i think the problem from my perspective, even as someone who knows how it works, is that making all the directional arrows independent of each other sort of subconsciously implies that you have to tap the stick in the each direction each time, instead of holding them for a smooth movement

Exactly!! I probably would’ve played a lot more street fighter as a kid if the diagrams on the arcade machines didn’t try to make it look like fuckin trigonometry instead of just, rotate the stick.