Discussion of Stage Legality in Smash Bros. Ultimate

[dav3yb]

I still don't see "Stage Sharking" to be any real issue. I never saw anything so degenerate in Smash 4 that would constitute any bans, and I'd love for someone to demonstrate it in a real match before that reason is deemed valid at all.

 

[ExceptionalBeasts]

You want to experiment for your locals/online tournaments? Sure, go ahead! I think, in the end, top level TOs will value quality over quantity and problematic stages will end up banned.

When I say the reaction by stage-conservatives is "nuh-uh", this is what I mean. Quality over quantity is a false dichotomy (especially in this game that looks to be the most well-balanced of any official Smash game). Examples like the Isabelle wall infinite (which wasn't linked to) are degenerate, I'm not arguing that, but this is a pre-release build of an unfinished game, and just because one player did something degenerate with one character one time before release doesn't mean we should ban the stage. If it's a consistent issue, then yes, certainly ban it. For a lot of these stages we have no Ultimate evidence of degenerate play (and no, pre-Ultimate evidence doesn't count because physics and whatnot change). You're using an appeal to authority based on a false dichotomy. This isn't even mentioning the circular reasoning of "we need a low number of stages because of the starter/CP system" and "we need the starter/CP system because it is the only one that limits the stage number".

I also agree with TheYungLink . Competitive Smash is not looked at fondly by other competitive fighting game players or casual Smash players. Turning it into a science with no variables is how we end up with a metagame with only a handful of characters worth playing, which is a great way to turn casuals off from getting involved and ultimately letting the meta stagnate even more. As for other FGC types, banning 90% of the stage roster in order to play competitive is a great way to convince them this game is a children's party game we take too seriously by gutting most of the game's content. I know I won't be the first person to mention that Tekken has a variety of stages that are more than just backgrounds (i.e. affect matchups and whatnot) and not only are they all legal, but selected randomly...

 

[dav3yb]

You want to experiment for your locals/online tournaments? Sure, go ahead! I think, in the end, top level TOs will value quality over quantity and problematic stages will end up banned.

Almost none of this is going to matter much early on, Nintendo is going to patch things, and DLC will be released. People are going to learn **** after 5 years that no one had any idea of early on and that is going to change things. Let the meta develop naturally instead of trying to steer it so hard to what we already have.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I still don't see "Stage Sharking" to be any real issue. I never saw anything so degenerate in Smash 4 that would constitute any bans, and I'd love for someone to demonstrate it in a real match before that reason is deemed valid at all.

It seems that Skyloft is going to be legal on Xanado, so maybe we'll see it tested there (if it's not tested before then).

This isn't even mentioning the circular reasoning of "we need a low number of stages because of the starter/CP system" and "we need the starter/CP system because it is the only one that limits the stage number".

I've never made that argument.

Competitive Smash is not looked at fondly by other competitive fighting game players or casual Smash players.

I care more about what Rivals of Aether players and Slap Stick players think about Smash than what Tekken players or casual Smash players who lack insight into how competitive Smash works (I've seen too many casual players argue that items should be one so yeah...). If our choices are between: X, a competitive ruleset that maximizes the elements that makes the game competitive or Y, a ruleset that makes casual Smash fans happy, I'd argue we should go for X. Trying to adjust the ruleset to make casual viewers happy risks harming the game's competitive integrity.

 

[Zekersaurus]

So.

I wanted to discuss stage legality, and I see it already started. I have seen several comments and posts in here and on twitter suggesting we move away from stage striking to a new system, but I do not see this as necessary given what we are likely to end up with.

First off, let's get the stages that are clearly not going to be legal regardless if they are hazard'd or hazardless out of the way:

Spoiler: Banned

Big Battlefield
Great Plateau Tower
Moray Towers
Peach’s Castle
Mushroom Kingdom
Princess Peach’s Castle
Mushroom Kingdom II
Luigi’s Mansion
Mushroomy Kingdom
Figure-8 Circuit
Mario Bros.
3D Land
Golden Plains
Paper Mario
Mario Galaxy
Mario Circuit
Super Happy Tree
Yoshi’s Island Melee
Kongo Jungle
Jungle Japes
75 M
Hyrule Castle
Great Bay
Temple
Bridge of Eldin
Pirate Ship
Gerudo Valley
Spirit Train
Brinstar Depths
Norfair
Dream Land GB
The Great Cave Offensive
Corneria
Venom
Saffron City
Spear Pillar
Big Blue
Port Town Aero Dive
Mute City SNES
Onett
Fourside
New Pork City
Magicant
Summit
Coliseum
Flat Zone X
Skyworld
Reset Bomb Forest
Palutena’s Temple
Distant Planet
Garden of Hope
Tortimer Island
Boxing Ring
Wii Fit Studio
Guar Plains
Shadow Moses Island
Green Hill Zone
Windy Hill Zone
Pac-Land
Suzaku Castle
Hanebow
Balloon Fight
Living Room
Find Mii
Tomodachi Life
Wrecking Crew
Pilotwings

It should go without saying that stages with long standing walk offs, with hazards that attack or damage players, with less than mild RNG, that promote timeouts and stalling, that have unreasonably low, shallow, narrow or massive blast zones, with walls or ceilings that act as cave-of-life or pseudo-cave-of-life areas, that scroll or that have permanent water do not have a place in competitive play. If you have a contention about a specific stage listed, that is fine. It is more or less the process I am partaking that is important.

