Before game 1 both players choose their character, doing double blind if necessary. Then they choose a stage by striking.
After game 1 we do loser picks stage, winner picks character, loser picks character.
You seem to be answering a question that's not being asked at all. OP didn't ask "why are there character counterpicks in addition to stage counterpicks", the question is "why are character selections **after** stage selection?"
If the opposite were true, then you'd already know whether your opponent is selecting marth **before** you pick FD. So the problem you're outlining still wouldn't happen.
The real answer is just what halfspeeds said, which is that there are a lot of much harder stage counterpicks than character counterpicks.
Like, the way the system currently is, if you pick FD, and your opponent picks Marth, and you think your Fox isn't way better than your opponent's Marth, it's on you to have a backup option that's good against Marth on FD (or else know your opponent has a pocket Marth and don't pick FD in the first place).
> if you pick FD, and your opponent picks Marth, and you think your Fox isn't way better than your opponent's Marth, it's on you to have a backup option that's good against Marth on FD
Why should it be on you to have a backup against Marth on FD if you just played a Fox ditto? If it were character-first, you wouldn't have to worry about playing Marth on FD in the first place.
> (or else know your opponent has a pocket Marth and don't pick FD in the first place).
This can't be guaranteed, which is part of the problem. The person counterpicking the stage assumes more pressure in that they're succumbing to a) not knowing for certain who their opponent will play (especially if they're strangers), and b) potentially needing a counterpick character they haven't practiced if their opponent picks a character that couldn't possibly have been within their purview (and if the subsequent matchup is bad enough).
For me, it honestly just boils down to: How can you feasibly counterpick a stage without being certain of what you're playing against? Doesn't that diminish the purpose of a stage counterpick?
Correct me if I’m wrong but it sounds like you are coming from an Ultimate mind set, which I’m not knocking btw, but in melee counter-picking characters does not happen that much, some people and even some top players do, but most people stick with their character in tournament sets.
Stages in melee are a lot more meaningful to counter-picks than swapping characters for example: taking captain falcon to FoD, taking a yoshi or sheik to fd, or going to fd as marth in general. Taking sheik or puff to yoshis, or taking anybody to dreamland when you play as a floatie character. All of the top tiers in melee can compete with each other almost evenly to where swapping characters mid set is not a must against certain characters
So you are gonna want to be able to pick the stage first to counter pick them. If you counter-pick someone to fd and then they switch to marth, that just is what it is, your opponent is attempting to counter your conter, but for the most part people don’t counter-pick characters. Most people’s secondaries suck compared to their main.
The thing with Ultimate is: I'm fully convinced it would be all character-first if the menus were just switched. Since the range of legal stages is more neutral on average than in Melee, character counterpicks are even stronger, pronouncing the uncertainty problems of stage-first even more. Kinda grinds my gears, haha
But okay, I'm starting to see that stage-first is fine to reward having more than one character because doing so is particularly hard in Melee. But character-first can also still reward this, right? It's just that players would have more info on the best stage to go to with the (potentially different) characters in mind.
And I guess I'm still struggling with the volatility inherent with the Melee stage list, and I feel like character-first throughout would encourage more neutrality in relation to the stages. I feel like it's unfair for a player's skills to be so beholden to stage geometry.
> The thing with Ultimate is: I'm fully convinced it would be all character-first if the menus were just switched.
Probably not. Smash 64, Melee, Brawl, and Smash 4 all have the character select screen first in the menu, but in tournaments you counter pick stage first, then character.
For context, the only Smash game that picks character first, then stage, is Project M.
You are talking about wanting more neutrality in stages for both characters and how it seems kinda unfair, but it is a COUNTER PICK, you literally are picking a stage to counter your opponent. Say you just lost, okay, now you have the opportunity to COUNTER your opponent with a stage pick. (Like I said majority of melee players are not going to swap characters mid set). So if a captain falcon beat me game one, if we are playing best 2 out of 3, the falcon gets to strike one stage before you pick so he still has some agency in the process. Say he bans FoD, a historically bad stage for falcon, okay, take him to fd or any stage you feel comfortable in. Want more space and to not die as early? Go dreamland. Want to keep the falcon close so he doesn’t have all this room to run around with his fast movement? Go yoshis to smother him. If it’s a best of 5 then there are no stage strikes after game 1 since it’s a longer set and encourages more stage variety.
It’s a COUNTER pick so inherently one player is trying to pull an advantage from the other.
Exactly. Stage-first after game 1 diminishes the value of the stage counterpick due to the inherent uncertainty that your opponent picks a better character on that stage after the fact, which is confusing to me. This is compounded by the fact that FD is a very polarizing stage, further centralizing the character-unknown stage counterpick as a deciding factor for a set.
playing multiple characters well is pretty uncommon, so it really doesnt come up much.
if your marth really is better than your fox on fd, you should get some kind of advantage for that.
