My college's smash club sorta died this spring, since the prezzy wasn't attending for the academic quarter and nobody else stepped up to the role.
I didn't own a setup until just 2 days ago (hallelujah...), so I got pretty desperate and needed my smash fix lol. Got into the 3DS version with some of the S4 clubbers.
5 weeks later I'm still just as frustrated lol. The game mechanics (as in stuff like changed shield lag/shield KB, drop shield timing, etc....not physics) and different startup/endlag timings of all the vet characters' movesets just...really throws me off aha. I've adjusted to the changed timings by now, but it still irks me everytime I get punished with a charged D-smash oos (wtf...) or something else bizarre. I still catch myself trying to knock shielding opponents off of edges, only for them to not budge an inch and punish me with...F-smash. And Falcon dash grab. And figuring out how to punish Sheik...somehow. How do I even...gahh so weird.
Watching others play reminds me of the potential the game has, but getting over habits I have from Melee/PM...habits meaning good habits in our main game, like thinking ____ is an example of a safe approach, or ____ is an example of something I should punish...it's hardd
Another thing that I feel contributes to the frustration of feeling like "I'm just getting hit by random poop..." is...there isn't as much opportunities for decision-making interactions between opponents. At least imo, when you watch Melee/PM vids, it's fairly easy to understand what was going through each player's head; what influenced them into thinking they could use their option B (rather than A) to cover the opponent's options X and Y, since Z was unlikely. And you can respect their ability to recognize the options they tried covering, and the efficiency of the methods used to try cover them, because that takes knowledge/experience and quick thinking/reactions. It's respectable. But then when watching S4....it's hard to identify nearly as much of those interactions taking place. I mean, they're definitely there, but it feels like a lot of the times characters like Sheik are super low risk high reward, even to the extent that they can afford to ignore thinking about the described decision-making interactions, at least up until a certain level of play. It may just be that were not able to recognize as many due to our recent intro to S4 meta, but jeez. I feel like the instant a punish starts, unless the aggressor of drops it, a lot of the times the one getting attacked can't really do much but just sit and take it. It's hard to understand things that regularly get S4 players hyped up...I wish I could share the hype, but all those combos they admire seemed so safe and simple that...idkk. I feel guilty about it, but I've honestly lost track of the number of times I've thought "...that would've been a lot more impressive (in terms of the depth of input/read difficulty) if pulled off in PM/Melee..."
None of this was intended as game bashing; S4 is great fun. Just sharing my own frustrations trying to learn it from a PM/Melee player (with his own difficulties, which obv isn't the game's fault)'s perspective