Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[Pazx]

So, maybe someone can lay this out for me: What makes the following stages worse than counterpick status?

Skyloft
Wuhu Island
Pilot Wings
New Super Mario Bros U Mushroom Kingdom.

I imagine the last stage is too erratic in its transformations. Skyloft has some holes, so maybe that's why it's banned? Wuhu has somewhat of a similar issue. And I guess Pilotwings tilts too much, but Lylat doesn't?

Skyloft is never banned, Wuhu is controversial but is a good stage and should be legal in the eyes of many (most, from what I've seen), Pilotwings is too campy to be legal (you can sit on the engine of the yellow plane and be untouchable) and Mario Bros U is... disruptive and has Nabbit.

The stage is super vertical, it's pretty strange. What even makes it banworthy, though? The random platforms in the middle? The barrel? The "if you don't tech properly you die" platforms on the side? Probably that last one.

Nothing makes it ban worthy in my eyes.

 

[webbedspace]

@ everyone

Aussies are following Apex and banning Kongo Jungle

wat do

Boycott, strongly worded letter, etc.

Alternatively, bribe Xanadu or TLoc into unbanning it (and/or its regulars into frequently counterpicking it), then use that as legitimacy leverage.

 

[SuperDavio]

Skyloft is never banned, Wuhu is controversial but is a good stage and should be legal in the eyes of many (most, from what I've seen), Pilotwings is too campy to be legal (you can sit on the engine of the yellow plane and be untouchable) and Mario Bros U is... disruptive and has Nabbit.

Ah, I was just thinking Apex rules. I'd like to see Skyloft elevated to counterpick, personally. Good to hear about Wuhu, and I totally forgot about Nabbit.

Basically, I'd like to see Apex add Town + City along with (eventually) Miiverse to starters, and add Skyloft to counters.

Nothing makes it ban worthy in my eyes.

What makes it legal in doubles, I wonder?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

So, maybe someone can lay this out for me: What makes the following stages worse than counterpick status?

Skyloft
Wuhu Island
Pilot Wings
New Super Mario Bros U Mushroom Kingdom.

I imagine the last stage is too erratic in its transformations. Skyloft has some holes, so maybe that's why it's banned? Wuhu has somewhat of a similar issue. And I guess Pilotwings tilts too much, but Lylat doesn't?

Skyloft and Wuhu should be legal everywhere. There is nothing wrong with either; anyone ******** about the blastzones on Wuhu should go talk to whoever kept counterpicking my Shiek to Dream Land 64.

Pilotwings is banned because it provides an incredibly strong fortified position for the entire runtime of the stage. Camping under a platform that the opponent has to drop through to fight you is a really strong positional advantage for much of the cast - this is why Venom was banned in Melee. It also allows for improved runaway - if the opponent tries to go around the side and come in from the ledge, you can run to the other side for free, and now the position is reset. The red plane, on its own, is not a viable competitive field. The yellow plane has very similar issues, except you can't drop through it - it's considerably harder to hit someone camping on the engines, and it allows for very easy circle camping and stalling. It's a degenerate strategy that breaks the game and is therefore banworthy.

New Super Mario Bros U has Nabbit, a third party to the fight who acts highly randomly and can OHKO you starting around 60-70%. This allows for the worse player to win through sheer randomness and is therefore not reasonable in competitive play. Same reason as Pyrosphere, really. It's a shame, because otherwise it's a really neat stage.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I think some people are deeply in love with matches moving as quickly as humanly possible, and Kongo Jungle 64 is one of the slower stages with the large blast zones, the rut in the middle, the barrel to extend stocks, several stage specific time wasting shenanigans that aren't particularly solid but can work for a little bit, etc.. It's far from a guarantee of a time out or anything extreme like that, but some people just can't stand anything slowing the game down at all and are only willing to accept a stage like this with the natural high match pace of doubles. I have little sympathy for the "ban Kongo Jungle 64" position; it's a fine stage.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

What you're not seeing is that the largest stagelist doesn't necessarily generate the best game. Depending on the meta, it might not even create the deepest game.

Say hypothetically we ended up with a very campy game using 13 stages with only 5 viable characters, but then someone found that removing FD, BF, and SV made the gameplay more varied and opened up most of the cast to competitive play, then the second ruleset would create the better game. When making a ruleset, we have the power to choose any set of stages and use it to shape the experience the game holds. And such a ruleset could absolutely be valid.

But that would open those stages up to be called on degeneracy. If FD, BF, and SV really limited the game that way, then it would be entirely valid to say, "Wait, hang on, this is degenerate, lowers the skill ceiling, and needs to be banned." Of course, this isn't how things are. The stagelist in Smash 4 is actually phenomenally well-balanced. We don't have a Rainbow Cruise or a Dream Land in the mix. Do we? The hardest counter I can think of is Halberd, for ZSS, and that's pretty small potatoes given the sheer number of characters who love killing off the top.

