Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[Zzuxon]

Here is a stagelist by yours truly.

 

[CatRaccoonBL]

View attachment 30794
Here is a stagelist by yours truly.

Eh, as much as I love playing on wrecking crew, it just isn't fair. It's easy to run away and the barrels really are a problem. Walk off stages could also continue to be a problem.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Wrecking Crew I agree is probably beyond saving, but I'm still hopeful that at least one walkoff will find acceptance. There are 3 pretty good ones that really have nothing wrong with them other than being walkoffs. (Coliseum, Wii Fit Studio, Mario Galaxy)

Also my last post and shameless self-advertisement is at the bottom of the last page so I'll quote myself for visibility. Hopefully @Shaya won't hit me with the mod hammer for this.

Now that I've gotten over my initial weekend of messing around, I'm starting up my stage research threads again. The first Wii U stage I'm covering is Mario Circuit, so go check that thread out. Hopefully this sort of focused topic will lead to more productive discussion; I try and limit the OP to objective fact but there's nothing wrong with healthy debate and conversation over possible exploits, legality, and whatever else in the replies.

On a related note, I am officially soliciting ideas and requests for what stages I should cover next. I have my own vaguely-ordered list but if one stage in particular is getting a lot of discussion then it's probably a good idea to suss it out sooner rather than later. (Apparently Mushroom Kingdom U is back on the table? That surprised me.)

 

[Zzuxon]

Wrecking Crew I agree is probably beyond saving, but I'm still hopeful that at least one walkoff will find acceptance. There are 3 pretty good ones that really have nothing wrong with them other than being walkoffs. (Coliseum, Wii Fit Studio, Mario Galaxy)

Also my last post and shameless self-advertisement is at the bottom of the last page so I'll quote myself for visibility. Hopefully @Shaya won't hit me with the mod hammer for this.

There is no reason at all to ban Mario Galaxy, Coliseum, or Wii Fit Studio.
If you don't like 'em, strike 'em. But you can't ban them just because you don't like walk-offs. Frankly, I think they should be starters, but making them CPs is a reasonable concession.
You should look into gamer, it is an interesting stage.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

There is no reason at all to ban Mario Galaxy, Coliseum, or Wii Fit Studio.
If you don't like 'em, strike 'em. But you can't ban them just because you don't like walk-offs. Frankly, I think they should be starters, but making them CPs is a reasonable concession.
You should look into gamer, it is an interesting stage.

I'm in favor of those 3 in case it wasn't clear, it's just that a lot of people seem to think walkoffs have cooties or something.

Gamer is a ton of fun, especially with the not-music soundtrack that turns it halfway into Silent Hill or something. Mom is surprisingly easy to avoid since she can't cover the whole stage at once, and there are a few particular quirks to her that I'm looking forward to discussing whenever I eventually get around to covering the stage in my research topics.

 

[Thinkaman]

There is no reason at all to ban Mario Galaxy, Coliseum, or Wii Fit Studio.
If you don't like 'em, strike 'em. But you can't ban them just because you don't like walk-offs. Frankly, I think they should be starters, but making them CPs is a reasonable concession.
You should look into gamer, it is an interesting stage.

So I'm pretty open-minded about walkoffs, and don't want to see them banned for no reason. It really irks me when people speak like walkoffs or hazards are implicitly bad.

But I'm also pessimistic, since walkoff camping is an absolutely miserable and degenerate gameplay situation that no player should have to experience.

I played with these stages on in early games, and they did prove to be a problem. The blast zones are wide enough that it's not SUPER awful, but it's still very obnoxious to have to approach a character with good grabs or throws next to the blast zone.

Often the games came down to just who got the first low-% edge grab.

No player should be able to ante up that much just because they have the lead.

 

[Das Koopa]

It's too easy to gimp people on walk-offs. The entire concept of ledge came is erased by them, and instead you risk characters with good throws/attacks with a lot of knockback gimping people into the blast zones. Even with the platforms the stages carry, camping is encouraged by them so you can force some sort of approach that inevitably leads to an early KO. It's disproportionately rewarding.

