MarioMario
Smash Rookie
I've been seeing a lot of people saying that final smashes have no place in competitive play and are a random and unfair aspect to the game.
I would like to put forth a counter-point to that argument, as I think that they add a lot of diversity and could make the pro scene much more interesting.
When it comes down to it, no final smash is impossible to dodge, difficult perhaps, but far from impossible. Some push this boundary, especially on smaller levels, such as Bowser's, but you need to keep in mind that Bowser is also a very slow and heavy character that will have quite a tough time ever reaching the high-floating smash balls.
If you think back to games like Street Fighter, when that series introduced super moves that inflicted tremendous damage almost instantaneously, and some characters could combo into them or easily or inflict more damage while others couldn't, you didn't see these features banned from tournament play.
Adapting to random things is what actually makes sport in general interesting. Not random things like exploding barrels, obviously, but the wind, weather, turf condition, humidity--these things all create unpredictable scenarios that the competitor must adapt to.
One could argue that picking Random as your character is unfair because then the other character could be at a disadvantage if his character poorly counters yours. Just because the most fair scenario happens to be two of the same character fighting on a completely empty surface, that doesn't mean that's the direction high-level smash bros should go. I understand this is an extreme example, but it's all in the same light.
Sometimes the smash ball might move out of your reach, but that just means you need to either move away or attack your opponent and knock it loose from him. Sometimes luck will swing in your way, and maybe the types of games played (how many stock or how much time) should be adapted for brawl, but that should happen before a feature like smash balls are removed.
The main issue at hand is balance, and if final smashes drastically skew that, then maybe they're not the best to use in tournament mode, but quite a few of them take skill to use and they all take skill to avoid, so why discount the abilities of pros so much as to say they're "impossible to avoid."
I just think there's a rush to judgment that should be avoided not just until people play the game but until the competitive scene in it truly emerges and we can see just what people can do to utilize and to avoid final smashes (don't forget half of avoiding it is predicting what will happen to the smash ball you see floating around and where you should be)
I would like to put forth a counter-point to that argument, as I think that they add a lot of diversity and could make the pro scene much more interesting.
When it comes down to it, no final smash is impossible to dodge, difficult perhaps, but far from impossible. Some push this boundary, especially on smaller levels, such as Bowser's, but you need to keep in mind that Bowser is also a very slow and heavy character that will have quite a tough time ever reaching the high-floating smash balls.
If you think back to games like Street Fighter, when that series introduced super moves that inflicted tremendous damage almost instantaneously, and some characters could combo into them or easily or inflict more damage while others couldn't, you didn't see these features banned from tournament play.
Adapting to random things is what actually makes sport in general interesting. Not random things like exploding barrels, obviously, but the wind, weather, turf condition, humidity--these things all create unpredictable scenarios that the competitor must adapt to.
One could argue that picking Random as your character is unfair because then the other character could be at a disadvantage if his character poorly counters yours. Just because the most fair scenario happens to be two of the same character fighting on a completely empty surface, that doesn't mean that's the direction high-level smash bros should go. I understand this is an extreme example, but it's all in the same light.
Sometimes the smash ball might move out of your reach, but that just means you need to either move away or attack your opponent and knock it loose from him. Sometimes luck will swing in your way, and maybe the types of games played (how many stock or how much time) should be adapted for brawl, but that should happen before a feature like smash balls are removed.
The main issue at hand is balance, and if final smashes drastically skew that, then maybe they're not the best to use in tournament mode, but quite a few of them take skill to use and they all take skill to avoid, so why discount the abilities of pros so much as to say they're "impossible to avoid."
I just think there's a rush to judgment that should be avoided not just until people play the game but until the competitive scene in it truly emerges and we can see just what people can do to utilize and to avoid final smashes (don't forget half of avoiding it is predicting what will happen to the smash ball you see floating around and where you should be)