To be honest, I've never seen spacies as a huge problem in either Melee or Project M. They're good, but they're not so good that they're unbeatable.
I agree with 1MachGO in that having the melee top 8 practically unchanged allows for an easier way to balance the game. The issue is that a lot of people either want change because "Project M isn't Melee" or because "I'm sick of seeing Fox and Falco always being top tier".
The argument that Project M isn't Melee is true on its face. However, the environment was changed to replicate Melee's in every possible way (gravity, hit stun, Melee stage boundaries). Porting the Melee top 8 into a Melee environment and then throwing characters at them who have ~2 years of meta game development (which itself has been stunted by changes to physics engines and characters themselves) will obviously favour the top 8 in the short term. Lets see where the game is in 3 or 4 years time before making rash decisions. If you think that's a long time, then consider (as an example) Jigglypuff in Melee. It took 3 years for people to consider her 'viable' and almost 6 years for her to be considered 'pretty damn good'. What changed so much over that time period to make Jiggs competitive? The meta-game. There were no buffs or nerfs, simply as new tactics evolved and old ones faded away, new characters came into the spotlight.
Now, this might or might not happen with Project M, but I think that a reserved approach is much better than an approach of 'change it now, its is currently too good.' I think to this end, the PMBR has done really well. Looking at tournament results, the only spacie players who have been consistently winning are Mew2King (who could probably win with anyone because Mew2king) and DEHF (who I admit I know little about). At the end of the day, Project M is focused on the competitive aspects of the game when it comes to balance. To say that spacies need to be changed seems like change for the sake of change, which more often that not screws around with balance far too much.
Quick edit for some input on Joe's post.
The issue with changing moves on melee vets to brawl moves is that in the case of the top characters, many people believe that the overall design of those characters is very good. If you change multiple moves, you change the overall design of the character, and I think the pmbr has more important things to do than redesign already well designed characters. Changing only one move leads to one of the following situations:
1. The move is aesthetically different but functions the same. Why change it then? The hitboxes will likely look wonky.
2. The move is overall better than the one it replaces. Do the top characters really need improvements?
3. The move is overall worse than the one it replaced. See my post above, but tl;dr be careful with nerfs.
4. The move is not overall better, but is better in certain situations while worse in others. This requires actually looking and seeing what the move does, but the question is basically does the new move mitigate some weakness, or does it just give another option in situations where others are already available? Which is better often depends on the character, but in terms of spacies, I don't think they need more options nor do they need weaknesses mitigated.
