Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[Piford]

Honestly I'd gladly welcome any brief diversion discussing which characters are advantaged/disadvantaged in specific stages. Like, I've heard that Jiggly and Little Mac both benefit from going to FD, for completely different reasons. So: who benefits the most in that matchup? Does anyone really know?

I don't know about FD, but I'm pretty sure Jiggs best stages are Delfino Plaza, Lylat Cruise, and Wuhu Island if it's legal.

But real talk why would we need to discuss what character are good on what stages, when we can just pick smashville? I mean as competitors we should have a play to win attitude. After you gentlemen to Smashville game one, make sure to counterpick back to Smashville because what you really want is take your opponent back to the stage he just won on and is likely most comfortable with. Play to win not to have fun. Not picking Smashville is like not picking Diddy Kong.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Testing on Yoshi's Island so far has been relatively fruitful. I can't find anything wrong with the stage. Like, at all. It's awesome.

Really? The walk off isnt an issue? The blocks don't create caves of life? I want to hear more about this stage if I'm actually really wrong about it

 

[Funen1]

Do you guys want to know something hilarious? Looking at the title of this thread you would think that the discussion would be about discussing how and when to use stages in competitive environments. What character is good/bad on this stage? What neat tricks can I pull off on this due to it's design? Things like that you know.

But why do that when I can do that when I can play on the simplest stage possible?
If you ever wondered why this thread is always about stage legality this is why. It's like stage knowledge is some kind of sorcery that frowned upon because the stage killed the player and not the character. I get if it has a random (RNG) element that can kill you or is easily campable but at least prove it. While your at it prove that using stage knowledge against your opponent is bad for the meta.

If Smashville, Battlefield and/or omega/FD are the only worthwhile competitive stages and the rest are going to be an after thought then why does this thread exist?

I think there might also be an element of "people naturally take the path of least resistance" when it comes to stage knowledge, but yeah, there's certainly still a lot of room for people of all skill levels to remain uneducated/ignorant about the whole topic as well. There's this idea that competitions are only supposed to be between two people (or four for teams), and nothing else... despite the fact that you're still duking it out within the same game you would've had the whole time, and without which there'd be no competition at all. Obviously some stuff in a game like Smash will be overly detrimental to "competitive" play, defined in the loosest sense of the word. But having any blatantly intrusive elements anywhere in the game ends up fostering the rather poisonous mentality of crying for something to be banned when it gets in your way at all, even if after stopping for a second and taking another look at it you find that there was in fact something you could have done about it.

Wuhu Island boat glitch? Stay away from the spot you can be insta-killed at. Temporary walkoff on a traveling stage? Never approach your opponent if they choose to camp the edge of the screen (see: Dabuz vs. Nairo last Apex). Dog popping up under you or your opponent while you're setting up something? Practice keeping track of the ducks so you know when and where he'll appear. Be creative with how you handle various stage elements. Never assume the game (more specifically, the stage elements) is "out to get us" somehow - it's gonna do what it's gonna do. That's where a lot of players end up falling short. We all get hit on the receiving end of something nasty at some point. We fall victim to a combo setup we haven't seen before, or in our nervousness from being in a late round of a tournament we mistime a stage transition and fall to our death. Stuff happens, but what matters the most is what you do about it afterward. Again, the game will do what it's gonna do, but realize that you do have some measure of control over what goes on. In a word, adapt.

It's people in this thread that realize this that have been calling out many notable tournaments for having such small stages lists, because they know that the reasoning behind excluding so many good stages is completely faulty. The rub is, of course, that this discussion doesn't include a whole lot of really prominent members in the community, for one reason or another (not visiting Smashboards at all or simply this part of the boards being a big one), though talking about how to work around this is probably well beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

Good news guys. Got confirmation that Aftershock will be doing Evo's ruleset for Smash 4
http://smashboards.com/threads/mar-...best-arlington-tx.387430/page-2#post-18674897

That solves the 3-stage striking problem and gives the list a few more stages to work with

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Really? The walk off isnt an issue? The blocks don't create caves of life? I want to hear more about this stage if I'm actually really wrong about it

The walkoff is, ironically, the very worst part of the stage to be on. If you're up there on the hill, your immediate course of actions should be "get me the **** down from here", because it's really hard to grab people from that position and it puts you at a huge risk of getting sniped off the top by safe fairs. In fact, a lot of the game focuses around trying to force people up that hill and away from the center of the stage.

The cave of life effect exists. However, it is both ephemeral and easy to do away with, and it's also necessary because of the low blastzones. Like, just for reference, Little Mac's jab->upB combo will kill here around 70-80%, regardless of where the blocks are. In fact, due to the way the blocks are situated, it's actually really easy to rack up a lot of extra damage if you can read how your opponent techs your moves. On average, I feel like matches here run considerably shorter, and your ability to tech can easily be mitigated by your opponent outplaying you. Between me and my opponent, neither of us had trouble killing. He played Marth; I played Pikachu, Little Mac, and ZSS.

