Our CP System is Broken: Details and Proposed Solution

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Fair enough, it was a lousy metaphor. Allow me to try to think of another one while I rage at the fact that this thread is here and my thread got moved.

 

[Ussi]

Ew. See, the problem with this, and the reason some form of counterpick system really should be present, is simply that the amount of variance in stage picks sinks drastically. You will NEVER AGAIN play on FD, Brinstar, RC, or various other stages which are seen as "hardcore counterpicks". There will be 2-3 stages commonly used, and that's it. I'm willing to claim that that is indeed a problem.

@Thio: It's not a free advantage, you got it by winning game 1. But you know my feelings on this from the other thread. Also you have no idea how jealous I am of you. Able to keep your thread in the $%^& forum...

False on 2 accounts, I've seen FD be game 1 strike, shouldn't be impossible.

Also i'd love to get RC on the strike too. Most people won't find it necessary to strike it against me either.


Besides, Lylat sometimes is a starter, and that is such a rare sight to see game 1. Or at all

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

False on 2 accounts, I've seen FD be game 1 strike, shouldn't be impossible.

Also i'd love to get RC on the strike too. Most people won't find it necessary to strike it against me either.


Besides, Lylat sometimes is a starter, and that is such a rare sight to see game 1. Or at all

In reference to FD, it's because people are stupid, or the starter list is so nuked that the most neutral stage for the matchup actually is FD. With a full stage strike, this will NEVER be the case. NEVER! The only reason it would ever be a starter then is if one or both people are scrubby enough to consider it "fair", or the player with the character who is worse on FD cedes to there because any other stage is unfamiliar ground. The reverse is only likely on RC; it will almost never not be stricken because it's heavily polarizing. The only reason people would not strike it is if they mistakenly believe their character is better there, or due to personal preference (like with you or SuSa).

The reason Lylat is so **** rare is because it's polar-it's the most aerial-based stage in the 5-stage starter list, and will almost always be a first strike for, say, Diddy, Falco, ICs, DDD, etc.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

The question comes down to: What would you rather, stage diversity or fairer match-ups?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Stage diversity by a mile. I don't really think there's much question there.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Then do you support items?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

No. There's no connection.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Pretty sure there is.

Adding items into the game increases the competitive depth at the cost of making the game less competitive due to the randomness.

Just as having full-stage striking is more competitive, but has less depth.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Pretty sure there is.

Adding items into the game increases the competitive depth at the cost of making the game less competitive due to the randomness.

Just as having full-stage striking is more competitive, but has less depth.

Why do more balanced matchups make the game more competitive? There is no direct correlation.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Preferably five, and as they've chosen the character before they choose the stage pool, they can't swap.

They still are going to list the three best stages of the character they intent to play if they chose it first, which our current system allows true mind games since you don't know what character they intent to play.

I don't see how this is relevant to anything I've said. The purpose of double blind can be expanded to never CPing via characters.

I'm stating why we do it game 1.

Also below.

I've explained how it does, you have yet to do anything but state how it doesn't. I'm waiting for logic.

Your missing a key point in this whole thing.

The purpose of the counter pick system is to counter pick against what your opponent does. The purpose is to give an advantage to the loser of the previous game. There is more weight on game 1 because of this, it's a by product that exists in every competitive game that allows you to change anything in between games.

We can make it so that the player who wins M1 doesn't get a guaranteed stage and character advantage in M3.

Ok, if we want it like that.

They deserve a free advantage in M3?

What?

What the hell is the logic in that?

They won game 1, thus they earned it.

Why do more balanced matchups make the game more competitive? There is no direct correlation.

Character depth. People like it.

But I agree it isn't a direction correlation.

 

[fkacyan]

The purpose of the counter pick system is to counter pick against what your opponent does. The purpose is to give an advantage to the loser of the previous game. There is more weight on game 1 because of this, it's a by product that exists in every competitive game that allows you to change anything in between games.

I understand the concept of the CP system. What you don't get is literally the entire point of this system.

