Project M Recommended Ruleset

[JesteRace]

The open space in the air on WL is definitely a big deal. I feel that actually makes the stage a lot less polarizing for enough matchups. It has a vertical bigness to it that none of the other small stages have. The open space in between the side plats on Yoshi's doesn't match Wario Land's open air space imo, especially with such a low top platform. And I know I've beaten the dead horse enough times, but come on with the tri-plats, ya know?

 

[Bazkip]

And I know I've beaten the dead horse enough times, but come on with the tri-plats, ya know?

Nothing wrong with a lot tri-plats if there's enough difference in other attributes, there's plenty of variance between Yoshi's, Fountain, Battlefield and Dreamland. Gameplay across the four is not the same.

 

[nimigoha]

I don't think it is AS bad, but if the logic for Dreamland is "its just too huge", then how is it fair to cut down on that without cutting out the other extremes?

The following is about YS vs WL, not about including both in a stagelist.

The extremes are different though, like you said you don't think it is AS bad.

Dreamland is much more of an outlier than any other discussed stage.

YS is barely different than WL. Almost identical ceiling, YS has a slightly smaller base width, YS has slightly larger horizontal BZ.

But there's one where YS loses hard, and that's actually the least talked about stage attribute: the bottom blast zone. YS is really really shallow and IIRC it makes sweetspotting certain recoveries near-impossible or actually impossible (GW and Sonic come to mind, and CPU Fox will die when he tries to sweetspot from below ledge so...)

For the purposes of attribute sizes, I'm saying they're negligibly different except WL has a much preferable bottom BZ.

Then there's "space" where I really don't see that much of an issue. They serve the same purpose for most matchups in this regard, I don't find WL cramped compared to YS either.

Triplat. It's not a deal breaker but it's just another factor. Why add in another triplat when WL offers a unique layout?

Sloped ledges. As a Wolf main they're fun as hell but they make some edgeguarding tools wonky and make wavedashing (especially to ledge) wonky too. That's a lose for YS.

And finally, Randall. I think of him as "pseudo-random" because while he is on a timer, A) almost no one memorizes it and B) it's up to the flow of the match whether you or your opponent will be offstage in a situation where he'll interfere.

And of course how he messes up tethers.

So like, individually, the problems of YS are quite small. This sounds hypocritical because I've argued against small discrepancies for Bowser's Castle in favour, but here's the difference: we have a 100% viable, near-identical stage that serves exactly the same purpose and is classified in all categories the same, in WL. We don't have that for BC which is why in the past I've responded to the discrepancies of the stage (emblem, chains, fire, platform height).

Bottom line is, YS has a few little things that add together and make any sane person wonder why WL has been replaced.

The only reason WL could be outed by YS would be if it still had the minigames.

 

[Zach777]

I find Skyworld has a problem with circle camping.

That top platform is really annoying when people want to do that.


Personally, I'm fine with extremes as long as their is an extreme of the opposite to counter-act it.

 

[Cox Box]

Remind me again why we're moving away from the consensus that NE 9 is the ideal stage list? Is it Dreamland being too extreme? Is it the game 5 exceptions needed for the ban process to not "force" a stage pick? Is it Bowser's Castle having some nuances that require a little adjustment? I don't get what you guys are on about, honestly. My scene gave me some grumblings at first, but when I (and some top players who have my back) said "This is what we're doing until its VERY apparent that we need to change" that was that. A lot of people still end up never going to Bowser's Castle, but its getting more and more played on every day.

Just pick a stagelist and ruleset and leave it for at least 6 months. It's ok to just see what happens.

 

[JesteRace]

I don't think there's a clear national consensus on it. And other than Atlas, I don't think anyone is straight up trying to replace it. It's just a discussion thread and in the event that NE9 doesn't stick, alternatives should be prepared.

 

[Cox Box]

I don't think there's a clear national consensus on it. And other than Atlas, I don't think anyone is straight up trying to replace it. It's just a discussion thread and in the event that NE9 doesn't stick, alternatives should be prepared.

Fair enough. I guess it just seems like there's a consensus from my point of view, since most of Alabama, all of Georgia, and the parts of Tennessee that my scene interacts with are all using NE9 with stage first. I've had no luck convincing people that we should do character first because "every other smash game is stage first, PM shouldn't be special." I don't really know how to respond to that argument, honestly.

 

[JesteRace]

How about "Melee uses stage first out of necessity because you often cannot stop very polarizing CP's in a bo3 and literally never in a bo5. Sm4sh should also use character first"?

