Concerns about competitive viability?

[Diddy Kong]

Game seems way more balanced than Smash 4, especially in its begin. No character feels totally busted to me, except maybe Inkling. If they hit nerfs, I see no problem. I think Chrom is fine and maybe appears strong only because nobody knows the engine well yet. With perfect shield being mastered, and people finding ways to deal with pressure, Chrom won’t be as strong. I beat him fine with Diddy honestly.

 

[RepStar]

Game seems way more balanced than Smash 4, especially in its begin. No character feels totally busted to me, except maybe Inkling. If they hit nerfs, I see no problem. I think Chrom is fine and maybe appears strong only because nobody knows the engine well yet. With perfect shield being mastered, and people finding ways to deal with pressure, Chrom won’t be as strong. I beat him fine with Diddy honestly.

Thats because diddy is high tier, lmao; of course you wouldnt struggle against an ike 2.0. compared to someone who uses hmm, i dunno, NESS.......

 

[Marmotbro]

I'm dealing with Chrom just fine as Wario, Wii Fit and Pit. With Ness just use your PK fire to set up damage, then killthrow, or throw him off the edge and use thunder to gimp him.

 

[RepStar]

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/276170717694001152/524918438645465088/tierlistspeculation.JPG

I'm dealing with Chrom just fine as Wario, Wii Fit and Pit. With Ness just use your PK fire to set up damage, then killthrow, or throw him off the edge and use thunder to gimp him.

Were it so easy if he didnt move at the speed of light and have frames faster than a fast forward. I can pk fire spam all day but because ness animations are so slow , if i miss a pk fire hes on my ass in a second. Hes too fast while ness is so floaty. When i shoot a pk fire and spam it he jumps out...and Playing on a battlefield platform is even worse. I dont think this is a solid case of "get good" either. I know how to use ness and, when it comes to chrom i either barely win or most of the time im extremenly mentally exhausted from playing footsies with this ****ing light-bug that hits like a train so i lose because he wont stay still for ness slow ass bat to swing or weak ass yo-yo.

 

[PreAlpha0]

I think I've seen aggressive play rewarded much more in Smash Ultimate overall than in Brawl or Smash 4. Even if true combos aren't as long or as varied as they could be, I've seen some satisfying strings and edgeguarding due to the changes to air dodges. I think the ability to perform any attack out of a dash is a fantastic change that gives much needed approach options. Unless there ends up being huge balance issues, I think this game should have a viable scene for several years.

However, this has me very worried. While air dodges have become less effective against edgeguarding and are no longer spammable in the air, they've become a great landing option. Air dodges have such little landing lag now that it can be much riskier to attack landing opponents. I've only seen some people utilize it, but I think as time goes on, more people will starting landing using air dodges, and it will lead to grounded defenses against aerial opponents becoming much more aggravating than they should be. This could be quickly and easily fixed in a patch, but it seems unlikely at the moment since it hasn't gotten much attention.

 

[LightLV]

I'm dealing with Chrom just fine as Wario, Wii Fit and Pit. With Ness just use your PK fire to set up damage, then killthrow, or throw him off the edge and use thunder to gimp him.

Chrom generally just doesn't give a **** about anyone's projectiles or roll frames lol

Fighting a good Chrom, honestly your only real hope is to wait your turn for an opening and relentlessly try to gimp him

Were it so easy if he didnt move at the speed of light and have frames faster than a fast forward. I can pk fire spam all day but because ness animations are so slow , if i miss a pk fire hes on my *** in a second. Hes too fast while ness is so floaty. When i shoot a pk fire and spam it he jumps out...and Playing on a battlefield platform is even worse. I dont think this is a solid case of "get good" either. I know how to use ness and, when it comes to chrom i either barely win or most of the time im extremenly mentally exhausted from playing footsies with this ****ing light-bug that hits like a train so i lose because he wont stay still for ness slow *** bat to swing or weak *** yo-yo.

Learn to use PSI Magnet to stall in the air and make your approach/neutral more versatile(Shorthop > instantly PSi magnet). It has a hitbox and puts Ness in a decent spot for feints, aerials, and PK fire. And if you land a hit with it, you can fastfall Nair or Uair and go into a combo.

