Memorizing every possible outcome of Skyloft is unreasonable. That's why you don't do that. You learn the stage's mechanics and learn to calculate what will happen. I see Skyloft moving in a particular way and make a calculation whether it's going to hit and where. I've memorized essentially nothing other than the geography of Skyloft itself, and I already knew that from playing Skyward Sword. I'm not always right because I'm still refining my method (heck, I just SD'd today in a friendly from incorrectly interpreting which landing zone I was going to!), but I tend to be pretty good at it. Predictable doesn't necessarily mean that the optimum way to predict is memorizing a large list. Of your two arguments I think both are valid and have to be considered in context of each other (it's possible to predict, and even if a given player can't, it's not that problematic for a player who can't or who makes mistakes in predicting).
Let me reframe the omega situation beyond my excellent memory which is definitely not a common attribute I'll just admit. In order to play with maximum player advantage on all of the omegas, what do you need to know before the match starts? If you are counterpicking, you need to know the one omega you prefer the most. You don't need to know the attributes of all of the others in that situation, only of the one that is best for your character. Perhaps you might need to keep that one and specifically Omega Lylat Cruise in mind since you maybe have a read that the opponent is bad at recovering but for some reason might not want default Lylat Cruise (or it was banned by a personal stage ban). Either way, you don't need to know much. From the other side, you can quickly see the shape of every omega at match start. You need to know that, for reasons I don't fully understand, you can't wall jump on Kalos. More or less everything else you can figure when you see it in the first few seconds of the match. You only have a problem if the particular nature of the omega would have made you counterpick a different character, but how often will that really come up? "Oh, I'm using Luigi, but I would have counterpicked Villager if I knew Omega Woolly World was a walled omega" does not seem like something any actual players are likely to say (especially since the less informed players disproportionately do not have dual mains with nuanced situational preferences). I find it pretty easy as a player to keep track of all of the fine details, but even for a player who doesn't, not knowing is unlikely to translate into a real disadvantage. Johnny first tournament, I'd point out, also probably plays a lot more For Glory than serious tournament types and is disproportionately likely to have a lot of experience on omegas, and Johnny also probably wants to pick his favorite omega for the background or music and not for strategic reasons (a few weeks ago, I watched a player at his first tournament counterpick Omega Castle Siege and then say "I just really like the Fire Emblem music", does happen for real).
To sum it up, my position here is that I think you're overstating the knowledge barrier these stages impose. You really just need to figure out the basic mechanics and geographies of the legal stages, something I did in the first week I owned the game, and from there you can figure out the rest as you go and you'll be fine. There are times in which knowing specific super fine details is awfully handy, but it's not really a big problem to figure it all out as you go. After about 20 hours of total play, if you play with every legal stage on random (even if you definition of legal is loose!), you should know enough about all of them to be very comfortable on them in a tournament setting; by then you've played at least 10 games on every stage which is really more than enough to know what you need to know. I know not everyone has 40 hours a week to spend (and I certainly don't do anywhere near that!), but if you haven't found the time to spend even 20 hours ever on the game, I'm not sure it's reasonable to say you should be winning a whole lot nor could you really since at that level you probably don't even know what all of the opposing characters can do which is going to lead to some nasty blindsides that really will outdo anything poor stage knowledge could cause.
Let me reframe the omega situation beyond my excellent memory which is definitely not a common attribute I'll just admit. In order to play with maximum player advantage on all of the omegas, what do you need to know before the match starts? If you are counterpicking, you need to know the one omega you prefer the most. You don't need to know the attributes of all of the others in that situation, only of the one that is best for your character. Perhaps you might need to keep that one and specifically Omega Lylat Cruise in mind since you maybe have a read that the opponent is bad at recovering but for some reason might not want default Lylat Cruise (or it was banned by a personal stage ban). Either way, you don't need to know much. From the other side, you can quickly see the shape of every omega at match start. You need to know that, for reasons I don't fully understand, you can't wall jump on Kalos. More or less everything else you can figure when you see it in the first few seconds of the match. You only have a problem if the particular nature of the omega would have made you counterpick a different character, but how often will that really come up? "Oh, I'm using Luigi, but I would have counterpicked Villager if I knew Omega Woolly World was a walled omega" does not seem like something any actual players are likely to say (especially since the less informed players disproportionately do not have dual mains with nuanced situational preferences). I find it pretty easy as a player to keep track of all of the fine details, but even for a player who doesn't, not knowing is unlikely to translate into a real disadvantage. Johnny first tournament, I'd point out, also probably plays a lot more For Glory than serious tournament types and is disproportionately likely to have a lot of experience on omegas, and Johnny also probably wants to pick his favorite omega for the background or music and not for strategic reasons (a few weeks ago, I watched a player at his first tournament counterpick Omega Castle Siege and then say "I just really like the Fire Emblem music", does happen for real).
To sum it up, my position here is that I think you're overstating the knowledge barrier these stages impose. You really just need to figure out the basic mechanics and geographies of the legal stages, something I did in the first week I owned the game, and from there you can figure out the rest as you go and you'll be fine. There are times in which knowing specific super fine details is awfully handy, but it's not really a big problem to figure it all out as you go. After about 20 hours of total play, if you play with every legal stage on random (even if you definition of legal is loose!), you should know enough about all of them to be very comfortable on them in a tournament setting; by then you've played at least 10 games on every stage which is really more than enough to know what you need to know. I know not everyone has 40 hours a week to spend (and I certainly don't do anywhere near that!), but if you haven't found the time to spend even 20 hours ever on the game, I'm not sure it's reasonable to say you should be winning a whole lot nor could you really since at that level you probably don't even know what all of the opposing characters can do which is going to lead to some nasty blindsides that really will outdo anything poor stage knowledge could cause.
![[Deuce]](/data/avatars/l/34/34711.jpg?1423154415){kind=avatar}
