With the announcement of the DLC that will be ending soon, its dawned upon me that while the DLC can stop, there's no reason why the patches can't stop, and always require Sakiurai's supervision. Rather than obsessively nerfing or buffing a certain character, why not "patch up" in other areas, such as:
- Increasing a characters range, both in attacks and recovery.
- Remove invicibility when a opponent initially hits the ground, so the opponent lying on the ground can still be grabbed.
- Quicken the time a character comes back from a KO. Decrease from 5 seconds of absence to 3 at the max. 1 or 2 seconds should be the norm. In a 2-minute match, every second matters.
- Quicken the 5-second countdown, over 2 second pauses between each second.
These sound like good ideas in theory, until you consider how they'd function in-game.
Increasing a character's range is not only redefining the fundamental traits of the character in question (something that has never happened in balance patches and probably never will happen), it would have drastic effects on everything from combo potential to how a character fares in certain matchups. While I don't doubt fans of characters with disjointed moves would be happy for some extra range on their blades, it would require a massive adjustment to the rest of the game to ensure it doesn't upset its balance. Recoveries are already very good in this game, so there's no need for them to be buffed even further.
Re-grabbing a downed opponent is called chaingrabbing. It was in
Melee and
Brawl and it was terrible. It's why characters like
Brawl Dedede and Ice Climbers were so easily abused: they could grab characters an infinite number of times until they were weak enough to be killed with a single throw or carried off-stage. They could literally grab the opponent to death, which resulted in unwinnable matchups for weaker characters and disproportionately inflated results for minimal effort. Even characters without chaingrabs could abuse it with certain moves to "lock" the opponent in place indefinitely (Falco's lasers and I think Diddy's bananas could do it), resulting in inescapable combos. It was removed in this game explicitly for that reason. The balance of the game is much healthier without it.
Reducing respawn time doesn't necessarily seem like a bad idea, but bear in mind that time can be beneficial for certain characters: characters with chargeable moves, like Donkey Kong and Mewtwo, can prep their stronger moves, and it gives the player a chance to catch their breath and regroup between stocks. It also means players have to adjust their strategy in a free-for-all or doubles setting, making for a healthier and more dynamic fight. The same goes for reducing the time it takes for the countdown to finish: it's unnecessarily changing the predefined rules of the game without considering how it will affect the game in the wider context. Balancing the game and trying to create equality between very different modes is a very delicate process: if it ain't broke, it definitely does not need to be fixed unless you honestly know what you're doing.
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