The New Smash Switch Mechanic

[Crystanium]

Hard to predict, i could see final smashes being integrated into a meter system for all characters that fill up throughout the match but i hope this isn't the case..

I do want to see gliding back though, dunno why they decided it was unfair really. Maybe with a fuel system like ROB's Up B so you can't fly forever and stall on some stages.

I've brought up Final Smash being a mechanic to my brother, and he's with you on it. I have to agree as well. It would be a bad idea. I also miss gliding.

I can see the rage mechanic being set to a single button so that rage can be activated after a number of hits, perhaps around 150% just to be consistent with how Sm4sh is. It'd pretty much be how it is now, except the rage would run out once the meter was depleted. I don't like rage as it is now because it does affect the way one combos and because it's so janky.

Someone somewhere on Smashboards mentioned before this idea where when you're hanging on the ledge, you can grab your opponent if he/she is standing close to the ledge. It'd be an interesting idea to pull your opponent off-stage while you return. I would give credit to whoever made up this idea, but I don't know where that person is or what his/her name is.

 

[WiFi]

I've brought up Final Smash being a mechanic to my brother, and he's with you on it. I have to agree as well. It would be a bad idea. I also miss gliding.

I can see the rage mechanic being set to a single button so that rage can be activated after a number of hits, perhaps around 150% just to be consistent with how Sm4sh is. It'd pretty much be how it is now, except the rage would run out once the meter was depleted. I don't like rage as it is now because it does affect the way one combos and because it's so janky.

Someone somewhere on Smashboards mentioned before this idea where when you're hanging on the ledge, you can grab your opponent if he/she is standing close to the ledge. It'd be an interesting idea to pull your opponent off-stage while you return. I would give credit to whoever made up this idea, but I don't know where that person is or what his/her name is.

Grabbing people off the ledge sounds interesting in theory, but it would hugely benefit characters that can edgeguard and ledgecamp well, such as Sheik or Villager.

 

[CannonStreak]

How about something called Super Smash Attacks? Here is how they would work? Basically, they are Smash Attacks, but are much faster and stronger for a limited time. The fighter has a second percentage bar, which goes from a high number to zero every time you string of combos to someone or attack multiple foes at once. When not attacking anyone, the second percentage bar may slowly climb back to its original number. Once the second percentage bar reaches zero, the fighter gets a fiery aura different from a Smash Ball aura, and their smash attacks become stronger and faster for a limited time, which could potentially turn the tide against others if used right. What do you all think of this idea?

 

[WiFi]

How about something called Super Smash Attacks? Here is how they would work? Basically, they are Smash Attacks, but are much faster and stronger for a limited time. The fighter has a second percentage bar, which goes from a high number to zero every time you string of combos to someone or attack multiple foes at once. When not attacking anyone, the second percentage bar may slowly climb back to its original number. Once the second percentage bar reaches zero, the fighter gets a fiery aura different from a Smash Ball aura, and their smash attacks become stronger and faster for a limited time, which could potentially turn the tide against others if used right. What do you all think of this idea?

Fantastic idea, but it sounds like you are describing some variation of the meter system that other fighting games have.

 

[CannonStreak]

Fantastic idea, but it sounds like you are describing some variation of the meter system that other fighting games have.

If you want, I can try to find a better idea to implement into this idea.

 

[WiFi]

Just read it a bit closer this time, and it seems a little complex for newcomers. Maybe either dumb it down a bit or just make it a feature of one character.

 

[CannonStreak]

Then how is this? Instead. To activate Super Smash Attacks, you must land a good number of fully charged regular Smash Attacks on opponents, say seven or eight. They have to land on the opponent, and you can miss once, but if you miss two or three times, you have to start over. Once you have landed that number of fully charged Smash Attacks, you will get the fiery aura that tells you you have the Super Smash Attacks, but only for a limited time.

Is that better?

