Even if you go with the premise that projectiles stagnate the game (which isn’t the case, and obviously isn’t what he meant), throwing out snide comments about how it would balance the game to give everyone the same moves is just in bad taste.
Pasky, you do great hard work for the ST scene, and I as well as many others here appreciate it. That said, your attempt at sarcasm here isn’t funny, or doing anyone any good.
Milo’s point is more to the fact that the ability to have good option go-to moves (often spammable, if you will) shouldn’t be the focus of the argument. If those options break down dynamics, as opposed to add to them, that’s where the problems are. For example:
-Fireballs promote zoning and footsie/poking games, approach and rushdown tactics that vary dynamically depending on ranges and characters involved. Without them, SFII for all of its lack of fast wake-ups or counters would devolve into a rush-down fest the majority of the time.
Though oddballs like Honda feel the pressure much more than the rest of the cast, they all still have their own ways to deal with the fireball situations, and the game is much better for this. (Many of those really lopsided circumstances were addressed in HDR, and were good for the game.)
-T.Hawk’s new dive opens up a few options much better than his old one as well. Life lead is so critical in his worst match-ups that any chance he has to safely chip damage is welcome, especially against Honda, who could have easily punished the old dive on block.
On hit, except in the most extreme of corner or trade situations, you end up with nearly the same result once the dust settles. The old dive bounces back too far and slow to really start your safe ticks or cross-ups, and the new one just gets you to that just-outside point faster, with the opponent still on his/her feet. Overall, this promotes strategy in a way that’s not abusive, so it’s good for the game.
Cammy’s new short drill, though, is changed in such a way that she got a bit of a 2+2=5 situation out of it, and doing so really changed the way she feels as a character.
Before, she was only safe if she tossed it out from proper distance, which for her was out of sweep range to begin with unless you poked first. (Few other characters in the game have to worry about such restrictions just to be able to chip damage, and they got some similar improvements in HDR too, like Blanka.) Training someone to “block” your low poke then go for the Hooligan instead is a viable strategy. You had to use her pokes, and you HAD to have the knowledge and skills really learned to do this effectively.
But now that the Hooligan is just slightly faster to pull off AND more reliable without the more complicated input, along with the lack of a need to poke before going for the short drill, she feels much more “spazzy,” as James Chen put it. Players tend to just “go for it” with her moves openly much more often than in ST, and rightly so, since it’s less risky by design…but in doing so it also takes away from the very tight zone nature she had before. It made her “better,” but in this case, I can definitely see why people who played her before might feel put off by that.
