Nintendo and competitive Smash.

[ScottyMcGee]

I think Sakurai/Nintendo started making some of those changes just for the sake of giving in a little, you know? They added just enough to be like "Fine. Here." They started the whole "For Glory" thing in Wii U to cater to competitive players but at the same time only did so by introducing battlefield and omega versions of the stages. That was their basic understand of "competitive play". Like "Okay here. Flat stage. That's what you want, right? RIGHT????" It's the equivalent to a boomer dad being like "Is this the Sony Game Boy thing you want???"

I think since then they've been stuck between a rock and a hard place between sticking to their guns and pleasing the fans. At the end of the day, they're also a company that still needs to make money. They don't want to be another Konami or something. I don't really think there's such a thing as an innately "casual fighting game". It depends how you play it that makes it casual or competitive. You can create as much BS you want in your game, people will always make their own rules and say "Okay we're only counting it if we're doing it THIS way".

[DarkZero]

this is why we should all switch to rival of aether instead

[CaptHayfever]

Meanwhile, there are people like me, who genuinely love the more casual game, but can't find enough people to play with us who aren't obsessed with forcing a square peg into a round hole.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[ScottyMcGee]

I'm going to host a wi-fi tournament centered around custom stages only if you wanna join. I wanted to set up a quarantine tourney online with friends. I thought about making it "fun" instead of just a usual tourney to get mad at for the wi-fi lag. Any custom stage is legal. Anyone is welcome. Probably set it up next weekend?

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

Sakurai flip-flops between wanting to make an actual fighting game and just party games in a fighting format. That doesn't work, it's an unavoidable fact that it's an inherently competitive format and there's really nothing that can be done to change that, proof being Brawl where they just slowed everything to a crawl and added tripping as a monkey wrench nobody liked.

The confusing thing to me is that it doesn't actually matter where the skill ceiling is to a casual so why lower it for them? If there's any significant skill component, which even Brawl had, a more skilled and experienced player will still thrash a casual just as badly as if it were Melee. So that means as long as the game is fun to play you may as well increase that skill ceiling to appeal to hardcore fans because you're always going to have casuals who like it because it's actually fun to play anyway. It's not an either/or thing.

[CaptHayfever]

^^I didn't think custom stages could be used online?

^It's not an issue of the skill ceiling. It's an issue of frustration at never getting to use a massive portion of the game's content.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

The majority of players just battle on their favorite stages with most items on, right? Most of the time I played SSB nobody I knew wanted to take items off and got bored of Final Destination.

[ScottyMcGee]

^^I didn't think custom stages could be used online?

Oh yeah, totally! I play custom stages with friends and random people online all the time. When custom stages were first a thing in Ultimate, I made a public arena titled "Show me ur custom stage". Lots of. Interesting ones. Before they started banning things.