This stage is solid, guys. It's a really, really cool and unique counterpick, and I can't find the broken on it.

 

[Firefoxx]

Yeah, I mean the reasons Pipes was banned in the last 2 games are basically all gone (Chain Grabs/ Fox shine nonsense) so I could totally see it being a legit stage. But its reputation is gonna be a hell of a thing for people to get over. Which continues the overall problem we have in this thread.

And I know Smashville every match is the norm and its crazy frustrating, but we have established that there is a massive lack of knowledge about stages and how they effect matchups. We've said time and time again what stages we believe are legal quality, so I don't see the harm in shifting the conversation over to discussing who benefits/struggles on which stages. I know one of the most informative things I've read on the site is Raziek's post on what stages are best/worst for Robin. That kind of information could really help get people to stop always picking Smashville, especially when they are playing against Diddy, Sheik, Luigi, ect.

So what characters should actually be trying to take everyone to Smashville? Who is being artificially helped the most in the current stage picking meta?

 

[Piford]

Yeah, I mean the reasons Pipes was banned in the last 2 games are basically all gone (Chain Grabs/ Fox shine nonsense) so I could totally see it being a legit stage. But its reputation is gonna be a hell of a thing for people to get over. Which continues the overall problem we have in this thread.

And I know Smashville every match is the norm and its crazy frustrating, but we have established that there is a massive lack of knowledge about stages and how they effect matchups. We've said time and time again what stages we believe are legal quality, so I don't see the harm in shifting the conversation over to discussing who benefits/struggles on which stages. I know one of the most informative things I've read on the site is Raziek's post on what stages are best/worst for Robin. That kind of information could really help get people to stop always picking Smashville, especially when they are playing against Diddy, Sheik, Luigi, ect.

So what characters should actually be trying to take everyone to Smashville? Who is being artificially helped the most in the current stage picking meta?

The current top tier seem to be good on Smashville (most likely by coincidence but then are further buffed by it). Sheik is really good on Smashville becuase of Fair strings, and other characters that have fair strings like Ness are likely also buffed. Characters with good forward or back throws that can get an early kill using the platform like Sonic or Pit enjoy that. I know it's a good stage for Diddy Kong, but he only has a few bad stages (Castle Siege and Lylat Cruise of the usually legal stages and Skyloft, Wuhu Island, and Kongo Jungle 64 if those are legal. I'm not 100% sure of that though).

A lot of times, if a character likes FD, Smashville is the stage they want to go to next.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

The walkoff is, ironically, the very worst part of the stage to be on. If you're up there on the hill, your immediate course of actions should be "get me the **** down from here", because it's really hard to grab people from that position and it puts you at a huge risk of getting sniped off the top by safe fairs. In fact, a lot of the game focuses around trying to force people up that hill and away from the center of the stage.

The cave of life effect exists. However, it is both ephemeral and easy to do away with, and it's also necessary because of the low blastzones. Like, just for reference, Little Mac's jab->upB combo will kill here around 70-80%, regardless of where the blocks are. In fact, due to the way the blocks are situated, it's actually really easy to rack up a lot of extra damage if you can read how your opponent techs your moves. On average, I feel like matches here run considerably shorter, and your ability to tech can easily be mitigated by your opponent outplaying you. Between me and my opponent, neither of us had trouble killing. He played Marth; I played Pikachu, Little Mac, and ZSS.

This stage is solid, guys. It's a really, really cool and unique counterpick, and I can't find the broken on it.

I'm not sure how to feel about this. More stages is good of course, but on a personal level I never really liked Yoshi's Island. The center stage has the destructible blocks that make life really hard for characters like Ness, and if you're not on center stage you're in a really ****ty position. Nonetheless I am willing to give it another look, though I'm not adding it to the list of stages my friend and I play on until I see it actually in some tournament being a good stage.

Speaking of, any stages I should add to my random selection for my sparring with my bud? So far we have Battlefield, FD, SV, T&C, Halberd, KJ64, Delfino, Castle Siege, Wuhu, Skyloft, and Duck Hunt. I may add some stages later if they prove seaworthy, but are there any I should add right now? Again, this isnt a tournament with ramifications, this is just me and my friend having fun

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

The walkoff is, ironically, the very worst part of the stage to be on. If you're up there on the hill, your immediate course of actions should be "get me the **** down from here", because it's really hard to grab people from that position and it puts you at a huge risk of getting sniped off the top by safe fairs. In fact, a lot of the game focuses around trying to force people up that hill and away from the center of the stage.

