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Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

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Luigisama

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Speaking of smashville. That stage needs to be investigated. Little mac can up b under it and hit through the stage. There is no use to that of course since mac is dead once he uses up b under the stage.

I wonder if like zss can do that thing where she passes through smashville or if D3 can do that inhale glitch?
 
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ATH_

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Alright, it seems about time for my monthly post in this thread. Again, I am still very torn between a few stages.

May I ask why @ LiteralGrill LiteralGrill 's Hypest group dislikes Skyloft and Wuhu Island? If good reasoning is presented I may go with it.

My online tournament that is almost ready to be held so far has got this as a solid list:

Starters(7):
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Duck Hunt
Delfino Plaza
Lylat Cruise
Counterpicks(6):
Kongo Jungle 64
Castle Siege
Skyloft
Wuhu Island
Halberd
Pokemon Stadium 2

Whereas the Counterpick stages will be voted upon for what should be allowed.
I'm all for FLSS but didn't want it to exceed 9, and to make it simpler, I kept it down to 7. Fair bet in my mind.

As usual, here are the usual 13 stages. All CPs will be voted upon as already stated. To keep it simple, I didn't allow Omega Stages, but that may change in the future or sooner than later depending if the demand is there. I plan to have a very professional tournament to become a good TO and Player as time goes on and Smash U develops.

I am interested in criticism for each of the CPs. In particular, Skyloft, Wuhu Island, and Pokemon Stadium 2. All criticism is helpful ^^
 
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Omegaphoenix

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Alright, it seems about time for my monthly post in this thread. Again, I am still very torn between a few stages.

May I ask why @ LiteralGrill LiteralGrill 's Hypest group dislikes Skyloft and Wuhu Island? If good reasoning is presented I may go with it.

My online tournament that is almost ready to be held so far has got this as a solid list:

Starters(7):
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Duck Hunt
Delfino Plaza
Lylat Cruise
Counterpicks(6):
Kongo Jungle 64
Castle Siege
Skyloft
Wuhu Island
Halberd
Pokemon Stadium 2

Whereas the Counterpick stages will be voted upon for what should be allowed.
I'm all for FLSS but didn't want it to exceed 9, and to make it simpler, I kept it down to 7. Fair bet in my mind.

As usual, here are the usual 13 stages. All CPs will be voted upon as already stated. To keep it simple, I didn't allow Omega Stages, but that may change in the future or sooner than later depending if the demand is there. I plan to have a very professional tournament to become a good TO and Player as time goes on and Smash U develops.

I am interested in criticism for each of the CPs. In particular, Skyloft, Wuhu Island, and Pokemon Stadium 2. All criticism is helpful ^^
This thread loves PS2, Wuhu, and Skyloft. You'll find some criticism, but not much.

Honestly, for a non FLSS system, it's pretty good. I would personally work in a rule for Omegas that would basically say "if a player picks FD, said player may also choose any Omega of his choosing
 

The_Jiggernaut

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Interesting, so it's not quite known. What do people think of this? Dying at all due to a stage hazard feels kinda crappy, and 125% does come up a fair bit. Is the transition really obvious if you know it exists? If it's very hard to anticipate, should we consider taking it out of our legal stage list? If not, why?
 

LiteralGrill

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@ ATH_ ATH_ Us TOs don't have an issue with Skyloft, it's the general player base. I personally would keep Wuhu and PS2 legal but we're all a team and we work together to come up with compromises and such.
 

ParanoidDrone

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It is admittedly a glaring, albeit tedious-to-collect, omission from ParanoidDroid's thread (which currently only says that it deals "appropriate" knockback, but may potentially be identical to the collision knockback of Mario Circuit, which kills "around" 125%)
That's because despite sitting in training mode for a half hour I was only able to get hit by the island once. Eventually I said "**** it" because I have better things to do with my time.

Kill % is approximate because the location of the player and direction of knockback have a massive effect on when they actually die. Hitting the track at "ground level" when it's sideways kills later than hitting it near the top of the camera, and hitting it when it's upside down can either spike you or bounce you off the platform.

Skyloft's knockback is likely to be identical to Mario Circuit and Pilotwings though, you have a point there.

Also @ The_Jiggernaut The_Jiggernaut since he asked.
 
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smashbro29

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I want to get to everyone's points and plan to but this one I can be quick about.
SO you're going to ban it because the players lack stage knowledge? Ignorantia juris non excusat, or for you non latin speakers ignorance of the law does not excuse or in this case, ignorance of the stage. That's a silly reason to ban if. I personally have used this "magical hitboxes no one knows of" to fast fall into so I could recover to the stage where I would have died. Don't ruin the game for players who are smart and practice but a few don't want to.
If you read what I said you'd see that I agree with your philosiphy, however after personally spending hours trying to find when scenery hits and having no luck finding documentation on it I've come to the conclusion that it's such a minor tell if its there at all it may as well be random.

Even if it wasn't random it's so minor it's nearly impossible to use effectively and just amounts to random saves/kills.

Granted if I could get some sort of proof or video on exactly where it happens and how I can tell I'd be ecstatic.
 

ParanoidDrone

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I want to get to everyone's points and plan to but this one I can be quick about.


If you read what I said you'd see that I agree with your philosiphy, however after personally spending hours trying to find when scenery hits and having no luck finding documentation on it I've come to the conclusion that it's such a minor tell if its there at all it may as well be random.

Even if it wasn't random it's so minor it's nearly impossible to use effectively and just amounts to random saves/kills.

Granted if I could get some sort of proof or video on exactly where it happens and how I can tell I'd be ecstatic.
Not the exact sort of tell you were hoping for, but as far as I'm aware Skyloft is only a danger when flying around the underside of the island and a brief moment when the stone wall around the giant statue apparently clips through the platform.
 

