Hardest Characters to Play Debate

[TheCrimsonBlur]

How are they not connected?

They aren't connected at all. Like, not at all. I'll give you an example:

Character A:
has a OHKO move that covers the whole screen. The move lasts an entire minute and has no lag. To execute the move, all the character has to do is press A. This character has no other moves and cannot move at all (no dashing, nothing). All he can do is sit there and press A every minute.

Character B: is invincible as long as he presses B very rapidly (say, the speed it takes to do Doc's highest tornado). Can OHKO opponent on contact.

Which character is better? Character B. As long as character B manages to keep his invincibility up, he wins. Which is harder to play? Character B. Tier lists don't dictate how difficult a character is to play at their maximum potential. They dictate how difficult it is to win with a character at maximum potential (though we usually just try to limit it to human potential for practicality)

The above example illustrates how tech skill can make one character harder than another, but I could make the same example with other factors: timing windows, dependance on reflexes/prediction, active frames, etc.

I think it justifiies my ability to post my opinions on factoring in a character's options/lack of options when determining characetr difficulty.

Because what you're saying makes perfect sense if you are arguing about how hard it is to win with a character, not how hard it is to play a character.

Yes, I did. I suppose Wobbles is an exception... but I guess you aren't.

Yeah dude more buttons. Thats what I've been saying this whole time. Buttons buttons buttons.

 

[Beat!]

I've already tried explaining that. He'll just say it doesn't make sense, without actually backing it up.

/leaves again

 

[adechrist]

Character A:
has a OHKO move that covers the whole screen. The move lasts an entire minute and has no lag. To execute the move, all the character has to do is press A. This character has no other moves and cannot move at all (no dashing, nothing). All he can do is sit there and press A every minute.

Character B: is invincible as long as he presses B very rapidly (say, the speed it takes to do Doc's highest tornado). Can OHKO opponent on contact.

Which character is better? Character B. As long as character B manages to keep his invincibility up, he wins. Which is harder to play? Character B.

I don't think this is a fair argument. You're talking about a character that has no limits, that at a high level of play will always win. This isn't smash. In smash, every attack is punishable, because every move has limited range, priority, speed, and power. Every character has limited movement and limited invincibility. You can never know exactly what your opponent is going to do, so nothing is ever guaranteed. That's why smash is so f*cking good. It's more about the players than it is the characters. So in theory, every character can beat any character, at least at human level of play. It's just harder for low tiers to do well than top tiers.

 

[I R MarF]

It's just harder for low tiers to do well than top tiers.

Holy ****. Basically my entire point summed up beautifully in one sentence.

Thank you adechrist

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

I've already tried explaining that. He'll just say it doesn't make sense, without actually backing it up.

/leaves again

Beatradamus

 

[Wobbles]

It's harder for them to do well. The question is "how hard is it to execute their given options?"

Pichu's game is extremely linear. He has no real advanced tricks to speak of, compared to things like aerial-shines, rapid DJC's, rapid float-cancels, or anything like that. Other crummy characters like Yoshi and M2 are both much more difficult because of the toolsets and attributes they possess, even though they are better characters.

Pichu's also a bad character. So if you REALLY wanted to beat somebody, you would have to outguess them every second of the match that you were playing as Pichu, in addition to playing your Pichu well.

Here is where your flaw in thinking is. You are confusing PLAYING AGAINST YOUR OPPONENT with PLAYING YOUR CHARACTER. Playing against your opponent involves reading them, baiting them, exploiting their habits and tendencies, and using NON-CHARACTER RELATED KNOWLEDGE to defeat them and create openings. Playing your character involves using moves at max range, timing them to give you optimal odds of beating your opponent's moves, using moves that give you the best advantage in a given situation, etc.

These are two different concepts, and if you ignore them you are missing out on the point of the thread. You are also missing out on a very important element of what it means to be good at this game.

*

Working off CrimsonBlur's extreme example, we'll use one that you are more likely to see in this game or games like it.

Move A lasts for eight frames. During its entirety, it has a range of X pixels. It also lacks a specific sweetspot, and instead the move is powerful for the whole duration.

