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My proposal for how we handle stages in smash 4

lordvaati

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Just to start quick, why is it absurd? Methinks you hold a bias about Final Destination of some kind. The fight for it to be a counterpick has gone on for quite a while actually as well, and while you should decide what you think for yourself that side has definitely presented arguments worth reading.]
from what I've gotten, the major argument comes down to the fact that range and projectile characters have an advantage there. my issue with that is that what else is there to justify it....nothing. absolutely bloody nothing. also you can argue stuff like Battlefield gives a distinct advantage to Marth due to platform positioning being just ajacent enough for him to sweetspot targets.

My general issue with the ban system we've used is that once a stage is up for the option of ban, immediately after a legion of people arrive that use mudslinging and what have you to FORCE the ban. this happened most infamously with Corneria, when after it got hit in Melee all of a sudden you have people saying it was banned for infinites(why it's banned in Brawl), which is false because it was legal for being THE ONLY WALLED STAGE THAT CANNNOT BE DONE ON. Another thing are kneejerk bans, mostly because of one singular match that usually had a camper winning the set, and resulting in a stage ban. now bans of things like Great Bay and Brawl's version of Rainbow Cruise have legitimate reasons, but a single campy Peach and Kirby match should not have been enough to ban DK 64 or Hyrule Castle. By that logic, Smashville-which is considered by many the most balanced Smash stage ever made- is up gfor banning due to god knows how many times someone has won sets by clocking out with MK.

Seriously, we need to reevaluate our s***, because at this point every damn thing is up for ban....or maybe we should just accept there will never be a perfect stage in this gamed that thrives on chaos.
 
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Amazing Ampharos

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My issue visa vi Final Destination is simple. I don't think the stage should be banned, but I always thought it was ridiculous that it was held as a constant "neutral" stage when it was the single worst stage in the game for my character, forcing me to use my stage ban on it 100% of the time. It's also a crazy strong counterpick stage for Ice Climbers which is not a small issue; most of the cast is so hard countered by ICs on FD that they might as well not even attempt to fight. It just feels unfair to see some tournament ban a stage that's a million times more match-up fair like Halberd while Final Destination gets a free pass just over something dumb like the claw that is random yeah but doesn't have a big effect on the game. If I could make the claw target me 100% of the time and fire off twice as often as it does now, I'd still prefer Halberd over FD in most match-ups. Situations like this can be brought up for so many characters too; I don't find leading a line of attack on Final Destination really productive, but I understand the frustrations that cause it.

I agree with the ban bandwagon mentality, but I think it comes from a somewhat different place. My view has always been that people truly favor familiarity and otherwise tend to support middle of the road policy on stuff like this. You have outliers on both sides; I know I'm an outlier who wants everything legal and am not representative of the average player. Of course, there are outliers on the other side too who really would be happy if Smashville were the only legal stage. Most people want some middling number of stages legal but aren't emotionally invested in it. The problem is that the current political structure doesn't favor simply averaging everyone's preferences; it divides things up by region, and some regions (or even just localities) end up banning a lot while others don't really ban much at all. Once a stage is banned somewhere, all players there begin to grow unfamiliar and don't want the stage legal anymore; they all essentially become converts to one extreme. National events also almost always favor the most limited stage lists in order to ensure maximum match quality since matches on stages only some players know well are going to look really sloppy, and this puts pressure on the more liberal regions to ban more stages to keep up. Over time, this creates a never-ending creep of stage bans until you end up with way more banned than most people ever wanted in the first place with the awful road taken to get there causing so many more problems along the way. Given that this is just a political artifact of the current way we do things, all it does is convince me that, with a new game, we really, absolutely must do things differently with the most important thing being constant unity. If everyone always uses the same rules and broad consensus is required for any stage to be banned anywhere, this creeping ban thing just can't happen.
 

popsofctown

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I like reading AA's posts.

I would rather play on a random selection between Wario Ware, 75m, and Level 1-2 (is that what it's called?) and have that be a frozen standard across the globe since 3 month's after the games released rather than have every state using a different, changing stagelist.

----------------------------

One thing I want to take a moment to point out and highlight is that there is some inherent difference between being forced to use a strike/ban on a stage that is random and being forced to use a strike/ban on a stage that is character skewed. Suppose you just had all stages in Brawl legal, but first half of the strikes were bans. Because random elements naturally favor the inferior player, whenever a weaker player plays a better one his ideal choice would be to avoid banning random stages. This leaves the better player using his strikes on 75m, Pictochat, and WarioWare just to reduce his chances of getting upset. The weaker player has the freedom to ban nonrandom stages that his character sucks at. The end result has the weaker player with a stage advantage.

This isn't really the case with character skew. If I'm playing Ice Climbers and I suck at the game or rock at the game, I would want to ban Rainbow Cruise against a Mario whether he sucks at the game or rocks at the game. So in that case the liberal stagelist isn't as toxic to players' progress at trying to be better than other players.

I think it's very important that you design the stagelist such that good players don't feel obligated to remove random elements themselves. It's much more okay to leave polarizing stuff like Rainbow Cruise in with a strike system though.
 

RelaxAlax

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I think in terms of the wonkier stages, there needs to be a line where we choose to ban it or not. Things like WarioWare include too many elements that wouldn't really be competitive friendly stages.

I was just watching a stage like this, however, that can be predicted and still requires a lot of skill for the player:

.

This could very well be legal. Perhaps not extremely popular, but still viable. Stages similar to this could be included as it is not random stage hazards but predictable and fair stage hazards, where half the time if you're wise you will make a strategy on how to make your opponent get hit by them . Although simply seeing stages and saying they could be legal is not fair. We don't know character gimmicks and physics until the game is out.

