Project M 'fair' starter list

[Overswarm]

AGREED

I don't understand why Final destination or Green Hill Zone should be starters when they give an obvious advantage to certain characters. There is no need to add more stages to the starter list, if there are only 3 neutral stages than there should only be 3 starters.

The reasoning is that there is no neutral stage. Every stage can give an advantage in a certain matchup. PS1 might be completely fair to Falco vs. Peach, but it might be a huge advantage to Fox over Sheik.

To remedy this, we stage strike with the intent on landing on a stage uniquely fair to that matchup -- assuming the players know what is good or bad for them.

The stages selected for striking determine if it's fair or not. If you have a starter list like "Yoshi's Island, Wario Ware, Dreamland 64" then you're forced to face heavy hitters like Ganon and Bowser on a tiny stage. You strike one of the small ones, they always strike Dreamland. Not fair.

If you are playing as Jigglypuff and I am playing as Diddy, a stagelist like Smashville, FD, and Pokemon Stadium 2 gives me an advantage. They are Diddy's best counterpicks. It might seem fair because you aren't used to viewing stages like this, but it's how it works. I personally get a free CP every tournament because the stagelist forces them to take me to, at worst, a stage I only slightly am advantageous on.

The reason you put in "obvious advantage" stages in the starter list is to alter the final result. A list like Yoshi's Island, Wario Ware, and Dreamland 64 is too consolidated on one type of stage. There's more stages of one type (small) than there are strikes!

There is more to a stagelist than "small" and "big". There is platform placement, extra ways to recover, ceiling height, stage length, hazards, movement patterns, etc., etc., and they all play into making a match fair or not. As long as there are less strikes then there are stages your opponent is advantaged on or you are disadvantaged on, then it is absolutely impossible for you to have a fair starting stage.

You typically need at least 9 stages to strike from to get a good starting match. This allows you to have a large variety within the strike list.

 

[Deleted member]

other way around, in the age when melee was new (and considerably more balanced due to limited game knowledge) the cumulative effect of the jank stages focused the game's interaction much more on the stages than character-exclusive interaction. of course, there is nothing wrong with this and the type of interation you prefer is just that- a preference. however, the community at large, and especially the areas outside of the midwest, made it quite clear that much of the community prefers the character-based interaction over that offered by stages or even items.

at the time those stages were the most fair, since smash is an imperfect game and they were simply the most acceptable as starters relative to other stages. use what you got.

and you can leave the condescending speech out of your stance, thanks. melee has been using my stage list and rule set since 2009 so apparently a few thousand people seem to agree with my ideas.

 

[-Fatality-]

melee has been using my stage list and rule set since 2009 so apparently a few thousand people seem to agree with my ideas.

They do indeed, though I think Melee mostly uses a 6 stage ruleset, because there literally aren't any other even remotely neutral stages they have access to, they're just making the best of what little they have.
With PM, we have like a gazillion solid options available to us, not saying all of them should be used, or even close to it, but we have an unprecedented opportunity to create the fairest stage list in any Smash ever.
And @ Overswarm the only thing about your original list I disagree with is having Lylat be a starter over Yoshi's Island, maybe I'm missing something, but Yoshi's seems like a less polarizing starter than that to me.

 

[DMG]

Yoshi's is already close to, or currently functions as, an ideal stage for a handful of characters. How many characters can you think of that say Lylat is their best stage? I mean sure it's harder to say for certain, since Yoshi's has been around forever and Lylat has only been around for awhile (took a bit to fix the tilting too), but character advantages and favorites probably lean much more on Yoshi's.

 

[Overswarm]

Yoshi's is already close to, or currently functions as, an ideal stage for a handful of characters. How many characters can you think of that say Lylat is their best stage?

I think he means the Brawl one

And @ Overswarm the only thing about your original list I disagree with is having Lylat be a starter over Yoshi's Island, maybe I'm missing something, but Yoshi's seems like a less polarizing starter than that to me.

I chose Lylat primarily for its length. With FD gone, the 'length' aspect that is helpful to some characters was lessened. Yoshi's Island (Brawl) doesn't do that as well.


I'm not in love with any starter list; I want only what inevitably results in the fairest starting stage. If people used my list and said "Psh, I still started on (insert stage)" and they're happy with that, then that is a success.

 

[Exodo]

the only stage i feel any character has advantage over other in is Brinstar, Ivysaur. you can heal yourself like crazy there and charge super fast the solar beam.