Was M2K's Marth on FD really "sick?" Haha
I just don't see how character-first throughout wouldn't also reward character breadth. They could still pick a different character after game 1, it's just that the loser of the last game would then have more information to choose the stage for that matchup. Would that not be more equitable for the loser?
Why do we want it to be more equitable for the loser? The loser already gets an advantage by picking the stage *and* picking their character second. I see no reason to buff the loser of the last game even further.
If my opponent wants to switch characters on me after they win, that's fine. But I, as the loser, should be able to choose the stage for the next game now that I have all possible pieces of information available to me. I shouldn't have to rely on tricking my opponent to give myself an advantage. That's my opinion, anyway
Character-first makes the set more neutral, on average. I'm failing to see how that's bad. Character counterpicks are still just as possible in character-first, aren't they?
Why should I be asked to pick a stage if I don't know what I'm fighting against?
Because more often than not, you tend to pick stages *your* character is good on rather than ones your opponent's character is bad on. If you play Marth, you counterpick FD. If you play a floatie, you counterpick Dreamland. Combined with the fact that most players don't have counterpick-worthy secondaries, you're just not deciding stages based on their option to swap characters that often. You know who you're gonna play, and you get to go where they're strong. That's the consolation prize for losing a game.
The prize for winning is having the option to throw a wrench in the loser's plan, if you happen to have a secondary good enough to rely on in tournament.
when you pick the stage, you influence which character your opponent picks. it is possible to get blind sided, but if you know they have a real secondary, your stage choice usually tells you which character they will play.
It's for historical reasons. If you think about early rulesets, it's necessary to have characters after stages because there were some extremely bad character/stage combinations. For instance Ganon would be at a huge disadvantage if the opponent could Rainbow Cruise reactively. Stages needed to be first so you don't get owned based solely on your character selection.
A lot of fighting games have the winner's character locked after a match, because that's what happens in the arcade mode of old 2D fighters (probably originally for thematic reasons). If the winner's character was locked in Melee with nearly all the stages on, you could get huge double counterpicks (stage & character CP), so early players decided that there needed to be some method of making sure matches weren't fucked up matchups every game. If you have both players involved in picking characters and picking stages, stages needed to come first because some stages just debilitate some characters.
This isn't the case anymore with the restricted stagelist we have today. IMO it should probably change to prevent the possibility of double counterpicks (e.g. pick FD, pick Marth). But even if most players thought swapping the order was better, it's really hard to convince the community to make such a small adjustment.
Ahh, this makes sense. So the volatility of Melee's stages necessitated stage-first, but in an environment with more neutral stages, stage-first is less necessary.
This helps answer the "menus" part of the question.
I just want to respond to say that you are getting unfairly dogged on in these comments, lol. There are a lot of people making half-baked rationalizations that have nothing to do with the ruleset being the way it is. At no point did anyone sit down and say "it's more exciting if you can surprise people with your secondaries!" or "you should get the biggest possible counterpicking advantage if you play multiple characters!"; at the time these CPing rules were really being developed, stages were crazier and there was more of an expectation to have pocket characters for certain MUs.
Stages-first leads to more metagaming, which I think is pretty safe to say (maybe not on reddit) is really undesirable for fighting game competitors. Practically speaking, competitors get surprised once, then they remember that x player has a pocket Marth or whatever, and next time you fight them you ban whatever you would have banned if the stage/character order was swapped in the first place. Or, you get surprised at a national, and lose because you didn't know something about your opponent that you could have googled. Or (most frequently), the character swapper actually isn't very good at the matchup they're about to play, lol.
People might cheer for things like M2K's Marth on FD but that's mostly because it's *iconic*, not because double counterpicking is a crowd pleaser by nature. He would get to take people to FD in bo5s anyways if the stage/character order was swapped.
Melee doesn't have to worry that much about this counterpicking order thing because character expertise overcomes stage advantages pretty well for all the frequently-played matchups. I think <5% of competitors bother with multiple characters in tournament, even less for good players. Swapping counterpick order affects the game so little that it's probably never going to be seriously discussed. I think you can look to PM and see that if double counterpicking had a stronger effect on the game, then we would swap the order, imaginary principles be damned.^^[[1]](https://smashboards.com/threads/396408/#post-18835834)
I think it's also worth noting how much harder it is to play multiple characters at tournament level in melee vs ultimate. In ult if you understand a characters tools and strengths you can play them pretty decently with a couple hours of practice, in melee it takes way longer and the difference in experience between you and your opponent matters way more so people usually only play one character, maybe have a secondary for certain matchups and very few people play more characters than 2 seriously in close bracket matches. Marth beats fox on FD but my fox I practiced for 2000 hours vs your Marth you practiced chain grabs with for a couple weeks is gonna be a wash no matter what
So you're saying that not being certain of your opponent's character when selecting a stage is not as much of a problem because of it being harder to learn individual characters in Melee? I don't think you can assume it wouldn't be a problem for the stage counterpicker just because their opponent's secondary is probably crusty. It's still an unnecessary risk for the stage counterpicker, imo
their secondary is usually more than just rusty. its usually pretty bad. general game knowlege and execution doesnt transfer across character nearly as well in melee.
