Hey everyone, firstly I just wanna say I super appreciate how civil and polite MOST people are being about this video. Seems like a lot of people agree with the general sentiment of the video and those who don't are *mostly* voicing their disagreements in a rational manner. A couple have been needlessly antagonistic but they'll likely slink back to their caves on Reddit in due course. I just wanna use this comment to address a couple of disagreements/criticisms people are voicing in the comments section because I have earnestly been paying attention to what you guys are saying AND because - thankfully, it seems like I've made surprisingly few errors in the video in need of correcting. So; #1: People take issue with me calling Joker a "below average character" until he summons Arsene, and to some extent I can see why. Perhaps I misspoke a little bit in the video and it would have been better to say that the power balance between base Joker and Joker with Arsene is (in my opinion) just totally out of whack. I maintain that Arsene needs to be scaled back a bit but I want to see very few characters get outright nerfed so I think it'd be reasonable that you buff base Joker in other areas to compensate, right? Regardless, on second thought - yeah, maybe Joker is at the very least an "average" character without Arsene, I don't think much more than that though. #2: People also disagree with me saying that the game is much less expressive and more specifically with me saying that you can rarely see tangible differences between two top/high level players playing the same top/high tier character. Sadly, I still just don't really see it, I'm sorry, I just don't. Maybe that frustrates you and you think I'm totally wrong - and that's fine! I'm not an unreasonable person and if and when people disagree with me, more often that I'm not I'm happy to discuss our differences of opinion as long as they bring their disagreements to me in a reasonable manner instead of being passive aggressive or insulting my intelligence like a couple people have in the comments, lmao. #3: I'm aware that roll buffering was patched in 5.0, was it *fixed* is a totally different question. From my testing I've found a minor difference in the buffering of rolls, but I'll stress minor, and that spotdodge buffering basically seems to be exactly the same. I know other people who say they've felt the same but also some very reputable people who say that the difference is major. As always with Smash, concrete and reliable info is very hard to come by. I'll update this post in the future if/when I ever can tell what's really happened with it for sure. I watch the game at a high level a lot, I'm still a Smash fan. And based on these comments I've seen people both here and on Reddit assuming a lot of things about me, that I'm "biased", "just an Ultimate hater" or that I don't know what I'm talking about. To those people I'd say, I don't mean to stroke my own ego but you can very clearly see footage of me in the video in Top 8 of a big regional event with Smash 4 Falco, widely regarded as a very bad character. I know my stuff, I did pretty well in my own region. If any of the Reddit brainiacs out there making false assumptions about me because they don't like my opinions wanna show me how their success/experience in the game outweighs my own, I'd love to see it! In Smash 4 I'd cite Ally/Anti/Zenyou as a perfect trifecta of how expressive the game was. All 3 Mario players, all with very distinct styles. Ally was known for his strong fundamental play, which was super interesting when you compared him to Zenyou who had combos and tech down more than any other Mario player but lacked that "X Factor" that let Ally clutch games out against the world's best so consistently. Anti was somehow kinda in-between both these players with a super read-based and unconventional style of his own. People speculated so much that if any of these guys gained the strength of the other to make up for what they lack, they'd be unbeatable. It was a super interesting dynamic. This is without mentioning the Mr. R/VoiD, Larry Lurr/Light comparisons I make in the video although; granted, maybe I don't explain well enough HOW I think they differentiated themselves, I just didn't want the video to go on for 40+ minutes! :) Sadly, despite people telling me to watch sets of a bunch of different Snake players or how much different Zackray's Joker was to MKLeo's, I still just don't see it. A lot of people are just kinda shouting at me that my opinion is wrong and that theirs is right and not really doing much to actually try and convince me, rofl. Someone said that because MKLeo lost to one Mario player 3-0 at Frostbite and then beat another one 3-0, that's proof of how playstyles can differ? That's proof of how the EFFECTIVENESS of said "playstyle" can differ, not how two players are actually allowed to express themselves through a game's mechanics. That's just "who deals with this situation better?", not "who deals with this situation differently?" Again, if you disagree, that's fine! I'm gonna continue responding to people who provide INTERESTING and DISCUSSION-PROVOKING comments and ignoring those who just wanna be big dumbos. Thanks again to those who have supported! Hopefully you feel like checking out the channel and seeing what else I've got on offer? If you liked this one, I think you'll like a lot of my stuff :) EDIT: ALSO final final thing I wanna address is people saying it takes too long to get into the meat of the video and that I don't need 5 minutes of disclaimers etc. The thing is that it's intentional. There's a lot of people on RUclips who just kinda wanna be objective and straight-faced and give you the "facts" and as a result they sacrifice any kind of expression or personality. I am very conscious of not doing that, I like having fun with my videos, making jokes and giving the viewer an idea of who I am, I don't wanna just be some nameless faceless voice droning on at you the whole time. I'm aware that some people may find the "slow burn" frustrating but this is just my style, it's what makes making videos fun for me. After all, it is only 5 or so minutes out of a 37 and a half minute video in which I provide some important background on myself, context on my experience with the game and give necessary credit to those who deserve it. I think the first 5 minutes are important and if they bothered you then sorry; but they are just a microcosm of me as a creator, I want to have some fun and show some personality. My stance is that if you have no idea who I am; I don't see why you should care about my opinion. Basically tl;dr it just be like that
That's all well and good. I think the expressive thing is probably the biggest hole in your argument, but we can't exactly make you see it our way. It's nice that you care about this game enough to talk about it civilly, and I'm genuinely sorry to hear you don't enjoy it as much as Sm4sh. However, I do feel that if a large part of your viewership is saying they see the expressiveness within Smash ultimate, it'd be fair to concede that there MIGHT be something there, even if you don't personally see it. Great video, great follow-up comment, hopefully you take this into consideration.
I left a pretty long comment that I have edited to avoid being more passive aggressive than need be cuz at the end of the day I do respect what you have to say, but I have many disagreements with your video, and would love to discuss this stuff if given the chance.
They should bring shield dropping into the game like you can do in melee. Then holding shield would interact with the input differently and create a sense of game feel at least in that situation. I wonder what they'll do. Hope they keep this game intact. I'm a melee guy but I look up to ultimate as a game they strikes a good balance of competitive and casual and I hope they keep that. Melee feels very serious these days and it's hard to get into when you're just starting out unless you're really obsessed or fascinated with the things you're able to do in this game. Which I am but if that's not there, you're just lost in a rabbit hole of techskill and what not and that's a lot to overcome. What is the 101 of melee is way over the heads of any casual player and would likely take a few months to get down at any reasonable level. I love melee for that but it's totally ridiculous for the kinda game Nintendo intended on
Especially when playing online. Sometimes I can't pass through the plat form so I just end up accidentally t-bagging and then I lose and my opponent t-bags me and I get incredibly frustrated...
@Mr. Potato it was the opposite for me, I've hated Ultimate for a while and this video comfirmed everything I suspected about the game. In fact this video only scratches the surface of what I dislike about the game
Savin Gark the input lag is the shittiest in the series and it’s honestly too much to enjoy. It feels like a completely different game, especially when you’re playing online. It was just horrible and destroyed the competitive aspect for me.
Bairhug ikr? It’s even more mind boggling when you simplify just how bad it really is. Since the game runs at 60 FPS, that means there’s a 0.1 second difference between the button press and the command happening on screen. It’s truly devastating. A tenth of a second is just too much for competitive play. This is the number one issue Sakurai needs to patch imo.
The longer I play fighting games, the more I realize that MOVEMENT is what separates the great from the good. If the movement is expressive, the rest of the game tends to fall in place.
The game’s awful buffer system makes the most basic actions significantly harder to do that were easy in previous smash games such as dashing right after an attack, attacking out of shield, and fast falling consistently. There have been so many times when I got punished in such frustrating ways when I ended up walking instead of dashing out of an attack, and my c stick just completely stopped working for several seconds after I let go of my shield.
@@rayminishi689 I mean, I would like to be able to follow up If i get a hit, that's why there called combos. I don't wanna get 0 to deathed off of one random nair, but I would like to be rewarded more. It's really boring when you get a really good read on your opponents movement and, as a reward, you only get to hit them like twice.
@@rayminishi689 you sound like a scrub if ur whining about being combo'd for 4 seconds. "Oh no, the better player is beating me and I don't like it" sounding ass
@@rayminishi689 you shouldn't be rewarded, or at least absolved of making mistakes. They need to be punished accordingly. In actual fighting games one mistake could mean an entire round lost. There needs to be a healthy balance
I'm a Melee player and I've been playing Ultimate seriously since release. I enjoyed the game at the beginning and I think it's so close to being great. But there's some design choices that just don't make sense. For me it's the pitiful grab ranges and how safe aerials are in general. I'm so sick of blocking an aerial and trying to punish only for the opponent to be able to buffer spot dodge before my move even comes out. I agree 100% with your take on how players play neutral and how the game doesn't allow you to play expressively. I feel like the game still rewards the player that plays safe more than the player that takes risks, and that leads to boring, defensive gameplay. Still a fun game in many regards, but I don't think I would have fun trying to optimize my play, since optimizing would just mean trying to figure out how to play as safe as possible. I'm glad we've reached a point where the game can be criticized.
