Discussion of Stage Legality in Smash Bros. Ultimate

[Untouch]

One stage whose legality really interests me is Dracula's Castle.

I don't have an immediate reason why it should be banned, but I'm extremely liberal on legality. Moreover, I am heavily biased purely because I'd love to see castlevania music as a mainstay of competitive play, because it's so good.

What are everybody's thoughts about it?

I don't see any massive issues, the stairs may provide some home to camping for USmash, but I think that'd be character dependent and banning entire stages because characters do well on them would be a misstep.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

One stage whose legality really interests me is Dracula's Castle.

I don't have an immediate reason why it should be banned, but I'm extremely liberal on legality. Moreover, I am heavily biased purely because I'd love to see castlevania music as a mainstay of competitive play, because it's so good.

What are everybody's thoughts about it?

Obviously hard to tell for certain without decent gameplay footage, but it made a good first impression. The only potential issues are the small walls in the center and the broken staircase on the right.

The walls I don't expect to be a problem, both due to their small size and due to engine features designed to limit wall-based infinites. (Assuming the engine is similar to 4's.) I suppose it's possible someone might figure out some degenerate tech with them later down the line, but that's strictly speculation.

The staircase is not a walkoff, so the only reason it can be considered a problem is the elevation change it creates, and by extension whether it's a degenerate camping spot. I don't think there's any existing stage we can compare it to in this regard except maybe Lylat, so the strategies that come out of this feature should be interesting.

The boss monsters are almost certainly gone with hazards turned off so I'm not even going to worry about those.

 

[SuperDoom1]

Well, first we'll have to see what stages bring something new to the table and invoke the feel of a party game (what Smash actually is). These stages are fun, enjoyable, and overall perfect for Smash.

Then we ban 'em.

 

[Untouch]

No confirmation as I don't have a video, but apparently the blocks on Green Greens NEVER spawn when on hazardless.
I think this opens up potential for this stage to be legal.

I do not think camping will be an issue here. Stage size may be an issue but If we're going for a more liberal stagelist I don't think this is enough of a reason to ban the stage.

 

[dav3yb]

Prism tower vs new donk: we don't know for sure how all of the landings for new donk are laid out. There might be several walk off landings or really awkward layouts like skyloft, so we can't really judge it yet. We know that after it takes off, prism tower has some very good layouts. There isn't a reason to not have prism tower legal.

I was also thinking i would like to see this flips in action. I still think it will take too long to cut through all the stages at the start and add a needlessly long amount of time to the process.

 

[MrArska]

No confirmation as I don't have a video, but apparently the blocks on Green Greens NEVER spawn when on hazardless.
I think this opens up potential for this stage to be legal.

I do not think camping will be an issue here. Stage size may be an issue but If we're going for a more liberal stagelist I don't think this is enough of a reason to ban the stage.

Stage size will definitely be the problem if we're dicussing Blockless (and I'm assuming it also doesn't have Whispy blowing). I feel like it would be a counterpick if it doesn't have blocks.

 

[justPUNT3R]

AFAIK it's been confirmed that hazardless Prism Tower still transforms.

oh okay cool

 

[StingArt]

Here's my boring answer, so you know where this is going.

As a competitor I'd love to see stages that are inherently fair, meaning the stage itself doesn't favor spawning positions, has random elements to it, walkoffs, is glitchy, jank, etc. I'm fine high platforms and stage transformations provided that stages are chosen before characters. This way every player has the opportunity to pick a character that's favorable on the stage they will play on. Any stage that the community deems unfair for whatever reason and relegated to counter-pick should in my opinion just be banned all together. Either a stage is legal or it is not.

As a spectator I'd like to see as much diversity as possible. Pokémon Stadium is my favorite stage because the stage transformations give, rise to gameplay you wouldn't otherwise see and it's not the main focus of the match because the transformation will go away again. It's too bad that the rock transformation is glitchy but that too can be thrilling to watch.

I'm almost 50/50 on this but since I'm not the one playing for money but for fun I'm leaning towards stage diversity rather than stage fairness.

For stage implementation I would propose a very simple (possibly unfair) method of stage selection: flip a coin, the loser can ban up to 3 stages and the winner picks a stage. The loser of the round picks a stage next while the winner can ban 3 stages. Take note that the amount of stages the banning player can eliminate is arbitrary and would be adjusted according to the amount of stages in total.

 

[dav3yb]

jank

There's that word again... you really shouldn't use it as a catch-all for stages you think are bad.

For stage implementation I would propose a very simple (possibly unfair) method of stage selection: flip a coin, the loser can ban up to 3 stages and the winner picks a stage. The loser of the round picks a stage next while the winner can ban 3 stages. Take note that the amount of stages the banning player can eliminate is arbitrary and would be adjusted according to the amount of stages in total.

How many bans do you get if there are 40 (yes, forty) legal stages?

 

[J0eyboi]

How many bans do you get if there are 40 (yes, forty) legal stages?

You give up and hit the random button.

 

[SuperDoom1]

Legal:
Battlefield
Final Destination

Counterpick:
Green Greens (No Hazards)
Pictochat (No Hazards)


Yes I just did that.

 

[StingArt]

There's that word again... you really shouldn't use it as a catch-all for stages you think are bad.

What's wrong with you?

You're filled with assumptions. The word jank is not a catch-all phrase for stages that I think are bad. Simultaneously you can't deny that there are stages that allow for jank that otherwise wouldn't occur if the stage was played in its omega form instead.

How many bans do you get if there are 40 (yes, forty) legal stages?.

Roughly twice as many when there are 20 (yes, twenty) legal stages.

 

[Skitrel]

There's that word again... you really shouldn't use it as a catch-all for stages you think are bad.



How many bans do you get if there are 40 (yes, forty) legal stages?

