The Tournament Standard: An open discussion on the competitive aspects of LLB

Where we're at currently:

Why does this relate to Blaze?

Things players need to watch out for:

Anything else?:

I recently had a small discussion on the Team Reptile Discord competitive channel about tournament rules and why the rule choice was chosen for Lethal League and where the ruleset should go in regards to Lethal League Blaze.I'm going to start with the original game and the standard competitive rule set.Double-eliminationBest of 3 until top 8, at which point all matches are best of 5.5:00RegularSome of the stuff is pretty straight forward. Starting at minimum ball speed and regular ball type is a no brainer (doesn't mean we didn't attempt alternative tournament types). Double Elimination is the standard for all FGC tournaments, similarly so is Bo3 and Bo5(top 64, 32, 16, 8, or even just finals depending on size of tournament). The other rules are where things get tricky.8 Stocks is the standard in Original Lethal League due to you only dying in one hit. With the one hit limit stocks are generally shorter so we can afford to have that amount.Why 5 minutes for timer? That seems so long, tournaments are going to run on forever! Traditional fighting games are only 99 seconds per round!Actually, no. While it's true, timers are set to 99 seconds they still play 2-3 rounds in a single game of a best of 3 match, which means the top end of each match is around 5 minutes. If every round in a single match were to go to time in SFV, Tekken 7, MvC, or any other fighting game that would be 99sec * 9rounds(each game in the set going to the 3rd round and the set count ending at 2-1), which totals out to 891 seconds, or ~15 Minutes, which is on par with the maximum that a standard set of Lethal League current rules are set at.The reason why I bring that up is in history we have experimented with different times, mainly 4 minute rounds. While this doesn't seem like a huge problem Lethal League lets you do something that you can't do(easily) in traditional fighters, and that is stall a match. If I have ball control I can find ways to keep the ball away from you, force action, or just whittle down time (my personal favorite was just letting the ball stay at the top of the screen and waiting for people to figure out how to get it). While the community is generally pretty good about progressing games along, if stalling the time became a viable option (as 4 minute matches made available) it would likely lead to unhealthy gameplay as the game no longer becomes about hitting your opponent, but just playing keep away and letting them fall on their own sword. 5 minutes is enough time to dissaude people from stalling games and keep fighting their opponent, and since it already falls in line with the "Standard Maximum Set Length" that traditional fighters have set I don't see a need to move away from that.The community already has a solid foundation for a rule set thanks to the previous title, we just need to monitor and tweak a few things as time moves forward. Blaze added HP and a few new mechanics to extend player stocks so it's safe to say that 8 stocks are definitely a thing of the past. The current standard is 5 and right now it feels just long enough to be satisfying.As the meta evolves and players get better at the game we need to seriously start tracking how long matches are taking. If a few months from now regular 5 stock matches are pushing the 5 minute barrier we may need to roll things back to 4 stocks, and on the other hand if top level games are cleaning up in about 2-3 minutes we might need to look at adding a 6th stock.I haven't even begun to touch on the topic of stage and character selections. Current rules for each of them are as follows:Defaults to gentleman’s agreement / random BUT if one of the two competitors requests it, both competitors must strike to a stage using the standard rulesThe winner of the previous game in a set must continue to play the character they won that game with. If a player selects random in game one and wins, they must select the same randomed character in the subsequent game. Loser can switch freely. No restrictions on the first game in a set.My personal opinion is that stage striking and banning should be the norm as character angles matter on a lot of stages. My opinion on the character rule is that it is...not great and could be formatted differently. Ultimately I'd like to see it move to something similar to smash's counterpick rule set.W: Bans StageL: Picks StageW: Picks CharacterL: Picks CharacterLike I said, this is just my opinion. I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say. Leave comments and arguments for or against below and we'll continue the discussion as a community.I'm also going to be streaming on twitch so if you want to bring the discussion live (and see me crumple to basic arguments) you can find me at: twitch.tv/monkhb