SSJ Mura smash ultimate is much more expressive due to smash ultimate characters don’t have a specific meta look at joker Leo and Zackray play totally different or look at teas Pac-Man against most regular packmans also pro players literally say then can tell who they can play against based on their style also look at palutenas grab range and also pivot grabs
gsmVoid just watched this video with his chat live on stream for the past hour. Void didn't agree with every point you made - obviously, since you made too many points for anybody to agree with everything lol - but this spawned a GREAT discussion about the valid problems in Ultimate, as well as how we as fans should best articulate our criticisms of the game. Mad props, dude.
They should have a casual mode and a competitive mode where comp is just melee. They should bring back wave dashing and L canceling, but wave dashing should trigger a 'dash animation' that's more similar to an exaggerated lunge. That is all. Ultimate is alright but could be better.
One of the things I hate the most is that you can't sheild in your initial dash. Combined with how comitial dashing is and the nerfs to sheilding, it makes degenerate zoning more viable than it should especially online. And the issue with platforms was already solved with sheild dropping but they decided to take it out for the first time in the series. Really makes no sense and would have been a great, intuitive skill check.
I came into this video thinking "I really like ultimate, I wonder what he thinks is wrong about it" but as the video went on I realized how many of your points are true, especially with the buffering system. I think i've experienced every one of the problems you pointed out but I just thought it was my error. I love smash ultimate, so this was a huge eye opener to me and I now look at the game with a more critical eye.
Could not agree more dude I HATE the buffer system. Personally I play pac man. And sometimes it just rolls, it just keeps rolling. I don’t think those things will never be fixed, the buffer system that is. :(
@LemonDoski what do you mean? You're just gonna ignore everything else he said? Like for instance the buffer system and the methodology behind character balancing? The video in itself is "subjective", due to the fact that it is an **opinion**, its not wrong because you say it is mate.
Here's a fun fact on Ultimate's inherent lag: Every Smash game has some amount of inherent offline lag. Ultimate has an average offline lag of 98ms. Compared to 64 and Melee, it's a drastic jump from their average of 58ms, and even when compared to the previously laggiest game in the series, Brawl at 84ms, there's still a pretty significant jump of 14ms. If that doesn't make too much sense or you don't understand how significant it actually is, it means that with the advancements Dolphin has made (which reduce Melee's inherent lag from 58ms to about 38ms) you could play Melee Netplay with a ping of 110ms (lag is half the ping, so you'd have 55ms of lag) and you'd have less lag than offline Ultimate. You can only then imagine how laggy WiFi Ultimate is.
Just to translate this to frames to make it easier to understand, all of the Smash games runs at 60 FPS. At 60 FPS, one frame takes about 16 milliseconds, so Ultimate's 98 milleseconds convert to 6.125 frames of added lag, as opposed to Melee's 3.625 extra frames of lag on-console and 2.375 on emulator. As for the wi-fi comparison part of this though, Ulimate's built-in delay is significant and would ideally be a lot lower, but those 6 extra frames are nothing compared to the 15+ that are added even on the best connections on Ultimate wifi.
Watched the whole thing. Cool video and i def agree to some of these points. The controls frustrate me so much sometimes (enough that we made our own video on them (which you know)) and dont even get me started on wifi... never played online, never will -.- Thx for discussing this stuff in a cool and rational manner, and who knows what the future holds, there are still a few (prolly 6) more patches to come. Im still slightly hopeful that Nintendo fixes at least the control problems, maybe even buff parrying :P - cFive PS: HOW DARE YOU PRAISE THE TRASH MENU IN THIS GAME... IT BEEING BETTER THAN IN SM4SH IS HARDLY AN ACHIEVEMENT >:| Also, congrats on the success of this vid :)
Thank you so much! I super appreciate the support and definitely wouldn't have been able to make this video if you guys hadn't paved the way with some of your own excellent stuff! :)
As someone who has nobody to play offline with and no time for locals, smash ultimate's online experience is tragic. I can't even see how my connection is to my opponent in an arena until I've waited in line! Breaks my heart
Literally just called my friend who I played ultimate with everyday after being huge melee fans to say "hey remember how our aerials kept getting messed up? here's why" felt so nice to have an answer to my confusion. One of the few youtube videos that is over 10 mins and packed with information back to front with no bullshit or filler. I love it. Thank you.
Yeah honestly coming from Ultimate and then dropping it for a Melee, I realized just how far I got in Ultimate by drifting forward all the time, and that that’s what it felt like. Melee has been making me be more aware of those things, and probably would make me better at Ultimate if I for some reason decided to pick up Ultimate again
@@coolamp I never said I didn't like aggressive play, nor do I think everyone plays like butting rams, but in Ultimate it felt like that is the only way I could play, and Melee opens up so many more options for creativity, expression, and movement, and I just love it.
I’m honestly sick of the whole “git gud” mentality in general. It’s only used to try and demean your complaints and criticisms and make you feel like it’s only your fault no matter how flawed the system actually is. And if they are wrong or seem to be frustrated about something, then offer to actually help them out and more easily realize why they’re wrong. The only thing you accomplish by saying “git gud” is showing that you’re a tryhard that only serves to make people quit and worsen a community because of it.
I mean u have to understand a game to a extent to properly critize but Ik what u mean better players ignoring opinions cus said player isn't great is lame; it's just a excuse to make annoying and lazy arguments.
@@Shad809 no, just that if you're not accepting that, then you're likely not very good at the game what i mean is, if you're entering tournaments and still haven't accepted that every time you lose an interaction, you could have done something about it, and instead blame it on the game, then you need to change your mindset and probably get better at the game
It is "DJ - THED" by the way. You were right the first time. Anywho, I'm someone who used to play Smash 4 at a midhigh-level in the Oregon/SW Washington region in the states. But I've never been able to transition to Ultimate properly because I get too frustrated with its control, even though I do think Ultimate is the better game overall. I've given up on the game very early on before the meta really started to develop, and I honestly don't know how problematic the other issues you stated is, because my perspective on things like how neutral plays out is mostly based on what I've spectated (which I haven't done a whole lot of either too). It's why I made that video about the buffer system. Hoping to shine some light on the situation, even though both of my channels haven't really focused on Smash that much. I'm glad you showed some bits of that video I made here, and talked about the Buffer some more in your own words. I still think the discussion on this is pretty light, and needs to be talked about more, because from a game design perspective, there's a lot about it that's just unintuitive control that the other games didn't have and should really warrant change, but it needs to be talked about if we ever want the Developers to have a better chance noticing. Having them notice and make improvements like adding "Auto Short Hop Toggles" in the control settings, or fixing C-Stick buffering, or removing the Dodge hold buffer, would be such a nice improvement to a more intuitive control system than what we have now.
I think it's worth noting that Ultimate's input buffer system is obviously based on the one seen in games from the King of Fighters franchise, as are many of smash's core mechanics. However the reason KoF's buffer system doesn't suffer any of the problems seen here is that in KoF it only applies to the execution of special or super moves, all it's meant to do is make reversal timing easier to hit when inputting certain specific inputs for combos or wakeup/reset situations. It was never meant to affect movement, and it's very unfortunate that this oversight on the part of Sakurai and his team has created such glaring problems as it has.
15:23 So that's why I've had trouble with dropping down platforms in Ultimate, but not with the other games. It makes me dread Battlefield layouts so much.
Hayden the eeeeeeeeeeevil male eukaryotic organism idk about never will be tho, because until now not enough people have been vocal about these issues for nintendo to see them in a meaningful way. there's still a chance :)
Reese Scott I certainly hope so. Imagine the control issues being toggleable or an added ground option like wavedashing or perfect pivoting for grounded microspacing. I doubt they’ll be added but it’d be sick if they were.
