My proposal for how we handle stages in smash 4

[Amazing Ampharos]

Stage policy is tricky and has been a major thorn in the community's side for years now. There are very divergent philosophies on what constitutes good stage policy, and actually winning these arguments has proven quite impossible for everyone. I've discussed this before, but the way we have done things in the past is basically the worst possible way. To this day, different events run different rules, and going region to region you can be jumping into a new metagame on the basis of the rules being different so the game is literally a different game. Even worse, just staying in the same place, the game tends to change with time; your relative ability as a player can grow or shrink not because of anything you've done yourself but just because the rules have changed to favor you more or less. The debates tend to be long and drawn out, and they sap the morale of everyone involved while generally giving an oversized voice to the naturally loudest among us.

We need to do things differently with smash 4, and after a lot of thought, I think I've figured out the best way forward if we can all agree to work together on it. I'll start with what I believe are two principles we all can and must agree on:

1. Uniform and consistent rules are more important than the particulars of the rules. We need to decide on the permanent stage list early in the game's lifespan, and we need to ensure it is uniformly used across all of North America, Europe, and Australia. From there, tournament players can prepare for whatever we decide it is going to be, and we never have to worry about the implications of changing rules because the rules aren't going to change.

2. We must respect the will of the people. All tournament players are equally and directly affected by the stage list. Even more, we've proven that the best minds in the community simply cannot come to an agreement on principles; relying simply on a few elite to make decisions here is not going to accomplish anything.

We can discuss these two points if necessary, but I strongly feel that we all need to get on the same page that those two things are right and true if we're going to do a good job with stage policy.

Before we can craft a stage list of particular stages, we have to agree on the procedure of how we pick stages in tournaments. This procedure has to work for stage lists with any number of stages whether it's a very large number or a very small number. I propose we use the flexible ruleset scheme previously used by the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale community. We'll do stage striking from the full list of stages for game one. Stages struck in the first half of stages struck are banned for the set, and of course the last stage remaining is used for game one. This allows all players to avoid rough counterpicks while enshrining a large degree of diversity and avoiding the inevitable biases of declaring certain legal stages "starters". This too can be discussed if necessary; it's merely what I see as the best out of many suggested options. Whatever we decide on this, I do trust that just procedure is non-controversial enough that we can reach a good consensus.

Once we agree on all of that stuff, we can move on to what we're actually going to do about picking which stages are and are not legal, a topic I expect we're never going to come to a consensus agreement on. We need to start big and go small; proposals to go the other way are simply unrealistic as people don't learn the intricacies of stages without playing on them so stages not initially allowed would never be allowed (matches on stages that players don't know well always look "worse" than the stage should really allow). Starting from a presumption of all stages being potentially legal, I suggest we ban stages in three steps:

One week after the game comes out, we open a general poll to the public asking which stages are clearly broken and should be immediately banned. Any stage which receives over 80% of the votes to ban it after let's say four days will be banned. It should be expected that relatively few stages will be banned at this point, but this step is very necessary to filter out stages like Temple that don't even approximate playability and would corrupt early tournaments to an unacceptable extent.

One months after the game comes out, we move to the first serious stage of voting. We open individual topics to the general public to vote on every remaining stage over the course of two weeks. In order to vote, any user must submit proof of having played in an in-person smash 4 tournament of the game version in question; a link to a tournament results thread showing their name would be an example of sufficient proof. Since these are going to be rules for tournament play, this is the most fair way. All tournament players get an equal voice, and all non-tournament players get no voice. Any stage that receives a 2/3 majority voting to ban it is immediately banned. Any stage that receives a 2/3 majority voting not to ban it is enshrined as legal forever. Stages with voting percentages somewhere in the middle move to step three.

One month after the previous voting closes, we move to make our final decisions on the borderline stages. Each side of these disputes will be asked to gather their thoughts and submit the best argument they can on why they're right. Threads containing arguments in both directions will be made for every remaining stage, and a last round of voting will occur with the voting requirement naturally being having participated in a smash 4 tournament for the version in question over the previous month. At this point, any stage with more than 50% of voters supporting a ban after two weeks is banned. If this leaves an even number of stages, we will now take a corrective action to make it an odd number. If it's a single digit even number, the stage banned by the narrowest of margins is legalized. If it's a double digit even number, the stage allowed by the narrowest of margins is banned. This will be our permanent ruleset, and we'll have it right at three months after the game comes out.

I can imagine many potential concerns people may have, but I see little virtue in carrying on for a few dozen more pages arguing against every objection I can imagine. The virtue I see is that we will inevitably get a pretty fair ruleset, and just as importantly it will be one that truly reflects our collective will as a community. We can just skip the debates on principle that no one ever wins since we don't actually share principles, and we can avoid any charges of bias in rule making since we're all in on it. I'm bringing this up now as we still have tons of time to talk things over and consider our best course of action; I know it's a hefty topic, but as a community we simply cannot afford to just wing it. We need a good plan, and whatever we ultimately decide on, we all have to be on the same page doing the same thing if we want a good outcome.

 

[DaDavid]

I'll admit I may have skimmed here and there, but yeah, in general I agree that if the community is going to ban stages (which of course it has to) then those bans should be consistent throughout all events that players participate in.

