It's called rubberbanding. Pretty much every racing game includes this, lol.
Must be bad or just party games. Though to be fair it's hard to balance racing games, because of not being able to go the same way as someone else at the same time.
I get what you're saying but it's not that rage is a bad mechanic necessary, especially in a series where heavies got dumped on by quick critters. SSB4 didn't implement it very well and then patched heavies with ding dongs so they went from punching bags to freight trains. If done well it could be a good balancing mechanic. Unfortunately Smash seems to mess up new gameplay systems at first.
I'm not saying rage is just "bad". I've been saying that I don't know if I'd want rage gone and like some aspecs of it.
I know it's not just helping a worse player either, and it doesn't change too much as well. But it still changes the game a bit.
Heavies getting dumped on doesn't mean rage is needed. To counteract the bigness and slowness of heavies they hit harder and live longer. No rage is needed to improve this. The Ding Dong or Koo-pa etc work without rage as well. It is not needed for this. Rage makes those windows when they work smaller, it's just they work earlier, so it's a double-edged sword for DK and Bowser, mostly being worse, since having those fixed, larger %-windows would be more reliable for them.
These hoo-has were given to some heavies, because they were bad characters. The Smash creators just didn't do a good enough job at balancing their stats out. Hitting harder and living longer just doesn't help them enough when they're being played ping pong with. Or maybe it would, but their "slowness" is just too much. They can't land (bad options, a lot of landinglag, slow moves, etc). All of this together is making them bad. And they tried to help them by giving them hoo-has, which is pretty sad (it's fun and all to get this yourself, maybe even hype for some people, but most are just getting salty- and for good reason), because they would need help in different aspects.
Of course rage does balance it out a little bit as well. If you get those grabs in the earlier %-windows where these hoo-has work you get the stock. And if you manage to hit with a hard-hitting move that's getting boosted by rage you also benefit from this. Your opponents will also lose their early-% combos more easily while you're hitting them than if they wouldn't have rage.
___
The only really apt comparison is another fighting game. Because the point is to balance out specific archetypes that are only relevant in another fighting game.
It does balance out the different characters, but who knows if that is what they tried to do while adding it?
Sakurai always wanted Smash to be a party game. They added a lot of random elements everywhere and the "pity final smash" when you're a few stocks behind. It's very possible that they just wanted to add a tiny bit of a comeback factor- just to help keep the playing field more even.
And no, it's not BS. The entire purpose in a fighting game is not just to do damage - it's to close out the game effectively. Rage rewards the other player not for getting hit, but for surviving. Tbh, your example sounds more like you want the player who - in your own words - guessed wrong multiple times in a row to be safe from swift retribution.
Yes, the purpose is to close out the stock (or time out with a % lead). But to do that you have to rack up damage first, unless you get early gimps (which do happen, but it's definitely not something you should always try going for).
Rage rewards someone for getting hit. Your reward for surviving is being able to try to get hits in again yourself and still being at your stock. Being able to survive is a
super-huge-reward in
itself.
How many times would people have lost sets if they didn't tech a stagespike, but they did, and then were able to win it themselves? These techs are game-changers, because of survival. The reward of surviving doesn't need another, extra "reward", which also has the negative effect of helping the player who is supposedly losing.
In my example I do not necessarily want the player who guessed wrong multiple times to win.
How do you take stocks safely? You try to predict, while spacing your moves to stay safe. If you miss - nothing bad happens; you were smart enough to position and time yourself correctly to not get punished hard for trying.
That is a very important skill by itself. If you didn't guess correctly and the opponent is surviving he will have another chance at winning neutral/going back to neutral or whatever. That is their reward for you guessing wrong/them not getting hit/surviving.
You just want to give them even more reward for no reason but to give them another advantage, even though they're supposed to be at the disadvantage.
If you want to compare Smash4+rage to another fighting game you can just compare it to Smash64, Melee or Brawl.
