You have a point about Hylian Skies-A. I'll have to think about that. It was banned so soon because only Hylian Skies-B was taken into account.

I'll also agree that Saturn Valley-B right away would just be silly, especially with stages like Jungle Hijinx being legal.

(Note: I say "-A" and "-B" because I think we need a shorthand, especially if we adopt a mixed-hazards stagelist. I got the idea because they could just be standard letter notations or they could also stand for "Aether" and "Basic".)

I think a mixed-hazards stagelist is an interesting idea but tbh probably too much to remember which version of each stage is legal, which is why I was thinking all CP's should be hazards on.. again open to discussion though

I'm leaning way more towards tson's side for this topic honestly. I'd at least want to see like a month of tournaments trying it out to see what it's like. not sure if I'm understanding it completely though… we have a starters list and a counterpicks list. are all the starters then given the opportunity to have their hazards turned on after the first game? idk what the list was last demo, but like let's assume dreamland was a starter. if I lose a game on FD game 1 and want to CP dreamland, would that mean the wind hazard goes on because it's a counterpick phase, or does it stay off because dreamland is a hazard?

id say maybe just not allow starters to be selected during the counterpick/striking portions to avoid that ^

otherwise i could see that being restrictive to what stages we can make starters

How many stages do you realistically want to be legal? Even if it's always 'hazards off' or 'hazards on', there's still plenty, that something is bound to get cut.

Battlefield
Final Destination / Waiting Room
Smashville
Tower of Salvation
Rainbow Route
Dracula's Castle
Pokemon Colosseum
Yoshi's Story
WarioWare

That's already 9 viable starter stages, which is kind of a lot. Which ones would get moved to counterpick?

And then, viable counterpicks:
Dream Land
Jungle Hijinx
Castle Siege
Saturn Valley
Metal Cavern
Sky Sanctuary Zone

And debatable counterpicks:
Clock Town
Galaxy Tours
Hylian Skies
Casino Night Zone
World Tournament (With hazards on only)
Central Highway (With hazards on only)

Something has to give - any 'debatable' counterpicks are probably not even worth debating. Is a 15 stage list (say 9 starter with 6 cp) too high?

well if we agree to a hazards on/hazards off meta where starters are only used match 1 then we can have as many starters as we want... meaning i would save the counterpick slots for more counterpick-y stages. literally everything you have in that list bar castle siege and ssz should be starter. we need to be more ballsy with the counterpicks if we're going this route

Here is the way i see things are going to go

No Hazards: Basically 9b all over again. People are just going to pick Smashville and Tower of Salvation all over again. While I really didn't have a problem with this as a player, as a spectator it would be nice to see some variety. Especially since some characters do better on other legal stages.

Hazards On: We are eventually going to have a stage list like Melee where they only allow stages with hazards that don't really impact the flow of the match and aren't to polarizing or campy (Yoshi's Story, Dreamland, Fountain of Dreams, and Pokemon Stadium as counter pick). Our equivalent to to FoD could be Dracula's Castle since both have moving platforms.

Hazard Switch: (Certain Stages have hazards while some don't). This is the path I really don't want to go down. I feel like it will lead to a lot of complex bans (people who played competitive pokemon know what im talking about). People are going to have to start banning stages and hazards. Then we will eventually get people saying "oh why does this stage get hazards and this one doesn't?"

Warning: The following post is a pretty large wall of text. Proceed with caution. I added a tl;dr section at the end, but that skips the entire thought process and why I ultimately come to the conclusions I mention there.




I personally think that (one of) the biggest issue(s) is that we currently are considering too many stages that are similarly to each other. As much as TSONs "everything is just FD with a minor difference" post triggered me, it does have some merit. The most recent official online list for 0.9b has 3 variations of Battlefield as starter stages for example, and two of them being nearly identical aside from platform positioning - going as far as being fused in other stagelists. Thats more than half the starters! Needless to say that this kind of ruleset benefitted characters that strive on the tri-plat layout significantly as opposed to characters who prefer less platforms. In a ruleset with three stage strikes, if your character didnt like tri-plats at all you were basically forced to ban those stages everytime, without having the option to plan with the strengths of the opposing character at all. And then we could be generous and add Mirror Chamber, how contrsoversial it may have been, as reverse BF to make it four - out of 9 stages. Then we had two and a half variants of FD. That means that we had 5 (6, 7) stages that were more or less carbon copies of each other in a ruleset with 9 stages. Thats certainly not a well varied stage list at all, and it does not appeal players to try a more different stage either.