I made this in another thread, listing off stages confirmed so far and their hazards.

Okay, I'll keep this as neutral as possible since this is the first list to my knowledge. Also we should consider moving to Hugs' thread or that thread migrating here.
Both games
Battlefield

  • I think it's safe to say this will be universally legal. Any objections will make me a bit perplexed at the community.
3DS
Arena Ferox

  • Not enough information; Seems pretty neutral, but there were statues presented that may add something to the gameplay. Should be watched
Gerudo Valley

  • Walk off stage but does have a pit; I believe the bridge breaks and opens a pit. Given tradition and experience, this would be banned
Rainbow Road

  • Not enough information, seems pretty neutral as of right now but time may say otherwise. I imagine Waluigi coming in on a kart and ****ing up the joint
Spirit Train

  • It is a moving stages (Big Blue, although we don't know if touching the tracks will kill you) and has hazards (bomb train). I'm going to say it will be banned.
Animal Crossing: New Leaf stage

  • Not enough information; hopefully it is the Smashville of the 3DS. The water surrounding may deter from this theory though.
Find Mii stage

  • Not enough information; possible stage hazard
Kid Icarus: Uprising stage

  • Not enough information; from the one image it seems to have many platforms ascending. It's unknown if the reset bomb effects gameplay but it seems to change the stages aesthetics.
Nintendogs Stage

  • Seems to be a walk-off stage; Unknown if Nintendog plays a role in gameplay
Super Mario 3D Land Stage

  • Scrolling; Many Stage Hazards; I think this one is a surefire ban.
Wii U
Dr. Wily's Castle

  • Pretty neutral. A few floating platforms, and pits on both sides. Yellow Devil may be the only hazard, and even his severity is questionable (See picture with Kirby phasing through him). I'd say it would be wise to keep watch on it.
Garden of Hope

  • Not enough information; It appears to be a walk-off stage. It is shown to have a pit so it may have a fighting chance.
Mario Galaxy

  • Appears to be walk-off, but the edges have never been seen. No hazards present but does have planetational gravity
Pyrosphere

  • Netural stages, somewhat large. No hazards presented and appears to be a safe pick for tournaments. We don't know if the lava plays a role in it or if Ridley is infused with the stage (hopefully not :])
Skyloft

  • Delfino-style level. Seems tournament safe as of now.
Windy Hill Zone

  • Hinted to be a walkoff stage; appears to have planetational gravity. I'd steer this one towards a ban but it may have unknown redeeming factors
Wuhu Island

  • A plane type level. Does not seem to have hazards. The planes ongoing change of tilt has not yet shown any gameplay disadvantages
Animal Crossing: City Folk stage

  • Smashville; should remain legal unless further evidence proves otherwise. This does show us stages may vary in platform placement and background. If platforms do change each time the stage is loaded, this could cause issues in strategy of stage selection.
Wii Fit stage

  • I'm still perplexed to as whether this is a walkoff stage or if it has pits. The gray beyond seems to suggest it has pits. No hazards have been presented and it appears to be pretty neutral. For now, I'd say it's legal.
Boxing Ring stage

  • It has been recently shown that beyond the arena there aren't any pits. This is still up for debate so this will need to be watched. However, the borders on the arena do invite infinites or easy damage racking (Lucas Down-tilt) so for now, it will be watched.
Keep in mind I wasn't really in on stages at the time so my opinons in here may not be the same because of newfound knowledge.
 

popsofctown

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I hope the community continues to say no to walkoffs. Dedede is not the problem with walkoffs, fwiw. The problem is that 3 stock matches behave like 2 stock matches there so the stages let you manipulate sample size. (Stuff like DDD and strong backthrows probably screw things up even more than that, but even if that was gone sample size trolling would be an issue.)
 

Zonderion

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I've wanted to make a really detailed post here since the OP, and hopefully I'll get the motivation to do it soon, but until then, I just thought this was incredibly apropos in a weird sort of way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gmRbdEO5Yns#t=274
Best line in there:

Sarah Silverman said:
If something isn't someone's cup of tea, they want to ban it.
And this one:
Sarah Silverman said:
People don't say anymore, "That's not for me." They go, "That shouldn't be for ANYONE!"

Well done Jack, well done.
 

RelaxAlax

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Amazing Ampharos

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I like reading AA's posts.

I would rather play on a random selection between Wario Ware, 75m, and Level 1-2 (is that what it's called?) and have that be a frozen standard across the globe since 3 month's after the games released rather than have every state using a different, changing stagelist.

----------------------------

One thing I want to take a moment to point out and highlight is that there is some inherent difference between being forced to use a strike/ban on a stage that is random and being forced to use a strike/ban on a stage that is character skewed. Suppose you just had all stages in Brawl legal, but first half of the strikes were bans. Because random elements naturally favor the inferior player, whenever a weaker player plays a better one his ideal choice would be to avoid banning random stages. This leaves the better player using his strikes on 75m, Pictochat, and WarioWare just to reduce his chances of getting upset. The weaker player has the freedom to ban nonrandom stages that his character sucks at. The end result has the weaker player with a stage advantage.

This isn't really the case with character skew. If I'm playing Ice Climbers and I suck at the game or rock at the game, I would want to ban Rainbow Cruise against a Mario whether he sucks at the game or rocks at the game. So in that case the liberal stagelist isn't as toxic to players' progress at trying to be better than other players.

