What would make Smash 4 less defensive/balanced?

[Puddi]

Title says it all. What do you think would make smash 4 less defensive and what would you change on a character to make it more balanced?

 

[Dar4]

Universal nerfs to spot dodges, air dodges and rolls. Add more shield stun. Increase shield regeneration time.

 

[Machii]

Increased frames on failed grab animations. Overall knock back reduction on most attacks in game/ more frames on airiel recoveries; a happy median between the two so that more true combos exist. Its sad how many "combo" videos I watch that people comment and praise as 'true combos' when it is really obvious that the player on the receiving end just stopped inputting commands.

 

[F. Stein]

Allow characters to move faster, give momentum on air dodges, cause the first air dodge to send a character into deadfall, take away the current ledge mechanics in favor of tried and true mechanics from earlier in the series to make ledgehogging viable and not make stealing the ledge from someone as simple as coming near the ledge.

 

[MarioMeteor]

If you mean without turning it into Super Smash Bros. Melee HD Remix, then rolls should definitely have some more lag between them, Rage should be removed, and every character would have a dash similar to Cloud that makes dash dancing and such easier. I saw a suggestion for a universal counter system that I really liked, too, where everybody has access to a counter similar to the Fire Emblem characters' counter, although not as strong, obviously. The whole thing with dashing momentum carrying over into jumps should come back, too.

As for character balance, nerf Sheik, nerf Zero Suit, and buff the low and bottom tiers.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Some people think that Rosalina would become too powerful if she has average weight. However, while high weight does improve a fighter's longevity, it doesn't exactly make your offense better.

 

[Zerp]

For the sake of balance, I'd probably try to slightly nerf the current top tier and high tier threats like Sheik, Ryu, Meta Knight, etc, and buff the low and bottom tier characters as much as possible in order to try to bring everyone to around the same level as the current mid-high tier. Obviously though, this is much easier said than done, you'd need to know exactly where to draw the line and exactly how to change them for perfect balance, and I don't actually know how to do that. Would be pretty fun to try though.

To make it less defensive as a whole though, I think adding more time for shield regeneration would work well at accomplishing that.

Some people think that Rosalina would become too powerful if she has average weight. However, while high weight does improve a fighter's longevity, it doesn't exactly make your offense better.

I think it does though, wouldn't rage make it so that the longer you can survive, the harder your hits'll be when your close to dying since your percent will be higher? I might be misunderstanding though, as a fellow light weight main myself, I don't get to experience rage very often and maybe my understanding of it is flawed.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

I think it does though, wouldn't rage make it so that the longer you can survive, the harder your hits'll be when your close to dying since your percent will be higher? I might be misunderstanding though, as a fellow light weight main myself, I don't get to experience rage very often and maybe my understanding of it is flawed.

If you're using Lucario, you'd definitely see a massive attack boost if its current damage goes over 100%. However, I don't see the rage mechanic enough to know its story. All that I do know about the rage mechanic is that based on what I have seen, it's rather situational.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

It's simple. We buff the low tiers. Seriously, ignore the good characters and buff everyone else to be just as good

 

[Tizio Random]

Nerf roll invincibily and make you fall when your shield is pushed against the ledge would be nice. And maybe make you can only airdodge one time when you are airborne but I can't say with certainty considering how amazing some aerials in this game are; some character would probably never ever land on the ground.

 

[wedl!!]

It's simple. We buff the low tiers. Seriously, ignore the good characters and buff everyone else to be just as good

This creates power creep which is very bad for balance. If you're constantly trying to have everyone on par but do nothing about the cast which shines out amongst the crowd you're just creating a bigger issue. There will always be a best character and a worst character. Unless you have one perfectly balanced character, you will never have a cast on equal footing. Scratching the rash instead of treating it, so to speak.

 

[FamilyTeam]

Making rolls have a lot more vulnerability frames and nerfing the distance of recoveries would make all matches flow a lot faster. I know I say this because I played a lot of 64 and Melee, but for God's sake, when you're knocked out of the stage, as long as your character's recovery is both horizontal and vertical, you're borderline guaranteed to get back on stage 99 times out of 100.

