L-Cancelling DOES ADD DEPTH TO THE GAME

[Bones0]

Mental resources have no in-game representation within the game, though. You can't judge a game's design by the work the player has to do, because that's not something the designer has any control over. You can't just say, "this is harder, and that's the cost," because you have no objective way to measure that. The same goes for your juggling example; you could alternately just be widening the juggling skill gap. You have no objective measurement for determining what gap is being tested. All you can say is you're making both tasks harder.

Of course mental resources have in-game representation. It's just not immediately apparent like DI or tech options are. Saying mental resources aren't an element of design is mind boggling. Plenty of games have higher demands for players in order to balance different aspects of the game. FPSes have some guns with large spray areas while others are tight. There's never a reason to NOT aim directly at your opponent, so why make shotguns easier to hit with than snipers? They intentionally design it that way because it makes snipers a less appealing option up close. Even if pros can consistently hit a sniper shot as often as a shotgun shot, it doesn't change the fact that the shotgun user doesn't have to focus as much on their aim and are therefore going to be more successful in battles with snipers. With more mental resources freed up, they are likely to pull the trigger faster and not worry as much about how they are moving during their shot. That's directly comparable to how players are freed up when you automate L-cancelling.

 

[1MachGO]

But it's not unfair if your purpose is to ask the perfectly valid question, "could Melee be improved upon," and then apply the same methodology to every mechanic in the game. There are other mechanics, besides l-canceling, that, taken on their own, could be improved upon. However, most of these mechanics are improved upon by other, much better designed mechanics, which skew the analysis. If you view l-canceling in the context of Melee, you mitigate the negative impact of the mechanic, and accentuate its positives, which makes it impossible to approach the question with disinterest. If you ask me, that's more unfair than judging the mechanic on its own merits.

Wouldn't a mechanic's true influence only be understood through both its intentions AND its interactions with other aspects of the game? That would require looking at the mehanic within the context of the game. And no, the negative aspects are not mitigated, regardless of the lense you look through, it is still easy to recognize that L-cancelling does add seemlingly arbitrary difficulty. However, the question should be: does the mechanic offer more than it takes away? Again, I ask that you imagine Melee without L-cancelling and with regular landing lag; would you prefer that to the difficulty L-cancelling adds?

And ph00t, your argument against mental resources being a cost seems more like personal incredulity. Just because "mental resources" isn't necessarily quantified doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

 

[KishPrime]

Maybe you didn't read earlier, but pretty much everyone still talking has already discussed that l-cancelling could be improved.

Well, it is. But for me, difficulty is just not a quality I can judge a game on for its own sake. Difficulty has to have an internal balance. Games that are harder for the sake of being harder aren't better or more elegantly designed. They're just harder. If you like harder games, then I guess, great for you. But you'll find yourself not necessarily judging games by how much thought went into the design. On that point, don't get me started on multi-input fighting games.

You state that "difficulty is just not a quality I can judge a game on for its own sake" and "Games that are harder for the sake of being harder aren't better or more elegantly designed" as if anyone were arguing those points. No one is!

I don't think you understand "harder for the sake of being harder." In sport, the difficulty of human execution is critically and undeniably woven into the entire ruleset. The difficulty of a mechanic is not simply chosen arbitrarily. It is selected as a means of balancing ends, allowing for player growth, and diversifying the depth tree. It does have an internal balance. If everyone could throw a football at the exact velocity and direction to hit a target every single time, then football would be much less interesting. There would be nothing impressive about many of the highlights that people ooh and ahh about to this day. The basketball hoop wasn't put at 7 feet or 13 feet, it was set at 10. It is pretty clear that human beings like to play and watch games that push the limits of human execution, whether primarily mental, physical, or some blend of both, and allow for growth and development along a challenge curve that provides increasing rewards with increasing skill.

A lot of thought is required for these design decisions, so I don't understand why you would minimize them. Deep game design, in many ways, is all about the proper management of difficulty. If a game is too hard, then players get frustrated. If a game is too easy, then higher-level players are not challenged enough. The Sirlin school of thought goes into the "minimization of execution difficulty and maximization of interaction" philosophy. I love Sirlin, but I think he is horrifically wrong to separate the two. If you want a game to push the limits of human ability, then good game design will challenge both simultaneously with appropriate rewards attributed to the person who can best maximize the combination of the two. Melee does this extremely well, and l-cancelling as currently designed is a central, positive factor in that discussion.

