As the Super Smash Bros. series is not designed purely around competitive play, there has been a fair bit of jiggery pokery which each game’s competitive ruleset to reduce instances of over-centralized play and polarizing stages. In this way, Smashers have been accustomed to banning certain stages–and even tactics–to stop the metagame descending into the same match-ups or stage picks over and over again.
Seeing as the idea of willfully banning elements of a game seems counter-intuitive, MySmashCorner has created a new video, running through what makes something ban worthy, using specific examples from Smash’s history. One need only look at the legal stage lists of games like Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U to see how thinking has changed on the legality of specific arenas, due to players discovering polarizing tactics on those select stages.
MySmashCorner also touches on the idea of banning whole tactics, like Meta Knight’s infinite Dimensional Cape in Super Smash Bros. Brawl or wobbling in Melee. Whereas the infinite Dimensional Cape warranted a ban as all it takes is for one Meta Knight to take the lead and they can then disappear until the timer runs out, wobbling can be prevented by a player knocking the computer controlled Ice Climber off the stage, with characters like Fox being able to do this with ease. Even then, the Ice Climbers do not overcentralize the meta with the presence of wobbling, with it being rare for an Ice Climbers to place in a top 8 of a major. Compare this to Brawl, where Meta Knight already made up most of Brawl top 8s without the use of the infinite Dimensional Cape.
This analysis raises some interesting points about what makes something ban worthy and should hope stop some players calling for a ban for things which they just find difficult to beat.
Source: MySmashCorner