@monorail I just watched the video and my gut feeling is that the argument, while interesting, is probably incorrect. The idea that we are simplifying the stage list to compensate for the increased complexity of the fuckass number of matchups is compelling but I can remember a lot of things that make me feel that the momentum towards a reduced stage list is something that was already happening in the community long before smash 4

Like, competitive Melee used to allow Poke Floats. And Brawl used to allow a lot of stages like Green Greens, Rainbow Cruise, Delfino Plaza, Halberd, but people would often complain about them. Generally jank stages were slowly removed (but then Ice Climbers became viable which was maybe worse). I remember cat and I eventually playing only a very small fraction of Brawl's stage list when we'd play friendlies because it was just more fun to not play on Lylat

I can think of multiple instances where a pre-smash 4 title initially allowed many stages and then slowly reduced the legal stage list over time because competitive players didn't like them (to be fair in Brawl's case, many of them overly benefitted Meta Knight which was often a justification)