Ultimately, I don't agree with your argument about the allocation of human resources not being objectively measurable or a credit to the game design at all. Sorry, I just could not disagree more to the point where it's not worth talking about if that's our big sticking point. You can prefer other mechanics better, but there is no serious flaw to the design of the l-cancel mechanic and it works as any good mechanic should. There's no such thing as a perfect mechanic.

 

[ph00tbag]

Of course mental resources have in-game representation. It's just not immediately apparent like DI or tech options are. Saying mental resources aren't an element of design is mind boggling. Plenty of games have higher demands for players in order to balance different aspects of the game. FPSes have some guns with large spray areas while others are tight. There's never a reason to NOT aim directly at your opponent, so why make shotguns easier to hit with than snipers? They intentionally design it that way because it makes snipers a less appealing option up close. Even if pros can consistently hit a sniper shot as often as a shotgun shot, it doesn't change the fact that the shotgun user doesn't have to focus as much on their aim and are therefore going to be more successful in battles with snipers. With more mental resources freed up, they are likely to pull the trigger faster and not worry as much about how they are moving during their shot. That's directly comparable to how players are freed up when you automate L-cancelling.

Mental resources are a part of design if you can represent and measure them in the game. I'm not so sure the difference between sniper rifles and shotguns falls under that kind of balance (my suspicion is it's more a function of range and angle, but I'd have to think about it more). A better example of balancing with mental resources is in Starcraft, where screen time, a resource borne of the limited screen range mechanic, directly measures how much you're focusing on a given part of the game. Case in point, a Zerg Queen needs to inject larvae on a hatchery, lair or hive every forty seconds. The more bases and queens you have, the more larvae injects you need to hit, the more of your time, and by extension, your attention, is devoted to ensuring you have ample production to support your army. Expenditure of screen time to perform this task is mandatory, since you have to manually target the hatch, and you cannot auto-inject like you can auto-repair buildings and mech units with SCVs for terrans. So you can objectively say that the advantages gained by having more than the three larvae you would have without injects is balanced internally by its mandatory screen time cost.

But screen time doesn't measure anything in Melee. All L-canceling costs is a button-press, but button presses aren't a managed resource in Melee. Button presses are free, so expenditure of them doesn't qualify as a resource.

Maybe you didn't read earlier, but pretty much everyone still talking has already discussed that l-cancelling could be improved.

So then why are you arguing with me at all? This is all I've been trying to say the entire time.

I don't think you understand "harder for the sake of being harder." In sport, the difficulty of human execution is critically and undeniably woven into the entire ruleset. The difficulty of a mechanic is not simply chosen arbitrarily. It is selected as a means of balancing ends, allowing for player growth, and diversifying the depth tree. It does have an internal balance. If everyone could throw a football at the exact velocity and direction to hit a target every single time, then football would be much less interesting. There would be nothing impressive about many of the highlights that people ooh and ahh about to this day. The basketball hoop wasn't put at 7 feet or 13 feet, it was set at 10. It is pretty clear that human beings like to play and watch games that push the limits of human execution, whether primarily mental, physical, or some blend of both, and allow for growth and development along a challenge curve that provides increasing rewards with increasing skill.

Yeah, and some of the authorities tasked with balancing these games sometimes don't know when to leave well-enough alone. When the NCAA extended the three point range a couple years back for Men's Basketball because three pointers were happening too often, I scoffed, because it just meant everyone would be practicing three pointers from further out. You could extend them to half court, and people would still devote whole practice sessions to becoming consistent with them, and they'd still be a central part of scoring points. Sure, it would interact with the front-court game and change the nature of floor spacing, but the fact that it would move the depth around doesn't make the decision any less inane.

 

[Zhea]

Again Kish, it's not that adding difficulty is bad. It's not that adding power through execution is bad and all the concentration and human limits that go with it. It's this specific case. It commits the cardinal sin of game mechanics. It attacks the flow of the game.

There are tons of ways to adjust that difficulty curve, and you are right, Melee's mid to top level of play has a nice curve. But going from beginner to early-mid level is a concave curve mostly because of L-canceling. It's solving a rodent problem with a Tiger.

