Staying within the less argumentative side of things, can anyone give me a video or something of someone getting out of Fox's multishine infinite on SSZ as Puff or some char that it works on with SDI? I've tested it with JayVoltage (IIRC) and we tried it, but we might have just missed it. Do you need a double input? Does Shine even have that much hitlag?

Venturing more into the weeds, I really like GT as a stage and choose it in friendlies (I don't think camping the top platform is a problem because there are ways to approach it from the bottom, unlike Kongo Jungle 64 or whatever), but I can't see it having a place in the ruleset. Resetting until you get a certain layout again might take a really long time: if someone is streaming a grand finals of a 100-man tournament, wouldn't it hurt viewership or general interest, from both the players and the others, if you have to reset 10 times to get the right GT layout because someone forgot to do tap jump correctly? The instant you can choose layouts, this problem vanishes. I don't think random layouts themselves are problematic: perhaps if any individual stage layout weren't viable (glorified RNG with auto-win stages would suck), but that's not really a problem. The stage's uniform boundaries and main stage area make certain characters consistently better or worse, no worse IMO than PS transformations in Melee.

Metal Cavern is an interesting case, and I'll leave it mostly to others. I'll just reiterate what was an excellent point made by Doq: we have more viable stages than we need. Comparisons to other games need to recognize this. Melee stagelist logic is inherently different than SSF2 stagelist logic, because Melee has a dearth of viable stages. Ditto with Brawl and Sm4sh and Smash 64. Stages need to add diversity to be worth putting in the list. Metal Cavern certainly does this, but it's important to keep in mind that the question is not just "is Metal Cavern viable", but "does the stagelist work better with it added".

Just for a frame of reference to those who don't really get TSON's definition of "zoner", look at Old Sagat or MK9 Sindel.

BM is not a zoner just because he has Meteor. Chibi-Robo is not a zoner just because he has Chibi Blaster. I consider these to be non-zoner characters with a strong zoning tool, because the projectile spam is not their most important tool. MM, Pac-Man, and Samus are all zoners because their meta is built upon a foundation of their projectile games. However, they are not 100% pure zoners, because they each have strong close-range tools in addition to their projectiles. They're not over-specializing in their projectile games, is what I'm getting at.

Anyway, I've said just about everything that I'm going to say about the stage legality. Perhaps the best course of action for the BR next time is to categorize each stage with no limits, set a recommended number of neutrals/CPs, and let the players/TOs assemble their own stage lists using that information. Perhaps do something like "these legal stages fulfill a similar purpose, but are different enough to not warrant a merger, so we recommend picking a subset of them for a given tournament".

I mean, SF Guile is a Zoner but has great close-ranged tools...
BM is a Zoner because he has better options at a range than up close, heck Meteo and Haste both now require a specific distance for them to be effective



I mean, using Harr's stage measurements, Saturn Valley is just a yard larger than the once legal SSZ (Which is no longer legal due to a reason that isn't size) and 2 yards larger than the currently legal Dracs

ToS actually larger if we take the platforms into account

oh boy

Sure is fun here, how you all doing?

and this is really where you have to be reading what i'm saying to follow my logic - because i wholeheartedly agree with you but we won't know if the stagelist works better with it added until we come up with a stagelist that isn't just "well this worked 10 years ago in the melee stagelist" or "this was legal in 9b and this didn't exist but looks sus so lets just ban it". testing is step 1, discussion is step 2, diversifying our picks of what's left is step 3, more testing is step 4, and an early stagelist is step 5. i feel like we just went right to step 2, then straight to step 5 with this list.

and tbh this could have been a conversation had privately as a br member but it seems some br members weren't invited to the discord


rofl, good post. i don't think what i'm saying (to test semi-viable stages before writing them all off) is at all comparable to enabling an item that allows players to KO at 30%, or 0death by mashing A. thanks for the memes i guess.

let me reiterate again since we're skimming... the goal is not to have a crazy stagelist where you die at 30% if you get hit by a stage hazard, it's just to test what's available before we jump into making widely adopted lists and start talking in public about reasoning behind those lists. i don't mean to drag anyone but the posts about ssz at the beginning of this thread show that the testing isn't there. dunno why that's controversial - to say we should test before banning stuff. it shouldn't be.

while i'm happy that we have some more liberal picks like saturn valley out of this list, the process is just wrong atm and i don't wanna stand by it. hopefully that's understandable. a lot is assumed and a lot is theory here, and that's not the standard of process that i expect from us. we need the facts to back it up.