Move B lasts for eight frames. At the start it has a range of Y pixels. Y is 10 fewer pixels than X (the range of move A). During frames 4, 5, and 6 it has a range of Z, which is five pixels larger than X. And on frame 5 it has a sweetspot where the damage is greater than X's, but for the rest of the move, it's weaker.

A is easier to use, without a doubt. In a majority of situations it outperforms B. It requires less specific timing to execute well. Yet B has larger range and damage POTENTIAL. B has higher reward for higher difficulty.

If you look at such a scenario being plausible, you have to acknowledge that it's possible for something to be both better AND harder to use effectively. And with a character being nothing more than the aggregate of their attributes and options, by extension you must acknowledge that it's possible for a character to be both better and harder to use effectively.

 

[Divinokage]

Lmao, I kinda liked the semi-callout in there.

 

[TheCrimsonBlur]

I liked the part where wobbles said exactly what I was trying to say but more eloquently and with a better example.

****ing ******* <3

 

[john!]

It's harder for them to do well. The question is "how hard is it to execute their given options?"

Pichu's game is extremely linear. He has no real advanced tricks to speak of, compared to things like aerial-shines, rapid DJC's, rapid float-cancels, or anything like that. Other crummy characters like Yoshi and M2 are both much more difficult because of the toolsets and attributes they possess, even though they are better characters.

Pichu's also a bad character. So if you REALLY wanted to beat somebody, you would have to outguess them every second of the match that you were playing as Pichu, in addition to playing your Pichu well.

Here is where your flaw in thinking is. You are confusing PLAYING AGAINST YOUR OPPONENT with PLAYING YOUR CHARACTER. Playing against your opponent involves reading them, baiting them, exploiting their habits and tendencies, and using NON-CHARACTER RELATED KNOWLEDGE to defeat them and create openings. Playing your character involves using moves at max range, timing them to give you optimal odds of beating your opponent's moves, using moves that give you the best advantage in a given situation, etc.

These are two different concepts, and if you ignore them you are missing out on the point of the thread. You are also missing out on a very important element of what it means to be good at this game.

but wouldn't a character that forced you to outplay your opponent extremely hard be "more difficult" than a character which did not require you to outplay your opponent at all? the need to outplay your opponent is a direct effect of your character choice, and should be treated as an aspect of the character itself.

suppose character A allowed you to take a stock with one punish, and character B allowed you to take a stock with 10 punishes. suppose that character A's punishment is twice as hard to execute. i believe that character B is intrinsically more difficult due to the higher requirements of taking a stock. according to your theory, character A is harder than character B just because the punishment is a bit more difficult.

 

[Varist]

john's still making sense wobbles. shed some light on this for us. sometimes playing character and playing opponent mixes in the tier meta? sometimes playing character and playing opponent mixes in the tier meta.

 

[Wobbles]

the need to outplay your opponent is a direct effect of your character choice, and should be treated as an aspect of the character itself.

Yeah. And that's how good the character is. And again, I am arguing that this is not relevant to how hard it is to use that character's options.

Okay then, take this for example. Player A is using a better character. In order to outplay Player B, however, he has to time all his moves extremely precisely. His character grants a better payoff in terms of spacing and power. But the timing windows are smaller and it's much harder to stay in that sweet spot than it is for character B.

It's easier for character B to win, yet A is the superior character.

Part of outplaying A will be tricking him into using his moves at the wrong time so you can invade that space and win. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how good you are at using B, but how good you are at tricking A. Assuming you can do this with character C, D, E, F, etc., then that's more indicative of how well you play against your opponent than how well you can play those particular characters.

*

And yes, it's important to note a character can be worse and harder to play too. I am not negating this as a possibility. Again, I think Yoshi is easily one of the hardest characters in this game to use in a way that represents his viable and useful options. Even though compared to higher tier characters his viable options also happen to suck.

****

There's some overlap between playing your opponent and playing your character. I won't discount this either. But overlap =/= the same thing.

As for john!'s punishment example, do you think it's harder to lift a five pound weight ten times, or a fifty pound weight once? Or to time ten easy jumps in a platformer, one after the other, versus getting a pixel perfect jump right a single time (even if takes you a hundred tries)?

