Rolls seem problematic in this game

[Sleek Media]

@ Prawn Your problem is that you are thinking objectively. See, what everyone wants is for rolls to be slow and extremely unsafe. You should always be able start a combo when you see a roll, or ideally KO the rolling opponent. Requiring you to actually exercise some kind of judgement to punish the roll is too defensive, and therefore slow and unskilled. They should have just made it exactly like Melee.

 

[PizzaWenisaur]

@ Prawn Your problem is that you are thinking objectively. See, what everyone wants is for rolls to be slow and extremely unsafe. You should always be able start a combo when you see a roll, or ideally KO the rolling opponent. Requiring you to actually exercise some kind of judgement to punish the roll is too defensive, and therefore slow and unskilled. They should have just made it exactly like Melee.

Lol - obviously you haven't read this thread...

Edit: Actually, I'm getting sick of this "they want it like Melee" attitude. Who cares if it might actually make the game worse, who cares if a new mechanic might be dumb. This is Smash 4 after all, the changes aren't dumb, just different. It's like people use that statement to try to blanket legitimate criticisms.

 

[ferioku]

I rarely roll as much as use to when i started playing, it's all about reading your opponent. Taunt them, make them angry, they will follow towards you with anger and try to dash attack you. Simply shield grab them =D. I find that some of them do it to p you off as well, they camp, roll and spam projectiles, especially Samus players, they are the worst!

 

[RyokoYaksa]

@ Prawn Your problem is that you are thinking objectively. See, what everyone wants is for rolls to be slow and extremely unsafe. You should always be able start a combo when you see a roll, or ideally KO the rolling opponent. Requiring you to actually exercise some kind of judgement to punish the roll is too defensive, and therefore slow and unskilled. They should have just made it exactly like Melee.

Um, no one's actually saying that. Not even Brawl's rolls elicit this kind of concern, and they were certainly better than Melee's rolls both in a vacuum and in the context of their respective games.

As for something I actually would have wanted to see in Smash4 as far as a new interesting mechanic that discouraged overuse of defensive moves, it would be some kind of "guard meter" that is depleted by blocking attacks and using dodge maneuvers and replenished by dealing damage. If exhausted, then you are immediately shield broken or something. Such a system is something that Bamco started utilizing in their games when they realized that high level play was becoming overly defensive, and I was hoping to see it happen in Smash when I heard of their involvement in developing the game. Instead, you have much spammier rolls that are highly irritating to most casual players, and annoying enough to competitive players to force specific character choices to deal with it. Fun times.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

Most characters at least have something in their moveset, like a tilt or somesuch, that they can use to punish a roll (even if they need a read to do so) and pop the opponent up slightly. At higher percents (around the 100% mark), even eating a tilt is usually enough to put you offstage. Most of the time you don't need to land a kill move directly out of a roll. Just poke them off the edge, poke them a few times while they're offstage to limit their returning options, and then hit 'em with a Smash Attack or the like when they go to land. Or you can be Jigglypuff, run through a back roll and punish with Rest.

 

[Teshie U]

The metagame will develop, and the best characters will have to be able to handle it. But, getting someone into the air often isn't any better for trying to kill them. All the airdodges have like 3 frames of vulnerability at the end. This means you can airdodge to airdodge and have far more invincibility than your opponent has hitbox coverage. You can also airdodge into the ledge to grab it. Then we have almost completely invincible ledge getups.

You can literally be on the ledge and stand up into a multihit move like Bowser flame breath without it touching you.

What we really have is a loop of overly safe options. I don't know if its going to ruin the game, but I'm pretty sure its going to ruin some characters.

 

[JamietheAuraUser]

Game & Watch's dodges are ridiculous. I literally just had a CPU Game & Watch perform a descending air-dodge right above ground level to dodge Pit's jab, and then dodge the second jab by rolling behind me. How the **** he managed to air-dodge into the ground and then immediately roll, I have no freaking clue. Also, Game & Watch's rolls being slow only makes them that much harder to punish because they're still intangible for the entire freaking roll just like everyone else's.

 

[Sleek Media]

Um, no one's actually saying that. Not even Brawl's rolls elicit this kind of concern, and they were certainly better than Melee's rolls both in a vacuum and in the context of their respective games.

As for something I actually would have wanted to see in Smash4 as far as a new interesting mechanic that discouraged overuse of defensive moves, it would be some kind of "guard meter" that is depleted by blocking attacks and using dodge maneuvers and replenished by dealing damage. If exhausted, then you are immediately shield broken or something. Such a system is something that Bamco started utilizing in their games when they realized that high level play was becoming overly defensive, and I was hoping to see it happen in Smash when I heard of their involvement in developing the game. Instead, you have much spammier rolls that are highly irritating to most casual players, and annoying enough to competitive players to force specific character choices to deal with it. Fun times.

