how? keep in mind smash was never ment to be a 'premier fighting game', it IS nintendo we're talking about. it was more along the lines of a party-fighting game that people MADE competitive.
keep in mind i already said that. the point is that it can be made competitive, which would be fun and has been executed properly before, but smash 4 ishonestly too frustrating for the competition to be enjoyable for me
project m 3.5 was released nearly a year ago, 3.6 entered beta jun 23rd.
true, i guess forget the "consistent" part. still, not a single sm4sh update has shaken anything up except individual character metas
also, dlc characters?? how isn't that 'shaking up' the meta
roy - marth clone
lucas - entire character is practically DESIGNED around his downthrow follow-ups
mewtwo - pretty cool but relies heavily on keeping characters away from him until he can get a punish, ill address this later
ryu - the most unique and technical character probably but he's still dominated by sheik and the lot
overall, it's doing nothing but adding new characters that still end up with the same mechanics and possible way of playing, just with new moves
except ryu.
http://www.ssbwiki.com/Chain_grab < literally following up grabs with grabs
ok so project m revolves entirely around grab follow-ups because... chain grabs exist?
???? what was the point in bringing this up
Um what? Legit you named like 2 of 5 characters who can even get a kill off of a followup without a kill throw itself. The game has combos off of throws yes, like every other smash game, but many characters can't even utilize their throw to do more than just damage.
fine let me rephrase.
smash 4 is heavily focused on rolling away and keeping the match at a stalemate through projectiles or otherwise spacing, until someone makes a slip-up and allows you to turn it around, which is almost always initiated and kept in your control using grabs. melee and the lot are, at least, more fast paced and you can do a whole lot more to keep the momentum going or flip the match on its head. smash 4 is almost like a god damn waiting game, hence the tedious and annoying thing i wrote.
i mean they thought, at first maybe 3 stocks would be enough for on-schedule tournament matches but at apex 2015, using 2 stock rules, smash 4 lasted waaaay over-schedule. hell in EVO, there was a villager player who forced god knows how many matches to end in a time-out.
of course some of that isnt even a big problem for fast, high tier characters like captain falcon (in tournament settings c. falcon is sometimes replaced by a rosalina or some stuff because rosalina is just ridiculous in the hands of someone skilled), sheik, and sonic. which is why there isn't a whole lot of diversity in smash 4. still slightly more diversity than melee, but i'd say that's definitely due to the roster size. there's some luigis, mr. infinite grab follow-ups, olimars, suprisingly, but again heavily reliant on spacing, some zss samus, horrifying hybrid of spacing and speed, occasional post-patch diddy kong (pre patch is just super diddy bros 4), and some outliers.
some like the fact that smash 4 is just a battle of mindgames, waiting, and reading but some people would describe that as tedious and boring (me).
not to say games like project m dont have a lot of reading and mindgames, but due to the fast pace the "waiting" part is cut out, and it generally just flows better.
if you are doubting what im saying, here's the first thing i clicked on when i searched for grand finals ssb4, because it seemed like a diverse match. i stopped watching soon after, but from 1:09 to 1:29, a full 20 seconds, not a single hit was landed. that is, until peach managed to land a grab and follow up. and then peach had control until she missed an attack and luigi got a good hit on her. then it was back to the same old song and dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KTKsky1BTAcurrently i am stuff at project m because i dont fully have the movement down and i dont really have anyone to play with, but it's still more challenging and fits more to my preference in fighting games.
(if i had a gamecube controller with an adapter that could change but)