I think I know what's the real issue people are having.

[Big-Cat]

I can't run away or trry to camp just cause i have the lead i'm not a coward and i enjoy fighting i rather lose playing the way i want than win with some cheesy stuff. I love playing rushdown in every game.

I'm just saying don't go gung ho. When I'm in the lead, I generally dance around the opponent, whittling away while I wait for a punish opportunity.

 

[Muro]

I'm just saying don't go gung ho. When I'm in the lead, I generally dance around the opponent, whittling away while I wait for a punish opportunity.

sounds fun.

 

[Nobie]

sounds fun.

In competitive Starcraft there's a mantra. What do you do when you get ahead? You get more ahead.

The idea is that a lot of players will get a lead in a game, and then throw it all away by putting all their eggs into one basket and just attacking because they believed having an advantage meant that the game was theirs. It's a problem for a lot of inexperienced players, and even some pros. While it is still possible to be very aggressive in this game, you have to have a keen understanding of your strengths vs. your opponent's and an accurate understanding of your own skill.

@ Big-Cat is saying a similar thing. When you have the edge against an opponent, why throw away that lead by being unnecessarily aggressive? Because it's the better way to play? Because it's more fun? The problem here is that charging in headfirst is just not thinking, and this is a game where thinking is important. You can be aggressive, but you have to also know how to choose when to be aggressive. If you choose to only attack, attack, attack, you'll miss those moments where it's better to wait or defend, and when you fail to get anything accomplished because you chose the worse option, even the opportunities for aggression start to pass you by.

As a side note, I wonder why more people don't pick up Little Mac? While he's of course known for his crazy good rolls and can be considered a "defensive character" in that respect, he's also extremely good at shield pressure and for punishing rolls himself.

 

[Antonykun]

As a side note, I wonder why more people don't pick up Little Mac? While he's of course known for his crazy good rolls and can be considered a "defensive character" in that respect, he's also extremely good at shield pressure and for punishing rolls himself.

Little Mac is a character who hates platforms and every legal stage has platform except for FD and that stage will always get striked out if they know you're a little mac player

 

[S_B]

Threaten to report me one more time and I'll cook you a delicious breakfast.

Killing him with cholesterol kindness!

Is that actually something that warrants reporting, though?

Lol, so basically if your opponent is just rolling away and too stubborn to move, counter that with your own stubbornness -- just let the timer run out! Or, if you think that's not fun, force your opponent to make an action. Of course, this will make the opponent approach you either way, but hopefully when that happens you know how to react.

You could always taunt. That'll usually get them after you (safety permitting, of course).

The other option is to pretend to so something stupid, like charge a smash attack. Just release it long before they get to you and spotdodge. You'd be surprised how many people get baited into believing they can punish when they actually can't and wind up getting punished for it...

I generally agree with the OP: there was an article years back about people "Johning" in Street Fighter. Long story short, when the win screen comes 'round, the game doesn't care how anybody won. It only cares about who was left standing on the stage and who wasn't.

 

[Swamp Sensei]

Reading through this thread again, it feels like some people think offense is purely rushdown.

 

[SuaveChaser]

Reading through this thread again, it feels like some people think offense is purely rushdown.

That is my preferred form of it. I don't like to stand idle or camp i don't play fighting games to do that. What other type of offensive is there?

 

[S_B]

That is my preferred form of it. I don't like to stand idle or camp i don't play fighting games to do that. What other type of offensive is there?

Projectiles and feinting tend to be the big ones.

You can often get your opponent to screw up if you simply run straight at them and then stop immediately out of their range

 

[chipndip]

Reading through this thread again, it feels like some people think offense is purely rushdown.

No, but those advocating offense tend to advocate pure rush down, which is a no no.

 

[Problem2]

The problem with this game is that perfect shielding is too good. It's to the point that zoning in this game is just backwards. Unlike conventional fighters, where you use your attacks to control space with the goal if hitting your opponent's body, you instead control space with your shield by intercepting any attack your opponent might throw out.

This causes the neutral game to be largely grabs and shielding followed by your out of shield option of choice. Because shielding is so good, grabs are the safest form of offense in this game. It's one of the few options that punishes shielding and also happens to punish other stuff like landing and mistiming attacks. You can also happen to cancel shielding into grab, so the best option in the game can be cancelled into the 2nd best option in the game, which happens to counter the first option.

Attacking in this game is essentially regulated to punishing someone for being thrown into the air, trying to get back onto the ground from the air, or throwing out a move away from your opponent to punish a bad dash grab attempt (face it, your opponent should have ran -> shield -> grab). You can also try your characters' auto-cancelled aerial so long as you perfectly space it, but I'll explain why that is even somewhat risky in a second.

