Thoughts on Balancing

[Tbro]

In my opinion (bear with me here), instead of nerfing Bayo, Sakurai should buff every other character. What if every character had at least a 0 to 50 combo. In my opinion, the game would be more fun. Respond with your own ideas for balancing Ultimate!

 

[Yosher]

Ehh. If every other character had at least a 0 to 50 combo and Bayo wasn't nerfed, she would still have the ability to ladder most, if not all characters to the upper blast line, not exactly my idea of fun. Bayo really does need to be nerfed, unless you want to give every character a 0-to-death combo, but I don't think that would be very fun either as it would become a competition of 'who can hit first', assuming people are able to continue the combo. I agree that the bad characters should be buffed before good characters get nerfed, but it shouldn't get to the point where every character can be considered ''OP'' in a sense.

 

[Uffe]

I don't think that has anything to do with balancing. Off the top of my head, Mario can land an 80 something percent combo, but he actually has to work for it, whereas Bayo really doesn't. Bayo was made to be a natural combo machine. I know Lucas and Mega Man are other characters who can set up combos that rack up a lot of damage, but they rely mainly on footstool set ups which actually require far more effort. Bayo could be nerfed, but because of how she's meant to be, I highly doubt her combo game is disappearing. If she becomes nerfed, she'll probably do lesser damage.

 

[SmashBro99]

The problem is the top characters get tweaked (and not enough), and the bottom tier garbage don't get any help.

But again I mean we're going to have like 70+ characters...I hope they do a better job of balancing this time tho.

 

[Necro'lic]

In my opinion (bear with me here), instead of nerfing Bayo, Sakurai should buff every other character. What if every character had at least a 0 to 50 combo. In my opinion, the game would be more fun. Respond with your own ideas for balancing Ultimate!

The idea of no nerfs sounds like the most ideal scenario on paper until you come to the point of power creep. And no, this doesn't just mean newer characters being better than older ones, but the scenario where the basal systems of the game are not adjusted to work with the buffs you put in place.

An example of something that seems like power creep but is not; there is this amazing game (at least imo) known as Awesomenauts. It is a platformer/MOBA hybrid. The game worked off of small numbers for calculations like damage and health, usually in the 10's, rarely reaching the 100's. Some years ago, they multiplied all of their health and damage values by 10, so a character with 90 health had 900 and so on. The reason this is not power creep is solely because the systems that the game revolves around were accommodated for thoroughly; every character was affected the exact same and even after this monumental number change, the game played exactly the same.

If you buff every character without changing the systems of the game, eventually those buffs will not be in line with how the game is designed. For example, because of Smash 4's hitstun cancelling, in order to get true combos for basically everyone involves making moves a LOT faster both in startup and endlag to counteract the lack of hitstun. This in turn makes more moves much safer and will slowly turn the game into more of a neutral spacing game than it already is. This is only one example of many and is one that is off the top of my head.

Do not be afraid of nerfs. Welcome them. A good game balancer understands nerfs' importance. A great game balancer understands how to nerf without compromising their character's design.

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For an example of a good nerf and bad nerf, let's use Smash 4 Marth, who is a top tier character. If the Smash balance team wanted to nerf him, which they would be justified in doing, how should they do it? Good and bad:

Bad nerf: Lower the damage and potency of his tipper attacks, lowering their damage racking ability and kill power

This ruins a lot of why people play Marth and like him in the first place. It also ruins the integrity of his design, because his frame data overall is subpar compared to other combo-centric characters BECAUSE of his tipper mechanic and range. It's a twofold symphony of suck.

Good nerf: Lower the priority and damage of his sourspots on the blade, making them significantly less safe and able to be challenged by short range characters

This is far better since it exemplifies what bad trait Marth has already, thus not harming the integrity of his design, at least in comparison (if you removed sourspot damage, of course it would mean more, but that's an extreme example). It also solidifies matchup problems with Marth that are clearly intended to the players, both the Marth players and the opponents of said Marths. Kirby mains want to stay inside his weak zone more and Marths want him out. The dynamic of the matchup is more interesting as a result.

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The general gist is to nerf based on weaknesses rather than nerfing strengths. Other bad nerfs include nerfing Kirby's combo potential, Duck Hunt's projectile game, Bowser's power, Corrin's mindgame ability and range, and Bayonetta's ability to string together zoning and combos. Nerf them in other ways that do not interfere with why people like these characters' playstyles to begin with.