of the 9 top level players, only 3 of them play 2 characters. 2 of them use their secondary for only one matchup. Mango is the only true dual main that can win majors right now.
only 13 of the current top 50 have a secondary, and almost all of them use that secondary for one particular matchup
I think OP asks this question in general not for top lvl only. Why would you have to select the stage 1st at your local for exemple ? When the player's skills are not top lvl maybe the difference between their main and their secondaries is not as big and in this case it would be better for the looser of round 1 to see his opponent's character pick before he chose the stage.
every time your stage counterpick makes your opponent switch characters, u can already consider it a win, because they probably are at least slightly worse with that character and won’t have it warmed up
stage counterpicks are more game swinging than character counterpicks at the top level, if you reverse it sets would be even more determined by the game 1 winner.
So essentially, the polarization of the stage list is leveraged to lengthen sets? And if stage-first is necessary for games after the first, why is game 1 character-first?
I'm just failing to see the benefit of stage-first at any point in a set. It deliberately restricts information for the person counterpicking the stage, thus slightly weakening the stage counterpick advantage.
> And if stage-first is necessary for games after the first, why is game 1 character-first?
Because character selection has to be able to be completely blind since it's the asymmetric aspect of the match (whereas stage selection is symmetric, you both end up playing on the same stage, ya know?) while stage selection has to be managed by strikes. Striking to a certain stage in advance leads to an inherently non-blind character selection choice because you get the additional info of your opponent's bans. This can be very relevant when two people with multiple mains play each other.
In a Bo5 there's not even striking for counterpicks, you just pick a stage and then your opponent needs the opportunity to play a character that isn't massively gimped on that stage. But for initial selection, avoiding the stage that massively gimps your character is handled **by** the striking.
I agree that game 1 should be character-first. However, all of what you said seems to support the idea that character-first would be better for all games. After game 1, every character selection is non-blind with stage-first. Shouldn't that be avoided at all points in a set?
there's no counter picking in game 1 in stages or characters.
"Leveraged to lengthen sets" makes it sound like a bad thing, it's reducing the variance from single game (game 1) results, it's more equitable. The larger the counterpick advantage, the more the set is determined by the winner of game 1 even if the opponents have an equal chance to win a game. It's not my opinion, it's how the math works. If two players are perfectly 50% against each other, then the winner of game 1 wins the set 68.75% vs 31.25%. A 55% counterpick advantage = 68.9% vs 31.1%. 60%: 69.3 vs 30.7. 70%: 71.2 vs 28.8. 80%: 75.7 vs 24.3.
A big thing to consider is that the winner of the first game could essentially get double counterpicked if it was the character first after G1.
Char first: Winner Char -> Loser Char -> Loser Stage Pick
Stage first: Loser Stage Pick -> Winner Char -> Loser Char
Games like Tekken mitigate this (at least in my understanding, never actually competed in Tekken) by locking in the winner's character and only allowing counterpicks of stage ***OR*** character, but not both in the same game. Since both char ***and*** stages are counterpicked by the loser in melee, Stage first still gives the advantage to the loser because they get the final chance to counterpick something before the next game, while the winner isn't completely blindsided by a potential new character to play against ***and*** new stage to play on.
It mostly comes down to how much advantage you think the loser should have in counterpicking, and with how early melee was with some of the wacky stages, it was probably preferred to not put the winner at the mercy of some potentially brutal counterpick selections. With today's ruleset, it probably wouldn't be *as* consequential, but I think most competitors would prefer to stay with the fairer stage first selection process, rather than giving the loser absolute control with char first after g1
Basically it gives the loser a chance to counter pick to a stage they like without the winner knowing what character they'll pick.
For example I lost to your fox game 1 with puff on Battelfield. I then counter pick to FD and the fox player is thinking "this guy is so stupid does he not know puff loses here" so he continues to pick fox.
I then pick my pocket Marth and proceed to chain grab him for 8 minutes to win game 2 to even up the set.
The reason it's done like this is because stages matter far more in melee than in ultimate.
TLDR; if character first then it'll always go to the most neutrel stage like how game 1 is always battlefield.
>Basically it gives the loser a chance to counter pick to a stage they like without the winner knowing what character they'll pick.
The loser could still go to a stage they like in character-first, no?
