Overall Speed of the Game

[Deleted member 245254]

Zero isn't the end all, be all. Smash 4 seems more tailor-made to low mains, as a lot of the same mechanics are there, only with combos.

Zero plays characters not known for these kind of advanced reverse grab buffering combos, and all of them are high tiers at worst. Compared to the old school NorCal Brawl player I was with, that's not as much experience with a lot of characters, specifically Samus, who was largely ignored in Brawl.

The player I was with (I forget his tag, but his name is Ryan; it seems I forget one or the other or both) totally knew Samus and all of those spammy projectile characters in Brawl, and is a self-admitted super hardcore camper (but he claimed he wasn't as bad as Zero, lol).

All and all, I saw firsthand what Masahiro Sakurai meant when he said Samus was the best character, because she is. HugS was wrong, and as much as I respect Hugo and appreciate my few talks with him, he was wrong. Based on Brawl and some 64 mechanics, with her reverse grab cancel mechanics, broken Z-air, and insane KO power, she was the best, without a doubt. And that grab combo was one of a few things only she could abuse.

I would dare say the Samus in Smash 3DS and WiiU demo has better combos than Samus in any version of Smash 64.

I'm all for not jumping the gun on judgment because of potential undiscovered tech, and also, I supported Brawl as a game. I practice every day in preparation for Smash 4.

It's just that trying to argue that Brawl has a wealth of combos is rather heinous and I'm surprised nobody else has jumped in to attack such an assertion. It's almost the primary reason melee players cite for not liking brawl aside from "floatiness" or tripping.

 

[Johnknight1]

It's just that trying to argue that Brawl has a wealth of combos is rather heinous and I'm surprised nobody else has jumped in to attack such an assertion.

Chain grabs are combos, and chains involving grabs are combos.

Whether you want to accept that or not dictates whether or not you want to come into reality.

If you want to ask top players of Brawl, ask them, and they'll tel you they are combos.

Brawl has a lot more OP combos than Melee. However, unlike Melee, they tend to rely on things we consider "janky" because they just look and act weird, and are too easy to perform. On top of that a lot of things in Melee we call "combos" aren't combos like in Marvel vs. Capcom where they're automatic, whereas in Brawl there are a wealth of combos.

If you doubt me, look up Smash wiki for "chain grabs", and you'll find an insane amount of super good combos involving chain grabs.

 

[Nstinct]

I suppose it depends on what "combo" means to someone. Kind of like when I watch Melee matches and there's commentary the commentators will chalk up hits as being a combo. If he grabs twice or more then they're normally called chain grabs. I could get misled if you call chain grabs combos since I've played games like Tekken and Street fighter (old versions) and grabs stop the combo counter.

In regards to Brawl combos, I don't really see to many combos in high level matches. I've once heard that true combos are inescapable, but I think as long as you can deliver a quick second hit to follow it up it'd be a combo. There seems to be a lot of space in Brawl so it's really pokey and campy and not all that combo rich. I do know Brawl had combos, but I think most of the combos were typically 2 hit and anything more isn't often seen in Brawl (by me anyway.) Maybe a lot of the combos are to easy to break such as DIing up out of Lucas' Dair.

 

[MasterOfKnees]

All and all, I saw firsthand what Masahiro Sakurai meant when he said Samus was the best character, because she is. HugS was wrong, and as much as I respect Hugo and appreciate my few talks with him, he was wrong. Based on Brawl and some 64 mechanics, with her reverse grab cancel mechanics, broken Z-air, and insane KO power, she was the best, without a doubt. And that grab combo was one of a few things only she could abuse.

I would dare say the Samus in Smash 3DS and WiiU demo has better combos than Samus in any version of Smash 64.

Please let this Samus make it live then, this sounds absolutely amazing.

 

[kazrisk]

My hope is that with all these improvements and changes that the Smash community won't need to mod Smash 4 in order to make it a major entry in the competitive scene. Sounds like its on track to be potentially the best Smash yet, and it still has 5 months of development! Nintendo makes entire games in that amount of time.

 

[Yoshi Kirishima]

>Bowser can chain grab by grab releasing on Wario, and it is an infinite on a wall until Wario jump releases.
>Dedede chain grabs anyone as heavy as Marth on up with his down throw. Dedede can also chain grab against a wall infinitely.
>Ice Climbers chain grabs. They can literally infinite grab the entire roster when both Ice Climbers are present.
>Fox can forward throw dash cancel chain throws. There's a special super unknown one I know where you do that and involve the down air.
>Pikachu can chain grab combo with buffering out of his forward and down throws, including Fox to about 115%. Pikachu can chain grab Wario off a ledge until 120%.
>Wario chain grab combos. He can chain grab with a grab, down throw, and buffer into a turn around re-grab. He can do this Captain Falcon 0-70%, Ganondorf 0-80%, Wolf 20-220%, Falco 52-120%, Donkey Kong 0-145% (DK can jump out between 100-110%), Bowser 0-180% (you can finish this with a Wario Waft). Buffering and using it to reverse grab is a hard but useful skill to master.
>Tons of combos (including infinite combos) on Ness and Lucas (these are so lulsy)
>Snake's box edge guard on Ike (Ike with his up B can't recover, and it keeps hurting him when he up B's, lol!).

