SSB4: SSB for Wii U and 3DS, maybe the NX and also your toaster!

[Knight]

There's a Lords of Shadow spin-off with Simon and his design is ugly. Honestly the original designs are ugly too, but they have a He-Man/Conan the Barbarian sort of look to them that'd make him stand out among the rest of the roster.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Knight

[Fire Emblem Fan]

EDIT: I misread something. Disregard this.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Fire Emblem Fan

[Jedi]

I'd take NES/SNES or his PS1 incarnation with Red Hair that still looks Barbarian like.

[Dai]

Am I the only one that actually liked Lords of Shadow and their incarnation of Simon?

[Jedi]

Am I the only one that actually liked Lords of Shadow and their incarnation of Simon?

It would involve me actually giving a crap about LoS to judge their version of Simon, which I hear is ok, but I'd prefer the classic incarnation still.

[Dai]

To be honest, I wouldn't mind classic Simon. The only thing that I think might bug me is if they kind of make it exactly like Mega Man is, in which they try to match the design perfectly. I think maybe Super NES Simon might be nice.

[Jedi]

Thats usually how Sakurai tends to go with the 3rd party characters, heck Cloud has alot of similar motions from FF7 and FF Dissidia for instance.

[Shin]

If they do put Simon Belmont in Smash though, I hope they give him his classic and manly NES-SNES look instead of his bishonen or Lords of Shadow look. Not really a fan of the later designs of him, and there are plenty of prettyboys characters in Smash already, we don't need one in a leather outfit.

I know what one his taunts are going to be.

[The DanMan]

This is a bit of a topic break, but something I've been thinking about lately... exactly how balanced is Smash 4?

Last time I bothered to check Smashboards (I've taken a several month break from lurking there), the general consensus seem to be that there were a few really good characters, a few really bad ones, and a crapload of "meh" mid-tier-ish characters who don't suck but aren't Shiek/ZSS/Ryu/(whoever else is considered top tier now) level of amazing.

Does Smash 4 really have the widest "mid-tier"? I know patches have balanced things out (for example, Greninja and Sonic early on were considered potentially top tier, but now seem to be in the broad middle, while characters like Shulk and Robin (who are by no means amazing now) have gotten some buffs and could probably hold their own against a good chunk of the cast), and there will probably be at least one more patch with the December DLC broadcast.

Really, it seems like a ton of the cast are wrecked by rush-down/the top characters. Whenever I see somebody say "X character is crap", "this character would be like X if X didn't suck", etc, it generally seems to mean " X character is unable to handle aggressive rush-down".

I'll use my two of my previous examples again. Shulk has laggy Smash attacks and not very good specials outside of the Monado Arts, while Robin has the worst mobility in the game and and a grab range which (while better than at launch, where you had to be nuzzled up to your opponent to use it) is generally not that useful against rushdown; both of those cases seem like rush down hard-counters them.

In the end, I'm just a bit tired of seeing so many people say "this character sucks", "that character sucks", and so on when it really seems like it's just moaning about "x character isn't top tier and isn't seen very much in competitive situations".

Edited November 17, 2015 by The DanMan

[Jotari]

This is a bit of a topic break, but something I've been thinking about lately... exactly how balanced is Smash 4?

Last time I bothered to check Smashboards (I've taken a several month break from lurking there), the general consensus seem to be that there were a few really good characters, a few really bad ones, and a crapload of "meh" mid-tier-ish characters who don't suck but aren't Shiek/ZSS/Ryu/(whoever else is considered top tier now) level of amazing.

Does Smash 4 really have the widest "mid-tier"? I know patches have balanced things out (for example, Greninja and Sonic early on were considered potentially top tier, but now seem to be in the broad middle, while characters like Shulk and Robin (who are by no means amazing now) have gotten some buffs and could probably hold their own against a good chunk of the cast), and there will probably be at least one more patch with the December DLC broadcast.

Really, it seems like a ton of the cast are wrecked by rush-down/the top characters. Whenever I see somebody say "X character is crap", "this character would be like X if X didn't suck", etc, it generally seems to mean " X character is unable to handle aggressive rush-down".

I'll use my two of my previous examples again. Shulk has laggy Smash attacks and not very good specials outside of the Monado Arts, while Robin has the worst mobility in the game and and a grab range which (while better than at launch, where you had to be nuzzled up to your opponent to use it) is generally not that useful against rushdown; both of those cases seem like rush down hard-counters them.

In the end, I'm just a bit tired of seeing so many people say "this character sucks", "that character sucks", and so on when it really seems like it's just moaning about "x character isn't top tier and isn't seen very much in competitive situations".

That's a large portion of people's view towards tiers for as long as they've existed.

[Fire Emblem Fan]

Am I the only one that actually liked Lords of Shadow and their incarnation of Simon?

Yes because LoS is terrible and you should be ashamed of yourself, you filthy heathen!

[Comet]

well there are a ton of characters in smash 4 too... though it is definitely the largest, proportionally, and not

[Jedi]

The general thought process is that we have a pretty well rounded top 10, but from then on it gets murky, characters like Wario, Ike and Megaman are making strides, even Doc (Thanks Nairo), its been quite the wild ride.

