Grim's LGL arguing thread

[WindMajor]

Sudden Death is bad because it's very likely that it will never ever ever end without a ledge grab limit of some sort, and a ledge grab limit deciding a Sudden Death match would be the most piss poor resolution to a match ever.

 

[Cassio]

I dont think thats actually very likely.

Also supposedly the senate disbanded the URC? Guess lgls will be up to the TOs now. Or the BBR,

 

[~Radiance~]

URC being disbanded should be interesting if that is so. Does that mean the MK ban will be lifted as well?

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Nah, not 100% dictated by the community exactly, but 100% dictated FOR the community. It's not inconceivable that a community might not know what's best for it. Although largely they do, especially because people who are a part of a small community will know what'll work best for it better than outsiders will.

So there can certainly be exceptions, but usually there aren't, and I can't think of many potential ones.

I can't see the point of having rule dictated by a set of equally logical guidelines if that means that the game isn't played by as many, or enjoyed as much, and the community is hurt because of it. It's no less arbitrary fundamentally, and it's no better in final results. I can't see the use of it lol.

Yeah, I'm starting to agree with that view-point more and more.

Hmmm...

Whenever I plank or time people out with MK, I usually do it because it feels less scary than actually fighting them lol.

There's just not a lot of things Olimar can do that would cause DK to instantly lose his stock if he messes up.

Yeah, I'd say MK is the exception xD

And yeah, spike is the only real thing he can do.

Maybe practical wasn't the right word lol. I'm just saying it's silly to respond to a video with pure theorycraft that doesn't have a video example to go with it, and refuse to see counter-theorycraft. Like if you're stooping to using theorycraft, you're not gonna accomplish anything if you don't allow anyone to debate the theorycraft you used lol.

Touche

Yeah haha. Problems are much better solved at the fundamental differences, instead of at the surface where none of the basics are attacked lol.

Alright, I suppose this is the best question to ask in this situation. What is your most fundamental foundation for your ruleset philosophy? What goal is it trying to achieve, and why is that a worthwhile goal?

The goal it of my philosophy would probably be to give players the highest possible "skill ceiling" to aim for.

And I think its more worthwhile than just banning 'x' because 'y', because a ruleset made with my philosophy forces players to overcome every(reasonable)thing the game throws at them to compete without prejudice against certain tactics because they are "gay". This forces them to become better players which, in turn, leads to a higher level of competition.

 

[DMG]

So you can't explain why sudden death is bad?

Aright, I'll take a crack at it.


Sudden Death is inferior to doing a regular rematch for most competitive philosophies. If you have a very VERY pure "leave the game alone completely" philosophy that is fine playing on banned stages and using stuff like IDC, then yes using Sudden Death would be right up your alley because there would be no alternative to you since that is all the game offers lol.


When stocks are tied, the game itself resorts to Sudden Death. Sudden Death is basically an extreme rematch. High damage, bombs spawning. The very fact that it's reasonably possible for a match to be decided randomly due to bombs turns a lot of people away. If you're someone who believes that using the % rule when a match goes to time is inadequate because it doesn't do a good enough job of representing who's truly ahead in a match due to positional and character advantages, you shouldn't be fond of a rematch that spawns random bombs. Just the thought of finding a winner based on a 1% lead and/or finding a winner due to who lucked out on bomb spawns should both sound awful to you.


If Sudden Death was just high % and play till someone died, you'd have plenty of people down for it. The bombs spawning is definitely not a positive: our goal is neither to rush the players or openly want a match to be decided by low/non competitive means (random bomb spawns don't prove a player's skill over the other, just as tiny % leads may not show who's really ahead). If we're ok with letting players rematch over and over til someone finally loses their last stock, then using Sudden Death because it's a quicker method wouldn't make sense either.


