Well, Little Mac in 4Glory mode won't be so tough anymore. . .

[Engage]

http://kotaku.com/little-mac-is-smash-bros-biggest-loser-1658263617

Looks like Daddy Sakurai noticed how overused Little Mac is, mainly because of how new players or vets look at him as "Really strong and tough, not to mention powerful!" When that's not the case at all.

Read this article and take a gander at how pathetically low Little Mac is online, Sakurai says, and I QUOTE:

"For Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the individual character win ratios lined up nicely in a staircase format, but [for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS] one fighter has a significantly low ratio." Sakurai wrote. "It's Little Mac."

Followed after shortly with:

Sakurai notes that players may perceive Little Mac to be stronger than he actually is, which has led to the influx of online usage of the character. "It appears that the biggest reason for his low win ratio is because people fall under the assumption that 'Little Mac is strong!' and all rush to use him only to get pummeled in return." Sakurai remarked. "He gives the impression of being able to win easier than other fighters which leads to more people using him, but in reality, he's a difficult character to actually continuously win with."

And there will also be a patch later this month in November for 3DS only, that will be fixing Little Mac's attack power and removing some super armor. Also, the Wii U version will already come with these fixes and more!

 

[RespawningJesus]

I read that article as well, but it never once mentioned any details on who is getting nerfed or buffed. Read it again, and read it more carefully please.

If anything, this just shows that Little Mac takes a bit more skill to use effectively, and he is not as beginner friendly as some people think.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

I didn't see anything either. Isn't Sakurai saying that a lot more new players are using Little Mac because he feels more powerful, even though they're not playing him very well? I don't think LM needs a nerf anyways. He's strong on he ground and weak in the air, how he should be.

 

[Engage]

I read that article as well, but it never once mentioned any details on who is getting nerfed or buffed. Read it again, and read it more carefully please.

If anything, this just shows that Little Mac takes a bit more skill to use effectively, and he is not as beginner friendly as some people think.

"According to Sakurai, a situation like this was a possibility that he had anticipated, however players may not exactly share his sensibilities which may or may not end up with the character getting powered down in the upcoming patch."

Could happen.

 

[PCHU]

I think that they should buff others rather than nerf characters (and fix the range issues/histun distribution); if they truly want characters to feel strong and just solid in general, they need to focus on what makes these better characters decent and what these lower characters are lacking.
Some of the changes they made were unnecessary, but it'd be nice to see mostly buffs from now on -- nobody wants to see their character nerfed (aside from maybe MK mains, but that was to be expected), and people should be able to pick whoever they want and not be at too large of a disadvantage.

 

[Engage]

I think that they should buff others rather than nerf characters (and fix the range issues/histun distribution); if they truly want characters to feel strong and just solid in general, they need to focus on what makes these better characters decent and what these lower characters are lacking.
Some of the changes they made were unnecessary, but it'd be nice to see mostly buffs from now on -- nobody wants to see their character nerfed (aside from maybe MK mains, but that was to be expected), and people should be able to pick whoever they want and not be at too large of a disadvantage.

I honestly agree, they should BUFF more characters rather than nerf, but a minor nerf of reducing the Super Armor frames Lil Mac has would help him not become sooverly used. I would love to see more Pac-man users or Luigi users. Heck, even my favorite Olimar should be a gruesome opponent!...
..I hope.

 

[Khao]

Huuuuuu, sorry, but I saw absolutely nothing that Sakurai said that even hinted at a possible Little Mac nerf. All he said is that he's more difficult to use than most players expect, where is this nerf thing coming from?

 

[Engage]

Huuuuuu, sorry, but I saw absolutely nothing that Sakurai said that even hinted at a possible Little Mac nerf. All he said is that he's more difficult to use than most players expect, where is this nerf thing coming from?

"According to Sakurai, a situation like this was a possibility that he had anticipated, however players may not exactly share his sensibilities which may or may not end up with the character getting powered down in the upcoming patch."

