Official Competitive Character Impressions 2.0

[earthboundspacefree]

Nothing worrying about it, those characters are all extremely easy to play and have strengths that produce consistent results.

Besides, i think alot of "character loyalists" would do good to play other characters (especially top and popular picks) to get some insight on WHY people do that, what they have that their loyal character doesn't, and how you can use that info to advantage.

People flocking to good characters is how every competitive meta works. Expecting people to struggle with their original "mains" when they can swap to a better/easier character and get the same results with a fraction of the effort is just unrealistic.




Falco's buttons are certainly good but i don't know how much practical benefit you can get from this level of microspacing. I was going to main him but in general, while he certainly feels improved, the thing that seems to lack in this game is any real identity. In Melee and Brawl, was able to play a really oppressive style of approach and zoning and had a definite strategy for his kills -- grabs, tech chases, spikes. He became somewhat of a brawler in Smash4 but we all know how well that worked in that game without the top-tier tools....that and his laser was complete trash. But here in Smash Ultimate, he seems to be in some kind of weak limbo.


Falco just doesn't have anything in this game, he has no real "niche". He's got combos but so does everyone else, he's strong in the air, but there are plenty of characters stronger...he's got a spike, but it's nowhere close to the best, his air speed isn't the best, he's great at edgeguarding but so are like 70% of the characters in the game at this point. He's got a relatively weak and still quite immobile projectile so he's not really winning any shooting matches, even against characters like Mario....all things considered, his buttons are good but not nearly good enough to stand out, certainly not in this game......


Funnily enough i feel like encompasses his original playstyle more than Falco himself, which is probably why people are flocking to him. Falco isn't bad, it's just that he doesn't really stand out in any significant way.

I feel like falco has really strong potential as a co-spacie. He seems to patch up some of the weaknesses spacies have in certain matchups. I can’t speak to his solo viability, but I think people like vd and Larry play him for a reason.

 

[LightLV]

I feel like falco has really strong potential as a co-spacie. He seems to patch up some of the weaknesses spacies have in certain matchups. I can’t speak to his solo viability, but I think people like vd and Larry play him for a reason.

I think the biggest asset of is that he's JUST well enough equipped to deal with most playstyles in the game -- he's what you'd call an "honest pick" IMO. I think a player with good fundamentals would do exceedingly well with him, but early in the meta you won't see him turning any heads.

But the issue with "honest" characters is that they require a consistent level of play, and that's where I think Falco's key weakness is. People drop characters like Falco because they aren't heavily rewarded with derpy/risky play or lucky buttons, you have to work for them. The reason Falco was such a popular pick in the Melee/Brawl days is because he WAS rewarded heavily for his good options, perhaps a bit too much. But that doesn't seem to be the case in Ultimate.

I'm not too sure about doubles though, i haven't really been paying attention to the doubles meta in Ultimate but i'm sure he's probably a pretty decent pick with his tools and someone to fill his gaps.

 

[Emblem Lord]

There are a worrying amount of people switching mains to Lucina, wolf and pichu right now.

Not worrying because of the characters themselves, worrying about how so many people are giving up trying to push their character any further and are nothing but slaves to the 'flavour of the month' meta. Its only 2 months in and so many characters are losing their best reps. Plenty of low and mid tier characters in smash 4 had the best players stick with them from the beginning, all the way to its end. This is just sad watching how many people are giving up already.

Imagine my disgust in the shoto discord, when people cry about basic input motions that have existed longer than half of the shoto player base for this game and then say they are going to switch to Wolf because *gasp* Ryu and Ken "require too much thought".

No, this is not satire.

People actually say this ****.

Kill me.

 

[LightLV]

Imagine my disgust in the shoto discord, when people cry about basic input motions that have existed longer than half of the shoto player base for this game and then say they are going to switch to Wolf because *gasp* Ryu and Ken "require too much thought".

To be absolutely fair though, analog sticks are trashcan for all but 3D fighting game inputs

some of those too tbh

 

[earthboundspacefree]

I think the biggest asset of is that he's JUST well enough equipped to deal with most playstyles in the game -- he's what you'd call an "honest pick" IMO. I think a player with good fundamentals would do exceedingly well with him, but early in the meta you won't see him turning any heads.

But the issue with "honest" characters is that they require a consistent level of play, and that's where I think Falco's key weakness is. People drop characters like Falco because they aren't heavily rewarded with derpy/risky play or lucky buttons, you have to work for them. The reason Falco was such a popular pick in the Melee/Brawl days is because he WAS rewarded heavily for his good options, perhaps a bit too much. But that doesn't seem to be the case in Ultimate.

I'm not too sure about doubles though, i haven't really been paying attention to the doubles meta in Ultimate but i'm sure he's probably a pretty decent pick with his tools and someone to fill his gaps.

I guess a good comparison would be Ike - except Ike in this game has much more reward with his tools. You still have to be fundamentally sound to use him, hence why you basically only see Leo using him

I think that’s also why falco could serve as a decent secondary to the spacies, he doesn’t have the glaring flaws the others do in some matchups, and could be used to less volatile levels of consistency (recovery, getting juggled, juggling, etc.)