 

[Jamisinon]

I could see a middle ground between rage and smash balls. At maybe 100% or 150% dmg type deal, characters could get something the equivalent of super rage, sparking (DBFZ), or a form of aura like lucario has. I envision a slight red aura surrounding each character and it could be something as simple as 1.1X dmg modifier, maybe increased knockback. Perhaps it could be a combination of dmg received and dmg dealt that stock. I'm not a fan of rage as it favors heavier characters who can benefit from it more. Maybe it could even replace rage as a new mechanic that rewards dmg dealt instead of just survivabilty.

I can't see a new ability like side special being added just bc there aren't buttons for it. Maybe separate buttons for regular shield and light shield. Have them on separate triggers.
More like any shield/dodge/roll change would be reverting to a Melee/Brawl type instead of something new. But I could see a Melee-like air dodge that you can act out of but can only be performed once in the air to be good. It could give a lot more potential for recovery mixups. I personally think sm4sh air dodges have too little end lag and can be spammed with little risk.

They could bring back some old tech like gliding or L-canceling.

This is my last thought and I think it's a super long shot but they could have one of the triggers switch between modes a character might have. It could be something just for some characters. It could change the special move. For example maybe Toon Link could toggle between Arrows and Fire Arrows. Fire Arrows could do more dmg but have less knockback or just some sort of tradeoff where they are better in one way, inferior in another. Every character could have it and it could just change 1 special move. It would allow more variety and could incorporate a little bit of the custom moves they implemented in sm4sh that didn't really pan out ideally.

 

[Crystanium]

People associate smash attacks with charging attacks. What if there were tilts and aerials that could be charged?

 

[CannonStreak]

People associate smash attacks with charging attacks. What if there were tilts and aerials that could be charged?

Funny you should say that. I was thinking of posting that idea here. Maybe there should be a charge button to charge up Smash Attacks as well as tilts and aerials.

 

[Uffe]

People associate smash attacks with charging attacks. What if there were tilts and aerials that could be charged?

Funny you should say that. I was thinking of posting that idea here. Maybe there should be a charge button to charge up Smash Attacks as well as tilts and aerials.

I'd be all for the aerial charges, especially if it looked like how it does in that video posted by Crystanium. It would definitely bring something fresh to the table. As for charged tilts, I'm not a fan.

 

[CannonStreak]

I'd be all for the aerial charges, especially if it looked like how it does in that video posted by Crystanium. It would definitely bring something fresh to the table. As for charged tilts, I'm not a fan.

I guess I understand where you are coming from. Chargeable Air attacks would be cool. How about chargable dash attacks, too, which are charged while running?

 

[FunAtParties]

People associate smash attacks with charging attacks. What if there were tilts and aerials that could be charged?

PM does this with Wario's Ftilt and Fthrow iirc. It's not a bad idea, and it can be a nice compromise for certain dairs that were changed to stall-then-fall attacks after formerly being still or lingering attacks. Like Bowser's dair, for example, makes a lot of sense to do this with.

My only issue is, I would feel like this needs to be a thing either 1) available to a select few characters across or 2) available to everyone over all of their attacks, or else the game design feels needlessly confusing for beginners to understand the basic attacks.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Grabbing people off the ledge sounds interesting in theory, but it would hugely benefit characters that can edgeguard and ledgecamp well, such as Sheik or Villager.

Unfortunately, grabbing fighters off ledges would not work, due to the intangible frames that the fighters will receive while climbing back up onto the stage. You'd have to wait until the intangible frames have passed before you can do any grabbing.

 

[Uffe]

I guess I understand where you are coming from. Chargeable Air attacks would be cool. How about chargable dash attacks, too, which are charged while running?

I wouldn't charge anything else if it were up to me. I think chargeable aerials looks really interesting, though. I could see it being used as a delay option if it were like how that guy did it with Melee.

 

[CannonStreak]

I wouldn't charge anything else if it were up to me. I think chargeable aerials looks really interesting, though. I could see it being used as a delay option if it were like how that guy did it with Melee.

Very well. I would like to see a chargeable dash attack, but aside from that and aerials, I probably wouldn't make anything else chargeable. I wouldn't mind if those other things were chargeable, though.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Yep. I can't think of any other mechanics to add to the game though...