Don't forget, the SSF2 BR has a tendency to bring back previously-banned stages if the meta shifts in such a way that the ban is no longer justifiable. IT's not a one-and-done deal like it is in the other Smash communities.

Well put. So early on, it shouldn't be about creating a definitive list that's narrow, but a draft selection that's broad, letting tournament response speak for itself. To dismiss Metal Cavern in the name of "Doesn't add anything other stages don't already add" doesn't really hold weight when it hasn't been tested to prove such, and you have 3 versions of Battlefield and plenty of variants of Final Destination as the poster children for the stage roster.

Every opportunity we have to consider a stage that isn't "normative" in other Smash games is a good idea. Same should be said for SSZ and others that are "fringe stages". Let the competitive scene speak for itself as time unfolds. Diversity isn't always better, but it's a great place to start.

Wanna just point this out as a thing.

I advertised the BR discord on a forum post when we still had our subsection. It's not my fault that people didn't join it

Although my flubbed tech skill is embarrassing, here's a replay with me and Skylar that demonstrates using SDI-Up to get out of the Fox multishine pseudo-infinite as Puff. Now that that's not a problem, I see no reason why SSZ can't be legal, and it certainly adds diversity, so welcome to stagelist v2.0?

Sorry for not making this a video, but it's not that hard to see for yourself.


Link to file: http://www.mediafire.com/file/cpf1cd3zsylz8or/fox_infinite.ssfrec

A big stage list is fine for this early in the meta, i'll give an example of early brawl, where there were like 13 or so stages to pick between.

SSZ for the time being should be legal mainly due to the fact that a lot of the characters that were strong there just aren't anymore, and the main problem of the stage at least to me was the effect of mus being swayed too hard there in 9b. Again it can be proven that top tiers are broke on that stage again and that will lead to a quick ban.

Saturn Valley is fine for now as well, yes it is a large stage but it still provides an alternative to the other large stages in the game. There's also the fact that there are enough bans to the point where if you really think you're gonna get taken there by a megaman player and expect to get timed out (which at this point in the meta is definitely not happening due to the offensive pressure of so many unanimously good characters) then you can just use one of your bans on it. Stage bans are plentiful due to the large stage list and we should all consider that when regarding stage legality.

What's wrong about Fox multishining Puff in SSZ anyways?
It's really hard to pull of and if you try putting Puff into that one small wall there you have already pushed her past that small wall for multishining.

What's wrong with Large Stages actually?

Our largest stage is ToS if we include the platforms and that has always been legal except for that one point before apparently

And besides, the gap between Final Destination and Yoshi's Story when it comes to size is only slightly more than the difference in size of FD and Saturn Valley

And again, Saturn Valley is only ever so slightly larger than SSZ which is "Banned" due to walls and not the size

just to back up the multishine infinite thing -
I tested the infinite doing near-perfect multishines in 2/3 speed, and was able to escape by SDIing up with puff - see the below gfycat

https://gfycat.com/DiligentFastBighornedsheep

Short version of my opinion (cause at work).

First glance, this stagelist seems solid- the only stage i'm eh about is Saturn Valley- like if walls were the reason for removing Sky Sanctuary i feel as though the pool edges create similar problems, or at the least Sky Sanctuary appears to be a less ridiculous version of the stage design that Saturn Valley fills, walls or not.

Otherwise besides obligatory I feel Sky Sanctuary/Galaxy Tours are far better than Saturn Valley concerns (I do feel like the ceiling issue is only bad on 1-2 of GT's platform layouts). this stagelist seems solid

Other concerns are more or less I do worry that we started too small but given that this list is of solid size, can live with it. Would the ones that are more defensible (LMAO at anyone wanting World Tournament legal), ever get a chance to be swapped out/tested?