True, being able to play the game soley with 3 buttons and an analog stick or D-Pad made it compatible with even the wii-mote. But because they had to make Brawl compatible with wii controllers, they sacrificed the ability to control the strength of your shield based on how hard you pressed down on the triggers, because wii-motes don't have a pressure sensitive trigger.
Although that's kind of a bad example as in melee it could also be done by holding the z button which wasn't pressure sensitive and this feature could've simply been seen, as most of us agree, overpowered or simply unnessecary.
I want smash bros to move on to become increasingly complex, while still allowing for simpler controllers or beginning players to perform the same action but to a lesser degree with a shortcut like the c-stick, which performs a weaker smash attack. While experts can use the pro controller to fully utilize all abilities.
The game Tatsunoko VS Capcom activated simple mode if a player used a wii mote, in which special moves could be activated with the press of a button, a huge advantage against GC controller users who had access to more advanced techniques, but had to input crazy joystick manuevers to initiate a special. It's debatable which side has the greater advantage when your opponent can spawn Hadoukens at a rapid rate whilst the opponent has a larger arsenal of attacks.
Meanwhile the Clash of Ninja series gave abilities solely to the wii-mote + nunchuck combo. And if you overcame the simple controller swap you'd notice that the wii-mote + nunchuck combo allowed for throwing bombs by pointing at the screen, doubling the strength of specials by flailing your arms, and even being able to activate status boosts by making "hand signs"...
This results in terribly one-sided online play where the GC controller using majority are foiled by noobs with a power boost and one hit K.O. specials.
These are both the wrong way to go about it. The traditional controllers should have the same abilities as the motion-controlled simpler ones. You're probably thinking less buttons equals impossibility. But you have to remember that the wii-motes have motion control, which has by now become perfected. ( Heck it was pretty damn good in Warioware smooth moves and worked flawlessly in skyward sword)
The problem with motion control though is that doing simple actions like leaning or sitting down will result in an unintentional action being initiated and, possibly, costing you a life. Which is why we're gonna take a look at the obscure Spore game that was released for wii. It's combat was simple but held a key idea. Attacks performed by shaking are only initiated when the attack button is held. For instance. Say you are holding the wii mote sideways. You want to perform an upward smash. First you must hold A before shaking the controller to initiate it. That is actually troublesome and should definitely be a Toggle-able option. Which leads to one more thing.
Complete liberty over button mapping. If I want to footstool by pressing x then I damn well better be able to. Button combos like A+B, B+X, etc... would be needed as well.
