Super Smash Bros [Wii U | 3DS]

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Online players are so terrible. 80% of them are spammers and idiots who run away from you or stay out of the battle. I throw my controller everytime when one of those ♥♥♥♥ing palutena players win.
 
Jellybones said:
It's good but definitely flawed, and it's just lazy of Sakurai and Nintendo to not keep supporting balance. I mean, I guess I can see why not- they've already raked in all the cash, at this point all they'll have to bother doing is keep the game working. Yet another reason for me to dislike Sakurai, but I can't imagine it's his decision alone.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I think it's fine that he isn't going to maintain custom movesets. By nature some of them are a bit messy and don't even work online, but the default movesets at least need to be patched. If he think it will 'never be the end of it' well... I thought that's what Bandai Namco, a team that actually knows about fighting games, is there for?
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Sakurai said he will patch the game if something pressing comes up, but ultimately it doesn't seem to be his concern so long as 90% of the playerbase isn't affected. It's true that he's got an entire balance team that can worry about it themselves, but perhaps it isn't cost-effective for one reason or another.

It's not a position I agree with, but it is sort of understandable. Even with Diddy being the current flavor of the month, he isn't nearly powerful enough that the game requires a hotfix. I think Sakurai's acknowledged what happens when balance goes completely unchecked, so we'll never get a case like in Brawl where Metaknight easily curbstomps the competition and one character's chaingrabs render half the cast unusable. In the end though, he doesn't think SBB is suited to be a truly competitive fighting game, and I'm certain he doesn't give a damn about tier lists so long as no character feels completely useless or dominant.
 
CobaltBW said:
In the end though, he doesn't think SBB is suited to be a truly competitive fighting game
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I've always found Sakurai's ploy to make Super Smash Bros more accessible to newer players very flawed. Every game is designed with a set challenge in mind, and the entire point of playing a game is to learn how it works and how to use what the game gives you to your advantage. Everything about Smash and any of Nintendo's games compromise this. If you lose to someone (or to the game itself), you should take that as a sign that you haven't learned enough, not sit in the corner and cry that you lost. Anyone can be competitive at any game if enough effort is put into it (just look at Pokemon). When Sakurai attempts to phaze out any strategic tactics in Smash, it loses tons of appeal that made Smash enjoyable in the first place. Why be smart and strategize your attack if you can just put minimal effort and be rewarded for your mindless actions?
 
Jasper the Fox said:
I've always found Sakurai's ploy to make Super Smash Bros more accessible to newer players very flawed. Every game is designed with a set challenge in mind, and the entire point of playing a game is to learn how it works and how to use what the game gives you to your advantage. Everything about Smash and any of Nintendo's games compromise this. If you lose to someone (or to the game itself), you should take that as a sign that you haven't learned enough, not sit in the corner and cry that you lost. Anyone can be competitive at any game if enough effort is put into it (just look at Pokemon). When Sakurai attempts to phaze out any strategic tactics in Smash, it loses tons of appeal that made Smash enjoyable in the first place. Why be smart and strategize your attack if you can just put minimal effort and be rewarded for your mindless actions?
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There are two sides of the coin when it comes to competitive multiplayer, and this is one of them. Having deep, well-balanced mechanics creates for a long-lasting videogame, but if the player is unable to grasp some of the enjoyment at a surface level, they may quit before ever reaching the deeper layers of gameplay. This is an issue because not everyone plays videogames on a regular basis or has time to master the mechanics.

Say that on one end you have Street Fighter, and the other you have Mario Party; they're both competitive, but the mood and the audience each attracts are completely different. As a designer for a commercial AAA videogame, you want to reel in as many customers as possible, and so you're forced to ask yourself the question: Which gameplay model sells the best? It is possible to gear a Smash Bros. title solely toward a hardcore audience, but this is not necessarily the best commercial model to choose from. How do you market a deep, well-balanced game to someone who has no interest in investing time into it?



And I'm not knocking your argument that SSB should be competitive, because this is really what's been the success of Smash Bros. since day one: the series is unique in that it can to reach out to both audiences, and it actually has in nearly every single iteration. It could be argued that Melee's competitive scene was a complete accident, but even with it being by far the most fast-paced and competitive game in the franchise, it still garnered critical acclaim worldwide and sold extraordinarily well within just the first week of release.

