<3 Depth Versus Complexity in Smash 4

[DairunCates]

These two paragraphs raise a point about complexity that I don't think I've ever posted about on these boards, despite it crossing my mind a few times.

I actually have a problem with characters requiring more technical skill than others.

So, it's all good that those who like helpings of character-specific ATs get their pleasure from such characters. The worry is that for the players who don't really care about how much tech a character has or lean away from ATs, it can influence their decision for their character choice. For example, I remember reading that one of the reasons cited for Meta Knight's temporary ban from competitive Brawl play was his ease of use relative to other characters. If the best character is notably easier to play as than characters below them, it will generally elicit thoughts like "well why would I play X when Y is better AND easier?".

Having reasonable competitive balance doesn't completely resolve this issue either. Because again, if all characters are roughly as good as each other, then it can and likely will turn players away from the more complex characters, thus (perhaps unintentionally) overcentralising the metagame. I believe this is one of the reasons why my local PM scene is filled with Marth and Roy players. "If X is as good as Y who is much harder to play, why would I play Y?"

Possibly to Melee's credit the "best" character in the game, Fox, is far more technically demanding than some other top tier characters like Jigglypuff.

It's for these reasons that, in my opinion, all characters in a game should ideally be as technical as each other. Whether that be hardly technical at all, or extremely technical, is the choice of the developer. I'm fine with characters having unique quirks and abilities, heck I encourage it, but I believe the number of them and the way in which they are performed should not outweigh that of another character.

But I dunno, maybe I just feel this way because I gravitate towards midtiers in Smash and in my old unintentionally-competitive community I was a "low tier hero".

Well forced tripping is still in the game, if the E3 demo is any indication. And yes, it's still random. I saw Kirby's Dtilt trip an opponent twice and then not trip them on another occasion.

Oh. I do agree with that. There's a bit of a balance with that. In Melee, Marth actually used to get similar complaints. He's not nearly as extreme of an example as Metaknight, but there were definitely complaints that he's not nearly as tech heavy as Fox or Falco.

I don't think that's necessarily a reason to shy away from tech heavy characters. First, Metaknight was kinda a big fluke in really bad balance. Ideally, the new game shouldn't have an obvious top tier character that gets their own tier like that. Second, eventhough some characters are gonna be easier, you just have to reward the player for their effort without making the character SPECIFICALLY more powerful. This usually takes the form of giving tech heavy characters more options, but not necessarily ones that are always optimal or easy to execute. By having these expanded options, the character gets a good edge when the player is well-trained and on their game, but still makes the player work for those victories.

Once again. It's a very delicate balance, but most of the time, the balance for that tends to the weaker side. However, the roster this time around seems to have quite a few interesting tech based characters. Robin has the potential to be a very strong field controller, Rosalina and Luma have an insane zoning game, and the Villager looks like he's some weird combination of a heavy hitter and a prankster kind of character (it's hard to put into words). Even some of the older vets like Zelda seem to have had some interesting technical tools added to their arsenal. With that sheer number, at least one should statistically come forward as a good strong tech character.

But yeah. When I suggest that one of the solutions is more tech-heavy characters, that, of course, comes with the caveat that a metaknight style character doesn't emerge. After all, if Metaknight wasn't a thing, how many serious players would've flocked to Snake? Even in Vanilla Brawl, there's some very cool things that pro Snake players were doing.

As a side note, I tend to gravitate towards mid and low tiers myself too. It's more of a, I like using the guy no one else uses more of the time than an actual character preference... Either that or the low tier character have some insanely fun super move. I'm a sucker for style, unfortunately.

 

[Malcolm Belmont]

Personally the character i have a feeling will be used a lot and interests me the most in a competitive scene is Greninja. I have a feeling he is going to very good (Maybe not Metaknight tier) because of his Water Shuriken move as it can lock an enemy in place. I wonder if you can follow up with a teleport and a combo. Personally i think unlike Brawl and Melee there will be no terrible characters. There will be some better than others but i think it will be balanced.

 

[DairunCates]

Personally the character i have a feeling will be used a lot and interests me the most in a competitive scene is Greninja. I have a feeling he is going to very good (Maybe not Metaknight tier) because of his Water Shuriken move as it can lock an enemy in place. I wonder if you can follow up with a teleport and a combo. Personally i think unlike Brawl and Melee there will be no terrible characters. There will be some better than others but i think it will be balanced.

I've noticed that about Greninja. My only real concern on it is that he doesn't actually seem to have a lot of very heavy killing moves that I've seen. So, he seems like he should be able to tally the damage really fast, but I'm not sure what his strategy for finishing people is gonna be yet. Still, yeah. He looks like he's gonna be one of the good speed characters for this game.

Well, that, and of course he's gonna be awesome. He has a dive kick and Uncle Sensei tells me that's the most important thing in a character (that and a trenchcoat).

