Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[Marcbri]

As a TO, I'm thinking (at least to start, until the community as a whole agrees otherwise)....

NEUTRAL
Battlefield
Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
Prism Tower
Final Destination

COUNTERPICK
Arena Ferox

How do you decide which stage the players start with 4 neutrals? I feel like Arena Ferox should be the last starter so people can use stage strike.

On an unrelated note, here's the stage list I'll be trying for the few first months while receiving feedback from the community. Need to do some more research but I have a general idea now.

Starters:
Battlefield
FD
Yoshi's Island
Prim tower
Arena Ferox

CP:
Mute city
3D Land*
Reset bomb factory
Brinstar
Rainbow Road*
Corneria
Jungle Japes
Tortimer Island*
Paper Mario*

* Need to experiment with these 4 but I feel they can work, at least some of them.
About the previously banned melee stages I feel we don't lose anything for trying them again, I suspect Corneria and Japes to end up illegal but we should be open to possibilities. Brinstar may end up legal this time if characters can't shark the stage.

Lastly, why did you put Bird man on Magicant, Sakurai It might be my favorite stage from the series.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

@ Raziek

Could you please, if available, post links to youtube videos for each stage in the OP? Would be very much appreciated!

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

We were working on pictures, but unfortunately couldn't come up with them. With footage being so minimal, I'm not sure what we can come up with, but I can try to help him find footage of stages.

 

[WizKick]

I'm not against random, but like you said, it's not going to attract players.

That's... not what he said. He said hardcore smashers hurt attendance in the scene.

I can understand wanting to stick with tradition and have a wide range of stage formats to choose from but we're completely skipping a step here. Assuming that Smash 4 is relatively balanced, we need to first figure out what format it's balanced for. I specifically mean studying Standard (Platforms) vs Omega (Flat) stage formats.

Would our unwillingness to give up our traditional stages make the game unbalanced? Were certain characters just not balanced for platforms? Or even the inverse, would an Omega format break a character's balance? These are the sort of things we need to figure out before we get into debates about random elements in stages. I feel that if one format is balanced but the other neuters even one character, we should stick to the balanced format. Of course this isn't something that's going to be picked apart in a week's time but I'm hoping people will put thought into both standard and omega formats and especially take note of the differences both positive and negative.

In the end it's up to the community to decide how the game should be played but I don't think that extra fun nor variety outside of characters should come at the cost of game balance in a fighting game. That's my stance across the board on stages, custom moves, and equipment.

If a character performs not as well on one thing or the other, I believe it's up to them to strike and counterpick responsibly. Not us to ban stages.

 

[Chauzu]

I like the feel that many people here want a more liberal stage list for this game, it makes me happy.

Like personally first time I saw Mute City I thought it was beautiful and I think it could be fine so it would be nice if stages like that was given a chance instead of getting written of.

Banning stages right now is kinda like making tier lists of character. No, just no. (Ok this is extreme since there are some outrageous stages but ok).

 

[lordvaati]

So I'm theorymonning a ruleset to get ready for the 3rd if I host an event, and I'm considering this stage list but would like feedback if possible.

Starter Stages
Battlefield
Final Destination
Yoshi's Island
Tortimer Island
Reset Forest

Counterpicks
Arena Ferox
Lumiose City
Mute City
Omega-ALL

Thoughts

 

[slimjim]

So I'm theorymonning a ruleset to get ready for the 3rd if I host an event, and I'm considering this stage list but would like feedback if possible.

Starter Stages
Battlefield
Final Destination
Yoshi's Island
Tortimer Island
Reset Forest

Counterpicks
Arena Ferox
Lumiose City
Mute City
Omega-ALL

Thoughts

I would switch Reset Forest with Lumiose City. The former is less "neutral" in my opinion, based off years of theorycrafting and tournament attendance/participation...as well as over 40 hours of smash 4 stream-watching since japanese release.

EDIT: Also, brinstar might be up for consideration as a CP depending on certain factors.

 

[T-block]

Honestly, (especially) if your entire stagelist is less than ten stages, just remove the Starter-Counterpick distinction and strike from all of them.