That is 67 stages out of the way, leaving 36 in total. I have separated them into Borderline and Legal Worthy. Stages with an asterisk denote stages that would be used as hazardless only. The borderline stages are stages that could be legal if certain conditions were met, i.e. Wuhu Island's blast zone and size was adjusted from Smash Bros. Wii U. Many of them were previously banned prior to Ultimate. Legal worthy are the very obvious shoe-ins.

Spoiler: Borderline

New Donk City Hall*
Dracula’s Castle*
Delfino Plaza
Mushroom Kingdom U*
Super Mario Maker*
Kongo Falls*
Green Greens*
Gamer*
Duck Hunt
Pictochat*
Wuhu Island

Spoiler: Legal Worthy

Battlefield
Final Destination
Rainbow Cruise*
Yoshi’s Story
Yoshi’s Island (Brawl)
Skyloft*
Brinstar*
Frigate Orpheon*
Dreamland
Fountain of Dreams
Halberd*
Lylat Cruise
Pokemon Stadium*
Pokemon Stadium 2*
Unova Pokemon League*
Prism Tower
Kalos Pokemon League*
Castle Siege*
Arena Ferox*
WarioWare, Inc.*
Smashville
Town & City
Wily Castle*
Midgar*
Umbra Clock Tower*

Now that we have some context on what we're working with here, I will start by discussing the starter list.

The whole point of a starter list is to ensure that game one is played on the stage that provides the fairest conditions possible for both players, assuming the players struck optimally. With this in mind, there are some important considerations:

1. Regardless of how large or small the total stage list is, the starter list must be kept relatively small, preferably within a range of 5-9 stages. There are a few important reasons for this:

- Time. Since the first stage must be struck to, this requires both players to go through each stage in a list. The larger the starter list, the longer it will take to go through each stage, and tournaments need to be kept expedient. It also takes longer if players have to consult a list to remember what stages need to be struck or have to ask someone what stages are in the list.

- Human beings are not good multitaskers. Even in situations where one appears to be multitasking, it is instead moving the direction of focus from one object or activity to another in quick succession. This is because we can only process or consider so many things at any one given time. We are also not good at retaining many parts of information within our working memory. The average person can only retain 7 digits at a time. In order for a player to properly prioritize which stages to strike and in which order, they need to compare multiple stages at the same time. This becomes exponentially harder to do the larger the list becomes, particularly if you have to consult a list to remember all of the options available to strike from rather than the 5 or 7 you are used to. If you go past 9, it starts to become excessive, based off of my experience organizing tournaments.

- The larger the starter list becomes, the more likely it is that the stage list will experience what I would call stage redundancy. This is where stages that are similar to each other, such as Battlefield and Dreamland, or hazardless Smashville and hazardless Halberd, occupy the same list. This leads me to my next point.

2. The starter list must be kept diverse, and unique. This is achieved by including a variety of stage layouts with little overlap in qualities. This is to ensure that no one type or sub-type of character has more of an advantage while striking due to an overlap in options. We do not want the starter list to favour zoners over grapplers, or grapplers over rush down characters, for example, more than is necessary.

3. No extremes. The starter list must consist of traits that mildly to moderately favour groups of characters, but no more than that. This is again to achieve point 2. The reason we use Battlefield and not Dreamland in the starter list in Wii U is because the high ceiling counterbalances the elevation the platforms provide, where Dreamland fails to do this. If we used Dreamland over Battlefield, it would favour characters playing on a tri-plat game one differently, and this would make it harder to achieve a fairer game one.

4. The starter list must consist of symmetrical layouts. The reason for this is because players will have different advantages on stages like hazardless Castle Siege or Arena Ferox based on where they spawn. This may seem like a small point, but it stays consistent with the purpose of the starter list.

With all these conditions in mind, given the 36 stages available to us, what would an ideal starter list look like? If we want to pick stages that are unique to each other, with qualities that are not extreme like really large or really small blast zones, and that are symmetrical, here is what we come up with:


With Hazards Toggled

1. Final Destination
2. Yoshi's Island Brawl*
3. Pokemon Stadium/Pokemon Stadium 2*
4. Battlefield
5. WarioWare Inc.*
6. Smashville/Town & City*
7. Lylat Cruise*/Town & City*

With Hazards Off

1. Final Destination
2. Smashville*
3. Pokemon Stadium/Pokemon Stadium2*
4. Battlefield
5. WarioWare Inc.*
6. Lylat Cruise*
7. Town & City*

What we wind up with is a good place to start. I think it is important to consider two lists because while it seems right now that hazards cannot be toggled on the stage select screen, there is a very strong possibility it could be in the game on launch or patched in later. The first five stages are the same in both lists, following a flat, si-plat, di-plat, tri-plat, quad-plat format. The only thing that changes is that if we cannot toggle hazards and organizers choose to stick to a hazardless ruleset, we replace Yoshi's Island Brawl with hazardless Smashville.

Now to discuss the counter pick list.

While it is important to have a relatively conservative starter list, I think the best approach in the beginning to counter picks is to be very liberal and include as many as seem reasonable and then ban them as time goes on, with the exception that we do not saturate the list with redundant stages like mentioned earlier. There is a chance that Battlefield, Dreamland, Yoshi's Story, Fountain of Dreams and Hazardless Midgar are going to have differentiating factors that make them unique, but including most of them is unhealthy for competitive play. We will have to suffer and pick which to get rid of, which will be easier to discern once we know about their dimensions and other details when the game is out. The same goes for hazardless Pokemon Stadium 1 and 2, et cetera. This becomes especially important when you consider that there are more tri-plat and flat stage layouts than any other variant stage type available.

