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 and thinks it has a bright competitive future, 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.
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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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Teching and Getup Changes
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Teching has always been a sort of antithesis of my second principle in the mission statements saying it isn't about how hard the tool is to do, but how you use it. And yet, it persists still. And honestly, the way Ultimate has it where holding down the shield button while in tumble causes automatic teching is VERY close to what I wanted for years now. However, it leaves the problem of missed techs still being a detriment in pretty much all cases, making teching overall better, which I would still fix.
Now, the difference between no tech and tech is more clear. One allows you to be vulnerable at the beginning of the animation, yet gives longer invulnerability than an actual tech should the enemy not get said opening. This includes not just the standard tech, but also tech roll vs missed tech roll. The risk-reward of missing the tech is now actually a thing; miss the tech on purpose if you feel they will not tech chase immediately to potentially take longer to get out of the disadvantage. However, risk the problem of not being able to get out of the combo immediately should they reach you in time. It also builds on an idea of the advantaged player instead waiting to see what the teching/not teching player will do to escape, and if they choose to wait for the tech, and you don't actually do it, they have messed up and you have won the exchange and have a better time getting back to neutral. Thus, the overall layers of risk vs reward is potentially more nuanced in the end simply because missing the tech on purpose is a potentially good choice in certain circumstances.
That leaves the second half of these changes dedicated to lowering the ability to tech walls and ceilings. Ultimate has added a certain threshold where if you take knockback above a certain amount, teching off walls, floors, and ceilings is impossible. I would lower this threshold to make sure people cannot survive for too long. These changes could also potentially fix the "cave of life" problem that plagues a few stages.
Following with the general idea of missing techs on purpose being useful, not only are wall and ceiling techs stripped of their invulnerability and made to be slightly longer, making you open in place for the purpose of repositioning away from the enemy, but you can now freely DI at least once when bouncing, meaning your destination when missing the tech could also be very different. This creates more risk-reward in wall techs similar to the grounded techs I talked about above. In addition, to further remedy the cave of life problem, multiple bounces between wall, floor, and ceiling will not take away as much knockback from the launching move.
These changes were mostly for the purpose of making missed techs vs teching an actual choice and solving "caves of life". Again, it's not about how hard teching is, but how you use it... as well as DON'T use it.
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Stale Move Negation Changes
This builds upon the idea that DI is a fantastic game mechanic that should be used more. However, it also fixes a contradiction in Smash Bros mechanics. The stale-move negation is meant to make players shy away from spamming moves, however, since damage and knockback are in line with each other, staling moves can potentially make them stronger by making them easier to combo into other things. Thus, you are encouraged to spam certain moves. This is not a good fix for this.
Now, DI deviation and vectoring influence increase the more a move is spammed. This is nothing but a bad thing for the spammer, regardless of the move used, because higher DI deviation on a comboing move is obviously bad, because it makes it less likely to combo into other things. However, it is bad for kill moves too because survival DI is a thing, and vectoring can be used to resist knockback in a direction directly. As established, vecotring influence would be worse as the knockback accrued is stronger, but just that little bit added because some genius decided to spam their kill moves along with the survival DI means this is also bad for kill moves.
Because of this, I believe this particular way of going about stale-move negation is actually just straight up better than what we have in terms of the goals it is trying to accomplish.
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Shield Changes
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Wow there's a lot to unpack here... let's go in sections to talk about each individual thing here
Shield regen is increased, but the overall time it takes to regen up to full is much longer considering the base shield health is doubled and general shield damage would be higher.
Lastly, due to the lack of shield shrinking, moving shield around is a redundant feature.
To top this off, pushback is increased on shields in general, making retaliation out of shield very unlikely due to higher shieldstun. So all of this to make shielding worse, yet I would lower the shield drop to something lower than any Smash game to date. Why?
