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[Azure J]

OMG I forgot about this :lol

Smash 4 doesn't need any rebalancing until at LEAST a year in. Smash Wii U isn't even out yet!

I think we are going to see a lot of casual players toy with For Glory mode, which is going to be their first exposure to "competitive" Smash. Projectiles will be spammed and they will be camped out. Off to Twitter they go, complaining that X character is broken or OP because they couldn't get a hit in.

Then Smash 5 happens and Marth wields a butter knife, Fox/Falco damage themselves when using laser and have over the top John Woo animations they have to go through when landing after firing their blasters, Little Mac supplants Ganondorf as the new meter stick for "how bad could you get fucked over in game version transitions despite being only 'good'" and Shiek gets X-Factor.

Kappa

If you're fighting Little Mac like you're in an episode of Fist of the North Star and trading blows back and forth, of course you're going to lose. He's fucking Little Mac.

You have that jump button for a reason!

Hey man, they just need to get Ippo'd a few times. They'll learn if he doesn't end their (Smash) careers with enough punches.

 

[abstract alien]

Little Mac in a nutshell: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgrDJeiw7PM

Damn this is good

 

[KHlover]

Hm idk. Most of my matches against Little Mac ended early when I sidestepped their Jolt Haymaker near the edge.

Character should be called Suicide Mac.

 

[YianGaruga]

Since people are complaining about the sample size:

I don't like to defend kotaku, but even with a small sample size of 20 you can do some actual statistics if all encounters were truly random and the author didn't encounter the same person playing Little Mac 4 times for example.

There are 49 characters in the full roster, which means every character should have a chance of 1/49 = 2.04% to appear.
A simple binomial test then tells you that the chance for the same character to appear 4 or more times in 20 trials is 0.065%, which happens randomly only once in ~1500 cases. So it is as the article says "a significant rate of reappearance", even a statistical one. That is all that was said about the "test" in the article and it is totally correct.

Game is not out for long, so let's take just the starting roster of 37. Now the probability for 4 or more appearances is 0.18% (randomly once in 550). Still significant.

Of course there are other biases than character strength like general popularity (which would actually work against LM and make him appear less frequently compared to some other characters I think) and it doesn't really tell you if LM is OP, and it's not worth writing an article about, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the "statistics" or the sample size in the article.

 

[MLH]

Playing Little Mac vs the CPU does feel a little OP, but vs. a good player they can easily counter him. As others have said he's only strong on the ground and flat stages/ final destination gives him more of an advantage. I've found characters with a counter move work well against him and he can't jump for shit, knock him off a stage and you've basically won.

 

[Chunky]

I'm still basking in the heavenly glory of (Next level)Little Mac getting in Smash.

It feels so good.

 

[YourMaster]

Since people are complaining about the sample size:

I don't like to defend kotaku, but even with a small sample size of 20 you can do some actual statistics if all encounters were truly random and the author didn't encounter the same person playing Little Mac 4 times for example.

There are 49 characters in the full roster, which means every character should have a chance of 1/49 = 2.04% to appear.
A simple binomial test then tells you that the chance for the same character to appear 4 or more times in 20 trials is 0.065%, which happens randomly only once in ~1500 cases. So it is as the article says "a significant rate of reappearance", even a statistical one. That is all that was said about the "test" in the article and it is totally correct.

Game is not out for long, so let's take just the starting roster of 37. Now the probability for 4 or more appearances is 0.18% (randomly once in 550). Still significant.

Now you're calculating the chance of one of the 50 characters appearing 4 times in 20 matches and drawing a conclusion for that. This is not what they did, they actually had a hypothesis of which character would appear often, and exactly that character appeared often.
This makes it more likely that indeed this character is more popular than average.

 

[joffocakes]

Playing online for the first time yesterday I comfortably won my first 10 or so matches as Captain Falcon (the most fabulous man in all the galaxy) before getting matched with the same Little Mac player four times in a row. They did utterly destroy me but I was starting to be matched with better players by that point so it definitely wasn't just the character.

Little Mac's weakness in the air is probably less of a handicap on the flat Final Destination stages of For Glory mode but it's far too early to say he's overpowered.

I am keen to hear advice anyone has for punishing him, though!

 

[JNA]

When I get the Wii U version of SSB, my main character was going to be Little Mac.

I hope to god they don't nerf Mac then. Especially when he does have a clear weakness to compensate for his curb stomping power.

 

[Sanctuary]

This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen in my life.

You must never have played WoW.

