Competitive Rant

There was an excellent post on SWF on how many competitive players feel about anti-competitive casual smashers. I felt it was worth noting here.

The crux of this debate is that some people do not want other people to play a certain game competitively. That's it. No one is asking the inverse, demanding that casual gamers play by their arbitrary set of rules. It is simply the anti-competitive crowd going out of their way to spite those who are better than them. Their "arguments" normally focus on some abstract "way the game was meant to be played", which we all know actually means "way I want to play the game". To this I can only say, who killed Sakurai and made YOU king?

For the misinformed, which includes most of the anti-competitive crowd, here are the standardized rules for Super Smash Bros. tournament play:
-4 Stock, 8 Minutes, Team Damage, No Items
-Both players choose one stage to ban for the set
-Both players pick characters at same time and go randomly to one of the six "neutral" stages.
-The loser determines the next stage to go to, from almost all of them. The loser also picks character second.
-Best out of three wins

Obviously, we have to talk about items. Items add luck to the game, period. If a good item appears next to you, you very well could instantly win. If a bomb or exploding container appears in front of your attack, you very well could instantly lose. Players don't like having their skill nullified by luck in a competition. Players enter tournaments to pit their skill against their opponent's, not to gamble. Items benefit top-tier characters more, period. It only widens the gap between characters. Most the high tier characters are fast and/or very aerial, giving them a massive advantage in obtaining items on the stage. Some people say that items were meant to balance the game, claiming that characters like Mewtwo and Pikachu were designed as item gods, and their low tier positions are due to items being banned. This is bull****. If an item spawns directly between Pikachu and Shiek, who will get to it first? Fox and Falco, two of the top characters, even have their reflectors to give them the upper hand even when their opponent has the items! Are you saying they need MORE advantages?

If you want to play competitively with items, go ahead. Make your own tournament. Tournaments are organized by players, not people who own stores. Just don't be surprised when no one shows up, because virtually no one wants to play competitively with items. Tourneys do not play with items because the people attending them don't want to, not because some evil tourney director is making them.

Next stages. Hyrule Temple sucks, ok? Let's get that out of the way first. The bottom zone makes it almost pure luck as to who kills who first, giving certain characters huge advantages and leading to REALLY long matches. If you want to organize a Hyrule Temple tourney, go ahead, no one will show up. The only other stages that are banned are ridiculous ones like Super Flat Zone that no one ever likes anyway.

Now then... The six "neutral stages." People act like tournaments only play on Final Destination, which is ridiculous, since it's only one of the six default stages even, and it's typically banned by a player if their opponent has a good Falco. Some tournaments even play with something called "Dave's stupid rule", which states that no stage can be played twice in a set of matches. Yoshi's Story, Fountain of Dreams, Pokemon Stadium, Battlefield, and Dream Land all receive just as much play as Final Destination, if not more. And those are only the initial stages! The other counter-pick stages just aren't included on Random so you don't get some ridiculous random match-up like fighting Peach or Jigglypuff on Mute City.

So why are there so many people who think tournaments are the scourge of Smash? It's simple really. Every fighting game suffers from this to some degree, but it has hit the Smash community particularly hard due to its "easy to learn, impossible to master" nature: Everyone and their dog thinks they are great at Smash, some are, but most suck. People seem to get the idea that just because they've unlocked all the stages and characters, that they are true masters of the game. Then one day, they come up against someone using advanced techniques with tournament rules, get destroyed, then become angry and bitter towards tournament rules and techniques like wave dashing.

So next time you get beaten by an advanced player ask for some advice rather than the usual, "Bawwwwww! Wave dashing and L-canceleing are such cheep glitches (PROTIP: they're not glitches). The game is supposed to be played on Hyrule Temple with full items." It's not like advanced players are in some secret club, and are determined to keep these techniques hidden from you just to maintain an advantage. With the exception of a few rare douche bags the whole notion of elitism is false, most advanced players would be more than happy to explain advanced techniques to you. Furthermore, it's not even that hard to learn them. In only a couple hours you can learn to wave dash, a couple more and you can learn to L-cancel. From there it's just a matter of practice until you can incorporate them into your game.

So what do casual players have to complain about? Nothing, the anti-competitive crowd just doesn't like the fact that some people are better than them at the game, and they don't want to put forth the effort to become better themselves. That's it. The can claim otherwise all day, but that's it.