Landing Lag (or Lack Thereof ;)

[Pippin (Peregrin Took)]

Everybody’s talking about wavedashing/landing but very few seem to be mentioning the other “bread and butter” tool of Melee, L-Cancelling. I’ve seen from multiple sources now that the landing lag is cut very much from Smash 4, almost as if there’s an “automatic L-Cancel” or Smooth Lander badge equipped.

I dabbled some in that Smooth Lander Heavy Gravity group in smash 4 to know that there are some potentially major implications here.

 

[Aurora_Borealis]

I'd rather it be automatic than have it be manual.

 

[Hekpo]

There is no need for "L-canceling", or it's probably automatic because Demetrius did it during the treehouse with Ganongdorf's nair. He spammed nair and he was a complete idiot about techs.

 

[Quillion]

I don't want to make another thread when this exists, so I'm posting here.

I feel like Ultimate's tentative (because this can all change in the future) handling of landing lag was only a half-measure in an attempt to address the post-Melee lack of L-canceling. The main issues of post-Melee's lack of L-canceling are twofold: it slows down the game due to putting a damper on air-to-ground combos, and it removes the engaging element of being aware of the environment and thinking in response to that. As can be seen, universally low landing lag only addresses the former issue; the latter issue remains.

That said, bringing back L-canceling in its pure Melee form is just as flawed a solution, as it entirely depends on pressing a button at the right time, and there's no reason to not do it. Even if they added more landing lag to a missed L-cancel like some Melee and PM mods do, there still would be no reason not to L-cancel. Being punished for missing something you should have done anyway doesn't really sit right in Smash, especially in the Brawl-and-onward period of the series.

What they should have done, then, was to combine the best of both worlds into one option: On-hit L-Canceling.

This way, aerials would be handled thus: if the attack connects (either clean hit or on shield), it gets less landing lag; if the attack entirely whiffs, it gets more landing lag. It combines the faster pace, shield pressuring, and combos of L-canceling with the ease of lack of input and punishability of normal landing lag. Reads would be important in order to force the opponent into an unfavorable position, awareness in relation to the playing field would be important because low-to-ground aerials would be high-risk-high-reward, yet the attacking player still has the opportunity to execute and/or extend a combo.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

I don't want to make another thread when this exists, so I'm posting here.

I feel like Ultimate's tentative (because this can all change in the future) handling of landing lag was only a half-measure in an attempt to address the post-Melee lack of L-canceling. The main issues of post-Melee's lack of L-canceling are twofold: it slows down the game due to putting a damper on air-to-ground combos, and it removes the engaging element of being aware of the environment and thinking in response to that. As can be seen, universally low landing lag only addresses the former issue; the latter issue remains.

That said, bringing back L-canceling in its pure Melee form is just as flawed a solution, as it entirely depends on pressing a button at the right time, and there's no reason to not do it. Even if they added more landing lag to a missed L-cancel like some Melee and PM mods do, there still would be no reason not to L-cancel. Being punished for missing something you should have done anyway doesn't really sit right in Smash, especially in the Brawl-and-onward period of the series.

What they should have done, then, was to combine the best of both worlds into one option: On-hit L-Canceling.

This way, aerials would be handled thus: if the attack connects (either clean hit or on shield), it gets less landing lag; if the attack entirely whiffs, it gets more landing lag. It combines the faster pace, shield pressuring, and combos of L-canceling with the ease of lack of input and punishability of normal landing lag. Reads would be important in order to force the opponent into an unfavorable position, awareness in relation to the playing field would be important because low-to-ground aerials would be high-risk-high-reward, yet the attacking player still has the opportunity to execute and/or extend a combo.

I don't like the idea. It encourages defensive play. Just keep dodging or staying out of range until your opponent whiffs an attack, and punish their lag. I understand your point about rewarding reads and such, and while that is true, in tense tournament situations players will rely on what is safe, and if whiffing an attack means you're gonna lag, people will play it as safe as possible. As opposed to having no lag, playing aggressive is safe because you won't lag, so both players will have no incentive not to approach. Also, you assume that becase players won't lag on their attacks they can just haphazardly throw attacks, but that's not true either because other good players can still use good reads to predict what they are going to do and react accordingly. It's just that if you have no lag when you connect an attack and lots of lag when you whiff, the risk to reward ratio of approaching just has a huge dropoff.

