Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[CandySamaurai92]

Roy and Chrom mains are gonna give it to ya. They have a lot of weird hitboxes, so if they figure them out, get ready for a wonky game!

 

[$.A.F.]

Agreed ICs rely on getting in at close range to grab you or hit you with a jab or up-tilt (I think those are their mains combo starters that they use in desync combos, or at least the ones I've seen ICs use the most) where they can oftentimes kill you off one hit. The problem is that the large amount of projectile and sword characters in this game prevent them from getting in and playing neutral a lot of matchups and once they are separated, they lack the tools to do much of anything since Nana's AI is so inconsistent.


I think a lot of why IC's are not great comes down to how many relevant matchups they do well in vs how many characters can exploit their weaknesses to an extreme degree.

I've seen multiple high level ICs matchup charts with and as 60:40 MUs for ICs, ICs mains seem to agree they go even with , and and mains also seem to agree ICs either go even or win slightly against them so in a best case scenario, they do well in about 6 relevant Top/High Tier matchups which on the surface, seems good because that's about as many as some other mid tiers like or but they just lose to so many characters compared to other mid tiers, and they lose those matchups by a pretty significant amount as well.

You really just need be good at one of these things to do well against IC's in Ultimate which I think is why so many characters do well against them.

• Disjoints that are long enough to outrange ICs ()
• A strong projectile game that is able to effectively keep ICs out ()
• Ways to separate ICs reliably ()
• Or maybe you just have all of these things available to you ( yes, I think K. Rool should be here)

That last group especially does really well against ICs and and to a lesser degree and are not all that uncommon at top level play as either solo-mains or counterpicks and are also great picks against ICs.

I think this is largely why ICs won't be relevant without a major buff to their speed and range. Their terrible speed and mediocre range makes approaching extremely hard for them in a lot of matchups and since a lot of the characters that they lose to are fairly relevant in the meta, they just aren't going to do as well as time goes on and people start to figure them out.

Add to the both tier. Ptooie separates the climbers.
But yeah, Icies having a slow, low damage, hit reflectable projectile as well as bad speed and meh range basically mean that they have no real way to make you do anything at all. There are very few characters who have a hard time camping ice climbers at all. Though to be fair they would be terrifying with half a neutral.

 

[VodkaHaze]

I am convinced is the worst superheavyweight in the game. The only thing I think he has going for him is he has meaty hitboxes with a lot of knockback, so he's never low on kill options. But there are so many issues I see with him.

• Terrible mobility, both in the air and on the ground. This means he's going to struggle approaching, and makes him vulnerable to zoning and camping, and he doesn't have any good anti-zoning tools or a projectile.
• Frame data is bad, with his fastest move being his jab at frame 7. This makes his neutral poor and disadvantage bad. Combined with him being heavy and poor mobility makes him combo food.
• Recovery sucks. Even if he was good in the air, he still has the issues of his side-B and up-B not being that good. Dark Dive can be good for reverse-edgeguarding, but it can be reverse-reserve-edgueguarded with rockcrocking. Plus it doesn't cover that much vertical distance. Flame choke means you use it once and you're helpless, when other characters like Ridley and Incineroar don't have this issue. Also, Ganonciding is far less viable due to being able to mash out of it as well as you dying before your opponent, meaning the opponent have an easier time edgeguarding you when both of you have one stock.
• Not that good at ledgetrapping. Usmash can be used and it can be fine, same with Volcano kick, but its easy for an opponent to mix up due to high start up.

I just feel like with the other superheavyweights () even if they have the same issues, it's either their's is nowhere near as bad as Ganondorf's or if it is it's compensated by being good in another area.

 

[Lacrimosa]

I am convinced is the worst superheavyweight in the game. The only thing I think he has going for him is he has meaty hitboxes with a lot of knockback, so he's never low on kill options. But there are so many issues I see with him.

• Terrible mobility, both in the air and on the ground. This means he's going to struggle approaching, and makes him vulnerable to zoning and camping, and he doesn't have any good anti-zoning tools or a projectile.
• Frame data is bad, with his fastest move being his jab at frame 7. This makes his neutral poor and disadvantage bad. Combined with him being heavy and poor mobility makes him combo food.
• Recovery sucks. Even if he was good in the air, he still has the issues of his side-B and up-B not being that good. Dark Dive can be good for reverse-edgeguarding, but it can be reverse-reserve-edgueguarded with rockcrocking. Plus it doesn't cover that much vertical distance. Flame choke means you use it once and you're helpless, when other characters like Ridley and Incineroar don't have this issue. Also, Ganonciding is far less viable due to being able to mash out of it as well as you dying before your opponent, meaning the opponent have an easier time edgeguarding you when both of you have one stock.
• Not that good at ledgetrapping. Usmash can be used and it can be fine, same with Volcano kick, but its easy for an opponent to mix up due to high start up.

