Thats so true. People should stop at that line and realize this.
Also, I'm amazed. Some people think the guy is a bad game designer because he promotes FUN instead of competition. This is absurd, its mind boggling that people can think that way.
Because if you didn't know, games have been made for fun, not for competition.
People then decide to compete with it. People shouldn't even be whining about something like that. You compete or you don't, thats your choice, get in or get out of the competitive scene of Brawl. There is nothing else to argue about anymore.
I'm going to copy a post I made at allisbrawl.com in the identically titled thread so maybe people realize what the **** "competitive" actually means. The post was prompted by a ******** comparison of Brawl to chess.
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Brawl is the complete antithesis of chess. Chess is a game where the better player will win nearly 100% of the time, even if the skill difference is small. I'm not talking about you and your friends--I'm talking about tournament chess. Look at the USCF rating system:
* 2400 and above: Senior Master
* 2200 - 2399: Master
* 2000 - 2199: Expert
* 1800 - 1999: Class A
* 1600 - 1799: Class B
* 1400 - 1599: Class C
* 1200 - 1399: Class D
* 1000 - 1199: Class E
Assuming a player's rating is stable, one will very rarely beat a player of a higher class. It's like Melee, where you can imagine a rating system like this:
0: Total Noob, unfamiliar with the game.
1: Noob, knows what the buttons do.
2: Scrub, plays "competitively" with his friends.
3: Good scrub, beats his even scrubbier friends.
4: Semi-advanced, knows advanced techs, may occasionally attend tournaments
5: Average tournament player, rarely places, occasionally wins small tourneys
6: Good tournament player, normally places, frequently wins small tourneys,
7: Very good tournament player, almost always places, sometimes wins medium tourneys
8: Semipro, Frequently wins medium tourneys, sometimes wins large tourneys, may place high in national tourneys.
9: Pro, frequently wins large tourneys, almost always places high in national tourneys, sometimes wins national tourneys
10: Mew2King Tier, the 5 - 10 players who completely dominate national tournaments.
A player will almost never beat someone of a higher rating. Moreover, he will frequently get destroyed by better players. I'm about a 5-6 on this scale. I'm competent, go to tournaments when they're not really far away, but am on the whole not that good. If I'm playing a 7, I probably lose 90% of the time. If I'm playing an 8 I'll always lose, sometimes getting 4-stocked, mostly getting 2-3 stocked and occasionally 1-stocked. If I'm playing a 9 I'll always get 3-4 stocked. I'll get 4-stocked by 10s every time.
In Brawl this scale is not nearly so stratified. An average tournament player, like me, might occasionally place very high. I won't get destroyed even by players much better than me because it's not in the nature of the game. We can justify at most a rating system of 1 - 5: noob, scrub, tournament player, good/very good tournament player, semipro/pro. A 5 will still beat a 4, a 4 will beat a 3, etc., but there is much less distinction amongst average to good tournament players, and less distinction amongst extremely good tournament players. In the Melee rating scale, for instance, a 7 playing a 6 (in Brawl) may win only 60% of the time.
These scales I made are completely arbitrary. The important thing is not that you accept the scales, but that those dismissing criticisms of Brawl understand exactly what we mean when we say "Brawl isn't as competitive." It's not that there can't or won't be tournaments, or even that the better players won't generally win. It's that winning/losing has changed from a matter of NEAR CERTAINTY in Melee to MERE PROBABILITY in Brawl. This is what we mean when we say Game X is less competitive than Game Y. We are talking specifically about stratification of skill levels. Generally, the more stratified the competition, the more competitive a game is.
In a game like Tic Tac Toe, for instance, those not familiar with the game may think it is competitive. But the game is simple to master completely, giving rise to a class of masters, a class of amateurs, and a class of noobs. The masters will always tie each other. They will always beat or tie anyone else, because the game is that simple. This is one extreme. Continuing the board game model, the other extreme is chess, as detailed above.
Melee and Brawl are somewhere in between, Brawl tending towards the Tic Tac Toe end and Melee towards the Chess end. Brawl (at this point) seems to have a smaller "skill gap," meaning in any rating system applied to both Brawl and Melee, the subjective difference in skill between each rating level is smaller.
Melee
Noob----------------------------------------Tournament----------------------------------------Pro
Brawl
Noob----------Tournament----------Pro
You can imagine each - as a measure of the skill gap, exemplifying the total amount of talent, practice, and general experience needed to "advance to the next level."
Now, whether you accept these estimates as accurate is not really my concern. I'm just trying to quantify exactly what we mean when we say one game is less competitive than another, in order to avoid the kinds of misconceptions I've seen plaguing this thread, the chief of which are these, which I will address briefly.
"If a game has winners/losers, then it is competitive."
This is a very low standard for admission of competitiveness, including anything from Tic-Tac-Toe to flipping coins. If you held a national coin-flipping tournament, somebody would win, others would place, etc. But this is not what is meant by competitive.
"If a game has a steady tournament scene, then it is competitive."
This is probably true, but it is really a strawman. This is not what we mean when we say Brawl is not as competitive as Melee. No one is saying there won't be a tournament scene with Brawl. We are simply saying the "skill gap" is smaller and therefore results will be less consistent.
Sorry if I came off a little harsh.