stage list and metagame

[Vro]

Before I start on the juiciest part of this sentiment, I have to talk about the state of the metagame and balance. First and foremost, I am not an advocate of every sweeping chang made from 2.1 to 2.5, but overall the experience is slightly better. Slightly is a loose term which also includes bug improvements and release of new characters, but I digress. I would not like to see huge sweeping changes from 2.5 to the next version either, for the sake of stabilizing a metagame. Making character adjustments, especially tech skill oriented ones, punish players who practice and "exploit" character advantages. Learning matchup specific techniques and spending time to perfect exact and specific situations are also punished.

If your local metagame is not being dominated by a Fox or Bowser, than I am very happy for you. Please visit any other location that is and challenge them. You'll be blown away if you've never fought these characters in the right player's hands. Why these two characters specifically? Well, just look at the stages.

If any tournament is including several stages from the top row, it is garbage. Aside from the absolute bottom of the barrel selection the community has placed on the top row, we have other crowd favorites that have some how managed to sneak their way in. (Why is PS1 allowed when PS2 is better in every way) (Why am I spending 2 [all] of my bans on Wario Ware and Yoshi's Story)

Aside from the endless johns that is the stage select and the community's striking or banning methods (which are not intuitive or good, yet) we have to look at the stages. No, I mean really look at them. The highest ceilings are FD and Dreamland, which are the same from Melee. Look how the number of shorter stages there are. Smashville, considered one of the best neutrals, has a very low ceiling with Fox killing with upsmash at around 78% (no DI). That is lower than PS2 and around the same height as PS1. Look at Green Hill, Wario Ware, Castelvania, and Rumble. All of those ceilings are incredibly low.

Do you really want a stage list in which the most powerful way to kill (vertical) has the most amount of stages to choose and benefit from?

Other garbage stages are mostly garbage for the same reason. Oh, it's so nice we get to play on a slightly different platform layout with the EXACT SAME BAD BOUNDARIES as other stages we continue to play on.

Low ceilings is not the only problem. Many small stages behave differently from Melee than they do in PM. Without any argument, edge play is different because of Brawl mechanics. When a character can play excessively from the ledge, we call it poor sportsmanship or planking. But why wouldn't characters abuse small stages where over 70% of the stage is covered from their edge options provided from both edges? This speaks specifically to large characters that have good getup attacks or great ledge jumps. Instant reaction out of ledge jump is crazy to deal with when half of the stage is being controlled by a player who can choose to be invincible or choose to time his play.

I am not an advocate of having huge stages, either. Altho fox and bowser both kill vertically, their strengths on stage are opposite. Any small stage bowser may dominate, but any stage too big and fox will camp too easily.

In conclusion, your stage list is garbage.
Deanscuss

tl;dr: vertical kill is best kill and all the stages have low ceilings

 

[Oro?!]

PJSalt x infinity in here.

 

[traffic.]

This sounds like a pretty backwards approach to saying "nerf bowser and fox's vertical killing power" brah.

 

[Vro]

You are simply bad.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Wah fox nerf PS1

Or is it the other way around

 

[Oracle]

This is exactly why I'm a big advocate of the stage groups rule, which essentially gives you five bans out of 20 legal stages. Bowser isn't boosted nearly as much by this ruleset because you just ban small stages, which takes out all of the stupid bowser stages. Fox is still a problem, but thats pretty much always gonna be a problem with the level that he's at.

Currently, the most common stagelist (front page legal minus a few, with two bans) gives you very little control over your opponent's stage choice, since there are a bunch of stages that are effectively the same for a lot of characters. Ban Yoshi's/WW against bowser? Thats cool i'll just go to gray yoshis or purple yoshis. Want platforms to prevent cgs/long combos? Too bad, GHZ FD and Smashville are all legal and you can only ban two.This is pretty much a non issue with the group ban system.

 

[Arcalyth]

In my tournaments I ban Castle Siege (I used to ban Norfair and Skyworld as well but I decided to give them a chance). Oh, and SSE: Jungle obviously. Players get 4 bans. I personally think it's a good system, but maybe if I wanted a more conservative ruleset I'd say 3 bans.

In response to your first paragraph, I think that changes are required in order to ensure game balance when the final product is released. Now, that's not to say that I personally agree with every change that's been made, but there are certainly plenty of changes that absolutely make sense (3-frame commit on Ike's QD, no OHC for Sonic's homing attack, Pit with only one glide are three that stand out off the top of my head). Most character's playstyles remained very close to how they were in 2.1. Change should be expected when you're playing beta software.