The cave of life effect exists. However, it is both ephemeral and easy to do away with, and it's also necessary because of the low blastzones. Like, just for reference, Little Mac's jab->upB combo will kill here around 70-80%, regardless of where the blocks are. In fact, due to the way the blocks are situated, it's actually really easy to rack up a lot of extra damage if you can read how your opponent techs your moves. On average, I feel like matches here run considerably shorter, and your ability to tech can easily be mitigated by your opponent outplaying you. Between me and my opponent, neither of us had trouble killing. He played Marth; I played Pikachu, Little Mac, and ZSS.

This stage is solid, guys. It's a really, really cool and unique counterpick, and I can't find the broken on it.

I've got two words for you: Hoo Haa

I'm not sure how to feel about this. More stages is good of course, but on a personal level I never really liked Yoshi's Island. The center stage has the destructible blocks that make life really hard for characters like Ness, and if you're not on center stage you're in a really ****ty position. Nonetheless I am willing to give it another look, though I'm not adding it to the list of stages my friend and I play on until I see it actually in some tournament being a good stage.

Speaking of, any stages I should add to my random selection for my sparring with my bud? So far we have Battlefield, FD, SV, T&C, Halberd, KJ64, Delfino, Castle Siege, Wuhu, Skyloft, and Duck Hunt. I may add some stages later if they prove seaworthy, but are there any I should add right now? Again, this isnt a tournament with ramifications, this is just me and my friend having fun

Don't forget Lylat, it's legal in a lot of areas still.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Don't forget Lylat, it's legal in a lot of areas still.

Ah yes, I forgot that stage. We use that one too, idk how it escaped me. I really don't like it though, but thats just me

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

I'm not sure how to feel about this. More stages is good of course, but on a personal level I never really liked Yoshi's Island. The center stage has the destructible blocks that make life really hard for characters like Ness,

See, I would have listed Ness as someone who's quite good on the stage. He can fair chain people out away from the center, kill ridiculously early on the left edge, has at least one really solid move to kill off the top... He's certainly not what I would call "challenged" on the stage. And even if he were, are there really any other "must ban" stages against the character?

I've got two words for you: Hoo Haa

I'm not convinced it's significantly worse here than on, say, Halberd. In fact, the blocks can get in the way and force a mixup situation.

Don't forget Lylat, it's legal in a lot of areas still.

May he who would ban Lylat be named so that I may shame them and call them a disgusting scrub.

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

See, I would have listed Ness as someone who's quite good on the stage. He can fair chain people out away from the center, kill ridiculously early on the left edge, has at least one really solid move to kill off the top... He's certainly not what I would call "challenged" on the stage. And even if he were, are there really any other "must ban" stages against the character?



I'm not convinced it's significantly worse here than on, say, Halberd. In fact, the blocks can get in the way and force a mixup situation.


May he who would ban Lylat be named so that I may shame them and call them a disgusting scrub.

My point is more that it would kill super early when on either slope, as that brings you closer to the blastzone. So a Diddy player can stall when ahead a stock by camping the slopes. In fact, I think the permanent walkoff, even a slanted one, is reason enough to not include the stage.

As discussed before, permanent walkoffs allow characters with superior grab ranges or throw strengths to camp indefensibly when ahead. This leads to "checkmate" scenarios, where a player will lose if they let the time run out or if they approach. The slant might help approaches, but it doesn't prevent the opponent from dashgrabbing down the slope. I would list this sort of interaction as degenerate for sure, and I'm confused as to why you don't consider it so.


They were going to not have Lylat at Aftermath!, before they changed it to EVO ruleset. However there's still this idea trending that it should be banned, I can't really point you to where, but the ultra-conservative notion is still around.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

My point is more that it would kill super early when on either slope, as that brings you closer to the blastzone. So a Diddy player can stall when ahead a stock by camping the slopes. In fact, I think the permanent walkoff, even a slanted one, is reason enough to not include the stage.

As discussed before, permanent walkoffs allow characters with superior grab ranges or throw strengths to camp indefensibly when ahead. This leads to "checkmate" scenarios, where a player will lose if they let the time run out or if they approach. The slant might help approaches, but it doesn't prevent the opponent from dashgrabbing down the slope. I would list this sort of interaction as degenerate for sure, and I'm confused as to why you don't consider it so.

Shame, because if any kind of walkoff were to work, it would be a slanted one that would put the "camping" player in a worse situation. That or perhaps something like Water, but my lament about the lack of a static stage with water obscuring the bottom boundary is a story for another day.

They were going to not have Lylat at Aftermath!, before they changed it to EVO ruleset. However there's still this idea trending that it should be banned, I can't really point you to where, but the ultra-conservative notion is still around.

