It's not just roll punishing. A well placed tilt can manage enough of that. It's not the theory that's the problem, it's that it simply doesn't translate. Is a Samus who only knows how to roll and charge shot harmless if permanently settled at the opposite end of the stage? Sure-- but that doesn't mean I won't be hit the second I try and do something useful. Is A ganondorf who only uses side B dementedly simple beyond belief? Certainly, but to hell if I can punish 'simple' without resorting to stupid as well. When my best solution to 'spammy idiot' is 'pick a character who can punish safely', I lose heart in the whole of the game. Beating that crap a majority of the time just isn't enough-- losing any single time just has the hours of practice feeling meaningless.
Playing with friends would necessitate having such, regardless. No amount of adding random friend codes amounts to any realistic increase in play, given Nintendo's hatred of the internet making it impossible to communicate so much as even a game invite. The damn dreamcast could handle that much. That said, there's still practically no benefit to be had from even those limited games if there's no means of communication regardless.
Either way, I've unraveled the popularity of Little Mac: he's basically a specialist in dealing with stupidity and punishing predictability. Robin lacks the speed to capitalize, and I can't even get a chance to practice Lucina at all without some idiot sudden-death stalling or some ****. But playing Mac to beat the ****heads gets me a bad MU versus people who actually play even remotely conventionally, but it also gets them leaving after a single game so I never get a chance, so my options are 'cart eject on every dumb**** until matchmaking gets me something playable, thrash them all with Rock-paper-scissors picks of Mac to maul melee spam or Toon Link to maul ranged spam, or abstain. The first means enduring a few thousand matches of **** before any single practice game happens by, while the second means never getting real practice in due to an obsessive focus on just obliterating idiots... and neither are anything but crushing. At least in Starcraft the cheese can be identified and played around to some extent beforehand, if you scout, but... I digress.
Still not certain of the hows to deletion. Would at least like to leave with some respect for the forums themselves, even if the game it's based in is proving to be pointlessly painful. I learned Japanese, to play piano, and how to use a four-fingered hand after a mutilatory accident in a combined total of far less time than I've put into practicing smash... and the inability to even deal with cheese is just a profoundly disturbing lack of results. Melee experience, practice, theorycrafting, muscle memory-- none have proved relevant in making my efforts... well, relevant. I'm not so daft as to expect any real results without hours of play, but when I have dedicated that time and energy just to lose to someone who's handed the DS off to their cat? Yeah, I think I'm done with the banging-my-head-into-a-wall. Melee may have felt hopelessly beyond my level the second I broached wavedashing and saw a glimpse of the true skill ceilings, but at least I got to the point of beating spammers... Hell, even Brawl had me capable of that much, unplayable as I found the input lag and unlikely as I found it to get a Project M game...
But I'm getting off topic with an ultimately pointless rant. My original question still stands-- and I'd rather just ask than post an entire threat of swearing and voodoo curses or the like. May have lost my respect for the game, but the people around here have certainly been nothing but nice in general.
