Pre-Release The Transition: New Mechanics, Re-works, Balance Changes Thread

[Iridium]

Aesthetically, :ultrobin now has a meter showing how many uses for his Levin Sword or tomes he has left. has a meter showing how much Limit Break has been achieved. has lost the ability to drift after using Draconic Ascent in the air, weakening his/her recovery. As for , perhaps his down throw appeared slower because he was also breaking the platform in the trailer, but you should change it when it is confirmed. Also, , from what I have heard, can spike with Daisy Bomber (we should wait until that is tested though). has lost the ability to shine stall consistently, as although one time does not hurt, he will fall quickly a second time (Larry Lurr stated this).

 

[Cutie Gwen]

Back, went on vacation for a few days.

For the first one: Marth is voiced in english, so why would they not voice Roy in English? It would be incredibly stupid for Nintendo to say, "We don't want Marth to be voiced in Japanese in English countries so he can be understood better" (or whatever there reasoning is) and then not have Roy be voiced in English.

However, I think I just saw Daisy's white dress alt and thought it was a wedding dress. I'll change that.

Probably not, because unless they increased bonus shield damage too, that would decrease the utility of moves like Shield Breaker.

Marth keeping his Japanese voice was because he didn't have an English voice other than the 1993 anime. Marth got one of his games localized here which is why people wanted him to get an English voice in 4. Roy however, still hasn't gotten his game released outside of Japan. Sure, he's got an English voice because of Heroes but his game is the deciding factor. It's also kind of dumb to put an English voice for Roy in a list of confirmed changes when it isn't confirmed and only speculated by you

 

[viewtifulduck82]

Aesthetically, :ultrobin now has a meter showing how many uses for his Levin Sword or tomes he has left. has a meter showing how much Limit Break has been achieved, and also has a meter showing how close he is to getting K.O. Punch. has lost the ability to drift after using Draconic Ascent in the air, weakening his/her recovery. As for , perhaps his down throw appeared slower because he was also breaking the platform in the trailer, but you should change it when it is confirmed. Also, , from what I have heard, can spike with Daisy Bomber (we should wait until that is tested though). has lost the ability to shine stall consistently, as although one time does not hurt, he will fall quickly a second time (Larry Lurr stated this).

Mac had that meter in s4.

 

[Iridium]

Mac had that meter in s4.

Sorry. I forgot. Cloud and Robin reminded me of him.

 

[Clefargle]

Nah, the top players who actually had 1 on 1 time with Nintendo reps corroborate the bug claim. Besides, outside of Nintendo there are companies that ship games with bugs that straight up crash the game so I'm not surprised a demo half a year from release has something like that.

Didn’t Sakurai joke a the invitational that he saw a few bugs during the matches? That means he saw enough that he plans on fixin

 

[Octorockandroll]

You missed that Pichu's dtilt trips the opponent. I almost did too, since the Zard he does that to is barsly in frame during the trailer.

Okay, the more I think about this the bigger a deal it seems to be. Being able to trip easily is huge in smash and while we don't know yet if this is only possible with a sourspot or whatever, if the entire dtilt can do it, that could potentially be enormous.

Imagine if Pichu could combo into the trip at low percents and then loop that. Good enough players could get opponents up to high percents in no time with that sort of thing and while that is kind of a pipe dream, it still illustrates the vast potential this new tool gives which I find to be extremely hype.

 

[Teeb147]

I'm not sure where to post this... please let me know if it's already been talked about..

It looks like it's possible to tech a wavelanding if you've been hit.
Caught it at 0.29 secs of this video (by ness):

It also happens again at 4:52 (by pit)

 

[Iridium]

Exemple en vidéo super bien cadrée du DownB de Ness @Kido_Smasher @Bronoli @HirokSSY @lesAutresNess pic.twitter.com/ojpLEHLSA0

— Fauster (@Le_Fauster) July 8, 2018

can now damage opponents with a hitbox close to him during PSI Magnet. It is similar to , but this appears to happen at the start rather than the end.

