Editor’s Note: This is an op-ed piece. The opinions of the author may not necessarily reflect the full views of the Melee It On Me team; this article was made to encourage dialog between different communities.
It has been a very eerie feeling, watching history repeat itself. This past week on Smashboards has looked staggeringly identical to what it looked like in 2008; in so many ways, history is beginning to repeat itself. I feel the need to share some thoughts on Smash 4, what I see happening to our community and it’s direction. Most importantly, how we as a community can do better next time
First, Smash 4 as a competitive game, from the perspective of game mechanics.
Impressions
Smash 4 looks to me now, from what we now know of the game (I have had the demo for a week, and have a copy of the full game in my region), like it is going to develop very similarly to Brawl. From a competitive perspective, the game seems to have taken two steps forward and one or two steps back, to arrive at about the same place Brawl was.
The game has actually fixed most of the aspects of Brawl that hurt the game for a lot of people- planking is gone, hitstun is back, Metaknight is nerfed, the big chain grabs and infinites are (mostly) gone. In many ways, it’s Brawl 2.0 in all of the positive connotations, but with most of the undesirable parts cleaned up.
Smash 4’s combo game will evolve to work very similar to Brawl’s.
Now, simply removing the ability to airdodge out of hitstun helps a lot, but you can still airdodge out of tumble. You might be thinking “so? There’s still hitstun.” The reality is that you actually have very poor options after exiting hitstun in Smash 64 and Melee. Many combos are not truly in hitstun, but work because the opponent still can’t avoid the follow-ups. The reason characters like Samus are so hard to combo in Melee is because she can immediately nair out of hitstun; most characters don’t have a quick option like that. Everyone in Smash 4 is comparable to Melee Samus because you can airdodge out of tumble, and have slow fall speeds.
New Mechanics
A lot of new design decisions undermine many of these positive changes. For example, the Vector Influence (VI) mechanic is going to result in a lot more survivability. The buffing of many recoveries and removal of edgehogging creates a game where you can chase people very deep offstage, but you can’t stop someone from getting back if you fail to kill them with the initial chase. Combined with the slow fall speed, this means stocks are going to last a very long time, and being offstage is a very comfortable position. But VI is worse in another aspect- it creates (from the attacker’s perspective) inconsistent knockback. People can end up anywhere within a radius after being hit. VI, when combined with the fact that you can still airdodge out of tumble (not hitstun), means that combo game is not going to be very strong. Why? People will have a very large number of options as to where they end up, AND a very large number of options after exiting hitstun. These are all defensive options, which make it hard to chase combos.
The “rage mechanic” is poor game design; it’s made for rubber banding. It means that the player who is “losing” has better kill options and can suddenly turn the tide. For newer players who may be used to party games like Mario Kart, or board games, this might sound like a good thing, but it is definitely not in a competitive game. In a fighting game, the winning player should have an advantage that he can use to press his opponent. The losing player has to then take riskier options that will either get him back in the game or end the game very quickly. This leads to very interesting, and very quick, matches that force interaction. This is true of every major competitive game- Starcraft, Poker, Magic, and Chess all meet this design criteria. The winning player in the aforementioned games exerts pressure on his opponent, and brings the game to an end very quickly by forcing their them to make risky decisions to try to get out of the situation. If the opposite were true, you’d see longer games with more inconsistency. The better player may not win with consistency because the loser is given a handicap; the only thing that matters is who plays better at the very end of the game. If the better player cannot consistently win because of this, the game should not be considered competitive. Fortunately, Rage is fairly weak in effect.
The new ledge invincibility mechanics are also interesting, and favor the person in peril; the person returning to the stage will snap with invincibility, while the person chasing will not have invincibility. That is because invincibility is determined by airtime. This seems like a negative change to offstage game, however, it is likely a worthy tradeoff to rid the game of planking.
What Does This Mean?
The mechanics of Vector Influence and Rage both contribute to making knockback inconsistent. (Note: I don’t mean “random”- I mean that the player attacking will be unable to know the amount of knockback his attack will have as so many variables effect it, including ones his opponent controls.) Making knockback inconsistent completely changes the appraisal of the game if it becomes hard to know when a move transitions in to a kill move. Often times, you won’t know if an upsmash is enough to finish your opponent. Adding inconsistency makes the game worse at high level play, even if it’s not random. It prevents the threat of “now I can kill you with this move,” from entering into play at a time where both players know it. In Brawl and Melee, you have to start spacing and DIing to avoid certain moves once you know they can kill you. In this game, it’s going to be very hard to know, and that takes away depth from the player interaction.
A lot of players may read the paragraph above and disagree, but in a high level situation, gameplay becomes a conversation. You each know the extent of the opponent’s capabilities and are trying to wrest control of the situation, using your knowledge of what your opponent is capable of and what he wants to do to predict him. It’s almost like debate, in a way. Blurring the lines of a player’s capabilities in any given situation reduces the depth of the interaction between the players. Neither of these mechanics are definitive enough to decide on the the game’s competitive nature. However, when combined, they essentially counteract the gains made from the added hitstun. One step forward, one step back.
However, you no longer have a game where being on the ledge is safer than the stage, much like its predecessor; planking is gone, which is definitely a major improvement. Other minor defensive nerfs, like easier shieldbreaks, are appreciated. In the end, Smash 4 combos will still likely be, in this writer’s opinion, very Brawl-esque. You will hit your opponent, and position yourself to cover their options, like Brawl. You will not be able to set up in to kills, and instead rely on fishing for them. The player that takes the first stock will have a high likelyhood of taking the game; Brawl players will likely have a clear advantage in this game.
