Meta It's Time To Abandon 3 Starter Lists

[Illuminose]

Part of the reason I'm for FLSS is that Smashville is one of Charizard's worst stages, he can't use the moving platform for aerial protection like in battlefield and it lets Sheik and others do low% kill strings negating his great survivability against MUs that already give him issues. The only stage that I have found worse is Kongo and that is because he doesn't have any way to stop circle camping there.

I don't see any reason a stage is "bad" for game one yet "good" for game 2-5. If a stage has "Jank" (I hate that word) that makes it uncompetitive then it should be banned, not allowed as a counter pick. If a stage is legal at all it is considered good for competitive play so there is no reason it shouldn't be game one if neither player dislikes it enough to strike it, if that stage is bad for a character it should be stuck by that player.

The reason we have counterpick and starter stages is because we want sets to start on what are regarded as neutral stages. The bottom line is that we want to minimize any potential game 1 advantage because game 1 is often a deciding factor, particularly in best-of-3 sets in which the winner of game 1 still has an advantage for game 3 due to stage choice, even if they lose game 2. I mean sure, you could argue that people could just strike the stages that are bad for them, but even regardless of that and regardless of any stage legality, we want game 1 to be somewhat even. The issue is that there are no truly neutral stages, but for instance Smashville comes close, and depending on the matchup Battlefield or Final Destination can be a fine neutral. We also want game 1 to reward player skill and better gameplay; while (however much I might disagree) we may be 'ok' with Delfino's weird blastzones or Halberd's low ceiling/hazards in the middle of a set, it seems especially cheesy for someone to get this major advantage on a stage that can sometimes degenerate to gameplay which does not necessarily reward what we commonly refer to as player skill due to stage-related hazards (using this term loosely) or stage advantage. Not only do we eliminate this via a starter-counterpick system, but we reduce the stage striking time significantly because we're going through 3 or maybe 5 stages as opposed to 10+ stages.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

These are facts, you can't argue them. The only thing you can say is "I accept this but still want to play like that, because imo that's part of the game / not bad enough".

Or "you're still being completely inconsistent when allowing these stages games 2-5 but not game 1". Or "That's not a fact, that's an opinion". Christ, dude, you complained that a completely predictable hazard on Kalos killed you. Not even "an opponent knocked me onto a floating platform and jablocked me as it dragged me off into the blastzone", but "I made an unforced error and died from it". You've made it repeatedly clear that you consider the skill of "dealing with your environment" as though it was somehow beneath you, as if we should craft the ruleset to ignore one of the fundamental aspects of the game, which would be okay (hey, we all agree items are a bad idea) if you didn't turn around and talk about "core gameplay" as though the word had any meaning to you. "Facts". Hey, "some stages have uncompetitive elements" is a fact. You know what we do to those stages? We ban them. Here's what's not a fact: "Kalos's design is clearly uncompetitive". That's a subjective value judgment, and it's not even an obvious one, like with Temple or Pilotwings. "Jank"? Can you even offer an objective definition of the term?

If you don't see that, then I can't help you. That's why rulesets are thought out by people who know their stuff and not people that just joined the community or just want to play for fun and a little competition.

And of course, you belong to the former category, while people like, say:

• @ ParanoidDrone who literally developed most of the stage research we have to date
• @Raziek who is both the TO and best player in his region
• @Overswarm who not only is a TO in his region and would eat your ass for breakfast in Brawl or Smash 4, but also happens to be a member of every smash backroom so far and fairly influential in their decisions
• @Amazing Ampharos who is a regular tourney-goer and the freakin' co-designer of Balanced Brawl!
• @uh... me? who is both a regular tourney-goer and TO and basically responsible for the Smash 4 scene in his region existing

They all belong in the latter category, I guess. Because they disagree with you.

Cadet has always had way out of place opinions / logic for stuff like that

You know, say what you will about my opinions, but I'm not out of place here. When talking about the people who spend a lot of time examining and analyzing stages, I'm not even the most liberal. There's a reason it's "you against the crowd" here. Germany is obviously a different story, but there I see an odd little paradigm - people who know nothing about the stages in question want them banned; people who understand them don't. The guys at my biweeklies who threatened to quit if I legalized Kalos? I asked them how often they'd actually played on the stage, and I have literally played on that stage more in one evening session with ParanoidDrone than they have ever.

and mostly people just ignore him and don't take him seriously, because really most competitive people don't want to play like this (like Zeros opinion isn't really anything out of place, it's quite normal for the real competitive players, no matter if you "never liked him" or anything like that).

Zero is actually a great test case, because while his opinions are not really that out of place, his facts are so blatantly wrong that it's hard to take him seriously afterwards. It offers an excellent window into how players, even top players, think - they have no clue what they're talking about, little interest in actually learning the facts, and have their foregone conclusions which they will work towards because that's what they want, not because that's a ruleset that actually makes sense. Then again, you're also a pretty great test case, you just don't quite have the same name recognition.

I'm just here to diminish him (Cadet) spreading around his thoughts of how the game should be played so people aren't too allured by his stuff, because that's really a minority that think like that, and it's mostly people who aren't too competitive (a big part of the community isn't really that competitive actually).

Big props to @SmashCapps for making that survey, because now I'm actually justified in telling you to blow it out your ass. Almost half the smash community thinks we should FLSS. Removing those who don't go to tournaments does not significantly change that figure. Speaking of figures that don't significantly change, 75% think customs should be legal, so maybe, just maybe, you ought to stop speaking out against those - after all, clearly, it's a tiny minority that think like that. That makes sense, right? I mean, even if you were right, who cares, because clearly you're one of the only ones. That's not how logic or discourse works.

See on which stages Japan plays?

See on which stages <insert region here> plays? Oh look, you found an outlier - an outlier which, by the way, does not even remotely conform to your own ideology, so it's a bit of a bait and switch to pull it up like that.

Even in America the stages always got less and less over time for all Smashgames (dunno about 64). While some parts of Europe had quite a few stages (even Norfair and stuff) on Brawls start it always got less and less, because most people don't want stuff like that. And please don't come up with "we shouldn't do what people want/don't want", because they actually have good competitive reasons for not wanting that.

Question. What changed throughout the lifetime of Brawl that made these stages less viable? Was it that people just didn't want to play there? Or was it, oh, I dunno, stuff being discovered that was legitimately broken? Maybe it was planking and the way Wario could run away on Norfair that killed it. Maybe it was that one match where the Olimar got gimped by the stage that made Pictochat finally go away. Maybe Luigi's Mansion got banned because of Metaknight. Maybe Brinstar and Rainbow Cruise both got banned because people thought it would limit Metaknight. Oh wait, not "maybe", I was there. So was Overswarm. It happened that way. That was the way it went. The only stage that actually was banned under the "people didn't want stuff like that" paradigm was Pokemon Stadium 2, and I think we can all agree that that was a stupid decision.

 

[PUK]

The reason we have counterpick and starter stages is because we want sets to start on what are regarded as neutral stages. The bottom line is that we want to minimize any potential game 1 advantage because game 1 is often a deciding factor, particularly in best-of-3 sets in which the winner of game 1 still has an advantage for game 3 due to stage choice, even if they lose game 2. I mean sure, you could argue that people could just strike the stages that are bad for them, but even regardless of that and regardless of any stage legality, we want game 1 to be somewhat even

This is the most common argument IN FAVOUR of FLSS.
As a competitive player i can never start with my main because of the three starter list, so i need to use MK or whatever good on at least 2 of the starters every first game. Thats alone hit some characters viability.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

The reason we have counterpick and starter stages is because we want sets to start on what are regarded as neutral stages. The bottom line is that we want to minimize any potential game 1 advantage because game 1 is often a deciding factor, particularly in best-of-3 sets in which the winner of game 1 still has an advantage for game 3 due to stage choice, even if they lose game 2. I mean sure, you could argue that people could just strike the stages that are bad for them, but even regardless of that and regardless of any stage legality, we want game 1 to be somewhat even.

Right, and the only meaningful way we can determine "even" is by looking at how the matchup averages out over all legal stages, and taking the stage that best matches that average. Failing that, however, the median is an entirely adequate and useful approximation. The argument seems to be that we want game 1 to be even, therefore we should use a striking system that is not even.

The issue is that there are no truly neutral stages, but for instance Smashville comes close, and depending on the matchup Battlefield or Final Destination can be a fine neutral.

Yes, depending on the matchup. However, I feel the need to point out that Shiek's two best stages, out of all the stages being currently considered for "legal", are Smashville and Battlefield, and that Final Destination qualifies as a solid pick in many matchups as well. Pikachu loves Smashville. Little Mac hates Smashville. You could probably find quite a few more if you took the time to look. What can happen with 3 starters is, just for example, in the Shiek-Ganon matchup, is that the absolute worst stages in the matchup for Ganon are Smashville and Final Destination. Shiek gets a free counterpick round one. Hey @Overswarm , mind repeating that bit about how bad characters in Brawl were boosted by a stagelist explicitly negating their weaknesses?

