I just now found this thread. Alrighty here's what Im going to do:
I will write up a large post concerning a number of things based on my opinions/thoughts on the matter. I won't be here for awhile, going on a vacation trip for about half a week til Sunday/Monday. If you have questions or more stuff you wanna talk about personally, just leave me a PM or visitor message. Alright, here goes. Ladies and Gentlemen, this shall be a lot of text. Hope you like walls, I try to break it down where I can:
I think we messed up on certain things. For Bowser, Idk. I feel that the change to the rule is fine, but on the other hand the previous rule wasn't a big deal IMO. Bowser is so competitively unviable to start with, and the scenario that the rule governed over probably has occured in fewer than 0.05% of Brawl Matches ever. Frankly IMO it didn't matter that much either way. Part of the problem as Vex said is some of the haziness around how it functions. Some stages you can jump out of it as Bowser and live, others maybe not so, port priority comes into play, etc. From a pure competitive standpoint, it might be more ideal to say "Go along with what the game says if there are factors that influence whether you win or not, even if you do not choose to use them/they are not there certain times" because if you jump away and go with what the game says, you win. If you have port priority and go with what the game says, ditto. If you could have jumped, but failed to do it, then you didn't take advantage of that and a win isn't necessarily granted. It gets a little meh concerning "well we're not sure if he can do it 100% or not" or "port affects it significantly", and saying go with what the game says is letting what happens happen. Now, realistically, this doesn't really matter much. It's Bowser. This shouldn't happen very often, and when it does there really isn't much detriment to taking the easy way and saying "Here is the win". In this instance, the pure competitive voice spoke louder than the simpler "Just give him the win" standpoint. Either way I don't think it makes a big difference although 1 is much simpler and gives faster results in the case of ambiguity. Vex I'll certainly talk to you some more about it, it's an interesting discussion really.
Now, for what 99% of the complaints have been about, STAGES!!!!!!!!!
Yes, Stages. The new stage list... what to make of it? I have very mixed feelings about the stage list. Mostly negative, even though I was someone who was involved in shaping it (I'll get into my stances on certain stages later). Here are my thoughts on the stage list:
- I think it was a mistake to have FD considered acceptable as a stage ONLY if the stage list was expanded to 7 or more. I think FD is a clear candidate for a 5 stage list spot. The obvious arguments against FD being that close of a starter/being a starter at all are that it's too advantaged for ground characters and that it's a strong CP for a lot of characters. On the flip side, FD along with BF is the only real stage that does nothing in terms of affecting normal gameplay. The stages are static, no hazards random or otherwise, etc. These stages are the closest you can get to Player vs Player in Brawl, and I personally think that is the direction Brawl needs to go JUST for starter stages because of the importance of Game 1 in a set. I am more lenient (but still probably considered conservative) when it comes to the CP stages. Brawl IMO should be more than just FD/BF/Similar stages, but I feel we go too far sometimes and go deep into the ridiculous CP jungle.
Now, that is my biggest complaint about the starters. I'm not a huge fan of the 9 stage starter list because frankly I feel that past 7 stages you start roaming into questionable CP land. Delfino in particular I think is a definite CP, and is only added because people feel it is more "neutral" than other CP stages. Castle Siege and Halberd are more rational IMO, but even they aren't clear starter quality at least in my eyes. Past 9 stages I think is a mistake, and I would not advise anyone going past that for 2 main reasons. 1- You go into clear CP territory and makes them selectable Game 1 stages.
Is Frigate starter quality? No, but I bet it would be added on a 11 stage starter list. This becomes even more ridiculous past that point. The 2nd- The more "liberal" stages you add on a starter list, the stronger MK is. This is because there are more stages that favor him than those that do not. It's poor game balance yes, you can't change that. However, when you think about adding more stages in, the ones you think about adding tend to mostly favor MK with few standing out that are bad for him. In a 5 stage starter list, you could have FD, BF, SV, YI, whatever. MK is wary of FD obviously, and maybe SV/BF for some matchups, and past that point he doesn't really have many stages that he has to get rid of besides Matchup specific ones. Now, past that point though, what do you get? Stages like Delfino, Frigate, RC, Norfair, Distant Planet, etc. How many of those stages favor MK, and how many do not? A disproportionate amount favor him over hurting him.