The reasoning behind this is to allow for more varied character weaknesses. See, if shield drop is lower, that means designing characters that are bad against shielding is easier to do, because just giving them lower shieldstun is enough. Whereas if I want a character with good shield pressure, just give them higher shieldstun. The result of this is that matchups will vary far more in terms of shielding, because in some matchups you want to shield, while in others you avoid it. This alows more potential design space for more overall archetypes to work with.
In short, by making the baseline shield drop much lower, it allows most of the "shield safety" to be put less on the game itself and more on the individual fighters. But again, safe on shield moves would be a lot more widespread. That is the plan.
And as an added bonus, this makes it possible to have relatively safe to whiff yet punishable on shield moves, which can potentially give slower characters some power against faster ones by shielding their usually hard to catch hitboxes.
Lastly, by making shielding without getting hit have more leeway, it also allows for easier anti-zoning ability due to shielding being less committal, at least at a distance.
However, this also means the usual risk of parrying, which is letting go of your shield, is now gone, so we need to give it a new risk of some kind. The idea here is that parrying doesn't help against shield breaking moves due to not negating shield damage, and it causes you to take full damage from the parried hit. In addition, you will still get pushed back, so now parrying at the wrong time as opposed to just shielding means you will take unnecessary damage for the price of maybe finding an opening. I still think parry might be too strong even after all this, but we'll see.
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Priority Changes
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This change to priority to a number system, like the shield drop reduction mentioned in the above section, is meant to give more design space for characters and balance. For example, if you want a character to have great combo game and pressure, but bad defense, giving them low priority on most attacks is how to do that. Contrast this with slow but powerful attacks having higher numbers for priority. Though this mirrors damage based priority as it is right now.
Now take the inverse of these. Great frame data AND high priority but also low damage. This creates an archetype for oppressive gameplay unlike anything Smash has right now. This hilariously huge strength can then be tempered with creative weaknesses in other places, but this archetype would not exist with the damage based priority we have now. Similarly, we can have bad frame data and bad priority with high damage to signify that a character may want to not use these moves to challenge anyone and would generally be very weak in neutral, but still potentially strong when used at the right moment. Again, not something that can be done with damage based priority.
The second part of this is to make it so aerial moves are no longer exempt from the priority system. Now, if two differing priorities clash from either ground to air and air to air, whoever has the higher priority will gain a heavy reduction in knockback, damage, and hitstun rather than simply going through regardless of priority. This makes general anti-airs much stronger and creates more difference in air to air combat as one character may clearly have better options to stuff out the opponent with that they cannot exchange with compared to them.
The last part of these changes has to do with weakening disjointed moves overall, which is something that not only Smash, but all platform fighters have had trouble with, namely keeping disjointed characters in check without making them garbage. I think this is a great way to do it. Now, if a disjoint has a low number priority, which most in the game will, on the ground, they will be give the hit enemy FAR less damage, hitstun, and knockback, similar to how air to air and ground to air exchanges work now. In addition, should they have higher priority, which is rare, when hit, they will actually not cause the non-disjoint to cancel like it does now, but instead will cause a reduction in general hitstun, damage, and knockback from the retaliating hit.
This overall makes ground game for disjoints FAR more reliant on spacing in all cases, and will never cause a clash in any case, meaning disjointed hits will naturally be very bad at resetting neutral should you lose it due to not clashing to stop both fighters. These same rules apply in the new ground to air and air to air exchange rules. These changes do not make disjoints useless per se, but give them some defined weaknesses inherent to the game system. Using disjoints, which again will mostly have very low priority necessitates good spacing in all cases as to not trade with the opponent. And they are worse at getting back to neutral.
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Damage Changes
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In the same vain as the priority changes, this creates far better design space to work with in regards to making moves work exactly how they need to. Now the only thing directly tied to damage is knockback, and even that can be decoupled should it be necessary.
Note these are mostly developer concerns and not really concerns for players of the mod, but I will still state why it is on here, because I think it is important to state that how it presently works in game is still flawed in some respects.
