The Great Stage Debate: Hazards off entire tournament?

[TheBuzzSaw]

I don't actually believe we should have hazards ON for tournaments. I'm just frustrated at the lost of several staple stages.

 

[Pyr]

That brings up an interesting thought, actually: What if I want to gentleman to hazards on Yoshi's Island? Would I simply not be allowed because it's not technically tournament legal in a hazards off format? Where would the line be drawn, if I'd be allowed in that case? Hazards on Great Cave of course crosses the line, but how about hazards on Fountain of Dreams?

*aside*
God ****ing **** Nintendo, why did it have to be a rule over a stage select screen toggle?

 

[DDRC]

I think most of us saw the hazard toggle as a godsend for competitive smash. It can only be a good thing, right? It will convert many previously banned stages to perfectly reasonable ones!

While everyone is busy discussing which hazard mode of which stages ought to be legal, there is an important discussion happening underneath: there is talk of leaving hazards off for the entirety of the tournament. The reason for this is to reduce chance of human error: the hazard toggle is tucked away in the rule settings; it is not a quickly accessible mode the same way Omega or Battlefield are.



--- THEBUZZSAW OPINION BEGINS HERE ---

Do we support the tossing of stages to protect a setting from having to change?

While I can empathize with TOs wanting to keep things simple, I feel this is a big mistake. We continue to neuter competitive play by insisting that players should never have to adapt to their surroundings. To be clear, I'm opposing the idea that we ought to (for example) have hazards off for stages like Smashville or Lylat. The slow moving platform on Smashville is great how it quietly changes the situation for both players. Sorry, you can't have your completely straightforward edge guard opportunity! You have to read the opponent going for the platform instead! Are we worried about... matches taking too long?

I'll just reiterate: this is not a thread about whether specific (hazard-enabled) stages are competitively viable; it's specifically about this notion of keeping the hazard toggle set to one thing and never changed.

Stage hazards should be toggled situationally because i would like to keep my pokemon stadium, dreamland and yoshis but also want other stages that would be good without hazards to be available

 

[WritersBlah]

That brings up an interesting thought, actually: What if I want to gentleman to hazards on Yoshi's Island? Would I simply not be allowed because it's not technically tournament legal in a hazards off format? Where would the line be drawn, if I'd be allowed in that case? Hazards on Great Cave of course crosses the line, but how about hazards on Fountain of Dreams?

To quote the Xanadu ruleset:

"Stage Agreement Clause
Players may select any LEGAL stage if they both agree on it. Players may not play on illegal stages or change the length of a set. If this is violated, both players will be subject to complete disqualification from the event."

So long as this ruling stays a tournament mainstay, you can kiss that ambition goodbye.

 

[Frihetsanka]

This illustrates pretty well why Smash Reddit cannot be trusted: A guy posts a really bad troll argument, expecting to get downvoted, BAM, almost 4k upvotes: https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/...so_many_tos_think_we_as_a_community/?sort=new

"So I want this thread, and its success, to be a testament to a single message: The community's wants for a competitive environment will not line up with what is best for a competitive environment because very, very few people here actually participate in said environment. TOs aren't infallible, but bandwagonning with a ****poster, simply because they share your message and can make an "impassioned speech," proves that some critical thinking should be employed.

Anyone who actually thought that menu navigation was the fundamental issue is a moron."

I wouldn't go so far to call someone a "moron", more like uninformed of the actual issues of mixed hazards.

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

I have more faith in Twitter these days. There seems to be some hot discussion going on there among high level players and TOs. I'm happy to see strong representation in opposition to hazards OFF for the entirety of tournaments. There is similar talk in my local scene's Facebook group.