Sakurai Discusses Competitive Fighting Games

Masahiro Sakurai just published his thoughts on competitive fighting games in this week's Think About the Video Games. It’s certainly a treat for all of us who wanted more insight into the Smash director’s brain and how he has approached designing the fighting games we all love. The full column is available on Source Gaming.

He begins the column by discussing Marvel vs. Capcom 3:

When you watch high level matches of Marvel, you will often see players start a combo, and keep it going until their opponent is KO’d. You can convert a single stray hit into a very long combo, and it’s not rare to see a character start with full health and lose all of it from a single combo.

He continues,

Think about what it’s like to be comboed like that. Is that fun? Doesn’t that seem absurd and unreasonable? That’s what I thought, but when you get down to it, it’s not that complicated. It’s still a contest of skill between two people.

Sakurai then discusses the need to balance the outcry of the loud few and the silent majority, as some people demand certain moves to be nerfed as they are unfair. Balancing Smash is a complicated process, and one where Sakurai needs to consider a lot of factors and playstyles.

In the end, Sakurai concludes:

I took a step back and thought about it, and came to the conclusion that it’s because that is fair, in its own way. A competitor has the freedom to choose the same team composition as their opponent, and pull off the same combos, if they so choose. If you think overpowered moves, links, or combos are unfair, then you should just use those techniques and win. Your opponent is doing the same thing to you.

Reminder, the full column is on Source Gaming.

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Hmm. I'm not quite sure how to put it, but Sakurai is at once a combination of error and wisdom. As in, I feel some premise or hidden assumption of an argument of his is wrong, but he has a virtuous way to view them if they be true. It is difficult to criticize him, because us humans usually make mistakes through our vices and that's the path I often criticize individuals through. It's a bad way, but it 'worked' a lot of the time. It is rare those who make honest mistakes. Perhaps, I'll put more effort in and give him more credit.

Common themes:
'People are still people, and should be viewed with compassion rather than disdain, but it still gets on my nerves as they can seem ungrateful.'
'Vocal minority and silent majority.'
'Metagame is a manifestation of internal balance, and is inherently fair. My fun might not be their fun, and that's fine.'

First, I'd like to welcome Mr. Sakurai to capitalism! Or, at least, state capitalism or fascism or something like that. As the great Mises said: "The real bosses [under capitalism] are the consumers.... They are full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. They do not care a whit for past merit. As soon as something is offered to them that they like better or is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors." Ungrateful indeed.

I think, a much more rational position to take on the silent majority is the position of neutrality, rather than assuming they're fine with things. We don't truly know what they think, but we can make guesses on their supposed composition. The silent majority are the ones who don't put the effort to get their views out, likely through a simple, reasonable lack of care. I suppose those who, by definition, care less about the game, are "casuals." And this is no insult, just a comparative definition to hardcore as hot is to cold. I think it's more reasonable to assume that their enjoyment of the game would be mostly unaffected by many changes that the vocal minority (which seems comparatively hardcore in composition) suggests. I'd hesitate, then, to use them in justifying inertia to outside pressures to change.

Sakurai seems to be leaning towards contexts of fairness in metagames, implicit consent of play under rulesets, and levels of skill, at last. If I'm right, he had an attitude of aggregate fairness before, and balance would be expressly built around that. But, I think he's shifted his mind on a key premise, without realizing it.

 

If you think overpowered moves, links, or combos are unfair, then you should just use those techniques and win. Your opponent is doing the same thing to you.

Even Sakurai gets that, why can't most people?

 

Sakurai seems to be leaning towards contexts of fairness in metagames, implicit consent of play under rulesets, and levels of skill, at last. If I'm right, he had an attitude of aggregate fairness before, and balance would be expressly built around that. But, I think he's shifted his mind on a key premise, without realizing it.

if it's not too much trouble, could you simplify this a bit? because what your saying has caught my interest, but I don't quite follow it...

 

Even Sakurai gets that, why can't most people?

I
I think the logic in that statement is pretty sound. Obviously, if a strategy is the best, and you are competitor playing at tournaments, you should pick that strategy because it gives you the best chance to win. However, there are a few problems with that point of view.

Remember pre-patch flowchart Diddy? Now let's imagine a hypothetical scenario where he never got any changes whatsoever and after a while into the meta it becomes clear that he's simply the best character in the game. Now, lets imagine a world where everyone take that point of view to heart and litterally every competitor is using super hoo-haa Diddy. Would the game be worth playing or watching at that point? Also, in that case, if everyone should just use only the best options and characters, why even bother adding such a huge roster? Since no one is supposed to use them, are they just here for decoration?