However, this has me very worried. While air dodges have become less effective against edgeguarding and are no longer spammable in the air, they've become a great landing option. Air dodges have such little landing lag now that it can be much riskier to attack landing opponents. I've only seen some people utilize it, but I think as time goes on, more people will starting landing using air dodges, and it will lead to grounded defenses against aerial opponents becoming much more aggravating than they should be. This could be quickly and easily fixed in a patch, but it seems unlikely at the moment since it hasn't gotten much attention.

TBH I don't have nearly as much of an issue with Pichu, he's extremely light in a game where pretty much every character has some kind of explosive kill potential. Even when his pressure is overwhelming i don't see how fighting Pichu is that much different from Ganon or Bowser. You're just winning until you aren't lol.

Air dodges are absolutely fine....the general flow of this game is that actually reaching the ground is half the battle. Every character is significantly more mobile on the ground and offense is so strong that even if you're on a platform and blocking you're still at a severe disadvantage because characters can just fast fall, land, and then jump again and keep pressuring you.


A general thumb of this game seems to be that the neutral can go one way or another, but once its your turn, it's your turn. Some characters obviously capitalize off hits more than others, but getting a launch, either getting them off the stage or in the air over the stage, seems to be universally advantageous in this game because it's more offense oriented.

 

[RepStar]

Chrom generally just doesn't give a **** about anyone's projectiles or roll frames lol

Fighting a good Chrom, honestly your only real hope is to wait your turn for an opening and relentlessly try to gimp him



Learn to use PSI Magnet to stall in the air and make your approach/neutral more versatile(Shorthop > instantly PSi magnet). It has a hitbox and puts Ness in a decent spot for feints, aerials, and PK fire. And if you land a hit with it, you can fastfall Nair or Uair and go into a combo.



TBH I don't have nearly as much of an issue with Pichu, he's extremely light in a game where pretty much every character has some kind of explosive kill potential. Even when his pressure is overwhelming i don't see how fighting Pichu is that much different from Ganon or Bowser. You're just winning until you aren't lol.

Air dodges are absolutely fine....the general flow of this game is that actually reaching the ground is half the battle. Every character is significantly more mobile on the ground and offense is so strong that even if you're on a platform and blocking you're still at a severe disadvantage because characters can just fast fall, land, and then jump again and keep pressuring you.


A general thumb of this game seems to be that the neutral can go one way or another, but once its your turn, it's your turn. Some characters obviously capitalize off hits more than others, but getting a launch, either getting them off the stage or in the air over the stage, seems to be universally advantageous in this game because it's more offense oriented.

How do you know all of this

 

[PreAlpha0]

TBH I don't have nearly as much of an issue with Pichu

Sorry If I wasn't clear, I don't have an issue with Pichu, just that particular point when Lucina's up tilt was air dodged.

Air dodges are absolutely fine....the general flow of this game is that actually reaching the ground is half the battle. Every character is significantly more mobile on the ground and offense is so strong that even if you're on a platform and blocking you're still at a severe disadvantage because characters can just fast fall, land, and then jump again and keep pressuring you.

But even if offense and mobility are strong on the ground, landing characters put you into awkward situations. As seen in the clip, if you stay on the ground and attack, the opponent can just air dodge and punish you for it. If you shield and wait to bait it, you leave yourself vulnerable to shield pressure if they attack instead. And if you short hop attack, you could end up vulnerable in the air above them. These situations don't really happen as often with rolls or spot dodges because they are hindered by ending lag for the former and lack of mobility and short duration for the latter, but with landing air dodges, you can have a fast landing with long invincibility used to punish attacks.

 

[PURGE THEM LIKE THE]

You could always jump and use your up air before the enemy is close enough to the ground to get away with an airdodge. Airdodging such an up air will put them in the huge aerial airdodge lag. I doubt directional airdodges would get them far enough away to not get chased and caught.

 

[Phosphophyllite]

Ultimate will be just fine. As people already mentioned, Brawl managed to get a decent competitive life despite it's many many flaws. The issues with Ultimate are nothing compared to other games where the competitive scene died very early, like:
Street Fighter X Tekken, where the meta was really boring and encouraged camping/time outs
Playstation All Stars where the game's overall mechanics and system were completely unappealing to the wider audience
Most recently Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite which was purely down to the underwhelming roster compared to previous MVC games.
Trust me, even if Ultimate's gameplay wasn't amazing, people would still play it because it's Smash and people want to play as their favourite characters.