This means that the longer your list, the more strikes you have to eat up on stages he is good at. If you are given 5 strikes, but MK is good on 6-7 of the stages total, what happens is that now he gets to guarantee start on a stage that favors him. This is a bad shift in the metagame, with as much of a problem as MK is now. Ban worthy or not in your own personal opinion, it's hard to argue that he would do worse with a larger, more diverse stage list when the stages added favor him more than they hurt him (past 9 stages this is really obvious. At 9 it's debatable, but I personally think he does better on 9 than on 5). This may become evident with the 9 stage starter list as time passes on. Some people say it's clear right now that he's instantly better, others may see MLG results or stage preferences at larger tournaments and say it doesn't make him noticeably better, etc.
-Now for CP stages and my thoughts:
I think the big part of some of these CP stages is that people are not creative enough in ways of exploiting the stage layout, or that there just aren't enough tournament videos of something stupid happening on it for people to widely go "Hey, ok this should be banned, makes sense now". Think about scrooging: why did it take the community THAT long to realize MK had immense potential for gaying it up by simply gliding UNDER the stage not grabbing the edge? We all knew he could do it, we have seen people mix up going under the stage or missing a shuttle loop M2K style and recovering on the other edge. No one put 2 and 2 together and said "Hey, wait a minute, let's go under the stage not to recover, but for other means" until M2K showed people apparently. For stages like Norfair, Distant Planet, Luigi's Mansion, Green Greens, etc. I think that people either have the hard "Don't believe it until I see it" mentality where without a bunch of tournament videos they will not say there is a problem, even if on a theory or fairly realistic thought train level it looks like the stage has issues, OR people genuinely do not see what may be possible on the stages.
Norfair: Meh. I wasn't thrilled about this one honestly. This has been legal in Texas for some time. Was on and off. Dallas tended not to have it legal, Houston did. Relating back to those past and current experiences with the stage, I can honestly say that I think it is ban worthy because of how gameplay changes. Sharking and Planking on this stage are really strong IMO. I hear arguments that planking is weaker because the platforms line up with the higher edges, and see this is where I don't think people are creative enough in seeing why that isn't a solution/deterrent to the problem. Going under the stage, and fooling around with various MK reverse shuttle loop/side B/Regular Shuttle Loop/Tornado/Glide/Down B/etc options should give an idea of just how incredibly diverse and safe some of the options on that stage are. Or how gay tornadoing under someone's shield on the platform, then moving to the other side of the stage and watching them not be able to punish you because the stage layout makes this impossible. How people miss that, IDK. Even tossing out any Lava mishaps, as there are some decent arguments on them not being an issue, I think that the stage layout alone promotes very silly and bad things for competitive Brawl. Maybe I'm seeing problems that aren't there. Maybe the stage is fine and we will see this with it being more widespread. I trust my gut feeling on this however, and I personally would not be surprised if this ended up being rebanned and a LOT of people saying "I told you so".
PS2: I completely favor this stage being a CP. Many of you might be surprised to hear that this stage was actually strongly considered for being a starter. Regardless, I personally think this is one genuine stage that looks acceptable that was just shunned by the community really early for being different. I hear that argument for other stages *cough Green Greens and Norfair and Distant Planet cough cough*, but for PS2 I actually agree I think this stage is fine and it just was not liked early on in Brawl for whatever reason. I don't think many people are really up in arms over this compared to Norfair/Mansion/others, but I know some of you might be incensed about this one. I will say that if you think this should be banned, you should also have no problem with removing Brinstar and RC as those 2 stages are clearly more "atrocious" in nature than this one.
Mansion: Oh lord. This stage. Well, this was legal in Texas quite a bit too. Banned because we thought gameplay got really gay on this stage. IDK if it was just our region at the time, but most of the time we saw this stage as a MK frenzy. I guarantee you most matches involving this stage were either Double MK, or MK main vs poor soul of another character. IMO MK is the clear "nagging pain" of this stage. Not DK, ROB, Olimar, Snake, etc. I hear many characters supposed to be ******** on this stage, but most of them also have clear CP characters against them. DK against Dedede on this stage? No. Snake against Wario? Catching him would be ********. Olimar against MK? Eww. And so on. There were some back and forth arguments over the stage being destroyable. There was the argument that destroying the stage would stop most problems the stage has. Then again, if you are having to spend time changing the stage to make it more "neutral" for it to be acceptable, that would indicate that maybe you shouldn't play there to begin with. The main problem with destroying the stage is that the stage regenerates fairly fast, and wasting time until it does so is not hard for characters who abuse the new stage layout. I just find that most gameplay either revolves around abusing the stage layout, destroying the stage layout so that the other guy can't abuse it, or waiting for it to regenerate so that you can go back to abusing it. There is little "Hey let me go try to hit that guy regularly" when you can run or make him come to you or run from him. Running is a BIG problem of the stage. Maybe just me seeing the gayness aura that starkly portrays it as unacceptable, maybe I'm seeing too much of something that isn't there, idk. From what I have already seen and done with the stage though, I do strongly believe it's not just me seeing something really gay, but there something being really gay about this stage to start with.
