Proposed revisions for SFA in the netplay era

i don't know if these all merit separate topics, but i figure at the moment our player base is small enough that we can coherently discuss things here. basically since we're rebooting SFA for netplay, now is a great time to look at our currently established rules and see if anything should change.

i'll post a number of things to discuss in successive posts.

Stage picking

Sleeves suggested - and i think this is a good idea - that rather than our current model for stage selection (randomly pick the first stage, loser picks the second, and so on) we adopt the Melee style of striking stages. here's how it works:

Sleeves wrote:

I feel like in a game where characters are unique enough to have advantages and disadvantages on certain stages, we should opt for a stage striking method to determine the first stage.

In Super Smash Brothers Melee, our stage striking process goes a little like this: there are 5 neutral stages, 1 cp. At the beginning of a set, the players decide who gets to ban a neutral stage first, either by RPS or one player just giving it to another.

For simplicity's sake, player 1 gets to ban first. Player 1 can choose any of the 5 neutral stages to strike, meaning that stage is no longer available to pick to start on. Player 2 gets 2 strikes, then player 1 gets 1 more strike leaving 1 stage to play on.

This method is good because it is a lot more fair than randomizing to the first stage, plus I feel that the characters are unique enough to play differently on each stage and that aspect would just make the game that much deeper.

...
In a bo3, after one of the players wins game 1, the winner then strikes a stage (which could include the 1 cp stage), and then the loser picks a stage out of the remaining 5 stages. The winner can opt to stay or change characters, then the loser.

In a bo5, the only difference is that there are no bans. So after a player wins game 1, the loser just picks a stage, then the character selection comes after that.

note that in SFA we call the "neutral stages" green stages and the "cp stage" yellow.

at the moment in 1v1 we have 6 green, 5 yellow stages. in 2v2/FFA we have 8 green, 4 yellow stages. this number will probably change a fair bit pending my forthcoming posts. this means we'll need to mess with the stage striking numbers and order a little, to make sure every player has a fair chance to strike or pick.

also note that in SFA, as opposed to melee and other fighting games, characters are selected AFTER the stage is picked, not before. since the stage-striking model is intended to work under the assumption that characters have been picked first, we need to find some way to properly implement this. our current model for fair character picking is that both characters write down their picks on a sheet of paper, and hand it to a third party to verify their pick. if this is done, there are a couple ways to proceed:

1. reveal the character picks before the stages are struck or selected. this makes the whole process identical to Melee/other fighting games. players have to strike stages based on their opponent's character choice.
   
2. wait until the stage has been picked to reveal the character selection. this would mean each player has to try to guess what character their opponent is going to play, which could make for some interesting metagame decisions even before the game starts. on the other hand, this might totally flop, and we might see people always picking the safest options for characters or getting screwed over because they made a wrong guess about their opponent's character.
   
3. something else i haven't thought of. add your suggestions.
   

for 2v2, this model works the same, with each team acting to strike stages. for FFAs, we should instead have each player striking some number of stages in some order, until all players have struck.

if anyone has any objections to this, state them here, but otherwise i think we should move to this model, as it's definitely more interesting than randomly picking stages and then selecting characters based on that stage.

Stage statuses

rather than make a whole thread for this as we've done in the past, maybe it'd be wise just to review some of the stages and see how everybody stands on them.

here are the current rules for easy reference:

HAXage wrote:

Stages:
RED = banned stage
YELLOW = legal, only for counterpicks in sets
GREEN = legal

1v1 colours:
Outer Sargasso, Space Station, Titania*** ,Great Fox, Simp4, Simp5
Aparoid City+, Corn+, Full Fichina, CB Fichina, Sauria+**
Katina, Inner Sargasso, Simp1, Simp2*, Simp3***, Zoness

+In 2v2/FFA, Aparoid City, Corneria and Sauria are green
*Simp 2 is usually played "no stealth pack allowed", otherwise it is yellow
**On Sauria, the cave beneath the smallest temple can't be entered
***In 2v2/FFA, Titania and Simp3 are yellow

CB Fichina

this stage was intended to be a fair arena where player skill was all that mattered, but a) nobody likes it and b) it's not really fair at all, having some notable problems with there being a giant insurpassable pillar in the middle of the map and weapons such as the pod and HL in the center occasionally, which can give a player some serious advantage. to that end i vote we erase this stage and be done with it.

i don't think there will be much opposition to this, but if anyone really wants CBF to stay, now is the time to say so and/or argue about it.