You have a guard meter. It's called shield depletion. You don't need to completely disable an opponents defensive options to break through their guard like a standard fighting game. You are given the ability to angle your tilts and smashes for a reason. Wear the shield down a little bit, then poke. It's not rocket science, but I can see how you might think it is if you're used to the mindless nonstop offense in Melee.

 

[RyokoYaksa]

You have a guard meter. It's called shield depletion. You don't need to completely disable an opponents defensive options to break through their guard like a standard fighting game. You are given the ability to angle your tilts and smashes for a reason. Wear the shield down a little bit, then poke. It's not rocket science, but I can see how you might think it is if you're used to the mindless nonstop offense in Melee.

Standard shield depletion is not even close to what I was talking about. Smash shields regenerate too quickly for shield pokes, let alone breaks, to be a regular occurrence, and if you are pressured with a weak shield you need only back off for a bit. It's really easy to play keep away or land a hit of your own to provide ample time for your shield to come back. Bear in mind there are multiple ways to break guards in traditional fighters, too. Attack heights require a specific block, grabs, unblockables, and the like. It still benefitted from having such a "guard break" system. The purpose of that system was to make matches more offensive and preventing long drawn out games, but still far from "mindlessly offensive" if you have to label Melee that way for some reason. And they do a rather effective job of doing so in their respective games while adding another layer of strategy.

tl;dr there's often more punishment for failing to punish a roll in time than there is for actually having a roll read by the opponent.

 

[theunabletable]

You said "punishing after a hard read is impossible with some characters".

If you believe that then the only response is "get good". Show me some frame data that shows that's true and I'll back off.

This isn't anywhere near my central point haha. It's completely cherry picked out of context. I'd be happy to elaborate if you'd like, but it seems almost a distraction when it's distinct from my primary concerns.

Do people forget how good Metaknight/diddy/falco were at rolling?
...
I'm also not even sure if the good rolls in brawl were punishable "on reaction" in the true sense of the term.

I actually said this. This was probably my biggest argument, that MK's roll was very powerful in Brawl (to the extent that no one could punish it on reaction), and characters appear to have better rolls now than MK had.

How about we test it, Prawn? I'm eager to see how you do it. I have a good connection (and in smash 4, input lag doesn't drop much, it's mostly framerate), but even then, you can have upfront wifi johns.

Of course it won't be conclusive, because it's wifi. Well it would be pretty conclusive if you're able to punish it well on wifi, but I wouldn't be able to make my point purely on wifi. It's completely falsifiable, and it's a good test, even if it wouldn't prove my point (but it could prove yours.)

 

[Prawn]

You keep saying "how about we test it" as if me not being able to punish it is gonna make your argument and I'll have egg on my face and I'm not really interested in that kind of challenge for the sake of proving a point either way because I don't think a wifi game between two scrubs(which I can only assume you are, and I know I'm not very good at this game yet) is at all a real barometer for how good rolls are.

I just woke up from an intense map though so maybe in a bit

 

[otter]

what use is depleting shields if you never have to block anything?

 

[Prawn]

What use is complaining about rolls if they will never change :0

 

[theunabletable]

You keep saying "how about we test it" as if me not being able to punish it is gonna make your argument and I'll have egg on my face and I'm not really interested in that kind of challenge for the sake of proving a point either way because I don't think a wifi game between two scrubs(which I can only assume you are, and I know I'm not very good at this game yet) is at all a real barometer for how good rolls are.

are you even reading my posts?

"It's completely falsifiable, and it's a good test, even if it wouldn't prove my point (but it could prove yours.)"

"I have a good connection (and in smash 4, input lag doesn't drop much, it's mostly framerate), but even then, you can have upfront wifi johns."

"Of course it won't be conclusive, because it's wifi."

"Well it would be pretty conclusive if you're able to punish it well on wifi, but I wouldn't be able to make my point purely on wifi. "

I reiterated in 4 different places in the short post you responded to that you being unable to punish it would NOT make my argument. It would be a good test because it ONLY serves to discredit my argument, nothing more; not to discredit yours.

It serves exploration more than anything, allowing both parties to broaden their horizons, and better mutually describe things.

between two scrubs(which I can only assume you are

Why do you assume this sort of thing, and why is it relevant?

 

[Prawn]

are you even reading my posts?

"It's completely falsifiable, and it's a good test, even if it wouldn't prove my point (but it could prove yours.)"

"I have a good connection (and in smash 4, input lag doesn't drop much, it's mostly framerate), but even then, you can have upfront wifi johns."

