• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Super Smash Bros Wii U and 3DS Thread 3: Ridley's Believe It or Not!

Sakurai outright stated on the official N64 site that balance in the conventional sense is impossible with Smash Bros. because of all of the variables: number of players, stages, items, and so on. His vision of Smash Bros. is that of a carefree four-player battle royal with a lot of crazy shit happening at once, so I don't think he'll ever be concerned with trying to balance the game as though it's Street Fighter. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just the way Smash Bros. is. I truly don't believe Sakurai sees the value in painstakingly optimizing the characters for one-on-one Final Destination-style matches.
 
Sakurai outright stated on the official N64 site that balance in the conventional sense is impossible with Smash Bros. because of all of the variables: number of players, stages, items, and so on. His vision of Smash Bros. is that of a carefree four-player battle royal with a lot of crazy shit happening at once, so I don't think he'll ever be concerned with trying to balance the game as though it's Street Fighter. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just the way Smash Bros. is. I truly don't believe Sakurai sees the value in painstakingly optimizing the characters for one-on-one Final Destination-style matches.

even if SSB4 was balanced properly around 4-player FFAs with items, it would still be much more balanced than any other game in the series
problem is, it's obviously not balanced around that either, at least not in the past
 
I think Sakurai should at least invite someone in the room with him.
 
I think he's talking about how everyone wants a plain balanced game where every character's matchups are very close to one another. I sorta agree it'd be boring having newcomers with boring attacks that were too similar to verterans'. Brawl's balancing did work for some characters (not Meta Knight and Ganondorf, obviously), it was mostly the physics change that hurt the veterans who were good in Melee (Samus and Captain Falcon.)

I wish he did chill out too, but it's not uncommon for Japanese workers to overload themselves with work and work long shifts, especially for Sakurai who asks for so many characters, stages, etc. and expect a great fighting game. It's tough, I can imagine.

I always thought that if you take Meta Knight out of the game, Brawl is actually balanced quite well.

SS: Meta Knight
S: Ice Climbers
A+: Olimar, Diddy Kong
A-: Marth, Snake, Falco
B: Pikachu, Zero Suit Samus, Wario
C+: Lucario, King Dedede,
Toon Link
C: Wolf, Fox, Mr. Game & Watch, Pit
C-: R.O.B., Peach
D: Kirby, Donkey Kong, Sonic, Ike, Sheilda, Sheik, Ness, Yoshi
E: Luigi, Pokémon Trainer, Lucas
F: Mario, Samus, Bowser, Captain Falcon, Link, Jigglypuff, Zelda, Ganondorf

The bolded become viable if you take MK out of there, or at least nerf the shit out of him. I'd be more than satisfied with 8+ tournament viable characters in the game. It's when ONE completely and utterly dominates that kills a game for me. Also, the fact that NO ONE managed to catch this dominance during the balancing phase of Brawl that begins to scare me. Sakurai reaffirming that Smash 4 will undergo the same process as Brawl is not good news to me.

Still hoping for the best...

Sakurai outright stated on the official N64 site that balance in the conventional sense is impossible with Smash Bros. because of all of the variables: number of players, stages, items, and so on. His vision of Smash Bros. is that of a carefree four-player battle royal with a lot of crazy shit happening at once, so I don't think he'll ever be concerned with trying to balance the game as though it's Street Fighter. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just the way Smash Bros. is. I truly don't believe Sakurai sees the value in painstakingly optimizing the characters for one-on-one Final Destination-style matches.

Is balancing 1v1 on FD really that painstaking, though? I've said this before... if you balance for that style of gameplay, with everything stripped away but the characters and their movesets, adding items, final smashes, stage hazards etc. will not unbalance the game. The same cannot be said the other way around.

Even still, I don't understand how they managed to miss how overpowered MK was. Turn every item on, play on the most hazardous of stages, in a 4 player free for all. MK is still fucked.
 
well tbf didn't people originally argue Snake>MK in the competitive community?
WHOOPS

(I remember when Wolf and Fox were in the bottom half of the list, that good MK matchup really push them that far up?)

i think for like the first month or two snake was #1, then MK's dominance began and he didn't let up.
 
I had no clue Ice Climbers and Olimar were ranked higher than Diddy and Snake in Brawl. Especially for the latter, given how often people seemed to complain how gimmicky the pikmin were to manage in-fight when the game first launched. Do they just have cheap exploits which aren't quite as blatant as Metaknight's tornado?
 
I had no clue Ice Climbers and Olimar were ranked higher than Diddy and Snake in Brawl. Especially for the latter, given how often people seemed to complain how gimmicky the pikmin were to manage in-fight when the game first launched. Do they just have cheap exploits which aren't quite as blatant as Metaknight's tornado?

I think Ice Climbers will always be at least high tier simply due to how they work, one grab=unleash havoc on everything

and Olimars can be annoying, man
 
Sakurai outright stated on the official N64 site that balance in the conventional sense is impossible with Smash Bros. because of all of the variables: number of players, stages, items, and so on. His vision of Smash Bros. is that of a carefree four-player battle royal with a lot of crazy shit happening at once, so I don't think he'll ever be concerned with trying to balance the game as though it's Street Fighter. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just the way Smash Bros. is. I truly don't believe Sakurai sees the value in painstakingly optimizing the characters for one-on-one Final Destination-style matches.

I can agree with that but can we at least un-nerf some guys like Samus? Imo, stuff like that made little sense.
 
