How do you think Smash could be improved?

[AJawesome07]

Undoubtedly, Smash is a great game and arguably the greatest fighting game there has ever been. That being said, Smash is not a perfect game, if such a thing exists.

What aspects of Smash do you think could be improved upon? What parts of the game anger or irritate you? Are there any parts of the game you think are not fair?

I ask these questions only in my desire to gather the collective opinions of the people who care about this wonderful game just as much as I do.

As a budding game designer, I anticipate your responses greatly.

 

[Boardwalk]

project m?

 

[EPsilon933]

Balance, obviously. Only 8 characters are useful out of its 26

C stick in singleplayer

Having the effect of l canceling being automatic

 

[Boardwalk]

Balance, obviously. Only 8 characters are useful out of its 26

C stick in singleplayer

Having the effect of l canceling being automatic

I have heard some reasonable arguements for the auto l cancel idea. what is yours may i ask?

 

[EPsilon933]

I have heard some reasonable arguements for the auto l cancel idea. what is yours may i ask?

It's a perfect choice. There's no reason to ever not l cancel. It doesn't break the game if it were to always be used

 

[DtJ SmithZzz]

go look at Melee SD Remix. Those changes were cool & I wish it got as big as PM sometimes.

 

[Boardwalk]

It's a perfect choice. There's no reason to ever not l cancel. It doesn't break the game if it were to always be used

you are right when you say there is never a situation where you dont want to l-cancel. but there are plenty of situations where missing an l-cancel drops a combo. that can easily change the game
the difficulty of a game can set apart different players. there is a lot of mind games, theory, reading, strategy, etc. that is involved with this game already. to take away the technical requirements to play this game at a high level is putting a larger emphasis on those aspects.
good tech skill can sometimes save you from a bad strategy. (catching a poorly thrown football with one hand... TOUCHDOWN)
a good strategy can sometimes require only a few button inputs at the right moment. (grab ledge and press L or R)
it is the technical aspects of any game/sport that make it so exciting and fun to play/watch

just because something is a perfect choice doesnt mean it should be given out for free.
basketball free throws( a similar but not exact situation i think)
if someone is fouled attempting a 2 or 3 point shot they get 2 or 3 free throws.( or 1 extra if they make the shot)
the perfect choice is to make all of your FREE throws, but this is almost never the case.
missed free throws and made free throws have determined the outcome of many games.
free throws are a technical aspect to the game of basketball.
just because you have a wide open shot does that mean you should get the points everytime

 

[Massive]

• Remove fox's laser (it forces approach)
  
• Make every character techably fall after fox's shine (fixes shine infinites, removes guaranteed follow ups from shine).
• Limit the range of Falco's lasers to prevent camping.
  
• Give more characters approach options against shielding opponents (basically more command grabs).
• Make shield dropping easier (increase the area of the joystick that can be used to drop).
• Add context specific follow ups (e.g. fair could cancel into a utilt or whatever, but not into any other moves and only if you didn't L-cancel) to make L-cancelling a more robust mechanic.
• Remove trash moves that have no use (PM does this well).

 

[B-Will]

you are right when you say there is never a situation where you dont want to l-cancel. but there are plenty of situations where missing an l-cancel drops a combo. that can easily change the game
the difficulty of a game can set apart different players. there is a lot of mind games, theory, reading, strategy, etc. that is involved with this game already. to take away the technical requirements to play this game at a high level is putting a larger emphasis on those aspects.
good tech skill can sometimes save you from a bad strategy. (catching a poorly thrown football with one hand... TOUCHDOWN)
a good strategy can sometimes require only a few button inputs at the right moment. (grab ledge and press L or R)
it is the technical aspects of any game/sport that make it so exciting and fun to play/watch

just because something is a perfect choice doesnt mean it should be given out for free.
basketball free throws( a similar but not exact situation i think)
if someone is fouled attempting a 2 or 3 point shot they get 2 or 3 free throws.( or 1 extra if they make the shot)
the perfect choice is to make all of your FREE throws, but this is almost never the case.
missed free throws and made free throws have determined the outcome of many games.
free throws are a technical aspect to the game of basketball.
just because you have a wide open shot does that mean you should get the points everytime

I actually love this response and your explanation as to why l-cancelling should stay. I tried to argue FOR l-cancelling some time ago, but did a poor job explaining why I felt that way.

 

[Boardwalk]

• Remove fox's laser (it forces approach)
  
• Make every character techably fall after fox's shine (fixes shine infinites, removes guaranteed follow ups from shine).
• Limit the range of Falco's lasers to prevent camping.
  
• Give more characters approach options against shielding opponents (basically more command grabs).
• Make shield dropping easier (increase the area of the joystick that can be used to drop).
• Add context specific follow ups (e.g. fair could cancel into a utilt or whatever, but not into any other moves and only if you didn't L-cancel) to make L-cancelling a more robust mechanic.
• Remove trash moves that have no use (PM does this well).

Remove fox's laser (it forces approach)
- PM i think does a good job with the damage reduction. i think either making SH double laser harder to execute; penalizing attempting with the lag of a grounded laser; or just only SH single laser.

