This would go much better if people would view Brawl as a different game, instead of "melee 2.0". I have brawl, I played melee and was practically addicted to it for a couple months. I just got back into smash, and im very satisfied with Brawl.
The fact of the matter is, here's smash:
Smash 64 = Smash 1.0
Melee = Smash 2.0
Brawl = Smash 3.0
1.0 to 2.0
Z cancelling became L cancelling, dash dancing stayed in, teching stayed in, they added wavedash (accident or not it added lots of depth), gave spikes to more characters, kept the intense edgegame, increased physics related differences between characters, game speed went through the roof, made it overall bigger and prettier.
2.0 to 3.0
took out cancelling altogether, took out wavedash due to new dodging/physics system (which is okay... BUT --->), took out dash dancing completely which really hurts the ground game, made characters randomly fall over, game speed is slowed almost to smash 64 levels, got rid of physics differences between characters, made everything floaty, made the effects of fastfalling much less, killed the edgegame, made the game overall bigger and prettier, put it online, made a decent 1 player game out of it.
There's certainly more but that's basically my view of it, a couple days later. Generally you expect some continuity from game to game, a BUILDING UPON the successes of the past. Not a systematic tearing apart of them. From 1.0 to 2.0, they built upon it. 2.0 to 3.0 is like a step backwards... as stated above, like making smash into a kid's game.
People like to spike over the edge... people like to dashdance, wavedash, shinespike, edgeguard, combo, crouch cancel... 'well we can't have any of that, my god!!! What about the poor noobs and novices!?!? We know everyone will buy the game no matter what we do, let's cater to the casual crowd.'
The casual crowd would buy the game and eat it up EVEN IF they kept all the depth. Just because some people are mindbogglingly good doesn't mean that people who are not so good can't enjoy the game. I loved melee before I knew about the advanced stuff, it was great fun.
I simply don't understand the elimination of such options.
And yes, I need to vent, and you need someone to hate. So flame away.