 

[DMG]

Ew. Yoshi's Brawl is pooper scooper though

 

[Overswarm]

Ew. Yoshi's Brawl is pooper scooper though

That's a pretty useless statement. -_-;;

 

[DMG]

It's a fine stage, I just don't like it. I wouldn't take it off starters just for disliking the stage though: people dislike stages like Metal Cavern without giving cohesive reasons why it's not viable.

 

[Overswarm]

It's a fine stage, I just don't like it. I wouldn't take it off starters just for disliking the stage though: people dislike stages like Metal Cavern without giving cohesive reasons why it's not viable.

That's not a problem except when they ban the stages they dislike and removing viable stages >_>

 

[Deleted member]

They do indeed, though I think Melee mostly uses a 6 stage ruleset, because there literally aren't any other even remotely neutral stages they have access to, they're just making the best of what little they have.
With PM, we have like a gazillion solid options available to us, not saying all of them should be used, or even close to it, but we have an unprecedented opportunity to create the fairest stage list in any Smash ever.

If you return to the initial premise of "every stage favors certain characters" then you create a circular argument where this idea becomes impossible. Frankly, I think Smashville, Battlefield, and Pokemon Stadium 2 are already as neutral as we're going to get and we can just keep it simple and.... do that. If OS is saying that those stages are too good for say Diddy, we can probably start to look at that character instead, and sure enough Diddy is already known to be problematic for this build. Don't over-complicate something that doesn't need it.

 

[Overswarm]

If OS is saying that those stages are too good for say Diddy, we can probably start to look at that character instead, and sure enough Diddy is already known to be problematic for this build. Don't over-complicate something that doesn't need it.

*head explodes*

Your solution to "Certain characters like certain stages" is not "make sure the existing stages are fairly distributed" but rather change every character to be equal on all stages.

 

[Deleted member]

*head explodes*

Your solution to "Certain characters like certain stages" is not "make sure the existing stages are fairly distributed" but rather change every character to be equal on all stages.

character balance was one of the initial goals of the entire game though, the application of that character balance within a tournament setting is simply implied at this point. once again, you are over-complicating the stage list. the point of a standardized rule set is to add validity to the tournament operation and results, so long as the players believe the rule set and stage list is fair it can be anything. if you are in the minority on this particular stance, that's fine but at least be honest and accept that your viewpoint is not the one that the community at large agrees with.

once again, PS2 BF SV as the only starters is easy, functional, and 95%+ of the community can work with it. I don't see the issue here.

 

[trash?]

OS's argument hinges on very, very bad mindsets to have when regarding a game you can properly change and take a looksee into. stage lists in standard smash games are half-attempts at balance, that's why about half of the stages that could work in brawl were tossed out, because metaknight was good, you can't specifically nerf metaknight, but you can change the stage list to be a bit less in his favor. all fine and dandy, except this isn't brawl, and our devs aren't a high-end company in japan; diddy clearly dominating most neutrals isn't a problem with the starters, as PM's balance is explicitly based around starters, thus, it's easy to say that it's an issue with diddy (and it is, if you haven't seen the scourge that's taken over MDVA).

the idea that we need to wiggle around our ruleset in the name of balance is incredibly unnecessary, because we can directly address the core of these problems, instead of trying to mess with the symptoms

 

[Kaeldiar]

character balance was one of the initial goals of the entire game though, the application of that character balance within a tournament setting is simply implied at this point. once again, you are over-complicating the stage list. the point of a standardized rule set is to add validity to the tournament operation and results, so long as the players believe the rule set and stage list is fair it can be anything. if you are in the minority on this particular stance, that's fine but at least be honest and accept that your viewpoint is not the one that the community at large agrees with.

once again, PS2 BF SV as the only starters is easy, functional, and 95%+ of the community can work with it. I don't see the issue here.

But why limit starters to only 3? One of the great things about P:M is that we can create more than 3 good stages. A larger variety of stages makes more characters viable. Just look at Brawl. Stages were banned simply because MK was extraordinarily dominant on them. A stage can make or break a character. P:M's goal was to make every character competitively viable, and if we limit stages to so few, then a small group of characters WILL dominate.