Smash4 introduced some cool techs, like Ledge Trumping and the ability to bounce opponents off of the stage with Meteor Smash attacks. Smash4 retained some Brawl mechanics like the ability to air dodge out of the launch animation, but I think what really sets Smash4 apart is what it removed. Random Tripping while walking, Chain grabs, and ledge attacks being slower at high-percents were all removed in Smash4, mostly with positive response. However, I still have a few grievances with the game that I hope are addressed in Sma5h.

So, Let's REMOVE a couple nuisances present in Sm4sh like "Random Tripping caused by Tilts". This was surprisingly still widespread across the movesets of character's in Sm4sh. Many character's down-tilts have a random chance of tripping their opponents. I don't mind the tripping caused by Diddy's Bananas, and wouldn't mind if character's had dash attacks that induced tripping 100% of the time. Just so long as the move is clearly telegraphed, and not a 2 frame tilt that can be spammed safely.

Also, when a character is launched, they should ALWAYS be able to tech on the ground https://youtu.be/4i6-mldGJog?t=12
Basically, in Smash4, you can randomly get an "Untechable Spin Animation", which prevents you from teching on the ground, as the name would imply. I don't know why the devs decided to add this to Smash4. On the bright side, it only happens once you're over 100%.
Most people don't even notice this, but there's a chance that you experienced it if you missed a seemingly easy ground tech.
Even worse, because it's impossible to tech, it leaves you open to follow up attacks from your opponent.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, now that those two big flaws have been rectified, let's implement NEW mechanics.

Landing Dodges: Basically, I think it would be cool if players could tech on the ground, even if they haven't been launched and sent tumbling towards the stage.
So, if a player jumps, they can land on the stage into a forward-roll, a back-roll, or a spot-dodge. The player cannot do this if they land while performing an attack.
To perform a Landing Dodge, just air dodge while falling into the ground and press the direction you want to tech in. These landing dodges will last longer and leave the player vulnerable longer after completion.

C-Stick Shield Angling and New Shield Mechanics: One of the more unique aspects of the smash series is how shields shrink as they are hit. In Melee, shields were nearly unbreakable, but regrew slowly leaving player's hurtboxes exposed if hit too much. So, player's had to manually move their shields with the stick to cover their weak points. However, this was very finnicky to control, as tilting the stick too fast would cause the player to initiate a roll.
This finnicky control scheme is probably why shield poking is nearly non-existant in Smash4, for some reason in Smash4, smaller shields can still defend a largely exposed player. This might be because shields actually defend a bigger area than they visually appear to defend.

Well I think it would be cool if, in Sma5h, shields only covered the front and center of player's bodies by default, (leaving their back, top and bottom exposed,) and players had to use the second stick to move the shield around their character's body.
If an opponents hitbox makes contact with the shield, the shield will shrink at a rate somewhere between Smash4 and Melee, and the player's will slide away from eachother, but the attack won't be able to poke the player's hurtbox. To poke the player's hurtbox, the attack must NOT make contact with the shield before making contact with the player's hurtbox. Once shields are smaller than a certain percentage of their full size, they stop defending. Shield Breaking Dizziness is removed, players will just get hit when they are out of shield.

A smaller, easier to move, shield would give Sma5h high/low mixups like in other fighting games.
Hopefully all character's will get diagonal tilts adjusted so that high-diagonal-side-tilts can be reacted to easier.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Putting fighters in hitstun for a longer duration before they can air dodge definitely helped Bowser's Bowser Bomb. In Brawl, fighters can quickly execute an air dodge during the hitstun period, which can cause the second hit of Bowser's Bowser Bomb to always miss its mark.

 

[GoldTrainRider]

I would like a meter that when filled up, gives you a final smash. Maybe they'd have to nerf or tweak the final smashes to make it balanced, though.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

I would like a meter that when filled up, gives you a final smash. Maybe they'd have to nerf or tweak the final smashes to make it balanced, though.