Make every character techably fall after fox's shine (fixes shine infinites, removes guaranteed follow ups from shine).
yes. even though infinites are hype

Limit the range of Falco's lasers to prevent camping.
yes

Give more characters approach options against shielding opponents (basically more command grabs).
maybe. i also think giving other characters than fox/falco good shield pressure options with a decent tech skill requirement
also just increasing shield damage or decreasing shield regen or both might give players that choose to play agressively some advantages.

shielding is something in general i think is flawed. at lower levels of play, shield grabbing is super OP. maybe having hits on shield cause any oppenents to slide further (like luigi). or increase the time it takes to shield grab vs. unshield grab ( hit on shield wave dash in place after shield stun is over then standing grab would be a faster option then just spamming the a button) bring some technical skill and decision making to it. making other moves Oos more viable

Make shield dropping easier (increase the area of the joystick that can be used to drop).
sure

Add context specific follow ups (e.g. fair could cancel into a utilt or whatever, but not into any other moves and only if you didn't L-cancel) to make L-cancelling a more robust mechanic.

not sure what this is

Remove trash moves that have no use (PM does this well).
like what

 

[Boardwalk]

I actually love this response and your explanation as to why l-cancelling should stay. I tried to argue FOR l-cancelling some time ago, but did a poor job explaining why I felt that way.

thanks! i am a pretty beginner player i would say competitively.
pretty consistent at SHHFLing.
i only really wavedash with characters that have good wavedashes (when i use luigi, marth, and mario)
but i do follow competitive smash

i enjoy the challenge of learning the technical parts of the game. (sometimes more then i like to apply my strategy sometimes lol)
melee is where it is today because of the insane technical requirements that top players have.
it is awesome that as i improve technically i can extend my combos and use more advanced options.

if l-cancelling was eliminated it would give newer players to pull off some of the same ridiculous combos that competitive players do with minimal effort. imagine a new player after picking up the game being able to go falcon and windmill somebody across the stage to knee. maybe if l-canceling was removed and some more defensive options were available i could see it. right now we can only escape combos with a tech (if were low to the ground) or changing your di. just some ideas here.

sorry for double post!

 

[Roko Jono]

I'd say the game is perfect the way it is, imperfect. (I am also a game dev, hello brother)

The character balance is in the right direction as in Fox and Falco have this weight class that is very susceptible to reads (tech chases) and their recovery is somewhat predictable. You have low tier characters like DK who can up air combo fast fallers to death with some skill and reads. Its not perfect, but its something I'd call ideal if you get my point. To be honest if the game had 30 characters and all characters had an even matchup I would probably say the game would get boring and stale. I like match up strengths and weaknesses and who doesn't get hype over a Bowser beating a Fox. Would I like to see more characters in high level play? Yes. Would I like to see all characters in high level play? I can't explain it, but no.

Something I've always wondered though is why characters like Fox Falco Shiek and Samus can cancel their projectile animations by hitting the ground. Imagine if Mario Link or Game&Watch could do this. Would I take away the ability for those characters to do it? Nah, give the players their freedom as long as it isn't a camp strat.

Regarding advanced techniques, the commonly used ones in this game are seriously not that hard and I wouldn't change them (if that HAD to be changed). Sure, the casual market buys most of the games while the competitive minority are the small percentage of players who plan to play my game for more than 1 month. You know what though, I'd rather have a game loved by the people who actually care to play and get better than make a game that a bunch of people bought and never played again, but that's just me (money is cool though...).

Glaring glitches like phantom hits can go though. I'm also not a fan of anything that must be 1-frame perfect. 3-4 frames I can deal.

Edit: I'd love to make a game that Melee players would like to call "the other game I play".

 

[Racuncai]

SD remix is the answer my friend

 

[The Cutting Edge]

I'd love to make a game that Melee players would like to call "the other game I play".

I don't think Melee players play games that aren't Melee

 

[AirFair]

I think the game is good. I just want to to see more characters used, but the meta has developed for years, so it's not very likely.

 

[fatman667]

Obviously balance the game, it's soon becoming the next MvC2 if it hasn't already. It's hype, but it might die eventually, I mean look at MvC2, everyone said it will never die, but it did pretty much by now. The tier gaps between characters are constantly growing and it's not a good thing.

Add some cost to L-canceling maybe, but I wouldn't know how to do that. Either that or every aerial has the ending lag as if they're L-Canceled, but I don't like this idea nearly as much as the cost to L-Cancel idea. There's literally no reason to L-Cancel, because it's such a strong mechanic, which is exactly why they need to fix it somehow. In other fighting games a mechanic like it would cost meter, like in Guilty Gear, RCed attacks would cost meter, hell X2 #Reload had literal L-Cancels, in this case they're called FRCs, for some attacks like Ky's air Stun Edge and that cost 25 meter. Does L-Canceling increase the skill cap in Melee? Yes it does, but is it good for a fighting game or to balance out a game? No it isn't in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, L-Canceling is a good idea on paper, but no cost to use it makes the mechanic pretty broken. Even if it doesn't look broken or you say it's not broken, but reducing landing lag to half of what it normally is and it costs nothing? Sounds pretty overpowered to me tbh, but at least it's not the N64 version with no landing lag at all and still no cost. Here comes all the hate comments on my post about my opinion on L-Canceling, lol.