 

[KamikazePotato]

To be absolutely fair though, analog sticks are trashcan for all but 3D fighting game inputs

some of those too tbh

I played a good amount of Street Fighter with a D-pad and it felt good. Any time I tried out the analog stick it felt abysmal. Same thing applies to Ryu/Ken in SSB. Their moves aren't complicated but they're clunky, which is even more understandable considering they're being slotted into a fighting game system not made for them.

 

[Scarlet Spyder]

Last night, MKLeo was at my local! He opted to use Wolf. Wadi also came out and chose to use Rosalina & Luma.

Grand Finals

This resembled a friendly between two secondaries but still interesting to watch. Reaffirms Wolf as being super good (or as I like to joke, the flavor of the month) and Rosalina & Luma 2.0.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

Last night, MKLeo was at my local! He opted to use Wolf. Wadi also came out and chose to use Rosalina & Luma.

Grand Finals

This resembled a friendly between two secondaries but still interesting to watch. Reaffirms Wolf as being super good (or as I like to joke, the flavor of the month) and Rosalina & Luma 2.0.

Umm.never mind Wolf being Smash 4 Sheik 2.0. He seems to now be becoming Smash 4 Cloud 2.0 (well back when Cloud was came out) A solid character that is easy to pick up and play do pretty well with having solid fundaments. Plus having not exactly a good recovery does not seem to impede them as much as you think it would.

But in the end, I also feel like only the top-level talent who put effort to master Wolf will get success with him at top-level play in the end

 

[peekpeek]

Imagine my disgust in the shoto discord, when people cry about basic input motions that have existed longer than half of the shoto player base for this game and then say they are going to switch to Wolf because *gasp* Ryu and Ken "require too much thought".

No, this is not satire.

People actually say this ****.

Kill me.

People specifically buy $200 controllers to make it easier to do those "basic input motions", and they aren't designed to be easily done in $30 GC controllers. So no **** people don't like doing them.

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

As spectators I can see not wanting pros to play the same characters, but from a competitive perspective, what’s the issue? This is the competitive impressions thread, right.

I feel like terms like “character loyalty” and “tier *****” are thrown around as if everyone has already agreed these are good and bad things. I don’t really see people call someone an instrument ***** or tennis racquet loyalist lol.

 

[Minordeth]

I can’t even right now with this Falco talk.

Falco has some of the most consistent, high damage combos in the game which flow together into dumb-powerful strings.

He stuffs projectile users in a meta with strong projectile characters.

He gets more off a parry on single hit aerials than almost every other character in the game.

He can go deeper for edgegaurds than most of the cast thanks to the highest jump in the game.

Like, I don’t think he’s quite as good as Fox or Wolf. But the only reason he isn’t snatched up by more people is that he is hard to play online. That’s it. Same as Greninja (except Greninja is top tier, don’t @ me).

Falco’s niche is to be able to deal with basically any character and be able to style on them.

Look, bottom line: parrying a Lucina Fair, throwing out Utilt, going into a 40% combo that throws her off stage, throwing out a laser to steal her jump, and then run off Dair spiking her to death is... life affirming.

 

[Emblem Lord]

People specifically buy $200 controllers to make it easier to do those "basic input motions", and they aren't designed to be easily done in $30 GC controllers. So no **** people don't like doing them.

I will not lie. I am biased.

I played Ivy in Soul Calibur 2.

So imagine doing on an analog.

After that a hadouken is child's play.

 

[earthboundspacefree]

Like, I don’t think he’s quite as good as Fox or Wolf. But the only reason he isn’t snatched up by more people is that he is hard to play online. That’s it. Same as Greninja (except Greninja is top tier, don’t @ me).

Falco’s niche is to be able to deal with basically any character and be able to style on them.

Look, bottom line: parrying a Lucina Fair, throwing out Utilt, going into a 40% combo that throws her off stage, throwing out a laser to steal her jump, and then run off Dair spiking her to death is... life affirming.

Agree with everything you said (including greninja) except the hard to play online reason for not using him (I’d also argue fox is probably harder to play online than falco). He’s just not as popular a character as fox/wolf, and many people consider the opportunity cost of using the weakest spacie to be too great. I think more people should try him though, he’s super good and super fun to play. Definitely slept on hard

 

[The_Bookworm]

The main thing in which I cannot take results in the early metagame seriously, other than the obvious fact that optimizations and counterplay is still too undeveloped, is because top players right now are simply flocking over to the "shiny" character. Those shiny characters are oftentimes good, but easy to play. Chrom was the original shiny character. The main reason why he dipped in popularity after month 1, other than people abusing his recovery better, is because Leo won a tourney with Ike and he became the new shiny choice everyone flocks over.

Those who place high in a tourney and are easy to play, are oftentimes the characters top players flock over. The main reason why imo, is because everyone left SSB4 with an explosive mindset. People are often going to pick easy to play characters with a great reward, no matter how big the risk is (emphasis why Pichu is so popular right now).

By doing this, I don't think the metagame is going to develop properly. Because no top players are investing their time in the hard-to-play/master/technical characters, like Rosa, Falcon, Shulk, Ken/Ryu, and ICs, their metagames cannot properly flourish. Leffen recently dropping the hard-to-master Pokemon Trainer, and looking towards the easy to play Pichu simply as a result of VoiD's good Genesis performance, kind of enforces this.