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Dodge Changes
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Contrasting this with the last few sections, this technically removes design space. However, this makes up for it in allowing for more universality in defensive maneuvers across the entire cast. Basically, this prevents any Samus roll uselessness shenanigans since the intangibility and frame data on rolls is the same, meaning a roll, no matter which character uses it, can use it in the same optimal and non optimal places. It functions as a roll no matter what. Same for spotdodges.
One change I would do is to make it so the strange decision to have a lot more frames of inactivity for floatier characters' directional airdodge be scrapped for simply temporarily giving all characters the same fall speed and gravity for the duration of the airdodge, at least until they get hit.
Lastly, I would bring back platform sliding from wavelanding. Honestly, it's a no brainer. Makes combos potentially more interesting, and has a clear cut upside/downside in that you can't shield if you platform cancel obviously.
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Grab Changes
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Another universality change like the dodges. However, this one would be in distinct categories of grab frame data that each character would have. Note that in terms of frame data, tether grabs overall get a nerf in startup but a buff in endlag and a MUCH higher active frame count. In fact, enough that spotdodging against tether grabs is not feasible at all. This is the main upside to having a tether grab over a melee grab, but I decided to give a few more things to tether grabs overall. This includes a general range increase for all tether grabs, and the ability to be angled on startup, meaning grabbing people hanging off the ledge is actually a feasible option, something that melee grabs cannot do.
As for melee grabs, they are nerfed overall in FAF, being even higher than the general increase Ultimate gave them. HOWEVER, I would give many of the combo throws lost their utility back as a result.
What this would do for the game overall is make grabbing a far more situational affair, especially defensively. It already is in Ultimate, but this would make it more so. This may potentially make shields too good if not for the massive increase in shieldstun that would be added as eluded to in the shield change sections.
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Universal Move and Movement Changes
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I guess since this is far less cohesive a section, I will split it into sub sections like the shield changes.
I want to say that Ultimate made initial dash frame data universal already, but just in case, I will put it here because I think it is important this is added. It makes even slower characters' initial dash not completely obsolete to use, but simply weaker should they be slower. It's the same thing as the rolls having universal frame data.
Double jump height is reduced overall, but that doesn't mean EVERYONE. This is to make recovering in general a little more interesting, especially with the ability to directional air dodge upwards AND do an air dash upwards. I feel this good compensation. It also makes escaping combos simply by jumping a little bit worse, especially when there are platforms involved, as the first jump height increase makes it easier to chase upwards against double jumps.
The last one brings an extra bit of power to an edgeguarding player, especially challenging recovering low in a way that isn't simply to edgehog. Now if you do not jump off the stage at all, you keep your first jump, which I again reiterate is usually better across the board. This gives a much higher margin for error on the edgeguarder's part, again emphasizing the power of going offstage to edgeguard as opposed to staying on stage. This makes characters with usually shoddy recoveries even have more incentive to go off stage.
The more interesting change is allowing the option to smash attack by doing one input to charge, and then pressing again to release. This makes the smash cancel option of dodge + a direction more feasible, while the Ryu Focus Attack style of cancelling is more for the press and hold types. The reason this is a thing is because of my rework of Ice Climbers necessitating it, but yu can see that thread for yourself whenever you want. In short, it's another control option, and those don't really hurt anyone.
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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 am now finished. Hopefully people find it interesting.
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
- 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
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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
- 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.
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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
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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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Teching and Getup Changes
- Missed tech now gives invulnerability starting on around frame 12
- Hitting a fighter in missed tech animation once now allows them to tech
- Can now hold shield to buffer a tech while in hitstun at all times
- This includes wall and ceiling techs
- Standard tech is quicker, but has less invulnerability frames at the end
- Tech roll has less invulnerability frames at the end
- Wall techs and ceiling techs have no invulnerability and slightly longer endlag
- Knockback decrease on wall and ceiling collisions heavily reduced
- Knockback based threshold for not allowing tech decreased
- Can now DI off wall and ceiling collisions up to one time while in hitstun
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Teching has always been a sort of antithesis of my second principle in the mission statements saying it isn't about how hard the tool is to do, but how you use it. And yet, it persists still. And honestly, the way Ultimate has it where holding down the shield button while in tumble causes automatic teching is VERY close to what I wanted for years now. However, it leaves the problem of missed techs still being a detriment in pretty much all cases, making teching overall better, which I would still fix.