Simple Map 2 revisited

currently, there are two versions of simp2 available in 1v1: one where the invis is banned and one where all items are fair game. if the invis is banned, the stage is green; if not, it's a yellow stage.

the reason we ban the invis 1v1 is because it makes it very easy to run items as a fast character. on simp1, it's slightly more fair because there is no invis and committing to running items makes you lose control of the center with all its weapons. on simp2, however, it's definitely easier to go on a tear once you've collected the invis.

if the invis is banned, the stage is much fairer, but after the invis has spawned, no more items will be available on the map for the rest of the game.

there's also the fact that if we keep the current model of a yellow simp2 and a green simp2, we have to figure out how that works with stage striking: if yellow simp2 is struck by the winner of the first game in the set, can their opponent pick the green simp2? maybe for the second game of a set simp2 should always be yellow?

anyway, if i recall correctly we had been having some issues with this model before the hiatus of about 2 years. i'd like to know what people think now. it may be that it's not nearly as scary now to shut down an invisible item runner as a slow character on simp2.

Ap, 2v2/FFA

currently (although i don't remember us voting on this!) Ap is green for 2v2/FFAs. i'm not sure this should be the case, since you probably won't ever pick Peppy on Ap except as a joke no matter how many players there are; it's just not a good layout for someone trying to spam RCBs and play positionally.

anything else people are upset about with the current stage statuses

personally, that's all i can think of, but if anyone has any ideas, let them fly here

In the event of a drawn game...

our current views on drawn games:

Quote :

*If a game draws, play one additional game of overtime (OT); if this also draws, play a 1-life Survival sudden death game (SD).
*For practical reasons, FFA and 2v2 tourneys usually go "Captain Clutch style" instead, straight to SD between all tied players.

Drawing games in a set

these rules don't cover what happens when a game within a set is drawn.

in the past we've dealt with drawn games in sets by simply continuing with the set. if the entire set draws (no player has won more games than the other/s), a full game of overtime is played; if that draws, it goes to sudden death.

if we wanted, we could make sure a winner is decided for every game by going to OT/SD immediately after a drawn game within a set. if this is the case, we should probably make it sudden death rather than a full game, as many games in a set may draw and we don't want to extend a set by more than double its proper length. this makes draws a little less desirable for players, since overtimes are much less predictable, but would take much longer. what do people think about this?

Stage and character selection for overtimes

we have GENERALLY played the same map (as the previous one on which the game was drawn) for overtimes and SDs, but not universally. should we keep this strategy, or select a new stage based on some criteria?

if the latter, should we follow the first-game-of-a-set rules for striking, or something else entirely.

same question for character selection - we've generally allowed people to repick their character, since being forced to play Krystal in a sudden death match really sucks. should people be allowed to repick for sudden death? how about full games of OT?

let me know what you all think.

Can we talk about legal/green/yellow stages?  I remember you talking about abolishing CB Fichina (it's pretty dumb if someone gets an HL right away) and I have issues with simp 3 being green (or legal).  

This might seem weird too, but I think we should try to bring back stock matches.  I truly believe timeouts are the easiest and most efficient way to win, and makes Falco overcentralizing.   What can any character do when Falco gets a point up with ~1:30 left on most stages?  When I was playing ChubbyBlue last week it was really relevant and i'm pretty sure he agrees.  Here are easy and common scenerios in Falco vs not Falco that happen in timed matches.

Katina: Falco can just sit on the other side of the tower and wait them out with a lead.  If they don't get missiles it's game over.

Sarg: This one is pretty okay, the tunnels on either end of the top floor can create a stalemate if there's ~30 seconds left but it's pretty rare.

Simp1: Stage is too small to just run away on, but Falco can run items pretty well.  Still fine though

Simp2: Stage is fine for the most part.  Simp2 and Sarg are pretty balanced stages.  

Simp3: Awful map, Falco dies maybe once and then runs items while invisible for the rest of the game.  Sensors are your only hope.

Zoness: kind of unplayable with netplay, but it's an okay map I think

Aparoid: This map can't be camped out but picking Slippy or Peppy is already suicide.  

Corneria: I think Corneria is okay, most of the good weapons are around the middle so most of the action is there anyway.  Falco can run to the opposite side of the stage and win with ~45 seconds left.

Full Fichina: Falco can just stay on the opposite side of the base as the other person and never get caught.  