Fortunately, and hopefully for the sake of the future of Ultimate's metagame, the SSB4 mindset will die down and top players will begin to explore more harder to play characters.

Oh, and patches are a thing as well.

 

[Rocketjay8]

The main thing in which I cannot take results in the early metagame seriously, other than the obvious fact that optimizations and counterplay is still too undeveloped, is because top players right now are simply flocking over to the "shiny" character. Those shiny characters are oftentimes good, but easy to play. Chrom was the original shiny character. The main reason why he dipped in popularity after month 1, other than people abusing his recovery better, is because Leo won a tourney with Ike and he became the new shiny choice everyone flocks over.

Those who place high in a tourney and are easy to play, are oftentimes the characters top players flock over. The main reason why imo, is because everyone left SSB4 with an explosive mindset. People are often going to pick easy to play characters with a great reward, no matter how big the risk is (emphasis why Pichu is so popular right now).

By doing this, I don't think the metagame is going to develop properly. Because no top players are investing their time in the hard-to-play/master/technical characters, like Rosa, Falcon, Shulk, Ken/Ryu, and ICs, their metagames cannot properly flourish. Leffen recently dropping the hard-to-master Pokemon Trainer, and looking towards the easy to play Pichu simply as a result of VoiD's good Genesis performance, kind of enforces this.

Fortunately, and hopefully for the sake of the future of Ultimate's metagame, the SSB4 mindset will die down and top players will begin to explore more harder to play characters.

Oh, and patches are a thing as well.

I do think that the Pichu hype will die down once people expose his weakness. Such as his self damage mechanic and his paper defenses. It will probably happen before the end of the year because of how often he's appearing in most of the tournaments.

 

[ARISTOS]

Falco's buttons are certainly good but i don't know how much practical benefit you can get from this level of microspacing. I was going to main him but in general, while he certainly feels improved, the thing that seems to lack in this game is any real identity. In Melee and Brawl, was able to play a really oppressive style of approach and zoning and had a definite strategy for his kills -- grabs, tech chases, spikes. He became somewhat of a brawler in Smash4 but we all know how well that worked in that game without the top-tier tools....that and his laser was complete trash. But here in Smash Ultimate, he seems to be in some kind of weak limbo.


Falco just doesn't have anything in this game, he has no real "niche". He's got combos but so does everyone else, he's strong in the air, but there are plenty of characters stronger...he's got a spike, but it's nowhere close to the best, his air speed isn't the best, he's great at edgeguarding but so are like 70% of the characters in the game at this point. He's got a relatively weak and still quite immobile projectile so he's not really winning any shooting matches, even against characters like Mario....all things considered, his buttons are good but not nearly good enough to stand out, certainly not in this game......


Funnily enough i feel like encompasses his original playstyle more than Falco himself, which is probably why people are flocking to him. Falco isn't bad, it's just that he doesn't really stand out in any significant way.

Nah I feel Falco has a clear identity, in that you want to close space, use your solid tilts (utilt, dtilt and side-b all pop people up perfectly for air extensions) and grab to bring people into the air where Falco is able to convert into big damage and great offensive positioning. In many ways he feels like an actualized version of Smash 4's Falco. Melee/Brawl Falco was all centralized around laser and dair, but given how cocky Falco's character is it doesn't really make sense for him to be so much of a lockdown zoner.

If he could combo into bair a bit more easily he'd legit be busted lmao

 

[Heracr055]

The main thing in which I cannot take results in the early metagame seriously, other than the obvious fact that optimizations and counterplay is still too undeveloped, is because top players right now are simply flocking over to the "shiny" character. Those shiny characters are oftentimes good, but easy to play. Chrom was the original shiny character. The main reason why he dipped in popularity after month 1, other than people abusing his recovery better, is because Leo won a tourney with Ike and he became the new shiny choice everyone flocks over.

Those who place high in a tourney and are easy to play, are oftentimes the characters top players flock over. The main reason why imo, is because everyone left SSB4 with an explosive mindset. People are often going to pick easy to play characters with a great reward, no matter how big the risk is (emphasis why Pichu is so popular right now).

By doing this, I don't think the metagame is going to develop properly. Because no top players are investing their time in the hard-to-play/master/technical characters, like Rosa, Falcon, Shulk, Ken/Ryu, and ICs, their metagames cannot properly flourish. Leffen recently dropping the hard-to-master Pokemon Trainer, and looking towards the easy to play Pichu simply as a result of VoiD's good Genesis performance, kind of enforces this.

Fortunately, and hopefully for the sake of the future of Ultimate's metagame, the SSB4 mindset will die down and top players will begin to explore more harder to play characters.

Oh, and patches are a thing as well.

