Budget Player Cadet_
Smash Hero
All right guys. The last one was locked because it was driven off topic very hard. The only thing you should be posting about here should be **** well relevant to the starter list. I'd really prefer not to get this locked again, k?
Copied from AiB, original is here: http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=88526
What is a starter stage? How do we define a stage as a starter, and why? This question doesn't hit many people. Ask the typical AiB member, and they'll almost certainly give you something along the lines of "A starter stage is a stage with minimal interference", and then proceed to list Final Destination, Battlefield, Smashville, Yoshi's Island, and either Lylat Cruise or Pokemon Stadium (melee).
I'm here to state, cleanly and simply, that this way of thinking should be abandoned as soon as possible, because it not only places a higher value than is natural to the game upon certain elements in game one, the most important game of the set, but it also severely mitigates other elements, provides a strong advantage to certain characters with very explicit character weaknesses, but, additionally, it actually goes against the purpose the entire starter system was designed for. Specifically, creating a truly fair stage in game one.
Here's a little fun fact some of you may not know. When the starter list was originally proposed, it was not the way it is in most tournaments today. I remember the balking response to the MLG stagelist having 9 starter stages. THE HORROR! It completely goes against the sense of a starter list! That is, until you think back and remember that the original tournament starter list was that one.
Look at that. What are halberd, Delfino, and CS, among others, doing on there? O.O They move, they transform, they interact! Hmm... It's almost as if they were there on purpose.
The starter stage system was implemented to replace the old melee system of "pick a random stage". I hope you can realize why this was unfair-even if you don't play melee, you can imagine that there's a difference between playing against falco on Japes and playing against falco on Yoshi's/Battlefield/etc. And the differences would've been far more pronounced if they didn't ban almost every stage in melee (like, imagine fox vs. Jiggs on Pokemon Stadium, and then imagine you had the exact same random chance of getting sent to Pokefloats-it would be ridiculously random and unfair!). In brawl... ridiculous.
The large part of why the striking system was created in the first place was to ensure that game one (which is without a doubt, with our current counterpick system, the most importent game in the set) created a fair stage for the matchup. Of course, the system changes-this may not apply any more. Just to double check though, let's see here... The current starter set used by most tournaments is:
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Yoshi's Island
Pokemon Stadium 1
We have:
* Ice Climbers getting 3/5 of their best stages in the list
* Falco getting 3/5 of his best stages in the list
* Diddy getting 3/5 of his best stages in the list...
I.e. you can't win-you're going to go to one of those character's best stages. Maybe it's like this for everyone?
* G&W counts the list to his very worst stages
* MK counts most of the stages to his worse/worst
* Wario has far better stages
And those are just the ones I know explicitly about, let's not forget chars like Pika, Kirby, and ZSS. So in short, is the starter list still providing a fair and balanced ground?
No. No, it is not. Overswarm brought this up in one of his posts in a thread which is overall very relevant to this discussion-a thread on SWF, where several players were suggesting removing Final Destination from the starter list.
And I already hear it. "But it is fair-it's fair to the players". Wait, what? I don't understand this line of reasoning, because while Final Destination-Battlefield-Smashville may be "fair" to the players in some sense, so is Rainbow Cruise-Brinstar-Castle Siege. When I inquire what "fair to the player" means, I hear that stage movement is not fair to the player. This makes no sense. Why would any non-random stage be more fair to a player than another? Both players, assuming more or less equal skill level, have an equal chance of winning on each and every non-random stage in the game. There's nothing "unfair" about Brinstar or Rainbow Cruise as such; they're completely and totally non-random and therefore completely fair to the player. And even in the case of randomness, most stages have the sort of randomness that does not lead to any worthwhile inconsistencies (think, 1/10^10% level of inconsistency), or their random elements announce themselves miles in advance-but I'm getting off topic, this is the subject for an entirely different blog.
The short version of the above paragraph is that being fair to the player is, in this context, commonly misunderstood (because it doesn't mean what it really should), and virtually always a non-issue–nobody's recommending Pictochat as a starter here (yet), and stage interaction is not a matter of player fairness at all.