By making that Counterpick list, I'm assuming you have judged those stages (outside of Omega forms) to give some significant advantage to some subset of the cast? If so, I have two things to say about that:

1) We don't have enough of a familiarity with the game to be making those kinds of calls
2) If you strike from the whole list, you'll be one of the people who will be well-equipped to weigh in if/when we do decide to split into Starter and Counterpick. You'll have seen what stages get struck immediately (ie- the "unfair" ones) and which stages tend to be left at the end (ie- the "neutral" ones) for a whole bunch of matchups.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

I still think that Spirit Train looks perfectly tournament-viable, but then I'm new to competitive and not really familiar with everything that goes on in terms of bans and the reasoning behind them.

The single most unusual aspect of Spirit Train is that sometimes the train slowly moves to the far right or left of the stage area, creating a temporary walk-off and also forcing people at the opposite end of the stage to approach in order to not go over the blast line. This being Smash 4, however, the blast lines are fairly forgiving in this regard, so it's not too difficult to avoid being insta-killed by the blast line moving up to meet you.

Spirit Train also has occasional floating platforms that appear from the sides and gradually drift across the stage area.

The Bomb Trains that sometimes appear off the left or right sides give plenty of warning, being that they first approach, then attach to the Spirit Train. It's only 10 or so seconds after they attach that they actually explode, making escaping the blast radius as simple as walking away unless your opponent is intelligently hassling you.

The potential problem I see with this stage is that Duck Hunt's camping game could be insane here as he can simply wait inside one of the cars and toss projectiles at people, with cars' roofs overhead stopping enemy approaches. We've seen this before with Duck Hunt's domination on stages like Battlefield and Yoshi's Island, even though the overhead platforms are drop-through just like they are on Spirit Train. The solution to that's pretty easy though: Don't bring Duck Hunt to Spirit Train. So unless the stage itself somehow leads to degenerate gameplay (which I can't see happening), I see no problems at all. Just because the stage gives a single character — or even several characters — an advantage is not valid grounds for a ban, after all.

 

[Qikz]

I honestly hope the stage list is a lot more liberal in this game. Having more stages is nothing but good for a spectator perspective and it's one of the huge problems that Starcraft 2 suffered over Starcraft 1. In Broodwar so many map designs were used, balanced or not and it meant wide breadths of stratergies and specific map builds appeared. In SC2 due to the design of the game it means every single map might as well be the same with a different tileset.

I'd personally like to see these stages get some use:

Battlefield
Final Destination
Final Destination variants
Prism Tower
Reset Bomb Forest
Arena Ferox (Pokemon stadium 1 had walls, so this should be fine)
Spirit Train (if you're falling on the tracks, then you're probably dead anyway and I think it could only be a problem for Mac anyway)
Yoshi's Island
Corneria (I'm fairly certain all the stuff is on a timer)
Mute City (arguably, I think this is my favourite stage in the entire game).
Kotobuki Land (Tortimers Island)
Distant Planet
Tomodachi Collection
Wily's Castle (the boss can be easily avoided and from playing it I don't see any buffs other than the bomb maybe doing damage when it explodes)
Brinstar
Jungle Japes (for pretty much the same reason as Spirit Train, it's not hard to avoid the water unless you're going to die anyway).

Now in terms of walk offs I'm of the honest opinion that most if not all of the characters have some form of range in this game and if someone is camping the blast zone then they should be able to be countered and especially with a lack of chain grabbing it's no longer an instant death if you go near them so for that reason I think looking at:

Paper Mario
Gerudo Valley (all the stuff is easily avoidable and very easy to spot when it's happening)
Green Hill Zone
Boxing Ring (air camping is possible, but it's also possible to knock them away. The only problem I saw with it hugely at the invitational was Kirby's throw insta killing when the lights were there)
and finally Gauru Plain.

Obviously I'm not looking into what's a counter pick and what's neutral, but I honestly believe that for Smash 4 to take the stage it needs to be spectator friendly and the best way of doing that, especially in a game like Smash where one of the main draws is it's not stuck on a basic stage constantly and all the stages have differences is by using as many stages as possible and working around any differences with new strategies from the players perspective.

I don't think we should limit the game so quickly and I don't think we should be so extremely conservative all the time.

 

[Raziek]

@ Raziek

Could you please, if available, post links to youtube videos for each stage in the OP? Would be very much appreciated!

I'll try to do some gameplay videos doing a round on each stage. Probably tonight or tomorrow.

 

[Cactusblah]

I think we should just use the omega version of each stage, Battlefield, Yoshi's Island, and call it a day. Ideally there would be a Battlefield version of each stage as well, but oh well.

