Proposed Standardized Ruleset

[Leafeon]

@Strong Bad There is some merit is allowing players to pick stages they banned previously, and I don't see any merit to actively banning it. It's much more intuitive that bans only last for a game, and it'd be really easy to forget which stages you banned.

But anyway, here's an example of how CPing to a stage you banned would work. Let's say I'm playing the zss vs mario matchup and I won game 1 handily. In that matchup, FD is probably the worst stage because it lets him camp a little harder and platforms REALLY help you combo mario, and maneuver around his stuff, so I ban it and idk, fod. Anyway, he then picks X stage and I stay zss, but he switches to fox. He wins game 2 and bans 2 stages that aren't FD. I could then pick FD and switch to roy to get a fairly good matchup. If he knew I had a pocket roy, the he'd have to choose whether the zss vs mario matchup that I did really well against him with had better odds of winning than roy vs fox on FD. (and lemme tell you, his better odds of winning would be fox on FD)

That's just one other example, but I'm sure there's more. Especially if you have a pocket character like bowser, and a main that hates yoshi's. (i.e. I know someone that mains samus with a pocket bowser.)

And the prior knowledge of what characters your opponent plays shouldn't exactly be a skill worth testing in smash bros., so that final situation is something that I don't agree with to begin with.
(Character selection BEFORE stage bans/selection)

But I do agree that bans should not last throughout an entire set.

 

[Foo]

And the prior knowledge of what characters your opponent plays shouldn't exactly be a skill worth testing in smash bros., so that final situation is something that I don't agree with to begin with.
(Character selection BEFORE stage bans/selection)

But I do agree that bans should not last throughout an entire set.

So, you are saying that character's should be locked in before stage is selected? huh, I've never really thought about that. In every tournament I've been in or seen, it's been done the other way, and it's that way in the OP. I'd have to think more about it to decide which way I'd think is better.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

My initial gut reaction is no. While it does require knowledge outside the game, I think its fine the way it is. I like the idea of pulling out pocket characters to cover bad stages.

 

[Leafeon]

So, you are saying that character's should be locked in before stage is selected? huh, I've never really thought about that. In every tournament I've been in or seen, it's been done the other way, and it's that way in the OP. I'd have to think more about it to decide which way I'd think is better.

I think character-blind stage counterpicks are great.

(I'm gonna go to this stage and hopefully they don't have a floaty, cuz jeez that would be terrible for me.)

My initial gut reaction is no. While it does require knowledge outside the game, I think its fine the way it is. I like the idea of pulling out pocket characters to cover bad stages.

You still cover bad stages this way, there is a reason it's a counterpick when you win a game. Eg : Win with Roy on the stage you both struck to (maybe PS2, maybe GHZ, whatever) against a character who likes large stages. Switch to a character who also likes large stages. Now you're home free if they don't also switch.

Having a character who likes super-small and a character who likes super-large both puts you at a stalemate for stage advantage, honestly, if you're running the way of character selection after stage. Lol they actually smartly counterpicked a stage? Let me just switch characters to nullify that, and maybe also make it better for me than for them LOL great method, super nice for the person who's supposed to be counterpicking.

 

[Narpas_sword]

This discussion was supposed to happen after the stage list is decided =p.

Everything seems so convoluted.

For one, I still have no idea why stages are picked before characters in rounds after the first.

First game, both players pick, then you strike stages for a starter.

Then next game we pick stage before character? It's silly.

We have 40 odd characters, and about 12 stages. We strike stages based on what we think the player may choose as their character?

I seriously think we should be picking characters first.

Game 1:
Both players select characters.
Stages are struck to choose a starter.

End game.

Winner chooses character.
Loser choses character.
Winner strikes 2 stages.
Loser picks a stage.

Fight ends, repeat. No stages are struck from previous rounds.

So simple.

 

[jtm94]

I can't tell you how often I beat people game 1 and don't realize they are melee vets so when I ban stages and declare I am staying on my character and they go Fox, now my decision changed and I can't go to FD the entire set because I didn't want to face Squirtle on FD. Now a CP should yield advantage to the loser because they lost, but because of the nature of the game there are thousands of character vs character on X stage MUs and having the largest playable cast of any Smash game feels like a detriment to solo-mains under this procedure. That's probably how it should be though.

