Reacting to "Analysis: The Consequences of Reducing the Skill Gap" Amazing video! 

A commentor on the original video said it best: "Lowering the skill floor is okay, lowering the skill ceiling is not."

Core A-gaming is the best channel of FGC

Note about the Daigo parry: You can't parry the first hit of Chun Li's super on reaction to the super flash. You have to tap forward in anticipation for it and then time the rest of it afterwards. Also if Daigo had tried to block he would just die from chip obviously.

NO YOU'RE CHEATING YOU'RE GONNA LEARN KID

Armada and Core-A in one video. This is the good stuff.

Honestly, I would watch Armada reacting to ANY Core-A Gaming video because the level of insight and depth Armada brings to the table is unparalleled. (Like when he was casually fact-checking "There Will Never Ever Be Another Melee Player Like Hungrybox").

One thing I wish smash as a franchise got more credit for was being a game for both casual and more competitive players. Despite Nintendo refusing to actually help the competitive scene they've managed to make a franchise that anyone can pick up and have fun with and at the same time it has very specific movement and tech options for players who seek that experience. It's actually really impressive how well they've blended those two formulas

Armada + Core-A Gaming is too powerful

It seems to me that creators of fighting games have mixed up “ease” of controls with “intuition” of controls. Ideally you’d have a game that works well that people can pick up, but has plenty of in-depth mechanics for die hard players.

Core-A is the "Every Frame a Painting" of fighting game channels. That's a big compliment btw.

Man, this guy has so much input and thoughts about the matter, he should try some kind of Competitive game, like melee or something.

Calling him "Diego" still gets me. 🤣

I played Melee casually during maybe 2 or 3 years and I cared about winning. Even so, I was a super casual player. When Brawl came out I bought it and didn't quite liked it because it felt different but I could never pinpoint why. That's why I agree a ton when people say casuals don't care or notice. Melee is a super high skill ceiling game and I enjoyed the hell out of it without performing a single "advanced" technique. IMO lowering the skill gap is trying to get people who know about competitive scene enough to care and at the same time they want to compete themselves. I don't think for a second they're more than the casual player base. But game companies are actively trying to cater to them. To me a good and high skill ceiling is best. It creates a rewarding experience for people who put in the work and casuals like I am (or was?) don't care or even notice.

In regards to Armada's point about a lack of interest with upsets; that's exactly how I felt about most smash 4 tournaments. Hearing that a top 50 player lost in round 1 or 2 pools rarely got me excited as it happened so often. Hearing that a top 20 player lost to rage or lylat never felt statisfying, and more so left me waiting for a tournament where the seeded top 8 made it to top 8. The best tournaments that involved upsets were things like Frostbite w/ Tsu or Evo w/ Kameme, cause they didn't get lucky with one upset. They consistently beat good players, so the upsets felt impactful.

@14:20 when Armada is talking about "football" and my USA Mango brain started thinking of American Football

I’m mostly a Guilty Gear player, but I love your videos. I’m glad your venturing outside of smash for a bit. Awesome video!

I'm surprised that Armada doesn't play Tekken considering that the game is nothing but punishes and spacing.

