Princess Dedede's Castle: Are We Down?

[JimmyTheCaterpillar]

So, my local community has officially decided to make the DLC stage, 'Peach's Castle (64)' a legal counterpick for singles. Which I am totally in favor of.

However, I'm not too sure if it's such a good stage for us as Dedede players. I've played on it a bunch against the CPU (my only option atm) and I've had a harder time on it than on, say, Smashville. It's incredibly cramped, and it's difficult to FF and move around in general. The slides in the corners also mess with our killing power, as most of my bairs sent my opponent flying right at the slides, causing them to stay alive.

However, with as many wacky angles as there, I'm sure there are Gordo trickzz for days there. Curious if @ Girthquake has figured some effective ones yet, actually. Speaking of Gordo, it's ridiculously easy to stick the gordo to the slides. Also, I'd like to note that our SDJ can go right through the moving bottom platform like Halberd.

Personally, while I think it should be legal as a counterpick, this is a stage that I will be banning far more often than not.

What do you guises think?

 

[cwjakesteel]

I think the stage is super angular. And I like it. I haven't tested much gordo tricks, but I can take your word on it. Although, since it's more cramped, I would believe that those gordo tricks are much easier to circumvent too by a move greater than 1%, and also much more of a threat to us.

I love the idea of the moving floor at the bottom, and this is one of the only stages that give us a good wall for our gordo to bounce off of or stick to that isn't just at the edge.

Those triangle things at the top left and right. Could you tech off the bottom of those? I think that would be a problem, since that's where our back air usually sends people.

 

[Girthquake]

So, I personally think this stage is complete utter jank. It's fun, but I haven't really done too much lab work on it. From what I've done though most of the time on the Triangle slopes in the air the gordo sticks super easily more often than not, and it would be hilarious if you grab up threw someone into the bumper into the gordo.

Other than that On the bottom there are a few slants on both sides of the middle part of the stage that send the gordo out wards towards people on the sliding platform thing.... And the bridge on the left side has a slant to bounce it back behind you with an up gordo after a bounce or two of walling with up gordo.

Not a fan of the stage even with the cheesy gordo tricks. I don't think they work as well on this stage as they do on like Halberd/Castle Siege and a few transforms on Delfino. But that's just my opinion.

 

[Jabejazz]

Refresh my mind, isn't that the stage with no grabbable ledges? Haven't played in a while, but the idea of such a stage existing in a tournament settings flusters me.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

They updated it so that you can grab both the moving platform and, iirc, the base platform that the moving platform, well, moves through. I haven't purchased the stage yet but I had the chance to play on it last night.

Unfortunately that was during an online tourney in a free for all setting...I can say I wasn't really digging the stage as Dedede. The stage itself I think is acceptable until I can further test it. It may be worth noting that if you sit on the base platform, using the bouncing gordo custom you can launch it through the top platform and have it bounce around up there.

I'd like to play around with the stage some more, anyways, but I definitely think it's not going to be seen much in more conservative rulesets, which is what we run at Anvil Smash. :/

 

[Eggggggggggbert]

Its extremely claustrophobic for any character (I serious suggest putting 8 player smash on with 8 bowsers, its a pretty funny time). It boggles me why they made Zelda's castle so huge but this stage feels so small. Its also basically an upside down smashville with the addiction goofiness of the bumper and slopes.

 

[Jabejazz]

They updated it so that you can grab both the moving platform and, iirc, the base platform that the moving platform, well, moves through.

Gotcha. That's interesting. It definitely deserves further investigation. As Girthquake mentioned however, there might be too much jank to be a reasonable stage. Historically, Smash 64 used it as a counterpick stage, except it didn't have grabbable ledges. So there's a possibility it'll be considered.

If one of the two new stages had to be allowed in the stagelist, it's definitely Peach's Castle; from what I've seen, Hyrule is stupidly gigantic for a 1 on 1 setting.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

The biggest issue I see with this stage's legality are the ramps. They're coded as walls, which means you can wall jump, tech off of them (this is the biggie here), stick Gordos/other things to them, etc.

In 64, it wasn't an issue because you simply couldn't tech off of walls and (I believe) ceilings. The bumper can be a bit disruptive but I don't see that being a big enough issue by itself to warrant a ban. If I had to redesign the stage with competitive play in mind, I would've removed the ramps and stretched out the bottom a bit so it's less cramped...but that would remove some of the nostalgia factor, I guess. And it's not like these stages are built for 1v1 tourney play anyways.

But I do hope it at least gets proper testing rather than immediately ignored. I tend to favor slightly liberal stage lists myself and if we allow silly stages like Duck Hunt and Castle Siege I don't see why we would have a problem with this one...

 

[Girthquake]

Another thing to keep in mind too is that the blast zones are ridiculously far, which naturally I think is better for heavy characters. We can keep that max rage cap much longer and since D3 has such an amazing recovery he rarely gets knocked far enough not to make it back.

But again I'm really against this stage competitively. I feel like if you brought someone to this stage as a counter pick it's saying "Hey, so I can't ACTUALLY beat you so I'm going to try to use stage jank to beat you" This stage is also on a much higher "jank" level than Delfino/Castle Siege/Halberd are for sure. Guess we'll see how it turns out though.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

On the one hand I kinda understand where you are coming from, but on the other that's sort of the same mentality that leads to most players striking to Smashville nearly every match.

Nothing about the stage is inherently uncompetitive. The platform layout and mechanic is a little weird, but it's definitely learnable and doesn't disrupt the flow of the match as much as, for example, the second transformation of Castle Siege. The bumper has interesting play that I feel players who want to put in the time to study it could benefit from. The main concern are the ramps, and that's due to potential cave of life problems.

Either way, I see stage knowledge as a completely valid player skill and IF the stage can be played on without having to play the stage MORE (keyword) than playing the other player I think that the stage is competitive. Whether or not players want to actually include the stage is a different discussion.

But, I think if a stage is legal and you lose on it because someone brought you there and you didn't understand how the stage works, that lose is on you, whether or not it was because the stage is "jank." In a tournament you have to play to win, and if that means exploiting your opponent's weaknesses when selecting a stage, so be it. I don't know if that's a popular opinion per se, but it's the way I feel about the issue right now.

ALL OF THIS SAID, I don't really think we NEED this stage in the list, but if we do want to consider it then it should be given a fair shot as a legal stage until it is proven to be a problem, not because of potential fears of jank being an issue.

 

[Girthquake]

All those are valid points. I just feel like it doesn't take more than one solid look to feel at least iffy on this one. I think the stage is different in a bad way, but again that's just my own opinion.

 

[Cook]

I think it's a very interesting stage. The layout is highly unique, but it doesn't have random elements so I don't see why it should be banned.

I wonder if it would be good against ZSS since the ramps could help a bit with kills off the top and juggles.

 

[Jdawg26]

Circle camping.

You will get camped on this stage.

They'll build a whole freaking village.

Please don't do this to yourself.

This stage is horrible, you will get timed out by literally every Megaman/Sheik/Sonic/Bowser Jr. that you fight on this stage.

Please ban it.

Please.

 

[SalsaSavant]

So, overall, is this a good D3 stage?
It looks like, if nothing else, it softens our ZSS matchup problems and gives us the large blastzones we like. It offers up Gordo tricks, which we haven't developed yet but are nice to have.

But the basic layout...I dunno. Seems like it'd be a bit against us.