 

[Raijinken]

While I agree that having characters be equally technically capable would be very ideal, I've never seen it happen in a game where technical prowess is relevant to the fight. I recall the developers of Dissidia012 felt that Kain was somewhat overpowered, but they also decided that his skill floor justified it. I don't think that's a good way to go, because as we've seen with Fox, if a character is that significantly better, then players will learn them regardless of the barrier (if they are physically capable of doing so).

While I've personally always mained exclusively by favoritism for my top three, I'm well aware that's not the standard way to pick a main for most players in most games. It comes off as fairly ignorant of game design and balance in general when players bash characters for being "too easy to be good with". While it IS possible for a character to be too easy for the reward, that sort of attitude isn't encouraging for people learning the meta. I'm a Marth main not because he's top tier in Melee or high tier in Brawl. I'm a Marth main because I like Fire Emblem. And while granted he's easier to become competent with than your average Spacefurry, there's still a lot of practice that goes into learning his (and every character's) attacks and traits. (Also, @ R RascalTheCharizard , my scene is also dominated by Marths and Roys, but that's because our best two players are Fire Emblem fans, and the newest hops mains based on what we win with).

Another frequent case of "too easy to be good with", especially at a mid-high level of noncompetitive play, is Sheik. Hold Tilt Get Combo. I'm sure every Sheik player who reads that from a Marth player would scoff and suggest I just Fairfairfairfairfairdair, too. But part of the skill-floor to skill-ceiling balance (and part of matchups in general) comes from the design of the characters. I'm not sure how globally valid the statement was because I don't watch many streams or know many casters' reputations for accuracy over entertainment, but one caster on a PM stream stated that "Most players agree that Marth vs Sheik is a very even matchup, but it takes great effort and skill on the Marth's part to make it even." Assuming that statement is true (and if it's not, substitute any two characters who are evenly matched when played right), that is an example of how some characters are expected to work. After all, if everyone has a high skill ceiling and a moderately high skill floor, a beginner will have a hard time choosing a place to start. But if you can point to a very easy-to-learn character that is also played at high skill and show them "This is a character you can learn, and also be good with, if you put in reasonable effort", then it shows that a goal is attainable.

Basically, difficulty does not justify strength, but it should be acknowledged that it is very hard to make characters' difficulty-to-strength curves align at all skill levels. While an inexperienced player may perceive certain characters in their circle as "overpowered" (why else would everyone have their own tier-list who wasn't raised looking them up online?), the difference should hopefully be a matter of experience, and ideally your average player should be able to reach the eventual (and hopefully true) conclusion that the cast is more or less balanced.

Having such unique characters this time around serves well to at least make us hope that, with good practice, a dedicated main will be able to show some character-specific skills beyond simple tech skill and generalized Smash knowledge. I'm maining Robin, I hope to find the best way to balance my tomes and sword durability to keep my strongest options as long as I can. I'm hoping to learn versatile ways to approach with Megaman. I'm hoping my friends can figure out Palutena's best options, and pull off some impressive and unexpected aerial play with Little Mac. That sort of character-level balance and technique makes things far more interesting than "Can you Wavedash well? No? Go home."

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

I'm hoping my friends can figure out Palutena's best options, and pull off some impressive and unexpected aerial play with Little Mac. That sort of character-level balance and technique makes things far more interesting than "Can you Wavedash well? No? Go home."

Little Mac aerial play (by my expectations):
DTilt > short hop > NAir > NAir > NAir > UTilt > Spiral Uppercut

 

[Raijinken]

Little Mac aerial play (by my expectations):
DTilt > short hop > NAir > NAir > NAir > UTilt > Spiral Uppercut

That sort of speculation is fun (same for all characters), but it'll take the real game and real testing to see if that really is all he's limited to.

 

[<π]

This game is going to be bigger than Ridley...

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

That sort of speculation is fun (same for all characters), but it'll take the real game and real testing to see if that really is all he's limited to.

Well, I think his DAir can do stuff too just because Meteor Smashes are almost automatically useful, but it's pretty short-range and also pretty laggy.

 

[DairunCates]

While I agree that having characters be equally technically capable would be very ideal, I've never seen it happen in a game where technical prowess is relevant to the fight. I recall the developers of Dissidia012 felt that Kain was somewhat overpowered, but they also decided that his skill floor justified it. I don't think that's a good way to go, because as we've seen with Fox, if a character is that significantly better, then players will learn them regardless of the barrier (if they are physically capable of doing so).

