“If I may sum it up as follows - what we're saying is that when I get hit by a car and my opponent takes advantage, I blame myself for letting myself get in a bad position. When you get hit by a car, you curse your bad luck and blame the stage for interfering with your match.” - Me
The above statement, stolen and modified out of a stage discussion that I participated in recently, sums up the vast difference between two schools of thought in Melee rule-making. No Johns is almost dead as a principle of Smash. Many modern players care so much about the (admittedly cool) fancy combos and tech skill that they have taken over the Smash ruleset with their preferences about how the game “should” be played, limiting anything that messes up the opportunity for skill demos. Suggesting that there's a way that it "should be played" is an elitist attitude that doesn't accurately represent that this is a personal opinion (even if it is shared by a good portion of the community), and that there are varying opinions out there on the matter, so I'm here to contribute my own to the mix as an alternative opinion.
Personally, I love to play the game Super Smash Brothers Melee. I love factors that make you weigh risk/reward, that make you adapt your play to massive variations in stage layout, and that create high-pressure situations where the best players have the chance to display their excellence. I love players that can force their opponents, through stage control, into zones of the stage that are difficult for them to handle or that contain more risks. More than all of this love, I hate Johns (especially when I catch myself doing it).
This is a fully-competitive ruleset where the best players will win most of the time, as in any good ruleset, and it rewards players who develop their talents with multiple characters and whole-game knowledge. It also has a unifying rational basis that people can actually argue about, contrary to the purely opinion-based, preference-based, or politically developed rulesets that are typically released. I’ll admit up front that I haven’t been to many tournaments over the past couple of years, but I still play, know, and love the game pretty darn well.
Going with the opinion theme, this ruleset is for anyone that agrees with my rational criteria as a starting point, and it’s not for anyone who doesn’t. If you’re going to argue about anything on this list, you’re going to have to argue it against my criteria, or I’ll just give you a funny look. I don’t care about your incorrect definition of fairness, or about your opinion about stage damage wrecking the “real game.” I am interested if you feel that some stages do have single-character dominance issues that are ignored, or if you disagree with my “Turnip Threshold” analysis for certain stages.
Without further ado...
The No-Johns Ruleset
Objective: Preserve as much of the game of Melee as possible while keeping the ruleset competitive. When it is not an issue of competitiveness, select the option that promotes more game knowledge and required ability.
Aside: Competitive in this context simply means that the ruleset applies equally to all players before they begin to place their own input into the game (character selection), with winners consistently determined according to their relative skill levels. The actual word one should use is fair, but so many people abuse that word that I hate to invoke it.
Rational Criteria for Ruleset: To accomplish the objective, this ruleset is based on three pieces of arbitrarily-selected criteria.
1. Prevent overly randomized results – One primary objective of any competitive ruleset is to ensure consistent results. Consistent does not mean that the same/best person wins every time - consistent is just consistent. There is always variation in results, even before random factors come into play. Melee is a game that includes a degree of randomness in many of its facets, and decisions under this criteria have to meet some arbitrary threshold. In this case I’ve selected something that is considered widely acceptable by the community - the results randomization generated by the computer’s selection of Peach’s turnip pull - as my standard (referred to as the Turnip Threshold). Any effect that is less significant than this, then, should be allowable.
2. Bans distributed only against single-character or single-strategy brokenness – Stages such as Hyrule, with run-away projectile camping being unbeatable, fall into this category. If two characters are viable, then clearly neither is broken and you have options available to you.
3. Unavoidable glitches that impede gameplay – Stages like Brinstar Depths, through which your character can randomly fall through any part of the stage, were banned for this reason. FoD is usually banned in teams because the frame drop messes with people. I never thought the Mute frame drop was bad enough to warrant it, but some do.
Best of 3 Sets, played as follows:
First round – Characters may be double-blind selected. Players then stage strike, using the whole stage list. Players may elect to start with a smaller list of 5 or 6 standard stages (chosen by the TO) to speed up the process if both agree.
Second/Third rounds – Advanced slobs - loser picks stage, winner changes character, loser changes character. A stage may not be repeated (under the criteria that this requires most ability/game knowledge).
Bans - Bans are optional, but it does little to "balance" anything. It just makes characters better or worse depending on their number of counters.
Team Attack ON – Falls under objective of “select option that requires most ability/game knowledge.”
Items OFF – In the distant past while this was still a debate, we even experimented with Items-On during only round robin play as a means of keeping them in the tournament scene. Despite this, it seemed to clearly violate the Turnip Threshold (if only because of exploding boxes), and exited the tournament scene. Anyone disagree?
