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You're all self-serving and illogical in what you think is good/bad or legal/illegal in terms of stages. Also a lot of you pick bad characters.
If you disagree, you are statistically likely to be incorrect because a lot of the survey results tend to lean that direction pretty strongly. =P
But let's begin with characters, cuz they're fun.
First of all, your tier list and character choices:
With a total of 33 characters and a ranking of 1 (S tier) or 5 (F tier), we have a Mean of 2.85152, meaning everyone from Captain Falcon upwards is considered "above average" from this sample.
Of our 60 participants for this survey (a decent sampling for this I guess, although small enough to mean we need to take it with a grain of salt), 30 of you picked captain falcon or above, 30 of you picked Snake or below. Literally split right down the middle as far as how many play good or bad characters.
The most used character was ganondorf, so, what the ****.
We had absolutely no representation from Pikachu, Ness, Diddy Kong, ROB, Lucas, or Wolf. These are characters I could guess that would occur with, given that they're all either considered bad or complex by the community and complex characters generally have way less than simple characters.
Good news is that Ganondorf was the most used with a grand total of FIVE players out of 60, representing a mere 8.3% of our responses. With an average of 2.2 players per character in regards to actual chosen characters, the following characters can be considered "underrepresented" with only one user vouching for them:
Fox
Peach
Donkey Kong
Zelda
G&W
Bowser
Snake
Wario
Toon Link
Everyone else has 2 or more. Pretty wide sampling, which is expected for this stage of the metagame.
When asked "what tier level do you think your main belongs in":
S tier - 11.7%
A tier - 38.3%
B tier - 35%
C tier - 15%
D tier - 0%
F tier - 0%
Absolutely no one thought their own character was horrible!
Characters put into C tier by their mains, bolded being those above the standard deviation:
Charizard Sonic Captain Falcon
Squirtle (2)
Ivysaur
G&W
Ganondorf
Zero Suit Samus
This is despite there being several D and F votes. People think OTHER characters are bad, just not their own.
Who was voted to the "F" category?
Luigi - 1 vote
Zelda - 2 votes G&W - 8 votes
Ness - 3 votes
Wario - 2 votes King Dedede - 5 votes
ZSS - 2 votes
ROB - 2 votes
Sonic - 1 vote
Squirtle - 1 vote
Lucas - 1 vote
Sonic is the only character considered "good" by the community (above captain falcon) that was given an F vote.
From our community vote...
The worst character in the game, far and away, is Game & Watch. It isn't even a contest. He beat out Ness for that title by 0.48, which is also the single highest jump. The second highest gap was between Fox and Sheik at 0.43, then Sheik and Marth, where Sheik is ahead by 0.38. To put this in perspective, people actually believe that Game & Watch is worse than Ness by a larger factor than they believe Fox is better than Sheik. Chew on that.
Knowing this, it appears that G&W either needs to be changed by the developers or he will be forgotten completely. I do not forsee this character getting any love.
The best character in the game is Falco, but not by much.
91.2% put Fox in S tier, while 94.7% put Falco there.
7% put Fox in A, 3.5% put Falco in A.
There was 1 vote for Fox in C tier and 1 vote for Falco in D tier, both pretty crazy votes imo.
If we ignored every vote except for the majority vote, meaning if you have 10 votes for C tier and 9 votes for S tier you'd be in C tier, this would be our tier list, in no particular order :
S tier:
Falco
Fox
Sheik
A tier:
Peach
Marth
Jigglypuff
Captain Falcon
Mario
Lucario
Sonic
Ike
Wolf
Pit
B tier:
Ganondorf
Pikachu
Donkey Kong
Link
Bowser
Zero Suit Samus
Toon Link
Squirtle
Ivysaur
Lucas
Sonic
C tier:
Luigi
Zelda
Ness
Snake
Diddy Kong
Wario
King Dedede
D tier:
G&W
Ness
Zero Suit Samus
ROB
Charizard
All in all, it seems that the characters have been mostly "figured out" by the community as a whole but not on an individual level. Many, many people have a crazy opinion on one or two characters and nearly every surveyed player inflated their own characters importance, value, and definitely in regards to stages. Despite this, as a whole we've mostly been in agreement.
For your ease of viewing, here is my tournament analytics followed by our community tier list via the survey:
I'll get stages in the next post, maybe in a little while. It'll be a doozy.
You have to realize that the majority of people out there are self-serving when it comes to stages (even you) and the reasons people suggested we "fix" or "delete" changes were, on the whole, mostly personal and/or unfounded.
Many were simply done via philosophy - "This stage is too big", "This stage is awkward", "This stage is different than others", "I don't like transformations", "Hazards = instant ban", "People can camp on this stage", "stairs are janky", "the edges are jank", "This stage is too small", and one that even said "This stage is too green". The last one is actually a bit legitimate even if it is a bit unusual.
Very few of those complaints are legitimate and it illustrates a failing within the smash community and, more specifically, a failing within the BBR during the Brawl era and the MBR in the post-Melee era.
Because we don't want to give a competitive advantage to any certain play style or character choice, it's important that a "hands off" approach is taken as much as possible until adequate data is collected. A stage simply being "different" or "disliked" is not adequate reason for banning a stage. If it was, we could ban any stage and justify it with "dun like it".