Now, I think your concerns about stage boundaries are beyond legitimate. We need more variety in our stage selection. I think many players take for granted the effects of subtler things like stage boundaries outside of the blatantly obvious (e.g. Dreamland, WarioWare) and instead only look at the size of the stage itself. Having a smaller two-platform stage with medium-sized boundaries as a starter (to replace FoD imo, which would become counterpick) would be a nice touch. Dracula's Castle could have the stage lowered and it'd be similar to Dreamland. The same treatment could go to GHZ and PS2. I think if all of those things happened then stages would be much more balanced.

 

[0RLY]

How I do things are:
game 1, stage strike from the bottom row
game 2, winner bans 3 stages from the bottom and middle row , then loser picks among those stages

 

[Kink-Link5]

Also no way are Halberd or Metal Cavern bottom of the barrel when stages like Castle Siege and Rumble Falls are available.

I've used the following when going to my school's LAN party and it tends to go over well

BF, FD, MC, YS, WW, PS1, PS2, DL64, FoD, HB, SV, GHZ, DC for Singles

BF, FD, SSE:J, KJ64, RF, SL, PS1, PS2, DL, NF, SW, SV, DC for Doubles

After characters for game 1 are selected, each player/team bans 4 stages in the order of ABBA. These stages stay banned for the entire set. Then, the remaining 9 stages are struck in the order of ABBAABBA. After game 1, the winner selects their character, the loser selects their character, the winner temporarily bans 2 stages, and the loser can CP from the remaining 7. The end result is variety and malleability for the stage list while retaining that each set has as little jank specific to the matchups in question. If you don't want to deal with low ceilings, you can outright ban YS, WW, and PS1, strike away from PS2 and HB, then keep Bowser away from MC and HB with temp-bans.

It takes a bit of getting use to in order to figure out how to strike from 9 stages, but once everyone has the hang of it it goes quite smoothly.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Sorry to ignore the stage topic, but I have something on the topic of vro being against sweeping changes in 2.1 to 2.5

This game is still a demo, and since the very beginning of its development, it has been said that everything is subject to change...everything. Of course the current meta and character designs will be preserved if possible, but if a character attribute is seen as a problem to the general design of this game, if of course extensive testing supports it being a problem, then it will be changed.

So basically as long as it says alpha next to the project m logo, don't be surprised that characters change.

 

[Nausicaa]

I'm sure this has been discussed to death, but locally we use a system of stage SELECTION rather than elimination.

Instead of striking and banning, the first phase is each player (or doubles team) selects a number of stages they want in the set. Then player bans one or two of the selected stages and you're left with 4 (or whatever). From there, either 1 strike each and random the last stage for the first match, or you have 3 that are ALWAYS on the list (PS2/BF/YI [example]) and that way you strike to 1 stage.

There's a picking phase, and 1/2 bans, 1/2 strikes, and you start.
None of this 5 billion hours of banning and striking to start the first match, and it's more limited in the end so players have a more precise selection. No broad or spastic CP list after the initial match either.

Especially when more stages become tournament viable, which inevitably, would be nice and is likely coming.

Works for us very efficiently, but to each region their own.

 

[Vro]

original thoughts on stages 3 months ago

I have a very strong opinion about the stage list and the future of smash stages. I think we can add a ton of competitive stages and modify existing ones to make them more competitive.

Stage picking needs to be 2 things. Easy and Good. No matter how well explained or detailed your instructions are, if it's not easier than quickly going to Battlefield/Smashville (aka player agreement) than the rules are bad. If I have to look at a list of over 10 stages to CP and/or ban, it's not easy.

Many people try to do grouping technique and additional bans, but those rules are inelegant.

Last point before I show my list, many Melee neutrals are not perfect neutrals in PM, in my opinion. FD is seen as neutral by many, but if you think about how much it skews matchups and how often it is banned, why would you think it is neutral? YS is too small just on vertical blastzone, not by stage design. Etc...

Vro's Conservative Stage List

Neutral:
Battlefield
Smashville
Pokemon Stadium 2

CP:
Final Destination
DreamLand 64
Green Hill Zone
Fountain of Dreams
Yoshi's Island

No bans, Dave's Stupid Rule (cannot go back to any stage you won on, unless agreed)

You see a lot of stages missing. There are many, many viable stages such as Dracula's or YS, but I cut them out because they are too different from the others. The blast zones for both stages are extremely different from those in my list above.

