Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[Firefoxx]

Based on twitter conversations from a few weeks ago I knew they were looking into it, but Max and The Rapture are now officially going to be testing out the 8 player versions of PS2, Norfair, and Pyrosphere as counterpicks for Smash Attack 5 next Sunday.

http://smashboards.com/threads/mar-...d-no-customs-1v1-at-brooklyn-new-york.393749/

If all goes well it appears as if the plan for them is to make 8p PS2 a starter, make the others counterpicks, and possibly get rid of Lylat and Castle Siege as stages all together (That last point is unclear, but The Rapture doesn't appear to be a fan. Lylat for sure won't be a starter if they get good feedback.)

I'm of two minds here. More stages is always a good thing, and their method for using these seems to be the best one I've seen. As far as static flat and plat stages go, 8p PS2 and Norfair have good layouts.

On the other hand, this could potentially be a huge blow for Castle Siege and Lylat. Because of the exposure afforded by Sp00ky, Smash Attack matters, and a tournament this visible banning those two stages would be bad. Additionally this sends a bad message about the legality of Skyloft, Wuhu, and regular PS2. Also, 8p Pyrosphere is basically just Final Destination.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Castle Siege? Really? That's just ****ing depressing.

 

[Quickhero]

This would do more harm than good, imo. I would much rather have Castle Siege and Lylat Cruise (CP I'm okay with, but BANNED?) than 8p PS2. PS2 is honestly a fine stage anyways and I don't want any transformation stage getting banned just for the virtue of getting banned.

Honestly, I don't like this whole 8P thing, it takes way too long to create and it would just not be fun to set-up at all. Let's not forget about the whole Lucario stock aura thing.

 

[Firefoxx]

Oh yeah, this is a crazy bad idea. That probably didn't come through, but I super don't support this and I hope that the players say they aren't fans either. And yeah, people complain enough about Lucario as it is.

 

[Piford]

It's definitely not going to work out becuase your gonna have time issues and what not. Also Pyrosphere is huge, like bigger than Wuhu Island huge.

The main thing is that if it was a rare occurrence of someone picking those stages it'd be fine, but PS2 will probably get picked nearly every single round (just like it does in PM), so you add a lot of time to the tournament. Plus you have things like what if someone SDs or gets hit, how do you determine when to start, ect.

Also banning Castle Siege and Lylat Cruise make no sense regardless of how many stages you have. It's very rare that you see someone miss the ledge on Lylat at higher level play and we shouldn't ban the stage just because worse players can't sweetspot it. Also we had it legal in Brawl forever with no issues. Same with Castle Siege. In Brawl it had those bad ledges, and Chain grabs to abuse the walk-offs. Plus there were those loading time issues especially with transforming characters. Now those aren't issues why would we ban the stage now? There's no issues with it and its a great stage, heck it was even a starter sometimes in Brawl. Also banning Lylat and Castle Siege would make Diddy super good since those are his only bad stages that are legal (we would have more but we love banning things for no reason). Replacing those with hazardless Norfair, Pyrosphere, and PS2 would just make Diddy great becuase he loves all of those stages.

 

[Linkshot]

This would do more harm than good, imo. I would much rather have Castle Siege and Lylat Cruise (CP I'm okay with, but BANNED?) than 8p PS2. PS2 is honestly a fine stage anyways and I don't want any transformation stage getting banned just for the virtue of getting banned.

Honestly, I don't like this whole 8P thing, it takes way too long to create and it would just not be fun to set-up at all. Let's not forget about the whole Lucario stock aura thing.

I don't care either way about Siege/Lylat. Everybody hates Lylat so it's a waste of breath to defend it, and Siege's best part is just the start, while the rest is honestly jank as hell thanks to superspeed transitions.

Lucario's stock aura is only in comparison to the one with the most stocks left btw. This mechanic carries over to Time (current score) and Coin (current wealth).

 

[Funen1]

To be fair, we can only find out the details of exactly how an 8-player stage procedure would work by actually trying it out. Only then will we see, for instance, exactly how much time it adds compared to a "standard" tourney, how feasible it is for a TO to provide the extra equipment and manpower to make it work, which stages are even feasible for 1v1, etc. Let's get our bearings first before shouting "this is a terribad idea".

I still heavily disagree with Lylat Cruise and Castle Siege being banworthy.

