Except that the intervals of spawning are pretty damn predictable. You can zone, hell, you can zone at all times. It’s just now a slight risk at certain times. That can only IMPROVE the game considering how stupid the game gets on the zoning front.
cannot believe this is still going on.
just keep letting smash bros cannibalize itself.
its been two years already, the line has been drawn, and the community sucks so hard it doesn’t even realize its killing itself off.
even in the face of horrible gameplay caused by lack of items, there’s barely 1% of them that would be open to using items. it’s not happening.
everyone should just move on to saturday night slammasters.
oh wait. even that has items.
Your argument that items discourage zoning is partially correct.
Two characters are far away, and one player is zoning the other out while an item is about to appear. If the item appeared next to the zoning character,the zoned out player could approach and successfully land a hit because an item appeared and the zoning char was forced to stop. If the item spawned next to the zoned out char, then he would obtain the item, gaining an advantage without any risk. You could say that this discourages camping, but this is also not true.
What it promotes is doing nothing in order to keep options open and maintain distance from your opponent. Because Brawl’s shitty physics and mechanics punish a player for approaching, the next best option is to use aerials and quick ground moves to space your opponent out and gradually restrict your opponent’s options, otherwise known as zoning. Since items discourage zoning and punish you for doing so, players are left with no viable options except to do nothing or take a gamble on whether or not an item would stop your zoning. Approaching is out of the question since it results in a disadvantageous position, zoning is also out because of items, then characters can only do the next best thing: sit back and wait for items, hopefully one that spawns next to a player. But when you think about it, this is only another form of zoning and camping. Again, since the spawn locations are random, this would only result in a random winner.
You could say that this is because Brawl is a shitty game and I would wholeheartedly agree. But in case I’m wrong, please correct me.
Also, sub, melee is at 9 years and going strong. I don’t see a death of the smash community anytime soon. The Brawl community is not the smash community.
Wow, totally forgot about this.
Gonna ignore these cause I feel like an argument isn’t really all that productive at this point, suffice it to say I had a response, but what really needs to be said is on the bottom and I’d prefer to just draw your attention to that.
Honestly, you gotta understand it from our prospective, the vast majority of smashers have no issue with other formats.
But, we don’t like people forcing other formats on us, and that’s what was attempted at Evo. Most smashers took that as a literal slap in the face. Regardless of whether or not it’s a push, there’s bad blood on both ends, SRK’ers being as hostile to smashboarders as the reverse is never gonna help the situation.
If you approach smashboarders from the prospective of “I prefer the game with all items, but itemless play is cool too” instead of the common attitude of “itemless play is an abomination before all that is holy”, then I can see a lot better results.
What you describe is our position, not yours. Nowhere did Evo say “we’re doing it this way, so you better fucking do it too”, meanwhile, your community actively boycotted and slammed any attempt at doing anything items-wise the second the game came out. Evo said “well, since this is a new game, we’d like to see how we should run the game first. Can you show us why not?” Then no one did. Lots of heresay and doom prophecies, but no evidence. Just whining.
Meanwhile, proof was given to WHY Evo’s stance should be supported, and even with all that, Evo still decided to attempt some sort of compromise, which due to the lack of understanding of the intricacies of the game, led both sides kinda miffed about it all, 'cause ultimately, it was fairly unbalanced in some aspects (Smashballs w/o anything out there to dilute the frequency or counter in play and the whole “First round always on Smashville” being the bigger problems).
