Smash's Longest Debate Ever

[@urd3adnow]

"i counterpick mike haze" LMFAO

[@ThePharphis]

Unbelievably he was still talking about timer changes when this is the real solution to any current problems in the ruleset.

[@iasongain4497]

Hbox is going to counter pick to his mom

[@gwen6622]

@@iasongain4497 what if he counterpicked the opponent's mom though, like... oh shit now i have to play against hbox AND my own mother? she's not good at the game, but can i morally 4 stock my own mom? the betrayal alone would have me reeling

[@MusicalRiolu]

alternatively we could accept that Rishi's Jungle Jam is the ideal melee experience already smh

[@the0therethan]

ACTUALLY TRUE

[@BlueGrovyle]

rio goat

[@MusicalRiolu]

@@BlueGrovyle i cant scape it nooOOO

[@Rain-od6oc]

thank you for knowing the truth

[@sebas9504]

This is the way

[@willh9187]

i counterpick mike haze has me dying rn

[@gamingtime9716]

it's a bold strategy, I think it needs to be labbed out in bracket to test viability.

[@SunsetInStone]

actually murdered me, I haven't laughed that hard in a while.

[@alexantone5532]

Same

[@andrewanderson7402]

Toph's counterpick dream sounds like a deepleffen tweet lol

[@alexantone5532]

Exactly what I thought

[@RandallPacks]

lol its that time of the year again

[@AlexRoseGames]

"1 minute 4 stocks so timeouts are the only viable win condition". RIP silentwolf

[@bailujen8052]

5 minutes and mild penalties for more than 7 seconds of camping

[@hungiie]

"i counterpick mike haze" has to be one of the funniest scenarios ive heard of in a while

[@benk7954]

"I counter pick, Mike Haze" a custom map that looks like Mike Haze fades into frame

[@sam.lipchutz]

“Possibly unpopular opinion. This is how you know you’re in for some spicy goodness.” I love Toph

[@kestrel7493]

I honestly see both sides having an argument, but neither can be proven until it's tested on a significant scale

[@jaysean9589]

Exactly. Anything highly debatable can go back and forth for eons just using a bunch of toxic hypothetical ideas. Someone run a tournament with these rules. They will enter. Maybe maybe it 6 minutes. Most matches are probably about 3.5 minutes.

[@BuckshotBill118]

The fact that it hasn't even been considered is the reason we're having this conversation for the 30th time. If it gets tested and is bad, we move on and have data that says, "This is a bad idea."

[@MinoTaurusLoL]

15:15 for me it isn't about patience, but rather that with less time there is less room to fuck up, so the player camping has a bigger edge over his opponent.

[@Bizzozeron]

with less time there's actually less time to fuck up, camping becomes better because you don't have to be as consistent about it as you did previously. Platform camping you becomes more viable because I don't have to avoid you for as long. Similarly, the player who is losing has more impetus to actually chase you down because he'll get timed out sooner, which means timeouts are actually respected more and allow more defensive campy gameplay to gain respect in-game because they must be approached, whereas before they would just stand there and then maybe the defensive player would lose the heart to continue camping (happens more frequently than it should)

[@darly5448]

I think this also ties really well into the "Player vs. viewer experience" where the player that's behind, being forced to make more interactions might feel a bit more shitty, but as a viewer this would just mean more interactions and timeout hype would come out of it. Definitely deserves testing

[@darly5448]

Also personally I think generally more interesting things happen when people are put under pressure, (like timeouts, or last hit last stocks, or reverse 4 stocks) like being down 2 stocks already feels like your world is crumbling and a closing time is like another angle to force some desperation and spaghetti outta people, which as a viewer, is just objectively more fun to watch than camping for 3 more minutes, but ALSO as a player, may be nice to just make something happen and not just dick around any longer. Though thinking about it now, it may also make reverse 4 stocks closer to impossible if they don't have the time for it.

[@sebastianscouras8183]

One argument I haven’t seen against shortening the timer is that players should have enough time to finish their games when neither player is camping, which can often take 6-7 minutes in floaty dittos

[@lordmew5]

Best take

[@TheSLATEcleaner]

Here's the best way I think to test this: 5v5 round robin team tournament with 5 minute timers, Jiggs/Fox/Falco/C Falcon/Shiek team vs Ganon/Samus/ICs/Peach/Dr. Mario. Ganon/etc. team play as normal. Instruct the spacies players that they can *only* win by timing out the other player while having a stock and percent lead or if the opponent SDs their last stock. See how difficult it is for that condition to be met consistently. The real issue with the shortened timer isn't with top tiers vs top tiers but rather with a shortened timer giving an even easier route for fast characters to abuse characters with bad mobility, artificially improving the matchup in the favor of characters that don't need the help.

[@yoshter135]

12:48 Toph: in order for a tourney to fall behind schedule... Me: we’d need TWO wizzy’s

[@bulkywallnut5674]

It seems that toph doesn't really have an answer to the argument that lower time makes camping stronger. Taking the peach ditto for an example, having a shorter timer would "Incentivize" the peach that is behind to approach more, but at the same time the peach already wants to approach because she is losing. The reason why she doesn't approach is because approaching is hard in the matchup, hence the camping. If we lowered the timer, the player already in disadvantage would have even less options because they would be forced to turbo engage, which would probably make it easier for the camper to predict their movements.

[@fuzzace6044]

Uh yeah. Ok but that's the point of the timer even at 8 minutes. The losing player SHOULD have to approach. Also saying they have turbo engage is severely wrong. Like in a peach ditto per your example you litetally would have to lose a massive amount of neutral exchanges to encourage nonstop approaching . in which case you are getting destroyed and SHOULD have to make plays to come back.

[@fuzzace6044]

And if this argument you made even sounds good in theory, the fact is no one wants to sit through a 40 minute set (which is what an 8 minute timer hypothetically allows). Faster timer means faster games and more interaction. Its that simple. Wouldn't affect most matchups and would benefit the ones it does affect

[@WillyMacShow]

5 minutes should be tested. its not that crazy. timeouts isn't a bad thing, and it won't shift the meta that much imo.

[@codetaku]

If the 5th to last option was changed from "remove the time limit" to "hide the time limit" it would make some sense (so players have to track Randall manually, and if they want to camp to the end of the game they also have to keep track of the actual time on some external device or in their head which adds mental overhead to the difficulty of camping).

[@loganmyall660]

There's a distinctive difference between trying to disincentivise time-outs and camping. If you out melee game on 12 stocks and 2 minutes, regardless of camping you're going to see timeouts. The question is are we trying to rid ourselves of timeouts all together? I think no timer, 2 stock or something is probably how that should go down. But youll see camping still. Want to get rid of camping? 1 stock, 60 seconds timer. You will see timeouts very frequently. Another thing complicating the equation is people not understanding the difference between camping and defensive play. Running away isn't necessarily camping but it will cause timeouts.

[@SuperLemonfish]

I think your peach example was great fot analyzing the repercussions of lowering the timer. I agree that lowering the timer in that peach example doesn't incentivise camping. But, it does make it stronger/easier for the leading peach. The losing peach will have to go for risky aggressive approaches that, especially for peach, are probably a pretty bad option. And she will most likely get blown up worse than if she had more time to work with. As a potential repercussion of leading being buffed, players might be able to turn smaller (and in my eyes more trivial) leads into big advantages. i worry for floaties in particular. their matches sometimes get close to 8 min even without any hard camping. this seems bad to me, but i totally agree that we should test things out and see. you can only theory craft so far.

[@cirlu_bd]

M2K doesn't want lower timer because HE would definitively exploit the easier timeouts, but a part of him is kinda against it (but not enough to stop him from doing it anyway)

[@grantdraus7449]

Exactly this dude. I think deep down he knows that he's willing to do whatever it takes to win. He knows that with a shorter timer, he would be really good at abusing it. And Mew2King will N E V E R willingly play suboptimal. Only problem is he probably doesn't enjoy playing that way as much as he enjoys engaging directly with his opponent (just like most of us). He doesn't want a shorter timer, because if the timer was shorter he'd be forced to decide between playing his best and playing enjoyably.

[@ismelljello]

Taking a few hype examples of last stock time outs, doesn’t erase the multitude of depression inducing hopeless multi-stock lead timeouts. The boring ones don’t get the notoriety, but someone should really count how many have happened compared to the handful of hype endings.

[@DustyDodongo]

looking forward to the next vid in the toph discuses melee brain meme template series

[@AfroSnackey]

If I ran seven tournaments back to back where I put 15k in the prize pot myself with a 5 minute timer people would eventually come around.

[@dbgr9875]

That counter-picking timer reminds me of one of my dreams for the Ultimate scene, a Special Smash ruleset where after every game one player gets to select one change to the Special Smash rules. For example, MKLeo turns on franklin badges to make fighting Samus 100 times easier, Light turns on curry breath with his Fox so he can stay in his opponent's face and deal constant damage, etc.

[@dfed324]

I am kinda new compared to the vets. The 1st tournament I watched was EVO 2013. But I have been paying attention to how long games--not a whole match, a single game--take because even then I thought 8 minutes was strange. So here's what I noticed. Games with characters that have a natural speed and aggression to them like spaces, Falcon and Marth are going to be quick, and it helps when the player has a natural aggression to their playstyle too. A game between spacies is 2 minutes and change like CLOCKWORK; for perspective, 1 whole spacies match can be finished before another finishes 1 game. But even when you get to slower matchups--Falco vs Sheik, Marth vs. Falcon, Yoshi vs Sheik, Peach/Puff vs anyone, they almost never go beyond 5 minutes like 99.99% of the time. So it is pretty apparent someone is going for the timeout by the 4-minute marker. Solution: yes, lower the time limit. But to what you ask. I say to 6 minutes at least. If the game is not halfway (i.e. 2 stocks each) by 4 minutes, someone's playing to timeout, and those additional 2 minutes are just wasting everyone's time players included. If we're daring, test out 5 minutes, but 6 definitely should be the time limit. PS. I don't care much for timeouts. I care for timeouts that should've been over yesterday. Defense wins championships.

[@SkeletonSSBM]

That dream you described might be the funniest dream I've ever heard of

[@felixronkainen8880]

If the goal is to minimize stalling and camping, we should be focusing on changing the rules to disallow methods of stalling directly (Ledge camping, platform camping, etc.). Only changing the timer will never be enough to eliminate these undesirable parts of the game without new rules being in place.

[@grantdraus7449]

The goal indeed IS to minimize stalling and camping. but I don't think it's right to change those things directly and put direct rules to stop them. If we want to change the rest of the rule set in a way that makes those strategies bad, that's okay. But we can't just ban those strategies directly at the source, unless we're ready to admit that we don't actually like Melee, just something that's almost LIKE melee.

[@felixronkainen8880]

@@grantdraus7449 That philosophy doesn't make a lot of sense to me. There are already a ton of banned techniques in the ruleset already (wobbling, luigi ladder, peach bomb stalling etc.), so its not like banning other forms of stalling is anything new. Moreover, I don't think that banning certain techniques is an admission that we "don't like melee". Melee is a 20 years old game that was intended for casuals and has never received a single patch. I think its pretty unreasonable to expect the game to be perfect for competitive play without any modifications. We already mod the game with UCF, so why cling to the idea of melee being perfect in its vanilla form? I just don't see a reason why we should avoid making changes to competitive melee that make it more enjoyable. If banning stalling techniques makes the game more fun to play and watch, we shouldn't shy away from it out of some vague notion that it taints the game's purity.

[@grantdraus7449]

@@felixronkainen8880 luigi ladder and bomber stalling are not seen outside of explicit stall scenarios. Whereas if you've ever seen wizzy or m2k play, it's obvious that there's so much gray area between "I am camping you for timer" and "I need multiple regrabs to get my next combo to work." Trying to ban the former messes with the latter, no matter how hard you try.

[@felixronkainen8880]

@@grantdraus7449 That's not true at all. The current ledge grab limit rule only comes into effect if the game goes to a time out. So long as you take all of your opponent's stocks before 8 minutes pass, you can grab the ledge as many times as you want. This prevents players from planking to force a timeout, while still allowing them to hang out on the ledge for shorter periods of time to collect themselves.

[@grantdraus7449]

@@felixronkainen8880 I'm not against the current iteration of the rules other than the timer. Apologies if I was a bit unclear. I am just massively against further rules of that style, such as Puff air time limit, or even just an airtime limit that applies to everyone, or a more restrictive ledge grab limit (the kind that is active even if no t/o happens).

[@abexuro]

On the shorter timeout incentivizes camping: Wouldn't that be matchup dependent? Like in the Peach ditto where they camp at 8 minutes already so nothing changes. Are there matchups where camping now becomes a viable strategy where it wasn't before? I'd think that if you can't camp to 8, you can't camp to 5 either. Unless the match naturally runs long like in floaty ditto, but then you're not really camping.

[@yugioh5ds209]

It makes me think about the coaching case and allowing a friend to coach inside a set. (at least in Smash 4). Lot of debates, then we tried once. Everybody hated it. Removed it. Case close. No more debate about that.

[@Vlazeca]

Revisiting this due to the discussion that came out of the hour long Hbox/Llod grand finals set at Gigaschwab 3. Would be curious to see you revisit the topic in some sort of way, along with other proposed ideas for ruleset revisions (airtime limits, making Puff auto-lose timeouts, lowering the ledgegrab limit, ect.)

[@reubenc747]

I think timeouts are only lame because you had to wait 7 minutes to get there. This post was made by 3-minute timer gang

[@vapeshrimp5220]

Run the 3 minute timer, it feels amazing to time out someone with that janky rule set

[@GarnitrexGaming]

Another thing people - m2k - choose to forget is that the end of brawls era adopted a TEN MINUTE timer.

[@fuzzace6044]

5 min actually sounds perfect. Most fast faller matchups still won't go to time I guarantee (However it is now possible which is interesting ) and mus where timeouts are probable a faster timer only benefits.

[@unsapient2197]

I think the possibility totally exists that a 5 minute timer might end up being not great, but like you said I ABSOLUTELY agree that this is something we should yknow actually test before throwing out the idea entirely. Weve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

[@ssbMekk]

this is big brain! nobody talking about how hype timeouts really are for spectators often. it's the middle campy part running down the clock that is boring!

[@ssbMekk]

no harm in experimenting anyways xD

[@kestrel7493]

That dream is hilarious, its like crew battles but you counter pick players until 1 team wins the 2v2

[@silashicks9736]

Genuinely I think timeouts are fine, alternative win conditions are interesting and add dimensions to play

[@BlessTheJay]

There it should be 3 tournaments by that rules, one with melee, one with P+ and one with ultimate just to see how it affects the meta on those 3 games

[@KittSpiken]

I use a lower timer in personal play, I like time outs as an occasional match result and 8 minutes deep you just don't see it or if you do, it was a slog to get there

[@0penGamer]

The point being that there needs to be a balance between tournament time organization, incentivising interactive gameplay, hopefully keeping the spirit of a time-out situation, and etc.. The best way that i personally see it is that you dont touch the timer and instead change from 4 to 3 stocks. I like 4 stocks, but realistically, 3 stocks would make timeouts more impressive, shorten the time of games while making games longer for timeout attempts (more danger losing a stock), while still keeping tournament times the same or even shorter. Possibly this would work with even a 7 minute timer better.

[@Back2Zack]

Try it out!! Does anyone think it will hurt top players or viewership to try it? 18:00 - I agree, however, I think the "against" reasoning targets the type of player who is too impatient for 8m but patient enough for 5m...so actually this might help Plup beat Hbox. 😂

[@linkluver_izn]

im still dying at that dream, fucking funny

[@ThatWolfArrow]

My take is that if the timer is lowered to 5 minutes in melee, the stock count should also be lowered to 3. Keeping the game at 4 stocks would absolutely increase timeouts by a lot, plus the ratio of time per stock would be more in line with the round timers of traditional fighting games.

[@67kingdedede]

Longer timers mean more melee content. I personally like 7 minutes though.

[@dbgr9875]

I think the problem with that argument is that more does not mean better. Technically, Micheal vs Bananas was a whole lot of "melee content", but it was boring to watch. On the other hand, if you just watch 1 minute of high-octane Fox dittos, for example, you will be infinitely more fulfilled.

[@kevinfetters7040]

@@dbgr9875 To be fair, Michael vs Bananas was actually hilarious to watch, however if it was a reoccurring thing it'd be boring. I would love to see a new timer style tested though.

[@kennythekid130]

I'd argue that shorter timers would allow for more best of 5 sets which is better as a whole since it makes over centralized stages like FD less important to winning a matchup

[@gwen6622]

i dont think 7 minutes is enough of a difference tbh. if you're prepared to camp someone out for 7 whole minutes, then you would be camping them out for 8 too. it's only 1 less minute. if its between 8 and 5 though, then that is enough of a difference to where it actually might affect the choices people make in-game. for better or worse!

[@jonathancangelosi2439]

Another important point is that a 5-minute timeout and an 8-minute timeout are not the same. The goal here isn't to reduce timeouts, but to reduce time spent with low levels of interaction. To that end, reducing the timer will force players to approach more against a campy player who is in the lead. Additionally, this will incentivize campy players who are behind to close the gap more quickly by taking more risks and approaching more. While this will speed up the pace of the game, this structure often rewards campy players in the lead who have little incentive to approach, since making the other player approach them is an important part of their gameplan. Moreover, having a shorter timer may possibly lead to players running away more to run out the clock, since their opponent has less time to cover the gap. The odds of going to time are much higher, so stalling strategies are rewarded more. One solution may be to have a stricter ledge grab limit. Still, one could argue that the "running out the clock" is a hype aspect of timeouts, and that there's nothing wrong with rewarding it as long as there's still a high level of interaction. Basically, there's a lot of tradeoffs to consider, but either way, it should be tested so we can put the matter to rest. My analysis suggests that lowering the timer would be better for spectators, but competitively would reward campy players more.

[@perriwinkleiii5361]

We should run fighting game-style rounds: 100-second timer, one stock. You play a Bo3 with these rounds, and that Bo3 counts as one game. Characters are locked within those Bo3 rounds. You play this way for a Bo3 of games and eventually Bo5 later in bracket.

[@zerohcrows]

Would be cool if Fizzi added an experimental queue for Slippi to test something like this.

[@JAMllostthegame]

Maybe next April Fools'

[@jackalito4022]

All I know is we need to test SOMETHING, ANYTHING. I think both sides make good points and both have mostly sound logic, but we will never actually know how effective they are unless they are put to the test in real tournament settings. After all, say one actually does lead to more TOs and longer games in general, then now we know and don't use those timer rules anymore. There's nothing to lose by just trying it

[@dumamihd]

How many matches of stalling/timeout did it take for one hype moment to argue in favor of timeouts? I can't help but agree with mew2king as a fan/watcher

[@kingarthur3236]

You're completely missing the point the whole reason to lower the timer is so we don't have as much stalling Instead of eight minutes of stalling we only have five

[@Golgito]

As Toph said what makes it boring is the time of inactivity. If no one does anything even when the timer is about to run out then that's on the players not on the timer itself. As of now we can't say how lowering the timer would affect that. Will people just get a small lead and camp the rest? Will the player in dissadvantage do anything in response? Can whoever is losing even do anything in response, for the cases where people are ledgestalling which is another problem in it of itself? We simply do not know. That's why PTAS is talking about testing it, not blindly implementing form here on out. Oh and saying "not everything needs to be tested" and then using a hyperbole to make whatever people suggest sound unreasonable is just dumb. The suggestion has merit and should not be simply called crazy.

[@dumamihd]

@@Golgito @golgi i watched the whole video you don't have to regurgitate it with your opinion promise

[@Golgito]

​@@dumamihd bro wtf is that response lmfao

[@dumamihd]

@@kingarthur3236 so what your proposing is players make rushed decisions constantly, got it

[@gatorssbm]

PracticalTAS said it best Do not fear the timeouts, embrace them Sure more timeouts will def happen but we dont know how far it will go if we never test it, plus ledge grab limit rule will be less of a niche situation and timeouts will be less dreaded if they arent as commonplace as people feared Id also say the Melee play has been optimzied to the point where top level doesnt seem to be as defensive as before, it may suck for anything below that though being the biggest con, Id really want to see a dip in the waters by doing 6 mins or a modded build with a 6:30 option

[@ParagonPKC]

Hard agree the middle chunk of timeouts are boring. The TO in me does want to DQ them both because I've got a bracket to run but I think we should test 10 minutes and 6:30.

[@NickNick-xv6wv]

depends what you want to see in melee

[@dhbroad]

My biggest argument against a shorter timer in Melee is frequency of games that start with one person taking 2 or even 3 stocks right away, yet the other person is able to come back and take 4 stocks in a row. It happens too often to not take it into account. If a shorter timer was implemented, it would be easier and more tempting for the player with the lead to camp the rest of the match instead of being forced to engage and allow these great comebacks to happen.

[@nowonprzn7442]

“Leffen responds lmao” that’s the leffen.

[@FGCbaronkorvo]

I feel like no progress has ever or will ever be made by theorycrafting ONLY. We NEED to test the timer change. I doesn't have to be at a major or anything crazy, but it should get some press so we can see what the ENTIRE community thinks (the pros, commentators, spectators, everyone) and make a decision based on more educated opinions.

[@LegendaryMythril]

i don't care either way for the argument but near the end you point out that with a smaller timer, one of the players' would be essentially forced into approaching - but that's just making camping stronger. if your opponent doesn't have enough time to patiently break down your camping strategy, then your camping will be more effective.

[@catrinaisahuman820]

we must return to monke with rishi's jungle jam

[@cuno6118]

This has come up about once a year since I started in 2013 lmao

[@kolja783]

Honestly I wouldn't lower it shorter than 7 mins because some low tier characters can struggle to kill and this would take them to time on a lot of games when normally that doesn't happen. For me playing Roy on slippi, I've had games where neither player camps go to the last minute since every stock can get to 200%+ and neither player can land their scuffed kill confirms🤣

[@bulkywallnut5674]

Yea its like. Lowering timers = people will have to pick faster characters. The game already favors fast characters, why should we further hurt the low tiers who struggle to kill?

[@FlamingZelda3]

Jokes aside, I think the real solution here is to normalize timeouts. We need to try a 4-6 minute timer.

[@NaxipTV.]

as a person that comes from traditional fighting games, smash players don't understand that a time out doesn't have to be boring. The boring part of a time out is the refusal to approach from both sides, in many of the fighting games i play having a 60-99 second timer makes it so the about of time where nothing is happening very minimal whereas in melee, 8 minutes gives you a lot of time to just fuck around and do nothing. I think shortening the timer may possibly increase time outs but I don't really think that would be a bad thing. Playing an evasive style can even be cool if you see one side is doing all they can to be aggressive and approach but the other player is just super good at being evasive, if it didn't last 8 minutes then I think this style of play would be appreciated a lot more.

[@charlottearanea7507]

I kinda like the idea of lowering the timer and having chat vote on who played cooler because it would have encouraged me to drop Lucas for Sheik two years sooner in Smash 4 and I would have enjoyed more time playing a cool top tier before everyone jumped ship to Ultimate because there's literally nothing I could do as Smash 4 Lucas that would stop people from voting to DQ me.

[@laffy7204]

If ledge camping becomes more degenerate, we can create new rules. For example, modding the game so that a character can only grab the ledge 20 times in a row before landing on the ground. This forces campers to commit to an option on stage if they want to keep ledge stalling. Even better, make it so that every time they grab the ledge, they lose one frame of invincibility

[@kingkurtis]

We need a fall speed event that works like weights in martial arts or boxing. I want to see the data for sets with only fast fallers and floaties. Does the melee audience as a whole like seeing floaty matches or fast fallers more? Do they only watch one to know who will be up against what in the next. Of course this will never be implemented but it's still food for thought. Personally I think there'd be a strong bias to fast and maybe mid fallers as they tend to have faster more chaotic matches. Where I'd cut the brackets would be as follows Falco to Roy are the 5 FF Marth to Ness are the 10 mids Mario to puff are the 11 floaties Though Mario doc and gnw do feel like mid fallers. Which would make the split 5 13 and 8. Which would make more sense as the extremes should probably have less chars in them. If we go off Zain tier list and the 5 13 8 split all those above weirdos which most would consider top tiers, the fast fallers would have 3 top tiers the mids would have two and floaties would also have two. Strangely enough there's no fast fallers in weirdos which I think highlights how balancing fast fallers is finicky. Unfortunately this does mean Zain will be crushing two brackets. Maybe he'd pull out the zuff to prove he can hold his own in all fall speeds. I do think marth borders between fast faller and mid faller but I couldn't resist joking about Zain taking it all. I'm not suggesting banning any characters just exploring more thought experiments to do with the game and potential rulesets. I guess we could make an algorithm to throw back data to us about what sets are watched on KZbin.

[@ieatatsonic]

I’m surprised the chart didn’t mention other fighting games at all. But yeah, no harm in testing.

[@cise3895]

I’m also for testing a shorter timer. I do agree with Toph that 64 and Brawl showed that Smash players are definitely patient enough to camp regardless of a long/nonexistent timer, but Melee is a much faster game, with a slightly different playerbase. Therefore, the same may not apply. Ok then, how do we replace the “may” in that statement with “does”? Just test it, simple as that. Well, I call it’s simple, but unfortunately we are slow as balls at incorporating anything new into tournaments. My proposal is we only have one tournament series try a different timer; it’s much easier that way anyways. If a 5 min timer like PTas suggested sounds a bit much for the TO or whoever is in charge of the ruleset, maybe take babysteps over the course of a few years: 7 min timer for 1/2 years, then 6 min timer for another 2 years, etc. We’d still be going slow as all shit, but at least the changes would be constant over the years instead of arguing for X years and then suddenly having all tournaments abide by it. We did the latter option with wobbling, and look how the ICs players responded. TLDR: Yes, test shorter timer, just be really conservative about it.

[@jonathansaraco]

Comment for algo. Keep killing it on the KZbin game Toph

[@MinoTaurusLoL]

18:55 on average it isn't about the floaty match ups. It's the otherwise fast paced 3 minute games where lowering the time incentivizes camping/running away with your lead. Analyzing Peach dittos make no sense for this reason

[@cameronmele2989]

I wouldn’t say it makes no sense. It makes sense to think about all matchups, including what you brought up.

[@MinoTaurusLoL]

@@cameronmele2989 It makes no sense because the arguement isn't that matches which are already going to time out, aren't gonna be shorter because of a lower timer, but that the average match will take longer. So by analyzing the extreme, you completely miss the point.

[@BlueGrovyle]

Again, this goes back to the part of M2K's argument that Toph disagrees with: the idea that players are impatient. Expecting the behavior of the players in the 3-minute average-length matches to change when the time is decreases implies that they're too impatient to wait out the extra 3 minutes in our current ruleset but would be willing to play for a timeout if it didn't take as long. I read your other comment (you think it's not about lack of patience), and I don't understand why you would think that less time benefits the camper more than more time does when the way timeouts are typically played already includes what is essentially wasted time in the middle of the game (what Toph thinks we should try to reduce, which is why he brought up the Peach ditto example). The only difference I can see it making is that fewer stocks are taken, but regardless of all of that, the player in the lead will always be in the driver's seat, so the primitive idea of "don't be the one losing" is just as prevalent as before, in my opinion.

[@yScribblezHD]

@@BlueGrovyle It's not about patience though, the degree to which you camp most certainly does depend on the timer, in terms of how viable the strategy is. Camping IS a more viable strategy the less time remains in the match, regardless of if you think it is. If you have a 5% lead with 5 mins left, camping is nowhere near as viable as if you have a 5% lead with 5 seconds left. It's not at all about how patient the players are, because even if you control for that, the fact still remains that camping reduces the number of infractions in neutral.