Many players base their ideas off of their own perceptions and little else, which results in the vast majority wanting to get rid of stages that are specifically bad for their character. This is not a mindset meant to make a balanced stage list, but when the majority of people all respond selfishly to a survey it makes it easy to see what is ACTUALLY fair and what they simply dislike.
As such, when someone says we should ban Rumble Falls or SSE Jungle because it is "too big" or Metal Cavern or Yoshi's Story because it is "too small", they are typically coming from an uninformed standpoint, save for their own personal troubles.
What responsible people will do is say "This stage is too big/small, which leads to...." and have a followup.
A few actually would say "SSE Jungle is too big and promotes camping"; this is a healthy statement that can be adequately tested.
A statement of "Metal Cavern is too small and hurts people that have trouble getting back to the stage" is another healthy statement.
As for whether or not these things should result in a stage being banned is another topic entirely, but I needed to make this clear.
This entire survey is done from the standpoint of "All stages should be legal unless proven otherwise; this survey is meant to show preliminary distaste, personal thoughts on advantages/disadvantages, etc., so that we may start progress towards a stage list that completely negates history, personal preference in playstyle or character, preference in types of fun or speed, and any other bias possible".
So please, when viewing and commenting on this, take the time to take the next step. If you're not willing to test things or find and cite videos online, you don't have an opinion that should be worth anything more than a tick mark on a survey, so just do everyone a favor and test first.
Now onto the juicy details. I'll be doing this from a rule design standpoint, posing as someone who is intent on creating a fair stage list with as many stages as possible given our current information while simultaneously acknowledging player's personal preference to see from a development standpoint what stages need to be changed, removed, or altered in some way.
Finding our fair "Starter" stages
First things first. What stages do people straight up LIKE?
And now in order, sans %:
Of course this means nothing without the stages that people DISLIKE.
An easier way to compare them:
Now you have that raw data up there you can fiddle with if you'd like, here's some analysis.
Stage "score"; simple subtraction. Votes for good - votes for bad. Stages with a higher score have more people saying "This stage is good for me" while stages with a lower score have more people saying "this stage is bad for me"
At first glance, this seems incredibly easy.
"Okay, duh. Starters are Smashville, Battlefield, FD, PS2, Yoshi's Story, then Dreamland and Fountain of Dreams. Rest are counterpicks, so what of it?"
For one, there's some selection bias going on. This is the bottom row of page 1 and some commonly played stages. People are more accepting of Fountain of Dreams' platforms than they are of, say, Dracula Castle's platforms, despite both having similar functions.
But that's besides the point. The important thing is this:
"Good" votes:
Smashville - 36
Battlefield - 35
Final Destination - 36
PS2 - 32
Yoshi's Story - 36
Dreamland - 32
FoD - 30
If this survey, rougly 50% thought that these starters were advantageous to them. This means that we are pairing someone who says "i have an advantage on this stage" with someone who says "I do not have an advantage or disadvantage" on this stage a bit under 50% of the time.
This is bad.
This means that our current starter list is giving a distinct advantage to certain character/playstyles; we are essentially "subsidizing" a certain type of game within Project M.
To put it in an easier perspective, this is similar to the complications you would run across by having only FD legal. Some would have a huge advantage, others would have a huge disadvantage, and it is entirely dependent on matchups.
Let's dive deeper
But that's just surface level data. We have to dive deeper. After all, it could be that those stages are perfectly aligned and that different people have different preferred stages and it happens to add out to about 50%!
There's a looooooooooot of data to sift through here and it has to be done manually so I'm going to take some shortcuts (sorry) and just try to answer a few questions. If someone wants to buy me the pro version of survey monkey I'd be faster
The next two questions are simple. If a solid number think 4 or more are good or bad for them, those characters are essentially in a permanent state of advantage or disadvantage (or believe to be).
Of the 7 stages, how many people think 4 or more are good for them?
54.09%
(45.9% believe that only 3 or less are good for them)
Of the 7 stages, how many people think 4 or more are bad for them?
0%
100% believe that only 1 or 2 are bad for them; not a single person thought 3 or more stages were bad for them.
How many list more non-starter stages as "good" than starters?
26/60 43%
How many list more non-starter stages as "bad" than starters?
37/56, 66%
So what do we know right now with just this data?
1. ) no one starts on a stage they consider bad for them via stage striking.
Stage striking works in that regard at least! Definitely a step up from random.
2. ) Over 50% believe they are starting on an advantaged stage each time they play a match, regardless of their opponents striking attempts.
This is bad. Very bad. This means you could pick a character from that group and say "whatever" and throw a dart and still come up with an advantage. If you are able to remove your opponents advantage (should be able to do this ~50% of the time), you have a soft counterpick on game one (good for you, no bonus for them).
3. ) The stage list of page 1, as it stands, would result in soft or hard counterpicks if we did striking from the whole list. It's a bad idea and won't work. Sorry.
Phew.
So if we want true balance, we'd have to edit the starter list as it stands.
That said...
The majority of people felt they had 2-4 stages as "good" from the starters. Very few thought they only had one as a good stage, but a solid group felt they had 5, 6, or 7 good stages (!) from the starter list.
