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Smash Legend
So Kotaku released their full interview today that they had with Sakurai. They had parts of it up earlier while E3 was going on, and in this interview Sakurai talked a lot about the competitive smash scene and what he's going to do for the next smash.
Interview can be found here: http://kotaku.com/an-in-depth-chat-with-the-genius-behind-super-smash-bro-530744390
Now the following is just my personal opinion and interpretation of what Sakurai meant with what he was saying so if you have your own that's fine too some things also may have come out wrong or translated poorly in the interview (although I think Kotaku is usually pretty good about it).
Skipping down about halfway through the interview to this question which is the first one about competitive
smash: Kotaku: I'm awfully sorry to hear that... To switch gears a little bit, how much do you follow the competitive scene, competitive Smash Bros.? There's a big US community, I don't know if there's a community in Japan also, but do you follow that competitive Smash Bros. scene?
Sakurai: In Japan, there's actually a tournament scene, and it's an annual thing... that's something that just wrapped up, actually. It sort of reached its peak, and then now with anticipation for the next title, it's sort of on hiatus. I imagine that will pick up again on release of the new games, but that's something that personally I'm not involved in. It's something that Nintendo manages. Personally, I can't really say too much about that.
This part somewhat worries me. I'm not really to big on the Japanese competitive scene. I know who the players are, when they have tournaments, and I watch videos of them, but I don't really know what he's saying with an "annual thing". Competitive Japanese tournaments have tournaments all the time as far as I know. Maybe the peak thing is just referencing that there used to be more tournament entrants than there are now? That's how it is in the US right now, but they still have good turnouts as far as I'm aware. And I've definitely never really heard of Nintendo managing any type of tournaments or competitive events in Japan unless maybe that one time where Sakurai played Ganon against that girl Lucas player with items on? If that's his idea of competitive tournaments then I'm very disappointed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hayhkV1zGVA
Then again, maybe I just don't know that much of the Japanese scene and how they interact with Nintendo.
Kotaku: Do you ever talk to the high-level competitive players when you're balancing Smash Bros.?
Sakurai goes on to say that he doesn't "incorporate feedback like that" which, while I'd like to see him take some ideas from that area of players, I think it's fine as long as he knows the mistakes that he made about balancing before. I don't think a super in-depth discussion with some of the high-level competitive players is what Sakurai needs as there'll be bias in that too, just as long as Sakurai realizes some of the balancing issues with characters like Meta Knight and Ganondorf and he UNDERSTANDS what makes these characters good/bad, that it's all fine by me.
However, he also says that he doesn't want to cater to these players because it's only a small percentage of the people that play Smash Bros. and wants to avoid it being like other fighters where it's only appreciated by a small group of maniac players. I think as long as smash is still....well...smash then it'll be fine. You know, a bunch of Nintendo characters (with some 3rd parties) on Nintendo stages in a pinball-like environment with damage percentage and boundaries to the level with the same basic foundations to the character's movesets. I think that will appeal to the casual people with almost any game mechanics and physics. I do understand though that he doesn't want to take a risk like that as Smash Bros. is a huge popular franchise that appeals to many different kinds of people and he might just not want to risk losing that which, again, I think is understandable.
"But that's not to say that I don't appreciate very high-level competitive play, the type of very refined competitive gameplay that happens in other fighting games. "
So Sakurai clearly acknowledges, respects, and appreciates the competitive scene which I'm very happy about this. As a lot of people have been saying that Sakurai just hates the competitive scene. This makes me more confident that Sakurai does have the competitive scene in mind while making Smash games.
Sakurai: So in regards to overall game balance, what we do is we use sort of this monitor playtest where we set up players of a certain level to play highly-skilled players in an arena. For example, an arena just with maybe a single platform and we watch them fight over a certain amount of time and view video from that and decide at a high level how to make adjustments to that for the base.
