The real reason why Smash Brothers games are competitive.

[Salmon]

A competitive Smash game doesn't necessarily need AT's to foster a competitive community. The game just needs to let one person be better than the other person they are sitting across from.

There's my prefix, but before I continue I want to state that I, as a relatively new Smash 4 player and an old melee player. Love both of these games, I feel the need to state this because immediately I want to address that I am not going to; or even try to compare Smash 4 to Melee.

Melee is a more competitive game. Hands down. It's faster, its harder to play and there are more things to think about and attempt to do while playing.

BUT

Smash 4 is, and can be a competitive game too, in it's own right. It's different enough that Melee is not just an "outright better" version of it. I feel that there is this hivemind-esque idea floating around where "one game is the only game." Which I personally believe needs to stop. It's a toxic idea and it drives people away from joining the community of Smash games in general. I want to leave that there, I feel like the #oneunit debate has been beaten dead so I want to now turn to my main point that people keep forgetting.

In BOTH Sm4sh and Melee, you can body somebody with Ganondorf like a complete baller and walk away enjoying the win.

You: "Salmon? What the hell does that have to do with anything you said before? Ganon? What are you on about m8?"

Me: "Well Audience! In case anyone hasn't noticed or they have forgotten, both games allow you to pick a character then try to deplete the lives of the other guy in the game by crushing their beliefs, dreams, values and ideologies with sick, maximum disrespect Ganon up-tilts."

What I mean by that is, Smash 4 allows you to 1v1 another person on competitive stages and because Smash 4 is slower, has less AT's and I dare say generally easier. People believe that "nup nope not competitive move over Zero I wanna see Melee." Thats SO wrong! Smash 4 is a fighting game where hitting the other opponent, dodging their attacks, punishing their mistakes and hopefully knocking them off the stage gets you a big fat W. Not being able to Wavedash and DACUS doesn't kill the game, it just makes it different from Melee and...

At the end of the day, you can still be better than the other person you are siting across from.

Thoughts? Idea's? Disagree? Agree?
I'm not looking to get people salty just finally tipping my 2 cents into the discussion.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I never quite understand what "more competitive" means on what measurable value people look for.

Still Smash 4 is good and has value.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

competitive has become synonymous with viewer count these days.

 

[Salmon]

Yeah I feel that because the word competitive has gained a scale over time. Not being higher than another game wrongly means that it isn't competitive at all.

Sm4sh is a fighting game after all, and you can battle your friends hopefully to win. In Cooking Mama for example you don't. So I can understand if people say Cooking Mama isn't competitive


Inb4 I insulted underground cooking mama competitive community

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

I was just confused since I wasn't sure where that was from. By views? Sure but nailing down objective competitive value is hard when it questions what goals and attributes it would go out and share.

I also question what people would look for in ATs when to be frank, the games dash mechanics, pivots and customs opens up a lot that haven't been fully explored yet.

On top of that, people are really bad at trying to edgeguard or just aren't sure what to do yet. I feel like a lot of the brawl side of players are used to an MK like environment where he was ungimpable or project M 3.02 which had that but worse.

Still it would be interesting to see how this develops.

 

[Salmon]

I'm looking forward to seeing if any Smash 4 AT's become further fleshed out. It's early days and something like that takes time.

I remember when wave dashing was discovered back in the day and a significant majority of the community initially (Keyword here being initially) thought the tech was rather useless and a flashy gimmick. Which just solidifies the fact development takes time.

 

[thehard]

Melee is a more competitive game. Hands down. It's faster, its harder to play and there are more things to think about and attempt to do while playing.

None of these points prove Melee is more competitive than Smash 4.

Agree with everything else. This should all be common knowledge. I'm getting sick of hearing X game is anti-competitive purely because someone doesn't like it. I'm sick of people equating advanced techs (exploits) with competitive play, I'm sick of slower gameplay being synonymous with worse gameplay, and I'm sick of the lack of appreciation for anything that isn't crazy rushdown combos.

I just hope to god most of the people who keep pushing that agenda are kids.

