This is an in-depth evaluation for the Mii fighters utilizing the power of...
Philosophy!
There has been some considerable discussion over the usage of Mii as a character in Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U (but not on the 3DS that I am aware of). This came about for three reasons:
The first of these matters has to do with both the overall strength of a Special Move named "Piston Punch" and a possible exploit to it. I will go over both these issues in painstaking detail utilizing logic as my process and a position of Competitive Standards - that is, I will be addressing arguments based on the perspective of competitive values since I will also be addressing the 2nd issue of Dapuffster's tournament performance (tournaments are assumed to be adhering to competitive values).
About Mii
Mii is very much like any other character on the Character Select Screen (CSS), in that you place your Player Token on the icon to play the character. The initial difference is that you then get a sub-selection of which Mii you'd like to choose, much the same way Brawl allowed the use of either Zelda or Sheik upon a sub-selection, except with Mii you get more than just one alternate choice.
Competitive Philosophy
For more information on this (and a whole lot more) please refer to: Competitive Philosophy for Super Smash Bros.
It seems this must be reiterated many times, but there are (at least) two very distinct areas of play: Competitive and Casual.
Both are conceptual, they don't exist in a location, they reside in our minds. However, very real things are affected by these conceptual areas - communities form from them.
We then have a Competitive Arena and a Casual Scene.
The Competitive Arena is shaped by its duty to uphold a Competitive Standard, that which is bound by Competitive Principles.
These principles are:
Additionally, upholding Competitive Standard is essentially saying the player will be "Playing to Win" in regards to David Sirlin's book of the same title.
For more information on this, please see: Playing to Win
Of these principles, regarding Mii, I will be focused on two of them: Fairness and In-game Authority.
Fairness is essentially not allowing a competitor to have any reasonable advantage over another. This is mostly seen as options made available. There are some exceptions to this (e.g. Port Priority - it is a physical impossibility to physically plug a controller into the same port). When these exceptions occur the most fair option must be used to decide a split, and that is usually drawing lots (like flipping a coin) as it is a random factor that does not favor any competitor.
With that aside, fairness usually comes from complaints about the game itself. Such complaints of a move, tactic, strategy, or character not being "fair". However, it has been more often than not that this is just the usual complaints of a person who refuses to play competitively and seeks to gain an advantage over their opponent using out-of-game rulings - this person is usually referred to as a "scrub" and competitively they should be ignored and the game allowed to continue to evolve.
So how does this whole fairness thing include the character Mii?
There have been complaints brought to issue about Mii not being "fair" - uh oh, is that the call of the wild scrub we hear? Well, let's reasonably hear the complaint out before prejudging anyone as scrubs.
The claim is this:
It is not fair that Mii can have custom moves and nobody else can.
This is under assumption that Customization is set to Off (which I feel like it should competitively be set off, but that's outside the scope of this post).
This presupposes that Mii has "custom moves"
And this assumes no other character can use their custom moves.
Because the second premise is false and the conclusion of "not fair" is assumed to be true then we have an invalid argument.
We can have a valid argument by either negating the invalid argument or replacing the false premise with a true one:
It is not the case that it is not fair that Mii can use custom moves because nobody else can.
In-game Authority
As a general rule of thumb in the competitive community the game's programming is authority. TO's, competitors (pro/novice alike), spectators, and "the majority" do not have authority on how the game functions or else we are subjected to oligarchy, dictatorship, or a lemming complex. The only exception for this rule is when the game itself overrules its programming and does not function, it literally breaks, and this is when the community steps in and says "This mighty fine game here is competitively worthy and we wish to keep playing it, so anyone who causes this game to break on purpose by exploiting this glitch will be disqualified from our tournament" - and hopefully that can fix the problem until a patch is given.
What this ultimately means is that if a game is competitive then we have no business messing with it. And if it isn't competitive we have no business playing it competitively, find another game and play that.
"Too Good"
Leave it to some to try to get their way by simply proclaiming something to be "broken".
There is now something that is truly broken in the literal sense and a scrubby "broken" in a figurative sense.
I'll illustrate how this works: Well, I am not good enough to win by skill (a competitive principle) because I can't get past those Forward Smashes. If I banned Forward Smashes I'd win. What, only broken things get banned? If the ONLY exception to get something banned is if it breaks the game then I will just claim Forward Smashes are "broken" and I can get it banned. Then I win.
