"I see no merit in having stages that will just be banned in a year or whatever especially since it comes with a lot of hurt feelings, and if you think about it, there's no real logic in some stages being 'fair enough to play on but not in game one'".
This is a mentality I agree with, but there are some issues. First is that no one wants to strike 30 whole stages. Second is that ideally, for striking, you want 1+4n stages (5,9,13,17, etc.). Let's say the most we can get people to be alright with striking is 13 stages. Well, the rest would have to be counterpicks. I could get behind leaving things that are very similar to the strike stages as counterpicks. For example, if you have battlefield on the strike list, you would put all other 3 plats like yoshi's story and 64 dreamland on counterpick.
This is why I said don't do stage striking. Stage is selected before characters which is actually a major game changer here; just rely on random and give each player a random veto like old Melee rules (the Melee rules from the mid-2000s for those who have memories going that far back). I guess I'll explain the principle ideas here in a bit more detail.
Stage rules have three main goals. One is to be fair; this means both giving each player and equal chance to win and not introducing undue random variation in the match outcome. Two is to include as much of the game's content as possible; this is both most "pure" in terms of sticking to the game as it is and also gives the game as long of a lifespan as possible (the more stuff you have legal, the longer it will take the community to fully solve the metagame). Three is to make tournament administration as practical as possible; this means it needs to be as easy as possible to explain the rules and all procedures should work as quickly as possible. Stage striking was largely a compromise solution to deal with the fact that the stages were super divergent from each other and what was picked game one was drastically changing outcomes, and this solution worked out to be a major sacrifice to ideal 2 and a bit of a hit to ideal 3 for this purpose. A hazard toggle promises to avoid the stages intrinsically messing things up to the same extent (we'll still have some classes of stage to ban but honestly I could easily imagine 50 legal stages if the hazard toggle works like I think it will), and a game with an absolutely huge cast where basically all the strong players will have several mains and the stage is selected before the characters means that the match-up implications of which stage is picked frankly just don't matter as much (presumably the abuses of the Brawl days are going to remain gone too so you don't have the fear of most of the cast fighting someone like ICs on Final Destination). With problem 1 solved without stage striking, you can just take the massive gains on points 2 and 3 and have a procedure that does include this insanely large stage list and actually takes far less time than striking ever did even striking from a tiny handful of stages. This also solves the other striking issue which is that in effect more than half of the players just agreed to Smashville because they found striking tedious which was a pretty dull way for tournaments to go; the random solution will actually be used by all of the players since it's actually faster than agreeing to Smashville. The veto thing isn't even truly necessary but just makes things more palatable for most players, allowing them to avoid their least favorite stage or two for game one.
To get at what a stage list might look like more now that I've had more time to think, a few things are pretty basic automatic stage bans. Permanent walk-offs, caves of life, hard loops, overly strong camp points, or excessive size are all instant ban conditions. Just notably poor geography may require a few more bans that are more case by case; I see right away that Moray Towers is probably going to need a ban even though it doesn't really violate any of the simple rules. I don't think touring stages just on principle need banned if hazards off preserves the touring (but it might not, and if it doesn't, we accept that), and I don't think touring stages that visit forms that have a problem or two is necessarily that bad (I'm very much pro-Delfino, pro-Castle Siege, pro-Skyloft assuming it doesn't hit you while moving here). If a stage like Tortimer Island still has a random lay-out but every possibility is fair we also just rock with it. Obviously I don't know all the details here but I think with hazards off we're probably looking at something close to this. I'm just going to assume every stage other than Miiverse is going to return (Miiverse is just Battlefield anyway) and that hazards off probably works like you'd expect, maybe preserving touring but removing everything really disruptive and everything that could possibly ever hit you (we know it removes Frigate's flips and Lylat's tilts so it can be pretty comprehensive). I'd also say something like Duck Hunt that just one or two characters auto-lose on is fine; stage is always picked before character so if you play one of the very small number of extreme characters like Little Mac that can't compete on every stage you just gotta be ready with another character (any reasonably competitive player in a game like this will have multiple mains). Also obviously we have no ability to judge any new stages other than the two we've seen in detail.
Legal (40):
Arena Ferox
Battlefield
Brinstar
Castle Siege
Delfino Plaza
Dream Land (64)
Duck Hunt
Final Destination
Fountain of Dreams
Frigate Orpheon
Garden of Hope
Halberd
Jungle Hijinxs (reasonable to assume never transitions to the back)
Jungle Japes
Kalos Pokemon League
Kongo Jungle (64)
Lylat Cruise
Mario Circuit (Wii U) (assuming it unconditionally does not hit the player)
Midgar
Mushroom Kingdom U
Mute City (Melee)
Norfair
Peach's Castle (64) (the bumper is presumably gone)
PictoChat
Planet Zebes
Pokemon Stadium
Port Town Aero Dive
Prism Tower
Pyrosphere
Skyloft
Smashville
Tortimer Island
Town and City
Umbra Clock Tower
Unova Pokemon League
WarioWare Inc.