@ph00tbag:
You do have to take you user into account when designing and balancing your game. It's unfortunately not an objective part of design, which is why the it can be so hit or miss, but humans and the human brain are what you are directly faceting your game to.

 

[Bones0]

But screen time doesn't measure anything in Melee. All L-canceling costs is a button-press, but button presses aren't a managed resource in Melee. Button presses are free, so expenditure of them doesn't qualify as a resource.

L-cancelling doesn't just cost a button press as has been established multiple times. It costs the ATTENTION of the player, one of the most important resources in Melee. It doesn't matter how much you know about the game or how good your strategy is; if you aren't giving your opponent your full attention, you'll probably lose. Obviously how much of a player's attention resources are being used is a more abstract measurement than something as simple as screen time, but surely you can't deny that a player pays more attention to L-cancelling when it's manual as opposed to automatic. I know that sounds obvious, but if that much is obvious, it should also be easy to understand how L-cancelling very much costs resources. If L-cancelling was some weird trick where you just held down a trigger for the duration of every match and that would automatically cancel all of your lag, obviously that wouldn't require any attention (other than the small amount required to keep your grip on the trigger tight) and thus players wouldn't be using any significant resources for a purely beneficial technique. That's not the case though because L-cancelling requires plenty of mental resources.

 

[ph00tbag]

L-cancelling doesn't just cost a button press as has been established multiple times. It costs the ATTENTION of the player, one of the most important resources in Melee. It doesn't matter how much you know about the game or how good your strategy is; if you aren't giving your opponent your full attention, you'll probably lose. Obviously how much of a player's attention resources are being used is a more abstract measurement than something as simple as screen time, but surely you can't deny that a player pays more attention to L-cancelling when it's manual as opposed to automatic. I know that sounds obvious, but if that much is obvious, it should also be easy to understand how L-cancelling very much costs resources. If L-cancelling was some weird trick where you just held down a trigger for the duration of every match and that would automatically cancel all of your lag, obviously that wouldn't require any attention (other than the small amount required to keep your grip on the trigger tight) and thus players wouldn't be using any significant resources for a purely beneficial technique. That's not the case though because L-cancelling requires plenty of mental resources.

They do pay more attention to it. But that attention isn't measurable by any in-game resource. Going back to screen time, there is direct payoff for being able to larva inject quickly, because you expend less screen time, and by extension less attention. In Melee, you get the same pay-off for l-canceling whether .01% of your attention is focused on it or 100%. So the game doesn't actually care how difficult the input is. You just have to do it.

I'm not saying attention isn't a resource. I'm saying it's not relevant to the design of l-canceling, and can't be called a cost when talking about l-canceling. Please keep this in mind.

 

[Bones0]

They do pay more attention to it. But that attention isn't measurable by any in-game resource. Going back to screen time, there is direct payoff for being able to larva inject quickly, because you expend less screen time, and by extension less attention. In Melee, you get the same pay-off for l-canceling whether .01% of your attention is focused on it or 100%. So the game doesn't actually care how difficult the input is. You just have to do it.

I'm not saying attention isn't a resource. I'm saying it's not relevant to the design of l-canceling, and can't be called a cost when talking about l-canceling. Please keep this in mind.

I don't see how you can think that you get the same pay-off regardless of how much attention you give it. Surely if you use 0.01% of your attention, you're going to miss many more L-cancels than if you used 100% of your attention on it. Yeah, if you can give it 0.01% of your attention and consistently do it, then there's never any reason to give it 100% of your attention, but the amount of attention an L-cancel requires varies by each situation and the importance of its cost varies as well (if you're landing a KO aerial on a sleeping Puff, you can focus on L-cancelling much more than if you're trying to approach a DDing Marth because one situation requires attention for many other variables while the other has almost no variables to consider). Having to pay attention to L-cancelling costs you mental resources. There's no way around that fact. Let me simplify this and you can tell me where I went wrong with my logic:

1. L-cancelling requires attention.
2. Attention is a resource used for virtually everything in the game.
3. Choosing to perform an attack that requires an L-cancel (or simply deciding if you need to L-cancel at all) costs a player a varying percentage of his attention.

 

[Fortress | Sveet]

Attention and Star Craft

While it is ideal to perform optimal micro and macro, it is usually impossible to do both tasks together as well as one could perform each separately. Thus, a player is forced to make the decision where to allocate his or her actions and attention. In order to win, a player should consider the opportunity cost of his or her choice. By spending attention on micro, we are omitting macro, and vice-versa. It is generally accepted that good macro is more valuable than good micro.