I just feel like with the other superheavyweights () even if they have the same issues, it's either their's is nowhere near as bad as Ganondorf's or if it is it's compensated by being good in another area.

Would you also go so far and say he's the worst character?

 

[VodkaHaze]

Would you also go so far and say he's the worst character?

Let me put it this way: if on certain stages platform camping is not only allowed but the norm, then Little Mac is probably the worst. If however people don't platform camp, Ganondorf is very likely the worst. But even if Ganondorf isn't the worst, he's still like Bottom 5.

 

[BitBitio]

Would you also go so far and say he's the worst character?

That seems pretty reasonable to me. He has slow mobility and framedata, which means he struggles to win neutral. Other chars like have pretty slow framedata and mobility but have good range to compensate. So yeah, a lot of players say that since Ganon can just annihilate stocks if he wins neutral, he isn't bad, but they always forget about everything else. If he loses neutral, some characters send him offstage and then just edgeguard him to heck. And it's too bad, but Ganon usually loses neutral. The other heavies do a lot better in neutral, even if several of them also suck in neutral.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Ganon doesn’t have range issues, he has plenty of range. It’s not disjointed range but majority of his attacks have good reaching hitboxes. I wouldn’t even say Ganon has neutral issues unless in specific matchups where being slow and a large target matters. (Ganon doesn’t care if Fox is much faster than him because Fox cannot just run past Ganon’s hitboxes. Ganon does care that Pikachu is much faster than him because Pikachu doesn’t need to run through his hitboxes, he has a projectile that Ganon cannot deal with).

Ganon’s major issue is that his defensive options and options in disadvantage are non existent due to his size, fall speed and hitbox placement on his faster moves. Ganon has to make risky plays to get out of a corner and to play around safe pressure as he can very easily get trapped in it. He doesn’t have the mobility to not have to rely on shield unlike other characters with bad OOS (Joker or Greninja come to mind) and he can’t throw hitboxes out freely either.

They keep throwing more power in Ganon’s moves which sure make him better in the delayed WiFi environment and even let him steal stocks offline off mistakes but the effort it requires is too much, but I can’t call him a bad character regardless of all I just said, he’s clearly one of the weakest characters in the game that’s for sure.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Ganon doesn’t have range issues, he has plenty of range. It’s not disjointed range but majority of his attacks have good reaching hitboxes. I wouldn’t even say Ganon has neutral issues unless in specific matchups where being slow and a large target matters. (Ganon doesn’t care if Fox is much faster than him because Fox cannot just run past Ganon’s hitboxes. Ganon does care that Pikachu is much faster than him because Pikachu doesn’t need to run through his hitboxes, he has a projectile that Ganon cannot deal with).

Not really.
Key moves like the up air, fair, bair, jab, and grab are noticeably stubby in terms of hitboxes relative to his mobility, frame data, and hurtbox size. While his forward and down tilt's hitboxes are decent, they could be better, especially due to how slow they are.

His sword attacks have great range, but are very slow, with up smash in particular having a pretty bad blindspot.
Neutral air is his main stand-out move in terms of both frame data and hitbox size, but relying on it, especially with the 3rd slowest air speed and air acceleration in the game, is not feasible.

Now compare these hitboxes with other large characters like .
Suddenly the difference becomes stagnating, which also doesn't help that those listed characters are much faster in both frame data and mobility.

Ganondorf has suffered from this issue ever since his Brawl self, and it hasn't really changed much in Ultimate.

also suffers from this issue, but he is a little faster in terms of mobility, and at the very least has projectiles and armor.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Most of Gannon's ranged attacks also extends his hurtbox out at unfavorable angles as well . I think he suffers from this as much as
. A good example moved in f-tilt where the hurtbox of the move lasts all for its recovery frames . This makes it pretty punishable on Sheild even at the far tip of it If your character has a fast enough burst option . For I have been trying recently and I cannot tell you how many stocks off Wi-Fi Gannon's I have taken by up-smashing the very tippy-toes of thier boot

 

[Krysco]

I wouldn't exactly say Ganon's uair, dtilt or to a lesser extent ftilt are stubby or lacking. He's one of the largest characters in the game with very long legs to go with those moves.