The fact remains that Evo did nothing of the sort regarding “forcing formats on you”. Their tournament, their rules. That’s as far as it went. Nowhere did they say “you must follow the law of Evo for your own tournaments”. No, that goes more to the whole Back Room thing you guys got going on over there. No, they don’t say “these are the Smash Commandments”, but the community treats them as such, right down to the point of making a veritable holy war between the communities (see the whole fiasco in SoCal when your own community whined and bitched and boycotted the guy that was honestly trying to run tournaments to prove Evo wrong about their thoughts until the guy caved 'cause otherwise his tournament would be dead.) It’s hard to take that whole “forcing formats” crap when Evo practically begged for a good reason NOT to do it this way. In the end, what happened? Brawl got booted from Evo as a whole. Sure, they got “invited” to a corner of the place last year, but they might as well have not even been there. It was nearly a quarantine zone. Haven’t even heard if you guys will get that shot again. But the general attitude received from the community kinda made any chance at Smash ever appearing as a main title at Evo again an impossibility.
It’s funny, your community can claim “it’s just another tourney” about Evo, and so do we here, but the second we do so, it’s right back to the whining that you guys aren’t ever getting your fair share. It should tell you something when Melty Blood gets a nod over your guys.
When you’re trying to get attendance, you gotta appeal to the community, not the reverse.
How can you take them not attending as a slight to Evo and say that it wouldn’t be perceived as an attempt to force the format on smash? It was aimed at competitive smashers, was it not? Competitive smashers overwhelmingly are in favor of itemless formats as the standard for competitive play, sure they’ll attend items play, but they not gonna attend a tournament for just that. So how can you not expect us to interpret it this way?
How would you guys feel if for the next SF game that comes out, let’s say it’s several months after release and SF players have already been running tournaments. Now smashers try to run a major SF tournament (lets say it’s a combined fighting game tournament), but they use a completely different set of tournament standards then your tournaments do (not necessarily better or worse, just different), would you attend?
Wouldn’t that strike the SRK community as “we know how to run your game better then you guys do?” Especially if you guys repeatedly say “you won’t draw many SF players with this ruleset” and they’re like, “our ruleset is better”. Especially if they interpret lack of attendance as a sign of bad faith.
Yet, if it were run explicitly as an experiment (aka, yea, we understand, but we’re gonnna try this and see how it works, it’s gonna be a side tournament, and if it doesn’t work out we’ll do things differently next year) and smashers were not held responsible for not being interested, it could’ve been taken for what it was, a failed experiment, it didn’t draw in the community.
Now I’m not gonna say smashers haven’t been obnoxious about this, but at the same time, you can’t say it was unexpected, and you can’t say that it was just smasher’s fault. It was at best a push, where both sides were looking for things to take as slights, and the end result was obviously gonna be animosity.
But better PR on both ends would’ve helped a lot. Hell, maybe it still can if people are, I dunno, willing to listen to each other.
TL;DR: Smashers didn’t go to Evo 2008 because the format didn’t interest them, everything was a matter of bad PR.
The problem with your thought process here is we’re talking about Brawl when it first came out. New game. From our standpoint, instantly translating rules from a game’s predecessor, which took years to get to in the first place, was indeed asinine. It’s a foreign concept to you guys, I know. This is your first real “new” game, as Smash really didn’t get a scene until Melee. You guys haven’t dealt with iteration after iteration, nor have you dealt with other games similar but different enough from the game you’re used to (somehow I doubt any of you took TMNT Smash Up with more than a grain of salt, for example), so the idea of resetting and experimenting all over again was terrifying to the point where you just assumed “let’s just do it like we did before”.
The fact that our standpoints are so radically different should be enough to realize just how impossible it would be for you to grasp where Evo was coming from. They were looking out for the best interest of the GAME, not its community, as it was brand spanking new. If you take notice, they did nothing to influence how Melee was done in 2007, as it was an established game and over the years developed what was pretty much universally agreed as the most optimal way to play. I could see reason to complain if Evo had decided to say “all stages all items” in 2007 with Melee.
As I’ve said before, I was in that community back when Melee was still in its infancy. I watched the evolution of Melee up until around 2005, where I just got bored with the game from what it became. I still think the decision to cut items originally was a little rash, but understandable. To keep with tradition for tradition’s sake from the get-go on a game that did pretty damn well on fixing items shortcomings on its predecessor? It just shows how far that community has fallen into its own circlejerking scrubbery.
