Determining the procedure to pick stages in Smash 4

[popsofctown]

The so-called neutral stages have never been "neutral", and the results in Brawl especially were often really lousy with small starter lists. I main Mr. Game & Watch. He's all around a very good character, but he's nearly unplayably bad on Final Destination and Smashville is just awful for him too. Both of those stages turn the otherwise winnable but hard ICs/MK/Olimar match-ups into hard counters (like G&W vs ICs is 1-9 at best on FD; you might as well give up and not play), and they make every other match-up worse too (I don't think he actually has an advantage against a single other viable character on those two stages). No matter what, I always have to strike both of these stages on any starter list which means 3 stage lists that include both are just automatically awful outcomes for G&W. Even on five, if both are included which is always true, I get my worst stage out of any remaining stages (usually mostly mediocre G&W stages among the others even if not as just awful as these two). On the other hand, G&W just loves Halberd and rather likes Delfino too; having them in the starter list lets him get stages that are actually decent for him as his opponents strike those to offset the strikes he absolutely must make to FD and SV. Sometimes you get an MK player who really likes Delfino and we play game one there, and when that happens, we both end up feeling really good about the game one stage since we both believe it gives us an advantage (IMO vs MK Delfino is a very soft G&W good stage, perfectly worth it for the MK player if he as a player is super comfortable with the stage). I just don't see at all how banning so many stages and having so few starters did any good in Brawl; it completely screwed my character, and as far as I can tell, it made the game's overall balance a lot worse in general as characters like ICs and Olimar ended up artificially just way too good in way more match-ups than vs G&W.

I believe we see the same sort of thing in smash 4 too. Final Destination is easy to pick at in this game; it's a near-perfect Little Mac stage that gives aerial characters nowhere to go but down into his super armored arms, but on "not FD", so many characters can deal with Mac's unique mix of pros and cons so much more effectively. Sonic too is really crazy on FD; Hammer Spin Dash is still not on a lot of people's radar but one of the most powerful mobility and attacking options in this game that is a million times better on FD than on "any stage with platforms". Battlefield isn't perfect either. Bowser I feel is mostly really good in this game, but BF's platform layout is perfectly wrong for him. They just get in the way of a lot of movement he wants to do, nearly completely take Bowser Bomb and dair out of his moveset, and his size makes it nearly impossible for him to use them defensively. Greninja too I feel just struggles with Battlefield specifically; the platforms are just at this perfectly wrong height and spaced just perfectly wrong relative to the open ground so it's really hard for him to use any of his ground moves from below or poke at the platforms with any aerials. In smash 3ds, just add up the lists of characters who either win or lose uniquely much from stages like FD or BF, and then compare it to a similar list for Prism Tower. I think you'll find that the Prism Tower list is just as short as the FD or BF list; stages like that are every bit as "neutral" as any others. Even more, since every stage will have significant flaws and match-ups in which it is a particularly unfair stage, including a ton of different stages and notably different types of stages (you NEED to include both static and traveling stages) will really smooth it out. Smash 3ds really did have a shortfall of quality stages which made this hard (still possible), but we won't have that problem on Wii U which is the version that really matters anyway.

On top of the fact that any short starter list will invariably produce massive winners and losers in terms of characters, starter-counterpick dichotomy just doesn't work from a meta perspective. Real players only practice so much, and they formulate different strategies to win on every stage. This is actually a lot of work, but real players know something obvious. To win a set, you need to win 2/3 games. Since your opponent's counterpick is your biggest disadvantage, you focus on winning on your own counterpick and the game 1 stage. The game one stage is always going to be from the starter list. Your best winning play is to pick a character whose natural best stages are starters and to counterpick those starters with your counterpicks. You have to learn minimal stages, and you'll get maximal results. Learning counterpick stages is a lot of work, and no matter how good you are at it, it will never win you sets as you still have to win game one or a counterpick match on a starter your opponent picked. It's just a sucker's play to bother with that at all, and of course when no one learns these stages (except in my beloved if naive Midwest which never seems to shy away from learning tons of new stuff whether it really helps us or not), the matches on these stages will be awful since these stages tend to be complex and require tons of knowledge to play well and you're inputting players with low stage knowledge. If the matches on these stages are awful and it's just annoying anyway when "that one guy" doesn't understand the strategy to win and picks the outlandish cp stages anyway, people eventually just want to ban the cp stages altogether so a small starter list will always lead to an eventual small total stage list. Why would we design this implication into our stage rules?