Sakurai outright stated on the official N64 site that balance in the conventional sense is impossible with Smash Bros. because of all of the variables: number of players, stages, items, and so on. His vision of Smash Bros. is that of a carefree four-player battle royal with a lot of crazy shit happening at once, so I don't think he'll ever be concerned with trying to balance the game as though it's Street Fighter. I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing -- it's just the way Smash Bros. is. I truly don't believe Sakurai sees the value in painstakingly optimizing the characters for one-on-one Final Destination-style matches.

I dunno, fighters never seem balanced anyway. A few characters always end up being cheap or OP in some way. Unless you're a pro or something, you can loose to someone who is just button mashing.
 
This scares me. It didn't work for Brawl.
but it worked for melee

Also didn't he say just a few months ago that he won't be the only person handling the game's balance this time with SSB4? He doesn't outright deny this in that quote, just that he prefers doing things himself and usually does.
 
Sakurai
Until now I always considered that I was responsible for each and every aspects of every characters, the balance of the game, to the point where I created each different attacks separately for every characters. I'll share this work with other people this time around, to make sure a good balance can be found for this game.

Sakurai's pants are on fire.

What's going on here? I'm confuzzeled. Did he change his mind or something?
 
but it worked for melee

Also didn't he say just a few months ago that he won't be the only person handling the game's balance this time with SSB4? He doesn't outright deny this in that quote, just that he prefers doing things himself and usually does.

didn't Melee have more people working on the balancing?
also Melee isn't that balanced, it's just that with the higher skill ceiling and more combos low tiers can make up the gap more easily (see also: Link/Samus in SSB64)
 
Yeah that confused me too. I really hope there's not a giant usefulness gap between characters again.

I don't know what to believe anymore. Hold me.
 
I don't know what to believe anymore. Hold me.

I think the article talks about that also:
"In all previous Smash Bros. games," he explained, "I've entered in all the data for fighter skills and hitboxes by myself, and it's quite nearly that way with this game too. I've thought about leaving this work to others and I've actually tried it once or twice, but it hasn't worked out. I don't want to release an incomplete game, and I want everything to be as successful as possible, but it results in a massive amount of work for me. It's a big problem, but there are reasons for doing it this way."

One of those reasons is consistency. Since it's Sakurai coming up with ideas for character motions and fighting moves, once he completes work on damage rates and hitboxes for a character, they'll already fairly playable at that point.
 
zlCfzRMmaB0jzEjSmx


Pic of the day. Super Mario 3D World is out today in Japan! To commemorate the occasion I had these four…people(?) come together in a group shot.
 
zlCfzRMmaB0jzEjSmx


Pic of the day. Super Mario 3D World is out today in Japan! To commemorate the occasion I had these four…people(?) come together in a group shot.

awwwwwwwwwwwwww

incredible screenshot

but everyone knows you celebrate a new game release with a newcomer sakurai GOSH
 
I really don't think newcomers will be revealed in the daily pics.

It is all about Directs and E3. I personally think a newcomer reveal would be wasted on the pics anyway. Save that stuff for something special.
 
Well, Zelda for Friday then. They just didn't want to have two new characters in one week is all!
I really don't think newcomers will be revealed in the daily pics.

It is all about Directs and E3. I personally think a newcomer reveal would be wasted on the pics anyway. Save that stuff for something special.
You're right, they'd never use these daily pics to reveal important characters like Olimar, or Marth, or Toon Link, or Peach...
:P
 
Well, Zelda for Friday then. They just didn't want to have two new characters in one week is all!

You're right, they'd never use these daily pics to reveal important characters like Olimar, or Marth, or Toon Link, or Peach...
:P

My words, stop attacking me with them.

*runs and hides*

Newcomers should be saved for Directs and E3
 
obviously this just means Zelda is a lock for tomorrow.

'cause he'd never do reveals on two consecutive days. never.

please be excited.
 
This confirms
Waluigi
as the Mario newcomer, right? Because if it's not
that character
it has to be this one!!11

Looking forward to pink and blonde TP Zelda with bangs :p
 
Something about that pic looks off. It doesn't look like Peach's hands direcly connect to Toad or something. I still think Toad is actually playable. We shall see I guess. (I know I sound crazy for thinking of this, but I just have this feeling...)

It just looks like Toad pulling the taunt ot something. Toad looks like he's a couple inches away from Peach's hands.

Goodnight yall.
 
He hasn't acknowledged non-Japanese release dates yet, but ... Now I wonder if this is specifically so Zelda/Sheik can be revealed in honor of ALBW's American/European release tomorrow.
 
Something about that pic looks off. It doesn't look like Peach's hands direcly connect to Toad or something. I still think Toad is actually playable. We shall see I guess. (I know I sound crazy for thinking of this, but I just have this feeling...)

It just looks like Toad pulling the taunt ot something. Toad looks like he's a couple inches away from Peach's hands.

Goodnight yall.

It's always looked like that.

Goodnight. :)
 
Wow, what a tease. Toad really ought to be playable... I'm still crossing my fingers, though it's looking more likely that the potential Mario newcomer will be Rosalina or Bowser Jr.

I think at this stage in the game it is better to just assume that SSB4 will be as much of a mess as Brawl was when it comes to being an actual fighting game. I'd like to be optimistic, but the closest we've gotten to "good news" regarding that was removing tripping (which was unpopular with EVERYONE) and cop-out answers about SSB4 being a "balance" between Melee and Brawl. I'd love to be optimistic, I really would, but... well, if SSB4 is just a party game, there's always Project M to turn to for a solid fighter.
 
I'm surprised you guys haven't noticed Luigi's apparent NEW jumping animation, which harkens back to SMB2/3D World
 
Top Bottom