1- What makes a character good, in your eyes?
Having a good amount of options and followups for their moves. Like combos, spacing, decent kill moves, ect.
2- How far is too far until a character is broken?
When one character clearly outshines the rest of the cast with minimal skill level to play. Fox is not like this because nobody can play frame perfect fox yet, but 20XX is upon us so who knows. Fox isn't known to win tourneys often besides mango simply because even though he is the best he is hard as heck to play.
3- What kind of stages are preferred?
Neutral stages with none of the stuff in question 4. Usually comes with 1-3 platforms that may or may not move or none at all.
4- What makes a stage "unplayable"?
Any stage that doesn't have the following: walk offs(blast zones that you can walk to), No stage hazards(things that directly hurt you most of the time, things like Dream land 64 wind is fine), traveling stages, and things like Pokefloats and Temple which is too big.(though pokefloats is hilarious)
4.1- What's the big deal about walk-offs?
So, overcentralization is the big deal, when walk offs were legal we realized that the optimal way to play was to wait for the opponent at the edge then simply grab them or hit them into the blast zone. It was fairly easy and for characters both in brawl and melee it simply made the entire game be about camping out near the zone and shooting projectiles to get them to approach you. It made the ENTIRE game about that, and obviously that is not interesting or fun. Look at the 3DS tourney, you can see examples on the Ocarina of time stage. There was one match where literally both bowsers just camped out near the blast zone waiting for each other. And you have to imagine waveshining in melee or chain grabs in brawl made this worse. Smash 4 seems no different as grabs now send you REALLY far.
5- What's the big deal about stage hazards?
They aren't a true definition of skill since they are outside sources of damage that do not come from the opponent directly. Some have argued that you can predict them and for a while things like Mute city in Smash bros melee were legal. However people realized that being hit by a car was pretty random as is most damaging stage hazards. How do you counter something like Jungle Japes crocodile suddenly hopping out at you and spiking you to death?
5.1- Even small ones?
If it damages you in some way yes. But some things like Dream land 64's wind is ok, same with the cloud in the yoshi level, and of course transformations like pokemon stadium. But those are more of stage configuration things or minor things that affect you rather than big things like the barrel in the DK stage from 64 that spins around.
6- No items, not even Mr. Saturn??
No, items spawn randomly and therefore are completely luck based and RNG. You can imagine what would happen if a less skilled player were to win by just happening to grab a lot of items. Or more likely, how silly combos can get with items since you can throw nearly all of them and some of them just outright kill the opponent. If it is bad when a less skilled player wins for competitive it is even worse when pro play boils down to who can get the most items rather than outplaying your opponent.
7- How is saying the game looks so cool ruining it for competetives?
It isn't, the problem is most people also consequently say less than flattering things about competitive players and their opinions.
8- Brawl is "competetive trash"??
Disclaimer: Trash is his words not mine. I say it just isn't suited toward a good esport for viewing. It has its scene but it held back by a lot of the following.
First, Tripping - completely random and obviously random is bad for competition. Second - Terrible balance, some characters are literally F tier where another character will be able to kill them super easy. Third - Overreliance on defensive play, not to say it is bad for a competitive game to be defensive just that a lot of people found it uninteresting to watch compared to melee. And obviously competitive play and esports thrive off viewers. It was a lot of neutral game and not a lot of payout once you hit the opponent. 4) This was mostly because of Hitstun cancelling, after a few frames you can cancel out of hitstun with a dodge. This made it so any combos that characters would have had wouldn't matter unless they could hit the opponent within those few frames. Hence Metaknight being godlike. 5) Random input lag, whenever you did the input for a move there was a random amount of frames between your input and when this happened. Mostly discovered during project M's development this is part of the reason why people felt brawl was off.
9- For those who play Brawl still: you guys tend to play fox a lot, would YOU say Wolf is a clone?
N/A
10- How can many of you "for sure" say that this game is just going to be "Brawl2.0"?
We can't but we can say that first impressions make it strikingly similar to brawl and possibly not in a good way. First impressions are first impressions. If Nintendo makes the changes suggested at E3 we could see a game that would be able to surpass melee in time, obviously if they made the right choices.
11- Opinions of the competetive viability of newcomers?
- Ok, decently good skills kinda floaty but floatyness doesn't mean bad because sheik in melee was floaty.
- depending on how much damage her moves do, assuming she is the same speed as marth if marth's tipper is that much harder to hit without more damage payout lucina will be better. She likely is to be the "Marth" of this game.
- Some solid moves, decent options but we haven't seen enough.
- Really bad except for ground game, He can't recover worth anything and his ground game at the moment isn't enough to make up for this
- good moveset, would be an interesting but hard character to play as. Not sure if she'll ever be as good as ice climbers in terms of dual character types but she seems ok.
