I mean, you're entitled to your opinion... but what exactly justifies it? Can you explain the following phenomenons?
1. How do you explain so many people joining the Melee scene after 10+ years or how Melee overtook its less technical sequel in competitive popularity? I mean ****... it still remains to be seen if Smash 4 will even have more entrants than Melee at Apex 2014. (To be fair, I'd be surprised if Melee did since smash 4 is the new game after all). Also, how did this game last so long if ATs are bad for growth?
2. Why is P:M, a game which utilizes Melee ATs and technical characters (Lucas, Lucario, etc.), able to get so popular and garner new players? Shouldn't the ATs inhibit popularity?
3. How do you explain players such as myself who got into competitive Melee because L-cancelling, wavedashing, and videos such as shined blind were alluring?
4. Shouldn't a game with technical and mental facets cover more demographics? You're saying that ATs limit entry, what about the mental game? Does the fact that players like Borp (zero tech skill) and Dark (totally flashy, excessive tech skill) can exist concurrently in Melee mean anything to you? Players are able to pursue many different avenues.
5. Watching players perform crazy, unexpected, and impressive technical feats can be good for viewership. This is ubiquitous throughout most games (see: infamous parry in 3rd strike). Things which are good for viewership is good for growth, right?
6. Starcraft is wayyyyyy harder than Melee or any smash game for that matter. Entry into smash can be boiled down to a 2 button fighter/platformer with directional inputs. Sc2 demands some baseline understanding of macro before you can even apply strategy which takes far more time than learning the most basic levels of smash. If difficulty is bad for growth how did starcraft get so popular in South Korea? To the point its basically their national sport?
7. You cannot say that all ATs create barriers before admitting that they add options (primarily techniques such as wavedashing/wavelanding, jump canceling shines, double jump cancelling, dash dancing, etc.). The more options a game has, the more time it takes to figure out. Wouldn't this mean that some ATs contribute to longevity and meta progression? Melee in 2003 is wayyy different than 2013.
In short, I just don't understand how you can arrive to the conclusion that ATs are nothing more than entry inhibitors or that its bad for growth; essentially nothing but the contrary exists in actual esports. (particularly with the examples I gave with Starcraft)
Something you should understand:
A game can be enjoyed at many different levels of play. Yes, if you want to be the best at melee, you've got a hill to climb, but this is a testament to its depth and duality as a technical AND mental game (an a 13+ year old one at that). You wouldn't scoff at chess which is hundreds of years old for the same reasons.
Furthermore, ATs don't exist as technical barriers, they exist as options which give you new degrees of control to your character and allow you express yourself in countless ways (do you emphasize tech? Do you focus on movement? Do you focus on combos? Do you focus on outsmarting your opponent?) these options contribute to emergent gameplay (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_gameplay) which is honestly the best thing a game can hope to achieve. More ATs = more options = more depth.
1. There are and always will be people who prefer the faster and more technical game. And, all technical aspects aside, Brawl's playerbase dropped the ball while Melee's went out of their way to gain new recognition. I don't deny that these games grow, but so do the even-more technical regular fighting games. I simply believe they can grow
more or
faster without.
2. The biggest draw to PM for me personally is its ongoing balance. I'm meh at its ATs, but it offers me a game to play with Brawl's roster plus two, one of which is Roy, a character from my favorite game series. I treat it as a better Brawl with gimmicks that I'm too slow to compete with, so I play it for fun (like I do every Smash game), and I watch tournaments (PM and Smash4, but not Brawl or Melee, because M and 4 offer more character variety which keeps me interested, while both having enough technique to let players show off). I suppose I should clarify again, ATs don't inhibit popularity, they inhibit entry to competition. I and my whole friend group won't even bother wasting our own time going to a tournament because we know we aren't nearly capable of playing well enough. Smash4, I'm not that opposed to entering Smash4, where I already know and can reliably perform everything except perfect pivots (which... I can't see application for Robin yet). I see an easier time growing into a competitive Smash4 player because it's already closer to my level of capability.