I think it's very important that you design the stagelist such that good players don't feel obligated to remove random elements themselves. It's much more okay to leave polarizing stuff like Rainbow Cruise in with a strike system though.
This is actually an excellent point, and I don't disagree with you in the general point you're trying to make. I do think you overestimate the effects of randomness on a few of those stages. 75m is certainly an awful stage for a large number of reasons, but the only random things are the hazards which are pretty easy to avoid. PictoChat has 27 drawings, about 20 of which are definitely not a big deal, and either way, an informed player can tend to deal with it pretty effectively (I could give a very detailed tutorial about playing smart on PictoChat, but I don't think it would be useful to this topic).

I do think that we can trust people. 3 months after release, who here favored WarioWare legal? Walk-offs are kinda a similar situation. I think they deserve a fair shot, and I think we'll see them play out in the first few months. If they cause problems, I think we can trust people to eliminate them when the time comes. If they work out, well, why not keep them? If nothing else, I imagine a walk-off stage will have to be virtuous in more ways than an ordinary stage to pass a vote so you may end up with something like just a few walk-offs legal which is hard to see as a problem. I also don't understand the point about walk-offs making matches into virtual 2-stock matches; hanging out near the walk-offs is a generally bad strategy since, for most of the cast, fthrow has high base knockback and low growth while bthrow is the opposite. This means that, against a low damage opponent, hanging out near the walk-off is putting you in far more danger than it's putting the opponent, and having your back to the blast zone also restricts your movement which is a big tactical disadvantage. Some match-ups are different for a few reasons, but in most match-ups, walk-offs revolve around controlling center stage just like normal stages so I don't see how it changes the basic stock dynamic.
 

popsofctown

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Well, what you've pointed out is that walk off trolling is character specific. You need to have a strong backthrow, and it helps to be against a weak fthrow. I am inclined to agree to your argument and say that's ok, then. It's more of a character skew issue.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The stages mentioned were just for illustrative purposes and off the top of my head. I've played on 75m like once and have no real opinion on it. Pictochat is generally at a controversial amount of variance; I lean strongly proban on it but it's definitely not so outrageous that it is an epitome amongst chaotic stages.
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The bottom line I was getting like, is that I'm guessing half the strikes=ban is a rough initial number and subject to adjustment. There's this available tactic of allowing stages adding stages with ~40-60% general support to the stagelist, then upping the number of strikes available to each player so that they could strike it if they want to (though its presence is still going to have a strategic impact).
+1 legality +1 strike is a fine way to go if people can't decide something like "should this difficult, character specific wall infinite remain in the stagelist" or "do we want this heavy-unfriendly stage in the game for the longhaul". The dissenting minority will have a little less fun, but the game won't be any less competitive.
+1 legality +1 strike is not a good way to resolve disagreements if people can't agree whether a stage is nonrandom enough to be competitive. Because that means the extra strike will be used in the way I described earlier, which slows player progression ahead of peers. The majority will have more fun (hell, everyone will have more fun, if not for sample sizing issues transforming stages would always be the best ones), but the game will be less competitive in the long run, and that can have a lot of negative consequences. That's how you lose players to stuff like Starcraft that gives them clear and quick standing on when they've improved without any rubberbanding.
 

Amazing Ampharos

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I'd point out that, in terms of that quick feedback for improvement, smash is already kinda in the pits along with other fighters just due to how character match-ups work. Even if seeding is perfect in terms of player skill, you can easily run into bad (or good!) match-ups in tournament that completely change how you perform. Like as a G&W main, I'm just not going to have a good time if I find all the Snake mains early, but a lot of the low tiers lose to G&W even harder than they lose to the other good characters so low tier mains will do artifically worse against me. Even worse is that there are just so many combinations of things that could happen that you're going to be forced to seriously confront stuff for the first time in tournament; it's entirely possible that you simply don't have any good Zero Suit Samus players local to you, and then you get shut down early by one at a large event just because you don't know the match-up with there really being nothing you can do to avoid this sort of thing (in SC, not only is online play strong, but only three match-ups makes it awfully easy to know all three very well since any decent player will regularly play against all three races). I don't think there's any way to model these effects other than as simple inherent variance built into the game; the magnitude of it declines as players become very skilled (which is a minor consolation to your up and comers), but it's always there to some extent. I'm not saying that reducing variance shouldn't be a goal, but it's among many goals and we have to recognize that compared to other competitive games, fighters already introduce more variance than usual in exchange for a great deal of variety.

My response about particular stages was really more meant to suggest that pragmatism is likely to really help mitigate the problem you're talking about. The first part of it is that really random stages are generally widely disliked and are unlikely to pass legality muster under any system. The other side is that a lot of stages that seem random really aren't very random, but it comes down to experience. I'm trying to avoid wall of texting over and over again so I'm just going to ask you to trust that experience can drastically reduce the consequence of the RNG on PictoChat to the point that it's not a large factor in match outcomes (it's not important that we agree on this in specific). So the rubber banding effect is really distorted as stage knowledge ends up pushing things in the other way, toward the players who have more skill, and the net effect doesn't really work as a rubber banding mechanic at all when the stages are well designed even if they contain random elements. The details of how this all plays out or the particulars of which stages really are just stupid and random in the end (like WarioWare) or are more tests of esoteric stage knowledge (like I'd argue PictoChat) are things reasonable people could argue about, and this is where I'm putting trust in the community's collective wisdom to do right here. I don't think anything that would have true popular support would have the possibility to show the problem you're describing beyond a weak effect, and given the inherent noise level in player skill discernment due to the basic design of a fighting game, I don't think stages that are very weakly random rubber-bandy or the inclusion of a very small percentage of stages that are like that would have a truly significant effect in the long run. I'm not disagreeing that the phenomina you are describing is a real theoretical problem, but I'm suggesting that in practice it's very unlikely to actually come back to bite us.
 

