Front Room Stage Procedure Podcast/Poll

[Amazing Ampharos]

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Smash Front Room! We’re a group of players who have recognized that Smash Ultimate will pose some new and interesting challenges for tournament rules and other such community issues, and we have decided to tackle this by getting together and talking it out. We really want to hear all sides of the issues, and we value transparency as our highest goal so we produced a podcast wherein we talked about all of this.

This first meeting was targeted at trying to figure out how to handle the massive changes we've seen to stages, as well as how we choose them. We go over our general ideas about stage selection procedures, reminisce a bit on past games’ rules and our experiences, talk about different sorts of qualities stages have, and all throw out a variety of ideas about how things are and how things should be. We went in expecting not to agree, but as the discussion wore on we actually came to a solution that was shockingly acceptable by all parties. We also are really interested to hear what all of you think about this, but more on that in just a moment. It's a bit on the long side, but its got some great discussion! If you just want to cut to the big thing we agreed on, a summary of that is provided as well.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Zo_HlfD8GS6IGRWN7j8gOUmprIqC6pHO

This is the Full List Partial Striking (FLiPS) ruleset we discussed in the podcast. It was the hybrid of several of our ideas that our group was able to agree upon as a generally practical solution to the challenges Ultimate provides on stage procedure.

Spoiler: FLiPS Ruleset

This is a simple proposed method to accommodate a large legal stage list while including the most desired elements of stage striking. At the start of a set, each player will strike some number of stages reducing the total stage pool to about half of the original stage pool using the random stage select screen. From there, game one will be played on a random stage. Games two and onward will be counterpicks from the pool of stages created by the initial striking so initial strikes also account for stage bans.

This system has all of the following advantages:

-The system preserves the best part of stage striking. You can avoid all of your least favorite stages.
-The system can accommodate unusual stage counts. Unlike traditional stage striking, it’s not a problem if some weird indivisible number of stages like 18 is your legal pool.
-This system is as fast as stage striking is now at tournaments. Striking an only slightly larger number of stages is negated by the lack of a need to do stage bans after game one.
-This system can handle very large numbers of stages. It only begins to get bogged down heavily around 45 legal stages.
-This system can easily be adopted for Stage Morph solutions. If Stage Morph is a workable and desired mechanic, the random selection for game one can be replaced with allowing each player to choose half of a Stage Morph.
-This system is stream friendly. It will easily allow commentators and viewers to track player strikes and stage decisions simply by watching the stream feed.

Here is a simple example of this style of striking in action with a 32 stage list. For the sake of argument, let’s just use the following 32 stages. In real action we may use different stages or a different total number of stages:

Spoiler: Sample Stage List

Battlefield
Final Destination
Dream Land 64
Brinstar
Yoshi's Story
Fountain of Dreams
Pokemon Stadium 1
Delfino Plaza
WarioWare Inc.
Norfair
Frigate Orpheon
Yoshi's Island Brawl
Halberd
Lylat Cruise
Castle Siege
Smashville
Unova Pokemon League
Prism Tower
Arena Ferox
Tortimer Island
PictoChat 2
Mushroom Kingdom U
Mario Circuit 8
Skyloft
Kalos Pokemon League
Town and City
Duck Hunt
Wuhu Island
Wily Castle
Midgar
Umbra Clock Tower
New Donk City Hall

Since we’re trying to get rid of about half of the stages, each player will have 8 total strikes. A reasonably balanced order for 8 strikes per side might be a 2-3-3-3-3-2 sequence which I can demonstrate with the following example. Let’s say this will be a best of three set between you and an imposing opponent. First the players agree that you will go first in the process (though if they didn’t agree they could do rock-paper-scissors or a G&W Judgment Hammer test as needed). They go to the random stage select toggle and remove stages in order:

You remove Final Destination and Umbra Clock Tower.
Your opponent removes Wuhu Island, Skyloft, and Norfair.
You remove PictoChat 2, Wily Castle, and Castle Siege.
Your opponent removes Mario Circuit 8, Delfino Plaza, and New Donk City Hall.
You remove Duck Hunt, Arena Ferox, and Smashville.
Your opponent removes Tortimer Island and Mushroom Kingdom U.

Spoiler: Stage List After Striking

Battlefield
Dream Land 64
Brinstar
Yoshi's Story
Fountain of Dreams
Pokemon Stadium 1
WarioWare Inc.
Frigate Orpheon
Yoshi's Island Brawl
Halberd
Lylat Cruise
Unova Pokemon League
Prism Tower
Kalos Pokemon League
Town and City
Midgar

From here a random stage is selected, and it happens to be Unova Pokemon League. Both players double blind select their characters in response to this and game one is played. Your opponent’s Sonic edges out your Simon Belmont here and you are allowed to counterpick from any of the stages not struck in the first place which probably will require a check of the random stage select screen to remember which stages these are. You choose Yoshi’s Island Brawl, your opponent switches to Ridley, and you switches to Inkling in response. Game two is played, you win. Your opponent can now counterpick from the same pool of stages struck down to except not Unova Pokemon League since he has already won there. He chooses Town and City, you stick with Inkling, your opponent goes back to Sonic, and the final game is played to determine the set.

