New Super Smash Bros. for Wii U/3DS

TheMikenyan wrote: »

Sadly no evidence that OP ever read his answer though.

I'm happy just to see people trying to make the world (even if only via perceptions) a better place.

Whether or they actually succeed doesn't matter.

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Simon linked this in the chat, and I think it's one of the best Melee related reads:

http://np.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1hyqyk/nintendo_tells_organizers_they_cant_stream/cazeyxg

Standard question of "Why don't smash players play proper fighters?" with probably the most comprehensive and well written answer I've ever seen.

See, I don't think that answer was that good. It was a wall of text, where his reasons for disliking "standard" fighters was; I don't like combos, rock/paper/scissors gameplay is lame, and muh freedom of doing whatever I want. Everything was fluff on himself or on how technical melee is. Between the lines, though, is this whole "excessively high amount of time spent on an extremely narrow point of focus of developing skills" subtext.
The reason that Melee players don't translate over, so far as I can see, is that skills gained in playing Smash to a high level don't translate over to other fighters in the same way that, say, KoF skills translate to SF (footsies, correct AA option judgement, correct method of approaching opponent/matchup archtype). I'm not saying that the skills aren't there at all (you're not gonna fight a Marth the way you would fight a DK), but I am saying that the skills you develop are much narrower and not as readily applicable across all fighting games.
[edit]I should also probably qualify that the technical skill of Smash doesn't translate well to standard FGs. There's definite technical skill involved, no doubt, but where doing a qcf/dp/360/tk-anything translates as a standard motion from game to game, there's no translating any of the cube-controller motions to any other FG.[/edit]
Or am I totally wrong?

Given the context of the statements surrounding the question, we can certainly agree that his answer was good. I'm just not satisfied with the answer to what I see as the important question of "why do (primarily) smash players not generally branch out into standard fighting games?" I feel that he gave a lot of context and explanation to his argument that smash is skilled, competitive and intricate. As far as I'm concerned, that was a given (but I had some experience with melee/project M, so first hand experience comes into play that the question poser never seemed to have had, or had had a skewed experience). This is why I broke down his entire argument to a single statement that I felt reflected his answer to the important question (in my eyes).

The random statements were my own views, and what the responder stated about "DI", "SDI" and other low-frame, game specific actions that in no-way or shape could ever be applied outside of the game. Or are you saying that Chris G never misses a TAC Counter? It's why I post-scripted with it a query of me being wildly off the mark :pac: They're an opinion I've formed after seeing the level of technical skill required to do half the things in high level play, and realizing that, because of the method of execution, the skills developed would translate poorly over. This would be due, among other things, from the writer mentioning "analogue versus digital" motion control. While analogue controls infer an extremely high degree of control, it does mean that you get used to some freedom with movement that doesn't exist within standard fighters (outside of wacky nonsense like MvC's wavedashing/p-dashing).

I suppose the issue in our discussion lies on the fact that the posed question was directly phrased as "Why do people who play smash competitively not play other fighting games instead?" rather than the question you posed it as of "Why don't smash players play proper fighters?". The phrasing changes these questions from a postulate of "stop playing this baby casual game" to "why aren't you translating your skillset to a wider field?". I'll admit to having ignored this piece of phrasing up to this analysis of it.

If we're gonna start bringing in player names, why doesn't M2K play MvC too then? Surely, as one of the best smash heads, he should be able to body everyone free in Mahvel :pac: (I'm only being facetious, but at the same time, a player's starting game, without context of their skill within said game, hardly makes a point, surely? It's not super easy to find out Chris G's skill in the game, so it seems kinda pointless to bring him into the discussion.)

I'm not using the term "proper fighters" to say that Smash isn't. I'm using it as a direct quote from you;

UberPrinny_Baal wrote: »

Simon linked this in the chat, and I think it's one of the best Melee related reads:

http://np.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1hyqyk/nintendo_tells_organizers_they_cant_stream/cazeyxg

Standard question of "Why don't smash players play proper fighters?" with probably the most comprehensive and well written answer I've ever seen.

My argument isn't Chris G is too good to count, I just want to know his level of Smash skill! I also don't know of M2K's MvC skill, but given a lack of existing and accessible information, I can only infer he does not play the game. I've no "pre-defined" level of skill in mind at all, I just want to know the spill-over rates into other games from mid-high/high level Smash to other games. I imagine this is a moot point, however, since the information is probably not super-widely available.