I said it up there bro, it MAY happen. There's a chance, due to high reports from players.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

"According to Sakurai, a situation like this was a possibility that he had anticipated, however players may not exactly share his sensibilities which may or may not end up with the character getting powered down in the upcoming patch."

I said it up there bro, it MAY happen. There's a chance, due to high reports from players.

But... there's a chance of anything happening. And if Sakurai's aware that a character has low win rates due to not having a low skill ceiling like some newer players expect, I doubt he'd nerf the character just for being popular. That's stupid. Saying it MAY happen is kind of pointless, and doesn't really merit its own thread, especially since it's not particularly likely.

 

[The21stSmasher]

I'm glad something like this came up and Little Mac deserves that title! Almost everybody thinks that they can get free-wins with him with no problems whatsoever. But nope! That backfired.

 

[PCHU]

I honestly agree, they should BUFF more characters rather than nerf, but a minor nerf of reducing the Super Armor frames Lil Mac has would help him not become sooverly used. I would love to see more Pac-man users or Luigi users. Heck, even my favorite Olimar should be a gruesome opponent!...
..I hope.

In my experience, Pac-Man is actually fairly good aside from his grab.
Just the fact that he has melon and key is huge, not to mention he has slight disjoints (or incredibly high priority) on sideB and dash attack.
His aerials come out quickly and have fine range, but I'd say he's lacking a bit in the recovery department (but it does take some skill to gimp him, or at least a quick character).


Also, I'd like to take an excerpt from the article:
"Still, while the perceived imbalance may have been more than initially anticipated, it's better to have characters with different strengths and weaknesses than to have all the characters be the same and end up bland. Or as Sakurai puts it, "I believe that averaging out character stats is a bad move in both play and competition.""
Had this been someone I genuinely trusted to do a great job in balancing characters, I'd completely agree (and I don't think he's awful at it, but there have been issues), but you can't just ignore balance and say that everything will work out.
The biggest flaw you can make is not looking over past mistakes and working to improve upon them, and I think he's trying to redirect attention to historically "even" games being boring due to lack of variety, which just isn't the case.
Even as Tager back in BlazBlue, I felt there were difficult matchups, but none so tedious as some I've found as King Dedede/Kirby/Wario.
Characters don't have to be the exact same to be balanced, they just need true strengths to offset their weaknesses.
Speed vs power is an awful way to look at balancing out characters, especially in a game like Smash 4, where anyone can nearly safely dodge circles around a character and be completely unharmed by a multihitbox dsmash.
Characters should generally have decent attack speed, or at least a few attacks they can use without much need for setup -- as far as mobility goes, lower mobility characters should have an option to face high mobility characters with decent attack speed/a decent projectile; Tager has a charge-based projectile (only available on full-charge) that pierces through other projectiles and sets up for a combo, not to mention he has mid and high super armor during this charge; however, he can still be hit by low attacks, and I'm pretty sure he can still be grabbed.
DK and Dedede are two characters that have the potential to be good, but are limited by how easily they're outsped/outranged/outprioritized (in D3's case, his aerials either have limited range or comparatively bad startup); notice that Bowser has super armor, relatively decent mobility, and excellent range/speed on his tilts and fair, not to mention his neutral B can be used to edgeguard.

I'm not saying that it's impossible to win as some of these characters, but I think it'd do people some good to crack this game open and figure out what exactly could be done to improve characters rather than nerf the better characters.
Many people will just flat-out tell you to improve at the matchup without taking time to realize that maybe the people they've fought aren't using these characters to their fullest -- they don't put this stuff on paper, they just go with experience, much like Yoshi in Melee, who always had the potential to be quite decent but never had someone with the right hands/mindset.

Don't take this as a "whining" post by any means; I just want people to really look at the game.

 

[Smasher89]

From when i read the article i think its more talk about buffing him rather then nerfing mac since hes got so bad results.

