Why Were Fireballs Gutted?

[Angell]

For the uninformed, Zhime is the best Zelda player to date, he has gone toe to toe with m2k and mang0. This is his combo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91_wfIFnx8. Within the video he displays the high skill cap of the old fireballs. They had kill and combo potential. They were undoubtedly Zelda's most valuable asset.

At the time Zelda was considered to be an upper mid-tier character by most of the community(not OP by any means). Then the three fireballs were removed in favor of one fireball. IMO this was a huge mistake. her combo potential was gutted and she descended down most tier lists.

You may say this is because the fireballs stalled the neutral game and they forced the opponents to approach. That's the point of a projectile. Think about it: Falco lasers, snake's grenades, pika's jolt, Lucario's aura shperes, and many others. I don't understand why they gutted it.

Thoughts?

 

[4tlas]

For the uninformed, Zhime is the best Zelda player to date, he has gone toe to toe with m2k and mang0. This is his combo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E91_wfIFnx8. Within the video he displays the high skill cap of the old fireballs. They had kill and combo potential. They were undoubtedly Zelda's most valuable asset.

At the time Zelda was considered to be an upper mid-tier character by most of the community(not OP by any means). Then the three fireballs were removed in favor of one fireball. IMO this was a huge mistake. her combo potential was gutted and she descended down most tier lists.

You may say this is because the fireballs stalled the neutral game and they forced the opponents to approach. That's the point of a projectile. Think about it: Falco lasers, snake's grenades, pika's jolt, Lucario's aura shperes, and many others. I don't understand why they gutted it.

Thoughts?

I agree wholeheartedly that the old fireballs were no more centralizing or obnoxious than any other projectile, including new Dins.

I don't agree that the new one is worse or that Zelda is worse, though I do agree she is low tier. I thought she was low tier all along. She has always been a noobslayer, and old Dins was the ultimate tool for dominating new players.

As far as I remember, the reasons to change old Dins was threefold: when they work well they work too well (as seen in the case of Zhime's combos, as a noobslayer tool, and against several matchups), when they work poorly they actually didn't work at ALL (as seen in matchups vs speedy characters, where she was simply unable to place Dins ever), and no matter how well they work they were nearly self-sufficient and risk-free. Many people felt that Zelda and her opponents were not playing Smash but were playing "Din's Fire: The Game" which I think was a fair claim. I recall that most of my gameplan at the time was to cleverly use Dins to bait, trap, combo, gimp, harass, zone, and edgeguard my opponent. I agree they needed changing, but I don't know if they had to be completely reworked like they were.

 

[WhiteCrow]

For the uninformed, Zhime is the best Zelda player to date, he has gone toe to toe with m2k and mang0. This is his combo video:

Lol what a start. The PMDT has never provided an official statement on why it was cut down to 1 Din but they would probably justify their reasoning with their game wide guidelines. They wanted to tone down on "tools that mitigate positional advantage" which 3 Din's Fires could easily do. I miss 3 Din's but I don't miss being forced to play mine sweeper just to have a neutral.

 

[ECHOnce]

I miss old dins, but mostly for the control we had over them. Learning to maneuver them accurately was a *****, but being able to weave it between platforms and teammates and whatnot felt so empowering. Same deal with Pit arrows. Even in this aspect, they were a bit over the top (even with just one, no matter where you sent them opponents, you could potentially follow up with a hitbox placed just about anywhere on the screen to extend combos), but I loved them for that lol. Being only limited by my precision was pretty cool.

But disregarding whether old Dins were reasonable...we reeeally need to advocate for there to be some indication for when new dins have an inactive hitbox, after detonation or hitting a hurtbox/hitbox/shield. It's unintuitive, and makes the new din seem deceptively much better than it really is. It's not bad, but it's definitely not at all as scary as it seems from a first impression. Most Zeldas I've met don't even bother with setups using the return path, unless they managed to lay a larger one out. If happens to hit on its own, great. But it's not worth going for crazy setups on stage given how high commital it is, vs. how easily opponents render it useless on reaction and net a free punish.