Having watched several streams of For Glory mode, I see nothing wrong with the ruleset. We finally have every stage playable in a Smash game because of omega versions and the game looks great competitively.

 

[Raziek]

Yes, that's exactly what everyone wants.

To play on a completely flat and boring stage LITERALLY all the time.

 

[Boss N]

So I think something should be made clear about randomness in competition, since there's people insisting that Smash needs to be absolutely clean of any randomness. IT'S IN GAMES NO MATTER WHAT.

Look at Go. Go is intended to be the most direct, symmetrical, balanced game ever created, yet there's still randomness in whether you pick up the white stone, which can determine the entire pace of the game.
Likewise, since Smash is a digital game, one that relies on on-the-spot calculations by electronics, there's always going to be randomness present, ESPECIALLY in smash because the very design of the game was built around creating spontaneous events within the play. Trying to get rid of the game of ALL RANDOM ELEMENTS is like trying to remove all the blades of grass in your yard, it's not going to happen.

That said it's still not impossible to create a balanced competitive scene based entirely on Randomness. How? 2 words:

Professional Poker

Poker is a game that based almost entirely on randomness as you have no way in determining your starting hand, or what cards you get as the game progresses. But there's still a definitive difference between your average player and Card Sharks, because professional players, despite the uncertainty of defined variables, know exactly how to maximize their chances of getting a successful play while at the same time minimizing their chances of losing.

Smash is no different. If the player understands the game, it's underlying mechanics, and even a minimum knowledge of the stage, then they'll know how to capitalize their chances of success no matter what gets thrown at them. This is what defined Ken from everyone else in the early days of smash, back when we had items and crazy stages like Pokefloats at professional events. There was still a distinction from the champions and everyone else because they understood ALL aspects of the game.

 

[Cactusblah]

Yes, that's exactly what everyone wants.

To play on a completely flat and boring stage LITERALLY all the time.

Like every other fighting game? I have no problem with this and prefer the variety of backgrounds and music.

 

[<π]

Like every other fighting game? I have no problem with this and prefer the variety of backgrounds and music.

if you want to play every other fighting game then please... go do that. smash made it's own genre, a "platforming fighter". Why are we going to water that down and make it "just like every other fighter. (actually one of the best part about this game I guess is that you CAN play it like every other fighter. turn on hp instead of percent and prove how best you is. You can play this game hundreds of ways!)

It wasn't till very late into melee's life (and you had to unlock BF and FD mind you) that everyone decided that "competitive play" meant that you had to play the game with these static levels and sacrifice 90% of the the game for that cause. (I'm sure some of the core of the game is getting chopped away with such a huge chunk taken out) That just isn't the case. A personal preference? sure, but it is not some hard coded rule of competition, and that's been proven both in and out of the smash community consistently count less times.

One of the big pros for having a wider stage list is just by it's very nature you will get a wider pool of players and spectators, and that will breathe some much more life into our community. That alone out weighs any other benefits of narrow stage lists, because as a health community our job is to grow as quickly as possible, not set up an environment where only certain people withing the community are seeing benefit.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

So I think something should be made clear about randomness in competition, since there's people insisting that Smash needs to be absolutely clean of any randomness. IT'S IN GAMES NO MATTER WHAT.

Look at Go. Go is intended to be the most direct, symmetrical, balanced game ever created, yet there's still randomness in whether you pick up the white stone, which can determine the entire pace of the game.
Likewise, since Smash is a digital game, one that relies on on-the-spot calculations by electronics, there's always going to be randomness present, ESPECIALLY in smash because the very design of the game was built around creating spontaneous events within the play. Trying to get rid of the game of ALL RANDOM ELEMENTS is like trying to remove all the blades of grass in your yard, it's not going to happen.

That said it's still not impossible to create a balanced competitive scene based entirely on Randomness. How? 2 words:

Professional Poker

Poker is a game that based almost entirely on randomness as you have no way in determining your starting hand, or what cards you get as the game progresses. But there's still a definitive difference between your average player and Card Sharks, because professional players, despite the uncertainty of defined variables, know exactly how to maximize their chances of getting a successful play while at the same time minimizing their chances of losing.

Smash is no different. If the player understands the game, it's underlying mechanics, and even a minimum knowledge of the stage, then they'll know how to capitalize their chances of success no matter what gets thrown at them. This is what defined Ken from everyone else in the early days of smash, back when we had items and crazy stages like Pokefloats at professional events. There was still a distinction from the champions and everyone else because they understood ALL aspects of the game.