Maybe it's that a lot of people just don't like it, people don't like the tilting disrupting recoveries and messing with projectiles, or maybe it's the center platform, IDK. I only include it out of necessity; I REALLY don't think it deserves to be a neutral outside of FLSS, and if I was forced to choose between it and most other recognized stages, I would side against Lylat.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

My point is more that it would kill super early when on either slope, as that brings you closer to the blastzone. So a Diddy player can stall when ahead a stock by camping the slopes. In fact, I think the permanent walkoff, even a slanted one, is reason enough to not include the stage.

Right. And every bit of testing I've done has shown that this doesn't work. At all. If someone is camping up on the walkoff, you basically get to poke at them for free if you have aerials that are anywhere near decent, and they can't really do much about it. That, plus how close they are to the blastzone, makes the walkoff the worst place on the stage to be. Try it sometime, you might be surprised.

As discussed before, permanent walkoffs allow characters with superior grab ranges or throw strengths to camp indefensibly when ahead.

No, I get it, I understand the problem with walkoffs. Yoshi's just doesn't have that problem. The steep slope makes the typical tactics not work any more. At all. It's not like trying to approach someone on the ground. It's like trying to approach someone above you on a platform - you have a lot of really good options, and they don't.

This leads to "checkmate" scenarios, where a player will lose if they let the time run out or if they approach. The slant might help approaches, but it doesn't prevent the opponent from dashgrabbing down the slope. I would list this sort of interaction as degenerate for sure, and I'm confused as to why you don't consider it so.

Because I spent time testing it, and learning to work around it, and the fact is that if you space yourself well, even relatively slow characters and characters with mediocre range can float far enough away that "dashgrabbing down the slope" is impossible. The only character I can see having trouble there is Little Mac. Like, just to give you an idea of how extreme this is, if I upB into any point on the hill as Pikachu, or use Crescent Slash, I slide (almost instantly) all the way to the bottom. Even if you're forced to land on the slope, you still slide downhill, and grabs do not have good vertical range. And even then, most typical bthrows don't work very well, because you can DI down and tech.

Have you spent a lot of time playing on Yoshi's? Because none of the problems you've described have happened. Whenever my opponent tried to camp the walkoff, my immediate response was to go up and start throwing fadeback fairs in his face, because it's totally free and it leaves him close to the blastzone and in an ever-more precarious situation. The walkoff isn't a strong camping spot. It's the worst place on the stage to be.

They were going to not have Lylat at Aftermath!, before they changed it to EVO ruleset. However there's still this idea trending that it should be banned, I can't really point you to where, but the ultra-conservative notion is still around.

Who's the TO of Aftermath?

@ Oracle what the hell, man? Seriously? Where's Wuhu? Where's Lylat? Where's Pokemon Stadium? Why are you banning so many completely legitimate stages? What happened to "we don't ban things until they're shown to be broken"? You know, the most fundamental aspect of competitive ruleset design? What's going on?

 

[Piford]

Right. And every bit of testing I've done has shown that this doesn't work. At all. If someone is camping up on the walkoff, you basically get to poke at them for free if you have aerials that are anywhere near decent, and they can't really do much about it. That, plus how close they are to the blastzone, makes the walkoff the worst place on the stage to be. Try it sometime, you might be surprised.



No, I get it, I understand the problem with walkoffs. Yoshi's just doesn't have that problem. The steep slope makes the typical tactics not work any more. At all. It's not like trying to approach someone on the ground. It's like trying to approach someone above you on a platform - you have a lot of really good options, and they don't.



Because I spent time testing it, and learning to work around it, and the fact is that if you space yourself well, even relatively slow characters and characters with mediocre range can float far enough away that "dashgrabbing down the slope" is impossible. The only character I can see having trouble there is Little Mac. Like, just to give you an idea of how extreme this is, if I upB into any point on the hill as Pikachu, or use Crescent Slash, I slide (almost instantly) all the way to the bottom. Even if you're forced to land on the slope, you still slide downhill, and grabs do not have good vertical range. And even then, most typical bthrows don't work very well, because you can DI down and tech.

Have you spent a lot of time playing on Yoshi's? Because none of the problems you've described have happened. Whenever my opponent tried to camp the walkoff, my immediate response was to go up and start throwing fadeback fairs in his face, because it's totally free and it leaves him close to the blastzone and in an ever-more precarious situation. The walkoff isn't a strong camping spot. It's the worst place on the stage to be.



Who's the TO of Aftermath?

@ Oracle what the hell, man? Seriously? Where's Wuhu? Where's Lylat? Where's Pokemon Stadium? Why are you banning so many completely legitimate stages? What happened to "we don't ban things until they're shown to be broken"? You know, the most fundamental aspect of competitive ruleset design? What's going on?

You said you are a TO right? Make Yoshi's Island legal, get data and see how it goes. If there's nothing wrong then great, if there's actually a problem it'll show. And if it means anything, the stage was seen legal a lot at the beginning of Brawl and was even legal at EVO 2008 (if that means anything).