I keep hearing all these clamors that stage interaction is a bad thing, or that it throws extra variables into the match. It doesn't. Volke Aeno mentioned this:
This is, again, only applicable to heavily random stages. A non-random stage is not a variable, it's a constant. And even then, slightly random stages are, as he mentioned, almost completely negligible.
I don't understand the beliefs held against moving stages, or the prejudices in favor of static stages. While I can understand why people would be against randomness (I have very strong arguments against this belief, btw, but I can understand where it comes from in general), but the argument that stage movement is wrong and/or bad is completely baseless. Stage movement/interaction does not, in any way hinder competition. In fact, it strengthens it, by forcing the players to have more skills.
Beyond that, I especially don't know why this mentality of "interactive stages are bad" should not apply to your counterpicks, but only to the first, and most important, set in the game. Sure, it should be consistent, but as said-the inconsistencies brought up by most stages are so close to 0 that you'd need a microscope on a line graph. Overall, I've been getting a lot of "it's this way because it is this way"; i.e. circular logic works because circular logic works because circular logic works.
Originally, the starter list was built to ensure a fair stage for a character matchup. It no longer fulfills this goal. Our current starter list is hardly better than going with random in many matchups-no matter what, the same group of characters is going to get a big, fat, unwarranted advantage, and other characters are going to get the hose. Especially in matchups like ICs-G&W. G&W destroys the ICs on many stages, but the ICs can always strike to one of their best stages in the matchup game one, effectively giving them 2 counterpicks. This is a big deal!
And now this argument comes a lot. "These characters get 2 counterpicks per match because they're better characters who are good on these stages which are inherently neutral". Um, no. This is simply not the case. These characters are, in fact, worse at dealing with stages. The reason they want to go to stages like FD, BF, or SV is because they, as characters, are awful at dealing with stage movement. This is not a good thing in brawl, a game where being good at stages is clearly rewarded as a character trait. At this point, justifying this fact is not really necessary; it's obvious. Look at the game! Certain characters are good on every stage (G&W, MK, Wario...); certain characters are good on a very small minority of stages (ICs, Falco, Diddy...). Why are we rewarding those who are good only only some stages when they are worse characters? Why are we arbitrarily rewarding them at all? I have dozens! DOZENS! Of posts dealing with this exact issue. There is simply no sane backing for this reasoning.
So our current starter list, the lists most people use (either BF/SV/FD or the more common BF/SV/FD/YI/Lylat or PS1) does not fulfill the basic function it was implemented to perform, and none of the other reasonings supporting it really provide a good reason to use it in its current form. It additionally has the major downside of basically handing Diddy, Falco, ICs, and several others two counterpicks per game, a major flaw in its design. And merely because of the, quite frankly, indefensible reasoning that we should only put static, non-changing stages on the starter list?
The amount of movement and interactivity a stage has should have nothing to do with its categorization once it has been shown to be competitive.
I.e. once we have decided "Stage X is competitive", the amount of interaction, the degree to which "normal gameplay" is changed on it, and in general any factors based around its basic features can and should be ignored when further deciding if it's a starter stage or not. They are simply irrelevant to the actual goal of starter stages.
But what isn't irrelevant, if those things are?
The polarization of a stage-how strong of a counterpick it is, how often it would normally be counterpicked, how many characters would object to playing on it/completely love playing on it, etc. That is the only thing that matters when discussing whether or not a stage declared to be competitive should be a starter stage (i.e. no chars like Warioware, but it's already been disqualified as anticompetitive). This fits in perfectly with the original sense of the starter list, because non-polar stages are, by definition, reasonably fair playing ground. By assembling a list out of such stages, you will find that, although certain stages in the list may favor certain characters, nobody will really love half or more of it-you may get a scene where a Diddy has to strike Frigate against MK, but never a scene where MK has to strike FD and SV and then goes to one of diddy's best stages in the matchups anyways–he'll still have various stages that are between good and decent for him. The goal is, after all, a stage which is decent but not good for both characters.
