Why Puff Should Auto-Lose Timeouts

Ok before you start raging at the title, I don’t actually know if Puff auto-losing timeouts is the solution. I do think there is a pretty big problem with the current ruleset, though.

What is Melee’s win condition? We as a community decided that the main win condition is to take 4 stocks before the opponent does. We secondarily added a timeout clause so that 1) the player with a deficit is incentivized to approach, and that 2) the games don’t last forever (see SuPeRbOoMfAn vs. Gerson). In my opinion, and I think most of you would agree with this, the main win condition in melee should never be to go for a timeout. If it was, then we would just play on timer mode and say whoever had the most kills in a designated amount of time wins the game. The timeout clause was put in place as a failsafe, not a path for victory. With timeouts in place, the character with a deficit is put under pressure to make the comeback within a set amount of time. Because approaching is often inherently risky, this clause gives an advantage to the player with the lead. There’s still a chance that the player with a deficit can make the comeback, though – it’s just a lot harder. 

Timeouts should really only happen if both players, including the player at a deficit, decide to camp. If both players are constantly approaching, then timeouts shouldn’t happen. If one player with a lead camps and the other with a deficit approaches, then timeouts shouldn’t happen. Only if the player with a deficit camps should a timeout happen. You might ask why the character with a deficit would camp, and I’d be curious too. Sometimes it’s to try to trip up the opponent with a weird timing, sometimes it’s to hope the opponent gets bored and starts running in, sometimes it’s to charge your charge shot or throw projectiles or farm for turnips. Usually it involves a ~little~ bit of camping to make your approach a ~little~ bit better when trying to take back the lead. If you camp too much then you risk running out the clock and losing the match, so it’s a balance act. Regardless, the player with a deficit should theoretically be able to take back the lead by approaching.

Here's where my problem with Puff comes into play. When Puff gets the lead vs Peach, she can effectively prevent any future interactions from happening. This is what we call “stalling” – preventing the characters from interaction with each other. This is different from “camping,” which just makes it more difficult for the other character to approach. Stalling makes it impossible. Through air stalling, circle stalling, and ledge stalling, she can dodge turnips, avoid landing near Peach, abuse ledge invincibility, and retreat pretty much constantly to the point that Peach can’t really force interactions. (If you think I’m exaggerating Puff’s ability to stall, go watch Fiction’s video of Puff vs Peach, or ask like any top player lol.) This means that if Puff gets the lead, the game’s pretty much over.

My complaint isn’t about the matchup being bad. It’s that the arbitrary ruleset we’ve created incentivizes Puff to play non-interactively. The point of the timeout clause is to incentivize the player with a deficit to approach, right? The problem is that even if Peach decides to approach, she literally cannot interact with a stalling Puff. It isn’t just difficult, it’s impossible. It’s different from, say, Peach trying to comeback against a Marth or Fox because Peach can actually force interactions against those characters, especially since we’ve instituted a ledge grab limit. The interactions she forces are often skewed against her, but she can at least play the game. Against Puff, however, Puff dictates when and where interactions occur, and so if Puff doesn’t want to be hit then she won’t be hit. 

We as a community have already taken several steps to ban stalling. We’ve implemented ledge grab limits, banned techniques like the freeze glitch, and banned movement options like pound stalling and peach bomber stalling (the bans of which, by the way, are extremely poorly defined). You can argue that we should reward people for stalling, which I’m sure some people would love to do, but ultimately we as a community decide the ruleset we play with and evidence shows that we very much dislike stalling.

One thought experiment I like to do is consider what matchups look like under different timers, since the 4 stocks 8 minute rules we’ve established are pretty arbitrary. If we did 4 stocks and no timer, then puff would actually have no incentive to stall. Peach could just farm turnips forever against a stalling Puff, Samus could just spam charge shots and missiles, any character with a projectile would never have to approach because Puff can’t threaten them from afar. So if we played with no timer, Puff would be forced to interact. Now, I’m sure there are many Puffs out there who want to see the world burn and would still stall even at a deficit, which is why we have a timer in place. Still interesting to consider, though, because this ruleset incentivizes Puff to approach.

If we consider a longer timer, like 20 minutes with 4 stocks, then a similar concept happens. Puff is incentivized less to run away. She can still stall indefinitely vs characters like Peach, but Peach at least has more time to fish for special turnips and try to force more interactions. With this format, there’s a good chance that Puff’s optimal win condition would be to just fight Peach, though it could also again just be to stall, I’m not really sure.

