Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[Piford]

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?

Just checked, Skyloft at least shouldn't have an issue.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Just checked, Skyloft at least shouldn't have an issue.

As a last ditch effort, make sure he's talking about Skyloft the Zelda stage and not Skyworld the Kid Icarus stage? IDK, I'm grasping at straws for now.

 

[Piford]

As a last ditch effort, make sure he's talking about Skyloft the Zelda stage and not Skyworld the Kid Icarus stage? IDK, I'm grasping at straws for now.

I mean I don't think Skyworld has any issues either, but if he responds I'll tweet that.

Edit: I tweeted at him anyways.

 

[[Deuce]]

We should ask him regarding FLSS at the very least-


Also: told'jall this would happen

 

[[Deuce]]

edit double post

 

[Plain Yogurt]

I'm still marveling at this. MUSIC? All these arguments to get stages unbanned and MUSIC is an issue? Also @Pokemon Music not being owned by Nintendo, PS1 is legal in Melee.

 

[Piford]

I'm still marveling at this. MUSIC? All these arguments to get stages unbanned and MUSIC is an issue? Also @Pokemon Music not being owned by Nintendo, PS1 is legal in Melee.

That is true. Again the music shouldn't actually be an issue for at least Skyloft, and it's likely that he couldn't remember which stages he couldn't use off the top of his head.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Guys, it's not like that. It's like this from my best estimation. They probably approached Nintendo with a contract for the streaming rights and used the APEX rules as a base. They sought clearance for those specific tracks and got it. It's not that they couldn't have gotten Skyloft clearance had it been on their initial list, but the time is passed since you don't just rewrite these big money rights contracts on a whim about which stages we prefer playing on whether the APEX rules were dumb or not. No, I don't have any inside intel, but based on the posts from EVO staff on the topic, I think this is by far the most reasonable assumption about why they're being this way. I love me some Skyloft, but it's not really sensible for us to push hard on this point especially since so far Mr. Wizard is being very reasonable in listening to us on other issues. We shouldn't squander goodwill on a lost cause.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Guys, it's not like that. It's like this from my best estimation. They probably approached Nintendo with a contract for the streaming rights and used the APEX rules as a base. They sought clearance for those specific tracks and got it. It's not that they couldn't have gotten Skyloft clearance had it been on their initial list, but the time is passed since you don't just rewrite these big money rights contracts on a whim about which stages we prefer playing on whether the APEX rules were dumb or not. No, I don't have any inside intel, but based on the posts from EVO staff on the topic, I think this is by far the most reasonable assumption about why they're being this way. I love me some Skyloft, but it's not really sensible for us to push hard on this point especially since so far Mr. Wizard is being very reasonable in listening to us on other issues. We shouldn't squander goodwill on a lost cause.

So in future tournaments if Skyloft etc. are well accepted they could have it on the table to start with? That's good I suppose.

 

[ATH_]

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.

When it was researched, we found that the background is very intrusive since it actually can hit players and spike them at times. I wish that didn't happen.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Welp, thanks APEX.

You ****ing ruined it, you ****nuggets.



Seriously, you guys have a lot to answer for. This is your fault.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Ruined it YET AGAIN.

I still hope they're not as hard faced as Apex Team and actually welcome community input.

 

[Omegaphoenix]

So Follow The Leader has once again doomed us all to a life of No Items, Diddy Kong Only, Smashville.

Never understood why Apex is the gold standard for Tourneys. Their rulesets for this year was a total cluster F, and everyone acknowledged it, but we're still following it anyway.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

So Follow The Leader has once again doomed us all to a life of No Items, Diddy Kong Only, Smashville.

Never understood why Apex is the gold standard for Tourneys. Their rulesets for this year was a total cluster F, and everyone acknowledged it, but we're still following it anyway.

Because Mr. Wizard didn't get the memo, apparently. And why would he? Is he active on smashboards? I dunno, kinda doubt it. APEX had the big, high-exposure ****, and their ruleset was what people who aren't around here would be exposed to.

****in' sucks.

 

[webbedspace]

So in future tournaments if Skyloft etc. are well accepted they could have it on the table to start with? That's good I suppose.

Never give up - never surrender.

(Although privately I suspect that in 2016 all efforts will have to be expended in simply keeping Duck Hunt and Castle Siege legal.)

 

[MrGame&Rock]

In that case, the time to hound other major tourneys for more legal stages is now, before they get locked in like EVO did

 

[Linkshot]

Welp, thanks APEX.

You ****ing ruined it, you ****nuggets.



Seriously, you guys have a lot to answer for. This is your fault.