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

You said you are a TO right? Make Yoshi's Island legal, get data and see how it goes. If there's nothing wrong then great, if there's actually a problem it'll show. And if it means anything, the stage was seen legal a lot at the beginning of Brawl and was even legal at EVO 2008 (if that means anything).

I'm trying, but if my players don't want it, I'm not in a position to force them (the location is not really "mine" per se, and if they get fed up with me, they'll just reorganize me out). The fact is that in quite a bit of online and offline play, I have yet to find any problems.

 

[dav3yb]

So, I've been trying to figure out a good way to hopefully make it easier for people to do stage striking for our upcoming local. I know a lot of players outside the few i play with on a regular basis have dealt much in the way of striking or banning, so I decided to put together a bit of a visual aide.

http://i.imgur.com/P27rFdB.png

I took a good picture of the stages in game, and put a black/white filter and darkened all of the banned stages. I'm hoping i might be able to laminate it and maybe just use some dry erase markers to have each player strike stages. I know this can be done in game with the random select, but in the event that we have a setup that for some reason doesn't have that unlocked, or just to keep people from constantly going back into the rules and turning them on/off, or until they're more familiar with doing it that way. I think ill be adding some text under the stage pictures with the names of them on it just to make it a bit more clear which ones that are.

added: Also, depending on how much room is on a page that i print this one, i might be able to include the rules on how to strike on the page with the stages, hopefully saving some time and preventing a TO from having to facilitate striking.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

@Infinitysmash you're apparently involved with Aftershock as well. What the hell, man? Where's Wuhu Island? It's one of the best anti-Diddy counterpicks and there is nothing wrong with it. It's less questionable than Delfino is!

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Regarding stage knowledge, that's why I'm doing my research threads. I have no issue with people linking to them in case that wasn't clear.

Speaking of which, have a big topic on Pyrosphere. Something something Ridley's too big.

 

[Oracle]

Right now, I'm pushing for the EVO ruleset as a standard because I think its extremely for the community at large to have a standard ruleset. I am personally not a fan of wuhu island, but I do agree that it isn't super degenerate or broken, and could stand to be looked at in the future. Initially, I pushed for lylat to be banned because of the tilting glitch, but under further exploration it looks to be not random, totally predictable, and able to be played around, so I don't see a problem with having it legal.

 

[Piford]

Right now, I'm pushing for the EVO ruleset as a standard because I think its extremely for the community at large to have a standard ruleset. I am personally not a fan of wuhu island, but I do agree that it isn't super degenerate or broken, and could stand to be looked at in the future. Initially, I pushed for lylat to be banned because of the tilting glitch, but under further exploration it looks to be not random, totally predictable, and able to be played around, so I don't see a problem with having it legal.

So after EVO we might see more stages like Wuhu Island, Skyloft, and Kongo Jungle 64 added to stage lists?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Right now, I'm pushing for the EVO ruleset as a standard because I think its extremely for the community at large to have a standard ruleset. I am personally not a fan of wuhu island, but I do agree that it isn't super degenerate or broken, and could stand to be looked at in the future. Initially, I pushed for lylat to be banned because of the tilting glitch, but under further exploration it looks to be not random, totally predictable, and able to be played around, so I don't see a problem with having it legal.

But what if the standard was FD/BF/SV? I mean, there's a real problem with banning elements of the game that are not broken or random. Wuhu is neither. It's essentially Delfino Island, slightly bigger, without the low blastzones during the transformations. Evo was wrong to ban it, and the reason they did so was, as far as I've understood it, because they needed to ask Nintendo for the rights to the music ahead of time, and went off the APEX stagelist... Which was similarly stunted for no good reason. And after that, they couldn't go back and add more stages.

Please don't just follow the leader for the sake of following the leader.

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

Right. And every bit of testing I've done has shown that this doesn't work. At all. If someone is camping up on the walkoff, you basically get to poke at them for free if you have aerials that are anywhere near decent, and they can't really do much about it. That, plus how close they are to the blastzone, makes the walkoff the worst place on the stage to be. Try it sometime, you might be surprised.



No, I get it, I understand the problem with walkoffs. Yoshi's just doesn't have that problem. The steep slope makes the typical tactics not work any more. At all. It's not like trying to approach someone on the ground. It's like trying to approach someone above you on a platform - you have a lot of really good options, and they don't.



Because I spent time testing it, and learning to work around it, and the fact is that if you space yourself well, even relatively slow characters and characters with mediocre range can float far enough away that "dashgrabbing down the slope" is impossible. The only character I can see having trouble there is Little Mac. Like, just to give you an idea of how extreme this is, if I upB into any point on the hill as Pikachu, or use Crescent Slash, I slide (almost instantly) all the way to the bottom. Even if you're forced to land on the slope, you still slide downhill, and grabs do not have good vertical range. And even then, most typical bthrows don't work very well, because you can DI down and tech.