Better yet, just remove the darned return path and buff the size/damage/knockback/hitstun/maneuverability/number-of-detonations or something ;___; The literal only setup I or other Zeldas fetch with it consistently and easily is a large Din moving slowly enough for a juggle hit after the first detonation, or weak returning edgeguards...but Zelda already has a plethora of other tools for just as efficient edgeguarding >___>

 

[Mentor]

If I'm being totally honest, I don't mind the current dins, as I have many other zelda shenanigans to utilize. Having said that, there's a ton of curious design decisions about the current dins.

One example: When returning dins hits the opponent, zelda cannot hit side b to reactivate the hitbox for 25 frames (I refer to it as the "cool down time"). If she hits it before the 25 frame reset, you just get zelda doing the animation, but with no effect. I can understand why they would put this in, as it would be unfair to get hit be a returning dins then get exploded on since it's then a guaranteed combo for pretty much any size & in most % ranges. However, if I want to perform a manual detonation while dins is returning, once zelda hits side b, the fireball hitbox stays out for the first 11 frames of the animation, then disappears & the momentum stops on the 12th frame. If the opponent gets hit on the 1st 11 frames, there's no manual detonation, & zelda's still stuck in the side b animation. Personally, I don't think this is fair as you need to essentially read exactly where your opponent will be for not just the 11 frames of startup lag, but also roughly 3-8 frames beforehand as you make the decision & move your fingers to the appropriate inputs. The easy way to mitigate this issue would be to have the returning hitbox disappear on frame 2/3 after hitting side b instead, while keeping all other frame data the same.

ECHOnce An idea I came up with for the hitbox issue would be to change the animation so that when the returning dins hits the opponent, you could have a significantly smaller dins return to the owner & even have that dins deal 1% damage w/ no knockback. When it get reactivated, return it to the original size & animation.

 

[Miryafa]

In the middle of writing this, I realized how old this thread was. But since I didn't see any primary or secondary sources, I thought my reply might still be helpful to anyone interested.

I asked Umbreon when he came to a monthly, after he told me he was the one who designed the new Zelda. I'll paraphrase his reply, because it's a been awhile and I don't remember it word for word.

Essentially, he said Zelda was cancerous. He saw a Zelda encage an opponent with 3 fireballs, to the point that they couldn't move, and said no one wanted to play against that (Note: this might mean the fireballs didn't force opponents to approach - they prevented opponents from approaching at all). The consensus as he saw it was that Zelda was unfun to play against, so he got rid of the extra 2 fireballs.

He also said he got rid of the super-sweet spot on Zelda's toe because no one, not even pros, could hit it consistently, and he felt that hitbox was just adding RNG to the game.

And he said that Zelda's limiting factor is that she's slow, and that she'll always have problems because of that, but that he couldn't change that because Zelda being slow was flavorful.

Now that's just what he told me, to the best I can remember, so you don't need to tell me about cancer from Sonic or Kirby, or the RNG in Game & Watch's Judgement or Luigi's side-b, or how Metaknight was changed from Brawl to make him faster (at least, according to the frame data I can find). So that's the answer I have for the OP.

 

[Kaeldiar]

In the middle of writing this, I realized how old this thread was. But since I didn't see any primary or secondary sources, I thought my reply might still be helpful to anyone interested.

I asked Umbreon when he came to a monthly, after he told me he was the one who designed the new Zelda. I'll paraphrase his reply, because it's a been awhile and I don't remember it word for word.

Essentially, he said Zelda was cancerous. He saw a Zelda encage an opponent with 3 fireballs, to the point that they couldn't move, and said no one wanted to play against that (Note: this might mean the fireballs didn't force opponents to approach - they prevented opponents from approaching at all). The consensus as he saw it was that Zelda was unfun to play against, so he got rid of the extra 2 fireballs.

