Topic: Super Smash Bros. for WiiU (& 3DS)

[Soren]

I think Nintendo should pander to all the indies, not just the ones I like.

Shovel Knight, Shante and Patricia Wagon for Smash.

[Evan_B]

That would be my only exception. Put in Max from Mutant Mudds, Shantae, and Rusty and then I'll consider Shovel Knight.

[MagicCow64]

...I take it back.

PUT LAYTON IN. PUT LUKE IN. ANYTHING BUT SHOVEL KNIGHT!

Seriously, the pandering to Yacht Club is ridiculous, since they've made one mediocre title and are made up of ex-Wayforward employees, who have a far more prolific franchise, more deeply ingrained in Nintendo history, and released a better game than Shovel Knight last week.

But hey, if you're all gonna waggle "It's what the fans want" in my face, I'll shut up and most-definitely skip on that DLC pack. But honestly, Shovel Knight is laughable.

Yup, I'm in the same boat. And this isn't even a mediocre franchise yet. I hope at the utmost this is just a Mii sword fighter costume.

[Wah]

...I take it back.

PUT LAYTON IN. PUT LUKE IN. ANYTHING BUT SHOVEL KNIGHT!

Seriously, the pandering to Yacht Club is ridiculous, since they've made one mediocre title and are made up of ex-Wayforward employees, who have a far more prolific franchise, more deeply ingrained in Nintendo history, and released a better game than Shovel Knight last week.

But hey, if you're all gonna waggle "It's what the fans want" in my face, I'll shut up and most-definitely skip on that DLC pack. But honestly, Shovel Knight is laughable.

Yup, I'm in the same boat. And this isn't even a mediocre franchise yet. I hope at the utmost this is just a Mii sword fighter costume.

that would make a lot of sense to make it a costume..
I'm really hoping for Machamp!

[Soren]

September 30 Update:

- Mario Maker Stage
- Brawl Pirate Ship Wind Waker Stage (Wii U Only)
- Wii U Duck Hunt Stage now available on 3DS for free.

Mii Outfits
- Business Suit
- Toad Hat and Outfit
- Viridi Wig and Outfit (Kid Icarus)
- Hunter's Helm and Mail (Monster Hunter 4)
- Rathalos Helm and Mail (Monster Hunter 4)
- Fox McCloud Hat and Outfit
- Captain Falcon Helmet and Outfit

[broodwars]

Nice. I liked the Wind Waker stage in Brawl. I still really want Saphron City from Smash 64, though.

[Stratos]

Monster Hunter outfit!?! The MonHun community will go nuts with speculation that we could get a surprise cameo character as well like a "Hunter & Palico" character.

[Caterkiller]

I am looking at 2 official GameCube adapters for $15.99. Does anyone still need or want one? It's not a deal but I thought I'd post to make sure. I know how hard they are to find.

[Stratos]

I am interested in one if you are selling. And 16 is a pretty good deal.

[Caterkiller]

I am interested in one if you are selling. And 16 is a pretty good deal.

Sorry Stratos, by the time I got this message it was already too late.

[Stratos]

No worries. I can just grab one on Amazon now that I see they are available again.

[nickmitch]

While we wait for our last two DLC characters, I had a thought.  Nintendo has a handful of amiibo with no use in Smash, currently.  When word got out about a Shovel Knight amiibo, everyone assumed he'd be in Smash.  Unfortunately, he's not.  But I kinda thought, why not?  There's still room to add characters relatively easily: as assist trophies.  I'm thinking maybe Nintendo could put out an update to Smash that lets you add assist Trophies (Shovel Knight, Splatoon's Inklings, Chibi Robo) by using the amiibo.  That could be a way to add fun content to the game that adds utility to existing amiibo while keeping Smash feeling fresh.  Also, could inspire more devs to get in on the amiibo action by saying "Oh, and you're character will be in Smash".

Sorry if this has come up before, but I thought it was a neat idea.

[Oedo]

I didn't know where else to post this and I wasn't sure if we'd get a news post about it, but I thought it was worth sharing. Smash 4 at EVO 2016 will officially be the largest Smash Bros. tournament to date. The previous record was 1,926 (which was Smash 4 at EVO 2015), so they've topped that, and registration is still open for an entire month. A couple of figures in the Smash community hinted at Nintendo wanting to increase their involvement in the competitive Smash scene earlier this year and I hope they really do ride this momentum.

[ClexYoshi]

I'm with you, Oedo. I'm interested to see how things shape up now that Bayo patch has hit and people are adjusting.


I still think she's incredible and that getting a succesful Witch Time read is devestating enough to take a stock.

[Evan_B]

Maybe they'll nerf the top-tier waifu *** characters as well.

