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Discussion of Stage Legality in Smash Bros. Ultimate

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PoptartLord

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 13, 2015
Messages
54
What's all this now? Why are all of these stage lists getting praise? Where to start... ok, how about with how they're still using the Starter / Counterpick ideology? History has shown it doesn't actually solve the problem it's meant to solve, and now that the in-game menu order has switched the problem it was made to solve doesn't exist anymore.

And then there's the list size. They're all far too small. There are dozens of competitively viable stages in the game, yet these lists have ~10-13 total with half unavailable in game 1. Everybody knows that stages don't get added to the initial list, so I'm not buying the arguments of "other tournaments will test the other stages" or "focus on what we know is good initially, we'll get to the rest later". That's so bad I won't even classify it as token lip service.

About the only redeeming factor I've seen is the willingness to have hazards on and off in the list. That is the correct thing to do. Contrary to popular belief the toggle is not between "Normal version" and "Competitive version" but "Normal version" and "Alternate version that happens to help the competitive viability of some stages a lot but we need parity so every single stage needs some kind of change, regardless of how it affects competitive viability".

Moving on. Let's talk about the Lylat thing. Only now we know it's more of a Kirby thing. Seeing all the kneejerk reactions from the community is.... well, there's no way to say even a fraction of what I want without getting banned for language and insulting large swaths of the community. So I'll end that thought there; fill in the gaps yourself.

There are so many arbitrary lines in stage viability reasoning it makes one's head spin. Considering the things perfectly acceptable in Smash 4's four stage list (<sarcasm>because everybody hates Lylat and it's only there to hit the 4n+1 striking magic number so it doesn't count</sarcasm>) there should be far less complaints about far fewer stages. The only commonality is "this stage is banned because I don't like it". Watch, somebody will quote the previous line and say "but permanent walk-offs are banned because they promote degenerative play, everyone knows that, therefore you're wrong and your point is invalid", which sidesteps the actual points of contention so completely it has to be intentional since they don't have an actual response.

How long will people be held back by ghosts of the past? It's a new game demanding new rules and methodologies. Stop blindly applying lessons learned in the past - instead understand why those lessons had to be learned and first see if they're even relevant anymore! There are so many core gameplay/element changes implemented specifically to fix previous grievances. Look at chaingrabs - once a scourge, now removed completely by re-grab timers. Any lessons of "X is bad because it allows for chaingrabs" are null and void, so stop applying them to the present game!!

EDIT: I missed an 'i' in 'chaingrabs'
 
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Untouch

Smash Master
Joined
Aug 4, 2009
Messages
3,783
I was thinking, could a day 1 patch change the way hazards off works?
I don't think this is likely, but I've heard that people report Arena Ferox spawning the same way multiple times in tournaments.
Since I have reason to believe that 1.0.0 was finalized mid-October, I wonder if the mall/tournament demos were a later build or something.
I mean I doubt it, I don't have any footage of the title screen afterall. They didn't let us see all of the stages in the mall/torunament demos.

Another reason why I think its a newer build is that the build Sakurai was using to show off WoL had a DLC button not present in 1.0.0.
 
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ShneeOscar

Smash Cadet
Joined
Jan 19, 2015
Messages
43
Battlefield
Final Destination
Dreamland 64
Rainbow Cruise (No Hazards)
Brinstar (NH)
Yoshi's Story
Fountain of Dreams (Hazards On)
Green Greens (NH)
Pokémon Stadium 1 (HO)
Delfino Plaza
Warioware, Inc. (NH)
Norfair (NH)
Frigate Orpheron (NH)
Yoshi's Island Brawl
Halberd (NH)
Lylat Cruise
Pokémon Stadium 2 (NH)
Castle Siege (NH)
Smashville (HO)
Unova Pokémon League (NH)
Prism Tower
Arena Ferox
Mushroom Kingdom U (NH)
Skyloft (NH)
Kalos Pokémon League
Town and City (HO)
Wuhu Island (NH)
Wily Castle (NH)
New Donk City Hall
Dracula's Castle (NH)

