My thoughts on how Smash 4 can be better.

[BUM163]

Link to original post: [drupal=5104]My thoughts on how Smash 4 can be better.[/drupal]



Hi. My name is Bum. You may or may not know me. I'm an old school Donkey Kong player that put in work within Brawl and especially Melee with my favorite Nintendo character [Donkey Kong]. I'm here making a blog [completely out of my character and for the first time so please try to deal with it and read] to discuss on how I think this is the chance to actually revive the competitive scene for this series.

So I just read the article that had Masahiro Sakurai talking about his newest game [ Kid Icarus Uprising] and interesting enough...he is mentioning how he wanted this game gear towards the hardcore gamer. You can click on this link and read it for yourself - http://ds.ign.com/articles/122/1221762p1.html. I said to myself that's weird....but then again it's not weird.

Reason why I say it's weird because....we all know Nintendo is the company that thrives on the casual play of gaming with hardly any notable hardcore games since the wii came out.

Now reason why I say it's not weird, because although they sold a lot of wii's, when it comes down to selling games....it wasn't that going that good in that department. As a matter of fact....they starting falling off real hard starting from 2010.

What I think of this is that maybe...they are learning from their mistakes and realize although the casual player is their cash cow....the hardcore player is what keeps them going and actually help advertise their game via youtube/streaming among other ways.

Now where i'm going with this is that if Sakurai did this for his latest title....will he look at Smash 4 and do the same. One of the problems that I feel troubles Nintendo is that the company has a one track mind along with not truly reaching out to their fans. Their whole motto was...let's get the casual crowd and make a butt load of money and not worry about our true loyal fans.

As you can see with Brawl....it had loads of content which was great...but what about for the hardcore players that wanted something more than just 300 tracks and non talking cinemas? The ones that been playing this franchise in tournaments for more than a decade? With Brawl...I felt like I got slap in the face multiple times...spit on...thrown off the roof and then got ran over by a truck...and I will explain why.

One of the problems I felt that could of been addressed in Brawl was Chain Grabbing. Why wasn't this fix in Brawl via Throw techs? Since Street fighter 2 turbo...this feature has been in every fighting game including the ninja turtles smash game that was develop by the smash company that made melee/brawl. Obviously in Melee this was maybe too strong of a feature that allow a character to either put an insane amount of damage or even kill the opponent.

A throw tech would easily fix that and even allow mix ups forcing the opponent to guess whether the opponent is going to d.i a certain way or get grab again. Obviously they didn't put it and certain characters like ddd, pikachu and other can put tons of damage off of a button and direction. I feel like in this game....it should definitely be included which would tone down the Cg's.

Second problem I have is the Supers. Why did they make Supers a Smash item that you can ONLY obtain by hitting the item multiple times in which gets more stupid, because if let's say I hit the item three times and then my opponent hits it once....my opponent will be the one to get the super after all the work I put on to it.

They could of simply made it how it is in every fighting game, which includes a bar building up from either whiffing a move, getting hit or hitting the opponent or another way of their choice. This was a smack to the face for hardcore players being that they should know that we don't use items in tournaments. Hopefully....they will change this and make it that it's a bar and not an item.

The third problem I have is the speed of the game. This is something more personal that I would prefer and it's to be faster. It doesn't have to be melee speed which is extremely fast and stiff...but please....I don't want to watch someone coming down for ten seconds after getting sent to the bubble and then another ten seconds if I hit the opponent outside again. It's crazy how some matches you watch over and over and over again for nearly a minute just someone in the bubble. It's not appealing to the people that are watching and sometimes not even to the players.

Fourth problem has to do with the ledge grabbing in Brawl. If you really look at it....it's bad. So bad that they have to come up with a rule to fix how many times you can grab on to the ledge. The thing I feel like they can do to fix this is that every time you grab on to the ledge....your invincibility reduces until you have no more left to prevent people from ledge camping such as Mk and other characters that can easily do it.

Now to help someone come back...they should add a new feature like using some of your bar [if they was to include that in the game] to help you fight off your opponent whether it's you recovering from your roll a lot faster or be able to do a special move only from the ledge. I just really think the ledge game is bad in Brawl and needs to be adjusted.

Fifth problem I have is the new mechanics that were added.......here we go. First I will start off with tripping. Now wtf is this? Why are characters randomly tripping? What was the point of this? To steer off the hardcore crowd? This was just taking a huge dump on the community. What made this worst is that Brawl is such a open game that you can turn on items, fix your controller and add them to your name...fix the stages that come up random and even have certain music play on the stage.

Of course tripping wasn't allow to have the option of being turn on or off in which this was one of the worst features a Fighting game has ever had. I seen Wins in tournament including me winning because of this stupid feature. One tournament I SHOULD OF LOST AND I WON BECAUSE MY OPPONENT DIDN'T TIE HIS SHOELACE.....YET ROB DON'T EVEN HAVE LEGS/SNEAKERS.

