Pictochat 2: A brief analysis

[ぱみゅ]

Kyo here, a die-hard Pictochat defender that will forever be on it.

I spent the last 2 hours or so playing this stage and analyzing its behavior. I very likely missed some things but I'm still willing to test stuff off.
We'll begin with the transformations:

Spoiler

1. Letter. A sheet of paper and an ink bottle will appear, then a quill will write lines there that act as platforms for the characters. These lines can be short or use the whole sheet. The bottle is also a block, it both creates a ceiling and you can stand on top of it.
2. 75m. A 75m-like layout. There is a "Donkey" at the top and he throws barrels, they can follow the layout, ignore it, or fall over the sides. Both the ape and the barrels are hazardous.
3. Monkeys. A pair of monkeys appear on both sides of the stage, each holding a platform characters can step on, but few seconds after touching it it will fall off. It will also reappear instants later.
4. Sparks. It draws a platform at the left and another one at the top right. Both platforms, as well as the ground will have a spark running around it, after few seconds the sparks will stop, and then continue their movement, faster, for few seconds before disappearing. The sparks can be shielded, and reflectors will make the user not to be hit by the spark.
5. Tornado. A swirling figure appears, moving slowly from side to side of the stage. If it reaches the ledge, it disappears and reappears immediately facing the other side. Upon contact, characters will be sent flying first towards the center of the tornado, then upwards (with no damage), with huge hitstun but low knockback. It can kill over the top, at very high percentages.
6. Clouds. Three layers of clouds that move from side to side to the stage.
7. Noses. Two noses that jump around using their mustache. Both act as platforms.
8. Balance. A Balance that tilts depending on where characters stand on top of it. Weight is apparently not involved in this equation.
9. Lemniscate.A Lemniscate at the very center of the stage. It is a platform that curves downwards either to the left or right (it is easily noticeable with 3D). Next to the lower platform there is a wall.
10. Dolphins. A group of Dolphins that jump from the sides to the center of the stage, or vice-versa. Each one of them is a platform.
11. Planes. The drawing of paper planes that fly from side to side to the stage, slightly downwards. Similar to the Dolphins, but slower and begin much higher. Also, they glide off pretty far from the stage.
12. Clock. A quarter of a clock. Characters can stand on the minute hand while the hour will act as a wall. It can be either the top-left or top-right part of the clock.
13. Sunset. There is a line slightly above the ground level, and a bit off the sides with half a circle over it. Said circle slowly moves towards the line, disappearing below it. There are also "bird" drawings that are platforms as well.
14. Pacmen. Pacman heads are drawn, they can hurt characters. They don't seem to follow any particular direction, aim for players or follow any pattern. When they move downwards and hit the ground, they will move any other direction afterwards (Left, Right or Up)
15. Police Officer. Stage will all be scrapped black, then a man will be drawn in white. He has a flashlight, and anything he or his light beam touches will be hurt. He can point the light either down, front, or up.
16. Tap. A faucet that unleashes a stream of water from the center to the sides of the stage. The stream will make grounded characters slide to the sides, also, standing directly below of it will make them fall faster.
17. Escalator. Three escalator stairs, all moving upwards. There are faint people that, when they get to the top, they fall over the stair. The last one reaches off the stage.
18. Moon. First the stage gets scrapped black, then it appears a Moon cycling through its phases. When it reaches the New Moon, all the stage becomes black (except the ground) and characters are invisible.
19. Pipes. A group of Pipes appear all over the stage. Standing on top of any of the ones on the ground will transport you to a different one, at random.
20. Van. It appears a line from side to side to the side, then a car's horn will beep, along with a faint icon showing which direction a car will appear. Its speed is varies, and it can come from either the left, right, or top of the stage (in which case it accelerates when hitting the ground).
21. Love Test. Two faint faces looking at each other with a line between their eye zone. In said line it can appear either a spark that damages characters that touch it, or a heart that will heal them (heal is either 10% or 20%, not sure how it works yet).
22. Boots. A pair of boots coming from the right side of the stage to the left, hurting whatever they step on, spiking or grounding characters. They can be a normal pair, or one with spikes.
23. World 1-2. The stage has some blocks you can step on, as well as creating a ceiling for the main ground, while there are on the sides of the stage two rows of platforms, one moving upwards and the other downwards.
24. Road. The drawing of a road towards the horizon, the sides of it, pointing diagonally upwards from the sides to the center, and act as platforms.
25. Blowing Face. A face aiming to the top of the stage. It will blow from its mouth, allowing characters to float on the air current.
26. Shooting Star. The background gets blacked out, then a Shooting star falls from above. Upon contacting something, small stars will separate from it, each of them having also individual hitboxes.
27. Blackout. The background gets all scrapped black, and nothing else happens.
    [/b]

