We got consolation prize Air Armada before getting back the actual stage#370

I don’t think the devs realise that it’s not really the visuals of Air Armada that people enjoy but rather the lack of walls. The free stage skin just seems like a rather tone deaf solution that doesn’t do anything but leave a sour taste. Imagine removing one of the most iconic maps that’s been present ever since launch. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.

It was one on the most unpopular maps and a lot of the gameplay came down to cheesing your opponent at low percents thanks to the lack of walls. It was an experiment that wasn’t very interesting to a large portion of players.

This update makes it so that you still get to keep the Air Armada aesthetics and music in play with the regular ruleset, which is a happy medium for people who liked the stage visually.

Air Armada is still in the game, you can still play it, sure it’s not in competitive modes, but you have to understand how much the lack of walls impacted that right? The point of the stage skin is so people who liked the theme and especially music can still have it in competitive play. It is not meant to be a “solution”, the devs intentionally removed it from competitive, I don’t see why they would just add the stage back to the rotation after removing it

No people didn’t enjoy the lack of walls, they hated it, that’s only you

Just wanted to chime in and stay we understand some people DID like the old layout. We decided to remove it in this ranked season for competitive reasons. We don’t have plans to bring the old layout back as a default, but we wanted to add this stage skin since Air Armada has been playable across Rivals 1 and 2 for years in ranked, so it’s a small nicety if you still want to use the old skin.

@George I would like to call out the fact that currently, there is no way to play a private lobby or local modes with Air Armada available for random selection. The stage shows up but can’t be hit by Random if casual stages are off; if they are on, then it is completely absent from the stage list (which seems like an oversight, since it has all 22 other stages), and even if it were there, Random only picks from the 10 on the first page.

We decided to remove it in this ranked season for competitive reasons.

What “competitive reasons” could possibly warrant all competitive stages to fundamentally play the same. The only outlier left is Hyperborean Harbor, yet even that stage still has walls like the others. There is still no Final Destination, and now, no pinapple.

Having the stage in custom games does not satisfy my needs as I mostly play ranked.

The competitive reasons could probably be boiled down to the fact that these layouts are uninteresting to a large portion of the playerbase at a competitive level. Not only that though, but they also skew the risk / reward balance of stage design across the cast.

It’s the same reason there’s no final destination in this game either. Stage picks should of course be important in these games, but it’s not fun when there’s some characters that can completely gap others on this one particular stage thanks to it’s layout.

For a large portion of the roster, Air Armada was an INSTANT ban simply because having no walls is too much of a detriment for their recovery game. In a game with already a huge variety of layouts, having one or even both of your two bans forced to be used on the ‘instant death if you even dare go offstage’ layout is just silly.

If I’m Reina, why WOULDN’T I ban Air Armada every single time? It’s not enjoyable to have that decision be made for you every single set.

Kragg/Fleet/Wrastor main detected

It’s the same reason there’s no final destination in this game either

So the game is just doomed to have very similar layouts until the end of time. I personally love FD and all stages that have a pinapple in Smash and so I guess we just have to settle with all stages having walls and platforms. Incredibly boring if you ask me.

I want more weird stages in competitive, but Armada was a bad type of weird where all it did was make cheesy wins and remove options from both players instead of adding anything new.