This is already a long post in which I've pretty much just laid out why the starter-counterpick dichotomy is bad and why a short list of allegedly "neutral" stages will always be anything but. At this point I've asserted we need a ton of starters and no counterpicks. Our problem is that we have three principles that all tend to lead to the best game but run contrary to each other:

-Stages should be selected quickly.
-The chosen stage should be fair as often as possible.
-The game should have as much variety as possible.

Sacrificing any one point makes things fairly easy. If you use a small stage list, you directly move a lot of variety by removing stages and effectively remove more by making fewer characters viable. If you don't care about the fairness of the stage you pick, you can just random a stage which is super fast and super high variety. If you don't care about time, you can full list stage strike from 21 stages to get a super fair outcome that will encapsulate a mountain of variety. Here's what I can glean from this:

Stage striking as a procedure is not practical past 13 stages. 13 is a very good number (balanced striking, the only other number that works as well is 9), and no matter what happens, this makes 13 a good floor for legal stages. We need to adamantly insist on no stage lists for smash wii u with under 13 total legal stages and for all 13 at such events to be starters. However, we're going to have more than 13 good stages, and we need to figure out how to make them all game one legal. If we get precisely 18 or 26 good stages, we have one easy bisection option of just making even numbered rounds use one starter list while odd numbered rounds use the exact opposite list. That too seems unlikely; we're betting on lucky numbers. I think all things being considered a pretty good solution would be this:

For locals, you just randomize the starter list per event from the pool of good stages. To guarantee no super lopsided results, divide the legal stages between "static" and "dynamic" and preserve the ratio. If your legal stage list contains 12 mostly static stages and 8 dynamic ones, your randomized starter list will be guaranteed to contain 8 static stages and 5 dynamic ones. Players can always counterpick any of your legal stage pool, but the stages that don't get picked for a specific event will be counterpick only that day (and yes, that means that some days Final Destination or Battlefield will not be starters; it's okay). For larger scale events, vary the stage list per round, re-randomizing every time but always including every stage that was excluded from the previous round in the current round and maybe having a similar rule against a stage being allowed to be on the list too many rounds in a row. Do this before the event so players can see in advance what they'll be facing. This might be hard to coordinate if you run your event really loosely and have a ton of different rounds playing at the same time, but that's bad TOing in a few ways so just don't do that and it will be easy to communicate the stage list per round.

That solution isn't perfect, but I can't come up with anything better. I'd love to full list strike from 21 stages or whatever, but it would really slow down tournaments and prove a huge barrier of entry to newer players. I'm just plain not willing to ban stages over that kind of procedural concern though; I think a compromise something like this is going to be our best play.

It's not cool to change stage legalities based on what round of the tournament it is. All matches should be played on the same ruleset, you don't want johns because the two best player played eachother during round two AND stages X Y and Z weren't in the stagelist.

I'd point out that my proposed system works well for more than 13 stages because you regain some of the lost time in later games of the set because the striking automatically choose subsequent stages, removing the current time halt while players ponder their counterpick choice.


I'd also say that even if Wii U has tons of stages that should be legal, you can probably ban a couple as a combination of procedural concerns and other reasons. Two stages might be really similar to eachother, especially in a stagelist that big, so you can remove one. Or one stage might have a tiny bit of RNG, so you can remove it to get down to 13 or 17. I won a tournament set yesterday to Halberd cannon, expletive that expletive.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

We're not exactly focusing on what's wrong with the current system. Fixing a system is often easier than creating a new one from scratch, not to mention that it's often more acceptable for veteran players. Let's deconstruct the current system and find its flaws.

Something that easily is noticed is that whoever wins the first match already applies immense pressure since he gets the last counter-pick in most cases. We can't let players pick the starter stage. The starter stage should be picked at random.

