Has anyone tested stale hits?

[skstylez]

In Melee/64 hits moves would do less damage if you repeated them too much. But in Brawl, they took it a step farther and included knockback. This was a huge problem for characters with few KO moves. Does anyone know how it works now?

 

[SKM_NeoN]

I actually made a thread about this not too long ago, and according to @ Amazing Ampharos , stale hits are going to affect knockback like Brawl. I'd like to see something conclusive on the matter personally, though I'm fine taking his word for it.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Yeah, kill moves seemed to stale out in smash 4; it was pretty noticable. I of course was not able to do any measurements to confirm if the formula is identical, but I would point out that in Brawl physics the damage a move does is actually proportional to the knockback so you couldn't "only stale damage". Of course, launch physics seem radically different in smash 4 than in Brawl, but if the knockback formula remains similar, this isn't really something that could change easily.

 

[TimeSmash]

So could this tenatively mean people who had good kill moves that that character happened to use a lot for spacing and general stuff (think Brawl Peach and Fair) could be lower on the tier list if they don't have many kill options?? I'm feeling yes, but I didn't get to play the demo so I might be exaggerating

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Characters with few kill moves will just have to manage staleness very carefully though many of those characters also tend to have good off-stage games so they can go for gimps as a secondary kill avenue. The pleasure of using a character like Bowser with many different kill moves is always having a fresh option; it's a better balance way to make kill moves a bigger differing factor between characters instead of just making some characters have no decent way to get kills or some characters kill at insanely low percentages. It's not like managing your stale move queue isn't strategic either; the mechanic added a ton of nuance in Brawl.

 

[Venks]

I played at least 140 rounds of Smash 4 and I can definitely say that stale moves are still a thing. If I ever used Little Mac's up smash before my opponent hit 100% then I wouldn't be able to use the same move to KO. However if I never used the move before they hit 100% then I could up smash for the KO without a problem.

 

[skstylez]

God dammit.. and I was just watching the invitational finals again, and was wondering why Kirby's kill power was so crazy inconsistent.

Take falcon, this was a HUGE problem in brawl. The knee sweetspot was extremely precise, but after a few whiffed knees, the knockback was laughable. Peach f-air as mentioned above is a vital spacing tool but also her primary kill move.

 

[Clavaat]

God dammit.. and I was just watching the invitational finals again, and was wondering why Kirby's kill power was so crazy inconsistent.

Take falcon, this was a HUGE problem in brawl. The knee sweetspot was extremely precise, but after a few whiffed knees, the knockback was laughable. Peach f-air as mentioned above is a vital spacing tool but also her primary kill move.

That actually sounds amazing. This forces people to be mindful of when they are using their moves. I.E. You can't be an Usmash/Uair spammy Fox. I like this.

 

[Crome]

I have a few questions
1. Directed to @ Amazing Ampharos and @ Venks
How was it compared to brawl? Was it worse, or better than brawls?
2. Does stale moves still take effect if you miss the attack?

 

[Venks]

I have a few questions
1. Directed to @ Amazing Ampharos and @ Venks
How was it compared to brawl? Was it worse, or better than brawls?
2. Does stale moves still take effect if you miss the attack?

Stale moves don't take effect unless you land the hit. As for the how the game is, I'd suggest checking out this post: http://smashboards.com/threads/over-14-hours-with-smash-4-heres-what-i-learned.360628/

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

My observation was that stale moves are seemingly identical to Brawl in how they work. Confirming this mathematically will, of course, have to wait until launch, but given that I was the one who found the mathematical model for how they work in Brawl in the first place, I'm confident I'll be able to give a super detailed numeric answer very early in the game's lifespan.

In Brawl, whiffing moves doesn't contribute to staleness, but landing a hit on any character or on another damagable object (such as a damagable stage object or certain types of character summoned objects like Snake's grenades) puts the move in the queue. One use of a move can only enter it in the queue once, and repeating the same move over and over and comboing quickly can also put it in the queue only once (like Ness dtilt mashing or a faster grab pummel like Wolf's but doing things slower even like Jigglypuff's grab pummel counts independently). Moves that don't stale (like Luigi's damaging taunt) don't affect the staleness of any other moves, but moves with multiple independent attacks (like Dancing Blade on Marth but NOT like up smash on Link) count as separate moves for each action. I can't confirm any of these fine details for smash 4, but I saw nothing that contradicted these already established mechanics in my time and the extent to which staleness seemed to affect damage and knockback seemed pretty identical to Brawl.

If you want general information from me about smash 4, I also have my own thread in which I answered... a lot of stuff. Venks played for about 30 times as much time as me, but I'm way more long-winded than he is so you may enjoy that:

http://smashboards.com/threads/my-smash-4-best-buy-demo-info-impression-extravagganza.358436/

 

[Senario]

That actually sounds amazing. This forces people to be mindful of when they are using their moves. I.E. You can't be an Usmash/Uair spammy Fox. I like this.