However, both the Rage and VI mechanics have a fairly small effect on total knockback, particularly Rage. Since the mechanics are not overly pronounced, they should not be game-breaking (and there are other fighting games with similar mechanics to Rage that have remained competitive, including Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom 3), and it would be unfair to write the game off because of these. The steps forward of fixing planking
History: Brawl’s Final Stock
Now that I’ve established why I believe we will see the game develop similarly to Brawl, let’s talk about what happened to it, and the positive side for Smash 4 players.
Brawl died in the U.S. in 2013. It did not in Japan, and Brawl is still bigger than Melee there. Contrary to what the documentary portrayed, it’s important to make sure new players know this: Brawl was bigger than Melee for about three years. A ton of new players joined the scene for the new game, and a large number of Melee players switched over or played both. Players like Mew2King and ChuDat were huge forces that pioneered new things through Brawl’s entire life, and Azen was an early champion. Genesis 2 was the first big tournament in which Melee outstripped Brawl, but Brawl continued to have very large tournaments that rivaled Melee until it self-destructed in 2013.
Why did Brawl self-destruct? A combination of these factors:
- Huge community dissent over Metaknight, wanting to ban Metaknight, the ban falling apart, etc.
- The game devolving in to Metaknight vs Ice Climbers on flat stages (because most counterpicks were banned because they made Metaknight win, but flat stages make Ice Climbers win) with little variety.
- Bad press from the Melee documentary
- The prevalence of stalling techniques (something Japanese players soft ban), infinites, chaingrabs, and matchups that are incredibly one sided.
Interestingly enough, this sudden self-destruction did not happen in Japan. If Brawl had magically been patched to not have the polarizing issues of characters like Metaknight and Ice Climbers, it would likely still be played to this day on a large scale, even if second place to Melee. Its decline was sudden and surprising, and likely unique. I expect Smash 4 to have a thriving competitive scene like Brawl did, and likely one that will stick around longer. I’m not sure competitively which game is better or worse between the two, but Smash 4 has the advantages of newer hardware and HDMI support which Melee doesn’t (unless Nintendo blesses us with a Melee Wii U release).
Furthermore, these factors probably will not apply to Smash 4. None of the stalling techniques or infinites from Brawl look like they will exist, and we just have to hope we don’t end up with a new Metaknight. So, I expect both Melee and Smash 4 to have lengthy, healthy competitive scenes. Even though Smash 4 will be extremely similar to Brawl in gameplay, pace, logic, and speed, it will probably surpass Brawl’s lifespan.
Community Split
The most important thing is this: people are going to hear what they want to hear, and they are going to seek out sources that corroborate them. You are going to see people making very big leaps to justify mechanics that are poor. You will see people citing famous player’s quotes on Smash 4. You will see certain reasoning clung to and repeated, and community figures making speeches about how things are just different. The two groups of people will have completely different world views, much like the same article can get posted on a Democrat and Republican site and get a completely different set of group think.
Here is what you are going to see, if history continues to repeat itself.
You’re going to see a flood of new players, particularly on Smashboards and Reddit. These new players will frequently hold very out-there opinions, and be vocal about them. The annoyance of having such a huge flood of ignorance in places that are typically very knowledgeable will result in a lot of players being quite rude as they get tired of it and correct people snappily. This will lead to new players perceiving Melee players as rude, particularly on Smashboards (rude players may get downvoted on Reddit). When you’re rude to someone when you are correcting them, they tend to focus on the injury to their pride and argue, rather than learn. There will be people who feel the community should abandon Melee for the new game; they will be hailed by Smash 4 players, and derided by Melee players.
Smash 4 Players Will:
1. Accuse Melee players of being elitist or afraid of change.
This will often accompany claims of “it’s just different, not worse”.
There’s a fair case to objectively describe Melee as the best game in the series. From every aspect of competitive game design, Melee is a better game. That does not mean an individual has to prefer Melee as their game of choice, any more than thinking The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars movie means someone can’t do a marathon of the prequels or Clone War cartoons or even A New Hope, because being technically better may not matter to taste.
To be fair, some individuals will be elitist. However, a lot of them simply understand the kind of gameplay they don’t feel makes for a game they enjoy, and aren’t interested in playing it. Smash 4 players should try to understand that Melee players who stick with Melee don’t enjoy the new changes.
I have personally spoken with a lot of top Melee players, and the issue definitely isn’t a fear of change. Most of these players would convert over in a heartbeat if the game was very different, but still offered the same kind of mental interaction. But the mental interaction of Brawl is very different from Melee. There are no real rushdown characters. Most Melee players would switch over to a new game even if it didn’t have L cancelling and wavedashing, if it still had techniques that let them move, fake out, combo, and pressure at high speeds like Melee allowed. It’s about wanting something different from the game, not about being afraid of change.
2. Accuse Melee players of being entitled.
A lot of players behave as if loving Nintendo means you have to love the latest game, that a true fan should play Smash 4. Others believe that Nintendo did all this work for us, and we should be grateful we got a new Smash at all. Others will get mad at anyone speculating negatively about the future of a new mechanic, seeing them as pessimists or elitists.
Nintendo isn’t some non-profit. If someone doesn’t like the game, they shouldn’t feel they have to reward Nintendo for making a game they don’t like.
This “be grateful for what you get” attitude is a bad thing. Nintendo is a business and should make money by providing consumers what they want. People should be able to complain if the game isn’t what they want. This is the only way games improve in quality. If you buy a game regardless of the quality, what incentive does the company have to improve it?
3. Make embarrassingly bad justifications for some of the game’s issues, especially if they are newer players.
Try not to be too mean to them. When someone tells you how Rage is a great mechanic and says “God forbid your opponent has a chance to turn the tide on you,” reply nicely. They will perceive you as arrogant otherwise.