Alternatively, you could create groupings within the counter pick list for bans. Instead of banning Yoshi's Story, you would ban tri-plats and that would eliminate all 4-5 options. However, this is likely a bad choice because each stage will have its own set of intricacies (certain characters unable to full hop on bottom platforms, sliding moves like Kirby's down B sliding off the side of Yoshi's Story, etc.,) and this means that to stay competitive you would have to play and learn on all 4-5. This makes playing the game more of a burden for the mere benefit of including more eye candy and minimal variety.

If you remove the excess and assume that any stage in the Borderline list is likely non-viable, a counter pick list may look like this:

1. Rainbow Cruise*
2. Yoshi's Story/Dreamland/Fountain of Dreams
3. Skyloft*
4. Brinstar*
5. Frigate Orpheon*
6. Halberd*
7. Prism Tower*
8. Kalos Pokemon League*
9. Castle Siege*
10. Arena Ferox*

That brings the total down to 17-18 stages. While relatively small compared to the 103 we were blessed with, it is massive compared to the mere 6 we were left with in Wii U.

I also think we should seriously test stages with walls in competitive play. By walls I mean things like the temporary walls in transformation stages (e.g. Frigate and Delfino), the small wall on RC, or the little grooves on Brinstar and Dracula's castle, that may or may not have wall-like properties. When Brawl's stage selection was at it's most liberal, there quite a few walled stages to choose from and wall infinites were pretty prevalent. I would go so far as to even say that it drastically changed certain matchups and even character viability (as did other stages, really).

Now we can learn from past mistakes, and come up with logical conclusions, like putting flat zone or Temple on the ban list, but once we get to that "boarder line" of legality, we should seriously consider just testing things out over making a decision based on theory. We can learn a lot from our history with past installments of smash, but they are each a unique game. An issue for one smash game may not be an issue for the next.

Along those lines, I was initially against large or obstructive stages like Green Greens and Duck Hunt, because of camping. I wonder if Ultimates increase in speed will help weaken camping a bit.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I didn't want to lose track of an important aspect of this discussion, so I made a thread dedicated solely to the idea that hazards "should" be OFF for the entirety of a tournament regardless of whether a hazards-enabled stage is competitively viable: https://smashboards.com/threads/the-great-stage-debate-hazards-off-entire-tournament.463564/

I feel it warrants its own discussion. TOs want tournaments to run smoothly, and that results in rules that focus on simplicity over keeping all options open.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I also think we should seriously test stages with walls in competitive play. By walls I mean things like the temporary walls in transformation stages (e.g. Frigate and Delfino), the small wall on RC, or the little grooves on Brinstar and Dracula's castle, that may or may not have wall-like properties. When Brawl's stage selection was at it's most liberal, there quite a few walled stages to choose from and wall infinites were pretty prevalent. I would go so far as to even say that it drastically changed certain matchups and even character viability (as did other stages, really).

Now we can learn from past mistakes, and come up with logical conclusions, like putting flat zone or Temple on the ban list, but once we get to that "boarder line" of legality, we should seriously consider just testing things out over making a decision based on theory. We can learn a lot from our history with past installments of smash, but they are each a unique game. An issue for one smash game may not be an issue for the next.

Along those lines, I was initially against large or obstructive stages like Green Greens and Duck Hunt, because of camping. I wonder if Ultimates increase in speed will help weaken camping a bit.

For the record, I can pretty categorically state there's nothing on Brinstar that would act like a wall.

 

[MaestroDavros]

As for other FGC types, banning 90% of the stage roster in order to play competitive is a great way to convince them this game is a children's party game we take too seriously by gutting most of the game's content. I know I won't be the first person to mention that Tekken has a variety of stages that are more than just backgrounds (i.e. affect matchups and whatnot) and not only are they all legal, but selected randomly...

I'm surprised that no one has said "but, Smash and Tekken aren't the same thing" yet. But since I want to defend the presented point, I'll act like it has.

Well no **** Smash and Tekken are 2 different types of fighting games, but that's also not the point that stage liberals are trying to make. Maybe I don't speak for everyone, but speaking for myself at least the point is not to merely compare 2 different games, but to point out how in Tekken, they are willing to play on stages with hazards (although before I go on I am in support of using the hazard toggle for Ultimate). AFAIC they don't whine and cry about unfairness or complain about how "janky" something is. To them the game is the game, and even if money is on the line the only thing to blame for losing is the player themselves. Not physics, not an OP fighter, not a stage that's unfitting to a particular fighter, the player. That's the biggest difference between Smash and Tekken: not mechanics but the level of maturity in the competitive scene.

Actually the mere fact that the community at large is unwilling to actually test and experiment with different ideas for stage selection is a testament to this issue. Simply adapting what was done in the prior game instead of looking at what could be done for this one is unhealthy, and could lead to stagnation. Who knows, maybe conservative leaning Smashers are right, and a small stage with the tried and true starter/counterpick system is what will work the best, but the fact we're potentially giving up on testing anything outside of the norm before the game even comes out is disheartening.

 

[WritersBlah]

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the current stage situation for Ultimate. Despite literal dozens of potential legal stages, there has been a massive push for a stagelist limited to 9 or 13 stages. There are some major hurdles currently preventing a larger stagelist from acceptance in the views of the public, the biggest offenders being the difficulty and time sink of choosing a stage from such a large list, as well as the prevalence of clone stages potentially favoring specific stage layouts. And who could blame them? If each set takes 5 minutes to actually start, only for you to play 3 games on Battlefield, then people will be understandably upset.

And yet, it seems wrong to let the potential that Sakurai has given us in this massive stage roster to go to waste. It is with these limitations in mind that I, with the help of some likeminded friends, put together this!

