Smash 4 Community Stage Survey Results

[Piford]

I took a survey over on the smash bros subreddit, so I thought I'd post the results here

I conducted a survey earlier today, and I thought I'd analyze the data now that the polls are calming down.

Go here

General

It seems that about 3/4 of us want to play smash bros competitively. About 3/4 of people will be playing both versions, and of the people who are only going to play one, it is slightly going to favor the Wii U version.

Stage Legality

For determining stage legality, the majority of people want to start with a large stage list, and slowly cut off any stages that can't work competitively. Of the rest, most think we should have a medium size stage list of about 5 neutrals and 4 counter picks. More people would rather have a huge stage list than a really small one though.

Stage Features

Of opening up to new stages, 37% of people would be willing to analyze each walk off stage, and ban accordingly. 27% of people would be would be for having stages with temp. walk-offs like Skyloft legal. About a tenth of us are willing to give in to Gaur plains because of the soft platform walkoffs. About 1/5 of people are willing to stick to no walk-off just like old times.

For moving stages, the majority of people are all for stages like Prism Tower and Skyloft. Nothing else major came out besides that.

So 2/5 of the community thinks that nonintrusive hazards are fine. This is really subjective and could range from the fish is Reset Bomb Forrest to the Cars on Rainbow Road. Then people who think hazards add depth to the game make up slightly more than people who want static stages with no hazards. This means that about a quarter of people want to see players learn stages and use the hazards to their advantage to win.

Legal Stages

For this, I made it optional to choose what stages you wanted. This means that smaller numbers actually mean a larger percent of people. Also a lot of people chose to only answer with Battlefield and Final Destination; this contradicts earlier, which means most people probably weren't that familiar with stages due to a lack of footage. The data is even more skewed because of this. About 85% of people responded to the 3DS one, and 75% to the Wii U one. I'm going to tier based off the data to see which stages will likely be playable

3DS

The was a drastic drop in acceptance of stages, going from about 60% to about 30%. This is likely due to lack of footage on most of these.

Tier 1

Final Destination

Battlefield

Arena Ferox

Prism Tower

Yoshi's Island

These are almost non-debatable.

Tier 2

Tomodachi Life

Tortimer's Island

Boxing Ring

Mute City

Gaur Plains

Corneria

Jungle Japes

These are highly likely to be legal, except maybe the melee stages that were previously banned.

Tier 3

Rainbow Road

Brinstar

Magicant

Reset Bomb Forrest

Paper Mario

This is probably a good starting place for what stages we should seriously consider for legal play

Tier 4

Dream Land

Unova Pokemon League

Spirit Train

Pac Maze

Find Mii

Every stage after this basically what we can eliminate immediately for legality

Wii U

The Wii U stagse we have seen have had a much better reaction than 3DS stages. Only 3 stages fall below 20%, and less people have answered this questions

Tier 1

Final Destination

Battlefield

Town and City

These stages had over half the people say they should be legal, and for obvious reasons.

Tier 2

Skyloft

Halberd

Pilot Wings

Kalos Pokemon League

Castle Siege

So 2 of these stages were legal in Brawl, so thats good. Skyloft was above 50% for a while, but just dipped to 49% when I took these results.

Tier 3

Coliseum

Boxing Ring

Gaur Plains

Great Fox

Pyrosphere

Its interesting to note that Gaur Plains had more results on the 3DS, most likely because people think Metal Face will be a Stage Boss. Pyrophere will likely have Ridley as a boss, so it might get banned. Great Fox is also probably off the idea that its just Corneria

Tier 4

Mario Galaxy

Wii Fit Studio

Garden of Hope

Windy Hill Zone

Mushroom Kingdom U

These are likely stages. Legality is probably more to do with camping on these stages, since 2 have walk-offs, 2 are pretty big. Mushroom Kingdom U has the spikeball stage hazards.

