It's come to my attention that, despite high reports of lag, people have not been taking steps to reduce it. Some people have gone as far as asking the SSF2 Back Room to ban Lloyd from tournaments because his sword effects are known to be lag-inducing.

Yes, there are still optimization problems with the game that have yet to be addressed. But it's not all on the devs. Most of it is on you.
But when there is a way to minimize it, and people don't use it, that confuses me.

Look, I get it. Plain black backgrounds with no effects at all are kinda ugly and boring. You want the game to always look its best. But there is a time and a place to care about looks.
Those times and places are:

1. Friendly matches where nothing is on the line.
2. Viewing replays.

But please, not during a tournament. Not only will preventable lag cause the match to be unnecessarily frustrating for both you and your opponent, but lag can cause desyncs, or it can cause the replay of the match to not save properly, which can lead to the outcome of a match being declared invalid.

Which would you rather have; backgrounds and effects, or a clean, painless match where the outcome is certain? You can only pick one.

There's a reason that we in the Back Room unbanned stages like Final Destination, Dracula's Castle, and Pokémon Colosseum unlike in v0.9b, and that reason was because you, the end user, could now take steps to reduce the effects those stages would otherwise have on your computer's performance. But we're trusting you as competitors to actually take those steps. If you don't, that is harmful to not only your enjoyment of the match, but to the game as a whole. If instead of using the tools provided, you take other steps to avoid lag, such as gravitating towards specific, already effectless stages and declaring certain characters unfair, that unnaturally warps the meta.

Tournament organizers, I implore you to encourage this as well. Demand it if possible. Even if you think your computer is good enough, it's best to play it safe when it comes to competition.

There is no way to make this an enforceable rule for tournaments, but it shouldn't need to be. Lag that could have been avoided is its own punishment.

This isn't enforceable tho

I know that. That's why I'm not proposing it be a rule.
I'm just trying to… spread the word, in hopes that people will listen. Just like "don't smoke tobacco, even after you turn 18" isn't enforceable, but it's still best to try to get people to follow anyway.

The alternative is going the v0.9b route and banning lag-heavy stages again. And in this case, a character. And I don't think that will be a very popular move with anyone.

Having them demand it is still seen as forceful though, IMO. People are probably going to see that word and think of it as an imperative, no offense.

the damage display always cuts in and out on minuim settings

Yeah, Hud Fade turned off is quite a problem, although it can always be turned on.


But instead of putting settings to a Minimum, why not have a setting requirement that actually is good while still running at good speed?
sometimes Minimum settings actually lag as well, weird.

My personal advice is to first do Minimum, then turn on anything that significantly hampers your ability to play. For me that's hit effects and HUD fade; without those, I have a hard time playing my best.