 

[KishPrime]

It attacks the flow of the game.

Not going to lie - I have no idea what you mean when you say this. And I've had a looooooooooooooooooooooot of game design conversations and debates, so I'd enjoy some exposition here.

 

[Zhea]

Well that surprises me, it's in many of mine. It usually refers to the pace of the user experience. Attacking Flow usually means drastic shifts in the pacing of gameplay that is out of the players hands in a way generally designed to frustrate the player. Overlong death sequences, labyrinthine menus, un-skippable pre-boss cinematics are more traditional examples. You go a freshly waxed hard wood floor to 3ft of mud for one missed button that had no other bearing on your decision. The pacing is what sells melee for me. L-canceling is the ****ing gate keeper. Why would you put that behind a brick wall? I hate, and I do mean hate, to make the comparison, but this is why even highly technical Traditional Fighters don't use lag cancel on land (that isn't attached to a resource).

 

[ph00tbag]

I don't see how you can think that you get the same pay-off regardless of how much attention you give it. Surely if you use 0.01% of your attention, you're going to miss many more L-cancels than if you used 100% of your attention on it. Yeah, if you can give it 0.01% of your attention and consistently do it, then there's never any reason to give it 100% of your attention, but the amount of attention an L-cancel requires varies by each situation and the importance of its cost varies as well (if you're landing a KO aerial on a sleeping Puff, you can focus on L-cancelling much more than if you're trying to approach a DDing Marth because one situation requires attention for many other variables while the other has almost no variables to consider). Having to pay attention to L-cancelling costs you mental resources. There's no way around that fact. Let me simplify this and you can tell me where I went wrong with my logic:

1. L-cancelling requires attention.
2. Attention is a resource used for virtually everything in the game.
3. Choosing to perform an attack that requires an L-cancel (or simply deciding if you need to L-cancel at all) costs a player a varying percentage of his attention.

The problem with your logic is in the premise, since you assume that the amount of attention necessary to perform a given action is constant for all individuals.

 

[KishPrime]

Well that surprises me, it's in many of mine. It usually refers to the pace of the user experience. Attacking Flow usually means drastic shifts in the pacing of gameplay that is out of the players hands in a way generally designed to frustrate the player. Overlong death sequences, labyrinthine menus, un-skippable pre-boss cinematics are more traditional examples. You go a freshly waxed hard wood floor to 3ft of mud for one missed button that had no other bearing on your decision. The pacing is what sells melee for me. L-canceling is the ****ing gate keeper. Why would you put that behind a brick wall? I hate, and I do mean hate, to make the comparison, but this is why even highly technical Traditional Fighters don't use lag cancel on land (that isn't attached to a resource).

Fair enough. I think this is not the only way to view it, though, and I feel like you're overstating its impact. Building a game around the difficulty/results curve is a perfectly fine methodology, and I think l-cancelling actually fits nicely into the system. The fact is, L-cancelling doesn't "frustrate" a player until they achieve a very high level of play. You can do a ton without ever leaving the ground and before opponents learn to punish the landing lag. Everyone pretty much agrees that between evenly matched opponents, the l-cancel rate almost never determines the winner. You can't JUST look at top-level tournament play - not everyone plays a game at that level. Players up to around the 95% percentile of all players who enjoy the game (possibly higher) can likely be solid winners without even being aware of l-cancelling. But, for pros, l-cancel serves as a powerful, balanced tool that allows a player to increase their results with increased skill and add increasingly diminished returns to their arsenal. Pros, generally speaking, appreciate having ways to differentiate. Yes, it's a mechanical differentiation, but so is chain grabbing. So is pillaring. There are 5 million ways to differentiate mechanically beyond l-cancelling, and I don't see anyone seeking to limit those. L-cancelling very specifically adds a skill check to aerial play and combo implementation - it is neither meaningless nor, I would argue, outside the flow of the game, but a reasonable tax on the results you gain.

Many traditional fighters "punish" jumping, generally speaking, by limiting your options upon leaving the ground. In Melee, you generally have much more freedom in the air than in other fighters, including air dodges, wavelands, double jumps, and various attacks, many of which affect your position and fall rate. You can use this freedom to accomplish an awful lot of your objectives. L-cancelling is a skill check that prevents air play from becoming more powerful than it already is. Not that we want to go down the traditional fighter path.

