Exact replicas of past stages or competitive versions?

[Generically Epic]

Don't get me wrong, P:M stages are infinitely better than Brawl stages, and I love them. But when it comes to a replica of a melee stage, I'd rather have it be a competitive stage I can actually play on than an exact replica. What I mean is I'd take http://forums.kc-mm.com/Gallery/BrawlView.php?Number=35812 over the original Peach's castle. What are your thoughts and opinions?

 

[Zeallyx]

I agree: I'd prefer competitive stages. Though Great Bay (Melee) is a fun casual stage imo.

Original competitive stages like Skyloft are, just like competitively revamped Melee/Brawl stages, really awesome imo. So much potential there too<3

 

[The_Altrox]

I'd rather them do that with more of the Brawl stages but to the point where they're not completely sterilized of what made them entertaining.

 

[Generically Epic]

I agree: I'd prefer competitive stages. Though Great Bay (Melee) is a fun casual stage imo.

Original competitive stages like Skyloft are, just like competitively revamped Melee/Brawl stages, really awesome imo. So much potential there too<3

I'd rather them do that with more of the Brawl stages but to the point where they're not completely sterilized of what made them entertaining.

There's a bunch of competitive versions of Great Bay out there.
I love their new additions like Dracula and distant planet. I'm down for more of those, like the competitive spear pillar stage.

 

[Paradoxium]

I dont want stage redundancy, because we already know what kind of problems that can pose. Bring back some wacky stages

 

[CORY]

I dont want stage redundancy, because we already know what kind of problems that can pose. Bring back some wacky stages

yeah. unless they're going to make some kind of underrepresented or unique counterpick style stages, there's already a pretty good amount of competitively viable stages (and others that are close to viable that just need a little work). may as well just bring fan favorites in (like how they got n64 castle and saffron).

 

[Saito]

You don't know how much I miss the bullet bill from peaches castle.

You don't know how much I miss the tornado from hyrule castle

You don't know how much I miss the barrel from below the stage in DK's 64 stage.

 

[Generically Epic]

You don't know how much I miss the bullet bill from peaches castle.

You don't know how much I miss the tornado from hyrule castle

You don't know how much I miss the barrel from below the stage in DK's 64 stage.

As much as Daisy misses being kidnapped by Bowser?

 

[210stuna]

A F-Zero stage that moves, but doesn't land where cars can hit you, or stages that only have a single base would be nice.

Not every stage has to be Final Destination material, but you guys know what I mean.
They could do that with Brawl stages too.

 

[The_Altrox]

I love their new additions like Dracula and distant planet. I'm down for more of those, like the competitive spear pillar stage.

I don't think they're going to though. I remember in another thread somebody saying that they don't want to make any more competitive stages because the ones we have atm work fine and they don't want to add more because it clutters up the counterpicks/starters, even if that meant more variety.

But what I would like...
with the second floor added back in but the walk offs removed (if that's possible). The statues can stay though.
w/o walls and walkoffs (if possible)
w/out walk off portions (though I imagine that that would be really difficult to program where the stage lands)
like it was in Brawl, but as a separate stage from the competitive version. Best banned stage ever!

As far as the classic stages go, I really don't like the N64 ones. I'm okay with old dream land and DKJungle, but old Hyrule and old Saffron are so dull and generic, especially w/o the hazards. I'd rather have the Brawl versions back, but I know I'm in the minority.

Also, as for , , , and , I've noticed that they've all had changes, but none of them are legal in most tournaments... then what's the point? Really, if you're not going to use it competitively, why sterilize a stage that was good for funsies? I love vanilla Norfair for all the chaos, but this Norfair is so bland. If you use it for competitive play then fine, but why doctor a stage that nobody's going to use anyway, especially when plenty of tourney viable stages are available already? Also, why aren't these stages counterpick? I get pictochat, but the others... (Also, Halberd is fine without the claw, but that's not the point).

 

[DrinkingFood]

We have 21 competitive stages. that's enough. I'd rather see replicas of past stages at this point, if not for any reason other than attracting attention from interested casuals.

