STAGE SELECTION POLL - Neutral / Counterpick / Ban

[Florence]

speaking of camping and all that, have any of you ever played someone who camps underneath the left or right platforms on DL? it's pretty hard to get around against Kirby or pika

Not as hard as left side Hyrule.

 

[¨°PÞ-§°¨ Bane]

i've never seen boom write so much so coherently in my life.

yea, for a good reason. hyrule should be banned and it looks like there might finally be some momentum to make it happen.

look, it's problematic to assume that some stages are better than others solely because they give certain characters a better advantage. the goal should be to provide an objectively good stage to develop metagames on - not to give up upon the realization that some characters are worse than others and therefore need a larger and obviously flawed stage to stand a chance.

you have to understand that this kind of thinking is only based on the current metagame, which is entirely subject to change. it just seems like everyone has it stuck in their head that these lower-tiered characters are bad against high tiers on small stages and won't even bother learning them. if nobody is developing a new metagame, then of course these characters will never be viable against the top tiers! i mean, just look at people like armada or even mango when he first started using puff (or jousuke!).

and even if these characters never fully reach the mark of pikachu, kirby, or fox, then that still does not give any good reason to imply that hyrule should be legal. tiers do exist. it's the job of the player to make a certain character better, not the stage. if that's going to be our rationale, then why not make sector z legal as well? it's entirely comparable to hyrule. large, asymmetrical, has random stage hazards, and a wall for comboing. seems to me like low tiers would probably fare better there as well.

we should be striving towards making only the objectively best stages legal - not the ones that give us the most personal comfort. dreamland is symmetrical, it has no random hazards (wind is predictable by looking at the tree/isn't even comparable as a hazard to tornadoes), and it isn't big enough to camp/stall. wtf is wrong with us?

 

[SheerMadness]

We just had a poll a month or two ago about banning hyrule.

A majority voted against banning it. Pwned.

 

[bloodpeach]

Ignoring the fact the stages give advantages and disadvantages to different characters is just as bad ignoring the differences between characters.

also recurring argument of the DL only camp: "Your preference for Congo/Peaches/Hyrule is subjective, but my preference for DL is objective".
Symmetry is good. Wind is best hazard. Not big enough to camp. All of these are subjective claims (and the last is pretty hard to argue too, pro play on DL can get really campy. take a look at the vid fire posted or japan).

The community needs to get togther and have a serious discussion about how the stagelist effects the meta and what we can do to improve it. So far all we got is "tornados r gay! BAN"

 

[¨°PÞ-§°¨ Bane]

well, if you wanna play that game...

Ignoring the fact the stages give advantages and disadvantages to different characters is just as bad ignoring the differences between characters.

That's subjective.

kidding aside though, when did i ever ignore the difference between characters? i feel like you didn't even read or understand my argument. you're basically saying that you shouldn't ignore the differences between stages and the proof is that you shouldn't ignore the difference between characters.i don't quite follow the logic.. and i'm not even ignoring either of those.

also recurring argument of the DL only camp: "Your preference for Congo/Peaches/Hyrule is subjective, but my preference for DL is objective".
Symmetry is good. Wind is best hazard. Not big enough to camp. All of these are subjective claims (and the last is pretty hard to argue too, pro play on DL can get really campy. take a look at the vid fire posted or japan).

ok, sorry to say, but if you think tornadoes are really just as good as wind, then your opinion is invalid (not saying that you do, but that's what your post seemed to imply). even the skilled players that support hyrule would agree that tornadoes are not cool.

boiling everything down to "subjective," especially things that are obviously not, is just an easy way out. i tried to provide reasoning for my points in my post. where's yours for symmetry being bad? i have never once heard of symmetry being an undesirable quality in competitive gaming. should chess boards be asymmetrical too?

and what are your reasons for wind being not as good as other hazards? i'd also like to see that video. most instances of camping in dreamland are when the camping is a "mutual" thing. the difference between hyrule and dreamland in terms of camping is that if one player really wants to chase someone down on dreamland, they actually can. boom's already pointed out the problem with circle/triangle stalling on hyrule.

We just had a poll a month or two ago about banning hyrule.

A majority voted against banning it. Pwned.

the majority of people in the world thought the world was flat at one point. were they right?

