What is the point of Smash DI/SDI?

[Necro'lic]

Posed this question on reddit, but I'd like to spread it around because I honestly want to know what the merits of SDI are compared to DI. So far, from what I've seen studying these games, SDI's only tangible purpose compared to DI is to make multihit moves either useless or simply not function consistently as moves. DI doesn't have this problem, and its upsides are so amazing for a game like this that I am only in support of it as a fighting game mechanic.

Not SDI though. It seems the only upside I have been told about it, controlling your trajectory, is something that regular DI does anyway, but without removing consistency and functionality from a bunch of moves from a bunch of different characters.

Maybe you can prove me wrong, because from where I stand, SDI's entire purpose in Smash seems to boil down to "regular DI, plus the added 'option' of making your opponent's multihit moves not work as intended, thus punishing them for hitting you".

 

[aarchak]

Yeah, I don't like SDI either (except for aginst Bayo), it really makes multihits worse as you said. From what I've read, it is basically DI during the freeze frames of being hit, allowing you to perform DI before you get sent flying.

The consequences means that multihit attacks worse to use as you can SDI more from each attack. But I don't know how the internal physics system works, it might be necessary i order to make DI work in the game at all.

 

[Necro'lic]

Yeah, I don't like SDI either (except for aginst Bayo), it really makes multihits worse as you said. From what I've read, it is basically DI during the freeze frames of being hit, allowing you to perform DI before you get sent flying.

The consequences means that multihit attacks worse to use as you can SDI more from each attack. But I don't know how the internal physics system works, it might be necessary i order to make DI work in the game at all.

If that's the origin of SDI, the simplest solution is to just have the game create the DI angle AFTER freeze frames rather than having them move during it. Sure, it can calculate where the control stick is inputted during that time, but just don't have them move around. Honestly, unless they are working with spaghetti code, it's not that hard of a problem to fix.

 

[aarchak]

If that's the origin of SDI, the simplest solution is to just have the game create the DI angle AFTER freeze frames rather than having them move during it. Sure, it can calculate where the control stick is inputted during that time, but just don't have them move around. Honestly, unless they are working with spaghetti code, it's not that hard of a problem to fix.

Well, I heard that there was no SDI in the Smash Ultimate Demo, so it may just stay that way in the final game, and the problem will be solved.

 

[Flowen231]

Yeah lol, in ultimate I couldn't SDI to save my life. but generally speaking SDI was a way of moving yourself before getting launched as you were in hitstun, which is why top players started SDIing vs bayo later in smash 4's life since you could use it to just bust out of witch twist completely.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

It should probably be noted that Smash 3DS / Wii U modified the Autolink Angle's mechanics so that they're more reliable than in Brawl. This is most notable for the 366 Autolink Angle, as it does pull fighters toward the center of the hitbox (which would counter the SDI issue if the hitbox rehits frequently).

 

[Quillion]

I'm with Necro'lic here. SDI seems to serve no purpose other than to gut multi-hitters. It punishes Zelda in particular, and making the engine itself punish a character is a big no-no.

It should probably be noted that Smash 3DS / Wii U modified the Autolink Angle's mechanics so that they're more reliable than in Brawl. This is most notable for the 366 Autolink Angle, as it does pull fighters toward the center of the hitbox (which would counter the SDI issue if the hitbox rehits frequently).

What's an autolink angle? I've never heard that term before.

 

[Necro'lic]

Quillion First off, thanks for agreeing with some other gripe I have with Smash Bros lol. It's all in the name of love though. Just want these games to be the best they can be. <3

Second, autolink is a feature on hitboxes in the "angle" category. They are very special angles in the same vein as the Sakurai angle, which is identified in the code as 361 degrees. In Smash 4, we can have 3 types: 365, 366, 367. Each has slightly different properties, but their general goal is the same, which is to cause the knockback of this particular move to follow into the center of itself. This is usually a single hitbox that can hit multiple times, thus allowing the opponent's hurtbox to "lock" towards the center of that hitbox, thus ensuring the multihit of that hitbox works.

The three special angles have different uses. 365 is a refined autolink angle from Brawl, which I believe can be used for grounded or aerial opponents, but doesn't take into account the direction the user of the hitbox is going. This is rarely used in Smash 4, but it works better than the other two for certain multihit aerials.

366 is the general Smash 4 autolink angle. This one does take into account the hitbox user's momentum, but it can only be used on aerial opponents. If it hits grounded opponents, it will default to 85 degrees or something like that.

367 is the odd one, and was most likely made to sort of "improve" on 366 but for both grounded opponents and aerial, but it has one caveat: it doesn't measure momentum for the first few frames a hurtbox enters. This can cause them to work very strangely against grounded opponents, making them "hop" in a weird way that can cause inconsistency.

Mario & Sonic Guy Am I close?

 

[Quillion]

Okay, that sounds pretty neat for how they can make moves be multihitters.

One question: can autolink be DI'd? I'd imagine that normal DI would still pose a problem for autolinking if the former could affect it.

 

[Necro'lic]

Quillion Sadly, yes. Autolink angles can be DI'd, just not as well as Brawl, and they are a far sight better than 64 and Melee where they were non-existent.

I would pose that they shouldn't have SDI in them at all and the only DI-able hitbox should be the launching hit at the end of the multihitter, rather than the multihit itself.

 

[Mario & Sonic Guy]

It should also be noted that even if a hitbox's SDI multiplier is set to 0, the target can still alter his/her knockback trajectory. However, this can be mitigated somewhat by making the knockback strength of the looping hits not too strong.

Likewise, the chance of escaping decreases further if the hitboxes rehit frequently, such as every 2 frames. Of course, this can be fighter dependent as well.

 

[Teeb147]

hello again.
I might not totally understand your gripe, but I think SDI is cool, because it doesn't just stop multi-hit moves, it also gives you a head start in DI'ing in some direction, which makes it more interesting to both avoiding being followed up on, so just more things to consider and the attacker having to read where they might go.

 

[Quillion]

I've thought of ONE instance where SDI actually helps balance: Fox's Uair in Melee.

Like a lot of Fox's moves in that game, it has ridiculous knockback and is a powerful vertical finisher. But the move is comprised of two hits: a weak hit and a strong hit, with the former intending to lead into the latter. With SDI, the victim can shuffle out of the weak hit and not be hit by the strong hit. This alone stops the Uthrow-Uair combo from being as ridiculous as the old Hoo-Ha from before Diddy was patched (though heavies like Bowser, DK, and ROB need to rely on similar followups for pretty much everything towards the end of Smash 4's tenure).

That said, Fox can still mix up his vertical followups with Bair or Nair, and there are techniques to make the Uair only hit on the strong hit. So it makes Fox's playstyle even more skill-based.

Maybe if the game was designed around more moves like Melee Fox's Uair, SDI would serve a purpose. But unfortunately, post-Melee games aren't, so SDI just flat-out punishes multi-hitters for no reason.

 

[Necro'lic]

Good point. Still, I think making one particular move that is a multihit not have as much skill is a small price to pay for consistency. Plus, there are MANY ways to work more skill into moves. For example, you can make UAir into a double hit like Link's FSmash, where you might not use the second, stronger hit all the time. Unfortunately, this fully repurposes the move, so a full rebalancing is in order, but the point is that this is far more favorable than just having Fox's UAir sometimes not work as intended.

 

[Quillion]

Good point. Still, I think making one particular move that is a multihit not have as much skill is a small price to pay for consistency. Plus, there are MANY ways to work more skill into moves. For example, you can make UAir into a double hit like Link's FSmash, where you might not use the second, stronger hit all the time. Unfortunately, this fully repurposes the move, so a full rebalancing is in order, but the point is that this is far more favorable than just having Fox's UAir sometimes not work as intended.