It seems to me that a lot of the grievances that you have with this game comes down to the lack of options (either through movement or through attack diversity) and the confusingly inconsistent interactions with the buffer system. The slower WiFi would be much less annoying with a consistent buffer system. Accidental dodging and the near-fatal endlag of off-stage directional air dodging would be more acceptable if they weren't so high on the buffer system. The top tiers wouldn't be so annoying if their prowess was due to the options that their attacks grant them (such Pikachu, Wolf, and Inkling like you mentioned in the video) rather than just one move/combo or gimmick keeping them relevant. Having a FEW gimmick characters would be fine (in my opinion), but the fact that so many of them essentially rely on the gimmicks do make them feel so much staler than previous games. I completely agree with you there. There are so many characters that are expressive but are overshadowed simply because these one-trick top tiers are simply better overall. Joker and Wario are very close to being amazing, but Arsen and Waft (respectively) make fighting them a bit of a chore, especially since both gimmicks grow with time. Likewise with Lucario, whose gimmick grows with damage sustained (which means characters who struggle to kill are literally digging themselves into bigger holes). As you mentioned in this video, Smash 4 had some of the same problems: Bowser and DK relying on grab kill confirms, Cloud having the single most busted gimmick in the game, Bayonetta simply not being balanced in the slightest, et cetera. But if Smash 4 was often seen as "UTilt-UAir combo" game, Ultimate seems to be the "NAir-train" game, considering just how many characters rely on NAir so heavily. (The Ridley Discord server literally says that NAir is the best move that Ridley has; that's disappointing to me.) Despite all of this, though, I've found myself loving Smash Ultimate's competitive scene so much more than both Brawl and Smash 4. Maybe it's because how much more viable the general cast is. Maybe it's because all of the love and dedication that the animations have. Maybe it's because of all of the different people sides of the Smash community finally coming together more easily after the schism that happened between the Melee and Brawl/4 communities way back when. There's just something awesome about this game that keeps me coming back to play it, even if I don't have anyone offline to play it with. For me, Brawl was too much of a slog for me to enjoy competitively, and Smash 4 didn't have enough to keep me occupied due to my not having any interest in mastering all of the tech (as cool Wavebouncing is as a term, I just didn't care to learn how to do it). Ultimate, though, has more for me, and it's probably the closest I've ever gotten to actually wanting to learn stuff. In fact, if it wasn't for Rivals of Aether, I'd probably be training for Smash Ultimate more readily despite all of these legitimate grievances that you've brought up. I think that a fix to the buffer system, a fix to the online infrastructure, a better distribution of power within movesets, and actual meaningful buffs to the lower tiered characters would be enough to make the game almost ideal for competitive play. Ultimate is so full of "almost" in its execution. Some characters just need one or two key buffs to make them incredible. Some characters (or gimmicks) need one or two key nerfs to make them nowhere near as overbearing. The buffer system just needs a few tweeks to be as accessible as it was initially designed to be. I think Ultimate is a great game. It could be an outstanding competitive game too. Thank you for making this video! I know that not many people will agree with you. If I hadn't been exposed to what a truly competitive game could be like (that being Rivals of Aether), then I most likely wouldn't have agreed with you either. I still don't agree with your assessment on character playstyles being exactly the same due to being optimal (at least not on all characters; there are quite a few characters-even high/top tier-that still have diverse methods of play, such as Snake, Peach, and Pac-Man). I also don't agree that Mr. Game & Watch qualifies to be in your "one attack overshadows everything else" category (though I do believe that he does have a few overtuned moves). But you've presented your thoughts in a way that I rarely get to see in about this franchise, and I appreciate your diligence and passion. Thank you for opening this conversation. I hope you have a wonderful day, Fudj,
I think that there should be a few changes. 1) more hitstun, but not ridiculous melee level. 2) fix online, definitely. You shouldn't be playing in conditions that are literally unplayable and you shouldn't get matched up with people with items on or FS meter. 3) I think that grabs in general should be buffed. Although, maybe not grab combos. Rock paper scissors only works if the three options are equal, right now grab is definitely less than attack and shield.
what i would love, which will most likely never happen but still, is if they give some characters new tech or more potential of characters' movelists. Nothing as much as the fighting game inputs like with Terry and the Shotos, but still: 1. Ganondorf's Warlock Punch, on the animation where the hands glow at the last startup of the move, i want that to be a buff on his next special move, and being able to immediately cancel out of it so the buff isn't just used immediately. Something that is similar to Jin's devil buff from Tekken, (i think specifically Tekken 5 where he does the hand motions to turn it on) 2. I want taunts to actually give benefits to the characters, like with Street Fighter 3's taunts that give like buffs and stuff. For example, when Falcon does the taunt where he burns with flame, i want him to be able to increase damage on any attack that inflicts a burn on the opponent. 3. Instead of throwing them all at once, Sheik's neutral special should instead be that she throws one needle with only a light press of the button, and the longer someone holds down the button, the more needles get released once they let go, with each second adding another needle to throw, with the maximum being 6. [Etc]
You could try to generalize him by saying all he wants is options but that simply isn't true. He mentioned in the video that there are too many good moves in this game and there is nothing stopping a good player from not spamming their characters best aerials. But it feels like there is no other way to play the game than one button spam and camping until something happens. Cause the controls are horrible, the movement is horrible and the amount of save moves on whiff and shield is insanity.
@@brlvper4 Yes, he does mention that there are moves that are too good. In most contexts, you could say that you have the option to use that move; in high-level play, however, that "option" turns into a mandatory action because anything else would mean actively reducing your chances of winning. When you say "it feels like there is no other way to play the game than one button spam and camping until something happens", that is the very picture of having few options. If spamming aerials is the only thing that will not keep you from being punished, then your "options" of approaching with a grounded move or a tomahawk grab are diminished to the point of not mattering. More MEANINGFUL options comes more varied gameplay, which in turn makes the game overall more appealing to the players and the spectators. Yes, shielding is not as good an option in this game, and many of the characters who cannot spam aerials are worse specifically for it. Grabs are generally not very good either, meaning everything revolves around spacing safe aerials. If grabs were all around better, then there would be a more balanced interplay between aerials, shields, and grabs. That would, in and of itself, make the gameplay more varied and more fun. Ultimate has some neat movement tech, but it's stunted by how unintuitive the buffering system is. Though top players have learned to work around it, their movement cannot be as expressive as it could be if the buffering system was better implemented. The controls themselves are fine. Most of the buttons are fully customisable, and they do what they're supposed to do when they're not having strange interactions with the buffer system (which Fudj mentioned in many different sections of his video). Smash 4 had many characters who are known for their DThrow/UThrow->UTilt->UAir->USpec strings (or some permutation of those moves). Brawl and Melee both had so many chain grabs that it seems almost necessary to learn them to succeed in some matchups at high/top level. Ultimate is not free from having a lot of seemingly simplistic and visually monotonous interactions (like safe aerials on shield), no. It could absolutely be better handled. I would love for it to be better handled in future patches. Maybe with enough thoughtful discussion, it could happen, maybe not. But if those past games can find competitive depth despite the shortcomings, there's no reason why Ultimate cannot sustain itself with its own. I can absolutely be better. Much better. But if the buffer system were better implemented and more characters received buffs to allow for more meaningful options, then the complaints about spamming moves, overcentralized kits, and character balance would nearly vanish. A bit of online latency can be excused if you can trust the game to not eat your inputs twice (once by the connection, then again by the weird buffer system). Gimmick characters would still be gimmick characters, but their presence wouldn't be egregious if they could also play decently well without overly relying on said gimmicks. As I said in my initial post, Ultimate is so full of "almost" in its execution. I think that feeling of "almost" is why people feel the way they do about Ultimate's competitive.
To be fair, melee netplay is pretty good for what it is. When melee netplay regularly works better than Ultimate offline, that's a pretty big problem, lol
Except Melee's netplay isn't something Nintendo made, even if it's objectively better. This is from a company that more so focuses on it's own demographic (Japan) and with how closely everyone lives in Japan, peer to peer makes sense when everbody is nearby. Not so for the U.S. or other countries. Nintendo just doesn't care.
@@doclouis4236 Melee netplay is also peer to peer. The thing is, Ult online also doesn't work well even if you're in the same area. I played a bunch of melee netplay last night and it honestly felt almost just like offline
@@KurtMage Since we're on this subject, are we talking about emulation? Because if that's the case, then it's no surprise that an old game like Melee is running well on modern PC with netplay much like other arcade games. With Ultimate, you're playing on a console with a newly released game.
I didn't think that I was going to enjoy this as much as I did. I'm immediately subbing because seeing a fellow smash fan just want the best and have legitimate critiques instead of it being seen as hate is nice and just like having a conversation about what we could do to have the best game we can.
@@mrgibbles5427 Personally, I like Smash bros ultimate but I believe that more things from the previous smash titles like wavedashing, shield dropping wave dancing, etc.
Kaka Poopoo don’t get me wrong, I really like Ultimate, but there are times where I’m having a blast and want to constantly keep playing, but it can be SOOOOOO frustrating to the point where I never want to play it again.
@@mrgibbles5427 yeah I agree with you on that. It's so frustrating trying to get your main into Elite Smash without cheesey rulesets but you kind of have to in order to have a larger chance.
