TCS was the only person who made a comment on this stage and it had the presumption that it may encourage shorter combos which I really don't think is bannable rofl. Chars with longer combos have the ability to shorten them. We should test it.


You can't stall in the middle of the stage... whoever controls the stage better wins anyway. This is a platform fighter. We should test instead of assuming.


What's fundamentally different about our game where it's legal in brawl and in our game not even worth testing? The engine differences don't make temp walkoffs for 1/3 transformations suddenly a doomsday scenario. The reach is real


Source that. I don't see anyone getting 100% drillshined on this stage tbh I don't even think you can get 50 on a human if that. its situational to begin with and the transformations make it even more so. we should test it.

was looking forward to seeing counterplay on dark transformation. it's not like the stage changes shape and while that's the weakest transformation I think the positives of the others more than make up for it. dunno where you could camp tbh and you can't infinite without a permanent wall which doesn't exist here.

don't infinites have to be... near infinite? you're referring to situational chain grabs at best. the point of this is to test. idk why everyone is sooooo hot and bothered LMFAO the stages that work out will be good for the meta.

multi shining is only excapable when the user messes up.

multishining is escapable if the wall goes away which it does on every stage listed with walls.

That being said part of the obligation is on the other person to, well not put themselves in the position to get trapped in the infinite. Either way, unlike the other games, the physics are different enough to where I don't think it's particularly likely the problem gets to the level of where fox forces auto bans on the stage, or DK even. Point is that any of those infinite scenarios, whether they're grab based (which don't get grabbed), or shine based, are both equally based on the other person's tech capabilities- 100% nobody in this game is gonna be 100% on any 0-death combo regardless of lag, no lag, practice, etc. Nobody gets 0-deaths 100% of the time and I feel like the DI and other options will allow for those to be inescapable.

Like it's worth a test, and in the case of Siege's walkoff...its temporary and just don't go near them LOL? I'm admittedly more hesitant on some hazards, i.e Saturn Valley's because of the healing even if small, but I feel like you'd be surprised on how little it would impact most players.

yes but it can bring characters to 100% in around 5 seconds. and thats with me f*** up the multishines a bunch https://www.dropbox.com/s/abgfke9suscdt ... sfrec?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/h66xmdrv9ypts ... sfrec?dl=0 unless the platforms were to change ever 3 seconds the infinite is still broken. I dont see how you can look at a infinte that does 300 percent in 15 seconds and say its fine because the wall goes away.

• Final Destination/Waiting Room/3DS
• Tower of Salvation
• Metal Cavern
• Jungle Hijinx
• Dream Land/Yoshi's Story
• Battlefield
• Smashville

So most of these stages are pretty fine as they are, but why Dream Land/Yoshi's story AND Battlefield? Not to mention that Pokemon Colosseum is a fantastic starter stage so having it not be a starter is a massive shame. i don't get why Jungle Hijinx and Metal Cavern are here; Metal Cavern fills a great niche in being a very small stage but it seems more suited to counterpick due to its small size.


Counterpick - Hazards on. 2 bans.

• World Tournament removes low offstage game. it's different from stages with low blastzones because in this case it's so ridiculously close.
• Galaxy Tours the random element here isn't really great and i'm not fond of it at all, especially considering it's almost entirely out of the player's hands. i don't think a "hehe it's risk/reward bro" stage should be here
• Dracula's Castle no problems here
• Saturn Valley there's an outright superior stage for competitive play and that's literally this same stage with hazards off. adding the hazards doesn't do much for the stage at all, either.
  makes players consistently fight for center stage (since why wouldn't you) but there's way more to Smash than center stage
• Castle Siege has walkoffs 1/3 of the time. forms 1 and 3 are fine but having walkoffs isn't great at all. having hazards off here sacrifices the mediocre 3rd form in exchange for outright getting rid of the 2nd form too, leaving the best 1st form
• Hylian Skies walls are consistently in the stage on both sides. makes it hella easy to live especially by DIing down and has wall infinites. this stage is almost gimmickier than Project M
• Pokemon Colosseum transformations add very little by being there, especially since Pokemon Colosseum is an amazing neutral stage