The main idea here was coming up with sets of different stage setups, each adhering to the usual balance and ease of striking a nine-stage starter list. This also ensures that different matchups have access to stage pools that may be more balanced than a single starter pool may offer traditionally. It also exhibits an environment that treats all stages as equal, as outside of three clone stages, no stage is unavailable for play in game 1, without giving either opponent a massive selection of stages that benefit them exclusively.

We're proud of what we have, but there may be a few areas for improvement. We tried to balance the three lists in as many ways as we could, but different arrangements of the stages may be possible. We went with three stages listed for a counterpick for now, but depending on how strong it proves, that number could be increased. If anyone has any feelings about these things, I'd be really interested to hear about it!

 

[Munomario777]

I'm not a fan of list striking, since it introduces unnecessary ambiguity to the process. Like, using that example, let's say my character excels on WarioWare due to its small size, but does terribly on Kalos and Ferox due to their largeness. When I'm deciding to make my list ban, it's not clear which option would be most beneficial overall.

This adds a strategic element, sure, but the purpose of striking is not to itself be a mindgame- and strategy-based gamble – it's to find the most neutral-ish stage for the matchup. Striking serves to facilitate Smash Bros as a test of skill. With that in mind, striking swaths of stages at once isn't a desirable system unless the stages are 100.00% identical, such as Battlefield / Omega Forms.

(Additionally, 7-stage striking is flawed.)



This is why I'm in favor of a similar-ish system, but with a key difference: the starter list used is determined by an outside factor (such as which round in a tournament you're playing) instead of by striking.

 

[WritersBlah]

I'm not a fan of list striking, since it introduces unnecessary ambiguity to the process. Like, using that example, let's say my character excels on WarioWare due to its small size, but does terribly on Kalos and Ferox due to their largeness. When I'm deciding to make my list ban, it's not clear which option would be most beneficial overall.

This adds a strategic element, sure, but the purpose of striking is not to itself be a mindgame- and strategy-based gamble – it's to find the most neutral-ish stage for the matchup. Striking serves to facilitate Smash Bros as a test of skill. With that in mind, striking swaths of stages at once isn't a desirable system unless the stages are 100.00% identical, such as Battlefield / Omega Forms.

Well firstly, as I originally mentioned, the actual organization of the stages isn't set in stone by that image, but the underlying logic behind the organization was to choose a selection of stages that do not too heavily favor a single playstyle (which is why all the lists have a mixture of small and larger stages) and could stand on their own as a relatively balanced starter list. The interest in banning a list is in cutting out the list with the worst stage(s) for your character, to hopefully land on something more neutral, as stage striking currently does. Making any one list cater to a specific style would inherently keep the stage pool from being acceptable game 1 options.

This is why I'm in favor of a similar-ish system, but with a key difference: the starter list used is determined by an outside factor (such as which round in a tournament you're playing) instead of by striking.

I would think that if players inherently have a specific stage bias (which they do), leaving the pool of stages they end up on for a given match up to chance would be unappealing. Players want control over the exact stage they end up on, but if a player's favorite stage is Brinstar and the TO decides to give a list that doesn't include Brinstar in it, then the player was effectively screwed over by RNG, versus a striking system where they would always at least have a controllable chance to end up on Brinstar.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

(Additionally, 7-stage striking is flawed.)

I just want to point out that that image has three lists of 9 stages. I don't believe there is significant support for 7 starters though the old Brawl unity rules did use a 2-3-1 order which is arguably balanced if you wanted to go that way.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I'm irritated that we think 1-2-2-2-1 striking is less of a burden than enabling hazards for specific stage picks.

 

[dav3yb]

I'm irritated that we think 1-2-2-2-1 striking is less of a burden than enabling hazards for specific stage picks.

I'm irritated that people still think striking is a good system.

 

[Munomario777]

oh derp re: Amazing Ampharos



WritersBlah

Ultimately you're still gonna have situations like what I described – I reckon it's kinda unavoidable with this many stages, characters, etc available in the game. Striking more than one stage at a time is gonna create situations where players can't ban the stages they don't want to play on while leaving the ones they do want to play on, which is pretty much the goal of striking.



re: my own system of choice, bias towards certain characters / players is always gonna be present in a starter/CP system. If your favorite stage is Brinstar, here's what happens under the current system, and under VSL (my proposal):
- Current system: Tough luck, Brinstar is a counterpick and not available in game 1.
- VSL: You get to play on Brinstar a decent chunk of the time because every stage is sometimes a starter.

Over the course of a whole tournament, each stage gets action as a starter, so imbalances caused by the variable lists is balanced out on a large scale. It's also not decided by RNG or the TO's discretion, but by the round of the tournament you're on (detailed in the pastebin).



dav3yb Striking is a good system for a 5- or 9-stage list – the issues come when certain stages have to be relegated to CPs, or etc. If you have five or nine stages and want to find the one both players can best agree on, striking is a balanced method that's backed up by years of use over multiple Smash games.

 

[Frihetsanka]

I'm irritated that people still think striking is a good system.

Why do you think it's not?

I'm irritated that we think 1-2-2-2-1 striking is less of a burden than enabling hazards for specific stage picks.

I don't think 1-2-2-2-1 striking would be much of an issue assuming players pick characters before stage, people will likely learn to strike fairly quickly.

The main issue with enabling hazards for specific stages is that the risks of a mistake are too great.

 

[J0eyboi]

I'm not a fan of list striking, since it introduces unnecessary ambiguity to the process. Like, using that example, let's say my character excels on WarioWare due to its small size, but does terribly on Kalos and Ferox due to their largeness. When I'm deciding to make my list ban, it's not clear which option would be most beneficial overall.