 

[Xiivi]

Yeah, I do agree that the various rulesets used to make things difficult for the scene as a whole. It would be nice to unify the stage list early on; and getting the community behind this would be good.

 

[Ussi]

Certain stages can opt to be banned later on after we see a character break it yea?

 

[Terrazi Terrajin]

So.. everything that isn't Final Destination and Battlefield? Gotcha!

 

[Zonderion]

I fully support this, but there are still some issues that need to be worked through.

Step 1: What is the minimum number of votes before we close the poll? Imagine if you will, that over the course of the first week, there are only 10 people who vote (highly unlikely, but possible). If 8 of those 10 happen to choose to ban 6 stages, are those legitimate bans?

Step 2: Is one month enough time for people to go to tournaments? Especially if we require only in-person tournaments? I am a tournament goer, but there are rarely any tournaments in my area. This means that I would have to travel to make it to a tournament, and doing so in that one month time span may be difficult. This could eliminate several hundred, or possibly even several thousand from being able to contribute to the official stage list. Could we expand the time frame to maybe two months, maybe three at most?

Step 2a: Providing that online play is feasible and close enough to in-person play, can an online tournament be used as verification for contributing?

Step 3: Let's propose that a highly regarded player (ex: Mew2King) is unable to play a tournament within the time frame. Will that player be able to contribute during step 3, even though they don't meet the technicalities of Step 2?

Step 3a: How will we regulate who posts in those threads? Understandably, the criteria is someone who plays in tournaments, but if anyone is allowed to post, then there will undoubtedly be people who post that don't meet the criteria. In this sense, we now have violation of only tournament goers' opinions on stage bans.

Certain stages can opt to be banned later on after we see a character break it yea?

Ussi has a great point. If a certain technique that works only on stages X, Y, Z and we don't figure that out until 6 months in, what happens?

Could there be a yearly review on the stage list to either add or drop based on the techniques discovered?

 

[lordvaati]

Certain stages can opt to be banned later on after we see a character break it yea?

After that I believe it would then open a second test: a test of the character tech. That would then lead to seeing what happens if the same tech is performed on different stages, how it does when performed on the rest of the cast, and how it's initiated.

If only doe through a gme-effecting exploit, then one could argue the tech to be banned(ala idc, or Sonic's homing stall).
If it has a negative effect on the stage for everyone, then yeah it can be open for a ban(like wall infinites on Corneria.)
If it's only character specific, it can go either way(likePeac vs Ganon on DK 64.)

 

[MrPanic]

I think it would be best to come up with some rules a stage has to meet before the game is out. Once we know all the stages we'll just have a ton of opinions and I personally think it's better to draw the line using the logic and our smash knowledge we have now to layout a ruleset so when we play the game, we can instantly recognize the first time we play a stage if it's legal or not.

Of course people will always have different ways of judging if a stage is legit or not, that why I think is better to just have multiple tiers of stage rulesets. Let the first tier just hold the most basic rules and let the tiers after build extra rules on top of that. When the actual game come out we can decide on which rulesets are actually relevant to the new game and should only leave us with a handful of stages that could be debatable.

Let me try with a example:
Rules Tier 1:
- Stages that allow you to walk off-screen are banned
- Stages with randomly appearing or unpredictable stage hazards are banned
- Stages with OHKO stage hazards or hazard that do over ??% are banned
- 'Traveling' stages are banned.

Rules Tier 2:
- All rules from tier 1
- Stages that extend close to the side of screen are banned
- Stages with any stage hazards are banned
- Stages that feature random (rng) elements are banned

Rules Tier 3:
- All rules from tier 2
- Stages that provide an advantage at certain sides of the field are banned
- Stages with any interact-able are banned
- Stages that change gravity or otherwise alter base mechanics are banned

Rules Tier FXFLC:
- Fox only
- Final Destination

Sorry for the bad joke there, but you probably catch my drift. If we can come up with something like this that suits everyone here, we can predetermine what really matters and we'll have a solid base to work with when we can actually check the stages ourselves. This will result in a very conclusive list on stages and their "legitimacy" tier right on day one leaving the discussion only open to a few edge case stages. Then we can pretty much create one to three tourney types with their own stage lists that we can always refer to in future, only leaving a discussion open to the edge cases and potential glitches or exploits found later in ssb4's life-cycle.

I just think the whole let the community vote thing is a bunch of bogus when it comes to tournaments. The stages should be chosen to create a fair playing field, so the stages should undergo a strict ruleset to determine what actually is fair and what is not. That's why we, as a community, should decide on a ruleset for choosing stages and not just choose some stages. Sure, some people have a different view on what is fair and what is not, that why should determine what the most fair rulesets should be beforehand. Otherwise we'll just be voting for the coming five years because no one is gonna agree on each other ever.

That's just my two cents on this, I just don't think we should leave the voting a legit stages to everyone in the community, you'll just get to many opinions that aren't even relevant for a tournament scene.

 

[RelaxAlax]

I really like the tier idea. What if, and this is a big 'what if', a poll is indeed opened and we start voting on stages. But instead of just listing all the stages, we should categorize them even in voting - define them by what stage they are and work from there.