Though to be fair the problem with this kind of system where stale moves are huge is that if a character has to use a move for general use/spacing since their other moves just don't work as well or effectively it becomes a problem. I never really understood the stale moves negation as heavily as it is in brawl and I guess smash wii U. Melee had it as well but it wasn't too bad, options for using other moves made the differences important but not overbearing. A lot of stale move negation just means that some characters with only few good moves won't be able to do anything, and largely those characters aren't exactly great characters.

As an example, Marth from melee has forward air, neutral, and back air which are all good moves in a lot of situations. Down air is useful in it's own way but not every situation. He has a lot of variety in his moves to mix it up, A lot of his ground moves are good too. Compare to Roy who has down tilt, forward air and maybe up air(but not really) his tilts aren't amazing and he has few moves that are actually good. Stale move negation hurts characters like him a lot more than it does hurt higher tiers which usually have a ton more options.

Shiek has neutral, forward, back, and occasionally up air. Jiggs has neutral, forward, up. Fox has every air except forward, same with falco, captain falcon has down, up, neutral, forward and back.

Stale move negation needs to be there, not sure if it needed to be stronger than it was in melee though. It favors characters who have a wide variety of good moves and hurts those who don't have as many options.

Certain characters may have not needed to think about stale moves but they weren't doing it to spam. It is just that they had so many options that stale moves were never a problem. Also, I'd like to see how far you get with upsmash and upair spammy fox..both of those are kill moves but I highly doubt you could be successful spamming the moves.

 

[skstylez]

That actually sounds amazing. This forces people to be mindful of when they are using their moves. I.E. You can't be an Usmash/Uair spammy Fox. I like this.

It makes low accuracy moves useless though. Is it worth cutting down your move arsenal to prevent people favoring moves? As I said, previously it still staled percentages.

Also it's already in brawl. This heavily separates the tier list. I'm gonna be optimistic in the balancing this time around, but there's no sense praising something that we've already experienced, and was frankly broken.

 

[Venks]

If you want general information from me about smash 4, I also have my own thread in which I answered... a lot of stuff. Venks played for about 30 times as much time as me, but I'm way more long-winded than he is so you may enjoy that

Really good stuff. I spent more of my time focusing on all of Little Mac's secrets as I wanted to be the go to source for that character. I honestly couldn't be bothered to play most of the cast, because I wanted to focus on the new.

Did you notice the ground bounces on characters hit by meteor smashes in the air? Such an improvement from the older games. This combined with the lack of lag on Samus's down aerial combines to make her potential something vast.

@ Crome The game could change from the demo we've played, but thus far it's looking to be a really nice combination of the strengths of all three Smash games along with a couple twists of its own.

 

[Crome]

@ Crome The game could change from the demo we've played, but thus far it's looking to be a really nice combination of the strengths of all three Smash games along with a couple twists of its own.

That's really good to hear!

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Really good stuff. I spent more of my time focusing on all of Little Mac's secrets as I wanted to be the go to source for that character. I honestly couldn't be bothered to play most of the cast, because I wanted to focus on the new.

Did you notice the ground bounces on characters hit by meteor smashes in the air? Such an improvement from the older games. This combined with the lack of lag on Samus's down aerial combines to make her potential something vast.

@ Crome The game could change from the demo we've played, but thus far it's looking to be a really nice combination of the strengths of all three Smash games along with a couple twists of its own.

I didn't pick up on that mechanic just like I didn't pick up on the greatly reduced but apparently still present SDI. I'm not sure that mechanic will be quite so big though since, generally, being sent flying into an object gives you a chance to tech before a ricochet so those combos from air to air meteor starters will be breakable with techs. If they aren't, well, that would be unusual, but yeah, that would be really great for characters with good meteors (I already don't want to think about what that could mean for the still unrevealed Falco!). If you got to play the whole time, that makes sense (I know I could have played Greninja for 14 hours no problem); I only got to play enough rounds to explore a couple of charcters and get a good feel for the game, but I got to watch a lot go down in person and was watching like a hawk (and taking notes, 7 pages worth!) and had help from a friend in gathering info which let me put together everything I did.