I want my neutral to feel like breakdancing not a 5yd sprint Also imagine melee with a score system like tony hawk pro skater +500 for that sick micro spacing
What's nice about your comment is melee did monitorinputs and such, there was a grade system that gave you achievements once a match was over. And there was an achievement for tapping the directional stick twice as fast as the second faster player. My favorites were "all thumbs" whiffing lots of grabs and "sniper" landing every shot from an item weapon on a foe there was even one for using every attack your character has in a balanced manner during the match. They based a game mode off of this called decision mode which desperately needs to come back. You scored points for every achievement and 500 for every stock taken.
I hope many people will be able to watch this with an open mind, because regardless of whether they agree or disagree with what you said I think you articulated this video really nicely and are making super coherent arguments. I really felt it when you said that you want to love this game. Great video overall, I agree with lots of your points (except maybe parries that reflect projectiles) and i feel like although you left out some things that could’ve been mentioned, you covered some of the deep flaws of the game. If i were to add anything to it i’d probably mention the absence of lag on everything. Everything being so lagless has led to players throwing out moves, aerials and neutral airdodges with little consequences. Peing able to mash moves on shield with no repercutions, or smash attacks into buffered spot dodges being a legit strategy also encourage this low risk, safe playstyles you pointed out. Great video, super fun watch:)
I party agree with your comment but what I like with how safe moves are is now the game is much more focused on offense rather than smash 4s very defensive play compared to ult. I do agree though that something are just kinda dumb like you said with smash attacks, but I credit these things to add a different layer to the game although most people may not like this opinion.
@@meowpiplup1741 I didn't see it either I just suspected that since Zero123 seemed to be responding to a dude that isn't there, they deleted the comment
The more I play Smash Ultimate, the more I dislike it as a game. It's easily the most-polished Smash to-date, and it has the best balance of what the competitive community wants versus what the casual community wants. That said, its inconsistencies really bother me as a player, and its movement and neutral play aren't what they should be. Input buffering is a big deal, there's WAY too much input lag for a modern fighter (SFV has this problem too, so it's not like Smash is the only game that suffers here), the behavior of projectiles is super-inconsistent, and literally everything is safe on shield, creating a non-existent punish game until you get hit once. I still really like Smash Ultimate as a game, but it's hard to justify how inconsistent it feels and how horrible it is to work around that. If a game doesn't feel natural, the response shouldn't be "get better until it feels natural". The response should be "we should make this feel more natural and consistent so players make less mistakes."
@@theboy2385 I'm going to respond to this chiefly because I think you bring up an important issue in multiplayer game design. I agree with most of the points you just made, but I have to ask the single question that all game developers need to ask themselves when designing interactions: "why?" Why does the game feel the way it does? Why is a person's natural reaction to do ________. Why should this mechanic challenge the player's reaction? Why should this mechanic NOT challenge the player's reaction? In the case of button mashing, challenging player habits is positive because it makes for more-compelling gameplay. Players build new habits and are able to pull off complex strings of moves that they would not have been able to just slamming random buttons. Something small lost, something major gained. The game becomes more fun. Your example of jumping after being hit is another positive challenge of player habits. If players could just escape that way, the game would lack depth, so they make it more-challenging to escape combos and strings. This makes offense more exciting and encourages players in a disadvantage state to find creative ways out of challenging situations. Again, something small lost, something major gained. The "why" in these situations have very clear answers that benefit high-level play. You force players to make new habits because breaking those habits can lead to more-interesting gameplay. The issue I see with your philosophy (and ESAM's too) on the issues my original comment brought up is that the trade-off is largely skewed in the negative direction. What positive traits come from Smash Ultimate's buffer system? In my eyes, and in the eyes of its critics, very few. It's a step in the right direction in a lot of cases, especially with short-hop aerials, but its execution is abysmal. In its current state, Ultimate's buffer system is an unnecessary obstacle to high-level play that would improve the game across all demographics with a few tweaks. This video gives a few suggestions for tweaks that it should get. Plenty of other RUclips videos have similar or completely different ideas for how to fix Smash Ultimate's buffer. ESAM's suggestion that practice can alleviate struggles with the buffer system are partially correct (though the clips I've seen of him screwing up with Ultimate's buffer system in tournament play suggest otherwise), but he doesn't ask why that buffer system exists in the first place. Let's apply the question of trade-offs to some of my other complaints. First: inconsistent projectiles. Very rarely in Smash Ultimate do you find two projectiles that behave the same way. What's the benefit to that? More complex gameplay. Okay, that's a good upside. What are the downsides? Unpredictability, necessary memorization, and extreme frustration. Is the upside worth the downsides here? In my opinion, no. Let's try another: A LOT of moves are safe on shield. Upside: more-aggressive gameplay. Downside: very few chances to punish, which can lead to frustration and boredom. Game design is a lot about balancing positives and negatives to maximize positive experiences. In some instances, Smash Ultimate does better with this than any other Smash game. In others, it could use a lot of work. It's fine to defend something that the gaming community doesn't like based on your own logic. I have plenty of opinions that other people don't like. I prefer Mario Galaxy 1 to Mario Galaxy 2 because atmosphere and music are more-important to me than the design of platforming challenges. I like Dark Souls II more than Dark Souls III because customizing and experimentation are more important to me than razor-sharp gameplay and pretty area design. Would those opinions change based on how positively I view the positive aspects and how negatively I view the negative aspects. Yes. That's how subjective opinions are formed. We take comparative information and make logical decisions based around our own subjective preferences. If you like Smash Ultimate's buffer system, than I think you're entitled to do so, but you've gotta give some good reasons as to why you think it should stay. What does it offer? What does it take away? ESAM fails to do this in his response to this video, not really bothering to look at why the mechanic is there in the first place and just saying that Fudj should get past it by practicing. Regardless of whether you like ESAM or not (because I personally like the guy), I think it's hard to argue that his response didn't just dismiss Fudj's original concerns. Bottom line: When designing a game, looking at the positives and negatives of each design decision is INCREDIBLY important. If a design choice impacts the game in more negative than positive ways, that decision should be reworked. It's perfectly fine to like a design decision that a lot of people don't, but you've got to back it up with solid reasons to justify its existence. I'd like to throw this back to you by asking what good the systems I have listed as complaints do. Chances are, we either have different opinions on the positives and negatives, or we simply weigh them differently. I'm sorry for the ungodly length of this post, but hopefully it managed to get my point across.
Can you explain what you mean by projectiles being inconsistent because I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Also not sure why everyone has been complaining about safe moves as if they're broken. You could always play game and watch if you're gonna be a baby about it. (Just kidding please don't kill me)
I agree, the game feels a bit fucky with the buffer. Like, I try to work around it, but it usually still pops up a few times in a match, and I get a buffered role when I'm literally not touching any buttons and end up losing a stock for it at least once every few games. Sure, I'm not a competitive player, but I have played every Smash game for hundreds of hours and this is the only one where I've ever felt like something went wrong and it wasn't my fault. I can lose in Melee, Brawl, 4, or 64 all day and still come out feeling like I had fun, but Ultimate's buffer is one of the few game mechanics that really makes me dislike a game and get salty. The only other mechanic I can think of that annoys me that much is when RPGs have revive mechanics and the party leader getting KOed is an instant game over, contradicting mechanics. That's what the buffer feels like for me, cause this is a really fast game but we've got a buffer that lasts for roughly double digit frames. The 2 things just don't belong together. If there's a buffer, games should shorten the buffer in proportion to the increased speed of the gameplay
@@Chronoflation Are you telling me you never played other smash games and felt like meta knight and Bayonetta cheated you out of a win? :/ I have no idea what's being on in this specific comments section complaining about buffering.
For another example, Sinji "best Pac-man in the U.S." and Tea (Best Pac-man, that's it) while the only thing Sinji does it's camp in a corner eith bonus fruit, Tea just uses every option Pac-man offers. Personally, I think Ultimate it's as expressive as smash 4, but it's understandable why would you say it's isn't.
As a smash 4 and melee player primarily, I’ve realized over time just how little I actually have my inputs executed as intended in ultimate. Since I quit melee and competitive 4 years ago due to fear for the health of my hands, and since I started playing ultimate, I’ve come to appreciate melees lack of a buffer system immensely. I agree that I enjoyed smash 4s comp better exclusively because of how individual you could get with your play, and the emphasis on hard reads. I find ultimate far less satisfying overall, but that’s coming from someone who lost her spark in comp smash overall years ago. I really only play ultimate as a party game full time nowadays. I appreciate how customizable all the extras are in ultimate honestly. Regardless of all this, great video, I hope sakurai manages to do something about these problems in the future.
While I haven't experienced as many issues as you have, I respect that you made a criticism video on such a popular game. You laid out your opinions in a respectful manner with strong justification and evidence. All in all I don't have to agree to say this is a great video!
