Meta Stage Legality Discussion Thread:

[W.A.C.]

As much as I love the stages Halberd and Isle Delfino, those stages have a ton of aspects to those stages that make their legality highly questionable. Isle Delfino is probably one of the most interesting legal stages in the game because of its environments and whatnot, but you can die at the stupidest of percentages because of the stages transformation, much of the environments encourage camping, and of course there's walkoff sections which will always be controversial. A lot of people find it really weird that stage is legal and I always pick that stage when I can as Diddy Kong at tournaments because its questionable traits greatly benefits a character like that. Then with Halberd, you have super low blast zones where a character like Rosalina can kill with an up air to Donkey Kong at 22% (Dabuz did this to DKwill) and stages hazards. Most of the stages hazards aren't that bad IMO, but the claw is flat out unfair and can decide the outcome of a match because the player was unluckily attacked by it, which is very bad for competitive play and should not be allowed for this alone. A completely random stage hazard should never be able to decide the outcome of a match during competitive play.

Despite the problems with those stages, Castle Siege's legality is easily the most questionable. Even at a casual level of playing this game years before I ever considered playing Smash competitively, myself and many others hated this stage in Brawl. Its transformations are some of the most bull**** transformations of any stage in the game. Super tiny blast zones with insanely weird transitions to the next area of a stage. Then there's the second section of the level, which is badly designed. Its walk-off sections can make opponents die at stupidly low percentages, it's so huge that opponents can stall or time out matches by running away, and the statues are super unfair to projectile based characters. This match in particular is a good example of why this stage should not be allowed. Anyone who watches that, please tell me why Castle Siege is a good stage for the competitive health of this game?

Then there's Duck Hunt, which is probably less controversial than Castle Siege, Halberd, and Isle Delfino, but I don't think it's a good stage for competitive play. The ducks are completely random and can mess with projectiles, the tree can encourage camping, and I've heard Little Mac can't even reach the tree. If that's true, couldn't a projectile based character just choose that map, go to the tree, and spam projectiles until time outs? How is that even remotely fair? Not to mention the Dog can screw people over, but that's mostly the player's fault because of the predictability of where the Dog will go.

I feel the only stages currently legal that deserve to be legal (regardless if they're starter or counterpicks) are FD (including Omegas). Battlefield, Smashville, Town & City, and Lylat Cruise (entirely because the recent balance patch turned this into an actual good stage). Every other legal stage has some aspects to them that just makes the game look bad competitively, which sucks because a stage like Isle Delfino is a good stage at showing off much of what makes Smash such a unique fighting game. But when it comes to picking which stages are legal, we should keep in mind that we want Smash 4 to be the best competitive fighting game it can be. Every stage provides advantages for specific characters, but some of those advantages are a result of stage design that is not good for competitive play. Plus some characters have their viability hurt enormously from stages that are the most unfair in decision. On the King Dedede board, some people's only consensus on which stages are good for Dedede are just Smashville and Town & City, with Final Destination only being good depending on the matchup. The characters that benefit the most from the most controversial stages are typically high tier characters, which results in a less balance game for competitive play.

I think most people would agree that stages like Final Destination (including omegas), Battlefield, and Smashville are all stages that benefits characters in interesting ways that are a result of good design for competitive play. They're not perfect by any means and some of us might even dislike one or two of those stages (I've never liked Battlefield honestly), but there's an consensus that they should be allowed. Town & City and Lylat Cruise are more controversial than those three stages, but people typically agree they should be allowed at least as counter-pick stages. Pre-patch though, Lylat Cruise was probably one of the worst legal stages in the game that a lot of players would pick just because of its horrible ledges and tilting. Tilting is still a thing, but I don't think that one trait alone should take away its legality.

It's really too bad there's no easy way to play Pokemon Stadium 2 without stage hazards unless a ton of people are in a match, because if it weren't for the transformations, this would be one of the best competitive stages in the game and we would have six solid stages that all deserve to be allowed. But at least we have five standard stages. Having only four stages that no matter what deserved to be allowed kind of sucked. Really wish more stages in this game were designed with competitive play in mind. Omegas help at least. Though I think omegas should be separate from Final Destination. A character that does super well on Final Destination can get screwed over badly by an omega stage's unique traits like if someone counter-picked Omega Kalos Pokemon to screw over a character with bad recovery. Maybe the best way of handling stage selection for Starter and Counter-Picks would be either this:

Starter Stage Selection
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville

Counterpick Stage Selection (Winner can ban two stages)
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Lylatt Cruise
Omegas

Or this...

Starter Stage Selection
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Lylatt Cruise

Counterpick Stage Selection (Winner can ban two stages)
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Lylatt Cruise
Omegas

I personally prefer the latter to reduce the overall dominance of Smashville as a stage, but the former list does make it where all the starter stages are the most fair neutral stages in the game. I thought about having three bans for counter-picks because omegas are separated, but most people typically ban one of the following stages: Castle Siege, Halberd, Isle Delfino, and Duck Hunt. I think there's only one time I've been at a Smash 4 tournament where a player didn't ban any of those stages (he banned Smashville and Town & City). Seriously, who here has never banned any of those four stages during the counter-picking process? Most people tend to ban two of those four stages against me during tournaments. Plus if three bans were allowed, basically a player could ban all three of the most neutral stages in the game.

After Evo, I think a lot of regions should come together to come up with a unified stage selection for tournaments across the country with the most competitive regions and best players having the largest influence. Apex 2015's ruleset was a reflection on what regions typically did and regions typically allowed all the stages that were allowed in Brawl, plus the stages Town & City and Duck Hunt. Apex 2016 will likely do the same thing. I think it's great we've experimented so much with the amount of stages we have largely to get a better idea of what should be allowed, but it's gotten to the point where we're now much better informed.

Edit-

Worth mentioning that if we were to get rid of counter-picking altogether, we would mostly just see Smashville constantly and I think players who do well at tournaments should be able to play well on a multitude of stages. Counter-picking is supposed to give your opponent who just lost some sort of upper hand in the stages selection process which is fair as long as the stage selection is good.

 

[Slyshock]

Starter Stage Selection
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Lylat Cruise

Counterpick Stage Selection (Winner can ban two stages)
Final Destination
Battlefield
Smashville
Town & City
Lylat Cruise
Omegas

A couple issues.

One, two stage bans is overkill for such a tiny stage list. The winner already gets to ban that many stages for the first round, and the simple addition of omegas is hardly game-changing enough to warrant the redundancy. If the counterpick phase is supposed to grant an advantage to the loser, then having that many bans simply won't work. Either just one ban like in Melee or even no bans would make far more sense.

Two, making omegas distinct from Final Destination unnecessarily clutters the stage list with virtually identical stages. While the omegas are slightly different from Final Destination, they're all still flat, static stages with the exact same blast zones. The omegas are also slightly different from each other, so if you think Final Destination and the omegas are different enough to separate, you'd also have to think that the omegas are different enough from one another to be broken into sub-categories. If you really want to keep omegas, you should make a clause that says that banning Final Destination also bans all omegas. Honestly though, since this stage list is already so conservative, you may as well just ban all omegas outright for the sake of simplicity.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

First of all, denouncing an entire country as crazy isn't a good idea. Like it or not, our major events will have to have stagelists somewhat similar to theirs if we want a global community. You yourself have stated that you do not believe that Halberd should be legal due to its ridiculously low ceiling, Japan just feels the same way for Delfino. Delfino also has a very low ceiling, has some transformations that are pure camping/waiting, and overall is just a stage you pick because you know weird things can happen there.

That "global community" thing? The amount of interplay between East Asia and virtually anywhere else is phenomenally low. Every once in a while, we send a couple of our very best there, or they send some of their very best to the US. And everyone should adapt their rulesets for that? What if the Japanese played with Wiley's and Pyrosphere legal, would you say "well, better adapt to what they're using"? No, because it's blatantly less competitive and has significant flaws. Banning almost 10 legitimate stages for no good reason is terrible ruleset design. It slashes the game's depth for no good reason.

