Let's talk about stages & camping in For Glory...

[ParanoidDrone]

Find Mii has a boss that is too disruptive. Tomodachi Life will be circle-camped to death. Rainbow Road is similar enough to mute city, in that it's just far too disruptive for proper competitive play. The better player should win, not the player that get randomly hit by cars less often on an inferior stage when we could just play better stages that allow for deeper gameplay and mindgames.

When money is on the line, it is better to have a smaller stagelist with better gameplay than a more liberal stagelist with shallower gameplay.

I grant the Dark Emperor is disruptive, but I've heard that it's possible to send it packing by doing...something. (Either attacking the guy himself or freeing the Mii from its cage, I've heard both.) If it's relatively simple to swat him away then it may not be such a big deal.

Rainbow Road's still better than Mute City and (especially) Port Town since the individual stops have pretty good platform layouts from what I've seen and the moving platform I believe has grabbable ledges. The racers themselves are also telegraphed a good 5-10 seconds in advance by a giant flashing sign.

I have no idea how you can circle camp Tomodachi Life since every single platform is passthrough except the base.

 

[Raijinken]

I have no idea how you can circle camp Tomodachi Life since every single platform is passthrough except the base.

I've watched people try to circle camp there. It will only work if your characters' speed difference is so great that even Battlefield can be circle camped (a la E3 tourney).

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I've watched people try to circle camp there. It will only work if your characters' speed difference is so great that even Battlefield can be circle camped (a la E3 tourney).

Yay counterpicks!

 

[RascalTheCharizard]

What about Yoshi's Island? With that we at least have a magic 3 number of FD, BF, and YI for neutral stages right?

Well that's what the Tourney Locator folks use and I personally like it.

(They also have Lumiose City as the sole Counterpick stage as it's basically Delfino Plaza without the BS, to paraphrase. Another convincing argument they made for Lumiose City is that unlike Delfino, there's only walkoffs for the start of the stage's transformation cycle. If someone does camp at the sides, the other player can just wait a few seconds for the stage to change and it puts the side-camping player in a disadvantageous position. Either because the camping player is now offstage, or because the camping player will be forced to approach out of fear of being left offstage lol.)

Really guys? It's a new game, gotta find a new way to play. It's not like Street Fighter where the same mechanics stay consistent. Smash is new every iteration and people trying to do the same techniques and realize they fail with the new iteration, well, it's no surprise. Gotta adapt and change. This is Natural Selection at it's finest.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think the whole point of the OP was that @Zipzo was expecting it to be different and it wasn't.

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

Well that's what the Tourney Locator folks use and I personally like it.

(They also have Lumiose City as the sole Counterpick stage as it's basically Delfino Plaza without the BS, to paraphrase. Another convincing argument they made for Lumiose City is that unlike Delfino, there's only walkoffs for the start of the stage's transformation cycle. If someone does camp at the sides, the other player can just wait a few seconds for the stage to change and it puts the side-camping player in a disadvantageous position. Either because the camping player is now offstage, or because the camping player will be forced to approach out of fear of being left offstage lol.)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I think the whole point of the OP was that @Zipzo was expecting it to be different and it wasn't.

Oh, nice. Not familiar with all the new stages yet, but Lumiose looks pretty good! Its transformations are just different arrangements of platforms, instead of having some more funky stuff like walls and walkoffs like Delfino as you mentioned, and even Delfino was fine as a counterpick.

It's really nice having this stage around, as it covers lots of different combinations of platforms and perhaps most importantly, is a changing stage which will help change the dynamic of the games played on it and help ensure the gameplay isn't too stale or static for too long.

 

[slimjim]

It actually looks more like square-camping when done properly on Tomo Life, and the stage itself just promotes shallower gameplay by option select reduction. As far as Find Mii, these sorts of stage hazards are inexcusable because if one player stops to get rid of the beast, the other player can capitalize. If they have a "gentlemen's agreement" as to stop gameplay to kill the beast, who gets to do it? Who takes the risk, and gets their moves unstaled? What if they accidentally hit each other? What if it takes too long because one player wants to time out the other? It's just better to remove the stage. Rainbow Road is better than Mute City (banned) and Port Town (banned). I'll agree to that, but it still disrupts good honest deep gameplay in a fashion that makes it worthy of banning like the others. Lack of a base platform for some of the trashier transformations is also limiting.

Why limit gameplay just to include an extra stage (keep in mind we already have 6-7 better stages, which is more than enough for Bo5 grand finals, INCLUDING bans)? It's just not worth it when people have hundreds or thousands of dollars riding on the line. So what if the hazards are telegraphed? When given the choice between an okay option and a similar option that is just clearly better in almost every way, the first option becomes obselete. If a man walked up to you and said, "I am going to give you money, would you like $10, or $15?" it is clearly a better option to take the latter.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

Rainbow Road's still better than Mute City and (especially) Port Town since the individual stops have pretty good platform layouts from what I've seen and the moving platform I believe has grabbable ledges. The racers themselves are also telegraphed a good 5-10 seconds in advance by a giant flashing sign.

