Perfect combos are just as bad as Tripping

[Paingel]

So I read the posts on this forum, and I see all sorts of whining and complaining. Some of this whining is coming from the crowd who hates tripping. Some of this whining is coming from the crowd who wishes that combos were still in the game. And still others are simply complaining that there's so much complaining!

"Isn't that what you're doing just now? Wow, Paingel! Way to be a hypocrite!"

I'm not complaining, I'm pointing it out. There's a difference. If I were complaining, then I would be expecting people to "fix it" for me. But let me tell you that I'm not expecting nor asking for any such thing.

I am pointing it out. I am mearly stating something as simple as the fact that the sun rises in the east, and that the sky is blue during the day. These are not great mysteries, but they are right in front of those who bother to look up and watch the course of the sun.

But let me point out a few things to you. Things which you may not have noticed. Maybe reading these things will cause you to consider things a little differently.

All of the complaints that I have heard have centered around the fact that it is unavoidable, and that there is nothing that the player can do to prevent it. (Well, unless the player chooses to jump around instead of walk, that is.) Well, obviously, this is a perfectly valid complaint. Your skill is not being expressed in the game. If you get f-smashed because of that trip, then your opponent didn't beat you, he beat the game. The game gets in the way of your competition.

Okay, so that is perfectly understandable from my point of view, but then I hear the complaints about "there are no combos". When they give their reasons for why they say this, it usually comes down to a lack of hitstun plus an emphasis on defensive play.

Let me break these into two seperate issues here. First off: the lack of hitstun. When you use combos, you are taking advantage of hitstun. When you are under the effects of hitstun, there is nothing that you can do except wait for the stun to pass. During this time, the opponent can do anything they want to and there is very little you can do to prevent it.

But wait, isn't that just as unfair as tripping? If you trip, aren't you unable to do anything for a breif moment of time except for wait for the chance to get back up? Isn't your opponent free to do whatever they wish to you during your one vulnerable moment?

Hitstuns and Tripping have this in common: If your opponent wins because you were under their effects, then the opponent didn't really beat you. You can say that the opponent beat the game, or that the game beat you, but that is not the same as having your opponent beat you. The game got in the way of the competition.

The only difference is this: With hitstun, the opponent does it to you, and with tripping, the game does it to you. The only mistake on your part that caused this to happen is allowing yourself to be hit or allowing yourself to dash. And after you've made this very small mistake, there is nothing you can do to recover from it. It's up to the opponent vs. the game now. It is not up to you.

So if the game is better off without tripping, then isn't it the case that it's also better off without hitstun?

If you want to use the argument that "Well-trained warriors shouldn't randomly trip and fall over when walking", then couldn't I just simply say "Well-trained warriors shouldn't cringe and freeze up when getting hit"? In my eyes, the two arguements are no different.

And now there is the emphasis on defense. "Brawl is less competitive because there are no combos." "But I've used combos before!" "Yeah, but those combos will only work against someone who doesn't know about defensive play."

So when they say that "There are no combos", what they really mean by this is that "there are no perfect combos, for all of them can be escaped."

So.. wait... doesn't this mean that we can overcome our opponent's actions with defensive play? Doesn't this mean that those who know what they're doing won't be destroyed by a long combo, while those who don't will be? "It is a failure on your opponents part if your combo works agaisnt them."

Then doesn't this also mean that the game doesn't come down to just a handful of perfect combos, but instead comes down to what you know vs. what they know, and what you do vs. what they do?

Isn't that really just you vs. them? Isn't that really just what competition really means? With combos, the play comes down to you vs. the game, and the other player just so happens to be there. So how is this any different than having a stage with too many random hazards, since in both cases it's just you vs. the game and the other player just so happens to be there?

So why then do you say that this makes the game less competitive? You are no longer finding weaknesses in the game itself, but instead you are finding weaknesses in the player. So why is this less competitive?

I will agree with you in this: that tripping is an unfair addition to the game. However, I also will go on to state that hitstuns and unbeatable combos are also unfair and I'm glad that hitstun was removed and that combos are beatable. Because they were taken out, you no longer rely on "Solving" the game (finding an unbeatable strategy and using it to win every time) and instead can rely on "mindgaming" your opponent. Isn't that a deeper game? Isn't that a lot more competitive?

Brawl without tripping would be competitive, more so than Melee, not because of an excess of combos but rather a lack of perfect combos. If you want to hit your opponent several times in a row to rack up damage, then there will be some prediction involved and you will have to know what they'll do in order to destroy them. Only a severely weak player will be severely punished, while a slightly weak player will only be slightly punished. This, in my mind, is a better game.

 

[omega17]

Wow I read your whole post and you bring up a very good point. I also agree that this game most definitely will not be less competitive as melee, it will either be the same or more competitive Sad truth is people aren't going to read your whole post and pick apart certain parts of it.

 

[Veil2222]

I see what you're saying, you're going to get a lot of disagreement about your idea of the similarities between hitstun and tripping, and melee advocates will argue that searching for openings for those unavoidable combos makes melee deeper and only pros could pull that off. Be prepared for a lot of "you're an idiot" one liners before someone tried to actually debate your ideas.

 

[VicSkimmr]

Good Lord its like everything I've been thinking but haven't been able to formulate into a coherent argument.

 

[Xedi]

I really agree with most of it, just didn't like the comparison between tripping and histun as the fact that it's random (the game) or not (the opponent) really changes everything...

 

[HeartNana]

Tell them to play sheik if they want combo's.

That's what i do...