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I actually have a series of rebalancing/redesigning threads I am doing right now for Smash Ultimate if you want to see them. They mostly involve low tier characters, but I will be getting to how I would respectfully nerf higher tier characters like Ryu, Sheik, Bayonetta, and Marth soon enough. These are who I have so far:

Redesign/Rebalance threads

Samus

Jigglypuff

Bowser

Zelda

Pichu

Roy

King Dedede

Olimar

 

[Luigifan18]

In Jigglypuff's case, I think its biggest problem was getting screwed over by the changes to the engine between Melee and Brawl; everybody got a lot better at defending themselves in midair, which made its Wall of Pain and other aerial combos a lot less reliable. Of course, having its main trump card nerfed also hurt it a lot.

 

[GeflGabe]

Ehh. If every other character had at least a 0 to 50 combo and Bayo wasn't nerfed, she would still have the ability to ladder most, if not all characters to the upper blast line, not exactly my idea of fun. Bayo really does need to be nerfed, unless you want to give every character a 0-to-death combo, but I don't think that would be very fun either as it would become a competition of 'who can hit first', assuming people are able to continue the combo. I agree that the bad characters should be buffed before good characters get nerfed, but it shouldn't get to the point where every character can be considered ''OP'' in a sense.

Actually, a game like that already exist, it's called Smash 64.

To be fair the you "get hit, you die" thing works very well in 64, so I could definitely see it working in ultimate, theoretically if that was the case.

I like to think of it as the "MvC of Smash". But of course, I'll always enjoy the Neutral heavy style of Smash 4, and will definitely enjoy what ultimate is turning out to be, but I do want to say that taking the 64 route wouldn't be an inherently bad design choice.

 

[TheTrueBrawler]

In Jigglypuff's case, I think its biggest problem was getting screwed over by the changes to the engine between Melee and Brawl; everybody got a lot better at defending themselves in midair, which made its Wall of Pain and other aerial combos a lot less reliable. Of course, having its main trump card nerfed also hurt it a lot.

No kidding. Apart from a few direct nerfs, she continues to get screwed over by game mechanics.

Smash Brawl's physics as you explained buffed everyone's ability to get back which took one of Jigglypuff's best cards away from her. Add the fact that her damage and launch power received a substantial nerf especially in Rest, and you have yourself a bottom tier character. Smash 4 fixed the mechanics that we're hurting her, but applied different indirect nerfs with new mechanics and went harder on Jigglypuff than in Smash Brawl. Smash 4 introduced a new mechanic called Rage. Basically, characters who have been damaged more deal out more damage. Because Jigglypuff is an insanely light character, she can now die at absurdly low percents. Also, the Sky KO line now has a chance to result in an instant Blast KO. Since Rest only launches vertically, her strongest kill option has a decent chance to lead to a stock trade. It's completely random by the way.

There's something wrong with a game when the mechanics are continuously bullying a character to bottom tier.

 

[Necro'lic]

No kidding. Apart from a few direct nerfs, she continues to get screwed over by game mechanics.

Smash Brawl's physics as you explained buffed everyone's ability to get back which took one of Jigglypuff's best cards away from her. Add the fact that her damage and launch power received a substantial nerf especially in Rest, and you have yourself a bottom tier character. Smash 4 fixed the mechanics that we're hurting her, but applied different indirect nerfs with new mechanics and went harder on Jigglypuff than in Smash Brawl. Smash 4 introduced a new mechanic called Rage. Basically, characters who have been damaged more deal out more damage. Because Jigglypuff is an insanely light character, she can now die at absurdly low percents. Also, the Sky KO line now has a chance to result in an instant Blast KO. Since Rest only launches vertically, her strongest kill option has a decent chance to lead to a stock trade. It's completely random by the way.

There's something wrong with a game when the mechanics are continuously bullying a character to bottom tier.

I definitely do think Jigglypuff should be fit to work with the game she actually is in, and I have yet to see it done in a way that isn't in Melee where it was mostly incidentally good.