Lastly, just to hit the argument you claim for the sake of the argument: yeah, by disturbing a currently established ruleset for any given game, you’re bound to get lesser attendance. This has happened on many occasions. Good example was Evo moving to console from arcade. There was a lot of complaint, and in a few people, still does have some people complaining, but overall, the decision was respected and now is the standard. A good example to come will be MvC2, where it’s the first time to be there and not be on arcade/Dreamcast. Lots of hate’s coming from that, and I’m sure the attendance won’t be nearly as big as it was last year, but either one of two things will come out of it: the game’ll die at Evo, or it’ll become the new standard. Lots of legitimate reasons to move on to the PS3, lots of legitimate reasons to stick w/ the DC, but ultimately it’s Evo’s decision and they’re sticking to it. Only can respect their decision and compete or not.
What is BAD to do, however, is to go out of your way and make sure no one else does. This is what your community did on several occasions, not even including Evo itself, and Evo still got fairly good numbers in spite of neither side of the whole thing was happy about the ruleset. Had the massive whining that continued even after Evo by the majority that wasn’t even there (note: Evo 2k8 Brawl was still hype in spite of the meh rules) not occurred, I’d not be surprised to have seen Brawl in the lineup in 2k9, with All-Brawl’s set, as all it did was convince people the shit works, and either one two things would have happened yet again: either the game would die, or it’d become the standard. Though, admittedly, I think this is much more of a gray area. I think it would not have become standard, but either become its own scene or made the game more crossover between the two. Back in the days of Melee’s growth, both types of tourneys were run, rulesets were fairly consistent with the exception of the biggie (items in meant stages in, items out meant stages out). There was a pretty fair amount of harmony for a good couple of years. At worst, people would begrudgingly play in something “not the ruleset they’re used to”, but nowhere was all the animosity that exists today.
Actually, there was a great deal of experimentation, it just wasn’t tournament experimentation (which, to be fair, is exactly what I’ve defended the HD remix community for doing with Akuma). A lot of the items data that you cited to me came from internal SBR testing, with the objective being questioning whether the game was "different in the crucial aspects that made melee items with melee as opposed to the reverse, and this had been occurring from the time that it came out in Japan.
Now, is it scrubbery? Nah, this is a matter of tournament standards, and I feel like this post on Sirlin’s forums best makes the distinction. The various options that smash has should be treated as akin to how shooters have a variety of different game settings, neither better or worse inherently, just different, and choosing any particular one isn’t scrubbish.
And think reasonably, even though smash might not have had the depth of field that SF does, the SF community in general has significantly less of a grasp of the series then smashers do overall, so the recommendations just don’t come with the credentials it would if it was internal.
Now I understand, it’s Evo’s right to make it’s own ruleset, but at the same time it’s the community’s right to not attend and dislike it. Smash doesn’t need Evo to thrive and evo certainly doesn’t need smash. But at the same time, holding just smashers responsible for what was clearly a difference of opinions (and one that hasn’t been proven non-subjective at that).
Now, as far as going out of our way to make sure nobody else did, what beyond Evo had this? Remember, the presumption for Evo 2008’s Brawl was that it was aimed at the smash community. And like you said, the understanding was that either “you standardize what Evo does or the game dies at Evo”. We may have strong opinions about what is the best format, but we’re not gonna force people to not play without items. We just won’t do it competitively and we recognize items play is a separate metagame that isn’t equivalent at all.
Out of curiosity how large was Brawl’s 2008 Evo attendance?
Regardless, the point is, there’s plenty of blame to go around in the current split between smashers and SRK, and any reconciliation would have to be taken by both sides.
Some thoughts
Testing in tournaments is a big thing. Outside of a tournament, there are fewer variables that effect outcomes, and you can confirm your hypothesis 99% of the time regardless of what it is. In a tournament, people are trying to win, so you may see things that you may not have thought of when you ran the test at your house. Something may work out great, others may work out poorly. The point is you just don’t know what will happen, and nothing is proven.
