Data
I created a custom stage: Small size. I placed four horizontal square (cube, if you want to get technical) blocks, horizontally, in the most center part of the stage. The left most part of the stage is considered 0, and the right most, 4. Where each block meets is 1, 2, and 3. And in the middle of each block it’s 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, and 3.5. I used two players in this testing.
Item Drop Placement
Categories: Percents, Distance, and player position
[Even/Uneven %, Far ends/balanced (equal distance from player and edge), and 1p left/right]
[Items in reach - Left player gets 0 through 2 for their total range and 0 and 0.5 for their “next to” range. Right player gets 2 through 4 for their total range and 3.5 and 4 for their “next to” range. Example: 1p - 23:5 (23 is the total, 5 the next to)]
[1p% - 1p has the higher percent]
Even % - Far Ends - 1p Left
Total Drops: 148
Average Drop Placement: 2.1
Mode Drop Placement: 3.5
Drops per position:
0 -> 4
0.5 -> 17
1 -> 21
1.5 -> 21
2 -> 22
2.5 -> 11
3 -> 23
3.5 -> 25
4 -> 4
Items in reach:
1p - 85:21
2p - 85:29
Even % - Far Ends - 1p Right
Even % - Balanced - 1p Left
Even % - Balanced - 1p Right
1p % - Far Ends - 1p Left
1p % - Far Ends - 1p Right
1p % - Balanced - 1p Left
1p % - Balanced - 1p Right
2p % - Far Ends - 1p Left
2p % - Far Ends - 1p Right
2p % - Balanced - 1p Left
2p % - Balanced - 1p Right
Item Drop Frequency
Basically, I sat there, on my custom stage, and watched the timer. And when I saw a item appear in my peripheral vision , I wrote down what the seconds showed on the timer.
Categories: High frequency, Medium frequency, Low frequency, and None (lol).
[The times shown are the times between drops]
High
Total Drops: 50
Average Drop Time: 13. 571 sec
Mode Drop Time: 15 sec
Median Drop Time: 14 sec
Range of Drop Times: 10 - 17 sec
Note: I have only test on Food so far for my testing. Sandbags and Beam Swords will come later, for every category. (Yeah, I know. That’s a lot of data to gather and stuff.
lol)
Note 2: I will be doing more testing on categories already done, to add to the amount of drops tested.
Hypothesis
Item drop position: Pretty balanced, somewhat favoring 2p and right side.
Item drop frequency: For high frequency, after an item drops, 10 seconds later seems like a good time to prepare for the next item.
Overall: With position looking balanced and frequency having certain time ranges, item drop in brawl isn’t looking completely random.
My thoughts
I’m not saying that items should or should not be legal in competitive Brawl. What I’m doing is looking at items in a different way. Not what they do during the match and the use of them. But how they do it and get there. Do items drop at certain time intervals? Is the
location drop for items random, or does it change depending on certain factors? (Like: character positions, percents, stage size, platforms, player ports, etc.)
Smash is a game that relies on items. Smash players are the ones that turn them off. And you can’t deny the fact that we have just put off item testing like this, because we’ve assumed that items are just completely and totally random.
We have to take into consideration that Brawl is not completely liked because of it’s turtle style of play (camping). If there is a pattern in the “randomness” in item drop in Brawl, items could have some viable use in competitive Brawl. Hell, we play even when there is tripping, which is random.
And what can me testing items and their properties do to hurt the smash community? It will spark the debate of item use. Nothing can be said, though, until I have tons of data to look over and form a hypothesis with. For now we can play Brawl how we’ve played it for a year now.
Brawl is not Melee. Brawl plays and feels different than Melee. Brawl is not appreciated. If there is some order in the chaos of items, then we can make Brawl better. Maybe.
Any input and/or thoughts would be highly appreciated.
Thank you,
Cake