Apologies I went to bed last night before I could respond, but let me word this in a way that I hope makes sense.
With my limited time playing, I've currently concluded that the best way to win a match is to live by these words, "Set up the opponent to fail". I constantly do things, both aggressively and not so aggressively to put the opponent in a position to get hit. To give you an example, and I hope Karsticles doesn't mind, but I am going to use our last set as an example with his Ganondorf. He had a downb custom that shoots him across the screen, and a side b custom that doesn't grab, but is more of a sideways multi hit move.
I quickly learned that if I maintained a far distance from Karsticles, he would, more than half the time, jump in the air and use his down b to fly across the stage and attack me. All I had to do was block when the kick came, and I was able to punish. I consider this good defensive positioning, and knowing that Karsticles has conditioned himself to do this a lot, I could continuously take advantage.
Now, here is an example of what i consider good spacing. If I positioned Ness fairly close to Gannondorf, but out of range from his A attacks, I could bait him into throwing out his SideB custom. So what I would do is throw a PK Fire I know wouldn't hit him, or do a short hop fair to think he has an opening, and more often than not, he would rush in with that sideb. If I blocked it correctly, I could immediately punish. Again, I am throwing attacks at the guy fairly close to him, and somewhat approaching, but I am maintaining a distance to get him to make a mistake, knowing his nuances.
Now, as an example of offensive play being rewarded. I learned that if I get right up to Karsticles and attack him within his attack range, he was going to either use his downtilt, jab, or ftilt to attack me, so my strategy was to short hop fair into him, knowing he would probably block it, then try and confuse him on my landing spot so that he would pump out one of those moves in the wrong direction, if I got it right, I would follow up with a grab, or an aerial. If I got it wrong I would continue to short hop around him and repeat the process until the opening presented itself.
These are the things I think of at a rapid pace. There is very little down time in my playstyle. I consider myself to be very good at spacing out my attacks, but moreso I consider myself good at reading an opponent, and figuring out their bad habits. I think this sometimes frustrates opponents, and they start to say things like "playing defensively" or what have you because maybe they aren't fully comprehending the thought process I am going through in a given match, or fully understanding the things they are doing wrong that are leaving them open to an attack.
Again, I would ask you to watch this, admittedly very old (and I think we are both much better now) match between me and karsticles and determine if I was playing overwhelmingly defensive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kztNVBgZJuU
Because if you do, we just aren't going to agree. I don't believe spacing a pk fire for half a second, or hitting 2 pkthunders from a distance for 5 seconds consitutes overwhelming defensive play. I think that is putting to good use some moves that can connect from a distance when the opportunity presents itself while knowing I am going to have to go in close to get the majority of my work done.
Does Smash4 award good defensive play? Absolutely. Does it reward good offensive play? Absolutely. For most characters it's a combination of both, for some it skews one way more than the other. Ultimately, it rewards good reads, awareness of what your opponent does, and thinking a few steps ahead. If you prefer the heavily offensive nature of a game like Melee, that's fine, but the notion that Smash4 only rewards camping and heavy defensive play is, in my opinion, silly and wrong. Or I dunno, maybe my definition of what constitutes offensive and defensive play is just different, I guess