It just feels weird and we both start to forget what's been banned in larger sets so we forgo it and default to using gentleman's to just go back to the same stages for simplicity. I just want to play the game.

What's the best practice to double-blind game 1? Just write down on a piece of paper, phone, or tell a third party? I'm going to start doing this for all of my games to see if it changes anything.

 

[Cubelarooso]

There's also the fact that the character select screen comes before the stage select screen. Besides making the "stage-then-character" method unintuitive, it leads to a lot of L+R+A+Starting when one player begins the match before the other has gotten to switch characters.

 

[Badge]

Stage selection is optimized to balance the match in the way we want it to be balanced: Mostly even, but with a slight advantage to the loser of the preceding match while promoting stage diversity. Character selection is completely unregulated (obviously, we don't want to bar people from playing their character), so it doesn't make sense to put it after the stage selection. It also complicates the stage selection process, because you have to account for possible character switches, while it's less important to guess stage choice when choosing character first, because you can ban your worst stage(s) anyway and there's not much guesswork involved (one stage is usually ideal for the opponent).

The fact that it is less intuitive and more complicated the other way around is also something that should be stressed. Especially for newer players, having as few rules as possible is very important. The less work it is to go to a tournament (and this includes reading through and learning the rules) and the less you have to fear (such as misunderstanding complex rules) the more likely it is that new players go to tournaments, participate and add to the scene. Of course simple rules are also good for veterans, because you can concentrate on what matters, which is playing Smash, instead of having to worry about some outside rules that are only there to regulate the competition in Smash and make it as enjoyable as possible.

For stage bans carrying over the arguments are similar: It's just much cleaner and less complex. What would each variant look like ideally? Probably something along the lines of

[...]
4. The winning player of the preceding match bans two stages.
5. The losing player of the preceding match chooses one of the remaining <number of legal stages -2> stages as the stage the next match is played on. (That player may choose a stage he or she had banned in previous matches.)
[..]

for bans not carrying over (the reminder in brackets is just that and not strictly necessary) and otherwise

[...]
4. The winning player of the preceding chooses two stages to be banned. If he or she had banned stages previously, the new bans replace the old ones.
5. The losing player of the preceding match choses one of the legal stages that are not the bans of either player as the stage the next match is played on.
[...]

The first variant seems much simpler. As I formulated the bans carrying over variant, it also has the problems, that if the opponent or oneself switch character (or one acquires new information for some other reason) the bans one had placed earlier now hinder oneself, and that the player who won the first match gets a disadvantage due to having chosen his bans sooner (and thus having less stages to choose from). If you want to avoid these issues, you have to add some extra clause allowing new bans if the opponent switched characters or something (for the first issue) and increase the memory issues further for the second issue.

The memory issues in particular aren't to be ignored either. While it may not be too hard to remember stage bans, Smash is a complex game with enough memory load anyway and anything that unnecessarily adds to that only makes it less enjoyable. Two stage bans also may be easy to remember, if you spend effort doing so, but four already get very bothersome.

If you do remember what you banned, maybe because it's clear to you to always ban those stage in this situation, it's about as much work to just ban those stages again as it is to remind your opponent about which stages you had banned (and less than to discuss it with him/her, if he/she remembers differently.)

Bar removing one mindgame that may make you feel bad if it's used against you, I don't see any reasons to let bans carry over. That mindgame (banning a stage you intend to choose) also is just that and backfires against you, if the opponent either doesn't care, forgets which stage you chose or looks through it, by ridding you of a stage ban and possibly making your opponent's counterpick better.
Dual maining already has enough advantages I feel like, especially in Project M where most characters have at least some bad matchups, that can be covered by a secondary or second main. As such I don't see encouragment of multi-maining as a reason in favor of bans carrying over (or character selection after stage selection for that matter).

 

[Narpas_sword]

Other points towards not carrying strikes over:

The initial stage striking for a starter doesn't keep those stages banned. - having a different rule for striking after a win is confusing.

The stage select screen is presented clean to the players the next game. - this feels like a clean stage striking screen. No remembering is necessary. The winner just goes and strikes what they want struck.

There is absolutely no need for complex stage striking.

