Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[Cutie Gwen]

This reminds me of the ban talks back in Brawl. A little backstory. was a stupidly broken character, he beat everyone in the cast except arguably Pikachu and that was mainly because ESAM was unwilling to compromise his views on pika. A lot of MK's winning MUs were +3 (hard counter) and +4 (realistically unlosable). He was so broken that several rules had to be made just to limit his power. At that time ledge grabs had invulnerability no matter how many times you grabbed them and you couldn't trump people. So ledge grab limits were implemented with MK's being lower than everyone else. Otherwise he could just drop> Uair a few times>regrab the ledge and most characters couldn't stop this "planking". MK had an infinite cape glitch where he could get the lead, spam it and become intangible for the rest of the game; that was banned. And several stages were removed because MK could fly under them and "shark" with Uairs through the stage then safely retreat to a ledge. Brinstar, Norfair and Delfino Plaza were banned primarily for this reason. That really sucked because those were some of Link's best stages and I played him.
MK never was banned. Too many top players used him, you know because he was OP, and complained. Brawl suffered for it. The game didn't grow very much; I remember going to a regional in Denver, CO's largest city with only 65 participants. I've attended Ultimate tournaments in Boulder, a much smaller city, with 128 entries for comparison.

My point is: banning a character will never happen. That's how the community is. They didn't ban MK and they certainly won't ban Hero. It's pointless to talk about. But they did tweek a few rules to at least make the game playable. I already gave a perfectly reasonable solution. Just let players who can't read the menu because dyslexia or the language barrier request a different character is played for one match. 90% of the time this won't even come up. Players are usually known in the smash community and lying about it could be exposed fairly easily. This would really help when players from Japan come over.

Ignoring how laughable it is to compare a character who's made very little impact on the scene to a character who had the entire meta revolve around him, how do you tell which people arw dyslexic and which ones felt "I don't want to fight this character"? It's no coincidence that this character widely considered midtier happens to he considered annoying to fight, also, consider the possibility of a big tournament and suddenly in grand finals we get Maister vs Nair^^ to which Maister goes "Ummm actually I'm dyslexic, change your character who conviniently has a good match up against my main". Let's imagine this match has a big cash prize, would someone playing for money be ok with taking a big hit when there are loads of abled people who love taking advantage of disabilities when they can find benefit from them? Especially as that set showed Maister just play oddly, turns out, being defensive and waiting for the opponent to approach against a character who thrives when people aren't rushing them down and gives them breathing room isn't the best thing to do

The Witness

I don't think it's very fair to compare a singleplayer game to a multiplayer game in this regard, accomadating for disability in a singleplayer game with accessibility options literally only affects those who want to use them whereas your rock climbing comparison gets to the point across much better

 

[Envoy of Chaos]

Asking someone to not play a character is the same thing as a character ban which, if requesting a character ban for reasons not directly related to that character’s impact on the meta is just plain silly.

My reaction time is not the same as it was when I was 18 and could play twitch shooters with the best of them. I’m not requesting my opponents not use characters with really fast moves because I physically cannot react to them while they can, that’s totally unreasonable. Instead I’ve learned to work on my mental game and how I study my opponent as a means of coping with my slower reaction speed. I have poor eyesight, I don’t expect Snake players to not use nades and C4 just because they are small and I may not see them all the time, I cope by using audio cues to know when the Snake player is using those moves so I can be more attentive to where those moves are thrown around the stage.

I’m all for making the playing field as even as possible, but this is just silly honestly. Part of living with disability is learning how to cope and deal with disability. It’s called a disability for a reason, it’s not going to make things as easy for you and they are for others, that’s not being mean that’s just how things work. We should absolutely make accommodations for disability whenever we can and I do applaud those who are trying but we also can’t make things bad for everyone in pursuit of that.

 

[Rizen]

Ignoring how laughable it is to compare a character who's made very little impact on the scene to a character who had the entire meta revolve around him, how do you tell which people arw dyslexic and which ones felt "I don't want to fight this character"? It's no coincidence that this character widely considered midtier happens to he considered annoying to fight, also, consider the possibility of a big tournament and suddenly in grand finals we get Maister vs Nair^^ to which Maister goes "Ummm actually I'm dyslexic, change your character who conviniently has a good match up against my main". Let's imagine this match has a big cash prize, would someone playing for money be ok with taking a big hit when there are loads of abled people who love taking advantage of disabilities when they can find benefit from them? Especially as that set showed Maister just play oddly, turns out, being defensive and waiting for the opponent to approach against a character who thrives when people aren't rushing them down and gives them breathing room isn't the best thing to do

Yes it's entirely laughable to compare a character who was talked about being banned in smash bros to a character who was talked about being banned in smash bros. What was I thinking?
The thing about smash tournaments is it's a community. Yes it's possible for someone to come once and lie that they're dyslexic but 1 what does that accomplish? The opponent can switch to a much better character than Hero. You can't dodge bad MUs that way. And 2 if someone wants to be part of a smash community it gets increasingly difficult to carry lies. If Maister said he's dyslexic people could call him out on social media. People get to know other players. 3 so you're just going to say FU to everyone who actually is dyslexic or from another country? Hero's largely not an issue because he isn't very popular but if he was I could see it being a problem for players who travel to or from Japan.

My solution isn't 100% perfect but at least I'm offering solutions.
Thread:
"Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline."

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Yes it's entirely laughable to compare a character who was talked about being banned in smash bros to a character who was talked about being banned in smash bros. What was I thinking?
The thing about smash tournaments is it's a community. Yes it's possible for someone to come once and lie that they're dyslexic but 1 what does that accomplish? The opponent can switch to a much better character than Hero. You can't dodge bad MUs that way. And 2 if someone wants to be part of a smash community it gets increasingly difficult to carry lies. If Maister said he's dyslexic people could call him out on social media. People get to know other players. 3 so you're just going to say FU to everyone who actually is dyslexic or from another country? Hero's largely not an issue because he isn't very popular but if he was I could see it being a problem for players who travel to or from Japan.