I think it's just that what Melee evolved into kind of shook Sakurai; sure, the gameplay is intense and the meta is deep, but so much content was left behind in the process: no items, most stages are banned, many characters see little or no usage, understanding certain techs like wave dashing and DI being required to remotely grasp competitive matchups.... this is very alienating to a player viewing the gameplay from a surface level. It's a great game, but it's a very different game than what was advertised on the back of the box. Some people want Mario Party, and what they get is Street Fighter.

I think SSB4 succeeds here because it's the first title to really distinguish the two styles of gameplay and go the extra mile in providing something for everybody. There's no wave dashing and combos are still pretty limited, so in that sense it can't hope to be as fast and skill-based as Melee; but the strategic depth is still there, and the way the balance team has framed the two models of "For Fun" and "For Glory" sets up a clear design strategy that can flexibly support different definitions of fun. The game isn't perfectly balanced, and this is to be expected with a roster of 40+ characters, but the balance is still good enough that anybody can pick up the game and have fun with it for a long time. This is what Sakurai wants, and so long as nothing totally gamebreaking ruins the experience, it doesn't really matter to him if there are some minorly annoying oddities in higher levels of play.

犬夜叉;764008 said:
I'd say this in particular needs patching though.
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Because of the ease of use of this strategy, chances are it's going to be hotfixed. Whether this will trigger other balance tweaks to be shipped along with it is difficult to say.
 
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Jasper the Fox said:
I've always found Sakurai's ploy to make Super Smash Bros more accessible to newer players very flawed. Every game is designed with a set challenge in mind, and the entire point of playing a game is to learn how it works and how to use what the game gives you to your advantage. Everything about Smash and any of Nintendo's games compromise this.
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Okay, this kind of logic pisses me off. Regardless of your opinion of SSB4, accessibility has NOTHING to do with any of what you just said. Accessibility is the ease at which a player new to the series can learn how to play. The actual depth of the game has absolutely nothing to do with how accessible it is. There are many deep games that are incredibly accessible, and there are many shallow games that are horribly inaccessible.

Jasper the Fox said:
If you lose to someone (or to the game itself), you should take that as a sign that you haven't learned enough, not sit in the corner and cry that you lost. Anyone can be competitive at any game if enough effort is put into it (just look at Pokemon).
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Part of accessibility is helping new players make sense of their losses. One of the most frustrating situations in any game is losing without understanding why. By making the game mechanics clearer and easier to understand, you get a more competitive game because it's easier to learn how to improve when you lose.

Jasper the Fox said:
When Sakurai attempts to phaze out any strategic tactics in Smash, it loses tons of appeal that made Smash enjoyable in the first place. Why be smart and strategize your attack if you can just put minimal effort and be rewarded for your mindless actions?
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This is pure bullshit hyperbole. There is PLENTY of strategy in Smash. If it was as you say, I could just join a random game and win the same amount as someone who's been playing for years, and you know full well that's not the case. Where has strategy been removed? I'd really like to know, because the strategies and skills I've been honing for years still work just fine, and with the new characters, even more strategies have been introduced.

Some people just love to whine that the game isn't exactly like Melee, and if that's what you want, PLAY MELEE! With a new game comes new strategies and new tactics, and isn't that the entire point of a sequel?
 
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I don't believe it's as much of an issue as he (Sakurai) thinks. For all Melee ended up being, like you said, it still sold a lot. It never stopped me from playing it casually. Besides, in the end, it's the people who really love the game that keep playing and would buy potential DLC.

At the same time, that's been his core philosophy from the start... Kirby was conceived as a less challenging alternative to the difficult platformers at the time, so knowing that I guess I also don't expect him to change. Still, at this point the game could use a new lead. He made a good idea and has refined it a bit, but he's clearly tired.
 
Coincidentally, I have a problem with the way Kirby games have been designed recently, but maybe I'd best save that for another topic.
 
Jellybones said:
I don't believe it's as much of an issue as he (Sakurai) thinks. For all Melee ended up being, like you said, it still sold a lot. It never stopped me from playing it casually.
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I think Sakurai was correct in his assessment that Melee had problems that needed addressing, but in Brawl they overreacted and pushed things too far in the other direction. I found tripping incredibly obnoxious and I'm the type of player who plays with items on and loved Poke Floats. I'm very happy with SSB4, though, as it seems like they've found a proper middle ground where multiple styles of gameplay can thrive.