Now, the difference between no tech and tech is more clear. One allows you to be vulnerable at the beginning of the animation, yet gives longer invulnerability than an actual tech should the enemy not get said opening. This includes not just the standard tech, but also tech roll vs missed tech roll. The risk-reward of missing the tech is now actually a thing; miss the tech on purpose if you feel they will not tech chase immediately to potentially take longer to get out of the disadvantage. However, risk the problem of not being able to get out of the combo immediately should they reach you in time. It also builds on an idea of the advantaged player instead waiting to see what the teching/not teching player will do to escape, and if they choose to wait for the tech, and you don't actually do it, they have messed up and you have won the exchange and have a better time getting back to neutral. Thus, the overall layers of risk vs reward is potentially more nuanced in the end simply because missing the tech on purpose is a potentially good choice in certain circumstances.
That leaves the second half of these changes dedicated to lowering the ability to tech walls and ceilings. Ultimate has added a certain threshold where if you take knockback above a certain amount, teching off walls, floors, and ceilings is impossible. I would lower this threshold to make sure people cannot survive for too long. These changes could also potentially fix the "cave of life" problem that plagues a few stages.
Following with the general idea of missing techs on purpose being useful, not only are wall and ceiling techs stripped of their invulnerability and made to be slightly longer, making you open in place for the purpose of repositioning away from the enemy, but you can now freely DI at least once when bouncing, meaning your destination when missing the tech could also be very different. This creates more risk-reward in wall techs similar to the grounded techs I talked about above. In addition, to further remedy the cave of life problem, multiple bounces between wall, floor, and ceiling will not take away as much knockback from the launching move.
These changes were mostly for the purpose of making missed techs vs teching an actual choice and solving "caves of life". Again, it's not about how hard teching is, but how you use it... as well as DON'T use it.
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Stale Move Negation Changes
- Stale moves no longer causes damage decrease
- Fresh moves no longer get a 5% damage increase
- Stale moves now increase DI deviation and Vectoring influence
- Stale move queue time increased slightly
This builds upon the idea that DI is a fantastic game mechanic that should be used more. However, it also fixes a contradiction in Smash Bros mechanics. The stale-move negation is meant to make players shy away from spamming moves, however, since damage and knockback are in line with each other, staling moves can potentially make them stronger by making them easier to combo into other things. Thus, you are encouraged to spam certain moves. This is not a good fix for this.
Now, DI deviation and vectoring influence increase the more a move is spammed. This is nothing but a bad thing for the spammer, regardless of the move used, because higher DI deviation on a comboing move is obviously bad, because it makes it less likely to combo into other things. However, it is bad for kill moves too because survival DI is a thing, and vectoring can be used to resist knockback in a direction directly. As established, vecotring influence would be worse as the knockback accrued is stronger, but just that little bit added because some genius decided to spam their kill moves along with the survival DI means this is also bad for kill moves.
Because of this, I believe this particular way of going about stale-move negation is actually just straight up better than what we have in terms of the goals it is trying to accomplish.