RelaxAlax

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I think it'll come down to a list of pros and cons that have to cater to Smash 4's new mechanics, physics and style. Maybe a type of Venn Diagram, where you'll have positives and negatives on each side but the middle holds subjective topics such as RNG, transformations, or stages that cater to certain characters. And we cannot let opinion cloud judgement, or tradition for that matter. I understand what has happened in the past has happened for a reason, but we should be more open yet critical about stage selection. We won't willy nilly have a stage like Bridge of Eldin legal unless we look at what it gives us if it is legal, what it may take away if it's legal and if it's applications suit competitive play.
 

popsofctown

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I'd point out that, in terms of that quick feedback for improvement, smash is already kinda in the pits along with other fighters just due to how character match-ups work. Even if seeding is perfect in terms of player skill, you can easily run into bad (or good!) match-ups in tournament that completely change how you perform. Like as a G&W main, I'm just not going to have a good time if I find all the Snake mains early, but a lot of the low tiers lose to G&W even harder than they lose to the other good characters so low tier mains will do artifically worse against me. Even worse is that there are just so many combinations of things that could happen that you're going to be forced to seriously confront stuff for the first time in tournament; it's entirely possible that you simply don't have any good Zero Suit Samus players local to you, and then you get shut down early by one at a large event just because you don't know the match-up with there really being nothing you can do to avoid this sort of thing (in SC, not only is online play strong, but only three match-ups makes it awfully easy to know all three very well since any decent player will regularly play against all three races). I don't think there's any way to model these effects other than as simple inherent variance built into the game; the magnitude of it declines as players become very skilled (which is a minor consolation to your up and comers), but it's always there to some extent. I'm not saying that reducing variance shouldn't be a goal, but it's among many goals and we have to recognize that compared to other competitive games, fighters already introduce more variance than usual in exchange for a great deal of variety.

My response about particular stages was really more meant to suggest that pragmatism is likely to really help mitigate the problem you're talking about. The first part of it is that really random stages are generally widely disliked and are unlikely to pass legality muster under any system. The other side is that a lot of stages that seem random really aren't very random, but it comes down to experience. I'm trying to avoid wall of texting over and over again so I'm just going to ask you to trust that experience can drastically reduce the consequence of the RNG on PictoChat to the point that it's not a large factor in match outcomes (it's not important that we agree on this in specific). So the rubber banding effect is really distorted as stage knowledge ends up pushing things in the other way, toward the players who have more skill, and the net effect doesn't really work as a rubber banding mechanic at all when the stages are well designed even if they contain random elements. The details of how this all plays out or the particulars of which stages really are just stupid and random in the end (like WarioWare) or are more tests of esoteric stage knowledge (like I'd argue PictoChat) are things reasonable people could argue about, and this is where I'm putting trust in the community's collective wisdom to do right here. I don't think anything that would have true popular support would have the possibility to show the problem you're describing beyond a weak effect, and given the inherent noise level in player skill discernment due to the basic design of a fighting game, I don't think stages that are very weakly random rubber-bandy or the inclusion of a very small percentage of stages that are like that would have a truly significant effect in the long run. I'm not disagreeing that the phenomina you are describing is a real theoretical problem, but I'm suggesting that in practice it's very unlikely to actually come back to bite us.
Assuming you live in an MK-legal region, your character choice of G&W is not very viable and the reason you don't have a quick feedback loop for improvement would stem from that. That's indicative of the loop being unimportant for how you, personally, enjoy the game. For those who value quick improvement, Smash comes a lot closer to Starcraft. Several top tier characters have no -2's at all, which makes pairing matter less.
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A large part of Starcraft's advantage over smash has to do with the smash community's insistence on sticking to a substandard tournament format, though. In an elimination tournament, experiencing an obscure type of rush for the first time would be pretty irritating, but most competitive play is in the ranked ladder, which is more like round robin and less like elimination. Weekly Friday Night Magic tournaments have been using the superior Swiss (round-robin family) tournament format for years, and have ten times as many competitive players for a less exposed game that costs more to play.
---------------------------------------------------------
I guess I'm getting pretty far offtopic. Anyway, I think your -prediction- that things will turn out okay is probably right, but I think keeping the variance and character skew discussions separated is a good way to get the best stagelist (though as you suggest, maybe I'm too perfectionistic).

There's two sides of this to err on. Misapplying +1 stage +1 strike on a stage that is too variant, and not applying +1 stage +1 strike on a stage that is only character skewed. I think you're predicting the first mistake is unlikely, and you may be right, the second mistake may run more rampant. A good example is Japes in Brawl, which was banned outright, with a conflated "issue" of "random" klaptraps thrown into the discussion of its massive character skews. +1 stage +1 strike would have been a better call there. Because the discussion wasn't properly separated it got an unfair axe.
 

TimeSmash

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You too Amazing Ampharos, those were great posts.

From a hazard point of view, I believe that if a hazard is predictable and not something obscenely large, or barely causes damage are not that bad. Things like that spring on Pirate Ship. It's annoying, but not gamebreaking. Things like WarioWare, while not necessarily (as a whole) don't break my rules, are simply too much to deal with though, and the long term effects (like invincibilty and such) deserve a ban. It's just way too much. The excellent Yoshi's Island SNES video that Lackadiasy posted is not exactly ideal, but can be compared to Halberd as its hazards are for the most part predictable and easy to avoid and perhaps help to alter the playstyle of some if not all characters that play on those stages. I think hazards being an extra flair on stages and not the sole focus help add more strategy to the way people play, and naturally these hazards will favor some characters more than others. Neutral stages do that too, though, like Battlefield against a Marth, which is just so bad for so many people because he can get you right through the platforms.

