Proposed Ruleset for Smash 4 Tournaments

[Vkrm]

I wonder how many tournament vets would shy away from a random stage/character match.

Less than you think. It would probably be harder to find competitive players who dislike items.

 

[PikaJew]

I think we'd have mutiny

Why do you ask though?

It would lead for some interesting matches.
Playing the cards you're dealt.
I know people are confident in their Smash skills with a familiar character on a familiar stage, but I wonder how many are confident that they can beat any one given any circumstance.
Some situations people will draw the short end of the stick playing as a character they never do on a stage they hate against someone who managed to get their main, but that would put emphasis on knowing every inch of the game and finding ways to beat anyone with whatever you have to fight with.
It would lead to a lot of people complaining about tier mismatches, but I mean if there are people who can rally past Falco with Pichu, or Metaknight with Ganondorf then does it really matter what their rankings are?
I would love to see how each player uses each character on the stage that's selected.
It would really bring out the versatility in some Smash players who are comfortable with anything.
Take the players out of their comfort zone and see if they can find a way to rise to the challenge.
That in my mind would be an incredible tournament to be a part of.

Idk about you guys but with each Smash series I make it a mission to make every single character my main (obviously finding favourites along the way) but doing so allows me to know each character inside and out so I know how to win with them, but more importantly I know how to defeat them.

Hopefully with Smash 4 striving for a more balanced roster something like this would be possible in the future.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

So because one guy is able to perform amazingly on it, it means that kind of performance is the standard now for everyone else?

Just because Spud Webb could dunk doesn't mean every other 5'5" guy has no excuse for not doing it.

Actually, yes, because one person can perform amazingly well with or in something, it does set the standard of performance for everyone else. We don't make excuses or lower standards at every Olympics event (except to change those standards in areas that need to be safely performed like on the Luge) and we especially don't do that when someone sets a world record. Additionally the gold standard for how well something performs is determined by the better players, not a bunch of mediocre players or tournament results (although tournament results can be evidence for viability of something.)

You cannot make that analogy. There is an inherent handicap in the 5'5 person. The brain is a lot more malleable than the human body, and there less to compensate for while practicing.

As you have a tendency to put things in an inappropriate context, I will clarify that I am not arguing for a larger stage list: I can understand the argument where added complexity can eventually become a detraction, but you cannot deny a standard was set.

EDIT: P.S. This thread makes me sad

 

[Evil-Guy]

Oh my! What a vulgar first post. Dear heavens, my panties! Oh! I'm so shocked at how crude it is.

 

[Chiroz]

I was trying not to indulge into this debate but for those of you saying Brood didn't get gimped on RC, you are either blind or you cannot grasp the technicalities of the game.

I have only watched the first stock and the whole first stock is M2K only hitting Brood when RC forces Brood to be in a bad position. M2K doesn't even bait or move at all he just waits for the stage to grant him free assured hits. Whats worse is that there is nothing Brood can actually do about it, he is playing really well, yet the stage puts him in a position where he either gives a few free hits to M2K or he just dies, there is no other choice. Sure, Brood did splendidly considering he's at such a huge disadvantage, but that replay just shows how wrong a stage like that is.

 

[[Corn]]

One can only hope for some people to understand that learning stages is easy and you can learn fundamentals and translate them to stages wonderfully.

Do you remember Brood at APEX2010 and that he NEVER got gimped on Rainbow Cruise?

I cant tell if this is resourcefulness or simply a misunderstanding of what happened in the match.

 

[HugS™]

You know, there's one surefire way to have things go your way and have no one bash you too much. Be really good. That way, if enough proponents of these goofy stages start winning a lot, on all stages, you can dictate what works and what doesn't.

Conversely, if you're the kind of player that's beating the good players only on stupid stages, and rarely anywhere else, the good players will find a way to end it.

 

[MopedOfJustice]

It would lead for some interesting matches.
Playing the cards you're dealt.
I know people are confident in their Smash skills with a familiar character on a familiar stage, but I wonder how many are confident that they can beat any one given any circumstance.
Some situations people will draw the short end of the stick playing as a character they never do on a stage they hate against someone who managed to get their main, but that would put emphasis on knowing every inch of the game and finding ways to beat anyone with whatever you have to fight with.
It would lead to a lot of people complaining about tier mismatches, but I mean if there are people who can rally past Falco with Pichu, or Metaknight with Ganondorf then does it really matter what their rankings are?
I would love to see how each player uses each character on the stage that's selected.
It would really bring out the versatility in some Smash players who are comfortable with anything.
Take the players out of their comfort zone and see if they can find a way to rise to the challenge.
That in my mind would be an incredible tournament to be a part of.

Idk about you guys but with each Smash series I make it a mission to make every single character my main (obviously finding favourites along the way) but doing so allows me to know each character inside and out so I know how to win with them, but more importantly I know how to defeat them.

Hopefully with Smash 4 striving for a more balanced roster something like this would be possible in the future.

This would be especially good with a liberal stage list. I agree with your philosophy, and do my best to do the same myself, which I could do in Brawl and 64, not so much in Melee.
Speaking of "hand your dealt," would this fantasy tournament have ISP (items)?

I was trying not to indulge into this debate but for those of you saying Brood didn't get gimped on RC, you are either blind or you cannot grasp the technicalities of the game.

I have only watched the first stock and the whole first stock is M2K only hitting Brood when RC forces Brood to be in a bad position. M2K doesn't even bait or move at all he just waits for the stage to grant him free assured hits. Whats worse is that there is nothing Brood can actually do about it, he is playing really well, yet the stage puts him in a position where he either gives a few free hits to M2K or he just dies, there is no other choice. Sure, Brood did splendidly considering he's at such a huge disadvantage, but that replay just shows how wrong a stage like that is.

I think that M2K was being a bit of an @$$#0|<, but that Brood was amazing. You have to admit it was a close match, and if Brood got just a few more side-specials connected, he could have won. I think, as I said previously, that it shows how you can still win at a disadvantage (even though he didn't). If those stages weren't banned for being "unfair," more people would want to develop counters for the gimpery that can take place. As is, we see it as insurmountable only because of inertia, not taking into account what a concerted effort to develop a counter could produce (Spoiler: a counter).

 

[Jack Kieser]

You know, there's one surefire way to have things go your way and have no one bash you too much. Be really good. That way, if enough proponents of these goofy stages start winning a lot, on all stages, you can dictate what works and what doesn't.

Conversely, if you're the kind of player that's beating the good players only on stupid stages, and rarely anywhere else, the good players will find a way to end it.

Yes, because we all know that the person with the most to gain dictating the ruleset doesn't introduce conflicts of interest at all.

 

[J1NG]

You must not know how insanely difficult it is to unban things. Once you ban a stage it almost NEVER is unbanned no mater what you do. I can't actually think of a time when a banned stage was unbanned.

