I didn't say you could successfully engage, I said you could engage, but with circle stalling you can't engage.
I was just explaining to clarify why I think one is clearly stalling (And thus easily banned) and the other isn't.
If I had to classify planking, I'd put it as a form of camping. A very hard to break form, but nothing more. Snake laying out a mine, C4, and chucking grenades could also be classified as pseudo-stalling in some matchups if planking falls under that.
You can engage people who are circle-stalling. Slowly but surely, there are characters who can bypass the tactic. Pit's arrows will follow whoever you want them to follow manually, faster than any character can move in the air or ground. Falco can fire lasers as soon as they meet in the same horizontal plane, or ahead of them before they reach their destination. Snake could plant a C4 on the circle-camper's route, or he could use his Nikita to follow them, attacking whoever would go under the stage.
But MK's planking can't be overcome by these things that can put an end to circle-camping with proper use. MK might be vulnerable at a very small window, but reasonably, what character is able to interact with him during that moment? If they try an OoS option (which is the fastest thing that would work), there are a number of factors that prevent characters from doing so... Like uair shieldstun, uair shieldstab, active hitbox preventing optimal positioning for aerials, downB stalling to increase invincibility frames... It just seems too much for any character to deal with. As pointed out by a BBR member, the only reasonable characters that can bypass planking if done perfectly AND during that small frame window are Marth and MK (both's upB OoS), but just knowing that if they fail the small frame window they'll be very vulnerable to any and all attacks, and knowing that one of Marth's worst matchups is MK, your best option to stop planking, would be to use MK himself... And an MK fighting an MK all the time because his tactic is too good and the players don't want each other to be timed out by it, doesn't seem like a very appealing match to me.
Upon being pressured by the attacker, MK could mess up his planking, just like Olimar could mess up his defensive game upon being pressured by Ganon. It is just not reasonable to expect MK or Olimar in those situations to mess up.
Circle-campers could mess up their circle camping, just as ICs could mess up their CG past 300%, or Snake could miss his tech at any moment and lose a stock, or someone could run away from Sonic or closer to Sonic from a specific direction to influence his sideB's knockback direction... But the fact that they can be influenced doesn't make them any less "stalling". Olimar might mess up his defensive approach, but he's vulnerable to attacks and approaches at all times and he doesn't prevent gameplay by exploiting a game mechanic like "invincibility frames" for as long as the match is happening.
And really, I would not consider Olimar vs Ganondorf as stalling at all. I wouldn't classify as "stalling" the fact that one character is so bad that everything he does is punished, is currently fighting an opponent who punishes characters before they're able to do what they want. Olimar is not preventing any engagement of the sort, his strong defensive game is simply a strong counter to the bad character's horrible offensive game. And it doesn't even apply to THAT many MUs! MK, on the other hand, has a tactic that works on everyone, and the few ones that may have a slim chance of doing anything to it, have an immensely small error window and are at risk of widening the gap between their disadvantage and MK's advantage... Comparing a tactic that works universally and is pretty much known to be too close to unbeatable, to a matchup that is the definition of a hard counter due to the effectiveness of one character's strengths vs the other character's weaknesses AND not being a tactic that puts the other character in a position where he canNOT engage against the opposing player, is not really something that I would accept with the information and research material open and given for my viewing needs.
Given the example that you have given me and your opinion on it, Olimar vs Ganondorf sounds more like stalling than MK vs X character on any scroogable stage. Given the decision, if Olimar mains would unanimously decide that it is a better tactic to just stand still against Ganondorf and intercept him whenever he decides to get close AND let him live, would you apply a rule to make them kill Ganondorf as soon as they can? What if they started saying that they were trying to kill Ganondorf but he kept escaping and surviving everytime they tried to kill him,would you still consider it stalling? What if their tactic would be to just run away and do damage BUT not kill Ganondorf, how would you limit or prevent that?
However, the scrooging pattern on Smashville requires MK to hang out on the moving platform while it is off the stage. You CAN approach and attack MK at this point, it's just stupid to do so.
You can't really approach MK at all. Think about it...
*If you wait on the platform for him, he will just stay on the opposing ledges, or land on-stage until you start taking a position where he might be in danger of getting damage, then drop back to the ledge and continue waiting the platform out.
*If you try to go to the platform and engage him, he can just jump over you and race to the other side, tornado straight through you as soon as you go airborne and land on the other ledge, or drop through the platform and grab the ledge which sets up for a planking situation until the platform makes it to the other side of the stage, then he scrooges.
*If you try and camp him, he will just avoid the camping by either downB'ing, grabbing the ledge, jumping over the threat, shielding it, dodging it, or tornadoing through the threat.
Is it really a reasonable thing to say, that MK can be intercepted when scrooging and planking to run the timer?
The "pseudo-stalls," if we use the definition above, are consistent with responsible competitive play. What is described is simply finding a way to nearly guarantee victory, which is exactly the objective of every competitive player.
A way to nearly guarantee victory is achieved... Making it an optimum option, one that players unanimously would be wise to adopt, since it nearly guarantees victory. This being a competitive scene, having an optimum strategy of that magnitude in the game is detrimental to the competitive value of the game. Shouldn't such tactics be prevented from being used? The risk:reward factor is HEAVILY unbalanced in favor of reward, what with MK only running a small frame window risk, which is difficult to exploit by other characters, but very easy to fail and lose the advantage even more by said characters. It's not just an "optimum strategy that can be reasonably overcome by other differing options", it's an optimum strategy that CANNOT be overcome by other differing options, except by MK himself, which would make the strategy the eye of an 'overcentralization' scenario. Wouldn't this pseudo-stalling strategy have to be dealt with if my scenario would come true? What if this scenario is true, and a large amount of players are revolving around the character because the strategy is THAT good, and that character is the only one that can come close to beating the strategy while running the least risks?
As for other examples of some non-infinite stalls, consider:
Snake endlessly C-4 teching under certain stages. Properly executed, Snake may not ever be in range for even a suicidal approach.
Sonic, similarly hanging out under certain stages in certain matchups with neutral-B.
Meta Knight using the dimensional cape's advanced technique(s) endlessly to prevent himself from being fightable.
Upon achieving one of the character freezing glitches (for example, certain situations with Diddy Kong's side-b), if you refuse to free the character by scoring a hit on him and instead wait the timer out, that would be stalling.
You're right, I forgot about those, thanks for pointing them out.
Still, think about it... Snake can be stopped from teching below stages by a nice amount of characters, and so can Sonic's neutralB, so I wouldn't consider those strategies to be as bad as MK's pseudo-stalls... All it takes is a character that can remove them from those positions, and there's quite a number of them that can do so effortlessly. The other examples are indeed stalling, and cannot be beaten by any single character, so I won't look into them.