What's irritating is that just from the title of the thread and its existence you can already read into the author's exact mindset on the issue. What is it you want? All the other people who agree with you to hold your hand and mop up each other's crybaby tears? Let's talk about facts.
Fact #1
You think L-cancelling is a useless addition to the game (provided was balanced competitively) that adds nothing but a barrier for intro level players. This was completely obvious given the title and just another countless thrashing of a beaten horse.
Fact #2
This topic has been covered extensively in the past. Each side has completely obvious points. One side thinks that if it doesn't bestow you with added abilities that it doesn't add anything. They are typically the same crowd who give preference to the mental aspects over the physical. This is because they hae a problem with there never being a decision about when to L Cancel and when not to L Cancel, because if each option had tactical significance it would validate the mechanic in their eyes .We can call them pure tacticians. The other side is the side that prefers the performance aspects over the tactical side, these are the Jocks. Somewhere in the middle we have Smash Brothers Melee. The best of games balance tactics and logic, with difficulty of performance because the depth of complexity and the extent of the physical demands all add together to create the sport. If that sport marginalizes the physical aspect to where it's just too simple to perform at max capability, the difference between players has nothing to do with their CAPABILITY to perform, but only to do with the strength of ideas. On the other end of the spectrum they value only raw physical talent or conditioning their bodies to determine who is truly the best, and somewhere in between is the Smasher.
Fact #3
People are throwing around the words "EXACT". It works exactly the same, etc. It would be the same thing to cut landing lag in half... No. No it would not be. And that my friends is a fact. You can argue about how people "Shouldn't" be missing their L-cancels but you know what, they do. Even in tournaments, even top players here and there. Its not as if you get 2 seconds to press the button. Does it take skill? Well let's think about what it entails... you must press L/R/ or Z. You must not fully depress it or else you risk triggering your tech window. If you know a player fully depresses it then you can use it to your advantage knowing they can't tech, ie spacing peaches down smash to clip their toes and throw them off stage. Attacks have hitstop when they connect with players and shields... players must adjust their timings as appropriately. This means that light shielding vs hard shielding affects L-Cancel timings. If shield toggling is used, they could switch the timing on you late into your jump and you have to either be fast enough to catch it, or use a staggered option select type input that covers both windows, which no player does... but maybe people will level up and start using option selects on the L cancel window and look at that, we added more depth yet again. This is also a factor for IC mains that they take full advantage of in their matchups. When someone misses an L cancel, the ramifications could be death. That's huge. When are they most likely to miss one? When they're under pressure. Not only does that mean needing to perform well under pressure, which is what tournaments are truly testing... otherwise we could just have pros play friendlies all day. It also provides an opportunity to the other player that would not exist if L cancelling wasn't there. That is also a fact. How about this idea... a game provides risk vs reward for each thing we do... good balance of risk and reward leads to a fun and balanced game. Attacking with aerials is slightly harder because it requires timing the L cancel. Its the tradeoff for having increased offensive capability. Would L cancelling be that much better if it was a 4 frame window with plinking like street fighter that only pros could utilize? I don't think so, and in fact, I think its difficulty window is just perfect. Its tight enough to feasibly mess up, but loose enough to not be incredibly restrictive, like 1 frame links and guilty gear FRCs.
Also, for the pure tacticians, there DO EXIST situations where not L Cancelling can have a use. Z-dodging is what I call it when your character's hurt boxes are extended along the Z axis, reducing the part of the character that can be hit. An example of this would be Falco's fastfalled fair done low to the ground without L Cancelling. He ducks super low and his body moves into the foreground which can duck under grabs. This works as well for Yoshi, Fox, Pikachu, and other characters but it is move specific and is kinda a super hard read with skewed risk reward which is why it hasn't made its way into the meta, however it proves as fact that even on a tactical level there are times when not L Cancelling has uses too.
These are all facts about how the game wouldn't be the same without it. You may not value them because you don't think it adds mid to low level nuance to the game, but melee has so many nuances in top level play, that every exchange is fresh and exciting because unexpected things happen quite often, or nonstandard exchanges occur due to all the various nuances, and it is up to the players to spot it and take advantage of those situations. Together, those things make a great game. L cancelling is part of that, and if you can't see that, I'm sorry you can't look through your own personal biases to accept that it does have a positive impact on the game.
Anyone who won't play competitively because they don't want to time a button press is not a competitive person and has very little promise in improvement with such a pathetic mindset. Why marginalize your game to reach out to someone who doesn't want to be competitive anyways. Let casuals play casually. That's where they have the most fun.