thx babe. summarized it better then me could

Saying things like "nobody is gonna get an infinite 100% of the time" means that you completely missed the point. Yes, human error is a thing, but that doesn't make an infinite any less problematic (especially when a specific character has an infinite). In Brawl, DDD had an infinite with his chain grab against certain characters. Guess what happened to those characters? They weren't viable because not only could DDD live past 200% but he could easily get the grab. In Melee, Ice Climbers has an infinite on the entire cast, and if they got that grab when both climbers were intact that was the stock. You're really underselling how problematic infinites are in smash because they are often not difficult to replicate and can be performed almost anywhere on stage. Even if an infinite is stage specific, it's still problematic. In Brawl many stages with walls were banned simply because of infinites. You can't say that "the player shouldn't put themselves into that position", because guess what? The opponent is also a factor and they can pressure you into the corner. And before you say "but Pokemon Stadium in Melee has a wall on a transformation", that wall is in a hole you literally have to put yourself into.

Speaking of walkoffs, the same principles apply.

you can't pressure someone into going towards a walkoff on a transforming stage less you be the one with the disadvantage... I get the point on walls (tho imo that's a case for hylian moreso than the other stages bc you can di+sdi up and escape the infinite on ssz/cnz from my experience)

we could move colosseum into neutral if y'all want and remove hylian and imo we have a good stagelist for testing. keep in mind there's some other stages in the boxes at the bottom that may be worth a peep too if we need more cps

re: gtours, look at it this way: random isn't polarizing. "I personally don't like this" is not a reason to ban a stage that consists of neutral layouts... it does add some conservatism to the counterpicks being there instead of in neutrals

Galaxy Tours would be a great stage, because the randomness doesn't change much (if it changed between BF and FD it'd be different, but all of the stages have the same dimensions and roughly the same layout), except it means you can't replay matches if something comes up. If the community agrees to that, and no one is a scumbag and says "oh well s*** I forgot to fix my controls" when they see the wrong layout, it'd be fine, and it'd add diversity so there's a real reason to keep it. Despite that, this community is not exactly known for keeping perfect honor systems when it comes to tournaments, and so I reluctantly have to argue for its ban. Can we have a GF in a tournament where someone decides to play grimy to get a (small) advantage in a completely unpunishable way without hurting the community?

Hylian Skies and Casino Night Zone (and SSZ to a smaller extent) have wall infinites. Those suck: I'm not just theorizing that. I've played a fair amount on those stages as testing, because I think walls have the ability to make the game more interesting in a casual context and I've wondered if that transitions, and to my knowledge no one has ever enjoyed playing my Fox on a stage where the wonderfully complex and interesting punish game Smash and Beta has becomes reduced to "laser from near the walls, dair -> shine -> shine -> shine -> shine x20, usmash". When I look at that, I don't see a serious competitive match.

World Tournament is ridiculous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, what about semi-spikes or combos into meteors? Meteor cancelling doesn't help if you die once you go under the stage. Falco fair -> dair is a thing in this game; do we want auto-win stages? Secondly, it completely invalidates recoveries that are best from low, like Marth or Link. Sure, we can test this; there's no amazing reason not to, except that it's a waste of time and good tournaments to test utterly ridiculous stages.

About Bomb Factory and Castle Siege: walkoffs were tested last version informally, and sure we can test them now. I don't think anything will change from the consensus that they have no place in competitive play. The first problem is that they completely invalidate literally a half of the game: offstage play. What is Puff supposed to do against Fox if you can't get them offstage and they DI everything down and tech? The second problem is chaingrabs and wall combos. DK has a cargo grab that can chain: do we really think that tournament players who work hard to practice punishes will be happy dying to a rando cargo grab combo that's inescapable with any DI at 20%? Having it happen 1/3 of the time doesn't change anything.