I play Melee and PM, and I really appreciate this video. I cannot stand the buffering system, so I'm so pleased to hear a Smash 4 player's opinion criticizing Ultimate. You also helped show me some of the merits of Smash 4 where I kind of threw Ultimate and Smash 4 into the same bucket. Thank you again, I've shared this in several Discord servers!
Yea as a smash 4 lover, I hate ultimate and can't stand to play it anymore. Moving to rivals of aether. Now my gamecube controller thumb cap finally wore out from playing a fast pace game lol
@@davidvkimball not in a competitive sense at all. L canceling makes it pretty hard to get into for me. Plus my sparring partner and I always get into games at the and same time. Getting bopped against someone who knows melee ain't the best way to have a good time haha
@@Firenmage433 I'm sorry you feel that way! If you like Rivals I bet you'd love Melee. Getting bopped in Melee is fun because wins and combos in Melee truly feel earned in a way that's unique from other Smash games. I hope you'll give it a second try! L-canceling really isn't that bad. :)
@@davidvkimball To some people it might seem dumb, but I actually think L-cancelling add this extra layer of difficulty and balance to aerials and shields. It makes combos less brain-dead, and requires you to be aware of what happens during your combo (responding to DI, techchase extensions). So overall i feel it just adds an extra layer of complexity to all your timings, you have to stay on your toes. It might not be for everyone, but I respect it for what it is, since its just another attribute of melee that just perfectly represents it's beauty; its depth, and level of control.
Actually loved the vid. I feel like I don't as often see comparisons to S4, mostly comparisons to Melee (admittedly I like those comparisons and wish there was a bit more of that here, but all good). I know it's hard to fit everything, but I had a couple comments: - Firstly, maybe I missed it, but if not, I'm surprised you didn't mention input lag in this game. It's the most in any smash game by far and is horrible. Admittedly, the ridiculous buffer masks this a bit, but it's still inexcusable in a competitive game. SF5 had this problem on release and fixed it over patches. Ult will never fix this, because they don't care about competitive play. - Might have been worth taking a second to also note that the short hop aerial macro is also redundant and unnecessary, because they added the two-button short hop macro. - You say Ultimate handles rage really well. Probably not going into too much detail in this vid, but why? IIRC it took an up to 1.5x knockback multiplier and turned it into an up to 1.0x knockback multiplier. Definitely an improvement, but I still see no reason why it should be in the game at all. It's not even clear that it's a comeback mechanic because of the way stocks work, it can do the opposite. It just feels like an unnecessary pseudo random element. - When talking about running through each other, I wish you'd have taken a second to also point out how poorly implemented it was. There are a ton of issues caused by collisions in this game. Here's one blatant example, but you can find tons, sometimes even with grabs pushing shielding opponents away (yikes): twitter.com/LeBigRussianPig/status/1190705591402008576 - I loved that you touched on this in thee section about buffering full hop aerials with greninja. You said that it was challenging, not in a fun/skill-intensive kind of way, but in a frustrating "why am I just fighting the controls" kind of way. This is a topic I have thought about and haven't heard anyone go into detail about. In Melee, for example, something being nearly frame-perfect feels fair and challenging, because the control and lack of buffer feels fair and understandable. The game does what you tell it to in a very literal way. You fault yourself for missing. In Ult, getting a sh aerial might also mean that you missed a similarly small input window, but it doesn't feel fair or fun. It feels like "this is a poorly made game." You fault the game for missing.
Thanks a ton for this comment, I super appreciate it! A lot of the things that I didn't go more in-depth on, i.e. the absence of endlag on most moves and how rage is probably an ultimately unnecessary mechanic (which I lowkey agree with but just wanted to say SOME positive things about the game without a caveat) are simply due to time and limitations. This video already took 3 and a half hours to render as is and I really don't wanna stress my laptop out any further, y'know? Either way, thanks! :)
You are literally just being a contrarian. The input lag for Ultimate isn't a problem, as the game has by far the fastest attack animations of the series, and the buffer system does allow for more frame-perfect inputs than would otherwise be possible. Ultimate is completely on-par with plenty of other modern fighters in terms of input delay, it just happens that previous entries had notably fast inputs. This change doesn't make Ultimate worse competitively, nor does it make it uncomfortable to play for most people. In fact, literally the ONLY notable difference that this change in input delay makes is that it's particularly uncomfortable for people who are used to Melee, since the timing for complex inputs is different. The game plays just as smoothly as every other previous entry, due to the faster universal moves and lenient buffer window. It is strictly a matter of getting used to the new timing, and nothing else. That's why this complaint actually cues me in about you just not wanting to adapt. This was a personal problem that everyone else got over within two months of the game's release. "Ult will never fix this, because they don't care about competitive play" See, now I know that you're not only a contrarian, but you don't even give enough of a shit to pretend that you ever played the game. This is the first Smash game EVER where they actually BROUGHT IN competitive players to help balance the game, and adjust patches based on actual complaints. They have given universal shield buffs, lowered damage of projectiles against shields, increased grab speed out of shield, lowered the amount of downtime on aerials before they can grab ledge, and plenty of other major changes to the whole roster, for the sake of making the game better. There is a roster of around 25 characters who are regularly notable at tournaments, and the other 50+ are still capable of winning sets. People have taken matches off of top-level players with characters like Ganon, Piranha Plant, the Belmonts, Isabelle, etc. All characters largely considered low-tiers, if not bottom. That would be downright impossible in something like Sm4sh, Brawl, or Melee, because the bad characters didn't have any good tools to compete with the better characters. That's because this game put a focus on universally good moves, and is BY FAR the most diverse competitive scene we have seen, or probably will ever see. It's not perfect, and I completely understand preferring the movement of older games that you're more used to, but yes, this is pretty much the best Smash game we have ever had, both competitively and casually, excluding anything like Subspace. Buffering is a little clunky, but using the excuse of "this game is unplayable, it has slower inputs than melee, and is now only ON PAR with other modern fighters" is excessive, and the claim of "they don't care about competitive" is downright ignorant.
@@Gatchu137 fam calm down. The higher amount of input lag in ultimate actually is a big deal. IMO it's the single biggest problem with the game. Regardless of if you think it's a problem or not, it affects gameplay in a lot of ways. By the way, I'm a melee player. So my perspective is coming from years of competitive melee. I agree with you on several areas. I don't think the buffer system in ultimate is that bad, or necessarily a bad design choice. It's just different from the other smash games. It's pretty cool being able to do frame perfect combos or options consistently. One thing I don't like very much in melee (or any of the previous smash games) is that in some shield pressure situations, you either have to execute the offense or defense frame perfectly, so it's a raw execution test. Ultimate gets rid of this since you can just buffer many of those options. I like in ultimate that you can just buffer short hop aerial follow ups off of throws for instance. I like that change. The buffer system is unintuitive to many new players though, which is probably a general flaw of the system. Ideally a core mechanic shouldn't be unintuitive to new players. And how initial dash is handled in ultimate, that's another choice that I think while not necessarily bad, does make many people feel the game is unintuitive. I think a lot of the reasons people say the game feels unwieldy and strange actually comes down to the input lag. Simply put, controls in any video game should feel responsive. I mean, I've literally taken game design courses where responsiveness is called a staple of good engines. Having input lag is fine, it's not like what you input has to happen instantly, but if there is enough of a pause between your input and the action on screen, your brain feels strange, like something went wrong, like you didn't actually do the action. To me in ultimate I feel this the strongest on the CSS. Literally I move the control stick, and THEN the cursor moves. Like there is a moment in time where I can react and see that the cursor HAS NOT MOVED, to something that should intuitively be an instant action. It's only a split second but it's definitely disconcerting. It's like trying to move your arm, and your arm doesn't move right away and then moves. It's just strange. These are small issues though. The biggest problem in my view of how input lag affects ultimate negatively is how it affects effective reaction time. You could ignore everything I've said previously. This next part is really what I hope you listen to. Let's say smash advanced frame by frame and you had as much time as you wanted to buffer your next move for the next frame, then you pressed some advance button and the next move came out. Smash would be totally and completely different. Neutral would revolve around either power shielding or parrying, depending on which smash game you choose. The game would be extremely defensive, to the point of never attacking anyone else (because most non frame 1 attacks could be powershielded/parried). The game wouldn't work. It wouldn't be a game. There would be very little prediction or skill involved since you could just react to everything. In melee, there's a bot called smash bot that can beat any human player. It plays fox. Honestly it's not very smart at all- literally all it leverages is a 1 frame reaction time and a 1 frame move. That's all it needs to beat any player. I mean it's internal logic could be as simple as (against any other character besides fox, falco, puff, gnw): Am I about to get hit? If so, powershield or shine. If not, move toward the opponent laglessly (walk) If the opponent is in range, use shine. If it hits, combo. If they powershield it, shine again. That's a simplification but you get the idea. The point is that reaction time plays a very critical function in how the smash games work. Without it the game is totally different. Input lag is important because it determines what you can and cannot react to. Reaction time is actually super complicated (it depends on if it's audio or visual, if you're just reacting to movement, if you're trying to differentiate different movements or sounds, if you choose different actions depending on different stimuli) but let's just say human reaction time takes 14 frames. In melee input lag is around 4 frames. Effective reaction time is 18 frames (to differentiate different stimuli). So you can just barely tech chase characters on reaction (tech in place takes 26 frames, 18 frames to react, 7 to grab, 1 frame left over). In ultimate effective reaction time is around 22 frames (because of the increased input lag). And combine this with the lower landing lag of moves in ultimate, and I think there is a fundamental design problem. I think moves with less lag are generally good for the smash series, as long as the risk reward isn't skewed. The problem is that ultimate combines less lag and more input lag. It's a double buff since maybe pokes are safe AND unreactable/unpunishable on reaction. That right there is one of the biggest problems with the game IMO. That was really long. Hopefully that makes sense why input lag really does affect gameplay though, because it changes what you can and can react to, what you can and can't punish. In a game with already really safe pokes and offense, it makes them even safer.
