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Let's talk stale moves

Quillion

Smash Hero
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
5,512
I personally think stale moves is a good idea, but it has been done in a less-than-ideal way over the course of several Smash games. I mostly take issue with how it has favored "spam combos" (moves that combo into itself) too much, as a lot of the time, the purely decreased knockback tends to help this kind of playstyle, more than offsetting the reduced damage from staling. I have (EDIT) four separate ideas on how they can improve staling:
  1. My first idea for improving staling is this: as a move stales, base knockback increases, but knockback growth decreases. This way, opponents are hit farther and farther back regardless of percent, but the effect percent has on the move will decrease. While someone has said that adding BKB would turn combo moves into kill moves, I also have the idea of adding a "BKB cap" unique to each character so that if a move stales to have too much BKB, it is capped at a certain number while knockback growth continues to decrease. The main drawback of this approach is that it would be very complicated to program and balance properly, so it may be rather impractical to implement.
  2. I (partly) took this idea from Necro'lic Necro'lic , but he had the idea of making it so that instead of the game decreasing knockback for you, the DI deviation increases so that the player decides where to go. As for my own addendum, I also have the idea of making it so that "real vectoring" (not Smash 4's purely vertical Launch Speed Influence) is a mechanic. By holding the control stick parallel or opposite to the launch angle, knockback received increases or decreases. By holding the control stick perpendicular to the launch angle, the launch angle gets altered without launch speed being affected. This makes it so that the responsibility of escaping spam combos is put in the hands of the victim instead of the game. However, the problem with this is that it would favor characters with more diverse combo options, which would pose a problem with trying to balance heavy characters.
  3. My third idea is just bringing stale moves back to Melee standards: where staling doesn't affect knockback at all. My problem with this is that it rewards spamming one good finisher, discouraging diverse use of finishes. It also does nothing to prevent spam combos other than SDI and DI, both of which I want to see heavily reworked.
  4. (EDIT) My fourth idea is to classify each attack into being either a combo move or a KO move. As combo moves stale, they gain BKB, meaning that the attacker has a harder time chasing down the victim and following up. As KO moves stale, they lose KBG, meaning that the attacker can knock away the victim but can't kill them effectively, and the attacker can't just turn a KO move into a combo move. Combo moves would keep their KBG and KO moves their BKB with no change as they stale. This is similar to my first idea, but it would be much easier to implement without having to balance around BKB increasing and KBG decreasing.
All of that said, I really appreciate the new dodge staling, since that puts defensive options on a more even level with attacking.
 
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Necro'lic

Smash Ace
Joined
Aug 9, 2015
Messages
654
I personally think stale moves is a good idea, but it has been done in a less-than-ideal way over the course of several Smash games. I mostly take issue with how it has favored "spam combos" (moves that combo into itself) too much, as a lot of the time, the purely decreased knockback tends to help this kind of playstyle, more than offsetting the reduced damage from staling. I have three separate ideas on how they can improve staling:
  1. My first idea for improving staling is this: as a move stales, base knockback increases, but knockback growth decreases. This way, opponents are hit farther and farther back regardless of percent, but the effect percent has on the move will decrease. While someone has said that adding BKB would turn combo moves into kill moves, I also have the idea of adding a "BKB cap" unique to each character so that if a move stales to have too much BKB, it is capped at a certain number while knockback growth continues to decrease. The main drawback of this approach is that it would be very complicated to program and balance properly, so it may be rather impractical to implement.
  2. I (partly) took this idea from Necro'lic Necro'lic , but he had the idea of making it so that instead of the game decreasing knockback for you, the DI deviation increases so that the player decides where to go. As for my own addendum, I also have the idea of making it so that "real vectoring" (not Smash 4's purely vertical Launch Speed Influence) is a mechanic. By holding the control stick parallel or opposite to the launch angle, knockback received increases or decreases. By holding the control stick perpendicular to the launch angle, the launch angle gets altered without launch speed being affected. This makes it so that the responsibility of escaping spam combos is put in the hands of the victim instead of the game. However, the problem with this is that it would favor characters with more diverse combo options, which would pose a problem with trying to balance heavy characters.
  3. My third idea is just bringing stale moves back to Melee standards: where staling doesn't affect knockback at all. My problem with this is that it rewards spamming one good finisher, discouraging diverse use of finishes. It also does nothing to prevent spam combos other than SDI and DI, both of which I want to see heavily reworked.
All of that said, I really appreciate the new dodge staling, since that puts defensive options on a more even level with attacking.
I think my idea of increased DI deviation combined with Melee's system of no knockback change would work very well, and it might be what is missing from Melee's stale move system. Think about it: if people spam their killing moves too much, the increased DI deviation will make them far worse at killing, ESPECIALLY if we add your vectoring idea to the mix due to the opponent choosing the dreaded 45 degree angle to just continuously survive.
 