Let's say a Mac player gets to pick the starter stage. The Mac player will pick FD as soon as possible since it's the best Mac Stage ever. It's basically a counter-pick. It gives an advantage that immediately nullifies the very idea of having a starter list in the first place.

 

[RosalinaSama]

Why would Luigi's Mansion be legal? Did they change it in any way from Brawl at all?

 

[Davis-Lightheart]

Why would Luigi's Mansion be legal? Did they change it in any way from Brawl at all?

This isn't a thread about stage legality; let's try to keep that out of this thread.

 

[Piford]

We're not exactly focusing on what's wrong with the current system. Fixing a system is often easier than creating a new one from scratch, not to mention that it's often more acceptable for veteran players. Let's deconstruct the current system and find its flaws.

Something that easily is noticed is that whoever wins the first match already applies immense pressure since he gets the last counter-pick in most cases. We can't let players pick the starter stage. The starter stage should be picked at random.

Let's say a Mac player gets to pick the starter stage. The Mac player will pick FD as soon as possible since it's the best Mac Stage ever. It's basically a counter-pick. It gives an advantage that immediately nullifies the very idea of having a starter list in the first place.

If you pick characters first, and then go to a full list stage strike, then if you end up on final destination then it is either the players fault for striking incorrectly, or FD is the most neutral stage even if Little Mac is a combatant

 

[Dapplegonger]

I'd say use a tiny neutral stage list, like in previous games, but then make a much larger counterpick list. That way the first round stage striking goes quickly, and then you go through a counterpick process afterwards as in previous games. I don't know how stage bans would work, maybe multiple types of FD, but that keeps the time pretty low

 

[Piford]

I'd say use a tiny neutral stage list, like in previous games, but then make a much larger counterpick list. That way the first round stage striking goes quickly, and then you go through a counterpick process afterwards as in previous games. I don't know how stage bans would work, maybe multiple types of FD, but that keeps the time pretty low

The problem is there are no truly neutral stages. A neutral stage for a certain matchup may be locked into the conterpick list.

What do you guys think of Stage Suggesting? It's basically the opposite of stage striking. Players take turns suggesting what stage to play on off of the legal stage list. At the longest, it should take the exact same amount of time as FLSS takes.

 

[Doval]

So why should stages be chosen before characters? I would think that knowing which characters are fighting would be essential in finding the best stage to play on.

One thing to consider is that picking the stage first provides partial information you can work with in the event of a double blind pick. If you pick characters first and someone requests a double blind pick, you risk ending up with a bad matchup that stage choice may not be able to fix, especially if any form of striking is in effect since the opponent will stop you from picking the stages that would most even the odds.

We're not exactly focusing on what's wrong with the current system. Fixing a system is often easier than creating a new one from scratch, not to mention that it's often more acceptable for veteran players. Let's deconstruct the current system and find its flaws.

Something that easily is noticed is that whoever wins the first match already applies immense pressure since he gets the last counter-pick in most cases. We can't let players pick the starter stage. The starter stage should be picked at random.

Let's say a Mac player gets to pick the starter stage. The Mac player will pick FD as soon as possible since it's the best Mac Stage ever. It's basically a counter-pick. It gives an advantage that immediately nullifies the very idea of having a starter list in the first place.

Picking the stage randomly just gives the advantage to a random person. You're also disregarding that the player that wins the first round gets to counterpick characters regardless of how stages are chosen. Some will dismiss this by saying that most players don't have two mains, but to me that's irrelevant; most players don't make it to the top, and top players will be proficient with multiple characters, both because it maximizes their chances of winning when counterpick rules are in play and because you can't make it to the top with the narrow world view that comes from only studying one character in depth.

The problem is there are no truly neutral stages. A neutral stage for a certain matchup may be locked into the conterpick list.

What do you guys think of Stage Suggesting? It's basically the opposite of stage striking. Players take turns suggesting what stage to play on off of the legal stage list. At the longest, it should take the exact same amount of time as FLSS takes.

Stage Suggesting doesn't sound bad. I think in practice most players, despite ostensibly being competitive, never fully explore the whole legal stage list and will end up agreeing to popular and mundane stages early in the process. I've never TO'd so I have to ask - does stage selection actually contribute significantly to tournaments falling behind schedule? Do we have fair reason to believe stage striking with a larger stage list would cause problems?