Full List Stage Striking doesn't have this problem. You are going to end up at the even stage for the matchup, no matter what the matchup is.

We also want game 1 to reward player skill and better gameplay

Wrong, we want each game to reward player skill and better gameplay. This attitude is bizarre to me. What, do we just stop caring after game one?

while (however much I might disagree) we may be 'ok' with Delfino's weird blastzones or Halberd's low ceiling/hazards in the middle of a set, it seems especially cheesy for someone to get this major advantage on a stage that can sometimes degenerate to gameplay which does not necessarily reward what we commonly refer to as player skill due to stage-related hazards (using this term loosely) or stage advantage.

Yeah, you know what we do to stages that are degenerative to gameplay, fail to reward player skill, or otherwise offer uncompetitive conditions? We ban them. If I didn't think Delfino or Halberd were legitimate game one (and I am honestly on the fence about Halberd due to the permanent low ceiling enabling some quite frankly hilarious bull**** with ZSS, Palutena, or Rosalina), then why in the world would it be legitimate game two? Or three? We're saying "you can't play this stage round one, it's too uncompetitive, but we're totally okay with you winning the tournament on it." That's ridiculous!

(Also, on a side note, if you got cheesed on Delfino, you got outplayed. It's not degenerate or broken, you were stuck in a reasonably high-risk situation and got outplayed. There's nothing wrong with this in practice in any part of the set - but if there were, it would be a problem no matter if it was game two of a loser's round 1 set or game 5 of Grand Finals.)

 

[Raijinken]

And please don't come up with "we shouldn't do what people want/don't want", because they actually have good competitive reasons for not wanting that.

Personally, I'm a logistics analyst. My job is to ask why things are and to get explanations, realize systems need improvement, and then start improving them. And "it's always been that way" and "the boss said so" are the two most over-used and least useful excuses for running a bad system. Ever. Doesn't matter the subject. Much of the point of people like Cadet, and me, and numerous other of us "theorycrafters with no basis in reality and no competitive experience" (as I've been called), is to bring attention and thoughtful analysis and reflection to aspects of the ruleset. At best we get some consideration, at worst people ignore us and complain while EVO adopts our rulesets on your behalf.

Wrong, we want each game to reward player skill and better gameplay. This attitude is bizarre to me. What, do we just stop caring after game one?

New ruleset: Bo1 on FD? No hazards, no platform cheese, pseudo-viable Little Mac, nothing but player skill and people playing Sonic. May the best Sonic win.

 

[Illuminose]

@ Budget Player Cadet_ the thing is that the Sheik-Ganon matchup doesn't become any more winnable for Ganon just because the stage changes. Sheik can win by literally camping needles and spacing fairs. It's a 65:35 matchup in favor of Sheik at least if not more like 70:30 or 75:25. If the Sheik player plays the matchup like it is supposed to be played (not using unsafe moves on shield, not trying to trade with Ganon, forcing Ganon to approach via zoning with needles and good spacing...), it is an almost unwinnable matchup. Ganon is a low tier and Sheik is the best character in the game, that's just how some of these matchups happen. How much is stage impacting this? Not much, that's for sure.

The thing I want you to explain is how full list stage select fixes this issue. I can't see how it does without actually allowing counterpicks game 1, which would be banned by any player not dumb. I'd like you to show me the data that proves FLSS has neutral stages for all these matchups. Even at that point, it's a major logical jump to have FLSS as opposed to expanding the starter list to say 5 (which I'm still pretty opposed). And you know what? We'll see even more players just Gentleman's to Smashville and be done with it. This is because FLSS wastes time. You have to go through all of our legal stages for game 1 and each player has to think about every single stage they could possibly want to avoid. This takes a fairly long time, which is important when considering large tournaments. The other reason the 3 starter list is so effective is its simplicity. You don't have to consider 10+ stages just to start your set. Literally all you have to do is pick out of 3 stages the one you least want to go to, which streamlines the stage selection process immensely.

 

[NegaNixx]

New ruleset: Bo1 on FD? No hazards, no platform cheese, pseudo-viable Little Mac, nothing but player skill and people playing Sonic. May the best Sonic win.

That ruleset has "gotta go fast".

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

@ Budget Player Cadet_ the thing is that the Sheik-Ganon matchup doesn't become any more winnable for Ganon just because the stage changes. Sheik can win by literally camping needles and spacing fairs. It's a 65:35 matchup in favor of Sheik at least if not more like 70:30 or 75:25. If the Sheik player plays the matchup like it is supposed to be played (not using unsafe moves on shield, not trying to trade with Ganon, forcing Ganon to approach via zoning with needles and good spacing...), it is an almost unwinnable matchup. Ganon is a low tier and Sheik is the best character in the game, that's just how some of these matchups happen. How much is stage impacting this? Not much, that's for sure.

First of all, that was just the matchup that immediately came to mind; the same is true of the ZSS/Shiek matchup - I'd ban FD and Smashville in a heartbeat in that matchup as ZSS as well. Secondly, most ganons don't think it's that bad, because if Shiek gets overzealous (or just goes for a bouncing fish and gets read), Dark Fists ****s her up, and her gimp game is considerably reduced by Wizard's Dropkick (I refuse to treat the customs-off meta as a real meta). Not good, but not awful either. Thirdly, yes, the stage does actually make a pretty significant difference - on Smashville, a lot of the advantage Ganon ekes from living really long goes away due to Shiek easily carrying him straight to the blastzone on the platform, and on FD he has no platforms to help capitalize on his advantages when he gets them.

The thing I want you to explain is how full list stage select fixes this issue.

Okay, here's a few iterations of striking between a ZSS and a Shiek:

Spoiler

• Battlefield
• Final Destination / Omega Stages
• Smashville
• Castle Siege
• Delfino Plaza
• Town & City
• Duck Hunt
• Halberd
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Skyloft
• Pokémon Stadium 2

ZSS strikes:

• Battlefield
• Final Destination / Omega Stages
• Smashville
• Castle Siege
• Delfino Plaza
• Town & City
• Duck Hunt
• Halberd
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Skyloft
• Pokémon Stadium 2

Shiek strikes:

• Battlefield
• Smashville
• Castle Siege
• Delfino Plaza
• Town & City
• Duck Hunt
• Halberd
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Skyloft
• Pokémon Stadium 2

ZSS strikes:

• Battlefield
• Smashville
• Castle Siege
• Town & City
• Duck Hunt
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Skyloft
• Pokémon Stadium 2

Shiek strikes:

• Battlefield
• Castle Siege
• Town & City
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Skyloft
• Pokémon Stadium 2

ZSS strikes:

• Castle Siege
• Town & City
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Skyloft
• Pokémon Stadium 2

Shiek strikes:

• Town & City
• Lylat Cruise
• Wuhu Island
• Pokémon Stadium 2

ZSS strikes:

• Lylat Cruise
• Pokémon Stadium 2

This leads to the considerably more neutral Lylat Cruise, rather than Smashville or Final Destination, which, you may note, are among the very first stages the ZSS player would strike.

I can't see how it does without actually allowing counterpicks game 1, which would be banned by any player not dumb. I'd like you to show me the data that proves FLSS has neutral stages for all these matchups.

If you're still talking about counterpicks, you missed the point, but okay, let's just take it to mean what most people mean, which, counter-intuitively, is not "a stage you would counterpick your opponent to" but rather "a stage which is not flat+plat with minimal movement and hazards". So what? Recently I started game one against a Greninja on Delfino. Neither of us struck it, because neither of us saw it as problematic, and we both saw other things we'd rather not start on. And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.

You describe another phenomenon - players having a knee-jerk reaction to "counterpick" stages. This is probably true. I'm sure there are some ZSS players who might strike Halberd if the opponent doesn't. They're doing it wrong, and giving up a huge advantage out of some misguided sense of honor; much like the street fighter player who won't throw because he thinks it's "cheap". This falls cleanly under "player preference", which, as I have explained on numerous occasions, should play absolutely no role in determining how we strike.

Even at that point, it's a major logical jump to have FLSS as opposed to expanding the starter list to say 5 (which I'm still pretty opposed).

No, it's not. 5-starter is an improvement over 3-starter (a character can get their 3rd-best rather than their 2nd-best stage), whereas FLSS actually guarantees the closest thing to neutral we can have.

And you know what? We'll see even more players just Gentleman's to Smashville and be done with it.

I'm sure we will. You know what? That does absolutely nothing to invalidate the usefulness of the system. It's player preference again, and if a player is willing to take a worse result than they would otherwise for the sake of convenience, that's their fault and I'm not going to stop them from doing so.