Ex. 1. Regular Stages
2. Moving Stages
3. Hazard Stages

Then a group of us will tally the votes (yay...) and we'll make a tier list of stages similar to that of Character Tier list

Then we could vote, or a selected few of us choose on a tentative tier list, on where we draw the line on the tier list (I.e. Tier S- B are legal, C - G are banned) to see which are tournament legal. Then any further discussion would be where we could move these said stages (up or down) but only on hard evidence and glaring problems. It's impossible to get it right the first try, but if we work as a community together, we can shorten that time span and give this game a hell of a cycle.

Also, with this voting system, we'd have to make sure there is as little bias as possible. I can just imagine tournament celebrity's tell their fans that they should vote for certain stages and only those stages because it helps there game.

There are websites that do all the arduous voting calculations and stats, right? I really hope so.

Then I have this idea of doing it similar to a political campaign. The stronger and more active users on these threads get voted on to speak for the community, because let's face it, everyone getting a say will become chaotic, side-tracked and frankly hard to follow. We choose representatives to organize the stages on a list of most tournament appropriate to least (See my tier list idea). Ofcourse the first one won't be perfect, but that's why they keep working at it, watch tournaments and fix glaring issues. As long as these people are, again, not going to provide bias for a certain character or community.

 

[DaDavid]

I think the list should be open to change, perhaps even more than on a yearly basis and definitely immediate in the event of something horribly broken being discovered. The bigger thing remains that the changes made are universally acknowledged instead of just applying to the tourney in which they were discovered or something like that.

 

[Substitution]

Simple, does it have the words "Final" or "Destination"?
No? Then ban it...

 

[ryuu seika]

Final Frustration for starter legal stage.

 

[lordvaati]

see the ironic thing is nowadays you have people wanting Final Destintion to become a counterpick.

That only just goes to show how absurd the stage legality process is slowly becoming.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

The main idea really is that nothing that happens later is going to change things. Like we have both Melee and Brawl as examples here. Has any stage in either game really proven itself to be broken in a way we didn't know very quickly? With Brawl, literally the only case is Meta Knight clipping into the Halberd, and that's a really narrow glitch that could just be banned itself rather than banning the stage. We changed the stage list constantly, but we never actually agreed on anything or proved anything about any stages. There are many interepretations of how this affected the overall metagame, but let me give you the most cynical one. Powerful but not really broken things would begin to happen on certain stages. Some regions ban those stages, others don't. The metagames in those regions begin to diverge a bit. A national happens, and for various political reasons, it uses a very narrow stage list. The more liberal regions are ill-prepared as they're familiar with a different metagame, and they do artificially worse than they would otherwise. They change their rules to something they enjoy a lot less to try to keep up, but they're still behind the times as the more conservative regions are playing in yet a new metagame with even fewer stages. This repeats basically indefinitely, and it's fundamentally more unfair than literally any consensus ruleset could have possibly been. This is doubly true now; we know so much about the basics of how smash works. Our early metagame isn't going to be perfect, but it will be decently informed of how to abuse stuff. I severely doubt that within the first three months we won't find everything truly broken about every stage in the game; we'll know the vast majority of it within the first few days honestly (we already know to look for stuff like Temple's hard loop). Once you get that out of the way and know that the really awful stages are doomed anyway, you realize that stage policy is really more about a preference of what you want the metagame to be than about any truly fundamental issues of fairness. In fact, the one fairness issue is the fact that it keeps changing, and that's what I want to avoid.

As per everyone having a voice, my logic here is very simple. We tried not to do that and only listen to certain elites in past with backroom rulesets. That whole exercise failed pretty spectacularly; it completely failed to bring about unity, and as someone who was actually party to it for a while, I can say that the debates were not a bit better than what we ever had in public. Even more, it's not like a group of more experienced players really had any sort of common basic ideas from which to work. In fact, the sort of thinking MrPanic is displaying is basically exactly what I'm confident won't work. The problem is that I'll tell you there's no problem with moving and transforming or hazardous stages and that they shouldn't be in a fundamentally different category than Final Destination. Someone else will tell you that stages with hazards are just hilariously awful and should be insta-banned just like Temple. We will never, ever agree. We'll just continue to argue that point for literal years, and we'll just repeat all the same mistakes of the past. From the point that we know we can't agree on the why any stage should or should not be banned, I think the best we can do is respect the will of the people. We make a stage list that makes the greatest number of people possible happy, and we just stick wtih it for the fairness issue (since a changing stage list is fundamentally not fair). We do have to restrict it to tournament goers since voter fraud is impossible to combat otherwise and, honestly, the number of people who are serious but live in rural Alaska where a tournament of any size isn't possible to do on a monthly basis is far outstripped by the number of people who live within a reasonable distance of tournaments but simply choose not to go.

I was perhaps far too wordy in my initial post since I covered the procedure in great detail, but I have put a crazy amount of thought into this covering basically every possible outcome. I don't see agreement on any principles as a possible outcome; too many years have proven that impossible. From the point we know we can't agree, what could possibly work other than simple democracy?

 

[LiteralGrill]

I propose we use the flexible ruleset scheme previously used by the PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale community. We'll do stage striking from the full list of stages for game one. Stages struck in the first half of stages struck are banned for the set, and of course the last stage remaining is used for game one. This allows all players to avoid rough counterpicks while enshrining a large degree of diversity and avoiding the inevitable biases of declaring certain legal stages "starters". This too can be discussed if necessary; it's merely what I see as the best out of many suggested options. Whatever we decide on this, I do trust that just procedure is non-controversial enough that we can reach a good consensus.