As for Delfino, the comparison between Delfino and Halberd is flawed for the same reason that there's no comparison between Castle Siege and Colosseum. A constant threat cannot be given much berth, whereas a temporary threat can. And you really can't think of a reason people would pick Delfino other than "Weird things can happens there"? You could use that to describe every stage in the game except Final Destination! "Shieks only counterpick SV because they can get insanely early kills with the platform.", et cetera. It's a cop-out, a non-argument. Stages do things. This is a fact of Smash that simply cannot be ignored.

BPC's just an idiot. He doesn't understand that an entire competitive community can have a more conservative stage list without it being objectively wrong. It's pretty clear to most people that "they're crazy" isn't a valid argument.

Would it be objectively wrong to ban every character other than Fox? Would any decision be objectively wrong, regardless of how harmful for the metagame and the game's depth?

Despite the problems with those stages, Castle Siege's legality is easily the most questionable. Even at a casual level of playing this game years before I ever considered playing Smash competitively, myself and many others hated this stage in Brawl. Its transformations are some of the most bull**** transformations of any stage in the game. Super tiny blast zones with insanely weird transitions to the next area of a stage. Then there's the second section of the level, which is badly designed. Its walk-off sections can make opponents die at stupidly low percentages, it's so huge that opponents can stall or time out matches by running away, and the statues are super unfair to projectile based characters. This match in particular is a good example of why this stage should not be allowed. Anyone who watches that, please tell me why Castle Siege is a good stage for the competitive health of this game?

You know what happened in that match? A Ness consistently outplayed a Sonic, then basically SD'd twice.

No, I'm serious. The Ness made two incredibly stupid mistakes that cost him the match. He approached the Sonic near the blastzone on a walkoff (instead of doing the smart thing and holding back and waiting for a more advantageous position), then he grabbed (and sat there pummelling) the sonic while on the transforming part, offstage from the approaching stage. That's an SD. I have no sympathy for that Ness, because he threw that match away by making two incredibly basic, very costly mistakes. It's like looking at a match where a Ganon gets consistently outplayed, then gets dthrow -> dair spike and then a ganoncide on the next stock - no, Ganon isn't broken, the other player just made two bad mistakes in a high-risk environment. If that player had just continued to play solid and had been aware of the issues involved, this would not have happened.

This is the kind of thinking people hold. "Oh my god, that player was unable to adapt to a stage which has been around since ****ing Brawl, therefore the stage is broken and must be banned!" I'm not impressed, to put it bluntly. Deal with it. Your qualms about what is and is not competitive are completely meritless.

 

[webbedspace]

Apex 2015's ruleset was a reflection on what regions typically did

Not quite true. Kongo was banned almost solely on a theory that Jigglypuff and Peach could camp the barrel indefinitely, despite no substantial video evidence proving this. Until that point, Kongo was accepted in the vast majority of regions (several of which promptly banned it in order to be "Apex ruleset compliant" (which made a little sense then) and are still banned now to be "EVO ruleset compliant" (which makes somewhat less sense now given that many of them don't actually have customs or FLSS)).

 

[W.A.C.]

A couple issues.

One, two stage bans is overkill for such a tiny stage list. The winner already gets to ban that many stages for the first round, and the simple addition of omegas is hardly game-changing enough to warrant the redundancy. If the counterpick phase is supposed to grant an advantage to the loser, then having that many bans simply won't work. Either just one ban like in Melee or even no bans would make far more sense.

I did not know Melee only did one ban.

Two, making omegas distinct from Final Destination unnecessarily clutters the stage list with virtually identical stages. While the omegas are slightly different from Final Destination, they're all still flat, static stages with the exact same blast zones. The omegas are also slightly different from each other, so if you think Final Destination and the omegas are different enough to separate, you'd also have to think that the omegas are different enough from one another to be broken into sub-categories. If you really want to keep omegas, you should make a clause that says that banning Final Destination also bans all omegas.

Eh, you make a good point. It's probably best they're grouped together.

Honestly though, since this stage list is already so conservative, you may as well just ban all omegas outright for the sake of simplicity.

No, hell no. My stage list is conservative because there's a lack of solid competitive stages, not because I want a small stage selection. The omegas are good stages and reduce stage repetition, so they should not be banned.

You know what happened in that match? A Ness consistently outplayed a Sonic, then basically SD'd twice.

No, I'm serious. The Ness made two incredibly stupid mistakes that cost him the match. He approached the Sonic near the blastzone on a walkoff (instead of doing the smart thing and holding back and waiting for a more advantageous position), then he grabbed (and sat there pummelling) the sonic while on the transforming part, offstage from the approaching stage. That's an SD. I have no sympathy for that Ness, because he threw that match away by making two incredibly basic, very costly mistakes. It's like looking at a match where a Ganon gets consistently outplayed, then gets dthrow -> dair spike and then a ganoncide on the next stock - no, Ganon isn't broken, the other player just made two bad mistakes in a high-risk environment. If that player had just continued to play solid and had been aware of the issues involved, this would not have happened.

This is the kind of thinking people hold. "Oh my god, that player was unable to adapt to a stage which has been around since ****ing Brawl, therefore the stage is broken and must be banned!" I'm not impressed, to put it bluntly. Deal with it. Your qualms about what is and is not competitive are completely meritless.

The player made some dumb mistakes, but it just shows how the stage is such a lousy stage in general. Explain to me why you think Castle Siege is a stage worth keeping, because I haven't heard a single good argument in favor of it.

Not quite true. Kongo was banned almost solely on a theory that Jigglypuff and Peach could camp the barrel indefinitely, despite no substantial video evidence proving this. Until that point, Kongo was accepted in the vast majority of regions (several of which promptly banned it in order to be "Apex ruleset compliant" (which made a little sense then) and are still banned now to be "EVO ruleset compliant" (which makes somewhat less sense now given that many of them don't actually have customs or FLSS)).

Huh...I did not know that. I haven't heard much in favor of making that stage legal again for singles, probably because of the enormous blast zones.

 

[Pazx]

The omegas are good stages and reduce stage repetition, so they should not be banned.

This couldn't be any less true. Do you value aesthetics and music more than actual gameplay mechanics of stages, because that's almost the only thing Omega stages have that are different between them.

Anyway @ Ulevo since you've shown some respect to the Japanese ruleset, don't you think you should add Halberd, Lylat, Duck Hunt and Delfino to the "suspect" list?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

The player made some dumb mistakes, but it just shows how the stage is such a lousy stage in general. Explain to me why you think Castle Siege is a stage worth keeping, because I haven't heard a single good argument in favor of it.

I'll do that as soon as you explain to me why you think any stage other than Final Destination is a stage worth keeping.

 

[PUK]

Why Final destination is worth keeping? I saw a falcon using the visual to hide his falcon punch and won because of that.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Why Final destination is worth keeping? I saw a falcon using the visual to hide his falcon punch and won because of that.

Well pick any stage then and tell me why it's worth keeping. The point being that the question is flawed.

 

[webbedspace]

Huh...I did not know that. I haven't heard much in favor of making that stage legal again for singles, probably because of the enormous blast zones.

A bit of anecdata: out of the regions I know of which have Kongo legal, a good amount of them also run 3 stocks. One such region's commentator noted that this combination is more than a bit timeout-prone, but mused something to the effect of "eh, timeouts don't really affect regional weeklies much, and they can be hype when the percents are close."

 

[W.A.C.]

This couldn't be any less true. Do you value aesthetics and music more than actual gameplay mechanics of stages, because that's almost the only thing Omega stages have that are different between them.

That is insanely untrue. There are multiple types of omega stages and they can affect recovery by quite a lot.

I'll do that as soon as you explain to me why you think any stage other than Final Destination is a stage worth keeping.

Battlefield: While I'm not a big fan of this stage, its big emphasis on platforms and the much smaller ledges is a huge contrast to Final Destination which makes it a far better stage for specific characters. Its lack of stage hazards, unfair randomness, and stupidly low blast zones that polarizes the tier list makes this stage considerably more fair than most of the legal stages. Granted, this stage's blast zones are probably bigger than ideal, but I never see it result in tournament matches timing out unless custom Villager is involved...which can happen on pretty much any legal stage.