 

[Zzuxon]

It's too easy to gimp people on walk-offs. The entire concept of ledge came is erased by them, and instead you risk characters with good throws/attacks with a lot of knockback gimping people into the blast zones. Even with the platforms the stages carry, camping is encouraged by them so you can force some sort of approach that inevitably leads to an early KO. It's disproportionately rewarding.

You put yourself in extreme danger by getting close enough to a walk-off to do what you are describing.

 

[Thinkaman]

Well, I wouldn't use the word "gimp" or even "rewarding"; it creates as much, if not more, risk for the walk-off camper as the victim.

The issue isn't that it is too strong, the issue is that no one should ever be allowed to just up and declare "OK NEXT GRAB WINS" regardless of %.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

So why couldn't you put all 4 stages on instead of just 2? Also I'd think Luigi's Mansion is much better than Wooly World.

There's some game theory about balanced striking going on with the numbers 5, 9, 13, 17, 21... being favored over the other odd numbers for more procedural fairness (it's not my concept so I don't really want to defend it, but it does make some sense to me). Once we had a pool of 33 candidate stages, we tried to see if 13 could be found for simplicity and speed, but it wasn't practical since the 15 excluding all of those stages were just so clearly good to us that cuts became painful so adding two and accepting 17 became what we wanted to try (so this is a procedural test as well as a stage test). Woolly World is likewise included because we want to see it actually in action. I have little faith in the stage, but it's a relatively non-risky way to test the gameplay dynamics of both walk-off stages and "not much ground" stages all at once while also being important to include for ruleset coherency (it's not a permanent walk-off and it has no hazards; we need a very explicit reason to ban it that we can easily verbalize which will likely be produced most efficiently by actually playing on it for a while). We aren't Atlantic North so we're not going to treat the other stages in the game like they're just gone forever; this is a very experimental ruleset with everything else still on the table based on the results of early testing.

 

[Das Koopa]

Well, I wouldn't use the word "gimp" or even "rewarding"; it creates as much, if not more, risk for the walk-off camper as the victim.

But it's not okay that this is a thing. It's far safer than spiking a character off a stage, and not to mention, early KOs are going to happen more frequently due to the proximity of the blast zone to where the characters are fighting.

The issue isn't that it is too strong, the issue is that no one should ever be allowed to just up and declare "OK NEXT GRAB WINS" regardless of %.

This is, too, a very good reason to ban walk-offs.

View attachment 30794
Here is a stagelist by yours truly.

Some of those Starters should be C/Ps and several of those C/Ps aren't viable. Unless Port Town has significantly changed, it's going to stay banned like it was in Brawl. Car hazards are way too disruptive and powerful and come without warning. I explained last page why Norfair is ridiculous.

I doubt any commonly banned stages in Brawl are going to be legal in Smash 4. Stadium 2 I'd normally think would be banned, but we'll see how disruptive its hazards are to gameplay.

Kingdom U is going to be an issue. There's the spiking pufferfish which seem to just appear at a random area of the stage from geysers, there's the icy spikes, and Nabbit is like an active galaga robot that distracts from the match. It's not like a Yoshi's Story Shy Guy, it's definitely disruptive and can heavily impact the match.

 

[Piford]

Fo walk-off camping, in theory it just doesn't work. If I am in the lead, why should I want to risk my lead in order to win? There are much safer options that can allow me to win, so why bother putting my lead at risk? And if I'm behind, then the person in the lead has no reason to approach me. If he just waits out the clock he wins so I'm forced to not walk-off camp. The only reason walk-off camping seems to work is because people think it does.

There's some game theory about balanced striking going on with the numbers 5, 9, 13, 17, 21... being favored over the other odd numbers for more procedural fairness (it's not my concept so I don't really want to defend it, but it does make some sense to me). Once we had a pool of 33 candidate stages, we tried to see if 13 could be found for simplicity and speed, but it wasn't practical since the 15 excluding all of those stages were just so clearly good to us that cuts became painful so adding two and accepting 17 became what we wanted to try (so this is a procedural test as well as a stage test). Woolly World is likewise included because we want to see it actually in action. I have little faith in the stage, but it's a relatively non-risky way to test the gameplay dynamics of both walk-off stages and "not much ground" stages all at once while also being important to include for ruleset coherency (it's not a permanent walk-off and it has no hazards; we need a very explicit reason to ban it that we can easily verbalize which will likely be produced most efficiently by actually playing on it for a while). We aren't Atlantic North so we're not going to treat the other stages in the game like they're just gone forever; this is a very experimental ruleset with everything else still on the table based on the results of early testing.

