Starter
Final Destination/3DS/Waiting Room
Battle Field
Smashville
Yoshi Story
Dreamland

Counterpick
Dracula's Castle
Wario Ware

Hazard's Off and 2 Bans

vanilla ice cream is my favorite flavor

EDIT:
3 Stocks
8 Minutes

Starter
-Final Destination/3DS/Waiting Room
-Battle Field
-Smashville
-Yoshi Story
-Dreamland

Counterpick
-Tower of Salvation
-Dracula's Castle
-Wario Ware
-Pokemon Coliseum
-Rainbow Route

Hazard's Off, 2 bans

Optimal rule set. There is nothing wrong with taking things from the rule sets of other smash games. Stages are banned because they are not competitive, and guess what causes that? Hazards. Stop trying to be different and accept the fact that hazards and walk offs aren't good, they just make stages worse or uncompetitive. If you want competitive play, keep your game free from as many random factors as possible.

In a way I like this ruleset - like 100% I think Galaxy Tours, and Sky Sanctuary should be tested along with these 10 and this still would be a good ruleset if not.

That being said, having both Battlefield and YI Melee as starters bothers me a bit, same with YI Melee and Smashville/3DS/Waiting Room being a thing- all 3 FD's should be an option, but I guess i'm concerned with how triplats could make some chars really good/make it hard to ban them out depending on the RPS/Coin Flip. Same with chars who like small stages- like DK and other chars who want smaller stages would love those starters since it's easy to force a tiny stage for game 1 (between YI Melee, Smashville and 3DS/Waiting Room). That's the one thing that concerns me on this list.

Otherwise it def meets in the middle of not being too small, but picking the best of what we got, even if I think more should be tested to start stagewise.

Again, I feel like the sloped stages (Jungle Hijinx, Castle Siege, Saturn Valley) should be represented in there somewhere.

holy s*** two great stagelists in a row what the f***

i really like both of those actually, but i feel pokemon coliseum could be a starter in place of Dreamland or Yoshi's Story

Battlefield/Smashville/Pokemon Coliseum are like the holy trinity of starter stages

Do we really need 3ds when we both have Final Destination and Waiting Room as flat stages? I feel like the ledges are rather borky and unreliable on 3ds

I'm wondering how people think of Clock Town currently. I'd still think it'd be a starter stage since its layout is pretty basic, despite the gap on the lower middle of the stage. If not starter, then counterpick, if the gap in the middle is a problem for it to be a starter. There's no real reason it should be banned from tournaments, right? What would the implications be if it isn't banned?

i think that's another case of "could run it but there's better options"

that middle gap is REALLY awkward and, while interesting, is pretty intrusive as a whole imo

But it's not that bad since you don't have to constantly fight the stage. You still have three platforms to fight on, and you could completely ignore the bottom gap that's in the middle if you want to. The platforms are all big enough to actually do it, too.

As for there being better options, what stage similar to this could be better?
By the way, in my personal opinion, there'd be no discussion about the stage's legality if it had a bridge on the bottom platform or something. It would just be a legal stage, most likely.

If someone's on the inner edge of a lower platform, aren't they pretty much unapproachable? If you are on the top platform, you get sharked (I guess shield dropping might help). If you are on the same platform, they just cross the gap. If you try to approach from anywhere else, it's an edgeguard. For characters with good projectiles, it's like one of those campgrounds that have tents set up for you in advance.

Edit: For testing, Isaac, Pit, Megaman, Falco. I assume they would dominate.

---
@firewater
---

To clarify, I am by no means accusing every Smash player of being a scumbag. That isn't what I said. In fact I agree that it is likely that, in the event Galaxy Tours is a legal stage, most people will simply deal with whatever the stage layout happens to be. However, the fact of the matter is that, whether we like it or not, the 1-in-5 nature of Galaxy Tours actively promotes a type of degenerate metagaming by rewarding those who can find creative ways to reroll for better layouts. Again, I am not saying that everyone would do this, but that doesn't mean that no one will and it does not change the fact that the stage rewards this kind of behaviour.

"But we can just DQ people who do this."

No, we cannot. We cannot because none of the reset situations that one might deem problematic are abuses when any stage other than Galaxy Tours is involved. Take the following scenarios, for example, all of which can occur while the announcer is saying 3, 2, 1, GO!

• Sandbag player: "Hold up, I think some items might still be on. That wouldn't be good. Let's check."
• Any player: "Oh rats, I think I accidentally set the damage ratio to 0.9 when I was changing my controls."
• Any player: "Wait, my character blends into the background on this stage, lemme just pick a different colour real quick."

Each of these is a 100% legitimate reason to restart a game within the first three seconds on any other stage, and it would be impossible to prove that someone was abusing his opponent's good will in order to reroll Tours layouts. Maybe it would become evident after the fifteenth time, but do you really want to DQ someone if they realize immediately that their B button isn't working, just because they happened to be playing on Galaxy Tours?

Now, in regards to the comparison to Melee's Pokemon Stadium. It's one thing to restart the game after a minute has passed and the stage transforms for the first time. At that point you have agreed to play the game out. With Galaxy Tours, however, players know what layout they rolled before they can even move their characters. This also happens to be the one time during a match where it is generally acceptable to restart without any qualms. There have been many scenarios in which people have had to quickly reset tournament games because someone remembered pause was still on or some other trivial thing, and everyone is fine with it because it happens immediately, takes ten seconds to fix and the stage the competitors go back to is exactly the same stage that they were going to play on in the first place. Not so with Tours.