In conclusion:
With this sole deciding criteria in mind, I've gone through a fairly conservative stagelist and constructed a starter list:
3: PS2, Smashville, Lylat
5: +Battlefield, Castle Siege
7: +PS1, Final Destination
9: +Frigate, Yoshi's
11: +Delfino, Halberd
13: +Jungle Japes, Rainbow Cruise
15: +Brinstar, Norfair
I'd honestly stop at either 9, or 11. Beyond the first few, it does get a little shaky; certain stages are more or less polar, but you also have to respect the striking system in a way... It's tricky, but if you go up to 11, you don't really have any issues. Striking in a 3-3-2-2 pattern, or even a 4-5-1 pattern severely speeds up striking as a whole.
Notice a few consequences of this:
1. FD is only a starter with 11+ starter stages. This is very intentional; FD is not a starter stage. Shouldn't be, anyways. It is, quite simply, one of the most polar stages ever. I went down from S tier to D tier and found 2 characters who find the stage neutral in more than a small handful of matchups. FD is a hardcore counterpick. It's very rare that one of the two players doesn't ban it, that's how polar it is. It's literally about on the level with Rainbow Cruise or Brinstar as far as matchup polarization goes.
EDIT: Updated. FD is bad, but not that bad.
2. Pokemon Stadium 2 is ALWAYS a starter. Again, very simple. PS2 is really one of the most fair stages in the game. No character likes it, no character hates it. Well, to be fair, Sonic and G&W "like" the stage, but they like it in the same way Metaknight "likes" Halberd or Lylat in many matchups-they have some tricks, but have far, far better stages. This isn't just out-of-my-*** theorycraft either (although that backs it up)–Nova Scotia and parts of Australia have confirmed this very extensively-PS2 is a really, really balanced and fair stage.
3. Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar are still awful starters. Newsflash: the reason these aren't starters isn't because they move, it's because they're about as polar as an abortion debate between a stem cell researcher and a TV Evangelist.
It is miles better than our current starter list in any of its forms. It's the way the starter list should look. I heavily recommend going with the 11-stage form of the list for your starter list to any TO.
Also, DMG should namesearch this.
Here's looking at you SuSa
Copied from AiB, original is here: http://allisbrawl.com/blogpost.aspx?id=88526
What is a starter stage? How do we define a stage as a starter, and why? This question doesn't hit many people. Ask the typical AiB member, and they'll almost certainly give you something along the lines of "A starter stage is a stage with minimal interference", and then proceed to list Final Destination, Battlefield, Smashville, Yoshi's Island, and either Lylat Cruise or Pokemon Stadium (melee).
I'm here to state, cleanly and simply, that this way of thinking should be abandoned as soon as possible, because it not only places a higher value than is natural to the game upon certain elements in game one, the most important game of the set, but it also severely mitigates other elements, provides a strong advantage to certain characters with very explicit character weaknesses, but, additionally, it actually goes against the purpose the entire starter system was designed for. Specifically, creating a truly fair stage in game one.
Here's a little fun fact some of you may not know. When the starter list was originally proposed, it was not the way it is in most tournaments today. I remember the balking response to the MLG stagelist having 9 starter stages. THE HORROR! It completely goes against the sense of a starter list! That is, until you think back and remember that the original tournament starter list was that one.
Overswarm said:
Look at that. What are halberd, Delfino, and CS, among others, doing on there? O.O They move, they transform, they interact! Hmm... It's almost as if they were there on purpose.
The starter stage system was implemented to replace the old melee system of "pick a random stage". I hope you can realize why this was unfair-even if you don't play melee, you can imagine that there's a difference between playing against falco on Japes and playing against falco on Yoshi's/Battlefield/etc. And the differences would've been far more pronounced if they didn't ban almost every stage in melee (like, imagine fox vs. Jiggs on Pokemon Stadium, and then imagine you had the exact same random chance of getting sent to Pokefloats-it would be ridiculously random and unfair!). In brawl... ridiculous.