I'm ignoring all of your posts until you do.

 

[PottyJokes]

japanese cp system holla

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I understand the concept of the CP system. What you don't get is literally the entire point of this system.

I'm ignoring all of your posts until you do.

Clearly you can't read,

I understand the whole point of taking more weight off of game 1 and make every game feel like it's game 1, but this doesn't really distribute the weight of game 1 to the other games. It's just a natural flaw with fighting games when they use a CP system of any sort, we have to set it for best 2/3, etc. to give an weight to say who is better. Because of this changes can happen.

added to the fact you want to remove the ability to cp characters so that game 3 isn't one sided.

But I guess this is pointless since you decided to do what I equivalent to, put my ears and screams like a six year old, then I guess talking you is pointless.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

PottyJokes, it's been objectively proven that the japanese stagelist is less competitive than most USA rulesets. Please post something sensible for once. It's like the only thing you ever do is come into random threads and post a one-liner about how much you like the (HORRIBLE) japanese counterpick system. You're wrong. You are objectively speaking LOGICALLY WRONG.

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Why do more balanced matchups make the game more competitive? There is no direct correlation.

Greater balance in match-ups increases character diversity. That in turn increases the number of MUs to be learnt, the number of stages (as different characters are more likely to choose different stages), etc...

 

[fkacyan]

blah blah i don't know what logic is and I only argue with my own opinions

How does my system not take weight off of G1?

Why should we have true counterpicking, as in CPing to give a guaranteed advantage, in the first place? How does that add competitive depth?

You have yet to present a counterargument. Statements to the contrary are useless, and all they do is make me want to fly to wherever the hell you are and strangle you with your brain stem.

Greater balance in match-ups increases character diversity. That in turn increases the number of MUs to be learnt, the number of stages (as different characters are more likely to choose different stages), etc...

I'm all for balancing the characters via the stagelist once we have objectively defined matchup ratios for every stage (That is to say, each matchup on every legal stage).

Get on it! That's like 15-25k MU ratios depending on the legal stagelist you're working with.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

How does my system not take weight off of G1?

Because you still left a part of the CP system in your system by letting people still pick stages. I can really equivate it to the current system by giving someone two stage bans instead of one.

Winner pick the stage, but they are picking the lesser of three evils, which is pretty similar to what we already do.

Game 1 is still very important to allow players to try and gain an advantage via stages, which is even more influenced by forcing characters before stages.

Why should we have true counterpicking, as in CPing to give a guaranteed advantage, in the first place? How does that add competitive depth?

It adds depth because it makes who you main and why you pick up characters. So you can use them to counter pick a character to gain an advantage. You can use them to cover bad match-ups if you get a read on a stage choice, Wario main cps or didn't ban FD wonder if they are switching characters, or if you lost game 1 or 2 to a bad match-up.

Counter pick systems in TCGs, fighting games, etc. are going to help out people who win game 1 in a set of best 3/5.

Your system still has this, via stages and even with characters while blind picks is just changes where the mind games are going to be more focused on, which character they will choose.

You have yet to present a counterargument. Statements to the contrary are useless, and all they do is make me want to fly to wherever the hell you are and strangle you with your brain stem.

So you want to strangle me and display condescending behavior. Cute.

I'm all for balancing the characters via the stagelist

The stagelist shouldn't be used to balance the cast except for a few exceptions.

That should never happen unless the stage is question makes a tactic broken, Wario running away on CP stages, or polarizes a grand majority of match-ups to force players to play certain characters or lose.

once we have objectively defined matchup ratios for every stage (That is to say, each matchup on every legal stage).

Get on it! That's like 15-25k MU ratios depending on the legal stagelist you're working with.

Players already make rough guess' on these already. Some Marth's have said the MU with MK turns from a 4:6 to a 3:7 or worse on Brinstar.

It could help to have a chart of every match-up on each stage, but good luck getting people to be completely objective about this.

 

[Crow!]