My solution isn't 100% perfect but at least I'm offering solutions.
Thread:
"Watch your heel crush, crushed, uh-oh, this means no fear cavalier. Renegade steer clear! A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline."

Are you really comparing a character who's so broken that the rest of the tier list had "How can they deal with Meta Knight" affect their placements to Hero who you yourself just said "the opponent can switch to a better character"? You also conviniently forget a major detail, if Hero's not an issue because he's not very popular, wouldn't that mean Hero would dominate the game if played to win? How come that hasn't happened yet whereas it happened to MK and Bayo? The answer is that Hero isn't an issue, Hero just makes people feel bad about losing because they automatically assume there was no skill involved and RNG decided the match and if you lose to a Hero who's gameplan is "Command Menu go brrrrrrr", you're absolutely to blame for the loss. I don't think you're trying to argue in favour of people with a reading disability, but considering your posts on Hero in general, I get the feeling you just want to get rid of a character that makes you upset to lose against and refuse to acknowledge that you or anyone else who ever lost to a Hero made mistakes and got punished like with any other character

 

[Frihetsanka]

I don't think you're trying to argue in favour of people with a reading disability, but considering your posts on Hero in general, I get the feeling you just want to get rid of a character that makes you upset to lose against and refuse to acknowledge that you or anyone else who ever lost to a Hero made mistakes and got punished like with any other character

If that were the case, wouldn't Rizen be pushing for a global ban instead of just banning Hero for people who have dyslexia (perhaps if they ask for it)? I suppose it would make it harder to solo main Hero, although it's not exactly ideal to put people with dyslexia at a disadvantage either. Reading ability has never been a factor in Smash until Hero's release. I don't know how bad it is, and it probably affects people differently.

From Niko: "[...]i only found out about it cuz my close friend, good player, has dyslexia and just auto loses to hero". I assume "auto loses" is an exaggeration, and I don't know how bad it really is, although several people on Twitter seem to say it's pretty bad.

The language barrier issue is actually not that hard to solve, in my opinion: Whoever isn't picking Hero gets to select from (a set of languages, probably English + Japanese + maybe a local language like Spanish) for the game. So if an American non-Hero visits Japan they can play in English, if a Japanese non-Hero player visits the US they can play in Japanese, etc etc. It would be easy for the Hero player to prepare (to some extent) for this: Apparently some Hero mains have already memorized the Japanese list anyway. It's fairly reasonable to expect Hero mains to do this (it's their character anyway), less reasonable to expect non-Hero mains to memorize two lists given that they might not even face a Hero.

If it's a Hero ditto they'll just play in the default language for their country (Japanese in Japan, English in many regions, etc etc). This would give greater incentive to traveling for non-Hero mains: MkLeo might not enjoy going to Japan and having to play Akakikusu in Japanese. Raito probably didn't enjoy facing Salem in English. Given that the game is going to end up with more than 80 characters it's not reasonable to expect everyone to know every matchup perfectly, and Hero is generally not considered a top tier by most players.

Might be a good idea to try to get Nintendo to add symbols though, it'd make the language situation much better for both people with dyslexia and people who travel.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

If that were the case, wouldn't Rizen be pushing for a global ban instead of just banning Hero for people who have dyslexia (perhaps if they ask for it)? I suppose it would make it harder to solo main Hero, although it's not exactly ideal to put people with dyslexia at a disadvantage either. Reading ability has never been a factor in Smash until Hero's release. I don't know how bad it is, and it probably affects people differently.

From Niko: "[...]i only found out about it cuz my close friend, good player, has dyslexia and just auto loses to hero". I assume "auto loses" is an exaggeration, and I don't know how bad it really is, although several people on Twitter seem to say it's pretty bad.

The language barrier issue is actually not that hard to solve, in my opinion: Whoever isn't picking Hero gets to select from (a set of languages, probably English + Japanese + maybe a local language like Spanish) for the game. So if an American non-Hero visits Japan they can play in English, if a Japanese non-Hero player visits the US they can play in Japanese, etc etc. It would be easy for the Hero player to prepare (to some extent) for this: Apparently some Hero mains have already memorized the Japanese list anyway. It's fairly reasonable to expect Hero mains to do this (it's their character anyway), less reasonable to expect non-Hero mains to memorize two lists given that they might not even face a Hero.

If it's a Hero ditto they'll just play in the default language for their country (Japanese in Japan, English in many regions, etc etc). This would give greater incentive to traveling for non-Hero mains: MkLeo might not enjoy going to Japan and having to play Akakikusu in Japanese. Raito probably didn't enjoy facing Salem in English. Given that the game is going to end up with more than 80 characters it's not reasonable to expect everyone to know every matchup perfectly, and Hero is generally not considered a top tier by most players.

Might be a good idea to try to get Nintendo to add symbols though, it'd make the language situation much better for both people with dyslexia and people who travel.

Again, I'm saying that's what it comes across as, I want to assume the argument is made in good faith but a lot of Rizen's posts about Hero suggest an inherent dislike of Hero. As for the dyslexia argument, I find it too slippery of a slope as disabilities aren't always the same as Thinkaman pointed out with colourblindness, I actually have quite a few friends with dyslexia who don't have issues with reading the menu, just specific moves feeling cheap, do their opinions invalidate the entire concern? Of course not, but that also means that having dyslexia isn't an autamatic loss, but rather making the matchup harder depending on the severity. Banning an entire character because a group of people might have a much harder time fighting them seems foolish when we don't care about this for other characters like Steve and Pythra potentially affected those with worse eyesight than the average player

I agree on the language barrier point because if you're playing to compete, it's part of learning a matchup, an usual way, but this goes for Hero players too, not just people fighting Hero

It's unreasonable to expect perfect mstchup knowledge yes, but we always have a low tier character pull off an upset, Hero just has the added affect of their unique Menu, but it just proves that if Hero was so problematic, more people would use them

Sadly Nintendo aren't known for being good with accessibility but yes, icons are an ideal solution, I just think that the people advocating for banning Hero for disability concerns will just say "Oh the icons are too small! I'm dyslexic and colour blind so I can't tell the different coloured icons apart!" Again, there's a history of abled people pretending to be concerned about disabilities but rather taking advantage of them

 

[Nekoo]

I'm on the side of "Playing with disabilities, you know what ride you're getting on" type of deal.
The only way something should be banned is, if it's against the competition in an unhealthy way, self-destructing it. Let's say that if one day they release something even more disgusting as Meta-Knight from Brawl, and said character is in all top 8 of all tournaments and create an unprecedented disinterest of the game (almost like Bayonetta did for 4) this case should be investigated and perhaps lead to a ban.