 

[rockmace]

Even being one of the most refreshingly smart posts, I suggest everyone to give up. Y'know, this is smashboards, a closed community, and whatever is law here, won't be changed anytime soon.

Trying to make most people to accept tripping, it's like the antique trying to make people accept items. It's just pointless.

And partially, they have a good reason, I'm personally glad with tripping within my little circle of friends, so I don't have to handicap myself that much and they still have a good chance of winning If my character trips.

But that's for a very very VERY casual player, now, If I were about to, let's not say win money, let's say, lose it, of course I'd be horribly complaining about a failure forced to me by the game.
This is something like the center of their point, so your post should be placed in more "all-round smash" themed forums, like gamefaqs, since here the main interest is tournaments.

but, again, how refreshing is seeing a smart post! haha so unlike mine

 

[GreatClayMonkey]

tripping is annoying there is no reason for it but the combo thing is stupid but I guess I do agree with u on some parts

 

[Senshuu]

A very well-made post. Thanks for posting that! I enjoyed reading your point. It's obvious you've formed a good opinion on it. <3

 

[:034:]

tl;dr.

OH I DARE

 

[shadydentist]

*sigh.

Let me also make the argument that combos are good for gameplay. Why? Because the ability to combo glives the player more options. Contrary to what some of you believe, combos are NOT about memorizing button combinations to rack up free damage. In Melee, combos were mostly about predicting your opponent's reaction. If you predict well, you can severely punish your opponent for being predictable.

Brawl suffers from not having this option. Even if you do correctly predict your opponent's reaction, often there is simply nothing you can do to punish it because he recovers so quickly. This drastically changes the nature of the game. Where in Melee you were looking for an opening, now in Brawl you're simply aiming for chip damage until your opponent is high enough to KO.

This is why camping will continue to be a dominant strategy. Combos require you to get close to your opponent. Chip damage works equally well from all the way across the stage, and theres no real reason to approach your opponent.

The point is this: a combo is a reward for punishing an opponent's mistake. This is a good thing. In Brawl, even if you predict perfectly, often you can only get off one or two hits. Combos reward an offensive player, lack of combos rewards the defensive player.

Perfect combos were very rare in Melee. Combos relied on your ability to predict how your opponent was going to react. The only perfect inescapable combos I can think of are the ICs infinite and waveshining. Everything else can be DI'd out of if your opponent guesses wrong.

Also, the reason why tripping is unforgivable is because it takes control away from the player.

 

[BlackPanther]

I don't agree. Combos was somethin to reward players when the other player screwed up in whatever form, if you screwed up and your opponent was waiting for that exact moment when you would screw up whether it would be from you rolling into him/her or your opponent anticipating your aerial attack and then counters with a well executed combo then that player deserves it. I don't even believe these to components should be compared to one another.

For one thing we're talkin about tripping, a random variable that makes you fall and this was put in to stop players from advancing the movement of their characters and keeping it on a balanced level so it would be fair for everyone. And on the other hand we're talkin about comboing, not random and somethin that's, when practiced, can be very helpful and rewarding and this was taken out again to level the playing field and stop people from advancing in the game, to keep the game equal for everyone. So now when a player should be rewarded to correctly anticipating their opponent's move, it's possible for them to get punished because of the lack of hitstun meaning if I throw you or somethin it's possible for you to actually hit me back right even though i punished you for messing up. That isn't how the game should be played in my opinion.

And sorry to all of the people who felt like the pro melee people always call you guys idiots. It's actually you guys (all/pro brawl) who start the flame wars.

 

[Flayl]

Why are you comparing something that is based on skill and the ability to predict the opponent's reaction/placement to something that is completely unavoidable and gives no warning sign?

 

[Veil2222]

Panther, that last sentence would have gotten a lot of respect points if you hadn't tagged that last part on there. Either way, it isn't relevant to the thread, both sides are capable of intelligent debate.

He compared tripping to hitstun, not neccesarily comboing. I disagree that people aren't properly rewarded for prediction/mindgaming/breaking defense, I feel they were rewarded *too much* for it in melee. The lack of hitstun doesn't equal no combos either, I play Toon Link, Ike, and MetaKnight, all of them have combos from hitstun from grabs, mindgames, and openers. This has been my experience, and I feel it's pretty valid as is counter to alot of the arguments against brawl.

 

[MookieRah]

Let me break these into two seperate issues here. First off: the lack of hitstun. When you use combos, you are taking advantage of hitstun. When you are under the effects of hitstun, there is nothing that you can do except wait for the stun to pass. During this time, the opponent can do anything they want to and there is very little you can do to prevent it.

There is stuff you could do. You could DI, you could use your second jump, your could air-dodge. You make it sound like you couldn't get out of combos in melee at ALL. You also don't take into account that while there were *some* definite combos and setups (there weren't that many actually) most combos happened due to punishing the opponents mistakes (such as bad DI) and not messing up. Combos in melee were mostly free form and dependent on the actions the opponent took, if you weren't a good player then you couldn't get out of them and if you weren't a good player then you couldn't combo.

The only difference is this: With hitstun, the opponent does it to you, and with tripping, the game does it to you.

That is a huge difference. One is not controlled by anyone and is a random variable, the other is due to a player being skillful and using game mechanics to his advantage.

If your opponent wins because you were under their effects, then the opponent didn't really beat you.

No, your opponent beat you. Keep in mind, you could just as well have taken advantage of hitstun yourself, but see if you didn't and they did then you were the lesser player. By saying "the game beat me" to something that is within a players control and is not exclusive to any character and definitely isn't broken, you are merely a sore loser.

