Super Smash Bros 4 (Spoilers ITT)

[EonX]

So I've been able to have some online matches since the patch, primarily with Shulk to test out his slight buffs. I'm just going to say this right now. If you haven't tried Shulk, do it. Although all his buffs are minor, they add up to make him a fair bit better. The slight increase in damage output is really nice and allows you to play with Speed and Shield at high damage much more reliably as you can still deal decent damage. It doesn't feel as though his knockback was effected, so he still has the same combo ability he had before the patch, only with a bit more damage.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I decided to try out some for glory for the first time (I usually play against CPUs, serves me right). Wow. Little Mac is such a stupid character. I managed to win maybe 3-4 matches in an hour and a half against some guy. He's just so unpunishable if your character doesn't have a good grab.

BUT I 2-stocked him consistently in all other matches where he played as other characters. That makes me sad.

 

[TheMantyke]

I don't think any of those match ups change with these nerfs though, but I guess I'll get over it and just learn Diddy or Lucario instead if needs be.

Wish Nintendo was more clear with these changes though and actually told us what changed in detail but whatever.

I mean a reduction in killing power helps out the other party in any match up by merit of just giving them more chances to do things. Sheik can still do all the stuff that's made her good still. I could very well be wrong since this is really early on, but I think she'll be fine.

I decided to try out some for glory for the first time (I usually play against CPUs, serves me right). Wow. Little Mac is such a stupid character. I managed to win maybe 3-4 matches in an hour and a half against some guy. He's just so unpunishable if your character doesn't have a good grab.

BUT I 2-stocked him consistently in all other matches where he played as other characters. That makes me sad.

What character are you using anyhow? The general game plan for me when I go up against a Mac is to juggle at low to mid percents than edge guard at high. I'm curious what character you're considering having a bad grab since most of the time, I find it pretty easy to juggle Mac with Up-Throws since his only options in the air are a pitiful aerial, air dodge, side B, or down B, none of which a sheild grab really cares about.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I mean a reduction in killing power helps out the other party in any match up by merit of just giving them more chances to do things. Sheik can still do all the stuff that's made her good still. I could very well be wrong since this is really early on, but I think she'll be fine.


What character are you using anyhow? The general game plan for me when I go up against a Mac is to juggle at low to mid percents than edge guard at high. I'm curious what character you're considering having a bad grab since most of the time, I find it pretty easy to juggle Mac with Up-Throws since his only options in the air are a pitiful aerial, air dodge, side B, or down B, none of which a sheild grab really cares about.

Zamus. Grabs are practically a non-option, and his jab continually beat mine. When I could get jabs in, he'd escape it before the final hit then come right back in with super armor. I swapped to ness and was able to do pretty well, but he was able to use his ridiculous amount of super armor to keep me from doing much on the offensive ever. Again this was pretty much my first for glory run of all time so IDK how talented this guy was or anything, but I was able to dominate his shielk, bowser, and samus with ness pretty hard.

 

[Lasagne]

MOST IMPORTANT SMASH WIIU NEWS

 

[GatoDelFuego]

I'm pretty sure that all CDs found at every point have just been old songs. I think no songs got cut from the final game, we just won't find any "new" music that we've never heard before.

Which I'm totally fine with, it's off the charts.

 

[NightSoul]

MOST IMPORTANT SMASH WIIU NEWS

DK RAP?
"remix"
NO. WHY ISN'T IT THE DK64 VERSION. WHERE'S THE "HE HAS NO STYLE, HE HAS NO GRACE. THIS KONG HAS A FUNNY FACE" PART?
....Anyway. This seems interesting:

 

[Valmanway]

I don't know how this happened. I just don't know.

 

[Champion Cynthia]

Pic of the day. We've added Masterpieces in the Wii U version--this is where you can look back on what fighters did in the past!! You can actually play the games too.


(Comment)

Some of the Masterpieces aren't unlocked at the beginning of the game. It's impressive that there are even games from the Game Boy. Some games have different starting points, while others come loaded with save data.

 

[RODAN]

MOST IMPORTANT SMASH WIIU NEWS

you know its finally here, performing for you

 

[Hulavuta]

I don't know how this happened. I just don't know.

This actually happens to me quite often on For Glory, usually I start it. I'm a pretty theatrical player, so I like to do all the taunting, dancing, t-bagging, etc. after I take a stock. Sometimes when I'm far away from my opponent or after I've just KO'd them, I'll just start crouching over and over, and if my opponent is a fun guy he/she will just stop fighting and start doing it too. Which is actually way more often than I expected, I guess people on For Glory do like fun!

Against friends I do it way more often, and they're always more likely to just start doing it as well. UllarWarlord knows, I do it all the time against him. Personally I think Ganon has the best "crouch dance" animation.

