Is stage 2 difficult

[gokuisgod420]

Is stage 2 difficult cause it seems really easy these days I miss the slaughter fest in stage 2 that they used to have I feel this started to happen after Sasuke 30 when they got rid of swap salmon ladder

[azn]

It helps that the obstacles that are in stage 2 have basically been in so many tournaments, that you can predict what's their and what's not. The stage also has a huge time problem, and you can thank the fact that the stage is no longer the speed course it once was. I feel the Backstream should be removed entirely and be replaced by something like the metal spin or another original obstacle, and that the salmon ladder should move to the 3rd stage so that in the future, if they make a new variant, it can be more than just a simple set of rungs where you go up and down. What made the stage so good in the past was that it was basically a rush to the finish, now it's not even a rush anymore.

[BigT]

For an average person definitely yes. Nothing in Sasuke is easy.

Compared to previous versions, hard to say if it's harder or easier. What makes it seem like easier is the lack of changes to stage 2 over past few tournaments which means people have adapted to it. There is also no longer a sense of urgency. Time was main concern in Sasuke 1-17 but it was still relevant even when you had the salmon ladder-unstable bridge combo, so you couldn't waste too much time. Now we are used to people clearing with 10+ seconds and taking their sweet time on backstream, so it seems like a piece of cake.

In my opinion, stage 2 out of all stages has not kept up with the increase in good competitors.

[tns8597]

Stage 2 has always had something going for it that pushes its agenda beyond that of just a simple intermediate between the more infamous Stages 1 and 3.

From Sasuke 1-6, it was exclusively a speed stage. Much shorter and higher pace than Stage 1 and much more formidable too; in fact it was arguably the hardest stage for the first 3 tournaments. It really separated the lucky novices and rookies from the actual strong competitors.

From Sasuke 7-17, it had an additional element of technicality with the Chain Reaction, Balance Tank and eventually Metal Spin. Also, unlike the current iteration, the time limit would always be lower than the tournament before meaning that competitors were time and time again forced to step up their game in terms of speed.

Sasuke 18-27 took Stage 2's focus away from speed in favour of upper body strength and technicality; the time limit was more lenient, but there were an abundance of failable obstacles like the iconic Salmon Ladder and Unstable Bridge, an even harder Metal Spin and so on. It was slower paced than the Stage 2 that came before it but it was still exciting as every obstacle was easily failable, meaning that a clear was never guaranteed until it was actually confirmed.

The current iteration seems to have none of these aspects. It's not a speed stage because the time limit is too lenient, and this also makes it less exciting because competitors end up going slower as they know they have the time to waste (tell that to Keitaro). There's also no element of suspense unlike the obstacles in previous iterations; if you make it past the Spider Walk, you're basically guaranteed to clear unless you screw up on the Backstream or you're blatantly low on time, which basically hasn't happened to anyone in the last 3 tournaments bar Kawaguchi. The last 3 obstacles are unfailable and the point being to use whatever time you have left to desperately scramble through the conveyer and wall lift while wet to clear in time, except it never is in desperation because of the time limit being too high. I think the Backstream etc. could work; just slash off another 10-15 seconds from the time limit and see the extra damage done.

[Ninja Relaxer]

Today's Stage 2 probably would have destroyed the entire field of competitors in SASUKE 1. So yeah, it's hard. It only looks easy now because the competitors have trained for it.

[tns8597]

ninjarelaxer if you think about it that’s only because of the Salmon Ladder, which was only brutal for a few tournaments because no one understood how to do the movement correctly.

If you take that out of the equation and replace it with, say, the Brick Climb, it’s probably even easier given the super lenient time limit.

[Ninja Relaxer]

I think the Salmon Ladder can be really difficult even for people who know it exists and have a chance to train for it. I can think of a few people, for example, who cleared Stage 1 for the first time in recent years but failed on the Salmon Ladder. It's still a brutal obstacle, IMO. 6 failures in Sasuke 33, 7 failures in Sasuke 34.

[tns8597]

I agree it did ween out the more novice competitors who maybe just got lucky on Stage 1, but the failures in 33-34 were mainly attributed to the Ring Slider that sapped a lot of the competitors' strength before the Salmon Ladder (bear in mind no one failed it in 32). Hopefully that will be the same with the Rolling Log making competitors much dizzier and causing them to make fatal errors, but I don't think it would hurt to just spice the SL up a bit more; it's been exactly the same for 7 tournaments now.

[zoran]

Nov 13, 2020 7:00:47 GMT -5 tns8597 said:

I agree it did ween out the more novice competitors who maybe just got lucky on Stage 1, but the failures in 33-34 were mainly attributed to the Ring Slider that sapped a lot of the competitors' strength before the Salmon Ladder (bear in mind no one failed it in 32). Hopefully that will be the same with the Rolling Log making competitors much dizzier and causing them to make fatal errors, but I don't think it would hurt to just spice the SL up a bit more; it's been exactly the same for 7 tournaments now.

'Fatal'

[tns8597]

By fatal, I meant they're too dizzy to place the bar correctly and they just fall off or something.

Luckily the Rolling Log doesn't come right before the Backstream, otherwise that might actually be fatal as its dictionary term is intended.....

[Ninja Relaxer]

Yeah, I'm eager to see the Log-Ladder combination. I think it has the potential to mess up a few competitors, the same way the Rolling Maruta messed up Yuuji the first time he had to do it. Some people just do not handle dizziness well.

I would also like to see a change to the Salmon Ladder, even if it's just bringing back an older variant, but I doubt it'll happen in 38, simply because Stage 2 sees so few changes these days. Maybe in 39.

[Eclipse]

I think that there's an issue with Stage 1 moreso. Currently, most people who clear Stage 1 can clear Stage 2. If stage 1 was easier such that it allowed double the people onto Stage 2, most would fail there (however I'd like to see this, more variety and maybe a few more randoms make Stage 3)

[tns8597]

Yeah this is somewhat true. Notice how whenever there are a high number of Stage 1 clears, the Stage 2 clear rate is much lower even if the course is identical because the easy Stage 1 let novices, rookies, and those who got lucky clear.

A good example of this is comparing Sasuke 34 and 35. In 34, we had 24 clears because the course was exactly the same as before and was an easier variant of Stage 1 anyway, which meant that we saw a fair few competitors in the lower echelons of the running order clearing, yet they all seemed to massively suck on Stage 2; like the first guy who couldn't even make it up a single rung on the Salmon Ladder. So we only got a S2 clear rate of 37%. Whereas in 35 where they added the DG and massively shortened the time limit, we only got 8 clears but these all comprised of seasoned veterans (yes, even Darvish....) and no rookies, coupled with the fact that S2 was once again identical to previous competitions, so 5 of them also cleared S2 which was a much higher rate of 63%.

I personally disagree with your comment about Stage 1 being too hard as I think it's actually the other way round. We've still seen 10-15 competitors clear over the last couple of tournaments which is much higher than a lot of the earlier competitions, more that Stage 2 has been stale for so long to the point that it's too close in difficulty to Stage 1, where there's now basically a 70-80% chance that clearing Stage 1 will earn you a ticket to Stage 3.

I think the bottom line is that there needs to be sufficient differences in difficulty between Stages 1 and 2; because either Stage 1 being too hard or Stage 2 being too easy consolidates an overly high Stage 2 clear rate. I agree something needs to be done about this because Stage 2 is meant to separate the 'boys from the men' to put it crassly, and right now it just doesn't. 

[Rafas]

no