Timed out matches will be determined by the remaining number of lives, then percentage of the current stock. In the event of an exact percentage tie, play out sudden death (preserve original game where logical).
Stage Analysis – Please be aware that most of this is opinion based on the criteria listed above. You may choose to discount or disagree with any of this, but I feel that I have been very strict in adhering to my own criteria so as to preserve the logical coherency outlined above.
Should be included – Stages that fail none of the criterion are listed here
Final Destination – Fails no test.
Battlefield – Fails no test.
Dream Land – Fails no test. Random wind effect is minimal.
Fountain of Dreams – Fails no test. Random platform movement has affected matches, but is well below the Turnip Threshold. Many viable characters.
Pokemon Stadium – Fails no test. Transformations occur randomly, but players are warned well in advance. All odd stage characteristics are consistent and can be learned.
Yoshi’s Story – Despite having some of the most severe random effects of any “neutral” stage (Shyguy-induced extended hitboxes/bonus DI and Randall), it still seems pretty clearly below the Turnip Threshold.
Brinstar – Fails no test. On rare occasions, lava will randomly save players, but this effect is minimal and comparable to widely-accepted stages like Yoshi’s Story. At least three characters are strong on this stage (Peach/Puff/Ganon), with a couple of additional characters able to hold their own.
Jungle Japes – Fails no test. Klaptrap is in fixed zones of the stage that are completely avoidable until high % knockaways. I’m not aware of a single character or strategy ever dominating this stage, though some did attempt to play a lot of keep-away with moderate success.
Mute City – Fails no test. No randomness. It could be pretty strongly argued that the stage has a “two-character dominance” issue, but that doesn’t meet my criteria, since neither character is broken. In my opinion, it is one of the best stages for terrain adaptation and utilization and risk/reward play.
Rainbow Cruise – Fails no test. May have same “two-character dominance” that Mute has, but can’t ban it by my criteria.
Kongo Jungle 64 – Fails no test. Barrel is minimal in its random effects. Stage has unique geography that seems to have the potential to both cause major problems and give many benefits for a large number of characters. Run-away camping may, in fact, be a stage-breaking strategy, but it’s hard to see how multiple characters can’t use it to some extent.
Mushroom Kingdom II – Fails no test. No one ever effectively made a case for stage brokenness. It was removed by most solely for walk-off edges, which is a stage property that no one ever proved to be broken as a rule, just high-risk, high-reward. We kept it on at FCs even through 2007.
Borderline – A lot of opinion and judgment involved, otherwise known as "TO's choice"
Corneria – Tough in multiple cases. At the very least, two characters seem to be viable here. Arwing lasers can come close to the Turnip Threshold, but I don’t think it crosses that line. Camping the right side of the stage was never proven to be broken, but Ness/YLink gun camping is still up in the air (though as Big D has noted, you can always go down and destroy the gun if you are that scared of it, forcing a fight on stage for the rest of the time).
Green Greens – Mildly struggles with randomized results. However, I have played on this stage quite a bit in my tournament career, and I do believe that for the most part the randomness is not as bad as it seems. Players’ bad decisions on positioning are usually much more impactful. There is a lot of potential for clever use of terrain, so I do still like it as an option, but I wouldn’t die for it. May be single-character dominance issues as well (who else but Fox?).
Poke Floats - Does Fox break this stage? I know that this is one of two stages where I have landed two space animal slayers without getting hit and still lost the round, but that’s very anecdotal. No stage randomness, and the two spots you can fall through are widely known and easily avoidable, so single-character dominance is really the only possible issue.
Onett – Does Fox break this stage? Quite a few felt that he did.
Peach’s Castle – Does Fox break this stage? Quite a few felt that he did. Random effects seem well short of Turnip Threshold, but can be quite present.
Should be removed – To the best of current knowledge, these stages have unavoidable issues
Icicle Mountain – Stage movement severely and regularly impacts players at random times, often costing full stock. Fails Turnip Threshold.
Brinstar Depths – The causes of stage warping were never found. Even then, some have suggested that Fox breaks this stage.
Pipes – A rare case of single-character domination. Before it was banned, some players wisely started countering to this stage, even if they did not play Fox, and scored wins over better opponents by switching to him. Between the low ceiling and the walk-off edge-shine potential across the entire stage, it seemed to be too much. This was before most of the dominant Falcos showed up, so it would be interesting to examine further in light of that.