Just to note (As the guy who made that the how to pick rules is PSASBR) it was actually VERY popular, many people liked it. The only downfall was time, and we only had online events in a chatroom at the time so it was a problem, live events have NO such problems. (Though due to the mostly online nature of their event they've gone the route of only playing one stage really, a really unfairstage even oddly enough. :/ )

I promise to give a proper response to this when I can though, I can bet with AA posting it's gonna have great stuff!

 

[Morbi]

Or we could do it like Soul Calibur and just use the random button? No... okay.

 

[TimeSmash]

To me, things that are crazy like WarioWare or Temple should be banned immediately. But then there are stages that are more up for debate, like DK64 and what have you. The whole region difference things that was mentioned earlier is very true; I think for Smash 64 only Dreamland is legal in Japan, while here in the US we have other stages that are legal. To a smaller extent, I haven't done my research but it's very possible people in different regions in the US alone have definied certain stages as illegal, while others deem them counterpicks. We need a system to decide universally for everyone what is and is not playable.

As for hazards, see the topic "A Reevaluation of Stage Hazards" which is definitely a little buried at the moment. GrimTuesday also posted a lot about this subject as well, but I can;t remember the thread's name. Looking at you here Capps.

Exploits are tricky, like that whole Peach Bomber in Fourside debacle. We should decide whether the stage or technique should be banned.

 

[RODO]

I still think that changes should be allowed later on if something arises that is a huge problem. My personal opinion on stage bans in not to have any though, and only deciding neutral stages is important. Opinions, amiright???

 

[pitthekit]

Perhaps *gulp if sakurai gives us better stage building tools that we make competitive legal stages?

... Nope could not work, everyone would have to have access to custom built stages.

 

[nessokman]

No items, fox only, final destination.

 

[DaDavid]

Perhaps *gulp if sakurai gives us better stage building tools that we make competitive legal stages?

... Nope could not work, everyone would have to have access to custom built stages.

Well why would people not? Even Brawl had it so that you could download people's stages on certain websites so I see no reason the same couldn't be done for this, or even better, stages could be shared in-game. I guess it'd be tricky, but if a stage was made that someone thought was good for competitive play, maybe there could be a way to submit that stage for a vote? Have people download it and test it out and see how it goes?

I guess it might be more trouble than I initially thought, but IF there's a need/desire to make stages using a (hopefully) more robust stage builder, I don't see it as being totally a worthless idea.

 

[RelaxAlax]

I thought of this too, like there would be an official document saying which defult size is acceptable and which blocks go where in order to let the stage be universally the same.

(Ex. 8-2 to 8-8 filled with small block; 9-2 to 9-8 with small block etc.)

Ofcourse it would be tough for TO's to make sure all is right and to confirm if the stage is correctly made. That's something the Brawl community didn't even bother with for reasons I'm unsure of. Fear of change? Lack of need? I think it's plausible but may just be effort for nothing.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

The problem with custom stags is that they're moving us in the wrong direction. As I've tried to stress as hard as I can, unity is the single most important goal. Custom stages inherently add a million options, and that's just more stuff we won't be able to agree upon.

It's also pretty questionable for tournament play; let's say we decided to include a custom stage and were arguing about where precisely to put a platform. If we put it a little higher, it sure helps Pikachu. If we put it lower, Peach is happier. This stage is picked in a tournament finals Pikachu vs Peach, and it's a super close game on which the outcome of the tournament hinges. Whatever decision was made on that platform's position changed the outcome of that event, and at that point the loser has a pretty fair complaint that they didn't really legitimately lose at the "real" game, just at something fan-built. We do have to make decisions on stages simply because the game contains many stages and we can only play on one at a time, but I think it's important to remember we're trying to play the game we are buying, not a variation we are building.

 

[MrPanic]

I totally see where you're going with this, but I just feel like if you gonna leave it open like that it will just start a bunch discussions that quite likely turn everything into the same mess it was. I totally agree with you that it should be a democracy, but I just think we should use those opinions to lay a solid base of rules instead of waiting till people get their bias on when they know the stages. Sure, there should be polls and discussions about certain stages later on, but if we, as a democracy, can decide on some good rules that everyone can agree on, we have a great base to fall back on so the discussions can never go out of hand like they did.

Of course there's that glaring issue with this idea, namely opinions. I think there's one thing we can count on and that's we'll never agree on a universal stage list. I tried to address that with the tier idea but maybe it should be split up even further. My plan would be to 'democratically' decide on two or three mindsets regarding stages. When we can all agree on the different mindsets (read: everyone in the community can agree with at least one of them), everyone can side with their favorable mindset and should 'democratically' decide on the rules a stage should comply to. We'll then end up with probably three general mindsets with their own set of rules for stages. Then when the game comes out, all three 'mindsets' can easily put their stage list together and we'll end up with three lists of stages that can be used for tournaments.