4. Make big sweeping posts about future potential that get a lot of attention and upvotes.
Expect to see a lot of stretches, or airdodge chases and strings phrased as combos. Don’t get too pedantic; Melee combo videos include strings and frame traps too.
5. Accuse Melee players of pessimism.
Smash 4 players need to understand that someone being disappointed for legitimate reasons does not have to take away from your enjoyment, and not attack players who express disappointment. There are already threads on Smashboards claiming that Smash 4 pessimists are “ruining it” for everyone else.
On the other hand, Melee players do not need to try to make Smash 4 players feel bad about the game. This is merely going to result in encouraging Smash 4 players to be defensive and band together in the thread.
6. Come out with the “next big thing” magic AT to revolutionize the game every week.
People are going to be constantly looking for something that will allow them to approach. Like Brawl, Smash 4 will have an emphasis on walking over running, because there is no movement option out of run. So running reduces your options, and thus, people will generally walk or dash > shield.
A lot of people will be trying very hard to find any technique that gives promise, and because people are desperately looking to up the game speed, will get a lot of visibility.
7. Say that the game is too young to judge. This excuse will get stretched out for ages. There will always be more metagame development needed.
Smash 4 games seem to be much longer than Brawl was at launch.
Here’s a tournament match from my region’s first event where we had early copies of Brawl:
Smash 4 will definitely improve with time, but it’s going to improve on a similar schedule to Brawl. The game is not going to magically turn in to Melee. Game length is already much longer than early Brawl games.
Melee Players Will:
1. Get pedantic.
As mentioned above- a frame trap or string by controlled manipulation of options may not be a true combo, but you don’t need to run in to every thread saying “this isn’t technically a combo”.
2. Bash on the game in an exaggerated fashion.
You will have to keep in mind that this game is going to be an improved version of Brawl, and many people are going to enjoy it. The game will have a lot of depth, even if it is at a slower, and more defensive place. Keep in mind that there are people who enjoy playing Jigglypuff vs Young Link in Melee out there.
To this day, I hear all kinds of complaints about Brawl from people who clearly never played it competitively and simplify the game to nothing. These players are usually Melee players, and sometimes even casual Melee viewers repeating statements they’ve heard. As a Brawl player, this would drive me nuts.
3. Start getting territorial.
Right now, you might think you won’t. But when EVO and MLG have to decide between Melee and Smash 4, Melee players will start viewing Smash 4 as a threat. Even if the majority don’t, a vocal minority will. This was a major issue in Brawl. Melee players would heckle Brawl players, insult the game, boo their grand finals, and in several cases there were a number of players who would enter Brawl tournaments, pick Metaknight, and camp the timer, to “show people how bad this game is” in their words. I even remember one Melee player who wanted to get Metaknight banned because he felt it would split the Brawl community and kill the game faster.
Does this sound juvenile? Yes. But it happened regularly. If you ask any Brawl player who started in 2008 and stuck around, they will remember this. Some regions worse than others. It left a bad taste in new player’s mouths, and it DID NOT HELP MELEE PLAYERS. All it did was create a generation of Brawl players that did not want to switch to Melee.
I know a fair number of Brawl players who now prefer PM who did not want to play Melee because they still have a distaste for the community’s behavior in those days.
I want to put a special shoutout here for Hungrybox, who I remember cheering on Brawl grand finals at Apex 2010 while other Melee players left. Hungrybox heavily contributed to me personally eventually becoming involved with the Melee scene in addition to Brawl and Project M. I doubt he even remembers me being at that tournament, but it had a lasting effect.
If you want Smash 4 players to appreciate Melee, be like Hungrybox.
– Praxis
I appreciate the honesty of this article and its really a good idea to put all this in perspective. Like you said, way too many people are trying to either say Smash4 fixed everything wrong with Brawl, or it’s exactly like it. To be transparent I was a Melee player that viewed Brawl as a threat and sees it as a bad game. But it’s true that I shouldn’t judge others for playing. Sadly from what I played of Smash4 I find myself in the same position. While the game isn’t exactly like Brawl, and while it is better overall, I still find it frustrating to play and overall a bad game. This time around I’ll probably just stay out of the “war” between the two sides. I think enough Melee players learned that we can just keep playing Melee. It’s not going to go anywhere as long as we continue to support it.
This was a great article and very fair. I really like smash 4 but i still prefer melee due to things it offers smash 4 fixed a good amount of brawls problems and has new ones and combos barley happen sigh.
Sure, S4 isn’t a threat to Melee as a game, no one can stop people from having their local tournaments. However, S4 is definitely a threat for Melee’s growth. Nintendo needs S4 to do well and sell a lot of WiiUs. You can be sure that Nintendo would love to have S4 at Evo this year.
>Melee’s Growth
>Growth
>for a 13 year old game that’s already been analyzed to death by tourneys.
Great article. I would like to know if you have any suggestions to make the game more competitive yet give it a fresh feel? Have you expressed your thoughts to the developers or game testers? Maybe a patch can help?
Unfortunately, Nintendo does not really take much feedback for the game, and the developers are in Japan, making them even more inaccessible.
