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The No-Johns Ruleset

The Star King

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So they aren't worth the inherent unfairness they present.

If those things aren't tested without randomness then it's a completely horrible fighting game. Melee is not one of those games.
 

Kal

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So they aren't worth the inherent unfairness they present.
They don't really present unfairness. You're misusing the term. If both players can respond to randomness equally well, then it's not unfair. For example, both players have the choice to avoid the bottom part of the stage on Mute City in order to avoid the cars. Yes, the cars have a random pattern, but they can be sufficiently accounted for.

Moreover, any "unfairness" as a result of randomness goes away in the long-term. This is especially important when the effect of the randomness is minimal, e.g. Peach's turnip or Game and Watch's hammer.

Further, whether they're "worth" anything is subjective. The point is that they still test these skills. You may not find the skills worth testing (relative to the rest of the game), but that's beyond the point.

If those things aren't tested without randomness then it's a completely horrible fighting game. Melee is not one of those games.
Sort of missing the point here. You made the claim that randomness is universally bad in a fighting game. I've given an example where it's not. I'm not saying it's necessarily good in Melee (again, subjectivity), but you can't just affirm that randomness is universally bad.

If you want an example where randomness is a good thing in Melee (obviously, this is just an opinion, so relax), look at Peach's turnip. Many times your best bet is to simply take a turnip to the face or to catch the turnip and drop it immediately. However, if your opponent (randomly) pulls a stitch-face or a Bob-Bomb, the dynamic changes, and you must adapt accordingly. So, in my opinion, having Peach randomly pull out bull **** is a good thing. It tests your opponent's ability to think on his feet and maintain his cool.

Sure, those things are already tested in other ways, but that makes this example no less valuable.
 

Life

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As a rule of thumb, there are two criteria by which randomness can be measured as a good or bad thing:

1. Advance warning: random stage changes on Stadium are okay because you have, what, five seconds of warning before the stage actually begins to change? This is why hazards on a timer are almost universally unproblematic: you always know exactly where they are based on what the timer says.
2. Overpowering: I'm not well enough versed in Melee stages to elaborate, but if there were a hazard that came with little warning... and did a quarter-percent damage and no KB on hit, who'd care?

Hazards with little warning and a lot of effect tend to cause too much variance, while hazards with more warning and/or less effect tend to add to the game more than they subtract.
 

Kal

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As a rule of thumb, there are two criteria by which randomness can be measured as a good or bad thing:

1. Advance warning: random stage changes on Stadium are okay because you have, what, five seconds of warning before the stage actually begins to change? This is why hazards on a timer are almost universally unproblematic: you always know exactly where they are based on what the timer says.
2. Overpowering: I'm not well enough versed in Melee stages to elaborate, but if there were a hazard that came with little warning... and did a quarter-percent damage and no KB on hit, who'd care?

Hazards with little warning and a lot of effect tend to cause too much variance, while hazards with more warning and/or less effect tend to add to the game more than they subtract.
I must say I very much like this post.
 

PEEF!

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Why is this the no-johns ruleset when it has nothing but rules that give people legit johns.

More like a super-johns ruleset
 

Kal

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Why is this the no-johns ruleset when it has nothing but rules that give people legit johns.

More like a super-johns ruleset
Did you read the first post, or are you just trolling?

KishPrime said:
If I may sum it up as follows - what we're saying is that when I get hit by a car and my opponent takes advantage, I blame myself for letting myself get in a bad position. When you get hit by a car, you curse your bad luck and blame the stage for interfering with your match.
 

Stevo

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It only gives johns to bad players.
aka 95% of smashers :awesome:

Although people in this thread make good points, I still lean towards the current stage list more. I have nothing to back this up except it is what I am used to, what most smashers want, and I have some bad experiences on some of the stages suggested.

It may be johns, bias, and not logical, but that's how it is for me. I think many smashers might feel the same, given the length of time this game has been out and how long we have been playing with small stage lists.

I wish I could say I support this completely, but like many others, I simply don't.
 