While a serious attempt should be made to balance the starter list, it is important to note that this is a matter of degree and not a failing of the system. This stage list is influencing certain characters in a positive direction, not rocketing them forward. If a traditionalist said "Eh, this is good enough" he wouldn't be crazy for saying so.
That said, I'm a perfectionist.
Removing stages from the Starter list
Given that bottom row.... what should we remove?
It's a tough call, so... we have to ask more questions. The easiest thing to do is realize that if a lot of people believe 4 stages (a majority) are in their advantage, there is probably an overlap of those 4 stages in the stage striking list!
A hypothetical would be wario ware, yoshi's story, and SSE Jungle as our only starters. We could then see that people who routinely thought YStory was good for them also saw wario ware was good for them, and from that we could assume that SMALL stages were giving certain characters an advantage. One of those would need to be removed.
What stages overlap?
Pretty straightforward; the data backs it up, but we didn't need it.
From left to right, counterpick against my character, disadvantage, no advantage/disadvantage, advantage, counterpick for my character
Then I looked into the data to see "well if someone says FoD is a disadvantaged stage... what other starters are for him?" to see overlap. The findings were surprising.
Fountain of Dreams is one of the most stable stages
Despite PS2, Battlefield, and Smashville to all be considered "no advantage or disadvantage" 50% of the time or more, FoD with a piddly 22% "no advantage or disadvantage" is actually our best starter.
Fountain of Dreams is the only stage that is not directly associated with another stage in any fashion. There is no legitimate rhyme or reason between thinking FoD is a counterpick of any level, for or against, and the other starters.
It isn't "neutral", but characters generally know immediately if they want to ban it or not and if someone bans FoD you don't say "haha, I'll take you here instead! It's the exact same!", which other stages can say...
Yoshi's Story and Battlefield might as well be the same stage
There are definitely people that don't see an overlap between the two and Yoshi's Story definitely is more polarizing, but at the end of the day if you have YStory, Battlefield, and Smashville, YStory and Battlefield are both in the advantage of the same guy the majority of the time.
Final Destination, Pokemon Stadium 2, Smashville, and Dreamland are also linked
This is the problem right here. At some point we managed to get 4 clones which, for all intents and purposes, are the same.
This means that if your character does well on one of these stages, there is a statistical likelihood that he does good on all of them. Because of this, it means any character good on these stages get an automatic advantage. Those bad on all 4 get an automatic disadvantage, but this doesn't appear to exist.
The auto advantages, however, do.
It is important to note that not ALL characters that do well on one of these stages do well on all of them. There will be those that obviously do not. There is simply a statistical likelihood that they will, which is what we are trying to rectify.
Who do we remove? What do we replace it with?
This is the hardest question to answer and I ask you to read my thoughts as just my thoughts. Yes, it's backed up by data and nearly a decade of Smash so it's definitely grounded in something, but when it comes down to it there will be more than one acceptable answer.
The Popularity Route
This is a bad way of doing things, but I want to illustrate it.
We've seen this image before! Left disliked for your character, farther right more liked. (Last column is N/A)
Reviewing PS2, FD, SVille, and DLand, we can see that the most controversial stages are between Final Destination and Dreamland. The stage with the most "heavy advantages" is Dreamland, followed by Final Destination. Normally you'd expect it to be the other way around, but the changes in chain grabbing has made it a different world!
PS2 has a healthy spread on the advantaged side but lacks the disadvantage, making it a "soft" coutnerpick at best.
Smashville is in a similar boat as PS2, just slightly less in terms of "strong CP" belief.
Looking at the stage list as a whole and organizing it we see:
Fountain of Dreams (polarizing, unique)
Yoshi's Island and Battlefield (Yoshi's harder, BF softer, linked)
Smashville, PS2, Final Destination, Dreamland 64 (soft to hard, linked)
Poll Question: Which do you think could conceivably be considered a fair starter stage in a stage-striking environment (no stage limit)
So from a strictly popularity-based viewpoint (as in, what stage is least likely to be striked), the stage you'd want to replace is Dreamland 64.
Kind of a no brainer in this regard, but also very, very wrong. If you did that for the entire list, you'd assume Smashville is the best starter while FoD is one of the worst when FoD is one of THE BEST.
Again, this is a factor of personal bias that people brought into the poll. The people that thought FoD was bad for THEM though "That shouldn't be a starter".
Keep in mind that the bias only works one way. No one looked at a stage that was GOOD for them and said "must be a starter", but with alarming consistency people continually said that stages that were BAD for their character shouldn't be a starter.
This comes from the flawed idea that every starter stage should be "fair" when this isn't the case at all. The entire reason we moved to Stage Striking and away from Random is so we didn't end up starting on a stage that put someone at a disadvantage in the set by random chance (we succeeded, by the way).
People only stopped at their own personal level and didn't move on to think what kind of effect it may have on their opponent in a positive fashion, thus giving them an advantage.
As an example, Fox doesn't do poorly on Dreamland 64. It doesn't hurt him or help him worse than many other stages and while he has better stages, no one would counterpick a Fox to DL 64 thinking "such an awful stage for him". But if Fox had to play a series of peaches or mario players, whose recovery and survivability is greatly aided by this stage, the matchup ratio would skew slightly despite the stage having little to no effect on Fox.