Basically what Slim said here:

Why limit gameplay just to include an extra stage? It's just not worth it when people have hundreds or thousands of dollars riding on the line. So what if the hazards are telegraphed? When given the choice between an okay option and a similar option that is just clearly better in almost every way, the first option becomes obselete. If a man walked up to you and said, "I am going to give you money, would you like $10, or $15?" it is clearly a better option to take the latter.

Both Lumiose and Rainbow Road have similar concepts: touring stage with different platform layouts. The difference is one has cars you need to learn how to dodge and the other doesn't. Unless there's something substantially different layout-wise to make RR worth learning to dodge the cars, why would you ever pick it over Lumiose? You still get your varied layout tour stage without the hassle of dodging a hazard, telegraphed or not. Granted I haven't played either stage, but that's how I see it.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

It actually looks more like square-camping when done properly on Tomo Life, and the stage itself just promotes shallower gameplay by option select reduction. As far as Find Mii, these sorts of stage hazards are inexcusable because if one player stops to get rid of the beast, the other player can capitalize. If they have a "gentlemen's agreement" as to stop gameplay to kill the beast, who gets to do it? Who takes the risk, and gets their moves unstaled? What if they accidentally hit each other? What if it takes too long because one player wants to time out the other? It's just better to remove the stage. Rainbow Road is better than Mute City (banned) and Port Town (banned). I'll agree to that, but it still disrupts good honest deep gameplay in a fashion that makes it worthy of banning like the others. Lack of a base platform for some of the trashier transformations is also limiting.

Why limit gameplay just to include an extra stage? It's just not worth it when people have hundreds or thousands of dollars riding on the line. So what if the hazards are telegraphed? When given the choice between an okay option and a similar option that is just clearly better in almost every way, the first option becomes obselete. If a man walked up to you and said, "I am going to give you money, would you like $10, or $15?" it is clearly a better option to take the latter.

I'd argue that as long as the cars aren't a OHKO (they're not unless you're already in kill range), then two players simultaneously fighting for the superior position while trying to knock the other into the cars is its own sort of thrilling gameplay, separate from simply adjusting to different transformations. That, in turn, suggests it's not quite as cut-and-dry as your $15 > $10 example.

More fundamentally, I feel like we're approaching this from opposite directions. You seem to prefer starting with a restrictive ban list and requiring justifications to unban a stage. I prefer starting with a liberal ban list and requiring justifications to ban a stage. So you're asking me what the point is to unbanning Rainbow Road; I'm asking you what the point is to banning it. (This is all working on the assumption that the Shy Guys can be reasonably accounted for in play.) In other words, if you were to consider Rainbow Road in a vacuum, or if Prism Tower didn't exist as a stage, would you still want Rainbow Road banned?

I also want to clarify that for the most part all of this is theorycrafting since very few of us have the Japanese version.

EDIT: Also, as I understand it Mute City was only banned once Armada tore apart a Falco there. (Correct me if I'm wrong there.) But isn't that the point of a counterpick?

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

I grant the Dark Emperor is disruptive, but I've heard that it's possible to send it packing by doing...something. (Either attacking the guy himself or freeing the Mii from its cage, I've heard both.) If it's relatively simple to swat him away then it may not be such a big deal.

Rainbow Road's still better than Mute City and (especially) Port Town since the individual stops have pretty good platform layouts from what I've seen and the moving platform I believe has grabbable ledges. The racers themselves are also telegraphed a good 5-10 seconds in advance by a giant flashing sign.

I have no idea how you can circle camp Tomodachi Life since every single platform is passthrough except the base.

Freeing the Mii sends the Dark Emperor away. This is confirmed by the in-game tips. It's possible that attacking it directly also sends it away, but I've never seen anything state that in-game (but of course I only have the demo).

Another thing about Find Mii is that if both players use sufficiently similar colours, you'll both get the same boosts at the same time when the stage gives stat increases.

Rainbow Road telegraphs the cars a long time in advance (an in-game tip even points out that there's a ton of warning before they show up), and of course they're nowhere near as fast nor as deadly as the ones on Mute City in Melee, so you can just see the individual cars coming and dodge them. That was doable in Brawl on Mario Circuit, so I don't see why it would be a problem here. And if you do take a hit, an extra 10%, while not ideal, certainly isn't as bad as being KO'd from 50% like the cars in Mute City did.


Also, more on Unova League and its patterns to make my earlier point more clear:

— First off, the stage transformation: The platform you fight on starts out floating far away from N's Castle in the background. When the platform flies in towards the castle, that's when the stairs snap into place from the sides. Don't stand at the ledges when the platform reaches the castle, because the stairs deal damage and knockback if they hit you on entry.