Once again, in-game authority trumps any scrub complaints of a move/character being "Too good", "Cheap", "Over Powered", "OP", or "Broken".
Unless the move/character meets ban criteria then such complaints should be ignored. However, this seems to have to be said ad infinitum, so be ever vigilant.
Now that all this has been established we'll look more into some matters that may be ban-worthy and need to be evaluated.
The Piston Punch
Not gonna lie, the Piston Punch is a strong move. Very strong!
Ok, it's not as strong as a lot of other moves that many other characters have, but what it lacks for in pure knockback it makes up for in its setups, speed, and utility - somethings that other stronger attacks might not have.
But being a strong move isn't reason enough for a ban. Not even being the strongest move in the game is warrant for ban. In fact, even if it were the strongest move in the game undeniably by far and is extremely overpowered it is still not warrant for ban - it just means you should be using it to its full potential for as long as it is viable!
In Playing to Win the ban criteria is as follows:
However, It also has one additional thing: The One Inch Punch.
The One Inch Punch
What is it?
It is an "Advanced Technique" utilizing the first hitbox properties of the Piston Punch. It was named by Jigglymaster when he posted this thread: http://smashboards.com/threads/the-one-inch-punch-a-mii-brawler-insta-ko-tech.376667 after he discovered it (although independently discovered by others, myself included).
The One Inch Punch can be thought of as an exploit, although it is difficult to determine if this is the case. There is question if this is supposed to be in the game or not because it was not patched out in v1.0.4 when many of the known exploits and glitches were removed. Having been left in the players are left to wonder if it was an oversight that was overlooked or just part of the game similar to Marth's critical hit "tippers" have similar unusual hitbox properties.
But what is so special about it?
On certain characters (as far as I know, only Jigglypuff at this time) if performed correctly the OIP will KO at 0%. This is almost identical of a situation to Roy's Reverse Blazer in Super Smash Bros. Melee which can KO Jigglypuff (and Pichu) at 0%.
Once again, a complaint was brought up that this Advanced Technique is "too powerful" and needs to be banned.
So, let's reasonably analyze this claim in a competitive sense.
Discrete?
It is difficult to say when the OIP is being used as it looks like the Piston Punch. The only difference is when the opponent gets sent flying without taking additional hits, when this happens someone who knows about the tech may ask "was that the One Inch Punch?" because knowing about it and seeing it still doesn't equate to being able to identify if it was used. This is rather borderline arguable that it may or may not be discernible.
Enforceable?
It is impossible to enforce a ban on just the technique because it happens so frequently, and usually it hinders an attempt to KO rather than causing a KO (the chances of meeting up with a Jigglypuff in tourney are far and few in between). One can say if you KO an opponent at 0% with the Piston Punch you can be penalized, but it may not even be warranted.
Warranted?
Seeing as the 0% KO is only knowingly guaranteed on one character (Jigglypuff) with some possibility for her to escape it (SDI may be an option) and the cold truth that it is useful out of a Grab (D-throw combos into it) that it makes this no different from many other techs that are not banned. Roy's Reverse Blazer was never banned and well known, the same with Toon Link's D-Smash (which really works on a lot more characters), and many others that have yet to be widely known (Mario's U-Spec and Pit's F-Spec have produced similar issues).
Competitively speaking this is no worse than Ice Climbers chain grabbing or Meta Knight spamming Shuttle Loop, all of which required a greater skill level to overcome and warranted no ban.
As stated earlier, the technique often time crops up during a combo into a Piston Punch which would normally KO an opponent, but because they are a heavier character they do not get KO'd from the OIP despite that the Piston Punch itself would have KO'd if the "exploit" hadn't interfered which actually makes the Piston Punch a weaker attack in this respect.
Verdict?
Discreet: Yes
Enforceable: Debatable
Warranted: No
Dapuffster's Tournament Performance
Many people came up in arms over Mii, Piston Punch, and One Inch Punch after Dapuffster's tournament performance on livestream.