You know what’s kind of ironic about the whole Melee vs. Brawl split? They’re almost the exact same game. I’m sorry to be the one to say it, but in the grand scheme of things, the differences between the two games are so incredibly small. If you gave both games to someone who had never seen the series before, they would have a hard time describing what is different beyond the interface. I know that there are plenty of people reading this shaking their head. Melee fans can only focus on the differences, you might say its all they can see, because they’re so far ingrained in the culture that they have lost sight of what Smash is, what it started as, and what it was intended to be. I mean, its amazing that we can get four people together to play a fighting game and everyone is laughing, having fun, and playing with a character that they personally identify with. Not every match has to be a dick-waving contest. Super Smash Bros is so much bigger than the latest new advanced tech with a made-up contrived name. Melee is a much better game from a competitive angle. But competitive play, is just competitive play. Its one style of play among many others. And just because it involves more skill and focus does not make it better than casual play. I say this because its a video game. Keyword being: game. It’s for fun. What reason you play it beyond its original intention is up to you. But its purpose is first and foremost to entertain. Sakurai is a smart man. Many people don’t understand what it is like to be creating a product with a vocal following online. It can be hard to hear the little voices because the big ones are so loud. Not only are there more little voices, but even the big voices don’t actually know what they want. So no matter how much you clamor on, Sakurai is very likely not listening. Its kind of a waste of time to read online comments because fans tend not to be well-informed, mature, or articulate. On an individual basis you end up with two out of three at most.
The semantics that are argued among the Smash fanbase between what game is better or worse is so silly. The amount of emotion and negativity that gets generated over a fucking game.. To be honest it reads like its coming from a bunch of privileged people who ordered a snack that doesn’t have dipping sauce. Get up and make your own damn sauce (Project M) or get over yourself and just eat what you have (play the damn game and have fun). Complaining about it does absolutely nothing. Nothing. You might some pats on the back from people who agree with you. But when you do that for too long, you entrench yourself in an echo chamber and close yourself off from the real world. This goes for both Melee elitists and Brawl/Smash4 apologists.
“I mean that the player attacking will be unable to know the amount of knockback his attack will have as so many variables effect it, including ones his opponent controls.”
Followed with ” You each know the extent of the opponent’s capabilities and are trying to wrest control of the situation, using your knowledge of what your opponent is capable of and what he wants to do to predict him.”
-Logical inconsistency. You imply that having prediction in the game is bad in the new game, then follow it up with how it’s an important mechanic when applied to Melee.
All of that ties in later in the article about how Melee is supposed to mentally challenge you, but this mechanic makes you need to think more before delivering a follow-up.
“I’m not sure competitively which game is better or worse between the two, but Smash 4 has the advantages of newer hardware and HDMI support which Melee doesn’t”
…”1. Accuse Melee players of being elitist or afraid of change.
This will often accompany claims of “it’s just different, not worse”.
-Logical inconsistency. This also throws a wall of bias preemptively by giving someone to silence naysayers or back-track to look better.
Claiming that there is a future for the metagame to be developed is completely valid. It’s one thing to disregard a statement like that after the game has been out for a year and a half, but it’s just a couple weeks old.
You speak of how Melee players aren’t elitist, then you spout out things about people destroying the competitive scene from the inside. I know you’re not condoning the behavior, but you start writing off casually, calling it juvenile.
I don’t see anything in this article that promotes a positive discussion. This is either a rallying cry with no direction or a poorly constructed piece trying to defend Melee as the superior game in the franchise while trying to block dissent.
I say this as someone who prefers Melee to everything else in the series and has no established connection to 4 yet.
It was nice to hear a melee-esque perspective. I’m am brawl player( I do play and appreciate melee though) and some parts of the article made me cringe a bit, but it was good overall.
I recognize that the rage mechanic is not the best mechanic competitively(so we are in agreement). I am a lucario player in brawl and have every complaint in the book on why my character is, uncompetitive, stupid, damaging to the meta game, and the list goes on and on. You used the wrong word when you use “inconsistent”. I think the word should be replaced with the phrase ” needlessly complex”. There is no reason that a player can’t learn what percents he needs to worry about the rage effect. At top level play proper VI’ing should be assumed, so that is one variable taken out of the effective equation.
Smash 4 is a different game from Melee, but the wording you used made it sound like VI’ing was bad because it promoted survivability. It is a subjective aspect of what make a “good” smash game. I think you grasp that though.
I also like your point about Nintendo being a business. I think people forget that sometimes.
I’ll admit to knowing nothing of the scene, so I ask these questions as someone who wants to learn. I’ll be phrasing these questions in opposition to what’s spoken of in the article, in the hope that it’ll draw out the strongest answers (in like manner to how tempering steel strengthens it).
Why does a fighting game need combos in order to be competitive? There are many real-life competitive fighting sports (e.g. Tae Kwon Do, Judo, Kendo) don’t have combos, and yet are competitive. Sumo – the sport upon which Smash appears to be loosely based – has little that could be called a combo. Why do things like VI and Rage mean that Smash 4 is automatically uncompetitive? I would think that this would simply change the nature of how the competition operates (making it more like Eastern martial arts and less like MMA), rather than killing it off entirely.
Additionally, how does the Rage mechanic limit combos in Smash 4? The modification to knockback afforded by Rage, as far as I’m aware, is consistent for a particular character match-up and damage %. Thus, if a combo by character X (at 20% damage) against character Y (at less than 50% damage), then it will ALWAYS work for character X (at 20% damage) against character Y (at less than 50% damage). Rage doesn’t limit combos – it just adds another variable when determining which combos work at which %s: rather than needing to remember *only* which % your opponent needs to be on for a combo to work, you must *also* now remember which % *you* need to be on for the combo to work. Is it just that this is too much to have to remember?
How is taking control out of the attacker’s hands (with VI) automatically a bad thing? Many other competitive sports continue to exist with many random elements – e.g. the weather has a huge impact on tennis, soccer, rugby, cricket, etc. – or rules to advantage the defender (more on this in the next paragraph). Heck, even Poker, in spite of its total reliance on chance (and management thereof), is treated like a sport! I would think that changing the balance of power between attacker and defender (or attacker and environment) simply changes the nature of the game, rather than making the game inherently worse. One could argue that we want equity in how tournaments operate, to make sure that the “worse player” doesn’t win “due to random chance” – and fair enough! But this can be done by changing how the tournaments are set up – after all, Poker seems to work just fine in spite of its total reliance on chance. Is it just that changing how we run tournaments is too hard for the community?