So when they say that "There are no combos", what they really mean by this is that "there are no perfect combos, for all of them can be escaped."

No, what we are saying is that there aren't any combos. Even if I predict everything my opponent does, he can still get out of it. If you do combo, it's like 2-3 hits. Again, you fail to realize that combos came about due to the aggressor being skilled and punishing his opponents mistakes and following their DI properly. You make it sound like you should just drop your controller when you got hit once in melee.

So.. wait... doesn't this mean that we can overcome our opponent's actions with defensive play?

Yeah, you can in Brawl. To the point that you are better of just camping and ONLY being defensive. In melee, you had multiple strategies and styles at your disposal that were all viable. In Brawl, everything is better for the person on defense. If you are a better camper and/or using a better camping character, you will probably win, even if the other player is overall more skilled.

To put it simply... you are very wrong about hit stun.

 

[Paingel]

There is stuff you could do. You could DI, you could use your second jump, your could air-dodge.

Yes, you can DI, you can double jump, and you can air-dodge. BUT! Will any of these things allow you to damage the enemy or land a killing blow? No, you'll just stay on the defensive, trying hard to survive, until you get into a position where the effects of the hitstun no longer matter, or your opponent makes a mistake which allows you to actually fight again.

Granted, I'm just talking in the context of long combos here. I know that most of the match isn't like this, but I'm not talking about the whole match. I'm talking about hitstun and the flaws caused by it.

The approach is the bottleneck. With hitstun, the first person who lands a hit gets to stop his opponent from attacking. Which is largely why fast/ranged characters ruled Melee. The "strong but slow" characters were owned because their strength was mostly negated by the fact that they could never land a hit first.

Without hitstun, there's more balance between the characters.

You also don't take into account that while there were *some* definite combos and setups (there weren't that many actually) most combos happened due to punishing the opponents mistakes (such as bad DI) and not messing up. Combos in melee were mostly free form and dependent on the actions the opponent took, if you weren't a good player then you couldn't get out of them and if you weren't a good player then you couldn't combo.

And what's stopping me from punishing an opponent who DIs poorly in Brawl? It's more difficult perhaps, but that's a far cry from saying that it simply isn't there.

That is a huge difference. One is not controlled by anyone and is a random variable, the other is due to a player being skillful and using game mechanics to his advantage.

Yes, it's a difference. However, "Huge" is relative. I've never heard of any standard measurement for how "different" two things unless there was actual math invovled, so I'd really have to say that this sentence has no real meaning to me at all. Can't argue against a point that has no real point.

No, your opponent beat you. Keep in mind, you could just as well have taken advantage of hitstun yourself, but see if you didn't and they did then you were the lesser player. By saying "the game beat me" to something that is within a players control and is not exclusive to any character and definitely isn't broken...

If I'm playing a single player game, and I win, then I have beaten the game.

Okay, so I could have taken advantage of hitstun to. This means I have to hit first. But wait, in order to hit first consitently, then I have to have an attack that gives me either speed, range, or both. But wait! This means I need a character with good speed and range! Who would that be? Oh yeah! It's Marth, Shiek, and Fox, the top-tier guys!

Hitstun in of itself wasn't broken, yeah, but because of it the whole tier list was.

you are merely a sore loser.

Why thank you for that great compliment. What, did you think that the hitstun from your personal attack was going to let you combo me into a KO? Sorry, but no.

No, what we are saying is that there aren't any combos. Even if I predict everything my opponent does, he can still get out of it. If you do combo, it's like 2-3 hits. Again, you fail to realize that combos came about due to the aggressor being skilled and punishing his opponents mistakes and following their DI properly. You make it sound like you should just drop your controller when you got hit once in melee.

Well, the effects of hitstun don't ruin the whole match. But I wasn't talking about the whole match. I was talking about combos, and how hitstun relates to them. Those combos worked because the aggressor could ensure that he would remain the aggressor. Now that's no longer the case, but I can still hit my opponent several times before he hits me once. I'm still predicting the opponents and I'm still winning because of it...

Yeah, you can in Brawl. To the point that you are better of just camping and ONLY being defensive. In melee, you had multiple strategies and styles at your disposal that were all viable. In Brawl, everything is better for the person on defense. If you are a better camper and/or using a better camping character, you will probably win, even if the other player is overall more skilled.

Again you use words like "more" when you haven't even presented a standard for measurement. Are they "more skilled" because they know more? Are they "more skilled" because they have better technical skill? Another argument without any meaning. You may as well be posting complete gibberish for all of the impact that this point really made.

To be honest, it sounds to me like you're just a sore loser, claiming to be "more skilled" despite the fact that you've clearly lost.

If I beat someone, then that means that I have outperformed him. If I can outperform him consistently and repeatedly, then I am the more skilled player, not him. Skill leads to performance and performance leads to winning.

To put it simply... you are very wrong about hit stun.

Sorry, but it's pretty clear that I've thought about this a bit more deeply than you have, and I'm not wrong. You are focusing on tiny details and blowing them out of proportion when they do not, in fact, even matter. Meanwhile, you are ignoring the deeper things that do.

 

[shadydentist]

Paingel, without hitstun camping becomes a severe problem. Instead of combos, gameplay now consists exclusively of hit and run attacks. You can't seriously argue that this is good for the strategic variety of the game.

 

[metroid1117]

Hitstun is the result if you screwing up and the opponent taking advantage of it by attacking you. Tripping is the result of a game mechanic that happens randomly.

