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- Mar 16, 2001
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What makes a character honest?
In short: Perceived overall fairness. The general impression that YOU feel, whereby losses to a given character feel truly deserved. This impression is generally influenced by the following criteria:
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With all these factors in mind, I personally think that the most honest character in the game would probably be Captain Falcon. Though as I've already mentioned, fairness is ultimately based on perception and is therefore fairly subjective.
In short: Perceived overall fairness. The general impression that YOU feel, whereby losses to a given character feel truly deserved. This impression is generally influenced by the following criteria:
- Risk/Reward Balance. Characters that have moves that are low risk, but high reward are considered dishonest. For example, Witch Time in Smash 4 had almost no risk, but in many situations could guarantee a stock.
- Cheese. Moves that can gimp or kill at very early percentages are seen as cheesy and therefore dishonest. For example, Melee Ice Climber's wobbling. Or Smash 4 Bayo's 0-to-death ladder combos. Or even Fox's drag down f-air. And basically all low to no-risk suicide moves such as Bowsercide. Cheese doesn't necessarily have to be easy to execute, but ease-of-use or difficulty-of-escape does act as a cheese-value multiplier.
- Degeneracy. Tactics that force an opponent to adopt playstyles that are not fun to play or are non-standard. This is often (but not always) a subset of cheese. Tactics like camping at the edge and waiting for the opponent to approach so you can use a cheesy gimmick to finish them off in one move like Yoshi Egg Lay, Kirby/DDD inhale, DK offstage cargo throw, aetherspike and ganoncide. Or Wii Fit Trainer's entire ledgecamping shtick. Or King K. Rool's boring flowchart. Or the circle camping abilities of Melee Jigglypuff or Brawl Metaknight. It also includes campy playstyles in general, which means on a fundamental level, many projectile-based characters arguably have some automatic base level of degeneracy.
- [Nearly] Unbeatable Options. Some moves or tools are so powerful that they are either unbeatable, or sure feel like it. For example, Smash 4 Bayonetta had a recovery that allowed her to return from deep off-stage, with a relatively small window of vulnerability, and the ability to counter-gimp attackers or escort them to the blast zone. Many characters had little or no answer at all to it.
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With all these factors in mind, I personally think that the most honest character in the game would probably be Captain Falcon. Though as I've already mentioned, fairness is ultimately based on perception and is therefore fairly subjective.
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