My friend and I were recently arguing about this. I said that being able to play a character lets you know of and abuse the holes in their gameplan. When to punish, what they aim for, their likely tendencies, etc. My friend says it’s entirely based on your own character, that knowing what to punish with your character, what you aim for, is more important. Basically, if I were to say play Ryu vs his Ken. My argument would be that I would do better in that matchup because of fighting as Ken, while his would be he would do better because he has experience playing as Ken vs Ryu.
So is playing a specific matchup just as if not more important than playing that character in general
Full viewpoints would be appreciated.
EDIT: Was gonna make this a poll, but I forgot how. Help?