 

[Nighty]

Honestly, I'm pretty cool with the patch, they removed janky glitches, nerfed most of the popular threats in varying degrees (for example, Greninja got it worse, while Sonic escaped untouched, that bastard!), and some of the less loved characters got some love (Metaknight doesn't lie to you with his range animations anymore, Ike got a bit more options, etc).

There is of course a rampant placebo effect making people go nuts (Greninja did got the most notable nerfs, but he is still good, folks), but from the looks of it, the actual changes are actually a nice balancing act, especially for Nintendo's first balance patch ever.

 

[aVocado]

I have seen a lot of negative comments about the new Smash patch and while it's understandable that you hate that your main got nerfed (especially Sheik and Greninja) people aren't looking at the new buffs that some characters got like Meta Knight or Shulk. I think that players need to adapt to the changes instead of whining and crying about them, while you can argue that this wasn't their best approach to balance the game there's nothing that can be done and the sooner players adapt the better. Finally, I don't think that people should worry about Smash 4 getting slow paced, remember that this was the first and probably biggest update that we will get because the Wii U version is coming soon and the game is already fairly balanced. So it would be amazing if people stop complaining about X character getting nerfed and started to look at the positives of the new patch. :)

Why? If it's not broken*, don't fix it. Obviously some things were broken (like wario's glitch for example) but that's a different case. They didn't need to nerf Greninja or Sheik, even though I'm in favour of Rosalina getting some sort of nerf somewhere (Luma not being able to attack while Rosalina is stunned/grabbed is a good thing for example), other characters didn't really need to be touched. This patch was terrible and I'm very pissed off by it. Yes I'll have to adapt but that doesn't mean I like it. I'm just doing it because I'm forced to.

And removing DACUS is just the dickest move of all.

*by broken I don't mean OP.

 

[Nighty]

Personally, I'm joyfully dancing on DACUS' grave, good to see more janky mechanics go away.

 

[QuickBH]

I like DACUS going away solely for the purpose that it doesn't give you a disadvantage for using another controller, I think you should be able to be the best you can possibly achieve with a character on any controller you feel comfortable, rather than just the Gamecube controller.

The Sheik nerfs were still really bad and unneeded, though.

 

[Killah]

Sakurai's goal is to have a game where every character is viable. There is no character that doesn't need to be touched; every character should be viewed as having potential for either buffing or nerfing to bring them in line with the rest of the roster. They now have both data to live "ranked" games in For Glory, and apparently have an ear in what happens in the community as well considering all the bugfixes this patch has brought. They can now effectively guide the game towards their desired result, rather than just leave us with a tourney scene dominated by Meta Knight and Ice Climbers like Brawl was.

Remember that this is basically patch #1 out of what might be a long series of patches both games have to offer. Mewtwo will probably launch in six months, and who knows how much DLC is on the horizons after that - we could be getting patches for a long time to come. From our viewpoint, there is absolutely no reason to stagnate on character balancing in the meantime. The only concern might be what has already been brought up, as more nerfs than buffs will gradually lead to longerand less entertaining games.

And one final reminder: The game has been out 6 weeks. More changes and tweaks will almost certainly be on the way, some of them probably reverting changes from this patch. Just because a character hasn't been adjusted yet doesn't mean they won't be, and just because someone was over-nerfed doesn't mean they won't be adjusted in the next patch cycle.

 

[Adamant Zoroark]

I don't really mind balance patches, because sometimes characters really are just too OP. Rosalina definitely deserved the nerf. They really didn't need to remove DACUS though. Hell, I don't even understand why they're removing any advanced techniques in the first place. I mean, I get it, Sakurai wants the game to appeal to casual players, but why can't you appease both? The players who want to be competitive will put in the effort to learn these advanced techniques, and the players who just wanna play Smash for fun won't give a shit. That's how it was in Melee, and there's no reason to believe it would be any different now. I mean, I can get why things like edge-hogging and planking are gone, but L-cancel? That was in the game since Smash 64 and didn't make the game any less enjoyable in casual matches, because guess what? Casual players don't give a shit. You are not affecting casual enjoyability by having advanced techniques in the game, but you ARE hurting competitive enjoyability by removing them. And besides, some characters would benefit from canceling landing lag more than others (looking at you Ganondorf) so it would help balance out the character roster too.

 

[aVocado]

Sakurai's goal is to have a game where every character is viable. There is no character that doesn't need to be touched; every character should be viewed as having potential for either buffing or nerfing to bring them in line with the rest of the roster. They now have both data to live "ranked" games in For Glory, and apparently have an ear in what happens in the community as well considering all the bugfixes this patch has brought. They can now effectively guide the game towards their desired result, rather than just leave us with a tourney scene dominated by Meta Knight and Ice Climbers like Brawl was.

If they really want to make each character viable, then where are the Palutena, Ganondorf, DK, etc all the shit character buffs? I don't see them.