@@Gatchu137 Also I'm not making any objective claims about which smash game is best competitively and I recommend you to not as well. It's generally not a good look. People can have their favorite games and there's little point arguing about which one is technically the best competitively.
@@mymyscellany I'm not trying to argue that less input lag isn't a good thing. My argument was that Melee had particularly low input delay, and many modern fighters are also around the same as Ultimate's 7-frame delay, not Melee's 4-frame. If you're capable of realizing that you've made an input, and are able to see the input not be made, then you must be inhumanly fast. Because again, even Ultimate's input delay is much faster than any person's response time. The only reason it's noticeable isn't because you can see it, it's because you can feel it, and it's out of sync with your muscle-memory. I'm not saying that Ultimate wouldn't be better with less delay, I'm making an argument of Ultimate not being slow compared to other modern fighters, and that Melee players are just out of sync with the new timing. And no, I don't think pokes being unreactable is a bad thing. That's why they're pokes. Sm4sh had reactable pokes, and guess what? It meant that any character who threw out a reactable move would get punished for it, because the opponent WOULD LITERALLY just wait for the opponent to throw out a move, react to it, and win every exchange. It turned the game into exactly the scenario of "wait for the other person to commit" that people complain about. Every single character should have at least one unreactable move, because that stops your potential from being limited to whatever frame-data allows. Shiek/Ganon was literally a 10-0 matchup in Sm4sh, because every move that Ganon did was within human reaction times, and so throwing out a poke was too big of a commitment on his part, basically resulting in "if you attack, you lose a stock". I'm sure Melee had some sort of comparison, lingering around in the bottom tiers. Characters who can literally never win against top tiers, just based on human reactions and optimization. Ultimate doesn't have that. Even the most bottom-of-the-barrel characters CAN win against the best ones, because they have some sort of tool that they can leverage, and not be punished for. Even if the reward for winning an exchange is heavily skewed in favor of one character, the other character is technically capable of winning most interactions. The only fault in this system arises when players carry over their mentality of "I should get a free hit, because they threw out a move that shouldn't be safe", when no, that's not how it works anymore. Adapting to the opponent's mentality, and properly capitalizing on what you THINK they'll do is a much healthier system than waiting for them to commit to something, and winning an exchange off of it. The game still has high-commitment moves, but characters are no longer losing matches for trying to leverage their fastest move in neutral.
It's unfortunate, but the only good implementation of the c-stick in the history of smash is in Melee, where each different c-stick input is treated as an unique input tied to an action, this ensured that the c-stick didn't interfere with anything else in the controls. But when Brawl came out, c-stick functionality was changed to be a macro of the Directional Stick+Button and is still this way and that's why smash stick down airs still fastfall to this day and why it's basically impossible to make this thing bug free.
@@rgprosucctions1704 Yeah, but jumps, rolls, spot dodges out of shield with the c-stick are some of the few things in melee that can be buffered, so high chances it's a deliberate choice.
I don't remember which smash game but c stick used to allow directional buffer for attacks i.e. angle up or down for smash attacks by c sticking the attack while holding the control stick up or down. Those were the days of good controls though, not this jumbled up mess.
Dude, thank you. *THANK YOU* for bringing all of this up, you have literally put all of my thoughts into words about this game that it makes me want to tear my hair out. I cannot stand Smash Ultimate. I tried so hard to like this game, but I just simply cannot. The inputs, the character balancing, *the effing controls*, my friends have told me that I should accept these flaws and adjust, but it just makes the game so unfun to play, and tournament games have already gotten so stale because it's the same linear gameplay every single time. I told my friends that unless they intend to overhaul all of these mechanics, there is no way that I'll continue to play this game. And the best way that I could describe it before seeing this video is that Ultimate *really* encourages you to play how it wants you too, and not the other way around. So again, thank you for finally putting this into words for me.
First off, love the level of quality in this, let's just get that said and done immediately. This video addresses problems with Ultimate specifically from the competitive perspective and you do a great job showcasing what you are talking about with visuals and simplifying things which is much appreciated as it is difficult to sometimes understand what top players are talking about when they throw out terms or describe things in ways that aren't simplified enough for the people just getting into competitive or for those who casually play competitively (I know that sounds weird, but just roll with it). Now as for the points brought up in the video: -Buffering- Yes this has been an issue since Day 1. Smash 4's buffering system seemed perfect to me. There were maybe 10 total instances in all of my time playing Smash 4 from Day 1 where something got buffered that I did not intend for it to get buffered. In just the first couple of months of playing Ultimate however, the amount of mis-input buffers far exceeded Smash 4's. It doesn't look like they'll be changing the buffering system, but who knows, maybe they will. I've grown more accustomed to the buffer system, but it still results in some serious problems every now and then and if they ever tone the buffer system down, I'll be all the happier. -Characters relying on one (or a few) very specific strong points or a gimmick to be good- As mentioned in the video, this isn't an Ultimate specific issue. The atrocity that was Smash 4 Bowser suddenly becoming somewhat viable only because of one new gimmick as opposed to addressing his weakness and buffing him around those areas is probably the biggest offender of that (that was ever patched in to make a character good) in my opinion. I agree that characters' weaknesses should be looked at more closely and then buffed accordingly to make the character better as a whole rather than giving them only one tool to make the character better. I also agree that buffing characters' strong points or things that don't really matter is useless in pretty much every case EXCEPT in the case where buffing those strengths really does make up for their weaknesses like Ganon's overwhelming strength, but at the cost of his pretty bad recovery (among other things). Even that isn't a perfect example because Ganon still struggles despite having overwhelming strength, so a little better than that I guess. Generally though, buffing a character's weak points will be better overall than buffing their already strong points. -Movement- Were there more tech/skill based movement options in Smash 4 than in Ultimate? Of course, that's undeniable. But overall, I find that Ultimate has much better movement than Smash 4. Maybe it's just a result of Ultimate being faster than Smash 4 and overall more aggressive, but I disliked the movement in Smash 4. It felt too stagnant and stiff. -Player expressiveness in characters- You mentioned that you could view a match between 2 top level Sheiks with the same costume and no name tags in Smash 4 and be able to decipher who's who based on how they play. I agree with that, but not just in that case, but in all cases and not just in Smash 4. People are people and no two people are the same. People can play similarly, but no one plays the exact same way as someone else. Now could it be possible that Smash 4 allowed for more expressiveness because of it's tech/skill based movement? Maybe. But just to point something out, no matter who was playing him, Mario was going to down throw, up-tilt you in Smash 4 and eventually up-air ladder you to the sky. No matter who is playing him, Mario is going to up throw, short hop/full hop (can't remember off the top of my head) down-air you in Ultimate and eventually up-air ladder you to the sky. So it then comes down to how do the players play their characters before, in between, and after doing character specific things and if we're looking at it that way, every player is going to play differently during those moments. Some might fish for an opening, some might play more aggressive, some might play more defensive, some might play in an unorthodox way, or any combination of any of these. This isn't even accounting for the character match ups, the current point during the match, the current point of the set, the current stage they're playing on, etc. My point here is that you can take any 2 people who play the same character in either Ultimate or Smash 4 and both players will have a distinct way of playing and go for different things during the match. -Goats slamming into each other with horns- Nothing much to say about this other than I personally prefer this over the incredibly defensive nature of Smash 4. Just my preference I guess. Last couple of things: Air dodge reading in Smash 4 was definitely sick and it's much harder to do in Ultimate now, but I think predicting an air dodge in this game feels more rewarding for me personally since there was more to account for what with multiple directions now being a factor. I definitely like the way air dodging is handled in Ultimate though over all other smash games. Parries needing to be buffed to be more rewarding is something we can also both agree on. As it sits right now, parries aren't always worth it and I feel that they need to be buffed to something similar to Rivals of Aether but, not to the same degree of severity or functionality. Online sucks? What? No way! Online is the best thing ever and there are never any probl- A communication error occurred. Overall agree with a lot of what you said and disagree with a fair bit, but there's always room for discussion and I appreciate the fact that you aren't blatantly saying "x is better definitively and if you disagree, your opinion is garbage" like a lot of other people tend to do.