I suppose I don't know. But here's to hoping for DLC, I guess. Maybe stage updates will help persuade players to not ban 80% of the stage select.

 

[nat pagle]

Actually, yes, because one person can perform amazingly well with or in something, it does set the standard of performance for everyone else. We don't make excuses or lower standards at every Olympics event (except to change those standards in areas that need to be safely performed like on the Luge) and we especially don't do that when someone sets a world record. Additionally the gold standard for how well something performs is determined by the better players, not a bunch of mediocre players or tournament results (although tournament results can be evidence for viability of something.)

Under this logic, no stage should ever be banned since there's always going to be some sort of "skill" to overcome the disadvantages or advantages. Why lower the standard in Melee just because Fox can waveshine someone clear into the walk off blast wall indefinitely? Should've used more skill.

You cannot make that analogy. There is an inherent handicap in the 5'5 person. The brain is a lot more malleable than the human body, and there less to compensate for while practicing.

There's an inherent handicap of certain characters on certain stages.

As you have a tendency to put things in an inappropriate context, I will clarify that I am not arguing for a larger stage list: I can understand the argument where added complexity can eventually become a detraction, but you cannot deny a standard was set.

And another standard would be set if someone did well on Hanenbow, right? Or any other god-awful competitive stage where someone wins once in a blue moon?

 

[Chiroz]

Under this logic, no stage should ever be banned since there's always going to be some sort of "skill" to overcome the disadvantages or advantages. Why lower the standard in Melee just because Fox can waveshine someone clear into the walk off blast wall indefinitely? Should've used more skill.



There's an inherent handicap of certain characters on certain stages.




And another standard would be set if someone did well on Hanenbow, right? Or any other god-awful competitive stage where someone wins once in a blue moon?

Nat, I don't think Quilt was arguing against your overall argument, I believe he was arguing about that specific sentence he quoted.

If a single player managed to avoid being waveshined by every single Fox in every single game while on a walk off stage then it could be argued that that specific stage shouldn't be banned on the basis that Fox can waveshine because this one player did manage to do avoid it and so everyone else should just learn to adapt, so your statement (which says we shouldn't base decisions on if only one player can achieve a certain outcome or not) is not correct.

Unfortunately, no player can achieve this as of yet so your overall argument remains correct or at the very least agreeable by me.



To the people who are talking about the Brood replay. Take into account that M2K isn't being an asshole, he is playing the way he thinks is most effective, which is getting free hits because the stage grants him those hits without him needing to touch the control. M2K is actually playing horribly, he doesn't punish as he should and he doesn't actually take into account Olimar's movements, he just knows when the stage will grant him hits and he takes them.

Walk Off Stages and Moving Camera stages force this type of gameplay, which many people don't like. When people don't like certain things they slowly lose interest and thus the community slowly loses people. The most important aspect of a competitive scene is its people.

Without people, there is no scene. This is why preference actually matters.

Anyways, Brood was playing very well, but quite honestly look at M2K play and look at all the mistakes he made, I only watched the first 2 stocks and turned the video off, it was rather displeasing seeing that match, it didn't look like high level play, it was just a really inefficient camp, which even though it was severely inefficient it was still effective just because of the stage.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

Under this logic, no stage should ever be banned since there's always going to be some sort of "skill" to overcome the disadvantages or advantages. Why lower the standard in Melee just because Fox can waveshine someone clear into the walk off blast wall indefinitely? Should've used more skill.

...As you have a tendency to put things in an inappropriate context, I will clarify that I am not arguing for a larger stage list...

Under what logic should any stage should never be banned? You are going to have to elaborate that point further. It doesn't necessarily follow that we would benefit from adding the different skills these stages would demand (as HugS has said) just because someone performed well. I hope I am not taking HugS out of context, but competitive players benefit from skills that involve fighting the other player, not fighting with the stage. However, there's no denying someone did something skillfully in a different way. On some level, it actually does set a new standard of performance for everyone else.

Going a bit extreme here, if Taylor Hicks came even second place in Melee's EVO 2014 while boxing during a game of Jeopardy (where he has to shoot at his buzzer from a distance) and balancing on a boogie board, the rest of us would have to take a sobering look at how we're playing our normal game.

There's an inherent handicap of certain characters on certain stages.

That's true, but you were making a comparison of a skill which doesn't bar much in the way of physical limitations to one that greatly does. Given we actually followed through with the analogy, the other players would actually not be able to defend their less poor performance. "Well, I would have been able to X if not for some non-personal (character or otherwise) Y!" is almost never an acceptable excuse for how you performed. Chances are you are going into the competition already knowing what advantages and disadvantages you have.

EDIT: P.S. This thread makes me sad

 

[Mr.Showtime]

We should have all stages in a Street Fighter 4 tournament instead of just the Practice stage, because the lag gives other characters advantages. Especially low-tiers. It's stupid that only Practice Stage is played. So boring and flat.

 

[LiteralGrill]

We should have all stages in a Street Fighter 4 tournament instead of just the Practice stage, because the lag gives other characters advantages. Especially low-tiers. It's stupid that only Practice Stage is played. So boring and flat.

Not sure if trolling on this one, especially with how we treated MK and Fox with stages in the past.

 

[Mr.Showtime]

Not sure if trolling on this one, especially with how we treated MK and Fox with stages in the past.

Lol I'm just being sarcastic. I can have my moments. =P

 

[LiteralGrill]

Lol I'm just being sarcastic. I can have my moments. =P

Wanted to be sure! I almost saw the glimpses of a very strange argument

 

[nat pagle]

Under what logic should any stage should never be banned? You are going to have to elaborate that point further. It doesn't necessarily follow that we would benefit from adding the different skills these stages would demand (as HugS has said) just because someone performed well. I hope I am not taking HugS out of context, but competitive players benefit from skills that involve fighting the other player, not fighting with the stage. However, there's no denying someone did something skillfully in a different way. On some level, it actually does set a new standard of performance for everyone else.

"Actually, yes, because one person can perform amazingly well with or in something, it does set the standard of performance for everyone else. We don't make excuses or lower standards at every Olympics event (except to change those standards in areas that need to be safely performed like on the Luge) and we especially don't do that when someone sets a world record. Additionally the gold standard for how well something performs is determined by the better players, not a bunch of mediocre players or tournament results (although tournament results can be evidence for viability of something.)"

That logic. You said it yourself, "...because one person can perform amazingly well with or in something, it does set the standard of performance for everyone else.". Therefore, if in any one case someone can perform well in say, Hanenbow or some ridiculous stage and come up with a strat, everyone's now equally required to play at that level no matter how much it can screw up all levels of play.


