Why are Sakurai's views on competitive Smash so mis-represented?

[Necro'lic]

Spak I'm not really sure how making it so the game completely shrugs off the consequences of getting hit by certain moves as a good thing. And like Fell God said, there are, and have been, other ways to make meteor moves balanced. Just because it was done in one of the games doesn't mean it's the only way or even the best way.

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Personally, I don't mind if new games aren't like Melee, if they offered NEW ways to play that were deep that were not like Melee. For example, if Brawl took out all those techniques, they should have added more moves. Each character should have had more moves, or there should have been new interesting gameplay innovations. Instead, Brawl offered tripping and crazy overpowered Smash Balls as new gameplay mechanics. To use an analogy to Zelda as I've seen in this thread, Wind Waker doesn't have Epona, but instead gives you Sailing. If they included Epona but made Epona slower and made her jumps slower, that would seam lame compared to OOT. By drastically changing Epona to a boat, the game creates it's own identity.

I mean, what did Smash4 do that was new? Edge trumping is the ONLY thing I can think of, which was a cool, simple way to add innovative ways to play. The problem with the post Melee Smash games is that they didn't add real new ways to play the game. They just added more content , quantity, and didn't change the core gameplay elements. That has been my problem with new post Melee games. They removed interesting ways to play the game, but didn't add new ones. They could have added air throws,eor give enough an extra set of B moves in the air. Or how about Back Smash is different from forward smash? How about picking two characters and switching like Marvel vs Capcom? There are many ways to keeping button inputs simple and straitforward, but at the same time innovating - but instead, features are only removed, and nothing is innovated.

As a result, the post Melee games all are too similar to Melee, minus what Melee so well liked, instead of striving to be their own game by actually innovaitng the core gameplay elements of Smash. I think if the core elements were changed drastically that they no longer even resemble Melee but they still are accessible to new players the way Sakurai wants, I think Melee players would actually give the game a shot. For example. the perfect shielding innovation in Ultimate is a totally new concept, and Melee players are actually excited about it because it's completely different. It appears to be a deeper way to play the game, and it doesn't require insane button inputs. More of this kind of thing really has been needed.

 

[J0eyboi]

Spak I'm not really sure how making it so the game completely shrugs off the consequences of getting hit by certain moves as a good thing. And like Fell God said, there are, and have been, other ways to make meteor moves balanced. Just because it was done in one of the games doesn't mean it's the only way or even the best way.

It's a bad thing in a vacuum, but a good thing when you consider the meteors themselves. See, the thing about spikes in Smash 4 is that they're kinda universally trash if used for anything other than edgeguarding, often being very negative on hit if used onstage until very high percents, because they have to be. If they had enough knockback to actually be useful, they'd all kill at 0 against everyone offstage, which would be ever so slightly dumb. Spikes in Smash 4 are better for edgeguarding than meteors in Melee, but they're only good at edgeguarding.

Melee doesn't have this problem, because in Melee, meteors aren't supposed to be used for edgeguarding (spikes are, though). By making it so you can still recover if you get meteored offstage, Sakurai gained the freedom to make meteors actual useful combo tools. In stark contrast to Smash 4, meteors in Melee have extremely high hitstun, only aided by the fact that meteors are untechable on grounded opponents. This makes them actually usable onstage and as landing options, which was the intention.

I'm not saying meteor cancelling was a great mechanic in either game it appeared in; I personally think it was poorly implemented both times, and that the meteor cancelling window should've become later with percent so that meteor smashes could actually be used to edgeguard at higher percents. That said, saying it was a terrible mechanic is ignoring why it was there.

 

[Spak]

In Melee, certain meteors couldn't be meteor canceled, such as Marth's (in the NTSC version) and Falco's (not 100% about that one), both could be comboed into. Nowadays, almost no one can combo into meteors, and all of them are slow. Plus, it's not like high level matches are plagued with them, in the ones I see, they aren't very common.

That was intentional and based off of the angle that it sent people. Spikes were supposed to be riskier moves that you can't MC (like it being harder to tipper Marth's Dair or hit), but they didn't gauge that correctly in Melee (seen by the changes made to Marth in PAL to make his spike a meteor and the second half of Falco's Dair sending people up and out in PAL). Then, they made everything meteor cancelable in Brawl and it caused options that used to be riskier (but worth it because the opponent couldn't meteor cancel) completely useless. Then, they made nothing meteor cancelable in Sm4sh, which would be a problem except for the fact that the most of the characters' options for recovering to ledge are so safe that there's hardly any point to trying to ledgeguard at all.