I’m aware that such a proposal is likely to raise a few concerns which I would like to briefly address.

“This will take too long” - Timing issues in tournament settings are always sensitive, but here’s my take on how this will probably play out. Based on my personal experience, the time striking takes is largely focused on the last few strikes as the decision is narrowed between stages you like the most. With only striking to about half of the total remaining pool, the decisions should be easier and thus each strike can progress faster. Without Ultimate in hand to do a real simulation, exact metrics cannot be provided, but I am confident this would consistently be a sub-minute procedure which will fit in nicely with current tournament timing norms. The rule preset function we have been shown is a further boon as well; between sets this feature very likely can be used to restore the random stage list to its original state which will be an overall time savings for the tournament. Having all these stage bans effectively done up front can also save time going into games two and three and therefore across the set.

“I dislike randomness” - RNG is not without its disadvantages, but in the end, a striking method will either have some volatility beyond your control (your opponent’s unpredictable actions) or an inevitable result of the same thing almost every time (Smashville). This method is, in our opinion, the most realistic way to ensure fairness and diverse outcomes while allowing for the large stage list that it seems likely Smash Ultimate will call for. Even still, Stage Morph may provide a non-RNG solution, but the gameplay dynamics there remain poorly understood at this early date.

“I want to ban a stage after playing a game” - The ruleset can be easily modified to allow for a post-game one stage ban with minimal impact at a TO’s discretion depending on timing concerns.

We mentioned earlier that one of our biggest goals was to reach out to the community and find out exactly where the people stand on some of the most contested topics out there. In order to accomplish this, we have put together a poll that spans such topics as 'How many stages should we have legal?' to 'Should Squad Strike be considered for competitive play?'.

We're not just looking for opinions, though. We also ask that you share your region, time spent in the scene, game of choice, and role in the community as well. It is one thing to be able to say '42% of people are for a large stage list', and quite another to be able to say '42% of west coast smashers with over 10 years experience are for a large stage list, but TOs from the same region are less excited.'

We hope that by many community members filling this out we’ll be able to more accurately understand how the community as a whole feels on these sort of issues which should help tournament organizers make rules that will better match those preferences. So please fill this out! Even better, get your friends to fill it out too! The more responses we get, the more accurate our data will be!

https://goo.gl/forms/HVGso0pgPWaZfJx73

Thank you for taking your time to consider all of this. We’re all super excited for Smash Ultimate, and we hope that if we all talk to each other and work together we can make this not just the ultimate Smash game but also the ultimate competitive experience. Please do fill out the survey, and if you have any other ideas or perspectives, please do comment and discuss. Everyone’s voice is welcome!

 

[PoptartLord]

I'm looking forward to seeing the results of that poll. I keep hearing "The community wants X" but there's no way to back that up. This won't be perfect but it's a good start. Especially as more people participate.

Oh, I should mention for those that didn't check it out yet that It's not about the method proposed in the first part, but general questions about ruleset preferences. Also some data gathering on thoughts about the new mechanics/options.

 

[Galgatha]

Well filled out the doc, and I will say that this looks to be a good solution going forward. Amazing Ampharos , I must say though that after backing you up in plenty of legal stage discussion threads, lol, why was I not invited to this discussion? XD

All joking aside, I like it so far. I would love to see Stage Morph in legal play, but if not, I can always enjoy it at home.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

WritersBlah actually organized the group; I was invited but was not doing inviting!

And yeah, I think a lot of us are pretty interested in the potential of stage morph, but so much we don't know. We don't know the exact dynamics when you change between stages of really different sizes, we don't know if the very large and visible frame drops in the direct we saw will be resolved at launch, and really we just don't know how well it will play out. The thing I like about FLiPS in this regard is that it can accommodate Stage Morph if it works out well and carry on without missing a beat if it doesn't.

 

[QrowinSP]

It's good to see you again, AA! I'm just a spectator, but I'm a huge proponent of a large stage list, so I'd love a system like this. I just hope that people don't get butthurt about random stage selection and declare they lost due to "Jank" or something like that. It completely neutered Sm4sh's stage list.

