Soon I'm going to send my updated stage list with deep reasoning, so that should be a fun post to write. So far it's looking like I have two different lists to write about (2-2-2-2 and 3-3-3-3) so I can go over a ton of the deeper intricacies about each stage and why I believe those lists are very balanced.
I think you might be limiting yourself by making a sort of stagelist 'template' and then attempting to fill it out with the most appropriate stages.
Stages are complicated things with a lot of different factors at play. Slants, ledge-to-blastzone, walls, platform height, 'open-ness' etc.
All of these affect wether a player will choose to go to that stage (or wether a certain character is good on that stage)
It isn't really the case that platform layout is the most important factor and should be the driving balance point when adding stages. I mean, if that's your opinion, then ok, but it's definitely not an objective truth.
FD-likes ('open' stages) tend to be quite polarising in a certain direction (for certain characters) in a way that we pretty much understand quite well. Other layouts though (triplats, biplats, monoplats) aren't that obvious. In S4, triplats were pretty polarising, perhaps as much as FD, due to the relevance of ladder-combos. In Ult, this isn't really the case (or at least it doesn't seem like it so far), and the triplat is fairly ambiguous, much like the biplat and monoplat.
Basically, it's best to just judge stages on their own merits, imo.
That being said Halberd is probably my second favourite semisoft (and tbh, as much as I like Prism I do just dislike semisoftness in general, and Halberd at least has less of it)
Finally, a decent argument. You're right that stages are much more complex than simply their layout/zones. In this game, we are actually able to craft a list that we find balanced because we have so many options. In my opinion, sorting the stages by size/zones/layout we can see the patterns I'm speaking of where the viable stages are divided into 5 categories and we can use that to our advantage. A stage list should be fair game for any one character, but doctoring the list to ensure that every single character works as intended has never worked.
I personally do believe that 4 of the 5 layout types (because the 5th is just all explicitly unique stages) have very distinct qualities about them. It is much more complicated than simply saying "all triangles help X character", I am simplifying it in debate because it goes too deep to tackle without spending a week forming a conclusion.
If we do as you say and look at the merits of each stage without categorizing, it's quite easy to see that it turns out that we have certain stages that similarly benefit certain characters. I suppose another way to put it is that my argument is not a hypothesis proven by testing, it's a
conclusion I've come to through testing. It's where you end up when you compare all of the stages together. You can get rid of the labels, but the innate properties of the stages are still there.
Do note, I'm not saying "have 2 of each layout and a 5th starter and you're good", because it's far more complicated than that. There has to be variance. You don't want both FoD and Battlefield, because they're nearly identical. You use Yoshi's Story instead, because it's significantly different, but still provides pros and cons that it shares with Battlefield. Of course, because it's smaller, it helps heavy characters. As well, because it has walled sides, it helps recoveries of certain characters. There are things that these stages do not have in common, but the overwhelming majority of advantages and disadvantages are shared between stages of the same layout.
Now, okay, let's entertain the concept that maybe this is correct but it falls apart when you look at how each layout is balanced against each other. What happens if all four layouts support one type of character? What happens if 2 of the layouts are too similar and basically inflate the list with even more stages of a similar type? That's entirely possible, but I don't believe that to be the case in this game. The most likely example is Triangles being too similar to Semi-Central Biplats, so let's look at that.
When we look at the layouts abstractly, it definitely poses an issue. However, these layouts are
not abstract in-game! So let's analyze how similar their advantages are in-game. Pokemon Stadium 2 is one that a lot of people will agree is definitely different enough from any Triangle-stage, even Midgar. Top players have already gone over that, so I'm going to skip it. What about Unova though?
Well, what are the differences? Unova has:
- One less platform.
- Platforms are about 5 units higher up, meaning a lot of full jumps don't reach.
- Walled sides
- Odd-shaped walls that have been known to kill Teleports
- Darker background with flashing lighting effects
Is this enough? How can we know it's enough? Well, we can compare it to how we compare other stages to find out if it's enough, but first let's go deeper on each specific point.
One less platform: You can't do many extended combos without the top platform, this is all known and well. It also means that as certain characters (most notably Mewtwo but also a lot of others) with poor landing options you don't have one of your best options. Conclusion: There are plenty of characters who benefit from and are at disadvantage because of there being one less platform.
Platforms are about 5 units higher up: Lots of full jumps don't reach, similar to the differences between PS1 and PS2. While this means neutral is much different than on Battlefield, I think the main important thing is that extended ladder combos are even more difficult to pull off or impossible with these platforms. Some characters (such as Greninja, Yoshi, Cloud, Peach/Daisy, Ike, Inkling, etc) rely on only needing one jump to reach the platform to extend their combos (and keeping them true). Conclusion: I don't know from those characters which specifically reach and don't reach the platform (I'd bet Greninja could but Yoshi can't) but there are tons of characters who have combos that are made untrue due to the platforms being different.