Green Greens: Another lovely stage that was legal quite a bit in Texas, and is now mostly off besides MLG like stage lists that include it. I think the stage is dumb, and camping becomes even more ********. I hear the argument that MK is bad on this stage, even when it really looks like he is fine on it. Under the stage are ******** scrooging and planking issues from even "regular" planking characters like G@W, Pit, Jiggs. MK himself is pretty absurd in that he has many more safer options for doing this with the extra edges in play. There are many different things he can do, some of them easier to explain in video form. I will try to make a video about the things he can do and post it so that maybe what I am trying to say makes more sense.
Distant Planet: I think this is another stage that people seem to think is alright without fully realizing the full implications of what can happen because of the layout. Sharking/being near the edge of the slant under everyone else is a really powerful position to be in with the lead. REALLY powerful. You can grab the edge near you, you can shark under the platform, you can go to the platform edge, you can go through the platform, you can move up the slant, you can sit in place, etc. There are so many options in that spot compared to any other spot on the stage. Same with being near the very edge of the platform. I don't think the slant walkoff/CG issues are that bad. However I think there are some camping exploits on this stage, that many people might not instantly see or realize, that I think will become more obvious once people play on there more frequently and realize how powerful such positions are.
Yoshi's Island Melee: I felt this should be full banned. Counter/Banned is much better than being full blown counter obviously lol. This stage many people disagree about what is a problem/what is not. My personal opinion is that the middle pit is a problem for planking, and that the Cave of Immortality effect of the stage is not beneficial to gameplay. CG's and Walkoffs not really a problem IMO, some argue it is, I would not. Dedede himself has so many counters in the present metagame that even on a stage like Bridge of Elden, you could not say the walkoff was a problem because Diddy/Falco/IC's/etc would come along and make him look foolish. Now, the 1 main issue about them IS camping the walkoffs. That I agree can be a problem. But on slanted walkoffs I actually think that is not very strong because you can hit under then easier without worrying about the Bthrow/whatever move or you can try to DI into the slant when it happens.
Pirate Ship: Same as YI Melee. I'd prefer to have it outright banned, Counter/Banned is obviously better than outright Counter. This should obviously not be legal over other clear CP stages (I would laugh if you had this, but not Frigate or something similar as a CP), but hey I could see this being one of those "Well the people don't truly mind" kind of stages.
Japes: I think there are some water stalling/layout abuse issues that people don't immediately see but are ever present. I think these will become evident with more usage. I don't think Falco is ******** here, I think MK is actually definitely better on here than him.
Port Town: Oh Lord. Lawdy Mista What haz happend?
This stage you will probably hear a lot of public BBR grunting about. This stage is probably the biggest one in terms of people going "Why is this legal?". Some stages like Pictochat, there were arguments and people would say "Ok I see what you are saying, I just disagree with stage philosophy or disagree that the problems you listed are too much for the stage to be legal". For Port Town, it seemed more like "Ok why would you want this legal, regardless of whether it feels competitively acceptable to add it?". The stage feels more like "We can, therefore we shall" not "We should, we shall". Like because it was an option, we had to use it.
There are some problems with the stage. Disagreements over the severity or the existence of these was definitely there. Lack of edges, powerful car hazards. Some people thought the cars were too much because they killed too soon in their opinion. Others felt they didn't kill at ridiculous %'s, so they were fine. Others said yes they kill really ********, but you can avoid them reasonably in their opinion. Lack of edges some said yes this is a big problem. Some said lack of edges isn't necessarily a problem, look at stages with walkoffs or stages with extended durations of no edges being fine for gameplay.
I think no edges for a majority of gameplay, when factoring in cars and traveling hurting/gone terrain makes strong edgeguarding and recovering characters being a bit too powerful. MK loves the stage, no problem recovering back and anyone who might need the edge against MK will just take it hard offstage against him. I also think the cars are a problem because regardless of your intent, you have to obey what the stage dictates or severely get punished. Im not talking about "Follow up the Delfino platform while it rises or die", Im talking about "SWEET JESUS GET OUT OF OUR WAY" takes instant priority over fighting the opponent. Even if there are safe spots, the very fact that you have to go clearly out of your way to avoid them doesn't seem amusing to me.
Again. I speak for only myself on this matter. Not for the entire BBR. These are some of my stances/thoughts, and while I agree with the majority of the dissent out there, I do agree with some of their decisions.
