Upcoming 1.0.4 Balance Patch in November!

[Thinkaman]

Okay maybe chess was a bad example because it's potentially a 'solved' game, but how does Poker not have Yomi?

Poker has bluffing. There isn't actually a fractal of direct and indirect strategies--no true counter-play of any sort. With perfect information, Poker would be trivial.

 

[SonicZeroX]

With perfect information, Poker would be trivial.

Uh isn't it the same with fighting games? If you played perfectly you could just perfect shield everything on reaction and be untouchable.

 

[Thinkaman]

Uh isn't it the same with fighting games? If you played perfectly you could just perfect shield everything on reaction and be untouchable.

No, as Sirlin talks about often, fighting games are built on a foundation of using human reaction time as a buffer to induce rapid yomi states.

Clearly all fighting games we have today break when played without human reaction time.

 

[SonicZeroX]

Wait but then isn't that an even more arbitrary skill gate than learning tech because human reactions times can vary greatly (like my reflexes are just garbage and I can never play super fast characters)

 

[Thinkaman]

Wait but then isn't that an even more arbitrary skill gate than learning tech because human reactions times can vary greatly (like my reflexes are just garbage and I can never play super fast characters)

Reaction time is a polynomial complexity skill. (Better than binary, worse than NP) It's also not one that people can practice, and primarily discriminatory based on age. It's... a pretty poor skill test, all things considered.

(You can make an argument that reaction time has an implicit resource-management "focus" skill test, but while this may be true in say StarCraft, I'm skeptical that this is a useful design perspective in a fighting game.)

We'd prefer the game to be as little about reaction time as possible. We're just exploiting it to establish such a high density of Yomi evaluations, which are very rich NP-hard skill tests.

Edit:
Additionally, a time-based component is sadly required for simple Yomi choices to remain interesting. This is because non-complex Yomi choices tend to decay quickly and be solveable--reducible to an optimal equilibrium of ratios. This is why play of Sirlin's Yomi card game has to either have a turn time limit and/or ban use of random number generators.

 

[Nobie]

I'm not competitive on the level of anyone in this discussion thread, but I wanted to post in here just because the direction of this conversation is one that I've seen fought a million times over in multiple competitive gaming communities. I'm not a game designer so I can't say firsthand what works and what doesn't, but what I mainly want to say is that it's very easy to take a firm position on how competitive games "should be" but it risks inadvertently accusing others of making or even playing games "incorrectly."

Sirlin usually comes up in these arguments because of his emphasis on yomi and how polarizing it can be. To simplify Sirlin for a bit, he believes that execution barriers are the devil and if we could all play with purely our thoughts and intentions games would be much better. Essentially, Sirlin wants games to answer the question, who is the superior thinker? It makes sense, but mainly if you see games as "brains over brawn."

A number of years back Sirlin took a class on Starcraft Brood War that was being given at a university, and from his perspective one of the issues with Brood War is how tedious the game is in terms of things you have to click to even play the game at a remotely decent level. I can't remember the exact words, but he basically suggested something like a maximum cap to APM so that who presses buttons faster wouldn't be a measure of skill. Instead, it would be about using your actions wisely instead of simply some people getting more opportunities than others. Naturally, the Brood War community disagreed. It loved the idea of APM as an execution barrier, or more specifically the combination of speed and precision needed to use it effectively. It separated chumps from champs, and when a great player is able to build his army so perfectly because he never misses a beat in his production cycles, it's viewed as a thing of beauty.

We've heard it over and over again that fun is subjective. It's the rebuttal that competitive Smash players use against the argument that they're playing the game wrong because they don't embrace the free for all chaos that Smash advertises itself as. It applies here too: different people get satisfaction out of games differently, and this includes competitive gaming as well. In other words, while Sirlin views games as a domain of the mind, some people like the idea of being able to defeat brains with brawn even in games. They like the idea that they can train up their "muscles", and that, by being bigger, faster, and stronger too, even the most brilliant tactical mind in the world wouldn't be able to keep up.

