A proposal regarding Automatic L-Canceling

[Scribe]

I've been involved with a few discussions on Anther's Ladder regarding the matter of L-canceling, and other ways the PMDT could work to not just emulate Melee's mechanics, but build upon and streamline them, and on the merits of automatic L-canceling, and how it allows other games and mods like Rivals of Aether or Brawl Minus to be competitive while lowering the execution barrier at the same time. However, I still understand why many players prefer manual L-canceling, and it too has its advantages, such as certain mixups involving deliberately not L-canceling. With that said, if a group of players consists of a mix of people who prefer the manual method and the automatic method, you'll always leave some players dissatisfied, which has me wondering.

Would it be possible to make the choice for automatic vs. manual L-canceling work on a player-by-player basis? I'd have to assume that it could be done either through the character select screen, like the ability to set the number of stocks each player has (Though I believe that replaces vBrawl's handicap function), or through controls options, like enabling or disabling rumble or tap jump.

 

[ECHOnce]

My take on the PMDT adding the auto L-cancel feature was that it was to be thought of as training wheels. They intentionally made it applicable to all players so it wouldn't be viable for tournament rules by default, so they wouldn't have to deal with a discussion like player fairness and whatnot. And have to give an answer that'd be almost guaranteed to be controversial, whichever side they vouch for.

 

[Scribe]

That is true, but at the same time, automatic L-canceling produces the same basic results, and if you're doing it the manual way and you're not consistently L-canceling, you're not competing. It reminds me of what Seth Killian said in an interview a few months back.
"At the end of that work, it’s not like, now you’re a good player. Now you’re just competent. You have the ability to execute the moves we designed the game around. Now you’re basically at the ground floor of being able to play the game."
And later in the same interview
"When we talk about great matches at an event like [EVO], we’re never talking about, man, that guy sure didn’t miss any uppercuts. Nobody cares about that. That’s the baseline of competition. If you have a guy who can only do an uppercut a third of the time, he’s not even competing."

And in a lot of ways, L-canceling is like that. If you can only L-cancel a third of the time, you're not even competing. If you're expected to do it every time, why not have the option to have it just happen every time? Or even make automatic the default rule for tournament play?

Honestly, I kinda think the optional ALC mode is the PMDT's way of easing players into the idea of automatic L-canceling. I won't be surprised if it's the default by 4.0

 

[ECHOnce]

That is true, but at the same time, automatic L-canceling produces the same basic results, and if you're doing it the manual way and you're not consistently L-canceling, you're not competing. It reminds me of what Seth Killian said in an interview a few months back.
"At the end of that work, it’s not like, now you’re a good player. Now you’re just competent. You have the ability to execute the moves we designed the game around. Now you’re basically at the ground floor of being able to play the game."
And later in the same interview
"When we talk about great matches at an event like [EVO], we’re never talking about, man, that guy sure didn’t miss any uppercuts. Nobody cares about that. That’s the baseline of competition. If you have a guy who can only do an uppercut a third of the time, he’s not even competing."

And in a lot of ways, L-canceling is like that. If you can only L-cancel a third of the time, you're not even competing. If you're expected to do it every time, why not have the option to have it just happen every time?

This argument has been gone over countless times, and I'm not one to disagree. Having auto L-cancelling would be neat, but it's bound to create a stigma of those users being lesser players. Adding in auto L-cancelling in is almost be like nurturing the elitist behavior; even those who aren't normally discriminatory would probably get upset that they went through the effort to learn some tech just for others to get a free bypass slip. I can guarantee you that at least a few would fall into that line of logic, and while a bit short-sighted, they'd kinda have a point.

Or even make automatic the default rule for tournament play?

When 99% of the current tourney goers would probably get thrown off by it, to some extent? To accommodate the 1% that are still in their early stages of getting better? I was open to discussion on this because you seemed fairly open-minded on the weaknesses of enabling auto L-cancelling from your OP. Where did this sudden presumptuousness come from?