Calm your ****, jfc. There's no reason to force more stages on players. There's no proof it's actually good for a metagame to have to learn a bunch of things specific to stages that are unintuitive to the rest of the game's design as we know it. You're making a terrible representation of everybody that wants to see more stages and it's really pissing me off. The EVO stage list is just fine. Siege/Halberd/Delfino are even debatable at high levels due to extreme interruption of the neutral game and water generally being a very slow death sentence against most but not all characters (which is a pretty big advantage).

Anyway, tested stuff last night. MK8 should absolutely not be legal in any right because "the little glitch" is an instant kill and consistently repeatable. I have 3 replays of just casually hitting my opponent into that glitch for a free kill but I'm not sure how to spread them around so w/e. MKU should not be legal because the water droplets that warn of an icicle can spawn offscreen and make the giant hitbox a surprise, as well as Nabbit just being an AI-controlled kill at 80%. OGA should probably not be legal because the platform explosions interrupt play and if you're anywhere under the Arwings during transition to the Great Fox, you get pushed under it and die.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Calm your ****, jfc. There's no reason to force more stages on players. There's no proof it's actually good for a metagame to have to learn a bunch of things specific to stages that are unintuitive to the rest of the game's design as we know it. You're making a terrible representation of everybody that wants to see more stages and it's really pissing me off. The EVO stage list is just fine. Siege/Halberd/Delfino are even debatable at high levels due to extreme interruption of the neutral game and water generally being a very slow death sentence against most but not all characters (which is a pretty big advantage).

Anyway, tested stuff last night. MK8 should absolutely not be legal in any right because "the little glitch" is an instant kill and consistently repeatable. I have 3 replays of just casually hitting my opponent into that glitch for a free kill but I'm not sure how to spread them around so w/e. MKU should not be legal because the water droplets that warn of an icicle can spawn offscreen and make the giant hitbox a surprise, as well as Nabbit just being an AI-controlled kill at 80%. OGA should probably not be legal because the platform explosions interrupt play and if you're anywhere under the Arwings during transition to the Great Fox, you get pushed under it and die.

Why did I ever think you were a cool person.
/drunkposting

 

[Linkshot]

Why did I ever think you were a cool person.
/drunkposting

Because i was as immature as you once.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Because i was as immature as you once.

Glad you grew up. I'm still kinda stuck here in arrested development.

Btw was that show any good? I never got around to watching it.

 

[J_the_Man]

Anyway, tested stuff last night. MK8 should absolutely not be legal in any right because "the little glitch" is an instant kill and consistently repeatable. I have 3 replays of just casually hitting my opponent into that glitch for a free kill but I'm not sure how to spread them around so w/e. MKU should not be legal because the water droplets that warn of an icicle can spawn offscreen and make the giant hitbox a surprise, as well as Nabbit just being an AI-controlled kill at 80%. OGA should probably not be legal because the platform explosions interrupt play and if you're anywhere under the Arwings during transition to the Great Fox, you get pushed under it and die.

Were these CPU opponents, or were they human players? Were you trying to hit them into the glitch, or were you just fighting and it happened?

 

[ATH_]

Were these CPU opponents, or were they human players? Were you trying to hit them into the glitch, or were you just fighting and it happened?

Yo, why does this say it's my quote? o.o

 

[Thinkaman]

Why did I ever think you were a cool person.
/drunkposting

Glad you grew up. I'm still kinda stuck here in arrested development.

Btw was that show any good? I never got around to watching it.

Yo, why does this say it's my quote? o.o

 

[J_the_Man]

Yo, why does this say it's my quote? o.o

IT'S A GLITCH! BAN IT!

 

[Krysco]

Omfg Smashboards not this again. I'd like to be notified when stuff is posted here. I AM watching it after all >.>. Maybe it has something to do with being inactive in here for too long.

Uh, ramble-ranting aside, I'm personally not a fan of the MK8 stage though I haven't had too many matches on it. I see race cars on a Smash stage and my first thought is 'oh great, a bad stage' since like every other Smash stage with racers be they F-ZERO or MK has been pretty bad. I could see myself tolerating the stage being legal though since I'm fine with the likes of Norfair :x

And the whole locked stagelist for EVO bugs me too. :/ makes it seem like more of a bad thing that Nintendo is getting involved although I know that isn't entirely true since they supplied setups at APEX among other things. At least customs are beginning to be supported so it's something!

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

Do you even have a frame data chart of spotdodge invincibility windows for the whole cast? If you don't know that, it seems strange to be bothered by not knowing the frame data on Duck Hunt. If you do know that, it's easy to test. Just go into training mode, set the game speed to 1/4 speed when holding L ("frame advance"), and input a spotdodge on one character and an attack that will hit on the last frame of invincibility with another character (we have frame data charts for "hits on" data for all normals and grabs). If the attack hits, there is z-axis behavior on other stages. If it doesn't, there isn't and Duck Hunt makes no difference. If it hits, you can then iterate for attacks that hit one frame faster until you don't hit to find out exactly how many frames of invincibility you lose. I don't know if that sounds complicated, but I can tell you from experience that's really easy testing even though it will be somewhat tedious to iterate over 51 characters just because 51 characters is a lot of characters (anything that requires testing the whole cast is kinda obnoxious in this game).

