Discussion of Stage Legality in Smash Bros. Ultimate

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

if Battlefield and FD are chosen, you could be able to select the BF or Omega form of any stage to sub it out.

Prob not, going off the precedence set by Smash 4. While I do agree with you on a personal level, I also recognize that there are a slew of issues such as music rights issues while streaming or just how much of a difference having a wall vs empty space below a stage can actually make. I find it likely that we'll be seeing one FD and one BF, with the exception of course being if it is a CP instead of Neutral pick.

use RPS to determine which stage goes first, just like determining who bans first

Hell, I would almost argue that going second is better since they might strike one of the stages you were going to as well. Maybe not, since I guess you might ban their second for them, but regardless you're going to come out with your 3rd worst neutral stage at absolute WORST, which is a sweatheart deal.

 

[Thinkaman]

Prob not, going off the precedence set by Smash 4. While I do agree with you on a personal level, I also recognize that there are a slew of issues such as music rights issues while streaming or just how much of a difference having a wall vs empty space below a stage can actually make. I find it likely that we'll be seeing one FD and one BF, with the exception of course being if it is a CP instead of Neutral pick.

It has been strongly implied that all Omega/BF stages have identical geometry under the stage. While we'll need to confirm this, plus check stage friction, it looks promisingly consistent.

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

Starters and counterpicks is a broken model. It literally does not work, and this has been proven in every smash game. What happens when you try to make it work is that the community bans every counterpick stage regardless of merit. You need a procedure that can deal with having 20+ legal stages and game one not always being restricted to a subset. This need is the starting point.

Literally does not work how? You say this like tournaments have fallen apart at every turn, but I don't see what you're getting at at all here when tourneys have and will continue to run smoothly with that system.

I'm with you on needing more counterpicks, but throwing them into Game 1 is where I draw the line. I outlined my logic on that above, edited it in so let me know if you'd like me to expand on any of those points.

Transforming stages being "frowned upon" is honestly silly. What's the objective problem? Yes, advantage changes with time. Isn't that 100% strictly superior to one player being at a constant unchanging advantage? It's not even like we pick "neutral" stages; we always have Final Destination as a starter and it's very consistently one of the most skewed legal stages in terms of character advantage in every smash game even in regions with liberal stage lists.

Agreed! But! That's not what the public at large believes, and like it or not that's what ultimately is going to be demanded from us. Our job is not to pick what stages we personally feel are the best and most fair, it's to make people have fun with the beautiful game. If it were up to me, FD would be CP, but when it's also by a large margin people's most practiced stage, I can't argue for that point. If you can sway the masses, then I will be your most vocal supporter man. But til then, I'm sticking to my guns.

Like think about it. What's the effect of Delfino's temporary walk-offs? Well, characters with bad recoveries have a better shot because sometimes the stage isn't as dangerous for them, and if you know your opponent is on the lower end of the IQ spectrum, you can bait them into doing stupid stuff near the walk-off and maybe get a cheeky kill but if your opponent is even merely just slightly below average in terms of intelligence they'll control space, pin you to the walk-off, and then you're in big trouble when the stage starts transforming. What's the effect of not having platforms? Well, any character with a poor air game gets massively magnified since the opponent totally loses the ability to put vertical space between them. Which is a bigger impact on a match-up really?

This is an oversimplification. It's not like good players are immune to making mistakes by the walkoffs, and don't think that 'just don't go over there' can fly here. Nor can I agree that it's as simple as being in an advantageous position by pinning them to the side like that with your pressure. Sometimes, sure, but it depends a lot on the current characters being played. Both are poison for a fun environment. Your best option shouldn't ever be 'don't play super smash bros right now', at least in the context of a stage.

Players don't want stages that are generally disruptive, and most players aren't comfortable with rocking the boat and complaining if too much is banned. However, there's a huge fatigue across the entire community with Animal Crossing stages and the general idea of just always playing on the same couple of stages. The community as a whole is sympathetic to the "ban stages, ban them all!!!" side's arguments about specific stages but totally unsympathetic to the position of just having fewer stages for the sake of it. Smash Ultimate is giving us the tools to change it, and whether we use stage morph or not (it's not really clear how well it will work out; we'll have to see the fine details of the mechanics), there's going to be a lot of very unhappy people if we don't change our basic model to just plain have more diversity. The idea of playing on 9 or fewer stages in a game with 103 (!) stages is the sort of thing that if you just spell it out that way should sound like an absolutely crazy idea to you, and if we try to really make that happen, it's going to hobble this game throughout its competitive lifespan.

This is something that rings true to my very soul, but again, Game 1 just is not the place for it. We need to let the players choose to explore these stages by making them available, not demand that they learn every single one before entering a bracket or risk getting crushed on something they had no real experience on.