 

[Nobie]

When it comes to "what is more competitive," I think people tend to start from the wrong end of the question. Rather than asking, "how many difficult things are there for a person to do in competition," the question should be, "What skills is this game testing in a competitive environment?"

In a recent episode of UltraChen, fighting game commentators Ultra David and James Chen talked about why they find both Melee and Smash 4 fun to watch. They associated Melee with something like Marvel, which is a momentum-based game. Smash 4's appeal is that it's more of a positional game with greater emphasis on neutral. I think it's a great way to explain the differences without saying one game is better than the other, but I also know that it goes against a lot of the arguments that have built up over the years within the community as to why Melee is the greatest.

I've heard the argument before that Melee is more competitive than other games for a number of reasons. It has this added technical layer. It has a more movement options/advanced techniques. It has a better follow-up/combo system when someone wins the neutral game. While this is not to say Melee isn't competitive or a challenging, deep game, this concept also assumes that these elements simply layer on top of each other, and that all of that technical/mechanical aspect simply adds to the strategic aspect of the game rather than affecting it profoundly such that a game with and without those elements would be testing two somewhat different skill sets.

If Melee were twice as fast or twice as slow, we wouldn't just have the same game that we do now, only with the speed adjusted. It would substantially impact how the game is played and viewed.

Similarly, adding that extensive combo game on top of the neutral game doesn't simply make it a 'better neutral game" because of the reward you get on it, it simply changes what is being valued. While it can be argued that the neutral in Melee is deeper due to all of those extra techniques, it doesn't change the fact that one requires you to win the neutral less often than the other. Consistency in neutral then becomes a more valued skill.

In other words, just because fencing requires you to back off when you get a hit doesn't mean it's less competitive than boxing. Just because in boxing you can't use your legs or hit someone while they're down doesn't means it's less competitive than MMA.

 

[Caryslan]

Something I think that holds back Smash 4's potental is TOs that keep playing it with the same basic ruleset that we've had since Melee.

In other words, they aren't taking advantage of the unique things Smash 4 brings to the table. 3 on 3 along with 4 on 4 team matches would be insane to watch, and I think quite fun. Custom movesets are another aspect of the game that don't get taken advantage of in tournaments. It could add some sense of depth and unpredictability to the matchups and make counterpicking more intresting.

Rather then having a player think "It's Mega Man, as long as I can handle his Metal Blades, Crash Bombs, and Leaf Shield, I have this match), you know have that player wondering what Specials Mega Man will bring into the match. Will this one have Hyper Bombs? Ice Slasher? Beat? The ability to change specials is in my opinion, something that will break the metagame of Smash 4 wide open.

Now, players can't just train themselves to counter a single version of a character, now they have to always take some guesses as to what the opponent might be using. This is also not even getting into the fact that characters like Ganondorf are vastly improved with their custom specials.

More to the point of the topic, I have to say this much. I don't know how or when technical aspects of a game became the sole idea that alone decides how much depth a game has.

And while I'm not going to claim to be an expert on the topic, I will say this.

Smash 4 has a 50+ character roster with hundreds of potential matchups. Virtually every character on the roster is diverse, with their own playstyles, mechanics, and abilities. If we were to add in customs at Tournaments, then the number of potential matchups would skyrocket. My point is this. I understand Smash 4 does not have things like Wavedashing, but it does have a large roster, much of which has yet to truly be played and understood.

Going by the roster size alone, how can anyone say this game lacks depth? If everyone played like Mario or we had a single character dominate like Meta Knight in Brawl, then I might see their point.

But the Top 8 had only two Diddy players. Pac-Man, Duck Hunt Dog, Little Mac,Olimar, and Captain Falcon were all top-8 characters.

Something people tend to forget is that Melee's metagame was not built in a day, a month, or even a year. It took many years to develop that metagame to what it is now. None of us have any real idea how Smash 4's metagame will develop. Maybe a bunch of advanced techs will be discovered, maybe we'll have a metagame where numerous characters have a chance and liven up matches, or maybe we'll go the route of Brawl and have a single dominant character emerge.