Kal

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It may be johns, bias, and not logical, but that's how it is for me. I think many smashers might feel the same, given the length of time this game has been out and how long we have been playing with small stage lists.
The issue here is the way such justification of stage bans allows for further banning. Once you've granted that things can be banned because "that's how it's been for so long" or because "that's how most people prefer it," then it won't be hard for people to lobby for a ban whose only justification is a majority agreement.
 
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I think there are a fair number of stages in the current ruleset. I wouldn't mind more, but I'm not ready to complain. Each stage is sufficiently different, and it's more than the one stage that all other fighting games have.

As it is, Melee is a very complete game with an astronomical skill spectrum. Again, additional stages aren't anything bad, but I'd prefer not worrying about this until Project:M (allowing for good custom stages) or a future Smash game.
 

christianizcool

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I mostly just like FD, BF, small BF (Yoshi), windy BF (Dreamland), and moving BF (FoD)

But, for whatever reason I love Kongo Jungle 64. Maybe it's because I am a noob and don't know why people don't like it. I am assuming camping though. But yeah, I love it.
 

Stevo

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The issue here is the way such justification of stage bans allows for further banning. Once you've granted that things can be banned because "that's how it's been for so long" or because "that's how most people prefer it," then it won't be hard for people to lobby for a ban whose only justification is a majority agreement.
I agree
 

Smasher89

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I mostly just like FD, BF, small BF (Yoshi), windy BF (Dreamland), and moving BF (FoD)

But, for whatever reason I love Kongo Jungle 64. Maybe it's because I am a noob and don't know why people don't like it. I am assuming camping though. But yeah, I love it.
For the record I never had played CF competively (or atleast in tournament) neither practiced him, and had a record of loosing to AJP for some time. The ruleset just begged for it (no stagebans, 7min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNGDB95Ah4
 

christianizcool

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For the record I never had played CF competively (or atleast in tournament) neither practiced him, and had a record of loosing to AJP for some time. The ruleset just begged for it (no stagebans, 7min)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tNGDB95Ah4
Yeah, you got a point. It is definitely campy. If it was the same but smaller, and without the barrel down below, it would be one of my favorite stages I think.
 
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Yeah, you got a point. It is definitely campy. If it was the same but smaller, and without the barrel down below, it would be one of my favorite stages I think.
I think it would be great to have a stage like that, or perhaps a Battlefield-style stage, in which the player could recover through the floor. It would introduce all kinds of neat recovery mixups for some characters.
 

Sinji

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I mostly just like FD, BF, small BF (Yoshi), windy BF (Dreamland), and moving BF (FoD)

But, for whatever reason I love Kongo Jungle 64. Maybe it's because I am a noob and don't know why people don't like it. I am assuming camping though. But yeah, I love it.
yeah its very campy. but it depends on the character as well.
 

FrootLoop

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serious question: what is the purpose of a stage ban? In this ruleset or the currently used ones. How did it end up that we implemented stage bans at all?
 

Grim Tuesday

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Stage bans let us have stages legal which could be considered broken for some match-ups, but not the majority.

For example, if we pretend there is a stage where every character goes 50:50 on it, except for a few match-ups that are 100:0.

With a stage ban in place, we can have that stage legal without creating any really unbalanced match-ups, as the few MUs that are unbalanced can use the ban.
 

christianizcool

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I think you meant "platformless BF (FD)."
Haha yes, exactly. For real though, the one (big) thing I like more about the original over Melee is the stages are more unique, but for the most part balanced. I really like Hyrule Castle, Peach's Castle, and Saffron City. It just seems for Melee they decided to make levels either more simple, or more crazy for the most part.
 

ShroudedOne

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Can we stop calling stages "campy"? It's silly to assume that a stage is one way or another, because each player chooses how they want to play on that stage. Okay, the space is more conducive to camping, but that doesn't make it a campy stage, so much as it makes a campy player consider it as a CP.
 

Kal

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It's pretty clear that when a stage is called "campy" the person means "conducive to camping." The terminology is defined for the player, not the stage, so I think it's straightforward what is meant when it is used to qualify a stage.

"Neutral," on the other hand, is a loaded term which only one person has even come close to defining in a reasonable way.
 

KishPrime

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I actually think that Brinstar is one of the most neutral stages under that definition. However, that usually provokes a violent reaction.
 