 

[4tlas]

How about "none of the other games (except sm4sh, which is still young and thus does not have its ruleset nailed down) have the character and stage diversity of PM, which means that allowing such wild matchup and stage combo swings is absolutely ridiculous and completely unnecessary for its original purpose of encouraging character diversity"?

And I don't think a real consensus was ever reached. It seemed that most TOs agreed with the theory and haven't put forth any testing in either direction. Much of the consensus seemed to be manufactured by introducing the list as "this is the consensus".

From my own theorycrafting, I am not a fan. From the very little playtesting I have personally experienced, I am still not a fan. I don't hate it though. You might want to talk to Yata about it lol

 

[Darth Shard]

From my own theorycrafting, I am not a fan. From the very little playtesting I have personally experienced, I am still not a fan. I don't hate it though. You might want to talk to Yata about it lol

I feel like you are somewhat misrepresenting the parties who adopted the NE9 (like we did in Minnesota). We agreed with the principle behind the logic and wanted to implement it in our region to see if it was a good fit. So far, it's definitely the best-received stagelist we have personally had. More and more players are picking Bowser's Castle, which is encouraging to me. Even if you don't believe it is fit to be a starter, it certainly seems to have some competitive value.

I understand the merit behind rotating stagelists each season and continuing to experiment. I think that is a testament to the Project M community and can only benefit us to have more data. However, picking a list and fleshing it out for a while has its merits too. No need to insinuate that TO's took one look at NE9 list and decided they were set for life.

Also, and I'm not trying to hate on Yata, but one thread detailing the platform timings on Delfino's hardly makes him the ultimate authority on stagelists. I think he has made some really great arguments on a number of stagelist topics, but let's give credit to the rest of the community that doesn't necessarily agree with him.

 

[4tlas]

I feel like you are somewhat misrepresenting the parties who adopted the NE9 (like we did in Minnesota). We agreed with the principle behind the logic and wanted to implement it in our region to see if it was a good fit. So far, it's definitely the best-received stagelist we have personally had. More and more players are picking Bowser's Castle, which is encouraging to me. Even if you don't believe it is fit to be a starter, it certainly seems to have some competitive value.

I understand the merit behind rotating stagelists each season and continuing to experiment. I think that is a testament to the Project M community and can only benefit us to have more data. However, picking a list and fleshing it out for a while has its merits too. No need to insinuate that TO's took one look at NE9 list and decided they were set for life.

Also, and I'm not trying to hate on Yata, but one thread detailing the platform timings on Delfino's hardly makes him the ultimate authority on stagelists. I think he has made some really great arguments on a number of stagelist topics, but let's give credit to the rest of the community that doesn't necessarily agree with him.

Perhaps I worded it poorly. I did not say all, and I am certain that some TOs have tested the list and used their own logic, and arrived at the same conclusion as Nebraska. But there are also many I know of who did not; much of the support is coming from players who have merely heard "its balanced and there's a consensus" and they take that for truth. I know many TOs who have no interest in thinking about stagelists whatsoever that have adopted the N9 just because "well if everyone else is, we should".

And I agree wholeheartedly that Yata is not the authority on stagelists. I disagree with his solutions to the stagelist issue. I merely agree with his qualms with the N9. I am part of the community that doesn't agree with him. I also don't agree with the N9.

I believe everyone who bothers to post in the thread is a free thinker, someone who comes to their own conclusions. I believe most of the people who read the thread are similar. I did not mean to imply that everyone was just following along, merely that the "consensus" is mostly coming from people who say "there's a consensus".

 

[Darth Shard]

Perhaps I worded it poorly. I did not say all, and I am certain that some TOs have tested the list and used their own logic, and arrived at the same conclusion as Nebraska. But there are also many I know of who did not; much of the support is coming from players who have merely heard "its balanced and there's a consensus" and they take that for truth. I know many TOs who have no interest in thinking about stagelists whatsoever that have adopted the N9 just because "well if everyone else is, we should".

And I agree wholeheartedly that Yata is not the authority on stagelists. I disagree with his solutions to the stagelist issue. I merely agree with his qualms with the N9. I am part of the community that doesn't agree with him. I also don't agree with the N9.

I believe everyone who bothers to post in the thread is a free thinker, someone who comes to their own conclusions. I believe most of the people who read the thread are similar. I did not mean to imply that everyone was just following along, merely that the "consensus" is mostly coming from people who say "there's a consensus".