Talking about techniques, albeit in general or character specific is a different story. This is potentially a bad idea, but why not ban certain techniques like camping for more than like 30, 45 seconds? Fourside was a somewhat viable stage but was banned because so many people can camp and run the whole time, and also Peach's Wall Bomb posed an issue because people would stall with it. I haven't checked the rules on techniques like camping or stalling recently, so if something is already illegal, let me know, it's been a long time. But anyways why not say "this character can't do X technqiue on this stage" or "all characters can't do technique Y on this stage (or possibly in general were it so gamebreaking). These are just thoughts, and I will admit I'm not super familiar with stage striking and such, but I hope my opinion is valued nonetheless.
 

popsofctown

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It's better to ban a stage, or at least ban a stage/character combination, than ban a tactic. Enforcement is one issue. I'll try to sidestep the whole debate of why banning tactics is bad, especially if those tactics are not defined in a discrete way. I'll try to sidestep that by pointing out that enforcement for the kind of thing you're proposing requires at a minimum that the whole tournament stop for 7 minutes so the TO can watch a replay with a stopwatch in his hand and decide if a character was offstage for 25 seconds. So, yknow, probably better off if you either ban the stage, or let characters strike it, or let players adapt and use projectiles or other tools


Nonrandom hazards are fine, if they are really nonrandom.
 

TimeSmash

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Exactly, I don't want to get into some tactic discussion and distract from the main point of this. That was more of an off the head sort of thought and I definitely see your point. But I believe things like using Peach's wall climb to stall should be banned outright, because that seems very clear as to what the player is trying to do. You can just let her sit there and do what she wants. She must recover, or forfeit were she to continue doing that. Not that that's the only reason Fourside was banned, but it was definitely a factor.

I feel like the way I worded that was awful. Call me out if I was unclear.
 

popsofctown

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If you ban the stage or stage/character combo, you are banning it outright. You're just doing it in a way that is far more logistically convenient at the small expense of some legitimate uses of the stage.
 

TimeSmash

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So if I understand you, something like banning Peach's Wall Bomber stall on Fourside results in Fourside being banned as a whole, no? Just wanting to make sure I get it, haha.
 

popsofctown

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So if I understand you, something like banning Peach's Wall Bomber stall on Fourside results in Fourside being banned as a whole, no? Just wanting to make sure I get it, haha.
Yeah, which is what the melee community apparently decided on. You could even make a rule that if the stage selected is fourside, neither player is allowed to use Peach, if you really wanted the stage to be part of the game (peach mains could strike it to avoid getting locked out of their character)
 

TimeSmash

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Okay okay, thank you so much for clarifying. It is appreciated.

Another question I have is then (which I guess I asked indirectly before), is should this method of banning stay viable for Smash 4?
 

popsofctown

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While ledgegrab limits were controversial (because they pertained to characters more than stages), I think I can say there was mostly pretty strong consensus throughout the life of Brawl that we would prefer to ban stages to avoid banning tactics. One example would be Hyrule Temple, which can be resolved by banning the circle camping tactic or by banning the stage, banning the stage was simpler.

I would expect this method to remain popular for smash 4.
 

Zonderion

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While ledgegrab limits were controversial (because they pertained to characters more than stages), I think I can say there was mostly pretty strong consensus throughout the life of Brawl that we would prefer to ban stages to avoid banning tactics. One example would be Hyrule Temple, which can be resolved by banning the circle camping tactic or by banning the stage, banning the stage was simpler.

I would expect this method to remain popular for smash 4.
But isn't this why AA started this thread? To change the way stages have been banned in the past? The onus can be put on the players of the tournaments to know the rules before hand. So that if a tactic A is banned on stage Z, then if a player violates that rule, it will be on the other player to catch it. This would alleviate the TO from trying to watch replays. There would be of course penalties involved for either party if either party is in error.

This method is much messier than the aforementioned "ban stage because of a certain tactic."
 

popsofctown

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I think AA wants things to be put to a vote this time. I'm just making a prediction here based on past phenomena that the result of the vote will overwhelmingly ban stages with those tactics. I think in "step 2" of his fancy model.
 

TimeSmash

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Another question to be brought up is the fact of if a stage that has been banned has a chance of being '"revived" so to speak, if the community warrants it being not as bad as originally thought
 

LiteralGrill

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Not to hate on this idea as I quite like it, but there is a serious problem here. I was reading over old threads for fun (as I usually do, yes I'm weird) and ran across something from back in the day about the big MK Ban vote that happened right before the Unity Ruleset Committee decided to ban him. The thread is called: URC Analysis - Voluntary Response Polling and the 75% Myth (if you want to see it, it's in the Competitive Brawl forum I'm sorry I can't link it, I don't have much time to access the internet at the moment and the signal I get is very weak.)


To summarize: A voluntary response poll like you have suggested AA is inaccurate and in the end will sadly be pretty useless :(


So, in this way I've kinda mutilated a core part of the idea which I didn't want to but had too. This kind of a vote you suggest while being awesome because players are represented just wont work properly.


BUT there are some fantastic things mentioned in this thread, and I wanted to look at them:


We cannot use Brawl or Melee (or even Smash 64) as a precedent for our new ruleset. We did this from Melee to Brawl and look how horribly it turned out. We set ourselves up for it though, Brawl was so different then Melee that even with a few similar principles what we did for Melee didn't work with Brawl. Smash 4 is going to yes have some of the basics we know, but it is too entirely different to just base what we think off of other smash rulesets. With one exception.


I truly believe the reason why Melee has such a good ruleset was that they followed the methods of other fighting game communities and did not ban until proven banworthy. With Melee people didn't have assumptions on what smash used to be or has already been so they set out with an open mind and testing everything thoroughly. In the end it created a great ruleset for their game. We really have to do this over and pretend each previous iteration of smash just plain doesn't exist to find the proper ruleset for this smash.