 

[Narpas_sword]

So I went back through all the posts and noted ever 5 stage starter list (and +1's to lists someone made)
I didn't count any votes for partial lists (e.g posting 4 stages and 'a new Training room stage')

I also included the stage lists from this topic: http://smashboards.com/threads/proj...ensive-tutorial-and-sample-stagelists.382890/

These are the lists that were posted, and the total of +1s if any

4 x GHZ / BF / SV / PS2 / DL64
3 x GHZ / FoD / BF / SV / PS2
2 x WW / FoD / BF / SV / PS2
1 x GHZ / BF / SV / PS2 / FD
1 x YS / FoD / BF / PS2 / DL64
1 x YS / FoD / BF / SV / DL64

As far as individual Stage votes go, these are the results:

YS: 2
WW: 2
GHZ: 8
FoD: 7
BF: 12
SV: 11
PS2: 11
FD: 1
DL64: 6

So while GHZ / BF / SV / PS2 / DL64 was the most voted for complete list,
GHZ / FoD / BF / SV / PS2 were the most voted for stages individually.


As far as those results go, my thoughts are it definitely has to be one of those 2 lists we go with.

IMO the "GHZ / BF / SV / PS2 / DL64" list suffers from the problem of people banning DL and GHZ first nearly every time, which is why @Umbreon had proposed the 3 starter list.

Thinking it would be good to at least get the starter list sorted so we con discuss the merits of the CP stages.

 

[Deleted member]

ok so ^ tagged me, im not ignoring this thread i just went to a tournament for the weekend and ill get back on top of this week. as far as i know @ SOJ has agreed to help us with the stage list so i think we can get used to an edited DL64 as our fifth starter. this pretty much cements ghz ps2 bf sv dl64 as our five starters. that said, i think we can agree that norfair and skyworld are also terrible cps. given the five starters i just listed, i think we can safely say that fd fod yi ww dp are cp status. lylat is up for debate, although personally id like to see it gone. that gives us ten stages, no obvious flaws innthe cp system with two bans, and no stages that people hate outright.

i know a lot of people have posted in here and i havent caught up with it yet. i'll check it monday or tuesday.

 

[Player -0]

ok so ^ tagged me, im not ignoring this thread i just went to a tournament for the weekend and ill get back on top of this week. as far as i know @ SOJ has agreed to help us with the stage list so i think we can get used to an edited DL64 as our fifth starter. this pretty much cements ghz ps2 bf sv dl64 as our five starters. that said, i think we can agree that norfair and skyworld are also terrible cps. given the five starters i just listed, i think we can safely say that fd fod yi ww dp are cp status. lylat is up for debate, although personally id like to see it gone. that gives us ten stages, no obvious flaws innthe cp system with two bans, and no stages that people hate outright.

i know a lot of people have posted in here and i havent caught up with it yet. i'll check it monday or tuesday.

Clearing this up so it's more visually appealing. You're suggesting:

Spoiler

Starters:
1. Green Hill Zone
2. Pokemon Stadium 2
3. Battlefield
4. Smashville
5. Dream Land 64

Counterpicks:
1. Final Destination
2. Fountain of Dreams
3. Yoshi's Island: Brawl
4. Wario Ware
5. Distant Planet

First, what do you mean by edited DL64?

Second, I think the stage list is super unfavorable to zoners/circle camp/has little big stages. The only pretty large stages include Distant Planet, FD, and Dream Land. That's 3 but FD and Distant planets only have horizontal length and practically no vertical platforms.

Third, personally I think Lylat has has starter potential, every other starter is just really solid though so eh. Norfair is an interesting counterpick. Just depends though. Can't think of any other stages right now because don't have Project M pulled up + not going to Project M website because I'm not lazy...

Edit - When you said DL64 was terrible/you hated it earlier did you mean just because of the random ledge thingy (which thing were you talking about again?) or a different reason?

 

[Deleted member]

basically dreamland is god damn huge even compared to other stages and it totally sucks

 

[Narpas_sword]

then dont put it in for now, choose a different stage.

No sense at all waiting for a new stage.

 

[DMG]

@Strong Bad : The advantage of being able to CP a stage you banned, is over who has to pick characters first. If I want to pick or play on FD somewhere in the set, I may want to do so on my own terms. Marth vs Spacies sounds gravy, but if they have a soft counter to Marth for FD when they pick it, then they retain their CP power essentially (which is fine, not complaining about that necessarily). If I instead pick FD, and they choose their soft counter to Marth, I can just switch to Mario, Link, Falco, or some other character that might do good vs their characters. If they stay Fox/Spacie, you stick with Marth.

