Why does everyone assume that new tech will be patched out?

[TheMisterManGuy]

But I heard that Smash 4 had their **** patch out or nerf most of the time. So I can see why people are concerned

It was only really DACUS that was patched out.

 

[Mi4Slayer]

It was only really DACUS that was patched out.

Oh cool, so I'm not practicing dash cancel to tilt for nothing.

 

[LightLV]

Sounds to me like options were taken away at high level play, and that the base of the problem was that, not making one thing easier for newer players. I still put forth that you can both have many options for high level play and simplify them for newer players to grasp, understand, and execute without sacrificing skill ceiling. This example only tells me that they only did half that, which doesn't disprove the idea.

No....nothing was removed. Only one thing was added, the 1-button invincible move. (specifically they just took 1 move in the character's moveset that was generally used as a high priority attack, sped it up, and gave it full invincibility.) But the addition of the move undermined the rest of the game. High level play didn't get its options removed, only basically invalidated because people can get out of pressure so long as they have a gap. TBH high AND middle level play got sacrificed for the sake of an entry-level player boost.

I think you misunderstood me. I'm not sure how to easily explain it, but I guess I can give an example with another game I play and watch, Dota.

The casual Dota players are basically playing the exact same game that pro players are, just suboptimally. This is because all Dota matches share the same ruleset, the same map, the same heroes, etc.

I guess this is a bit off topic since this is more about rulesets in Smash than skill ceiling specifically, so I won't talk about it too much here.

I don't play DOTA but i played league. Yeah, it's the same concept. It's no different in Smash, or any other fighting game. The reason why MOBAs don't suffer the same problem fighting games do is because it's far more difficult to judge your individual skill in a game like DOTA/LOL because there are 4 other players on your team and victory is the sum of everyone's parts.

Not to mention the visual difference in skill between players is more of a strategic one. There are concepts like last-hitting, skillshots, and neat plays, but generally speaking it's nothing anywhere close to the level of demanding what you'd see in an FPS or fighting game.

I feel like you are talking past me now. You can ignore the rest of this comment if you really want, but please don't ignore this part.

Both of these quotes makes it sound like you think I'm some super casual salty about getting their *** handed to them, so I want the skill ceiling to be lowered so everyone is at my level. In short, you are, once again, making a critical error that that Core-A Gaming video made. I want to reiterate as mildly as I can, because how people misconstrue my intentions when talking about this topic is so one-note it actually is mentally taxing and frustrating now...

I am fully aware that there will always be a skill gap. To act like there is a way for bad players to seem as good as experienced players is a ridiculous notion.

I go on about these topics with the viewpoints that I do not to reach some inane goal of squeezing the skill floor and skill ceiling so close together that no one can get better. This is ridiculous, and honestly I have to question how you even came to this conclusion about me. You assume my intentions are to lower the skill ceiling for my own personal gain when my actual intentions are to lower the skill floor and raise the skill ceiling, but in terms of strategic depth rather than execution.

I feel you believe this because you still believe that skill ceiling is based solely on execution. I've already said why that's simplifying the subject, but this is simply a hypothesis of your viewpoint

No you're right, i actually was talking past you, i shouldn't have used direct pronouns....but even if I was, I really want to stress that i don't think it's a bad thing for someone to feel that way. It's a perfectly natural human response. What I AM trying to say though is...fighting games are already very highly strategic. But by design there's only so far you can push this concept before it becomes too samey, which is why technical barriers exist to place these options on a curve of availability.

Anyway yeah, I feel like fighting games are notoriously bad at explaining their mechanics to you. Arc System Works games are AMAZING these days at teaching you all the ins and outs of its fighting game engine, even the more advanced concepts like fuzzy guard and oki. But there's still a ways to go, i feel like EVERY fighting game this generation should be including their full frame data in the command lists. Maybe keep it toggled off at the start, but absolutely have it present.

I am curious though....if Nintendo had just embraced the meta and actually had tooltips for advanced techniques in Smash, if people would have felt differently about it going forward? Like if DACUS or dash dance was just accepted as a feature of the game and told to players.

 

[Zapp Branniglenn]

and actually had tooltips for advanced techniques in Smash,

Oh, you just go to Help > Techniques. All the "Common" entries there are pretty helpful stuff. It certainly goes far beyond the stuff I managed to google in 2010 for Melee. Here I just learned something: When you shield tilt (they call it shield shift), you can avoid an accidental dodge roll or spot dodge input by pressing two shield buttons together. Or a shield button and a special button, though I'd guess Inkling is exempt from that. That's a hot tip. I wish there were even more tips, like how Spot dodges have two different amounts of endlag depending on what you choose to do, or how you could avoid ledge trumps with a buffered input which is Smash 4 tech that I assume is still in the game. But anybody coming into this help menu and then checking out the tips for their character are pretty well equipped I think.