 

[RepStar]

Ultimate will be just fine. As people already mentioned, Brawl managed to get a decent competitive life despite it's many many flaws. The issues with Ultimate are nothing compared to other games where the competitive scene died very early, like:
Street Fighter X Tekken, where the meta was really boring and encouraged camping/time outs
Playstation All Stars where the game's overall mechanics and system were completely unappealing to the wider audience
Most recently Marvel Vs Capcom Infinite which was purely down to the underwhelming roster compared to previous MVC games.
Trust me, even if Ultimate's gameplay wasn't amazing, people would still play it because it's Smash and people want to play as their favourite characters.

Brawl had its problems just like melee and ultimate. Just because it has tripping doesnt mean its " many many many" . atleast brawl wasnt a confused mess of either casual or competitive like ultimate is.

 

[Ulevo]

I will say that I am beginning to miss SSB Wii U, for all its problems it has. They added a lot of wonderful things in this game, and yet for everything they included they detracted or messed up something else. Fixed dash lengths and the removal of perfect pivots make high speed baits very binary. They removed shield drops. The directional air dodge has no business being in this game because most characters cannot follow up with a punish if they commit to the combo follow up, and because of this frame traps in this game are non-existent. They ruined the ledge trump mechanic. Once you reach high enough of a percent you cannot tech stage spikes, which rewarded proper timing and execution, and there is no way to ‘know’ when that will happen. Thanks to the buffer system, some mechanics are brainless while others are incredibly frustrating to execute. They removed the ability to buffer full hop aerials in favour of catering to casuals (this right here makes me livid because it perfectly embodies the philosophy behind all of Brawl’s changes coming from Melee; watering down the game or ruining it to appease a very casual audience) even though double sticking allowed you to do the EXACT same thing in Wii U. The parry system is horrible for reasons that would take an entire thread to unravel. The UI is infuriating. Online is making Wii U’s online experience look like 8 ping in League of Legends. I played online last night and it swapped my controls to default settings. Characters in this game constanty live to 140+ because many kill confirms are gone and players need to fish for a read or resort to back throw.

Whether or not you have concerns about competitive viability should come down to two questions. Do you believe a game needs to be better than its predecessor to succeed, and do you have faith that Nintendo will properly address current issues.

I feel like when the luster of the new shiny thing wears off people will begin to complain about Ultimate with very legitimate criticisms.

 

[ALiBi212]

ITT: a lot of blanket statements about a 3 week old game.

Have you guys ever seen Ken getting his butt handed to him after returning to Melee? That guy was the best in the world! Then, a few years later he gets stomped by mid tier competitors.

The point is, competitive games evolve and that’s what makes them competitively viable. We could have easily written Melee off before ever discovering the wonders of wavedashing and shine spiking. Give this game some time to evolve and let the community find new, exciting, more effective techniques. Only then can we know how it will turn out.

Maybe it’s a flop, but maybe it turns out to be an incredible fighting game. We’ll only know for sure if we give it a shot.

 

[R208]

After putting in 100+ hours into this game, and coming from well over a decade of both Smash and traditional fighters: I do not think that this game lacks any quality that is required to be a solid competitive fighting game, and that putting 4+ years into this game is a very safe bet. Though there are flaws in the game, they are not severe enough, or plentiful enough, to make me question the competitive quality of the game.

 

[Browny]

Mashing out of Ridleys grab, only to fall out of it the instant you get to the ledge and just before he throws you and the game makes you buffer a directional airdodge because that was the last thing you pressed and dying for it really made my mind up on how horrible the buffering is in this game.

If the only way it gets removed is by having some top player SD their last stock in grand finals of a major, then so be it. Something needs to happen to fix it.

