Meta SSBU Competitive Ruleset Discussion

[Gunla]

Hello, and welcome to the Ruleset Discussion thread. This will be a repository of basic information for rulesets in Smash Ultimate in the recent wake of the scene. Some rulesets and preliminary stagelists have risen up, but are bound to change. I’ve tried to keep a low bias for this thread. In addition, individual stages will not be discussed as much here, but instead in the Stagelist Discussion Thread. Much of this is based around SamuraiPanda's old post for Smash 4.

Some of the things this thread will not cover:

• Individual stages (see above)
• Final Smash Meter (overall determined to be too unbalanced for play because of select Final Smashes and their invincibility)
• Stage Morph (issues of framerate/player preference on what stage goes first)
• Spirits (basically custom equipment, largely too volatile due to leveling variance & inability to transfer teams between setups)
• Underdog boost (unexplored, turned off by default)

Game Settings​

How many stocks, and what time should we be running?

Overall, at the beginning of the game, we've seen 3 stocks take hold for the most part with how the game speed is, but there's some potential variance. Here's the major rules that have been seen:

• 3 stock, 8 minutes (Brawl styled), with variance of 6-8 minutes
• 2 stock, 6 minutes, but best of 5 for most, if not all of the tournament.

Some shorthand arguments for each side:

• 3 stock, 6-8 minutes
  • Many players have been comfortable with this due to prior games, and the game speed is both faster than Smash 4 but not as stock-deletion heavy as Melee; the character speed and general damage (ladders and rage-reliant tools notwithstanding) passes Smash 4, but the hitstun does not create snowball situations like the latter game does. There is variance in time limits because of many TOs simply having different conclusions on the game's speed and how to discourage debilitating (not defensive) play.
• 2 stock, 6 minutes, best of 5 starting earlier
  • The more character-centric focus this game could be leaning towards (especially with the current onset that the viability floor seems much better than past games) means that character counterpicks and the like can play a much bigger role. However, given the nature of how Smash 4's 2 vs 3 stock ended up not showing a huge difference between timespan, I don't think it'd be a big difference in timesaving given how changing stocks will also change how players approach the game.

How do we run events?

• Swiss or Round Robin format for pools, then traditional double elimination
• Double elimination all the way through

Some shorthand arguments for each side:

• Swiss/RR -> Double Elimination
  • Some tournaments (namely the Smash 'N' Splash series) pride on using this format as it allows for players to get more sets in even if they're going to go out early, namely with the latter format. One of the more crucial issues here is that tiebreakers become a headache, but seeding can be more block based and regional conflicts become more of a straightforward "do not include more than X from a region" in this pool.
• Double elimination
  • Formatting does not change, which for some less informed competitors would be easier to understand because this is the traditional format. This will likely be the format most tournaments will run with, despite the fact that it allows half of the competitors to only play a few sets for their entry.

Stages​

What stages should we use?

See this thread. This deserves it's own topic.

How should stage selection work?

• Random selection
• Stage striking
• Online style preferences (Battlefield/Omega variants only)

Some shorthand arguments for each side:

• Random selection
  • Would likely tone down the starter list (smaller than the general 5-stage standard seen across tournaments) to create a relatively benign list to account for randomness. Punishes characters that may be weak to select stages.
• Stage striking
  • Players strike from a list of starter stages (in the case of 5 stages, a 1-2-2-1 format [as in the first player strikes, then the second player strikes two stages, and then comes back around to the first player to decide the stage played on]) with the order decided by Rock-Paper-Scissors or some equivalent. First player chooses the stage at the end of the day. This is the standard, typically.
• Online style preferences
  • Whittles down stage selection to a handful/2 stages, simplifying the stage selection but potentially alienating characters weak on both stages.

How should stage banning be done?
Note: SRR, or Stage Reselection Rule, indicates that you cannot select any stage you have won on previously in a set without a mutual agreement. MSRR, or Modified Stage Reselection Rule, indicates that you cannot select the most recent stage you have won on in a set. Pick X, Pick 1 is a format that instead has the loser of a game select a list of stages, with the winner selecting the one they want to play on.

• 1-3 bans, with no SRR or MSRR
• 1-3 bans, with SRR or MSRR
• PXP1

Some shorthand arguments for each side:

• SRR or MSRR
  • While stage ban count will vary with stagelist, inclusion of these rules can essentially give someone a soft additional ban later on in the later games of a set. Requires that players memorize on the fly of previous stages won on.
• No SRR or MSRR
  • Players do not have to recall additional stages here, and must utilize their bans on all stages they wish to avoid, or as many as possible.
• PXP1
  • See this post for a breakdown of PXP1 (by Akiak ). It is oriented towards larger stagelists (double digits).

How should alternate forms be handled?
Note: "Flat Stages" refers to Duck Hunt, Flat Zone X, Dream Land GB, Hanenbow, Super Mario Maker, Mute City (SNES) and Pac-Land.

• Allow all alternate forms as counterpicks
• Allow most as counterpicks, and remove egregious ones (flat stages) or ones that cannot be used because of copyright issues
• Ban all as counterpicks

Some shorthand arguments for each side:

• Allow all alternate forms as counterpicks
  • Allows for easier understanding and not having to recall specific banned stages. May not be doable at major events.
• Allow most and remove egregious ones
  • Flat stages flatten the Z-axis and can change small behaviors in moves, and likely should be removed to ensure complete symmetry across BF/FD forms.
• Ban all as counterpicks
  • Sacrifice additional variety for the sake of simple understanding that none of them are legal, removing the possibility of motion sickness or light issue concerns.

Miscellaneous​

How should Miis be handled?
Note: It is being assumed that players must name their Miis in a Neutral-Side-Up-Down number format with their loadouts. Guest Miis are also in Smash 4 and colors can be changed in-game.

• Legal with all of their moves, and sometimes restricted to locking in special moves to avoid the subject of moveset counterpicks
• Restrict Miis to a select community set standard of special moves
• Ban Miis

Some shorthand arguments for each side:

• All moves legal, but swapping loadouts mid-set is banned
  • This ended up being the major standard at the end of Smash 4, where most of the time Miis were used with Guest Sizes. However, now any Mii has the same weight and height and the Miis themselves now even have marginally different weight, speed and airspeed classes. This allows them to utilize their character creation tools.
  • Locking in the special loadouts prevents them from switching to a specific special midsets as a counterpick play. If Miis are allowed to switch specials, it's typically treated as changing characters.
• Restrict Miis to a community set standard
  • Makes creation of them be down to TOs and can be simpler to set up instead of the minute or so it may take from a set if they aren't made already. However, this assumes that players are able to agree on a standard (namely Mii players), and as seen in Smash 4, agreement was not universal.
• Ban Miis
  • TOs and players do not have to worry about the legal logistics. However, banning 3 characters alone when there is a lack of data to show they are debilitating to the game is a highly controversial move.

More sections may be added based upon demand and user input.