I have a lot of schoolwork this week. I can test this this weekend and deliver a full chart of z-axis behavior on spotdodges if you provide me with a starting chart of the normal invincibility windows on spotdodges. I'm not personally that curious but if it prevents needless bans of a good stage it's worth it. If you don't have one of those, I'm not sure I understand your complaint since we're similarly unknowledgeable on all stages in that case (and I don't have one and don't really intend to manually test invincibility windows on 51 spotdodges from no starting knowledge).

Thank you for offering to check this, it's seriously appreciated. I was able to follow along, at least, you need to throw out attacks at different frames in order to see where (if any) characters are no longer invincible. I was under the impression that frame advancing didn't actually advance frame per frame (as there's a 1/4 speed option as well as a 1/2 speed option), but it does advance it once true frame, then that's very good to hear.

I asked around, and the frame data should exist, but it would not be from the latest update of Smash 4. Would you still like me to locate a copy? Something to note, there's talk that the z-axis invincibility was unintentional, so depending on the source of the data, it might pertain to either 2D or 3D stages by some ironic accident. I would recommend testing Dedede once on 2D and once on 3D to see what variation the data is actually describing before doing all 51 characters, just in case.

Although I do not study frame data directly, anyone who really "feels" a character (myself included) has an intuitive idea of how long their spot dodge lasts. This is through many thousands of test through play. So, we could test to see if characters have shorter spot dodges on Duck Hunt in a similar way, by attempting to dodge a bunch of things and seeing if it "feels" different, but that's not exactly conclusive, and the placebo effect would be pretty strong (ie being told it might be different will likely make people feel like it's different, even in cases where it lasts the same amount of frames). So I feel it's better to compare frame data, even though that's not the method I use to understand spot dodge lengths.

Anyway, tested stuff last night. MK8 should absolutely not be legal in any right because "the little glitch" is an instant kill and consistently repeatable. I have 3 replays of just casually hitting my opponent into that glitch for a free kill but I'm not sure how to spread them around so w/e. MKU should not be legal because the water droplets that warn of an icicle can spawn offscreen and make the giant hitbox a surprise, as well as Nabbit just being an AI-controlled kill at 80%. OGA should probably not be legal because the platform explosions interrupt play and if you're anywhere under the Arwings during transition to the Great Fox, you get pushed under it and die.

@ J_the_Man I was player 2 in the MK8 situation, actually. We were specifically testings it because it was brought up as a possible stage option. So we jumped on Random characters and picked the stage a few times. We encountered this OHKO by accident during our second play on the stage while the platform starts to move after stopping on the transformation with a ceiling. I got caught inside between two hazards off screen and got bounced around until I died.

Second time it was encountered @ Linkshot did aim to recreate it, but it was within the context of an actual match where he was trying to take a stock off my character. The final time was less intentional, and I recall that it was not in the exact same place and in a different manner than before, but not the details beyond that. These 3 events happened within our first 6 plays of this stage, with random characters each time. Replays are available if someone explains to us how to share them.

(PS do you happen to be a fan of the podcast The JV Club? I heard an eerily similar screen name to yours given a shoutout on the show)

As for the other claims about Mushroom Kingdom U and Orbital Gate Assault, I will second that they are very much not suitable for competitive play for the listed reasons


Alright then, about the EVO stage list lock:

It's clear at this point that we do not have control over what stages will be featured at EVO, and that's pretty disappointing, as that the general community thinks it's insufficient. However, that doesn't mean "it's over" in terms of increasing the stagelist to something proper.

Although having a national have an incorrect stagelist makes things harder, we can still make changes at a level we can control. We need to do our part and discuss things with our local TO's that we think matter. We need to properly talk to notable communities about why striking from the entire list (and ignoring starter/counterpick distinction) is very much important to the viability of all characters. I think most importantly, we need to keep discussing things in this thread, go over all options and come to agreements. If we had to lock in a full ruleset that everyone would agree with today, we simply wouldn't be ready for that.

(Not saying that a unified stage list is even a good thing this early on, but if every region had a variation of 2 stocks + 5 minutes + 9-13 stages + striking from the entire list, that would be very healthy for general gameplay. On the flip side, there's no value in forcing every region to have an identical ruleset if they truly have their own reasons for their choices)

We simply have to do our best explaining to whomever we can reach out that the Apex ruleset is not an appropriate one to adopt. If we can convince many of the regions to stray from the Apex (and EVO now, I guess) ruleset then the next national will either adapt to what people are actually doing or be clearly recognized as failing to have a relevant ruleset.