"Of course it won't be conclusive, because it's wifi."

"Well it would be pretty conclusive if you're able to punish it well on wifi, but I wouldn't be able to make my point purely on wifi. "

I reiterated in 4 different places in the short post you responded to that you being unable to punish it would NOT make my argument. It would be a good test because it ONLY serves to discredit my argument, nothing more; not to discredit yours.

It serves exploration more than anything, allowing both parties to broaden their horizons, and better mutually describe things.
Why do you assume this sort of thing, and why is it relevant?

I just think a game between us might be less conclusive then a top level match. I'm admittedly pretty sub par at the game, and scrub is a relative term I didn't mean to offend you. I have no idea how good you are at the game


Edit: but sure, pm me your FC or something I'll give it a shot

 

[Signia]

The metagame will develop, and the best characters will have to be able to handle it. But, getting someone into the air often isn't any better for trying to kill them. All the airdodges have like 3 frames of vulnerability at the end.

5 frames.vulnerability, 24 frames intangibility starting at frame 4.

http://smashboards.com/threads/air-...-the-auto-cancel-window.373035/#post-17770416

Let's see, you have 35 frames to recognize the animation (earliest being the frame where the animation is distinguishable), react (12-15 frames), choose an attack (hopefully you have one ready), and have the attack reach its hit frames (minimum 3 frames usually). That's plenty of time to punish, as long as you're closeby, ready to react, and don't choose a very slow attack. In some situations or with some characters you might have to stay close enough to be in harm's way if you want to punish in time, though.

5 frames of vulnerability doesn't mean you have a 5 frame window to input the punish. Say your attack has 3 hit frames that will be in range. That means the hit frames can start two frames before and still hit, for a total of a seven frames window. Imagine trying to fit a 3-square lego block onto a 5-square one. There are 7 different ways to connect them. A seven frame window is easy enough, and that's only for 3-relevant-hit-frame attacks like Marth's fair.

There's nothing particularly bad about the air dodge based on these facts alone. It must recover quick enough that the air dodge actually helps the player get away. It must last long enough that the opponent has time to punish it on reaction if they bait it. It needs to induce landing lag in a way that its drawbacks are not avoided by airdodging close to the ground. It needs to have a fast enough startup that it's a better purely defensive option than attacking. After scrutinizing it, I don't think the air dodge could have been designed any better than it is (except if it gave you momentum ^_^). It seems to perfectly fulfill all those purposes.

If you're annoyed about people easily getting out of combos, blame the hitstun.

what use is depleting shields if you never have to block anything?

And if you try to deplete shields, you get punished. Practically everything is unsafe, and they can just regenerate during the punishment. And safety requires you to be spaced or be fading away with an aerial, where the opponent can easily back off.

Shield-poking can't be reliably used as an offensive strategy unless players both fail to punish and continue to use only shield as their defensive option. You need be heavily outplaying your opponent with projectile+attack setups and delayed string attack mixups that encourage sitting in shield, and you also need to reasonably threatening to cover roll-though, and lastly have them near the edge so they can't just roll away. All those mixups need to be in your favor just to get an extra mixup that's not even that rewarding if the opponent knows to shield-tilt in safe places.

Shields are clearly designed to handle four player free-for-all, strong enough to defend but still punishing excessive shielding in the more chaotic environment where multiple players, items, and stage hazards can be hitting you.

 

[Gawain]

5 frames.vulnerability, 24 frames intangibility starting at frame 4.

http://smashboards.com/threads/air-...-the-auto-cancel-window.373035/#post-17770416

Let's see, you have 35 frames to recognize the animation (earliest being the frame where the animation is distinguishable), react (12-15 frames), choose an attack (hopefully you have one ready), and have the attack reach its hit frames (minimum 3 frames usually). That's plenty of time to punish, as long as you're closeby, ready to react, and don't choose a very slow attack. In some situations or with some characters you might have to stay close enough to be in harm's way if you want to punish in time, though.

5 frames of vulnerability doesn't mean you have a 5 frame window to input the punish. Say your attack has 3 hit frames that will be in range. That means the hit frames can start two frames before and still hit, for a total of a seven frames window. Imagine trying to fit a 3-square lego block onto a 5-square one. There are 7 different ways to connect them. A seven frame window is easy enough, and that's only for 3-relevant-hit-frame attacks like Marth's fair.

There's nothing particularly bad about the air dodge based on these facts alone. It must recover quick enough that the air dodge actually helps the player get away. It must last long enough that the opponent has time to punish it on reaction if they bait it. It needs to induce landing lag in a way that its drawbacks are not avoided by airdodging close to the ground. It needs to have a fast enough startup that it's a better purely defensive option than attacking. After scrutinizing it, I don't think the air dodge could have been designed any better than it is (except if it gave you momentum ^_^). It seems to perfectly fulfill all those purposes.