I think all of this ^ is totally reasonable and fair.

 

[Deleted member]

Fair enough. I guess it just seems like there's a consensus from my point of view, since most of Alabama, all of Georgia, and the parts of Tennessee that my scene interacts with are all using NE9 with stage first. I've had no luck convincing people that we should do character first because "every other smash game is stage first, PM shouldn't be special." I don't really know how to respond to that argument, honestly.

try this-

PM is much more relatively matchup heavy than those games because the tiers are much narrower, stage first enables you to pigeon-hole opponents into a horrible CP option such that whoever wins game 1 has a disproportionately strong advantage in the set. PM actually is special compared to other games because other games have more defined tiers where an arbitrary percentage of each respective cast is considered non-viable, so functionally every other smash game has ~8 relevant characters while PM still has 35+ because it was specifically designed that way. Moving to character first still enables counterpicking to be a reasonably powerful aspect of tournament play but works much better with the matchup-heavy nature of the game with no real downside.

----

on another topic, its reasonable for TOs to move to a common stagelist for uniformity. the idea of creating one to begin with is to enable that uniformity. we're pretty much settled on this in texas-

green hill zone
smashville
battlefield
ps2
bowsers alt

warioware
final destination
fountain of sheik
delfino secret

i think this is more or less what we should use going forward, its 9 stages for best of 5s with two bans, has 5 starters for striking, and no ******** ass dreamland 64

 

[Cox Box]

try this-

PM is much more relatively matchup heavy than those games because the tiers are much narrower, stage first enables you to pigeon-hole opponents into a horrible CP option such that whoever wins game 1 has a disproportionately strong advantage in the set. PM actually is special compared to other games because other games have more defined tiers where an arbitrary percentage of each respective cast is considered non-viable, so functionally every other smash game has ~8 relevant characters while PM still has 35+ because it was specifically designed that way. Moving to character first still enables counterpicking to be a reasonably powerful aspect of tournament play but works much better with the matchup-heavy nature of the game with no real downside.

----

on another topic, its reasonable for TOs to move to a common stagelist for uniformity. the idea of creating one to begin with is to enable that uniformity. we're pretty much settled on this in texas-

green hill zone
smashville
battlefield
ps2
bowsers alt

warioware
final destination
fountain of sheik
delfino secret

i think this is more or less what we should use going forward, its 9 stages for best of 5s with two bans, has 5 starters for striking, and no ******** *** dreamland 64

That's a fine list, but I'd get put on blast for replacing Dreamland with Delfino's because I'm "intentionally skewing the stagelist to be good for Ike by adding walls." Yes, this is a real criticism I have been confronted with, lol. And as dumb as it is, its hard to argue with the fact that the walled stage bias is very real. Every single counterpick stage on that list has walls, along with two of the five neutrals. So how do we address that? I don't know.

 

[JesteRace]

That's a fine list, but I'd get put on blast for replacing Dreamland with Delfino's because I'm "intentionally skewing the stagelist to be good for Ike by adding walls." Yes, this is a real criticism I have been confronted with, lol. And as dumb as it is, its hard to argue with the fact that the walled stage bias is very real. Every single counterpick stage on that list has walls, along with two of the five neutrals. So how do we address that? I don't know.

Your could point out that Fountain and FD aren't fully walled, which matters. So, 2 semi-walled, 3 non-walled, and 4 walled, which yeah, favors walls, but I don't think it's that significant. Bowser's Castle and Delfino's Secret aren't good Ike stages just because they're walled. They might be good CP's occasionally, but seriously, this isn't even an argument, your scene is just stubbornly against Ike... for some reason.

And as far as I know, Nebraska will be continuing the 9 for a while since the scene is still fine with Bowser's. I believe we are also replacing Dreamland with Delfino's(thank god) and moving FoD to a starter instead of GHZ. It's not my ideal stagelist, but no Dreamland makes me happy, having less of an open space bias in the starters makes me happy, and Bowser's Castle is good for my character, so **** it.

 

[Deleted member]

you could also not give a ****. not every "problem" needs a solution.

 

[eideeiit]

Our upcoming PM tournament will probably run:

starters: GHZ, BF, SV, PS2, DS

CPs: YIM, WW, FoD, FD, DL

2 bans, chars first, dsr to all stages used

Of course it could be better, but we came to this after a bit of thinking. Afaik it's not 100% sure yet. We came to this from Nebraska 9 after we got worried whether all our setups would have Bowser's, so we replaced it with YIM and DL. Kinda poopy but meh. I didn't want FD, but we'll likely have a lot of melee players and I decided to respect its legacy in their ranks or something. I'm not happy with:
2 such large stages as starters,
both DL and DS,
both WW and YIM,
so much airspace
But you gotta make do with what you have.