 

[adechrist]

Part of outplaying A will be tricking him into using his moves at the wrong time so you can invade that space and win. But that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with how good you are at using B, but how good you are at tricking A. Assuming you can do this with character C, D, E, F, etc., then that's more indicative of how well you play against your opponent than how well you can play those particular characters.

I don't think you should look at playing an opponent and playing a character as separate things. You can't have one without the other. A character doesn't do anything by itself. A player can't play without a character.

The original question did say include everything, including intelligence. A worse character forces you to outplay your opponent in order to win, therefore they take more intelligence, and are harder to play. A worse characters options might take less tech skill, but personally I think tech skill is easier than outplaying an opponent. And if the tech skill is incredibly hard, then the move isn't viable and shouldn't be used. Like Yoshi's parry. In theory it'd be great to use but in reality it's too hard to use consistently, so it's not a very viable option.

Now if we were discussing which character would require the most tech skill at GOD level of play. Then yes, maybe yoshi would be one of the hardest to play. But I don't think we are talking about perfect play, and i don't think we should. Too much ambiguity.

 

[Wobbles]

Yeah, I established earlier that we aren't talking about ceiling. We're talking about floor. Yoshi's floor for useful maneuvers in a tournament setting is extremely high.

At this point I guess we're just disagreeing on definition.

Awareness of how a character functions is playing the character. Being able to execute their techniques is playing the character. Spacing their moves well is playing the character. Judging whether or not your b-air will be a better tech-chase in X situation than going for a grab is playing the character.

But knowing whether they will tech left or right is playing the opponent. Adapting to a particular approach pattern is playing the opponent. Shouting MINDGAMES every time you taunt is playing the opponent.

Except in extreme cases of serious matchup shutouts, you must do both to win. And that is why I don't believe you can say that having to make lots of reads and obtain lots of openings makes playing a character difficult; it makes a character bad. If, in a given situation, the execution of your choice was easy to do, then playing the character at that moment was easy. But if you DO need lots of reads, to make those numerous executions count, then that means your character is easy to use but difficult to win with.

You are not differentiating between the input and the output, and you are equating output with difficulty, which just doesn't make sense.

I'm not sure how else to describe it. It's ****ing difficult to win with Pichu because his attributes all suck, but executing his best options and maneuvers is piss-easy because it's a linear shuffling and dash dance game that doesn't really have strict timing anywhere. Easy to do stuff with him, hard to win with that stuff.

The best example from another game I can come up with to illustrate this point would be from Gunbound. You had Mage whose shots required no special calculations, but had great damage output. You had Boomer, whose shot was drastically affected by even the tiniest wind and required lots of attention, but had the highest damage output in the game. You had Aduka, who was very simple to play since his shots barely did anything special, but his damage output sucked unless you stacked a team with him. And then there was Lightning, who required serious precision to get moderate damage output, and had lots of trick plays and options that STILL didn't yield much damage output. A case for all four potential extremes: low difficulty and high output, high difficulty and high output, low difficulty and low output, high difficulty and low output.

Or another fighter? SF4 has Viper who has really high floors on executing most of her B&B. Ryu is the most basic character in the game and very easy for anybody to pick up and play. Which one is higher on the tier list? Viper, because her output is higher for people with the technique to play her. Ryu is all basics, but he requires consistent execution and lots out-basic-ing your opponent to win.

 

[KirbyKaze]

None of the top 5 or 6 characters should be on this list. None of them are that hard to play effectively.

 

[Divinokage]

I'd say Ganon is pretty up there, I haven't seen many good ones because you need crazy precision and timing in order to do well. If you miss once you are basically combo food.

 

[CaptainEvilStomper9]

I agree with wobbles though I can see the disagreement being because of different interpretation.

"Pichu is hardest, you have to outplay your opponent a lot so he's the hardest to play"


"Yoshi is the hardest, it takes a lot of skill to use his moves optimally"


Personally I think that its harder to optimally play a character with a lot of effective yet hard to use options then it would be to play a one dimensional crappy character.

I feel the question is dull if its "who is the worst character". I like "what character is most difficult to use there move set effectively" but it is a matter of interpretation

 

[adechrist]

At this point I guess we're just disagreeing on definition.