___
It doesn't make a lot of sense to say that just because your opponent is at 130 and you're at 90 that you automatically "win". We're not playing Stamina mode.
I wouldn't say that even in stamina it would work like that, lol. But it is showing a trend.
Does it make sense to almost kill someone and expect them to die because you're healthier than they are?
As opposed to other fighters, the goal of Smash isn't to reduce a health bar, it's to send your opponent flying past the blastzones. If you don't do that, it doesn't matter how many times you get hit, because in Smash, there isn't a definitive number of hits and not every life will last the same amount of time. As such, Rage benefits the surviving player for surviving, as that's one of the key points of the game.
In smash, your aim isn't to win neutral, it's to close out stocks and survive. Rage forces you to get better at that.
Rage forces you to get better at that, yes. Why? Because of giving an unfair advantage to the player who is supposed to be in disadvantage.
In Brawl at Dreamland, almost every stock went nearly 150. Everyone was surviving, but nobody got any reward off of it, and due to staling, if you made it to 150 you were usually safe for a little while as your opponent's main KO moves were weakened due to trying to KO you with them. But your opponent could just keep launching you back, because it's not like your KO moves were any better. There's no reward for surviving in Brawl. You just come back, get hit again, come back, hit your opponent, watch them survive, and repeat.
I've mentioned above that surviving alone is one of the biggest rewards in the game. It should be obvious why. You live on with the same stock - get another chance - aren't a stock behind (which can be hard to take off when you've lost rage as well). In one of my Brawl sets against Leon I've survived really long, because of good DI and momentumcancelling. My reward for that was to stay alive longer in these situations. You want an extra reward for that after you have such a huge reward for surviving? Want to get a free final smash with that? Gtfo.
64 and Melee are the opposite. Stocks rarely last more than a minute, and 0-deaths off of a single hit are rampant. It's very marvel-esque. Rage would have 0 benefit in these games (Except for maybe against Melee Marth) because holding onto a stock is nearly impossible and one mistake gets you killed.
Who knows?! Rage could mess up combos as well to make it harder to close out stocks - making the losing player able to have an easier time taking the stock off the one who just took his, while the leading player might not have too good, working combos - just because of that rage.
In smash 4, losing stocks very early is present, but so is living for a long time. The difference is you get rewarded for surviving. You don't get rewarded for Losing - because you've only lost once you've lost two stocks. That's a big misconception in this game, that if you have more stocks, or more percent, you should win the game. That's not how smash 4 works. Smash 4 rewards you for sealing off stocks effectively, and rewards your opponent for preventing you from doing that. If you have the best neutral in the world but can't fulfill the win condition presented to you - sending your opponent out of the ring twice, not hitting them a number of times - then you deserve to lose.
In Brawl, losing stocks very early was possible, living for a long time was also possible. Your reward for surviving is staying alive, without an extra reward to help the losing player.
___
If a Sheik Fsmash would have killed a DK just barely from a shieldpoke, is it bad design if the DK recognized the situation, dropped shield and dashed in oh so slightly so that he barely survives the Fsmash just from positional displacement, and comes back to abuse the increased rage he now got because he noticed his predicament and took a high risk, high reward option?
That would probably be stupid of the DK because getting back to neutral or even his advantage is the most difficult thing for him.
But for your examples sake - it could possibly be smart by the DK to take advantage of a mechanic that rewards him for getting hit.
Was it smart for Hikaru to get himself killed by Mr R by charging a Dsmash and making Mr R wanting to abuse this to get the stock - just so he's out of rage so that Mr R is back in Ding Dong %?
Possibly.
It's also possible that rage hindered him and forced him to suicide his own stock to get rid of it.
Is it a good thing that rage kinda balanced out the Ding Dong in this case? Possibly, because the Ding Dong itself is kinda a "toxic" thing to have. But if you look at it competitively, it sucks that rage hindered him.
But yeah, rage can help or hinder. It's always dependant on the specific situation.
and 