This stage list is the most concise and the ones with the least rules. For the sake of competition, I think the stages should be different but homogenous. Allowing even 12+ stages onto the list forces odd rules (group ban or multi ban) and forces players to learn multiple nuances of multiple stages.

I'm all for more stages. But make them better. There is a reason a majority of players like BattleField of Smashville. Reasonable blast zones, easy layout, no centralizing strategy.

Closing words: Imagine if we played like Soul Calibur where the stage picking is always random. What if all stages were so similar and neutral that we could play on all of them?

Basically, there are three things to talk about.
1) Stage list needs to be easy and good.
2) Balance changes destabilizes metagame and punishes players.
3) Metagame can change just by stage select

If you talk about grouping/multiban stage selection, particularly 15+ stages, you are completely ignoring everything I am saying.
If you talk about balancing in terms of nerfing, you are completely ignoring everything I am saying.

Why don't we talk about innovative and adaptive tactics while reexamining our current rules? Noobs say nerf fox or that ike nerf was too good. This is not a balance discussion, this is a metagame discussion.

Here are some misconceptions:
Players "like" variety for the stage select. - No, they don't. If you look at Melee's past and present, the competitive scene weens out stages that are outliers. Why? Because no one wants to see an underdog win on Pokefloats. No one wants to practice a pocket fox so that every set they are ready to be taken to Rainbow Cruise.

More stages = variety - No, it doesn't. I would say over 3/4 of our available stages have the same bad boundaries. Metal Cavern is the paradox: incredibly small stage that can barely fit 2 large characters on it with blast zones akin to FD.

They'll balance it! - No, they won't. Stage selection is a variable in control of the community and the players hands. Forthcoming balance is outside our knowledge, independent from whines of noobs, punishes players who test and perfect characters.

[To be 100% honest about balance and the backroom, they don't know what they're doing; I don't blame them. For as many nerf hammers they brought out, they ignored problem areas. Many nerfs have totally halted characters' metagame progress or tanked their popularity. Buffs or ignored nerfs are just as prevalent in random areas as they are in needed ones. I am never in favor of multiple, sweeping changes to a character for the sheer fact that there is almost no chance for rollback. Science tests 1 variable at a time and the only variable the community can control is tournament rules.]

 

[The_NZA]

original thoughts on stages 3 months ago



Basically, there are three things to talk about.
1) Stage list needs to be easy and good.
2) Balance changes destabilizes metagame and punishes players.
3) Metagame can change just by stage select

If you talk about grouping/multiban stage selection, particularly 15+ stages, you are completely ignoring everything I am saying.
If you talk about balancing in terms of nerfing, you are completely ignoring everything I am saying.

Why don't we talk about innovative and adaptive tactics while reexamining our current rules? Noobs say nerf fox or that ike nerf was too good. This is not a balance discussion, this is a metagame discussion.

Here are some misconceptions:
Players "like" variety for the stage select. - No, they don't. If you look at Melee's past and present, the competitive scene weens out stages that are outliers. Why? Because no one wants to see an underdog win on Pokefloats. No one wants to practice a pocket fox so that every set they are ready to be taken to Rainbow Cruise.

More stages = variety - No, it doesn't. I would say over 3/4 of our available stages have the same bad boundaries. Metal Cavern is the paradox: incredibly small stage that can barely fit 2 large characters on it with blast zones akin to FD.

They'll balance it! - No, they won't. Stage selection is a variable in control of the community and the players hands. Forthcoming balance is outside our knowledge, independent from whines of noobs, punishes players who test and perfect characters.

[To be 100% honest about balance and the backroom, they don't know what they're doing; I don't blame them. For as many nerf hammers they brought out, they ignored problem areas. Many nerfs have totally halted characters' metagame progress or tanked their popularity. Buffs or ignored nerfs are just as prevalent in random areas as they are in needed ones. I am never in favor of multiple, sweeping changes to a character for the sheer fact that there is almost no chance for rollback. Science tests 1 variable at a time and the only variable the community can control is tournament rules.]

You need to recognize you are speaking for you and only you. I like a diverse stage list. I dont like the whole 4 melee neutrals and PS1 is the only CP. It was fun to see how people played on other stages. With that said, I understand it––mele really didn't have many balanced maps to offer. no ones asking htem to legalize pictochat or flatzone, but having some other options than just 4 or 5 stages is in the interests of many people.