The idea behind this is to have three consistent lists that are fair in its own way. Some tourneys will always have a different idea on what's fair and what is not, so if we can present them with these options, atleast we'll know what beforehand what we can expect. I for one think it's great that stages differ from event to event just for the variety, the problem with that is that the metagame can change drastically because of these changes. I think it would be best if we can just decide on three 'metagames' by using these mindsets so we can prepare for any event by preparing for these three options instead of dealing with rules that keep changing. I think the big pro's of this idea are: makes it easier for tourneys to decide on stagelist, less need for endless discussion because of separated mindsets, easier for players to prepare because of set variety, less need for stage discussion because of democratically laid base rules (only really needed when a glitch or character breaks a stage).

So yeah, more cents from me, I just think some preemptive democracy is needed if you wanna get rid of the usual drama, wait till it's out and we'll just end up in the same situation again.

 

[RelaxAlax]

Very tough thing to decide for sure. Nobody wants a bunch of elites telling them what to do and giving everyone a say would also be very tough. I like your idea of having 3 sets of lists so everyone knows what to expect. If one list tends to become more favored than a year down the road when the competition becomes bigger we can all decide one which of the presumable 3 is going to be the keeper so everyone knows. The only way we'd choose this is by seeing which stage lists people play most. But it seem fair so everyone isn't in shock when going to tournaments and from the getgo every type of list is satisfied.

Even then there are going to be naysayers and people wanting just one. I think it's a good idea because one list could be conservative, one middle grounded and one with many options. Just how to choose these lists is another thing and how varied they are may cause problems.

And thanks Amazing Ampharos, I get what you mean by that. I just think if included it could really expand what stages we have. Ofcourse, your example shows that it would need testing to be as neutral as possible. I think it could work, but i just don't think the whole of the community wants it all that much.

 

[DaDavid]

I'm not certain I see the issue with opinions if we're doing it democratically. Yeah, it's gonna suck for the people who "lost" and end up not having a stage they thought fair on the list or vice-versa, but that's how voting work. Not everyone can possibly get their way, that's not the point of a unified stage list OR of opening up the issue to everyone's word.

However I do agree with the idea that a vote on basic stage elements and properties BEFORE the games come out could be a useful way to guide the conversations once they do. Even if a stage that seemingly is disqualified from consideration due to having one or more of the elements voted on in the pre-release polls ends up being viable, couldn't enough people just step up and say we should put that stage individually up to a vote?

 

[LiteralGrill]

see the ironic thing is nowadays you have people wanting Final Destintion to become a counterpick.

That only just goes to show how absurd the stage legality process is slowly becoming.

Just to start quick, why is it absurd? Methinks you hold a bias about Final Destination of some kind. The fight for it to be a counterpick has gone on for quite a while actually as well, and while you should decide what you think for yourself that side has definitely presented arguments worth reading.

There are many interepretations of how this affected the overall metagame, but let me give you the most cynical one. Powerful but not really broken things would begin to happen on certain stages. Some regions ban those stages, others don't. The metagames in those regions begin to diverge a bit. A national happens, and for various political reasons, it uses a very narrow stage list. The more liberal regions are ill-prepared as they're familiar with a different metagame, and they do artificially worse than they would otherwise. They change their rules to something they enjoy a lot less to try to keep up, but they're still behind the times as the more conservative regions are playing in yet a new metagame with even fewer stages. This repeats basically indefinitely...

No matter what we CAN'T let this happen again. It's unhelpful and makes our scene look bad too honestly.

Very tough thing to decide for sure. Nobody wants a bunch of elites telling them what to do and giving everyone a say would also be very tough. I like your idea of having 3 sets of lists so everyone knows what to expect.

Your big suggestion.

Minus the "elites" telling us part, that's honest the BR Recommended Ruleset which if we are honest has just been laughed at and basically ignored for the most part, it doesn't work, we've tried it. We gotta try something different.

A List Striking System as part of our rules is something we should do either way, but if we are considering trying to make a unified ruleset we gotta look at Unity.

Say what you will about Unity, they did make mistakes but the idea was great at the start. It also ended rather suddenly and under strange circumstances so we don't know if it would have improved things in the future. However, let's study what they did well and where they failed and avoid that if we try ANY idea.

The idea of democracy does sound nice, but there is a great point here:

I can just imagine tournament celebrity's tell their fans that they should vote for certain stages and only those stages because it helps there game.

It WILL happen (If you haven't seen me jabber about Norfair and Jigglypuff yet find it in a thread. I don't wanna have to type it much more, but a long story short: a match that doesn't exist started a stage legality discussion).

I wrote up an idea of the 3DS Alliance once, a backroom where the representative for regions were voted on and where all conversations could be viewed by the public and the public counted for part of the vote, it's a hybrid of democracy/backroom where only ONE person is placed into the group instead of being voted on, that person isn't allowed to vote though instead they have to represent the vote of the people. The only reason they exist is to make sure the group functions.

It has flaws, but here you go for those brave enough to read it:

[collapse=The Constitution Of The 3DS Alliance]

The Constitution Of The 3DS Alliance​

Article One: Guiding Principles

• To bring the Smash 3DS Community together and help keep peace in the Smash community.
• To promote the general welfare of our community by allowing adaptation and growth in the best interest of our community
• To provide for the common defense by providing clear and transparent conversations for ALL to observe and comment on.
• To allow all people fair representation in our processes for materials we provide and treat all smashers equally.
• To promote and advocate fair and enjoyable competitive play
• To grow and promote the Smash 3DS community in knowledge and quality, both online and offline
• To establish standards and provide support for players, tournament organizers, and tournaments worldwide both online and offline.
• To develop and guide leaders in order to build and enhance our community

Article Two: Leadership

Dictator:
The Dictator shall serve as a Dictator rei gerundae causa (“for the matter to be done) as well as comitiorum habendorum causa (for summoning the comitia for elections) and legendo senatui (for filling vacancies in the Senate).

