Montage's List of Stage Bans!

This is Montage's list for Stage bans petition in competitive play.

I'll start with the new stages, for singles:

First, Mushroomy Kingdom.
It's a shame really, since the level is sweet as hell. But if you have someone with a rapid nuetral combo, you can trap them against a wall while the stage moves. The Stage's side will kill them and not you, resulting n a complete unfair advantage in the cast.

Second, Rapid Falls (I think that's the name).
It's One of the two new DK stages. For those unknowing, it plays like icicle mountain. A lot of you won't know icicle mountain, because no one EVER PLAYS IT EVER OH GOD.

Next, Pokemon Stadium 2.
Again, shame. Diddy's bananas on the conveyor belts will ko people. The windmill gravity reduction will allow certain characters to fly forever, stalling a minute at a time. This is a slow game, and as of now, the game would fall into sudden death too **** much.

Spear Pillar.
Constantly, without warning, the mad flips left-right and cause your directions to be backwards. Same with up and down, forcing you to play up and down. It's also likely someone could use the circular stage to camp the 7 minutes. In my tournaments, I'll call shenanigans, and force them to stop, but major tourns won't.

The New F-Zero Stage.
While it looks, and plays exactly like Mute City, the cars are faster, and KO most characters at 80% The cars themselves appear just as much as Mute city. Characters with flight can avoid the cars, most of the time, while most other characters will have to dodge. That dodging will leave you open to punishment. Clear unfair advantage.

WarioWare.
The minigames themselves can take a stock if you mess up. Fun as hell, but not serious.

Donkey Kong Arcade.
You can't fall below the top platform. This allows people below to camp slightly and keep them at bay. There's fire on the stage that can do up to 40dmg is your caught correctly. Again, it's not a serious stage, it's fun!

FlatZone2:
It's just too small. The game turns from 5-6 minutes to 2-3. the new things that fall from the stage to WAY too much knockback. Basically, it's the first one, with more lame added.

New Pork City:
It's a camp fest. You couldn't possibly hope to finish a match. It's big, and annoying. Characters without flying are all but screwed. It's swinging platforms, and high ledges are a nightmare for Bowser and Wario, while DeDeDe and Toon Link will be all over the plave shooting projectiles.

Mario Bros. Arcade:
It's played like the original Mario Bros. For those of you who haven't played it, it's the minigame that was in Super Mario Bros. 3. If you haven't played that you have three options. One, bust out/buy a nintendo and the game, and play it. Two, Virtual Console. Three, Quit gaming. ANYWAY... It's hard to fully explain this ban without you playing it. The The map is made into corridor-ish lanes, while much too powerful enemies walk the stage, aiming to kill. Pit's Side B or shield can camp and entire corridor, as well as Falco's Laser spam. All in all, it's the least playable stage in the game, for a competitive nature.

Elektroplankton:
The stage is made of oddly colored leaves that are not connected. It's been seen that sometime a tether recovery will get confused between the leaves and you'll die. Kind of the way auto aim in games like CoD of Halo will force you to shoot between two people. bad news.

Shadow Moses Island: (MGS)
The walls on the side can be used to camp out the time limit. If you trap someone with a rapid natural against the wall, you can keep them there (Fox's DB spam, Pit's SB on some characters) for the entire Match. DI, Airdodging, and everything else has been tried for escaping.

Skyworld
Breakable floors disable ALL tether recovery on the level. Maybe counterpick in the future, but With the fight club action in between the bottom and top also makes this level more luck based, and pure skill.

Singles, DX stages. (past stages):

Hyrule Temple:
Same old crap. Running away for 7 minutes. The tried and true cowards way to first place. Still banned.

Big Blue:
Does this need explination? /sigh

Onett:
See: Shadow Moses Island

Cornaria. (/cry)
See: Onett. v_v


Teams Only Bans:

Norfair.
At one point, you'll have to take shelter under a small, metroid-esque tenty thing. You have to fight to keep people out, in hopes to gain a stock advantage. In teams, there's not enough room for two people to be under, and one attack to keep the others out. You'll kill your teammates much too much. IMO it's a fair singles stage, because that lava wave will only happen every 3-4minutes.

