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Pre-Release Dead thread

Do you think the top KO consistency has a future?

  • Yes

    Votes: 4 44.4%
  • No

    Votes: 5 55.6%

  • Total voters
    9
  • Poll closed .

Thinkaman

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I can't help but think that you have a lot of emotion about an obscure nuance that virtually never matters.

I'd bet good money that not a single bracket match of all of Super Smash Con this weekend will have its outcome affected by this.
 

Frihetsanka

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It does matter for Jigglypuff, the difference between getting a Star KO and a Blast KO can be the difference between surviving after a Rest and getting punished with a Smash attack. For most other characters, it usually never matters much at all (in some cases it can be the difference between fully charging an ability and not doing it, and in rare cases it can lose you game when you get an unlucky Star KO when you're falling to your death).

With that being said, I agree with Thinkaman that you seem to be putting a disproportionate amount of focus on this topic. I'm guessing this is a pet peeve of yours?

As for mods, I'm not 100% sure about how Switch modding works but from what I've gathered Nintendo are banning a lot more Switches than they did Wii Us. This could discourage Smash modding, since many people would be unwilling to risk an online ban just to mod Smash. I don't think Smash Ultimate modding will be nearly as prevalent as Smash Wii U or Smash Brawl modding for this reason (unless hackers either find a way to safeguard against bans or Nintendo stops banning as much).
 

William5000000

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It does matter for Jigglypuff, the difference between getting a Star KO and a Blast KO can be the difference between surviving after a Rest and getting punished with a Smash attack. For most other characters, it usually never matters much at all (in some cases it can be the difference between fully charging an ability and not doing it, and in rare cases it can lose you game when you get an unlucky Star KO when you're falling to your death).

With that being said, I agree with Thinkaman that you seem to be putting a disproportionate amount of focus on this topic. I'm guessing this is a pet peeve of yours?

As for mods, I'm not 100% sure about how Switch modding works but from what I've gathered Nintendo are banning a lot more Switches than they did Wii Us. This could discourage Smash modding, since many people would be unwilling to risk an online ban just to mod Smash. I don't think Smash Ultimate modding will be nearly as prevalent as Smash Wii U or Smash Brawl modding for this reason (unless hackers either find a way to safeguard against bans or Nintendo stops banning as much).
Actually, from what I've seen so far, people have lost to unfair top KOs more times than anyone could have imagined.

Here is a video link to what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMIMSRsxfSE ~ Go to 2:09-5:07

If you look at the comments below, you will see them mentioning the top KO consistency.

----------

Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. Since "Smash 64", I have loved getting Star KOs every chance I got, whether it's casual or not, and it was satisfying every time that happened. Now, it's no longer satisfying because of the cruddy upper Blast KOs. And call me crazy, but that's actually one of the reasons why I didn't watch many videos of "Smash 4" and still don't watch many videos of them up to this day, not even "Smash Ultimate". Yep, it bothers me that much. Sorry if this offends anyone, but I had to get that off of my chest.

I'm focusing on this topic because it seems like nobody else has the guts to do so. I know they have problems with the top KOs too. Someone has to do it. I just got a comment about the top KO situation on my other thread.

----------

Hope the mods won't be too much of a problem in the future then.
 
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Amazing Ampharos

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I once lost a Brawl tournament match this way, granted just a local. It was my G&W vs a Diddy Kong on I think Pokemon Stadium (might have been PS2; we are midwest!). I was pretty much losing, down about 40% on last stock, and time was about to run out. However, I made a super hard read and just charged right at him and usmashed right as he jumped, hit, and killed. However, I got a star KO instead of a screen splat, and since star KOs had longer animations than screen splats in that game, time ended frames from his death resulting in my loss by rule.

In smash 4, this was fixed. You always get an instant death off the top if you would die a top KO in the last 5 seconds or whatever. My bad RNG case, by far the most likely reason to get screwed by top KO RNG, was fixed in smash 4 which definitely means in terms of RNG upper blast zones smash 4 is ahead of both Melee and Brawl. I believe smash 4 also made star KOs and screen splats take the same amount of time? I'm not super sure on that honestly; I'm pretty sure it's closer than it was in Brawl in any case where splats were clearly and distinctly slower.

What does exist in Smash 4 is that you can randomly die instantly or get a star KO or screen splat when time is not close to running out and you would otherwise die off the top though I believe it's not quite "pure" random (I think the probabilities are influenced based on your speed when you die, but I'm not 100% sure since I haven't done real science on it). However, it can only matter in two situations:

You did a suicidal attack off-stage and got a KO specifically when both you and your opponent were on the last stock and the timing of who dies first is really important.

You are specifically Jigglypuff and landed a kill against an opponent who had multiple stocks left with Rest and need your opponent to be occupied for as much time as possible so you don't get punished.

The former is so hilariously obscure that is really doesn't matter like... at all. Jumping off stage and risking it all on one last chance to score a KO knowing you're dead after the next attack either way is something that happens in like 0.01% of matches which honestly even then is probably overstating it. I'm not saying it has never happened before, but if you've personally seen (as in watched live, not seen a video after the fact picked out to demonstrate) this happen more than once I'd be completely shocked. Smash Ultimate is known to address same frame grabs, a problem that also almost never comes up, but is very literally one million times more prevalent than this.

