Please forgive my ignorance, but what it "setplay" and how does it ruin fighting games?
Setplay is a logic. It's the full optimization of any and all outcomes that could occur in any given situation during a fight.
Touch of Death confirm combos off the tiniest of Jabs. (Maximum damage combos off any confirm, really.)
Vortex Option-select Mixups that anticipate the opponent's every single move with a perfect countermeasure.
Reading and countering all the opponent's movements.
The "objective" of Setplay is to completely shut down the opponent's movements, actions, and efforts to win.
From a competitive standpoint, this is what all pro-level players seek to achieve.
However, a truly balanced fighting game will anticipate and counter this logic every single time.
Damage Scaling, combo pushback, gravity, Psych Bursts, Dead Angles, Guts ratings, Danger Time, Instant Kills... all of these mechanics EXIST to prevent flawless setplay.
It's because fighting games are inherently a 2 player game... it isn't just one player running the show.
In a game of tug-of-war, both competitors will pull on the rope to gain their advantages... but setplay seeks to take the rope out of the opponent's hands entirely.
The "rope" in this case, represents the normal rules of the game, the mechanics that keep it balanced.
Skilled players know how to manipulate that rope in their favor, but setplay by its nature destroys all hope that anyone else can use the rope.
There are, of course, counter-logics to setplay, but again, it is really all determined by the amount of balance found within the game itself.
What happens to the opponent when they take too much damage but aren't K.O.'d? Do they gain a lot of tension? Do they get a lot of Psyche Burst gauge back? Can they use those features to make a comeback?
A balanced game will allow for this in some measure.
From a general perspective (non competitive/casual) setplay is the bane of fighting games because it homogenizes all possibility within the game to make any other choices. It literally takes all the "fun", "variety", and "randomness" out of the game.
This is because setplay only seeks to determine ONE outcome: for the opponent to completely and utterly lose.