A Final Smash meter would seem interesting at first. However, it probably wouldn't work out too well in the long run, especially since only one Smash Ball can appear at a time.

 

[GoldTrainRider]

Smash4 introduced some cool techs, like Ledge Trumping and the ability to bounce opponents off of the stage with Meteor Smash attacks. Smash4 retained some Brawl mechanics like the ability to air dodge out of the launch animation, but I think what really sets Smash4 apart is what it removed. Random Tripping while walking, Chain grabs, and ledge attacks being slower at high-percents were all removed in Smash4, mostly with positive response. However, I still have a few grievances with the game that I hope are addressed in Sma5h.

So, Let's REMOVE a couple nuisances present in Sm4sh like "Random Tripping caused by Tilts". This was surprisingly still widespread across the movesets of character's in Sm4sh. Many character's down-tilts have a random chance of tripping their opponents. I don't mind the tripping caused by Diddy's Bananas, and wouldn't mind if character's had dash attacks that induced tripping 100% of the time. Just so long as the move is clearly telegraphed, and not a 2 frame tilt that can be spammed safely.

Also, when a character is launched, they should ALWAYS be able to tech on the ground https://youtu.be/4i6-mldGJog?t=12
Basically, in Smash4, you can randomly get an "Untechable Spin Animation", which prevents you from teching on the ground, as the name would imply. I don't know why the devs decided to add this to Smash4. On the bright side, it only happens once you're over 100%.
Most people don't even notice this, but there's a chance that you experienced it if you missed a seemingly easy ground tech.
Even worse, because it's impossible to tech, it leaves you open to follow up attacks from your opponent.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, now that those two big flaws have been rectified, let's implement NEW mechanics.

Landing Dodges: Basically, I think it would be cool if players could tech on the ground, even if they haven't been launched and sent tumbling towards the stage.
So, if a player jumps, they can land on the stage into a forward-roll, a back-roll, or a spot-dodge. The player cannot do this if they land while performing an attack.
To perform a Landing Dodge, just air dodge while falling into the ground and press the direction you want to tech in. These landing dodges will last longer and leave the player vulnerable longer after completion.

C-Stick Shield Angling and New Shield Mechanics: One of the more unique aspects of the smash series is how shields shrink as they are hit. In Melee, shields were nearly unbreakable, but regrew slowly leaving player's hurtboxes exposed if hit too much. So, player's had to manually move their shields with the stick to cover their weak points. However, this was very finnicky to control, as tilting the stick too fast would cause the player to initiate a roll.
This finnicky control scheme is probably why shield poking is nearly non-existant in Smash4, for some reason in Smash4, smaller shields can still defend a largely exposed player. This might be because shields actually defend a bigger area than they visually appear to defend.

Well I think it would be cool if, in Sma5h, shields only covered the front and center of player's bodies by default, (leaving their back, top and bottom exposed,) and players had to use the second stick to move the shield around their character's body.
If an opponents hitbox makes contact with the shield, the shield will shrink at a rate somewhere between Smash4 and Melee, and the player's will slide away from eachother, but the attack won't be able to poke the player's hurtbox. To poke the player's hurtbox, the attack must NOT make contact with the shield before making contact with the player's hurtbox. Once shields are smaller than a certain percentage of their full size, they stop defending. Shield Breaking Dizziness is removed, players will just get hit when they are out of shield.

A smaller, easier to move, shield would give Sma5h high/low mixups like in other fighting games.
Hopefully all character's will get diagonal tilts adjusted so that high-diagonal-side-tilts can be reacted to easier.

I;d like the shields we have now. Good ideas though.

 

[Blackwolf666]

I think my ideas would just p*** people off. Well here we go... a "wet surface mechanic" the ground, edge and walls would be affected for a couple seconds by any form of liquid for example Mario's FLUDD would make the ground slippery causing players to slide this would also affect the walls and edge when someone attempts wall jumps or cling to them they'll slip and fall to their deaths instead. Inkling ink however would cause players to move slower and take 1% damage every second they're on it.