Have you spent a lot of time playing on Yoshi's? Because none of the problems you've described have happened. Whenever my opponent tried to camp the walkoff, my immediate response was to go up and start throwing fadeback fairs in his face, because it's totally free and it leaves him close to the blastzone and in an ever-more precarious situation. The walkoff isn't a strong camping spot. It's the worst place on the stage to be.



Who's the TO of Aftermath?

@ Oracle what the hell, man? Seriously? Where's Wuhu? Where's Lylat? Where's Pokemon Stadium? Why are you banning so many completely legitimate stages? What happened to "we don't ban things until they're shown to be broken"? You know, the most fundamental aspect of competitive ruleset design? What's going on?

No, I haven't done any play on Yoshi's Island, so in the end I'll have to just believe your experience over my own speculation. It's all just... a bit of a hard pill to swallow, you know? It just feels like your testing is missing something, or else the community wouldn't have such intense reservations towards it. Even if it is a suitable stage for competitive play, if you can't get anyone behind trying it out locally, then perhaps your energy is best spent making sure Lylat and Wuhu are included. If we all try and push ideas that will have no traction, it actually takes away from our credibility when we try and push unanimously accepted ideas.

I absolutely know I'm going to get flack for saying this but here is goes anyways: Even if Yoshi's Island can be learned and isn't degenerate, can we just chose to not include any permanent walkoffs on our stagelist? Like, it might be arbitrary to make that a cut off, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that only being objective when designing a game leads to problems and blindspots. Part of this is all to make a game that is enjoyable to play, and that's subjective at it's core. Even what's considered best for the highest level of play is subjective.

So, I've been trying to figure out a good way to hopefully make it easier for people to do stage striking for our upcoming local. I know a lot of players outside the few i play with on a regular basis have dealt much in the way of striking or banning, so I decided to put together a bit of a visual aide.

http://i.imgur.com/P27rFdB.png

I took a good picture of the stages in game, and put a black/white filter and darkened all of the banned stages. I'm hoping i might be able to laminate it and maybe just use some dry erase markers to have each player strike stages. I know this can be done in game with the random select, but in the event that we have a setup that for some reason doesn't have that unlocked, or just to keep people from constantly going back into the rules and turning them on/off, or until they're more familiar with doing it that way. I think ill be adding some text under the stage pictures with the names of them on it just to make it a bit more clear which ones that are.

added: Also, depending on how much room is on a page that i print this one, i might be able to include the rules on how to strike on the page with the stages, hopefully saving some time and preventing a TO from having to facilitate striking.

I really like the idea of having a graphic and using something physical to mark the stage list, it's something we're looking into in Ottawa

My big suggestion for you is to not include the grayed-out stages. The actual positioning on the stage list is relatively unimportant, as someone will usually learn where the stages are pretty quickly. With only the legal stages on your sheet, you will have plenty of room to include striking rules and anything else you want to print out.

Right now, I'm pushing for the EVO ruleset as a standard because I think its extremely for the community at large to have a standard ruleset. I am personally not a fan of wuhu island, but I do agree that it isn't super degenerate or broken, and could stand to be looked at in the future. Initially, I pushed for lylat to be banned because of the tilting glitch, but under further exploration it looks to be not random, totally predictable, and able to be played around, so I don't see a problem with having it legal.

I actually strongly disagree that having a standardized ruleset this early in the game's lifespan is a good thing. Experimentation and testing things out is important so that all avenues can be explored. Immediately making ruleset standard could mean missed opportunities.

I do think that it's important to have solid reasons for including or removing stages and for choice of stocks/timelimit etc, and I don't believe either Apex or EVO have good reasons to not include so many stages. The converse of that, however, is that the people in this thread and others who believe a larger stage list should be used should stop pedaling 13 stages to be required. People need to be less demanding and allow some regions to be different. Open discussion is fine, but calling out TO's and perpetuating this idea that TO's with smaller stage lists are stupid needs to stop. I shouldn't be going to a tournament's rule thread and seeing the first response accusing the ruleset of being cancerous. Like ****, can't we treat each other a little better?



Jeez, I guess it's unpopular opinion day for me, eh?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

No, I haven't done any play on Yoshi's Island, so in the end I'll have to just believe your experience over my own speculation. It's all just... a bit of a hard pill to swallow, you know? It just feels like your testing is missing something, or else the community wouldn't have such intense reservations towards it.

We're struggling to get Wuhu Island legal in tournaments.

Wuhu Island.

That should say everything about the community's "reservations".

I don't care that there are so many people with reservations about it, because most people, almost all of them, have never played the stage. They looked at it once, said, "eh, brawl and melee had it banned" and added it to the instaban dustbin along with Mario Circuit, Orbital Gate Assault, and every other stage that is remotely interesting.