Either it sets a new standard of performance or not. Unless of course, you aren't implying that the Olympic level of competition is applicable to all levels of competition. For instance, judging Level 4 Gymnastics the same way as the Senior Elite level because the bar's that high. Not to mention you don't see people Wobbling like Wobbles does. Yet it's supposed to be the gold standard now.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Walk Off Stages and Moving Camera stages force this type of gameplay, which many people don't like. When people don't like certain things they slowly lose interest and thus the community slowly loses people. The most important aspect of a competitive scene is its people.

Without people, there is no scene. This is why preference actually matters.

As sad as it is, this is true.
It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense or it has the stupidest basis ever (like saying "stage is gay"), if a majority of people don't like something, TOs can't just force them to do it.
If people feel obliged they will lose interest, that's a sad universal rule about how much you can get just by complaining.

 

[Jack Kieser]

As sad as it is, this is true.
It doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense or it has the stupidest basis ever (like saying "stage is gay"), if a majority of people don't like something, TOs can't just force them to do it.
If people feel obliged they will lose interest, that's a sad universal rule about how much you can get just by complaining.

That's why I really wish we would be folded into the FGC proper. Look at, for instance, the recent ban on collusion in the FGC. They had a problem, and just like that (*snaps*), they had a rule in place at every major national and EVO; no one will challenge that. The FGC has it's share of problems, but cohesion is not one of them.

Then, there's us. We are, for all intents and purposes, a loose confederacy of TOs. Texas does one thing, NE does another, WC does something different, Europe and Central America do something else... we have no cohesion. The days of the Back Room are over because not a single region has any respect for the other regions. But, part of it is simply money and influence. The business structure isn't there, the pot sizes aren't there. There's no event or series of events that players wouldn't be willing to abandon because community, at the end of the day, doesn't really matter much here anymore, not unless we're all against someone else, like we were against Skullgirls and Super Turbo for the EVO drive.

If we got folded into the FGC, though, we'd finally have that cohesion. We could have a Back Room again because the Back Room would have access to EVO's ruleset, in addition to making our larger nationals into official "Road to EVO" qualifying events. We'd have TONS of money on the line, much more prestige, and no one in their right mind would skip an EVO or a qualifier because of one stage, or hell, because of most possible ruleset changes. Even better, losing players like that wouldn't even be a problem because we'd have a steady influx of new players from stream viewers and larger events, not to mention the SRK players who'd no doubt come over to the series that gave Chris G his start.

For as great as our community looks on the main stage of EVO, I can't help but feel that we're children when we get home and start playing amongst ourselves again. And, a big part of it is because a lot of times... we act like children. Petulant children who whine and throw tantrums when we don't get our way exactly the way we like it.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

The skill argument has been invoked at several points here. I should start by explaining exactly why Midwest is a weak region. It has nothing to do with rules; it's all geography. I live in Kansas City, and let's say I want to go to a tournament that's not in-town but in one of the closer cities. St. Louis? That's a four hour drive. Wichita? Three hours. Des Moines? Four hours. Doing stuff local is great except for the fact that you're going to be dealing with such a small club of people. If you have a really big and healthy local scene, you maybe are looking at 20 people. Sometimes you're stuck in an unhealthy scene and are playing just 4-5 regularly. Even 20 is too few, and either way you quickly see yourself only playing events monthly instead of weekly and just in general not getting enough practice. It's easy to see how your growth gets stunted.

I will say that for years (when I was active), the best Midwest-West player was Domo, and it wasn't really close. He was all for allowing tons of stages, and it sure didn't seem to hurt him. I was just remembering old matches like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBJAgCD1S1U

That's 2009 metagame, but still, it shows fairly legitimate gameplay on Port Town Aero Dive.

Honestly, OS also addressed players with skill and these stages as well. The argument that these stages are skill-repellant is kinda absurd. Sure, if you only play on 3 stages, you're probably going to be better on those three stages than someone who plays on 30 stages will be on any of them. That's common sense; you get ten times as much practice on any one of your stages as the other guy. Of course, if the only match-up you play is Fox vs Marth, you're going to be the best at that match-up, but when someone picks Yoshi, you might lose horribly because you have no clue how to deal with that. You might cry that it's not a real test of skill since Yoshi isn't viable so you are only losing to a gimmick character, but Yoshi is a part of the game and to be a good player you have to be able to deal with Yoshi. Sure you can be a bit better at the "important" match-ups if you never practice the Yoshi match-up, but does that really make you more skilled at the game as a whole? Part of skill is diversifying your skillset, and saying that by requiring fewer skills we could be better at the fewer remaining is obviously true but also not really convincing at all that we should remove the diversity. If you're a truly good player, you should be able to win on any fair stage.

The camping thing I'll say two things about. For one, most people camp more than they should on a lot of unfamiliar stages out of fear. Spend some time in training mode on Rainbow Cruise and really learn the stage, exactly when everything spawns, etc.. Master your character's movement options well and be comfortable navigating. Then play on the stage against someone who tries to camp the carpets out and such. Just go crazy rushdown on them during those segments. I can pretty much guarantee it will pay off. It's the same thing with stages with hazards. Don't camp out of fear. KNOW what they are going to do, and play aggressively with them. For two, Brawl promotes camping. I mean, I love Brawl, but it's just true. I camp, you camp, everyone camps in Brawl. It's legitimate and strategically interesting gameplay, but it is patience testing and boring to watch. It's just the kind of game Brawl is, and if you wanted to change that, you'd have to start by banning MK, Olimar, Ice Climbers, and Wario, and that's just a start of what you'd have to do. We as a community shouldn't have an interest in fighting against camping as a tactic with our rulesets, and honestly when you really know how to play on all these stages, it's not like the typical "janky" stage is actually more camp-favoring than Battlefield.

In terms of keeping track of what's going on as a skill, it's seriously not that hard. In a match I was really trying to win, I have literally never been killed "because of a stage hazard" in Brawl. I've been forced into stage hazards by opponents playing sharply, but in those cases, my opponent and not the stage was the cause of my death. The stage moving doesn't give you a positional disadvantage. You know it's going to move, and you gave yourself a positional disadvantage by not spacing to account for that. Like let's take Jigglypuff vs Fox on Rainbow Cruise. No, the stage will never force you above Fox. You can stay low during the carpets if you want to, using your superior aerial mobility to use nearly gone platforms safely. When the stage is ready to fall to the boat, get low first and try to make it into a juggle situation against Fox. You have five jumps while he has one; you can do this first.

