So, here's a question, Mewtwo fans:
Do you think SSB4 has enough competitive merit? If you're a Melee/PM player like me, can you play without the advanced techs and such? Or do you think it will fare like how Brawl did? Personally I love it and intend on saving up to attend nationals for it, but the community is giving it a lot of hate for not being competitive enough.
First, let me just say that I love all the games in the series. Melee was definently the most competitive, Brawl was definently the most casual, and SSB64 and SSB4 are definently the middlegrounds. I play all of the games semi-casually. I like having some, but not all, of the items on, and I like playing on a variety of stages, but not totally disruptive ones. I also find I'm one of the few people who play Smash that actually like Final Smashes. They're part of a character's moveset, and they're tons of fun to use.
That aside, and excuse my French, **** all the dip****s who only play Melee and berate every other game in the series. If you only like Melee, that's 100% fine by me. But when rip other games in the series to shreds for not being like Melee, that's when we have a problem. Melee was NOT perfect. It still had issues that needed to be addressed. I loved every game in the series immensely, but they all had flaws. If you ask me, 64 was the closes to perfect in the series up until SSB4. 64 seemed like the middlegrounds to me. It wasn't all casual, and it wasn't all competitive. Not that Melee and Brawl were all of one thing, but 64 came the closest to middle up until 4. 4, is, in my opinion, the most perfect game in the entire series, with 64 at a
very close second. It still has issues, definently, but I think it has the fewest.
64, while it lacked staple features such as Up and Down throws, Over Bs, and Air and Spot dodges, was well balanced throughout what it had. The biggest issue, if you ask me, were the crap recoveries. Pikachu, along with Kirby, to some extent, were the only characters in the game with decent recoveries, and that's part of why they're so top tier. Jigglypuff's was absolute bullcrap at that point, and the next best was Fox, and even his wasn't that good. If you ask me, the reason Samus is considered the worst character in the game was because her recovery was a Pichu-level joke. Anyway, getting past the recoveries, everything else was very well balanced, and while it lacked staple features, it was very near perfect. Sometimes, quality is more important that quantity.
4 is easily one most balanced games in the series, with it's only possible competition being 64. The recoveries seem to be well-balanced, unlike 64, and they did a good job of all-around balancing nearly everything else in the game. Prime example: Bowser. He was absolutely worthless before 4, and they buffed him to actually be viable. Heck, he won a few pre-release tournaments. Ganondorf, infamously the worst character in Brawl, seems to have been buffed to the point of being balanced. He's heavier than he was in Brawl, but now, in 4, he's an overall faster character. Warlock Punch and Flame Choke are now even more powerful, and Dark Dive was buffed so as to disallow characters from attacking Ganondorf as he released them. It's amazing what they did with the characters this time around, and its honestly the first time I've played a Smash game without being able to quickly point out a high-tier character or a low-tier character. And that's a great thing. Now, the game obviously has glaring issues. The biggest one is definently the removal of edgehogging. Massive mistake. It's one of the reason recoveries are so much better this time around. And while that change definently helps some characters, there were other ways to fix that problem. As I stated before, character recoveries seem much better this time around. This is in part to due to the new ledge mechanics, and they almost seem to be the opposite of Smash 64's. Instead of most of them being awful, most recoveries seem to be spectacular. This, in turn, makes the characters' survivability much higher, and it seems to draw out stock matches and cause lower scores in time matches. I can survive to much higher percentages, it seems, than in other iterations in the series. However, because most, if not all, characters have excellent recoveries, none of them are unbalanced in that area. It's Brawl- logic: If eveybody's OP, then nobody is. This does not alleviate the problem at all, and it remains Smash 4's glaring issue, but the fact that no characters are unbalanced because of it makes it more of a gameplay issue, which is less detrimental to competitive play than an unbalanced roster. The other problem Smash 4 has, of course, is the absence of L-Canceling, which was very important to competitive play due to its lag-reducing properties. It's one of the few cut features, along with edgehogging, that I believe should be reimplemented in order to remain competitively appealing while also staying casually appealing.