In short, one is your fault and the other isn't. The point of a fighting game is to capitalize on the opponent's mistakes. You are considered skilled if you can cause your opponent to create mistakes (mindgames) and punish them as much as you can (technique).

With reduced hitstun, you can't capitalize on your opponent's mistakes; you're reduced to just using powerful one-hit attacks or 2-3 hit combos. Hitstun was an award for outsmarting your opponent; if you followed Isai's simple, yet powerful advice of "don't get hit", you wouldn't be caught in that situation. Your argument that you have to use quick and high-priority attacks isn't very strong because part of competitive play is causing your opponent to make mistakes - with proper spacing and trickery, you can punish anything. Even Fox's Shine in Melee was punishable - although it had extremely high priority and was one of the three fastest attacks in the game (Falco's Shine and Jigglypuff's Rest), you can still punish someone for using it by standing out of range and grabbing or attacking them after they used it.

Also, on your original point that Brawl becomes deeper because it involves more mindgames: In my opinion, a game's depth is determined by how much there is to master. Melee was incredibly deep because you had to master both the art of mindgaming AND comboing; since comboing was based on tech skill, it was essential to master both. With reduced hitstun, you only need to master mindgames - there's not as much things you need to learn in Brawl. Part of the fun in Melee was learning what move led to what; I, as a Marth main, had to find out for myself that a single Dancing Blade doesn't really lead into anything against a smart opponent, and neither does a non-tipped UAir. In Brawl, pretty much all the techskill you need is B-reversing, short-hopping, RAR, and doing the max number of aerials in the air. The point of tech skill was to set up for combos and perform combos - there's almost no point to it in Brawl.

By the way... MookieRah used Mewtwo in Melee, and he was quite good at him - undoubtedly one of the best Mewtwo users in the country, if not the world. He is a very experienced Smasher. I'm not saying that everything he said is truth and that if you don't believe him you're a noob - however, you should take his words into consideration.

 

[Kye L]

I don't know much about combos and whatnot and even I understand there's a difference.

Tripping is completely random. It is not caused as a result of the player's mistakes or his opponent's actions. It just happens. It's no one's fault, but it can put the victim at a disadvantage. There's nothing you can do to prevent it, too. You'll just have to hope it doesn't happen.

Meanwhile, a combo...is difficult to pull off. There's a lot of effort involved on the part of the player trying to do one; correct timing and spacing, and using it at the right percentages. Not slipping up. Probably trying to keep up and adapt if your opponent struggles - and your opponent can struggle and put up a fight, they can DI, they can tech. You have to set things up so that pulling the combo off is possible, and so that they getting out of it won't happen. This doesn't just happen.

Tripping is some random event that can't practically be controlled.
A successful combo is the result of a player's effort and skill.

 

[LouisLeGros]

I'm just going off on a hunch paingel, but I'm going to assume you aren't really familar with melee competitive/high level play.

I mean your points make sense, but it doesn't seem like you really have the actual game experience to figure out how it actually works. You are not as bad as the people who talk about memorizing button combinations/combos, but you don't seem to understand the cause and effect relationship of these features in high level play.

 

[Paingel]

You're forgeting that this game has knockback. No need to hit and run when hitting them moves them away from you.

Because of that, I can hit my opponent, knock him away from me so that he can't immediately attack back, and then (A) chase him down and hit him again or (B) hit him with a projectile. If I choose (A) then I can (A-1) approach from beneath and juggle or (A-2) jump into the air and intercept. Sounds like strategic variety to me.

Only now I have to worry about whether or not he's going to use a dair on me if he uses (A-1) or a fair/bair (depending) if he uses (A-2). Maybe I'll have to shield for a second after getting into position, or maybe I won't.

Also, the game already has safeguards against "camping". If you shield too much then your shield will break. Dodging and rolling have predictable timing and spacing. Character-specific Counters tend to leave you wide open if you use them at the wrong time.

Seems to me like there's severe problems inherent with "just camping". Whatever defensive option you choose, there is a way for your opponent to punish you for it.

There's grabs. They go through shields and counters. There's some attacks, like Lucario's u-tilt, that attack behind you. They punish opponents who try to roll behind you. There's also projectiles, like Lucario's Aura Ball. They attack opponents who try to stay away from you.

And if you don't have a projectile, but your opponent does and is spamming you with it? Roll, Shield, and Jump your way through the shots to approach your opponent. Or better yet, get out of it's range. The range on projectiles is very limited in this game, I've noticed.

You act as though camping and hit and runs are going to win you the match. But this simply isn't the case.
Aside from counters, defensive moves don't deal any damage to offensive players. So you have to hit and then defend yourself? Seems to me like the game is more focused on the blow-by-blow exchanges in the match. The strategic value isn't really gone, you've just zoomed in to a more tactical level of play.

There are still stuns in the game. You can still be spiraling out of control in the air. You can still shield break or be in a danger fall (Not techincally a stun but you still can't attack). You can still be knocked down. There's plenty of ways to put your opponent at a disadvantage and plenty of times when they are vulnerable to you. They just aren't as noticable as "I hit you first so now I'm untouchable."

You act as if you can never open up with an attack because they'll just dodge/shield/whatever and then hit you during the lag from your missed attack. If you know they're going to sidestep, just delay your attack for a second and get them when the invincibility frames wear off. Whatever technique they use for camping, your character probably has an answer for it.

Besides, I was never talking about strategic variety in the first place. I was making a comparison between hitstun and tripping.

EDIT: Yeah, I know that MookieRah used Mewtwo in Melee. It stood out to me because I did to. And sure, he was pretty **** good from the videos I've seen. I am not dismissing his points out of hand.