If you are a player who wants to win tournaments then it's only logical to go for the characters that have low risk & high reward. Let's take Cloud from Smash 4 for example. He was relatively easy to pick up and learn his intricacies, b&bs, win conditions, etc. What you do from there is push for mastery with that char (optimizing recovery, being intimate with Limit & knowing when you're going to get it, etc) while ALSO pushing player skill, such as knowing when to recognize MUs & player vs player stuff (Tweek's abusive grab game with Cloud comes to mind, even though Cloud had poor grabs), or even messing around with secondaries (a luxury a specialist typically doesn't have), resulting in a polished & effective secondary to your easy to abuse main. So elevating as a player goes beyond just spending a bunch of time trying to unlock a character's potential. Look at Smash 4 Peach. This is a char you can spend untold hours optimizing combos, float cancels, etc but will struggle VERY hard with swords, Meta Knight specifically. And then when you switch to your very underpowered secondary to deal with swordies, since you spend much of your time in your specialized main, you fold to them since they've fought hundreds of pockets just like yours. So focusing on a low risk high reward char can allow you to elevate other aspects of your play for bountiful results that you might've spent just labbing 0-80% Peach combos that are not reliable enough and can be flat out ineffective versus swordies

Edit: The specialists of the many underrepresented characters right now are doing their due dillegence, and the results of their work will bloom sooner or later, giving players looking for something abusive/different a new toy to play with (remember post patch Bayo in 4?). This is actually what I am banking on the Inkling players in this game. Look how dormant that character has been in terms of results since release, and then look at Cosmos' results from Genesis 6. They're coming out to win over the next few months in my opinion

Edit 2: I agree with Ziodyne's post below. The rewards for playing such technical chars for multiple games has finally truly reaped the spoils for these dedicated players, and I can't be mad at them (and neither should anyone). Sooner or later the rest of the top players will catch up, and then we'll see where we go from there.

 

[Ziodyne 21]

If you are a player who wants to win tournaments then it's only logical to go for the characters that have low risk & high reward. Let's take Cloud from Smash 4 for example. He was relatively easy to pick up and learn his intricacies, b&bs, win conditions, etc. What you do from there is push for mastery with that char (optimizing recovery, being intimate with Limit & knowing when you're going to get it, etc) while ALSO pushing player skill, such as knowing when to recognize MUs & player vs player stuff (Tweek's abusibe grab game with Cloud comes to mind, even though Cloud had poor grabs). So elevating as a player goes beyond just spending a bunch of time trying to unlock a character's potential. Look at Smash 4 Peach. This is a char you can spend untold hours optimizing combos, float cancels, etc but will struggle VERY hard with swords, Meta Knight specifically. So focusing on a low risk high reward char can allow you to elevate other aspects of your play for bountiful results that you might've spent just labbing 0-80% Peach combos that are not reliable enough and can be flat out ineffective versus swordies.

Edit: The specialists of tye many underrepresented characters right now are doing their due dillegence, and the results of their work will bloom sooner or later, giving players looking for something abusive/different a new toy to play with (remember post patch Bayo in 4?).

Yeah thats kinda true. I mean and / have also been shown to be very strong right now in the current meta and have gotten resutls. However if you look closer at said results you will see it has all been done by players who already used them in Smash 4 and even Brawl and already know how to optimize them. That is because they are very technical characters that take lots of practice and management to learn and master what makes them that strong right now. You cannot pick up as easily as say right now. For new players that are looking at tournaments and want to pick up a character that is doing well, Wolf/Lucina is the more logical choice going with that mindset

 

[Today's Tom Sawyer]

Bookworm, I agree with your post, except that Pichu is not easy. Might not have a floor as high as Fox or Shotos or Mega Man, but certainly one of the highest ceilings given risk-reward is imprinted quite literally into all of its lightning hitboxes and needs to be calculated at all times.

 

[Ffamran]

He became somewhat of a brawler in Smash4 but we all know how well that worked in that game without the top-tier tools....that and his laser was complete trash. But here in Smash Ultimate, he seems to be in some kind of weak limbo.

I've said this countless of times, but Smash 4 Falco was forced to become a brawler because his Blaster was horrendously ignored and left undertuned in that game. If he had Ultimate Blaster or even Melee Blaster which had about the same recovery as Ultimate Blaster, but had much higher startup when used on the ground, Falco would have been mid tier because guess who wouldn't be forced to approach in every goddamn matchup? Smash 4 Falco. Even Fox's Impact Blaster would have been better than the crap Smash 4 Falco Blaster was because of its ridiculously high total frames they kept and increased from Brawl. Oh, Brawl Falco spams lasers so much and for free. Let's increase the total frames a bit more. No, he spammed it because you developers somehow figured a projectile like his being able to autocancel was reasonable let alone its full screen coverage in Melee and Brawl.

Brawling could have worked if his running speed wasn't low. Smash 4 Falco with Mario's running speed would have been fine. He had and has always had good normals, but not the movement speed and not the most crucial of moves for him in Smash 4 and that was a working projectile to zone if he couldn't get in or if he didn't have the movement speed. Pick one and Falco wouldn't have been in the rough state he was in Smash 4.

[Falco]'s got a spike, but it's nowhere close to the best

This **** is active for 5 frames. A frame 10 spike that is active for 5 frames. It's good, but it's on Falco, a character who doesn't move super fast on the ground or in the air. You put this Dair on someone like Bowser, DK, Diddy, Fox, Jigglypuff, the Marthlings, Palutena, Ridley, Sheik, Sonic, Wii Fit Trainer, or Wolf and people would be crying all day about it. The hitbox might not be good compared to other Dair spikes or Ivysaur's freak of nature Dair and it's not as strong as some other spikes, but it's fast, it's active for 5 frames, and if you can jump high enough like Falco, you can probably followup from it. In other words, Greninja, Sheik, and ZSS would probably be able to get some setups from landing a Falco Dair. Granted, Greninja's Dair already works with his moves.