The little experience I had with developping PM has taught me something very important: "A game can be both deep and accessible all at once" Depth and accessibility are not mutually exclusive. Melee is a very easy game to play at a basic level. If anything, I find it is "easier" to play at a basic level than games like say...Ultimate just because it is more responsive. You fight less with the controls, and the characters does exactly what you want it to do. The skill floor is very low, yet the skill ceiling is very high. As such, there is pretty much a near limitless amounts of depth, and it can be enjoyed at every level. Furthermore, responsiveness directly ties into being able to express yourself in your gameplay. Melee is by far (After Project M), the most accessible game in the series, simply because it caters to pretty much every skill level. Some will say "But what about those that don't want to be crushed online?". Matchmaking. What about those that don't want to lose to their friends? Grow up. People argue fairness when trying to narrow the skill gap, but is it, really? One can argue that it is very unfair for someone to put in effort into mastering a game, only to be defeated by random chance. Isn't it unfair for skilled players to not be rewarded for the effort they put in? It is an agument of equality of outcome VS equality of opportunity. Now, when it comes to games at least, I believe in equality of opportunity. Almsot everyone who tries to get good at Melee can become good. Handicaps can have an impact, unfortunately, but otherwise, it is inherently fair in terms of opportunity. Anyone can try and better themselves. Not everyone will make it to the top, but we can all try. Those hwo argue for equality of opportunity in gaming essentially say "I don't want to put in effort and still want to win". It is essentially robbing people of the rewards for their hard work. Now, about creator intent: It honestly does not matter. Games are transformative by nature, and are impacted by those who play them. Every single individual has a personal relationsip with the games that they play, and as such, creator intent is completely irrelevant, save perhaps for the initial design philosophy. A good creator adapts to new realities. Just how comboes were not "intended" to exist in Street Fighter, or game designers never intended for there to be a speedrun community, it doesn't matter. In the end, a good designer is not going to get bogged down by a narrow-minded vision. Project M was originally intended to be aimed at competitive players, but we grew more and more aware that more casual players also enjoyed the game. So we added items, cosmetics, and other non-competitive features for those fans. It was us recognizing that the game evolved past our original intentions... and this is fine. People being able to play on their own terms; that is the mark of true accessibility. Accessibility at the top, bottom, and anywhere in between On upsets: Upsets only mean something to me when I understand te meaning fo the upset. For example, Axe's victory at a major was exciting because he was an underdog that toiled for years to get where he was at. He won with a suboptimal character, and what wa sinspiring was his journey, and the result of it. Zain winning with an online tourney with Roy was exciting because he took the character to a whole new level. These upsets meant something because their victories were against people who showed consistently high levels of skill. Champions don't change all of the time. When someone wins, it's because they climbed a mountain and defeated Goliath. In a game where champions change as often as I change socks, it's not really much of an upset.

14:50 yep, combos were a secret feature that was accidentally made after the Lead producer discovered that the hit stun created by landing a move was enough to chain another move in while he was debugging the car smash bonus stage. He decided to leave it in as a hidden feature because he thought the timing for a “combo” was too complex to be practically utilized in a real match.

Core-A’s delivery of his lines is so interesting

This guy gives a lot of neat advice for those trying to get into the fgc

I love upsets when they display the exceptional and unexpected growth of a player or team, not when the more skilled contender just got unlucky.

Easy to pickup, hard to master is the sweet spot. I'm fine with pros wrecking me, I just don't want to invest 10+ hours just to do literally anything at all with a character. I thought Melee WAS the sweet spot tbh.

Armada you should change your titles from reaction to analysis, what you're doing takes a different skill than just reacting...

Nice video Adam. I think acceptable ways to lower the skill gap are: there is no good reason for a technique to be so hard, the technique is bad for your hands (not allowing ergonomic button remapping, claw is notoriously bad for hands), there is no fun bridge to competitive play (a game like melee can be picked up off the shelf and enjoyed, but conceivably, a game could be unplayable until a lot of skill was obtained)

Imo when people say something is "too" hard in a game that's just an issue with their mentality... In my mind when I'm trying to learn a new difficult skip in a speedrun for example I think it is very hard but not too hard and that just pushes me to try harder to get it. I think a speedrunning kind of mentality is a good way to look at competitive games as well since in speedruns the glitches and skips and their frame data weren't set by the developers and therefore judging wether it is too hard or balanced is pointless since the glitches are what they are. Also, when other people can do it it is possible and thus not too hard, one is just not skilled enough. I also think it's a very positive trait of a competitive game to have a high skill ceiling so the players that are better also get rewarded more. Where's the fun in a game where everyone can win regardless of who played better? A game of this kind would have no incentive to actually play it and gain skill and experience in it.

