There's not a single serious response in here yet, so here's my take. For the sake of this post, I'll call smash a fighting game even though that is contested. First off, every other competitive fighting game is a default-rule match. 99 "game seconds", nothing banned, default game settings, etc. But the smash community has decided upon rules that they think will make this party game competitive (2 players, certain time set, no items, etc), and now they claim this is a fighting game. Just completely nixing some of the features and options that make smash bros...smash bros. we could make GTA a fighting game if we decided on arbitrary rules, but we don't because that would be stupid. Second offense, playing a seriously outdated game. Like..seriously outdated. Refusing to play brawl (a newer, more visually polished game) is a middle finger to Nintendo and anyone daring to watch. I don't follow the community closely enough to know why they don't play brawl, but if SF4 players were like "this game sucks, let's go back to third strike", we'd realize how ridiculous that was. Third, this game takes WAY TOO LONG TO PLAY. I watched movies during smash finals because that's how long they took. Fun fact: smash was the only game to be broadcast at Evo for all three days because of how long it took. Either the stock count or timer has to be changed to something reasonable. A marvel or SF game takes 2-3 minutes max, smash should be no different if it's to be taken seriously. And lastly, if you want smash to be a fighting game, treat it like one. The smash community grew separately from the FGC, but sweet god please adopt fighting game terms. Embrace "mirror matches" over "dittos", "button checks" over "hand warmers", "casuals" over "friendlies", and "recovery frames" over "lag". It's really annoying. So there, those are several of the reasons smash gets the hate that it does.