LiteralGrill

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I want to get to everyone's points and plan to but this one I can be quick about.


If you read what I said you'd see that I agree with your philosiphy, however after personally spending hours trying to find when scenery hits and having no luck finding documentation on it I've come to the conclusion that it's such a minor tell if its there at all it may as well be random.

Even if it wasn't random it's so minor it's nearly impossible to use effectively and just amounts to random saves/kills.

Granted if I could get some sort of proof or video on exactly where it happens and how I can tell I'd be ecstatic.
We've allowed stages that ACTUALLY randomly save people before (Yoshi's Island Brawl) so when there actually is a tell, even if it's very slight, I don't find it right to remove it.
 

smashbro29

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We've allowed stages that ACTUALLY randomly save people before (Yoshi's Island Brawl) so when there actually is a tell, even if it's very slight, I don't find it right to remove it.
The platforms are on a timer aren't they? Even if they aren't they're platforms that can come up on a static stage in the same spots not random pieces of flying scenery that can kill/save you that last a fraction of a second.
 

ParanoidDrone

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The platforms are on a timer aren't they? Even if they aren't they're platforms that can come up on a static stage in the same spots not random pieces of flying scenery that can kill/save you that last a fraction of a second.
AFAIK the support ghosts are completely random. And they can in fact randomly save people who are falling or have been spiked with no forewarning. They can also kill Ness/Lucas by getting in the way of their PK Thunder.
 

ATH_

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@ ATH_ ATH_ Us TOs don't have an issue with Skyloft, it's the general player base. I personally would keep Wuhu and PS2 legal but we're all a team and we work together to come up with compromises and such.
Thank you for the response! I understand, yet, I'm still at square one.
I would like to give an argument for them being absent, so, what points do people give to you all to get rid of the stages?
 

Locke 06

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As a fan of Skyloft, mostly because of how unique the platform layouts are, the stage hazards and where the stage is going are always on my mind. It helps that I know Skyloft's layout from playing Skyward Sword a ton.

Not knowing a stage is like not knowing a character matchup.

When ROB uthrows you onto a battlefield platform from the base and kills you earlier than you expect, that's okay. But when ROB is recovering low during the one Skyloft transformation which the scenery is a stage hazard and dies unexpectedly, that's not okay.
 

Piford

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I want to get to everyone's points and plan to but this one I can be quick about.


If you read what I said you'd see that I agree with your philosiphy, however after personally spending hours trying to find when scenery hits and having no luck finding documentation on it I've come to the conclusion that it's such a minor tell if its there at all it may as well be random.

Even if it wasn't random it's so minor it's nearly impossible to use effectively and just amounts to random saves/kills.

Granted if I could get some sort of proof or video on exactly where it happens and how I can tell I'd be ecstatic.
You can tell when the background swoops into the foreground, its pretty obvious. Also, you can definitely use it to your advantage like this


(Thanks dude who posted that on Reddit)

Also it's like 10x better than the random platforms saving people in Yoshi's Island because it just punishes the person who's getting hit more instead of rewarding them like the platforms do.
 
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LiteralGrill

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Thank you for the response! I understand, yet, I'm still at square one.
I would like to give an argument for them being absent, so, what points do people give to you all to get rid of the stages?
Well I would sit down and try to provide evidence that the stage is broken in some way.
 

Amazing Ampharos

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I want to get to everyone's points and plan to but this one I can be quick about.


If you read what I said you'd see that I agree with your philosiphy, however after personally spending hours trying to find when scenery hits and having no luck finding documentation on it I've come to the conclusion that it's such a minor tell if its there at all it may as well be random.

Even if it wasn't random it's so minor it's nearly impossible to use effectively and just amounts to random saves/kills.

Granted if I could get some sort of proof or video on exactly where it happens and how I can tell I'd be ecstatic.
It's just very hard to explain in words to that kind of detail, but it's obvious to most people who have played a lot on this stage. The mechanic is that, while the stage is traveling, the physical landmass has a hitbox. If that landmass moves within the play area while traveling, it's possible to hit that hitbox. Skyloft has a really huge number of possible travel patterns that would be honestly unreasonable to document in full, but the shape of the island is static and you can tell from the background if you're swooping close or not. It's not really random except insofar as the travel patterns are, but there's just so many possible permutations that it's a lot easier to tell people "just learn the shape of the stage and the mechanic, get some experience, and you'll know too". It's pretty much a mental iceberg thing. It's entirely possible to learn, but if you do, it will inevitably be on the "underwater" part of your mental iceberg: the part consisting of the things you know but can't explain. See also: explaining the very precise pattern of movement your legs must take to allow you to walk. You know it, but I sure bet you couldn't explain it in enough detail for someone who knows nothing about walking to emulate it.

I also think, even if you couldn't predict it (which you can), that the magnitude of effect it has on matches is very low on average. Several moves are already random in this game: Mr. Game & Watch's Judgment Hammer (and Chef!), Peach's turnips, Villager's uair/dair, etc.. Even among top tiers, as far as I can tell, the flight path of Diddy Kong's rocketbarrels when knocked off are random, and they can definitely kill if they hit. These moves can easily have profound impacts on matches, and we just accept that because banning every character with a random move would harm the game far more than the fairly small amount of randomness intrinsic to their moves does. In context of that reality, we need to understand that stage elements of very little consequence can be accepted. Skyloft rarely hits players at all, and when it does, it very rarely changes the outcome of a game, far less often than the aforementioned moves. You have to do a cost-benefit analysis here. The downside is that it will, once in a very great while, hit someone and that, once in a great while, that hit will matter. The upside is that you have an incredibly dynamic and balanced stage as a part of the game if you allow it. The upside just wildly outweighs the downside, and arguing the downside is bigger doesn't even make sense in a world where Villager is a legal character and probably a full quarter of his three stock matches are largely impacted by random uair/dair events.