My opinion is that whichever system we go with should allow both players to negotiate with the widest possible selection of non-broken stages.

Regarding the Gentleman's Clause, I don't see the issue even if you allow banned stages to be chosen. Banned stages confer an overwhelming advantage to a player or randomize the results. The Gentleman's Clause requires mutual consent; a player won't consent to playing on a stage that gives an overwhelming advantage to the opponent, nor will they consent to a stage that would randomize the result if they believe they can win. It's possible for players to make uninformed decisions here, but it's not our place to stop players from making bad decisions. When someone enters a tournament using the worst character in the game, we don't stop him.

 

[guedes the brawler]

why don't we simply limit the number of counterpicks? from what i understand, players take turns banning stages from the list, until all but one stage is left, and that's where they play.

with a big list, let players ban around half of the list.



or we simply get more strict wit stage choices.

 

[Dapplegonger]

why don't we simply limit the number of counterpicks? from what i understand, players take turns banning stages from the list, until all but one stage is left, and that's where they play.

with a big list, let players ban around half of the list.



or we simply get more strict wit stage choices.

I don't think we should limit counterpicks. Counterpicking doesn't take long. Stage striking on the other hand has the potential to take a while if we have more neutral stages. I said this in a previous post, but if we limit the neutrals, stage striking won't take long. Use omegas and a wider stage list for counterpicks

 

[Piford]

I don't think we should limit counterpicks. Counterpicking doesn't take long. Stage striking on the other hand has the potential to take a while if we have more neutral stages. I said this in a previous post, but if we limit the neutrals, stage striking won't take long. Use omegas and a wider stage list for counterpicks

The problem with having a small number of stages as starters and more stages as counterpicks is that it leads to less nuetral matchups. It also discourages players from even learning a counterpick stage, since they can simply counterpick to a starter stage that they learn. Full List stage striking game one would be the absolute best way to determine a stage, but time is an issue. You could put a timer on it, but then they're being forced to choose under pressure.

 

[guedes the brawler]

...what if we had 2 games on neutral stages? each player gets to pick one neutral stage only. counterpicks become available from game 3.

 

[Piford]

...what if we had 2 games on neutral stages? each player gets to pick one neutral stage only. counterpicks become available from game 3.

Who would get the counterpick? The looser of the 2nd game? The looser of the 1st game? This would only work where you had all 3 games be played on nuetral stages, but then you wouldn't have any games played on counterpick stages (until semifinals). This almost eliminates counter picking, which is very important since it rewards players with better knowledge of the game. Even with counterpicking being important, I believe having stages labeled as only counterpicks is a bad idea.

 

[guedes the brawler]

hum...

Even with counterpicking being important, I believe having stages labeled as only counterpicks is a bad idea.

i don't get what you mean here.

 

[Piford]

hum...


i don't get what you mean here.

Counterpicking a character or stage is important. If we don't have a distinction between counterpick and start stages, you can still counterpick a stage. The list for counterpicking should be the same as the list for starting, since a neutral stage for a matchup might get labeled as "counter-pick' and then give an unfair advantage to one player.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

If you pick characters first, and then go to a full list stage strike, then if you end up on final destination then it is either the players fault for striking incorrectly, or FD is the most neutral stage even if Little Mac is a combatant

All right, bad example. I still don't know what's the problem with the current system and many veteran players still don't know it either. If we're planning to change, then we can't just go and do it, we have to present solid arguments about why the system is flawed and suboptimal in the first place.

 

[Piford]

All right, bad example. I still don't know what's the problem with the current system and many veteran players still don't know it either. If we're planning to change, then we can't just go and do it, we have to present solid arguments about why the system is flawed and suboptimal in the first place.

I put a more fleshed out example of why splitting stages in starter's and counter picks is harmful in the OP. I don't suggest we change Melee or Brawl's way of selecting stages, since it already set in stone. Smash 4 doesn't have an official ruleset yet, so I think we can avoid past problems this time around. The main issue when choosing a system is finding how to make it efficient.