 

[mixa]

i bet when kefit and sensei are playing and the wind starts to blow, they sream "oooh **** that wind - yeah wind is bad" and they stand still and wait for the wind to stop. but not before jerry says: "they are gonna wait for the wind 'cause winds are bad"


btw i wonder if malva is gonna do a write up, that would be fun

 

[bloodpeach]

I agree that what I said is subjective. I disagree that some things are 'obviously not subjective'

In a campy matchup, where players are trying to eke out a small advatange in spacing and stage control over a long time, wind can have a much bigger effect than tornados. Wind covers half the stage and changes characters movement in a way that tornados do not (example: yoshi regular get up and ledge sends you right back to the ledge while completely helpless with wind). Tornados force you to avoid them, but do not change the way characters move. Also, wind direction IS random, but there is start-up lag to give you time to adjust. Tornados have start-up lag too.

Almost all camping/stalling matches on hyrule are mutual as well. It's usually stuff like kirby staying on the lower left and uptilting while fox forces him to stay there by laser camping. Very campy matches can happen on both stages, but somehow on DL its legit and quality smash but on hyrule its 'cheap'. I think the longest match we have recorded (Correct me if I'm wrong) on Hyrule is Isai v Gerson. Somehow I don't feel qualified to argue against their play. Circle stalling could be a problem on hyrule, but why worry about it until it happens? Besides we have a stalling ban anyway.

You'll probably never catch me saying something like "Wind is worse than tornados" or "Symmetry is bad" when I'm being serious. The game is more complex than that. But I will argue against anybody who does and I don't want people who think that their opinions are objective facts to be determining the rules of games I play.

PS: "DL is best because of symmetry and weakest hazards; which are good because I and other peoplse say so" is not convincing justification. Besides the wind-randomness argument, thats the only justification I could find in your posts for DL being the perfect stage.

PPS: long posts making me swtich to lighter pink. bs

 

[mixa]

Also, wind direction IS random

no

 

[bloodpeach]

Oh? Whats the pattern for direction then? If it's not random you surely must have memorized it?

EDIT: Seriously though, do you actually know the details how the tree decides which way to turn and how often it decides to blow? Randomness could come into play in both of those actions. Do you actually KNOW tornados are random. There coudl a complicated formula to determine placement in a way that feels random but isnt (like the orange ghost in pacman). But instead of considering these posibilities all you have is 'no'.

 

[mixa]

i'd answer it, but I notice your internetty tone of writing. wait for me to update my thread. it's not even that relevant that the wind has a set direction anyway.

 

[¨°PÞ-§°¨ Bane]

i don't have time to reply to all that right now, but just a little clarification:

i don't think dreamland is a "perfect stage," and it's not because of those factors. i think it's the best competitive choice because all the other stages are worse (except possibly congo). i used those factors merely as a point of comparison to other stages. i'll be convinced when someone can provide good reasons for why hyrule should even be played competitively - let alone reasons for why it's a better stage than DL.

also, there's plenty of scenarios where the small startup time on tornadoes won't mean much and can still screw you over. and that's disregarding fast tornadoes (which you didn't address). if they really weren't a problem, then we wouldn't see people run into them at high level play... but we do. will write more later.

 

[bloodpeach]

Peaches and Hyrule do have their flaws, but I have yet to see an argument suggesting that either is so game-breaking that it outweighs the unique options those stages provide to some characters.

As for fast tornados, I don't think anyone has really spent the time to seriously adapt their play to tornados outside of isai level players. I don't think the fact that there is some unexplored territory in the finer points of stage control is necessarily a bad thing.

PS mixa if u plan to keep posting itd be nice if you could contribute something :3 Step up the jokes/insults at least.

 

[mixa]

mixa if u plan to keep posting itd be nice if you could contribute something

mini modding is my cue
bb

 

[prisonchild]

if i'm reading this poll right, hyrule should not get banned (by community opinion). at least 33% have it is a NEUTRAL, so out of the three options (neutral, cp, banned) it should stay. combined about 64% want to keep hyrule in some form.

 

[The Star King]

Not voting again (lol) because it depends, and I'm unsure a lot anyway

If we institute a timer I think Hyrule should be banned.

If we don't I'm not sure, kinda leaning towards no Hyrule ban but I don't feel strongly either way.

Not sure about PC. It's kinda janky. But it doesn't have a camping problem (arguably least campy in the game IMO), and nothing depends on random numbers either. But it's what I would call "as good as random", because it's IMO unrealistic for someone to keep track of the bumper/triangles at all times when they're off screen, and people get saved because those objects happen to be at the right place at the right time.

I can see (platform) camping problems happening on Congo with a timer as well.

Honestly if we institute a timer I'm leaning towards saying "**** it" and doing DL only. That would be quite the big change, though.

Oh? Whats the pattern for direction then? If it's not random you surely must have memorized it?