- Spells have really long ending animation, levin sword has really long end lag, unless he has significant damage on his moves I can't see him being higher than being just "average". Losing your recovery if you use your up B too much sounds really detrimental since a lot of top level play is focused on keeping the opponent off the stage, if you keep having to make it back to stage then run out of tome you died earlier than you would have for other characters like fox who can use long range recoveries very well and as often as they want. His moves better be good, he isn't very fast.
- Unsure, seems ok but the entire premise of only long ranged moves seems odd. Need more info and practice time
-I don't even want to talk about this guy. I don't like him.
-Insane long ranged moves, Not sure what was thought of when balancing this character but hopefully she'll work out. I just don't think the size of some of these moves makes any sense balance wise. But who knows?
- Erm, good? I dunno kinda up in the air.
-Fast, looks fairly strong, likely to be up there in terms of possible really good characters.
12- Who are you hoping receives buffs and for what reasons?
- Nothing is more hype than knee combos, Falcon never wins any melee tourneys but he is definitely a fan favorite due to his style. Also his knee was terrible in brawl due to the cap on the amount of momentum he could carry from his run to his jump...also hitstun cancelling.
13- Who are you hoping receives nerfs and for what reasons?
- Already a solid character in brawl, has no reason to be buffed in Smash 4.
in comparison got destroyed by nerfs.
14- How is wavedashing such an extremely great thing?
It gives you options. It gives you the option to reposition yourself at a moment's notice for both offensive and defensive capabilities. You can use it to go in, you can use it to move back then counter with a smash (marth does this quite a bit), you can use it for combos like waveshining(a lot harder to do than you think), you can use it for landing on platforms(wave landing) by jumping full height and instead of continuing to go up you wavedash onto the platform so you can jump again and follow up, you can use it to edgeguard which is a highly useful technique for all players and all tiers, and a multitude of reasons why (Luigi wavedash is insane). It would take too long to list them all but the key here is that it provided a lot of options and good player choice as to "do I wavedash? Waveland? Do I wavedash and do this and that? Do I jump and not wavedash and instead to an air move?
15- How is dash dancing useful?
Mind games and repositioning, mind games being a kind of mental game you play with your opponent making them unsure of what you are going to do and stuff it is kinda hard to explain but it is a general fighting game thing. Repositioning is more of just the same functionality as wavedashing except easier, dashing is still very much a useful technique as it makes use of a character's speed to dash out, dash in, and get across the stage.
16- Why do some of you consider yourselves "the real players"?
N/A but I don't think anybody considers themselves the "real players" any player to do so both competitive and casual would be completely off base.
17- What about ledge hogging seems like a fair tactic?
Because the game is focused on preventing your opponent from getting back onto the stage, it may seem unfair to some people but in competitive play there are no rules such as "Oh this move is too cheap so we won't use it". No Johns. Also, it is highly useful and good for a lot of characters, not all of which is top tier. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a character like ganon, yoshi, and so on do well because they had the method to keep the opponent off the stage. Also, it only covers one recovery option, sweet spotting the ledge. If the opponent recovers high like mango often does you have to predict which way they will fall. Or if they jump and airdodge onto the stage you just wasted your time being on the edge, sure you MIGHT be able to ledge hop out and attack but that is all dependent on other stuff.
18- What about off-edge play seems like a way to really enjoy what smash is about?
It offers a lot of excitement, you don't know if the person will be able to hit the opponent and prevent them from recovering to the ledge. It is sort of like the equivalent of taking out a character in Marvel, the neutral game is all well and good but taking a stock and gaining an advantage is really really exciting. Off Ledge play is exactly this, excitement. If getting your opponent off the ledge meant nothing and the opponent would always recover/always die at a certain percent it would be like every other fighting game ever with hp bars. But smash you can lose a stock at ANY Percent, and that is really exciting.
19- Which stages shown so far look to be banned and accepted?
Follow above rules: Accepted in Wii U is FD, Battlefield, Maybe the animal crossing stage. We are unsure if you can turn off stage bosses so not counting those.
20- Actually, what is the criteria for a stage to be accepted?
Above rules for a good stage.
21- Explain what "counter-pick" stages are all about! Please
Counter pick stages, ok so some characters have movesets that are just really good on some stages granting them a better chance mathematically of winning. Marth really does well on Fountain of Dreams for example, this is due to a multitude of reasons, how big the entire stage is blast zone to blast zone, the configuration of the stage itself and it's platforms, essentially a counter pick stage is a stage that you CAN pick if you lose the first game in a 2\3 match, counter pick stages are often not open to be picked in the first game because they favor some characters too heavily. Melee pokemon stadium is exactly this. You choose the stage to give yourself an edge over your opponent's character who is already picked if you are picking stage in second game. I'm personally not too big on this since I find the numbers very hard to memorize with all other life things going on but generally it adds another layer of depth to the game and forces both players to be good at ALL legal stages rather than just one standard stage. Or picking a character that is only really really good on that singular stage.
All of this is from what I understand, I may have glossed over a few points so forgive me if it isn't comprehensive. Also OPINIONS, don't get all upset ok? Because if you do I won't reply likely lol.
Likes for all! Specially you, @