3. Some people like flashy and fast tricks. I like 'em, too, I just suck at using them, so I won't be attempting to compete in a game out of my capability.
4. Again, inhibits tournament entry. Perhaps because I don't follow Melee any more, but I've heard of neither of those players, and can't make accurate statements about them.
5. Viewership growth depends on a lot of things, and while flashy tech can help, it's not the only way. Character and stage variety, as well as good commentators (unrelated to the games themselves), also help a lot. For that matter, character and stage variety are why I don't watch Melee or 64 on a regular basis, only PM and Smash4. But I don't deny that there's a lot of fun in watching some flashy combos (but I'd like for it to be someone besides a Fox or Falco for a change, y'know?)
6. It can be argued that any athletic sport is harder than any video game due to the physical endurance and skill needed to play, and almost every athletic sport is more popular than almost every esport (outliers exist in both directions). But direct on the subject of Starcraft, while there are certainly thousands of pro SC players in Korea, a
significant part of its popularity as a sport is its public support and spectator scene (tournaments being held in old Olympics stadiums, for instance). It basically IS a sport there, whereas, say, in the US or Europe, video games are... video games, to the general eye. That perception is changing, slowly, but the concept of an e-sport is still scoffed at by a lot of people as something inferior to athletics. A lot of that is attitude. ESPN3 hosted Dota2's International this past year, but right after it, some bigwig on the network basically said "It was cool but it's not a sport." If that attitude itself won't change, at least the perception of video games will have to change before any esport will gain real mainstream acknowledgement. I recommend watching Valve's "Free To Play" documentary if you're interested in esports history (helps if you know Dota, as that's how it's framed).
7. ATs add options (but aren't the only way to do so), and in doing so, most certainly can (but don't always, e.g. L-canceling) add additional depth to a game. And, while new things are learned over time, certain things haven't changed at all in Melee's history. Namely, it is Fox, and always has been Fox, and always will be Fox, who is the top character. Things below him may shift, and playstyles may vary, but the top level of Melee hasn't changed in a
very long time. That sort of lack of change and balance is an issue for me that brings a lot of appeal to Project M and (depending on if Sakurai and Nandai consider found infinites and whatnot to be on their list of "glaring issues" for their future patching policty) Smash4 (though that could be because, as a Dota player, I'm very used to a balance patch every 2-3 months keeping the metagame from devolving to the same handful of top picks and bans with the occasional flavor pick, which is pretty much how I see Melee at a top tier being played).
I am all for emergent gameplay, but I firmly believe that it can be done without implementing frame-tight physics exploits into a character's metagame. A useful note about Project M is that they made a lot of Melee and Brawl's ATs easier to use (for example, Samus's "super wavedash") and more standardized in result (DACUS in 3.5). That, in my opinion, is a
good approach to ATs. I'm also, perhaps nonsensically, very opposed to ATs that exist as hidden easter eggs, but it's hard to argue that the internet has made things vastly easier to discover (for those interested) than tricks used to be.
I suppose it often sounds like I thoroughly hate ATs and want them all removed. That's not true. But I want them to be a) acknowledged in in-game documentation if they are intended, b) to add depth that benefits the cast at least more or less equally to avoid imbalance (l-canceling adds no depth, and sadly, not everyone gets much or any mileage out of a wavedash), and c) to be implemented in intuitive ways (pivots are intuitive. Perfect Pivots are pretty intuitive. Airdodging into the ground to move while attacking makes no intuitive sense when considering its inputs). Unfortunately, most ATs don't follow those traits.
The bottom line is that I don't believe ATs are this absolutely-required trait that many players harp them as. They inhibit people from entering high level play, but they also can help that high level play become even higher level. There are plenty of ways to add techniques without making them abnormally difficult to execute (I will always admire the PMBR for making old techs even a few frames easier to perform), which has the result of keeping depth without sacrificing much accessibility.