 

[MrGameguycolor]

Ness's D-Smash has a hitbox on the yo-yo while charging it, just like in Melee: (Likely on Up-Smash as well)

 

[1FC0]

R.O.B.'s Dthrow now burries the pathetic maggots who oppose him in the ground.

 

[R.O.B.]

50% is enough to break any shield in 4, so be careful.

Even the shield of Shield Shulk?

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Does anyone know if you can still tech a grounded spike like in Smash 4? I really hope you can’t, as that’s severely neutering the combo game.

 

[Awesomeperson159]

Alright, I'm back! Time to start to update information with info from the wiki and people who played the demo.

Even the shield of Shield Shulk?

Doesn't count, but it has 75.

Does anyone know if you can still tech a grounded spike like in Smash 4? I really hope you can’t, as that’s severely neutering the combo game.

From what I've heard, everything is techable. This is a big hindrance to characters that rely on footstool combos, as they're now techable.

 

[R.O.B.]

Doesn't count, but it has 75.

Why not?

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Alright, I'm back! Time to start to update information with info from the wiki and people who played the demo.

Doesn't count, but it has 75.

From what I've heard, everything is techable. This is a big hindrance to characters that rely on footstool combos, as they're now techable.

****

 

[Cutie Gwen]

UH OH .

Better change that, the site has an autocensor and making the U longer makes it go away and you'll get in trouble from mods for sure

 

[Necro'lic]

So there's this more critical post on the smashbros subreddit going through some little things in the Smash Ultimate demo, at least the one in the Nintendo World store in NYC which I think is the E3 build. Some of these might be subject to change, some might not. I will go through the ones that the post mentioned succinctly as well as my thoughts on them.

• Pivoting is gone completely. Flicking the control stick to input a 1 frame dash results in a Dash during Brawl DD frames and Skid afterwards.
  • Personally glad pivoting is gone, at least in this sense of being a precursor to perfect pivoting.
• B reverse is still in. It does not work on moves that couldn’t B reverse in S4 like Samus Side B.
  • Makes sense, though I wish every special was reversible.
• RAR (Reverse Aerial Rush) is gone. Dashing, then pressing back and jumping will not turn you around. You can do a RAR-like movement during a Run since the back input now counts as a dash backwards and turns you around.
  • This is less forgiving. It seems you can do something similar but a lot more clunky. Hopefully this gets smoothed out.
• Wavelanding can easily grab the ledge.
  • Makes sense. Nothing much to say.
• Cannot Shield during a Dash. (Note that dash is the startup before a full running animation. You can still shield while running)
  • Making dash actually have a downside even with the run cancelling mechanic. Honestly, I have no problems with this.
• Pressing forward/backward, then R within a few frames in U inputs a Roll like S4, though the window feels more strict. (2 frames, maybe)
  • Not sure why this was brought up. I'm pretty sure this is how rolls always worked right?
• Shield dropping is still in and the timing for Isai dropping is closer to Melee.
  • Actually never heard of Isai dropping or shield dropping before. Can someone fill me in?
• You 100% cannot dash cancel in this game. Dash, release to neutral, A will buffer a run cancel jab to the first frame of Run.
  • Again, another example of dash vs run with the dash being bad and run being much better. Totally fine with me.
• Z in the air results in an airdodge no matter what if your character doesn’t have a Zair.
  • Just like how it was in Smash 4 iirc.
• Down, diagonal and upward airdodges have around 20 frames of lag. You cannot use more than one airdodge in one jump arc.
  • Note that this might be staled dodges. They didn't say for sure it was unstale.
• Neutral airdodge can land laglessly.
  • I have mixed feelings about this, but then again, with the dodge staling mechanic, it might not be as bad if stale dodges give more landing lag.
• You cannot select a character on the CSS while holding B.
  • Apparently this was a thing and now it isn't. Apparently nerfs CSS spam pickers.
• After fully charging a smash attack, you can hold it in seemingly forever.
  • Maybe there isn't a maximum duration on holding it?
• Kicking the smash ball out of someone is harder now.
  • If Final Smashes actually had a chance to be used competitively, this would be a bad change imo.
• The state you enter after you release the stick to neutral during a Run is a continuation of Run or a separate state instead of Standing: pressing jump after releasing to neutral will result in a forward jump rather than a neutral jump.
  • I feel this could be tweaked to be a neutral jump during run if you really want it instead of forcing a forward jump. Hopefully this is fixed.
• Short hop button combo apparently makes immediate full hop aerials harder to do?
  • I hope not.
• Airdodge is activated every frame in which R is held and not through a press.
• This means that if you jump and do an aerial, you will airdodge as soon as you go through endlag and not fall on the ground and shield.
• Aerial landing lag follows different rules: downforward is a spotdodge, downback is a roll back. Holding down, back, forward or neutral will make you shield regardless of the type of lag.
  • I am so confused by all of these airdodge changes, or at least the way they are worded. From what I can tell, different directions of airdodging into the ground result in different types of dodges?
• Apparently hitstun cancelling is back.
  • They didn't actually make a bullet point on this, they just emphasized it twice during their summary of what they felt about the game. Not sure if this was confirmed somewhere else, but would be a travesty if it's back.