EDIT: Seriously though, do you actually know the details how the tree decides which way to turn and how often it decides to blow? Randomness could come into play in both of those actions. Do you actually KNOW tornados are random. There coudl a complicated formula to determine placement in a way that feels random but isnt (like the orange ghost in pacman). But instead of considering these posibilities all you have is 'no'.

It's pretty simple. If players on one side of the stage > players on the other side when the tree decides to start blowing, the tree turns to blow on that side. If players on one side = players on other side, it blows in the direction it's already facing. This includes 0 = 0, as the tree does not detect players in the air, hanging on the edge, or on the top platform. The tree starts the game facing right.

However, the times at which tree blows is random.

 

[Sangoku]

mixa is a mini-mod, which means he can ask me to infract anyone and I'll do it regardless of whether the person deserved it ok thank yuo

Dreamland wind is pretty bad for characters like YOSHI or SAMUS because it screws up lots of shieldbreaks. They don't even have rapid a's to help =(.

 

[clubbadubba]

Bloodpeach stage selection is already subjective and always will be. Its subjective that random is undesireable, and its subjective that hazards are bad in competitive play. No one can give you any reasons why one stage is factually better than another, because something you say is bad, like cloud camping, the next person could just say cloud camping is awesome and now you're back to subjective opinions.

"Nados are bad because they can actually kill people so they mess up the match"

"Nados are good because they kill people so it forces players to be more aware of their surroundings"

Both subjective statements, one of them likely comes from someone in our community, one of them likely comes from someone outside of it. Both are valid subjective opinions, and yet we usually accept the first one as fact. All we can do in the end is pick stages that align with our communities SUBJECTIVE goals as a whole.

The goals that we all agree on are:

-reduced randomness
-minimal hazards
-what hazards exist have minimal effect
-conflict cannot be avoided for an extended period of time

We have to use those goals, which are ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE goals that we believe as a community to be good for competitive play but have in no way proven factually, to select our stages.

 

[thegreginator]

Edited first post with updated results.

Since the argument over Hyrule is starting to get heated, how about some good old fashioned negative campaign ads to spice things up

Did you know the average ELO ranking of those who support Hyrule neutrality is 134 points LOWER than those who support banning it? Are these people the ones we want dictating our ruleset?? Stand with me - neigh - stand with AMERICA and vote NO on Hyrule neutrality.

 

[Nintendude]

i like the idea of not being able to cp to a stage you've already won on. is that chain ace's ruleset?

That's the Apex ruleset, and the rule states that you can't cp to a stage you already won on that you picked. However, it seems that most people forget that the rule exists.

Also I realized that I voted wrong. I think that CJ is fine as a neutral if Hyrule is neutral, but if Hyrule is banned it only makes sense to have one starter stage and that would be DL.

 

[Karajan]

Where are the rest of the stages?

 

[Mahie]

Neutral : DL
The rest can go to CP. I'm actually not sure about Hyrule. We all know what playing properly on that stage means, and though it's not broken per se, it's definitely not interesting either.

 

[bloodpeach]

It's pretty simple. If players on one side of the stage > players on the other side when the tree decides to start blowing, the tree turns to blow on that side. If players on one side = players on other side, it blows in the direction it's already facing. This includes 0 = 0, as the tree does not detect players in the air, hanging on the edge, or on the top platform. The tree starts the game facing right.

I didn't know all of this. Thanks.

Bloodpeach stage selection is already subjective and always will be.

I agree. This is all I wanted out of this argument...

"Nados are bad because they can actually kill people so they mess up the match"

"Nados are good because they kill people so it forces players to be more aware of their surroundings"

Both subjective statements, one of them likely comes from someone in our community, one of them likely comes from someone outside of it. Both are valid subjective opinions, and yet we usually accept the first one as fact. All we can do in the end is pick stages that align with our communities SUBJECTIVE goals as a whole.

The goals that we all agree on are:

-reduced randomness
-minimal hazards
-what hazards exist have minimal effect
-conflict cannot be avoided for an extended period of time

We have to use those goals, which are ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE goals that we believe as a community to be good for competitive play but have in no way proven factually, to select our stages.

But then you had to go and ruin it by making the kind of general statements that I dislike so much
I like to think that I'm in the 64 community, and I'm strongly in the second tornado camp and I disagree with those goals. And I think everyone else does too (even if they don't know it) because Peach's and Congo have no RNG, minimal hazards*, and no proven stalling capability. But we still play DL more. There's clearly other factors at play.