None. I stand by the best suggestion here being to swap from bans to vetos. Have one player suggest a stage and the other have a limited number of vetoes. They get to accept or veto and upon running out of vetoes the next stage is accepted.

Can be 4-6 on such a large stagelist.

As a community the Smash scene should strive for the option that causes the least conflict and complaints. This suggestion earlier has received the least pushback and complaining than any other.

I genuinely believe it is the compromise and middle ground that upsets the fewest people. We shouldn't pick something that makes the largest number of people happy if it has a larger number of unhappy people, we should pick what creates the lowest number of unhappy people.

80 happy people and 20 unhappy people creates more conflict than 50 happy people, 40 indifferent people and 10 unhappy people.

The best option is the option with the least unhappiness. There is a significant mistake that the Smash scene has always made in going with what the largest majority want rather than what would create the fewest unhappy people. It creates so much conflict and complaining in the scene that could be eliminated by switching from this old misguided approach to a more conflict-free approach.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

The stage selection debate's flaring up again on Twitter. With the launch date creeping closer, I guess it's to be expected.

Linky: https://twitter.com/VGBC_GimR/status/1054834998258421767

 

[StingArt]

I like the method of 'each player brings a couple of stages' too.

That seasonal stuff where TOs or certain individuals in the Smash community arbitrarily choose what stages are allowed is something I would not want to see at all. Rules should be as static as possible in this regard.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Top-player opinions:

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I realize that Zero and M2K are generally focused on a very narrow subset of Smash content as a whole (namely, whatever's relevant to the competitive scene) and therefore it's somewhat understandable that they didn't recognize several of the 3DS stages or know exactly what they did. That said, I'm still kind of surprised.

At least they both seem to recognize that we simply don't know how the hazard toggle will change several of the promising-but-uncertain stages.

 

[Untouch]

I agree with most of their opinions except Super Happy Tree and Green Greens.
I don't think both should instantly be ignored and should be tested first.

 

[Skitrel]

What bothers me about this whole debate is that it feels like the backrooms have already made up their mind and they're generally just trying to push what they already decided they liked weeks ago on everyone. The requests for feedback don't really sound like requests for feedback, no matter how much negativity comes their way they're basically going to find a way to do what they want to do in the first place. They're hollow calls to look like they're listening when in reality they already know what they want to do and are throwing feelers out there to figure out how to phrase or deliver what they want.

 

[dav3yb]

What's wrong with you?

I'm just tired of seeing people throw around a term which is so subjective. It's been used a lot to discount stages with no real discussion or reasoning behind it.

Roughly twice as many when there are 20 (yes, twenty) legal stages.

Since you said each player gets 3 bans, I was assuming you were considering a fairly small list. So is 6 bans enough for a list of 40 stages?

Top-player opinions:

I think for the most part they do a decent job, but some of the info they're referring to is something that will most likely be changed for the final release, so you'd need to test those things for sure. And some of the stages I feel they call it before considering how the hazard toggle will effect it.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

I think for the most part they do a decent job, but some of the info they're referring to is something that will most likely be changed for the final release, so you'd need to test those things for sure. And some of the stages I feel they call it before considering how the hazard toggle will effect it.

I didn't say it was bad thing. lol

It was more like I needed an excuse to have some posted as opposed to just a lone video link.

 

[StingArt]

Since you said each player gets 3 bans, I was assuming you were considering a fairly small list. So is 6 bans enough for a list of 40 stages?

Oh now I understand what you did wrong. You just nitpicked my post without reading it fully. See I said this too:

Take note that the amount of stages the banning player can eliminate is arbitrary and would be adjusted according to the amount of stages in total.

Or maybe what you need is not a literal quote. Maybe you need an explanation of what the word arbitrary means so here it goes. "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."

As you can see I'm a nice guy and not only have I helped you point out what you missed or helped you out with rather hard to understand but I will also give you advice on what to do in the future to prevent you from comitting any more embarrasing mistakes.

1 - Fully read a post before you start nitpicking and criticizing.

2 - Make sure you understand the post. If there are any words that you don't understand then you can use google to get an explanation.

I hope that this clears up any misunderstand that we've had. If you still have a hard time understanding what I have said feel free to hit me up, I'll explain it to you in more detail.

 

[dav3yb]

Oh now I understand what you did wrong. You just nitpicked my post without reading it fully. See I said this too:



Or maybe what you need is not a literal quote. Maybe you need an explanation of what the word arbitrary means so here it goes. "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system."

As you can see I'm a nice guy and not only have I helped you point out what you missed or helped you out with rather hard to understand but I will also give you advice on what to do in the future to prevent you from comitting any more embarrasing mistakes.

1 - Fully read a post before you start nitpicking and criticizing.

2 - Make sure you understand the post. If there are any words that you don't understand then you can use google to get an explanation.

I hope that this clears up any misunderstand that we've had. If you still have a hard time understanding what I have said feel free to hit me up, I'll explain it to you in more detail.

You said so much without actually saying anything.

I read everything, including your supposed floating point, but I wanted something more concrete. You didn't mention if the number of bans should be half the total stages, or a third, or how many legal stages you're supposing. You must have some idea of what you would want to see, but if we end up with 40 stages and someone has to ban half of them, then it's going to potentially eat up a lot of time, and essentially create a virtual stage list within, since chances are people will just start banning the same stages to keep from having to play on them.

But if it's all arbitrary it's probably not worth considering anyways.

I didn't say it was bad thing. lol

It was more like I needed an excuse to have some posted as opposed to just a lone video link.

Yeah, i saw just quoting you so anyone else could refer to your post to see what i was talking about. I just left the video out to keep it more compact.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Here's my take on the subject matter.

Skip to 2:19 to bypass the intro and get into the discussion.