I don't think that's very ambiguous or metagamey; no more than striking already is, anyway. It's not that hard to figure out and subsequently strike the list for which your opponent would get the highest number of meaningful bans over you on (a meaningful ban being any ban you don't have to spend on a stage that clearly benefits your opponent over you).

This adds a strategic element, sure, but the purpose of striking is not to itself be a mindgame- and strategy-based gamble – it's to find the most neutral-ish stage for the matchup.

If that's the point of striking, your suggested system is just as bad as WritersBlah's, if not worse. If we assume that there is exactly one legal stage that is the most neutral for a given matchup, your system makes it so the chance of that stage being available for a given set is 1/x, where x is the number of lists, which is more or less the same as WritersBlah's. Yours is just random instead of player-controlled.

As for WritersBlah's system:

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the current stage situation for Ultimate. Despite literal dozens of potential legal stages, there has been a massive push for a stagelist limited to 9 or 13 stages. There are some major hurdles currently preventing a larger stagelist from acceptance in the views of the public, the biggest offenders being the difficulty and time sink of choosing a stage from such a large list, as well as the prevalence of clone stages potentially favoring specific stage layouts. And who could blame them? If each set takes 5 minutes to actually start, only for you to play 3 games on Battlefield, then people will be understandably upset.

And yet, it seems wrong to let the potential that Sakurai has given us in this massive stage roster to go to waste. It is with these limitations in mind that I, with the help of some likeminded friends, put together this!

View attachment 177323

The main idea here was coming up with sets of different stage setups, each adhering to the usual balance and ease of striking a nine-stage starter list. This also ensures that different matchups have access to stage pools that may be more balanced than a single starter pool may offer traditionally. It also exhibits an environment that treats all stages as equal, as outside of three clone stages, no stage is unavailable for play in game 1, without giving either opponent a massive selection of stages that benefit them exclusively.

We're proud of what we have, but there may be a few areas for improvement. We tried to balance the three lists in as many ways as we could, but different arrangements of the stages may be possible. We went with three stages listed for a counterpick for now, but depending on how strong it proves, that number could be increased. If anyone has any feelings about these things, I'd be really interested to hear about it!

The main issue I see with this system is that it's really rigid; in other words, it's going to be a huge pain in the ass to reconfigure when stages inevitably get banned. Not helping matters is that for each list to be wholly unique, the number of legal stages has to be 15, 25, 27, 35, or 45 (ideally 25 or 45); any other number of legal stages would require some stages to be on multiple lists.

That said, so long as lists can be decided on and reworked as bans inevitably happen, it seems fine. I just think it might be an issue to get TO's to agree on what the lists should look like and/or remake them every time a stage is banned.

Regarding the lists you proposed, I think 5 lists of 5 would be better than 3 lists of 9. I don't think it's necessary to have a clone of FD, BF, and PS in every list, either. Kalos isn't a very good PS clone anyway.

 

[Zekersaurus]

For the record, I can pretty categorically state there's nothing on Brinstar that would act like a wall.

Are you sure? You know what I'm referring to, right? Those little gooie things that hold the stage together. They don't break with hazards off. I'm not talking about an honest to goodness wall. I'm talking about grooves or ridges that could stop a character from sliding back and potentially lead to longer combos or infinite. Have you played on the hazardless version of this stage or seen gameplay of it?

 

[dav3yb]

Why do you think it's not?

I could see it mattering more in a game like Melee, where the blast zones were actually quite different from stage to stage, but it seems like the blast zones in a lot of stages are pretty much identical for smash 4, with only minor variations from stage to stage. Although we don't completely have an idea of how they'll be in Ultimate, I feel like the striking actually doesn't accomplish what it's really trying to anymore. Outside of smashville when the platform is at it's outer extremes, I can't say I've witnessed just a ton of match-up variance from stage to stage. So to me the striking process is just time consuming and somewhat arbitrary.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Are you sure? You know what I'm referring to, right? Those little gooie things that hold the stage together. They don't break with hazards off. I'm not talking about an honest to goodness wall. I'm talking about grooves or ridges that could stop a character from sliding back and potentially lead to longer combos or infinite. Have you played on the hazardless version of this stage or seen gameplay of it?

The way you grouped it with Dracula's Castle made me think you had an actual physical wall in mind. Apologies.

 

[Frihetsanka]

Although we don't completely have an idea of how they'll be in Ultimate, I feel like the striking actually doesn't accomplish what it's really trying to anymore. Outside of smashville when the platform is at it's outer extremes, I can't say I've witnessed just a ton of match-up variance from stage to stage. So to me the striking process is just time consuming and somewhat arbitrary.

The point of game 1 striking is to give both players a roughtly equal chance to play at a stage that is relatively neutral for the matchup. In many cases, this is Smashville, so players end up in Smashville, though sometimes it's Battlefield, Town & City, or even Final Destination. As such, striking does fill a role, and always starting at Smashville would skew the balance in the favor of characters that are good on Smashville (such as Sheik or Ness).

It's not really that time consuming anyway.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I'd much rather see a system along these lines: the stage selection is random, but each player is given one strike-and-reroll. That way, you can avoid that one stage that is absolutely terrible for your main. Otherwise, you have to decide how much risk you're willing to take on with regard to rerolling a stage you're simply not fond of. As long as fighter selection happened after stage selection, I don't see how this would be a problem at all. It's a random element that is not devastating at all (particularly if the stage pool is a sane list to begin with).