A perfect example of the type of fix that was absolutely necessary despite the protests of some is the removal of wavedashing. When people play a game at a tournament level, basically everything that can be exploited for benefit will be, so of course wavedashing became a part of the tournament scene for Melee. That doesn't change the fact that it's a movement bug involving an incredibly unnatural sequence of input to do. This creates a wall of both understanding and skill, requiring players to learn yet another thing in order to be any good. Yes, such bugs do create more options and more complex high-level play, but most of the time they do more harm than good.

I guess it just drives me insane when people complain about accessibility when if done correctly, accessibility doesn't harm their experience at all. As a player AND a game designer it's in my best interest that games are made as accessible to new players as possible. That doesn't mean every game needs a mandatory tutorial and a joke of a difficulty level; it just means that people regardless of experience should be able to pick up the game and figure out what they need to know to succeed.
 
I'm gonna take my post from the spriters resource here.
Iceman404 said:
I wonder where people pull this ratio of casual and competitive from, because when I go on For Glory (a mode everyone will play at least more than once), I see some really hard ass people. I mean have you SEEN those Links sometimes? A lot of people enjoy pushing themselves to be really good no matter the title, though some waaaaaaaaaaaay moreso than others.

To be honest, Sakurai's quote there is really weird. You can cater to the competitive crowd without affecting the casual crowd in the slightest. Keep the skill floor the same and raise the skill ceiling to higher heights and you're basically done. Anyone who doesn't care for competitive play won't notice. I really can't understand the guy's inability to process that although casual players make the initial sales, competitive players are what can drive a game for several years to come.

Melee is only still relevant because of that crowd, accident of a high skill ceiling game or not; it's still going for absurd prices in 2015, 14 years after it's initial release. It is literally impossible for this to be for the sake of it's nostalgia factor or rarity, the thing was produced like pancakes and every successor has significantly more content than it ever contained; this is because of it's gameplay that happened to turn out unexpectedly deep, spawning loads of hype and spread by word. Melee just had so much more mobility than any other Smash title, in terms of general freedom it felt the cleanest; this is something I noticed as a kid even before I knew what the competitive scene even was. The engine just felt so consistent, it was coded around momentum retaining, rather than the fixed values and momentum cancelling Smash 4 introduced. Melee had a lot more to it than just a dodging-into-the-floor exploit. I think about the only thing the later titles have over it in terms of basic controls is the introduction of frame buffering which makes general button inputs in themselves less of a frame perfect annoyance when playing quickly.

If anything, keeping the casual skill floor and raising the competitive ceiling can only help the Smash Bros. series tremendously without disappointing either side for one or the other, and it does not need to be done through silly movement option exploits like wave-dashing. Just lower landing lag, make gravity heavier, increase hit-stun and DI strength, increase speed, have momentum carry between jumps (this one is just common game knowledge Sakurai), and wallah (no, Special Smash does not fix these problems). No one would complain audibly enough to have the community so split as it is now if they balanced a game around that.

Also Smash 4 may lean toward casual more, but compared to Brawl it's much more competitive and balanced. Brawl was the only inflatable middle finger to the competitive crowd, Smash Bros has always been fun to play in either fashion neglecting that title. I've literally been having endless fun with this game so far, regardless of my thoughts of it possibly having the potential to be better or not.

I conclude with just my dislike for Sakurai now in general with his recent statements on everything. He invented a great concept and still makes incredible titles, but he seems to REALLY hate the other side of his fan base that I'm basically partially included in, and makes it his job to erase possibilities of pleasing them (though this game turned that around slightly from Brawl). All he had to do was probably just bat an eye to the competitive scene and leave the gameplay properties as they were (removing wavedashing was a necessity for professional polish though); they're weren't hurting anybody.





Oh also, I'm pleased with how mature TSR is with dealing with members that enjoy the competitive scene. You wouldn't believe the shitty comments that I'd be seeing in hate if this were basically anywhere else on the internet (a good deal of casual players have somehow become even more elitist in their tone toward anyone who disagrees with them and would usually gang up in this situation, as ironic as that sounds). Honestly surprised I haven't seen "HURR DURR FINAL DESTINATION FOX ONLY HOW DO YOU EVEN HAVE FUN UGH YOU DON'T LIKE IT BECAUSE IT ISN'T MELEE JUST GO PLAY MELEE".