Walled sides: I barely have to talk about this because the community seems to agree that this is a pretty big deal. Wall jumps can save characters with really poor recoveries. Not being able to retreat below a stage means edge guarding is much more powerful. Wall jumps allow for more mixups and edge guards. The list goes on and on. For some characters this means a whole extra jump. For others it can mean your opponent's character gets a pretty nice advantage at the ledge.
Odd-shaped walls: This has been mostly fixed as of the recent update, but if you're caught teleporting beneath the shape of the wall then you're very likely to go flying off to the blast zone. This is a huge factor of Unova that can really turn the tides against any character with a teleport. Gives them less options, gives others more punish opportunities. It's key to recognize that this is a point of knowledge, and not unavoidable. It's an adaptable trait of the stage, it is not absolute.
Darker background with lighting effects: This is underestimated, but many top players (ZeRo, Esam, Mew2King, Salem, others too) have talked about how on stages like Unova and FD it can become really really difficult to see certain projectiles. Most notably, Snake's grenades (as well as others). This is something that sets it further apart from Battlefield, where the lighting is bright and projectiles are very clear. Note that none of these players have said that it is a broken aspect, but rather note it as an aspect of the stage.
So is this enough? Well, that's subjective, but in my opinion yes. If we look at a stage like Yoshi's Story, we see walled sides, taller platforms, smaller blast zones, and smaller terrain. If those four things are enough for YS to be different enough, then I'd believe that makes Unova different enough.
If you have any other two layouts/stages you believe might be too similar, let me know. I believe that if you look at every single viable stage you'll find this pattern, and I'll take this into much deeper detail with my next stage list post. They all have aspects that are adaptable and aspects that make them very different.
I am paying a lot of attention to what makes these stages unique from one another, the categories are short-hand to help describe concepts to other people. Maybe I should abandon that line of short-hand, though.
Right, I think everyone is 100% in agreement that these are degenerate.
This part I'm not convinced on, though. How easy it is to snap the ledge with a recovery is not generally a defining trait of how good a recovery is, due to the fact that snapping the ledge on most stages is fairly trivial. For example, from that video you posted, it's clearly easier for Link to snap the ledge than Bayonetta, despite the fact that Bayonetta's recovery is clearly better (it goes much further and also allows for more variation). Characters like Palutena and Pikachu also may have trouble snapping the ledge on a semisoft despite otherwise having great recoveries. I actually think the truth is the reverse, that many of the best recoveries actually do very poorly on semisofts and thus this kind of stage may level the playing field to some degree.
I'm also totally in agreement here, I just don't agree that a stage like Prism promotes low player interaction. There's plenty of footage of this stage from 3DS and yet I've never seen a match representing the kind of "nightmare scenario" where players just sit there and wait out transformations. At best you might have matches where two zoners spend a transformation throwing projectiles at each other but this is a big part of their neutral on any stage.
I really wish the hazards off version of PS1 was simply to modify or remove the two problematic transformations rather than to turn them off entirely, particularly considering PS2 exists. One of my biggest gripes about Ultimate in general is that the Hazards off version of many stages are so poorly thought out. Many other stages could be viable with small tweaks (ie, remove the rock in Kongo Falls, remove the Cage in Find Mii, etc), and many of the tweaks they did make ruin stages (ie, Fountain of Dreams, Smashville, etc).
The flip can also obviously offer massive reward as well, if you get a timely hit on the opponent just before or during the flip it can create an early kill or a crazy gimp situation, both of which are always super hype, though the flip is so chaotic I can see why they'd probably prefer not to have it particularly when the no-flip version is available. That being said, I do think hazards on Frigate is still a viable stage if we were doing a hazards on ruleset for whatever reason.
I've been off Team Warioware for a while now, I think you can make a decent argument that it's simply too much of an outlier compared to the rest of the stages (a similar argument can be made for, say, Mushroomy Kingdom U, but on the "too big" side of things) but I'm still firmly part of team Castle Siege.
You say that as though you weren't also only responding to a couple lines out of my post and generally ignoring or missing the point of most of it.
Like for example, when I mentioned that we could make a stagelist with only 3 stages, you chose to nitpick the inclusion of FD (even though I think this is wrong, FD is a very balanced stage for many matchups, it's only polarizing in some cases), rather than addressing the underlying issue of "why do we want a large stagelist period?". If we agree that, say, the 5 starter stages are the most fair stages, why do we bother with counterpick stages at all? Just allow the loser of each match to pick the next stage or do 1 ban and there you go. That clearly gives better balance, avoids controversy in stage selection, and also speeds up the stage selection process.
The only reason I can come up with for why we bother with the concept of counterpick stages is because we want to allow more stages in tournament.
Already said I don't want to have to delve into the deepest reasoning behind literally every aspect of this thread. You can answer your own questions by reading the thread up to this page.
I read all of your post, and as I said I wanted to respond to the ridiculous things you were saying. You however are cherry-picking things I'm saying and choosing to respond only to what you disagree with when you don't acknowledge any of my reasons that are
very clearly stated. Instead you choose to put words in my mouth and frankly, it's insulting.