 

[Gunla]

Repository of Major/Notable Tournament Rulesets
This table is not comprehensive. If you feel a ruleset should be listed here or there is any inaccuracy due to ruleset changes, please let me know in this thread or via PM.
​

Region/Organization/Event | Ruleset Link | Stage Count | Hazards/Hazardless | Stage Bans/SRR | Miis | Stock & Time
California | Ruleset | 7 Stages | Hazardless | 2 bans, no SRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 8 minutes
Xanadu | Ruleset | 9 Stages | Hazardless | 2 bans, no SRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 7 minutes
Don't Park on the Grass 2018 | Ruleset | 8 Stages | Hazardless | 1 ban, MSRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 7 minutes
Midwest Mayhem Ultimate | Ruleset | 7 Stages | Hazardless | 2 bans, no SRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 7 minutes
Let's Make Moves | Ruleset | 7 Stages | Hazardless | 2 bans, no SRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 8 minutes
Sumabato SP | Ruleset | 5 Stages | Hazardless | 1 ban, no SRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 7 minutes
Genesis 6 | Ruleset | 11 Stages | Hazardless | 2 bans, MSRR | Legal with all moves | 3 stock, 8 minutes

 

[Shieldlesscap]

Personally, I think we should go with:
- 3 Stocks, 7 Minutes (Timer’s kinda arbitrary but Melee has an 8 minute timer so... as for 3 Stocks, generally faster pace)
- Double Elimination the whole time (It’s simple, it’s effective, no reason this needs to be changed from other games)
- I’ll come back to stages in a moment
- Make a standard Mii for every combination of specials, for a total of 12 Miis per type. Might want to use the unstacked roster though so you don’t have 36 options to scroll through.

Ok, so as for stages, I have a couple of ways we could handle this:
1. 5 starters, ban 1 2 1, MSRS
2. Stages that are considered too similar to both be legal (I.E. BF, Hazardless Fountain, Yoshi’s, Dreamland) get banned together, but if “Triplats” isn’t banned then any of them can be picked. This allows for multiple triplats to be legal separately while also not making character viability too centralized on characters who do well on Triplats.
3. As for the issue of flat stages and FD, ban them all except for Wily Castle, which can be a counterpick (The ability to walljump can potentially help certain characters, which is why I think this can work). Omega Stages are cosmetic alts.
4. Or, if the stagelist is too big, we could always say **** it and try to incorporate stage morph in, where one person gets first ban and the other gets to pick the order.

 

[SiO2]

My thoughts on Miis,

Since we are allowing nametags and custom controls, there is no reason to restrict Mii movesets, since it takes less than a minute to make a Mii set.

Placing hard restrictions on appearance (Guest Mii, standard costume) and naming (ie naming a Mii set to XYZA to represent moveset, like 1111 or 3121 or gun2232) is fine.

Limiting a player to one, and only one, moveset per Mii type is fine, even across the tournament. Ie: if a Gunner wants to use 2222, he is not allowed to switch to 1111 for the entire tournament. He is allowed to switch to Brawler or Sword, or a different non-Mii character (other rules permitting).

Additionally, now that Miis are legal in online random matchmaking, we can collect significantly more data on the characters than we ever could for Wii U.

Time/Stock

I think 3 stock and 7-8 minutes is ideal. Online random matchmaking allows us to set to 7 minutes (though there is sudden death on online), and it rarely goes to time. Of course, online play is not tournament play, so it is fair to criticize this point.

From a spectator perspective, 3 stock is much more fun to watch than 2 stock. Of course this is subjective.

 

[Rag]

Shouldn't switching Mii movesets be treated the same as switching characters between matches

 

[Mc.Rad]

Speaking of Miis, has anybody tested if height and weight makes a difference in them? That could be something that could make Miis even more difficult to balance out...

 

[Gunla]

Speaking of Miis, has anybody tested if height and weight makes a difference in them? That could be something that could make Miis even more difficult to balance out...

There are no height/weight differences - in fact, all of the Miis now have different weights, airspeed, etc.

 

[Mc.Rad]

There are no height/weight differences - in fact, all of the Miis now have different weights, airspeed, etc.

So are you saying that the height of the Mii itself doesnt factor into the fighter and the Mii fighters all have unique weights and airspeeds all dependent of their type and not the original Miis themsleves? Or is that something different.

Because if its the former then that pretty much lets the Miis be legal...


All I ask for is that nobody does some really crappy like make hitler miis and try to use them at EVO or something

 

[Gunla]

So are you saying that the height of the Mii itself doesnt factor into the fighter and the Mii fighters all have unique weights and airspeeds all dependent of their type and not the original Miis themsleves? Or is that something different.

It is type dependent. KuroganeHammer's website has some of the early attributes.

I assume that most events will just require Guest Miis to be used, especially majors, like in Smash 4.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

My early impressions would be...

1) Try 3 stock vs 2 stock best of 5 while the game is still young, get some hard data on any time differences. If the average is more than 60 seconds difference, go with the faster one. If the average is less than 60 seconds difference, let the TOs decide which works best logistically for them and let a standard naturally settle itself out. But as long as the viable character list remains as wide as it looks right now we should be willing to give both a fair shot during the first few months. Ideally we get at least a few large regionals done during this time to test both formats in 100+ man tournaments.

2) Swiss where possible, but probably stick with DE for the small tournaments (under 64). Swiss is rather entertaining to watch, however you need to have the setup support for it. And frankly for smaller tournaments I don't think its worth the hassle: they'll be able to have more friendlies done per player anyways than larger tournaments.

3) Stage Striking unless we end up in another situation where Smashville is the starter 60% of the time. In which case, force random on the players. We need to keep in mind the audience, even if the players don't like to be reminded of that fact. Audience gets bored of Smashville showing up so much. The neutrals need to be wildly used, not "X and Y are on there only so we have enough stages for striking".

4) No SRS or MSRS. Part of Smash is how well your character can perform on different stages. People constantly gentlemaning back to Smashville or Battlefield ruins that part of the game. To me, its borderline "cheating" in that you allowing both competitors to not have to deal with that aspect of the game, while in other sets one player may not allow that to happen.

5) Allow most, remove egregious ones. As long as this includes motion sickness inducing ones (Bayonetta's stage), this is the best way to handle things to start at least. If things end up too imbalanced because we have like 10 Tri-platform stages on the CP list we may need to look at either cutting them down or saying that they're included under the Battlefield strike

6) Free the Miis. Allow switching of movesets between rounds in a set, just as long as it counts as a character change and follows the rules accordingly. To me they're not just 3 characters, they're Character #72.1.1.1.1, #721.1.1.2, #72.2.3.1.1, etc. All should be eligible for being switched to like any other character. Keep the naming rule obviously.

 

[SiO2]

Shouldn't switching Mii movesets be treated the same as switching characters between matches

Makes sense to me.