 

[Thinkaman]

I'd like to chime in with a criteria that is often overlooked:

The stage selection process should not penalize players for not knowing or forgetting which stages are legal.

I don't know how many times the following conversation happened:

Me: "Alright, what do you ban?"
Them: "I dunno, how about Delfino."
Me: "Okay, we're going to Norfair."
Them: "CRAP, I forgot about Norfair! WHY IS THAT LEGAL?!?"

This sympathetic rage, incidentally, just adds one more source of gravity towards banning all the stages.

I would advocate some sort of stage counterpick protocol where the loser gives the winner a choice of 2 or 3 stages. This is largely the same as the status quo, but removes the burden of all players having to persistently the legality of every stage at every event.

 

[DeLux]

I'd like to chime in with a criteria that is often overlooked:

The stage selection process should not penalize players for not knowing or forgetting which stages are legal.

I don't know how many times the following conversation happened:

Me: "Alright, what do you ban?"
Them: "I dunno, how about Delfino."
Me: "Okay, we're going to Norfair."
Them: "CRAP, I forgot about Norfair! WHY IS THAT LEGAL?!?"

This sympathetic rage, incidentally, just adds one more source of gravity towards banning all the stages.

I would advocate some sort of stage counterpick protocol where the loser gives the winner a choice of 2 or 3 stages. This is largely the same as the status quo, but removes the burden of all players having to persistently the legality of every stage at every event.

I don't agree. We have rules in the common practice where the player is punished for forgetting / not knowing they may pause. We have rules that punish people for forgetting / not knowing if a glitch causes the game to freeze, etc. And those are punished by forfeit. Assuming the stagelist is written before the tournament (as it should be if the tournament is worth going to), it's the player's responsibility to know the rules and if they don't know ask.

Having a 9 or 13 stage list without starter/cp distinctions helps minimize the risk, but from a skill stand point, it's hard to distinguish between forgetting to ban a stage vs. X character and not knowing to ban a stage vs. X character as part of matchup knowledge.

 

[Thinkaman]

We have rules in the common practice where the player is punished for forgetting / not knowing they may pause. We have rules that punish people for forgetting / not knowing if a glitch causes the game to freeze, etc. And those are punished by forfeit.

This is different though.

These cases end in forfeit because there is no possible alternative. Additionally, it is unambiguous to everyone. Everyone knows you can't pause or unplug your opponent's controller during a match. These simple and obvious rules are true not just at every smash tourney, but every competitive video game event.

Stage legality is completely different. It is a complicated list that can vary from region to region, event to event, or even week-to-week. Who can blame someone if they momentarily forget what's legal? This doesn't affect you or me, but is especially unfair to new players not well-versed in the status quo.

I have no sympathy for competitors not knowing game mechanics, but I have plenty for people who aren't fully informed on the political squabbles of our community. That's not something we should be testing, not what the tourney should be about.


I definitely agree that arbitrary starter/CP distinctions make this issue worse, and that TOs should always try to communicate rules as clearly as possible to all participants.

 

[Big O]

If the list of "good neutral" stages is pretty large this time around, I think it might be a good idea to just have the players come to an agreement themselves. Instead of essentially going through the entire striking process every time, I think a gentleman's agreement would be much faster at best and around the same time at worst.

I'm sure most people are going to end up defaulting to the same few stages anyway, but end up taking less time this way. For the few who actively like to play on the less popular stages it will take about as long as striking, but with a chance at taking less time if they reach an agreement before they cycle through all the stages.

 

[DeLux]

This is different though.

These cases end in forfeit because there is no possible alternative. Additionally, it is unambiguous to everyone. Everyone knows you can't pause or unplug your opponent's controller during a match. These simple and obvious rules are true not just at every smash tourney, but every competitive video game event.

Stage legality is completely different. It is a complicated list that can vary from region to region, event to event, or even week-to-week. Who can blame someone if they momentarily forget what's legal?

I have no sympathy for competitors not knowing game mechanics, but I have plenty for people who aren't fully informed on the political squabbles of our community. That's not something we should be testing, not what the tourney should be about.