For some, mastering a frame-perfect 50-hit combo in an anime fighter sounds like the most tedious thing ever. You sit around, committing things to muscle memory, hardly a showing of your mental skill. However, for others, improving your ability to read the player and to think more critically in a match is too abstract a reward. Others still might believe that the true test of skill comes from managing luck and taking advantage of uncertainty, as in games like mahjong or Texas Hold 'em. Depending on where you fall between those two extremes, different games appeal to different people because of what they believe "competition" means. Bobby Fisher famously promoted a version of chess where starting positions were randomized because he believed that chess was becoming too reliant on memorizing openings, but it didn't stick because, most likely, people on some level liked being able to improve by having superior memorization compared to their opponents (inertia from years and years of tradition was probably a factor as well).

I think the implicit disagreement as to how games should be competitive is what creates such tension within Smash Bros. itself. You have this massive clash of philosophies within a single franchise, and even within a single game. Putting aside the fact that Melee is more mechanically difficult than Smash 4 (as far as we know), and that this has created some dissatisfaction for players who believe the Melee way is the best, even Smash 4 itself has different philosophies behind its characters which can cater to different people's idea of "competitive fun." We've seen the argument that Sonic's gameplay is degenerative because it forces the opponent to have to guess where he's going to be and throw out moves in the hopes of catching Sonic, but there are people who love the idea of games as gambles, of having to shoot into the darkness because there's a thrill in being able to more effectively navigate uncertainty. This isn't to deny the frustration fighting Sonic can create, nor is it an argument that Sonic or any other character is balanced or imbalanced. Rather, it's about the fact that different characters in Smash end up embodying different concepts of competitive play, and when they clash there's always the chance that arguments of a character being bad for gameplay for being too simple or complex or whatever. It's important to think beyond our own conception of competitive fun and to be able to see from the perspective of others.

 

[A2ZOMG]

You realize that Thinkaman's arguments are valid on both a competitive and casual level, right? Unnecessary input barrier for instance is a legitimate reason why Melee is a very overrated game both competitively and casually. Competitively, entry barriers are fundamentally toxic. Casually, Melee has dumb cases like bad players rolling because the game mechanics are very poor from an intuitive game design perspective.

 

[Lukingordex]

I wonder if this: http://smashboards.com/threads/the-one-inch-punch-a-mii-brawler-insta-ko-tech.376667/page-2 is going to be fixed

 

[Nobie]

You realize that Thinkaman's arguments are valid on both a competitive and casual level, right? Unnecessary input barrier for instance is a legitimate reason why Melee is a very overrated game both competitively and casually. Competitively, entry barriers are fundamentally toxic. Casually, Melee has dumb cases like bad players rolling because the game mechanics are very poor from an intuitive game design perspective.

I do find Thinkaman's arguments to be perfectly valid, and I personally believe that entry barriers are often an issue in a lot of games. However, I'm aware of the fact that across a number of different games some people love the idea of entry barriers. They love that it's there, and that there's this clear delineation between them and the level below them. An entry barrier, in those cases, is a way to filter out those but the most dedicated, because some prefer to have an exclusively super hardcore smaller community but of course this makes getting new blood that much more difficult. I generally don't agree with that mindset, but I have to acknowledge that it exists, and that it ends up being the reason a lot of people play games.

 

[Thinkaman]

-a very well-written post-

There is an aspect that comes into this, that makes this matter more than just one of preference.

It's also a matter of accessibility, and thus, the spirit of competition.

Binary skill tests tend to be very exclusionary. I know many people who would never be able to consistently DACUS or L-cancel, no matter how hard they tried. Anyone can learn yomi or complex evaluation skills, but some people's fingers will simply never be able to perform these intermediate motions.

Should those people not be permitted to play Smash Bros? (Or be forced to play at an artificial handicap?)

Can we claim a true spirit of competition when many would-be competitors are artificially excluded?

