Hey everyone. I don't play competitive Smash at all, but I've always admired and defended it from a distance. This is partially because I'm not into most fighting games and although Smash isn't a fighting game, the competitive rule sets made for Smash make it very exciting to watch because unlike fighting games, the stages aren't mere background swaps but have completely different layouts and methods for fighting on them (and obviously because I can't see Snake beating up Ganondorf anywhere else, something even the snootier FGC players will admit rocks).
Back when Project M was big, I used to watch tourneys for it habitually for fun, and I vastly preferred it to all past Smash games because as fun as they could be, only a handful of stages were allowed. The reasons were understandable though, as Smash back then was not made for competitive play in mind, so for those not playing Smash as the party game its devs intended it as, it was a neutered experience. Project M made a step in the right direction by having more than 10 competitive stages by the time its final version was released. Many exciting matches were seen because of the new strategies that emerged from the expanded stage list.
While I moved onto Smash 4 shortly afterwards (as much as I loved playing Project M casually [yes, that's possible, just like Melee] it ultimately had no new characters besides miraculously bringing back Roy and Mewtwo, whereas Smash 4 gave me Little Mac and Cloud), I didn't care for the competitive scene at all compared to Project M, as there were less competitive stages. The weird addition of a mode where every stage became a Final Destination clone was off-putting--the whole strength behind Smash is the platforms, making versions of every stage where they're all flat showed that the Smash team REALLY didn't understand the part of their audience that liked playing Smash as a non party game. They seemed dead set on reassuring everyone that Smash is a party game and looking at it as anything else was not a good idea.
But...all these changes in Ultimate now shows that the developers have changed their mind. They obviously still don't see Smash as a fighting game like Street Fighter or Tekken or Soulcalibur or any of those games, but they ARE finally throwing the competitive community a bone. Smash Ultimate is the very first game that's not built up from the ground up to ONLY be a party game, as they are now keeping the competitive community in mind as well, and that excites me! Because for the first time, the viable stage list is HUGE!
When I looked at the posts by
Amazing Ampharos
, something lit up inside me when I saw that, with hazards off, there are at least TWENTY viable stages, with a whopping THIRTY for the ones they're only mostly certain about.
That's roughly 1/5 and 1/3 of all stages respectively! Guys, this is blowing my mind!
If this rule set means we can play on a much bigger variety of stages, I will 100% watch competitive Smash Ultimate. And even though I am aware of a lot of the competitive community's rule sets and thought processes from a distance and are thus understanding when the stage lists are so small in earlier games, I guarantee that the audience that initially turned off of competitive Smash will come back and just grow and grow if the stage list doesn't dwindle.
If you want people like me--i.e. casuals--to start actively supporting competitive Smash, keeping the stage list big even if it doesn't cover all 103 stages (which casual fans can come to understand far easier if the default stage list isn't hilariously tiny) is a crucial first step. Don't listen to anyone who is advocating for a measly 10 or so stages, that's the VERY FIRST THING that will turn off potential fans and players, and more or less permanently label the Smash competitive scene as a complete joke. I 100% understand why the stage list is puny in earlier games, but with hazards off there is zero excuse not to have lots more viable stages.
On a side note: I'm sad that making hazards off universally will lead to stages like Yoshi's Story, Fountain of Dreams, and Smashville to be more homogenized (even as a casual I got hyped whenever Randall saved someone or assisted a combo in a Project M tourney). But it's a price I'll pay for an immense increase in viable stages otherwise.
(Now if we could set individually what "hazards" to keep on and off for each stage individually via a menu or something, this wouldn't be a problem, as I wanted Wily Castle without the Yellow Devil but with the moving platforms. But this is as good as we're getting it and it's a net gain overall.)
