Which of the iconic obstacles would you replace?

[dakohosu]

Which of the most iconic Sasuke obstacles would you personally want to get rid of/think are overplayed? For reference the ones I’m referring to specifically are ones that have appeared in at least half of all competitions:

- Spider Walk
- Wall Lift
- Cliffhanger
- Salmon Ladder
- Warped Wall
- Pipe Slider

Personally I’d want to keep the Spider Walk, Cliffhanger, Wall Lift, and Warped Wall but modify them all. The Wall Lift is an iconic end to Stage 2 but that doesn’t mean it can’t be tinkered with. I’d personally block off the bottom completely and force competitors to lift the walls with like 2cm handholds or something. The Warped Wall is also a mainstay but is getting quite long in the tooth so I think could be raised a couple of feet or so. And no, by modifying the Cliffhanger I don’t mean make it even harder. If it were up to me, I’d get rid of all the crazy transitions (because it’s honestly the culprit for 90% of the predictable fails) and replace it with maybe an elongated Cliffhanger Kai straight into Vertical Limit. Unpopular opinion I know but I’m just tired of everyone failing the 180 transitions, some 5-6 times without clearing. I’d also keep the Spider Walk but introduce a version where the walls move outwards and inwards. That’s never been tried before and I think it could catch a fair few competitors out, especially those that try to recklessly speed through it.

The Salmon Ladder and Pipe Slider can go imo. I feel like at this point every possible iteration of Salmon Ladder has been tried and tested and competitors train for it so aggressively that it would definitely be a huge shock to find out that it’s no longer there, maybe replaced by something like the Giant Ring Swing but an ascending version. The Pipe Slider is far too long in the tooth and is an underwhelming end to such a brutal Stage 3. They need to bring back the Flying Bar in its initial format; it’s never been attempted on Sasuke in its original form yet is used by pretty much every international show.

[subtleagent]

I could honestly stand to see the Wall Lift go. Yes I understand why they made it so the walls fall down slowly, but it's just not interesting to watch anymore. No one really seems to have problems on it anymore and with the fast dropping gone there's no longer the suspense of timing out.

And yeah, the Salmon Ladder is at this point second nature. They have one in the final so it kind of makes Stage 2's redundant.

One not mentioned here that I REALLY want to see scrapped is the Reverse Conveyor. It's at this point useless and they're too scared of injury to put on a full conveyor.

[dakohosu]

What would you replace the Wall Lift with though? It needs to be equally as exciting as the last stand where the competitor is trying to scramble to the exit before time runs out. But yeah agreed, unless time is running critically low the obstacle has become quite boring and ever since 28, competitors tend to take it much more leisurely cos of the Backstream making it harder as well as the lenient time limit.

Ah yeah the Reverse Conveyer has actually been in more than half the competitions lol. It did kind of make sense after the Backstream as the competitor's whole body was already exhausted so what better way to subject them to an even more gruelling fast-paced full body exercise, as well as the wetness making it much harder. But recently it's done s*** all in terms of damage. Again though, what would you replace it with? It's kind of limiting given that any replacement will undeniably follow the Backstream (I've basically accepted at this point that it's going to stay) so obstacles like the Metal Spin or Roulette Row are out of the question because of slippery wet hands which would make it literally impossible. Again another one of the many reasons the Backstream sucks a**.

[azn]

Quad Steps - The current iteration isn't iconic by any means, but they are derived by the Godantobi, which produced some crazy fails during it's run, and one step away from being the Rokudantobi, which was the first obstacle during the early shin era and during the end stages of the era before Nagano's kanzen. It's essentially a blank canvas to just mess around with, add a rope and it's the step slider, add curvature and it's the dome steps (just don't touch them with your hands morimoto) and add a bunch of logs at different angles and you got the ever so underrated twelve timbers, it's modern brother however is just wider, more padded and way more easier. Once in a blue moon does it do anything and if run by non speedsters like Morimoto, then it's a slow start to the stage. The transition to the rolling hill is the only hard bit about, but it's the rolling hill doing most of the work.

Alternative - Shrinking Steps, which in concept are essentially the poles on the Fishbone, just without the motorized spike things. So really they could just do a rehash of the shrinking steps by making them the same design but have them in a similar height to the fishbone poles. In any event, it's a faster version of the Step Slider but harder to manipulate, if you lose your balance or misstep and slip off or pull a Lee in SK27, then your toast.

Other than that, I would modify or move most of the obstacles mentioned. Move the Warped Wall back to it's original position of second to last obstacle. I'd much rather see a guy race against time by struggling to climb a rope or climb the lumberjack climb than a guy sitting for ages resting before going up the wall, and in some cases taking too much time on the resting bit, only for them botching the climb.

I actually wouldn't mind a passing wall concept to return, but maybe instead of splitting the walls normally, have the split on an angle or something? I guess? In terms of the Wall Lift, if it ain't broke don't fix it but unfortunately it's caused injuries and now what they got are three walls that really want to plonk back down, but can't, and it's lead to mixed feelings. I personally would be fine with that concept or just them adding more walls for fun, or maybe make some crazy tackle machine, wall lift hybrid or just put the tackle before the wall lift.

The backstream is a waste of space and all of our time

I do wanna see the Salmon Ladder in the third stage at some point in it's life on SASUKE, and since ANW has made more interesting salmon ladder variants it's very possible to see that. Personally I'd like it if it was this "Super Salmon Ladder" and then a direct transition into the flying bar to complete the third stage, and if they did use the pipe slider, well then I guess it better be one long af jump to the platform.

