I find that the gamble of forcing glances is mitigated due to the nature and increase of said glances. In NW there is a certain minimum range in which attacks simply will not find purchase, and that can be exploited. Do you not find this occurring? It is not training to be luckier so long as it can be regularly and confidently used no? It also has much more direct benefits as opposed to your example of chambering with fists. It can confuse the opponent, and timed well it can open them up for a quicker counterattack than simply blocking the attack itself.
The thing is, getting poked is a gamble, when I have tried to demonstrate pokes to people it has been quite tricky to find an angle for the overhead where I consistantly poke. This does not even account for the dolphin, no matter how close you are someone might doplhin you mitigating even the possibility of poking you, which means that it's not only a gamble on mechanics but also on the persons awareness. The fact is it's too risky a move to be part of a serious repertoire. So in light of this one might as well argue that this move is facehug, spam and pray which partially even validates Gokillers view.
I was not trying to say that MM did not have the same skills necessary for success. I also will agree that attacking is an easier thing to accomplish, but there is a trade off of some equity towards the defense. With attacking now being the easier act to accomplish, the players who want to go to the next level in the game need to change their focus, and find new ways to deal with the problem.
My point was that these things have allways been in, and the second attack does not change the absolute emphasis placed on these skillsets. Proportionally they have grown in importance since other skillsets have been removed. So it's not a case the slice of these areas growing in the skillcake, but the skill cake having certain areas carved away for an overall smaller skillcake.
Secondly shifting focus to staying alive is quite contrary to the easy to learn hard to master mantra gamedevelopers are so fond of. Easy to learn means that can contribute a bit quite easily, i.e. blocking down and distracting the enemy. And hard to master means that to kill people effectively and swiftly on your own you need to be quite experienced. Where as at the moment because it's comparatively so hard to stay alive there is no distinction between a bad player and an intermediary player. Both of them will flail around wildly with their attacks. So at the moment you have two kinds of players, baddies and kill farmers instead of a spectra of different skill levels that will perform at their own level consistently.
EDIT: To clarify, some areas I would find to increase ones performance would be in an understanding of range, the probabilities of glancing, what to do in group situations etc.
Most of these things constitute gambles, and not necessarily good ones at that, and even so they are skills that were equally needed in MM so people who were good in MM will have them down and thus they are not areas that most of the people prefering MM melee need to brush up on.
Now, I want to discuss some of what you said in that last sentence. Do you mean in any situation? Or are you alluding to certain ratios of enemies? I do want to discuss it but first I want to understand exactly what you meant.
To clarfy the sentence I think you are refering too: I believe that the shorter more random (from alot of peoples point of view) melee will make people less prone to go into melee simply because it's too much of a gamble in their eyes, if they hang back and shoot they feel that they are safer, and more likely to pick up 2 kills than by going into melee twice. Which I believe is partially a cause for people running away instead of fighting in melee and similar practices, which did exist in MM of course, but they were far less prevalent in my opinion.
And perhaps I should have taken it that way, over the past several weeks this issue has been rather hot button and I understand that it frays the patience over time.
Yeah, it's easy to resort to hyperbole and exageration in the debate, especially since alot of the veterans feel very passionately about it.