Okay, I don't really get how banning a stage just to get a balanced number makes sense, but I'm not that well versed in game theory.

 

[-Kagato-]

Ok. Let's talk Windy Hill Zone. What are people seeing to make the stage neutral? A I missing something or is everyone overlooking the springs on the sides of the stage?

 

[Piford]

Ok. Let's talk Windy Hill Zone. What are people seeing to make the stage neutral? A I missing something or is everyone overlooking the springs on the sides of the stage?

The springs on windy hill don't seem like that much of the problem. First, they aren't there all the time. Second, if you use the springs to aid your recovery, your put into a position that's easily punishably by your opponent, since as far as I can tell it always puts you in the same spot. It still always better to sweet spot the ledge unless you possibly cannot make it back to the stage.

 

[-Kagato-]

The springs on windy hill don't seem like that much of the problem. First, they aren't there all the time. Second, if you use the springs to aid your recovery, your put into a position that's easily punishably by your opponent, since as far as I can tell it always puts you in the same spot. It still always better to sweet spot the ledge unless you possibly cannot make it back to the stage.

What about if you're recovering from under the stage and the spring appears, bouncing you straight down to your death? It's happened more times than you'd expect. It's not like the waterfall in skyloft where you still have a chance. If you are recovering and the spring appears, you're dead. Damage percentage means nothing. You die.

 

[Thinkaman]

Fo walk-off camping, in theory it just doesn't work. If I am in the lead, why should I want to risk my lead in order to win? There are much safer options that can allow me to win, so why bother putting my lead at risk? And if I'm behind, then the person in the lead has no reason to approach me. If he just waits out the clock he wins so I'm forced to not walk-off camp. The only reason walk-off camping seems to work is because people think it does.

Again, it's not a question of it being optimal or even good. It's a strategy that is so toxic that we can't ever allow either player the option of doing it.

It's not just in theory. In some games I played, with all stages legal, I DID walk-off camp in certain matchups. Robin really enjoys it, as does Little Mac. (Again, in certain matchups)

 

[Piford]

What about if you're recovering from under the stage and the spring appears, bouncing you straight down to your death? It's happened more times than you'd expect. It's not like the waterfall in skyloft where you still have a chance. If you are recovering and the spring appears, you're dead. Damage percentage means nothing. You die.

Don't the springs float up from the bottom? They don't just pop in and out right? If they float up from the bottom and then you should be able to react and either land on the spring or avoid getting hit by it.

Edit:

Again, it's not a question of it being optimal or even good. It's a strategy that is so toxic that we can't ever allow either player the option of doing it.

It's not just in theory. In some games I played, with all stages legal, I DID walk-off camp in certain matchups. Robin really enjoys it, as does Little Mac. (Again, in certain matchups)

But why did you walk-off camp? If it wasn't fun and there were always better options, why do it? (I'm actually being curious)

 

[Slyphoria]

I'm in favor of those 3 in case it wasn't clear, it's just that a lot of people seem to think walkoffs have cooties or something.

Gamer is a ton of fun, especially with the not-music soundtrack that turns it halfway into Silent Hill or something. Mom is surprisingly easy to avoid since she can't cover the whole stage at once, and there are a few particular quirks to her that I'm looking forward to discussing whenever I eventually get around to covering the stage in my research topics.

The Mom uses the exact same tells as the Gamer minigame. I'll use this smiley for danger ones:

For window:

1. She walks by the window normally and opens.
2. She walks by the window, dips down, then comes back up and opens.
3. She walks over and breaks the window.
4. A lookalike that looks like her, but the hair bobs a bit, it's the old man.
5. Occasionally, the old man as lookalike and her will cross paths, bow, and then continue. Mom usually doesn't open the window here.

