@
Amazing Ampharos
I appreciate your knowledge of the game, and in fact I personally attempt to reach mastery of the mechanics of that level. I also recognize that you've made a significant investment into the game that I have not (in particular, that you've begun to study custom moves while I have not).
I also recognize you as a strong Smogon player. Maybe you don't remember me, but yes, I do recognize you as a "Pokemon Professor", so I understand why you'd want to emphasize that mindset into this game. I too was a competitive Pokemon player for a short time in the DPP 4th generation.
However, I
always always always prefer games that reward
depth of knowledge beyond
breadth of knowledge. Lets take PacMan for instance, my main. My single B attack offers eight projectiles, each of which is thrown at a different trajectory and each of which have different damage, speed and priority. PacMan also has a 9th "projectile" for side-B, the power pellet.
For the standard fruit set, I've memorized every single matchup combination. I can tell you instantly which attacks beat Mario's fireball, Luigi's fireball, clash with Villager's Tree, which are canceled out by Lucario Aura Spheres, which beat Megaman's Lemons. For
every single character matchup my main can potentially go up against, I've internalized the projectile interactions. I've also internalized which attacks beat out those projectiles. (Pacman's jab and FTilt clash with Mario's fireball). This wasn't easy knowledge to acquire mind you. Its knowledge that I put forth upon myself with self-study and lots of training.
I'm not complete either. I'm still studying.
Beyond that, I've then learned which characters seem to have an advantage over my matchup game, which leads me to Robin. A secondary that seems to cover PacMan's poorer matchups (and similarly, PacMan seems to cover Robin's poor matchups as well). I'm currently in the process of mastering Robin's projectiles (Thunder, Elthunder, ArcThunder, Thoron, Extended B-held Thoron, Elfire, and Elwind). I'm nowhere close to mastering Robin yet, as I barely understand how these projectiles interact with opponent's projectiles. (does Thunder beat out Shiek's needles?)
For example, did you know that Robin can use ElWind to slightly gimp a Ness's PK-Thunder recovery, by attacking him during his active frames and reducing the distance he travels? Because Ness is "clashing" with the ElWind projectile, it reduces the distance he travels back towards the stage.
This depth of knowledge can only be gained by mastering everything about your character, and then studying the interaction of _every_ attack in your toolset against every combination of attacks from all possible opponents.
If I wish to master two characters, a "Primary" and a "Secondary", this requires me to study the interactions of 98 matchups. Pacman x Mario. Pacman x Luigi. Pacman x Peach... Pacman x Pacman... Robin x Mario, Robin x Luigi, Robin x Peach, etc. etc. Only after reaching this level are you typically prepared for what comes at you during a tournament.
Otherwise, you get punished by random stuff like Mario's frame1 invincibility on his OOS up-B (Vanilla mind you. I have no idea how the custom moves change things up). No, you don't need to execute it. Only Mario mains need to practice their fingers to do it... but you need to know how your character interacts with a frame1 invincible uppercut... and how it may affect your combos or pseudo-combos.
I've
barely gotten to the point where I understand my main's matchups. I'm hardly anywhere close to understanding my secondary's matchups, outside of Yoshi and Lucario vs Robin matchups. (two characters that Robin seems to do better with compared to PacMan).
Now you're telling me that this matchup knowledge isn't enough? You're telling me that I have to go further, and explore the full customized movesets of each character so that I'm ready for all of that? Not only that, roughly 66% of the custom movesets by definition are never going to affect me in a particular battle. (you can only choose one of three custom moves).
The changing of custom moves is furthermore going to affect the metagame severely. Maybe Pacman's Freaky Fruit will do better vs Lucario's Aura Spheres, or maybe Lucario got a better down-B than his 4frame counter, and can mitigate my Robin counter-pick. These are facts I'd rather not be learning about. I would rather refuse to learn this aspect of the game, so I can continue my mastery of the base vanilla game without distractions.
The amount of "breadth of knowledge" that a 49-character roster requires is exponentially (erm... more precisely... quadratically) larger than the smaller casts of past. Smash4 in its base form is already a game that requires a huge amount of breath in its vanilla form, due to the huge cast.
To complicate things further seems like overkill, and is certainly not a metagame I'm willing to support.
Again, I'm a player who regularly plays Magic the Gathering. I've also played Pokemon competitively. But I've also played Starcraft competitively, a game with very static units that favors "depth" of knowledge over "breadth" of knowledge. Personally speaking, I'd rather have the metagame develop towards the "Starcraft" direction. More statically, with players very deeply understanding the matchups between characters. Instead of spending their time learning about movesets that may or may not matter in their particular matchup.
Most importantly however, I don't want to win on my opponent's ignorance. I don't want to be winning because I know of a special trick with PacMan's fruit in a particular matchup that my opponent forgot to study. I'm the kind of player who explains to my opponent why they lost, and also gives my opponents "practice matches" to see how my moveset works entirely before playing.
Its part of the way I play. I don't want to sound rude, but holding your opponent's ignorance as some sort of matchup advantage honestly sounds uncompetitive to me. Only when both players fully understand the matchup do I get joy from beating my opponent. Winning or losing based off of
ignorance is the emptiest feeling I've ever had.
Its one thing to win on ignorance in a game explicitly designed to test your breadth of knowledge (IE: Pokemon or MTG). Sure, that's their fault for not studying enough. But that's the name of the game in Pokemon.
But winning or losing because of ignorance in
fighting games? That's not cool bro. I don't like that. And typically, I've been on the winning side of the exchange... like dishing out a 3-hole frame trap to beat out an opponent's 4-frame jump in BlazBlue (Noel Vermillion pressure string, 5A 5A 5C). Opponents are never happy to learn that I'm beating them on a trick... and I'm not happy either.
Thinkaman seems to understand this issue
But increased barrier to entry is a very real and serious problem that we have to confront. We simply cannot fuel the entropic spiral towards insularity, excluding new players from our cool-kids-only clubhouse with every ruleset decision we make.
But anyway, it could be a character-choice issue. Studying and fully mastering Pacman's neutral B takes an extraordinary amount of time longer than most characters. That single attack represents 8 different projectiles in Pacman's toolkit... a total of 24 different projectiles that I have to teach myself in the customs metagame (each of which cross each other in a Pacman vs Pacman mirror).
Yeah... Cherry, Freaky Cherry, Lazy Cherry, Strawberry, Freaky Strawberry, Lazy Strawberry... Orange, Apple, Melon, Galaga, Bell... Key, Freaky Key, Lazy Key. Total of 24 when you count them out, each with their own damage, hitbox, speeds, knockback, priority.
The "rethrow" also changes the priority of the projectile. B-thrown Cherry cancels out Lucario Aura Spheres, but pick it up and throw it with A lowers its priority. Instead of clashing, it gets beaten... but only in the Lucario Matchup it seems. So really, there are 48 projectile properties I need to learn (24 from throwing it with "B", and then 24 more from catching it and rethrowing with "A"), some of which have combo opportunities (There are some vanilla Galaxian combos across Battlefield involving
attacking while simultaneously catching the Galexian as it "loops" in the direction of one of its 3 random cycles), and all of which are affected by matchup knowledge.
That's a lot of matchup knowledge I have to learn, and that's only
one single vanilla attack. So maybe things look far harder for me due to my choice in who I main.