Kal

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Frankly, any analysis of the stages using that definition would lead me to think that just about every stage is neutral. If I have the time, I may write create a matchup chart for each stage and calculate the standard deviation of matchups on each stage. The main point I want to make is the following:

Nearly every matchup is virtually the same, in terms of probability of success, on each stage. The number of exceptions is small when compared to the entire cast. There are 351 matchups, and I doubt most of them are changed by stages in any significant way. With that in mind, I would expect standard deviation to be quite small.

Also, Bones0, would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean by this analysis? Do you actually want to use standard deviation (i.e., calculate the mean of matchups on the stage (which would require some methodology I think) and then calculate the square root of the sum of blahblah), or did you have something else in mind, e.g. looking at the stage-specific matchup chart and counting how many matchups are not 50-50?
 

Bones0

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I actually think that Brinstar is one of the most neutral stages under that definition. However, that usually provokes a violent reaction.
I'm not sure how good you still are relative to today's metagame, so I won't insult your credibility, but it is largely accepted that Brinstar is very much a "best of both worlds" for the floatier characters. It has the large blast zones such as on Dream Land, but the stage itself is quite small. This makes it so not only do the floaties live for very long, but they do not have to worry about chasing their opponent's quick character around. As an example, the best part of Peach vs. Fox on YS is that Peach can cut down on Fox's movement options MUCH easier. She doesn't have to worry about a top platform like on BF and DL which is very far above her. Peach vs. Fox on DL makes it much harder for Peach to trap a Fox running around, but she lives for a very long time.

So when you combine these two, you end up getting Brinstar, which has the blast zones of DL, the stage size of YS, and on top of all of that, you have lava which will do 3-4 times more damage to non-floaties. It doesn't take too much analysis to see why certain stages are biased in favor of characters of different speeds and weights. Brinstar is definitely one of the most bias stages in the game. Am I saying fast fallers cannot beat floaties on Brinstar or slow characters cannot beat fast ones on KJ64? Obviously not. But it IS unnecessarily difficult relative to the neutrals.

Frankly, any analysis of the stages using that definition would lead me to think that just about every stage is neutral. If I have the time, I may write create a matchup chart for each stage and calculate the standard deviation of matchups on each stage. The main point I want to make is the following:

Nearly every matchup is virtually the same, in terms of probability of success, on each stage. The number of exceptions is small when compared to the entire cast. There are 351 matchups, and I doubt most of them are changed by stages in any significant way. With that in mind, I would expect standard deviation to be quite small.

Also, Bones0, would you be willing to elaborate on what you mean by this analysis? Do you actually want to use standard deviation (i.e., calculate the mean of matchups on the stage (which would require some methodology I think) and then calculate the square root of the sum of blahblah), or did you have something else in mind, e.g. looking at the stage-specific matchup chart and counting how many matchups are not 50-50?
I don't think we would need to do anything TOO in depth to show a clear bias towards certain characters. You could classify characters into groups of Slow, Fast, Floaty, and Fast Faller, and then just figure out the matchups on each stage and calculate the average for any given trait. You could actually get one of those grids with the 4 quadrants and depict values that way. One corner for each trait, and the worse the matchup gets, the further the stage's "point" will be from the origin (neutrals will be in all of the quadrants, but fairly close to the middle while counterpicks and banned stages would be further out). So for instance, using Brinstar, you would compare Puff's matchups on the neutrals to her matchups on Brinstar. Just pulling these numbers out of my ***, so don't freak out.

Puff vs. Fox
BF: 50-50
DL: 60-40
FD: 45-55
FoD: 55-45
YS: 40-60

PS: 40-60
BS: 65-35
KJ: 5-95 (Smasher89 is my hero)
RC: 35-65

Then do the same for Peach/Samus/Luigi vs. Fox (and other fast fallers), and you will notice DL and FoD will be slightly in favor of virtually all of the matchups. BS will be heavily in favor of floaties and slow characters. KJ and RC will be dominated by fast/fast falling characters.