For TV:

1. The TV flips through channels, and on the third or 4th, Mom's on the TV and looks out.
2. Same as #1, but no mom.
3. Turns on with just static, then she's in the TV and looks out.
4. Same as #3 but no Mom.
5. Some other tell for the one where she jumps out and walks across the room. The initial music on the preview is what goes here.

For Door:

1. The cat opens the door.
2. Door randomly opens with nothing.
3. Foot step sounds, then she opens the door
4. Running step sounds, then she opens the door quickly.

I probably missed a few, but that's most of them. I think there might be one where she comes in through the window too.

She's quite predictable. It could be that it could be legal if the only song was the default Gamer track, as that helps out a ton with the tells.

 

[Zzuxon]

The Mom uses the exact same tells as the Gamer minigame. I'll use this smiley for danger ones:

For window:

1. She walks by the window normally and opens.
2. She walks by the window, dips down, then comes back up and opens.
3. She walks over and breaks the window.
4. A lookalike that looks like her, but the hair bobs a bit, it's the old man.
5. Occasionally, the old man as lookalike and her will cross paths, bow, and then continue. Mom usually doesn't open the window here.

For TV:

1. The TV flips through channels, and on the third or 4th, Mom's on the TV and looks out.
2. Same as #1, but no mom.
3. Turns on with just static, then she's in the TV and looks out.
4. Same as #3 but no Mom.
5. Some other tell for the one where she jumps out and walks across the room. The initial music on the preview is what goes here.

For Door:

1. The cat opens the door.
2. Door randomly opens with nothing.
3. Foot step sounds, then she opens the door
4. Running step sounds, then she opens the door quickly.

I probably missed a few, but that's most of them. I think there might be one where she comes in through the window too.

She's quite predictable. It could be that it could be legal if the only song was the default Gamer track, as that helps out a ton with the tells.

What about when she appears to be floating upside down and you can only see her feet?

 

[Slyphoria]

What about when she appears to be floating upside down and you can only see her feet?

I haven't personally seen that one yet. I have to assume that's a window one.

I'll try watching it a bit and hammering out these tells tonight.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Well Mario Circuit has a bit of a glitch. Didn't see it mentioned here yet:

 

[ParanoidDrone]

The Mom uses the exact same tells as the Gamer minigame. I'll use this smiley for danger ones:

For window:

1. She walks by the window normally and opens.
2. She walks by the window, dips down, then comes back up and opens.
3. She walks over and breaks the window.
4. A lookalike that looks like her, but the hair bobs a bit, it's the old man.
5. Occasionally, the old man as lookalike and her will cross paths, bow, and then continue. Mom usually doesn't open the window here.

For TV:

1. The TV flips through channels, and on the third or 4th, Mom's on the TV and looks out.
2. Same as #1, but no mom.
3. Turns on with just static, then she's in the TV and looks out.
4. Same as #3 but no Mom.
5. Some other tell for the one where she jumps out and walks across the room. The initial music on the preview is what goes here.

For Door:

1. The cat opens the door.
2. Door randomly opens with nothing.
3. Foot step sounds, then she opens the door
4. Running step sounds, then she opens the door quickly.

I probably missed a few, but that's most of them. I think there might be one where she comes in through the window too.

She's quite predictable. It could be that it could be legal if the only song was the default Gamer track, as that helps out a ton with the tells.

There's another one. Sometimes there will be a drawing easel on the stage in place of one of the various platform setups. The pages flip back every so often. Sometimes it will reveal an image of Mom, which will activate a second or two later. Unlike her normal searching, drawing-Mom covers the whole stage at once.

Moves-across-the-room-Mom always returned to the TV and did a few more searches before leaving through the door or, once, by jumping out the window. Mom is weird.

 

[Slyphoria]

There's another one. Sometimes there will be a drawing easel on the stage in place of one of the various platform setups. The pages flip back every so often. Sometimes it will reveal an image of Mom, which will activate a second or two later. Unlike her normal searching, drawing-Mom covers the whole stage at once.