Or they can just make the move kill later or make it a pure combo move for air pressure. The post-Melee games did the former, and MagicScrumpy 's concept for nerfing Fox did the latter.

But I think we have to address Bayonetta as well. As a few people have said already, SDI stops her from being even more broken than she already is since a lot of her moves are multihitters.

This kind of worries me when it comes to balancing the notoriously poor Zelda. Her entire playstyle revolves around multihitters like Bayonetta, and she absolutely could do heavy damage with her attacks. But her best finishers (her aerials) have the worst possible sweetspot hitboxes to try to compensate for this.

 

[Necro'lic]

The way to fix Bayonetta is surprisingly simple: nerf her multihit moves in some other way. Give only the final hitbox more DI while still allowing the others to autolink up, reduce the damage, reduce the hitstun, do ANYTHING other than increase SDI so people can just escape a move they got hit by, thus punishing the Bayonetta player for using a move correctly.

 

[Quillion]

I believe I found your thread, and I took a look at what the comments are.

Here's something that you put down:

I agree with preventing infinites, because that makes sense. But for everything else? Why is it a factor AT ALL? Why not ensure the integrity of your character's moves? For example, what would be gained for giving Rosalina's FAir any amount of SDI? Better control of which direction you get launched? Well regular DI has that covered anyway, so that's out. What else is left? The ability to get out of it early and thus punish Rosalina for hitting you because FAir doesn't do what it was clearly designed to do?

I'd go as far to say that SDI should just be fully inactive for most multihits, especially ones that will most definitely not cause an infinite. For rapid jabs, fine. But what does allowing even a chance for other moves that won't cause infinites to simply appear to just not work as intended add to the game?

Other examples: Charizard's USmash, Lucas' NAir, Dedede's UAir and FTilt, IC's UTilt, Bowser's Up-B, etc. None of these multihit moves will ever cause infinites, and even in the super small chance that they could, I doubt introducing a mechanic to them that just causes them to lose their functionality is a good idea in any form. QUICK EDIT: And remember that all of these moves have launching hitboxes at the end which you can easily make DI-able, while leaving the other hitboxes meant to "link" into others without SDI whatsoever.

SDI does help balance rapid jabs, which you discussed in that comment chain. But for most other multihit moves, SDI is unnecessary and the move should absolutely trap opponents until the move ends and launches them away.

The people over there say that SDI is needed to balance rapid jabs to prevent infinites, but I agree that other multihitters really don't need it.

If SDI should stick around, it needs to be exclusive to rapid jabs, and only in a minimal capacity. I'd go as far as to say that rapid jabs should probably have "auto-SDI" that shuffles the opponent a little bit in a direction (which can still be influenced by the victim) so that characters can't be infinitely trapped.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

I can understand why the absence of SDI to make multihit moves connect easier, but my stance on that is that multi hit moves provide distinct advantageous. A multi hit aerial attacking allows characters to apply continuous pressure while also being able to properly space, especially on shield. Eliminating SDI means you give a character a greater amount of control over a certain amount of space, and as Quillion mentioned, the application of SDI helps prevent the gauranteed Up throw > Up air combo in Melee.

I believe that when you using a multi hit move, you are forfeiting a certain amount of control over your character, whether that is a multi hit jab or an aerial. Eliminating SDI skews the risk of using multi hits in favor of the move, which wouldn’t be bad, if characters like Bayonetta didn’t exist. The implications also extend to other moves that have continuous chaining qualities, like Mario and Fox’s up tilt in Smash 4. It makes your opponent have to rather react to or read the proper follow up instead of just continuously racking percent. This with rage made it possible to due excessive damage off of s couple hits, and put you in an advantageous position. If you get serial stringed you only have the option to air dodge for the most part. If you can SDI and air dodge you may at least be able to react to a punish then just accept getting baited.

SDI should at least exist to supplement DI and incentivize chasing the opponent instead of eating for a hit or baiting an option.

 

[Necro'lic]

I can understand why the absence of SDI to make multihit moves connect easier, but my stance on that is that multi hit moves provide distinct advantageous. A multi hit aerial attacking allows characters to apply continuous pressure while also being able to properly space, especially on shield. Eliminating SDI means you give a character a greater amount of control over a certain amount of space, and as Quillion mentioned, the application of SDI helps prevent the gauranteed Up throw > Up air combo in Melee.

I believe that when you using a multi hit move, you are forfeiting a certain amount of control over your character, whether that is a multi hit jab or an aerial. Eliminating SDI skews the risk of using multi hits in favor of the move, which wouldn’t be bad, if characters like Bayonetta didn’t exist. The implications also extend to other moves that have continuous chaining qualities, like Mario and Fox’s up tilt in Smash 4. It makes your opponent have to rather react to or read the proper follow up instead of just continuously racking percent. This with rage made it possible to due excessive damage off of s couple hits, and put you in an advantageous position. If you get serial stringed you only have the option to air dodge for the most part. If you can SDI and air dodge you may at least be able to react to a punish then just accept getting baited.

SDI should at least exist to supplement DI and incentivize chasing the opponent instead of eating for a hit or baiting an option.

I understand your point, or at least I would if you didn't bring up "Up-Throw > Up-Air combos" without mentioning if either of those individual moves are multihits. Because if neither is, then we aren't talking about SDI, just regular DI, and I wouldn't advocate removing the DI factor from those moves. Same for your repeating Up-Tilt example. That's not a multihit move, that's just multiple of the same move. Not the same thing I'm talking about.

And as for Bayonetta... I already said it; just have the very last hitbox of the Up-B give DI (higher if you need to balance it), rather than every single hitbox throughout the move getting SDI. This doesn't exactly support SDI, because not once in your explanation could I see you actually talking about SDI besides Bayonetta, but about DI being used to escape combos.

And for your last point on it favoring the move... yeah. Putting in measures to make sure a move actually functions will inevitably be in favor of said move. I'm not sure what you're getting at here other than it being imbalanced? I already gave my explanation for Bayonetta, but you'd rather we "balance" the move by making it subpar at what it was designed to do and also potentially punish the user of said move for hitting an opponent because they escaped the multihit before the full move was finished? That's a horrible way to balance things. You hit them with the singular move, you should get the full effects of that move. Simple.

 

[Quillion]

I can understand why the absence of SDI to make multihit moves connect easier, but my stance on that is that multi hit moves provide distinct advantageous. A multi hit aerial attacking allows characters to apply continuous pressure while also being able to properly space, especially on shield. Eliminating SDI means you give a character a greater amount of control over a certain amount of space, and as Quillion mentioned, the application of SDI helps prevent the gauranteed Up throw > Up air combo in Melee.

I believe that when you using a multi hit move, you are forfeiting a certain amount of control over your character, whether that is a multi hit jab or an aerial. Eliminating SDI skews the risk of using multi hits in favor of the move, which wouldn’t be bad, if characters like Bayonetta didn’t exist. The implications also extend to other moves that have continuous chaining qualities, like Mario and Fox’s up tilt in Smash 4. It makes your opponent have to rather react to or read the proper follow up instead of just continuously racking percent. This with rage made it possible to due excessive damage off of s couple hits, and put you in an advantageous position. If you get serial stringed you only have the option to air dodge for the most part. If you can SDI and air dodge you may at least be able to react to a punish then just accept getting baited.

SDI should at least exist to supplement DI and incentivize chasing the opponent instead of eating for a hit or baiting an option.

I can see how eliminating SDI would favor the move itself, but as you said, multihitters cause the users themselves to lose control of a character.

I feel like that alone is a good enough drawback to those sort of moves. If the opponent gets hit by the move, they suffer a lot of damage. If the user whiffs, the opponent gets a good punish in.

And yes, SDI does help with spam combos (which I failed to take into account), but spam combos already have staling to reduce their effectiveness. What's more, DI already helps with escaping those types of combos by moving to the side, which itself can be read by the attacker to continue a combo.