The thing your method has over the others is that is that it's objective and so it's easier to agree on things compared to a more subjective model. However, it's drawback is that it's blind to the game experience itself;

Howso? The first clause is entirely dependent on game experience. "Degenerate" depends entirely on what works in the game, and how the game plays with and without that element.

 

[Piford]

People are really complaining about large blast zones, a thing that was praised in past games for adding diversity? Wuhu Island Doesn't even have a larger ceiling, and the distance from the ledge to the blastzone is also the same. If people don't want large blastzones, why don't we just make halberd the only legal stage? Also you can't tell 90% of people don't know what they are talking about with blastzone because you here commentators say things like "Oh Duck Hunt has smaller side blastzones" and "Town and City has a high ceiling" all the time.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Yeah, guys. Take it from a ZSS main - Town and City does not have as high of a ceiling as you might think. If I catch you on that top platform, you're dead.


And as I keep saying and will keep continuing to say, whoever thinks moderately larger blastzones should be a ban criteria, ever heard of Dream Land? It's like the most fun thing ever to try to kill a Peach or Jiggs there with Shiek. I feel like people are really freaking out about Sm4sh taking too long, and are doing stupid things as a result. I'm sorry, is Brawl faster? Are we seriously supposed to believe that it was okay to run 3 minutes, 8 stocks in Brawl but we can't possibly go past 6 minutes and 2 stocks in a game that is considerably faster and with considerably more combos and lower kill %s, where most of the time you don't have fatasses like Snake (and lightweights like Metaknight) living to 150?

Guys, you do know that APEX lost an entire day, right? This game is not slower than brawl. Wuhu Island is not going to cause matches to last forever, nor is that inherently a bad thing. That's why we have the timer. It doesn't even encourage stalling; all it does is make you live longer.

 

[thehard]

Well, Kongo Jungle I know is getting legalized in singles in Team Sp00ky's next tournament @ Pazx . Ammunition for you. As I've said elsewhere, KJ64, Skyloft, and Wuhu are the last stages that seem to be well-liked but lack major tournament representation. I'm hoping we can get a recommended ruleset up soon that includes these.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Yeah, guys. Take it from a ZSS main - Town and City does not have as high of a ceiling as you might think. If I catch you on that top platform, you're dead.


And as I keep saying and will keep continuing to say, whoever thinks moderately larger blastzones should be a ban criteria, ever heard of Dream Land? It's like the most fun thing ever to try to kill a Peach or Jiggs there with Shiek. I feel like people are really freaking out about Sm4sh taking too long, and are doing stupid things as a result. I'm sorry, is Brawl faster? Are we seriously supposed to believe that it was okay to run 3 minutes, 8 stocks in Brawl but we can't possibly go past 6 minutes and 2 stocks in a game that is considerably faster and with considerably more combos and lower kill %s, where most of the time you don't have fatasses like Snake (and lightweights like Metaknight) living to 150?

People think T&C has a big ceiling? Thats funny! Its ceiling is lower than FD, Smashville, and Duck Hunt from my experience.

Speaking of Dreamland, is there any hope that Miiverse will have a different layout, more like Dreamland or Fountain or Yoshi's Story from Melee than straight-up Battlefield?

 

[FullMoon]

Say, what's the general opinion on Mario Circuit (the new one)? I've heard people say it should be legal before but I dunno.

 

[Omegaphoenix]

Say, what's the general opinion on Mario Circuit (the new one)? I've heard people say it should be legal before but I dunno.

It's generally considered to be not specifically bad, but irritating to an underknowleged player. An smart player could use the karts and walls to extend a combo, smack an opponent, or survive longer. Unfortunately , the track hitting players back annoys people, and there's still resentment over the ideas of kart racers smacking players, even though it is the exact same track everytime, and the shy guys are suprisingly hands off compared to other cart stages

Mario Circuit 8 is generally agreed to be the top kart stage, especially because Ledges you can actually grab. Still, not a lot of tourney players like the stage, due to the Shy Guys and Walls. A shame really. Mario Circuit really rewards stage control and knowledge

 

[ParanoidDrone]

It's generally considered to be not specifically bad, but irritating to an underknowleged player. An smart player could use the karts and walls to extend a combo, smack an opponent, or survive longer. Unfortunately , the track hitting players back annoys people, and there's still resentment over the ideas of kart racers smacking players, even though it is the exact same track everytime, and the shy guys are suprisingly hands off compared to other cart stages

Amusingly, there's only one transformation where they actually drive on the floor. In every other case they can't actually hit a grounded player on whatever serves as the main fighting surface for the transformation.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Say, what's the general opinion on Mario Circuit (the new one)? I've heard people say it should be legal before but I dunno.