 

[Oro?!]

Synopsis of the argument everyone has ignored;

Stage list heavily affects metagame, not game balance. Bowser is a good character regardless of stage list, but is indirectly buffed with the current metagame relative to the stage list. Fox would be strong in basically any metagame and his current balance. Fox is affected in relation to what characters are popular in the metagame, and which stages those characters are good on.

Metagame=/=Game balance

 

[ELI-mination]

There's a lot less wrong with the variety of stages and a lot more wrong with the *********** of Fox being allowed to do the stupid **** that he does.

 

[Arcalyth]

Here are some misconceptions:
Players "like" variety for the stage select. - No, they don't. If you look at Melee's past and present, the competitive scene weens out stages that are outliers. Why? Because no one wants to see an underdog win on Pokefloats. No one wants to practice a pocket fox so that every set they are ready to be taken to Rainbow Cruise.

More stages = variety - No, it doesn't. I would say over 3/4 of our available stages have the same bad boundaries. Metal Cavern is the paradox: incredibly small stage that can barely fit 2 large characters on it with blast zones akin to FD.

They'll balance it! - No, they won't. Stage selection is a variable in control of the community and the players hands. Forthcoming balance is outside our knowledge, independent from whines of noobs, punishes players who test and perfect characters.

[To be 100% honest about balance and the backroom, they don't know what they're doing; I don't blame them. For as many nerf hammers they brought out, they ignored problem areas. Many nerfs have totally halted characters' metagame progress or tanked their popularity. Buffs or ignored nerfs are just as prevalent in random areas as they are in needed ones. I am never in favor of multiple, sweeping changes to a character for the sheer fact that there is almost no chance for rollback. Science tests 1 variable at a time and the only variable the community can control is tournament rules.]

Variety can only be good. In your conservative stage list 50% of the stages are triangle stages, which as has been discussed to death, are not necessarily the most balanced stages. 50% of your stages are tiny, either in stage size, blastzones, or both. Only two of the stages have walls (and I'm pretty sure NOBODY is going to counterpick Ike to GHZ... let's not forget about the rest of the characters who can walljump/wallcling as well, as long as we're discussing metagame). I think that such a stage list causes more problems than it solves. Such a homogenized set of stages only provides us with more of the same that we've seen since Melee, and it stifles any kind of tactics that would arise on any "different" stages. I don't think anybody is clamoring for Poke Floats (or I guess in P:M's case, something like Flatzone) to be tournament legal, but there's nothing wrong with stages like Dracula's Castle or Skyloft. As I said in my previous post, we can alter the blastlines so that stages aren't homogeneous in that regard as well.

The backroom isn't perfect and it's up to us players to, as you say, test and perfect the abilities of a character so that they know what direction the metagame is headed. Will some changes be inherently bad for the game? Yeah, probably. That's why it's up to us to test and write succinctly our thoughts and analyses of the character's design and abilities; johns and complaints won't bring any progress and unless people can coherently and intelligently convey their thoughts we very well could end up with a metagame that's inherently broken upon final release (though personally I do have slightly more faith in the PMBR than that).

 

[Kink-Link5]

Let's just use BF only and get it over with.

 

[Nausicaa]

Nah mang, PS2 or bust.

 

[Oracle]

For most characters I don't think blastzones are nearly as important as stage size. Bowser might kill fairly early on castlevania or rumble falls with his up b/up air, but his lack of ability to control the stage due to its size hurts him a lot more than killing 10% earlier. And as far as stage size/platform layout goes, we have a TON of diversity.

Basically, there are three things to talk about.
1) Stage list needs to be easy and good.

'Good' is incredibly vague, I have no idea what you mean by that. And why does the stage list need to be easy? If we're sacrificing four seconds so that you can click the 'next page' button on the stage select screen for competitive depth, I don't see why that would be a problem.

2) Balance changes destabilizes metagame and punishes players.

Can you explain how a balance change can punish a player? I can see how a big nerf can punish someone who only wins because his character is good, but (assuming the nerf is warranted) the only way that would affect a skillful player is by taking away the rewards that he didn't deserve, aka the rewards you get just for picking a character.

If you talk about grouping/multiban stage selection, particularly 15+ stages, you are completely ignoring everything I am saying.