CB Fichina: plz ban

Sauria: Slippy and Peppy actually have okay mobility on this stage because if their jump, but it's big enough for Falco to get away for a little while.  Not tooooo bad

I think the main issue is Falco is a good character from spawn, and most of the advantage he gains immediately is he can just run away and get better weapons and take the first point easier than most (barring an op spawn for the opponent) then it's way too easy for him to gain an advantage.  In point games he still retains his advantage in weapon collecting, but has to actually play the game to actually win.  There's no worse feeling when down one point (or even tied vs a low health Falco) when you know there's nothing you can do to change the outcome.  Stock matches might take longer but imo would be more fun to play and be more exciting to watch.

Simp3 is just dumb because there are way too many items in such a small place, the sensor mindgame are kind of cool but that's the map's only redeeming factor.  It's very similar to Simp5 without the yellow blocks on top.


Somewhat related, I wonder if there's a way we can hack the game and adjust weapon values, doing stuff like nerfing the HL (only get 3-5 on picking them up, or reducing damage) would be really cool.

re. the stages, yeah, we can do a whole new revisions topic if there's demand for it, i just wanted to cover some things in this thread that stuck out as being unresolved. i just looked at the last stage thread and the last time we discussed simp3 was 3 years ago, so maybe we are due for a revote after all...

Cac and i were actually discussing time matches a little while back as there was some contention about them before the whole hiatus (i think the topic is actually still in this forum somewhere). i'll try to page him and get him to comment on this whole issue as well, because he had some good ideas

basically i agree with your views on fich, ap, and to a lesser extent corneria, but those are yellow stages after all and i think it's ok that way, since anyone planning to play a slow character is undoubtedly going to strike some of those stages - this is why we need to allow more stages to be struck, since if you want to play Peppy and are only allowed to strike Ap after the first game, your opponent is just going to pick Falco and juke you for days

for the rest of the stages, i had a bunch of counterpoints lined up, but honestly i think the best thing to do is just play a ton of matches and see how things go. to sum up my views, i don't think it's a fast character/slow character/time match issue, i think it's a planning and a decisionmaking issue, and i think lots of people haven't yet adjusted to how far ahead you need to plan when you play a slow character. basically, i believe the way to win with slow characters is to be aggressive and to get ahead in points so that you don't ever fall into the situations you describe, and as of yet no one has really been able to play that way outside of FFAs.

i also think that as it is, no amount of argument on this subject will help, which is why i figure we should just play and record a bunch of matches so we have some raw data to work with. as it is, nobody has really WANTED very much to play slow characters in the last ten tourneys or so, so we don't actually have very much evidence.

hax and I played a few games today, and talked about a bunch of stuff wrt to this topic, and the things I remember are:

3-4 GREEN stages.  

- Simp 1
- Simp 2
- Inner Sargasso Hideout
- Katina (maybe yellow, works out better that way with stage strikes)

2-3 YELLOW stages

- Corneria
- Sauria
- Katina (if not green)

As for rulesets of the actual playing of sets....

- Ideally, character selection for game one should be blind (pick a character without regard of stage or opponent's character selection), but can be hard to do without a third party. Just don't be a jerk, I guess.
- Green stages are struck by each player until there's one left, and you play that stage in game 1. In the case that Katina is green, there would be an uneven number of stage strikes, and in that case, one stage would be randomly taken out before stage striking. I think Katina will be yellow anyway.
- At the conclusion of game 1, the winning player strikes 1 or 2 stages (undecided how many should be struck) and the losing player selects a stage (green or yellow) that was not struck by the winning player. The winning character reveals their character first in the character selection process. (Should characters be chosen before stages?)
- If the set is tied up after two games, the same process occurs. Players may not select a stage they have won on earlier in the set.
- A DRAW game is decided with a 1 stock match, whoever survives is the winner! (Should the stage stay the same? Should the characters stay the same? Should it be on a set neutral stage (simp 1?))


Fichina is an awful map (both full and CB) in 1v1's, and I don't think we decided on a definitive fate for simp 3, but I think? RED was the consensus, could be wrong.  Zoness would probably be fine, but it doesn't run well on netplay.  I'd guess it'd be a GREEN stage offline though.   Old red stages like Titania and Simp5 are still awful, don't worry.  We didn't really talk about Aparoid City, but nobody likes Aparoid City.    