>For example I lost to your fox game 1 with puff on Battelfield. I then counter pick to FD and the fox player is thinking "this guy is so stupid does he not know puff loses here" so he continues to pick fox.
>I then pick my pocket Marth and proceed to chain grab him for 8 minutes to win game 2 to even up the set.
The problem I see with this is: What incentive do I (game 1 winner) have to NOT pick Fox? The winner would essentially get punished for simply making a decision without sufficient information. There's no reason to anticipate the Marth in the first place.
I guess I'm starting to see a benefit of stage-first after game 1 being that it rewards character breadth, and it's good to reward that in a game like Melee where it's relatively hard to fully learn any one character. But, I'm not sure that absolves the other issues I see.
>The reason it's done like this is because stages matter far more in melee than in ultimate.
>TLDR; if character first then it'll always go to the most neutrel stage like how game 1 is always battlefield.
Wouldn't we want as much neutrality as possible to determine the winner of the set most rightfully? Discouraging neutrality in any form seems anti-competitive to me.
If what you seek is neutrality then the looser of round 1 should not even be able to counter pick stages as it gives him a small advantage, players should always choose their characters at the same time like round 1 and pick a random stage...
According to you if selecting a character 1st gives more infos to the looser, thus helping him to pick his stage accordingly, it becomes even less neutral...
What you are seeking is not neutrality, it's helping the looser more in order for the set to last longer. Basically you are asking "since we agree that the looser of each round should have an advantage, why don't we give him an even greater advantage ? And I guess the answer is because that's not fair.
At least with the current rules, If you want to screw your opponent you have to know their secondaries and try to anticipate their reaction as to what would be their character choice if I choose this stage ? It's a mindgame and it's cool, it adds a dimension to the game. It's a risk reward.
Imagine I main Marth, I loose game 1 against a fox, and I pick FD. My opponent switches to Sheik or Falcon, then if I think it's a bad matchup for me on this particular stage and I don't have a secondary myself I'm fucked. It would not be a problem at all if I had a secondary character like my opponent, let's say fox for exemple. So in the end it rewards the player who can play multiple characters which is good for the game and if both czn play secondaries then it still reward the looser of round 1 more because he get to choose his character last.
You're assuming that both players are of completely equal skill. The current way of doing things gives the loser a chance to bounce back.
It's basically a come back mechanic. It's not anticompetitive because the compensation for letting the loser counter pick is the fact that the winner is up.
Honestly, you could change the order of character and set selection for counter picks, it really doesn't matter. The only reason we stick to it is tradition. Don't try and fix what works.
Changing it won't imporve much since melee is such a skill based game that the better player will inevitably win.
Am I buggin? I’ve never been to a melee tournament where we struck stages first.
But every ultimate tournament I went to had is strike stages first since that was the first screen that came up, and maybe 1% of the time was I asked “who do you play?”
If you're good with a character why would you only counterpick your opponent on one stage and not the whole set? If you dual main marth and fox, you'd just play marth every game instead of saving marth for FD. It's very rare that someone actually counterpicks a character just for a single stage. The only recent example I can think of is Zain going ICs versus leffen on FD and pokemon stadium (and he lost so it didn't even work).
Because a character could potentially lose 100% of a time on a stage. So you may have a nice icies youd play on fd. But since its always char first you cant ever pick icies. Likewise if you were the one picking stage and playing plup, You could wait till your opponent picks sheiks then counterpick fd and icies. Thats way too much of an advantage. We dont want sets decided game 1.
Counterintuitively, most ultimate rulesets actually do have character first and stage selection second, so the menu order of the 2 games are both the opposite of their rulesets.
I think the current way it is setup lends itself to some pretty cool stage+character prep folks can cook up.
Aklo's link+FD vs marth comes to mind for top level play. Its not a hard counter, but rather a matchup that most marths don't really want to engage with.
With stage first, it dissuades Marth mains from taking Aklo to FD. This is important for him, as a fox main.
If it were character first, then the only way Aklo could leverage his link is if he lost and is counterpicking. And, if he's counterpicking... honestly he's probably just going to rock fox on a counterpick stage. Welp.
I think thats a shame, especially with how hard it is in melee to get a real secondary up to par... and being comfortable swapping. Zain icies coming out in Ludwig's noticeably, well, iced out his own marth.
As the losing marth, yea it sucks you don't get to have your epic FD counterpick, but tbh if someone has that secondary actually cooked up then jeez, respect.
And, if YOU have your secondary, then boom! Thats how you get young link vs mario on FD (mango v axe super smash con 2017).
Before game 1 both players choose their character, doing double blind if necessary. Then they choose a stage by striking. After game 1 we do loser picks stage, winner picks character, loser picks character.
