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Discussion of Stage Legality in Smash Bros. Ultimate

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MercuryPenny

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I can't reference Mario Maker, so that may be an entirely different case
most mario maker forms have permanent walkoffs, caves of life, and/or lava (a perpetually present stage hazard), if the layout is still random it's definitely not going to be legal
 
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ParanoidDrone

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most mario maker forms have permanent walkoffs, caves of life, and/or lava (a perpetually present stage hazard), if the layout is still random it's definitely not going to be legal
Speculating for lack of video evidence to the contrary, but it's possible hazardless Mario Maker somehow restricts the stage elements it gets to work with. (Unlikely, I know, but the possibility exists for now.)

EDIT: Per 2GG, the Shy Guys in hazards-on Yoshi's Story will bring food items regardless of item settings. So we have a weird dichotomy on this stage in particular.

Hazards On: Randall, but food.
Hazards Off: No food, but no Randall.

Source: https://twitter.com/2GGaming/status/1067132519965847552
 
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ParanoidDrone

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Still wondering what people have against Wuhu and Kalos but it's a better starting point than most lists I've seen and they explicitly say pending further information yada yada.

Also now that I'm not double posting I want to call attention to an edit I made on my previous post two above this one with 2GG's tweet re: Yoshi's Story.
 
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J0eyboi

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Still wondering what people have against Wuhu and Kalos but it's a better starting point than most lists I've seen and they explicitly say pending further information yada yada.

Also now that I'm not double posting I want to call attention to an edit I made on my previous post two above this one with 2GG's tweet re: Yoshi's Story.
Kalos is on that list (leftmost stage on the middle row of the counterpicks). I don't get why they excluded Wuhu, though; in the poll they put up, people were for it 52-48. I guess they thought it, YI, and Halberd would be too many static monoplats, and it was the most contentious of the three. I'd imagine they excluded Dracula's for similar reasons.
 
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ParanoidDrone

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Kalos is on that list (leftmost stage on the middle row of the counterpicks). I don't get why they excluded Wuhu, though; in the poll they put up, people were for it 52-48. I guess they thought it, YI, and Halberd would be too many static monoplats, and it was the most contentious of the three. I'd imagine they excluded Dracula's for similar reasons.
Missed it, thanks. And yeah, I forgot Dracula's Castle. Prism Tower and New Donk are also high on my personal list of "stages to seriously consider."

I guess I could make my own list but I'm not a TO or anything so it would just be navel gazing for the most part.

Also WTF @ that Lylat clip. That can't possibly be intended behavior.
 
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TCT~Phantom

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The 2GG list looks good for the most part. I would still push for Dracula's, Wuhu, and Rainbow Cruise to get some tests, but for a starting list it is not terrible.

I will state that Fountain as a Starter is something I am very against. In my opinion Yoshi's should be the final starter there. I feel that having a second tri plat as a starter is dangerous for competitive. Yoshi's meanwhile gives us a unique layout which is good for comp play. Hazardless Yoshi's is a great stage if you think support ghosts and food is too uncompetitive. I feel the best part of this choice would be the diverse layouts for the selection. Overall I would heavily suggest future lists look at having Yoshi's as a starter instead.
 

NewGuy79

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Walls have two "problems".
1 - They can lead to infinite. This hasn't really been a problem since Brawl so it isn't really relevant.
2 - They force people to jump. I think this is really overstated, especially on Dracula's Castle based on the layout.
personally, I would hope that we consider both Dracula's castle and rainbow cruise, concerning being forced to jump.

I don't think such an element is necessarily bad for the stage, especially because there are several avenues of approach past them.

to clarify players do not necessarily have to jump to get past the walls and the two middle platforms on the stage are close enough to them so that a player could simply just run off them and bypass the wall.

so personally I don't really think the wall is restricting movement as it is changing how players have to approach it, something I hope more smash stages accomplish honestly.

as for infinite, they've been gone since braw so ya they shouldn't be a problem unless there some other way to trape a player in them, but then again their size and the return of SDI should mitigate such strategies entirely in competitive play.
 