I suppose I should wrap up my point like this. Let's say two similarly but not equally skilled and knowledgeable players play a tournament set in two different tournaments. The only difference between the tournaments is that Skyloft is legal in one and banned in the other. How much greater is the probability that the less skilled player will win the set in the tournament with Skyloft legal? I would argue that it is pretty close to 0% and highly debatable which side of 0% it is on (I'd argue it actually slightly enhances the odds of the more skilled and knowledgeable player). Unless it is clear that is not true, I find it hard to justify a ban of this stage on the basis of unpredictable mechanics.
 

The_Jiggernaut

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I want to get to everyone's points and plan to but this one I can be quick about.


If you read what I said you'd see that I agree with your philosiphy, however after personally spending hours trying to find when scenery hits and having no luck finding documentation on it I've come to the conclusion that it's such a minor tell if its there at all it may as well be random.

Even if it wasn't random it's so minor it's nearly impossible to use effectively and just amounts to random saves/kills.

Granted if I could get some sort of proof or video on exactly where it happens and how I can tell I'd be ecstatic.

I agree that if the tells are minor, it's an effectively random event. And in a game where we're pushing for 2 stocks, that's not appropriate.


We've allowed stages that ACTUALLY randomly save people before (Yoshi's Island Brawl) so when there actually is a tell, even if it's very slight, I don't find it right to remove it.
With regards to everyone's comparison to Yoshi's Island (Brawl):

If they are on a timer, then saying that their randomness makes the game unfair and therefore the stage not competitively viable is like saying Yoshi's Island in Melee shouldn't be in tournaments because the cloud sometimes saves people. And that's a lot of strong opinions you'd have to bat your way through.

I think there's also a difference between randomly being saved (resetting the situation from a possible kill to an edgeguarding scenario) and being outright killed (ending a stock). For the counter-example of Ness and Lucas being killed, wouldn't that only happen if they spaced things without that in mind? Even if it does kill them no matter what, they always had the power to strike and ban the stages. This feel appropriate to me because they're an exception to the rule. However, the killing walls of Skyloft aren't character specific, so the same precautions can't be made.


You can tell when the background swoops into the foreground, its pretty obvious. Also, you can definitely use it to your advantage like this


(Thanks dude who posted that on Reddit)

Also it's like 10x better than the random platforms saving people in Yoshi's Island because it just punishes the person who's getting hit more instead of rewarding them like the platforms do.
Guys.... I have some bad news. There is more than one area of the stage that can kill you. The one shown in this video is not the one that I've experienced.

My experience is with a full wall, not ceiling, that occurs on the left side of the stage. It's a lot like the wall in Port Town Aero Drive. The hazard shown in this video generously hits you towards the stage (generally), but the wall I've seen if far enough off stage that it can just end you, as it has a tenancy to shoot you downwards. There's no stage in this situation to break your fall.

So not only do we not know when these will kill and with what consistency, but there are more than one of them.
 

Piford

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I agree that if the tells are minor, it's an effectively random event. And in a game where we're pushing for 2 stocks, that's not appropriate.



With regards to everyone's comparison to Yoshi's Island (Brawl):

If they are on a timer, then saying that their randomness makes the game unfair and therefore the stage not competitively viable is like saying Yoshi's Island in Melee shouldn't be in tournaments because the cloud sometimes saves people. And that's a lot of strong opinions you'd have to bat your way through.

I think there's also a difference between randomly being saved (resetting the situation from a possible kill to an edgeguarding scenario) and being outright killed (ending a stock). For the counter-example of Ness and Lucas being killed, wouldn't that only happen if they spaced things without that in mind? Even if it does kill them no matter what, they always had the power to strike and ban the stages. This feel appropriate to me because they're an exception to the rule. However, the killing walls of Skyloft aren't character specific, so the same precautions can't be made.




Guys.... I have some bad news. There is more than one area of the stage that can kill you. The one shown in this video is not the one that I've experienced.

My experience is with a full wall, not ceiling, that occurs on the left side of the stage. It's a lot like the wall in Port Town Aero Drive. The hazard shown in this video generously hits you towards the stage (generally), but the wall I've seen if far enough off stage that it can just end you, as it has a tenancy to shoot you downwards. There's no stage in this situation to break your fall.

So not only do we not know when these will kill and with what consistency, but there are more than one of them.
Yoshi's Island Brawl is 100% random. Only in PM is it not, but that really doesn't matter. In Brawl and Smash 3DS, they are random. There's also no difference from being randomly saved and being randomly killed. Randomly saving my opponent is the same as randomly saving me. If I go in for a clutch edge guard or spike that would kill both me and my opponent, but my opponent gets save and I die how is it any different. Even if it wouldn't kill me, it still puts my opponent in a much better position then I am because he's on a platform and can safely recover and now I have to avoid his edge guard. And at least Skyloft has warning from the background from when it's going to happen, unlike Yoshi's Island. Also, are these hitboxes on Skyloft really any better than Delfino's Blast zones shrinking while transforming. Both would kill you earlier than expected, you know both are coming, the only difference is Skyloft has a significantly smaller chance to kill you since you can save yourself with DI and recovering and whatnot. You should also be able to react to your opponent's DI or your launch trajectory to use the stage to your full advantage. I mean if your being sent to die and you notice the stage is coming into the screen, you can DI towards it to try and save yourself, and you can always hit your opponent into it like in the gif.