We already discussed how SDI stops Melee Fox and Smash 4 Bayonetta from being more overpowered than they already are, but without SDI, they can still balance them by numbers. I don't think either of those characters need the ridiculously high knockback on finishers that they have, and neither do they need essentially guaranteed combo starters and extenders. Decreasing KBG on their finishers and increasing KBG on their combo moves would be a good start.

 

[Necro'lic]

I can see how eliminating SDI would favor the move itself, but as you said, multihitters cause the users themselves to lose control of a character.

I feel like that alone is a good enough drawback to those sort of moves. If the opponent gets hit by the move, they suffer a lot of damage. If the user whiffs, the opponent gets a good punish in.

And yes, SDI does help with spam combos (which I failed to take into account), but spam combos already have staling to reduce their effectiveness. What's more, DI already helps with escaping those types of combos by moving to the side, which itself can be read by the attacker to continue a combo.

We already discussed how SDI stops Melee Fox and Smash 4 Bayonetta from being more overpowered than they already are, but without SDI, they can still balance them by numbers. I don't think either of those characters need the ridiculously high knockback on finishers that they have, and neither do they need essentially guaranteed combo starters and extenders. Decreasing KBG on their finishers and increasing KBG on their combo moves would be a good start.

E Eternal phoenix Fire To add to this, remember that those infinite jab combos could still have SDI. I'm not saying get rid of SDI in every case. Just the cases where it would hurt the game. And extra points on the balancing by other numbers point for Quillion . I'd rather we balance our characters correctly than just follow the terrible balance of the past. And yes, I would consider most of the balancing of characters in Smash so far to be either WAY too safe, or in the wrong way, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Melee Fox and Smash 4 Bayo.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

I understand your point, or at least I would if you didn't bring up "Up-Throw > Up-Air combos" without mentioning if either of those individual moves are multihits. Because if neither is, then we aren't talking about SDI, just regular DI, and I wouldn't advocate removing the DI factor from those moves. Same for your repeating Up-Tilt example. That's not a multihit move, that's just multiple of the same move. Not the same thing I'm talking about.

And as for Bayonetta... I already said it; just have the very last hitbox of the Up-B give DI (higher if you need to balance it), rather than every single hitbox throughout the move getting SDI. This doesn't exactly support SDI, because not once in your explanation could I see you actually talking about SDI besides Bayonetta, but about DI being used to escape combos.

And for your last point on it favoring the move... yeah. Putting in measures to make sure a move actually functions will inevitably be in favor of said move. I'm not sure what you're getting at here other than it being imbalanced? I already gave my explanation for Bayonetta, but you'd rather we "balance" the move by making it subpar at what it was designed to do and also potentially punish the user of said move for hitting an opponent because they escaped the multihit before the full move was finished? That's a horrible way to balance things. You hit them with the singular move, you should get the full effects of that move. Simple.

I feel you should at least be able to SDI out of the first hit of a multi-hit move, which is not as easy as it sounds.

But the isssue surrounding not being able to SDI out of s move is that characters who can string moves get hit in a repetitive fashion, and when combined with stale move knock back reduction it favors unintuitive set ups. This wouldn’t be a problem in a game like Brawl, where you may be able to land with a lagless air dodge and punish a player for repeating the same action, and the directional air dodge in ultimate also corrects this issue, but in Smash 4 it’s a problem. Now that I think more about it, Smash 4’s air dodge wasn’t very well thought it I feel; it sooner addressed a complaint than anything.

Even if you can SDI out of a move that’s not going to make it bad all of the sudden. It takes good reflexes, and this many incentivize players to use more DI cross ups to punish a player. Similar to how Sheik players do now for their Up air sets ups to trick opponents to DI into a move and receiving maximum knock back.

I feel it should come back in some way or another. Especially if the game is going to have more stun, then follow ups shouldn’t be a huge problem, as you are still in stun during SDI.

 

[Necro'lic]

I feel you should at least be able to SDI out of the first hit of a multi-hit move, which is not as easy as it sounds.

But the isssue surrounding not being able to SDI out of s move is that characters who can string moves get hit in a repetitive fashion, and when combined with stale move knock back reduction it favors unintuitive set ups. This wouldn’t be a problem in a game like Brawl, where you may be able to land with a lagless air dodge and punish a player for repeating the same action, and the directional air dodge in ultimate also corrects this issue, but in Smash 4 it’s a problem. Now that I think more about it, Smash 4’s air dodge wasn’t very well thought it I feel; it sooner addressed a complaint than anything.

Even if you can SDI out of a move that’s not going to make it bad all of the sudden. It takes good reflexes, and this many incentivize players to use more DI cross ups to punish a player. Similar to how Sheik players do now for their Up air sets ups to trick opponents to DI into a move and receiving maximum knock back.

I feel it should come back in some way or another. Especially if the game is going to have more stun, then follow ups shouldn’t be a huge problem, as you are still in stun during SDI.

SDI out of the first hit? So you want the absolute worst outcome of my complaint, where the opponent gets hit by a move and yet they escape said move on the first hitbox and literally the entire move minus one hitbox becomes their window of punishing the player who hit them?

And I'm still not sure what you mean by "characters who can string moves get hit in a repetitive fashion". Are you talking about the person hitting or getting hit here? And honestly, I have a problem with stale move negation as is, but that's neither here nor there (yet).

And your Sheik Up-Air example is honestly not a good enough example to just potentially have the Sheik player be punished for hitting the opponent with said Up-Air, because what happens when the SDI allows the opponent to be released halfway through the move and punish her during the last half of it? Are we going to call that balanced? Are we going to call it intuitive? I call it needless and an inferior method to fix and/or design this game.

Literally anything you say that's good about SDI can be said about DI, minus these major problems with consistency and undeserved player punishment creating baggage. Let's go with a pragmatic approach; why would you want two mechanics where both do the exact same thing for players, but one has a caveat of causing horrible design while the other doesn't?

 

[ZeroJinKui]

apparently i am the only person on this board who is unaware of what DI and SDI both mean...

i assume they're related to competitive terminology.

 

[Quillion]

apparently i am the only person on this board who is unaware of what DI and SDI both mean...

i assume they're related to competitive terminology.

DI (directional influence) means influencing the knockbck angle.

SDI (Smash DI) means moving yourself in a direction when in hitstun.

 

[Necro'lic]

ZeroJinKui

DI: Directional Influence

(Taken from the Smash wiki) [DI] is the control the receiver of an attack has over his or her trajectory. Each attack sends its target in a particular direction; DI can be used to alter, but not completely change, this original trajectory. DI is executed by holding the Control Stick in any direction during freeze frames from an attack, before the character is launched.

SDI: Smash directional influence (also known as hitstun shuffling)

(Also taken from the wiki) [SDI] is a mechanic that allows players to slightly alter their position during the freeze frames of being hit by an attack. Tapping the control stick (and/or C-Stick in Brawl) in any direction during freeze frames will slightly move their character in that direction, allowing them to potentially escape multi-hit moves or certain combos. Despite its near-identical name, SDI is not a subtype of directional influence (or DI), but a different mechanic altogether that is performable under the same circumstances. The major difference is that, while DI changes the trajectory a character is launched in, SDI changes a character's position before launch.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

SDI out of the first hit? So you want the absolute worst outcome of my complaint, where the opponent gets hit by a move and yet they escape said move on the first hitbox and literally the entire move minus one hitbox becomes their window of punishing the player who hit them?

And I'm still not sure what you mean by "characters who can string moves get hit in a repetitive fashion". Are you talking about the person hitting or getting hit here? And honestly, I have a problem with stale move negation as is, but that's neither here nor there (yet).