I may want to ban FD to prevent them from forcing my hand when it comes to characters. Obviously they can accomplish this with other stages, but some are more forceful than others.

Since stage bans are primarily aimed at reducing your disadvantages, it's not farfetched to let people CP their own bans for those RPS character advantages. It's kind of janky but with such a RPS MU centric kind of game, it might make more sense to allow it? Or the argument to have bans affect both players also makes sense if you're trying to limit the RPS CP stuff going on

 

[Narpas_sword]

this is still just more weird things stemming from having a ban for the set as opposed to striking a stage for the next game...

Characters before Stages.
Strike for the game only.

So simple
Works.
No going back and forward through menus
No remembering past games bans
No running out of stages to play on in longer sets.
No worrying about if you can play on something you banned.
Consistency between the first game and subsequent games in a set.

 

[Boiko]

The way we've been doing it is that you have 3 bans per set. Knowing your opponents counter pick characters is a huge part of the game. For example, I play with Malachi. He's a Peach player and I generally play Toon Link against him. However, he always makes sure to ban PS2 when playing against me because he knows if he leaves it open,I'll go there and switch to Samus. It's the same as PPMD CPing M2K by picking Marth when they go FD. It's just knowing your opponent and it rewards you at the highest level. However, we don't allow you to change your bans, otherwise you could effectively eliminate the counter pick advantage when used in conjunction with DSR, or at the least, mitigate it.

As far as selecting characters before banning. That just defeats the purpose of counter picking characters. I''ll use Bowser as the most drastic example. If someone has a pocket Bowser that they think will do better in the current MU, considering they get the appropriate stage selection, they're not going to want to disclose that right away. If they do, the opponent will ban FoD, WW, and YS, and now you're stuck as Bowser playing on a less favorable stage. If you know your opponent has a pocket Bowser, you may consider using one or two of your bans to cover these stages.

Counter picking in Project M, both characters and stages, is insanely important. The more that your mitigate the effects it has, the more the favor is pushed to the person who wins game one.

 

[Deleted member]

pocket chars arent really much of an issue in terms of cp choice it just means you have to choose wisely- which duh ofc you do

game one winner is supposed to have a very mild advantage after that point in the set

 

[DMG]

this is still just more weird things stemming from having a ban for the set as opposed to striking a stage for the next game...

Characters before Stages.
Strike for the game only.

So simple
Works.
No going back and forward through menus
No remembering past games bans
No running out of stages to play on in longer sets.
No worrying about if you can play on something you banned.
Consistency between the first game and subsequent games in a set.

Striking for each game basically kills 90% of the CPing power. Striking just gives the winning player a jillion bans, instead of 2-3 bans. 7 strikes for 15 stages vs 3 bans for 15 stages? It's effectively 7 bans. Not only that, but if the opponent's character has more favorable stages, you force the loser to give the winner a CP basically!

We never want to promote that: if the opponent switches to an optimal character after your stage pick that's unfortunate, but god it would sting even more if he was locked into his character already and got a free CP because his character was better on the majority of stages.

That kills any reason to ever want to pick a character that has clear favorability for only some stages: might as well openly tell people to play Fox or CF only instead of a diverse cast with stage flaws that you otherwise should have been able to work with

 

[Foo]

The way we've been doing it is that you have 3 bans per set. Knowing your opponents counter pick characters is a huge part of the game. For example, I play with Malachi. He's a Peach player and I generally play Toon Link against him. However, he always makes sure to ban PS2 when playing against me because he knows if he leaves it open,I'll go there and switch to Samus. It's the same as PPMD CPing M2K by picking Marth when they go FD. It's just knowing your opponent and it rewards you at the highest level. However, we don't allow you to change your bans, otherwise you could effectively eliminate the counter pick advantage when used in conjunction with DSR, or at the least, mitigate it.

As far as selecting characters before banning. That just defeats the purpose of counter picking characters. I''ll use Bowser as the most drastic example. If someone has a pocket Bowser that they think will do better in the current MU, considering they get the appropriate stage selection, they're not going to want to disclose that right away. If they do, the opponent will ban FoD, WW, and YS, and now you're stuck as Bowser playing on a less favorable stage. If you know your opponent has a pocket Bowser, you may consider using one or two of your bans to cover these stages.