 

[medofbr]

What bothers me about this whole debate is that it feels like the backrooms have already made up their mind and they're generally just trying to push what they already decided they liked weeks ago on everyone. The requests for feedback don't really sound like requests for feedback, no matter how much negativity comes their way they're basically going to find a way to do what they want to do in the first place. They're hollow calls to look like they're listening when in reality they already know what they want to do and are throwing feelers out there to figure out how to phrase or deliver what they want.

Well, there is a lot that goes into this. First of all any ruleset they chose would be disliked by a sizable minority at least, making negative feedback unavoidable. Also the backroom's opinion will generally be different from the community's "average " because what you value in the rule set depends on casualness (casualness being a gradient scale in which Top players are the least casual and non-competitor spectators are the most; I couldn't come up with a better word). The less casual you are the more you tend to value consistency while the more casual you are the more you tend to value variety. Because of this the backroom will most likely form a ruleset that is more conservative than a lot of people in the community would like.

Now that I have explained why the rift exists, I am going argue for why I think the backroom should make the rules rather than a community vote. TO's put a lot of work into setting up a tournament; they also have experience in knowing what makes a tournament work. Also TOs and top players, the majority of the backroom, have the most to gain or lose from a tournament going well as it can affect both their reputation and their finances. Thus the well informed strongly invested "elites" should make the rules rather than the weakly invested inexperienced masses.

Btw that's the theory behind America's constitution.

 

[dav3yb]

Well, there is a lot that goes into this. First of all any ruleset they chose would be disliked by a sizable minority at least, making negative feedback unavoidable. Also the backroom's opinion will generally be different from the community's "average " because what you value in the rule set depends on casualness (casualness being a gradient scale in which Top players are the least casual and non-competitor spectators are the most; I couldn't come up with a better word). The less casual you are the more you tend to value consistency while the more casual you are the more you tend to value variety. Because of this the backroom will most likely form a ruleset that is more conservative than a lot of people in the community would like.

Now that I have explained why the rift exists, I am going argue for why I think the backroom should make the rules rather than a community vote. TO's put a lot of work into setting up a tournament; they also have experience in knowing what makes a tournament work. Also TOs and top players, the majority of the backroom, have the most to gain or lose from a tournament going well as it can affect both their reputation and their finances. Thus the well informed strongly invested "elites" should make the rules rather than the weakly invested inexperienced masses.

Btw that's the theory behind America's constitution.

The general rulesets will work themselves out over time. Time limit and stock count are pretty much a non issue at this point. The stages and selection method is the only real thing of concern from where i sit. And I'm looking at this as a TO. As someone who has had to explain stage bans and striking to new players, and watch as they struggle through it, I don't want to have to deal with such a convoluted system for ultimate, especially if the list of viable stages is large. I feel they are also making too many cheap arguments against certain stages, especially since we haven't even seen over half of them in action yet.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

I don't think you've really thought this through if you think Kongo Falls is a good stage but Frigate Orpheon isn't and somehow Pilotwings is even considerable...

I know this post is older, but dude...
There's over 103 stages with stage morphing and talks of a hazards toggle that we don't know how it will work 100% with different mechanics and altered physicals for characters that is going to take so much time to test in a game.

I think there is room for doubt...


Anyway, here's part 2 of my predicts:

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I know this post is older, but dude...
There's over 103 stages with stage morphing and talks of a hazards toggle that we don't know how it will work 100% with different mechanics and altered physicals for characters that is going to take so much time to test in a game.

I think there is room for doubt...


Anyway, here's part 2 of my predicts:

There is very little room for Kongo Falls to be a good stage. The way stages like that play in Smash in general is pretty well established, and we know exactly what the stage does. The ridiculously swingy and in many match-ups just obviously advantageous situation of camping on the rock is not going to change unless Smash Ultimate is just absurdly divergent from every other Smash game because Kongo Falls was a pretty bad competitive stage in Melee and would have been even worse in 64, Brawl, or 4 if it existed in any of them. At a minimum, I think it's safe to say "if you think Kongo Falls is looking like a good stage, then you probably believe we should just have almost every stage legal until there's hard evidence it's broken" which is a logical position someone could take (though a position that, due to Smash politics, effectively disqualifies you from having a real impact on what actually happens), but if that was that person's position then they should have been totally on-board the Frigate Orpheon train because Frigate Orpheon is pretty overtly non-offensive and has zero obvious problems unlike Kongo Falls which has a huge and glaring one. That was the basis of my post there; the conclusion the list drew seemed mostly to indicate just not having thought the situation through. There's a ton of room for doubt on stage policy musings in general for a game that isn't even out yet, but some positions like Kongo Falls > Frigate Orpheon at least on the surface really don't make much sense and are the kind of radical suggestion that would at a minimum need a pretty solid presented explanation for why which was not given there.

Pilotwings is also an unbelievably bad stage; there's room for doubt on many things but this one seems like a freebie. I can go into a long explanation of why Pilotwings is fundamentally one of the absolute worst competitive stage designs in the series history, but assuming that anyone who "gets it" can just look at the geography, think for a while, and work it out, I think it's fair to say "if you're going to list Pilotwings, why list stages at all since at that point you might as well just play on all 103". It's not really meaningfully better on any kind of examination we can do without the game in our hands than any of the other 102 stages; this is a really non-workable design on so many basic levels...

 

[dav3yb]

I know this post is older, but dude...
There's over 103 stages with stage morphing and talks of a hazards toggle that we don't know how it will work 100% with different mechanics and altered physicals for characters that is going to take so much time to test in a game.

I think there is room for doubt...


Anyway, here's part 2 of my predicts:

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with Prism Tower... if you think Delfino and Halberd have potential, then there is NOTHING you can say against Prism Tower that wouldn't also apply to those.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with Prism Tower... if you think Delfino and Halberd have potential, then there is NOTHING you can say against Prism Tower that wouldn't also apply to those.

