I thought the point of banning stages was to ensure that there is as little luck as possible.

The fact that GT literally pulls platform formations at random is enough to ban it imo, even moreso is the fact that the top platform on some transformations is super close to the blast zone

The fact is that if you are going to go and CP a stage, why not go to something you know 100% will be the stage you picked instead of having only a 20% chance of getting the formation of platforms you want on GT

It's more so a matter of adapting than it is luck, though. The stage may be randomized, but it's not like it's infinitely randomized or something like that. No, it only has five different options, all of which are balanced in their own right and can very easily be adapted to. As you get more experienced, something like limited randomization shouldn't be a bother to you, especially in small amounts.

The way I see it is a risk/reward. say four of the transformations benefit me and one doesn't, and my opponent struck all of the other stages I wanted to play on. I would be better off chancing it with GT. Sure it would require a degree of stage knowledge and the ability to somewhat adapt to most of the transformations, but if they're all balanced then it's a non-issue imo until proven otherwise

I don't think that type of random outcome weighing is a skill that is particularly interesting to test in this context, TSON. We're playing Smash, not Hearthstone.

Yes, yes it would. A ruleset should never have to depend on the goodwill of the people it governs in order to be effective.

The problem is that you cannot get a TO involved, because there is zero way to prove that any button issues, desyncs, disconnections, phone calls from Mom, etc., were faked in order to land on a better layout. These are all things that happen regularly, and no one bats an eye at it on other stages because of how easy it is to simply restart the match. Not so with Galaxy Tours.

Galaxy Tours is quite different, actually, precisely because it is not a transforming stage. It's five different, static stages bundled as one. If it cycled through every possible layout but started in a random spot in the cycle, that might be a stage worth considering.

Absolutely correct. One cannot say "I don't like this version, let's restart." However, one can find a valid, unimpeachable reason to reroll, and therein lies the problem. Galaxy Tours encourages and rewards such behaviour.

That's fine and dandy, but the reality is that the stage encourages people to find excuses to restart the match until they get their favourite layout.

It most certainly is. If everyone fought "honourably," then we wouldn't have Pink Shinobi versus Rockcrock on Kongo Jungle 64 or people camping on the guns or under the fin on Sector Z. The point of a competition is for people to do their best to win. The fact of the matter is that someone can and should find excuses to reroll Galaxy Tours, otherwise they are not doing their utmost to win within the confines of a ruleset in which Galaxy Tours is a legal stage.

I don't want the game to be about who can grime the other guy out the best, and I'm positive that the majority of people that play any game competitively aren't interested in that either. Rulesets are meant to eliminate opportunities for tactics which the community deems "underhanded," or which shift the focus of the game to something outside the game itself. Banning Galaxy Tours is the responsible thing to do.

Strawman'd so bad rn. It falls under the jurisdiction of being "pro". You do this when you strike stages anyway, "well my opponent can pick one of these 5 stages left, i don't have enough strikes to cover all of my weaknesses but this is in my favor"


If we can ban stalling I think we can ban RNG-faking. It's pretty obvious if you're in the CP stage of the set and your opponent suddenly wants to reset twice. If you DC in the middle of a match you should lose automatically anyways.

tfw your best bet is one single stage that's locked behind a 1/5 chance that you can't easily pick because it's RNG


also yes we could ban RNG manipulation but honestly i think something like that is completely valid considering that there's some completely arbitrary "risk/reward" system behind picking a single stage. besides, you shouldn't be adapting to fight the stage. you should be adapting to fight your opponent. i don't get what's so hard about this


man this reminds me of the time someone told me mario maker should be legal because it'd make the players adapt to the game LMFAOOOOO

you should be adapting to both. even in a narrow-minded stagelist like 9b you're telling me there's no adapting done between fd and battlefield? u wrong

as i been saying regardless of what side you stand on we should be united around testing and you can b**** up a storm after we have educated opinions based off of real matches

yes, you should ADAPT to a stage. you should not FIGHT the stage and the stage should not FIGHT you. that's why stages like hazard ToS or awkward stages like Hylian Skies shouldn't even be bothered to be tested, especially when there are outright superior stages that are actually suited for competitive play. i'm not stupid; i'm probably better at smash games than you are if you want me to be quite frank with you. i'm also not suggesting to test gimmick stages that have shown to be pointless over and over again.

if we're testing these silly stages why not test items too, or a lower damage ratio? it'll be fair or risk/reward or something i guess idk let's test it!!!!!