Reason street fighter parrys are harder is you are leaving back and hitting forward, so if you mistime it early or the opponent delays their hit a slight bit, you are now eating the combo instead of shielding like in Smash. Smash parry is actually more akin to Just Defend from SNK fighters, where the window is shorter but the consequence is a regular block.

I will say I typically shy away from Melee due to it being hard in weird places. I play Rivals which has easier wavedashes, no L cancelling, and allows you to set tilt stick and turn off tap jump. These are things I could get used to in Melee sure, but I'd rather just jump into Rivals. Granted I'll appreciate both games for their depth and difficulty in areas that actually matter.

I mostly agree with Armada but tbh the combo skill gap between SFIV and SFV is so different to Melee and Ultimate - the designed difference of tripling the frame link window isn't the same as Melee's combos, which are in many ways based on properties and idiosyncrasies of particular moves (which I would bet a lot of money the devs didn't know about - Falcon's Tipman would not have been a designed property), being different to Ultimate's combos, which are much more designed in the way Street Fighter combos were designed. When Gerald talks about how SFV doesn't let combo masters like Sakunoko and Gamerbee being able to express themselves, the combos these guys were performing in SFIV were made using universal mechanics that Capcom definitely knew were possible. Armada's punish game? I'm certain the designers had no idea that was possible. Great analysis though.

Thank you for this video Armada! I appreciate you!

Dark Souls games (especially the 1st) proved that a huge portion of gamers want high challenge and want to learn about the game without being hand held, since the game doesnt explain a majority of the game it let's you explore

36:15 you should enter Project + tournaments if you feel you can't take ultimate seriously. We'd love to see the Swedish Sniper dominate again

The lack of expressivity in ultimate kills me whenever wolf gets a grab

Tbh this video with Armada's commentary has made me understand more about the Melee player mindset than any argument I've heard since forever. I can honestly say now after years of not really understanding why Melee players dog so hard on the newer Smash games, that I can really grasp those takes. Don't agree with em any more than I did before, but it definitely comes off in a different light now.

Personally, I feel like developers should try to reach a middle ground when it comes to execution. I don't think that a game that directly deteriorates hand health such as melee can be justified by it's depth, but I also don't think a game like ultimate which is mechanically very simple is a good idea either, since this greatly reduces depth. I think a good example of a middle ground is rivals of aether, the game simplifies various mechanics such as wavedashing, while not sacrificing the depth of the game. Things such as parrying should always be difficult, but basic mechanics of a game, such as the input commands in a fighting game should be easy. A player will never be able to string together the basic tools of the game into solid movement and combos without practice, if a game has sufficient depth, artificial difficulty becomes unnecessary. As for input delay, it's always a bad idea to increase it as it takes away a player's control of their character.

Ive loved core a gaming for years and it's awesome to see how other smashers think of his content

Core A Gaming is amazing! I was already into Smash Bro’s but it helped me get into Tekken and Street Fighter.

Every game I love in any format follows the "easy to learn, hard to master" approach. Chess, Melee, Poker, Street fighter, Mordhau, dark souls etc. Games that don't force fun on you but give you all the tools and resources to have fun your own way are always the best games and the ones that stay alive and breathing years after release. Definitely possible to appeal to everyone with this in mind.

So imagined Melee reducing the skill gap : - Automatic L-Cancel - Performing wavedash is just a spam of directional airdodge without been precise - Everyone now can do the amazing combos we see from Mang0 , Armada , etc. - People now can do out of shield options so easily. - There is now two jump buttons, for full hop and other for a short-hop, no need to be precise for a short hop - Parrys and power shields are insane easily by just pressing shield - The Amsa tech get so easy that no need to be precise, just spam. - DI is just mashing random buttons and not of a precise angle. - Everyone can now just moon-walk with no effort, making it not so sick :(

13:57 What Armada is referring to here is basically death of the author in writing. Which is that the intended goals of the writing don't matter as the viewer's interpretation of a piece of writing will always matter more to them than the author's intent.