If you're annoyed about people easily getting out of combos, blame the hitstun.



And if you try to deplete shields, you get punished. Practically everything is unsafe, and they can just regenerate during the punishment. And safety requires you to be spaced or be fading away with an aerial, where the opponent can easily back off.

Shield-poking can't be reliably used as an offensive strategy unless players both fail to punish and continue to use only shield as their defensive option. You need be heavily outplaying your opponent with projectile+attack setups and delayed string attack mixups that encourage sitting in shield, and you also need to reasonably threatening to cover roll-though, and lastly have them near the edge so they can't just roll away. All those mixups need to be in your favor just to get an extra mixup that's not even that rewarding if the opponent knows to shield-tilt in safe places.

Shields are clearly designed to handle four player free-for-all, strong enough to defend but still punishing excessive shielding in the more chaotic environment where multiple players, items, and stage hazards can be hitting you.

I feel like your last statement is important. I feel like perhaps maybe just a little too much went into balancing for four people (which for the record, I find completely not fun in any way at all).

 

[PizzaWenisaur]

I feel like your last statement is important. I feel like perhaps maybe just a little too much went into balancing for four people (which for the record, I find completely not fun in any way at all).

I think Free For All is alright, but didn't Sakurai express that he felt like this Smash was gonna be better at appealling to the competitive audience. I'm still wondering exactly what he was talking about outside a few additions ( like For Glory mode and Omega stages ). But it's kinda funny because by and large, Smash already favors a casual environment. That's where most of the effort goes to when talking about the gamemodes ( Smash Run, Homerun, Trophy Rush, trophies in general). But also from a gameplay perspective (items, game adjustments, character nerfs, etc). So I'm questioning his statement. Perhaps Sakurai has a deeper understanding of competitive Smash than I thought. And the coming months/years prove what he said correct.

Mind you, I don't want anyone to label me a Smash 4 hater, I would probably be playin' right now if I wasn't busy.

 

[DownWitDaWaveDash]

I would like the rolls to be like brawls. When people in brawl rolled, you punished it, simple and effective. Spamming rolls was bad.

I guess I can't blame the rolling too much , but on For Glory, you can possibly lag, and even if you are positioned right you can't punish.

Rolls should be used sparingly, and when you spam them, they should be easy to punish. I would like the same to happen with spot dodges, which is why Falco and D3 were so stupid in brawl

 

[LittleKirby]

Try even touching yoshi in practice mode while he is on Run mode.
using an average speed character.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Rolls in this game are f**king dumb, but I personally don't have that hard of a time punishing them most of the time. Use your tools. You can literally do a pivot forward tilt/ smash out of a run to punish someone who does this, or punish with grabs so there is minimal risk.

However, rolling in this game is a severe design oversight, one that is making me believe the developers aren't fully competent or immensely spiteful. You install a regrab timer, but don't diminish rolling invincibility frames after continuous use? Good job.

This game needs to get patched. Hard.

 

[PizzaWenisaur]

Rolls in this game are f**king dumb, but I personally don't have that hard of a time punishing them most of the time. Use your tools. You can literally do a pivot forward tilt/ smash out of a run to punish someone who does this, or punish with grabs so there is minimal risk.

However, rolling in this game is a severe design oversight, one that is making me believe the developers aren't fully competent or immensely spiteful. You install a regrab timer, but don't diminish rolling invincibility frames after continuous use? Good job.

This game needs to get patched. Hard.

This is a little off topic but...
I feel like the game exists in a wierd state. On one hand, grabs feel less effective due to the reduction of chain grabs, grabs that start combos, and kill grabs. And although I think less combo and kill grabs is a little silly, if they made grabs even stronger then shield grabbing would be like the worst thing ever.

 

[o-Serin-o]

Rolling is truly overpowered in this game.

 

[RyokoYaksa]

There's nothing particularly bad about the air dodge based on these facts alone. It must recover quick enough that the air dodge actually helps the player get away. It must last long enough that the opponent has time to punish it on reaction if they bait it. It needs to induce landing lag in a way that its drawbacks are not avoided by airdodging close to the ground. It needs to have a fast enough startup that it's a better purely defensive option than attacking. After scrutinizing it, I don't think the air dodge could have been designed any better than it is (except if it gave you momentum ^_^). It seems to perfectly fulfill all those purposes.

If you're annoyed about people easily getting out of combos, blame the hitstun.

