Smash is not primarily meant to be a competitive-only fighting game, so it's only natural it would have elements forbidden in competitive play - it has things that are there for casual players, things there for competitive players, and gives you the options to mess around and play the game however way you want. Yes, the specials are terribly implemented, but I'm thankful for that, because I do think they take away from the experience, competitive-wise.

I never played KOF so I'm not judging that, but I never said these specials broke the game or could be easily spammed to win a match. I know most of the time the 15-second cutscene special will only land in specific situations on combos (on a skilled player), but my point is that the 15-second cutscene is still boring. If I perform an insane combo to destroy my opponent, I'm already satisfied by that on its own, I don't need a long cutscene telling me "whoa you're awesome" everytime I do it.

For example, in Smash I play Meta Knight. Meta Knight has a ridiculous (and arguably broken) ladder combo that can kill pretty much any character extremely early off the top, but it is a combo that is hard to land and execute - I had to train a considerable amount of time before I could start getting it, and even today there will still be a lot of occasions where maybe one or two things are a little out of place and it won't land. Everytime I win a match with this combo (and it happens often), it's satisfying for me and frustrating for my opponent who sees a whole game ending on a single mistake... what if, at the end of this combo, there was an unskippable 15-second long cutscene showing Meta Knight killing the other character? Even if it is a hard to land combo, wouldn't that be extremely annoying for everyone involved? I sure think it is, because it's pointless. All it does is waste everyone's time with a cutscene that will inevitably get old after a couple times.

I feel like a lot of these fighting games too often take control out of the players in specific situations that will keep happening over and over and that just makes it so repetitive. It's the reason I gave up on Pokkén, for example - that whole game revolved around this. "X move cancels into Y move that leads into Z combo", so you're always doing that same sequence of moves in the same way knowing it'll work every single time... "this move cancels into a command grab" great, so everytime I land that one move I know there will be a cutscene for the grab meaning no one gets to do anything for a while... and then there are the Burst Specials, which are just the absolute worst because of what I already said - they're just a one input move that, if it lands, prompts a ridiculously long and ridiculously over-the-top cutscene which is always the same. It gets old, and it gets boring.

I like Smash because it is a game that always keeps control in both players hands and has different outcomes for each move every time because of all the different situations and circumstances that might arise. For example, no combo is ever the same because there are countless factors involved that will change how the opposing character will get knocked back (their weight, their %, rage effect, and the DI by your opponent), and because the same range of actions is always allowed regardless of your character's condition, people can get out of combos with their own moves, making it a complete reversal. Most other fighting games don't allow this: for example, if your character gets knocked in the air, you usually can't perform an aerial move because you're being hit - meanwhile in Smash, if you're in the air you can always perform any aerial action as long as you're not in hitstun, and of course you can even influence hitstun itself with DI.

tl;dr most fighting games today (I'd blame at least Pokkén and SFV) are too repetitive, Smash is awesome because every interaction is always different. Edit: oh and also Tekken 7. I played it last weekend and was disgusted by how stupid the special cutscene moves were, given how great everything else was.

Congratulations, you just completely invalidated your point by carefully explaining how you know absolutely nothing about Smash.

...seriously? I'm struggling to see how you could find anything in what I said that would be considered an 'exploit', and the game is absolutely not a casual slugfest. The only things that are forbidden in Smash are things the game itself allows you to disable, such as custom moves, equipment, items, etc. which are all made with casual play in mind and in the case of customs, have even been referred by Sakurai himself as cheating. Just because the game allows options for casual players doesn't mean it's a 'casual slugfest', because it also allows options for competitive players and has in fact received countless balance patches to improve the metagame, which is actually extremely well balanced nowadays except for maybe a couple of slightly OP characters and maybe 3 shitty ones.