 

[digiholic]

I'm glad that AA is always around to stick up for a less restrictive ruleset. I'm glad someone is at least giving a chance to new tournament styles instead of everyone just defaulting to how Melee works and never considering how much more fun things could be without sacrificing the competitiveness.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

The poll has some initial results! We hope to keep getting some more responses to flesh out the data, but this is already a pretty good starting point. Let me share what we have so far. We'll do more correlations and such later when we're ready to close this.:

Spoiler: Responses

Various preferences among those who identified as competitors:

Various preferences among those who identified as TOs:

Various responses among those who identified as spectators:

Stage preference filtered by time in the community:

To summarize what we can surmise...

The consensus position on the question of what the initial stage list should be is option 3: a generally large stage list that excludes problematic stages. However, preferences are non-uniform. Competitors are about evenly split between that and option 2: a generally small list of carefully selected stages, but TOs and spectators have a very strong preference for option 3. We also observe that time in the community is a strong predictor. Generally speaking, newer players are more stage conservative and more experienced smashers are more stage liberal, but you observe that the large list prevails as long as you consider anyone who has been in the community since before Smash Wii U came out.

3 stock is the very overwhelming preference of basically everyone. This summarized what I think we all knew: 2 stocks for Smash Wii U really sucked, and we don't want to do it again.

No one is quite sure whether matches should be 6 or 8 minutes; it's very evenly divided. 7 is so low largely because it wasn't listed on the form but was a decent performer for a write-in. This is a topic we'll have to explore more in future polls.

For stage hazard toggle, shockingly to me a majority seem willing to case by case stages. I don't really know how that's going to work (and given that TOs are less enthusiastic than the other two groups about this maybe they don't either), but it's interesting.

Overall enthusiasm for Stage Morph is actually pretty low. There are a decent number of curious people, but a lot are just completely uninterested and very, very few like it enough to say they really want to use it.

A lot of people want to toy with metered final smashes, but very few seem willing to commit to them (spectators having the highest approval of the idea). Definitely the consensus here though is that they should be toyed with when the game launches.

On the other hand, people pretty much are convinced squad strike should be a side event at tournaments. I feel the poll may have been insufficiently communicative on this and the previous question since, to me, side event means "we're not running doubles and we're running this instead", but surely many people voted for this and metered final smashes both as side events which is the sort of thing that can't really happen at an actual tournament (just not enough time). The next poll should probably ask "what should be the side event at Smash Ultimate tournaments" and list out like doubles, quads, metered final smash, and squad strike.

I... actually don't remember which way we framed the rage toggle question, but most people are just unsure which is basically what the results indicated.

Either way, this is just preliminary. We'll have better, more detailed results in the future. For now though, I'm interested if anyone has any thoughts on these results, and I hope some more people will jump in and add to the data pile.

 

[dav3yb]

Just took the poll, and will be dropping a link to my local scene if thats ok with you AA.

I also currently don't see any reason to adjust the standard 3 stock 6 minutes until we get a feel for how fast the game plays out. It could be just fine, especially if the 1v1's have additional damage.

I said yes for smash meter because I'd love to see it honestly, but I know, depending on how a lot of them behave, it probably won't be a thing.

Also in terms of stage morph and the frame drops, we haven't even really had a chance to play with it yet, so it could just not be an issue? I'm 100% for using morph if at all possible. I think it solves game 1 perfectly, and i would love to see it personally.

 

[Untouch]

Two interesting tidbits I see here.

1. Generally, the longer time spent in the community, the more stages are requested.
2. Squad Strike as a main event is much lower than I would have expected, though I think a lot of people don't know how it works yet (myself included).

 

[Galgatha]

Two interesting tidbits I see here.

1. Generally, the longer time spent in the community, the more stages are requested.
2. Squad Strike as a main event is much lower than I would have expected, though I think a lot of people don't know how it works yet (myself included).

Agreed, and the new information in regards to Squad Strike dropped by Sakuria only add to the confusion. Before, I was pretty sure it would work similar to the final battle in Smash Tour, where you had a set number of stock, and each stock was represented by a different fighter. So in 1 battle, you could cycle between 3 different fighters.

But, now it appears that there might be multiple ways of playing Squad Strike. The first way, that being similar to Smash Tour, appears to be for the 1v1. However, when playing as a group (such as Crew battle), it would work more similar to how the Team Tournament worked in Tekken Tag Tourmanet 2 (my only real experince with fighting games outside of Smash) in which, there are a set number of characters, and the characters will fight 1 by 1, the winner moving onto the next round with the damage that they took from the previous round. This would continue until that winner was KO'ed, then the next fighter would take that place, and this would continue until 1 player had run out of characters.

If this is the case....AND this is adapted into the Online feature for Smash, Crew Battles just got a ton easier, and it can still be used in 1v1 as well.