Buff Palutena!

[Oedo]

Sheik already got changes in the patch before this one. The waifu trio is still among the best, but a lot of top players vouch for Ryu, Cloud, and Diddy being on that level as well. I think Sakurai and his team are happy with where the game is at now considering Bayo was the only one who was affected by the latest patch.

I'm with you, Oedo. I'm interested to see how things shape up now that Bayo patch has hit and people are adjusting.


I still think she's incredible and that getting a succesful Witch Time read is devestating enough to take a stock.

Yeah, it seems like some people are writing her off, but she still has good tools and in a lot of ways it feels like the real development of the character is just starting after the patch. Most top players didn't pick her up in any real capacity because of the stigma associated with playing the her, but now that the patch has made her more of a fair character, maybe they give her a real shot. It would cool if we saw someone pull out a secret Bayo at EVO.

[Evan_B]

Yeah, it seems like some people are writing her off, but she still has good tools and in a lot of ways it feels like the real development of the character is just starting after the patch. Most top players didn't pick her up in any real capacity because of the stigma associated with playing the her, but now that the patch has made her more of a fair character, maybe they give her a real shot. It would cool if we saw someone pull out a secret Bayo at EVO.

I'm going to have to disagree with you here. The patch didn't make her more "fair" it just made her tools immensely more sloppy and killed her combo potential. While it still exists, it's marred- not unlike the rest of the Smash 4 cast, which the dev team has insisted on nerfing to the point where combos are few and far between.

Rather than creating an interesting metagame, the developers have shied away from the "bread-and-butter" combos and encouraged strategic thought and utilization of tools... but only for the characters that were clearly superior. Others, like Mewtwo and Bowser, have had their tools improved, but not enough to leave a lasting effect on the metagame because speed or broken gimmick= better performance.

Smash 4 is still a young game, and hopefully its meta will evolve, but the patches have appeared more like fixing leaks in a ship's hull than actual balance. And that's sad.

[Oedo]

It sounds like you have a fundamental issue with Smash 4 (or at least Smash 4 as a competitive game). That's fine, plenty of people do. But it doesn't mean that if they change a character to play by the same rules as everyone else, it's not actually balancing the game because you don't like those rules. That's exactly what making a character fair or balancing the game means. In the context of this game, she was the only character prior to 1.1.6 who could kill you with a relatively easy combo at extremely low percents regardless of what the other player inputs. Her combos are easier to escape now, but that just puts her in the same boat as everyone else. If the opponent doesn't react correctly or the Bayonetta player makes a couple of good reads, she can still combo and it's still going to hurt, just like every other good character in the game.

As an aside, true combos do exist in this game (even if they aren't of the high multi-hit or heavy damage variety that you see in 2D fighting games), and you do have characters who aren't considered top tier doing well. A top Japanese player won a U.S. major with Mewtwo a couple of months ago. A top Mario player very recently won a major over the #1 Smash 4 player in the world, who was using Sheik and Diddy (two "superior" characters). Another top Japanese player also nearly took out the #1 player earlier this year using Villager (and this was against pre-patch Sheik, who was considered the best character in the game). Like I said, if you have an issue with the game itself that's one thing, but in terms of balance there's a lot of room for different characters to grow and get good results.

[pokepal148]

Charizard was a sloppy mess when the game launched. He's just a much more coherent character now with the way they've tweaked him.

[Evan_B]

It sounds like you have a fundamental issue with Smash 4 (or at least Smash 4 as a competitive game). That's fine, plenty of people do. But it doesn't mean that if they change a character to play by the same rules as everyone else, it's not actually balancing the game because you don't like those rules. That's exactly what making a character fair or balancing the game means. In the context of this game, she was the only character prior to 1.1.6 who could kill you with a relatively easy combo at extremely low percents regardless of what the other player inputs. Her combos are easier to escape now, but that just puts her in the same boat as everyone else. If the opponent doesn't react correctly or the Bayonetta player makes a couple of good reads, she can still combo and it's still going to hurt, just like every other good character in the game.

As an aside, true combos do exist in this game (even if they aren't of the high multi-hit or heavy damage variety that you see in 2D fighting games), and you do have characters who aren't considered top tier doing well. A top Japanese player won a U.S. major with Mewtwo a couple of months ago. A top Mario player very recently won a major over the #1 Smash 4 player in the world, who was using Sheik and Diddy (two "superior" characters). Another top Japanese player also nearly took out the #1 player earlier this year using Villager (and this was against pre-patch Sheik, who was considered the best character in the game). Like I said, if you have an issue with the game itself that's one thing, but in terms of balance there's a lot of room for different characters to grow and get good results.