This transitions into the character thing. I've seen several claims here that basically amount to saying that fewer stages leads to better character balance. That's simply not true. MK doesn't break stages in Brawl. MK (mostly) breaks Brawl, and that's true on every stagelist. When MK beats Falco on RC, it's more about Falco's weaknesses than MK's strengths, and at the same time, characters like G&W will counterpick RC against MK all day. I actually can't think of a single character who would generally counterpick RC who would be scared to go there against MK; every character MK takes to RC hates RC in more match-ups than MK. Even then though, there's more to the game than most know, and I'm glad that Brood's Olimar was brought up since I was thinking of Fino's Olimar which was always notoriously actually a threat on RC. RC in truth is not a bad Olimar stage (not good either, really middle of the road for him), but that's counter-intuitive and you only really know it when you see a good Olimar use it properly. Honestly I'm not even thinking of which characters are screwed by RC against MK other than Falco and Ice Climbers. The former is just a case of one character having a pretty bad stage, and the latter is a character flaw that they are bad on most stages that for some reason we think shouldn't exist as a character flaw (despite the fact that ICs infinite based gameplay is generally terrible for the game so promoting it with our rulesets is strange to say the least). As an aside, Brinstar is basically the same story except flip Falco and Olimar's roles (Falco is less bad on Brinstar than you'd think, and it's just a case of Olimar having one really bad stage).

Even more, OS was getting at this, but I'll just say it. Non-top characters are better on broader stage lists. I've seen Ganon mentioned several times, and as someone who actually has some knowledge of Brawl Ganon's metagame, I'll say that he wants as liberal of a stage list as possible. You might think this isn't true because he's so slow so he can't exert effective stage control, but that's why he's a bad character in general. If you are going to pick Ganon anyway, you have to think about how you leverage your strengths. Your best move by far is uair, and stages like Norfair that allow you to attack from below more frequently are a huge help. Your recovery is one of the worst in the game so any stage that has more ground than usual or more than two ledges is a huge help in not getting gimped, and with your high KO power, you don't struggle to kill on those stages yourself. You have no real ability to approach about half the cast in a static neutral situation so stages that have dynamic neutral help you greatly; them having to move gives you some opportunity to attack. Ganon is still a really bad character, but he's relatively a lot worse if you go down to a conservative stagelist (I'm talking about the difference between losing match-ups 3-7 or 1-9). Real play also shows this. Atlantic North is the most conservative ruleset region, and it also tiers up the most. Midwest is the most liberal region, and we also play the broadest diversity of characters. I've had tons of cases of seeing undervalued characters really perform on these stages. Have you ever seen how Link can use moving stages to up the ante on his zoning game? Has anyone here seen how well Brawl Jigglypuff controls Jungle Japes? I remember one game I counterpick a Sheik player to Norfair, and this player begins to do these crazy tricks to snipe my sharking with Vanish and then proceeds to do thing after thing to control Norfair as Sheik that I didn't even know was possible before. I adapt and win, but it was crazy close and I would never have been able to pull it off if I weren't so specifically good at Norfair myself.

This post is already too long, but PictoChat got mentioned a lot so I'll just say this about it. If you have actually played a lot on the stage, you don't get killed by the hazards. For serious, as someone with the experience, it just doesn't happen. We can talk about safe zones and stuff; honestly I never bothered myself so much with them. I don't hover over where the only dangerous drawing (the arrows) spawns hitboxes at the times a drawing is about the happen (and you know when those times are), and I don't low recover to the left ledge at those times either (it could draw the line that removes that ledge). Otherwise you can just play reactively to what's going on, and if you know the basic gameplay on all 27 drawings, it's not hard. The mine card and pirahna plant both are reactable in their hitbox spawns (they take a bit longer than most to be ready to hit you), if you DI up the missiles never kill since they have fixed knockback, the spike walls can always be survived by DI down and tech no matter how high your damage, the fire does 1% per hit and only kills at crazy high damage so I don't even care that much if I get hit by it unless I'm at such a crazy high damage... Drawings spawning in places that are going to hit you in general is super rare (like once every 100 games rare), and honestly I've never seen a game decided by it while I've seen lots of games decided by what turnips Peach pulled or even the support ghost (YI: B is the most random plausibly legal stage in Brawl, no joke). What I do know is that PictoChat is a fair stage that doesn't really disadvantage any character too greatly, but it is also Sonic's best counterpick while being no one else's best counterpick (maybe in the running for Yoshi, but Yoshi's stage game is weird and I'm not comfortable making a definitive claim about that) so the main character balance effect of banning it is nerfing Sonic. You have a stage that in practice never swings matches randomly among players who actually know the stage, that has incredibly little effect on the top tier metagame since every top character has better stages (unless you play with full list for game 1 in which case as one of the most neutral stages in the game it makes the game more balanced that way), and that does actually somewhat help Sonic by being legal. I don't understand the ban rationale. The game is objectively better with the stage; we all just have to learn 27 drawings and some basic stage mechanics that personally I had pretty much down by the end of month 1 even living in the middle of nowhere with very little real competition (I was in Rolla MO at the time). If this is the poster child for a bad stage, I just don't get it.

 

[Strong Badam]

mw's rulesets have traditionally been terrible
but it has nothing to do why we're worse at the game than the coasts. our players are just so spread out that our talent doesn't have the opportunity to practice against each other like other egions.

 

[Pacack]

The only reason that I liked the OP is because it was written so absurdly.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

That logic. You said it yourself, "...because one person can perform amazingly well with or in something, it does set the standard of performance for everyone else.". Therefore, if in any one case someone can perform well in say, Hanenbow or some ridiculous stage and come up with a strat, everyone's now equally required to play at that level no matter how much it can screw up all levels of play.

Yeah, that's kind of the nature of being the best at something, even in a vacuum. Everyone is required to play at or near that level in that scenario if they want to continue making a stake at being competitive, or they are going to get rolled over. But that doesn't mean we have to make the stage legal. One player doing extremely well against seemingly insurmountable odds doesn't mean we should make changes to the game (but it may mean we need to take our own play up a notch to meet the new standard level of play.)

" Not to mention you don't see people Wobbling like Wobbles does. Yet it's supposed to be the gold standard now.

Maybe I am not understanding what you're saying, and I definitely am not implying Wobbles placed strictly because of his technique, but is it any coincidence he was the highest ranking IC at Evo this year? Are you implying that doesn't make him the gold standard for the technique? He has the highest known human capacity for playing Nana & Popo.

Yet what does any of this actually have to do with stage legality, nat pagle? I'm not arguing stage legality at all. If you really think anything I said could be used to argue for whatever, go ahead, take it and make it your own, I don't care. I know what you mean when you say (paraphrasing) "If a (certain level of) skill exists to counteract the (formerly seeming) disadvantages of the stage then there should be legality for that stage." but that is only tangent to what I am saying. You're making this more arbitrary than called for.

P.S. This thread makes me sad

 

[Cassio]

You know, there's one surefire way to have things go your way and have no one bash you too much. Be really good. That way, if enough proponents of these goofy stages start winning a lot, on all stages, you can dictate what works and what doesn't.

Conversely, if you're the kind of player that's beating the good players only on stupid stages, and rarely anywhere else, the good players will find a way to end it.