— Zekrom's attacks: I haven't watched footage of the stage in a while, but I know Zekrom roars and does a special animation before attacking, and I'm fairly sure that he has multiple roaring sounds and multiple different animations to show his different attacks. His Fusion Bolt attack has him roar and rear his head back, then cover himself in blue electricity and leave off the top of the screen. When Zekrom leaves the screen about to use Fusion Bolt, a blue glow of electricity is visible from the point at the edge of the screen that Zekrom is about to attack from. It starts subtly and grows brighter over the course of a second or two, reaching peak intensity about half a second before Zekrom suddenly zooms in from offscreen while shrouded in blue electricity, slamming into the stage. Depending on where he hits, he might knock the stage around for a moment before it goes back to normal, but this doesn't launch the fighters onstage or deal damage to them. Only being hit directly by Zekrom's Fusion Bolt attack deals damage. According to the tips section, Zekrom's Fusion Bolt can destroy the stairs, but it doesn't seem to do so reliably. While Zekrom's attacks are powerful and potentially somewhat disruptive, it's blatantly obvious which attack is coming and where, and the "disruption" only lasts an instant. On top of that, two of the possible angles for Zekrom's Fusion Bolt hit the underside of the ledges, meaning it won't hit you at all if you're on-stage at the time.

I've not yet seen footage of Reshiram's version of the stage, so I don't know anything about its attack patterns. I can only assume that they'll be just as telegraphed as Zekrom's.

Unova League's hazards can catch you by surprise your first few times playing the stage, but with a bit of practice you can learn the cues and start finding ways to use the hazards against your opponents instead.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Freeing the Mii sends the Dark Emperor away. This is confirmed by the in-game tips. It's possible that attacking it directly also sends it away, but I've never seen anything state that in-game (but of course I only have the demo).

Another thing about Find Mii is that if both players use sufficiently similar colours, you'll both get the same boosts at the same time when the stage gives stat increases.

Rainbow Road telegraphs the cars a long time in advance (an in-game tip even points out that there's a ton of warning before they show up), and of course they're nowhere near as fast nor as deadly as the ones on Mute City in Melee, so you can just see the individual cars coming and dodge them. That was doable in Brawl on Mario Circuit, so I don't see why it would be a problem here. And if you do take a hit, an extra 10%, while not ideal, certainly isn't as bad as being KO'd from 50% like the cars in Mute City did.


Also, more on Unova League and its patterns to make my earlier point more clear:

— First off, the stage transformation: The platform you fight on starts out floating far away from N's Castle in the background. When the platform flies in towards the castle, that's when the stairs snap into place from the sides. Don't stand at the ledges when the platform reaches the castle, because the stairs deal damage and knockback if they hit you on entry.

— Zekrom's attacks: I haven't watched footage of the stage in a while, but I know Zekrom roars and does a special animation before attacking, and I'm fairly sure that he has multiple roaring sounds and multiple different animations to show his different attacks. His Fusion Bolt attack has him roar and rear his head back, then cover himself in blue electricity and leave off the top of the screen. When Zekrom leaves the screen about to use Fusion Bolt, a blue glow of electricity is visible from the point at the edge of the screen that Zekrom is about to attack from. It starts subtly and grows brighter over the course of a second or two, reaching peak intensity about half a second before Zekrom suddenly zooms in from offscreen while shrouded in blue electricity, slamming into the stage. Depending on where he hits, he might knock the stage around for a moment before it goes back to normal, but this doesn't launch the fighters onstage or deal damage to them. Only being hit directly by Zekrom's Fusion Bolt attack deals damage. According to the tips section, Zekrom's Fusion Bolt can destroy the stairs, but it doesn't seem to do so reliably. While Zekrom's attacks are powerful and potentially somewhat disruptive, it's blatantly obvious which attack is coming and where, and the "disruption" only lasts an instant. On top of that, two of the possible angles for Zekrom's Fusion Bolt hit the underside of the ledges, meaning it won't hit you at all if you're on-stage at the time.

I've not yet seen footage of Reshiram's version of the stage, so I don't know anything about its attack patterns. I can only assume that they'll be just as telegraphed as Zekrom's.

Unova League's hazards can catch you by surprise your first few times playing the stage, but with a bit of practice you can learn the cues and start finding ways to use the hazards against your opponents instead.

I've heard it theorized that the Dark Emperor actually puts a colored aura on everyone, which indicates the buff. I have no idea if this is true or not though. (I really need to do some stage research once I get the game.)

Reshiram uses Fusion Flare, which sends out small blankets of fire to a few discrete spots. They're maybe a Bowser width and change and do light damage and knockback. They vanish after a few seconds.

EDIT: I think this constant back-and-forth, both here and elsewhere, with people filling each other in on stage details shows quite plainly that we know very little about a lot of the stage hazards. IMO it would be the height of foolishness to ban a stage before we completely understand how it works.

 

[slimjim]

We tried that: allowing stages with transformations in an attempt to increase gameplay possibilities. What we found from extensive data through trial and error, is that it does nothing but limit gameplay. PS1 is allowed in melee, but most competitive matches STILL, after 13 years, come to a standstill during some of its transformations. This disrupts gameplay, kills hype, and contributes little. I would still vote to ban RR, one because we have better options, and two, because I have taken part in those early tournaments in brawl that allowed janky stages, items, and the rest of that stuff and I have seen the discontent and anger it sows. I start from restricted and then consider becoming more liberal because that prevents the disasters that we saw with earlier brawl tournaments, which was another contributing factor that divided our community. We lost a HUGE part of our fanbase then, which can be prevented by starting restricted and then dabbling in less tame stages.