Also... 1000TH POST!

 

[Poopysandwich]

More hitstun and make rolling and air dodging less safe also ledge hogging

 

[Charoite]

Is really hilarious that the majority of the suggestion is basically converting the game to melee HD remix, thinking that these attributes would make the game more offensive when could do more harm than good to the game because the characters and the overall balance of the cast is specifically adapted to the smash 4 engine, and changing one of these mechanic would make the game be less balanced or defensive.

Example: More hitstun and one time air dodge would make more polarising because they are designed to be characters around kill confirms ie: now bayo can 0-to dead you even better,now ryu can confirm true shoryuken around all tilt,MK and ZSS can make ladders even better, sheik 50/50 would become a hoh hah, this would make the game about who can convert hits into deaths, so slowers characters would become worse, fatties would be trash (like melee bowser trash)

Another one is nerfing rolls and spot dodges, of course they are strong , but not because of the invulnerability, but speed, more specifically the startup of rolls(spot dodges are fine) are very good and most of the time unreachable, this is why rolling is a good option in defensive and offensive situations, but if you nerf the invulnerability, you would make rolling into the enemy a bad option, but rolling away of the opponent would still be a good option, in short you're making the game more defensive by nerfing the invulnerability frames of rolls.

So if you want to make smash 4 more offensive oriented you need to make changes that suit the smash 4 engine and their characters , not copy pasting mechanic and attributes of others smash games(64,melee,brawl,or PM) because it will not work or would make the game worse.​

 

[Poopysandwich]

Is really hilarious that the majority of the suggestion is basically converting the game to melee HD remix, thinking that these attributes would make the game more offensive when could do more harm than good to the game because the characters and the overall balance of the cast is specifically adapted to the smash 4 engine, and changing one of these mechanic would make the game be less balanced or defensive.

Example: More hitstun and one time air dodge would make more polarising because they are designed to be characters around kill confirms ie: now bayo can 0-to dead you even better,now ryu can confirm true shoryuken around all tilt,MK and ZSS can make ladders even better, sheik 50/50 would become a hoh hah, this would make the game about who can convert hits into deaths, so slowers characters would become worse, fatties would be trash (like melee bowser trash)

Another one is nerfing rolls and spot dodges, of course they are strong , but not because of the invulnerability, but speed, more specifically the startup of rolls(spot dodges are fine) are very good and most of the time unreachable, this is why rolling is a good option in defensive and offensive situations, but if you nerf the invulnerability, you would make rolling into the enemy a bad option, but rolling away of the opponent would still be a good option, in short you're making the game more defensive by nerfing the invulnerability frames of rolls.

So if you want to make smash 4 more offensive oriented you need to make changes that suit the smash 4 engine and their characters , not copy pasting mechanic and attributes of others smash games(64,melee,brawl,or PM) because it will not work or would make the game worse.​

You make a fair point although when i mean make rolls less safe i meant to say make them slower so that opponents can punish them easier. Also making moves safer on shield would help IMO and making better frame data for some characters so they can approach easier without getting as punished for it.

 

[SmashChu]

Allow characters to move faster, give momentum on air dodges, cause the first air dodge to send a character into deadfall, take away the current ledge mechanics in favor of tried and true mechanics from earlier in the series to make ledgehogging viable and not make stealing the ledge from someone as simple as coming near the ledge.

Both of those are horrible ideas. Freefall on air dodges is dumb because it makes dodging detrimental. You are punished for dodging an attack. Why is that good? On ledge mechanics, you complain that its too easy to steal the ledge, but praise ledge hogging which is easier to do as has fewer counters. These are bad mechanics which is why they are gone.

I think people focus too much on combos. Combos does not make a game good or competitive. Any trained monkey can press a series of buttons. It's muscle memory. Strings are interesting because you have to be one step ahead of your opponent. There is some tact there and it shows who's is a strong player. Combos are a series of inputs.

