Does SSB Cater more To us or casuals?

[SmasherZ]

I Like to think its dedicated to us cores, but part of me feels its not the case. what do you think? and what are your opinions on this?

 

[GSM_Dren]

Don't quote me on this, but Sakurai has stated time and time again that it isn't his intention for the Smash series to be taken seriously as a competitive game, but more to be taken as a party game. That doesn't stop the smash community (namely competitive players) to break the mold set by Sakurai and create our own rules to play with (stock count/time/no items etc.).

He has invested a lot of time and effort into the Smash series, so we should respect his ideas for it. So yes, the game caters to casuals and that's fine. We play our own way and casual players will play their way. It should not matter who is right in how to play. For players like us who come to Smashboards, we look for competition and advice to take ourselves to the next level.

 

[Teh Sandwich]

@gsm, that was brawl. Sakuai wants sm4sh to be competitive. However, he will not make any changes that will hinder casual play as well. Seems like he is trying to keep everyone happy, which is a very hard task.

 

[Deleted member 269706]

I think it was made to impress the people who will buy it. At the end of the day, from Sakurai's standpoint, this is a product of business, and the core idea behind business is to make money. His goal isn't to make it seem like it's directed toward anyone specifically, but anyone who wants it. That being said, he could very well implement things into the game that appeal towards comp players, but keep it simple enough for the casual crowd. You know how Sakurai's bias works, I wouldn't be surprised if this was directed more towards one crowd than the other.

 

[Boigahs]

It's catered to both. The whole point of Smash is that it can be played in as many ways as possible, including competitively. People like to pretend that Sakurai is some demon that is out to murder the competitive crowd, but that's simply not true. They have to make trophies, single player modes, tons of stages, and all kinds of stuff, and that putting effort into that means they aren't putting all of their effort into the competitive scene. It doesn't mean they hate the competitive scene, it just means they have a lot of other mouths to feed. If they really wanted to kill the competitive scene, they'd just remove stocks and item switches.
P.S. Brawl was very likely not meant to be as terrible as it is. He did simplify it in reaction to Melee, but it also went through years and years of development hell, and they eventually just gave up and released it after years of delays. A lot of the stuff in Brawl that makes it garbage was due to neglect, not because they actually wanted it that way.

 

[mimgrim]

Sakurai has stated his design goals quite clearly.

 

[TheHypnotoad]

Sakurai has stated his design goals quite clearly.

"Having everything be totally fair would boost the competitive aspect, but runs the chance of it no longer being about playing a game"

What the actual **** am I reading?

 

[Mobes]

"Having everything be totally fair would boost the competitive aspect, but runs the chance of it no longer being about playing a game"

What the actual **** am I reading?

That sounds like some bad translation.

 

[Nobie]

That sounds like some bad translation.

If I'm interpreting the mistranslation correctly (and this is just a guess really), I've seen a similar sentiment from other game designers before, including for competitive games. The idea is that if you try to make everything perfectly balanced so characters don't have distinct strengths and weaknesses, they'll all end up kind of bland and boring. Characters are interesting when they have ups and downs, and any engine will make certain play styles more competitively viable. Even then, some people will prefer to use a "lower tier" character if it gives them a chance to play the way they want to play.

I think you can see this philosophy at work with Lucario, for better or worse. Sakurai decided that Lucario's "aura" aspect wasn't prominent enough, so you can really see how important it is now. Extreme strength, extreme weakness. Same goes for Little Mac and Mega Man. Though there are more well-rounded characters, they're not the majority of the cast.

 

[B.A.M.]

lol not gonna lie i think its kinda hilarious most of the people in here are casuals claiming to be competitive. Why such a nitpick distinction?

 

[Muskrat Catcher]

I believe that this iteration of smash, while not as technical as melee, caters more to skilled, adamant players than casual players like brawl did. However, I think that it was made very clear that casual players would still have their spots in the game. We got for glory mode, and casuals got the haven of for fun mode. We got omega stages, and casuals got a lot more fun stages (seeing that there are not many competitively viable stages that aren't omega form). We got online tournaments (or will get soon hopefully), and casuals got 8 player local smash. Basically, this game allows you to enjoy all the randomness and insanity of brawl if you choose, but it certainly added many features that favored skilled, competitive players, and most of the casual additions seemed to be to balance out the competitive ones.

 

[Grass]

I feel like this thread should be in SSB4 general but whatevs.

As for the topic, Smash has always catered to the masses. Be they casual or competitive, you are free to play smash however you feel most prevalent. That's how it's always been, and that's how it will always be.

 

[LunarWingCloud]

@gsm, that was brawl. Sakuai wants sm4sh to be competitive. However, he will not make any changes that will hinder casual play as well. Seems like he is trying to keep everyone happy, which is a very hard task.