Finally, why is “rubber banding” a bad thing? You cite a number of well-respected games that penalise the losing party, but this sounds like the Texas Sharpshooter if it doesn’t have a cohesive model or theory to back it up. There are lots of professional sports in which “rubber banding” is built into the rules: ANY sport where control of the ball is handed to whoever just failed to defend against a goal (soccer, basketball, water polo, etc.) has this mechanic. The fact that we have competitive games which penalise the winner (those above) and those that penalise the loser (those cited in the article) implies “rubber banding” might not be a bad thing. Why then, in the context of Smash specifically, must “rubber banding” be bad?
I’ll try to answer these best I can!
“Why does a fighting game need combos in order to be competitive? ”
A fighting game does not inherently ‘need’ combos to be competitive. However, combos serve a couple purposes:
* Makes punishes from offense hit harder than punishes from defense in most cases. This is very important, because it encourages people to approach each other and fosters interaction.
* Improves spectator viewership- people like watching combos.
* Increases skill gap between players, allows the better player to get harder punishes.
One of the issues with Brawl is that people tend to just trade hits a lot more, and getting hit by a nair out of shield from a defender isn’t that much worse than getting hit by a similar attack by an attacker. As a result, defensive play is encouraged, and comebacks are rare because there are no game-shifting ‘thwomp’ moments. You can’t turn the tide in an instant like you can by, say, going All In in Poker.
“Why do things like VI and Rage mean that Smash 4 is automatically uncompetitive?”
I don’t think they make the game noncompetitive. I think that they are steps backwards. VI improves defensive game (a major issue Brawl had already) and Rage is an anticompetitive addition (that is fortunately very weak). I think the game will still be better than Brawl.
“Additionally, how does the Rage mechanic limit combos in Smash 4? ”
Well, since I wrote this article people have gathered more statistics on Rage and it barely does anything below 70%, so it probably actually won’t be too bad, but what Rage does is increase knockback…increased knockback limits combos by pushing the opponent too far. Fortunately, it looks like it won’t be enough to be a major issue.
“How is taking control out of the attacker’s hands (with VI) automatically a bad thing? ”
It’s a bad thing in the context of an addition to a game that is already famous for being too defensive. Brawl favored the defender far too much by providing the defender too many options to escape followups and also too many options to punish blocked attacks with ease. Adding another technique to help the defender have more control is dangerous in this scenario.
I agree that changing the nature of the game does not make the game inherently worse, it’s just that Brawl’s greatest flaw is that the game favors the defender to the point where it is usually bad to approach, and that’s why Brawl games are so slow. Smash 4 is very, very similar to Brawl already and should be pushing the game in a more aggressive direction. That’s why VI is a step back.
You make the comparison to Poker a lot- have you actually played Poker competitively or read any books on it? I actually have and it’s a legitimate competitive game. But, chance is used in a very controlled manner in Poker, and there is a lot of number theory behind betting that allows you to control your opponents and get insight in to what they have. Poker also has so many hands in play that the better player will “average out” to winning. All risks in Poker are controlled, and people drop out of the hand if they don’t think they have good enough odds to manipulate the opponent. Pre-flop betting/folding is huge.
Smash has random elements- like Peach’s turnips, Dedede’s gordos, etc. But the examples of chance, like weather, are more like stages.
I’m not sure what you mean about changing how we run tournaments though. If you mean items, there is no sport that has anything as gamechanging as items. Items randomly reward either player, while weather effects all players. No one would seriously play a sport where the ball can appear on either side of the court or players randomly get punished for no reason.
“Finally, why is “rubber banding” a bad thing? You cite a number of well-respected games that penalise the losing party, but this sounds like the Texas Sharpshooter if it doesn’t have a cohesive model or theory to back it up. There are lots of professional sports in which “rubber banding” is built into the rules: ANY sport where control of the ball is handed to whoever just failed to defend against a goal (soccer, basketball, water polo, etc.) has this mechanic.”
This example you give isn’t rubber banding. It is punishing the team for failing, and that’s perfectly fine. If the ball was given to whichever team had the lowest score, it would be rubber banding. Giving the ball to the other team when a team misses a goal isn’t rubber banding, it’s standard risk/reward (the team making the shot has to keep in mind the punishment of missing the goal).
Good game design allows for comebacks by giving both parties many ways of taking advantage of mistakes the opponents may make (like a missed short on goal, or a failed L cancel), but does not punish the winning player for winning. Game design allows for comebacks by constantly rewarding the losing party to keep them closer together is deserved for party games and board games.
Giving your opponent power for losing to you is artificial comebacks. It’s the game rewarding you for losing, and means good play in the latter half of the game matters more than the former half.
What is so wrong with defensive play in smash or fighting games in general? I smell a double standard. Games where everything is balls to the wall offensive and incredibly one sided are praised for being “hype” but games that allow you to play defensively or strategies that are more defensive are scoffed at and are even called disgraceful by some. Why is it so wrong for me to zone in smash bros, why is brawl looked at as badly as original sin?
This article was great and i really appreciate the fairness of it. Thank you for the well-thought out write up of both sides.
I think this article glosses over and really heavily understates how vicious it was in the aftermath of Brawl’s release. The resulting conflict that came from that had effectively driven out players who had been interested in learning Brawl because they saw the Melee community as fanatical and obsessed. The sheer amount of hate for Sakurai on Smashboards was also a big factor to some.