The underlying point is that most people are fine doing a rematch of some kind if stocks are tied when the match goes to time. The question then is "Well what's the best rematch to use?". Sudden Death is at the bottom of the barrel for somewhat reasonable methods. It's better than randomly assigning two players handicaps based on coin flips, or using banned stages to decide, deciding ahead of time the two players characters like "you must random, must CF ditto, etc" or other poor methods, but it's not as good as other rematches either. Doing a 1 stock "fresh" rematch is better because you don't have the bombs threat, and going further than that by assigning handicaps that closely resemble the character's % right as the match went to time is also superior to using Sudden Death. If you think we have to use what the game offers even in the face of clearly better alternatives, then yes you're gonna stick with Sudden Death.

 

[theunabletable]

Yeah, I'm starting to agree with that view-point more and more.

Hmmm...

c:

Yeah, I'd say MK is the exception xD

And yeah, spike is the only real thing he can do.

That just doesn't sound scary to DK at all, nor did it appear to be in that match lol.

Further, it's just not the type of game I'd like to play, but I can understand if people did want to keep it in. It's a bit like the US' Federalism. Different communities can have what works best for them. Perhaps what works best is to use what other communities and areas around them are using, so as to have similar competitions and do better against them. Maybe what works best is to use a different kind of ruleset, to keep some players interested, or because people simply don't enjoy the other's rules. I can't say what's best for any hypothetical community, the people in that community would likely know much better than me.

The goal it of my philosophy would probably be to give players the highest possible "skill ceiling" to aim for.

And I think its more worthwhile than just banning 'x' because 'y', because a ruleset made with my philosophy forces players to overcome every(reasonable)thing the game throws at them to compete without prejudice against certain tactics because they are "gay". This forces them to become better players which, in turn, leads to a higher level of competition.

Banning something doesn't mean that the skill ceiling is lower. It can mean that in certain situations, but it doesn't have to, and I'd wager that planking is not one of those situations.

Having something restricted certainly doesn't inherently lower the skill ceiling, it merely shifts it in a different direction, although the direction it shifts it in might have a shorter end than it would originally have had. We can know that banning something doesn't lower the skill cap when we consider a game like Mario 64 speedrunning. Banning the 16 star route to allow for the 70 star category doesn't lower the skill cap at all, in fact it increases it. The skill cap for the BEST way to do things in a 16 star route would almost inherently be found quicker, because it's a far shorter run. Now that's theorycraft and wouldn't be good without results, but they reflect this as well. People are still trying to reach the skill cap in 70 star, in fact there's been a cool rivalry lately between 2 Japanese players and 1 American player (Neronero679, Honey, and Siglemic), where they each keep stealing each other's records back and forth.

Often banning something that's way too good would increase the effectual skill cap (though not always, of course), just because now we have one less strategy that resides at the top of the skill cap.

Perhaps planking isn't one of these. It could certainly

As for the goal itself, it's a bit undefined, as the only good question I can ask regarding the goal itself is, "Skill ceiling in what?" The goal of looking for the highest skill ceiling doesn't actually tell us anything about what it is that we want to have a high skill ceiling in. Brawl, right? But what Brawl do we want the highest skill ceiling in? Speedrunning the subspace emissary? That's not unreasonable, there are people who do that. Fastest average break the targets times? There's a community for that, too, to some extent. The multiplayer mode? With items on? Sure that's not ridiculous. Perhaps with items off. Timer on or off? Stock mode or coin mode?

Every single one of those has an entirely different skill cap/ceiling. What this goal turns out to do, is it doesn't actually tell us anything about what type of game we should play, it only tells us what we should do once we've already decided on what type of game we should play. And we can play anything we want. Abstract or more material, a competition is simply a social pact.

It's a bit circular, really. We can't use it to tell us what we should do, as to know what that goal entails, it must have the ingredient of what social competition it aims to have the highest skill ceiling for. Once we've made the commitment that would make that goal rationally usable, we've made the EXACT same assumptions that a community oriented goal would make, and in the exact same places. And that's because they answer different questions, and are used in different places.