This sort of goes back to character choice as far as being able to more effectively play around these defensive moves. "Annoying for casuals, forces character choice for competitives." ADs are no longer purely defensive, they are quick enough to actually get a reversal out of them on quite a few character's aerials since they're that fast to act out of compared to aerial attacks. They're certainly good for helping a player get away, but a little too well against any character who doesn't have aerials or the mobility to keep up with them, almost to the point where getting launched into an air chase doesn't really feel like a bad position for you against a good portion of the cast. Think of how MK dominates the Brawl meta, and how well he can chase down aerials and dodges. Like rolling, buffing one defensive mechanic without actually improving punishment options across the board creates issues with character pool.

The AD landing lag, while well meaning as a method of giving them a weakness, provides rather annoying conflicts with the game's controls. If you try to land from a jump into a shield and press the button a bit too early, you get AD landlag (one thing I miss from Melee is having different shield and AD inputs through pressure sensitivity). If you try to ukemi too early, same thing since you can AD right out of tumble (being able to do this is still pretty silly tbh and makes Ukemi unnecessarily difficult). Forcing too many actions with one input tends to do this, which I would ultimately call a design error. And then there's the AD aerial landlag autocancel shenanigans...

 

[SirroMinus1]

Frame data to prove it? Reality of some characters are desiring hard reads. Plausible because of the predictability of a rather infant online community. This won't go underutilized in tournaments.

I should of just referred to myself in this post. I was mainly stating that if it was over used then it should be easy to punish.

 

[Signia]

This sort of goes back to character choice as far as being able to more effectively play around these defensive moves. "Annoying for casuals, forces character choice for competitives."

Yeah. Ideally, balance needs to take into account all the ways slow characters are disadvantaged, and give them almost ridiculous compensation. Being able to punish in smaller windows is always a consequence of a fast character.

ADs are no longer purely defensive, they are quick enough to actually get a reversal out of them on quite a few character's aerials since they're that fast to act out of compared to aerial attacks.

They're certainly good for helping a player get away, but a little too well against any character who doesn't have aerials or the mobility to keep up with them, almost to the point where getting launched into an air chase doesn't really feel like a bad position for you against a good portion of the cast. Think of how MK dominates the Brawl meta, and how well he can chase down aerials and dodges. Like rolling, buffing one defensive mechanic without actually improving punishment options across the board creates issues with character pool.

Maybe I should have stayed away from the offense/defense terms. If you dodge an attack at the right timing (the earlier you dodge, the earlier you recover and can punish, but the earlier you have to act), and when the opponent uses an unspaced or long recovering attack, I think it's fair that you get a free hit for it. There's no reason you have to be completely helpless in the air. There does seem to be a tradeoff between helping floaty or low-air-mobility characters get down or helping slow characters give chase in the air, though.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the game is fine as it is, I just think you're misplacing the blame on a mechanic that's well-designed. As soon as you would "fix" one thing about air dodge, it would create other problems. And removing it would cause the issue of not being able to get down. Smash 64 had dairs with good hitboxes and speed, nearly no landing lag and high hitstun on shield, while Melee had fast fall speeds, wavelands for good platform movement, and safe aerials (the ones that didn't got abused into mid tier or lower, for the most part). Smash 4 has none of that. I disagree, even with the AD, being in the air sucks.

The real problem is balance and hitstun. Now keep in mind the game can't give slow characters insane kill moves in return, or else they'll dominate free-for-all. With more hitstun, well, as the designer if you wanted something to combo you make it actually combo.

The AD landing lag, while well meaning as a method of giving them a weakness, provides rather annoying conflicts with the game's controls. If you try to land from a jump into a shield and press the button a bit too early, you get AD landlag (one thing I miss from Melee is having different shield and AD inputs through pressure sensitivity). If you try to ukemi too early, same thing since you can AD right out of tumble (being able to do this is still pretty silly tbh and makes Ukemi unnecessarily difficult). Forcing too many actions with one input tends to do this, which I would ultimately call a design error. And then there's the AD aerial landlag autocancel shenanigans...

That is a problem. Input-overlap is a ***** and there are similar issues like this in all smash games (****ing tilts). But that's what happens when you have simplified controls.

 

[Zoa]

Speaking of defensive play, has anyone else had the pleasure of being the victim to an fsmash from a level 9 AI almost immediately after they drop their shield? It happens to me all the time. Wanna do ftilt and accidentally gets read as fsmash, which gets shielded, only to eat one in return. I understand shield is super duper safe on almost everything, but what the **** is up with the shield drop frames? Are they almost nonexistent or can I actually do fsmash OoS now?