Our goal with the stage striking system is for a rational player to not have that happen to them. You should be able to bring both players to a stage that brings them little to no advantage.
The Logical Approach
So we're forgetting the whole "popularity" thing. We're willing and ready to say "Smashville, you get out!", even though it is one of the most "even" stages in many matchups if it turns out it is the breaking factor, despite it having a whopping 93.8% of the populous saying "this is a fair starter stage".
Remove all emotional bias!
First we have to acknowledge that there are different philosophies. Mine I stated above: all stages are legal whether you like them or not, only when they're totally busted do we remove them. Others don't share that view and just want to hack and slash at the stage list with limited data and try to create their "perfect game"; I think that's a bad idea, especially in P:M when that data can help FIX those stages, but it does exist and it's a popular one.
From what I've seen in the past, the constructionist philosophy basically says "Get rid of hard counterpicks, keep soft counterpicks and whittle it down as much as possible to where we have as close to "even" ground as possible".
So pretty easy. Look at the list below, get rid of those like Jungle that has a large % saying it should be removed/fixed. Keep those that don't, continually do this until no one is unhappy with a stage. You will eventually end up with ONLY starters, and your starter list would be Smashville, PS2, and Battlefield. Yoshi's Story, FD, FoD, and DLand would all be counterpicks originally but it wouldn't matter because FD and DL are direct clones of the 3 starters (thus essentially making them poor CPs) and Yoshi's Story and FoD aren't related so they'd end up being banned. You could any of those CPs to teh starter list but it wouldn't make any difference to the striking procedure across the board because within this structure you want the most fair starting stage but soft advantages aren't considered important.
Expanded image of the poll question above (what is an acceptable starter stage)
Opposite question, which do you think should be removed/fixed from play altogether:
If you're an originalist like me and want to keep in as much as possible without editing it, it's quite a bit harder.
Because soft and hard advantages exist for EVERY STAGE, we have to ask the question "is it possible to have an 'even' stage".
The answer is YES! We just have to be smart about it and realize that "50% win rate between the two characters" is not even and generally means one character is getting an artificial boost.
If you wanted to test if a stage was even for a particular matchup, you'd have to find out the matchup ratio. This is done by getting a large sample size of games from various players in the same matchup on various stages, then determining the overall winrate for the advantaged character in the matchup.
Using Bowser vs. Sonic we could then see that, foregoing the idea that every Bowser player was just straight up better than the Sonic players on average, Bowser wins a certain % on each stage. We would then be able to list stages from "best" to "worst" and create an individualized "stage preference list" for this matchup.
If we wanted to get super technical we could do this with only one pair of players by having them play several hundred games, recording the results, and determing an actual matchup ratio between the players themselves and accounting for this with the character results.
In this hypothetical we'll assume Bowser won, on average, 60% of the time. This makes the matchup a 60:40 matchup in Bowser's favor.
Given this, our ideal starting stage is one that allows Bowser to win 60% of the time.
It's important to note that this is making the assumption that the stages looked at don't all advantage Bowser too much; this is easy to spot when you also account for CP stages. If Bowser wins 60% of the time on average via the starters, but only 52% of the time on CP stages, the starter stages are actually the harder counters!
With me so far?
Any stage that results in Sonic winning 50% of the time is artificially inflating Sonic's results while downplaying Bowser's. In this example, Bowser is just a better character. We don't want to inflate Sonic's results to make them go even.
Well we obviously can't do this. If I had every tournament result for Brawl down to the stage they were on, I could maybe do this with accuracy NOW. No way we can do it for M this early. But we can use the basic idea!
If we DID do this for Bowser/Sonic and the matchup was determined to be 60:40, we could then hypothesize that any natural result would have Bowser winning 60% of the time and neither character would believe they were advantaged or disadvantaged on this stage. It would be "normal". Any deviation from this 60% would, by definition, be an advantage or disadvantage to a character that would skew the %.
To do this, we must be careful not to fall into the trap we've fallen into: making starter stages into the group of stages that approximately half think "no advantage/disadvantage", thus dooming the other half.
Instead we need just ONE stage like that for each matchup, and we need to make the logical choice for the players to strike towards that stage.
To do that we have to isolate the factors for each stage that make them unique. Why would someone want Dream Land 64 over Smashville, or PS2 over FD, if statistically they are the "same stage"?
Stage Properties Dream Land
Large blastzones
high platforms (difficult to hit someone above via tilts)
wide platforms
spaced platforms
no wall
wind hazard (minor)
Smashville
Medium blastzones
low platform
wide, singular platform
moving platform (advantage for mobility, dealing with projectiles, edgeguarding, etc.)
No wall
Balloon Hazard (super minor, virtually non-existant for those who aren't Ness or Ivysaur)
PS2
Medium blastzones
Small platforms
Spaced platforms
low platforms
Wall present (semi-ignorable aspect)
Final Destination
Medium blastzones
No platforms
Wall present
Looking at stages in this manner can help point out the non-obvious. Doing the same above with Yoshi's Story and Battlefield make you go "Oh, that's why they're statistically the same". They both have small platforms that are easily accessed with relatively small areas to fight in. The only difference is that Yoshi's Story is a little bit smaller and has a wall. While these differences are obvious, statistically they mean very little.
