FD is fine. We base our counterpick system not off of matchups, or who is the best on what stage and etc. We base it off of the activity of stage's hazards themselves.
Get over it or try to change that.
We're trying to.
The fact is, brawl as a game seems to have quite a lot of stages based around hazards. It's as if, gosh, the game
wants us to have to deal with stage hazards. You know, seeing as the list of stages with no movement and no hazards is approximately 3 stages long, and the list of stages with minimal movement and hazards is, again, ridiculously small.
I am, once again, equating wanting to grade the competitiveness of stages by their interactivity to grading the competitiveness of characters by their ability to space and zone-it's a major part of the game and removing it would be flat-out ridiculous. Furthermore, there is no reason we should remove it in game one of the set, or for that matter any game in the set.
PEOPLE decide the competitive nature of a game. Compare Billiards to No Limit Hold em: No Limit is obviously quite a bit more popular. Say you refer to 9 ball, one of the most popular variations. 9 Ball is great as a competitive game; you play the opponent head on, nothing else in the way. No Limit, sure it's harder because you have luck thrown in and more opponents to face against and play longer. You have reads, numbers to crunch, etc. 9 Ball is very straight forward compared to No Limit. Hit balls into Pocket, don't scratch, gg lol.
Now, why are more people interested in that over a game where there is no barrier between the two opponents, or influencing factors? People would intentionally prefer to play a game where no matter how good you play sometimes, you can lose because the cards don't fall your way? Wouldn't that be frustrating to lose in a spot like that? Where hand after hand you get garbage like 7-2 off suit, 10-3, etc and the opponent gets High Pairs, flops sets, hits the straight?
There is no set standard of something being competitive, or something being more competitive than the other. Just opinions. Popularity? There are plenty of competitively sound games that are passed over for something else. A game could be competitive crap, and somehow be quite popular. Checkers for example has already been solved and known to be a draw if played optimally, yet people flock to the game. There's even a "World Draughts Federation". Depth/complexity? Plenty of games that get passed up for simpler games, simpler games also getting passed up for harder games. Balance/Lack of other factors? Just mentioned that people would rather play Poker than Pool lol.
People will see a game, and decide for themselves the competitive nature of it.
Err... In pool, is there a set of rules proscribed by the game
itself? Somehow I doubt that. Or, if there is, it's the 9-ball variant that virtually everyone plays. I've never even heard of no limit, therefore I can't really do much with this analogy. I will however state that it's very hard to compare games like pool that have been around for decades or centuries, where the rules of the game have permutated extremely and by now, the pros probably do know more about the game than the people who designed it, to a video game with ridiculous internal coding, far more than meets the eye at first glance (see that pool table, the balls, and the cues? That's all there is to it), and a ridiculous amount to find out.
I agree, and the way I see it (and hopefully many others) is that the more interfering the stages become, the less player skill is required. Obstacles will do the work for you, or play against you. The game then steadily becomes an enormous imbalanced mix of matchups and victories based off of only character selections because some can avoid the attrocious terrain better than others. Smash would be a very sad game indeed.
False! False false false! The other night I was playing wifi, and on brinstar, the lava bumped me into pika's downB as it rose, making me lose the match. Whose fault was that? After all, the lava comes at completely regular intervals. I should've known that the lava would be up at 5:20 or whenever that part of the match was.
This case could
potentially be made for randomized stages, but even then, they're rare. Norfair is apparently non-random. The randomness on PS1, PS2, Delfino, and Frigate are negligable, and either come with a ridiculous amount of warning, are almost completely predictable, or don't make a huge difference/have large transition times. Smashville's randomness is virtually completely negligable. Japes is completely non-random. I've heard you claim that Yoshi's Island is on some sort of pattern. Norfair and PTAD are random to a very minor extent (Both run on a timer, the only thing that is random being placement; on PTAD you can predict if cars are about to show up even without seeing them if they've gone by once; on Norfair, IIRC the lava spouts are random).
What's left? Pictochat? Halberd, maybe? Pirate Ship? Green Greens?