 

[RespawningJesus]

"According to Sakurai, a situation like this was a possibility that he had anticipated, however players may not exactly share his sensibilities which may or may not end up with the character getting powered down in the upcoming patch."

Could happen.

You are taking the quote you provided out of context. You basicly quoted the writer's opinions. Not Sakurai's. Sakurai thought it was interesting that people thought Little Mac was a super powerful character, only to find out that as a result of so many people flocking to him, it only showed two things:

1. That Little Mac is not as powerful or easy to use as most people would think.
2. That people have learned how to deal with Little Mac, which is a natural form of game balance.

So saying that a nerf could happen is really naive. Especially when the stats say that Little Mac has a poor win record online, which shows that others have no problem dealing with the character, which makes Little Mac in need of no nerfs. And I highly doubt he is going to buff Little Mac considering that the character is pretty powerful to begin with.

 

[Engage]

You are taking the quote you provided out of context. You basicly quoted the writer's opinions. Not Sakurai's. Sakurai thought it was interesting that people thought Little Mac was a super powerful character, only to find out that as a result of so many people flocking to him, it only showed two things:

1. That Little Mac is not as powerful or easy to use as most people would think.
2. That people have learned how to deal with Little Mac, which is a natural form of game balance.

So saying that a nerf could happen is really naive. Especially when the stats say that Little Mac has a poor win record online, which shows that others have no problem dealing with the character, which makes Little Mac in need of no nerfs. And I highly doubt he is going to buff Little Mac considering that the character is pretty powerful to begin with.

They are able to nerf him for a simple reason of character plays. Realize, Little Mac has the amount of losses he has in the first place because he's thought to be "over powered". So, if Sakurai DOES nerf his abilities and damage he can dish out in no time at all, the people who leech on over to Little Mac will see how weak he is with a bit of lower hit points per attack than before, and leech on over to a different character.

Little Mac overall has the most losses because he IS overly used, if Sakurai does something like a small nerf to his damage and maybe super armor priorities, then he'll most likely or hopefully, lose some player support and bandwaggoning, causing him to not have so many losses anymore. Then the GOOD Little Mac players can come and take over, maybe to boost his Wins and lower the chance of him having so many losses.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

They are able to nerf him for a simple reason of character plays. Realize, Little Mac has the amount of losses he has in the first place because he's thought to be "over powered". So, if Sakurai DOES nerf his abilities and damage he can dish out in no time at all, the people who leech on over to Little Mac will see how weak he is with a bit of lower hit points per attack than before, and leech on over to a different character.

That's... not true. And your logic is completely ridiculous. If Little Mac was really a character that NEEDED nerfs, wouldn't his FG win rate be fairly good, since the bad players playing LM would be able to beat all the bad players not playing LM most of the time? Keep in mind these are people who quit whenever they lose a match. Being considered OP by people who don't play well doesn't mean anything, like Brawl GW. Nerfing a character soley because they're popular is ridiculous. That's like saying ZSS should be nerfed because a lot of people currently consider her high tier and a lot of new players flock to her as well. And why would you want them to "leech on to another character" anyways? If you're mad that the characters you use aren't as popular, play them well, and the new players will want to play them well too.

Little Mac overall has the most losses because he IS overly used, if Sakurai does something like a small nerf to his damage and maybe super armor priorities, then he'll most likely or hopefully, lose some player support and bandwaggoning, causing him to not have so many losses anymore. Then the GOOD Little Mac players can come and take over, maybe to boost his Wins and lower the chance of him having so many losses.

Nerfing a character to drive away players is stupid.

 

[RespawningJesus]

They are able to nerf him for a simple reason of character plays. Realize, Little Mac has the amount of losses he has in the first place because he's thought to be "over powered". So, if Sakurai DOES nerf his abilities and damage he can dish out in no time at all, the people who leech on over to Little Mac will see how weak he is with a bit of lower hit points per attack than before, and leech on over to a different character.

