One of the big issues that sets Smash Bros. apart from other fighting games like Street Fighter or Tekken is the attitude of the developers. Sakurai and team don't really consider their game a fighting game and cater to the casual crowd with smash bros. This is in stark contrast to Capcom who tries to make Street Fighter the competitive fighting game. This is changing somewhat with the Wii U invitational and actually issuing balance patches this time around for smash 4 but it will be a long time before another Smash is a competitive hit like Melee was, Sakurai has even said that melee was too technical and was a mistake.
It's worth noting that the casual focus in Brawl was responsible for the "tripping" mechanic: during battle, your character would trip completely at random. There was no way to disable it.