Good test would be like Keit’s test. You come in with a simple bipolar idea and you test it. Example: Can you escape the fan. It’s either yes or no. He tries it and it can be done. The test can be done in the comfort of your home because there are much fewer variables involved.
Except for the fact that the Melee scene has only been around for, what, maybe 7-8 years at most, when SF has been around since the 90s.
This shits gay. Look if you cant play with items you DONT know how to play smash. Thats all it comes down too. If you were to have a smash tourney it really should be random items on medium all on random stage, thats it.
Who ever thought it was a good idea to make no item tourneys is wrong.
END.
Well said. I think there needs to be more of a “deal with it,” ideology in Smash.
Truthfully you gotta think about it Smash is the most “unfriendly” community to new members. With blah blah blah rules counter pick stages and all kinds of weird crap it really dilutes the game itself. The Smash meta game is complete for the most part, Metaknight is win. How long did it take mvc2 to get that way? Brawl has been out for what 3 years and its already a done deal. The worst part is the community just deals with it.
If I thought I could change things I would. 
I love smash.
Oh well there is some satisfaction in being a big fish in a small pond.
When I said “Deal with it,” I meant that Smash Players have a tendancy to turn something off if they don’t like it. Items. Gone. Stages. Off. Heck, they even wanted to ban Meta-Knight.
I wouldn’t say “dilute.” I think competitive Smash is dumb down from what it should be. These elements that are turned off bring depth. Yet, without it, it becomes a shell of a game. I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned it becomes “unfriendly,” because of it.
Since we are on the topic, what would you change?
I would say all stages are good in that game except maybe skyworld and the dk rumble falls (pretty broken). No custom stages. All items on, on medium drop rate for 1v1. High drop rates for 2v2. that is about it. 8-9 minute time limit 3-5 stock (items can take lives pretty fast).
What do you think?
I think it’s good. I disagree with the stages if only because they still help towards counter picking. Characters like R.O.B. could counter pick stages like Skyworld to give them the edge. At the very least, I say allow everything for counter picks and make the random custom at the organizer’s discretion. So stages like Rumble Falls and Skyworld wont be the first match but players can still choose them if they wish. 4 or 5 stock will work with items.
This wasn’t mentioned but I think Friendly Fire should be off in team games since it brings back some strategy into team games. Seems to much like coordination (playing online, I far to often see these really good players leave their team mates to die rather than join the fight). I think items on high is an interesting touch for a team game.
A big problem with TA off is that when it comes down to a 2v1 situation, it’s a no-win situation for the 1. Also, with TA on, the more in sync you are with your teammate, the more likely you can play in the dangerous waters of side-by-side. A huge advantage over other teams without this capability, and successfully pulling such a thing off consistently is much more awe-inspiring than a TA off tag-team wall of hate.
I will say this much: if there’s one thing that changed little between Melee and Brawl, it’s the strategy of TA Off, and that got silly real quick.
Admittedly, this is quite impossible to pull off online… but that’s friggin’ online. Even if it weren’t for Nintendo’s shitty WFC, it’d be difficult to coordinate the kind of things that are relatively easy to do live.
A 2v1 situation isn’t unique to Smash Brothers, it’s the nature of a 2v2. In RTSs, you are at a huge disadvantage in a 1v2. The same be true in shooters if the other team doesn’t decide to play rouge agents. But heck, making a 2v1 situation is part of the strategy. If one team makes a 2v1 situation, good for them. That was their strategy and hopefully it worked out for them. Making a 2v1 fair for the 1 guy makes no sense as this is a team match.
Also, part of the strategy would be breaking the wall. Since we were talking about items on high, this will solve the wall as a well placed item or an assist trophy will break it. A team camping gives up their item advantage and a team that is a moving wall is amazing, but can be broken by good tactics and execution.