Some behavior data:

• The stage will begin transforming since the initial countdown.
• Just like Pictochat 1, it will cycle through every transformation. They will not repeat until the cycle is complete. There is a counter at the left of the screen, piling a line for every transformation past.
• However, there are four "Night" transformations: Police Officer, Moon, Blackout and Shooting Star. There will be only 1 Night Transformation per cycle.
• With that in account, there are effectively 24 transformations per cycle.
• It usually takes over 10 minutes to complete a cycle.
• There are 8 hazardous transformations, 1 lethal non-damaging transformation, and 1 that ***heals***.
• No transformation seems to cut off any ledge.
• Walls apparently are effective after the transformation is complete. Needs further testing to confirm.

Now, my opinions:

There are only two real problematic transformations, them being the Pacmen and the Boots (and even then, the Boots are fairly easy to shield, Powershield even), I experienced no problems trying to deal with anything else after a little practice (and I'm willing to debate it out).

Something worth nothing is that you can have a lot of bad luck (seriously, someone do the math please) to have the Police Officer as the very first transformation. It happened to me once, and it resulted in an unescapable setup, not sure if the hitbox came after I could even move or my choice was poor, but yeah, it happened. I don't think it would e a problem for anyone else.

Also, I'm preeeeeeeeeetty sure I got a Night Transformation where nothing happened. I'm not sure anymore.
CONFIRMED

 

[T-block]

Good man.

A few questions:
-Any data on timings? It would also be worth it to see if there's any sort of set timing, or if there's a general window as to when drawings appear or disappear.
-Since there is only 1 Night transformation per cycle, does that mean each cycle consists of 24 drawings?
-Every time I've seen Boots, they've stomped across the screen twice... is that consistent with what you saw?
-I've only played on the stage a handful of times, but I feel that I've seen Boots in about half of them, yet I'm pretty sure there are some of these I've never seen. Small sample size, so nothing conclusive, but did you notice if any of the drawings tend to be more common towards the beginning of a cycle?

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

Pretty much off-topic, but I'm pretty sure the things in transformation #7 are Tektites from Legend of Zelda, not noses.

Also, standing on the dolphins in the wrong way can occasionally somehow cause you to fall through the main platform, with you still standing on the dolphin as it passes through instead of being transferred to the ground platform.

 

[Dragoomba]

Pretty much off-topic, but I'm pretty sure the things in transformation #7 are Tektites from Legend of Zelda, not noses.

Are you sure? I'm pretty confident it's a reference to Wario.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I do not believe the pipes are player controlled. Simply standing on one for a few seconds is sufficient to automatically use it, even if you're mashing out a jab combo or presumably doing anything else. (Amusingly, since I was Rosalina, Luma kept spinning in place until I reappeared somewhere else.)

 

[ryuu seika]

Are you sure? I'm pretty confident it's a reference to Wario.

And I thought they were the tentacled nose monsters from the first Kid Icarus.

Would you consider the complete inability to see Shadow Sneak (Greninja's Side B) a significant problem with the stage? Apart from that one, powerful move loosing its warning, this stage seems ok in my book.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

Those tornado things also remove your second jump, by the way, and their hitbox is huge.

 

[Dragoomba]

To be honest, the fact that you can't see Greninja's shadow doesn't make an entire stage bannable, it actually makes it a viable counterpick. It was the same situation with Snake's C4 on Lylat.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

To be honest, the fact that you can't see Greninja's shadow doesn't make an entire stage bannable, it actually makes it a viable counterpick. It was the same situation with Snake's C4 on Lylat.

I can also see it messing up some players who haven't quite memorized how fast the shadow moves out and depend on the visual.

But I agree and that makes it one of the strangest qualities to judge a stage on I think I've ever heard of.

