loss at the end of the timer, if they have not completed the win criteria of removing the opponent's stock. This is, as proven above, logically permissible and competitively valid. In addition to this, it fulfills it's goal of mirroring Brawl's native results screen as much as possible.
Now, people may try to make the argument that, if this can be done, why it cannot simply be done at the end of the main match, and save 5 minutes of overtime. Simply, the reason is because the results screen would have given a second change, and so should we. If Brawl, at time, simply called the match a draw, then we would, too, and simply award both players a loss. This is not the case, however. The game would continue into a Sudden Death round, so in the interest of mirroring Brawl's native results screen, so should we.
Thus, I postulate that the clause be changed as such (change in bold):
"If a main set match goes to time, a 1 stock, 5 minute tiebreaker match is played on the same stage, with the same characters; both player's ending % are carried over to the tiebreaker match to the nearest 10% using the handicap feature. If this match goes to time, both players are awarded a loss. It is the player's responsibility to keep track of their %'s; if either player cannot or does not give an accurate % at the end of either match, then he/she is automatically awarded a loss."
