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At this point in the metagame, edge guarding is being reworked. In a few months, we'll see some amazing stuff with the new ledges.
People call it "aggressive", but really I see a lot of Fox or Falcon dittos dash-dancing back and forth across Dreamland 64 or Yoshi's Story. I'm not sure that constitutes aggressive. There's a lot of feinting that goes on, with dash-dancing and wavedashing instead of walking or standing idle to apply offensive pressure. That's the biggest difference between Melee and Smash 4. Melee you're constantly moving to look aggressive, just changing what animation your character is doing to make it look like you might be readying an attack. In Smash 4, when you have superior reach than your opponent your best option is often to walk at them and then either throw something suddenly, or wait for them to accidentally stand inside your reach or panic and throw an attack while you're still out of reach.
I think this is the only thing you've ever said that hasn't made me think you were a complete fool. This post is spot on.
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You hit the nail on the coffin. Even xD1x brought this up during his 24hr marathon that Melee can be campy at times. I remember there's a Melee match on youtube (I believe it was Mew2king vs Hungrybox, correct me if I'm wrong) and it was a campy match. It was still entertaining despite that. However, defensive play was overshadowed due to how aggressive and offensive the game was.
You're ALWAYS better off letting the other person make the first move in EVERY game. That includes Melee, Marvel, Skullgirls, whatever. That's how fighting games work, dude. In fact they have to work this way for there to be any competitive depth whatsoever.
There is a form of this in Smash 4 but due to the 3DS being a 3DS it's not easy to pull off and might break and pad.
Now's the part of the discussion where we get into dithering about definitions of words. Melee rewarded you for taking the initiative, this game doesn't. Whether you want to label taking the initiative as defensive or aggressive, it doesn't really matter. The strategies that work the best in this game are camping and turtling, with poking back and forth. You can say, as you do, that all competitive fighters are defensive, but look at high level matches in this game compared to Melee and tell me that they are exactly the same in the manner that they are defensive. You really can't do that.
No, he can't do that. But is that a problem? Not really. Take a look at the grand finals for Street Fighter IV at Evo this year. Smash players have no idea what real turtling and defensive play looks like. It's not like there's anything wrong with it either. Some earlier Street Fighter games are considerably more aggressive, but do you see the Street Fighter community as a whole getting angry whenever it's not exactly like the past games? No, they just take it for what it is: a different experience. Smash 4 is conducive to more traditional fighting game rationality. What works as general strategies in Street Fighter and Blazblue tends to work in Smash 4: playing reactively and waiting for, and baiting out, an opening. For some reason, a lot of people here have a problem with this gamestyle and I don't really get it. It's not even overly defensive.
It's just not exciting to play at a high level, is the problem. You have mechanics like wavedashing and L-cancelling that you can define as defensive techniques, but they move the game forward and reward you for approaching. It's really not going to give anyone who doesn't care for this style of poke and run gameplay any comfort to know, well now it's like other fighting games! If people wanted to play other fighting games, they would. They expect something different in Smash Bros.
They aren't really different in concept, how they are performed is but a lot of that has to do with how Melee favors constant movement over using a Shield.
Well that last point you said is a fair one for sure. But I disagree that watching high level defensive play is not exciting. I go to events like Evo pretty regularly, and I can tell you for sure that people were just as if not more hyped during the SFIV finals as they were during the Melee ones. Plenty of people enjoy both types. Conceptually very similar things are happenings: players are making choices and changing decisions as they watch what their opponent does, and push punishes to their absolute maximum. The excitement factor partly depends on the audiences level of understanding of what's going on. A lot of the FGC doesn't really "'get" Melee so they can't really get into it (and a lot of Melee fans don't "get" things like SF or other fighting games). I think Smash 4 is a chance to get other people in the community involved because it's visually more similar when you're watching.
This is... really not anywhere close to true. In the classic example, Chess, there is a clear and established advantage to going first. I think that just blew apart your entire opening sentence, but anyway.
Chess is completely different from a fighting game. I thought it was pretty obvious from his post that he was talking about fighting games in particular. He has a point. In the design of a fighting game there is very, very rarely a situation in which an opponents action cannot be countered by some other action. Attack can be blocked, you can hit someone out of a grab animation, etc. Given that, if you were a robot, the best action would always be to wait for your opponent to make a decision, because there is always a correct reaction to any action taken by an opponent. On the other side, whenever you take an action you are committed to it, and therefore cannot act until after your attack or whatever has finished, putting you at the whims of the other players reaction.
Please don't reference Chess as a counterpoint. It's turn based over both players having an equal chance to move. If White plays perfectly they will win by 1 move where as black os 1 move short of pulling of a checkmate themselves.
You talking Louffy vs Bounban or whatever his name is?
It's really not the same even in concept. Watch a high level game of Melee and then one of Brawl. You'll notice a lot more grab ass in Brawl. What people mean by defensive gameplay is one that is plagued by constant airdodging out of attacks, rolls, poking and running... it's a matter of taste but in my view that's not exciting at all, and it's not rewarding to play. It tests your patience, sure, but I don't think a player should be punished for just not being able to tolerate the constant turtling. The feeling you get when you play Brawl, and this game, is that you have to just sit and wait for a momentary lapse and then prod in and quickly leave, because if you follow up you're going to get creamed... it's dull. Call it defensive play or not, what people mean by defensive is that the options for protecting yourself far outweigh the options for attacking. And that's the way this game is looking so far. It's just dull. That's why you see Melee at Evo after a decade and Brawl is in the mortuary. This game is taking more after Brawl than Melee. The one area that it doesn't, the ledge game, it is universally accepted as something that improves the gameplay, and what do you know, it also is generally acknowledge to make the game more competitive-friendly. Maybe take a note Sakurai?
Air dodging got nerfed from Brawl a lot. Rolling is far scarier on Smash 4 than an airdodge, and even then if you ever learned how to punish a roll happy Lucario in brawl you can do the same here.
Try captain falcon if thats how you feel. He's probably going to be better in wii u, because a gamecube controller or something better than the 3ds is basically required to play C.Fal correctly (the circle pad on 3ds is too hard to properly grip for correct c fal technique). He's probably still the 2nd fastest character in the game (maybe 3rd if you're counting shulk's speed variant), and although he has no projectiles, he's got the most aggressive playstyle of any character.
If we're talking about hypothetical perfect play, there's really no such thing as "waiting" to make a decision. Both players are making decisions every single frame. If port priority didn't exist, then it would still be a draw either way regardless of if you're attacking or defending, so there's no inherent bias to either side. Considering port priority, Port 1 would eventually win but exactly how the match would play out is a whole other discussion.
Well of course. You can assert control over the match either way. That's what I'm saying; there's no inherent bias to either side, it depends on how the game is balanced. Bear here in mind here I have no issue with forcing people to approach. I do play Sheik after all, lol. What gets annoying is when both player's defense is so powerful and offense is so useless that neither of them can force an approach, and no one does anything.
its because brawl is the worst smash game of them all just because how it favors the campy/gimmicky characters way too much, the ridiculous chain grabs,metaknight, etc.. they are not gonna have smash64 there so you are left with melee. melee is still a flawed game that relied on a glitch that wasnt meant to be in the game for people to exploit. playing on a 3ds and a controller is gonna feel like 2 different experiences. this game is barely over a week old. people need to get use to a new game and new mechanics. like actually play the game for a while instead of expecting it to come natural to them.