 

[Brisk187]

we got worried whether all our setups would have Bowser's

Why are you worried about that? Is there any reason that a given setup wouldn't have Bowser's Castle Alternate? It comes on default 3.6.

 

[eideeiit]

The last tournament we had our only setup didn't have it.
Maybe I'm overreacting to that tho and we'll have it now and everything goes dandily, but a foolproof plan is good to have.

 

[nimigoha]

You are overreacting to that because tournaments should be played on 3.6 and 3.6 has BC.

It's fine for people to add stuff to their builds but taking stages away is a terrible idea.

 

[Bazkip]

CPs: YIM

Yoshi's Island...Melee?

???

 

[eideeiit]

*gulps

The build last time was some hackless version made into a netplay build that some guy had found from god knows where. It had no alt. stage support. We also had to fight a Snake/falcon/falco after each and every match. Also it was our only setup as I mentioned.

It was actually lucky PM only had 9 entrants or **** would've hit the fan pretty hard time-wise. Even like this Melee bracket started at 9pm.

The story has nothing to do with rulesets tho I guess.
Or maybe it teaches something about necessity dictating and sacrifices.

Also have any regions not Australia tried Sky Sanctuary Zone out?
At least from the gew netplay sets I've gotten to play on it, it seems like a pretty good stage. Even a starter candidate, though I know nothing.

 

[4tlas]

*gulps

The build last time was some hackless version made into a netplay build that some guy had found from god knows where. It had no alt. stage support. We also had to fight a Snake/falcon/falco after each and every match. Also it was our only setup as I mentioned.

It was actually lucky PM only had 9 entrants or **** would've hit the fan pretty hard time-wise. Even like this Melee bracket started at 9pm.

The story has nothing to do with rulesets tho I guess.
Or maybe it teaches something about necessity dictating and sacrifices.

Also have any regions not Australia tried Sky Sanctuary Zone out?
At least from the gew netplay sets I've gotten to play on it, it seems like a pretty good stage. Even a starter candidate, though I know nothing.

This is relevant to rulesets, because practicality helps dictate the ruleset. After all, if we could use any stages we wanted, why wouldn't we create a bunch of stages and tailor them for balance?

I had not considered the possibility that the Alt Stage Loader could be broken on a setup. While this would rarely happen, it is still a good reason to exclude Bowsers from a recommended ruleset (but not from a true universal ruleset).

The same holds true for something like Sky Sanctuary Zone. Australia has an easy time using it because they have all agreed to use it. I think this would be nearly impossible to do worldwide.

I also don't like any of the proposals that have come through but I don't care to debate right now. Just didn't want silence to be assumed consent.

 

[Zarkdion]

Sky Sanctuary Zone? Forgive me, but I am not familiar.

 

[4tlas]

Sky Sanctuary Zone? Forgive me, but I am not familiar.

Its a custom map, which I believe can be found on BrawlVault. Looked pretty good gameplay-wise, but I think it has some art issues that would not have been up to the standards of PM and PMDT.

I believe the Sydney scene is using it as part of their stagelist, and perhaps another scene in Australia/New Zealand? They've really enjoyed it, but I think it would be impossible to implement anything short of a true universal standard if it were involved. And we won't get that far unless we let people try it for themselves and slowly reach a consensus...so I think its a no-go.

 

[Avro-Arrow]

The art is good; it's on the netplay as an alt (I think z-alt) to GHZ. The art was improved (mostly the palette I think) transitioning to the final version of the stage; it actually looks pretty polished.

 

[4tlas]

The art is good; it's on the netplay as an alt (I think z-alt) to GHZ. The art was improved (mostly the palette I think) transitioning to the final version of the stage; it actually looks pretty polished.

I believe I saw that and still was not pleased. I thought it was a significant improvement but all the whites still blend together.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Its a custom map, which I believe can be found on BrawlVault. Looked pretty good gameplay-wise, but I think it has some art issues that would not have been up to the standards of PM and PMDT.

I believe the Sydney scene is using it as part of their stagelist, and perhaps another scene in Australia/New Zealand? They've really enjoyed it, but I think it would be impossible to implement anything short of a true universal standard if it were involved. And we won't get that far unless we let people try it for themselves and slowly reach a consensus...so I think its a no-go.

