alright guys, tone down the flaming and trolling and hate here, all of you.
The thread is getting pretty off topic and I’d rather not have to close this thread.
You seriously cannot compare ST Akuma to items. They aren’t even close Shari.
Items do not completely dominate the game 100% like akuma did. Items are just an aspect of the game. ST Akuma was either pick him or lose.
As for the whole randomness aspect, yeah randomness exists, and sometimes it will cause upsets,etc. I don’t think anyone’s disagreeing. But Consistancy vs Once in a while is probably the better argument here. I think alot of SRK’ers are willing to give up 100% “consistancy” (despite the fact upsets do happen anyway), and have a generally consistant result, while keeping more of the game intact.
I’m sorry guys, but Akuma wasn’t exactly tournament tested before he was banned. Not to the degree that people are claiming items need to be tested as such, anyway.
But it also varies by region. Remember that ST came out in a much different time, where there was no SRK. Heck, the internet wasn’t even close to as useful as it is right now.
However, chances are that if a tournament allowed Akuma they also had other silly rules like “no throwing”.
But this isn’t saying items can just go away with minimal testing, if anyone wants to get that idea. As ST came out in a different time, so must the standards change with it. We have the capability to run several tournaments across the country and report the results now, so we should use that.
I’m not saying CPU didn’t play the game right, he knew what to do. I just don’t see where people derive enjoyment from that style of play, especially when winning can boil down to something so simple.
I guess to each their own. I would personally rather fight it out like a man than play high level run away waiting for the smash ball. Because really, that would be the smartest thing to do. Which, is exactly what happened. That’s just silly.
Because, unlike Ken, who really had no clue what to do in the scenarios given to him (which is painfully obvious. I mean, he tried to smack ROB around during the FS), we tend to know how to handle the situation. We don’t see it as black and white as you might. Indeed, to each their own.
How much testing will be enough to satisfy both sides? If after a series of tournaments with items-on, we find that the winner is not consistent, is that enough to turn items-off? Vice versa with items-on?
Its hard to find someone who is actually objective about this issue. Both sides seem to have an agenda to either have items-on or off because its what they prefer. The argument that the ruleset that changes the “nature” of the game the most should be avoided is not really that valid since there really is no default way of playing this game.
The criteria really should be whatever ruleset that makes the game competitively interesting and generally consistent; not whatever takes the least away from the arbitrarily decided default way of playing the game. How exactly would one test for that? Can we really boil down item usage to something empirical? Give points based on how strong it is or how weak an item is? Make some kinda item tier list?
We should decide how to test items in a standardized way, not just have a bunch of people argue about ifs and maybes.
No offense, because i like that you are working toward a goal similar to ours… but…
its really hard to take you seriously when you called for a ban on hammers (i dont know if they are still on your ban list or not, but it speaks volumes of the light you choose to examine some of this in.)
The problem is the way items interact with eachother. You cannot examine each one alone, and as such, the only way to start getting results is to run the damn game with nearly everything on and see if you are getting irregular results (outside the normal variance of any fighting game, accounting for players improving and others not practicing/getting worse.) Also, you will beging to really see if any items are really problems and might need removal. The rigors of tournament play FOR MONEY may be the only thing that forces your talented community to find creative solutions to some of the dynamic and intimidating problems items throw into your usual gameplan.
look at evo. black hammer avoided like plauge. final smashes avoided repeated. people murderd for picking up gold hammer. etc, etc… give the best players the venue and reason to win and you will see what ive been seeing all along. items play is just as consistant and viable ass what you are used to, its just different )and this is why many of us fighting game players LIKE it).
I dont have a main game, really. I am a generalist. But, im probably best at WHP, ST, and Garou, and ill be playing a lot of SF4… and smash + items of course.
Actually, we only have the GH banned right now (the black hammer is CP). That’s not the point, though.
The point is that taking a ‘middle ground’ policy on a hotly contested issue shouldn’t make someone lose credibility. The ‘light I [chose] to examine [items] in’ was purely scientific, and I’ve even posted every bit of data I (or anyone else involved) gathered to be reviewed by my peers. Look, I know that our project has flaws, and those flaws will only come out and be dealt with through regular play. But, it is a work in progress. We could have done things the way you say and kept everything on until we found something we (subjectively) considered overpowered… but the vast majority of Smash players wouldn’t have condoned it in the slightest. Meanwhile, we could have kept everything off until we found an acceptible counter for it, but then no one would have any reason to experiment (because everyone would be busy playing with them off). Expressly because we took a middle ground approach from the get go, the supposedly ‘hard-headed’ and ‘intolerant’ SWF-goers have contributed 590 posts and almost 27,000 page views to our debates and discussions. That’s a lot.