Think of it this way. What if FD was the only legal stage? A very large community considers FD to be the most balanced. In fact, most casual players and even Nintendo consider FD to be the most balanced stage. It has no platforms and average blastzones. That sounds balanced, right? Enter Melee Marth. Marth on FD is perhaps the best character in Melee. It would create a new metagame that looks like Marth > Peach > Fox > Falco...
What about Dreamland? After all, Dreamland was the most balanced in Smash 64? Why wouldn't it be balanced in Melee? Let's look at Marth again. Marth kind of sucks on Dreamland. Characters with great recoveries and good survivability will do much better. Now Peach and Samus get moved up the tier list! The point is, stages make a huge difference, and more stages means more good characters. If we stick to only a few "neutral" stages, then we get dominance by a small amount of the cast, which will probably be the spacies. Our concept of a neutral stage is defined mostly by Melee and Brawl's stage lists, which we have seen do not limit the spacies.

tl;dr You should read the whole thing, dammit. Stop being lazy

 

[Paradoxium]

err scratch that

 

[trash?]

if the entire game was balanced around FD in the same way this game is effectively balanced around those starters--and to that end, if we could change those characters as easily--then yes, fixing marth could be a high priority.

why should we fix a list that works well for every character except one who's clearly badly designed, when you could fix that design, seeing how that's the core issue?

 

[Kaeldiar]

if the entire game was balanced around FD in the same way this game is effectively balanced around those starters--and to that end, if we could change those characters as easily--then yes, fixing marth could be a high priority.

why should we fix a list that works well for every character except one who's clearly badly designed, when you could fix that design, seeing how that's the core issue?

Because we've seen that we have TOO MANY stages right now. We need to knock it down a small bit. There are stages that are typically unplayed or unliked (Lylat, Skyloft, Skyworld), and stage banning takes too long. It's quite tedious at this point, so we want to cut back a little bit.

 

[menotyou135]

There should be at least 5 starters. Any less is asinine and makes a more asymmetric experience to the initial stage pick.

 

[Deleted member]

There should be at least 5 starters. Any less is asinine and makes a more asymmetric experience to the initial stage pick.

why? fill this idea out a bit more and convince me (and your peers), if you have a good argument i'd love to consider it. that goes to anyone btw, by all means contribute to this discussion so we can make the tournament scene better for this game.

 

[menotyou135]

why? fill this idea out a bit more and convince me (and your peers), if you have a good argument i'd love to consider it. that goes to anyone btw, by all means contribute to this discussion so we can make the tournament scene better for this game.

Well let's just break it down.

Say that there are maps A, B and C.

Person one likes A a lot, B a little, and hates C.
Person two likes C a lot, B a little, and hates A.

This is fine for everybody. They will get map B regardless of who goes first. However, lets say that person one likes A a lot, and both B and C a little. In this case, Person one is guaranteed a map they like at least a little. If Person two goes first, then person one can screw them over.

The worst however comes from this:

Lets say Person one likes A a lot, B a little, and hates C.
Person two likes A a little, B a lot, and hates C.

If Person one votes first, then C is eliminated. Person two then gets their favorite stage. If person two votes first, then C is still eliminated, and person one get's their favorite stage.

Imagine the stagelist has A as dreamland, B as BF, and C as FD (hypothetically). If one of the characters is puff or peach and their opponent can't play well on FD, then as long as they go second, they have a guaranteed Dreamland.

This is mostly solved when you have 5 or more maps because the amount of influence you have on the starter stage pick changes from 33% (one veto out of three) to 40% (two vetos out of five) or 43% (three vetos out of seven). As long as there are enough stages to facilitate a decent starter list, the higher number ensures the most neutral result.

Also, it is kind of silly that Melee has 6 usable stages and 5 are starters, whereas the suggestion here is that with around 20 usable stages, we only have 3 starters.

With all the possible matchups in this game, saying that X, Y, and Z, maps are the most neutral makes it to where the individuals in the pre-game don't have as much influence over the stage picks, and are more likely to get a advantageous or disadvantageous map selection through no fault of their own.

Some characters will do well on all 3 maps, while others won't, whereas with 5 or more maps, it's almost guaranteed that no character will have all 5 be good or all 5 be bad for them in any particular matchup.

It limits meaningful choice and increases the chances of a matchup being decided by something other than who is the better player. Neither of these things are good.

 

[trash?]

I can respect that reasoning... though, then there needs to be two stages beyond BF, PS2 and SV, and that's kind of what this topic ends up arguing around, doesn't it? most people agree on those three being good starters, but it's evening them out with two more that's an issue

if horizontal space is why that isn't good enough on its own, what vertical-based stages would work well? that way, one would have a middle ground in BF, two horizontal stages scaling from small to extreme in PS2 and SV, respectively, and... honestly, I'm stumped from there. WW could fit the extreme for vertical, maybe?

