The Ultimate Smash 4 Ruleset Poll RESULTS!

[Shirma Akayaku]

I think that Skyloft should replace Delfino, but it seems people are comfortable with Delfino since they're used to it. The same goes for Halberd. Jeez. I don't expect this poll to be taken seriously, mostly.

 

[Xermo]

Yeah any new game is to be judged on whether mostly old players play it...if it's mostly old players then it's a good game, and if there are new players it must be a showing that the game is bad and should be ridiculed.

Good job at misinterpreting and assuming what's not there. Doesn't matter if it's newcomers who play the game, but having them make all the rules and decisions for how it's played when they have no previous experience handling smash and its rulesets is another story. Sit and spin, buddy.

 

[allison]

The one thing I absolutely do not like about the competitive community is the banned/unbanned list of stages. Other than stages with holes in the middle of them or with too many stage threats, it shouldn't be up to a select few people to decide what should or shouldn't be banned again with the few exceptions made. The only characters that this benefits are the the higher tier ones, and nobody seems to realize that or care. Stages like Luigis mansion should not be banned, and I don't give a damn what your pathetic arguments are against it.

Luigi's Mansion doesn't just have a huge disadvantage to projectile characters and promotion of circle camping (both of which are enough to make it seriously sketchy), it also has some serious caves of life, dragging out matches too long.

 

[Iceweasel]

@ Radical Larry @ DaRkJaWs Luigi's Mansion has problems with the platforms, which create Caves of Life.

 

[Mega Bidoof]

Self control is not starting a flame war in competitive threads that have things you are strongly against.

 

[Gero Zeal]

Loving the PS2 and 3 stocks support. Also it seems that much of the public is uninformed about Pilotwings.

Well I think Custom Stages should be a possibility in competitive Smash in that it can replicate stages like PS in its neutral state.
I think as long as there is a reviewing party to look at stages and it legality it should be fine to include custom stages.

 

[Gero Zeal]

Wait, were some people excluded from the survey? I submitted mine and I don't see my name.

 

[DaRkJaWs]

Luigi's Mansion doesn't just have a huge disadvantage to projectile characters and promotion of circle camping (both of which are enough to make it seriously sketchy), it also has some serious caves of life, dragging out matches too long.

We already have two stock, so tough. And it won't be played every match so this means nothing to me.

To the person who said that "newcomers" are trying to say something about the rules, no. This is an argument that has been building up over 7-8 years now. Face it, top characters and the players who play them determine the stages. That's all there is to it. And that will come to end eventually.

 

[KCB: Cloth]

Let's tag this as a discussion. Enough fuel imo.

 

[LiteralGrill]

Wait, were some people excluded from the survey? I submitted mine and I don't see my name.

No, I'm just assuming google forms was silly as even MY name wasn't there but I managed to hunt down my results on the sheet.

 

[BlurB]

Lylat Cruise: Legal
Town and City: Legal
Smashville: Legal
Castle Seige: Legal
Coliseum: Banned
Halberd: Legal
Luigi's Mansion: Banned
Me: *starts going red with anger*

Luigi's Mansion. How does banning it even make any remote sense? It's not like there are hazards or run offs, or that it catches recoveries and stuff, but just...how the heck is that stage even banned? There's absolutely nothing wrong to it. "Competitive" logic I guess.

I think it's because in luigis mansion you can live almost indefinitely by teching the platforms. If you are a good player you can potentially survive forever. And tournaments need to end sometime.

 

[GJR78]

I think some people do know about Pilot Wings but think it could be fought around or isn't "that bad".

Not my opinion, but they are entitled to theirs.

I think Pilotwings, Kongo Jungle 64, Colisuem, Pokemon Stadium 2, Wii Fit Studio & Windy Hill Zone should all be legal. but that's my own opinion.

 

[sogeki]

Stadium 2 NEEDS to be legal

 

[Nidtendofreak]

So, people who actually understand spreadsheets:

Its is possible to make another version of this chart, but with the votes from people who said they didn't play at all taken out?

 

[Radical Larry]

I think it's because in luigis mansion you can live almost indefinitely by teching the platforms. If you are a good player you can potentially survive forever. And tournaments need to end sometime.