 

[Firefoxx]

Also, they do lay out their procedure for doing it, which requires zero extra equipment or manpower

1) Select 8-Player Smash
2) Set rules to 3 stocks, 6 minutes.
3) Enable handicap
4) Select characters for two human players and three level 1 CPUs. You can replace any of these CPUs with human controllers if preferred/available.
5) Set CPUs (if any) to 300% handicap. Keep participating players at 0%.
6) Select stage
7) Kill non-participating CPUs/human players.
8) Have each participating player SD once.
9) Begin match at 5:00.

 

[Nintendrone]

There is no good reason to ban Lylat and Castle Siege that doesn't amount to "I don't like it". Both stages were pretty much always legal in Brawl, and Siege was a significantly worse stage back then too thanks to loading times and chaingrabs to the walkoffs.

PS2 does not need to be in hazardless form to be allowed. It is a fine stage, and I am of the mindset that transforming stages tend to have less lopsided matchups, making them more fair. Norfair, I can understand wanting it to be hazardless, as its hazards are plentiful and require attention, but it doesn't necessarily need to have no hazards either. Pyrosphere obviously needs no hazards to be legal, but it's so big that I think it should not be legal for singles.

So I feel that for singles this process will do more harm than good. PS2 and Norfair don't need to have no hazards, and Pyrosphere should not be in singles. In doubles, however, I would agree that this could actually be worth it since only 1 extra character is needed.

 

[thehard]

Too many similar stages

I'd rather keep CS and Lylat over the frozen versions of PS2, Norfair, and Pyrosphere

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Everyone needs to go on twitter. I sent this out:

@teamspooky "Fireballs are unfair ban plz" is dumb, right? The reaction to people who want Castle Siege banned in Sm4sh should be the same.

Something like that. Something he'll understand. Maybe a "Sirlin would not approve".

 

[Linkshot]

Brawl's loading times made the Siege transitions occur at a reasonable speed, but the chaingrabs were a huge issue. In Smash 4, the reverse is true: the transitions are brief, the ceiling is low, the floor is ludicrously fast, and the camera is unforgiving (I have had the camera hide the platform appearing on Delfino, as well, during the pillar islands section during waterplay). If people don't want it legal, there is no reason to keep it legal. People won't select it if they don't want to play on it, and it's not a "piece" of some other grand thing (so your Mario's Fireball argument doesn't hold up).

Like, if the majority of tourneygoers don't like a stage, that's pretty much good enough reason to knock it off. It's not "all stages are innocent until proven guilty" in a grassroots setting, it's "convince people this stage offers something of visible competitive value worth the effort required to manage it". Heck, Melee peeps didn't even really give Yoshi a chance until aMSa proved that his stuff IS worth learning.

 

[Piford]

Brawl's loading times made the Siege transitions occur at a reasonable speed, but the chaingrabs were a huge issue. In Smash 4, the reverse is true: the transitions are brief, the ceiling is low, the floor is ludicrously fast, and the camera is unforgiving (I have had the camera hide the platform appearing on Delfino, as well, during the pillar islands section during waterplay). If people don't want it legal, there is no reason to keep it legal. People won't select it if they don't want to play on it, and it's not a "piece" of some other grand thing (so your Mario's Fireball argument doesn't hold up).

Like, if the majority of tourneygoers don't like a stage, that's pretty much good enough reason to knock it off. It's not "all stages are innocent until proven guilty" in a grassroots setting, it's "convince people this stage offers something of visible competitive value worth the effort required to manage it". Heck, Melee peeps didn't even really give Yoshi a chance until aMSa proved that his stuff IS worth learning.

Castle Siege doesn't have a low ceiling. The transition visuals and timer should be enough of a notice to make sure your at center stage (you shouldn't have been at the walk-off anyways, bad positioning you'd die pretty early). I have no idea what you mean about the camera. There are people who want it legal as it's a fair stage and people want to use it to their advantage.

Think of it like this. A majority of tourneygoers don't like sonic, so that's a good enough reason to ban him. It's not "all charaters are innocent until proven guilty" in a grassroots setting, it's "convince people this character offers something of visible competitive value worth the effort required to manage it."

That seems stupid right. The majority of people hate sonic because he doesn't really require as much skill to play as other characters, but is pretty good. His play style is hit and run and isn't very exciting to play, play against, or watch. Most people would probably be completely fine if he was banned, but we don't want to limit the people who actually want to use sonic. There's nothing unfair about using sonic as long as I'm just as good and know the matchup.