And one final reminder: The game has been out 6 weeks. More changes and tweaks will almost certainly be on the way, some of them probably reverting changes from this patch. Just because a character hasn't been adjusted yet doesn't mean they won't be, and just because someone was over-nerfed doesn't mean they won't be adjusted in the next patch cycle.

Exactly. It's been out for only 6 weeks, and they're already doing balancing patches. It's way too early, and unnecessary. Even if they "revert" back to the old version, it's still very stupid and ridiculous.

 

[Nighty]

At the end of day, Smash is intended to be a simple to learn yet difficult to master fighter, and while I do understand that the way Melee turned out gave people the impression that the only way to do this is via secret input techniques that require a level of physical skill, it's clear Sakurai doesn't see it that way. He wants everybody to have all of a characters resources and skills easily available, letting the player's judgement skills, strategy and reflexes to be what decides the better player, instead of whether you can L-cancel always without fail or not.

Granted, this is overall drowned in his bigger desire to have the game be a party game above everything else, which makes it harder for some people to apprecciate the game.

EDIT: Also, has no one realized that For 3DS was a stealth beta? Most of these changes are default on the Wii U version, which had more testing time than the 3DS version. That's why we got a balance patch 6 weeks into the game.

 

[Killah]

If they really want to make each character viable, then where are the Palutena, Ganondorf, DK, etc all the shit character buffs? I don't see them.

I answered that in the second block you quoted - they'll be on the way! Or maybe not, who knows.

Exactly. It's been out for only 6 weeks, and they're already doing balancing patches. It's way too early, and unnecessary. Even if they "revert" back to the old version, it's still very stupid and ridiculous.

They have thousands or millions of For Glory matches played. They have pro players flocking to Sheik and Rosalina because they are (were) the best characters in the game. There is likely both quantitative and qualitative evidence - in spades - that some characters need to be adjusted, and they're adjusting them. Why should they wait for the game to stagnate before tweaking it? Why not develop a fluid patch cycle that lets them subtly change things on the fly? There's multiple philosophies when it comes to patching live games, and not everyone takes the Blizzard approach of months and months of testing before minor changes are applied. Neither policy is wrong, they're just different. Sakurai wants to take the same hands-on approach he does in making the game to patching it, and that's fine.

 

[Camden]

It doesn't take that long to realise the potential of a character, especially when it's blatantly obvious. Maybe in some cases it can a lot of experimentation to realise the true viability of a character, but when a character has super exploitable traits like Rosalina, Sheik, and ZSS, it's not hard to see.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

EDIT: Also, has no one realized that For 3DS was a stealth beta? Most of these changes are default on the Wii U version, which had more testing time than the 3DS version. That's why we got a balance patch 6 weeks into the game.

Srsly, the game is in version 1 starting now. I can garauntee if we didn't have this experience with these "OP" characters we wouldn't be complaining.

Lol @palutena shit character tho, she is def high mid and will rise in potential so much now super speed and lightweight are allowed.

 

[Karxrida]

Like I said before I'm not a comp SSB expert in the slightest, so excuse this potentially ignorant question. Do we know if the custom specials be allowed at tournaments?

 

[Mew2]

Why? If it's not broken*, don't fix it. Obviously some things were broken (like wario's glitch for example) but that's a different case. They didn't need to nerf Greninja or Sheik, even though I'm in favour of Rosalina getting some sort of nerf somewhere (Luma not being able to attack while Rosalina is stunned/grabbed is a good thing for example), other characters didn't really need to be touched. This patch was terrible and I'm very pissed off by it. Yes I'll have to adapt but that doesn't mean I like it. I'm just doing it because I'm forced to

I never said that you should be happy about the new patch, I just said that people usually see the negative side of the patch (Sheik's and Greninja's nerfs) and completely ignore the fact that other less viable characters like Meta Knight and Olimar got amazing buffs. Then you said that aside form Rosalina, other characters shouldn't be touched and well I haven't seen a single Meta Knight or Shulk in a high level tournament while I have seen tons of Sheiks and Greninjas.

If they really want to make each character viable, then where are the Palutena, Ganondorf, DK, etc all the shit character buffs? I don't see them.

Palutena and Ganondorf got some upgrades and other of the "shit characters" like Olimar and Shulk got them as well. Not sure about DK tho

 

[NightSoul]

Vectoring is dead.
http://smashboards.com/threads/dawn-of-a-new-day-vectoring-removed-in-patch-1-0-4.378709/
Edit: It's not dead. A huge part of it was removed in Ver. 1.0.4.

Like I said before I'm not a comp SSB expert in the slightest, so excuse this potentially ignorant question. Do we know if the custom specials be allowed at tournaments?

Some tournaments are allowing them, some aren't thanks to them being hard to get.