Necro'lic
Smash Ace
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2015
- Messages
- 654
I've been saying for months here since Ultimate was revealed at E3 this year that I was going to plan to make a mod that is more competitive than what Smash Ultimate brings right now. Keep in mind that this is someone who loves the additions to this game, but also someone who would like to play more with what potential this series can achieve, at least on a competitive level.
So I will be sharing my general outline I have written in sections. I will also go over my thought processes and general wants out of this competitive mod.
I understand that Ultimate isn't moddable yet, which is why I will most likely be using Sm4shExplorer to mod Smash 4 to test out some of these things before we eventually get the Switch Homebrew and Ultimate becomes moddable. Until then, I will be working on this, and hopefully some people care enough to keep reading to see what I think Smash Bros could do better in the competitive aspect...
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Mission Statements:
"Easy to learn, Hard to master"
This is, in my opinion, the lifeblood of what makes a great game, not just competitive, but a great game period. A way to attract newbies into the fold of your game, and a way to keep them there. Smash Bros, in my opinion, is the best fighting game series in terms of following this statement. However, I think they could go further in the first department.
One of the cardinal sins I see fighting games follow far too often is a lack of tutorial and ease into more advanced things. Heck, even the most basic things are not basic to a newbie. However, I do not think that catering to newbies has to come at the cost of high level, core players. Which brings me to my next point, the controls.
I love a simplified control system, but a lot of other fighting games seem to not follow this trend, or at least, the older, more popular ones like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. However, Smash is not free from this curse, as we see in Melee. While the buttons themselves are easy to understand, to execute the functions themselves is more challenging than it should be, especially to a newbie. But like I said, I don't think straying away from this "hard to execute" style of development is in any way harmful to the competitive scene. Why do I think that?
"It's not about how hard the tool is to use, it's about how hard it is to use it effectively"
I believe competitive players of all stripes take far too much credence in the idea of execution being important to skill. While there will always be a factor of how hard something is to execute, I believe as a developer, you should not make it the point of something being hard to execute. Usually, the best games for newbies to learn, yet also deep for the core players involve very easy to use, easy to understand controls, and the hard part is using these controls effectively, rather than the controls being difficult. And note that I am not saying this is in place of actual depth, because hard to execute games at a baseline level can be very deep. But going back to my first point, how is any newbie going to understand how deep the game really is when they can't even effectively use all the tools given to them?
Again, in terms of Smash Bros specifically, this criticism is aimed at Melee. There are easy to execute techs (wavedash), and there are much harder ones (shine combo). There are more important ones (l-cancel), and there are less important ones (quick ledge grab). But the problem still is that these techs aren't just not told to the player by the game itself, but they are difficult to intuit from the controls given to the player.
This entire section may sound like I'm griping on Melee, but of the things it did wrong, it did do something very, VERY right which the other Smash Bros games have yet to match...
"Options, Options, Options"
What Melee did right was giving a player MANY different ways to go about fighting. And while it wasn't the best at getting there, once again, because most of those options are tied to weird physics engine interactions rather than explicitly coded functions, this result is still VERY important, and brings me to the latter portion of the first mission statement, "hard to master".
Competitive players love options, and why wouldn't they? The more options you have to use, the more ways you can beat your opponent. Options are VERY important in competitive games, and this one logical truth is why I think Melee, despite all of its clunkiness and all of its shortcomings, is still very popular to this day, because once you are good at the game, you feel free to do almost anything within it. That is why I think more options are great, and my mod will hopefully deliver. It's also why Brawl and Smash 4 faltered to me, because despite their clear intent, polish, and good overall flow, their options were not nearly enough to satisfy more core fans, including myself. And while Ultimate has done better, I am still left wanting.
"Balanced Characters"
But the other form of options is balancing characters, and this should go without saying really. The more characters you can arguably win with, the more potentially rich the game's scene will look for all players. But while I would definitely make it a point to balance characters meticulously after setting up this mod, this is not one of the things I will talk about in this post.
