Reasonings behind Olimar's underratedness?

[Pikmin-ism42]

Hullo, Olimar's been my main ever since the first Super Smash Bros. game I've ever played!
...
I haven't played melee yet. I am a terrible person.
Anyways, I've realized that ever since Olimar was playable in any game, a whole bunch people really seem to have a grudge against him. Here are a few notable examples...

"The only 2 characters that I agree are bad are rob and olimar. Their attacks are weak. Olimar is the the weakest. If you are missing pikmin, than an entire set of attacks are useless. The only good thing about him is his final smash. But most of the time you can't even get it because be is so terrible. I once did a randomness brawl. (with random stages and characters. I became olimar and he was so bad I instantly canceled the brawl."

"Olimar was a disappointment in every way imaginable. Weak attacks, is a puny without his Pikmin who, by the way, die way to easily, smash, although strong, isn't accurate at all, cannot grab on to ANYTHING, jump is ********, slow, keeps getting eaten by that ******** worm thingymajagger, wears a dumb helmet, keeps making annoying sounds, is scared of everything, cannot even FIGHT properly, he is possibly the worst character in a fighting game ever. Did I mention he's a disappointment?"
-courtesy of http://www.thetoptens.com/worst-ssbb-characters/

"Remove Olimar (TOO USLELESS, EITHER REMOVE HIM, OR CHANGE HIS MOVESET! TWO OF HIS SPECIALS DON'T EVEN DO ANYTHING!!!!)"
-This outburst of truth comes from http://www.screwattack.com/news/ssb4-part-2-removing-characters

So yeah, basically, a lot of people seem to strongly despise Olimar for questionable reasons, despite ranking a whopping #3 spot on the tier list in Brawl. It made me wonder if I was the only person on Earth that happened to know of the existence of the Pikmin franchise.
Then came Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS, along with the return of Olimar, however, this time around only three Pikmin could follow him at a time, BUT his recovery was replaced with a much more effective move AND there is now a handy little marker showing you which Pikmin you'd use. Honestly, I didn't find that the removal of three of his Pikmin was that much of a handicap for him, and I've noticed that even whilst carrying 3 Pikmin with him, his recovery traverses a satisfactory amount of distance.
But now a hella lot of people on the internet have begun to point out how terrible of a nerf this was and how he is practically useless and a dissapointment of a character. And so far, I've only met one person (other than myself) online who has chosen Olimar. (Also he was a terrible player.) Huh.
So basically, why do you think that Olimar gets so much unfounded hatred? It could possibly be because he's one of the least straightforward characters, but it's probably more than just that.

 

[Pikmin-ism42]

*Please ignore this one reply*

 

[Sky Pirate]

I was going to address the points those people were making, but they were SERIOUSLY dumb...

Olimar requires a bit of effort to learn and play, but he can be very potent and annoying once you do.
You're bound to get people upset because they can't use him or upset because they played against him and found him annoying.

 

[Ribskhie]

I think the main reason people hate him is because Olimar has a reputation as one of the most annoying characters to fight against, with him being able to rack up damage indirectly and quickly. On top of that, a lot of people suck with Olimar and can't utilize most of his abilities well, or just simply don't understand how Olimar functions.

Edit: I just checked out those links, and my God, were there some stupid stuff in them.

 

[koken]

I think the people who play against us as Olimar, gets frustrated when they can't get close as easily as their are used to or can do their usual %$/&$2.
I trully believe that fighting against us is a pain in the $%&$, because you have to be very focus to not get punished.
Besides, it's underrated because it has a big learning curve and you need a lot of effort to keep the good job with him.

It is true that he is weak and gets killed earlier (some characters can kill us at 80+%), but that's another reason why a good Olimar player has to be totally aware off and annoying.

I believe that a good way of explain our gamestyle is: annoying. Just as the Hoo-Haa except that we can't kill THAT easily.

 

[Pikmin-ism42]

Hmmm, that is true, but still. If people find him annoying to fight, why would they go through all the trouble to jump in front of their keyboard and rant about how "Useless" and "weak" he is if they found him difficult to beat?

 

[Ribskhie]

Hmmm, that is true, but still. If people find him annoying to fight, why would they go through all the trouble to jump in front of their keyboard and rant about how "Useless" and "weak" he is if they found him difficult to beat?

Like I said before, some people don't understand how Olimar works and can't get that Olimar isn't your standard fighter. As such, they do bad with him, and immediately think that Olimar is horrible, when in reality, it's just them sucking with him.

 

[Angbad]

Olimar was underrated at the beginning of sm4sh, but i'd say he's overrated right now.

In brawl he was very underrated until some top olimars really showed his potential.

 

[ImReallyFeelingIt]

Like I said before, some people don't understand how Olimar works and can't get that Olimar isn't your standard fighter.

Because they're too busy using easier to use characters like, say... Link. Like Robin, you need to think when using Olimar.

Also, he's easy to kill, especially with strong characters like Rosalina and Capt. Falcon, but hey, I still love Olimar/Alph.