As this is the only position cannot be voted upon but must exist to ensure the continuation of the alliance, restrictions have been placed on the Dictator that will be controlled by the senate.

• The dictator is not allowed to vote during Senate elections, only to call people to vote on them.
• The dictator is not allowed to vote on Senate Projects, instead his vote will serve as a reasonable fraction of public opinion from the Comitia in such projects to directly give more representation to the people. The Dictator is allowed however to express ideas and opinions during Senate Project discussions, just not allowed to vote on them.

Other responsibilities of the Dictator will include:

• Posting the results of any Comitia Senate votes.
• Voting with the Consul on any disciplinary action needed in the alliance
• Ensuring the Consul is completing their duties
• Appointing Representable Areas
• Managing and maintaining a list of members of the alliance

Consul:
Consul shall act as the two highest elected officials. These will be voted on by the Senate from their own membership, the two with the most votes will be the Consul. The Consul must be reelected each Senate term.

Responsibilities of the Consul:

• Managing and coordinating all projects the alliance undertakes
• Enforcing dispute resolutions
• Actively responding to member query and improving the structure of the alliance and project methods using said feedback.
• Subdividing and assigning projects to individuals based on self nomination and interest. Those individuals will be called Project Leaders.

Representatives and the Senate:
The senate shall only have a total of 2 representatives from each state, province, or similar structures within a country, this will be referred to as a “Representable Area” (RA). To become an RA, a player from an area must make a request of the Dictator to be accepted in, and the dictator must accept if it is a state, province, or something similar. An RA is not required to have a total of 2 representatives to the Senate, but we will strive to make this so.

Players in an RA will be able to nominate players to become representatives of their RA. These representatives MUST live in the area they are representing. If these nominees accept, they will be placed in a pool of nominees to be voted on. If no more then 2 representatives are nominated and accept these nominations in an RA within the period the Dictator assigns, they will be automatically assigned spots within the Senate.

If there are more then 2 representatives that are nominated and accept their nominations, the people in that area will hold an election decided by majority vote where the nominees with the most votes will be appointed to the senate.

Representatives shall serve a year long term in the Senate before they must be reelected. If a Representative is not able or does not want to complete their term, the Dictator shall appoint a replacement to serve the rest of the term. If possible, this replacement will always be the next available representative who had the most votes. If such an arrangement is not possible, a vote shall be held to decide the new representative. If this is also not possible or the time before the regular yearly vote is too close, the Dictator may choose to either place in a nominee of his choosing or keep the space open until the yearly election.

Responsibilities of Representatives:

• Voting on all Senate Projects and writing a dissertation explaining such votes
• Being active in discussions
• Represent a positive reflection of the alliance and the smash community

If these responsibilities are not followed, the Consul and Dictator shall vote on what disciplinary actions must be taken. This can range on anything from a forced resignation until a reelection to permanent banning from the alliance depending on the severity of the infraction.

If such an action is taken by a Consul member, the Senate itself shall hold a vote where a 2/3 majority will decide on the punishment.

Active Representative Criteria:

An Active Member is a member of the Alliance who contributes to threads on at least a weekly basis and participates on Project Teams

If a member fails to contribute to threads, projects, and other goals of the Alliance, they shall be declared an Inactive Member. Members Inactive for one month shall face disciplinary action from the Consul and Dictator.

If a member must be gone for a short period of time for a personal reason, they should bring this up to the Dictator who can allow them a leave of absence if the time needed is reasonable, or allow another person to hold their place as a representative for their RA until they return if the time is much longer.

Comitia:

The Comitia is an assembly of players to vote on any subject be it Senate elections, tier list charts or anything else similar. This allows more power to the average player so they can influence big decisions. All Senate Projects and any discussions that take place within the alliance will always be viewable by the Comitia. If any member of the Comitia wishes to discuss a subject taking place, they must ask the Dictator to make a thread for them where they can discuss this with others in the Comitia so their views can be represented by the Dictator.

Article Three: Projects

Any member of the alliance can propose a project at any time for the Alliance to undertake. If there is enough interest the Consul with assign the project a Project Manager and the project shall begin. Project Managers will have these duties:

• Actively contributing to and encouraging activity concerning the project
• Determining the dynamic direction and intent of the project as needs dictate
• Managing the core project team to meet deadlines set by the Consul
• Communicating with the Consul in regard to project progress and anticipated direction.

Some projects MUST be done by the Alliance once yearly on a proper schedule as to allow them to be finished before elections. These projects include:

• 3DS Tier List
• 3DS Matchup Chart

The Matchup Chart shall be contributed to especially by the Comitia who have expert opinions on characters that people in the 3DSA may not play.

The 3DS Tier List shall be voted on after the chart is made, EVERY member of the 3DSA must vote, and the Dictator shall have a vote consisting of a reasonable fraction of the Comitia's votes on the matter.
At the start of the 3DSA at the game's release, a stage study must be conducted. This will give us all information on each stage in the game that shall be compiled into guides. With this information, we shall put stages into groups based on their competitive merit, and from there create a recommended ruleset to be presented to the public.

