we're discussing tourney fairness here
Hyrule Temple is obviously not a good level for tournament play. Simply due to the ease of running. On any other stage, you'll make a mistake trying to run eventually and the fight will resume. Of course, if Items were off, running might be successful...but with items on, eventually you will get a legendary pokemon of some sort and I'll be ****ed if you can't catch somebody on a smaller stake when there's that bird that makes the flaming tornado blocking off a full half of the stage. Honestly you should catch someone here. And it would be hard for them to disable mines as easily what with having less room to get a good distance between them and their enemies to give them time to fire at it. Thus, a match with items on on a small stage will end if a player runs away (Except on a crappy non-tourney-worthy stage like Hyrule, where ***** tactics are quite easy to pull off against slow characters). A match with no items on a small stage can easily become a stalemate, and the solution of forcing the players to end the match is ridiculous. Yes, it makes sense in your example of a player running forever and never fighting...but it doesn't make sense when the players are simply camping because it is strategically more viable. You keep bringing up that items on would not solve this. The players COULD still camp. (Yeah, capitalization is fun). The thing is, it is no longer strategically beneficial to them. So yeah, they COULD camp and then you'd be forced to do an unorthodox solution like disqualification...but they won't ever do that. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to camp when it is advantageous to do so....it's not reasonable to do it when it is disadvantageous. Thus the former will happen many times while the latter would not. And I don't know about you, but arguing about hypothetical situations that will never occur just doesn't seem relevant to me.
Thus: Items on breaks stalemates among reasonable players (a.k.a. the only players we care about).
Another point I just don't understand. You keep talking about item skill overriding hand-to-hand fighting skill. The question that comes to my mind first is what makes hand-to-hand fighting superior as a measure to skill. Items obviously don't render it useless, they just complement it. So I don't see why it is necessarily "bad" if a guy can beat someone more frequently with items on and lose more frequently with them off. What makes items not recognized as a valid skill set? The analogy even though we hate those is if you decide to ban throws. One guy is more skilled than another with his throwing game, but less skilled without it. As such you have a match spread exactly like the one you mentioned with Sean and Mickey. What makes throws different from items, as a skillset? (Aside from the fact that items is an easier thing to ban due to the built in setting). Your point about items becoming more important that regular play only makes sense if for some reason item skill was not a valid skill to measure...I just don't see why it isn't. It's definitely a part of the game.
I guess I'll let Matt respond to the points made to him, though if he continues with the minimal arguing I may be forced to argue on his behalf.
-B
Hyrule Temple is obviously not a good level for tournament play. Simply due to the ease of running. On any other stage, you'll make a mistake trying to run eventually and the fight will resume. Of course, if Items were off, running might be successful...but with items on, eventually you will get a legendary pokemon of some sort and I'll be ****ed if you can't catch somebody on a smaller stake when there's that bird that makes the flaming tornado blocking off a full half of the stage. Honestly you should catch someone here. And it would be hard for them to disable mines as easily what with having less room to get a good distance between them and their enemies to give them time to fire at it. Thus, a match with items on on a small stage will end if a player runs away (Except on a crappy non-tourney-worthy stage like Hyrule, where ***** tactics are quite easy to pull off against slow characters). A match with no items on a small stage can easily become a stalemate, and the solution of forcing the players to end the match is ridiculous. Yes, it makes sense in your example of a player running forever and never fighting...but it doesn't make sense when the players are simply camping because it is strategically more viable. You keep bringing up that items on would not solve this. The players COULD still camp. (Yeah, capitalization is fun). The thing is, it is no longer strategically beneficial to them. So yeah, they COULD camp and then you'd be forced to do an unorthodox solution like disqualification...but they won't ever do that. It's perfectly reasonable for someone to camp when it is advantageous to do so....it's not reasonable to do it when it is disadvantageous. Thus the former will happen many times while the latter would not. And I don't know about you, but arguing about hypothetical situations that will never occur just doesn't seem relevant to me.
Thus: Items on breaks stalemates among reasonable players (a.k.a. the only players we care about).
Another point I just don't understand. You keep talking about item skill overriding hand-to-hand fighting skill. The question that comes to my mind first is what makes hand-to-hand fighting superior as a measure to skill. Items obviously don't render it useless, they just complement it. So I don't see why it is necessarily "bad" if a guy can beat someone more frequently with items on and lose more frequently with them off. What makes items not recognized as a valid skill set? The analogy even though we hate those is if you decide to ban throws. One guy is more skilled than another with his throwing game, but less skilled without it. As such you have a match spread exactly like the one you mentioned with Sean and Mickey. What makes throws different from items, as a skillset? (Aside from the fact that items is an easier thing to ban due to the built in setting). Your point about items becoming more important that regular play only makes sense if for some reason item skill was not a valid skill to measure...I just don't see why it isn't. It's definitely a part of the game.
I guess I'll let Matt respond to the points made to him, though if he continues with the minimal arguing I may be forced to argue on his behalf.
-B