That's 30 stages that, IMO, you would have a hard time arguing that they shouldn't be legal in some form, or at least tested. (If you can think of a good reason that one of these stages is undeniably broken to the point where it doesn't warrant testing, please speak up)

That fact they we seem to be starting with ~10 is ridiculous. If 2/3 of these end up being found unviable after significant testing AND USE IN TORNUMENT (which is the only real way to test these things), then so be it. But cutting out over half of potentially viable stages with no testing is completely unacceptable, especially considering, as we all know, STAGES NEVER GET UNBANNED.
 

Alias Tex

Smash Cadet
Joined
Nov 19, 2018
Messages
29
Switch FC
SW-3796-7058-8396
Battlefield
Final Destination
Dreamland 64
Rainbow Cruise (No Hazards)
Brinstar (NH)
Yoshi's Story
Fountain of Dreams (Hazards On)
Green Greens (NH)
Pokémon Stadium 1 (HO)
Delfino Plaza
Warioware, Inc. (NH)
Norfair (NH)
Frigate Orpheron (NH)
Yoshi's Island Brawl
Halberd (NH)
Lylat Cruise
Pokémon Stadium 2 (NH)
Castle Siege (NH)
Smashville (HO)
Unova Pokémon League (NH)
Prism Tower
Arena Ferox
Mushroom Kingdom U (NH)
Skyloft (NH)
Kalos Pokémon League
Town and City (HO)
Wuhu Island (NH)
Wily Castle (NH)
New Donk City Hall
Dracula's Castle (NH)

That's 30 stages that, IMO, you would have a hard time arguing that they shouldn't be legal in some form, or at least tested. (If you can think of a good reason that one of these stages is undeniably broken to the point where it doesn't warrant testing, please speak up)

That fact they we seem to be starting with ~10 is ridiculous. If 2/3 of these end up being found unviable after significant testing AND USE IN TORNUMENT (which is the only real way to test these things), then so be it. But cutting out over half of potentially viable stages with no testing is completely unacceptable, especially considering, as we all know, STAGES NEVER GET UNBANNED.
I agree that all of these stages should at least be tried. This may just be me being extremely liberal for day-1 testing standards, but I think that Kongo Falls, Reset Bomb Forest, and Umbra Clock Tower (All without hazards) are worth adding on to the "testing before judging" list. A good chunk of these stages are likely to get banned - but really it only makes sense to start liberal before reigning things in. I get that people would like to have their shortcut competitive stage list right off the bat, but in the long run it would be better to try all of our options to avoid constricting the metagame because we missed the opportunity to have 15 quality stages while we only have 10. And in the short run, having these new toys to play with is part of the fun of experiencing a new smash game. They may not all be perfectly balanced competitive masterpieces, but its not like our two-week-old metagame will be suffering from our stage selection not befitting our player skill level. Is the joy not in the journey, or are Smash 4's greatest highlights occurring before our eyes in its final days of competitive play? As the game gets more serious, we can make the stage list more serious. That is the natural process, and disrupting it will likely over-constrain our competition and water down our fun. What approach will do a better job?

On another topic, what are some good alternatives to starter/counterpick stage selection?
 
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Akiak

Smash Ace
Joined
Jul 28, 2007
Messages
820
Location
In my secret laboratory.
What's all this now? Why are all of these stage lists getting praise? Where to start... ok, how about with how they're still using the Starter / Counterpick ideology? History has shown it doesn't actually solve the problem it's meant to solve, and now that the in-game menu order has switched the problem it was made to solve doesn't exist anymore.

And then there's the list size. They're all far too small. There are dozens of competitively viable stages in the game, yet these lists have ~10-13 total with half unavailable in game 1. Everybody knows that stages don't get added to the initial list, so I'm not buying the arguments of "other tournaments will test the other stages" or "focus on what we know is good initially, we'll get to the rest later". That's so bad I won't even classify it as token lip service.