Also yes there are multiple places it can happen since the entire stage is a hitbox.
 
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Well then, let's map the stage out, find the paths, and adapt. You know, like good competitive players. Learn to work around it. And if you don't think it's worth learning, then you don't get to complain when you die to it.
 

Firefoxx

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So lets compare Skyloft to a different traveling stage, Delfino Plaza. When Delfino transforms, the top blast zone basically disappears and can allow for ludicrously early KO's. This is something that has a far greater impact on play then the environment on Skyloft that can only appear briefly in between a handful of transformations. Yet Delfino is a beloved stage, I think it might have been the third or fourth most popular stage on stream during Apex. If that stage can be legal with a fairly game changing quirk, I don't see how Skyloft can't be. (And this isn't an anti-Delfino post, cause I love that Delfino has that weird quirk that makes it that much more unique. Every stage needs stuff like that.)
 

The_Jiggernaut

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Yoshi's Island Brawl is 100% random. Only in PM is it not, but that really doesn't matter. In Brawl and Smash 3DS, they are random. There's also no difference from being randomly saved and being randomly killed. Randomly saving my opponent is the same as randomly saving me. If I go in for a clutch edge guard or spike that would kill both me and my opponent, but my opponent gets save and I die how is it any different. Even if it wouldn't kill me, it still puts my opponent in a much better position then I am because he's on a platform and can safely recover and now I have to avoid his edge guard. And at least Skyloft has warning from the background from when it's going to happen, unlike Yoshi's Island. Also, are these hitboxes on Skyloft really any better than Delfino's Blast zones shrinking while transforming. Both would kill you earlier than expected, you know both are coming, the only difference is Skyloft has a significantly smaller chance to kill you since you can save yourself with DI and recovering and whatnot. You should also be able to react to your opponent's DI or your launch trajectory to use the stage to your full advantage. I mean if your being sent to die and you notice the stage is coming into the screen, you can DI towards it to try and save yourself, and you can always hit your opponent into it like in the gif.

Also yes there are multiple places it can happen since the entire stage is a hitbox.
I was not aware that they were truly random events, thanks for clarifying. I disagree that being randomly killed and randomly saved are equivalent. There is an extreme difference between a situation being reset to neutral and the game outright ending. I can't say that any more simply.

If you know you're on a stage that can randomly save an opponent (always in the exact same place, unlike the rising platform in Duck Hunt, but I digress) DO NOT do a suicide spike. I feel that this is common sense.

About the differences being brought up here and by @ Firefoxx Firefoxx between Delfino's changing blastzones and getting hit by Skyloft, I think the real difference is consistency. Delfino's Blastzones change on every single transition. It becomes part of the flow of the stage. When the transition ends, the Blastzones will change, so act accordingly.

Meanwhile, Skyloft's Hazards are so inconsistent that we haven't been able to even test when they kill. If Skyloft had a stage hazard in the form of a Rockface sticking on every single transition, then I would happily argue that the situations are the same. It would be a much more useable stage is this was true. Because you would naturally play according to this and it would become part of the stage's flow. But they're just wildly inconsistent instead. Should we ban it? I don't know. But I don't think it's acceptable to simply expect people to memorize the motions of the platform when no one in our community even knows how many hazards are even on the stage. If we keep it, it's because the random events don't justify the ban.





This part of my post suddenly became an essay, so sorry to those of you that don't like reading. There's a TL;DR version at the bottom.

There's this... privilege I've noticed amongst gamers that grew up with the NES and SNES where extreme amounts of memorization is no big deal. In fact, it's romanticized. People who have spent 40 hours memorizing small details to surprise and beat players of a similar skill are put up on a pedestal and the player that didn't put the time in is criticized for not being as much of a gamer as the other. It's a hugely problematic viewpoint that I will be coining as "NES Privilege."

NES privilege is the phenomenon in which gamers who grew up on the old video game consoles directly value the number of hours pumped into a game, while also not valuing time as a limited resource. As in, they glorify spending many hours of play while not realizing that there are a lot of great or necessary other things that the time could be used for.

This mentality comes from the days of old where we spent entire summer vacations only playing games. When we were growing up, we had no responsibilities and nothing BUT time. We could amaze friends with our tricks we picked up through the multitude of hours played to beat our single player games in new and interesting ways. And that was valuable to us. But we aren't those kids anymore. We've grown up, and we have things to do. We gotta go to jobs, have relationships, and make our own lunches. Yet this idea that it is valuable to stick 40 hours into a game sticks with us still.

Basic design philosophy states that a game should be easy to learn and hard to master. Part of this means that the number of hours needed to learn the game's mechanics should be small, and that's in direct violation to NES privilege. That's NOT to say, however, that depth and interesting and undiscovered interactions between characters makes game bad, that's all part of "Hard to master". By mechanics, I mean the using all of a character's moves consistently, learning how to recover, and learning the stages.

One of the largest cases of NES privilege in our community is the expectation that everyone must memorize every Omega stage and the differences between all of them. Don't think that's a thing? Since we allow someone to counterpick ANY Omega stage their choose, the other player must know what details that stage has in order to properly choose if he will switch characters or not. I don't wish to open up the discussion of how different or samey Omega stages are. It very much matters to Megaman if he can walljump off of the walls or if the walls do not allow walljumping, and that cannot be denied. Thus, the Megaman player must memorize all of the omega stages that have walls and all of those stages that do not allow walljumping. It takes an extreme amount of study, either by playing the game or looking through smashboards to learn these differences. Another part of NES privilege is even expecting a player to know that they must start learning the game like a literary work before an English exam.