I already made a huge post on my ideas for Jiggs, and I have the link in my other reply here, but the biggest ideas for her were:

1. Allow for her to jump DURING aerial moves' animations
2. Make Rest super weak as a combo finisher, (still retains good kill power when not comboing) allowing her combo game to become more varied without becoming easily overpowered by the uber powerful frame 1-2 kill move
3. Rework Rest to heal her a tiny bit as well as cut the inactivity period in half
4. Rework Sing to be a three stage radial midair grab (sorta) that can be cancelled between the three waves of song
5. Allow Sing to sleep airborne opponents, if only for a little bit
6. Give a new move, Gyro Ball, to replace Rollout, giving her a vertical recovery move and potential anti-rushdown tool (look at my post for more on that weird idea of mine )
7. Have her pummel give the flower damage over time debuff, encouraging thrown enemies to button mash and throw out attacks to get rid of it, allowing Jiggs to followup on their mistakes with aerial maneuverability

This is quite a bit of change, but that's what happens when you have a crazy weak character to buff lol.

 

[Luigifan18]

No kidding. Apart from a few direct nerfs, she continues to get screwed over by game mechanics.

Smash Brawl's physics as you explained buffed everyone's ability to get back which took one of Jigglypuff's best cards away from her. Add the fact that her damage and launch power received a substantial nerf especially in Rest, and you have yourself a bottom tier character. Smash 4 fixed the mechanics that we're hurting her, but applied different indirect nerfs with new mechanics and went harder on Jigglypuff than in Smash Brawl. Smash 4 introduced a new mechanic called Rage. Basically, characters who have been damaged more deal out more damage. Because Jigglypuff is an insanely light character, she can now die at absurdly low percents. Also, the Sky KO line now has a chance to result in an instant Blast KO. Since Rest only launches vertically, her strongest kill option has a decent chance to lead to a stock trade. It's completely random by the way.

There's something wrong with a game when the mechanics are continuously bullying a character to bottom tier.

I was referring specifically to how the Wall of Pain used to be a Morton's Fork, as in Melee, air-dodging offstage was a guaranteed death unless your airdodge took you right to the ledge (due to air dodges putting characters in the helpless/freefall state) — but not challenging Jigglypuff's chain of aerial attacks at all after it knocked you offstage meant being slowly piledriven directly into a blast line, and trying to answer with an aerial attack of one's own was often futile due to Jigglypuff's aerials having an amazing ratio of speed, range, and power (on top of aerials following different priority rules from grounded attacks). Then the changes to air dodges in Brawl made them actually a viable option offstage, and Jigglypuff's attacks generally got nerfed on top of that, and it was all downhill for poor Puffster.

And, yes, rage has been a further case of insult to injury — let's add a game mechanic that has no benefit whatsoever for easily-killed lightweights, lol! (Though what you said is not quite correct; rage only increases knockback dealt, not damage.)

 

[pupNapoleon]

In my opinion (bear with me here), instead of nerfing Bayo, Sakurai should buff every other character. What if every character had at least a 0 to 50 combo. In my opinion, the game would be more fun. Respond with your own ideas for balancing Ultimate!

So in reality, you want to change the dynamics of the gameplay of Smash? Essentially changing the entire core mechanic of the series...

let's just nerf Bayonetta and you can play in 3x damage mode.

 

[Luigifan18]

So in reality, you want to change the dynamics of the gameplay of Smash? Essentially changing the entire core mechanic of the series...

let's just nerf Bayonetta and you can play in 3x damage mode.

Or TC can play Brawl-.

 

[Tbro]

I don't want to change the entire mechanics of smash, I just think buffs are better for the game than nerfs. Buffing all of the low tiers wouldn't change the "core mechanics"

 

[Necro'lic]

I don't want to change the entire mechanics of smash, I just think buffs are better for the game than nerfs. Buffing all of the low tiers wouldn't change the "core mechanics"

Well look to my long post I did here in this thread on that. It's not that core mechanics change, but that too many buffs across the board would mess with the structure of the game design-wise.

And besides all of the points I made before, I forgot another big one: developer time. What is easier? Nerfing a couple of overpowered characters to be in line with the majority of characters, or buffing a vast majority of your character roster to such a degree that they are in line with the few at the top?

And that's kinda the last nail in the coffin for this view of "buffs are always better than nerfs" is just simple time management.

 

[Union of Darkness]

Clearly Ganondorf should be buffed so every hit disintegrates his opponent.

Seriously though, do you know how hard it is to balance a character game? I'm suprised Smash 4 was as balanced as it was after the terror that was Brawl Meta Knight. And now with 70+ characters it's going to get even harder. I don't know how Sakurai manages it. It's not as simple as saying "do x".