Even if it is a suitable stage for competitive play, if you can't get anyone behind trying it out locally, then perhaps your energy is best spent making sure Lylat and Wuhu are included. If we all try and push ideas that will have no traction, it actually takes away from our credibility when we try and push unanimously accepted ideas.

They will pry Lylat and Wuhu from my cold dead hands.

I absolutely know I'm going to get flack for saying this but here is goes anyways: Even if Yoshi's Island can be learned and isn't degenerate, can we just chose to not include any permanent walkoffs on our stagelist? Like, it might be arbitrary to make that a cut off, but the unfortunate fact of the matter is that only being objective when designing a game leads to problems and blindspots. Part of this is all to make a game that is enjoyable to play, and that's subjective at it's core. Even what's considered best for the highest level of play is subjective.

Man, I dunno about you, but I love Yoshi's. That stage is a blast to play on. It's really different, and works differently to many stages we have, and it encourages creative, on-the-fly play. Everything is subjective, sure, but there are certain subjective rules we can use to craft the best possible ruleset. Not banning things that are not exceedingly random and that are not degenerate leads to a higher skill ceiling and is directly in line with our goals of crafting an ideal competitive environment. Banning those things... Isn't.

Jeez, I guess it's unpopular opinion day for me, eh?

No, those last two points are pretty much on point.

 

[dav3yb]

I really like the idea of having a graphic and using something physical to mark the stage list, it's something we're looking into in Ottawa

My big suggestion for you is to not include the grayed-out stages. The actual positioning on the stage list is relatively unimportant, as someone will usually learn where the stages are pretty quickly. With only the legal stages on your sheet, you will have plenty of room to include striking rules and anything else you want to print out.

Yeah, it was something I was going to play with, but i showed a friend of mine the picture with the grayed out stages, and he said it would actually help him remember just where on the list it is. I also did a test print, and it takes up about 3/5ths of page, so I should have plenty of room to have the striking rules under it. I think for now i'll keep the entire thing, just to give people more perspective on where on the stage select screen everything is, but i might later go through and make a more custom once for more events if this one is successful and our community starts to build and support things.

btw, here: http://i.imgur.com/gUQsQRQ.png is a clean picture of the stages that i took from my capture device. its just the selection screen cropped out, so if it'll be useful to you, have at it!

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

So after watching that Spooky stream... I think we need to have a little talk about Halberd.

This stage might be kinda busted.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

Whoa Rapture at Smash Attack on Team Sp00ky's stream just said they're gonna use 8-player smash shenanigans to make PS2, Pyrosphere, and Norfair counterpicks at their next tournament. Wonder what method they're using that isn't a logistical mess.

@ Halberd Why? Because Rosie up-airs the frick out of heavies? Or because sharking shenanigans?

EDIT: Whoops...didn't know there was a user named Halberd. Was talking about the stage dude! Sorry!

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Whoa Rapture at Smash Attack on Team Sp00ky's stream just said they're gonna use 8-player smash shenanigans to make PS2, Pyrosphere, and Norfair counterpicks at their next tournament. Wonder what method they're using that isn't a logistical mess.

Grinding intensifies.

Re: Halberd: mostly the ridiculous uair strings. I thought it was amusing when people DI'd my uair strings badly and lost stocks to ZSS, now I'm seeing just how dumb Rosalina and Diddy get on that stage and I'm really worrying. I mean, I saw hoo ha killing at like 80. That's kinda ****ed.

 

[Plain Yogurt]

By that train of thought Delfino would need to be banned as well, and potentially Town and City. And no offense dude but weren't you just arguing for Yoshi's Island to be tested for legality which also ha a pretty low ceiling if I recall? I think its more of a "don't take awesome Uair characters to low ceiling stages if you're a fatty" thing.

 

[thehard]

Whoa Rapture at Smash Attack on Team Sp00ky's stream just said they're gonna use 8-player smash shenanigans to make PS2, Pyrosphere, and Norfair counterpicks at their next tournament. Wonder what method they're using that isn't a logistical mess.

@ Halberd Why? Because Rosie up-airs the frick out of heavies? Or because sharking shenanigans?

EDIT: Whoops...didn't know there was a user named Halberd. Was talking about the stage dude! Sorry!

I like how Team Sp00ky just DOES things instead of hemming and hawing like most other tournament organizers. Seriously, they treat Smash 4 so well.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

By that train of thought Delfino would need to be banned as well, and potentially Town and City.

The former is very temporary; the latter is minor. Halberd is just crazy.

And no offense dude but weren't you just arguing for Yoshi's Island to be tested for legality which also ha a pretty low ceiling if I recall? I think its more of a "don't take awesome Uair characters to low ceiling stages if you're a fatty" thing.