Spoiler: Hitboxes

I'd consider them quite generous given how large of a circle ends up being around his feet and these hitboxes don't get any smaller throughout the move. They're far better than say Belmont dtilt which doesn't even fully cover the foot (which doesn't have a hurtbox to it but still). They're not disjoints nor does he have armor on these moves but the range itself is fine imo.

As for his smash attacks, I personally find his fsmash has a worse blindspot than his usmash.

Spoiler: Hitboxes again

First image being the first active frame, second being the second active frame and third pic being the final (but not third) active frame. There's a slight gap between Ganon and the first active frame but body blocking tends to make that a non issue, plus it's a small gap anyways. There's a bit of a blindspot between the first and second frames and the final active frame doesn't hit low profiling characters like a crouching Snake despite the sword reaching the ground but that's about it for usmash.

Compare that to fsmash:

Spoiler: Even more

That's the first and second active frame with no hitboxes inbetween those, leaving a pretty large blindspot despite him clearly swinging his sword there. And there is a way to remove that blindspot, just make the move look more like base Joker bair.

Spoiler: Joker bair

Trailing hitboxes where his blade was since he swings it so fast.

His arm based attacks make more sense for them to be lacking range as they aren't as long as his legs, with his grab in particular being bad as he doesn't lunge his body out ala Melee Marth or have an absurd disjoint to it like Palutena or Smash 4 Bowser's pivot grab. Granted, grabs in general are rather poor in this game so that's not a unique issue to Ganon.

I can agree with the issues of his endlag on ftilt, leaving his hurtbox more exposed though this could be addressed either with longer active frames or just quicker cooldown.

Another move that wasn't mentioned that actually does have a rather poor hitbox is Ganon's late dash attack.

Spoiler: Dash attack

Bodyblocking can make this hitbox not even connect even though it has less knockback than the early frames and being towards the end, has less of a cooldown time after landing it compared to the early frames making it perfect for comboing or following up if it is landed.

 

[BitBitio]

Point is, Ganon is heavily underprivileged among all the characters and it wouldn’t be unreasonable to cite him as the worst character in the game. The other characters in contention for this, IMO, currently are . And that’s it. Nobody else is nearly as bad. Being the fifth worst in the game is very different from being the fourth worst right now.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Not really.
Key moves like the up air, fair, bair, jab, and grab are noticeably stubby in terms of hitboxes relative to his mobility, frame data, and hurtbox size. While his forward and down tilt's hitboxes are decent, they could be better, especially due to how slow they are.

His sword attacks have great range, but are very slow, with up smash in particular having a pretty bad blindspot.
Neutral air is his main stand-out move in terms of both frame data and hitbox size, but relying on it, especially with the 3rd slowest air speed and air acceleration in the game, is not feasible.

Now compare these hitboxes with other large characters like .
Suddenly the difference becomes stagnating, which also doesn't help that those listed characters are much faster in both frame data and mobility.

Ganondorf has suffered from this issue ever since his Brawl self, and it hasn't really changed much in Ultimate.

also suffers from this issue, but he is a little faster in terms of mobility, and at the very least has projectiles and armor.

Well has Krysco pointed out he does have range, it’s not disjointed range aside those smash attacks which does bring issues pointed out like his hurtbox going with him which opens him up to easier whiff punishing but he still very much has range in most moves it matters, atleast from a neutral perspective. He doesn’t use up air in neutral, his fair already doesn’t auto cancel so that’s a full hop commitment move and not going to be used much in neutral, atleast the type of neutral Ganon wants to play. I do agree on his Bair and Jab the range is rather underwhelming there and a character like Ganon could really use a better jab. His ftilt fills its purpose for now but ftilt does have those hurtbox extension issues that were pointed out. Overall tho with moves like his tilts (not up tilt obviously) nair is keeps him low and full of active frames and his burst options he’s able to play the grounded neutral he wants to and can even control the pace in some matchups. It’s just all those other problems toploaded with the fact while he does have decent neutral tools it’s not entirely enough to keep up with the myriad of options a lot of characters better than him have that to keep up. What good is a neutral if your unable to escape disadvantage the moment you’ve been hit?

 

[RonNewcomb]

So, Smash is no longer at EVO this year.....

 

[Thinkaman]

So, Smash is no longer at EVO this year.....

To be fair, no game is really at EVO this year.