Definitely not NZ.

I use the OP of this topic still.
I have managed to get Alc for the last 2 ranbats, and hope to put it into our proper ruleset.

 

[4tlas]

Definitely not NZ.

I use the OP of this topic still.
I have managed to get Alc for the last 2 ranbats, and hope to put it into our proper ruleset.

Can I just say I am absolutely thrilled to hear that? I hope I can, because here goes.



I am absolutely THRILLED to hear that!

 

[Narpas_sword]

It was easy, I told them to stfu and play before I listen to any feedback.

Then I asked for feedback, and specified that any complaints must be accompanied by a pint.

Most of the people who didn't like it at first didn't notice a difference. Others felt like the bottom end players played better.

I convinced them that bottom end players doing better is better for the scene, as we all improve when fighting better players.


Hopefully it lasts =p

 

[Zach777]

What does Alc stand for?

I cannot think of a stage with those initials.

 

[mimgrim]

What does Alc stand for?

I cannot think of a stage with those initials.

Auto L-cancel.

 

[Zach777]

Oh thanks.

No wonder I could not think of a stage with those initials.

 

[JesteRace]

I know all the arguments about L-cancelling being bad design, and I get all the arguments that helping lower level players is a good thing, but I still don't support auto L-cancel. That **** is straight up muscle memory for the vast majority of Melee/PM players, and I don't think it's worth messing them up for however long just to give people who can't manage an extra button press a leg up. It's really not hard. If you don't L-cancel as a personal choice, that's fine, that's your prerogative, but you shouldn't be rewarded for that over someone who actually learned how to do it, bad design or not. It should be left to a gentleman's rule at most, imo.

 

[CORY]

What does Alc stand for?

I cannot think of a stage with those initials.

 

[4tlas]

I know all the arguments about L-cancelling being bad design, and I get all the arguments that helping lower level players is a good thing, but I still don't support auto L-cancel. That **** is straight up muscle memory for the vast majority of Melee/PM players, and I don't think it's worth messing them up for however long just to give people who can't manage an extra button press a leg up. It's really not hard. If you don't L-cancel as a personal choice, that's fine, that's your prerogative, but you shouldn't be rewarded for that over someone who actually learned how to do it, bad design or not. It should be left to a gentleman's rule at most, imo.

They don't get messed up by it. You can still L-cancel manually, just nothing will change.

And you don't get rewarded OVER someone who learned how to do it, it simply negates it.

There are also other good reasons to use ALC, but I won't get into them here. This is not the place for it.

 

[JesteRace]

They don't get messed up by it. You can still L-cancel manually, just nothing will change.

And you don't get rewarded OVER someone who learned how to do it, it simply negates it.

There are also other good reasons to use ALC, but I won't get into them here. This is not the place for it.

The game is still going to register that you pressed L/R, though. And because you ALC, which didn't require that button press, that will most likely result in an accidental shield, will it not? And because people who learned how to L-cancel would have to unlearn their muscle memory to work around this, it would make the assertion that it rewards people who didn't learn how to L-cancel over them pretty fair.

And where else but the ruleset thread to discuss this?

 

[4tlas]

The game is still going to register that you pressed L/R, though. And because you ALC, which didn't require that button press, that will most likely result in an accidental shield, will it not? And because people who learned how to L-cancel would have to unlearn their muscle memory to work around this, it would make the assertion that it rewards people who didn't learn how to L-cancel over them pretty fair.

And where else but the ruleset thread to discuss this?

No, it doesn't result in an accidental shield. So all of that other stuff doesn't happen.

Also we had a long debate about it in a "what would happen if ALC got implemented into rulesets?" thread, which is where I would expect it to continue.

 

[CORY]

The game is still going to register that you pressed L/R, though. And because you ALC, which didn't require that button press, that will most likely result in an accidental shield, will it not? And because people who learned how to L-cancel would have to unlearn their muscle memory to work around this, it would make the assertion that it rewards people who didn't learn how to L-cancel over them pretty fair.

And where else but the ruleset thread to discuss this?

go screw with it in debug. the only time hitting shield is going to make you shield with alc is if you screw up the timing and press/hold the button after the landing animation for the aerial finishes.

 

[4tlas]

go screw with it in debug. the only time hitting shield is going to make you shield with alc is if you screw up the timing and press/hold the button after the landing animation for the aerial finishes.

Right, which is no different from manual L-cancelling.