Wily Castle
Wuhu Island
Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
Yoshi's Story
Depends (17/18):
Big Blue (if hazards off removes all of the cars/the road below and stops movement it's fine, but most likely it will either have a loop or still be hazardous)
Corneria / Sector Z (if hazards off removes the gun platform completely and if walls aren't terribly abusable in smash u it's fine, but either point could force a ban)
Find Mii (need to test if the side platform is a big problem for camping, stage's previous awfulness precluded experimenting)
Gamer (need to test if hazards off precludes cave of life/hard loop formations)
Great Plateau Tower (need to see how strong the cave of life effect is; I'm optimistic this stage will be able to be legal)
Green Greens (camping positions most likely a problem but gotta see how it plays out without bombs)
Mute City (3DS) (honestly hard to guess what this stage is even like with hazards off, ranges in possibility from obviously legal to obviously banned)
Orbital Gate Assault (like the previous stage, just don't even know what this stage will be without hazards, huge range of outcomes)
PictoChat 2 (depends on how they handle this stage's many generally bad transformations)
Pirate Ship (needs testing without the bow insta-kill, significant worry it will be a camping stage)
Pokemon Stadium 2 (depends on whether hazards off deals with the general nonsense of wind and electric forms)
Rainbow Cruise (this stage was always borderline okay; if it stays on the boat with hazards off it's only an issue if walls are an issue in smash 5)
Rainbow Road (I don't even remember this stage beyond being bad well enough to make an informed statement)
Reset Bomb Forest (if it stays in the first form)
Spirit Train (hard to guess how this will work without hazards, some possibilities acceptable)
Super Mario Maker (need to test the range of possibilities with hazards off; if it prevents all walk-off/hard loop formations, it's okay)
Yoshi's Island (64) (depends on whether the far camping cloud is gone without hazards)
Not Legal (57-59):
3D Land (walk-offs)
75m (excessive size)
Balloon Fight (walk-offs)
Big Battlefield (excessive size)
Boxing Ring (walk-offs)
Bridge of Eldin (walk-offs)
Brinstar Depths (camping positions)
Coliseum (walk-offs)
Distant Planet (walk-offs)
Dream Land (3DS) (walk-offs)
Flat Zone (in general) (walk-offs)
Fourside (camping positions)
Gaur Plain (at least three reasons)
Gerudo Valley (walk-offs)
Golden Plains (walk-offs)
Great Bay (loop)
Green Hill Zone (walk-offs)
Hanenbow (size, generally awful lay-out)
Hyrule Castle (size, camping, cave of life, probably "close" but almost certainly not good enough)
Icicle Mountain (no clue how it will work without hazards but near 100% chance it's bad)
Kongo Falls (Melee) (camping position)
Living room (walk-offs)
Luigi's Mansion (cave of life, probably actually worse without hazards since you probably can't break the mansion)
Magicant (that lower platform completely ruins it; in the unlikely event it goes away, move this to legal)
Mario Bros. (walk-offs)
Mario Circuit (Brawl) (walk-offs)
Mario Galaxy (walk-offs)
Moray Towers (honestly just the worst layout of any smash stage I've ever seen that doesn't fit an easy insta-ban category)
Mushroom Kingdom (64) (walk-offs)
Mushroom Kingdom (Melee) (walk-offs)
Mushroom Kingdom II (walk-offs)
Mushroomy Kingdom (walk-offs)
New Pork City (size)
Onett (walk-offs)
Pac-Land (walk-offs)
Pac-Maze (loop)
Palutena's Temple (size)
Paper Mario (probably a walk-off, niche chances they do something to fix this)
Peach's Castle (Melee) (camping)
Pilotwings (camping)
Poke Floats (if it just stays on Squirtle it's a camp haven; if it goes through all the stuff there are other problems)
Rumble Falls (no clue how it will work without hazards but near 100% chance it's bad)
Saffron City (camping)
Shadow Moses Island (remarkably terrible lay-out)
Skyworld (cave of life)
Spear Pillar (loop, legal if they just get rid of the bottom area completely though)
Summit (loop)
Suzaku Castle (walk-off)
Temple (size)
The Great Cave Offensive (size)
Tomodachi Life (lay-out is pretty terrible)
Venom (camping)
Wii Fit Studio (walk-offs)
Windy Hill Zone (size/camping)
Woolly World (walk-offs)
Wrecking Crew (lay-out is pretty terrible)
Yoshi's Island (Melee) (walk-offs)