Great Bay – A similar stage to Pipes. Fox showed the ability to pull off “mini-Hyrule” run away camping around the stage, and the low ceiling only added to his control over the stage.
Yoshi 64 - Run away camping is an extremely dominant strategy
Hyrule Temple – Run away camping is an extremely dominant strategy
Flat Zone – Randomized results induced by falling items fails Turnip Threshold
Big Blue – I want to say randomized results cause a Turnip Threshold problem, but I’m not sure that’s true. For now, I lean that way.
Completely unsure
Kongo Jungle (Rock) – Not sure any random factor is enough to randomize results in any meaningful way. It was banned early, so there is no evidence of a single character being dominant. It was hypothesized that the rock was too strong of a location to approach. I’m not convinced that this is true in the modern game. To me, the extreme verticality of the stage may pose more problems, but that may only make it a counterstage against slow movers.
Mushroom Kingdom – Bricks are completely disruptive, but I’m not certain that they are competitive issues at all. They may actually interfere with the ability of some top-tier characters to execute that which makes them top-tier. Regarding character balance, no idea. None.
Venom – I don’t know of any clear reason why this would be banned, save for potential Fox-dominance (which may not even be true). Arwing lasers pose the same problem that they do on Corneria, which is to say a minimal one, and cave-saves are similar. The combined effect pushes it close to ban territory.
Fourside – Was originally among some of the first stages banned for several reasons, including fears of Peach Bomber stalling and camera issues, especially during doubles on smaller TVs. Truthfully, I have no idea if it fails any of my given criteria or not. Run away camping could well be dominant here – there’s a lot of room.
----------------
One final note. Often, it is said that competitive activities should never have any randomness in them, and the people that say this are very passionate in defense of it. Unfortunately, most of these same people fail to realize that this is just an opinion. In fact, when done correctly, incorporating some randomness can test a battery of skills - the weighing of risk/reward, ability to evaluate and react to circumstances and new information, improvisation, ability to recover from a negative event, etc.
In other words, if you are someone who thinks no randomness belongs in a competitive game, this isn't your thread and it is not the place to debate.
Feel free to discuss, but as I’ve mentioned, I suggest you discuss using my criteria or I will just post -_- + 10 chars. I also don't think there are too many people that think this way anymore in the community, so it will be interesting to see if anyone does.
The above statement, stolen and modified out of a stage discussion that I participated in recently, sums up the vast difference between two schools of thought in Melee rule-making. No Johns is almost dead as a principle of Smash. Many modern players care so much about the (admittedly cool) fancy combos and tech skill that they have taken over the Smash ruleset with their preferences about how the game “should” be played, limiting anything that messes up the opportunity for skill demos. Suggesting that there's a way that it "should be played" is an elitist attitude that doesn't accurately represent that this is a personal opinion (even if it is shared by a good portion of the community), and that there are varying opinions out there on the matter, so I'm here to contribute my own to the mix as an alternative opinion.
Personally, I love to play the game Super Smash Brothers Melee. I love factors that make you weigh risk/reward, that make you adapt your play to massive variations in stage layout, and that create high-pressure situations where the best players have the chance to display their excellence. I love players that can force their opponents, through stage control, into zones of the stage that are difficult for them to handle or that contain more risks. More than all of this love, I hate Johns (especially when I catch myself doing it).
This is a fully-competitive ruleset where the best players will win most of the time, as in any good ruleset, and it rewards players who develop their talents with multiple characters and whole-game knowledge. It also has a unifying rational basis that people can actually argue about, contrary to the purely opinion-based, preference-based, or politically developed rulesets that are typically released. I’ll admit up front that I haven’t been to many tournaments over the past couple of years, but I still play, know, and love the game pretty darn well.
Going with the opinion theme, this ruleset is for anyone that agrees with my rational criteria as a starting point, and it’s not for anyone who doesn’t. If you’re going to argue about anything on this list, you’re going to have to argue it against my criteria, or I’ll just give you a funny look. I don’t care about your incorrect definition of fairness, or about your opinion about stage damage wrecking the “real game.” I am interested if you feel that some stages do have single-character dominance issues that are ignored, or if you disagree with my “Turnip Threshold” analysis for certain stages.
Without further ado...
The No-Johns Ruleset
Objective: Preserve as much of the game of Melee as possible while keeping the ruleset competitive. When it is not an issue of competitiveness, select the option that promotes more game knowledge and required ability.