Honestly, I kinda think the optional ALC mode is the PMDT's way of easing players into the idea of automatic L-canceling. I won't be surprised if it's the default by 4.0

It's not, they're just training wheels. They see little use outside of new player-use, from what I can tell. Never seen them on stream once, or any tournies I've attended. I would be down for auto L-cancelling to be toggle-able for each individual player, I'm still just afraid that it'd create an unnecessary divide (which is why I usually stay out of those flame wars, since I don't really have a place on either side). But advocating it become the default..? Supposedly with such strong backing that doesn't really exist? That's a bit too ambitious.

 

[Scribe]

Those are honestly some good points. While I prefer ALC from a design perspective, I never considered that people might feel miffed at finding out that the tech they learned is now unnecessary. I will admit that the last bit is entirely speculation on my part, and in hindsight was an unnecessary addition to my post. Though I suppose something like manual vs. automatic drifting in Mario Kart would be a good approach to a per-player toggle. Harder but more effective vs. easier but less effective. Or even just increasing the frame window on L-canceling further (maybe use the same timing as techs?).

 

[ECHOnce]

Tech window is 20 frames, so that'd mean almost trippling it from Melee's. It's already a frame more lenient than Melee's L-cancel window (8 instead of 7). Not sure where I'd stand on giving players a nerfed L-cancel...that kind of defeats the purpose of making it available to them, and would definitely be a showing of taking sides against the new players, since then it'd be undeniably training wheels at that point. As I said, it's a messy can of worms to open, which is probably why they haven't moved much further than they have now. If they do choose to implement it, I'd advocate for it being done in full instead of complicating the issue any further.

EDIT: Another reason why I do feel learning L-cancelling is super beneficial to newer players is that it helps to teach them to "visualize" spacing better. Average human reaction time is 12-21 frames, and the L-cancel window is 7/8 depending on the game you're playing. It's not physically possible to react to seeing your character hitting the ground, so you instead have to learn to input it pre-emptively. And for some players, they'll stumble across the concept of visualizing shapes for where they should input things - like for L-cancelling, they'd see a line above the ground, which would represent abouts where they should be pressing L-cancel by. Most players learn this skill at some point, consciously or not. During TBH5's melee break for S4 finals on stage+stream, Hbox mentioned in an interview that that's exactly what he does - he visualizes the shapes of where opponents will be ahead of time, and makes sure to go/not go into that range based on how safe it is. Like for Falco, he doesn't see just the grounded character - he visualizes a huge vertical wall/column, since his jump is stupidly quick and you can't react to it. Pre-emptive spacing using heatmaps. L-cancelling obviously won't lead all players along this line of thought, but it's still and exercise that inadvertently teaches them the skill and bettering their anticipated coordination/timing, even if they aren't aware of it.

^That said, I've never heard of anyone else making the argument that L-cancelling helps to build those skills, so maybe I making a bit assumption. Seems logical enough to be true though, even if it is to a very minor extent. Back on topic, I'm still down for auto L-cancel toggles. @SOJ not sure who I should tag, you're the only PMDT who I know works with coding. My b if I should've tagged someone else. Has this idea been considered?

 

[Scribe]

I guess that's true. Though I will say that any sort of frame window increase couldn't hurt. Maybe up it to 10-15 frames. It's in a weird place where it needs some sort of change to lower the skill barrier, but it's hard to come up with a way to change it that won't create other issues or result in long-time players dropping it entirely.

Now that I think about it, maybe this is why Wavedash Games is a thing. Not only will they not have to worry about Nintendo's legal department with an original title, but they aren't held back by what Melee and Project M established. They're free to experiment and try new things with the formula, like Rivals of Aether or even Brawl Minus does.

 

[Bleck]

l-canceling is dumb etc.

 

[St_Steady]

Honestly it really just takes a few days of practice and a week or two until you are literally l canceling everything. It's not such a big deal to just suck it up and practice

 

[mimgrim]

It's already a frame more lenient than Melee's L-cancel window (8 instead of 7).

It is still a 7 frame window in Project M, actually.

 

[CORY]

And isn't the tech windowin both melee and pm also a 20 frame one? Or did I misunderstand what he meant by tripling it?

