Stale Move Negation in Smash 4?

[SKM_NeoN]

Do we know how Stale-Move Negation functions in the latest build of Smash 4? I heard some point out that there was no move decay in the Mario and Mega Man match at E3 2013, but I'm not sure if that's entirely true or carried over to the demo currently being played.

 

[Cap'nChreest]

I really hope its not like Brawl "We don't die! We DI have stale moves!!"

I think PPMD had some trouble killing someone with his up smash after a few tries. Hungrybox tried to up throw kill ZeRo twice but he only got it once. I think its in. If not than its in the demo at least.

 

[2ndComing]

The Nintendo rep said there are stale moves, you guys should watch the Nintendo Treehouse Live

There aint nothing wrong with them in my opinion

 

[SKM_NeoN]

Smash Bros. has always had stale move negation. The question is if it functions more like Brawl (affects knockback) or not.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Smash Bros. has always had stale move negation. The question is if it functions more like Brawl (affects knockback) or not.

So it didn't affect knockback in melee?
If spamming attacks makes the knockback of that attack weaker, than that gives me all the more reason to spam my attacks! The less they get knocked back, than the closer they are to me, just where I want them!

 

[SKM_NeoN]

If spamming attacks makes the knockback of that attack weaker, than that gives me all the more reason to spam my attacks! The less they get knocked back, than the closer they are to me, just where I want them!

Yeah, that's pretty smart actually. Characters like Sheik can get a crazy amount of consecutive tilt combos because of this. Make sure you keep your kill move fresh though

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I'll speak from experience playing the demo. It's just like Brawl (though the base kill power of the kill moves seems quite a bit higher), but that's not so bad. If your character is good enough that spamming your only kill move is not your only option, you just have to mix it up a bit. Don't start using your kill move 15% before actual kill percent and just hit it raw over and over; you'll stale it like crazy and barely fail to kill over and over again. A lot of people did exactly that in the demo and then seemed surprised they were having such a hard time getting kills, but it can be avoided. Mix up your kill moves a bit, relying on multiple options at different times so you'll have fresh ones ready. Use things like jabs, projectiles, grab pummels, Dancing Blade, and multi-ftilt to quickly refresh moves. In general just stop and think about what you're doing as well; the stale move system is basically there to reward thoughtful play, and it's actually a very interesting skill test.

It's also kinda important to how these games are balanced in that it helps characters with a really diverse array of kill moves since staleness is just not such a big deal when you have 5 good kill moves and almost always can easily pull a fresh one. A fast character, on the other hand, probably has more limited kill options and can easily run into staleness trouble without careful play; in my eyes, that's a pretty fair way to give them different strengths and weaknesses.

As per combos, this wasn't really possible to explore in the demo, but I can say this from Brawl. Knockback and hitstun are directly proportional so, if you stale out a combo move, you keep them closer but also do less hitstun so it's not really a linear advantage. In general in Brawl, it was still usually easier to combo with stale stuff than with fresh stuff (some cgs were crazy and depended on particular careful levels of staleness; Pikachu had a lot of those in Brawl), but you were also doing less damage so it kinda worked out. I don't think this is likely to be a big problem, especially with how mindfully the parameterization seems to be in regards to things like combos.

 

[SKM_NeoN]

Thanks AA. I was starting to think nobody noticed any hit decay while playing the demo. I'm disappointed it's like Brawl in this regard, but it's just a minor gripe for me.

 

[Coonce]

Yeah, that's pretty smart actually. Characters like Sheik can get a crazy amount of consecutive tilt combos because of this. Make sure you keep your kill move fresh though

So about those ftilts at 4:11...

I've never been a fan of stale moves. It seems like the simple way to "balance" without actually balancing. Instead of trying to make all moves equally effective in their own situations, let's just punish the player for using a move too much. Worst of all, it doesn't prevent spamming at all, but encourages it for the reason DakotaBonez mentioned.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

So about those ftilts at 4:11...

I've never been a fan of stale moves. It seems like the simple way to "balance" without actually balancing. Instead of trying to make all moves equally effective in their own situations, let's just punish the player for using a move too much. Worst of all, it doesn't prevent spamming at all, but encourages it for the reason DakotaBonez mentioned.

The point is to force a person to be dynamic rather than force a way into the same move over and over for a bread and butter combo. Which actually is a flaw in some fighting games where people just rely on the same thing over and over.

It kinda fails with the tilts linking into themselves in Brawl and Smash 4 but overall it does help balance the game a bit.

 

[SKM_NeoN]

Another problem with stale moves though is that it forces you to sit on your reliable KO move, which in itself removes the variety it tries to create. Some characters with limited KO moves suck because of this, especially a character like Samus who relies on her back air for damage buildup.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Samus is bad in Brawl regardless and her best kill move that is too easy to stale out is dtilt and not bair? I mean, Samus in Brawl is so bad for so many reasons; I don't really think removing stale moves would actually change her overall tier position. Even if we didn't look at it that way, I'm not really seeing the argument that we don't have more diversity. If you're playing as a bad character like Samus who is sufficiently bad that she only has a few great moves, stale moves providing an incentive to use the rest of them would seem to add even more diversity as opposed to about how I'd play Brawl Samus without stale moves which would replace basically every close range ground move with dtilt. It's best if characters as bad as Brawl Samus aren't a thing and I certainly don't want basic game systems designed around the idea of using characters who are fundamentally bad, but even if we grant that these characters likely exist and want them to work well with the basic game systems, the gameplay still seems better with stale moves.

