In today’s 3rd (regular) issue of State of Calibur, the theme is simple: Stages. Such a subtle, often overlooked part of the game. What have Aelz, Boom, Shen Chan, Party Wolf, Skyll & Shen Yuan to say about them?
As per stabndard already in place, the 3rd (regular) State of Calibur issue got proper representation of all three main Calibur regions:
America:
Boom
Party Wolf
And here are today’s questions:
How much you consider stage pick to be decisive for the result of the match?
Aelz: Stage picks are very important for the outcome of a match. On the smaller side of the picture, they have a lot of influence on the pacing of a match as some players tend to be more agressive or defensive: smaller or bigger stage may give an innate advantage to specific styles of play. On the bigger side, SC6 characters scales differently with opportunities of wallsplats and ring-outs. Some chars have amazing ring-outs or wallsplat capabilities while other are less equipped on that department and rely more on the neutral game.
Boom: Stage picks can be pretty decisive. No one wants to play VS Yoshimitsu on Indian Port (or any stage for that matter, maybe except Hwang’s stage LOL), nor do people want to play VS Nightmare on the desert stage, or Cervantes on a walled stage, etc.
Shen Chan: Extremely important for SCVI in my opinion. It’s a core part of how you approach certain MUs in this game because wall combos and ring outs can turn the tide of the battle easily.
Party Wolf: I think stages are super important. Mainly because some stages have different spawn distances, and some characters have overpowered ringout capabilities. Even if neither of those things existed, there will always be characters that want to run away on big stages or characters that have higher damage outputs at the wall.
Skyll: Stage pick can be very impactful but it really depends on the characters. It forces you sometimes into such bad risk rewards situations that you need to reposition yourself instead of being able to pressure and make use of your plus frames.
Shen Yuan: It can influence 60-70% of the outcome. This is especially for characters that have strong ringouts and wallgame. In tournament, you are as good as dead if the stage is not in your favour. I remember how in the first NEC, Shen Chan fought Incendiate’s Ivy in the small desert stage. He lost the first game and did random stage select. Well who knows – same stage again. He was wiped.
Which character(s) you consider to be impacted most by specific stage(s) being selected, for good or for bad?
Aelz: Some characters are infamous for having incredible tools to perform lethal wallsplat combos or ring-outs, the most prominents in no order are in my opinion:
- Yoshimitsu: his wall game is insane and being cornered by a Yoshi gives him insane pressure on you, his RO opportunities are also solid and he thrives on smaller maps where he is less efficiently spaced out.
- Siegfried: his wall game is incredibly scary with tools like 6AA and 22A that are so incredibly damaging and efficient. agA/4A are tools that become very threatening near the edge too.
- Taki: very threatening near the edge, 3B/a6 LH become instant death tools.
- Astaroth: he had always powerful things for both wallsplats and ring-outs and SC6 hasn’t changed that.
- Maxi: lots of ways to score some wallsplats that always lead to some nasty damage, RO potential also pretty great, especially with the CE which is a premium RO tool.
- Seong-Mina: you know what I’m talking about, it’s fucking MINA.
- Azwel: 22B and Weapon Axe by themselves make Azwel a threat on many maps.
- Raphael: just watch some Ssylus clip on twitter to see what i’m talking about.
- Nightmare: I kinda want to include Nightmare but this mofo has so much RO carry potential that he doesn’t care too much if you’re near the edge or not, if you eat 66KK, you get RO even if the void is around 50 meters from you.
Other outliers that scale well on wall and RO but less so:
- Mitsurugi: this guy is quite beastly near walls, his oki becomes extremely threatening and eating 1BB wallsplat feels very rough.
- Zasalamel: smaller stages tends to be quite good for both his RRO and also for combos/oki when the opponent fall in front of a wall.
- Cervantes: 66A+G and some gruesome wallcombos and RO, though his overall powerlevel is less baked into this aspect of him, still quite relevant.
- Groh: scales very well with the presence of walls and has some powerful RO options.
Boom: Yoshimitsu probably doesn’t really have a bad stage tbh, so stages probably impact him the most. Characters like Azwel get benefits depending on if its longer (can get weapon safely at start), or if there are walls (axe low with back to the wall is threatening). It’s hard to say which single character is impacted the most from a walled stage to a ringout stage and vice versa, since a lot of characters change depending on the stage.
Shen Chan: I feel we should look at the perspective on how much more threatening each character gets whenever they are approaching a possibility of a wall combo or ring out rather than good or bad. You will see that it greatly benefits some a lot more than the rest. Some examples of characters that benefit more from these are Yoshimitsu, Siegfried etc.
Party Wolf: Yoshimitsu is the first character that comes to mind when it comes to stages. I genuinely think he is broken on certain stages like Indian port or the Geralt stage. There’s too many ringout angles and the ringout distances are large. There are some other characters too that are really questionable too. Nightmare/Raph/2B can carry you to the ring edge from a far distance.
Skyll: Yoshi is probably the best example of a very “stage dependent” character. He can be very strong on stages with close ROs or walls due to his 4aA+B that will let him realign his opponent to a RO or even a wall. He will suffer on very big stages though. Some other good example could be Mina, NM, Zas or even Taki.
Shen Yuan: Good for them – Yoshimitsu. Nightmare. Cervantes. Zasalamel. You will find most players will give you the same list. Bad – anybody vs them.
I know some Nightmare/Yoshi/Zasalamel players who base their whole gameplan on ringout. That’s how important it is.
What you think about stages being on random select on tournaments? Is it ok or should this be changed somehow?
Aelz: Random select is fair and it has always been the norm. The problem in SC6 imo is that there is quite a large number of shorter maps with big wallsplat or RO opportunities compared to wider maps. I would like more balanced maps like the snow map for example.
Boom: Random select is fine, except when it randoms the same stage. I don’t think stage picking should be allowed. I think in this game, counter picking stages can make the game more silly than it has to be.
Shen Chan: It’s ok. It’s only fair and in the spirit of tournaments.
Party Wolf: I’m a firm believer that if you pick random that if the random stage is a repeated stage, then you should be able to change the stage again. It’s unfair to not be able to have the freedom to escape certain match ups on certain stages. Otherwise, I have no issues with random.
Skyll: I’m fine with it personally but I wouldn’t mind some stage banning of some sort. But I also know that it would take some time in a tournament so I’m not sure if that would be a good idea or no.
Shen Yuan: This is hard to ever change. Allowing the loser to have deliberate stage select will be unfair. But if random select generates the same stage twice, there should be a reset.
BONUS QUESTION: What you personally prefer – walls or ringouts? Why?
Aelz: I always prefer a laaaarge map where I can press 44444 to my heart content, without worrying about dying instantly from a RO combo. 444444444444444👹
Boom: I prefer walls because I can swag out on folks, unless I’m playing Yoshimitsu. Then I prefer my 44bB CH half screen ringout starter 🙂
Shen Chan: It greatly depends on the MU. If it’s against Yoshi for example, i’ll be sad either way 😛
Party Wolf: I like stages that have both walls and ringouts active at the same time. Snow-Capped Showdown, Windswept Plains, and Murakumo Shrine are my favorites to play on gameplay-wise. Murakumo Shrine is my favorite overall since it is the prettiest while being fun.
Skyll: I prefer walls by far. They are way cooler, very fun to execute to the player and easier to balance for devs.
Shen Yuan: I’m flexible.