There's using the middle and upper parts of the stage. Teching on the hard platforms in the middle just gives room for punishing on the bottom floor, as your character still needs to land. Your character can't automatically hit the opponent after teching.

So the Cave of Life thing isn't all too valid an excuse to ban it. It's easy to punish opponents who do tech.

 

[Metallinatus]

WHAT THE CURSE IS WITH THE DELFINO PLAZA LOVE IN THE COMPETITIVE SCENE? It is the most broken stage ever.... EVER.... why the heck do people like so much to see it in the tournaments?

 

[MikeKirby]

We already have two stock, so tough. And it won't be played every match so this means nothing to me.

To the person who said that "newcomers" are trying to say something about the rules, no. This is an argument that has been building up over 7-8 years now. Face it, top characters and the players who play them determine the stages. That's all there is to it. And that will come to end eventually.

It's actually the TO's that determine playable stages in a tournament not the players. Most of them have also been involved in Smash for a long time and have experience to have sense in what stages are best to utilize.

Also, have fun having Sonic/Shiek having to time you out in Luigi's Mansion, guys. That stage has the same problems that it did in Brawl and the legality of that stage won't change. It's been tested.

 

[MonkeyArms]

So many people voted for PS2 to be legal.
YUCK.

 

[TheHypnotoad]

So, people who actually understand spreadsheets:

Its is possible to make another version of this chart, but with the votes from people who said they didn't play at all taken out?

Please this. I would like to see a version of the chart with the people who have never attended a tournament and possibly the people who attend fewer than one tournament a month taken out.

 

[Murlough]

We all know that the trolls aren't gonna put that they never played right?

EDIT: Also i voted for luigis mansion thinking they were talking about the omega version for some reason..... so yeah -1 on that xD.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Please this. I would like to see a version of the chart with the people who have never attended a tournament and possibly the people who attend fewer than one tournament a month taken out.

Nah, those are still people who are part of a community. Can't count out small local scenes that can only get together say once every 2 months or w/e

 

[MonkeyArms]

@ LiteralGrill I took the poll but I didn't have my results shown, what happened?

 

[ThirdDay]

Due to the number of votes coming in slowing significantly faster than expected, the results of The Ultimate Smash 4 Ruleset Poll will be released to the public early! After several similar previous polls this most recent poll has collect tons of data with over 3700 responses at the time of writing.

Here Are The Results!​

A full spreadsheet with all results can be found here. Many discussions based on tidbits of the poll have already started, hopefully the results within can be mined for the most interesting data and the dialog between players and tournament organizers can continue.

SmashCapps is incredibly excited for people to get digging into the data and for discussions to begin. To discuss the results with him personally or anything else Smash follow him on Twitter.

Wow this is really detailed. It's really fun reading what other people think. I personally think it should be 2 stock, 5 minutes, and best 3/5.

 

[AstraEDM]

ITT: People who don't go to tournaments arguing about tournament stages

 

[Thor]

For the record, PS2 probably got so many votes for legality because of Budget Player Cadet's thread on it. I'll admit I was uncertain about its legality, but it's MUCH harder to unban a stage than to ban it, so I hesitantly put it at counterpick, since none of the transformations are actually degenerate [possibly save the conveyor belts], they're just obnoxious to deal with IF you don't practice on them [and Halberd's claw, Delfino's water, Lylat's edges, and Smashville's moving platforms are obnoxious if you aren't used to them either... but this is why people git gud or stay free]. I will admit I frankly don't care either way - I'm generous about stage lists usually, so I'll certainly gentleman there with someone, but I'm not gonna go out of my way to pick it either.

Also half my results seem to be missing. Oh well... [or I'm just misreading things, at which point I don't understand exactly how the results are laid out.]

Luigi's Mansion is a bad stage because of circle camping [good luck fighting Fox if you're slower than him XD] and the cave of life [it's super hard to KO someone who's camping a pillar to protect it, while able to tech the walls if they're hit].