Edit: for ledge grabs it'd take a few seconds for them to slip.

 

[Crystanium]

PM does this with Wario's Ftilt and Fthrow iirc. It's not a bad idea, and it can be a nice compromise for certain dairs that were changed to stall-then-fall attacks after formerly being still or lingering attacks. Like Bowser's dair, for example, makes a lot of sense to do this with.

My only issue is, I would feel like this needs to be a thing either 1) available to a select few characters across or 2) available to everyone over all of their attacks, or else the game design feels needlessly confusing for beginners to understand the basic attacks.

I imagine a chargeable aerial requires one to hold the A button. I don't see how that would be confusing.

 

[FunAtParties]

I imagine a chargeable aerial requires one to hold the A button. I don't see how that would be confusing.

If it's exclusive to a handful of characters and not straight up explained, it'll be confusing.

 

[Kooj Kooj]

I feel like the easiest way to think of new ideas with this is to simply think of the existing mechanics and find some way to adapt them that might be interesting. In this way, you can very easily come up with hundreds of new concepts, a large amount of which are probably garbage. But, it's at least interesting to conceptualize things.

For example, let's take rolling. How can you adapt rolling to look new? Well... of the top of my head:
- Hold your shield button to continue a roll with interchangeable distances; to balance, add an ending lag proportionate to the distance of the roll.
- Rolls lose invincibility but do damage to players rolled through.
- Rolling counters, on a timer. Rolls are limited based on how many you've done and refresh over time.
- Rolls trip opponents who you pass through, but make you vulnerable while in that animation.
- Rolling grants armor at the end of the animation, but no longer grants invincibility while moving.
- etc.

Not that I'm saying any of these ideas are honestly good, just random thoughts.

Personally? What I'd like to see is a new type of move introduced as a shield stab. If people remember, when Sm4sh first came out, the back foot of 's Fair would actually pierce shields, similar to how a grab does. It simply assumed the shield wasn't there. To me, putting these kind of moves in the game (especially as aerials) has some interesting gameplay and mindgame elements. I'm sure it could be balanced around as well, like weird hitboxes (reverse fair was hilarious tho), high ending lag (easily punished for not using it appropriately,) maybe free-fall if you miss it as an aerial... all kindsa stuff that people more creative than me could come up with.

 

[WiFi]

I think that characters should have their own dedicated diagonal attack, instead of having diagonal F-tilts. It would make combos a lot easier and I'm bringing my point back from way before of having diagonal specials as well.

Edit: To the person commenting above me, I want shield stabs too, just because shielding is absolutely overpowered in Smash 4. I want a move other than a grab that can break shields, and don't make a shield breaker exclusive to Marth and Lucina. Other characters should have shield stabs.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

I'll never really get why some fighters deal more damage if they angle their f-tilts or f-smashes higher. If anything, the damage output for the f-tilt and f-smash should remain consistent, regardless of how it's angled. Little Mac would be an exception though, since his up-angled f-smash is meant to deal vertical knockback, while the low-angled f-smash deals greater damage, but sacrifices knockback strength as a drawback.

 

[KEYLIME SSB]

Maybe smash aerials for some characters could be cool, Robin already introduced it in a basic form

For an example Mario would keep his current tornado Dair as usual, but if you did a smash Dair you would instead do a ground pound

Not for all aerials of course but could have cool applications

you have just described Rivals of Aether. The main issue with Smash 5 is that it’s for the Switch, a very casual console, and complex game mechanics like directional and smash aerials convolute casual gameplay to a confusing and unplayable level.

 

[WiFi]

Diagonal tilts wouldn't make things too complicated. It isn't too hard to angle the L-stick.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Diagonal tilts wouldn't make things too complicated. It isn't too hard to angle the L-stick.

But being required to angle the left Control Stick to increase the damage output of an f-tilt just doesn't make much sense. Like I said on the last post, the f-tilt's damage output should remain consistent, regardless of how it's angled.