It has been strongly implied that all Omega/BF stages have identical geometry under the stage. While we'll need to confirm this, plus check stage friction, it looks promisingly consistent.

Ain't that a thing of beauty. If it's truly a strict cosmetic change, then the only issue remaining would be the music problem, which is pretty easy to just say 'hey don't do these stages on stream because we get in trouble'.

 

[Munomario777]

the main flaw with starter / CP is that starters are the only group of stages you'll always need to play on --> people mainly practice on starters --> people are unfamiliar with CPs --> people want to ban CPs

e.g. in smash wiiu we literally no longer have any CPs lmao

by putting all stages on equal footing, there's way less risk of certain stages falling into obscurity. if they do end up being played less, then it's due to the stage itself rather than the rules, meaning the stage is actually a reasonable candidate for being removed from the ruleset



imo the main problem with experimenting outside of tourneys is that stage lists rarely grow over time, they usually just shrink. this happened with ssb4, melee, and iirc brawl

if we start with a conservative ruleset, it's pretty unlikely that tournaments will end up adding stages and making it a wider stagelist down the road. the whole loop I mentioned above is pretty relevant – stages aren't tourney legal --> players aren't familiar with them (they don't have to be) --> they don't want the stages legal --> stages aren't tourney legal --> etc

 

[Thinkaman]

Literally does not work how? You say this like tournaments have fallen apart at every turn, but I don't see what you're getting at at all here when tourneys have and will continue to run smoothly with that system.

He means it has failed not as a way of running an event (any arbitrary internally consistent policy can "succeed" at having events run to completion) but as a community compromise.

Starter/Counterpick distinction was originally adopted as a means of having game 1 be less random:

I get to play on Brinstar, you get to play on Green Greens, and neither of us has to play on the other for the first game. Thus, we get to keep both stages "legal", we both get our favorite stage, and no one gets randomly screwed.

That's the theory. And this theory proved to fail in all 3 major tournament smash games.

Without exception, all counter-pick stages were gradually banned, in all 3 games. (Pokemon Stadium 1 remains debated--but plenty of people want to see it banned, and many more want to freeze it.) The compromise simply didn't hold, and things inevitably slipped down a slope towards a hyper-conservative "only neutrals" stage list. All 3 games, every last stage.

The Starter/Counterpick system has indeed indisputably failed in its original purpose.

 

[Count Bleck]

It has been strongly implied that all Omega/BF stages have identical geometry under the stage. While we'll need to confirm this, plus check stage friction, it looks promisingly consistent.

Strongly implied? Sakurai outright stated all the omega and battlefield forms would be uniform.

 

[Thinkaman]

Strongly implied? Sakurai outright stated all the omega and battlefield forms would be uniform.

It was explicitly that "they all hover over a void", highlighting that none of them have walls or impassable center structures. But it wasn't super mega no-doubt clear that the lower geometry is precisely identical--many omegas in Smash 4 were over a void but had slightly different curvatures and thicknesses.

But again, I think it's likely that they are all the same and were aiming to communicate that. My only real concern is grass friction.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I can give three good examples of starter-counterpick literally not working. These examples are as follows:

Super Smash Brothers Melee
Super Smash Brothers Brawl
Super Smash Brothers for Wii U

All three games started with popular stage policy working exactly the same way. They had 5-9 starter stages and some assortment of counterpicks. The exact number of cps varied but it was always 10+ cp stages. In all three games, the strongest players from the beginning only picked stages from the starter stage list; only weaker players picked counterpick only stages in actual tournament matches. The reasoning was not obvious at first but clear on inspection; if your strategy wins on starter stages, you win sets. If you strategy wins on counterpick stages, you lose sets 1-2. Over time, because they were not useful in the metagame at all, every last counterpick stage got banned from every one of these games at most major events; strong players who found playing on the cp stages pointless also found it annoying when clueless people would pick them so banning them was just natural. Melee has a grand total of one "counterpick only" stage now because Pokemon Stadium was a starter stage for almost a decade so it was ingrained in the culture but six wasn't a striking friendly number. Otherwise, it very literally does not work. Trying to do it will result inevitably, absolutely unavoidably, in every last counterpick only stage being banned. It's the worst possible suggestion for stage policy because it's the one suggestion for which we have an absolute mountain of empirical evidence it does not work. Your game one list is your entire legal list; you just don't realize it until it's too late.

I tried to offer a detailed analysis of strategy on a transforming temporary walk-off, but let me be as clear as possible with the strategy here from a player perspective. It's not "don't go over there". It's "don't play dumb smash". You just evaluate the situation like you do most stage situations and normally correct play heavily favors you. Let's get into the weeds of it.