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

In general when balancing a game the goal is to "balance to where the fun is". In theory you could make everyone as good as Bayonetta, but I think most would say she's not the most fun character in Smash 4 to use at all since she's really not as dynamic and interactive as most of the other characters. Likewise you could make everyone as slow and bad as Palutena, but who would want that? The main fun she provides is the good laugh you get when you realize that your gameplan comes down to spamming bair and hoping somehow your opponent messes up enough to lose to that. The overall probably most effective fun to effectiveness ratio in Smash 4 is probably Mario who is indeed a pretty good character but not *quite* at the very top. Notice that Mario seems to be the least changed character 4 -> Ultimate and that most characters seem generally better overall but a few who used to be at the top have some strategic nerfs snuck in. I think the devs know what they're doing here.

Jigglypuff is tough because, fundamentally, she has a lot fewer options than other characters. A Smash character is only about 20 moves, and a large percentage of Jigglypuff's moveset is extremely poor to useless by design like jab, all her tilts, dsmash, Rollout, and Sing which is a ton of moves. Then even among her moves with a realistic chance to be useful they often undertune; like in 4 Jigglypuff's uair is extremely poor which doesn't help because if all you're really doing is jumping around throwing out aerials it sucks if you can't even effectively hit in every direction in the air. Taking all of the moves that have a real chance to be good and focusing hard on tuning them all to be legitimately useful and generally quality options would be a good start for Jigglypuff; in 4 that would mean significant buffs to usmash, fsmash, dash attack, uair, and dair. Then you revert the nerfs to Pound because that's the most important move in her kit; Pound is the move designed to let you beat basically anything the opponent might throw out if you have a read so nerfing it really sucked for Jigglypuff (the most limited character by design *needs* a functional safety valve move!). Then you might be within the ballpark of a functional character that you can do more specific balancing based on testing from there; those changes alone would probably put Jigglypuff in mid tier in 4 instead of bottom tier where she is now.

 

[Deleted member]

The problem is that Bayonetta breaks the laws of Smash. Being able to keep your momentum and basically 'float' with fair and pretty much just take your opponent of stage is nuts. Also we all know her witch twist combos kill at any percent. She doesn't need hard nerfing, she just needs to be balanced, because right now a lot of the Smash community hates her because she is so broken. Same for Cloud, he needs balancing, which he is already receiving. Point is, if every character had almost guaranteed kill combos at any percent, it would honestly not be a fun game. Bayonetta needs toning down period.

 

[Luigifan18]

The problem is that Bayonetta breaks the laws of Smash. Being able to keep your momentum and basically 'float' with fair and pretty much just take your opponent of stage is nuts.

Jigglypuff did that in Melee.

 

[Necro'lic]

Jigglypuff did that in Melee.

Wait, is this why I've recently seen people say Jigglypuff's a "degenerate" character in Melee?

 

[Luigifan18]

Wait, is this why I've recently seen people say Jigglypuff's a "degenerate" character in Melee?

Probably because Jigglypuff's not as flashy as Fox or Falco. Its best tools are Rest and the Wall of Pain, and it doesn't require massive combo setups to pull either off.

 

[Deleted member]

Jigglypuff did that in Melee.

Yes I know. But Jiggly was at least balanced and had many weaknesses while Bayo pretty much needs her own tier and has little to no weaknesses.

 

[Sudz]

Having every single character be as non-interactive as Bayonetta seems like a real bad time tbh. While I understand the popular gaming philosophy of "make everyone as strong as your broken characters" I don't think it applies in this case.

If every single character has the ability to destroy you with zero effort whatsoever, then what's the point? Every character becomes functionally the same. Bayonetta is not fun to play against and she's pretty brain dead to play as, too. I'd rather not have every character feel that way.

Instead, make sure every character has options. But leave it at that. That way they're not all functionally identical with different versions of ez mode instagib powers.
Oh, and of course it helps to nerf the absolute **** out of Bayonetta, which there is no guarantee they did. Sakurai pls

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

The only time that a fighter has every right to be overpowered is if he/she is a Final Smash transformation. But since Smash Ultimate is doing away with the fully playable Final Smash fighters, that's pretty much a moot point.