 

[Necro'lic]

No....nothing was removed. Only one thing was added, the 1-button invincible move. (specifically they just took 1 move in the character's moveset that was generally used as a high priority attack, sped it up, and gave it full invincibility.) But the addition of the move undermined the rest of the game. High level play didn't get its options removed, only basically invalidated because people can get out of pressure so long as they have a gap. TBH high AND middle level play got sacrificed for the sake of an entry-level player boost.

Then that sounds like an overpowered option added that invalidates other options. That has nothing to do with lowering execution. It has everything to do with shoddy balance.

What I AM trying to say though is...fighting games are already very highly strategic. But by design there's only so far you can push this concept before it becomes too samey, which is why technical barriers exist to place these options on a curve of availability.

I disagree to a point, because execution is always going to be a part of fighting games. I'm not hiding from it, I merely saying it is better for low level players to be able to use these skills and understand them better without having to go through the tedium of repeatedly trying to even execute their moves before even getting to playing the game.

In return, we make more easy to do and easy to understand options available to the player, heck, even more than Melee. It is a goal that is possible, but it hasn't really been done, so it might seem like a crazy notion. Again, I disagree.

Anyway yeah, I feel like fighting games are notoriously bad at explaining their mechanics to you. Arc System Works games are AMAZING these days at teaching you all the ins and outs of its fighting game engine, even the more advanced concepts like fuzzy guard and oki. But there's still a ways to go, i feel like EVERYfighting game this generation should be including their full frame data in the command lists. Maybe keep it toggled off at the start, but absolutely have it present.

They also need to teach the more nebulous concepts like neutral, spacing, baiting, stage control, etc. And preferably, there would be some sort of teacher that looks through replays and tells you what you did wrong and what to do next time. This would definitely curb most frustration out of new players, hopefully.

I am curious though....if Nintendo had just embraced the meta and actually had tooltips for advanced techniques in Smash, if people would have felt differently about it going forward? Like if DACUS or dash dance was just accepted as a feature of the game and told to players.

It depends on the difficulty of the mechanic. Dash dance I'd be fine with. DACUS, you could just have wavedash be on one button and DACUS is achieved (along with a slew of other options). The idea is to make it so not only do new players understand what tools they have, but also that these tools don't require hours upon hours of repeated attempts just to be able to use them before they actually play the game.

This, I'd wager, is one of the big reasons why fighting games are so hard to get into, not just because the game doesn't tell you jack, but that to even start playing the game on a basic level requires some stupid amount of time in the training room (a.k.a not playing the actual game). Even Smash has this problem, because you need to learn some combos before playing on a basic level in 1v1 (along with those other concepts I mentioned that the game doesn't tell you about). And it brings with it another problem of difficulty spikes, because since some advanced techs will be used at high level where the low level players wanting to become high level don't understand what is even happening, it creates a difficulty spike and ruins the upward flow of the game. This can also be blame on a lack of matchmaking rating too.

There are many problems with fighting games' overall lack of care about their newer audience, and I think they could do so much better and become so much more, all without sacrificing the strategic depth of said games.

 

[LightLV]

It depends on the difficulty of the mechanic. Dash dance I'd be fine with. DACUS, you could just have wavedash be on one button and DACUS is achieved (along with a slew of other options). The idea is to make it so not only do new players understand what tools they have, but also that these tools don't require hours upon hours of repeated attempts just to be able to use them before they actually play the game.
I disagree to a point, because execution is always going to be a part of fighting games. I'm not hiding from it, I merely saying it is better for low level players to be able to use these skills and understand them better without having to go through the tedium of repeatedly trying to even execute their moves before even getting to playing the game.

In return, we make more easy to do and easy to understand options available to the player, heck, even more than Melee. It is a goal that is possible, but it hasn't really been done, so it might seem like a crazy notion. Again, I disagree.

you dont need to know advanced tech to play the game thoughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

This, I'd wager, is one of the big reasons why fighting games are so hard to get into, not just because the game doesn't tell you jack, but that to even start playing the game on a basic level requires some stupid amount of time in the training room (a.k.a not playing the actual game).

You're supposed to have to learn them....

Sorry, i just can't get behind it, every time i have this conversation it just continuously flip flops between "I'm not saying we shouldn't to have to learn" and "but why do we have to learn"...The best tutorial in the world isn't gonna make a new player want to practice if they arent already motivated to and any good competitive fighting game worth anything is going to require practice to be good.

