Unless your shoto opponent is constantly trying to counter with fierce SRK for some poor reason, canceling a Hawk Dive would really get you nowhere, as it would still be way too slow to land and have enough time to take advantage. A different angle would either be pretty worthless (too steep) or really overpowered (too shallow). And as fun as the idea of a safe knockdown dive is, I trust Sirlin’s experience of it being way overpowered as well. Slightly better priority, or a hitbox that makes it hit as an overhead a bit more often, are about the only ways you could possibly make an alternate dive effective without blowing it wide open.
The most effective changes are almost always slight revisions or combinations of versions of moves we’ve already seen before. Before HDR was released, we could reasonably assume that Cammy’s SBF would be much better off from her ST version if it could go through fireballs at all strengths. How is that? She had the ability to do so as O.Cammy, so unless there were some radical changes made, we knew it wouldn’t be unbalanced.
Sirlin gave Cammy the range from ST, fireball immunity like O.Cammy, a more reliable method of execution, and the upgrade a few characters got that allow them to connect fully with multiple hits (which also gave her the benefit of some added range). People still say the move isn’t that good, but it’s hard to deny that it’s much better than it was before, and quite practical in a few instances. Nothing drastic, no guesswork, just a lot of little things based on prior experience.
There are of course a few exceptions in HDR, like fake moves and Chun Li’s parabolic SBK, but those design elements were very heavily inspired by other similar games like SFA2. Most of what people seem to agree on change-wise are full reversions or combinations of old moves, like T.Hawk having both dives, or Chun Li not being able to accidentally air SBK far too often. The only way anyone will ever really pay attention to a suggestion (if at all, of course) is if it’s sensible for effectiveness, balance, character flavor, and ease of implementation. Factor in the fact that the game’s less than a year old, with nuances still being discovered all the time…no one’s going to pay attention unless something makes total sense. (And even then, there’s no guarantee anything will happen about it, even when it’s something as agreed upon as Honda’s stored Oicho throw and safe recovery on jab headbutt.)
