There are no Mind Games in guaranteed set ups..... the whole point of going for guaranteed setups is to avoid the process of playing mind games... why ? I don't know.
Missing the point.
Mind games come because both players know what the other is going to do. At this point, since player A knows that player B knows that he's going to do setup C, player A instead does setup D because player B isn't expecting it. Of course, this goes into a deeper level when player A does setup D because he thinks player B is expecting setup C, but player B is actually expecting setup C.
If you think mind games are simply, not doing the exact same thing every time, then you're not really doing mindgames. In fact, doing the exact same thing every single time is an important part of mindgames, since it plays into conditioning.
There are times when someone doing mindgames actually doesn't look like it because they look like they're just spamming the same thing over and over, but that's either because they're trying to condition their opponent, or the opponent is thinking too far ahead and as a result, keeps falling for the same thing over and over.
For example, from last weekend's MKX Asia Pacific Championship grand finals between Australia's Edison and the Philippines Timcruz. Edison seemingly kept falling for the same trap that Time was doing, he'd put up an ice clone and go into an overhead. There was a point where Edison ate 3 overheads in a row from this setup. Now while it looked like Tim was spamming the same setup, what was actually happening was the Edison didn't think that Tim would do the overhead a second time after the first hit and would instead go for a low starter. Knowing this however, Tim simply did the overhead again, trusting that Edison wouldn't expect the overheads. He'd then do it another time just to mess with him, and then switch to a low starter afterwards.
Now this is a perfect example of mind games and conditioning. Edison was thinking that Tim wouldn't simply follow up an overhead with another overhead, however Tim correctly read that Edison was thinking this, and therefore just went for an overhead again. Of course, once he hit this twice or thrice, Edison would probably start blocking high against the overhead (or, get conditioned to block high to stop the overhead), that's when Tim switched and started going low.
But never mind that.... you didn't say anything about the execution barrier..... what do physically difficult commands to execute have to do with Mind Games and High Level Play ?
Execution is about two things. First it gives moves a chance to fail without having to resort to an RNG, therefore players can practice against it. Yet at the same time, also fail at certain points due to tournament stress.
The other part is that they allow for more moves to be mapped out to a simply stick+buttons layout. you can get more moves and variations of moves by using special inputs instead of just mapping them to one or two buttons.
Take for example, the upcoming Street Fighter V. In addition to the normal moves and special moves, each character also has a host of command normals (since SFV does away with promximity based normals in favo of command normals). This means that each character has at least 6 or so command normals triggered by holding a direction, and pressing a specific punch or kick button.
So you can't just do the Smash thing of making special attacks a direction plus a button (due to the fact that these are tied to command normals).
The other thing is that motions give certain properties. Charge moves mean that characters using them tend to be more defensive since they need to hold down back. Meanwhile, 360s and 720s usually imply a risk of getting a jump, which tends to force people to buffer them in other moves (either during a jump, buffered in a normal as a "tick throw").
I mean, that's not to say that there are some pretty stupid motions for inputs (SNK pretzel motions are pretty dumb, and I think even 720s are too much). But there are valid, gameplay related reasons for them.
The other important point is that alot of the high level execution stuff is "emergent". In other words, its developed by the players. Most if not all of these high level, high execution elements are stuff the developers never expected, but that the players have discovered and are now using at high level play (e.g. UMvC3 fly-unfly bullet hell with Morrigan, U/SSFIV Evil Ryu combos, Chun Li leg loops, Fuerte Run Stop Fierce, etc.).
Theres no such rule In Mortal Kombat or DoA because the input for its equivalent of Ultras is literally only two button presses.... its not difficult and not unintuive. Practically anybody can do it....it doesn't make the game less deep.....it doesn't kill off high level play.
Changing the motions may not "kill off" high level play, but they can sure as well change it.
Take this for example.
The D.E.D. Option Select works in part because the input for certain supers overlaps with those for certain moves. This means that you can have a situation where, depending on whether or not your low poke hits, the super will come out, or if its blocked, a safer move will come out. This is an OS that works because of the motions. If they were instead 2 button to activate, then it wouldn't work (and would therefore affect high level play).
.
