Accepting the Game/Character.

[Dark.Pch]

You guys are not seeing the point. you don't have to be losing to little mac to realize that he's a complete failure of game design. Those are two totally seperate issues. Little mac isn't even a strong character anyway, which makes this argument even more strange.

Don't mean to take it out on you, but this argument is really common and really illogical. You can dislike vectoring but still set aside 8 seconds to understand it and win with it. You really think people are so shallow that they only dislike a feature if they're losing and vice versa?

Not a strong character? Did you not say in your last post that lil mac was a hard hitting character? You might wanna get your facts straight here dude.

I don't see how he was poorly made. Lil mac strengths is being on the ground and controlling it. Which is very strong. And everything comes with a price.

The price for that is he is nearly helpless in the air. Can't even fight in the air. Getting him in the air can lead to getting him off stage for easy deaths. He can barely recover. Alot of characters can seriously freestyle on his recovery.

That actually balances out the character. Something balanced is not poorly designed. I just think you feel he can freely push buttons and get away with it for free without thinking. That's my assumption at least. If not, then I seriously don't see how he is poorly made.

Also:
You really think people are so shallow that they only dislike a feature if they're losing and vice versa?

Yea, I do. Welcome to a fighting game community.

 

[JustinAkatsuki]

Hey guys new to this forum though i have many other accounts on other forums. Good write up @ Dark.Pch I wanna expand on something here and this is based on my experiences with fighting games in general. One of the hardest things a player can go through other than "Guessing" correctly is the ability to adapt to multiple playing style. "Adaptability" in my book is how well a player can adapt through multiple play styles, everyone is different whether they can adjust fast enough to their opponent while others need much more time to process the algorithm to adjust to someones playstyle.

I feel if players focused more on adaptability, guessing correctly every now and then, and being more patient can help them in not only improve as a player but also their "Bad" match-ups. Bad match-ups are no fun but a player once said to me "Don't focus to much on what your opponent stops from doing but rather focus on what your opponent doesn't stop you from doing".

 

[Pazzo.]

Thanks again, Dark Peach.

Your posts here are always appreciated, especially around here.

 

[otter]

Not a strong character? Did you not say in your last post that lil mac was a hard hitting character? You might wanna get your facts straight here dude.

No, I've been pretty clear that he is bad since the game came out. Still a strange point considering "hard hitting" characters are almost always bad in Smash.

"if you dislike a feature, get better, then you'll like it"

It's unfortunate you want to be in that eternal state of supporting what you win with and complaining about what you don't, it prevents all meaningful discussion.

 

[Luggy]

You guys are not seeing the point. you don't have to be losing to little mac to realize that he's a complete failure of game design. Those are two totally seperate issues. Little mac isn't even a strong character anyway, which makes this argument even more strange.

Don't mean to take it out on you, but this argument is really common and really illogical. You can dislike vectoring but still set aside 8 seconds to understand it and win with it. You really think people are so shallow that they only dislike a feature if they're losing and vice versa?

No, I've been pretty clear that he is bad since the game came out. Still a strange point considering "hard hitting" characters are almost always bad in Smash.

"if you dislike a feature, get better, then you'll like it"

It's unfortunate you want to be in that eternal state of supporting what you win with and complaining about what you don't, it prevents all meaningful discussion.

Dude, Little Mac is not bad, he's bad in the air. If you don't know how to play him, fine, but don't call a character "bad" when other people like him as a main and knows how to play him. We often laugh about it, because it's funny to see all those little macs on "For Glory", but Little Mac is a great character when you know how to play him.

And second of all, hard hitting characters are good in smash. Before, some of them were bad, but know, they are balanced. Look at Bowser : he hits hard but he's a good character. Look at King Dedede : he hits hard, but still is a good character. I could go on and on about this.

I'm going to stop here, I don't want to create "fights" in this thread. You don't have the same opinion, that's fine. But I don't want to see people starting fighting for nothing. End of story.

 

[Thinkaman]

otter is making an intelligent distinction between something being good for a player and something being good design. L-cancelling is definitely good for the player, and definitely horrible design.

What is upsetting people is that they disagree about Little Mac. I too actually think Little Mac is surprisingly well designed. I expected him to be poorly designed before I played him, to be honest, but I think he is actually a very dynamic matchup experience across the board.

