The argument from the beginning hasn't been about which game is currently more competitive. The entire purpose of the thread was to look into the competitive viability of each game and in that process we looked at the every stage of melee's development, as well as the pros and cons of each game's mechanics and overall play style. All of this is an effort to decide whether we should, as a community, be backing Brawl on a competitive ground.
The biggest issue I have is that the game is not exciting. It is slow, floaty, and lacks in anything impressive. Individual moves may "look" cool, but graphics are skin deep. The ability to link one thing into another, given a variety of factors such as knowledge of knockback and hitstun, keeping close to frame perfect on movement out of your own moves and into the next, and adaptation to opponent DI are examples of why Melee is exciting to watch. It is impressive to observe a player that can execute all of this consistently. These factors exists in Brawl, but have been gimped horribly by the new game mechanics, and even years down the line when people can combo consistently, it isn't going to be nearly as fun to watch because of the slow pace of the game.
This brings me to an important point. Brawl is not fun to watch. Spectators get bored. Melee has it's own share of boring things, such as chaingrabs and shine infinites (hard to do anyway), but in Brawl, in just a few months, we have already discovered more of these kinds of techniques than Melee ever had. Brawl is an exercise in poorly designed game mechanics and programming what-not-to-do's. One of the biggest reasons Fox's shine was considered one of the best moves in Melee was because it had set knockback which could lead into other moves, giving Fox an amazing combo starter. Brawl has GRABS with set knockback in addition to a variety of normal moves. There is nothing impressive about watching someone CG when their grab always pushes a character the same way. This comes down to pure muscle memory. There is no reaction to DI and nothing to predict. It is boring from start to finish.
Brawl has inferior mechanics to Melee. This is not something that will be changed given more time to adapt the meta-game. You can argue it all you like and say that you have more fun in Brawl, but odds are, you were never at the high level metagame of Melee, and you aren't at the high level metagame of Brawl.
I have never used the concept of advanced techniques being necessary in a game because I don't believe that to be true. They will be found regardless. Advanced techniques are just the easiest way to spot a player that actively participates in the community in that, if you know something exists and you want to stay a competitive player, you will learn to do them. It's that simple. I have seen players that spent a significant amount of time complaining about wavedashing and l-cancelling in Melee flaunt their newfound brawl ATs. Newsflash: It's the same thing. You were just butthurt about not being able to keep up in Melee. Odds are, you are going to fall behind in Brawl too.
Please, someone come complain because anything I am saying is just my "opinion". I would like to point out once again that there is a difference between opinion and expert opinion, and I have already demonstrated many times over my knowledge of both games.