Let's say we're playing a match on Delfino Plaza. I'm at 20% and you're at 100% and you decide to hang out near the walk-off. Dumb smash would be running super far right into your arms and throwing out an unsafe attack. This would also be dumb on Battlefield if your back was to the ledge; the only difference here is that the punish for being dumb is bigger. Smarter would be actually playing smash and focusing on appropriate stage control. If your back is to the walk-off, you have a huge space near you that you can't move into (you can't move toward the walk-off or you just die). If I move kinda close but not right into your arms and establish a zone, I can actually put you in a terrible spot. For one, you have no mobility and are under pressure; if I move in carefully when you're at the greatest disadvantage, I'll have a much easier time than usual landing a hit which that close to the edge will almost assuredly kill you outright even if it's a mediocre fair that at center stage wouldn't kill at 180% so thanks for the free 80%. Secondly, because the walk-off is temporary, you're already in a terrible spot. I can just control that space and limit your options and never go in. Then in like 10 seconds when the stage transforms, what do you do? You either rush me or make some desperate move to get around me because you literally can't stay still or you'll die. Either way I'm at an insanely large advantage and extremely likely to land several hits if not take a stock. It's effectively a deep off-stage edgeguard situation in which the player attempting to camp just voluntarily put themselves in a terrible position. This is why when you see strong players actually play on a stage like Delfino they very rarely wait by the walk-offs. It's only done as a disrespect (I think my opponent is dumb and will just give me a free win by forgetting how to play sound smash suddenly because I'm in a high leverage situation) or as a raw desperation play that almost never works out. In the abstract strong play aims for center stage. Specific geography can make off-center but center-ish positions superior (i.e. being under the Battlefield platform instead of in the direct center, being at the bottom of walls instead of the top even if the top is the actual middle), but center stage control is what actually wins on every stage and temp walk-offs don't actually change that.

The community's common reason for banning Delfino in 4, not that I agree with it either, had nothing to do with the walk-offs. It had to do with how close the blast-zones got when the stage was transforming. I don't agree it was as egregious as others stated, but it was at least actually obnoxious. The problem with Skyloft and Mario Circuit 8 was the stage hitting you. Castle Siege was how obnoxiously long the second form is which is really just terrible. Halberd was the low ceiling and the hazards kinda together with low ceiling being extra bad thanks to Bayonetta's dynamics. Wuhu Island was the size especially in a game with Sonic. Touring stages themselves have never been an inherent problem, and I think most of the competitive scene who has been around longer than 3-4 years also remembers the terrible consequences we brought on ourselves when we got rid of them in Brawl (ICs got too good and it was probably the single biggest gameplay factor leading to Brawl's demise). Like I said, I don't know if stage morph itself is the future, but I do know that the touring and transforming stages are important either way. They're some of the stages we need most, and I think they're also the stages with the highest potential for diverse and also fair gameplay which is probably why so many of them have been made.

 

[Munomario777]

in addition to grass friction, the other thing is some stages being flattened (as in flat zone / pacland / etc)

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

On mobile but I see what you guys mean now. I'm still gunna give you some pushback on the concept later tonight though when I can get to a computer.

 

[Count Bleck]

It was explicitly that "they all hover over a void", highlighting that none of them have walls or impassable center structures. But it wasn't super mega no-doubt clear that the lower geometry is precisely identical--many omegas in Smash 4 were over a void but had slightly different curvatures and thicknesses.

But again, I think it's likely that they are all the same and were aiming to communicate that. My only real concern is grass friction.

"...Their sizes and terrain are all the same, so savor the simplicity with the music and background over your favorite series."

Not only does this mean they will be the same underneath, the friction of each should be uniform as well.

 

[infomon]

For game 1. If you pick stage before characters, you can get screwed by the matchup. e.g. "I didn't know my opponent has a Lil Mac or I wouldn't have picked FD."

So we pick characters before stage. But this makes the "starter list" really important. Consider: if 5 of 9 starters are FD-like, then Lil Mac wins. If instead 5 of the 9 are platformey, then Lil Mac loses.

The best answer to that is probably: pick characters, then stage-strike across all legal stages. That way the balance issues are decided by the game itself, not the TO.

Unfortunately we can't do that because there might be 30 valid stages; striking would be slow and tedious.

So I just don't know of a good answer. I guess we should pick a subset of "neutrals", and maybe that list rotates somehow. It should probably try to reflect the full diversity of the valid stages, instead of just picking the "most boring" of them as if that's more fair (hint: it isn't).

But I kind of hate all the answers. Anyone have a better idea?

How about this (if it were feasible somehow):
- Pick a random set of 9 stages
- You each pick your characters (blind)
- Now stage-strike down from those 9

Sure it uses randomness, but in a controlled way that gives lots of power to the players. I don't love it but I can't think of anything better.

 

[Untouch]

Only other problem I can think with the stage morph is people stalling until the stage changes to their character's preferred stage. I don't really know what could be done to stop that as it's already against the rules.