And your Sheik Up-Air example is honestly not a good enough example to just potentially have the Sheik player be punished for hitting the opponent with said Up-Air, because what happens when the SDI allows the opponent to be released halfway through the move and punish her during the last half of it? Are we going to call that balanced? Are we going to call it intuitive? I call it needless and an inferior method to fix and/or design this game.

Literally anything you say that's good about SDI can be said about DI, minus these major problems with consistency and undeserved player punishment creating baggage. Let's go with a pragmatic approach; why would you want two mechanics where both do the exact same thing for players, but one has a caveat of causing horrible design while the other doesn't?

You keep saying something is bad, but you aren’t explaining why and assuming the worst. If you can SDI out of a moves initial hit and still remain in stun,how is that a problem? If the opponent can hit you with a multi hit jab and punish you before you SDI completely out of it, how is that an issue? It’s not bad game design, it’s part of what makes smash combos interesting; integrating a form of control as a defense.

If you would read my previous posts, you would know that I’m talking about moves like Fox’s and Mario’s uptilt. I’m not going to keep repeating myself. I’ll use Bayo as an example again, if Bayo SDI’s out of the first hit of set knockback from her Up B, the worst thing that could happen is that she has no guaranteed follow up, best possible outcome is that she can possibly afterburner kick depending on the level of DI, or just land because the move is very safe.

DI in smash 4 isn’t good, nor is it perfectly good as SDI. In the instance where I talked about being hit by Multiple up tilts: DI won’t help you, because A. low knock back means you have no direction to go in, B. Moves get stale, meaning that knock back is reduced, making it easier for a move to chain, C. Assuming you can DI during upper percents, you can’t go anywhere because air dodging will get you punished, doing an aerial landing can get you shield grabbed. If SDI was introduced, your opponent won’t just be able to string multiple tilts, rather they would have to chase you during stun to follow up.

Another example would be Sheik forward tilts. She wouldn’t just be able to just chain them repeatedly, she should have to mix them up

I’m not sure if you know what SDI looks like, but it just allows you to move a bit further in proximity to the hit of a move while still retaining stun. That’s pretty much it.

It’s not going to make multi hit moves worse, there is still a matter of execution, and doing so all the time is very difficult, and human error introduced into the formula makes it impossible. And I do understand that implementing SDI should be something taken with caution, but without it, characters gain a great amount of positioning because the amount of DI available isn’t enough to supplement a solid escape. Mario / Luigi / ZSS/ Bayo / Meta Knight up air chains exist because you can’t reposition yourself and don’t require the player to anticipate a mix up in direction and just mindlessly secure a kill.

Just because a player SDI’s doesn’t mean they get out of the combo for free, they are still in stun, and if they SDI wrong or if the opponent predicts it, it may put the opponent in a more disadvantageous position. Think about it, if you are stunned, take a hit and are giving the opponent the maximum amount of control due to SDI’ing away, you are forfeiting more control of the stage at a possibly lower percent, at an attempt to be safe, or punish back. Of course this depends if the move would have killed or not, but mixing up an opponent attempting to repeatedly SDI just means resorting to use a move that isn’t multi hit to kill. Of course this is all character and positioning dependant, and it does hurt characters who have have set ups into multi hit finishers like diddy with d-tilt>u-smash, but at kill percents you can d-tilt > rar bair. It’s a reoccuring issue that characters with several guaranteed kill set ups usually take up top placing in tournaments. Having some SDI would help some heavy weight characters at least.

This is all just theory, but playing the game a lot against players at a higher level helps me explain this...sort of. Having SDI can be a good idea on paper and can end up being terrible, just liking nerfing DI in general looked good on paper then it ended up being bad. I think it should at the very least exist to some extent.

 

[Quillion]

DI in smash 4 isn’t good, nor is it perfectly good as SDI. In the instance where I talked about being hit by Multiple up tilts: DI won’t help you, because A. low knock back means you have no direction to go in, B. Moves get stale, meaning that knock back is reduced, making it easier for a move to chain, C. Assuming you can DI during upper percents, you can’t go anywhere because air dodging will get you punished, doing an aerial landing can get you shield grabbed. If SDI was introduced, your opponent won’t just be able to string multiple tilts, rather they would have to chase you during stun to follow up.

Oh yeah, move staling is definitely an issue since it favors repeatedly using a move so it knocks the opponent back less. I didn't take that into account either.

That said, SDI can still go as long as they fix knockback staling. I think staling should work like this: the more you use a move, its base knockback increases and its knockback growth decreases.

That way, combo moves get worse as they are repeatedly used because they knock the victim further and further back, but it can't finish since percent won't affect it that much. Likewise, finisher moves get worse as they are repeatedly used because percent affects the launch less and less, but they can't be used as combo moves afterwards since base knockback increases without any regard to percent.

Honestly, BKB and KBG aren't really that hard to figure out: less BKB is good, and more KBG is good. I wish the developers would realize this and balance knockback staling around that fact.

It’s not going to make multi hit moves worse, there is still a matter of execution, and doing so all the time is very difficult, and human error introduced into the formula makes it impossible.

Okay, this is the same argument people bring up when discussing L-Canceling. People say that it's vital to making Fox in Melee less overpowered, but no. It doesn't even make him less overpowered; it just slows the process of people finding out he is overpowered.

Likewise, even though SDI is reactionary unlike L-Canceling, SDI doesn't make multi-hitters better; it only slows the process of people finding out that multi-hitters are bad.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Oh yeah, move staling is definitely an issue since it favors repeatedly using a move so it knocks the opponent back less. I didn't take that into account either.

That said, SDI can still go as long as they fix knockback staling. I think staling should work like this: the more you use a move, its base knockback increases and its knockback growth decreases.

That way, combo moves get worse as they are repeatedly used because they knock the victim further and further back, but it can't finish since percent won't affect it that much. Likewise, finisher moves get worse as they are repeatedly used because percent affects the launch less and less, but they can't be used as combo moves afterwards since base knockback increases without any regard to percent.

Honestly, BKB and KBG aren't really that hard to figure out: less BKB is good, and more KBG is good. I wish the developers would realize this and balance knockback staling around that fact.



Okay, this is the same argument people bring up when discussing L-Canceling. People say that it's vital to making Fox in Melee less overpowered, but no. It doesn't even make him less overpowered; it just slows the process of people finding out he is overpowered.

Likewise, even though SDI is reactionary unlike L-Canceling, SDI doesn't make multi-hitters better; it only slows the process of people finding out that multi-hitters are bad.

That’s true, which is why I said my ideas may be terrible lol.

I with there were some sort of hit modifiers for Multi hit moves that make some hits function better or worse. I know they definitely nerfed Greninja’s old Uair from Smash 3DS, but it’s still a solid multi hit and a good finisher. It does suck players in like Sheik Uair, but it’s balanced out because Greninja’s jump acceleration and height compensate for its inaccuracy.

So I guess the best alternative to SDI for multiple hits and hits that are hard to DI out of in general is just paying attention and individually tayloring the moves and working on knock back growth issues.

 

[Necro'lic]

Okay, let's go through this in chunks

You keep saying something is bad, but you aren’t explaining why and assuming the worst.

So it turns out I actually didn't go through my line of reasoning here on this thread, just in the reddit post I mentioned. So here's are two excerpts of my most fundamental problems with this system of SDI:

This problem stems from something a bit more basal to a game, which, like you said, is overall consistency. If you were a casual player and trying to hit someone with a multihit move and then for some reason they just stopped being hit long before that animation finished, and it kept doing that, AND this happens with many other moves throughout the roster, what would that tell you about the game? The first thing you'd probably think is "why is move A not working properly?" They will think it's a bug or a glitch or an oversight on the developers' parts and will think less of the game, if only a little.