We played 6 matches on various stages, (Simp2, Katinax2, Corneria, Sauria, Full Fichina), with one of us playing Slippy/Peppy, and the other, Falco, with Falco winning every time (hax lost Fichina as Falco because he didn't want to lame it out after he got the first point, but he would have won if he did), and all the games bar Corneria weren't very close (from what I remember, Simp2 was 4-2 Falco, Katina was 3-1 and 4-2 Falco, Corneria was 2-1 Falco, Sauria was 1-0 Falco (not close, he had full health + barrier), and Fichina was essentially either 1-0 or 2-1 Falco depending how long it took Slippy to find the missiles).  While it might just be Falco having a significant advantage on the slow characters (which is definately true) it does show that he's a clear cut above them, I don't think swapping to Krystal or Fox would change a whole lot either (Falco is still significantly faster than them), but we'll play more games sometime next week to figure things out a bit more.

I don't really want to ban (or restrict him to maybe 1 match per set?) Falco, but I think a meta with Fox/Krystal/Slippy/Peppy would have a lot more variety in character selection (I think you'd only see Fox/Krystal/Falco otherwise, majority of the games being Falco/Falco).   At the same time, maybe its fine just having lots of Falco matches, most fighting games have bottom tiers that are never used anyway, and if someone picks Slippy/Peppy and wins, it'd be pretty hype.  I think HAXage said he was gonna upload our games (dunno if it'll have our audio, the whole time we pretty much talked through our decision making and some mistakes we made which could be helpful) but the games should be intact regardless.

Alright, I got a lot to reply to so let's do it.

First off, your welcome for the stage striking idea

But in all seriousness, I think that characters should be picked blind before the stage striking process. Once the characters are declared, we should then proceed to pick the stages.

Speaking of stages, I believe we should have 3-4 Green Stages (Neutral):
- Simp 1
- Simp 2 (no invisibility)
- Sargasso
- Zoness

And 3-4 Yellow Stages (Counter Pick):
- Corneria
- Katina
- Sauria (cave banned)
- Zoness

I haven't played Zoness enough to decide whether it should be Green or Yellow.

If Zoness is green, we could either add another neutral stage to make the numbers odd and the striking process will be neat, or we could do something like each player ban a stage, then RPS for a second ban or coin flip to decide which of the remaining 2 stages you go to.
If Zoness is yellow, then we can keep the green stages and each player gets one ban.

When a player wins a game, 2 stages are banned (3 if Zoness is green and we add another neutral), leaving 5 stages to pick from. I think the stages should be picked as if the players are staying the same character, then if the players wish to change characters they can do it after the stage is selected (Winner of last game picks character first, then loser).

As for draws, they should be settled with a one stock match on the same stage they occurred on with the same characters you played the drawing match with.

And I kind of like the idea of returning to stock matches. Maybe not 5 stocks, but 3-4 instead with a 5-7 min timer.

to summarize my views on the posts made so far:

- i do think we should cut down the available stages. having variety is nice, but it's not worth it if we have a million stages that are biased in favour of fast characters.
- it seems to be that as a fast character, camping and kiting and otherwise playing like Hungrybox on big stages is the #1 problem with stages for people right now, so with that in mind, i'd say Sauria and Corneria are just on the very edge of being ok to have in the game - if you're playing a slow character, you pretty much have to strike those stages if you've won the first game. by playing incredibly defensively, i won against STG 1-0 on Sauria, which is absurd... shutout games almost never happen in SFA, so that's a pretty crazy result and worth mentioning.
- i would much rather not ban Falco or restrict his use whatever happens - i agree that he's probably the safest pick almost anywhere, but he's not so overpowered that there's no reason to not pick him, and i'd much rather have a game where Falco is played in 2/3rds of games than one with four characters or complicated rules for who you can and can't play.
- i think rather than time games, our problems right now are:

1. stages not having the right statuses so that slow character players know what to ban
   
2. players not knowing how to properly play positional Peppy (or Slippy, but i just like the alliteration)
   

Sleeves wrote:

I think that characters should be picked blind before the stage striking process. Once the characters are declared, we should then proceed to pick the stages.

yeah, this is probably the best way to do it, that way it's exactly like other tried-and-true systems like Melee's.

Quote :

I haven't played Zoness enough to decide whether it should be Green or Yellow.

my vote is green for sure - as a top-down stage Zoness gives a lot of mobility to slower characters and actually often punishes fast characters who are too cocky, which is awesome. there's a centralized location (the main building) which affords good safety and general control/access to other parts of the map, and outer locations that are riskier to get to (missiles, HL, rand) but afford the lucky player some advantage.

one thing i should mention is that the roof above the missiles - the small overhang - has to be banned for this stage to be green, or Peppy can camp out the majority of a game, since pretty much the only way to attack someone up there is to be up there yourself (which can't be done if you have any other character) or get missiles (which is very unlikely considering the platform is directly above the missiles!). i suppose you could do it with some really crafty grenades but it's not a good spot to allow. all the other spots are more or less ok because they can be camped, but you can't control the missiles from anywhere else.