Then they proceed with traditional counter picks.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I'd much rather see a system along these lines: the stage selection is random, but each player is given one strike-and-reroll. That way, you can avoid that one stage that is absolutely terrible for your main. Otherwise, you have to decide how much risk you're willing to take on with regard to rerolling a stage you're simply not fond of. As long as fighter selection happened after stage selection, I don't see how this would be a problem at all. It's a random element that is not devastating at all (particularly if the stage pool is a sane list to begin with).

Then they proceed with traditional counter picks.

This hinges on the players being able to see which stage was selected by the random button, which is admittedly likely since that's how it worked in past Smash titles but AFAIK we don't actually know for sure if it will hold for Ultimate. Demo footage of the stage select screen is shockingly rare.

That said, as long as we do have that visibility into the stage picked I'd be fine with it.

 

[dav3yb]

This hinges on the players being able to see which stage was selected by the random button, which is admittedly likely since that's how it worked in past Smash titles but AFAIK we don't actually know for sure if it will hold for Ultimate. Demo footage of the stage select screen is shockingly rare.

That said, as long as we do have that visibility into the stage picked I'd be fine with it.

If you're doing something like that, each player could just blind pick a stage that get's auto-banned if chosen at random.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

If you're doing something like that, each player could just blind pick a stage that get's auto-banned if chosen at random.

I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I will say that rigidity of a system could be interpreted as a feature and not a bug. I've thought about various things that happen, and a big thing is that some regions just allow more than others and you kinda have this creeping system of stage bans throughout a game's lifespan. A more rigid system has an "advantage" of sorts of making that really hard to do; you standardize and then change is really hard, and more rigidity really minimizes the possibility of regional variation too. We have some number of DLC stages coming that could maybe sub in down the road if some particular stage is proven to be really, really bad; otherwise you just play the game without politicking over constantly changing the rules of the game. Said politics are often really toxic too so minimizing the extent to which those are possible actually sounds really good...

Honestly the more I look at the entire situation I pretty much just have two priorities. One is just not doing starter-counterpick no matter what; it's an absolute garbage system with such an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence it doesn't work that frankly it boggles my mind that it's still even suggested. Two is not having a single digit number of legal stages in a game with this kind of a feature set; honestly it's just an attack on the game itself to ban stages to that extent when the super clear design intention of hazards off being in the game is that it would be used. There are a ton of reasonable and good systems that have been shown that could work, and honestly, any of them will be fine. The "small starter list and some set of counterpick stages we're banning in a year or two anyway" solution is just not okay or even vaguely in the spirit of the game, and I think the most important thing is just not accepting that at all.

As per random and then you get to veto the randomly chosen stage if you don't like it (one or more than one times) as in the old Melee rules from before stage striking was a thing, I'd be totally down with it; it was the first thing I suggested in this thread. A lot of the community seems to get really uneasy about randomness as such; it would in practice be fine, but I think the most important thing is finding some procedure that actually keeps numerically an appropriate number of stages that is most acceptable to the community and going with that. The community is so fractured with so many people in hidden Discord servers or whatever where they can't connect with everyone else; I'm always unsure of how to actually make those connections happen and make it clear what it is that people really want out of a stage list.

 

[Galgatha]

I will say that rigidity of a system could be interpreted as a feature and not a bug. I've thought about various things that happen, and a big thing is that some regions just allow more than others and you kinda have this creeping system of stage bans throughout a game's lifespan. A more rigid system has an "advantage" of sorts of making that really hard to do; you standardize and then change is really hard, and more rigidity really minimizes the possibility of regional variation too. We have some number of DLC stages coming that could maybe sub in down the road if some particular stage is proven to be really, really bad; otherwise you just play the game without politicking over constantly changing the rules of the game. Said politics are often really toxic too so minimizing the extent to which those are possible actually sounds really good...

Honestly the more I look at the entire situation I pretty much just have two priorities. One is just not doing starter-counterpick no matter what; it's an absolute garbage system with such an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence it doesn't work that frankly it boggles my mind that it's still even suggested. Two is not having a single digit number of legal stages in a game with this kind of a feature set; honestly it's just an attack on the game itself to ban stages to that extent when the super clear design intention of hazards off being in the game is that it would be used. There are a ton of reasonable and good systems that have been shown that could work, and honestly, any of them will be fine. The "small starter list and some set of counterpick stages we're banning in a year or two anyway" solution is just not okay or even vaguely in the spirit of the game, and I think the most important thing is just not accepting that at all.

As per random and then you get to veto the randomly chosen stage if you don't like it (one or more than one times) as in the old Melee rules from before stage striking was a thing, I'd be totally down with it; it was the first thing I suggested in this thread. A lot of the community seems to get really uneasy about randomness as such; it would in practice be fine, but I think the most important thing is finding some procedure that actually keeps numerically an appropriate number of stages that is most acceptable to the community and going with that. The community is so fractured with so many people in hidden Discord servers or whatever where they can't connect with everyone else; I'm always unsure of how to actually make those connections happen and make it clear what it is that people really want out of a stage list.

This sums it up rather nicely. Well done as usual, Ampharos. Basically saying what I cannot for some reason -_-

 

[Veggi]

I read a lot of opinions about what people wanted and decided to combine them to please as many people as possible. Here are the ideas I saw:

-People want a lot of stages but are worried it would lead to them playing in situations they don't like or are degenerate.

-People hate the counterpick system and many don't like the strike system.

-People like the variety aspect of random stage select but dislike the idea that a player may be put on a stage they don't like.

-Everyone thinks that the process should involve as few steps as possible.

