It's fair as long as it's about skill and not luck. Simple as that.
That's like saying that rich people shouldn't get paid properly for their job because they're already rich anyway.
It doesn't **** over anyone. It prevents luck being a factor in a skill-based game, but it still means little considering kills and deaths are quite irrelevant to the actual stacking of players in the scoreboard. Healing system does not hinder anyone's ability to score hits and thus score points.
To lazy to multi quote so I'll just put it like this.
1. What types of game have you been playing?
2. That is a capitalist problem not a game problem. Yes the rich shouldn't be paid the ridiculous amounts they get paid, mostly for doing jack shit (and most of it being received from 'legalized' bribery, all sorts of tax evasion etc.) but that is a completely different topic. This is not about having privileges in order to be able to live and afford ridiculously expensive cars, for no reason. This is about having the privilege to 'enjoy' a game.
3. Back to question one. What types of game have you been playing? I'd like you to name one game where things are so tightly controlled that it is literally impossible for someone to get a lucky shot/punch/spell anything you could think of in. What game out there (not just video game but also real games) where someone of lower skill can never beat someone of higher skill even if said higher skilled player slips up. That is impossible. Fighting a luck factor in a game is like Don Quixote fighting the windmills. Now if the windmills represent the luck factor, unlike them, this actually technically exists, but not in the touchable spectrum of assistance, so it still cannot be fought. You know what game out there is technically speaking impossible to win because of luck? X and O. Technically speaking there can be no such thing as a winner in the standard X and O game, because right placement of the X or the O will always mean there will be a draw. Why can there be winners if two humans play it? Because on occasion someone slips up. But a battle of X and O between two pros (as in people who are skilled at paying attention and focusing for long amounts of time/ or just two properly programmed computers) will always result in a draw. When it's played like that, then that is a game where there is literally no such thing as luck. Tell me is that what you think ESF:F can be?
Now let's have a look at the human mind a little. Dying in video games. No one likes that. People will always try to prevent dying from happening, even if you say dying is not important to the scoreboard (even though you ignore the fact that staying alive more also means more chances to get a higher score) Once again let's say there is a healing system 20 non-combo punches = healing. Ok. Casual player gets really hurt. Before he got hurt he managed to deal 4 punches. Now he's on his quest to heal so 16 simple melee punches to go. Here goes he lands punch number 5 punch number 6, 7, 8... plow *he get's killed by someone combo swooping him. Some time later same scenario he had 10 punches previously. 11, 12, 13, plow... mua mua, no healing for you, you just got caught in a blast. Similar scenario later 6 followed by 7,8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 he's on a roll, woops some a hole came out of nowhere and ownd him. rinse and repeat, 14, going to 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, omg it's amost there, woops no the last one teleported away and counter attacked you and now you're toast. Does this look like fun to you? A game where you have to keep chasing an almost unobtainable objective constantly, that is made worse by a reset after death. Now you might be saying why is he chasing that objective, all he has to do is score hits to get points, who cares if he dies, when he doesn't loose anything?
Answer: he still dies. And unless there is some instantaneous and I do mean instantaneous respawn, which I doubt, he still wastes precious seconds staying dead. When you tell someone they are about to die, unless they are clinically depressed to the point of going suicidal, everyone else is going to do the thing that will help prevent their dying. That is not just basic psychology, that is basic human instinct. This is what the game will turn into for most people just starting out/ or getting the hang of a the game. A race where you have punch someone 20 times to stay alive. Advanced melee? Why? What's the point. It doesn't heal me. Throws? For what it either does nothing or it does some damage. At the very most temporarily gets rid of a pest. Special trigger combos? Maybe to see what they look like. But they still don't heal. Now if this was some ESF:F separate mode, where you can actually play like this, I'd delve into that occasionally, you probably would live there. But if this is the main game? **** that! Where's my controller, I'll play the only DBZ game for PC for the rest of my life. Where did I put those 60$ now? Oh wait. Even better. I'll play with bots. Because once you learn their patterns there can technically also be no luck in there and I can be the top dog or the top loser if I want to there.
Once again, when you make a game very hard-core and grindy and you'll eventually get empty maps with a very dedicated few players still sticking around, that you will play with over and over and over. But if you level the playing field at least a little, enough so that it would seem that pros are also men, not gods, then people will have incentives to play, to try new things.
Now there is always planet hlev server, no noobs allowed, which you can easily create and maintain and restrict anything you think is lucky, a.k.a. planet boring. But don't screw over everybody else's fun just because you're so frustrated there is such a thing as luck in a skill-based game, which literally (I have to stop using that word).... actually exists in EVERY single skill-based game out there, whether a video game or a regular game.