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If hazards off is tournament standard I don’t see stage counter-picking being a problem. I agree with random select.
I still wonder how this game will do in the scene.
Well even if hazards are off, the layout of a map can make a difference. A small, tight map would benefit rushdown characters whereas a large, open one like metropolis would be better for zoners.
It’s not about the stage hazards, it’s about the stage design itself. The Dojo stage, being one of the most extreme examples in the game, makes it impossible to play a zoning game because there’s absolutely no room to run away, so Radec is immediately at a disadvantage. The lack of platforms means characters who have a strong ground game have less areas they need to worry about, so characters like Heihachi get an advantage simply because you can’t really approach him from the air.
If Radec can’t set up a zoning game, he’s already going to be in a bad situation, but then when you pit him against someone who has a much greater close range game than he does (which is basically anyone), he is at a severe disadvantage. A 6-4 matchup can turn into a 7-3 or even an 8-2 simply because the stage does not allow a character to play to their strengths. That’s how stage counterpicking comes into play. Some characters were designed to play at range, others were designed to be aerial combatants, and then there’s the close range fighters. In a stage that eliminates two of those play styles, they’re going to be overall less effective characters.
What is the consensus on items/hazards? Personally I feel they should be left on. Hazards ain’t random and the shit that made items broken in Smash isn’t present in this game.
When stage hazards are turned off it usually goes to final transformation so for Dojo you’ll be in the outside area I think…
Personally I think items/hazards should definitely be off for tournaments.
Dojo is still small even with the walls down. Being outside just takes away the ability to wallbounce
I honestly don’t see the problem with it. If you have 5 stages, and both players strike two they least want, you’re most likely to get the most neutral stage for the two characters, assuming the players know what they doing. It was important when Final Destination was a neutral because the stage is huge in length and so its a keepaway character’s dream, so randoming it flip-flopped a bunch of matchups. Eventually everyone realised this was stupid in a supposedly neutral stage, but for that time it was important. The system most definitely does do something about something, and I don’t know how you couldn’t see that.
WTF Parappa can reflect projectiles?!?!
kendall said yesterday on ign superbot refers to attacks as attack 1, attack 2, attack 3.
It doesn’t do anything because it only matters for 1 game and then immediately doesn’t matter. After you play the first game loser picks the stage, right? So he can then counterpick after losing? If the goal was to stop counterpicking stages, they failed at it miserably because it doesn’t work. Only the first game can be neutral, but why even bother? Like I said, either you care about stage counterpicks or you don’t, and the “strike the stages” method is a middle of the road solution that doesn’t do anything in reality. If they don’t care about stage counterpicking, which clearly they don’t since the system allows for it, why not just make the first stage select a coin toss?
In the situation you just mentioned all you really managed to say was that Final Destination went from a neutral stage to a counterpick stage, but that’s not what I’m talking about. The system Smash uses is convoluted and stupid and doesn’t really do anything about the issue of counterpicking because it STILL happens. There’s only one way to avoid counterpicking stages and that is random select. Any other system does not stop counterpicking stages and any system made to make stage selection as neutral as possible is way more complicated than it should be because there’s no good way to do it.
You’re MEANT to be able to counterpick, that’s the whole fucking point of the system. Why are you looking at it as if its meant to stop it at all? First game is fair because its not meant to favour anyone, and then loser gets their pick. You have three options with Smash, you can have every game be on a random stage, which will randomly give someone a huge advantage, you can have every game be on neutral stage, which doesn’t take advantage of the game’s whole unique factor in its stages with big differences, or you can have first game be neutral to not favour anyone, and then give the loser a leg up with a counterpick stage. That’s what its meant to do, and it does it well. I’ve always had a problem with how the Smash community decides what stages are ‘fair’ enough for the list, because the people in charge are all a bunch of pussies, but the system itself is fine.
I wasn’t trying to say that it was supposed to stop counterpicking, because clearly it doesn’t. What I’m saying is I don’t like the system because stage counterpicks are possible and I don’t like that. I don’t like that there needs to be a committee meeting to agree on which stages are neutral and which stages aren’t, because I don’t think anyone could decide that in such a way that everyone agrees on because stages will ALWAYS favor one character over another. Furthermore, picking “the most neutral possible stage” doesn’t mean it’s 100% neutral for the matchup.