Okay, why?
According to you, why can't I say Prism Tower could be banned?
You're not giving me a reason.

Saying nonsense like "Because you think other stages like Delfino and Halberd are okay." is not a reason... (I'll get to you later Amazing Ampharos )

Explain yourself.
Because I don't think you actually listened to what I said about Delfino, Halberd or Prism Tower.

 

[justPUNT3R]

Okay, why?
According to you, why can't I say Prism Tower could be banned?
You're not giving me a reason.

Saying nonsense like "Because you think other stages like Delfino and Halberd are okay." is not a reason... (I'll get to you later Amazing Ampharos )

Explain yourself.
Because I don't think you actually listened to what I said about Delfino, Halberd or Prism Tower.

Prism Tower can really only work as a counter pick, I played the heck out of Smash 3DS because smash run (IF THIS ISN’T IN SSBU I’LL BE HECKING ANGRY) but I digress. Prism tower only has walk-offs as a “ban-worthy” stage “hazard”. It’s mostly fine outside of ONE transformation with walk-offs.

 

[J0eyboi]

I know this post is older, but dude...
There's over 103 stages with stage morphing and talks of a hazards toggle that we don't know how it will work 100% with different mechanics and altered physicals for characters that is going to take so much time to test in a game.

I think there is room for doubt...


Anyway, here's part 2 of my predicts:

Regarding Norfair:

Characters with bad air games would be absolutely screwed there. Characters with high airspeeds (Puff, Mewtwo, Yoshi, Roy, Limit Cloud, et al.) or moves that cover a lot of horizontal distance quickly (e.g. Fox Illusion, ABK, Monkey Flip, Bouncing Fish, etc.) can just jump between the two upper platforms every time someone tries to threaten them, and if you can't chase fast enough, you're out of luck. Lower-mobility characters and characters with bad aerials would just get camped to **** there.

Even without that, though, it's just way too different from pretty much every other stage being considered for legality. There's 6 ledges, and the main platform is tiny, which makes playing any sort of ground game on it impossible. It would **** with neutral, combo structure, edgeguarding, ledgetrapping, and basically everything else, to the point where playing on Norfair would practically be an entirely different game than playing on every other stage. No one would want to play on Norfair, because no one would know how to play on Norfair.

 

[dav3yb]

Okay, why?
According to you, why can't I say Prism Tower could be banned?
You're not giving me a reason.

Saying nonsense like "Because you think other stages like Delfino and Halberd are okay." is not a reason... (I'll get to you later Amazing Ampharos )

Explain yourself.
Because I don't think you actually listened to what I said about Delfino, Halberd or Prism Tower.

We know what Prism Tower does even with the Hazard toggle. It is completely unchanged. The only "flaw" anyone can find with it is that it's starting location has walk-offs, but so does halberd. The same criteria would apply to both stages. The only real difference is that Prism occasionally lands again. Since we know Prism Tower still travels, as does Town and City (the only other traveling stage we've seen so far), we can probably infer that Delfino will at least still travel, as well as halberd. Delfino has a LOT of landings that are just flat out awful, so considering it over Prism Tower imho is just flawed.

Granted it's still early, and things can change, and certainly we don't have all the info yet, but just from drawing on what we do know, this is how I see it. I agree with you for the most part on your assessments though, with a few caveats. This one just happened to strike me the most.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Prism Tower can really only work as a counter pick, I played the heck out of Smash 3DS because smash run (IF THIS ISN’T IN SSBU I’LL BE HECKING ANGRY) but I digress. Prism tower only has walk-offs as a “ban-worthy” stage “hazard”. It’s mostly fine outside of ONE transformation with walk-offs.

Regarding Norfair:

Characters with bad air games would be absolutely screwed there. Characters with high airspeeds (Puff, Mewtwo, Yoshi, Roy, Limit Cloud, et al.) or moves that cover a lot of horizontal distance quickly (e.g. Fox Illusion, ABK, Monkey Flip, Bouncing Fish, etc.) can just jump between the two upper platforms every time someone tries to threaten them, and if you can't chase fast enough, you're out of luck. Lower-mobility characters and characters with bad aerials would just get camped to **** there.

Thank you both.

There's actual reason behind these points.
More of this please...

As for you:

There is very little room for Kongo Falls to be a good stage. The way stages like that play in Smash in general is pretty well established, and we know exactly what the stage does. The ridiculously swingy and in many match-ups just obviously advantageous situation of camping on the rock is not going to change unless Smash Ultimate is just absurdly divergent from every other Smash game because Kongo Falls was a pretty bad competitive stage in Melee and would have been even worse in 64, Brawl, or 4 if it existed in any of them.

I do agree with this mostly. This explanation would have worked over just putting "You didn't think this through for having 3 'bad' choices out of 103."

At a minimum, I think it's safe to say "if you think Kongo Falls is looking like a good stage, then you probably believe we should just have almost every stage legal until there's hard evidence it's broken" which is a logical position someone could take (though a position that, due to Smash politics, effectively disqualifies you from having a real impact on what actually happens)

That's not feasible judgement, it's a close-minded way of looking at the discussion of legal stages.
Everyone's going to have those few choices that won't fit under your standards of stage selection. But it doesn't mean they didn't put any thought, effort or reason into their choices.

Personally, a big-peeve of mine is whenever someone posts something and everyone else just highlight small things that are "wrong" about it without actually going into any explanation about it.
Which it what you did.

but if that was that person's position then they should have been totally on-board the Frigate Orpheon train because Frigate Orpheon is pretty overtly non-offensive and has zero obvious problems unlike Kongo Falls which has a huge and glaring one. That was the basis of my post there; the conclusion the list drew seemed mostly to indicate just not having thought the situation through. There's a ton of room for doubt on stage policy musings in general for a game that isn't even out yet, but some positions like Kongo Falls > Frigate Orpheon at least on the surface really don't make much sense and are the kind of radical suggestion that would at a minimum need a pretty solid presented explanation for why which was not given there.