Moves-across-the-room-Mom always returned to the TV and did a few more searches before leaving through the door or, once, by jumping out the window. Mom is weird.

Where do you hide from drawing Mom, then? And if there's nowhere to hide for the drawing one, then could you just No Contest and try it again? I'm sure it's pretty rare. I've only had the Easel once, and she didn't come out.

 

[Zzuxon]

Where do you hide from drawing Mom, then? And if there's nowhere to hide for the drawing one, then could you just No Contest and try it again? I'm sure it's pretty rare. I've only had the Easel once, and she didn't come out.

You can hide in the shadows, like normal. I've had this happen to me once.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Where do you hide from drawing Mom, then? And if there's nowhere to hide for the drawing one, then could you just No Contest and try it again? I'm sure it's pretty rare. I've only had the Easel once, and she didn't come out.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. Drawing Mom's attack is still affected by the shadows, but unlike normal Mom where a) the angle she looks at the stage will bend the shadows and b) she only looks at half the stage at a time, Drawing Mom's attack is completely head on (so you need to be directly behind a solid object) and looks at the whole stage at once.

EDIT: Also, one of the possible platform setups features a solid cave-of-life object with a green block on top. Standing on top of this green block puts you completely out of range from Mom no matter what she does, to the best of my knowledge. Her gaze seems to have a finite vertical range, as I was able to replicate the effect by jumping really high.

 

[Piford]

Well Mario Circuit has a bit of a glitch. Didn't see it mentioned here yet:

Wow Ness, always finding glitches in all the good stages

 

[Conda]

Should windy hill not be CP due to the ridiculous length and lack of edge guarding that can happen? A CP for those weak to edge guarding.

 

[Captain Norris]

wii u list is looking sweet. Are people still in talks of making a few generic custom stages that could be tourney viable?

 

[LiteralGrill]

I too am wondering on Windy Hill but purely cuz it's just too big. I've been playing matches on it, and running away a ton is becoming a big issue.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I too am wondering on Windy Hill but purely cuz it's just too big. I've been playing matches on it, and running away a ton is becoming a big issue.

I've played several here, and it doesn't seem to be that big of an issue. In fact, as far as anyone here can tell, Windy Hill is just a great stage.

 

[Slyphoria]

wii u list is looking sweet. Are people still in talks of making a few generic custom stages that could be tourney viable?

Maybe when stage sharing is a thing. Right now, any suggestions of it have been shot down elsewhere.

I'd be down for it, though.

 

[Zzuxon]

I'm certainly in favor of competitive custom stages.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I just spent a large amount of time toying around on Wuhu Island, and oh boy, this stage is super legal.

I tried very hard to replicate the clipping glitch on the boat to no avail using the exact same match-up in that video (Ness grabbing Wario). I just couldn't do it; this glitch must be some crazy, super picky glitch that is one in a million. I don't think it has any relevance to this stage's legality.

Speaking of which, these transformations don't come up equally often or even close. The course has a few "tracks" it follows, maybe or maybe not stopping at any given landing zone. The thing is that some landing zones are on multiple tracks while others are not. That boat is very hard to test since it's a very rare landing zone; it seems like it's only one one seldom chosen track. I wasn't able to explain algorithmically how this track works, but if you watch the background, you pretty much know what's coming up.

I only see three hazards here. When the stage is moving to the "target" landing zone, the moving platform will skim the water. If you hit the water during this very brief time, you'll take 5% damage and be launched upward. I couldn't find the kill percent though I know it's not fixed knockback; Ness survives this hit at 250% so it might as well never kill. When you land on the clifftop, a red balloon floats by to the right. Contacting it does 10% damage, and I wasn't able to get in kill percent testing since this balloon isn't around often and this is also not the most common landing zone. The third is the boat; when the boat is moving, touching the underside is an instant kill which only happens if you go into the front of the water at this time. It's very brief that the boat is moving in this fatal way; this is not a big deal.

I tried to re-create rudder stalling from Pirate Ship here with Sheik's plunging dair. The trick with plunging dairs and water to dive deep still works, but no one is going to be stalling here. Using it on the jet ski race actually kills Sheik! Apparently the water there is more shallow than the water on Delfino, and Sheik just goes too deep with her dair. Aiming it into the wall to slow down a bit revealed to me that it wasn't possible to get past the wall regardless.On the other two forms iwth water (the rocky islands and the boat), Sheik can't kill herself off the bottom with dair, but she also can't get under anything. All of the islands and the boat extend all the way to the bottom blast zone (I didn't expect this from the boat, but it's a good thing), and Sheik can't wiggle under and in.

This stage has some grabbable ledges that might not be intuitive. On the rocky islands landing spot, the far right island's right edge is grabbable, but there are no other grabbable ledges. I'm not sure if it's even useful, but it's there. At the jet ski landing spot, the upper ledges are grabbable but the lower ones close to the water are not. When the main platform is blue and has the two low hanging platforms extending past the normal ledges, the pass-through platforms' outer ledges are grabbable; that's important knowledge actually and probably not immediately obvious! Also, every ledge on the volcano landing spot that is over a pit is grabbable; this spot isn't actually very dangerous because of that.

The fountain in one relatively common landing spot is pretty interesting. The water exerts a constant upward force on anyone mid-air in it. It's strong enough for Ness to stay suspended indefinitely but not if he fast falls. However, Sheik's higher fall speed means she can't stay suspended. Specials like Ness's down special that kill vertical momentum also allow for little upward pops in this water stream. I doubt any of this is useful except for really niche situations, but it's interesting!

The sandy beach landing spot is mostly just a flat ground double walk-off, but note that you actually stand in the sand a bit with your feet being mostly covered by the sand. If you are doing a super precise landing maneuver, this may change the timing by 1f since the ground is a tiny distance lower than it appears; I didn't test any super precise landing maneuvers, but it's probably good to keep in mind.

The suspension bridge landing spot actually has the ground bounce with realistic physics as you jump on it. Jumping near the middle of the bridge causes larger bouncing, of course. Do note that the bridge isn't perfectly centered around the blast zones; the left side extends all the way to the left blast zone, but on the far right there's a bit of cliff attached to the bridge that of course causes no bouncing in the bridge if you jump on it. All ledges on the bridge are grabbable, and you can pass through it freely from underneath but not drop through on your own.

So yeah, that's some research into everything relevant to Wuhu Island's legality and quite a bit of stuff that is probably not relevant but is nice to know for when you play on it. I see literally no possible reason to ban this stage; it just seems fantastic, and from a few games I played on it this weekend, it plays nicely too. Can anyone lay out anything suggesting otherwise?

 

[MegaMissingno]

So... am I the only one here in favor of a more conservative list? Or does being picky mean I'm just totally insane? Is it really just me, am I totally alone here? Someone please tell me I'm not nuts.

I'd rather have a few great stages than a bunch of mediocre to bad ones. I don't want to feel like I'm fighting the stage more than I'm fighting my opponent, a lot of the complicated and moving stages just feel too distracting to me. And I sure as hell don't want stages that completely remove the recovery/edgeguarding mechanic from the game, absolutely no to walkoffs. Stages must have all four blast lines present, period, end of story. I can at least see where people are coming from with stages that only have brief temporary walkoffs, but hell no to permanent ones, never ever. Removing the bottom blast line is like removing the heart and soul of Smash!

If it were up to me, I'd keep the list nice and small:

Starter
Final Destination
Battlefield
Lylat Cruise
Smashville
Town and City

Counterpick
Duck Hunt
Maybe Big Battlefield, playtest it and see if it's Too Big™ or not
Maybe Kongo Jungle, playtest it and see if it's campable here and whether or not sharking is a big deal
Omega stages (in sets with bans, banning FD counts as banning Omegas)
Miiverse (in sets with bans, banning Battlefield counts as banning Miiverse)​

This is a minimum of 6 stages if we don't include Big BF and Kongo and don't count Omegas and Miiverse as separate, same size as Melee. Could go up to 8 if BBF and KJ are good. That's good enough for me, if there were more great stages I'd love to add them (Fountain of Dreams and Yoshi's Story DLC pls), but I'd rather not add bad ones just for the sake of having more.


The biggest problem I have with Wuhu is that it transforms so fast and frequently, doesn't give you enough time to stop and fight as you're just constantly moving too much. It also serves as a major buff to recoveries as you can often get saved by an incoming stop before you hit the bottom blast line. I also just hate swimming, stupid mechanic.

If people really insist on having one of the transforming stages present, I'd say Mario Circuit is the least stupid out of all the ones in SSB4. I still don't like when it blocks blast lines, and I wish it slowed down, but I could begrudgingly put up with it if I truly have to...

Windy Hill's weirdass gravity is stupid. The windmill is stupid. The springs are stupid. If not for those it'd be good, but since those are there, I say no.

As for the subject of custom stages once the patch makes them shareable, it sounds nice on paper but I just can't see how anyone could come to a consensus on which ones to use. The only way I could see it working out is if we only use recreations of old stages and static versions of new ones (Pyrosphere, you could've been so good!), but even then I expect long drawn out arguments over whether the coordinates are correct or whether a platform needs to be moved a pixel to the right. I fear a scenario where every TO is using a different custom stagelist, and newbies get confused as hell trying to get used to stages they've never seen/practiced before. If we're able to make it work out, great, but I'm not terribly optimistic here.

 

[BestTeaMaker]

So... am I the only one here in favor of a more conservative list? Or does being picky mean I'm just totally insane? Is it really just me, am I totally alone here? Someone please tell me I'm not nuts.

I'd rather have a few great stages than a bunch of mediocre to bad ones. I don't want to feel like I'm fighting the stage more than I'm fighting my opponent, a lot of the complicated and moving stages just feel too distracting to me. And I sure as hell don't want stages that completely remove the recovery/edgeguarding mechanic from the game, absolutely no to walkoffs. Stages must have all four blast lines present, period, end of story. I can at least see where people are coming from with stages that only have brief temporary walkoffs, but hell no to permanent ones, never ever. Removing the bottom blast line is like removing the heart and soul of Smash!

If it were up to me, I'd keep the list nice and small:

Starter
Final Destination
Battlefield
Lylat Cruise
Smashville
Town and City

Counterpick
Duck Hunt
Maybe Big Battlefield, playtest it and see if it's Too Big™ or not
Maybe Kongo Jungle, playtest it and see if it's campable here and whether or not sharking is a big deal
Omega stages (in sets with bans, banning FD counts as banning Omegas)
Miiverse (in sets with bans, banning Battlefield counts as banning Miiverse)​

This is a minimum of 6 stages if we don't include Big BF and Kongo and don't count Omegas and Miiverse as separate, same size as Melee. Could go up to 8 if BBF and KJ are good. That's good enough for me, if there were more great stages I'd love to add them (Fountain of Dreams and Yoshi's Story DLC pls), but I'd rather not add bad ones just for the sake of having more.


The biggest problem I have with Wuhu is that it transforms so fast and frequently, doesn't give you enough time to stop and fight as you're just constantly moving too much. It also serves as a major buff to recoveries as you can often get saved by an incoming stop before you hit the bottom blast line. I also just hate swimming, stupid mechanic.

If people really insist on having one of the transforming stages present, I'd say Mario Circuit is the least stupid out of all the ones in SSB4. I still don't like when it blocks blast lines, and I wish it slowed down, but I could begrudgingly put up with it if I truly have to...

Windy Hill's weirdass gravity is stupid. The windmill is stupid. The springs are stupid. If not for those it'd be good, but since those are there, I say no.

As for the subject of custom stages once the patch makes them shareable, it sounds nice on paper but I just can't see how anyone could come to a consensus on which ones to use. The only way I could see it working out is if we only use recreations of old stages and static versions of new ones (Pyrosphere, you could've been so good!), but even then I expect long drawn out arguments over whether the coordinates are correct or whether a platform needs to be moved a pixel to the right. I fear a scenario where every TO is using a different custom stagelist, and newbies get confused as hell trying to get used to stages they've never seen/practiced before. If we're able to make it work out, great, but I'm not terribly optimistic here.

The thing is, if a stage can be perfectly viable in tournament play, why not include it to help grow the meta of the game?

As it stands, we are in the early stages of this game's life. We should be looking at other stages and seeing if they could be competitively viable. Do walkoff stages suffer the same problem as previous iterations? Do some transformations cause an unfair advantage to certain characters? Over time, as we play on these stages more and more, we may find certain things about these stages that do not engender competitive play well. But right now, we don't know how it will affect tournament play.

That said, there is something to be said about having too large of a stagelist. Having to learn the ins and outs of every stage can be a chore to players. It can also be a hassle during tournament play to choose which stage to play on.

The bottom line is that we're at the point where we have to test out stages for the sake of the competitive future of this game.

 

[Pazzo.]

Onett might be a fun stage.

If we're going to excuse Norfair's lava, I see no reason to ban the stage based on the cars.

#EarthboundBias

 

[MegaMissingno]

The thing is, if a stage can be perfectly viable in tournament play, why not include it to help grow the meta of the game?

Because they're just bad stages that are too distracting to fight on. As I said, I would rather have a few great stages than a lot of terrible ones.

Do walkoff stages suffer the same problem as previous iterations?

The problem is that they completely remove one of the most central game mechanics. There's no way for walkoffs to not have that problem.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

@ Amazing Ampharos I was considering Wuhu Island for my next stage research thread but you seem to have done a lot of the work for me. Good writeup.

@ MegaMissingno , Do walkoffs really remove the "heart and soul of Smash" or do they just go against what we have decided Smash to be? I ask this because literally every Smash game has had at least one walkoff stage. There's also an argument to be made that characters with particularly bad offstage games would love the chance to counterpick a walkoff. And if you're feeling cynical, you could say that edgeguarding is dead due to the recovery mechanics so why even bother. Camping the walkoff is a legitimate concern, although it's also one I feel needs to be re-evaluated due to the many changes in the game.

More generally though, a restrictive stage list almost exactly like the one you're suggesting lead directly to the rise of the Ice Climbers in Brawl. I'm sure @ Amazing Ampharos can tell you all about his time with Mr Game & Watch as the stage list shifted back then, slowly banning all of his best stages while leaving his worst ones alone. Meanwhile since all the banned stages were the Ice Climbers' worst, to the point that a counterpick was basically insta-lose, they became the powerhouse we know them as now. Stages do impact characters and it's important that we don't restrict our list of stages so much that some characters are left without any good stages. Conversely, we also need to make sure that the stages we do allow aren't all (or mostly) beneficial to already-good characters.

 

[Terotrous]

You put yourself in extreme danger by getting close enough to a walk-off to do what you are describing.

The problem is that the risk / reward is skewed by damage percent. Let's suppose I'm at the blast zone. If either of us lands a grab, the other one is dead. This kind of seems fair, if a bit volatile, but you have to realize that we may not have equal damage. Suppose I just took your first stock playing "fairly" and am now at 110% damage. If you get the kill on me at the blast zone, I have almost nothing to lose, because I would have been dead in 1-2 hits anyway. However, if I get the kill on you, the reward for me is utterly massive as I get to take an entire stock just like that.

This is also why you choose to walk off camp if you can. There's no situation in the game where you can get risk so little and potentially gain so much. This not only makes walk-off camping a toxic strategy, but a dominant one.


IMO, I feel the way they need to fix walk-offs is that there needs to be a count-out system. For example, let's take the Boxing Ring stage. The way this stage should work is that whenever you're outside the ring you take gradual damage, and if you take more than 10 seconds to get back in you're defeated instantly. 10 seconds should be enough to get back to the stage in most situations (though the opponent could definitely try to keep you from getting back), but the countdown completely prevents camping the blastzone.

 

[LancerStaff]

Anybody have trouble recovering on Omega Lylat Cruise? Well, on most stages you can slide up the underside with a recovery, but not there. Pit is highly dependent on sliding up the sides, although I wouldn't know if anybody else is. Plz ban