If you claim learning the Omega stages or memorizing every permutation of Skyloft's travel only takes 14 hours (I'm imagining it takes more, actually) you are telling a person who only has 2 hours of free time due to having a life, job, and responsibilities that they must do nothing else but play Smash for a week straight before they can properly play against those of equal skill level. That is absolutely NOT reasonable. Especially when learning ACTUAL advanced techniques takes time as well.

Instead, of valuing these things, we should be building the game to have the least amount of exploitable technicalities possible and the smallest amount of hours needed to learn the core of the game. This will allow more people to reach the highest level of play, and will be better for the community as a whole.




TL;DR

Expecting everyone to pump 40 hours into a game to learn non-skill based details in order to play at a competitive level is bullsh*t, especially when it can be easily avoided. People shouldn't be glorifying the simple number of hours spent playing a game, but instead how skilled a player is at the game. People that glorify this have NES Privilege.

Also, this is a call to normalize the Omega stage list by choosing a handful and banning the rest, while keeping the Ban FD=Ban Omegas rule. If we allow someone to pick any Omega stage they want, it forces everyone to have to memorize the entire list, and that's silly for reasons discussed in full above.
 

Piford

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I was not aware that they were truly random events, thanks for clarifying. I disagree that being randomly killed and randomly saved are equivalent. There is an extreme difference between a situation being reset to neutral and the game outright ending. I can't say that any more simply.

If you know you're on a stage that can randomly save an opponent (always in the exact same place, unlike the rising platform in Duck Hunt, but I digress) DO NOT do a suicide spike. I feel that this is common sense.

About the differences being brought up here and by @ Firefoxx Firefoxx between Delfino's changing blastzones and getting hit by Skyloft, I think the real difference is consistency. Delfino's Blastzones change on every single transition. It becomes part of the flow of the stage. When the transition ends, the Blastzones will change, so act accordingly.

Meanwhile, Skyloft's Hazards are so inconsistent that we haven't been able to even test when they kill. If Skyloft had a stage hazard in the form of a Rockface sticking on every single transition, then I would happily argue that the situations are the same. It would be a much more useable stage is this was true. Because you would naturally play according to this and it would become part of the stage's flow. But they're just wildly inconsistent instead. Should we ban it? I don't know. But I don't think it's acceptable to simply expect people to memorize the motions of the platform when no one in our community even knows how many hazards are even on the stage. If we keep it, it's because the random events don't justify the ban.




This part of my post suddenly became an essay, so sorry to those of you that don't like reading. There's a TL;DR version at the bottom.

There's this... privilege I've noticed amongst gamers that grew up with the NES and SNES where extreme amounts of memorization is no big deal. In fact, it's romanticized. People who have spent 40 hours memorizing small details to surprise and beat players of a similar skill are put up on a pedestal and the player that didn't put the time in is criticized for not being as much of a gamer as the other. It's a hugely problematic viewpoint that I will be coining as "NES Privilege."

NES privilege is the phenomenon in which gamers who grew up on the old video game consoles directly value the number of hours pumped into a game, while also not valuing time as a limited resource. As in, they glorify spending many hours of play while not realizing that there are a lot of great or necessary other things that the time could be used for.

This mentality comes from the days of old where we spent entire summer vacations only playing games. When we were growing up, we had no responsibilities and nothing BUT time. We could amaze friends with our tricks we picked up through the multitude of hours played to beat our single player games in new and interesting ways. And that was valuable to us. But we aren't those kids anymore. We've grown up, and we have things to do. We gotta go to jobs, have relationships, and make our own lunches. Yet this idea that it is valuable to stick 40 hours into a game sticks with us still.

Basic design philosophy states that a game should be easy to learn and hard to master. Part of this means that the number of hours needed to learn the game's mechanics should be small, and that's in direct violation to NES privilege. That's NOT to say, however, that depth and interesting and undiscovered interactions between characters makes game bad, that's all part of "Hard to master". By mechanics, I mean the using all of a character's moves consistently, learning how to recover, and learning the stages.

One of the largest cases of NES privilege in our community is the expectation that everyone must memorize every Omega stage and the differences between all of them. Don't think that's a thing? Since we allow someone to counterpick ANY Omega stage their choose, the other player must know what details that stage has in order to properly choose if he will switch characters or not. I don't wish to open up the discussion of how different or samey Omega stages are. It very much matters to Megaman if he can walljump off of the walls or if the walls do not allow walljumping, and that cannot be denied. Thus, the Megaman player must memorize all of the omega stages that have walls and all of those stages that do not allow walljumping. It takes an extreme amount of study, either by playing the game or looking through smashboards to learn these differences. Another part of NES privilege is even expecting a player to know that they must start learning the game like a literary work before an English exam.

If you claim learning the Omega stages or memorizing every permutation of Skyloft's travel only takes 14 hours (I'm imagining it takes more, actually) you are telling a person who only has 2 hours of free time due to having a life, job, and responsibilities that they must do nothing else but play Smash for a week straight before they can properly play against those of equal skill level. That is absolutely NOT reasonable. Especially when learning ACTUAL advanced techniques takes time as well.

Instead, of valuing these things, we should be building the game to have the least amount of exploitable technicalities possible and the smallest amount of hours needed to learn the core of the game. This will allow more people to reach the highest level of play, and will be better for the community as a whole.




TL;DR
Expecting everyone to pump 40 hours into a game to learn non-skill based details in order to play at a competitive level is bullsh*t, especially when it can be easily avoided. People shouldn't be glorifying the simple number of hours spent playing a game, but instead how skilled a player is at the game. People that glorify this have NES Privilege.