With special cool news being we have TWO smash games this time and even have the opportunity to have separate rulesets for testing. The people really dedicated to the Smash 3DS community for example have all so far really liked the idea of making it a “stepping stone” smash to get new players into tournaments, so we may even have items standard along with a more relaxed stagelist. People who keep dismissing the 3DS have to wake up and use this tool we have to help a niche and build up our scene as a whole.


Next, people mentioned LGLs among other things. We need to not have these kinds of arbitrary rules. I bet people have heard Sirlin's ban criteria a billions times but he simply put it so well I can't think of a better way. The BBR (though not always the best organization) had the intelligence to oppose such rules, and I wish more people would have caught on. We need to keep the integrity of the game when we can and not put in random rules just because like we did much too often with Brawl. Banning a certain character from a stage wont do it, but the LSS (sometimes called “Flossing” if people want an easier term) can avoid that being necessary altogether which is awesome. Worried about being chaingrabbed on a walk off? Ban it! Can't fight those IC's on FD? Ban it! You don'thave to worry if FD should be a starter or not because of some matchups or if that one CP skews these matchups and not others. Things like Brinstar could still be legal with Flossing, and since it is far superior to the current method adopting it just makes sense. Yes there are some stages that will rarely see play but those stages still need to be there for the times they can and should.


Finally, something I don't think we always consider in creating rules but honestly needs to be a factor: HYPE. You want this game to look good to spectators, you want the game to get people on the edge of their seat and pumped up watching. In Brawl MANY suggestions where made to help with these problems (2 stock bo5, 1 stock b07 and many others) that could have made Brawl a lot better for everyone involved, but people were too stuck in the past to even try.


Which brings me sorta back to my first thing, WE CAN'T LIVE IN THE PAST. If we see the ruleset we made isn't working we need to sit down and change it, even if it's a seriously big change we need to do it instead of trying to put band-aids here and there like we did in Brawl.


Also, if we are to try some new method of ruleset making outside of the BBR or something like Unity coming back to life we need to offer real incentive to use it. It can be as simple as hosting big tournaments with the ruleset to make people want to practice with it. Why do so many people practice under Apex rules? With no incentive to try whatever we create no one is going to even use it once we are done, the BBR has proven that with its recommended ruleset. Whatever idea you come up with you have to make it have a reason for people to want to use it at all.


I think I posted my idea for the 3DSA somewhere in this thread. I know is surely has issues, but I know for at least the 3DS we're going to try some ambitious things whether we use that idea or something else. Whatever you are planning it is going to have to take a unified group of dedicated people who provide an actual reason to use the ruleset you come up with in the process. Do not make the mistakes of Unity, and be sure to not lead by somehow forcing it on players. In all honesty unified rulesets can have some serious weaknesses too. What you really need is something that can help make locals huge as locals are the base on which the entirety of our community is based.
 

popsofctown

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Not to hate on this idea as I quite like it, but there is a serious problem here. I was reading over old threads for fun (as I usually do, yes I'm weird) and ran across something from back in the day about the big MK Ban vote that happened right before the Unity Ruleset Committee decided to ban him. The thread is called: URC Analysis - Voluntary Response Polling and the 75% Myth (if you want to see it, it's in the Competitive Brawl forum I'm sorry I can't link it, I don't have much time to access the internet at the moment and the signal I get is very weak.)


To summarize: A voluntary response poll like you have suggested AA is inaccurate and in the end will sadly be pretty useless :(
The usefulness of a voluntary response poll is debatable, yeah. The United States basically uses it to run a country, how well that works out is debatable again I guess.

I truly believe the reason why Melee has such a good ruleset was that they followed the methods of other fighting game communities and did not ban until proven banworthy. With Melee people didn't have assumptions on what smash used to be or has already been so they set out with an open mind and testing everything thoroughly. In the end it created a great ruleset for their game. We really have to do this over and pretend each previous iteration of smash just plain doesn't exist to find the proper ruleset for this smash.
How do you convince everyone of this though? Lots of things got banned lightning fast in Brawl, not even failing a trial by jury, jury just didn't happen.
With special cool news being we have TWO smash games this time and even have the opportunity to have separate rulesets for testing. The people really dedicated to the Smash 3DS community for example have all so far really liked the idea of making it a “stepping stone” smash to get new players into tournaments, so we may even have items standard along with a more relaxed stagelist. People who keep dismissing the 3DS have to wake up and use this tool we have to help a niche and build up our scene as a whole.
The 3DS is such an essential stepping stone to the [poorly selling] Wii U that I don't think you can view either one as a chance to make some screwups.

Finally, something I don't think we always consider in creating rules but honestly needs to be a factor: HYPE. You want this game to look good to spectators, you want the game to get people on the edge of their seat and pumped up watching. In Brawl MANY suggestions where made to help with these problems (2 stock bo5, 1 stock b07 and many others) that could have made Brawl a lot better for everyone involved, but people were too stuck in the past to even try.
People usually become players before they later become spectators, rather than the reverse. Player retention after the critical 1st tournament experience is what seems to be the issue to me, but maybe that's different in different areas.
There's some really good arguments for 2s bo5 and 1s bo7 that have little to do with spectators, though.
 