So striking from this list:
Yoshi's Story
Battlefield
Fountain of Dreams
Smashville
PS2
FD
Dreamland 64
What can we remove that is already adequately represented in those bottom 4 stages?
There is no answer that doesn't take away SOMETHING from SOMEONE; no answer will be perfect.
The first thing to note is that Dreamland is on its own. There is no other stage with wide, spaced platforms or large blastzones. Not a single stage fits that criteria. Dreamland should remain a starter as it fits a vital role: it is polarizing in certain aspects and not over-bearing in matchups where neither have an advantage/disadvantage due to the stage properties.
So the removal has to come from FD, PS2, or Smashville with the latter two being the most popular stages in the game (ouch!)
As much as I hated Final Destination being a starter in both Melee and Brawl.... it seems to be a solid starter here. It provides something nothing else does and due to the lack of chain grabbing antics in this game it is no longer a stage that is an "auto strike" in a high % of matchups. FD stays.
The issue resides in PS2 and Smashville.
Despite a large difference in appearance, Smashville and PS2 are the same stage. In the polling results, they had practicaly the same results across the board.
Smashville and PS2, respectievly:
3 people thought the stage was disadvantaged for their character
33 and 35 people thought it was no advantage/disadvantage
25 and 24 thought it was advantaged
Why is this?
Well, their platform structure is the same. Both involve a wide, open space where you can openly juggle and combo and a small % of the stage is covered by a platform that doesn't allow the opponent to tech away (unlike DLand) and the platform is low enough to the ground where you have the same options under each.
Smashville's platform moves, but this ultimately presents the same scenarios.
Conclusion: Remove either PS2 or Smashville from the Starter List
Reason: This stage type is over-represented and they are direct clones of one-another
This would be similar if we had Rumble Falls and SSE Jungle as starters, or Skyworld and Battlefield. They're so similar in design that they create problems.
Despite both PS2 and Smashville being acceptable starters, in a 7-stage striking system they cannot co-exist without giving any character that does well on these stages an overall advantage (since 50% of the time a character that does well on PS2/Smashville will do well on FD and DL as well).
Well... what do we replace it with?
I spent some time looking over the results and hypothesizing to myself, and have come to a sad conclusion:
There is no acceptable starter stage that rounds out the 7 stage striking system. (except for maybe Castle Siege)
That's a ****ty answer, but it's an answer.
You can add in Metal Cavern, But then you just reverse the issue. It's not as bad as FD/SV/DL/PS2, but MC/BF/YS/FoD is still the same problem. No dice.
Norfair does a decent job, but it has such a high polarization rate that it doesn't fit into the stage striking system. Remember, 24% thought FoD was a "bad" stage for them while 52% thought it was "good" for them, and 20% thought it was "neutral". With Norfair, ~32% thought it was "bad" and ~30% thought it was "good", and 28.6% thought it was "neutral".
While Norfair is more spread out across the board, we SHOULD see a slight pull towards "advantaged" in all starter stages according to our current model. Despite Norfair being quite literally one of the most fair stages in the game assuming random characters non-stop only playing on that stage... we aren't in a vacuum. Norfair would be a stage that would always be struck, always, and would have a humorous effect of skewing the stage striking process to advantage whoever hated Norfair the least! Hardly an ideal replacement.
PS1 does an excellent job, actually. It has several factors that we don't have existing in other stages (such as low ceiling / medium horizontal blast zones) and a unique spread due to the transformations, but ultimately I think people don't want the transformations. They often result in a bit of a campfest that runs down the timer some, and we should avoid that if possible.
Yoshi's Island (Brawl) seems good at first glance and actually holds up decently well, but upon further review it's actually pretty close to a clone of Smashville. We'd be having lesser instances of the same problem
Castle Siege is probably the best contender, to be honest. It is literally the best of both worlds and is similar to no other stage the entire time. The first transformation is similar to Yoshi's, while the later is more similar to FD. The first has a true wall, the second a pseudo wall. The walk-off is complained about but as anyone who played Brawl knows, it is negligible and people who complain about the walk-off are bad and should feel bad.
So why not Castle Siege?
Well, to be frank, people don't like it. 9.4% of people thought it'd be a fair starter stage, which is the same amoutn Norfair and Jungle got. It is also the lowest result in the poll.
Not surprisingly, those who said we should "fix" a stage have claimed that Castle Siege needs to be "fixed"; 36.5%, behind Jungle (people said too big) by 3 votes and Halberd (how does lazor wurk) by 1 vote.
Adding Castle Siege as a starter would be acceptable from a balance standpoint, but telling people "Did you know you should remove PS2 or Smashville for Castle Siege?" wouldn't fly.
So What Do?!
Few solutions.
1) Make a new stage.
2) Add 9 starters total, not 7.
Both of these would work.
If we were going to make a new stage, what would we need?