Accessibility shouldn't be in detriment of competitiveness. You shouldn't ban a character and said community from said character, because of some disability, which makes me realize is really something that comes from the crying Twitter community that want a ban for anything and nothing, same goes for Northen Cavern.

We lived throught 4 years of Smash 4 DF blinding you with lights and crazy background. Ultimate's DF is also, if not, as noisy visually speaking, we keep Lylat where the absolutely super dark background make it so some characters can get ridiculous to see, whenever it's snake's projectiles, nade or C4 blending with the stars behind, Game and Watch himself or such.
But suddenly Northen Cavern has an issue, well...the thing is, we'd need to know how many people has an issue with it compared to who does not, and im pretty sure the numbers would be pushed toward people who does not.

Not only that but in ANY situation, if said player has a visual issue with Northen Cavern, in literally NO situation would they be forced to play on it, with the numbers of stages, DSR or not DSR and bans, they will always have a choice, they can ban it, or choose another stage. And don't call it "wasting a ban" if they truly need it.

As much as it might sounds...horrible? I think Hero and Northen Cavern are a case of "Suck it up it's the game you know why you're here."
I have carpal tunnel syndrome after years of drawing, I don't stop mid match for my opponent and be like "man, do you mind if we take a 15 min break?" If I signed up to a tournament, I know what Im getting in.
It's the same for so, if not, all games in e-sport, you see people blind, colorblind, deaf, hand paralyzed, fingers missing, etc etc playing their fullest and even in general not wanting to be refered by their disabilities, but by their skills. Why?
This is a sport, it should be about competitiveness in an environment where everyone is equal and no one look onto your disabilities (except EXTREME CASES)

As harsh as it sounds, I think we should rather find solution to help people to manage through their issues than just trigger happy ban anything that create any sort of controversie or headache booboo.

 

[Hydreigonfan01]

New seeding for Pandemic Anniversary Series: Finale. As the final big online tourney until GOML Online in July, this one will be stacked.

1. Sparg0
2. Maister
3. Sonix
4. ESAM
5. Dabuz
6. Jake
7. naitosharp
8. Yez
9. Capitancito
10. ShinyMark
11. Rivers
12. Chag
13. Myran
14. Middy
15. Myles
16. SassyFlygon

 

[Thinkaman]

I don't think it's very fair to compare a singleplayer game to a multiplayer game in this regard, accomadating for disability in a singleplayer game with accessibility options literally only affects those who want to use them

This was an unusual case. Here's two quotes by Jonathan Blow:

Originally I wasn't sure whether I wanted to implement subtitles or not [for the optional in-game audio recordings]. It's important to me that the game have an overall aesthetic that contains no visual language. I was worried that if we were to draw subtitles for people who don't speak English, it might ruin this.

If you are playing in English, subtitles are OFF BY DEFAULT. It amazes me how badly many games handle subtitles, most notably, that a great many games seem to have voice acting in English and then also default to subtitling in English. This is terrible because people read at a different speed than they listen, and they probably read faster. It ends up dividing peoples' attention in a weird way. I don't know why so many games do this except that they aren't paying enough attention to user experience. So to have a good experience you have to go turn subtitles off, but sometimes that doesn't even work! A couple of days ago, I was playing Xenoblade Chronicles, and when I turn off subtitles, only about half of the subtitles in the game go away. Apparently there are two different classes of subtitles and one of them you cannot even turn off! I think they never even tested it...

It's important context that here, Blow is talking about subtitles for The Witness's easter-egg audio recordings; the "game itself" has no dialogue or written language what-so-ever.

The audio puzzles are a different matter altogether. Unlike typical accessibility options, any attempt to provide a sufficiently exposed accessibility option "spoils the twist" for everyone else. Subtitles won't cut it--what, are you just going to have a random subtitle pop up and give away the answer if subtitles are on? That would ruin it for people like my wife who like subtitles, or people playing in other languages. Are you going to also have a separate "deaf mode" in the settings, that does nothing except add a pop-up in this one place saying "Sorry you're deaf, here's the solution to this optional puzzle"? Why would any deaf person expect to go look for such an option (in this exclusively visual game), and how much would their experience benefit from its existence?


So there's no feasible solution to implement. Except even implementable solutions have a cost! The cost to add any feature to software, accessibility-related or not, has direct and indirect costs that can be framed as either:

• a price tag of money, time, and testing
• or an opportunity cost of other features that could have been implemented (with that money, time, and testing)

Either way, everyone else ends up paying for it. ADA accomodations do force businesses to raise prices, become litiguously paranoid, and in rare cases even go out of business. (Elevators ain't cheap yo!) That is the price we pay (imo rightfully) to comprehensively accomodate a variety of common handicaps in public spaces. But there is no fundamental difference between hiring an engineer to build a ramp and hiring an engineer to program a color-blind mode.

The first part of being an advocate for accessibility issues is recognizing the often steep costs of those support systems, and being strategic + informed about which we pursue and how to go about arguing in their favor.

 

[Nobie]

I think the big difference between Northern Cave and everything else is that it seems to actually make people nauseous. It's one thing to have a disadvantage that makes you unable to play the game better, and it's another to have the game make you physically ill. It'd be funny if pulling up Hero's menu made people hurl every time, though.

As others have said, I think it's really up to Nintendo to overcome the menu issue, whether that's due to dyslexia or foreign languages.

Until then, I think a soft line should be drawn at the difference between something making someone unable to play vs being unable to win as easily, and what is simple to implement vs what would require banning entire characters. We can do what's in our power: Color blindness is easily dealt with when it comes to character costumes, but not with stage legality.