In fact, the two aren't wholly unusable together. I could see someone making the case for a ruleset dictated by what works best for the community, and raising an environment in which we try to have the highest skill cap. Although considering the skill cap for Brawl is no where in sight, and the game is already dwindling, it does seem that a goal focusing on keeping the community alive would serve a greater purpose than extending the, currently unreached by even the very top level players, skill cap.

Sorry for the wall of text, but does that make sense? That the goal doesn't tell us what competition we should have in any way, just what environment we should stimulate within the already made competition, and what we should attempt to do once that competition has been made?

In fact, I think I just thought of a very simple "thought experiment" to test whether that goal is an answer, or not. If I ask the question, "Then what skills is it that we would like to test, to have the highest skill cap in?" does the goal you stated have any information in it that tells us the answer to that? Does it give us the abstract materials necessary to know what skills the competition should test? If yes, then it is, at the very least, defined enough to tell us what kind of competition we should have (although a yes wouldn't tell us ANYTHING more than that, such as if it's a worthwhile goal or not). If not, it isn't a goal for ruleset design, as it simply doesn't tell us enough to make a ruleset.

And I would say that the result is that it certainly does not answer that question, and it is not descriptive enough to tell us what we "ought" to do first.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I'd like to say you've changed my mind after reading that, but I'm often too easily persuaded in these kinds of discussions.

I'll give it some thought, but you've certainly made a powerful case

 

[theunabletable]

Alright, awesome haha, thanks for considering it c:

If you ever wanna talk about it or have any questions, feel free to bring it up again, it's a fun topic

 

[#HBC | Joker]

Guys, stop having a rational discussion where you each actually listen and attempt to understand each other. You're supposed to individually quote each other's sentences and respond with stuff like "lolololol no" or "you might think that but you'd be wrong" or my personal favorite "ur dumb"

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Guys

WRONG!

I'm a transexual.

stop having a rational discussion

no, ur dumb

where you each actually listen and attempt to understand each other.

We can't listen to each other over a forum, are u ********?

You're supposed to individually quote each other's sentences

lolololol no

and respond with stuff like "lolololol no" or "you might think that but you'd be wrong" or my personal favorite "ur dumb"

at least i'm not a ***

 

[popsofctown]

Further, you are completely free to make an ICs grab limit if it sucks as much pleasure out of the game as planking does for everyone else (I doubt it does, but w/e). If you can get a TO behind you, and a community to agree that will benefit from an ICs grab limit, go ahead.

I bet you don't have all of those, but if you do, it's perfectly fine for you to do so. There are zero reasons why that'd be bad if you had all of those ingredients.

The only part of your response that isn't a circular appeal to status quo/bandwagon is "I doubt it sucks as much pleasure out of the game".

There's every indication it does suck as much pleasure out of the game though. Ice Climbers had better tournament results than players using planking strategies before the ledge grab limit was implemented, so apparently arctic chaingrabbing is a more powerful strategy than planking. Arctic chaingrabbing requires several characters to play a secondary just to deal with the tactic, too a similar extent that planking does. And arctic chaingrabbing leads to a warped game with fewer dimensions, much like planking does, instead of being restricted to a narrow set of ledge and anti-ledge tactics, you're restricted to a narrow set of ungrabbable tactics.

The real reason there's not a community behind me that wants to ban it is because a larger minority would be suppressed, more people enjoy playing Ice Climbers than enjoy planking. The size of the minority being suppressed shouldn't be a factor though.

 

[#HBC | Joker]

You heard it here first, folks. popsofctown is in favor of oppressing minorities, no matter how big or small.

 

[theunabletable]

The only part of your response that isn't a circular appeal to status quo/bandwagon is "I doubt it sucks as much pleasure out of the game".

It's not an appeal to majority, it's a search for what works best for the community. It just so happens, and this makes sense, that the best thing for a community often intersects with what that community largely wants.

The size of the minority being suppressed shouldn't be a factor though.

I don't see how it's not a factor. In a community based game, the amount of the community being alienated by a rule certainly has at least SOME effect on the worthwhile-ness of the rule, but it's debatable how much.