I definitely agree that arbitrary starter/CP distinctions make this issue worse, and that TOs should always try to communicate rules as clearly as possible to all participants.

As a frequent tournament host, my personal experience tells me not every player knows to not pause during a tournament match, despite it being explicitly stated in the rules. So people are going to forget the rules, regardless of how "unambiguous" / "obvious" it should be. Further, using the pausing example, there is a variance with which it should be punished (with an interpretive TO discretionary decision, with a stock, or with a forfeiture), thereby validating the political / regional nature of the rule. From an analogous perspective, it's like saying someone shouldn't be forced to lose a stock despite an explicit statement in the rulesset if they pause because they forgot it was against the rules to do so because in one region they do the "TO discretionary" but in the other region they do "auto loss of stock".

However, even if you don't agree with that logic, I'd still contend the rulesset at a tournament isn't subject to political squabble, once it's been set and decided upon by the TO. The only reason a player shouldn't know the rulesset at a given tournament they are attending is because the TO changed the rules mid tournament (which is an obvious issue). And if you're in doubt, you ask the TO. Otherwise to its logical extreme, we can't run a stage list any larger than 1, since a player may momentarily forget a stage is legal, even in the case as small as 3 stages. But since we agree there is a need to have more than 1 stage, the only way we can reconcile that is to have it be the player's responsibility to know the rules that they are playing under.

However, from a practical standpoint, outside of having a stagelist written at every setup (which I've done for tournaments when the stagelist is larger than 9), I understand the sentiment towards catering to the new player unfamiliar with the rules, thus why I favor limiting stage lists to a 2 ban / 9 stage or 4 ban / 13 stage procedure to mitigate the circumstance, which transcends the various normative criteria used to determine stage legality.

 

[Piford]

If the list of "good neutral" stages is pretty large this time around, I think it might be a good idea to just have the players come to an agreement themselves. Instead of essentially going through the entire striking process every time, I think a gentleman's agreement would be much faster at best and around the same time at worst.

I'm sure most people are going to end up defaulting to the same few stages anyway, but end up taking less time this way. For the few who actively like to play on the less popular stages it will take about as long as striking, but with a chance at taking less time if they reach an agreement before they cycle through all the stages.

This is what I was suggesting earlier with Stage Suggesting. At the longest, you go through every stage besides one and that takes just as long as full list stage striking. Counterpicking would still be done with striking, since it takes much less time. In a larger stage list, you need more strikes though. I would suggest the amount of strikes be ceil(# of Legal stages/3) +1, so if you had 16 stages legal, you would get 7 bans.

In regards to players forgetting what stages are legal, or the rules in general. If the player knows they might forget something, it should be their job to carry around a list of rules and legal stages with them.

 

[popsofctown]

As a frequent tournament host, my personal experience tells me not every player knows to not pause during a tournament match, despite it being explicitly stated in the rules. So people are going to forget the rules, regardless of how "unambiguous" / "obvious" it should be. Further, using the pausing example, there is a variance with which it should be punished (with an interpretive TO discretionary decision, with a stock, or with a forfeiture), thereby validating the political / regional nature of the rule. From an analogous perspective, it's like saying someone shouldn't be forced to lose a stock despite an explicit statement in the rulesset if they pause because they forgot it was against the rules to do so because in one region they do the "TO discretionary" but in the other region they do "auto loss of stock".

However, even if you don't agree with that logic, I'd still contend the rulesset at a tournament isn't subject to political squabble, once it's been set and decided upon by the TO. The only reason a player shouldn't know the rulesset at a given tournament they are attending is because the TO changed the rules mid tournament (which is an obvious issue). And if you're in doubt, you ask the TO. Otherwise to its logical extreme, we can't run a stage list any larger than 1, since a player may momentarily forget a stage is legal, even in the case as small as 3 stages. But since we agree there is a need to have more than 1 stage, the only way we can reconcile that is to have it be the player's responsibility to know the rules that they are playing under.

However, from a practical standpoint, outside of having a stagelist written at every setup (which I've done for tournaments when the stagelist is larger than 9), I understand the sentiment towards catering to the new player unfamiliar with the rules, thus why I favor limiting stage lists to a 2 ban / 9 stage or 4 ban / 13 stage procedure to mitigate the circumstance, which transcends the various normative criteria used to determine stage legality.