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So, now that the general goal of what I want to do with this is done, let's go over some general mechanics that I think need fixing up. I will update this thread with a new section every once in a while when I can fully talk about it. The order of these sections will be from most important to least important, though all of them are, of course.
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New Mechanic: Slide Dash and Air Dash
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This is my replacement of wavedashing mostly, but with an added mechanic on the side that Smash Bros hasn't ever done before.
The biggest difference between the two is that this maneuver has its own button, which makes it far easier to do; as easy as wavedashing is, it's not one button press plus a direction. The ability to slide dash at different distances depending on the tilt or smash of the control stick is also reminiscent of how wavedashing can give a variety of distances. However, since it isn't tied to airdodge, it can't be used in the air, right?
Well, I thought about what is basically an aerial wavedash, the air dash, and this brings with it many different things. It can be used in all directions, is independent of jumps, and allows for attacking during it. And when landing into the ground, you will do a slide dash. As an added feature, holding the slide dash button causes you to go off platform edges, something Smash Ultimate wavelanding doesn't allow.
What air dash brings is more ways to go about aerial combat, as well as recovering. Even characters with a bad recovery now have both a directional airdodge and an air dash to work with, which should make the gap between godly and awful recoveries just a little bit less. But again, you yourself have an air dash to go against the opponent. I can't even think of all the implications the air dash alone can bring in the flow of a match.
Back to slide dashing, it essentially is wavedashing, but with a single button + direction. However, there is a catch that using it too much will cause it to stale, like dodges in Ultimate, and this brings with it some risk/reward in the form of resource management, because overusing your slide dash, a generally offensive maneuver, means you are making your defensive maneuevers worse. However, your defensive maneuvers are overall less useful than your slide dashing in terms of what advantage they can bring you in a match. This theoretically should cause offense to be more favored than defense, at least in a neutral state.
This is the main new thing I would bring to the mod. Everything else is more or less adjusting something that exists. Thus, this is the most important part of the mod to me, because it brings something completely new to the series.
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DI, Vectoring, and Hitstun Changes
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I believe DI is the main driver for combo creativity as well as not fully causing a comboed player to be helpless, and I think it is a genius game design choice on many levels. I would actually up the DI angle to higher than even Melee, because I think it could theoretically cause even early combos to be less static and more based on reaction to the opponent, which is how I believe fighting games should be for the most part.
However, one thing that is needed to balance that is more hitstun and removing hitstun cancelling, one of the worst additions to the series, simply because of the lack of choice it brings. You never want to be in hitstun, so hitstun cancelling is something that only causes hitstun to matter less. Removing it and upping the hitstun is to counteract the ability to potentially get out of disadvantage with the increased DI, by making it more likely the enemy will still hit you before you can act, it's just you, the comboed player, get to pick the terms.
But as an extra addition, players in hitstun can choose to slightly adjust their speed of flight to not only choose what angle they fly in via DI, but how far they fly. This obviously can lead to stocks taking too long, so this influence is reduced down to 0 if they are hit with a strong enough move.
These changes make it so that no matter what, even if one player is hit, both players are still engaging with each other at all times, and even when in disadvantage, while it is harder (and some of the other changes I would make make disadvantage nevertheless worse), it is never a hopeless situation where the game allows for no counterplay. Sure, it might be a choice of "bad" and "worse", but it's a choice that needs to be made in the moment, and that creates engagement.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ledge Changes
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The main problem with the ledges of Smash 4 and Ultimate is actually not the fact that ledge trumping exists believe it or not, though many would be inclined to say it is. However, the more bedrock problem is that going for the ledge is in favor of the player recovering. This means that going for the ledge is the best course of action at almost all times specifically because the onstage player cannot do much about it without being at risk.
To compromise between edgehogging and ledge trumping, now the rule is that the player with the most time in the air will be the one taken off the ledge. Since this is usually the recovering player, this means that an onstage player could basically do an edgehog and the result will be that they will trump the recovering player. This gives power of the ledge back to the onstage player, and allows them to followup with another hit on the now trumped enemy. However, this goes further, because since it is who was in the air less, not who was in the air at all, this means even if the onstage player goes out to actively edgeguard, they could still win over the ledge should both arrive at it simultaneously.
