First of all, we now have footage of play on Delfino Plaza:
Watch the movement of the camera carefully there while the stage transforms. It looks way more similar to Brawl than 4 to me; I think the tight blast zones while transforming issue is most probably not back in Ultimate. It's hard to be sure of course, but this is a pretty sound data point for "seriously, don't ban Delfino for no reason".
And
ProfessorVincent
here's basically the situation. So we have like 30 legal stages. Striking down to one would take an eternity no matter how you slice it, but the gains of striking reduce with time since in theory the value of the stages on the stage list to you should be about a bell curve. So at the start of the set, you struck let's say 4 stages each, presumably the four stages each that you would never want to play on. Then you get the data for two games of play each and remove four more stages (as well as the stages each of you picked which presumably were two stages considered very favorable to each side). This will drastically increase the efficiency of these bans and make them presumably very well targeted to the best stages for each side. In theory, out of your 30 stage list, you've removed the 9 best stages for each side. You then randomly select between the 12 stages in the middle of the value spectrum which should actually all be pretty similar in terms of fairness because that's how bell curves work, and even then, you can still react to the stage that is chosen by adjusting your character or squad as appropriate since stage always comes before character.
An alternate solution would be to make game three on a stage morph and each choose a stage from that pool of 12. The downside is that you'll have to adjust settings for game three, but with pre-sets that's not too hard. The secondary downside is that you'll presumably get the least fair two stages in that pool of 12 and will have to settle the question of order (IMO whoever lost game two in specific should get to decide whether his stage is first or second in the morph). This downside is also not too bad because like I said all 12 stages should be pretty good here so even if you optimize for the "worst" outcome it's still okay. I guess the third downside is that this guarantees game three is never on a "static stage" which has different gameplay implications, but as someone who likes dynamic stages, I'm okay with that.
Here are some realities I think we have to face though:
-We have close to 30 good stages. If we go with a smaller stage list, we're basically just banning stages for no reason other than trying to force the game to fit our procedural preferences.
-Stage strikes are a good system for small or mid sized lists but it scales poorly to large lists. Striking something like 29 stages down to 1, which is 14 strikes per side, would take a very long time across an event.
-Complicated solutions involving external programs calculating lists would be honestly too difficult to communicate at events.
I think the end result is that the only three viable solutions exist. You can just ban a lot which will work if you just don't care about making the game worse. This is the main thing I want to fight against because, well, it just obviously makes the game worse. You can rely on random at some point which is what FLiPS does. You can also rely on stage morph which it wasn't clear was going to be viable until a few days ago when we learned they actually fixed all the lag. Everything else is procedural optimization and can go any way; at the end, I think you simply must embrace one of these three solutions.
If you want something more traditional with no randomness going down the third route, I do think this is about the best you'll do:
Watch the movement of the camera carefully there while the stage transforms. It looks way more similar to Brawl than 4 to me; I think the tight blast zones while transforming issue is most probably not back in Ultimate. It's hard to be sure of course, but this is a pretty sound data point for "seriously, don't ban Delfino for no reason".
And
ProfessorVincent
here's basically the situation. So we have like 30 legal stages. Striking down to one would take an eternity no matter how you slice it, but the gains of striking reduce with time since in theory the value of the stages on the stage list to you should be about a bell curve. So at the start of the set, you struck let's say 4 stages each, presumably the four stages each that you would never want to play on. Then you get the data for two games of play each and remove four more stages (as well as the stages each of you picked which presumably were two stages considered very favorable to each side). This will drastically increase the efficiency of these bans and make them presumably very well targeted to the best stages for each side. In theory, out of your 30 stage list, you've removed the 9 best stages for each side. You then randomly select between the 12 stages in the middle of the value spectrum which should actually all be pretty similar in terms of fairness because that's how bell curves work, and even then, you can still react to the stage that is chosen by adjusting your character or squad as appropriate since stage always comes before character.An alternate solution would be to make game three on a stage morph and each choose a stage from that pool of 12. The downside is that you'll have to adjust settings for game three, but with pre-sets that's not too hard. The secondary downside is that you'll presumably get the least fair two stages in that pool of 12 and will have to settle the question of order (IMO whoever lost game two in specific should get to decide whether his stage is first or second in the morph). This downside is also not too bad because like I said all 12 stages should be pretty good here so even if you optimize for the "worst" outcome it's still okay. I guess the third downside is that this guarantees game three is never on a "static stage" which has different gameplay implications, but as someone who likes dynamic stages, I'm okay with that.
Here are some realities I think we have to face though:
-We have close to 30 good stages. If we go with a smaller stage list, we're basically just banning stages for no reason other than trying to force the game to fit our procedural preferences.
-Stage strikes are a good system for small or mid sized lists but it scales poorly to large lists. Striking something like 29 stages down to 1, which is 14 strikes per side, would take a very long time across an event.
-Complicated solutions involving external programs calculating lists would be honestly too difficult to communicate at events.
I think the end result is that the only three viable solutions exist. You can just ban a lot which will work if you just don't care about making the game worse. This is the main thing I want to fight against because, well, it just obviously makes the game worse. You can rely on random at some point which is what FLiPS does. You can also rely on stage morph which it wasn't clear was going to be viable until a few days ago when we learned they actually fixed all the lag. Everything else is procedural optimization and can go any way; at the end, I think you simply must embrace one of these three solutions.
If you want something more traditional with no randomness going down the third route, I do think this is about the best you'll do:
For game one each side names five stages double blind. Then each side may choose one stage from the other's list and you will play game one on a stage morph between those two stages. Which stage is first in the morph can be chosen randomly if players cannot agree. In the event that the same stage is chosen by both players, simply discard stage morph and play on that stage. In the case of "clone" stages (like Battlefield and Fountain of Dreams or Final Destination and an omega stage), the "neutral" formation will be chosen (Battlefield, Final Destination, Pokemon Stadium 1).
For game two and onward, stage is counterpicked mostly as usual but when counterpicking each player will list three stages instead of just one. The other player (the winner of the previous game) will pick the one stage from that list of three to be the next stage or may instead choose to play on a stage morph of two of those listed stages (morph order decided by the original listing player in that case). In the case of "clone" stages, the loser of the previous game will specify which form is desired when listing the three stages.
DSR will always block you from listing a stage you won on previously in the set. If you win on a stage morph, you are blocked from listing both stages that were included in the morph.
In all cases, stage is chosen before character. You may always react to the chosen stage or stage morph with your character selection.
For game two and onward, stage is counterpicked mostly as usual but when counterpicking each player will list three stages instead of just one. The other player (the winner of the previous game) will pick the one stage from that list of three to be the next stage or may instead choose to play on a stage morph of two of those listed stages (morph order decided by the original listing player in that case). In the case of "clone" stages, the loser of the previous game will specify which form is desired when listing the three stages.
DSR will always block you from listing a stage you won on previously in the set. If you win on a stage morph, you are blocked from listing both stages that were included in the morph.
In all cases, stage is chosen before character. You may always react to the chosen stage or stage morph with your character selection.