And remember, EVO once ran Smash Tournaments with Items on, so this isn't as large as a setback as it looks at the moment.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

If the old version is 1.0.4 (released near Wii U launch), that's fine as it seems overwhelmingly unlikely 1.0.5 changed spotdodge duration (1.0.5 also doesn't apply to Wii U as of now). If it's something before 1.0.4, it honestly won't be reliable since 1.0.4 changed a ton of random small things. As long as they were all tested on the same stage, it will be easy to disambiguate which is which if we're absolutely sure King Dedede has z-axis behavior (it would make sense seeing as he did in Brawl, but I haven't been following those developments closely).

Frame advance isn't really frame advance. It advances the game at whatever speed as long as you hold L. The trick is that you can completely stop the game and then hit L while holding buttons on two controllers and just keep holding L to watch what happens as two characters begin taking different actions. If the frame data of one of the two actions is known, that can give you significant information about the other. This will be non-trivially obnoxious since we need to look at active frames to test dodges properly, but all of that data for normals and grabs is known so it's a doable exercise. For example, if we want to see if Ness's spotdodge has z-axis behavior, know Ness's spotdodge has it last normal frame of invincibility on f27, and know that G&W's ftilt has its last active frame on f27 (warning, example uses made up numbers), we would just have G&W ftilt and Ness spotdodge at the same time on Duck Hunt and see if Ness gets hit. If he does, he has z-axis behavior. If the spotdodge avoids it, he does not.

 

[J_the_Man]

@ J_the_Man I was player 2 in the MK8 situation, actually. We were specifically testings it because it was brought up as a possible stage option. So we jumped on Random characters and picked the stage a few times. We encountered this OHKO by accident during our second play on the stage while the platform starts to move after stopping on the transformation with a ceiling. I got caught inside between two hazards off screen and got bounced around until I died.

Second time it was encountered @ Linkshot did aim to recreate it, but it was within the context of an actual match where he was trying to take a stock off my character. The final time was less intentional, and I recall that it was not in the exact same place and in a different manner than before, but not the details beyond that. These 3 events happened within our first 6 plays of this stage, with random characters each time. Replays are available if someone explains to us how to share them.

(PS do you happen to be a fan of the podcast The JV Club? I heard an eerily similar screen name to yours given a shoutout on the show)

Never heard of the JV Club. In any case That third time likely happened as the race course transitioned from being a background to a ceiling. There's a very small window where if you get caught right when the course becomes a ceiling where you can get trapped. I've done it to a CPU when he was at kill percentage. Another CPU suicided into the glitch (CPUs suicide a lot on this stage for some reason).

But IMO, the fact the glitch is repeatable means it's just repeatable. The Wuhu Island glitch is repeatable too. As someone who would like to see this stage legalized yet acknowledges that this glitch is really the biggest obstacle, I'd personally like to test this out further to see how frequently it does happen with proper stage knowledge.

 

[[Deuce]]

Alright then, about the EVO stage list lock:

It's clear at this point that we do not have control over what stages will be featured at EVO, and that's pretty disappointing, as that the general community thinks it's insufficient. However, that doesn't mean "it's over" in terms of increasing the stagelist to something proper.

Although having a national have an incorrect stagelist makes things harder, we can still make changes at a level we can control. We need to do our part and discuss things with our local TO's that we think matter. We need to properly talk to notable communities about why striking from the entire list (and ignoring starter/counterpick distinction) is very much important to the viability of all characters. I think most importantly, we need to keep discussing things in this thread, go over all options and come to agreements. If we had to lock in a full ruleset that everyone would agree with today, we simply wouldn't be ready for that.

(Not saying that a unified stage list is even a good thing this early on, but if every region had a variation of 2 stocks + 5 minutes + 9-13 stages + striking from the entire list, that would be very healthy for general gameplay. On the flip side, there's no value in forcing every region to have an identical ruleset if they truly have their own reasons for their choices)

We simply have to do our best explaining to whomever we can reach out that the Apex ruleset is not an appropriate one to adopt. If we can convince many of the regions to stray from the Apex (and EVO now, I guess) ruleset then the next national will either adapt to what people are actually doing or be clearly recognized as failing to have a relevant ruleset.

And remember, EVO once ran Smash Tournaments with Items on, so this isn't as large as a setback as it looks at the moment.

The biggest problem with this is that now that nationals are beginning to be unified in rulesets it gets exponentially harder to push against the tide. Reason is that while we would like to employ the local TOs in rulesets/stages we DO like, they're more likely to incline toward emulating the rulesets of the nationals because that is what the top players would want. Just like before Apex, local TOs all adapted the Apex ruleset to appease the pros intending to go to Apex as it provided better simulation.