Quote :

If Zoness is green, we could either add another neutral stage to make the numbers odd and the striking process will be neat

i am still kind of holding out for a green Katina, will report back pending my analysis of a bunch of games here. that would make things nicely symmetrical

Quote :

And I kind of like the idea of returning to stock matches. Maybe not 5 stocks, but 3-4 instead with a 5-7 min timer.

i've wondered about the "stock-with-timer" approach in the past, since it'd theoretically be the best of both worlds: there's always incentive to push, but the pressure of the clock still exists. the thing is i don't think stock matches in any context would fix the problems we're having with fast characters: if it's a good decision to run away and kite a slower character for a really long time in time games, it's still a good decision in point games; it just draws out the game a little more. i think what we'd see is exactly the same behaviour, with the fast character circling and running away from the slower one until they're stacked enough to mount an attack where they'll be on better terms.

the other problem is that there's no way to natively implement stocks with time limits in SFA, and any implementation we could come up with would suck - i don't like the idea of having to manually quit during a time game if someone reaches 3 or 4 points. maybe that's not a big deal, but i thought i'd mention it; i'd like to avoid manipulating the basic functionality of the game as much as possible, so that the rules are easier to implement and easier to explain to new players.

played some games with Akp just now. results:

game 1: Katina, PvF. final score 4-2. i'll have to look into this game a bit more. on the one hand, this score can mostly be explained by Akp making a few mistakes (he got fashed twice) but even taking out those points i think it would have been a fair game. as Peppy i controlled the missiles, got an invis pickup and tried to stay ahead in points the whole game, and it worked out ok.

game 2: Corneria, XvP, final score 2-4 (!). Akp did to me here what i tried to do to him on Katina: he stayed ahead in points the whole game, controlled the HL pickups by putting lots of damage on me with RCB, and shut down all my missile pickups by being really aggressive with an MGun. i still think this stage should probably be yellow as it has the potential to be abused by Falco or other faster characters (running around the border of the map with 1min to go) but it's definitely not total jank.

game 3: Sauria, XvP, final score 2-1. this game was questionable. i spent most of it running away. between this game and my shutout of STG the other day i am pretty suspicious of Sauria now. i didn't even need to engage Akp until about a minute in, when i picked up missiles, ran to the high temple, got a health pickup, and got the point. i'll analyze the game to see if things could have gone differently but this stage definitely isn't as nice for slow characters as Corneria.

game 4: Sarg, SvF, final score 3-5. last point was a snipe with 2 seconds left. game was fine, i made a few mistakes (including completely biffing a missile pickup) that led to me dropping behind in points. i was fine when i controlled the top level and didn't take too much damage for no reason; when i let Akp hit me with like 4 HLs i had a bad time. (side note: we can't reasonably nerf the HL's damage to improve its balance, because we can't get it to still kill Falco in 3 hits but take 5 hits to kill Slippy. maybe amending it to 5 per pickup would work?)

game 5: Simp1, SvF, final score 2-6. last point was a very manner snipe and subsequent RQ lol. Akp was able to go on some huge item runs here that i'm not sure i could have stopped. after i was down 3-1 i don't think i had any chance.

that last game has made me wonder whether Simp1 doesn't suffer from exactly the same problem as Simp2 in that it's really, really easy to run items. on stages like Sarg and Katina there are all these different levels that hinder your mobility and block your view of what items are up, so it's not nearly as easy to run them, but if you're out behind red on Simp1 you already know which item is up: you can see out behind green and blue, and if the health packs aren't up there and there's no barrier up then you've got to go to yellow. it's not impossible to shut down an item run on Simp1, and there are examples of slow characters putting up good fights against runners on this map, but if we're willing to make Simp2 impossible to run items on, we should probably do the same for the other playable simple map.

we then played two really silly games which i won't mention in depth. one was on zoness though. i definitely think zoness is ok; you need an insane amount of control to tear around that map as a fast character and it doesn't even get you huge advantages, as the map has such a high degree of connectivity that it's not at all hard for a slower character to cut your grand plans off somehow. it helps that fast characters can't abuse missiles here and that HLs are not nearly as reliable when the map is so compact.

the other game was on simp2. i do think not being able to run items as a fast character here makes things pretty much fair. as Plippy you have to play close to the grey/blue connector area, use the tunnel and the cracks between buildings to defend against missiles, and punish your opponent for going out to open ground. not much else to say here.