I'm not too sure about doubles though, i haven't really been paying attention to the doubles meta in Ultimate but i'm sure he's probably a pretty decent pick with his tools and someone to fill his gaps.

On the subject of doubles, I think Piranha Plant could be a monster with someone to cover for plant's issues.

Imagine my disgust in the shoto discord, when people cry about basic input motions that have existed longer than half of the shoto player base for this game and then say they are going to switch to Wolf because *gasp* Ryu and Ken "require too much thought".

No, this is not satire.

People actually say this ****.

Kill me.

And then we have the Angel and Nelson in The King of Fighters and Vatista and Yuzuriha in Under Night In-Birth among others. Angel and Nelson are essentially rekka characters on steroids and Vatista has your usual hold back and then forward or down and then up charge motions, but she also has hold forward and then back and hold up and then down charge motions. Vatista is in an anime fighter, so expect to be able to combo with these moves.

Hard inputs my ass. There are some people out there who main these characters and they use gamepads and not fightsticks and they do fine.

People specifically buy $200 controllers to make it easier to do those "basic input motions", and they aren't designed to be easily done in $30 GC controllers. So no **** people don't like doing them.

You can get used fightsticks for half the price or make your own for whatever fits your budget. Fightsticks tend to be durable or are very simple, so buying used fightsticks isn't that huge of a risk and replacing broken or worn out parts isn't that expensive. With regards to making them, some people buy wooden jewelry boxes or whatever from Goodwill or thrift stores and shove the parts in. There's even people with shoe boxes for fightsticks and I think there was this dude with a dakimakura, a body pillow, fightstick.

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

I think players that aren't at the level of tweek, Void or MKleo are going to hit a wall with switching to "pocket" characters like wolf or pichu, the reason "pocket" characters worked so well was because there was a clearly power gap between the top tiers and mid tiers, and even then only top players got results with cloud, sheik, and diddy. Pocket mains players drowned before top 16 the majority of time at nationals.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Like what?

IDK Diddy but he does have good frame data I'll give you that.

Fast, but hardddd time killing, and having relatively poor disadvantage. YL's recovery is way more reliable though, but he doesn't have easy kill set ups, as Diddy's Banana > F Smash or D Tilt > U SMash.

 

[The_Bookworm]

Bookworm, I agree with your post, except that Pichu is not easy. Might not have a floor as high as Fox or Shotos or Mega Man, but certainly one of the highest ceilings given risk-reward is imprinted quite literally into all of its lightning hitboxes and needs to be calculated at all times.

I meant easy to pick up, but certainly not an easy character to use at the highest level.

 

[MG_3989]

I think players that aren't at the level of tweek, Void or MKleo are going to hit a wall with switching to "pocket" characters like wolf or pichu, the reason "pocket" characters worked so well was because there was a clearly power gap between the top tiers and mid tiers, and even then only top players got results with cloud, sheik, and diddy. Pocket mains players drowned before top 16 the majority of time at nationals.

It is a different game for them but there are probably about 20 or more players who can pull it off

Bookworm, I agree with your post, except that Pichu is not easy. Might not have a floor as high as Fox or Shotos or Mega Man, but certainly one of the highest ceilings given risk-reward is imprinted quite literally into all of its lightning hitboxes and needs to be calculated at all times.

Ok I know this is is semantics but the correct word is low floor for hard to play characters. A high floor would assume they’re easy to play at a relatively high level because a low floor means you can easily bottom out with them. A high ceiling however means they’re hard to master

I’ve just seen it a lot in this thread and it’s a pet peeeve lol

 

[J0eyboi]

Agree with everything you said (including greninja) except the hard to play online reason for not using him (I’d also argue fox is probably harder to play online than falco). He’s just not as popular a character as fox/wolf, and many people consider the opportunity cost of using the weakest spacie to be too great. I think more people should try him though, he’s super good and super fun to play. Definitely slept on hard

Fox really isn't hard to play online. Online, his SHFF becomes unreactable, as do a number of his approach options, making his already choking rushdown even harder to deal with. His Side-B also becomes harder to react to, though it's still doable. For Fox's part, while he does have some stuff that input lag can mess up, most of his BnBs aren't significantly affected.

Ok I know this is is semantics but the correct word is low floor for hard to play characters. A high floor would assume they’re easy to play at a relatively high level because a low floor means you can easily bottom out with them. A high ceiling however means they’re hard to master

I’ve just seen it a lot in this thread

So you'd think.

Generally, "skill floor" refers to how much skill is needed to play a character at some arbitrary level. Hence, high skill floor means a character is hard because they require more skill to play at that basic level. If we're using the building analogy, think of it as how big the staircase up to the front door is (an easy character to pick up would be like a standard house, while a hard character would be like the Capitol Building). I don't know why that's the way it's used, nor do I agree with it, but at this point trying to use it the other way will just result in confusion; it's too late to change it.

 

[MG_3989]

So you'd think.