 

[WiFi]

But being required to angle the left Control Stick to increase the damage output of an f-tilt just doesn't make much sense. Like I said on the last post, the f-tilt's damage output should remain consistent, regardless of how it's angled.

I wasn't talking about that, I'm talking about Diagonal moves being their own dedicated move, instead of being an angled F-tilt.

 

[Lukingordex]

final smash meter would ruin the competitive aspect of the game, unless it's possible to turn it off.

I'm really hoping custom moves get cut, i don't really want to be involved in another "war" against people who support those for competitive play.

I'd also like the removal of rage. Not only it's excessive, but it also often works against it's purpose, specially when your opponent gets the stock first and you now struggle to get it.

 

[PsychoJosh]

Things I would add:

Underwater Combat - The swimming mechanic that's been in the game since Brawl seems totally pointless. You can't fight wihle you're swimming in water, you can only tread around and drown easily if you're at high percentage. What I propose is that characters in water get infinite jumps (AKA the ability to swim, 2D Mario style), but their movements are much slower and it's harder to fight underwater.

Light Attack button - You no longer need to perform tilts using the same button as you use for Smashes, as pressing any direction + Light Attack (Y on the Gamecube controller) will perform a tilt for you. This opens up the possibility for...

Combos - Performing sequences of hits with the light attack and heavy attack button will act as a true combo, and a "hit counter" will appear over your character portrait. Command normals could also be performed with the same inputs you previously used for tilts, which could be multi-hitting attacks on their own, or they could be armored attacks.

Super Meter - Another idea is to give EVERYONE the same thing that Cloud has with his limit break, which is, a meter that gradually fills up as characters attack/get hit. When the meter is full, they will be able to spend it to do an enhanced/EX special attack, and can decide to spend it by pressing a direction + A and B at the same time.

Final Smashes - Can only be activated if a character has high percentage and has full super meter. These aren't as devastating as previous Final Smashes but instead can be used to give the player an advantage that they are able to miss with if they aren't careful.

 

[FunAtParties]

Things I would add:

Underwater Combat - The swimming mechanic that's been in the game since Brawl seems totally pointless. You can't fight wihle you're swimming in water, you can only tread around and drown easily if you're at high percentage. What I propose is that characters in water get infinite jumps (AKA the ability to swim, 2D Mario style), but their movements are much slower and it's harder to fight underwater.

Light Attack button - You no longer need to perform tilts using the same button as you use for Smashes, as pressing any direction + Light Attack (Y on the Gamecube controller) will perform a tilt for you. This opens up the possibility for...

Combos - Performing sequences of hits with the light attack and heavy attack button will act as a true combo, and a "hit counter" will appear over your character portrait. Command normals could also be performed with the same inputs you previously used for tilts, which could be multi-hitting attacks on their own, or they could be armored attacks.

Super Meter - Another idea is to give EVERYONE the same thing that Cloud has with his limit break, which is, a meter that gradually fills up as characters attack/get hit. When the meter is full, they will be able to spend it to do an enhanced/EX special attack, and can decide to spend it by pressing a direction + A and B at the same time.

Final Smashes - Can only be activated if a character has high percentage and has full super meter. These aren't as devastating as previous Final Smashes but instead can be used to give the player an advantage that they are able to miss with if they aren't careful.

I don't want the game becoming more like traditional fighters and light attacks do just that. There's nothing wrong with tilts imo. Your light attacks to heavy attacks combos idea just furthers this. Smash combos may not always be creative, but at least they're more creative than that.

Underwater combat sounds neat, water is definitely a wasted idea so far in Smash.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

I wasn't talking about that, I'm talking about Diagonal moves being their own dedicated move, instead of being an angled F-tilt.

Little Mac does have a start with his angled f-smashes having different properties.

 

[WiFi]

Little Mac does have a start with his angled f-smashes having different properties.

That's what I meant. Except for instead of Smashes, this would apply to F-tilt.

 

[G-Unit]

We can't use Final Smashes unless Smash Balls are turned on. What do we do? Taunt when your opponent's KO'ed. Rakusyo.