Now remember that this "feature" we are talking about here can affect character viability and balance and you got a problem for not just the casual playerbase, but the competitive playerbase too. Because all the playerbase is going to think about that multihit move is, "okay, so this move is basically useless and I should never use it".

In a bid to try and allegedly create options with an unbalanced and poorly thought out mechanic, you inevitably create less options for the player. This is why mechanics need to work with the game, not against it. The only purpose of SDI besides the few things that DI already covers is to passively give a global method of breaking the game's design.

This is based around lack of consistency and feel of the game, as well as potentially causing certain moves to become imbalanced and remove options. And again, for nothing gained, no matter how small the SDI; the fact it exists at all still would potentially cause this problem.

The only thing SDI would bring that DI couldn't is the ability to just escape the [Bayonetta] Up-B before it finishes itself, which only brings problems. You got hit by the Up-B, you deserve to take it. This is how it should work for all moves.

The only thing SDI would bring in that situation is punishing the Bayonetta for using Up-B at all, regardless of if it hit you or not, because you could then escape it far before it is finished and punish her for hitting you. Now imagine this scenario, but not just with one character's singular move, but stretched throughout the entirety of the game.

These "options" that a hit opponent are given only end up disadvantaging the player who did something right, and basically devolves the situation into "just don't use Bayo Up-B because it will sometimes not function properly compared to how it was clearly designed to work" which just seems like a system meant to make certain moves worse or nearly unusable at the cost of consistency and design integrity when there are a PLETHORA of ways to make certain moves less useful besides simply having them not work as intended.

This highlights what I already said in the last post to you. Potentially punishing a player for hitting their opponent, skewing the risk/reward system integral to all fighting games. I got hit with move A, therefore I take the full brunt of move A's effects as they are taken advantage of by the opponent.

If you can SDI out of a moves initial hit and still remain in stun, how is that a problem?

This wouldn't be a problem, but how can you ensure that to happen? Multihit hitboxes traditionally have very low hitstun duration in order to allow a player to get out of them should the offending player find a way to cancel them, such as landing into the ground. Are you saying th hitstun of the move should linger on as long as the move is, even after the character visibly escapes? Because that still doesn't fix the readability and consistency problem.

An example with Bayo Up-B. If we look through the Smash move viewer, we see that there is an initial hitbox and the multihit hitbox upwards that lasts for 14 frames and starts on frame 8. Let's ignore the initial hitbox for now and focus on the multihit. Now let's say the player hit by the move immediately escapes during frame 11, the second rehit of the multihit upwards.

If I'm reading your statement of "SDI out of a moves initial hit and still remain in stun", then the only way this sort of situation could work with your ideal while also making sure the Bayo is not punished for doing something right by hitting the player is if the escaping player is stuck in hitstun for at LEAST up to Bayo's first actionable frame for that move; in this case, 31 frames, since her FAF on Up-B is 42. This way, both players become active on the same frame, and at the very least Bayo isn't punished for hitting the player, but she isn't rewarded either. This could definitely work with a bit of tweaking her Up-B.

The problem with this ideal you have to make SDI not punish a player for doing something right by making the escaper still be in hitstun is the fact that the escaper is now in such a long amount of hitstun for seemingly no reason. Again, not good for readability, and it makes the game feel clunky and unintuitive. On top of this, what if they escape much later into the move's multihit? Would they then take less hitstun than this example just to ensure Bayo is active at the same time they are? What if it's a multihit move that can be interrupted by landing? It seems like you would have to create an entire system of scaling hitstun based on when a move hit you AND what the player using the move ends up doing. At this point, it's FAR too complicated and convoluted than just removing SDI for that multihit move altogether, and just having the Bayo Up-B's last hit have DI exclusively. A far simpler, more elegant solution.

If you would read my previous posts, you would know that I’m talking about moves like Fox’s and Mario’s uptilt.

I knew what you were talking about and it still makes no sense to this situation because those moves aren't multihits. If you get hit by a singular Mario UTilt, you just DI normally. If you get hit by another one, you DI again. SDI has nothing to do with this scenario because SDI involves changing trajectory during the hitlag of a move, not trajectory after the move has hit you. If Mario's UTilt had a DI factor but absolutely no SDI factor, nothing would change, because the change in movement from the player being comboed here is in play only after Mario gets the hit off.

I’ll use Bayo as an example again, if Bayo SDI’s out of the first hit of set knockback from her Up B, the worst thing that could happen is that she has no guaranteed follow up, best possible outcome is that she can possibly afterburner kick depending on the level of DI, or just land because the move is very safe.

Except like I said, SDI on multihits rarely have enough hitstun to compensate for the rest of the move in its entirety, and I already went through why trying to make sure Bayo has no guaranteed followup even with them escaping the move is unintuitive and convoluted at best.

DI in smash 4 isn’t good, nor is it perfectly good as SDI. In the instance where I talked about being hit by Multiple up tilts: DI won’t help you, because A. low knock back means you have no direction to go in, B. Moves get stale, meaning that knock back is reduced, making it easier for a move to chain, C. Assuming you can DI during upper percents, you can’t go anywhere because air dodging will get you punished, doing an aerial landing can get you shield grabbed. If SDI was introduced, your opponent won’t just be able to string multiple tilts, rather they would have to chase you during stun to follow up.

Another example would be Sheik forward tilts. She wouldn’t just be able to just chain them repeatedly, she should have to mix them up

Again, going by what the difference between SDI and regular DI is, adding SDI wouldn't do anything for that scenario. The actual solution is heavily increasing DI angles for those specific moves to make sure they can't combo too easily into each other. And I already mentioned my mild disdain for stale move negation as is.

Honestly, your example has more to do with Smash 4's shortcomings than SDI's merit as a mechanic. And even with all of that, more DI is a much more elegant and sensical answer to this problem.

I’m not sure if you know what SDI looks like, but it just allows you to move a bit further in proximity to the hit of a move while still retaining stun. That’s pretty much it.

Except it has the capacity to move you to outside of a rehitting hitbox like I mentioned with Bayonetta's Up-B. Even though it retains stun, because these hitboxes rehit, if they move out of the hitbox after the hit, they obviously can't rehit anymore, no matter how stunned. And like I said, the hitstun for each and every rehit is not high at all.

It’s not going to make multi hit moves worse, there is still a matter of execution, and doing so all the time is very difficult, and human error introduced into the formula makes it impossible. And I do understand that implementing SDI should be something taken with caution, but without it, characters gain a great amount of positioning because the amount of DI available isn’t enough to supplement a solid escape. Mario / Luigi / ZSS/ Bayo / Meta Knight up air chains exist because you can’t reposition yourself and don’t require the player to anticipate a mix up in direction and just mindlessly secure a kill.

Again, increase the DI without having to increase this mechanic that does exactly what DI does, but with the caveats I mentioned before. Just increase the DI. It doesn't have these problems I'm mentioning AND it still puts human error into the equation just fine. This is why I endorse DI but not SDI, because one is clearly superior to the other to the point of making the other objectively inferior and unnecessary, at least in a LOT of cases.

Just because a player SDI’s doesn’t mean they get out of the combo for free, they are still in stun, and if they SDI wrong or if the opponent predicts it, it may put the opponent in a more disadvantageous position. Think about it, if you are stunned, take a hit and are giving the opponent the maximum amount of control due to SDI’ing away, you are forfeiting more control of the stage at a possibly lower percent, at an attempt to be safe, or punish back. Of course this depends if the move would have killed or not, but mixing up an opponent attempting to repeatedly SDI just means resorting to use a move that isn’t multi hit to kill. Of course this is all character and positioning dependant, and it does hurt characters who have have set ups into multi hit finishers like diddy with d-tilt>u-smash, but at kill percents you can d-tilt > rar bair. It’s a reoccuring issue that characters with several guaranteed kill set ups usually take up top placing in tournaments. Having some SDI would help some heavy weight characters at least.