 

[mimgrim]

And isn't the tech windowin both melee and pm also a 20 frame one? Or did I misunderstand what he meant by tripling it?

You misunderstood what he meant.

 

[Scribe]

He meant that the tech window is nearly triple what Melee's L-cancel window is.

 

[Phyvo]

Personally I wouldn't dismiss automatic lcanceling as a tournament rule so easily. When it comes to growing a game accessibility can be very important and it can be a lot to expect a 2 week period of practice from someone to get them to what is more or less the basic experience of the game. I hardly think that lcanceling is THE reason why people aren't playing P:M but there are a lot of strikes against P:M from an accessibility standpoint: it's a modded version of another game, it requires special hardware, and setting up online play is a huuuuge pain in the butt if you want to do so without illegally torrenting. I might have actually gotten into online play except that after a ton of effort my brawl disc MD5 was incorrect and at that point I just gave up.

Still, I have no doubt that automatic l-canceling would help bring more people in over the long term simply because it does improve accessibility a great deal without hampering the depth of the game that much. The problem is, as you alluded to echo, that to get any benefit you'd have to get existing tournament players to accept it, and with an overwhelming majority to minimize player losses. I don't think we have that kind of consensus. I don't think we ever will.

 

[JOE!]

The issue is that Lcanceling is so ingrained into melee and at this point PM via years of having it in, that suddenly making it automatic does bring in the legit complaint of "All that practice for nothing!" sort of deal.

Though it doesn't add any practical gameplay element over auto, manual has a "feel good" sense to it in that it sort of "revs up" your hands during play to lead to a faster paced feel.

 

[Ramz289]

^ dis
PM should have had auto l-canceling from the first demo. It migth be to late at this point.

 

[Kurri ★]

^ dis
PM should have had auto l-canceling from the first demo. It migth be to late at this point.

Just change it to automatic without telling anyone for a few months. Until it's revealed that L-Cancel is now automatic, no one will notice.

 

[Ramz289]

People (probably) aren't stupid enough for that to work lol.

 

[CORY]

Yeah, a couple games of everyone noticing 100% lcancels and then riots

 

[Kurri ★]

Yeah, a couple games of everyone noticing 100% lcancels and then riots

Obviously you still keep the white flash and only keep track of manual L-Cancels

 

[Bleck]

People (probably) aren't stupid enough for that to work lol.

I'd believe this if I didn't see so many people arguing in favor of l-canceling

 

[Ramz289]

Obviously you still keep the white flash and only keep track of manual L-Cancels

I didn't you were being serious lmao.
I could see this happening if they hide it well enough but there's always a chance some random dude well go looking through the files and find "Autolcancel.exe" or something.

I'd believe this if I didn't see so many people arguing in favor of l-canceling

People (probably) aren't stupid enough for that to work lol.

I'm giving the community the benefit of the doubt *shrugs*.

 

[Kurri ★]

I didn't you were being serious lmao.
I could see this happening if they hide it well enough but there's always a chance some random dude well go looking through the files and find "Autolcancel.exe" or something.




I'm giving the community the benefit of the doubt *shrugs*.

two-thirds joking, one-third serious.

 

[SunJester]

By far the best solution is to turn on automatic L-Cancelling, but still have manual L-cancelling percents be tallied for those who want to show off their techniques.

No one is going to ruin their muscle memory, and people still get to measure **** sizes with how well they L-Cancel. Also it isn't a technical barrier for new players so they can jump in and learn more important things like spacing and neutral faster.

 

[ECHOnce]

By far the best solution is to turn on automatic L-Cancelling, but still have manual L-cancelling percents be tallied for those who want to show off their techniques.

No one is going to ruin their muscle memory, and people still get to measure **** sizes with how well they L-Cancel. Also it isn't a technical barrier for new players so they can jump in and learn more important things like spacing and neutral faster.