 

[9bit]

My pipedream for the stage select screen is thus:

Bottom row all neutral/starters. Middle row all counter-picks. Top row all doubles/teams stages. Each row has a different outer box color to indicate this and the background of the stage select screen has a legend to tell you about this color code. Perhaps bottom row = green, middle row = yellow, and top row = red

Second page all wacky/fun/casual stages.

 

[Generically Epic]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not seeing to necessarily make them legal stages, but a few more team battle stages wouldn't hurt. :3

 

[Phaiyte]

People actually enjoy the **** stages?

 

[The_Altrox]

People actually enjoy the **** stages?

If you're goofing around, having fun, or not being a competitive tryhard all the time, it's sometimes fun to play on banned stages. I love and in Brawl and Brinstar Depths, Peach's Castle, and Jungle Japes in Melee.

 

[MoonlapseOpethian]

Seriously though, I played Melee casually, before I even knew about a competitive scene, so having the hazard filled wastelands that were in Melee would be nostalgic heaven.
At the same time, I grew on to play competitively, so I'd also like to play on these epic stages in a non hazardous format.

Seriously though, refer to the image.

 

[Brim]

I'd rather them do that with more of the Brawl stages but to the point where they're not completely sterilized of what made them entertaining.

This. An example for me is the Fire Emblem stage. And correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the revamped version of this stage in PM still banned in tournaments? I literally never see it played. They could just make it two entirely separate stages.

 

[The_Altrox]

This. An example for me is the Fire Emblem stage. And correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the revamped version of this stage in PM still banned in tournaments? I literally never see it played. They could just make it two entirely separate stages.

Eh, I don't think it should be separated. The first one is kind of small and would probably be banned on its own (see the metal mario stage) and the third is an FD with tilting. If it were up to me, I would find away to make the second level w/o walk-offs. I'd keep the statues though. I like it as a counterpick to projectile users.

 

[Phaiyte]

Why don't you guys just go play Playstation All Stars lol

 

[Kaye Cruiser]

I'd prefer for the entire stage roster to be competitive, honestly. If I want some wacky chaos, I'll just turn on items and/or go into Special Brawl for some Turbo Mode and stuff. Wouldn't mind more moving stages, though. Probably cause Delfino Plaza is one of my favorite stages. Then again, I play on every single stage in the roster for several hours a day, so I don't care as long as it's not Hanenbow levels of terrible. XD

If anything, I wish there actually were two versions of all the non-competitive stages so that there could simply be two filled up pages of either Competitive or Non-Competitive stages so that people wouldn't have to complain so much and everybody wins.

 

[Xinc]

We have 21 competitive stages. that's enough. I'd rather see replicas of past stages at this point, if not for any reason other than attracting attention from interested casuals.

Aren't 6 of them banned though?

 

[Banjodorf]

If we could get the walls or size or whatever on the top row of the front page adjusted so they could be considered CP at worst rather than Banned, I'd be fine with the stages we have right now.

What's the point of having the Front Page be the competitive stages if 1/3 of them aren't even allowed? Just adjust them a bit.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Aren't 6 of them banned though?

...according to what ruleset?

 

[The_Altrox]

...according to what ruleset?

In a lot of tourneys that I've watched on the Interwebs, the top row has been banned (though the one I'm watching atm has Metal Cavern and many allow distant Planet in doubles).

The tourney I'm attending next weekend is also banning the top row, save DP in doubles

 

[Xinc]

In a lot of tourneys that I've watched on the Interwebs, the top row has been banned (though the one I'm watching atm has Metal Cavern and many allow distant Planet in doubles).

The tourney I'm attending next weekend is also banning the top row, save DP in doubles

Those 6. I never saw the point of it. They had battle tourney value

 

[PhantasyStar]

You don't know how much I miss the bullet bill from peaches castle.

You don't know how much I miss the tornado from hyrule castle

You don't know how much I miss the barrel from below the stage in DK's 64 stage.

We need the return of the tornado and have at least one tourney where these jank stages are legal.

 

[Phaiyte]

Do people actually somehow prefer the **** stages when they are "just having fun"? I mean if you're going to play all mindless and junk and just walk into a game doing nothing but pressing buttons then what does it even matter?