Smashville: This stage is typically viewed as the most neutral stage in the game because it takes ideas from both Final Destination and Battlefield. Like both stages, it doesn't really have any stage hazards, unfair randomness, or stupidly low blast zones that can result in characters dying at the dumbest of percentages from vertical kills. Pretty much the worst aspect to the stage (outside of its outdated visuals that I wish were updated) are the balloons. There's a predictability to them and they typically don't create issues in matches.

Town & City: About the only things on this stage people hate are the low blast zones and the fact the platforms leave. The platforms have a set predictability to them of when they're going to leave and very rarely do I see people die from vertical kills anywhere near the level of Halberd and Isle Delfino. Overall, it's typically regarded as a good stage at the very least and I haven't heard a single person argue this stage shouldn't be allowed in competitive play.

Lylat Cruise: Pre-patch, this stage sucked because the ledges were so awful. A lot of people would counter-pick this stage to screw over characters with bad or inferior recoveries. Fortunately, the balance patch fixed this problem, so now it's a good stage. The only problem is the tilting, but that aspect to the stage is nowhere near as problematic as it used to be because of the ledge changes. Plus isn't there a predictability to the tilting? I'm not 100% sure because people almost never played this stage pre-patch because almost everyone I knew hated it.

Whatever is regarded as unfair about those four stages is minimal compared to the problems found in Halberd, Isle Delfino, Duck Hunt, and ****ing Castle Siege.

A bit of anecdata: out of the regions I know of which have Kongo legal, a good amount of them also run 3 stocks. One such region's commentator noted that this combination is more than a bit timeout-prone, but mused something to the effect of "eh, timeouts don't really affect regional weeklies much, and they can be hype when the percents are close."

Ah. Both NorCal and SoCal banned it because of Apex and Evo. lol

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Battlefield: While I'm not a big fan of this stage, its big emphasis on platforms and the much smaller ledges is a huge contrast to Final Destination which makes it a far better stage for specific characters. Its lack of stage hazards, unfair randomness, and stupidly low blast zones that polarizes the tier list makes this stage considerably more fair than most of the legal stages. Granted, this stage's blast zones are probably bigger than ideal, but I never see it result in tournament matches timing out unless custom Villager is involved...which can happen on pretty much any legal stage.

And yet you've failed to answer the specific question. Why is this stag worth keeping? What makes it worth having in the ruleset? It's far better for specific characters - why not get rid of it to strip them of that advantage? What could it possibly add to the stagelist?

The answer, obviously, is depth. The stage offers significantly different gameplay from other stages, just like Smashville does, just like Delfino does, just like Castle Siege does. Just like every stage does. No stage has to justify its inclusion in the stagelist. You're looking at the issue exactly backwards. We start with a list of every stage, then strip away the ones that are not worth the depth they offer, usually by being excessively random or promoting degenerate strategies. Your belief that Castle Siege belongs stripped off that list is beyond bizarre, and the fact that you took a video with two thoroughly awful players making huge mistakes as evidence for the stage somehow being uncompetitive is more evidence that there's something wrong here with the way you make these evaluations, holding up bizarre things like the "ideal" size (whatever the hell that means) or the ledges on a stage (if you have trouble getting around those ledges, that's because you are bad).

Smashville: This stage is typically viewed as the most neutral stage in the game because it takes ideas from both Final Destination and Battlefield. Like both stages, it doesn't really have any stage hazards, unfair randomness, or stupidly low blast zones that can result in characters dying at the dumbest of percentages from vertical kills. Pretty much the worst aspect to the stage (outside of its outdated visuals that I wish were updated) are the balloons. There's a predictability to them and they typically don't create issues in matches.

 

[Piford]

Guys I think Smashville and Town and City are going to need to be banned. Their platform movements cause some BS things to happen.

 

[Ulevo]

Alright, something else I'm going to say that everyone should note.

If you want to discuss stages like Halberd, Duck Hunt, Delfino in more detail via a specific thread, we will do that. I will make a thread. However, I will not do that before we finish the current suspects. For one, regardless of how some of you feel about these stages, it does not change the fact they are used mostly everywhere, making them less controversial by default. Secondly, I find it highly suspect that I see arguments for supporting stages like Mario Circuit but then suddenly Castle Siege and Halberd are called to the stand to be tried. For consistency and to make sure we have congruency, I would like to test the lesser explored stages first.

Would it be objectively wrong to ban every character other than Fox? Would any decision be objectively wrong, regardless of how harmful for the metagame and the game's depth?

It's comments like this that have me call you an idiot and basically want to avoid debating with you. You know that's not a valid comparison, nor a perceivable one. You also act as though the Japanese just arbitrarily decided to ban said stages without a due process or reason behind their ruleset. You're calling it harmful, but to my knowledge their metagame is functioning just fine.

I do not agree with their stage list, but that does not mean I agree with how you approach your conclusions.

Anyway @ Ulevo since you've shown some respect to the Japanese ruleset, don't you think you should add Halberd, Lylat, Duck Hunt and Delfino to the "suspect" list?

As I noted above, I understand the philosophy behind why the Japanese have the list they do. That said, I do not agree with their list. We're not the Japanese community, and we shouldn't try to emulate them or base our decisions on the precedent they set. I was mostly noting that using personal attacks or sweeping claims is not a justified method in order to argue with someone's position, particularly when conveniently they collectively or singularly are not present to argue their point of view.

@ W.A.C. I have a lot to say about what you've mentioned, but it's too much to cover right now. I'll deal with it when I'm back home.

Just to note, characters like Zero Suit and Rosalina don't pull off surprise kills on just those stages:

 

[Woohoo982]

What about the 3DS?The ads version has different stages than the wii U,But heres my opinion on legal stages:
Wii U-Starter
Battlefield
Final Destination
Smashville
-------------------
Wii U-Counterpick
Town and City
Wii Fit Studio
Halberd
Castle Siege
Big Battlefield
---------------------
--------------------------
3DS-Starter
Battlefield
Final Destination
Yoshi's Island
--------------------
3DS-Counterpick
Tomodachi Life
Gaur Plain
Arena Ferox
Prism Tower
Rainbow Road

 

[Ulevo]

What about the 3DS?The ads version has different stages than the wii U,But heres my opinion on legal stages:
Wii U-Starter
Battlefield
Final Destination
Smashville
-------------------
Wii U-Counterpick
Town and City
Wii Fit Studio
Halberd
Castle Siege
Big Battlefield
---------------------
--------------------------
3DS-Starter
Battlefield
Final Destination
Yoshi's Island
--------------------
3DS-Counterpick
Tomodachi Life
Gaur Plain
Arena Ferox
Prism Tower
Rainbow Road

Because the Wii U is more prevalent and because I personally do not play the 3DS version, I did not cover it in this thread. It's more effective to cover just one rather than two at the same time. If you want to cover the 3DS, I encourage you create an equivalent thread that deals with the differences the Wii U does not share.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

It's comments like this that have me call you an idiot and basically want to avoid debating with you. You know that's not a valid comparison, nor a perceivable one. You also act as though the Japanese just arbitrarily decided to ban said stages without a due process or reason behind their ruleset. You're calling it harmful, but to my knowledge their metagame is functioning just fine.

Just like the metagame would function just fine if you removed one, two, three, or even most of the characters in the game. Hell, replace my statement about characters with stages - would it be objectively wrong to ban every stage except FD? There is a right and a wrong way to build a ruleset. The Japanese have built theirs the wrong way, with conclusions that simply make the game less deep and less competitive. The comparison works for that specific line of argument, but okay, it's got some issues. What if the only legal stage is FD, is that wrong?

As I noted above, I understand the philosophy behind why the Japanese have the list they do. That said, I do not agree with their list.

Based on what? Not being facetious here, I genuinely want to know.

 

[Firefoxx]

Every stage has problems, because its very likely none of these stages was made with absolute fairness in mind. The beauty of a large stage list is that it embraces this idea and allows for more characters to have stages that work well with their specific game plan. But this can sometimes come at a cost.

