Official Stage Legality Discussion

[bobson]

Distant Planet: The person that spawns on the left pretty much wins the match. The edge of the slope is one of the best camping spots in the game. It's immensely hard to get around it, and you pretty much have to put up with it until it starts raining. Even then, they can just camp the ledge until the rain stops.

Whaaaat? I don't see this working to a large degree at all. I'm going to need some proof that this happens.

Please tell me someone did not just complain about the Bulborb.

 

[12345678910]

The bulborb is to the right...I don't see how having your opponent spawn to the left affect interactions with the bulborb which is at the right.

Linkshot do you have any links to videos demonstrating this "impossible to get around camping?"

 

[Lore]

why is spear pillar banned is it the hazards or like when the controls are reversed or the time slows down or a combination of all of them

It's a combination of that and circle camping.

 

[Linkshot]

*facepalms*

The bulborb does nothing to the match at all.
There's a spot under the left edge of the green platform. You can stand there and spam **** through the green platform, which can't be fallen through. It makes it intensely hard to approach, nearing impossible against some characters.

Try it out yourself and see how far your opponent can get.

 

[bobson]

There's a spot under the left edge of the green platform. You can stand there and spam **** through the green platform, which can't be fallen through. It makes it intensely hard to approach, nearing impossible against some characters.

Try it out yourself and see how far your opponent can get.

My opponent jumps over me and comes from the other side. My opponent drops down on the right and shoots me with projectiles. My opponent drops down on the right and comes over. My opponent mindgames me and sneaks a hit in when I'm in lag.

I really, really don't see how this approaches anything more than annoying, except perhaps in matchups that are already ******** like Ganon VS Game & Watch. Planking is harder to get around.

Hell, I did it just now against a CPU and it managed to get through it a few times.

 

[Linkshot]

Maybe I'm johning because it was on WiFi x.x

 

[infomon]

lollll LS

'nuff said

 

[Dracospawn]

Hannabow should definatly be banned, that place is gay.

 

[GwJ]

Isn't HANENBOW already banned?

 

[Linkshot]

It is XDD Very banned.

 

[infomon]

but not in doubles

 

[Linkshot]

Hanenbow is globally banned in bBrawl because it takes you to WiFi room

:V

 

[Lore]

Hanenbow is globally banned in bBrawl because it takes you to WiFi room

:V

That's not why it takes you to it. It's because the people who made it simply hate the stage, so they put in wifi room instead since it's a global counterpick instead of a rarely played doubles-only cp.

At least, that's probably the reason.

 

[Linkshot]

I theorise that it was the only song without music, so all songs could be heard.

Anyway, back to vBrawl.

Aside from the obvious circling, Hanenbow is a very interesting stage with unique ledge-guarding options.
I thoroughly enjoy playing friendlies on this stage.

 

[sunshade]

I have a quick question that does not have to do with the last few pages of this thread.

If a random element in a stage that causes damage is enough to make it considered illegal in some people's minds, than why are stages that suffer from the fall through glitch regardless of their balance allowed to be played in tournaments as legal stages?

 

[Sucumbio]

I theorise that it was the only song without music, so all songs could be heard.

Anyway, back to vBrawl.

Aside from the obvious circling, Hanenbow is a very interesting stage with unique ledge-guarding options.
I thoroughly enjoy playing friendlies on this stage.

Word, I recently picked up Wolf and was hesitant about playing on this stage but in fact he seems to have a better time of it than first expected.

OK so me and a few others 'round here have a ? but I'm the only one w/a smashboard account, lol

WHY is Yoshi's Island a "confirmed neutral stage?" (aib ladder matches are what I'm referring to specifically, but it's considered neutral by many including here as a "starter" stage).

We constantly get gimped by shy guys. Ok not constantly, but seriously, JUST when a good projectile would be worthwhile, there's the Shy Guy in the way, or JUST when a great KO is about to happen, there's the pillar to save the stock. Yeah it's timed, so one should ... IDK plan? God... imagine. I purposefully set you up to be gravity smashed ... into the pillar, then, something for the kill. ><;

Now we even have some who say that FD is the only 100% totally neutral stage, because the platforms in BF get in the way of some character's moves, and the moving platform in smashville same thing so being forced under it or hiding under it becomes a strategy which means the stage has defined a strategy so it can't be true neutral. mlah. whatever, I have felt that in all a "neutral" stage is one where nothing in the stage can harm you, nothing in the stage makes it possible to be automatically killed, nothing in the stage makes it possible to run away from your oppoenent indefinitely... did I miss any criterion?

thoughts?

cause basically we've all decided to not battle on YI(B) for any kind of first round ranked match but I don't want that decision to be without first knowing full why the reasoning behind it other than our own. i mean, thousands of others couldn't be wrong and we like, 5 are right so methinks something is missing here...