So here's the idea I came up with:

1.) Have a large odd number of legal stages. Let's say 21.

2.) Each player has the full list of stages on their phone, on paper, etc.

3.) They strike through 10 stages they will not play on.

4.) Only stages that are not striked through on either list are turned on. This could be as few as one and as many as eleven.

5.) Hit random for game 1.

6.) Losing player can pick whatever stage is not on your opponent's list. No further discussion required.

Liberal players have many options to choose from and it means that the more stages are legal, the more bans conservative players have. In order for a conservative player to be met with a stage they think is degenerate, they would have to think half the legal stages are unacceptable.

Another benefit is you really only have to make the list once if you want to. Like "Hi nice to meet you. I don't play on these stages." It removes the need to go through the striking and banning process with every different person. It's just a matter of activating the stages before the set. No discussion is required after that, really.

 

[Lozjam]

Lately, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about the current stage situation for Ultimate. Despite literal dozens of potential legal stages, there has been a massive push for a stagelist limited to 9 or 13 stages. There are some major hurdles currently preventing a larger stagelist from acceptance in the views of the public, the biggest offenders being the difficulty and time sink of choosing a stage from such a large list, as well as the prevalence of clone stages potentially favoring specific stage layouts. And who could blame them? If each set takes 5 minutes to actually start, only for you to play 3 games on Battlefield, then people will be understandably upset.

And yet, it seems wrong to let the potential that Sakurai has given us in this massive stage roster to go to waste. It is with these limitations in mind that I, with the help of some likeminded friends, put together this!

View attachment 177323

The main idea here was coming up with sets of different stage setups, each adhering to the usual balance and ease of striking a nine-stage starter list. This also ensures that different matchups have access to stage pools that may be more balanced than a single starter pool may offer traditionally. It also exhibits an environment that treats all stages as equal, as outside of three clone stages, no stage is unavailable for play in game 1, without giving either opponent a massive selection of stages that benefit them exclusively.

We're proud of what we have, but there may be a few areas for improvement. We tried to balance the three lists in as many ways as we could, but different arrangements of the stages may be possible. We went with three stages listed for a counterpick for now, but depending on how strong it proves, that number could be increased. If anyone has any feelings about these things, I'd be really interested to hear about it!

You know, I actually really like this. It promotes stage variety, simplifies the system, and provides a multitude of stages, that positively affects game balance.
However, I think this could be simplified even further:
Game 1: List 1: RPS: Winner chooses 4 stages, loser chooses a stage out of those 4(this is effectively striking in a nutshell. Might as well make it easier, and faster for tournament play).
Game 2: List 2: Loser chooses 3 stages, winner chooses one stage from the list.
Game 3: List 3: Loser chooses 3 stages, winner chooses one stage.

I don’t see a reason to ban “clone” stages though if the previous person won either. I mean, the winner gets to have his choice out of 3 stages anyway. If he or she doesn’t want to play on a stage layout they lost in, then, they already have a means to do that. Plus they might want to rematch that stage layout. You never know, as this is seen all the time.

I actually think a progression from 1-2-3 is really awesome, both thematically and balance wise. Having different characters being able to excel more between rounds would incentivize playing multiple characters in a set. Not only that, but keeping a stage such as Fountain of Dreams and Final Destination until the final round is really cool. This will provide so much variety for spectators, as it is impossible to have 3 stages in a row, and a lot more variety for competitive players as well. The fact that stage selection happens first within the game, caters to this system quite well. Picking the stage, and then choosing the characters will provide a much better mindgame. Considering that there are different stages for different rounds, that really just provides a better use from that. It gives each round more oomph and a gravita.

For grand finals too, with 5 match sets, that just means that match’s 4 and 5 are any stage goes, which is incredibly exciting for a crowd.

This theory craft also really means, that no specific stage can be banned because a single character is really good in it. We won’t have a repeat of Brawl Metaknight, because if say, Isle Delfina was broken for metaknight.... then any competent player just wouldn’t pick that stage for metaknight. Meanwhile, that stage is still available for all of the other (soon to be) 79 characters. This sort of system would have greatly reduced Bayonettas ladder combos. Bayonetta’s problem wasn’t just that she wasn’t ridiculously good(because she was), she was also ridiculously good on nearly all of the “legal” stages. The stages made her the nightmare that she was, and this effectively reduces that problem.

And if there are 2 stages a character is broken in? Just move it to another list. It really is that simple. Say Isle Delfino and Lylat are broken for Metaknight. Just move it. Isle delfino list 1, Lylat, List 2. No player has to see or deal with it in Metaknight. This is an effective way of balancing broken character and stage combinations, without ruining stage variety and matchups for other characters.

Game 1: List 1
Game 2: List 2
Game 3: List 3

This really fixes many of the problems that Smash has had, and this is something I truly believe will thrive. I back this one 100%.
It’s good for the meta, it’s good for spectators, it’s good for balance. It will be rad thematically too. I suggest we test these lists quite heavily though, I think a good amount of rearranging and tweaking will do this concept justice,

 

[ぱみゅ]

Veggi's system is something I've proposed in the past:

Have any x+x+y number of stages where y is any non-zero number.
After announcing their characters, each player strikes an x number of stages and then hit random among the remaining ones (which would be y plus the number of overlaps).

Advantages:
-It's quick and easy to do.
-Stages not stroke might not be an important influence on the matchup.
-Discourages the current starter/counterpick distinctions.
-Works with literally any number of stages.

Disadvantages:
-Might need an external support like paper or any method to keep track of the strikes.
-Doesn't eliminate randomness (instead, it creates a middle ground).