Now when I seen Armor being included into the game...I like yeah this is a cool feature being added....till I seen Olimar having it when he whistles...which makes no sense and then having armor while you normal grab your opponent. Why add armor to a whistle from such a tiny character in which this character job is to control space and we all know that a character that is small and basically controls the map....shouldn't really have any armor on anything.

The armor while normal grabbing is pretty stupid also. It you should be you either grab the opponent before his/her attack frame connects or you get beat out of it. Now if it's a command grab...then you can apply a feature like that...but every character has this. I think that should be change also.

The new features which come in the form of gliding, wall cling and crawling and backwards ledge grab lol....could of been balance out better in my opinion. Gliding was a very cool feature...yet this is a game where you can be high in the sky or just below the stage. This didn't work so well with Charizard...but with Pit and Especially Mk...this feature in some of the stages allow sky camping whether from above the skies or coming off the ledge.

You also keep your jumps from gliding in which these characters had multiple jumps and the speed off the Glide may of been to fast [besides charizard] and the fact that you can grab backwards/attack and cancel out of it made it a very strong addition. If it was to be in Smash 4....something should be done like not be able to grab backwards and if you land on the ground with an attack....their should be a longer recovery frame instead of recovery somewhat fast. Let's not forget the priority the Glide attack had that it basically cancels out other attacks.

The wall cling was okay...I just felt like maybe a character can do something out of it like an extra attack or maybe climb up or down for a limit amount of time. Again this is more of a personal thing. Crawling....was useless besides Snake and Diddy. I felt like an extra attack or something viable should of came out of this...but it sucked for the most part.

Then their's Backwards ledge grabbing. This was a weird addition in my eyes...because why should you be able to grab backwards? Was this to help out the casual player in case they fell off the ledge or something? I wonder if they will keep this feature in the sequel.

A big [6th] problem I have is the character balance and clones. One thing for sure is that Melee and Brawl balance is obviously not the best. Some characters completely shut down the lower tier characters. With Brawl.....I felt like they could of came out with an updated version via wii download and if not that....made a year edition Brawl that tweak the characters and overall balance of the game like they did with Melee [pal version] years back.

They could of even added more stages and characters and I bet you they would of sold a million or more copies just because the community alone would of supported that. Nintendo truly lacks in supporting this scene...in which I think they should start taking notes from Capcom, Namco and other companies that been supporting their fans.

They should also allow some players [not just a random joe] to help out with the game frame data and testing out stages and looking for glitches. I would let players like M2k, Wes, Jman, Aziz, Mango, Anti, Will, Ninja Link, Isai, Chu dat, Korean Dj, Dire and a few others including myself to test out the game. Whether they know how to read frames, find glitches, have a ton of knowledge when it comes to the game or just raw talent to see if something is too broken...I would like to see Nintendo more involve to help better their product since this game is basically a game that is huge within their company.

When it comes to the clones.....enough is enough. Let's be real....did we really need to have Adult Link and Toon link...in which Toon Link could of had a completely different move set considering he uses different items...come on now. I can understand Fox and Falco...but even then...they could of change up the moves and only had like two or three moves the same..tops. Now the real stupid stuff... Ganon and Captain Falcon. Really?

These guys are not even from the same world. This guy Captain never came out from his car so it's obviously they had to make up something for him. Now Ganon...LMAO really? Why do you have these moves?

I don't care if you not using your sword, but you're a wizard that uses magic and we seen you different types of magic in the many years that you existed. Why is it you have no magic moves [ do not count a big purple punch nor a flying purple kick]? To me...this is just lazy work on Nintendo's part and having clones should stick to the 1990's where ryu/ken's palette swap's rule the scene.

An overall problem I see with the game is that it's too open due to the bad balancing of the game. I feel like if the game was better balance....we wouldn't have no planking and no sky camping and taking off some stages that are actually interesting.

I was thinking that they can have the Nintendo rule set which is install in the game. So the stages with powerful hazards such as The F-zero stage in Brawl [ I love that stage] can allow you to either fix the damage/knock back that the cars do for tournaments or just take out the cars in general.

That way stages that would be good if it wasn't for hazard that was too strong...can be suitable for competitive play. Also instead of scrolling to look for a name in which I believe it stores 100...let it allow you to look for your name via typing it in that way you can get to your name a lot faster. That would help out Tournaments run so much faster.

The last set of problems I have is in regards to Controller Port Priority, Combos, Dodge Mechanic, L canceling, Shielding, DLC and Streaming. I find it stupid that in tournaments....people fight over a port that will give you an advantage over your opponent. When I first found that out...I was like wow.....why even do that? What was the point to include such a stupid feature in which I think Melee has it also [I can be wrong on that]. I truly think that should be taken out in Smash 4.