 

[Zhea]

I don't really care if it's the competitive part in this case, aerial combos is the most fun part of the game, and it's really hard to get new players on board with the melee because of L-canceling. I have hadmore new players who put in the time to learn WD/SH the L-canceling, because it's just not fun (Their words not mine).

And No. This is not a balancing mechanic. Not for a competitive multi-player game. You spend a lot of time in this game just practicing so that this isn't something your play is balanced around.

The aerial options you listed prevent you from choosing to aerial at all in most cases. Spacing, Shield Grabing and Anti-Airs already keep it in check, actual decisions. Your options should always be kept in check by what your opponent can do about it (or at least this is what you should strive for).

There are better ways of adding higher technical difficulty to a game's curve. You do it by slowly adding options with technical prowess. L-canceling adds to big a chunk of options, and completely removes any reason to things the old way. WD does not replace rolling, but it gives you another OOS option.

 

[1MachGO]

^Why are you still making that comparison to WDing? Correct execution and an actual action which changes the state of your character are two completely different things. Bear in mind, L-cancelling does exactly what it is intended to do. As a function of executing an aerial attack correctly, you are not gaining options you are just not losing them.

I still stress that the only reasonable argument I can think of against L-cancelling is the difficulty it adds, however, I still believe that if the difficulty were removed, you would hardly gain any new players. And to respond to your last reply to me, I am not overestimating, I believe anyone who is willing to play this game consistently practice and improve is someone who loves it more than the challenge. This criteria would be the majority, if not all, currently active, competitive Melee players. Anyone who has bothered to learn and master wavedashing, shffling, and a character or twohas clearly demonstrated their interest in the game. If someone got turned away by something as simple as learning to L-cancel, their interest in the game is obviously low because they don't have delayed gratification.

I would also like to comment on your comparison to traditional fighting games. You state that they don't have L-cancelling, but you failed to state that Melee doesn't have quarter-circle/dragon punch motions or any complex inputs for combos and special moves which you have to memorize. How are these not flow breakers?

The problem with your logic is in the premise, since you assume that the amount of attention necessary to perform a given action is constant for all individuals.

When did he say that? No offense ph00t, but it seems like you have a tendency to strawman

 

[Zhea]

Because just like the Dragon punch motion of below, WD is a technical aspect that gives you access to additional option. Learning how to Hadoken or Shoryuken motion for moves does not invalidate the existence of standing punch or kick. L-canceling adds nothing, it's just the way you have to do it. You already chose what you were doing when you input the button and direction for your aerial. It exists for it's own sake.

As for your seconds point I think we have different views on what creates a competitive gaming community and I am just going to agree to disagree here.

 

[ph00tbag]

When did he say that? No offense ph00t, but it seems like you have a tendency to strawman

Surely if you use 0.01% of your attention, you're going to miss many more L-cancels than if you used 100% of your attention on it.

The only reason Bones0 can think this way is if he assumes, all else being equal, that two people always exert the same amount of attention on L-canceling. The reality of the fact is, some people only require 0.01% of their attention to l-cancel efficiently, and some require 100%. And the game doesn't measure for that, because the l-cancel rewards them both the same.

 

[Divinokage]

I've thought about it a bit and I will give one easy example why L-canceling and sometimes not L-canceling is important. Just look at Break the Targets.. there's some timings where you have to miss the l-cancel in order to have the correct timing to break the next target and sometimes you have to L-cancel. =)

 

[Zhea]

One could argue that the being able to divert less attention to something and being able to do it just as efficiently is a demonstration of skill. The problem is there are better technical options you could add that would have the similar drain.

@Kage: Damn it Kage! You win this round.

 

[Strong Badam]

I've thought about it a bit and I will give one easy example why L-canceling and sometimes not L-canceling is important. Just look at Break the Targets.. there's some timings where you have to miss the l-cancel in order to have the correct timing to break the next target and sometimes you have to L-cancel. =)

have a specific example? i can't imagine a scenario where missing the l-cancel would be any better than hitting the l-cancel, then waiting for the extra time with less restriction as to your next actionable frame, unless the non-l-canceled landlag animation lets you dodge a BtT hazard.

