Could Smash bros work as a team based fighter?

[Zapp Branniglenn]

A lot of people ask what Smash could do in the next entry to really stand out from previous games. I could think of a lot of mechanics from other fighting games that can really change things up, but a lot of them take entire essays to justify their inclusion in a way that only makes sense to a fraction of players. And not everybody plays smash for its mechanical systems anyway. It's a game where you jump and smash and have fun. Why complicate it? We need something that we can put in a trailer and you understand in just ten seconds of non-commentated footage. So how about a team game? I think that's the sort of change that even the most casual observer would look at and say "oh, yeah. That's different from the last one". The roster of these games always gets so massive, it almost feels like a shame to just play one character at a time right? Let's explore how that may look mechanically:

A tag team fighter. Tag team games are characterized by one thing, tagging out your active character with a reserve one. Each one maintains their own health bar. And typically when all the health bars deplete you lose. There's quite a few tag team fighters out there to gleam ideas from, and each with really specific mechanical differences. Do reserve characters restore damage percentage passively when you swap them out? Should there be a comeback mechanic that activates when you're on your final character? Under what circumstances should you be allowed to tag out (do your feet have to be touching the ground, Can you switch mid-combo by landing specific moves like in tekken tag tournament, is there a cooldown before your next character switch, etc). Should there be a system of bonuses that you earn for selecting certain character combinations for a fight?

• And Assists? I don't want to shoot down anybody's theory crafting but I think Smash bros needs more than a few mechanical tweaks for assists to not be annoying. For those unaware, an assist is when your reserve character jumps into the match beside you to perform an attack independently of your main character. I think part of why assists work in a game like Marvel vs Capcom is that characters are generally more mobile and can block moves in the air. In Smash Bros, a lot more is going on in the air and off the stage. In the current iteration of Smash you just have the one brief air dodge, and some landing lag to go along with it. Trying to land against your opponent's attacks is tough enough without yet another attack flying your way at the same time. There's also concerns with the camera. In tag team fighters, the assist character jumps in from offscreen, and it never looks weird because the boundaries of the stage shift and stay rigidly focused on both combatants. In Smash Bros the boundaries of the stage are unchanging, and the camera zooms in or out based on context. Taking into account that the entire stage is often visible, where do the reserve characters even come from? Do they matrix leap in from the left or right blast zones? Do they jump up onstage from the background? Can every stage in the game accommodate that? There's a lot of questions with how assists would work in Smash Bros that I personally find too complicated to tackle.

OR

Squad Strike as a basis: When Smash Ultimate released it came with a new versus mode: Squad Strike. It's a 3 stock or five stock match where each stock is a different character you select. You can't change the order mid match. And it's the best mode in Smash that you haven't played/probably forgot about. There's a few reasons for that. For one it's not available to play online. It's local only. Baffling. But even with friends over there's another issue, it's 1v1 only. There's no free for all equivalent. And not everybody wants to play smash 1v1. I don't even think there's handicap controls to help curve the balance between two players of differing skill levels. 

Making most modes in Smash bros play like squad strike could be great. But of course there's also room to add some more mechanics in order to flesh it out a bit. There's a fighting game that immediately comes to mind as being similar to Squad Strike: King of Fighters. In that game, your second and third character choices have access to more super meters. It encourages players to put their best character for last so you can really push their limits during the final stages of a match. It's not much of a "comeback mechanic" since both players get this bonus, but just a basis for getting players to think about how important the order of characters is rather than stressing about counterpicking your opponent's character selection. Another thing that KOF does is restore your health a bit after a kill. Then everything resets to neutral for the next "round". Since Smash bros is a game about getting your opponent offstage and then keeping them off, I'd be worried that resetting the situation to neutral like that would encourage too many "suicide plays". Baiting your opponent offstage and doing whatever it takes so long as the opponent dies moments before you do. But I do like the idea of a small health restore or some other advantage that players can use to stay ahead in the match.

There's also a capcom vs SNK game I remember where your character selection was on a ranked points system. Characters were intentionally designed to be stronger or weaker than each other, but costed more "points" that you spend at character select to fit them on your roster. Like instead of selecting three normal characters you can just try to win with one superboss type character. Imagine choosing between a team of Mario/Luigi/Peach, or some massive character like Dracula or a legendary pokemon. I don't know if this ranked choice system has ever been universally well received in a fighter before, but I feel like that sort of idea can only work in a format like Squad Strike rather than in a tag team fighter. On the other hand, it creates a lot of new balancing concerns, obviously. And it won't matter at all how tough Giga Bowser is if you flub his recovery and die early. Moments like that wouldn't be fun for either player.

So would you like to see a new smash game take this direction? And if so, how do you think it ought to work?

Edited April 17, 2021 by Glennstavos

[Hasechi]

I want to combine them. This thing I've never seen in every video games. So i would like to try it. It is:

Team 2 vs 2. Each player can select 3 charaters. And those players can swap to 1 of 3 charaters they chose in the game. 

Basically it is team 2vs2 combine with tag. I find it interesting. It makes the game more complicated & a lot harder

[NinjaMonkey]

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

I don't even think there's handicap controls to help curve the balance between two players of differing skill levels. 

You can already give starting percentage handicaps to players.

2 hours ago, Glennstavos said:

But I do like the idea of a small health restore that players can use to stay ahead in the match.

This already happens in Squad Strike.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 hour ago, NinjaMonkey said:

You can already give starting percentage handicaps to players.

This already happens in Squad Strike.

I just checked and you're right. None of these settings are switched on by default, but they're there in the options. As well as the resetting of the match when one player dies. You can just straight up make the game King of Fighters. In fact I'll make a custom ruleset named that and show it off next time I play the mode.

[Lord_Brand]

I think I once thought of something similar for a prospective Super Smash Bros. DS - Double Smashes, where two characters team up to attack.

We already sorta have or had tag-team fighters in the form of Pokemon Trainer, Pyra & Mythra, and Zelda & Sheik, so yeah, I could see this working for the series. Only problem is that it's gonna dilute the gimmick that distinguishes the aforementioned fighters, but in Pokemon Trainer's case, it always felt weird that three different Pokemon shared damage, so this could be a good way to fix that. I'd be interested in seeing what kind of roster you'd come up with for such a game?