I do think that Sakurai acknowledges that people do want the possibility to play the game competitively, however, if one thing's for certain it is that it won't be as technical as Melee. Sakurai has stated time and time again that there were things he wasn't happy about with Melee, and that was mostly in reference to how hard it was to learn to play it. So yeah, even if he says that it will probably strike a speed in-between Melee and Brawl, don't expect L-Cancelling and Wave Dashing to return. Maybe an automated cancel, or just less lag overall, and heck if we're lucky we might see a new kind of cool technique, but that's probably about it.
The game is going to be faster than Brawl as Sakurai has stated, but it won't play like either Brawl or Melee, something he has stressed since early development. It'll certainly be better competitively than Brawl, it doesn't take too much to do that, but it's safe to say that it will not be in the Melee ranks, I think it'll create a name for itself by being the in-betweener.
Hopefully it'll be enough to make it an interesting competitive game while also keeping the casual friendliness of Brawl. Because like it or not, in an online environment Melee wouldn't be very casual friendly, even with an elo system (which competitive players always find a workaround to so they can still clobber noobs.) Its general gameplay design is much more punishing than Brawl's too, and if there's one thing casuals hate it's not being in proper control right from the get-go. Big Smash fans like us here on Smashboards mostly prefer Melee or Project M because we play the games day in and day out, we study the attacks of each character and figure out what ones that's best to use when, and we sit down and practice techniques and combos. Casuals don't do all of that, in their case Melee is a game that lags a lot (no l-cancelling) and where you fall to your death incredibly fast. That was my interpretation of Melee after Brawl came out, back when I didn't play very seriously, and I had played it since release by then, and that's also been all of my friends' interpretation too when I introduced them to Melee after they had played Brawl for some time. I don't think anyone can deny that Brawl was easy to pick up and play even the first time you played it, right from the start you could do nearly everything you needed to, and that's casual luxuary, but sadly it's also competitive genocide. So even if the majority of people around here might prefer Melee, it's also worth noting that Brawl was a much better game for the casuals in terms of gameplay, and casuals do make up the majority of the playerbase and sales.
So yeah, both games have good things and bad things, but they both lean so heavily towards seperate audiences, they don't strike a balance. That's probably why Sakurai is trying to mix the best of both worlds this time, and I'm looking forward to see how it works out.
So yeah, overall, it will definitely be a quality game, like every Smash Bros game has been to date in their own rights. Whether it'll satisfy the competitive scene remains to be seen until the game is out. I personally don't care much, since I at most play semi-competitively, so I'll have fun either way. These days I enjoy all Smash Bros games because I play them for what they are.
That's just my two cents on the subject.