This is because FLSS wastes time. You have to go through all of our legal stages for game 1 and each player has to think about every single stage they could possibly want to avoid. This takes a fairly long time, which is important when considering large tournaments.

It takes like 30 seconds among players who know the stagelist and who have a reasonable understanding of the characters played by them and their opponents.

 

[Nintendrone]

I'm going to address some common faulty claims that people make when they are super stage-conservative:

1. "Hazards are intrinsically uncompetitive." No, they are not. The majority of the stages in Smash have hazards, and a large chunk of them are damaging. Hazards are an intrinisic design of Smash stages, to the point that stages with no hazards are the exception and not the rule. A large number of hazards offer strategic value and can add competitive depth. If a stage detracts from competition, we ban it!

2. "Hazards and other properties of stages are jank." Jank is not a word. You wanna know what jank is? Jank is an excuse commonly made by salty scrubs who don't like something, and use this made-up term to make their complaint seem like something bigger than it is.

3. "Top players don't want hazards because they detract from competition." While this may be true in some cases, this is actually them pulling the jank card again. Top players want stages they don't like to be banned because they want to win without practicing on those stages, and TOs will ban those stages to appease them because they'll get more money!


The starters were picked because of those 3 reasons, but they are all wrong. In conclusion: 3-starter lists are terrible. Making the starter list bigger is good for fairness and for the metagame.

 

[Raijinken]

It takes like 30 seconds among players who know the stagelist and who have a reasonable understanding of the characters played by them and their opponents.

Quite frankly, between two "perfect" players, they'd immediately gentleman's to the stage they know is most even for the matchup.

I ran FLSS with 13 stages at a tournament a few weeks ago. The tournament was extremely entry level, maybe three people there (self included) had ever competed in a tournament before. Even the uninformed players made it through the process quickly by banning stages they don't like (which included Smashville on numerous occasions). At worst, the process took two minutes, because I had to explain the whole idea to a pair of players who'd hardly played the game to begin with. We kept a checklist on a whiteboard so people could visually strike (without using Random Stage Selection because some people didn't have fully unlocked setups). It was easy.

I'm going to address some common faulty claims that people make when they are super stage-conservative:

1. "Hazards are intrinsically uncompetitive." No, they are not. The majority of the stages in Smash have hazards, and a large chunk of them are damaging. Hazards are an intrinisic design of Smash stages, to the point that stages with no hazards are the exception and not the rule. A large number of hazards offer strategic value and can add competitive depth. If a stage detracts from competition, we ban it!

2. "Hazards and other properties of stages are jank." Jank is not a word. You wanna know what jank is? Jank is an excuse commonly made by salty scrubs who don't like something, and use this made-up term to make their complaint seem like something bigger than it is.

3. "Top players don't want hazards because they detract from competition." While this may be true in some cases, this is actually them pulling the jank card again. Top players want stages they don't like to be banned because they want to win without practicing on those stages, and TOs will ban those stages to appease them because they'll get more money!


The starters were picked because of those 3 reasons, but they are all wrong. In conclusion: 3-starter lists are terrible. Making the starter list bigger is good for fairness and for the metagame.

Hit the nail on the head. Heck, most characters are jankier than most stages. And it's far easier to solo-practice a stage than a matchup.

But seriously, there is no reason for an extreme stage conservative to play anything besides For Glory rulesets. Everything else just adds to the jank.

 

[Luigi player]

I'm going to address some common faulty claims that people make when they are super stage-conservative:

1. "Hazards are intrinsically uncompetitive." No, they are not. The majority of the stages in Smash have hazards, and a large chunk of them are damaging. Hazards are an intrinisic design of Smash stages, to the point that stages with no hazards are the exception and not the rule. A large number of hazards offer strategic value and can add competitive depth. If a stage detracts from competition, we ban it!

2. "Hazards and other properties of stages are jank." Jank is not a word. You wanna know what jank is? Jank is an excuse commonly made by salty scrubs who don't like something, and use this made-up term to make their complaint seem like something bigger than it is.

3. "Top players don't want hazards because they detract from competition." While this may be true in some cases, this is actually them pulling the jank card again. Top players want stages they don't like to be banned because they want to win without practicing on those stages, and TOs will ban those stages to appease them because they'll get more money!


The starters were picked because of those 3 reasons, but they are all wrong. In conclusion: 3-starter lists are terrible. Making the starter list bigger is good for fairness and for the metagame.

1. - they are. and the majority of the games stages are uncompetitive. they game was designed to mostly be a party game after all.

2. - While that is true for "salty scrubs", it's also true for competitive players who don't like a stage because it distracts from actual combat with their opponent. You have to differenciate that.

3. - I'd have no problem learning about stages, but if a stage has enough bull to even be played, then I want it banned, because it adds some sort of "luck" than actual skill of beating the opponent.

You have correct reasons in terms of scrubs, but we're talking about competitive players here, and while you're definitely right some might be a little scrubby it is not the case for all of them.


In the end it seems like it's just a different "philosophy" of playing against someone.
Most highly competitive players just want to play against their opponent without any disturbances or "jank" while many half-casuals/half-competitive players enjoy having more stages and maybe jank (of course that will not be true for all of them, but it's likely the majority).

The starter / counterpick idea supports more uninfluencing stages as starters and more influencing stages as counerpicks.
You are correct, if we don't want any jank we'd just play on FD / Omegas, Battlefield and maybe Smashville (then again, players just like Smashville because it's a nice middleground of the 2 formers, even though the moving platform can influence a few things sometimes, so they'll more than likely allow it as well).
But there are also a lot of other stages who are almost okay and add a lot of variety, I'm guessing it's mostly a consensus to use the starter/counterpick idea, which lightens the weigh of counterpicks, as long as you win game 1.

I hope you can agree that playing more against your opponent and less against the game is more competitive in a game where the point is to beat the opponent.

 

[Rikkhan]

So what's competitive players opinion about this? I'm not familiar with the smash4 competitive scene so I'm not sure if any top competitive player has already replied to this thread or has already mention something about changing the starter list.

 

[Infinite901]

2. "Hazards and other properties of stages are jank." Jank is not a word. You wanna know what jank is? Jank is an excuse commonly made by salty scrubs who don't like something, and use this made-up term to make their complaint seem like something bigger than it is.

Exactly. Jank is a John. No Johns.

These are facts, you can't argue them. The only thing you can say is "I accept this but still want to play like that, because imo that's part of the game / not bad enough".
If you don't see that, then I can't help you. That's why rulesets are thought out by people who know their stuff and not people that just joined the community or just want to play for fun and a little competition.

That does not at all answer what they wanted you to answer. They asked you why they need to accept that as a "fact" (which it is not at all, it's an opinion) and you responded by essentially saying "Because it's a fact." Circular logic is circular.

1. - they are. and the majority of the games stages are uncompetitive. they game was designed to mostly be a party game after all.

2. - While that is true for "salty scrubs", it's also true for competitive players who don't like a stage because it distracts from actual combat with their opponent. You have to differenciate that.

3. - I'd have no problem learning about stages, but if a stage has enough bull to even be played, then I want it banned, because it adds some sort of "luck" than actual skill of beating the opponent.

1. - I can agree with that, most stages are non-competitive. But a hazard does not necessarily break a stage.

2. - The only reason a competitive player wouldn't like a stage on FLSS because it "distracts" is because they don't understand the stage. It's their fault, not the stage's. You have to differentiate that.

3. - You obviously do have a problem with learning stages, because you are barely giving most of them any chance.

 

[Nintendrone]

1. - they are. and the majority of the games stages are uncompetitive. they game was designed to mostly be a party game after all.

I agree that most stages in any given Smash game are not fit for competition. However, "potentially disruptive/influential" is not equivalent to "uncompetitive". If you're OK with Halberd, then why aren't you OK with other hazards that give fair warnings and don't lead to degenerate play? Dynamic stages and their hazards are part of the core design of Smash: what makes it stand out from other fighters.

2. - While that is true for "salty scrubs", it's also true for competitive players who don't like a stage because it distracts from actual combat with their opponent. You have to differenciate that.

If a competitive player can pay attention to the patterns of SV/TaC's platforms, then I'm sure that most hazards that liberals like myself want will be no worse. We can't cater rulesets to lazy players who don't want to learn and/or are easily distracted. Like I said, if a stage element is so powerful that it leads to degenerate play, then that stage is banned.

3. - I'd have no problem learning about stages, but if a stage has enough bull to even be played, then I want it banned, because it adds some sort of "luck" than actual skill of beating the opponent.

None of the stages I want legal has too much bull to be played on. Again, stop calling things you don't know about "luck". Stages with good hazards (including fair warnings/patterns) will minimize or eliminate any "luck".

You have correct reasons in terms of scrubs, but we're talking about competitive players here, and while you're definitely right some might be a little scrubby it is not the case for all of them.