---
@TSON
---

There are no strawmen involved. You said that you viewed picking Galaxy Tours as a risk/reward scenario. In this case the risk for Player 1 is that when he presses the button to choose the stage, he might not get the stage that he actually wanted. The reward is that he could. The skill being tested in this situation is the ability to weigh the percentage of how many stage possibilities benefit him versus his opponent, to what degree each does or does not, and whether he finds those odds acceptable.

I see two problems with this. The first is that this particular skill is not one that competitive Smash seeks to test on any other stage. Instead of "I am picking this stage strategically because I believe it will benefit me against my opponent," it becomes instead "I am picking this stage because I believe there to be a higher chance that it will benefit me rather than benefiting my opponent." This is a fundamental difference, hence my comparison to Hearthstone. Games with that amount of RNG are by their nature about weighing percentages, but seeing as that is not what Smash is about, I don't see the merit in introducing this element in the selection of one stage.

Secondly, weighing of percentages is not a contested skill. Smash is, at its core, a game about contested skill. That's what makes it interesting. There are certainly tests of uncontested skill present in the game, ranging from "can I move my character" to "can I multi-shine," but even these uncontested skills become contested in the context of a match, where the question is not only whether I have the ability to move my character, but whether I can do so in such a manner as to achieve victory against my opponent. The opponent can't do anything to play against my picking Galaxy Tours and praying.


---
Re: Starter discussion
---

My issue with Battlefield, Yoshi's and Dreamland all on the same starter list is that as of Beta they are more similar than ever. Rather than the three totally distinct stages that they are in Melee, following the upscaling of Yoshi's and Battlefield SSF2 now presents the trio as Battlefield, Battlefield but a tiny bit smaller and Battlefield but a little bit bigger. For this reason I believe that it doesn't make sense to include all three of them in a starter list, because it means that characters who prefer the tri-platform layout always get it no matter what.

I agree that Battlefield/Smashville/Pokemon is a perfect starter combo, and I would gladly play in a tournament with this three-starter ruleset. I do think there is merit in adding two more stages, however, namely Rainbow Route and Final destination. Some character combinations will naturally gravitate towards flat stages, so Final Destination works quite well in a starter list in which it is the only flat stage. Rainbow Route balances that out by being a second stage with a three-level layout, but without being a second tri-platform stage. With the this list of starters, every stage layout is unique, no character is forced to play on a specific layout, and the chance that every matchup ends up with a Game 1 on a fair stage is very, very good. That's why I'm in favour of

Battlefield
Smashville
Pokemon Coliseum
Final Destination
Rainbow Route

as a starter list.

regarding GT, seems like camping by hopping between inner ledges would be really strong.
like whenever the opponent tries to approach you just hop to the other ledge, causing them to have to try and take risks to reach you.

extreme example would be fox/falco using illusion to instantly get to the other ledge.

and to add to the starter list ting, I agree that Yoshi's/BF are too similar in ssf2 to be on the same starter list, but I think Dreamland
is different enough to be included - higher platforms, larger stage and larger blastzones. I think this is a good starter list:

Battlefield
Pokemon Colosseum
Smashville
Final Destination
Dreamland

not sure about GT as a starter due to the unconventional platform layout, we should probably test whether the plats make it a strong CP.
or not.
I can see it being used in place of DL tho.
seems like BF/PC/SV/FD are solid for the starter list, just the 5th spot thats in contention imo.

we could also go a different route of just 3 starters using BF/SV/PC, just a thought.

Sharking is a thing that's already in some currently agreed legal stages like Battlefield. While I can see how it could be a problem at first, players will quickly find ways to counter this sharking, especially by just not staying on the upper platform too long, just like Battlefield.

Here was my reasoning for having BF, DL, and YS on the same starter list. I wanted to pick the stages with the best layout. And to refute claims of YS not having enough differences between BF, the stage is noticeably smaller and the blastzones are closer to the stage. Honestly, when I was picking a 5th starter I considered PC, but YS felt safer. After taking feedback, I changed my list.

- As for Rainbow Route, the inverted BF layout is far more polarizing than any starter, so I left it as a counterpick.
- As for Clock Town, the stage's layout leads to camping and it can give certain characters too much of an advantage. Remember, counterpicks are counterpick because they can skew some matchups in favor of another character; banned stages are banned because they can give character(s) too much of an advantage over others or because they are uncompetitive.
-As for Galaxy Tours, the fact that the stage has a random layout makes it uncompetitive so it should be banned.

3 Stocks
8 Minutes

Starter
-Final Destination/3DS/Waiting Room
-Battle Field
-Smashville
-Pokemon Coliseum
-Dreamland

Counterpick
-Yoshi Story
-Tower of Salvation
-Dracula's Castle
-Wario Ware
-Rainbow Route

Hazard's Off, 2 bans

Any thoughts?

I'm honestly starting to think that if there is to be online tourneys, it should have a tourney room where it's to be watched and controlled by a TO or someone like that and just having the TO in spectator mode so they don't have to pick a character, SD and watch (talking about rules, hazards, items etc). The only thing the players have to do is pick stage then pic a character (with no camouflage to the stage), fix their own controls and that's it right?

Or maybe not?

Idk how all this tourney stuff works, but just an idea to not let all these excuses keep happening.

Edit: This would probably mean adding a online chat in game or on the tourney forum? Again probably not an idea to go with but still.