 

[The_Altrox]

Do people actually somehow prefer the **** stages when they are "just having fun"? I mean if you're going to play all mindless and junk and just walk into a game doing nothing but pressing buttons then what does it even matter?

Sometimes it's just fun to play on a ridiculous stage with lava, minigames, and over the top gimmicks. It's that simple.

 

[Ginge]

Consider the non-tournament players. If you ever play with people like that, they don't care about those gimmicks being in stages. And if those stages aren't on the first page, competitive players shouldn't really care about them.

 

[SmashBroski]

Stages I'd like to see built upon:
lower half removed gameplay-wise and visually, legendary Pokemon delegated to background characters like the Villagers in Smashville. In short, no hazards. I know there's an unofficial version circulating around BrawlVault.
Re-add the second portion, if possible, make it so statues aren't destructible and no longer absorb projectiles.
*insert generic move city scenery in the background and make a new stage from scratch fix*. Like Temple: M before Skyloft.
1337m is pretty nice, can it be built upon?

I feel as if Brawl stages have great atmosphere but fall short competitvely-wise.

 

[210stuna]

2 words

Brawl Vault

 

[EdgeTheLucas]

Stages I'd like to see built upon:
lower half removed gameplay-wise and visually, legendary Pokemon delegated to background characters like the Villagers in Smashville. In short, no hazards. I know there's an unofficial version circulating around BrawlVault.
Re-add the second portion, if possible, make it so statues aren't destructible and no longer absorb projectiles.
*insert generic move city scenery in the background and make a new stage from scratch fix*. Like Temple: M before Skyloft.
1337m is pretty nice, can it be built upon?

I feel as if Brawl stages have great atmosphere but fall short competitvely-wise.

...New Pork City is already in the background. Sakurai just put a bunch of random REAAALY spaced out platforms in front of it rather than let us actually fight in the damn city.

And, as a big fan of Mother 3, I hate that New Pork City ended up being a worse Temple. At least in Temple you had this giant barrier smack dab in the middle of the stage, so that, no matter where you were, you could still take stocks easily.

 

[Aenglaan]

I want replicas because I want a variety of stages to play on. We already have plenty of solid choices to chose from for competitive play. The stages that offer just goofy fun (Poke Floats, Brinestar Depths, etc) are stages that I want to see preserved, not redesigned. We may have hated Depths in Melee, but I think I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it.

 

[Egadd]

What I see from a lot of redesigned stages is all the fun being sucked out of them. Not every stage has to be a FD/Battlefield clone, but I feel like a lot of the unofficial stages have done so. Having said that, I think the current P:M stages are great, each one is a little different and provides some nice variety even when I'm just training. However, when adding more stages, it's really unneeded to make too many more "viable".

 

[UberMario]

I think a lot of people disregard the fact that there can be stages that can be both competitive and unappealing and ones that are easily banned and fun.

For example, I found Melee's Battlefield and Yoshi's Story to be complete garbage in terms of design and much preferred Fountain of Dreams and Dreamland. The former two have aspects to them that are anti-competitive compared to other legal stages (in particular YS's absurdly small killbox and the ledge design of Battlefield which Brawl's Final Destination derived parts of it's horrid lip from) but are ultimately considered competitive because of their static nature, moderate size and lack of intrusive elements. There are plenty of competitively viable shapes for stages, and Project M caters to this well, but Melee sorely lacks a lot of these possible configurations.

On the flipside, stages like Norfair in Brawl are fun because they provide new strategies, though are not truly competitive because they have aspects which ruin comp gameplay (such as the ledges). If you're playing just for fun, odds are you aren't abusing the ledges to oblivion so you can enjoy ricocheting people off of the lavalfalls from the side or trying to force people to get hit by the lava tsunami. I'd like WarioWare a lot more if I could disable the bonuses when items are off though.