I agree. And from your definition, I'd probably agree Yoshi is the hardest.

 

[Deleted member]

god this thread sucks

even stupidier than the weird quirks thread

 

[Geist]

s2j I keep reading your posts in Laurence Fishburn's voice. If you don't sound like him irl I'm going to be very disappointed.

 

[Warhawk]

Did you know: If two players of exact equal skill played chess, the player who went first will always win?

This trvial statement pretty much collapses your argument. It shows that if two players of equal skill played each other, the one with the disadvantage will lose. In order to win with Bowser, you have to be of superior skill since he is at an initial disadvantage.

[...]

But TBH, that is exactly it. You see, there are different ideas that factor into "which character is the hardest to play?". The thread is vague and suggests that you include them all, so if you did, the result would be a backwards tier list.

A Tech-Skill tier list is more along the lines of what you are looking for, but that isn't what this thread is about.

It does not collapse my argument because it is a horrible comparison. Luck and coincidence doesn't have near the same effect on chess as it does in smash. If they both play their character at top level the Bowser will still win at some point, because eventually the Bowser player will have a match where enough reads go his way and he wins. Of course this means that for a match the Bowser player outplayed the Fox for that particular match, but if there of equal skill there will also be matches where the Fox player outplays the Bowser player, so its not a matter of not being able to win at all without the Bowser player being better.

Furthermore, neither Crimson nor I are insinuating that tech skill is solely responsible for how hard a character is to play. Certain strategies that a character has and their difficulty in executing properly also come into play with a character's difficulty and Bowser's necessary tech ability and strategy execution are far simpler than Fox's because of his limited ability. A player's ability to affect their own chances to win at high/top level plateau's sooner with Bowser than it does with Fox. This suggests that Bowser is in fact, easier to learn, because there is less you have to learn with Bowser that can help you win at high/top level and less of a skillset necessary by the player to play Bowser at high/top level. The only one that's suggesting that difficulty in playing a a character is directly tied with any one thing is you.

 

[I R MarF]

It does not collapse my argument because it is a horrible comparison. Luck and coincidence doesn't have near the same effect on chess as it does in smash. If they both play their character at top level the Bowser will still win at some point, because eventually the Bowser player will have a match where enough reads go his way and he wins. Of course this means that for a match the Bowser player outplayed the Fox for that particular match, but if there of equal skill there will also be matches where the Fox player outplays the Bowser player, so its not a matter of not being able to win at all without the Bowser player being better.

Furthermore, neither Crimson nor I are insinuating that tech skill is solely responsible for how hard a character is to play. Certain strategies that a character has and their difficulty in executing properly also come into play with a character's difficulty and Bowser's necessary tech ability and strategy execution are far simpler than Fox's because of his limited ability. A player's ability to affect their own chances to win at high/top level plateau's sooner with Bowser than it does with Fox. This suggests that Bowser is in fact, easier to learn, because there is less you have to learn with Bowser that can help you win at high/top level and less of a skillset necessary by the player to play Bowser at high/top level. The only one that's suggesting that difficulty in playing a a character is directly tied with any one thing is you.

The chess example was supposed to show how advantages and disadvantages could affect the outcome of a match between two equal players. This is exactly what an MU is. Lets say the MU between Fox and Bowser is 75:25, Fox's favor, it shows that Fox has a far greater advantage over Bowser if both players are equal. Because of these advantages, the Fox player, despite being of equal skill to the Bowser player, would beat the Bowser player very often in comparison. more often than not.

In order to affect the odds of such a difficult MU, you have to be superior player because your character is harder to play.

 

[Warhawk]

I dunno, I just feel like using a character's difficulty to win shouldn't be used as a end-all measurement to how difficult they are to play. It should affect it somewhat, but at high/top level you aren't going to be able to get that significant skill gap necessary to drastically turn the matchups more in your favor because everyone is so skilled. To me, its more about how difficult it is to be able to play at a high/top level with that character, using all of their strategies and techniques properly. Then again, no character in this game is really easy to play at a high level, each takes a great deal of time to learn, so it almost renders the argument to one of definition and smaller, finer details before it begins...