 

[RyokoYaksa]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the game is fine as it is, I just think you're misplacing the blame on a mechanic that's well-designed. As soon as you would "fix" one thing about air dodge, it would create other problems. And removing it would cause the issue of not being able to get down. Smash 64 had dairs with good hitboxes and speed, nearly no landing lag and high hitstun on shield, while Melee had fast fall speeds, wavelands for good platform movement, and safe aerials (the ones that didn't got abused into mid tier or lower, for the most part). Smash 4 has none of that. I disagree, even with the AD, being in the air sucks.

There's lot of matchups to be abused where one character being airborne and trying to land against someone giving chase in the air is a rather trivial affair. I play Rosalina, Sheik, and ZSS, all of whom have great ways to defend themselves in the air even without ADs. With them, it's another brick in their top tier defense wall. I get that AD seems well designed on paper, but in practice it's a bit excessive when everything else interacting with it is taken into account. You can pretty much input repeated ADs twice as fast as most aerial attacks now, which the vast majority of the cast can't hope to keep up with in air-to-air combat.

Speaking of defensive play, has anyone else had the pleasure of being the victim to an fsmash from a level 9 AI almost immediately after they drop their shield? It happens to me all the time. Wanna do ftilt and accidentally gets read as fsmash, which gets shielded, only to eat one in return. I understand shield is super duper safe on almost everything, but what the **** is up with the shield drop frames? Are they almost nonexistent or can I actually do fsmash OoS now?

High level CPUs in this game are obnoxiously spot on with the perfect shields into a direct counterattack. Perfect shield allows you to attack from a blocked attack faster. It's pretty much the CPU-enabler mechanic with how dumb they tend to be otherwise.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Am I the only one who thinks rolls aren't an issue?

Well granted my Brawl Lucario experiance taught me how to use and punish rolls but still is it that hard?

I've found it harder but still easy to push it.

Edit: Also don't reference CPUs, If they are like Brawl ones but better, they are, they will have inhuman reaction time.

Back in Brawl they power shielded Frame 2-3 jabs consistently.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I don't understand threads like this. We have quite a few that talk about various topics, but this one is the biggest one that seems to be strange like this.

Why are we discussing whether rolls, counters, the blastzones, airdodges, shields, or whatever else you might want to name are well designed game elements? I mean, I think all of these things (definitely including rolls) are fine, but even if they weren't, what are we accomplishing here by deliberating over whether they're bad mechanics? If rolling is overpowered, the only real competitive discussion I'd expect would be discussion of how to optimally roll a lot to win, about which characters can roll the best, and other such things, but that doesn't seem to be the tilt at all. We can't change the game so it doesn't really make sense to discuss how the game could be different or how we'd prefer the game to be. We're best off just accepting gameplay elements for what they are and asking ourselves how we can use them to our advantage.

What I really fear is that I really do think a lot of new players read threads like this. They're coming onto this forum looking for competitive information about the game, and in fact I think a lot of them are having trouble punishing rolls since rolls can be pretty strong in this game and new players often have trouble making reads (even in Melee where rolls were awful, a lot of newer players found them difficult to handle). I really fear a lot of them will see a topic like this and conclude "rolls are overpowered, I'm not bad, the game is just broken" instead of learning how to play better to handle rolls or even better how to use rolls well to allow themselves to benefit from them instead of suffer by them. That seems way worse as an outcome to me than whatever good (if any?) we could realize if we came to some kind of hypothetical agreement about whether rolls make this game better ore worse.

To specifically address the OP's concerns, I'll point out that online lag makes rolls seem WAY better than they are since the lag is the difference between your ability to react and punish versus not in a lot of real match situations. When I play online, I spam roll liberally and just get away with it; offline I'm a lot more careful (still roll, just a lot less) and am looking more and more to punish rolls (you can just dash attack them so much, and it's so easy). Then remember that even offline smash 3ds lags some (yeah, really), and imagine how much more you'll be able to hit on wii u when you can finally play this game with other humans with zero lag slowing things down and making stuff harder to punish. Of course, even if rolls really were just overpowered, it would be better to frame things as "rolls seem strong, how should we be using this to our advantage", but I think this is a better picture of how strong rolls actually are in this game (in short, they're a lag tactic).