With the stock/percentage lead Wario can stall pretty hard on Duck Hunt, biking back and forth between the tree and the bush. You can stop him, but that doesn't really matter. Wario is never really stalling for the match to go to time, he's stalling to charge Waft. Duck Hunt allows Wario to take full advantage of his unique mechanic. It's just that his unique mechanic rewards him for stalling and stalling is generally seen as undesirable gameplay. Duck Hunt isn't the only stage that Wario can stall on, but its probably the one where his attempt to stall is the most obvious.

That clearly gives Wario a pretty great advantage on Duck Hunt, but is it greater than the advantage Sheik has on a stage like Smashville. Sheik's Fair is obviously a fantastic move, and the platform on Smashville allows her to use it to almost effortlessly carry victims across the stage and to a very early demise. Its almost uncanny how it travels at almost the perfect speed to allow her to do that. Sheik is quite possibly the best character in the game, and she has the tools to be good on any stage. But Smashville can give her a massive reward for capitalizing on relatively small mistakes that simply happened next to that platform.

Our reasoning for what is a fair stage in Smash has always been pretty subjective when a stages issues aren't immediately clear. A stage that confers a strong advantage to Sheik is far more concerning to me than a stage that confers an advantage to a character like Wario, and yet many Smash 4 players would question my sanity for suggesting that Smashville wasn't a 100% totally legal stage while I have heard the quite a few people argue against Duck Hunt's legality.

Obviously this is a little reductive, but I bring all this up as more of a philosophical point. Do we care enough about having a larger viable cast that we will accept a larger stage list to facilitate them, even if it means potentially introducing more opportunities for undesirable gameplay? What is more important to the future health of the game, the potential that more people's favorite characters are 'good', or the potential that a smaller stage list might speed up the game to make it a more desirable spectator experience?

 

[Jucchan]

As for Delfino, the comparison between Delfino and Halberd is flawed for the same reason that there's no comparison between Castle Siege and Colosseum. A constant threat cannot be given much berth, whereas a temporary threat can. And you really can't think of a reason people would pick Delfino other than "Weird things can happens there"? You could use that to describe every stage in the game except Final Destination! "Shieks only counterpick SV because they can get insanely early kills with the platform.", et cetera. It's a cop-out, a non-argument. Stages do things. This is a fact of Smash that simply cannot be ignored.

The only reason you would pick Delfino is for the walk-off kills, water, campy transformations, and basically anything that is not possible on any other legal stage except for Castle Siege, which has its own BS. You CAN'T counterpick Delfino for the low ceiling because if you are a character that kills off the top, your opponent should have banned Halberd and Delfino already. Now, you would say that "Then, SV should be banned because of Sheik", but that's why we have FLSS. If you are playing a Sheik, you should strike SV. There, problem solved. Less SV, no early Sheik kills.

Basically, a good solution is FLSS with the "5 starter list" for first match, then loser counterpicks out of the 5 stage list after winner strikes one stage. No player gets their best stage unless the opponent bans incorrectly or shares their favorite stage with the opponent, and the loser gets their 2nd best stage on counterpick. Less BS early kills, less one-sided matches, overall pretty neutral.

 

[Nintendrone]

Prepare for a wall of text, as I'm going to explain my thoughts on every stage…

THESE ARE MY OPINIONS AND APPLY FOR SINGLES ONLY
Green = Definitely legal
Yellow = Unsure (I would maybe include some of these to round out a stagelist for CP/FLSS)
Red = Should be banned

• Battlefield
  • The ceiling is fine.
• Big Battlefield
  • Size alone isn't banworthy, but BBF's size and numerous platforms, when together, have runaway potential, which is exacerbated by massive blastzones.
• Final Destination
  • The flash in the background is fine.
• Mario Circuit (SSB4)
  • The ceiling glitch only occurs at 2 specific points. The layouts are fine, the Shy Guys are a nonissue, and the transitions have a pattern.
• Mario Galaxy
  • Gravity is fine. Permanent walkoff is not.
• Mushroom Kingdom U
  • Nabbit ruins it with early KOs, player targeting, and difficulty getting killed. Other hazards are fine with decent warning.
• Delfino Plaza
  • All walkoffs and water are temporary. Low ceilings should not be banworthy.
• Luigi's Mansion
  • All caves of life can be removed, which greatly rewards stage control. I think the size and layout together make it not great for singles.
• Mario Circuit (Brawl)
  • Walkoff. Shy Guys are stronger than MK8 and take up huge chunks of stage.
• Jungle Hijinxs
  • Background layout combined with two layers makes runaway strong. The stage design doesn't work for singles.
• 75m
  • Walkoffs. Huge yet cramped with weird platforms and hazards.
• Kongo Jungle 64
  • I have seen no proof that infinite stalling is practical with the barrel. Large size/blastzones themselves aren't bannable.
• Skyloft
  • The transitions (including stage hits and floor glitches) are semi-predictable. No water, temp walkoffs.
• Bridge of Eldin
  • Huge, walkoffs, and the bridge breaking will completely stop a singles match. Offers very little otherwise.
• Temple
  • Infinite runaway, multiple caves of life, and many walls, compounded by massive size.
• Pyrosphere
  • Although big and the hazards are plentiful, Ridley is the only problem, and his power, frequency, alliance, and HP wreck the stage.
• Norfair
  • Lava jets, rising lava, lava wall, and lava wave are all somewhat telegraphed and somewhat strong. I feel that they improve the stage with strategic value and can discourage runaway in some cases.
• Woolly World
  • Tilting platforms, temp walkoffs, potential runaway for some characters.
• Yoshi's Island (Melee)
  • Very cramped, small but removable caves of life, small blastzones. I sometimes hear good things about this stage.
• The Great Cave Offensive
  • Extremely big, many caves of life, random mine carts, many lethal Danger Zones, infinite runaway.
• Halberd
  • Walkoff at start. Low ceiling, jump-through platform. Hazards are all kinda strong yet telegraphed.
• Orbital Gate Assault
  • Everything is totally predictable. Some hazards are strong, yet most are telegraphed and all are predictable. Some platforms are small or campable. I think it's fine like Rainbow Cruise, with a unique emphasis on air play.
• Lylat Cruise
  • Edges are fixed. Tilting is predictable based on background.
• Kalos Pokémon League
  • Platforms in transition can kill off the top. Fire pillars are annoying but not bad, Ho-Oh just makes them taller. Water has walkoffs, stream pushes towards them, which is avoidable, and whirlpool is simply annoying. Dragon explosions are easily avoided and telegraphed, Rayquaza is strong yet telegraphed. Steel swords are destroyable walls, metal pool is strategic, but Registeel is not too telegraphed yet strong. I find the frequent hazards manageable for singles.
• Pokémon Stadium 2
  • Normal is great. Ground has 1 wall. Electric's conveyer belts aren't too bad and greatly reward stage control, and are slower than Brawl's. Flying's wind is different, not exactly bad. Same for Ice. Normal lasts the longest, and all hazards are temporary. Not bannable.
• Port Town Aero Dive
  • No edges, cars are powerful, disruptive, and somewhat frequent, with almost no safe spots.
• Onett
  • Pretty big, walkoffs, big walls, cars are powerful, disruptive, and frequent.
• Coliseum
  • Pretty big, walkoffs. Platforms are fine.
• Castle Siege
  • Transitions are totally predictable. Part 2 has temp walkoffs, and statues can slow the pace down. Not banworthy.
• Flat Zone X
  • Walkoffs, many frequent/powerful hazards.
• Palutena's Temple
  • Ludicrously big, decently powerful spikes, many walls and caves of life, infinite runaway.
• Skyworld
  • Breakable but quickly regenerating caves of life. Edges can be broken.
• Gamer
  • Random layout can have caves of life, 5-Volt is powerful, disruptive, and frequent.
• Garden of Hope
  • Pretty big, breakable walls/floors. Crab is powerful, disruptive and somewhat frequent.
• Boxing Ring
  • Very big, walls, and walkoffs. The lights are abusable with its height and hitbox.
• Town and City
  • Platforms are fine. You have to get outplayed to get carried offstage by the transition. Just as good, if not better than Smashville.
• Smashville
  • Great stage, but no sacred cow. The stage can be polarizing with platform stuff; not perfectly neutral.
• Wii Fit Studio
  • Walkoffs, pretty big. Dynamic platforms are fine, and unlike others, they don't kill off the top.
• Gaur Plain
  • Completely massive yet cramped on tiny platforms, walkoffs, and the intrusive and decently powerful Metal Face.
• Duck Hunt
  • A bit big, with a high-up tree. Ducks are fine, and dog is predictable and strategic.
• Windy Hill Zone
  • Gravity is fine. Pretty big, with springs that are consistent in location but inconsistent in timing/direction. Windmill seems fine. Not great for singles, imo.
• PAC-LAND
  • Scrolling isn't consistent in speed, walkoffs, numerous walls, no edges, and annoying/somewhat frequent hazards.
• Wily Castle
  • The platforms are cool, but Yellow Devil is disruptive, centralizing, potentially powerful, and frequent.
• Wrecking Crew
  • I've seen that the stage has strategy with predictable layouts, but it has a very high ceiling, the barrels are really powerful, and the high amount of platforms may enable runaway. Unsure.
• Pilotwings
  • The red lower platforms and the yellow engines allow for near-infinite stalling. Offers very little otherwise.
• Wuhu Island
  • It's slightly big with temp walkoffs and water. Some layouts are weird, but that shouldn't be banworthy.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