You could do this with Smash too using Round Robin tournaments. In a Round Robin environment with a sufficient number of players, you could legalize almost every stage out there so long as it doesn't have a random chance to instantly kill you with no warning or do equivalently nasty things, like arbitrarily give a player free invincibility (WarioWare). You could legalize most items excluding explosives that go off on contact (so no capsules, crates, barrels, exploding crates, bob-ombs, motion-sensor bombs, or, unfortunately, bombchus). You could even legalize the Smash Ball, given the relative power of Final Smashes in Smash 4 (most of them don't even KO from 50%) and that the item seems to like to appear in the exact centre between both players.

Oh, and also, Poké Floats has no randomness to it at all as far as I remember. The stage always moves the exact same way. Heck, even the pattern of the Unown is set, and I think that seemingly random Goldeen of save-your-sorry-butt might actually have a set pattern to it as well.

 

[Cactusblah]

One of the big pros for having a wider stage list is just by it's very nature you will get a wider pool of players and spectators, and that will breathe some much more life into our community. That alone out weighs any other benefits of narrow stage lists, because as a health community our job is to grow as quickly as possible, not set up an environment where only certain people withing the community are seeing benefit.

And Smash 4 provides exactly that, a wider stage list with omega stages. All stages with all music are finally accessible, making the game much more entertaining for spectators.

 

[<π]

And Smash 4 provides exactly that, a wider stage list with omega stages. All stages with all music are finally accessible, making the game much more entertaining for spectators.

Oh, it does?! Well I guess I've just been wasting my breath this whole time. Thanks for enlightening me.

 

[infomon]

The problem with banning the spectrum of stage diversity is that the winner of our three-flat-stages-only competition is not the best at smash bros. Anyone can say "I'm better than Mew2King" and we can't claim otherwise because we don't actually know. We're not playing the same game, and we've eliminated a lot of the skill of smash bros from being considered in our evaluation.

We're also disenfranchising anyone who likes the other stages (platforms, hazards, moving stuff, etc.) by arbitrarily removing them. We're just insulating one part of the smash community from another for no reason. A separate competition with only "interesting but viable" stages and not FD/BF/YI would give a different set of winners and still be an equally valid tournament. It's bizarre.

We're here to find the best at smash bros. We remove only the stages that do not allow us to determine who's the best because they are not competitively viable (overly random, degenerate strategies and glitches, etc.)

 

[Road Death Wheel]

The problem with banning the spectrum of stage diversity is that the winner of our three-flat-stages-only competition is not the best at smash bros. Anyone can say "I'm better than Mew2King" and we can't claim otherwise because we don't actually know. We're not playing the same game, and we've eliminated a lot of the skill of smash bros from being considered in our evaluation.

We're also disenfranchising anyone who likes the other stages (platforms, hazards, moving stuff, etc.) by arbitrarily removing them. We're just insulating one part of the smash community from another for no reason. A separate competition with only "interesting but viable" stages and not FD/BF/YI would give a different set of winners and still be an equally valid tournament. It's bizarre.

We're here to find the best at smash bros. We remove only the stages that do not allow us to determine who's the best because they are not competitively viable (overly random, degenerate strategies and glitches, etc.)

So far i watched alot of streams (zero expecially) and everyone seems to preform very well in FD if anything characters only get worse with platforms CHARACTERS. meaning that skill has nothing to do with it. mac seems to do well in fd but is definitely not OP but put in a platform and boom hes the most garbage character out there. i think other people are gunna have to suck it up cuz FD is the most balanced stage this time around.

 

[infomon]

I don't care about characters. Pick whatever character will help you win. I want to know what player is the best; who wins the tournaments, gets the prize. That's the goal of the competition. That's what our decisions should be based around.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

I don't care about characters. Pick whatever character will help you win. I want to know what player is the best; who wins the tournaments, gets the prize. That's the goal of the competition. That's what our decisions should be based around.

thats fine and great and all but people should be aloud to win with the character they wish without feeling severely out matched. that was the problem with all the other smash games.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

And Smash 4 provides exactly that, a wider stage list with omega stages. All stages with all music are finally accessible, making the game much more entertaining for spectators.

If you're counting all the Omega stages separately, then literally 50% + 1 of the stage list is Final Destination. I hardly call that diversity.

