If you've gotten to the point of reading this sentence, you're brave, or curious if I tossed my entire bag of marbles off a cliff. I assure you, I held on to a couple.
It's an idea I've bounced around in my head for quite a while, but never really taken the time to present it in any particular manner.
With the Invitational, E3 show floor and the Best Buy demos all running 4 person FFA, my local game store running a few casual FFA events and Sakurai's statements of focusing Brawl and Smash 4 around four person matches, I felt now was a good time to put this idea to paper and spark a proper discussion of it. I also have thrown the idea out to a few friends recently, who also expressed it not being a completely terrible idea.
Here are the facts, Brawl and Smash 4 have been said by Sakurai to be focused around four player matches. As has been noted before, with Brawl we simply tried to shoehorn the agreed upon Melee ruleset into it, with that being 1v1 stock matches. Brawl's gameplay in a 1v1 scenario currently lends itself to very calculated and generally defensive play. Those coming from Melee much prefer it's high pressure and aggressive nature, which leads to all the arguments we have.
For Nintendo's Smash 4 events, they've been running timed matches and determining the winner by score. For the Invitational, players had 4 stocks and top 2 were determined by the last person standing, and then second place by final score. Both of these formats have the fundamental flaw of rewarding firstly survival, encouraging defensive or even straight up avoidance, and then secondly, simply scoring the killing blow, which again, encourages calculated and defensive play until an ideal moment to strike.
What I propose is an adjustment to the above:
- 4 player FFA
- Timed match
- No stock limit
- Winner determined by % damage dealt
This has the adjustment of rewarding players for being active and getting involved in the fight. In a 1v1 situation determined by %, evasive playing is rewarding once you've gained the lead. This is ideal even in a stock match once you have a stock lead. Simply standing by and avoiding players in a 4 person match nets you absolutely no reward as each player has two other targets to aim for, and you make no progress towards victory. Mobility is no longer as important as it was in Melee, which is fitting as Brawl and Smash 4 do not have the same wealth of options. Instead, it encourages aggression in an alternative way while also discouraging evasive play.
One other addition that could be coupled with this is subtracting % damage taken from the damage dealt, to result in a 'final score'. This is something that could be added if it's found too advantageous to simply pick a bruiser character and try to favourably trade at every opportunity possible. I don't think it would be necessary, but it's something that could be added to adjust it.
Looking to have an intelligent discussion on this. We're obviously in a solid place when it comes to Melee, and we're already experimenting with an alternative Brawl ruleset, but I'd like to discuss the idea of trying a Brawl event with this ruleset, as well as possibly approaching some early Smash 4 events with this.
It's an idea I've bounced around in my head for quite a while, but never really taken the time to present it in any particular manner.
With the Invitational, E3 show floor and the Best Buy demos all running 4 person FFA, my local game store running a few casual FFA events and Sakurai's statements of focusing Brawl and Smash 4 around four person matches, I felt now was a good time to put this idea to paper and spark a proper discussion of it. I also have thrown the idea out to a few friends recently, who also expressed it not being a completely terrible idea.
Here are the facts, Brawl and Smash 4 have been said by Sakurai to be focused around four player matches. As has been noted before, with Brawl we simply tried to shoehorn the agreed upon Melee ruleset into it, with that being 1v1 stock matches. Brawl's gameplay in a 1v1 scenario currently lends itself to very calculated and generally defensive play. Those coming from Melee much prefer it's high pressure and aggressive nature, which leads to all the arguments we have.
For Nintendo's Smash 4 events, they've been running timed matches and determining the winner by score. For the Invitational, players had 4 stocks and top 2 were determined by the last person standing, and then second place by final score. Both of these formats have the fundamental flaw of rewarding firstly survival, encouraging defensive or even straight up avoidance, and then secondly, simply scoring the killing blow, which again, encourages calculated and defensive play until an ideal moment to strike.
What I propose is an adjustment to the above:
- 4 player FFA
- Timed match
- No stock limit
- Winner determined by % damage dealt
This has the adjustment of rewarding players for being active and getting involved in the fight. In a 1v1 situation determined by %, evasive playing is rewarding once you've gained the lead. This is ideal even in a stock match once you have a stock lead. Simply standing by and avoiding players in a 4 person match nets you absolutely no reward as each player has two other targets to aim for, and you make no progress towards victory. Mobility is no longer as important as it was in Melee, which is fitting as Brawl and Smash 4 do not have the same wealth of options. Instead, it encourages aggression in an alternative way while also discouraging evasive play.
One other addition that could be coupled with this is subtracting % damage taken from the damage dealt, to result in a 'final score'. This is something that could be added if it's found too advantageous to simply pick a bruiser character and try to favourably trade at every opportunity possible. I don't think it would be necessary, but it's something that could be added to adjust it.
Looking to have an intelligent discussion on this. We're obviously in a solid place when it comes to Melee, and we're already experimenting with an alternative Brawl ruleset, but I'd like to discuss the idea of trying a Brawl event with this ruleset, as well as possibly approaching some early Smash 4 events with this.