• Welcome to Smashboards, the world's largest Super Smash Brothers community! Over 250,000 Smash Bros. fans from around the world have come to discuss these great games in over 19 million posts!

    You are currently viewing our boards as a visitor. Click here to sign up right now and start on your path in the Smash community!

Legality of BF/Ω stages

Saikyoshi

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 26, 2014
Messages
3,921
Location
Being petty
NNID
KarmaPilcrow
3DS FC
0344-9771-0514
I may not be too in the loop, but I don't entirely understand why Battlefield and Omega stages are almost never even considered for competitive play.
In 4, they did make sense to ban because of how inconsistent they were from size to shape to blast zones to traction, but Ult makes it a point to avoid that problem. (Mostly. I'll get to that.)

I have heard several of the arguments before and explain why I don't particularly agree with them.
  • Music copyright — This one I'm heavily biased about because I am staunchly anti-copyright in general. If this is a reason, though, I can begrudgingly accept that it can't really be fought, but even that doesn't explain stages in the same series as legal stages—Saffron City can play the exact same songs as Stadium 2 and Kalos League.
  • Distracting visuals — This is the argument I'm probably most confused by. I've seen Umbra Clock Tower cited as a reason for this, but... frankly, Final Destination's effects are a lot worse, and that's the only legal omega there is. And considering people have been complaining about getting blinded during a match since Melee, I don't think I'm alone in holding that opinion. And even then, there are plenty of omegas with subtle or sometimes even completely static backgrounds. (Great Cave Offensive BF and Palutemple Ω are my personal go-tos.)
  • Consistency — I understand why someone would hold this opinion, that as many elements need to be kept consistent between tournaments as possible, but I simply don't have that opinion. In my eyes, if something doesn't affect gameplay, it's for the benefit of the audience. If your muscle memory is thrown off collision-wise or strategy-wise by the stage looking different despite it being functionally identical, I'd say that says more about you than anything. It strikes me like, for instance, someone who normally plays as Peach being unable to figure out how to play as Daisy.
  • Expedition — I can see going to the original if the competitors can't agree on which form to use. But from what I've seen, the standard rules for this game are the first in the series to not have a Gentleman's Clause, and I'm confused why. Competitors can't even use other forms if they both want to play on the same one and agree right away.
  • 2D Effects — This one, I actually do agree with, because the game just plain screwed up when it came to these, forgetting that squishing the fighters affected the hitboxes. These particular stages, I always turn off when I randomize them. But other than those anomalies, what's the harm? Are there any other direct effects on how the game plays on the stages which don't have this problem?

Is there anything that I'm not seeing? Because I do feel like I might be missing something obvious.
 
Last edited:

GhostM

Phantom
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
423
Location
Off the Radar
I can definitely see your arguments, but legalizing all forms of BF and Omega stages would have its own cons.

I feel like a key factor as to why they are banned comes from the fact that legalizing all forms of BF and Omega stages would severely increase the amount of stages that are viable on the stage list. Even if the stages were debately legal without any sort of issues nor copyright issues, it would create a long stage list to the point where going through every stage to strike would be more of a hassle. Having to strike a stagelist that’s more than 50+ stages would create hassle and frustration and would also mess up how tournaments are run. Not to forget that the BF and Omega stages that are legal would just be straight up be tied to Battlefield and Final Destination respectively. Wouldn’t really make sense for them to be their own individual stages since the whole stagelist would be straight up be just FD and Battlefield. It would pretty much just end up being FD and Battlefield, but with a lot more different skins to choose from.

The stagelist is kept short to prevent such a hassle when striking stages to keep it simple, not to forget that it also tries to have variety involved. Having a huge amount of different skins for FD and Battlefield wouldn’t really make any sense if the original Battlefield and FD play the same. I guess they could include just a couple of skins if they considered it, but they definitely wouldn’t include all of them.
 

Cosmosis

Smash Rookie
Joined
Mar 10, 2020
Messages
7
I can definitely see your arguments, but legalizing all forms of BF and Omega stages would have its own cons.