Shallow, simplistic advantages and disadvantages are indeed often sources of poor, shallow design. However, while Little Mac appears to have a simple "air = bad, ground = good" definition on the surface, how he attempts to exploit that strength and mitigate that weakness is in practice very dynamic with an interesting array of options.

We very well may agree to disagree about Little Mac, but I just wanted to shine some light on the source of friction I'm seeing here: Two sides winning different arguments.

 

[otter]

There is a pretty simple flowchart to get positive replies, but I'm too lazy. "X character is actually pretty good," then summarize their strengths and weaknesses without addressing how their weaknesses are way bigger.

 

[King Donkey Kong]

Cool thread, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Rosa and Mac are bs lol.

Rosalina is only due to the lag though, I don't see her being a huge problem offline.

Mac is just....lol he's true to his character but then why isn't Ganondorf killing everyone in this game? Leave out the gimmick crap pls.

 

[Gawain]

And here is where I am gonna get you. Otori. He came to America. And kinda ran the train on a lot of our top USA players who you high tiers. Now Peach, a character who people say gets rekt by MK. One dude in japan, decided to just play as smart as he can and knows what he is up against. And he beat this man's MK with Peach in tournaments. In American The peach players did not really think out the box vs MK and these players. And MK just ran the train on them. That's why people stated MK destroys her. Not in japan though, cause they think out the box. a lot of high level players with high tiers could not beat this man's MK. Yet a smart dedicated soul, beat this man, with a freaking mid tier. And he as also gotten at the other MK's over there with Peach.

When People watch him play and the stuff he was doing vs MK, people picked up on it. Then we had a Peach on the WC, making tyrant sweat freaking bullets with MK for the first time. Taking him to game 5 in grand finals I believe almost winning. Having a seriously hard time beating a freaking mid tier. A match up people thought was terrible for Peach. people started changing their minds on the match up. Even Anti himself after seeing what these 2 guys were doing. Stated himself that the match up was close to even. Because none of the other peach players came close to what the Japanese did in terms of playing the match up and dealing with MK's BS.

See what I mean now? See how this all ties up to the OP? The **** never complained. That's why they are so creative. Always finding new stuff. New ways in the meta for said characters. Exploring. They are not wasting time crying like the americans are. And calling some new unbalanced or broken. The reason things as so called unbalanced or broken is cause the players allow this to happen by complaining instead of doing something about it. And that's what people need to start doing.

Get the hell up and do something about it or just dip. Simple as that.

I'm sorry but I'm not seeing where you've "gotten" me at all. Isai can beat anyone in Smash 64 with any character. So what? That doesn't mean that some characters aren't objectively better than others. All that says is that one player is really good. There are these things in statistics called "outliers". You tend to toss them out when finding averages and setting baselines. Which is what people try to do when they say one character is better than another. Who has more options in a given situation?

That is the key. You can win with any character, what matters is how much more you have to outplay someone to get that win.

 

[san.]

I'm sorry but I'm not seeing where you've "gotten" me at all. Isai can beat anyone in Smash 64 with any character. So what? That doesn't mean that some characters aren't objectively better than others. All that says is that one player is really good. There are these things in statistics called "outliers". You tend to toss them out when finding averages and setting baselines. Which is what people try to do when they say one character is better than another. Who has more options in a given situation?

That is the key. You can win with any character, what matters is how much more you have to outplay someone to get that win.

If you're finding successful tactics in a matchup that has yet to be countered, that isn't simply outplaying. I'm sure many Brawl veterans are also tired of any good mid tier player being labeled an outlier for doing well, despite evidence against it with success from other players who reach that level of understanding.