Brawl's and Melee's issue was simple: An unbalanced roster. Slower characters with crap recoveries were low tier, and quicker characters with superb recoveries were high tier. Granted, Brawl's roster was far more unbalanced than Melee's, having Gods like Meta Knight and nightmares like Ganondorf, but both of them them were pretty damn unbalanced, even with the two outliers of Pichu and Meta Knight removed.
Now, Melee, while having a more unbalanced roster than 4, does have faster gameplay and more hitstun, as well as lacking the extreme survivability of Smash 4. Of course, this is geared more toward a competitive community, but I would say, as a semi-casual player, that having a balanced roster would be more important than having faster gameplay, seeing as an unbalanced roster can have the potential to wreck the competitive scene, as Meta Knight proves, whereas slower gameplay would appear to be just a matter of adapting and getting used to the different speed.
And then, there's the Air Dodge mechanics and wavedashing. Whenever I have a conversation about Smash Bros., that's the one subject that never fails to come up. Yes, Melee's Air Dodge and the resulting wavedashes are geared for competitive players, but I wouldn't say that makes the current Air Dodge mechanics inferior because they're more casual. If you ask me, the current mechanics feel far more fluid and natural than Melee's. This is a bold statement, but I would say that if wavedashing had been removed when Sakurai noticed it, an uproar over the new Air Dodge mechanics would've been less that half of what it was. Wavedashing is an important aspect of Melee's competitive play, I understand that. But the fact that is a
glitch should probably tell Melee players that hate the other installments, "
Hey, maybe I should stop ******** about the new Air Dodge mechanics because wavedashing was a glitch, so even if Melee's mechanics were to return, which they probably won't because Nintendo clearly prefers the new ones, as Smash 4 showed with their reinclusion, wavedashing most likely wouldn't, which is a massive part of why I prefer Melee's mechanics." I don't have a problem with you preferring Melee's mechanics, but don't think that they're going to return when Nintendo's decided they like the current mechanics better, and at least think about how wavedashing returning, even in the event that Melee's mechanics were going to return, is incredibly unlikely because it is a
glitch. And ESPECIALLY don't crap all over other installments because of their exclusion of Melee's mechanics and, consequently, a
glitch. I have absolutely no problem with you preferring Melee's Air Dodge mechanics, but be sensible and be nice.
As to answer your question, yes, Smash 4 easily has enough competitive merit. Brawl could played competitively, and Smash 4 is basically the middlegrounds of competitive and casual play in the Smash series. Yeah, it's not as competitive as Melee, but it's not as casual as Brawl. People who keep expecting Nintendo to make another Melee are just setting themselves up for disappointment. If you prefer Melee, then we have zero problems. The problem is when you expect another Melee and get pissed when it doesn't happen. That's not how it works, so if you want to play a game as competitive as Melee, then play Melee. Don't expect another Melee, because, chances are, it's not going to happen, especially after Sakurai's recent interview, of which I agree with 100%. If they only make a competitive Smash, them its not going to be as popular and it's not going to sell well. People who only play Melee and tear up other games in the series need to realize that they are not the only ones that matter and that their are other ways to play Smash. If you only play competitive, that's great, but understand other people play Smash, too. I think Smash 4 has tons of competitive merit, especially because it's easier for beginners to pick up and play and learn the controls than a game like Melee. You can't grow a competitive community if beginners don't understand the game. And, you also have to consider the much more balanced roster than other games in the series, which is very important to competitive play, as a character that dominates the rest of the cast wrecks the competitive scene.
As a person who plays Project M and Melee, I actually find that I play Smash 4 better than other installments in the series, even without prominent features such as L-Canceling and wavedashing. I don't know if it's because the game is more casual, but I do know that I'm the best in Smash 4 relative to other games in the series, to answer your other question.
I'm sorry I'm so late replying and I'm sorry this post is so long, but I feel like this needed to be said.
it was censor dodging. didnt know that was against the rules. we got rid of it. >.<