So for starters, I'm not really sure what he means about "highly-skilled players" as I doubt any of them are really on the level of like Mew2King or most anyone in the competitive scene really and I've never really heard of Nintendo getting anyone in the competitive scene, USA or Japan, to help them test the game.
The "for example part" also kinda stuck out to me, I'm not really sure if he arbitrarily just threw out a stage layout or if he was specifically trying to indicate a basic stage layout (like a "Neutral/Starter" as we like to call them). If the latter then this kind of signifies to me that the game, at it's core foundations, is balanced based on neutral levels. So if it is then this really says to me that the game wasn't really meant to be played on stages like Rainbow Cruise or Brinstar competitively.That's not to say, though, that the metagame for competitive play might not evolve to where some of these stages might help competitive play such as what if most of the matchups in the game are similar to ICs vs Ganondorf (in brawl) which at high levels of play is near impossible-impossible on any neutral stage (and it's still pretty bad on most other stages), making stages like Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar might help balance the game out of if the game evolved to the point where the majority of the matchups are like those. Still, this kind of indicates to me that the game was/is balanced based on Neutral/Starter levels like Final Destination, Battlefield, etc.
Smash Bros. is all about position—where you're at and what kind of power the player has based on where their position is at. So it's something that players have to take advantage of. But if suddenly you create sort of a testing scenario where the position balance is removed from the equation, and you sort of start to see where, when you remove that one factor from the game, you're basically testing two players in the same circumstances, that's when you can really start to see the differences and balance between characters.
So, again this statement kind of reaches out to important aspects of competitive play: stage positioning and neutral position, at least this is what I took it as. So stage positioning is kind of like what if one character is on the edge of the stage and the other is putting pressure on him. Neutral positioning where like no one really has stage control and they're trying to shift it to their favor. I'm very happy that Sakurai is aware of these things and understands how important they are and may try to balance some of these things too.
As far as the overall balance, if you were to take that and then put it in a flat playing field and have characters fight, you get a situation where suddenly, it's no different than any other fighting game. We realized that having different positioning, there's a lot of factors that occur in vertical elements of the stages. Once you get the core balance, then you can stretch out from there and realize, well, players don't want to play a normal flat fighting game: they want the special peculiarities of Smash Bros., where there's a lot of verticality, where the collision detection is a little broader. And the overall balancing goes factoring in those vertical elements as well.
So I took this statement as basically "We still want to have a variety of stages that players can choose from for their own enjoyment." I think the "vertical elements" he's referring to is kind of like that stage variety. you have your typical flat stage like Final Destination and the more "vertical elements" you put into it the father you get from those types of stages like Rumble Falls and Rainbow Cruise for instance. He says that core balancing is first (which I think are kind of like the foundations to smash, speed/power/damage of attacks, frame data, character speeds, etc.) and then making sure when you take all of these things and put it into a more hectic environment (or one with more "vertical elements") it still stays balanced.
And so we wanted to add a little bit of some accidental or random elements to help sort of narrow the possibility of who would come out on top in a match. And so our opinion on it was that it sort of helps balance the game. Of course, hardcore players might take issue with it, so that's why we decided to make it an option you can turn on or off.
This basically just telling me that Sakurai does still cater to the competitive scene and tries to appease all types of players.
So now, for this time around, we're sort of aiming for something that is in between those as far as the speed of the game. Because I don't really think this time we're in a situation where we're trying to accommodate that many new players like we did last time.
And like we've been hearing from many interviews with Sakurai, he's trying to put the next game somewhere in between melee and brawl. If Melee was hard mode and Brawl was easy mode then the next one is going to be intermediate.
So in conclusion, I'm pretty happy about what Sakurai is trying to do with the game. I'm glad he does think about the competitive scene when making Smash games and not just throws us under the rug which is what many people thought before. I do wish he put more research into competitive smash when developing the games, but I think it's very understandable that he tries to appeal to as many people as he can.