Untouch

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Can we wait for the day 1 patch?
Remember, day 1 Wuhu Island had a glitch that let Ness throw people throw a ship.
 

ParanoidDrone

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Oh yeah, I should probably sign up for that.

Anyway, that seems like an unnecessarily small stagelist, even for hazards-off only. It doesn't even have T&C.
Agreed. Especially if we're going with a "let's test things out" mentality, there's really no reason to start with such a small list right off the bat. I feel that sort of defeats the purpose of, you know, testing.
 

Frihetsanka

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It doesn't even have T&C.
Lots of people think T&C is banworthy because one of the platform layouts which can lead to around 30 seconds of camping every time it comes up. We don't know yet how had it'll be, but it might end up banned for that reason.

Especially if we're going with a "let's test things out" mentality, there's really no reason to start with such a small list right off the bat. I feel that sort of defeats the purpose of, you know, testing.
More focused testing rather than testing stages that'll eventually go away. Plenty of stages (like Castle Siege, or Frigate Orpheon, or WarioWare) will be tested in that list anyway, and other tournaments will test other stages.
 

ShneeOscar

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I think we have a problem with the diversity of stages on a larger scale, where stages who's layout differs from "single flat main platform with a few platforms above it", such as Prism Tower, Norfair, Brinstar, Green Greens, and even Skyloft are being discared early for not fitting that very narrow formula. If we're testing stages, we should test ones that may actually have problems or are different, not only ones who's biggest problem is "being asymmetrical".

One other thing: We have more than enough stages for FD (which is way more polarizing than Yoshi's Brawl, Kalos or even Castle Siege, IMO) to be a counterpick (see PM), if we still feel the need to stick with the fundamentally flawed Starter/Counterpick division.
 
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ParanoidDrone

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More focused testing rather than testing stages that'll eventually go away. Plenty of stages (like Castle Siege, or Frigate Orpheon, or WarioWare) will be tested in that list anyway, and other tournaments will test other stages.
No. If you only test a narrow range of stages that fit a preconceived notion of what constitutes a good stage, then you're just paying lip service to the idea of testing in the first place. You have to test more than just what you think will work. You have to test what you're not sure at all about and what you don't think will work. The unknown and negative cases. Not necessarily at regular tournament events, mind you, I'll concede that, but I feel like I need to trot out the old chestnut about assuming.

To be fair, some stages are so blatantly not going to work that we probably don't have to bother. But when I say that, I'm talking about monstrosities like New Pork City or Onett or PAC-LAND. There's a lot of stages that currently exist in a grey area of "might be good, might be bad" with nothing but theorycraft about how a real match might play out. Those are the stages I'm talking about.

EDIT: On a completely unrelated note, a dataminer on Twitter says that Town & City's ceiling is higher than Battlefield's now, instead of lower like it was in 4. (To be precise, 172->195.) So throw out blast zone sizes as known quantities -- Halberd and Warioware in particular.

*Adds to list of things to eventually test.*
 
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Untouch

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Going to make a bold prediction that Lylat will get banned because of this very early on with very little testing done, the glitch will get fixed, and then it'll never become legal again.
 

Frihetsanka

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Not necessarily at regular tournament events, mind you, I'll concede that, but I feel like I need to trot out the old chestnut about assuming.
Oh, I'm fine with people testing many stages the first week or so on their own, I might do that as well. Still, tournament testing takes more effort and having some focus is probably valuable.

Going to make a bold prediction that Lylat will get banned because of this very early on with very little testing done, the glitch will get fixed, and then it'll never become legal again.
People are saying it's more of a Kirby-thing than a Lylat thing, and from what I've heard Lylat is better than in Smash 4, so it probably shouldn't get banned, at least not early. It seems better than most other stages people want to try, anyway.