The large part of why the striking system was created in the first place was to ensure that game one (which is without a doubt, with our current counterpick system, the most importent game in the set) created a fair stage for the matchup. Of course, the system changes-this may not apply any more. Just to double check though, let's see here... The current starter set used by most tournaments is:
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Yoshi's Island
Pokemon Stadium 1
We have:
* Ice Climbers getting 3/5 of their best stages in the list
* Falco getting 3/5 of his best stages in the list
* Diddy getting 3/5 of his best stages in the list...
I.e. you can't win-you're going to go to one of those character's best stages. Maybe it's like this for everyone?
* G&W counts the list to his very worst stages
* MK counts most of the stages to his worse/worst
* Wario has far better stages
And those are just the ones I know explicitly about, let's not forget chars like Pika, Kirby, and ZSS. So in short, is the starter list still providing a fair and balanced ground?
No. No, it is not. Overswarm brought this up in one of his posts in a thread which is overall very relevant to this discussion-a thread on SWF, where several players were suggesting removing Final Destination from the starter list.
/end quoteOverswarm again said:
And I already hear it. "But it is fair-it's fair to the players". Wait, what? I don't understand this line of reasoning, because while Final Destination-Battlefield-Smashville may be "fair" to the players in some sense, so is Rainbow Cruise-Brinstar-Castle Siege. When I inquire what "fair to the player" means, I hear that stage movement is not fair to the player. This makes no sense. Why would any non-random stage be more fair to a player than another? Both players, assuming more or less equal skill level, have an equal chance of winning on each and every non-random stage in the game. There's nothing "unfair" about Brinstar or Rainbow Cruise as such; they're completely and totally non-random and therefore completely fair to the player. And even in the case of randomness, most stages have the sort of randomness that does not lead to any worthwhile inconsistencies (think, 1/10^10% level of inconsistency), or their random elements announce themselves miles in advance-but I'm getting off topic, this is the subject for an entirely different blog.
The short version of the above paragraph is that being fair to the player is, in this context, commonly misunderstood (because it doesn't mean what it really should), and virtually always a non-issue–nobody's recommending Pictochat as a starter here (yet), and stage interaction is not a matter of player fairness at all.
I keep hearing all these clamors that stage interaction is a bad thing, or that it throws extra variables into the match. It doesn't. Volke Aeno mentioned this:
/end quoteVolke Aeno said:
This is, again, only applicable to heavily random stages. A non-random stage is not a variable, it's a constant. And even then, slightly random stages are, as he mentioned, almost completely negligible.
I don't understand the beliefs held against moving stages, or the prejudices in favor of static stages. While I can understand why people would be against randomness (I have very strong arguments against this belief, btw, but I can understand where it comes from in general), but the argument that stage movement is wrong and/or bad is completely baseless. Stage movement/interaction does not, in any way hinder competition. In fact, it strengthens it, by forcing the players to have more skills.
Beyond that, I especially don't know why this mentality of "interactive stages are bad" should not apply to your counterpicks, but only to the first, and most important, set in the game. Sure, it should be consistent, but as said-the inconsistencies brought up by most stages are so close to 0 that you'd need a microscope on a line graph. Overall, I've been getting a lot of "it's this way because it is this way"; i.e. circular logic works because circular logic works because circular logic works.
Originally, the starter list was built to ensure a fair stage for a character matchup. It no longer fulfills this goal. Our current starter list is hardly better than going with random in many matchups-no matter what, the same group of characters is going to get a big, fat, unwarranted advantage, and other characters are going to get the hose. Especially in matchups like ICs-G&W. G&W destroys the ICs on many stages, but the ICs can always strike to one of their best stages in the matchup game one, effectively giving them 2 counterpicks. This is a big deal!
And now this argument comes a lot. "These characters get 2 counterpicks per match because they're better characters who are good on these stages which are inherently neutral". Um, no. This is simply not the case. These characters are, in fact, worse at dealing with stages. The reason they want to go to stages like FD, BF, or SV is because they, as characters, are awful at dealing with stage movement. This is not a good thing in brawl, a game where being good at stages is clearly rewarded as a character trait. At this point, justifying this fact is not really necessary; it's obvious. Look at the game! Certain characters are good on every stage (G&W, MK, Wario...); certain characters are good on a very small minority of stages (ICs, Falco, Diddy...). Why are we rewarding those who are good only only some stages when they are worse characters? Why are we arbitrarily rewarding them at all? I have dozens! DOZENS! Of posts dealing with this exact issue. There is simply no sane backing for this reasoning.
