Necro'lic
, I strongly advise that you look
Chiroz
post. He argued this way more eloquently then I could have.
I’m just gonna say based off of what I read of this post, that from what I understand your desire for SDI are reasonable, however, they are leniar, and don’t deviate outside of the effectiveness of a move besides a move landing all of its hits to achieve maximum damage. There’s nothing wrong with that; that is the goal, but you aren’t going to be landing 100% of the attack’s you throw out, and if you only attach for that reason, you aren’t fooling anyone. Which is why understanding the principles behind why certain moves function the way they do.
Increasing DI, and nerfing moves instead of implementing one universal function is practical. I mean if the whole village is at one house trying to scew in a light bulb, then who’s building the rest of the village? And personally, I don’t like the idea of needing things, it’s just pandering to the lowest common denomination of an issue. Not to mention it can just make a character / game really ****ing boring. If SDI can fix some problematic, and further resources can be spent building upon the game rather than focus on something inconsequential to the games overall success (multi hit moves landing all hits) then cool. And fixing though modifying SDI works; they did it with Greninja’s Uair from being busted in Smash 3DS to being solid to Smash 4 Wii U.
You act like dealing with SDI is some monumental goal with your village analogy. You already give an example of them fixing the SDI with a move, and surprise, it involved lowering the value so it becomes less of a factor! And I feel you are trying to make it seem like I'm focusing WAY too much on this one thing when there are bigger fish to fry when the fact is, this is what the thread was about, this is why I posted it, so bringing up other bigger flaws would be simply going off topic. I really don't think this makes or breaks the game as much as you seem to think I do, but it is still an issue nevertheless.
And I'm not sure why you bring up "you aren’t going to be landing 100% of the attack’s you throw out" when this is obvious. I'm not sure how you got this idea of this being my motivation from my arguments. If someone fully misses a multihit move, tough. However, if they do hit it, they deserve the rewards of said hit fully.
Lastly, what do you mean by this?
And personally, I don’t like the idea of needing things, it’s just pandering to the lowest common denomination of an issue. Not to mention it can just make a character / game really ****ing boring.
I'm not understanding what you're getting at here, especially the part saying it makes the game boring. How does having moves function consistently suddenly make the game boring? Does that mean making them work even less consistently to the point of always malfunctioning more exciting? What were you trying to convey here?
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And to
Chiroz
Yea, but those other ways can also butcher the move just as well as SDI could. You're going on a hypothetical and hypothetically, if I were to add 20 frames on end lag, Bayo could now never combo, making the move useless as well. This is why I am trying to reiterate that you shouldn't be talking about SDI as a whole, but about specific examples where you think SDI was not properly balanced.
At least the move would be functioning properly every time. The problem with the SDI is also a visible inconsistency problem, and nobody likes having a move that they clearly hit not work to the main function of said move. If you just added 20 frames of endlag to Witch Twist, then the move's function now changes to something that doesn't combo. The developer's intention is still intact if SDI is removed from the move, even if it would be balanced poorly.
This is why I try to bring up the difference between design and balance. People conflate the two a lot. It is hard to know exactly which is which sometimes, but I think the best overall idea is "design in a game dictates how something functions; balance in a game dictates how well it achieves its function". You are bringing up a balance issue when SDI is a design issue. Removing SDI is removing a design problem. Now sure, you can rebalance to compensate for the removal of that design issue, but since design integrity is far more important than balance integrity, whatever rebalance you do, no matter how crazy, will inevitably be more favorable than keeping the design problem in (unless you do something insane).
Again, exactly why they have it set as a specific variable, so that they can fix those specific instances where SDI is doing more harm than good. Obviously no game is perfectly balanced. Landing lag in heavies is way too big and they mostly rely on auto cancel windows, otherwise they can't throw out aerials at all, but that doesn't mean that end lag/landing lag are bad game design concepts as a whole, just that there are some moves/characters where it isn't properly balanced.
I skimmed over the first parts of your post and focused on the bigger paragraph and I didn't even see this. I would've definitely replied to you sooner if I saw this, because once again, you are conflating design and balance. The existence of endlag and landing lag is, imo, an absolute necessity to a platforming fighter's design. SDI, I will still posit, is not, at least not as much as it is used. Bringing up endlag/landing lag on certain moves being imbalanced doesn't change the fact that SDI is a bad design choice, at least most of the time.
Your overall post seems to be "look at the nuance of this" and trust me, I have. I have even admitted that SDI is necessary for certain moves, but it is criminally overused throughout multihit moves when just removing it in those cases can solve at least a few problems.
You're saying what the move is supposed to do, but in the previous argument I was trying to make a point that I believe that some of those moves are supposed to be inconsistent by design. So in a way, escaping them is part of how they are supposed to work.
And I remember saying that making a move inconsistent in this way is a horrible idea for a competitive game.
If you increase DI as a whole in the game, now you have people surviving until ridiculous amounts. You also have people very easily escaping almost all combos in the game, all to balance a few handful of moves. If what you're saying is have "move specific DI" well, that's exactly what SDI is supposed to be, at least that's what I think they are trying to achieve with it (I might be wrong). If your concern is about how hard/unintuitive SDI is to actually perform, then I agree that it could be made into a simpler input. (Although it couldn't be "just hold a direction" because then everyone will SDI moves without trying and sometimes without wanting to).
SDI is not "move specific DI", because DI and SDI are fundamentally different things. And while I would like a simpler input too, it still isn't my point. And note when I said "increase DI deviation", it was only to that one particular move from Bayo, not to all multihits. Please don't try to twist my words into an extreme that I don't actually support.
I would actually argue this is a case where SDI is strictly needed, as that move deals 32% by itself if I am not mistaken. The other argument could be "well, lower it's damage then to 16% and take away SDI" - true, but then it wouldn't be a good shield pressure tool. Although now you could say, "well, raise it's shield damage value" - I guess that's true as well. I honestly wouldn't be able to tell you exactly why the move is how it is and doesn't work in another way, but I am trying to make clear that there's a ton of other reasons why decisions are made and that there might be some reasons we aren't aware of or are not thinking of at the moment.
Your train of thought at the beginning of this quote is exactly how you would fix up a move like Yoshi's DAir. And in the end, it still achieves its goal of being good at shield pressure, while also being consistent to hit with! Overall, it is a win.
And even with your apprehension of the interlocking mechanics of the game, I would simply note that, from what I've seen of the mechanics of this game, they are TOO interlocking. For example, a move's damage controls its hitstun, its knockback, and its shield damage and shieldstun. Why? This makes the game so much harder to balance since increasing damage of a move, a pretty simple number change, causes way too many background changes. My point is that even with the caution that these decisions have reasoning behind them, they can still be improved regardless.