Almost a great stage, some people want it banned for stupid, scrubby reasons; others want it banned because of a few rather nasty glitches. I'd run with it, personally.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

I'm kinda iffy about MC8 because of how you can get stuck in the track when it becomes tangible. I like the transformation variety and the Shy Guys aren't that destructive but I personally wouldn't pick it if it was legal.

 

[J_the_Man]

Amusingly, there's only one transformation where they actually drive on the floor. In every other case they can't actually hit a grounded player on whatever serves as the main fighting surface for the transformation.

You could literally stand at the right-center portion of the stage through an entire circuit around Mario Circuit and never once get hit by Shy Guy. Mario Circuit 8 should be legal.

 

[Locke 06]

You could literally stand at the right-center portion of the stage through an entire circuit around Mario Circuit and never once get hit by Shy Guy. Mario Circuit 8 should be legal.

I love Mario Circuit... But that is a poor argument for making a stage legal.

 

[[Deuce]]

So, I won a match the other day on Skyloft because I knocked him off the stage as the stage was lifting off and the stage immediately hit him once it began moving as he was recovering and killed him. Needless to say he was heated

Makes me wonder if this is an element of randomness, or of game knowledge. There are what, a total of 160 something paths, which CAN be isolated down in your head based on the current location. For Skyloft in particular, this might mean you'd want to get back to the stage more quickly as result of such a "random" event occurring if you were lazy to calculate the probability of being hit based on the path that may be taken from the current location you're at, but that also invites the mindgame from the opponent in which they would be actively looking to delay your recovery by zoning you out. What do people think about this?

tl;dr - opponent was recovering to stage as stage was transforming. It hit and killed him once it started moving, thoughts?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

So, I won a match the other day on Skyloft because I knocked him off the stage as the stage was lifting off and the stage immediately hit him once it began moving as he was recovering and killed him. Needless to say he was heated

Makes me wonder if this is an element of randomness, or of game knowledge. There are what, a total of 160 something paths, which CAN be isolated down in your head based on the current location. For Skyloft in particular, this might mean you'd want to get back to the stage more quickly as result of such a "random" event occurring if you were lazy to calculate the probability of being hit based on the path that may be taken from the current location you're at, but that also invites the mindgame from the opponent in which they would be actively looking to delay your recovery by zoning you out. What do people think about this?

tl;dr - opponent was recovering to stage as stage was transforming. It hit and killed him once it started moving, thoughts?

Got a vid? People really need to start saving replays with these things happening. I'd call game knowledge, personally.

 

[[Deuce]]

It was during a smash fest so we weren't really looking to dissect things and just having fun. But wow I didn't know all of a sudden everyone had a responsibility to save replays of such occurrences. I'll see if I can find a pic of it, I remember it was a white building on the bottom left that hit him as the stage began moving

So in terms of game knowledge, what specifically applies? There's a specific probability that you will get hit by the stage while you're recovering based on the locale that its lifting off of? Even then probabilistic scenarios do introduce an element of luck

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I mean, you guys don't have to record it, it's just really hard for the rest of us to understand what happened or replicate it, and these vids would be really nice to have. I don't really understand the situation, so I can't really comment on whether it's skill or not; it seemed to me like he could figure out whether he would get hit based on where he was on the stage. We still don't have anything mapping out the paths, do we? :/ We really ought to get on that.

 

[[Deuce]]

Hmmmmm well the best I remember of it was that there were in fact hitboxes on the bottom left and top right corners during that particular transformation. Someone posted a gif/vid earlier of a combo using the stage on the top right, i'll check it out and see if it was that particular transformation

 

[madworlder]

For Skyloft, the problem with the stage might not be so much that you can be hit while off-stage, but that the risk that off-stage play generates causes players to play a degenerate game and only fight on the grounded parts of the stage, which do not last long. As it stands, I would prefer to play runaway on the main platform and wait for a decent landing to go in against my opponent, especially as my % increases.

 

[J_the_Man]

I love Mario Circuit... But that is a poor argument for making a stage legal.

More or less, those were poorly spaced entirely separate thoughts. They weren't one argument for MC8's Legality.

 

[LiteralGrill]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

• Game Settings: 2 Stock, 5 Minute Time Limit, 2/3 Games
• Starter stages: Battlefield, Final Destination, Smashville
• Counter-pick stages: Castle Siege, Delfino Plaza, Duck Hunt, Halberd, Lylat Cruise, Town & City

So if you want a non crap stagelist (5 starters, at LEAST Kongo Jungle 64 and Skyloft as those should not be difficult to fight for) GO AND BUG THE MAN!!!

WELP NEVER MIND!

There was a problem fetching the tweet

Well then... I have a sinking feeling this is going to end up being a veeeeery common ruleset...

 

[thehard]

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I thought this was just for Sonic and Mega Man stages? Uh oh...