Same thing goes with castle siege. We don't want to limit people who want to use the stage from using it. Like at Apex, Dabuz wanted to use Castle Siege to counter Diddy as Olimar, why should we limit his option. If his opponent didn't learn the stage that's his fault.

I have no idea what aMSa has to do with anything. Do I have to show Castle Siege in a competitive match to make it legal because it's gonna be hella hard to do that if the stage is banned.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Brawl's loading times made the Siege transitions occur at a reasonable speed, but the chaingrabs were a huge issue. In Smash 4, the reverse is true: the transitions are brief, the ceiling is low, the floor is ludicrously fast, and the camera is unforgiving (I have had the camera hide the platform appearing on Delfino, as well, during the pillar islands section during waterplay). If people don't want it legal, there is no reason to keep it legal. People won't select it if they don't want to play on it, and it's not a "piece" of some other grand thing (so your Mario's Fireball argument doesn't hold up).

Like, if the majority of tourneygoers don't like a stage, that's pretty much good enough reason to knock it off. It's not "all stages are innocent until proven guilty" in a grassroots setting, it's "convince people this stage offers something of visible competitive value worth the effort required to manage it". Heck, Melee peeps didn't even really give Yoshi a chance until aMSa proved that his stuff IS worth learning.

What the **** happened to you, man?

 

[popsofctown]

As someone who likes sedate stages it's tempting to jump on a bandwagon of majority rule and banning most stages most people don't enjoy playing on. But it can have some really nasty long term consequences, especially with this scary kind of arbitrary decisionmaking on what gets banned.

I attribute a large part of Brawl's morbidity to "I don't like this" ban logic being applied by biased TOs that tended to be playing top tier characters. Jungle Japes got banned in that game long before Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar because Falco victims outnumbered Falco players. Brinstar and RC had similar levels of polarization, arguably less, arguably more, unarguably that polarization favored the game's best character instead of some of the games strong characters.

Seeing Diddy's worst stage get banned so casually is pretty scary.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but Wuhu Island seems to suck for Diddy, Shiek, and ZSS. Like, not fun at all for them. And we're banning this stage without a damn good reason? Are you ****ting me?

 

[Piford]

Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but Wuhu Island seems to suck for Diddy, Shiek, and ZSS. Like, not fun at all for them. And we're banning this stage without a damn good reason? Are you ****ting me?

Also people seem to be complaining a lot about Timber Counter, which gets completely shutdown on Wuhu, Skyloft, and Delfino.

 

[popsofctown]

Also people seem to be complaining a lot about Timber Counter, which gets completely shutdown on Wuhu, Skyloft, and Delfino.

Well, Timber Counter isn't actually centralizing the game, it's generating whiners. That's entirely different. I doubt that custom villagers hold sway with the TOs and are petitioning to get traveling stages banned to suit their own preference (thought that's equally terrible if they are), it's much more plausible and concerning that Sheik/Diddy/ZSS, etc players are creating that influence and reinforcing a cycle of centralization.

 

[thehard]

Also people seem to be complaining a lot about Timber Counter, which gets completely shutdown on Wuhu, Skyloft, and Delfino.

That's actually an amazing point. More ammunition for Wuhu and Skyloft.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but Wuhu Island seems to suck for Diddy, Shiek, and ZSS. Like, not fun at all for them. And we're banning this stage without a damn good reason? Are you ****ting me?

Enlighten me, what makes Wuhu Island suck for Diddy/Sheik/ZSS?

 

[Piford]

Enlighten me, what makes Wuhu Island suck for Diddy/Sheik/ZSS?

For Diddy, I'm pretty sure it's harder to control the match using Bananas on Wuhu Island because you know it's dynamic. The same would be true for delfino if it wasn't for the blastzone thing.

Edit: I should clarify that the blastzone thing makes Delfino good for Diddy, it doesn't help him control bananas.

 

[The_Jiggernaut]

Castle Siege doesn't have a low ceiling. The transition visuals and timer should be enough of a notice to make sure your at center stage (you shouldn't have been at the walk-off anyways, bad positioning you'd die pretty early). I have no idea what you mean about the camera. There are people who want it legal as it's a fair stage and people want to use it to their advantage.

Think of it like this. A majority of tourneygoers don't like sonic, so that's a good enough reason to ban him. It's not "all charaters are innocent until proven guilty" in a grassroots setting, it's "convince people this character offers something of visible competitive value worth the effort required to manage it."