 

[dav3yb]

I'm starting to like the idea of the stage swapping. It might still be worth having "starters" for that, but if you RPS, winner picks which stage order they'd like to pick, 1st or 2nd, each player gets to pick a preferred starting stage, and play out game 1. Game 2+ has some amount of bans/veto's, and loser picks any stage from the larger list.

I'd also be willing to have the final smash meter on honestly. THe main issue before was the same issue as other items, they spawn randomly, so even if you're winning a lot you could still swing the match further in your favor. Having a "super meter" certainly eliminates that issue, and could prove really interesting. It'd really depend on how everyone's FS works with it though, and how fast it actually fills up, but that's for another thread.

 

[infomon]

You could stage-strike down to 2 stages and then morph on them. But that just adds more mindgames to stage-striking when you might as well just go down to 1, IMO. Honestly I can't see us using the morph except for side-event kinda stuff.

 

[Untouch]

Depending on whether or not Dracula's Castle has a walkoff or a ceiling I can it maybe being legal (with hazards off obviously).

 

[Munomario777]

infomon

imo striking down to two stages would kinda defeat the point of morphing

the point of it is that you don't have to strike down all the stages. instead you can basically do two simultaneous counterpicks, where you can just give each player a couple of bans or something and let them each pick a stage for the morph

so even if there are 20 legal stages or w/e, you never have to whittle them all down in game 1

 

[infomon]

Oh yeah, oops. right!

 

[---]

Depending on whether or not Dracula's Castle has a walkoff or a ceiling I can it maybe being legal (with hazards off obviously).

It was shown to have neither or those (walk-off Dracula boss is obviously a separate thing,). The interesting part is that there are small walls on each side in the center. They seem like they'd be easy to SDI out of given their height, so it could work as a counterpick without hazards.

 

[dav3yb]

So, I went back and watched through the direct again, mainly because 1st time I only got to watch it on a phone, but I did stop and get a good screenshot of the stage select screen.

So far, with using pretty much ONLY information we have confirmed so far, here is what I think a legal stage list would look like: https://imgur.com/r9bwKGu

Spoiler: some stages

Highlighted in green are what I feel anyone would consider a legal stage. I did not choose some because of unknown variables as to how stage hazard toggle with change them, and some i left out due to being too similar to other stages (mainly BF type layouts). The only stage I really included that we don't have any solid info on so far is WarioWare, which I think most people would assume simply does not shift to mini-games with the hazard toggle.

This gives 14 stages by default that i don't think ANYONE can actually argue with, as they are currently legal in a smash game.

Also please keep in mind I'm not suggesting we use ONLY these from the list, these, again, are mostly confirmed to be tournament viable in some form, be it in past games, or as we've seen from the pre-release build thus far.

 

[Untouch]

I think if it comes down to it, NDC would be a better option than Prism. More platform variety and less sharking, but it comes down to how the stage works, if NDC's transformations last more than 10 seconds my opinion may be a bit different.
Also Kalos League if stage hazard disables transformations and just has the platforms change.

 

[PoptartLord]

Quite the exciting Direct we got today. Before moving on to the new shiny things I'd like to reiterate how the starter+counterpick paradigm has consistently failed and we should abandon it entirely. As said before, it's not a list of "starters" and "counterpicks" but rather a list of "the legal stages" and "stages that the community are paying lip service to before banning". blah blah HISTORY blah blah three games now blah blah no, it won't be different this time.

My biggest concern is that it looks like the hazard toggle is in some sort of menu options page only, not the stage selection screen. If it takes more than a button press to get there that will severely hinder having hazards on and off stages in the stage list. Always off hurts a number of stages; Norfair is good but the lava makes it amazing, Gamer is gutted, and Great Plateau Tower actually loses some credibility.
...ugh, I think I know exactly why they did that: stage morphing parity.

Speaking of, it is an interesting concept. I wonder if this is another of their decisions specifically geared towards the tournament scene. When figuring out game 1 it has always been an issue trying to minimize the stage advantage for a single player. The rotating advantage option was never available before. I can see it working, and I can see it failing. Stalling is the most glaring pitfall, however A) stalling can and does happen on static stages B) the pressure to finish up before your stage goes away can lead to overextension -> punishment opportunity (an interesting dynamic) and C) stages that have stalling (or circle camping) issues on their own are banned anyway. But if it works it solves the problem of how to whittle away at a large stage list [there's >100 stages, it may be faster to just list the ones not competitively viable at this point].
I wonder how granular the timer is. 15s? 1m? 1s?? Maybe every 45s or 1m30s is better. Depends on the speed of the game, really, so that decision will have to be put off until after release.