A stage that wouldn't be linked with Dreamland, FD, and the remaining PS2/Smashville
So... what properties? It's hard to predict without serious testing, but my guess would be:
Small stage area
Spaced, short platforms (or moving platforms)
Wide horizontal blast zones
Shorter ceiling
Wall
But that's just my personal guess. I guess this because Yoshi's is small across the board and DL is large across the board. Smashville allows for short horizontal blast zones and normal height as does PS2 (if hit off the floating platform or edge of stage, respectively), Battlefield has normal sized platforms and a medium size, FoD has a small size and normal sized/spaced platforms (to an extent, this changes), FD has no platforms and a large stage with no other discernable effects and kind of a pseudo-wall.
There is currently no stage that has a shorter ceiling AND wider horizontal blast zones, nor is there a stage that is small with spaced platforms. All the small stages currently have a "oh, you got hit? You're going to land on a platform" kind of thing going. We also don't have a stage that makes it easy to take someone off the edge other than Yoshi's Story, while we have several like FD, DLand, and PS2/SV that allow characters to stay on the stage at even high % after being grabbed or hit.
Cramming all of those factors in together might be a bad idea, it is difficult to tell.
A tier - Good character capable of consistent tournament play against all challengers
B tier - Has some bad matchups, but tournament viable
C tier - Tournament viable in some circumstances, but requires more effort and has many challenges
D tier - Not tournament viable, held back by other character's advantages and their own limitations
F tier - Character played specifically for the challenge they bring, hopeless for tournament play
It's important to note that the tiers were listed in this format. C tier isn't necessarily 'bad'.
S tier is for characters that are above and beyond, and there is evidence for Fox, Sheik, and Falco for this.
A tier is supposed to be for characters that have no bad matchups or at least none worth mentioning; you should be able to solo an A character with little uphill struggles. I see a few people that would probably drop lower later.
B tier is for characters that probably are a secondary or need one, but save for bad matchups they are viable. I think Ivysaur is a good example of a B tier character. He's strong, fun, and has great defensive options, but if that character can get inside Ivy's game changes drastically. B tier characters can be defined by their opponent while S and A tiers don't really have that issue.
C tier is for characters that not only have bad matchups, but just straight up aren't as good of characters. Charizard has some neat stuff but he isn't super heavy, is big and easily comboed, and is pretty easy to edgeguard. At the very least he takes significant damage. A good Charizard player can just wreck some faces, but Charizard still has some weaknesses he has to overcome. Even to Charizard players, they have to know his weaknesses.
I play Bowser, for example. He has tremendous strengths and I love Bowser vs. Fox and think it might actually be even, if not in Bowser's favor on certain stages. That said, if I get hit by a Fox nair at 30% or above, I'm getting hit with 3-5 more moves. It is easy to get hit by a nair. I understand this is a weakness Bowser has and have to accept it and move on.
Charizard just doesn't seem to have the same strengths. He's got some superb gimps and great tech chasing and combo ability but from what I've seen he has difficulty initiating.
I really want to see his neutral B changed from a flamethrower or at least give him flame canceling. Giving him an akuma fireball neutral b in the air and a horizontal one on the ground would be aweeeesomeeeeeee
I think the most telling part is the last bit - current tournament analytics vs. the community tier list. Clearly, we underestimated several characters, like ROB and Luigi and overestimated others (Lucario, Mario, Pit, Marth). I guess it shows we really don't know how good. Hopefully the stage data can tell us which stages are fair or unfair in general.
I think the most telling part is the last bit - current tournament analytics vs. the community tier list. Clearly, we underestimated several characters, like ROB and Luigi and overestimated others (Lucario, Mario, Pit, Marth). I guess it shows we really don't know how good. Hopefully the stage data can tell us which stages are fair or unfair in general.
Actually, the tournament results do not show this. I'm going to be doing more tournament related stuff later, but that comparison is a very skewed one. I probably should have clarified.
ROBs results have been fairly poor, while Bowser's have been phenomenal. ROB has had many players, while Bowser has had a small handful with success. As such, ROB is inflated by a number of 5ths and the like, as well as dual character use while Bowser is inflated by mainly Gimpyfish going bonkers like earthquake in a can.
Charizard pretty much just has metroid representing him. Desipte this, he's smack in the middle!
Due to a large variety of character choice and such a small sample size (as well as not inflating based on population), the results will have many odd placements. These will smooth out later.
Actually, the tournament results do not show this. I'm going to be doing more tournament related stuff later, but that comparison is a very skewed one. I probably should have clarified.
ROBs results have been fairly poor, while Bowser's have been phenomenal. ROB has had many players, while Bowser has had a small handful with success. As such, ROB is inflated by a number of 5ths and the like, as well as dual character use while Bowser is inflated by mainly Gimpyfish going bonkers like earthquake in a can.
Charizard pretty much just has metroid representing him. Desipte this, he's smack in the middle!
Due to a large variety of character choice and such a small sample size (as well as not inflating based on population), the results will have many odd placements. These will smooth out later.
I agree with Overswarm here, the tournament results are limited and skewed heavily by personal skill level in an budding meta where everything is in flux. Guys like metroid, prof, jcaesar, gimpyfish, reflex, etc, who are head and shoulders above anybody else playing the character and can win tournaments simply by outplaying their opponents with individual skill are outliers, their results aren't indicative of how strong the character is, rather just how damn good they themselves are.