That seems stupid right. The majority of people hate sonic because he doesn't really require as much skill to play as other characters, but is pretty good. His play style is hit and run and isn't very exciting to play, play against, or watch. Most people would probably be completely fine if he was banned, but we don't want to limit the people who actually want to use sonic. There's nothing unfair about using sonic as long as I'm just as good and know the matchup.

Same thing goes with castle siege. We don't want to limit people who want to use the stage from using it. Like at Apex, Dabuz wanted to use Castle Siege to counter Diddy as Olimar, why should we limit his option. If his opponent didn't learn the stage that's his fault.

I have no idea what aMSa has to do with anything. Do I have to show Castle Siege in a competitive match to make it legal because it's gonna be hella hard to do that if the stage is banned.

No, character bans and stage bans are in a completely different category and cannot be properly compared. So your Sonic example holds no water. There is no penalty for us to keep unused characters legal, but there is a benefit to keeping the stage list clean and simple. Part of the Smash community has always been choosing a subset of stages, so we should be able to discuss banning a stage without someone implying that banning stages is akin to banning characters.



Here's my view on the whole discussion: Castle Siege does have problems, and it's just silly to claim it does not. The question should be "are the problems bad enough that we should ban it?" This is where the discussion should be.

Problems with Castle Seige:

• Super fast floor drops as transitions end
• Transitions give no indication of where the new stage will appear
• Camera is deceptive during transitions, making the above points less manageable
• Every character can suicide kill with a grab on transitions
• Some characters can survive the "suicide" grab that they initiate
• Sudden low ceiling during transitions
• First form is too cramped for doubles play
• Second form has the longest-lasting non-permanent walkoffs in the game
• Degenerate play can still be seen when 1/3 of the stage has walkoffs
• Second form is ridiculously huge
• Statues interrupt proper stage control and zoning
• The stage is fundamentally different than in brawl, we do not have 6 years worth of testing for it

So if we still want the have Castle Siege on our Singles and Doubles stage lists, we have to show that these problems aren't large enough to justify banning it. I personally think that someone could legitimately be on either end of this argument and therefore we shouldn't be assuming that people that do not want the stage legal are dumb or are pushing for the ban in bad faith.

It's just as arbitrary to include a stage because it hurts a top-tier character for that reason alone as it is to ban a stage that no one plays on. If a stage is legitimate and it's not a good stage for Diddy Kong, then that's a bonus. But if the reason for giving otherwise problematic stages a pass because we want the meta to go in a specific direction? It would be us with the bias this this around.

We absolutely should not be banning Lylat Cruise, though.

 

[Pazx]

"Transitions give no indication of where the new stage will appear"

In the middle. Where they appear every single time you play this stage.

There is less degenerate play on the second transformation than on a walkoff stage because it transforms (so you can't camp bad positioning blah blah) and because the statues prevent forcing approaches with projectiles.

I'm not sure I see an issue with suicide grabs when we have stages like Smashville, T&C and 3 other transforming stages. It's also worth noting that for the suicide grab (or backthrow) to occur one player must approach the one camping the walkoff (which is a bad decision and deserves to be punished).

 

[Piford]

No, character bans and stage bans are in a completely different category and cannot be properly compared. So your Sonic example holds no water. There is no penalty for us to keep unused characters legal, but there is a benefit to keeping the stage list clean and simple. Part of the Smash community has always been choosing a subset of stages, so we should be able to discuss banning a stage without someone implying that banning stages is akin to banning characters.


Here's my view on the whole discussion: Castle Siege does have problems, and it's just silly to claim it does not. The question should be "are the problems bad enough that we should ban it?" This is where the discussion should be.

Problems with Castle Seige:

• Super fast floor drops as transitions end
• Transitions give no indication of where the new stage will appear
• Camera is deceptive during transitions, making the above points less manageable
• Every character can suicide kill with a grab on transitions
• Some characters can survive the "suicide" grab that they initiate
• Sudden low ceiling during transitions
• First form is too cramped for doubles play
• Second form has the longest-lasting non-permanent walkoffs in the game
• Degenerate play can still be seen when 1/3 of the stage has walkoffs
• Second form is ridiculously huge
• Statues interrupt proper stage control and zoning
• The stage is fundamentally different than in brawl, we do not have 6 years worth of testing for it

So if we still want the have Castle Siege on our Singles and Doubles stage lists, we have to show that these problems aren't large enough to justify banning it. I personally think that someone could legitimately be on either end of this argument and therefore we shouldn't be assuming that people that do not want the stage legal are dumb or are pushing for the ban in bad faith.