I've read the OP, and skimmed the rest of the thread. My thoughts:

The system proposed sounds pretty familiar...

...The Leader begins by choosing three stages from the stage list. The Answerer then picks one of these stages for the current game to be played on...

Coincidence? Not that I mind; if you thought this idea was good enough to be pushed to be used in a less bizarre tournament format, then I'm flattered.


Anyway, I think you're mis-selling your system here. At 3 stages, the proposed system is in theory identical to normal counterpicking with 2 stage bans (well, apart from repeating the double blind character selection, which I'm not sold on.) At 5 stages, it's basically allowing your opponent to have 4 bans. So it's really not that radical a change, whereas the tone of the OP makes it sound like it's supposed to be.


There are aesthetic reasons to prefer counterpicking over always opting for the fairest matchups possible in each individual game: sure, character X gets to do great things on stage A / vs character Y, but if stage striking is always used, then in tournament you almost never actually get to DO that awesome stuff even if you main character X - not if your opponent knows the matchup, anyway. Having the games go in order of "not strongly favoring either character, then favoring one, then favoring the other" adds more variety to the games which are played, which in a sense adds more depth. So long as keeping this variety does not make the match essentially over after game 1, this seems to me to be something worth keeping.

From a results-oriented point of view, I'd be more convinced that some change in this regard is needed if I didn't see so many instances of Lose-Win-Win at tournaments. (Or heck, from those weird MLG rules, consider cases of winning in continuation sets - were stage selection so huge a factor in determining game outcomes, this would be essentially impossible).

If tournament matches were consistently Win-Lose-Win, with only the occasional Win-Win if the players are terribly mismatched in skill, then the system would be pretty clearly broken. I hear that someone is tallying up the MLG matches' data; when/if I have my hands on that, I'll see if I can quantify how much advantage picking the stage gives players.


(Obvious additional concern regarding repeating double-blindness of character selection: letting matches be thrown one way or the other because of hitting a D3 essentially at random when you picked a vulnerable character is darn close to anticompetitive. I feel a lot better about DK and the rest when players know for sure in at least one of the games in the set whether D3 is coming up, and when they know that they basically just can't pick those characters at all for game 3.)

 

[Yikarur]

this "our cp system is broken" stuff is the reason I prefer a conservative stageset. If you play only on stages that are less critical then Luigis Mansion or Norfair or stuff like that then counterpicking doesn't have that much weight like stated here.
in europe you never get a free win by counterpicking because every hard CP is removed (brinstar is allowed somehow though but legalization of brinstar isn't that bad because if you ban brinstar there is no hardcore counterpick left)

 

[Jack Kieser]

OMG, a Crow! post! Dude, where have you been? Have you checked out the stage discussion forum?

 

[SuSa]

Because Final Destination isn't as Polar as Rainbow Cruise?

Riiiiiiiggghhhhtttt?

HORRIBLE logic is ****ing HORRIBLE

 

[Yikarur]

Final Destination isn't as polar as Rainbow Cruise.
you're so right =)

 

[SuSa]

I'm going to have to thank BPC for this link one day

Sorry, but that truly is laughable. Diddy/Falco/DDD all gain a distinct, polar advantage on Final Destination.

Uhm... I guess MK get's one on Rainbow Cruise?

3 > 1 last time I did 4th grade math...

 

[Yikarur]

I disagree with Falco, Falco is better on other stages.
I can fully agree with ice Climbers though (even though you didn't mention them)

the advantage they get on FD is imo on another level than like on rainbow cruise!
and even if they get it: BAN IT (that's your main logic ^-^)

on rainbow cruise you're screwed if you're character abilitys just don't match the stage. (extreme example: Ganon is sooo low and so unmobile, how can you expect him to survive on this stage on his own? while fighting another character? uhhh..)

That's not the case on FD.

 

[SuSa]

I'm against handing out any bans. But if that's your logic for FD - than just ban RC. Nice double standard?