The only reason you would pick Delfino is for the walk-off kills, water, campy transformations, and basically anything that is not possible on any other legal stage except for Castle Siege, which has its own BS.

Yeah, so people pick stages for their qualities. I'm sorry, I don't see why this is a problem. Are you saying that it's less valid when I beat you on Delfino than on Smashville? Because I find that a very tall claim. Stages in Smash are varied, unique, and have tons of interesting qualities that lead to players wanting to get an advantage out of them. This applies to every stage in the game, not just "counterpick" stages. Because, here's the thing - I've heard people complain about some element on every stage. "The platform layout on Battlefield is OP for juggles." "Smashville has easy kill combos off the side." "Final Destination makes zoning matchups completely impossible." "Town and City can be platform camped". Every stage. Every stage has some abusable, unique element that makes it interesting to different characters in different matchups.

Less BS early kills

I'm just gonna keep posting this until people get it through their heads.

 

[Jucchan]

I'm just gonna keep posting this until people get it through their heads.

Did you even read my post? The whole point was that we should be using FLSS so that we don't play SV when in precisely this kind of match-up. If we used FLSS, SV would have been striked and this gif would not have happened.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Did you even read my post? The whole point was that we should be using FLSS so that we don't play SV when in precisely this kind of match-up. If we used FLSS, SV would have been striked and this gif would not have happened.

Right, and if we ban Smashville, this will never happen, because what other possible reason would anyone have to pick Smashville? Also, I see Shieks and Pikachus being able to start on and counterpick to Smashville all the time.
I'm trying to draw an analogy here between Smashville and Delfino. You're holding up a fairly vicious double standard here, trying to paint the qualities that people pick Delfino for as universally negative and the ones people pick Smashville for as innocuous. That simply isn't the case, and I'm not even sure you can make the comparison like that.

 

[Pazx]

I do not agree with their stage list, but that does not mean I agree with how you approach your conclusions.



As I noted above, I understand the philosophy behind why the Japanese have the list they do. That said, I do not agree with their list. We're not the Japanese community, and we shouldn't try to emulate them or base our decisions on the precedent they set. I was mostly noting that using personal attacks or sweeping claims is not a justified method in order to argue with someone's position, particularly when conveniently they collectively or singularly are not present to argue their point of view.

Just because you and I think a stage should be legal doesn't mean it's always going to be legal. I'm telling you if you want this thread to be a good unbiased resource you need to move at the very least Duck Hunt, CS and Halberd to the suspect list. Your personal opinion is worth less than that of the multiple regions (as in several entire countries) which have banned these stages. By moving these stages to suspect you promote healthy discussion about them, hopefully not just whether they should be legal or not but what the arguments for both sides are and what facts we can present to conservatives who dislike them.

 

[Ulevo]

Alright.

With the introduction of @ W.A.C. post, there is a topic I want to cover in order for us to have a distinction about why we have the rules we do and why a stage may or may not be appropriate for a ban.

Essentially there are two reasons we utilize bans in Smash.

The first is when something is considering anti-competitive. This falls under the jurisdiction of indefinite stalling, circle camping, intrusive, random, dangerous or volatile stage hazards. These are qualities that either significantly detract from the qualities present in competitive Smash or invade on the ability of the players to compete against each other.

The second is when something is considered overpowered. This, while not technically correct, is often synonymous with broken, and too good. Good examples are the bans on Mute City in Melee, which pushed reasonable characters like Jigglypuff and Peach in to arguably overpowered territory while playing on this stage. Other examples include the ban on Meta Knight, and Ice Climber wobbling. Note that regardless of whether or not you agree with these decisions or bans, the philosophy behind these decisions remained sound from at least a hypothetical stand point.

It is important to recognize which is which. While there is often overlap between the two, i.e. a strategy can be viewed as anti-competitive because it overpowered, you need identify which category the problem in question falls under in order to ascertain whether or not a ban is appropriate, and how to go about creating policy for that issue.

Up until this point I feel a lot of the points made for and against these stages discussed has been regarding their level of competitive or anti-competitive quality. The points that @ W.A.C. have made seem to deviate from this, and lean more towards the idea that these stages are simply too good under certain conditions.

As much as I love the stages Halberd and Isle Delfino, those stages have a ton of aspects to those stages that make their legality highly questionable. Isle Delfino is probably one of the most interesting legal stages in the game because of its environments and whatnot, but you can die at the stupidest of percentages because of the stages transformation, much of the environments encourage camping, and of course there's walkoff sections which will always be controversial. A lot of people find it really weird that stage is legal and I always pick that stage when I can as Diddy Kong at tournaments because its questionable traits greatly benefits a character like that.

• Walk offs are controversial under static conditions. I do not feel that the majority of players find walk offs to be a problem under dynamic circumstances, particularly when the transformations only last 16-18 seconds. There are no circumstances where this becomes disadvantageous to either player as they can opt out of playing near the blast zone unless the game is about to hit time, in which case either player is responsible for it coming to that outcome.

• All of the instances where you can die early vertically happen during the stage transitions, or at the Pillars, which is a single transformation out of the nine that do not include the other four transitioning platforms. These transitions only last a few seconds and are easy to identify and avoid if you are looking out for them.

• Umbrellas, Shine Gate, and Docks are the only transformations that really promote camping out of all the available transformations. That is not very many. Disregarding this, whether or not camping occurs depends on the circumstances of the match, and which characters are involved. These transformations will not reward camping for every character, and if your goal is to specifically camp, there are better stage options you can resort to.

Then with Halberd, you have super low blast zones where a character like Rosalina can kill with an up air to Donkey Kong at 22% (Dabuz did this to DKwill) and stages hazards. Most of the stages hazards aren't that bad IMO, but the claw is flat out unfair and can decide the outcome of a match because the player was unluckily attacked by it, which is very bad for competitive play and should not be allowed for this alone. A completely random stage hazard should never be able to decide the outcome of a match during competitive play.

These factors are very % dependent. Characters like Rosalina and Zero Suit Samus, while they have an easier time executing these situations, cannot do them whenever they please. If you are too low or too high of a %, this will not work. I would also like to note that the characters that really take advantage of this stage are a select few, while in a more general sense the stage benefits many characters quite equally. Essentially any character that relies or can use vertical killing power can utilize this stage well, and that includes quite a few characters. While there is precedent for banning stages because of specific characters, i.e. Mute City, this case is not nearly as abusive.

Despite the problems with those stages, Castle Siege's legality is easily the most questionable. Even at a casual level of playing this game years before I ever considered playing Smash competitively, myself and many others hated this stage in Brawl. Its transformations are some of the most bull**** transformations of any stage in the game. Super tiny blast zones with insanely weird transitions to the next area of a stage. Then there's the second section of the level, which is badly designed. Its walk-off sections can make opponents die at stupidly low percentages, it's so huge that opponents can stall or time out matches by running away, and the statues are super unfair to projectile based characters. This match in particular is a good example of why this stage should not be allowed. Anyone who watches that, please tell me why Castle Siege is a good stage for the competitive health of this game?