Online tourneys have continued to be a pretty big meh. Yeah, they open up things to a massive audience who may have not been included before, and that's legitimately important. But I think we all agree that it's a slightly different game, and a worse game, and not one that yields pretty much any high quality data as far as people here are concerned.


I'm of two minds. On one hand, people complaining about Ultimate having traditional synchronized-buffer online (and the latency that implies) is legitimate in every sense insofar as the consequences of that are indeed their experience. It's as much a valid market reality as praising the game for anything in it you like.

On the other hand, I get exasperated when people go on to be angry or confused that a Japanese game engine written in 2007 (referencing source code written in 2001) doesn't have rollback. Everyone with half a brain knows what the score is: We have a game with two million characters, five billion stages, a gazillion other things (and actually decent balance) because we've been all-in on building on a single foundation for most of the last 15 years.

If you point out that your truck gets less milage than your wife's Prius, that's a perfectly valid observation. If you're confused as to why that is, well, you're kind of ignorant. If you are indignant than your dealership won't install a hybrid engine in your 2007 F-150, you are a complete moron.

Any future Smash engine will be built on rollback, just as Arcsys's latest Guilty Gear, just as every other fighter series, just as the 2020 F-150 has a hybrid model. Hearing the complaints ensures this fate comes true. But man, let's do it without embarassing ourselves?

 

[meleebrawler]

To be fair, no game is really at EVO this year.

Online tourneys have continued to be a pretty big meh. Yeah, they open up things to a massive audience who may have not been included before, and that's legitimately important. But I think we all agree that it's a slightly different game, and a worse game, and not one that yields pretty much any high quality data as far as people here are concerned.


I'm of two minds. On one hand, people complaining about Ultimate having traditional synchronized-buffer online (and the latency that implies) is legitimate in every sense insofar as the consequences of that are indeed their experience. It's as much a valid market reality as praising the game for anything in it you like.

On the other hand, I get exasperated when people go on to be angry or confused that a Japanese game engine written in 2007 (referencing source code written in 2001) doesn't have rollback. Everyone with half a brain knows what the score is: We have a game with two million characters, five billion stages, a gazillion other things (and actually decent balance) because we've been all-in on building on a single foundation for most of the last 15 years.

If you point out that your truck gets less milage than your wife's Prius, that's a perfectly valid observation. If you're confused as to why that is, well, you're kind of ignorant. If you are indignant than your dealership won't install a hybrid engine in your 2007 F-150, you are a complete moron.

Any future Smash engine will be built on rollback, just as Arcsys's latest Guilty Gear, just as every other fighter series, just as the 2020 F-150 has a hybrid model. Hearing the complaints ensures this fate comes true. But man, let's do it without embarassing ourselves?

I mean, an overhaul is always possible in the next game if they happen to make it online-multiplayer focused.

It's just that it likely would remove a huge chunk of all that other stuff you mentioned, pleasing no one except a die-hard minority of what the devs view as just a single aspect of Smash. Easy to scoff at these things until it's too late, careful what you wish for and all that. The only way backlash could be avoided would be to treat such a game as a side project.

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

To be fair, no game is really at EVO this year.

Online tourneys have continued to be a pretty big meh. Yeah, they open up things to a massive audience who may have not been included before, and that's legitimately important. But I think we all agree that it's a slightly different game, and a worse game, and not one that yields pretty much any high quality data as far as people here are concerned.


I'm of two minds. On one hand, people complaining about Ultimate having traditional synchronized-buffer online (and the latency that implies) is legitimate in every sense insofar as the consequences of that are indeed their experience. It's as much a valid market reality as praising the game for anything in it you like.

On the other hand, I get exasperated when people go on to be angry or confused that a Japanese game engine written in 2007 (referencing source code written in 2001) doesn't have rollback. Everyone with half a brain knows what the score is: We have a game with two million characters, five billion stages, a gazillion other things (and actually decent balance) because we've been all-in on building on a single foundation for most of the last 15 years.

If you point out that your truck gets less milage than your wife's Prius, that's a perfectly valid observation. If you're confused as to why that is, well, you're kind of ignorant. If you are indignant than your dealership won't install a hybrid engine in your 2007 F-150, you are a complete moron.

Any future Smash engine will be built on rollback, just as Arcsys's latest Guilty Gear, just as every other fighter series, just as the 2020 F-150 has a hybrid model. Hearing the complaints ensures this fate comes true. But man, let's do it without embarassing ourselves?

