[Source Gaming] Sakurai On: Balancing Smash

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Source Gaming has published another installment of the Sakurai On series. This series brings together a collection of quotes from the Smash series director in order to promote a deeper understanding of the design philosophy behind Smash.

The latest game, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS has seen numerous balance updates, and support for tournaments from Nintendo. One of the biggest focal points for Masahiro Sakurai is ensuring that Smash can cater to all kinds of audiences and playstyles.

There are moves that are completely useless in a 1v1 battle, but in a four-player free-for-all those moves might prove quite useful. Therefore, if I played only one kind of battle, the game would feel very slanted towards a particular style of play. —The Act of Balancing, June 11, 2015

Despite seeing Smash as a "party game", there has been a seemingly increased focus on character balance with every installment to the series.

During development of Super Smash Bros. and Super Smash Bros. Melee, I balanced the game personally. For the third game, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, we monitored a team of four people, looking at their records against each other, for example, and adjusted from there. This time, we’re monitoring a team of 12 people…—Famitsu Interview from E3 2014

Despite not fully understanding why competitive Smash is played the way it is, Sakurai believes that fans should play the way that makes them happy and is glad that people can enjoy the game.

Recently, there was a tournament featuring the top Japanese and American players. In 1v1s, the natural tendency is to use low risk moves to gradually deal damage to the opponent. Smash attacks rarely came out, and the matches were prone to becoming long, drawn out affairs. When considering the variety of ways Smash can be played I think this is a shame, but the winner was certainly decided by skill.

Just as surely, people who play the game this way enjoy it from the bottom of their hearts, and make many friends playing this way. Because the game accommodates a wide variety of playstyles, it’s only natural that it captivates so many people in a variety of ways. —The Act of Balancing, June 11, 2015

The full article can be read here and covers the changes with each game, and contains additional quotes.

PushDustIn is looking for someone to balance his daily life. You can offer suggestions on Twitter.

 

You know someone is cornered when they call you an apologist for no good reason, oh you. If it helps you sleep better at night sure, think of me as that, it doesn't make your idiocy less notable nor your case more solid but ignorance is bliss for little minds like yours

Go get lost in thoughts all alone. lmao

 

It's nice to get it in writing that the lead game designer doesn't understand the game's design at all. I've long since suspected that most of the real balance work has been done by others on his team.

 

I don't get why game designers try to make people play a certain way.

If you read a really good book, it doesn't matter if you get something out of the story that the writer didn't intend. Whether the creator planned it or not, the experience you have is as valuable, if not MORE valuable than what was intended.

 

I don't get why game designers try to make people play a certain way.

Literally anyone else would have been flattered to see a game they made have such a passionate competitive scene that has kept the game alive since it's release.

Sakurai though?

"I'll make sure they play the way I want this time!", then came Brawl.

 

Wish they'd just focus balancing on 1v1 because the only players that care about balance are the competitive players and as we all know that scene is all about 1v1. Casual players couldn't care less about balance unless it's absurdly off, which it is not. So I don't understand whose experience is being improved by considering free for alls in balance decisions.

 

Wish they'd just focus balancing on 1v1 because the only players that care about balance are the competitive players and as we all know that scene is all about 1v1. Casual players couldn't care less about balance unless it's absurdly off, which it is not. So I don't understand whose experience is being improved by considering free for alls in balance decisions.

Because of this

However, you are overestimating the size of the competitive community.

Melee sold 7.09 million copies.
Brawl sold 12.93 million copies.
Wii U sold 4.61 million copies.
3DS sold 7.92 million copies.
(Sources here)

How many people are on /r/smashbros?
203,096 people subscribed.

How many people are on SmashBoards?
229,899 registered users.

On the old Wii Channel, you had 1,690,757 players report their Brawl time. You don't need to be a mathematician to know that's a much bigger number than both /r/smashbros and SmashBoards combined. And the Wii Channel was opt in. So people had to actively send their data. These aren't people who just bought the game and put it down either. The average play time among those 1.5 million people? Over 77 hours.(Source)

Project M had almost a million downloads (3.0) (Source). The 3.6 beta was downloaded 61,399 times (Source). Again, that's <8% of the people who bought Brawl.

So unless you have data for the millions of people playing Smash that you pulled out of thin air, then it's kind of big assumption that the "only a small minority actually plays" 1v1 matches, and stock. Especially if you are just basing it off the <1% of the Smashers who are registered on online forums.

Now, you can argue that the game can be balanced for a 1v1 setting, and free for all. But you can't act like the majority of Smashers are hardcore competitive players who only play 1v1, because there is no evidence to suggest that. Heck, Chris Pranger, former Nintendo Treehouse Localizer, even said that competitive Smashers aren't the majority (Podcast here). He said we are loud, but we aren't the majority and I think he's 100% correct.

 

Because of this

Obviously casual players far outnumber competitive. But casuals are having just as much fun with or without the balance patches. Unless the balance is absurdly off casuals don't care about balance, so just balance around 1v1.

