Super Smash Bros 4 - Meta Knight's design analysis
Here's some more of that game design to talk about, one that ISN'T stupidity this time around. Back in Brawl, Meta Knight was a character with a still glaring enough chink in his form: lack of projectiles. While you couldn't shell him with projectiles because he was too fast for that, Meta Knight was still forced to fight you up close no matter how monstrous he could seem. The good news is, SSB provided the ability to hard counter any individual melee move with one of your own because there's plenty of them. So Meta Knight was ultimately given Counter Play already: you could try to wall him with this in mind, he would try to catch holes in your defense, and you would try to plug those holes in so that his lackluster durability would haunt him. Fighting Meta Knight off required skill and a more healthy brand of endurance. This sort of gameplay was rendered useless by various other characters in Brawl, though SSB4 does make plenty of effort to fix it in general. (Damage per attack reductions AND bigger blast zones are handy in this regard. Now what would be nice is to fix the weight gaps to prevent the arbitrary survival by lightweights.)
In SSB4, HAL decided to nerf Meta Knight beyond this because they wanted to avoid hypocrisy by letting Meta Knight be effective at low level play and they didn't want Meta Knight having advantage in matchups that were the relevant ones in Brawl. To this end, SSB4 reduced Meta Knight's reach with his attacks.
Let me summarize Meta Knight's style with that in mind: he's supposed to be an anti-armor fencer.
Sure Meta Knight in his own game can't handle the Eldritch Abominations so he opts to outsmart them, but it only establishes he's meant to be the cool guy when he can dismantle his first appearance game's Big Bad's plan in a single move and uses his innate ability to make sure that the single move doesn't knuckle under. What HAL wants to do is make sure that players can't use him mindlessly by chopping everything in their way before everything in their way gets a chance to attack.
Of course, it's not very perfect, because it also suffers Hitbox Dissonance that hurts Meta Knight. Meta Knight's damage output also feels underwhelming for anti-armor.
I would fix the Hitbox Dissonance first, by giving certain attacks each an extra hitbox that would cover what's missing and add a little disjoint, BUT at the same time that extra hitbox, if it's what hits, would be too weak to prevent counterattack and the damage too low for any halfway steadfast combatant to think of really fearing it. The disjoint actually makes sense:
Mei Ling: That's Meta Knight. He's a knight from Dream Land. They say his sword swings can break the sound barrier.
For that reason, I'd have that around to give Meta Knight a sense of being dangerous, but it would be mere fear factor in the end at the same time.
After that, check Meta Knight's damage output outside the extra hitboxes to see if he can handle armors well enough to prevent that from being the obvious solution against him. We're supposed to reward players for skill, not make him simply require more skill to even use. Honestly-
Oh yeah. Zero Suit Samus. She's weak. Can't even freaking kill Meta Knight with clean hits when he's at triple digits, and gets killed before 70 percent as well. Now then, honestly-