Items, Pokeballs and Assist Trophies got more and more overtuned as the series went on to the point where you're barely even actually fighting the other person, you're just jumping around waiting for a Gust Bellows (that instantly kills the opponent) or a Pokeball (80% chance it'll be something that instantly kills the opponent) to spawn.
No items fox only FD became the standard probably because you're actually getting to play Smash Bros with the other person, not a 2 person platformer where you're spending more time trying not to fall in the Norfair lava or instantly getting killed because you didn't do the stage gimmick right than you are actually fighting.
I play comp and me and my friends used to also play with items on sometimes but we had to very specifically curate the items that spawn because anything past a certain point and it's barely any fun really.
>>718587525
I always hated this dumbass casual elitist take that is somehow somewhat prevalent among people who don't actually play Smash. If someone is going to beat you with no items, they're also going to beat you with items, if anything the gap between the two players will get even wider because the no items player will likely know exactly where to throw a theoretical Pokeball to fuck you up the hardest regardless of what spawns since specific sets of items do exist in comp play and every character that has access to them abuses them heavily.
tl;dr Item powercreep made it so playing without them is much more fun on a base level.