About the only redeeming factor I've seen is the willingness to have hazards on and off in the list. That is the correct thing to do. Contrary to popular belief the toggle is not between "Normal version" and "Competitive version" but "Normal version" and "Alternate version that happens to help the competitive viability of some stages a lot but we need parity so every single stage needs some kind of change, regardless of how it affects competitive viability".

Moving on. Let's talk about the Lylat thing. Only now we know it's more of a Kirby thing. Seeing all the kneejerk reactions from the community is.... well, there's no way to say even a fraction of what I want without getting banned for language and insulting large swaths of the community. So I'll end that thought there; fill in the gaps yourself.

There are so many arbitrary lines in stage viability reasoning it makes one's head spin. Considering the things perfectly acceptable in Smash 4's four stage list (<sarcasm>because everybody hates Lylat and it's only there to hit the 4n+1 striking magic number so it doesn't count</sarcasm>) there should be far less complaints about far fewer stages. The only commonality is "this stage is banned because I don't like it". Watch, somebody will quote the previous line and say "but permanent walk-offs are banned because they promote degenerative play, everyone knows that, therefore you're wrong and your point is invalid", which sidesteps the actual points of contention so completely it has to be intentional since they don't have an actual response.

How long will people be held back by ghosts of the past? It's a new game demanding new rules and methodologies. Stop blindly applying lessons learned in the past - instead understand why those lessons had to be learned and first see if they're even relevant anymore! There are so many core gameplay/element changes implemented specifically to fix previous grievances. Look at chaingrabs - once a scourge, now removed completely by re-grab timers. Any lessons of "X is bad because it allows for chaingrabs" are null and void, so stop applying them to the present game!!

EDIT: I missed an 'i' in 'chaingrabs'
While I agree with your sentiments here, I've been having trouble freeing myself of starter-counterpick. If we're sticking to regular striking, then we're stuck with 4n+1. However, people also prefer not having too many starters, so our only options are 5 and 9. Some people only want 5. What do you do with those other stages? Make them counterpicks, that's all you can do.

The way I see it atm, I'm aware of three alternatives to regular striking:

1) Using RNG (i.e. FLiPS): probably not gonna be accepted by a large part of the community unfortunately.
2) DeLux & Amazing Ampharos' suggestion where both players double-blind pick their CPs for games 1 and 2: it's a good option, but there's a fair bit of resistance against basically overhauling how we think about sets completely ('neutral' game 3 instead of game 1). Circumvents the logistics issues of FLSS with many stages by limiting it to games which go 1-1.
3) My suggestion in my last post which requires ranking half of the stages from most to least preferred: works with any stage amount, but requires writing on a phone or on paper.

So either we pick one of these, or we're gonna have counterpicks, that's just how I see it.
 
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Veggi

Smash Champion
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Jun 4, 2008
Messages
2,590
Location
I'm gonna wreck it! (Fort Myers)
While I agree with your sentiments here, I've been having trouble freeing myself of starter-counterpick. If we're sticking to regular striking, then we're stuck with 4n+1. However, people also prefer not having too many starters, so our only options are 5 and 9. Some people only want 5. What do you do with those other stages? Make them counterpicks, that's all you can do.

The way I see it atm, I'm aware of three alternatives to regular striking:

1) Using RNG (i.e. FLiPS): probably not gonna be accepted by a large part of the community unfortunately.
2) DeLux & Amazing Ampharos' suggestion where both players double-blind pick their CPs for games 1 and 2: it's a good option, but there's a fair bit of resistance against basically overhauling how we think about sets completely ('neutral' game 3 instead of game 1). Circumvents the logistics issues of FLSS with many stages by limiting it to games which go 1-1.
3) My suggestion in my last post which requires ranking half of the stages from most to least preferred: works with any stage amount, but requires writing on a phone or on paper.