TBH it doesn't even matter if advanced tech options are available to players or even explained at the start. Its like handing a person a piano with a beginners book that teaches them chords but also includes symphonies.

It just moves the goalpost of complaining and excuses to the next thing they didn't practice in that other players can do. If it isn't technical execution then it'll be frame traps, blockstrings, tick throws, okizeme, resets, vortex, 50/50s, zoning, spacing...at some point you have to stop blaming the developers for people not wanting to learn how to do this stuff.


They're supposed to be hard to get into. If you want to learn to play basketball but get discouraged when the kids at the park who've been playing years longer than you roflstomp you, then maybe you just shouldn't play basketball with them. Go find people who are more at your level.


Again, this has much less to do with the game being too hard, and more to do with people having unrealistic expectations of how they're supposed to be performing. If you put a day-1 Guilty Gear player in a room with another day-1 player and let them play for a year, none of them are going to complain about complicated execution barriers because they're playing each other at their appropriate skill level.

It's not until you put someone better in the room who's more advanced to bend them over that you'll start hearing whining and complaints about what should and shouldn't be possible to perform and how difficult it is...even though the game literally has a tutorial that teaches you all the concepts they're using against them.

 

[Necro'lic]

you dont need to know advanced tech to play the game thoughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh


You're supposed to have to learn them....


Sorry, i just can't get behind it, every time i have this conversation it just continuously flip flops between "I'm not saying we shouldn't to have to learn" and "but why do we have to learn"...The best tutorial in the world isn't gonna make a new player want to practice if they arent already motivated to and any good competitive fighting game worth anything is going to require practice to be good.

TBH it doesn't even matter if advanced tech options are available to players or even explained at the start. Its like handing a person a piano with a beginners book that teaches them chords but also includes symphonies.

It just moves the goalpost of complaining and excuses to the next thing they didn't practice in that other players can do. If it isn't technical execution then it'll be frame traps, blockstrings, tick throws, okizeme, resets, vortex, 50/50s, zoning, spacing...at some point you have to stop blaming the developers for people not wanting to learn how to do this stuff.


They're supposed to be hard to get into. If you want to learn to play basketball but get discouraged when the kids at the park who've been playing years longer than you roflstomp you, then maybe you just shouldn't play basketball with them. Go find people who are more at your level.


Again, this has much less to do with the game being too hard, and more to do with people having unrealistic expectations of how they're supposed to be performing. If you put a day-1 Guilty Gear player in a room with another day-1 player and let them play for a year, none of them are going to complain about complicated execution barriers because they're playing each other at their appropriate skill level.

It's not until you put someone better in the room who's more advanced to bend them over that you'll start hearing whining and complaints about what should and shouldn't be possible to perform and how difficult it is...even though the game literally has a tutorial that teaches you all the concepts they're using against them.

And you did it again, trying to read my thoughts and intentions as something they aren't. I know it's so easy to think that because some people ask for similar things that I do that I must be exactly like them, while also ignoring context like, scale of change that I want, reasoning behind the changes, or what I would want the end result to be.

you dont need to know advanced tech to play the game thoughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

So what then? Is that an excuse to not make it known to players? If they don't want to actually use the techniques even if we tell them, then that means we have put the ball in their court and they choose to not play ball. It no longer is in the developer's hands, because that's the best a developer can do.

But the way this conversation seems to be going, I hypothesize your view is since they don't need it to play the game, then the game shouldn't teach it, which is ridiculous. It is part of the game.

You're supposed to have to learn them....

Then make it so the game can help you in that endeavor rather than act like the technique doesn't exist until you learn about it from an outside source or something. It's not inviting to new players to have some tool known to them that not only is not told to them by the game, and not only is used on them when they cannot use it on the other person, but also that said tool potentially requires hours upon hours of not actually playing the game to even use, let alone use optimally.

Sorry, i just can't get behind it, every time i have this conversation it just continuously flip flops between "I'm not saying we shouldn't to have to learn" and "but why do we have to learn"...The best tutorial in the world isn't gonna make a new player want to practice if they arent already motivated to and any good competitive fighting game worth anything is going to require practice to be good.

The idea here is not to eliminate practice. It's to eliminate the tedium of practice by making it so the "practice" is actually happening while the game is played rather than in a training room alone. If they don't want to do it, then okay. You can't control what anyone wants to do. But it's there if they wish to change their mind.

It just moves the goalpost of complaining and excuses to the next thing they didn't practice in that other players can do. If it isn't technical execution then it'll be frame traps, blockstrings, tick throws, okizeme, resets, vortex, 50/50s, zoning, spacing...at some point you have to stop blaming the developers for people not wanting to learn how to do this stuff.