These changes should cause onstage players to want to actively edgeguard once again, while also making sure recovering low towards the ledge isn't just a non-option for the recovering player, since they will still be able to at least grab the ledge before getting knocked off it.
To compensate in some ways, the 2 frame punish window is removed and the trumped player can now DI better, making it a layer within a layer of edgeguarding.
Some other changes involve less ledge snap radius. However, some moves might be changed to give more or less ledge snap ability. Some might be stronger, like Bowser or Ganondorf, while others might be weaker like Pikachu.
Last big change is the removal of the ledge grab timer, meaning the moment the ledge is grabbed, you can get off of it.
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I hope this thread is appropriate for this forum. I also hope, in SOME weird universe, someone actually reads through this. I'm sure all of these ideas will not be controversial in the slightest.
I will add more sections when I feel like it. I'm tired of typing so much lol.
So I will be sharing my general outline I have written in sections. I will also go over my thought processes and general wants out of this competitive mod.
I understand that Ultimate isn't moddable yet, which is why I will most likely be using Sm4shExplorer to mod Smash 4 to test out some of these things before we eventually get the Switch Homebrew and Ultimate becomes moddable. Until then, I will be working on this, and hopefully some people care enough to keep reading to see what I think Smash Bros could do better in the competitive aspect...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mission Statements:
"Easy to learn, Hard to master"
This is, in my opinion, the lifeblood of what makes a great game, not just competitive, but a great game period. A way to attract newbies into the fold of your game, and a way to keep them there. Smash Bros, in my opinion, is the best fighting game series in terms of following this statement. However, I think they could go further in the first department.
One of the cardinal sins I see fighting games follow far too often is a lack of tutorial and ease into more advanced things. Heck, even the most basic things are not basic to a newbie. However, I do not think that catering to newbies has to come at the cost of high level, core players. Which brings me to my next point, the controls.
I love a simplified control system, but a lot of other fighting games seem to not follow this trend, or at least, the older, more popular ones like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter. However, Smash is not free from this curse, as we see in Melee. While the buttons themselves are easy to understand, to execute the functions themselves is more challenging than it should be, especially to a newbie. But like I said, I don't think straying away from this "hard to execute" style of development is in any way harmful to the competitive scene. Why do I think that?
"It's not about how hard the tool is to use, it's about how hard it is to use it effectively"
I believe competitive players of all stripes take far too much credence in the idea of execution being important to skill. While there will always be a factor of how hard something is to execute, I believe as a developer, you should not make it the point of something being hard to execute. Usually, the best games for newbies to learn, yet also deep for the core players involve very easy to use, easy to understand controls, and the hard part is using these controls effectively, rather than the controls being difficult. And note that I am not saying this is in place of actual depth, because hard to execute games at a baseline level can be very deep. But going back to my first point, how is any newbie going to understand how deep the game really is when they can't even effectively use all the tools given to them?
Again, in terms of Smash Bros specifically, this criticism is aimed at Melee. There are easy to execute techs (wavedash), and there are much harder ones (shine combo). There are more important ones (l-cancel), and there are less important ones (quick ledge grab). But the problem still is that these techs aren't just not told to the player by the game itself, but they are difficult to intuit from the controls given to the player.
This entire section may sound like I'm griping on Melee, but of the things it did wrong, it did do something very, VERY right which the other Smash Bros games have yet to match...
"Options, Options, Options"
What Melee did right was giving a player MANY different ways to go about fighting. And while it wasn't the best at getting there, once again, because most of those options are tied to weird physics engine interactions rather than explicitly coded functions, this result is still VERY important, and brings me to the latter portion of the first mission statement, "hard to master".