Stages that were banned in Melee that should be allowed:

Yoshi's Island (pipes):
Until a rapid shine-like approach is found, I'd say it's cool to release this ban. While the charatcers are a bit bigger, the stage feels more accessible.


Stages still in Discussion:

Distant Planet.
The water can send tether recovers off the ledge, and if edge guarded, there's a 50% chance they will die instantly. Jump straight up gets the hit everytime



Thanks for reading, please discuss.

... Wait, so certain rapid A combos are wall infinites now?

Dang.

Indeed. We found it today. We were all very upset.

I'd say all your arguments for banning each stage make sense. Kinda surprised you didn't include Mario Circuit (for similar reasons as mute city) and Pictochat (for similar reasons as the donkey kong classic stage ie. fire and other obstacles).

While I guess you're right about Hyrule Temple being a chase fest, I've always thought this stage was excellent for competition as it involves a bit more strategy than you smaller spaced stages where you're always on top of one another. And it's always possible to catch up, out-wit, or cut-off your opponent in this stage if you're really a skilled player. That's from my experience anyway.

xmenotux said:

I'd say all your arguments for banning each stage make sense. Kinda surprised you didn't include Mario Circuit (for similar reasons as mute city) and Pictochat (for similar reasons as the donkey kong classic stage ie. fire and other obstacles).

While I guess you're right about Hyrule Temple being a chase fest, I've always thought this stage was excellent for competition as it involves a bit more strategy than you smaller spaced stages where you're always on top of one another. And it's always possible to catch up, out-wit, or cut-off your opponent in this stage if you're really a skilled player. That's from my experience anyway.

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Not flaming, but you've no experience then. Hyrule is a banned stage because fast characters can damage their opponent, and run for 8 minutes. If you're new to the tourn scene, note that you'll not be playing hyrule, ever.

As for MC, the cars were tested, and at 100 they couldn't kill toon link, so that's fine. The pictochat stage is weird but by all means playable.

xmenotux said:

I'd say all your arguments for banning each stage make sense. Kinda surprised you didn't include Mario Circuit (for similar reasons as mute city) and Pictochat (for similar reasons as the donkey kong classic stage ie. fire and other obstacles).

While I guess you're right about Hyrule Temple being a chase fest, I've always thought this stage was excellent for competition as it involves a bit more strategy than you smaller spaced stages where you're always on top of one another. And it's always possible to catch up, out-wit, or cut-off your opponent in this stage if you're really a skilled player. That's from my experience anyway.

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Besides running and camping...how is being knocked around in a small area by powerful smash attacks and easily tech-surviving to above 300% "excellent for competition"? This makes no sense as kills at that point are basically random.

Either way, let's get off of Hyrule. I need feedback on Pokemon Stadium

Pokemon Stadium's walls were never ban-worthy in Melee, where Fox was all the rage, and had infinites. The wall thing in general seems like an arguable point, just like Wobbling in Melee if it is indeed available to that many people, but still requires the right conditions.

The same was said about Cornaria...

But, conditions always should apply, you can never tell what could happen. Look at hyrule. It could be a Bowser Ditto, but it's still banned.

It's the fact it requires "conditions" that prevents it from being truly broken and deserving of a global ban. Not letting Pikachu back you into a wall is hardly different from not letting Fox back you into a wall in Melee, save for the easy execution. The same goes for Wobbling. It's ********, but these setups are far from guaranteed.

And also, despite Temple being banned in all rulesets, if all participants agree to a banned stage, they can play there unrestrictedly. Bans are only in place to protect the interests of the competitors, not to actually limit how they can play if they want. If both are aware of the rules and agree to a banned setting, then they are always free to do so, warts and all.

With fox, you had to either JC shine over and over, or you had to shine WD shine. With Pikachu, you Hold A, and wait.

Darkpaladin of Chaos said:

Am I the only one that likes Rumble Falls (not 'Rapid Falls')? I saw some videos of it, and the background visuals are pretty amazing.

On another note, I'm glad I'm not that competitive. The reasons for banning some stages are...dumb.