While I've personally always mained exclusively by favoritism for my top three, I'm well aware that's not the standard way to pick a main for most players in most games. It comes off as fairly ignorant of game design and balance in general when players bash characters for being "too easy to be good with". While it IS possible for a character to be too easy for the reward, that sort of attitude isn't encouraging for people learning the meta. I'm a Marth main not because he's top tier in Melee or high tier in Brawl. I'm a Marth main because I like Fire Emblem. And while granted he's easier to become competent with than your average Spacefurry, there's still a lot of practice that goes into learning his (and every character's) attacks and traits. (Also, @ R RascalTheCharizard , my scene is also dominated by Marths and Roys, but that's because our best two players are Fire Emblem fans, and the newest hops mains based on what we win with).

Another frequent case of "too easy to be good with", especially at a mid-high level of noncompetitive play, is Sheik. Hold Tilt Get Combo. I'm sure every Sheik player who reads that from a Marth player would scoff and suggest I just Fairfairfairfairfairdair, too. But part of the skill-floor to skill-ceiling balance (and part of matchups in general) comes from the design of the characters. I'm not sure how globally valid the statement was because I don't watch many streams or know many casters' reputations for accuracy over entertainment, but one caster on a PM stream stated that "Most players agree that Marth vs Sheik is a very even matchup, but it takes great effort and skill on the Marth's part to make it even." Assuming that statement is true (and if it's not, substitute any two characters who are evenly matched when played right), that is an example of how some characters are expected to work. After all, if everyone has a high skill ceiling and a moderately high skill floor, a beginner will have a hard time choosing a place to start. But if you can point to a very easy-to-learn character that is also played at high skill and show them "This is a character you can learn, and also be good with, if you put in reasonable effort", then it shows that a goal is attainable.

Basically, difficulty does not justify strength, but it should be acknowledged that it is very hard to make characters' difficulty-to-strength curves align at all skill levels. While an inexperienced player may perceive certain characters in their circle as "overpowered" (why else would everyone have their own tier-list who wasn't raised looking them up online?), the difference should hopefully be a matter of experience, and ideally your average player should be able to reach the eventual (and hopefully true) conclusion that the cast is more or less balanced.

Having such unique characters this time around serves well to at least make us hope that, with good practice, a dedicated main will be able to show some character-specific skills beyond simple tech skill and generalized Smash knowledge. I'm maining Robin, I hope to find the best way to balance my tomes and sword durability to keep my strongest options as long as I can. I'm hoping to learn versatile ways to approach with Megaman. I'm hoping my friends can figure out Palutena's best options, and pull off some impressive and unexpected aerial play with Little Mac. That sort of character-level balance and technique makes things far more interesting than "Can you Wavedash well? No? Go home."

I have a lunch to go to. So, I can't get too detailed right now, but I never meant that a simpler character shouldn't be able to be competitive or have a high skill ceiling to them. What I was more pointing out is that having characters that are inherently technical that gain options from their technicality (but sometimes less consistency through dropped combos or techniques being a lot more punishing) can be rewarding for the tournament players looking to push the game to its limits and hit higher levels of skill.

The truth of the matter is, though. The people that are gonna be consistently high-ranking tournament players aren't actually going to use these characters very often unless they're clearly more potent like a Fox or Falco. That consistency is very important for actually winning a lot of tournaments unless you're someone like Justin Wong. The importance of a really technical character is that it gives people that like to "go to the lab" and explore new techniques something to work with, and their reward is often being able to do some cool tricks that almost no other player can do, and often that unpredictability becomes their strength. Characters like this are actually usually very hard to tier simply because their players are usually very variable in skill levels.

Anyway, my point is, even though I LITERALLY made a youtube series where I made jokes about Marth back in 2008, there's technically no problems with a strong easy to learn character like Marth, per se. I do think he's a bit too unbalanced in previous installments just because he gets 3 of the main character traits (speedy, powerful, and long reach), but that doesn't disparage easy to use characters being competitive. A good example of this is Zangief from Street Fighter IV. He's insanely easy to learn, but the higher end gameplay with him requires you to become an absolute MASTER of spacing. So, there's still a good skill ceiling for competitive players to learn.

 

[JV5Chris]

It's not hard to call the shields in Smash 64 bad, at all.

To be fair, no shield in the history of the franchise would be adequate against z-canceling's zero lag. Don't think 64's is particularly great even still, but at least at lower level play it serves its purpose.

 

[Senario]

Would I be wrong to say I agree with you, but still would like to see smash 4 or something be somewhat close to what I liked about Brawl. Still...the game really isn't as good for comp play and I hate to admit that, mostly because when Brawl is played at it's best, it's not always fun to watch if at all.

Trela makes hype happen, that really what got be excited for Brawl Lucario seeing him do upsets and legit combos in the game.

For me personally on game preference.

Brawl>or=Melee>>>P:M>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>64.

For me at least, also the fact I wanna play my favorite smash character again without a mod completely 180ing him and getting me annoy every time I try to play him.