Counter picking in Project M, both characters and stages, is insanely important. The more that your mitigate the effects it has, the more the favor is pushed to the person who wins game one.

First off, I really don't think knowing your opponents characters should be something that can change a win to a loss. I play people for the first time all the time. Secondly, if anything, the current system gives MORE advantage to the winning player if they abuse the system.

Honestly, with this system, the correct way to play is to have a character that's really good on big stages, and a character that's really good on small ones. Let's say someone is playing samus and takes game one. He bans a couple medium stages. His opponent takes him to yoshi's and he switches to bowser. At that point, the loser is basically forced to pick a stage that is really really good for one of his characters. Also, having 3 bans instead of 2 would mitigate the CPIng advantage much more. Those 2 bans won't be changable anyway, unless it's a BO5 set.

Also, let's not assume 3 bans, because that's too many.

 

[Boiko]

First off, I really don't think knowing your opponents characters should be something that can change a win to a loss. I play people for the first time all the time. Secondly, if anything, the current system gives MORE advantage to the winning player if they abuse the system.

How do you figure that?

 

[Foo]

How do you figure that?

Read the rest of the post and find out lol. If you play a character that's good on big stages (like samus or peach) and a character that's good on small ones (like marth or bowser) then, after a win, you can ban medium ones and force your opponent to "Counterpick" a stage that you will do very well on. If your opponent has a few characters up their sleeve, you pretty much can't counterpick them. If you pick character first though, you can counterpick stage just fine, you just can't really cheese them with a surprise character like bowser.

In fact, getting to counterpick your opponents character before stage when you lost also helps a lot. If I have a roy for spacies and my opponent is a fox player and I CP FD, then he switches to someone else, that sucks for me because zss isn't good on FD for most matchups. Really, picking character second pretty much only helps pocket bowser.

 

[Boiko]

Read the rest of the post and find out lol. If you play a character that's good on big stages (like samus or peach) and a character that's good on small ones (like marth or bowser) then, after a win, you can ban medium ones and force your opponent to "Counterpick" a stage that you will do very well on. If your opponent has a few characters up their sleeve, you pretty much can't counterpick them. If you pick character first though, you can counterpick stage just fine, you just can't really cheese them with a surprise character like bowser.

In fact, getting to counterpick your opponents character before stage when you lost also helps a lot. If I have a roy for spacies and my opponent is a fox player and I CP FD, then he switches to someone else, that sucks for me because zss isn't good on FD for most matchups. Really, picking character second pretty much only helps pocket bowser.

That's contingent on if they have a secondary that benefits them on the opposing stages that their main suffers on, which isn't always going to be the case and it also fails to consider that the the loser of game one does not have a secondary.

 

[Comprehend13]

@ Boiko
Literally the point of a secondary is to complement weaknesses of a primary character. Choosing characters first ensures that the loser of the previous round actually has a stage advantage in the current round.

I vote for character selection first, and also reduction of number of bans to 1 or 0 (depending on the diversity of the counterpick list). Perhaps this will support the viability of "pocket" characters, or characters who only perform well on specific stages.

 

[jtm94]

So after running the recent PMOAL my thoughts have changed on stages mildly.

Norfair isn't that bad. I find it weird that Melee players don't ban it and don't mind it. I think the stage heavily benefits Falcon, but it doesn't have any amount of weirdness to it like Lylat does for example. A lot of people don't like Lylat so it shouldn't be included in any end all be all stage list at the moment.

At this junction I would honestly rather consider Norfair over DP. DP has the side issue where it's sloped and makes it difficult for some vertical reoveries to sweetspot. Sonic can't do it at all. And it isn't like it's an intuitive design of the stage or a stage hard-coded into the game that we have to deal with. In a game where the stagelist is infinitely malleable. something like DP shouldn't be included at the moment.

I do not agree with the blast zones on Dreamland. They should be big, but not by the exponentially larger amount that they are. Assuming good DI that all good players should achieve you will live until no less than 130 putting it lightly unless your opponent is Falcon.

In a best of 5 set I actually banned FD because I refuse to play Squirtle there, he picked FoD after I lost game 1 and decided to go Marth and I changed to Sheik. That moment made me feel good about our current system, it's fine. However as I was starting to do better against Marth, I was expecting Marth again, but he picked FD and went Squirtle making me wish our bans had stuck. A players bans should AT LEAST apply to their opponent. I thought about it heavily during the tournament yesterday. Whether or not they apply to the person who banned those stages can still be up in the air.