"Casual" "Competitive", they're just play style preference, nothing forced on anyone.
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When asked why a competitive crowd fan like me isn't even very supportive of the Wave Dash exploit.
Because it has no actual animation, hurts to perform in a consecutive manner, and your character is screaming one million times a stock while dust is flying and spamming everywhere. It just looks unintended, and you can have a competitive smash game without it, my point is that it doesn't have to be Melee to be fun and competitive! Every single other thing that made Melee competitive made sense or looked less ridiculous, intended behaviours. Though I did prefer single air dodging, the addition of multiple has seriously ruined the game in terms of offensive play.

There's this usual assumption that Melee was the only competitive Smash title and most of the time because of wavedashing, have you seen the 64 scene? It was even more advanced and enjoyed than Brawl. Brawl is literally the only Smash game to not cater to both crowds. 64 (Smooth Landing is an official thing guys, aka L Cancelling) and 4 do it intentionally, and Melee tried to as well with several slipups among the coding team making it accidently even deeper than intended when learned well.
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Also FYI, I enjoy the game both ways. In fact, competitive party matches have to be the funniest shit I have ever witnessed.
 
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So uh, found a funny glitch. Not sure what caused it, but I'm sure Krillin needs to go to the hospital.

ssb4___blue_mii_head_glitch__by_ordomandalore-d8ehkzn.jpg
 
Emmagad, just launched myself in online battles after some training and...I see those characters in EVERY FUCKING MATCH: Link, Palutena, Lucina and ROB.
Palutena is like getting points by fucking around the whole time, ROB spams laser and the spinny attack, Lucina spams counter and Link is here with up-smash or up-special...


I'm really sad about this, it looks like Pokemon tiers in strategic matches WTF
Even tough, does not stop me winning some games as Mario.EDIT: Also Shulk and BACKSLASH.
 
"Lat'" said:
Emmagad, just launched myself in online battles after some training and...I see those characters in EVERY FUCKING MATCH: Link, Palutena, Lucina and ROB.
Palutena is like getting points by fucking around the whole time, ROB spams laser and the spinny attack, Lucina spams counter and Link is here with up-smash or up-special....
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The key is to time each of their attacks, because the majority of such counter moves, and moves which leave the user vulnerable, should give you enough time to grab them and them start landing combos. Most of the characters can be easily killed with a strong attack and aren't too heavy.


If you have meteor smash attacks, make use of those whenever you can too. Am I the only one that thinks that most meteor smashes have gained a really big power boost from SSBB? I've noticed in most character which have them, but especially in Kirby's aerial down attack has really big spike power, and can easily kill on low percentages if landed just at the right time. Around 40 - 50% at least.


I still find projectile spamming + running to the other side of the map the most fucking annoying tactic I've seen anyone do online... grabbing and critical hits are your best friend against that.
 
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Counter spam is very predictable, you just need to not be comfortable rushing at them 100% of the time.
 
I once made a Shulk player SD out of rage because I claimed an entire stock of his with nothing but grabspam.
He deserved it, all you have to do is read and grab.
 
Oh god the charizards who use Side-B, or the Palutenas who roll away from you, standard B, Up-smash, Side-smash you.
 
Hi everyone.

Have you people been experiencing nothing but losses in For Glory? I have, and I think I need to practice!
 
MrBreada said:
Hi everyone.

Have you people been experiencing nothing but losses in For Glory? I have, and I think I need to practice!
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It all depends on who you play as, your skills with that character and who your playing against. You can get good streaks and then it can turn around for a while and repeat.


I certainly get good and bad moments on there. I still get pissed off by the constant aerial/rolling dodge (whatever you smash people call the term for it)-projectile spamming tactic by most Samus and Link players. Thank god some of Sonic's spin-dash based attacks can be cancelled and manipulated to avoid that problem.


Also just saw that Pac-Man team strategy. That's pretty hilarious to see that the game can be broken so easily. If all were Pac-Man, it would be a very long waiting game. Flare-Blitz spammers are hilarious because they usually don't pay attention about how far Charizard can travel, which can be dodged easily and ending up with the opponent flying off the stage which can be quite far. The up special doesn't get enough travel distance to recover properly 9/10 of the time after screwing up Flare-Blitz.
 
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