It's okay to look at something in a game and say that it's unfair or broken or needs a change as long as it's based on the facts as opposed to personal experience. The problem is when you have individuals who aren't able to remain objective when discussing balance and simply want certain things to be removed because they don't want to put in any attempts at understanding the situation. Of course, you also have players who want to stick too firmly to the "Git Gud" mantra. This has it's own host of problems, especially when taken to the extreme.

On another note, I also think this argument sounds really lazy coming from Sakurai. It sorta comes off as, "I wish everyone would just pick (top tier character) and deal with it." I also think he picked absolutely the worst example for his explanation on balance. Everyone knows that MvC is a broken game, but that's also one of the game's selling points. The people who play it, go into it with that expectation; the same cannot really be said for Smash unless you're playing Brawl minus. A better example would have been something like Street Fighter, Tekken, or Skull Girls. Those games seem to fall more in line with what might be considered a baseline expectation of balance in the traditional FGC. I actually can't tell if he's simply that far out of the loop or if he's just poisoning the well or something. It's also becoming increasingly difficult for me to give him the benefit of the doubt each time one of these gets published.

 

Even Sakurai gets that, why can't most people?

People who don't play objectivly better characters don't like either winning with a huge advantage over most other characters or just don't think that character is fun.

 

Even Sakurai gets that, why can't most people?

Um...Because it's flawed? Honestly I think this line of thinking mostly stems from annoyance from people who actively whine about over-tuned attacks.

The way I see it, the more balanced the game is, the more fun it is both casually and competitively. Sure one could just use the overpowered tactic exclusively, but this really just leads to everyone following suit, and the game becoming predictable, and less interesting.

Also, just because someone plays competitively doesn't mean they have more fun exploiting an OP character instead of using their favorite character.

 

"Git gud"

-Masahiro Sakurai, 2016

 

I must remind everyone that Melee is doing just fine.
Not that I like to see Fox in 99% of all sets, but most people like that for some reason.
Also, that line is not to be used as an excuse to release a broken unbalanced mess of a game.... but it is rather for people who complain too much about every character ever.
You know the world is full of them....

 

if it's not too much trouble, could you simplify this a bit? because what your saying has caught my interest, but I don't quite follow it...

Balance is manifest in metagames. There're a ton of them, as in 'who plays versus who?' Each shared player has its metagame--as long as common lines can be drawn between people who normally play together, that is the metagame. In one, very high skilled region, Diddy or Cloud may be the strongest balance wise, in another group who plays on Temple with items it is Ganondorf or some other. Before, I think he viewed it as one huge whole. That is, he thought of himself stomping an older couple in King of Fighters in an arcade strongly, and that impression aimed his instincts of what was fair or not to try and make any given match fun for all parties no matter what metagame they come from. I think he's matured past that sentimentality to the understanding that most people don't play with most other people, and that they'd sort themselves to play with whoever or play however it is more fun to them. People are not likely to play with those that violate the in-house rules or norms established, these are what I mean by implicit consent under a ruleset. He realizes the people who play competitive Marvel are having fun because they've mentally come to terms with the metagame of one touch death combos and the rules of the tournament--they've adopted the mentality of playing to win or not sweating whether the game is absolutely balanced: it's balanced fine to the their pleasure otherwise they wouldn't play! And so has Sakurai come to terms with it, in observing there are more metagames and a great variety of players, and I think his future efforts at balance will be affected by this new understanding.

 

Even Sakurai gets that, why can't most people?

It's not that people don't get it. It's that people don't fall for that bull****. Opinions aside it's a matter of whether you can see merit in that way of play. Personally i don't.

 

In another words...shut up and adapt xD

 

Even Sakurai gets that, why can't most people?

Thats something obvious but whats the fun on that? in a game where he can patch at anytime why stay conformed with just the good characters, why not make every character viable and see different playstyles and combos and different characters, (its not as fun to win with a character thats not your favorite character just because he is good) altho smash4 is quite balance there are some characters that need an obvious buff such as Falco and jiggs, and its not that complicated to figure out what they need. IMO, if you can patch the game and make bad characters good, then why not do it, im not a fan of nerfing moves, i prefer to see buffs on bad characters than nerfs on the good ones.

