Thursday, October 13, 2011

Two Cents: Super Smash Bros Brawl Community and the Meta Knight ban

The Unity-Ruleset Committee recently announced that they will ban Meta Knight on July, 9 2012 after Apex 2012.

The ban only follows those who use the Unity Ruleset.

The ruling has sort-of caused a split in the community between those who use the Unity Ruleset and those who don’t. One side argues that Meta Knight should not be banned and people should learn to deal with it and learn how to fight him. The other feels like the character is a plague to the community and is not allowing the competition aspect of Brawl to evolve.

Both sides constantly argue back in forth on rules that are constantly being made to change the competitive aspect of this game.


The Good 

  • Meta Knight being banned can mean a greater attendance from anti-Meta Knight players who stopped showing up because of the character.

  • No obvious results of a Meta Knight winning the tournament and taking most of the top slots.

  • Making the game fun again for people who did complain about him.

  • Adds an entertainment value back to Brawl (An example of this in action is Juice Gaming's Concentrate tournament series.)

The Bad

  • This would not change the already falling Super Smash Bros Brawl community.

  • Players who main Meta Knight would have to pick up a new character or would most likely quit playing it competitively. (One of the best Meta Knight players, Mew2King decided to quit and only attend Meta Knight events).

  • It is kind of late to ban a character three years later after the game has evolved to this point.

  • Just because this character wins doesn’t mean this character is unbeatable.

In the end, any competitive fighting game is going to have one or more broken characters that dominate tournaments. That shouldn’t stop the game from being played competitively (random factors like stage effects and tripping does).

Learn to deal with whatever a game has or just play another game.