However, I won't accept a vague ideal like "more skilled" as a valid argument. If a person complains about losing because their opponent is using "cheap tactics" despite the fact that the person is "more skilled", then that's scrub talk. But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Mookie's a scrub, but I am saying that I can't really respect an argument like that.

High-level play is a result of Low-level mechanics. I've said before that I was a CompSci major, and most of my thinking is on the low-level mechanics. And at this level, things are very black and white. (It is, after all, a bunch of 1s and 0s.)

You are making valid points.. but.. The only point you've managed to refute is the fact that combos don't come from hitstun in of themselves, but of other factors.

What about the fact that you still can't do anything to get out of hitstun except wait? It's like tripping, but since it's hitstun then there's a higher chance that your opponent is in a position to take advantage of it.

 

[Fuego]

Listen, Paingel, you can theorysmash all you want. You can rationalize brawl to have many options when it does not. The bottom line, is that due to all the changes that you apparently support, brawl is a campfest.

You can say it's not, you can make up reasons why it's not, but at the end of the day, camping is by far the most effective strategy that anyone has found so far. The best characters are simply the best campers. There is nothing you can say which will refute this, because there is nothing you can say that will change the basic mechanics of the game.

 

[E.G.G.M.A.N.]

And what's stopping me from punishing an opponent who DIs poorly in Brawl? It's more difficult perhaps, but that's a far cry from saying that it simply isn't there.

What's stopping you is that they will recover from being hit faster than you will recover from hitting them and smack you right back. Oops, there goes your combo. Better to hang back and snipe for chip damage than risk damage by chasing after an opponent who you probably won't be able to combo. They can eat one hit, then hit you back, or air dodge and THEN hit you back (something that was not possible in melee).

 

[Dark Sonic]

Only now I have to worry about whether or not he's going to use a dair on me if he uses (A-1) or a fair/bair (depending) if he uses (A-2). Maybe I'll have to shield for a second after getting into position, or maybe I won't.

Which means that your reward for punishing his mistake was one hit. After that one hit the playing field was reset because both of you have the same number of options. You successully predicted them, and your reward is only one possible hit? At least in melee you were put in some kind of advantagous position (they couldn't hit you or airdodge), but even melee was extremely lenient towards the defensive player. They could DI, smash DI, or tech to escape your combo, and there were very few combos that actually were inescapable. Now compare this to other fighting games. How many competative fighting games will let you potentially escape a combo after one hit. None. You always take a little bit of a beating as punishment for messing up, but most importantly a reward to the one who predicted correctly.

Also, the game already has safeguards against "camping". If you shield too much then your shield will break. Dodging and rolling have predictable timing and spacing. Character-specific Counters tend to leave you wide open if you use them at the wrong time.

And this is exactly what promotes camping. If you are just firing projectiles, you can rest assured that your opponent can't defend them forever, and that they'll be forced to approach. This was apparent in melee too. The only difference was that the one approaching was actually in an advantageous position, and not the one on defense. The ultimate goal for the players was to be the one on offense, because there were rewards for succesfully attacking your opponent (if you could land one then you'd be rewarded with a few more hits, just like other fighting games).

Seems to me like there's severe problems inherent with "just camping". Whatever defensive option you choose, there is a way for your opponent to punish you for it.

Describe how to punish an arrow spamming Pit, who is good enough with the arrows to aim them at you as you move. Give me one option that leaves Pit with no option but to get hit for his arrow spamming. Assume that both players are top level players and see if you can come up with a situation in which Pit would rather actively approach his opponent than just run away and spam arrows.

There's grabs. They go through shields and counters.

And yet that's all they do! They don't actually lead into anything. Your punishment for shielding to much and getting grabbed is...10 damage!

There's some attacks, like Lucario's u-tilt, that attack behind you. They punish opponents who try to roll behind you.

No, they make you hard to approach. You think that defensive means that your shielding, but IMO defensive just means the one who's not doing the approaching. In your situation, Lucario would be the defensive player, and thus that situation would promoted camping.

There's also projectiles, like Lucario's Aura Ball. They attack opponents who try to stay away from you.

Once again, camping isn't just staying away from you (and Lucario's Aura sphere is a terrible projectile for punishing campers), they'll likely be projectile spamming at you (case in point, Pit).

And if you don't have a projectile, but your opponent does and is spamming you with it? Roll, Shield, and Jump your way through the shots to approach your opponent.

But you just described how they could have attacks that hit behind them to punish rolling, and just said that shields could not be used too much! Basically the one approaching has a much harder time than the one defending, the only problem is that even when you succesfully approach, there is only a small reward. Why should you approach, when you can just get a percentage lead and then camp? What do you gain by approaching (unless you're losing of course). In most fighting games, the winning player is the one who is most actively trying to approach, because he want's to finish off his opponent. And yet the other player is trying to approach as well, so that he can gain the advantage and become the winning player. However in brawl, the winning player becomes encouraged to camp, because of how difficult approaching is in comparison to the reward given for doing so.

Or better yet, get out of it's range. The range on projectiles is very limited in this game, I've noticed.

So they move just a little bit closer? Do you not realize that they'll just be staying at the very edge of their range while projectile camping? All you'll have accomplished is moving yourself closer to the edge.

You act as though camping and hit and runs are going to win you the match. But this simply isn't the case.

This is exactly how Pit fights! And you say it won't win you the match?! Why should I approach if I can just spam projectiles? What is my reward for putting myself at risk by coming close to the opponent? Is that reward great enough to justify the risk? Is that reward to risk ratio more appealing than that of just spamming arrows?

