Mind Over Meta is a weekly series of articles on /r/SSBPM, the Project M subreddit. Written by several different authors, this series covers many of the mental aspects of playing smash and other subjects related specifically to Project M. This week user orangegluon wrote about stages. The original article can be found here. To read the rest of the series check out the Mind Over Meta Archive. Sit down, read, and enjoy.
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Hi everyone, after that hiatus we are finally back with another Mind Over Meta. Today, I want to discuss an aspect of the game that defines the differences between traditional fighters and Super Smash Bros. As a platform fighter, Smash’s primary selling point is its use of space and open room in a way that Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, and other traditional fighting games don’t. Without further ado, let’s talk about stages!
... And All the Men and Women Merely Players...
As I mentioned before, stages encapsulate the real character of a Smash game; simplicity of characters and complexity of space and movement. Project M is no different, and with a host of at least 16 stages it is easy to feel quickly overwhelmed in a competitive environment. Even further, the PMDT have put insane amounts of thought into a lot of the other customized stages which are not generally legal for competition, like Electroplankton, Bowser’s Castle, and HD Metal Cavern. On top of that, a host of Melee and Brawl classics still exist in Project M for maximum fun. So with so much stage content, where can we possibly start a discussion?
For the most part, I’d like to narrow in our focus to the competitive stagelist for simplicity, but that still leaves a huge amount of variation. The differences between, for example, Final Destination and Warioland are huge. The sheer quantity of diverse stages makes individual analysis hard to wrap your head around without some framework, so we should start by talking about these stages in terms of commonly seen structures.
Sizing up
The primary characteristic of stages, above other factors, is the stage size. Because Smash fixates on movement so much (and Project M especially so what with wavedashing and shellshifting and air boosting), the amount of space available on a stage is a crucial factor in whether a particular stage plays to or against a character’s strengths.
Broad, large stages like Dreamland and Final Destination are beneficial to characters that need a lot of room to control space effectively. Luigi, Captain Falcon, Ike, and Squirtle, to name a few characters, use large areas to effectively move and pressure opponents into corners. Since these types of characters are able to move from one place to another very quickly, they benefit from having lots of space, meaning that these characters effectively have a large bubble of threat zone they can command at any point in time. Characters like Bowser and Zelda, for example, simply cannot extend their immediate reach as far because they lack the mobility to put hitboxes far away from their current location quickly. Therefore, they miss out on a potential benefit of larger stages that quicker characters enjoy.
Another consequence of big stages is the ability to camp out the opponent well. Large areas also can play to defensive strengths, like the ability launch projectiles from afar or run from the opponent, unable to be cornered down. Stuck facing an aggressive opponent? Just retreat! Stages like Delfino’s Secret leave lots of room to escape from menacing lockdowns, letting you choose to reset the situation to neutral without much risk. Characters like Samus and Toon Link, as well as Fox, Falco, and Mario, are able to use the large spaces to safely put on damage from a distance. This match between [A]rmada and TL|Hungrybox in Melee exemplifies the use of space (to a more pronounced degree). By utilizing the large stage base effectively, both players seek to eke out an advantage playing to their characters’ strengths, namely the ability to evade disadvantageous confrontation and the ability to fire many projectiles.
By contrast, small and confined stages like Yoshi’s Story and Warioland confer advantages to very different types of playstyles. These stages force direct confrontations more often, so characters that gain an advantage from forcing stage control more violently will benefit here. Ganondorf, Bowser, and other characters with strong immediate stage presence now gain a massive boon: opponents have a lot less room to wriggle out of these characters’ powerful pressure and daunting damage outputs. Characters that usually must play defensively and punish mistakes have an opportunity to force opponents to approach them and capitalize accordingly. However, this is a double edged sword as well; characters with such powerful areas of control tend to be correspondingly very large. They can put out hitboxes over a huge fraction of the stage at the cost of taking up a huge fraction of the stage as well, so opponents can just as easily nick them with attacks and follow up with easy combos.
Characters with powerful dash dances often can enjoy close quarters. With no room to run away, opponents are forced to respond directly to pressure from space control. An explosively dash dancing Marth or Donkey Kong can corner his prey and force them to roll, whiff a counterattack, or try to jump away, giving the dancer the upper hand. This extremely simply dash dance demonstrates exactly how tight spaces let Sethlon force a dubious reaction from Westballz and get a reward from it.