As someone who plays Ultimate, when The video got to the topic of taking away defensive options I felt that man. I felt that.

I think a decent amount of difference in opinion here can come down to what specifically a player finds value in when it comes to fighting games (or game design in general). For instance you value having a nuanced punish game and the ability to self express through unique gameplay decisions as well as having higher execution demands making things feel more rewarding and more impressive when they are pulled off. Personally I love having a lot of interesting options for self expression above most other things here and I don't particular care for execution barriers being higher so I'm going to value design choices differently. Having a lot of options is naturally going to make the game harder both in terms of execution as well how much any player needs to learn. I also like faster paced games (as I'm sure you do as well) which also ends up making games more difficult and widens the skill gap but I personally see making things more difficult to execute as downsides that are simply worth doing for the sake of very good up sides that come along with other design goals (making the game faster and increasing options). For example I personally don't find most of the Daigo clip especially impressive in a vacuum as simple execution performance doesn't impress me all that much and I don't value it especially highly. I DO find the initial parry impressive because it required knowing the opponent was going for that option in order to pull off but everything after that not so much (and let's be honest a 10F window is pretty generous). There's also the bit about it being game 5 of grand finals and it was literally do or die that makes it quite impressive. But really when you boil it down it was one important decision followed by a bunch of execution checks. Any failure on this execution check would then devalue the excellent decision making that preceded it. Best not fail what I see as a glorified quick time event. Now granted for full disclosure I DO have a bias here as my hands don't work as well as they used to and had to quit some games due to hand pain but I did still have most of this same opinion before that came to be the case. For Smash Ultimate in particular I'd like to see an expansion of follow up options from slightly added hitstun and probably slightly better mobility for some characters which would end up making the game more difficult and increasing the skill gap but do so for reasons that I find valuable. On the flip side I was very disappointed with how one of the updates was handled with jumping (where they added the ability to press two buttons at the same time to short hop). I would MUCH rather see the ability to map individual buttons to short hop as well as full hop. This would also address an issue a lot of players have with how the short hop aerial buffer functions. I personally do not value arbitrary execution checks like being able to short hop properly. We can talk about how impressive the Daigo clip was and sure, but the flip side to execution checks like this are things like failing a ledge dash in Melee and losing a game due to the SD which is the polar opposite of impressive or satisfying - that's something that also can come with this sort of execution minded design too. I guess that's a lot of words to say "I don't value execution for execution's sake" but that's where I come at this from. Either way I do like the video and enjoy the chance to talk game design. I value your opinion more than most on game design subjects even if I disagree with you from time to time. Dunno if you'll read this or whatever but if you like player expression a lot then I do genuinely think you'd enjoy Guilty Gear (especially XX, not as much XRD).

This video was amazing. I have same criticisms of ultimate with the input lag that you cant effectively punish your opponents bad/missed moves.

Can confirm as a melee enjoyer I didn't even know there was a high skill ceiling until years later when someone made a youtube documentary on it. It just felt fun, and brawl didn't.

Armada doing Core-A-Gaming?? DO MORE I NEED IT!!!

When Armada was saying Sakurai I kept thinking he was saying Zackray

This is why I love games that are "easy to play, hard to master" . It has the best of both worlds, the game is fun and easy for casuals to play but at the same the same time, there's a lot of depth to the game's mechanics that competitive players can have fun learning.

Great content by Core-A Gaming, and of course, great impressions. Even though top players will keep being top players no matter what, because they are the ones who will put those hours grinding and have the right mindset when it comes to competitive play, I don't feel motivated anymore while playing newer FGs in general. Thankfully, there are still big enough communities that will keep older games alive, which is pretty much where my interest stands at the moment.