Quillion

Smash Hero
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
5,512
I think my idea of increased DI deviation combined with Melee's system of no knockback change would work very well, and it might be what is missing from Melee's stale move system. Think about it: if people spam their killing moves too much, the increased DI deviation will make them far worse at killing, ESPECIALLY if we add your vectoring idea to the mix due to the opponent choosing the dreaded 45 degree angle to just continuously survive.
I didn't put this in the OP, but another issue I have with "increase DI on stale" is that it make escaping combos a bit difficult for beginners in addition to the problems with favoring more diverse combo options. There would also be a lot of guesswork in determining the launch angle of each attack.

Then again, with the improved training mode revealing each attack's launch angle, perhaps the guesswork won't be an issue. Even then, I do kinda prefer how the game affects knockback on stale just to punish more "noob" players. There just needs to be a way to balance affecting combo moves and affecting kill moves.
 

FNUStory

Smash Cadet
Joined
Sep 12, 2018
Messages
63
Increasing directional influence? Never thought of it before, but now that I have, it's a pretty good idea. Moves that become stale have less of an ability to combo into other ones and kill players.
 
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Quillion

Smash Hero
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
5,512
Increasing directional influence? Never thought of it before, but now that I have, it's a pretty good idea. Moves that become stale have less of an ability to combo into other ones and kill players.
Not only directional, but players should also be able to escape combos by holding the control stick with the knockback instead of purely to the side. It launches them too far out for the attacker to chase.
 

Luigifan18

Smash Master
Joined
Feb 19, 2015
Messages
3,134
Switch FC
SW-5577-0969-0868
I figure that the idea of stale-move negation increasing base knockback and decreasing knockback growth could be coupled with stale-move negation modifying knockback velocity proportionally to knockback growth and inversely proportionally to base knockback. Essentially, as a combo-suitable move with inherently low knockback stales, it not only launches the foe further away, it also launches them faster, making it even harder to chase after them and continue the combo. Conversely, as a kill-suitable move with inherently high knockback stales, not only does its launching power weaken, the velocity at which the target is launched is reduced, giving the victim more time to apply DI and survive. The reasoning behind reducing knockback velocity for high-knockback moves is to avoid causing KO moves to kill more easily when heavily staled. This does require working within the "balloon effect" introduced in Ultimate, but in a way that explicitly hinders combos that rely on repeatedly executing a small number of moves, while not being as detrimental to combos that rely upon a large variety of moves.
 

Mario & Sonic Guy

Old rivalries live on!
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Stale moves does lead to some inconsistency with the knockback formula. It can cause attacks to deal less knockback than what you would see in the game modes that don't use stale move negation (such as Training).

I think one way to adjust the stale move negation mechanic is to simply just alter the amount of damage that an attack deals. Damage dealt already affects the amount of knockback dealt, so there's no point of altering the knockback taken multiplier as well.

As for the mechanic itself...

Total Damage Dealt = ((Base Damage) * (1 - (Queue Positions))) * (Other Damage Multipliers)

Queue Positions
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
0 | 0.09 | 0.08 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.01
Basically, Melee's reduction factor system returns, but stale move negation would no longer affect the amount of knockback dealt. As such, even if a KO move is fully staled, it would still be able to KO below 200% damage, assuming that it can KO below 100% with the base damage value.

If an attack has not been used at any point, it would receive a fresh bonus of 1.05x damage dealt. But if the attack has been used, and is no longer in any of the queue positions, it will simply deal its base damage amount (excluding the damage multipliers from other factors). Getting KO'd resets the queue, enabling attacks to acquire the fresh bonus again.
 