It's just as arbitrary to include a stage because it hurts a top-tier character for that reason alone as it is to ban a stage that no one plays on. If a stage is legitimate and it's not a good stage for Diddy Kong, then that's a bonus. But if the reason for giving otherwise problematic stages a pass because we want the meta to go in a specific direction? It would be us with the bias this this around.

We absolutely should not be banning Lylat Cruise, though.

I don't see how a stage ban and a character ban are different. Degenerate play is usually define as camping, but characters like Sonic have degenerate play on every single stage. If I ban Sonic, than only Sonic mains have their options limited, but if I ban a stage than every single player has their options limited. We want to give competitors as many options as possible and banning a stage is actually more limiting than banning a character, especially when its such a unique stage like Castle Siege.

Some of the things you listed

Super fast floor drops as transitions end - You should be on the main stage anyways, and even if you don't you can easily jump

Transitions give no indication of where the new stage will appear - You should know the stage and where it is. If you didn't learn the stage that's your fault not the stage's

Camera is deceptive during transitions, making the above points less manageable - I've never had any issue with the camera, so some kind of video would be nice to know why this is an issue

Every character can suicide kill with a grab on transitions - Same can be said about Delfino plaza, Town and City, Halberd, ect. Don't get grabbed. In Brawl getting grabbed by the Ice Climbers meant death and you avoided that, so now when you have to avoid getting grabbed for just a couple seconds I think it's manageable and your fault if you do.

Sudden low ceiling during transitions - Do you have the data on this?

First form is too cramped for doubles play - Length wise it's actually about the same size as Smashville, although the incline ends up making it a bit smaller.

Second form has the longest-lasting non-permanent walkoffs in the game - Wooly World has it beat. Not really like that matters at all. if Castle Siege and Woolly World weren't in the game than Delfino would have the longest.

Degenerate play can still be seen when 1/3 of the stage has walkoffs - you can't walk-off camp since it's not permanent, and if you try you will likely die during the transition or get edgegaurded

Second form is ridiculously huge - While it is big, it's actually really hard to abuse it because of how the platforms are arranged. Now there are a few characters like Sonic who could probably abuse it in some matchups, but you can strike the stage against them.

Statues interrupt proper stage control and zoning - They definitely don't interrupt stage control. It's bad if you don't have a multi-hit piercing projectile, but it's not like it completely shuts you down. The character that has the hardest time with it is Mega Man, and again you have strikes for a reason. You can actually use the statues strategically to avoid hits or extend hitboxes if you are smart

The stage is fundamentally different than in brawl, we do not have 6 years worth of testing for it - Besides the faster loading times and better ledges, what's different about it?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

No, character bans and stage bans are in a completely different category and cannot be properly compared. So your Sonic example holds no water. There is no penalty for us to keep unused characters legal, but there is a benefit to keeping the stage list clean and simple.

Care to elucidate it? Also, what? So "nobody picks it" is justification for banning a stage now? What?! Do we just not care about the concept of "don't ban what isn't broken" any more? Do we not consider that maybe in the future, people will find a good reason to pick the stage (say, they start picking up on the stage being a great counterpick in such and such matchup)? What benefit is there to keeping the stage list clean and simple? That new players have an easier time remembering the legal stages? What, is 13 stages so hard to remember? Christ, I wonder how many of them are able to remember what ZSS's 3333 set is! (Terrible. That's what it is. God ZSS has some abysmal customs. But that's beside the point.)

Problems with Castle Seige:

[*]Super fast floor drops as transitions end

Did that in Brawl. In fact, I went back to check how fast it was - if there's a difference, I can't see it.

[*]Transitions give no indication of where the new stage will appear

Did that in Brawl too.

[*]Camera is deceptive during transitions, making the above points less manageable

Sounds familiar, I think I had that problem in Brawl.

[*]Every character can suicide kill with a grab on transitions

Ooh, I remember people hating me for doing that with MK's stupid dashgrab in Brawl.

[*]Some characters can survive the "suicide" grab that they initiate

...Okay, that's a new one for me, but I'm willing to bet this happened in Brawl too.

[*]Sudden low ceiling during transitions

Certainly nowhere near as bad as Delfino.

[*]First form is too cramped for doubles play

Not that much worse than Battlefield, actually, and the stage does transform.

[*]Second form has the longest-lasting non-permanent walkoffs in the game

Oh man, you remember back in Brawl, when it lasted even longer and some characters like Falco, Diddy, and DDD could just straight up walk you off the edge to death? Fun times.