 

[Dcold]

When it's ideal to please everyone, that can't always happen. The next best thing is to please as many people as possible until the ideal can be met.

 

[popsofctown]

This has fallen into rights of the few vs. good of the many thing, which is too basic an ethical perspective issue to actually debate.

If you're conceding that you're oppressing a minority because it makes the majority happier, and you just think you're hurting few enough people to justify the gain, that's as far as I can go.

 

[Cassio]

The point of federalism is that youre not oppressing a minority.

This has been more or less my view since Apex, having a national standard isnt a bad idea, but pushing localities to cater their ruleset to one standard causes more oppression than any singular rule for a specific community can.

 

[popsofctown]

If no one was scrubby it'd be easy to have a unified ruleset.

Alas this is not so.

 

[theunabletable]

^No, that is not the case. Scrub, in the way that Sirlin coined it, does not refer to ruleset making for a social agreement between two players, it refers to someone who's agreed to play a game, and is then holding themselves back at the game they've agreed to play.

I would leave my post at this, but I doubt that short sentence would change how you view the word scrub, and it would only lead to you saying something either equally short and unnecessary in response, or asking me why I'd say that's the case. I'll save the time, and back up exactly what I'm saying in the rest of this post.

If you have a disagreement, you do NOT need to respond to every sentence, you can point out the technical flaws I've made in my reasoning if you find any, and we can have a discussion about that. This shouldn't require wall-of-text responses back and forth, but I do want to be especially clear in the first thing I say, so that we don't get to the point where wall-of-texts are required to clear up misunderstandings.

Here it is:

[collapse=an elaboration of my full reasoning]

A scrub is a player who is handicapped by self-imposed rules that the game knows nothing about. A scrub does not play to win.

The issue here comes from, well, how easy it is to misinterpret the meaning of "game" when it can refer to many things that are different. A game could be something such as RPS, or the video game Brawl, or even Ocarina of Time. Although a game could also be a type of competition, a social agreement between two players to attempt to accomplish a goal versus each other. For the purpose of having a distinction between the two and avoiding confusion, I'll call the former GameA (or gamma!!!!!!!!!), and the latter GameB (or how about gammba!!!!!!).

A gammba is a bit more abstract; it's a social agreement; it involves people and communication. It be reasonably referred to as an object, but it is immaterial in nature. Think of a tournament, or a ruleset, or an abstract game where someone makes the rules and you follow them. A gamma is more of a pure object. Think of a video game, a board game, etc. Gamma is a bit of a noun, gammba is a bit of a verb (that can involve its own respective nouns). You go out and buy a game/gamma, you go out with your friends and play a game/gammba. You own brawl/a gamma/a game, you play with your friends Brawl/a gammba/a game. Game can have both meanings, as Brawl can have both meanings.

It could get a bit more technical than that, there are deeper intricacies, but I really want to avoid making up more than two words, because I'm sure it's confusing as it is lol.

That definition of scrub surely, when saying "game", refers to a gammba, although both a gamma and a gammba know nothing about your self-imposed rules. I don't like to monopolize words, and quote people out of context, and add my own meanings to what other people have said, so I'd like to at least show why either

Imagine you're the designer of a gamma. Let's say you're trying to design Rock, Paper, Scissors as a gamma, an object, but not a social agreement between you and other players. Now try and create this game without any out-of-RPS-gamma-rules (which in other situations, many would call these simply "out of game rules").

This should seem impossible, it's a ridiculous idea. You can't create something while being disallowed from using anything other than itself, the it isn't defined yet. Or if it were to change an already existing RPS gamma, it'd be equally impossible. You can't change something away from what it is, while not being allowed to make changes that are different than what it is. Something is itself, law of identity, etc lol.

Now try and do the same. Try and imagine designing Rock, Paper, Scissors as a gammba, a set of rules that players agree to as a competition to see who is best at this made up game, but you're not allowed to use any out-of-gammba-rules.

Easy.