Now, this is where your argument begins to become a little silly. I understand the merits of suspecting Delfino Plaza or Halberd, as from the criteria of being overpowered, or allowing for characters or strategies that were 'too good', it made sense. I do not agree with that, as I deconstructed it above, but it made sense.

Where is the validity for questioning Castle Siege or Duck Hunt?

• You hating this stage has no bearing on whether or not this should be legal. I hate Lylat Cruise. It was fixed. I still hate Lylat Cruise. You don't see me crusading about it.

• How are these transformations bull****? The blast zones? From the right side of the base platform, Mario dies to a Jigglypuff Rest at 50%. On Smashville, Mario dies at 54%. That's hardly a big change. Mario dies on Town and City at 51%. Side blast zones? Mario dies to a Mario forward smash at 61% on Castle Siege at the ledge. On Smashville, he dies at 64%. On Final Destination, he dies at 65%. These are by far the smallest non-walk off blast zones in this stage, and as you can see they are quite comparable with other stages. Your complaints here about blast zone size are not valid.

• Weird transition? So what you're saying is you don't like it. Either that, or you're ignorant as to how it works. Neither of these are valid arguments. All you need to know about the transitioning phase is that the vertical blast zone from floor to ceiling is identical to the 1st transformations right platform from the platform to the ceiling.

• The walk off, like with Delfino, is a temporary transformation. You do not have to opt in to fighting your opponent near a blast zone unless you are pressed for time, in which case this is your own doing, either by the way you played the match or by the nature of the match up of your character.

• I did not see anything wrong that game. Ness died at the end because he grabbed Sonic at the wrong time, probably assuming he was going to drop on the stage. This is just an error of judgment, and it's happened to everyone before. How many times have you dive kicked with a character like Sonic or Sheik with the camera out of view, assuming you would hit the stage, only to suicide? Same principle. This does not happen when you are comfortable with the stage.

Then there's Duck Hunt, which is probably less controversial than Castle Siege, Halberd, and Isle Delfino, but I don't think it's a good stage for competitive play. The ducks are completely random and can mess with projectiles, the tree can encourage camping, and I've heard Little Mac can't even reach the tree. If that's true, couldn't a projectile based character just choose that map, go to the tree, and spam projectiles until time outs? How is that even remotely fair? Not to mention the Dog can screw people over, but that's mostly the player's fault because of the predictability of where the Dog will go.

• We do not ban stages because the are not 'fair', we ban them because they fit in to one of the two categories I described above. Counterpicks are not meant to be 'fair', they are meant to benefit your character in the event you lost.

• Duck are random, but this should not really matter. They are prevalent enough to the point where if you are playing a projectile based character and are on this stage, you should understand that your projectiles will be limited or hindered in certain circumstances. The hitboxes of the ducks are large enough that while their flight patterns are random, you have a good idea of when a projectile will or will not collide with them.

• Little Mac has a ton of problems on a myriad of stages, and shouldn't really be used as a go-to reason for criticizing a stages competitive validity.

• The trees do promote camping. Camping is not a degenerate strategy.

• You can ban the stage if its that unfavourable to you. Most characters, Little Mac excluded, do perfectly fine here.

I feel the only stages currently legal that deserve to be legal (regardless if they're starter or counterpicks) are FD (including Omegas). Battlefield, Smashville, Town & City, and Lylat Cruise (entirely because the recent balance patch turned this into an actual good stage). Every other legal stage has some aspects to them that just makes the game look bad competitively, which sucks because a stage like Isle Delfino is a good stage at showing off much of what makes Smash such a unique fighting game. But when it comes to picking which stages are legal, we should keep in mind that we want Smash 4 to be the best competitive fighting game it can be. Every stage provides advantages for specific characters, but some of those advantages are a result of stage design that is not good for competitive play. Plus some characters have their viability hurt enormously from stages that are the most unfair in decision. On the King Dedede board, some people's only consensus on which stages are good for Dedede are just Smashville and Town & City, with Final Destination only being good depending on the matchup. The characters that benefit the most from the most controversial stages are typically high tier characters, which results in a less balance game for competitive play.

• And what exactly constitutes proper design fit for competitive play?

• We should not be banning or allowing stages to cater to the viability of characters unless they are in specific abuse cases akin to Melee's Mute City.

• Top and high tier characters are not good because they excel on multiple stages, they excel on multiple stages because they are good characters. Again, this ties in to my 2nd point that we should not be using the stage list as a means to balance the cast. We tried to do that with Meta Knight in Brawl, and look at how stupid that idea was. I'd also like to note that it is not only the top and high tiers that benefit. Meta Knight is one character in particular that benefits enormously from a variety of these stages, and he might not even be a top 10 character. Most players don't consider him top 15.

I think most people would agree that stages like Final Destination (including omegas), Battlefield, and Smashville are all stages that benefits characters in interesting ways that are a result of good design for competitive play. They're not perfect by any means and some of us might even dislike one or two of those stages (I've never liked Battlefield honestly), but there's an consensus that they should be allowed. Town & City and Lylat Cruise are more controversial than those three stages, but people typically agree they should be allowed at least as counter-pick stages. Pre-patch though, Lylat Cruise was probably one of the worst legal stages in the game that a lot of players would pick just because of its horrible ledges and tilting. Tilting is still a thing, but I don't think that one trait alone should take away its legality.

You keep referring to 'good design' and 'bad design' without definitively stating what that even is. This makes the basis for much of your arguments ambiguous.

Just like the metagame would function just fine if you removed one, two, three, or even most of the characters in the game. Hell, replace my statement about characters with stages - would it be objectively wrong to ban every stage except FD? There is a right and a wrong way to build a ruleset. The Japanese have built theirs the wrong way, with conclusions that simply make the game less deep and less competitive. The comparison works for that specific line of argument, but okay, it's got some issues. What if the only legal stage is FD, is that wrong?

No, it wouldn't function if you removed most of the cast, because then most of the people playing this game wouldn't play it. Your hypothetical example doesn't work in the real world because there are external reasons outside of a competitive ruleset as to why people play this game in the first place. If people do not want to play this game, there is no competition.

Stop. Giving. Me. Bad. Examples. Thank you.

Additionally, there is no right or wrong way to build a ruleset, only more and less effective ways to achieve the desired outcome you want. But you don't see that because in your little mind you think everything the way you see it is the infallible truth.

The Japanese likely have a mindset that Smashville, Battlefield, and Final Destination are the fairest stages for the widest array of characters, and a stage list centred around that ideology allows for the most honorable competition. If you believe that those three stages are the fairest in the game overall, and your goal is fair competition, then their ruleset makes a lot of sense. If you believe there is value in adding stage variety, that these alternative stages are relatively fair in high tier competition, and that allowing more stages allows for a wider array of options for characters to succeed, then you might not align yourself with the Japanese way of policy making.

We in the West have traditionally aligned ourselves with the latter half of that explanation, or a more liberal way of stage variety. I myself agree with this approach, and it is the perspective I am choosing to argue from.

Based on what? Not being facetious here, I genuinely want to know.

I do not believe the game is necessarily more fair with a more conservative list, only that it changes the tiers slightly, and that any perceived benefits we see from a more conservative list are minimal compared to the increase in variety within competitive play, which is typically an attribute most players enjoy and appreciate, myself included.

Just because you and I think a stage should be legal doesn't mean it's always going to be legal. I'm telling you if you want this thread to be a good unbiased resource you need to move at the very least Duck Hunt, CS and Halberd to the suspect list. Your personal opinion is worth less than that of the multiple regions (as in several entire countries) which have banned these stages. By moving these stages to suspect you promote healthy discussion about them, hopefully not just whether they should be legal or not but what the arguments for both sides are and what facts we can present to conservatives who dislike them.

It's a little ironic that you're talking to me about bias given what it is I am doing and how you're choosing to address this. I will admit that being devoid of personal bias completely is impossible. That said, I am doing what I feel is the most objective manner while still providing a catalyst to get these discussions rolling.