If those tactics involve strategic depth rather than execution based difficulty, then I have no problems. And again, you can always make tutorials for those.

And you'd rather just say the new players are to blame when you also admit that fighting games in general are unfriendly to teaching these new players? The developers can only do so much... but they aren't doing much to begin with, so in this instance, yes, I can put the blame on them.

If you want to learn to play basketball but get discouraged when the kids at the park who've been playing years longer than you roflstomp you, then maybe you just shouldn't play basketball with them. Go find people who are more at your level.

That's why I brought up a matchmaking system that actually works, but with the combination of lack of information, execution based difficulty, and a few other things mentioned throughout my comments, this will create a difficulty spike sooner or later due to tools used on the learning player that they weren't aware of and weren't aware of how to counter, giving the illusion of hopelessness even if said techniques are counterable. The illusion can be enough to just not bother, especially if it happens over and over and over again. This is also why I would be fine with a dynamic teaching "AI" in the game that walks you through some mistakes you made and how to potentially correct them, etc.

Again, this has much less to do with the game being too hard, and more to do with people having unrealistic expectations of how they're supposed to be performing. If you put a day-1 Guilty Gear player in a room with another day-1 player and let them play for a year, none of them are going to complain about complicated execution barriers because they're playing each other at their appropriate skill level.

It's not until you put someone better in the room who's more advanced to bend them over that you'll start hearing whining and complaints about what should and shouldn't be possible to perform and how difficult it is.

This is true, and justified to a point, because of what I mentioned in the last paragraph. It disrupts the concept of "flow" in a game and causes the difficulty spike to pop up. If they then say the game is unfair... well they are right. They were matched against someone clearly above their skill level, which again puts up the importance of a matchmaking system.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm getting this niggling feeling throughout your more recent comments that you still see me as some scrub who wants to help new players by putting down good players, when that isn't my intentions. I also feel like you only think this way because you've probably been told by other sources, most likely Core-A gaming as an example, that the only people who would even think about this stuff have to be scrubs.

 

[LightLV]

And you did it again, trying to read my thoughts and intentions as something they aren't. I know it's so easy to think that because some people ask for similar things that I do that I must be exactly like them, while also ignoring context like, scale of change that I want, reasoning behind the changes, or what I would want the end result to be.

i'm only responding to what you're saying bro, if you're saying something different than you need to be more descriptive i guess.

Then make it so the game can help you in that endeavor rather than act like the technique doesn't exist until you learn about it from an outside source or something. It's not inviting to new players to have some tool known to them that not only is not told to them by the game, and not only is used on them when they cannot use it on the other person, but also that said tool potentially requires hours upon hours of not actually playing the game to even use, let alone use optimally.

1) there are games on the market that do this already, and i've already agreed that this should be the case. However:

2) everyone knows what the internet is and most people who complain about this sort of thing quickly learn whats happening within the span of a few reddit or gamefaq's threads or something. And to the people who get discouraged with the game before they think to go to the internet, they likely weren't going to stick around for it regardless of how much the game tells them about what they don't know.

besides if something like that seems "uninviting" to a player then they aren't cut out for the kind of game they're playing anyway. It dont matter how much careful handholding you give them. At some point they are going to have to practice something.

The idea here is not to eliminate practice. It's to eliminate the tedium of practice by making it so the "practice" is actually happening while the game is played rather than in a training room alone. If they don't want to do it, then okay. You can't control what anyone wants to do. But it's there if they wish to change their mind.

This already happens. But again, at some point you are GOING to have to exclusively practice SOMETHING.

A player who is adverse to this concept is going to stop trying at this point no matter what.

If those tactics involve strategic depth rather than execution based difficulty, then I have no problems. And again, you can always make tutorials for those.

And you'd rather just say the new players are to blame when you also admit that fighting games in general are unfriendly to teaching these new players? The developers can only do so much... but they aren't doing much to begin with, so in this instance, yes, I can put the blame on them.

The fact that you're willing to actually separate strategic depth from execution based difficulty is telling me that you feel as though they're interchangeable. What i'm trying to tell you is that they aren't. If you want a game to be competitively viable to the degree that it can hold an audience AND have longevity, then barriers to execution are inevitable.

Edit:

And BTW, all of those techniques have some kind of execution barrier, but they're more strategies than they are execution techniques. You have to understand the deeper concepts of the game to understand how and why they work. And so yes, they require practice and some degree of studying the game.