So either we pick one of these, or we're gonna have counterpicks, that's just how I see it.
That's how I see it too. Like, yeah, the counterpick system is flawed but if we have a lot of stages then I don't know how to make them all selectable game one without making the process take forever. I pitched the best solution to the problem I could think of but I still felt like people thought it was too difficult even though it was only about as complicated as Brawl's 1st game.
 

Munomario777

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ok, how about with how they're still using the Starter / Counterpick ideology? History has shown it doesn't actually solve the problem it's meant to solve, and now that the in-game menu order has switched the problem it was made to solve doesn't exist anymore.
Starter/CP does solve the problem it’s meant to solve. That problem is finding a good way to select a stage for game 1, and starter/CP is excellent at enabling that. The problem also has not gone away, so starter/CP’s useful properties are no less relevant than they were before.
 

lmntolp

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jul 28, 2008
Messages
190
Location
Maryland
Battlefield is clearly better than FoD for flavor reasons, remember that you now can use Battlefield forms of any stage (including FoD).
Ah I almost forgot. It's also not explicit all of these lists that BF form stages are legal, but hopefully yes. I haven't heard whether any stages have weird properties like grass traction, but that's minor.
 
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Untouch

Smash Master
Joined
Aug 4, 2009
Messages
3,783
I see a lot of people using other videos like the Ike video to try and justify a ban for Lylat still.
Are these people new to the series? This glitch has been in since Melee, it's called pineappling, this problem doesn't only exist on Lylat.
 

Frihetsanka

Smash Champion
Joined
Apr 26, 2016
Messages
2,252
Location
Sweden
Ah I almost forgot. It's also not explicit all of these lists that BF form stages are legal, but hopefully yes. I haven't heard whether any stages have weird properties like grass traction, but that's minor.
From what I've heard, 2D stages are still 2D, but grass isn't "grass" (doesn't have special traction). Some stages are likely still banned on majors and streams because of copyright, though. Either the ruleset could ban 2D stages or they could have a clause that you can only go to an Omega or a Battlefield variant if your opponent agrees, either way works (the latter is simpler though.

I see a lot of people using other videos like the Ike video to try and justify a ban for Lylat still.
Are these people new to the series? This glitch has been in since Melee, it's called pineappling, this problem doesn't only exist on Lylat.
I think people just want Lylat banned and they're doing what they can to meme it out of existence, despite it likely being more viable than most other stages suggested.

Some of the comments in this thread seem rather disrespectful to the TOs and players that spend hours every day discussing various stages. Do you guys think people are just basing their decisions on hunches? It's not "ridiculous", it's quite well-reasoned and discussed at length.
 

NewGuy79

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Apr 12, 2014
Messages
212
Location
In the mountains, training....
I'm still sorta baffled that no one has suggested using the stage morph in any way when it comes to picking stages.
As I see it the mechanic could be used to remove the need for starters alltogether, since the stage will morph between two stages, both players could simply choose their most prefered stage and go.

some simple rules could be:
  • RPS or tournoment seed for who gets to pick first
  • morphing set to every 2 min for 8min matches or 1:30min for 6min matches so each player gets 2 instances of their pick
Aside from the above, using stage morph for game one has alot more benifits, i.e. removes any instance of pick advantage, is fast since it only involves both players picking a stage and it allows for any sized stage list as there is no need for starters or counterpicks and would.

I havent heard any top players, TOs or community meambers really discus the feature seriously, and I cant figure out why?

is it really that outlandish of a system to use, if only to allow for a true nutral setting for game 1?
 

dav3yb

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 7, 2014
Messages
431
I see a lot of people using other videos like the Ike video to try and justify a ban for Lylat still.
Are these people new to the series? This glitch has been in since Melee, it's called pineappling, this problem doesn't only exist on Lylat.
What gets me is that these same people are absolutely fine with Melee Battlefield, which has some seriously ****ed up ledges. I certainly don't hear them whining about that.
 