It’s not that the 2v1 situation is unfair, it’s that it’s unwinnable. The 2v1 scenario is so lopsided the remaining player would be better off just jumping in the pit and starting the next round. Overall, TA Off is a removal of depth in a team scenario where “vs. the other two” is just as important as staying in sync with your teammate. That aspect just isn’t there when you remove the concern from your own attacks near your teammate. No having to think about jumping into a brawl. The concern for your teammate makes you think about how to assist rather than just fly at someone screaming “YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGHHHH!!!”
Again, it’s probably one of the only things I will concede to not having much, if any, change between iterations of Smash. There was a reason why TA On became the standard then, and there was a time in which TA Off was tried. The simplest strat of covering each other’s smash attacks repeatedly was nigh invincible. Hell, I remember a time myself and LordLocke, for lulz, did double Ice Climbers and just moved around the stage alternating down and up on the c-stick on top of each other. Doing nothing but that netted us 5th out of 40+ teams, no effort put in. A lot of which we KNEW were better than us in any other situation, even had we taken it seriously, all because of how dumb TA Off was. And that’s not even counting the silliness that would occur once 1 teammate was removed from play.
Not to say 2v1 TA On is a “fair” scenario, 'cause it’s far from this. The two still have a major advantage, it’s just not a totally unwinnable scenario if TA were Off. In a TA Off scenario, that last one player cannot do ANYTHING offensive. Even the most mediocre of teams will still understand the basics of praying on the opponent’s recovery to any offense, and with TA Off, there is no repercussions to camp out behind your teammate and wait for said offense with a burly attack chain that would otherwise never land on an intelligent opponent. He can’t turtle up, 'cause he’ll eventually be backed into a corner by one, while the other either a) flanks safely, or b) in an items scenario, scrounge up items like crazy and throw them into the mix. With TA Off, those items are safe to throw in there, aside from an explosive.
These are far from the doom prophecies that items bring to the table, as they are core strategies and not dependent on anything “random” to cause the scenarios. The second one teammate is ousted and the remaining two regroup, the last teammate has no chance of success. Jump in the pit is a better strategy. Up until the time the team can regroup, there lies the hope that the remaining teammate can make a kill and bring it to 1v1. If that’s not feasible? They’ll eventually regroup and Jump In The Pit becomes the strat of choice again.
Meanwhile, a 2v1 TA On scenario still keeps the team on their toes, as the 1 player can hang onto the hope that he can get the two opponents to break each other apart/kill. The two can decide to step up and double-team with that risk, or have one sit back and tag-team/item scrounge, both of which can be considerably more risky than in a TA Off scenario due to the fact the remaining 1 player does not have the fear of going offensive if the opponent’s teammate abandons them. They can still punish said offense rather easily, but it’s not a derp scenario. The “tagged out” teammate actually has to pay attention for a proper time to step in.
I disagree entirely. Turning FF on removes depth. There is no longer any strategy or any realy team work. It justy boils down to 2 1v1s that go on at the same time. It should be no surprise that the team tier list mimic the 1v1 list when it shouldn’t.
Doing silly things like Yoshi’s egg roll and having another player attack is an assist. It allows the attacking player to get easy shots off. Of course, Yoshi is doing nothing besides helping the other team mate. If the other guy’s assault fails, then the assist end badly. Right now, it has nothing to do with combining attack or using unique tactics. It’s just split off and fight.
Again, it’s not invincible. You just have to break the wall. A moving wall is vulnerable in that it’s moving. Since the players are going to try to stay together, it’s going to be slower than the other team. The other team could go for a mobile force and try to break the wall by attacking from two sides. They could also use projectiles, items, or assist to pull it off. It’s stage dependent, but I can’t see how you can not break it. I think the IC thing has more to do with they didn’t know how to break it more than it’s invincible (this is competitive Smash Brothers players we are talking about. They will shield against a warp star).