 

[CR4SH]

... the game I play is competitive Super Smash Brothers Brawl not competitive Smashboards Brawl.

But you play with 3 stocks, items banned, 8 minute timer, stages banned, best of 3 games with stage striking and counterpicks. I know you do, I've done it with you. Please explain how this isn't supersmashboards brawl?

We gotta do some **** to make a party game competitive, we just do. It's not like street fighter where you can just turn the game on, go to fight mode, and play something competitive.

ps. I agree with you about keeping more stages legal. That statement just stuck out at me.

 

[infomon]

If a random element in a stage that causes damage is enough to make it considered illegal in some people's minds

It doesn't; very few ppl think Halberd shouldn't be a legal counterpick. Hazards that are predictable and easily avoidable are fine.

than why are stages that suffer from the fall through glitch regardless of their balance allowed to be played in tournaments as legal stages?

What stages are they, where can it happen, and how can it be avoided during a match?
I only remember it happening on Pokémon Stadium 1 during the transition, in which case.... if you're a character for whom this will matter, and you're worried about this glitch, then don't be running on the requisite parts of the platform at the wrong time. I think you have enough warning about the stage transition to do that, right? idk tho

We constantly get gimped by shy guys. Ok not constantly, but seriously, JUST when a good projectile would be worthwhile, there's the Shy Guy in the way, or JUST when a great KO is about to happen, there's the pillar to save the stock. Yeah it's timed, so one should ... IDK plan? God... imagine. I purposefully set you up to be gravity smashed ... into the pillar, then, something for the kill. ><;

You just need to learn to play around the stage. If you see a shy guy, or a vacant spot where a shy guy might show up any second, plan around it. Rather than dealing with a perfectly deterministic situation, there are stochastic (random) factors in play. It may affect the way you make decisions, but there's nothing wrong with having subtle random factors in gameplay. Any Peach main knows how to weigh the odds of her Fsmash, for example.

Now we even have some who say that FD is the only 100% totally neutral stage

Absolutely not. FD causes some matchups to be crazy imbalanced. Falco, Ice Climbers, Dedede all say hi FD is vacant and bland and predictable, but don't confuse that for "balanced".

This is the reason we have stage-striking. Amongst some reasonable set of possible starter stages, you pick off the ones that are most imbalanced for your matchup.

But you play with 3 stocks, items banned, 8 minute timer, stages banned, best of 3 games with stage striking and counterpicks. I know you do, I've done it with you. Please explain how this isn't supersmashboards brawl?

We gotta do some **** to make a party game competitive, we just do.

You just answered your own question. Banning items, setting a stock/timer combo, and banning broken stages is some of what we've determined is the bare minimum to be able to play this party game competitively.

just IMOs

 

[Sucumbio]

You just need to learn to play around the stage. If you see a shy guy, or a vacant spot where a shy guy might show up any second, plan around it. Rather than dealing with a perfectly deterministic situation, there are stochastic (random [timed]) factors in play. It may affect the way you make decisions, but there's nothing wrong with having subtle random factors in gameplay. Any Peach main knows how to weigh the odds of her Fsmash, for example.

The bolded is what I was thinking too, but I had assumed that those elements could not exist in a True Neutral stage which is where our confusion is. But...

Absolutely not. FD causes some matchups to be crazy imbalanced. Falco, Ice Climbers, Dedede all say hi FD is vacant and bland and predictable, but don't confuse that for "balanced".

Or Neutral? ... I think I'm catching on.

This is the reason we have stage-striking. Amongst some reasonable set of possible starter stages, you pick off the ones that are most imbalanced for your matchup.

Now the penny drops. Ok, so really it's all about the starter stages being ... I can't say neutral it's just an inaccurate word. More, balanced. The thing is the search for a neutral stage is the search for something that doesn't exist. It's stages ... there's no one stage that all characters can face each other on in other words and not have 100 % neutrality, I'd have assumed FD was the closest to that, but like you point out, it skews some characters heavily.

 

[infomon]

Exactly. That's why they're officially called Starter stages, not Neutrals.

Some ppl think we need more than 5 starters for the stage-striking to allow things to be as balanced as possible. It's a tough call.

 

[Sucumbio]

I count 4 which is the 5th? Yoshi's Island [Brawl] (37-0-0) Battlefield (47-0-1) Smashville (24-0-1) Final Destination (26-2-1)

lol the poll results for YI(B) is exactly the opposite of what we'd been thinking but that's cause we all had Neutral drilled into the cranium.

 

[infomon]

Hmmm, the OP doesn't seem to go into it.

You can't rly stage-strike with an even number of stages. The way the SBR official ruleset works is, they state those 4 starters, and say it is up to the TO to select some stages from the starter/counterpick set to be in the starter set, in order to make it an odd number. So you might have FD, BF, SV, YI:B, and Lylat.... or you might have PS1 instead of Lylat... or you might have PS1, Lylat, and Halberd. Or something else. It's up to the TO.