Because of this, the pattern becomes very circular- national TOs adopt a ruleset that pro players are well practiced in which stems from local TOs and online gameplay, and local TOs adopt a ruleset that simulates that of nationals, making change quite difficult.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I came in here today with a goal: I wanna ban a stage.

This is seriously not my usual motif so please forgive me for this strange change in my bahvior. I don't feel that Kongo Jungle 64 should honestly be legal in singles. Barrel stalling if you ONLY touch the barrel could maybe be covered in a stalling clause, but just plain abusing the underside with a character like villager, peach, or jigglypuff is incredibly centralizing. (ESPECIALLY Jigglypuff who makes the entire stage a pain.)

Just shark, get those jumps up, repeat. Sure it's beatable don't get me wrong but it's just making a match go on for ages for a degenerate strategy. I can honestly understand why places have banned this in singles at this point. It would only take one person actually willing to play super lame and a tournament would be seriously hurt by it. I almost went to do this in an online event but after warning the Hypest TOs about it they said they would seriously look into it and keep me informed. But if I don't see it banned I'll be the one to provide footage of it being an issue myself if I can to show why people have said it's no good.

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

If the old version is 1.0.4 (released near Wii U launch), that's fine as it seems overwhelmingly unlikely 1.0.5 changed spotdodge duration (1.0.5 also doesn't apply to Wii U as of now). If it's something before 1.0.4, it honestly won't be reliable since 1.0.4 changed a ton of random small things. As long as they were all tested on the same stage, it will be easy to disambiguate which is which if we're absolutely sure King Dedede has z-axis behavior (it would make sense seeing as he did in Brawl, but I haven't been following those developments closely).

Frame advance isn't really frame advance. It advances the game at whatever speed as long as you hold L. The trick is that you can completely stop the game and then hit L while holding buttons on two controllers and just keep holding L to watch what happens as two characters begin taking different actions. If the frame data of one of the two actions is known, that can give you significant information about the other. This will be non-trivially obnoxious since we need to look at active frames to test dodges properly, but all of that data for normals and grabs is known so it's a doable exercise. For example, if we want to see if Ness's spotdodge has z-axis behavior, know Ness's spotdodge has it last normal frame of invincibility on f27, and know that G&W's ftilt has its last active frame on f27 (warning, example uses made up numbers), we would just have G&W ftilt and Ness spotdodge at the same time on Duck Hunt and see if Ness gets hit. If he does, he has z-axis behavior. If the spotdodge avoids it, he does not.

Ah, so if you have 60 moves that come out on each of the 60 frames, you can check exact frames of anything, gotcha. So I got some bad news for you, though. After a lot of searching, the frame data for dodges couldn't be found. They might be in there somewhere, but they aren't in the same place that Brawl had them. It's likely that it's now an action that's handled by a general file, and not by the individual characters. If that's the case, that means it's a file that isn't able to be looked into with our current understanding of the game.

Without the spotdodge info, the task of measuring the differences becomes a little insane, at least with the process you've described. You'd have to derive every character's spot dodge length first, which is kinda blah. I'm not sure how to proceed from here.

Never heard of the JV Club. In any case That third time likely happened as the race course transitioned from being a background to a ceiling. There's a very small window where if you get caught right when the course becomes a ceiling where you can get trapped. I've done it to a CPU when he was at kill percentage. Another CPU suicided into the glitch (CPUs suicide a lot on this stage for some reason).

But IMO, the fact the glitch is repeatable means it's just repeatable. The Wuhu Island glitch is repeatable too. As someone who would like to see this stage legalized yet acknowledges that this glitch is really the biggest obstacle, I'd personally like to test this out further to see how frequently it does happen with proper stage knowledge.

The podcast thing was a longshot, I admit. It's simply not "repeatable" in the same way that the wuhu island glitch is. There's only 3 known characters that it works for on wuhu, and your opponent can seriously play around it. They can simply not stand by the super-precise spot where it works. In the MK8 case, there's a time on the stage where a single correct read leads to a loss of stock of your opponent on any part of the platform, or even off of the platform. This is with any character and doesn't have to be at kill percents.

Besides this, there are many hitboxes that look like they aren't hitboxes, and many things that look like hitboxes that aren't. Some hitboxes are active the moment they become visible. I understand you can memorize these in theory, but the entire stage seems a little janked up for this to be a reasonable task. In practice, you're going to see kills due to surprises on MK8 quite often.

The biggest problem with this is that now that nationals are beginning to be unified in rulesets it gets exponentially harder to push against the tide. Reason is that while we would like to employ the local TOs in rulesets/stages we DO like, they're more likely to incline toward emulating the rulesets of the nationals because that is what the top players would want. Just like before Apex, local TOs all adapted the Apex ruleset to appease the pros intending to go to Apex as it provided better simulation.

