You know, I've been thinking and experimenting a little bit, and I actually think WarioWare should be bumped up a bit to a tentative Counterpick status. Yes, you can be powered up by the stage and the chance for power-ups can be random, but given that you have to make tactical decisions whether to try to attempt to get those power-ups by attempting the minigames (as opposed to items, which simply spawn whenever with no control from the player), I don't think the randomness should be a factor. Any more so than the randomness associated with attempting Peach's forward smash, Game & Watch's Judgment, or DeDeDe's Waddle Dee Toss.
More to the point, I don't think the power-ups are nearly as gamebreaking as they're made out to be. Considering what a defensive, campy game Brawl is anyway, any player worth their salt should be able to defend themselves for a few seconds against invincibility. And being giant-sized can be a double-edged sword.
It just doesn't seem to have that huge of an impact of the overall outcome on matches from what I've seen.
I know that the chances are pretty good that this will fall of deaf ears, but I really think that this could qualify for Counterpick/Ban-optional at the very least.
Edit:
In Brawl, they're two sides to the same coin.
wut, no.
-A map that racks damage for not being under an umbrella
-A map that can pitfall you and get you killed from a charged smash
-A map where an unpredictable car that comes from either side, can stall, and can jump can kill you
-A map that has arrows that can kill you
-Walk off ledges on all special maps
But those I'd say are minor compared to the fact that you can get a Starman for completing one of the missions. Starman is broken. Period. One character is completely invincible for 10 seconds while the other has to run, sheild, and dodge constantly to try and not to get hit.
And becoming huge can also be broken if your opponent didn't get a boost at all. Just imagine an MK opponent becoming giant, and you basically can't avoid his dsmash or tornado because of the ridiculous range.
The map should undoubtedly be banned. It's too random. The combination of the randomness of events that can kill you, combined with the fact that they all have walk off ledges without platforms, combined with the fact that players get rewarded arbitrarily for situational things, and the rewards are broken (Starman>huge>nothing) all make a gigantic banned map.
At least with other counterpick stages, you can avoid the things. You can avoid getting hit by the lava on Norfair, you can avoid getting hit by a missle on Pictochat, you can avoid getting hit by a bomb on Pirate Ship, etc. You can't avoid your opponent getting a starman or becoming huge.
WarioWare=Banned.
Also, with the whole restrict vs. liberal, extremes in both ways are bad. If we only have neutral stages and then just Lylat and Halberd after that, the similarity of each stage benefits camping characters and basically takes away counterpicking from the equation. We want people to be able to counterpick. I want, as a Diddy, to be able to take a campy Snake to Rainbow Cruise, a stage where he can't camp. If we restrict all of the stages, a certain strategy benefits everywhere, and counterpicking is completely dead.
Being completely liberal with stages is also horrible though. Stages like WarioWare, 75M, etc., add a HUGE randomness factor to a game to the point where it's near impossible or just downright impossible to avoid things, and then the stage ends up killing you. You can't control if your opponent gets a starman, as aforementioned. Stages like Shadow Moses Island mean that people get wall-infinited like crazy, and only benefit people who can kill off the top.
But really, any stage that isn't stupid with walk-off ledges, permanent, unavoidable walls, and random unavoidable factors, should be counterpicks. Norfair should be a counterpick; the lava is avoidable, just like Brinstar. Just because there's more places where lava can come in, doesn't mean it should kill you. It's easy to see a giant wall of lava coming to you in any direction, the lava that sprays can be sheilded, and the lava that covers the entire level can be air or spotdodged.
On Norfair, yes you have to adapt to the environment, but it's not to an extreme; you just have to be aware of the lava. And Norfair gives some fighting styles a plus (aerial characters) while giving some fighting styles a nerf (campy or ground control characters), which is the ENTIRE POINT OF COUNTERPICKING.
The current stage list of counterpick stages is pretty good. We shouldn't ban stages like Luigi's Mansion, Norfair, Brinstar, Rainbow Cruise, Pirate Ship, Japes (despite how much I hate the stage), etc. Some stages like Pokemon Stadium 2 really shouldn't even be considered banned; yes the stage is random and doesn't really benefit anyone, but it doesn't kill anyone at all (I personally can't see anyone ever using PS2 though, but it sitll shouldn't be banned). Stages like Distant Planet, Skyworld, and Green Greens can be debated; personally I'd put all of them on banned, but having them as counterpick/banned is understandable.
Really, how consice a stage list is can be up to the TO. Some TOs like more liberal stagelists and will put all of the debatable stages on counterpicks. Some TOs don't like that, and will just put the know-for-sure stages on their legal list. But as a general rule, as long as the stages hazards are easily avoidable and the stage doesn't have stupid things like permanent walk-off-ledges, permanent walls, etc., the stage should be legal on the official SBR list.
tl;dr: I repeated myself a lot.
but I wonder if "the most competitive" is actually the full reason why the better players stick to the neutrals.
