Meta It's Time To Abandon 3 Starter Lists

[evmaxy54]

So in other words, none of the stages are good and we should stop playing competitively?

P much

And play a real fighting game

Like Sonic The Fighters

 

[MajorMajora]

P much

And play a real fighting game

Like Sonic The Fighters

I can't tell if you are serious, are a troll, or started out serious and then reverted to trolling to cover up against people disagreeing with you. Either way, I must disagree with the sentiment that smashville's early kills are qualitatively different than delfino's early kills.

 

[Peabnut Bubber]

There is so much to absorb in this thread that is still relevant today. I'll try to recap a good bit of it:
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- Three starters leads to unfair advantages for certain characters, because some are always guaranteed to get their 2nd best stage. Also, with only three stages, the player who strikes 2nd is given a bigger advantage than the player who struck 1st.

- The smaller the starting stage list is, the more risk you have in giving some characters guaranteed advantages in game one.

- The reason why Smashville is chosen so much in this format is not because it is the fairest stage in the game (although it is one of the fairer ones), it's because FD and BF are opposite ends of the spectrum and lead to very obvious advantages for two different sets of characters, so they always end up getting struck and so SV is the remaining stage.

- There is no truly neutral stage in the game, and the people who advocate FLSS state that game one in this format is fairer than all the other formats because, even though this format may use stages that are considered "CP only," the fact that both players have such a wide array of stages to choose and strike from means the final result will be a stage that both players are alright taking and is the most neutral stage in the match up. This is essentially why stage striking is done in the first place.

- A stage that is never picked still contributes to finding the perfect stage for game one (i.e. Lylat in a Five Stage Starter list). Also, if a player bans said stage even though it gives their character an advantage, that is entirely THEIR FAULT and not the stage's.

- Stages like T&C (AKA non-random stage elements) don't kill players. Players kill players.

- "Jank" is not a reason for banning a stage. Stages can be studied and practiced on, so maybe the jank will go away if players have properly studied the stages. (The same also applies to characters, funnily enough). Stage elements that seem random may not actually be random, leaving player interaction as the only random element present in a game.

- Top players' opinions can be misinformed.
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My question is: What makes a stage illegal?

 

[Luigi player]

There is so much to absorb in this thread that is still relevant today. I'll try to recap a good bit of it:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Three starters may lead to unfair advantages for certain characters, because some might be getting their 2nd best stage. Also, with only three stages, the player who strikes 2nd is given a bigger advantage than the player who struck 1st.

- The smaller the starting stage list is, the more risk you have in giving some characters guaranteed advantages in game one.

- The reason why Smashville is chosen so much in this format is not because it is the fairest stage in the game (although it is one of the fairer ones), it's because FD and BF are opposite ends of the spectrum and lead to very obvious advantages for two different sets of characters, so they always end up getting struck and so SV is the remaining stage.
-> doesn't the above conclude to SV being the fairest stage, or at least one of them? or maybe it's just the most liked overall?

- There is no truly neutral stage in the game, and the people who advocate FLSS state that game one in this format is fairer than all the other formats because, even though this format may use stages that are considered "CP only," the fact that both players have such a wide array of stages to choose and strike from means the final result will be a stage that both players are alright taking and is the most neutral stage in the match up. This is essentially why stage striking is done in the first place.
-> a neutral stage doesn't mean "every MU is even on it". it means it does not disrupt the fighting in a bad way (which is why starters were previously also sometimes refered to as 'neutrals'; why would people even still need to strike if all of them were good for any MU?!). MUs have nothing to do with making a stage neutral.

also many people seem to think that stages which add more randomness or jank are actually legit because they enable more random results making it seem that MUs are more even. randomness or jank is still bad for competitive games. of course they will bring more varied results, but not because of the stage layout or something like that which may help the characters, it's often just "this luckily just happened to happen at this exact moment and at exactly this place and scenario and it made players take a stock at like 0 % because this stage is definitely a good one for competition".... yeah.

- A stage that is never picked may still contribute to finding the perfect stage for game one (i.e. Lylat in a Five Stage Starter list). Also, if a player bans said stage even though it gives their character an advantage, that is entirely THEIR FAULT and not the stage's.

- Stages like T&C (AKA non-random stage elements) may kill players. Players also kill players.

- "Jank" is a very good reason for banning a stage. Stages can be studied and practiced on, so maybe the jank will go away if players have properly studied the stages. (The same also applies to characters, funnily enough). Stage elements that seem random may not actually be random, leaving player interaction as the only random element present in a game.

- Top players' information (and therefore opinions) can be misinformed.
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My question is: What makes a stage illegal?

Fixed some stuff for you. I don't know why you present the things you said as facts. People can view it in a different way too.
I'm for 5 starters, too. Lylat and TaC are definitely viable stages and can help to balance the starting stage. For MUs? Yeah. But we don't (shouldn't..) add stages just for MUs, we add stages because they're viable or don't if they aren't. The most neutral stages (= stages that don't have weird things (please let me just call it that for now, everyone should know what I mean) about them) are starters and some odd choices that might still be considered somewhat legit get on the "counterpick"-list.

 

[Zeth444]

Hope this is the right vídeo.

 

[Peabnut Bubber]

Fixed some stuff for you. I don't know why you present the things you said as facts. People can view it in a different way too.
I'm for 5 starters, too. Lylat and TaC are definitely viable stages and can help to balance the starting stage. For MUs? Yeah. But we don't (shouldn't..) add stages just for MUs, we add stages because they're viable or don't if they aren't. The most neutral stages (= stages that don't have weird things (please let me just call it that for now, everyone should know what I mean) about them) are starters and some odd choices that might still be considered somewhat legit get on the "counterpick"-list.

I realize my first two points are redundant. My b. The point still stands that the bigger the starter stage list, the lower the chances of giving guaranteed advantages to characters. That's a fact.

SV shouldn't be considered the most fair stage in the entire game just because it gets chosen over the other two stages (BF and FD). That's like saying the color red is the best color ever even though the other two options allowed are blue and green. It's true that SV is one of the fairer stages but calling it the most fair is wrong because there are so many colors out there that weren't given the opportunity to be chosen.

A stage is definitely fair if it does not disrupt the fighting. A stage may also be fair if all it does is change the way of fighting (like Pokemon Stadium in Melee). You say MUs have nothing to do with a stage being neutral, but that's wrong. "Neutral" is context sensitive. That's why we don't call it the neutral stage list, but rather the starter stage list; it's because the stages in this list have the biggest chance of being fair to play on in any given MU. I believe that a stage should only be considered neutral the moment both players agree to play on it by striking all of the other stages. In that moment, the stage that was chosen is the most neutral for that MU and all of the stages that were struck were not neutral enough (unless the players struck incorrectly. Stage striking is a skill that players can use, btw). I agree that stages with out of control RNG that can change matches considerably should not be legal, but which stages like that are being proposed?

If a stage has non-random elements, it cannot kill players. T&C doesn't kill players. A stage like Halberd does kill players (random stage elements that target players at random). Give an example of a non-random stage element killing players.

Jank is too general a term. We should define it if we're gonna talk about it. I think jank is when a stage behaves improperly or glitchy (examples include Battlefield's ledges and players falling through Lylat).