I'd prefer all attacks have near zero landing lag except for those attacks that are especially powerful, and those can have minimal but still not a lot.

 

[Quillion]

I don't like the idea. It encourages defensive play. Just keep dodging or staying out of range until your opponent whiffs an attack, and punish their lag. I understand your point about rewarding reads and such, and while that is true, in tense tournament situations players will rely on what is safe, and if whiffing an attack means you're gonna lag, people will play it as safe as possible. As opposed to having no lag, playing aggressive is safe because you won't lag, so both players will have no incentive not to approach. Also, you assume that becase players won't lag on their attacks they can just haphazardly throw attacks, but that's not true either because other good players can still use good reads to predict what they are going to do and react accordingly. It's just that if you have no lag when you connect an attack and lots of lag when you whiff, the risk to reward ratio of approaching just has a huge dropoff.

I'd prefer all attacks have near zero landing lag except for those attacks that are especially powerful, and those can have minimal but still not a lot.

Maybe making all aerials "easily punishable" on whiff is a bit extreme, sure. I still think on-hit L-canceling would combine the best of both worlds into one package, but maybe not all aerials would need to be extremely laggy on whiff. Several aerials in all the pre-Ultimate days were really hard to punish even without L-canceling.

That said, the Smash team really needs to take a good look at how aerials are handled and adjust them to how they are used: either as combo tool, or finisher. I really don't like when aerials can be comfortably used as both (looking at you, Melee Fox and pre-patch Diddy).

 

[viewtifulduck82]

I don't want to make another thread when this exists, so I'm posting here.

I feel like Ultimate's tentative (because this can all change in the future) handling of landing lag was only a half-measure in an attempt to address the post-Melee lack of L-canceling. The main issues of post-Melee's lack of L-canceling are twofold: it slows down the game due to putting a damper on air-to-ground combos, and it removes the engaging element of being aware of the environment and thinking in response to that. As can be seen, universally low landing lag only addresses the former issue; the latter issue remains.

That said, bringing back L-canceling in its pure Melee form is just as flawed a solution, as it entirely depends on pressing a button at the right time, and there's no reason to not do it. Even if they added more landing lag to a missed L-cancel like some Melee and PM mods do, there still would be no reason not to L-cancel. Being punished for missing something you should have done anyway doesn't really sit right in Smash, especially in the Brawl-and-onward period of the series.

What they should have done, then, was to combine the best of both worlds into one option: On-hit L-Canceling.

This way, aerials would be handled thus: if the attack connects (either clean hit or on shield), it gets less landing lag; if the attack entirely whiffs, it gets more landing lag. It combines the faster pace, shield pressuring, and combos of L-canceling with the ease of lack of input and punishability of normal landing lag. Reads would be important in order to force the opponent into an unfavorable position, awareness in relation to the playing field would be important because low-to-ground aerials would be high-risk-high-reward, yet the attacking player still has the opportunity to execute and/or extend a combo.

This is exactly how you slow down a game. No one is gonna throw anything because they'll be afraid of lag. This also removes throwing out sh aerials to deny space, which is one of the only real ways to zone without a projectile.

It's perfect as is in ultimate.

 

[Quillion]

This is exactly how you slow down a game. No one is gonna throw anything because they'll be afraid of lag. This also removes throwing out sh aerials to deny space, which is one of the only real ways to zone without a projectile.

It's perfect as is in ultimate.

Again, maybe they'll be afraid if every move has the landing lag of most of Bowser or Ganondorf's set. But if we're talking landing lag of speedsters such as Diddy or Sheik, things change then.

Most characters on the roster certainly need a good mix of fast, weak aerials and strong, slow aerials, though. And it really grinds my gears when an aerial has BOTH the low base knockback of a combo move and the high growth of a finisher.