Nobody knows for sure, and this is why I find it funny that certain parts of the Smash community bash Smash 4 for having no depth. The game is only two months old! It needs at least a year before anyone can truly make that call. But here's the other thing to consider, people need to stop comparing Smash 4's gameplay and depth by the standards of Melee and other previous games.

Smash 4 is its own entity, and needs to be judged on its own merits. The thought also needs to be considered that its depth might not be the same as 64, Melee, Brawl or Project M. And that's not a bad thing!

 

[Jeronado]

I've never understood the Smash Community's idea that a game could be "more" or "less" competitive, how do you even measure "competitive-ness". I've always seen competitive-ness as being a pretty black and white thing. A game either is competitively viable or it isn't. If you can compete against others and if the person who plays better wins the majority of the time, then the game is competitive.

No amount of ATs can make a game more competitive than another, all that does is add depth and raise the skill ceiling.

 

[Raijinken]

I agree with the OP. The game is, by definition, competitive. And it's very fun, and personally, since it's easier to play, I can put less time into practicing techniques, and more time into learning my characters and opponents and stages.

All the games are different, and fun in their own ways. Just because cheese pizza lacks pepperonis doesn't make it terrible, it makes it the pizza of choice for a lot of people, and pizza is good. Replace Pizza with Smash, cheese with some and Pepperoni with ATs, and there you have it.

 

[Laserbeamed]

When it comes to "what is more competitive," I think people tend to start from the wrong end of the question. Rather than asking, "how many difficult things are there for a person to do in competition," the question should be, "What skills is this game testing in a competitive environment?"

In a recent episode of UltraChen, fighting game commentators Ultra David and James Chen talked about why they find both Melee and Smash 4 fun to watch. They associated Melee with something like Marvel, which is a momentum-based game. Smash 4's appeal is that it's more of a positional game with greater emphasis on neutral. I think it's a great way to explain the differences without saying one game is better than the other, but I also know that it goes against a lot of the arguments that have built up over the years within the community as to why Melee is the greatest.

I've heard the argument before that Melee is more competitive than other games for a number of reasons. It has this added technical layer. It has a more movement options/advanced techniques. It has a better follow-up/combo system when someone wins the neutral game. While this is not to say Melee isn't competitive or a challenging, deep game, this concept also assumes that these elements simply layer on top of each other, and that all of that technical/mechanical aspect simply adds to the strategic aspect of the game rather than affecting it profoundly such that a game with and without those elements would be testing two somewhat different skill sets.

If Melee were twice as fast or twice as slow, we wouldn't just have the same game that we do now, only with the speed adjusted. It would substantially impact how the game is played and viewed.

Similarly, adding that extensive combo game on top of the neutral game doesn't simply make it a 'better neutral game" because of the reward you get on it, it simply changes what is being valued. While it can be argued that the neutral in Melee is deeper due to all of those extra techniques, it doesn't change the fact that one requires you to win the neutral less often than the other. Consistency in neutral then becomes a more valued skill.

In other words, just because fencing requires you to back off when you get a hit doesn't mean it's less competitive than boxing. Just because in boxing you can't use your legs or hit someone while they're down doesn't means it's less competitive than MMA.

 

[PCHU]

I was just confused since I wasn't sure where that was from. By views? Sure but nailing down objective competitive value is hard when it questions what goals and attributes it would go out and share.

I also question what people would look for in ATs when to be frank, the games dash mechanics, pivots and customs opens up a lot that haven't been fully explored yet.

On top of that, people are really bad at trying to edgeguard or just aren't sure what to do yet. I feel like a lot of the brawl side of players are used to an MK like environment where he was ungimpable or project M 3.02 which had that but worse.

Still it would be interesting to see how this develops.

