A New Alternative Proposition for Smash Bros. Wii U Stage List

[Ulevo]

Now that EVO has finally concluded, tournament organizers are looking to the player base to see if changes should be made to the stage list. More specifically, if Lylat Cruise should remain legal, and if Battlefield and Dreamland 64 should stay as a combined stage ban. In this post I will propose a ruleset I have not seen mentioned before that will tackle both of these issues.

Judging by this latest poll on twitter, we can say that there is a consensus that Lylat should remain legal, with about 59% voting to keep it with the current ruleset intact or just by separating the triplats. There is a problem here though that the poll does not properly show, and that is that players may be wanting to keep Lylat within the stage list to ensure that we do not have to have Battlefield and Dreamland 64 in the same 5 stage strike for game 1. Lylat is currently the reason we are able to avoid this, and many would argue it is only legal due to necessity.

One look at #banlylat on twitter reveals plenty of evidence as to why this stage, on its own merit, should not be legal for competitive play. It simply has too many inconsistencies, bugs and hard to predict variables that can arbitrarily effect the outcome of a match.

If tournament organizers were to decide to ban Lylat Cruise, we then have another dilemma, and that is that Dreamland 64 and Battlefield would have to exist on the same stage strike selection for game 1. There are some players who feel that these stages should be treated as separate entities, but regardless of which camp you reside on, having Dreamland 64, Battlefield, and in some cases Town & City to select from game 1 is a problem in many match ups.

The only solutions to this seem to be to grin and bear with having Dreamland and Battlefield in the same starting list, or reduce our number to three starters, which has garnered criticism in the past for having too few of a selection and giving the player who strikes second too much of an advantage. So what do we do?

My proposed ruleset:

- Ban Lylat Cruise
- Town & City and Dreamland as Counterpick
- Smashville, Final Destination and Battlefield as Starter
- Player 1 & 2 decide which stage to play on game 1 by a modified version of rock, paper scissors.

Modified rock, paper scissors? What does that entail? It's simple.

Instead of using rock, paper and scissors, you use hand signs of one, two or three fingers. Each represent a stage: one being Smashville, two being Final Destination, three being Battlefield. If both players land on the same amount of fingers, let's say two, then both players agree to go to Final Destination. If both players land on different fingers, let's say one and two, then they agree to go to the stage not chosen: Battlefield.

This method has several advantages:

- It removes the advantage one player has in a strike order by making the choice essentially blind pick
- Ironically, no more RPS to decide striking order
- It's faster than traditional striking
- It's easy
- It avoids triplatform saturation for game 1
- It affords us the ability to not have to rely on Lylat Cruise to balance out the stage list
- We can still keep Battlefield and Dreamland 64 as a single ban, or choose to separate them or ban Dreamland 64 later

The one potential con I see with this method is that it relegates the stage list to three stages game 1. But after playing this game for over two years competitively, I do not see this as a problem. This is because of the inherent differences between Smashville, Final Destination and Battlefield. Each of these stages represent varying extremes, such as Final Destination being the longest legal stage in the game, with Smashville being the shortest, or Final Destination having the least platforms, with Battlefield having the most. This often lends players enough options to comfortably choose between the three for the first game. I have heard that this would imbalance the stage list and favour certain characters, such as Sheik, but ask yourself if this is worse than having Battlefield, Dreamland 64 and Town & City on the same list of five choices? And how many times do you see game 1 played on a stage other than these three? As long as players are able to agree to a stage that is fair and comprised of a middle ground between the advantages given to either character, then that stage list is functioning properly. I feel this is currently our best alternative going forward, provided we see no more stages released.

 

[MarioManTAW]

Instead of using rock, paper and scissors, you use hand signs of one, two or three fingers. Each represent a stage: one being Smashville, two being Final Destination, three being Battlefield. If both players land on the same amount of fingers, let's say two, then both players agree to go to Final Destination. If both players land on different fingers, let's say one and two, then they agree to go to the stage not chosen: Battlefield.