 

[BombsOnBombs]

I've been having an OK time beating R/L, you just have to camp her the same way she camps you. Toon Link is actually not a bad character to do this with, with Duck Hunt being alright as well. (Not as good at actually killing her though.) You don't really have to go "into the lab," you just have to look at it objectively. "What am I losing to, and what's strong against that or how can I ignore that completely?" This kind of thinking basically leads you to the conclusion pretty easily.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

This isn't a fair comparison. If you want to compare Rosalina to a Brawl character, then it should be Snake. In the first few months, Snake was considered to be the strongest character, and why wouldn't he be? His tilts were fast, had outrageous range and very strong, his camping game was great, he didn't die, he killed super early, he did a lot of damage... There was almost nothing that could hold him down. However, people didn't fear immediately that they have one overpowered character in the game because they mostly compared Brawl to its predecessor, Melee, where there wasn't (and still isn't) one character who is overwhelmingly more powerful. Surely Fox was ridiculous, but Falco, Sheik and Marth were just as ridiculous, and Peach, Falcon, Jiggly and ICs were all considered high tier characters that could easily compete with the top tier. People didn't just assume one character was much stronger than the other, even when Meta Knight was acknowledged to be the first many people still thought Snake was very close to him. After a couple of years however, after people had had long enough time to hit the lab and come up with strategies to counter him, it became plain obvious that Meta Knight was broken.

This game, on the other hand, has not even been out for a month. There are still plenty of tricks to discover, so I think it's valid to tell people to "lab up" and then judge. Rosalina might be broken, she might also be not, but it's too early to say. Fearing and complaining that the game might become like its predecessor, which is Brawl in this case, isn't going to help a whole lot.

That said everybody still has their own right to complain, but it's probably not going to help anyone out a lot, or make anyone's day better, and that's what this post is about.

I'm glad you made the analogy between Rosalina and Snake. I do it all the time. Because someone that slow can never be the best character in a Smash game. Rosalina is exactly like Snake and will fall once players learn to exploit her with real speed. As any character right now you should be focused on exploiting anything that makes you fast against her.

 

[Doval]

Thanks Dark Peach. I come to the Competitive Discussion board because I want to get better, but there always seems to be a lot of noise about whether such and such character, stage or mechanic is overpowered or is bad for the game or whatever. It's fine to have those opinions, but it's better to discuss that sort of thing in the other boards. You gotta win the game you have, not the game you wish you had.

 

[Gawain]

If you're finding successful tactics in a matchup that has yet to be countered, that isn't simply outplaying. I'm sure many Brawl veterans are also tired of any good mid tier player being labeled an outlier for doing well, despite evidence against it with success from other players who reach that level of understanding.

I didn't say it was. But there are a lot of things that you can objectively talk about. Again, options in a given situation etc. In the same way you are chalking it up to successful tactics anyone can just chalk it up to people not knowing the matchups. Just because a good player loses with a high-ranked character to someone doesn't mean its the character's fault that they lost.

 

[Raijinken]

If you're going to try to compete, well then play to win, and if that means you use the best strategies on the best characters, then that's the way you have to play. But doing so shouldn't in any way forbid any player from desiring a more-even field, or from expressing that desire. No developer has ever made a perfect game in one shot, and games (both digital and physical) have been well-known to take years, decades, centuries to reach a state of balance. "Learning more" will only result in so much metagame change in a game that literally never changes.

Just because a game is "the way it is" does not mean certain things are not unfair, poorly designed, poorly balanced, or poorly implemented by the community itself. Dismissing complaints as "the game is what it is so shut up and get good, scrub" is not only anti-social from a community standpoint, it's also deliberately ignorant of how game design can, and often does, work on any internet-compatible gaming device. If Nintendo ignores their ability to patch the game, I'd say that's their loss, but it's their choice. But suppressing suggestions based on outdated adjustability restrictions is foolish at best, and ignorant at worst.

So by all means, players, accept the game and characters as they are. The present state of the game is what we're playing, after all. But that state is more than capable of being changed, and whether Nintendo chooses to or not, there is no reason not to (civilly and reasonably) discuss perceived issues and solutions. That is how games evolve from good to great.

 

[Doval]

If you're going to try to compete, well then play to win, and if that means you use the best strategies on the best characters, then that's the way you have to play. But doing so shouldn't in any way forbid any player from desiring a more-even field, or from expressing that desire. No developer has ever made a perfect game in one shot, and games (both digital and physical) have been well-known to take years, decades, centuries to reach a state of balance. "Learning more" will only result in so much metagame change in a game that literally never changes.

Just because a game is "the way it is" does not mean certain things are not unfair, poorly designed, poorly balanced, or poorly implemented by the community itself. Dismissing complaints as "the game is what it is so shut up and get good, scrub" is not only anti-social from a community standpoint, it's also deliberately ignorant of how game design can, and often does, work on any internet-compatible gaming device. If Nintendo ignores their ability to patch the game, I'd say that's their loss, but it's their choice. But suppressing suggestions based on outdated adjustability restrictions is foolish at best, and ignorant at worst.

