Stage Analysis & Discussion Thread

[popsofctown]

I bet Wiley Castle works fine in a FLSS system. I don't know of anything degenerate to it.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I bet Wiley Castle works fine in a FLSS system. I don't know of anything degenerate to it.

Yellow Devil is highly disruptive, although that isn't quite the same thing as degenerate. However, it occupies a lot of space and is generally an annoyance to everyone. And killing it creates a powerful explosion that deals 45-50% if you're caught in the whole thing.

On the bright side, other than the explosion there's nothing on the stage that's actually a threat. Yellow Devil itself can't kill you until over 300%, unless you're Hyper Smash Shulk or something I guess.

 

[Linkshot]

I think the weirdest thing about Wily's Castle is just how much the Yellow Devil can push you by existing near you. I tried to do an attack behind him and figured I'd safely land, but the mechanic that keep entities a fair distance from each other shoved me past the ledge and killed me. It was a weird interaction, but it's quickly learnable, whatever. I think the Yellow Devil is barely more intrusive than Halberd's stuff, and far less of a deciding factor due to no kill potential.

The legality of Wily's Castle comes down to this: Is fighting for the boss explosion an okay competitive aspect, even though the two other boss stages violate legality?

 

[J_the_Man]

I don't want something that frequently disrupts my ability to get in between me and my opponent and can rack up damage on me on my stages. Even if the Yellow Devil can't kill, it's incredibly disruptive, hogs a lot of space, and just downright doesn't allow me to face my opponent. Unlike the Combo Cannon on Halberd, which is easy to avoid by just moving around, you're guaranteed to get hit by the Devil. There's no doubt in my mind that Wily's Castle, san some miracle that we get a stage hazards on/off switch, should and will remained banned at tournaments.

 

[popsofctown]

As Linkshot caught onto, I'm mostly speculating what large amounts of stage knowledge do to change how the stage plays out.

 

[Sucumbio]

Sorry to be off topic or if this is a ****ty question but I'm fixin to host locals so what's the concensus among top players Omega only, or what. I practice mainly on omegas both offline and online but from a meta pov that could backfire so...

Plus we all remember how japan did us... FD. Ugh.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Sorry to be off topic or if this is a ****ty question but I'm fixin to host locals so what's the concensus among top players Omega only, or what. I practice mainly on omegas both offline and online but from a meta pov that could backfire so...

Plus we all remember how japan did us... FD. Ugh.

Closest thing to a consensus is Full List Stage Striking (FLSS) for game one with the following stages:

Battlefield
Final Destination/Omegas*
Smashville
Town & City
Lylat Cruise
Kongo Jungle 64
Castle Siege
Duck Hunt
Halberd
Pokemon Stadium 2
Delfino Plaza
Skyloft
Wuhu Island

For game 2 onward, the winner gets to ban some number of stages (exact number is basically up to the rulemaker, IDK what the standard is for a 13 stage list) before the loser picks the stage. Then they choose characters.

That said there are people who dislike some of the above stages for various reasons, although IMO they all boil down to personal preference and thus hold no weight if you're considering banning them outright.

*Omegas allowed only as a substitute for Final Destination in the counterpick phase.

 

[warriorman222]

On a scale of 1-10, with 7 being legal reqs(Basically something like PS2), Where would Orbital gate Assault and Gamer rank? And why? Neither seems that horrible to me.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

On a scale of 1-10, with 7 being legal reqs(Basically something like PS2), Where would Orbital gate Assault and Gamer rank? And why? Neither seems that horrible to me.

You'll get different answers from different people. I wouldn't mind playing on either in the slightest, personally.

Here are some possible complaints I can see cropping up for them:

Orbital Gate Assault

• Pokefloats IN SPACE means no stable main platform.
• Transition from first missile to Arwings requires getting hit by (non-damaging, fixed knockback) explosion, otherwise players risk falling to their death depending on how good their recovery is.
• Exhaust flames, stray missiles (total of 2 over a loop) and force fields on Orbital Gate itself constitute damaging hazards. (Of these, only the force field can really kill.)

Gamer

• 5-Volt (aka Mom) is a powerful hazard with varying amounts of warning.
• Warnings for Mom are sometimes fakeouts.
• Warnings for Mom are sometimes drowned out by BGM. (Use "Gamer" BGM for best results.)
• Layout is randomized on match start, sometimes creates circle camp situations.
• Layout sometimes contains additional vectors for Mom to attack from (sketchpad and game system).
• Mom's patterns can catch players by surprise if they don't practice a fair bit first.

EDIT: Links to my threads for further reading if you want:
Orbital Gate Assault
Gamer

 

[warriorman222]

You'll get different answers from different people. I wouldn't mind playing on either in the slightest, personally.