I agree with reducing shield regeneration as mentioned above. Shields, in general, could use some tweaks.

 

[F. Stein]

Weird, I thought this was an idea generation threat. Not a debate thread. lol. You can explain sm4sh all you want to me, I just put forth things that I thing would make it better. Maybe it's because I play a big, heavy character, that can push people off stage easily and if I were able to edgehog I'd be able to get reliable stock easier. I just mentioned things that would allow my character to be more offensive. Because the things I listed force me to be highly defensive.

I find it funny that you list these things as bad mechanics when the earlier games in the series have no problem with them at all. Sakurai doesn't get rid of things or implement things to make a 'better fighting game' you have to realize that he strives to make a party game. Much like how he implemented tripping in brawl and slowed the game down drastically in an effort to dampen any competitive play. Just because a mechanic is gone or replaced doesn't mean it is bad, it just means that the creator wanted to make something different. It would take a lot of convincing from someone to actually get me to believe that sm4sh was created with the competitive community in mind. That has never been the aim.

 

[MockRock]

2 things I'd like to see: slightly more hitstun, and much slower shield regeneration so that genuine shield pressure is actually possible. Apart from that, I think the game is actually in a decent state; the patch that increased shieldstun made a huge difference to the offense/defense balance.

 

[Runic_SSB]

This thread is a perfect example of why Sakurai is completely justified in not listening to the community for balance ideas. You're all suggesting blanket changes to core mechanics instead of looking at the individual characters. And even if adding more hitstun or shield stun would do anything (they already did the latter and it changed nothing), they don't need to; the game already is balanced. With the exception of Rosalina and Villager, every high tier character can approach at least as well as they can camp. Most of the hard camping scenarios you see in tournaments (not involving Rosalina or Villager) are either caused by a disadvantageous matchup or personal preference, and the reason so many people think the game is "all defense" is because of confirmation bias and/or having the most exaggerated possible definition of what "offense" is.

 

[SeanS]

The actual solution to this is to decrease - not increase - the number of safe moves available. This will encourage fundamental prediction instead of commitment-free zoning, easy mode traps, and purely reactive behavior aimed at forcing out movement, all of which are dominant at the top level of play.

 

[dansal]

First things first: damage percentages are used to break ties for all modes, with sudden death happening if those, too, are tied.

Now, you know that DoT one gets when they're near the blastzone? Extend that all the way to the center of the stage, and then have the damage shrink as a character gets closer to the center. Something like, 1% per second at the blastzone (default), which shrinks to 0.1% per second when you're at the center of the stage. I'd also consider reducing the DoT the closer the characters get to each other.

This provides an incentive for characters to gather at one spot, which should result in more action and less waiting around. It also offsets the penalties of being large and slow (just sit near the center of the stage until the opponent comes to you).

 

[Veggi]

This thread is a perfect example of why Sakurai is completely justified in not listening to the community for balance ideas. You're all suggesting blanket changes to core mechanics instead of looking at the individual characters. And even if adding more hitstun or shield stun would do anything (they already did the latter and it changed nothing), they don't need to; the game already is balanced. With the exception of Rosalina and Villager, every high tier character can approach at least as well as they can camp. Most of the hard camping scenarios you see in tournaments (not involving Rosalina or Villager) are either caused by a disadvantageous matchup or personal preference, and the reason so many people think the game is "all defense" is because of confirmation bias and/or having the most exaggerated possible definition of what "offense" is.

I agree. There's also no reason why being defensive is anti-competitive. In order for a game to be well developed as a competive game, in my opinion, it has to have consistent winners with a lot of variety. Smash 4 has more consistent winners than other smash games despite still being young. Smash 64 had a very consistent winner but that game didn't have much variety in play style. The characters were few and the differences between them were few as well when compared to characters in Smash 4. Smash 4 has many characters that are very different frequently used in tournaments while still producing players that win consistently.