Now obviously the results turn out in my favor considering I just made up the matchup values myself, but I'm sure results would be very similar if top players were asked about them, and even though most players will be biased that their own character is less advantaged on any given stage, when you average the matchup perceptions from both sides you will get a fairly acceptable value. Fox players will probably be like "yoooo, Puff owns on Brinstar, 80-20" while Puff players will probably be like "meh, it's not THAT good; prolly 60-40." So you would end up getting 70-30 as your matchup value.

If you wanted to remove even more bias from the system, you could eliminate subjective values all together. Instead of asking people how bad a matchup is, you could compare how often each stage is banned, and by what character, or to go even further you could compare how matches go (how many stocks the victor had left) when those stages are played. Each method obviously has flaws, but after all the dust settles I'm pretty confident there would be clear distinction between Neutrals, Counter Picks (still legal), Counter Picks (banned a while ago), and Banned Stages (almost always banned).
 

BigD!!!

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pretty much everybody but marth and ice climbers is good on brinstar, people are just dumb about lava

peef, the point of this whole thing is that johning about the lava or a car is, in the eyes of some people, no more "legit" than johning about running into marths fsmash or stupidly double jumping above him on fd
 

Kal

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Puff vs. Fox
BF: 50-50
DL: 60-40
FD: 45-55
FoD: 55-45
YS: 40-60

PS: 40-60
BS: 65-35
KJ: 5-95 (Smasher89 is my hero)
RC: 35-65

Then do the same for Peach/Samus/Luigi vs. Fox (and other fast fallers), and you will notice DL and FoD will be slightly in favor of virtually all of the matchups. BS will be heavily in favor of floaties and slow characters. KJ and RC will be dominated by fast/fast falling characters.
This is nowhere near conclusive enough for anything within the provided definition. The point I made earlier, which still applies, is that of the 351 matchups, very few will change according to the stage. If you want to argue for neutrality according to better characters (this is possible to do), then that's fine, but not something I would consider.

And really, your argument just lacks rigor. I find it hard to even understand what point you're trying to make. Even if Brinstar is favored by floatier characters, that doesn't make it statistically significant. Is the variation really anything severe? If we were to look at Puff and Peach, compared to the remaining stages, every matchup other than Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik and C. Falcon remains unchanged. So then the remaining 21 matchups for Peach and Puff remain roughly the same. When applying the same amount of rigor to this analysis as you do, we reach drastically different conclusions.

This suggests that, if you want to make this argument, it needs to be more rigorous. It's sort of absurd to bring up mathematical notions of standard deviation and to then avoid any rigor at all.
 

KishPrime

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Yeah, I know all that about Brinstar. I still think it's high on that list of "most neutral." I do believe that matchups have to be played differently there, just like any stage, but I do think that the "change from the average matchup values" is similar compared to stages like FD and FoD. The disadvantages for Fox/Falco are overblown.
 

Grim Tuesday

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pretty much everybody but marth and ice climbers is good on brinstar, people are just dumb about lava

peef, the point of this whole thing is that johning about the lava or a car is, in the eyes of some people, no more "legit" than johning about running into marths fsmash or stupidly double jumping above him on fd
Ice Climbers are fine on Brinstar and RC.

That myth should just die. The best stage to CP against them is KJ and then time them out.
 

BigD!!!

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i can imagine them having a somewhat tough time on brinstar, at the very least compared to their normal game. indefinite grab combos are limited by lava, theyre forced to leave the ground and go into the air which can make them pretty vulnerable compared to their ideal state of wavedashing around, and that **** in the middle hinders their ability to wavedash from any point to any point quickly. i dunno though, maybe its not as big a deal as i imagine.

im sure they can still compete there, but they a lot of their best strategies become not good ideas, and this can be used by the other player

fastfallers, however, can do fine on brinstar, because they can abuse the fact that they can quickly go from the ground to the air and back relatively safely. when the lava is coming up, they can generally be the first to that top platform and somewhat edgeguard up there. they can survive gimps by bouncing around on the lava; i know they take a lot of damage but that happens instead of dying so cheer up.

plus, nobody believes me, but if the lava comes high and getting to the top plat isnt an option, you can go up in the air and shinestall off to the side for a little while and they wont come get you. if they do, forward b to the middle when they leave it, mix in an airdodge, stuff like that
 

Bones0

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This is nowhere near conclusive enough for anything within the provided definition. The point I made earlier, which still applies, is that of the 351 matchups, very few will change according to the stage. If you want to argue for neutrality according to better characters (this is possible to do), then that's fine, but not something I would consider.