Here are some possible complaints I can see cropping up for them:

Orbital Gate Assault

• Pokefloats IN SPACE means no stable main platform. yeah, I remeber when that one guy won on Pilotwings cause of that. Still, it won't screw things up too badly, sicne each transition is almost always predictable, becaus eit happens at SET TIMES. At those times, don't try comboes that could be broken.
• Transition from first missile to Arwings requires getting hit by (non-damaging, fixed knockback) explosion, otherwise players risk falling to their death depending on how good their recovery is. Yeah, that's an actual issue. Your opponent can purposely launch you after the 2nd missle to ensure you don't get hit, killing you. But most people are inexperienced and won't think that deep. Then again, the inexperienced will jump. And you shouldn't be using a character with bad vertical recovery here, as coincidentally said characters have extra issues on the stage.
• Exhaust flames, stray missiles (total of 2 over a loop) and force fields on Orbital Gate itself constitute damaging hazards. (Of these, only the force field can really kill.) Of these, only the force field matters. And it's good it's there, because If it was a normal wall, horizontal kills would never happen. Plus, it only kills at 150%, and can be teched, so it isn't super busted or anything. It semi spikes, but you bounce off the missile.

Gamer

• 5-Volt (aka Mom) is a powerful hazard with varying amounts of warning. The warning is almost always enough.
• Warnings for Mom are sometimes fakeouts. True. and then you tried to knock your opponent into a trap that didn't exist. Or maybe you gave up stage control to hide. Yeah, this could be bad. But
• Warnings for Mom are sometimes drowned out by BGM. (Use "Gamer" BGM for best results.) Use Gamer BGM for best results.
• Layout is randomized on match start, sometimes creates circle camp situations. I don't even. How do you circle camp here? Even the worst layouts can be gotten around? Well, then again i have seen minor runaway, but it 's not even near Pilotwings levels of terrible.
• Layout sometimes contains additional vectors for Mom to attack from (sketchpad and game system). Neither of them have lasting frames, sketchpad has like 2 frames to hit you, and does less damage and can be ducked under. Gamepad is telegraphable, and doesn't have additional power.
• Mom's patterns can catch players by surprise if they don't practice a fair bit first. Then practice. Simple, right? Just from Classic Mode(I have gone onto the stage willingly... twice.), I can point out and avoid all the hazards.

EDIT: Links to my threads for further reading if you want:
Orbital Gate Assault
Gamer

My stuff is in bold. But still, neither stage is problematic, and both should be allowed. "Poke Floats with explosions" is better than Poke Floats creatively, competetively, and graphically. I think they both deserve a chance outside of experiments.

 

[Linkshot]

Just want to point out that Yellow Devil's two attacks are shieldable (one is reflectable, not sure about absorption and pull though), so stage control becomes maintaining distance from Yellow Devil without getting cornered at the ledge. The body parts have a very low refresh rate, so you can shield one and not fear getting hit by an immediate one after. I think, at most, the Yellow Devil travelling can hit you 3 times, just because the refresh rate only gives it that much.

 

[ぱみゅ]

OGA and Gamer are potentially usable, OGA requires a lot of stage knowledge (about as much as Kalos Pokémon League, both I love (Kalos WAAAAAAY more than OGA); but if people are complaining about WuHu and Skyloft levels of knowledge, I don't have high hopes for it).
Gamer's only issue us that it would require you to restart the match as many times as necessary until a layout without that Cave of Life/Circle Camp thingy shows up. 5-Volt isn't really that bad.

 

[J_the_Man]

OGA and Gamer are potentially usable, OGA requires a lot of stage knowledge (about as much as Kalos Pokémon League, both I love (Kalos WAAAAAAY more than OGA); but if people are complaining about WuHu and Skyloft levels of knowledge, I don't have high hopes for it).
Gamer's only issue us that it would require you to restart the match as many times as necessary until a layout without that Cave of Life/Circle Camp thingy shows up. 5-Volt isn't really that bad.

I'm not in agreement that Gamer should be legal. That 5-volt can kill very early means that a match on Gamer simply becomes who smacks who into 5-volt enough times first. Especially when it's hard to get three stocks in tournaments, then a close game where two people are at or around 60% could quickly put someone down a stock and really behind.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I'm not in agreement that Gamer should be legal. That 5-volt can kill very early means that a match on Gamer simply becomes who smacks who into 5-volt enough times first. Especially when it's hard to get three stocks in tournaments, then a close game where two people are at or around 60% could quickly put someone down a stock and really behind.

It's not terribly hard to avoid 5-Volt if you pay attention to the background. Also disable all BGMs except "Gamer," it really makes a difference.