 

The part where he talked about MvC3 is something I can relate to. I love that game and watching it's matches can be entertaining but I despise the fact that if you get hit first at full health pretty much means that your character is lost assuming your opponent doesn't drop their combo sequence. Sure, it rewards players for being dexterous but getting mercilessly juggled to death while being helpless the whole time isn't fun nor fair in my opinion. I feel that the devs should have added a combo breaker command to that game in order to mitigate this, Tatsunoko vs Capcom and Killer Instinct had one so why not Marvel as well? Games like Street Fighter are fairer in that regard since abnormally long combos like those don't exist there.

 

If you think overpowered moves, links, or combos are unfair, then you should just use those techniques and win. Your opponent is doing the same thing to you.

If only it was this simple. Especially in a game like this, nobody should be expected to have to use a different character than the one they're using to gain an equal advantage to the opponent. Balance ensures that everyone is free to use the character they like without having all too bad or too good odds of victory through the character alone. Forcing people to switch to other characters instead is no alternative to balancing the game.
Now I know how harmful nerfs can be and how much they can ruin a character. I exclusively use Bayonetta after all. But if it's (understandably) not possible to get everyone on the level of the best characters, nerfs simply need to happen.

This would be less of a problem if they took more time testing the characters instead of relying on their ability to patch them after the release. Some character concepts were way too obviously doomed to go wrong. Just look at (Pre-Patch) Cloud, Bayonetta, Little Mac, Sheik, Palutena, Corrin you name them. It took people a day to figure out things like Bayonetta's death combos, so I cannot imagine that the development team actually spent much time checking the character before release.

 

in other words THE MAN HIMSELF SAKURAI JUST SAID: "GIT GUD"

 

We play video games because they are fun. Part of the fun comes from the depth a game has, which is derrived from attacks, combos, techniques, strategies and the variety of things we can do to beat our opponent.

If we are all playing a character who has 1 hitpoint and WONPAWNCHes the whole roster, surely it is fair. But where's the depth? The strategies? The mindgames? The more binary a game is, the less fun it will be and the less time people will spend playing it. The less of a following and legacy that game will have for years to come.

So when something becomes rampantly broken (prepatch Bayo), sure, we can all just sit down and play one character and watch the meta stagnate and get less enjoyment out of our game. Or we can patch the game and bring them to a reasonable level of balance... which is what the man has done.

? ? ?

If he truely believes what he is saying, then his words completely contradict the patches we've been getting for the past 3 years. It doesn't add up.

Or he's taking credit for the work of other people on his team who keep the game in a state of balance and he, himself, doesn't understand competitive games at all.

Given his track record, i'd guess the latter.

 

We play video games because they are fun. Part of the fun comes from the depth a game has, which is derrived from attacks, combos, techniques, strategies and the variety of things we can do to beat our opponent.

If we are all playing a character who has 1 hitpoint and WONPAWNCHes the whole roster, surely it is fair. But where's the depth? The strategies? The mindgames? The more binary a game is, the less fun it will be and the less time people will spend playing it. The less of a following and legacy that game will have for years to come.

So when something becomes rampantly broken (prepatch Bayo), sure, we can all just sit down and play one character and watch the meta stagnate and get less enjoyment out of our game. Or we can patch the game and bring them to a reasonable level of balance... which is what the man has done.

? ? ?

If he truely believes what he is saying, then his words completely contradict the patches we've been getting for the past 3 years. It doesn't add up.

Or he's taking credit for the work of other people on his team who keep the game in a state of balance and he, himself, doesn't understand competitive games at all.

Given his track record, i'd guess the latter.

Sakurai has already said that he leaves most of the work to them or something similar.

 

We play video games because they are fun. Part of the fun comes from the depth a game has, which is derrived from attacks, combos, techniques, strategies and the variety of things we can do to beat our opponent.

If we are all playing a character who has 1 hitpoint and WONPAWNCHes the whole roster, surely it is fair. But where's the depth? The strategies? The mindgames? The more binary a game is, the less fun it will be and the less time people will spend playing it. The less of a following and legacy that game will have for years to come.

So when something becomes rampantly broken (prepatch Bayo), sure, we can all just sit down and play one character and watch the meta stagnate and get less enjoyment out of our game. Or we can patch the game and bring them to a reasonable level of balance... which is what the man has done.

? ? ?

If he truely believes what he is saying, then his words completely contradict the patches we've been getting for the past 3 years. It doesn't add up.