 

[Divinokage]

have a specific example? i can't imagine a scenario where missing the l-cancel would be any better than hitting the l-cancel, then waiting for the extra time with less restriction as to your next actionable frame.

Well I saw it yesterday actually, Pichu's one where you have to Fair to hit 2 targets to the left without L-canceling and then you have to do the double uair to hit the next 2. If you L-cancel, you wont be able to hit the 2 targets with double uair since the target will be too high.

 

[Strong Badam]

What does that accomplish that Fair, L-cancel, wait 8 frames, then act doesn't?

 

[Divinokage]

I suppose its for consistency purposes because im not sure if you can hit the first 2 with L-canceling and then hit the next ones, it'll be too fast.

 

[1MachGO]

Because just like the Dragon punch motion of below, WD is a technical aspect that gives you access to additional option. Learning how to Hadoken or Shoryuken motion for moves does not invalidate the existence of standing punch or kick. L-canceling adds nothing, it's just the way you have to do it. You already chose what you were doing when you input the button and direction for your aerial. It exists for it's own sake.

If you decide to initiate a special move that requires a dragon punch motion (classic example being the shoryuken), your decision is to shoryuken and the dragon punch motion is your requirement. Likewise, if you decide to pull off a shffl'd aerial, that would qualify as your decision and all the associated inputs, including L-cancelling, are your requirement. Dragon Punch and L-cancelling are execution related mechanics. If you want to compare these things to WDing, you have to compare it to the process of intiating a WD (the process of jumping and directional airdodge). The WD itself is an action which grants and removes options, the inputs are all requirements.

In actuality, you can argue that the inputs for wavedashing, L-cancelling, Dragon Punch, etc. are all arbitrarily difficult. Its all subjective. L-cancelling just feels more arbitrary because it is atypical for an input to come at the end of an action as opposed to an initiation. As I keep saying, there isn't anything wrong with arguing the point that L-cancelling feels arbitrary, though you should really clarify and identify the main points of your stance.

The only reason Bones0 can think this way is if he assumes, all else being equal, that two people always exert the same amount of attention on L-canceling. The reality of the fact is, some people only require 0.01% of their attention to l-cancel efficiently, and some require 100%. And the game doesn't measure for that, because the l-cancel rewards them both the same.

Bones0 never explicitly claims that two people always exert the same amount of attention, he is simply making a logical conclusion that the more attention you give something, the more consistent you will be at doing it. I am not saying that the statement: "some people only require .01% and some require 100%" is incorrect, though it is, also, just a logical conclusion and doesn't disprove Bonse0's statement.

Regardless of our interpretation of someone else's argument, the indisputable fact is that L-cancelling does require some of your attention. The fact that you have to anticipate the need to L-cancel after initating an aerial will interefere with your reaction time of the resulting hit. In other words, you would be better at follow ups if you didn't have to L-cancel because it wouldn't interfere with your reaction time. This is the "cost" of L-cancelling.

 

[Zhea]

Dragon Punch and Wave Dashing have a need to be complicated due to control restraints. There are only so many buttons and simpler actions are already taken up. Wave Dashing in particular (while created on accident) has to account for that there are times when a player just wants to spot dodge, air dodge away, or roll and it has to fit in an input that can account of the granularity. The actions are complicated out of necessity. They could be improved, Dragon Punch and Hadoken motions are more legacy then anything, but they still serve their purpose. L-canceling does not differentiate to possible actions the player, when educated on the game, would want to chose between. It is there for it's own sake. It's a mechanic riding on the coat tails of a better set of movement mechanics.

 

[Bones0]

The problem with your logic is in the premise, since you assume that the amount of attention necessary to perform a given action is constant for all individuals.

Citation needed.

 

[KishPrime]

Dragon Punch and Wave Dashing have a need to be complicated due to control restraints. There are only so many buttons and simpler actions are already taken up.

This is not true, though. There's no reason that special moves could not have been assigned to additional buttons, or that the number of normal attacks could be reduced from 6 to 4 to make room for two "special attack" buttons, or that SF couldn't incorporate a tilt system like Smash. The higher-difficulty motion required to execute the dragon punch is balanced with the overall effectiveness of the move being far greater than a single button press. Try playing Blazblue (or likely any game) with one-button supers turned on. It's ridiculous. There is a purpose in requiring a certain amount input time and accuracy behind different moves.