The latter is kinda a character specific flaw. It does really matter for the utility of Rest on Jigglypuff which is overall still not really a good move either way (it was also a bad move in Brawl). Jigglypuff in general is poorly tuned and one of the worst characters in the game in Smash 4 so it mostly doesn't matter; she's going to be a bottom tier character as she's built in this game no matter what on this dynamic so she's only really used by people who don't consider character quality in their criteria for character selection. It's also not really a problem with the upper KO mechanics so much as a problem with the move itself. Probably if the move red sparks in a 1v1 match she should wake up right away, but even if she doesn't, it's not a huge deal since at worst it's like Judgment Hammer: a character specific gamble on hit move that can pay off big. At least Jigglypuff's version always does give you something real on hit with just random consequences, G&W's is unsafe on hit if you get a 1 and extremely unrewarding versus the difficulty to land it with any other number that is not 9...

The tl;dr is that there's minor polish that could be done here to improve some edge dynamics sure, but it's not a big deal and it would be actually insane to try to do a project to mod the game to address it. It's just... not that big of a deal.
 

Thinkaman

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Hope the mods won't be too much of a problem in the future then.
You're discussing the mechanics of the game, which is absolutely fine.

Even if I admittedly think the magnitude of your concern is a little silly, that's just my opinion and I hope you don't take it as some sort of authoritative disapproval. I'll work to make sure posters here can have the discussions they want regardless of my own petty views.
 

AKC12

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I do think it's silly that these cases don't get reviewed when the game allows you to save replays and there are cases where this happened on stream. It rarely happens, so what's the harm in making sure a player never gets screwed over because of this?
 

William5000000

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I do think it's silly that these cases don't get reviewed when the game allows you to save replays and there are cases where this happened on stream. It rarely happens, so what's the harm in making sure a player never gets screwed over because of this?
Well, whatever the case may be for "Smash Ultimate", I just really hope the top KOs work like the previous 3 "Smash" games at least. "Smash 4" has left a very bad taste in my mouth with those cruddy upper Blast KOs, and I just didn't enjoy it at all. :(
 

TheTrueBrawler

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It's a small nuance. As much as I want it fixed, the logical side of me thinks upper blast line consistency has no future unless Nintendo decided to hear us out before the release of Smash Ultimate.
 

TheBuzzSaw

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Regardless of how people feel about this mechanic, it hurts my soul to see that people are immediately willing to alter the game to avoid something they don't like. We're bad enough for banning the majority of stages, disabling all items, and honing in on very specific settings. Do we really need to play a version of the game that is inaccessible to people unwilling to mod their system?

I used to firmly oppose any and all random aspects of the game in competitive settings, but I've warmed up to small bits of the game (such as this) forcing the player to weigh risks and sometimes roll the dice. Even though the way someone dies off the top is random, the circumstances leading up to that moment are not. It is not some random mechanic that abruptly inserts itself into the middle of gameplay. You don't like the dice roll? Don't kill off the top. What if the game chose the fast KO 100% of the time? Jigglypuff would simply be hosed all the time with regard to punishes. Maybe it should be seen as a good thing that Jiggypuff has a chance of surviving.
 
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Idon

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I agree with the sentiment that I'd appreciate if Jigglypuff wasn't randomly punched in the mouth for landing a high risk move or Cloud randomly charging his limit up to full after just using it to kill. They should just pick one and balance accordingly or make certain moves guaranteed to star-KO or normal kill KO.

However modding's a bad idea in general unless it's its entire point like in Project M. It's an added layer of complexity onto what is already an already complex competitive entry hurdle.

Let's just hope the way the game's meta develops, it won't be much of an issue, and that characters like Cloud and Jigglypuff's advantages and disadvantages respectively get evened out.
 

S_B

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I never understood why this became randomized. It basically means competitive JP players will never exist in Ultimate because they're going to get murdered even when they succeed in landing the rest...
 

Zapp Branniglenn

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The endlag of Rest has been improved by 20 frames in Ultimate. That's not quite how much I would have done to the move in order to fix this particular problem. Seems more likely done as a response to new knockback velocity. Since whether you kill or not with Rest, they're coming down faster in Ultimate.
 

Xebenkeck

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I just want all top kos to be star ko’s again like it was in 64 melee and brawl.

Even though its a small gameplay mechanic it was noticeably inconsistent in smash4.

And quite frankly just less fun, star ko’s have always been “entertaining.”
 

TheTrueBrawler

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I just want all top kos to be star ko’s again like it was in 64 melee and brawl.

Even though its a small gameplay mechanic it was noticeably inconsistent in smash4.

And quite frankly just less fun, star ko’s have always been “entertaining.”
You know those three games had Screen KOs too, right?
 

Xebenkeck

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You know those three games had Screen KOs too, right?
Yes I am aware, I consider screen splat KO’s and star KO’s similar. It would be ideal if their animations are the same lenghth of time

Its the instant upper blastzone ko’s that are new in smash 4 and are dumb.
 

TheTrueBrawler

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Yes I am aware, I consider screen splat KO’s and star KO’s similar. It would be ideal if their animations are the same lenghth of time

Its the instant upper blastzone ko’s that are new in smash 4 and are dumb.
Yeah, I kind of wish I could disable it too.
 
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