Seems Fountain of Dreams might be dead:

At least people can still play the Battlefield version for the visuals and music. This means that hazards mixed would only add two stages, Smashville and Town & City. Do spectators really want to risk hazards mixed for two Animal Crossing stages?
 

ParanoidDrone

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Going to be honest, I didn't notice a frame drop in that video. Just looked like a lot of hitstop when the fsmash hit, and since the ICs hit twice, well, that might be why. Unless I'm missing something.
 

Frihetsanka

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Going to be honest, I didn't notice a frame drop in that video. Just looked like a lot of hitstop when the fsmash hit, and since the ICs hit twice, well, that might be why. Unless I'm missing something.
Apparently the video is in 40 fps and it's more noticeable in 60 fps.
 

Veggi

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I was mostly involved in competitive Smash back in the Brawl days and only got back into it recently. People back then used to be considered bad whiny players when they wanted to ban things that were never proven to be overcentralizing or degenerate. Now people are going to ban things without having a single tournament match demonstrating that an unfair or degenerate advantage can be gained because of a stage's features. It's honestly really dumbfounding.
 

J0eyboi

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EDIT: On a completely unrelated note, a dataminer on Twitter says that Town & City's ceiling is higher than Battlefield's now, instead of lower like it was in 4. (To be precise, 172->195.) So throw out blast zone sizes as known quantities -- Halberd and Warioware in particular.
That same dataminer said that Warioware's horizontal blastzones are 180 in either direction, which is both the same as Smash 4 and ~3/4 the size of the average legal stage in Smash 4. The vertical blastzone is significantly higher than it used to be, though the exact number is misleading; Warioware's main stage is higher up relative to the center than most other stages.
 
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Untouch

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I don't think having smaller blastzones makes a stage bannable.
That is the entire purpose of counterpicking in the first place, and why the stage isn't starter.

AGAIN I'll say that Smashville and Town and City has the same problem.
If we keep treating **** like this we'll be back at 5 stages in 2 years. This is NOT healthy for the scene.
 
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Frihetsanka

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People back then used to be considered bad whiny players when they wanted to ban things that were never proven to be overcentralizing or degenerate.
People discuss stages to depth and make logical and sound arguments why the stages are flawed and should be banned, your response: Indirectly calling them "bad whiny players".'

You'll get your proof, don't worry.

That is the entire purpose of counterpicking in the first place, and why the stage isn't starter.
Isn't it mostly that we need to have either 5 or 9 starters exactly, so those outside of that number end up as counter-picks? Anyway, WarioWare will likely end up legal for a while at least, so we probably don't really need to discuss it right now.
 

ParanoidDrone

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Isn't it mostly that we need to have either 5 or 9 starters exactly, so those outside of that number end up as counter-picks?
Yes, mathematically speaking you need 4n + 1 stages for a traditional striking system to be fair to both players. So 13, 17, 21, etc. would also work but that rapidly approaches "excessively time consuming" territory without a new process.

Insert obligatory comment here about starter/counterpick distinctions being unhealthy for varied stage selection in the long term.
 
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Raysebi

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People banning because probably some irrelevant and imperceptible framedrop, banning because "Oh no sharking is bad but i can't prove it" and "oh no, go through the stage is BAD because you are avoiding ledge game all the time" without prove it, without being something overcentralizing to the game and degenerate. Banning 2 weeks before because probably some Kirby shenaningas in Lylat, and so on, so on.

Yeah, i don't know now, but it makes me pretty sad, i off course understand concerns regarding some stages, i don't want the largest list possible, but i want to people leave the game to adapt and grow on his own avoiding off course the evident issues, like(banning stages with walkoffs or redudant ones, or to big ones, or with walls).

At the end they only care about themselves and only in their win rate and to be as lazy as possible when it comes to learn more than 6+ stages.