Now in Melee...we had true combos that were not only used to wow your fans/audience, but also rack up tons of damage on your opponent allowing you to get closer to knocking them off the stage. In Brawl...they change that and made it TBCC = To be continue combos. Why is it that I can hit you with a Down air from Ganon only to have to wait to see when you're going to dodge to capitalize on my hit.

If I hit you with a strong move that should put you in a long stun state...why do you have the ability to dodge out of it? Yet a character like Mk can combo up to the skies with no problem and have true combos that few characters have in the game. Not only that....it made the game boring to watch....real boring. I think everyone can agree that TRUE COMBOS should be back in Smash 4.

When it comes to the Dodge Mechanic....this is also a weird one. Characters like DDD had a great dodge that you basically had very few frames to punish him for. Not only that....you was allow infinite dodges in the air and couldn't control your air dodge like in Melee.

When you landed with an air dodge in Brawl, you only had like 4 frames of recovery or something like that in which sometimes you ended up perfecting shielding an attack [if the opponent decided not to go for the grab] by mistake and got a free punish. I wouldn't know how to approach this...but I would like to see what people think of Air Dodging. Would you want it back to Melee...Brawl...or done in a completely new way?

Now one thing I miss completely and thought was dumb to take out was L canceling. It was a great tool to use to cut down on your recovery from your aerial attacks when you hit the ground. It not only made your attacks safer...but also allow to do combos not normally possible. I'll keep it very simple on this one.....BRING IT BACK.

Next comes shielding....I feel like they made it tooooooooo effective in this game. The only nerf shielding got was not being able to reflect items/projectiles which sucks...because it took much skill to reflect in Melee. In Brawl, I felt like Shield poking wasn't as effective as it was in Melee...[again I can be wrong on this] and Perfecting shielding was definitely good, but a little too good.

It happens even when you didn't mean to and you got a free punish in the process. Maybe they should keep the perfecting shielding mechanic....but not allow you to shield that fast...and also bring back the reflecting when you power/perfect shield.

Streaming and DLC is last on my list. Streaming is such a huge thing now...to the point that certain things you cannot stream. Now the thing with this is....will Nintendo allow us to stream regular sessions, but the real question is will they allow us to stream huge tournaments/majors?

Last and most important to me is download content aka DLC. Now with this I would like to see Nintendo use this to deliver us more stages, characters, balance out the game among other things. I just don't want them to have content already in the disc [Yeah i'm looking at you Capcom] and then sell it to us.

Please comment below on what you think can help revive this game to take over the fighting game scene and any questions you may want to ask...hit me up here or on facebook = Johnathan163@myspace.com.

 

[TL?]

This is one of the best "what smash 4 needs" posts I've read. Everyone else is too concerned with the roster, while brawl's engine is incredibly problematic. Not sure if I agree with you about meter and supers though. Everything else sounds good.

You covered so much yet there is still so much more that needs fixing:

Grab release:

In brawl, letting your opponent break your grab generally results in better frame advantage and combo opportunity than actually throwing them. This makes absolutely no sense. Also grab release frames need to be universal. Characters having different grab release frames just leads to infinites (marth to ness/lucas).

Stiff movement:

This game is so much better with dash dancing and/or dash cancel (hit down while dashing in melee or most brawl mods). Dash attacks are ussually garbage. Dash dancing needs to return too. What other fighting game has turnaround animations? Why limit the player's ability to space themselves properly? Lagless ledges would also be nice, but the obscene ledge invulnerability would need to be fixed first.

Footstools:

Not a fan of this mechanic at all. Really all this has done in competitive smash has added jab locks and other nonsense combos to the game.

Ledges:

Ledges are too safe. I know you talked about this but it's very important. The point of the game is to control the stage. Being onstage should be a better position than hanging onto the ledge. That's not always true in brawl.

Rolling:

Why is rolling so inconsistent? It's a terrible idea with most characters, but then you have lucario with good rolls, and if I remember right MK and ZSS have one good roll. They don't have to be exactly the same frames, but it would be nice if something like this was kinda consistent.

Momentum:

This is strange that they would take this out completely in brawl. Jumping forward from a dash and jumping forward from standing take you equally as far. This has been added into most brawl mods and makes the game feel much smoother.

 

[Ussi]

What are your thoughts about wireless only controllers?

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Smash 4 with patches and downloadable characters/stages can has all of my money.

 

[Scidadle]

Completely and utterly perfect. The ONLY thing I have that I might disagree with was the whole supers thing, I'd like to see how that would play out first. And air dodging should be back to melee to allow wave dashing and to remove ******* combo breakers.

 

[Jimnymebob]

While I agree with a majority of your problems with the gameplay engine itself, especially when compared to Melee, I can't help but notice this:

Their whole motto was...let's get the casual crowd and make a butt load of money and not worry about our true loyal fans.