Like top 10 is generally, Sheik, Rosalina, ZSS, Pikachu, Fox, Ness, Diddy, Mario, Sonic, and insert random 10th here, we have such diverse results in this game its hard to pin down the other really effective characters considering we have standout Ike performances, which are becoming more commonplace, stuff with people like Ryu, Mega, Wario, the occasional Toon Link Or Link, Lucario, Pit, and so many other characters.

There is a huge black hole in the middle of this cast, and it seems to shift everyone around it, patches only make it harder to see, and generally mix things up even more lol.

[Great Geargia Gateway]

How balanced is smash 4? How balanced is any fighting game? It's hard to do, but I feel Sakurai could put some time and effort if he went to Tourney's, played (Some) For Glory and looked around on the internet. Hayao Miyazaki always always went out and observed life and watched and took notice of people, that's why Studio Ghilbi is one of the best animation studio's.

I wanna see Sakurai's face when he sees his fans not having fun or judging his game and decisions with Grab Whore Mario brothers, Spin-Attack spammy Sonics and especially... fukn needles which is my most recent butthurt.

I mean, I rather a better balancing than any DLC character, otherwise, the game could be pay to win, or what's worse is the DLC characters you pay for won't even do a dent in improving anything.

Yes because LoS is terrible and you should be ashamed of yourself, you filthy heathen!

Awwwwe, mmmmm8! Watchaself creet'n. :3

[Jedi]

How balanced is smash 4? How balanced is any fighting game? It's hard to do, but I feel Sakurai could put some time and effort if he went to Tourney's, played (Some) For Glory and looked around on the internet. Hayao Miyazaki always always went out and observed life and watched and took notice of people, that's why Studio Ghilbi is one of the best animation studio's.

I wanna see Sakurai's face when he sees his fans not having fun or judging his game and decisions with Grab Whore Mario brothers, Spin-Attack spammy Sonics and especially... fukn needles which is my most recent butthurt.

I mean, I rather a better balancing than any DLC character, otherwise, the game could be pay to win, or what's worse is the DLC characters you pay for won't even do a dent in improving anything.

Mario and Luigi's grab shenanigans aren't that bad, especially after Luigi's massive nerf. They do plenty of damage yeah, but they aren't that effective as kill set ups. If you space them out, they can't even grab you.

Sonic's spindash is pretty irritating, but when you know what clanks with it, you can stop it fairly easily. If you look at high level Sonic play, they don't particularly spam it, they mostly use it for racking up damage when they can, mind games or the spin shot tech. Also once you learn how a Sonic player moves, they become quite a bit easier to deal with.

Needles... Pretty dominating in the neutral yeah, but have been nerfed, if you nerf them too much, Sheik is just gonna fair more. -shrugs- i'm not sure how you could change Sheik to make her less good, without her losing several tiers. Its not like she's Melee Fox or Brawl Metaknight, or hell 64 Pikachu.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Jedi

[Knife]

This is a bit of a topic break, but something I've been thinking about lately... exactly how balanced is Smash 4?

Last time I bothered to check Smashboards (I've taken a several month break from lurking there), the general consensus seem to be that there were a few really good characters, a few really bad ones, and a crapload of "meh" mid-tier-ish characters who don't suck but aren't Shiek/ZSS/Ryu/(whoever else is considered top tier now) level of amazing.

Does Smash 4 really have the widest "mid-tier"? I know patches have balanced things out (for example, Greninja and Sonic early on were considered potentially top tier, but now seem to be in the broad middle, while characters like Shulk and Robin (who are by no means amazing now) have gotten some buffs and could probably hold their own against a good chunk of the cast), and there will probably be at least one more patch with the December DLC broadcast.

Really, it seems like a ton of the cast are wrecked by rush-down/the top characters. Whenever I see somebody say "X character is crap", "this character would be like X if X didn't suck", etc, it generally seems to mean " X character is unable to handle aggressive rush-down".

I'll use my two of my previous examples again. Shulk has laggy Smash attacks and not very good specials outside of the Monado Arts, while Robin has the worst mobility in the game and and a grab range which (while better than at launch, where you had to be nuzzled up to your opponent to use it) is generally not that useful against rushdown; both of those cases seem like rush down hard-counters them.

In the end, I'm just a bit tired of seeing so many people say "this character sucks", "that character sucks", and so on when it really seems like it's just moaning about "x character isn't top tier and isn't seen very much in competitive situations".

1. Smash 4 is the most balanced game in the series. Smash 64 is close, but that only had 12 characters and literally everyone had OP 0 death combos.

2. Yeah, Smash 4 def has the widest mid tier. Can't wait for mid+low tier tourneys to start being a thing.

3. Sonic is definitely still considered top 10 with an evenish matchup with Sheik and favorable MUs on almost every character mid tier and below. Greninja's fallen much lower, not an equivalent comparison.