Basically, the entire point I have been trying to make the whole time is that I don’t like stage counterpicking, I would rather there not be stage counterpicking in tournament play because I don’t want the game to boil down to every round being a counterpick, and I don’t see anything wrong with random select. Yeah, someone can randomly get an advantage, but you can also randomly get a disadvantage, and it’s better than a system where you will get a disadvantage 100% of the time if you win a game. If every tournament match came down to whoever won the first match because the next two were going to be counterpicks, I would be extremely disappointed with the tournament rules. That’s it. Stages are a huge part of this game and on top of the impending character matchups, they could heavily sway how much of a disadvantage you are at to the point where some matchups are impossible.
The only fair system I see is to not players pick the stage at all, if after a match both players agree to a rematch on the same stage then let it fly, otherwise the losing player should be able to demand another stage select. Random select never favors anyone, sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don’t, but when you allow stage counterpicking it becomes less about the players and their actual abilities and more about min/maxing character/stage select to play characters that counter you on a stage where you cannot play your character’s optimal game plan, and I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty fucking lame in my opinion.
Stages in Smash really aren’t ‘you will 100% win on your counterpick’, and that series’s balance is complete trash so I’d hope PSABR is better with that. If they were, everyone would just play best of 1 in Brawl because no one really enjoys 24 minute matches. It seems like your problem with counterpicking is more hyperbole and less actual experience, because it definitely doesn’t play out in practice how you seem to think it does. Trash characters will have stages where they can’t play, but bad characters will also have matchups they can’t win anyway, so you just have to either hope the game’s balance is better than that or just not play bad characters.
I wouldn’t compare this to Smash in any way shape or form for any reason because the two games are completely different. PASBR could have better overall balance than Smash, but at the same time the characters aren’t designed in the same way. The keepaway characters in Smash aren’t in the same style of keepaway as say, Radec is. No one in Smash is trying to be a full screen away from you, because no one has any kind of effective attacks at that range. Radec is designed to be terrible at close range and great at long range. Put him in a stage where there’s nowhere to run and he’s terrible, put him on the biggest stage in the game and he’s great.
PASBR has these designs because you aren’t trying to ring someone out, the goal in Smash is to stay as close to the center of the stage as possible so you don’t fall off, so all characters are given short range tools because they NEED them. When a character sucks in Smash, it’s because they have bad short range tools and/or bad recovery so they can’t stay on the stage/get back to the stage. All of that is irrelevant in PASBR. Radec isn’t a bad character because he has bad short range tools because he has GREAT long range tools, however if he can’t use any long range attacks and is forced to rely on his bad close range attacks, he is a bad character. Maybe my worries are hyperbole, but I am still vehemently in disagreement that stage selection won’t affect matchups in a serious, tangible way. Maybe impossible wasn’t the right word, but 8-2 is pretty horrible, and it’s entirely realistic, and a stage pushing a matchup to that degree isn’t unfeasible.
This discussion is very worrying. Hopefully tournament organizers (those who will ultimately decide the rules) will have some sense.
People kneejerk about hazards and items and stages because they think everything out of their control is automatically “uncompetitive” or “unfair”.
Falco and King DDD are both pretty keepaway heavy in Brawl, they both spend the majority of the match on the other side of the screen throwing shit at you. Toon Link spends even more of his time just throwing stuff at you due to his bad grab. Final Destination wouldn’t be such a matchup tilting stage if there weren’t heavy keepaway characters. Sure, they still have to have good up close options so they can actually kill you, but they still spend most of the time just throwing projectiles. DDD doesn’t even have to get close ever if he kills you with a Gordo.
I don’t see why you’d even want to play your hypothetical matchup Radec with random select, though. An 8-2 matchup that you’d get against the entire cast 1/14th of the time sounds awful, and not something I’d ever want to deal with. I just don’t think they’d have balanced the game in such a way that you can’t fight at all on one stage, unless they intended it to be only tournament played on only one stage.
It’s a hell of a lot better odds than an 8-2 matchup that happens 100% of the time if I win the first game.
Either way, though, you’ve got an 8-2 matchup that’s going to come up eventually in a major, and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s why I think the stages won’t be as big as you think, because surely the balance guys would’ve taken them into account so that characters like Radec aren’t hugely polarizing.