Competitive players, by definition, play to win. If they think they can get an advantage by banning things they don't like, then they may try to do so by accusing it of "jank". I know that not all of them are like this, but you have to see that we are catering to top players too much by letting them be lazy with only 3 stages deciding Game 1, which also boosts the characters that they happen to play.

In the end it seems like it's just a different "philosophy" of playing against someone.
Most highly competitive players just want to play against their opponent without any disturbances or "jank" while many half-casuals/half-competitive players enjoy having more stages and maybe jank (of course that will not be true for all of them, but it's likely the majority).

Top players, as competitors, will not want variety because they will have to practice more and work harder to get money. Lower-level players, since they're not consistently placing in the money, do not let this concern blind them to the benefits that more stages bring. I'll repeat: Top players will take any opportunity to win money, and TOs will do anything to get top players and more money.

The starter / counterpick idea supports more uninfluencing stages as starters and more influencing stages as counerpicks.
You are correct, if we don't want any jank we'd just play on FD / Omegas, Battlefield and maybe Smashville (then again, players just like Smashville because it's a nice middleground of the 2 formers, even though the moving platform can influence a few things sometimes, so they'll more than likely allow it as well).
But there are also a lot of other stages who are almost okay and add a lot of variety, I'm guessing it's mostly a consensus to use the starter/counterpick idea, which lightens the weigh of counterpicks, as long as you win game 1.

The starter/CP distinction is dumb because it encourages laziness. Players only need to practice the starters because they decide Game 1. There is no excuse for a stage to be legal in Game 2 but not Game 1. Stages that are CPs are "OK" because they're legal, not "almost OK" because they're not as popular. The reason that the system is still in place is that top players ***** and moan that they have to actually learn more than 3 stages.

I hope you can agree that playing more against your opponent and less against the game is more competitive in a game where the point is to beat the opponent.

I agree that "fighting the stage" instead of your opponent is not competitive. The stages that I advocate for do not make it so that you "fight the stage", but in fact have hazards that can be strategically used to fight your opponent.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

1. - they are.

You have made absolutely no attempt to demonstrate this statement, and yet you keep making it. Why?

Most highly competitive players just want to play against their opponent without any disturbances

First of all, thank you for continuing to poison the well. I'm getting kind of sick of you calling everyone who disagrees with you uncompetitive. Secondly, this would imply that most highly competitive players have very little interest in Smash Bros as a series.

 

[KakuCP9]

Jank is a John. No Johns.

Siging for truth.

 

[Lukingordex]

If you like 3 starters then you need to play against good Sonics and Sheiks.

 

[Luigi player]

You have made absolutely no attempt to demonstrate this statement, and yet you keep making it. Why?



First of all, thank you for continuing to poison the well. I'm getting kind of sick of you calling everyone who disagrees with you uncompetitive. Secondly, this would imply that most highly competitive players have very little interest in Smash Bros as a series.

Didn't I tell enough times already why? If you still don't get it, then you never will. Why would this imply that? Just because they aren't playing on stages that you think are competitive but in their eyes they are less than the neutrals?

Well, you are a different type of competitive that isn't trying to compete against other people alone, but also against the game, I've worded it pretty nicely in my previous post imo.

Exactly. Jank is a John. No Johns.
That does not at all answer what they wanted you to answer. They asked you why they need to accept that as a "fact" (which it is not at all, it's an opinion) and you responded by essentially saying "Because it's a fact." Circular logic is circular.

Why would I need to explain a fact? You'd just need to accept it. I've tried explaining most stuff a lot of times already.

1. - I can agree with that, most stages are non-competitive. But a hazard does not necessarily break a stage.

I agree with this.

2. - The only reason a competitive player wouldn't like a stage on FLSS because it "distracts" is because they don't understand the stage. It's their fault, not the stage's. You have to differentiate that.

I'm now understanding Kalos a lot and think it's a great deal of fun and that I want to play on it on Smashfests in competitive matches against other people. I'd even go as far as allowing it at "just for fun" tournaments that don't have pot or too much meaning, basically small Smashfests. But I'd never want to see it in a real serious competition. It's just not fit for that, because of all the things it has.

3. - You obviously do have a problem with learning stages, because you are barely giving most of them any chance.

I definitely give them a chance if they would at least feel like they could be viable. Like, I don't see why people don't like Wuhu Island. It might've been banned since the start because of the boat glitch, but you have to get grabbed at that specific place for that to happen, so that's just what people need to know about and it's completely fine. It's a little big which could turn out to be a problem, but it wasn't really tested, I don't see how it's any worse than Delfino otherwise. It should be used more and I could even see it as a starter (instead of Battlefield). They boat glitch is also apparently fixed as well.

As for Kongo Jungle, that might be bias because I love DK, but I don't see why it should be banned as well, the barrel is annoying, but it's not like it's unbeatable. People tried telling me how Barrelcamping is completely overpowered and let me SD my first stock against their Jiggs while they're only trying to run the clock and they always failed to let me not come back. They even had a john that was they aren't too good with Jiggs. I can definitely see a good Jiggs being a little better at this but I still didn't see how it was broken. So I am definitely open minded for stages and I've even come to somewhat accept Delfino which I'm playing much more on now (although I once got that really early kill in my last smashsession which made me worry a little about it again..), but some stages are pretty obviously just too much. Don't think I wouldn't love to have Mario Kart 8 or Kalos legal if it weren't for the hazards. It's really sad, but they are how they are, and from my (and almost everyone else who tries to play a serious competitive match against an opponent) perspective of competitive, they would definitely be a great deal annoying if "random hazard" stuff happens.

That doesn't change the fact though that some stages are still better suited for the competitive purpose of fighting other people with as few distractions as possible. Do you want football (soccer, but I'm referring to it as football :]) players play on fields with big rocks lying around or have a train drive through in a set timer? No. That's basically the same thing with Smash. You don't want hazards that interrupt that play against the opponent. Small hazards can be seen as okay depending on how liberal someone/a community is, but they're destracting either way, even if just a little. And hazards that kill could be seen as holes on the playing field that if players fall into them they're just gone. It's just with a way too big impact, lol.

 

[NegaNixx]

That doesn't change the fact though that some stages are still better suited for the competitive purpose of fighting other people with as few distractions as possible. Do you want football (soccer, but I'm referring to it as football :]) players play on fields with big rocks lying around or have a train drive through in a set timer? No. That's basically the same thing with Smash. You don't want hazards that interrupt that play against the opponent. Small hazards can be seen as okay depending on how liberal someone/a community is, but they're destracting either way, even if just a little. And hazards that kill could be seen as holes on the playing field that if players fall into them they're just gone. It's just with a way too big impact, lol.

If we're talking about analogous "hazards" in real sports lets talk baseball. Soccer has standardised dimensions so its not a fair comparison.

Baseball has different sized blast zones (home run fences), blast zones that benefit and harm those that hit off each side (like blast zones that benefit those that kill off the top and the sides. Turf vs. standard grass vs. clay resulting in volatile baseball movements. Have been noted to have the field tampered with to benefit their team or hamper the other team.

These are more analogous to smash hazards, things that you can account for during the game. Just like a person can account for platforms moving when you choose the stage, or a temporary lower blast zone, or a laser with significant warning. They don't serve to break the game, they serve to even certain match ups when implemented in a FLSS because if a stage is too volatile to a single character they can strike it and play on the most neutral stage to the match up. It's like choosing between a three strike stage list of Fenway park (volatile Left field, right field), New Yankees Stadium (volatile left field right field), and Angel's Stadium (volatile centre). Angels stadium would be the most balanced. But putting more fields would balance it out depending on the team matchup. If I and my opponent want more right sides home runs I'm going to New Yankees stadium. If we both want lots of platforms I'm going to Lylat Cruise. The most balanced is not always number 5 out of 9, sometimes 7 is more average thanks to the match up.

Sorry, this is sort of sloppy, I'm on my phone.

 

[Piford]

Varying weather conditions is similar to hazards if you are comparing sports to smash. Some places are colder, sometimes it'll lightly raining, ect. Also, if Soccer/Football did have big rocks lying around the field it wouldn't be any worse of a sport and it could actually be very interesting to see how players work around and utilize it. You could probably make some cool passes by knocking the ball into it, or give yourself a better defensive position at the cost of less movement space. Having a train drive through the field obviously can't happen.

 

[Raijinken]

If we're talking about analogous "hazards" in real sports lets talk baseball. Soccer has standardised dimensions so its not a fair comparison.

Baseball has different sized blast zones (home run fences), blast zones that benefit and harm those that hit off each side (like blast zones that benefit those that kill off the top and the sides. Turf vs. standard grass vs. clay resulting in volatile baseball movements. Have been noted to have the field tampered with to benefit their team or hamper the other team.