You realize that Thinkaman's arguments are valid on both a competitive and casual level, right? Unnecessary input barrier for instance is a legitimate reason why Melee is a very overrated game both competitively and casually. Competitively, entry barriers are fundamentally toxic. Casually, Melee has dumb cases like bad players rolling because the game mechanics are very poor from an intuitive game design perspective.

I would never call Melee poor or overrated. Unnecessary inputs were a painful flaw, but Melee did many, many things right.

This is what makes it such a crime, to attribute Melee's depth, success, and glory to its main flaw.

The real game underneath all those obnoxious inputs was great, and removing those barriers to let everyone play it and have access to those options would not change that.

 

[YoshiplayerX]

There are a ton of things i want to be changed.
At first: They should nerf this annoying fast roll in this game.
Then they should reduce the blastzones.
And please: Nerf the counter attacks. Shulk's is so OP.

 

[SonicZeroX]

Reaction time is a polynomial complexity skill. (Better than binary, worse than NP) It's also not one that people can practice, and primarily discriminatory based on age. It's... a pretty poor skill test, all things considered.

(You can make an argument that reaction time has an implicit resource-management "focus" skill test, but while this may be true in say StarCraft, I'm skeptical that this is a useful design perspective in a fighting game.)

We'd prefer the game to be as little about reaction time as possible. We're just exploiting it to establish such a high density of Yomi evaluations, which are very rich NP-hard skill tests.

Edit:
Additionally, a time-based component is sadly required for simple Yomi choices to remain interesting. This is because non-complex Yomi choices tend to decay quickly and be solveable--reducible to an optimal equilibrium of ratios. This is why play of Sirlin's Yomi card game has to either have a turn time limit and/or ban use of random number generators.

Okay I think I get what you mean now on yomi.

However like Nobie states above me, basically while there are things that a terrible from a balance point of view, people accept them because people don't play fighting games JUST because they're a pure test of skill. Video games are about fun too and fun is purely a subjective thing.

Like a lot of things you pick apart because of Cocaine Logic, but they only work from a designer's point of view. For instance, having a 0-death chaingrab combo that you need to practice just to make the Marth vs Fox even is objectively bad design, because if you ask yourself is it a good idea to make a matchup hinge on one player's ability to do a set combo over and over then the answer is obviously no.
And yet on the other hand many people accept it, because for the Marth players that's what they WANT to do. It's fun for the Marth. If it wasn't then they obviously wouldn't play Marth, they would play Fox instead.

I mean you KNOW there are a ton of players who glorify Melee purely on it's technical skill and not on it's balance. I guess the point is for many people balance and good design are not the reason why they play Melee or fighting games in general (I mean look at how many Marvel players there are). It's actually coincidental that Melee has both such an incredibly high skill ceiling and balance between it's top tiers and the main 6 stages, and thus it sorta pulled in people who believe in totally opposite sides of this debate.

I guess the question then is where to draw the line. I know you want a game that tries to favor yomi and is as much of a true test of skill as much as possible, but the truth is that's not what everyone wants from Smash Bros.

 

[Thinkaman]

I mean you KNOW there are a ton of players who glorify Melee purely on it's technical skill and not on it's balance.

Heh, well for all its successes, I don't know of anyone who glorifies Melee for it's balance, heh...

But anyway, this was very divergent from the thread topic.

Who has bets on a release day? Will it really be the 21st, artificially?

 

[Crescent_Sun]

I'd like for it to be sooner...But that's the date that makes sense. I'd prefer to not keep practicing with characters that may have had something significant changed about them.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I wouldn't ever call Melee poor or overrated. Unnecessary inputs were a painful flaw, but Melee did many, many things right.

This is what makes it such a crime, to attribute Melee's depth, success, and glory to it's main flaw.

Melee also had some extremely questionable individual character design, chaingrabs, and a system that proves why a lack of grab teching is fundamentally bad for Smash when you look at who all the top tiers are (either you get grabs easily or can't be grabbed in a nutshell, sometimes both!). Strategically, Melee gets really stupid, unless your name is Mango and you have reaction time that nobody else can replicate.