Aside from counters, defensive moves don't deal any damage to offensive players.

Pit would beg to differ. His arrows do 11 damage.

So you have to hit and then defend yourself?

So your reward for succesfully approaching your opponent is a single hit, followed by an even playing field? That's not how fighting games work buddy.

Seems to me like the game is more focused on the blow-by-blow exchanges in the match.

Which means it's less focussed on the risk-reward scenerios, as playing defensive is almost allways the best option.

The strategic value isn't really gone, you've just zoomed in to a more tactical level of play.

But this one aspect (blow by blow exchange) fails to sufficiently reward a player for making a correct prediction. Lets look at a few extremes here. Lets say that you are Sonic, fighting against Pit. You succesfully manage to get past his arrows and reach him and now you've grabbed him (he started shielding). Now what? Nothing you do from here will guarantee you another hit. No matter which direction you throw him, it will not actually lead into anything. So you decide to up throw him and wait for him to airdodge, and then you hit him with a Uair. So you just succesfully predicted him again. And your reward was a little more damage, but now he finds his way to the ground. Guess what? Now he's just going to projectile camp again! Your reward for getting past the projectiles, for landing a grab on him, and for predicting an airdodge was...two hits! Do you not see the problem here?

There are still stuns in the game. You can still be spiraling out of control in the air.

But not long enough to be hit again, which means that your completely safe and back on even ground with your opponent after one hit.

You can still shield break

Breaking someone's shield is much harder than you think. That's because the only way to pressure a shield is to either

1.Use attacks that cause more shieldstun than the lag you suffer from doing it
2.Use attacks that leave you out of your opponent's range so that they can't reach you before you recover.

These moves are few and far between, so don't expect breaking shields to be a viable strategey (heck, even Marth's shieldbreaker has a hard time getting that done, because the opponent just dodges it)

or be in a danger fall (Not techincally a stun but you still can't attack).

Don't use your up B when you could be severly punished for missing?

You can still be knocked down.

They recover far more often, and teching is harder to punish.

There's plenty of ways to put your opponent at a disadvantage and plenty of times when they are vulnerable to you. They just aren't as noticable as "I hit you first so now I'm untouchable."

And yet each of those ways will only land you one hit before being on an even playing field. That is a problem.

You act as if you can never open up with an attack because they'll just dodge/shield/whatever and then hit you during the lag from your missed attack.

This is a very viable strategy for most attacks. Shielding and then attacking from you shield is really good.

If you know they're going to sidestep, just delay your attack for a second and get them when the invincibility frames wear off.

And a smart player would only sidestep when your in a position where you couldn't delay your attack (such as when delaying your attack would cause you to land before your attack comes out) thus covering both scenerios.

Whatever technique they use for camping, your character probably has an answer for it.

Tell me Gannondorf's answer for an arrow spamming Pit or Toon link.

Besides, I was never talking about strategic variety in the first place. I was making a comparison between hitstun and tripping.

And we're saying that it's a bad comparison.

What about the fact that you still can't do anything to get out of hitstun except wait? It's like tripping, but since it's hitstun then there's a higher chance that your opponent is in a position to take advantage of it.

To get out of hitstun, yes all you can do is wait. However, this is punishment for making a mistake. Your supposed to be put in a bad situation because you are the one being punished. And even then you have options such as SDI, DI, and teching, which is more than can be said for most fighting games. You feel that people were being rewarded too much in melee, but I feel that in comparison to other fighters, they were actually being rewarded less than normal.

Taking hitstun out takes away from the risk:reward system.

Tripping, however, is not punishment for making a mistake, but just punishment. Your opponent did not succesfully predict you, and there was no mistake to correct. That is fundementally flawed as it is an event that puts the opponent in an advantageous position, without you making a mistake. You didn't leave yourself open or take the pressure off of them, you were just unlucky.

Hitstun and Tripping work on two completely different principles and although the end result may be similar (one player being better off than the other) the events leading to that result are drastically different. Hitstun is justified while Tripping is not.

 

[tect]

hitstun is a game mechanic.

tripping is just lame.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

sonic wave i literally just made this account just to applaud that humongous ownage of a comment.....

btw paingel i actually under stand what u mean, tripping leaves you open, hitstun leaves you open in the dirty basics its the same. I have an opinion but i dont intend arguing. I say tripping is random, but to be in hitstun *enough for a combo at least* requires mindgames and hardwork and you arent really rewarded for that according to sonic wave *dont have ssbb*

 

[tect]

Without hitstun, there's more balance between the characters.

If your opponent wins because you were under their effects, then the opponent didn't really beat you.

fail .

 

[Rho]

If you trip, I agree that it's the same outcome as if you have been comboed. The only thing tripping has going bad for it, I think, is the lack of input. If tripping were caused by something you did, or your opponent could make you trip 100% of the time with certain moves, or the players did something to cause it in general... I'm sure it would be accepted. The only thing that strikes tripping on a bad note is that it's random, unavoidable. Now, you can still compare it to a combo, but the difference is that while the game allows both, you can avoid combos. If you get punished by one, it was your fault, you fell for your opponent's mind games, or messed up somehow. Tripping isn't what happens when you mess up; tripping is random. That's the difference, and though I don't have any units of measurement, don't throw it off as "meaningless", it does have a point. Combos are more fair than tripping, and you can't disagree with that.

But this discussion has turned to one about camping and the like, so I guess I'm a bit late.

 

[nbrkn]

Paingel, Sonic Wave, this has been very educational for me.

