Of course there's elements of subjectivity in my assessment of stage quality. That's unavoidable when assessing the quality of anything. But my subjective opinion is based on an evaluation that rests on well accepted criteria - that is, that people enjoy watching and playing fast paced games with lots of movement, complex zoning, and active neutral gameplay. Crowd reactions to Kikoushi vs Isai back this up; compare these reactions to the general reactions towards me vs Sensei at Apex 2012 to see the opposite side of this spectrum. Player reactions matched those of the crowds in both instances. Similarly, we can conclude that people involved with SSB don't like stalled game states, and thus Hyrule is losing favor with most established players. These criteria, backed up by demonstrated community reactions, lend objective weight to my opinions.
all of this is irrelevant.
i don't give a **** how people react to my playstyle and it should not, nor will it ever, influence the way i play this game. that should be true for everyone.
if you're playing this game to show off for the crowd, you will attempt some absurd **** - and risk losing the match because you weren't careful with your spacing or you misjudged something, etc.
you are out of your mind if you believe crowd reaction should influence whether or not a gamestyle/stage is played. the ways in which people enjoy a game do NOT add "objective weight" to your opinions. you're quoting
enjoyment, which is
subjective for each and every player. as i said before, some may like slower games. is their opinion void because it does not match your idea of what "competitive smash" is?
and as i have stated - it is the players' choice(s) to stall. you want the crowd involved? let them call players on their stalling. that is much more important than whether or not there are gasps and cheers. i'd much rather someone say "hey buddy stop camping" (because it is
against the rules) as opposed to "hey buddy nice combo", ya dig?
tl;dr:
pleasing spectators should never be an issue in tournament
also, with regard to the second part of your statement, kefit, star king said it best:
The burden is not on us to show that Congo is a good stage (how would one go about doing that for any stage?), but for you to show that it breaks tournament gameplay.
ugh i'm done
But that doesn't change the fact that I think it's a bad stage that no one likes and that it does nothing interesting for gameplay.
i'm not arguing this angle anymore. i like congo because it encourages a different playstyle that you cannot execute on DL or hyrule. limit yourself to one stage and you limit yourself in many more ways than one.
i'm concluding my input on this.