Stage Balance Discussion Thread

For those of you who have been following the stage roster discussion thread as well as Mistress' stage design thread, I'm sure at this point you are aware that the stages discussions are a hot topic on the forum now these days. With many debates on many issues that relate to it.

This topic here will be strictly a discussion about the balance of numbers of stages that will be satisfying for both casual and competitive Crusade players.

I will list down all in-game and confirmed stages on the OP (eventually). Next to each name of the stages, there will be a notification indicating the playable appeal of each individual stage.

For Example:

*Stage Name* (Casual)
*Stage Name* (Competitive)
*Stage Name* (Casual/Competitive)


The purpose of this thread is to make sure that both demographics of players get a fair and well-balanced number of stages. Lets Begin.
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1. Battlefield

2. Final Destination

3. The Beginning (Smash 64 Intro Stage)

4. Mushroom Kingdom: Kingdom I

5. Princess Peach’s Castle

6. Good Egg Galaxy

7. Luigi’s Mansion

8. Airship Armada

9. Waluigi Pinball

10. Forest Maze

11. Kongo Jungle (64)

12. Bramble Blast

13. Crystal Caverns

14. Foggy Fumes

15. Yoshi's Island [SNES]

16. Baby Bowser's Bedroom

17. Rice Beach

18. Club Sugar

19. Hyrule Castle (64)

20. The Great Sea

21. Ocarina Medley

22. Palace of Twilight

23. Palace of Winds

24. Tal Tal Heights

25. Planet Zebes (64)

26. Brinstar Depths

27. Phazon Mines

28. Main Sector

27. Vegetable Valley

28. Battleship Halberd

29. Asteroid Field

30. Saffron City (64)

31. Mute City

32. Big Blue

33. Fourside (Melee)

34. Castle Siege (Brawl)

35. Excitebike Course

36. Duck Hunt

37. Green Hill Zone

38. Chemical Plant Zone

39. Ice Cap Zone

40. Shadow Moses Island

41. Cut Man’s Arena

42. Sukazu Castle

43. Planet Flora

44. Planet Namek

Wat is this i dont even...

Stages do not need to be balanced. We shouldn't have competitive potential in mind when designing stages. Stages can be interesting and still be tourney legal (Examples: Castle Siege, Pokemon Stadium, Delfino Plaza in Brawl).

Battlefield and Final Destination are popular stages because they are simple, and in Smash, simple is unique and should be unique.

If only the option of turning on and off gimmicks existed in crusade.....

Uhh esper, none of those stages you suggested are good competitive stages. They're CP's, and probably wouldn't even be that if Brawl had more competitive stages in it. Look at Melee's list, it's 4 BF clones and FD in the neutrals, and Pokemon stadium for CP.

This thread is great. Keep in mind that i don't even think we should be looking for a balance of stages, but rather for a 1/10 ratio of competitive/casual. If we have 100 stages, that means 10 competitive stages, which is plenty.

I'll go through this list in my next post, for now im thinking (competitive) should go next to any neutral stage, (competitive/casual) would go next to counterpick stages, and (casual) would go next to banned stages.

perfecthell4 wrote:

I'll go through this list in my next post, for now im thinking (competitive) should go next to any neutral stage, (competitive/casual) would go next to counterpick stages, and (casual) would go next to banned stages.

Any stage can be used in casual gameplay.

Obviously, but the point here is mainly to separate out which ones are PURELY casual. So in actuality, this thread is a legality balance thread, because any stage is casual, but only certain ones are competitive. Any banned stage is ok to be as gimmicky or complicated as we want. I propose going for 5-7 purely neutral competitive stages, and the rest can be designed any way at all. Another 5 or so of those non-competitive stages are bound to turn out as counterpicks in the stage legality list just by chance.

I also think it's too early to be determining competitive stages in this way. This is something to consider later on, because some of the stage designs to come are bound to be neutral, if we hold onto 7 neutrals now, we'll end up with at least 10 by the time all stages have been finished