So in-short: You don't agree with two choices of their choices and concluded they didn't think it through.
That's quite presumptuous and unreasonable to think so, since again we're talking about over 100 stages with different variants behind them.

Pilotwings is also an unbelievably bad stage; there's room for doubt on many things but this one seems like a freebie. I can go into a long explanation of why Pilotwings is fundamentally one of the absolute worst competitive stage designs in the series history, but assuming that anyone who "gets it" can just look at the geography, think for a while, and work it out, I think it's fair to say "if you're going to list Pilotwings, why list stages at all since at that point you might as well just play on all 103". It's not really meaningfully better on any kind of examination we can do without the game in our hands than any of the other 102 stages; this is a really non-workable design on so many basic levels...

A: I disagree, Pilotwings isn't one of the worst choices. That's just exaggerating.
Considering stages such as Mushroom Kingdom 64, Mario Bros, 75M, Hyrule Castle, Temple, Gerudo Valley, Dream Land GB, Great Cave Offensive, Big Blue, Fourside, New Pork City, Summit, Palutena's Temple, Gaur Plains, Pacland, etc...
Pilotwings has it at least a centered, consistent, flat layout over the blast-zones.

B: You said yourself, the game isn't out yet and we don't know everything about hazard toggle.

So coming to a verdict that "Pilotwings is out of the question" and labeling others as "You don't get it." this early on is just silly.
Maybe if you actually go in-detail why Pilotwings doesn't work and inform other about, then people might start to see your point across.

In my video below I say Pilotwings isn't a likely choice, but I don't rule out the idea there might be another thing I'm missing about it.

Heck, for all we know, hazards off may fix most or all the issues standing it's way, we don't know.
It's possible to leave some room open and think about it.

Is that unbelievable to you...




Anyway, my last part:

 

[justPUNT3R]

View attachment 172536
Depicted: not a cloud main’s brain (no offense to cloud mains)
Also I fricked up with the photo it was a big brain

 

[MrGameguycolor]

View attachment 172536
Depicted: not a cloud main’s brain (no offense to cloud mains)
Also I fricked up with the photo it was a big brain

What?

I don't get what you're trying to do.

Anyway.
My prediction of the legal stage layout in picture form without the details.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Actually in short the whole list was pretty bad and those were the most obvious, glaring problems. I could go into a million word explanation of why every last detail of the list was bad which would require me to dig up the entire list again among other things I'm not going to actually do, but the most efficient way to address something like that is to point out the most obvious problems, state the conclusion a million word post that went into dozens of problems would have reached which also would have been super harsh to direct at someone who clearly just didn't think it all through, and move on unless the person who posts something like that wants to begin to justify themselves which would involve actually going into their game theory and then we have a discussion. That never happened there so it ended at that. That's pretty cut and dry. The fact is as well we'd already had substantial discussion at that point about why a stage like Kongo Falls is bad as my memory serves. It's not my job to continually repeat those things; it's incumbent on those with the overwhelmingly divergent opinions to give some reason at all for why their viewpoint is what it is or even just ask a question like "what's wrong with Kongo Falls?". That guy was free to do that and chose not to and the discussion ended there. Your criticism on this point seems kinda absurd to be honest.

I'm also in awe of having me, of all people, called closed minded on stage legality. It's hilarious given my history. I think I was very clear, very reasonable, and actually generally pretty open minded throughout. Every post I have made has been generally quality here; I take this topic very, very seriously, and I have spent a rather large amount of my time pouring over every detail about stages in Smash Ultimate I can. I could go into a long explanation of why my posts were clearly proper, but frankly it's totally off topic as are your claims that somehow my posting style is unreasonable. This thread is for discussing stage legality, not discussing discussion of stage legality.

On that note, let's ignore various other antagonistic things you're saying (this thread is full of explanation that is apparently sufficient for almost everyone else), let's discuss Pilotwings really. I was originally going to go into that very long explanation in the last post anyway but decided we didn't really need a few thousand words written about Pilotwings when it's such an obviously bad stage, but you asked for it (see that's how it works; people have to actually ask about things for the discussion to happen) so now we're going to have a long discussion over Pilotwings. I find most of what I'm about to say here obvious, but I do think there may be a class of people who will find an extremely detailed breakdown of how an obviously terrible stage is terrible useful and a lot of the lessons here apply to why so many other terrible stages are terrible. Let's spend a long time actually breaking down why Pilotwings is non-ironically worse than almost every stage you listed as apparently obviously worse.

Pilotwings is mechanically similar to Prism Tower in that it is a "touring" stage that follows a preset script through a very small number of forms. In this case, Pilotwings has only two forms: yellow plane and red plane. Each form has the following basic mechanics:

Yellow Plane: The plane itself is one very long flat platform with two super tiny "water wing" platforms underneath each wing. The very center of the plane is a solid block through which fighters may not pass, but the wings are passthrough floors like the bottom of Kongo Jungle. Stage tilts rather severely based on movement through the background elements.

Red Plane: Like with yellow plane, only the center of the plane is a solid object preventing fighters from passing through. You have a lower "main" ground that is passthrough like yellow plane wings divided between each side of the plane forming the lower part of the wings and two platforms extending all the way into the central plane forming the upper wings.

So what are the gameplay dynamics of both?

