We need to use this opportunity to escape from the past.

[digiholic]

It's no secret that Smash Bros has been trying to make lightning strike twice since Melee, and the competitive ruleset of the following games definitely show that. We've been using basically the same tournament rules for nearly a decade and a half. With the new changes in Smash Ultimate, we need to consider possibly changing the way the game runs. With hazards toggleable, there's a potential to have a massive list of legal stages. We need to seriously redefine what makes a stage legal, and how we pick them. Legal/Counterpick distinction worked okay when the list was maybe five to ten stages, but with a lot more stages, then dividing them into fully "common" and "uncommon" means there's an incentive to avoid practicing on the counterpick stages, and leads to less stage variety, and potentially less character diversity.

If you're running a tournament early on in the release of the game, please consider using Full List Stage Striking. This community has historically been very unwilling to change once things have settled, so it's important that we make sure that we start this one off right.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I swear if we have another five years of Smashville ahead of us I'm going to scream...

I'm not entirely sold on the idea of flossing. I think Smash 4 tasked players with enough matchup knowledge from the large character roster. So having to keep tabs on how other characters benefit from unique stages adds even more homework for the serious player. I appreciate Battlefield forms a lot so that we get more opportunities to listen to the game's good music. However, we seen how these stages can differ in shape under the ledge in Smash 4 and it will take a lot of research to confirm which forms are true to Battlefield and FD's dimensions.

For the short term however, I think Flossing will result in a more informed community regarding stages when it's crunch time to decide a legal ruleset. Smash 4 really took the easy way out with its legal roster of returning stages.