You hit it on the fucking NAIL.....I agreed with a ton of his points but also disagreed as well ....buffer system? Trash in ult but good in 4 Air dodge reads? (Personally) more satisfying in ultimate. Smash 4 it was difficult because no lag but in ult its difficult bc they can dodge in 8 different directions ....both difficult. Both satisfying. Pikachu , wario and wolf being more interesting than say joker, palu, and wario? Sure.... but pikachu or wario not being as good 🤥🥴 yeah ok.... and honestly jokes pretty interesting...maybe not Arsene but joker sure. Idk ...he hit it home with certain points but others I felt he was wayyyyy of base and it seemed more like nostalgia for smash 4 rather than complete 3rd person criticism 😔 (Edit:) OH and I think you hit it on the fucking nail with the character expressiveness and movement comment 👏👏👏
never really had a huge buffer problem in ult, most things buffer the way they're intended, except sometimes I get an inkling Nair instead of Bair in the edgeguarding process, other than that I've had rare issues, and while I don't think the buffer is that bad I can confidently say the C stick dosen't work lol
@@sirstack59 I've never really utilized a C-stick, can you explain why it sucks so much ? :D I hear a lot of people saying it's useful for certain characters and techniques, and then others tell the exact opposite
this is the comment i was seeking for.... the exact same poitns i was disagreed on him, the read on the airdodge, the doference style of playing the game, he being a litle to bias on sm4sh nostalgia and preffereing the movement and the goat slamming into each other with horns gameplay over smash 4 incredibly defensive gameplay
I'm somebody who despised the way Smash 4 turned out and will never go back, but you hit damn near everything about the controls on the nail. Ultimate does have very clunky movement and at times it feels like I'm being punished for trying to be precise with my button presses. Shields being nerfed is a good thing, but that combined with the poor buffer system and increased shield stun makes characters feel untouchable and unfair despite being more tame than the top tiers of Smash 4. The amount of times I've tried to buffer an aerial out of a parry and got a nair instead is infuriating at this point. I've used the c-stick for aerials so often that I've literally broken it, due to not wanting to press the jump and attack buttons at the same time. I wish the collision system was more consistent as well; in recent times I find myself asking "how did I end up behind/in front" of my opponent when I land next to them from the air. I haven't lost complete hope yet, this game is still new, and Nintendo has been patching the game, even if it's slightly. The fact that they fixed a buffered roll problem and nerfed the shield damage of projectiles shows that they're listening, even if it's a little. Great video, I hope people share this so Nintendo/Smash devs can see this and make some needed improvements.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with ultimate is its input lag. It’s a really jarring transition from Sm4sh to ultimate due to the weird delay and acting by reaction feels much worse. Especially sense this game is focused more on movement than other fighting games
The second you started explaining how the input buffer works, it was like everything suddenly clicked at once. I've had so many issues with the controls in this game since day 1, but couldn't put my finger on exactly what my problem was. At least now I know I wasn't going crazy.
One thing I personally can't stand about this game is how lagless everything feels. So many moves have ridiculously low end lag to the point where by the time you can react the opponent is either attacking again on spotdodged. Whiff punishing feels rare and almost character dependent. Obviously weak, quick attacks and well spaced ones are going to be and should be difficult to punish, but it also feels like really strong moves have little to no opportunity to punish (Mario up smash, Pichu ftilt, Wolf down smash just to name a few) My theory as to why so many moves are so spammy and low on endlag is because the dev team wanted players to move faster and go for more combos. In which case, why not just increase the hitstun? If you do that, moves can have more lag and become more risky to use so when they do land it feels more earned and rewarded but if they miss then the opponent has time to punish if they spaced themselves well. I just don't understand why the game has to be every character standing in a general area throwing out big aerials for seven minutes.
I feel like a perfect example of this is Incineroar's down smash. It hits super hard and hurtbox shifts him out of the way of most non-aerial moves to the point where start up is pretty much ignored, and then endlag is almost non existant. It can be spammed in ledge play super easily and is super frustrating to deal with at times.
Play Sm4sh. The reason why 90% of the roster was almost never viable was because any "average" character or worse could throw out literally ANY move, and the opponent playing a better character could capitalize on that one move. Ganon for example, wasn't even a bad character, it's just that heavies were generally the worst archetype. If Ganon played against a Shiek, ZSS, Pika, Rosa, or like anyone in the top 15, and he even ATTEMPTED to poke in neutral, he lost the stock. You don't want characters to have fast options, but fail to acknowledge that not making most moves universally fast has done absolutely nothing but create obscene power imbalances in previous games, and completely invalidate most moves, if not most characters. Mario up-smash functioning as an out-of-shield option isn't poor design, it's giving him a tool with which he can fight these "lagless aerials" that you're complaining about in the same comment. And plenty of characters have moves like that. Cloud, Game&Watch, Pac-man, Mario, PT, Yoshi, and plenty of others all have tools capable of punishing any poorly spaced aerials on their shields. If your character doesn't have a tool to punish shielded aerials, then they probably have something else to compensate. Greninja and Shulk are both great, and neither one has anything capable of punishing shielded aerials.
It’s as if piranha plant’s back air took the hit of end lag for every single character, seriously have you seen the amount of end lag it has? If you fast fall it even slightly below the stage of FD or Battle field, you will fall to your death.
Online is trash. Huge negative for me. HUGE. It’s freaking 2020. Barebone online options and terrible lag. The thing I wanted more than any character before the game released was GOOD online lol
cfalcon07 I know right? I just quit this game for melee, and the melee online experience is so good. Apparently it has good netcode compared to ultimate, because connections are always really smooth and not laggy
Me and my friend are just a few blocks away from each other, and when we play online it's so bad. It feels like we're watching a slideshow more than playing a game. Our WiFi isnt even that bad, heck mines actually pretty good.
Honenstly i agree with almost everything in this video, it's great to see someone put all of Ultimate's flawed controls to light like this. I do however think that you're looking back at Smash 4 with rose colored glasses. Aside from the problems you did point out in the video: -For Glory was not a better enviroment to seriously train on, and at the very least Ultimate's system allows for a bit more stage variety, it's still a pretty bad quickplay experience overall though so i won't defend it. That said, the addition of battle arenas makes the online experience way better, even if it has to be aided by external communities like Discords and whatnot. -Smash 4 was criticized at it's time for being the most restrictive smash game when it came to movement and general options, even compared to Brawl. To suddenly act like perfect pivoting was this amazing tech that made it great when it was basically it's only non commital movement option for most characters is just blowing it out of proportion. Ultimate's dash may be resrictive in comparison but the fact that you can do so much out of it makes it a better option than it ever was in 4, which outside of perfect pivoting was basically just run and shield. The issue in Ultimate however is that it has no microspacing options, so i understand why pivoting is still missed. -The point about expresiveness is a rather hard one to make, because a lot of it will ultimately depend on players and the characters they play. Fatality's and Nick C's Falcon play very differently, your previous main Falco now has some sick options opened to him both from up and down throw that makes his combo game quite a sight. It's going to look bad when you're comparing 2 of smash 4's better balanced and free form characters like Fox and Sheik with some of Ultimate's most straight forward like Palutena and Ike, i could do the same if i took Ultimate's Fox and Inkling and compared them to Smash 4's Cloud and DK. Of course Ultimate is still hindered by it's controls and technical issues, which is probably why a lot of top players go for the safer options more frequently. Smash as a whole is just a very complex game that allows for tons of way for players to express themselves, to the point that the 2 games with the least amount of options still allow those subtle differences between players to show.
Falco: dragdown fair, utilt, utilt, up air, up air, up throw to bair. C.Falcon: Falling Nair, dthrow, up air x15. Dair, to bair or fair. Perfect pivoting is microspacing like you said...so yes, it was pretty good. I play Marth...so yeah. Palu: Nair x3, fair to fair. Fair to DA. Very Expressive Indeed.
I think that he really did not give joker enough credit he is a great character even without Arsene Edit 1: ok so everyone is saying people live to high percents with base joker but first hit of fair into upsmash kill confirm with both regular joker and persona regular killing at 110 which is not bad for a supposed weak character
@@ElCampeador99 normal people just wait until Arsene to get any kill, but when you see Leo playing Joker it feels that Arsene is there only to loose the Grappling Hook agaisnt Samsora.