I didn't go through character specifics in the post because those are much more subject to change I think, plus I was only interested in the global changes. Also apparently they really didn't care for Mega Man Dair losing 10 frames of lag for some reason, so I feel those sections were being critical for little to no reason.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

Why not?

The Shield Monado Art not only increases Shulk's shield health, but it also reduces how much damage he takes. So an attack that can easily shatter a full shield under normal circumstances may fail to break Shulk's shield while the Shield Monado Art is active.

However, the shield damage bonus that certain attacks have, does not get reduced by the Shield Monado Art.

 

[NocturnalQuill]

So there's this more critical post on the smashbros subreddit going through some little things in the Smash Ultimate demo, at least the one in the Nintendo World store in NYC which I think is the E3 build. Some of these might be subject to change, some might not. I will go through the ones that the post mentioned succinctly as well as my thoughts on them.



I didn't go through character specifics in the post because those are much more subject to change I think, plus I was only interested in the global changes. Also apparently they really didn't care for Mega Man Dair losing 10 frames of lag for some reason, so I feel those sections were being critical for little to no reason.

I'd be a little worried if this was all we had to far, but a lot of it seems to be at odds with what we've heard from basically everyone at the invitational. If you read through his comments, he seems insanely biased against Smash 4. Love or hate Smash 4, it's the base for Ultimate.

 

[Necro'lic]

So apparently short hop aerials have a damage multiplier of 0.85, meaning that by default, aerials done out of a short hop (note it doesn't matter when you do the aerial, as long as you shorthop to get in the air), your aerial will deal 85% damage.

This sounds bad, but it works in tandem with the 1v1 20% damage boost, meaning, effectively, shorthop aerials in 1v1 have 2% extra damage all up compared to their FFA full hop aerial counterparts.

I personally love this since they made it so short hop aerials are much easier to access as well as buffing jumpsquat and landing lag across the board. Seems like a feature for just in case short hop aerials become better than grounded normals, which I think they might be considering the buffs I mentioned.

It also begs the question, would a double jump from a short hop normalize the attack damage again? Because if so, that sounds like a situational buff to low double jumpers and multijumpers.

As for other effects, this overall might make some short hop aerials better at comboing than if they didn't have this, while at the same time making them worse at killing.

All in all, me likey.

 

[Thinkaman]

Apparently this is how you have 3f jumpsquats + input shortcut + massively reduced landing lag without making SH fair/nair/bair: The Game.

Super funny to watch people on reddit freak about how this is "too complex."

 

[Necro'lic]

Apparently this is how you have 3f jumpsquats + input shortcut + massively reduced landing lag without making SH fair/nair/bair: The Game.

Super funny to watch people on reddit freak about how this is "too complex."

I'm starting to remember why I don't like the smash bros subreddit.

Subreddit: No wavedashing or perfect pivoting = simple game. won't last 6 months in comp.

Also subreddit: actually balancing the game via damage percentiles? Why is Smash becoming so complex.

What is going on over there?