 

[Locke 06]

But you can still gentleman's to other stages? If so, that logic doesn't really make sense.

 

[LiteralGrill]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

I thought this was just for Sonic and Mega Man stages? Uh oh...

I was about to post this...

Guys, does this mean Nintendo has actually sactioned a tournament stage list...? Does this mean the debate is over...

 

[thehard]

Maybe he worded it poorly? (i.e. he doesn't know what Wuhu and KJ64 are) and combined two thoughts into one tweet?

 

[Locke 06]

I was about to post this...

Guys, does this mean Nintendo has actually sactioned a tournament stage list...? Does this mean the debate is over...

Just because you can't build from the top down doesn't mean you can't build from the bottom up.

Bottom up is literally an uphill battle though.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

What an odd response. Nintendo is sanctioning the list now? I wish they could at least shift some counters to starters...

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Why the hell did Nintendo sanction a stagelist amd why is this how we knew about it??

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I've been tweeting with Mr. Wizard and apparently the issue is music licenses. While this would make sense for something like Windy Hill Zone, being third party, I'm completely baffled why it would preclude Skyloft, Wuhu Island, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Kongo jungle 64 from being used.

Those are stages from the Zelda, Wii Sports, Pokemon, and Donkey Kong series. All first party. How are they even an issue?

I'm mostly curious even though that may have come across as slightly belligerent. But seriously. Zelda.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

I've been tweeting with Mr. Wizard and apparently the issue is music licenses. While this would make sense for something like Windy Hill Zone, being third party, I'm completely baffled why it would preclude Skyloft, Wuhu Island, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Kongo jungle 64 from being used.

Those are stages from the Zelda, Wii Sports, Pokemon, and Donkey Kong series. All first party. How are they even an issue?

I'm mostly curious even though that may have come across as slightly belligerent. But seriously. Zelda.

THEN JUST HAVE THE OFFENDING SONGS SET TO NEVER PLAY ON THOSE STAGES

 

[LiteralGrill]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

My twitter is being a jerk and not letting me post (says I'm a spam bot? UGHGHGHG) GO TELL HIM YOU WANT AT LEAST TOWN AND CITY AND LYLAT CRUISE FOR STARTERS! LET'S MAKE THE BEST OF THIS LIST!!!

 

[Piford]

There was a problem fetching the tweet

My twitter is being a jerk and not letting me post (says I'm a spam bot? UGHGHGHG) GO TELL HIM YOU WANT AT LEAST TOWN AND CITY AND LYLAT CRUISE FOR STARTERS! LET'S MAKE THE BEST OF THIS LIST!!!

So I checked and it looks like Nintendo owns all the music on Skyloft. Wuhu Island was almost good, but it has Tetris Type B, which is likely not owned by Nintendo. PS2 likely has the issue of Pokemon not being owned by Nintendo, but that's no 100% certain. So we can fight for Skyloft definitely. Wuhu Island should also be fine, as you have to unlock the tetris music and we can just make sure the streaming Wii U doesn't have it unlocked.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

So I checked and it looks like Nintendo owns all the music on Skyloft. Wuhu Island was almost good, but it has Tetris Type B, which is likely not owned by Nintendo. PS2 likely has the issue of Pokemon not being owned by Nintendo, but that's no 100% certain. So we can fight for Skyloft definitely. Wuhu Island should also be fine, as you have to unlock the tetris music and we can just make sure the streaming Wii U doesn't have it unlocked.

Or even use My Music to set the odds of the Tetris music playing to 0.

 

[Piford]

Or even use My Music to set the odds of the Tetris music playing to 0.

Yeah, except you likely wouldn't need to do that because I doubt any music will be unlocked on the Wii U anyways.

The Stages that they can't use should be
Onett
Windy Hill Zone
Pac-Land
Wily Castle
Possibly the Pokemon Stages
Possibly Gaur Plains
and Luigi's Mansion and Wuhu Island have one Tetris track each.

But yeah we should still tell him somehow that at least Skyloft can be used, and that Wuhu probably can be used.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Yeah, except you likely wouldn't need to do that because I doubt any music will be unlocked on the Wii U anyways.

The Stages that they can't use should be
Onett
Windy Hill Zone
Pac-Land
Wily Castle
Possibly the Pokemon Stages
Possibly Gaur Plains
and Luigi's Mansion and Wuhu Island have one Tetris track each.

But yeah we should still tell him somehow that at least Skyloft can be used, and that Wuhu probably can be used.

Mr. Wizard said he's under NDA and can't discuss the specific tracks that are causing issues. That said if you want to tweet at him, be my guest. (Twitter is currently mad at me and thinks I'm a spambot.)

Speculation: Perhaps it's an issue with a specific composer?

 

[webbedspace]

The Twitter lockout bug is affecting everyone, don't worry about it.