TO discretionary lenience on pause penalty is just a really dumb practice that goes on. It's absurd to ever let a rules infraction like that go by with no penalty of any magnitude, even if the only effect is a change in mental/emotional momentum which can be huge in smash.

So for your analogy to work someone has to expect a really dumb rule to be in place

 

[popsofctown]

Great TOs should probably print stagelists and put them at every setup. Costs a fifth of one player's venue fee to do that.

 

[DeLux]

TO discretionary lenience on pause penalty is just a really dumb practice that goes on. It's absurd to ever let a rules infraction like that go by with no penalty of any magnitude, even if the only effect is a change in mental/emotional momentum which can be huge in smash.

So for your analogy to work someone has to expect a really dumb rule to be in place

I'm not arguing the merit of the rule, more so that it exists (which it does). Since it exists in practice, the analogy holds.

- In the event pause is left on accidentally and is pressed, immediately call over the TO. Based upon their judgment, the situation will be resolved. If your situation is neutral [players are not in combat], the match will be resumed as if the pause had not occurred. If your situation is advantageous to one individual and the player in the disadvantageous situation paused, the disadvantaged player will be either placed in a grab or onto the ledge of the stage. If a player in a death situation [Chain grabs, Grab releases, Jab-locks to a kill move, etc] paused while in a death situation, the current stock is forfeited immediately. If you unpause before the TO reaches the station, the player that unpaused losses a stock.

 

[popsofctown]

Yeah, your analogy does hold. I just hate that it does.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised Apex used such an inane rule.

 

[DeLux]

Yeah, your analogy does hold. I just hate that it does.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised Apex used such an inane rule.

To be fair, "Battleship Halberd" and "Pokemon Stadium 1" continue to be on the legal stagelist despite their not being stages with those names in Brawl.

As one of the head Apex Brawl TO's I'll probably make a big public ordeal about a change to the stagelist for "Halberd" and "Pokémon Stadium" to replace "Battleship Halberd" and "Pokemon Stadium 1" respectively.

And possibly beg to change the pause rule lol

 

[smashmachine]

However, from a practical standpoint, outside of having a stagelist written at every setup (which I've done for tournaments when the stagelist is larger than 9), I understand the sentiment towards catering to the new player unfamiliar with the rules, thus why I favor limiting stage lists to a 2 ban / 9 stage or 4 ban / 13 stage procedure to mitigate the circumstance, which transcends the various normative criteria used to determine stage legality.

13 stages/4 bans?

that seems like way too many bans

 

[Dapplegonger]

13 stages/4 bans?

that seems like way too many bans

I agree t's a bit much, but PM tournaments usually have 14 stages/3 bans. It's not far off, no?

 

[smashmachine]

I agree t's a bit much, but PM tournaments usually have 14 stages/3 bans. It's not far off, no?

I'd argue having more than 2 bans is already too much, especially considering Smash 4 does not have in-game bans like PM does

 

[Redline!]

Stage-Striking has always been a huge pain in the butt for players and TOs alike, and the layouts of popular, "neutral" stages often exert undeserved gravity over character viability across-the-board.

Of course, until the Wii U version comes out and we know all the stages, this discussion is purely academic, but even at this early juncture I'm throwing my (admittedly minimal) weight behind a complete revamp of the stage-selection dynamic for Sm4sh.

 

[guedes the brawler]

To be fair, "Battleship Halberd" and "Pokemon Stadium 1" continue to be on the legal stagelist despite their not being stages with those names in Brawl.

As one of the head Apex Brawl TO's I'll probably make a big public ordeal about a change to the stagelist for "Halberd" and "Pokémon Stadium" to replace "Battleship Halberd" and "Pokemon Stadium 1" respectively.

And possibly beg to change the pause rule lol

at least make pausing between a KO and a respawn fair game.