That's why I brought up a matchmaking system that actually works, but with the combination of lack of information, execution based difficulty, and a few other things mentioned throughout my comments, this will create a difficulty spike sooner or later due to tools used on the learning player that they weren't aware of and weren't aware of how to counter, giving the illusion of hopelessness even if said techniques are counterable. The illusion can be enough to just not bother, especially if it happens over and over and over again. This is also why I would be fine with a dynamic teaching "AI" in the game that walks you through some mistakes you made and how to potentially correct them, etc.

And while i agree, i'll just say what i always have to say when this sort of thing is brought up...it doesn't matter how much coddling you do to players. Some people are wired for competitive fighting games, and some people just aren't. That's just a fact. Even among players who actually consider themselves "competitive". There is ALWAYS a level where they lose motivation and no longer care to go higher. It's different for every person, but for most people it happens the moment they find out that the game is far deeper than they realized it was.

This happens to everyone. It happens to me, i'm never going to play competitive Melee because I don't feel like developing that kind of technical skill to play the game. I never bought Street Fighter 4 because i didn't feel like learning 1-frame links and option selects in a game where i have to be proficient at them to contest the average online player. Trust me, i empathize with what you're saying.

the difference is that i am just self-aware of why i don't care to learn it -- the game just wasn't for me at the time. I didn't blame Capcom for making a game with such high tech barriers, i KNOW i could become decent at the game if i really wanted to. I didn't need the game to teach me anything else -- there's an endless stream of information and player advice on the internet just waiting for me to access it. I just didn't want to.

I'm getting this niggling feeling throughout your more recent comments that you still see me as some scrub who wants to help new players by putting down good players, when that isn't my intentions. I also feel like you only think this way because you've probably been told by other sources, most likely Core-A gaming as an example, that the only people who would even think about this stuff have to be scrubs.

No I don't think you're a scrub, I think you're someone who wants to be inclusive to new players, which there is absolutely nothing wrong with.

I just have been playing fighting games for such a long time. I know how people think when it comes to approaching them.

You have friends where you'll completely destroy them and they just assume you're naturally amazing at the game. Some people, it discourages them from wanting to play anymore. And then there are others that'll relentlessly try and defeat you and fail....but the next time you play them you can easily tell they've been in training mode....even if it's ineffective they're improving. They'll be the ones to suggest playing again, if not to beat you than just to see if they get closer to it. These are the ones who seek out advice and try to understand why they're losing, and it's this process that makes the game fun to play for them. It's the improvement that makes it fun, not simply the winning.

But the kinds of people who relentlessly complain about execution barriers? Those are the ones who are at least 85% of the time going to quit when they hit a wall that takes longer than a single day of practice to overcome. Either they quit the game, or if they're still playing the game, they just refuse to bother learning what they don't like.

It's just a consistent truth, and while i'm 100% for removing barriers of LEARNING from players, I simply do not care about trying to hopelessly coddle players who just lack the kind of personality that would have them appreciate the game anyway.

 

[ZephyrZ]

You have friends where you'll completely destroy them and they just assume you're naturally amazing at the game. Some people, it discourages them from wanting to play anymore. And then there are others that'll relentlessly try and defeat you and fail....but the next time you play them you can easily tell they've been in training mode....even if it's ineffective they're improving. They'll be the ones to suggest playing again, if not to beat you than just to see if they get closer to it.

But the kinds of people who relentlessly complain about execution barriers? Those are the ones who are at least 85% of the time going to quit when they hit a wall that takes longer than a single day of practice to overcome.

It's just a consistent truth, and while i'm 100% for removing barriers of LEARNING from players, I simply do not care about trying to hopelessly coddle players who just lack the kind of personality that would have them appreciate the game anyway.

Well I don't play traditional fighting games but I do play a lot of competitive Smash Bros and Pokemon, and let me tell you, I'm willing to put in work. When I lose, I feel a drive to improve. I want to get better and I'm going to spend hours upon hours of studying and practicing to get better. I am that player who asks for rematches when I run into a player who outclasses me and get will my butt kicked over and over again trying to do better against them.

I still don't see the point of l-cancling. Sure, if it was in Ultimate I'd be willing to learn it just how I'm trying to learn how to consistently short hop. But it doesn't add any depth or options to the game like the aforementioned spacing, frametraps or 50/50s. I'm not asking for "coddling", I'm just not happy about brainless, tedius grinds that don't add anything directly to the game. I prefer to do my actual learning out in the field, playing the actual game against real players.

Maybe that grind is part of the appeal of traditional fighters, but it never was meant to be for Smash Bros. That's why special move inputs are so simple compared to tradtional fighters - because Smash Bros isn't a traditional one but instead its own spin on the genre. Not to say that I couldn't enjoy a traditional fighter if I gave it a chance (I probably would but just haven't tried one yet because I'm a bit of a Nintendrone), but I think Ultimate is fine as it is without any l-cancels or perfect pivots.