That was a fun Little Mac analysis, but you did say you thought his best air to air was side special. Did you not like uair and up special as much as we did? Uair seemed like a solid juggling move to me, and up special seemed to just win every time it was challenged and hit really hard. That was really the main thing that stood out to me there, but I don't want to drag this off-topic with Little Mac air game discussion.
---

To go back to the topic of stale moves, I'd point out that improving historically bad moves seems to be a thing in smash 4. Luigi's dash attack was amazingly good in the demo; that really should speak for itself! Bowser likewise not only has legitimately pretty good new moves, but his dair, while using the same animation, now seems like an unusually good plunging dair instead of that horrible no hitstun extreme lag thing it was in Brawl (I forgive anyone who doesn't remember the animation; Bowser players were very rare, and good Bowsers used this move almost literally never). Custom movesets will also give every special move three chances to be good so we have to consider how that may play out as well.

I mean, it wasn't even really true in Brawl that any character actually boiled down to just 4-5 moves and even the character who came the closest, Jigglypuff, had a lot of good tactics that higher level players were able to use to deal with staleness (and the extent to which a character had to worry about staleness was pretty tier independent in Brawl; Ganon worried about it less than Meta Knight!), but smash 4 seems to be even more determined than ever to make sure you have reason to go to most of your moveset with most of the cast. Stale moves are really a good system, and they seem likely to work even better in smash 4. Just... don't go for your best KO move 5-10% before KO percent and then keep just going for it raw without doing anything else. I saw people do that over and over in the demo, and while that's really not good play in any smash game, it's punished very, very hard in Brawl and smash 4 too.

 

[Clavaat]

It makes low accuracy moves useless though. Is it worth cutting down your move arsenal to prevent people favoring moves? As I said, previously it still staled percentages.

Also it's already in brawl. This heavily separates the tier list. I'm gonna be optimistic in the balancing this time around, but there's no sense praising something that we've already experienced, and was frankly broken.

Right, I'm saying in the scope of assumption that the system is done well and balanced this time around. I didn't assume it would be the exact same as Brawl. Also, I only meant "spammy" Fox as one that uses it too often as a go-to kill move. It would be nice to not have to panic every single time you are above Fox because you are probably going to die. This was just an example anyway, I could have said Bair spammy Jiggles and meant the same thing. Sorry for the confusion.

As @ Amazing Ampharos said, the system already seems more balanced, in that more characters are able to use more of their moveset and still get the necessary DI out of it. If done correctly, the system would open up players to using more of their character's moveset, thus seeing slightly different matches. Also, as another thread is discussing, Smash 4 and Brawl both leaned a little less toward technical skill and more toward actively being strategic about your moves. Stale moves, done correctly, only enhances that idea. Smash 4, as others have said, seems to be finding a nice middle ground between these two ideas, which would make for an accessible, but still competitive/strategic fighter. The prospect is very exciting.

 

[Venks]

My moves going stale were a huge problem for me until I learned the KO percent for characters like Link and Bowser. I kept up smashing them around 110% with Little Mac only for them to just fall back onto the stage. I would then figure that at around 128% I'd be able to get the KO, but no dice still. By using my up smash twice in a row I'd be taking heavy characters to around 144% without getting the KO. I'd have to switch to forward smash, down smash, forward tilt, or forward throw to finish off the job.

Not that the other attacks are bad by any means I just had a tendency to up smash more then I should. Especially since side smash actually KOs at lower percent. xD

 

[Clavaat]

My moves going stale were a huge problem for me until I learned the KO percent for characters like Link and Bowser. I kept up smashing them around 110% with Little Mac only for them to just fall back onto the stage. I would then figure that at around 128% I'd be able to get the KO, but no dice still. By using my up smash twice in a row I'd be taking heavy characters to around 144% without getting the KO. I'd have to switch to forward smash, down smash, forward tilt, or forward throw to finish off the job.

Not that the other attacks are bad by any means I just had a tendency to up smash more then I should. Especially since side smash actually KOs at lower percent. xD

Did it seem like there was a cap to this? That is, did the stale moves eventually regain their original effectiveness if not used over a certain amount of time? Did the staleness stop depleting after awhile? I understand that this would be hard to test given the environment you were given (I read through your experience), but those details might be good to know as well.

 

[Venks]

Did it seem like there was a cap to this? That is, did the stale moves eventually regain their original effectiveness if not used over a certain amount of time? Did the staleness stop depleting after awhile? I understand that this would be hard to test given the environment you were given (I read through your experience), but those details might be good to know as well.

I'm not sure about overtime, with two minutes to play there isn't a lot of time per round. But yeah I loved grabbing a lot and Little Mac has a pretty quick pummel. I found it really easy to get the freshness back on my attacks, but yeah that's pretty much how it worked in Brawl as well.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Did it seem like there was a cap to this? That is, did the stale moves eventually regain their original effectiveness if not used over a certain amount of time? Did the staleness stop depleting after awhile? I understand that this would be hard to test given the environment you were given (I read through your experience), but those details might be good to know as well.