 

[Quillion]

Here's some recommended reading for y'all:

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/designing-defensively-guilty-gear

If we want Smash to be as diverse as it is while still being meticulously balanced, they should follow Guilty Gear's example.

 

[Necro'lic]

Here's some recommended reading for y'all:

http://www.sirlin.net/articles/designing-defensively-guilty-gear

If we want Smash to be as diverse as it is while still being meticulously balanced, they should follow Guilty Gear's example.

My man. ;D

 

[Quillion]

My man. ;D

Well, even with what Sirlin said about Guilty Gear, you gotta admit that it's one of the many "prohibitively complex" fighters that the genre is notorious for.

Could there be a way of having GG's balance without having so many mechanics just to be failsafes to one another?

 

[Necro'lic]

Well, even with what Sirlin said about Guilty Gear, you gotta admit that it's one of the many "prohibitively complex" fighters that the genre is notorious for.

Could there be a way of having GG's balance without having so many mechanics just to be failsafes to one another?

I am doing the redesigning/rebalancing series of posts still, but I think eventually I will go through how I would fundamentally change Smash. Like I said, I want my mod of Ultimate to be more in the style of Brawl Minus than Project M, as in, not derivative of any other Smash game in secondary mechanics, at least not directly.

I am sure it can be done. However, I'm not sure what is wrong with mechanical failsafes. I would just call them "concrete downsides" as opposed to less concrete ones. Things using meter is a VERY easily noticeable downside. In fact, I would say the dodge staling mechanic in Ultimate works in much the same way, except it wouldn't completely take it away if the "meter" is depleted, just make it weaker. Heck, with how many variables are involved with that mechanic, I would go so far as to add a visual meter of your dodges on screen.

It will probably end up being an essay style post when I get around to it, but considering my loose job, I can probably find some time to do it. XD

 

[Mogisthelioma]

That's what they've done. Most low tiers (including a lot of my mains) got huge buffs that make me really happy.

 

[Tbro]

People are focusing a lot on the "not nerfing Bayo" part instead of my main point which was "buff low tiers"

 

[Sudz]

People are focusing a lot on the "not nerfing Bayo" part instead of my main point which was "buff low tiers"

The implication, based on the original post, is that you are saying that low tiers should be buffed to Bayonetta's level of play. If that's not what you're saying then I suppose it's different, but my issue is with buffing everyone to broken levels of strength

I agree with buffing low tiers, I just don't want the game to be Glass Cannon Tournament 2: Electric Boogooloo

 

[Necro'lic]

People are focusing a lot on the "not nerfing Bayo" part instead of my main point which was "buff low tiers"

When you bring up the relative standpoint of what character should be nerfed, then say "don't nerf them, instead buff others", of course people will focus on the overall idea given. If you just say, "buff low tiers", I guarantee no one here will disagree with you on that front, but then you have no discussion really.

 

[PURGE THEM LIKE THE]

If everyone is too strong, the game becomes too mindless and risk free. I think mewtwo, marth, mario, and captain falcon are some good examples of an appropriate level of power. Each one has unique strengths, and those strengths are meaningful enough to be able to work around those weaknesses. For example, mewtwo can get outranged a lot by certain disjointed aerials, but by forcing approaches with shadow ball, mewtwo can get a character to approach and ultimately hit its shield with that aerial unsafely.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

For the most part, when buffing a low tiered fighter, the tier target to aim for should at least be the C-tier; average if the tier system goes by S, A, B, C, D, E, and F.

 

[Crystanium]

Characters like Mario and Luigi can pull 0 to >80% combos. Samus can currently reach 0 to >40% with her dash attack set-up. Ness can do at least 0 to >20%, depending on how the set-up goes. He can go higher. A character is more than just combo set-ups, though. To balance a character, you have to make sure you don't go to the extremes as in the case of Cloud. His only true weakness is a poor recovery, but even that doesn't matter when he's controlling the match. Not to mention he has Limit to help his recovery. His aerial mobility also helps.

To balance a character, you must find the weaknesses and improve them. It doesn't require a whole lot of tweaking, either. Samus' jab 1 cannot connect because of the angle it's set to. It's decent enough in the neutral, but it's only reliable to use as jab 1. It improves when the opponent has more damage, but by changing its angle, Samus could always confirm a jab 2 as long as jab 1 connected. It might require more than changing properties, though. Ness has improved, but what holds him back is his recovery. Change PK Thunder 2 to Teleport, which could function like Sheik's Vanish, and Ness is becomes a more solid character than before.