Recoveries are really good in this game, and you can't just ledgehog someone anymore.
Coupled with the magnetic ledges, a lot of people are just turned off to the idea; the game is still really lenient despite the lowered invincibility system, and going out for the hit doesn't seem to do as much as it used to because people live for so long.
A lot of my gimp attempts have been stuffed since almost everything sends my opponents up and away, so I spend about 10 seconds walling them out only to have them come back easily.
Of course, there have been numerous success stories, but I won't deny that it's felt entirely pointless at times and actually frustrating vs people who hardly approach in the first place; it's almost like trying to kill a flea with your bare hands.

 

[Raijinken]

Recoveries are really good in this game, and you can't just ledgehog someone anymore.
Coupled with the magnetic ledges, a lot of people are just turned off to the idea; the game is still really lenient despite the lowered invincibility system, and going out for the hit doesn't seem to do as much as it used to because people live for so long.
A lot of my gimp attempts have been stuffed since almost everything sends my opponents up and away, so I spend about 10 seconds walling them out only to have them come back easily.
Of course, there have been numerous success stories, but I won't deny that it's felt entirely pointless at times and actually frustrating vs people who hardly approach in the first place; it's almost like trying to kill a flea with your bare hands.

There's a good reason almost the entire roster has a spike of some sort. It can be hard to do, but I've seen so many impressive spikes watching high-level edgeplay, that at least for me, the revised offstage is far more exciting than watching someone just roll or grab the ledge to nullify a recovery.

 

[PCHU]

There's a good reason almost the entire roster has a spike of some sort. It can be hard to do, but I've seen so many impressive spikes watching high-level edgeplay, that at least for me, the revised offstage is far more exciting than watching someone just roll or grab the ledge to nullify a recovery.

I guess it doesn't help that my (Dedede's) spike takes forever to come out and has some pretty stupid sourspots; I'm usually pretty spot-on with my stuff (I mean, I could hit Lucas's bair spike in Brawl most of the time), but I generally don't like to even try because it's so awkward and I almost always have a better, more reliable option.
The stages without an underside hurt me, too, since I can't even go for a stagespike.

I'd rather them make the invincibility system more harsh than outright give the ledge to people; originally, I thought that was the plan and I was pretty excited because, despite maining MK, I hated planking and what it was doing to the game, but after a few matches of just having the ledge stolen or easily taking it back, it got kinda old and took the fun out of making a smart recovery.
On paper, it seems like it'd be doing a lot of good, but in practice, even against good people, the benefits of staying onstage outweigh the risks of going offstage regardless of good recovery options, and some people just don't feel it's worth their time.

 

[Raijinken]

I guess it doesn't help that my (Dedede's) spike takes forever to come out and has some pretty stupid sourspots; I'm usually pretty spot-on with my stuff (I mean, I could hit Lucas's bair spike in Brawl most of the time), but I generally don't like to even try because it's so awkward and I almost always have a better, more reliable option.
The stages without an underside hurt me, too, since I can't even go for a stagespike.

I'd rather them make the invincibility system more harsh than outright give the ledge to people; originally, I thought that was the plan and I was pretty excited because, despite maining MK, I hated planking and what it was doing to the game, but after a few matches of just having the ledge stolen or easily taking it back, it got kinda old and took the fun out of making a smart recovery.
On paper, it seems like it'd be doing a lot of good, but in practice, even against good people, the benefits of staying onstage outweigh the risks of going offstage regardless of good recovery options, and some people just don't feel it's worth their time.

It's a matter of risk-reward, but especially with the revised invulnerability and the inability to edgehog, I think it's still more interesting than "He grabbed the edge before me, I am dead" scenarios. Of course, a lot of it depends on the character, but what I feel like it does is create an opportunity for a dynamic where before there really wasn't one.

 

[popsofctown]

The nebulous concept of competitiveness is pivotal to making a subjective game preference an objective superiority to another human being.

 

[Conda]

OP:

It's great that you've learned this and are writing about it here, but this is not really a discussion thread. You got your thoughts out which is great, but this is a discussion subforum and generally not the place to make new threads just to voice a thought. I'd recommend in the future writing a blog post or posting this kind of thing on reddit or in one of the more social/general subforums.