A decade of fighting game devs trying to make games more accessible has proven this to be a myth. That's some shyt old heads try to get off because they refuse to adapt or humble themselves to the fact that the new game isn't like the old one so they have to actually LEARN the game instead of coasting on old metas.
The number 1 reason ogs lose to newer players is because the newest players have an open mind and are absorbing more relevant situations. Older players are trying to force their old ideas into a new meta and get mad when it doesn't work out their way. But nikka you refused to humble yourself and adapt
I saw this shyt happen with Street Fighter 5. It was all good when 7-8 nikkas knew the frame data and bullshyt, but now when 75% of the scene accesses the information nikkas wanna be mad because they can't beat up on bums anymore
The irony is trying to make these fighting games easier actually made them HARDER. Again with Street Fighter 5 they tried to make the game easier for casual and oops fukked around and made the hardest Street Fighter game for nikkas to get into. If you're a beginner trying to get into SF5 and you don't know the math you're fukked
I'm not saying you have to like Tekken 8 but that skill gap shyt is a lie. The actual truth is Twitter, YouTube, and better training modes have closed the skill gap more than new dev mechanics have
Ehh this isn't really truth, on the surface it might appear that way but the games today are far less skill based than the games of old. Tekken is a prime example of that, the old heads in Tekken are a BEAST even in current T7. Dudes aren't really losing to the new school players, the old heads that don't play T7 or rarely play. Now there are a bunch of great up and coming new tekken scenes and players but in general the people you expect to place well or do well... do so.
Tekken is..well was a legacy game and while they added some newer player friendly stuff it didn't change the core of the game. T8 looks like a lot of legacy knowledge and skills go out the window and just going for it will be a strong option like with all the newer games as of late. So I wouldn't be surprised to see newer players rising up and older heads just falling back.
I have a pretty open mind when it comes to fighters, but a lot of the newer stuff is reaction based, and a knowledge check. Also in newer games they don't want a player to be able to control or zone effectively, nor trap or generally annoy your opponent. That use to be a way to control unga bunga players or players that are just non stop aggressive that want to run their mix and roll dice. Now if you want to purely zone or space control well if a characters does let you do it, you are going to lose to a random jump in into 50/50 corner carry and more mix. On top of that you zoned or controlled the match for 60 seconds? Great, well now the opponent has built up *insert whatever comeback factor* and only needs 1 50/50 mix for the kill. So not only have they boiled most fighting games down to the simplest options they also nerfed controlling space and it's effectiveness.
So yeah people who have been playing since or before USF4 have it bad, they older so reflexes are worse, and the knowledge is super common place so even someone that's super mid has the knowledge to potentially knock out someone that's overall more skilled because they have good reactions and have seen the knowledge check situation on youtube.
Frame data might be the worse "new" thing to come to fighters. It gives people a false sense of what to do and not to do and how good or bad a character is. This is part of the reason I'm really looking forward to SF6 and the way they handle Framedata. At a glance it's or without playing it's harder to look at characters and be like oh yeah do xyz.