 

[Deleted member]

you're assuming that stage preference is the determining factor that offsets stage selection. as a competitive player, you really shouldn't have any "weak" stages, either by preference or by your capacity to play on them. this is particularly true for neutrals. but thats a semantic issue tbh.

i disagree with your contention that with 5 or more maps you eliminate starter bias. if you consider which stages that could potentially be added to my proposed 3, any stages you add WILL have meaningful biases. i think any experienced player can name characters that are good at DL64, FoD, YS, and FD. Can you name any characters *not known to be problematic already* that have a notable advantage on PS2, BF, or SV? I can't offhand.

so you're playing against idk a character like samus so you strike DL64, nothing has really changed since thats an obvious choice, all you've really done is complicated the striking process. same goes with fox striking FD, sonic striking FoD, jigglypuff striking YS, etc etc. almost all of our stage strikes end up on SV anyway.

 

[mimgrim]

Why not just have legal stage and non-legal stages. Just get rid of the whole starter-counterpick system. What really makes one stage a better starter from another? I understand the general idea is to get the most fair battle in the first round. But shouldn't striking from all legal stages be able to accomplish this idea better? Because really, there are no true "neutral" stages. Having a starter-counterpick system is rather counter intuitive to the whole idea.

That's just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[menotyou135]

I can respect that reasoning... though, then there needs to be two stages beyond BF, PS2 and SV, and that's kind of what this topic ends up arguing around, doesn't it? most people agree on those three being good starters, but it's evening them out with two more that's an issue

if horizontal space is why that isn't good enough on its own, what vertical-based stages would work well? that way, one would have a middle ground in BF, two horizontal stages scaling from small to extreme in PS2 and SV, respectively, and... honestly, I'm stumped from there. WW could fit the extreme for vertical, maybe?

There is a huge problem with PS2, SV, and BF involving blast zones. PS2 and SV both have low ceilings and fairly close blast zones. This means vertical killers and characters with poor recovery would benefit heavily from this stage list. Any floaty would automatically have a bad matchup against characters like Fox who rely on strong finishers on stage. Characters like jiggs and peach that rely on their strong horizontal recovery and high blast zones to survive would be massively disadvantaged. Furthermore, the three maps listed all have bottoms which are short making characters who use wall jumps in their recovery suffer. This is not ideal. So lets look at other options to add for a 5 stage list. I will address my views of how they address these problems and rate how well they address the problems mentioned above. (Feel free to skip this part if you just want to get to the point).

I feel like GHZ's high ceiling is good for balancing out the slightly low ceilings of PS2 and SV, though it's side blast zones are still close. It does give at least one starter to characters that like wall jumps to recover. Personal Rating 4.5/5

Yoshi island's blast zones are similar to PS2, so having it as a starter is kind if redundant. However, it has wall jump recovery options, filling that void. I love this map, but it doesn't really fit into neutral. Personal rating 2/5

Lylat is actually a pretty decent idea for it's high ceiling and decent side zones, though not many people like that map. However, it fills the gap nicely. However, it is probably the worst stage for characters who use wall jumps to recover. Personal rating 4/5

FoD is a lot like GHZ in that it has a higher ceiling and close blast zones, but I feel most people like GHZ better. It is a nice middle point for wall jumping though since it doesn't let a character do it all the way from the lowest part of the blast zone. personal rating 3.5/5

One that few seem to think about as a possibility is Metal Cavern, but as far as the blast zone problem goes, it is essentially a poor man's Dreamland. It's ceiling isn't nearly as high, but the side blast zones are about as far and it's ceiling is still medium height. It also isn't as big as dreamland so it isn't as much of an auto win for floaties. Personal rating 3.5/5

FD is perfect for blast zones, but it's lack of platforms make it's gameplay pretty polarized so I understand removing it. However, doing so hurts both the blast zone and wall jump problem. It has the most balanced walls because they concave under the stage making the wall jumps harder, but still useful than maps like GHZ/YS where the walls are vertical. It has problems but the way it addresses the problems of the other maps make it pretty useful. Personal rating 3.5/5

Wario Ware is probably the worst idea for addressing the blast zone problem because it easily has the smallest blast zones in the game. Personal rating 1/5

Rumble falls has a high ceiling and medium side zones, so it addresses the blast zone problem, but the stage itself is so big and the platforms on top are so tall that run away camping is too easy. Personal rating 2/5

Distant planet as close blast zones and a low ceiling. However, it is a large stage, so it isn't as bad as other close blast low ceiling maps for addressing the blast zone problem and it has a good wall jump platform. Also gameplay is awkward. Personal rating 1.5/5