Interview can be found here: http://kotaku.com/an-in-depth-chat-with-the-genius-behind-super-smash-bro-530744390
Now the following is just my personal opinion and interpretation of what Sakurai meant with what he was saying so if you have your own that's fine too some things also may have come out wrong or translated poorly in the interview (although I think Kotaku is usually pretty good about it).
Skipping down about halfway through the interview to this question which is the first one about competitive
smash: Kotaku: I'm awfully sorry to hear that... To switch gears a little bit, how much do you follow the competitive scene, competitive Smash Bros.? There's a big US community, I don't know if there's a community in Japan also, but do you follow that competitive Smash Bros. scene?
Sakurai: In Japan, there's actually a tournament scene, and it's an annual thing... that's something that just wrapped up, actually. It sort of reached its peak, and then now with anticipation for the next title, it's sort of on hiatus. I imagine that will pick up again on release of the new games, but that's something that personally I'm not involved in. It's something that Nintendo manages. Personally, I can't really say too much about that.
This part somewhat worries me. I'm not really to big on the Japanese competitive scene. I know who the players are, when they have tournaments, and I watch videos of them, but I don't really know what he's saying with an "annual thing". Competitive Japanese tournaments have tournaments all the time as far as I know. Maybe the peak thing is just referencing that there used to be more tournament entrants than there are now? That's how it is in the US right now, but they still have good turnouts as far as I'm aware. And I've definitely never really heard of Nintendo managing any type of tournaments or competitive events in Japan unless maybe that one time where Sakurai played Ganon against that girl Lucas player with items on? If that's his idea of competitive tournaments then I'm very disappointed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hayhkV1zGVA
Then again, maybe I just don't know that much of the Japanese scene and how they interact with Nintendo.
Kotaku: Do you ever talk to the high-level competitive players when you're balancing Smash Bros.?
Sakurai goes on to say that he doesn't "incorporate feedback like that" which, while I'd like to see him take some ideas from that area of players, I think it's fine as long as he knows the mistakes that he made about balancing before. I don't think a super in-depth discussion with some of the high-level competitive players is what Sakurai needs as there'll be bias in that too, just as long as Sakurai realizes some of the balancing issues with characters like Meta Knight and Ganondorf and he UNDERSTANDS what makes these characters good/bad, that it's all fine by me.
However, he also says that he doesn't want to cater to these players because it's only a small percentage of the people that play Smash Bros. and wants to avoid it being like other fighters where it's only appreciated by a small group of maniac players. I think as long as smash is still....well...smash then it'll be fine. You know, a bunch of Nintendo characters (with some 3rd parties) on Nintendo stages in a pinball-like environment with damage percentage and boundaries to the level with the same basic foundations to the character's movesets. I think that will appeal to the casual people with almost any game mechanics and physics. I do understand though that he doesn't want to take a risk like that as Smash Bros. is a huge popular franchise that appeals to many different kinds of people and he might just not want to risk losing that which, again, I think is understandable.
"But that's not to say that I don't appreciate very high-level competitive play, the type of very refined competitive gameplay that happens in other fighting games. "
So Sakurai clearly acknowledges, respects, and appreciates the competitive scene which I'm very happy about this. As a lot of people have been saying that Sakurai just hates the competitive scene. This makes me more confident that Sakurai does have the competitive scene in mind while making Smash games.
Sakurai: So in regards to overall game balance, what we do is we use sort of this monitor playtest where we set up players of a certain level to play highly-skilled players in an arena. For example, an arena just with maybe a single platform and we watch them fight over a certain amount of time and view video from that and decide at a high level how to make adjustments to that for the base.
So for starters, I'm not really sure what he means about "highly-skilled players" as I doubt any of them are really on the level of like Mew2King or most anyone in the competitive scene really and I've never really heard of Nintendo getting anyone in the competitive scene, USA or Japan, to help them test the game.
