Popularity is important. My personal goal for Smash is to make a game with the longest longevity and largest competitive scene possible. If we achieve this through a huge stage list and custom special moves legal then I'm all for that. But through my experiences in the competitive scene and discussing with players, this is not at all the case for stages.
No it isn't. Popularity isn't important at all.
Why would it be?
If it was, we'd have banned Snake before we even talked about banning MK. We'd ban all sorts of things.
The 'popular' vote is
always going to be for the status quo except in one special case: "when it benefits me".
Popularity isn't a good metric.
Besides, if we went based on what was popular we'd have items on in tournaments. Not joking on that, there are
way more of them than there are of us by a magnitude of 10 or more.
Stage hazards are fine as long as they are not centralizing to the gameplay. If your entire strategy revolves around utilizing stage hazards and that devolves your gameplay into things like camping at a walk off or running away until Klaptrap is about to spawn, then I believe hazards are bannable. I also believe that random hazards should be banned in case of randomness where the random factor can play a large impact in the role of the game (where "large impact" starts is hard to say though; is 30% a large impact? A KO certainly is). I think clearly defining what makes a stage hazard bannable vs legal would be a great discussion to figure out before Smash 4 is out.
Disagree. There's no difference between your strategy revolving around a platform, a ledge, or a hazard.
Literally none.
They're all just different aspects of a stage that are studied and utilized by the players to gain an advantage over the opponent.
Smashville's balloon was a hazard that
randomly killed Ness and Lucas but we didn't ban it. Smashville's balloon also gave players the ability to refresh their moves, something other stages didn't. Those both have pretty large impacts in the grand scheme of things, but Smashville still shouldn't be banned for it.
"This hazard sometimes appears and saves you"
So does randall the cloud, roger the ghost, Fountain of Dream's platforms moving up/down, Dream Land's wind, whatever.
"This hazard can kill you!"
So can a platform that sets up for a Marth tipper, or Randall coming in and letting your opponent edgeguard you from farther away.
It's impossible to look at hazards one at a time and say "I like this" and "I don't like this" and assume a logically consistent outcome.
The only way hazards should ever be the reason a stage is banned are:
- The hazard itself is the stage, thus making gameplay revolve entirely around it (and any attempt to not do so results in a loss) [currently no known examples, but Port Town Aero Dive was close, New Pork City's chimera was close, Summit's Fish is really close, but all of these are easily avoidable even with an opponent attempting to use them against you]
- The hazard is entirely unpredictable and/or unreliable, so that a reasonable person cannot ascertain exactly what will happen or why, despite experience and study of the stage [Example: Wario Ware's reward system]
- The hazard itself creates variance despite player experience, resulting in a truly random or largely skewed result [Example: Summit]
- The hazard itself causes long lulls in combat and/or mandatory inactivity [See: Bridge of Eldin. PS1 could also be banned for this reason, as could PS2 due to wind transformation's permanent rise]
- The hazard alters or changes actual game input and rules in a way that is unrelated to the majority of other stages [See: Spear Pillar flipping the camera]
- The hazard, while minor, arbitrarily targets only one participants and gives them an unfair advantage or disadvantage that is large enough to potentially grant or deny victory. [Example: Wario Ware's stomping foot, Halberd's targeting system/claw]
- The hazard tests a skill set that isn't inherent to smash, but otherwise completely removed. [no known examples yet, but consider a stage that has math problems that heal health]
That's really it. Severity and frequency and amount you need to learn before you can understand it fully doesn't even come into play. Obviously simply being on the list above doesn't mean auto-banned, otherwise we'd have banned Halberd immediately. We saw the issue, it just didn't actually have an effect on results.
And really, that's the biggest thing. Does it change results?
Distant Planet has a OHKO with its animal thing on the right hand side... but it's impossible to be hit into it against your will and it is only triggered if someone gets in its mouth. The OHKO is irrelevant, that shouldn't ban the stage despite its severity.
