Holy ****, this is long.
After much observation, I can say I'm very disappointed in what you people are trying with hacks.
None of you are experimenting. All you're doing right now is focusing on making Brawl as Melee as possible. I'm sure a lot of you prefer Melee's "seriousness," but THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT'S A GOOD THING.
The current focus should be on BALANCE. But you should not be thinking something like "How can we bring back Captain Falcon's godly combos from Melee?" You should be thinking "How can we improve this character while not deriving from their primary strengths?" For example, Falco's style from Melee and Brawl are very different. In Melee, Falco was all about aerial kills, using the Shine and Uair. But in Brawl, Falco's game is now about spiking, combined with more emphasis on his Blaster and his different, but still useful, Reflector (and god**** chaingrabs). And I doubt you're intending or even thinking of bringing back Falco's devastating Uair from Melee, since his new style works.
If a character's flaws are crippling, fix it. For example, Link is awful in the air due to his short jumps and extremely poor air mobility. So give him better jumps and air speed, just a little. Captain Falcon's Raptor Boost has too much start-up and cooldown for low priority. So make Raptor Boost travel faster and further and not make him trip if he misses. Know what the character is intended to specialize it and improve on that.
Similarly, remove features that negate their flaws. Let's look at Meta Knight here. Meta Knight was intended to be a fast-attacking character that focuses on damage rather than finishers. Unfortunately, his glide attack, Nair, and DSmash are not only fast, but are good finishers. That's why he's so broken. If they were to do a lot less knockback, he wouldn't be borderline banned. Meta Knight's problem is similar to that with Shiek back in Melee, because of her semi-spiking Fair.
On a similar note, the moves should do whatever they were INTENDED to do. Why does Dedede's Utilt faster and do more knockback than his USmash?
Also, TRY TO MAKE EVERY SINGLE MOVE AS USEFUL AS POSSIBLE. Looking back at Meta Knight again, why is Mach Tornado used frequently while Drill Rush is rarely used? That's because with Mach Tornado, you have extreme mobility and less overall lag for just about the same damage. So what do you do? Personally, I'd go with reducing Mach Tornado's movement. But if you'd like, you could just buff Drill Rush to do more damage or something. The point is, no move should be superior to every way that matters than that of "inferior" moves. What move do you never use and why? How can you make that move more useful?
Being less general to fighting games and more specific to Brawl, balance the move's damage, range, and speed. The SSB series (Read: the whole series) was never built to be focused on 1v1s (or balance, even). I mean, look at Snake. Snake's tilts are, in fact, generally overpowered. His Ftilt and Utilt come out in a few frames, and have great knockback and damage. It doesn't even have sweetspots. Seriously, his Utilt shouldn't be killing at 110%.
As for techniques, I have a huge gripe on this. As much as you might hate to admit it, Smash is simple. You don't need to memorize stick movement and button combos, like traditional fighting games. They may share the same basics, but they don't necessarily share the same principles.
I'm sorry, but I just have to say this. Smash's techniques have all been about muscle memory and physics exploits. Smash is different. In traditional fighting games, the game's focus is on fighting mechanics. As for Smash, it's physics. I am not saying Smash isn't as "deep" as other "regular" fighting games. Smash is deep, in the aspect that there's a lot more emphasis on things like knockback and it's unique HP system, and the fact that stage selection matters. But Smash wasn't built to be "serious." It has items and stages with instant kill obsticles. Hell, Sakurai himself even said that Smash has always been intended to be a party game. I'm not saying Smash is incapable to be taken seriously, but most people find Smash different. And the way you behave to those kinds of statements aren't helping.
Back to the matter at hand. The competitive Smash community has a different meaning for "skills." Techniques, which require "skill," are more about muscle memory than mindgames. Let's talk about the most notorious Melee technique: Wavedashing. To wavedash, you need to do a short hop, and right when you take your foot off the ground, you have to air dodge diagonally towards the floor, causing you to skid forward without requiring input. It lets the player input ground attacks while at the same time not being anchored into the ground. In fact, wavedashing permanently changed the face of competitive Melee. In fact, you can say wavedashing "broke" the game. There is a fighting game that similarly implements a technique like this, only the effect is much stronger, it's part of the system, and it was in a gauge. The game in question is Hokuto no Ken, and fighting game experts say the game was "broken" to the point where both players equally had the ability to win a 3/5 match in a single round within 7 seconds.
Back to muscle memory. Truthfully anyone can learn wavedashing with a little practice. Eventually they can practice to the point where it becomes a regular practice. But wavedashing doesn't require much thinking to do. That goes especially with L-canceling. Why wouldn't you not L-cancel at every opportunity? You never have to think of when not to L-cancel. In fact, the same can be said of dashdancing. Whenever you are not attacking, you just have do dashdance. Personally, I think dashdancing is the biggest offender here, mostly because it looks absolutely ridiculous and stupid in practice.
Going back to hacking. So why not create new techniques? Here's a suggestion: Air Canceling. The main idea of an air cancel is to use it to trick the opponent into thinking you're using a high-startup attack, like Ike's Fair. But with air canceling, you can cancel using the attack by jumping at certain frames for certain aerial attacks and then execute something completely different. You could maybe opt to use a spike, or short hop, air cancel, then begin a ground rush, or even save yourself from suiciding.
I just made up something completely new, and look how deep it sounds. So why not create techniques that require actual thinking rather than muscle memory. AND WHY DO YOU HAVE TO PRESS L JUST TO REDUCE AERIAL LAG? CAN'T YOU JUST MAKE IT SO THAT YOU DO IT AUTOMATICALLY?!
You have the potential to create something wholly new! Why not do so?! Forget everything you know about Melee! You should not try to repeat something just because you grew fond of it. If you want to play Melee, then play Melee. Just DON'T WASTE POTENTIAL LIKE THIS. You know what wasted potential? MUGEN. And it's terrible now.
In fact, I'm gonna have to buy myself a USBGecko and learn hacking, just so that this project won't steer itself to utter failure.