 

[Tagxy]

This information shouldve been in the OP

Standard PM roll is 33 frames (with some being worse).
Standard Melee roll is 4-19 / 31
Standard Brawl roll is 4-19 / 31

Best Rolls in Brawl were:
Forward Roll
5-12 / 23 Metaknight
4-19 / 27 Lucario
4-17 / 27 Pit
4-15 / 27 Zero Suit Samus
4-19 / 29 Diddy
4-19 / 29 Squirtle

Back Roll4-19 / 27 Lucario
4-19 / 29 Diddy
4-19 / 29 Squirtle

Note: Average human reaction time varies from 9-18 frames

Analysis:
People coming from PM are going to have the hardest time dealing with this. Every roll is well above reaction time, including metaknights. Additionally, 2-4 frames may seem subtle but make a notable difference, so very small latency issues both locally and through wifi are also going to seem very noticable. Furthermore, rolls are typically a tactic more difficult to handle the further removed the player is from top level play. Lastly, shielding provides a huge tell for rolling.

Additional analysis. As Ampharos above seems to imply, its a bit odd to treat rolls like the boogeyman. Metaknights forward roll in Brawl was generally used in smart offensive ways to mix up an unsuspecting opponent, but study of top level play would show that its far from overpowered and this seems to be true from most decent smash 4 footage as well. Little Mac seems to be the most often cited when discussing overpowered rolls, but the context is neglected that his entire ground game is intentionally absurd at the expense of a sound aerial and offstage game. I highly doubt other good rolls are better than MKs, and are probably in the range of Diddy-Lucario.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Roll has always been a very powerful tool with a few character specific exceptions like Samus or Yoshi. In the context of the often cited RPS-System of competitive games the roll has a very special position as it beats "Attack" and "Grab" without losing to "Shield". The inherently apparent weakness of rolling - which is losing stage control - is heavily mitigated by the amount of movement options all smash games give you compard to other fighting games.

Rolling away from the opponent is very hard to punish directly in any smash game unless you see a very predicatble roll coming. In Brawl and possibly smash 4 rolling behind your opponent is actually a viable approach mixup-option. Unless you're using it predictably, you'd get away with it and possibly get frame advantage. But good players ended up not having any major troubles with rolling, they simply adapted to it. And they used characters that are either inherently strong at covering these options [MK, Snake, ICs, ...] or abusing these options [MK, Falco, ...]. These characters ended up being "good" because they have tools to cover these powerful options.

I personally feel like Smash 4 has actually improved and increased the amount of counter-measures against rolls, especially rolls away from the opponent. Dash Attacks have been globally improved in range to make sure that even a slowish character like Lucario can punish it on a [non-hard] read. Many characters are mobile enough to chasegrab rolls, have quick projectiles that can punish their lag or they have special moves that seems specifically designed to deal with them [Falcon and Pit sideB!]. If you can't cover or punish rolls with your player skill then you need to get better, if your character can't cover or punish rolls then the character isn't good enough to win.

 

[Donovan McGrabb]

I agree that rolling is ridiculously good, but the thing you have to remember is that rolling cause no damage and knockback.

They can't roll around like ***holes the whole match and win, they'll have to attack eventually. So don't react to the roll, react to the follow up.

^^^^^^^ THIS

 

[PolarTimeSD]

I don't understand threads like this. We have quite a few that talk about various topics, but this one is the biggest one that seems to be strange like this.

Why are we discussing whether rolls, counters, the blastzones, airdodges, shields, or whatever else you might want to name are well designed game elements? I mean, I think all of these things (definitely including rolls) are fine, but even if they weren't, what are we accomplishing here by deliberating over whether they're bad mechanics? If rolling is overpowered, the only real competitive discussion I'd expect would be discussion of how to optimally roll a lot to win, about which characters can roll the best, and other such things, but that doesn't seem to be the tilt at all. We can't change the game so it doesn't really make sense to discuss how the game could be different or how we'd prefer the game to be. We're best off just accepting gameplay elements for what they are and asking ourselves how we can use them to our advantage.

What I really fear is that I really do think a lot of new players read threads like this. They're coming onto this forum looking for competitive information about the game, and in fact I think a lot of them are having trouble punishing rolls since rolls can be pretty strong in this game and new players often have trouble making reads (even in Melee where rolls were awful, a lot of newer players found them difficult to handle). I really fear a lot of them will see a topic like this and conclude "rolls are overpowered, I'm not bad, the game is just broken" instead of learning how to play better to handle rolls or even better how to use rolls well to allow themselves to benefit from them instead of suffer by them. That seems way worse as an outcome to me than whatever good (if any?) we could realize if we came to some kind of hypothetical agreement about whether rolls make this game better ore worse.

To specifically address the OP's concerns, I'll point out that online lag makes rolls seem WAY better than they are since the lag is the difference between your ability to react and punish versus not in a lot of real match situations. When I play online, I spam roll liberally and just get away with it; offline I'm a lot more careful (still roll, just a lot less) and am looking more and more to punish rolls (you can just dash attack them so much, and it's so easy). Then remember that even offline smash 3ds lags some (yeah, really), and imagine how much more you'll be able to hit on wii u when you can finally play this game with other humans with zero lag slowing things down and making stuff harder to punish. Of course, even if rolls really were just overpowered, it would be better to frame things as "rolls seem strong, how should we be using this to our advantage", but I think this is a better picture of how strong rolls actually are in this game (in short, they're a lag tactic).