Like, seriously, play a few matches against the AI and focus on avoiding 5-Volt.

 

[J_the_Man]

It's not terribly hard to avoid 5-Volt if you pay attention to the background. Also disable all BGMs except "Gamer," it really makes a difference.

Like, seriously, play a few matches against the AI and focus on avoiding 5-Volt.

It's easy to avoid 5-Volt against the AI, because you can control the whole stage against it the entire match. Playing on Gamer against a skilled human opponent is an entirely different thing.

 

[Tybis]

I don't think 5-volt is the biggest issue with Gamer, it's the randomized layouts and potential huge time sink for a non-ceiling layout to appear. And even if all the randomized layouts were "legal" material, the fact is that the layout you get can not be planned around, and that doesn't do the stage any competitive favors.

By contrast, OGA is entirely consistent (at least from what I can tell), thus every event can be planned around. For this reason I'd support OGA over Gamer in terms of legality.

 

[Piford]

I think we can all agree this stage is banned

 

[ぱみゅ]

PLEASE BAN ASAP

 

[Jaxas]

I think we can all agree this stage is banned

What caused this, was it any separate piece of the Footstool->Raptor Boost + height or was it just the perfect combination?

 

[Linkshot]

Looks like the combination. Footstool placing Falcon's body briefly inside the stage, Raptor Boost locking it in place and dashing through the stage, and then being slightly too low to land on the stage still.

Also, OGA is entirely consistent, yes, but there's one transition that always feels like my stock is up to a crapshoot (missile -> arwings)

 

[Wilyen]

so why is luigi's mansion banned again?

 

[The Stoopid Unikorn]

so why is luigi's mansion banned again?

 

[popsofctown]

Yes, CPU3's don't smash DI or tech. Good job. You are so smart. We can't have that stage legal until we are at least as good as cpu3. I think it will take us 20 years to get there.

 

[Tybis]

Also, OGA is entirely consistent, yes, but there's one transition that always feels like my stock is up to a crapshoot (missile -> arwings)

On either missile->arwing transformation, you can simply stand on the missile when it blows up and you'll always be hit up to at least the arwings. The missile explosions deal 0% and the knockback growth is so low I couldn't even die from it at 999%.

 

[Locke 06]

I think we can all agree this stage is banned

So, BF can have a glitch like that... and Mario Circuit cannot.

#LegalizeMarioCircuit

 

[ParanoidDrone]

So, BF can have a glitch like that... and Mario Circuit cannot.

#LegalizeMarioCircuit

#LegalizeWuhuIsland too.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Double post for visibility although I'm not sure many people will care about Yoshi's Island. The Melee version, not the Brawl one.

 

[Zylach]

I just found this out earlier today by complete accident and I was curious whether others were also aware: In Skyloft, during the stage transition when it flies underneath Skyloft itself, there is a point where the stage is able to spike a player downwards on the far top-right side. Not sure what this does to its competitive viability but it seemed like something that ought to be mentioned in the stage discussion.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I just found this out earlier today by complete accident and I was curious whether others were also aware: In Skyloft, during the stage transition when it flies underneath Skyloft itself, there is a point where the stage is able to spike a player downwards on the far top-right side. Not sure what this does to its competitive viability but it seemed like something that ought to be mentioned in the stage discussion.

This is a known thing. The island of Skyloft in general forms a damaging hazard when the stage is in motion, it deals 12%. Trying to exhaustively document all possible times where it can hit a player is something I'm not prepared to do, although I think other people here are more...enthusiastic about the prospect than I am, so maybe that'll happen sometime in the future.

 

[Zylach]

This is a known thing. The island of Skyloft in general forms a damaging hazard when the stage is in motion, it deals 12%. Trying to exhaustively document all possible times where it can hit a player is something I'm not prepared to do, although I think other people here are more...enthusiastic about the prospect than I am, so maybe that'll happen sometime in the future.

Good to hear. I don't play this stage often and my friend and I freaked out when it happened today. He was around 120% anyway so he should've been dead anyway. Sounds like it won't kill like that at most percents that send you that high without killing you anyway so it doesn't sound like a huge problem for the stage's competitive viability.

 

[Piford]

Good to hear. I don't play this stage often and my friend and I freaked out when it happened today. He was around 120% anyway so he should've been dead anyway. Sounds like it won't kill like that at most percents that send you that high without killing you anyway so it doesn't sound like a huge problem for the stage's competitive viability.

The stage hitboxes is usually right at the very edge of the blastzone and will only really matter towards kill percent. The only times it really matters, it makes itself pretty obvious by swooping in from the background.

 

[xTheSilverStar]

#LegalizeWuhuIsland too.