You keep bringing up single hit moves more than multihit moves here. I understand the use of SDI against single hit moves. There it might at least have some semblance of purpose, but what would it give that simply increasing DI deviation not bring exactly? And DI increase would be helping heavy weight characters, again without the baggage SDI can bring for some moves.

Most of this theorycrafting you are bringing up in this paragraph about the choices between SDI'ing one way or the other could easily just be substituted with DI anyway. Ignoring the specifics about movement during hitstun and multihits, let me just replace "SDI" with "DI" in your paragraph here as well as add some comments.

"Just because a player DI’s doesn’t mean they get out of the combo for free, they are still in stun, and if they DI wrong or if the opponent predicts it, it may put the opponent in a more disadvantageous position. Think about it, if you are stunned, take a hit and are giving the opponent the maximum amount of control due to DI’ing away, you are forfeiting more control of the stage at a possibly lower percent, at an attempt to be safe, or punish back. Of course this depends if the move would have killed or not, but mixing up an opponent attempting to repeatedly SDI just means resorting to use a move that isn’t multi hit to kill. (Again, just have the multihit move subject to DI on the launching hit, or if it's a rapid jab, then SDI is excusable at that point) Of course this is all character and positioning dependant, and it does hurt characters who have have set ups into multi hit finishers like diddy with d-tilt>u-smash, but at kill percents you can d-tilt > rar bair. (This dynamic wouldn't be lost without SDI allowing for escape prematurely by USmash) It’s a reoccuring issue that characters with several guaranteed kill set ups usually take up top placing in tournaments. Having some DI would help some heavy weight characters at least."

Quick edit towards Quillion . I think a better, and much more appropriate stale move negation system is to increase DI deviation for stale moves. This works especially well since most of what stale move negation works against is combo starters and kill moves. With more DI deviation, stale combo starters would have a harder time comboing, and kill moves that are stale would have a harder time killing as well.

Second quick edit: I see you talking about L-Cancelling's problem with relying on human error. I don't know if I myself bent you towards that view, but I'm glad to see that maybe I'm not as bad at explaining this stuff as I think I am.

Probably still am though ._.

 

[Quillion]

I agree with Necro'lic that SDI unreasonably guts multi-hitter attacks and it needs to go.

But I also agree with E Eternal phoenix Fire that SDI does help with spam combos since knockback staling actually helps those moves.

But it seems that we can all agree that Smash 4's DI was too weak and SDI seemed to only be there to compensate for it. I personally think DI can actually be stronger than it was in Melee and Brawl if SDI can go, plus they can enhance Smash 4's LSI so that holding the control stick parallel to the knockback angle increases knockback while holding it opposite to the knockback angle decreases knockback (as opposed to LSI only working vertically, which is dumb).

And Necro'lic's idea for increasing DI deviation on staling could even add to that. The game won't automatically knock you away further or lesser for a staled move, and it's left to the victim to determine knockback themself. I'm sure that would appeal best to the skill-based combo escaping that Eternal phoenix Fire prefers.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Okay, let's go through this in chunks



So it turns out I actually didn't go through my line of reasoning here on this thread, just in the reddit post I mentioned. So here's are two excerpts of my most fundamental problems with this system of SDI:



This is based around lack of consistency and feel of the game, as well as potentially causing certain moves to become imbalanced and remove options. And again, for nothing gained, no matter how small the SDI; the fact it exists at all still would potentially cause this problem.



This highlights what I already said in the last post to you. Potentially punishing a player for hitting their opponent, skewing the risk/reward system integral to all fighting games. I got hit with move A, therefore I take the full brunt of move A's effects as they are taken advantage of by the opponent.





This wouldn't be a problem, but how can you ensure that to happen? Multihit hitboxes traditionally have very low hitstun duration in order to allow a player to get out of them should the offending player find a way to cancel them, such as landing into the ground. Are you saying th hitstun of the move should linger on as long as the move is, even after the character visibly escapes? Because that still doesn't fix the readability and consistency problem.

An example with Bayo Up-B. If we look through the Smash move viewer, we see that there is an initial hitbox and the multihit hitbox upwards that lasts for 14 frames and starts on frame 8. Let's ignore the initial hitbox for now and focus on the multihit. Now let's say the player hit by the move immediately escapes during frame 11, the second rehit of the multihit upwards.

If I'm reading your statement of "SDI out of a moves initial hit and still remain in stun", then the only way this sort of situation could work with your ideal while also making sure the Bayo is not punished for doing something right by hitting the player is if the escaping player is stuck in hitstun for at LEAST up to Bayo's first actionable frame for that move; in this case, 31 frames, since her FAF on Up-B is 42. This way, both players become active on the same frame, and at the very least Bayo isn't punished for hitting the player, but she isn't rewarded either. This could definitely work with a bit of tweaking her Up-B.

The problem with this ideal you have to make SDI not punish a player for doing something right by making the escaper still be in hitstun is the fact that the escaper is now in such a long amount of hitstun for seemingly no reason. Again, not good for readability, and it makes the game feel clunky and unintuitive. On top of this, what if they escape much later into the move's multihit? Would they then take less hitstun than this example just to ensure Bayo is active at the same time they are? What if it's a multihit move that can be interrupted by landing? It seems like you would have to create an entire system of scaling hitstun based on when a move hit you AND what the player using the move ends up doing. At this point, it's FAR too complicated and convoluted than just removing SDI for that multihit move altogether, and just having the Bayo Up-B's last hit have DI exclusively. A far simpler, more elegant solution.



I knew what you were talking about and it still makes no sense to this situation because those moves aren't multihits. If you get hit by a singular Mario UTilt, you just DI normally. If you get hit by another one, you DI again. SDI has nothing to do with this scenario because SDI involves changing trajectory during the hitlag of a move, not trajectory after the move has hit you. If Mario's UTilt had a DI factor but absolutely no SDI factor, nothing would change, because the change in movement from the player being comboed here is in play only after Mario gets the hit off.




Except like I said, SDI on multihits rarely have enough hitstun to compensate for the rest of the move in its entirety, and I already went through why trying to make sure Bayo has no guaranteed followup even with them escaping the move is unintuitive and convoluted at best.



Again, going by what the difference between SDI and regular DI is, adding SDI wouldn't do anything for that scenario. The actual solution is heavily increasing DI angles for those specific moves to make sure they can't combo too easily into each other. And I already mentioned my mild disdain for stale move negation as is.

Honestly, your example has more to do with Smash 4's shortcomings than SDI's merit as a mechanic. And even with all of that, more DI is a much more elegant and sensical answer to this problem.





Except it has the capacity to move you to outside of a rehitting hitbox like I mentioned with Bayonetta's Up-B. Even though it retains stun, because these hitboxes rehit, if they move out of the hitbox after the hit, they obviously can't rehit anymore, no matter how stunned. And like I said, the hitstun for each and every rehit is not high at all.



Again, increase the DI without having to increase this mechanic that does exactly what DI does, but with the caveats I mentioned before. Just increase the DI. It doesn't have these problems I'm mentioning AND it still puts human error into the equation just fine. This is why I endorse DI but not SDI, because one is clearly superior to the other to the point of making the other objectively inferior and unnecessary, at least in a LOT of cases.



You keep bringing up single hit moves more than multihit moves here. I understand the use of SDI against single hit moves. There it might at least have some semblance of purpose, but what would it give that simply increasing DI deviation not bring exactly? And DI increase would be helping heavy weight characters, again without the baggage SDI can bring for some moves.

Most of this theorycrafting you are bringing up in this paragraph about the choices between SDI'ing one way or the other could easily just be substituted with DI anyway. Ignoring the specifics about movement during hitstun and multihits, let me just replace "SDI" with "DI" in your paragraph here as well as add some comments.