This is why I want a game in the middle, at least what smash 4 is attempting to do and at worst it's not worse than Brawl...no way with what they removed is what a ton of people complained about and even what I agree needed to be removed.

But to be frank, I don't want L-canceling back at all. I don't want the idea of me hitting someone to be unsafe because they crouch cancelled it, yes I main Peach but still I hate this when it happens. I hate how safe a lot of the top tiers in Melee are in terms of being aggressive. I actually like fighting the "OP" people on PM more than Melee tbh even if I like Melee more.

Just my thoughts on this in terms of gameplay, complexity and Depth.

I really liked Brawl a lot because to be quite frank, I felt like I was better than other people from my own mindgames and adaptation. I don't feel that in anything else. but I want it to be more aggressive, if that makes sense.

Felt I had to adress the L cancelling issue since honestly I do find it a useless input however the overall effect shouldnt be ignored. The low landing lag. If it happened automatically it would be great as L cancelling doesnt have interesting play decisions like other things such as crouch cancelling on low % ot wavedashing. As for top tier play in melee, it is all dependant on who you play. I have friends that are massively better than me and I dont take games off them ever. I dont find it unfun though because they know how to read me and run the game. All that said top tiers have a huge flaw in that everybody knows the matchup. I dont know any melee player irl who doesnt know the spacey matchups. And in many cases it is their best matchup since they know how to play against those chars well. Or at least it is mine. I know how to play well vs fox and falco to a certain extent. Obviously if they are better than me i will lose no question but they do have counters. And i do intend to maybe pick up a pocket marth to deal with them/puff if for some reason I cant deal well with sheik.

 

[RascalTheCharizard]

(Also, @ R RascalTheCharizard , my scene is also dominated by Marths and Roys, but that's because our best two players are Fire Emblem fans, and the newest hops mains based on what we win with).

Well see that's the thing. If my scene is that way because of FE love (which I don't think is the case) then there'd be Ike players, right? But nah, he's more complex with all of his QD tech and his relative slowness compared to Marth and Roy makes him harder to do things on reaction. He's harder to learn and to play. Plus he's not actually that bad.

I do find that ripple effect you mentioned interesting. This is pretty much why some people blame tier lists for imposing certain characters on people. "Hey look, this guy's really good and gets guaranteed results! Stop being a loser and call us today! Only $19.99!" But that thankfully isn't what's going on in my scene, as evidenced by the absence of Top 8 placing Roy mains.

As for the rest of your post, I agree that character difficulty does not justify character strength. I just feel that it at least encourages effort lol, if nothing else.

 

[otter]

Runaway as a tactic is one reason i'd like to see some sort of king-of-the-hill style mode (or something similar) put into the game to allow slower and/or less mobile characters to punish more mobile characters for stalling. Something to act as an alternate victory condition alongside the normal stock/score goal.

something along the lines of:

A.) stand on the point to capture it, first player/team to hold the point for 3-4 minutes wins the match (TF2-style)

B.) stand on the point to recover damage over time. If already at 0% then gain +1 stock and 300% damage ('rollover' to a new stock) and resume the HoT.

C.) items start spawning on the point if you stand on it long enough, maybe even gain a final smash given a long enough time?


One thing I have to say though is I highly disagree with the "playing with honor" posts, one should always Play to Win. If that results in degenerate gameplay then that is no fault of the player, that is solely the game designer's fault for allowing it to happen within the rules of the game.

In Divekick, the player closest to the center of the stage when the time runs out is the winner.

 

[DairunCates]

In Divekick, the player closest to the center of the stage when the time runs out is the winner.

I know. I love the stupid simplicity and near infinite depth of Divekick. It's really beautiful. The game is almost entirely mind-games and tactics at a fast pace with a skill floor approaching absolutely 0. If only we could actually figure out how to apply that design ethos to a slightly more complicated game like Smash, then we'd probably get the best fighting game of all time.

 

[<π]

Really iff topic, but I've been in and out of the hospital with my wife all week. She is my priority.

I don't think I'll be able to post the new video today. Sorry if anyone was waiting for it.

If you guys have any specific questions you can get me on skype or through messages here. I don't want to completely derail the thread. Thanks guys.

 

[DairunCates]

Really iff topic, but I've been in and out of the hospital with my wife all week. She is my priority.

I don't think I'll be able to post the new video today. Sorry if anyone was waiting for it.

If you guys have any specific questions you can get me on skype or through messages here. I don't want to completely derail the thread. Thanks guys.

Not a problem. Hope she gets better.

 

[Renji64]

Really iff topic, but I've been in and out of the hospital with my wife all week. She is my priority.

I don't think I'll be able to post the new video today. Sorry if anyone was waiting for it.

If you guys have any specific questions you can get me on skype or through messages here. I don't want to completely derail the thread. Thanks guys.

Sorry to hear that hope things improve and get better.