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

Ha! If anything he is one of the best balanced characters in the game.
He has obvious pros and cons and I can stand my ground with Villager against most people playing Little Mac.
He's definitely not overpwered even a bit.

 

[JediLink]

This is definitely MvC3 Sentinel all over again, and knowing Sakurai he probably will get the nerf bat while overlooking the obvious better solution of putting platforms in For Glory.

EDIT: Oh, and enable custom movesets in online as well. Hell, why don't they just let you make lobbies where you can set your own conditions? This has only been a thing since like, the beginning of time.

 

[GenG3000]

This is definitely MvC3 Sentinel all over again, and knowing Sakurai he probably will get the nerf bat while overlooking the obvious better solution of putting platforms in For Glory.

Sakurai will probably tell you to learn Little Mac, just as he told everybody to learn KI:U controls.

 

[YesManKablaam]

There can be a lot of fun to be had messing with Little Mac players (I myself am predominantly one). As this is doable with Mega Man I presume it's also doable with Sonic and Pac-Man as they have similar Up+B attacks.

If you see a Mac player coming at you with a Jolt Haymaker, Up+B out of the way. A friend of mine did this to me and I was amazed to see that Mac landed on Rush and preceded to repeat the recovery-less animation right off the stage! Goddamn I was salty over that one, we were only 15 seconds in!

Similarly (though this is something a Mac player could use to their advantage) the ropes in the Boxing Ring stage can be used to this effect, though I swear I managed to change direction upon hitting the ropes, keeping me centred in the ring. The spacing on it is very specific though, I'll need to try it out a few more times.

Little Mac is great fun. While people are correct in that you shouldn't play him as a maverick power character, it's so much fun to boot up a For Fun match and just go charging around the stage throwing wild punches.

 

[Fiktion]

This is definitely MvC3 Sentinel all over again, and knowing Sakurai he probably will get the nerf bat while overlooking the obvious better solution of putting platforms in For Glory.

It would actually be very uncharacteristic for Sakurai to yield to pressure like that. He's stubborn for good or for worse.

 

[YianGaruga]

Now you're calculating the chance of one of the 50 characters appearing 4 times in 20 matches and drawing a conclusion for that.

That's how a binomial test works for the hypothesis "Little Mac appears as often as every other character". It's perfectly applicable here and confirms that Little Mac appears more often than others. I don't know what they did exactly or if they even thought about this, I just wanted to show that the people saying "lol small sample" and "someone didn't take elementary statistics" have no idea what they are talking about.

 

[randomhugs]

I don't think Little Mac is only good on FD. Battlefield gives him some platforms to avoid some projectiles heavy characters, and gives him a non linear approach (just jump then shield though since his aerials suck). As long as he hangs out primarily at the bottom and avoids the edges, he's still rather viable.


Sadly. I was so hype for Arthur too and then that match and the upcoming months showed me otherwise lol. Oh well.

I don't follow the Marvel scene but, what match are yall talking about?

 

[Demoli]

Why are people even using Mac's side B? His dash attack seems much more solid and doesn't put you in a compromising position.

 

[YesManKablaam]

Why are people even using Mac's side B? His dash attack seems much more solid and doesn't put you in a compromising position.

It looks REALLY rad.

 

[sciencerob]

I think people are missing the real issue here, primarily that it is easy for bad players to get easy KO's due to the nature of little mac despite the fact that they suck. That's why people dislike little mac. I think the KO-punch is a bit much imo, but beyond that I don't mind too much. I think they need some platforms on the for glory mode though.

 

[RionaaM]

It's nice seeing tips on how to defeat Little Mac here. I haven't tried him yet nor played any multiplayer, but I'll make sure to keep these tips in mind.

By the way, is there any way to learn how to properly play this game? I've been playing it casually since the first one (haven't played Melee though), and I was always pretty bad. Never learned how (or when) to use the shield, when to roll, when to jump and how to do counter attacks, I just spam attacks until I get lucky or die. I'm pretty sure I'll get utterly destroyed as soon as I decide to try multiplayer.

 

[RoySFNR]

It's just really easy to do well on Mac. If you get destroyed, you get a free kill move that hits through shields. If you land a jab, you can add atleast 20% for free. Super armor on quite a few moves and on top that off he also has a really strong counter. Almost every non-aerial move becomes a kill move too once you reach around 80%.

Nothing that's impossible to handle, but it's very tedious and really unnatural for new players in a game where almost every character has more or less the same set of basic rules except Little Mac.

