I have read numerous of BPC's posts, and he's a purist. It really is that simple. Everything to him hinges on that the game state shouldn't be changed from what it was. Sirlin, who for simply writing a book, is considered to be a gaming theory god. His book is written about 2d fighting games, predominately about Street Fighter. I've read it, and that's the realm of knowledge that he pulls from. Smash isn't a fighting game, it's a completely different genre of game.
And yet, for some reason, we are able to make it into a fighting game without actually banning anything. Imagine that. Just not a very good one. So we then go forwards and we ban what we
absolutely have to. I'm not that much of a purist. I recognize that it is possible to make the game better by banning things. The game is a better game (presuming the way we play it; stock, timer, 1v1, no items) if you ban certain stages like Temple, due to skill-mitigating factors that make the learning curve necessary to win on those stages next to non-existent, and it is not only better, but it is better by a
ridiculous margin. It's like banning Akuma in SF2T-the game is not playable the way we play it with this element legal, but without this and a few other elements (also all stages), it becomes a legitimate and very fun game. And I don't think anyone here is going to follow the purist creed of "if you have to edit it so much to make it competitive, find a better game", mostly because, well,
we really, really like smash. There are no other games that even remotely fill the niche smash fills, unlike fighters like street fighter or tekken, where they're all pretty much the same basic concept; if street fighter 5 turns out to be a total flop, you can either just go back to super street fighter 4, wait for Super Street Fighter 5 where they fix the issues, or play a completely different and yet shockingly similar fighter like Guilty Gear, Blazblue, or Tekken. We do not have that option, so we ban what we absolutely have to. Let's talk about that.
Circle camping is a big no-no, and it works on a bunch of stages. So from our banned stages, we have:
75m
Hanenbow
Hyrule Temple
Mario Bros.
Spear Pillar
The Summit
New Pork City
These stages
need to be banned to keep the game even remotely competitive, and I support that sentiment. After all, "brawl without 75m, temple, and co" is a
much better game than "purist brawl". I don't think anyone will ever contest this. These stages are gone for good, although we should consider opening them for doubles play, seeing as the broken tactic just simply does not work when there are two people.
Now we have "excessive randomness". If you can't react to it (pictochat has hazard startup and a safe zone, norfair has a ton of hazard startup), and there's no safe way to avoid it, and it's not only arbitrarily random but also severely game-changing (think randomly getting a final smash), then it's definitely excessive randomness. Anything else is debatable, but mostly will fall under "you can react to it, and that is considered a critical skill in this game" (a point you're going to have trouble debating against).
Wario Ware
One stage. Warioware is no good for competition. There is no avoiding the randomness, it is clearly game-changing (you get a star and your opponent is up **** creek. You get a mushroom and your opponent is dead or you're up **** creek).
Then we get to the part where we are a little less obvious. Specifically walkoff (and wall) camping. In a game with things like chaingrabs, walkoffs are a problem. DDD can kill 2/3rds of the cast with a grab on any of these stages. You can lock your opponent against a wall with things like jabs or dtilts or low-knockback throws (ike fthrow, anyone?), dealing them immense amounts of damage or in some cases just outright killing them.
On walkoffs, it's a little shaky to utter purists because there
is still competitive gameplay possible on such stages. However, it reduces the "viable cast" to about 1/3rd of its size, or rather would if the viable cast wasn't already very limited by the physics of the game; in such a case, it gets rid of almost the entire viable cast. It leaves only the members of the top and high tiers that DDD can't CG. It's as if DDD could infinite almost everyone in the game. The issue here is trading actual choice (the ability to select something) for viable choice (the ability to select something without ****** yourself). Real purists would never do this unless you're trading a tiny bit of actual choice for a lot of viable choice (like in circle camping and Akuma)... The question is, how much are we talking here?
The second issue with walkoffs is walkoff camping. It's a percieved issue that I will gladly challenge. It makes characters with good grab games great, but the main thing it does is raise risk/reward obscenely. Is this necessarily bad? See the mario circuit thread for details. It's bad, but I really doubt it's as bad as its made out to be. In some cases, it's not even a factor. But to credit this, let's throw out all the stages with permanent walkoffs.
Bridge of Eldin
Flat Zone 2
Mushroomy Kingdom I
Mushroomy Kingdom II (might as well be)
Mario Circuit
Green Hill Zone
Shadow Moses (also might as well have a permanent walkoff)
(Distant planet, YI(M), and onett are all exceptions due to: the rain on distant planet and the main platform being different from the walkoff one, the slope screwing with both CGs and ledgecamping, and the cars interfering respectively)
Then we have walls. The risk-reward on walls is also, well, similar to walkoffs, except you have to work much harder for it-trapping your opponent against a wall if you don't have a CG is actually quite hard. You actually have to make a case against these. And in some cases, this advantage disappears (like in Onett, where you have to give up your attempt at wall infiniting due to cars). I'd argue that any stage that is banned exclusively for this needs slightly more justification. This is where we reach the things that are very, very debatable. Most of the community thinks its justified. I'm on the fence, personally (again, onett gets a pass due to cars)
Corneria
...that's the only stage banned because of it? Whoops.
And now, we reach the stages where I'm left scratching my head thinking "why the hell is this banned?".
Green Greens
Onett
Port Town Aero Dive
Skyworld
Yoshi's Island (Pipes)
Luigi's Mansion
Distant Planet
Rumble Falls
Big Blue
No really, why do most events ban these stages?
Regardless of what term you use 'turn off' the end result is the same. There is no reason to dive into the semantics of what term should be used. At the end of the day, Items aren't going to be used in most tournaments because they are off/banned. We are no different from a group of six friends that have gotten together and decided that the best way to play smash is with Ganon banned, or any other arbitrary thing they have decided to do. We attempt to justify out choices, and have channels to have the right decisions made, but at the end of the day we are a small portion of a larger community playing the game a different way than most. Competitive Brawl, isn't the game that's on the cd. It's our little game that we made up, and decided to make a world-wide game type.
The difference between turning something off and banning it is essentially the difference between flipping a switch and hacking the game to remove the item in question. There is a switch built in to the game to decide which items are on, when, if at all. There is no switch built into the game that will stop you from selecting 75m. We could hack one in, but it's changing the game. Items are not banned, they are off. It's like saying time and coin mode are banned. No, they're just not on. Stock is. It's an in-game setting, and the designer wanted us to be able to play it that way.
We ban stages though. The closest thing to banning a stage is hacking the game and removing that stage from the SSS. Of course, as said above, sometimes it's a good idea. Sometimes we have to. Other times it's not very justified and I wonder "why are we banning this stage". In such moments, there'd either be a very good explanation, or we're all scrubs.
Also, good analogy: consulting sirlin's blog about smash is like asking your "hausartzt" (basically in germany the doctor you go to when you get sick and for general things) how to deal with your ruptured inner ear. He may or may not be able to help you, but he can sure as hell point you in the right direction.