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Spirits Competitive Ruleset
I really, really like Spirit Mode. Sadly, not everyone shares my enthusiasm about it. Some think the Adventure Mode was disappointing, others are just not interested. A minority of the Smash Community sees however a great potential in this mode, and they want it to be enhanced so it wasn't added for nothing.
Spirits are a major feature of SSBU and their absence from the competitive scene, while not surprising, is quite disappointing.
It's a shame that a mode which could open so many new possibilities is left aside, so why don't we at least try to make it work ?
What is the problem with Spirits ?
It's simple : Spirits outside of Spirit Mode are unbalanced. On the Spirit Board or in World of Light, stronger spirits would get you less rewards after winning a battle, encouraging you to make challenges harder so you don't end up with fewer skills or an underleveled team against bosses.
But during regular battles this doesn't matter at all, there's no reason to not want the most efficient team to win the fight.
Suppose a 1v1 fight, what kind of restrictions would both players have to take in account when selecting a spirit team ?
When we take a closer look at how Spirits are made, we can see they were not made randomly. The better is their stats and/or their trait, the less slots they will have for Support Spirits. If this was all there's to know about Spirits, the battle would always be fair and balanced, but the main problem isn't there.
The problem is their types.
Types are a HUGE problem. They provide an absurd advantage in attack and defense, it makes the battle litterally impossible for the disadvantaged player if they're both equally skilled in regular fights.
Types are what we must find a solution for, so let's imagine something that could make the battle fair despite them.
Ruleset proposition
From what I know most tournaments apply a best-of-3 rule, and sometimes a best-of-5. Considering this here are the ruleset I'm proposing :
- each player must have four teams of spirits, one for each type, that can't change for the duration of the set.
- for the first battle, both players must chose a team of the same color which is either chosen by both players, randomly selected or decided by a RPS game in case the players disagree.
- if after two or four rounds both players won the same amount of time, this step is repeated.
- the winner of the first round is forced to switch to their grey team, the loser gets to chose any of their team.
- during a best-of-5, if a player has two victories while the other doesn't have any, the current leader must chose any team apart from grey and declare it, only then the other player gets to chose any of his team.
- during a best-of-5, this step also applies after a player gets their second victory while the other only has one.
Let's ask Sakurai for new useful features that could help us integrate spirits more easily into the competitive scene ;
- a setting that would deactivate spirits advantage. Thanks to this addition, there would be no need for a ruleset such as the one I proposed above.
- a quick way to add a team to the team list in regular battles. Imagine going to a tournament and having to create a spirit team everytime, this would take a long time, and only one player could do it at a time. Now imagine if you could just input a code directly from the character select screen to add the team immediately. This code would be four to sixteen characters long depending on how much supports spirits there are. The numbers correspond to the spirit in-game number. Here are examples :
- 0940 0945 1001 0025 corresponds to Super Macho Man, Piston Honda, Ibuki and Fox Luigi.
- 0665 0676 corresponds to Black Knight and Azura.
- 0137 0445 1001 corresponds to Donkey Kong & Lady, Ho-Oh and Ibuki.
- a way to change/select the spirit's style from the character select screen. There are only two ways to switch style right now : going in "activities" and teaching the spirit again or having two separate copies with diffrent styles. What if we could just select it from a list so we gain a lot of time ? Even better, let's add this idea to the code I proposed earlier :
- 094002 0945 1001 0025 corresponds to Super Macho Man with the Land Style, Piston Honda, Ibuki and Fox Luigi.
- 013713 0445 1001 corresponds to Donkey Kong & Lady with the Overthrow Syle, Ho-Oh and Ibuki.
As said earlier, Spirits can be balanced if we remove their types from the calculation, but in any case there are spirits which just don't care about fairness. Here are examples of spirits that could be banned for being too strong :
- Gold Mario, a support spirit who requires three slots to provide the Super Armor trait : makes the character insensible to multi-hit attacks, smash attacks barely make them flinch at low percent. The only attacks susceptible to affect the character are super powerful attacks like Roy's neutral B, counters and grabs.
- Full Armor X, a primary spirit, also provides the Super Armor trait, but he's fair since he only has one slot and his stats are very low.
- Ore Club trait support spirits, wich require three slots : this item is so broken, it provides Super Armor on smash attacks, has a long range, deals great damage, has a very high smash power and summons a huge tornado if that wasn't enough already.
- Final Smash Meter : Final Smashes are still banned for being unbalanced, no question.
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