 

[marink]

I will say lil mac's amazing ground game caught me off guard, but he's not op

 

[roknin]

So did Kotaku merge with Eventhubs

Lmfao seriously, Was thinking of saying something similar XD

 

[Hyperactivity]

Since people are complaining about the sample size:

I don't like to defend kotaku, but even with a small sample size of 20 you can do some actual statistics if all encounters were truly random and the author didn't encounter the same person playing Little Mac 4 times for example.

There are 49 characters in the full roster, which means every character should have a chance of 1/49 = 2.04% to appear.
A simple binomial test then tells you that the chance for the same character to appear 4 or more times in 20 trials is 0.065%, which happens randomly only once in ~1500 cases. So it is as the article says "a significant rate of reappearance", even a statistical one. That is all that was said about the "test" in the article and it is totally correct.

Game is not out for long, so let's take just the starting roster of 37. Now the probability for 4 or more appearances is 0.18% (randomly once in 550). Still significant.

Of course there are other biases than character strength like general popularity (which would actually work against LM and make him appear less frequently compared to some other characters I think) and it doesn't really tell you if LM is OP, and it's not worth writing an article about, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the "statistics" or the sample size in the article.

1st problem- matchmaking

 

[Unison]

Front page of Yahoo.

 

[Kimosabae]

Front page of Yahoo.

Are you fucking serious?

Freakin' internet age, man. Worst part about this is that Nintendo is going to likely gut the character before anyone actually learns how to fight him (or even learn to play the game in general).


Holy shit, if online play existed back in 2001 Melee Sheik would have probably been deleted from the game.

 

[MrSaturn99]

Front page of Yahoo.

lmfaoooo

I personally can't relate to the Little mac problem since I mostly haven't had access to online over the past week, but I guess I'll see for myself when I get home tomorrow.

It's Ike all over again!

Edit: I love how "Character ruining game" is right next to the Korea ferry tragedy. This can't be real, right?

 

[Kinsei]

Are you fucking serious?

Freakin' internet age, man. Worst part about this is that Nintendo is going to likely gut the character before anyone actually learns how to fight him (or even learn to play the game in general).


Holy shit, if online play existed back in 2001 Melee Sheik would have probably been deleted from the game.

Could you imagine how these people would have reacted to good Ice Climbers players?

 

[Shaanyboi]

LOL

 

[rexor0717]

Front page of Yahoo.

Holy shit, this is actually real. LOL

 

[RockTurtle]

welp. this is a thing now.

 

[foxuzamaki]

lil mac was basically made to be a character that everyone thinks is OP until he isnt.

 

[Clefargle]

This is hilarious, I have faced many Lil macs on FG now and they mostly follow a predictable routine. Pretty easy to throw and gimp. This sensationalist shit is funny though. Would my win/loss be at 65% if little mac was unstoppable?

 

[Clefargle]

I think people are missing the real issue here, primarily that it is easy for bad players to get easy KO's due to the nature of little mac despite the fact that they suck. That's why people dislike little mac. I think the KO-punch is a bit much imo, but beyond that I don't mind too much. I think they need some platforms on the for glory mode though.

I literally have not been hit by KO punch in FG yet. It's easy to predict and since it's on a timer you control the game when they are trying to pull it off. Just play defensively until they whiff. Easy

 

[FSLink]

I think people are missing the real issue here, primarily that it is easy for bad players to get easy KO's due to the nature of little mac despite the fact that they suck. That's why people dislike little mac. I think the KO-punch is a bit much imo, but beyond that I don't mind too much. I think they need some platforms on the for glory mode though.

The thing is, they're only getting a way with it since for most people it's like week 2 of playing.

If you're being beaten by bad players, it's probably you as a player that's also bad.

I have about a 69% win ratio on the JPN version mostly playing Little Mac and I mostly get away with a lot of stuff because people do some really dumb stuff, like having really obvious ledge recoveries, or dash attacking like an idiot. Like euphemism said, the KO punch is on a timer, I think I get most of them by: either people attacking me with a really obvious laggy move (dash attack, so I sidestep and punish with KO punch) or people rolling being afraid not realizing that KO punch can punish it or shield.

 

[Anura]

Even good macs can be beaten if you handle yourself with care. He is less annoying to play against than say a good Sheik or Yoshi. I got an almost 80% win ratio out of about 400 FG matches so trust me when I say Mac is one of the most balanced characters here.

 

[Hours Left]

Front page of Yahoo.

I would say WTF, but Yahoo frequently posts ridiculous stuff.

