I think I'll use the argument for skill development. What would you regard as skills in a fighting game? Godlike neutral game? Good pokes? Combos? Reading players? Patience?
Forgot to respond to this. CPS2's post just reminded me. This is hard to answer and bear in mind that it might not make any sense.
Fighting game skills generally boil down to any elements that take some degree of physical effort, dedication and experience to develop to their fullest potential. We respect skills that take more effort, dedication and experience and disrespect those skill sets that take less of those things (more or less). All those things you mentioned are skills, with the exception of patience, which is a character trait of particular players, that can aid a particular skill (such as blocking/defense).
Gonna be relatively abstract here to keep it short, but skill sets vary from game to game, obviously, and emphasize different things.
A game like Melee's ceiling is so high because there's a high degree of variability in regards to how many of the high-level techniques/tactics in that game can be utilized - Wavedash/Land in particular.
Generally it comes down to how much control a player has over any particular aspect of the game that determines how high a ceiling can be for a skill set. How far and in how many different directions can the envelope be pushed? The more analog any particular aspect is, the higher the potential skill ceiling for that aspect of the game, and the game in general.
In SF4, anti-airing is a necessary skill, that's scalable, since there's variability there in terms of consistency, how quickly a player can react to a player jumping at them, the attack worth using varies, etc.
Being able to break grabs with consistency is another one. While there's standard grab setups, the potential grab setups are enormous. Executing grabs are easy, breaking them are not, despite the fact that they have the same physical requirements.
Combos are another skill, in terms of consistency in their performance and optimization. The broader the combo system, the larger the scalability and the higher the potential ceiling.
While neutral in SF4 is highly analog, it pales in comparison to a game like Guilty Gear with many more movement options, so the skill ceiling for that aspect of the game is higher in the latter.
When you give staple FG elements such as movement and combos, a high-ceiling in regards to potential, that tends to widen the gap between players in the game, making the gameplay way more satisfying for dedicated players.
I think that's saying something I dunno.