Gotcha, I've edited the post to specify for asking why it's stage-first after game 1
If i’m a fox players playing the ditto, and i pick FD, just for my opponent to switch to Marth, I’ve completely lost the advantage of my counterpick
You seem to be answering a question that's not being asked at all. OP didn't ask "why are there character counterpicks in addition to stage counterpicks", the question is "why are character selections **after** stage selection?" If the opposite were true, then you'd already know whether your opponent is selecting marth **before** you pick FD. So the problem you're outlining still wouldn't happen. The real answer is just what halfspeeds said, which is that there are a lot of much harder stage counterpicks than character counterpicks. Like, the way the system currently is, if you pick FD, and your opponent picks Marth, and you think your Fox isn't way better than your opponent's Marth, it's on you to have a backup option that's good against Marth on FD (or else know your opponent has a pocket Marth and don't pick FD in the first place).
> if you pick FD, and your opponent picks Marth, and you think your Fox isn't way better than your opponent's Marth, it's on you to have a backup option that's good against Marth on FD Why should it be on you to have a backup against Marth on FD if you just played a Fox ditto? If it were character-first, you wouldn't have to worry about playing Marth on FD in the first place. > (or else know your opponent has a pocket Marth and don't pick FD in the first place). This can't be guaranteed, which is part of the problem. The person counterpicking the stage assumes more pressure in that they're succumbing to a) not knowing for certain who their opponent will play (especially if they're strangers), and b) potentially needing a counterpick character they haven't practiced if their opponent picks a character that couldn't possibly have been within their purview (and if the subsequent matchup is bad enough). For me, it honestly just boils down to: How can you feasibly counterpick a stage without being certain of what you're playing against? Doesn't that diminish the purpose of a stage counterpick?
Correct me if I’m wrong but it sounds like you are coming from an Ultimate mind set, which I’m not knocking btw, but in melee counter-picking characters does not happen that much, some people and even some top players do, but most people stick with their character in tournament sets. Stages in melee are a lot more meaningful to counter-picks than swapping characters for example: taking captain falcon to FoD, taking a yoshi or sheik to fd, or going to fd as marth in general. Taking sheik or puff to yoshis, or taking anybody to dreamland when you play as a floatie character. All of the top tiers in melee can compete with each other almost evenly to where swapping characters mid set is not a must against certain characters So you are gonna want to be able to pick the stage first to counter pick them. If you counter-pick someone to fd and then they switch to marth, that just is what it is, your opponent is attempting to counter your conter, but for the most part people don’t counter-pick characters. Most people’s secondaries suck compared to their main.
The thing with Ultimate is: I'm fully convinced it would be all character-first if the menus were just switched. Since the range of legal stages is more neutral on average than in Melee, character counterpicks are even stronger, pronouncing the uncertainty problems of stage-first even more. Kinda grinds my gears, haha But okay, I'm starting to see that stage-first is fine to reward having more than one character because doing so is particularly hard in Melee. But character-first can also still reward this, right? It's just that players would have more info on the best stage to go to with the (potentially different) characters in mind. And I guess I'm still struggling with the volatility inherent with the Melee stage list, and I feel like character-first throughout would encourage more neutrality in relation to the stages. I feel like it's unfair for a player's skills to be so beholden to stage geometry.
> The thing with Ultimate is: I'm fully convinced it would be all character-first if the menus were just switched. Probably not. Smash 64, Melee, Brawl, and Smash 4 all have the character select screen first in the menu, but in tournaments you counter pick stage first, then character. For context, the only Smash game that picks character first, then stage, is Project M.
You are talking about wanting more neutrality in stages for both characters and how it seems kinda unfair, but it is a COUNTER PICK, you literally are picking a stage to counter your opponent. Say you just lost, okay, now you have the opportunity to COUNTER your opponent with a stage pick. (Like I said majority of melee players are not going to swap characters mid set). So if a captain falcon beat me game one, if we are playing best 2 out of 3, the falcon gets to strike one stage before you pick so he still has some agency in the process. Say he bans FoD, a historically bad stage for falcon, okay, take him to fd or any stage you feel comfortable in. Want more space and to not die as early? Go dreamland. Want to keep the falcon close so he doesn’t have all this room to run around with his fast movement? Go yoshis to smother him. If it’s a best of 5 then there are no stage strikes after game 1 since it’s a longer set and encourages more stage variety. It’s a COUNTER pick so inherently one player is trying to pull an advantage from the other.
Exactly. Stage-first after game 1 diminishes the value of the stage counterpick due to the inherent uncertainty that your opponent picks a better character on that stage after the fact, which is confusing to me. This is compounded by the fact that FD is a very polarizing stage, further centralizing the character-unknown stage counterpick as a deciding factor for a set.
playing multiple characters well is pretty uncommon, so it really doesnt come up much. if your marth really is better than your fox on fd, you should get some kind of advantage for that.