Notes:
-Strikes can overlap and not affect the procedure.
-If you end up being counterpicked you either didn't strike properly or just get hard countered by the opposing character anyway.
-If you need more than half of the strikes to make your choice comfortable your character is probably just bad.


I'm not sure how to name the system for future reference though.

 

[ExceptionalBeasts]

Great, agreeable, well-said points...

I agree with everything here. I want to respond specifically to your point about hidden discord servers, or rather ask a question- how do we even engage with the people who aren't in this thread? More and more I think us stage liberals are fighting a losing battle. My small, local scene (not too far from yours, actually, but not so close that we have any overlap) has already said that for Smash tourneys starting Dec. 7th they're going to adopt the earliest competitive ruleset they find with a limited stage number. People in our Facebook group think 12 stages should be the maximum and that even Frigate should be banned for the temporary wall and asymmetry. I think we're between a rock and a hard place. Big tournaments won't adopt a liberal ruleset unless enough entrants want one, and small scenes are just gonna copy big rulesets. Taking our time to type out thoughtful arguments online is one thing, but suggesting a legal Find Mii in-person is going to make us look like items-on goofballs. And considering no one here even has the privilege of posting in the ruleset discussion thread, or the hundreds of discords whose existence we might not even know about, I think we'll end up with only a few stages by the end of 2019. At least Smashville got some nice new remixes...

But seriously, how do we engage with people? Where do we go from here? We've got a small army in this thread and almost no presence outside of it (save AA's FLiPS thread which is really well-made but last I checked doesn't have a huge level of interaction)

 

[Frihetsanka]

I want to respond specifically to your point about hidden discord servers, or rather ask a question- how do we even engage with the people who aren't in this thread?

This thread, and the Smash Reddit, seem to create a kind of "echo chamber" with a disproportionate amount of people who want to try various ideas, ideas that most of the playerbase (and TOs) disagree with. Unfortunately, few of them seem interested in engaging in this thread (I can't say I blame them, it gets tiresome having to repeat the same arguments over and over again without much constructive actually being done).

When it comes down to it, the points I've been arguing? They're fairly mainstream. Perhaps I may be alone in this thread ( Jamisinon used to post here but he doesn't seem to be active anymore), but the larger competitive community shares similar ideas how a stage list should be created. If you look at polls, you'll see that most competitive Smash players do not seem to want 15+ legal stages for various reasons, and I bet if you made an unbiased Twitter-poll most people would prefer stage striking over random stages for game 1.

I think as far as progress goes, Discord seems more useful than Smashboards or Reddit right now. It's a shame, really, because Internet forums have several advantages over Discord, but that's how it is.

 

[ぱみゅ]

I personally am in the PG Discord Server's "Closed" sections (as well as few other people who sporadically post here).
People there are quite aware of places like this where there are tons of discussions. But keep in mind that due to the huge amount of people taking part on them, the amount of proposals is huge as well.
I can't blame anyone for not closely following all of them.

 

[dav3yb]

I'm not sure what you mean.

If game one is random, with each player getting a ban/reroll, they could just pre select which stages they would want to be nixed, if we can't tell which stage is being randomly chosen. That way they'd at least have to announce what they don't want, and can't just axe a stage after the fact if something comes up they realize they like less than what they were originally thinking.

 

[j.method()]

So for picking stages, how about something quick and simple.
Whatever stages are deemed legal, sort by

• no platforms
• One-platform
• Dual-platform
• Tri-platform

Game 1.
PlayerA picks two (tri-platform and one-platform)
PlayerB picks one of the two options given by PlayerA (say tri-platform)
PlayerA picks battlefield.
This is close to PlayerA currently saying, I strike FD, and PlayerB striking Smashville. They play battlefield.

Game 2 & 3.
Loser picks any tournament legal stage.

This allows quick decisions on stages, has the same two option choice you get now for a starter but also includes all the similar stages (Dreamland, etc).

 

[ParanoidDrone]

*breezes in with an unrelated thought*

Is there merit in the idea of using the game's mini radar thing when a player is off-camera to help judge blast zone shenanigans more accurately? Thinking about cases like Delfino here.

(Not my idea for the record, saw it on Reddit first. Credit where it's due.)

 

[WritersBlah]

*breezes in with an unrelated thought*

Is there merit in the idea of using the game's mini radar thing when a player is off-camera to help judge blast zone shenanigans more accurately? Thinking about cases like Delfino here.

(Not my idea for the record, saw it on Reddit first. Credit where it's due.)

That could potentially be useful, depending on how accurate the radar is. Especially if it's still available in training mode, slowing the game speed down to note how/if the stage boundaries move could be an incredible tool in figuring out specifics of stage boundaries.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

*breezes in again with an actually on-topic post*

From Reddit, credit to BarnardsLoop (who I thought was also here but I can't @ him so IDK), a size comparison of Mushroom Kingdom U to Smashville and Wily Castle:

https://i.imgur.com/M6zf8UR.png

It's not quite as big as I thought it was. Thoughts?

 

[Munomario777]

I made that image LOL. Here's the full thing

Spoiler

From top to bottom, the stages are:

Gamer
PS2
Kalos
OMEGA Smashville (so, FD)
Mario U

(taken from smash 4's files)

Additionally, the other day we discovered that apparently Mario U has the same horizontal blast zones as Battlefield (again, in the Wii U game).

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I made that image LOL. Here's the full thing

Oh. Whoops?

Additionally, the other day we discovered that apparently Mario U has the same horizontal blast zones as Battlefield (again, in the Wii U game).

I assume this was measured from center stage?