I feel like Ryu has difficulty dealing with rolling since his down smash only hits in front of him, both of his forward tilts are slow, his forward smash has a dead zone, and his focus attack is just risky. Obviously, this doesn't mean people should predictably spam rolling, but it is definitely something worth keeping in mind.
Also, I think Ryu doesn't have a strong ground poking game (ironically, since he is typically a footsies based character in the SF series). He can get out poked quite easily as a result.
I'm wondering how good Ryu will really be once the hype dies down a little bit...He has great strengths, but he has weaknesses too. Then again, maybe my noobish opinion about some of Ryu's "flaws" are just flat out wrong and I'm just missing something with this character.
You're not wrong.
Ryu lacks approach options.
His options are:
Nair to start a combo. This is not safe on shield, it is shut down completely by simply shield grabbing him, a jumping Ryu telegraphs his intent very clearly.
Grab. But Ryu's grab range is terrible.
Used ranged moves to force opponent to approach.
---
Ryu's game is going to be advanced by Ryu players learning counter moves, frame traps and pushing the limits of perfect shields. Perfect shield in Smash4 hasn't been explored much, Ryu relies on it to start combos.
You have got one thing wrong here: Ryu's footsies game isn't bad in Smash. The mistake you're making is treating footsies in Smash as the same as footsies in SF. Footsies isn't just tapping backwards and forwards throwing out moves until one connects. It's throwing out the move that directly counters the move you pre-emptively expected your opponent to throw out.
Ryu's heavy utilt and usmash are fantastic footsy counters to aerial approaches, they're low commitment because they're quick, so they're low risk. His dtilt beats anything that opponents throw out that would hit him mid-high on his hurtbox because he ducks and his hurtbox moves backwards as a result. His hard neutral A is a counter to anything that hits mid-low because he has no low hurtbox during the animation. The list goes on. The quantity of moves he has are all about choosing the correct move to counter the anticipated moves your opponent is making. That's how footsies works, and it works the same in Smash with a few more movement based differences in particular because of the aerial game. Stationary Fair should also be part of your defensive game as Ryu as should all manner of retreating aerials.
Give it time, Ryu's footsies is going to be a core part of playing the character, move choice is going to be something you need to understand heavily. Matchup knowledge is going to be an incredibly important aspect of playing Ryu because (just like in SF) you're going to need to know the details of absolutely all of your opponent's options in order to choose the correct countering option against them.
As for the meta right now, the meta vs Ryu = Force him to approach. Shield grab him when he stupidly tries to start his obvious combos with nair. Kick the hell out of him. Repeat. Watch him get more aggressive and easier as he gets angrier.
We pretty much need a matchup thread for every single character in the game in my opinion. Then we can really get the ball rolling on which moves Ryu mains should be throwing out the most frequently against which opponents.