 

[Mc.Rad]

So I wonder if we start allowing Mii fighters and let them use their customs, does this mean we need to do extensive research into every possible combination to see if something is possibly too overpowered or can easily combo into something leading towards easy kills? I guess its up to the community to see if they are ok with testing that out to the fullest

 

[Black_Ice_Gaming]

Dear All Smash Fans~



Okay so i’ve seen many ideas for a competitive smash ultimate and honestly I’m very disappointed with them. This is because we have a very unique opportunity in the fact that the competitive community has actually been thought of and not disregarded. So I have an idea on what a rule set can be all I need is for you to share this so everyone can see it. Now than before we begin i’d like to say from the bottom of my heart thank you for taking your time with this let us now begin.





~STOCK AND TIME~





Now after playing Ultimate since the midnight release of the game I’ve had an idea on how long matches will last after playing with others who are switching from playing other smash games competitively one coming from Melee the other two coming from Sm4sh and my self also coming from Melee. After playing for some time this is what we thought.

• 4 Stock

• 8 Minutes

This gives more than enough time for the match to play out and not be timed out nor have to few stock to were it would end to fast. This is the same rules as melee altho I could see the stock count changing to three as well. There really isn’t much to explain here so i’ll move on to the next subject.





~FINAL SMASH METER~





I think the Final Smash Meter (which i’ll now be referring to as FS Meter) should be tried if it is not it may never, if we banned it right away and what to try to later many will be reluctant to and it will be much harder to get people to have a open mind once the rules are finalized. Here are some of the key points about the meter I will explain more after it is listed.



#1).The FS Meter is similar to other fighting game Ultimate Moves.



#2).It gives variation to a fight.



#3.)Makes the game have more depth with how it can be used.



#4).From what i’ve seen it is not broken and every Final Smash can be avoided.



Now lets get into the first point most fighting games played competitively has some for of a Ultimate Move Street Fighter II, Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs. Capcom, Injustice Gods Among Us. Their Ultimate moves from what i’ve found are completely aloud in competitive play. Now on to point two. The fights would have more variation with the visuals of the Final Smash along with players having a new move to use. As for point three its easy to explain ill do this one with a example first. Lets say that a Incineroar has their meter ready and than get launch off stage they could try using Incineroar’s Final Smash which would rush him forward allowing them to recover from what his poor recovery would consider death most the time. This is one of many examples on how it gives game play variation. Now for the final point four. The FS Meter Final Smash is overall weaker than one from a Smash Ball. Along with the fact that in this game they are meant to be more like Ultimate Moves I don’t see any that are busted. Now than this one is a bit incorrect not every character can doge every Final Smash like Little Mac trying to dodge Ice Climbers on Fountain Of Dreams. But overall a Pichu won’t beat a Bayonetta and just like match ups some are just better at dogging Final Smashes but overall the cast can all dodge a hefty amount of them but now lets move on to the next part.





~SPIRITS~





This will be fast but I thought I should still talk about it in case someone who supported for customs in Sm4sh was wondering. Its a easy no the Spirits give to much randomness and would take to long setting up at tournaments. Not only that but they can also allow a player to have a item like the Lip’s Stick. So overall the Spirits are a easy no, they should be banned we seen them in Sm4sh where they was the exact same in the form of customs.





~STAGE HAZARDS~





Now let us get a tad weird shall we? I’ll first say the rules than describe it and that is both have it on and off. Let me explain, so in Ultimate you have the ability to save rulesets so I say we should make two rulesets both being used in one tournament being swapped between i’ll start making my points now.



#1).More stages can be allowed.



#2).Lets stages be more unique.



And thats it but it makes a huge impact heres why. With stage hazards turned off the stages Dream Land, Fountain of Dreams, and Yoshi’s Story all becomes Battlefield with some differences around the bottoms of the stage and the blast zones but normal on Dream Lands a breeze will blow on Fountain of Dreams the platforms will rise and fall and on Yoshi’s Story Randle (That cloud) will go around the bottom of the stage on a timer. Along with that some other things are Pokemon Stadium not transforming Yoshi’s Island not having it’s top platform move or the side platforms show. Smashville not having its platform move the same goes for Town and City.



But even than we lose if we just leave hazards on because now stages that can be use with the hazards off now can’t because of their hazards like for example. Halberd firing lasers and canon balls, Reset Bomb Forest transforming the same goes for Castle Siege. PictoChat 2 now having drawings and WarioWare, Inc. playing it’s mini games.

So the solution is simple we make two save rule list one called “Ultimate Hazards On” and another named “Ultimate Hazards Off” with the rules being

• 4 Stock

• 8 Minutes

• FS Meter On

then one will have hazards on the other hazards off now we have the best of both the variation of stages like Fountain of dreams but more stages that would other wise be unusable like WarioWare, Inc.





~STAGE LIST HAZARDS ON~





This one will be short ill just list the stages I think should be able to be picked with the Hazard On rules.

• Omega/Battlefield Stages along with the original Battlefield and Final Destination.
• DreamLand
• Fountain of Dreams
• Yoshi’s Story
• Pokemon Stadium
• Lylat Cruise
• Yoshi’s Island
• Smashville
• Town and City
• Prism Tower
• Duck Hunt
• Umbra Clock Tower

And that is all for what I think should be aloud for competitive play with hazards on now granted the stage list can be changed if there are problems found.





~STAGE LIST HAZARDS OFF~





This one will also be short the same as the last a list of stages but this time with the rules of hazards off

• Battlefield/Battlefield Forms
• Final Destination/Omega
• Dream Land
• Green Greens
• Fountain of Dreams
• Yoshi’s Story
• Brinstar
• Pokemon Stadium
• Castle Siege
• Pokemon Stadium 2
• Lylat Cruise
• Halberd
• Yoshi’s Island
• Frigate Orpheon
• WarioWare, Inc.
• Smashville
• Prism Tower
• Unova Pokemon League
• Reset Bomb Forest
• Find Mii
• PictoChat 2
• Mushroom Kingdom U
• Town and City
• Kalos Pokemon League
• Skyloft
• Duck Hunt
• Pilotwings
• Wuhu Island
• Wily Castle
• Midgar
• Umbra Clock Tower

Now there is one thong about this and its Stage Striking I believe if Player One strikes Battle Field than Player Two can’t pick Dream Land Yoshi’s Story, or Fountain of Dreams this rule will apply to any stages that are far to similar to one another.





~ENDING~





So with this I’ve said everything I have to say please make sure to share the post, message me, comment, and comment below if something is wrong with the rules or if there is misinformation. Along with that please make sure to share this everywhere you can if its not seen these rules can’t be taken into consideration and with that i’d like to say THANK YOU so much for your time and please have a wonderful day I truly hope you do.





Sincerely Black Ice Gaming~

 

[NonSpecificGuy]

My thoughts on Miis,

Since we are allowing nametags and custom controls, there is no reason to restrict Mii movesets, since it takes less than a minute to make a Mii set.

Placing hard restrictions on appearance (Guest Mii, standard costume) and naming (ie naming a Mii set to XYZA to represent moveset, like 1111 or 3121 or gun2232) is fine.