Smash 4 from a design perspective at least manages to mostly only commit the crime of very questionable individual character design on characters that so happened to be top tier (hello Sonic, Lucario, Pikachu, Yoshi, and Sheik!). I still will complain about no grab teching, although drastically reduced grab reward globally is a fair compromise, and when I end up complaining that damage per hit imbalances are one of the biggest problems in this game, it means the game did something seriously right in terms of balance.

 

[Crescent_Sun]

I strongly agree. With regards to the Brains vs. Brawn situation, it honestly feels like Smash 4 is entering a situation where you can play either way because of the depth and variety of characters, and I think that's ideal for a game that attracts gamers that play so many different types of games because of the cast. The characters are on a level, designed to give you a reminiscence of their respective games in one form or another, and I think Smash 4 is doing that best with variety intact. I might just be optimistic, however.

 

[Thinkaman]

Smash 4 from a design perspective at least manages to mostly only commit the crime of very questionable individual character design (hello Sonic, Lucario, Pikachu, Yoshi, and Sheik!). I still will complain about no grab teching, although drastically reduced grab reward globally is a fair compromise, and when I end up complaining that damage per hit imbalances are one of the biggest problems in this game, it means the game did something seriously right in terms of balance.

I don't mind no grab teching in a game with no chaingrabs.

I also disagree on some of the characters:

I don't mind Lucario--I am not a fan of aura and think he is overtuned, but don't regard aura as a cardinal sin like many do. Comeback mechanics get an unfairly bad rap.

Pikachu has not in my limited experience been quite as slippery as you imply. In fact, I almost would call Greninja more slippery. (The bugfix will help that a bit) I'd call him one of the game's weaker designs, though.

(New) Yoshi is a great character, I just dislike how oppressive eggs feel in some matchups. Like Lucario, he's overtuned imo, but w/e.

Sheik is like Yoshi, but with Needles.

Sonic, meanwhile, we agree on. Exempting ICs, Sonic is more unfun to play against than anyone in Smash, imo.

 

[SonicZeroX]

Well at least we all know how Eggman feels now

Especially since mindlessly spinning at things is true to Sonic's canon fighting style.

Heck a lot of characters have been designed to match their canon fighting style like Megaman and Little Mac which is both cool and kinda bad from a balanced design pov but whatever Smash is a Nintendo fanservice game after all.

 

[Djent]

Okay maybe chess was a bad example because it's potentially a 'solved' game, but how does Poker not have Yomi?

IIRC that's Checkers. I don't think the entire movespace of chess has even been computed. /OT

Anyway, I'm hoping that aside from the silly glitches, changes in the 1.04 edition will be minimal. I don't want a rebalancing this soon, and if it comes I want it to make small, incremental adjustments instead of knee-jerk nerfs.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I don't mind no grab teching in a game with no chaingrabs.

I also disagree on some of the characters:

I don't mind Lucario--I am not a fan of aura and think he is overtuned, but don't regard aura as a cardinal sin like many do. Comeback mechanics get an unfairly bad rap.

Pikachu has not in my limited experience been quite as slippery as you imply. In fact, I almost would call Greninja more slippery. (The bugfix will help that a bit) I'd call him one of the game's weaker designs, though.

(New) Yoshi is a great character, I just dislike how oppressive eggs feel in some matchups. Like Lucario, he's overtuned imo, but w/e.

Sheik is like Yoshi, but with Needles.

Sonic, meanwhile, we agree on. Exempting ICs, Sonic is more unfun to play against than anyone in Smash, imo.

Yeah, I largely agree that Lucario, Sheik, and Yoshi are mostly cases of gross overtuning, which is something that still makes me feel awful when it's blatant. Actual gameplan is not completely unreasonable though.

You can call my bias on Pikachu partly because I've been watching Ayame play Pikachu, and while I have to give her props for being skilled, it simultaneously makes me cringe when I see just how good Pikachu is.

 

[SonicZeroX]

Yeah, I largely agree that Lucario, Sheik, and Yoshi are mostly cases of gross overtuning, which is something that still makes me feel awful when it's blatant. Actual gameplan is not completely unreasonable though.

