I understand your side more clearly, but I definitely disagree about guessing. In Tekken guessing is minimized. There's no person who remembers every character's moves and options all the time even if that person has Korean blood. Nonetheless the longer you play, the more you remember and recognize from basic startup animations. At that point you don't guess, you react. At first you remember how 3 hit strings end, then hit 2 ones, when opponent mixes up you finally in high level learn that even if he breaks string 4 hit string in half he's either at disadvantage or at least I'm able to backdash or sidestep.
I didn't say it was just guessing. I said it is guessing "based on experience". Sure there are instances where reflexes do the job for a guaranteed result, like punishing on block, guarding slow lows, seeing arms as you break throws correctly, interrupting a canned string and hit confirming counters. But good players make calculated choices most of the time in this game because their good opponents don't over-use these telegraphed attacks too often.
Whenever you dance in and out and/or side step at mid range, you are trying to bait a whiff - that's part of the guessing I am talking about. When you throw out a mixup or guard against a really good one, it is guessing. Basic poke battles are all about guessing because the moves are too fast to see and react perfectly to every time.
All that guessing is still based on skill because whatever you guess, you do so for a solid strategic reason. Maybe you decide to let a weak low of a mixup hit you because it's better than getting hit by a launching mid that's near the same speed. Maybe you go for a low getting your opponent to eat three solid CH poke hits in a row. Maybe you side step/walk left against a Mishima at mid-range to help avoid CD attacks. None of these are guaranteed to work in your favor, but experience tells you that it is a good guess a lot of times to attempt these strats in these specific circumstances.
What hard earned knowledge and skill is mashing invincible on block or sometimes on hit even? Or not blocking, sidesteping or backdashing, countering, parrying incoming move. Instead doing one move that just goes through anything, and I mean anything opponent throws out? Is that skill? Firing up move that beats anything that is visibly coming up? In normal tekken when you see a move coming up but it's too late to think and do much about it, you automatically react with blocking (or sidestep if you're Korean or Doomshine), but then you have to think fast and do something, plan, react, do shit.
In Revo? "Oh dude rises his foot" - invincible! Truly Invincible flow chart.
Revolution teaches noobies one option instead forcing them to think for themselves of many. If I just wait and wait and launch punish invincible 1, 2, 3 times, what does a dude who won 100 matches with this "flawless tactic" do? Nothing, he just stands there, afraid. Because those 100 matches taught him nothing. He gets destroyed because the only thing the game has taught him, is not working. Then he sends hate mail, or make a room called "Don't combo spam" and I really saw that. One stupid move can people dumb and dumber.
If you believe this will teach newcomers anything, okay. I believe in opposite outcome. It'll make them dumber, and less skilled, then if they' have jumped into other tekkens unprepared.
I believe that learning good defense in Tekken takes a long, long time. It starts with being able to see holes in an opponent's offense to begin with. Knowing how to best exploit those holes while developing the muscle memory to do so consistently for hundreds and hundreds of individual circumstances is a never ending process.
I feel that normal Tekken's defense is too much to learn for a lot of average players to take on if they don't have the deep passion required to put in dozens of hours of practice on a regular basis - first learning where the holes are to exploit, and then knowing how and when to exploit them. Tekken R's invincible allows them to open their eyes to the first part. Later on, they may choose to play a "real" Tekken game and they will still be able to see those holes, and only then need to figure out how best to address them.
If you are correctly punishing the middle of a canned string you've seen a dozen times with an invincible as a newbie to the series, then you will still be aware of that same opening in another Tekken where there are no simple solutions. That's the positive outcome I'm talking about. Playing TR, they are not as overwhelmed by all the many, many, many, many, many defensive rules they would have to know to stay alive. They can then better get a feel for Tekken in general, and they can later refine the basics they learned in TR with a real version at a down the line if they get hooked.
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