Of course, Project M also has a variety of middle-sized stages, the archetypical example being Battlefield. These stages are generally considered neutral with regards to spacing; they have enough space that most characters can easily put distance between them and the opponent, but not enough that they can always escape to these safe zones. Similarly, high close-up pressure is possible, but takes some work to actually pin down opponents. Hence, characters can play to their stage size advantages, but not without more effort than on their “preferred” stage sizes. There is a reason so many competitive matches in Melee begin on Battlefield!
But stage size isn’t the only factor! Closely related, stages are also characterized by stage blast zones.
Heading Out of This World
Blast zones are the regions in which characters actually lose a stock offstage. These zones are to the left, right, top, and bottom of the screen and form a box around the main stage. Whether these zones are close to the main stage or far away determines how much percentage, on average, you need to tack onto particular characters to net a KO with one of your finishers.
Large stages tend to have far away blast zones, while small stages generally have very close-in blast zones. For example, Dreamland is notable for having extremely large blast zones. This means that light characters, like Jigglypuff and Olimar, and floaty ones like Samus, will generally live until very high percents, surviving several kill moves (with proper DI, recovery, and persistence) to keep coming back and heckle opponents struggling to KO. So-called “Marth Syndrome,” where certain characters best land kills in particular percentages because their kill setups are not consistent otherwise, is exaggerated in these scenarios because of the tendencies toward higher percentages. Meanwhile, more fragile characters like Falco and Roy tend to have poor recoveries to begin with, so they gain nothing from further blast zones; they are more likely to fall to the bottom blast zone anyway.
Conversely, stages with very close blast zones, like Castle Siege or Green Hill Zone, favor characters with quick middle-high power moves and lots of offstage heavy-hitters. Ganondorf, with his powerful forward air, tends to earn kills at very early percentages. Roy’s offstage neutral-B, Captain Falcon’s knee, and Ike’s forward air are other great tools for early KOs on small stages. Floaty characters tend to suffer immensely on these stages purely from being easily tossed into blast zones, while heavy fighters like Charizard and Snake require a lot more shoving to get pushed away. Coupled with their tendency toward having lots of launchers, heavy characters generally enjoy small blast zones so they need not tack on lots of percents before netting a stock.
Characters should tailor their preferred stage blast zones to the types of launchers they have. Fox’s powerful, vertical upsmash, for instance, draws him toward Pokemon Stadium 2 and Yoshi’s Story, which have very low ceiling blastzones, allowing him to net early kills. Mario’s forward smash, by contrast, is most effective with nearby wall blast zones. On the other hand, characters with no trouble pushing foes away off stage, such as Jigglypuff or Dedede, may want blast zones very far away from the stage, so that they may live for longer while not losing the ability to kill opponents offstage with chained aerials.
Sizes and blastzones tend to correlate strongly, and together can strongly set the context of a given game and matchup in Project M. While sizes and blastzones vary among stages, there is one more factor that really distinguishes the legal stages from each other…
Mysterious Floating Planks
Platform number and layout are key features of any stage in PM. From the bare-bones platformless island of Final Destination to the double-high-rise-quadruple-platform arrangement of Warioland, platforms have a surprisingly large amount of diversity among the legal stages.
Platforms are key to all characters; all of them can use platforms in a variety of ways. One simple application of platforms is in continuing combos. Throwing an opponent onto a platform and then jumping next to them lets you set up for a lot of possible scenarios, like grabbing, smashing, or tacking on extra percentage. They also let you follow up launches more easily, by landing and then jumping again to pursue opponents still in hitstun. Donkey Kong can make great use of this tactic with up-air and throw strings to land kill moves. In addition, platforms can help trap opponents above you. For characters with long disjoints, such as Marth and Roy, an opponent caught above you on a platform often means that you can harass them for significant damage with utilts and uairs. Characters like Sheik can also shark under the platforms to poke at unguarded opponents with uairs and nairs.
More importantly, however, platforms are often critical to characters that rely heavily on wavelands and vertical movement for proper mobility. Note how Eikelmann and Bizzarroflame, in this Melee Ganondorf money match, utilize the platforms masterfully to aid in mobility with powerful wavelands and drop-aerials. Ganondorf, Bowser, Captain Falcon, and many others can suffer heavily with no platforms to assist their movement and get around opponents. In Project M, lots of other characters can utilize platforms to aid their mobility and offensive options in less intuitive ways as well. Otek’s crisp Luigi, for example, utilizes momentum retention from dropping through platforms in order to launch quick offensives and sail through the air with aerial attacks.
