This is a rather timely post for me, as just last night I was testing a bunch of stages for their suitability in my 1 v 1 tournament rules Battle Arena. Normally, I stick pretty close to the stages commonly considered tournament legal, but sometimes I like to throw in different stages for a bit of variety.
I'm of two minds when it comes to what stages and hazards should be legal. On one hand, I appreciate that competitive play is meant to determine who is best based solely on the player's skill and therefore stages ought to interfere with the player's skill as little as possible. To that end, tournament legal stages tend to have few features (such as slants) and symmetrical designs to try to minimize any advantages to either fighter as much as possible.
On the other hand, and allow me to play devil's advocate, forcing the player's to work around and incorporate different terrain and hazards in their strategies also tests the player's skill and their ability to adapt. It's one thing to learn a combo and execute it on Battlefield or Final Destination, it's another thing to execute it around asymmetrical stages or hazards. Sometimes I think Smash should embrace the fact that the environment where combat occurs is not a passive element, especially because stages are largely designed to be dynamic.
Combatants have realized, since forever, that the environment is something to adapt to and use to your advantage as much as possible; it's a critical element in any combat. For example, those who have seen Braveheart may remember the Battle of Sterling, where the Scots led by William Wallace defeated an English army. In the movie, the battle is depicted as taking place on an open field. The English had superior numbers, archers, and cavalry and the only thing that saved the Scots were makeshift pikes and their sheer cussedness. The reality is far more interesting. The battle actually took place with Sterling Bridge between the English and Scottish armies. Like in the movie, the Scots were out-manned and outgunned, but unlike the movie, the Scots using pikes to counter the English cavalry, though effective, likely wouldn't have been the deciding factor on open ground (the Scots employed their pike formation in the subsequent Battle of Falkirk, but were destroyed by the English longbows). The deciding factor was the bridge the English had to cross to reach the Scottish position, which only allowed the English cavalry to cross two-by-two. As the English crossed, the Scots descended upon them and won the day. One might say the English ought to have won; they were the superior force in pretty much every measurable respect. However, the fact is they didn't; the Scots won and was the better army that day because they used the terrain to their advantage. Ought to win and actually winning are two different things and the only one that actually matters is the latter.
Back to Smash, it could be said the better player is the one who can fight around the terrain. Even in legal stages, some terrain elements can be a deciding factor in determining who wins. I've seen plenty of players using zoners like Samus, Mega Man, etc. repeatedly fail to take into account slants in the terrain on stages like Yoshi's Story and Lylat Cruise and lose as a result. Even platforms can be a pain to work around sometimes. Knowing how to fall through platforms, either from standing on them or falling through them while in the air, is a fundamental skill every player needs to know, because if you can't adapt to the platforms adequately, you're going to get punished for it. For example, in lower level play, you often will see players going around platforms, rather than through (usually from a jump), thereby exposing themselves to a punish. The point is, terrain is already a factor in the game, however minimized, so banning stages merely because their terrain is more pronounced doesn't necessarily promote a full and fair assessment of player skill.
Further, our fighter tier lists are based on fighting on legal stages, thereby favouring characters whose mobility and moves favour large, flat spaces with few platforms. The question I'd like to pose is whether the inclusion of more unorthodox stages would create a more balanced look at the characters. Perhaps Jigglypuff's aerial mobility would be far more of an asset if the terrain was less flat and created more obstacles to move around. It's also common knowledge Little Mac benefits greatly from flat stages. Even the heavies might get a boost fighting in terrain where their opponents can't escape as easily.
The point I'd like to make is that our current tier lists are based on a set of stages that may benefit some fighters disproportionately over others. It would be interesting to see a tier list based on a wider selection of stages or even where hazards are turned on.
However, do not take the above to mean that I have a bone to pick with the current legal stages. I merely think it would be interesting to see how competitive play would differ if a wider selection of stages or hazards were allowed. I also wished to just point out that the idea of a stage helping a player win over an otherwise "better" player is maybe a misconception considering how the environment plays a huge role in any combat situation and combatants are required in any real life scenario to account for their environment. Lastly, we seem consider stages legal on the basis that they don't appear to have features that obviously favour one fighter over another, but perhaps our perception of the high/top tier characters is significantly influenced by the stage choices and otherwise low-tier characters strengths are simply not well-adapted to the current legal stages.
Anyway, it's all just food for thought.