 

[Awesomeperson159]

Got as much info as I could on the 8 64 starters and gave nice little overviews.

Even the shield of Shield Shulk?

Oops, forgot something: Shields take 1.19x damage in 4, meaning although they have 50 health, they can only take 42 damage.

Shulk's, for normal attacks, can take 94 damage with the shield art, not counting shield decay over time.

 

[NocturnalQuill]

I'm starting to remember why I don't like the smash bros subreddit.

Subreddit: No wavedashing or perfect pivoting = simple game. won't last 6 months in comp.

Also subreddit: actually balancing the game via damage percentiles? Why is Smash becoming so complex.

What is going on over there?

Reddit is what's going on. The pessimism can be a little much sometimes. This isn't going to be Melee 2, but it's looking like a vast improvement on 4.

 

[Luminario]

Quick thing that's missing from the OP, Peach has a new down tilt: a sweeping kick. It doesn't spike grounded opponents and make them fly straight up so no potential footstool combos anymore, but on the flipside they can't tech the initial whack off the ground and roll away.

 

[LancerStaff]

Apparently this is how you have 3f jumpsquats + input shortcut + massively reduced landing lag without making SH fair/nair/bair: The Game.

Super funny to watch people on reddit freak about how this is "too complex."

It does seem... Silly. It feels like instead of actually balancing things they’re just slapping on modifiers as problems come up. And it kinda flies in the face of Sakurai’s MO of keeping things simple.

Still makes sense though.

 

[Necro'lic]

It does seem... Silly. It feels like instead of actually balancing things they’re just slapping on modifiers as problems come up. And it kinda flies in the face of Sakurai’s MO of keeping things simple.

Still makes sense though.

I don't think it flies in the face of simplicity at all, otherwise people are going to have to look at literally every type of advanced tech, or even how shields don't cover people if hit too much when the actual simple thing would be to just have the shield affect the same area all the time, or the stale-move negation literally doing the exact same sort of thing with damage multipliers, or who knows how many other things I can't think of right now.

It doesn't feel like slapping modifiers on at all. It probably feels that way to you because it's new and/or you're only recently having a motivation of seeing the production of these games. Coming from a MOBA and shooter background though, this looks less like slapping on and more like a compensatory nerf for making something easier and more intuitive.

 

[Metal B]

Cloud (61)

Cloud's limit charge is reduced when attacked during Limit Charge
Source: https://twitter.com/KuroganeHammer/status/1019178804630048768

 

[LancerStaff]

I don't think it flies in the face of simplicity at all, otherwise people are going to have to look at literally every type of advanced tech, or even how shields don't cover people if hit too much when the actual simple thing would be to just have the shield affect the same area all the time, or the stale-move negation literally doing the exact same sort of thing with damage multipliers, or who knows how many other things I can't think of right now.

It doesn't feel like slapping modifiers on at all. It probably feels that way to you because it's new and/or you're only recently having a motivation of seeing the production of these games. Coming from a MOBA and shooter background though, this looks less like slapping on and more like a compensatory nerf for making something easier and more intuitive.

I mean if they wanted to balance short hop aerials there are far better solutions than making the same move used in a slightly different way act completely differently depending on the situation. I always felt similarly about stale moves, partly because it doesn’t really do it’s job of weakening moves after repeated use. ...I mean sure it does but combo moves become stronger, and the game is basically centered around these moves.

I’ve been interested in game balance and game design my entire life. This is one of those things that will just mess with the uninformed... I mean we need to double check basically all the data we’ve collected in the past month because it wasn’t immediately obvious to us, even.

Understandably it nerfs SH aerials. However, it also makes edge guarding harder. It makes fighting on stages with many separate platforms that much harder. It just feels inelegant, and lazy.

 

[GunBlaze]

Captain Falcon (11)
Forward Smash has a new animation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayUTQsO6d1E

 

[Gearkeeper-8a]

adding these modifiers is actually a good form of balancing, that means that the team is actually trying to balance the game by making the aerials feel fast and strong but not braindead, i think with this form of modifiers the dev team can balance better in general without compromising how some characters feels or plays, like cloud or ike.