Dreamland is the opposite extreme from the current problem so adding it back for a more balanced list isn't that bad of an idea, but I think there are much better options, and due to it's advantage for floaties it isn't very neutral. It is a great stage, but it benefits floaties too much. Personal rating 2/5

Yoshi island (B) still has low ceiling, but it's side zones are far which helps a lot in the balance. It's main detractor is the clouds that come from the bottom to save people. It also has a wall for wall jumping. IMO, it is a better stage than people give it credit for. Personal rating 3/5

Skyworld has a high ceiling and medium side zones, making it good for the blast zone problem. However, it is generally hated by most and it's still bad for wall jump recoveries. Personal rating 3/5

Skyloft has a low ceiling and medium side zones. It also has a pretty frustrating layout. Personal rating 1/5

DK 64 was a neutral back in SSB and is also a poor man's dreamland with the blast zones. However, even without the barrel on the bottom, this map is super easy to camp out. I think it would work better than the melee version but still not good. Personal Rating 2/5

PS1 has the same blast zones as PS2 pretty much and has other problems. It really shouldn't be considered. Personal rating 1/5

Dracula castle is pretty decent. It still has a low ceiling, but it's side zones are far and the stage is fairly big which helps balance the size of the other stages. It also has walls to jump off for wall jumpers. Personal Rating 2.5/5.

Idk how Norfair 2.0's blast zones are, but it might be a good choice since it is basically SV with two platforms ins stage layout. Also, it has a nice medium for characters that like wall jump recoveries since there is a decently sized wall on the bottom. Personal rating right now assuming blast zones are both medium 3.5/5

(end of breakdown)
I think that if PS2, SV, and BF are guaranteed to be neutrals, that the best maps to be neutrals to compliment them would be (in my personal order): GHZ, Lylat, FD, FoD, Norfair 2.0, Metal Cavern, Yoshi Island.

That being said, I don't think that most people will agree because of the fact that those maps aren't necessarily the most popular maps in the game and I don't think these are the "best" maps. I just feel that with the biases toward close blast zones on PS2 and SV, that two of these maps should be added. Personally, I would go with GHZ and Lylat even though I hate Lylat. However, if the lack of neutrals with wall jumpable sides is deemed important enough, or the hate for Lylat is strong enough, then either FD or FoD should take the second spot. Also, if Norfair 2.0 ends up being amazing when it comes out, then it should take the second spot. Metal Cavern and Yoshi Island are more shots in the dark than anything, but they could hypothetically work.

To be clear if we were to use 7 neutrals, then maps with close blast zones wouldn't be as significant so the rating for wide blast zone maps would go down and the rating for close blast zone maps would go up. The ratings above assume that there will only be 5 neutrals. If there were 7 neutrals, maps like YS and Wario ware would increase in viability and maps like dracula castle and DK 64 would decrease in viability.

That is just my opinion though. Feel free to tell me any flaws in my breakdown.

 

[menotyou135]

Can you name any characters *not known to be problematic already* that have a notable advantage on PS2, BF, or SV? I can't offhand.

I don't contend any points from your post other than this one.

Jigglypuff vs Fox on PS2 is much more heavy in fox's favor than normal because fox and upsmash/up air Jiggs at like 65% and kill, whereas on BF jigs could live a fair bit longer. Replace Fox with pika, G&W, Sonic or any other character with great vertical kill ability. Same with Smashville. PS2 ans SV both have really short ceilings so characters with strong vertical kill ability do very well on them and characters that are weak to vertical kills do poorly.

Also, the side blast zones are fairly close on both (not so much SV, but PS2 definitely) meaning characters who have strong horizontal recovery as their defining characteristics suffer. Characters with weak recoveries do not suffer at all because at those side blast zones, they couldn't recover anyway unless they were really high in the air (which is hard with low ceilings).

As a Roy main, I would love to see only those maps because it would make my life easier against characters like Zelda, Puff, Peach, Lucas, Mewtwo, ect...

Also, characters like Ike suffer heavily from the fact that SV has almost no wall under the stage. Same with BF and PS2 to a lesser extent. An Ike main is automatically at a disadvantage with this stage list since he is guaranteed a map where he cannot utilize his side B recovery technique effectively which is a defining aspect of his playstyle.

Characters like Falco, Wolf, Gannon, Roy, and Marth all benefit from two of these stages. The only map here that is truly neutral is battlefield, and it is the map with the widest blast zones of the ones you listed.