And now a concern I think nobody has brought up yet - stage music is grouped by series and available on every related stage. So now instead of a particular track making one stage unstreamable due to copyright it can affect 2+. Won't somebody please think of the TOs?!

 

[Untouch]

Honestly I agree, counterpicks feel like "this stage can be legal but the community doesn't want to deal with it" to me.
I think that the stage hazard is an option you can turn on and off in the options menu.

What music is copyrighted? I know earthbound stuff but it doesn't look like we're getting any legal earthbound stages anyways.

 

[dav3yb]

Quite the exciting Direct we got today. Before moving on to the new shiny things I'd like to reiterate how the starter+counterpick paradigm has consistently failed and we should abandon it entirely. As said before, it's not a list of "starters" and "counterpicks" but rather a list of "the legal stages" and "stages that the community are paying lip service to before banning". blah blah HISTORY blah blah three games now blah blah no, it won't be different this time.

My biggest concern is that it looks like the hazard toggle is in some sort of menu options page only, not the stage selection screen. If it takes more than a button press to get there that will severely hinder having hazards on and off stages in the stage list. Always off hurts a number of stages; Norfair is good but the lava makes it amazing, Gamer is gutted, and Great Plateau Tower actually loses some credibility.
...ugh, I think I know exactly why they did that: stage morphing parity.

Speaking of, it is an interesting concept. I wonder if this is another of their decisions specifically geared towards the tournament scene. When figuring out game 1 it has always been an issue trying to minimize the stage advantage for a single player. The rotating advantage option was never available before. I can see it working, and I can see it failing. Stalling is the most glaring pitfall, however A) stalling can and does happen on static stages B) the pressure to finish up before your stage goes away can lead to overextension -> punishment opportunity (an interesting dynamic) and C) stages that have stalling (or circle camping) issues on their own are banned anyway. But if it works it solves the problem of how to whittle away at a large stage list [there's >100 stages, it may be faster to just list the ones not competitively viable at this point].
I wonder how granular the timer is. 15s? 1m? 1s?? Maybe every 45s or 1m30s is better. Depends on the speed of the game, really, so that decision will have to be put off until after release.

And now a concern I think nobody has brought up yet - stage music is grouped by series and available on every related stage. So now instead of a particular track making one stage unstreamable due to copyright it can affect 2+. Won't somebody please think of the TOs?!

you have ALWAYS been able to mute the music in game, so copyright stuff is a non-issue.

 

[MaestroDavros]

you have ALWAYS been able to mute the music in game, so copyright stuff is a non-issue.

Not in Smash 4. Even set at zero there is an infinitesimal chance a song might play.

 

[infomon]

Not in Smash 4. Even set at zero there is an infinitesimal chance a song might play.

I think he means "turn the Music volume down (leave SFX volume up)" which is different than toggling *which* songs on which stages.

 

[dav3yb]

Not in Smash 4. Even set at zero there is an infinitesimal chance a song might play.

drag music to 0 and you won't hear it.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...st/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20160110095130

 

[MaestroDavros]

I think he means "turn the Music volume down (leave SFX volume up)" which is different than toggling *which* songs on which stages.

drag music to 0 and you won't hear it.

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net...st/scale-to-width-down/1000?cb=20160110095130

Ooooh! Sorry, misunderstood.

 

[Untouch]

Going for 12 stages here's my list at the moment. Hazards off all the time.

1. Battlefield/Fountain of Dreams/Midgar (if the platforms move with hazards off it can be considered its own stage here, but I'm assuming they won't)
2. Final Destination/Wily's Castle/Smashville (assuming that smashville acts like FD with hazards off)
3. Yoshi's Island 64 (assuming that clouds are considered a hazard and never spawn)
4. Green Greens (assuming that blocks are considered a hazard and never spawn)
5. Brinstar (assuming blocks just become undamagable)
6. Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2
7. Warioware (assuming no transformations)
8. Frigate Orpheon
9. Kalos Pokemon League (assuming transformations do occur but just change platform position)
10. New Donk City
11. Town and City
12. Dracula's Castle (assuming that the side of the screen is not just a walkoff)

 

[dav3yb]

So again, thinking back to the direct with regard to stage hazards....

I know a lot of the ON/OFF arguments have largely centered around the ease at which the option is accessed. I think it could be a non-issue now. If the game allows you to setup various Rulesets, then you could easily have a ruleset for hazards on, and one for off. This might simply mean backing out of the stage select and picking the appropriate ruleset for whichever stage gets chosen.

I could see it being a potential issue if someone forgets to swap rulesets, and you start a game on a stage thinking the hazards are off and it turns out they're on. That could be far more disruptive than even needing to back out to set the option on or off.

Just a thought...

 

[infomon]

Even better, I really really hope that custom stagelists are part of the custom rulesets!!

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

Ok, so as promised here's me butting up against the whole argument of the previous stage system failing.

