This is where you're wrong. While obviously it's more complicated than this, in general the rule of making a game competitively viable is to remove as many usages of the RNG as possible. Where it is used, it should be inconsequential in the long run. The issue with Smash is that when the right item spawns right in front of you and provides you with an advantage, it can be game changing. In a competitive game, where the goal is straight up to win, this is not something the participants are going to pleased by. Especially when they're on the losing end. And neither will many of the viewers be pleased when the competitor they were supporting gets screwed out of a clearly deserved win because the RNG said so.Doctor Shemp wrote:There's also the mentality that all competition must have all luck stripped out of it which is again nonsense. There are many RTS games played at the highest level on random maps. These are predictable to the extent that the random map generation follows certain patterns and can be broadly predicted but are impossible to predict specifically. Therefore there is an element of luck. According to the Smash mindset, none of this is real competition. In a non-video game example, all Scrabble tournaments aren't real competitions either since there's luck involved in what letters you draw. The idea that competitions can't involve an element of luck and the idea that items and stage hazards require no skill at all are both complete nonsense.
Any time you use the RNG in a game that's intended to be played competitively you're leaving an opportunity for a close match to be thrown to one sides favor for something that's out of their control or, depending on the severity, for a not even close match to be turned around and for the clearly superior player to lose. This pisses off the player, this pisses off many of the viewers, and in the long run this harms the game's competitive appeal.