This sentence confuses me, just because the 'casual' buyer doesn't bother learning all of the things like wavedashing, L-Cancelling, chain grabs and whatnot, they aren't true fans, even if they have followed the series since its creation and checked the SSBB Dojo everyday until Brawls release?

It's basically saying someone be a true fan of Super Metroid if they can't speedrun it.

As I said, the rest of your post is sound, and much more detailed/thought out than the average "wah I want x or y", but the Smash catering primarily to the 'hardcore' mentality that people have on this site just baffles me. The game is aimed towards kids to teens, as you can tell by previous releases, the tone of the game, and the characters you can choose from. Why would Nintendo want to release something so kid friendly to a target audience of late teens to adults? Sure they play the game in tournaments, but people act as if they should just shun the 'casual' players and cater to the hardcore, and I know age rating wise Smash and Street Fighter are the same, you can tell that Street Fighter's target audience is slightly more mature than what Smash Bros. is aimed towards. People should be thankful that Smash caters to an older tournament based audience as well; they could have easily had it were you could never play with items off in any of the games, and all stages could have had gimmicks.

I'm not getting at you here, I'm just speaking out against the attitude of a good number of people when it comes to SSB being catered towards tournaments as opposed to some kid who wants to fight Mario as Pikachu.

 

[bedjy dious]

yup i totally agree with the dlc and patches add-on idea. it could be more cooler if they had a way for 3ds to share a sever so that wii-u and 3ds can brawl togather.

 

[bedjy dious]

they should also bring back pichu,mewtwo,roy. just saying cause my opinion is that pink ballon pokemon shouldt be there

 

[TL?]

Please don't turn this into another dumb roster topic.

 

[Big-Cat]

First off, PLEASE put more of your paragraphs together. I understand why it's written as such, but it's to little spread out.

A throw tech would easily fix that and even allow mix ups forcing the opponent to guess whether the opponent is going to d.i a certain way or get grab again. Obviously they didn't put it and certain characters like ddd, pikachu and other can put tons of damage off of a button and direction. I feel like in this game....it should definitely be included which would tone down the Cg's.

Along with finally adding in throw techs, actually putting more strategy like giving characters vortex would change things dramatically. Imagine giving the Ice Climbers Millia Rage's Ring as a throw setup.

Second problem I have is the Supers. Why did they make Supers a Smash item that you can ONLY obtain by hitting the item multiple times in which gets more stupid, because if let's say I hit the item three times and then my opponent hits it once....my opponent will be the one to get the super after all the work I put on to it.

They could of simply made it how it is in every fighting game, which includes a bar building up from either whiffing a move, getting hit or hitting the opponent or another way of their choice. This was a smack to the face for hardcore players being that they should know that we don't use items in tournaments. Hopefully....they will change this and make it that it's a bar and not an item.

Let's not forget that Final Smashes, like the items in Brawl, are either really good or just suck. There was no obvious balance behind these attacks.

Fourth problem has to do with the ledge grabbing in Brawl. If you really look at it....it's bad. So bad that they have to come up with a rule to fix how many times you can grab on to the ledge. The thing I feel like they can do to fix this is that every time you grab on to the ledge....your invincibility reduces until you have no more left to prevent people from ledge camping such as Mk and other characters that can easily do it.

Alternatively, and probably an easier solution, is to have a universal ledge grab limit. IIRC, Balanced Brawl limited it to three before you had to get back to the stage. Recovery moves work like this as well.

I was thinking that they can have the Nintendo rule set which is install in the game. So the stages with powerful hazards such as The F-zero stage in Brawl [ I love that stage] can allow you to either fix the damage/knock back that the cars do for tournaments or just take out the cars in general.

A hazard switch would be the best thing ever. I personally like some stages, but don't play them as much because of these hazards.

Last and most important to me is download content aka DLC. Now with this I would like to see Nintendo use this to deliver us more stages, characters, balance out the game among other things. I just don't want them to have content already in the disc [Yeah i'm looking at you Capcom] and then sell it to us.

From a technical standpoint, there's nothing wrong with what Capcom's done. Sure I don't like it as much as you do, but would rather them keep it at HQ with a huge download size and fee?

I'll chime in what I think it needs. Naturally, I know these aren't going to be agreed upon.

Eliminate the C-Stick and replace it with new mechanics that give you more options. For example, you can add a mechanic to turn around in mid-air. With Momentum, I'd like to see, maybe, that jump momentum is committed to from the beginning until, say, the peak of the jump.

Genuine Combos. I know people might not be a fan of this, but I'd like to see strings beyond just AAA, but something more meaningful with an array of possibilities. Think Tekken but just two buttons. Personally, I want the ground game stronger so it doesn't seem like having good aerials is a sign of a top tier character. Another thing I'd like to see is the simplification of DI. Why do I need two control sticks to DI to a specific direction? Seriously.