 

[Overswarm]

The only map here that is truly neutral is battlefield, and it is the map with the widest blast zones of the ones you listed.

Unless your character doesn't deal as well with platforms. Or if he's based entirely on his ground game and can't get down from platforms. If you need wide open spaces, BF sucks.

 

[menotyou135]

Unless your character doesn't deal as well with platforms. Or if he's based entirely on his ground game and can't get down from platforms. If you need wide open spaces, BF sucks.

True. That even further supports the point I was trying to make though.

 

[Overswarm]

I'm on your side.

The idea that there are any "neutral" stages is mind boggling to me. If you pick only one (or one type) of stage you're destined to have certain characters at an advantage on those stages and others at a disadvantage.

Those who have an advantage are played more, those at a disadvantage are played less.

 

[Mera Mera]

the initial premise of a starter stage (once called "neutral") is to have the least polarity as possible at the beginning of the set. I propose that we only have Smashville, Battlefield, and Pokemon Stadium 2 as the only starters and give each player one stage strike. I think we can all agree that stages like Final Destination, Dreamland 64, Yoshi Story, Fountain of Dreams, etc. clearly offer match-up biases that should not be present during Game 1.

I personally think that Smashville is fairly polarizing. Or at least it's a pretty bad stage for my main. Imo it's Zard's worst stage out of the stages in the two bottom rows of page 1. The lack of a reliable platform to recover to / land on from above makes it hard for Zard to recover high safely. Also Zard thrives on attacking people on mid-small sized platforms via tech chase traps.

@ Overswarm I think your suggestion for starters makes a lot of sense. I'll try it out next time I host.

 

[Chexr]

My stage list would be this. You get two bans.

Starters:

PS2
Smashville
Battlefield
Dreamland
Fountain of Dreams


Counterpick:

Greenhill Zone
Warioware
Final Destination
Yoshi's Island (Melee)
Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
Skyworld

 

[GrosMinou]

edit: cut that. my bad,

 

[Overswarm]

I personally think that Smashville is fairly polarizing. Or at least it's a pretty bad stage for my main. Imo it's Zard's worst stage out of the stages in the two bottom rows of page 1. The lack of a reliable platform to recover to / land on from above makes it hard for Zard to recover high safely. Also Zard thrives on attacking people on mid-small sized platforms via tech chase traps.

@ Overswarm I think your suggestion for starters makes a lot of sense. I'll try it out next time I host.

Let me know if the starting stage is considered negative for anyone. (not the stage list, there's always some jackball that will something like "SKYWORLD?! Who would play on THAT stage?!")

 

[menotyou135]

All I'm saying on the PS2 BF SV debate is that characters like Roy, Falco, G&W, C.Falcon, Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Fox (among others) that benefit from mid sized maps with small blast zones benefit from this stage list. They can space and rushdown effectively and their recovery isn't that good. They get an auto CP as long as they veto BF, and if they don't veto BF, they get a neutral. On the other hand, characters that have good horizontal recoveries as a main element to their playstyle, have low weight, or have a problem with characters that can space and rushdown effectively suffer.

Characters that come to mind include the slow heavies like Bowser, DK, and Gannon who can't deal with projectile spam well. PS2 and Smashville are super easy to projectile spam on and a character that can projectile spam is guaranteed one of those maps.

Other characters that come to mind are the super floaties. Kirby, Jiggs, and Peach who die super early on low ceiling levels and like large side blast zones suffer heavily from PS2 and almost as bad on SV. Forcing them to play on one of these maps at the start is asinine. The other character will always take them to PS2 or SV unless they are stupid.

With 3 maps, it doesn't matter if BF is really neutral, because anybody who realizes that they can abuse small blast zones will just veto it. BF isn't even perfectly neutral. Characters like pikachu and link do very well on BF to the point that it is incredibly common for players to CP there as those characters (at least in my experience).

Main point: PS2 and SV are not always neutral maps and harm characters that suffer from small blast zones.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Yoshi's story
GHZ
Smashville
PS2
DL

How's this for a balanced starter list? 5 stages is more compact to deal with, quicker to strike and prevents cluttering up the overall counterpick list with additional starters. You can strike any troublesome stage attribute with two strikes- High ceilings, far side blastzones, low reaching stage walls, wide stages, short stages, triangle platforms, etc. The only issues, which aren't big ones, is that you can strike all low ceilings with one strike, or all far side boundaries with one strike (unless you consider PS2 to have far walls, which it kinda does since it's wide to begin with and still has slightly above-average distance to the side blastzones). But even in those cases, you can't force your opponent to strike to a stage of the opposite extreme, you can only force them to select an average stage at worst, if they are striking for the opposing attribute, which is also the most you can do when striking for any of the OTHER stage attributes as well. I have a longer write-up available I could copy/paste here but I don't feel like searching my state's FB smash group for the post.

