wow im mad swf went down as i wrote a big post
ffs ill reply later, making scrambled eggs. in short, no youre missing like 99% of the picture.
---
Anyway, yes falcos recovery is limited and his margin for error is small. This will have an effect every match, most likely costing him a stock or two and taking considerable damage. Now lets consider some other aspects of his gameplay... Both characters are on the ground, shielding. What is his margin for error in going for a jab? Its almost as big as you can possibly get. Almost no matter what the enemy does, his jab WILL win and if it doesnt (ie, they roll away) it doesnt matter because now it has put them in the neutral position. Falco now has lasers and side B. Both of these have enourmous margins, lasers are basically 0 risk and side b has low risk too. All of these options have tiny effects (<10 damage in most cases) yet how often will they hit? How often is falco going to be in a neutral situation where his lasers have an infinite margin for error and when that decreases, his sideb makes up for it?
Remember its ALL CUMULATIVE. You have to consider how often the character will find themselves in a situation where they maximise this margin. For falco, thats pretty much the majority of the game. Then you consider the effect of this. Look at his chaingrab. that has almost no risk once it has begin, thus an enormous margin AND it has a massive effect. However he will only find himself in this situation a few times every match. But most importantly, is how his margins compare to the OTHER CHARACTER. It doesnt really matter what falcos margins are; only how his are relative to the one he is against. How many times in a match does the enemy have a low-risk approach to beat lasers, sideb and jab? Dont only consider how precise they have to be, consider how many times they have to do this. Every time falco hits you with these attacks, your margin is cut down. You cant continue to run this risk or falco just builds up a bigger lead, and his margin is made larger (in the form of %).
So think, if every time falco hits you with jab/sideb/lasers which have a massive margin for error, your margin decreases (in the sense you are going to need to pull off a high risk, low % gimp to bring the match back), who is the better character? And this was only considering 3 attacks. I didnt even consider things like rising bair. Overall, his margin is EXTREMELY high because he has so many low risk options at any given time which cut down the enemies margins to almost 0. it doesnt matter if his margin is small in the fact of someone who can gimp him easily like mario or something, for 99% of the match he has cut marios margin down to 0 when he has absolutely no answer to jab or careful camping. Its not the total which matters, its the DIFFERENCE and falcos ability to make everyones margin tiny or 0, is what makes him amazing.
Now im not gonna go into detail like i did with falco, but DDD is no different. Yes he has those enormous margins with his weight, CG, priority and range but he does have aspects which cut his margin down, mostly mobility-wise. however DDD doesnt have a multitude of auto-shutdown options like falco does. Almost all characters can camp him. Whether its with projectiles or simply staying just out of his range and playing reactionary, if they are patient, they can punish him often. How about mk approaching DDD who is near the ledge. DDD does have options to MK's like 20 different approaches, but he cant mess one up or he WILL get punished. it doesnt end there though. Now DDD is out of the neutral position and getting pressured. He has to make the right decision every time because his reset options are terrible. He cant get away from pressure well at all. This is an ongoing thing. For every time he gets pressured, his margins decrease. It can only take 1 single dash attack from MK to start it all, but suddenly DDD's chaingrab, bair, ftilt, sideb etc are all taken out of the picture.
Whilst he can escape it with a well timed, exact move, the risk is still there. if he messes that one attack up, he could find himself shuttle looped offstage and now his margins are REALLY small. His poor escape mechanisms and low mobility are just too much. So unlike falco, he has a naturally extremely high margin for error in that he can get hit 30 times and not die however he doesnt cut down the enemies anywhere near as well. The enemy has a considerable risk as always of copping a fair to the face or messing up and getting CG'd however vs MK in my example, DDD is going to be faced with a low margin of error situation for the majority of the game. He cant avoid taking lots of damage at a time and this WILL happen because of how he is. This isnt a player skill to overcome, it is his margin for error.
ugh idk if that made much sense. DDD is a tough case but the main point is, all that matters is how large the margin is between the two characters OVERALL. if your character requires repeated low margin tactics in order to win, the character is bad. You can make up for this by decreasing the enemies margins as much as possible even if the enemy has a naturally ENORMOUS margin. See Diddy vs DDD as the prime example to end them all.