J0eyboi

Smash Ace
Joined
Dec 28, 2017
Messages
573
What gets me is that these same people are absolutely fine with Melee Battlefield, which has some seriously ****ed up ledges. I certainly don't hear them whining about that.
No you see, it's because we can afford to be picky. There are only 5 good stages in Melee, we can't ban Battlefield. Now that we have literally 8,954.32 stages in the game, we can ban stages for literally no reason. It definitely won't set any kind of precedent that'll lead to a 5-stage list for the 4th game in a row or anything.

I tried to make it as obvious as possible, but just in case someone can't tell, I'm being sarcastic
 
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dav3yb

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Dec 7, 2014
Messages
431
No you see, it's because we can afford to be picky. There are only 5 good stages in Melee, we can't ban Battlefield. Now that we have literally 8,954.32 stages in the game, we can ban stages for literally no reason. It definitely won't set any kind of precedent that'll lead to a 5-stage list for the 4th game in a row or anything.

I tried to make it as obvious as possible, but just in case someone can't tell, I'm being sarcastic
Your first sentence sounded pretty serious, the rest of it helps, but I nearly put my palm through my skull when i started reading this.
 

Gunman1357

Smash Apprentice
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Jan 15, 2015
Messages
78
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Michigan
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Gunman1357
Such Bustling Downers in the chat. It seems some off us got this way with all the pessimism, and know it all complexes some people have. Like, can we just test all these stages before we try banning them two weeks before launch. besides arena ferox, shnee has a great starting list above, of stages to playtest for competitive. Lets all be positive and try our best to be optimistic about the stages.

First off, I currently think the risk with hazards mixed is not worth it, so we should run hazards always off. With hazards always off, FoD and YS basically turn into Battlefield, so they're banned.

If we assume, for the sake of the argument, that hazards mixed is worth it, then I could see Fountain of Dreams being a counter-pick. It does have some differences from Battlefield, although it might still be a bit too similar... Anyway, with both Battlefield and Fountain of Dreams being legal, adding YS would be really bad for character who are bad on triplats. "I ban Battlefield and FoD", "Okay, Yoshi's Island".

Yoshi's Island (Brawl) is a borderline case, but we should still test it. Halberd and Wuhu Island are probably dead, but I guess people could test it.
PS. [The intention was hazards mixed, its lazyness that you guys don't wanna deal with less then 5 seconds of menu backtracking] That thought process of only having 2 bans, was created from your mind. As I mentioned before. if we had a stage list of. 9 starters the Stage striking. RPS, Winner Strikes 2 - Loser Strikes 3, Winner Picks from remaining 4. So the Loser of the RPS could still ban all Triplats if they really didn't want to play them, (BF, Fountain, Y,Story) and the winner gets to pick the stage.
 

infomon

Smash Scientist
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Messages
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Location
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If the game had 10 different triplats then obviously triplats are an important and fundamental part of the game, and the idea of getting to ban them all as one, is ridiculous. It's not our job to manipulate character-balance and "FD as starter" is proof that we'd be doing an awful job of it anyway.

Edit: That being said, I'm sympathetic to it in Smash4 when we had so few legal stages anyway, that we had to take more explicit control, because we're already viewing such a biased subset of what the game was supposed to be. But now that we have easily 20+ perfectly fair stages, we can consider our full legal list as representative of the whole game, so "grouping" things makes less sense (unless it's purely to help tournaments run on time).
 
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Frihetsanka

Smash Champion
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PS. [The intention was hazards mixed, its lazyness that you guys don't wanna deal with less then 5 seconds of menu backtracking]
You're either ignorant on the issue or attacking a strawman. Anyway, this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsAoOqhWsAAX7cQ.jpg:large

If the game had 10 different triplats then obviously triplats are an important and fundamental part of the game, and the idea of getting to ban them all as one, is ridiculous.
Read the part about Dream Land etc:
There was a problem fetching the tweet

But now that we have easily 20+ perfectly fair stages,[...]
We really don't.
 

infomon

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Messages
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Yes, his objective is to balance the characters by making each stage choice "different enough" and reasoning about the counterpick meta. And as much as I like the intention, I think it's arbitrary and bending the game to our own will.

