Real gameplay that is, not just short blips here and there, but 2+ hours at the invitational and the treehouse vids, etc. what do people think about the noticeable differences in this game?
I've noticed that learning Smash is a dynamic undertaking. If, in other words, you learned on Melee, and then tried to play Brawl like you were playing Melee, you'd be hard pressed to be as good. I think the same holds true for Brawl... I think that the habits one develops need to be unlearned between each iteration, and this concept may indeed be what confounds players the most. Admittedly I've played other fighting games, and it seems true for them as well. In fact it has seemed over the last 2 decades that most series want to punish players who expect to go in to the new game using old techniques. They either, kinda work, half work, or flat out don't work at all. And what follows is the reaction "ew, I don't like this, I can't do Heihachi's 6 hit juggle anymore, he must suck now, and so this game must suck) and then time passes and we learn to adapt and change or pick new mains, or whatever.
Anyway, not to lecture just noticing that THIS new game is not different in this respect... indeed we will have to unlearn our Brawl techniques (and whatever Melee techniques were left) in favor of discovering Smash4 techniques, which are of course similar to the previous games... they are based on previous games, but they'll undoubtedly require a fresh perspective.
Just going off of the invitational gameplay, I can see there's a few interesting things that will no doubt become ... issues? No I don't wanna say that, they're not problems, they're more decisions by the developers that may impact the game in a competitive sense. For instance Yellow Devil. Crazy and cool as he is, he seems like he'd take that stage out of the running list of starters/cp. Aerials seem to be elongated (sic) now, you can see some of the double jumps -> recovery will take characters well above the damage ceiling - a short hop seems to be about 1.5 times higher than in previous games. The game also tends to still suffer from camping issues though maybe not as bad as Brawl. Interesting strategies to say the least, but at the same time, not-so original in varying arenas, methinks the boxing ring will also be turned down for start/cp though it's definitely too early to tell for sure.
And of course most of these observations are based on the mostly FFA matches, just watching it over and over and focusing on one or two different players each run through. In the 1v1 GF match ZSS seemed to have more options against Kirby but this could also be attributed to the fact that out-of-the-box someone familiar with ZSS may fair better than a player familiar with Kirby, or appear to have more options (as it appeared in the match). These matches, though, these observations, are key because they will lead to the final tweaks made to the game to help finalize the product, and hopefully the finished product will not disappoint (as I'm seeing there is already quite a bit of negative feedback being generated).
Oh, and on a personal note, this whole "you can't dash dance" thing is kinda off I think... you may not be able to do it just like you used to but unless my eyes deceived me hungrybox was doing some crazy footwork/positioning with kirby.
Also I noticed that the learning curve is a bit steep for the new characters Mega Man and Little Mac. When put to the test, both characters remained about a stock and half behind the rest in terms of KOs/dmg. With items off it's obviously a different story, but in general you can typically follow the potential of a character (and player, really) based on the closeness of dmg% as a fight continues, and it was clear that even during FFA 3 of 4 players would be around equal % while MM/LM would end up at much higher damage to even being down a stock before anyone else. Again could be the learning curve, maybe these characters are just harder to use effectively, or it could be that these characters just aren't as high tier as we'd like them to be. If we just go off of feedback LM is bottom tier, lol which I think is a bit harsh.
I've noticed that learning Smash is a dynamic undertaking. If, in other words, you learned on Melee, and then tried to play Brawl like you were playing Melee, you'd be hard pressed to be as good. I think the same holds true for Brawl... I think that the habits one develops need to be unlearned between each iteration, and this concept may indeed be what confounds players the most. Admittedly I've played other fighting games, and it seems true for them as well. In fact it has seemed over the last 2 decades that most series want to punish players who expect to go in to the new game using old techniques. They either, kinda work, half work, or flat out don't work at all. And what follows is the reaction "ew, I don't like this, I can't do Heihachi's 6 hit juggle anymore, he must suck now, and so this game must suck) and then time passes and we learn to adapt and change or pick new mains, or whatever.
Anyway, not to lecture just noticing that THIS new game is not different in this respect... indeed we will have to unlearn our Brawl techniques (and whatever Melee techniques were left) in favor of discovering Smash4 techniques, which are of course similar to the previous games... they are based on previous games, but they'll undoubtedly require a fresh perspective.
Just going off of the invitational gameplay, I can see there's a few interesting things that will no doubt become ... issues? No I don't wanna say that, they're not problems, they're more decisions by the developers that may impact the game in a competitive sense. For instance Yellow Devil. Crazy and cool as he is, he seems like he'd take that stage out of the running list of starters/cp. Aerials seem to be elongated (sic) now, you can see some of the double jumps -> recovery will take characters well above the damage ceiling - a short hop seems to be about 1.5 times higher than in previous games. The game also tends to still suffer from camping issues though maybe not as bad as Brawl. Interesting strategies to say the least, but at the same time, not-so original in varying arenas, methinks the boxing ring will also be turned down for start/cp though it's definitely too early to tell for sure.
And of course most of these observations are based on the mostly FFA matches, just watching it over and over and focusing on one or two different players each run through. In the 1v1 GF match ZSS seemed to have more options against Kirby but this could also be attributed to the fact that out-of-the-box someone familiar with ZSS may fair better than a player familiar with Kirby, or appear to have more options (as it appeared in the match). These matches, though, these observations, are key because they will lead to the final tweaks made to the game to help finalize the product, and hopefully the finished product will not disappoint (as I'm seeing there is already quite a bit of negative feedback being generated).
Oh, and on a personal note, this whole "you can't dash dance" thing is kinda off I think... you may not be able to do it just like you used to but unless my eyes deceived me hungrybox was doing some crazy footwork/positioning with kirby.
Also I noticed that the learning curve is a bit steep for the new characters Mega Man and Little Mac. When put to the test, both characters remained about a stock and half behind the rest in terms of KOs/dmg. With items off it's obviously a different story, but in general you can typically follow the potential of a character (and player, really) based on the closeness of dmg% as a fight continues, and it was clear that even during FFA 3 of 4 players would be around equal % while MM/LM would end up at much higher damage to even being down a stock before anyone else. Again could be the learning curve, maybe these characters are just harder to use effectively, or it could be that these characters just aren't as high tier as we'd like them to be. If we just go off of feedback LM is bottom tier, lol which I think is a bit harsh.