Although I wasn't reading the chat when it was happening nor have I read the chat log, but I have not heard of any complaints that are not readily answered with the usual Competitive Principles. The philosophy behind Competition is very strong, and complaints are generally very weak fallacies usually appealing to majority, authority, tradition, or simply keeping it a subjective matter of "opinion".
A reasonable person cannot stress enough that "a stronger argument destroys a weaker one".
The strength of the philosophical reasoning presented here (and the respective sources as linked) stands their ground. If any reasonable argument may be made for Mii or any future character/move to be banned or limited it will be responded to in a similar fashion.
Whether Dapuffster won through being a better player or by exploiting "powerful" moves/characters may be a matter of opinion or debate. But I will put my two cents in stating that Mii and its moves cannot be reasonably banned/limited in the Competitive Arena. If Dapuffster won by tipping the scales in his favor, so to speak, with his choice of character and strategy or tactics then I would surmise that is simply a manifestation of his better playing and Nairo (and others) would have to follow suit and either counter these strategies or counter with other characters.
But I hope I clarified everything philosophically.
There is just one more matter that really needs to be looked into.
Who (effectively) Calls the shots on Rules?
Pros?
Stream monsters?
TO's
The game?
After the outcry over Mii, and more recently Diddy Kong from people watching livestreams and demanding "bans" and additionally to players as well whether pro or novice alike, I don't believe this is the proper way for those proclaiming being a part of the Competitive Community to act.
We'll let our actions define us and when complaints are brought up they will be reasonably analyzed, but continued actions of a scrub will simply just define us as a scrub.
Our choice is clear:
The community is defined by you the indivual.
TL;DR:
Not ban-worthy, not a custom move, not logically a custom character, not OP, and not "broken".
If anything wait for a future patch if it is an exploit, until then, competitive players get on the path of the pro: Best of luck with improving your game and the metagame in general!
Philosophy!
There has been some considerable discussion over the usage of Mii as a character in Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U (but not on the 3DS that I am aware of). This came about for three reasons:
- The Piston Punch
- Exploit on Piston Punch ("One Inch Punch")
- Dapuffster's top 3 ranking and victory over Nairo
The first of these matters has to do with both the overall strength of a Special Move named "Piston Punch" and a possible exploit to it. I will go over both these issues in painstaking detail utilizing logic as my process and a position of Competitive Standards - that is, I will be addressing arguments based on the perspective of competitive values since I will also be addressing the 2nd issue of Dapuffster's tournament performance (tournaments are assumed to be adhering to competitive values).
About Mii
Mii is very much like any other character on the Character Select Screen (CSS), in that you place your Player Token on the icon to play the character. The initial difference is that you then get a sub-selection of which Mii you'd like to choose, much the same way Brawl allowed the use of either Zelda or Sheik upon a sub-selection, except with Mii you get more than just one alternate choice.
Competitive Philosophy
For more information on this (and a whole lot more) please refer to: Competitive Philosophy for Super Smash Bros.
It seems this must be reiterated many times, but there are (at least) two very distinct areas of play: Competitive and Casual.
Both are conceptual, they don't exist in a location, they reside in our minds. However, very real things are affected by these conceptual areas - communities form from them.
We then have a Competitive Arena and a Casual Scene.
The Competitive Arena is shaped by its duty to uphold a Competitive Standard, that which is bound by Competitive Principles.
These principles are:
- Fairness
- In-game Authority
- Reward to Skill
Additionally, upholding Competitive Standard is essentially saying the player will be "Playing to Win" in regards to David Sirlin's book of the same title.
For more information on this, please see: Playing to Win
Of these principles, regarding Mii, I will be focused on two of them: Fairness and In-game Authority.
Fairness is essentially not allowing a competitor to have any reasonable advantage over another. This is mostly seen as options made available. There are some exceptions to this (e.g. Port Priority - it is a physical impossibility to physically plug a controller into the same port). When these exceptions occur the most fair option must be used to decide a split, and that is usually drawing lots (like flipping a coin) as it is a random factor that does not favor any competitor.
With that aside, fairness usually comes from complaints about the game itself. Such complaints of a move, tactic, strategy, or character not being "fair". However, it has been more often than not that this is just the usual complaints of a person who refuses to play competitively and seeks to gain an advantage over their opponent using out-of-game rulings - this person is usually referred to as a "scrub" and competitively they should be ignored and the game allowed to continue to evolve.