I feel like a key factor as to why they are banned comes from the fact that legalizing all forms of BF and Omega stages would severely increase the amount of stages that are viable on the stage list. Even if the stages were debately legal without any sort of issues nor copyright issues, it would create a long stage list to the point where going through every stage to strike would be more of a hassle. Having to strike a stagelist that’s more than 50+ stages would create hassle and frustration and would also mess up how tournaments are run. Not to forget that the BF and Omega stages that are legal would just be straight up be tied to Battlefield and Final Destination respectively. Wouldn’t really make sense for them to be their own individual stages since the whole stagelist would be straight up be just FD and Battlefield. It would pretty much just end up being FD and Battlefield, but with a lot more different skins to choose from.

The stagelist is kept short to prevent such a hassle when striking stages to keep it simple, not to forget that it also tries to have variety involved. Having a huge amount of different skins for FD and Battlefield wouldn’t really make any sense if the original Battlefield and FD play the same. I guess they could include just a couple of skins if they considered it, but they definitely wouldn’t include all of them.
Then why don't we NOT legalize ALL BF and Omega stages, and only ones that are considered acceptable?

And then, to lower the pain of having to ban every BF and Omega stage, players simply ban ALL OF THEM at once, because they are all identical.

Essentially, if one player in tourney bans Battlefield, they also ban EVERY BF stage variant that is legal at the same time.
If one player bans FD, then they also ban EVERY Omega stage variant that is considered legal, all at the same time.

Actually yeah, we already have the method in place; if you ban Battlefield, you ban all legal BF variants. If you ban FD, you ban all legal Omega variants. Torunaments don't need to create a "new" stage list, as all BF and Omega's will fall under BF and FD respectively.
 

GhostM

Phantom
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
423
Location
Off the Radar
Then why don't we NOT legalize ALL BF and Omega stages, and only ones that are considered acceptable?

And then, to lower the pain of having to ban every BF and Omega stage, players simply ban ALL OF THEM at once, because they are all identical.

Essentially, if one player in tourney bans Battlefield, they also ban EVERY BF stage variant that is legal at the same time.
If one player bans FD, then they also ban EVERY Omega stage variant that is considered legal, all at the same time.

Actually yeah, we already have the method in place; if you ban Battlefield, you ban all legal BF variants. If you ban FD, you ban all legal Omega variants. Torunaments don't need to create a "new" stage list, as all BF and Omega's will fall under BF and FD respectively.
Forgot to address it in my original post, but when I mean striking FD and Battlefield, I also meant striking all of their accepted stage variants because “BF and Omega stages that are legal would be straight up tied to Battlefield and Final Destination respectively”. I guess having more variants would mean more variety in terms of how FD and Battlefield look, but it doesn’t add any sort of variety in terms of gameplay because the accepted FD and Omega variants would play the exact same as the normal FD and Battlefield. I feel like some tournaments would adopt the accepted variants onto their stagelist, but most would go with the original look because FD and Battlefield would still play the same regardless of the variants or not, which kind of makes the accepted BF and Omega variants a personal choice rather than a required necessity to add in. Ultimately, the question really relies up to their personal choice of the variants (skins) or not.

I personally wouldn’t mind having a couple of accepted (and obviously legalized) BF and Omega variants as different skins for FD and Battlefield for mixups, but I would keep the variants (skins) at a low amount.
 
Last edited:

Saikyoshi

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 26, 2014
Messages
3,921
Location
Being petty
NNID
KarmaPilcrow
3DS FC
0344-9771-0514
When I was in the Super Smash Flash 2 backroom (which was admittedly a pretty long time ago), there weren't omega stages, but there were still basically three functionally identical versions of Final Destination. There was FD proper, Nintendo 3DS without hazards, and Online Waiting Room.

What we did was we treated them all as one stage in terms of striking/banning. If one went, they all went. And if they were accessed, it was up to the players or tournament organizers which one was used.

(At least at first. It was later concluded that 3DS had the least problems with lagging effects for people with weaker computers, so eventually that was the only one of the three kept legal. I don't know if that's changed in the three years I've been gone from there, but probably.... anyway, that's beside the point.)