 

[Overswarm]

Drinking food, your list is much better than the existing standards; it is impressive.

The downside in your list is that there's only one "right" stage for floaty characters-- Dreamland. PS2 is closer to Smashville than DL, which cannot be said for GHZ and Smashville.

This may not seem large, but this slight imbalance means characters like Peach are forced to ban Yoshi's Story and GHZ to avoid small stages (assuming they are against someone like Roy or Bowser) and are then forced to play on PS2, which has a slightly smaller ceiling.

If one of your goals is "super small starter list", I think your list is about as close to good as you can get. PS2 being replaced by a larger stage would be good, but there really isn't a good 'larger stage' because most of PMs large stages are simply large all around. PS2 is a medium size stage masquerading as large due to the size of the stage itself.

For your stage to be most efficient PM would need a larger stage with an inverse of GHZ's properties. (medium ceiling, farther side blast zones) PS2 is really close, but the blast zones aren't so much bigger due to the fact that most of the kill moves occur from a non-center location.

But for a small list, it's about as optimal as you can get.

Yoshi's Island (Melee)
Green Hill Zone
Fountain of Dreams
Battlefield
Lylat
Smashville
Pokemon Stadium 2
Skyworld
Dreamland 64

Still like the one above much more though -- it gives significant options so that a character like Peach or Jiggs or the like can pick a stage they enjoy for that particular matchup without having to focus on generalities like "big" or "small".

 

[DrinkingFood]

I was under the impression the PS2 did indeed have an average ceiling. It's higher than PS1's I believe.
Lemme go look it up, reddit has the numbers somewhere.

EDIT: I was wrong, they are identical.

 

[Overswarm]

Other than that it's pretty close. It's not that much shorter than most as well.

 

[RIDLEY is too SMALL]

Do me a favor.


Starter: (2 smallish, 2 mid-long, 3 mid-plat of various sizes, 2 big)

Green Hill Zone
Yoshi's Island (Melee)
PS2
Smashville
FoD
Battlefield
Lylat
Dreamland 64
Skyworld

Do a stage-strike procedure with your character against other characters you typically face in your local environment. Strike in this order: 1, 2, 2, 2, 1.

Do you ever end up on a stage that is advantaged or disadvantaged for you?

If you have a situation where you aren't exactly sure or find the stages equal, you can type them as STAGE / STAGE.



The traditional 7 stage list of "bottom" row is pretty garbage. It has one large stage (Dreamland) and one small stage (Yoshi's), and FD and FoD are like poor-man equivalents that have issues in many matchups. If you like flat/plat stages that are medium sized you get a counterpick first round guaranteed. It's near impossible not to.

My list should prevent that from occurring and neither player, despite their character, should get a large advantage or disadvantage.

If you're mostly interested in "small" vs. "large", feel free to view the stages in this order:
Yoshi's Island (Melee)
Green Hill Zone
Fountain of Dreams
Battlefield
Lylat
Smashville
Pokemon Stadium 2
Skyworld
Dreamland 64

With the 3 in the middle being pretty close to one another. A "I want a small stage" character vs. "I want a large stage" character would end up between Battlefield, Lylat, and Smashville. More importantly, more specific looks at the stage list such as "I want to NOT start on a mid-sized stage, because that's where Link is best" or "Ness needs help with his recovery, so I want to strike all those stages" allows players to do such things. There are options.



Let me know if you find a hole.

Overswarm, I just made my own thread about trying to figure out the most balanced stagelist possible without realizing that there was already a very similar thread (this one).

It seems that we came to a similar conclusion about there needing to be an equal number of smaller and bigger starters to balance out the medium stages in the starter list. Let me copy/paste the section of my post that deals with the topic of the starters:

Battlefield and Smashville really deserve to be neutral starters, but both are the very definition of a medium-sized stage. This means that any starter list that almost always results in BF, SV, and PS2 gives privilege to characters who prefer medium-sized stages. This problem exists with a 3-stage, 5-stage, or 7-stage starter list as long as they contain the three most popular neutrals (BF, SV, and PS2). If BF and SV are to remain as neutral starters (and I think they should), then there would need to be an equal amount of small neutral starters and an equal amount of long/large neutral starters to even the scales. Therefore, in order to keep both BF and SV as neutral starters and have a truly balanced and fair starter list, there would need to be a minimum of 9 neutrals (3 small, 3 medium, 3 long/large). Likewise, the counterpicks should also maintain this balance.