I actually have a bit of hope that Nintendo might simply just tune these characters down a bit after they tuned down Rosalina. I think Nintendo knows who are the main offenders are because these character are universally used/complained about both here and in the Japanese scene.

 

[Utena]

Okay maybe chess was a bad example because it's potentially a 'solved' game, but how does Poker not have Yomi?

in what world is chess a solved game..... endgame tablebases for chess are only solved up to 6 pieces.

 

[SonicZeroX]

IIRC that's Checkers. I don't think the entire movespace of chess has even been computed. /OT

Anyway, I'm hoping that aside from the silly glitches, changes in the 1.04 edition will be minimal. I don't want a rebalancing this soon, and if it comes I want it to make small, incremental adjustments instead of knee-jerk nerfs.

in what world is chess a solved game..... endgame tablebases for chess are only solved up to 6 pieces.

oops my bad

 

[A2ZOMG]

in what world is chess a solved game..... endgame tablebases for chess are only solved up to 6 pieces.

Last I heard, a big complaint from competitive Chess players is that the game at really high level play comes down to memorization. As in there being a lot of common positions where once you know the flowchart, the game is decided.

Might have been something Sirlin said. I don't remember specifically where I heard that.

 

[Thinkaman]

Last I heard, a big complaint from competitive Chess players is that the game at really high level play comes down to memorization. As in there being a lot of common positions where once you know the flowchart, the game is decided.

Might have been something Sirlin said. I don't remember specifically where I heard that.

The endgame is memorization of various algorithm, and the early game is a different type of memorization. (Knowing a "book" of what openings are most likely to beat which other openings.) The mid-game is strictly heuristics.

 

[GameWatching]

Hopefully the airdodge landing lag cancel is gone

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Thinkaman, I see where you're coming from but I'd have to emphatically disagree with you. In the last few years I've become a game designer in my downtime, and I'm specifically working on a high profile fan fighting game. This is my genre. I have spent weeks debating design philosophy especially when it comes to accessibility. You see, I'm forced to make a traditional 2D fighting game, but I HATE the execution barriers that traditional fighting games provide for new players (despite me loving 2D fighters since my childhood). The barrier to entry is huge when your typical gamer has trouble inputting a quarter circle command. At some level, fighting games need to be easier to play in general by reducing the burden of knowledge new players must aquire to compete against each other.

I'll be honest, I can go on and on on this topic specifically. I can type a damn dissertation on this subject by now. So I'll just cut to the chase.

What you are leaving out is the reward for dedication. This is a key feature I believe most Nintendo games have lost with the years. I believe this is something that keeps both the casual and the hardcore player coming back to your game over and over again. When you keep playing the game and you know you are getting better at it.

Melee is a great example of this. The game was absurdly fast (too fast for casual gamers now) and had L-canceling. A casual player continues to come back over and over again and notice that they become better at inputs. Controlling their character becomes easier. Smoother. They start to L-cancel more and more (assuming someone teaches them). They continue coming back to play the game because they KNOW they are improving. They feel rewarded, win or lose, because they are moving like they were never able to before.

Dedication in any game should be rewarded. The issue is how it should be rewarded, and should that reward confer a huge unsurmountable advantage to the player who knows it thus making it a requirement to play at a high level.

If there were NO reward for "pushing buttons better" then there would be no differentiator between mid and high level players. Why should there be a differentiator you ask? Simple. a) Mid level players need something to aspire to more than "being a smarter player". b) Viewership drastically increases when people see players doing things they wish they could do (or can do at a much lower level) because that is entertaining. c) Rewarding a high level player for dedication and time, making them less frustrated at the game overall.

The grand finals of the first playable alpha version of my fighting game went down to Chris G vs a kid who loved fighting games but could never play them because he had trouble with basic inputs. And you know what? That grand finals went amazing. Proof of concept for my design philosophy. But the difference between that kid and other people like him is that he spent literally the entire day before the tournament at this convention playing my game. He could do things no other person could despite having a low traditional tech skill. He was rewarded for playing the game more because he could move in interesting ways and utilize the game's inherent mobility options very well.