I don't have an issue with Smash 4. It's just balanced terribly.

There are other options you can use to balance- like, say, combos with diminishing power, which is what many more traditional fighting games implement. They still encourage combo seeking, while Smash 4's method of balance is taking away combos in order to justify lower tier characters. But then again, Smash 4 was never meant to be a competitive fighting game- Sure, it's at Evo, and that's all well and good. But it's a party game first and foremost, and I firmly believe Sakurai intended that. Which is honestly how I'd rather play the game, despite my pathetic attempts to improve and play competitively.

Also, Charizard is still a terrible character because he only has three special moves. No, the one that deals damage to himself doesn't count.

I don't really try to take Smash seriously, and I find the people that do the same generally have a better opinion of the game. Just accept it for what it is- a poorly-balanced party brawler- and let the good times roll.

[Oedo]

You keep saying it's a poorly balanced game, but you still haven't explained how it's poorly balanced. You're still talking about the general gameplay principles and now how it's meant to be a party game first. I'm not even necessarily disagreeing with that, it just has nothing to do with whether it's a well balanced game or not. The fact that multi-hit combos aren't emphasized as much in Smash 4 has nothing to do with the fact that there are numerous characters on the roster who are considered viable in a competitive setting and that the gap between the most viable characters isn't huge. Is a decent amount of the roster considered low tier? Sure, but when you're dealing with a roster of this size, that's always going to happen. The fact that Ultra Street Fighter IV emphasized combos a lot more than Smash 4 didn't stop that game from having a large percentage of the roster being characters who weren't real tournament threats. That has nothing to do with how much importance is placed on combos, reads, execution, matchup knowledge, etc. from one game to the next, that's just straight up due to the fact that taking a roster of 40+ characters and making them all viable is incredibly difficult. If you look at a top 16 for a major Smash 4 tournament, you're going to see a lot of character diversity. More often that not, if you get your ass beat, it's on you as a player, not the character.

Enjoying it as a party game only is great and I would hardly consider myself an expert on competitive Smash 4. I'm just not seeing the "poorly balanced party brawler" part. Their first priority was to make this game accessible to a broad audience, there's little doubt in my mind about that, but if they didn't care about Smash 4 in a competitive setting, they wouldn't have released a patch that only affected Bayonetta last month. I doubt anyone playing the game casually really gave a crap that she only needed to outplay you once in neutral to kill you regardless of what percent you were at or what you did after she starts her combo.

[Luigi Dude]

I don't have an issue with Smash 4. It's just balanced terribly.

You find me another fighting game with a roster of at least 58 characters that has the amount of viable contenders that this game has had.  Hell, Smash 4 has had more competitive viable characters in it's tournaments then a lot of fighting games with smaller rosters have produced, which is very impressive considering the wide variety of playstyles the 58 characters in Smash 4 have.

[Evan_B]

The idea that balancing characters should revolve around nerfing them is inherently stupid. The highest level of skill comes from players that utilize technically challenging characters in order to win. Sheik, Zero Suit Samus, and Rosalina are examples of this. But taking away their good tools even if they're technically difficult to perform doesn't encourage high-level play. Likewise, Bayonetta's match up was different and more patient (and "easier" to perform), but she wasn't destroying the competition. There were no Bayonettas, especially those seemingly coming from unknown places, placing high in Smash tournaments. So what was the reason for the nerf? Well, a very obnoxious, loud portion of an already small fighting game community caused a big enough stink about it that it was hastily nerfed, rather than giving players a chance to actually learn the matchup. Sure, it makes people play the game longer because they have to learn the new mechanics of the game, but ultimately, wouldn't you rather just have a good game made in the first place...?

I don't hate Smash 4. I don't hate fighting games. I love them, even if I'm terrible at just about every one. But patching is my least favorite "enhancement" of the online-gaming era because, though it purportedly makes a broken game "better" it also smothers the potential a game had before that- and Bayonetta's stupid Marvel combos were different, fun to watch, and punished players that didn't have a comprehensive perspective of the game. Patches make it easy to forget how stupid your initial idea was, but its also a lazy excuse to put less effort into something.


I am in the group that believes games can be artistic in nature, but I don't think the industry is poised in that direction, and the nature of patches reflects this. You all keep saying "having a huge amount of competitively viable characters is a good thing!" But that's not what I'm arguing at all.

[Evan_B]

We can just agree to disagree, since everyone seems ready to jump at my throat just because I have a different opinion. I'll keep my nose out of the Smash thread from now on.

[Phil]

I haven't bought any DLC since Ryu because I fear that we'll get an NX port with all the DLC included. The good thing is that I don't feel like I'm missing out since the game is already a complete package. I think I can wait!