Before I get to the main part of the post, I want to say two things.
1)Read my whole post before replying or flaming, and especially read more than my title.
2)I know the initial negativity has died down somewhat, but I still think this needs to be said.
The first thing I should do is describe what I consider l-canceling. L-canceling (fully known as lag canceling) is a (mainly non-obvious) technique is the Super Smash Brothers games that reduces the landing lag of a player’s aerials.
Since Brawl has come out, I’ve seen many posts where people have said that they were disappointed by the apparent removal of l-canceling from the game, especially since it was there in E-for-All. Some common complaints were that l-canceling allowed for combos and safety that otherwise wasn’t there. People also said that it added depth to the game. The point of this post is to prove these, and hopefully any other, complaints flawed.
First, l-canceling has no strategic depth whatsoever. The reason for this is that, once learned, there is simply no reason to not do it. It’s like, in melee as Marth facing Sheik, purposefully doing an fsmash right out range of a fully mobile Sheik. You can shout, “MINDGAMES!” all you want, but regardless, you’re just opening yourself up for punishment. When there’s no thought downside to doing something, no reason to take another path, there’s obviously no strategy involved. This is in contrast to wavedashing, where you may want to jump or dash to move instead.
All the general depth that l-canceling provides in Brawl is pointless and unnecessary. I’d say it’s safe to say that anything that gives you more options or ways to move/attack/block/grab (especially when not obvious) is depth. Although very minor, being able to walk, run, or jump would be depth. Being able to light-shield is depth. When you l-cancel, it’s also technically depth, but it’s only useful having it in Melee. In that game, l-canceling allowed us to do combos or follow-ups otherwise impossible, and have greater safety when approaching with an aerial. Brawl is a fresh new game, however, and the devs had no reason to keep it in. The reason for this is that l-canceling just reduces lag. All they had to do was lower aerial lag in general. If they had kept melee’s l-cancel, and doubled Brawl’s average aerial lag (which they very well could’ve done) then the only difference would be that we have to press an extra button to get to where we are now. (It seems that we do have more average landing lag in Brawl then in Melee, but that’s not because of l-canceling’s exclusion.) There’s really no reason for them to have us press that extra button, except for one thing, and that is to keep a bigger gap between casuals/scrubs and pros/competitive players.
That has also been a complaint of some people, I believe. That too is flawed thinking, though. First off, I’m not going to show why it’s bad to want a gap, or just more depth in general. That’s not the problems. There are two main problems for wanting l-canceling just for the above described skill gap. One, advanced techs are not as much a factor as mindgames and smart thinking/strategy. That’s why Ken or Chu or whoever could probably 4-stock me in melee, because I use Melee’s advanced techs. There’s no way the developers can take that away. In fact, it seems like they’re putting a tiny bit more stress on such things in this game then in Melee (but that’s for a different post.) The other reason that wanting l-canceling for that reason is flawed is because Brawl, as already stated, is a whole new game. There are many possible new techniques that have yet to be discovered. I myself would be very surprised if we didn’t find a single new technique that overshadows what l-canceling did for Melee.
I hope that I’ve showed all of you why taking out l-canceling is not a bad thing for Brawl. Although it did good things for Melee, this is a new game, and it is no longer needed.