Shrug. Again, obviously there is a difference in base philosophy here that's interesting to dig up, but will never be resolved.

 

[Zhea]

Fair enough, that is essentially the base premise of smash. I'm not sure if this is the reason, but many arcade machines back in the day had at most 2 buttons at most if they were using the standard stick and circle buttons scheme. The designers may have felt that they were already pushing the control size at the time. Later iterations of the genre removed some of the more ridiculous inputs and softened the stringency for Dragon Punch and Hadoken motions. Blaz Blue is actually one of the few other fighting games I tried getting into. Didn't care about them. I personally didn't use them, but it never bothered me when less experienced players used them. Most of the technical meat in that game is in it's combos, which actually had a melee esque feel to them.

I don't have a problem with having a high level of technical execution, but it should always be used to support the game, not the other way around.

 

[1MachGO]

^Depends on the game. Most arcade fighting games had a stick and six buttons per player. Games like Pacman had two buttons and a stick, though in some cases, these two buttons were usually just for selecting the amount of players

 

[Zhea]

Forgot about Seperate kick and punch buttons. So adding a special button would be this weird out of place 7th button. They might of just felt it was easier than dealing with more finger shifting. I doubt it, was a pioneering age in terms of fighting games.

 

[1MachGO]

It is far more likely that the inputs were intended design. What constraints did they have to adhere to? They designed their arcade cabinet to cater specifically to their game lol

 

[ph00tbag]

Citation needed.

I already did.

 

[Zhea]

It is far more likely that the inputs were intended design. What constraints did they have to adhere to? They designed their arcade cabinet to cater specifically to their game lol

Fair point. It's still execution that adds an option without making other options completely obsolete, but at this point I am way over sounding like a broken record. So I'm going to stop now.

 

[Bones0]

I already did.

Citation needed for your citation.

 

[ph00tbag]

Citation needed for your citation.

The only reason Bones0 can think this way is if he assumes, all else being equal, that two people always exert the same amount of attention on L-canceling. The reality of the fact is, some people only require 0.01% of their attention to l-cancel efficiently, and some require 100%. And the game doesn't measure for that, because the l-cancel rewards them both the same.

Now can you please stop being obtuse?

 

[Bones0]

Now can you please stop being obtuse?

According to my source, you don't understand what a citation is.

Source

 

[choknater]

i guess this example is similar to tripping

if you don't wanna trip, don't run

 

[Falconv1.0]

It's really not a decision making thing when you're not supposed to **** it ever and ****ing it up is seen as quite a big mistake. It's not the same as trying to do something so flashy than even super hardcore veterans have trouble pulling it off, it's a very ****ing arbitrary extra input. If your idea of depth is "I suck so I gotta put even more thought into this aerial attack because OH NO I MIGHT **** UP A BASIC MOVE" then gee I sure hope you aren't in charge of any competitive games in the future. L Cancelling is one of those things that essentially makes the game harder to get into, absolutely not more fun in anyway for people who are good at it, and it doesn't even factor at all into decision making because it's a thing you're supposed to just be able to do, period. No pro player has ever not done an aerial attack because derp might miss the l cancel.

 

[MajinSweet]

For starters, we need to pin down what we mean by "depth". In competitive games my definition of depth is "amount of viable options". So you could easily argue that L-Canceling adds depth to Melee because the reduced lag opens up more options offensively. The problem with this line of thinking though is that this ignores the fact that an L-Cancel is simply making an existing option better. It isn't like WaveDashing where it exist as it's own option with it's own differing uses. So that leads us to only one last line of questioning. Is their an interesting decision for players to make between non L-Canceled aerials and L- Canceled aerials? (If their exist a true decision here, the player has two viable options) And the simple, obvious answer is, that no, their isn't any real decision here.

Because attempting an L-Cancel has no cost. And not L-Canceling has no benefit. Even when a player misses an L-Cancel they still attempted it. This is why the "mental cost" is a flawed way of looking at it. Because even if that is true, it still doesn't add depth. Because even if you lack the mental resouces to L-Cancel a whole match your decision making in a game isn't going to change. You're still going to attempt as many L-Cancels as you can because it has no in game cost, and no benefit not to try it. The game is simply punishing you for something you can't do. You might say, but these players should aerial less if they lack the mental energy! But now we're talking about certain players being handicapped and having options limited. This only goes even further in the wrong direction. Theirs also the executional requirement. Forgive me but I don't know the frame data off the top of my head, but I know L-Canceling has fairly tight timing. So players with lower executional skills will also be punished by this mechanic. These two situations create a barrier to entry for the game to be played competitively.

