A way to solve the stage legality tangles?

[Frightful Five]

After a lot of lurking, particularly on the Official Stage Legality thread, I decided to post because an idea hit me. There are many stages which have to be banned, or restricted to counterpick only, and with the exception of some which are clearly fair starter stages (e.g Battlefield, Smashville) and others which must clearly be banned (e.g 75m, WarioWare, Eldin), there is even more uncertainty and discussion about what stages fit in which of these categories. Thus my thought, which might not be practical for mainstream tournaments but could at least lead to an interesting discussion: Why not sidestep the entire discussion, and use the tool Brawl gives us to *make* balanced stages: The stage builder.

Think about it. Custom stages can easily be made fair, contentious features like walls and walk-off ledges can be avoided in designing them, and if some broken feature is found on any particular stage it should be quite simple to correct. And with all the features the stage builder has, it shouldn't be a great problem to make different stages which allow varied gameplay.

We could set up a thread, the "Competitive Custom Stage Workshop and Repository" to systematically make, playtest and archive custom stages designed for competitive play. Of course, to maintain a stage metagame, we couldn't just keep making stages ad infinitum, we'd have to agree on a number of stages ahead of time. Personally I suggest as an upper limit 33, one for each stage currently in brawl minus the four starter stages, (which are unnecessary to duplicate and should be kept in the custom stage set, although a version of FD without the wonky ledges might be desirable) but that many might not be needed.

While obviously, tournament standards for Brawl will never move to a custom stage set, if only for practical reasons, I thought the notion at least merits discussion. And if it's a completely wrongheaded and foolish idea, at least now someone can tell me why. (Calmly and rationally, please)

 

[damezguy]

lol why pick eldin and wario ware as clear banned stages when eldin probably has the strongest arguement to be made legal. stages like mario bros is a clear ban, as you can literally win without dealing any damage to your opponent. i think your idea on custom stages is cool, but theres already stages which are fair enough to play on. its all about compromise and good counter picking.

 

[person701]

Expect a bunch of **** from other people for this topic. This has been brought up numerous times. Reasons this wouldn't really work are because of people complaining it'd be too much of a task to download all the stages at a tourny, or that there would be certain quirks to the stage builder (like a massive edge grabbing range). Though, some stages recreated (like WarioWare) in it's stand still state, wouldn't make for that bad of a thing.

Personally, I'd love to see it happen, especally since Stage Studio is out, it' wouldn't be a problem to make so good stages. It just seems to be a personal preferance to those who don't like customs.

 

[DKKountry]

The problem is how difficult it would be to make something like that standardized at tourneys since tourneys are often supplied by participants bringing their own Wiis.

The other problem is that custom stages are booooooring

 

[Meese]

Halo 3 has tourney legal custom stages, I think this would be a fine idea.

EDIT: "Achievement Unlocked: Reference an Xbox game on a Nintendo games' forum"

 

[person701]

Sorry but...

Halo 3 has tourney legal custom stages, I think this would be a fine idea.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but then all people need to do is fight back with the argument "Halo is a shooter, Brawl is a fighter." Like said before, it would be hard to standardize this.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Custom stages are limited in too many ways to be seriously worth using. Fair or not, they simply cheapen the actual quality of the game. There are a lot of other reasons to avoid them, but this alone is enough for me.

 

[SpongeBathBill]

Mightn't tourney-legal custom stages play hell with the metagame?

Also, there is the minor problem that not everybody will be able to experience the custom stages that end up getting used at a given tournament, giving an arguably unfair advantage of familiarity to players who have already spent time learning their ins and outs.

This is similar to a problem at In the Groove tournaments - the officials are old and boring while customs are new and exciting, but every machine is going to have different customs on it and sometimes some of those songs aren't even available for download, anywhere, so some players might be forced to play totally unprepared.
Usually the TO nominates a number of customs that can be freely chosen, and any other customs (within difficulty range) can be chosen with opponent's consent.

I wonder if something like this could work with Brawl.

 

[Delta_BP26]

Mightn't tourney-legal custom stages play hell with the metagame?

Also, there is the minor problem that not everybody will be able to experience the custom stages that end up getting used at a given tournament, giving an arguably unfair advantage of familiarity to players who have already spent time learning their ins and outs.