On yellow plane, you can jump down to the water wing underside platforms and camp easily. They are absurdly unapproachable due to their microscopic size (much smaller than even Kongo Falls rock), and they require extremely large moves to reach which mean that unless your character is in the absolute top tier of safe aerial navigation (like Bayonetta level at a minimum) you're going to get killed for even trying to approach like that (imagine someone like Little Mac, Ganondorf, Bowser, or Cloud even trying). Even worse, they form a figure-8 loop structure so even if somehow you figure out the strategy to approach it doesn't even help you. Consider the following strategy: Go to one of the water wing platforms and wait. As soon as someone commits to an approach which moves them way below the stage, jump up through the wing. Immediately run to the other side of the plane and run over to the other water wing and begin camping it. From a stalling perspective, this is actually MORE powerful than a traditional circular loop. A traditional circular loop requires your mobility to be greater than your opponent's for it to be permanently sustainable. Here, your mobility can be worse than your opponent's as long as it's not too much worse (like Dedede probably can't stall out Sonic here, but Captain Falcon could). Therefore, this layout is fundamentally even more degenerate than something like Temple or New Pork City. It's truly something special.

On red plane, you have a structure very similar to the stage Venom. What is the meta on Venom? Well, if you want to camp (and of course we want to camp), you go to the lower wings and station yourself against the wall. Now, what does your opponent do to approach? If they run to the far side of the upper wings, drop through, and try to approach your horizontally, you jump up through the upper wing and over the main plane and resume your camping on the opposite side to negate that approach strategy. Therefore, that approach strategy is non-viable. You can instead drop directly onto your opponent, but think about what doing this means. In general, the least safe place you can possibly be in Smash is directly above someone. As a rule, down airs lose to up tilts, up smashes, and up airs pretty consistently, and even excellent down airs like Cloud's tend to have fairly lengthy start-up meaning they are universally bad as fast options in close quarters. What I'm trying to say is that dropping through a platform right on top of someone like this mostly just gets you hit, and of course the moves that hit you will just hit you upward to repeat the situation. If you're desperate and have the right character, you can drop down and raw guess a Counter or something, but every play you can make is massively -EV to force action here with possibly the sole exception of Snake who can set a c4 in one nook and horizontally approach the other (in Smash 4, custom Villager could use the tripping sapling in the same way here for whatever that's worth; Pac-Man won't have enough time to use his trampoline nor will Mega Man have enough time for Crash Bomb if you were thinking of those answers). If you're losing on red plane, you either wait out the form or take gambles significantly more likely to make you lose than win; those are your only options. Note that relative to Venom, red plane is actually worse because the plane is a bit faster to jump over (a less tall central wing). The tall central wing of Venom could make its own problems, but when we're at this degeneracy level, it's actually a mitigating factor for Venom as characters with really bad vertical movement speed might find moving over Venom a little tricky but even Ganondorf can pretty quickly make it past Pilotwings red plane to ensure as many characters as possible are able to employ a degenerate strategy.

So okay, that's our whole stage. It has two forms that it transforms between, both subject to the absolute worst kinds of degenerate strategies that can be employed by generally most of the cast and countered by almost none of it. For the sake of considering all other factors because we want to be super exhaustive here, let's think about the transformation itself. A quick youtube search because I forget my years old research on this point shows me the stage transitions from red plane to yellow plane at about 50 seconds into the match and back to red plane at about 115 seconds then back again to yellow plane at about 170 seconds. For the sake of rounding, let's say you get about one plane swap a minute. The transformation in both cases drops all fighters from all positions that generally qualify as "on stage" neatly on top of the next plane. Hypothetically, you do get a small window to attack a camping opponent during a plane swap. In a 3 stock 8 minute match, this does mean you're guaranteed 8 chances to attack your opponent non-suicidally. This is a positive for the stage, but attacks happening once per minute is obviously an absurdity that is far below the threshold of acceptable action level for a competitive stage.

Since we're exhaustively explaining everything in this post, let's consider the cavalcade of awful stages you listed for relative merits. I'm going to not actually be as exhaustive because I don't have all day for this post, but let's do a quick better-worse-about the same versus Pilotwings for all of them:

Mushroom Kingdom 64: Effective loops by repeatedly using the pipes, arguably even superior to the figure 8 camping on yellow plane. Walk-offs and a hilarious cave of life as well. I'll give that this is even worse than Pilotwings as this stage is truly something special.

Mario Bros: Walk-offs sure and a very hard loop. Walk-off camping is honestly far less degenerate than the types of camping Pilotwings allows so I don't think walk-offs are meaningful negatives when we're down at the low level of "is it better than Pilotwings". The loop is a big problem of course and makes this stage really bad and obviously never legal under any ruleset, but is it really worse than Pilotwings? Only more mobile characters can run from less characters here (unlike on yellow plane), and if the less mobile character is simply never behind, you can kinda have a real match. You do have to factor in the Pilotwings transformations here giving minimal exchanges and the red plane at least lets you make awful, game losing gambles to try desperately to win. I think overall it's about the same if you factor everything in.

75M: A walk-off but a pretty hard one to exploit for a lot of reasons. Tons of messy platforms that kinda create loops but they're much harder loops to run than traditional loop stages (you need to have a distinct mobility advantage to really succeed; as long as your mobility is in the ballpark of the opponent's, you'll be able to force exchanges). The wall of hazards normally forces action to some extent as well actually (fun quirk, when the stages are this awful, damaging hazards usually make them relatively better by preventing run-away), but hazards off I guess we would assume remove those. In general the structure of this stage makes most action really messy, but action can occur from both sides in a fair way in a large range of match-ups so this stage is just distinctly better than Pilotwings.

Hyrule Castle: This definitely has some decent camping nooks on both sides and a more match-up specific run-away strat involving the central platform structure, but this stage approximates playable in at least half of the match-ups in the game. While this stage really should be banned almost certainly, it's simply not on the awful level of Pilotwings or even close. Unusual inclusion on the list.

Temple: Very similar to Mario Bros in effect. By the same style of argument, it's about equally bad to Pilotwings.