And really, your argument just lacks rigor. I find it hard to even understand what point you're trying to make. Even if Brinstar is favored by floatier characters, that doesn't make it statistically significant. Is the variation really anything severe? If we were to look at Puff and Peach, compared to the remaining stages, every matchup other than Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik and C. Falcon remains unchanged. So then the remaining 21 matchups for Peach and Puff remain roughly the same. When applying the same amount of rigor to this analysis as you do, we reach drastically different conclusions.

This suggests that, if you want to make this argument, it needs to be more rigorous. It's sort of absurd to bring up mathematical notions of standard deviation and to then avoid any rigor at all.
My argument? I'm not arguing anything. You asked how I would prove statistically that the neutrals are a host to less extreme matchups compared to other stages, and that's how I would do it. If you and Kish are just going to go "nah, the stages aren't that bad," then obviously how I would analyze the data is irrelevant. Personally, I have no desire to compile all of these statistics because it's quite clear, to me and most people, from tournament play, which stages favor which characters and which stages are considered more/less neutral. You can argue all day that people are too lazy to learn how to play on counterpicks or that how bad they are is blown out of proportion, but your opinion is in the minority. Spacies ban Brinstar vs. floaties all the time, but it never happens the other way around. Either this is some absurd form of stage favoritism within the community, or they really are bad.

The entire point is irrelevant anyway. I've never argued stage should be banned because they are biased towards certain characters, so even if Brinstar was 100% undeniably neutral in every matchup, I still wouldn't think it should be legal in tournament because of how the design affects game play. Stuff like random lava interrupting fights is what makes it ban worthy, not the fact that floaties do well on it. The only reason I bothered explaining the concept of neutrals in the first place is because you seem to view this discussion as a game to be won, rather than a way of coming to an agreement. You understood perfectly why everyone considered these stages neutral, but you waited for me to point it out before going "oh wow, someone finally gave the really obvious argument for why they're called neutrals!"

It's clear the thread has simply devolved into people who don't mind dealing with random stage hazards vs. people who think dumb stuff that is almost impossible to anticipate ruins the player vs. player aspect of the game. This idea that players who prefer to remove randomness from their competition are johning is ridiculous. When you remove the randomness, you are largely removing the number of valid johns available to the player because the less randomness present, the less excuses they have to justify their loss.
 

Grim Tuesday

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i can imagine them having a somewhat tough time on brinstar, at the very least compared to their normal game. indefinite grab combos are limited by lava, theyre forced to leave the ground and go into the air which can make them pretty vulnerable compared to their ideal state of wavedashing around, and that **** in the middle hinders their ability to wavedash from any point to any point quickly. i dunno though, maybe its not as big a deal as i imagine.

im sure they can still compete there, but they a lot of their best strategies become not good ideas, and this can be used by the other player
Indefinite grab releases are generally pretty quick anyway, and their air game is fine depending on where you are. I mean, they are vulnerable from below, but your opponent has to jump as well when the lava comes, and they do have bair/uair.

You just have to play a little differently, less ground based and abuse their strong traits on the stage (avoiding being camped because of the small size, mainly).
 

Kal

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My argument? I'm not arguing anything. You asked how I would prove statistically that the neutrals are a host to less extreme matchups compared to other stages, and that's how I would do it.
"Argument" here meaning more like "point" than indicating that we are arguing. There is no need to react with hostility. I'm sorry if my vernacular implied something negative, as I meant nothing by it.

If you and Kish are just going to go "nah, the stages aren't that bad," then obviously how I would analyze the data is irrelevant.
This isn't what I am saying by any means. It should be clear that, of the 351 matchups, most are unaffected by Brinstar. If you were to use the standard deviation of matchups to measure neutrality, it would be clear that Brinstar were pretty close to neutral.

Again, if you favor an analysis in which you only consider the top 6-8 characters, this changes significantly. But I would never approach the question of which stages to ban based on the current tier list.