For anything not grab, perfect shield will beat it (there exists very few exceptions to this). If you let go of shield as soon as you land a perfect shield, there is no shield drop animation, allowing you to punish with whatever you feel like. So if your opponent keeps doing auto-cancelled aerials to space you out, run up, perfect shield, and then punish.

Once your opponent is in the air is when it is finally reasonable to use attack moves. When you're on the ground and your opponent is flung into the air, you can basically think of this situation as two cases. In one case, your opponent is so high from the stage that will not receive landing lag if they air dodged at this point. This point is very risky to commit to anything. Typically, you try to jump somewhat close to your opponent just to bait a reaction. If done right, you force your opponent into committing to air dodging or attacking. Even if you can't punish that commitment, they are now forced to be closer to the ground. If they jumped, that's cool too, because now they won't have that option in a second.

Then you have the point where the opponent is closer to the ground and air dodging will result in them having landing lag. This is where there is actual yomi in play. They can try to attack you, jump away, or dodge into the ground in order to avoid getting punished. Here, there are a few tactics you can perform such as empty hop to bait a reaction then punish their landing. You can also run underneath them and shield their option then punish the landing as well. If they jump, the scenario just resets. The one real mix-up the opponent can have up their sleeve is to essentially do nothing. They can attempt to fast-fall during tumble and tech away which can slip by your current options, or if they're not in tumble, they can land then flee or grab you.

And then it's back to Super Grab and Shield Brothers.

Continuing on the subject of the game feeling very defensive, I believe that recovering in this game overall is not very interactive either, so it is in most cases the smarter idea to stay on stage and wait. Some characters by design are able to be edge-guarded to a reasonable degree, but the overall ledge mechanics do not ensure that is the case for every character. Slow recoveries, linear recoveries, flat out bad recoveries, and recoveries with no hitbox are the recoveries at risk for being actually edge guarded. Characters with multiple paths to the ledge or characters with straight up invincible teleports are not ever going to be reasonably edge-guarded. And that saving grace people talk about, trumping the ledge, doesn't work so long as the player holding the ledge first buffers another option straight from the ledge. At the very least, the threat of being ledge trumped makes players commit to a decision when they grab the ledge, but as the edge guarder, it's not worth giving up your stage position to play a dangerous game of rock/paper/scissors with how your opponent is trying to get back up from the ledge.

More often than not, it's best to try a couple of no risk options to edge guard. Options that are quick enough that you can get back to controlling center stage before they grab the ledge. These options also rarely do anything as they either cover a very niche recovery path or only work in the event your opponent makes an execution error.

Wow, this post became a little bit bigger than I thought it was going to be, but I think this sums up how the metagame works at the moment. Diddy being the best kind of fits in here nicely too. He has the best follow up out of throw, has some nice attacks to bait out air dodging and stuff, and his banana and command grab makes shielding and movement actually somewhat risky for the opponent. He has somewhat of an edge in the neutral game over the entire cast and a definite edge in the punish game.

 

[Tagxy]

@ Problem2 What youre describing is the rock-paper-scissors of smash. Dash shielding btw loses to just grabbing the opponent, which is a common tactic in high level play (youre also committed for several frames to being in shield once in shield).

The descriptions are right but the conclusions are odd which hits at the major problem with many of these arguments that complain about defense.

Many of these games lean defensive (yes this includes melee), which is an improvement on the games depth. No offense to PM but we've seen what happens when a game balances more on the side of offense (game becomes way too easy and straight-forward) and they intentionally scaled that back in 3.5. Using your attacks to control space with the goal if hitting your opponent's body is still defense and also describes Brawl, which was an even more defensive game. In melee defense revolved around movement, dash dance/wave dash in a threatening way until someone commits to an approach.

Now I want peeps here to tell me something, what are you scared of thats making it difficult to approach?
-Shields? Shields lose to grab and getting grabbed is terrible
-Grabs? Just hit them virtually everyone at minimum has a good dash attack.
-Long Range attacks? Super nerfed in this game, if this is a real issue be specific of what.
-Projectiles? Still difficult and some characters rely on this sort of keep away, but also generally nerfed from past smashes.
-Movement? The only thing I can think of people can do here is run away or roll. We see a lot of complaining about this but it's not common in top level neutral, and is certainly easier to handle then he movement options that existed in melee.

Probably the scariest thing is the risk reward skews for some characters, it can be scary to approach characters that are going to pull off an easy string of combos when you'll pull off less. But a lot of that has to do with skill too, Diddy is easy to pull of long strings with while other characters havent been developed or there hasnt been enough effort put it (because Diddy's are definitely easy by comparison).