Gerudo Valley: Assuming hazards off removes Twinrova and the breaking bridge, this is actually just a pretty ordinary walk-off stage which for various reasons should probably be banned but isn't notable or special in its awfulness. Even with the hazards, it's a pretty awful stage but dealing with walls of hazards that are still all fully reactable is far better gameplay than what Pilotwings offers.

Dream Land GB: A touring stage wherein every form is some really poorly built walk-off (or just most of them? This may be the stage I'm least familiar with since the 3DS version was bad and this stage was a complex, very bad stage on said version). This stage sucks, but I think generally it mostly approximates to the reasons walk-offs are bad which are a real thing but as I said before simply far less bad comparatively to Pilotwings.

Great Cave Offensive: See Mario Bros, Temple. Bad stage of approximately equal badness to Pilotwings.

Big Blue,: Now here's a very strange one to include. We have no idea what hazards off even means here; it could easily be a competitive stage in Smash Ultimate actually (if it's just the Falcon Flier). Even if we take it as-is and examine its competitive merits, it's without a doubt the best stage you listed here. There really aren't any degenerate strategies you can employ on this stage to a significant extent; you can kinda run a loop for a little bit around the Falcon Flier but it's really short lived. This stage also has zero damaging hazards, and while the exact placements of the cars is slightly random, for the most part an expert player should have a very clear idea of exactly what is going to happen next at all times on this stage which allows it to be played with consistent strategy. The stage's bizarre geography is somewhat match-up polarizing, but once our conversation moves beyond "gameplay is completely avoided by degeneracy" and into "this stage probably worsens the game's character balance", we're not in the same ballpark of badness. This stage is a million times better than Pilotwings.

Fourside: Basically Princess Peach's Castle's even worse cousin stage (strange to see one listed and not the other since they're so close in terms of why they should be banned, but you did pick the worse of the two and I suppose this list never promised to be exhaustive so whatever). A lot of camping positions here are really strong, and you can go back and forth over the Monotoli building's peak with a Venom-esque strategy of sorts, but it's overall somewhat weaker than the Venom/red plane Pilotwings strategies and certainly way less degenerate than yellow plane Pilotwings. Comparatively clearly superior.

New Pork City: Like all of the other huge stages, probably just equally bad to Pilotwings.

Summit: A loop that is at least a very short loop so if your mobility advantage is not significant it's pretty hard to sustain the loop. If the stage still slides down into the water with hazards off, that also temporarily disrupts loop running, and all the terrain is icy which makes movement generally larger in commitment if you aren't careful. Probably not a ton better than all of the other loop stages but still somewhat better; I would prefer playing a tournament set on Summit instead of Pilotwings for sure.

Palutena's Temple: The worst of the big stages for sure. This stage is so huge that it makes all of the other big stages look small, it's actively obnoxious to navigate (I think we saw some screenshot or video somewhere that suggested the central platforms of Palutena's Temple now are slightly bigger so it's going to be just barely less obnoxious now!), and the geography actually gives you compound loops instead of one simple loop so you can mix up your infinite run-away. I will cede this one is probably worse than Pilotwings.

Gaur Plains: If you really think about it, this stage is basically the same situation as 75m. It's a pretty bad stage but just clearly a lot better than Pilotwings.

Pacland: Hilarious stage but also one of the least bad ones here. The stage's geography not only allows but enforces constant player interaction; no match-up is an automatic checkmate on this stage. It still has the walk-off thing going on and the fast movement on the back half of the stage can often make situations in which mistakes that should normally be small turn into full stock punishes which makes the stage super swingy and not a well suited stage for competitive play, but compared to Pilotwings this stage is distinctly better.

So yeah, of the stages you listed, I'd agree two of them are worse than Pilotwings, several are just about equal, and several are distinctly better than Pilotwings. Overall I stand by my statement that Pilotwings is so bad that you might as well have every stage in the game legal if you want to allow it. I think I've backed that up thoroughly.

Of course, what I have yet to back up thoroughly is what hazards off does here which I'm sure is yet another discussion point in our exhaustive discussion here. We don't technically know, but someone (me) has been documenting what every known demo stage does with hazards off to get a sense for what its rules are such that we can extrapolate to the unknown stages. There are a lot of things that are still unclear, but I don't see a path forward for Pilotwings. First let me link the resource so you can consider all the data we have so far:

https://smashboards.com/threads/stage-changes-when-hazard-toggle-is-on.456624/

Hazards off has not been shown to change collision at any point. It does prevent a temporary object spawn from happening completely (as on Green Greens), but it thus far has never been shown to redraw the geography of a stage to improve it. Given the model Pilotwings uses, it's very hard to imagine redrawing the stage not to have the yellow plane water wings either, and red plane would look absurd if its structure changed. Prism Tower still tours with hazards off and Town and City still transitions between its two forms so Pilotwings likely still transitions too. The question of whether it transitions is largely moot though as both forms it transitions between are unbelievably awful. If it were permanent red plane (the starting plane), it would just be Venom which would improve it on the badness spectrum past loser stages like New Pork City but would keep it comfortably below the threshold of legality. Permanent yellow plane, while extremely unlikely, would make it actually worse than your New Pork Cities and would put it down with Mushroom Kingdom 64. Continuing to transition just maintains the current awful status quo. Like Lylat Cruise, it's likely hazards off will remove the tilting, but the tilting has no real relevance to why Pilotwings is one of the very worst competitive Smash stages.