[*]Degenerate play can still be seen when 1/3 of the stage has walkoffs

Okay, stop. We are not calling "temporary walkoff camping" degenerate. Not when it's been around since Brawl. Not when almost everything that made walkoffs a nightmare in Brawl is gone in this game. Having to deal with 1/3rd of the stage having walkoffs is not degenerate, and the fact you're calling it that seems to indicate that you don't understand what "degenerate" means.

[*]Second form is ridiculously huge

Do I need to appeal to Brawl again?

[*]The stage is fundamentally different than in brawl, we do not have 6 years worth of testing for it

But that's just it. It isn't significantly different. All of the same **** is the same. The only difference is that the transformation lasts slightly less time, most of the really nasty **** from Brawl is gone, and most characters have better recoveries, so if they mess up their spacing when the stage transforms they can almost always come back. Also: forcing grabs in certain spots is harder due to how much better defensive options are, and if you can trap your opponent's landing in place for a suicide grab, then you earned that kill.

[*]Statues interrupt proper stage control and zoning

Since when does this even begin to qualify as an "issue"? Port Town's cars killing you at 60 is an issue. Pikachu being virtually impossible to catch on Norfair is an issue. The first explosion transition on Orbital Gate Assault that will kill a ridiculous number of characters if they aren't hit is an issue. This? This is a feature. Anyone complaining about this is a scrub who needs to learn to play. I try very hard not to overuse that word, but come on. 40 seconds in, the stage shifts and suddenly projectiles lose a lot of their potency and some moves have to deal with doubled hitlag. Then, 40 seconds later, that goes away. Any TO looking at that and saying, "Yep, seems busted" deserves to have their TO license revoked.

In fact, generally speaking, if you're killing yourself on this stage, it's your fault. Almost nothing on this list qualifies as an actual problem with the stage unless you're of the opinion that literally anything other than flat+plat is a problem in its own right! A temporary walkoff is not and has never been considered a problem. A situation in which you can force a suicide KO with a well-timed, well-spaced grab is not and has never been considered a problem (Delfino, anyone? Frigate? Town and City?). Wonky Camera is not and has never been a problem (this one can be counteracted by just keeping track of where your character is). A temporary transformation that is a bit on the large side is not and has never been a problem. Et cetera. You've basically listed a lot of really, really, really bad reasons to ban this stage. Which is why this confuses the hell out of me:

So if we still want the have Castle Siege on our Singles and Doubles stage lists, we have to show that these problems aren't large enough to justify banning it. I personally think that someone could legitimately be on either end of this argument and therefore we shouldn't be assuming that people that do not want the stage legal are dumb or are pushing for the ban in bad faith.

I don't think they're pushing in bad faith. I think they, like the FD/BF/SV only crowd, are morons. It's like if someone said, "Ban Smashville, moving platforms are broken and allow for ridiculous low-% grab kills". You'd think they're an idiot and that they shouldn't be taken seriously, and rightfully so. Well, that's what I think about anyone who considers the arguments stated above convincing. Like, what?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Enlighten me, what makes Wuhu Island suck for Diddy/Sheik/ZSS?

Diddy was already mentioned - it's hard to set up camp, and many of his setups are on, shall we say, a timer - if you don't get the dthrow->uair kill early, it becomes harder and harder to kill, and Wuhu is a little on the large side.

I hate the stage as ZSS mainly because of the large blastzones (Boost Kick is strong, but it can still take forever to kill), wide, open spaces, low platform density making it harder to juggle, nothing to stage spike off of, oh and she gets very little from most of the transformations. ZSS can't really do much at all with a walkoff - none of her throws have any horizontal knockback worth mentioning, it's hard to force risky situations at most of the transformations, and she loses her best recovery option on the boat segment. Overall, I'd ban it slightly before Kongo Jungle and slightly after Final Destination in most matchups.

I don't exactly know why it's bad for Shiek, I just remember hearing that.

 

[popsofctown]

Temporary walkoffs are different than permanent walkoffs in a fundamental way, it's not a matter of degree. The walkoff camp strategy is the reason walkoffs degenerate, and the strategy fails to function properly in a fundamental way if you can wait until a walkoff is over to start interacting with your opponent.

 

[Jaxas]

Diddy was already mentioned - it's hard to set up camp, and many of his setups are on, shall we say, a timer - if you don't get the dthrow->uair kill early, it becomes harder and harder to kill, and Wuhu is a little on the large side.