You know, i'm not proposing degenerate stages, lol, but i can only wish people could be more rational about this, and less self-conscious. For example, if you ask me for the moment 2GG is doing a great work, testing at least mixed hazards and testing some cool stages that deserve a shot, because i really doubt it they will prove degenerate. But then again, i don't know, if really people care about fairness, because if that's so they would have banned Bayonetta, but not (i'm not saying im am pro-banning bayonetta guy). But the attitude they have....point to that way but because is a character, she off course is more difficult to ban.

You will excuse me, and i know there is a lot of people out there who really cares about the scene as a whole, but sometimes who a community makes choices in such a short limit of time without experimenting and testing properly it just past me, i can't handle it. This is killing my hype for the game, but it would be dumb to keep depressed about that.

P.D: Posting again this list for the sake of exposure

https://twitter.com/2GGaming/status/1067147265041723393
 
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ShneeOscar

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I'm still confused as to why nobody seems to be at least trying Prism Tower early on. Like I said before, we have a problem with the diversity of stages we are willing to accept. Although that 2GG list better than others I've seen, if we aren't even going to try something even a bit different, like the most mundane travelling stage ever, all this talk of testing different stages is rather pointless if the most radical thing we're testing is goddamn Castle Siege or Brinstar.
 
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Raysebi

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You are right, i was praising 2GG list because is the best i've seen so far regardings the last days when we found more info about the game but yeah, the walkoff last a few seconds, the everything else is acceptable, considering again sharking is probably dead.

It's weird though because 2GG asked about Norfair but no Prism. Maybe they just forgot in the polls and they are like "Oh whatever, there is plenty of testing now". Still, i think it would be tested and i'm crossing fingers it will be accepted.
 
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ParanoidDrone

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Ugh this doom and gloom is depressing.

So. Doubles!

It occurred to me that all our discussion has been pretty exclusively in the context of singles and I admit I'm not entirely up to speed on what makes a good doubles stage. Would something like Mushroom Kingdom U, that may or may not be too big for a 1v1 match, work for doubles? What about something like Garden of Hope, with its large pit? Are stalling strats on Duck Hunt or Kongo Jungle 64 more or less effective in a doubles format? (I legitimately don't know.) What's the upper limit on size for even a doubles stage? Big Battlefield?
 
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WritersBlah

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Being completely honest, this kind of attitude makes me question what even is considered a "good" competitive stage anymore. Like the only ones I feel comfortable in recognizing are Battlefield, Final Destination, Smashville, and hazardless PS2. Past that, I honestly have no clue. I would think Yoshi's Island Brawl, Kalos, and Lylat Cruise would be easy shoe-ins as well, but apparently not? Seriously, I'm at a loss for what's even considered a good stage anymore. Asking someone like Frihetsanka Frihetsanka here, are there any other stages that you actually have faith in? Because at this point, I'm really having difficulty relating with this perspective.
 

Raysebi

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I am just playing here Kingdom hearts to forget about this gloom. Not really going to help me if i stay depressed until the release date.
 

Frihetsanka

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Being completely honest, this kind of attitude makes me question what even is considered a "good" competitive stage anymore. Like the only ones I feel comfortable in recognizing are Battlefield, Final Destination, Smashville, and hazardless PS2. Past that, I honestly have no clue. I would think Yoshi's Island Brawl, Kalos, and Lylat Cruise would be easy shoe-ins as well, but apparently not? Seriously, I'm at a loss for what's even considered a good stage anymore. Asking someone like Frihetsanka Frihetsanka here, are there any other stages that you actually have faith in? Because at this point, I'm really having difficulty relating with this perspective.
Here's what I think: At this point in time, given what we know, those 7 stages seem like the most likely stages to end up legal in a year or so. Other stages will be tested early on, some will be dismissed fairly early (like Brinstar, Skyloft, Prism Tower, Halberd etc) while others might be legal for a while before they're eventually banned (like Castle Siege, Frigate Orpheon, and WarioWare). Unova Pokémon Stadium looks good but it's probably too similar to Pokémon Stadium 2.