He also said he got rid of the super-sweet spot on Zelda's toe because no one, not even pros, could hit it consistently, and he felt that hitbox was just adding RNG to the game.

And he said that Zelda's limiting factor is that she's slow, and that she'll always have problems because of that, but that he couldn't change that because Zelda being slow was flavorful.

Now that's just what he told me, to the best I can remember, so you don't need to tell me about cancer from Sonic or Kirby, or the RNG in Game & Watch's Judgement or Luigi's side-b, or how Metaknight was changed from Brawl to make him faster (at least, according to the frame data I can find). So that's the answer I have for the OP.

Umbreon overstates how much he designed 3.5+ Zelda. For one, the fireballs were an idea that Magus had wanted to experiment with for a while, based on Viola from SCV (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3WVi9JowQI#t=14s). The reason 3 fireballs were removed is that they were SUPER good if you were winning and SUPER bad if you were losing. It was impossible to ESTABLISH stage position with them, unless your opponent was a complete dunderhead (which is more often than you'd think)

The only way to make a balanced Zelda is to make her extremely difficult to use. Slow characters in Smash are by definition god awful, so you compensate with an enormous punish game. Huge kicks on Zelda doesn't really help. The small, precise ones rewarded precise, intelligent play. The 3 Din's allowed you to consistently hit the super sweetspots, because you had setups

 

[Deleted member]

In the middle of writing this, I realized how old this thread was. But since I didn't see any primary or secondary sources, I thought my reply might still be helpful to anyone interested.

I asked Umbreon when he came to a monthly, after he told me he was the one who designed the new Zelda. I'll paraphrase his reply, because it's a been awhile and I don't remember it word for word.

Essentially, he said Zelda was cancerous. He saw a Zelda encage an opponent with 3 fireballs, to the point that they couldn't move, and said no one wanted to play against that (Note: this might mean the fireballs didn't force opponents to approach - they prevented opponents from approaching at all). The consensus as he saw it was that Zelda was unfun to play against, so he got rid of the extra 2 fireballs.

He also said he got rid of the super-sweet spot on Zelda's toe because no one, not even pros, could hit it consistently, and he felt that hitbox was just adding RNG to the game.

And he said that Zelda's limiting factor is that she's slow, and that she'll always have problems because of that, but that he couldn't change that because Zelda being slow was flavorful.

Now that's just what he told me, to the best I can remember, so you don't need to tell me about cancer from Sonic or Kirby, or the RNG in Game & Watch's Judgement or Luigi's side-b, or how Metaknight was changed from Brawl to make him faster (at least, according to the frame data I can find). So that's the answer I have for the OP.

Those are actually some of the worst reasonings I've ever heard.

Keep Zelda slow because it's "flavorful"? What the heck kind of logic is that? lol

3 fireballs are bad but all of the other jank in the game is acceptable because?

"Character is not fun to play against" is not a good argument. You can say that about a lot of characters and it depends on the person's preference. Nerfing characters because it's not fun to you is not good game design.

 

[WhiteCrow]

Those are actually some of the worst reasonings I've ever heard.

Keep Zelda slow because it's "flavorful"? What the heck kind of logic is that? lol

3 fireballs are bad but all of the other jank in the game is acceptable because?

"Character is not fun to play against" is not a good argument. You can say that about a lot of characters and it depends on the person's preference. Nerfing characters because it's not fun to you is not good game design.

Love seeing these old threads resurface. The developers had some interesting character design justifications, but I've come to terms with Zelda's speed. If there wasn't variance in the movement speeds there wouldn't be "fast" or "slow" characters. We got the worse side of the deal and must compensate with burst movement and a single projectile. That's okay, Zelda's movement tools are largely un-optimized because so many players abandon her. Game design is set in stone at that point, so all we can do is cope with the results.