Also modifying the rule so that the cliffhanger can be done like everywhere else besides japan, facing towards the ledge instead of doing a 180 jump. In all honesty I don't see them making a cliffhanger without a transition anytime soon (though it would be a miracle if they did) but the least they could do is modify that rule. It's pointless considering it's been done in other ninja shows where they have a cliffhanger with jump, ANW being the most notable one, plus it's been done on SASUKE before, though by Dorescheru, unfortunately. If the rule changes, Sato and Hioki could legit have a chance at clearing the cliffhanger, making their runs less predictable. They don't need to think about where the ledge is when they can see the ledge before transitioning.

[subtleagent]

Kaiten Bashira. It was never attempted in KUNOICHI 1 and it would be perfect for anyone who was wet and would be sliding around. Also with the Rolling Log it'd double the dizziness factor.

Tempted to add the Unstable Bridge in it's place since not only would putting it later make it deadlier, but it would also be hard with wet hands. Perhaps too hard and that's why I'm not entirely sure.

[salt]

I can think of one last iteration of the salmon ladder that may or may not be a good idea: Crooked rungs that you need to turn the bar for as you go up or down. After that, it can go.

[sasukeninjawarrior]

Maybe for Salmon ladder we redesign it so that instead of it being in place, we replace it by having rungs on rope instead of it being a solid platform, which causes the salmon ladder to be unstable. I feel it would be a fresh idea for salmon ladder.

[dakohosu]

I'm honestly impartial when it comes to whether the first obstacle is a step obstacle or not. Either way, I'd personally rather it actually be fairly difficult just so that the joke competitors are eliminated as early as possible so we have more time for the stronger competitors. 38's Stage 1 was dreadful in that the first half of the course was too easy so we got so many novices reaching the Dragon Glider where they had no chance whatsoever. The Quad Steps+Rolling Hill combo definitely has to go though. The most recent steps are so wide and you're allowed to use your hands so it's literally a case of slow and steady wins the race which makes it so boring to watch. By that regard the Shrinking Steps is a genuinely good idea as it penalizes complacency, but I'd controversially like to have the Rolling Escargot as the first obstacle. It's appropriately hard to ween out the joke competitors and it hampers competitors' judgment due to dizziness, but maybe this is too similar an idea to the Rolling Log in Stage 2 idk.

And sasukeninjawarrior I'm not sure you realise how hard that would be to have the rungs on ropes. It's basically impossible given that the ropes sway backwards and forwards inconsistently. If we have to have a Salmon Ladder I'd like to see the return of the Swap Salmon Ladder but without the motorised rungs and without the bulls**t DQ rule. Just have it so if you fumble a transition you have to go back downwards and redo the swap transitions up until that point. That would be cool as failed transitions would result in a penalty of another 2-3 transitions rather than just 1, resulting in a likely failure anyway rather than just flat out disqualifying a competitor.

[ArbuthnotBlob]

For me, I'm a very beige person and I would honestly keep them all xD

But if I had to choose, I'd put a 100% no-kill protection on the Pipe Slider and Spider Walk, and maybe scrap Salmon Ladder, as I honestly don't know how much else they can do to keep it fresh in S2 - I do love it in the final though!

[Ninja Relaxer]

The Spider Walk is the least interesting, and the least deadly, of all these obstacles, so I'd go for that one. But I am also getting tired of the Cliffhanger focus in Stage 3, so I would welcome a Cliffhanger-less Stage 3 at this point. I'd love to see what the course designers came up with without that familiar linchpin holding everything together.

[dakohosu]

I think it’s a shame that the Cliffhanger is probably the most overplayed obstacle yet is the least likely to actually get replaced. Similar to the Salmon Ladder I’m not really sure how you’d make the obstacle harder without making it longer and/or adding more crazy transitions, which I think is the last thing we’d want to see given how Cliffhanger-centric the stage already is.

And the worst thing is that I know Inui is going to use the renewal as an excuse to further buff the obstacle when the Dimension has only been seen in its working form for one tournament and still took out everyone except for Yusuke who’s effectively invincible at this point.

I actually heard that he’s planning to modify the obstacle such that the ledges move completely out of sync with one another and that’s the recipe for disaster given that competitors get a limited amount of rest time. Therefore some competitors will be forced to attempt the obstacle when the ledges are completely out of sync while others will get luckier (effectively a repeat of what happened to Jun except on purpose....). Sasuke should be about hard training and athleticism paying off, not pure luck.

[sasukeninjawarrior]

Aug 25, 2021 13:51:56 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

I think it’s a shame that the Cliffhanger is probably the most overplayed obstacle yet is the least likely to actually get replaced. Similar to the Salmon Ladder I’m not really sure how you’d make the obstacle harder without making it longer and/or adding more crazy transitions, which I think is the last thing we’d want to see given how Cliffhanger-centric the stage already is.

And the worst thing is that I know Inui is going to use the renewal as an excuse to further buff the obstacle when the Dimension has only been seen in its working form for one tournament and still took out everyone except for Yusuke who’s effectively invincible at this point.

I actually heard that he’s planning to modify the obstacle such that the ledges move completely out of sync with one another and that’s the recipe for disaster given that competitors get a limited amount of rest time. Therefore some competitors will be forced to attempt the obstacle when the ledges are completely out of sync while others will get luckier (effectively a repeat of what happened to Jun except on purpose....). Sasuke should be about hard training and athleticism paying off, not pure luck.

This will sadly worsen Sato's chance of clearing cliffhanger, as it being out of sinc combined with his struggle with cliffhanger.

[LusitaniaAngel313]

NGL they really need to rid the jumps on cliffhangers for that exact reason. It's getting old seeing multiple people failing not due to their grip giving out, but to a jump that is too precise to get right... the rest idk what really could be fixed to make them different (pipe slider changing to bar glider I'm looking at you. You were stupid. )