This is important, even though at this point, it does appear completely obvious when looking at that quote. Of course he's not making self-imposed rules that physically alter the copy of the "game", that change the object. He's giving himself an abstract limitation that's not contained in the abstract gammba he agreed to with his opponents. I would say that either this is what that quote means in some manner, or that definition of scrub (which is the one that I assume you meant, as it's the one EVERYONE on this board uses in this context, the only other meaning I've seen is "someone who's **** at a game"). Imagine this situation a little bit, it's more of an elaboration.

"Hey dude, I thought of a cool game we could play together!"
"Oh how's it played?"
"So we gather an unknown amount of rocks and put them behind a curtain, then unveil the rocks, and the first person to correctly count how many of the rocks without losing their balance wins!!"
"That sounds cool, let's play! But I'm gonna play while standing on only one foot, because I have honor."
"Dude, that'll just hold you back when you play against other people who don't agree with your concept of honor. There's no part of the game that takes into account your honor, you'll just fail to meet the win criteria later on, and you'll purposely not win in the end, which people call being a scrub!"

In short, it is not scrubby to desire to have a competition with different rules (you could call this having a competition for a different gammba, just as easily, which some would say is "playing a different game," which isn't an untrue statement, but is a bit misleading, and that's why I said it the way I did lol. But those three statements are definitely synonymous, technically). It's scrubby to be in a competition, to agree to play a game against other people that has a specific set of rules, and then intentionally playing as if it had a completely different set of rules than he had agreed to, and possibly expecting everyone else to do so.

So no, people being scrubby has nothing to do with not having a unified ruleset. Scrub is a term that was made in the beginning of a how-to manual for competitive gaming, for when there's an agreed upon game/gammba that you want to win at. It has nothing to do with the structuring of social pacts between people, who'd like to play their own types of gammbas. Atleast not at all in the way you were inferring, and I could elaborate on what it means for making rulesets, but really, it's pretty unimportant for CHOOSING the game/gammba you'd like to play, it's pretty much only useful once you've already made that choice. I could elaborate more on all of this if you'd like.

If you have a disagreement, feel free to respond to just that part where I made an error, and we can have a small discussion based on that part in particular. Your responses, and my responses to those, do NOT need to be even anywhere close to the length of this post, although you can if you'd like, but don't be daunted because you feel like you should.
[/collapse]

 

[popsofctown]

That's overkill and I didn't read it. I was using scrub loosely for an offhand comment, I know that's not exactly what it means.

Even if I did think that was exactly what it meant, I'd abandon the term much more quickly than argue about the term. There's too many words in the English language to work with.

If nobody was [under the guidance of a overly liberal ruleset philosophy], it'd be easy to have a unified ruleset.

 

[theunabletable]

Alright haha. I figured you did, because I've seen a ton of posts on this board using the word scrub to describe anyone who bans anything unnecessarily haha.

It's not all to waste, though, I'll use parts of it to respond to anyone who overly uses Sirlin's Playing to Win principles for ruleset discussions c:

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Never understood Sirlin.

He says that a scrubby attitude is bad but supports Akuma's soft-ban in Japan.

 

[Cassio]

If nobody disagreed with my personal views and opinions, everybody would be happy.

 

[theunabletable]

Never understood Sirlin.

He says that a scrubby attitude is bad but supports Akuma's soft-ban in Japan.

Actually, although this certainly may not be his view, I'd say that it's not entirely inconsistent. I actually agree with everything I've read from Sirlin, but perhaps either I have misunderstood everything he has written, or everyone else has lol. If my interpretation is correct, he's certainly misleading to say the least, so chances are my interpretation is completely incorrect haha.

You may not win as much if you go against the social constructs, because you won't be capable of learning enough to abuse it, and there's no motivation, as they don't play much for money in Japan. I mean if everyone has an agreement to not play Akuma, even if it's not a rule, it has the same effect as a rule. The game basically becomes Akuma-less.

Conforming to social pressures for longterm benefit isn't necessarily scrubby.