Wanted to be sure! I almost saw the glimpses of a very strange argument

I know you guys already sorta came to this conclusion, but its worth stating in a shorter post.

Just let each region do what it wants

This is coming from years of experience dealing with a brawl community that became extremely divisive for what seems in retrospect fairly stupid reasons when there was a simple answer, instead of spending all that time and effort in helping to improve the community. Obviously nationals and leagues might require a little more consistency, but otherwise just let people be happy with what they want.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Has this become another thread about wobbling? Long story short, ice climbers were like melee's metaknight.
Let's just trust in the rigorous playtesting of nintendo games and believe that the next game will be the hypest sh$# at future EVOs.
But wait, what if someone plays with a keyboard and presses backwards and forwards at the same time thus activating moonwalking! Then everyone will play with a keyboard so they can walk backwards and attack forwards! It'll be the next game's wavedash, calling it.

 

[Ghostbone]

This post is already too long, but PictoChat got mentioned a lot so I'll just say this about it. If you have actually played a lot on the stage, you don't get killed by the hazards.

This is the most untrue thing I've ever seen anyone post.
Please tell me how a Falco is supposed to recover on the left side of the stage without either getting randomly gimped or easily punished by the opponent. (and there's no warning, the ledge disappears before the line even appears, pictochat doesn't have any sort of timer for the transformations either, it could happen at any time when there's not some picture currently active)
And yes, recovering on-stage to give your opponent a free punish counts as the hazard killing/hurting you. (even if it's only by proxy)

And then there's the spikes spawning in the middle of someone grabbing you, so they throw you into them and kill you. That happens, a lot, that's someone getting randomly killed by the hazards.

Honestly defending pictochat is like defending WarioWare, it's ludicrous, just playing on Pictochat makes most people realise how bull**** it is every game.

 

[MopedOfJustice]

This is the most untrue thing I've ever seen anyone post.
Please tell me how a Falco is supposed to recover on the left side of the stage without either getting randomly gimped or easily punished by the opponent.
And yes, recovering on-stage to give your opponent a free punish counts as the hazard killing/hurting you. (even if it's only by proxy)

And then there's the spikes spawning in the middle of someone grabbing you, so they throw you into them and kill you. That happens, a lot, that's someone getting randomly killed by the hazards.

Honestly defending pictochat is like defending WarioWare, it's ludicrous, just playing on Pictochat makes most people realise how bull**** it is every game.

If they caused it, the kill isn't random.

 

[Ghostbone]

If they caused it, the kill isn't random.

....
>No picture drawn, Player A grabs Player B
>Spikes randomly spawn
>Player A throws Player B into the randomly spawned spikes for a kill.

Do you not know what random means.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

If they caused it, the kill isn't random.

The stage presented an advantage that wasn't there in a way that couldn't be predicted unless you had cycled through all of the drawings at least once (or if it happens to be the last drawing) and committed the order to memory. Just because the character caused the death doesn't mean the advantage wasn't random.

EDIT: P.S. This thread makes me sad

 

[ぱみゅ]

As for Pictochat, some people claim that they never get killed by the randomness because they never put THEMSELVES into the transformations, but get outplayed at the worst possible moment and get punished more heavily than in any other circumstances for it.
Some people think it's okay, saying that they shouldn't have risked getting outplayed at that one moment (better luck next time).
Others think it's not because the reward for outplaying suddenly gets bigger at random without really deserving it (up to interpretation).

But anyway, if the burden of proof is over the people claiming it's okay (which is actually easy to just ignore, the status quo will probably not change no matter the argument), why even bother debating against it?

 

[DMG]

I think what's painful for people is that they see the diversity and freedom Smash offers in many areas, like overall character movement, character designs, items, and stage choices, and yet competitive play naturally weeds out many of these. When it comes to new smash games, the response I would have had before, is to let as many stages be legal as possible and weed them out with time and experience. However, as someone who played Brawl in the early days and literally lived through matches on "obvious" banned stages, I can say that competitively we may be better off by chopping things off fairly quickly.


Throughout Smash history, we have consistently shrunken the legal stage list for every game. The reason is obvious: competitive players evolve and prefer simpler stages. Whether their views on stages are arbitrary or misguided on what could truly be competitive, the test of time has consistently leaned Smash games towards the more static/plain stages. It's hard to lean that way in your heart if you are drawn to Smash because it's different than the traditional fighter archetype. I think a majority of us may have gotten into Smash because consiously or subconsciously we liked that it was different than the average fighter, or because we sensed something great about it that you can''t easily put into words and accurately convey to someone who asks about it. As time goes on, we see a beauty that's greater than the game as a whole. With tuning and refining, we attempt to drive the game to greater heights. It's an ironic idea, that stripping down some of the features and facets that naturally drew us to the game, could then lead to something better. In that regard, I don't think any other fighting game is nearly comparable. It's a testament to how profoundly vast and diverse Smash is. Even after applying the "community touch" of removing stages, items, etc, we have an incredibly rich game. As much as we may question or hate Sakurai and the people who made specific development choices, they were borderline genius when you look at Smash games individually and in totality. Purely genius. There's no way to possibly describe how amazing it is, whether it was through luck or accident or intention.


We desire excellence, and to drive the game further. I think there are 2 types of growth in competitive Smash (as far as the game is concerned, not players): raising the vertical bar of what can be done, and expanding the horizon. In my opinion, the plainer stages give way to raising the bar, and the more diverse stages expand the horizon. We need both to reach the real potential that Smash offers. It's a mistake to lean too far in either direction: if every game was played on FD, players may interact with the stage and with their opponent in near perfect ways, but we would have much less variety in what will work. If something doesn't work on FD, that is it. The game then would tend to stale. With too many stages, you get situations where it's more about knowing the alternative options and strategies, instead of striving for perfection. You get some diversity and the game feels like it opens up, but it's rougher around the edges and not as refined. There's also the unfortunate reality that despite the seemingly "good" facets of a stage, that it can lead to degenerative strategies or character choices. You risk that by including more stages, and it detracts from the overall experience.


The mindset many people have when it comes to stages, is that they'd rather lean a bit too much on the "FD's" of the world and cut out the risks and downsides of different stages, even if it means technically throwing away stages that very well may be fine. We may only approach 70-80% of the true potential of Smash that way, but it's the safer and more certain approach. We get lucky that even with seemingly over conservative stage lists, that we can still refine and expand the game and that even with our strongest efforts that we haven't staled it yet. We should be honestly grateful for that.



It's hard to say whether we should wait before stripping down the next Smash game, but it's inevitable. We will do it eventually, in our pursuit for greatness. We will take the next Smash game and put our will into making it the best it can be. That's not our obligation, but our desire, and it's why we're Smashers.

