We had a 200-post thread about this not all that long ago, but the gist of it is that
- Yes, option selects are about contriving the right sequence of garbage to input in a given situation to force the game to interpret the input in different ways depending on how the situation plays out, to attenuate the need for a good read or reaction to the opponent’s behaviour.
- Some option selects are better than others: some will beat two of your opponent’s best options outright and lose to another three, some will beat three of your opponent’s options and be okay against another whilst losing hard to yet another, and so on. Option selects are almost never a “win button”: different option selects have different “coverage”, you get from an option select whatever you can wring out of the game systems in that situation.
- Most importantly: option selects are inevitable, and cannot be removed from fighting games entirely. Introducing purported fixes will often just introduce other, unforeseen option selects, and likely also destroy the “feel” of the game. Designers can and do attempt to clamp down on the most egregiously degenerate option selects, but degenerate tech doesn’t need to be an option select to be clamped down upon, so this isn’t special treatment. Good combat design acknowledges, accounts for, and even embraces option selects.
wrt the example you quoted, though, I’m not sure that’s actually a thing that works.