You're telling me that my opinion is worth less than that of the multitude of regions which have banned these stages, yet you're ignoring the fact that the vast majority of them have these stages legal. Like I said before, I am not against discussing them, but they are not the priority right now. And you masquerading your opinion as statistical fact when most tournaments have been following the Apex ruleset or some variant similar to it for some time now, which has these stages legal, is not going to to convince me to change my course on how we continue discussion.

 

[smashmachine]

Just because you and I think a stage should be legal doesn't mean it's always going to be legal. I'm telling you if you want this thread to be a good unbiased resource you need to move at the very least Duck Hunt, CS and Halberd to the suspect list. Your personal opinion is worth less than that of the multiple regions (as in several entire countries) which have banned these stages. By moving these stages to suspect you promote healthy discussion about them, hopefully not just whether they should be legal or not but what the arguments for both sides are and what facts we can present to conservatives who dislike them.

yeah, so many regions have banned those stages

"so many" as in just Japan, of course

 

[dav3yb]

I don't have a ton to add to the discussion, but when i was helping form a stagelist for a local tournament, eventually I came to the conclusion that there are 3 overwhelming criteria that stages usually get banned for, and I figure if any stage met 2 of the 3 criteria, then it would end up banned.

1) Permanent walk-offs

2) Has hazards which are not telegraphed well, or not at all, and easily kill players.

3) Promotes camping or otherwise degenerate strategies.

Things like ceiling height or blastzones i feel are not even worth much of a discussion, outside of the obviously huge stages, which cause a single criteria above to be really dominant. This kind of thing should only come into play when counter-picking stages.

Generally if you look at most of the stages, the ones people generally keep legal might only have a single of the above issues, but even then, it's often not very prevalent or sometimes matchup dependent.

Also I think a particular issue with my above criteria is that anything that falls under permanent walk-off kind of automatically also falls under promotes degenerate strategies (camping the edges for easy grab kills). It somewhat almost feels unfair to walk-off stages, but I don't think it can be avoided.

 

[erico9001]

I would like to see Delfino and Halberd banned. I would like to see Omegas allowed. Wuhu is worth trying. I am unsure about KJ64 and PS2.

I was actually having a pretty fun, tense match with somebody on Halberd the other day. We were doing Shulk dittos, both getting pretty high in damage. He sends me off-stage with Fair, and by dumb luck, that arm thing came out and true combo'd me into the blastzone! "BS." I came to question, 'What function does the legality of this stage serve?' And, well, I don't see it. Add in things like Lightweight Palutena guaranteed killing you at 0%, why have it legal? It looks to be more loss than benefit. On the topic of low ceilings, the same goes for Delfino.

PS2... well... things become somewhat lolsy during the flying stage. Ice is fun. Ground is interesting. Electric isn't that annoying. Overall, I just don't see what makes it worth legalizing. Sure, it wouldn't be that bad, but it wouldn't be good.

Kj64: I don't passionately care either way if this stage is banned or not. There are some shenanigans with the barrel, but maybe they can be worked around. If it means anything, the music is meh for the most part, and the stage is aesthetically dull. Maybe that's why I kind of like it banned.

 

[Nintendrone]

I think that these super-conservative stagelists are around because some people are in the mindset that a stage must prove itself for legality, or "guilty until proven innocent", which I personally find faulty.

If a stage is guilty until proven innocent, that just bans all stages except the ones that the person likes, as they force the supporters to have proof of a stage not being broken even though the stage was never proven to be broken in the first place. Things are tough to un-ban, as it's tough to get players to test something that's banned, and the detractors will repeatedly assert that whatever evidence of the stage being fine "isn't enough".

I feel that the best approach to bans of all kinds is "innocent until proven guilty", which the community uses for characters (Brawl) and items (in Melee, at least), but ignores for customs and stages, feeling that they're of lesser competitive value when they are actually very big deals. I believe that the best stagelist is one that only bans what has proven to be broken for competitive play, which includes permanent walkoffs, powerful hazards that have little-to-no warning, and/or noticeable promotion of highly degenerate strategies (like near-infinite stalling/runaway).

 

[Ulevo]

So, as per the talk regarding Delfino and Halberd, I thought I would post this thread here I made for my own personal uses, as it contains data that helps us to understand the stages better.

http://smashboards.com/threads/meta-knights-up-throw-kill.400394/

Halberd will take a move that is normally used as a last resort in situations where killing is difficult and turn it in to a reasonable kill secure at 140% with DI. That's not amazing, but it's okay. Delfino on the other hand can kill mid weight characters at 85% without rage and proper DI. That being said, this only happens at three parts of the map, and only during the transitioning states when either Platform 1 or Platform 2 are elevating or descending. These are the spots on Delfino where you'll usually see those early 'cheese' kills. The timing is very specific and obvious to a player who understands how the blast zones are at particular moments. The rest of the stage is average at best, excluding the static top platforms on Platform 1 and Platform 2, but those are hard to utilize without something like Meta Knight's up throw.

Just food for thought.

 

[Piford]

You know I've seen a lot of discussion over legal stage across many places recently and it occurred to me, some people don't know about these stages. Like they have wrong information and they are arguing to ban stages over it. Obviously I shouldn't be to critical over this stuff as everyone makes mistakes, hears wrong information, and forgets things, but it's happening very often. It just seems to me that these people want to ban these stages after only playing on them once if that. I think if the stage data threads were more widely know, people might be more open to these stages. I'm not saying that everyone who says these stages should be banned is misinformed btw, just a noticeable amount of people.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

You know I've seen a lot of discussion over legal stage across many places recently and it occurred to me, some people don't know about these stages. Like they have wrong information and they are arguing to ban stages over it. Obviously I shouldn't be to critical over this stuff as everyone makes mistakes, hears wrong information, and forgets things, but it's happening very often. It just seems to me that these people want to ban these stages after only playing on them once if that. I think if the stage data threads were more widely know, people might be more open to these stages. I'm not saying that everyone who says these stages should be banned is misinformed btw, just a noticeable amount of people.

Unfortunately publicity is not my forte, even though this is literally the reason I did them in the first place. If you have any ideas I'm all ears.

 

[Ulevo]

Well, this is partially the reason for this thread. I think it would help if someone like @Shaya stickied the thread, assuming it was found important enough to do so.

Ideally I would make video content covering these stages, however I cannot afford video equipment for the time being.

 

[ParanoidDrone]

I do know that kyokoro has a thread in the Academy that's basically nothing but links to various stage threads for both Wii U and 3DS versions. Mostly mine but there are others as well. Posting that thread to Reddit or something would be an obvious step but I'm not sure how to frame it in a way that would actually encourage people to check it out.

 

[MajorMajora]

Wuhu Island, Skyloft, PS2, Windy Hill Zone, Kongo Jungle, Norfair, Kalos, MK8 circuit, Orbital Gate Assault.

All of these are the ones that I most often see suggested either as legal or as requiring testing. Interesting thing is that there's 9 of them, which means they are perfect for stage striking. (fitting the 1+4n ideal).

I know some of you have objections to many of these stages (understandable), but what I'm suggesting is that we put this list specifically for a sort of 'testing tourney' made for the sake of actually putting solid data behind any claims we make. We all say 'I think x stage should be tested', so why don't we try it with these?

Yes, I understand that not all of these will be found to be legal. This is for testing, just a way to expedite the process. Of course, a couple bad players could play on one of these stages wrong and make it seem worse than it is and get it unfairly banned, but that's an unavoidable growing pain all of these stages are bound to go through if they get tested in the slightest., and the larger a sample size we collect the less significant these claims will be.

Sp, why don't we develop a tourney for these stages?

 

[Nintendrone]

Capps did an online tournament full of banned stages early on. I heard that it didn't turn out too great, with player complaints (likely due to no practice on those stages) causing them to axe stuff partway through, and apparently the data wasn't very helpful.

Wuhu Island, Skyloft, PS2, Windy Hill Zone, Kongo Jungle, Norfair, Kalos, MK8 circuit, Orbital Gate Assault.