A lot of such combos are very specific to damage percentages, or specific to a set character or characters. If you look for them enough, you'll find a ton. However, many if not most of such combos are banned tournaments (to various degrees).

Back when NorCal Brawl was a thing (from 2008-2011) this guy from Japan named Mike Hay taught a lot of people the Japanese secrets in 2009: camping, stalling, spacing, defense, and janky combo crap. And trust me, after that, we found all kind of combos.

DieSuperFly, an old school Melee legend back who was on top of Melee from like 2002-2005 and was on top of Brawl from 2008-2010 used to showcase that kinds of stuff like crazy, amongst a ton of characters. There are tons of Brawl players who know these things.

Mike Hay? Holy crap nostalgia. I think I remember that!

Great post! Marth's forward throw not allowing him to chaingrab proves that there are no grab combos in SSB4!

 

[ShadowLink84]

Of course things like a lot of items on the screen will cause lag, but that applies to every smash game.

Melee runs rather steadily,only time I ever saw a framedrop was during black hole glitches.

 

[Johnknight1]

Melee runs rather steadily,only time I ever saw a framedrop was during black hole glitches.

That's false.
Melee lags:
-Several frames on stages like Fountain of Dreams, Mute City, and Big Blue with 4 players.
-With more than 3 items that aren't Pokéballs.
-Pretty much any time a Pokémon is summoned.
-A few frames whenever you hit a Fly Guy on Yoshi's Story.

Please let this Samus make it live then, this sounds absolutely amazing.

A balanced version of it sounds cool, but currently it looked really OP.

Mike Hay? Holy crap nostalgia. I think I remember that!

Oh man, don't remind me. >.> He made my Toon Link irrelevant by making strong monsters in NorCal who camped (which I wasn't willing to do because I played the game too much like Melee to really win), lol.

I suppose it depends on what "combo" means to someone. Kind of like when I watch Melee matches and there's commentary the commentators will chalk up hits as being a combo.

Melee has few "true combos" of more than 3 moves like other fighting games have. Most of those are read-based non-automatic chains of attacks which can be classified as "combos", and it is ultimately what our community does. There is a very big difference between the 2, and a lot of people don't realize the distinction.

 

[MasterOfKnees]

A balanced version of it sounds cool, but currently it looked really OP.

Well, yeah that's of course what's reasonable

I just want a really good Samus, aside from Melee where she was okay she has always been a stinker, at least in the official titles, so I'm simply excited for a truly great Samus. Of course a nerf is pretty much inevitable if she's ranked top of the top during intern testing.

 

[Yodude57]

Well, yeah that's of course what's reasonable

I just want a really good Samus, aside from Melee where she was okay she has always been a stinker, at least in the official titles, so I'm simply excited for a truly great Samus. Of course a nerf is pretty much inevitable if she's ranked top of the top during intern testing.

I just hope they don't need her too much like they did in brawl

 

[LiteralGrill]

I think something curious about "speed" hasn't been mentioned.

I've seen talk of the psychics engine up until this point, what about how fast matches will be? The Wii U seems to have WAY larger stages, while the 3DS has much smaller stages, possibly making our matches a good bit faster.

 

[DaDavid]

So this basically devolved into a topic where one guy who had plenty of time with the demo's arguing against a guy who refused to hear his observations because he heard others say other things, not because of his own experience... Classy.

Now back to the topic...

I think something curious about "speed" hasn't been mentioned.

I've seen talk of the psychics engine up until this point, what about how fast matches will be? The Wii U seems to have WAY larger stages, while the 3DS has much smaller stages, possibly making our matches a good bit faster.

I've worried about how long matches seem to take ever since the invitational and it only worsened when I played. The games FEELS faster and all, but characters seem to live forever now. Whether it's due to big stages, I can't really say because I didn't play too too much 3DS. I honestly think it's just that blast lines in general are way further out.

 

[LiteralGrill]

I've worried about how long matches seem to take ever since the invitational and it only worsened when I played. The games FEELS faster and all, but characters seem to live forever now. Whether it's due to big stages, I can't really say because I didn't play too too much 3DS. I honestly think it's just that blast lines in general are way further out.

I was playing on some remade Smash 64 stages in Brawl, and that gave me the EXACT feel of what I was seeing from the Wii U in terms of stage size and how long it took to kill. The stages there are seriously bigger, and it may make matches take longer. The 3DS can't really support such large stages with the small screen (which is actually a GREAT thing for us) so a lot of our matches could go faster. It's something really worth thinking about.