 

[Sucumbio]

This reminds me of Goldeneye for N64. I used to rely heavily on recognizing my opponent's location in split screen mode because it was easy to zone in on them or keep them from sniping me. After awhile I began to feel however that it'd be a stronger test of skill to play on separate monitors (an option that didn't exist). It's not a comparison to the hero debate perse more of an example I experienced personally where so-called fairness came up because my strategy hinged on watching the other player's screen rather than simply reacting to what I saw on my own screen.

Instead of worrying about which spell Hero selects shouldn't a player be more worried about the consequences of leaving themselves open to his possible spell choices and react afterwards? Watching high level play I can honestly say I wouldn't have time to read that ****. It's small text and good players pick their spells so quickly it's really nothing to do with oh I can't read what you're picking. The spells could be written in hyrogliphics honestly it's entirely irrelevant to the strategy one should employ overall.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

This was an unusual case. Here's two quotes by Jonathan Blow:





It's important context that here, Blow is talking about subtitles for The Witness's easter-egg audio recordings; the "game itself" has no dialogue or written language what-so-ever.

The audio puzzles are a different matter altogether. Unlike typical accessibility options, any attempt to provide a sufficiently exposed accessibility option "spoils the twist" for everyone else. Subtitles won't cut it--what, are you just going to have a random subtitle pop up and give away the answer if subtitles are on? That would ruin it for people like my wife who like subtitles, or people playing in other languages. Are you going to also have a separate "deaf mode" in the settings, that does nothing except add a pop-up in this one place saying "Sorry you're deaf, here's the solution to this optional puzzle"? Why would any deaf person expect to go look for such an option (in this exclusively visual game), and how much would their experience benefit from its existence?


So there's no feasible solution to implement. Except even implementable solutions have a cost! The cost to add any feature to software, accessibility-related or not, has direct and indirect costs that can be framed as either:

• a price tag of money, time, and testing
• or an opportunity cost of other features that could have been implemented (with that money, time, and testing)

Either way, everyone else ends up paying for it. ADA accomodations do force businesses to raise prices, become litiguously paranoid, and in rare cases even go out of business. (Elevators ain't cheap yo!) That is the price we pay (imo rightfully) to comprehensively accomodate a variety of common handicaps in public spaces. But there is no fundamental difference between hiring an engineer to build a ramp and hiring an engineer to program a color-blind mode.

The first part of being an advocate for accessibility issues is recognizing the often steep costs of those support systems, and being strategic + informed about which we pursue and how to go about arguing in their favor.

Ah, gotcha, I only know The Witness by name so I assumed the comparison was more like say, people wanting Dark Souls to be more accessible as those players want to explore the world of the game and absorb the atmosphere where a case can be argued on both sides

This reminds me of Goldeneye for N64. I used to rely heavily on recognizing my opponent's location in split screen mode because it was easy to zone in on them or keep them from sniping me. After awhile I began to feel however that it'd be a stronger test of skill to play on separate monitors (an option that didn't exist). It's not a comparison to the hero debate perse more of an example I experienced personally where so-called fairness came up because my strategy hinged on watching the other player's screen rather than simply reacting to what I saw on my own screen.

Instead of worrying about which spell Hero selects shouldn't a player be more worried about the consequences of leaving themselves open to his possible spell choices and react afterwards? Watching high level play I can honestly say I wouldn't have time to read that ****. It's small text and good players pick their spells so quickly it's really nothing to do with oh I can't read what you're picking. The spells could be written in hyrogliphics honestly it's entirely irrelevant to the strategy one should employ overall.

I think this was brought up 2 pages ago but a chunk of Hero's spells have similar counterplay due to his projectile spells firing straight in front of him, the important exceptions being Flame/Kacrackle Slash, Thwack, Magic Burst and Kamikaze. The first 2 are frame 6 iirc and cover a decent amount of vertical distance, Thwack has a big hitbox but is reactable as Hero's startup gives the plan away and the last two are incredibly powerful but also risky cause if you manage to minimize MB damage, Hero's in a nightmarish situation where they can't even use a recovery and Kamikaze only gets used when a Hero is dead certain on it landing as you know, they die first

 

[Thinkaman]

I'm going to digress to push back against a pet peeve trend.

It becomes culturally fashionable to retroactively double-down on the vilification of past top tiers. It's bad enough that players always-on-average exaggerate how broken the best characters are in the present. (In pretty much any game) But while some cases get lost to history with each new patch, others go on to be hyped up even beyond the exaggerations of their day.

There has to be some qualitative truth as to how dominant or "overpowered" a character was/is. It's just hard to define and hard to compare, as defining exactly what measurement to use is subjective and comparing across different games is inherently flawed. But whatever that qualitative truth is, it's nothing more and nothing less.

Last I checked:

was used by about 33% of players in supermajor top 64s at his peak; nothing more, nothing less.
was used by about 25% of players in supermajor top 64s at his peak; nothing more, nothing less. (Though he did perform more aggressively at higher cutoffs, coming close to Melee Fox's performance at certain threshholds)
(pre-patch) is hard to qualify; his very strong momentum kept his players and results increasing long after patches 1.0.6 and 1.0.8 nerfed him barely half a year into his life. If I had to speculate based on the data we have, given enough time I would expect Smash 4 1.0.4 Diddy to reach ~15% of players in supermajor top 64s; nothing more, nothing less.
Barnard's Loop did a great deal of work on. I counted her as being used by about 6% of players in supermajor top 64s around the start of 2018, which almost exactly matches DasKoopa's stats of her being used by ~5.7% of ranked players in that timeframe. She climbed to ~10% in the time between that and Smash 4's release, bouyed primarily by secondary adoption by top multi-character users like Tweek. Nothing more, and nothing less.

Unrelated but related:

I still have no takers on my standing bet that in 2 years, no character in Smash Ultimate will enjoy over a 5% play rate across the competitive player base.

The pandemic got in the way, but we still easily cleared this limbo bar.

Across the entire bracket, every character has under 3.0% usage by games. (By player, the number would be slightly lower still.)