That's why I'm so confused why they're not allowed. They're not clones of Battlefield/FD, they are Battlefield/FD. Save for the 2D mistakes, you could reasonably pick BF Form Random if the stage is struck to Battlefield, or Ω Form Random if the stage is struck to Final Destination. The gameplay would not be any different doing that than it would be picking BF/FD proper. (Provided, of course, that the 2D stages are disabled in the random stage switch.)

Do you see what I mean?

EDIT: Sooo, basically what Cosmosis said.
Having Random BF/Random Ω in place of BF/FD on the stage list would be functionally the exact same as just one of them. Randomness here would really have about as much effect on matches as random music.

I could understand not doing that in 4, I reiterate. But there is really no reason not to in Ultimate except just tradition.

And yet, right now, playing on any of them, even if both competitors mutually agree, immediately disqualifies both of them due to the removal of the gentlemen's clause. And that's messed up.
 
Last edited:

GhostM

Phantom
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
423
Location
Off the Radar
I played SSF2 before, so I understand what you mean. The reason why I believe the accepted and legal FD and Battlefield variants aren’t allowed is because they are not necessary because the variants still play exactly the same as normal Final Destination and Battlefield. It makes the legal and accepted variants more of a personal choice than a required necessity to adopt into the official stagelist.

I assume even if they were allowed, only some tournaments would adopt the accepted variants because they don’t really need it if the original Final Destination and Battlefield play the exact same as the variants, even though they technically are Battlefield and Final Destination. I also question why the accepted and legalized Omega and Battlefield variants aren’t allowed, but this answer to me makes sense to the confusion of it.
 

Saikyoshi

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 26, 2014
Messages
3,921
Location
Being petty
NNID
KarmaPilcrow
3DS FC
0344-9771-0514
As I said in the OP, the point is primarily for the benefit of the audience. They don't affect the competitors, sure, but they at least give audience watching the tournament some different music to listen to, you know?

Back when I was a horrific little anti-Melee gremlin (this was ages upon ages ago), my primary reason for not liking competitive Melee was the endless repetition of environments and music. And while it's not as bad nowadays, repetition like that does still really bother and distract me.

But that said, I'm not exactly mentally sound, so I'm probably a special case when it comes to that.
 
Last edited:

GhostM

Phantom
Joined
May 3, 2019
Messages
423
Location
Off the Radar
As I said in the OP, the point is primarily for the benefit of the audience. They don't affect the competitors, sure, but they at least give audience watching the tournament some different music to listen to, you know?

Back when I was a horrific little anti-Melee gremlin (this was ages upon ages ago), my primary reason for not liking competitive Melee was the endless repetition of environments and music. And while it's not as bad nowadays, repetition like that does still really bother and distract me.

But that said, I'm not exactly mentally sound, so I'm probably a special case when it comes to that.
Ah I took it from a competitive side, my mistake. Your original post listed arguments against the accepted variants with your argument against them, and you listed if you were missing some arguments as to why the variants aren’t allowed, which is why I responded with reasons why they weren’t allowed like they are in SSF2.

I definitely would like to see the variants get accepted since the variants do change the environment and music. Wouldn’t mind having different music and environments added to change things up.
 

crazybenjamin

Smash Journeyman
Joined
Aug 25, 2019
Messages
414
Switch FC
SW 2794 0568 0108
Seems like people just default to BF/FD proper because...that's just what they're used to. And no one can remember which stages have issues such as music copyrights, so they just don't bother.
 

Xelrog

Smash Lord
Joined
Feb 24, 2019
Messages
1,136
Location
Battle Ground, WA
Switch FC
SW 2367 4933 3404
At my local they're considered equivalent to the regular Battlefield or Final Dest. So if I pick or ban FD, it's taken to mean that I can pick (or have banned) all Omega stages as well.
 

Saikyoshi

Smash Master
Joined
Jun 26, 2014
Messages
3,921
Location
Being petty
NNID
KarmaPilcrow
3DS FC
0344-9771-0514
At my local they're considered equivalent to the regular Battlefield or Final Dest. So if I pick or ban FD, it's taken to mean that I can pick (or have banned) all Omega stages as well.
Are there any caveats to that? Any that aren't allowed? (i.e. Flat Zone)
 
Top Bottom