Saturn Valley with hazards makes no sense to me, because you could just turn it off. This speaks to a larger problem of my understanding about the arguments for more stage liberality: why does adding a bunch of stages make the stagelist better? I wrote a wall of text about how I think the criteria for a stagelist are diversity and balance, in the sense that they fairly represent the meta by making sure every competitively viable stage has a reason to be picked every so often. That doesn't mean "just add as many stages as humanly possible", it means "balance the stages we do add so that they don't overly weigh down the meta". Do the tournament players actually want to play on a stage with healing, when they could just play on the stage without it (and if healing 8% a stock is unimportant as TSON says, it favors and disfavors the exact same characters as the hazardless version, so it doesn't add diversity)? Will people appreciate a dev or the BR or both telling them that if they don't want to play on a stage with healing or walls or walkoffs that they have to ban it every time they play, when most of the stages being discussed don't add any diversity to the meta beyond "here is another stage"? From the stuff I've seen from the community, and as a tournament player, I think not. That doesn't mean I agree with people who just want to always play on SV, but it does mean that we should pause to consider if these discussed stages, with the exception of a few, actually make the game more fun for anyone, regardless of whether they are legalizable. Ditto with Coliseum: why? I don't understand the idea behind having a bunch of very questionable stages that undoubtedly draw ire from the community and cause salt, when we have a dozen inarguable stages and we could have a stagelist tomorrow. Does it really add a ton to the game? Is someone who loses in part from the stage really going to think "damn, they're just better than me?"

The other thing I think we should have a conversation about is that I think there's a problem with some of the testing people has done that needs to be mentioned: in this community, because we're small and tightly-knit, people have a tendency to soft-ban things. I mained Fox last version, and very few Samuses ever went for the dthrow zero-death chaingrab, despite the fact that it made a tough matchup easy. Some restricted themselves to not using Charge Stacking Glitches, or double charge shot glitches. The same can be said about most chaingrabs last demo: people in this game are just not that willing to play grimy. The stages being discussed are really fun casually. But to test them, and to have those tests hold water, you need to play like someone who doesn't care what their opponent thinks. You need to abuse the game as much as humanly possible. To be honest, I'd be pretty happy to practice my grime for a couple of days and attempt to record some replays in the style of the 50-minute Hyrule Castle 64 set that banned that stage or the set that banned Kongo Jungle in Melee (with the Peach stalling Ganon). In a tournament, without any money at stake, people will sometimes ignore rules that let them win. Hell, the ECSD clause last version would have allowed a DK player to easily win a tournament by getting free Giant Punch charges whenever, but people really don't abuse that stuff. I think we might get people to agree a lot more quickly if we just have everyone play as grimy as possible, save a few replays of someone who is really dedicated to camping walkoffs against a character that can't fight it or abusing World Tournament for all it's worth, and just end this discussion.

100% i'm biased in this situation because yes, I play IC's in Melee/Brawl/PM so i'm very aware of what they and others can do. The thing is, historically yes, there's some rationale reason for why walkoffs are bad, and I agree. THat being said, there is counterplay- like in Melee, DDD, IC's, Falco, etc were not the best character (even if ICs were 2nd.) In Melee, wobbling still only gets IC's to ~8th best, and even then they arguably lose to every viable character in that game, and a couple of those who are not as viable. Point i'm making is to some extent it's 100% your fault if you fall into those situations.

Regardless I still agree that walls and walkoffs could be problems, but seeing as the stages we're gonna test are only temporary, I don't see the harm in giving them the shot. Walls, less sympathetic to- hence why not a fan of Hyrule skies or whatever the stage is.

Also Tson also explains the other rationale for why Galaxy Tours is a legitimate CP (or starter). The arg about why the whole s*** happens layout won't change is again a dumb as f*** reason to ban a good stage. Every transformation stage, except siege is random. Delfino randomized the stage, Frigate Orpheon, the various pokemon stadiums- given everything but how the platforms are placed changes nothing does, means that it's virtually the same stage. Like randomness is not bad if it's purely cosmetic- even then name a character who would actually CP this stage that would get f*** by 1 of the transformations if the other 4 are ok for them regardless.