Across just the top 1/8th of brackets, every character is under 4.0% usage. (Again, by games.)

In fact, even the placement percentages landed at 5.0% after 1 year, before we got additional balance patches and DLC competition. (Placements have continued getting more diverse, but it's hard to say how much of this is related to offline-vs-online play.)

Potential for further dominance is nebulous but there: ROB and Min Min are clearly on the rise, and Palutena seems like she is once again rising in popularity in spite of nerfs. Hypothetically Wolf could see an offline resurgence in the 11.0.0+ meta. Or Snake? I feel confident that the perennial "most overused" characters (Cloud, Ness, Bowser) are already close to their usage ceilings. I suspect Steve has a hard-ish ceiling too.


Really curious what happens next. Not to get anyone's hopes up, but 2020 saw the "big" balance patch (Min Min, with buff sets to 20+ characters) land in the summer following a previous smaller patch (Byleth) that included multiple nerfs. 2021 started with top-tier nerfs as well (with little in the way of changes to the rest of the cast), so my guess is that we'll see changes to other characters this summer now that the dust has started to settle at the top.

That said, Pyra came out over a month later than Byleth did, so anyone's guess as to how long we'll be waiting for the last 2 DLC and their patches.

 

[StoicPhantom]

So uh, am I the only one that doesn't pay much attention to Hero's menu and just reacts based on the fact that the vast majority of his spells travel in the same linear fashion?


I think for the disability debate it is important to acknowledge the points made about limitations in accessibility efforts while being careful not to stray too far into the "life sucks, suck it up" rhetoric and mindset that can marginalize the disabled.

I have Ehlers-Danlos syndrome which makes my connective tissue too loose. That causes lots of instability among among the structural framework of my body and thus my muscles, ligaments, tendons, etc, have to work harder than normal to keep everything stable and moving correctly. I tire much quicker than most people and deal with much greater amounts of pain and inflammation when combined with other disabilities I have.

It's not a huge problem with video games ordinarily, but fighting games happen to be an exception in that they have significantly more inputs in rapid succession. Given the inordinate amount of strain on your hands and tendons video games of this nature put on, and on the more delicate areas of your body to boot, this naturally puts me in a bit of a bind. It's not really recommended for anyone to play long hours without breaks, but I tend to have an operation time of about two hours max per day. Not to say I can't go longer, but I really pay for it and there comes a point in time where my hands are too gassed to even play at a good level. And if I do that repeatedly I have symptoms that persist for weeks even if I completely stop playing.

As such, I have to make compromises on practice time and how long I play with friends that would much love to play longer. Tech practice and other rote activities become incredibly difficult to do and I start having issues within ten minutes. My overall ability then suffers because I simply am not able to devote enough time and effort to round out certain aspects of my play. It's not then particularly difficult to say that the way fighting games are currently designed happens to run directly counter to one of my disabilities in a fundamental way. I can make up for poor reaction time and hand-eye coordination with a playstyle change, but inputs and my own body are fundamental limitations I can't really get around.


But I don't really know how that would be solved without fundamentally changing how the genre plays. Which is something that I don't think anyone wants, myself included. This can be mitigated by using peripherals that spread out the strain more evenly across your hands/arms. And perhaps the community, particularly the Melee community, can be more accommodating to peripherals that aren't poorly designed controllers and acknowledge that if a game's perceived depth relies on poorly designed peripherals then maybe it wasn't that deep in the first place.

But those are mitigations and not solutions. Ultimately, there is no getting around something that is fundamental to how something is designed. To change fighting games to accommodate my disability would be to fundamentally change fighting games into something completely different. And that wouldn't be something I would want to have happen.


Now my disability may be on the more extreme end to what's been mentioned, but the same concept should still apply. Disabled ultimately means the inability to do something. And if you lack the ability to do something then no matter what society does you will be unable to do it. You can't turn a paraplegic into a star athlete without attaching some sort of exoskeleton or some sort of high performance bionic limb or something. Even if you did, it would become quite the controversy among normal athletes if the trans athlete discourse is anything to go by and you won't ever be able to naturally compete or fit in.

However, I would caution against being too dismissive of accessibility concerns even in light of the above. I don't think this applies to the posters in this thread, but there are people who use this unfortunate reality to ignore the concerns of the disabled for their own convenience. Most of the accessibility issues in society today are the result of poor and arbitrary designs and planning and thus there should be efforts to redesign those aspects of society that weren't built with those considerations that good planning should have.




P.S. If you really want to help the disabled I would suggest zooming out a little and focus on more systemic things. Contemporary society is fervent when it comes to niche issues like this, but becomes cagey to say the least when it comes to things like disability benefits, healthcare, affordable housing, and quality public transportation. Important things that will have a drastic impact on the quality of life and independence of the disabled versus an easier time with video games.

 

[Gleam]

So uh, am I the only one that doesn't pay much attention to Hero's menu and just reacts based on the fact that the vast majority of his spells travel in the same linear fashion?

Seriously, that's what I'm f***ing saying. It's like, you can't read Hero's list?

Damn, it's almost like you have to play the game normally. If the inability to read Hero's list is throwing one so off the matchup that it completely destroys you against Hero. Than by god, fighting the actual real Top Tiers must be a nightmare. Imagine the idea of having to face someone with vastly superior combo, technique, frame data and capability that someone like Hero wishes he had, but you don't have a big block of text telling you what's going to happen.

No wonder MKleo's Joker keeps kicking everyone's rear. There's not big wonky textbox telling the opponent what he's going to next.

Let's not kid ourselves, this isn't about dyslexia or disability. This is a vocal minority who instead of just admitting, "Hey, I lost, I got out played, my reaction wasn't quick enough, the RNG caught me by surprise and, eh, shrugs it happens to the best of us. I'll keep working on the matchup so next time I'm not thrown off so badly."

They're instead acting like a bunch of sore losers.

 

[RonNewcomb]

I particularly recall Omega Palutena's Temple being used often

Shame it wasn't the standard everywhere. That was a beautiful and solid stage choice.

If you're disability is so negating that not being able to read a small textbox throws you completely off the battle against Hero...