Tier 5

Palutena's Temple

Wily Castle

Pac-Land

I decided to put the bad stages this time because there were only 3. Wily Castle and Palutena's Temple were actually pretty close to 20%, but Pac-Land was under 10%

Conclusion

So thats it, it looks like we got a pretty good stage list this time around. The community seems pretty open to trying new things, and I hope Smash 4 gets a health meta-game because of this.

 

[Texas Toast]

Interesting read. Thanks for conducting/compiling.

 

[Piford]

Interesting read. Thanks for conducting/compiling.

No Problem, I figured mostly the extremist would be participating in discussions, so we should see the whole communities take on stages.

 

[Weavile's Wrath]

As far as I've seen, Spirit Train and Find Mii aren't as horrible as people are making them out to be, but they could only be one tier higher.

 

[guedes the brawler]

uh, was it a good idea to put Pac Land in the vote? we don't know much about it yet

 

[Piford]

uh, was it a good idea to put Pac Land in the vote? we don't know much about it yet

We don't know much about any Wii U stage yet (besides the ones we saw at E3). But we know Pac-Land is a scolling stage with walk offs, hazards, and I think a stage boss, so it has a lot of things that could be problematic.

 

[Rakath]

...I'm trying to figure out why Pac Maze is so low, is there something I'm missing about the stage construct?

 

[Piford]

...I'm trying to figure out why Pac Maze is so low, is there something I'm missing about the stage construct?

It might be low because if you collect the dots, then you can avoid the stage hazards. This would cause people to fighting the stage instead of eachother.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

It might be low because if you collect the dots, then you can avoid the stage hazards. This would cause people to fighting the stage instead of eachother.

I...don't see how that follows. Pac-Maze has Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde roaming around doing contact damage, but I've never seen them actually launch someone more than a few feet. Collecting the dots causes a power pellet to appear, color coded to the player who can use it. Collecting that power pellet lets you destroy the ghosts on contact for a few seconds, but the pellet itself can also be destroyed by your enemies.

The whole thing just doesn't seem powerful enough to yank the focus away from the actual match, mostly because the ghosts themselves seem so weak.

 

[Raijinken]

Interesting that Brinstar is lower than Gaur, to me. But I'd say this is a pretty comparable response to my own (except I'm a bigger fan of Brinstar).

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

I'm trying to figure out why Unova League is so low. Everything I've seen about it suggests that the hazards are dramatically telegraphed in their attacks. I suspect the stairs (and thus the temporary walk-offs) are on a timer too, but it's hard to tell. At the very least, when they first appear is entirely predictable, as the Pokémon League sinks into Plasma Castle below. Either Reshiram or Zekrom will appear for the stage, and once the game chooses which one, only that one will appear. On top of that, they each only have one attack, though it can target different parts of the stage.

Although, it's incredibly difficult to find gameplay footage of this stage. I've seen like 1 video of it on Youtube, in the Reshiram form. The only time I saw gameplay of the Zekrom form was in a Twitch stream, and only for a single match as I recall.

 

[Piford]

For Pac Maze, that was just a guess, and I think it should be legal at first.
For Unova my guesses would be either people just assume its Spear Pillar 2.0, or its because the stairs that come down can hinder with recovery.

 

[Dragoomba]

I still don't understand. How come Tortimer Island is grouped with stages like Boxing Ring and Gaur Plains, with obvious walk-offs? What makes Tortimer Island not belong in tier 1?

 

[Piford]

I still don't understand. How come Tortimer Island is grouped with stages like Boxing Ring and Gaur Plains, with obvious walk-offs? What makes Tortimer Island not belong in tier 1?

The results are based off a survey, and are listed in order of highest percents. The tiers are based off when there is a large jump in percentage (although smaller as I go down). Tier 1 to tier 2 was about a 20% jump in accpetence. Tier 3 to 4 was only 5, because I was working with numbers in the mid 20s and then numbers in the high 10s.

 

[KingBroly]

So...are these for the non-Omega forms of these stages?

 

[Piford]

So...are these for the non-Omega forms of these stages?

Yes. The Omega versions of all stages have the exact same legnth and blast zones, and there for are all final destination.