You can even expand this to different modes like doubles, for example reducing the amount of heal of some absorb moves, reducing the knockback of cloud fishinig touch or limit croosh slash so doesnt becomes degenerate on 2 vs 2 imo.

 

[Aaron1997]

(55)

Dash attack hits 4 time's
Down-throw animation is faster

D-tilt now returns Pac back to his original position after being used
Bell now stuns on Z-drop

Fruits can only be Z-dropped once
Can't cancel Aerial Fruit charge into another special
Can now Cancel Aerial fruit charge into Jump


Not 100% on this but

Fruit's now stale. Staling one fruit stales all fruits. (If I hit you with Key, my apple will be staled) . Edit: This is incorrect, see Below


Wow they killed the campy playstyle he had in smash 4.

 

[Thinkaman]

for example reducing the amount of heal of some absorb moves

This already happened to Bucket, PSI Magnet, and Pocket in patch 1.1.3 I believe.

View attachment 153576 Fruit's now stale. Staling one fruit stales all fruits. (If I hit you with Key, my apple will be staled) .

If correct, I would suspect that all grab-able items now stale? (Turnips, bombs, ect.)

 

[NocturnalQuill]

The modifiers make me excited because there is the very real possibility that they'll be on the table for post-launch patches. All we really got with Smash 4 was move changes, but this opens up a whole new realm of possibilities.

 

[Aaron1997]

If correct, I would suspect that all grab-able items now stale? (Turnips, bombs, ect.)

Ok I can confirm that Fruit's staling is misinformation.

@ 1:18, Shuton get's hit by Galaxain twice and both hit's do 9.4%
@ 4:31, Shuton get's hit by orange and take's 7.8%, 8 second's later, take's 7.8% again.
@ 5:10, Shuton get's hit by bell and take's 7.8%, he gets stun by bell 2 more time's and take's the same damage.

You can thank this threat for the Misinformation

https://smashboards.com/threads/pac-man-is-back-man-frame-data-damage-changes.455461/post-22118701

 

[Awesomeperson159]

Updated (again). Got the unlockables in 64 and Little Mac.

Quick thing that's missing from the OP, Peach has a new down tilt: a sweeping kick. It doesn't spike grounded opponents and make them fly straight up so no potential footstool combos anymore, but on the flipside they can't tech the initial whack off the ground and roll away.

Footstool combos were removed, so that's a straight buff. Forgot about that, I'll put it in.

 

[SSBBDaisy]

• Olimar has a long range grab

Source?

 

[**Gilgamesh**]

Actually the modifier does not make SH aerials weaker thanks to 1v1s getting a 20% boost in damage ( -15% vs +20%). They are slightly stronger than Smash 4 aerials. This could have been in place to make aerials not send characters farther etc. Doubles is looking to be an entirely different mechanical game though.

Also apparently moves stale when used on a shield. Not sure if this mechanic will stay or a developer oversight.

 

[Necro'lic]

Incoming change: We now know that ledge attacks have full invincibility throughout the hitbox duration rather than being removed right before the hitbox. It's also rumored that ledge attacks damage is buffed across the board.

How do y'all think this affects ledge play? Obviously it makes a usually meh option on the ledge much safer against other attacks. I've heard people say it makes ledge play too strong, but honestly I feel like people who say this didn't actually play Smash 4 and still think ledges are like Brawl or Melee but simply with the addition of ledge trumping.

 

[Untouch]

Incoming change: We now know that ledge attacks have full invincibility throughout the hitbox duration rather than being removed right before the hitbox. It's also rumored that ledge attacks damage is buffed across the board.

How do y'all think this affects ledge play? Obviously it makes a usually meh option on the ledge much safer against other attacks. I've heard people say it makes ledge play too strong, but honestly I feel like people who say this didn't actually play Smash 4 and still think ledges are like Brawl or Melee but simply with the addition of ledge trumping.

Overall good.
Forces players to go offstage to ledgeguard instead of just slowly trading damage.
Allows characters with poorer recovery options to get back to the stage easier.