Or he's taking credit for the work of other people on his team who keep the game in a state of balance and he, himself, doesn't understand competitive games at all.

Given his track record, i'd guess the latter.

He clearly went on as well about the fact that relying on the same tactics as your opponent is also a problem.
And he's taking credit for his team's work? *sigh* Reading comprehension please. Way to interpret something that he didn't say at all.

This would be less of a problem if they took more time testing the characters instead of relying on their ability to patch them after the release. Some character concepts were way too obviously doomed to go wrong. Just look at (Pre-Patch) Cloud, Bayonetta, Little Mac, Sheik, Palutena, Corrin you name them. It took people a day to figure out things like Bayonetta's death combos, so I cannot imagine that the development team actually spent much time checking the character before release.

That's a very hind sighted way to look at it. Game testers aren't as skilled nor dedicated as most of the players of these characters, plus testing is a very taxing job and that the devs have no way to predict the amount of variables and contructs that high level players will come up with when playing a certain character. You mention Sheik as an obvious case but I believe she even lost a tournament against Bowser before this game came out, and her potential wasn't truly discovered a few months after release. At most what they could do is hold off the release for half a year or so but they have a deadline to meet as well so they can't put it off forever, add to that that their demographic isn't tourney goers but casual players mostly.
That's why patches are actually a more reliable way to balance the game. They come after a game has been released and players have developed tactics and playstyles, so the devs can take into account tournament results and user input for their balancing choices.

 

Sakurai is correct.
Fun is overated: play lame, win game.

 

He clearly went on as well about the fact that relying on the same tactics as your opponent is also a problem.
And he's taking credit for his team's work? *sigh* Reading comprehension please. Way to interpret something that he didn't say at all.

I find it frustrating that he's just stating the obvious. He keeps talking about how everything's fair because everyone can use the same characters, which is true of most fighting games. So it isn't insightful or elaborative of his own processes. It's just mundane filler talk from a guy who has the final say in all things game design at Smash HQ.

I am completely out of bounds about his involvement in balance and relationship with his team. I apologize for that and should have been thorough on the main article before I hit reply.

 

Having good characters IS NOT an excuse to ignore low tiers in need of buffs. That’s like saying Brawl is a balanced game because everybody can use Meta Knight. That’s not what balance is. The more characters that can place well at top level play, the better balanced the game is. By Sakurai’s logic, if I think Shulk deserves a solid buff that fixes many of the fundamental problems with his design (garbage frame data, hitboxes not matching animations, the ability to autocancel aerials, etc.), I should just play Cloud instead because, since he’s a top tier swordsman, Sakurai doesn’t have to worry about balancing every other swordsman in the game because their players can just play Cloud. That is a HORRIBLE design philosophy. Just because Cloud is good, that means Shulk doesn’t deserve buffs. How does that make any sense? What if I don’t want to play Cloud? What if I love Shulk’s stat-boosting playstyle and the character himself because of Xenoblade? Did Cloud travel across the bodies of two giant gods on his quest for vengeance? Nope. Did Cloud take down the Mechon, Metal Face, Egil, Zanza, and more? Nope. Did Cloud watch his girlfriend get stabbed to death? ...Uh… he actually did so scratch that. Jokes aside, this brings me to my final point: character loyalty. Smash is a game that is filled with beloved characters from all sorts of games. While there are some who will play a character simply because they’re good, a lot of people pick their characters because they like them as characters. They want to fight as (insert character here) because they love (insert character here). Why should these people be told to pick up a better character if they main a low tier? Why can’t Sakurai just buff the low tiers instead? A majority of them have easily fixed issues. But, nope. Instead, I shouldn’t play Shulk because I can just play Cloud instead. Kudos to you, Sakurai!

 