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Was M2K's Marth on FD really "sick?" Haha I just don't see how character-first throughout wouldn't also reward character breadth. They could still pick a different character after game 1, it's just that the loser of the last game would then have more information to choose the stage for that matchup. Would that not be more equitable for the loser?
Why do we want it to be more equitable for the loser? The loser already gets an advantage by picking the stage *and* picking their character second. I see no reason to buff the loser of the last game even further.
If my opponent wants to switch characters on me after they win, that's fine. But I, as the loser, should be able to choose the stage for the next game now that I have all possible pieces of information available to me. I shouldn't have to rely on tricking my opponent to give myself an advantage. That's my opinion, anyway
>I shouldn't have to rely on tricking my opponent to give myself an advantage. Man you must HATE neutral lol
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Character-first makes the set more neutral, on average. I'm failing to see how that's bad. Character counterpicks are still just as possible in character-first, aren't they? Why should I be asked to pick a stage if I don't know what I'm fighting against?
Because more often than not, you tend to pick stages *your* character is good on rather than ones your opponent's character is bad on. If you play Marth, you counterpick FD. If you play a floatie, you counterpick Dreamland. Combined with the fact that most players don't have counterpick-worthy secondaries, you're just not deciding stages based on their option to swap characters that often. You know who you're gonna play, and you get to go where they're strong. That's the consolation prize for losing a game. The prize for winning is having the option to throw a wrench in the loser's plan, if you happen to have a secondary good enough to rely on in tournament.
when you pick the stage, you influence which character your opponent picks. it is possible to get blind sided, but if you know they have a real secondary, your stage choice usually tells you which character they will play.
It's for historical reasons. If you think about early rulesets, it's necessary to have characters after stages because there were some extremely bad character/stage combinations. For instance Ganon would be at a huge disadvantage if the opponent could Rainbow Cruise reactively. Stages needed to be first so you don't get owned based solely on your character selection. A lot of fighting games have the winner's character locked after a match, because that's what happens in the arcade mode of old 2D fighters (probably originally for thematic reasons). If the winner's character was locked in Melee with nearly all the stages on, you could get huge double counterpicks (stage & character CP), so early players decided that there needed to be some method of making sure matches weren't fucked up matchups every game. If you have both players involved in picking characters and picking stages, stages needed to come first because some stages just debilitate some characters. This isn't the case anymore with the restricted stagelist we have today. IMO it should probably change to prevent the possibility of double counterpicks (e.g. pick FD, pick Marth). But even if most players thought swapping the order was better, it's really hard to convince the community to make such a small adjustment.
Ahh, this makes sense. So the volatility of Melee's stages necessitated stage-first, but in an environment with more neutral stages, stage-first is less necessary. This helps answer the "menus" part of the question.
I just want to respond to say that you are getting unfairly dogged on in these comments, lol. There are a lot of people making half-baked rationalizations that have nothing to do with the ruleset being the way it is. At no point did anyone sit down and say "it's more exciting if you can surprise people with your secondaries!" or "you should get the biggest possible counterpicking advantage if you play multiple characters!"; at the time these CPing rules were really being developed, stages were crazier and there was more of an expectation to have pocket characters for certain MUs. Stages-first leads to more metagaming, which I think is pretty safe to say (maybe not on reddit) is really undesirable for fighting game competitors. Practically speaking, competitors get surprised once, then they remember that x player has a pocket Marth or whatever, and next time you fight them you ban whatever you would have banned if the stage/character order was swapped in the first place. Or, you get surprised at a national, and lose because you didn't know something about your opponent that you could have googled. Or (most frequently), the character swapper actually isn't very good at the matchup they're about to play, lol. People might cheer for things like M2K's Marth on FD but that's mostly because it's *iconic*, not because double counterpicking is a crowd pleaser by nature. He would get to take people to FD in bo5s anyways if the stage/character order was swapped. Melee doesn't have to worry that much about this counterpicking order thing because character expertise overcomes stage advantages pretty well for all the frequently-played matchups. I think <5% of competitors bother with multiple characters in tournament, even less for good players. Swapping counterpick order affects the game so little that it's probably never going to be seriously discussed. I think you can look to PM and see that if double counterpicking had a stronger effect on the game, then we would swap the order, imaginary principles be damned.^^[[1]](https://smashboards.com/threads/396408/#post-18835834)
I think it's also worth noting how much harder it is to play multiple characters at tournament level in melee vs ultimate. In ult if you understand a characters tools and strengths you can play them pretty decently with a couple hours of practice, in melee it takes way longer and the difference in experience between you and your opponent matters way more so people usually only play one character, maybe have a secondary for certain matchups and very few people play more characters than 2 seriously in close bracket matches. Marth beats fox on FD but my fox I practiced for 2000 hours vs your Marth you practiced chain grabs with for a couple weeks is gonna be a wash no matter what
So you're saying that not being certain of your opponent's character when selecting a stage is not as much of a problem because of it being harder to learn individual characters in Melee? I don't think you can assume it wouldn't be a problem for the stage counterpicker just because their opponent's secondary is probably crusty. It's still an unnecessary risk for the stage counterpicker, imo
their secondary is usually more than just rusty. its usually pretty bad. general game knowlege and execution doesnt transfer across character nearly as well in melee. of the 9 top level players, only 3 of them play 2 characters. 2 of them use their secondary for only one matchup. Mango is the only true dual main that can win majors right now. only 13 of the current top 50 have a secondary, and almost all of them use that secondary for one particular matchup
I think OP asks this question in general not for top lvl only. Why would you have to select the stage 1st at your local for exemple ? When the player's skills are not top lvl maybe the difference between their main and their secondaries is not as big and in this case it would be better for the looser of round 1 to see his opponent's character pick before he chose the stage.