Competitive players love options, and why wouldn't they? The more options you have to use, the more ways you can beat your opponent. Options are VERY important in competitive games, and this one logical truth is why I think Melee, despite all of its clunkiness and all of its shortcomings, is still very popular to this day, because once you are good at the game, you feel free to do almost anything within it. That is why I think more options are great, and my mod will hopefully deliver. It's also why Brawl and Smash 4 faltered to me, because despite their clear intent, polish, and good overall flow, their options were not nearly enough to satisfy more core fans, including myself. And while Ultimate has done better, I am still left wanting.
"Balanced Characters"
But the other form of options is balancing characters, and this should go without saying really. The more characters you can arguably win with, the more potentially rich the game's scene will look for all players. But while I would definitely make it a point to balance characters meticulously after setting up this mod, this is not one of the things I will talk about in this post.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, now that the general goal of what I want to do with this is done, let's go over some general mechanics that I think need fixing up. I will update this thread with a new section every once in a while when I can fully talk about it. The order of these sections will be from most important to least important, though all of them are, of course.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Mechanic: Slide Dash and Air Dash
- New movement option: Slide Dash and Air Dash
- Pressing the second shield button (designated slide dash/air dash button by default) will activate slide dash while on the ground and air dash while in the air
- Slide Dash slides the fighter along the ground without turning around. After a few frames of startup, they will be able to perform all moves while sliding
- Air Dash gives huge sideways aerial momentum to the fighter. After a few frames of startup, they will be able to perform all aerial moves while carrying this momentum. Can be body blocked by enemy fighters. Can only do up to once in the air
- Can perform this maneuver in any direction
- Pressing the Slide Dash/Air Dash button with a tilt or smash input will allow for different distances travelled
- Landing with an Air Dash transitions into a Slide Dash
- Works off of the same staling queue as rolls, spotdodges, and airdodges
- Holding the Air Dash button when landing with an Air Dash allows for Slide Dash to slide off platform edges
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is my replacement of wavedashing mostly, but with an added mechanic on the side that Smash Bros hasn't ever done before.
The biggest difference between the two is that this maneuver has its own button, which makes it far easier to do; as easy as wavedashing is, it's not one button press plus a direction. The ability to slide dash at different distances depending on the tilt or smash of the control stick is also reminiscent of how wavedashing can give a variety of distances. However, since it isn't tied to airdodge, it can't be used in the air, right?
Well, I thought about what is basically an aerial wavedash, the air dash, and this brings with it many different things. It can be used in all directions, is independent of jumps, and allows for attacking during it. And when landing into the ground, you will do a slide dash. As an added feature, holding the slide dash button causes you to go off platform edges, something Smash Ultimate wavelanding doesn't allow.
What air dash brings is more ways to go about aerial combat, as well as recovering. Even characters with a bad recovery now have both a directional airdodge and an air dash to work with, which should make the gap between godly and awful recoveries just a little bit less. But again, you yourself have an air dash to go against the opponent. I can't even think of all the implications the air dash alone can bring in the flow of a match.
Back to slide dashing, it essentially is wavedashing, but with a single button + direction. However, there is a catch that using it too much will cause it to stale, like dodges in Ultimate, and this brings with it some risk/reward in the form of resource management, because overusing your slide dash, a generally offensive maneuver, means you are making your defensive maneuevers worse. However, your defensive maneuvers are overall less useful than your slide dashing in terms of what advantage they can bring you in a match. This theoretically should cause offense to be more favored than defense, at least in a neutral state.
This is the main new thing I would bring to the mod. Everything else is more or less adjusting something that exists. Thus, this is the most important part of the mod to me, because it brings something completely new to the series.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DI, Vectoring, and Hitstun Changes
- Hitstun cancelling removed
- Hitstun increased overall
- DI max deviation increased from 10 degrees to 21 degrees
- SDI reduced overall
- Exceptions to these DI and SDI changes are made on a move by move basis
- Can now slightly influence distance traveled during hitstun by guiding the control stick towards or away hit fighter’s visible trajectory (This is what we will call vectoring)
- This influence gets weaker and weaker the more knockback the launching move does
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I believe DI is the main driver for combo creativity as well as not fully causing a comboed player to be helpless, and I think it is a genius game design choice on many levels. I would actually up the DI angle to higher than even Melee, because I think it could theoretically cause even early combos to be less static and more based on reaction to the opponent, which is how I believe fighting games should be for the most part.
