Wow, this came out of nowhere. Nintendo just dropped version 8.1.0 of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which comes with a few improvements for the game's online mode. And those are certainly needed in times of a pandemic, where people are primarily playing Smash online. Of course you shouldn't expect wonders here, since they won't magically add servers, but there are some adjustments to the netcode, match-making and getting into Elite Smash.
In addition, this updates comes with a new stage: Small Battlefield. It's basically just Battlefield without the top platform, which makes it similar to Pokémon Stadium 2 without stage hazards, which is a stage that frequently gets picked in tournaments. But it's smaller and therefore even better suited for 1on1s.
I've been playing Smash more competitively for a while now and I've kept thinking that it would be nice to have a two platform variant for all the stages, similar to the Battlefield and Omega variants. Sakurai even mentioned on Twitter that they were considering this, but they weren't able to do this (as translated by PushDustin).
We can only speculate why this is, because technically all they need to do is to remove the top platforms from the Battlefield variants and shift the other two platforms slightly. But maybe it's because these variants need to be saved separately, which would cause a larger update (though it shouldn't be that large, since assets like textures or meshes can be reused), or because this would require lots of testing for over 100 new stages. Or it's because they would need to get permissions for the 3rd party stages... We don't know, but hopefully they will implement this in the next Super Smash Bros. game, because it would be nice to have.
They've also added the option to choose from any music on the four Super Smash Bros. stages (Battlefield, Small Battlefield, Big Battlefield and Final Destination), which is great. But it also completely ignores your "My Music" selection for these stages, where instead it goes over all your "My Music" settings, which is not so great, if you want to play these stages with classic Smash Bros. music only. Hopefully the random music selection for these stages will get fixed later on.
Speaking of random, for some reason they have added random selection buttons for Battlefield and Omega stages, which seems rather redundant, because you could simply press X and use the old random selection button before. The main advantage is that it prevents you from accidentally going for the wrong version, but that's about it. And together with the new Small Battlefield stage, this takes half of the potential empty slots on the stage select screen:
So, if they are going to add more stages beyond the 2nd Fighters Pass, then there are only three spaces left on this screen and a "Stages Pass" seems out of the question now. And this also makes the stage select screen arrangements differ between the normal Smash mode, Training mode and the stage select in the rule sets, which might be annoying, because finding stages is already confusing as it is...
However, what I like about this new arrangement is how it sorts things by pushing the first stage of a certain Smash era to the front. The stages from Super Smash Bros. Brawl now start at the fourth line with Delfino Plaza and the stages for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U start at the eighth line with Mushroom Kingdom U. And the "DLC era" starts in line 10 with the Super Mario Maker stage. This should make things a little bit easier and intuitive to find than before, even though a "sort by franchise" option is still dearly missed.
(Maybe they will also add something to Training Mode later, so it has the exact same arrangement. There could be two new versions of the Training stage for example.)
And while they were busy with this change to the stage select screen, they still haven't bothered with implementing a quick stage hazard toggle on it, which would be far more valuable than these random buttons. How hard could it be...?
Also, ideally you would be able to choose which stages appear for the
random Battlefield and Omega stages. This was a feature that Super Smash Bros. for Wii U had, but got axed in Ultimate for
its convoluted rule sets. But sometimes when I play with competitive
rule sets, I just want to go to a random Battlefield or Omega stage, but
then it puts me on Battlefield Smashville or Omega Pokémon Stadium 2
all the time, because it takes the from the limited pool of allowed
stages. And this makes these random options rather useless, because the main
reason to play these altered stage variants is because you don't want to
play the normal version of that stage anyway, where you likely will
have it disabled in the rule set.
At least this free update makes me more hopeful that they are going to do a bunch of free Echo Fighters next, maybe even a couple more stages, either as standalone paid DLC (similar to the Super Mario Maker stage on the Wii U and 3DS) or as another free addition, where they could bring some of the missing stages back (though, this would mess with the new arrangement). And with only three more open slots, it now feels more likely that they actually might consider filling the entire stage select screen.
PS: It's telling when the most exciting thing that has happened lately is a "new" stage for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. We seriously need a Nintendo Direct...
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