 

[Cactusblah]

If you're counting all the Omega stages separately, then literally 50% + 1 of the stage list is Final Destination. I hardly call that diversity.

I couldn't care less about platforms. There's nothing wrong with flat stages, but only a handful of stages like melee and brawl is certainly bland and stale. Omega stages were one of Sakurai's greatest gifts to us. We should utilize them by making them the default stage choice.

 

[infomon]

thats fine and great and all but people should be aloud to win with the character they wish without feeling severely out matched. that was the problem with all the other smash games.

I know the feeling, but it's up to the game devs to balance the characters, not us. It's as impossible for the game to be perfectly balanced as it is for us to reach conensus about a "most character-balanced" rule set.

And what makes a character more important than a stage? If Little Mac is bad at smash bros, the actual game in all its stages, that's unfortunate for Little Mac. But what happens when some people think Little Mac is too powerful, and others think he's too weak? Determining a ruleset would be chaos. We can't try to artificially make him good by removing parts of the game that show his weaknesses. The game is the game.

I couldn't care less about platforms. There's nothing wrong with flat stages, but only a handful of stages like melee and brawl is certainly bland and stale. Omega stages were one of Sakurai's greatest gifts to us. We should utilize them by making them the default stage choice.

We will utilize the Omega stages. We will also utilize the real stages (the ones that aren't broken). I don't see why this is a problem.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

I know the feeling, but it's up to the game devs to balance the characters, not us. It's as impossible for the game to be perfectly balanced as it is for us to reach conensus about a "most character-balanced" rule set.

And what makes a character more important than a stage? If Little Mac is bad at smash bros, the actual game in all its stages, that's unfortunate for Little Mac. But what happens when some people think Little Mac is too powerful, and others think he's too weak? Determining a ruleset would be chaos. We can't try to artificially make him good by removing parts of the game that show his weaknesses. The game is the game.



We will utilize the Omega stages. We will also utilize the real stages (the ones that aren't broken).

but his weakness still shows in fd its just that every character is balanced in fd so far according to zero.

 

[Cactusblah]

We will utilize the Omega stages. We will also utilize the real stages (the ones that aren't broken). I don't see why this is a problem.

My point is that this entire thread consists of people trying desperately to justify stage options for competition when we already have competitively viable versions of every stage. Why even try to settle for a Rainbow Road with all the transformations, hazards, and walkoffs, when the omega version is right there?

 

[Road Death Wheel]

My point is that this entire thread consists of people trying desperately to justify stage options for competition when we already have competitively viable versions of every stage. Why even try to settle for a Rainbow Road with all the transformations, hazards, and walkoffs, when the omega version is right there?

this is why i just requested we have 2 rules sets.
One a FD only format
the other messy counterpick format.

 

[infomon]

My point is that this entire thread consists of people trying desperately to justify stage options for competition when we already have competitively viable versions of every stage. Why even try to settle for a Rainbow Road with all the transformations, hazards, and walkoffs, when the omega version is right there?

Because those transformations and hazards are part of the skill set that is important for determining who is the best at the game. They're an important part of the game. If there's no reason to disqualify them from the competition between players, then they should be allowed.

I'm not trying to "save" these stages. They're allowed unless there's a reason to remove them. Why would we choose to play a mini-game when we could play the actual game? What does that achieve?

You seem to think that the reasons people like a stage is just the music and graphics. It's not. Many players deeply appreciate the complexity of a stage that has different platform arrangements, moving parts, transformations, etc.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I couldn't care less about platforms.

More power to you then.

There's nothing wrong with flat stages

Agreed.

but only a handful of stages like melee and brawl is certainly bland and stale. Omega stages were one of Sakurai's greatest gifts to us. We should utilize them by making them the default stage choice.

Smash 3DS has a total of 34 stages. Of these, Final Destination, Battlefield, Yoshi's Island Brawl, Arena Ferox, Tortimer Island, Tomodachi Collection, and Prism Tower are almost certainly legal. (That's 7.) Then there's stages that have good layouts but need more research done on the stage hazards to see if they're overcentralizing, such as Find Mii, Pictochat 2, Reset Bomb Forest, Pac-Maze, Unova Pokemon League, Mute City, Spirit Train, and Magicant. (That's 8.) Then there are the returning stages Jungle Japes, Brinstar, Corneria, and Distant Planet that deserve a re-evaluation. (That's 4.) And walkoffs in general need to be looked at with fresh eyes due to the increase blast zones making camping them inherently damaging to the camper, and the removal of chaingrabs. That opens up Balloon Fight, Dream Land, Paper Mario, Gaur Plain, Gerudo Valley, and Green Hill Zone for investigation. (That's 6.)