Out of the remaining stages I did not mention yet, the most different ones were propably Castle Siege and Sky Sanctuary Zone, two stages that were rarely chosen for having a slope or "being jank", with the latter's minor problems being blown way out of proportion at times. While it certainly does not help that some of the more different stages such as WW, PS3 and Dracs were kicked either because of size issues or simply being too laggy for online (I still stand by my opinion that Dracs was by far the biggest variety in the entire stagelist and shouldve been kept around simply for the same of having some CP that was actually different) and going around and calling every stage "FD but it has a minor twist that doesnt matter" and saying that were no difference in blastzone sizes at all (DL, SSZ and MC in particular come to mind for the latter part for having different or at least unusual blastzones) does not exactly help the issue, it is true that our stagelist was offering little variety for the most part and thus discouraged counterpicking stages that were "out of the norm" so to speak. There is a reason people mostly played on the same stages, and a big part of that was many stages being too similar too each other. And lag of course, which is likely to stay at least somewhat relevant given the nature of our competitive scene being online-only - even with the advanced quality settings that Beta offers.


As you may have noticed by now, I think that a healthy stagelist should have enough variety to keep things healthy and counterpicks actually relevant, being it by being more open minded when it comes to the stagelist itself. Thats why I came up the Smashville Clause, prohibiting simply GMing to Smashville to at least force stage striking and perhaps have some thought process involved, thats why I kept experimenting with stages way longer than I should have (remember Central Highway being legal? Or Bomb Factory?), and why I was sad when my proposed stagelist with 3 starters was shot down completely and met with a complete lack of participation. Not all of these ideas were for the best of course, but experimenting and trying things out is barely ever a bad idea. When thinking about the option of using the hazard switch I strongly agree with Kuro that we should not have the players end up fighting the stage instead of each other however, nor is "forcing gimmicks" a good idea. Taking the example of ToS that already was discussed briefly, I find it hard to believe that people will be fine with getting blasted with a giant laser beam no matter the circumstances (Halberd got kicked partially because of that, and that was the most telegraphed hazard I have ever seen) simply because it opens the chance of losing your stock way earlier than it would have been possible otherwise. Imagine the following scenario: Fox/Puff on ToS. Puff is at a percent where UThrow Uair would not connect anymore due to the UThrow KB being too high. Fox gets a grab and UThrows Puff straight into the laser beam, instantly killing her on the spot. The Fox player got a KO in a way that would have not been possible or would have taken more effort otherwise (DThrow techchase -> KO instead of a simple throw), and the Puff player was robbed his chance to keep his stock longer by escaping the techchase (DThrow) or landing safely (UThrow) and potentially win the match, even though his only fault was getting grabbed at the wrong time. Being killed by stage hazards should simply not be a thing, as predictable and un-randomized they may be.

Essentially we need to properly differentiate between disruptive and constructive hazards before taking the easy way of "all CPs have hazards on" or "just ban hazards entirely lol". And I honestly dont believe that TSON is right when he says "having to remember which version of the stage is legal". For one the amount of stages where hazards could be turned on without being too disruptive is quite small (Draculas, World Tournament, Dreamland and Central Highway) to begin with. But assuming that people join their first tournament, it would be incredible easy to simply add a small note [HAZARDS ON] behind the stages that are legal with hazards on on the stagelist. Even at the very end of 0.9b's lifespan I have seen people having to look up the stagelist over and over again, so putting it there is the easiest and most effective way for that imo.