We ALREADY are at risk of losing a large portion of those who play melee because there is nothing better, but are looking at smash 4 to see if it will become competitively viable. Better to hook these folks, and then mess around with jank later.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

We tried that: allowing stages with transformations in an attempt to increase gameplay possibilities. What we found from extensive data through trial and error, is that it does nothing but limit gameplay. PS1 is allowed in melee, but most competitive matches STILL, after 13 years, come to a standstill during some of its transformations. This disrupts gameplay, kills hype, and contributes little.

I would think this is an argument in favor of possibly "janky" stages since it proves a stage can still be competitive and overall worth keeping despite a few hiccups.

I would still vote to ban RR, one because we have better options, and two, because I have taken part in those early tournaments in brawl that allowed janky stages, items, and the rest of that stuff and I have seen the discontent and anger it sows. I start from restricted and then consider becoming more liberal because that prevents the disasters that we saw with earlier brawl tournaments, which was another contributing factor that divided our community. We lost a HUGE part of our fanbase then, which can be prevented by starting restricted and then becoming liberal.

We ALREADY are at risk of losing a large portion of those who play melee because there is nothing better, but are looking at smash 4 to see if it will become competitively viable. Better to hook these folks, then mess around with jank later.

Honest question here because I'm fairly ignorant of the high level politics (such as they are). Do we, as a community, prioritize keeping the Melee crowd or trying to attract fresh blood? Because a lot of what I've seen lately suggests the former, but the latter is how a community grows. I'm getting mixed signals.

Also I believe historically it's been much harder for the community to unban weird things than to ban them. I'm not convinced that's a feasible plan, especially since by the time we get around to trying the "standard" stuff will already be fairly well entrenched. The transition to a new game would be a very useful catalyst.

 

[Raijinken]

While we're discussing transformations and whatnot, what about Reset Bomb? The transformation walkoff seems even shorter than that of Castle Siege, and the spike dragon looks to be extremely predictable.

As for starting narrow and widening or starting wide and narrowing, you will turn off a portion of the playerbase no matter which approach you take. It has also been proven in past games that it's far easier to suitably ban things with evidence than it is to widen the stagelist after people have acclimated to a narrow list. If you spend a long time practicing many stages and some are removed, that's no unreasonable loss unless it ends up favoring a dominant playstyle, like the past games did. If you start of narrow and suddenly a new stage is legal, it either gets ignored or the experienced players complain because they have to entirely revamp and re-practice a stage they may have literally never played on (especially if they start playing the game with the immediate intent to compete in large tournaments).

Honest question here because I'm fairly ignorant of the high level politics (such as they are). Do we, as a community, prioritize keeping the Melee crowd or trying to attract fresh blood? Because a lot of what I've seen lately suggests the former, but the latter is how a community grows. I'm getting mixed signals.

"We, as a community" can't agree on our own. I'm all for getting new players, since Melee has had more than its share of time in the limelight and will not be going anywhere.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

I've heard it theorized that the Dark Emperor actually puts a colored aura on everyone, which indicates the buff. I have no idea if this is true or not though. (I really need to do some stage research once I get the game.)

Reshiram uses Fusion Flare, which sends out small blankets of fire to a few discrete spots. They're maybe a Bowser width and change and do light damage and knockback. They vanish after a few seconds.

What I know is that the colour the character is determines what buff they get. I think that the Dark Emperor also only puts a single buff on the field at a time, and that the choice of buff and the timing might be random. So all yellow characters get boosts to their Special stat (the same as the stat in Smash Run) when the Dark Emperor activates the yellow aura, for example. To me, as long as you arrange for both players to be the same colour, they'll both get the same buff at the same time and everything will be fair. A sudden unexpected gameplay change, perhaps, but still fair and it still results in a valid form of play and competition.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

While we're discussing transformations and whatnot, what about Reset Bomb? The transformation walkoff seems even shorter than that of Castle Siege, and the spike dragon looks to be extremely predictable.

As for starting narrow and widening or starting wide and narrowing, you will turn off a portion of the playerbase no matter which approach you take. It has also been proven in past games that it's far easier to suitably ban things with evidence than it is to widen the stagelist after people have acclimated to a narrow list. If you spend a long time practicing many stages and some are removed, that's no unreasonable loss unless it ends up favoring a dominant playstyle, like the past games did. If you start of narrow and suddenly a new stage is legal, it either gets ignored or the experienced players complain because they have to entirely revamp and re-practice a stage they may have literally never played on (especially if they start playing the game with the immediate intent to compete in large tournaments).


"We, as a community" can't agree on our own. I'm all for getting new players, since Melee has had more than its share of time in the limelight and will not be going anywhere.