Other Recommended Projects For Undertaking:

• Character Study For 2v2
• Character Study For FFA
• A Recommended Items List*
• Maintaining A Questions and Answers Guide
• Writing An In Depth Guide To Running Tournaments For The 3DS

Article Four: Amendments

Amendments to this document shall be decided by a 2/3 majority vote. Amendments may be proposed in a formal thread with the word “Amendment” in the title of the post. The Consul shall have 2 weeks to respond to the proposal and decide whether or not it shall come to a vote.


*The 3DSA can decide whether they support the use of items in competitive play in their recommended ruleset. However, as it is known many people will use items in either experimental play, side events, or even some main events, it would be beneficial for us to provide a list of which items work best.

VIVA LA 3DS!​

[/collapse]

 

[nat pagle]

Fox only, on Onnett.

Whoever wins the shining competition wins. After all, you should be skilled to play on EVERY stage.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I suppose I should be clear. I don't expect anything but chaos in the "debate" over which stages to be legal in an open public vote, but I'm not sure chaos is a problem since in the end all we need to get from people is their vote, not a reason why. Yeah, you'll have big name players pulling a lot of influence, and perhaps people who speak eloquently for their cause will rally some people too. In the end though, any individual is going to vote for what he thinks is best whether that's independently formed ideas, being convinced by someone like me posting a wall of text, or he just trusts that Mew2King is such a good player that his opinion deserves a second vote. I actually look at it a lot like I look at real life democracy. People might vote for one candidate or another for any number of stupid reasons and the debates tend to be ugly, but in the end, who can say that the end result isn't overall reflective of what people actually wanted?

Also, part of the idea of the procedure for stage selection, which I spent a lot of time on, was to buffer against situations like that. Let's say hypothetically this had happened for Melee and, for whatever reason, Onett made it past the voting. Melee is not ruined; against anyone who shows Fox game 1 or is known to have a pocket Fox, you can strike Onett in the first half of your strikes and be guaranteed not to see it for the whole set. Unlike a stage ban, you have a fair number of these too so it's not like being "forced" to spend one leaves you horribly tactically behind. This is a big part of why I don't think discoveries past the first few months are likely to matter. Things that are abusable in the majority of match-ups like running the loop in Temple are going to be obvious right away. Match-up specific abuses that aren't an obvious part of that character's core gameplay (less obvious than, say, DDD chaingrabs) aren't really a big deal since the procedure can be used to shield against specific match-ups while still allowing the stage in the majority of match-ups in which it's not lopsided. We only end up having a problem is an awful lot of stages with an awful lot of serious problems make it through, but I trust both the team's game design and the community's sensibilities enough to be confident that wouldn't occur. This is even more secure when it's considered that abuses that are just pure stalls like Meta Knight clipping into Halberd or Peach doing wallbombers very low on Pokemon Stadium can just be explicitly banned while leaving the stages legal.

 

[bigbro2233]

Okay, each stage with gimmicks should have a Balanced Version available in the options.

Take Project M's take on Brumble Falls, it was just a platform at the top of the waterfall. That should be an example of this. Maybe if you want a fair fight on Norfair, take away the lava and fire. For WarioWare, keep the fight on the main section. This wouldn't apply for stages like Battlefield and Final Destination however.

 

[warionumbah2]

Its funny cause nintendo won't listen to this ****

 

[Zonderion]

Its funny cause nintendo won't listen to this ****

Funny... cause this has nothing to do with Nintendo. We, the Smash Community (not Nintendo), are trying to invest in the competitive scene by creating a legalized set of stages so that the metagame across the nations can be very similar.

So...







Yeah...

 

[warionumbah2]

Funny... cause this has nothing to do with Nintendo. We, the Smash Community (not Nintendo), are trying to invest in the competitive scene by creating a legalized set of stages so that the metagame across the nations can be very similar.

So...







Yeah...

Jimmies are Rustled.

 

[Zonderion]

 

[LiteralGrill]

Okay, each stage with gimmicks should have a Balanced Version available in the options.

Take Project M's take on Brumble Falls, it was just a platform at the top of the waterfall. That should be an example of this. Maybe if you want a fair fight on Norfair, take away the lava and fire. For WarioWare, keep the fight on the main section. This wouldn't apply for stages like Battlefield and Final Destination however.

Sakurai already said no to this while laughing at Playstation All Stars who tried this. By the way other then the programmers being so bad they didn't actually get rid of all the hazards, but the community just argued whether hazards should stay on or not. It actually just makes more problems, take my word ffor it. (I was once the largest PSAS TO).

Also, part of the idea of the procedure for stage selection, which I spent a lot of time on, was to buffer against situations like that. Let's say hypothetically this had happened for Melee and, for whatever reason, Onett made it past the voting. Melee is not ruined; against anyone who shows Fox game 1 or is known to have a pocket Fox, you can strike Onett in the first half of your strikes and be guaranteed not to see it for the whole set. Unlike a stage ban, you have a fair number of these too so it's not like being "forced" to spend one leaves you horribly tactically behind. This is a big part of why I don't think discoveries past the first few months are likely to matter. Things that are abusable in the majority of match-ups like running the loop in Temple are going to be obvious right away. Match-up specific abuses that aren't an obvious part of that character's core gameplay (less obvious than, say, DDD chaingrabs) aren't really a big deal since the procedure can be used to shield against specific match-ups while still allowing the stage in the majority of match-ups in which it's not lopsided.

