So far I'm with you on this matter; but couldn't the same be said about your addition of custom stages? What exactly presented a problem so great that you felt the absolute need to add new stages to the mix?
The inevitable fate of any Smash game is that it will lose stages over time. Until now, we have not had the ability to add stages. Keep this in mind.
At the start of Brawl, I was part of a group of smashers that were against using "random". This was a standard at the start of Brawl, carried over from Melee. "Random" always had the issue of corrupting sets by giving one person a good starter stage. Fox vs. Marth can go one way on PS1, and another on Battlefield (Melee).
To fix this, we came up with stage striking. I don't recall who thought of it first, but we all discussed it and refined it and found a few truths to it:
1. The more stages, the better
2. The stage list needs to be fair for every matchup
3. It has to be an odd number for an even number of strikes.
We started off with 9. Unfortuantely, Delfino was one of the 9 and didn't have a replacement. Due to several walls, water, weird edges that spacies don't snap to, shield pressure games that land you in water (free hit and/or spike) and walk-off ledges, we found Delfino often showed an irregular skillset for victory. In short, it was a counterpick.
So then we had 8. 8 is an even number. We move it down to 7 by getting rid of Castle Siege or Halberd, and all is gravy, right?
You know where it goes from here. People ***** about D3 having a walk-off CG on Castle siege and its gone. People didn't like Halberd's hazards, and its gone. This continues until we only have flat stages with platforms: BF, FD, SV, YI, and then LC or PS1 depending on where you are.
This itself is not an issue until you realize that now the intent of starter stages is broken. The intent was to make sure characters would find an agreeable stage, not a good stage or bad stage, in every matchup. Rather than having to cross your fingers like in random, you could actually get a decent stage every time! But now, certain characters started off on a counterpick. If you're playing a character who does well on SV, BF, and FD, you're at a disadvantage at the beginning of the set.
It was no surprise to me when Falco and Diddy rose in the ranks while other good characters, such as Wario, failed to have the same success. The starter stages helped determine their fate; this is in addition to removing a wide variety of CP stages in other areas. While Wario has aerial mobility and a wide range of combative options, Falco and Diddy have a very limited moveset. This is why Falco and Diddy do horrible on many CP stages but Wario can actually do better on them; Wario has the attributes to fit the bill.
Adding and removing stages inadvertantly determines what characters are good.
I agree with the removing of Delfino as a starter, and I think the removal was done in good taste. Other removals weren't to my liking, but I can understand where they're coming from.
However, this leaves us with a broken game. Our characters are chosen not necessarily by their merit but by how well they do on certain stages. How would you feel if our starters were Lylat Cruise, Rainbow Cruise, and Pirate Ship? Would your character do as well there? I'm sure G&W mains would be dancing nonstop for weeks if it were.
So how to fix it? Add stages!
I anticipated this would be an issue when Brawl first came out and tested custom stages with other players. I ran side tournaments, held MMs, friendlies abound, recorded matches and put them on youtube, etc., etc., and collected as much data as I could. I found similar results when compared to the normal tournaments and concluded that even if custom stages weren't necessary, they could be used and retain similar results.
From this, I know that custom stages can be added to freshen up an event. Make it unique, make it fun. It's a possibility that is determined solely by your audience.
But as my goal is to determine other things, I needed more variety and a bigger set of data. I gave the stages to everyone in my circuit group and had them test them out but received few comments.
Since hosting one "real" tournament with custom stages would be pointless (too small, not enough data), I decided to add it to the circuit. After the circuit, I'm done with custom stages unless I see a drastic need for them....
but people that hate the "janky" stages like Green Greens, PS2's transformations, and other such things should be happy to know that these stages can be remade in the stage maker. We don't have to actually remove stages anymore, and could instead simply FIX them. The data I'm collecting from this event will help us determine if a problem that has shown its head in Melee and, in some regions, Brawl, can be fixed.
(and the switch of FD from neutral to counterpick)?
FD is one of the most common counterpicks in the game amongst the top tier characters. This results in the saturation of FD use as a CP in tournament (if FD was the primary CP for all the bottom tiers, we'd never see it). As such, FD being such a strong counterpick for these characters but not having an opposite on the stage list means certain characters force an "auto strike", similar to how it'd be if we had Halberd, Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar, or other such stages as starters. While FD
could be a starter, it would only be rightfully so in the case that there were other extreme stages in the mix that helped balance it out. If FD and brinstar were both stages on the list, you'd find that most matchups involving the characters that care about the stages greatly would see them both removed first.
In short:
Our stage list determines our character tier list, most especially starter stages. While I do'nt have a problem with hazards, mayn people do, and custom stages can remove them. Our current popular starter list is flawed in such a way that it has rocketted the popularity of two characters in the US while other characters with similar potential have been mostly untouched. Custom stages can make brand new starter stages that help balance it out for the entire roster, and at the very least the upper tier.
That being said, why are you against it since it is taking the same approach that you have been: Come to the tourny, prove it's broken, abuse it and win money, and it shall get removed. (Couldn't this, in fact, be taken as one of the 'experiments' you suggest?)
This would be acceptable if it was solving a problem rather than a potential problem.
j/k of course