Do we know how frequently the stage can be set to morph?
Depending on that, I wonder if a solution to the whole camping problem might be to set the morph to a very short interval, like 30 seconds or something.
Benefits:
- Camping isn’t as strong. Why camp when your reward is only a mere 30 seconds in the stage of your choice? Even if camping is beneficial in some scenarios, the short duration of each morph means that camping won’t drag out the game nearly as long.
- The benefit of having the first morph isn’t as large. Since each morph lasts only 30 seconds, it’s rare to win because the opponent never got a chance to play on their stage.
- Each player has more opportunities to use their stage. Since it swaps back and forth frequently, neither player has to wait long to get their stage of choice and pull off a ladder combo or other trick.
- Simultaneously, neither player can abuse stages for a long time. If a Little Mac’s opponent picks Duck Hunt, they can’t camp on the tree for more than 30 seconds. Similarly, a ZSS can’t constantly use ladder combos on Battlefield.
- For this reason, this system may be viable with zero stage bans, which is good for a large stage list even if the number of bans is small. Bans punish players for forgetting one of the legal stages; if you’re a Mac player and forget to strike Duck Hunt in the heat of the moment and from a pool of 20 stages, good luck. With morphing, the need to prevent certain stages from being used is mitigated, because each stage is essentially favorable for your character half of the time. (Additionally, you pick your character after the stages are picked!)
- The issue of “echo stages” is sidestepped completely, due to the potential obsolescence of bans. If a match ends up morphing between Battlefield and Dream Land, there are no issues! The only exception is if DSR is implemented, which might make less sense to begin with in a morphing system.
- This is more of a fun side effect than a selling point, but rapid transitions would mean more opportunities for hype tricks using the morph system, such as recovering from a spike by riding the stage as it comes up. This would hardly break the game, and like Randall, it’s on a predictable timer.
Drawbacks:
- The rapid transitions may be disorienting or distracting. The camera zooming out is the main concern, but stages like Duck Hunt have been legal without a zoomed-out camera being an issue. The music and visuals also change.
- Similarly, some players might not be a huge fan of adapting to different layouts so often. Then again, PS1 in melee and T&C in 4 are legal, and Smashville is incredibly popular.
- If having such a short delay between morphs lags out the game, then this isn’t a good route to take.
- And of course, we don’t know if it’s even possible to set the stage to morph in 30-second intervals.
If 30-second (or so) morphs are an option and don’t lag out the game, they should really be considered, in my opinion! The other con, where the morphs end up feeling disorienting / distracting, is a valid concern. To alleviate this, morphing could be limited to game one, and subsequent games in a set could use asymmetrical stage selection systems.
This isn’t entirely relevant, but for those subsequent games, I’m a fan of “loser nominates 3 stages, winner picks 1.” Unlike striking, it doesn’t punish players for forgetting one of the legal stages, which helps with a large stage list. (Under this system, “echo stages” would be accounted for by only allowing the loser to nominate one from each group.)
As a final note, here’s a good idea for a morphing-selection procedure, imo:
- Players play RPS, just like current game one methods.
- The winner of RPS gets to pick whether to reveal his stage pick first or second.
- Afterward, the loser of RPS gets to pick whether he wants his morph to appear first or second in the battle.
- After that, both players reveal their stages, select them in-game, select their characters, and play the match.
- If both players choose the same stage, it’s just selected without morphing... though this is unlikely in this system since it’s not double-blind or anything.
A simpler system would be “double-blind, RPS to choose morph order,” but that might give the winner of RPS too much power.
has a really unfair advantage while on it. While fighting Roy, you could strike 3D Land to keep the match fair, but without Roy 3D Land remains a viable option. Plus, it solves the issue on how to strike with a huge stage list, by simply not striking all stages.