...then the obvious solution is to counterpick with Fox, Pika, or anyone else who can rushdown relentlessly enough so Erdrick doesn't have time to pull the damn menu.

Or forces him to topdeck, meaning no one will be reading that menu, hence nullifying your dyslexia. points_at_brain.jpg

 

[Rizen]

Seriously, that's what I'm f***ing saying. It's like, you can't read Hero's list?

Damn, it's almost like you have to play the game normally. If the inability to read Hero's list is throwing one so off the matchup that it completely destroys you against Hero. Than by god, fighting the actual real Top Tiers must be a nightmare. Imagine the idea of having to face someone with vastly superior combo, technique, frame data and capability that someone like Hero wishes he had, but you don't have a big block of text telling you what's going to happen.

No wonder MKleo's Joker keeps kicking everyone's rear. There's not big wonky textbox telling the opponent what he's going to next.

Let's not kid ourselves, this isn't about dyslexia or disability. This is a vocal minority who instead of just admitting, "Hey, I lost, I got out played, my reaction wasn't quick enough, the RNG caught me by surprise and, eh, shrugs it happens to the best of us. I'll keep working on the matchup so next time I'm not thrown off so badly."

They're instead acting like a bunch of sore losers.

The toxicity against disabled people in this thread has gotten really disgusting. Disability is not just someone faking it to have an easier time in life. I've got to take a break from this thread.

 

[Thinkaman]

The toxicity against disabled people in this thread has gotten really disgusting. Disability is not just someone faking it to have an easier time in life. I've got to take a break from this thread.

I think there are two groups being addressed: People with an identified handicap, and unrelated people perceived to be using them for an agenda. Two sets of similar-but-different discussions talking at different targets (where both have the moral high ground in their parallel debates and won't back down accordingly) is a time-tested recipe for strife.

Many of the most-controversial cultural debates in politics follow this two-different-discussions script.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

The toxicity against disabled people in this thread has gotten really disgusting. Disability is not just someone faking it to have an easier time in life. I've got to take a break from this thread.

Generalizing all criticisms of this as toxicity against disabilities doesn't actually give you the moral high ground as it implies that all disabilities are equally severe and need to be treated the same when the fact is, many feel belittled by abled pretending to care with superfluous 'solutions' that fail to solve anything. Again, your post history about Hero really makes this come off as bad faith

 

[Gleam]

The funny thing is that, if Hero's menu was designed in in a way that only the Hero Player could see their list but not the opponent, I doubt people would complain about this. We've long since established the point that Hero's RNG isn't some insane game breaker that turns the character into an unstoppable Top Tier.

Cutie Gwen said it best a page or so ago. We've been dealing with Hero for the past two years and a lot of the things we thought might be a problem with Hero, just didn't end up happening. But oh no, someone lost to Hero, obvious that's got to be because of some disability. Shocking that this issue only came up now....

The toxicity against disabled people in this thread has gotten really disgusting. Disability is not just someone faking it to have an easier time in life. I've got to take a break from this thread.

You really seem to be missing the point, but it's already been said multiple times across this thread. People with a disability who play anything go into that game knowing that they will be hindered in someway. It's their choice to play the game, but they have to come to accept their handicap in a match. And they pretty much do.

I'll be the a**hole here. I don't give one flying, two bit crap about anyone's disability here. I don't care if your blind, deaf, dyslexic, have a muscular disease, tooth decay, one lung, half a heart, two fingers and no thumb, etc.

What I care is the fact that, despite what your disability is, you still push forward. I have far more respect for these people than anyone seriously complaining about Hero's god forsaken Textbox.

Maybe if this was about helping the Hero Players (the people who actually need to know what's going on in that textbox) it would be one thing. It's not a necessary thing, but it would be a nice thing. Would having a symbol dictating what Hero's attacks were? Sure, and it's similar to why I enjoy the fact that Manado Arts now have text with them. It may not be necessary, but goodness, it does add a layer of easiness.

But unfortunately the issue seems to be that people are using a disability to blame their own loss or issue with the character, than to actually offer help for those with the disability. They don't want to help those with a disability. They just want to use the disability as an excuse for why Hero can somehow win.

 

[Deleted member]

What I care is the fact that, despite what your disability is, you still push forward.

This is true and one should improvise. I've inherited cognitive issues from one of my parents and was an alcohol abuse survivor that worsened the condition, which I still struggle with it from time to time. It was nice that I've kept up with the genre's best from an old school era, as extremely toxic as the communities were in their respective games. It paid off no less.

Although, it took long than I expected after discontinuing chess tournaments, I can still keep up with most people, which I'm humble about it.

Unfortunately, from returning to Nintendo 3 years ago, I wish I had the dedicated community friends list as I've did 10 to 17 years ago. Being depraved of this makes it more difficult to progress in this game in particular.

 

[Rizen]

Generalizing all criticisms of this as toxicity against disabilities doesn't actually give you the moral high ground as it implies that all disabilities are equally severe and need to be treated the same when the fact is, many feel belittled by abled pretending to care with superfluous 'solutions' that fail to solve anything. Again, your post history about Hero really makes this come off as bad faith

Tell me have you ever attended a smash bros tournament?

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Tell me have you ever attended a smash bros tournament?

Yeah I have actually, I want to believe I got the wrong impression so I'd like you to explain your reasoning for asking unless you were hoping for a no to act like that's reason to dismiss anything I say.

 

[Gleam]

The disabled percentage of Smash just isn't large enough to warrant changing up the system to accommodate them. It may be sad, but it's just the way it is. But even if that percentage got larger and larger, chances are we wouldn't just change up the entire system of Smash to benefit that group at the cost of hindering the other side.

Instead, we'd probably just separate the two groups. Just as we do with the regular Olympics and the Special Olympics.

And hey, if you've got a disability and want to play on the other side, all the power to you. But in that case, you'd go into that area, knowing how your disability is going to effect you. Someone said it a few pages back but by the end of the day, there is a line you have to draw. There comes a point where you can only help one side so much before it negatively effects the other side.