I mean what you say is true, as to why we don’t have rollback currently but there isn’t anything that would stop them from implementing rollback in a future title and we do have a replay system so some of the groundwork is there and it is possible. The thing is as you said this is a Japanese game, Japan’s population density and overall far superior internet structure makes online play much more tolerable in delay based match making over there. When the size of a country the game is made is half the size of Texas there isn’t an urgent need focus heavy online stability.

I will say though I can’t see more focus on improving online functionality is only something the competitive scene wants, the majority of smash players the causal scene probably suffers from poor online more than we do. With more players in matches and more elements on screen at a time further slowing things down in frustrating ways. Even a casual player will get upset the game ate their shield input when the clear as day D3 Fsmash hits them in the face.

I know people wanted to see Smash at Evo this year so “Nintendo could see how bad it is”. Like Nintendo is suddenly going to fix everything (they aren’t, am I the only one who remembers in pre release trailers, Sakurai admitting and pre apologizing for issues people will have with online stability?). But I do encourage people to remain vocal, even if it doesn’t change anything about ultimate it can change the next smash game. At most in ultimate what would immediately make things feel better is if we got the inherit input delay cut down, it happened with Street Fighter it’s not impossible to happen with Ultimate.

 

[|RK|]

To be fair, no game is really at EVO this year.

Online tourneys have continued to be a pretty big meh. Yeah, they open up things to a massive audience who may have not been included before, and that's legitimately important. But I think we all agree that it's a slightly different game, and a worse game, and not one that yields pretty much any high quality data as far as people here are concerned.


I'm of two minds. On one hand, people complaining about Ultimate having traditional synchronized-buffer online (and the latency that implies) is legitimate in every sense insofar as the consequences of that are indeed their experience. It's as much a valid market reality as praising the game for anything in it you like.

On the other hand, I get exasperated when people go on to be angry or confused that a Japanese game engine written in 2007 (referencing source code written in 2001) doesn't have rollback. Everyone with half a brain knows what the score is: We have a game with two million characters, five billion stages, a gazillion other things (and actually decent balance) because we've been all-in on building on a single foundation for most of the last 15 years.

If you point out that your truck gets less milage than your wife's Prius, that's a perfectly valid observation. If you're confused as to why that is, well, you're kind of ignorant. If you are indignant than your dealership won't install a hybrid engine in your 2007 F-150, you are a complete moron.

Any future Smash engine will be built on rollback, just as Arcsys's latest Guilty Gear, just as every other fighter series, just as the 2020 F-150 has a hybrid model. Hearing the complaints ensures this fate comes true. But man, let's do it without embarassing ourselves?

It's not every other fighting game series. The issue is that the majority of fighting game series - particularly those originated in Japan - don't have it. And that's whether it's a new game or not. Rollback has been around for ages, but games are just starting to implement. Even recent ArcSys games (hi Granblue) are still using primarily delay-based solutions.

So it's really not quite a foregone conclusion yet, hence the loud voices from the FGC and Smashers.

 

[Lacrimosa]

The fact that Smash is explicitly gone from EVO's line-up is a huge call-out towards and against Nintendo.
One can only hope that they receive this message and improve on their Net-Code.

 

[Arthur97]

You might be overestimating how much they care about EVO. In fact, you probably are.

 

[NotLiquid]

Not that I wanna entertain this discussion for all that long given this ain't the topic for it but Smash's snub seems to have more to do with Nintendo's politics to content rollout more than it does Smash's netcode being suboptimal. A lot of people forget this (because most people don't play it) but SamSho is in that lineup in spite of having arguably the most atrocious netcode of a fighting game this generation. That still gets an exhibition despite having an online community that's dying, and since EVO Online is promising special content it's safe to say SNK had either more SamSho DLC to show off or a new KOFXV trailer lined up. In fact every company in that main lineup are still putting out content for the games represented and they usually use EVO as a means of delivering that content.

Smash is obviously the exception since Nintendo only reveals DLC on their own events. Based on a lot of these latest wi-fi tournaments there's an argument to be made that Smash is perfect for an exhibition format since it's more of a controlled environment, and top pros play with each other all the time online, but it seems to me like the TOs just don't consider the risk worth the hassle since there's no bonus incentive to run it, especially after all the negative community feedback.

 

[Arthur97]

They don't always show trailers at their own stuff. Wasn't Joker announced at a third party event?

 

[KakuCP9]

On the other hand, I get exasperated when people go on to be angry or confused that a Japanese game engine written in 2007 (referencing source code written in 2001) doesn't have rollback. Everyone with half a brain knows what the score is: We have a game with two million characters, five billion stages, a gazillion other things (and actually decent balance) because we've been all-in on building on a single foundation for most of the last 15 years.