 

[petrie911]

On the subject of L-canceling, I think the problem with it is more clear if you imagine you're proposing to add it to the game, rather than removing it. Imagine the alternate world where the L-cancelled animations in Melee are just the default animations, and there is no L-cancelling. This game is strategically identical to Melee--all options available in Melee are available in this game. The only difference being that you don't press L every time you land. Now, someone proposes that they add landing animations for each aerial attack that are twice as long as the current ones, and you get those unless you press L before you land. Does this sound like a good addition to the game?

Another way to look at it is what it sounds like to add L-canceling to other moves. Consider a Melee mod where you have to press L 2 frames before changing the control stick direction when dash dancing or foxtrotting, otherwise you get the normal turnaround animation or stopping animation. Once again, this game is strategically identical to Melee--all options available in Melee are still available. You just have to press L an extra time every time you dash dance or foxtrot. Does this sound like a better game than Melee? Would you encourage people to play this mod because it has a higher skill ceiling?

To give one last example, imagine the Project M designers proposed that to fix the problem of random tripping in Brawl, pressing L when you start a dash in Project M removes the 1% chance of tripping. Would you think this is a good idea, or would you tell them the proper fix is to just remove tripping?

 

[b2jammer]

On a somewhat related note Smash 64 had Z-Canceling too, but in that game it just replaced the attack's landing animation with the normal landing animation (a constant 4 frames, often below what Melee L-Canceling would have granted). The developers deliberately reworked L-Canceling in Melee to be worse than it was in 64 (the timing window was smaller and it only cut landing lag in half instead of skipping it entirely), so removing the mechanic altogether in Brawl wasn't exactly a huge leap in logic.

 

[Necro'lic]

It's just a consistent truth, and while i'm 100% for removing barriers of LEARNING from players, I simply do not care about trying to hopelessly coddle players who just lack the kind of personality that would have them appreciate the game anyway.

I might get to your other points later (though honestly I have little to say about most of them since I either kinda agree or they were points based off of sidestepping the issues I was talking about), but this last statement is weird to me.

Three questions:

1: Why are you assuming the players that would be attracted to these easier to execute techniques would not appreciate the strategic depth of the game?

2: Why would you assume that this particular "personality" you say is incompatible with fighting games is incompatible regardless of the already established horrible difficulty and tutorial problems that plague fighting games?

3: What do mean when you say "coddle"? Follow-up: Are you saying that making easier to execute techs that are just as deep as the harder to execute counterparts is "coddling" when a deep game already necessitates that a lot of learning and practice must be done to get good at it, therefore the idea of "coddling" the player is only insofar as they don't just get bored of tedious practice and instead get out there and play the game (and lose) while having fun doing so?

 

[LightLV]

I still don't see the point of l-cancling. Sure, if it was in Ultimate I'd be willing to learn it just how I'm trying to learn how to consistently short hop. But it doesn't add any depth or options to the game like the aforementioned spacing, frametraps or 50/50s. I'm not asking for "coddling", I'm just not happy about brainless, tedius grinds that don't add anything directly to the game. I prefer to do my actual learning out in the field, playing the actual game against real players.

Maybe that grind is part of the appeal of traditional fighters, but it never was meant to be for Smash Bros. That's why special move inputs are so simple compared to tradtional fighters - because Smash Bros isn't a traditional one but instead its own spin on the genre. Not to say that I couldn't enjoy a traditional fighter if I gave it a chance (I probably would but just haven't tried one yet because I'm a bit of a Nintendrone), but I think Ultimate is fine as it is without any l-cancels or perfect pivots.

I think most people would agree that L-cancelling is an unnecessary mechanic, that's why nobody has been directly asking for it. People care about landing lag, not L-cancelling. L-cancelling existed only as a fix for Z-cancelling from Smash64, which removed ALL of your landing lag. That allowed some pretty ridiculous things, so they settled for a 50% reduction instead of a 100% one. L-cancelling only existed as a more balanced way to not completely remove Z-cancelling from the game.

The reason people have been asking for L-cancelling (or something similar) since Melee is because Brawl and Smash 4 just completely removed the feature from the engine with no form of compensation whatsoever. So moderate to high landing lag characters were just screwed.

On the subject of L-canceling, I think the problem with it is more clear if you imagine you're proposing to add it to the game, rather than removing it. Imagine the alternate world where the L-cancelled animations in Melee are just the default animations, and there is no L-cancelling. This game is strategically identical to Melee--all options available in Melee are available in this game. The only difference being that you don't press L every time you land. Now, someone proposes that they add landing animations for each aerial attack that are twice as long as the current ones, and you get those unless you press L before you land. Does this sound like a good addition to the game?