Spak I'm not really sure how making it so the game completely shrugs off the consequences of getting hit by certain moves as a good thing. And like Fell God said, there are, and have been, other ways to make meteor moves balanced. Just because it was done in one of the games doesn't mean it's the only way or even the best way.

It only shrugs off consequences if you input correctly. If you input too early or jump right before they try to meteor, you're put into a window (I think it's either 20 or 40 frames; I can't remember off the top of my head) where you can't meteor cancel. Also, if you feel like negating consequences of getting hit by certain moves is a bad thing, surely you're against all techs, or maybe you really don't like counters (either way, give 64 a shot ). It's merely another defensive option that (in my opinion) should be available against the easy-to-hit meteors (whereas I think the harder to hit moves or moves that cleanly tie together a character's moveset should be spikes). Also, I'd appreciate elaboration on how you think Brawl or Sm4sh made meteor moves more balanced. I honestly think that Brawl made meteors too weak by making everything meteor cancellable and Sm4sh made spikes too strong by taking away meteor cancelling, but I could just be overlooking something.

 

[Flowen231]

imo if someone lands a meteor you shouldn't be able to cancel it. Meteor canceling in my eyes is just a way of breaking out of heavy disadvantage after your opponent has outplayed you and followed up well enough to land a kill move. In a sense, meteor canceling rewards bad play because it allows the player who got outplayed to deny his opponent's reward despite getting all of the conditions right for it.

That's my preferred take on it anyway, it really does depend on how the meteors are implemented like joey said.

 

[Necro'lic]

It only shrugs off consequences if you input correctly. If you input too early or jump right before they try to meteor, you're put into a window (I think it's either 20 or 40 frames; I can't remember off the top of my head) where you can't meteor cancel. Also, if you feel like negating consequences of getting hit by certain moves is a bad thing, surely you're against all techs, or maybe you really don't like counters (either way, give 64 a shot ). It's merely another defensive option that (in my opinion) should be available against the easy-to-hit meteors (whereas I think the harder to hit moves or moves that cleanly tie together a character's moveset should be spikes). Also, I'd appreciate elaboration on how you think Brawl or Sm4sh made meteor moves more balanced. I honestly think that Brawl made meteors too weak by making everything meteor cancellable and Sm4sh made spikes too strong by taking away meteor cancelling, but I could just be overlooking something.

Honestly, I like J0eyboi 's explanation on the matter. I think I was far too binary on my viewpoint. But at that point, you have to admit that meteor cancelling as it is seen in Smash right now, is pretty poorly done.

I'm not against ALL techs, though I think a refinement of the tech system is definitely in order. However, some techs I am definitely against, like techs off of meteor smashes on stage and stage techs on the sides (in their current form), as well as wall techs in general, since they single handedly cause stage imbalance. However, I would need a bit more research into this subject to give a more coherent explanation to why I feel this way and what I would do to fix it. The basis of all of these besides the wall techs is still rooted in the idea of negative consequences being cancelled by getting hit, except for the most basic techs it still usually works out, because teching on the ground for instance can still be a negative in some cases, so the overall idea of techs isn't bad. It just needs refinement.

And note that when I'm criticizing meteor cancelling, don't expect me to "defend" the other games outright that don't have it, because chances are I have other problems with meteors in those games too (and I do, funny enough).

 

[Spak]

I'm not against ALL techs, though I think a refinement of the tech system is definitely in order. However, some techs I am definitely against, like techs off of meteor smashes on stage and stage techs on the sides (in their current form), as well as wall techs in general, since they single handedly cause stage imbalance. However, I would need a bit more research into this subject to give a more coherent explanation to why I feel this way and what I would do to fix it. The basis of all of these besides the wall techs is still rooted in the idea of negative consequences being cancelled by getting hit, except for the most basic techs it still usually works out, because teching on the ground for instance can still be a negative in some cases, so the overall idea of techs isn't bad. It just needs refinement.

That's exactly the thought process that the Smash team had in development of 64, and aside from being able to tech meteors on stage, you described 64's teching system. Wall and ceiling techs are completely nonexistent in 64, which created a problem because it introduced crazy, inescapable combos based off of wall bounce. And I would agree that meteor cancelling hasn't ever been executed perfectly because they didn't properly balance what could vs what couldn't be meteor cancelled in Melee and they went to both extremes in both games since. Hopefully Ultimate will finally find a good balancing point lol.

EDIT: Added "properly balance" so the post is actually readable now.