 

[T0MMY]

I agree with the OP more or less, and I believe that a more fair system of determining which Stage to be used on can be found.
After both competing and hosting in an area that is not without complaints about how tournaments are run I have gone through the staggeringly long trial and error process of how to best accommodate attendees so they can have plenty of options to choose from and yet keep it a fair match.
The grand question of stage list was solved much more simply than I expected (allowing practically all stages to be an option rather than starting with the question of which to ban) so I was expecting the question of fairness of which stage to be chosen would be much more simple. But what I found at the end of that tunnel was truly a golden delight of philosophical wonder - a taste of what "fair" truly meant which echoed the spirit of dueling samurai.
But my path has far but ended, as this is an exploration rather than a destination. But my current rules have been well received the past two years with some specifics I'm looking at.
You'll see how my minimalistic approach to rules solve the greater macrocosmic questions regarding stage selection (at rule #2):

1) Agree to Characters
2) Agree to Stage
3) Play the game

As long as the players agree to whichever means that determine the stage they are always content with the fairness of the match. Seem too simple? Well, if you are a TO, I implore you to try it for yourself. A player? Examine how a fair match will help your competitive spirit.
All in all, I welcome (reasonable) criticism, so feel free to contact me regarding this procedure.

 

[Piford]

I agree with the OP more or less, and I believe that a more fair system of determining which Stage to be used on can be found.
After both competing and hosting in an area that is not without complaints about how tournaments are run I have gone through the staggeringly long trial and error process of how to best accommodate attendees so they can have plenty of options to choose from and yet keep it a fair match.
The grand question of stage list was solved much more simply than I expected (allowing practically all stages to be an option rather than starting with the question of which to ban) so I was expecting the question of fairness of which stage to be chosen would be much more simple. But what I found at the end of that tunnel was truly a golden delight of philosophical wonder - a taste of what "fair" truly meant which echoed the spirit of dueling samurai.
But my path has far but ended, as this is an exploration rather than a destination. But my current rules have been well received the past two years with some specifics I'm looking at.
You'll see how my minimalistic approach to rules solve the greater macrocosmic questions regarding stage selection (at rule #2):

1) Agree to Characters
2) Agree to Stage
3) Play the game

As long as the players agree to whichever means that determine the stage they are always content with the fairness of the match. Seem too simple? Well, if you are a TO, I implore you to try it for yourself. A player? Examine how a fair match will help your competitive spirit.
All in all, I welcome (reasonable) criticism, so feel free to contact me regarding this procedure.

What happens when players don't agree?

 

[T0MMY]

What happens when players don't agree?

This method doesn't displace the usual Tardiness Rule (usually 5 minutes to start a match before a DQ).
No matter the method used if someone is sitting there refusing to agree/strike/random/etc. a Stage they will most likely be DQ'd.

 

[Piford]

This method doesn't displace the usual Tardiness Rule (usually 5 minutes to start a match before a DQ).
No matter the method used if someone is sitting there refusing to agree/strike/random/etc. a Stage they will most likely be DQ'd.

What if its both players refusing to agree with each other, with no clear player being stubborn or something.

 

[popsofctown]

What if its both players refusing to agree with each other, with no clear player being stubborn or something.

Competitive Tragedy of the Commons. Will make for great EVO footage. "Oh #*$% he's going to keep insisting on that Brinstar even though they agreed on little Mac vs. Wario OH MAN, TIME IS OUT, GRAND FINALISTS DQ'ed THIRD PLACER WINS BY DEFAULT.

Johnny, talk about how you convinced opponents that Halberd was an innocuous game1 stage and used DQ pressure to get those game 1 upsmashes and climb up the bracket, ultimately leading to this incredible double DQ victory."

 

[LiteralGrill]

1) Agree to Characters
2) Agree to Stage
3) Play the game

As long as the players agree to whichever means that determine the stage they are always content with the fairness of the match.

Sorry but the players here bring up a valid point. I could easily argue that I do not want to fight on the stage the opponent does and simply go towards DQ time kicking us both out of an event even though it's totally within reason for me to refuse said stage or not agree. This rule can't work simply for that, you could pressure players into choosing your stage or just being DQd.

 

[DeLux]

It's like the reverse of the prisoner's dilemma. We shall call it, the DeLux dilemma.