[@BlueGrovyle]

@@yScribblezHD I guess that's a fair way to look at it. I also think that timeouts are hype _at the very end_ like Toph does, and reducing the timer again mitigates the potential for meaningless minutes of Melee.

[@aprfinancing481]

I'd love to test out a 5 min timer since i'd give me a new win condition to play for against floaties as a defensive falco main. It'd be unironically refreshing.

[@Blazier]

Lower the timer to 3 minutes, but it only counts down if no damage has been dealt for 20 or more seconds. Or give both players a 3 minute chess clock that only counts down if they themselves haven’t dealt damage for 20 seconds, and a player loses if their time runs out.

[@bubsadoozy]

Time Mode actually might be an interesting one-off tournament idea.

[@mikecl07]

Testing both is a good idea. My intuition tells me a longer timer would be better because it would create a larger barrier for camping and intentional timeouts. It all comes down to mindset and I think there are few players who will make the effort to play campy and lame if the timer is longer because that's a lot of time where you have to acknowledge "wow I'm playing like a goober" but if we lower the timer it simultaneously decreases the barrier and more players will see it as a viable option outright or during the match.

[@axis8396]

If the average game is 4-5 minutes, there's no point in having an 8 minute timer. Timeouts in a number of games are incredibly exciting and a relatively normal thing, the issue is when the timer is too long and nothing is happening. 6 minutes is fine in most cases, add in a ledge grab limit to prevent stalling. In Basketball there's a shot clock, in Boxing the ref breaks up holds, American Football has play timers so they have to start the next play rather than standing around doing nothing. A lower timer can reward camping for sure but we should also look at what matchups are even causing the timeouts in the first place: Peach-Puff is probably a big one, Sheik shino stalling against a number of characters, and other non-interactive styles of play are going to cause that but something like Fox-Falco or Fox-Falcon or Marth against Spacies is probably never going to go to time even with a 5-6 minute timer let alone an 8 minute one. Like I mentioned 6 minutes and a ledge limit is probably fine but if you don't want to do that much off the bat then 7 is probably fine to test, at the very least it means nothing happens for 1 less minute than current rules

[@simongotborg3866]

I disagree with the interpretation of M2K's argument around 15:00 as saying that people will camp more if the timer is lower because it takes less patience. I think you could make a legit case that camping becomes a worse strategy the longer the timer because one advantage of being the aggressive player is that you get to pick when to confront the opponent. If you have less time to work with you need to approach more frequently making your approaches more predictable. Furthermore I would say that it takes much more focus to camp effectively than it does to go for a bunch of fake-outs. As a result the camping player needs a lot more stamina for longer games while the aggressive player isn't necessarily affected as much.

[@Bizzozeron]

If you have less time to work with to approach your opponent (who is camping and winning) then they gain more advantage from camping due to you being predictable.

[@simongotborg3866]

@@Bizzozeron Yeah that's what I said.

[@IronicHavoc]

Someone should make a Summit Sketch out of weird Smash dreams

[@zerohcrows]

that dream story is the funniest fucking shit ever lmaoooo

[@Forthelemon]

wait "DQ both players in timeout" actually sounds brilliant why don't we do that

[@cammro]

gameacho runs Virtua Fighter 3 on it's channel. that game has best of 5, 30 second rounds. game end in all the ways games can end, timeout, ring outs, and KOs. the frantic scramble as someone who is 30% down, and tries to land a throw, or 3 hits in 5 seconds is great fun. the only game i've seen allow infinite time rounds online is Dead or Alive. and what it does, being ahead means nothing, so there's no game management, you kill them or they kill you. there's no point trying to timer scam, or play differently, you keep going and you kill them, so rounds are really short (i think the infinite timer thing applies to fast fallers since their rounds are 1-3minutes, it's so rare to get them outside this range)

[@AndrewRKenny]

At the end of the day I don't think there's any harm in testing it. At the very least it makes the argument (should it come up again) less based on conjecture.

[@kennythekid130]

I don't understand why players are so against it when we have a ledge grab limit now

[@Teckiels24]

Players play with a chess clock and hit their side of the clock when they approach

[@burntfish123]

Imagine picking up the fastest paced platform fighter in existence and then just camping someone out for upwards of 24 minutes for one set lmao

[@fuzzace6044]

40 minutes with bo5 :)

[@MrBasmannen]

Yes, imagine playing to win

[@fuzzace6044]

@@MrBasmannen yup playing to win is perfectly fine! But if a set goes to that extent would absolutely rather it be 24 minutes than 40 :)

[@joush0vosman]

12:38 what if Wizzy is playing in said tournament?