 

[SKM_NeoN]

It was just an example, I'm not going to pretend that's the only thing wrong with Samus. The point still stands: she lacks KO moves and what little she has is also her reliable damage buildup, so stale moves work against her. Sonic and Pit would have been a better example I suppose.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

So it didn't affect knockback in melee?
If spamming attacks makes the knockback of that attack weaker, than that gives me all the more reason to spam my attacks! The less they get knocked back, than the closer they are to me, just where I want them!

This doesn't work as well as you think, even for just one extra hit for something like Sheik's f-tilt. The knockback still scales with percentage. Its main implication is that following up a teetering KO attack with the same attack is likely to keep the attack at almost-KO range. In either case, the characters will be outside of a follow-up.

Knock-back staling is stupid, anyway. A lot of characters have piss-poor KO options and knock-back staling forces them to do extra combos or use a completely situational move if they fail the kill.

Anyway, the new game doesn't seem to even allow many follow-ups. Keeping people in range with knock-back staling could be moot.

 

[Jellyfish4102]

I think the happy medium would be to make staling apply only to kill moves and not combo moves.

 

[Dr. James Rustles]

That's a miserable medium, Jelly. What's a kill move that can't kill reliably? From the other point of view, what's the point of having no staling on combo moves if we don't* want them to launch?

 

[Coonce]

The point is to force a person to be dynamic rather than force a way into the same move over and over for a bread and butter combo. Which actually is a flaw in some fighting games where people just rely on the same thing over and over.

It kinda fails with the tilts linking into themselves in Brawl and Smash 4 but overall it does help balance the game a bit.

I still feel that the moves themselves should encourage the player to be dynamic, rather than forcing them to be. If a player is spamming a single move, there's something wrong with that move or the rest of their moves. As for combos, most fighting games you have your BnB's. Smash does too, but Smash is different. You have damage percent, DI, weights, and fall speed all working against a consistent BnB. Whereas in other fighting games, if you get that confirm, you get that combo.

And as mentioned by some other people here, staling knockback is a real problem for kill moves and ultimately limit the viability of a lot of characters. I don't mind staling damage too much. It's the knockback I have the biggest problem with.

 

[Hong]

Another problem with stale moves though is that it forces you to sit on your reliable KO move, which in itself removes the variety it tries to create. Some characters with limited KO moves suck because of this, especially a character like Samus who relies on her back air for damage buildup.

It was just an example, I'm not going to pretend that's the only thing wrong with Samus. The point still stands: she lacks KO moves and what little she has is also her reliable damage buildup, so stale moves work against her. Sonic and Pit would have been a better example I suppose.

I'd say that's more a problem specific to certain characters. There are a lot of characters that never had really applicable kill moves against competent players. This time, they seem to acknowledge this. Pit has the Upperdash Arm, Samus has buffed vertical launch power on Screw Attack, Kirby's up throw is not quite where it was in 64 but at least decent. On the same vein, moves that probably had no business being kill moves have been redefined into damage builders with high damage, low recovery, but lower launch compared to past entries. I for one look forward to seeing how Sheik fares with the changes to her fair.

To go back to your first point, having a few defined kill moves is perfectly okay, so long as there are many ways to lead into it. Insert generic quote about how it's not the destination, but the journey itself. Every Falcon combo that ends with a knee is a work of art in motion. Sometimes, in order to justify having a really good kill move, it has to have conditions to satisfy that prevent it from being too viable for other purposes.

 

[SKM_NeoN]

I agree with your points, character design was a bigger problem than the mechanic itself, and Smash 4 looks like it is balancing around hit decay a lot better. I don't think I'll ever prefer it over the first two game's version of stale move negation, but I can accept it if it's implemented properly.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I still feel that the moves themselves should encourage the player to be dynamic, rather than forcing them to be. If a player is spamming a single move, there's something wrong with that move or the rest of their moves. As for combos, most fighting games you have your BnB's. Smash does too, but Smash is different. You have damage percent, DI, weights, and fall speed all working against a consistent BnB. Whereas in other fighting games, if you get that confirm, you get that combo.

And as mentioned by some other people here, staling knockback is a real problem for kill moves and ultimately limit the viability of a lot of characters. I don't mind staling damage too much. It's the knockback I have the biggest problem with.

Maybe, but as it was in older, it really didn't encourage this.

There is some depth to it was well so the mechanic itself is actually pretty good at least at what it does.

 

[Tristan_win]

Brawl move decay or staling is actually my favorite mechanic in smash next to wave dashing. For me it added a very deep level of depth and made me enjoy the game a lot more then I ever expected. I'm glad to hear more reports that it's confirmed to be back.

 

[Kevandre]

The point is to force a person to be dynamic rather than force a way into the same move over and over for a bread and butter combo. Which actually is a flaw in some fighting games where people just rely on the same thing over and over.

It kinda fails with the tilts linking into themselves in Brawl and Smash 4 but overall it does help balance the game a bit.

Spoiler

The exact reasons why I like stale move negation. Being cheap is BS. It got to the point where my friends and I outright banned those characters for those games