Quillion

Smash Hero
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
5,512
Stale moves does lead to some inconsistency with the knockback formula. It can cause attacks to deal less knockback than what you would see in the game modes that don't use stale move negation (such as Training).

I think one way to adjust the stale move negation mechanic is to simply just alter the amount of damage that an attack deals. Damage dealt already affects the amount of knockback dealt, so there's no point of altering the knockback taken multiplier as well.

As for the mechanic itself...

Total Damage Dealt = ((Base Damage) * (1 - (Queue Positions))) * (Other Damage Multipliers)

Queue Positions
0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
0 | 0.09 | 0.08 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.02 | 0.01
Basically, Melee's reduction factor system returns, but stale move negation would no longer affect the amount of knockback dealt. As such, even if a KO move is fully staled, it would still be able to KO below 200% damage, assuming that it can KO below 100% with the base damage value.

If an attack has not been used at any point, it would receive a fresh bonus of 1.05x damage dealt. But if the attack has been used, and is no longer in any of the queue positions, it will simply deal its base damage amount (excluding the damage multipliers from other factors). Getting KO'd resets the queue, enabling attacks to acquire the fresh bonus again.
You know, maybe a better way to correct the wonkiness of damage and knockback would be to not let the damage dealt by an attack affect knockback.

Given that the current knockback formula calculates using the victim's percent after they take an attack, I don't really see why damage dealt needs to be a variable in the knockback formula. They way it is now, having damage dealt by an attack affect knockback significantly as it does makes balance more difficult.
 

Mario & Sonic Guy

Old rivalries live on!
Joined
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Location
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You know, maybe a better way to correct the wonkiness of damage and knockback would be to not let the damage dealt by an attack affect knockback.

Given that the current knockback formula calculates using the victim's percent after they take an attack, I don't really see why damage dealt needs to be a variable in the knockback formula. They way it is now, having damage dealt by an attack affect knockback significantly as it does makes balance more difficult.
BKB and KBG exist as well though. So even if an attack deals high damage, it may lack any real KO potential if its knockback statistics are weak. This is most notable for Little Mac's f-smash when it's angled downwards, where even though it's his most damaging smash attack, it's impractical for KOing, due to how low its KBG is. And if that attack is fully stale, it won't be able to KO the lightest fighters at all until their current damage goes well beyond sudden death levels.

And of course, an attack that deals very little damage would need very high knockback statistics if it wants to be a potent KO maker.

Fixed knockback may ignore an attack's base damage when calculating the amount of knockback dealt, but since those kinds of attacks ignore an opponent's current damage as well, you wouldn't be able to make any KOs with them, unless the fixed knockback strength is high. And even then, other factors, such as BKB, KBG, knockback resistance, and even the knockback taken multipliers, still influence the strength of the fixed knockback.
 

Quillion

Smash Hero
Joined
Sep 17, 2014
Messages
5,512
BKB and KBG exist as well though. So even if an attack deals high damage, it may lack any real KO potential if its knockback statistics are weak. This is most notable for Little Mac's f-smash when it's angled downwards, where even though it's his most damaging smash attack, it's impractical for KOing, due to how low its KBG is. And if that attack is fully stale, it won't be able to KO the lightest fighters at all until their current damage goes well beyond sudden death levels.

And of course, an attack that deals very little damage would need very high knockback statistics if it wants to be a potent KO maker.

Fixed knockback may ignore an attack's base damage when calculating the amount of knockback dealt, but since those kinds of attacks ignore an opponent's current damage as well, you wouldn't be able to make any KOs with them, unless the fixed knockback strength is high. And even then, other factors, such as BKB, KBG, knockback resistance, and even the knockback taken multipliers, still influence the strength of the fixed knockback.
Even if BKB and KBG exist, I would prefer that knockback be adjusted to compensate for not having damage dealt affect knockback at all.

If there are moves that deal high damage and low knockback, so be it. I think there should be more of a distinction between damage dealer moves and finishers.

Come to think of it, I have a fourth idea for asjusting staling: making combo moves gain BKB while kill moves lose KBG. Each move could be individually classified into this system to determine whether less knockback or more knockback is ideal, and so spam combos and finisher spamming are more discouraged.
 
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