Aside: Competitive in this context simply means that the ruleset applies equally to all players before they begin to place their own input into the game (character selection), with winners consistently determined according to their relative skill levels. The actual word one should use is fair, but so many people abuse that word that I hate to invoke it.
Rational Criteria for Ruleset: To accomplish the objective, this ruleset is based on three pieces of arbitrarily-selected criteria.
1. Prevent overly randomized results – One primary objective of any competitive ruleset is to ensure consistent results. Consistent does not mean that the same/best person wins every time - consistent is just consistent. There is always variation in results, even before random factors come into play. Melee is a game that includes a degree of randomness in many of its facets, and decisions under this criteria have to meet some arbitrary threshold. In this case I’ve selected something that is considered widely acceptable by the community - the results randomization generated by the computer’s selection of Peach’s turnip pull - as my standard (referred to as the Turnip Threshold). Any effect that is less significant than this, then, should be allowable.
2. Bans distributed only against single-character or single-strategy brokenness – Stages such as Hyrule, with run-away projectile camping being unbeatable, fall into this category. If two characters are viable, then clearly neither is broken and you have options available to you.
3. Unavoidable glitches that impede gameplay – Stages like Brinstar Depths, through which your character can randomly fall through any part of the stage, were banned for this reason. FoD is usually banned in teams because the frame drop messes with people. I never thought the Mute frame drop was bad enough to warrant it, but some do.
Best of 3 Sets, played as follows:
First round – Characters may be double-blind selected. Players then stage strike, using the whole stage list. Players may elect to start with a smaller list of 5 or 6 standard stages (chosen by the TO) to speed up the process if both agree.
Second/Third rounds – Advanced slobs - loser picks stage, winner changes character, loser changes character. A stage may not be repeated (under the criteria that this requires most ability/game knowledge).
Bans - Bans are optional, but it does little to "balance" anything. It just makes characters better or worse depending on their number of counters.
Team Attack ON – Falls under objective of “select option that requires most ability/game knowledge.”
Items OFF – In the distant past while this was still a debate, we even experimented with Items-On during only round robin play as a means of keeping them in the tournament scene. Despite this, it seemed to clearly violate the Turnip Threshold (if only because of exploding boxes), and exited the tournament scene. Anyone disagree?
Timed out matches will be determined by the remaining number of lives, then percentage of the current stock. In the event of an exact percentage tie, play out sudden death (preserve original game where logical).
Stage Analysis – Please be aware that most of this is opinion based on the criteria listed above. You may choose to discount or disagree with any of this, but I feel that I have been very strict in adhering to my own criteria so as to preserve the logical coherency outlined above.
Should be included – Stages that fail none of the criterion are listed here
Final Destination – Fails no test.
Battlefield – Fails no test.
Dream Land – Fails no test. Random wind effect is minimal.
Fountain of Dreams – Fails no test. Random platform movement has affected matches, but is well below the Turnip Threshold. Many viable characters.
Pokemon Stadium – Fails no test. Transformations occur randomly, but players are warned well in advance. All odd stage characteristics are consistent and can be learned.
Yoshi’s Story – Despite having some of the most severe random effects of any “neutral” stage (Shyguy-induced extended hitboxes/bonus DI and Randall), it still seems pretty clearly below the Turnip Threshold.
Brinstar – Fails no test. On rare occasions, lava will randomly save players, but this effect is minimal and comparable to widely-accepted stages like Yoshi’s Story. At least three characters are strong on this stage (Peach/Puff/Ganon), with a couple of additional characters able to hold their own.
Jungle Japes – Fails no test. Klaptrap is in fixed zones of the stage that are completely avoidable until high % knockaways. I’m not aware of a single character or strategy ever dominating this stage, though some did attempt to play a lot of keep-away with moderate success.
Mute City – Fails no test. No randomness. It could be pretty strongly argued that the stage has a “two-character dominance” issue, but that doesn’t meet my criteria, since neither character is broken. In my opinion, it is one of the best stages for terrain adaptation and utilization and risk/reward play.
Rainbow Cruise – Fails no test. May have same “two-character dominance” that Mute has, but can’t ban it by my criteria.
Kongo Jungle 64 – Fails no test. Barrel is minimal in its random effects. Stage has unique geography that seems to have the potential to both cause major problems and give many benefits for a large number of characters. Run-away camping may, in fact, be a stage-breaking strategy, but it’s hard to see how multiple characters can’t use it to some extent.