Also, this is a call to normalize the Omega stage list by choosing a handful and banning the rest, while keeping the Ban FD=Ban Omegas rule. If we allow someone to pick any Omega stage they want, it forces everyone to have to memorize the entire list, and that's silly for reasons discussed in full above.
But on Yoshi's it doesn't set to neutral. If you attempt to perform any offstage game whatsoever, if my opponent gets saved by the platform they are immediately in a better position then me. Even if it did reset to neutral, it randomly took the momentum out of my favor, unlike on Skyloft where the stage hitting you continues your momentum. Also I wouldn't call the inconsistent. I mean it is set, but it's not necessary to memorize where it is. All that's required is paying attention to the screen and noticing when it's happening. The stage hitting you on Skyloft isn't at all banable as it doesn't create over dominating strategies or marginalize player skill. For Omega stages, you don't need to memorize every one. The only one you need to know is the one you want to counterpick too. You can just look and see if the stage has walls if your opponent picks one you don't know. Omega stages might have trivial differences, but if you pick FD it's not because it has walls its because its a long stage that lacks platforms.
 

Krysco

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So since I have way too much free time on my hands and saw people talking about Skyloft and it's random-not random hazards, I decided to count every possible path the stage could take. I came to 162. That's assuming that the path the stage takes at the very beginning to each starting destination is a different path from the final stop to restarting-first stop paths so there could very well be less.

What does this mean? It means there's at most 162 different paths to figure out where hazards appear and when they appear on each path (keeping in mind that many paths are incredibly similar and only differ by one stop point such as Knight Academy - Bridge - Bazaar - Small Island - Knight Academy and Knight Academy - Bridge - Bazaar - Waterfall Island - Knight Academy) It's up to the players if they care enough to learn where every hazard is and when each hazard appears on each and every path. Any player who chooses to learn this will naturally be able to make better use of the hazards than someone who didn't bother to learn them. There's also only 6 minutes at most per match so only so many paths will be taken per match. I'm not suggesting anyone try to learn all of these paths nor am I suggesting anyone not try to learn them, I'm just throwing this out there.

I have a Wordpad document open with every path written down if anyone cares to read or at least glance at the ridiculous wall of text @.@. Would want to put it in a spoiler tag first and I don't remember how to do such a thing but I won't bother unless someone asks. And if anyone is curious, I'm in favor of Skyloft being legal.
 

madworlder

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Skyloft's damaging ledges only seem to happen off of the main moving platform, so it's a risk to pursue kills and a hazard to recovering players while on the moving sections of the stage. Knowing the specifics isn't as hard as memorizing all 168 possible routes, as there are set stops for every first, second, third, and fourth destination. There are 54 different transitioning phases, which is quite a bit, but it's likely that the majority do not have damaging walls. Realistically, I doubt it will make a difference of one in 100 games.
 

ATH_

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So, is Skyloft actually going under hardcore research right now for it's possible hazards?
I think it's safe to keep it off lists until the hardcore research is finished, but of course, you could use the same evidence for the other way around in order to speed up the research.

(off-topic) Anyway, as a side question, what's a good way to host an IRC channel (s) so that I can host an online tourney? I'll need two for East and West Coast brackets. So it would be awesome to find a good, hopefully free, way of doing it. I know of a few clients, but is there a recommended one?
 

Piford

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So, is Skyloft actually going under hardcore research right now for it's possible hazards?
I think it's safe to keep it off lists until the hardcore research is finished, but of course, you could use the same evidence for the other way around in order to speed up the research.

(off-topic) Anyway, as a side question, what's a good way to host an IRC channel (s) so that I can host an online tourney? I'll need two for East and West Coast brackets. So it would be awesome to find a good, hopefully free, way of doing it. I know of a few clients, but is there a recommended one?
I don't think anyone's actually going to try to find all the hazards because its easier to just pay attention during a match for the stage, and it's not worth banning the stage over since the uniqueness it brings is worth more than the slight annoyance that is the hazard. It should be on every stage list.
 

webbedspace

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Expecting everyone to pump 40 hours into a game to learn non-skill based details in order to play at a competitive level is bullsh*t, especially when it can be easily avoided. People shouldn't be glorifying the simple number of hours spent playing a game, but instead how skilled a player is at the game.
This feels like a silly argument. How do you get more skilled at a game? By practicing. What does practising do? Build muscle memory.
How do you get more familiar with Skyloft? By practicing on it. What does practicing do? Build mental memory.
There's no important difference between mental memory and muscle memory in terms of time spent to accue. They both boil down to practice. Moreover, the practice overlaps: you can get more skilled at the game and more familiar with Skyloft by practicing on Skyloft.

Also, arguing that "pumping 40 hours" as an obviously unreasonable task seems a bit silly when most professional players (whose living is tournament winnings/sponsorship) play for at least 8 hours a day, every weekday.
 

ParanoidDrone

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So, is Skyloft actually going under hardcore research right now for it's possible hazards?
I think it's safe to keep it off lists until the hardcore research is finished, but of course, you could use the same evidence for the other way around in order to speed up the research.

(off-topic) Anyway, as a side question, what's a good way to host an IRC channel (s) so that I can host an online tourney? I'll need two for East and West Coast brackets. So it would be awesome to find a good, hopefully free, way of doing it. I know of a few clients, but is there a recommended one?
Not by me despite my position as unofficial stage guru. I feel similarly to Piford in that trying to actually document all possible instances of Skyloft forming a damaging hazard is not worth the trouble given the sheer number of possible flight paths (assuming there's a unique path between each pair of valid start and end transformations) and it's simpler to just note the broad strokes. Namely, when the stage flies around the underside of the island, it's possible that the rock may be close enough to hurt players. There's exactly one exception to this I can think of, that being the wall around the goddess statue, which also comes close enough to be a hazard depending on how the stage is flying around.