So somewhere around 6-8 stages in the long run, unless we get some good DLC stages. That's what I think will happen, anyway.

Lylat might die because some people on Twitter hate it, though... From what I've seen I think Lylat seems good enough to remain legal, but we'll see. It's possible Yoshi's Island Brawl (or Smashville) will be banned because they're too similar to each other, but some people think the differences are significant enough to keep both in the stage list. Omega/Battlefield-variants will mostly be legal, most likely.

XXXX Miis will likely be legal as well.
 

lmntolp

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Here's what I think: At this point in time, given what we know, those 7 stages seem like the most likely stages to end up legal in a year or so. Other stages will be tested early on, some will be dismissed fairly early (like Brinstar, Skyloft, Prism Tower, Halberd etc) while others might be legal for a while before they're eventually banned (like Castle Siege, Frigate Orpheon, and WarioWare). Unova Pokémon Stadium looks good but it's probably too similar to Pokémon Stadium 2.

So somewhere around 6-8 stages in the long run, unless we get some good DLC stages. That's what I think will happen, anyway.

Lylat might die because some people on Twitter hate it, though... From what I've seen I think Lylat seems good enough to remain legal, but we'll see. It's possible Yoshi's Island Brawl (or Smashville) will be banned because they're too similar to each other, but some people think the differences are significant enough to keep both in the stage list. Omega/Battlefield-variants will mostly be legal, most likely.
Overall yea I think ppl will want to ban stages because they're too similar, unless there's a way to prevent that with sets or rotations. It would be sort of a shame because we could have a wider music selection. But not the end of the world, especially for Pokemon.

Yoshi's Brawl feels very different from Smashville from when I played Brawl. You basically can't fullhop approach or land without the huge platform getting in the way, so it feels more claustrophobic/protected than Smashville. Plus it has walljumps. Frigate (hazards off) feels more like Smashville imo.

If we really had to choose, I think it would be cool if we'd consider keeping FoD over battlefield or Frigate over Smashville for flavor and other reasons. I think FoD could possibly be more balanced than battlefield cus it doesn't overly benefit swordies or ladder combos as much. And Frigate doesn't have moving platform combos like Smashville. It's just asymmetric is all (but so is Smashville technically).
 

Frihetsanka

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Overall yea I think ppl will want to ban stages because they're too similar, unless there's a way to prevent that with sets or rotations. It would be sort of a shame because we could have a wider music selection.
Omega and Battlefield variants exist, they could provide plenty of music variety. Let's encourage top players on stream to pick Omega/Battlefield variants!

Yoshi's Brawl feels very different from Smashville from when I played Brawl. You basically can't fullhop approach or land without the huge platform getting in the way, so it feels more claustrophobic/protected than Smashville. Plus it has walljumps. Frigate (hazards off) feels more like Smashville imo.
Many people are saying Yoshi's Brawl is similar to Smashville, so we'll see. It's worth testing, at least.

If we really had to choose, I think it would be cool if we'd consider keeping FoD over battlefield or Frigate over Smashville for flavor and other reasons.
Battlefield is clearly better than FoD for flavor reasons, remember that you now can use Battlefield forms of any stage (including FoD).
 

ParanoidDrone

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Battlefield is clearly better than FoD for flavor reasons, remember that you now can use Battlefield forms of any stage (including FoD).
As hilarious as it would be for Battlefield to be a banned stage, I agree with this. If only one triplat is going to be allowed, it's the clear winner.
 

Untouch

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Oh no, bad news, looks like we're going to have to ban ALL stages.

Also can I make a statement about how much I ****ing hate the "we have 103 stages, we can be picky" attitude people have? I was miffed when people were using this excuse for not having Prism Tower even though it was fine in Smash 4 3DS, but now people are using it to excuse Lylat. If this keeps being an excuse, we're going to be back at 5 stages (if that) again.
 
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