I largely agree with this, but to illustrate a point I want to mention that until someone specifically posted about it and linked a video, I had no idea there was a spiked dragon thing floating around underneath the second part of Reset Bomb Forest. That's really kind of silly, since you'd think trying to figure out exactly what all the stages have going on would be a priority. But nearly every stream and tournament I've seen has been Omega + Battlefield only.

</rant>

What I know is that the colour the character is determines what buff they get. I think that the Dark Emperor also only puts a single buff on the field at a time, and that the choice of buff and the timing might be random. So all yellow characters get boosts to their Special stat (the same as the stat in Smash Run) when the Dark Emperor activates the yellow aura, for example. To me, as long as you arrange for both players to be the same colour, they'll both get the same buff at the same time and everything will be fair. A sudden unexpected gameplay change, perhaps, but still fair and it still results in a valid form of play and competition.

There is a notification on the bottom 3DS screen that says what's going on, but not all of us can read Japanese so it's hard to figure out what's what. I hope that when the game comes out internationally it'll be easier for us all to get on the same page.

 

[slimjim]

I would think this is an argument in favor of possibly "janky" stages since it proves a stage can still be competitive and overall worth keeping despite a few hiccups.

Honest question here because I'm fairly ignorant of the high level politics (such as they are). Do we, as a community, prioritize keeping the Melee crowd or trying to attract fresh blood? Because a lot of what I've seen lately suggests the former, but the latter is how a community grows. I'm getting mixed signals.

As to your first point, PS1 is different because it has a very nice "main" transformation that it returns to for a good amount of time between each alternative form transformation, allowing solid gameplay to continue. Same with Delfino Plaza. However, the "main" transformation of places like RR and mute city are not as nice, thus putting them below the threshold of stages we're willing to allow when money is on the line, excluding of course their other issues.

My main point is that yes, Zipzo, we are probably looking, best case scenario, at a stage list with 3 neutrals, and 3-5 counterpick options. This is thankfully enough for well-run tournaments.

The political and back-end arguments are for another thread. My point in mentioning it was that with the stage list, we have the ability to fireproof our house, or roll the dice and keep the oven on. Better to play it safe and think about the long-term.

EDIT: I shouldn't have mentioned the fanbase point, my fault.
Also, Reset Bomb Forest I know nothing about, but it could be looked at too.

 

[Cactusblah]

We have 36 stages to choose from. 34 omega stages, Battlefield, and Yoshi's Island.

 

[Gawain]

I say stage listing should be lenient in the 3DS version. It's going to have an extremely short lived competitive life (it's gonna immediately die off once the Wii U version comes out), so why not use the time experimentally?

 

[Plain Yogurt]

Oh wow I completely forgot about Reset Bomb Forest. That level seems solid at first glance as well. Dang it I want the game already so I can start actually looking at this stuff...

I do actually agree with starting bigger and getting smaller, list-wise. I suppose I can't say "what does Rainbow Road offer that Lumiose doesn't" without actually playing on them first, can I?

 

[Lozjam]

As to your first point, PS1 is different because it has a very nice "main" transformation that it returns to for a good amount of time between each alternative form transformation, allowing solid gameplay to continue. Same with Delfino Plaza. However, the "main" transformation of places like RR and mute city are not as nice, thus putting them below the threshold of stages we're willing to allow when money is on the line, excluding of course their other issues.

My main point is that yes, Zipzo, we are probably looking, best case scenario, at a stage list with 3 neutrals, and 3-5 counterpick options. This is thankfully enough for well-run tournaments.

The political and back-end arguments are for another thread. My point in mentioning it was that with the stage list, we have the ability to fireproof our house, or roll the dice and keep the oven on. Better to play it safe and think about the long-term.

EDIT: I shouldn't have mentioned the fanbase point, my fault.
Also, Reset Bomb Forest I know nothing about, but it could be looked at too.

Here is what it should be.
Starter:
Yoshi's Island
Final Destination/Omega Forms
Battlefield
Tortimer Island
Counter Pick:
Lumiose City
Pictochat 2(The stage hazards this time really aren't bad at all)
N's Castle(All attacks are choreographed and easy to dodge)
Rainbow Road(All cars you can see coming from very far away and do little damage)
Arena Ferox(It's like PS1)
Reset Bomb Forest(The transformations are quick, and has minimal stage hazards)

Stages that we should look at:
Gerudo Valley(Walk offs are not dangerous and campy anymore and all stage hazards are choreographed)
Gaur Plains(There aren't any stage hazards besides walk offs)
Corneria(The wall shenanigans could have been fixed)
Jungle Japes(The hazrds don't seem that bad this time)
Pac Maze(The ghosts normally just keep to themselves, and the pac pellet doesn't give that big of an advantage)

This will all create more unique gameplay to stray away from the Fox only, Final Destination mindset, and will invite more people to come into the competitive scene. This will also balance the roster a lot more, creating more diversity in the characters.