He never really said he wanted SSB4 to be competitive. He merely mentioned wanting to make SSB4 please as many people as possible, since he realized certain aspects of Brawl were not positively received by the players and aimed to fix that. But I don't recall him ever saying he wanted 4 to be competitive, just that he wanted it to please as many players as possible. Hence all the different core modes. He's trying to keep everyone happy, yes, and it is a very hard task indeed.

 

[Octagon]

I feel it caters perfectly to both, thats the beauty of Smash, but Smash 4 blends the too better than previous installments

 

[micstar615]

I personally feel sm4sh is an attempt to find a middle ground between casual and competitve. For glory and for fun demonstrate this. However, I feel For Glory and some other design choices show that Sakurai and his team may not know too much about what the competitve community really wants, that's definitely the case if he thinks FD is the main stage matches take place. I hope nintendo/Sakurai take the time to learn more about the competitve community because while I believe sm4sh is an attempt to cater to both, it swings a bit more towards the casual side. Luckily there's a lot of good competitive aspects to the game, I just wish certain things that casuals and competitive players enjoy (like custom moves and certain equipment) weren't implemented so poorly.

 

[Raijinken]

It caters to everyone, as it should.

 

[DEEK4Y]

. . . However, I feel For Glory and some other design choices show that Sakurai and his team may not know too much about what the competitve community really wants, that's definitely the case if he thinks FD is the main stage matches take place. . . .

Depends on which competitive community you're referencing. I'm not sure what the situation is currently but I know the Japanese competitive melee scene only played FD for a very long time.

 

[Ultrashroomz]

I'd say both, but Sakurai has stated that the games weren't meant to be taken so seriously.

 

[micstar615]

Depends on which competitive community you're referencing. I'm not sure what the situation is currently but I know the Japanese competitive melee scene only played FD for a very long time.

Well the competitive community is diverse but it's fair to say that for the most part FD only isn't representative of what the whole community would've wanted.

 

[DEEK4Y]

Well the competitive community is diverse but it's fair to say that for the most part FD only isn't representative of what the whole community would've wanted.

Yes, the diversity within the community is incredibly apparent and that's what I was attempting to point out. Certain segments have their respective maps/rulesets and they can vary immensely between each group (e.g., the Japanese playing only FD while the rest of the world had a longer list). Attempting to please the entire community with their vastly different rulesets is an extremely difficult task. The way I see it, there were (likely) two options for stage selection when the dev team was designing FG. Option 1: have a neutral version of every stage; option 2: attempt to predict what stages the community will deem illegal and select stages accordingly. Both options have their pros and cons but, from a risk mitigation standpoint, designing a neutral option for each stage is a far safer choice than predicting the competitive community's determinations as you run the risk of being wildly incorrect.

Ultimately, it is unfair to assume the community was neglected when designing FG because there are a lot of factors to take into consideration.

 

[micstar615]

Yes, the diversity within the community is incredibly apparent and that's what I was attempting to point out. Certain segments have their respective maps/rulesets and they can vary immensely between each group (e.g., the Japanese playing only FD while the rest of the world had a longer list). Attempting to please the entire community with their vastly different rulesets is an extremely difficult task. The way I see it, there were (likely) two options for stage selection when the dev team was designing FG. Option 1: have a neutral version of every stage; option 2: attempt to predict what stages the community will deem illegal and select stages accordingly. Both options have their pros and cons but, from a risk mitigation standpoint, designing a neutral option for each stage is a far safer choice than predicting the competitive community's determinations as you run the risk of being wildly incorrect. I will concede that steps could have been taken to make option 2 more viable but we'd have to look at the issue from an organizational resource availability standpoint in that scenario.

Ultimately, it is unfair to assume the community was neglected when designing FG because there are a lot of factors to take into consideration.

No, I definitely agree but I didn't say the competitive community was neglected, I feel it's moreso that Sakurai attempted to find a middle ground but may have missed that mark by a margin for a portion of the community. It is definitely difficult to please everyone so I don't truly think any single smash "caters to everyone."

 

[Roukiske]

The game is catered to casual players, but they have attempted balance and included features for the competitive players.

 

[Mobes]

For the people that say it's catering to casuals: If Smash didn't have any intention of being designed to allow "fair" (to the extent that there's not constantly random variables that you can't manipulate) competitive play, would a competitive community around Smash ever exist to this extent?

 

[Roukiske]

For the people that say it's catering to casuals: If Smash didn't have any intention of being designed to allow "fair" (to the extent that there's not constantly random variables that you can't manipulate) competitive play, would a competitive community around Smash ever exist to this extent?

A good question.

As long as nothing is extremely broken to the extent that it turns off those who want to play competitive, then it doesn't matter who it was catered to. If it has competitive elements then people will play it competitively. These elements can be both intentional and unintentional.

 

[T0MMY]

Don't quote me on this, but Sakurai has stated time and time again that it isn't his intention for the Smash series to be taken seriously as a competitive game, but more to be taken as a party game.

I quoted you on it.
Caught ya playing the "Sakurai said" game, haha (Source or it didn't happen).