Unfortunately this can get mad confusing; I've seen a number of tournaments where they just copy/paste the SBR ruleset and don't change anything, so the tournament rules don't actually say what stages are in the starter set lol. oh well, it's the TOs fault

 

[Linkshot]

Lylat/Delfino/Halberd/Siege/PS1

Those are your other options.

I'M TOO SLOW

 

[CR4SH]

You just answered your own question. Banning items, setting a stock/timer combo, and banning broken stages is some of what we've determined is the bare minimum to be able to play this party game competitively.

just IMOs

But if you're going to make a distinction between "ssbb" and "competitive smashboards brawl", how in heaven's name is a the legality of a few select stages going to make the difference? Especially when so much modification has already been done.

 

[Lore]

Now we even have some who say that FD is the only 100% totally neutral stage, because the platforms in BF get in the way of some character's moves, and the moving platform in smashville same thing so being forced under it or hiding under it becomes a strategy which means the stage has defined a strategy so it can't be true neutral. mlah. whatever, I have felt that in all a "neutral" stage is one where nothing in the stage can harm you, nothing in the stage makes it possible to be automatically killed, nothing in the stage makes it possible to run away from your oppoenent indefinitely... did I miss any criterion?

Actually, FD is less neutral than you think. Due to the fact that it is completely flat with no platforms, characters with projectiles have an advantage over the ones without them. BF solves this problem by adding 3 platforms, and I don't see how they block moves, lol.

You can also talk about the stupid edges on FD but that's beside the point. That sucks for EVERY character.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

than why are stages that suffer from the fall through glitch regardless of their balance allowed to be played in tournaments as legal stages?

Because people wouldn't like BF being banned.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

But you play with 3 stocks, items banned, 8 minute timer, stages banned, best of 3 games with stage striking and counterpicks. I know you do, I've done it with you. Please explain how this isn't supersmashboards brawl?

We gotta do some **** to make a party game competitive, we just do. It's not like street fighter where you can just turn the game on, go to fight mode, and play something competitive.

ps. I agree with you about keeping more stages legal. That statement just stuck out at me.

We have to have some method to select stages (the game doesn't suggest a method), and we have to use some settings in regard to stock and time. For all practical purposes, stock and time mode are identical for 1v1 in Brawl anyway; 3 stock 8 minutes is just convenient. It's not actually that gameplay different from any non-coin setting (other than the obvious match length implications for Pokemon Trainer and Zero Suit Samus).

Items are not banned. The random spawning of items is set to off with each individual item having its toggle set off. This is an important difference; if items were actually "banned", we would not allow, say, Peach to use Beam Swords when she pulled them via her down special, but we do allow it. The issue here is that the game has presented us with a setting (the item switch), and we have to make some decision on it. The default (all items on, medium spawn rate) is obviously broken if for nothing else than the fact that it includes the incredibly broken Timer item that is beyond unacceptably random. Any setting other than that obviously unacceptable default, be it just turning the Timer off or turning everything off and the spawn rate to none, is equally arbitrary. There are doubtless dozens if not hundreds of possible fair item configurations, but tournaments need a standard. We picked one, and it happens to be on the one that probably makes the best game.

There are only two real differences from a game like Street Fighter here. One is that the game presents us with far more options to configure with the default configuration being broken. That forces us to actually take the step of tournament standard settings seriously as a community, though many SF tournaments do in fact do things like set finals to be 5 round games instead of 3 round games (which is not default!). We're using options included within the game regardless here; it's hardly "banning" anything. The second issue we have is that stages actually matter so we need the devise some system to pick stages. We already required a counterpick system to prevent the obvious situation that it's in everyone's best interest to pick their character second (all fighters employ a counterpick system in tournament play); we just expand it to include a stage selection mechanism that is designed to maximize fairness for both players. Selecting a stage in this way, though, is much like selecting a character. People have leeway in how they pick stuff, and presenting them with fewer options here really does amount to a ban. That's why banning stages is a bad idea while "banning" items (which aren't really banned) isn't an issue.

There is no need to lower ourselves to considering our game a "party game". Brawl is a serious fighter; it just happens to require a bit more work than a usual fighter to get a good ruleset. Regardless though, we can apply the same standards used in other games; it works out just as well.

 

[Linkshot]

AA, how do you feel about Items set to On and None? This allows D3 to throw capsules and Diddy's Peanuts to pop with food.

 

[Sucumbio]

I don't see how they block moves, lol.