But I understand that the issue of such topic can sway greatly away from the likes of "Character Discussion." But I do think the likes of Hero and his Menu can still play a part in this thread.

I believe that the ability to read Hero's list as an opponent is a shallow point of interest and unlike Nicko's remark that his friend's inability to read Hero's list when fighting him completely destroys him in a match, I fail to see that cause. I think any good player against Hero will fight in terms of "reaction" not in terms of "reading comprehension."

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Tell me have you ever attended a smash bros tournament?

This is a bad attempt at ad hominem and a blatant attempt at "no true Scotsman."

If you have to resort to this, it's probably best that you simply agree to disagree.

 

[SKX31]

One of the key take-aways I have from all this is still valid: Nintendo (and many other Japanese corporations) could be doing a better job providing accessibility features consistently for those with disabilities. It does undermine Nintendo a bit since they pride themselves on them designing for the whole family and more and more developers have begun to incorporate similar features. Those features can't cover for everything under the sun, true, but the devs / publishers are the ones who are the most able here.

While I don't think banning Hero is the right call (partly since there are workarounds like anticipating a certain kind of spell)...

It kinda baffles me that Sakurai and co. didn't include the spell icons, since it would've killed two birds with one stone: A) making Hero easier to play for dyslexic people - thus removing a barrier for some people to pick up and play the character for a while, and B) solving the language barrier issue. Especially for a fighting game that prides itself on being simple and accessible relative to the FGC titles. I'm gonna rely on Occam's Razor here and guess that the thought simply didn't cross their minds, and mistakes do happen.

There are also other UI-related hiccups, like and not having UI elements when both characters could have them and make things easier to read period (not just for people with disabilities like eyesight issues). Especially when characters like and have such UI elements.

 

[Nekoo]

"Have you ever attended a smash bros tournament?" sounds like "Have you ever made a game?" from Sakurai. Meme worthy to dismiss anything anyone says and deflect any criticisms and any opinion different than yours.

Yet another loosing MU for DK.

Remember guys, different experience, different point of view. Everything shall stay civil, whenever you're in the "suck it up champ" camp or "We have to do something." side.

 

[Rizen]

Yeah I have actually, I want to believe I got the wrong impression so I'd like you to explain your reasoning for asking unless you were hoping for a no to act like that's reason to dismiss anything I say.

You could have fooled me. Inferring my solution fails to solve anything and is "superfluous" shows a great lack of understanding of how smash communities work on your part. Like I said, my solution will barely come up. It's extremely minimalist. I tried to account for Hero mains as much as possible. But it's good to plan for events which I have outlined prior. I've been going to smash tourneys since Brawl. Furthermore what constructive have you done in this thread besides insult me? I'm really not hearing anything to accommodate people with disabilities.

Let me explain something to you. I take care of my mom who has stage four cancer, which will kill her. She's disabled and has a handicap plack for her car. She can walk but not very far and in great pain. She's gotten out of her car and a woman followed her throughout the grocery store accusing her of faking being handicapped. I know first hand what it's like when people accuse people of lying about handicaps. So don't accuse me of doing anything in bad faith.

 

[zeldasmash]

By no means am I trying to offend anyone here, but those with disabilities play the game because they love the game. And if they wish to be competitive, despite their condition, they still do it despite the disadvantage they have. They do it because they love it. For the sake of example, I played UMvC3 against someone who was chair bound and only had one reliable arm to play the game with. Despite his disadvantage, the guy had a blast. The guy knew he was struggling hard but still loved the play.

Those who have disabilities know what they are getting into when playing games competitively. In my opinion, the whole thing with Hero is that the whole game has inconsistent UI with their characters. Others have more visibility with their mechanics while others don't. But just because Hero is a little bit more difficult in that regard doesn't mean the whole character should be banned. Even less so when the character isn't even a top tier or "toxic" character to the meta.

I'm sorry if I come off ignorant but from what I can tell, the reaction against Hero's menu is a little unwarranted.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

You could have fooled me. Inferring my solution fails to solve anything and is "superfluous" shows a great lack of understanding of how smash communities work on your part. Like I said, my solution will barely come up. It's extremely minimalist. But it's good to plan for events which I have outlined prior. I've been going to smash tourneys since Brawl. It will work. Furthermore what constructive have you done in this thread besides insult me. I'm really not hearing anything to accommodate people with disabilities.

Let me explain something to you. I take care of my mom who has stage four cancer, which will kill her. She's disabled and has a handicap plack for her car. She can walk but not very far and in great pain. She's gotten out of her car and a woman followed her throughout the grocery store accusing her of faking being handicapped. I know first hand what it's like when people accuse people of lying about handicaps. So don't accuse me of doing anything in bad faith.

The idea to ban an entire character because dyslexic people might have an unplayable matchup despite the disability having various levels of severity is the equivelant of making a steep ramp and saying it's accessible for wheelchair users because they don't need to use stairs anymore, completely ignoring how it doesn't improve jack ****. Like, the blame is instantly on Hero's Menu and not the possibility the player simply didn't play well. Look at when Nair^^ whacked Maister, that only happened because Maister rolled into it, had he tried ducking, stuffing it out with a disjoint, jumping, using the bucket or just stayed in his shield, that wouldn't have happened.

That's awful but that's about disabilities and illnesses not being visible and unfortunately, there are plenty of people who will gladly fake disabilities if it means they get special treatment or made a martyr. See antivaxxers claiming they have a disability that makes facemasks hazardous so they won't have to wear one, a journalist claiming he has permanent, severely life altering brain damage because he got a milkshake chucked at him and a surprising amount of lawsuits about work accidents saying that the injured person cannot do anything without despite showing evidence of the contrary with vacations taken inbetween the time of the accident and the lawsuit.