There are a bunch of other things I could say, including changes to characters (except I don't consider myself that knowledgeable of the metagame), but I'll stop here.

 

[bedjy dious]

your right about the paragragh thing. i was in a rush. i was looking up about wyh deadpool says he wants a vulgus2.

 

[Veggi]

I agree with most things you say, except for not being able to grab the edge backwards, changing the air dodge system, bringing back wave dashing and l-cancelling. Also, the incorporation of more true combos. Before anyone gets too angry at me, allow me to explain...

When you think about grabbing the edge backwards, I'm guessing you're looking at how it helps new players to recover and not enough about how it gives competitive players more options. When you jump off the edge to edgeguard someone, your character could easily be facing forward (I can't say always because so many characters have great bairs.) I use grabbing the edge backwards after edgeguarding a lot because it's the most convenient thing to do. I don't do it because I'm bad at the game and need help grabbing the edge. I use it because grabbing the edge backwards is what I need to do at the time. It's not unnatural either. If you're facing away from the edge, it's implied that the character turns around and grabs it.

The reason I disagree with with wave dashing is not because I don't like what it added to the game, but rather, I think they should have a replacement(s) for wave dashing. It's just not good to intentionally put something that looks unnatural into the game. For example, to replace wave dashing I think they should put an option to move your character backward while still facing forward and still having access to all your grounded and special moves. Kind of like how other fighting games are 100% of the time, but you would be able to cancel your movement with moves.

As another addition to the movement options that wave dashing gives, I think that certain characters should have access to an air dash such as Fox, Falco, Charizard, ect.

The problem with l-cancelling is that it adds difficulty to the game without adding depth. When is there a time where you should not l-cancel your moves? It adds nothing to the game that causing those moves to have less lag automatically doesn't. However, I think they should get smarter with how they balance the useability of aerial moves. Call me crazy, but one of the few moves that actually came from DK's games is his fair and that move sucks. I think the frame data in Brawl is actually significantly worse than it was in DK64. Like seriously...they should just know that move was going to suck because it isn't anywhere near powerful enough to warrant all the lag it has. Brawl minus got that move right.

What I like about Brawl's air dodge system is that it becomes a game of psychology. It isn't a get out of jail free card because if I know someone's going to do it, I can just hit them for it. I don't think I've ever gotten angry at the Brawl air dodge. The way to maximize damage has become a game of psychology rather than playing against yourself to see how well you can do beating up your opponent's helpless body. I know that it's not that extreme due to DI, but I definitely prefer the focus on maximizing damage through higher emphasis on knowing your opponent.

I talked about hitstun in the last paragraph, but I'd like to show more of what I think it should be. I agree that they should add more hitstun to moves, but for the reason that Brawl's hitstun is dangerously low. When you find out that you can be punished for LANDING a move, something is messed up there. Also, I don't think that true combos are a bad thing, but it should compete with resets. When combos become a primary focus, a lot of the game becomes you playing against the game and not against the opponent.

When you say that the lack of combos make the game boring, I would have to disagree. An offensive player vs. an offensive player is interesting. An offensive player vs. a defensive player is interesting. What I believe makes Brawl boring to watch is that almost every character is best played extremely campy or defensive. The thing about combos is that they put more reward on landing a hit, making the game more offensive. Having support for different types of playstyles is what makes a game healthy. In my opinion, BlazBlue did this the best. There are characters for many different playstyles.

In Brawl I think the only characters that can be played offensively are like...MK and Diddy. Maybe a Wario or something. Even then, it's better to play them defensively. That's why earlier in Brawl's lifespan M2K vs. Ally got me so pumped up. If they gave more offensive options to characters like being able to move forward or backward while attacking, air dashes, a somewhat increased hitstun and block stun, plus moves that were safer on shield, then I thoroughly believe that Brawl would be a much more interesting game to watch. Also, they need to test better so these stupid *** chaingrabs aren't in the game. If going near a character's shield wasn't so scary because of chaingrabs, the game would be more offensive. Also, every dive kick in this game sucks. I'm not saying it should be like stupidly good SF dive kicks, but they should be useable moves.

I wanted to show my support for the section about individual characters. This is something that needs more attention brought to it. The way Ganondorf is in Smash is an absolute joke. Tons of the character's movesets are terrible but Ganondorf is the worst. I know I sound crazy here, but that shouldn't have even been ALLOWED. This is like putting Iron Man in MvC and having him beat people up with his bare hands and then when he taunts he shoots a laser into the background. Also, the entire cast in general is pretty dumb. Like how Charizard has a bad recovery and can glide at a whopping 5 mph. Also, Mario can't crawl, his cape works nothing like in Super Mario World, but somehow he can't glide with the cape, he has a bad recovery despite being the king of platformers, he has FLUDD but they gimped it so it sucks and he ignores its second function and allows himself to die.