Why do you think Smashboards was raided by /v/ so constantly in those days? Or that the fighting game scene largely dismissed and ridiculed Smash Bros. players back then? The chaos of Smashboards back then was a big part of that, and although it’s largely gotten better, there’s definitely still a great deal of resentment floating around.
On another note, I had been reading this and its comments earlier:
http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2gmbb2/smash_4_and_melee_the_reality_we_all_have_to_face/
It comes off very high-handed and doesn’t really grasp the problems that plagued the community, along with the hope that Melee will continue to be represented in large scale fighting tournaments.
That’s where the problem lies, I believe–a small and incredibly vocal minority of Melee’s playerbase do not want other Smash games in the series to succeed. Why do you think some people went well out of their way to poison the well against Brawl? Because they wanted Melee to be the only /official/ game ever.
Granted, Brawl had big problems and was quite inferior as a competitive game in comparison to Melee, but the sheer fact that some Melee players were actively trying to destroy the Brawl scene is appalling, and the fact that they largely succeeded even more so.
And as like this article says, history is repeating itself as some people are preemptively poisoning the well against Sm4sh already, lamenting how it’s going to kill the Melee scene.
That’s where the crux of the problem lies. Another playerbase split is going to happen eventually so long as this keeps up, because Nintendo isn’t going to support Melee at all when they have a new game out. This is what certain Melee players are afraid of, so the more radical minority of them will probably do their best to ruin Sm4sh for everybody in hopes of driving them back to Melee.
I largely enjoy the Melee community, so long as there are those desiring “Melee 2.0”, there will be those that will never be satisfied with their own game. I can only see splits happening more and more often as this continues, and if the Melee crowd finds it can’t adapt and instead chooses to lash out again, things will turn out very /very/ ugly.
I’ll agree on that, it was really, really bad. People seem to have forgotten, but I remember thinking very negative of Melee players for a long time because of how they treated the community in those early days. A lot of players were viscous.
Good to know your gonna reject others opinions that your being too one sided and accusing the game to be garbage because it’s not Melee, bravo, your DEFINITELY not filled with ignorance.
I don’t see what the problem is, you want Combos %100 of the time? Smash 4 having combos to push characters to high percentages early isn’t good enough for you? Your too much of a baby to fully finish off your opponent and blame the vectoring? Come on, grow the fuck up, the Smash community as a whole needs to band together and love each other as a series and Snags 4 is a great addition, your pushing it too far to assume and look at Smash 4 negatively while ignoring the positives AND painting a rather rude and absolutely garbage picture of the community who have a different opinion from you.
Grow up.
Smash 4 has an entirely different game, but your points seem more majorly nitpicking then negatives.
I personally find the rage mechanic to be much more fair in in a balance state, why should you be able to fully combo somebody until they die? I feel being able to.combos at the earliest percentage then finish them off with a Smash attack is much more fitting for the Smash context.
And not to be rude, but your labeling of Smash 4 fans is more rider than your making them out to be, every game has these type of people, even Melee and Project M.
Smash 4 is nothing like Brawl, at it’s competitive stand point it’s exactly what we were told it would be, it is it’s own game with mechanics mixed between Melee and Brawl while having it’s own uniqueness to it like the ledge mechanics. you only say history is repeating itself because it doesn’t seem like you want to get with Smash 4 at all, which is fine, your entitled to your opinion, but it’s incredibly rude to do so ignorantly and painting everybody else as the “bad ones”. This articles seems more of an attack to the community than an actual analysis to be honest, I want to love this site, but not with an attitude like that. And this is coming from a fellow fan who prefers Melee as well but wants to still try Smash 4.
This was a pretty decent read all around.
One criticism I would make though; in regards to rage being “not a competitive mechanic”. Putting aside opinions on if it’s a good mechanic or not, I don’t think it’s fair when looking at other fighting games currently out there to say that.
In my opinion the Rage mechanic is a comeback mechanic, simple as that. Loads of fighting games have these nowadays; SF4 has Ultras, UMvC3 has X-Factor, Blazblue has Overdrive, Guilty Gear has Dragon Install (albeit limited to one character, PRAISE SOL), Smash 4 has rage, the list goes on. They all function differently, but they all have a similar function to rage. (Though I’d personally argue that Rage isn’t nearly as significant as something like X-Factor and as such shouldn’t be treated as such, but that’s just me)
You can argue whether or not it’s healthy for fighting games to be shifting to such mechanics, but at the end of the day that’s a different debate altogether.
As a whole I think it was a decent article though, even if I disagree with some of the things said within. I enjoyed all the Smash games and look forward to seeing how Smash 4 develops.
Also that last bit about how Melee players treated Brawl players, I mean wow, I actually didn’t see stuff like that for myself. That’s messed up.
This is a fair discussion. It’s a very recent trend in fighting games to add these kinds of rubber banding mechanics, but I feel pretty strongly that this is not good fighting game design. I’m fairly sure even Capcom has said they built the Ultra/Revenge mechanic to help keep novice players doing better against experts (though it didn’t work that well since it just gave experts more tools to land on them). The Ultra meter concept isn’t as bad as it could be because it still requires very good play to utilize.
X-Factor is generally regarded very negatively by the MvC3 community, actually. It frequently causes “unfair” losses as the game gives so much ammo to the losing player that they can turn it around in a heartbeat.
“You can argue whether or not it’s healthy for fighting games to be shifting to such mechanics, but at the end of the day that’s a different debate altogether.”
This is something I’d argue. It’s nonexistent in long lasting, healthy fighting games like SF2 or MvC2, or in other genres (Starcraft, Poker, Chess, any actual sport like Football/Soccer). I think it’s a tradeoff a lot of developers choose to make- it slightly harms the competitive nature of the game in exchange for slightly improved viewer hype through comebacks. It’s a pro-spectator, anti-competitive feature, so they usually implement it lightly. But you can design a game to allow for comebacks without needing a feature that rewards the losing player.