That's a total of 25 stages that are legal or should be investigated to determine if they should be legal.

My point is that this entire thread consists of people trying desperately to justify stage options for competition when we already have competitively viable versions of every stage. Why even try to settle for a Rainbow Road with all the transformations, hazards, and walkoffs, when the omega version is right there?

The reason we're pushing for other stages to be allowed as well is because these "competitively viable" versions of every stage are literally a reskinned version of the same base stage, namely Final Destination. If you're happy with a bunch of differently-colored apples, that's fine, but we want a choice between apples, oranges, bananas, and so forth.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Because those transformations and hazards are part of the skill set that is important for determining who is the best at the game. They're an important part of the game. If there's no reason to disqualify them from the competition between players, then they should be allowed.

I'm not trying to "save" these stages. They're allowed unless there's a reason to remove them. Why would we choose to play a mini-game when we could play the actual game? What does that achieve?

You seem to think that the reasons people like a stage is just the music and graphics. It's not. Many players deeply appreciate the complexity of a stage that has different platform arrangements, moving parts, transformations, etc.

by your logic wily castle should be legal.
walkoffs should be legal
items should be legal
because its part of smash.

 

[Solarman]

Really the stages that as of now I see as 100% legal are Yoshi Island, Prism Tower, FD, and Battlefield. Arena Ferox has a few minimal issues such as caves of life on some transformations and if the statues function as they did in brawl, it can hinder projectile heavy fighters. If I recall Tortimer Island has 1 ledge that's ungrabbable and has the shark hazard. These two stages could still be counter picks along with reset bomb (It has that one enemy as a hazard and a cave of life however)

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

My point is that this entire thread consists of people trying desperately to justify stage options for competition when we already have competitively viable versions of every stage. Why even try to settle for a Rainbow Road with all the transformations, hazards, and walkoffs, when the omega version is right there?

You seem to be on a completely different page for the rest of us. It's not "settling" for Rainbow Road with transformations, hazards, and walk-offs. It's about being the best in any environment. Those hazards and transformations are part of the game, and learning to use hazards and stage elements to your advantage is part of playing Super Smash Bros. If anything, stage hazards and transformations and other quirks of the field layout are part of what makes Super Smash Brothers so much fun!

You see, we could do a competition with only Omega form stages, and it would be a perfectly valid competition. But what it wouldn't tell you is how good the winner is at Smash Bros. as a whole. It would only tell you how good that player is on flat stages without platforms, uneven terrain, or hazards.

by your logic wily castle should be legal.
walkoffs should be legal
items should be legal
because its part of smash.

We're still pretty much saying "no" to items in standard tournaments due to the possibility of luck determining the victor without much of any player input on rare occasions, but all the rest of those are still up for evaluation at this point. (Honestly, if we made tournaments Round Robin on a large scale you could probably legalize most items without being unfair.)

Really the stages that as of now I see as 100% legal are Yoshi Island, Prism Tower, FD, and Battlefield. Arena Ferox has a few minimal issues such as caves of life on some transformations and if the statues function as they did in brawl, it can hinder projectile heavy fighters. If I recall Tortimer Island has 1 ledge that's ungrabbable and has the shark hazard. These two stages could still be counter picks along with reset bomb (It has that one enemy as a hazard and a cave of life however)

Reset Bomb Forest's hazard is more like an anti-hazard than anything else under most circumstances, since it just blocks off the lower blast line temporarily. Now of course, creative use of it could lead to it preventing the foe's recovery if you can send them down right as it covers over top of them.

 

[Bladeviper]

Really the stages that as of now I see as 100% legal are Yoshi Island, Prism Tower, FD, and Battlefield. Arena Ferox has a few minimal issues such as caves of life on some transformations and if the statues function as they did in brawl, it can hinder projectile heavy fighters. If I recall Tortimer Island has 1 ledge that's ungrabbable and has the shark hazard. These two stages could still be counter picks along with reset bomb (It has that one enemy as a hazard and a cave of life however)

the enemy on the bomb forest is not much, it goes really slow under the stage and does not do much damage or knockback it should be a counter pick at the very least imo

 

[infomon]

by your logic wily castle should be legal.
walkoffs should be legal
items should be legal
because its part of smash.