Because of this, the pattern becomes very circular- national TOs adopt a ruleset that pro players are well practiced in which stems from local TOs and online gameplay, and local TOs adopt a ruleset that simulates that of nationals, making change quite difficult.

While I understand this is a difficulty, it in no way means we can't do anything about it. Anyone you talk to knows that the people who made the Apex ruleset messed up greatly. It's just a few months into this game's lifespan, it's certainly not too late to start pushing against the tide. If we do nothing but wait, obviously the 8-stage ruleset will take over, so just do what you can as soon as you can. Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, as it were.

 

[Linkshot]

I'd personally like to test this out further to see how frequently it does happen with proper stage knowledge.

As soon as it happened the first time, I was able to identify how it worked and purposely recreate it without setting up beyond a standard neutral game. It is nowhere near as precise and character-specific as Wuhu's glitch. You just hit somebody upward hard (or use wind) and the ceiling's meteor doesn't overpower the momentum, the character passes through, gets hit 4 times, and dies off the top.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Ah, so if you have 60 moves that come out on each of the 60 frames, you can check exact frames of anything, gotcha. So I got some bad news for you, though. After a lot of searching, the frame data for dodges couldn't be found. They might be in there somewhere, but they aren't in the same place that Brawl had them. It's likely that it's now an action that's handled by a general file, and not by the individual characters. If that's the case, that means it's a file that isn't able to be looked into with our current understanding of the game.

Without the spotdodge info, the task of measuring the differences becomes a little insane, at least with the process you've described. You'd have to derive every character's spot dodge length first, which is kinda blah. I'm not sure how to proceed from here.

So you don't know how long spotdodges are normally, but now that they're changed, you're going to ban stages that change them ever so slightly?

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

I came in here today with a goal: I wanna ban a stage.

This is seriously not my usual motif so please forgive me for this strange change in my bahvior. I don't feel that Kongo Jungle 64 should honestly be legal in singles. Barrel stalling if you ONLY touch the barrel could maybe be covered in a stalling clause, but just plain abusing the underside with a character like villager, peach, or jigglypuff is incredibly centralizing. (ESPECIALLY Jigglypuff who makes the entire stage a pain.)

Just shark, get those jumps up, repeat. Sure it's beatable don't get me wrong but it's just making a match go on for ages for a degenerate strategy. I can honestly understand why places have banned this in singles at this point. It would only take one person actually willing to play super lame and a tournament would be seriously hurt by it. I almost went to do this in an online event but after warning the Hypest TOs about it they said they would seriously look into it and keep me informed. But if I don't see it banned I'll be the one to provide footage of it being an issue myself if I can to show why people have said it's no good.

I'm not exactly sure what the problems your stating are, or if that makes the stage bannable. If I must be honest, it sounds like you might have lost a few times on the stage in a way you deemed "unfair" and now you have strong feelings against the stage that might be a little misplaced. I don't mean to be rude (I know people don't usually enjoy being cold-read), but it's a strong vibe I'm getting from your wording, especially if this isn't your "usual motif."

I've asked this before, but how long are you physically able to stay in the barrel before it shoots you out? That would be helpful in making a decision of considering it "stalling" or not.

Sharking isn't so great in this game. If someone grabs the ledge, goes to hit you under the stage, and then goes back to the ledge, they will not be invincible for the second grab (assuming you didn't hit them). This means you can run up to the ledge when they're on the way back and spike for a kill. With counterplay like this, I wouldn't call sharking "degenerate." Besides this, you can shark on like, 5 other stages, so I don't see why Kongo Jungle in particular should be banned because of this strategy.

I also don't understand why slow play on a single stage of a set would "seriously hurt" a tournament. The absolute worst that can happen is that a single game of a set takes a full 5 minutes. With many sets occurring at the same time, there's likelyhood due to variance that it might not even be the longest set in a tournament round, as the length of the other (up to) 2 matches in your set could not possibly take place on this stage.

For these reasons, I do not see a problem with the stage. If you still feel the stage is broken somehow, feel free to provide the videos of the problems you mean.

So you don't know how long spotdodges are normally, but now that they're changed, you're going to ban stages that change them ever so slightly?

Holy Jeez is this ever a loaded question. Could you please have an actual discussion for once rather than just attacking people who don't agree with you?

I in fact DO know how long spot dodges last for every character I feel comfortable with. Every player that is on their way to mastering a character knows instinctively how long of a spotdodge that character has. This is something you learn through play. I have covered this in the message previous to the one you quoted.