Max sample size is 100 which is still too small, but 60 is good enough. It's not perfect, but good enough to get some stuff from it. Also it was in a separate thread and the social thread.
@Overswarm: Thanks for the thought-out response, I agree with pretty much everything you said. However, looking back at the list of B tier characters, I'm surprised that people don't consider Charizard to be among them (Ganondorf and DK stick out the most for me). Both of those characters are Melee veterans that people are familiar with though, so the primary culprits are either bias on my part or lack of wide-spread representation.
I agree with Overswarm here, the tournament results are limited and skewed heavily by personal skill level in an budding meta where everything is in flux. Guys like metroid, prof, jcaesar, gimpyfish, reflex, etc, who are head and shoulders above anybody else playing the character and can win tournaments simply by outplaying their opponents with individual skill are outliers, their results aren't indicative of how strong the character is, rather just how damn good they themselves are.
Persoanlly, I think it's a matter of match-up inexperience for my case. I beat DSF's Falco, ORLY's Fox, and Kels' Fox at the last tournament I went to, but none of them have that much experience against Charizard since I'm not as active as others in our scene.
@Overswarm: Thanks for the thought-out response, I agree with pretty much everything you said. However, looking back at the list of B tier characters, I'm surprised that people don't consider Charizard to be among them (Ganondorf and DK stick out the most for me). Both of those characters are Melee veterans that people are familiar with though, so the primary culprits are either bias on my part or lack of wide-spread representation.
Persoanlly, I think it's a matter of match-up inexperience for my case. I beat DSF's Falco, ORLY's Fox, and Kels' Fox at the last tournament I went to, but none of them have that much experience against Charizard since I'm not as active as others in our scene.
People don't know Charizard, but they know DK/Dorf. Dorf was also slightly over-represented. I'd imagine that Charizard is borderline given my current knowledge of him, but I don't know enough to really peg him down.
Awesome stuff on the stages Overswarm! Just wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the matter of which stages should be starters and which shouldn't.
Metal Cavern
Metal Cavern is the most disliked stage, yet conversely 30% of people like it. So, again, it's a polarizing stage, why is that? Well, it favors certain playstyles over others, and is a bit awkward to play on because of it's very small size, awkward slopes and platform, and larger blast zones. The slopes dip inwards towards the middle, while a platform sits above, creating a central position that is abnormally powerful to hold because it's easily defensible and there isn't anywhere your opponent can land that you can't strike, outside of this central recess you are backed against the ledge or on the platform which makes you extremely vulnerable to attacks from below. Because of the stages small size, large blast zone, and lopsided stage control due to layout, it is an edgeguarding haven, it's painfully difficult to recover and reset to a neutral position on this stage, with it's small size there's not much respite from attack, there is nowhere to retreat, it heavily favors aggressive characters or those with above average edgeguarding capabilities. Because of the larger blast zones and how often they'll be hit offstage and forced to recover, a disproportionate amount of kills will be gimps. I'm exaggerating of course, but this stage is heavily slanted in favor of particular characters and playstyles, as you can see from the poll it tends to be very polarizing and I think this is why. It doesn't feel very good to play on, in my opinion, as well as looking dated, with a noisy background, low quality textures and blocky shapes which all contribute to make it visually unappealing as well, which further decreases it's appeal.
Skyworld
Skyworld, which is almost as disliked as Metal Cavern, is not polarizing so much as just straight up unpopular, with only 8.3% saying they liked it. Why is this stage so reviled? On the surface it appears to just be yet another Battlefield clone but with the platforms shifted to the right so they're asymmetrically aligned. Well, I think a large part of the dislike comes from the visual element. The platforms are fat little cotton ball clouds rather then the thin sheets of battlefield or elsewhere, which is problematic because it's difficult to tell exactly where the ground is on them as they don't read well at a glance like a stereotypical platform shape does- you know exactly where you'll land on the standard sheet style playform, it's a precise horizontal line. Additionally, the clouds take up a lot more space, though they can be passed through, but visually they're eating up space and that changes how you perceive the stage. Not only do the clouds take up space, they obscure it, again, it's difficult to know exactly where the floor is on the clouds, so sharking is more difficult, dropping through doesn't feel as clean, even telling how wide the platforms are is more difficult because rather then sharp edges it's a fluffy curved mass. The main stage itself is a fat little ice cream sandwich of a tan platform, some distracting glowing sigils in a black strip, then a white rounded bottom. The main platform itself isn't bad, the tan looks nice, it's just a flat platform, though there is for some reason an odd lip to the back of the stage which is, again, entirely unnecessary and hurts readability because it's the exact same color as the main stage, it's visibly a part of the platform and unnecessarily complicates the plane of action. Of course, even the ledges read poorly, because there are two goddamn ledges since the dark strip of sigils is recessed, so again, it's complicating visually. The dark strip with the sigils is in general visually distracting, the foreground is all white and tan, light and simple while letting the background be more complex and darker to contrast it, except that strip of black with teal glowing marks pulls your eye straight toward it. Of course this is all just based off the visual elements, technically speaking I think an asymmetrical Battlefield layout would work fine, but I think this stage just doesn't read well and Battlefield or one of the many other similar stages just does everything Skyworld does, but better.
I figure I'll just keep working my way backwards through the list by unpopularity...