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Shield Changes
- Shield health is now variable amongst the characters
- Base shield health increased from 50 to 100
- Shield damage would be adjusted accordingly
- Shield break stun is now a uniform 0.75 seconds at all percentages
- Does not include invincibility between shield break launch and landing
- Shield no longer shrinks as it is damaged
- Shield no longer drains while holding it
- Shield will now fully regain health after shield break
- Base shield regen increased to 7.5 per second
- Cannot move shield while blocking
- Reduce shield drop from 11 frames to 5 frames
- Shieldstun would be adjusted accordingly
- Decrease minimum shield time from 9 frames to 6 frames
- Shield grab penalty increased to 8 frames
- This means from shielding to shield grab takes minimum of 19 frames
- Can no longer jump out of shield immediately
- Pushback on shields generally increased
- Perfect shield no longer ignores shield damage
- Perfect shield will now cause the fighter to take 100% of the damage done by the parried attack
- Perfect shield now is done by pressing the jump button while shielding rather than letting go
- Perfect shield does not resist shield pushback whatsoever
- Character specific shield quirks are gone
- This means Yoshi can shield platform drop
- This also means Jigglypuff’s shield break does not launch it
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Wow there's a lot to unpack here... let's go in sections to talk about each individual thing here
So this is a simple change to make each character have a bit more or less leeway when it comes to how much they can shield. The general rule is the more offense oriented or light the character, the less shield health they have and vice versa. There are exceptions I would make, like Marth would have less than the average to signify his weakness at CQC, and Squirtle would have very high shield health to both elude to his shell's defense and being better in disadvantage, but overall, this is simply to differentiate characters in another way that we don't have right now.
The binary nature of the shield break is rather terrible to me, because for most situations, a shield break means a stock. It also means shields are put on a balancing act that they shouldn't have to be in where you can't have them be TOO easy to break. This allows more design freedom to make shields weaker without completely breaking the game. And again, 0.75 seconds is about the time for a good smash attack to hit, especially if you account for the landing right after shield break giving you more time.
This generally makes shielding more consistent and also removes the pesky problem of a small shield basically causing you to effectively not actually block when you tell the game to block. It's so fundamental to the flow of the game that to hit shield, only for shield to not happen due to a small shield poke happening is rather asinine. Shield also doesn't drain, because honestly, with what is coming up, staying in shield is enough punishment to begin with.
Shield regen is increased, but the overall time it takes to regen up to full is much longer considering the base shield health is doubled and general shield damage would be higher.
Lastly, due to the lack of shield shrinking, moving shield around is a redundant feature.
Now despite what it looks like, this is a good thing for shielding. The general shieldstun numbers would be MUCH higher than even Melee's, not only to compensate for the lower shield drop frames, but to make it so if someone hits your shield, you will most likely be locked into it despite all of this frame data reduction on shield drop. You also cannot jump out of shield for a quicker shield pressure reversal response either.
To top this off, pushback is increased on shields in general, making retaliation out of shield very unlikely due to higher shieldstun. So all of this to make shielding worse, yet I would lower the shield drop to something lower than any Smash game to date. Why?
The reasoning behind this is to allow for more varied character weaknesses. See, if shield drop is lower, that means designing characters that are bad against shielding is easier to do, because just giving them lower shieldstun is enough. Whereas if I want a character with good shield pressure, just give them higher shieldstun. The result of this is that matchups will vary far more in terms of shielding, because in some matchups you want to shield, while in others you avoid it. This alows more potential design space for more overall archetypes to work with.
In short, by making the baseline shield drop much lower, it allows most of the "shield safety" to be put less on the game itself and more on the individual fighters. But again, safe on shield moves would be a lot more widespread. That is the plan.
And as an added bonus, this makes it possible to have relatively safe to whiff yet punishable on shield moves, which can potentially give slower characters some power against faster ones by shielding their usually hard to catch hitboxes.
Lastly, by making shielding without getting hit have more leeway, it also allows for easier anti-zoning ability due to shielding being less committal, at least at a distance.
These perfect shield/parry changes are for multiple things. Firstly, because of the potential spammability of shield due to the lowered minimum shield time and much lower shield drop, the ability to accidentally parry will increase by a wide margin. To fix this, you now need to press the jump button while shielding, made easier because you can no longer jump out of shield.
However, this also means the usual risk of parrying, which is letting go of your shield, is now gone, so we need to give it a new risk of some kind. The idea here is that parrying doesn't help against shield breaking moves due to not negating shield damage, and it causes you to take full damage from the parried hit. In addition, you will still get pushed back, so now parrying at the wrong time as opposed to just shielding means you will take unnecessary damage for the price of maybe finding an opening. I still think parry might be too strong even after all this, but we'll see.