 

[Kewkky]

I'm of the type that would like a conservative stagelist first, then start adding other stages as we test them out instead of the opposite. I think we should transfer from the previous games' rulesets of being conservative in their stages, and ease in new stages as we test them out. Jumping into a game with no criteria, or not knowing how to even run the first tournaments, is a surefire way of splitting the community between liberals and conservatives like what happened with Brawl in different states.

This is what I think, sort of along the lines HugS posted in the OP:

- Stages must not have auto-kill/high-damage hazards.
- Stages must not give characters infinites/game-breaking tactics (prime example, grab release infinites against walls).
- Stages must not be random, or give players unfair advantages (prime example, WarioWare for SSBB).
- If there are walkoffs they'll be banned, but we can revisit them later if we really want to as a community (unless we have exploitable moves, like Dedede and his chaingrab on SSBB, then they stay banned).

I don't know about caves of life, though. I personally don't mind and I can see some players using them as counterpicks, but I can also see how one could use them for stalling once they have a stock lead.


I'm about to go to sleep so I decided to just post my two cents instead of spending 30 more mins by reading the thread... Although I will tomorrow.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

This is the most untrue thing I've ever seen anyone post.
Please tell me how a Falco is supposed to recover on the left side of the stage without either getting randomly gimped or easily punished by the opponent. (and there's no warning, the ledge disappears before the line even appears, pictochat doesn't have any sort of timer for the transformations either, it could happen at any time when there's not some picture currently active)
And yes, recovering on-stage to give your opponent a free punish counts as the hazard killing/hurting you. (even if it's only by proxy)

And then there's the spikes spawning in the middle of someone grabbing you, so they throw you into them and kill you. That happens, a lot, that's someone getting randomly killed by the hazards.

Honestly defending pictochat is like defending WarioWare, it's ludicrous, just playing on Pictochat makes most people realise how bull**** it is every game.

I have a reply to you, but it's not the point of this post so I'm collapsing it.

[collapse=PictoChat is fair]By the spikes you mean the arrows I presume (the spikes can just be DI'd down and you tech off the ground). The arrows are the most "problematic" of the 27 drawings for sure, but if you get grabbed right at that moment and right at that position in which that could happen, it's your bad still.

PictoChat does have a timer for the drawings. It's not something you can do per simple clock reading since it's based on how long it's been since the last drawing was done and different drawings have different durations (also different drawings have different amounts of time they take to be fully drawn, and sometimes you can't see the drawing being started on the first frame it happens depending on which drawing it is and where on the stage you are), but it is fixed. I've played around in PictoChat in frame advance; I'm quite sure of this. Even if I hadn't, when you play on it enough, you just "feel" when a drawing is going to happen. The knowledge is on the underwater part of your mental iceberg and is hard to verbalize, but you know it to use it when you play. This also leads to the answer to your Falco question. The Falco just mixes up the timing of his recovery such that he won't be trying to grab that ledge at the absolute worst possible moment. Either fastfall and such to grab it faster or double jump and such to get there slower. Most recoveries in Brawl are high, and PictoChat in particular has a small off-stage area. If the line is drawn while Falco is above it, he can just land on it and run across it.

Seriously, equating Pictochat to WarioWare is what's ludicrous. I'm unconvinced you've really played on it to a substantial degree. On WarioWare you can expect at least half of the games to be wildly impacted by the item reward mechanic which is completely random. On PictoChat a tiny percentage of games will have any impact at all to hard to react to drawings, and of those tiny percentage, an even tinier percentage of those will result in character deaths. Given that we play in a game in which one of the characters has a move that has a 1/9 (actually a bit better if you use it right but whatever) instant kill move that's completely random and sometimes does no hitstun and hurts that character for using it, I think we can deal with extreme corner possibilities like the far less than 1% chance that things will happen just exactly wrong on any one game of PictoChat to screw someone especially since even then they should be expected to know how the stage works and have played to put themselves in a position in which that could happen. The only "problem" I ever saw with PictoChat was that it was a counterpick stage that offered no character (other than Sonic, a fairly uncommon mid tier) a reason to pick it so it almost never saw play which led to people being unfamiliar with its large degree of nuance. This is one of the reasons I support every legal stage being fully legal (including for game 1); I don't want stages like PictoChat, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Frigate Orpheon that are obviously fair while having more "dynamic" features but offer such small advantages to become the forgotten stages again.[/collapse]

To DMG, I don't super disagree with a lot of what you said, but I do look at it a bit differently. I see the main problem is that our stagelists keep changing, and that's why we end up where we do. I do agree that some of the stages legal in super early Brawl were dubious (seriously, places had Hanenbow legal), and I'm thinking that compromise is reasonable. Stages like Onett that are fair enough but widely hated with a few issues here and there I could accept losing, but the trade-off would have to be that stages like Norfair would need to be enshrined as legal forever as a trade there. Brawl had over 40 stages. I'd be okay with us only playing on around 20 from early on and just using those 20 forever, accepting that the other 20 will never see play. I mean, I look at it like this for Brawl:

[collapse=Stage list grouped]
Group 1 (unanimous support, 3 stages total):

Battlefield
Final Destination
Smashville

Group 2 (good enough that only extremely fringe people support banning, 9 stages total):

Delfino Plaza
Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
Lylat Cruise
Halberd
Castle Siege
Pokemon Stadium 1

Group 3 (stages that conservatives usually dislike but are easy to demonstrate are fair, 18 total stages)

Norfair
Frigate Orpheon
Pokemon Stadium 2
Distant Planet
PictoChat
Jungle Japes
Rainbow Cruise
Green Greens
Brinstar

Group 4 (stages about which you find more substantial complaints but are still mostly fair, 25 total stages)

Luigi's Mansion
Mario Circuit
Pirate Ship
Port Town Aero Dive
Yoshi's Island (Melee)
Onett
Corneria

Group 5 (stages that have some theoretical merit but are only supported by an extreme fringe, 33 total stages)

Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1
Rumble Falls
Bridge of Eldin
Skyworld
Flat Zone 2
Shadow Moses Island
Green Hill Zone
Big Blue

Group 6 (stages everyone agrees need to be banned, 41 total stages)

Mushroomy Kingdom 1-2
Spear Pillar
WarioWare Inc.
New Pork City
Summit
75m
Mario Bros.
Hanenbow
Temple[/collapse]

I'd be okay just taking the first three groups, making them fully legal (including for game 1), and giving up on the others. That's a compromise; I really do like playing on Onett, Luigi's Mansion, etc., but I can recognize that in the end the will of the people is not for that. However, those group 3 stages that are now mostly banned; I think those are just banned out of unfamiliarity, and I find the only inevitability of the process is that we keep changing the rules and that banning is easier than unbanning.

