The layer that has been removed was not purposefully put into Melee, it was simply taking advantage of glitches and oversights in the physics. Melee was already deep, without teching. Obviously additional depth was added when techs were discovered, but the sudden lack of them doesn't mean the whole game is suddenly shallow. There is still a lot that was put into the game intentionally that can be worked with to be fun.
Actually, it really was. L-canceling was put in melee intentionally, and added a lot of depth. Teching, shorty hopping, edgehogging, edgeguarding, crouch canceling, DI, ASDI, SDI, dash dancing, ect. Were all put into the game with technical depth in mind. They were not oversights in anyway. The only things that can even be described as oversights are wavedashing (although it's suprizing that it wasn't removed in later versions of the game) and all actual glitches (yoyo-glitch, super wavedash, and various other glitches). In case you haven't noticed, every single advance tech that is shared accross the cast, is not a glitch. Calling that an oversight is rediculous.
There seem to be a lot of pro players who are quite elitist about Melee - if you can't tech, you can't compete, and unless a non-techer is playing against another non-techer, that's true. If you don't tech you are very unlikely to be able to compete against someone who does.
So it's bad to learn how to learn to play a game well? So it's bad for people to get better than other people by practicing? So it's bad to have a game that can be played at more than one level?
But in Brawl no-one can tech, so suddenly the playing field is levelled quite a bit. Although it does mean sacrificing a layer of depth, that layer of depth was one that most players didn't find fun or enjoyable, if they even knew about it.
The thing is, all competative players
did enjoy it, and if you didn't enjoy that depth, then you had no place trying to enter the competative scene. Is leveling the playing field important enough to strip the game of its fun? That level of depth
was fun, and almost every competative player will testify to that. So instead of casuals simply improving, they felt the need to bring us down?
It split the fanbase into two - the people who did tech, and the people who didn't, and the ones who didn't didn't stand a chance at beating the ones who did.
So, what's your point. And those two groups you have are wrong anyway. The groups actually are:
The people who use everything in their disposal to win, and the people who don't. That will still be true in brawl, but the people at the top won't have as much to use. That may make it more fun for you to fight us, but it makes it
drastically less fun for us to fight each other.
I'm sure the fact that they couldn't effectively compete and have fun at the same time made the game significantly less fun and more short-lived for them.
For who, casual gamers? Competative players did have fun effectively competing. That's something that you don't seem to get. The game was fun for us
beacuase it taxed our minds. It made us not only have to think smart, but fast as well. It also put a whole new layer of options on us to sort through. That's what made the game fun. You may disagree, but you aren't the one that was affected by this change. We were, and it really is a step down in comparison. If closing the gap between us means making the game less fun amoungst ourselves, then may the gap extend for miles. If the advance techniques could simply become easier, and bring casual play up instead, then let the gap be infinitely thin.
Even if you are one of the people who did enjoy that layer (as the majority of the people on SWF seem to be), you are in a significant minority in the overall fanbase.
So we don't matter? Aren't you trying to enter that
minority as you so aptly put it? Do you think it will be fun when you get here, when you realize that the maximum potential has been made so low?
It seems only fair that the game was altered to make it more fun for the majority, and now that they should all have a reasonable chance of being able to compete if they want to
If they really want to be competative, then advance techs are nothing to complain about. Their technical difficulty (which they aren't that hard BTW) has nothing to do with why we argue so passionately for them. It's because it adds more options, and thus more depth. More things to think about, a faster paced game that puts stress on you to keep up, this is exactly what the competative smash scene is all about. Isn't that the scene that you aspired to enter? Well, that's not here anymore.
for most players it will be more fun, and in fact, more competitive.
No, it won't be more competative, or more fun based on the removal of advance techs alone. Do you know why? It's because even though you may have a lot of fun
entering the tournament scene, you won't be inclined to
stay there. The game will get boring faster, because you'll peak faster, because there are less options for you to think about.
It doesn't mean just anyone will be able to effectively compete, skill and strategy will still play a big part and will have to be learned. It's just that teching was a huge barrier that was so big that it took the fun out of the game for a lot of people.
But advance techs
added to that skill and strategy. They weren't just button presses, they were tactics, no different than the ability to roll or short hop. Each of them added options that made the game more complex, which is very appealing to competative players. If you don't like the complexities of a game, then you really don't have the competative mindset in the first place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nObA-7mlsls Mindgames=applied techskill+prediction of the opponent. If you take away from the techskill, which is specifically defined as "ability to control your character," then you are directly taking away from the possible mindgames.
Melee was a two story house with the casuals on the first floor and competatives on the second. Both groups were perfectly content with playing amoung themselves. Problems only arised on the "stairs" between them (dificulty of advance techs). Instead of installing an escelator (making advance techs easier to perform, but leaving them there) they simply tore down the top floor. Is that really fair. The gap the stairs brought is gone, but the height the second floor offered is gone as well. Heck I'd take a two story house with a freakin' rope climb over a one story house any day. I wouldn't mind a dificult way up if there was something better upstairs. You just couldn't leave us alone, could you?