I'd argue that to many people, possibly even a majority, it's been the exact opposite.

Ultimately, what you're pushing for is something I agree with. But these stages have not gone away because of some hidden secret class with an agenda to destroy the fun in smash bros; they've gone away with community support. I loved Halberd, but I loved it because I could cheese out insanely early kills compared to early stages on the low blast zone. Loved it a lot less when Bayo could do the same to me but a million times more efficiently. Once I saw that having that stage in the roster hurt my chances to win, I wanted it gone as did many other players.

That's what this is always going to come down to. Doesn't matter what the issue is, Mii legality, stages, Bayo ban, you name it. 'Does this make it harder for me to win? Then I want it not in this game.' Or vice versa. Some of the most adamant supporters of custom moves were Duck Hunt and Palutena mains. Because, that's right, it made them win more games.

So, let's tie this back to the actual issue. You're suggesting we throw as many stages as possible into the mix, which is a very very cool idea! But, to the bulk of players, that reads as 'I am going to lose a lot more games on stages I don't know.' Would love to be able to say that they'd take that as a point of needing to improve and explore those stages and be ready for them next time, but I'm not that idealistic. I've seen what happens before. And with that in mind, I have a hard time seeing this ever get past the initial pitch to the public. It's strong enough that I doubtlessly want to see it put out there, but my expectation is for it to be very poorly received by the masses.

Which brings me back to my claim that it's been a success rather than a failure. This notion of smash needing to be something that fully utilizes the kinds of stages available is one I share with you, but is FAR from the common player's opinion. If it wasn't, we wouldn't see the stage lists moving the way they have. If players had really, truly cared, they would have pushed back and made it change. Case in point, look at the Lylat ban in Smash 4. They pushed for that to be cut, but when we say just how terrible that barest of bones stagelist was, it was slapped back into place in record time. That hasn't happened for the others because people have been happy with the changes.

I respect your stance. I agree with you opinions. But that isn't what's important here. We need to find what works for -everyone-, not just smash idealists with stars in our eyes.

 

[infomon]

Case in point, look at the Lylat ban in Smash 4. They pushed for that to be cut, but when we say just how terrible that barest of bones stagelist was, it was slapped back into place in record time. That hasn't happened for the others because people have been happy with the changes.

What's hard to measure is the people who leave the scene over time because the things they like get banned, or that don't join in the first place because the game seems dull or won't let them use their favourite stages. I've seen good (locally) players leave for these reasons. Community growth => bigger prize pots

If you're indiscriminately counting "everyone who stays around" as being happy with the existing rulesets, then you've conveniently removed any dissenting opinion from the conversation.

Also now that we're in the age where Viewership matters to TOs and Pros, I think we are seeing a stronger voice for "what keeps the game fun" instead of simply "what helps ME win". Just my 2c.

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

Here's hoping you're right man! But my point was that people have expressed disapproval and overturned decisions before, and that hasn't happened for the other stages as it did for Lylat. Doesn't make it the 'right' decision, just the one that people have supported (or not cared enough to fight against, which in this case, is as good as support).

 

[WritersBlah]

What's hard to measure is the people who leave the scene over time because the things they like get banned, or that don't join in the first place because the game seems dull or won't let them use their favourite stages. I've seen good (locally) players leave for these reasons. Community growth => bigger prize pots

If you're indiscriminately counting "everyone who stays around" as being happy with the existing rulesets, then you've conveniently removed any dissenting opinion from the conversation.

Also now that we're in the age where Viewership matters to TOs and Pros, I think we are seeing a stronger voice for "what keeps the game fun" instead of simply "what helps ME win". Just my 2c.

I feel it's a mixture of both, probably. Bayo happens to be in the unfortunate position where she's seen as neither fun nor beneficial for players (outside of those who main her). The stages, on the other hand, are a complete unknown that could easily fall in either direction. I can attest to my leave being connected with my discontentment with the way the ruleset was evolving, which was two years ago now, but we don't have any hard data for how many cases like me exist, versus people who just left the scene because they felt they weren't good enough and didn't want to practice more.

Ok, so as promised here's me butting up against the whole argument of the previous stage system failing.

I'd argue that to many people, possibly even a majority, it's been the exact opposite.

Ultimately, what you're pushing for is something I agree with. But these stages have not gone away because of some hidden secret class with an agenda to destroy the fun in smash bros; they've gone away with community support. I loved Halberd, but I loved it because I could cheese out insanely early kills compared to early stages on the low blast zone. Loved it a lot less when Bayo could do the same to me but a million times more efficiently. Once I saw that having that stage in the roster hurt my chances to win, I wanted it gone as did many other players.

