Tweet
Re: The AKB48 Joins the Fight! And Other SSB Demo Info.
I don't think it's impossible for Smash to be competitive with items, but the system needs to be set up for it. The biggest hurdle is giving players fair access to items and reduce random kills. For example:
* Items shouldn't spawn when players are off the stage. At the very least, winning players shouldn't get any useful items while losing players are off stage. If you decide that it's ok for losing players to get items while winning players are off stage, it should be an item that's impractical to do offstage KOs with (e.g. box, party ball, fire flower) so he doesn't get a guaranteed KO by throwing a bat/sword/poke ball.
* Items that are directly applicable to killing people should spawn in bunches, enough for each player to grab one. Again, this should only occur when all players are on stage.
* Assist Trophies and Pokemon shouldn't spawn anything that can easily instant kill (e.g. Lyn, Scizor).
Right now there's absolutely no fairness to how items spawn. That's fine for the chaos of a free for all because free for alls are also unfair, but it completely falls apart for 1v1. Sakurai clearly don't care either, since his solution in "For Glory" is to turn off the items. I don't really trust anyone that thinks Final Destination should be the only stage for competitive play to come up with a sane rule set for tournaments either.
On a side note, the mechanics for changing your trajectory when hit have changed.
The graph illustrates the effects of holding the analog stick against a vertical attack. The right side is how it used to work in 64, Melee, and Brawl, the left side is Smash 4.
In previous games, if you pushed the stick perpendicular to the direction you were about to get launched (in that graph you're being launched straight up), you'd change the angle of the attack. It didn't change the knockback, but since now you're not taking the shortest path to the top of the stage it takes more knockback to kill you.
In Smash 4, whichever direction you hold the joystick is added directly to the force of the attack. That means if you hold left, you'll travel more to the left, but the attack has the exact same vertical force and you'll travel the same vertical distance. But if you hold down (which wouldn't do anything under the old system), the attack will have less knockback. And if you hold up, you'll actually travel farther (which could be useful to get out of combos).
The upshot is that to survive vertical kills, hold down (or down-left/down-right, won't make a difference) and to survive horizontal kills hold the opposite side (to reduce the horizontal knockback) + up (to get more height for recovering).
Source: Vectoring: The replacement to Directional Influence in Smash 4 | Smashboards
I don't think it's impossible for Smash to be competitive with items, but the system needs to be set up for it. The biggest hurdle is giving players fair access to items and reduce random kills. For example:
* Items shouldn't spawn when players are off the stage. At the very least, winning players shouldn't get any useful items while losing players are off stage. If you decide that it's ok for losing players to get items while winning players are off stage, it should be an item that's impractical to do offstage KOs with (e.g. box, party ball, fire flower) so he doesn't get a guaranteed KO by throwing a bat/sword/poke ball.
* Items that are directly applicable to killing people should spawn in bunches, enough for each player to grab one. Again, this should only occur when all players are on stage.
* Assist Trophies and Pokemon shouldn't spawn anything that can easily instant kill (e.g. Lyn, Scizor).
Right now there's absolutely no fairness to how items spawn. That's fine for the chaos of a free for all because free for alls are also unfair, but it completely falls apart for 1v1. Sakurai clearly don't care either, since his solution in "For Glory" is to turn off the items. I don't really trust anyone that thinks Final Destination should be the only stage for competitive play to come up with a sane rule set for tournaments either.
On a side note, the mechanics for changing your trajectory when hit have changed.
The graph illustrates the effects of holding the analog stick against a vertical attack. The right side is how it used to work in 64, Melee, and Brawl, the left side is Smash 4.
In previous games, if you pushed the stick perpendicular to the direction you were about to get launched (in that graph you're being launched straight up), you'd change the angle of the attack. It didn't change the knockback, but since now you're not taking the shortest path to the top of the stage it takes more knockback to kill you.
In Smash 4, whichever direction you hold the joystick is added directly to the force of the attack. That means if you hold left, you'll travel more to the left, but the attack has the exact same vertical force and you'll travel the same vertical distance. But if you hold down (which wouldn't do anything under the old system), the attack will have less knockback. And if you hold up, you'll actually travel farther (which could be useful to get out of combos).
The upshot is that to survive vertical kills, hold down (or down-left/down-right, won't make a difference) and to survive horizontal kills hold the opposite side (to reduce the horizontal knockback) + up (to get more height for recovering).
Source: Vectoring: The replacement to Directional Influence in Smash 4 | Smashboards
Comment