Melee, again, hits the nail on the head here. Look at M2K vs Shiz at ROM4, or Amsah vs Ek. Melee is a game where you can turn the game around in one quick, clever, hard read. Mew2King grabs Shiz at the ledge (mistake #1), guesses his immediate jump (mistake #2), and puts a hitbox in that spot and bam- M2K follows those two reads up in to a kill when the game was firmly in Shiz’s hands.
Having hard punishes so that the losing player can bring the game back if he manipulates the winning player right is the best way to make comebacks feasible without compromising player interaction.
That was Melee’s problem. Its mechanics made it too focused around getting early kills, to the point where simply being offstage was almost a death sentence. The characters that ended up dominating were those that excelled at getting early kills, whether through gimping (Fox, Sheik, Marth, Puff), being able to combo so well that regular kill percents were effectively early (Falco, Falcon), having a guaranteed kill at 20% just by getting a grab (ICs), having a powerful true spike (Falco, Marth), or having a ridiculously powerful kill move that can be comboed into (Puff, Falcon). Peach maybe be the one exception, but I don’t know enough about her to make any sort of statement. The game became less about sparring with your opponent for a whole stock and landing a powerful smash attack or aerial or special or whatever at a high percent and more about getting kills as quickly and cheaply as possible.
Just to be sure, is this a serious article? You’re a Brawl player. Do you believe the nonsense you’re typing or are you trying to make some kind of point?
Congrats, you just found out that a casual fighting game is a casual fighting game. There was never really meant to be a competitive scene.
Is this satire?
Early testing shows that VI has minimal effect on low percentage combos and on high percentages where it actually matters, the knockback is too high so you wouldn’t be able to combo anyway.
You might want to explain why rage is a rubberbanding mechanic when it favors good players outside of one stock matches.
– good players tend to survive to higher percentages
– good players tend to kill their opponents at lower percentages
– good players tend to take multiple stocks off their opponent while still on their first stock
PSg89s Very well written article. It will be useful to anyone who employess it, as well as yours truly :). Keep up the good work – looking forward to more posts.
“It means that the player who is “losing” has better kill options and can suddenly turn the tide.”
What about players with high percentages who are ahead by a stock? Wouldn’t that mean that the winning player would have better kill options?
I wanted to reach out to Chris Hardin about this article. I’d love to chat. Seems like he doesn’t have any contact information here so I’ll have to just leave a comment and hope for the best. BTW, I’m working on spreading good messages like this to the community as a whole.
Should be an interesting chat.
I would love to be able to play Melee like they do in competitive scenes but there are a number of factors that prevent me from doing so.
1.Between 2 jobs I don’t often have enough time to play games much less practice the tech to be competent at it.
2. Living in a small town with few people who’d be interested in playing like this and have the time to practice with.
3. I like playing lots of different games so committing myself to just one will get boring quickly.
If I was younger and had time I’d definitely be getting into Melee but will most likely be playing Smash 4 as I’m finding the demo fun and it has quite a few characters I’m looking forward to.
Just another person letting you know how awesome the article was. Thanks for the good work and for the mature perspective.
I heavily disagree with the idea that the new mechanics in question make anything inconsistent. If VI would make the use/properties of moves inconsistent in a way that reduces depth, then (S)DI, crouch canceling, and moves with multiple angles/power/etc. at different parts of the move would, too, and it is easy to see how it is not as simple as that.
VI from a comboing perspective is arguably deeper than DI, as while the defender has a greater variety of options within that, mix-ups based on what the attacker hits with are more viable at a wider range of percents. VI seems to scale with the knockback you’re sent out at, so at low percents the effect is relatively small (much like DI), while after that things like Mario D-Smash sending you out (for edgeguarding/KOing) but D-Tilt sending you in (for comboing) means that there is much more potential for bad VI even at high-level play (where you could previously accept that players would have great DI virtually every time). It works on both an offensive and a defensive level. Also, the direction that would get you good DI would often get you good VI at high percents, so we will probably not see any significant difference in KO percents there.
I don’t understand how the Rage Effect could be seen as a rubber-band effect; if anything, it’s probably more likely to snowball and allow characters who are difficult to land a KO move on to be more threatening at high percents, much like Lucario was in Brawl. It was far more demoralizing to be down a stock while Lucario was at high percents because you knew things were likely going to get far worse really quickly.
Am I the only one who didn’t think this article was not extremely biased? I don’t understand why people are saying this is a great article. I respect you Praxis, but this is majorly biased bro. You have basically ignored all the hate, bashing, and negativity that the Melee community has done and the big hole that the damage has done to the community. Praxis, you preemptively accused Smash 4 players of thinking thoughts that may not even be true, and you basically downplayed all of Brawl’s history and said it died in 2013, and gave a bunch of reasons about why it died and ignored the fact that the negativity that started from the Melee community since the beginning of Brawl is the SOLE reason of why Brawl is not really played competitively anymore. Brawl didn’t even die in 2013. A more accurate time is after SKTAR 3 after 9b won. Apex 2014 was VERY competitive for Brawl.
Thoughts on mechanics and ect…those are all subjective. A fast-paced combo heavy game does NOT make a game better or more competitive.
Comparing Smash 4 & Brawl & saying that it will have the same development? What is that!? The game isn’t even out yet, and that is a very negative view to say that it will have the same development.
Overall, the main ideas that I got from reading your article is that Melee is better; Brawl was bad and hurt the community; Smash 4 will be the same as Brawl and that Smash 4 shouldn’t accuse Melee of being elitist, pessimist, and that they have legitimate reasons for their actions. Also, Hungrybox is the best!