 

Axel311 :
I don't think Sakurai believes that you can completely balance the game around 1v1 and still have it fun for all kinds of players. In addition, he has to make the game accessible to all types of players. Remember -- the way he approaches balancing is not just the number of players, but a variety of playstyles and skill level. He's talked in particular about Kirby's Stone ability multiple times.

Furthermore, if I went with what is fair according to advanced players, the beginners wouldn’t be able to keep up. For example, Kirby’s Stone attack probably won’t hit a player above intermediate skill level, but if I made it more powerful, it would destroy beginners. --Act of Balancing

Furthermore, he said this:

Another problem we have to consider is that battles can take on many formats in Smash. There are moves that are completely useless in a 1v1 battle, but in a four-player free-for-all those moves might prove quite useful. Therefore, if I played only one kind of battle, the game would feel very slanted towards a particular style of play.--Act of Balancing

So...yeah. Sakurai doesn't believe you can only balance around 1v1 and still have it fun for casuals.

 

Long drawn out affairs? Niconico was far from long drawn out matches. How is metaknight killing off the top early and zss doing the same, a long match? People don't use smash attacks because the majority of them are terrible and only work with a hard read. You can't simply throw a smash attack out for every single K.O. If we needed to use smash attacks more then why are so many character smash attacks nerfed. It doesn't make any sense. Tbh the hypest kills aren't the ones ended in a smash attack.

PS: Just found out that he wasn't talking about Niconico, but still everything what I said still applies.

 

And every balance patch seems to me like's based off the competitive scene. All the nerfs are obviously due to the big tournament players doing so well with their characters. Casuals probably don't ever do anything close to what the top players do in tournaments. Especially if they use items, smash balls, coin matches(if that still exists), you name it.

 

Patches in general take a lot of work. Sakurai can't just flip a switch and suddenly say "this character is buffed/nerfed". It takes careful fine tuning to properly balance characters, so everything can't be done immediately. As for characters getting ignored, there's likely a queue of priority for the team. Clearly Mewtwo and other DLC fighters were a big priority as they released later, thus having less time to be worked on. Fighters like Jiggs and Dedede are probably still in their queue, just with less priority than characters who were already touched.

Jiggs has been horrible for 2 games in a row.

 

Sakurai never said "No DLC". He said "there are no plans for DLC".

-Is Sakurai a Liar?

He said there wasn't plans for a balance update. Not that there wouldn't be any. Check out the Is Sakurai a Liar? article for more information.

Characters take a long time to make. It's because they need to debug them across a wide variety of modes, and playstyles. They also needed to create characters for not one version, but two and then make them play identical when the hardware is different. I was saying from the start that we wouldn't get a lot of DLC characters (One of the few people to say that too). Based on the characters we got, and the data mining it seems that the DLC characters took up to 6 months each. Lucas was probably the easiest as they could import from Brawl/ modify Ness (he inherited some more Ness like qualities in Smash for Wii U/3DS). Ryu required them to rework some of the engine (Source). There's some reason to believe that Corrin was the last decided fighter, as he's in the last slot, and that slot wasn't in the April update (Source) but Sakurai has never commented on it. Just that it was decided to add a character to promote an upcoming game (My full thoughts here).

However, you are overestimating the size of the competitive community.

Melee sold 7.09 million copies.
Brawl sold 12.93 million copies.
Wii U sold 4.61 million copies.
3DS sold 7.92 million copies.
(Sources here)

How many people are on /r/smashbros?
203,096 people subscribed.

How many people are on SmashBoards?
229,899 registered users.

On the old Wii Channel, you had 1,690,757 players report their Brawl time. You don't need to be a mathematician to know that's a much bigger number than both /r/smashbros and SmashBoards combined. And the Wii Channel was opt in. So people had to actively send their data. These aren't people who just bought the game and put it down either. The average play time among those 1.5 million people? Over 77 hours.(Source)

Project M had almost a million downloads (3.0) (Source). The 3.6 beta was downloaded 61,399 times (Source). Again, that's <8% of the people who bought Brawl.

So unless you have data for the millions of people playing Smash that you pulled out of thin air, then it's kind of big assumption that the "only a small minority actually plays" 1v1 matches, and stock. Especially if you are just basing it off the <1% of the Smashers who are registered on online forums.

Now, you can argue that the game can be balanced for a 1v1 setting, and free for all. But you can't act like the majority of Smashers are hardcore competitive players who only play 1v1, because there is no evidence to suggest that. Heck, Chris Pranger, former Nintendo Treehouse Localizer, even said that competitive Smashers aren't the majority (Podcast here). He said we are loud, but we aren't the majority and I think he's 100% correct.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/super-smash-bros-not-getting-paid-dlc/1100-6423702/
Sounds to me like he really didn't want DLC

 

I think he could create a mode that´s specific for competitive tournaments where character´s properties change only in that situation.
But you know what? Jigglypuff could have better grabs... Just saying

 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/super-smash-bros-not-getting-paid-dlc/1100-6423702/
Sounds to me like he really didn't want DLC

You need to go to the source for the full story.