Yeah i think most people can agree with you, I don't think anyone has ever really argued for the inclusion of L-cancelling. Like i explained, i'm pretty sure L-cancelling existed more as a patchwork fix to Z-cancelling, not a deliberately intended feature.

I think the reason you hear about it when discussing ways to make the game BETTER is because the concept of reintroducing L-cancelling just sounded faaaaaaaaar less drastic than "well for this next entry, how about they just slice EVERYONE's landing lag by 50% by default". Of course...that's exactly what Ultimate did. And if someone had told me that before it was confirmed through gameplay i would have sworn they were lying.

This should have happened ages ago, but i can only assume it took so long because Smash 4 is the first time Nintendo themselves thought to actually pay attention to the balancing issues plaguing the Smash series, and they probably saw how stupid of an advantage characters with naturally low landing lag had on the cast.

Ultimate has made multiple balance changes like this that seem uncharacteristically savvy, which i can only imagine is due to them consulting pros during development. Wavedashing is another mechanic that has more or less been just made a natural, universal feature of the engine, as you can now execute any move out of dashing animations, which are also better across the board. It essentially gives everyone the utility of a wavedash without the actual input. These are all great additions to the game.

 

[LightLV]

I might get to your other points later (though honestly I have little to say about most of them since I either kinda agree or they were points based off of sidestepping the issues I was talking about), but this last statement is weird to me.

Three questions:

1: Why are you assuming the players that would be attracted to these easier to execute techniques would not appreciate the strategic depth of the game?

2: Why would you assume that this particular "personality" you say is incompatible with fighting games is incompatible regardless of the already established horrible difficulty and tutorial problems that plague fighting games?

3: What do mean when you say "coddle"? Follow-up: Are you saying that making easier to execute techs that are just as deep as the harder to execute counterparts is "coddling" when a deep game already necessitates that a lot of learning and practice must be done to get good at it, therefore the idea of "coddling" the player is only insofar as they don't just get bored of tedious practice and instead get out there and play the game (and lose) while having fun doing so?

1) I'm not. I just know that having easier access doesn't necessarily mean they're more likely to take the game series and move past the crutch phase.

2) Because to anyone who actually really makes the decision to improve in these games, the walls thrown up by poor tutorials and execution woes are of no moment. Just in case anyone didn't realize this.....the fighting games out today are vastly easier than they have been in the past. Internet information access was way worse than in present day....back then the best you had were forums. These days within hours of release you have no shortage of combo videos on YouTube to copy tech from. There are tons of content creators who make hours worth of videos teaching you all sorts of strategies and techniques at all levels of play. Even the training modes today are a farcry from what they were in the past.

3) Yes, by coddle, i'm referring to getting bored by tedious practice. And i'm all for easier execution. It doesn't necessarily mean the game isn't deep...just look at games like Under Night In-Birth, Dragon Ball FighterZ, or Blazblue Cross Tag which all literally come hard-coded with single button mash combos. I get it, people don't want to have to practice for 10 days just to do stuff.


edit: oops doublepost.

 

[Lord_Ghirahim]

Compare the landing lag of melee characters to Ultimate and it's consistently better if not identical in this game. Why would anybody want to have to press L to get access to such good frame data that they already get for free?

It's simple really, although I can understand your point of view. L-Cancelling is a fantastic mechanic for new players. Of course it means nothing to people that have been playing for a while and always L-Cancel without thinking about it. When you are new to the game though it is something to learn and somewhere to see improvement. Watching yourself speed-up and improve in fighting games is where all the fun is really. The loss of L-Cancelling was just one less thing for newcomers to practice, and although it's not a big deal, it is still sad to see it go.

 

[b2jammer]

It's simple really, although I can understand your point of view. L-Cancelling is a fantastic mechanic for new players. Of course it means nothing to people that have been playing for a while and always L-Cancel without thinking about it. When you are new to the game though it is something to learn and somewhere to see improvement. Watching yourself speed-up and improve in fighting games is where all the fun is really. The loss of L-Cancelling was just one less thing for newcomers to practice, and although it's not a big deal, it is still sad to see it go.