However, one thing that is needed to balance that is more hitstun and removing hitstun cancelling, one of the worst additions to the series, simply because of the lack of choice it brings. You never want to be in hitstun, so hitstun cancelling is something that only causes hitstun to matter less. Removing it and upping the hitstun is to counteract the ability to potentially get out of disadvantage with the increased DI, by making it more likely the enemy will still hit you before you can act, it's just you, the comboed player, get to pick the terms.
But as an extra addition, players in hitstun can choose to slightly adjust their speed of flight to not only choose what angle they fly in via DI, but how far they fly. This obviously can lead to stocks taking too long, so this influence is reduced down to 0 if they are hit with a strong enough move.
These changes make it so that no matter what, even if one player is hit, both players are still engaging with each other at all times, and even when in disadvantage, while it is harder (and some of the other changes I would make make disadvantage nevertheless worse), it is never a hopeless situation where the game allows for no counterplay. Sure, it might be a choice of "bad" and "worse", but it's a choice that needs to be made in the moment, and that creates engagement.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ledge Changes
- 2 frame punish window removed
- Ledge grab timer removed
- Ledge snap radius reduced
- Ledge grabbing radius is changed on a move by move basis, meaning some recoveries can grab the ledge further than others
- Ledge intangibility time related to air time inverted
- Now, the more time you were in the air, the less intangibility you will gain when reaching the ledge
- Ledge intangibility time related to damage percentage still kept
- This means more damage equates to less intangibility
- Minimum: 15 frames
- Maximum: 120 frames
- Anyone onstage going directly to ledge now has a base intangibility time of 45 frames
- Ledge trumping reworked:
- If a fighter grabs onto the ledge and a second fighter grabs the ledge, if the first fighter is still intangible, the second fighter will be knocked off the ledge
- If both fighters reach at the same time, it will first favor the onstage fighter over the offstage. It will then favor whichever fighter would have more intangible frames on the ledge; the one with less will be removed from the ledge
- Can DI the ledge trump
- Ledge trump animation slightly longer
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The main problem with the ledges of Smash 4 and Ultimate is actually not the fact that ledge trumping exists believe it or not, though many would be inclined to say it is. However, the more bedrock problem is that going for the ledge is in favor of the player recovering. This means that going for the ledge is the best course of action at almost all times specifically because the onstage player cannot do much about it without being at risk.
To compromise between edgehogging and ledge trumping, now the rule is that the player with the most time in the air will be the one taken off the ledge. Since this is usually the recovering player, this means that an onstage player could basically do an edgehog and the result will be that they will trump the recovering player. This gives power of the ledge back to the onstage player, and allows them to followup with another hit on the now trumped enemy. However, this goes further, because since it is who was in the air less, not who was in the air at all, this means even if the onstage player goes out to actively edgeguard, they could still win over the ledge should both arrive at it simultaneously.
These changes should cause onstage players to want to actively edgeguard once again, while also making sure recovering low towards the ledge isn't just a non-option for the recovering player, since they will still be able to at least grab the ledge before getting knocked off it.
To compensate in some ways, the 2 frame punish window is removed and the trumped player can now DI better, making it a layer within a layer of edgeguarding.
Some other changes involve less ledge snap radius. However, some moves might be changed to give more or less ledge snap ability. Some might be stronger, like Bowser or Ganondorf, while others might be weaker like Pikachu.
Last big change is the removal of the ledge grab timer, meaning the moment the ledge is grabbed, you can get off of it.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I hope this thread is appropriate for this forum. I also hope, in SOME weird universe, someone actually reads through this. I'm sure all of these ideas will not be controversial in the slightest.
I will add more sections when I feel like it. I'm tired of typing so much lol.