You could try to argue it could do something we don't have a reason to expect. Sure, there's a lot we don't know; I buy it. I will say this though. We also don't know if Palutena's Temple will be completely redrawn to be like 20% of the size and a reasonable lay-out with hazards off. It seems unlikely, and if that happens, it's basically a completely new stage. Pilotwings is in that boat. Realistically likely changes keep it as one of the absolute worst stages in the game, and if it is fundamentally changed into a completely different stage, maybe that stage could be re-evaluated on new merits. I think it's obvious, and it would generally be absurd to continually repeat, that one of the first things we do on day one (really the second thing we do after unlocking all the characters) is actually look at all of the mechanics of all 103 stages with hazards off in detail to actually have a strongly informed viewpoint on what the realistic stage pool clearly is in specific. If any stage does things that are surprising and outside of expectations, that can easily cause the stage's evaluation to shift. Like currently we all think Magicant is probably going to be banned because the lowest platform is an insane camping position, but if against all hope it's just not there with hazards off then suddenly Magicant is a good stage. I do think having vague ideas that get us most of the way to the stages we need and allowing the handful of surprises to shift things is productive. Since a stage like Pilotwings is pretty firmly in the "insanely awful with a structure that seems unlikely to improve" camp, it really does deserve to be fully written off up until we see actual evidence that shows it being anything different from what it is now. We still check what it does; 103 isn't really that big of a number to check so we check everything. It has, however, already commanded far too much of our mental energy so far so it should just be dismissed for now unless you seriously have a defense for this awful, awful stage ready.

I will also flash my Midwest stage liberal credentials here. I have played actual tournament games on both Pilotwings and Big Blue in the past. The Pilotwings game was literally one week into Smash Wii U's lifespan so sadly it was exploited relatively poorly (but still the stage played really badly) before we convinced the TO to just remove it forever. Big Blue was in Brawl and was actually super interesting; I played a great game of my G&W versus a reasonably decent MK on the stage and had a blast that was actually pretty competitive. I could imagine how a lot of characters would not have functioned well on Big Blue, but there were definitely match-ups that the stage enhanced rather than worsened and G&W vs MK was one of them so it was really cool.

And yes, that post was WAY too much work, and it was an excessive way to prove a point. I sure hope you've found this helpful, and I do hope that maybe actually seeing a "terrible illegal" stage like Pilotwings truly taken seriously and broken down will help everyone as a group understand a lot of things about what make bad stages bad. No, posts like this shouldn't be the norm; it's better to just state commonly understood ideas and only explain all of this if someone actually needs it.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Amazing Ampharos I forgot how big your walls of text could be I mean damn. o_O

In the "severe nitpick" category I'd like to mention that Rosalina could potentially also make life interesting in the ancient curse sense of the word for someone trying to camp Venom or red Pilotwings by untethering Luma and having it hang around the enemy's escape route. Of course, Luma is not exactly known for its defensive prowess so it would probably be a roadbump at best in the end, but still. I mained her in 4 so felt obligated to bring it up.

You could try to argue it could do something we don't have a reason to expect. Sure, there's a lot we don't know; I buy it. I will say this though. We also don't know if Palutena's Temple will be completely redrawn to be like 20% of the size and a reasonable lay-out with hazards off. It seems unlikely, and if that happens, it's basically a completely new stage. Pilotwings is in that boat. Realistically likely changes keep it as one of the absolute worst stages in the game, and if it is fundamentally changed into a completely different stage, maybe that stage could be re-evaluated on new merits. I think it's obvious, and it would generally be absurd to continually repeat, that one of the first things we do on day one (really the second thing we do after unlocking all the characters) is actually look at all of the mechanics of all 103 stages with hazards off in detail to actually have a strongly informed viewpoint on what the realistic stage pool clearly is in specific. If any stage does things that are surprising and outside of expectations, that can easily cause the stage's evaluation to shift. Like currently we all think Magicant is probably going to be banned because the lowest platform is an insane camping position, but if against all hope it's just not there with hazards off then suddenly Magicant is a good stage. I do think having vague ideas that get us most of the way to the stages we need and allowing the handful of surprises to shift things is productive. Since a stage like Pilotwings is pretty firmly in the "insanely awful with a structure that seems unlikely to improve" camp, it really does deserve to be fully written off up until we see actual evidence that shows it being anything different from what it is now. We still check what it does; 103 isn't really that big of a number to check so we check everything. It has, however, already commanded far too much of our mental energy so far so it should just be dismissed for now unless you seriously have a defense for this awful, awful stage ready.

I especially want to call reader attention to this paragraph because YES. While we can make educated guesses about stage legality based on what we've seen so far, there are still a whole hecking lot of unknowns left for us to find out. (Personally I'm hoping hazardless Magicant throws a curveball at us and does away with that campy platform because IMO it's criminal such a beautiful stage would have to be thrown away, but it really does ruin the competitive value.)

 

[dav3yb]

The main thing I'd like to hear opinions on at this point are stages that have outer platforms not connected to the main body of the stage. Now that we have a pretty good idea that Green Greens will not drop blocks, kill it's wind, and not throw fruit, I really don't see much of an issue with it. The video w/ M2K and Zero they just brushed it off with "Have you seen Bayonetta on this stage?," which I also think has been a confirmed change (her ability to kill vertically). Although I don't think a single character's match up potential should be enough reason to completely discount a stage.

I can certainly understand a bit more about stages with a more enclosed mid pit, like Saffron City, but without the hazards on Green Greens, and if Jungle Japes looses the rushing water along with the Klaptrap, I certainly don't see why they shouldn't at least be given a chance.

 

[Doomblaze]

A single character matchup is the reason for many things. In brawl metaknight singlehandedly rendered many stages invaluable. Mute city was banned in melee after armada showed people how to abuse it with peach. If you listen to people complain, bayo killed smash 4.

At the beginning of each game they werent issues, but they all became issues as players got better at the games. This will undoubtedly happen with smush too, but the first thing to decide is how liberal to make the first rule set.

Jungle japes would be terrible. A stationary tiny platform is basically impossible to approach. If you get a lead or have good projectiles you can force the opponent to approach you, but the only way they can do so is to jump right into your shield right next to the blast zone. Saffron city has the same issue. Green greens isn’t as bad but still leans towards that playstyle