I suppose this makes sense, but there are a few problems with this train of thought:

• L-Canceling is very all-or-nothing, so once you figure out how to do it, there's really nothing else to improve.
  • With wavedashing, you can at least practice dashing in different directions or improving your short hop timing, etc.
  • Or with dash-dancing where you can try to dash longer distances or practice dashing back and forth to move around more easily.
• The mechanic itself is shallow muscle memory - all it does is decrease landing lag, so if you can pull it off, there's no good reason not to. Techs like dash dancing and wavedashing at least encourage decision making (e.g. dashing in the wrong direction could leave the user open to attack), which allows for much more significant improvement in the long term.
• This may be a less major issue and is common throughout much of Melee's tech, but the mechanic itself feels out of place compared to the rest of the game's controls, which basically requires the player to go online and stumble across it:
  • Nothing in the game states that L-Canceling is even possible, let alone what it does or how to use it. Even the directional air dodge got a blurb in the manual, and while the short hop was never mentioned, its execution makes sense to anyone that's ever played a Mario or Kirby game.
  • There's no tell that an L-Cancel was successful beyond the faster animation (no particle effect, character doesn't flash, nothing). Even the fast-fall, which is similarly never mentioned in-game or in the manual, caused a small twinkle to appear next to the character.
  • Perhaps the easiest way to discover L-Canceling accidentally would be to try landing on the ground during an air attack while holding L/R in an attempt to quickly raise shield. However, unless they're playing as a much slower character like Link or Ganondorf, a new player might not even notice the decrease in landing lag, and the lack of further tells wouldn't clue them in to the fact that they might be doing something potentially useful.
    • If the new player does discover the landing lag decrease this way, they may make the wrong assumption that L-Canceling is just a forgiveness window for raising shield while landing and won't think to try it with other moves (unless of course they look it up online).

 

[Lord_Ghirahim]

I suppose this makes sense, but there are a few problems with this train of thought:

• L-Canceling is very all-or-nothing, so once you figure out how to do it, there's really nothing else to improve.
  • With wavedashing, you can at least practice dashing in different directions or improving your short hop timing, etc.
  • Or with dash-dancing where you can try to dash longer distances or practice dashing back and forth to move around more easily.
• The mechanic itself is shallow muscle memory - all it does is decrease landing lag, so if you can pull it off, there's no good reason not to. Techs like dash dancing and wavedashing at least encourage decision making (e.g. dashing in the wrong direction could leave the user open to attack), which allows for much more significant improvement in the long term.
• This may be a less major issue and is common throughout much of Melee's tech, but the mechanic itself feels out of place compared to the rest of the game's controls, which basically requires the player to go online and stumble across it:
  • Nothing in the game states that L-Canceling is even possible, let alone what it does or how to use it. Even the directional air dodge got a blurb in the manual, and while the short hop was never mentioned, its execution makes sense to anyone that's ever played a Mario or Kirby game.
  • There's no tell that an L-Cancel was successful beyond the faster animation (no particle effect, character doesn't flash, nothing). Even the fast-fall, which is similarly never mentioned in-game or in the manual, caused a small twinkle to appear next to the character.
  • Perhaps the easiest way to discover L-Canceling accidentally would be to try landing on the ground during an air attack while holding L/R in an attempt to quickly raise shield. However, unless they're playing as a much slower character like Link or Ganondorf, a new player might not even notice the decrease in landing lag, and the lack of further tells wouldn't clue them in to the fact that they might be doing something potentially useful.
    • If the new player does discover the landing lag decrease this way, they may make the wrong assumption that L-Canceling is just a forgiveness window for raising shield while landing and won't think to try it with other moves (unless of course they look it up online).

Thank you for the detailed response. I've read through and have to say, I agree with every point you have to make. I suppose I just have a nostalgic attachment to the mechanic from when I was first learning to play Smash, grinding out L-Cancels with Falco and seeing the improvement in my combo game from this practice.

It's unnecessary and I'm all for making the point of entry easier for players. I dunno, I just don't feel it has zero purpose. If I were to make my own 'best' Smash game I would include it but general consensus seems to be that L-Cancelling is a dumb mechanic. Most likely true, and that's why it hasn't re-appeared since Brawl.

 

[b2jammer]

Thank you for the detailed response. I've read through and have to say, I agree with every point you have to make. I suppose I just have a nostalgic attachment to the mechanic from when I was first learning to play Smash, grinding out L-Cancels with Falco and seeing the improvement in my combo game from this practice.

It's unnecessary and I'm all for making the point of entry easier for players. I dunno, I just don't feel it has zero purpose. If I were to make my own 'best' Smash game I would include it but general consensus seems to be that L-Cancelling is a dumb mechanic. Most likely true, and that's why it hasn't re-appeared since Brawl.

That's fair. I just think we can all agree that there are better ways to make training/grinding more fun and engaging for new players without compromising skill or competitive integrity, and that thankfully seems to be the direction Ultimate has taken.