These are more analogous to smash hazards, things that you can account for during the game. Just like a person can account for platforms moving when you choose the stage, or a temporary lower blast zone, or a laser with significant warning. They don't serve to break the game, they serve to even certain match ups when implemented in a FLSS because if a stage is too volatile to a single character they can strike it and play on the most neutral stage to the match up. It's like choosing between a three strike stage list of Fenway park (volatile Left field, right field), New Yankees Stadium (volatile left field right field), and Angel's Stadium (volatile centre). Angels stadium would be the most balanced. But putting more fields would balance it out depending on the team matchup. If I and my opponent want more right sides home runs I'm going to New Yankees stadium. If we both want lots of platforms I'm going to Lylat Cruise. The most balanced is not always number 5 out of 9, sometimes 7 is more average thanks to the match up.

Sorry, this is sort of sloppy, I'm on my phone.

Most athletics can be, and often are, played outside in the elements, where rain and wind have a very real impact on ball physics, and sunlight can affect visibility or momentarily blind players. Cloud cover is decidedly more "random" than everything in Smash. But while I love throwing around metaphors and 1:1 comparisons between esports and athletics, the two are truly different forms of competition (heck, this entire debate reminds me of trying to convince some jock that competitive video games are sports).

If you like 3 starters then you need to play against good Sonics and Sheiks.

If his signature is anything to go by, he IS a Sonic. Which has the unfortunate effect of making his entire stance seem biased, whether his character's factors into his opinions at all or not.

The complaint about "fighting the stage" is bland and inaccurate. The only stages that will deliberately strive to target and harm you, across both versions, are Halberd (legal), Corneria (banned for wall or other issues), Magicant (Flying Man), Wily Castle, Gaur Plain U, Pyrosphere, and Mushroom Kingdom U. I suppose an argument could be made for scrolling stages, too, since it does require paying active attention to terrain features. Nothing else is actually a matter of the stage being out to get you.

Top players, as competitors, will not want variety because they will have to practice more and work harder to get money. Lower-level players, since they're not consistently placing in the money, do not let this concern blind them to the benefits that more stages bring. I'll repeat: Top players will take any opportunity to win money, and TOs will do anything to get top players and more money.

A million times this. I don't know anyone with actual practice on any stage (hazard or no) who expresses concern over getting "unfairly" or "uncompetitively" beaten up by the stage's properties. The complaint comes specifically from people who don't know the stages and thus play unsafely given the circumstances. It just hit me that almost every hazard in the game is more predictable and has a longer tell than Falcon Punch. Think about that for a minute.

Don't complain about stages you don't play. It's kinda like complaining about movies you don't watch.

 

[Rikkhan]

so exactly what stages are people here advocating to be unbanned or to be added as starter?

 

[Malex]

What quantifiable differences exist between starter stages and counterpicks that necessitate the creation of two separate classifications of legal stages?

And the quantifiable differences between couterpicks and banned stages, for that matter.

 

[NegaNixx]

so exactly what stages are people here advocating to be unbanned or to be added as starter?

Smashville FD and Battlefield + (Any two) of Lylat, Duck Hunt, and Town and City. For a five starter stage list.
The discussion has mostly moved to FLSS vs 3 Starter Stage List. So it's not the stages in question but more the way we decide on which stage to play.

 

[Raijinken]

so exactly what stages are people here advocating to be unbanned or to be added as starter?

On top of what NegaNixx said, there's some support for Stadium 2, Wuhu Island, Delfino Plaza, Mario Circuit 8, Halberd, Castle Siege, Skyloft, and Kongo Jungle 64, just depending on how stage-liberal a person you're asking.

Personally, I'd put Stadium 2 in before Duck Hunt.

 

[WaterFire]

Just coming from reading through the thread on what the time limits should be for tournaments, I find it very interesting how there can be such a big problem like managing time in tournaments, and then I come to this thread and people are advocating for more and more and more stages being legal, which just takes moremore unnecessary time to ban. Now, I must admit, I'm very new to this community and I have never attended a tourney yet, but I have watched many brawl and smash 4 sets and tourneys on stream and have a decent understanding of the game competitively. Personally, I think that the fewer stages that can support camping, have hazards (although I personally love Halberd), and detract from the game competitively, the better. Smashville, FD/omegas, Battlefield, Town and City, and Lylat are the best stages for competitive play I think. Stages like Halberd and Delfino can be picked occasionally as a gentleman's agreement. However, I'll let the more experienced members of the community decide on this though, just my two cents.

 

[Nintendrone]

Good hazards should never distract a practiced player nor detract from the PvP fight, but rather aid it. The stages that I'm advocating for have good hazards.

----------

People arguing for smaller stagelists because of "time concerns" are wrong. Striking stages never takes long with learned players, and always take a bit longer with new ones, regardless of how many stages are added. The commonly suggested number of 13 stages in FLSS is very managable and includes nearly all of the really good stages. TOs should have a sysyem in place to help expedite stage striking anyway. Besides, TOs shouldn't actively make the game worse just because they can't finish a tournament on time!

----------

Here are the stages that I think need to be legal (I also highly support FLSS, so one could either 13 or 17 for a good stagelist):

Green = Definitely should be legal
Yellow = Borderline for me

• Battlefield
• Big Battlefield (doubles)
  • It might work for doubles, but I'm not sure.
• Final Destination
• Delfino Plaza
• Mario Circuit (MK8)
  • The stage has a consistent pattern. Shy Guys are weak, not intrusive, and not that frequent. The temporarily covered blastzones leads to interesting play for stage control. The glitch is only at specific spots, is foreseeable, and you have to get strongly hit upwards for it to even happen.
• Luigi's Mansion (doubles)
  • All ceilings can be destroyed, adding a layer of strategy as to when to change the layout. I feel that it's better suited for doubles.
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Skyloft
  • Why do we have Delfino, but not this? The transformations (and hazard) have set patterns. It doesn't have Delfino's weird ceiling, and like its layouts the most out of the touring stages.
• Norfair (singles)
  • All hazards are telegraphed and encourage conflict (less camping). With modified edge mechanics, it's way better than in Brawl. I feel it's too cramped for doubles, though.
• Halberd
• Orbital Gate Assault (singles)
  • Literally everything is 100% predictable and the same every time. It's like Rainbow Cruise, but with no scrolling nor platforming. I feel that it's too cramped for doubles, though.
• Lylat Cruise
• Kalos Pokémon League (singles)
  • I've discussed this thing to death. All hazards are telegraphed and have patterns. I feel that the stage is too cramped for doubles, though.
• Pokémon Stadium 2
  • You're in the amazing normal form for 2/3 of a match. Ground is fine with wall infinites gone. Flying strengthens stronger ground games, and there's less floating then Brawl. Electric encourages strong center stage control, and the conveyers are slower than Brawl. Ice allows for cool mobility options and no tripping. The stage has improved since Brawl.
• Castle Siege
• Town and City
• Smashville
• Duck Hunt
• Wuhu Island
  • Why do we have Delfino, but not this? The transformations have set patterns, and the hazards are weak, not intrusive, and infrequent. It doesn't have Delfino's weird ceiling, but rather a slightly larger size.
• Windy Hill Zone (doubles)
  • The windmill has no problems, being an unsafe spot in general. The gravity is not banworthy. The springs need to be respected offstage, as they have 1 spawn point. I feel it's a little too big for singles.

 

[Illuminose]

I'm going to preface this with a slight clarification because the attitude with which the posts of individuals like myself and @ Luigi player have been responded to is frankly absurd.

Spoiler

For one: having a liberal stage list is a minority opinion among competitive players. Every single person I have talked to outside of this thread in regards to FLSS thinks it is a terrible idea. I don't know who was voting on that poll, but I have not talked to a single competitive player who takes this game seriously that actually thinks FLSS is anything but a waste of time and makes no sense. The term "jank" is not a john in this context; someone complaining about "jank" doesn't always just need to "get good". Fine, I can understand why there are plenty of instances where jank actually is a john because the person really doesn't understand the counterplay for something, but when you have a whole bunch of people with extensive experience playing on/dealing with a stage that are complaining about it, you can't dismiss it as a john. It becomes a legitimate complaint at that point.

Stages are guilty until proven innocent in the Smash community. That's how we play this game, and it's for the reason that most stages were not designed with competitive play in mind. It's not 'removing a crucial aspect of the game' to not want to play on stages with hazards or walkoffs or whatever because we are not using Nintendo's ruleset. We are using our own community ruleset, and the Smash rulesets have a lot of precedents that players are generally inclined to prefer due to experience in the previous games. People don't want to play the game differently, and that's actually a legitimate concern because we don't play the game 'how it's intended'. We've adapted the intent of the game to fit that of what we desire in a competitive game. We aren't 'ignoring a major aspect of Smash' by not including certain stages because we are playing our competitive version of Smash, not the casual intended version of Smash.