This procedure was able to in my time bring a 5 stage stagelist (that usually was only games on ONE stage in other places) to 13 during PSAS. It really does work and it forces players to learn the game and characters better as well. You just have to be careful to not have too many stages so it's not TOO complex. (No full list stuff, we can't strike 40+ stages). Another bonus is it makes the first match fairer as well as all matches after. As the first match is the most important, it's awesome we make it fairer, the rest of the matches being better as well doesn't hurt either!

 

[RelaxAlax]

I've always thought this as well. Broadening the striking would help make more stages available. Then it would not only matter on someones skills, but their "Smash IQ" for a matchup if they mistakenly didn't strike a certain stage. The only thing is with a bigger list, a percentage of that will be stages nobody would want to go to anyways. So banned or not, it wouldn't be played out of choice. Then you'll see regions defying the permanant list and we'll come full loop.
I personally have only been to one brawl tournament; just got into the scene last year but unfortunately, school doesn't permit me to drive an hour for weekly smash fests. I think Smash 4 is where I want to get serious with it and actually help the competitive community.

I think simplicity will be the best answer for all of this. Capps mentioned that time plays a factor in the stage banning in PSAS- somehow I don't think people are all too crazy about time. And with Smash, the stages are plentiful. So we will definitely need some neutral guidelines for stage banning and how we'll decide that out of a 40+ list. I think Brawl has some much uncracked potential if stages were given more a chance. It would bring about new strategies if a few more stages were seen in tournaments. I can only hope we do it right this time, or as well as we can.

And like AmazingAmpharos said, we shouldn't wing this. It's good atleast a few of us are talking about it now.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I've thought about the time issue with this procedure, and I forsee the biggest time sink is in keeping track of what's going on (like "did I already strike Siege?" or "Is Stadium 2 okay for counterpick this set?"). What you need is a paper chart available at each station (make plenty of copies as a TO) that shows every legal stage in an easy to read format (probably with little pictures for each and the name below). Each side while striking will put an X through stages struck in the first half and circle stages struck in the second half. That makes striking in the first place faster as you can eliminate stages quickly without having to fumble through menus or rely on memory, and it makes counterpicking later on faster as you can just look at the set of circled stages as your legal cps (that or just going back to the stage from game 1 if DSR blocking you, but you'd have to be pretty daft to forget that option). Give each side a differnetly colored pen or pencil (as easy as having one pack of blue pens and another of black) and you can even do metrics on which players struck which stages, but that's a luxury and not necessary to the basics of running it.

You also save time in a few ways here. You eliminate the clumsy concept of standard stage bans that always take a ton of time (no one can ever decide what to ban), and having the stage list physically in front of people and interactable like this removes all confusion for what is actually legal. Of course, standardization breeds familiarity which will also speed things up; if you've played at a dozen tournaments with the exact same stage list, it won't be hard to decide what to strike.

As per the game outside the game, I actually think this is a bit less punishing than the current system because you don't have to face nearly as tough of counterpicks. In the current system, banning the wrong stage can put you at a pretty awful disadvantage, and it's not even always your fault (maybe you didn't know he had pocket ICs while he brought you to FD). Being able to avoid a lot of stages lets you hedge your bets a bit; if you strike one stage early becuase you personally hate it or out of fear of a match-up you really don't need to fear, you still have more to work with and can end up okay. Even if you just strike semi-randomly, odds are you're going to be mostly facing the stages that are slightly in your opponent's favor, not the big disadvantage ones since those not only tend to be well known but tend to be few in number and likely to be hit up by you just striking randomly. Sure you could end up worse off than the current system if you are so incompetent that you make choices that go beyond merely neutral into the ground of actively helpful to your opponent, but anyone that clueless had no hope of beating any vaguely decent opponents anyway.

 

[RelaxAlax]

That's certainly alot for TO's, if only we could have someone make a stage striking app (ehhhh ... ehhh :D), but until then, that systems demanding for TO's. I fear that it won't happen because each match would need these charts and it would become a pain in the disorganzied tournament scene. Perhaps when the time comes someone can make a template for TOs to print out whenever that would be efficient for printing costs and such. I just think there could be a better way then to have to print them out or write them out.

Actually, come to think of it, a striking app would be really simple to make. I'm sure someone on the boards can take the time to make something like it.

 

[Zonderion]

That's certainly alot for TO's, if only we could have someone make a stage striking app (ehhhh ... ehhh :D), but until then, that systems demanding for TO's. I fear that it won't happen because each match would need these charts and it would become a pain in the disorganzied tournament scene. Perhaps when the time comes someone can make a template for TOs to print out whenever that would be efficient for printing costs and such. I just think there could be a better way then to have to print them out or write them out.

Actually, come to think of it, a striking app would be really simple to make. I'm sure someone on the boards can take the time to make something like it.

I'm on it.

 

[lordvaati]

Remember when people used to use Random select for first set stages? Yeah, theme's was the days(and IMO easier.)