 

[Luigifan18]

Ness has improved, but what holds him back is his recovery. Change PK Thunder 2 to Teleport, which could function like Sheik's Vanish, and Ness is becomes a more solid character than before.

Maybe so, but I'm not sure that throwing away such a reliable player-guided projectile is worthwhile. PK Thunder is a great tool for harassment, damage-building, and forcing approaches (well, unless you're up against Ness, Lucas, or Mr. Game & Watch, who can just absorb it...). That move is honestly one of the main reasons I main Ness.

 

[Necro'lic]

Characters like Mario and Luigi can pull 0 to >80% combos. Samus can currently reach 0 to >40% with her dash attack set-up. Ness can do at least 0 to >20%, depending on how the set-up goes. He can go higher. A character is more than just combo set-ups, though. To balance a character, you have to make sure you don't go to the extremes as in the case of Cloud. His only true weakness is a poor recovery, but even that doesn't matter when he's controlling the match. Not to mention he has Limit to help his recovery. His aerial mobility also helps.

To balance a character, you must find the weaknesses and improve them. It doesn't require a whole lot of tweaking, either. Samus' jab 1 cannot connect because of the angle it's set to. It's decent enough in the neutral, but it's only reliable to use as jab 1. It improves when the opponent has more damage, but by changing its angle, Samus could always confirm a jab 2 as long as jab 1 connected. It might require more than changing properties, though. Ness has improved, but what holds him back is his recovery. Change PK Thunder 2 to Teleport, which could function like Sheik's Vanish, and Ness is becomes a more solid character than before.

I'm not quite in agreement with the general idea of your second paragraph of "improving weaknesses". Maybe improving overall feel, but characters' weaknesses are part of their design and to remove them means to then counterbalance by either lowering their strengths, or buffing their weaknesses to the point where their strengths mean little relative to the other many characters you've changed.

However, in line with your suggestions given, I do support this in this case. The first with Samus' jab because it basically makes Jab 2 on Samus a useless move, so it would just be a buff to Jab 2 and mostly for consistency and feel than any weakness Samus should have. The second with Ness' recovery because I think that is one weakness which has actually gone TOO far off the rails, which is rare, but when just getting Ness off the stage is considered near certain death when against any semi-decent player no matter the character, you've gone too far in nerfed recovery. However, it wouldn't change it to that per se, but something like it.

Have PK Thunder 2 break through counters, can't be perfect shielded, and guarantee a shield break. This can make the missile part itself the thing people will try to stop, because if they don't, then Ness gets a free recovery no matter what. This lowers the vulnerability of his recovery from two stages to one stage; from being countered both while the Thunder is out AND when doing the missile to only the former.

It would still be exploitable, but now Ness can get much more control over this vulnerability, especially considering it's a controllable projectile.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I mean Ness was a pretty good character in Smash 4, and his recovery isn't some end all huge deal. Shaky was in my region for a good while, and yeah, it's not free to kill Ness off-stage when the Ness is consistently DIing correctly, consistently using Pk Thunder from every angle and not just that 45 degree angle below the stage that is the only recovery angle bad Ness players use, is consistently not wasting Ness's enormous double jump, and is consistently playing intelligently on-stage in the first place so it's not like he's spending a ton of the game off-stage. Then you're just dealing with Ness's impressive combination of damage output, aerial mobility, range/priority, and power constantly which you can deal with since he's a mere high tier not a top tier but you're going to work hard to beat that no matter which character you play. I think a lot of people view Ness as worse than he is because bad Ness players are really free and good Ness players are rare, but he's just a more advanced character which doesn't inherently make him worse than others.

Smash has always kinda had a balance problem with characters like Sheik and Diddy who actually don't have real weaknesses that kinda distort how people look at the balance, but it's a tuning question. In the end we also had Bayonetta who has some of the worst attack start-up times of any character in the game and Cloud who like most sword characters has a ton of unsafe stuff that you have to use carefully on top of his generally bad recovery, but people don't seem to take those weaknesses seriously just because those characters had upsides that outweighed their substantial downsides. I think so far what we've seen from Ultimate makes sense, but it's not just an attack on characters having downsides since in general Smash's greatest strength comes from gameplay diversity and that basically just can't happen when every character is nothing but upside.