Going back to "good hzards/bad hazards", a good example of an disruptive hazard would be Rainbow Route: Certain parts of the stage suddendly port you to the top of the stage and leave you in special fall, putting you into a severe disadvantage and potentially leaving you to eat a big punish, being killed or disrupting your own offense, be it a combo, a techchase or simple pressure on the opponent. Of course this is certainly avoidable, but it nonetheless forces you at best end your offense early before getting put into what is the biggest disadvantage stage possible, and a stage hazard should not do that. A stage that benefits from hazards would be Dracula's Castle. The platform layouts are always in a fixed order and are on a set timer (a full cycle, meaning that the transition back to square one takes 1 minute and 40 seconds, and all layouts stay active for about as long as any other for instance), and unlike RR the moving platforms dont put you in a severe disadvantaged stage, but expand on the variety of the stage by adding multiple layouts that offer different tactics at once, which no other stage in the current meta can do to this extent. Of course the stage would still be fine without the moving platforms, but that would make it far less interesting and much more of a "generic" pick for me. I would still counterpick to it given the right circumstances (which, given my main and overall playstyle will propably happen quite a lot), but it would be much less appealing and dynamic. Deciding on which hazards are fine and which are not is not going to be easy, but it has to be done, and thats why I think that just going around "all hazards banned" or "all hzards legal for CPs only" is not the best way. Sure, it works I guess, but generalizing a ruleset like that is rarely ever the best choice, especially if there are so few stages to consider with/without hazards in the first place. The main guideline for that in my opinion should be to be more liberal at the start, as we can easily ban stages that are deemed uncompetitive later on (see WarioWare), but it usually is much harder to re-allow things after they already were banned (my main gripe with Mirror Chamber in version 0.9b for instance).


What we should do is get as much info on the more controversial stages as quickly as possible - World Tournament, Rainbow Route, Starship Mario/Galaxy Tours, Saturn Valley and a whole lot more - to decide wether or not they are both competitive and different enough to provide a fair and balanced:tm: stagelist that offers enough variety. The easiest way to do so is by allowing them in tournaments and testing them in friendlies, until we reach a conclusion about their competitive viability. We should avoid reaching a point where 20 stages are legal simply because they are "fine" however. That would make stage striking way too complicated and tedious, and would lead to even more "lets just GM to SV" moments. If that means cutting stages that would be fine on their own then it has to be done, but instead of simply removing the more controversial stages we should also make sure we have a healthy mix of big, small and medium sized stages, keeping different layouts and whatnot in mind.



Once we are set on which stages would work fine, and which hazards are (not) suited for competitive play, and assuming we end up with a stagelist that does not consist of 20+ potential stages that we need to carefully cut down without taking too much away, or it does and we made it smaller, the next big step would be actually convincing people to pick different stages. For all of those who grew tired of getting beaten by Black Mages during tournament, try to realize why always defaulting to ToS is perhaps not a great idea and you should try getting better results with a smaller stage with more platforms to counteract projectiles. If you notice your opponent has no clue what to pick against Bomberman, make them realize that a bigger stage where bombs dont influence stage control as much such as Dreamland or Dracula's is a better idea than picking Smashville for 3 games straight and getting 4 stocked every single time. That is perhaps going to be the biggest issue of them all, to convince a community that spent the majorty of the last three years on less than a handful of stages that they should try different places, eventually benefitting both themselves and the metagame overall.




tl;dr: We need a stagelist that offers enough variation both layout wise and in terms of size/blastzones, we need to evaluate every potential tournament pick and consider hazards carefully without ending up with a giant list at the end and we need to show people that stage picks actually can make a huge difference and always defaulting to SV/ToS just harms the meta. Also Dracula's is amazing and you are all silly for not CPing it every chance you get

I agree with TSON, since we have such a huge variety of stages all with decent hazards it would be best to have only CP stages for the CP phase. Hazards on and no SV.

I'm trying to figure out how to reconcile our ideas.

Very rough and not-completely-thought-out thing cobbled together:

STARTERS:
Waiting Room
Battlefield
Smashville
Tower of Salvation-B
Pokémon Colosseum-B
WarioWare-B
Rainbow Route

COUNTERPICKS:
Metal Cavern
Dracula's Castle-A
Central Highway-A
Hylian Skies-A
Saturn Valley-B
Castle Siege-A
Sky Sanctuary Zone-B
Yoshi's Island (SSF2)-A
Final Valley


TOWN ORDINANCE:
During the counterpick phase, starter stages can only be chosen using the Gentlemen's Clause.

DUPLICATES CLAUSE:
Yoshi's Story (Melee) (either one), Dream Land (either one), Final Destination, Nintendo 3DS-B, and Jungle Hijinx (either one) can be chosen by the opponent as a counterpick, but only if their equivalents (Battlefield, Battlefield, Waiting Room, Waiting Room, and Castle Siege, respectively) have been chosen with the Gentlemen's Clause. The case is the same with -B forms of -A stages, except for Hylian Skies-B, and Central Highway-B, which are banned. The counterpicker's choice overrides.