I'm one of those new players. I've always liked Smash, mostly Brawl, but never got into it competitively. Coming from other fighting games like SF4 and SFxT, I decided I wanted to break into the competitive scene with Smash 4. After browsing on reddit, I decided to come here to actually get good competitive information and learn how to play. Tbh, I'm not impressed. I've learned a bit here and there, but my impression of the scene from just these forums is that people want a different game. They want the unrealistic notion of Nintendo changing the game to suit them. I understand, change is hard, now suck it up and explain to me how I can play Smash 4. Ok, rolls and ADs are strong, though with the frame data posted above, you can punish ADs quite easily. Now the question is: how should I punish rolls? How should I roll effectively? How does my main fair against other rolls, and how well do they roll themselves? What's the frame data on all of this? This is what I was expecting on a forum for competitive fighting games, not complaining to no end.

 

[Tagxy]

@ PolarTimeSD Unfortunately you have a lot of people who are familiar with their old game and are having a hard time grappling with the new, which is where complaining comes from. Youre fortunate in that you have a fresh perspective so its not tainted from an older train of thought. The biggest problem is theres not a lot of information at the moment. The OP also presumes a lot without doing enough research unfortunately, but thats not the first time thats happened.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

Multiple people have requested frame data but its presumably not out yet or not out publically.
The change the game crowd seems like PM influence. L

 

[RyokoYaksa]

@ PolarTimeSD You're expecting actual frame data 2 weeks in, on a platform that is currently very ill suited for gathering this data accurately?

And while the frame data on ADs might make it look like it's easy to punish, they aren't really in practice. It's based on the notion that you're right on top of them doing nothing waiting for an AD while they just AD right into your space.

 

[Tagxy]

Since Ive been hearing lots of complaints about rolls I decided to do a ghetto frame test:

Step one: Pick a video.
Used a video of sheik since its a non-mac character peeps complained about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DBkR5e0_T4

Step two: Find a good roll
Found a good one at 4:27 where he shields, rolls, then shields

Step 3: Watch the clock
Roll starts at 6:17:06 and ends at 6:16:55

Step 4: Translate to frames.
Seems like roughly 29-31 frame range. AKA in line with rolls in melee and Brawl.

Subject to non-ghetto testing but Im inclined to believe this is overblown and peeps are basing this off of mainly Mac. Its not surprising, people thought falco had a faster roll in Brawl when it fit the standard rolls of the game, but its strenght was in its length.

 

[~Burst~]

I'm one of those new players. I've always liked Smash, mostly Brawl, but never got into it competitively. Coming from other fighting games like SF4 and SFxT, I decided I wanted to break into the competitive scene with Smash 4. After browsing on reddit, I decided to come here to actually get good competitive information and learn how to play. Tbh, I'm not impressed. I've learned a bit here and there, but my impression of the scene from just these forums is that people want a different game. They want the unrealistic notion of Nintendo changing the game to suit them. I understand, change is hard, now suck it up and explain to me how I can play Smash 4. Ok, rolls and ADs are strong, though with the frame data posted above, you can punish ADs quite easily. Now the question is: how should I punish rolls? How should I roll effectively? How does my main fair against other rolls, and how well do they roll themselves? What's the frame data on all of this? This is what I was expecting on a forum for competitive fighting games, not complaining to no end.

For one, go to your characters specific forum to find out information about using your character.
Second, as you yourself noted we're dealing with change it is quite difficult to have all of those answers so early when we're all trying to wrap around the completely different game we have been given. People are still trying to find effective ways to edge guard without hogging the ledge. Give us time. This isn't a remade game with a new mechanic its a new game with changed mechanics.

 

[Mettie7]

>Sees thread topic
>Sees 4 pages
>Skips all but OP

I may not be the best like no one ever was, but imo rolls are very punishable. One of my friends pointed out that I roll a lot and that they're very punishable which accounted for the 1:20 W:L ratio I had vs him last night.

About halfway through our matches they decided I should try and play and never roll. I only rolled liked 3 or 4 times, but I did way better when I was forced to NOT roll and only make smart rolls.

And tbh, I'm blaming the 3DS for this and not the player. I think once the Wii U version comes around we'll all be playing better and smarter so we won't roll as much.

I do think Little Mac's armor + rolls is ridiculous tho