 

[Deleted member 245254]

At this point, we're still figuring out too much about the metagame (including the most efficient way to guarantee a KO) for this to be a primary concern. This is another case of not knowing enough about how the new mechanics are going to change the way people play. People are going to resort to camping for the time being, but we're going to figure out the best ways around that soon enough to the point where it'll be a non-issue. For example:

I've been playing the demo fairly consistently over the past few days as Mario, and now I know a few specifics about the projectiles that the other fighters throw. When Villager's Lloid Rocket spawns in front of him, it doesn't have an active hitbox until it starts spouting fire to begin moving. Mario can take advantage of this and use his dash attack to slide underneath the rocket, hitting it along the way with no consequence, and knocking the Villager into the air for a combo. By the time the rocket's hitbox becomes active, I'm already on the other side pummeling my opponent. It takes a bit of precision and timing, but it's fairly easy to get it down to a science with practice.

Another example is Pikachu's Thunderbolt. These have deceptively large hitboxes, yes, but they also can be rolled through. If they're firing in quick succession, you can roll through one, short hop over the other, and before you know it, you're hitting Pikachu with a meaty Nair or Bair as he's trying to fire off a third.

Once you start seeing things like this, getting through projectile camping is going to be a breeze.

Fighting an actual player with awareness and skill is much different, if a player like that is camping, they likely know the methods for which you are going to approach, that's actually the main reason a skilled player camps, is that they can limit your options for approaching to only those favorable to them, on their terms. It has nothing to do with the difficulty in avoiding the damage from the other side of the stage. There's a deeper purpose to it.

The points about Smash4's camping being Meleeoid are pretty solid. It's not like Brawl and some games where you're waiting for the enemy to get impatient and screw up, instead your goal is to give yourself an opening rather than wait for them to give you one. I've watched plenty of "pro" Smash4 so far, and unless it's a double camp matchup (which probably would have happened in Melee if all of the non-spacefurry campy characters hadn't been relative trash), it has universally involved whittling at them while trying to get in, rather than whittling at them and constantly running away. It's been a firefight instead of a fistfight, it largely hasn't been a staring contest.

This seems accurate however I would argue that it is simply the lesser of two evils as I find campy play in and of itself to be a bit lame, despite it's existence as a legitimate tactic.

Projectile camping isn't really as strong in smash 4. Compared to Brawl all of the ranges camping got sweeping nerfed across the board.

Obviously only amateur players camp by sitting on one side of the stage spamming their singular input. Knowledgeable players know how to camp intelligently while covering their vulnerabilities and exploiting yours, they close enough distance physically so their projectiles do reach you, and again, in Smash 4 it's not necessarily so much about the actual projectile it's the manipulation of your opponent that they have with it.

Um, what? I do just fine when pitted against projectiles. You just have to get used to them.

Please don't bring simple-minded anecdotes as an actual form of input...this post literally explains nothing about you, your opponent, how you "do fine", what "getting used to" means, or if you even completely understand the focus of my post.

I am not saying camping is over powered and indomitable, I'm simply expressing concern for a stage list that isn't frequenting FD, because disappointingly, balance wasn't shifted far enough away from projectile favoritism on the stage in my opinion as much as I'd have liked it to.

 

[san.]

Power shield, instatoss, etc. Not going to be that hard once you learn how to combat it.

 

[Deleted member 245254]

Power shield, instatoss, etc. Not going to be that hard once you learn how to combat it.

Again, this isn't about learning how to combat campy play. It's about the stage list size.

 

[Morbi]

There are two options available to us at the current time.

1. Go BANdai Namco (Smogon) on dey asses and ban Omega modes for a stage-list number that the community is more comfortable with, 3 or 4.
2. Accept the new meta-game, but that is a bad idea. Change is unacceptable. We should keep it default for now because there is no reason to change.

 

[Raijinken]

Again, this isn't about learning how to combat campy play. It's about the stage list size.

Tying in with the stage selection, what if the winner of a round in a set was not allowed to change characters?

Let's say you win overwhelmingly on Battlefield as Duck Hunt Dog, and in order to counter your play, the loser then counterpicks you to Brinstar (disregard for the moment that we have no idea how much more or less viable Brinstar would be for DHD).

Under normal rules, after that stage is identified, the winner of the last round is given the chance to repick their character before the previous round's loser. From what I understand, this is to prevent things like strongly counterpicking the winner's character with a stage.

Would the idea of having some of these different stages still be effective with the character swap option, or would that also need to go for the picks to be effective?

 

[san.]

I was responding to these lines:

It's my observation that projectile characters still possess a distinct advantage above characters without projectiles on omega stages, and I'm concerned that this kind of play style can be extrapolated in to tournament play.

However I'm willing to accept that this may not be very accurate given the game is so new, but getting in these huge pissing matches with Pikachu's spamming b, DHD at all and other types of things similar is becoming to appear more frequent over time, making For Glory a bit...annoying to play in occasionally.

I disagree that it's that bad even on FD-like stages. Additionally, this kind of play style will not be extrapolated in to tournament play because all other stages are not FD. It'll be strong against players who are not yet used to dealing with it.

