So people are talking about L-cancel in Super Smash Bros Melee over in Elon’s World, and I have thoughts on this topic which would be better expressed in a single post than in a twitter thread.
Broadly speaking, the reason I’m not particularly against somewhat steep execution requirements for basic or staple techniques in fighting games is because as much as they can be a hurdle to a new player playing their platonic ideal of any given fighting game, these execution demands can be a valid aspect of balancing considerations, but more importantly, execution is a concretely measurable skill – a new player may not have enough game sense or knowledge to understand whether or not their neutral (nebulous as it is) is better than it was when they started, but they do have the observational skills to see that their schmoovement is way cleaner than it was a week ago. This is why I think a game like Melee can have the staying power that it has – so much of the game at a competitive level is opaque and defies almost any optimisation, but players can physically see themselves improving when they see more consistent dash dancing, wavelanding, shield drops, etc.
So does L-cancel fit in among these other execution elements? In a way, yes, but if you ask me, it’s not nearly as compelling as the others because it feels less purposeful.
L-cancel as means of measuring improvement
A new player can, of course, see more consistent SHFFL nairs (do people still call them that?) as a sign of progress and improvement as a player, and perhaps that is enough for some. But for me, part of using these execution-intensive tools to measure progress as a player is also learning how to use them purposefully. For every situation you can conceive where a dash dance, wavedash or even ledge dash would be a great idea, there are several others where it would be a decidedly less good idea. The reason you want to be able to execute movement well is so you can more consistently move with purpose. There is no benefit to not L-canceling an aerial – a successful L-cancel incurs no penalty of any kind, and the non-L-canceled aerial is strictly worse than its L-canceled counterpart. You don’t learn to L-cancel so you can do so later with purpose, you learn to do it because it is, in all ways, better than the alternative.
L-cancel as balancing consideration
So what? Any high level Mishima player in Tekken will in theory always want to use EWGF over the regular WGF, but the execution barrier is there because EWGF is strictly better than WGF. If you could do that shit for free it would be completely brainless, if not broken. L-cancel is probably the same, right? I mean, is it? The most convincing argument I’ve heard in favour of L-cancel as it exists in Melee (in a discussion about auto L-cancel, which is a separate topic) is that if there was no possibility of messing up an L-cancel due to changes in timing caused by hitstop, then spacie drill would probably be too powerful, but like. It’s not as if shaving off half the move’s landing recovery frames is the same as the difference between WGF and EWGF – I can’t exactly say I’m convinced that any given aerial needs L-cancel to exist as a balancing measure, since most attacks in Melee aren’t so good that they need to be limited by an extra, slightly variable step in their execution. From where I’m standing, L-cancel doesn’t so much limit the strength of extremely powerful moves as much as it makes kinda bad moves much better, on average.
So like, I have my reasons for not liking L-cancel, but stuff like this is also kinda hard to talk about in this way. Melee is over twenty years old, and the only reason the game works the way it does is because of a number of people, at multiple points in the development process, and for a plethora of different reasons, said “eh, fuck it”. Like, L-cancel exists because it’s a nerfed version of Z-cancel from Smash 64, and Z-cancel only exists in that game because Masahiro Sakurai wanted to put a cool and technical secret thing into his game because he just likes putting shit like that into his games.
I guess if I had to come down somewhere on this question, I’d say that I don’t particularly like L-cancel, but it’s not even the most offensive thing in Melee. L-cancel isn’t a barrier to entry so much it is an annoyance that you just kinda have to deal with if you want to play the game. If you wanna talk about barriers to entry in Melee, then talk to me after you’ve tried learning how to shield drop consistently.