Limiting a player to one, and only one, moveset per Mii type is fine, even across the tournament. Ie: if a Gunner wants to use 2222, he is not allowed to switch to 1111 for the entire tournament. He is allowed to switch to Brawler or Sword, or a different non-Mii character (other rules permitting).

Additionally, now that Miis are legal in online random matchmaking, we can collect significantly more data on the characters than we ever could for Wii U.

Time/Stock

I think 3 stock and 7-8 minutes is ideal. Online random matchmaking allows us to set to 7 minutes (though there is sudden death on online), and it rarely goes to time. Of course, online play is not tournament play, so it is fair to criticize this point.

From a spectator perspective, 3 stock is much more fun to watch than 2 stock. Of course this is subjective.

The thing with Mii's are the over-complications that can come with them. They could do as you suggested but without the height and weight differences being factored into the play style of the character I don't think any one set up would be necessarily more powerful than any other.

What I mean is, TO's could set up their rules to where Mii's can be legal if you go by this, that, and this like you stated above but I think it would be much more simple to make them straight legal or illegal. Having them restricted to the move set they created for the specific match I think would be the most that needed to be done. Even then swapping a Mii's move set around only changes the Specials which yeah, it changes up the match up a bit, but by and large what was learned in a previous match in 2 of 3, or 3 of 5, can still be translated if the Mii's move set is changed around.

I say all that to say, Mii's should just be legal, period imo. I don't see any reason to defunct a character with a whole bunch of nuance when I don't feel it's entirely needed.

 

[leafgreen386]

So I wonder if we start allowing Mii fighters and let them use their customs, does this mean we need to do extensive research into every possible combination to see if something is possibly too overpowered or can easily combo into something leading towards easy kills? I guess its up to the community to see if they are ok with testing that out to the fullest

We're not smogon. We don't ban every little thing just because it leans toward the strong side. The only reason banning miis is even up for consideration is the logistical issues of having to set them up, and the time cost this would have on tournament play.

Even if one specific combination *did* end up being vastly better than the others and became the standard for the character (highly likely), that doesn't mean the character itself is too powerful, just that the other moveset options relative to that setup aren't as good. Furthermore, if a character did end up with a "standard setup," it would mean we'll end up with more than enough data *on* that particular setup, because everyone will be playing it. Only then, if the character proves to be too hard to deal with for the rest of the cast, would we consider banning it.

 

[Octorockandroll]

So far every tournament I've witnessed has used 3 stocks, 7 minute Bo3 rules which has this weird thing where matches between quicker and lighter characters seem to go pretty fast but as soon as you have a heavy in there it gets dragged out because of how it takes soo much time to kill them in this game. I'm hoping this is just something that will change once we understand the game more and can kill heavies more reliably but if not we may have to shorten the time since most tournaments won't really be running smoothly if so many games last 7 minutes.

 

[Untouch]

Just regarding Squad Strike, I feel like echos should be legal to run along side the main character. CLASHtournaments had some Squad Strike matches yesterday and one of the players with Pit/Dark Pit. I saw some people in the chat complain but I don't think it'd be fair to force something like this, even ignoring echos like Ryu/Ken and Roy/Chrom.

 

[AviaRy]

Some thoughts on each issue:

Game format - I've been using 3 stock 7 minutes so far, and it seems to work pretty well. Forgiving enough that an SD doesn't damn you, short enough that each game is of reasonable length. As the game progresses and players get better, it may becomes necessary to add stocks, reduce time (if stalling is impractical mechanically) or increase time (if stalling is too common). As far as counterpick banning, I think less is more. It is not an inherently bad thing in the meta for people to be able to go to their best stage (how exciting is it to watch M2K go to FD, or Mang0 to Yoshi's?). DSR prevents overuse of that stage anyway.

RPS, 1-2-1 stage striking
Modified DSR
1 or 2 stage bans (depending on the size of the list)
Round Robin pools when possible, double elim when not possible.

Starter list:

• Battlefield
• FD
• Smashville H/on
• Pokemon stadium H/off
• Town & City H/on
  • Or maybe Fountain of Dreams H/on

I honestly think that if we want the scene to grow, then competitive rules need to be simple without sacrificing depth. RPS, 1-2-1 striking can be explained in a few minutes, and most other systems that have been proposed are not. Obviously DSR and modified DSR are great ideas and should be kept. But keeping the format beginner-friendly and forgiving (whenever I ran small tournaments I made an effort to do round-robin pools, for example) is important to a healthy scene trying to draw in more casual players.

 

[Bla_nk]

What about warriors ware h/off

 

[Gunman1357]

Ok so here's a question most of us overlooked.
Anthers Ladder is doing character select, then stage striking,
I thought the intent with this game was character select before stage striking.
What's the ruleset, because I definitely advocate stage striking before character select.
It would change the game in alot of ways but I can't find where people are talking about this.

 

[Octorockandroll]

Ok so here's a question most of us overlooked.
Anthers Ladder is doing character select, then stage striking,
I thought the intent with this game was character select before stage striking.
What's the ruleset, because I definitely advocate stage striking before character select.
It would change the game in alot of ways but I can't find where people are talking about this.

This is news to me. I hope thats not a trend that catches on because picking a stage before a character is just a lot more interesting in terms of counter play and ****. And I say this being someone who usually only plays one character.

 

[Shieldlesscap]

Ok so here's a question most of us overlooked.
Anthers Ladder is doing character select, then stage striking,
I thought the intent with this game was character select before stage striking.
What's the ruleset, because I definitely advocate stage striking before character select.
It would change the game in alot of ways but I can't find where people are talking about this.

That’s weird... doesn’t Anther’s do Stages first in all other games?

 

[dav3yb]

I don't see a lot of reason to go past 6 minutes to start. And I don't think things should ever go past 7 minutes.

Btw, I haven't had a chance to really experiment with anything, but Nintendo mentioned that 1v1 would have higher damage rates? Is that still the case? I noticed you can set a lot of options when making rule sets, but does 1v1 alter anything about those values you can set?

 

[ShneeOscar]

I just had an idea that could speed up tournaments significantly. You know how like 80% of players use the default controls but with tap jump off? Well, if we set the default controls on all consoles to that (which is a thing you can do now, which is awesome), it would get rid of the bit before every set where both players have to enter their tags and set up their controls, saving potentially 1-2 minutes per set, which over the course of a whole tournament, would be significant. What the default controls are set to would have to be noted in the rules at every event though, and every console would have to be checked beforehand (which probably wouldn't take that long, as you're already setting up all the rulesets beforehand anyway).

 

[TK Wolf]

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I've heard that controllers with rapid-fire/turbo are automatically banned. Is this true? I'm not sure what sort of advantage turbo gives in a game like this, especially with how generous the input buffer is. Asking because I really like the Hori battle pad, and hope I don't have to toss it out because of a technicality. I imagine I'm not the only one in this bucket.

