SynikaL
Smash Lord
I think it may be.
Hey, community. I've been around more than a decade and I've seen Melee and the Smash scene at large go through myriad changes. I've helped develop some parts of the South Florida community and Melee at large for a significant portion in that large span of time. I'm not blaring a klaxon for some nepotistic favoring of my opinion. I'm just trying to say: I've seen some ****.
I saw Scar and Toph briefly mention this last night during G3 but it's something I've been thinking on for some time: it may be time to reduce Melee to 3 stocks as the tournament standard.
I was around when the 4 stock standard was introduced way back when. This game as a competitive standard was a completely new thing to almost everyone involved. With developing techniques like shine spikes, chain grabbing and other gimping techniques ending stocks so quickly, and developing at exponential rates; we began to feel we needed more time to adjust to our opponents in a tournament environment to favor less volatile outcomes in results.
This is similar to how the Marvel 3 community more recently introduced a 3/5 standard instead of 2/3 early in that's game's life. Due to the game being so massive and open-ended, results ended up being not very satisfying.
I think the Melee community is long passed these growing pains in terms of understanding its game and no longer needs 4 stock matches. I'm more of a spectator these days than a player, so I feel perspective is a humble composite of both.
The main overriding reason why I believe this should be changed is that Smash tournaments generally just last too damned long. From a player and spectator perspective, I believe shorter tournaments benefit everyone.
Melee has a reputation for being a "fast" game, but a 2/3 set still lasts about 10-15 minutes. A 16 man bracket can last a significant portion of the day - about 5-6 hours - when a game like SF or Marvel can be ran in about a third of that time with a similar number of players. And this is assuming matches are ran back-to-back. I'm not saying taking away one stock will make a world of difference because it's the nature of the series, but it helps. If we approximate 3 stock 2/3 matches to be 8 minutes that shaves about 2 hours off a 16 man event according to my math (and Melee brackets are rarely that small).
From a spectator standpoint it also makes sense for matches to move more quickly, and 3 stocks still allows for satisfying enough outcomes. Tournaments often run passed 12am EST and is hell on other parts of the world (I made it up to top 4 myself for GEN3).
Certain matchups will also cause a distention in event time and hurt spectator morale. Despite Jiggly being an outlier, Hungrybox being relevant will always make her relevant. While Jiggs vs. Pikachu can be stimulating for some - it's a matchup that is a slog for most spectators and prolongs the event. I feel the effects the character has on spectator attention spans and event times should be mitigated where possible and reducing stocks to 3 is once such way.
That's all I got for now. Anyone else agree or disagree?
- Kimosabae
-
Hey, community. I've been around more than a decade and I've seen Melee and the Smash scene at large go through myriad changes. I've helped develop some parts of the South Florida community and Melee at large for a significant portion in that large span of time. I'm not blaring a klaxon for some nepotistic favoring of my opinion. I'm just trying to say: I've seen some ****.
I saw Scar and Toph briefly mention this last night during G3 but it's something I've been thinking on for some time: it may be time to reduce Melee to 3 stocks as the tournament standard.
I was around when the 4 stock standard was introduced way back when. This game as a competitive standard was a completely new thing to almost everyone involved. With developing techniques like shine spikes, chain grabbing and other gimping techniques ending stocks so quickly, and developing at exponential rates; we began to feel we needed more time to adjust to our opponents in a tournament environment to favor less volatile outcomes in results.
This is similar to how the Marvel 3 community more recently introduced a 3/5 standard instead of 2/3 early in that's game's life. Due to the game being so massive and open-ended, results ended up being not very satisfying.
I think the Melee community is long passed these growing pains in terms of understanding its game and no longer needs 4 stock matches. I'm more of a spectator these days than a player, so I feel perspective is a humble composite of both.
The main overriding reason why I believe this should be changed is that Smash tournaments generally just last too damned long. From a player and spectator perspective, I believe shorter tournaments benefit everyone.
Melee has a reputation for being a "fast" game, but a 2/3 set still lasts about 10-15 minutes. A 16 man bracket can last a significant portion of the day - about 5-6 hours - when a game like SF or Marvel can be ran in about a third of that time with a similar number of players. And this is assuming matches are ran back-to-back. I'm not saying taking away one stock will make a world of difference because it's the nature of the series, but it helps. If we approximate 3 stock 2/3 matches to be 8 minutes that shaves about 2 hours off a 16 man event according to my math (and Melee brackets are rarely that small).
From a spectator standpoint it also makes sense for matches to move more quickly, and 3 stocks still allows for satisfying enough outcomes. Tournaments often run passed 12am EST and is hell on other parts of the world (I made it up to top 4 myself for GEN3).
Certain matchups will also cause a distention in event time and hurt spectator morale. Despite Jiggly being an outlier, Hungrybox being relevant will always make her relevant. While Jiggs vs. Pikachu can be stimulating for some - it's a matchup that is a slog for most spectators and prolongs the event. I feel the effects the character has on spectator attention spans and event times should be mitigated where possible and reducing stocks to 3 is once such way.
That's all I got for now. Anyone else agree or disagree?
- Kimosabae
-
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