Although he's pretty vague, unclear, as well as a bit shallow in a lot of his writing, so I mostly get the impression that that's probably not why he supports an Akuma soft-ban, but a purely play-to-win mindset is definitely not incompatible with soft-bans, and surgical nerfs, and "out of game rules", it's just uncommon, and shares traits that the play-to-win mindset is there to avoid haha.

 

[T0MMY]

Since when have we respected the game designer's wishes and given them ANY merit in tournaments?

I understand where you're coming here, but given a conditional that something is incorrect it does not matter how long it has been incorrect, what matters is how quickly it is corrected.
So if the community has always done something it is not sensible to disregard anything off-hand due to tradition, everything should be evaluated logically and given to the community to do with as seen fit.
IMO, Game designers > scrubs.

The designers of the game also put in Sudden Death, which we don't use despite it being the game's default tie breaker.

Although this would not justify out-of-game rules over in-game rules, I will take a moment to suggest the community at least reconsider Sudden Death before dismissing it.

My point stands: There is no objective way of figuring out who was winning, there is only the winner and the loser. So all tie-break rules are equally valid in that respect, regardless of what Pokemon Stadium's screen wants you to believe.

Just to clarify a bit of logic here (sorry for the tangent, but it could be helpful to you later) A point does not stand on its own; a point is a leg for which a conclusions stands on (conclusions should have at least two premises).
Your point, however, is false.
It is false because there is actually an objective way at not just figuring out who is winning, but KNOWING who is winning (or rather, who has won and can be applied to other identical cases): The game decides winner on time-out based on points (for us, "stock lead"). Anything else is subject to a Sudden Death to determine a winner.

I was watching your Melee teams combo video with t!mmy today, I have a pocket Kirby so I'm going to try some of your stuff with my Puff team-mate :D

Those were the good ol' days.
Now it's all about R.O.B. ([^^]
But I'm actually easing my way back into Melee, so the Puff will make a return (not just in teams, but also in singles!)

Never understood Sirlin.
He says that a scrubby attitude is bad but supports Akuma's soft-ban in Japan.

Actually, I have never seen him say he supports Akuma's soft-ban in Japan... or any character bans at that!
Maybe you misunderstood what he wrote when he described the soft-ban used in Japan instead of a hard-ban in America, but if you read the end of the article he does clarify:
"Is this ban warranted then? To be honest, I am not totally convinced that it is, but it is just barely in the ballpark of reasonableness since there is a decade of data on which to base the claim."

Hope that can clear some things up.

 

[theunabletable]

IMO, Game designers > scrubs.

these are just like words that don't mean anything lol

 

[popsofctown]

Sirlin appeals to authority are dumb and bad.

 

[DMG]

I just think it's funny that Sirlin's "don't ban ****" philosophy gets applied to MK, but then when other things like stages, LGL, etc come up people advocate for the extreme opposite. You can't have it both ways

 

[Arcansi]

I just think it's funny that Sirlin's "don't ban ****" philosophy gets applied to MK, but then when other things like stages, LGL, etc come up people advocate for the extreme opposite. You can't have it both ways

The community is used to pretty much getting what it wants as a community.

And none of our rulesets are advocating a more philosophical approach to this, anyway.

So they'll have it both ways as long as they want, most likely.

 

[DMG]

I mean I don't care whether someone is a Sirlin fanboy or not, but you can't tell me MK should be legal based on that, and then with a straight face turn and be the most vocal advocate for a conservative stage list/extra rules on gameplay. It's odd and it happens a lot lol.

 

[T0MMY]

That's a terrible argument, strawman and ad hominem all wrapped up together.
No, we don't ban MK and we don't instate LGLs. By "we" I mean those of us in the competitive arena, not the casual playing scrubs who try to limit others so they have a better chance at winning.

I'd think in my last lengthy post there'd be something to discuss, or did I cover everything needed?

 

[theunabletable]

I don't think you've actually explained why out-of-game rules are bad, nor given a justification for a strict "Sirlinesque" criteria.