I know you were referring to Meta Knight's ladder combo when you talked about an "exploit", but I'm sorry that is 100% absolutely not true. It is literally a combo, a sequence of moves you perform to deal a lot of damage and/or finish off an opponent, there is nothing exploity about it or broken about it, it's just a really strong combo that has in fact been acknowledged by the developers and nerfed in an earlier update.

Am I wrong to compare other fighting games to Smash? Maybe, I don't know. I'm a Smash player and when I play other fighting games I'm always disappointed at the lack of freedom they allow me, but that's my point of view. However, if you know nothing about Smash, which you clearly don't, you shouldn't try to discuss about it. It's just sad.

Only in another game. He's not even top tier in Smash 4, and hardly considered cheap by anyone.

Stop talking about stuff you don't know.

...and yes, having a couple of OP characters means an unbalanced game, but when I said "maybe 2 slightly OP characters", I meant Cloud and Rosalina probably, who I consider to be a notch above other characters and slightly broken in regards to the game's balance... however, are nowhere near being widely considered OP, in fact a lot of tier lists don't even put these guys on top 3, so yes it is a balanced game, because it has 58 characters and at least about 50 of them are viable.

Edit: oh and also nerfing a combo means the combo was an exploit? Lol no. Nerfing a combo means making a strong combo weaker.
I could name you exploits that have been entirely removed from the game, but I feel like there is no point to it anymore.

I actually didn't even criticize the lack of aerial combos in other games, and never even used KoF as an example (whenever I used examples I always contained myself to Pokkén, and occasionally SFV and Tekken 7, which are games I have played and have some knowledge about), I criticized the limitations you have in aerial options when you're thrown in the air vs. when you jump into the air, whereas Smash allows you to do the same aerial actions regardless of how you got there.

I actually didn't even criticize the lack of aerial combos in other games, and never even used KoF as an example (whenever I used examples I always contained myself to Pokkén, and occasionally SFV and Tekken 7, which are games I have played and have some knowledge about), I criticized the limitations you have in aerial options when you're thrown in the air vs. when you jump into the air, whereas Smash allows you to do the same aerial actions regardless of how you got there.

Edit: for example you mention how a lot of fighting games have options to break out of combos and such, and I know those exist, but the thing is, usually it's something specific like, do this certain thing at this part of the combo and you'll get out. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing at least one game where you could break out of combos by doing something that depleted your special gauge, but since I don't know what game it was I won't say anything - but that's my point. I don't like games that are built on the interactions of specific scenarios, I like games that have a few base mechanics and allow you to work around them to create different scenarios yourself.

That's the reason I don't like most TCG games like Magic, for example - they always revolve around having some dominant type of card, and then introducing another card that specifically counters the current OP one and becomes relevant solely for that reason, and I feel like a lot of fighting games (and certainly Pokkén) nowadays fall to that rule too.

The point is that the other games don't need these options because their design is different. On SSB, you can throw someone in the air, jump and hit them. They will fly and (if they don't die), you can hit them again. So, in SSB, if you lost control when thrown in the air, the oponent could kick you as many times he wants to. So it must include some kind of counter to that.

On SFV, per instance, you can't really do that. You can hi hit a strike or a simple combo and that's it. So any form of aerial defense is pointless. Tekken 7 is even less necessary since you jump just 30cm.

Complicated motions are pretty much always the worst part of fighting games. That's why Rising Thunder was so damn amazing. By simplifying the input system, it made the game more accessible, but by balancing the game through mind games and fundamentals (spacing, footsies, etc), it was able to maintain a high skill ceiling without an insurmountable skill floor. And then it died. Fuck Riot Games.

Anyways, I welcome a change away from complicated motions. However, games do need to be designed around this concept to really work. That said, any fighting game player that knows their shit can beat the ass of someone who is just spamming specials. While there is a very tiny advantage to touch screen specials (they are instantaneous instead of requiring input time), it really doesn't mean much if there is any skill gap. Spamming specials is no different than those people who spam Hadoukens to kill noobs online. The fact that you can press a button on the touch screen doesn't really change anything.