Having never played Melee more than once or twice, and based on lurking the discussions I thought the same way Paingel expressed about hitstun--that its omission from Brawl would make the game more dynamic and more rewarding for more highly skilled players.

But Sonic Wave's in-depth response (#) redeems the "no hitstun means no reward for aggressive play" argument.

With Sonic Wave's present clarification, taken together with the rally behind Gimpyfish's original assessment of the hitstun problem, and supplemented by recent tournament videos, the present situation looks really bad for the top-most technical players. But my question is this: is the present state of tournament play the inexorable result of the game's inherent mechanics, or is it merely a phase?

Is it unreasonable to assume that there are hoards of tournament players dedicated right now to discovering and capitalizing on some exploitable downside to excessively campy playstyles?

Is it absolutely impossible (with any character-specific or general strategies) to punch through with enough consistency to make it worth your while to be on the approach in Brawl?

Though I don't personally intend to play at a high level, I hope you guys find a resolution. It's a bummer. I can sympathize with both the wishful thinkers and realists alike.

 

[0RLY]

I feel as if I somewhat agree with the TS. I don't entirely understand his entire post though. But if he's trying to say that tripping=bad, then yes, I agree.

EDIT: This is the 'smartest' topic in this whole forum.

 

[Pink Reaper]

Combo's in Melee were not perfect, none of them were, except maybe if you were getting drill shined perfectly against a wall, but that really should never happen. Any combo in Melee was escapable after one or two hits with proper DI and understanding on how to escape. A select few characters(Fox, Falco, Falcon, Shiek, Kirby v.v) had character specific properties that made them much more comboable than other characters, which is why they get 0->deathed more often than other characters, but for the most part if your getting comboed to 100+% its because your bad at DI and Teching. Or getting wobbled

 

[Dark Sonic]

Paingel, Sonic Wave, this has been very educational for me.

Having never played Melee more than once or twice, and based on lurking the discussions I thought the same way Paingel expressed about hitstun--that its omission from Brawl would make the game more dynamic and more rewarding for more highly skilled players.

But Sonic Wave's in-depth response (#) redeems the "no hitstun means no reward for aggressive play" argument.

With Sonic Wave's present clarification, taken together with the rally behind Gimpyfish's original assessment of the hitstun problem, and supplemented by recent tournament videos, the present situation looks really bad for the top-most technical players. But my question is this: is the present state of tournament play the inexorable result of the game's inherent mechanics, or is it merely a phase?

Is it unreasonable to assume that there are hoards of tournament players dedicated right now to discovering and capitalizing on some exploitable downside to excessively campy playstyles?

Is it absolutely impossible (with any character-specific or general strategies) to punch through with enough consistency to make it worth your while to be on the approach in Brawl?

Though I don't personally intend to play at a high level, I hope you guys find a resolution. It's a bummer. I can sympathize with both the wishful thinkers and realists alike.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad I was able to help someone. This really is a problem.

That being said, I believe it's a problem that will eventually be fixed. We'll slowly find more definite combos or at least some that are hard to escape, and we'll find better ways to punish people that abuse the airdodging system, and we'll eventually find a solution to camping in general. But these things will take time, and I mean a lot of time. For a while camping characters really are going to dominate. How long they dominate, I don't know, but eventually someone will probably find either an easy way around camping strategies, or a way to make camping yield very little reward (maybe Powershielding everything while approaching?) Eventually someone will become proficient with anti camping strategies, and others will follow suit.

At the current moment things do not look good for brawl because a valuable asset was diminished greatly. However, competative nature itself is to find the best strategies, and then find counters for when those strategies are used against you. We will make this game competative, wether Sakurai likes it or not.

 

[BlackWhiteOrange]

Sorry, but hitstun is your punishment for letting yourself get hit. This is exactly why people complain about combos being gone. In melee, slip-ups would be punished severely, because people could combo you from 0-70 in extreme cases. In brawl, letting yourself get hit (ie sloppy/imperfect playing) will yield few negative ramifications. This is compounded by players being able to reach higher percentages without dying and automatically grabbing the edge from very long distances.

Also, combos were creative and improvised because they were affected by your location, and your opponent's DI (which, I may add, is something they do WHILE being comboed).

Your argument about hit stun is extremely flawed thinking. You don't get hitstun if you don't get hit, so saying that hitstun is unfair is saying that players being punished for mistakes is unfair. This is a scrub argument.

 

[Radical Dreamer]

I feel as if I somewhat agree with the TS. I don't entirely understand his entire post though. But if he's trying to say that tripping=bad, then yes, I agree.

EDIT: This is the 'smartest' topic in this whole forum.

This has got to be one of the most ******** topics in this whole forum. It's some idiot trying to rationalize that comboing through hitstun, something that only exists by player initiation, is equal to tripping, something that only exists by random chance and for no other reason at all.

 

[Ciel~Image]

Yeah, bro. When you get locked in a combo it's because you screwed up and deserve it. When you trip it's because the game's random number generator decides HEY I'M GOING TO PUNISH THIS GUY NOW FOR SOME REASON HEH

 

[Spellman]

There is still punishment...

Damage is dealt for the initial hit or two, and a possible K.O. later in the match. This should make you seriously consider if re-approaching your opponent when you make the first blow is the right thing to do.

Good post overall. I think a lot of people have been trying to emphasize this point, but have not had not the thoughts put together to actually give valid reasoning as to why.

It's still an opinion whether the hitstun was necessary to make "competitive smash" competitive, but nonetheless, it's there in Melee just as tripping is here in Brawl, just that tripping can't really be predicted and thus advantage can't really be taken of it unless you happen to be lucky.