every time your stage counterpick makes your opponent switch characters, u can already consider it a win, because they probably are at least slightly worse with that character and won’t have it warmed up
Because of consistency across all levels of play.
stage counterpicks are more game swinging than character counterpicks at the top level, if you reverse it sets would be even more determined by the game 1 winner.
So essentially, the polarization of the stage list is leveraged to lengthen sets? And if stage-first is necessary for games after the first, why is game 1 character-first? I'm just failing to see the benefit of stage-first at any point in a set. It deliberately restricts information for the person counterpicking the stage, thus slightly weakening the stage counterpick advantage.
> And if stage-first is necessary for games after the first, why is game 1 character-first? Because character selection has to be able to be completely blind since it's the asymmetric aspect of the match (whereas stage selection is symmetric, you both end up playing on the same stage, ya know?) while stage selection has to be managed by strikes. Striking to a certain stage in advance leads to an inherently non-blind character selection choice because you get the additional info of your opponent's bans. This can be very relevant when two people with multiple mains play each other. In a Bo5 there's not even striking for counterpicks, you just pick a stage and then your opponent needs the opportunity to play a character that isn't massively gimped on that stage. But for initial selection, avoiding the stage that massively gimps your character is handled **by** the striking.
I agree that game 1 should be character-first. However, all of what you said seems to support the idea that character-first would be better for all games. After game 1, every character selection is non-blind with stage-first. Shouldn't that be avoided at all points in a set?
there's no counter picking in game 1 in stages or characters. "Leveraged to lengthen sets" makes it sound like a bad thing, it's reducing the variance from single game (game 1) results, it's more equitable. The larger the counterpick advantage, the more the set is determined by the winner of game 1 even if the opponents have an equal chance to win a game. It's not my opinion, it's how the math works. If two players are perfectly 50% against each other, then the winner of game 1 wins the set 68.75% vs 31.25%. A 55% counterpick advantage = 68.9% vs 31.1%. 60%: 69.3 vs 30.7. 70%: 71.2 vs 28.8. 80%: 75.7 vs 24.3.
A big thing to consider is that the winner of the first game could essentially get double counterpicked if it was the character first after G1. Char first: Winner Char -> Loser Char -> Loser Stage Pick Stage first: Loser Stage Pick -> Winner Char -> Loser Char Games like Tekken mitigate this (at least in my understanding, never actually competed in Tekken) by locking in the winner's character and only allowing counterpicks of stage ***OR*** character, but not both in the same game. Since both char ***and*** stages are counterpicked by the loser in melee, Stage first still gives the advantage to the loser because they get the final chance to counterpick something before the next game, while the winner isn't completely blindsided by a potential new character to play against ***and*** new stage to play on. It mostly comes down to how much advantage you think the loser should have in counterpicking, and with how early melee was with some of the wacky stages, it was probably preferred to not put the winner at the mercy of some potentially brutal counterpick selections. With today's ruleset, it probably wouldn't be *as* consequential, but I think most competitors would prefer to stay with the fairer stage first selection process, rather than giving the loser absolute control with char first after g1
Basically it gives the loser a chance to counter pick to a stage they like without the winner knowing what character they'll pick. For example I lost to your fox game 1 with puff on Battelfield. I then counter pick to FD and the fox player is thinking "this guy is so stupid does he not know puff loses here" so he continues to pick fox. I then pick my pocket Marth and proceed to chain grab him for 8 minutes to win game 2 to even up the set. The reason it's done like this is because stages matter far more in melee than in ultimate. TLDR; if character first then it'll always go to the most neutrel stage like how game 1 is always battlefield.