The problem is that most Smash stages go one extreme or another and rarely fall in a happy medium. For example, Melee, for most people, only has 6-competitively viable stages: one is flat, one is a transforming glitchy mess that people pardon for the sake of having a non-static stage (though two transfomations in particular would be instanty banned if they were static due to how they ruin the motion of a game) and the other four are derived from the same general design of three platforms situated triangularly above a solid platform. The other stages? Most of them are chaotic nightmares that are ultimately not fun to play on other than for asthetics, like Icicle Mountain and it's ridiculous scroll pacing or Flat Zone and it's tiny space. A lot of them would be potentially competitively viable if they didn't have aspects that ruined them (such as Green Greens and it's obnoxious blocks), but many of these problems also ruin it for people playing casually too. Brawl isn't much better off in this regard since I can't really see anyone thinking that Flat Zone 2 or 75m are fun if they were posed as brand new stages with no references to any actual Nintendo game. It does, however, have a lot more stages that can fall in the intermediate (like Delfino Plaza), but even then it's still a rather small amount of the whole roster. 64 was the closest of the three official titles to having a well balanced roster in terms of competitive and casual aspects.

Project M remedies this with several of it's stage designs. I'd like to see more stuff like Dracula's Castle, the retooled Port Town Aero Dive and Halberd, as they're designed to be fun both competitively and casually. Ideally, I'd like to see them retool something like Brinstar to be more competitive so that more comp stages exist with hazards, an unfortunate rarity.

Also, I do believe that Castle Siege should be static on the first platform; the walkoffs during the transformation are annoying at best and I find the first form to be the most interesting.


tl;dr: I prefer competitive versions of stages, but only if they have glaring aspects that make it feel necessary (such as the spire on Princess Peach's Castle, the giant second level of Castle Siege or the absurd damage that Port Town cars can deal, but not stuff like, say, if someone took away all of the weapons on Halberd or removing the bumpers from Princess Peach's Castle 64.)

 

[Phaiyte]

Sometimes it's just fun to play on a ridiculous stage with lava, minigames, and over the top gimmicks. It's that simple.

Play Mario Party, then

 

[The_Altrox]

But sometimes I wanna play with all of that on Brawl/Melee/PM. Why you hatin'?

 

[Celestis]

The thing that makes Melee so great is it is both a competitive fighter and an awesome game to party with friends. We have plenty of competitive stages to work with. Any more and things just start getting repetitive, and that's boring. I still like turning items on some times and making shenanigans happen with my friends every now and then. Its what makes smash so perfect for both worlds.

 

[Generically Epic]

I like moving platform stages, we could use more of those.

 

[Phaiyte]

Really my favorite stages are kind of a combination of both, but never going into the extreme of either side. "Competitive stage" doesn't have to mean static by any means, and it's ridiculous to think it does. Same for the apparently proclaimed casual mindset that somehow automatically means fighting in the middle of goatse's butt hole. There's more than definitely plenty of ways to make stages nice enough for both the casuals and pros. Literally my favorite stages right now are as follows:

- WarioWare with the sweet .gif containing Wario, Waluigi, and Mr. L. It has my favorite "static" stage layout in the whole vanilla roster and the .gif in the background + the custom music my friend and I added just make it just that much extra fun for us to play on that stage without worrying about a stock taken that wasn't caused with our own hands and minds.

- The regular wi-fi waiting room with the sandbag that spawns in the center. It's great to block projectiles with and get your style on when you take a stock.

- That one Summit stage that is flat with two big platforms that float up and down and the polar bear in the middle of everything in the background. We added the Dark Dizzy and Blizzard Wolfgang tracks and, let me ****ing tell you how AWESOME of an idea that was. However, I wouldn't mind a tiny bit of slippery on the actual platform. It makes almost every option a little safer because of shield sliding, etc. But it can also kinda creates a whole new rushdown style with a bunch of characters in more favorable situations. The slipperiness of the central platform is also capable of pointing out anyone's possible lack of fundamental skill. Like, it becomes REALLY obvious when you miss a dash dance timing because you slide further due to a combination of the turnaround animation of the dash and sliding on the ice. It doesn't actually have that I was just saying why it could be a positive thing as a counterpick stage.

I think I just realized that I pretty much mostly love counterpick stages or neutral stages that I can use as a counterpick on purpose.... or.... something...

I'm done.