Or they can use one of the many ways to get in and actually win the match, considering that Ryu is mid tier and the top tier characters in the game such as Yun are all rushdown characters who rely on getting in and doing big damage. Even Evil Ryu who is top tier doesn't rely much on zoning.
Ryu's fireball trap hasn't been that strong for decades now. Players have discovered and developed many ways to get in over the years.
All this does is just highlight the meta-game of Street Fighter, where players will develop something "low risk high reward", only for other players to come up with a counter to them. This is how all fighting games, whether 2D or 3D, develop.
In any case, the original argument wasn't just about fireballs, but about multiple versions of specials. Take for example attacks that count as reversals, doesn't have to be Shoryuken's. For the most part, each variation, depending on the strength of the button pressed, gives different properties, whether it's height, invul, damage, recovery, etc. For example, for Ryu's Shoryu->FADC-<Ultra 1 to work, he needs to use the light punch version. However, the lower height means that for certain situations, he has to anti air with the heavy punch version.
Then there are moves like Decapre's stinger, which depending on the button pressed, have different invulnerabilities - one version is strike invul, another is throw invul and the third is only invulnerable against fireballs. This means that she can't just YOLO reversal out of knockdown because she has to respect whatever meaty attack her opponent is doing. At the same time, this encourages the attacker to risk a meaty attack on wakeup, since it means that Decapre can't just mash a reversal out every time (but has to think about which version she needs to use).
Yeah, and anyone who believes this is just flat out being a "scrubs" in the most
academic sense of the word.
And speaking of the meta, from the same chapter in that book.
Everything you consider "low risk high reward" (or in other words, cheap) is just something good players learn to deal with and overcome by developing something even "cheaper."
Except they are. For example, players like Luffy and Wokfrone only play on specific pads and bring their own adaptors to tournaments simply because they can only play on those specific pads.
Meanwhile, as I previously mentioned, modern arcade sticks all have the same layout and parts as those are the layout and parts that players use (in the same way that all high end gaming keyboards use the same Cherry microswitches).
Basic kara-cancelling is not even "notoriously difficult". All it involves is pressing something in a certain order.
And in any case, alot of these so called "notoriously difficult" high-level techniques do get used alot, in high level tournament play. And it's accepted because, as stated in the quotes above, eventually, players just develop more tactics that can beat these out.
As for your comments about the meta-game, every competitive endeavour, be it fighting games, chess, basketball, etc. has a meta-game. It's something unavoidable. These are competitions, not some D&D tabletop role-playing session where knowledge of the meta can ruin people's immersion (because it's not a competition). As soon as you step into the ring or court, or arena to face another person the meta develops. As soon as you realize that doing move x beats out your opponents move y, you're playing with the meta (and of course, vice versa, when you realize that what your opponent is doing is beating out what you're doing).
There is nothing to fix because there isn't anything inherently broken about using the meta. As I keep stating, that's how all competitive games develop.
Because nobody wants a solved game. A game that is truly solved is boring since the outcome is predictable. Yet, at the same time, nobody like randomness in competitive games. Input like what we have in fighting games address this problem by allowing some small degree of unpredictability while allowing players to practice against it.
Of course, that's on top of my earlier point about allowing for multiple variations of both normal and special moves.