These character quirks are gone, mostly because they are strictly negative and remove options and generally are hard to balance around, especially Jigglypuff's shield break launch. You know that idea of shield break being a binary thing? With Jigglypuff, it is binary at all percents regardless of what you do, unless you are under a ceiling, which no competitive stages ever are (hopefully that changes with my teching changes seen above, but that's neither her nor there). Making it a standard shield break makes it potentially easier to balance Jiggs. Same with Yoshi.
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Priority Changes
- Priority would be based on a number system. Higher number priority will stuff out lower number priority
- Scale of 0-10
- 0 priority is the same as transcendent priority
- Any ground to air and air to air interactions without transcendent priority involved will lead to the higher priority fighter being given less knockback, hitstun, and damage from the “clashing” hit.
- Same priority hits will lead to both getting the knockback, hitstun, and damage reduction
- Disjointed moves in these exchanges will be given 15% less knockback, hitstun, and damage
- Non-disjointed moves in these exchanges will be given 60% less knockback, hitstun, and damage
- Disjoints will work differently in ground to ground interactions with non-disjoints
- If a disjoint hits a non-disjoint of higher priority on the ground, will not cause non-disjoint to cancel, but will cause the non-disjoint fighter to take 60% less knockback, hitstun, and damage
- If a disjoint hits a non-disjoint of lower priority on the ground, will not cause non-disjoint to cancel. Instead, if the disjoint fighter is hit, will take 15% less damage, knockback, and hitstun from the lower priority non-disjoint hit
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This change to priority to a number system, like the shield drop reduction mentioned in the above section, is meant to give more design space for characters and balance. For example, if you want a character to have great combo game and pressure, but bad defense, giving them low priority on most attacks is how to do that. Contrast this with slow but powerful attacks having higher numbers for priority. Though this mirrors damage based priority as it is right now.
Now take the inverse of these. Great frame data AND high priority but also low damage. This creates an archetype for oppressive gameplay unlike anything Smash has right now. This hilariously huge strength can then be tempered with creative weaknesses in other places, but this archetype would not exist with the damage based priority we have now. Similarly, we can have bad frame data and bad priority with high damage to signify that a character may want to not use these moves to challenge anyone and would generally be very weak in neutral, but still potentially strong when used at the right moment. Again, not something that can be done with damage based priority.
The second part of this is to make it so aerial moves are no longer exempt from the priority system. Now, if two differing priorities clash from either ground to air and air to air, whoever has the higher priority will gain a heavy reduction in knockback, damage, and hitstun rather than simply going through regardless of priority. This makes general anti-airs much stronger and creates more difference in air to air combat as one character may clearly have better options to stuff out the opponent with that they cannot exchange with compared to them.
The last part of these changes has to do with weakening disjointed moves overall, which is something that not only Smash, but all platform fighters have had trouble with, namely keeping disjointed characters in check without making them garbage. I think this is a great way to do it. Now, if a disjoint has a low number priority, which most in the game will, on the ground, they will be give the hit enemy FAR less damage, hitstun, and knockback, similar to how air to air and ground to air exchanges work now. In addition, should they have higher priority, which is rare, when hit, they will actually not cause the non-disjoint to cancel like it does now, but instead will cause a reduction in general hitstun, damage, and knockback from the retaliating hit.
This overall makes ground game for disjoints FAR more reliant on spacing in all cases, and will never cause a clash in any case, meaning disjointed hits will naturally be very bad at resetting neutral should you lose it due to not clashing to stop both fighters. These same rules apply in the new ground to air and air to air exchange rules. These changes do not make disjoints useless per se, but give them some defined weaknesses inherent to the game system. Using disjoints, which again will mostly have very low priority necessitates good spacing in all cases as to not trade with the opponent. And they are worse at getting back to neutral.