We can learn the lengths of spot dodges on 2D stages through hours of play, which has the inherent problem of the difference being impossible to quantify, or we can use frame data to check if there's even a difference to learn in the first place.

Also, it's really fallacious of you to state that the changes to spot dodges are "slight" when the crux of your argument is that the amount of change is unknown to everyone.

If you had been following the discussion, you would know that my stance is now that Duck Hunt should be suspended from play until we can get the information required to make an actual decision, and then we can put it back if the changes are indeed slight. Now that we know that list of differences might not show up any time soon, I don't think that suggestion is appropriate.

Perhaps we can use the frame data of attacks to measure the starting and ending frames for Dedede and ROB alone on both 2D and 3D stages and continue discussion from there?

 

[ATH_]

It's one thing when a stage influences the options you use, it's another when the stage completely nerfs those options.

I personally have never been a fan of Duck Hunt, I'll keep it on my lists but I'm almost hoping it gets banned unanimously because of 2d shenanigans.

 

[webbedspace]

I came in here today with a goal: I wanna ban a stage.

This is seriously not my usual motif so please forgive me for this strange change in my bahvior. I don't feel that Kongo Jungle 64 should honestly be legal in singles. Barrel stalling if you ONLY touch the barrel could maybe be covered in a stalling clause, but just plain abusing the underside with a character like villager, peach, or jigglypuff is incredibly centralizing. (ESPECIALLY Jigglypuff who makes the entire stage a pain.)

The wording of this is a bit unclear - do you mean the stage can be repeatedly sharked without ever touching the barrel (only the two ledges), or is the barrel a requirement?

 

[ATH_]

Here's my stage list for the online tourneys I'll be hosting soon. I would really love criticism and ideas for it, so, feel free! Thank you.

Stage List
Starter Stages (9)

• Final Destination
• Battlefield
• Smashville
• Town & City
• Duck Hunt
• Delfino Plaza
• Kongo Jungle 64
• Lylat Cruise
• Castle Siege

Counterpick Stages (4)

• Wuhu Island
• Halberd
• Skyloft
• Pokemon Stadium 2

Stage Striking is a simple 1:2:2:2:1 for Starters, and in Games 2 and 3 the Winner gets to strike 3 stages.

Alright, a lot to talk about here and this is going to be a VERY long post.

"Nine starters?"
Yes, having Nine allows for balanced Striking and the more starters the more balanced a first game will be, since more stages will be stricken to truly find the nice first game stage the matchup wants.
"THIRTEEN WHOLE STAGES? Something must be wrong with you."
More the merrier. This game has a LOT of good stages. Some have been questioned (Namely the 4 Counterpicks) but they still are viable for now.
"Why not FLSS?"
Full List Stage Striking wouldn't be bad or anything, but I wanted to make sure that the four controversial stages were kept distant for now, at least, until the common thought starts to either tend toward them or away from them. Having 3 Strikes as a Winner further pushes this.
"Why not just use the starters and get rid of the CPs for FLSS?"
To me, these stages do not deserve to be banned as of right now. I can understand WHY some people would ban them, but I personally think all 13 of these stages are fantastic.
"Would it be best to let players vote for stages?"
Possibly, I considered this for the counterpicks, but I decided not to for the first tourney, not until I actually know there's a group of people who would participate.

About each stage, and my current opinions on them:

Final Destination
Good stage, but I prefer T&C over it. A lot of people have a looming thought that because it's basic and balanced that it suddenly has to be tied for best stage, and that's a no no. Didn't include this as a question, but I don't allow Omega stages because of the slight differences. Yes, it takes skill to use this differences to your advantage so they should SURELY be a counterpick, right? I disagree with this, as it adds a tad bit too far of depth, since you'd have to be able to know what a certain character can do on a certain omega, and it starts to get ridiculous. While I'm all for the "No amount of practice is too much" train, this is a case that just seems so unnecessary.

Battlefield
Love this stage, can't wait for Miiverse to either replace it (if it has the same platform layout) or be another stage like it! So many fun stage spikes. We've definitely come a long way from Melee's Battlefield and how you could get denied by the bottom of it. Just a good stage in general.

Smashville
I've said what I've needed to in the new Smashville thread, check that out if you want. It just feels like a better FD, because Projectile Spam IS possible, but it's certainly not as prevalent due to the platform. Beauty.

Town & City
Balanced layouts make me happy, platforms killing players is a bit eh, but then again, it's easy to tell when they're about to leave. I really like this stage, there's a lot of unique combos that can be done on it and it is just overall a very fun stage. Smashville 2.

Duck Hunt
Not a fan of this stage but I respect it's viability. I have beef with the grass, Dog, Ducks, and Tree. Just, ew. It's a gross stage but it isn't a bad one as far as we know. Fixed Camera surely doesn't help it's case either. Other than that stuff, it's a bricked FD with a couple gimmicks. It's neat, just messy.