In the meantime, characters constantly facing backwards after being hit is getting incredibly frustrating. The absolute worst is when you are facing towards an opponent who hits you with a jab flurry but you manage to DI out and shield the last hits, where you are now facing backwards and it completely messes up your punish. I use Incineroar and use his upb super armour if I predict a multi hit aerial approach to just go right through it. Its absolutely stupid that if I get hit in the armour, it makes me change direction. You can counter it by always holding the direction you want to go but there are many times I've missed an easy punish or straight up died because my character was facing backwards.

 

[meleebrawler]

Mashing out of Ridleys grab, only to fall out of it the instant you get to the ledge and just before he throws you and the game makes you buffer a directional airdodge because that was the last thing you pressed and dying for it really made my mind up on how horrible the buffering is in this game.

If the only way it gets removed is by having some top player SD their last stock in grand finals of a major, then so be it. Something needs to happen to fix it.

In the meantime, characters constantly facing backwards after being hit is getting incredibly frustrating. The absolute worst is when you are facing towards an opponent who hits you with a jab flurry but you manage to DI out and shield the last hits, where you are now facing backwards and it completely messes up your punish. I use Incineroar and use his upb super armour if I predict a multi hit aerial approach to just go right through it. Its absolutely stupid that if I get hit in the armour, it makes me change direction. You can counter it by always holding the direction you want to go but there are many times I've missed an easy punish or straight up died because my character was facing backwards.

Who the heck pushes shoulder buttons for mashing?

 

[Rocketjay8]

Mashing out of Ridleys grab, only to fall out of it the instant you get to the ledge and just before he throws you and the game makes you buffer a directional airdodge because that was the last thing you pressed and dying for it really made my mind up on how horrible the buffering is in this game.

If the only way it gets removed is by having some top player SD their last stock in grand finals of a major, then so be it. Something needs to happen to fix it.

In the meantime, characters constantly facing backwards after being hit is getting incredibly frustrating. The absolute worst is when you are facing towards an opponent who hits you with a jab flurry but you manage to DI out and shield the last hits, where you are now facing backwards and it completely messes up your punish. I use Incineroar and use his upb super armour if I predict a multi hit aerial approach to just go right through it. Its absolutely stupid that if I get hit in the armour, it makes me change direction. You can counter it by always holding the direction you want to go but there are many times I've missed an easy punish or straight up died because my character was facing backwards.

Just rotate the control stick man. It's less risky than pressing buttons.

 

[Nobie]

The directional air dodge system as it exists in Ultimate gives more freedom for the person in disadvantage, but fewer opportunities to use it

Remember, characters only get one air dodge before getting hit or landing, which means that if someone is falling and hasn't used their air dodge, there's a chance they're going to. It's a matter of predicting which way they want to go and intercepting, while also having more options available to the character below. An advantage state is not just about how big a combo you can land, it's about being in a better position to keep the opponent on the back foot.

Think about counter moves like Marth's or Bayonetta's: the common weakness of all counters are grabs and DOING NOTHING. If a Roy anticipates an attack and tries to down b, but you predicted he would try to counter and didn't throw out an attack, he's now a sitting duck waiting to be punished.

In that Marth vs Pichu clip, if the Marth waited just a hair and Pichu air dodged down, he could have easily gotten a grab or whatever and sent Pichu flying back up.

Smash players have a bad habit of wanting to hit as many buttons as possible, which is partly why Bayo was such a menace in Smash 4. Sometimes the answer is simply.."wait." Just because you're not extending your combo doesn't mean you're not winning.

 

[LightLV]

But even if offense and mobility are strong on the ground, landing characters put you into awkward situations. As seen in the clip, if you stay on the ground and attack, the opponent can just air dodge and punish you for it. If you shield and wait to bait it, you leave yourself vulnerable to shield pressure if they attack instead. And if you short hop attack, you could end up vulnerable in the air above them. These situations don't really happen as often with rolls or spot dodges because they are hindered by ending lag for the former and lack of mobility and short duration for the latter, but with landing air dodges, you can have a fast landing with long invincibility used to punish attacks.

Nah. This is not an issue in this game.

That video was a situation where Lucina tried to do 2 up-tilts where only 1 could connect and she got punished for it. It's no different from someone trying to meaty incorrectly on wakeup in a fighting game and just getting punished when they stand up.