Has anyone seen the ness instakill glitch on wuhu island? It can be legal if they fix it, but as of now, no

 

[ParanoidDrone]

Has anyone seen the ness instakill glitch on wuhu island? It can be legal if they fix it, but as of now, no

The Ness glitch requires that:

• Ness
• Uses down throw
• Against Villager or Wario
• In a specific location
• During a specific transformation
• At a specific time during the transformation
• And pray to RNGesus that it rolls the 10% chance to work.

Alternately you could be Lucario or Pikachu and do the same thing.

Meanwhile the opposite side of the boat is a classic defensive position that you can camp if you're really super scared of the whole thing. And the boat itself is one of the rarest transformations on the entire stage, appearing literally and exactly once out of every 16 transformations.

Not to mention we just saw a gif of a glitch on Battlefield where Captain Falcon fell through the stage. Why is Battlefield somehow exempt from the "rare glitch = ban" train but not Wuhu Island?

On a final note, stage strikes and bans are a thing. As a last resort, you could simply ban Wuhu Island if your opponent uses Ness/Lucario/Pikachu. IDK if those three would otherwise like the stage in the first place, though.

Wuhu Island thread for your reading pleasure.

EDIT: On a completely different subject, I made a thread on Palutena's Temple.

 

[Piford]

Also, I'd take the Wuhu Island glitch over the Battlefield glitch anyway. The Wuhu Island glitch at least rewards the player who did the good thing (getting the grab), while battlefield rewards the player who did the bad thing (getting edgeguarded).

Also the Wuhu glitch seems to work a bit differently on Lucario and Pikachu, as Lucario I could only get it to work on Shulk and Captain Falcon, while Pikachu I could only get it to work on Charizard.

 

[Slyshock]

Also the Wuhu glitch seems to work a bit differently on Lucario and Pikachu, as Lucario I could only get it to work on Shulk and Captain Falcon, while Pikachu I could only get it to work on Charizard.

I was able to pull it off using Pikachu on Donkey Kong first try, but couldn't get it to work on Diddy using Pikachu no matter what. I only tested those two after Charizard, but I think it's enough to say that whether or not Pikachu can pull off the trick depends on the size of the victim., with only larger targets being susceptible.

 

[Mario766]

I think we can all agree this stage is banned

Gotta ban Halberd and Delfino too, horizontal recoveries go straight through the ledge too.

Smash 4 no stages again.

 

[Piford]

I was able to pull it off using Pikachu on Donkey Kong first try, but couldn't get it to work on Diddy using Pikachu no matter what. I only tested those two after Charizard, but I think it's enough to say that whether or not Pikachu can pull off the trick depends on the size of the victim., with only larger targets being susceptible.

Yeah I was thinking it was something along those lines, seeing as the two it works with Lucario have basically the same stature, and Ness's are pretty similar. I still think it's a non issues because of how awkward it is. I constantly try to go for kills using the glitch in match but I'm never able to actually get it to work outside of testing.

 

[Slyshock]

I still think it's a non issues because of how awkward it is. I constantly try to go for kills using the glitch in match but I'm never able to actually get it to work outside of testing.

I've actually had a decent amount of luck pulling it off in matches due mostly to the ignorance of my opponents, but as has been frequently pointed out, it only works on certain characters, with certain characters, at one position of one transformation. Significantly less of a problem than temporary walk-offs, which afford a kill from a grab using anyone on anyone.

 

[Piford]

I've actually had a decent amount of luck pulling it off in matches due mostly to the ignorance of my opponents, but as has been frequently pointed out, it only works on certain characters, with certain characters, at one position of one transformation. Significantly less of a problem than temporary walk-offs, which afford a kill from a grab using anyone on anyone.

Temporary walk-offs aren't an issue. If your in range to get killed from a throw on a walk-off that means your playing way to close because you'll likely die earlier from anything not a grab. It's like running off stage and then complaining how easy it is to get spiked.

If someone is trying to camp the walk-offs, they are put into an edgeguard situation when the stage returns and they also gave up stage control. These are things you generally don't want to due to yourself, so why camp the walk-off? You gain nothing and lose everything, so it's an awful strategy.

 

[Slyshock]

Temporary walk-offs aren't an issue. If your in range to get killed from a throw on a walk-off that means your playing way to close because you'll likely die earlier from anything not a grab. It's like running off stage and then complaining how easy it is to get spiked.

I didn't mean to imply that temporary walk-offs were a bannable offense, just comparing their greater potential for abuse to the incredibly limited Wuhu Island boat glitch that some believe is a serious issue. In both situations an instant kill can occur, but the glitch is far less likely to occur than a walk-off kill due to a number of factors that have already been addressed several times throughout the course of this thread.