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Damage Changes
- Hitstun, priority, shield damage, and shieldstun are decoupled from a move’s damage value
- Knockback is now the only thing naturally connected to a move’s damage
- There would be an option to decouple this for certain moves
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In the same vain as the priority changes, this creates far better design space to work with in regards to making moves work exactly how they need to. Now the only thing directly tied to damage is knockback, and even that can be decoupled should it be necessary.
Note these are mostly developer concerns and not really concerns for players of the mod, but I will still state why it is on here, because I think it is important to state that how it presently works in game is still flawed in some respects.
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Dodge Changes
- All rolls would be uniform in frame data and only differ in length traveled
- All spotdodges would be uniform in FAF and intangibility frames
- All air dodges would be uniform in frame data and only differ by distance traveled
- Directional air dodge now causes all characters to have a uniform fall speed and gravity during the airdodge in order to have a universal overall vertical distance traveled
- When landing via air dodge, can hold down the dodge button to slide off platform edges
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Contrasting this with the last few sections, this technically removes design space. However, this makes up for it in allowing for more universality in defensive maneuvers across the entire cast. Basically, this prevents any Samus roll uselessness shenanigans since the intangibility and frame data on rolls is the same, meaning a roll, no matter which character uses it, can use it in the same optimal and non optimal places. It functions as a roll no matter what. Same for spotdodges.
One change I would do is to make it so the strange decision to have a lot more frames of inactivity for floatier characters' directional airdodge be scrapped for simply temporarily giving all characters the same fall speed and gravity for the duration of the airdodge, at least until they get hit.
Lastly, I would bring back platform sliding from wavelanding. Honestly, it's a no brainer. Makes combos potentially more interesting, and has a clear cut upside/downside in that you can't shield if you platform cancel obviously.
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Grab Changes
- Tether grabs general range increased
- All tether grabs can be angled on startup
- All tether grabs would gain enough active frames to always catch fresh spotdodges
- There would now be six uniform frame data categories for all basic grabs in the game
- Standing grabs
- Melee Grabs
- Fast: 6 frame startup, 2 active, 32 frame endlag, 40 FAF
- Average: 9 frame startup, 2 active, 29 frame endlag, 40 FAF
- Slow: 12 frame startup, 2 active, 26 frame endlag, 40 FAF
- Tether Grabs
- Fast: 13 frame startup, 18 active, 24 frame endlag, 55 FAF
- Average: 15 frame startup, 18 active, 22 frame endlag, 55 FAF
- Slow: 17 frame startup, 18 active, 20 frame endlag, 55 FAF
- Melee Grabs
- Dash grabs
- Melee Grabs
- Fast: 8 frame startup, 2 active, 34 frame endlag, 44 FAF
- Average: 11 frame startup, 2 active, 31 frame endlag, 44 FAF
- Slow: 14 frame startup, 2 active, 28 frame endlag, 44 FAF
- Tether Grabs
- Fast: 15 frame startup, 18 active, 25 frame endlag, 58 FAF
- Average: 17 frame startup, 18 active, 23 frame endlag, 58 FAF
- Slow: 19 frame startup, 18 active, 21 frame endlag, 58 FAF
- Melee Grabs
- Pivot grabs
- Melee Grabs
- Fast: 9 frame startup, 2 active, 34 frame endlag, 45 FAF
- Average: 12 frame startup, 2 active, 31 frame endlag, 45 FAF
- Slow: 15 frame startup, 2 active, 28 frame endlag, 45 FAF
- Tether Grabs
- Fast: 16 frame startup, 18 active, 25 frame endlag, 59 FAF
- Average: 18 frame startup, 18 active, 23 frame endlag, 59 FAF
- Slow: 20 frame startup, 18 active, 21 frame endlag, 59 FAF
- Melee Grabs
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Another universality change like the dodges. However, this one would be in distinct categories of grab frame data that each character would have. Note that in terms of frame data, tether grabs overall get a nerf in startup but a buff in endlag and a MUCH higher active frame count. In fact, enough that spotdodging against tether grabs is not feasible at all. This is the main upside to having a tether grab over a melee grab, but I decided to give a few more things to tether grabs overall. This includes a general range increase for all tether grabs, and the ability to be angled on startup, meaning grabbing people hanging off the ledge is actually a feasible option, something that melee grabs cannot do.