 

[pupNapoleon]

I don't want to change the entire mechanics of smash, I just think buffs are better for the game than nerfs. Buffing all of the low tiers wouldn't change the "core mechanics"

But that does change the mechanics of the game.
Eventually if you keep adding buffs, all you get are one hit knock outs, or people flying too quickly off stage, or being hit too far...
Consider the repercussions of buffing everything. It is called power creep. Well, in this case, not really creeping, but leaping.

 

[Tbro]

But that does change the mechanics of the game.
Eventually if you keep adding buffs, all you get are one hit knock outs, or people flying too quickly off stage, or being hit too far...
Consider the repercussions of buffing everything. It is called power creep. Well, in this case, not really creeping, but leaping.

Yeah I don't think one hit KOs would be fun I just think really bad characters like bowser jr and Zelda should be much better than they are. Buffing everyone may not be the best approach to balancing, it was just an idea

 

[Crystanium]

I'm not quite in agreement with the general idea of your second paragraph of "improving weaknesses". Maybe improving overall feel, but characters' weaknesses are part of their design and to remove them means to then counterbalance by either lowering their strengths, or buffing their weaknesses to the point where their strengths mean little relative to the other many characters you've changed.

However, in line with your suggestions given, I do support this in this case. The first with Samus' jab because it basically makes Jab 2 on Samus a useless move, so it would just be a buff to Jab 2 and mostly for consistency and feel than any weakness Samus should have. The second with Ness' recovery because I think that is one weakness which has actually gone TOO far off the rails, which is rare, but when just getting Ness off the stage is considered near certain death when against any semi-decent player no matter the character, you've gone too far in nerfed recovery. However, it wouldn't change it to that per se, but something like it.

I'm in favor of reducing strengths if necessary. A good example of this is in SSBU, where Ness' PK Flash moves faster at the cost of it not being as powerful. Although "flaw" and "weakness" are synonymous, perhaps "flaw" would have been a preferred word. In previous games, when Zelda used Din's Fire, she would fall to her death if she was off-stage. This has been improved. Ness' PK Flash also doesn't leave him in such a state if he uses the attack in the air, even if by accident. I think if I gave examples of weaknesses or flaws, that it would help clarify what I mean so that improving a move wouldn't make other moves meaningless. Fox and Falco used to only be able to use their forward special to recover, but now they can perform that and then their up special. Ike could probably be given a similar treatment to improve his recovery. Or perhaps it could be given to Chrom, since Chrom isn't like Ike in that regard.

Have PK Thunder 2 break through counters, can't be perfect shielded, and guarantee a shield break. This can make the missile part itself the thing people will try to stop, because if they don't, then Ness gets a free recovery no matter what. This lowers the vulnerability of his recovery from two stages to one stage; from being countered both while the Thunder is out AND when doing the missile to only the former.

It would still be exploitable, but now Ness can get much more control over this vulnerability, especially considering it's a controllable projectile.

I think these PK Thunder 2 buffs are kind of extreme. One thing that is pretty inconsistent is when Ness launches himself. There are times where he can be hit out of PK Thunder 2 by a direct attack, or times where a direct attack will kill the person trying to gimp Ness instead, while Ness makes it back to the stage. Here are my ideas for balancing Ness' recovery.

• Maintain wall-bouncing.
• Ensure wall-bouncing can be performed on both sides of every stage. Certain stages in SSB4 seem impossible to wall-bounce on the left side.
• Increase the time required to wall-bounce so that it's user-friendly.
• Grant Ness the ability to use PK Thunder twice off-stage, should his PK Thunder be interrupted.
  • At times, when Ness wall-bounces, his PK Thunder hits the stage (ex.: Final Destination), rendering wall-bouncing meaningless.
  • Hitting Ness directly, however, will reset PK Thunder so that he can try two times.
• Grant super armor when PK Thunder 2 is in effect.
• Make teching PK Thunder 2 impossible. This works with a high risk/high reward mentality. Nothing should ever be a low risk/high reward or vice versa.
• Maintain the ability to reduce the distance of PK Thunder 2, however.
  • If projectiles are used to reduce the distance, make it only for strong projectiles (ex.: fully charged Shadow Ball). Something as weak as Fireball shouldn't be reducing the distance.

People might complain about these, thinking that Ness won't be gimpable. He will be gimpable. He is left open, after all. It just won't be as easy to gimp him.