Bringing the discussion back to Smash, THAT is what Smash actually lacks. The game does not have inherent options that, when utilized to their best capacity, provide a reward for continued playing. The issue with Smash 4 and Brawl is that players simply do not feel their own progression as players as heavily as they do vs something like Melee. I'd argue that from a design standpoint, Melee did a fabulous job of providing rewards for players until Wavedashing became a thing. The issue is that Smash 3/4 removed things like high speed and L canceling which are direct measures a player can feel and SEE their growth. Measuring sticks that you can directly compare to top level players. So how do we make up for that lack? How do we reward players for dedication and technique? Bugs. ATs. Glitches. Unusual or unnatural inputs for things. If you remove all of those then you return to the issue at hand... Smash AT ITS BASE is not a very well designed game for high level competitive play. Until Sakurai designs new inherent techniques for players to utilize and learn, then all we have left as differentiators between an experienced person and an unexperienced person are these bugs that you so vehemently hate.
TL;DR You're right to some extent. We shouldn't have to rely on things like bugs or awkward ATs like DACUS. But because its Smash Bros, we DO. And until Smash Bros adds new mechanics to supplement the game at high level play, these ATs are vital to the community and to the players who enjoy the competitive Smash Bros series.
Man I rambled a lot in there...

I was with you til you mentioned L-Canceling.

I agree it rewards you for dedication but in application, when are ever going to ask, "When do I want to not L-cancel?" The answer is always never, so the tech inherently has no choice and therefore no place in a game. Nothing changes if you just cut lag in half, absolutely nothing in terms of gameplay or decision making.

There is no depth to it. I agree games needs execution in a fighting genre not if adding it adds nothing of value in return for depth or complexity. You never are going to say no to using it, ever.

I also strongly disagree Brawl and Smash 4 don't reward you for learning this, they don't as much as Melee but still I do stand by both of these games still rewarding you for learning how to play with the game and your character a lot. In many respects in ways people don't do in traditional fighting game due to the nature of it being a platform fighter and in ways not even Melee does.

 

[Nobie]

I don't mind no grab teching in a game with no chaingrabs.

I don't mind Lucario--I am not a fan of aura and think he is overtuned, but don't regard aura as a cardinal sin like many do. Comeback mechanics get an unfairly bad rap.

I agree with this 100%. There's this idea that Lucario's aura is inherently anti-competitive, but I think it's a bit ridiculous to think of a comeback mechanic as an either-or scenario that inevitably leads to rewarding bad play. The issue is that there's not enough risk to using Lucario as far as I can tell, which could be solved by something like not having it apply to his recovery (or at least not as much), making him lighter overall, or perhaps even having aura give a boost to offense at the expense of defense. I'm not hopeful that this patch will do anything about it though.

 

[NotLiquid]

I'd like to hope that Sakurai and Bamco's idea of balancing is mostly down to bug fixes and maybe some damage values (though things like Luma's respawn timer is understandable). I'm not going to speak on much of what they'd go for logically, but the only thing I truly hope for is that some characters like Ness, Bowser, Sonic, Captain Falcon and Yoshi, who desperately needed buffs, aren't getting their Smash 4 buffs negated.

I feel like Smash 4 is surprisingly balanced for the most of the part and we're incredibly early into the meta game. Most changes I could hope for is that some characters lower down the ladder get certain aspects fixed, but even then I'm not sure I'm all too desperate for it.

That or maybe I'm just bitter that my replays won't work anymore.

 

[Thinkaman]

Hopefully the airdodge landing lag cancel is gone

There is no air-dodge landing lag cancel.

The AC frame is just after the IASA frame.

 

[sunset_raven]

Only things I'm hoping for is bug fixes (Yoshi teleport, BLCs, infinites, wectoring, etc.) and a way to play with customs in FG. Maybe a little nerf to rolls in general? Idk. There are some pretty bad rolls already.

Luma's respawn change actually is refreshing to hear.