Pictochat had a new hazard every so many
seconds, but it was a really good stage that added a lot to Brawl. The frequency of the transformations didn't change anything; they only make the results of the transformation more apparent.
It is suuuuuuuuper super important that we don't take the approach of "Here's what we want the game to be" before the game comes out but to instead
embrace the game as it is and let it grow organically. I still see people saying "ban walkoffs", but we have no idea how the walkoffs even work in this game.
What if there's way more space on these stages, thus allowing more room, and forcing those who want to camp the edge to consistently take % damage?
What if ther'es a way to break out of grabs instantly in Smash 4 that we have yet to discover?
What if it turns out 100% of the cast can attack someone shielding by teh edge of the stage with impunity, thus making it a losing strategy?
Everything should always be tested.
When you start off with "here's what we plan on getting out of the game" you can end up completely eliminating entire playstyles and altering the tier list artificially. People still think Falco is good in Brawl and he is absolutely
terrible. We artificially made him good!
I'm honestly not sure counterpicks are really as powerful as you make them out to be. Even if Japes/Pipes/Mansion is legal, the MK will just CP back to Battlefield or whatever stage he is supposedly so dominant in to win the set. If you have to rely on the stage to win your matchup, then you aren't going to win the full thing. You've always made a big deal about the "power of counterpicks" but you don't really mention how an unusual stage counterpick can only win you a single game.
You're arguing against yourself. If MK has such a huge advantage on Battlefield or whatever stage and has an advantage,
that is his counterpick. Ergo, counterpicks are powerful.
Smash isn't like pokemon; you don't win certain matchups just by picking certain characters. Matchups are slight, typically. 60/40. 70/30, maybe. A few 80/20s. It depends heavily on the stage.
If you are of equal skill with a player and you hone a counterpick that is either
bad for your opponent's character or
good for your character or, if you're lucky,
both, that gives you an advantage in the set you otherwise would not have. G&W's matchup on Green Greens, for example, is markedly different against MK. Wario
beats MK on Brinstar. The tier list with a Brinstar/Rainbow Cruise/Green Greens starter list would have been remarkably different.
This is important because not all characters excel on flat/plat stages; some focus almost exclusively on mobility. When we take that away, we just arbitrarily decide "it is you who will not be good". That's lame.
Not only are having a wide variety of stages important for pools (featured in virtually every tournament), but its also important for standard sets.
If I can win a game on
your best stages, the flat/plat stages, even 40% of the time then having a strong counterpick gives me a balancing factor.
If you
remove the other types of stages then you're essentially only giving one type of counter-pick. It's not different than banning Battlefield, Smashville, and the other flat/plat stages and saying "Those flat/plat stages can only win you a single game anyway, you'll still lose the set".
A wide variety of stages is incredibly important for character diversity because
stages directly impact the viability of the character.
If the starter list is only
one type of stage then, by default, it's a bad starter list. The original starter list had Castle Siege, Delfino, Halberd, Smashville, FD, Battlefield, Yoshi's Island (Brawl), PS1 (sometimes 2), and Lylat as options as one of the varieties and even then it was only an 'okay' list.
Characters like Falco had trouble during this time period because people would strike FD, Battlefield, Smashville, and PS1 and Falco would be stuck with Yoshi's Island (Brawl), Lylat, Castle Siege, or Delfino depending on their preferences. It created a more even matchup.
When the stage like shrunk from well-meaning but ill-informed TOs to a whopping "Smashville, Battlefield, FD, Yoshi's Island (Brawl), Lylat" and sometimes "Smashville, Battlefield, FD", Falco got to just strike YI and Lylat and would end up on smashville or battlefield against everyone.
He got to
start on a
counterpick.
Counterpicks are super powerful and always have been. Why do you think all the Brawl characters that did well towards the end of the game were all flat/plat characters who had better matchups against MK, despite MK having losing matchups on certain CP stages with certain characters? We made some counterpicks mandatory and some counterpicks banned.