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I sooo agree with you. If it's something like the lava on Norfair then just learn to avoid it. I too like Rumble Falls looks better than Icicle mountain.

Darkpaladin of Chaos said:

Am I the only one that likes Rumble Falls (not 'Rapid Falls')? I saw some videos of it, and the background visuals are pretty amazing.

On another note, I'm glad I'm not that competitive. The reasons for banning some stages are...dumb.

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Have you played any of the stages at all? No. I don't think you have.

Rumble Falls moves TWICE as fast as Icicle Mountain in Melee. It is very difficult for slower characters to keep up with the stage itself.

You think the reasons are dumb? You would like to be held infinitely against a wall for an entire match? How about KO'd by a stupidly powerful VERY difficult to avoid(especially with larger charaters) obstacle costing you the match? You are not competitive posting in an obviously competitive thread. Awesome, great job.

Thanks for the impressions, dmbrandon. In particular, I'm curious about the new Windwaker-ish stage, which I've heard called Great Sea. You know, the one with the ship. It looks like a fair (and very fun) stage to me, but there are so few videos of it that it's hard to tell, and none of the videos appear to go in a full circuit.

It's not on your banned list, so you think that it could very well be tournament legal? Yay! It would be awesome if you could post impressions of it (here, or in the Great Sea thread), perhaps even with a long video so that we can see if it really is fair. Thanks.

geez, all these sweet stages are getting banned. i can understand the mushroom ruins (that's what i call it), but temple! man!

Interesting. Its a shame that Shadow Moses is banned, because watching tourney goers fight a "cage match" could be fun, but I understand the logic behind it. Alas!

I think we're jumping the gun too much here. The game's not even out yet in America and already we're banning stuff? Please. Give the metagame time to develop. Until true advanced techniques emerge (which will take years, not a week of playing), we can't accurately predict how Brawl's new engine will affect stages.

Furthermore, unless you have any official tournament backing, these are only your own personal opinions and should be counted as such.

Onett was counterpickable, so let Shadow Moses be counterpickable. At least you can destroy the walls here. Eventually Pikachu's a WILL destroy the wall. They can also ban that tactic like Wobbling was banned.
BTW, Pictochat could be the new Poke Floats, an odd counterpick.

Guys, these stages are not banned yet. This is merely a prediction of which stages will be banned, if Montage is correct. They have a very good idea, and this is very informative, but it is by no means absolute. Let's play these stages in tournaments before we make a final decision, OK?

So I can't play stages for fun now?

Fantus said:

So I can't play stages for fun now?

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Show me, in the post where it says this please. Did you even read the topic or are you just plain ignorant? **** it people this also is not set in stone. This is a loose prediction, with reasoning behind it. Most of the obstacles and stage gimmicks are very powerful in brawl and in some cases very difficult to avoid. It is sad, but true. When March hits you are going to be looking back saying "Wow, some of the stuff those guys said about these stages was right." and "ARGH! THAT STUPID FZERO CAR JUST KILLED ME AT 60%!!"

Fantus said:

So I can't play stages for fun now?

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A statement like that is just asking to be flamed. How about we not start the "fun" argument again.

It's someone with 3 posts. I know this is my 13th post, but that Fantus guy is just a troll, ignore him.

Eternal Yoshi said:

Onett was counterpickable, so let Shadow Moses be counterpickable. At least you can destroy the walls here. Eventually Pikachu's a WILL destroy the wall. They can also ban that tactic like Wobbling was banned.
BTW, Pictochat could be the new Poke Floats, an odd counterpick.

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1. I've tested it, a lot. The range is perfect, and won't break the walls.
2. You can ban wobbling, but not holding A. You can all stalling, but that's a stock lost even if he does it for 20seconds.
3. Hell yeah.

dmbrandon, it is kinda hard to comment on this list without seeing the stages involved. It would be nice if you could record some matches on non-standard stages (anything but Battlefield and Final Destination, really). I don't necessarily want videos of every stage, but it would be nice to see a few more so that I can form some opinion on them.

I'm not saying that you should stop releasing videos on the quintessential neutral stages at all. I like those too because I can focus more on the characters and strategies involved, but some vids of stages not normally seen in tournaments would be awesome.