 

[Foo]

That's contingent on if they have a secondary that benefits them on the opposing stages that their main suffers on, which isn't always going to be the case and it also fails to consider that the the loser of game one does not have a secondary.

Your point was contingent on them having a pocket bowser. I feel like it's much more likely to have a secondary that compliments your characters weaknesses since that, you know, the point of having a secondary. imo, the idea of having a pocket bowser to cheese out a win on yoshi's or WW if they don't see it coming is just really dumb. That's one of the things that would be better if it were gone.

 

[Narpas_sword]

lol.

all those situations and reasons to strike stages first just seem dumb to me.

convoluted striking rules to prevent occasional situations instead of logical ordering and simplicity.

 

[Paradoxium]

the problem with Norfair is that it is unappealing and ugly af. I guarantee if you textured it to look like smashville or battlefield or something people would choose it a lot more.

 

[DMG]

Norfair in relation to Captain Falcon: I don't like the stage very much personally because the shifting platforms makes Uthrow setups fairly unreliable at times. It's easier to deal with lower platforms because stuff like SH Uair covers a lot of options as a safe choice requiring little thought, and jumping up + wavelanding for tech chase is also easier + consistent on non shifting plats. In the middle of combos, good DI + SDI might let them escape to the platform more than Falcon would prefer (because again, trying to DI, SDI, or tech on lower platforms as an escape is still dangerous vs Falcon because of how well he can cover the space with just a SH or FH).

I would consider it a CP vs maybe Marth, or a similar character that probably really dislikes the platform heights or widths for trapping and tech chasing. Link as well perhaps? Samus? I dunno. Falcon tends to have comfortable CP choices vs the majority of the cast, Norfair doesn't strongly come to mind as uniquely ridiculous for him imo. DL and PS2 can be ridiculous, FD sometimes, BF is the standard classic, SV works solid in some MU's, even small choices like GHZ Yoshi's and WW can be brutal. Norfair just feels like a less consistent mix between BF and PS2, so that doesn't appeal to me very much

 

[Narpas_sword]

a a samus, i dont like the lack of missile cancel platforms on Norfair.
though i can just double missile.

And i fight way better with metroid music

 

[DMG]

Yeah Norfair is one of those places where you go to bone a select handful of the cast by making them worse, not necessarily by buffing your own character to some ridiculous degree. At least that's my impression of it: seems like an auto ban vs like Toon Link though if you're trying to have fun/win/not get camped

 

[jtm94]

I will support stage bans before character changes from now on. If you pick characters first it's easier to ban the stages they are good on and weakens the CP factor. So if you just always ban that characters good stages then at best for CP you can change to a different character MU on a neutral stage.

Thanks for the insight. One of our resident Melee Falcons seems to favor the stage if left open. And I saw another Falcon choose to go there over the course of the day, but it's possible it's personal preference/coincidence. As GnW I hard a hard time keeping up with Falcon on Norfair and did not like being on the platforms above him.

 

[Narpas_sword]

I will support stage bans before character changes from now on. If you pick characters first it's easier to ban the stages they are good on and weakens the CP factor. .

how does it weaken the counter-pick?

Wouldn't knowing the character you're going to face help the counter pick?

else the counter pick isn't a counter-pick it's a "i hope they don't change characters so this is a counter-pick"

With 2 strikes, you're not going to eliminate EVERY stage that their character has a good time on, you're going to eliminate the ones that give them any huge advantage, and leave them with counter-picks that aren't so harsh.

The point of Giving the loser the stage select is to help even up the next game.
The point of giving the winner some bans or strikes is to help migitate massive stage advantage.

Giving the winner the option to change characters and completely negate the counter-pick means we may aswell not have counter-pick stages.

At that point, you may as well play a random stage and pick which characters you want to fight on it.

 

[SOJ]

ok so ^ tagged me, im not ignoring this thread i just went to a tournament for the weekend and ill get back on top of this week. as far as i know @ SOJ has agreed to help us with the stage list so i think we can get used to an edited DL64 as our fifth starter. this pretty much cements ghz ps2 bf sv dl64 as our five starters. that said, i think we can agree that norfair and skyworld are also terrible cps. given the five starters i just listed, i think we can safely say that fd fod yi ww dp are cp status. lylat is up for debate, although personally id like to see it gone. that gives us ten stages, no obvious flaws innthe cp system with two bans, and no stages that people hate outright.

i know a lot of people have posted in here and i havent caught up with it yet. i'll check it monday or tuesday.