That solves nothing. The L-cancel technical barrier is tiny in the first place, and the counter is only helpful for newer players to keep track of improvement. Nobody who has played any longer than a month or so after actually trying to start to learn L-cancelling should have to worry about the counter dropping below 99% lol

Auto L-cancelling should become an optional thing, but people need to get it through their heads that it's not supposed to be a barrier at all. You practice for a few weeks (not even a week for most people who play daily) and you're set for life. At this point, for most players it's just another button you press that kinda feels nice and helps the flow of button inputs. But learning how to L-cancel is a big step in teaching new players how to learn/practice new things self-sufficiently, even if it's a tiny challenge.

That said, given how large the S4 scene has gotten, I feel that it is appropriate to accommodate them by adding the individual player option for auto L-cancel. If S4 is their main game, they're probably not gonna drop it, and getting in and out of the habit of L-cancelling every time you swap games is a huge pain in the ass. That's not a matter of technical barriers anymore (never should be the issue...), but of inconvenience and openness to other players. Nobody should be held back or discouraged from playing PM because of optimal habits that you just can't kill from another game. My S4 friends shouldn't have to reteach themselves L-cancelling on a weekly basis (passive tech that you don't think about are harder to relearn than those you actively input), just because they don't have a Wii or GC to practice on consistently. I've had a few just give up on PM instead. Not because it was hard, they didn't enjoy it, or they sucked (they had put in a good few months into the game whenever they could play), but because it's understandably annoying. And that's pretty unfortunate.

 

[Droß]

Or you could just give the L cancel mechanic more degrees of success and widen the window by a frame or two, giving newbies a softer learning curve while increasing the skill ceiling. Having variable landing lag reduction based on input precision allows players to better control their timing mixups while also presenting them with a tactical decision they have to make every time they aerial: do I opt for optimal L cancel timing and move as fast as I can, or do I attempt a mix up and take a looser, suboptimal L cancel instead? Now the mechanic has sufficient meaning to not require discussion about removing it or making it automatic.

To illustrate what I mean:

L input registered x frames before landing: % decrease in landing lag:

-7 : 2%
-6 : 4%
-5 : 7%
-4 : 10%
-3 : 20%
-2 : 30%
-1 : 40%
Perfect Input : 50%
+1 : 38%
+2 : 27%
+3 : 16%
+4 : 8%
+5 : 5%
+6 : 3%
+7 : 2%

 

[Kurri ★]

Or you could just give the L cancel mechanic more degrees of success and widen the window by a frame or two, giving newbies a softer learning curve while increasing the skill ceiling. Having variable landing lag reduction based on input precision allows players to better control their timing mixups while also presenting them with a tactical decision they have to make every time they aerial: do I opt for optimal L cancel timing and move as fast as I can, or do I attempt a mix up and take a looser, suboptimal L cancel instead? Now the mechanic has sufficient meaning to not require discussion about removing it or making it automatic.

To illustrate what I mean:

L input registered x frames before landing: % decrease in landing lag:

-7 : 2%
-6 : 4%
-5 : 7%
-4 : 10%
-3 : 20%
-2 : 30%
-1 : 40%
Perfect Input : 50%
+1 : 38%
+2 : 27%
+3 : 16%
+4 : 8%
+5 : 5%
+6 : 3%
+7 : 2%

If people don't miss L-Cancels for mix-ups now, they won't intentionally use variable L-Cancel for mix-ups then.

 

[Droß]

If people don't miss L-Cancels for mix-ups now, they won't intentionally use variable L-Cancel for mix-ups then.

Except for the fact that they will be able to after these changes, since the current version of L-Cancelling creates too much room for punishment with a deliberately missed L-cancel. With this change, a delay as low as 1-2 frames is possible. Even ignoring that, the princple of rewarding speed and precision is ever present in the Smash Bros series, and this change is no exception.