All I want out of this discussion is a rigorous analysis of
1) What we want out of the meta
2) How different stages affect the meta
without anyone claiming that their opinions are facts and that all good players agree with them anyway (Isai is pro-hyrule, remember?)


* Barrel should never effect high level play significantly; it's super easy to kill someone out of the barrel. Wedges are completely static; no different from the tent in Hyrule. If the wedge saves your opponent its your fault for having bad stage awareness, same as if they survive by bouncing off the tent. People only get so mad at wedges, bumper and barrel because we play congo and peach's so little that otherwise good players have underdeveloped stage awareness and then get frustrated when what works on DL fails on another stage.

EDIT: I guess I was wrong about the wedges. I still don't think they're as big of a deal as everyone else seems to think though.

 

[mixa]

* Barrel should never effect high level play significantly; it's super easy to kill someone out of the barrel. Wedges are completely static; no different from the tent in Hyrule.

just stop talking about hazards pls

 

[Karajan]

Wedges are completely static

Not true http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qjvUxZwvMQ

 

[bloodpeach]

welp i guess i dont play on peach's enough

 

[clubbadubba]

Bumper does damage and knockback and it moves, its a hazard. Pretty sure wedges move dude. Barrel moves and has 'knockback', I consider that to be a hazard for this. If you want to use a different word than hazard that's fine, I'm just saying generally we try to minimize elements that have big impacts on games. Every stage in this game has some little quirk to it, we try to pick the stages that have the least impact and also fit the other criteria.

Voting for neutrals right now heavily favors DL, and in certain 2nd place is Congo. I really don't think its a coincidence that the 2 stages with the least quirky quirks are 1st and 2nd in this poll. Maybe you personally have a different opinion, and certainly I wouldn't expect the entire community to be 100% in agreement, but I think overall those are our goals as a community and the poll results reflect that.

* Not every character has combo's to kill people if they pop out of the barrel at mid percent not near any useful platforms. Big exaggeration to say that I see people survive in barrels in high level play pretty often.

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

tornadoes are super easy to adapt to..

LOLNOPE

As someone who supports Hyrule as a cp, my reasoning behind it not being a neutral are:

Tornado's are dumb
The left side of Hyrule is even more dumb.

If that stupid left slip of Hyrule did not exist, there would be a very easy choice here/as someone who experienced why that slip is so dumb, I have an easy choice at this point.

The only way to make Hyrule a neutral would be to make a 5 neutral system (aka HC, DL, PC, CJ, and SC/Saffron City. 4 stages doesn't make a good striking process. It would also allow people to get rid of stages they dislike.

I would also add a single or double ban system (you don't like Hyrule/Saffron, you can ban it)

 

[bloodpeach]

Yeah the bumper and barrel are definitely hazards, I just don't think they have a very big effect on the game. I think more people dislike Peach's because ofthe moving platform, which I don't think is covered by most definitions of hazard.

I'm not sure if I buy your barrel stuff too. I find it's usally pretty easy to hit someone to one of the platforms and start a tech chase. Maybe yoshi has better options here though? Either way I think we should play congo more to develop that barrel meta.

All I'm really trying to get out of making a fool of myself here is for people to actually justify why they think hazards are so bad. If were going to bad something it should have a demonstrable negative effect on the meta. But apart from you and fireblaster, no one seems to have considered the meta and are just looking for excuses to ban things that they personally don't like.

EDIT: Shout out to koro for demonstrating
"Hyrue for CP because tornados are dumb"

 

[KnitePhox]

everyone get gamesharks, nados + wind go away as well as battlefield + metal mario available

BF DL CONGO neutrals

PC HideRULE Metal Mario cps

FD....CP?

 

[clubbadubba]

I'm not really sure what you want people to say because it all boils down to subjective opinions on what is good/bad for competitive play but how about this crazy hypothetical:

Take dreamland without any wind. No hazards, just 2 players fighting on the stage. Now on that same stage lets say there are 100 permanent mines scattered across the stage (and they can float in mid air) which if you touch you will die instantly. The locations are not well known, and they have random movement. With 100 of these pixels it would be extremely difficult to move and player to player action becomes more difficult. Is this an acceptable stage? Not by most standards because it takes away from the main focus of players fighting players. If we take away the random movement and give them fixed trajectories does that make it a playable stage? Not really. Say take away movement and randomness all together by giving them all fixed positions. Is this stage with 100 permanent mines playable now? No.