 

[lordvaati]

Shouldn't switching Mii movesets be treated the same as switching characters between matches

I always thought this too honestly.
With defined heights/weights and the removal of custom move hunting shenanigans there really should not be such restrictions on Mii Fighters. I'd raise an argument it is akin to if you choose the Echo overlay and switch the layout of the character between sets.

 

[Skeleghost]

I'm gonna bring over a discussion from the pre-release stage discussion thread, since this seems like a more appropriate place for it than the stagelist discussion thread...

I'm an advocate for personalized stage lists as an alternative to stage striking and counterpicking. Here is how the personalized list system works:
Each player creates a list of all legal stages, with their most preferred stages on top, and their least preferred on the bottom. Then you compare two player's lists in order to determine the stages in a set. Much faster than stage striking or counterpicking, and also more fair, and also there is no chance of a player ever getting stuck on a stage they hate (unless they hate the majority of the stages).

"Wait, what do you mean it's faster? That sounds like it would take a long time!"
http://smashlists.droppages.com/
Ta da! I made a simple web app for it. It might take time before the tournament to create the lists, then send them to the TO, but during the tournament, it's much faster than striking or counterpicking.

Anyway, I know the smash community tends to be conservative, and this is probably too different for many people to be willing to consider... but I hope someone proves me wrong and gives it a try!

 

[SiO2]

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I've heard that controllers with rapid-fire/turbo are automatically banned. Is this true? I'm not sure what sort of advantage turbo gives in a game like this, especially with how generous the input buffer is. Asking because I really like the Hori battle pad, and hope I don't have to toss it out because of a technicality. I imagine I'm not the only one in this bucket.

Turbo controllers are pretty much universally banned at any gaming tournament, fighting game or not.

 

[Shieldlesscap]

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I've heard that controllers with rapid-fire/turbo are automatically banned. Is this true? I'm not sure what sort of advantage turbo gives in a game like this, especially with how generous the input buffer is. Asking because I really like the Hori battle pad, and hope I don't have to toss it out because of a technicality. I imagine I'm not the only one in this bucket.

They’re banned because without having to even more your hand, you can mash at least 5 buttons 30 times per second using turbo.

 

[KACHOW!!!]

Uh... nobody's talking about bowsercide & other character move specific initiated suicides. Some people claim that it should be whoever wins on the results screen, but this seems insane/foolish because it's never been that way in tournament, but more importantly the person initiating the suicide is in control: they have actively created the outcome of the game. Yes, there are instances where it has been deferred to in tourney that the winner is the person on the victory screen (EVO 2018, among others), but this is not the way tournament rules in Melee and Project M, smash 4, and brawl have worked previously. Point being: if you're both on last stock and Bowser (or ganondorf, or donkey kong, or whoever) initiate that both of you die, then the winner of the match should be the person who initiated the mutually assured destruction. I say this not as some random person, because I'm not a TO, or a top player, or even a good player, I just know how rulesets have worked previously.

Although one problem with this is donkey kong, because if DK initates the suicide the victory screen then both players die, but the non DK player (let's say its Ike) dies after DK (so for example, Ike mashes out of the grab, DK falls to the blast zone on last stock, Ike falls to the blast zone on last stock.

This all gets to a bigger issue at the heart of this thread, especially with the question posted by Gunla of what kinds of rules the competitive scene should have. Do we want a more active game, where the person who initiates the situation takes the victory, or do we want a passive game that rewards the less active, more campy playstyle. That does mean that you could argue putting the rules in favor of suicide moves pushes the game towards a campy and boring playstyle, but I think that the bowsercide is an active move: you have chosen to do something: you've thrown out a move and it's connected. Why reward people for getting hit? Other than making things easier for tournament organizers (which is imporant in some regards, but you've gotta draw the line somewhere) Why reward people who can't win the game themselves, and win basically by the default of "well the victory screen said so"?

 

[Nidtendofreak]

The idea of not going with the results screen for suicide moves has been discussed before back in SSB4 with Kirby, Bowser and Ganondorf. IIRC Hawaii actually went with "initiator wins" for a short while because the best Bowser main of the time lived there. Problem is how do you prove it didn't have the suicide initiator as losing because the grabbed character broke out at the last second and thus truly didn't die first? Particularly for smaller tournaments who aren't streaming/recording everything? I think "results screen unless draw, then it goes to the initiator" was also tried but it technically runs into the same issue: how do you prove it wasn't a draw because the victim mashed out at the last frame possible and thus needs to go to the actual draw rules?

Another issue back in SSB4 was with Ike's aethercide: he always lost first because he clearly fell slightly ahead of whoever he dragged. If Bowser and Ganondorf got special treatment to override the results screen, why wouldn't he get it as well? Wasn't he suffering the same thing? Or DK with Cargo Grab? What is the line? The logic of "if you initiate it, it should go your way" could be used for going super deep off stage to deny a recovery attempt but falling to your death before your opponent. It starts to become problematic very quickly.

There's no fair way to deal with that argument if you aren't going by the results screen. It becomes "he said she said" with lots of finger point and headaches. TOs already have enough on their plates, and having to have refs watch every game with a suicide-capable character at majors isn't feasible. It is best to go with the results screen with everyone being clear in advance that it will be decided by the results screen.

 

[Akiak]

Gonna try to make a quick recap on why we should use PXP1 for counterpicks instead of bans. Probably the main reason is that it allows us to have larger (>10) stagelists with no significant drawbacks, meaning we don't have to ban perfectly viable stages simply because we have too many.

PXP1: for games 2+, the loser picks X amount of stages (for 11-15 stages 3 should be fine), then the winner picks 1 of them.

This is equivalent to 2 bans (X-1) in the regular system.

1) The first difference is that it gives the winner more information, so it's less likely that he'll waste his bans on stages that his opponent never intended to go to. This is simply better in my opinion, as it's less punishing to new players with less information.

2) It works much better for larger (>10) stagelists. This is because the counterpicker only needs to know his 3 best stages (which generally doesn't require looking at the full list of stages and pondering every possible choice). The opponent on the other hand, has to simply figure out his best stage out of the 3 that are proposed to him. With regular bans, you're asking the winner to figure out his opponent's 2 best stages out of the entire list (and ban them). With PXP1, the focus is on your best stages, as opposed to your worst.

3) This change in focus also directly affects how liberal we can be with stages. Let's take a stage such as WarioWare, that is considered pretty polarising and somewhat controversial. With regular bans, players would have to ban it every single set if they were afraid of being taken to it. With PXP1, the stage is never even looked at if neither of the players are interested in it. This means that stages are really only there for those who want to use them, meaning that we can keep fairly 'unpopular' stages legal, as long as some people like them (or, competitively speaking, if at least some matchups are balanced and interesting on said stage). Essentially, players will be much less inclined to complain and advocate for bans for a stage they don't like.