The approach I'd take for smash 4 is simple really. We will first quickly identify the group 6 stages, the stages that are just patently awful to the point that there's no merit in any reasonable theory. Those are off the table for legality. We'll also probably know our group 1 stages at this point, and we set them aside as out of legality discussion as well (they're legal). I imagine that after about a month we should be able to identify groups 2 and 5 as well, and we can enshrine group 2 as legal forever while banning group 5. Then somewhat later, perhaps as soon as another month, we have a big conversation about how we distinguish between group 3 stages (stages that are "different" but have very clear permanent potential and will be palatable to us in the long run) and group 4 stages (stages that may have some merit but are going to be sour spots for us forever). The compromise would be to keep group 3, forcing the "conservatives" to learn some dynamic stages, while getting rid of group 4, some of the stages with real merit that are the biggest banes of the "conservatives"). Then we can focus on improving our gameplay, pushing the game to its limits, without worrying that the rules are going to change. Everyone gets something and loses something, and while from our current skewed political perspective (the end of a game's lifespan), this seems like a big win for the "liberals", in perspective it's still banning more than half of the stages in the game. I really do want, if I were the only person involved I'd do this, to give every single stage a chance, but I can accept compromise. What I can't accept is surrender, and asking us to play on a single digit number of stages is asking that from just too many people.

Also, to Kewwky, if we start with few stages, we're never going to unban any. Surely you know that; that's just not how things work, and trying to do that early is just going to result in the same split with perhaps a faster play-out (Midwest will not go along at all). The only way we are going to know if stages are fair is to play on them; that much is obvious. How long we should tolerate this or that stage is a thing reasonable people could debate, and if you want to bridge the gap, I think compromise and establishing an early ruleset we take a strong stand is going to be static for the game's entire lifespan (and we are serious about it, not supporting events that deviate either direction more liberal or conservative) is the best way to do this. I remember Melee's MLG ruleset and the way that for years it let the game grow without ruleset issues, and honestly if Brawl had never come out (and taken most of the "liberals" away to a new game), I suspect that ruleset would still be used today. I'd like something like that for smash 4, a reasonable middle of the road ruleset that we just stick with and never relitigate. We've learned things with stage striking and Brawl's particular balance issues (flats and plats have a lot more obvious character biases in Brawl than in Melee and skew the game when they are forced game 1) that we're going to carry forward as lessons, but the general tone of how much is legal I feel was about right with that MLG ruleset that I'd point out worked very well for many years. Obviously I "really want" almost everything legal, but I'm realistic enough to know that won't happen but maintain that to be clear what the compromise is (halfway in-between my offer and banning everything is not a fair compromise since my real position has so much more legal than I'd accept as a fair middle ground).

 

[Ghostbone]

Seriously, equating Pictochat to WarioWare is what's ludicrous. I'm unconvinced you've really played on it to a substantial degree. On WarioWare you can expect at least half of the games to be wildly impacted by the item reward mechanic which is completely random. On PictoChat a tiny percentage of games will have any impact at all to hard to react to drawings, and of those tiny percentage, an even tinier percentage of those will result in character deaths. Given that we play in a game in which one of the characters has a move that has a 1/9 (actually a bit better if you use it right but whatever) instant kill move that's completely random and sometimes does no hitstun and hurts that character for using it, I think we can deal with extreme corner possibilities like the far less than 1% chance that things will happen just exactly wrong on any one game of PictoChat to screw someone especially since even then they should be expected to know how the stage works and have played to put themselves in a position in which that could happen. The only "problem" I ever saw with PictoChat was that it was a counterpick stage that offered no character (other than Sonic, a fairly uncommon mid tier) a reason to pick it so it almost never saw play which led to people being unfamiliar with its large degree of nuance. This is one of the reasons I support every legal stage being fully legal (including for game 1); I don't want stages like PictoChat, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Frigate Orpheon that are obviously fair while having more "dynamic" features but offer such small advantages to become the forgotten stages again.[/collapse]

Pretty much every single match on Pictochat has the transformations randomly affecting the match.
A stage doesn't have to deal damage or gimp a character with no warning (which pictochat does) to have random effects on the games.
Often enough transformations like the whale just kill any chance of a follow-up you had, giving that snake a free landing for example. That's randomly effecting the game, and something like that happens basically every game on pictochat, multiple times.

And to put Pictochat in the same group as PS2 is silly, one gives like 7 seconds of warning, cycles through a far lower number of transformations, is on a timer, and doesn't have hazards/make the ledge disappear instantly.
PS2 is a possibly legit stage that unfortunately nobody likes
Pictochat is a terrible stage that probably even less people like.

Stages like Onett that are fair enough but widely hated with a few issues here and there I could accept losing, but the trade-off would have to be that stages like Norfair would need to be enshrined as legal forever as a trade there.

Norfair is a demonstratively bad stage to play on
We've all seen Wario run away from many low mobility characters there, sonic can do the same thing, so can MK and Pit. Lava forces people to jump and put themselves in bad positions (yes technically you can just perfect shield all of it, but your opponent just gets free pressure from you shielding in that scenario.
If the lava was predictable and symmetrical, maybe it'd be ok, but just because there's a large warning, doesn't make it ok (oh you predicted that eventually you're going to have to jump and try to land against MK, guess what, you still have to try and land against MK when he did nothing to earn his favourable position)

Brawl had over 40 stages. I'd be okay with us only playing on around 20 from early on and just using those 20 forever, accepting that the other 20 will never see play. I mean, I look at it like this for Brawl:

And the rest of us are ok with Brawl just using 7-9 stages.

Group 2 (good enough that only extremely fringe people support banning, 9 stages total):

Delfino Plaza
Halberd

I assume you don't even keep up with the current competitive scene, for you to say that.
And the rest of your lists are laughable.

Group 6 (stages everyone agrees need to be banned, 41 total stages)
Mario Bros.

#legaliseMarioBros2013

The compromise would be to keep group 3, forcing the "conservatives" to learn some dynamic stages,

Most of us know how to play on Brinstar or Rainbow Cruise or Halberd, we just don't want to because we think they're bad competitive stages.
Also why should we have to play the game the way you want.
That's a pretty elitist mindset for someone to have.
TOs in general are going to have the ruleset most people want to play on, if you want more legal stages, stop talking about compromise which is never going to happen, and try and host tournaments with large stagelists, and convince players they should want to play on most of those stages.

Everyone gets something and loses something, and while from our current skewed political perspective (the end of a game's lifespan), this seems like a big win for the "liberals", in perspective it's still banning more than half of the stages in the game.

You realise >50% of Brawl's stagelist are discernibly terrible for competitive play after playing on them like once?
Pretending like they matter is silly.


You talked about G&W as well, yes that's a random move that we have to deal with, luckily it's not a very viable move (slow to come out, 9 has a very small hitbox as well).
Pictochat makes every move like a G&W hammer, it's always a dice roll to whether you're going to get randomly rewarded, or the stage will randomly reset the game back to neutral. It's not a stage conducive to skilful play.