My question was only jokingly "oh lawl they should body everyone free", and I only made it because you seemed to bring up Chris G out of nowhere. I understand that, outside of handful of players, it's very difficult to be good at multiple games with disparate skill sets.

At this point I think our discussion has veered wildly off-base from it's original premise of "why do (primary) smash players not generally branch out into standard fighting games?" Though I am willing to acknowledge the answer of "achieving a noteworthy level of skill across multiple games is difficult", I still feel there's potentially other factors at play. Possibly this includes the lack of inherently transferable muscle memory (a dp input is a dp input, no matter the game, but a Tilt-A is meaningless in a lot of standard FGs), among other things.

I only know who Chris G is because he became wildly famous via Marvel domination, and it came up that he had started as a Smash player.

I didn't mention him specifically because he was so skilled, but rather ONLY knew to mention him because of his fame.

Voa wrote: »

At this point I think our discussion has veered wildly off-base from it's original premise of "why do (primary) smash players not generally branch out into standard fighting games?"

Any discussion is better than.... say..... as a random example out of thin air: Reposting news about a confirmed returning playable character days/weeks after everyone already knew.

Or uselessly telling people what characters were in what smash games.

This discussion though? THIS is nice!

Voa wrote: »

Though I am willing to acknowledge the answer of "achieving a noteworthy level of skill across multiple games is difficult", I still feel there's potentially other factors at play. Possibly this includes the lack of inherently transferable muscle memory (a dp input is a dp input, no matter the game, but a Tilt-A is meaningless in a lot of standard FGs), among other things.

If we're talking about purely transferable muscle memory, I think it's a lot less transferable between games at a high level than you think, I don't think it's something that's unique to Smash.

Odd that you use tilt attacks as an example, because they are 1:1 the same as command normals in SF and KOF (one direction + one button).

Aside from that though, as an example, I play Deejay in SF4, one thing I had to learn was EX MGU dash U2. Ignoring the MGU part, the most general part of that input, Dash U2, is done like this:

Hold down-back for 55 frames for charge, release stick to neutral, double tap forward, return to down-back, input "delta motion" (stupidest motion in fighting games), press all three punch buttons simultaneously.

This is bizarrely specific muscle memory, and I don't believe this exact motion is transferable to any other game, and not even to most of the rest of the cast of the same game.

At a more basic level, the reason I specified 55 frames of charge is that this the standard time to charge in SF4 (not universally standard across all chars, but most common). If you wanted to play a charge character in KOF, you would need to readjust to the fact that only needs 30 frames to charge. If you only played KOF then moved onto SF, I imagine you'ld get a lot of jumping normal kicks instead of flashkicks.

Other mechanical things wreck my head going between "similar" fighters. Getting used to input shortcuts and "full guard" in SF4 (where your char auto-blocks an entire blockstring if you block the first hit) will get you absolutely destroyed in 3S, where I can't DP, and I tend to get hit by the latter half of supers while mashing out my own during blockstun.

Other 2D fighters have different kinds of input leniency too. SF4s is mostly direction input based (downforward, downforward = DP), but Blazblue's is button based (hold a button down for 5 frames of input leniency), and KOF's over reliance on semi-circles means it has a kind of "last input direction priority" (different motions take priorities over others, but this can be specifically bypassed by "Overshooting" your input and finishing it on a diagonal).

At high level, you pretty much have to play all these games with different muscle memory in mind.

Outside of that, your ability to win is based on your ability to read your opponent, react to stuff and correctly input the things you want your char to do. In that regard Smash is no different to any other game, in my opinion.

@Sairus: Something like this? http://supersmashbros.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Terms

Is this Evo training haha?

I suppose that, rather than muscle memory, I should have said similar "common motions". And tilt-A was a mistake on my part, I ment to say smash attacks, but I suppose they too can be linked to command normals. Smash wave dashing is a different enough to MvC wavedashing, but again, some through line exists there.

All this though, just makes me more curious. A lot of the smash players I was exposed to at the Smash-o-ton event seemed to resent standard FGs. As the event was closing up, after I said "please clean up lest we lose the venue for future tournaments. By the way, tournament in 2 weeks is SF" and I definitely heard someone say "yeah, 'cause we wouldn't want the Street Fighter people to not have a tournament". I've never heard someone roll their eyes so hard before. I didn't even know I could hear such a thing. And I had a weird vibe from a lot of people as I was playing a bit of MvC at the venue, but I put that down to being in a slightly awkward space in the venue. At the same time, even playing BB at an Inferno didn't make me feel like such an outsider within the FGC space.
This was just my experience, and maybe it's not indicative of the scene as a whole, but still. As I wouldn't be part of the scene and you would, maybe you can shed some light on it?

