There's also this weird witch hunt that happens all the time in the CCI thread -- happening right now to this fetus, rabbit thing called "Mewtwo" --, but hypocritically, people ask for over-tuned and broken options -- Shaya just posted about that in the thread. Just today, patch 1.1.6 is announced and someone made a thread in the Falco boards asking for the community to petition for Falco's SHDL. I feel like, and I'm sorry if I offend anyone, that the Smash community is immature. That's not a bad thing as communities do have to start somewhere and I'm not trying to say other fighting game communities are wizened, gentle communities, but the problem is that the Smash community has a habit of loving and hating broken things which leads to rejecting any notion of reasonable re-tuning to characters and worshiping -- might be the wrong word -- broken tools like 64 Fox and Falco's Blaster and Melee's Shines. When buffs are brought up, it's usually aimed at making a top tier. No, not a high tier or mid tier or just improving a character, but outright making them a top tier that probably would be overwhelming for other characters. Buffs like Falco needs his SHDL. There is never a notion that lower overall recovery could work like... Guile's Sonic Boom, King's Venom Strike, or a ton of other projectiles in Smash and other fighting games. When nerfs are brought up, they're usually severe to where I'd say some characters would just drop to bottom tier. It's not even things like, using Mewtwo's Fair, it should be re-tuned a bit like maybe it shouldn't do 13% and it should do 12% or maybe the knockback should be adjusted like 10 less base or something. Nope, it's straight up let's freaking kill Mewtwo's Fair so it's worse than Zelda's sour-spot Fair -- exaggerating, but you get the point.
There's also a rejection of fighting game concepts, especially in regards to zoning which is just labeled as campy. Here's the thing, defensive play and zoning are usually never fun for the audience. People hate them in Smash, people hate them in Street Fighter, and people hate them in boxing and MMA. For the audience, it's boring, but for the game, it's just a style characters and players do. Guile, anyone? Or in context to Smash, Melee and Brawl Falco? Yeah, Falco zoned the hell out of characters, but he happened to be able to approach while zoning. If he didn't he'd probably be hated in Melee and Brawl too just like how people don't like Duck Hunt, Link, Rosalina, Toon Link, and Villager. Oh wait, Falco is hated in Melee and Brawl. People don't like dealing with a zoner who works like that and there's few if any zoners in any fighting game who can throw out projectiles while moving with little commitment. King can follow her Venom Strikes, but after going through recovery frames and running up not firing a laser, moving, firing again, and moving. Even stationary, few characters have that rapid rate of fire. Even in Smash 4 where his rate of fire is half that of Melee and Brawl, people actually do struggle against Falco as he fires lasers. This doesn't help that he fires low to the ground while Bayonetta upwards and her Bullet Climax's knockback is low enough you don't get stalled like Falco's Blaster. You're forced to jump and there wasn't a safe zone in Melee and Brawl since his lasers basically had infinite range. Anyway, I digress.
For Smash 4, there's also a reliance on miracle patches to raise their characters from wherever to the top. Yes, there are characters who need to be fixed because of dysfunctional issues, but that doesn't mean your character should murder the rest of the cast nor should you be complacent. People gave up in Melee and Brawl because there were no patches and the best characters were that over-tuned. People in Smash 4 look like they are giving up and depending on patches to save them. Yeah, some moves and setups are stupid, but could you at least try to figure out why instead of complaining and whining which I'm also completely guilty about? When was it... Someone figured out that you couldn't DI Witch Twist it was the opposite. Yeah. Someone figured it out. It would have happened faster if everyone chipped in. At that point, it would have been either given everyone the info to combat it more quickly or figure that something is that busted and the world needs to know. Emblem Lord pointed this out too, but there is a problem: Smash's training mode. Unlike in other games, you can't repeatedly test something without a partner since you can't set the CPU to do whatever you want. Maybe someone will figure out a mod, but it's unlikely. At the same time, if there's something that's really troubling to the community, maybe people should join up to figure it out... Should note that I'm not saying stuff should be figured out instantly -- that's another, more general problem: people expecting immediate gratification and results. Might feel hopeless at times, but players are people. They're busy and they're not all the same. Some players take more time to get to a high level and others don't. You can't expect, say, a Greninja player struggling to juggle a job, school, maybe even a family to immediately become aMSa-level and take tournaments left and right. It's sad since there are some really good players, but because they can't travel, they're just ignored. Scatt's a fantastic Mega Man, but he wasn't able to travel until lately. Or players like Hyuga and Mr. R. Just a problem regions and their players and communities have. You do get tunnel vision when there's nothing else new around.