Amazing Ampharos

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There is one other possibility Capps, to be really honest with you. I originally wanted to construct a statistical theory on stages based on the level of variance and match-up skew each state constructed and use the results of your data project to mathematically define stage fairness. In the face of overwhelming objective data, I thought consensus might be possible. However, in light of both the lack of progress on your data project and the introduction of the competing but non-stage data gathering smashboards rankings, I don't forsee that being viable since I just can't imagine the quality of data necessary will ever exist. Please don't take that personally by the way; I'm just stating reality as I see it, and if you prove me wrong, I'd be delighted. Without objective data, a reasoned consensus seems impossible to me so I'm going with:

The usefulness of a voluntary response poll is debatable, yeah. The United States basically uses it to run a country, how well that works out is debatable again I guess.
American history was actually exactly what I was thinking about; when the founding fathers couldn't agree on any but the broadest of governing principles, they just compromised on everything and used a lot of voting and we got the Constitution. I don't expect the smash community to produce quite that good of a gem, but I do trust us enough collectively to believe we'd get something pretty good. To be honest as well, my biggest concern on any idea is political feasibility and then the details of how implementation would play out with long term consequences of how we go about things being a close second. I also think you're just wrong about Melee; MLG is what made Melee rules what they were. The smash community with an uninterrputed status quo tends to do rules more like Brawl, and unless we want to place our bets on MLG taking over as stewards of the community again, I think that's the perspective we have to work from. In fact, other than the 3DS stuff, you're saying a lot of the same stuff I would have said back then, and I wasn't the only one. What actually happened was that when everyone sat down to hash things out we just drew battle lines and never actually came to a consensus. Then different regions did their own things, every ruleset ever put out by the BBR was ignored by the community, and things progressed to where we are today. I just can't forsee how any discussion on the merits of stages is going to end any differently, and 3DS doesn't even have the same stages so other that introducing the scary possibility of dividing the community permanently in two I'm not sure how it really helps us figure out stages.

Also, it's totally off topic, but I can't let it go. G&W not viable in MK-legal? G&W is helped by MK-legal because, while MK has an advantage over G&W, he helps check characters who are bigger threats. I'll have to file my G&W primer along with my PictoChat primer for another time and place, not that anyone would believe me anyway if I started preaching the G&W gospel.
 

ThomasTheTrain

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The main idea really is that nothing that happens later is going to change things. Like we have both Melee and Brawl as examples here. Has any stage in either game really proven itself to be broken in a way we didn't know very quickly? With Brawl, literally the only case is Meta Knight clipping into the Halberd, and that's a really narrow glitch that could just be banned itself rather than banning the stage.
iirc. Some people didn't like pokefloats or falco's speedway after peech and jiggly became more popular and some regions banned them out. And I believe japan had some problems with brawl's maps early on because of the some characters zoning and poke.
 

popsofctown

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Also, it's totally off topic, but I can't let it go. G&W not viable in MK-legal? G&W is helped by MK-legal because, while MK has an advantage over G&W, he helps check characters who are bigger threats. I'll have to file my G&W primer along with my PictoChat primer for another time and place, not that anyone would believe me anyway if I started preaching the G&W gospel.
I think I'll do the wise thing and let you have the last word on that.
 

LiteralGrill

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The usefulness of a voluntary response poll is debatable, yeah. The United States basically uses it to run a country, how well that works out is debatable again I guess.
True. My solution (also from an old thread, people you need to go read old threads seriously the best stuff is buried away in forums and that shouldn't be the case :( ) would be to have a "census" at every willing smash event. Essentially, these would be considered part of your entry fee, after each event players would fill these out to answer questions about the legality of stages, if there was enough stocks, was the timer long/short enough, etc. Not only does this give us data from players who attend tournament (without the issues involved in taking polls on smashboards) but allows people to craft the best tournament for their players. A "how did we do" survey if you will. We can take what these tournament goers are saying and use it to try and craft this ruleset where the idea come from the people, while constantly building by taking surveys at regular intervals.

Power to the players!!!

How do you convince everyone of this though? Lots of things got banned lightning fast in Brawl, not even failing a trial by jury, jury just didn't happen.
I wish I had an answer to that. In all reality the people who want things done right need to give themselves the footing to get it done. I plan on being a TO and setting up a stream to help 3DS players stream when I can, if we have to connect via wifi for tournaments it's not impossible for me to stream finals for an event AT MY HOME. Crazy yes, but possible. Also I hope to provide things Any kind of tool we can give to people to help bring them into the fold to get things done that I can provide I will provide.

The 3DS is such an essential stepping stone to the [poorly selling] Wii U that I don't think you can view either one as a chance to make some screwups.
I can give it a try. Most players have pretty much given it up in every way and don't expect it to have any scene at all. If everyone else isn't interested, I can do with it what I want (within reason ;) )

People usually become players before they later become spectators, rather than the reverse. Player retention after the critical 1st tournament experience is what seems to be the issue to me, but maybe that's different in different areas.
There's some really good arguments for 2s bo5 and 1s bo7 that have little to do with spectators, though.
We do need to figure out how to make the experience better for players so we keep them (we've got some great ideas for it on the 3DS already, I've been working a while at this lol) as that too is important. The surveys to make people have a better experience would go a long ways to doing that.