Generally, "skill floor" refers to how much skill is needed to play a character at some arbitrary level. Hence, high skill floor means a character is hard because they require more skill to play at that basic level. If we're using the building analogy, think of it as how big the staircase up to the front door is (an easy character to pick up would be like a standard house, while a hard character would be like the Capitol Building). I don't know why that's the way it's used, nor do I agree with it, but at this point trying to use it the other way will just result in confusion; it's too late to change it.

Exactly or with athletes about to be drafted a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling means they can bottom out but have a high reward factor but a high skill floor means they’re pretty much a sure thing

If it’s too late to change that’s fine I just wanted to bring it up

 

[Luigifan18]

Exactly or with athletes about to be drafted a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling means they can bottom out but have a high reward factor but a high skill floor means they’re pretty much a sure thing

If it’s too late to change that’s fine I just wanted to bring it up

Wait, what? How is this athlete analogy supposed to work? Do athletes with "low skill floors" underperform a lot?

 

[MG_3989]

Wait, what? How is this athlete analogy supposed to work? Do athletes with "low skill floors" underperform a lot?

Yeah say an athlete coming out of college going into the NFL draft has a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. It means they have a ton of talent but they’re a very raw prospect and they may underperform, bottom out, or not work out so they’re riskier to draft than an athlete with a high skill floor because the athlete with the high skill floor is pretty much pro ready and it’s easy to see they won’t bottom out even if they may not have as much talent as the athlete with a low skill floor

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

I think each use is missing a word or two. Skill required to be successful floor vs success experienced relative to skill floor. Or in the athlete example, skill potential

edit: i agree with joeyboi though, the common usage leans that way

 

[MG_3989]

I think each use is missing a word or two. Skill required to be successful floor vs success experienced relative to skill floor. Or in the athlete example, skill potential

edit: i agree with joeyboi though, the common usage leans that way

Yeah I get that I was just going with the common usage and how I’ve heard it used before

If it’s already set in stone here than that’s fine and I can adapt to that

 

[ARISTOS]

Wait, what? How is this athlete analogy supposed to work? Do athletes with "low skill floors" underperform a lot?

It means that basically they're a risky bet, usually meaning they have poor fundamentals but a great build for the game. Whatever team that picked the player up will have to invest for unsure reward

In basketball, it's usually players who are very physically dominant in college but lack shooting/passing/bball IQ needed in the NBA. For someone with a high ceiling, a team would take a punt on that to try and improve those skills and turn that player into a productive team member/potential all-star

Usage is a bit different though in fighting games lol

 

[Scarlet Spyder]

For those discussing top players switching mains to more cookie cutter characters, here's my two cents. Professional Smash players need to get results so it makes sense to use the best tools available. It would be foolish to fault them for that. Some of you think this is a detriment to the diversity of the metagame but really, it is an important part of the metagame development. If everyone switches to Pichu, Inkling, Lucina, Wolf, etc... then either only the very best users of those characters will prevail or... top players will use other characters to counter them. Again, this is all part of the development of a metagame that is only just 2 months old. There are a lot of characters that will continue to be explored.

I know it sucks to have a top representative drop your character (come back to Pokemon Trainer Leffen!) but this doesn't stop YOU from using that character. YOU can still work on the characters that you like and develop them within your own communities. For example, I'm sticking with Pokemon Trainer and already, my friend and I are finding stuff that Leffen never used. There is a huge cast of 75+ characters and many of them are viable, despite what the top players are using. Another example is Wadi using Rosalina & Luma in our local last night.

 

[Diddy Kong]

The main thing in which I cannot take results in the early metagame seriously, other than the obvious fact that optimizations and counterplay is still too undeveloped, is because top players right now are simply flocking over to the "shiny" character. Those shiny characters are oftentimes good, but easy to play. Chrom was the original shiny character. The main reason why he dipped in popularity after month 1, other than people abusing his recovery better, is because Leo won a tourney with Ike and he became the new shiny choice everyone flocks over.

Those who place high in a tourney and are easy to play, are oftentimes the characters top players flock over. The main reason why imo, is because everyone left SSB4 with an explosive mindset. People are often going to pick easy to play characters with a great reward, no matter how big the risk is (emphasis why Pichu is so popular right now).

By doing this, I don't think the metagame is going to develop properly. Because no top players are investing their time in the hard-to-play/master/technical characters, like Rosa, Falcon, Shulk, Ken/Ryu, and ICs, their metagames cannot properly flourish. Leffen recently dropping the hard-to-master Pokemon Trainer, and looking towards the easy to play Pichu simply as a result of VoiD's good Genesis performance, kind of enforces this.

Fortunately, and hopefully for the sake of the future of Ultimate's metagame, the SSB4 mindset will die down and top players will begin to explore more harder to play characters.

Oh, and patches are a thing as well.

This is where people should start to miss characters as SSB4's Sheik, Diddy, Rosalina and even Bayonetta, because they where very technical characters. Still are in this game, and people haven't figured their playstyle out yet.

It's a shame everyone clamoring heavily to the easy characters though yes. But I can't blame them. It's easier for them to preform, and only those certain few characters have just one dumb move that can lead to a combo doing 70+ damage. It wouldn't be so bad if more characters could do it, or these exact characters wouldn't be able to do the same stuff to just about 95% of the roster...