 

[Scribe]

That said, given how large the S4 scene has gotten, I feel that it is appropriate to accommodate them by adding the individual player option for auto L-cancel. If S4 is their main game, they're probably not gonna drop it, and getting in and out of the habit of L-cancelling every time you swap games is a huge pain in the ***. That's not a matter of technical barriers anymore (never should be the issue...), but of inconvenience and openness to other players. Nobody should be held back or discouraged from playing PM because of optimal habits that you just can't kill from another game. My S4 friends shouldn't have to reteach themselves L-cancelling on a weekly basis (passive tech that you don't think about are harder to relearn than those you actively input), just because they don't have a Wii or GC to practice on consistently. I've had a few just give up on PM instead. Not because it was hard, they didn't enjoy it, or they sucked (they had put in a good few months into the game whenever they could play), but because it's understandably annoying. And that's pretty unfortunate.

Pretty much this. After trying to get back in the swing of PM after playing Smash 4 for so long, I already have a handle on Wavedashing, Dash Dancing, and all of that other stuff, but L-canceling specifically eludes me simply because it's one of those weird force of habit things that I'd have to drop Smash 4 in order to get back in the swing of. Though honestly, even a widened input window (Preferably in the 12-20 frame range) would be helpful. I've actually picked up Brawl Minus as my secondary Smash game because of this (And I absolutely love some of the design choices the Brawl Minus team made), and I'm considering picking up Rivals of Aether for similar reasons (and because Orcane is absolutely adorable).

Though I do think the idea slipping in ALC as the default without telling anyone, but still tracking L-cancel inputs and keeping the flash would be funny. I'd say it would be a little while before anyone actually noticed.

Maybe we could get the PM Unbound team on this. I mean, from what I can tell, their mod is basically a reverse-engineered Project M that uses BrawlEX instead of PM's proprietary clone engine (Which allows for more characters to be added. PM's clone engine simply cannibalizes the game's unused character slots, while EX actually adds new character slots). Checking to see if they'd be willing to fork off into something separate from PM could be worth a shot.

Except for the fact that they will be able to after these changes, since the current version of L-Cancelling creates too much room for punishment with a deliberately missed L-cancel. With this change, a delay as low as 1-2 frames is possible. Even ignoring that, the princple of rewarding speed and precision is ever present in the Smash Bros series, and this change is no exception.

Honestly, with your system, it raises the gap by requiring even more precision to get it right. From what I can tell, the current system is:
Hit shield within the last 7 frames before hitting the ground to reduce input lag by 50%

While your system would be:
Hit shield exactly 7 frames before hitting the ground to reduce input lag by 50%. If you hit it before or afterwards, it's reduced, but not as much.

Which, with input lag, display lag, and human reaction time taken into account, would make things a lot harder, and the average player will be less consistent. It raises the tech barrier more than it does the skill ceiling.

 

[Kurri ★]

Except for the fact that they will be able to after these changes, since the current version of L-Cancelling creates too much room for punishment with a deliberately missed L-cancel. With this change, a delay as low as 1-2 frames is possible. Even ignoring that, the princple of rewarding speed and precision is ever present in the Smash Bros series, and this change is no exception.

Honestly, with your system, it raises the gap by requiring even more precision to get it right. From what I can tell, the current system is:
Hit shield within the last 7 frames before hitting the ground to reduce input lag by 50%

While your system would be:
Hit shield exactly 7 frames before hitting the ground to reduce input lag by 50%. If you hit it before or afterwards, it's reduced, but not as much.

Which, with input lag, display lag, and human reaction time taken into account, would make things a lot harder, and the average player will be less consistent. It raises the skill floor more than it does the skill ceiling.

That, and missed L-Cancels aren't actually punished all that often unless the move has a significant amount of landing lag, which can still go unpunished if spaced properly. Most people don't have the reaction time to even realize there was a missed L-Cancel, and in the case that they do, don't have the reaction time to capitalize on them, and in the cases they do, can't anyways due to other factors (i.e. proper spacing).

 

[Bleck]

L input registered x frames before landing: % decrease in landing lag:

this is a bad idea

 

[Droß]

Honestly, with your system, it raises the gap by requiring even more precision to get it right. From what I can tell, the current system is:
Hit shield within the last 7 frames before hitting the ground to reduce input lag by 50%

While your system would be:
Hit shield exactly 7 frames before hitting the ground to reduce input lag by 50%. If you hit it before or afterwards, it's reduced, but not as much.