Personally, I have no desire to compile all of these statistics because it's quite clear, to me and most people, from tournament play, which stages favor which characters and which stages are considered more/less neutral.
As I've said before, you need a comprehensive argument to suggest that these stages are "non-neutral" in a meaningful way. What's the difference between Brinstar favoring Peach and Yoshi's Story favoring Marth? Most matchups are identical (or vary barely) when compared from stage to stage. What makes any stage more neutral than any other?

Earlier, I pointed out that you had a good method of defining neutrality for stages: a stage is "more neutral" when the standard deviation of matches on it is lower. However, you haven't really shown this, and instead have blown up in a fit of spinning-chair rage when I simply explain why your argument (or point, since "argument" seems to be a word you dislike) is nowhere close to comprehensive enough to prove anything.

You can argue all day that people are too lazy to learn how to play on counterpicks or that how bad they are is blown out of proportion, but your opinion is in the minority.
Why are you bringing up how many people share my opinion? How many people do you think feel that .999... is not equal to 1, or that -4^2 = 16? Majority opinion means nothing. Let's face it, when the majority gets together, they ban what they dislike, not what's warranted.

Spacies ban Brinstar vs. floaties all the time, but it never happens the other way around. Either this is some absurd form of stage favoritism within the community, or they really are bad.
Yeah, spacies do worse against floaties on Brinstar. I don't think I, nor KishPrime, have every said otherwise. This doesn't really prove anything.

The entire point is irrelevant anyway. I've never argued stage should be banned because they are biased towards certain characters, so even if Brinstar was 100% undeniably neutral in every matchup, I still wouldn't think it should be legal in tournament because of how the design affects game play. Stuff like random lava interrupting fights is what makes it ban worthy, not the fact that floaties do well on it.
This has been gone over before many times in the thread. Why are you bringing this up when it has nothing to do with the current discussion (which is on the neutrality of stages like Brinstar)?

The only reason I bothered explaining the concept of neutrals in the first place is because you seem to view this discussion as a game to be won, rather than a way of coming to an agreement.
I don't view this discussion as a game to be won, and I'm not sure why you're acting like such a childish *** about a perfectly reasonable discussion. It should be clear that something like rulesets should avoid compromise, at least when it comes to bans, which is why I continue arguing my point. Of course, it's the ****ing internet, and it's a ****ing forum, and it's just a ****ing discussion, so I don't see why you're overreacting so ****ing hard.

You understood perfectly why everyone considered these stages neutral, but you waited for me to point it out before going "oh wow, someone finally gave the really obvious argument for why they're called neutrals!"
Firstly, be realistic: "everyone" considers these stages neutral because they don't move and because they don't have "stage hazards." Virtually no one goes into the process of actually looking at matchups and deciding what stages make matchups closer to even. The closest thing to such an analysis is usually looking at a very narrow set of matches and deciding that they differ too much from what "should" happen.

Thus, I thought analyzing the stages and noting which ones had a larger standard deviation was a good idea.

It's clear the thread has simply devolved into people who don't mind dealing with random stage hazards vs. people who think dumb stuff that is almost impossible to anticipate ruins the player vs. player aspect of the game. This idea that players who prefer to remove randomness from their competition are johning is ridiculous. When you remove the randomness, you are largely removing the number of valid johns available to the player because the less randomness present, the less excuses they have to justify their loss.
I like that you've concluded with a summarized point we've provided valid arguments against many times, as though we're clearly just in the wrong and are unable to appreciate the other side of the argument.
 

Johnknight1

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LMAO at the "Fox breaks this stage" "Some say Fox may break this stage" and other stuff.

Fox banned tournaments... anyone=??? :awesome: (this is comin' from a Fox main)

Also, I think this list could probably use 2 to 3 new categories, because 3 ain't enough (well technically you have 4, but the 4th is a question mark category). I don't see how Mushroom Kingdom II and Dream Land 64 are in the same category, or how Corneria is in the same category as Onett (as much as I love to play Onett in casual matches).

Ironically, that is a point I hammered on the tiers like 3 years ago, lulz.
 

ShroudedOne

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Fox banned tournaments? Man, you want spacie mains to kill you. :awesome:

I know you were kidding, but that could only be warranted if Fox broke every stage.
 
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