As for melee grabs, they are nerfed overall in FAF, being even higher than the general increase Ultimate gave them. HOWEVER, I would give many of the combo throws lost their utility back as a result.
What this would do for the game overall is make grabbing a far more situational affair, especially defensively. It already is in Ultimate, but this would make it more so. This may potentially make shields too good if not for the massive increase in shieldstun that would be added as eluded to in the shield change sections.
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Universal Move and Movement Changes
- All characters can wall jump
- All initial dashes have uniform frame data, varying only in distance traveled
- First jump height is now minimum about 70% of the height to the top Battlefield platform
- Double/multi jump height generally reduced
- If a character walks or runs off the stage, they will keep their first jump
- All dash attacks will destroy incoming projectiles
- Some dash attacks may have more conditions to do so, but all will be able to in some form
- Smash attacks now have the option to be executed with two button presses rather than press and hold
- At full charge, Smash attacks can now be cancelled by either quickly flicking in one direction twice, or by pressing dodge + a direction
- This will cause a “shimmy” animation that is similar to a roll without any intangibility. Cannot do anything while shimmying.
- Smash attack max charge time increased from 1 second to 1.2 seconds
- Smash attack maximum hold time increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds
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I guess since this is far less cohesive a section, I will split it into sub sections like the shield changes.
Another universality, and this one is pretty darn simplistic to implement honestly, considering a lot of wall techs look like regular wall jumps. But this one is mostly there because why not?
I want to say that Ultimate made initial dash frame data universal already, but just in case, I will put it here because I think it is important this is added. It makes even slower characters' initial dash not completely obsolete to use, but simply weaker should they be slower. It's the same thing as the rolls having universal frame data.
The first jump height increase is to make platforming smoother for all characters. Considering this is a platform fighter, it baffles me that some characters still can't navigate smoothly across platformed stages.
Double jump height is reduced overall, but that doesn't mean EVERYONE. This is to make recovering in general a little more interesting, especially with the ability to directional air dodge upwards AND do an air dash upwards. I feel this good compensation. It also makes escaping combos simply by jumping a little bit worse, especially when there are platforms involved, as the first jump height increase makes it easier to chase upwards against double jumps.
The last one brings an extra bit of power to an edgeguarding player, especially challenging recovering low in a way that isn't simply to edgehog. Now if you do not jump off the stage at all, you keep your first jump, which I again reiterate is usually better across the board. This gives a much higher margin for error on the edgeguarder's part, again emphasizing the power of going offstage to edgeguard as opposed to staying on stage. This makes characters with usually shoddy recoveries even have more incentive to go off stage.
If you saw my character redesign threads, you'll know this is a trend of mine. I must emphasize that this is to give all characters SOME answer against zoners. Clanging usually does this, but it doesn't also close distance at the same time. It isn't always super good, but it is always there if you need it, no matter who you play as.
Smash attacks can be cancelled now into a sort of initial dash or slide dash or roll like movement, minus the ability to do anything and with no intangibility. This is to fake out the opponent as well as not commit to a clearly bad read. However, since this "shimmy" has no ability to be attacked out of or has invincibility, it itself can be punished, just not as easily as smash charging. Also, it can only be done after the smash itself is fully charged, which is 10% longer as well, so as to not make this too strong. The maximum smash hold time is doubled just because honestly lol.
The more interesting change is allowing the option to smash attack by doing one input to charge, and then pressing again to release. This makes the smash cancel option of dodge + a direction more feasible, while the Ryu Focus Attack style of cancelling is more for the press and hold types. The reason this is a thing is because of my rework of Ice Climbers necessitating it, but yu can see that thread for yourself whenever you want. In short, it's another control option, and those don't really hurt anyone.
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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 am now finished. Hopefully people find it interesting.
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