The "for example part" also kinda stuck out to me, I'm not really sure if he arbitrarily just threw out a stage layout or if he was specifically trying to indicate a basic stage layout (like a "Neutral/Starter" as we like to call them). If the latter then this kind of signifies to me that the game, at it's core foundations, is balanced based on neutral levels. So if it is then this really says to me that the game wasn't really meant to be played on stages like Rainbow Cruise or Brinstar competitively.That's not to say, though, that the metagame for competitive play might not evolve to where some of these stages might help competitive play such as what if most of the matchups in the game are similar to ICs vs Ganondorf (in brawl) which at high levels of play is near impossible-impossible on any neutral stage (and it's still pretty bad on most other stages), making stages like Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar might help balance the game out of if the game evolved to the point where the majority of the matchups are like those. Still, this kind of indicates to me that the game was/is balanced based on Neutral/Starter levels like Final Destination, Battlefield, etc.
Smash Bros. is all about position—where you're at and what kind of power the player has based on where their position is at. So it's something that players have to take advantage of. But if suddenly you create sort of a testing scenario where the position balance is removed from the equation, and you sort of start to see where, when you remove that one factor from the game, you're basically testing two players in the same circumstances, that's when you can really start to see the differences and balance between characters.
So, again this statement kind of reaches out to important aspects of competitive play: stage positioning and neutral position, at least this is what I took it as. So stage positioning is kind of like what if one character is on the edge of the stage and the other is putting pressure on him. Neutral positioning where like no one really has stage control and they're trying to shift it to their favor. I'm very happy that Sakurai is aware of these things and understands how important they are and may try to balance some of these things too.
As far as the overall balance, if you were to take that and then put it in a flat playing field and have characters fight, you get a situation where suddenly, it's no different than any other fighting game. We realized that having different positioning, there's a lot of factors that occur in vertical elements of the stages. Once you get the core balance, then you can stretch out from there and realize, well, players don't want to play a normal flat fighting game: they want the special peculiarities of Smash Bros., where there's a lot of verticality, where the collision detection is a little broader. And the overall balancing goes factoring in those vertical elements as well.
So I took this statement as basically "We still want to have a variety of stages that players can choose from for their own enjoyment." I think the "vertical elements" he's referring to is kind of like that stage variety. you have your typical flat stage like Final Destination and the more "vertical elements" you put into it the father you get from those types of stages like Rumble Falls and Rainbow Cruise for instance. He says that core balancing is first (which I think are kind of like the foundations to smash, speed/power/damage of attacks, frame data, character speeds, etc.) and then making sure when you take all of these things and put it into a more hectic environment (or one with more "vertical elements") it still stays balanced.
And so we wanted to add a little bit of some accidental or random elements to help sort of narrow the possibility of who would come out on top in a match. And so our opinion on it was that it sort of helps balance the game. Of course, hardcore players might take issue with it, so that's why we decided to make it an option you can turn on or off.
This basically just telling me that Sakurai does still cater to the competitive scene and tries to appease all types of players.
So now, for this time around, we're sort of aiming for something that is in between those as far as the speed of the game. Because I don't really think this time we're in a situation where we're trying to accommodate that many new players like we did last time.
And like we've been hearing from many interviews with Sakurai, he's trying to put the next game somewhere in between melee and brawl. If Melee was hard mode and Brawl was easy mode then the next one is going to be intermediate.
So in conclusion, I'm pretty happy about what Sakurai is trying to do with the game. I'm glad he does think about the competitive scene when making Smash games and not just throws us under the rug which is what many people thought before. I do wish he put more research into competitive smash when developing the games, but I think it's very understandable that he tries to appeal to as many people as he can.
.
. However, the randomness had to end for me on one point since I wanted to get better at the game. I still play randoms with items, but I prioritize 1v1 competitive matches.
![[Corn]](/data/avatars/l/219/219175.jpg?1363907352){kind=avatar}