Having good characters IS NOT an excuse to ignore low tiers in need of buffs. That’s like saying Brawl is a balanced game because everybody can use Meta Knight. That’s not what balance is. The more characters that can place well at top level play, the better balanced the game is. By Sakurai’s logic, if I think Shulk deserves a solid buff that fixes many of the fundamental problems with his design (garbage frame data, hitboxes not matching animations, the ability to autocancel aerials, etc.), I should just play Cloud instead because, since he’s a top tier swordsman, Sakurai doesn’t have to worry about balancing every other swordsman in the game because their players can just play Cloud. That is a HORRIBLE design philosophy. Just because Cloud is good, that means Shulk doesn’t deserve buffs. How does that make any sense? What if I don’t want to play Cloud? What if I love Shulk’s stat-boosting playstyle and the character himself because of Xenoblade? Did Cloud travel across the bodies of two giant gods on his quest for vengeance? Nope. Did Cloud take down the Mechon, Metal Face, Egil, Zanza, and more? Nope. Did Cloud watch his girlfriend get stabbed to death? ...Uh… he actually did so scratch that. Jokes aside, this brings me to my final point: character loyalty. Smash is a game that is filled with beloved characters from all sorts of games. While there are some who will play a character simply because they’re good, a lot of people pick their characters because they like them as characters. They want to fight as (insert character here) because they love (insert character here). Why should these people be told to pick up a better character if they main a low tier? Why can’t Sakurai just buff the low tiers instead? A majority of them have easily fixed issues. But, nope. Instead, I shouldn’t play Shulk because I can just play Cloud instead. Kudos to you, Sakurai!

Kudos to you actually. For making fiction out of an article that you obviously didn't bother to read completely, referencing a claim that the man said (spoilers: he didn't). I'm sure Sakurai said "pick Cloud instead of Shulk". Also, he didn't speak about the problem of doing just that (spoilers: he did).

 

He clearly went on as well about the fact that relying on the same tactics as your opponent is also a problem.
And he's taking credit for his team's work? *sigh* Reading comprehension please. Way to interpret something that he didn't say at all.




That's a very hind sighted way to look at it. Game testers aren't as skilled nor dedicated as most of the players of these characters, plus testing is a very taxing job and that the devs have no way to predict the amount of variables and contructs that high level players will come up with when playing a certain character. You mention Sheik as an obvious case but I believe she even lost a tournament against Bowser before this game came out, and her potential wasn't truly discovered a few months after release. At most what they could do is hold off the release for half a year or so but they have a deadline to meet as well so they can't put it off forever, add to that that their demographic isn't tourney goers but casual players mostly.
That's why patches are actually a more reliable way to balance the game. They come after a game has been released and players have developed tactics and playstyles, so the devs can take into account tournament results and user input for their balancing choices.

This shouldn't be up to the game testers, but the actual developers. They know, or at least should know the details to each individual character. Of course it's not one department doing the entire work and the information is most likely split among different departments, but in the end of the day, they should be able to have a clear view of a character and his options. The fans didn't create the game. We observed and learned from scratch. We explored the options one by one. Sheik didn't stand out to us because we weren't too experienced with combos back then, also explaining why Bowser was seen as so powerful. But developers need to know about them. The developers created those very options and should know about them in detail and be capable of testing them in interaction with other characters (with exceptions of unintended options of course, like certain glitches).
Patching can only cover so much. They cannot fix bad concepts though. The foundaton is built upon development and have to be tweaked at that time.

 

Kudos to you actually. For making fiction out of an article that you obviously didn't bother to read completely, referencing a claim that the man said (spoilers: he didn't). I'm sure Sakurai said "pick Cloud instead of Shulk". Also, he didn't speak about the problem of doing just that (spoilers: he did).

Sakuri didn't say to play Cloud over Shulk, but he implied that he felt that way. Cloud is a far better character by all accounts I've come across, and Sakuri basicly said that if you think something is overpowered you should just do it yourself. In this case it means he is saying that yes, if you think Cloud is better than Shulk by an unfair amount then play Cloud.

 

Another thing I'd like to add is how the notion of "If you see something that's broken/strong/e.c.t just use it yourself." Contradicts all the previous notions of how the personality of the game and it's characters are so important, and how the game needs to be varied or else it'll be boring. Which is true, and I agree wholeheartedly with that idea.

However, how does it help the game stay fresh and varied if everyone just uses the best characters and the best moves, wouldn't that cause the variety in the game to plummet greatly? Also, what about all the talk about how he didn't like that competitive matches were slow and boring because of the lack of varied options shown by the players? It seems he wants the players to have more options, but not quite as many as Melee, but then when players also want more options and express interest in them, we get weak arguments like these, then we're left with incredibly vague "It's okay, but not okay." sort of statements in what seems to be an attempt to appear neutral.

Is he simply having trouble making up his mind or is he just not willing to take any sort of risks? Maybe it's something else? Unfortunately we can only speculate, which is one reason why it'd be great, if he actually was willing to sit down, with one or more spokespersons from the competitive community and actually learn what we really want from the game; I feel like that would solve so many problems in the current player/developer dynamic.