Could you clarify this for me? Cause I swore I heard that Smash Ultimate was made with the Unreal engine this time around. If they really have been using the same engine since Brawl, then that sounds equal parts amazing and disturbing (like the world's most impressive Lego estate built over a decade).

 

[Lacrimosa]

You might be overestimating how much they care about EVO. In fact, you probably are.

I'm not naive, that's why I used "hope".

 

[NotLiquid]

They don't always show trailers at their own stuff. Wasn't Joker announced at a third party event?

We're still comparing a prestigious show ran by industry veterans and celebrated by game developer giants worldwide to a fighting game tournament that, while large, is a substantially smaller niche. Smash has substantially better avenues to give content updates than EVO, especially what with Nintendo being extremely secretive about the game and a few EVO announcements having a history of leaking. Even Joker was unknown of to most of the TGA staff outside of Geoff until the final hour.

 

[Nate1080]

Could you clarify this for me? Cause I swore I heard that Smash Ultimate was made with the Unreal engine this time around. If they really have been using the same engine since Brawl, then that sounds equal parts amazing and disturbing (like the world's most impressive Lego estate built over a decade).

I don’t think he meant to say engine, as in the game engine, but netcode. In which case, I don’t think Ultimate’s netcode is the same or even a modified version of Brawl netcode.

The netcode is probably something that Bandai Namco made in-house (they made Smash 4 and Ultimate) for their games (wouldn’t shock me if Tekken and Soul Calibur share similar netcode to Smash 4/Ultimate).

 

[Thinkaman]

They don't always show trailers at their own stuff. Wasn't Joker announced at a third party event?

Joker was at The Game Awards, which does have an unusual amount of Nintendo support including reveals and interviews. It's almost like a mini-E3, deliberately positioned opposite that window on the calendar.

We're still comparing a prestigious show ran by industry veterans and celebrated by game developer giants worldwide to a fighting game tournament that, while large, is a substantially smaller niche. Smash has substantially better avenues to give content updates than EVO, especially what with Nintendo being extremely secretive about the game and a few EVO announcements having a history of leaking. Even Joker was unknown of to most of the TGA staff outside of Geoff until the final hour.

Yup, this.

Could you clarify this for me? Cause I swore I heard that Smash Ultimate was made with the Unreal engine this time around. If they really have been using the same engine since Brawl, then that sounds equal parts amazing and disturbing (like the world's most impressive Lego estate built over a decade).

Smash Ultimate is not built on the Unreal rendering engine, nor any other part of Unreal. This would also have pretty much nothing to do with the netcode or foundational infrastructure we are talking about when discussing rollback.

Rollback depends on three core requirements:

1. A completely deterministic game state
2. The ability to simulate to arbitrary game states sufficiently fast (at least ~8x speed without interrupting rendering)
3. Modifications and alternate animation/SFX/VFX assets to allow proper blending of rollback changes

All fighting games I have ever heard of implicitly do #1; it's a hard requirement for replays after all.

For older sprite-based games, advanced hardware makes #2 somewhat easy and the nature of sprites makes #3 very easy to get mostly fine.

For modern games, #2 is more daunting. This is especially true for Smash, which has to worry about way more than 2 fighters/input sets and is operating on conservative hardware. How many frames do you think Ultimate can currently sim in 16ms? 2 on a good frame?

And for modern games, #3 demands higher fidelity. All those fancy VFX systems and soundclips have to have some line of code somewhere saying "no no, we're rolling back, that fireball never came out, ecks-nay on that Hadoken.wav". We can't have camera effects snapping, all this fancy stuff requires custom handling. We can't just change a sprite and break for lunch.

For a decent understanding of the complexity involved, I suggest the GDC talk overviewing Netherrealms's experience producing the MKX rollback patch.

Important take away: It took Netherrealms 4-12 engineers over 9 months to retrofit a rollback implementation into MK X; 7-8 engineering man years plus an increase in on-going maintience costs. Smash would take at least 5 times that. (Source: Me) If you put me in charge of delivering this feature, the initial estimate I would ask for would be 2 years and $8 million in staff.

 

[Arthur97]

We're still comparing a prestigious show ran by industry veterans and celebrated by game developer giants worldwide to a fighting game tournament that, while large, is a substantially smaller niche. Smash has substantially better avenues to give content updates than EVO, especially what with Nintendo being extremely secretive about the game and a few EVO announcements having a history of leaking. Even Joker was unknown of to most of the TGA staff outside of Geoff until the final hour.