That said, I certainly won't try to stop anyone who feels differently.

Off topic, my music player started playing the Ballad of the Goddess/Ghirahim's Theme mix as I was typing this. Funny coincidence.
 
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Locke 06

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TL;DR
Expecting everyone to pump 40 hours into a game to learn non-skill based details in order to play at a competitive level is bullsh*t, especially when it can be easily avoided.
Knowing how to DI diddy's dthrow to avoid the uair kill is a non-skill based detail, but it is pretty necessary to play at a competitive level against a competitive diddy. Same with Pacman's the bonus fruits and the hydrant. Is that much different from stage knowledge?
 

ATH_

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Everyone, the real issue is how much practice needed is "too much".
Some believe that there should be no cap and therefore if one stage takes years of practice then good.
Some believe it's better to ban the stage if the practice value is too damn high.

Now please, with this, continue onward. I will give my own opinion on the matter after reading the past pages a bit more.
 

Amazing Ampharos

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How much work is it though? I already feel like I know Skyloft "well enough" to play it in a powerful way in tournament. The game has only been out for a few months, and I probably honestly play a lot less than some other people. I don't sit in training mode mapping stuff out (that often, especially these days), and I've never spent time in training mode trying to study Skyloft. I just play on Skyloft in about 1/14 of the friendlies I play since I play friendlies on "random" with that as one of the 14 stages I randomly get. There's that and the times I've played it in tournament, and it comes up to a lot of games over a few months and more than enough to learn as I go. Like there's still so much I don't know in this game; I need to always have the knowledge edge on my opponent to win as Rosalina (it's just the type of character she is). However, learning transforming stages is just not hard; you just have to stop doing that dumb thing where you always play friendlies on BF/SV/FD since that inevitably prevents you from learning the other stages.

As per omegas and learning all of them, I dunno, I kinda just have to see an omega once and I know what's up with it. I know just about all of them by this point despite almost never playing on them just because they're so basic. Like I get where you're coming from about the NES privilege thing (an odd way to put it), but as long as you have a decent memory and don't forget things after you've seen them it doesn't take much time to learn a lot of this stuff. If you have one of those lousy memories in which you have to see something a bunch of times to remember it it will be harder, but that's kinda bad in general.
 

Pazx

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@ ATH_ ATH_ your stage list is alright but you should run either 5 or 9 starters in my opinion so the striking process is even.

On the topic of Skyloft: good stage, hazards are minor but arguably a Good Thing that rewards game sense. Not getting to know the stage gives characters who are bad on it (might I add that one of these characters is Diddy Kong?) a distinct advantage: they don't have to ban Skyloft because the chances of being CP'ed there are very low.

On the topic of cutting down the number of Omega stages: please go home, this is a terrible idea and something that should be addressed properly.
 

The_Jiggernaut

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But on Yoshi's it doesn't set to neutral. If you attempt to perform any offstage game whatsoever, if my opponent gets saved by the platform they are immediately in a better position then me. Even if it did reset to neutral, it randomly took the momentum out of my favor, unlike on Skyloft where the stage hitting you continues your momentum. Also I wouldn't call the inconsistent. I mean it is set, but it's not necessary to memorize where it is. All that's required is paying attention to the screen and noticing when it's happening. The stage hitting you on Skyloft isn't at all banable as it doesn't create over dominating strategies or marginalize player skill. For Omega stages, you don't need to memorize every one. The only one you need to know is the one you want to counterpick too. You can just look and see if the stage has walls if your opponent picks one you don't know. Omega stages might have trivial differences, but if you pick FD it's not because it has walls its because its a long stage that lacks platforms.
I'm not really concerned as to how bad a situation these platforms create on Yoshi's story. Being able to act and read your opponent in the given situation is fundamentally different than the game ending. It's fine if you don't think that either should be in a stage, but they are absolutely not equivalent.

What you're saying about Omega stages makes absolutely no sense. You can NOT look at an Omega stage from the menu, so how can you use the stage select screen to see what the stage is like? You would actually have to start a match and exit if you wanted to check this. If you are implying that you can tell what a stage's Omega Form looks like from the stage itself, you have been misinformed. There is very little correlation between the two.

Here are some examples. Onett, Mario Circuit (Brawl), and Bridge of Eldin are all walk-off stages. Omega Onett has straight walls, Omega Mario Circuit is a floating platform, and Omega Eldin has curved walls. What sort of shapes would you describe 75m and Pacland? Well their Omega stages are a floating platform with partial walls, and straight walls you can't walljump off of respectfully? What about a stage that has straight walls you can walljump off of like Kalos? It's Omega should also have such walls, right? Wrong, Omega Kalos has straight walls you CAN'T walljump off of.

There's enough weirdness like this that you are forced to memorize them all in order to know what you're getting into. And it's honestly starting to feel weird to try and explain to experienced smashers why the difference between characters recovering and them losing a stock is NOT a trivial difference.

If you are claiming that a choice in omega does not effect you as a player, than why are you against limiting the list to a handful of entries?


This feels like a silly argument. How do you get more skilled at a game? By practicing. What does practising do? Build muscle memory.
How do you get more familiar with Skyloft? By practicing on it. What does practicing do? Build mental memory.
There's no important difference between mental memory and muscle memory in terms of time spent to accue. They both boil down to practice. Moreover, the practice overlaps: you can get more skilled at the game and more familiar with Skyloft by practicing on Skyloft.