in regards to galaxy tours, it'd be one thing if the stage transformed, but the thing is, the transformations are the same in transforming legal stages in other games. same order? no. but the stage itself is the same. in this case, you are literally getting five different stages. if it transformed i'd be considering otherwise but it doesn't.


oh s*** forgot to sound like the good guy


as i've been saying we should be united to skip the pointless testing and save everyone's time

...I mean as we agreed last night there are certain things that have 0 chance of working or being tested. That being said what makes Galaxy Tours, different, or I should say 5 different stages. Someone posted the pics of the 5 different variations on that stage. They are all the exact same. The 3 (or 2) levels of platforms are all the same height, and are the same distance apart. the only difference is their placement, which looking at them the placement would cause very few differences in play.

As for the "skip testing"... There's easily only 6 to 8 stages that deserve tests, Hazards or not. Everything else is easily figured out. The majority of stages with hazards could be assumed to be not worth testing. Stages with massive walls/blastzones etc. will not get tested. Stages that the hazards make untenable, won't get tested. The reason we test the ones on the borderline, and/or if differences get better with hazards on the less obviously intrusive ones is to make sure we cover our bases.

Historically, Comp. Smash gets too conservative, forcing certain meta shifts that only benefit the best characters/certain playstyles. We see this in Melee since the stagelist is very anti-floaty character. Part of that is because there are few viable stages, other reasons are less set in stone but they figured oout the bad stages because of testing- like Corneria was legal back in Melee at one point. Meanwhile, Smash 4 goes from a not terrible stagelist (allowing for DSR, multiple bans, characters actually had meaningful counterpicks), to one that is frequently demanded to be made smaller even as those changes were tested, AND not only did the majority of the player base recognize/saw that the changes were bad (I.E. the attempted Lylat ban), they saw other unintended consequences such as players forced to CP themselves in BO5's at the highest level due to the stagelist because 6 (technically 5) stages with DSR is stupid in longer sets.

Is the way stages are decided perfect? No, but historically and in all of the games, you start large, and you test boundaries and you dump things when they are obviously a problem. We start large because it's far easier to figure out what stages are good early than trying to defend stages after a meta's been set. Also game hasn't been out a week so testing is best. I remember when the .9b stagelist was large and varied- stopped playing because the lack of good online was frustrating, BUT there was a lot of testing done before the stagelist shrunk in size.

galaxy tours is whatever. that one's less of an offender. but stages like Saturn Valley or Tower of Salvation are perfectly fine without hazards and there isn't any valid reason to test them with hazards.

smash 4 and melee are different games that have smaller stagelists because they don't happen to have a lot of stages that are very good for competitive play. however, here, we have way better alternatives to the point where if we used every stage that was very neutral we'd still have a pretty big stagelist. we don't need to test dumb stuff because we already have more than enough to the point where we probably won't see it all in a final stagelist.

look at project m for example. you don't see people pushing Pokemon Stadium 1 to be legal or even tested anymore because there is an outright superior (and incredibly neutral) Pokemon Stadium 2. people aren't pushing Castle Siege with transformations because there's Castle Siege without transformations which already isn't used because there's better options and they don't have a need to bloat the stagelist.

...We agree on a lot more than you realize- like the stagelist I suggested last night had all hazards off. Simiarily to you I don't think we need Hazards on, that being said the stages where it could improve the stage (Siege, Dracula's, Central Highway) are worth testing. It's worth testing if whispy isn't as bad if hazards are on. It's better to test so we have the data of, ok this thing appeared to be ok but it's actually trash, so it's gone rather than blanket assuming it's all terrible.

Yes PM example is right, yes we have a good problem of too many stages, doesn't mean we shouldn't test a few of the questionable ones.

those examples are different than ones like Saturn Valley though or whatever memes TSON is suggesting

i'm not directly against all hazards. Dracula's Castle having the platforms move is nice in particular. but ones that add nothing meaningful to competitive gameplay (like Saturn Valley) shouldn't really be bothered with because in the end we get the same result that we expect: usable, but no reason to run it.

the arguing in this thread is pretty dumb, u guys keep going in circles chofl.

kinda agree with kuro on most of this s***, but i guess some of the stages are worth testing cause why not.

I really think the consensus is gonna be that while some stages/hazards might technically be viable, people are gonna hate playing on em cause our competitive community doesn't like janky stuff imo