"Just because a player DI’s doesn’t mean they get out of the combo for free, they are still in stun, and if they DI wrong or if the opponent predicts it, it may put the opponent in a more disadvantageous position. Think about it, if you are stunned, take a hit and are giving the opponent the maximum amount of control due to DI’ing away, you are forfeiting more control of the stage at a possibly lower percent, at an attempt to be safe, or punish back. Of course this depends if the move would have killed or not, but mixing up an opponent attempting to repeatedly SDI just means resorting to use a move that isn’t multi hit to kill. (Again, just have the multihit move subject to DI on the launching hit, or if it's a rapid jab, then SDI is excusable at that point) Of course this is all character and positioning dependant, and it does hurt characters who have have set ups into multi hit finishers like diddy with d-tilt>u-smash, but at kill percents you can d-tilt > rar bair. (This dynamic wouldn't be lost without SDI allowing for escape prematurely by USmash) It’s a reoccuring issue that characters with several guaranteed kill set ups usually take up top placing in tournaments. Having some DI would help some heavy weight characters at least."

Quick edit towards Quillion . I think a better, and much more appropriate stale move negation system is to increase DI deviation for stale moves. This works especially well since most of what stale move negation works against is combo starters and kill moves. With more DI deviation, stale combo starters would have a harder time comboing, and kill moves that are stale would have a harder time killing as well.

Second quick edit: I see you talking about L-Cancelling's problem with relying on human error. I don't know if I myself bent you towards that view, but I'm glad to see that maybe I'm not as bad at explaining this stuff as I think I am.

Probably still am though ._.

This is a lot to read, so I’m gonna skim and respond to what I did see.

I want to ask, do you know how DI works? you keep saying increase the DI on a move, but that’s now how it functions. you can’t increase how much trajectory you control without the games engine allowing you to, such as with SDI, double stick DI in Melee, and having greater control over your trajectory (Brawl and Melee).

At lower percents you CAN’T DI out of those strings at lower percents, and yeah it’s character dependent, but the strings work on most characters. Same with Uair strings with most characters.

I know you are still in stub for most moves because they still count as hits and some moves like Samus’ and Bayonetta’s Up B have set knockback: knockback that will send you the same distance regardless of percentage.

In Melee the first hit of Fox U-air have very little set knock back, but still enough to perform set ups at low percents, hence why you have falling hair mix ups. It’s the same reason why falling Uair combos work with samus is because there is stun and set knock back on each hit.

I really can’t explain it to you other than saying just play and watch more videos. maybe beefy smash dudes idk. But I’m telling you what I know. I can’t make you read what I’m saying and if it’s not sinking in then maybe it’s better if you did some research on your own.

 

[Quillion]

E Eternal phoenix Fire : Necro'lic understands what DI does. It only changes the angle of knockback, but only to the side.

I think when he says "increase DI", he means increasing the angle that DI modifies on knockback. That's why on his edit he said "increase DI deviation" on staling.

His issue with SDI lies mainly how it makes multihitters objectively worse than singlehitters, a view I share. While you bring up a good point on how SDI is needed to balance spam combos, I think staling could be modified to do it better.

 

[Necro'lic]

This is a lot to read, so I’m gonna skim and respond to what I did see.

I want to ask, do you know how DI works? you keep saying increase the DI on a move, but that’s now how it functions. you can’t increase how much trajectory you control without the games engine allowing you to, such as with SDI, double stick DI in Melee, and having greater control over your trajectory (Brawl and Melee).

At lower percents you CAN’T DI out of those strings at lower percents, and yeah it’s character dependent, but the strings work on most characters. Same with Uair strings with most characters.

I know you are still in stub for most moves because they still count as hits and some moves like Samus’ and Bayonetta’s Up B have set knockback: knockback that will send you the same distance regardless of percentage.

In Melee the first hit of Fox U-air have very little set knock back, but still enough to perform set ups at low percents, hence why you have falling hair mix ups. It’s the same reason why falling Uair combos work with samus is because there is stun and set knock back on each hit.

I really can’t explain it to you other than saying just play and watch more videos. maybe beefy smash dudes idk. But I’m telling you what I know. I can’t make you read what I’m saying and if it’s not sinking in then maybe it’s better if you did some research on your own.

Chunks again.

I want to ask, do you know how DI works? you keep saying increase the DI on a move, but that’s now how it functions. you can’t increase how much trajectory you control without the games engine allowing you to, such as with SDI, double stick DI in Melee, and having greater control over your trajectory (Brawl and Melee).

At lower percents you CAN’T DI out of those strings at lower percents, and yeah it’s character dependent, but the strings work on most characters. Same with Uair strings with most characters.

If the SmashWiki is correct, it is the change of trajectory of an opponent's move's knockback if it hits you. This is determined on the last frame of hitlag. Since hitlag only happens during the hit and not after, getting hit by these particular moves would still involve DI to get out, since the move is finished when you get hit, and you simply DI wherever you need to in between hits. SDI is changing trajectory during hitlag rather than after, but since hitlag is so low for those moves, SDI would be pointless.

If you are talking about the game's engine being the limiting factor of DI, then that can be tuned up with better code. It's not really an argument for SDI still.

But note that even if I concede all of this, I would simply advocate for SDI on these particular moves, because they are singular hits that can combo into themselves, and I already said that the one good use of SDI is with preventing infinites, so even if what you said was completely accurate, it still wouldn't explain why they should be in moves that should autolink like Bayo's Up-B or other moves of that sort.

I know you are still in stub for most moves because they still count as hits and some moves like Samus’ and Bayonetta’s Up B have set knockback: knockback that will send you the same distance regardless of percentage.

In Melee the first hit of Fox U-air have very little set knock back, but still enough to perform set ups at low percents, hence why you have falling hair mix ups. It’s the same reason why falling Uair combos work with samus is because there is stun and set knock back on each hit.

Except I didn't reject the notion that you are in hitstun even when escaping. I was pointing out that this hitstun is most likely not enough to compensate for all the free time you have to retaliate against the player who is still in their attack's frames after said hitstun ends.

If the set knockback is low (it should since it's from a multihit) and the hitstun is only maybe 15 frames long (it is most likely short since it prevents complete helplessness if they cancel the multihit before the end, like in your examples), then if they escape the multihit when that multihit move still has 30 frames left before its FAF, then the escapee now has 15 frame advantage on the person who attacked them while they are at super close range. This is the problem.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Oh ok I got it, I was a little confused.

Granted, I still want there to be some kind of SDI, but mostly an improvement on DI.

SDI actually helps a lot with teching now that I think about it. Some characters wouldn’t survive at the percents they do if they didn’t.

 

[Quillion]

Oh ok I got it, I was a little confused.

Granted, I still want there to be some kind of SDI, but mostly an improvement on DI.

SDI actually helps a lot with teching now that I think about it. Some characters wouldn’t survive at the percents they do if they didn’t.

I feel like the only time SDI should balance out autolinking multihitters is on rapid jabs. And even then those should have auto SDI so they can't infinite on anyone but can still do damage depending on spacing. Moreover, the auto SDI angle should still be influenced by the victim.

 

[VeryUncreative]

I've only skimmed this thread, so sorry in advance if I'm just repeating info.

I believe SDI was added as a preemptive solution to infinites or long combos. Think about Fox's waveshine infinites on Link and Peach in Melee. Without SDI, they were 100% true, but it is possible to escape by SDI ing away when Fox runs past and JC shines, or by SDi ing in elsewhere. Unfortunately, jank happens when this is applied to all moves - Zelda's multihit moves in Melee are an example of this. This was probably why the SDI multiplier was added in Brawl - it can be raised to help escape moves that may be ridiculous combo tools, or lowered to assist moves that should connect. The autolink angle was added for a similar reason.

It makes sense for a universal defensive option to exist that lets you escape strings as long as you are prepared.