That Lucina could have simply read the airdodge and charged a smash attack. Or shielded and delayed that uptilt. Or did a falling upair.

However, Pichu's only options in that situation was a) throw out an attack (and get hit by Uptilt) or b) airdodge and hope to get away with it.

Airdodging was the best option because there was a CHANCE he'd get away with it, but in reality it was honestly the worst option because if the Lucina read the airdodge then he could have gotten hit by something way worse.

95% of the time in this game, if someone is UNDER YOU and throwing out an attack, you are at a serious disadvantage.

Edit:

Actually pichu MIGHT have had another option that was probably better -- to jump away. But in this case he's still in the air and Lucina still recovers first, and Lucina still has a sword, so....

 

[T-Donor66]

I don't find the input delay to be anymore noticeable than sm4sh, which I also found unnoticeable.

I don't know what you're talking about with combos being limited. The balloon knockback is for attacks that would launch you too far to follow up upon even if it was normal knockback. The 2 changes that do remove some combos are footstools being techable and not being forced into neutral getup when you're jab locked, and even if I disagree with them they are understandable since they allowed a bunch of 0-deaths and infinites. If anything I'd expect there to be more combos than sm4sh, not including including footstool combos, because of the universal landing lag, mobility, and jumpsquat buffs.

Maybe this video will restore your faith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBHMgR0v06A&app=desktop

I don't appreciate the new buffering system either, but maybe I won't mind after I've played more and built some new muscle memory. We'll see.

Same, this guy has a history of being incredibly ocd about input lag no one else is experiencing. He needs to get over it. Its like 2-3 frames more than smash 4 lol.

 

[Diddy Kong]

Thats because diddy is high tier, lmao; of course you wouldnt struggle against an ike 2.0. compared to someone who uses hmm, i dunno, NESS.......

Sorry, late reply. As Ness, you can still beat Chrom easily. Just don't allow his quick aerial attacks to oppress you. Catch him with PK Fire, follow up with F Air barrages, hit from a distance with PK Thunder. Don't challenge his attacks, punish his mistakes, and keep your distance. I think you'll be fine if you do that.

 

[Augi]

Jeez, what a controversial topic, and at the risk of getting sucked into the argument, for me, Brawl was bad. Nothing more unfun than hitting a character into the air and waiting an eternity for them to float back into fighting distance; giving them ample time to see what you're about to follow up with and get around it. It's slow and boring.

Ultimates not as fast as Melee, but its probably enough for most. Hell, Im still adjusting to the new air/fall speeds and getting the perfect spacing for followup attacks. My contention with the game is how easy it is for players to slip out of a disadvantaged state, but maybe it'll be easier to keep it going with time. That said, I think the game has a fine competitive scene ahead of it. And who knows how future updates and DLC characters will change the meta, or even the mechanics/physics of the game.

As for Chrom? Pfft. Some of you people talk like he's some invincible ball of unfairness. Like everyone else, he has weaknesses and bad matchups and ultimately is dependent on the skill level of the player. "He has no weaknesses!". Laughable. You think even a quarter of the fighters in this game have come the slightest bit close to being mastered yet? For all we know Incineroar, Zelda, or Isabelle beat the pants off of Chrom as long as you do X, Y, Z against him.

Get over it.

 

[PreAlpha0]

Nah. This is not an issue in this game.

That video was a situation where Lucina tried to do 2 up-tilts where only 1 could connect and she got punished for it. It's no different from someone trying to meaty incorrectly on wakeup in a fighting game and just getting punished when they stand up.

That Lucina could have simply read the airdodge and charged a smash attack. Or shielded and delayed that uptilt. Or did a falling upair.

I've tried using falling aerials against landing opponents, but if they air dodge, they usually recover first and put me in disadvantage, whether or not I fast fall.

 

[Deleted member]

Jeez, what a controversial topic, and at the risk of getting sucked into the argument, for me, Brawl was bad. Nothing more unfun than hitting a character into the air and waiting an eternity for them to float back into fighting distance; giving them ample time to see what you're about to follow up with and get around it. It's slow and boring.