4) It opens up to the possibility of grouping. This means that 'redundant' stages such as Pokemon Stadium 1 or Wily's Castle, can be included with virtually no effect on the overall balance of the list. You simply group them with their respective counterparts (PS1 with PS2, Wily's with FD, etc.), and you forbid the counterpicker from nominating more than 1 stage from any group (e.g. I can't nominate both Wily's and FD in my 3 nominations).

5) If we're doing stage first then char (for games 2+), then using regular bans is very problematic unless you have an extremely conservative list. This is because the winner has to figure out with ZERO information that his opponent may have a character that's overtly good on a certain stage (and ban that stage). With PXP1, the loser is giving his opponent some information before hand, which allows him to make a more informed decision about what stages to ban. Unfortunately, stage-first-then-char is still problematic, as any stage that is overtly polarising even for a single character would have to theoretically be banned 100% of the time, meaning it's never played. However, with PXP1, at least the ban is never wasted, since it only occurs when the stage is nominated.

Honestly, I don't see any reason at all not to use it. I'd be really disappointed if we didn't try it simply because we're too accustomed to regular bans. For the first time with Ultimate, we actually have a fairly large amount of competitively viable stages, and we should be open to new systems that allow us to make the most out of what we've been given.

Gunla I'd appreciate it if you could include this method in the original post. It's perhaps worth mentioning that X-2-1 is also an option, and gives the same exact benefits as PXP1, with one extra intermediary step:

X-2-1: for games 2+, loser picks X stages, winner bans X-2, loser picks 1.

The appropriate value of X is 1 more than what you'd use for PXP1, and 2 more than the amount of bans you want to give. The main difference is that you're giving the final say to the loser/counterpicker as opposed to the winner (although I'm not convinced this is necessary).

 

[Munomario777]

Seconding Akiak 's pXp1 post. The cool thing about pXp1 (which stands for "pick X, pick 1") is that it's basically the traditional ban system, except the players ban in the reverse order. As Akiak described, this fixes several problems. The purpose of this post is to make this fact clear:

>> In pXp1, the ban power (# of bans per player) is the same, but the reversed order solves several issues regarding the flow of information.

What follows is a full demonstration of how, under the hood, pXp1 gives each player the same ban power as the traditional system does. I recommend that you read it, but I've also put it in a collapse tag to help the post not become a massive wall of text. (but look how that turned out...)

Spoiler

Say the stage list is n total, and the number of bans in the traditional system is Y.

[ ! ] A "ban," in the sense of a stage strike, is defined as removing a stage from the available pool for that match. Makes sense, right?

Traditional order of events
- W bans Y stages.
- L bans [(n - Y) - 1] stages. (In other words, "L picks 1 of the remaining (n - Y) stages.")

We usually describe the last step as something like "L picks from the remaining (n - Y) stages." This is equivalent to "L bans [(n - Y) - 1] stages," in the same way that the final step of Game One 1-2-1 Striking can be described as either "P1 bans 1 stage" or "P1 picks from the remaining 2 stages."

>> Picking A stages out of B stages is the same as banning B-A stages.

(e.g. picking 1 of 10 stages = banning 9 stages.) In this sense, both players are banning stages here, not just W.

pXp1's order of events
- L bans [(n - Y) - 1] stages. (In other words, "L nominates (Y + 1) stages.")
- W bans Y stages. (In other words, "W picks 1 of the (Y + 1) stages nominated by L.")

Compare this to the traditional outline above. Same steps, but reversed order. For simplicity, you can rewrite pXp1 so that X = [Y + 1], which is more practical since that's the number of stages being nominated.

>> The X in pXp1 is 1 greater than the # of bans you'd use in the traditional system (to achieve the same ban power).

Rewritten pXp1
- L bans (n - X) stages. (nominates X)
- W bans (X - 1) stages. (picks 1)

Finally, here's an infographic to help illustrate the point. Here there are 5 stages. Y = 1, so X = 2. A greyed-out square means that the stage was banned by that action. For example, W bans red, so red is greyed out on the line showing W's bans.

With that out of the way, here's why I argue for pXp1.

Why do we give W stage bans in the first place? Answer: allowing L to pick absolutely any stage leads to imbalanced stage picks for the character MU. So we allow W to ban Y stages to limit L's options.

>> The goal of Game 2+ bans is to give L his (Y + 1)th best stage.

If both players have perfectly accurate information at their disposal, this works. However, that's not always the case. Here are some examples of where unavailable or imperfect information messes with the goal of Game 2+ bans:



W does not know whether L is interested in a stage - for example, W might ban Battlefield because he thinks his opponent might want to go there based on his character choice in Game One. This is a gamble, since it's possible that L never wanted to go there to begin with. If W loses the gamble, he's wasted a stage ban.

>> If W wastes a stage ban, the system has failed to give L his (Y + 1)th best stage, since L gets a better and better stage the more bans W inadvertently wastes.

pXp1 fixes this issue. If L plans to go to Battlefield, W will know and will be able to ban the stage if he thinks it's worse than the other options nominated. If L does not plan to go to Battlefield, W has neither the ability nor a reason to ban Battlefield.

>> pXp1 makes it impossible for W to fully waste stage bans.

This issue rears its head particularly nastily in the case of unpopular stages, such as Lylat in Smash 4. Banning or not banning Lylat is a gamble (assuming you dislike Lylat).
- Ban Lylat, and you're safe if your opponent wants to go there. BUT if he didn't want to go there, you wasted a ban.
- Don't ban Lylat, and you're at risk, but potentially don't waste a stage ban if you guessed correctly.

pXp1 fixes the issue here too, for the same reasons as above. You can only ban Lylat if banning Lylat was going to have any effect in the first place.



W does not know which of a group of Echo Stages L will pick - for example, take Battlefield (BF) and Dream Land (DL) in Smash 4. These stages are grouped together, meaning that banning one automatically bans the other. I'll call them "Echo Stages," each group is an "Echo Group," and I'll call the act of grouping them "Echoing."

Echoing is a solution to an important problem: what happens when two stages are too similar to be separate but each good stages in their own right? If they were separate, characters like Mario and ZSS would basically force their opponent to drop 2 stage bans on the triplats to avoid getting ladder combo'd. In other words, the triplat layout kind of has immunity to bans. Grouping the stages fixes this issue.

>> Echoing is a solution to when two or more stages are similar enough that their coexistence is problematic.

The problem arises when a character is good on one of the Echo Stages but not on the other (e.g. Mewtwo). Suppose your character is good on BF but not on DL. Banning the triplats guarantees that your opponent cannot pick DL, a stage you want to avoid. However, it also requires banning your best stage, BF, along with it. If you choose not to ban the triplats, you're taking a gamble that the opponent will prefer BF to DL.

If the opponent knows your character well, he'll probably pick DL to counter your character. For this reason, you're essentially forced to ban triplats – and thus ban your own best stage! – every time.