There are problems with Battlefield being centralized towards close quarters characters, as I used one and it was the most banned stage against me in Brawl. With the change to shielding not knocking you off platforms, it may be a little bit different now.

Again, this isn't about learning how to combat campy play. It's about the stage list size.

Aside from FD and omega stages, what stages promote the weakened projectiles/camping nearly as much?

 

[Raijinken]

Aside from FD and omega stages, what stages promote the weakened projectiles/camping nearly as much?

At least against Duck Hunt Dog a diagonal approach is difficult due to the can.

Though, thinking about it, if people can put up with the solid walls, the statues in Ferox will absorb a good number of projectiles, making it possibly an anti-camping stage from that perspective.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

I largely agree with this, but to illustrate a point I want to mention that until someone specifically posted about it and linked a video, I had no idea there was a spiked dragon thing floating around underneath the second part of Reset Bomb Forest. That's really kind of silly, since you'd think trying to figure out exactly what all the stages have going on would be a priority. But nearly every stream and tournament I've seen has been Omega + Battlefield only.

</rant>


There is a notification on the bottom 3DS screen that says what's going on, but not all of us can read Japanese so it's hard to figure out what's what. I hope that when the game comes out internationally it'll be easier for us all to get on the same page.

I saw footage of the Find Mii stage on the September 12th Treehouse stream, so we got to see the callouts on the bottom in English. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOZE4EZXik&t=43m55s

It's yellow-costume Little Mac versus Pac-Man, and both get a Special boost. Plus, there was a Pic of the Day that explained a bit about how the stage works and that fighters of different colours get different buffs.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I saw footage of the Find Mii stage on the September 12th Treehouse stream, so we got to see the callouts on the bottom in English. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQOZE4EZXik&t=43m55s

It's yellow-costume Little Mac versus Pac-Man, and both get a Special boost. Plus, there was a Pic of the Day that explained a bit about how the stage works and that fighters of different colours get different buffs.

Good find (I'd forgotten about that and I watched the stream) but I'd also look for a match between two differently-colored characters to make sure.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Obviously only amateur players camp by sitting on one side of the stage spamming their singular input. Knowledgeable players know how to camp intelligently while covering their vulnerabilities and exploiting yours, they close enough distance physically so their projectiles do reach you, and again, in Smash 4 it's not necessarily so much about the actual projectile it's the manipulation of your opponent that they have with it.

Even for intelligent players this was nerfed.

Yes you can control the stage better, but you still lost a lot of damage and safety that camping provided outside of maybe Link and Toon Link who really didn't suffer much if at all from the projectile damage and frame issues.

Fox can't SHL anymore and neither can Falco. That's a huge nerf since it adds a lot more risk to trying to play like that.

Camping is a lot weaker even in for Glory Mode. It doesn't do as much damage as normal smash attacks will and has problems with the overall faster movement of the cast.

You can still do it, but it's not going to wall people out like it used to in Brawl. Good zoning and spacing can fix this but it still doesn't change that it's a lot weaker than it was in Brawl.

 

[keninblack]

Starters:
FD
BF
Yoshi's

CP's:
Luminose
Omega FD with walls under ledges, just have one standard omega FD allowed that has the walls.

 

[Raijinken]

Can anyone with the game explain why Ferox isn't really under consideration? I'm biased toward it since it's the Fire Emblem stage, but I've seen only a small handful of Classic Mode games on it, so I'm probably missing out on some obvious flaw.

And for what it's worth, I do think people will better-learn how to counter the camping in this game. Even in FD modes, it doesn't seem nearly as bad as watching a Diddy with a banana tent in Brawl or PM.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Can anyone with the game explain why Ferox isn't really under consideration? I'm biased toward it since it's the Fire Emblem stage, but I've seen only a small handful of Classic Mode games on it, so I'm probably missing out on some obvious flaw.

And for what it's worth, I do think people will better-learn how to counter the camping in this game. Even in FD modes, it doesn't seem nearly as bad as watching a Diddy with a banana tent in Brawl or PM.

As far as I know, the biggest argument against it is that some of the transformations have solid walls and platforms. There are also sometimes statues like in Castle Siege that you can break. I honestly thought it would be a shoo-in for legality.

 

[Deleted member 245254]

Even for intelligent players this was nerfed.

Yes you can control the stage better, but you still lost a lot of damage and safety that camping provided outside of maybe Link and Toon Link who really didn't suffer much if at all from the projectile damage and frame issues.

Fox can't SHL anymore and neither can Falco. That's a huge nerf since it adds a lot more risk to trying to play like that.

Camping is a lot weaker even in for Glory Mode. It doesn't do as much damage as normal smash attacks will and has problems with the overall faster movement of the cast.

You can still do it, but it's not going to wall people out like it used to in Brawl. Good zoning and spacing can fix this but it still doesn't change that it's a lot weaker than it was in Brawl.

I never made any comparison to Brawl in the first place.

Rascals post is way more in line with what I'm trying to explain. It's a "new" type of campy dynamic, but don't kid yourself in to thinking projectiles have been somehow utterly gutted...they are still strong options for any character that has them. Past the point of them being viable, it's not really my concern how strong they are compared to Brawl.