People played the way they did at EVO because they knew what they were doing, but one tournament isn’t really enough data to make a concrete call on anything. EVO was/is a great starting place, and I’ll admit I was watching the fallout like a hawk because I knew that a successful EVO would validate our project as well. But EVO could have been so much bigger (and thus so much more of an accurate test)… all because the ruleset wasn’t ‘conservative enough’ (whatever the hell that means). For perspective, though, I’ve had people coming up to me on SWF saying, ‘Hey, I’d have gone to EVO if it was ran like this.’ (Disclaimer: not my views, so don’t bash me for it; I’m just the messenger)
What I personally think is most important is to get people playing. We’ll never get anywhere if we spend all our time playing ‘Theory Fighter’ online instead of Brawl with items. If it takes a middle-ground approach to get people to start playing with items, well, so be it; we can always edit the ruleset later, when people are more tolerant of the changes.
Oh, believe me, I mean you as little disrespect as possible and I see where you are coming from.
Its just the nature of the beast. Some items seem broken alone, but with everything else in play, solutions to them are easier to find (spicy curry). I wish you luck, as I’m sure you wish me, in building a scene for items-on brawl. I just can’t get behind anything that turns off the smash ball. Now I will agree that smash balls appeared too often at evo, even though this showed wonderful results in how well people could avoid them… turning everything on and playing shorter matches makes them appear much less.
xSAMx- If ‘camping’ for the smash ball is so braindead easy, please show up and enter a few of these tournaments and win. I’d really like to see it.
NO camping happened at evo. CPU spot dodged a lot and he is getting shit for it as a camper? Spot dodging is POWERFUL in this game, he would be a fool not to do it a lot with someone as agressive as ken in his face.
Keits: Yeah man, spot dodging is re-fucking-diculous in this game. It’s so abusable with certain characters, and ROB definitely happens to be one of them. Spot dodging is a big part of the reason I stopped enjoying the game. I hate brain dead go-to options like that. Once again though I’m not shitting on CPU’s gameplay, but do you think he would have done as well vs Ken in a straight up fight? I see it as being better at items play, not being better at smash. I know for some people, items play IS smash, but the majority of people see no items as a more respectable test of skill. CPU had a better strategy, but I doubt better skill.
I gotta focus on this, as this is a problem I see as a whole. When it comes to skill, strategy should be top priority. Unless the game is designed where technique outweighs strategy, a person with a master strategy but average technique should be beating out those with the opposite, and thus, better skilled. On the flipside, a game that treasures technique over strategy (Melee’s a good example for this crowd), strategy assists the technique, but without technique, even a master strategist will lose to someone with a strong technique if theirs is not at least up to snuff. Brawl seems to fall under the former.
That’ll be the one thing I’ll always enjoy about chess in terms of competitive play. Technique is absolutely non-existent, meaning the game is entirely about strategy. I’ll always find that the most impressive subset of skill, and games that tend to forego in favor of technique just tend to be dull as hell to me.
Wow. I didn’t realize it was so intense to move those pieces around. I’ll know next time not to underestimate the value of how hard it is to properly remove/place a captured piece. :rolleyes:
Really, though, the reason for items is simply that removing them is equivalent to shifting the balance from strategy to technique. The more things you remove from play, the more important technique becomes over strategy, due to the lack of options. Not saying that Diet Brawl is devoid of strategy, but the balance is considerably less in strategy’s favor than a more progressive ruleset. It is of my belief, and a number of people’s here as well, that the more the balance is tipped in strategy’s favor, the better the game can be. Not a single strategy, mind you, but the more possible strategies that can exist, the better the game can be.
That is not technique. That is a particular strategy. Knowing HOW to perform the actions necessary is technique, but, as said earlier, knowing how to move the pieces is fairly straight forward, and thus, non-existent.
Strategy - the ability to know what to do when and why.
Technique - the ability to know HOW to do it.
Technique in chess, aside from the basic mechanics knowledge, would be akin to choosing to slide your piece around as opposed to picking it up and placing it, or which fingers you use to move them, or how you pick up and place captured pieces. Superfluous actions.