 

[MysteriousSilver]

I could see it messing up players who haven't memorized the timing, and I would tell those players to learn the matchup. Unless unseeable shadow sneak becomes some sort of monster in competitive play I don't think it's any reason to ban a stage. This isn't any comment on this stage being legal, mind you--I've barely played on it. But Dragoomba mentioned hard-to-see C4, and other character have always had stage-specific perks like Sonic's weird invincible spindash on 45 degree angles in Brawl or other things. Giving an advantage to one character is not a problem in a stage unless it's overwhelming or overcentralizing, I think.

 

[ぱみゅ]

made a bit more tests.
Just few more

-Any data on timings? It would also be worth it to see if there's any sort of set timing, or if there's a general window as to when drawings appear or disappear.

There seems to be no set timer, just like PictoChat 1 the time can vary and some phases will sometimes take longer to appear or disappear. However, the first transformation consistently appeared after the 1:52 marker (I tested with 2-minute matches), unless it was a Night Transformation, for NTs the scrapping appears immediately after the last drawing disappeared, and when it happens to be the very first transformation, it will scrap it out at the initial countdown.
Another worth-noting timing note is that there is consistently 13-15 seconds between transformations. Very rarely it will take like 10 seconds for the other transformation to appear.

-Since there is only 1 Night transformation per cycle, does that mean each cycle consists of 24 drawings?

Yes, adding it to the OP.

-Every time I've seen Boots, they've stomped across the screen twice... is that consistent with what you saw?

They sometimes completed 2 laps of stomps, sometimes they only made 1½, and only once during my tests they made 1 and disappeared right before they reappeared to begin the second lap.

-I've only played on the stage a handful of times, but I feel that I've seen Boots in about half of them, yet I'm pretty sure there are some of these I've never seen. Small sample size, so nothing conclusive, but did you notice if any of the drawings tend to be more common towards the beginning of a cycle?

Not at all, every transformation seems randomized throughout the game.
But there seemed to be rare transformations for early into the game; the Pipes, Night, and Pacmen for example rarely even appeared during my tests.

Also, standing on the dolphins in the wrong way can occasionally somehow cause you to fall through the main platform, with you still standing on the dolphin as it passes through instead of being transferred to the ground platform.

This game has A LOT of fall-though glitches. This is but one of them.

I do not believe the pipes are player controlled. Simply standing on one for a few seconds is sufficient to automatically use it, even if you're mashing out a jab combo or presumably doing anything else. (Amusingly, since I was Rosalina, Luma kept spinning in place until I reappeared somewhere else.)

I can confirm this, my mistake. Just standing on top of the pipe drags you in. It can even cancel your action.

Those tornado things also remove your second jump, by the way, and their hitbox is huge.

The hitbox is indeed huge, but the other part of your statement is false. The hitstun is really long, and you can't act until a bit later, but the second jump is still there.


Now, other notes:
-Yes, there was another Night Transformation where nothing happened.
-The Lemniscate can either be pointing to the left or the right (easily noticeable with 3D on), and the lower part of the platform has a wall attached to it.

 

[cstonic]

YUS!!

Thanks a lot man!
I love picto chat soooooo much.

 

[ぱみゅ]

More tests made me think the boots are distasteful. A powerful hazard with no warning (the camera doesn't even pans out like almost every other phase), can hit the leftmost player and the other can shield them for a free punish.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

My impression of Pictochat after hanging around on it in training mode is that the transformations are generally very large and encompass a lot of the stage, but aren't immediately deadly by themselves. (Except maybe the flashlight and shooting stars? Wasn't able to test kill percents.) In order for the stage to be truly dangerous, your opponent generally needs to capitalize on opportunities provided by the hazards.

Which is admittedly very little comfort when you're on the boots or faucet transformation, for example, but still.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

My impression of Pictochat after hanging around on it in training mode is that the transformations are generally very large and encompass a lot of the stage, but aren't immediately deadly by themselves. (Except maybe the flashlight and shooting stars? Wasn't able to test kill percents.) In order for the stage to be truly dangerous, your opponent generally needs to capitalize on opportunities provided by the hazards.

Which is admittedly very little comfort when you're on the boots or faucet transformation, for example, but still.

This. Shooting Stars are very painful though and surprisingly difficult to avoid. I've mostly resorted to hitting the stars with Counter to avoid them.