We use a starter-counterpick system. It's really not a valid prerogative to question the fact that this system exists when most players understand the reasoning that we separate stages like this and enjoy the ruleset like this. I honestly think it is a waste of time to discuss FLSS because it will never happen outside of EVO and tournaments trying to use the EVO ruleset. And don't try to take EVO using it as a point in favor because, well, it's not. The starter list could conceivably expand though, which is something you can totally argue, but realize that people have reasons to resist this and that your opinions are not the end-all be-all.

That said, a lot of people have been calling top players 'lazy' in this thread, which I frankly find completely and utterly ridiculous. You know what I see? I see ZeRo at multiple tournaments every week, winning all of them. I see Nairo, Nakat, Dabuz, etc all constantly at tournaments and streaming. These are the players who are most invested in the game, and brushing off their opinions as 'laziness' is one of the most insane things I have ever heard because the amount they practice and compete is absolutely enormous. Heck, I value their opinions a whole lot more than some random person on an Internet rum, and so do most players. What they want to play in tournament actually matters, a LOT, because they are the ones that bring hype to tournaments and are competing in them all the time.

I think my last post left some things unclear, so I'll just make it very clear what my ideal legal stage list is:

Starter: Battlefield/Smashville/FD

CP: Town & City/Lylat/Duck Hunt/Omegas

This is the current legal stage list subtracting Delfino, Halberd, and Castle Siege, all of which are stages that have been called into question by certain voices within the community and w/e, and are not by any means unreasonable to exclude. Do you want to know why? These stages reward fundamental gameplay less than the other stages and instead have a greatly heightened focus on stage knowledge, which is essentially a fancy way to say taking advantage of the jank present in the stages. The construction of these stages and their features are so polarizing that they provide extreme advantages to certain characters, much more than how say Sheik does pretty good on Smashville. Delfino and Halberd provide extreme benefits to characters with extra vertical killing power due to the low ceilings. Halberd is especially egregious in this regard because its insanely low ceiling persists throughout the stage. Characters like Rosalina, DK, and ZSS that have standout vertical killing power gain an advantage on these stages. For all the complaints that people have about a Sheik-centered stage list, these stages aren't even bad for Sheik because she benefits pretty greatly from the low vertical ceiling due to her up air suddenly killing early. The other issue Halberd has is the hazards. I don't think the bomb is problematic, at all. I have seen the bomb come into play very few times because it is fairly small and inconsequential as it is a short explosion. On the other hand, the claw is semi-random and extremely unpredictable in any case. It can also kill. The laser lingers for a significant period of time and can also kill. It's more than big enough to hit someone into and can severely skew recoveries (read: they can't come back) if the opponent manages to hit them offstage (a part of normal gameplay) and the laser comes out. These hazards are directly obtrusive to normal gameplay in many circumstances, similar in many regards to stages with hazards that we have actually banned. The hazards on their own may be tolerable I suppose, but the hazards combined with the low ceiling just make this stage full of weird, early, undeserved kills.

The blastzones on Delfino's transformations affecting gameplay and allowing for easy kills isn't something that's really that situational. You shouldn't have to be worried about dying off the top at 20%. That just doesn't happen in this game. However, this can easily happen on Delfino's transformations, which I've seen and experienced tons of times. Also the water...is really kind of silly, but that's not the main issue with this stage. As for Castle Siege, well...I wish they just had the first and third transformations. The stage would be totally fine if the second transformation just didn't exist, but it lasts way too long for it to be a passable thing. This is an area of the stage that can punish players for trying to fight by its design. Due to the walkoff with incredibly close blastzones (the side of the screen is basically the blastzone) and enormous size, individuals who are playing to win are often relegated to degenerate styles like blastzone camping and running away from the opponent on the spread apart and relatively slow to access platforms. This transformation alone ruins what would otherwise be a really good stage in my opinion.

There is no reason to shift to FLSS. At all. Period. It doesn't help at all. Just in the context of the current stage list, Halberd, Delfino, Castle Siege, Duck Hunt, and likely Lylat will never appear as starter stages unless the player striking is an idiot. These stages are either almost never neutral (all of them except Lylat). Lylat has many of the same matchup polarizing issues (it is rarely even close to neutral) and also well...nobody likes Lylat. Maybe Town & City but ehh...the ceiling and platform placement alone makes it a heavily biased stage in many instances.

@ Budget Player Cadet_ I really don't get your ZSS Sheik example because very few Sheik players would choose to ban Battlefield. Sheik benefits from platform mobility and tipper USmash. There is nothing about the ZSS matchup that changes this, in fact I want to be as close to ZSS as I possibly can so that she can't try to wall me out. Against any ZSS, at least myself, assuming the ZSS player actually banned Smashville, I'd go for Battlefield in a heartbeat. And you know what? It's a very neutral stage in this matchup. Sheik doesn't really benefit as much from Battlefield in matchups so much as her mobility makes the stage a comfortable pick as she has options to move around the stage. It's often not the technical best stage and can be very neutral, but it's just comfortable and that's it. Another sample matchup where Battlefield could be selected is Sheik Luigi, which was seen in I believe last week's Fire & Dice tournament for like three or four straight matches. Battlefield is a good stage for Sheik in the sense that she can move around the stage well, but other characters benefit from this as well. On the other hand, Town & City is a stage that is rarely neutral in Sheik's matchups. Either the character has trouble accessing the upper platforms and thus Sheik can go up to them to charge needles or do whatever she wants, or the low ceiling might be disadvantageous to Sheik in a matchup such as say vs Rosalina. I think Sheik's advantages on the neutrals are being overstated. Her 'advantage' is that she's the best character in the game and has some insanely polarizing matchups. People like to look at stages and blame them for that as opposed to a stupidly bad matchup. Even if the stage changes the matchup by say 5% in her favor, what difference does that really make? A 65:35 matchup and a 70:30 matchup really aren't all that different. Complain about Sheik, not the neutrals because this idea that they provide some immense advantage to Sheik is completely wrong.

FLSS doesn't allow players to find a more neutral stage. Unless you can get some real examples that are actually relevant and would happen, I still don't understand the argument.

 

[Ulevo]

@ Illuminose Disregarding the majority of your post because I do not really feel like engaging in another arduous debate, it is not so much about top players being lazy as it is them being objectively wrong a lot of the time. I do not care how good you are; if you make a statement much like Zer0 did where you state that Smashville has a lower ceiling height as Final Destination, your credibility on that particular topic comes in to question. Saying something wrong is not going to suddenly take away your tournament winnings, but having those wins under your belt does not make you an authority figure, just a good player. Top players are valuable resources of information, but they need to be subject to scrutiny like everyone else. The word "jank" is just propaganda terminology much in the same way "quack" is. When someone wants to degrade or negatively associate something without having to objectively construct criticism against it, this is often the go-to tactic people used. The use of this tactic should be highly scrutinized because it forgoes logic in favour of catering to peoples personal feelings on a topic or problem, and anyone familiar with history, criminology, politics, et cetera will know how dangerous this is.

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Mario Kart makes me physically ill because of the background. Is that a decent enough reason to prevent it from being legal, or do I suck it up and use my ban on it every time?

 

[Infinite901]

snip

Agreed with all except for Norfair, Orbital, and MK8 being a definite. The main problem with Norfair is the transformation with the lava covering the whole screen and you have to get to the bubble... egh. MK8, maybe it's bias, but the road seems to just mess with too many kill options, and it has a temporary Cave covering the entire ceiling. Orbital Gate... the explosions are too big, they force you to go into the air (as if Little Mac didn't have enough of a problem with PS2.), a section prevents most KO's, etc. I'll play these all more but I'm mostly against them.

Also, Wii Fit and Coliseum still deserve MAJOR testing.The past iterations of Smash has led us to considering walkoffs as a disease, and as far as I know there has been no major competitive testing on these stages. I'm not particularly for or against them, but they need to be considered, even if they get banned very soon after.

Honestly I think LARGE tournaments should be using 9 stages until we find a definitive 13th. (Skyloft, Wuhu and PS2, are pretty much given, but there's still a lot to consider with Mk8, Wii Fit, and KJ64.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Agreed with all except for Norfair, Orbital, and MK8 being a definite. The main problem with Norfair is the transformation with the lava covering the whole screen and you have to get to the bubble... egh. MK8, maybe it's bias, but the road seems to just mess with too many kill options, and it has a temporary Cave covering the entire ceiling. Orbital Gate... the explosions are too big, they force you to go into the air (as if Little Mac didn't have enough of a problem with PS2.), a section prevents most KO's, etc. I'll play these all more but I'm mostly against them.

Also, Wii Fit and Coliseum still deserve MAJOR testing.The past iterations of Smash has led us to considering walkoffs as a disease, and as far as I know there has been no major competitive testing on these stages. I'm not particularly for or against them, but they need to be considered, even if they get banned very soon after.