I can just tell you the Brawl mechanics as our rough experiences suggested it worked about the same. We didn't get to measure anything, but it seemed to be about the same.

The stale move queue is nine moves long with any new entry going to the front and pushing any older entries back one slot. If the queue is full, the furthest back entry is removed to make room for the newest one at the front. Further, think of each entry as having a weight of (.10) to (.02). For any move's actual damage and knockback, take the base times (1-sum of weights). So if a move is both the most recent move you've hit with and 9th most recent move you've hit with and has a base damage of 10%, you'll do 10 * (1 - (.1 + .02)) = 8.8% damage (knockback is directly proportional). This does also mean there is a max staleness for any move of 54% effectiveness, and that requires hitting with the same move 9 times in a row without hitting with any other moves (it also means that every other move will be fresh in that circumstance). If a move is not in the queue at all, it does 1.05x damage and knockback as a bonus, but note this doesn't apply to moves that don't stale at all and doesn't apply in training mode where the stale moves mechanic is "off". You also refresh all moves when you die or transform into another character, but obviously the second point doesn't apply to smash 4.

Again, I can't confirm any of that is exactly how it works in smash 4. It seemed by rough estimation to play about like that. This will be tested early in the game's lifespan after launch for exact numeric behavior, but until then, we can just handwave and assume it's fairly similar to what's in Brawl though if there are subtle tweaks we never would have noticed.

 

[Clavaat]

I'm not sure about overtime, with two minutes to play there isn't a lot of time per round. But yeah I loved grabbing a lot and Little Mac has a pretty quick pummel. I found it really easy to get the freshness back on my attacks, but yeah that's pretty much how it worked in Brawl as well.

I can just tell you the Brawl mechanics as our rough experiences suggested it worked about the same. We didn't get to measure anything, but it seemed to be about the same.

The stale move queue is nine moves long with any new entry going to the front and pushing any older entries back one slot. If the queue is full, the furthest back entry is removed to make room for the newest one at the front. Further, think of each entry as having a weight of (.10) to (.02). For any move's actual damage and knockback, take the base times (1-sum of weights). So if a move is both the most recent move you've hit with and 9th most recent move you've hit with and has a base damage of 10%, you'll do 10 * (1 - (.1 + .01)) = 8.8% damage (knockback is directly proportional). This does also mean there is a max staleness for any move of 54% effectiveness, and that requires hitting with the same move 9 times in a row without hitting with any other moves (it also means that every other move will be fresh in that circumstance). If a move is not in the queue at all, it does 1.05x damage and knockback as a bonus, but note this doesn't apply to moves that don't stale at all and doesn't apply in training mode where the stale moves mechanic is "off". You also refresh all moves when you die or transform into another character, but obviously the second point doesn't apply to smash 4.

Again, I can't confirm any of that is exactly how it works in smash 4. It seemed by rough estimation to play about like that. This will be tested early in the game's lifespan after launch for exact numeric behavior, but until then, we can just handwave and assume it's fairly similar to what's in Brawl though if there are subtle tweaks we never would have noticed.

Thanks for the quick responses! Like I said, I know it would be difficult to test something like that in the given environment, but in general this doesn't sound like a bad thing to me. It forces players to be conscious of what they are doing, and when they are doing it. I honestly only paid attention to Brawl for a few months here on release (every other thread was "Ban MK" "Don't Ban MK") but I didn't know Stale Moves followed a Queue.

Balanced properly, this can be a great system in keeping fights diverse and requiring a solid strategy. I like it

 

[skstylez]

Right, I'm saying in the scope of assumption that the system is done well and balanced this time around. I didn't assume it would be the exact same as Brawl. Also, I only meant "spammy" Fox as one that uses it too often as a go-to kill move. It would be nice to not have to panic every single time you are above Fox because you are probably going to die. This was just an example anyway, I could have said Bair spammy Jiggles and meant the same thing. Sorry for the confusion.

As @ Amazing Ampharos said, the system already seems more balanced, in that more characters are able to use more of their moveset and still get the necessary DI out of it. If done correctly, the system would open up players to using more of their character's moveset, thus seeing slightly different matches. Also, as another thread is discussing, Smash 4 and Brawl both leaned a little less toward technical skill and more toward actively being strategic about your moves. Stale moves, done correctly, only enhances that idea. Smash 4, as others have said, seems to be finding a nice middle ground between these two ideas, which would make for an accessible, but still competitive/strategic fighter. The prospect is very exciting.

But if a move is too good, the move ITSELF should be balanced. All characters should not be punished for a few. They've heavily nerfed fox's up-kills in Smash4 already.

At least with the replies to this thread it makes sense why it stayed - Knockback is now damage based. This sounds fine on paper, I just hope it's better in practice this time around. At least a shorter stale queue would do wonders.