This is similar to a problem at In the Groove tournaments - the officials are old and boring while customs are new and exciting, but every machine is going to have different customs on it and sometimes some of those songs aren't even available for download, anywhere, so some players might be forced to play totally unprepared.
Usually the TO nominates a number of customs that can be freely chosen, and any other customs (within difficulty range) can be chosen with opponent's consent.

I wonder if something like this could work with Brawl.

That first argument isn't legit because it's the player's fault he didn't familiarize himself with such created stages.

I think this is a good idea. We should make the list of custom stages, then tourney hosts can say if their tournament will be using them, and which ones. It could add variety.

 

[Geist]

I've always been for tourney legal custom stages.
I always thought there should be an official criteria that a custom stage had to acheive before it would be allowed in tournaments. In the same sense that there are official tournament rules, which are able to be flexible and modified, I think there should be some form of a concensus is what is and isn't allowed in a custom stage.
For example, the obvious ones would be:
- no walk off edges
- no walls
- most likely small and medium size only
- no hazards, such as spikes.

but yeah, that's just my two cents. Obviously the hardest part of that would be trusting people to follow criteria and not be douchebags (pretty hard if you ask me), moderating some way so people don't take advantage and build a stage that would give unfair advantages to their characters, making sure people don't accidentally give some character a huge advantage, and lastly make sure that people's stupid stages that they made for fun with their friends don't pop up.

 

[person701]

I've always been for tourney legal custom stages.
I always thought there should be an official criteria that a custom stage had to acheive before it would be allowed in tournaments. In the same sense that there are official tournament rules, which are able to be flexible and modified, I think there should be some form of a concensus is what is and isn't allowed in a custom stage.
For example, the obvious ones would be:
- no walk off edges
- no walls
- most likely small and medium size only
- no hazards, such as spikes.

but yeah, that's just my two cents. Obviously the hardest part of that would be trusting people to follow criteria and not be douchebags (pretty hard if you ask me), moderating some way so people don't take advantage and build a stage that would give unfair advantages to their characters, making sure people don't accidentally give some character a huge advantage, and lastly make sure that people's stupid stages that they made for fun with their friends don't pop up.

This is actually something I to have thought about. We could bring back older legal stages from 64 and Melee with the new Stage Studio program, but that's pushing it because not everyone has access to uploading the stage to the Wii. Still as I once heard, there's always the oddball tournaments.

And as much as I sound against, I could care less either way if they were legal or not. ****, I personally prefer to play Brawl now days (bear with me, this may sound weird) on Heavy Brawl with 1.1 Damage Ratio... It makes it feel more Melee like to me. I think I'll go make a social group about it tomarrow. It's 10pm and I'm randomly tired. Good night.

 

[CR4SH]

Olimar takes almost a full 1/4 second to pluck a single pikmin on a custom stage block.

/thread.

 

[Man of Popsicle]

but that's pushing it because not everyone has access to uploading the stage to the Wii. Still as I once heard, there's always the oddball tournaments.

1. Make a file with all of the stages downloadable.

2. Download them to your SD card.

3. ??????

4. Profit More stages.

If you're a tournament director you should have an SD card.

I'm neutral on all of this.

 

[ndayday]

^^If I'm not mistaken, I'm still waiting for your idea of a SBR approvable custom stage.

Every time this comes up, it pretty much dies, and it could actually be worth something, assuming you fix the fact that all the nuetral stages are pretty much all the same. A flat stage with a few platforms floating above it. How are you to make a good stage that the SBR would approve that isn't what you already have in the game itself? Make one, show it to people, and then maybe people would warm up to the idea.

 

[Steel_Samurai]

This would be a good idea, although its not practical
A problem though could be the blastzones
making a good stage with blastzones not to far or close could be a problem

 

[person701]

If you're a tournament director you should have an SD card.

You're so right. =) But I think I also mentioned something (and it was mentioned earlier) that not everyone would have access to the stage before the tournie to practice on. But yea, it really wouldn't hurt to have some of these. As for blast zones, just use the small size. It will make matches quicker since Brawl is such a long game already.

Edit: If anyone is interested, I went off and made a social group for discussing this matter. Click my PM me if you're interested. It's invite only and you have to join to see the content.