Norfair
Again, a stage that goes both ways in opinion, a third of the surveyed people dislike it, while a quarter like it. I think this is more in line with because it's a deviation from the norm, I think it is a pretty good stage and has an interesting design. The interior can get a bit tight at times, when the platforms pull all the way in the stage can become quite small and feel as though there isn't much room to operate, it can have a similar, though not as pronounced, effect as Metal Cavern in that the opponent can effectively reach you quite easily and there isn't much safety, whereas when the platforms are fully extended it feels like you have more room to operate and maneuver. This stage certainly favors certain playstyles, it's good for combating projectile heavy characters as the multiple platforms give you multiple avenues of approach while the small size of the stage allows you to smother their projectile game by denying them space to operate, and as most projectiles travel horizontally, the vertical nature of the stage works to your advantage. It's good for characters with good juggling games, or characters with disjointed or good range on attacks, as you can poke through the platforms, both from above or below, though generally you want to be beneath your opponent. Overall though, I think this is a good stage and I'm a bit surprised to see it so disliked.
I'll keep editing in more opinions here, so keep your eye on this space!
Good work Overswarm. I eagerly await the character tier shifts that you'll be [no doubt] tracking in the future since you have a base one month sample.
I feel like a tier list creates popularity for certain characters. Those people who main those characters then pick and vote on surveys like this for what stages benefit them most. And as a result, the stage choices benefit those who main the popular characters, pushing them up the tier list and making them even more popular, and more people playing them creates more advanced strategies for those characters, which then makes them even higher on the tier list while attracting more players. This initial tier list that we already have is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy if we ban stages like we are about to (I hope not).
Also, Game and Watch is nowhere near that bad. Comparatively, I feel like all characters are on a C level, where every single one could have tournament success, with the only difference being the learning curve.
I stand wholeheartedly by my decision to only put characters in A, B, and C tiers in this case. No character or characters are so far and away ahead of the rest of the cast that they deserve a designation of "S" tier.
I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of the stage poll results, overswarm. I think it's to be expected that people would many judge neutral stages as "good" because they are comfortable to play on, and I know that as long as I feel the opponent doesn't have a large advantage because of the stage, I will like that stage and judge it as good. Just because so many people think it's good for them doesn't really mean the stage usually gives them an advantage.
I'm not sure I agree with your analysis of the stage poll results, overswarm. I think it's to be expected that people would many judge neutral stages as "good" because they are comfortable to play on, and I know that as long as I feel the opponent doesn't have a large advantage because of the stage, I will like that stage and judge it as good. Just because so many people think it's good for them doesn't really mean the stage usually gives them an advantage.
I specifically asked whether people felt a stage was a counterpick against them, disadvantaged, no advantage/disadvantage, advantaged, or counterpick for them. I coudl clearly see if they considered them just "neutral" or if they had an advantage.
Also, your theory falls apart when you realize they rated all page 1 stages and most people didn't have the same results for all of the starters despite being "comfortable" on all of them.
Finished with this. I have a pretty good idea of a whole bunch of stuff and wish I had the time to create stages to try to fill in the gap! If anyone has any guides to doing this, let me know so I can attempt it sometime. :B
If we were going to make a new stage, what would we need?
A stage that wouldn't be linked with Dreamland, FD, and the remaining PS2/Smashville
So... what properties? It's hard to predict without serious testing, but my guess would be:
Small stage area
Spaced, short platforms (or moving platforms)
Wide horizontal blast zones
Shorter ceiling
Wall
But that's just my personal guess. I guess this because Yoshi's is small across the board and DL is large across the board. Smashville allows for short horizontal blast zones and normal height as does PS2 (if hit off the floating platform or edge of stage, respectively), Battlefield has normal sized platforms and a medium size, FoD has a small size and normal sized/spaced platforms (to an extent, this changes), FD has no platforms and a large stage with no other discernable effects and kind of a pseudo-wall.
There is currently no stage that has a shorter ceiling AND wider horizontal blast zones, nor is there a stage that is small with spaced platforms. All the small stages currently have a "oh, you got hit? You're going to land on a platform" kind of thing going. We also don't have a stage that makes it easy to take someone off the edge other than Yoshi's Story, while we have several like FD, DLand, and PS2/SV that allow characters to stay on the stage at even high % after being grabbed or hit.
Cramming all of those factors in together might be a bad idea, it is difficult to tell.
-Metal Cavern - Yoshi's Story - Battlefield - Fountain of Dreams - Yoshi's Island: Brawl - Smashville - Final Destination - (Frozen) Pokemon Stadium 2 - Dreamland 64
The above is what I'm trying at my house tournament on the 16th, but I made that prior to this information and currently don't think it will suffice. More stages IS always better for growth in the metagame, but we don't know enough to just off the fly pick 'em. I think the above list will be adequate, at least.
I'm really interested in this Bowser's Castle one though.
It also appears that the platforms are the right height to make it different from other small stages. It looks to be around Dreamland height which would set it apart from BF/Yoshi's.
Hmm... after watching vids it looks like it is too similar to battlefield in terms of blast zones. It might work, I can't really say, but it definitely doesn't fit my model I presented earlier. Looks like a fun stage though.