The problem is we shouldn’t change the rules of the game for one scenario that is not unique to Smash Brothers but is true of almost any team game. I can tell you from experience that in Starcraft 2, if you lose your partner early on, it’s game over. Heck, losing a partner at all is game over as the other team can just make more units than you can.
Given, the 1 player can still win. It’s a lot more of a struggle for him, but it can be done if it’s close (i.e. they both have 1 stock and at least one of them has high damage). If the other team has more lives than it doesn’t matter how fair it is for the 1 guy, he still lost. So I don’t see the logic in bending the rules for just this.
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The best option for the one player is dodge, seek items, and land pop shots. Basically, guerrilla tactics. He can hope for the time to run out or get lucky with an item. But again, why are we trying to create rules for a 2v2 game based on 2v1? This is the same logic that is why items are off and most of the stages are banned.
Put into a tough scenario that happens a lot, the best players will find ways to deal with it and get around it. Seeing as one of the “best,” choices you mentioned was “jump into the pit,” I think that you have no hope of figuring out new tactics and trying a new way of playing (which I think adds far more). To be the best, players have to grow. Smash Brothers problem is that it wants to contract.
P.S. On the pit thing, it’s actually horrible in any scenario to just give up. If the match gets to a point of unwinnable, than try to prolong it as much as possible. Heck, they it be decided in a Sudden Death. The point at that point isn’t to win, but to get inside the other teams head and make them uneasy. They have to struggle to get you, but you can just jump around, taunt and have a good time. It doesn’t matter, you lost. The point is to frustrate them so that they screw up in the next matches. This gives your team mate time to relax and you can chill with some fun projectile spamming and running away. At least this way, you can fight another day.
I can’t say I often see the scenario you describe, at least, not with teams that know how to manage teamwork appropriately.
The problem you’re missing is that team dynamic not only exists still in TA On, but is far more strategic in the scenario where team sync is that much more required.
Missing here is the fact that this wall, as you describe it, wasn’t defensive in the least in this scenario. Never has to be. The fact you can cover someone’s recovery completely without worry means an offensive wall of limbs will at the very least force BOTH opposing teammates to either do one of two things: run away, or do the same thing defensively. If you manage to actually BREAK that (good luck against any decent team doing so) you’re only doing so to create the above concern you have with TA On: two 1v1 fights. Keep the two apart, then fight 'em 1v1. Now you’ve made it no different than TA On. Seems a little silly, considering how incredibly improbable it is to even stop such a thing in the first place.
I may not know that much about Starcraft, but from what I do know, it seems like a comparison of apples and oranges here. Don’t know what else to say.
Still missing the idea that TA On isn’t meant for “saving” 2v1. In a decent team scenario, team-up strategies are still there and VERY used, it just requires the two players to be much more in sync. Pick-up Teams just aren’t gonna do well. Can’t say the same for TA Off, where sync stops at watching each other’s attacks and covering each other’s recovery. That’s it.
In a 2v1 scenario, the 1 doesn’t have a chance. Not a sliver of a chance. It takes about three seconds to see what the 1 is doing, distract for a couple seconds to force them on the defensive, then zone until they die. There’s no “getting around it”. Even with items in play. Hell, ESPECIALLY with items in play, considering that the two now have that much more control of the stage than the 1, and chucking items without worry for your teammate is ever-present. It’s not a hope for the best scenario once your teammate dies, it’s a “wait for the inevitable” scenario. For the one player to succeed, it would require complete and total stupidity coming from the opposing team. Somehow, I don’t see that scenario EVER occurring, as if the team’s that fucking dumb, they’re never gonna kill your teammate in the first place. This is what I meant by the “jump in the pit” scenario. Yes, you can do exactly what you say, but the fact remains that the one remaining player is now just dicking around. It’s like running out the timer when your opponent would otherwise perfect you. At best, you’ll bum 'em out for not turning you into goo. Sadly, this game does not provide much for antics, as too many of the options to drive someone nuts is just not possible. Especially in that 2v1 scenario. You can’t even breathe. 