I for one would add most of these to the stagelist in a heartbeat. Wuhu, Skyloft, PS2, Kongo, and MK8 have no excuse for being banned. I'd be fine with playing on any of those except for WHZ in singles, and Kalos/OGA in doubles.

-----

When I hear conservatives say that a smaller selection of stages is better, they tend to use Melee as their evidence. However, Melee only has 6 legal stages because nearly all of Melee's stages are crap, so it only makes sense that there's only a few to choose from.

Brawl and Smash 4, however, have a larger number of good stages, partly as a side effect of having more stages overall. Smash 4 has so many good stages that people are dropping them because they think that it's bad to have a lot, which is false. I hear that PM is having a similar problem.

People are banning stages because they don't like them or think that it's better to keep it simple, but doing so hurts the metagame. The stagelist, more than anything else, is what sways character viability, and our current list noticeably reinforces the top tiers. If there is more variety in the stagelist (with ONLY highly degenerate/random stages banned), then we get a more accurate metagame with characters at their full potential. This applies to customs as well.

 

[MajorMajora]

Capps did an online tournament full of banned stages early on. I heard that it didn't turn out too great, with player complaints (likely due to no practice on those stages) causing them to axe stuff partway through, and apparently the data wasn't very helpful.


I for one would add most of these to the stagelist in a heartbeat. Wuhu, Skyloft, PS2, Kongo, and MK8 have no excuse for being banned. I'd be fine with playing on any of those except for WHZ in singles, and Kalos/OGA in doubles.

-----

When I hear conservatives say that a smaller selection of stages is better, they tend to use Melee as their evidence. However, Melee only has 6 legal stages because nearly all of Melee's stages are crap, so it only makes sense that there's only a few to choose from.

Brawl and Smash 4, however, have a larger number of good stages, partly as a side effect of having more stages overall. Smash 4 has so many good stages that people are dropping them because they think that it's bad to have a lot, which is false. I hear that PM is having a similar problem.

People are banning stages because they don't like them or think that it's better to keep it simple, but doing so hurts the metagame. The stagelist, more than anything else, is what sways character viability, and our current list noticeably reinforces the top tiers. If there is more variety in the stagelist (with ONLY highly degenerate/random stages banned), then we get a more accurate metagame with characters at their full potential. This applies to customs as well.

Yeah, so I suppose it would be better if we got a larger stream to do it as a friendlies event at first, where there will be less salt. Something like the size of Clash Tournaments, for example. Anyone know anything like that that tends to be liberal when it comes to smash rules? I think I heard Teamsp00ky tended to be liberal in these things, though I could be wrong.

 

[RayNoire]

I think people frequently have the wrong reasons for why Halberd and Castle Siege should not be legal. They cite the rare BS KOs instead of the problems that occur in every game.

Halberd's short ceiling is a problem (the Palutena thing mentioned before probably being the biggest example), but the hazards are not acceptable. People focus on players occasionally running into an anticlimactic KO, but the bigger problem is that the hazards provide free pressure--to a random target--every single match. The claw is the biggest offender, but all the hazards force a reaction from one player at random that the other can capitalize on. That's anti-competitive.

Castle Siege's 2nd transformation has incredibly short walls, which is also a problem (I don't see what's stopping Sheik from 0-death forward air chains from midstage, as an example), but it also promotes walkoff camping. Usually the optimal counter to camping the edge in Castle Siege is to just wait out the transformation--but do we really want players spending 2-3 minutes out of the match just sitting there?

The transition itself is problematic as well. If you're forced to tech (or God forbid you miss a tech) as the stage transitions to the 1st of 3rd form and you end up offstage, you're dead. The transition also seems glitchy in general (I know it eats Shadow Balls), but that's not as big a deal.

As for legalizing stages, Kongo and Wuhu seem like the best choices. Skyloft is borderline but I don't like the (virtually random) hazards, and PS2 is complete garbage for reasons I'm sure have been brought up many times by now.

 

[Ulevo]

Halberd's short ceiling is a problem (the Palutena thing mentioned before probably being the biggest example), but the hazards are not acceptable. People focus on players occasionally running into an anticlimactic KO, but the bigger problem is that the hazards provide free pressure--to a random target--every single match. The claw is the biggest offender, but all the hazards force a reaction from one player at random that the other can capitalize on. That's anti-competitive.

The hazards force you to adapt the same way any stage transformation forces you to adapt. The key is the preparation prior to the hazard being launched by either player, and you have more than adequate time. The claw cannot hit a moving target, and the bomb and laser are too slow to become an immediate threat unless the opponent capitalizes on the hazard and makes a play, which would be no different than a player taking advantage of a stage transformation.

These hazards behave more like stage transformations than legitimate threats because the time to react and plan around them is too long and the conditions for these hazards to harm you are very specific.

Castle Siege's 2nd transformation has incredibly short walls, which is also a problem (I don't see what's stopping Sheik from 0-death forward air chains from midstage, as an example), but it also promotes walkoff camping. Usually the optimal counter to camping the edge in Castle Siege is to just wait out the transformation--but do we really want players spending 2-3 minutes out of the match just sitting there?

The transition itself is problematic as well. If you're forced to tech (or God forbid you miss a tech) as the stage transitions to the 1st of 3rd form and you end up offstage, you're dead. The transition also seems glitchy in general (I know it eats Shadow Balls), but that's not as big a deal.

You will spend 2:15 on the 3rd transformation, assuming you go to time in a 6 minute game. In other words, you'll return to that transformation three times. This will not happen often, and more than likely it will result in both players only going there twice. This is usually only a problem in the case of a match up discrepancy. For example, if Olimar gains the lead against say, Ike, by the time the 2nd transformation comes around Ike is forced in to a situation where he has to approach Olimar or wait out 45 seconds and risk going to time later. This sort of scenario is not wide spread across cast nor is it a common occurrence, so I do not see the legitimacy of this argument when the stage can be banned with one of the two bans provided in the set.

If you fail to tech and die during the transitional phase then it is your own fault for dying.

As for legalizing stages, Kongo and Wuhu seem like the best choices. Skyloft is borderline but I don't like the (virtually random) hazards, and PS2 is complete garbage for reasons I'm sure have been brought up many times by now.

I honestly think Skyloft, while it deserves to be trialled, is receiving far too much credit. There are a lot of intrusive hazards on this stage that are a lot less consistent than say Mario Circuit that may or may not hit players both on the stage and as they're being sent in to the blast zone, with occasional cases of players passing through the stage.

 

[RayNoire]

The hazards force you to adapt the same way any stage transformation forces you to adapt. The key is the preparation prior to the hazard being launched by either player, and you have more than adequate time. The claw cannot hit a moving target, and the bomb and laser are too slow to become an immediate threat unless the opponent capitalizes on the hazard and makes a play, which would be no different than a player taking advantage of a stage transformation.

These hazards behave more like stage transformations than legitimate threats because the time to react and plan around them is too long and the conditions for these hazards to harm you are very specific.

The problem is that only one player (chosen at random) gets the chance to capitalize and make that play, whereas a stage transformation is more neutral (and hopefully has no RNG element, another problem I have with Skyloft).

You will spend 2:15 on the 3rd transformation, assuming you go to time in a 6 minute game. In other words, you'll return to that transformation three times. This will not happen often, and more than likely it will result in both players only going there twice. This is usually only a problem in the case of a match up discrepancy. For example, if Olimar gains the lead against say, Ike, by the time the 2nd transformation comes around Ike is forced in to a situation where he has to approach Olimar or wait out 45 seconds and risk going to time later. This sort of scenario is not wide spread across cast nor is it a common occurrence, so I do not see the legitimacy of this argument when the stage can be banned with one of the two bans provided in the set.

The problem isn't necessarily being forced to approach on the 2nd stage, it's the waiting itself. I'm mostly thinking about spectating here, because I don't really mind waiting as a player. But a match being paused for 45 seconds twice or three times because of the stage is something that could be very dangerous for the game's health if it happened at, say, EVO.

If you fail to tech and die during the transitional phase then it is your own fault for dying.

Depending on the timing, you can tech and still die, or at the very least be in an awful edgeguarding position. But this is not as big a deal, I agree. Just another thing to consider.