Little Mac overall has the most losses because he IS overly used, if Sakurai does something like a small nerf to his damage and maybe super armor priorities, then he'll most likely or hopefully, lose some player support and bandwaggoning, causing him to not have so many losses anymore. Then the GOOD Little Mac players can come and take over, maybe to boost his Wins and lower the chance of him having so many losses.

Okay, I see where you are coming from. But even then, if you nerf Little Mac to the point that people stop thinking he is super powerful, then you may end up hurting the people who actually are good with him. If anything, you would expect people to move on when they realize that he is much more difficult to use than people think otherwise. It is just that Little Mac's W/L ratio has to suffer a bit before people move on.

And even then, why would you ever want to drive people AWAY from a character so that they can play others? If anything, you should be moving people TOWARDS the other characters by placing buffs where they are needed.

 

[vaanrose]

Or Sakurai is warning us Little Mac's about to get buffed and justifying it by saying Mac has the lowest win ratio.

 

[RespawningJesus]

Or Sakurai is warning us Little Mac's about to get buffed and justifying it by saying Mac has the lowest win ratio.

Honestly, I don't think this is going to happen, since Sakurai knows that Little Mac is not as easy to play as, and that is the root of the problem. But then again, there isn't much that can be done, unless you decide to rework some things about him.

 

[vaanrose]

Honestly, I don't think this is going to happen, since Sakurai knows that Little Mac is not as easy to play as, and that is the root of the problem. But then again, there isn't much that can be done, unless you decide to rework some things about him.

I get the feeling from the article that Sakurai agrees with the people who say Mac is just fine as he is. Outing Mac as the character with the lowest win rate seems to be a response to all the people who cry that Little Mac is overpowered. Even the person who wrote this article comes across as someone who thinks Mac needs to be nerfed, while Sakurai is like "Nah, man, he's super easy to beat."

 

[RespawningJesus]

I get the feeling from the article that Sakurai agrees with the people who say Mac is just fine as he is. Outing Mac as the character with the lowest win rate seems to be a response to all the people who cry that Little Mac is overpowered. Even the person who wrote this article comes across as someone who thinks Mac needs to be nerfed, while Sakurai is like "Nah, man, he's super easy to beat."

Exactly. Kinda hated how the article kept on talking about potential nerfs to Little Mac.

 

[PokemonyeWest]

Nerfing Little Mac is the last thing that needs to happen. I don't see how the character is overpowered at all.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

Nerfing Little Mac is the last thing that needs to happen. I don't see how the character is overpowered at all.

This. Mac's strengths and weaknesses are just a bit more defined than other characters.

 

[ChronoPenguin]

From when i read the article i think its more talk about buffing him rather then nerfing mac since hes got so bad results.

Huh all Sakurai was saying is that he attributes part of Little Mac's low win rate due to players expecting an easy win but not actually putting time into the character.

This also happens in mobas and gets brought up quite a bit in community balance discussion. They'll find a "top tournament" level character/champion/god actually having poor win rates, but they'll have a lot of people playing them. Then you'll find a character the community says is bad having high win rates.
The general presumption is that unskilled players flock to the percieved best in the hopes of an easy win but because they aren't good players they still lose.

 

[AdaptiveTrigger]

Beware of personal biases. You are misinterpreting what Sakurai actually said with what you want to hear.

 

[ChrisP4]

Honestly, the only nerf Little Mac should get if any, is decreasing the amount of Super armor he has. I don't see Little Mac as op'd once I got used to the match up, I just think it takes sometime to adjust. It's pretty fun facing a good Mac tbh. It could be overwhelming at times when facing a solid Mac player, but like I said, just need to adjust & counterpick accordingly.

 

[Engage]

Or Sakurai is warning us Little Mac's about to get buffed and justifying it by saying Mac has the lowest win ratio.

If this is the case, Sakurai is a true troll.

