Sakurai has gone on record saying he's not happy with what Melee turned into, as its competitive play was too inaccessible to new players and cut too many stages and features than he would have liked. I think that to Sakurai, Final Destination with no items is all that competitive play really is. The problem isn't that competitive players don't want too many elements in their matches though, but that all of the different factors need to be balanced and have as little random elements as possible to ensure that competitive matches do what they're actually supposed to do; determine who is the best. If Sakurai made an effort to make item spawnpoints and times nonrandomized, I'm sure the competitive playerbase would try to integrate it into their matches.
Of course, he could have chosen Final Destination as the standard for competitive balance, and I suppose there's not much wrong with that, but some characters are inherently going to have more of a use for fall-through platforms than others. If he had to choose one stage to represent competitive play, I think Smashville would have been the best pick. To date I think it's probably the least biased neutral stage in any smash game. That and Hyrule Castle, maybe. And the idea of competitive FFAs still bothers me.... I guess we'll just have to see how it pans out I guess. It probably won't be too bad, but it won't be a replacement for the advanced rulesets the community will come up with.
Of course, he could have chosen Final Destination as the standard for competitive balance, and I suppose there's not much wrong with that, but some characters are inherently going to have more of a use for fall-through platforms than others. If he had to choose one stage to represent competitive play, I think Smashville would have been the best pick. To date I think it's probably the least biased neutral stage in any smash game. That and Hyrule Castle, maybe. And the idea of competitive FFAs still bothers me.... I guess we'll just have to see how it pans out I guess. It probably won't be too bad, but it won't be a replacement for the advanced rulesets the community will come up with.