I could go on an on and on about how much I hate what they did with the characters in this game, but for the sake of everyone else I think I'll stop there. Btw, I'm not trying to sound mean, I'm just giving my input.

 

[Big-Cat]

Wavedashing could be changed to be a QCF/QCB motion. The wavedash in Tekken, where the term comes from is done in a psueo-DP motion. L-Canceling can be completely revamped to have it where there's, say, three frames of recovery for an empty jump and four or five upon landing while using an aerial and this is done automatically. The problem with both these things in Melee, to some, is that it was harder than it needed to be.

As for true combos, believe me, there is nothing more that I love in fighting games than mixups. That's also why there's a decision in doing certain damage but losing the mixup, or doing less to try to get even more with a reset. You could even have chains where you end between choosing the damaging move or the weaker one for a reset. Thankfully, DI accomplishes this, but I wonder if it's bad thing that every move has this, especially multi-hitting attacks. Zelda should not be penalized for landing her USmash.

And lol yeah, dive kicks do suck. At the very least, make them Juri tier.

 

[TL?]

Brawl's air dodge system is not bad on its own. It just does not work well with Brawl's other mechanics. Mods like Brawl Minus have shown that Brawl's very safe/effective style of air dodges works well when there is high hitstun. In this game, if you get out of a combo then you deserve a powerful tool to make it back to the stage.

Wavedashing is nice in melee. Being able to position and space yourself better is almost always a good thing. But it is not nessesary for a good smash game.

In response to KumaOso's comment on DI, Brawl's engine already allows moves to be different levels of DI-able. The problem with Zelda's upsmash is mostly the implementation of that specific move. It's fixable with PSA.

 

[bedjy dious]

i guess so i don't play street fighter so i would't know much about juri dive kick tier. but i do like mixup combos like of marvel vs capcom3

 

[GunmasterLombardi]

BUM is godlike at Marvel3.

It would be cool if they focused on Free for All and Team Battle. Might as well play Street Fighter if you want 1v1.

 

[BUM163]

This sentence confuses me, just because the 'casual' buyer doesn't bother learning all of the things like wavedashing, L-Cancelling, chain grabs and whatnot, they aren't true fans, even if they have followed the series since its creation and checked the SSBB Dojo everyday until Brawls release?

My bad about that. I should say tournament player. You're completely right about that. You don't have to learn the game in and out in order to be a true fan. I'm glad to see feed back from you guys and I read every single of on them. I'm not the greatest with blogs as you can see lol. Please show other people this blog and let's gather together and discuss on what we think can make a better smash bros game [if you dislike Brawl like me and many others did]. Let's not make this a war on here though in which people are talking reckless stuff and trolling.

 

[BUM163]

Honestly...I would love to talk to Nintendo. Tell them how I feel and I know they may not care....but maybe it can put some type of impact to create a smash bros game that would truly be accepted by the fighting community altogether. That will allow sponsors to pick up players of all types from create hype to up and coming to truly talented player. The only one I know right now is vvv that sponsors smash players.

The smash community needs to mature and discuss how we can expand this community to greater lengths in order for a better, more healthy scene.

 

[BUM163]

Smash boards is acting slow right now. Hit me up on facebook if you have anything you want to tell me or say - johnathan163@myspace.com

 

[Эикельманн [РУС]]

This post needs to be noticed, immediately.

 

[Diddy Kong]

All I want for SSB4 is BUM to use DK again.

 

[lordvaati]

Honestly...I would love to talk to Nintendo. Tell them how I feel and I know they may not care....but maybe it can put some type of impact to create a smash bros game that would truly be accepted by the fighting community altogether. That will allow sponsors to pick up players of all types from create hype to up and coming to truly talented player. The only one I know right now is vvv that sponsors smash players.

The smash community needs to mature and discuss how we can expand this community to greater lengths in order for a better, more healthy scene.

I think the tricky part comes from contacting Nintendo's Japanese office. if it was just somene like NoA or Retro Studios, it would be no prob, but otherwise, contacting(much less going) to Japan to assist the development team as a tester may prove to be the problem.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

It would be so easy to make this game great for casual players, hardcore fans, and still please the tournament scene. They just have to want to do it, that is it.

 

[DireVulcan]

Hi my name is Dire, and I'm an alcoh-no seriously, some of you might know me for my Game and Watch adventures of old.

I agree with a lot of what Bum says, there's also some details I'd like to add as far as my personal wishes.

I wouldn't mind seeing this game modernized, with perhaps beautiful CG rendered backgrounds and stronger lighting/physics effects. The art style could remain cartoony enough to keep the nature of the game but still allow for better details sort of like how Brawl's collective color style was more scaled down than it's predecessors. Imagine wind/air/light physics being included in the game? DK's fur would shine with a relaxed but visible in areas with the appropriate lighting to cause it, and in certain stages like Battlefield and Pit's stage that are high in the sky, it would cause his fur to waver slightly. Or if a blue explosion of some sort occurs, it would create a blue shine on the reflection of anything that's shiny like Samus armor.