Every other stage that can be remotely considered legal is almost completely non-random, and it is perfectly reasonable to expect a player to adapt to them.
Edit: However, I do think that some stages (ps2, pictochat, and maybe.. maybe japes) should be added into more tournament stagelists. Anything beyond those 2-3 are foreign to competitive brawl, because while it's not street fighter, two players are supposed to be fighting eachother--I mean that's the god **** general idea.
The two players are supposed to be fighting each other, plus the stage, plus randomly spawning items (game allows us to turn this off, therefore optional), plus up to 2 more players (game allows us to turn this off, therefore optional). You have to fight the stage everywhere and no matter what; the fact is that it's simply
less on the starter stages commonly seen as acceptable. PvPvS is always there. Why should we lessen it if the game demands it of us? Because we don't
like it? That is pure scrub logic, I'm sorry. Casuals can do that; we, as a competitive community, cannot.
On the other hand, why shouldn't Game 1 represent the fact that other characters will only do good on the non neutral stages? G&W for example is great on most CP stages, but terrible on the standard neutrals. Should we then skew the stage list towards him because he's only good on stages that mess with other people, and not the "boring" stuff like FD, SV, BF, YI?
No. We should not skew the stagelist at all, that's what I'm saying. G&W is a poor example; he's great on stages where the opponent has to adapt, but he's still decent on others (like most aerial characters). Try Ganon instead. Ganon is almost playable on stages like Norfair and Brinstar, but is absolute garbage on "neutrals". Should we skew the stage list towards him? Of course not! ICs are amazing on "neutrals" and pretty bad on any variable stages. Should we skew the stagelist in their favor?
The issue you're missing here is that the stagelist is
already skewed. It is heavily skewed in favor of those who are only good on flatland stages due to this ridiculous concept that the less interactive stages are better for competition (they aren't). By removing the starter list entirely and striking from the whole stagelist, or removing the more polar stages first and then striking from what's left, as outlined above, you avoid situations where entire classes of character are extremely buffed by the ruleset, and others hosed. The larger your starter list, the more rarely you get the situation where certain characters can always get one of their best stages in the matchup.
But when you look for the most polar stages, there's absolutely no doubt-FD is up there right next to Brinstar and RC.
What is the justification for having FD as a starter in any situation, when it favors so many characters so heavily, and nerfs so many so much?
I call it neutral, referring to it being a Game 1 stage, not "neutral" for all matchups or across the board fairness. Non Neutrals being the stages reserved for Game 2 and onwards.
Starter = Neutral =/= "Neutral"/Fairest
Terrible. Does the term "intentionally misleading" say anything to you? Why do you think so many idiots think that FD is the most "neutral" stage? The term was changed for a reason.
Are you kidding? Every counterpick has a strong meaningful effect on matchups. Even neutrals themselves have a strong influential effect on matchups. Norfair, delfino, halberd, japes, etc. are some of the most powerful of the bunch. Any combination of stages and characters can make things closer to even, or relatively near impossible.
So? I believe the neutral list should be touched, but going at it by making game 1 the "median stage" of the matchup based on AERIAL and GROUNDED stages is not the way to go about it. Aerial and grounded stages DO NOT determine the best stage suited for any matchup in particular at all, as claimed.
I never claimed that. You will notice a very shocking alignment in many high-tier matchups though. You always have to look for the stagelist where the least chars get any real advantage (again, as compared to their average and/or median over all stages) from it. The larger the starter list in comparison to the counterpick list, the more likely this is to happen (in a stagelist where all stages are starter, the median will always happen in a matchup unless it is influenced by player preference or poor matchup knowledge; in a stagelist with 21 legal stages and 3 starters, it will almost always be ridiculously skewed in
some matchup).
I'll think of something. . . BUT, it's just as subjective as anything else to claim that simply bc there are more stages, that should determine who is should be rewarded or who should not be as well! That's just the same as saying diddy/blablalbla should be rewarded but to the extremely opposite side of the spectrum.
We aren't rewarding anyone though! We're merely making them gain the advantage they deserve for being good almost everywhere, as opposed to on just 3-5 stages.