That's what this is always going to come down to. Doesn't matter what the issue is, Mii legality, stages, Bayo ban, you name it. 'Does this make it harder for me to win? Then I want it not in this game.' Or vice versa. Some of the most adamant supporters of custom moves were Duck Hunt and Palutena mains. Because, that's right, it made them win more games.

So, let's tie this back to the actual issue. You're suggesting we throw as many stages as possible into the mix, which is a very very cool idea! But, to the bulk of players, that reads as 'I am going to lose a lot more games on stages I don't know.' Would love to be able to say that they'd take that as a point of needing to improve and explore those stages and be ready for them next time, but I'm not that idealistic. I've seen what happens before. And with that in mind, I have a hard time seeing this ever get past the initial pitch to the public. It's strong enough that I doubtlessly want to see it put out there, but my expectation is for it to be very poorly received by the masses.

Which brings me back to my claim that it's been a success rather than a failure. This notion of smash needing to be something that fully utilizes the kinds of stages available is one I share with you, but is FAR from the common player's opinion. If it wasn't, we wouldn't see the stage lists moving the way they have. If players had really, truly cared, they would have pushed back and made it change. Case in point, look at the Lylat ban in Smash 4. They pushed for that to be cut, but when we say just how terrible that barest of bones stagelist was, it was slapped back into place in record time. That hasn't happened for the others because people have been happy with the changes.

I respect your stance. I agree with you opinions. But that isn't what's important here. We need to find what works for -everyone-, not just smash idealists with stars in our eyes.

Considering the demographic of this website, I feel like the label of smash idealist may just be a little too accurate, and the amount of disconnect that exists between this community and the Smash community at large is at times dizzying. It's hard to remember that we're all technically playing the same game sometimes. That said however, we're obviously not going to get anywhere by pushing rulesets down people's throats, especially ones which conflict with the way Smash has been played in recent years. But at that point, should we have a stake in trying to suggest concepts to sway community mentality at all? Perhaps the best course of action then would be to do nothing and let the community stabilize itself by simply sticking to what it's comfortable to. It's a lazy mentality, sure, but if this is what the majority of the Smash community adheres to, doesn't that technically make it a good thing?

We Smashboards theorizers can prattle on and on about how much potential Ultimate has in switching up its ruleset to something brand new while still being competitively viable, but it's likely the opposite of what the community at large would end up preferring. What then, is the solution? Should we attempt to convince the public that playing the way they're used to isn't the best for the meta? Should we separate ourselves and form a splinter community? Is the Smash community in its current state even worth "saving" at this point? Because considering how different these two mentalities are, I'm not sure if compromise is even an option anymore.

 

[Fell God]

We Smashboards theorizers can prattle on and on about how much potential Ultimate has in switching up its ruleset to something brand new while still being competitively viable, but it's likely the opposite of what the community at large would end up preferring. What then, is the solution? Should we attempt to convince the public that playing the way they're used to isn't the best for the meta? Should we separate ourselves and form a splinter community? Is the Smash community in its current state even worth "saving" at this point? Because considering how different these two mentalities are, I'm not sure if compromise is even an option anymore.

Enforce our ideals whether everyone likes it or not

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Starry eyed idealist would be arguing to have hazards on as often as possible and play on every last stage that is not 100% provably broken (like we wouldn't play on Temple but we would play on Bridge of Eldin). That would be the absolute maximum of diversity in terms of stage selection, it would have probably around 80 legal stages, and it would probably not be the best game.

I'm saying we should play on all of the stages that are generally:

Not permanent walk-offs
Not hard loops
Not true camping stages
Not insanely large
Not hazardous even with hazards off
Not possessing obviously stupid/degenerate geography

That's actually really tame. Depending on the exact dynamics of things we can't know without the game in our hands, it's probably between 30 and 40 stages in Ultimate. It's actually what my region has been inclined to do in the past for every smash game just with smaller total numbers because past smash games didn't have a hazard toggle or 103 stages so I'm not even just speaking for online warriors here. I know real tournament players want stuff like this because I know real tournament players who do want stuff like this, and I don't think it's just something in our midwestern water since if you get down to it people are the same no matter where you go. And like really. Just watch like any random stream and you'll see the flood of comments about playing on the same couple of stages just over and over. Just talk to people and they'll say the same; it gets really stale. By and large this status quo has been accepted before largely because of sympathies for various problems here and there with these various stages and an underlying dislike for the disruptiveness of hazards, but with hazards off that's not going to be an issue anymore.