I'd sooner go there - at least sometimes I can tech off the blocks and live.

 

[Piford]

So after watching that Spooky stream... I think we need to have a little talk about Halberd.

This stage might be kinda busted.

It's not. It's like the one stage in the game with a low ceiling, and if you are going up against someone like Diddy Kong then ban halberd. There's nothing unfair about it. It doesn't cause overcentralising strategies that causes degenerate play and it doesn't marginalize player skill. It's just a low ceiling. I've actually heard some people say it should be the only legal stage because the blastzones in other stages are too big (that's complete BS but still). If your opponent is really good with vertical kills than you can strike the stage against them that's the whole point of stage striking.

 

[Jaxas]

So after watching that Spooky stream... I think we need to have a little talk about Halberd.

This stage might be kinda busted.

Close blast zones isn't a good reason to ban a stage, really.
On Halberd, though, I honestly tend to use it as a "cutoff point" for stage legality in my locals.

It won't ever actually go anywhere because everywhere uses it (so people need practice on it), but it's one of the only stages in the whole list which has some seriously disruptive hitboxes; the Combo Cannon is the stage straight up attacking you after all.

I don't think Halberd should be banned, by any means, but honestly I'd consider Wuhu, Kongo, and Stadium 2 better stages than it.

 

[dav3yb]

So I'll probably be writing up some of the base guide/rules for striking/banning stages, and i just want to make sure i've got a few things clear.

So for the first stage, striking 1-2-2-2-2-2-1, leaving the choosing player picking from the final 2 before striking the last 1 stage right? Or who is it that is supposed to start the striking, the player that is picking the stage, or the opponent?

for round 2, winning player bans some number of stages (would 3 be a good number for 13 stages? leaving 10 to pick from?) and the looser picks from the remaining stages.

IF round 3 happens, the player who is picking stages auto bans the last stage he won on in the set, and the winner of round 2 bans some number of stages.

is this the basics that need to be hit when tying put a guide/rules to strikes/bans? anything else needed/missing? thanks in advance. (also these explanations will be much expanded when i actually type up the how-to)

 

[Pazx]

People just need to stop picking Delfino and Halberd against characters that kill vertically, and make sure to strike/ban them if they can. These are two good stages. I'm disappointed Ness can't absorb the laser, that would be busted.

 

[LiteralGrill]

But what if the standard was FD/BF/SV? I mean, there's a real problem with banning elements of the game that are not broken or random. Wuhu is neither. It's essentially Delfino Island, slightly bigger, without the low blastzones during the transformations. Evo was wrong to ban it, and the reason they did so was, as far as I've understood it, because they needed to ask Nintendo for the rights to the music ahead of time, and went off the APEX stagelist... Which was similarly stunted for no good reason. And after that, they couldn't go back and add more stages.

Please don't just follow the leader for the sake of following the leader.

Lemme clear something up since I was the guy who interviewed Mr. Wizard.

From what was said he seemed to imply he did ask for more stages than Apex had but was told only yes to certain stages by Nintendo. He was not able to give me a full list of what he asked for however as it broke the NDA with Nintendo. So I don't feel like he JUST went for the APEX ruleset and only asked for those stages.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Lemme clear something up since I was the guy who interviewed Mr. Wizard.

From what was said he seemed to imply he did ask for more stages than Apex had but was told only yes to certain stages by Nintendo. He was not able to give me a full list of what he asked for however as it broke the NDA with Nintendo. So I don't feel like he JUST went for the APEX ruleset and only asked for those stages.

That's... really, really disturbing. Although having Ninty flat-out tell us "these stages are competitive, these are not intended to be" would clear up quite a few issues and make the whole "stagelist" thing really, really simple.

 

[Piford]

Lemme clear something up since I was the guy who interviewed Mr. Wizard.

From what was said he seemed to imply he did ask for more stages than Apex had but was told only yes to certain stages by Nintendo. He was not able to give me a full list of what he asked for however as it broke the NDA with Nintendo. So I don't feel like he JUST went for the APEX ruleset and only asked for those stages.

I have a feeling it was Windy Hill Zone, since when Apex got the rights they weren't allowed to use Omega Windy Hill Zone or Omega Onett, but they were allowed to use every other Omega stage.

 

[J_the_Man]

I have a question. What's the difference between recovering low and getting smacked by your opponent into a stage spike KO and getting launched by your opponent into the underside of Skyloft and getting spiked by the stage into a KO?

 

[MrGame&Rock]

On using 8-player smash to legalize certain stages: The best way to go might be to have a third player and two CPUs at level 1. Use the Handicap system to set the CPUs to 300% damage. Make them Jigglypuff. If you can, give them Risky Respawn equipment. Have P3 destroy them and then SD. Then make the time limit one minute longer than it would otherwise be. That should cover it.