Honestly I think LARGE tournaments should be using 9 stages until we find a definitive 13th. (Skyloft, Wuhu and PS2, are pretty much given, but there's still a lot to consider with Mk8, Wii Fit, and KJ64.

FYI you can shield/spotdodge/counter/super armor/etc. the giant lava wave on Norfair.

 

[Infinite901]

FYI you can shield/spotdodge/counter/super armor/etc. the giant lava wave on Norfair.

Good point. I just feel like being forced to use a defensive move is a bit excessive.

 

[Piford]

FLSS doesn't allow players to find a more neutral stage. Unless you can get some real examples that are actually relevant and would happen, I still don't understand the argument.

Ooh I can come up with some. Let's go with Robin versus Ness. Robin's least favorite stages are Final Destination and Smashville because he likes using platforms specifically to do things like arc fire traps and utilize his disjoint. Ness likes Smashville a lot since the platform can both carry his fairs to kill of the side very early and allow his back throw to come very close to the blastzone for early kills.

So in a 3 Starter system, Robin would strike Smashville and Ness would strike Battlefield and they would end up on FD, a terrible stage for Robin and hugely in favor of Ness.

In a 5 starter system, Ness would probably opt to strike Lylat first since lower platforms are better for Robin. Robin would then strike Final Destination and Smashville. Ness would like then strike Battlefield leaving them on Town and City. The town section isn't really great for either character. It's better than FD for Robin because he can still use his aerials on the platforms. The second section acts much better for Robin than Smashville because he can set up arc fire traps better, but it's also better for Ness because he as more opportunities to chain fairs and get B-throws. It's probably just as good for Robin in this matchup as FD is, so if the player preferred FD he might actually go there instead of Town and City. Still very in favor of Ness

In a 9 starter system Ness goes again for Lylat first. Robin precedes to ban Smashville and Final Destination. Ness goes for Battlefield. Ness's next stage would likely be Delfino Plaza as it's platform layouts really benefit Robin (maybe even more than Battlefield), but it's slightly better for Ness since he can convert a grab to a kill early with the shrinking blastzones. Robin would opt to ban Town and City and Duck Hunt. Duck Hunt isn't all that great for Robin since the platforms in the tree are high, but Ness's back throw kills much later from center stage because it's large so that's a plus. That leaves Ness to ban Halberd as the singular long platform is amazing for arc fire and decent for Robin's sword attacks. This leaves the match to start on Castle Siege, which is much more in Robins favor and perhaps even a neutral matchup for him. The first transformation is great for Robin as it's small and has low platforms. The second one is a mixed bag as the statues can be used for arc fire traps, but it can also be used for PK fire traps. Third one is much better for Ness. Stages could vary in order and perhaps starting stage depending on things like player preference. I would go on to 13, but it might get a bit long and redundant.

Also, if that was too much theory for you and not enough actual example, I'll give you another. Here's a FLSS that I personally performed at an event. It was me as Shulk versus a Diddy Kong. This was pre-patch

If it were 3 starter stages, I'd strike Final Destination and he'd strike Battlefield. We'd end up on Smashville which is hugely in Diddy's favor.

In this FLSS of 9 stages, I was up first and I struck Halberd because Diddy can easily KO on it. Post-patch, I'd probably have struck it later as Diddy's kill power has been nerfed. He struck Lylat and Battlefield, the two stages I wanted most because I personally focus a lot on platform play with my Shulk. I struck FD and Smashville as they have the least platforms and therefore are the worst stages for me to go to, plus they are great for Diddy. He then struck Castle Siege, probably because it was one of Diddy's worst stages, and Town and City, probably because I could utilize the high platforms in town with jump much better than he could. I then was prompted with Delfino and Duck Hunt. Normally I'd opt Delfino (and post patch I would), but since Diddy can easily convert a grab to KO especially if I'm in Smash, I went to Duck Hunt. I figured I'd utilize the tree in synergy with jump a lot. The matchup was still in Diddy's favor on Duck hunt, but it's much better than it was on Smashville.

 

[Pazx]

Ooh I can come up with some. Let's go with Robin versus Ness. Robin's least favorite stages are Final Destination and Smashville because he likes using platforms specifically to do things like arc fire traps and utilize his disjoint. Ness likes Smashville a lot since the platform can both carry his fairs to kill of the side very early and allow his back throw to come very close to the blastzone for early kills.

So in a 3 Starter system, Robin would strike Smashville and Ness would strike Battlefield and they would end up on FD, a terrible stage for Robin and hugely in favor of Ness.

In a 5 starter system, Ness would probably opt to strike Lylat first since lower platforms are better for Robin. Robin would then strike Final Destination and Smashville. Ness would like then strike Battlefield leaving them on Town and City. The town section isn't really great for either character. It's better than FD for Robin because he can still use his aerials on the platforms. The second section acts much better for Robin than Smashville because he can set up arc fire traps better, but it's also better for Ness because he as more opportunities to chain fairs and get B-throws. It's probably just as good for Robin in this matchup as FD is, so if the player preferred FD he might actually go there instead of Town and City. Still very in favor of Ness

In a 9 starter system Ness goes again for Lylat first. Robin precedes to ban Smashville and Final Destination. Ness goes for Battlefield. Ness's next stage would likely be Delfino Plaza as it's platform layouts really benefit Robin (maybe even more than Battlefield), but it's slightly better for Ness since he can convert a grab to a kill early with the shrinking blastzones. Robin would opt to ban Town and City and Duck Hunt. Duck Hunt isn't all that great for Robin since the platforms in the tree are high, but Ness's back throw kills much later from center stage because it's large so that's a plus. That leaves Ness to ban Halberd as the singular long platform is amazing for arc fire and decent for Robin's sword attacks. This leaves the match to start on Castle Siege, which is much more in Robins favor and perhaps even a neutral matchup for him. The first transformation is great for Robin as it's small and has low platforms. The second one is a mixed bag as the statues can be used for arc fire traps, but it can also be used for PK fire traps. Third one is much better for Ness. Stages could vary in order and perhaps starting stage depending on things like player preference. I would go on to 13, but it might get a bit long and redundant.

Also, if that was too much theory for you and not enough actual example, I'll give you another. Here's a FLSS that I personally performed at an event. It was me as Shulk versus a Diddy Kong. This was pre-patch

If it were 3 starter stages, I'd strike Final Destination and he'd strike Battlefield. We'd end up on Smashville which is hugely in Diddy's favor.

In this FLSS of 9 stages, I was up first and I struck Halberd because Diddy can easily KO on it. Post-patch, I'd probably have struck it later as Diddy's kill power has been nerfed. He struck Lylat and Battlefield, the two stages I wanted most because I personally focus a lot on platform play with my Shulk. I struck FD and Smashville as they have the least platforms and therefore are the worst stages for me to go to, plus they are great for Diddy. He then struck Castle Siege, probably because it was one of Diddy's worst stages, and Town and City, probably because I could utilize the high platforms in town with jump much better than he could. I then was prompted with Delfino and Duck Hunt. Normally I'd opt Delfino (and post patch I would), but since Diddy can easily convert a grab to KO especially if I'm in Smash, I went to Duck Hunt. I figured I'd utilize the tree in synergy with jump a lot. The matchup was still in Diddy's favor on Duck hunt, but it's much better than it was on Smashville.

This is just my opinion, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut... Castle Siege is Ness's best stage in the game bar none. Good try, though!

 

[Piford]

This is just my opinion, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut... Castle Siege is Ness's best stage in the game bar none. Good try, though!

Well it was a lot of theory, but why would it be Ness's best stage? I don't really see any reason it might be better than Smashville.

 

[Raijinken]

Well it was a lot of theory, but why would it be Ness's best stage? I don't really see any reason it might be better than Smashville.

I could see the walkoff portion being very strong for him.

Still, the point remains. Statistically, more stages means the mean (or median) stage will be closer to fair, on average.

 

[Piford]

I could see the walkoff portion being very strong for him.

Still, the point remains. Statistically, more stages means the mean (or median) stage will be closer to fair, on average.

I feel like Smashville's platform would be stronger since he can get a grab on stage and have it carry him off stage. Regardless if I was wrong about Castle Siege being best, than just shift all the stages down one and it's still better than Smashville.

Also, in regards to players not having enough practice on these stages that was mentioned earlier, I'd like to know @Keitaro 's thoughts. He practices on and has tournament experience with way crazier stages like Norfair, Gamer, and Orbital Gate Assault. He could probably give an informed opinion on legal stages like Castle Siege, Delfino, and Halberd and ones that people want to be legal like Wuhu Island, Skyloft, and Pokémon Stadium 2.

 

[Malex]

For one: having a liberal stage list is a minority opinion among competitive players. Every single person I have talked to outside of this thread in regards to FLSS thinks it is a terrible idea. I don't know who was voting on that poll, but I have not talked to a single competitive player who takes this game seriously that actually thinks FLSS is anything but a waste of time and makes no sense.

