Most people see Smash as a party game, and with default settings that's pretty much what it is. But, anyone who was serious about Melee will tell you that there's actually a super deep and highly technical competitive game underneath the silly randomness.
Brawl showed that Sakurai and Nintendo have no interest in supporting a competitive scene, and are in fact hostile to its existence, with crap like tripping added specifically to make the game more random and less dependent on skill. And of course, balance testing was virtually non-existent (hi Metaknight).
For me Brawl was a disappointment, so I won't be buying this next game. I'm sure it'll still make for a good drinking game though...