Same with on Final Destination.. and RC hardly moves so fast that Ganon can't keep up.. the fact you're even trying to suggest that is laughable. (Flight of Ganon anyone?) Even if he couldn't... BAN IT (that's your main logic ^-^)

Every character can survive on every stage, the only one "arguably impossible" when dealing with a matchup is Rumble Falls due to its "Speedup" thing.

Also that's the entire point of a stage being POLAR. It favors specific character traits

It just so happens FD favors a few more characters a lot more than RC does.

 

[Yikarur]

while a looot of chars like FD, RC favors chars and heavy disadvantaged other chars.
There is a difference between "having chars that favor the stage" and "having chars that heavingly disadvantage chars while favoring others"

 

[SuSa]

FD places me at a disadvantage because it lacks platforms for me to replenish my jumps to reach higher. It clearly places those with multiple jumps at an advantage due to this.

I demand you ban it.

 

[Crow!]

OMG, a Crow! post! Dude, where have you been? Have you checked out the stage discussion forum?

I've been at grad school. It takes a lot of time and effort.


As for the previous exchange between Yikarur and SuSa, I would like to point out that FD isn't even on the 5-stage starter list in the BBR 3.X rule set. For the matchups where one character favors it, it is often the single most advantageous stage for the character it favors. I personally voted to move it to the counterpick list, but if you have 9 stages on the starter list (and therefore 4 "bans" to use on game 1), it is actually fine.

 

[Ussi]

people don't play on RC right though, you can't get gimped for 2/3 of of the time. During the time when the stage is scrolling up (really only time getting gimped is possible) just camp like you would do on PS1 and Ps2.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

this "our cp system is broken" stuff is the reason I prefer a conservative stageset. If you play only on stages that are less critical then Luigis Mansion or Norfair or stuff like that then counterpicking doesn't have that much weight like stated here.
in europe you never get a free win by counterpicking because every hard CP is removed (brinstar is allowed somehow though but legalization of brinstar isn't that bad because if you ban brinstar there is no hardcore counterpick left)

I'm going to focus on the last part of this post for a moment, because it is flat-out wrong, and I actually demonstrated this in a tournament set (against Gale). I was playing against Gale, and thought he only ever went MK. Seeing as I was looking forward to a bunch of dittos, I did ban Brinstar, because I'm really bad at the stage. And then what happened?

He counterpicked me to FD with ICs that came out of ****ing nowhere and kicked my *** with one of the most ridiculously advantaged stage-character combinations in the history of smash on one of the most polar stages in the game. And, in fact, I will argue that FD is more polar than, or at least just as polar as RC. Look at the stages.

On FD, you have the ICs, who are completely and utterly broken on the stage. Like, retardedly broken. If FD was the only stage in the game, ICs would have maybe one bad matchup, if that (Whereas MK would have at least 3)-they're REALLY REALLY GOOD on FD. Then you have the "tier two" counterpickers; Falco, Diddy, and a few others like Pit who, while not absolutely ridiculous on FD, are still really strong on the stage.

On RC, you have MK, who is really strong, but definitely not broken (he's good, but definitely beatable-in fact, some chars would far sooner CP MK here than to a "neutral")-more in line with the tier 2 counterpickers on FD than the ICs, really. Then you have a few other chars (G&W? Pikachu? ZSS? Wario?), all of which are totally debatable, and most of whom do better on other stages. Even if you did decide that the stage boosts MK as much as FD boosts ICs, RC is still less polar. Wanna factor in that certain characters simply suck on RC? Well, guess what. Those characters are simply bad. They lack mobility, jumps, good recovery, whatever. If you want to claim that this is not true, then I can argue that FD hinders fast, mobile chars with good recoveries through its lack of hazards or movement.

