You have yet to give a reason as to why being different from Smash makes it a good game.
NASB2 was a great game. It was also more like Smash than it's predecessor. Multiversus will always have a place in the platfighter ring purely due to accessibility with being F2P
Being built around 2v2 is an issue in that it creates an ouroboros of balancing problems, seeing as you now have to balance everything around the doubles format which the devs are clearly not capable of doing. Balancing around 1v1 is the much healthier option for competitive play and a path of less resistance.
They absolutely can have a move have different functionalities based on whether it connects with a teammate or enemy. Again, this is literally already in the game. Better yet, they could create more cohesive complete move sets with more variety instead of making every match fishing for jab to start a combo.
Because it brings something new and exciting than just the same old same old? It makes the game more likely to stand out and obtain a whole new slew of players? (Which is exactly what happened. A lot of people who never played plat fighters were willing to try MVS over Rivals or NASB). And I'm sick and tired of games always needing to try and copy Melee Fox shine or Falcon knee or whatever. Or needing to force in wavedashing for the billionth time. The novelty and magic's gone, I want to see the plat fighter genre grow.
NASB2 was also a game that was instantly forgotten, is pretty much a financial failure from all the layoffs and created a bunch of bland missed potential in movesets since they designed characters around Melee and Ultimate players rather than doing anything cool or new with them. Which sucks since I liked NASB and wanted to see it thrive. But objectively, it did not thrive. MVS should be nothing like NASB lmao. And no, F2P alone isn't enough, MVS would run into the problem a lot of other plat fighters did: why play this when you can play Smash? Especially if it's significantly less polished than Smash or even Rivals? Multiversus would have no future trying to force a Smash approach, alienating the audience it DID get for its own merits. Smash players have already proven to swiftly abandon games at a moment's notice since they can always just play Smash to get their fix. There were other F2P Smash-likes that flopped or became extremely niche so F2P isn't the end all be all. Brawlhalla was the exception to the norm.
Not really, the issue isn't 2v2. That's blatantly false. The problem comes from the simple fact that PFG isn't too experienced with fighting games and their QA team is tiny, with the game being glitchy and rushed to boot. A lot of balancing problems would easily be fixed if they were fast enough to get their hitboxes in order already.
Your suggestion of how to handle your team attack idea is naive and a coding nightmare. And it defeats the entire point of team attack if certain moves just flat out won't hurt an ally anyway despite team attack being on by default. It's stupid and just a pure half measure. Either make them all team attack or don't do it at all. This wishy washy stuff would just frustrate more people than anything since their signature huge tools can't work with an ally without hitting them but
this character magically can. It'd become total nonsense. And the movesets literally are cohesive lol, the biggest praise for MVS are the movesets. Jabs are used the most because they're
overtuned, it happens, it's not the fault of the entire moveset concepts. Cohesion is there just with jabs being too strong.
This exact kind of problem exists because of the need to make every character interact with a teammate. Every character in this game has some sort of unfun degenerate nonsense that makes fighting them annoying. Tracking moves, negation of core mechanics, stupid overly complex status ailments that run the gamut of blatantly overpowered to borderline useless - they're more obsessed with being different than making a fun game to play. For every inspired moveset like Jason, Beetlejuice, or Smith, we have characters stacking up cool downs like it's League of Legends.
Genuinely who cares if they're stacking up cooldowns or statuses or whatever. That's a non issue and brought a lot of depth and manageable uniqueness to the game. I wish Smash thought of mechanics that made more of an effort to balance a lot of their bull**** characters. I will happily deal with Gizmo cooldowns and ammo system if the alternative is Young Link spamming fast and infinite flame arrows that combos to his lagless moves. Characters will always be annoying to fight even Smash and the """Smash copies""", they're filled to the brim with characters that players crashed out over. Singling out MVS for that is silly and reeks of bad faith criticism.
Copying Smash isn't a problem if you make it with quality. There are ways that Rivals and NASB2 outdo their inspiration. But then there's games that try to be too different - PlayStation All Stars, anyone?
It is a problem if you want to have worthwhile growth to the genre and an actual big playerbase. MVS lives or dies by its money revenue. It will not survive if it got a NASB tier audience from doing dumb **** akin to desperately chasing Smash players. The fact that Brawlhalla of all games consistently maintained a massive playerbase even when Ultimate was existing is the kind of goal MVS should be chasing than the niche discord fighter tier audiences.
The vast majority actually have fun with MVS and its dodge ideas unlike Playstation All Stars. If they weren't and wanted the game to be overhauled into a Smash wannabe, the shield mechanic wouldn't have such a large outcry.