I hate the stage as ZSS mainly because of the large blastzones (Boost Kick is strong, but it can still take forever to kill), wide, open spaces, low platform density making it harder to juggle, nothing to stage spike off of, oh and she gets very little from most of the transformations. ZSS can't really do much at all with a walkoff - none of her throws have any horizontal knockback worth mentioning, it's hard to force risky situations at most of the transformations, and she loses her best recovery option on the boat segment. Overall, I'd ban it slightly before Kongo Jungle and slightly after Final Destination in most matchups.

I don't exactly know why it's bad for Shiek, I just remember hearing that.

Well it has pretty big blast zones (pretty sure the next biggest out of the 13 main legal candidates after Kongo), and for a character like Sheik "can't kill" (I know this is wrong, but it's still difficult to straight up kill people here even with some of her setups) that's a bit of a problem.

Also, from personal experience, **** fighting a Shulk who likes Shield mode here as ZSS or Sheik; however little that means...

 

[Piford]

Wuhu's side blastzones would be about the same from the center as Duck Hunts and the same from the ledge as every other stage (I should say that Battlefields is actually a bit larger, but not by much. Things should kill like 4% later). The ceiling is the same, but I'm not sure how the elevation effects that @ Pazx should know better than I do.

 

[Pazx]

Wuhu's ceiling is the same as BF's ceiling when travelling and on most transformations, some are marginally higher or lower. The Wakeboarding area along with the rocks interestingly have lower ceilings than FD/SV/etc.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Wily Castle has a thread now. Turns out the Yellow Devil has a really hard time killing anyone on its own, Mario survived everything it had until over 300%.

 

[Linkshot]

What the **** happened to you, man?

if you don't have any better arguments, leave this thread

Castle Siege doesn't have a low ceiling. The transition visuals and timer should be enough of a notice to make sure your at center stage (you shouldn't have been at the walk-off anyways, bad positioning you'd die pretty early). I have no idea what you mean about the camera. There are people who want it legal as it's a fair stage and people want to use it to their advantage.

The transition was the context of the low ceiling. The transition has a VERY low ceiling.

Think of it like this. A majority of tourneygoers don't like sonic, so that's a good enough reason to ban him. It's not "all charaters are innocent until proven guilty" in a grassroots setting, it's "convince people this character offers something of visible competitive value worth the effort required to manage it."

1. Some people banned MK in Brawl and that made the metagame a little healthier until people got good with ICs, so this is a legit thing and not a parody.
2. This DOES apply to characters. My aMSa thing means that people saw Yoshi and said "this character takes too much to learn and doesn't offer anything of competitive value" so they didn't play Yoshi. aMSa proved that the skill ceiling for Yoshi DOES yield something of competitive value, and people started treating Yoshi with respect.

This warrants a ban for stages because stage selection's process is very different from character selection. If a stage doesn't seem to have competitive worth, then you have to either

1) Learn it. The reward vs the time spent makes it feel like an unpleasant chore.
2) Waste a ban on it because this one person with less character skill likes it and you don't know what's going on.

The majority of people in competition will attempt #1, feel no joy in it, and thus decide that it's best for the community if we ban it. The game should be inviting and fun, and we adjust rules to take out things that can make it unappealing. We don't ban moves because we can't just turn off a move and be done with it. We can turn off stages, and as a last resort, we can turn off characters.

 

[ぱみゅ]

If you tried adapting and got annoyed by practice, you deserve to get wrecked by every single gimmick that exists.

That includes dynamic stages and obscure characters with bizarre combos that shouldn't work.


There is a reason why practice is a thing.

 

[GingyCTMF]

I had a chance to play 8-player smash today with some friends and at some point we played Pokemon Stadium 2. Someone pointed out that it doesn't seem to transform at all. It's basically a Project M version of PS2 in Smash 4. Likewise with Bridge of Eldin (no breaking or boar-riding troll) and the Ridley stage (no Ridley). Note that I'm not referring to the Omega versions, these literally have the platforms and/or original layouts but without the disruption. There may be others too, I don't remember.
Now if I'm not mistaken, 8-player Smash can be played by 2 people, so why not make these stages legal for use in tournament??

 

[Mario766]

I'm 99 percent sure that you can't play 8 player smash with only 2 players.

You have to have at least 5 characters for the stage elements to disappear.