Smh, this is not what I thought I would be reading from this title. I thought this would address the fundamental issues in the community and give productive ideas on how to fix our mistakes so we don’t repeat them. I thought this would give hope to the community, but nope, no hope from reading this.
You suck at reading comprehension.
First off, terrific analysis in what I consider to be very objectively executed. The Smash series is very close to a lot of gamers’ hearts, no matter which game(s) you play. You can hate a game all you want, just be respectful of other people’s preferences, that goes both ways (I am a Melee/PM player, btw). I did play Brawl for a long time (casually), just as I did with Melee and Smash 64. However, about a year ago I started getting more and more into Melee on a serious level, and it was really about 10 months ago that I started looking into the competitive end of the spectrum of consciously improving, studying videos, attending a tournament, etc. I attended Apex 2014 as a spectator, and the great experience I had really solidified my leap into the world of competitive Melee. I started regularly attending tournaments this summer and picked up PM as well (although I will admit I was reluctant at first). Smash 4 has me incredibly intrigued. I would love to play all three of Melee, PM and Smash 4 competitively, but if Smash 4 isn’t for me, then I’ll stop playing, whenever that may happen. Maybe I play for a month and stop. Maybe it’s a year. Maybe I love it and play it until there’s no competitive scene left. Who knows? All I know if that it’s a Smash game, and I don’t care what anyone says- everyone wants to play Mega Man and Duck Hunt Dog, let’s be real.
PS: I will end my comment by correcting the end of your article. I was not around for 2010, and maybe Hungrybox was a more respectful player at that point in time. But it has been my experience that HBox is the rudest and most disrespectful professional player I have come across, and it’s been at both Apex 2014 and ROM 7 (he was in my pool there). I know there were multiple times he dissed Brawl at Apex, including stating that “Brawl players aren’t even good at their own game.” He was repeatedly in interviews brushed aside any mention of Brawl and essentially deemed it a game not worthy of being in the company of Melee, calling Melee “a real game,” and labeling PM as a gateway of sorts to convince Brawl players that Melee is the far superior game. I know the documentary portrayed him as some hero for people to feel pity for, and despite me going in ready to like him, he has repeatedly let me down on that front despite me giving him chance after chance and really wanting to like him as a person.
My point: let’s not go around hailing HBox as some community hero when that is very much not the case.
Just play whatever games you like, and don’t berate others for doing the same thing. If you don’t like the lineup at MLG or Evolution, then host your own tournament.
The thing that was most glaring to me was the analysis of rage. I find it really pretentious that the writer claims right from the start: “The “rage mechanic” is poor game design.” I know we all have our opinions on rage, but I think it’s excellent game design. I feel that it rewards the players who can survive up to high percentages.. essentially it rewards those who are good at DI, so it’s not a handicap since it takes skill to achieve in the first place.
“The better player may not win with consistency because the loser is given a handicap; the only thing that matters is who plays better at the very end of the game. If the better player cannot consistently win because of this, the game should not be considered competitive.” <– How does this even make sense? If the better player was truly better then they wouldn't lose to rage effect. These are probably the same people who say that stupid "Git gud" sh*t when you don't like Little Mac's KO punch and just tell you "don't get hit." If that's the case, then don't get hit when rage is in effect. Should be easy for the "better player."
"In a fighting game, the winning player should have an advantage that he can use to press his opponent. The losing player has to then take riskier options that will either get him back in the game or end the game very quickly. This leads to very interesting, and very quick, matches that force interaction."
This guy needs to take a different perspective. Just because you're at a high percentage doesn't necessarily mean you're losing. You could be up by one stock with a high percentage, and this still forces interaction, just in a different way. If anything, this encourages MORE interaction, whereas before most people are going to stall for the right moment to strike when they're at a high percentage for fear of being killed in one move, now that you have rage effect, the player with the higher percentage is given incentive to press harder and widen his lead by unleashing harder hitting smash attacks and potentially gaining KOs. I just don't necessarily agree that a fighting game always has to favor the winner. It should ALWAYS favor the CLUTCH PLAYER – the player that fights hardest when the situation for you is the most dire – and if that means rage makes you fight harder in the clutch, then it's perfectly valid and that makes for good game design. This is a new Smash Bros. it's time to think in a new way, and it's laughable that anyone can think that the rage effect makes it less competitive. Top competitive fighting games like Tekken and Soulcalibur have already been using something similar in their most recent incarnations and if anything, I feel it adds a level of mind games, it doesn't take away from the competitive aspect – it makes it MORE competitive and it also makes for more exciting matches. That's my opinion.
Am I the only one that’s concerned that the author seems to be tactically responding to certain posts and failing to acknowledge replies that make any kind of informed, well-constructed counter argument?
From reading all the comments regarding this article, I’m sure that I’m not the only one who can appreciate the irony of the effect it’s having.
1. As mentioned before, the problem came from melee diehards fans, and the fact they made (and are still making) lobbying toward Nintendo
2. VI doesn’t exists anymore, so one of your two critical view is now wrong.
This is a late comment but oh well, yes rage does give the person with higher percent the advantage (sort of) but let’s say it’s a two stock match and both are midweights, u manage to kill ur opponent when u have say 70% on u, in this situation one ur opponent most likely won’t be able to imediatly kill u, can’t rack up damage fast cus u aren’t in a good combo percentage, and rage isn’t built up enough to make com king hard Vince ur opponent is at low %. Then lets say they kill u about when u’be given them about 80 damage then science u are already have the lead sychologically ur opponent will be afraid and be less inclined to do riskier suff to rack up percent quick. So honey if ur opponent can still make a comeback and win then they deserved it.