The only thing this leaves is edge cases where you could potentially cause someone to miss an L-Cancel by tilting your shield or something to that effect. This is probably the only aspect created from this mechanic where it adds any sort of real decision making. The defender in these situations can't always attempt this, it requires specific situations. And you can't attempt to ruin someone L-Cancel timing while also using other defensive options. But it's true viability might be questionable, since it isn't something you see that often, but that's splitting hairs and I'll leave it alone.

So to summarize, L-Canceling adds very little to the game in terms of depth and is a potential barrier to entry, which can hurt the competitive scene. On top of that, it's simply needless. Melee as a game even without L-Canceling is a very fast paced and technical game. From a design stand point, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to add in technical requirements to a game like this when you they don't make the game any more interesting. It's a matter of over complicating what should be a simple situation. If a player should want to do an aerial attack, just let them do an aerial attack. Cut out the bull****. Balance the game by design, not by shoehorning in extra tasks. To steal a line from David Sirlin. Should we force a player to do a three ball juggle when they want to do a combo?

 

[1MachGO]

@MajinSweet

To be honest, I think your perspective of depth is flawed because you give it such a narrow criteria.

In simple terms, depth should typically be viewed as something that adds intricacy to an aspect. Saying that viable options is the only thing adding depth to a competitive game is like saying that symbolism is the only thing adding depth to a book; it is just not as simple as that.

For example, it is a fair statement to say that viable options adds depth to the game, however , parallel to viable options is decision making. Decision making can only exist if viable options exist, but deicision making is ultimately what makes viable options intricate in a competitive environment. Ultimately, both of these things add depth to the game and their interaction adds even more depth. Depth is really just a fancy way of saying complexity.

So I am not going to list all the possible forms of "depth" in a game (I am not smart enough anyway) but I am to go ahead and say that execution difficulty and execution requirements adds depth to the game. Execution serves as the fundamental limitation preventing the player naturally being able to do whatever they are capable of doing within the game. In order to overcome this barrier, they have to practice and learn the most effective ways to learn execution. This may not be "idealistic" depth, but it does serve to make the game more intricate. Furthermore, much like decision making and options interact, execution has its own interaction with these concepts. Oftentimes, execution can give access to better options... but it also can serve to impair the best decision making since your mind has to process another task.

So adding complexity = adding depth and interaction between these things = more depth

With all that said, my other main point is that you cannot criticize L-cancelling on the basis of its lack of decision making. This like trying to fit a round peg in a square hole. You are trying to judge it based on a criteria it was never meant to be in. Understand that L-cancelling is purely an execution mechanic for effectively perform an aerial close to the ground. If you L-cancel, you aren't gaining options, you are not losing them. It is completely intended to have no decision making.

To clarify, consider the action of short hopping where pressing the jump button quickly is required to perform it correctly. The decision making is entirely in the short hop; once you decided to short hop, your are required to press the jump button quickly. You never decided to press the jump button quickly, it is what the game is asking of you.

Similarly, L-cancelling is part of correctly executing an aerial attack while landing during the animation. You are never supposed to decide to L-cancel, your decision was made for you when you decided to aerial while landing; now you are required to L-cancel.

So this was pretty long winded but here are my two main points,
1. Depth is not just viable options. Decision making and execution also add depth to the game and they all interact with each other
2. You can't argue against L-cancelling for not incorporating decision making because it is an execution based mechanic, not an action such as shielding, jumping, dashing, or attacking

With all this said, I do think that the one valid argument against L-cancelling is that it adds seemingly arbitrary difficulty to the game. The question is: do you prefer what it adds to the game over its difficulty?

The trend of games these days is to make things simpler and more accessible, however, with simplicity comes a loss of depth (complexity). Consider the differences between Bioshock and its predecessor System Shock 2. In terms of immersing you into the environment, both are very effective. However, System Shock 2 had far more intricate rpg mechanics that gave players a larger set of options for picking and choosing how they want to play.

So yeah, if L-cancelling was gone, this game would be easier. But there would be a loss of depth also making the game "simpler". Whichever idea you idealize more is personal preference.