Which, with input lag, display lag, and human reaction time taken into account, would make things a lot harder, and the average player will be less consistent. It raises the tech barrier more than it does the skill ceiling.

Yes, it would make it tougher to get a perfect L-cancel, but it also makes it easier to get an L-cancel of some sort, which is what you want newer players striving for at first. With a frame perfect 50% reduction, it would be a notable feat of skill to be a "perfect L canceler"; from a spectator's perspective.

Also, it may raise the skill floor for perfection, but remember that the difference in this instance between any two neighboring L-cancel timings is 1-3 extra frames of landing lag (in either direction, depending).

I can understand if you're evaluating L-cancelling as a stepping stone to reach actual competitive shape, in which case I totally understand where your argument is coming from, but I'm trying to take the different direction of "make it a meaningful mechanic with a better designed purpose". Maybe I'm not doing such a great job, but I don't want to be another one of those people that says "make all aerials autocancel" (then why have the term/mechanic anyway?) or "remove it from the game entirely" (I'd rather not slow the game down in that manner).

this is a bad idea

I'm guessing due to potential interference with wavelanding? Or is there another aspect of it that I'm missing?

 

[Bleck]

I'm guessing due to potential interference with wavelanding? Or is there another aspect of it that I'm missing?

right now we have l-canceling that works like this;

aerial attack -> unsuccessful l-cancel -> fewer possible followups, or none at all
aerial attack -> successful l-cancel -> followups

in the thing you demonstrated, we have this;

aerial attack -> unsuccessful l-cancel -> fewest possible followups, or none at all
aerial attack -> level 1 l-cancel -> Followups Group A
aerial attack -> level 2 l-cancel -> Followups Group A, B
aerial attack -> level 3 l-cancel -> Followups Group A, B, C
aerial attack -> level 4 l-cancel -> Followups Group A, B, C, D
aerial attack -> level 5 l-cancel -> Followups Group A, B. C, D
aerial attack -> level 6 l-cancel -> Followups Group A, B, C, D
etc.etc.

it multiplies the amount of possible outcomes to attempting l-canceling, and since it's impossible to tell while it's happening which followups group you'd be placed into (because of human reaction times), you'd essentially have to organize all of your options based on reliability, wherein attempting a followup that you weren't actually in the group of could result in a missed opportunity

as such the only efficient ways to play with this system in place would be to a) always do perfect l-cancels, which depending on how it was implemented could either be as difficult as the current system or even moreso, or b) only use l-canceling for options that safely lead you back into neutral, i.e not combos or followups but shielding or evasion or etc.

 

[Scribe]

Pretty much what Bleck says. It adds complexity that players have little actual control over. It's not like a soft press where you can control how powerful it is. It's all based on both what frame you hit the button on, and when the game registers your input, which is a horrible thing to base degrees of success on. You can base it on die rolls in a turn based game (Pathfinder's Tzocatl subsystem, for instance, uses this quite well), or on aim precision, or on how far you press an analog input or how long you press a button, but not on something that requires such frame-perfect timing in such a fast-paced game (though it would be fine in a turn-based game) It could maybe work as two seven-frame windows, one that reduces it 50% and another that reduces it, say, 35%.

As-is, if we're assuming that the idea is not just to provide an environment where players can learn combos and the intricacies of the game before they tackle the tech barrier (a-la MvC3's simplified input mode), but also one where people who have been away from the game can get back into the swing of things and continue to compete as they were once able to without having to choose between dropping other games in favor of it or spending as much time re-learning stuff each time they come back to the game as they did learning it the first time around, then the other three approaches that have been discussed in this thread that would be far more effective than the degrees of success method.

 

[Droß]

I see, so it is the degrees of success thenselves that make the idea poor in theory. I do like that idea about just having two 7 frame windows with different lag reduction, but the small problem with that (really post landing l cancel in general) is if you have a very fast aerial, and you cancel it frame 7 after landing, and the reduction makes it such that your lag is less than the lag you've already suffered, what happens? Do you just revert to standing state next frame?