What polling process are you using to collect your data? Post your findings and methodology so we can compare with the data that was collected with the "Ultimate Smash 4 Ruleset Poll."

The term "jank" is not a john in this context; someone complaining about "jank" doesn't always just need to "get good". Fine, I can understand why there are plenty of instances where jank actually is a john because the person really doesn't understand the counterplay for something, but when you have a whole bunch of people with extensive experience playing on/dealing with a stage that are complaining about it, you can't dismiss it as a john. It becomes a legitimate complaint at that point.

The frequency of complaints has nothing to do with its legitimacy. At best, you could argue that if "everyone" complains about a stage, then it won't be included because it is unpopular. That in no way addresses the difficulty of the hazard or its affect on the game.

Stages are guilty until proven innocent in the Smash community. That's how we play this game, and it's for the reason that most stages were not designed with competitive play in mind. It's not 'removing a crucial aspect of the game' to not want to play on stages with hazards or walkoffs or whatever because we are not using Nintendo's ruleset. We are using our own community ruleset, and the Smash rulesets have a lot of precedents that players are generally inclined to prefer due to experience in the previous games. People don't want to play the game differently, and that's actually a legitimate concern because we don't play the game 'how it's intended'. We've adapted the intent of the game to fit that of what we desire in a competitive game. We aren't 'ignoring a major aspect of Smash' by not including certain stages because we are playing our competitive version of Smash, not the casual intended version of Smash.

Doing something because it is the way it has always been done is not a good enough reason to continue to do something. It should be judged on its merit, not its length of establishment. ~40% of regular tournament goers want to switch to FLSS. Keep in mind, that's FULL FLSS, not even increasing the number of starters.

We use a starter-counterpick system. It's really not a valid prerogative to question the fact that this system exists when most players understand the reasoning that we separate stages like this and enjoy the ruleset like this. I honestly think it is a waste of time to discuss FLSS because it will never happen outside of EVO and tournaments trying to use the EVO ruleset. And don't try to take EVO using it as a point in favor because, well, it's not. The starter list could conceivably expand though, which is something you can totally argue, but realize that people have reasons to resist this and that your opinions are not the end-all be-all.

I'm not sure that challenging the status quo is ever not a valid prerogative. Shouldn't we encourage our methods to be questioned?

That said, a lot of people have been calling top players 'lazy' in this thread, which I frankly find completely and utterly ridiculous. You know what I see? I see ZeRo at multiple tournaments every week, winning all of them. I see Nairo, Nakat, Dabuz, etc all constantly at tournaments and streaming. These are the players who are most invested in the game, and brushing off their opinions as 'laziness' is one of the most insane things I have ever heard because the amount they practice and compete is absolutely enormous. Heck, I value their opinions a whole lot more than some random person on an Internet rum, and so do most players. What they want to play in tournament actually matters, a LOT, because they are the ones that bring hype to tournaments and are competing in them all the time.

The reason why the top players are being called "lazy" is because the gut reaction is to assume they don't want to learn how to play on more stages. However, logically, if a player is achieving great success within a certain rules format, why would they want to change them? In fact, the top players have the MOST at risk! I would expect players who have the most at risk to be doing everything in their power to maintain any advantages (actual or perceived).

It is wrong to call them "lazy" but it is also wrong to say their opinions are any more valid than anyone elses. Statements made by anyone should be judged on their own, and not by who is saying them. (Example: ZeRo's recent video about his assessment of stages that included factually incorrect information.)

Starter: Battlefield/Smashville/FD

CP: Town & City/Lylat/Duck Hunt/Omegas

This is the current legal stage list subtracting Delfino, Halberd, and Castle Siege, all of which are stages that have been called into question by certain voices within the community and w/e, and are not by any means unreasonable to exclude. Do you want to know why? These stages reward fundamental gameplay less than the other stages and instead have a greatly heightened focus on stage knowledge, which is essentially a fancy way to say taking advantage of the jank present in the stages. The construction of these stages and their features are so polarizing that they provide extreme advantages to certain characters, much more than how say Sheik does pretty good on Smashville. Delfino and Halberd provide extreme benefits to characters with extra vertical killing power due to the low ceilings. Halberd is especially egregious in this regard because its insanely low ceiling persists throughout the stage. Characters like Rosalina, DK, and ZSS that have standout vertical killing power gain an advantage on these stages. For all the complaints that people have about a Sheik-centered stage list, these stages aren't even bad for Sheik because she benefits pretty greatly from the low vertical ceiling due to her up air suddenly killing early. The other issue Halberd has is the hazards. I don't think the bomb is problematic, at all. I have seen the bomb come into play very few times because it is fairly small and inconsequential as it is a short explosion. On the other hand, the claw is semi-random and extremely unpredictable in any case. It can also kill. The laser lingers for a significant period of time and can also kill. It's more than big enough to hit someone into and can severely skew recoveries (read: they can't come back) if the opponent manages to hit them offstage (a part of normal gameplay) and the laser comes out. These hazards are directly obtrusive to normal gameplay in many circumstances, similar in many regards to stages with hazards that we have actually banned. The hazards on their own may be tolerable I suppose, but the hazards combined with the low ceiling just make this stage full of weird, early, undeserved kills.

The blastzones on Delfino's transformations affecting gameplay and allowing for easy kills isn't something that's really that situational. You shouldn't have to be worried about dying off the top at 20%. That just doesn't happen in this game. However, this can easily happen on Delfino's transformations, which I've seen and experienced tons of times. Also the water...is really kind of silly, but that's not the main issue with this stage. As for Castle Siege, well...I wish they just had the first and third transformations. The stage would be totally fine if the second transformation just didn't exist, but it lasts way too long for it to be a passable thing. This is an area of the stage that can punish players for trying to fight by its design. Due to the walkoff with incredibly close blastzones (the side of the screen is basically the blastzone) and enormous size, individuals who are playing to win are often relegated to degenerate styles like blastzone camping and running away from the opponent on the spread apart and relatively slow to access platforms. This transformation alone ruins what would otherwise be a really good stage in my opinion.

Stage Legality isn't really the issue here. While that is hand-in-hand with what we are talking about, this thread is for removing the starter/CP set up in favor of FLSS. Even with your desired stage list, why can't Town & City/Lylat/Duck Hunt/Omegas be picked game 1?

There is no reason to shift to FLSS. At all. Period. It doesn't help at all. Just in the context of the current stage list, Halberd, Delfino, Castle Siege, Duck Hunt, and likely Lylat will never appear as starter stages unless the player striking is an idiot. These stages are either almost never neutral (all of them except Lylat). Lylat has many of the same matchup polarizing issues (it is rarely even close to neutral) and also well...nobody likes Lylat. Maybe Town & City but ehh...the ceiling and platform placement alone makes it a heavily biased stage in many instances.

The claim: "These stages are almost never neutral" implies that there are instances where they are neutral. In the case that for a match up, a non-starter stage was neutral, wouldn't we want game 1 to go there?

FLSS doesn't allow players to find a more neutral stage. Unless you can get some real examples that are actually relevant and would happen, I still don't understand the argument.

The claim "FLSS doesn't allow players to find a more neutral stage" is a very hard pill to swallow. This is claiming that ALL THREE of the starter stages (because of bans) are MORE NEUTRAL for ALL MATCH UPS.

If this is true, in which case, why have counterpicks in the first place then? We want a contest of player skill and not stage knowledge, so the more neutral the stages the better!

If this is not true, in which case, should we aim to have the first match be as neutral as possible? Why is opening up game 1 to all legal stages a negative thing, in your opinion?

 

[Jaxas]

We use a starter-counterpick system. It's really not a valid prerogative to question the fact that this system exists when most players understand the reasoning that we separate stages like this and enjoy the ruleset like this.

Mind explaining the reasoning we separate stages into starters and counterpicks, then?
I know where the starter(/"neutral")-counterpick distinction came from, but I'm really not sure why it's still around outside of tradition, myself.

FLSS doesn't allow players to find a more neutral stage. Unless you can get some real examples that are actually relevant and would happen, I still don't understand the argument.

It's really this simple: if you have a list of 9 legal stages, 1 of them will be the 'median' for all matchups.

Some of the time, that 1 legal stage will be one of the 'starters'.
Some of the time, it won't.

With either, then if it is, cool - you go to SV/BF/FD.
With FLSS, if it isn't, cool - go there anyways.
With 3 starters, if it isn't, crap - can't pick the median, so one character gets an advantage game 1.

Assuming a 3-starter 9-stage list, you have a 33% chance of getting the median game 1.
Assuming a 5-starter 9-stage list, you have an about 55% chance of getting the median game 1.
With FLSS, you have a 100% chance of getting the median game 1 (assuming people strike correctly of course, but that's something we can safely assume)