Adding things like hyper meters and throw teching wouldn't necessarily be copying anyone else, just getting with the times really. I would like to see perhaps some depth added to the combat as I agreed that this game is almost way too aerial-based. Perhaps some feature where you could either chain a jab into a tilt, or a tilt into a smash to breathe more life into ground combat. Imagine the option select possibilities with either tilting into a delayed cancelled Smash attack, or a grab? Yo mixups!

Also, why would you add the tethering system, but REMOVE an advancement in physics from your previous game such as grappling on to the side of the stage? Why isn't it an option to do either or?

Speaking of ledges, there's something that I think is a real annoying peeve that I barely see anyone mention. In Brawl when you initially grab the ledge, there is a half second delay that bars you from doing anything. Why is that there? It wasn't there in Melee. That needs to be taken out. It destroys the groove of combat as far as I'm see it. When it comes to invincibility rules, I believe you should only get invincibility on your first ledge grab, and until you re-plant your feet on the stage it does not get refreshed with each ledge grab.

There's also a point that people ALSO overlook, one made apparent by none other than Isai (since me and him are pretty good friends). He actually told me one of the main reasons he doesn't like the other smash games besides 64. Whether you think this is a shallow reason or not is irrelevant but it's because: You aren't allowed to hold shield on a platform and fall through. So because 64 had no spot dodging, it didn't force you to do that when you held a shield and pressed down on a platform. I agree that this causes too much vulnerability when placed on platforms and I am emphatically not the only one that believes being on platforms is too imbalanced as far as defensive options go. There has to be some way to change that, perhaps holding shield and C-sticking down would make you fall through, whereas pressing down on the analog would still allow you to spot dodge.

If there were to be a meter, I would not suggest whiffing moves gaining meter. That promotes a run away style that isn't pleasant. Final Smashes are extremely entertaining to watch but as an earlier post mentioned, quite like items, they're either over powered or terrible. Imagine if I take Sonic's for example which is arguably the most powerful. What if the knockback was fixed, and each swipe would deal only 8% damage? That means even if he hit you 5 whole times with it he would only deal a healthy but balanced 40% which is what "hypers" are intended to do. Add a chunk of damage but no obliterate the opponent.

I would like to see items receive the same treatment. Revamp the item system. Remove random exploding crates and capsules, and install an overall power reduction on the items and maybe even add techniques possible with the items. Here's some examples (most of them would be the more powerful items to illustrate my ideas for balance and fun)

Some items would allow you to still use your A moves while holding on to the item which would generally be some of the weaker and harder to use items.

Fireflower would do very little damage, and tossing it at the enemy would still inflict very little hitstun but it's possible to throw cancel out of the flame activation. (Imagine something like dash Nair into fireflower, throw cancel it, as it bounces off the opponent dash jump to Z-catch and land with another Nair on their shield and re-activate flames for more shield pressure. Fun and tactical offensive combinations)

Bob-omb would deal 15% and it's killing power would be about at 100% on Mario in the middle of FD, for reference.

Home run bat would be dramatically weaker. Smash attack would only deal 20% and kill at about 75%. Smash attack can be shield cancelled to create feints.

Beam saber could be stringed together from jab to tilt to smash but would be overall weaker in damage and knockback.

Some more ideas to balance the item factor in the game could be re-program how the item spawning works..perhaps something like items cannot spawn immediately after someone gets knocked away from the stage. I'd also get rid of the easy catch system with the whole dash attack and aerials picking up items and bring back the Z-timing catch. Perhaps even add a feature that promotes countering tossed items with catching. At it's core, it's a bit too risky. Let's say someone throws a bomb at you, if you screw up the catch, you get hit which is instantly negative but if you catch it it doesn't mean that you'll hit the opponent and I feel that doesn't encourage going for it. So if you were to catch an opponents item, for you it would become a tad bit stronger, or last for a bit more uses if it's some kind of projectile. (think active reloading from Gears of War). It would promote striving for the technical response as opposed to the much easier blocking/dodging.

That was just some conceptualizing and theorycrafting on the items side of things. I'm sure a lot of you non-item purists would just want them gone no matter what.

I'd like to see the inclusion of more moves, and fixes holes in characters. Give DK and Peach their aerial down B attacks for example. No reason as to why they should not have it. That's as far as some of the necessities. Now as far as what I'd like to see, perhaps some new kinds of ways to attack, like running B moves, pummel B moves, ledge B moves, perhaps something like each character gets an A+B move that can act like a half-way hyper (it would be a powerful move that costs half a meter) and they would be fresh and unique across the cast. Some ideas would be stance-changing like Samus switching missiles (from normal to ice, etc.) or Link switching his sword and shield. Or they could be pure power, like Bowser spiting a powerful explosive blast of fire, or Ganon releasing a furious wave of dark energy.