Though I could be wrong.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

This warrants a ban for stages because stage selection's process is very different from character selection. If a stage doesn't seem to have competitive worth,

Whoa, **** that noise. We're explicitly talking about stages with competitive value here. Nobody's saying "learn the gimmicks on Palutena's Temple". We're saying "If you don't know how to handle Lylat Cruise, that's your own damn fault".

then you have to either

1) Learn it. The reward vs the time spent makes it feel like an unpleasant chore.
2) Waste a ban on it because this one person with less character skill likes it and you don't know what's going on.

The majority of people in competition will attempt #1, feel no joy in it, and thus decide that it's best for the community if we ban it.

In other words, the majority of people are ****ing stupid scrubs who should not be taken seriously. We do not ban things because it's hard to adapt to and people don't want to put in the time. We're a goddamn competitive community, not "Baby's first Smogon". Actually, that's unfair - Smogon, to my knowledge, doesn't ban too many things simply for being annoying. If we were Smogon, Mario Circuit and Orbital Gate Assault would be legal, and Halberd would be banned.

The game should be inviting and fun, and we adjust rules to take out things that can make it unappealing. We don't ban moves because we can't just turn off a move and be done with it. We can turn off stages, and as a last resort, we can turn off characters.

I just wonder what would happen if other fighting games took up this philosophy. "You can't use Rapid Slash assist with Vergil, it's unfun and adapting to doom's j.6H/Rapid Slash mixup is almost impossible." Actually, it's considerably harder to adapt to that stuff (I don't know which side that mixup is on, and it's how I win half my games!), because there's no way to set up a training dummy to run that **** 24/7, but that actually strengthens my point.

 

[Nintendrone]

I had a chance to play 8-player smash today with some friends and at some point we played Pokemon Stadium 2. Someone pointed out that it doesn't seem to transform at all.

We had just discussed that. Most stages in 8-Player Smash disable at least some of their dynamic elements when played with 5 or more people.

It's basically a Project M version of PS2 in Smash 4.

Don't remind me. I was sad that they removed the transformations to make it flat/plat.

Now if I'm not mistaken, 8-player Smash can be played by 2 people, so why not make these stages legal for use in tournament??

8-Player Smash won't change the stage unless there are 5 or more players. There has been talk of tournaments using the 8-player version of PS2 and other stages. I'll repeat what I said before: PS2 is not banworthy in it's normal form, so there is no reason to use the 8-player version unless they want both for some reason. Also, the hassle of getting extra players and playing the match fairly would make me hesitant to adopt this practice in singles. In doubles, however, this is doable if they really want Pyrosphere and both versions of PS2.

The argument above me about banning unpopular stages

In an ideal, totally fair ruleset with competitive value, nothing is banned unless it is deemed banworthy, or degenerate and harmful to a competition. Banning a stage because people don't want to play on it is bad. If people rarely pick it because they don't like it, who cares? Just because the stage isn't popular, don't ban it and disallow anyone who wants to play on it to do so and put their practice to work. If you're so worried about playing on it when it's allowed, you either 1.) suck it up and improvise if you haven't practiced, or 2.) use one of your stage strikes. You should never pander your ruleset to lazy players who won't even practice a stage in case it comes up.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

In an ideal, totally fair ruleset with competitive value, nothing is banned unless it is deemed banworthy, or degenerate and harmful to a competition. Banning a stage because people don't want to play on it is bad. If people rarely pick it because they don't like it, who cares? Just because the stage isn't popular, don't ban it and disallow anyone who wants to play on it to do so and put their practice to work. If you're so worried about playing on it when it's allowed, you either 1.) suck it up and improvise if you haven't practiced, or 2.) use one of your stage strikes. You should never pander your ruleset to lazy players who won't even practice a stage in case it comes up.

Bears repeating.

Also worth noting that over the course of Smash history, the only true static stages have been Battlefield + FD. Literally every other stage in the series has something going on, whether it's simple like Smashville's platform and balloon or complex like basically everything on Kalos Pokemon League. After a while, if you step back and look at the rules and arguments from a distance, it looks an awful lot like players are trying to cherry pick stages so that they don't have to bother learning much of anything with respect to how the stages operate.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Those are the only two legal stages that are completely static.
Temple is also 100% static.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Those are the only two legal stages that are completely static.
Temple is also 100% static.

I forgot about Temple, thanks.

That would actually be an interesting riddle to ask people who think static stages are the be-all-end-all of Smash stages. I wonder what they would make of that little tidbit.