 

[DaDavid]

I was playing on some remade Smash 64 stages in Brawl, and that gave me the EXACT feel of what I was seeing from the Wii U in terms of stage size and how long it took to kill. The stages there are seriously bigger, and it may make matches take longer. The 3DS can't really support such large stages with the small screen (which is actually a GREAT thing for us) so a lot of our matches could go faster. It's something really worth thinking about.

I don't know about all that yet. It's true that several of the 3DS stages look smaller, but that doesn't mean much of anything if the blast zones are far out.

Either way, I plan to take the Wii U version more seriously than the 3DS just because of control issues, so this would still be a silver lining at best haha.

 

[Katy Parry]

Even the video info says explicitly that characters can escape it.

It says MK can escape it, first off all. Secondly, it says:

All uair hits are frame guaranteed

Problem: Ness isn't top tier in 64, Melee, or Brawl anymore now that the fraud has been exposed.

If Ness' recovery is good, his down air works, and he still has combos, he will be AMAZING though!

I think that's what they are going for, and they are mostly successful. The only thing I would hope they implement is either making lagless aerials universal to all aerials (or a set lag for all moves), making running not feel like a commitment you are tied to more than marriage and you have 48 children (dash canceling of some sort can fix this), and find more ways to punish super defensive plays (have moves push back people who shield more, or diminish shields faster).

I think the characterizations of characters is a lot more unique for each character. I saw all 24 characters in the demo played and played with or against roughly 14 of them, and everyone felt super unique. They all had very specific strengths and very specific weaknesses. It was very easy to find the former, but harder to find the latter, so it made everyone feel stronger. Honestly, this sounds random but it impacts gameplay a lot, but each character felt like the most unique version of them yet. Even Luigi and Toon Link felt totally different despite no move changes.

As for the "buffs", everyone has more KO potential due to the hitstun air dodge dealio from Brawl being gone, the lack of horizontal DI (vertical DI is still there), and the increased amount of hitstun. All these add to easier KO's and likely more KO's.

Honestly if Smash 4 doesn't have camping issues or super defensive battles (nothing wrong with the latter; defensive battles can be EPIC LIKE THIS!!!), I think 5 stock matches may become the standard actually!

So what about those videos from the tournament? Where it seemed characters weren't able to follow up? Do you think it was just because damage had to be higher/lower, or something else? Really interested to hear your feedback.

Also, OMNEOX OF SMASH!!!!!!!!!!!

lmfao

 

[Katy Parry]

Edit: accidental double post.

 

[ChikoLad]

Seems relevant to ask here, but I heard some E3 players say they felt the 3DS version was literally slower than the Wii U version. Is that true? I wouldn't necessarily mind that, as Wii U will be where my more competitive play goes, but I'm wondering if some people maybe just weren't used to the 3DS controls and felt it was slower as a result.

 

[pickle962]

Seems relevant to ask here, but I heard some E3 players say they felt the 3DS version was literally slower than the Wii U version. Is that true? I wouldn't necessarily mind that, as Wii U will be where my more competitive play goes, but I'm wondering if some people maybe just weren't used to the 3DS controls and felt it was slower as a result.

3DS felt fluid to me, though that could be because im a smash nut anywhom

 

[DaDavid]

Seems relevant to ask here, but I heard some E3 players say they felt the 3DS version was literally slower than the Wii U version. Is that true? I wouldn't necessarily mind that, as Wii U will be where my more competitive play goes, but I'm wondering if some people maybe just weren't used to the 3DS controls and felt it was slower as a result.

The reason you gave is likely the explanation. OR, they played Smash Run and didn't take into account the stat boosting nature of that mode. Other than that, anybody that tells you the games have engine related differences in terms of speed or physics is lying.

 

[Deleted member]

Both the 3DS and Wii U versions will be slower than Melee but faster than Brawl. I think it had to do with the 3DS controls, people weren't used to them and so they thought it was slower. Videos don't do justice, we have to see once the game releases.

 

[Bladeviper]

I don't know about all that yet. It's true that several of the 3DS stages look smaller, but that doesn't mean much of anything if the blast zones are far out.

Either way, I plan to take the Wii U version more seriously than the 3DS just because of control issues, so this would still be a silver lining at best haha.

i noticed they looked a little far out too, but that could change so we won't know 100% til release at least

 

[Raijinken]

From what I can tell (unfortunately I didn't get to go to E3) the game seems to run slower than Melee, but faster than Brawl. I can also tell that fast comboing is making a return. Do you think it'll be the same speed as the Wii U version? It might just be me, but I have been noticing that the 3DS version has been a bit faster, but I also noticed that the game has gotten slower than the match at E3 last year between Sakurai and that other dude from Nintendo of America.

It'll be good regardless, no worries. They've said it'll run at a full framerate, and I highly doubt they'd slow down the gameplay speed just for the 3DS version.

As for relative speed, less than Melee will be good for accessibility, more than Brawl will be good for competition. I'll be fine with it either way, and if it doesn't feel good for competition, well, there's always a certain two-letter mod to play while using SmashThrough as the funsies game. Plus, can't argue with having portable Smash.