Now we’re back to our 8 minute timer. Puff has the luxury of forcing timeouts pretty much anytime she gets the lead. 8 minute timer sounds great for running tournaments quickly, but the problem is that of the three rulesets I mentioned (no timer, 20 minute timer, and 8 minute timer), the 8 minute timer is the only one that encourages Puff to play for timeouts through non-interactive play. The other two formats might take a lot longer, but they encourage the idea of both players actually trying to take out each other’s stocks rather than run away. I’d bet the games actually end a lot quicker than the current ruleset because Puff can force interactions pretty easily, even against a camping Peach.

You might ask why I insist the onus is on Puff to make interactions happen rather than Peach. Turns out Puff has complete control over the pace of the matchup, even when she’s behind. Peach can try to run away, but Puff can pretty easily catch her and force interactions. It might be more difficult than normal, but that’s the original idea of the timeout clause – to make the player with a deficit force bad interactions. It doesn’t work the other way around, because Peach can’t force interactions against Puff.

You might think that this argument is nullified because I beat Hbox, but this isn’t the case. Hbox didn’t play nearly as degenerately as he could have. For example, he only grabbed ledge twice in one of the games that timed out. Twice! He could have stalled on ledge 58 more times, each utilizing all of Puff’s jumps to stall out the game a hundred times over. I’ve played vs Puffs who are worse than Hbox but much better at stalling, and it’s an absolute nightmare to play against. Again, it isn’t about the matchup being bad, but rather the ruleset encouraging such non-interactive play. 

I also realize it was a bit distasteful to bring this topic up after winning, but tbh it was the perfect timing since 1) it wouldn’t be looked at as a “salty tweet,” and 2) it was a set that received a ton of attention. This isn’t the first time this type of ruleset proposition has been suggested; Leffen’s been supporting it for a while. I’ve also been supporting some type of rule change for many years now, since I’ve played vs much campier Puffs than Hbox and it’s miserable lol. We just rarely see timeouts in general, and it’s even rarer to see Puff players abuse the ruleset to this extent. No shade against hbox, since he’s trying to play the matchup correctly according to the ruleset. I do think it’s worth changing the ruleset to encourage a more healthy metagame though.

So I hope by now you agree that there’s a problem with the ruleset: timeouts should never be a player’s primary win condition, because they should never singlehandedly be able to make the game non-interactive enough to go to time. So how do we fix this?

My initial suggestion was that Puff auto-loses timeouts. I think this closest would emulate the no-timer ruleset because Puff would be forced to approach to prevent Peach from farming turnips. Like I mentioned before, Puff really has no problem chasing down Peach. I, one of the best if not the best Peaches vs Puff in the world, tried to run away from Hbox and got destroyed for it lol. At the moment I’m not confident that I could force timeouts against Top 100 Puff players. I’d be happy to increase the timer to like 10-12 minutes to make that even less of a viable strategy.

I didn’t initially intend to imply in my tweet that Puff should auto-lose vs ~everyone~, and I don’t know enough about her matchups to make any conclusions. I think it’s fine to only apply this rule to Puff vs Peach for now, though, just since this is the matchup in which a problem has arisen. If we see similar problems in other matchups, where Puff can make timeouts her primary win condition, then I think we can adjust the rules for those matchups too. Or any matchup for that matter, as long as there’s evidence to back it up. 

Other solutions people have suggested are things like air timers, lowering the LGL, tracking whoever’s closer to center stage, etc. These all (except the LGL one since clearly Puff doesn’t even need to grab ledge to stall) have potential, though they’re hard to track mid-match and may even require special game modifications to calculate. They do provide “secondary win conditions” that dissuade non-interactive play, though, just as the timer was supposed to do. The difference is that these secondary win conditions would ideally encourage interactive play, even from the character with the lead. 

I think lowering the time limit is a terrible idea, because it incentivizes people to force timeouts in even more matchups. Like I said earlier, the win condition we’ve decided on is taking 4 stocks. The timer should only be in place to dissuade the player with a deficit from running away. We shouldn’t be making it easier for the character with the lead to force timeouts. Otherwise let’s just switch to timer mode.

At the moment, I don’t think there’s a good solution, and there won’t be until we actually see what happens with different ruleset changes. Idk why people are so married to the current ruleset, especially since it was created so long ago and before all these advances to the metagame. Heck, we literally changed the stagelist and banned wobbling recently. I think it’d be worth trying out different rulesets to see which one actually incentivizes interactive gameplay, which really is what we should be aiming for for the sake of the community.