That a type of layout is so widely represented in the game just tells me that you better be good at that layout if you want to say you're good at the game. Those stages are all in there deliberately. If most stages in the game had a trampoline, then get good at trampolines.


We've got a game with a bunch of stages. What does it mean to be better than someone else? The most unbiased generic way I can think, is to say that the better player is better across more of those stages.

So the game's balance -- as given to us by the stages that it has and in the amounts that it has -- isn't something for us to dabble with based around our own subjective ideas of what's good for characters or others. If you get counterpicked to a triplat, then you have every ability to pick a character who can perform well on triplats as your opponent.

Just my way of looking at things.
 

PoptartLord

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Mar 13, 2015
Messages
54
I was thinking, could a day 1 patch change the way hazards off works?
While possible, it's highly unlikely. Smash 4 was the only patchable game so there's not a lot of history to go by. The only stage patch I remember is when they fixed Wuhu Island, and even with that no design was changed. EDIT: As per ParanoidDrone they also touched up Lylat's ledges. From a development standpoint the designs would be finalized first and then it's the testing -> fine tuning loop until release. The demos all looked pretty close to a final state so I'm heavily leaning towards design decisions being locked in already. Any future patch could theoretically change up how a hazardless variant works but I'd be pretty surprised if it happens.

What do you do with those other stages? Make them counterpicks, that's all you can do.
Let me fix that for you: "What do you do with those other stages? Throw them away, that's all the community does". History is pretty clear about that.
What you do is not split the list in the first place, like what your listed alternative methods can accomplish. This split is the source from which the "throw them away" mentality sprouts. If there's too many viable stages to strike down to 1 without taking too long (and it does, 13 is about the highest number that's feasible) then the solution is either to strike faster (as in more than one by one) or don't strike down to 1. Here, I'll even create another method for your list on the fly - I call it "StrikeMorphing". Start with a list of whatever size, each player strikes 3 stages [alternating one by one], then each player chooses a stage for Stage Morph. RPS winner has their pick of first or second transformation but has to strike first. Stage selection first then character selection. Will it work? Theoretically! And also maybe not! The viability of Stage Morph is a complete unknown until the game is in our hands and tested.
The point is, there is no perfect solution. My suggestion is to go with the one with the most tolerable side effects. Starter/Counterpick leads to the removal of all counterpick stages. Random selection means you cannot dictate the exact stage beforehand, however all outcomes are viable in their own right. And so on.

History has shown it doesn't actually solve the problem it's meant to solve
Starter/CP does solve the problem it’s meant to solve. That problem is finding a good way to select a stage for game 1, and starter/CP is excellent at enabling that. The problem also has not gone away
Alright, I'll clarify what I meant. So the problem is that since characters were already locked in it was impossible to react to the stage selection. The "solution" was to split the list so that the stage pool shouldn't be that bad for most characters (theoretically, at least....), yet still keep the rest of the stages available for play in games 2+ (where stages being chosen first means character decisions can be reactionary to the stage). What happened is 1) the starter stages still affected matchups to a non-trivial degree, and 2) the non-starter stages were removed entirely. So the starter/counterpick method failed to minimize stage selection favoring one character over another and it failed to keep all viable stages in play. That's what I mean by "it doesn't actually solve the problem it's meant to solve".
Further, the root of the problem is the fear of losing at the stage select screen because the character you picked isn't the best there. Ultimate does the stage selection first, meaning you can choose your character based on the stage, meaning you'll never lose because of "being on a stage bad for my character" unless you specifically choose a bad character for that stage. That is why the original problem no longer exists.