"Creating a single fighter involves a huge investment, and we've already been giving it our all and investing a lot of work in the characters currently available in the game and, I think it’s an incredible package in terms of the sheer amount of content in the game. But it might be that people may not understand and may think that I am not offering enough by just looking at DLC itself.

"In light of this, we always need to weigh up both sides of this topic and carefully consider whether it really is best to have DLC or not.

http://www.videogamer.com/wiiu/supe...n_premium_dlc_for_super_smash_bros_wii_u.html

 

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/super-smash-bros-not-getting-paid-dlc/1100-6423702/
Sounds to me like he really didn't want DLC

Sounds to me like you can't read.

And every balance patch seems to me like's based off the competitive scene. All the nerfs are obviously due to the big tournament players doing so well with their characters. Casuals probably don't ever do anything close to what the top players do in tournaments. Especially if they use items, smash balls, coin matches(if that still exists), you name it.

But what is a casual according to you? It seems that you are confusing being a casual with being someone who has no clue of what they are doing. How do you know that there aren't any competent casuals out there who just might be savvy enough to know the ins and outs of certain characters and how to play up to their strengths?
These people may be affected by balance and patches to a lesser degree; and while they may not participate in tournaments it may not mean that there isn't any semblance of competitiveness and desire to win, after all that is a part of human nature, and they may just know enough what to do in order to triumph because they love besting their friends so this is why they shouldn't be disregarded when it comes to balance.
My brother for example has no interest in practicing that much nor cares about entering tournaments but he is savvy enough to outmatch most average players and understand the game's balance. And what about me? I don't participate in tournaments but I care about improving my game play because it's fun to face strong opponents one on one and is also fun to partake into 4 player matches with items as well, and I approach both of those formats with the intention of winning and optimizing my character as much as possible. Am I casual or competitive? A gray area must be considered when discussing balancing matters rather than thinking that it doesn't affect "casuals".

 

Sounds to me like you can't read.

But what is a casual according to you? It seems that you are confusing being a casual with being someone who has no clue of what they are doing. How do you know that there aren't any competent casuals out there who just might be savvy enough to know the ins and outs of certain characters and how to play up to their strengths?

I think he could create a mode that´s specific for competitive tournaments where character´s properties change only in that situation.
But you know what? Jigglypuff could have better grabs... Just saying

Smash is growing in the competitive scene with consistent events at majors like EVO and CEO. I can only see the community continuing to push towards this.

But whether we like it or not the casual scene still plays a major role for Smash since I do not know a single player who did not begin their Smash career by not getting a few of their friends together, picking their favorite Nintendo character and playing a items based 4-player match. Smash is rooted in having fun and being a party game.

Though the idea of creating a competitive mode where the game is balanced for that is not a bad idea but may not be possible either. You can not make Mario really good at 1 v 1 and then turn around and make him suck in 4 player mode. Its not fair to the character or to the players who play him since changing modes means changing his base skills. That in all honestly would break the game since there is no consistency or balance to it. A character across the board and modes must be consistent and feel the same no matter where they are being used at.

Customs was a chance for Nintendo to change up the base stats of a chacter and make it possible for a player to create their own character. We in the competitive scene killed that by saying it wasn't balanced but we fail to remember one thing. Their game is not just about us who play smash in a 1 v1 get salty if you lose setting. But it was built for the general population and no matter how much the competitive scene tries to change that it will not go away.

To sum all of this up. Smash and its balancing is not just for the tournament scene but is also for the general population and good for the community. It is up to us who play competitive Smash to not expect a balancing patch just to make us happy.

Balance must be for the good of all

 

All the Sheik mains would love dthrow uair and fthrow bouncing fish as kill confirms. And this would probably give it to them...

You also just made it easier for Cloud to confirm dair or uair to finishing touch, all of Bayonetta's combos work better, and good luck ever escaping Captain Falcon's dthrow knee now.

I guess make some things like DK cargo uthrow uair work longer, but this would give a pretty asymmetrical advantage to fast, low-damage-per-hit characters and make slow characters mostly worse.

Spoiler

Fun fact: Smash 4, Brawl, and Melee all have identical amounts of hitstun. Brawl had hitstun cancelling (yay coding glitch?) and Smash 4 and Brawl allow air dodges out of tumble in addition to mostly lower fallspeeds, but increasing hitstun would leave Smash 4 with the second-most hitstun in the series (or the most if they went beyond 64). I don't think that's a particularly great change, given how the combos in the game currently work.

i just have to ask, if hitstun were lengthened as such and these became more effective combos can't you still DI properly even while in hitstun? hitstun shouldn't affect overall direction of motion just how long you are reeling from the hit, correct? therefore it would strengthen the need for good DI, right?

 

i just have to ask, if hitstun were lengthened as such and these became more effective combos can't you still DI properly even while in hitstun? hitstun shouldn't affect overall direction of motion just how long you are reeling from the hit, correct? therefore it would strengthen the need for good DI, right?

That is true, but longer hitstun also gives the attacker more time to react to the DI.