Ps.: thank you everyone for the posts on game designs. It was definetly a good read.

 

[I_hate_usernames]

My 2 cents on "Teching"


OK so lets clarify, I am very new to the competitive fighting scene, and the fighting genre in general. I've really only started playing them since the begging of this year, and am still learning of the techniques and terminologies.

But I want you to look at this from a much broader standpoint, not from a "competitive smash" or even a "competitive fighting" scene in general, but strictly from a gaming standpoint. As far as I know "Teching" is referring to the use of a glitch or bug in order to enhance the playstlye of your character.

Now I watched a documented on competitive Smashing (Hell, it may have even been made by this forum). On competitive Melee and one part particularly interested me. It was during one of the tournaments, one of the players would win every single match, and won the tournament with an almost perfect match record, he did this throughout the season, and even started using some of worst character in game! It wasn't until really the end of the season he revealed that he was using a form of tech called L-canceling, which (As we all know) allowed him to Recover faster than normal.

Of course you all know this, so where am I getting at?

I want you to imagine something like that happening in a different genre, for example, if there was a formation glitch in Starcraft that allowed units to take less splash damage from a seige tank or reaver. Or a glitch in Call of Duty that allowed someone to heal half a second faster than everyone else. Now imagine someone find out and using that glitch to win the tournament without telling anyone! Everyone would be up in arms, they'd be furious! They would have demanded the winner to have been stripped of his prize and probably bar him playing in another scene again!

Glitching the game in order to win is never the optimal way of playing a game.

Does that mean these sorts of things need to be straight up removed from the game? Not nesserialy!

Let's look at another example, much like this, there were two games that had much the same problem. They were First person shooters, with the same glitch. The games were quake, and Call of duty 4. The glitch was that, using the blast, people could use the extra momentum in order to jump to areas of the map which shouldn't have been accessible, aptly named "Rocket jumping" and glitch though walls or shoot from areas other couldn't shoot back in. Now these two games took two completely different stances. Call of Duty 4 removed this glitch completely, stopping any momentum gained from an RPG blast. Quake on the other hand, rather, intergrated this glitch into this game, readjusting the levels so that rocketjumping is viable, reduced the damage taken from using the rockets to jump, and integrating that technique into the games tutorial.

Which technique was better is a for of subjectivity, but one thing is clear, both communities were better off because these said glitches were addressed!

Now, why is teching more generally accepted in fighting games? I believe it's because it's one of the few competitive scenes that didn't start on the PC. They started in the arcades, on a machine that was designed to nickel and dime you, a machine that was set in stone once it was released into the general public. There was no way to a address these glitches once they were found, and hell, sometimes you needed to use them in order to beat the game. Which is why I think Wavedashing and L-canceling is generally accepted in Melee, you can't remove it, you can't integrate it, it's now just a part of the game!.

But it's 2014 now, the internet has access to everything, there is no excuse for leaving glitches and bugs into the game, there shouldn't be any need for "teching" and in all honesty it's very unfair to Mr. Average Joe who doesn't know how, or where to find this sort of information and could lead to a massive segregation in todays community.

If Peach/Rose/MM suffer from losing this ability to tech, it can now be substituted with a buff to one of the movesets in order to gain a similar result. There is no reason to allow this sort of thing to take over nowdays.

TL:DR Yes, the glitches need to be addressed, either though integration or removal. If they suffer from it's removal, they can be buffed to compensate.





Back to the balancing, don't mind a little Little Mac nerf, as long as it's reasonable. Hoping Ganondorf gets some form of buff considering he has no projectiles, is as slow as molasses, no combo potential, and is really hard to enter engagements with.

 

[GeZ]

@ Thinkaman The deepest of sighs thing is a dodge. I'm ready to accept that I'm wrong because you seem to be very well versed in game design and positive competitive viability, but if I'm going to be wrong at least tell me why so I can understand.

 

[kyxsune]

Hoping for undeserved zelda buffs that make her down B slightly more useful as a zoning tool, at least up the endurance of it so it survives more than 1 hit.