This kinf of game should have a "simple mode" and a "pro mode" that would be the solution .... For ultimate, making a cut of input lag by half in a "special mode" would do the work , and everybody happy

Love these react videos and critiques from Armada. By a large margin he is the best top player at succinctly analyzing and logically explaining concepts behind fighting games. It's only too bad he doesn't have the tone of voice, online charisma, and X-factor needed to appeal to younger audiences to be a massive RU-vid star.

Love how Armada essentially predicted core-a talking about extra frame lag leading to reliance on predicting rather than reaction, in turn making more uncertainty in outcome.

14:00 Combos back in Street Fighter 2 were a glitch found by the developers which they decided to leave in. You can see how this greatly influenced fighting games.

Core A Gaming is one of my favorite RU-vid channels. Hopefully you'll take a look at more of their videos!

Love this content. Core-A gaming is great and you have interesting takes on it!

Yup, the second you allow for individual differences (i.e. not 100% random) there will be inequality, which with time will lead to a dominance hierarchy of skill.

the reason why i like Melty is that the last arc requires an ex shield during blood heat, which is a 3f window +1 late frame,. doing a full parry in that game is tough, but you get a lot of damage or an unblockable, untechable, insta kill from the damage.

8:40 I’m inclined to disagree with this point when melee came out there was no online scene for these types of games so casuals couldn’t even interact with good players but now that games are more online than local it’s very easy for a casual to go online, get bodied then call the game too hard and quit. In the past accessibility was less important because games were more closed off but now that you can play with anyone around the world companies have more incentive to reduce the skill gap to make casuals feel better about themselves online.

I think that regarding melee for casuals (talking about the point being made around 8:30), the advantage that melee had is how accessible it was at a low level. It could still feel really exciting and hype to land a random Ganon up-tilt without ever hearing about/scratching the surface of competitive Melee. The pieces of Melee are easy to use individually at all levels; controls translate from character to character and there's no '1-and-3-quarter-counterclockwise-joystick-rotation-double-tap-A' kind of moves. In other words, being a 'bad' or low-lever player in Melee doesn't feel nearly as bad as being as in other competitive games.

I do have to say that normal punishes are easier in ultimate, but there is still creativity and expression. The problem is that it's not worth it to learn setups to punish escape options and get extensions to make great punishes, but since there are sooooo many different characters that it is much more optimal to just practice neutral and corner/ledge traps cuz that works on everyone instead of just specific characters.

I'd love to see you do more of Core A's videos!

I've always enjoyed games with either a high requirement of knowledge or technical skill. Which is why i like competitive pokemon and competitve smash for those 2 reasons. In melee even with my friends who can shffl and dash dance somewhat comfortably, the hours i put in practcing the technical skills was as much fun for me as using it naturally in a match, and even if they outread me, i can out-tech them. Pokemon lacks the technical skills, but knowledge of the meta and how to make a competitive team is super important and you need to study it, much like tech skill in melee. It also allows you a lot of room to be creative. As new games now a days slowly slip into simple rock-paper-scizors i find myself liking them less and less.

I want to have a high skill game that focuses on teaching new players, like fun game modes that helps you practice the fundamentals or whatever. Something like that.

This is why i like traditional sports a lot, all skill basically no luck in something like distance running

Another video by Core A-Gaming that you would probably enjoy is "Analysis: Why fighting gaming is better than fighting sports" In my opinion it's anamazing video as well just as all the other ones on Core A-Gaming

Great video. I'm surprised you haven't watched that vid by Core-A Gaming until now. As you say, though, I think this issue is unfortunately becoming even more prevalent than back when the vid was released. Fighting games have increasingly become easier and easier currently. Games that are trying to be easier like Guilty Gear Strive are completely splitting apart communities that once praised their game for high complexity and skill gaps between low level and high level players. I think the only real way for players to "fight back" against these devs that are refusing to listen to their players is to just refuse to buy their dumbed-down games and continue to play the old, more complex ones. Unfortunately, the FGC tends to empty their pockets for the most recent iteration of their fighting games, so I seriously doubt this trend of dumbing down games isn't going anywhere.