What about Pictochat? The hazards have way too much knockback, and I believe the gravity is decreased a one point.

2.72 said:

dmbrandon, it is kinda hard to comment on this list without seeing the stages involved. It would be nice if you could record some matches on non-standard stages (anything but Battlefield and Final Destination, really). I don't necessarily want videos of every stage, but it would be nice to see a few more so that I can form some opinion on them.

I'm not saying that you should stop releasing videos on the quintessential neutral stages at all. I like those too because I can focus more on the characters and strategies involved, but some vids of stages not normally seen in tournaments would be awesome.

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Its called Youtube...

56k said:

What about Pictochat? The hazards have way too much knockback, and I believe the gravity is decreased a one point.

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It's been tested the upwards of 25 times. It's fine for both singles, and teams

paper_crane said:

... Wait, so certain rapid A combos are wall infinites now?

Dang.

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dmbrandon said:

Indeed. We found it today. We were all very upset.

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*waits for DSBX v1.1*

Here's a question perhaps made in ignorance: if in fact it is so very easy to infinitely combo someone pinned to the wall, and escape is impossible, is this the sort of thing that could be fixed through a download? Or is that messing too much with the game's mechanics?

GameAngel64 said:

Here's a question perhaps made in ignorance: if in fact it is so very easy to infinitely combo someone pinned to the wall, and escape is impossible, is this the sort of thing that could be fixed through a download? Or is that messing too much with the game's mechanics?

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This can all be answered through melee.
Back when Fox was all the rage, and everyone wanted to infinite-shine, people could be pinned up against Onett and Pokemon Stadium for hours with Drill Shines and Double Shines. I know this is stating the obvious, but its a matter of just not letting it happen.

*sigh* in other words...

Don't Get Hit.

I actually said it...

Ouch...some of the coolest stages are off the map now... =(

Those are some good reasons though. What about Frigate Orpheon, the 180 turn is all good?

SothE700k said:

Ouch...some of the coolest stages are off the map now... =(

Those are some good reasons though. What about Frigate Orpheon, the 180 turn is all good?

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The 180 turn is fine, once you've played the stage a few times. It's easy to read, and adds some depth/mindgames to the match.

Is there any word as to how created stages will fair among the tourney going populace? Is it too much work to simply give a stage a glance and notice any flaws. I think originality and diversity among stages should be embraced as long as no walls or cheap stage built exploits exist.

Taiki said:

Is there any word as to how created stages will fair among the tourney going populace? Is it too much work to simply give a stage a glance and notice any flaws. I think originality and diversity among stages should be embraced as long as no walls or cheap stage built exploits exist.

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There's too many weak variables. Some people might run a tournament with only created stages, kinda like a low tier!

You could pin people in the hole on pokemon stadium in melee with rapid A, still wasn't banned. Since the transitions are temporary it would be wise to avoid standing directly in front of walls or teching into them against someone with a rapid jab. Others may warrant it, or a rapid jab against a wall ban, but not stadium. Also, all those wall stages should be viable for teams if the walls are the only reason for their banning. If you manage to both get wall jabbed at the same time and can't free each other then you deserve to lose 2 stocks.

Fonz said:

You could pin people in the hole on pokemon stadium in melee with rapid A, still wasn't banned. Since the transitions are temporary it would be wise to avoid standing directly in front of walls or teching into them against someone with a rapid jab. Others may warrant it, or a rapid jab against a wall ban, but not stadium. Also, all those wall stages should be viable for teams if the walls are the only reason for their banning. If you manage to both get wall jabbed at the same time and can't free each other then you deserve to lose 2 stocks.

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This is solid posting. 5 points to TA and Gryffindor.

But in Melee, you could DI out of rapid A wall pins.

5 points to MN and Slytherin.

dmbrandon said:

It's been tested the upwards of 25 times. It's fine for both singles, and teams

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That's good to hear, I actually really like that stage. It's just from what I've seen people were getting ***** by some of the hazards at less than 60% lol. Then again, they were new to the stage...

But in melee you COULD wavedash.