>> In the traditional Game 2+ system, Echoing makes W take a gamble or else be required to ban a stage favorable to him, which is undesirable.

pXp1 fixes this issue. To be clear, pXp1's Echo Stage policy is "L may not nominate more than 1 Echo Stage from a given Echo Group." (e.g. you may nominate Battlefield OR Dream Land, but not both at once)

If L has any intention of going to a triplat, he will pick BF or DL. As W, whose character is awful on DL but good on BF, I can react to the triplat chosen. If L nominated BF, I choose the triplat. If L nominated DL instead, I don't choose the triplat. No gambles, no guesses, no having to ban your own best stage.

>> pXp1 removes ambiguity from Echo Groups while still preventing the Echoed layout from having immunity to bans.



W may find it difficult to thoroughly consider the entire stage list at once - for example, say you're playing against Bayonetta, who loves small-ceiling stages. If there are only 5 stages legal like in Smash 4, it's fairly easy to keep all of the ceiling heights in mind at once. I can tell you off the top of my head that Town & City has a low ceiling, Battlefield's is high, and everything else is the same. Ban Town & City, Bayo can't ladder you as easily, done.

With larger stage lists, however, this becomes more of an issue. If we run, say, 15 stages early on, it's hard to keep in mind the every property of each stage. In a system with 3 bans, for example, you might ban stages a, b, and c. You remember off the top of your head that a and b have low ceilings, so you ban them. In the heat of the tournament set, you can't think of a third low-ceiling stage, so you go with c as your third and final stage ban. Bayonetta picks stage d, which has a low ceiling, and you think to yourself, "Oh shoot, I forgot d has a low ceiling..."

This is especially hard because you're trying to think of your opponent's character's best stages. You know your main's best stages, but do you know the other player's main's best stages? In a game with seventy characters? It's tough.

(And of course, this is especially difficult for less experienced players, meaning it might be a barrier to entry)

>> The traditional Game 2+ system expects players to be able to make accurate calls on what his opponent's best stages are. There are more stages and characters in Ultimate than ever before, so this becomes even less realistic.

With pXp1, the issue is fixed. As mentioned above, you can recall your own main's best stages quite easily. In this way, L (who is nominating his best stages) has an easy time. W, meanwhile, now has a much smaller pool of stages to consider, so keeping all the details in mind is not nearly as taxing.

To go with the example from earlier, the equivalent of 3 bans is p4p1, so Bayonetta nominates 4 stages – the same a, b, c, and d from before. Just like before, all but c have a low ceiling. (Bayonetta chose c because she ran out of low-ceiling stages to nominate; there are no more low-ceiling stages in the ruleset.) You, Bayo's opponent, pick c – since the stages are presented to you directly and are few in number, it's easy to recall the properties of each.

>> With pXp1, the decision made by each player is not too difficult. L considers many stages, but only has to consider his own best stages. W considers few stages, in exchange for having to weigh which stages are best for his opponent.



In this way, pXp1 is basically the traditional system but optimized for consistent results. It strictly gives W more power than the traditional system does. The nice thing, though, is that now that W isn't prone to wasting bans, the results of this method won't fluctuate nearly as much. As such, it's easier to fine-tune the banning power of each player to achieve the result you want. So if you advocate for 3 bans but reckon p4p1 gives W too much power, you could consider using p3p1 instead. The number of bans doesn't need to be as high if those bans are consistently being used to good effect.

>> The consistency of pXp1 makes it easier than ever to find L's (Y + 1)th best stage (the goal of Game 2+ systems).

 

[Eaode]

The idea of not going with the results screen for suicide moves has been discussed before back in SSB4 with Kirby, Bowser and Ganondorf. IIRC Hawaii actually went with "initiator wins" for a short while because the best Bowser main of the time lived there. Problem is how do you prove it didn't have the suicide initiator as losing because the grabbed character broke out at the last second and thus truly didn't die first? Particularly for smaller tournaments who aren't streaming/recording everything? I think "results screen unless draw, then it goes to the initiator" was also tried but it technically runs into the same issue: how do you prove it wasn't a draw because the victim mashed out at the last frame possible and thus needs to go to the actual draw rules?

Another issue back in SSB4 was with Ike's aethercide: he always lost first because he clearly fell slightly ahead of whoever he dragged. If Bowser and Ganondorf got special treatment to override the results screen, why wouldn't he get it as well? Wasn't he suffering the same thing? Or DK with Cargo Grab? What is the line? The logic of "if you initiate it, it should go your way" could be used for going super deep off stage to deny a recovery attempt but falling to your death before your opponent. It starts to become problematic very quickly.

There's no fair way to deal with that argument if you aren't going by the results screen. It becomes "he said she said" with lots of finger point and headaches. TOs already have enough on their plates, and having to have refs watch every game with a suicide-capable character at majors isn't feasible. It is best to go with the results screen with everyone being clear in advance that it will be decided by the results screen.

Agreed. Initiator wins suicide moves is the way it should be imo, but the only way to keep it objective is for it to only apply to moves that can't be mashed out of. Afaik you can't mash out of Ganondorf's Side-B? I'm not sure if there are any others, but that would be my take--narrow "Initiator wins" only to suicide moves that guarantee a kill once offstage.

EDIT:

Seconding Akiak 's pXp1 post. The cool thing about pXp1 (which stands for "pick X, pick 1") is that it's basically the traditional ban system, except the players ban in the reverse order. As Akiak described, this fixes several problems. The purpose of this post is to make this fact clear:

>> In pXp1, the ban power (# of bans per player) is the same, but the reversed order solves several issues regarding the flow of information.

[...]
>> The consistency of pXp1 makes it easier than ever to find L's (Y + 1)th best stage (the goal of Game 2+ systems).

This post is based.

 

[DavemanCozy]

With defined heights/weights and the removal of custom move hunting shenanigans there really should not be such restrictions on Mii Fighters.

I'm a little sad that still some tourney rulesets are trying to restrict them to 1111. I'd rather they just ban them outright or allow their whole kit. Not an in-between version that is basically saying "we're banning them"

 

[dav3yb]

Agreed. Initiator wins suicide moves is the way it should be imo, but the only way to keep it objective is for it to only apply to moves that can't be mashed out of. Afaik you can't mash out of Ganondorf's Side-B? I'm not sure if there are any others, but that would be my take--narrow "Initiator wins" only to suicide moves that guarantee a kill once offstage.

If the result screen displays a clear winner, that is who should be declared winner. If i knock you off the top blast zone and it results in a star ko, but i fall and die before you do, I'm declared the loser. It's no different, the first person to hit the blast zone on their final stock has lost. I think one of the only reasons they needed a suicide clause was because sometimes they would result in sudden death, both players dying at the same time, and they just declared the person executing the move the winner. That is only case where the clause is acceptable.

 

[ShneeOscar]

IIRC, the suicide clause was originally created to deal with situations where the winner was inconsistent. In Smash 4, Bowsercide could result in Bowser losing, OR sudden death, depending on the stage partially, but also sometimes seeming completely random.