So how does this whole fairness thing include the character Mii?
There have been complaints brought to issue about Mii not being "fair" - uh oh, is that the call of the wild scrub we hear? Well, let's reasonably hear the complaint out before prejudging anyone as scrubs.
The claim is this:
It is not fair that Mii can have custom moves and nobody else can.
This is under assumption that Customization is set to Off (which I feel like it should competitively be set off, but that's outside the scope of this post).
This presupposes that Mii has "custom moves"
And this assumes no other character can use their custom moves.
- If the rules state Customization: Off, then the first premise would be true - Custom Moves are in fact disabled.
- The second premise is false. Since custom moves are disabled then it follows that if Mii uses custom moves then their specials would also be disabled. However, we can objectively verify that this is NOT the case - Mii can still be used with whichever Mii Special Attack was selected. Furthermore the game does not ever declare the moves as "custom moves" or "custom" in anyway in addition to them not being affected by customization.
- No other character can use their custom moves. This appears to be true.
Because the second premise is false and the conclusion of "not fair" is assumed to be true then we have an invalid argument.
We can have a valid argument by either negating the invalid argument or replacing the false premise with a true one:
It is not the case that it is not fair that Mii can use custom moves because nobody else can.
In-game Authority
As a general rule of thumb in the competitive community the game's programming is authority. TO's, competitors (pro/novice alike), spectators, and "the majority" do not have authority on how the game functions or else we are subjected to oligarchy, dictatorship, or a lemming complex. The only exception for this rule is when the game itself overrules its programming and does not function, it literally breaks, and this is when the community steps in and says "This mighty fine game here is competitively worthy and we wish to keep playing it, so anyone who causes this game to break on purpose by exploiting this glitch will be disqualified from our tournament" - and hopefully that can fix the problem until a patch is given.
What this ultimately means is that if a game is competitive then we have no business messing with it. And if it isn't competitive we have no business playing it competitively, find another game and play that.
"Too Good"
Leave it to some to try to get their way by simply proclaiming something to be "broken".
There is now something that is truly broken in the literal sense and a scrubby "broken" in a figurative sense.
I'll illustrate how this works: Well, I am not good enough to win by skill (a competitive principle) because I can't get past those Forward Smashes. If I banned Forward Smashes I'd win. What, only broken things get banned? If the ONLY exception to get something banned is if it breaks the game then I will just claim Forward Smashes are "broken" and I can get it banned. Then I win.
Once again, in-game authority trumps any scrub complaints of a move/character being "Too good", "Cheap", "Over Powered", "OP", or "Broken".
Unless the move/character meets ban criteria then such complaints should be ignored. However, this seems to have to be said ad infinitum, so be ever vigilant.
Now that all this has been established we'll look more into some matters that may be ban-worthy and need to be evaluated.
The Piston Punch
Not gonna lie, the Piston Punch is a strong move. Very strong!
Ok, it's not as strong as a lot of other moves that many other characters have, but what it lacks for in pure knockback it makes up for in its setups, speed, and utility - somethings that other stronger attacks might not have.
But being a strong move isn't reason enough for a ban. Not even being the strongest move in the game is warrant for ban. In fact, even if it were the strongest move in the game undeniably by far and is extremely overpowered it is still not warrant for ban - it just means you should be using it to its full potential for as long as it is viable!
In Playing to Win the ban criteria is as follows:
- Warranted
- Discrete
- Enforceable
However, It also has one additional thing: The One Inch Punch.
The One Inch Punch
What is it?
It is an "Advanced Technique" utilizing the first hitbox properties of the Piston Punch. It was named by Jigglymaster when he posted this thread: http://smashboards.com/threads/the-one-inch-punch-a-mii-brawler-insta-ko-tech.376667 after he discovered it (although independently discovered by others, myself included).
The One Inch Punch can be thought of as an exploit, although it is difficult to determine if this is the case. There is question if this is supposed to be in the game or not because it was not patched out in v1.0.4 when many of the known exploits and glitches were removed. Having been left in the players are left to wonder if it was an oversight that was overlooked or just part of the game similar to Marth's critical hit "tippers" have similar unusual hitbox properties.