And like honestly, I don't see how a starting position of "we shouldn't automatically ban 90% or more of a game's stages regardless of the quality of the stages just to have a small number" is anything but a common sense position. The small number itself is the most hated aspect of our current rules; why would we gut the game's content to preserve that? The only reason it would happen is if the people running tournaments aren't given what they can understand as reasonable alternatives. I'm all about being practical. Accepting things being the worst possible way they can be isn't being practical. It's being cynical, and while sure there's plenty to be cynical about (we all saw those grand finals for 4 at EVO), it shouldn't be our starting point of just assuming the worst of everyone. I'm pushing for this not just because I think it makes the best game, though I do believe that. I'm pushing for this because I honestly believe the majority of the competitive community wants it, just that many of them aren't vocal and won't have their desires heard if not for someone like me being loud. It's harder with so much of the community being insular, but we're still a community, and ideas can spread.

 

[Lhautlow]

Well, we have many choices here :
Either we play with morph on Game 1 then CP
Either we decide a list of maps so we can strike them
Or we just strike on every stages down to 1 which is really long (except if you basically strike 5 by 5 which is by no mean a strategic way to ban)

About my thoughts : I think morphing could be both good and bad, the thing is if a stage morphs while you are getting edgeguarded, well it saves you. The other thing is, if you don't want to play on a certain stage, you can just stall untill it goes on the one you prefer.
So am actually against Morphing. Stadium 1 has a morphing thing that often leads to stalling/ camping, which sucks.

Deciding a list of map since there are at least 14+ stages that are playable, is restricting the game way too much. We could have up to 40 different stages that are actually playable in this game. And I think each and every one of them might give a slight advantage to any character in any MU
So it's also a bad idea imo.

Strike down every stage would take for hours, so let's not talk about it.

I actually got 2 diffrent ideas:

The first one is : Let's only pick Hazard on stages. What I mean by that is, if a stage is not legal when Hazards are on, then, we can't pick them as starters.
then you can CP hazard off stages, and so it makes our list of stages that we can strike.
I think it could be a good idea but it's a bit restrictive.


My second idea is a bit more funky:
There are no True neutral stages. So let's pick every single one of them, and then both players ban 3-7 stages depending on how many stages are legal.
This way, the player who loses RPS can still ban X stages he doesn't want to play on, and the player who wins RPS can choose between a big variety of stages, making it interesting to watch and to play.

I still think we also should tiers out stages, so some of them are CP only.

Like :
Tiers 0 'Neutral'
Tiers 1 Hazard offs+Hazard on with no impact (Yoshi story brawl, Yoshi island melee, Yoshi island 64 assuming it kills clouds)
Tiers 2: Hazard on changing stages (Stadium 1, and maybe others, I don't really know)
Tiers 3: walk-off/caves of life (prism, delfino)
Tiers 4 : Banned

BTW here's my opinion on all stages :
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lhREip_SD2TGgJej61GQZxy3dj0gcdyKM4RZ-ckCBcU/edit#gid=0

 

[ぱみゅ]

I've been working on these: My opinion on potential legal stages.

Spoiler

Next you'll have two lists, the first considers the Hazards toggle turned ON and the second, obviously, Hazards OFF.
In both lists, the first column are stages with qualities preferred for competitions.
The second column has stages that are very likely to be suited for competition as well, barring a major problem we might not know about yet.
Finally, the third column lists stages that could present issues, but might be worth testing if any new changes made them more fair. Not holding any hope for any of them, but I am not discarding the possibility just yet.
Stages not listed are very likely to not be suited for competitions.
I used a number of criteria for them, most of which was already listed by Amazing Ampharos in the post above (thank you for that! ).

Spoiler: Hazard toggle ON

Spoiler: Hazards toggle OFF

So that's 9 good, 4 likely and 13 possible stages with hazards (Total 26) and 12 good, 12 likely and 30 possible stages without them (Total 54, 24 with very high chances of remaining legal).

Again, it is only a personal opinion on this topic.

 

[NewGuy79]

So How do you guys feel about utilizing stage merging as a means to solve the "game 1" problem for a lot of our alternative stage selection methods.
so instead of relying on random, RPG, or super long strike/ban phase we instead just allow both players to pick the preferred "neutral stage", whichever stage they are most comfortable with and simply have the stage merge form one another throughout game 1.

while unorthodox, it's fair, not random, completely predictable and gives both players the opportunity to create the most advantageous position they want for game one.

consider this scenario: Yoshi vs villager, its game one and were both picking our neutral stages. Villager picks final destination since it allows him to use his projectiles more efficiantly, Yoshi picks Battlefield since the platforms would help him get around Villagers projectiles along with his combo game.

Now more imagine an 8 min competitive game whereas Battlefield and Final destination are swapped between each other every say 2 min.

The game no longer becomes who can thrive on the best "neutral stage" or who wins the most at RPS or wins the game of pick/ban

Now the game is purely a struggle between advantage and adaptation, the best players being the ones capable of utilizing their short window of advantage to the fullest while also adapting to their opponent's advantage once the stage merger takes place.

I'm really interested to see how a serious competitive game would be approached with stage merger activated.