Also, arguing that "pumping 40 hours" as an obviously unreasonable task seems a bit silly when most professional players (whose living is tournament winnings/sponsorship) play for at least 8 hours a day, every weekday.
I think you're missing my point a little. Obviously you get better at a game through playing it. I will obviously not deny that. But there is a significant difference between time spent developing muscle memory and time memorizing facts. It has to do with something called "transferable skill". Basically, you want as much time spent learning how to be good at a game to pertain to skills that you can use in other games, (ie transferable ones) and as little time possible spent learning things that only help you in the game itself (how to navigate difficult menus, learning the terms the game throws at you etc)

It has to do with NES privilege a little, there's still this idea that transferable skills are just as valuable as non-transferable ones, but a truly good game is one that requires you to learn as few non-transferable skills as possible.

So yes, I believe there is a meaningful difference between:
a) Learning how to preform combos and make reads (Useable in other games)
b) Learning the 54 transitions in the Skyloft stage in SSB4 (NOT usable in other games)

I feel weird pointing out that professionals are able to put 8 hours into a game every day because it is their profession. Would it be reasonable to make them work a full-time job on top of that? Of course it wouldn't, so why are you saying that it is reasonable for someone has a full-time job to play that much Smash?


Knowing how to DI diddy's dthrow to avoid the uair kill is a non-skill based detail, but it is pretty necessary to play at a competitive level against a competitive diddy. Same with Pacman's the bonus fruits and the hydrant. Is that much different from stage knowledge?
Every game has some amount of random facts required to know for it to function. Smash is no exception. The important thing is that we limit these amount of details without removing any functionality. Memorizing Pacman's fruits, the effects of G&W's hammer, or even knowing what a character's smash animations are... these are all facts to memorize. But they're necessary. We as a community have made it clear (in both our good choices and our mistakes) that banning characters is dumb. We pretty much unanimously want to keep all characters in. (As a side note, knowing how to DI something is a skill, and needing to know its existence doesn't somehow invalidate that)

However, when it comes to stages, our policy is wildly different. We have never been afraid to ban stages in order to shape our experience. It's always been our balance point. So we can use it to get rid of redundant Omega stages and use it to remove stages that require too much memorization. Although basic character knowledge and basic stage knowledge are just non-transferable skills you have to learn, it's the stages where we have the ability to cut out the unneeded memorization.


Skyloft Discussion

Here's my final piece on Skyloft:

There are 2 main arguments going around:

1) The hazards of skyloft are infrequent and not powerful enough to adversely effect a match
2) The hazards are predictable if you memorize the stage

Argument 1) could be valid, and we're sort of getting the impression that it is. Although since we don't know how many of the hazards exist and we don't know when they kill, it's really too early to say for certain. More testing, however difficult it might be, is needed

Argument 2) I really don't see as a good argument for not banning the stage.

It was stated by @ Krysco Krysco that there are 162 unique paths on Skyloft and @ madworlder madworlder added that there are 54 unique transitions. Most of these transitions are extremely visually similar. An unknown amount of these 54 transitions have a stage hazard that can directly lead to a loss of stock.

The claim is that every player, if they want to be at the highest level of play, must sit and memorize the visual cues each of these 54 transitions have that might imply a stage hazard is on the way. This is so incredibly far from reasonable.

As @ ATH_ ATH_ points out, it's about how much is too much when it comes to learning a stage. In my opinion, this is a few stops past the getting off point.

To clarify, I'm not saying we should ban Skyloft. But we should choose to ban it or keep it based on how and when the random hazards effect matches and by that alone.



As per omegas and learning all of them, I dunno, I kinda just have to see an omega once and I know what's up with it. I know just about all of them by this point despite almost never playing on them just because they're so basic. Like I get where you're coming from about the NES privilege thing (an odd way to put it), but as long as you have a decent memory and don't forget things after you've seen them it doesn't take much time to learn a lot of this stuff. If you have one of those lousy memories in which you have to see something a bunch of times to remember it it will be harder, but that's kinda bad in general.
Hey again, AA! I was surprised when you abruptly stopped responding to my thread about the Omegas. I suppose we can discuss it further here if you'd like.

I do agree NES privilege is a bit of an odd term, but "gamer privilege" kind of refers to other issues, so I couldn't use that phrase. But basically what I'm trying to say is that in order to even participate in a conversation on the Smashboards, a large amount of gaming history and knowledge is required. So a lot of the time, the opinion of the new player is not heard. In the rare occasion that it is, we tend to devalue their opinion and be less than hospitable towards them because "they're not real gamers". (that's part of Gamer Privilege btw)

We tend to forget that without new people coming to tournaments, the game will die. The accessibility of our game must be good enough that people will stay. For this incentive and for the want of creating a tight-knit community (talking about 613 Smash here, but it can also apply to any of your communities), we absolutely need to factor what new players need into our rulesets, so long as it doesn't impact high-level play.

It's obviously good that you can look at an Omega stage and instantly know everything there is to know about it, despite having any real experience on them. It comes from a lifetime of being calculating and analytical with your games. But what about Johnny-First-Time who comes to your tournament? Should there be an expectation for this person to learn everything about the Omega stages based upon playing once on each? This is not to say that the new player should not learn but rather they should not be put at an inherent disadvantage due to the information not being made available. This is where our role as leaders within the Smash community comes in to bridge this gap rather then expect the newcomer to try to make the jump.

As a game designer, I'm sure you must be aware of the concept of a false choice. For those of you who are not familiar, it's the idea that a game should not have an option that's disguised as a meaningful choice when in reality it makes no difference or is outright inferior. If you claim that no Omega stage is different enough from FD to matter, why are we allowing more than 40 false choices in our stage list? If only 9 or only 3 are measurably different, it just seems silly to allow these redundant choices. Since we're already playing the game at this level with these "unwritten rules" in mind, why not write them down for the sake of the game's accessibility?
 
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