 

[extremecoopster]

"Scared of everything"...
Well, in that kind of logic, why is he fighting? Lol.

A lot of people can really understand Olimars potential even more over time. To my understanding, a lot of characters fight really panicky after some crazy damaging combo like White Pikmin toss+grab+Dthrow+fair+fair+dtilt That actually does a bit more damage than the Wombo Combo (THE Wombo Combo) which did 52%. When I mean Olimar is underrated, I mean underrated.

 

[Kon]

I really love Alph as a character and his playstyle. He is underrated because you need more "preparation" to understand his moveset.

1) Know the differences between each Pikmin.
2) Know your specials and how to use them effectively.
3) Learn how to survive without Pikmins.

And more advanced: Learn how to use pivot grabs and pivot smashes and when to use them.

Also the spacing is some issue(smash attacks range depends on the Pikmin color, grab range depends on the Pikmin color and even aerials depend on the Pikmin color) and the fact Pikmin can be reflected(smash attacks) makes people think it would be easy to kill Olimar. Next Olimar isn't such a combo character as many strong characters(Luigi, Mario, Pikachu, Sheik, Fox, Ness, Diddy,...) which leads to a more defensive playstyle or a more risky offensive playstyle(which needs good reads). So most people trying to play Olimar offensive right away will probably fail. I also feel like defensive playstyles are something many people don't really like.
Another problem is that the playstyle can change drastically depending on the MU. Stuff that works fine on characters like Donkey Kong, Bowser or Ganondorf may not work as good on characters like Yoshi or Peach.

And of course the most important reason why he is underrated: You barely see any Olimar/Alph in For Glory. Nobody plays him? So he must be bad. Better don't give it a try. I feel like many people have something like this in mind. Would be the same reason why you don't see many Charizards or Donkey Kongs in For Glory. However as quite some people troll with Ganondorf, you can see Ganondorf in For Glory sometimes.

 

[Roy Renard]

He's kind of underrated in a general perception because he's one of the least used characters in For Glory (and among the noob-competitive-beginning players), and that's mostly due to what people here said about him having some kind of high learning curve. I heard and read that back in the Brawl days he was supposed to be one of the easiest top tier characters to use, but his underrrepresentation after the Nietono era just showed how hard he was to use effectively in a Meta-Knight and IC's-plagued metagame, as players just opted to go with those characters or Snake or Marth.
During Sm4sh's release, I think he was pretty underrated, even for the competitive community, since he looked like he was heavily nerfed compared to his Brawl form, with smashes having a bit more lag (up smash is the least reliable of his smashes right now), having 3 less Pikmin, no more effective super armor in down B, reduced grab range and a lot more lag on whiffed grabs, no more chain grabs, White Pikmin doing almost half damage when side-B'd compared to Brawl and kind of a dumb Pikmin AI. I was personally kind of disappointed with him at the beginning, since I was an Olimar main in Brawl and thought he was very bad, and I think most other Olimar mains were as well, so, if even the old Olimar mains thought he was bad, the rest of the community would rightfully think so. Even top Olimar mains in Brawl immediately switched to another character (Nietono, Dabuz, Denti, Logic, etc.); however, ever since Dabuz showed his Olimar off in some major tournaments, we all immediately wanted to main him back, as we saw new great combos (such as downthrow-f-air to jab to downthrow-f-air, or downthrow to double u-air) and a possible counter to Diddy. I immeadiately went back to Olimar and found out that, even though he is probably still not as good as his Brawl incarnation, he's still pretty good, with many buffs that I (and possibly many other ex-Olimar mains) overlooked, such as added damage and killpower in most of his smashes, especially with reds, side-B being harder to deal with, as Pikmin aren't killed or shaken off as easily, downthrow combos that work even at high percents, a great jab that combos into grabs at low-mid percentages and, obviously, the massive recovery he gets (although that was the one buff that was never overlooked), which went from being the worst or one of the worst in Brawl, to one of the best in Sm4sh.
So, he is underrated because the perception that he was heavily nerfed still doesn't quite disappear (along with what happens with Metaknight, for example), in terms of the competitive community. And as for the general Smash community, noobs and beginners (which are majority) just think he is bad nevertheless, even in Brawl, since he is an unconventional character and he "can't attack without Pikmin, has two useless specials, etc, etc, etc.".

 

[A-money2121]

Trust me, 95% percent of their excuses have no logic, reasoning or truth behind them.

 

[JuanP_91]

I honestly have no idea why. I picked him up, made him my secondary, and loved him.

Imo, Olimar/Alph's potential lies in the versatility different kinds of Pikmin have.

Projectiles? You got plenty
Power? Red Pikmin there for you
Punishing Tools? Smack a purple in their face
Anti-projectile shields? Pikmin work fine
Powerful grabs? Blue Pikmin
Recovery? No words

You get the point. He can do many things. The only issues would be his speed and his lack of proper follow ups.

I just ignore haters, they have no idea the character they're missing in Olimar