 

[Thinkaman]

@ Thinkaman The deepest of sighs thing is a dodge. I'm ready to accept that I'm wrong because you seem to be very well versed in game design and positive competitive viability, but if I'm going to be wrong at least tell me why so I can understand.

Apologies; I also hope it didn't seem rude. I was rather flustered by that point, particularly because smashboards crashed and ate my response the first time. Lemme write something up.

@ Thinkaman
A few people already made counter arguments to your big post about jank, but to put a little emphasis to their disagreement I'm going to cite how Street Fighter developed into the series that it is because of "tech".

Combos were never intended. -snip-

First, let's back up a bit.

Intention is irrelevant. Z/L-cancelling was intended, and is still terrible. There are lots of unintended behaviors and interactions that can emerge in a game, at all levels of player experience. Usually these are problematic, but often they can be good things, happy mistakes.

This is an interesting topic in and of itself, but largely unrelated to execution barriers. (Only connected by the fact that many unexpected behaviors hide from the developers and QA by means of unexpected execution barriers.)

Aside: SF2 combos, like Melee wavedashing, was an accident, but caught during development prior to release and deliberately kept.

You take away the AT's, the exploits, the things that grant more control and more options to the player, and you're left with footsies, and pokes. It's too little. Foundational? Yes. Enough? Absolutely not.

(Emphasis mine.)

I think we might be having different arguments. I don't want to remove options. I want to remove execution barriers to those options, that are not required to exist.

I don't want to remove DACUS. I want it to be easy to do, so that the majority of smash players can do it rather than the minority. (Possibly by making all hyphen-smashes as good as the DACUS we know today, with better slides and tighter stopping power on release.)

There's no reason to restrict the true game of Smash Bros, with all its options available to the player, to well-informed elites who are good at pushing buttons like you and me.

I swear, everyone would benefit from playing a year or two of street fighter. You never hear people in the competitive community say, **** like your wall of text on AT and tech, because those are foundational and indentured into fighting games, but Smash is so isolated from the rest of the scene that you guys have no scope of reference and make these broad, wrong statements about intention of design and what's "right" for a game.

David Sirlin probably knows more about Street Fighter than anyone in the world (well, Super Turbo) and is extremely outspoken against execution barriers in fighting games. Here's a fantastic podcast he made a couple weeks ago:

http://www.sirlin.net/posts/podcast-sirlin-on-game-design

I can't recommend it enough to anyone who has an interest in game design or fighting games.

 

[SonicZeroX]

Speaking perfectly honestly, my biggest wish is that they buff Captain Falcon. By a lot. That way every Smash 4 tournament will just be Captain Falcon vs Captain Falcon and it will be the greatest thing on the planet.

 

[Ryusuta]

Falcon was already pretty thoroughly buffed from his Brawl incarnation (plus the changes to the game engine, allowing combos again, helped a lot too). I don't think he needs a whole lot more than he has to be decent.

 

[NAKAT]

Anti never beat me with mario. We have never played. Also friendlies online don't hold credibility.

Anti beat Dabuz, Ally, and Nakat 5 games straight in a round robin with Mario, buffing mario is the last thing we need lol. At the very least its premature.

I never played anti before so that's impossible. Also wifi friendlies don't hold any weight my dude.

 

[MrGame&Rock]

Id like to see (even though it's probably not going to happen) an option to use custom moves and ignore equips. That and buffs to Pit/Dark Pit on different moves to actually significantly differentiate them. On that same token, Lucina right now is less safe on shield than Marth is, and that needs to be addressed so she's not strictly a worse version of him. I'd also be thrilled with power buffs to Dr. Mario...

Rosaluma getting nerfed is really good news though. It's just a shame they also nerfed Bowser. Yes it's probably for the best because Bowserciding is kinda cheap, but it was still fun as hell to do.

 

[Tagxy]

I never played anti before so that's impossible. Also wifi friendlies don't hold any weight my dude.

Yeh it was Ramin my bad. I know friendlies arent serious but Mario does get underrated imo.