I agree

I might be misinterpreting you comment a bit but arcsys aren’t on some secret 100000 iq plan to make counterplay more effective, they’re just dumbing shit down so people who barely play or want to learning fighting games can get their dopamine rush slightly easier. Easier/more coherent counter play is just a by product of that.

And regardless there are only like two characters in guilty gear and blazblue (op’s examples) that legit make it hard to tell what’s going on

that being Jack-o from xrd and arakune from central fiction, (a character that would make any happy chaos hater wish for the gun again) two characters that fill the screen with straight up nonsense.

Shit like anji’s/baiken’s guardpoints it was easy to tell what was going on with them (they block hits with their own hits/baiken can attack out of guards in +r), and ideally if a player actually cared about countering them they’d utilize resources to do so.