[@ピカリFritzyBeat]

Even if you lowered it to 5 minutes and incentivized the losing player to approach more, you are still increasing the winning player’s incentive to camp, because the whole POINT of camping isn’t necessary to avoid confrontation, it is to force your opponent to make the first move and take a risk that you don’t want to take, and now that the loosing player has more pressure put on them to approach due to the timer being lower, those unsafe approaches that the camper is attempting to bait are going to happen far more frequently, with less opportunities for the camper to make a mistake in their camping (which is exactly the counter play a person being camped has against the camper, they play patiently and wait for the camper to slip up before going in and capitalizing. The timer is the counterplay). No matter how you look at it, with a low timer players are incentivized to take the first stock and camp more, because there is now a higher guarantee that the opponent will play exactly how you want them to to achieve victory (more unsafe approaches while you wait to punish from a safe position). It might not LOOK like the sort of camping we are used to seeing, because there will be more interaction, but those interactions will be far more heavily skewed in favor of the winning player than it is with a longer timer. I play ICs, I get camped by Peaches, Puffs, Foxes, Falcos and Sheiks (on the platforms) all the time. And believe me when I tell you the only counterplay I have to this is the timer, being patient, and waiting for my chances to strike. Rushing in for a counterattack almost never works in my favor. If the timer is shorter, I will have fewer of those chances, will have to commit to more unsafe approaches to compensate, and just loose faster. Long story short: I can’t agree with the idea of a 5 minute timer. A Mike Haze counterpick on the other hand... >u>

[@grantdraus7449]

Well obviously! If you play ice climbers, you should know by now that you deserve every disadvantage! /s That being said, while I agree with a lot of the points you make concerning advantage, interaction, and counterplay... I don't think they're enough to outweigh the truth of "if you're getting camped, you already lost the game, and you deserve that." In a perfect world, if you get enough of an advantage to camp your opponent, you deserve to win, but nobody deserves to sit for 6 minutes watching you do it. Not the crowd, and most of all not the opponent you're camping. 6 minutes four stocks is the honest TRUTH. I agree that 5 is a bit too short, btw.

[@saigesmart4167]

In singles it would be really interesting to allow counterpicking to a time match. Some characters obviously benefit from stalling so being able to switch from stock to time seems perfectly reasonable to me. If you do and lose the lead you'll still be in the same situation but at least you don't have to waste 8 minutes for one match, and on the other side I think its fair to make campers have to switch up play style if they are down in a shorter time match. Just like ptas said, worth trying things

[@pauldaulby260]

the comparisons to brawl and 64 are very good context

[@zaedis5629]

An interesting point that most people dont realize is time outs arent actually a bad thing. They've just been considered lame for decades even outside the smash community.

[@maxono1465]

14:32 that ad lib tho

[@darbleyy6597]

Timer stays at 8 and if it goes to timeout the crowd decides the winner

[@sunnyfalco3339]

Timer? but i barely know her 😔

[@zzzs5961]

I don’t really care what happens because I’ll still keep playing melee, but if someone asked for my opinion I would say keep the 8 minute timer because as soon as it changes people are going to go into a 0.9 mind set were they say well player X would have lost at the 5 minute mark so we’ll ever no if player Y was better then player X. The counter argument to that is kind of the same as 0.9 well we’ll never know or well we’re just updating the rule set other sets are in the past. My other argument is that at some point this same argument will end up coming up in 2 years again for the changed timer.

[@xSkwintz]

You wanna test it? What better time to do that than summit? Just make it a side event and see how it goes

[@kylep9216]

Seeing as how literally being forced away from crts for over a year is the only reason there is finally legitimate discussion about switching to monitors, i do worry that people just wouldnt take the shorter timers seriously. And like the second someone starts sandbagging because they don't take short timers seriously, the m2ks of the world who seem to immediately throw the concept out the window will just use that as a defense of their argument.

[@SmiteKhepri]

Just make every set bo1 99 stocks no timer

[@rumfordc]

unpopular opinion: picking the timer should be part of the counter-picking process.

[@dbgr9875]

counter-picking the version of melee you play on

[@アリス兄貴]

Hack the game to add custom soundtracks. Force the timer to be the length of the selected song. Hack the game so knockback is quadrupled on beats/ drops. Playing melee is now a combo video.

[@karlfairbanks1574]

ooooo fresh outro big t

[@chocobomog123]

ycz6 has been my hero for 13 years. He inspired me to stay in college and pursue engineering and math. I'm always so glad to see him still a part of the community.

[@joey5745]

My idea, a normal set is first to 5. Each win is 2 pts. (This makes it still a best 2 of 3) A time out win is only worth 1 point. So going for the time out strat is nerfed and discouraged. Then make the timer 5 mins,