This is the genius of SDI - it only works as long as you are prepared. It is impossible to SDI every move you're getting hit with correctly in a match. Only SDI will be used on moves that you can predict - most often meaning combo moves. Not all moves that can be SDI d will be - only the ones that are frustratingly good combo tools. (e.g. Bayo's moves)

I would like for SDI to be nerfed in Ultimate, but for more moves to have a higher SDI muiltiplier - the ones the devs suspect may have more combo ability than they know. Or just lower the multiplier on moves that should not be SDI d, like Zelda's up smash. Though they could just remove SDI altogether and fix it all through balance patches, though personally I find that's a less elegant solution.

An interesting article related to this is Designing Defensively.

 

[Necro'lic]

VeryUncreative Sadly you did sort of repeat what was said, other than your theory about why SDI was added in. At least it made sense at the time of inclusion, but I still find it a relic of the past and the far more superior DI should be able to cover for it for the most part anyway. However, I do think SDI has a VERY niche place in preventing infinites and other same move combo shenanigans.

Also, it's funny how you refer to that particular article, since that article is where I centralize a lot of my game design ideas and theories from. And while having SDI would technically be working with that ideal shown in the article, it also would be going against some of David Sirlin's other principles, namely the design of the game stifling options.

You really should read through the posts here, but my take on it, based on observation of how SDI seems to mess up specifically multihit moves, is that SDI actually stifles the options of the player because it has the potential to make multihit moves not work as intended, and in some cases, pretty much never. Because of this, the effect is basically limiting the player's overall options since they will not want to use the unreliable multihit moves for what they are meant to do.

I go into more detail in my comments here, and the people who reply to me do too. You should read through them if you want to understand I think.

 

[Chiroz]

I will just put my 2 cents and let you know that people who SDI out of Bayo's combo cannot punish her (true punish), the example you keep using is not real. I can SDI out of the first hit of Witch Twist consistently and if I try to DJ towards her and F-Air she just ABKs me (or I am risking a BW or WT which I will get punished for). Even when you SDI out of her BnB combo, she normally gets the chance to frame trap you with held aerials right afterwards, which is why you normally can't punish her even when she doesn't end the combo.

That said, every move in this game has an SDI multiplier, which is how much you can actually move while inside the multi-hit, Bayo's purposely was buffed TWICE during patches because they thought that the counter play to such a busted move was the ability for the opposing player to "get out of it" as opposed to balancing it by making the move worse (your argument is that they should have just made the move worse, I think everyone who hates Bayo would have agreed with you as her Up-B, even with that huge SDI multiplier, is one of the most busted moves in the whole game).

Some moves had their SDI multiplier lowered (some jabs specifically) so that people couldn't get out of it, and it worked. So you can assume that the current SDI on moves is exactly what the developers intended and that multi-hits that players are able to get out of are purposely made so. People like to quote a lot of Samus' attacks as not working correctly, but there are several tips that tell the player that Samus' moves are unreliable, so it is literally done on purpose.


If they think you shouldn't get out of X move, they can lower the SDI multiplier, if they believe a move is way too strong, but they like how it plays, they might deem that the correct balance is for "prepared" players to be able to get out of said move using SDI. What I am trying to say is that SDI is not exactly what you claim, a global mechanic that makes a type of move obsolete/objectively worse. I would say SDI is more like one extra balancing variable that allows the development team to give very specific moves the option for the opponent to escape them, the moves are specifically made with that "possibility of escape" in mind.

I will also say that I do not recall almost any multi-hit that you can SDI out of 100% of the time and immediately have an advantageous position. There are some examples that come to mind like Mario's D-Air at low % if he is rising (you can SDI downwards and U-Air him) but it needs to be at low % and he needs to be rising for that to work, it's very specific and Mario can avoid using that move in that way at those %s. Like I am trying to figure out which move becomes completely obsolete due to SDI.

 

[Necro'lic]

I will just put my 2 cents and let you know that people who SDI out of Bayo's combo cannot punish her (true punish), the example you keep using is not real. I can SDI out of the first hit of Witch Twist consistently and if I try to DJ towards her and F-Air she just ABKs me (or I am risking a BW or WT which I will get punished for). Even when you SDI out of her BnB combo, she normally gets the chance to frame trap you with held aerials right afterwards, which is why you normally can't punish her even when she doesn't end the combo.

That said, every move in this game has an SDI multiplier, which is how much you can actually move while inside the multi-hit, Bayo's purposely was buffed TWICE during patches because they thought that the counter play to such a busted move was the ability for the opposing player to "get out of it" as opposed to balancing it by making the move worse (your argument is that they should have just made the move worse, I think everyone who hates Bayo would have agreed with you as her Up-B, even with that huge SDI multiplier, is one of the most busted moves in the whole game).

Even if you couldn't punish in this instance, how would you ensure the hitstun is correct between hits? I'm sure they compensated for the hitstun to make sure Bayo is relatively safe if you SDI out early, but what about later? Would the hitstun still be the same then? And what about those moves that drag you to the ground with multihits? Would the hitstun be immense there too, or at least more than it should? Even without the specific problem I'm mentioning, it seems like a lot of work to make sure SDI isn't completely broken just to make sure it can make multihit moves seem broken by not linking all the hits.

And the whole reason I bring up what should be done instead of adding SDI is to balance the problematic moves like Bayo's Up-B in other ways. There are so many ways you can make it weaker besides just making people think and feel like the move isn't working as intended and making it inconsistent as a result.

Some moves had their SDI multiplier lowered (some jabs specifically) so that people couldn't get out of it, and it worked. So you can assume that the current SDI on moves is exactly what the developers intended and that multi-hits that players are able to get out of are purposely made so. People like to quote a lot of Samus' attacks as not working correctly, but there are several tips that tell the player that Samus' moves are unreliable, so it is literally done on purpose.

Just because the developers intend it doesn't make it good. I think that should be obvious to everyone here. Again, I'm not saying SDI should be abolished in all cases, just that it harms more than helps in a lot of the places it is used in.

If they think you shouldn't get out of X move, they can lower the SDI multiplier, if they believe a move is way too strong, but they like how it plays, they might deem that the correct balance is for "prepared" players to be able to get out of said move using SDI. What I am trying to say is that SDI is not exactly what you claim, a global mechanic that makes a type of move obsolete/objectively worse. I would say SDI is more like one extra balancing variable that allows the development team to give very specific moves the option for the opponent to escape them, the moves are specifically made with that "possibility of escape" in mind.

The problem comes when you think of why any developer would want to create unreliability as a downside in this specific way. Why not increase DI deviation for that move's launch hitbox rather than the multihit part? At least that part makes sense due to the move being over and fulfilling what it is supposed to do, and fulfills your hypothetical wish for the developers of "possibility of escape". I'm all for extra balancing variables in the code to make moves and their purposes much more varied, but other than niche cases to prevent infinites, when would any developer want a multihit move to visibly cause the player to escape the move long before the move is finished? It's such a ridiculous way to do it considering all the possibilities they already have to create effective nerfs.

I will also say that I do not recall almost any multi-hit that you can SDI out of 100% of the time and immediately have an advantageous position. There are some examples that come to mind like Mario's D-Air at low % if he is rising (you can SDI downwards and U-Air him) but it needs to be at low % and he needs to be rising for that to work, it's very specific and Mario can avoid using that move in that way at those %s. Like I am trying to figure out which move becomes completely obsolete due to SDI.

I'm pretty sure Yoshi D-Air is still a bit like that in Smash 4, especially if he lands during the escape. Other than that, weren't a lot of multihits in Brawl like this due to SDI being higher overall, especially jab combos? That honestly is a much better admission to how needless the mechanic is overall for multihits if by cutting it so much creates immediately smoother gameplay as a whole.