Obviously, I also tried to balance the starter list among 9 stages, and I experimented with a ton of different combinations in order to find the perfect balance while considering blast zone distances, ceiling heights, variety of platform arrangements, presence/absence of significant walls, and the size of the physical part of the stage itself (the amount of space that contributes to the onstage game).

Let me first say that I think the starter list you came up with is really, really solid. It might be the most balanced I've seen. There a couple of things that I don't necessarily agree with, however.

- One potential issue is that there 2 stages that have low ceilings (Yoshi's Story and PS2), but there are 5 stages with high ceilings (Dreamland, FoD, Green Hill Zone, Skyworld, and Battlefield), so characters that want high ceilings have a disproportionately better chance of getting a starter stage that benefits them.

- Also, over half of the stages have 3 platforms arranged in a triangle pattern, which helps out characters that excel on those types of stages and harms characters that would rather avoid a platform-heavy stage on the first match.

- Lastly, the starter list in the OP does not take into account counterpick stages at all, and the counterpicks could disrupt the balance of the stagelist. I think that the starter list and the counterpicks should not be decided upon separately--they should be considered together in order for the overall stagelist to be as balanced as possible.

These potential issues may not be a big deal (although I definitely feel that the selection of counterpicks are super important to maintaining a truly balanced stagelist). Idk. What are your thoughts on what I've said?


Anyway, here is the stagelist that I'm currently thinking about:

Taking all of these stage characteristics into consideration, I attempted to create my own stagelist with the goal of eventually figuring out the most balanced stagelist possible. Here is my best attempt so far:

Starters:
Yoshi's Story - Small stage - Very close blast zones - Very low ceiling - 3 platforms - Significant Walls
Warioware - Small stage - Very close blast zones - Very low ceiling - 4 platforms - Significant Walls
Green Hill Zone - Small stage - Close blast zones - High ceiling - 1 swinging platform - Significant Walls
Battlefield - Medium stage - Far blast zones - High ceiling - 3 platforms
Smashville - Medium stage - Average blast zones - Average ceiling - 1 moving platform
Norfair 3.5 - Medium stage - Very far blast zones (?) - Very high ceiling (?) - 2 transforming platforms
Stadium 2 - Long stage - Far blast zones - Very low ceiling - 2 platforms
Distant Planet - Long stage - Very close blast zones - Average ceiling - 4 platforms - Significant Walls
Dreamland - Large stage - Very far blast zones - Very high ceiling - 3 platforms

Counterpicks:
1. Fountain of Dreams - Small stage - Close blast zones - High ceiling - ~3 moving platforms - Significant Walls
2. Skyworld - Medium stage - Very far blast zones - High ceiling - 3 platforms
3. Final Destination - Long stage - Far blast zones - Low ceiling - 0 platforms - Significant Walls

With this stagelist, there would be an equal number of small, medium, and long/large stages. The selection of stages (both the starters by themselves and the starters + the counterpicks) have a VERY balanced variety of blast zone distances and ceiling heights. There would also be a wide variety of platform arrangements. Another more subtle benefit of this stagelist is that it would actually give floaties decent counterpick options, which many other stagelists lack.

What do you think about this stagelist? What issues are there in terms of balance? Are there aspects or benefits of your stagelist that mine lack? Are there factors that I'm not accounting for?

(I should add that after finding this thread, I am starting to question the definition of stage size. I consider Skyworld to be a medium-sized stage that just has very far blast zones (in the same way that PS2 is a long stage that has a super low ceiling) because the width of the actual solid part of the stage itself is comparable to Battlefield and therefore has a similar onstage game to Battlefield because the volume of onstage space is similar. However, it seems like you see Skyworld as a large stage and that may be true. I'm not sure.)

 

[Overswarm]

The ceiling thing is valid. The "triangle platform" one is a little difficult to avoid.

Your stage list has a similar problem with the "Peach" test.

Peach would have Dreamland struck against her immediately, followed likely by Distant Planet. The rest of the stages, regardless of character opponent (sans Jiggs) will likely be in stark favor against her.

There really is no "totally correct" solution, it's mostly a hole in the current stage selection.