Also LOL at people johning about Lylat's edges. Git gud or stay free scrubs. That stage should be legal even in PM where there is no auto-sweetspot, but whiny Fox mains who suck at adapting seem to have an awful lot of power... [actually it's a lot more than Fox mains, but nearly everyone in my local area who opposes the stage is a Fox main (though we have one who loves the stage... all kinds I guess)... thankfully our TO keeps most of the list legal, so we have a generous stage list and a larger number of bans to compensate].

If you can't space your recovery well enough to hit the ledge I'm pretty sure you should be blaming your loss on a lot more than one stage's ledges.

 

[ShuckleBoard]

I'm generally in favor of customs, but I just realized that if DLC characters will be anything like Mewtwo, they won't have custom

So you're saying that because a few characters don't have custom moves that everyone else shouldn't be able to use theirs. I would much rather keep my customs and let the DLC characters develop without customs. They aren't erased from the game by not having them. Also Mewtwo doesn't really need customs all of his current moves are useful.

 

[LiteralGrill]

@ LiteralGrill I took the poll but I didn't have my results shown, what happened?

I promised yourt results are there, the thing for tags is wonky. I had to hunt down my OWN data too, but I promise all the results are in

 

[ShuckleBoard]

So many people voted for PS2 to be legal.
YUCK.

The purpose of a competitive ruleset is to test the skill of the player in the game. However, if an element of the game makes testing this either impossible (due to randomness messing with the test results, such as on Warioware in Brawl) or trivial (due to the skill ceiling being phenomenally low, such as on Temple), then clearly the ruleset has failed.

• Temple Hyrule is the prime example of a degenerate state. A player adapting optimally to the stage might as well just not pick anyone other than Sonic or Fox, because the stage has a clear optimal strategy that is virtually skill-free. Here's a good metric - I am not a top player. Would I have a decent chance of beating, say, Mew2King on that stage if he didn't switch characters to abuse the optimal strategy? If the answer to that is anywhere near "yes", then we have a problem.
• Port Town Aero Dive is another great example. A player adapting optimally to the stage will still need to know how to play, but there are many mechanics thereon that make small mistakes incredibly unforgiving. Throwing your opponent into the path of the moving cars is a degenerate strategy. Couple this with the randomizing factor of one segment where you cannot see the cars coming more than a second in advance, and the stage is very bad for testing a player's skill.
  
• Pokemon Stadium 2 is the prime example of a stage that encourages player adaptation without degenerate game states. A player adapting optimally to the stage still needs to be really, really good at this game. They need all the same skills they need on any other stage, plus they have to understand how to fight in a low-gravity state, plus they need to know how lowered traction affects their character, plus they need to figure out how to maneuver around the rollers. The stage does nothing to take away from the game's depth - instead, what it does is increase it. Another simple rule of thumb - would you feel like you have a better shot against a better player on that stage than on, say, Smashville? If not, there's probably not an issue with the stage. And such is the case with Pokemon Stadium 2. It's a prime example of why "different" does not mean "banworthy".

You really can pare the valid reasons to ban a stage down to "Degerenate gameplay states" and "randomness". This cuts out basically everything that could interfere with legitimate competition. The problem is, many people seem to think that stages that move interfere with legitimate competition. That stages with hazards necessarily interfere with legitimate competition. That stages with odd layouts necessarily interfere with legitimate competition. That stages which occasionally break up the neutral necessarily interfere with legitimate competition. That stages which change the physics of your character temporarily are inherently disruptive to competitive play. This simply is not the case. We cannot immediately disregard any stage just because it's weird and different, unless we can find some degenerate or broken strategy, or some significant randomizing factor.


TL;DR: If your ruleset doesn't have PS2 legal you might be bad at ruleset design.

Quoting Budget Player Cadet because he can say it better than me.

 

[Opossum]

Seems like some stages, like Pokemon Stadium 2 and Wuhu Island, are pretty divisive still. I'm kind of eager to see what comes of that.

I do wonder about Omega stages though. It seems there wasn't really an option for "allow them in a case-by-case basis" but instead "Should one REPLACE Final Destination" and "If so, which ONE" were asked. Personally I don't think they should just be outright discredited, especially when some have variations in their layout (a common thing being whether or not they have a bottom section, which could allow for wall-jumps).


Then again I'm just spitballing.