Now, on to the rest of the post. One of the premises you are in fact defending is that our current counterpick system, as is, with no changes, is more valuable to our gameplay than various other stages. This is flat-out ridiculous. If a non-degenerate gameplay element is made broken through rules we insert into the game, then the problem is not the non-degenerate gameplay element. Imagine if we inserted a rule that said, "whenever a player using Yoshi takes a stock from their opponent, they win the set". Then, it very quickly turns out that, whoops, Yoshi is REALLY ****ING BROKEN. With your logic, instead of amending the rule (which was apparently pretty stupid in the first place) to fix the problem, you'd ban Yoshi. Also, before you make the same mistake as god knows how many other people, this only applies to rules WE put into the game, I hope I don't have to explain why.

What's more, while I suppose making a more "conservative" stagelist would help solve the problem, it would always be done wrong. When you take a ruleset like the APEX one and strip away Brinstar, RC, and maybe Delfino too (seriously, this is what you people would call "becoming more conservative"), then you kinda make the system MORE broken. For MK, it's no longer -/+++/-. Fair enough, you pulled that off; it's closer to -/=/-. But for, say, Diddy, ICs, or Falco, it's gone from +/--/++ to +/=/++. I.e. REALLY busted for them. Not only is most of the weight in the set still on game one, but you can't force a real disadvantage against them and they get an overall serious advantage in the set. At least before, MK didn't get a massive advantage overall. Your biggest problem is that when you claim to "remove the polarization" you only remove it in one direction, which makes the stagelist as a whole even more polar.

while a looot of chars like FD, RC favors chars and heavy disadvantaged other chars.

So wait... FD is ridiculously polar in almost every matchup, but RC only has one or two matchups that are problematic? And RC is the more polar one? See above to the point that RC disadvantages characters.

There is a difference between "having chars that favor the stage" and "having chars that heavingly disadvantage chars while favoring others"

No, not really. You have to look at everything relatively. You can't say "FD is neutral ground because it has no hazards". You have to say "FD is not neutral ground because it lacks platforms and hazads, which counts as a stage trait in and of itself". For all intents and purposes, FD DOES disadvantage various members of the cast severely. MK. G&W (G&W ALWAYS bans FD, or is ****ing stupid-that's how bad the stage is for G&W!!!). Wario. Donkey Kong (dear GOD the stage blows for DK). Basically, anyone with good movement, anyone who loves platforms, anyone with multiple jumps, anyone who hates being grabbed, anyone who has trouble with projectiles and/or lacks their own... And I only named the chars who really are "disadvantaged" by FD. There are tons more like Pikachu who aren't explicitly hindered,

 

[Yikarur]

your only advantage in such a discussion is that I don't feel like answering every stupid point in a multiply pages long wall of text lol
I'm not going to argue with you anylonger.
I have more to do than writing hundreds of lines with Fail-not-proven-Logic like you.
just saying: the IC Thing can always happen (with other chars and stages) as long as you're not going to do a Full Stage Strike + Double Blind pick every match.

and you should've won against Gale, Shame on you D:

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Gale placed second in the tournament to Akuma. I'm going to say that losing against him is not a huge deal.

Furthermore, you could just take any point in there which is critical to the overall argumentation (lack of features is a stage feature, FD actually hinders various chars, RC has less severely polar character picks than FD) and counter it. You don't need to debate every single point. You have to debate one, maybe two of them, and my argumentation falls apart.

You know what the problem with that is? YOU CAN'T. It's not that you're too lazy, it's that you're WRONG. You wonder why you were rejected by the BBR? That's why. You have no idea what you are talking about, your ideas regarding above all stages are scrub logic that should've been abandoned years ago (like Akuma, Bilo, and most of the rest of germany), and when you can't beat a point, you john about not wanting to waste your time on things that have "already been countered". They haven't been. In fact, they're correct. You're simply refusing to address the points. You claim it's because of sheer laziness, and that's bad enough. But it seems to me that rather than lazy, you're just wrong and you don't want to admit it. You'd rather just continue to spread the same old wrong misinformation, run tournaments with rulesets that are objectively worse than the kind of thing I'm proposing, and influence others to do the same.
THIS IS NOT OKAY!