At first thought, I thought this sounded like a good idea. Auto-gentlemans and auto-bans. But then I realized: your opponent's best stage won't always be the one you want to ban. In the second example you gave, one wants FD and the other wants Smashville, right? Well, most players who would prefer FD would have Smashville as their second choice, but this system forces them to ban their second-best stage and start on their worst. Imagine a situation where both players want either FD or Smashville. Ordinarily, they would ban other stages until whoever won RPS ultimately picked one over the other. But in your system, they're instead making a 50-50 bet: either they can correctly guess which of the two their opponent will pick, match that, and play on a stage they want, or guess incorrectly and be forced to play on a stage neither of them wants.
While this system does work for situations where both players want the same stage or both players want to avoid the stage their opponent wants (choosing the 3rd as a neutral pick), there are some situations where neither will be happy with the outcome.

 

[Ulevo]

At first thought, I thought this sounded like a good idea. Auto-gentlemans and auto-bans. But then I realized: your opponent's best stage won't always be the one you want to ban. In the second example you gave, one wants FD and the other wants Smashville, right? Well, most players who would prefer FD would have Smashville as their second choice, but this system forces them to ban their second-best stage and start on their worst. Imagine a situation where both players want either FD or Smashville. Ordinarily, they would ban other stages until whoever won RPS ultimately picked one over the other. But in your system, they're instead making a 50-50 bet: either they can correctly guess which of the two their opponent will pick, match that, and play on a stage they want, or guess incorrectly and be forced to play on a stage neither of them wants.
While this system does work for situations where both players want the same stage or both players want to avoid the stage their opponent wants (choosing the 3rd as a neutral pick), there are some situations where neither will be happy with the outcome.

Obviously the system is not perfect. I do think it is a better than the alternative we have if we ban Lylat Cruise though. Also, ordinarily people who want to go to Final Destination will want to go to Town & City, not Smashville. Smashville is quite small for a flat stage, and the blast zones are not comparable, ceiling excluded. Just a nitpick.

 

[Ulevo]

After discussing this with local players, there was an issue that came up with the way RPS is done. If player A wants Smashville and player B wants Battlefield, in theory they would both RPS with 1 and 3 and they would wind up on Final Destination. But if one player, say player B, knows what the other play wants to pick, they can just pick 2, and they will wind up on the stage that was not chosen but the one player B wanted.

I suppose an alternative to this would be to instead strike stages using this method, rather than choosing them. The issue then becomes, if two players strike the same stage, how is the stage decided out of the remaining two? Normal RPS could be done to decide who chooses, but that places too much emphasis on the winner.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I'm still not keen on banning Lylat in general for this. The idea is nice but the strongest reason people said to ban it was falling through it, which is legit, granted PS1 is legal in melee and has worse problems than just falling through the stage over lylat tilting.

 

[A Scrub]

Don't ban Lylat. Stage diversity makes a better spectator sport. Despite the occasional jankness of my list, make pretty good competitive stages.

In short:

Battlefield
Dreamland
Miiverse
Smashville
Town & City
Lylat Cruise
Duck Hunt
Kongo Jungle 64
Halberd
Castle Siege
Delfino Plaza
Luigi's Mansion


Bring your pitchforks, I'm ready.

 

[JagerCrush]

I proposed the idea of keeping Lylat, splitting BF/DL, keeping BF a starter, making DL a counter-pick stage, removing DSR, but giving your opponent 1 stage ban. Players would essentially never get to play on "their best stage" in a match-up but would also never have to play on "their worst stage."
This would mean if a player so chose they could completely avoid Lylat. The biggest downside is it benefits players that use BF/DL. In a best of 5 you could take an opponent to BF/DL twice assuming you won game 1 and lost games 2 and 4 on your opponent's counter-picks.
You could also use the tweaked version of DSR where you can't bring them back to the LAST stage you won on, instead of ANY stage you've won on.

 

[tecmo]

Don't ban Lylat. Stage diversity makes a better spectator sport. Despite the occasional jankness of my list, make pretty good competitive stages.

In short:

Battlefield
Dreamland
Miiverse
Smashville
Town & City
Lylat Cruise
Duck Hunt
Kongo Jungle 64
Halberd
Castle Siege
Delfino Plaza
Luigi's Mansion


Bring your pitchforks, I'm ready.

Have fun with your four man local. lol