Link/TL down stab, pikachu's thunder, those are only 2 examples I can think of, and one of them was the exact complaint we'd gotten during a local exposition. something like "c'mon why do we have to play BF I hate BF cause I can't use my TL" my personal response was "really, I actually do better w/TL on BF" but yeah... that is why anyway, I didn't necessarily agree but I did see their point, just kinda let them have their way until they went home lol

AA, how do you feel about Items set to On and None? This allows D3 to throw capsules and Diddy's Peanuts to pop with food.

Yeah there's been some folks that noticed this as well, more of a "why isn't diddy's peanuts leaving food behind" oh, cause items are off ha ha.

then again someone may feel as if that's unfair, or unbalancing, or something.

Wait, if items are off and none, peach can't pull beam swords, right? or can she...

 

[Lore]

Link/TL down stab, pikachu's thunder, those are only 2 examples I can think of, and one of them was the exact complaint we'd gotten during a local exposition. something like "c'mon why do we have to play BF I hate BF cause I can't use my TL" my personal response was "really, I actually do better w/TL on BF" but yeah... that is why anyway, I didn't necessarily agree but I did see their point, just kinda let them have their way until they went home lol

Lol. Still, just because some scrubs are mad that 2 moves in the game are blocked doesn't mean that the stage is not neutral.

 

[deepseadiva]

Wait, if items are off and none, peach can't pull beam swords, right? or can she...

She can pull out items regardless of item settings.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

AA, how do you feel about Items set to On and None? This allows D3 to throw capsules and Diddy's Peanuts to pop with food.

It's theoretically fair, but I think the current settings are more simple and just as fair. There are many settings that are very similar to what we play with now in terms of fairness; we could also set only Smoke Balls on to Low so everyone could use glide tossing more, but I think the whole affair is probably a direction not worth pursuing. I don't consider any arbitrary item choice we make though (including our status quo) to constitute a ban though, and that's the important thing. Our actions with items don't justify anything in terms of stage rules.

 

[Linkshot]

Team Healers on would be very interesting. As would Franklin Badges.

 

[Lore]

Team Healers on would be very interesting. As would Franklin Badges.

Team healers in doubles would be interesting set to low, but this isn't really the thread for this. XD

 

[BSP]

*facepalms*

The bulborb does nothing to the match at all.
There's a spot under the left edge of the green platform. You can stand there and spam **** through the green platform, which can't be fallen through. It makes it intensely hard to approach, nearing impossible against some characters.

Try it out yourself and see how far your opponent can get.

lol it happened to me too, it IS annoying, but i think it can be gotten around.

 

[sunshade]

What stages are they, where can it happen, and how can it be avoided during a match?
I only remember it happening on Pokémon Stadium 1 during the transition, in which case.... if you're a character for whom this will matter, and you're worried about this glitch, then don't be running on the requisite parts of the platform at the wrong time. I think you have enough warning about the stage transition to do that, right? idk tho

if what the stage glitch and info amazairum is correct the fall through glitch happens on 7 legal stages and can be occur durring "charging attacks, grabs, actions involving items, and even rolls. "

Pokemon Stadium 1 (starter/counter)
Halberd (starter/counter)
Castle Siege (starter/counter)
Delfino Plaza (counter)
Brinstar (counter)
Rainbow Cruise (counter)
Yoshi's Island (brawl) (starter)

(these are not all the stages that suffer from the fall through glitch but they are all legal and four of them can be considered balanced enough to be starters)

I personally cannot think of anything more uncompetitive than falling through the stage and dying because you wanted to charge a smash, grab someone, or roll. For many matches if the players are going roughly even a completely random and unprompted death can destroy a players chances of winning the match. Because of this glitch causing unpredictable death on many legal stages I really cannot understand why these stages are legal at the highest level of competitive play.

 

[deepseadiva]

Keep in mind that the glitch is absurdly rare. Tripping for instance is at least ten-fold more damaging to play than the fall through glitch will ever be.

Not to mention those are just the documented cases, it's very plausible it's just a fault in coding and could affect each in every stage.

 

[SuSa]

M2K fell through Poke Floats in Melee.

I found that funny.

Also what Meno said

 

[Linkshot]

It happened in Melee, too. It has to do with the floor pieces and how they're arranged.

LOL

Poke Floats fallthrough was 100% recreatable (Seel had a hole in his head)

 

[sunshade]

Keep in mind that the glitch is absurdly rare. Tripping for instance is at least ten-fold more damaging to play than the fall through glitch will ever be.

Not to mention those are just the documented cases, it's very plausible it's just a fault in coding and could affect each in every stage.

I have fallen through the stage and died twice myself during friendlies and it resulted in my loss both times, thankfully I have yet to be this unlucky in any tournaments or some other match with money on the line but I can say that although it is rare it only has to happen once to severely cripple your chances at winning.

In regards to tripping that will happen multiple times throughout a match and although its random it is expected and we are often aware of how to deal with tripping unlike instant deaths which nobody is prepared for.