You also seem to think I don't have experience on most of the banned stages.
I have heaps of experience on stages like Green Greens, PTAD, Pictochat, Summit, even Mario Bros. (Grim and I probably understand that stage better than anyone).
A lot of the time it's the experience playing on the stage that convinces me they should be banned (DIng and teching off screen blocks on Green Greens, Cars are ridiculous, Everything about pictochat is ridiculous, Summit's weird and more legit than some stages but Ice and no ledges and instant kill from the water depending on your fall speed just makes it an extremely janky stage)

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Yeah, I'm loving this implication that liberal stage lists are the ideal here, and you are forced to begrudgingly compromise with stubborn, stupid conservatives, AA.

Pictochat is beyond stupid. Random transformations that affect the entire stage and, therefore, randomly give one player an advantage? No thank you. The safe zone is a ridiculous concept, not only does it completely ignore the static transformations that will suddenly place one player in a better or worse position regardless of where they are standing (there is no constant ideal way of playing, it is a matter of picking one of many potential "ideal" positions and hoping that your number comes up), the safe zone ALSO doesn't apply when the characters are fighting; therefore, a player who is worse than their opponent/uses a character that sucks at KO'ing/etc... is going to have a better chance of winning if he forces confrontation in-between stage transformations with the hope that luck is on his side.

Comparing it to Judgement is ludicrous - a single move of a single character is in no way proportionate to a stage that is constantly influencing the players randomly regardless of stage position, in terms of how much it affects results.

The fact that you have to play around random hazards immediately sets off alarm bells because it creates the following situation:
1. You anticipated a certain transformation would screw you over, and guessed correctly - you win!
2. You anticipated a certain transformation would screw you over, and it never appeared - you lose!

Being able to mitigate the effects of randomness by playing in an ideal fashion doesn't eliminate them.

Your stage ranking is absurd, by the way. Why would Green Hill Zone be as bad as Rumble Falls?
How is PS2 on the same level as Norfair? etc... etc...

 

[Overswarm]

Norfair is a demonstratively bad stage to play on
We've all seen Wario run away from many low mobility characters there, sonic can do the same thing, so can MK and Pit. Lava forces people to jump and put themselves in bad positions (yes technically you can just perfect shield all of it, but your opponent just gets free pressure from you shielding in that scenario.
If the lava was predictable and symmetrical, maybe it'd be ok, but just because there's a large warning, doesn't make it ok (oh you predicted that eventually you're going to have to jump and try to land against MK, guess what, you still have to try and land against MK when he did nothing to earn his favourable position)

What bothers me is people saying stuff like this and not knowing what they're talking about.

Final Destination, Delfino Plaza, and Halberd were the three most one-sided stages in MLG's stagelist. Those have all been starters at one point in time, and all have been legal nearly everywhere. Those are the three "heavy counterpicks" that had the single largest swings. You pick the right character on FD, Delfino, or Halberd and your win% jumps up from the standard 40-60% to 80% and up. It's that ridiculous.

But Norfair is the bad one because you heard about someone camping? Post videos! Bring up actual discussions, not "well Wario can camp suuuuuuuuuuper super good and no one can beat them ever if they're the wrong character".

What characters? Is this due to them being bad, or Wario being good? Should we punish Wario for having the ability to time out slow characters on Norfair, but not punish the ICs for having easy opportunities for 0-death on FD? What about ZSS on FD against Fox, given her d-smash infinite is super easy there?

Here's a video of a Wario vs. Luigi on Norfair at that very tournament, at pretty bad quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfPXhnT1lrc

Wario isn't stupid and doesn't unnecessarily approach Luigi, and Luigi doesn't know how to approach Wario. You see him start to "get it" at the end, and watching this you know firsthand that Boss knows absolutely nothing about Norfair. The lava wave comes and he has his opportunity to pressure Krystedez.... and he walks into the bubble and runs the timer down? Krystedez jumps once, and Boss jumps WITH him rather than waiting for him to get closer to the ground, giving Krystedez the ability to just jump and bike away?

What characters have this problem? Should we care about characters like Luigi who literally only had Boss as a character main at that point, and had never been considered viable before?

How do we test these conditions again? If we ultimately decide to ban Norfair because of the matchup Luigi vs. Wario, how does this translate to other stages? What about Meta Knight on Smashville, flying under the stage or high up above, and a character not being able to catch him? Do we ban smashville then? If we don't and attempt to ban the technique, why not do that with Norfair or at least attempt to?

It's a lot more complicated than "I saw some guy who doesn't play on Norfair get timed out by someone who practices it a ton, and I didn't like it very much".

People jump to conclusions too fast without realizing the consequences. Hell, people thought Olimar couldn't stop Donkey Kong's planking. DONKEY KONG!

 

[Grim Tuesday]

Meta Knight is a far bigger problem on Norfair than Wario.

Like, he beats every single character in the game AT LEAST +2 on that stage, it's not really okay for tournament play at all.

+ the lava is silly at times, not usually a big deal in terms of influencing results, but it factors in to some degree.

 

[[Corn]]

I dont really understand the stage discussion at this point here.

Stages are generally chosen by those in which the player has absolute control over his character, ones in which allow all elements of skill into play ledges/decent boundaries/decent transformations that telegraph themselves at regular intervals/generally no hazards, and only offer slight advantages to characters and do not nearly guarantee an auto win. Basically ones that allow control due to predictability and play a factor in matches, but not one large enough to negate the players skill without the other players input.

Its why the majority of players prefer to play on stages that are generally flat, may or may not have platforms, have no hazards, and have ledges. These stages allow for techniques to be transferred to each other and playstyles mainly change to suit the opponent, not the stage itself. Like it or not having the stage play a large factor in your opponent winning; whether it be through large random events like Warioware/Pictochat, through the stage having mechanics that are detrimental to elements of play like Pirate Ship/Mario Bros/75M, or the stage playing such a large factor that you might as well not even be playing an opponent anymore like RC/Norfair are not fun to play on in a competitive aspect nor do they offer any skills that could be valuable anywhere else.

It is fairly easy to see why limiting stages to such a degree is the safest route to the competitive community, especially if the majority of competitive players like the general idea of them.

Norfair Stuff

That Wario clearly chose not to camp, especially to someone with as poor air speed as Luigi

 

[Grim Tuesday]

I actually believe that if, for whatever reason, the community at large was more accepting of larger stage lists, and had been practicing on them from the beginning, players would still be able to transfer their skills over and have a deep, fun and competitive match.

However, that doesn't mean we should have those stages. There are lots of things we can do that potentially make the game deeper (in-game % handicaps for low tiers is my favourite example), it's all just about how we, as a community, want the game to be played.