So by all means, players, accept the game and characters as they are. The present state of the game is what we're playing, after all. But that state is more than capable of being changed, and whether Nintendo chooses to or not, there is no reason not to (civilly and reasonably) discuss perceived issues and solutions. That is how games evolve from good to great.

It's not that the game is perfect or that balance issues can't be discussed. It's that those opinions almost always miss the mark, because the amount of research and experience needed to make a fair assessment about any one character, stage or mechanic generally far exceeds what the person so boldly making the claim has. I wouldn't make any statements about the balance of any one character or stage until I've invested several hours of research into winning at least 3/4 of all matchups in at least 3/4 of all stages and then back that up with hours of gameplay against top players that put in just as much time into finding counters to my strategies. Until then, my knowledge of the game is simply too shallow and any assertions are most likely way off base. And that's just for one character. Some people will propose game-wide mechanical changes that affect literally thousands of matchups without any real research to back it up.

A good way to look at it is like this - part of a game designer's job is to make the game too complex for anyone to figure out a dominant strategy. That means they have to balance a system they themselves can't fully understand, because if they did, so would the players.

Anyways the bigger issue is that those conversations are, in my opinion, off-topic here. It's fun to theorycraft and try your hand at amateur game design, and if two players want to discuss such things, by all means, have at it. But to me the point of Competitive Discussion is to discuss how to win at the game as it is. Every thread or post unrelated to that dimishes the usefulness of this board. It's like posting a thread on cooking in the Online Discussion board. There's nothing wrong with talking about cooking and surely some players will have that as a shared interest, but the people going to that board aren't looking for those discussions.

Maybe there needs to be a separate board for such theorycrafting. Maybe it's pointless because it can already be discussed it Reddit or Allisbrawl. I don't know.

 

[Thinkaman]

Real Talk: Almost all internet armchair amateur game design is really just thinly-veiled johns.

 

[CE_TheLord]

Best post I've read in the entire day... I agree with you completely. I used to have problems with DHD, and instead of complaining, I started to investigate how to beat him, I tried many different ways to avoid his attacks, and finally I don't have problems with DHD anymore. Stop complaining and try to get better at the game people.

 

[XxBHunterxX]

I disagree to a certain extent, complaining on a forum like this doesn't take a long time to do, it's actually taken me less to type this out than it would for me to finish a match in smash 4. It's called venting, I find it's good for people share how they feel about something rather bottling it up just for the sake if people with different opinions not wanting to read them, I've never seen anyone write a thesis on why they hate a certain a character so it's not as bad as people are making it out to be.

Telling people not to complain is just as counter productive as the complaint itself because brawl was a huge mess of a game, so do you actually believe that telling them not to complain about the problems it had would automatically make the game better? Of course not the problems exist wether you choose to acknowledge them or not and through the general distaste for brawl smash 4 seems to have addressed most of the problems it had. I always believe that complaints should be disproven rather than ignored, fighting games aren't perfect and the fact that we have so many versions of street fighter 4, seasons for killer instinct, and update patches for mortal kombat proves this and let's us know they do take player feed back.

I personally find that rosalina is hard to fight against because she has so many little things that break your focus during the fight, she teleports when rolling or spot dodging, she has disjointed hit boxes on a lot of her attacks, and she can still attack while in hit stun with luma. I do agree that it's way too early in the games life to be complaining because abilities and tech need to be discovered and skills need to be polished.

 

[DavemanCozy]

Haha, I remember being that scrub and complaining about Mac. It took me a whack of realism to realise that he's beatable.

I still hate the Fox vs Mac MU. But instead of lying there defeated, I learned the MU. Turns out switching to defensive bait mode works well, and so does counterpicking anyone who can keep Mac away. It took me 2 weeks of ignorance to learn that.

 

[mourir]

Yep. Not just fighting games either. Card games, mmo's, board games, whatever it is there's always gonna be at least one character or item or whatever that has a clear advantage over a majority of the rest of the game. That's just how things are, making every character the same would be boring, and making every character exactly equal without them all being the same is impossible.