It's not our job to manipulate character-balance and "FD as starter" is proof that we'd be doing an awful job of it anyway.
Bolded for emphasis. Finally, somebody else willing to say how polarizing FD is!
 
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ParanoidDrone

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While possible, it's highly unlikely. Smash 4 was the only patchable game so there's not a lot of history to go by. The only stage patch I remember is when they fixed Wuhu Island, and even with that no design was changed. From a development standpoint the designs would be finalized first and then it's the testing -> fine tuning loop until release. The demos all looked pretty close to a final state so I'm heavily leaning towards design decisions being locked in already. Any future patch could theoretically change up how a hazardless variant works but I'd be pretty surprised if it happens.
They patched Lylat to make the lips smoother for recovery instead of being Brawl-FD style where you bonk your head unless you sweetspot it perfectly.
 

Munomario777

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We were talking about morphing a bit in the public PGStats discord last night, and I decided to make a graph featuring some stages' transformation times!

1543505900951.png


Interesting to line these stages up. One potential use is finding a Stage Morph time that cuts off "bad transformations" for stages, such as hazardless TC's City portion which has offstage platforms. If the stage morphs every 40 seconds, the City portion will never occur.
 
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WritersBlah

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Someone mentioned a while back that hazardless Big Blue still has the track but there was no video. Well, I found a video. https://streamable.com/9bt77
Huh, that's really interesting. Trying to figure out this stage from a legality perspective, the Falcon Flyer is basically a slightly tilting FD with a slightly raised third. The road below being so fast would likely discourage any kind of potential camping, though I guess multijump characters might be able to stall between the flyer and the road. I would personally lean on the side of banned, since the Falcon Flyer itself doesn't really contribute anything that unique anyway, but I'm not so adamant about this position that I'm unwilling to have my mind changed.
 

ParanoidDrone

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Huh, that's really interesting. Trying to figure out this stage from a legality perspective, the Falcon Flyer is basically a slightly tilting FD with a slightly raised third. The road below being so fast would likely discourage any kind of potential camping, though I guess multijump characters might be able to stall between the flyer and the road. I would personally lean on the side of banned, since the Falcon Flyer itself doesn't really contribute anything that unique anyway, but I'm not so adamant about this position that I'm unwilling to have my mind changed.
I wouldn't mind playing on it, personally. The road being so fast means that despite the road technically being a solid barrier instead of the usual void, getting spiked is still probably going to be instant death unless techs end up holding you in place or something ridiculous like that. So definitely not campable, like you said. Stalling with someone like Jigglypuff or Peach would be a concern, but it's also possible that the lack of invincibility on regrab and hard regrab limit would neuter the strategy enough to make it a nonissue. It's really hard to judge.
 

Luigifan18

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We were talking about morphing a bit in the public PGStats discord last night, and I decided to make a graph featuring some stages' transformation times!

View attachment 180563

Interesting to line these stages up. One potential use is finding a Stage Morph time that cuts off "bad transformations" for stages, such as hazardless TC's City portion which has offstage platforms. If the stage morphs every 40 seconds, the City portion will never occur.
Do we know this to be the case? Transforming and moving stages could just “freeze” when morphed away from, then pick up right where they left off on their “schedule” upon morphing back.
 

Untouch

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I don't actually think the road is the issue with Big Blue, it's how the stage tilts, seems like it'd kinda be a mess to recover on.
 

infomon

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Best case: It gets patched day-1.

Second-best case: The behaviour of the bottom as either a solid or thin platform is deterministic and based on spacing. In which case it can look funny but there's no actual problem.

Worst case: It's random. Like say 50% solid 50% thin. In this case, still, is there any problem? You can reason about uncertainty. Don't go for that risky off-the-bottom kill if your only reward is that 50% of the time they will bounce off the bottom and that's only if they miss the tech.

So what would be the actual reason to ban it?
 