While this may be true, being more prestigious and reliable is different than not being third party. Either way, you can't say they haven't done it at third party events even if they prefer to do it in Directs. If we're being really technical, E3 itself is not a Nintendo event either, but it's usually within some sort of presentation (or whatever it was they revealed Pac-Man in) which is theirs.

 

[RonNewcomb]

I was interested in the reason for the drop. Did Nintendo itself ask to bow out? I don't think Evo staff would drop it based on netcode quality cause almost all main titles have sus netcode, notably Street Fighter, and we're all assuming SamSho will be a ****Sho.

Or did a collection of top players ask it to be removed? Or so many just stated they wouldn't attend that there's no point?

I'm thinking Nintendo asked, and Mr Wiz ginned up three new entry games to replace some hype.

 

[Nidtendofreak]

Good chance it was Nintendo asking for Smash to be dropped seeing how they tried to hid the online lag and had the hosts lie during one of the streamed online tournaments that they had a hand in. No way EVO was going to let them cover it up with a hard cutaway during a lag spike to a commentator claiming that its only on our end and that there's no lag happening on the players end, and it would expose the current netcode as being garbo pretty quickly. EVO themselves would have been fine still going with it, if only for the money: they got hit hard by the cancelations and Smash is one of the/is the largest game in terms of turn out, that's a lot of money to throw away during a time they really don't want to.

 

[Thinkaman]

NotLiquid just explained it to you guys and you're off spouting Twitter-tier conspiracy theories.

If we're being really technical, E3 itself is not a Nintendo event either, but it's usually within some sort of presentation (or whatever it was they revealed Pac-Man in) which is theirs.

Uhhh, a few points, all of which is getting well off-topic: (But let's face it, quarantine has sort of paused "the topic.")

• E3 is the key event of the ESA, the industry association of which Nintendo is, obviously, one of the biggest members of. It would be unusual to suggest that the E3 is somehow unrelated to Nintendo.
• Nintendo hasn't actually had a live E3 press conference since 2012, citing the ballooning costs of space and burden on staff. Instead, they have done Directs that I usually hear are not technically a formal part of E3.
• However, Nintendo brands them outright as "E3 201X Direct", and the ESA (again, who is Nintendo just like your family is you) would never schedule another event during that broadcast time. In fact, I've seen ESA-produced materials that include the Direct on the schedule.
• For a few years, Nintendo hosted a more modest "Developer Round Table" towards the end of E3. They often revealed something extra at the end, and these otherwise uneventful small events were where they revealed WFT and PAC-MAN.

 

[Arthur97]

NotLiquid just explained it to you guys and you're off spouting Twitter-tier conspiracy theories.



Uhhh, a few points, all of which is getting well off-topic: (But let's face it, quarantine has sort of paused "the topic.")

• E3 is the key event of the ESA, the industry association of which Nintendo is, obviously, one of the biggest members of. It would be unusual to suggest that the E3 is somehow unrelated to Nintendo.
• Nintendo hasn't actually had a live E3 press conference since 2012, citing the ballooning costs of space and burden on staff. Instead, they have done Directs that I usually hear are not technically a formal part of E3.
• However, Nintendo brands them outright as "E3 201X Direct", and the ESA (again, who is Nintendo just like your family is you) would never schedule another event during that broadcast time. In fact, I've seen ESA-produced materials that include the Direct on the schedule.
• For a few years, Nintendo hosted a more modest "Developer Round Table" towards the end of E3. They often revealed something extra at the end, and these otherwise uneventful small events were where they revealed WFT and PAC-MAN.

I know they have a Directs (though, I wasn't sure when they shifted away from conferences, either way, the old conferences did have Smash news too), but I was speaking technically. Nintendo doesn't host E3, but the Directs and such are their thing which they host as part of a bigger event that they don't, so that's kind of a gray area. But in any case, technicalities aside, the fact remains that they have done at the very least one reveal at a non-Nintendo event without any sort of Direct. Admittedly, it's the outlier, but it can't be ruled out moving forward.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Tbh I've heard people whining about the netcode on discord long before this happened. This was being complained about after the game immediately came out. This is nothing new. People are just being wishful thinkers hoping this will stop Nintendo using P2P networking on their online servers.

 

[Thinkaman]

People are just being wishful thinkers hoping this will stop Nintendo using P2P networking on their online servers.