"Please understand, I am still alive and patching my game. Little Mac has been the case in point of hatred by online play, so, I will be buffing him with Super armor on 90% of his moveset, but 0% on his aerials, also, his aerials will now do 10% more damage. Little things can pack a big punch! Ha Ha ha HA HAHAAHAH." - Mashiro Sakurai

 

[ellord]

He's actually not op, just easier to play which give him an advantage in medium and low skilled level of play. Like Ike in brawl (but stronger than brawl ike for sure). The fast rolling into attack is indeed an unskilled strategy that work, especially with lag, when you need to anticipate instead shielding on reaction. His counter is his unique defense in air and some character with bad off stage can't take too much advantage of his weakness.

If he's going to get any nerf, I just say take off his super armor ignoring counter and smash and his jab (30dmg is actually very high for a very fast attack) and it should be fine.

 

[vaanrose]

If this is the case, Sakurai is a true troll.

"Please understand, I am still alive and patching my game. Little Mac has been the case in point of hatred by online play, so, I will be buffing him with Super armor on 90% of his moveset, but 0% on his aerials, also, his aerials will now do 10% more damage. Little things can pack a big punch! Ha Ha ha HA HAHAAHAH." - Mashiro Sakurai

Buffing him because he's losing all the time is much more logical response than nerfing him just because people who aren't good at the game are complaining about losing to him.

 

[Game And Guy]

Just read the article. I don't really get a feeling of anything regarding updates on Little Mac. IMO he doesn't need to be touched, really. It's also not very surprising that Little Mac attracts that kind of crowd. He is a boxer with a really cool KO meter. Too bad though, since he's an actually good character.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

He's actually not op, just easier to play which give him an advantage in medium and low skilled level of play. Like Ike in brawl (but stronger than brawl ike for sure). The fast rolling into attack is indeed an unskilled strategy that work, especially with lag, when you need to anticipate instead shielding on reaction. His counter is his unique defense in air and some character with bad off stage can't take too much advantage of his weakness.

If he's going to get any nerf, I just say take off his super armor ignoring counter and smash and his jab (30dmg is actually very high for a very fast attack) and it should be fine.

GAH. Why does everyone want a Mac nerf? Mac does not need a nerf, none of the characters do, though some could use buffs. Mac isn't an easy character to play well, he's actually harder than most, and since his only game is his ground game, there's a massive skill/reflexes wall that keeps a lot of LM from ever playing him well. Super armor on his smashes is fine, he needs to be able to kill early when you consider that any decently strong Bthrow at about 50% or above will end a stock. Characters with bad offstage game will always have better offstage game than Mac, except in a ditto, and counter can be faked out and punished. Mac's whole strategy doesn't revolve around rolls, jabs, and smashes, it can just seem that way since, like I said before, his ground game is his only game.

 

[ellord]

Buffing him because he's losing all the time is much more logical response than nerfing him just because people who aren't good at the game are complaining about losing to him.

You need to understand that many player play him just because he's popular, so it doesn't mean they actually know him (i tried him and was horrible just cuz ground based is totally opposed to my style), but their opponent does, so they know the matchup. Also, for many beginner, LM can SD easly accidentally with side B. He's not op, but he has less chance to get a buff, that would be a troll.

 

[ellord]

GAH. Why does everyone want a Mac nerf? Mac does not need a nerf, none of the characters do, though some could use buffs. Mac isn't an easy character to play well, he's actually harder than most, and since his only game is his ground game, there's a massive skill/reflexes wall that keeps a lot of LM from ever playing him well. Super armor on his smashes is fine, he needs to be able to kill early when you consider that any decently strong Bthrow at about 50% or above will end a stock. Characters with bad offstage game will always have better offstage game than Mac, except in a ditto, and counter can be faked out and punished. Mac's whole strategy doesn't revolve around rolls, jabs, and smashes, it can just seem that way since, like I said before, his ground game is his only game.

And his ground game is unskilled even if i think him balanced overall for his absence of air game.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

And his ground game is unskilled even if i think him balanced overall for his absence of air game.