Also playing to win isn't a scumbag thing or a problem- if people cheat and are caught they get banned- solves any problem of trying to exploit galaxy tours. Also, soft bans are equally terrible- like if you're trying to win try to win, like there's nothing to say about dealing with them, other than just not going along w. the soft ban/no TO's actively ban whatever things are "soft banned"

All of the randomness you mentioned as a reason to keep GT is replicable: if I decide my controls are wonky, I can't change the stage. I really like GT, and I wish it could be legal. But I really don't want to feel like I lost, because the game desynced on a good stage for me and I got a worse stage next time. Getting different luck as the match progresses is very different than something that is set in stone at the start of a match and can be ragequit if RNJesus wasn't kind: the analogy would be if, every 50 games, Peach got a guaranteed 2 Bob-omb pulls, and so my controls "suddenly froze up", versus the stages you talk about, which are more like Peach randomly pulling Bob-ombs every so often. If it transformed or you could pick which one, I'd have no problem with it.

I think the analogy to console games doesn't hold water either, particularly comparing wall infinites to wobbling. Nonwithstanding the fact that you can't kill Nana if it's an infinite you can always do, and the fact that it's a lot easier to land a single dair near the wall than it is to land a grab with Nana nearby as IC's as a really fast character with a laser, I think wobbling is a popular contender for "thing I'd change about Melee if I could": suffice it to say, it's not exactly popular. We shouldn't emulate something that damaged Melee's community, and definitely not the thing that contributed so much to Brawl's demise. The fact that Melee happens to work out as a competitive game is in spite of the infinite, not because of it, and in spite of the fact that PS is a terrible stage, not because of it. Melee would kill for the stagelist we could have: there's no reason to undo all of that and keep uncompetitive stages.

I addressed this back on the last page, but to quickly sum up, you can't ban someone for resetting Galaxy Tours because there are a million good reasons to quit out of a match and restart it, and none of them are problematic on any other stage. The guy resetting isn't going to announce that he's doing it to get another layout, he's going to make his reason seem perfectly legitimate. There is literally nothing a TO can do about this unless you want him to start DQ'ing people for checking the damage ratio because they remembered changing it by accident just in the nick of time.

As an aside, were the legality of the stage still up for discussion in spite of this, the argument that every Tours layout is, to quote, "virtually the same stage," doesn't hold water. Take me, for example. I'm a Naruto main. Do I want to play on one of two possible layouts that invalidate my air clones? No, of course not. But the other three are varying degrees of fine.


On the subject of testing stages, I actually agree completely that funkier stages are worth testing. However, it isn't necessary to test them in tournament. In most of these cases all you need is a friend and a couple matches. I've played on World Tournament. I adore it; the flavour is absolutely wonderful. But it doesn't take too long to realize that it has no place in a traditional competitive setting. It discards half the recovery game and throws the power balance way out of whack by buffing anything that sends down to absurd levels. I don't want to live in a world in which Dancing Blade kills at zero.

addressing a few pts.:

brawl wasn't a good competitive game, comparing ssf2 to brawl in order to justify walkoffs is pretty dumb.

and just because something isn't technically "infinite", doesn't mean it should be legal.
100+% guaranteed combos are pretty dumb imo.

Drillshine/multishine aren't the only possible wall combos. If stages with walls were legal, you'd quickly find out just how many inescapable wall combos are in the game, as people would actually try and find+abuse them.

and just to put WT in perspective, sheik bthrow kills fastfallers at 0 from the edge. cmon fellas.

never was arguing that brawl was a good competitive game though, the point I was making was that there's no radical fundamental difference. if you the counterpart on walkoffs is the same and since dedede doesn't have a cg here... if they thought it should be completely legal almost unanimously what is this huge difference where in ssf2 it's not even worth testing?

and yes, to your points jammy & TCS, I keep using the word "testing". I'm not sure if this will work out as I keep repeating myself, neither do you guys tbh. we've now spent 11 pages arguing about hypothetical when we could have already run a tournament or two and figured out if it was worth it.

just saying.

(also wtf @ claiming that stagelists posted before "doesn't change or add anything"... have u seen some of these stagelists? in one breath you say u don't want everyone playing on sv but the entire stagelists is 3 stage layouts with different death boundaries. experimenting won't kill us it'll either reinforce why we need to stick with our guns or it'll open up wider discussion.)