Positionally, platforms separate stages into regions of effect. For instance, High platforms on stages tend to be safe areas, in such a way that players controlling the platform are in a largely advantageous position. Usually, for an opponent to contest the player, they must come up to their level in the air, which means that they are not able to use all of their normal options. Shielding on the top platform in these situations is powerful, as the opponent cannot grab while in the air (ignoring command grabs). And aerial vulnerability makes approaching a risk on the opponent’s part. Characters that do well in closed environments, such as Yoshi and Wolf, often maintain powerful platform control easily by threatening any opponents that dare encroach on their platform with ranged, quick smash attacks or grabs. Controlling platforms can quickly dictate control of the momentum of a match, much as controlling space on the base of the stage does.
Platforms often aid in recoveries as well; stages like Warioland or Battlefield with multiple layers of platforms can make recoveries much harder to predict and react to for edgeguarding players. High platforms allow opponents trying to fight back onto stage to find safe options to land, away from the ledge that you are desperately trying to puppy-guard. A dramatic instance of platform safety in action in Melee came earlier this year, at the nail-biting end of Mango’s bout with Plup at CEO 2015. Cleverly utilizing the stage’s platforms to your advantage can make for smooth escapes under pressure. In fact, most everyone who has ever been chain grabbed can attest to the importance of platforms for escape. By landing on the platform after being thrown, you have a chance to tech and escape from a follow up or regrab, if you outmaneuver the opponent. Final Destination’s lack of platforms has made it infamous for easy chaingrabs on a bevy of characters, by a bevy of characters. Indeed, so important are platforms for dealing with chaingrabs that many Melee players, at one point, attempted to remove Final Destination from the legal stage list, since Falco and Fox suffer so heavily against Marth without platforms.
Platforms are often overlooked and undervalued in discussions of Smash stages, but their presence and layout are critical to the flow of a match. Moving platforms allow for dynamic combos with potential early kills, as seen in this clip of a Sheik combo in Smash For Wii U. Paying close attention to the platform layout, as well as stage size and blast zones, of various stages will give you a strong advantage in thinking about stage choices.
Setting the Stage
Now comes the question: So what? What use is all this discussion?
The utility of paying attention to stages in competitive play is in making informed decisions about which stages to pick. Standard tournament rules dictate that, in the first game, players eliminate stages they do not want to start a match on, and that in subsequent games the loser of the previous game counterpicks a stage to gain an advantage. There are essentially 4 questions you need to ask when deciding which stages to choose or eliminate from possibility:
- What stages does my character have an advantage or suffer on?
- What stages does my opponent’s character have an advantage or suffer on?
- What stages fit my playstyle?
- What stages fit my opponent’s playstyle?
In general, many characters have well defined “favorite stages;” for example, Peach and Samus enjoy Dreamland and Delfino’s Secret, as the far blast zones give them a secure safety net should they be hit by stray launch moves. However, not all characters have obvious best stages, and if, for example, a Peach must fight against a Samus, either player might choose a different, smaller stage, so that the advantages of a large stage with far blast zones will not support the opponent more than themselves.
Knowing the ins and outs of every legal stage can only help you. Bread-and-butter kills, such as Fox’s up-smash on various characters, work at varying percentages against a given character depending on the stage and location on the stage. Knowing what those percentages are will go a long way toward nailing KOs, rather than showing your hand by sneakily landing a kill move only for it to fall just shy of taking the stock. More than that, understanding details about the stage, such as the nature of the Blaargwiches on Yoshi’s Island or Randall the Cloud on Yoshi’s Story, lets you time your recoveries to survive the clutches of death, or continue a combo offstage on a moving platform. Having accurate information lets you make optimal decisions in a game. For example, a myth in Project M claims that Pokemon Stadium 2 is the most balanced starting stage in any matchup. However, lots of characters’ advantages on the stage, such as Samus’s ability to rapidly fire missiles using the platforms, makes this a dubious claim at best.
The four questions are hard to answer a priori. But with practice, forethought, and some studying, you will hopefully be able to choose the best stage every time.
Showtime!
Ultimately the stages you pick are incredibly crucial to victory; that much is clear. Although descriptions of all the stages are helpful, the possible scenarios you could encounter are countless. However, experience and research are great teachers. Knowledge is power, and power corresponds to victory, so it’s in your best interest to really learn about the possible legal stages and their role for your character’s performance to improve your tournament matches!
Thanks for your patience with our hiatus, and thanks for reading a slightly more technical and less philosophical Mind Over Meta. Next week, we plan to go through most of the generally legal stages and describe them a bit in Part 2 of Mind Over Meta: Stages.
Until next time, take care! -- The Mind Over Meta Writing Team.
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