But what is so special about it?
On certain characters (as far as I know, only Jigglypuff at this time) if performed correctly the OIP will KO at 0%. This is almost identical of a situation to Roy's Reverse Blazer in Super Smash Bros. Melee which can KO Jigglypuff (and Pichu) at 0%.
Once again, a complaint was brought up that this Advanced Technique is "too powerful" and needs to be banned.
So, let's reasonably analyze this claim in a competitive sense.
Discrete?
It is difficult to say when the OIP is being used as it looks like the Piston Punch. The only difference is when the opponent gets sent flying without taking additional hits, when this happens someone who knows about the tech may ask "was that the One Inch Punch?" because knowing about it and seeing it still doesn't equate to being able to identify if it was used. This is rather borderline arguable that it may or may not be discernible.
Enforceable?
It is impossible to enforce a ban on just the technique because it happens so frequently, and usually it hinders an attempt to KO rather than causing a KO (the chances of meeting up with a Jigglypuff in tourney are far and few in between). One can say if you KO an opponent at 0% with the Piston Punch you can be penalized, but it may not even be warranted.
Warranted?
Seeing as the 0% KO is only knowingly guaranteed on one character (Jigglypuff) with some possibility for her to escape it (SDI may be an option) and the cold truth that it is useful out of a Grab (D-throw combos into it) that it makes this no different from many other techs that are not banned. Roy's Reverse Blazer was never banned and well known, the same with Toon Link's D-Smash (which really works on a lot more characters), and many others that have yet to be widely known (Mario's U-Spec and Pit's F-Spec have produced similar issues).
Competitively speaking this is no worse than Ice Climbers chain grabbing or Meta Knight spamming Shuttle Loop, all of which required a greater skill level to overcome and warranted no ban.
As stated earlier, the technique often time crops up during a combo into a Piston Punch which would normally KO an opponent, but because they are a heavier character they do not get KO'd from the OIP despite that the Piston Punch itself would have KO'd if the "exploit" hadn't interfered which actually makes the Piston Punch a weaker attack in this respect.
Verdict?
Discreet: Yes
Enforceable: Debatable
Warranted: No
Dapuffster's Tournament Performance
Many people came up in arms over Mii, Piston Punch, and One Inch Punch after Dapuffster's tournament performance on livestream.
Although I wasn't reading the chat when it was happening nor have I read the chat log, but I have not heard of any complaints that are not readily answered with the usual Competitive Principles. The philosophy behind Competition is very strong, and complaints are generally very weak fallacies usually appealing to majority, authority, tradition, or simply keeping it a subjective matter of "opinion".
A reasonable person cannot stress enough that "a stronger argument destroys a weaker one".
The strength of the philosophical reasoning presented here (and the respective sources as linked) stands their ground. If any reasonable argument may be made for Mii or any future character/move to be banned or limited it will be responded to in a similar fashion.
Whether Dapuffster won through being a better player or by exploiting "powerful" moves/characters may be a matter of opinion or debate. But I will put my two cents in stating that Mii and its moves cannot be reasonably banned/limited in the Competitive Arena. If Dapuffster won by tipping the scales in his favor, so to speak, with his choice of character and strategy or tactics then I would surmise that is simply a manifestation of his better playing and Nairo (and others) would have to follow suit and either counter these strategies or counter with other characters.
But I hope I clarified everything philosophically.
There is just one more matter that really needs to be looked into.
Who (effectively) Calls the shots on Rules?
Pros?
Stream monsters?
TO's
The game?
After the outcry over Mii, and more recently Diddy Kong from people watching livestreams and demanding "bans" and additionally to players as well whether pro or novice alike, I don't believe this is the proper way for those proclaiming being a part of the Competitive Community to act.
We'll let our actions define us and when complaints are brought up they will be reasonably analyzed, but continued actions of a scrub will simply just define us as a scrub.
Our choice is clear:
Reason vs fallacy/mob mentality
The community is defined by you the indivual.
TL;DR:
Not ban-worthy, not a custom move, not logically a custom character, not OP, and not "broken".
If anything wait for a future patch if it is an exploit, until then, competitive players get on the path of the pro: Best of luck with improving your game and the metagame in general!
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