Now say instead of killing you instantly they do fixed 50% damage and have fixed knock back that will just barely let you recover. Still not good right? If we remove 10 mines, is it better? Don't think so. Continue removing mines and reducing their effect. If you didn't say it was playable at 10 mines that all do 1% damage and fixed knockback (essentially bumpers now), why would it be playable at 9? Why 8? 7? 654321? And if you for some reason decided there is a point where one of them is playable, would it be better to continue removing mines and reducing their effect or do you actually think hazards improve the stage at a certain frequency?

If you say a hazard is acceptable you are either saying:

A) "Hazards are always acceptable, I want to play Apex GF on that stage with 100 mines that move randomly and kill instantly!"

B) "There is a sweet spot for me wherein hazard presence is actually the best option for competion. I like the stage that has X amount of mines that do Y damage and have Z knockback."

C) "There is a threshold for me below which hazards are acceptable, though less hazards is always better."

D) "There is no amount of hazards that is acceptable for competition."

If you picked A, congratulations your name is Karajan.

If you picked B, you admit that at a certain impact level, hazards are bad. However, for some reason hazards are good with smaller impacts. The onus is on you to explain why you stopped reducing impact when you did. Even if there are multiple people who chose B, they likely all have different definitions of what is acceptable, so that camp is not even unified in its opinion.

If you picked C, then you are likely a 64 player who has had to deal with our lack of hazard-free stages, and so you accept a small amount of hazard impact out of necessity. You may even have raised your threshold to increase stage variety by allowing hyrule, PC, and/or Congo.

If you picked D, you are probably not reading this because you are on the melee/brawl boards.

IMO, B is the most opinion based selection, because it is based not on the idea that hazards are good or bad, but that it depends how much hazard we are talking about. If you want to eliminate subjectivity, option B should be the first answer crossed off of your list. Option A, while it is a selection that requires no further subjectivity, I think we'd all agree (sans karajan) that too much hazard impact is a bad thing, so I'll cross that off. Option D also requires not further subjectivity once the selection is made, however this option does not work in 64 because every stage has something funky going on. This leaves us with option C being, imo, the best option.

So hazards are bad, but must be accepted to a point out of necessity.

 

[Shears]

everyone get gamesharks, nados + wind go away as well as battlefield + metal mario available

BF DL CONGO neutrals

PC HideRULE Metal Mario cps

FD....CP?

Why hasn't this been considered? Basically taking project M to the 64 level. My vote is for clubbas option D now.

 

[clubbadubba]

Why hasn't this been considered? Basically taking project M to the 64 level. My vote is for clubbas option D now.

Because it would require everyone to get gamesharks

 

[Sedda]

they're so cheap though

 

[bloodpeach]

I don't want to eliminate subjectivity, I want to accept and work with it. I'm all about option B. IMO we should be having discussions about whether stage gimmick X is good for competition, not trying to categorically reduce all gimmicks (cuz its impossible outside of the Pablo Proposal).

 

[clubbadubba]

That is fine that you have that opinion, but I think based on the poll you are in the minority.

 

[bloodpeach]

I realize that I'm in the minority. Thats why I'm making such a big fuss.

 

[clubbadubba]

well then i dunno what you want. Most people agree that hazards are bad for competitive play and unless YOU provide a convincing argument to change their minds then that's the way it is. Thus far your arguments have not been convincing.

 

[bloodpeach]

The community has already decide that some level of gimmicks and randomness is acceptable/good, otherwise we would stop playing the game. I'm not trying to convince anyone that hazards are good, I'm just trying to move the stage banning discussion away from "ban hyrule cuz nados r gay" and towards qualitative analysis of the stage for competitve play.

But since you want me to talk about gimmicks now: the pro-gimmicks argument is essentially the same as the pro-items argument (bear with me please). Being able to effectively use and adapt to stage gimmicks is a skill, even though some gimmicks can be dependent on RNG. The difference between gimmicks and items is that we can't ban all gimmicks (I would support this), so we need to decide which gimmicks are tolerable and which are not. Playing competetive gimmick smash with only wind is like playing competetive item smash with only fan. You can make a meta with it, but why not just include some others too?

Ultimately my point is I don't think tornados are so much worse than the barrel or wind, so I don't think that alone is anywhere near sufficient for banning hyrule.
PS Tornados can break the infmaous left edge stall. Without tornados Hyrule would be even MORE broken.

 

[KnitePhox]

Ultimately my point is I don't think tornados are so much worse than the barrel or wind

WAT

how

i never even...

 

[clubbadubba]

Yea I mean again entitled to your opinion bloodpeach, but strongly disagree with nado's not sucking as much, and I think most people are on the nado's suck train. We have to have gimmicks, yes, and DL is BY FAR the least gimmicky of the 4 legal stages right now.