4. I may be pessimistic, but I don't see patches changing much unless the top tiers are nerfed. Nintendo has mostly been going in the wrong direction with these (nerf Luigi, leave Sheik alone, give Zelda 0.5% more damage on utilt, make Bowser's utilt have more range, etc.). Most of these changes are very minor and don't fix the character's underlying problem. It would be nice to see Ike treatment for everyone, but with 50+ character and new additions, why would Nintendo care about putting so much effort into balancing at this point when they could be putting that time into developing DLC (and make money for it)? That's why I prefer a modest roster size that can be balanced well as opposed to a super inflated roster motivated by DLC money.

5. Yeah, not being able to handle aggressive rushdown is one end of the spectrum, but being lamed out is the other side. A character like King Dedede is extremely susceptible to both. He can't really stop huge combos from being done on him because his disadvantage is terrible and also can't approach very well when there's a wall of projectiles/fairs.

6. I think the biggest sources of imbalances in this game are A) Kill Throws/Setups and B) Disadvantage breaking moves. Among characters in the cast, kill throws seem to be very randomly distributed. I agree Fox shouldn't get any kill throws, but why is Ganondorf unable to kill with a throw before absurdly high percents while Sonic (a character who has a much easier time grabbing on account of his speed and better grab range) has a pretty good kill throw. Why does Sheik have an easier time killing through safe kill setups (soft nair to bouncing fish, dthrow to upair/vanish) than say Zelda or Jigglypuff? Why are ZSS/Ryu able to kill characters much earlier than most heavy hitters dream of, and safely at that?

As for disadvantage breaking moves, I suppose most of you casuals don't understand what disadvantage is. Disadvantage usually refers to a character's state while they are being comboed or juggled. Conversely, advantage refers to a character while they are comboing. Basically, ZSS has great advantage because she can usually get 3-4 upairs and even convert that into a kill move as well a a good disadvantage state because she can Flip Kick out of most combos/juggles. Dedede has a bad disadvantage because he doesn't have much to stop people from juggling/comboing him because he fall like a brick and doesn't have fast enough aerials to defend himself. Terrible disadvantage is what keeps Captain Falcon from being a top tier IMO. Common trend in this game is that top tiers have great advantage/disadvantage states while low tiers have bad disadvantage/advantage states. Some top tier characters like Fox have somewhat bad disadvantage states, but makes this up with his great advantage state. Advantage is very important as well. Who cares if Ganondorf does 20% per hit when Ryu has strings that easily extend 50%+ damage?

Edited November 17, 2015 by Knife

[The DanMan]

I haven't kept up to speed; last time I checked, Sonic had gotten some nerfs to grabs and air game. After a bit more research, some people say he's the "safest character" in the game; generally fast, low start-up and end-lag attacks.

Nice to see that the two resident competitive smash players responded. Thanks for bothering with this. And I agree with Knife; it's definitely going to be very interesting seeing tournaments that don't allow top tiers this time around.

[Anacybele]

Little Mac being in was seriously questioned by Japan and they felt Sakurai was being too biased towards the West.

What.

WHAT.

You can't be serious, Japan has NO right to talk about biasedness when THEY are the ones that get SO much stuff that never goes anywhere else! They need to shut the fuck up, the western fanbase matters just as much as they do. Seriously, Japan thinking like that is really annoying.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Anacybele

[Water Mage]

What.

WHAT.

You can't be serious, Japan has NO right to talk about biasedness when THEY are the ones that get SO much stuff that never goes anywhere else! They need to shut the fuck up, the western fanbase matters just as much as they do. Seriously, Japan thinking like that is really annoying.

Funny thing is, they're saying the same thing about Cloud.

They said that Sakurai put Cloud on Smash because he's trying to appeal western fans.

[Jedi]

Funny thing is, they're saying the same thing about Cloud.

They said that Sakurai put Cloud on Smash because he's trying to appeal western fans.

Please note this is only a select group, Little Mac being "western appeal" was still a bigger deal to them.

Its not as big with Cloud, its just he's had mixed reactions everywhere.

[Water Mage]

Please note this is only a select group, Little Mac being "western appeal" was still a bigger deal to them.

Its not as big with Cloud, its just he's had mixed reactions everywhere.

I know, it's just that I noticed something interesting about the behavior of the japanese fandom.

When there's something they don't like, some are quick to say that creators of the game are trying appeal the west.

In the same way that when there's something some western fans, they're a quick to say that the creators of the game are trying to appeal Japan.

In the end, both western and eastern fandoms are no different, it's very interesting.

[Anacybele]

Yeah, you're right, admittedly. Except western fans are more entitled to the bias complaint because of how much stuff Japan gets that never see western stores.

[Jotari]

Yeah, you're right, admittedly. Except western fans are more entitled to the bias complaint because of how much stuff Japan gets that never see western stores.

You know there's probably a Japanese person somewhere saying the exact inverse of this comment.

[Anacybele]

You know there's probably a Japanese person somewhere saying the exact inverse of this comment.

I don't know of anything that the west has gotten that has never been released in Japan. The Gold Mario Amiibo WAS an example, but it now has a confirmed Japan release. And honestly, I don't think anybody believed it would never see Japan.

[Ema Skye]

The inverse is moreso that Japan should be entitled to be biased considering all the stuff they get that we don't.