Yes, all stages should be legal.

Except for the ones that prevent a valid competition that allows us to determine the superior player.

In Brawl, permanent walk-offs prevented valid competition, because in high-level play there is an extremely dominant degenerate strategy that allows an inferior player to inflate their odds of winning to effectively a game of chance (50-50); whoever gets a grab first wins the stock. Single degenerate strategy overwhelming dominates all other consideration; banned. Although in any smash game we need to clearly understand and prove the problem caused by the walk-offs, because what's true in Brawl is not necessarily true in smash4.

Items also prevent valid competition: the superior player can randomly, through no fault of their actions, get KO'd by a randomly-appearing powerful bomb. There aren't really any safe-zones or other means to prevent this in the default (all items on medium) configuration. So we ban items. Maybe we could have a valid competition by only removing the items that are over-powered, and some tournaments try this.

And we keep going. Find the things that need to be banned to have a viable competition, ban them, and now we have the game -- smash bros -- in its truest competitive sense.

Wily's Castle should be legal until you can articulate why it is unfit for competitive play.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Yes, all stages should be legal.

Except for the ones that prevent a valid competition that allows us to determine the superior player.

In Brawl, permanent walk-offs prevented valid competition, because in high-level play there is an extremely dominant degenerate strategy that allows an inferior player to inflate their odds of winning to effectively a game of chance (50-50); whoever gets a grab first wins the stock. Single degenerate strategy overwhelming dominates all other consideration; banned. Although in any smash game we need to clearly understand and prove the problem caused by the walk-offs, because what's true in Brawl is not necessarily true in smash4.

Items also prevent valid competition: the superior player can randomly, through no fault of their actions, get KO'd by a randomly-appearing powerful bomb. There aren't really any safe-zones or other means to prevent this in the default (all items on medium) configuration. So we ban items. Maybe we could have a valid competition by only removing the items that are over-powered, and some tournaments try this.

And we keep going. Find the things that need to be banned to have a viable competition, ban them, and now we have the game -- smash bros -- in its truest competitive sense.

Wily's Castle should be legal until you can articulate why it is unfit for competitive play.

sorry man walk offs don't hinder who's the superior play people just don't like campy ness pros don't get baited into grabs from off screen.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

sorry man walk offs don't hinder who's the superior play people just don't like campy ness pros don't get baited into grabs from off screen.

In Brawl, actually, you don't even have to bait someone into a grab near the edge. In many match-ups, you only have to bait them into a grab on the same level as the walkoff. A fair number of characters in Brawl have infinite or near-infinite chain grabs that can easily lead to a foe being pushed straight off the blast line, but these are limited on non-walkoff stages because your chain-grab is forcibly ended when you reach the edge of the platform.

But on top of that, it's quite easy for many characters to be baited into a grab near the edge on stages where the blast line is very close to the edge of the screen. Your opponent has a percent lead and you don't have a projectile or a move that is safe from shield-drop > dash grab? Well, then you've got a problem because you have to approach. And if you have to approach, they have a good opportunity to grab you. This is especially true in Brawl, where the number of moves that are safe on shield is spectacularly small and even the number of moves that are safe on hit is significantly less than the total number of non-projectile and non-rapid jab moves.

 

[infomon]

sorry man walk offs don't hinder who's the superior play people just don't like campy ness pros don't get baited into grabs from off screen.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Is the strategy actually over-powered? Or was I just making that up? Is Ness the best at this strategy.... or someone with infinites as @ JamietheAuraUser suggested?

This is the type of thing we can prove with evidence and videos. These are accumulated over the course of smashfests and tournaments where people play to win and discover the powerful mechanics or ways to get around them.

We'll get there eventually. For now, as with any new game, we must allow all the stages until something is proven to be degenerate.

 

[Road Death Wheel]

Now we're getting somewhere.

Is the strategy actually over-powered? Or was I just making that up? Is Ness the best at this strategy.... or someone with infinites as @ JamietheAuraUser suggested?

This is the type of thing we can prove with evidence and videos. These are accumulated over the course of smashfests and tournaments where people play to win and discover the powerful mechanics or ways to get around them.

We'll get there eventually. For now, as with any new game, we must allow all the stages until something is proven to be degenerate.

AH i guess mac is just destined for low tier till a separate FD only rule set is implaced. (lol i don't even use mac)