>Basically it gives the loser a chance to counter pick to a stage they like without the winner knowing what character they'll pick. The loser could still go to a stage they like in character-first, no? >For example I lost to your fox game 1 with puff on Battelfield. I then counter pick to FD and the fox player is thinking "this guy is so stupid does he not know puff loses here" so he continues to pick fox. >I then pick my pocket Marth and proceed to chain grab him for 8 minutes to win game 2 to even up the set. The problem I see with this is: What incentive do I (game 1 winner) have to NOT pick Fox? The winner would essentially get punished for simply making a decision without sufficient information. There's no reason to anticipate the Marth in the first place. I guess I'm starting to see a benefit of stage-first after game 1 being that it rewards character breadth, and it's good to reward that in a game like Melee where it's relatively hard to fully learn any one character. But, I'm not sure that absolves the other issues I see. >The reason it's done like this is because stages matter far more in melee than in ultimate. >TLDR; if character first then it'll always go to the most neutrel stage like how game 1 is always battlefield. Wouldn't we want as much neutrality as possible to determine the winner of the set most rightfully? Discouraging neutrality in any form seems anti-competitive to me.
If what you seek is neutrality then the looser of round 1 should not even be able to counter pick stages as it gives him a small advantage, players should always choose their characters at the same time like round 1 and pick a random stage... According to you if selecting a character 1st gives more infos to the looser, thus helping him to pick his stage accordingly, it becomes even less neutral... What you are seeking is not neutrality, it's helping the looser more in order for the set to last longer. Basically you are asking "since we agree that the looser of each round should have an advantage, why don't we give him an even greater advantage ? And I guess the answer is because that's not fair. At least with the current rules, If you want to screw your opponent you have to know their secondaries and try to anticipate their reaction as to what would be their character choice if I choose this stage ? It's a mindgame and it's cool, it adds a dimension to the game. It's a risk reward. Imagine I main Marth, I loose game 1 against a fox, and I pick FD. My opponent switches to Sheik or Falcon, then if I think it's a bad matchup for me on this particular stage and I don't have a secondary myself I'm fucked. It would not be a problem at all if I had a secondary character like my opponent, let's say fox for exemple. So in the end it rewards the player who can play multiple characters which is good for the game and if both czn play secondaries then it still reward the looser of round 1 more because he get to choose his character last.
This is the best answer I've seen so far.
You're assuming that both players are of completely equal skill. The current way of doing things gives the loser a chance to bounce back. It's basically a come back mechanic. It's not anticompetitive because the compensation for letting the loser counter pick is the fact that the winner is up. Honestly, you could change the order of character and set selection for counter picks, it really doesn't matter. The only reason we stick to it is tradition. Don't try and fix what works. Changing it won't imporve much since melee is such a skill based game that the better player will inevitably win.
Am I buggin? I’ve never been to a melee tournament where we struck stages first. But every ultimate tournament I went to had is strike stages first since that was the first screen that came up, and maybe 1% of the time was I asked “who do you play?”
Yeah it's always character first, even on slippi ranked you double blind pick characters, then strike stages
If you're good with a character why would you only counterpick your opponent on one stage and not the whole set? If you dual main marth and fox, you'd just play marth every game instead of saving marth for FD. It's very rare that someone actually counterpicks a character just for a single stage. The only recent example I can think of is Zain going ICs versus leffen on FD and pokemon stadium (and he lost so it didn't even work).
This thread has one of the highest words:post ratios I have ever seen, I love it
Because a character could potentially lose 100% of a time on a stage. So you may have a nice icies youd play on fd. But since its always char first you cant ever pick icies. Likewise if you were the one picking stage and playing plup, You could wait till your opponent picks sheiks then counterpick fd and icies. Thats way too much of an advantage. We dont want sets decided game 1.
Counterintuitively, most ultimate rulesets actually do have character first and stage selection second, so the menu order of the 2 games are both the opposite of their rulesets.
I think the current way it is setup lends itself to some pretty cool stage+character prep folks can cook up. Aklo's link+FD vs marth comes to mind for top level play. Its not a hard counter, but rather a matchup that most marths don't really want to engage with. With stage first, it dissuades Marth mains from taking Aklo to FD. This is important for him, as a fox main. If it were character first, then the only way Aklo could leverage his link is if he lost and is counterpicking. And, if he's counterpicking... honestly he's probably just going to rock fox on a counterpick stage. Welp. I think thats a shame, especially with how hard it is in melee to get a real secondary up to par... and being comfortable swapping. Zain icies coming out in Ludwig's noticeably, well, iced out his own marth. As the losing marth, yea it sucks you don't get to have your epic FD counterpick, but tbh if someone has that secondary actually cooked up then jeez, respect. And, if YOU have your secondary, then boom! Thats how you get young link vs mario on FD (mango v axe super smash con 2017).