It is largely a boon to skilled players. These aren't players who are annoying at range until you get in to CQC with them, these are players who camp you, and manage to have amazing tussle skills, it's just made slightly difficult to go head to head damage wise due to their projectile advantage.

Again, I never stated this was OP, I simply stated I find it annoying and becoming frequent, and as a result am looking towards the future stage list for hope that this will not be the tournament norm, because in my opinion I believe projectile based control in matches to be unfitting for most viewers and players. Why do you think DHD is catching so much flak lately?

 

[Raijinken]

Why do you think DHD is catching so much flak lately?

Because the can is a non-charged kill-capable (at high damage) projectile with very good coverage.

That said, he's practically Snake reincarnated, and Snake eventually fell out of the topmost.

 

[Deleted member 245254]

Because the can is a non-charged kill-capable (at high damage) projectile with very good coverage.

That said, he's practically Snake reincarnated, and Snake eventually fell out of the topmost.

I take as much issue with the can as anyone else but Duck Hunt Dogs balance is not necessarily the goal here, I don't think we can do much about him post launch, we have to learn to deal with him.

There is much discussion on multiple forms of FD being viable due to difference in platform shape, and I'm concerned that the flat stage type will be the most often tread stage...creating a slight advantage to projectile characters who can utilize camping well.

If you or anyone else is not concerned about the competitive 3DS stage list then maybe I'm just fearing over nothing *shrug*, but I thought I would share my concern. They're was once even discussion on For Glory format being the new "meta" for Smash 4. Heck, people sure adopted the stock and time part quickly.

 

[san.]

I'm pro-diversity in stage lists since I believe it maximize competitiveness to include all legitimate stages, not about whether a stage is pro-projectile or not. For example, I wouldn't deny a potential CP because it's good for projectile users.

With a conservative stage list, you strike FD for the first round and ban it for future rounds. What happens then? Projectiles are still good, but you can get around getting walled. You can skip FD if you wish, so For Glory isn't going to do much to competitive play.

 

[Starbound]

I haven't played the game yet, but I'd like to throw out my suggestions for a legal stage list.

Starter: Battlefield, Yoshi's Island, Lumiose City
Counterpicks: Final Destination, Reset Bomb Forest, Arena Ferox, Brinstar, Rainbow Road
Maybe: Tomodachi Life (if all of the floors are dropthrough I think this stage can be perfectly reasonable)

Even in a game with weakened camping, it is my opinion that Final Destination is still a very polarizing stage, especially when compared to Battlefield and Yoshi's Island. In Brawl, characters like Diddy, Falco, Dedede and Ice Climbers were perfectly at home on FD by a significant amount. Of course, those characters have been either nerfed or removed, but we're still left with some characters that have the potential to abuse Final Destination to similar extents with Duck Hunt, Little Mac and, potentially, Rosalina and Luma.

I know that there has been some recent support for FD as a counterpick in PM, though I admittedly haven't been following it to see what effects it's had in the game.

 

[Raijinken]

If you or anyone else is not concerned about the competitive 3DS stage list then maybe I'm just fearing over nothing *shrug*, but I thought I would share my concern. They're was once even discussion on For Glory format being the new "meta" for Smash 4. Heck, people sure adopted the stock and time part quickly.

I'm more concerned because a 3-4 stage list that almost exclusively consists of stages from past games is boring, and I'll honestly lose interest as a spectator. It's hard to really tell (I only have the demo, and while Pikaspam is annoying, there are enough reflector characters to get in) without the full game available to a wider audience, but while camping and range spam will always be annoying, as long as there exist multiple valid options for beating it (like Mac currently appears to be, though again, early in the game's life), it's probably valid.

I know that there has been some recent support for FD as a counterpick in PM, though I admittedly haven't been following it to see what effects it's had in the game.

It made Stadium 2 the go-to starter stage for most characters, at least from what I've seen. A handful still prefer Dreamland or Smashville.

 

[Acryte]

Thank you. Let's not forget guys, Brawl camping: 5:00 timestamp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2XFZUdgeV0
Melee camping: 0:25 timestamp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yfo-v8pbXc

Smash4 camping is much closer to melee in that it is based around an offensive player attempting to get around a defensive player where both players must play dynamically (in this sense I mean "with much movement"). The offensive options in this game are such that they allow the offensive player to actually CREATE openings.

Brawl camping, due to the dominance of defensive options over offensive ones, was STATIC camping in which both players are defensively-postured, looking for a mistake from the opponent.

Even in the campier matches in smash4, we are still looking at a fun-to-watch, dynamic playstyle that challenges both contenders in the match.

Lastly, let us not forget that this is still with a foreign control scheme, which inherently gives a slight extra advantage to campy or frame-trap characters. Once we get GC controllers in our hands, we'll be able to pressure the pants off of campers.

Melee Camping is a bit different though, there is typically the immediate threat of punish, and individual hits count more.