Well, that much will never happen, at least until a radical shift in technology. Every fighting game is going to be peer-based; the cost of dedicated servers would be insane and wouldn't even solve the actual problem people are mad about.

I don't know of any game/genre with (hosted) dedicated servers that isn't a microtransaction/subscription-based service model for a game with 10+ simultaneous players. For example, Starcraft (1/2), Destiny (1/2), Warframe, and Splatoon are all P2P. Client-server games are rather rare, and on PC often merely refer to an executable being provided to run a dedicated server yourself, rather than a full service. (like League of Legends or Overwatch)

 

[Minordeth]

“Dedicated servers” has become a sort of gaming culture folk-panacea that cures all netplay ailments.

Dedicated servers being floated as a solution - for a fighting game - highlights the weird Swiss-cheese, tech knowledge-base endemic to gaming culture.

I’m struggling to think of a universe where - for fighting games - dedicated servers would be better than P2P anything. I think general non-regional connections in Ultimate are almost always awful, and even local, wired connections are serviceable at best.

However, at a basic level, adding an intermediary point for light to travel to before relating information to would make Ultimate’s netplay unquestionably worse.

 

[VodkaHaze]

To some people who want this topic summed up without reading walls of text, I recommend this video. If you want a TL;DR and a TL;DW basically attempts to implement rollback netcode is very unlikely due to how hard and costly it would be, other forms of netcode such as dedicated servers wouldn't solve the problem, so we're basically stuck with delay-based netcode.

On a note more related to the topic at hand, I swear Pit is underrated. Some people still put this character in Bottom 5, but I feel this character isn't even in Bottom 10. They have issues, but they feel well-rounded enough such that they should be nowhere near the worst.

 

[DougEfresh]

On a note more related to the topic at hand, I swear Pit is underrated. Some people still put this character in Bottom 5, but I feel this character isn't even in Bottom 10. They have issues, but they feel well-rounded enough such that they should be nowhere near the worst.

I agree with you about Pit. Sure, he really does need his hitboxes fixed so that people don't fall out of them as often as they do now (although this is more of a general multi-hit inconsistency issue in Ultimate that Pit tends to suffer from more than most), but he has other good attributes and tools like decent ground speed, a solid grab game with throws that lead into some of his combos (iirc), solid frame data, a projectile to camp with and a reflector to discourage the opponent from camping him back with their own projectile(s).

The only other obvious flaw to me outside of his "pitboxes" (though there may be others I'm missing, since I don't play him) is that his air speed is on the slow side, but he does have disjoints, multiple jumps and solid recovery to help make up for that. I feel like and are in very similar positions right now where they both have tools that make them pretty strong characters, but they each have significant enough hitbox issues that they're held back from being taken to their full potential. Imo, they both do deserve the appropriate fixes and buffs needed to make them feel like proper, fully functional characters, but it's also a delicate balance (no pun intended) to make just enough changes to make them both feel good while not going overboard with those to make them genuinely busted given the strengths they already excel in.

Fwiw, I'd currently put at lower mid tier. Probably bottom 25 in the game, but nowhere near the bottom of the barrel in terms of character viability.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Let's welcome chaos.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Let's welcome chaos.

Oh great. Now I have to worry about Terry players running up to me, randomly throwing out an invincible Rising Tackle or seamless full-powered Burn Knuckle out of nowhere and KO'ing me at 90%. The thing is that the basic version of this tech isn't even that difficult to do.

It does make recovering with Terry more feasible.

I personally don't really see this tech really affecting the Shotos very much, but this is definitely something spicy for Terry mains to utilize.

 

[Nathan Richardson]

Hrmm so that just means you need to rely more on your shield. You can't just throw out attacks blindly versus Terry or he'll easily counter you. Remember his basic moveset involves his moves chaining into each other. His more advanced techniques are him forcing you to make the first move. If you're the one always going first in neutral you're going to have a headache dealing with him.

 

[Nate1080]

Let's welcome chaos.

I was sold at simplified GO inputs. I hated sometimes getting Buster Wolf when I wanted Power Gyser, or even command Power Dunk when I wanted Buster Wolf.

Also DT Coil gives me a reason to assign the R button as attack in this game. In fact, for Pro Controller users, DT allows you to put Jump, Special, Attack and Shield on all 4 shoulder buttons; you can hold input and still do normal stuff with index fingers ( grabs would be shield+attack for those who may not have known).


Terry is going to be scary as hell now.