 

[Eaode]

IIRC, the suicide clause was originally created to deal with situations where the winner was inconsistent. In Smash 4, Bowsercide could result in Bowser losing, OR sudden death, depending on the stage partially, but also sometimes seeming completely random.

Actually, I believe it dates back to Brawl where Ganon- and Bowser-cides had one character die before the other or at the same time based on the relative size of the character models. It also brings things back into line with the principle of tactics and causality. I will agree with dav3yb in the sense that if the death order of these moves are 100% consistent now, there's not really a reason to overrule the game engine here--just means that suicide moves are bad if you're both on last stock.

I think I'll change my mind and say that, if there is NO inconsistency, the game staying as law is definitely preferable just for logistics' sake. If there is unpredictability though, it bears making a ruling on.

 

[SiO2]

I'm a little sad that still some tourney rulesets are trying to restrict them to 1111. I'd rather they just ban them outright or allow their whole kit. Not an in-between version that is basically saying "we're banning them"

At least the 1111 sets are competitively viable this time. Maybe not their best sets, but certainly not sucky

 

[Akiak]

I'm gonna bring over a discussion from the pre-release stage discussion thread, since this seems like a more appropriate place for it than the stagelist discussion thread...

I'm an advocate for personalized stage lists as an alternative to stage striking and counterpicking. Here is how the personalized list system works:
Each player creates a list of all legal stages, with their most preferred stages on top, and their least preferred on the bottom. Then you compare two player's lists in order to determine the stages in a set. Much faster than stage striking or counterpicking, and also more fair, and also there is no chance of a player ever getting stuck on a stage they hate (unless they hate the majority of the stages).

"Wait, what do you mean it's faster? That sounds like it would take a long time!"
http://smashlists.droppages.com/
Ta da! I made a simple web app for it. It might take time before the tournament to create the lists, then send them to the TO, but during the tournament, it's much faster than striking or counterpicking.

Anyway, I know the smash community tends to be conservative, and this is probably too different for many people to be willing to consider... but I hope someone proves me wrong and gives it a try!

Want to comment on this briefly since I was a proponent of it in the previous thread. There is one big advantage to using something like this over both bans and PXP1/X-2-1: it removes the starter-counterpick dichotomy. This is beneficial as it's generally not optimal to practice on counterpick stages, so they tend to fall out of use.

With PXP1, the only way of preventing this which I could think of, was to force the counterpicker to nominate at least 1 CP-stage (i.e. I can't nominate BF, FD and PS2). While I do think this helps, this doesn't completely solve the issue.

There is also however a major 'flaw' to the list system proposed above, which is that it pretty much requires either an app, or a phone/pen&paper to write down the lists and compare them.

I've made a number of posts about it in the previous thread. The main points I want to emphasise are that I believe the lists should only be used for games 1 (and use PXP1 for games 2+) and that players should be freely able to switch their lists around at any point during the tournament. Locking the lists and using them for every match isn't necessarily bad, just worse imo.

Anyways, link to my first post about the subject, and another explaining why we should always pick randomly when two stages are tied (there might be a few more).

Gonna try to make a quick recap on why we should use PXP1 for counterpicks instead of bans. Probably the main reason is that it allows us to have larger (>10) stagelists with no significant drawbacks, meaning we don't have to ban perfectly viable stages simply because we have too many.

PXP1: for games 2+, the loser picks X amount of stages (for 11-15 stages 3 should be fine), then the winner picks 1 of them.

This is equivalent to 2 bans (X-1) in the regular system.

1) The first difference is that it gives the winner more information, so it's less likely that he'll waste his bans on stages that his opponent never intended to go to. This is simply better in my opinion, as it's less punishing to new players with less information.

2) It works much better for larger (>10) stagelists. This is because the counterpicker only needs to know his 3 best stages (which generally doesn't require looking at the full list of stages and pondering every possible choice). The opponent on the other hand, has to simply figure out his best stage out of the 3 that are proposed to him. With regular bans, you're asking the winner to figure out his opponent's 2 best stages out of the entire list (and ban them). With PXP1, the focus is on your best stages, as opposed to your worst.

3) This change in focus also directly affects how liberal we can be with stages. Let's take a stage such as WarioWare, that is considered pretty polarising and somewhat controversial. With regular bans, players would have to ban it every single set if they were afraid of being taken to it. With PXP1, the stage is never even looked at if neither of the players are interested in it. This means that stages are really only there for those who want to use them, meaning that we can keep fairly 'unpopular' stages legal, as long as some people like them (or, competitively speaking, if at least some matchups are balanced and interesting on said stage). Essentially, players will be much less inclined to complain and advocate for bans for a stage they don't like.

4) It opens up to the possibility of grouping. This means that 'redundant' stages such as Pokemon Stadium 1 or Wily's Castle, can be included with virtually no effect on the overall balance of the list. You simply group them with their respective counterparts (PS1 with PS2, Wily's with FD, etc.), and you forbid the counterpicker from nominating more than 1 stage from any group (e.g. I can't nominate both Wily's and FD in my 3 nominations).

5) If we're doing stage first then char (for games 2+), then using regular bans is very problematic unless you have an extremely conservative list. This is because the winner has to figure out with ZERO information that his opponent may have a character that's overtly good on a certain stage (and ban that stage). With PXP1, the loser is giving his opponent some information before hand, which allows him to make a more informed decision about what stages to ban. Essentially, with regular bans, any stage that is overtly polarising even for a single character can't be legal (or you'd have to ban it 100% of the time).

Honestly, I don't see any reason at all not to use it. I'd be really disappointed if we didn't try it simply because we're too accustomed to regular bans. For the first time with Ultimate, we actually have a fairly large amount of competitively viable stages, and we should be open to new systems that allow us to make the most out of what we've been given.

Gunla I'd appreciate it if you could include this method in the original post. It's perhaps worth mentioning that X-2-1 is also an option, and gives the same exact benefits as PXP1, with one extra intermediary step:

X-2-1: for games 2+, loser picks X stages, winner bans X-2, loser picks 1.

The appropriate value of X is 1 more than what you'd use for PXP1, and 2 more than the amount of bans you want to give. The main difference is that you're giving the final say to the loser/counterpicker as opposed to the winner (although I'm not convinced this is necessary).

I added a 5th reason to this, since apparently we're still using stage-first-then-character for games 2+.

It's becoming more and more clear to me that our traditional ban system was made for very small lists of 6-7 stages, and there is absolutely no reason why we should stick with it this time around. It really stops working the moment you add more stages. Even with 9-10 stages, PXP1 seems clearly much better to me, for all the reasons stated above (you might want to use P2P1 or 3-2-1 in this case as it's equivalent to 1 ban, but with some form of SRS/DSR*).

*The amount of bans you want to give is somewhat subjective, and mine are just suggestions. With X number of bans, you're basically aiming for the loser's [X+1]th best stage (and as Muno showed above, PXP1 is more reliable in guaranteeing that since bans are less likely to be wasted).