Seems kind of counterproductive- yes there are a LOT of good counterpick stages- but there are times where the neutrals are equally as good/better options than the ones we have for CP's for certain characters- don't think forcing gentlemans to go back to any starter (Besides the one played game 1) is a good idea by any metric.

Also this A/B system seems too complicated- why are we linking stages that have 0 to do with one another? only stages that seem to be/need to be linked are FD/3DS/Waiting Room And maybe Battlefield/Dreamland/YI Melee - everything else is far too different from each other and arguably BF/DL/YI should stay separate. Only reason stages were linked in Smash 4 was because all of the actual CP stages got banned, and leaving BF/DL separate skews the stagelist heavily to certain chars, especially after Duck Hunt was banned.

Edlt: Looking at World Tournament I don't see the positives to it, yes different blastzones from the rest of the FD variants (or other stages) but the Top/Side blastzones are incredibly large AND the bottom blastzone doesn't exist given the gimmick behind it. We also have 3 FD's that are less ridiculous in scope already. Like if we need a big stage Dracula's castle does the job so much better.

I proposed Castle Siege and Jungle Hijinx being put together in that purpose because, for a little while, they were merged due to having similar layouts, mainly just facing the opposite direction.
They were too different to keep merged entirely, but too similar to each other keep both. So, in the v0.9b list, Jungle Hijinx had to go.

As for the A/B system, that's literally just shorthand for what position the Hazard Switch is in. "A" is Hazards On. "B" is Hazards Off. I think, with that, you got a little tangled up there.

1. Fair - I think i'd left/was too busy to deal with SSF2 things at that point- so didn't know that actually happened.
2. Makes sense- wasn't mentioned as what the A or B was for. I do need to test it more but outside of Dracula's, and maybe Central Highway (still seems super large even w. the hazards on), what do those stages gain w. hazards?

Drac's platforms arent a straight low line anymore and instead have their set order of layouts for a set amount of time. The moving platforms make the stage a whole lot more unique, dynamic, interesting and appealing. And unlike, say, Stadium, there is not a single random thing about the layouts either (as I said before, all the layouts happen in a set order and all are out for the same time - a full cycle takes 1 minute 40 seconds for instance). There isnt really a valid reason to keep hazards off for that, and if there is I have yet to hear it. And no, keeping them off for the sake of "consistency" is not a valid reason.


Central Highway basically can only be considered with hazards - without it is but a mere joke competitively. In early 0.9b stagelists it was legal with hazards on, but was later dropped because the blastzones remained overly big, especially in comparism to the tiny ground that remained afterwards. I havent tested the stage yet so I do not know if the blastzones still dont adjust properly, but if it doesnt it really should stay banned imo.


The main reason why Hylian Skies is considered right now despite its wall is precisely because the hazard (transforming stage) counteracts the whole "walls = infinite" argument by simply removing the wall and putting it across the stage. As far as I know the glitch that randomly instakilled you was fixed as well, so it at least should be looked into.


Castle Siege I honestly prefer the regular version over the "advanced" one as Harr called it. The second part of the stage is HUGE, and features walkoffs, promoting a very defensive and (circle) camp heavy playstyle. The third phase is a tilting FD with wider blastzones if my memory serves correctly, which isnt bad per se, but not really needed imo. Out of all these stages Castle Siege is perhaps the only one I consider to be worse with hazards turned on actually.

Hylian Skies-A, as TSON mentioned, alleviates the problem of wall infinites by inverting itself periodically. The stage's transformation will interrupt the would-be-infinite in progress and force the griefer to have to set it up all over again if they want to continue.

Castle Siege-A transforms into three different states and was actually a legal stage in Brawl for a while. Still is in some places. Stage 1 and Stage 3 are fine; it's stage 2 that people complain about.

Yoshi's Island (SSF2)'s hazard seems to be one of the ones that are MIA for now until a future patch, but normally it has Goonies that fly around and act as additional temporary platforms.

Central Highway-A becomes the smallest stage in the game at just 9 1/2 yards long after the side buildings crumble. Metal Cavern, in contrast, is 12 1/2.


...Speaking of lengths, I changed my mind about Final Valley. Turns out it's gigantic at a whopping 41 yards long. You can literally stick two of Dracula's Castle or Dream Land 64 (Both around 20 yards) side-by-side in there. There's no way it would fit in a competition.