I don't see how this is the case. Thats also pretty dismissive, since you haven't explained a good reason why a stage list along those lines is bad other than "its a little harder"

Players "like" variety for the stage select. - No, they don't. If you look at Melee's past and present, the competitive scene weens out stages that are outliers. Why? Because no one wants to see an underdog win on Pokefloats. No one wants to practice a pocket fox so that every set they are ready to be taken to Rainbow Cruise.

Actually, lots of people like variety for stages. More diversity in the stagelist means that as a player, you have to be versatile and skilled enough to adapt to a big number of different situations and opportunities, which, in my opinion, rewards the better player. I think stages are among the main things that set smash apart from traditional fighters, since they create a really complicated and diverse spacing element that you really don't see anywhere else. When we homogenize the stagelist to just be the same stage with minute platform differences, we remove this incredible aspect from the game, which makes it less deep.

In melee its kind of a different story because on the non neutral stages, Fox completely dominates the majority of them to the point that worse players could get free wins by taking their opponent there and going fox (similar situation with mute city and peach/puff). I still do think that melee could use a tad more diversity though. PM, however, has the ability to remove/change stages that give single characters this massive advantage, so a diverse stagelist won't be quite as obtrusive.

More stages = variety - No, it doesn't. I would say over 3/4 of our available stages have the same bad boundaries. Metal Cavern is the paradox: incredibly small stage that can barely fit 2 large characters on it with blast zones akin to FD.

See top paragraph about stage control>boundaries. Although I do share the sentiment that there are a few too many stages with low ceilings.

[To be 100% honest about balance and the backroom, they don't know what they're doing; I don't blame them. For as many nerf hammers they brought out, they ignored problem areas. Many nerfs have totally halted characters' metagame progress or tanked their popularity. Buffs or ignored nerfs are just as prevalent in random areas as they are in needed ones. I am never in favor of multiple, sweeping changes to a character for the sheer fact that there is almost no chance for rollback. Science tests 1 variable at a time and the only variable the community can control is tournament rules.]

Even if said changes make the character more skillful, or make the game reward the better player more frequently/consistently? In a balanced game, you shouldn't get massive rewards just for choosing a top tier at the stage selection screen. The whole point of having multiple characters is so that any player has the choice to pick whichever character fits his style of play/does what he wants to do. In 2.1 there were obviously characters that prevented that from happening. Ike and Lucario rewarded incredibly stupid play, and there were a good deal of situations where less skilled players would take victories simply because of the character that they chose. That's just my two cents though, since, as you said, this isn't really a balance discussion.

 

[Spiffykins]

Can you explain how a balance change can punish a player? I can see how a big nerf can punish someone who only wins because his character is good, but (assuming the nerf is warranted) the only way that would affect a skillful player is by taking away the rewards that he didn't deserve, aka the rewards you get just for picking a character.

I don't want to put words in his mouth or anything, but I'm pretty sure he meant that players that have taken time to master a character are punished by changes that require them to unlearn and then relearn the character.

Even if said changes make the character more skillful, or make the game reward the better player more frequently/consistently? In a balanced game, you shouldn't get massive rewards just for choosing a top tier at the stage selection screen. The whole point of having multiple characters is so that any player has the choice to pick whichever character fits his style of play/does what he wants to do. In 2.1 there were obviously characters that prevented that from happening. Ike and Lucario rewarded incredibly stupid play, and there were a good deal of situations where less skilled players would take victories simply because of the character that they chose. That's just my two cents though, since, as you said, this isn't really a balance discussion.

And now there are a good deal of situations where very skilled players have dropped those characters because they no longer feel their skill and effort is being adequately rewarded. Clearly there is a middle ground that's been hopped cleanly over.

 

[Oracle]

First of all, they CHOSE to play a broken/degenerative character in the demo of a game where the motto is "everything is subject to change". It was pretty obvious that the characters needed to be changed for whatever reason, and that they were going to be changed. If someone only puts work into a character thats clearly going to get changed in the next iteration of the game, then its their own fault for putting all of their eggs in one basket.

Secondly, if they just complain about character changes and can only win with the character that got changed, how skilled were they in the first place? If you could only win with 2.1 Ike or sonic then you're actually a bad player. Not trying to be mean to people who played those characters, but thats the reality of it.

No more replies to this side discussion, since its irrelevant to the thread. Feel free to start a new thread or message me if you want to continue the discussion on character change philosophy, but here is not the place