I like smash because it's easy to learn, hard to master. Ultimate I will admit has it's issues with many people, but the only one I have is the Imput Lag and the Buffer.

I bought street fighter 3: third strike as a first fighting game and quit playing pretty quickly because combos and combo routes were too difficult for a beginning player. But then SFV came out and I learned how to play pretty quickly because it was more accessable. Now I went back and am having a blast with third strike. There needs to be some games that allow people pick up and begin making meaningful choices pretty early on, otherwise most people won't even scratch the surface.

Don't wish it was easier wish you were better. Don't wish for less problems wish for more skills. Don't wish for less challenge wish for more wisdom. - Jim Rohn

With regards to parrying Chun’s super in SFV: obviously it’s a lot easier, and it should probably be harder than it is. However, the risk associated with parrying in SFV as opposed to 3s is completely different (not with regards to moment 37 just generally). Parrying in 3s is an instant action. Ryu’s VS1 isn’t active until frame 3. Also, and most importantly, parries in 3s have no whiff animation. If you guess parry and the opponent doesn’t press a button, you simply walk forward. If Ryu guess parries in SFV and the opponent doesn’t push a button, Ryu has 32 frames of recovery in which he is in a counter hit state. They made parrying easier because they made it riskier. Having it be both difficult and extremely punishable wouldn’t make much sense from a balance perspective.

23:28 I've never had someone better articulate how I feel about college basketball here in the states.

Regarding high input delay at around the 35:30 mark: It is a necessity for fighting games without rollback netcode.

Bit late here but afaik its a 1f or 2f window against chun after the first parry. And it depends on how you parry the first hit of chun super

Counterpoint: if you took chess and added a difficult dancing skillcheck that one would need to pass in order not to pass their turn, professional dancers would outperform Magnus Carlsen. In the end, the kind and difficulty of skillchecks that make it into any given game determine what the game is really about. When a game (that has many players with an incentive to play to win) has certain players that consistently make it to the top, it's sufficient evidence for the game being competitive and skill-based. The game could still not be fun or the skills checked might be uninteresting, but that has a degree of subjectivity.

Ice Climbers feel like the only characters in Ultimate that allow you to have freedom with your combo structure. Great for Icies, not so great for nair train Palu or down throw dash attack Wolf.

Core-A-Gaming is suuuch a good channel !

Does anyone know where that Ken interview at 13:19 is? I can’t find it anywhere

8:00 I 100% agree, on gamecube nobody said Melee was too hard, all I heard my friends say was that they were literally the best in the world at the game.

Easy to learn hard to dominate. Exists so many forms to improve smash games in general including Meele, but right now we need to focus in the trajectory and I believe the smash community it's doing an amazing job because from Brawl to Ultimate we can see so many improvements, maybe the next smash game it's what we're all waiting, but right now I would love a new game mode or customization option that let us play a better version of Ultimate and a better online mode

yea i feel like if every fighting games, was like melee, u get the best of the 2 worlds, as a casual u can play with items and interactive maps, but on competitive you can put the rules and there you go

You can make a game accessible without making it too easy. It's an interesting topic for sure! If I become a game designer, I'll try my best to do it :)

The sad part about Ultimate’s high input delay is they might have increased it artificially just to put all the supported controllers at an equal level.

Im a high level Ultimate player and I appreciate this video a lot because I feel like I have genuine skills and fundamentals that often go unrewarded, or lose out to scrubby options I have a complete read on but cant do anything about because of the games design, and it can be infuriating. Nothing frustrates me more than having a genuine read on my opponents option choice, but it not mattering because the option is so absurdly safe and any counter-measure that doesnt just let them get away with it is unreliable. I feel like a lot of people arent conscious of how this aspect impacts and flaws a games competitive merits, and while saying this as a gripe I have with Ultimate, Smash 4 was EONS worse in this regard, which is why I like Ultimate much more and why I think there are still people who think Smash 4 is a better game. As you said some people just like it more that way. This is why Ive been trying to get into Melee more, but unfortunately where I live doesnt have much of a scene for Melee and everyone plays Ultimate.

