Very personal take and a bit off-topic
I don't want to feel dismissive about how your feel (your post was a great feedback) but I think it's interesting how people want reasons for things all the time, not just in fighting games. I get people might enjoy having the big picture and wanting it to be explained to them. But sometimes there's no place or time to do so and you just have to do things without understanding them until it clicks, ofthen because you've amassed enough knowledge to understand it by yourself. I feel learning by doing is often dismissed as we're doing more and more academic/theorical studying instead of practical. It's the same with a new hire: you can't explain to them why the company works this way all the time or you'd never work. So you just ask to do as told, and they'll get it later.
In the case of fighting games, obscure things are now analyzed, frame data is available so everything has an explanation. But is knowing the explanation make you a better player and allows you to have more fun? It might to an extent, but it might be experience that will make you a better player. In this situation, explaining sidesteps won't change anything: if you can't sidestep this move, you can't. That's just a rule of the game, make a note about it and apply it. Sometimes intellectualizing it won't make it easier, questioning the why and what too. It's even the opposite. You may see the big picture but you might not be able to memorize little notes about the game.
In this case, who knows the game better and has more fun? Is it the one who can explain why you can't sidestep moves, or the one that can't explain but knows how to sidestep each move?
I think, as far as movement and game logic, it's extremely important to be able to parse why. I think being able to study things like how to punish specific moves is very important. But when you're talking about a roster of 50 characters with upwards of 50+ moves each, and you have to just...KNOW how to get by moves specifically in every scenario, it creates a lot of frustration. In Tekken, it's just not demonstrated. I can't sidestep during a lot of strings. Or, maybe I can, but not with this character because their sidestep is slower. Or maybe I can, but into the background instead of the foreground, or vice versa. It's not about knowing the explanation, it's about being able to tell, clearly, WHY something happened. In a similar scenario in VF or SC, or even DoA to a lesser extent, I can generally know WHY something happened, but in Tekken, it's not communicated clearly, and so, as a player that DOES want to get better, it is far more difficult, far more obtuse, because knowledge of every character's kit becomes a specialty when you want to get around certain stuff. I can't learn by doing since, by virtue of how Tekken's movement works, there are tons of variables to account for. I think "You just can't sidestep this move" is a terrible explanation, because it leaves no room for application anywhere else, lol. It might work when you have just one character, or just several dozen moves, but when you've got a roster and movelist the size of Tekken's, that doesn't work for me.
And I get that there's an appeal to this. But it doesn't add anything to the game to me personally for this stuff to be communicated to the player in the way that it has traditionally been done in Tekken. I don't think you should really need to explain movement. The use of a sidestep, of a sidewalk, etc, should be clear, and they should work in ways that feel natural. For me, everything about Tekken's movement is counter intuitive and frustrating.
More good news from battle for the grid. Its had ggpo and crossplay since day 1 but due to sony not allowing crossplay until changing their policy very late 2019 players were seperate...UNTIL NOW!
This is such good shit. I've been messing around with this game, and it really reminds me of my time growing up piecing together games like MSH and XvS. So good.