Frihetsanka

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People really hate Lylat, huh? I'm still willing to give it a chance, it seems better than many of the other potential stages, and that bug might be rare or get patched anyway.
 

slimjim

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Well, because we apparently like to use this as an arguing point, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsAoOqhWsAAX7cQ.jpg:large

Just read it with "going through the stage from the bottom creating a lost game which should have been won", rather than "hazards creating the uncomfortable situation of having to reset". It's not a direct parallel, but it's close enough.

I actually don't care whether it gets banned or not. I'm fine with the stage. I just want to make it clear there's an issue, so that we have more information from which to make a proper decision.
 

Frihetsanka

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Well, because we apparently like to use this as an arguing point, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DsAoOqhWsAAX7cQ.jpg:large

Just read it with "going through the stage from the bottom creating a lost game which should have been won", rather than "hazards creating the uncomfortable situation of having to reset". It's not a direct parallel, but it's close enough.
True, although I think the risk is significantly lower, and it's fairly likely that bug will be fixed eventually.

Save Lylat.
 

Akiak

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Given what we know, this is my proposed ruleset atm:

Hazards universally off. At least given what we know now, the only stages we'd gain are Smashville (hazards on) and T&C. Of course FoD and Yoshi's might get patched but there's no guarantee. If you want to add H+ SV and T&C as counterpicks, go ahead. Having all 5 starters hazardless makes it harder to make mistakes.

Starters: BF, FD, PS2, Smashville, Unova

Counterpicks: Yoshi's Island (Brawl), Kalos, Frigate, WarioWare, Lylat

Borderline stages: Yoshi's Story, Mushroom Kingdom U, Castle Siege, the sharkable stages*

*I think having only one sharkable stage is probably the best option as it guarantees that players can avoid it if they want to. I personally prefer Prism for its uniqueness (Skyloft is close to BF and Halberd is close to SV/YIB).

My reasoning for having Unova alongside PS2 in starters are as follows:
1) It's noticeably different to PS2. Just look at the two stages side-by side. The platforms are considerably larger and reach almost all the way to the ledge. It has walls. It's also noticeably smaller than PS2, both in terms of the main ground and the blastzones (except the vertical one is higher).

2) The PS2/Unova layout is one of the most liked and least polarising layouts out there, so having more than one doesn't bring up the same problems as, say, having multiple tri-plats.

3) There aren't suitable alternatives for 5th starter. Lylat has jank. Kalos plays closely to FD with a different edge game.

4) It'll promote variety. There's a good chance that the vast majority (say 40%) of game 1 matches will be played on PS2. Throwing in Unova splits that between the two stages, which already solves the potential problem of visual fatigue which plagued Smash 4. It might also lead to increased playtime on other stages, in those scenarios where the two players can't agree on one or the other and have no choice but to strike.

5) If Unova isn't included in the starters, it's likely banned. I just don't see it working as a CP, it's too neutral and non-polarising (and flat and symmetrical etc). So not having Unova in starters automatically means one less stage in the list.



Counterpicking Process

If the total amount of stages is 13-15, use p3p1. Loser picks 3 stages, winner picks stage to play on. No DSR.

If the total amount is lower, then it might be preferable to use 3-2-1. Loser picks 3 stages, winner bans 1, loser picks. Modified DSR might also be necessary, since the winner only gets one ban. However I personally would still try and use p3p1 as long as there's, say, 11 or more stages.

Grouping

For the sake of the CP process, grouping a stage with another is equivalent to removing it. The loser simply can't nominate more than one stage of any particular group.

This means we can add stages such as Wily's (alongside FD) and PS1 (alongside PS2) at no extra cost. Wether YS, Unova and YIB should be grouped with BF, PS2 and SV is debatable.

Of course, for game one all of the starters need to be unique and none of the echoes are available.


Now, since there are issues with starter-counterpick which PoptartLord PoptartLord did bring up...

To encourage usage of the CP stages, we could add a clause that, of the three stages the loser picks, at least one has to be a CP stage. I don't think this brings up any significant issues.
 
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