Damn Armada the vudeo is about a couple mins long not a damn movie I love this

43:10 this hits very differently after recent events

Loved the original, and loved this. What I want in a game is to be rewarded for effort, not to have to deal with lag etc.

Honestly, I don't really care who is better or who wins. What I care about is that the match shows an interesting dynamic between two people who're trying to win. It's not about the upsets for me or about rooting for a particular player. I watch for the hype moments and players who manage to surprise their opponents and the audience through ingenious plays.

I think Ultimate makes a LITTLE too easy for some things and the hold buffer is def too lenient but it's nowhere near as bad as SFV. I had no idea what SFV was like, wow! One of the reasons I main Yoshi in Ultimate is he actually has pretty good combo variety and a lot of almost-true strings. Not Melee level of course, but he has some cool stuff.

Armada’s gonna eventually react to everything Smash or fighting game related

Like the React Andy videos. Keep it going, Armada-sensei.

Little added note to SFV's balancing. thankfully at this point they have removed all the gross input delay. I think it was removed around the end of S3?

The only kind of upsets I wanna see, are like Wizzy eliminating Hbox at GOML19. Watching a player come so close so many times, and finally accomplishing a feat is the only type of upset anybody should be hyped about. Plup winning a major, M2K winning a summit. If the upset doesn't have a story that accompanies it, a history of climbing that mountain... what even makes it hype?

35:30 I think I can provide you with a reasonable argument as to why you ~6 frames of input delay might be a good idea. The more input delay you have, the more player lag you can "hide" in the netcode. (if the input is 5 frames late due to lag, you can wait 1 more frame before you simulate the input in game, hiding the lag completely). This means you get a buffer of 6*16ms = 96ms (which should be enough for most peoples lag). This way netplay will more closely resemble offline play. It makes sense to try keep the game consistent between the two modes so that you are actually "playing for real" when you're in netplay. This consistency has the additional benefit that everything that is reactable in training mode / locally is also reactable online. So you are trading responsiveness for game consistency. Not that I disagree with the conclusion that it's a bad idea. Something like GGPO seems to work better in practice (although it isn't perfect, can create some strange artifacts and might trip you up if you are trying to react, because a move might turn into a different move mid-animation) cheers :)

What makes the parry sequence iconic is the same reason MJ hitting game winners or Brady winning SuperBowls is iconic. It was Jesus performing a miracle in real time. It was a dude who is sick. Doing something unconscionably sick in real time.

What I like about smash is it’s one of the easiest fighting games out there but still has tech and gameplay that allows for a very high skill ceiling as well.

Yeah I checked, in street fighter 2, the combos weren't intentional but they knew about it and they choose to keep it (exactly like wavedash in melee)

There is in game no ranking in melee. It only became noticeable with the online modes with later games. When casuals see the gap between the best and themselves it disheartening. As time goes by the gap gets even bigger. This phenomena is referred to a "cursed problem": ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8uE6-vIi1rQ.html

I hate lowering the skill ceiling you should be rewarded for your dedication to the game

I'm curious about the potential of a compromise and how it could be marketed/implemented. Something few devs experiment with is introducing new mechanics that reward the grinders amidst an already present game, but I think this could be a solid solution for the scared marketing companies. Release a game as Street Fighter V that revs up to 3rd strike after a couple years. Game devs are too precious about what their game currently IS rather than what it COULD BE.

i love how armada made a 14 minute video into a 49 minute video

I don't think the high input delay is deliberate, I'm pretty sure it's just that they want HD graphics more than they won't smooth inputs. If I could, I'd double the hitstun, triple the DI, and quadrupal the SDI. Those are easy changes to make to Ult that I think would make it more fun and increase the skill ceiling. (There's other stuff I'd like, such as reducing the input delay and having a decent roll-back netcode, but those are harder to do.)