Not true(did you read my comment? ), dashdancing is a thing. Actually, if we're being nitpicky, LM and Peach are probably among the most skill-intensive characters in the game because of how fast you have to move your fingers, and how good your reaction have to be. ellord, you're basically saying Mac requires no skill to play, which isn't true of any character. Try going to the LM boards and saying that.

 

[ellord]

Not true(did you read my comment? ), dashdancing is a thing. Actually, if we're being nitpicky, LM and Peach are probably among the most skill-intensive characters in the game because of how fast you have to move your fingers, and how good your reaction have to be. ellord, you're basically saying Mac requires no skill to play, which isn't true of any character. Try going to the LM boards and saying that.

He doesn't need this dashdancing, rolling is too good and replace it. On ground he has a huge advantage and on air he just cannot do anything. He's actually weird in the meta. You only need to learn 1 style which make him easy to play but not strong because he lack of potentiel for his unique style play.

Make a survey to begginner and ask them who's is easy to play. For brawl they will say you sonic is hard cuz they doesn't manage his speed and fox because of his high gravity and miss areal for that. They will say kirby is easy because he float. But easy doesn't make the character stronger, just the view of meta at lower skill. That's why so many people report LM beeing op, they have casual eyes.

 

[rabbit.soaring]

He doesn't need this dashdancing, rolling is too good and replace it. On ground he has a huge advantage and on air he just cannot do anything. He's actually weird in the meta. You only need to learn 1 style which make him easy to play but not strong because he lack of potentiel for his unique style play.

Do you know what dashdancing is(link)? For any character that needs to utilize their ground game to the fullest, dashdancing is a necessity. Mac's playstyle has plenty of potential, I'm honestly starting to think you don't know what you're talking about. He's one of the very few characters who can consistently kill below 100%, which is very impressive for such a small, quick character. He has excellent punish game, and laggy/heavy characters can have a lot of trouble returning to neutral against him, as well as excellent OoS options. But due to the weaknesses I've had to repeat about three times in this thread, he's still a balanced, fun character. Let's move on. This argument is going nowhere.

 

[DakotaBonez]

Little Mac is the Ike of Smash4

 

[L9999]

Wow, only 3 months and the base already broke. Rosalina is the new Meta Knight and Little Mac is the new NO ITEMS! FOX ONLY! FINAL DESTINATION!

 

[Engage]

Little Mac is the Ike of Smash4

Little Mac is the Meta-Ike-DeDe-Climbers monstrosity combination of Smash 4. Overly used, "OP", Annoying and most importantly, builds up your % faster than a calculator can count.

Wow, only 3 months and the base already broke. Rosalina is the new Meta Knight and Little Mac is the new NO ITEMS! FOX ONLY! FINAL DESTINATION!

Rosalina is the new Meta Knight

Why is this a thing, LOL.

 

[Engage]

Also, I AM NOT saying Little Mac sucks, nor am I saying he is in need of a nerf, but he's DEFINITELY the mosto verused character in Smash 4, I actually lost interest in wanting to main Little Mac due to so many newbies wanting to use him. I just wish he wasn't so 'broken' as people claimed. I mean,. I LOVE boxers and fist fighters in games, and Little Mac was all I wanted in a smash character due to that, but he became a fan overly used favorite and... yeah.. so, Little Mac needs a change so he's not the first option new players go to.

 

[shapular]

I think that they should buff others rather than nerf characters (and fix the range issues/histun distribution); if they truly want characters to feel strong and just solid in general, they need to focus on what makes these better characters decent and what these lower characters are lacking.
Some of the changes they made were unnecessary, but it'd be nice to see mostly buffs from now on -- nobody wants to see their character nerfed (aside from maybe MK mains, but that was to be expected), and people should be able to pick whoever they want and not be at too large of a disadvantage.

Nah, if you try to balance the game by buffing everybody, you end up with Project M's "balance". Smash 4 did the right thing making everybody pretty good but nobody ridiculous.