This is why, and yes am totally gonna say it. I wouldn't mind some characters getting their "auto combos" nerfed. Or at least make them less reliable, or give others similar sexy stuff without having to put in five times the effort...

 

[MG_3989]

For those discussing top players switching mains to more cookie cutter characters, here's my two cents. Professional Smash players need to get results so it makes sense to use the best tools available. It would be foolish to fault them for that. Some of you think this is a detriment to the diversity of the metagame but really, it is an important part of the metagame development. If everyone switches to Pichu, Inkling, Lucina, Wolf, etc... then either only the very best users of those characters will prevail or... top players will use other characters to counter them. Again, this is all part of the development of a metagame that is only just 2 months old. There are a lot of characters that will continue to be explored.

I know it sucks to have a top representative drop your character (come back to Pokemon Trainer Leffen!) but this doesn't stop YOU from using that character. YOU can still work on the characters that you like and develop them within your own communities. For example, I'm sticking with Pokemon Trainer and already, my friend and I are finding stuff that Leffen never used. There is a huge cast of 75+ characters and many of them are viable, despite what the top players are using. Another example is Wadi using Rosalina & Luma in our local last night.

Yeah I agree

You have to remember it’s the way a lot of them make a living. They need to consistently place high in tournaments so they need to use the best tools available to them at the current time. They don’t have the time to develop a character the way we do because it’s just a game to us not a job

I mean luckily for me the Ness mains aren’t dropping him and they’re playing him at such a high level it’s ridiculous showing his potential in this game is insane (I don’t even think they’ve gotten to the full potential yet, Ness has a high skill ceiling as well). He’s not hard to pick up and play but when you watch FOW and Awestin play him you see the way he’s supposed to be played

 

[earthboundspacefree]

Low skill floor: character doesn’t take as much skill to play at a particular level
High skill floor: character takes more skill to play at a particular level
Low skill ceiling: max potential is lower
High skill ceiling: max potential is high

Low skill floor, low skill ceiling: easier to use, lower reward (smash 4 ganondorf)
Low skill floor, high skill ceiling: easier to use, higher reward (smash 4 cloud)
High skill floor, low skill ceiling: tougher to use, lower reward (smash 4 Pac-Man)
High skill floor, high skill ceiling: tougher to use, higher reward (ult/smash 4 peach)

*All assuming an equally skilled player tries each*

Just in case anyone is still confused. Tried to go with mostly last game since character status is kinda still tbd in this game.

 

[Foie]

I can’t even right now with this Falco talk.

Falco has some of the most consistent, high damage combos in the game which flow together into dumb-powerful strings.

He stuffs projectile users in a meta with strong projectile characters.

He gets more off a parry on single hit aerials than almost every other character in the game.

He can go deeper for edgegaurds than most of the cast thanks to the highest jump in the game.

Like, I don’t think he’s quite as good as Fox or Wolf. But the only reason he isn’t snatched up by more people is that he is hard to play online. That’s it. Same as Greninja (except Greninja is top tier, don’t @ me).

Falco’s niche is to be able to deal with basically any character and be able to style on them.

Look, bottom line: parrying a Lucina Fair, throwing out Utilt, going into a 40% combo that throws her off stage, throwing out a laser to steal her jump, and then run off Dair spiking her to death is... life affirming.

I actually think most people agree with you here. Nobody is arguing he's a terrible character, the main argument is that he has strong tools but is held back relative to the other spaces and top tiers. He has a strong projectile, strong combo game, strong edgeguarding, strong normals, and decent enough specials. None of his strengths are at the same level as the top of the cast though. Add that to a character who has amazing vertical mobility but poor horizontal, and you get a character who has great tools but only enough to be decidedly "honest" imo, somewhat like pit.

The main thing in which I cannot take results in the early metagame seriously, other than the obvious fact that optimizations and counterplay is still too undeveloped, is because top players right now are simply flocking over to the "shiny" character. Those shiny characters are oftentimes good, but easy to play. Chrom was the original shiny character. The main reason why he dipped in popularity after month 1, other than people abusing his recovery better, is because Leo won a tourney with Ike and he became the new shiny choice everyone flocks over.

Those who place high in a tourney and are easy to play, are oftentimes the characters top players flock over. The main reason why imo, is because everyone left SSB4 with an explosive mindset. People are often going to pick easy to play characters with a great reward, no matter how big the risk is (emphasis why Pichu is so popular right now).

By doing this, I don't think the metagame is going to develop properly. Because no top players are investing their time in the hard-to-play/master/technical characters, like Rosa, Falcon, Shulk, Ken/Ryu, and ICs, their metagames cannot properly flourish. Leffen recently dropping the hard-to-master Pokemon Trainer, and looking towards the easy to play Pichu simply as a result of VoiD's good Genesis performance, kind of enforces this.

Fortunately, and hopefully for the sake of the future of Ultimate's metagame, the SSB4 mindset will die down and top players will begin to explore more harder to play characters.

Oh, and patches are a thing as well.

I think the reason is skilled players have high expectations for themselves. They put in hundreds of hours of training and practice in lesser characters, then feel let down by their main when they lose in tournaments to stronger characters. I don't blame them, they have no obligation to stick to characters they feel are weak. The only metric that really matters is tourney placement, and they can and should do whatever they think will help them win.