Delfino Plaza
Love this stage to death, a bit bias'd since I used to speedrun Super Mario Sunshine. If only a couple of the transformations were better, but the transferring of forms parts are very good. The amount of times I've dropped from a ledge on it and PKT2'd to hit someone through the stage, absolutely incredible. I can see why people dislike it, but I personally like this stage a lot.

Kongo Jungle 64
This stage gets hate, and until the hate is backed up with videos or actual in-tourney proof, I'm keeping it here. It's a fun stage, and while the Barrel is an issue, I honestly don't see how it's such a bad thing to strike it when you're against a Jiggly/Peach player. Striking is so you can get rid of the stages that give your opponent an advantage or you a disadvantage, so use it.

Lylat Cruise
I know it's balanced but I hate Lylat with the passion of a neutron star '^'
Good stage, screw the ledges and tilting. I blame my choice in mains for me not liking this stage, though, still a good stage with a good layout. I have preferences though.

Castle Siege
I've got beef with this stage too, but not as much. The transformations last a very long time, and I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the stupid second transformation. Not to mention the sudden killing during a transforming sequence. Otherwise, I like this stage's first and third forms a lot. They handle Diddy and Sheik well and generally feel like fair grounds in a lot of matchups.


OKAY, So Smashboards ate up the other half of this post...I'll remake it at some point. Sorry.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Holy Jeez is this ever a loaded question. Could you please have an actual discussion for once rather than just attacking people who don't agree with you?

I in fact DO know how long spot dodges last for every character I feel comfortable with. Every player that is on their way to mastering a character knows instinctively how long of a spotdodge that character has. This is something you learn through play. I have covered this in the message previous to the one you quoted.

Here's the problem. I play on Duck Hunt quite a bit. I don't see the difference. At all. I know it exists, because I keep hearing about it, but I don't see it. I don't experience it. For all intents and purposes, every single time I've tried and failed to spotdodge something on Duck Hunt, I was fairly certain that it was me mistiming it, and I would have gotten hit on any other stage as well.

We can learn the lengths of spot dodges on 2D stages through hours of play, which has the inherent problem of the difference being impossible to quantify, or we can use frame data to check if there's even a difference to learn in the first place.

Also, it's really fallacious of you to state that the changes to spot dodges are "slight" when the crux of your argument is that the amount of change is unknown to everyone.

It's only an unknown because nobody can tell. I can't tell you what the 3059th prime number is off the top of my head, but I can tell you right off the bat that it's not a small number. That's how I know they're slight - because they're barely noticeable in the first place. Maybe if they kept Wario's wonky spotdodge from Brawl, I dunno. If they're barely noticeable in the first place, then you should have no trouble adapting pretty quickly. Nobody is trying to do frame-perfect spotdodges. It's a fairly long window to dodge in, and unless you're trying to spotdodge a diddy fsmash (which is a terrible idea, by the way), a few frames on either end should not be the end of the world.

If it is significant, though, then we can see that, and we can start planning around that.

If you had been following the discussion, you would know that my stance is now that Duck Hunt should be suspended from play until we can get the information required to make an actual decision, and then we can put it back if the changes are indeed slight. Now that we know that list of differences might not show up any time soon, I don't think that suggestion is appropriate.

I don't think it was ever appropriate. We're talking about minor differences that clearly do not make much of an impact, and nothing which is degenerate and cannot be adapted to. The problem here isn't just "Duck Hunt is a phenomenal stage" (it isn't, it's kinda meh), it's "why do want it removed". The reasoning bugs me. Because we don't understand it yet? Well learn it on the fly, and the player who adapts best wins! And when would we learn it after it was removed? Of course, that's a rather extreme overstatement - "the player who adapts best" will get an extremely minor advantage that, in the long run, is almost completely negligible.

Meh. Well, it ain't getting banned, so, yanno. Whatevs.

 

[Nintendrone]

@ The_Jiggernaut "Suspending" Duck Hunt from tournaments is simply not a good solution if 2D bugs you that much. The best way to test for how something affects a tournament is to play it in tournament, not ban it while a few are in the lab. A stage shouldn't have to prove itself to be put on stagelists unless it had previously proven itself to be bannable, which Duck Hunt hasn't.

 

[webbedspace]

One of the above posts mentioned Miiverse, so let me make a pessimistic prediction: while it's almost certainly going to be a "1% different Battlefield" (its underside is more symmetrical, harder to guide up and easier to fly underneath) I'm worried about the stage's downloadable messages. Will it require a live internet connection just to play on it? Will there be lag while the messages are downloaded? Hopefully they're working on this as we speak, but don't be surprised if it's not possible or practical to use on offline setups at all.