A reduction of 20-25% post landing seems pretty good for a 7 frame l cancel window post landing; some aerials might run into that "needless endlag suffering" problem, but the reward of going into standing state next frame (still a reduction in lag, but a reduced reduction) should still be pretty good.

I still think the current L-Cancel has room for improvement and/or repurposing such that it shouldn't be removed from the engine or need automatic l canceling.

 

[Scribe]

I wasn't even thinking of it as a post-landing thing. I was thinking
8-14 frames beforehand: 25-35% reduction
7 or fewer frames beforehand: 50% reduction

And one idea that I had (which I'm kind worried will create more problems) is instead of using L-cancels to reduce landing lag, let players hit shield at any point during an aerial's animation to end it prematurely and go into normal fall. The only real issue with this that I could see is using it to extend multi-hit moves, though a "cooldown" where you can't start new moves could nip that problem right in the bud.

 

[Kurri ★]

I wasn't even thinking of it as a post-landing thing. I was thinking
8-14 frames beforehand: 25-35% reduction
7 or fewer frames beforehand: 50% reduction

And one idea that I had (which I'm kind worried will create more problems) is instead of using L-cancels to reduce landing lag, let players hit shield at any point during an aerial's animation to end it prematurely and go into normal fall. The only real issue with this that I could see is using it to extend multi-hit moves, though a "cooldown" where you can't start new moves could nip that problem right in the bud.

If I'm reading this right, you mean instead of canceling some landing animations, you can cancel the move altogether? That's probably too big of a change, and probably broken too. You could theoretically chain Falcon's knee into another knee.

 

[Scribe]

If I'm reading this right, you mean instead of canceling some landing animations, you can cancel the move altogether? That's probably too big of a change, and probably broken too. You could theoretically chain Falcon's knee into another knee.

Yeah. I suppose it's something that might work in a Brawl Minus-like environment (Where everything is broken), but not as much in a Melee-like environment, even with a forced cooldown to prevent you from, say kneeing right out of another knee, or drilling out of another drill.

 

[mezbomber]

That is true, but at the same time, automatic L-canceling produces the same basic results, and if you're doing it the manual way and you're not consistently L-canceling, you're not competing. It reminds me of what Seth Killian said in an interview a few months back.
"At the end of that work, it’s not like, now you’re a good player. Now you’re just competent. You have the ability to execute the moves we designed the game around. Now you’re basically at the ground floor of being able to play the game."
And later in the same interview
"When we talk about great matches at an event like [EVO], we’re never talking about, man, that guy sure didn’t miss any uppercuts. Nobody cares about that. That’s the baseline of competition. If you have a guy who can only do an uppercut a third of the time, he’s not even competing."

And in a lot of ways, L-canceling is like that. If you can only L-cancel a third of the time, you're not even competing. If you're expected to do it every time, why not have the option to have it just happen every time? Or even make automatic the default rule for tournament play?

Honestly, I kinda think the optional ALC mode is the PMDT's way of easing players into the idea of automatic L-canceling. I won't be surprised if it's the default by 4.0

This is probably an oversimplification, but it seems that adopting ALC would make competitive gameplay that much faster. The meta would surely evolve and give way to more options and mix up. Just imagine how competitive gameplay would look if everyone had perfect l-cancels. I don't know. It's a bit of a radical idea, but why not try it? It's not unfathomable that people would change their opinions after an honest test drive.

 

[ECHOnce]

This is probably an oversimplification, but it seems that adopting ALC would make competitive gameplay that much faster. The meta would surely evolve and give way to more options and mix up. Just imagine how competitive gameplay would look if everyone had perfect l-cancels. I don't know. It's a bit of a radical idea, but why not try it? It's not unfathomable that people would change their opinions after an honest test drive.

Everybody already has perfect L-cancels, from mid/low-level play upwards. That's why many people are arguing that it's redundant, since current meta is taking into assumption that you never miss a single one. People bring up missing L-cancels on purpose to try bait opponents in and punish that (maybe power-shield > anything), but let's be real...I can't name a single person I know who does that lol.