Mushroom Kingdom II – Fails no test. No one ever effectively made a case for stage brokenness. It was removed by most solely for walk-off edges, which is a stage property that no one ever proved to be broken as a rule, just high-risk, high-reward. We kept it on at FCs even through 2007.
Borderline – A lot of opinion and judgment involved, otherwise known as "TO's choice"
Corneria – Tough in multiple cases. At the very least, two characters seem to be viable here. Arwing lasers can come close to the Turnip Threshold, but I don’t think it crosses that line. Camping the right side of the stage was never proven to be broken, but Ness/YLink gun camping is still up in the air (though as Big D has noted, you can always go down and destroy the gun if you are that scared of it, forcing a fight on stage for the rest of the time).
Green Greens – Mildly struggles with randomized results. However, I have played on this stage quite a bit in my tournament career, and I do believe that for the most part the randomness is not as bad as it seems. Players’ bad decisions on positioning are usually much more impactful. There is a lot of potential for clever use of terrain, so I do still like it as an option, but I wouldn’t die for it. May be single-character dominance issues as well (who else but Fox?).
Poke Floats - Does Fox break this stage? I know that this is one of two stages where I have landed two space animal slayers without getting hit and still lost the round, but that’s very anecdotal. No stage randomness, and the two spots you can fall through are widely known and easily avoidable, so single-character dominance is really the only possible issue.
Onett – Does Fox break this stage? Quite a few felt that he did.
Peach’s Castle – Does Fox break this stage? Quite a few felt that he did. Random effects seem well short of Turnip Threshold, but can be quite present.
Should be removed – To the best of current knowledge, these stages have unavoidable issues
Icicle Mountain – Stage movement severely and regularly impacts players at random times, often costing full stock. Fails Turnip Threshold.
Brinstar Depths – The causes of stage warping were never found. Even then, some have suggested that Fox breaks this stage.
Pipes – A rare case of single-character domination. Before it was banned, some players wisely started countering to this stage, even if they did not play Fox, and scored wins over better opponents by switching to him. Between the low ceiling and the walk-off edge-shine potential across the entire stage, it seemed to be too much. This was before most of the dominant Falcos showed up, so it would be interesting to examine further in light of that.
Great Bay – A similar stage to Pipes. Fox showed the ability to pull off “mini-Hyrule” run away camping around the stage, and the low ceiling only added to his control over the stage.
Yoshi 64 - Run away camping is an extremely dominant strategy
Hyrule Temple – Run away camping is an extremely dominant strategy
Flat Zone – Randomized results induced by falling items fails Turnip Threshold
Big Blue – I want to say randomized results cause a Turnip Threshold problem, but I’m not sure that’s true. For now, I lean that way.
Completely unsure
Kongo Jungle (Rock) – Not sure any random factor is enough to randomize results in any meaningful way. It was banned early, so there is no evidence of a single character being dominant. It was hypothesized that the rock was too strong of a location to approach. I’m not convinced that this is true in the modern game. To me, the extreme verticality of the stage may pose more problems, but that may only make it a counterstage against slow movers.
Mushroom Kingdom – Bricks are completely disruptive, but I’m not certain that they are competitive issues at all. They may actually interfere with the ability of some top-tier characters to execute that which makes them top-tier. Regarding character balance, no idea. None.
Venom – I don’t know of any clear reason why this would be banned, save for potential Fox-dominance (which may not even be true). Arwing lasers pose the same problem that they do on Corneria, which is to say a minimal one, and cave-saves are similar. The combined effect pushes it close to ban territory.
Fourside – Was originally among some of the first stages banned for several reasons, including fears of Peach Bomber stalling and camera issues, especially during doubles on smaller TVs. Truthfully, I have no idea if it fails any of my given criteria or not. Run away camping could well be dominant here – there’s a lot of room.
----------------
One final note. Often, it is said that competitive activities should never have any randomness in them, and the people that say this are very passionate in defense of it. Unfortunately, most of these same people fail to realize that this is just an opinion. In fact, when done correctly, incorporating some randomness can test a battery of skills - the weighing of risk/reward, ability to evaluate and react to circumstances and new information, improvisation, ability to recover from a negative event, etc.
In other words, if you are someone who thinks no randomness belongs in a competitive game, this isn't your thread and it is not the place to debate.
Feel free to discuss, but as I’ve mentioned, I suggest you discuss using my criteria or I will just post -_- + 10 chars. I also don't think there are too many people that think this way anymore in the community, so it will be interesting to see if anyone does.
feels bad man