I think I would have a large, unique and practical list of things to add to this game, and for those that don't think I wouldn't have an eye for balance, I'd like to say that I think I do. I understand the core principles behind designing a character as well as designing an attack. If an attack has long range and is powerful, by nature it should not be a fast attack. If an attack has extremely low range and weak, it should be a quick attack, but if it were low range and very powerful, it should still be on the slower side. Of course it gets much more complex but I'm just trying to show that I know exactly how I'd go about my design.

I may have discarded my smashing ways, and have somewhat regarded the community as disparaged, but still..Smash is a unique gameplay experience, and I would love to see it maximized to it's full potential. I wish I had some way to influence this game.

 

[BUM163]

That's really good **** you put there Dire. Items would be great if they fix it up and added things like what you said. A+B moves including direction would be great. The thing I like about Tmnt smash up was that they had a few more moves than usual. Also what they added which was weird is that if you roll towards the ledge...you actually flew out. I thought that was pretty cool also. That's also true about characters should have every direction fill in every situation whether air, ground or ledge with either the direction or button. It's weird that like Dk or Peach don't have a down B. I'm going to talk to someone that's pretty close to Nintendo about this.

This thread is definitely getting interesting.

 

[Spyro]

This is the best thread about ssb4. I agree with everything you said except for the supers and L canceling.

I think supers would mess up the balance a little bit. As for L canceling, it's just an unnessisary techinal barrier ( image if someone told you you had to hit the L, R, Y, and taunt button in melee to L cancel, yes you would get use to it but it's just unnessisary), all of the characters should have either very little landing lag from air attacks ( like 2-8 frames of lag) or no landing lag.

 

[DireVulcan]

I disagree with "no L-cancelling" for one reason. Aerials are TOO powerful cause of the nature of the combat system. Everything is about staying in the air and abusing your best aerials. It gives you a small 'tax' per se, to upkeep while you stick to that superior strategy.

 

[Big-Cat]

Adding things like hyper meters and throw teching wouldn't necessarily be copying anyone else, just getting with the times really. I would like to see perhaps some depth added to the combat as I agreed that this game is almost way too aerial-based. Perhaps some feature where you could either chain a jab into a tilt, or a tilt into a smash to breathe more life into ground combat. Imagine the option select possibilities with either tilting into a delayed cancelled Smash attack, or a grab? Yo mixups!

Lucario has this in Project M, but as I mentioned before, I'd like to see it where 3D Fighter strings are in the game as well. IMO, characters not in like Krystal and Little Mac would benefit greatly from this kind of addition.

If there were to be a meter, I would not suggest whiffing moves gaining meter. That promotes a run away style that isn't pleasant. Final Smashes are extremely entertaining to watch but as an earlier post mentioned, quite like items, they're either over powered or terrible. Imagine if I take Sonic's for example which is arguably the most powerful. What if the knockback was fixed, and each swipe would deal only 8% damage? That means even if he hit you 5 whole times with it he would only deal a healthy but balanced 40% which is what "hypers" are intended to do. Add a chunk of damage but no obliterate the opponent.

Another option would be to turn Sonic's Final Smash into Vega's Bloody High Claw, but I wonder if that kind of thing is appropriate for this kind of game, same goes for cinematic attacks even though we have Capt. Falcon's Final Smash as such.

Cool item stuff

This actually makes me think of items as having potential of having valid tactics behind them.

I'd like to see the inclusion of more moves, and fixes holes in characters. Give DK and Peach their aerial down B attacks for example. No reason as to why they should not have it. That's as far as some of the necessities. Now as far as what I'd like to see, perhaps some new kinds of ways to attack, like running B moves, pummel B moves, ledge B moves, perhaps something like each character gets an A+B move that can act like a half-way hyper (it would be a powerful move that costs half a meter) and they would be fresh and unique across the cast. Some ideas would be stance-changing like Samus switching missiles (from normal to ice, etc.) or Link switching his sword and shield. Or they could be pure power, like Bowser spiting a powerful explosive blast of fire, or Ganon releasing a furious wave of dark energy.

There's so many possibilities that it's not even funny. One possibility is to expand on the Smash Specials that we saw we Samus' missiles. Another thing would be to use 9B and 3B as inputs for specials. You could break up D3's Waddle Dee Toss that way along with Peach's FSmash.

Another excellent addition for specials is the ability to cancel into them.

I may have discarded my smashing ways, and have somewhat regarded the community as disparaged, but still..Smash is a unique gameplay experience, and I would love to see it maximized to it's full potential. I wish I had some way to influence this game.

You and me both. My biggest beef with Brawl, besides turning Smash into a mess, is that it did nothing to expand on the potential Melee provided. I still say that Super Smash Bros. has the potential to be one of the greatest fighters, nay, games of our time. At the very least, it's proving to be influential.