I'd say that I'm done arguing with you, but it appears I don't have to be because you don't have any actual arguments whatsoever. It's like saying "you're finished" to a guy you already won against in mario kart.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

t's not that you're too lazy, it's that you're WRONG. You wonder why you were rejected by the BBR? That's why.

I don't think you have a good stance to claim why he was rejected when you don't know truly why he was rejected. We can't make any claim to such since the BBR determines who is fit and who isn't, not you or anyone else that isn't in the BBR.

In fact you and me were rejected quite similarly when we applied. Why did we not make the cut? Because there were other people more qualified than us, plain and simple. In short your making an assumption to use it as leverage for an insult.

I'm gonna comment on FD later.

 

[Yikarur]

Cadet is Top Tier in insulting people who don't share his opinion. =)

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Yika, I literally just wrote a monster post explaining in complete detail as to why you are wrong (and FYI, it's not an opinion). Then you ignore it, and merely claim that I'm wrong. And then I make a post speculating on what you'll do because you are wrong and refuse to accept it. If telling a person accurately that they're wrong is an insult, as is calling out scrub logic and/or laziness, then there is something wrong with society. I didn't insult you, look again. And, FYI, you're still wrong and in denial.

 

[Zankoku]

Stay calm, guys. Deep breaths.

 

[Yikarur]

you talk me down, it's a kind of insulting imo.
I'm just tired to argue with you, it's non sense to argue with you, we represent completly different views.
I'm not wrong, I'm wrong in your point of view.
and I'm pretty sure RC has much more "Polar" Match-up then FD.
FD is not that bad, FD is a stage where a lot of characters can fight well, even GaW.
Of course it's stupid that ICs are that "broken" (they're good but not unbeatable though) but the stage itself is completly fine, it doesn't hinder chars because they're too slow, it doesn't kill your char because you can't keep up with your opponents character that waits for you to spike/semispike/Whatever you down.
be honest, don't you see the CLEAR DIFFERENCE between FD and RC?
of course your argumentation points are valid somewhere but there is just a clear difference between them.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

you talk me down, it's a kind of insulting imo.
I'm just tired to argue with you, it's non sense to argue with you, we represent completly different views.
I'm not wrong, I'm wrong in your point of view.
and I'm pretty sure RC has much more "Polar" Match-up then FD.
FD is not that bad, FD is a stage where a lot of characters can fight well, even GaW.
Of course it's stupid that ICs are that "broken" (they're good but not unbeatable though) but the stage itself is completly fine, it doesn't hinder chars because they're too slow, it doesn't kill your char because you can't keep up with your opponents character that waits for you to spike/semispike/Whatever you down.
be honest, don't you see the CLEAR DIFFERENCE between FD and RC?
of course your argumentation points are valid somewhere but there is just a clear difference between them.

Me, SuSa, Jack Kieser, and Raziek have all brought it beyond the realm of philosophy or "viewpoints". There is, in fact, a fairly clear right or wrong regarding stage legality. And there is definitely a right or wrong when it comes to the polarization of a stage, and it's downright obvious that FD is only less polar if you follow the outdated and false philosophy of "static = neutral".
Furthermore, you are seeing a difference where there is none. Your common sense is drastically misleading you. FD doesn't hinder chars because they're too slow. No, it hinders chars who are too mobile, relatively speaking. You CANNOT speak in absolutes, you have to look at the relatives. If you look at FD on its own, does it "hinder" chars? No. But look at it in the context of a game with a massive number of other stages with completely different traits, and it's suddenly the most hindering stage in the game to characters with certain qualities, and one of the most enabling stages to other characters with other qualities. RC may come close, and even be on a similar level, but to claim that there's a large difference between them, or that RC is more polar... Ridiculous.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Me, SuSa, Jack Kieser, and Raziek have all brought it beyond the realm of philosophy or "viewpoints".

They all suck at this game and nobody cares about them.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Need I remind you that:
-SuSa is a top player in a very competitive region
-Ad hominem still doesn't ****ing work