So our current starter list, the lists most people use (either BF/SV/FD or the more common BF/SV/FD/YI/Lylat or PS1) does not fulfill the basic function it was implemented to perform, and none of the other reasonings supporting it really provide a good reason to use it in its current form. It additionally has the major downside of basically handing Diddy, Falco, ICs, and several others two counterpicks per game, a major flaw in its design. And merely because of the, quite frankly, indefensible reasoning that we should only put static, non-changing stages on the starter list?
The amount of movement and interactivity a stage has should have nothing to do with its categorization once it has been shown to be competitive.
I.e. once we have decided "Stage X is competitive", the amount of interaction, the degree to which "normal gameplay" is changed on it, and in general any factors based around its basic features can and should be ignored when further deciding if it's a starter stage or not. They are simply irrelevant to the actual goal of starter stages.
But what isn't irrelevant, if those things are?
The polarization of a stage-how strong of a counterpick it is, how often it would normally be counterpicked, how many characters would object to playing on it/completely love playing on it, etc. That is the only thing that matters when discussing whether or not a stage declared to be competitive should be a starter stage (i.e. no chars like Warioware, but it's already been disqualified as anticompetitive). This fits in perfectly with the original sense of the starter list, because non-polar stages are, by definition, reasonably fair playing ground. By assembling a list out of such stages, you will find that, although certain stages in the list may favor certain characters, nobody will really love half or more of it-you may get a scene where a Diddy has to strike Frigate against MK, but never a scene where MK has to strike FD and SV and then goes to one of diddy's best stages in the matchups anyways–he'll still have various stages that are between good and decent for him. The goal is, after all, a stage which is decent but not good for both characters.
In conclusion:
With this sole deciding criteria in mind, I've gone through a fairly conservative stagelist and constructed a starter list:
3: PS2, Smashville, Lylat
5: +Battlefield, Castle Siege
7: +PS1, Final Destination
9: +Frigate, Yoshi's
11: +Delfino, Halberd
13: +Jungle Japes, Rainbow Cruise
15: +Brinstar, Norfair
I'd honestly stop at either 9, or 11. Beyond the first few, it does get a little shaky; certain stages are more or less polar, but you also have to respect the striking system in a way... It's tricky, but if you go up to 11, you don't really have any issues. Striking in a 3-3-2-2 pattern, or even a 4-5-1 pattern severely speeds up striking as a whole.
Notice a few consequences of this:
1. FD is only a starter with 11+ starter stages. This is very intentional; FD is not a starter stage. Shouldn't be, anyways. It is, quite simply, one of the most polar stages ever. I went down from S tier to D tier and found 2 characters who find the stage neutral in more than a small handful of matchups. FD is a hardcore counterpick. It's very rare that one of the two players doesn't ban it, that's how polar it is. It's literally about on the level with Rainbow Cruise or Brinstar as far as matchup polarization goes.
EDIT: Updated. FD is bad, but not that bad.
2. Pokemon Stadium 2 is ALWAYS a starter. Again, very simple. PS2 is really one of the most fair stages in the game. No character likes it, no character hates it. Well, to be fair, Sonic and G&W "like" the stage, but they like it in the same way Metaknight "likes" Halberd or Lylat in many matchups-they have some tricks, but have far, far better stages. This isn't just out-of-my-*** theorycraft either (although that backs it up)–Nova Scotia and parts of Australia have confirmed this very extensively-PS2 is a really, really balanced and fair stage.
3. Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar are still awful starters. Newsflash: the reason these aren't starters isn't because they move, it's because they're about as polar as an abortion debate between a stem cell researcher and a TV Evangelist.
It is miles better than our current starter list in any of its forms. It's the way the starter list should look. I heavily recommend going with the 11-stage form of the list for your starter list to any TO.
Also, DMG should namesearch this.
:leek:
