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Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

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Amazing Ampharos

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Memorizing every possible outcome of Skyloft is unreasonable. That's why you don't do that. You learn the stage's mechanics and learn to calculate what will happen. I see Skyloft moving in a particular way and make a calculation whether it's going to hit and where. I've memorized essentially nothing other than the geography of Skyloft itself, and I already knew that from playing Skyward Sword. I'm not always right because I'm still refining my method (heck, I just SD'd today in a friendly from incorrectly interpreting which landing zone I was going to!), but I tend to be pretty good at it. Predictable doesn't necessarily mean that the optimum way to predict is memorizing a large list. Of your two arguments I think both are valid and have to be considered in context of each other (it's possible to predict, and even if a given player can't, it's not that problematic for a player who can't or who makes mistakes in predicting).

Let me reframe the omega situation beyond my excellent memory which is definitely not a common attribute I'll just admit. In order to play with maximum player advantage on all of the omegas, what do you need to know before the match starts? If you are counterpicking, you need to know the one omega you prefer the most. You don't need to know the attributes of all of the others in that situation, only of the one that is best for your character. Perhaps you might need to keep that one and specifically Omega Lylat Cruise in mind since you maybe have a read that the opponent is bad at recovering but for some reason might not want default Lylat Cruise (or it was banned by a personal stage ban). Either way, you don't need to know much. From the other side, you can quickly see the shape of every omega at match start. You need to know that, for reasons I don't fully understand, you can't wall jump on Kalos. More or less everything else you can figure when you see it in the first few seconds of the match. You only have a problem if the particular nature of the omega would have made you counterpick a different character, but how often will that really come up? "Oh, I'm using Luigi, but I would have counterpicked Villager if I knew Omega Woolly World was a walled omega" does not seem like something any actual players are likely to say (especially since the less informed players disproportionately do not have dual mains with nuanced situational preferences). I find it pretty easy as a player to keep track of all of the fine details, but even for a player who doesn't, not knowing is unlikely to translate into a real disadvantage. Johnny first tournament, I'd point out, also probably plays a lot more For Glory than serious tournament types and is disproportionately likely to have a lot of experience on omegas, and Johnny also probably wants to pick his favorite omega for the background or music and not for strategic reasons (a few weeks ago, I watched a player at his first tournament counterpick Omega Castle Siege and then say "I just really like the Fire Emblem music", does happen for real).

To sum it up, my position here is that I think you're overstating the knowledge barrier these stages impose. You really just need to figure out the basic mechanics and geographies of the legal stages, something I did in the first week I owned the game, and from there you can figure out the rest as you go and you'll be fine. There are times in which knowing specific super fine details is awfully handy, but it's not really a big problem to figure it all out as you go. After about 20 hours of total play, if you play with every legal stage on random (even if you definition of legal is loose!), you should know enough about all of them to be very comfortable on them in a tournament setting; by then you've played at least 10 games on every stage which is really more than enough to know what you need to know. I know not everyone has 40 hours a week to spend (and I certainly don't do anywhere near that!), but if you haven't found the time to spend even 20 hours ever on the game, I'm not sure it's reasonable to say you should be winning a whole lot nor could you really since at that level you probably don't even know what all of the opposing characters can do which is going to lead to some nasty blindsides that really will outdo anything poor stage knowledge could cause.
 

madworlder

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A really good thing about how Skyloft's hazards work, is that they only appear in places you don't really need or want to be in the first place. It's good enough to know that being off-stage on Skyloft's platform is more dangerous than other similar stages, you don't really need to know anything more than that. Characters with slow recoveries, offstage stalling, and/or tendencies to go offstage for gimp or spike opportunities are put at risk on Skyloft, in a way that is unique from other stages. I'd be impressed if knowing all 54 transitions could make even a one game difference in 100 matches, just because the stage hazards are so quick they are nearly impossible to take advantage of or protect against.
 
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Okay, so there are 162 different paths the stage can take. That's a lot. Now how many of these paths contain hazards? How many of them pass by one of these hitboxes? How many of them look distinct? Or to put it another way, how many different scenarios do you have to examine in order to be able to reasonably assess, "There will be a hitbox in location X?" From what I can tell, there are two worth mentioning - one where you pass near a statue and a stone wall, and one where you pass under the stage. There might be more; I'd need to examine it more specifically.

But you know what? If I don't know that, and I go into a tournament without that knowledge, I do not get to complain that the stage gayed me over. I just don't. I made the choice not to know. I made the choice not to put in the time and effort to adapt. We're a competitive community. We don't coddle players who decide they don't want to put in the time. Like, I actually heard this from someone on Smashlabs the other day (translated from German):

You have to learn them, yeah. And it takes a lot more time and effort than on any other stage, because all other stages follow the same physics. For example, how attacks work on shield on the ice stage, or safe approaches with sliding downsmashes behind the opponent.
Keep in mind, he was using this as an argument to ban Pokemon Stadium 2.

What kind of attitude is this? It's not broken; it's not unpredictable. Learn it. Or, don't learn it. Your prerogative. I'm not studying the intricacies of the Mii Swordsman matchup, because the character sucks and nobody plays it. And if I lose to a Mii swordsman, well, ****. But it's my problem. Nobody else's. I could have put in the time. I could have looked up the character's frame data and moves; I could have spent some time exploring what they're capable of. I didn't.

Don't come whining when your own unwillingness to learn costs you a match! If I lose to a Mii Swordsman, or you get knocked around by moving walls on Skyloft, that's nobody else's problem. You should have known better. I should have known better. The better player will still win, and the game won't have been simplified in a degenerate, non-competitive manner. You just ****ed up. "It's hard to learn" is no excuse. It's hard to learn the Sheik matchup, but every player will, or they'll have neutered themselves.

Also, a suggested addendum to omega stages (thank you, Lylat...): "If you ban a stage, its omega form is also banned."

This in addition to the old "banning FD bans omegas and vice versa" rule.
 
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[Deuce]

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I think in the end what might end up happening is people compromising to a 9 stage FLSS since that's around the amount of legal stages that Apex featured, as well as 9 fitting in with striking order as opposed to 11. in that case what would be crossed off from AA's list of 14?

Probably Windy Hill, PS2, Wuhu, Skyloft, and 1 other
 

Omegaphoenix

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Then why did Apex ban them? I'm not saying what I want in particular, I'm saying what I think may actually end up happening.
Apex banned them because change is scary and confusing. They wanted to play it safe, not pick stages that could be divisive. PS2 transformations, Windy Size plus Grav, and Skyloft and Wuhu traveling (because Delfino and Rainbow Cruise don't exist clearly)
 

[Deuce]

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Apex banned them because change is scary and confusing. They wanted to play it safe, not pick stages that could be divisive. PS2 transformations, Windy Size plus Grav, and Skyloft and Wuhu traveling (because Delfino and Rainbow Cruise don't exist clearly)
Actually I think the latter 2 were omitted due to the lack of understanding of the hazards (Skyloft) and the boat issue (Wuhu)

Yes they have Halberd and Delfino (idk where you're getting Rainbow cruise from, doesn't look like its been legal for a while) but that doesn't change the issues they had regarding the other 2 stages. I actually like those stages a lot, they're colorful and have good music, if I were to take out a stage just because I didn't like it it'd be duck hunt
 

LiteralGrill

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The reason Apex banned a lot of stages to put it bluntly is that they don't actually understand the game enough to be making proper rulesets. Just look at what they did for Smash 4, all of the rules were seriously strange and so much of their explanations they tried to provide showed how little they actually knew about the game itself and how little they personally tested.
 

OddCrow

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I'm sorry but I can't read through 82 pages of this.

This is the process/stage list I'm going to use when I TO the next event in my scene. We also play 3 stock 8 minutes.



I think at this point the only thing to change would be wuhu/kongo for halberd/delfino - but the prior 2 stages are more popular in my scene. Halberd and delfino aren't well liked due to ceilings and hazards
 
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Locke 06

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With regards to basic stage knowledge, I'd say coming in contact with the stage scenery as it is moving deals damage should be basic stage knowledge. If I get hit by it, I could have seen it coming. Whether or not I knew the transformation specifically, if the scenery looks like it is close, I should probably watch out. I try to combo off of Skyloft's stage, but I rarely pull it off due to not knowing how it truly works. I'm much better at comboing off of Mario Circuit and its hazards, which are less obtrusive and deadly, but more useful, than the Halberd hazards.

Another point I'd like to bring up.

I played sets on Delfino tonight thinking I'd learn something about the stage since most Brawl players love to counter pick it (see Apex stream) and I did not play Brawl or follow Brawl competitively. The ceiling thing is something I haven't experienced yet, only heard about, and I find it troublesome that there is no warning for the stage to start traveling. Especially when the transformations do weird things to the blast zones.

Non-warning transformations are more harmful to me than a telegraphed hazard.
 

Omegaphoenix

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Game 1 will be played on Smashville
Nope nope Nope nope nope

In all seriousness, it's not a terrible idea. You have a walled omega where there could be a Skyloft, along side quite a few stages I think should be on there, (Delfino, Halberd) but it is a interesting idea.

However, FLSS is probably better, due to this being a bit too complex
 

Piford

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Apex's ruleset was pretty bad and they responded to criticism poorly (people wanted to use all Mii sets, they then banned 2222 and 3333 miis, people wanted Skyloft, Wuhu Island, and PS2 legal, they then banned Kongo Jungle 64, people wanted clarity on the suicide move, it failed to cover the most ambiguous case).

I'm sorry but I can't read through 82 pages of this.

This is the process/stage list I'm going to use when I TO the next event in my scene. We also play 3 stock 8 minutes.



I think at this point the only thing to change would be wuhu/kongo for halberd/delfino - but the prior 2 stages are more popular in my scene. Halberd and delfino aren't well liked due to ceilings and hazards
I wouldn't use that ruleset at all. It seems overly complicated and lacks a lot of good stages. I would remove Pyrosphere and Walled Omegas and add Halberd, Skyloft, and Delfino, and then eliminate then just FLSS. Also make PS2 and Castle Siege available in singles (the 8-players to remove stuff is a logistical nightmare and it would end up not working out). You'd have 13 stages which is perfect for FLSS, but if you still wanted the Starter/CP division, I guess make 5 or 9 starters and the rest CP.
 
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I'm sorry but I can't read through 82 pages of this.

This is the process/stage list I'm going to use when I TO the next event in my scene. We also play 3 stock 8 minutes.



I think at this point the only thing to change would be wuhu/kongo for halberd/delfino - but the prior 2 stages are more popular in my scene. Halberd and delfino aren't well liked due to ceilings and hazards
This is not a good stagelist. 3 starters is never a good idea (seriously - don't) and the way you word it is bad. "Choose to opt out of Smashville"? Why not just strike from 3 stages? Well, don't, but if you're going to, the way you're wording it seems like playing round 1 anywhere other than Smashville is a bad thing. Pyrosphere is an incredibly bad stage, as it introduces extreme random elements that vastly distort the game and allow for the worse player to win much of the time. Why in the world are Castle Siege and PS2 doubles only? Neither have qualities that make them specifically superior for doubles, and neither should be any sort of problem in singles. Leaving out stages because they're not well-liked (in particular if the reasons are just "we don't want to adapt" is not good competitive design. Especially when we're talking about stages as bog-standard as Delfino Island and Halberd. The idea of splitting it into categories is interesting, I'll say that much in its favor, but it forces the list to pigeonhole in weird ways and limits the number of stages you can have. Stages in smash just don't really fit into clean categories like that.
 

ATH_

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This is not a good stagelist. 3 starters is never a good idea (seriously - don't) and the way you word it is bad. "Choose to opt out of Smashville"? Why not just strike from 3 stages? Well, don't, but if you're going to, the way you're wording it seems like playing round 1 anywhere other than Smashville is a bad thing. Pyrosphere is an incredibly bad stage, as it introduces extreme random elements that vastly distort the game and allow for the worse player to win much of the time. Why in the world are Castle Siege and PS2 doubles only? Neither have qualities that make them specifically superior for doubles, and neither should be any sort of problem in singles. Leaving out stages because they're not well-liked (in particular if the reasons are just "we don't want to adapt" is not good competitive design. Especially when we're talking about stages as bog-standard as Delfino Island and Halberd. The idea of splitting it into categories is interesting, I'll say that much in its favor, but it forces the list to pigeonhole in weird ways and limits the number of stages you can have. Stages in smash just don't really fit into clean categories like that.
Just as a tip, they wrote (8) because it's the 8 player smash version. The one where there isn't any hazards. In Pyrosphere, no ridley, in PS2, no transformations. Just takes an extra controller. Not opposing you though, just pointing it out.
 
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Just as a tip, they wrote (8) because it's the 8 player smash version. The one where there isn't any hazards. In Pyrosphere, no ridley, in PS2, no transformations. Just takes an extra controller. Not opposing you though, just pointing it out.
...Oh.

Well thanks for ruining the best stage in the game. Jerk. :p

Seriously, is this a thing people are doing at tournaments? Throwing in an extra player who SDs at the start of the match? That seems kinda... I want to say "completely unworkable at large tournaments and so unhype that it hurts". Also, the "gains" for doing so involve destroying one of the best stages in the game. I'm not kidding. Congratulations, you took everything that made PS2 unique, interesting, and deep, and turned it into yet another boring flat+plat.

Then why did Apex ban them?
Because the people responsible for crafting the APEX ruleset couldn't competitively design their way out of a paper bag? I don't want to be a ****, but...

Okay, I kinda want to be a ****. The APEX ruleset was a complete and total mess on multiple levels, including completely gimping three characters for no reason (have you ever tried to play a default Mii Brawler at 1111? That character sucks! But run 1122 with small and thin, and suddenly he's top 3 in the game. Similar stories with Swordsman and Gunner, except that they go from worst in the game to almost viable), banning at least two stages that have nothing wrong with them (seriously, I don't care what your explanation is, there is nothing wrong with Wuhu Island. It's basically delfino 2.0 without the wonky ceilings. You can't even make a bad argument for banning it like you can with PS2), and running 2 stocks, which a lot of people have well-founded complaints about.
 

MidnightAsaph

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I haven't been involved in this discussion until I went to a tournament recently and found that the stage list was pretty non-existant.

And I have to say, this community is so freaking ban happy. Not on characters, but certainly on stages. This is ridiculous. I've read some of Sirlin's words on when to ban something, and I have to agree with him. We are killing the variety of stages we can play on based on, "I don't like this," rather than, "Uh, this completely invalidates my character" or "This stage chooses who wins, not the players."

Really. I've looked at a lot of these stages, and stages with minor annoyances or slight problems are just banned without a thought. I mean, this community might as well limit the stage list to Battlefield, Smashville and FD/Omega. Most people just go straight to Smashville anyway.

I can't be the only one who is surprised at this. Is the entire community fine with playing on a stagelist you can count on one hand?
 
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Omegaphoenix

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I haven't been involved in this discussion until I went to a tournament recently and found that the stage list was pretty non-existant.

And I have to say, this community is so freaking ban happy. Not on characters, but certainly on stages. This is ridiculous. I've read some of Sirlin's words on when to ban something, and I have to agree with him. We are killing the variety of stages we can play on based on, "I don't like this," rather than, "Uh, this completely invalidates my character" or "This stage chooses who wins, not the players."

Really. I've looked at a lot of these stages, and stages with minor annoyances or slight problems are just banned without a thought. I mean, this community might as well limit the stage list to Battlefield, Smashville and FD/Omega. Most people just go straight to Smashville anyway.

I can't be the only one who is surprised at this. Is the entire community fine with playing on a stagelist you can count on one hand?
Good sir, you have not just hit the nail on the head, you have pounded it so hard it approached the speed of light, burrowed into the earth and launched out into space at the other side

Many players don't like dealing with hazards or stage knowledge, and so tend to choose flat plats. Not to mention the benefit of getting good at the "neutrals" AKA just conterpick back to FD/BF/SV for game three if you win game one, compared to only being able to pick Counterpicks for games 2 and 3
 

[Deuce]

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Because the people responsible for crafting the APEX ruleset couldn't competitively design their way out of a paper bag? I don't want to be a ****, but...

Okay, I kinda want to be a ****. The APEX ruleset was a complete and total mess on multiple levels, including completely gimping three characters for no reason (have you ever tried to play a default Mii Brawler at 1111? That character sucks! But run 1122 with small and thin, and suddenly he's top 3 in the game. Similar stories with Swordsman and Gunner, except that they go from worst in the game to almost viable), banning at least two stages that have nothing wrong with them (seriously, I don't care what your explanation is, there is nothing wrong with Wuhu Island. It's basically delfino 2.0 without the wonky ceilings. You can't even make a bad argument for banning it like you can with PS2), and running 2 stocks, which a lot of people have well-founded complaints about.
Nothing at all with Wuhu Island? So if it was grand finals at evo and someone lost a stock (or god forbid, the game) due to the glitch at the boat, THEN what? Don't say its non-replicable because clearly people have managed to replicate it. If something of the sort has even a 1% probability of occurring why would TOs risk it?

I'd like Mute City, PokeFloats, and Rainbow Cruise to be viable stages for Melee, but the fact is that they're not available. What I'm getting at is based on precedence, regardless of whatever bickering back and forth, the stagelists for all smash games always ended up condensed- we need a MUCH bigger voice than was previously (if that's even possible) to TOs in order for a larger stagelist to even have a chance be the norm.

Because the people responsible for crafting the APEX ruleset couldn't competitively design their way out of a paper bag?
P.S. Then why did people tune in? You kinda proved my point, national tourneys can manage to botch a ruleset and people still watch because it's a national. Enough of those and it becomes the norm
 
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madworlder

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afaik nobody has been able to replicate it since the new patches.
additionally, it has ever only worked on one character, wario, as one character, ness, so we'd need both of those characters to get to grand finals at evo despite having no presence in top 16 at apex before that situation happens

we'd also need the wario player to not know about the glitch or not be concerned enough about it to let it slip through the stage striking process

then we'd need the transformation to be proper, and the ness and wario allow it to happen by lack of knowledge or lack of skill to prevent (you can replicate it by allowing it to happen 1/10 of the time at most, can you do the glitch when wario is explicitly watching out for a grab?)

basically I seriously do not believe there is a 1% chance or even a .1% chance or even a .01% chance that it will happen in tournament assuming at least one player in any given match does not want it to happen
 
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Nothing at all with Wuhu Island? So if it was grand finals at evo and someone lost a stock (or god forbid, the game) due to the glitch at the boat, THEN what? Don't say its non-replicable because clearly people have managed to replicate it. If something of the sort has even a 1% probability of occurring why would TOs risk it?
At APEX, we saw Dabuz lose a stock at 0% to a far more prominent "stage hazard" on Piazza Delfino. One that is considerably harder to avoid. This is not theorycraft; this actually happened, and it cost him the game. Ban Delfino? No, Dabuz ****ed up and everyone understands that. No need to ban a stage there; just don't hang around the blastzones on a walkoff like that.

The fact is, once you're aware of the Wuhu Island glitch, it is really easy not to get caught by it. The stage is essentially separated by walls and slopes into two parts, and if you stay on the left, your opponent is going to have a hell of a time approaching you because the position is so strong. If it was grand finals at Evo and someone lost a stock to the glitch, my response would be, "Wow, why didn't you know about that, and if you did, why did you approach there? How did you make it to grand finals?" Now add the fact that the boat is one of many transformations on the stage and one of the rarest, that the glitch is very matchup-dependent and doesn't work with a lot of characters...

We have something like 3-4 stages legal with a feature that can lead to very quick, easy 0% kills if you approach your opponent in the wrong place and the wrong time. Hell, Wuhu has a bunch of those too. But we don't ban for them, because players are expected to know not to approach in that situation, and to wait until the stage shifts again and get free bubble damage. Same deal with Wuhu, it's just not quite as obvious.

P.S. Then why did people tune in? You kinda proved my point, national tourneys can manage to botch a ruleset and people still watch because it's a national. Enough of those and it becomes the norm
Yeah, gathering 800 people and 100 or so setups in one place is more important than not being scrubs, especially for the viewers. Tell me something I don't know. That doesn't make the ruleset any less crap. They could have run random select FD/BF/SV for all 3 games, 3 minute timed, banned Diddy, Sheik, and Ness, and with that many top players present, people still would have watched.
 
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webbedspace

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afaik nobody has been able to replicate it since the new patches.
additionally, it has ever only worked on one character, wario, as one character, ness, so we'd need both of those characters to get to grand finals at evo despite having no presence in top 16 at apex before that situation happens

we'd also need the wario player to not know about the glitch or not be concerned enough about it to let it slip through the stage striking process

then we'd need the transformation to be proper, and the ness and wario allow it to happen by lack of knowledge or lack of skill to prevent (you can replicate it by allowing it to happen 1/10 of the time at most, can you do the glitch when wario is explicitly watching out for a grab?)

basically I seriously do not believe there is a 1% chance or even a .1% chance or even a .01% chance that it will happen in tournament assuming at least one player in any given match does not want it to happen
Actually several pages ago it was discovered that Lucario's down-throw can glitch-kill the entire cast at that spot - however, the timing and positioning is still quite strict.
 

The_Jiggernaut

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Memorizing every possible outcome of Skyloft is unreasonable. That's why you don't do that. You learn the stage's mechanics and learn to calculate what will happen. I see Skyloft moving in a particular way and make a calculation whether it's going to hit and where. I've memorized essentially nothing other than the geography of Skyloft itself, and I already knew that from playing Skyward Sword. I'm not always right because I'm still refining my method (heck, I just SD'd today in a friendly from incorrectly interpreting which landing zone I was going to!), but I tend to be pretty good at it. Predictable doesn't necessarily mean that the optimum way to predict is memorizing a large list. Of your two arguments I think both are valid and have to be considered in context of each other (it's possible to predict, and even if a given player can't, it's not that problematic for a player who can't or who makes mistakes in predicting).

Let me reframe the omega situation beyond my excellent memory which is definitely not a common attribute I'll just admit. In order to play with maximum player advantage on all of the omegas, what do you need to know before the match starts? If you are counterpicking, you need to know the one omega you prefer the most. You don't need to know the attributes of all of the others in that situation, only of the one that is best for your character. Perhaps you might need to keep that one and specifically Omega Lylat Cruise in mind since you maybe have a read that the opponent is bad at recovering but for some reason might not want default Lylat Cruise (or it was banned by a personal stage ban). Either way, you don't need to know much. From the other side, you can quickly see the shape of every omega at match start. You need to know that, for reasons I don't fully understand, you can't wall jump on Kalos. More or less everything else you can figure when you see it in the first few seconds of the match. You only have a problem if the particular nature of the omega would have made you counterpick a different character, but how often will that really come up? "Oh, I'm using Luigi, but I would have counterpicked Villager if I knew Omega Woolly World was a walled omega" does not seem like something any actual players are likely to say (especially since the less informed players disproportionately do not have dual mains with nuanced situational preferences). I find it pretty easy as a player to keep track of all of the fine details, but even for a player who doesn't, not knowing is unlikely to translate into a real disadvantage. Johnny first tournament, I'd point out, also probably plays a lot more For Glory than serious tournament types and is disproportionately likely to have a lot of experience on omegas, and Johnny also probably wants to pick his favorite omega for the background or music and not for strategic reasons (a few weeks ago, I watched a player at his first tournament counterpick Omega Castle Siege and then say "I just really like the Fire Emblem music", does happen for real).

To sum it up, my position here is that I think you're overstating the knowledge barrier these stages impose. You really just need to figure out the basic mechanics and geographies of the legal stages, something I did in the first week I owned the game, and from there you can figure out the rest as you go and you'll be fine. There are times in which knowing specific super fine details is awfully handy, but it's not really a big problem to figure it all out as you go. After about 20 hours of total play, if you play with every legal stage on random (even if you definition of legal is loose!), you should know enough about all of them to be very comfortable on them in a tournament setting; by then you've played at least 10 games on every stage which is really more than enough to know what you need to know. I know not everyone has 40 hours a week to spend (and I certainly don't do anywhere near that!), but if you haven't found the time to spend even 20 hours ever on the game, I'm not sure it's reasonable to say you should be winning a whole lot nor could you really since at that level you probably don't even know what all of the opposing characters can do which is going to lead to some nasty blindsides that really will outdo anything poor stage knowledge could cause.
A lot of our disagreement seems to hinge on whether or not the Omega stages have meaningful differences between each other. I, of course, agree that it's trivial to learn the Omega stage list if a match is not affected by the stage choice. So if you are of that opinion, it's understandable that you'd feel I'm overstating said knowledge barrier. However, we've been pretty subjective about things up until now. So I'll try something objective in my response.

I'm going to go over the same picks and bans process with a specific character and see how that goes. You're right to say that the only part of stage selection where you would need to have memorized more than just your favorite stage is the part where an opponent is picking a stage. So lets say a player wins a match with his Megaman (he seconds Jigglypuff), and his opponent is counterpicking. The opponent names an Omega stage, which the player vaguely remembers has straight walls in it, but not if he can wall jump off of them (note that this is NOT something conveyed in the visuals). So it could be one of 13 Omega stages, 10 with walljumps, and 3 without.

Why does this detail matter? Because Megaman can extend his recovery after he uses upB by walljumping. This difference is non-trivial and significant. It's more than just theory, I've personally experienced the difference it can make during a match. If the stage doesn't allow for this extension of recovery, the player may feel more comfortable using his secondary Jigglypuff, or some other character that doesn't rely on walljumping to recover. The knowledge of what's in store is an important factor of his decision to switch.

Let's look at a similar case where the opponent counterpicks an Omega stage and the player vaguely remembers instead that it floats and has a narrow lip, but doesn't remember if you can walljump near the tip. So it could be any of 19 Omega stages, 6 of which allow this and 13 of which do not.

Using the same argument as above, this difference is non-trivial and the lack of a walljump is an important factor in the decision to switch characters.

So where does that leave us? In order for any Megaman player to know what their recovery options are (on these two examples alone), they must keep track of 32 Omega stages. Now, you can come up with any sort of mimetic you'd like to help you remember them, but it's still true that you are tracking 32 stages. This is more than double the amount our current legal list has; it's honestly a lot. Additionally, as Sonic can do the exact same trick to help him recover, I can repeat the entire Megaman argument for him. So if you want to play either character the rules currently require you to track 32 extra stages. I believe I can safely say that that is a large knowledge barrier.

Alternatively, my proposition requires the same players in those same situations to know 4 Omega stages. Just four. If we have only one representative Omega legal per archetype, it substantially decreases the knowledge barrier while simultaneously leaving high-level play untouched. You can say there are 9 significant archetypes, you can say there are less. As long as we keep the rule that banning FD also bans Omegas nothing would change except the amount of meaningless details we expect players to memorize


Note also, that the rule "Any stage may be chosen so long as both players agree" would remain, so this would not stop players from picking Omegas that both of them are comfortable with.

Also, a suggested addendum to omega stages (thank you, Lylat...): "If you ban a stage, its omega form is also banned."

This in addition to the old "banning FD bans omegas and vice versa" rule.
I've seen this rule proposed a few times, and it continues to bother me. Not because I'm against the idea, but because it over-complicates the issue.

You've already stated that this rule should be implemented because of Omega Lylat. It seems odd to impose a general rule that would muddle up the stage banning process for every game when functionally, all the rule could possibly do is ban Omega Lylat when Lylat was banned. You see, even if your definition of "significant omega stage difference" is lax, there are always at least 3 options for any general type of Omega stage, (Lylat Omega being the exception) so you could never ban out a significant option, as you have only 2 bans.

Why can't we just make the rule "If you ban Lylat Cruise, its omega from is also banned" since that's what we're aiming at anyways?


@ Pazx Pazx I'm sorry that you feel that way. Perhaps what I'm doing in this other thread could be considered a proper way to handle the Omega issue?

Also if people want to continue discussing Omega stuff there rather than cluttering up this thread, you can be my guest. I very much need people to participate in the thread, or else the analysis will be incomplete.
 
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[Deuce]

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which is why you ban it vs Lucario
That's a waste of a ban though

At APEX, we saw Dabuz lose a stock at 0% to a far more prominent "stage hazard" on Piazza Delfino. One that is considerably harder to avoid. This is not theorycraft; this actually happened, and it cost him the game. Ban Delfino? No, Dabuz ****ed up and everyone understands that. No need to ban a stage there; just don't hang around the blastzones on a walkoff like that.

The fact is, once you're aware of the Wuhu Island glitch, it is really easy not to get caught by it. The stage is essentially separated by walls and slopes into two parts, and if you stay on the left, your opponent is going to have a hell of a time approaching you because the position is so strong. If it was grand finals at Evo and someone lost a stock to the glitch, my response would be, "Wow, why didn't you know about that, and if you did, why did you approach there? How did you make it to grand finals?" Now add the fact that the boat is one of many transformations on the stage and one of the rarest, that the glitch is very matchup-dependent and doesn't work with a lot of characters...

We have something like 3-4 stages legal with a feature that can lead to very quick, easy 0% kills if you approach your opponent in the wrong place and the wrong time. Hell, Wuhu has a bunch of those too. But we don't ban for them, because players are expected to know not to approach in that situation, and to wait until the stage shifts again and get free bubble damage. Same deal with Wuhu, it's just not quite as obvious.
Since when was knowing the glitches in the game considered appropriate game knowledge? Sure if pros want to win they should know about it, but it's not anything like wavedashing or cancelling where the devs are aware of it and people are simply making full use of the physics of the game, a glitch like the boat on Wuhu was clearly not intended. This isn't even about the pros anymore, it trickles down all the way to the average competing player. "What the heck? Why did I just die at 0%? Oh guess you didn't know about the glitch" - this is totally different than "the blast zones shrink during stage transformation" which is much more readily perceived as a gameplay mechanic and intended rather than not like in the former.

They could have run random select FD/BF/SV for all 3 games, 3 minute timed, banned Diddy, Sheik, and Ness, and with that many top players present, people still would have watched.
I know that. That's been my point this whole time. Whatever the nationals set, that's what everyone's going to end up having to adapt to regardless if we like it, but if we're loud enough there may be SOME compromise
 
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which is why you ban it vs Lucario
Actually, that's a really bad reason to ban it against Lucario. No, you ban it against Lucario because it's got some of the largest blastzones of any legal stage, and people tend to live longer there. And because when Lucario lives past 120, your life becomes very, very unpleasant.

Since when was knowing the glitches in the game considered appropriate game knowledge?
If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say since at least Melee. Or do you think they coded that on purpose? Hell, depending on how you want to classify it, wavedashing is a glitch - an unintended interaction based on how landing with an airdodge works. That's kind of a big deal. Your claim that it's clearly intended and designed... Citation, please? It doesn't seem like it. Or how about the numerous gameplay-defining glitches in Brawl? You think they meant for Snake to be able to slide 3/4ths of the way across FD with his mortar? Or for whatever the hell this is? I kinda don't. I've died to falcos hitting me with Usmashes from halfway across the stage. And that's just Smash. What about other games? Street Fighter isn't quite as notoriously glitchy, but if you look into the development history of Street Fighter 2, the original combo system was actually a glitch that they didn't remove because it would have been too much work. Happy accidents and whatnot.

So yeah, the answer to your question is "since the very beginning of fighting games". I'm willing to bet you'll find similar issues in famous shooters and various other titles. These glitches are how you push your edge, and unless they become a real problem for gameplay, they don't warrant being banned. The Wuhu island glitch is matchup-dependent, rare, and easily avoidable.

a glitch like the boat on Wuhu was clearly not intended. This isn't even about the pros anymore, it trickles down all the way to the average competing player. "What the heck? Why did I just die at 0%? Oh guess you didn't know about the glitch" - this is totally different than "the blast zones shrink during stage transformation" which is much more readily perceived as a gameplay mechanic and intended rather than not like in the former.
If you die because you didn't know something your opponent did, and which is easily common knowledge, then it is your fault and I have no sympathy. It's a glitch. So what? In brawl, people feel through stages. They literally just fell right into PS1 and Delfino and died for no reason. By comparison, this glitch is well-defined, easy to test, and easy to avoid. It's not a legitimate reason to ban the stage by any stretch of the imagination. If I was playing in a matchup where I knew this worked on me, I wouldn't ban the stage. Why? Because I know to avoid it! Camp the boat - overhangs like that are the reason Pilotwings, Venom, and Corneria are all banned in their respective games.
 
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CatRaccoonBL

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Nothing at all with Wuhu Island? So if it was grand finals at evo and someone lost a stock (or god forbid, the game) due to the glitch at the boat, THEN what? Don't say its non-replicable because clearly people have managed to replicate it. If something of the sort has even a 1% probability of occurring why would TOs risk it?

This stage has been legal despite all of this. And yes, this could happen at EVO.

That's a waste of a ban though

Since when was knowing the glitches in the game considered appropriate game knowledge?
Well, if you are going to learn about it all the other things needed to he good, you would probably find out about the glitch at some point.

Sure if pros want to win they should know about it, but it's not anything like wavedashing or cancelling where the devs are aware of it and people are simply making full use of the physics of the game, a glitch like the boat on Wuhu was clearly not intended.
...I'm not sure what the devs intending, not being aware of or not has to do with anything.
 

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@ The_Jiggernaut The_Jiggernaut I've seen your thread and I dislike it. I am fundamentally opposed to reducing the number of Omega stages available, anything other than letting the counterpicking player choose the stage both over-complicates the rules and negatively affects the gameplay. I also dislike how you reference wall-jumping as a reason to choose a different character on certain Omega stages here, and come up with this in your own thread:

However, if you can wall jump you can also upB which is far more reliable and safe. Thus the ability to walljump is outclassed by upB and there is no strategic difference between the stages.
I understand that you have provided counter-arguments but none of your arguments hold water to begin with, I'm all for a recommended list of Omegas and for information about Omegas to be spread but reducing FD to 4 stages alone is a bad thing. Surely the better option is educating smashers about the 9 categories of Omega stages we've come up with and what they do.
 

The_Jiggernaut

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@ The_Jiggernaut The_Jiggernaut I've seen your thread and I dislike it. I am fundamentally opposed to reducing the number of Omega stages available, anything other than letting the counterpicking player choose the stage both over-complicates the rules and negatively affects the gameplay. I also dislike how you reference wall-jumping as a reason to choose a different character on certain Omega stages here, and come up with this in your own thread:



I understand that you have provided counter-arguments but none of your arguments hold water to begin with, I'm all for a recommended list of Omegas and for information about Omegas to be spread but reducing FD to 4 stages alone is a bad thing. Surely the better option is educating smashers about the 9 categories of Omega stages we've come up with and what they do.
Look, you've got it all wrong. You have grossly misinterpreted the point of my thread.

The arguments are designed to be fallacious. All of them overgeneralize, all of them are presumptuous. That was the entire point. They are statements designed to be disproved. And I state this at the top of the thread.

The purpose of the thread was to have the community generate as many counter-examples as possible, and in doing so I could prove objectively if there were meaningful differences in the stages, or if they are indeed interchangeable.

It's called "Proof by contradiction". If can make a statement opposite to what I believe, and then use a counter-example to prove the statement wrong, that directly implies that my original belief was correct. This is powerful because it means I don't have to manually check the entire cast. Obviously my math background is showing here, and I'm sorry if you weren't aware of this, but the statement you just quoted me that apparently invalidates my argument in this thread is something I believe to be false. That's why I wrote it.
 
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[Deuce]

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Actually, that's a really bad reason to ban it against Lucario. No, you ban it against Lucario because it's got some of the largest blastzones of any legal stage, and people tend to live longer there. And because when Lucario lives past 120, your life becomes very, very unpleasant.



If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say since at least Melee. Or do you think they coded that on purpose? Hell, depending on how you want to classify it, wavedashing is a glitch - an unintended interaction based on how landing with an airdodge works. That's kind of a big deal. Your claim that it's clearly intended and designed... Citation, please? It doesn't seem like it. Or how about the numerous gameplay-defining glitches in Brawl? You think they meant for Snake to be able to slide 3/4ths of the way across FD with his mortar? Or for whatever the hell this is? I kinda don't. I've died to falcos hitting me with Usmashes from halfway across the stage. And that's just Smash. What about other games? Street Fighter isn't quite as notoriously glitchy, but if you look into the development history of Street Fighter 2, the original combo system was actually a glitch that they didn't remove because it would have been too much work. Happy accidents and whatnot.



If you die because you didn't know something your opponent did, and which is easily common knowledge, then it is your fault and I have no sympathy. It's a glitch. So what? In brawl, people feel through stages. They literally just fell right into PS1 and Delfino and died for no reason. By comparison, this glitch is well-defined, easy to test, and easy to avoid. It's not a legitimate reason to ban the stage by any stretch of the imagination. If I was playing in a matchup where I knew this worked on me, I wouldn't ban the stage. Why? Because I know to avoid it! Camp the boat - overhangs like that are the reason Pilotwings, Venom, and Corneria are all banned in their respective games.
I wouldn't say intended but rather acknowledged. Even then, it's not the same as randomly dying to a throw that you didn't know was coming. It has a much greater effect in the volatility of the outcome of a match because if landed it was a 100% kill. You say this glitch is easily common knowledge? Maybe to people who browse forums regularly, but to the average player or even viewer it is definitely not. Just because its avoidable to people who know it doesn't make it fair for newcomers who haven't seen it before. Things like blast zones are testable because its something an average player can be genuinely curious of. This glitch however is not only arcane enough to not be tested for independently, but also replicable for those in the know. That along with the significance in its effects are what makes it an issue
 
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Pazx

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Look, you've got it all wrong. You have grossly misinterpreted the point of my thread.

The arguments are designed to be fallacious. All of them overgeneralize, all of them are presumptuous. That was the entire point. They are statements designed to be disproved. And I state this at the top of the thread.

The purpose of the thread was to have the community generate as many counter-examples as possible, and in doing so I could prove objectively if there were meaningful differences in the stages, or if they are indeed interchangeable.

It's called "Proof by contradiction". If can make a statement opposite to what I believe, and then use a counter-example to prove the statement wrong, that directly implies that my original belief was correct. This is powerful because it means I don't have to manually check the entire cast. Obviously my math background is showing here, and I'm sorry if you weren't aware of this, but the statement you just quoted me that apparently invalidates my argument in this thread is something I believe to be false. That's why I wrote it.
You have logically disproven each of your statements in that thread (aside from the first and last which I'll get to at some point, someone in this thread a few pages back had a few thing to say about Omega Palutena's not being a good substitute for FD) which leads me to believe that there is no way to reduce the number of functionally different Omega stages. From what you've already gathered, are you actually hopeful as to reducing the number below 8 or 9 different archetypes?

Apologies for coming off condescending earlier, It's been a long week.
 

The_Jiggernaut

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Apology accepted. I do understand that my thread isn't as clear as it could be in what it's doing, so I have my share of the blame on that. I hope the upcoming weekend helps with the stressful matters.


Firstly, your help in providing more counter-examples would be helpful indeed. The reason why I'm even looking for more than one counter-example is a bit more complicated to describe outright.

I guess you could say that we can take a stage out of the Omega stage list if every single matchup in the game has a better stage pick for either side. But it's easier to count out a stage if every matchup isn't effected by that difference. If that makes any sense.

So like, even if villager really enjoys camping from under Fat Lip Floaters and that and that alone makes the stage different from Overhanging walls, if we can "offer" villager a stage where he can do camp like that and more, then we can remove Fat Lip Floaters from our stage list and no strategic choices are lost.

So although there is at least one counter-example on most of the statements, it's still possible to reduce things down if those counter-examples can be passed off to stages still in the list, so to speak.

However, if we find that the stage list is irreducible beyond 9 stages, I'm just as excited to discover that fact as I would be that it is reducible. Because it's an objective argument, it would mean (more or less) that the debate of how different the stages are would be over, and we could then discuss how to handle that information.
 
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I wouldn't say intended but rather acknowledged. Even then, it's not the same as randomly dying to a throw that you didn't know was coming. It has a much greater effect in the volatility of the outcome of a match because if landed it was a 100% kill. You say this glitch is easily common knowledge? Maybe to people who browse forums regularly, but to the average player or even viewer it is definitely not. Just because its avoidable to people who know it doesn't make it fair for newcomers who haven't seen it before.
Yes. See also: literally any dangerous/lethal tech in a fighting game before it becomes common knowledge. You think I saw that DACUS coming? I had no clue it was heading my way. Or the first guy to get Rufio'd - you think he saw that 0-death coming? You think the first person to learn about waveshining didn't surprise a few people with it? Look, if you go to a tournament and get beaten by something you didn't know about, that's called the metagame advancing. Ignorance cannot be an excuse. It just can't. We can't let "they didn't know" become an excuse for why we should ban things or why worse players should win. "I don't know how to deal with X, we should ban it" is the antithesis of competitive play. And in this case, we know how to deal with X. New players should be reminded that they can check out the forums, learn more about the available legal stages before the tournament, and generally ask a lot of questions. It's a steep punish for people who don't know about it, but I bet you this - nobody is gonna get hit by it twice. Knowing more about the game is something that helps you not lose, and that's a good thing. This glitch is descrete, avoidable, not easily executed, and does not even begin to qualify as banworthy. The argument "new players might not know" is a terrible argument to ban anything.

And complaining "it's a glitch" is not a reason to lower the ceiling. Something being a glitch does not make it any less part of the game. It still needs to justify itself as being banworthy. If this was intended behavior on Wuhu, would your argument change? It shouldn't.
 
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[Deuce]

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Yes. See also: literally any dangerous/lethal tech in a fighting game before it becomes common knowledge. You think I saw that DACUS coming? I had no clue it was heading my way. Or the first guy to get Rufio'd - you think he saw that 0-death coming? You think the first person to learn about waveshining didn't surprise a few people with it? Look, if you go to a tournament and get beaten by something you didn't know about, that's called the metagame advancing. Ignorance cannot be an excuse. It just can't. We can't let "they didn't know" become an excuse for why we should ban things or why worse players should win. "I don't know how to deal with X, we should ban it" is the antithesis of competitive play. And in this case, we know how to deal with X. New players should be reminded that they can check out the forums, learn more about the available legal stages before the tournament, and generally ask a lot of questions. It's a steep punish for people who don't know about it, but I bet you this - nobody is gonna get hit by it twice. Knowing more about the game is something that helps you not lose, and that's a good thing. This glitch is descrete, avoidable, not easily executed, and does not even begin to qualify as banworthy. The argument "new players might not know" is a terrible argument to ban anything.

And complaining "it's a glitch" is not a reason to lower the ceiling. Something being a glitch does not make it any less part of the game. It still needs to justify itself as being banworthy. If this was intended behavior on Wuhu, would your argument change? It shouldn't.
Look, do you think CEO and EVO will run all 13 stages as legal starters yes or no? To me it was doubtful given their history. You keep putting words in my mouth while forcing me to defend their decisions when Im really sitting on the liberal side of the fence with this-
 
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[Deuce]

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So we AGREE, then why are we even arguing? Huge time down the drain

Now that we've come full circle, what I originally posited was what stages WOULD they settle with and what would they omit??
 
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I wouldn't say intended but rather acknowledged. Even then, it's not the same as randomly dying to a throw that you didn't know was coming. It has a much greater effect in the volatility of the outcome of a match because if landed it was a 100% kill. You say this glitch is easily common knowledge? Maybe to people who browse forums regularly, but to the average player or even viewer it is definitely not. Just because its avoidable to people who know it doesn't make it fair for newcomers who haven't seen it before. Things like blast zones are testable because its something an average player can be genuinely curious of. This glitch however is not only arcane enough to not be tested for independently, but also replicable for those in the know. That along with the significance in its effects are what makes it an issue
What about Ness Yoyo Glitch or Ice Climbers freeze glitch in Melee? You have to forfeit the match (as far as I'm aware) if you perform these at a tournament because you didn't know about them. What about the whole in the center of Pokémon Stadium in Melee; I mean it happened on stream during Apex. What about falling through basically every single stage in Brawl (I mean I've fallen though Smashville at least 5 times all my time playing Brawl). Glitches are things you have to be aware of and know how to avoid them, regardless of who you are.
 
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