I really feel that there's a gross misunderstanding here on that whole "what worked in Melee", which kinda surprises me considering you guys have been working on nothing but that for years now. What worked in Melee were its mechanics, the effective and coherent movesets, stuff like that. The things that you've already understood and applied to other fighters. That's what made Falco good, not the fact he's a boring copy-paste of Fox.
You can't just say "well, that worked, so no use fixing what isn't broken", that's just not how game design works. Game design is not finding the optimal setup and then sticking with it, that's Math. It's about finding different optimals every time, which is something that's been done rather successfully on Toon Link, or even Samus. There was no need to add the Ice Beam, for instance. But you did it anyway instead of just, y'know, tweaking a few numbers to balance Samus out and call it a day.
Not to mention, you really can't say Melee Falco "worked" either. He was a generic Fox clone. That's not "working" in my book.
While the animations may be largely identical, Fox and Falco vastly different physics and hitbox settings that make the characters play different enough in competitive play, especially in mid and higher levels while having them both work competitively, effectively making them different characters.
Keep in mind that lots of companies/franchises have been successful by sticking with what worked with minor changes, like most franchises made by Capcom back in the late 80s and 90s, such as the NES Mega Man games.
Changing movesets for the sake of changing them hasn't always worked out well for other franchises like Soul Calibur.
The reason characters like Toon Link and Samus have been changed is because they needed altercations to their toolset to better fit in the PM environment and to be able to compete with the rest of the cast better. There are occasions where simple number tweaks aren't gonna cut it and characters like Toon Link and Samus are a great example. style is a staple of Melee anFalco's Melee moveset already has all that he needs to compete effectively not to mention his Melee d PM, so there is no purpose in changing in what works for Falco.
I've seen that brought forward on the website too, and I still can't help but feel this is incredibly flawed. Putting the same characters in a different situation isn't changing the characters in any way, just as adding new DLC levels doesn't suddenly make a new game, especially if those levels don't bring foward new mechanics.
In a nutshell, it's still the same Fox and Falco and Captain Falcon I'm playing. And in the frequent occurence where you'd have a match with two of the Melee top tiers, lo and behold, it's not a "very new game" anymore at all.
But there's not something for everyone, that's the main problem. You've tuned all the regular characters to be tournament-friendly AND casual-friendly, but completely left out the second part for Melee top tiers. Pragmatically speaking, you're alienating a major part of your audience (target or not, I don't really care) from a decent portion of your cast. That's the exact opposite of "for everyone".
On those characters, you're deliberately taking away things that casual players wanted (variety, personnality), and catering those players to the rest of the cast. In a way, that isn't all that much better than Sakurai did when he catered tournament-players towards playing only Metaknight, Ice Climbers, Olimar, Diddy and such.
Actually, even though characters like Fox and Falco are largely the same as Melee, playing them in PM IS a new experience while staying familiar. The mechanics and game around them have changed to the point where it's a different flavor. There are new techniques to use(Footstooling), new and improved characters to fight, and more environments and such that were not present in Melee Their Matchups and such are also very different in PM due to the larger variety of viable characters.
There's definitely things for casuals and the like to appreciate in PM though they aren't always easy to notice. For example, 2 changes that have gone under the radar that were made were:
1. Computer players no longer have a preference for ganging up on the human player in 4 player scenarios
2. Many items/Pokemon/Assist Trophy parameters were adjusted to better suit balance.
While some may disagree, keep in mind that there are players of all walks that felt that items in brawl were far too overpowered and I think the changes I did to them so far suit their wants.
Edit: If you want a Falco in PM that has what you want, I recommend doing it yourselves. You guys definitely have the tools to do so. While we may not support it, we have no problem with you editing Falco's PSA to be what you want and putting it on Brawlvault, as long as we're credited for the original PM Falco assets.