 

[AngusTheMaster]

I'm inclined to agree. 'Course, Pit has one of the best projectiles in the game, so naturally I'd want to keep people away.

lol no, Ness can absorb it

 

[Prawn]

lol no, Ness can absorb it

Oh right because one character can do one thing(that you can bait and punish) it means a projectile is bad

 

[AngusTheMaster]

Oh right because one character can do one thing(that's you can bait and punish) it means a projectile is bad

Well just saying it's prone to characters that have projectile-avoiding moves like the space animals and Pit himself.. So it's not that great of a projectile because characters with these types of abilities can easily see the arrows coming and can use it to their advantage. When I practice on Pit it's a common strategy I use because the arrows have quite a bit of startup.

 

[Problem2]

@ Tagxy I do tend to go on and describe a lot about the meta, perhaps even more than I needed to in order to support my argument, but the reason this game is too defensive is still in the first paragraph. You can still zone and threaten your opponent significantly with perfect shielding. As long as you are in neutral on the ground, your opponent has to be very careful to not predictably touch your body with almost any attack in fear of it getting blocked and countered by a perfect shield.

This does not happen in Melee or 64. In Melee, shielding an attack is good for countering a lot of Smashes and badly space aerials, but most defense comes from movement. In 64, shielding is an incredibly bad option where most players can produce an advantage by just hitting your shield and you run a high risk of getting dizzied from it being broken by a large block string. Both games still have a sense of defense, but it does not come directly from shielding, it from your movement options and being passive with how often you attack while always keeping the threat of an attack coming alive.

So the game is not Melee/64, but why does that make defense bad? Because 1.) It results in a lot of standing and walking. Two options that are good at pulling up a perfect shield while still being able to adjust spacing easily, and I would not define that as exciting. 2.) Character movement and attacks should be the focus of the game as they are what give characters their signature feel. It's the advertising point of the game to have recognizable characters fight each other with their signature attacks. People want to pick Bowser and use his flame breath and big sluggish moves. People want to pick up Link and use his sword and projectiles. Shield properties are quite uniform among the cast in comparison to signature attacks. Yes, each character has a different size shield and Yoshi is even a special snowflake because he has an egg for a shield, but all shields come out on the same frame, drop on the same frame, receive the same shield stun, and are cancelled by the same movement options. It's just not that interesting and onlookers will be confused and bored when they see their favorite characters in tournament standing or walking back and forth trying to bait opponents into getting perfect shielded or grabbed instead of seeing actual attacks being used.

 

[Liam Kneeson]

I agree with much in this thread, but don't think the game has been at a detriment by much of any of it.

Rolls are extremely fast and inherently spacie, they are even somewhat difficult to punish due to the low end lag of a roll (one can roll or spot dodge essentially immediately after another roll), however this difficulty encourages almost perfect reads. The playstyle it encourages is much of the same, but allows for options based on the character: smash attack punishes, dash grabs, tilts -> dash attack, and shorthop -> fair/nair. I'd argue that there are a lot of ways to react to rolling based on this.

Shields are interesting because perfect shielding is difficult, and the prevalence of shield stabbing is apparent in this game. If your non perfect shield is not angled correctly you are semi-likely to get hit in the head or limbs by a shield stab if you aren't already getting grabbed -> dthrow for shielding too often. Shields also aren't impossible to break in this game, notable shield breakers like Marth and Ganon have advantages here.

I think the defensive options just add to the game. You learn how not to get punished and how to open up opportunities with movement and spacing abilities. If you attack with a move at the wrong time or don't space it well enough to apply shield pressure then you get punished. It adds to the suspense (hype) of the game. It also forces players to learn the more advanced tactics like grabbing and spot dodging.

 

[LancerStaff]

lol no, Ness can absorb it

Pit can delay his arrows indefinitely by spinning. Meaning, if you activate it too early I'll just wait until you drop PSI Magnet and you get a face full of arrow. If I accidentally fire it too soon, I can just redirect it far away from you and you look like a doofus for trying to steal it, and I believe I get the advantage unless you have godly reaction time. And reflectors are ineffective against Pit, because he can just angle the arrow down at the last moment so he won't get hit. How many projectiles like this can just ignore reflectors?

 

[Tagxy]

@ Problem2 I didnt mention 64 but if any game is a perfect example of how shields are not only inherently defensive but essential to preventing too much defense its this one. The game is the most defensive of the series and part of that has to do with how bad shielding is.

I also feel youre tossing the defensive capabilities of melee through its movement under the rug which is functionally the same as any other defensive option. Even supposing that shield are defensive in the way you suggest, is each character dashing back and forth somehow more of a signature then a shield or tossing out spacing attacks that don't hit?

In any case I think youre incorrect about powershielding, when used defensively its too easy to bait out and if an attack doesnt connect then theyre stuck in their shield for 18 frames. Smash 4's defense probably comes down to projectiles and spaced attacks again.