There is one other possibility Capps, to be really honest with you. I originally wanted to construct a statistical theory on stages based on the level of variance and match-up skew each state constructed and use the results of your data project to mathematically define stage fairness. In the face of overwhelming objective data, I thought consensus might be possible. However, in light of both the lack of progress on your data project and the introduction of the competing but non-stage data gathering smashboards rankings, I don't forsee that being viable since I just can't imagine the quality of data necessary will ever exist. Please don't take that personally by the way; I'm just stating reality as I see it, and if you prove me wrong, I'd be delighted. Without objective data, a reasoned consensus seems impossible to me.
I understand, it really is sad that things slowed down how they did. I'm considering at a bare minimum having players fill out match slips at my events (which would help with doing flossing in the first place) to at least keep data myself. If any other TO would be willing to submit data, I could just as easily keep it on an excel sheet (Overswarm was explaining how I'd have to do it, it's a lot of work but worth it.)[/quote][/quote]
 

Amazing Ampharos

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iirc. Some people didn't like pokefloats or falco's speedway after peech and jiggly became more popular and some regions banned them out. And I believe japan had some problems with brawl's maps early on because of the some characters zoning and poke.
To be honest, this is exactly the sort of reason we need a more static stage list. When more defensive or slower paced characters are shown to be powerful on stages, it seems to be more common to want to ban those stages, and that's really not fair to the people who play those characters. You're basically taking the hard work that those Peach and Jigglypuff mains put in and devaluing it when you change the rules to make them worse characters. Perhaps they're good enough players to still do well regardless, but they don't deserve any more roadblocks put in their way than rushdown Fox players had. Doing so is extremely anti-competitive and drives away the players who are disadvantaged far more than it draws in the other players.
 

popsofctown

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Right. After an initial period of time, the stagelist should freeze. If someone is strong there, people can figure out how to counter it. 90% of the time there's a counter, especially in fighting games which are literally based on rock paper scissors with some fancy jazz wrapped around that.

If there is absolutely and certainly no counter to a certain character with a certain stagelist, you should just ban the character. It's better to revert some players' progress with a character once than to repeatedly do it 10 different times stage by stage.

Brawl would have turned out better that way. Maybe MK would get banned, but it's about as likely that Falcos figured out how to drag him to Japes or something.
 

samsparta21

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Why not just play on all the Final Destination stages that Sakurai has given us for this very purpose...?
 
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[TSON]

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That whole 80% vote thing right after the game's release is a big hole in your goal to be conservative this time around. I can think of a ****ton of stages that the Brawl community would have banned without even thinking that wouldn't have been impossibly bad in competitive play. As long as this community doesn't go all FD I'm fine. Part of Smash Bros' appeal is the stage diversity.
 

Ulevo

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Why not just play on all the Final Destination stages that Sakurai has given us for this very purpose...?
Because as much as we can smile at the "fox only, final destination" joke, we actually prefer stages with different assets to them outside of just being flat and no obstructions.
 

TimeSmash

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But are you saying the FD forms of those stages should be banned? I'm all for including them, but I do wonder how that would effect counterpicks and such. Maybe make a rule where the original FD counts as all FD forms of stages?

From the Direct, a lot of things look potentially viable. But how the hell do you get a horizontal KO in the Balloon Fight stage?
 

LancerStaff

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But are you saying the FD forms of those stages should be banned? I'm all for including them, but I do wonder how that would effect counterpicks and such. Maybe make a rule where the original FD counts as all FD forms of stages?

From the Direct, a lot of things look potentially viable. But how the hell do you get a horizontal KO in the Balloon Fight stage?
...Off the side? It'd be funny though is you could combo by launching a character into yourself though.
 

Cassio

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If you turn this into an election the process will have no credibility. Im the one who rose the criticisms on voluntary response polling, the process wont give you anything that represents true community opinion.

And I've mentioned it before, but after past and recent efforts Im definitely against artificial ruleset unification. I've only had time to skim past the OP posts, and for the record my opinion tends to be in line with most of West Coast's and taken seriously out here.

Heres my line of thinking:
- After the MK ban debacle it became clear to me that the debate on unity was much more harmful than helpful. Everyone took strong stances that tended to divide on region and prevented regions from catering to their players, the rule changes themselves were pretty minuscule in the grand scheme of things, and it completely diverted focus on actual community improvement activities such as better TOing, advertising, content and organization.

-The Japanese came over and after years of playing on just three stages, completely negated the practical argument that regional metagames with different rulesets diverge. More specifically, playing on less stages didnt hinder their gameplay on a more diverse stagelist. They whooped us and definitely had much less practice playing on odd stages.

-6 years after the games release and at a point when people are seeking genuine improvements to Brawls scene after they didnt make it into MLG, East Coast drops the fattest drama bomb by reigniting ruleset debates on topics of the MK ban, tripping, 1-stock rulesets, and other BS instead of actual community improvement activities. Fortunately for my region WC mostly ignored this.

In the end my biggest take away is that having a unified ruleset, especially one that applies to regional level and below, provides little benefit and a massively unneeded cost.
 
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RelaxAlax

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Each of the new final destinations presented from the direct are "pseudo" destinations. (Btw, I'm calling it, their official name is Psuedo-destinations).

From analysis of the direct (I'll be posting a video within a week), I can confirm that they are not the same stage as final destination. Ofcourse, most of you knew this, but there are a few details I'm put forward.

  • Ceiling and Blast Zones are not the same. From observation (and further as the week goes on) they seem to retain what the original had (see this with animal crossing, Wily's and Battlefield) Note I obviously don't have a copy of the game, so it's unknown if they're exactly, but from what I can tell they are similar (Except galaxy for obvious reasons). Pyrosphere and Wily's looks to have a high ceiling, While Animal Crossings is pretty mid-range all around.
  • The stage and edges are different. Wily's edges are part of a wall that decend to the bottom blast zone (akin to both Yoshis Story and Island), Galaxy's starts as a wall and curves to the underside of the stage, Pyrosphere is a wider FD with weirder indents on each of it's edges etc.
Although these are extremely minute, they make a difference. And this is before we know if blast zones differ. We shouldn't cast these away , we just need to implement them into tournaments. Say my opponent wishes to take me to Final Destination. If they decide to leave it unbanned, I should be able to decide which version of the pseudo-destinations I want to fight on. A flat stage is a flat stage no matter how you slice it, but with these new offers it can create a sub category of Final Destinations that may make such a flat stage more applicable for a wider case.
 
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