Leffen claims he won’t compete in Smash Melee next year if community doesn’t fix controller, stalling ruleset

There is always some type of conversation going around in the competitive Super Smash Bros. community surrounding character usage, legal stages, or general rulesets. Leffen tends to be involved in a lot of these discussions as a big voice in the scene, but a few recent topics have the top Melee player contemplating pulling back from the game again. 

Following the Ludwig Smash Invitational and his own third-place finish, Leffen talked on stream about how something needs to be done about what controllers can be used and updated rulesets. 

The rulesets complaint mostly centers around the ongoing debate surrounding Jigglypuff and the character’s ability to stall games out from multiple points once they take a lead against most other fighters. This didn’t look like it was being abused directly in Leffen’s run at this tournament despite losing to Hungrybox’s Jigglybox in the loser’s finals—even if he may feel like it came into play personally. 

Stalling, specifically for Jigglypuff in regard to Melee’s ruleset, has been a pretty common topic since early 2019 and beyond. Though nothing has really been done to mitigate the issue since it would be limiting a character artificially, which could still change in the future. 

You could also see Hbox reacting to the camping conversation live while waiting to play Zain in the grand finals on stage, which the chat loved. 

As for the controller discussion, Leffen didn’t focus much on that during his on-stream discussion but it has been a focus of some Smash players and the wider fighting game community (FGC) for some time now. The Smash Box has been accused of providing an unfair advantage at a technical level compared to other controllers, with similar controversies popping up around the BOXX and other alternative controllers that are still tournament legal.

For Leffen, these issues have become a drag on Melee that have him looking more toward other FGC scenes once more. Specifically, he mentions focusing even more of his time on Guilty Gear Strive, a game where he is already a top player, and perhaps putting some time into Street Fighter 6 when it launches in 2023. 

With Leffen’s history on subjects like this and moving on, it is unlikely he will leave Melee altogether even if nothing does change. But because some of these issues, such as the controller conversation, have been brought up in other fighting games for years too there is a pretty slim chance something is done at some point for Smash specifically

The ruleset bit is a little harder to approach, but people have gotten pretty tired of dealing with Puff stall games. Even the panel discussing the changes live with Leffen couldn’t really agree on one distinct thing.