I find all this whining to be completely hilarious. Little Mac haters stay pressed forever~

 

[Kimosabae]

This is why enthusiast press needs writers that can touch base with the FGC. The genre deserves it. The perspective is especially important to a series like Smash where egos are particularly fragile since everyone and their mother actually thinks they know how to actually play these games...

I think people are missing the real issue here, primarily that it is easy for bad players to get easy KO's due to the nature of little mac despite the fact that they suck. That's why people dislike little mac. I think the KO-punch is a bit much imo, but beyond that I don't mind too much. I think they need some platforms on the for glory mode though.

....

Comments like this are a perfect example.


No, the players getting easily KO'd by "bad" Lil Mac players are bad.

 

[Elija2]

Front page of Yahoo.

I love the shortened article title at the bottom: "Character ruining game"

 

[Codeblue]

I must just be fighting the absolute worst Macs if everyone is having this much trouble.

 

[BeesEight]

Since people are complaining about the sample size:

I don't like to defend kotaku, but even with a small sample size of 20 you can do some actual statistics if all encounters were truly random and the author didn't encounter the same person playing Little Mac 4 times for example.

There are 49 characters in the full roster, which means every character should have a chance of 1/49 = 2.04% to appear.
A simple binomial test then tells you that the chance for the same character to appear 4 or more times in 20 trials is 0.065%, which happens randomly only once in ~1500 cases. So it is as the article says "a significant rate of reappearance", even a statistical one. That is all that was said about the "test" in the article and it is totally correct.

Game is not out for long, so let's take just the starting roster of 37. Now the probability for 4 or more appearances is 0.18% (randomly once in 550). Still significant.

Of course there are other biases than character strength like general popularity (which would actually work against LM and make him appear less frequently compared to some other characters I think) and it doesn't really tell you if LM is OP, and it's not worth writing an article about, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the "statistics" or the sample size in the article.

Why are you using a binomial test on a data set that has more than two categorizations? Wouldn't you want to use a multinomial goodness of fit test if your expected frequency for each character is the same?

Course, the obvious issue arises that you're now doing calculations on a sample size that is below the number of categories you have for a multinomial test. While small sample sizes can be analysed with various tools, your conclusions can be flawed especially in a case like this. If you wanted to examine whether a character was seeing more play than any other, I simply can not see how you can get a robust confidence interval on such a low sample.

Granted, it has been years since I've done my statistical course work. However, I think it's fair to say that twenty matches is not the best experience to try and base any conclusions on.

 

[Branduil]

For Glory being only Final Destination is pretty bland. At least patch in Battlefield versions of every stage as well.

 

[Grakl]

Why are you using a binomial test on a data set that has more than two categorizations? Wouldn't you want to use a multinomial goodness of fit test if your expected frequency for each character is the same?

Course, the obvious issue arises that you're now doing calculations on a sample size that is below the number of categories you have for a multinomial test. While small sample sizes can be analysed with various tools, your conclusions can be flawed especially in a case like this. If you wanted to examine whether a character was seeing more play than any other, I simply can not see how you can get a robust confidence interval on such a low sample.

Granted, it has been years since I've done my statistical course work. However, I think it's fair to say that twenty matches is not the best experience to try and base any conclusions on.

How does it have more than two categorizations? I figure "P2 picks Little Mac" and "P2 doesn't pick Little Mac" would be the only probabilities needed to run the test.

 

[rpmurphy]

How do I join the game journos Smash Bros. Google Group? I want to see more shenanigans.

 

[Timeaisis]

This is so sad.

 

[Vanillalite]

The thing is the For Glory Omega stages kind of play to his strengths. If there were some stages with a few platforms like Battlefield or Dream Land things wouldn't be so bad. As it stands LM has a clear advantage in For Glory. #NerfBatLittleMac

This basically sums up my feelings.

He's OP mainly in FTG because of the stage design, but that's the main ranked mode people are playing for a variety of reasons.

He's not unbeatable, but he balances way better in regular stage designs vs the omega forms.

 

[Timeaisis]

He's not OP at all though. For every huge advantage he has a huge exploitable weakness. He's actually a very well balanced character, people just don't understand how to beat him. This is just reactionary bullshit.

I wonder how the internet would've reacted to Fox if Melee had online. Or if Brawls online was good how people would react to Meta Knight. Mac is not even close to them.

 

[Stoze]

For Glory being only Final Destination is pretty bland. At least patch in Battlefield versions of every stage as well.

Yep, I imagine this is why Mac is being deemed overpowered so early as well, of course the "good on ground, bad in air" character is going to be really good on completely flat stages.

 

[Stabby McSter]

brb picking up little mac for a week