I know I said I could edit the boundaries but I don't think I ever would. DL64 is too iconic of a stage to mess with. I'd rather just kick it out for something else. Training room is fine but I guarentee you it's not going in the next patch.

Also people keep bringing up that Norfair is too campy but I don't buy it. Someone linked this match earlier as "proof", but honestly I thought that match was pretty exciting. There was only one moment later on in the set where toon link camped, but Sethlon was easily able to overcome it.

Yes it can make it safe for some characters to run away to a platform, but that platform will only stay up for so long and there's always methods to reach up there. There's nothing overly jank about the stage to not use it in tournaments imo.

 

[TheGravyTrain]

It would actually strengthen counterpicks because you know they can't get out of jail by switching characters on you where they aren't at a disadvantage or even so they get the advantage. I am warming up to the idea, I would have to try it before I put full faith in it.

 

[Narpas_sword]

we obviously need a large Pros-Cons list for Selection order.

Someone get the yellow legal pad =D

 

[Badge]

Making counterpicks stronger helps the player who wins game one. Assuming both players have an equal chance p of winning on their counterpick, the chance to win after losing the first game is p*(1-p), which has its maximum at p = 0.5. If one player is better prepared for counterpicks than the other, of course he also gains a larger benefit from strong counterpick strategies, but that's an independent issue.

I don't think characters before stages necessarily strengthens or weakens counterpicking. Just from my impression most of the arguments in either direction seem to assume that only one player has a counterpick character. Usually this is the opponent for the people who argue in favor of characters before stages and oneself for those who argue against it.

What it does is lessen the importance of having multiple characters, simplicate the system and allow greater control over the stage counterpick advantage via stage list and number of bans. All of these are positive in my opinion, but can be negatives if you believe that character counterpicks have to be strengthened or respectively that stage choice should be a deep game on its own. (I'll adamantly argue in favor of making stage selection as simple as possible, though.)

Striking for each game basically kills 90% of the CPing power.

I believe Narpas just meant to say that bans don't carry over into later games, not that you strike again for game 2.

Knowing your opponents counter pick characters is a huge part of the game.

Do we want it to be such a huge part, though? I personally would rather not actively promote meta-gaming as in learning which player favors which character, but focus on the actual game of Smash. Adapting to how your opponent plays his character against yours is part of that, but having a mental list of characters per player to me is not. If you want to meta-game character choice there's still ample opportunity to do so without the rules made to favor it, e.g. learning a character that is good against your local meta.

As far as selecting characters before banning. That just defeats the purpose of counter picking characters.

Selecting characters before bans eliminates counterpicking stages with characters, but doesn't eliminate counterpicking characters with characters.

If you pick characters first it's easier to ban the stages they are good on and weakens the CP factor. So if you just always ban that characters good stages then at best for CP you can change to a different character MU on a neutral stage.

As outlined above, it's favorable to not have a large CP advantage if you don't want game one to mostly decide the set. If you can't CP your opponent to a stage that's favorable for your character, it's probably either of the following:
1) Your character simply loses the matchup/the stage list favors your opponent in this matchup.
2) The ruleset allows too many bans.
3) Counterpicks are intended to be mostly neutral by design.
We already have enough control over the strength of CPing stages, we don't need to choose characters after stages to do so, which has a ton of other consequences, too.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Nah, i meant that you re-strike for the next game. (if you want the same stages struck, you just strike them again)
When i get time ill type up the exact scenario on how i think it should play out.

if counter-picks are to be neutral by design, why are they called 'counter' picks? =p
But yea, they're designed to allow the loser a stage choice advantage, with the winner being allowed to strike a couple that they REALLY don't want to be on.

 

[Badge]

if counter-picks are to be neutral by design, why are they called 'counter' picks? =p

They usually aren't and I didn't want to imply that they are or should be. Just that you could have them so if you wanted.

 

[SOJ]

@Umbreon could you please update the OP with what we've been currently discussing? I don't think 3 starters is on the table anymore.