I won't take back how your posts are in bad faith as there's multiple examples of you disliking Hero for lack of a better word, petty reasons, such as complaining about getting hit by Hatchet Man, a 37 frame move, not counting the frames for opening up the menu and any amount time taken to select it from the menu. Bringing up your mother and claiming people are toxic to the disabled doesn't help your cause as it comes across as trying to guilt people into saying you're right. Major apologies if that's just me reading in to things too much though

 

[blackghost]

Ok let's redirect discussion away from disabilities and discuss actual counterclaim to Hero WITHOUT (for whatever reason) the ability to read the menu.
As others have said any spell ls travel at the same trajectory at differing speeds.
Personally I play vs Hero as "avoid the worst case secanrio" meaning most of the time the worst likely things that can happen are:getting rushed down by a buffed Hero, kaboom in general, or snooze.
I don't plan around Hero's thwack or giant explosion anymore than I play around game and watch 9s or peach stitch face. It isn't worth worrying about. It just mentally will take you out of th game.

What other strategies do people employ? Let's keep the thread productive in discussion ot argumentative over things outside the game itself.

 

[Thinkaman]

I suspect this is the point where I say that this off-topic topic has run its course and everyone has contributed what they have to add. At this point emotions are just getting enflamed.

Let's move on.

Who has a stupid opinion about a Smash Bros. character ready to be flogged?

 

[zeldasmash]

Ok let's redirect discussion away from disabilities and discuss actual counterclaim to Hero WITHOUT (for whatever reason) the ability to read the menu.
As others have said any spell ls travel at the same trajectory at differing speeds.
Personally I play vs Hero as "avoid the worst case secanrio" meaning most of the time the worst likely things that can happen are:getting rushed down by a buffed Hero, kaboom in general, or snooze.
I don't plan around Hero's thwack or giant explosion anymore than I play around game and watch 9s or peach stitch face. It isn't worth worrying about. It just mentally will take you out of th game.

What other strategies do people employ? Let's keep the thread productive in discussion ot argumentative over things outside the game itself.

A buffed Hero is a scary Hero. Can basically get in and out for free with the buffs he gets. As someone who plays Link, if Hero is buffed with Accelerate I usually try to just watch him and put out Nairs to stuff his approach. Hero's aerials are laggy so Link can end up stuffing them out and pushing back, forcing Hero to try another alternative to approach. Boomerang is also really good and bombs force Hero to pay attention to them, wether they are used as C4 to stuff his approach or when Link is holding it as he can Z-Drop it to relentlessly pressure him up close.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Who has a stupid opinion about a Smash Bros. character ready to be flogged?

I think Doc is super slept on.

His disadvantage is atrocious, but his explosive nature means you can never count him out.

And unlike say... Ganondorf, his frame data helps him avoid dangerous situations a bit more.

 

[Rizen]

I should have just ignored the trolls from the start. Anyway, Spargo's won the recent Lunchbox along with Cloud. Due to Spargo and Leo the character's been getting excellent results in stacked tournaments. However I will admit Cosmo's Pythra is not doing well; which is surprising because he trained with Nairo. I predict Cosmo will get better after he adapts to MUs but we'll have to wait and see.

 

[SKX31]

I suspect this is the point where I say that this off-topic topic has run its course and everyone has contributed what they have to add. At this point emotions are just getting enflamed.

Let's move on.

Who has a stupid opinion about a Smash Bros. character ready to be flogged?

Raises hand

I believe that 's not as overwhelming as quite a lot of people believe and Mythra in particular may struggle a bit vs. characters that can keep up with her combination of range and frame data some. Especially if a lot of trades happen since that interrupts her combo game and trades don't favor her damage-wise. She's still very strong, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that particular has been widely noted.

And yes, I'm ready to eat crow over this if I'm completely wrong.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Who has a stupid opinion about a Smash Bros. character ready to be flogged?

Pikachu busted

I think Doc is super slept on.

His disadvantage is atrocious, but his explosive nature means you can never count him out.

And unlike say... Ganondorf, his frame data helps him avoid dangerous situations a bit more.

This argument always kinda feels off to me as it's common to see low or bottom tiers occasionally make a splash due people not bothering to learn the matchup of a character they barely play, so is there anything that can suggest that Doc's strengths are his own and not exploiting a lack of experience or knowledge?

 

[Swamp Sensei]

This argument always kinda feels off to me as it's common to see low or bottom tiers occasionally make a splash due people not bothering to learn the matchup of a character they barely play, so is there anything that can suggest that Doc's strengths are his own and not exploiting a lack of experience or knowledge?

I'd argue that a character being able to exploit a lack of matchup experience is an innate strength.

 

[Cutie Gwen]

I'd argue that a character being able to exploit a lack of matchup experience is an innate strength.

I guess but that's not really a strength but rather exploiting a weakness of a player and that can apply to pretty much every character meaning that if people just figure out the matchup as they would any other character deemed a threat, Doc goes downhill and fast.

 

[DougEfresh]

Raises hand

I believe that 's not as overwhelming as quite a lot of people believe and Mythra in particular may struggle a bit vs. characters that can keep up with her combination of range and frame data some. Especially if a lot of trades happen since that interrupts her combo game and trades don't favor her damage-wise. She's still very strong, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that particular has been widely noted.

And yes, I'm ready to eat crow over this if I'm completely wrong.

I'm right there with you on this from start to finish, honestly. I think both of Mythra's and Pyra's strengths are so extreme that it takes attention away from some serious flaws they have (primarily recovery, which doesn't ruin their competitive viability by any means, but does take them outside of the top 5-10 character discussion imo), but mythra's sheik syndrome combined with a bit of lag on landing aerials and having slightly worse overall defensive options because of foresight (iirc) are also notable enough to mention as a limitation in my eyes.

The biggest thing that's paid off for me so far against Mythra is just accepting that you won't always keep up with her speed, and/or win neutral, but that's fine because you take a lot of percent and farm rage for a solid length of time with good enough patient play (even with the presence of Pyra and her absurd kill power). I actually think is the one still tripping me up more in the MU, because while she's slow on the ground, her air speed is actually somewhat decent and she's SO damn floaty that I end up mistiming an anti-air or landing trap punish and pay dearly for those mistakes (we'll have to see how much of that remains the case as people learn the MU and offline becomes more widespread again; mythra may well improve, but pyra will likely be significantly worse offline even if she's still decent enough).

I too, will surely eat my hat if I'm proven wrong, though.