I don't understand why the post about basketball wasn't the end of this thread. It is such a good analogy, and the "because it's a physical sport" counter argument doesn't even apply. It's a competition where the goal is to get a ball in a hoop to win. Smash, and any video game, is about pressing the right buttons to beat your opponent in a virtual setting to win.
I also find it rather single minded to say that fighting games shouldn't have execution challenges because they are based on spacing but rts games can.
Basketball is about spacing your team to get to the goal. RTS is about strategy. Why would it ever be ok for a physical skill to contribute to all these things and not contribute to a fighting game. This point of view literally makes no sense to me.
And I literally can not see how someone can counter the argument that you can mess up someone's power shielding to force an error and say that it simply shouldn't happen. That just shows ignorance of the depth of the game or that you just don't understand exactly what's involved with those situations.
There are already technical barriers without L-cancelling - wavedashing, movement in general, ledge-cancelling, making sure you actually use the right move, powershielding, spacing properly with your own attacks around your opponent, and probably more I'm not listing. Those all add depth to the game. What does L-cancelling add? To a top player like Mango, PPMD, M2K, Armada, and/or Hbox, it adds nothing whatsoever, but puts in a barrier for lower-skilled players that has turned players away from the game. These players hit their L-cancels whether they hit a shield, a player, nothing, ICs, ICs shield, or a single ICs shield, because they've practiced for so long, but they could still have the same level of proficiency if aerials just had L-cancelled lag in the first place.
Basketball has no tech skill barriers that ONLY add difficulty without depth - passing the ball in, dribbling, regular shooting from anywhere - there is an opportunity cost to each maneuver, with more difficult maneuvers requiring greater skill and you have to be able to do the right thing at any given time. But you don't have to make an odd motion every time you jump just to make sure you can still act quickly to chase after the ball. You do have to press the L or R button every time you land while doing something just to make the game play "normally" at a somewhat high level.
I may not be explaining it that well, but I'll say one more thing on this: Melee would still be as good a game as it is if L-canceling was never a thing and everyone has L-cancelled landing lag. Basketball would not be as much fun to watch/play/whatever if you removed an aspect of the game that requires some kind of skill [shooting, dribbling, passing, throwing it in, etc.].
r u tellin me i cant whiff l-cancels on purpose to confuse, condition, or bait my opponent?
even people who l cancel consistently get all kinds of messed up when the pace of the match rapidly changes because i'm doing weird ****
This must be a joke. You wanna whiff your L-cancels against a top player you'll get your *** whooped - there are matches where PPMD and M2K don't miss a single L-cancel, but there are tons of punishes because their lag is still too high/they made mistakes like that. You sit in lag longer, you're still just going to eat the exact same punish you'd normally eat from a strong player - they'll just think you're scrubby too if they whiff a punish once because they'll see you missed an L-cancel. It doesn't alter the pace of the match when they're rushing in to punish at all - you'd still just get smacked around.
I think that a competitive game with luck factors such as tripping as with only 1 viable character is poor design
RNG factors in Melee, as Xeylode pointed out, and being on the receiving end of a stitchface when up like 60% to 200% isn't fun it's just stupid, same for actually KOing Luigi had a misfire not occurred. There are multiple matches I can think of where someone would have lost if RNG hadn't gifted them a win out of nowhere [Vudujin vs Hbox had at least 3 misfires that saved him, Abate vs Hax had the misfire KO, there's more.] But ignoring that point, and just saying "fine they are fun", there are ways to avoid trips - walking/sticky walking and staying airborne mitigate the risk. Tripping is also usually small enough that it doesn't affect too much.
There's 10 viable characters, 9 if you don't count the only one in the bunch countered by the very top character.
Xeylode said:
". . . a game can be difficult not because of inputs, but because the game is difficult when played against skilled players. . ."
I would find it enjoyable to have both aspects. Something which is difficult to perform is fun due to trying to overcome personal challenge. Simply from experience with Archery and Tennis its enjoyable to see myself improve on the basics. Trying to have a good serve is something I can practice on my own and not have an opponent to play against. Then, when you combine having to play a good opponent with your own built up skills it becomes a good experience. The harder I have to work to achieve a certain level of performance the more enjoyable the experience.
As I stated when discussing the basketball analogy, serving is a part of the game where skill and how you use the skill you develop can actively affect the outcome of the match [serving fast or slow and serving at different angles]. You can develop a serve that is as weak or strong as you choose [mixups with slow serves], where you can upgrade yourself and the result. But L-cancelling is a flatline without depth - you can't somehow L-cancel differently to further reduce lag or actually add lag. You can notice a poor serve AND a good serve in tennis, but you won't ever say "Wow that was a good L-cancel." [BUT you might say "Wow that was a good ledge-cancel.", because that does add depth in if you decide to go for it or land nearer the center of the platform, possible because you can't make it or need something close to tech on at high percents.]
Serving is a skill where there is certainly a difference bred by practice that is visible in games. But L-cancelling is not - even if X player practices it for 3 years and Y player practices it for 1, if both can do it consistently, then there is no visible difference when watching their aerial's landing lag in a mirror warm-up, while in Tennis there could be a visible difference if two players with the same baseline had different amounts of practice. That is, there is a visible difference in Roger Federer's service game and the service game of some other professional, but there's no difference between PPMD's L-canceling and Mango's L-cancelling when they each play Falco, even if one or the other has actually practiced it for a longer period of time [I think Mango's been in tournaments in a notable manner since 2007, PPMD since 2009, so there is a gap].
You discuss satisfaction - I find satisfaction in a well-timed, proper-length wavedash, a well-timed and executed DACUS or glide toss and followup [Brawl but same principle applies], properly spacing an aerial, finishing a chaingrab, and successfully ledge-guarding someone, because those all depend in vast part on me reading my opponent and executing the correct options. L-cancelling is just me hitting a button, and unlike the others, as I said above it's never noted when it's done well, only when it's done badly. I take no satisfaction in it, only get annoyed at myself when I mess it up, but I guess that's another point on which we differ.