From a peopley perspective I would guess that a lot of the reaction you describe would be a reaction to the various slurs that standard FGs have heaped upon the Smash community.

Smash is looked down upon and made to feel like an outsider so it acts like an outsider.

It is a shame because we could have had a great Smash community had they gotten involved earlier but hopefully it can be built from here.

What Orim said is probably the most likely explanation on the whole. I had thought it was, but I wasn't sure how the Smash scene had been treated around here, so I couldn't make a call on it.

Just to comment on the way the tournament was run; I was hugely impressed. It was an amazingly tight ship that was run on time and on cue, with streamed matches and no nonsense held. I have nothing but respect for the chaps who ran it, and any ill will that may have been felt was either me making comments on the differences in the way of it being run (I don't trust wireless/wired connections for my brackets, I use a local program. Too much of a risk of losing your bracket somewhere in the ether, even with Challonge. Also, some bad experiences with the way that Challonge used to run losers brackets), which were not meant as criticisms, merely observations, or, as Onion said, friendly ribbing. I understand this may not have come over as such, as those I was joking with were friends of mine, who know the standard FGC jokes; Mavhel is braindead, SF will complain about tournaments and not show up, BB is a joke (q.q). If anyone overheard this, not knowing that, it would be easy to make the mistake that I would be hating hard on smash.

And yeah, we were set up in literally the worst possible place. Sorry about not being more approachable, I suppose we might have been slightly shell shocked by an actual populated tournament :P

And I know that the whole of the smash scene probably didn't think in such a manner as to be hostile; I was just seeing if what I experienced was a minority or a majority opinion. I didn't think it was going to be a case that an entire scene was as insular as I feared, but I thought I'd check to be sure :P
As far as I knew, this smash scene could have always have been there, like some kind of shadowy cabal.

well I'm surprised it's me who's bringing this news but... but just google "Smash Bros captain falcon", you'll find out some good news.

http://www.siliconera.com/2014/07/15/sakurai-talks-difference-lucina-marth-smash-bros/

While Lucina’s abilities are identical to Marth’s, as it must be in her DNA, Sakurai explains that Marth’s power is concentrated at the tip of his sword, while Lucina’s attack strength is balanced throughout her weapon, making her easier to control. She’s also a bit shorter than Marth.
“With the Wii Fit Trainers, the male and female Robins, the Villagers, and Little Mac, varying their appearances and voices works just like selecting alternate color variations,” wrote Sakura. “However, whenever there is even a small difference in abilities, that character gets an actual roster slot. That is why you can select Lucina individually.”

Voa wrote: »

...there's a Lady Mac skin?

No. There are:
M/F Wii Fit Trainers
M/F Robins
a dozen varieties of Villagers
3 Little Macs: Standard, with hoody and wireframe.

Get on my level.

D4RK ONION wrote: »

Is this on the JP 3DS? Might pick it up.

Yup. To get the demo you'll need to make a Club Nintendo account on the 3DS. If you haven't done that yet on your EU 3DS just do it simultaneously on both of them to get through all the menus easily.

Demo wasn't doing much for me on account of the terrible control scheme that can't be changed.

FirLocke wrote: »

At first, I thought the controls were terrible too, totally because for some reason grab and shield were swapped. Otherwise the control setup is the same as on a GameCube controller. I've played the demo for just under 4 hours now and I'm feeling comfortable enough with this control scheme.

The problem is that the tirggers are flipped and the difference in the physical position of the buttons on GC and 3DS mean the controls are technically modified too.





On the gamecube controller the layout of the controller means that your inputs are laid out in an almost straight line from left to right - B: Special, A: Attack, X: Jump

On the 3DS the buttons are placed more regularly, which means your buttons are now in a straight line from left to right: Y: Jump, B: Special, A: Attack.

So while the inputs are actually assigned to the same buttons in both games the layout of the controllers means inputs have been rotated one slot to the right. I always play games on default button layouts whenever possible, so this has been wrecking my head after so many years of playing Melee and Brawl.