 

[Peppa]

I don't get the hate on Mii customizations. Either ban them or let them be set up with whatever moves. That's the POINT of the character. I get they function like customs but they work with customs off. Making them go 1-1-1-1 is just removing at this moment a viable character in brawler, which I figured we all wanted more viability.

 

[Gardex]

Did 25% of the players seriously vote for Coliseum being legal?

 

[Metallinatus]

I don't get the hate on Mii customizations. Either ban them or let them be set up with whatever moves. That's the POINT of the character. I get they function like customs but they work with customs off. Making them go 1-1-1-1 is just removing at this moment a viable character in brawler, which I figured we all wanted more viability.

Same goes with a lot of characters like Palutena and Ganondorf.... so I think we should either ban all customs or let all of them (except broken combos *cof* *cof* tripping tree & explosive balloons)....

And I am in favor of banning them.

 

[Metallinatus]

Did 25% of the players seriously vote for Coliseum being legal?

I think that stages like that and and Wii Fit Studio are valid counterpicks.... I mean, shouldn't we be more concerned with ALMOST EVERYBODY WANTING DELFINO PLAZA LEGAL anyway?
I seriously can't understand that.... it is one of the most bs stages in the series, and yet, there it is, in every tourney ever....

 

[warriorman222]

Did 25% of the players seriously vote for Coliseum being legal?

Yes. It is a walkoff with telegraphable platforms popping up. Not everyone thinks walkoffs are toxic degenerate BS.

 

[ShuckleBoard]

Same goes with a lot of characters like Palutena and Ganondorf.... so I think we should either ban all customs or let all of them (except broken combos *cof* *cof* tripping tree & explosive balloons)....

And I am in favor of banning them.

How can Stalliger be broken if it hasn't won a tournement yet. Seems to me that something so broken would be all over the place. The strat is very easily beaten all it requires is waiting out the sapling and punishing the regrab. If you trade with bloons then the trade will be in your favor most of the time. I'm curious have YOU ever tried the come up with counter strategy for your charcter or do are you going to complain until it's banned. If you're not willing to adapt then you shouldn't be playing this game.

 

[ShuckleBoard]

I think that stages like that and and Wii Fit Studio are valid counterpicks.... I mean, shouldn't we be more concerned with ALMOST EVERYBODY WANTING DELFINO PLAZA LEGAL anyway?
I seriously can't understand that.... it is one of the most bs stages in the series, and yet, there it is, in every tourney ever....

Please tell me why Delfino is bs. I'm very curious to hear why.

 

[ShuckleBoard]

I think that Skyloft should replace Delfino, but it seems people are comfortable with Delfino since they're used to it. The same goes for Halberd. Jeez. I don't expect this poll to be taken seriously, mostly.

Why? Why should Skyloft replace Delfino? Evidence or it's just words. I for one want both to be legal along with Wuhu.

 

[Metallinatus]

How can Stalliger be broken if it hasn't won a tournement yet. Seems to me that something so broken would be all over the place. The strat is very easily beaten all it requires is waiting out the sapling and punishing the regrab. If you trade with bloons then the trade will be in your favor most of the time. I'm curious have YOU ever tried the come up with counter strategy for your charcter or do are you going to complain until it's banned. If you're not willing to adapt then you shouldn't be playing this game.

I'm not sure you're talking about the same thing I am.... I am talking about a Villager camping on the ledge spawning explosive balloons from under the stage nonstop with a tripping tree right in front of him....
I've seen this in practice in only one tournament and it was the most bs camping ever.
It didn't win the tournament because an opponent picked a Pikachu to Thunder Jolt him on the ledge as it was the only viable way to beat that camping as it was nearly impossible approach him or hit him with anything else.
Yes, let's all have to pick Pikachu every time someone pick a Villager with those two moves, that is totally better than just banning that combo and be over with it.

 

[Makaronileo]

Dissapoint on not many people wanting wuhu island leagal...

 

[Metallinatus]

Please tell me why Delfino is bs. I'm very curious to hear why.

Basically: it has a lot of ridiculous transformations.... just take a deep look at them.... the pillars one is the cutest.
No, I won't be talking the problems with every one of them.