Ultimates not as fast as Melee, but its probably enough for most. Hell, Im still adjusting to the new air/fall speeds and getting the perfect spacing for followup attacks. My contention with the game is how easy it is for players to slip out of a disadvantaged state, but maybe it'll be easier to keep it going with time. That said, I think the game has a fine competitive scene ahead of it. And who knows how future updates and DLC characters will change the meta, or even the mechanics/physics of the game.

As for Chrom? Pfft. Some of you people talk like he's some invincible ball of unfairness. Like everyone else, he has weaknesses and bad matchups and ultimately is dependent on the skill level of the player. "He has no weaknesses!". Laughable. You think even a quarter of the fighters in this game have come the slightest bit close to being mastered yet? For all we know Incineroar, Zelda, or Isabelle beat the pants off of Chrom as long as you do X, Y, Z against him.

Get over it.

It's funny because Chrom literally has a major obvious weakness. His recovery is balls

 

[KACHOW!!!]

I totally disagree with everyone who says 'competitive viability is meaningless' because if your goal is to play the game, enjoy the game, and maybe learn about and improve at the game for years to come, then competitive viability is a fundamental requirement of having a living, breathing community of people to play with. Without community it will just be other people you can play with online, until nintendo shuts down the servers, and then you'll have put in all this work for basically nothing.

Yes, I would agree with those of you who pointed out the OP might not be a diehard competitive player, but I would argue that a healthy community of people to play the game with in person is even more important for a more casual tournament player than a more diehard competitive player. That's because a casual competitive player won't have the opportunity or motivation to drive hours and hours to play with someone in person (which the best way to play any smash game: sitting 5 feet from your opponent).

Furthermore, I put a lot of hours into Project Melee, and while there's still people playing the game, there have been many scares throughout the existence of the game that made everyone think Nintendo was going to ban streaming rights on all platforms, which would basically kill the whole community, therefore people's incentive to keep playing the game at a top level would go away, new tech which trickles down from the top to the more inexperienced players stops happening, and the whole experience of every player who's ever tried to actually improve at the game cheapens. You could say "wow, that's all a bit extreme", but it's true: when the competitive scene of the game suffers, every player who's willing to look up new tech and actually try to learn the game suffers, because it becomes harder to get information out there and to have a good community. Basically the game gets played less frequently, and the skill level of most players becomes handicapped.

 

[LucasTizma]

Thanks, everyone, for the thoughtful replies. I honestly expected to be torn to shreds one way or another, and I didn’t properly explain my concerns (bad day when I posted.)

This summarizes my extreme frustration:

Input lag? Adapt it. My way of thinking of how to go around about it is to (maybe?) predict what your opponent is going to do (as we do in other smash games) extra early and buffer your move ASAP. Trust me, I feel your pain as I've been playing against a casual friend (i came from a melee background) and I can predict 80% of what he's about to do but couldn't punish him because of my timing :/

Input lag is what it is. Honestly I adapt to it fine, as the added delay online with Smash 4 didn’t prevent me from playing over 10,000 matches and mostly feeling things were fine.

The buffering mechanics are what are ruining my life, probably combined with the input lag. Because of these two, like you said, I have to predict and can rarely actually react. For the first time playing a game, I was getting physically exhausted after an hour of intense competitive play, because my hand was hurting so much from slamming inputs way sooner than I should have to. Inevitably, many of them would be invalidated by getting hit, so I’d need to buffer a bunch more.

Once I’m done with all the single player content I fully intend to just live in training mode practicing movement until I can get the hang of it.

Even still, my conclusion is that Ultimate is ALL about prediction, and reaction is rarely possible. In my most flustered instances, I find myself constantly one move behind because I try to react to the current one, but by that time, it no longer matters.

Any general advice for how to mentally shift out of reactionary play? I’m not saying I’m incapable of reading and predicting, but sometimes my head gets stuck in reacting to what just happened.

 

[LucasTizma]

Smash players have a bad habit of wanting to hit as many buttons as possible, which is partly why Bayo was such a menace in Smash 4. Sometimes the answer is simply.."wait." Just because you're not extending your combo doesn't mean you're not winning.

This is very true. Often when an opponent is on the ledge, I’m standing there just outside of getup attack range, waiting. Usually, I end up doing better than when I’m running and jumping around (not to say that there’s anything wrong with doing that).