I trust Leffen when he says isn't worth the effort. I trust Hbox when he says has zero options against a character such as Sonic. And so forth. How do we tell the difference between "difficult to master" and just plain crappy characters?

The alternative is they are weaker players, or they just don't have the practice or matchup experince necessary to win. Both of those could be true, but the players themselves probably know better than we do.

It may not be best for the meta development, but who are we to tell players they should suck it up and be held back by difficult or (just as likely) bad characters for the sake of the game?

 

[MG_3989]

I actually think most people agree with you here. Nobody is arguing he's a terrible character, the main argument is that he has strong tools but is held back relative to the other spaces and top tiers. He has a strong projectile, strong combo game, strong edgeguarding, strong normals, and decent enough specials. None of his strengths are at the same level as the top of the cast though. Add that to a character who has amazing vertical mobility but poor horizontal, and you get a character who has great tools but only enough to be decidedly "honest" imo, somewhat like pit.



I think the reason is skilled players have high expectations for themselves. They put in hundreds of hours of training and practice in lesser characters, then feel let down by their main when they lose in tournaments to stronger characters. I don't blame them, they have no obligation to stick to characters they feel are weak. The only metric that really matters is tourney placement, and they can and should do whatever they think will help them win.

I trust Leffen when he says isn't worth the effort. I trust Hbox when he says has zero options against a character such as Sonic. And so forth. How do we tell the difference between "difficult to master" and just plain crappy characters?

The alternative is they are weaker players, or they just don't have the practice or matchup experince necessary to win. Both of those could be true, but the players themselves probably know better than we do.

It may not be best for the meta development, but who are we to tell players they should suck it up and be held back by difficult or (just as likely) bad characters for the sake of the game?

I don’t think that’s true about Leffen with the amount of time and resources he’s put into the game. I think with Pichu or Inkling he’ll be one of the best. It’s his main game

Maybe with HBox because he’s still far more focused on Melee than Ultimate but nobody else thought Jiggs had any kind of huge potential anyway

 

[earthboundspacefree]

The main thing in which I cannot take results in the early metagame seriously, other than the obvious fact that optimizations and counterplay is still too undeveloped, is because top players right now are simply flocking over to the "shiny" character. Those shiny characters are oftentimes good, but easy to play. Chrom was the original shiny character. The main reason why he dipped in popularity after month 1, other than people abusing his recovery better, is because Leo won a tourney with Ike and he became the new shiny choice everyone flocks over.

Those who place high in a tourney and are easy to play, are oftentimes the characters top players flock over. The main reason why imo, is because everyone left SSB4 with an explosive mindset. People are often going to pick easy to play characters with a great reward, no matter how big the risk is (emphasis why Pichu is so popular right now).

By doing this, I don't think the metagame is going to develop properly. Because no top players are investing their time in the hard-to-play/master/technical characters, like Rosa, Falcon, Shulk, Ken/Ryu, and ICs, their metagames cannot properly flourish. Leffen recently dropping the hard-to-master Pokemon Trainer, and looking towards the easy to play Pichu simply as a result of VoiD's good Genesis performance, kind of enforces this.

Fortunately, and hopefully for the sake of the future of Ultimate's metagame, the SSB4 mindset will die down and top players will begin to explore more harder to play characters.

Oh, and patches are a thing as well.

Thing is, with rare exception, top players aren’t the ones advancing uncommon character metagames. It’s the next level, and the regional and local levels where those advancements happen. Then, if a character is realized to be good, the top players stand on the shoulders of the people who did the grunt work.

 

[fozzy fosbourne]

I feel like there were a decent amount of Peaches in the Genesis top 64, right? Plus there were a gang of Olimars, Mega Man, etc. And I'm not sure that Pichu is all that simple, execution-wise. Ike also doesn't seem like a brain dead character, since no one else has come close to reproducing Leo's results and a bunch of people have tried. He has to rely on really advanced fundamental footsie skills. So what I'm getting at is I don't think it's clear that the top players are all steering away from challenging characters.

Challenging characters without much evidence that they will be strong other than speculation, on the other hand, seem like they are being dropped or avoided by the pros. Why take a big bet on say pacman turning into a top tier (and dedicating 100s of hours to finding out) when there are characters with more early evidence that they will be strong? It seems like an expected value problem, where you would be placing a bet that a less developed character either becomes top tier through development or patches and that a character that is already top tier now is worse by that point (either through patches or meta developement). I'm sure this will be true for some characters, but it seems like if you are playing the odds you are better going with the character who has evidence they are strong now.

If this were melee, and this version of the game was going to be played for 20 years, things might be different.

 

[Foie]

I don’t think that’s true about Leffen with the amount of time and resources he’s put into the game. I think with Pichu or Inkling he’ll be one of the best. It’s his main game

Maybe with HBox because he’s still far more focused on Melee than Ultimate but nobody else thought Jiggs had any kind of huge potential anyway

I agree on both of those points. The main thing is, top players want to see at least large potential for the characters they play with to win tourneys. Once they feel the potential isn't there, who are we to say otherwise?

I'm very excited to see leffen's Pichu (who's essentially a totally busted Squirtle).

I feel like Hbox is perfectly happy being #1 in melee and commenting & competing more casually in ultimate.