A few things:
2) Samus might be low tier or whatever, but pointing out all of the weaknesses of her "missing" hitboxes feels a bit disingenuous, because a lot of those attacks are still really good.
I think overall Samus is not meant to be a "reliable" character in the sense that option A naturally flows into option B. Almost everything you have to do is based on trying to pick the right choice in context rather than there being a right choice in general. Jab 1 doesn't link into Jab 2, but you can Jab once and then go for something else, and when they start to counter whatever else you're doing, that's when you Jab 2. She has the tools to fight at close and long range, and you have to choose which is the right choice in any given situation.
Except quite a few characters already have frame traps built into jabs that also combo. Samus has a jab that doesn't combo and is a mediocre frame trap. It's a terrible move. Aside from that, it's not hard to make Samus sound like a good character. Except she isn't. Her neutral air is garbage. She's floaty, she has a terrible roll, and has no defense in the air other than down B and try to float away. She's supposed to be able to control space, but her jab and neutral air are both garbage, her forward tilt is average to below average, her projectiles are overall much more linear than Link's. In addition to her wonky hitboxes, she just doesn't really work. No matter how much you try to theorize about her having tools that should technically work, we haven't seen it happening at all in practice.
3) Falco does make sense as a character, it's just that his past incarnations have often skewed him away from what he was supposed to be. Losing dair hurts, and that's something i perhaps don't agree with, but if you look at how Falco is set up in Smash 4, he's basically meant to not really approach from a long distance. Short hop lasers are out, run speed is bad.
However, lasers in general prevent the opponent from trying to get too much distance from Falco. They force approaches, and are good for tacking on bits of damage if the opponent tries to break away. If they try to fight a projectile war, why look, there's a reflector that's ALSO A TRANSCENDENT PROJECTILE. Run speed is bad, but walk speed is great. So basically, Falco is designed to force approaches into close range where his neutral and footsies are well above average. Falco draws you into him, into the area where he excels. The results didn't quite live up to the design a few patches ago, but tiny, tiny changes have made such a difference. If his game plan wasn't clear before, I think it certainly is now, and the only thing preventing people from seeing that is "wah, where's my laser canceling, wah, where's my instant spike?"
You say the previous games distracted from "what he's supposed to be," and then you say that his laser forces approach. That's EXACTLY what he did in the previous games. Playing exactly how he was supposed to be played... distracted from how he's supposed to be played?
You don't seem like you've actually played as or against Falco. The hitstun on his lasers is almost non-existent. You can just run straight at him, and if Falco tries to fire more than two lasers from full screen, he's going to get punished. And I don't mean running at him and shielding the lasers, I mean you just run right at him and the lasers will not even remotely keep you out. You'll take 5-8% approaching Falco without shielding. It doesn't force an approach because there's no reason to be afraid of Falco firing lasers; they don't do much damage, and it's not like he has a charge shot. It also doesn't force approaches because it's incredibly easy to shield. Nothing about it forces anything. It's the easiest projectile in the entire game to deal with because each shot can easily be power-shielded, deals negligible shield damage, and has zero KO or follow-up potential.
They want Falco to be a close range character in a game where Mario, Luigi, Sheik, and even Kirby completely outclass him at that in every way. Falco's "game plan" isn't to shoot lasers and "force approaches," because that doesn't work. It's to walk instead of run, punish aerial approaches, keep people from getting too close with forward tilt and reflector, punish with grabs when he can, bait people into his forward smash. And those can work pretty well. The problem is, that's ALL he can do. He can't approach, and he can't force approaches. He needs people to simply walk or jump into his zone of their own volition. And if you think Falco players complain instead of figuring out the character, then you haven't actually been to the Falco boards or played against any Falco users. Get that strawman out of here, I'm tired of seeing it used every time someone tries to claim a character "isn't low tier, the people playing them just suck."