 

[NullVortex]

Sonic Wave, you my friend, are genius. I wholeheartedly thank you for posting that. That puts my opinion on Brawl in more eloquent wording than I could hope to achieve. Kudos.

Brawl makes me sad because camping + shielding + defense = win. Generally.

Toon Link, although my secondary, is obviously a monster because he can effectively keep you out of his face, while steadily accumulating damage. You approach, and you risk more damage for only half (if fortunate to land a few hits) of what you dealt. Even approaching through the projectiles is a hassle with TL's double arrow and quick draw. Rolling through them or jumping over them leaves you very open as well as makes your approach easily gimped. Even if you make it in range to attack,, the TL could easily retreat or shield the aerial and immediately do an out-of-shield bair to bair to more bairs or some other attack get you on the retreat to resume his spam, which leads to more damage and eventually a kill. Lather, rinse, repeat (with defensive variations) and you have yourself a match.

Also, it is the lack of hitstun that makes such a situation even remotely possible. The shieldstun loss makes shielding very, very viable in many situations. Heck Marth can fsmash out of shield. That in and of itself can screw an aggressor over and make approaching seem like a frightful dilemma. Sure grabs can be used to get around this, but honestly, few if any grabs in the game lead to any solid combo/punishment opportunities. Many send them too far away (which is actually a short distance due to, again, hitstun) to allow decent follow up. The low reward makes grabs pointless and hence approaching even less ideal.

The lack of hitstun promotes a horrendously defensive game with whoever spamming/defending the best winning. Play anybody with a good Pit or TL at the moment and trust me, you'll be in for one hell of a campy, frustrating game.

 

[DRaGZ]

Yes, you can DI, you can double jump, and you can air-dodge. BUT! Will any of these things allow you to damage the enemy or land a killing blow? No, you'll just stay on the defensive, trying hard to survive, until you get into a position where the effects of the hitstun no longer matter, or your opponent makes a mistake which allows you to actually fight again.

Granted, I'm just talking in the context of long combos here. I know that most of the match isn't like this, but I'm not talking about the whole match. I'm talking about hitstun and the flaws caused by it.

The approach is the bottleneck. With hitstun, the first person who lands a hit gets to stop his opponent from attacking. Which is largely why fast/ranged characters ruled Melee. The "strong but slow" characters were owned because their strength was mostly negated by the fact that they could never land a hit first.

Without hitstun, there's more balance between the characters.



And what's stopping me from punishing an opponent who DIs poorly in Brawl? It's more difficult perhaps, but that's a far cry from saying that it simply isn't there.



Yes, it's a difference. However, "Huge" is relative. I've never heard of any standard measurement for how "different" two things unless there was actual math invovled, so I'd really have to say that this sentence has no real meaning to me at all. Can't argue against a point that has no real point.



If I'm playing a single player game, and I win, then I have beaten the game.

Okay, so I could have taken advantage of hitstun to. This means I have to hit first. But wait, in order to hit first consitently, then I have to have an attack that gives me either speed, range, or both. But wait! This means I need a character with good speed and range! Who would that be? Oh yeah! It's Marth, Shiek, and Fox, the top-tier guys!

Hitstun in of itself wasn't broken, yeah, but because of it the whole tier list was.



Why thank you for that great compliment. What, did you think that the hitstun from your personal attack was going to let you combo me into a KO? Sorry, but no.



Well, the effects of hitstun don't ruin the whole match. But I wasn't talking about the whole match. I was talking about combos, and how hitstun relates to them. Those combos worked because the aggressor could ensure that he would remain the aggressor. Now that's no longer the case, but I can still hit my opponent several times before he hits me once. I'm still predicting the opponents and I'm still winning because of it...



Again you use words like "more" when you haven't even presented a standard for measurement. Are they "more skilled" because they know more? Are they "more skilled" because they have better technical skill? Another argument without any meaning. You may as well be posting complete gibberish for all of the impact that this point really made.

To be honest, it sounds to me like you're just a sore loser, claiming to be "more skilled" despite the fact that you've clearly lost.

If I beat someone, then that means that I have outperformed him. If I can outperform him consistently and repeatedly, then I am the more skilled player, not him. Skill leads to performance and performance leads to winning.



Sorry, but it's pretty clear that I've thought about this a bit more deeply than you have, and I'm not wrong. You are focusing on tiny details and blowing them out of proportion when they do not, in fact, even matter. Meanwhile, you are ignoring the deeper things that do.

Wow...you're really audacious.

I think you need to try playing against a very campy Toon Link or R.O.B. Then you'll see what we're talking about.

If you need help with discovering that, you can hit me up on Brawl anytime. Just PM for my AIM SN.

EDIT: This may seem like I'm just shamelessly promoting my own post, but I think it's really important:

http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=158712

We're discussing Heavy Brawl here and how it may actually reward both those who offensively play well and defensively play well, i.e. balanced gameplay.

 

[MookieRah]

just that tripping can't really be predicted and thus advantage can't really be taken of it unless you happen to be lucky.

Depends, I've gotten COUNTLESS rests off on trips with Jiggs.

It's still an opinion whether the hitstun was necessary to make "competitive smash" competitive

There are less combos, less flashy stuff, and while that isn't very important to make the game good the big issue is that this encourages more sloppy play as punishing mistakes is not nearly as effective as it should be.

 

[shadydentist]

Its easy to take advantage of tripping. If they trip anywhere near you, its a free tech chase.