Blastoise88 people only wait for Arsene in quickplay and elite smash. People who play joker competitively know how to use him to do great combos without arsene
Joker is good, but Arsene ruins his character. Seriously, on day one of buying joker I immediately beat a friend who was an inkling main. He's a pretty decent inkling and we usually go neck and neck in matches, but as soon as Arsene comes out the game is basically over for any light weight character. When you move as fast as them and hit as hard as ganon. On top of that it's a mechanic that rewards you for losing (which is very unhealthy game design). Which is why it's a further issue for many light weight characters or set up characters that have a very hard time killing at low percent. Arsene also gets probably one of the best counters in the game that's very hard to punish.
@@Moss_Dude because without any microspacing options, it boils down to button mashing. That's the "footsies" in ultimate. Smash 4 and Melee also had footsies, which were much more meaningful because perfect pivoting and wavedashing allowed you to quickly space just outside of your opponents attack ranges.
Semi-platforms are so annoying now. Being able to turn every stage into Battlefield was supposed to be a huge buff, as many competitive players would argue that it's an even more well-rounded stage than Final Destination. But now I'm always not falling through when I want to fall through and vice versa and I get screwed.
This video totally puts a lot of words to the feelings I've been having with the game. It's that weird feeling of "I should be loving this...but why aren't I?" Great video :)
This game just feels so stiff. And I hate how safe things are on shield. It took a bit to get used to the ‘Smash attack -> spot dodge-> smash attack’ gimmick. Or having someone land on your shield with some fast aerial and then already spot dodge or roll away before you’ve even dropped your shield. And for how fast and offensive the game was intended, it’s extremely campy. One person gets a stock lead and then plays reactionary on their back foot waiting for the other person to attack and then trying to make a hard punish. Either that or they just spam safe aerials to set up a wall (Link’s Nair)
This is most hand holding smash now button Mashers get rewarded on block or on wiff. What's that u miss time a move or was hitting buttons out of hit stun just hit any 3 frames button cause that's faster then anything they can punish me with even if they started the move before my Panic option unless it's a fast jab that won't kill/gives me 10% & basically just reset neutral. God forbid u trying punish someone & wiff cause they hit the 3 frame Panic option jump/ spot Dodge. risk vs reward is still retarded as smash4 but this game allows bad 1 note habits idk why they had the nerve to add spot Dodge canceling buffing a dumb invincibility option.
That's why having too much characters isn't good at all. A lot of them are so similar and if you're really try to improve you have to learn all the matchups and have matchup experience. Things like they safe attacks or the gimmicks that they have.
WTF YOU MEAN? Stiff? Not at all! Alot of things have always been safe on shield, stop hitting people's shields then. Yes people gonna use safer moves more often, why would someone intentionally use a bad move that wasn't gonna work? Since you know a character with a good Nair is probably gonna Nair alot do what good players do, and ADAPT!
After playing tons of Hollow Knight, a game where learning patterns, reading and punishing enemies is nessecary to survive and then coming back to smash ultimate I realised everyone plays like a Hollow Knight boss. I'm not amazing at ultimate but, somehow I'm in elite smash with Kirby, Pichu, Zelda, Daddydorf, Mewtwo, Lucario, Palentina and Banjo and that shouldn't be possible (for me). Fire Emblem players with the expection of Robin (purely because there are not many online) seem to have only one play style which makes them incredably easy to read and boring to play against. Joker players aren't actually very good but as soon as Arsene pops out the best strat is to just camp them and it usually frustrates them into acciently killing themselves because they're trying to back air you whilst I'm off stage. Either that or the meter runs out after a minute of camping. Cloud, Ness, Lukas, Mario I could go on but the lack of player expression is an issue. That and the shitty online. God it's bad.
i really wish wavedashing was in ultimate, at least to some extent. it was so painful when nintendo revealed that wavedashes would have increased landing lag. i think reducing the landing lag of wavedashes (but not regular d-airdodges) to ~5 frames would make the game much more expressive and free-form
Shun Y all characters can wavedash in ultimate, but it’s very laggy and so a niche option at best. Wavelanding is decent though, and Shulk has a fast wavedash tech. We’ll see if it gets used
If you ask me, Smash Ultimate was only as good as alot of these YTers describe in that honey moon period Vs other games say BBTAG Or FighterZ stand on their own for good reasons and theyre probably gonna last for a while
@@lilsoonerfaninmo My point is that not everyone was talking about how amazing ultimate is. Tweek even made a tweet about it on April of 2019. I just thought maybe people didn't know or something so I just put it out there.
Even though I love Ultimate and will continue playing it, I can see why you wouldn’t enjoy it and your points are very valid. I’d also like to point out that there are still some high tiers/viable characters with lots of success that don’t really rely on gimmicks or a single move like Mario and Fox. Plus, while Pac-Man and ROB are indeed much better than they’ve ever been, this is mainly due to the buffs they received in the transition to Ultimate and that many of the zoners in the game(Isabelle, Belmonts, Villager, Zelda) are not nearly as viable right now. Other than that, great, well explained vid!
Nivek Boats maybe I just play the character wrong, but I find I use back air a lot more in neutral. Sure, up air is great for combos, but it’s not centralizing in my opinion. Mario just has really great aerials, allowing for his combos to just flow. Look at the difference between Zenyou and Dark Wizzy’s playstyle. The character is actually quite expressive. Or.. maybe I’m just biased, because I love playing Mario.😅
Honestly the online of Sma5h has never ceased to make me sad. I love the game, and have spent a lot of time doing everything I can in it (don't even get me started on spirits) but I've never been able to play online due to internet. As an intermediate player, not quite competitive, I have never won a game on quickplay. The input lag combined with buffering has led to about 50 games of frustration in multiple sessions, leaving me uninterested and playing against CPUs by myself. I really love this game. I want to play often, and get better. But I can't, and it makes me very sad.
I played world of light twice. The online isn't even worth having when falcon is broken in ultimate and every other character has full stage insta-kill attacks without even a smash ball. New smash is just a wacky unorganized bloodbath like call of duty
Honestly you're better off the online, this online is so bad that you even get punished for your opponent disconnecting, I have been banned for hours because my opponents dropping, before the quarantine I had a few hours to play, I would try to do a few quick matches just to be connected with a player that would disconnect the moment I got one stock ahead, and get banned for the little time I had for playing ruining my time off, you can't complain or appeal to Nintendo, they don't even know who to blame when this happens so they just punish both players, and I end up playing Warframe or Fortnite instead which don't even need the online on the first place making me regret spending those 20 bucks, if there was a third party option for online I would take it in a heartbeat, but sadly Nintendo would probably sue anyone who tries doing so, even when clearly they can't do it properly.
I do think this was a good video. However, while I clearly get that you prefer Smash 4, I feel you give it way too much credit without really addressing its flaws. One thing I think drastically improves Ultimate compared to Smash 4 is the changes to dashing. Dashing in Smash 4 was absolutely terrible because it was so limiting. It was one of the most committal moves you could do because you had so few options out of it. That’s why dash to shield was such a popular option. It was the safest and least committal option. In Ultimate, you have a million options out of a dash, helped further by the fact that aerials have so little landing lag for most of the cast. I played the hell out of Smash 4. Spent way more time with that game than Ultimate and I do truly love the game even if I think it is flawed. However, when I played, I played notoriously campy because dashing at my opponent put me in a bad position and camping gave me way more options. If I camped, I’d have them dash at me, putting them in that awful position. Ultimate actually made dashing a good option again and I think that, to me, makes the game so much more interesting to me. I actually like playing aggro in Ultimate. Running up and doing risky shit because I don’t feel like the game is going to punish me for simply doing the “running up” part. I will agree that Ultimate’s controls are flawed. The C-Stick is coded so lazily. Why is Melee the only game with an actual well coded C-Stick? The not being able to buffer full hop aerials really hits home. As a Young Link main, one of our go to kill set ups is Down Tilt into Up Air. Full hop up air. And for Young Link, a character who can’t afford to screw up getting a KO, it’s ridiculously frustrating when I execute the aerial too fast and get a short hop instead. However, they did fix the roll buffering issue. I know this is Nintendo but maybe if we make our voices heard, they’ll fix some of these other complaints too. I don’t agree with Joker being lame at all. It’s not like he’s carried by Arsene. He’s a very good character even without Arsene and I do think he’s well designed in the fact that, unlike things such as Limit and Waft, you have little control over when exactly you get and use Arsene. You can’t charge Arsene up or save him for when you need him. Sure, that’s not to say Arsene isn’t completely free from scrutiny. He can be pretty dumb, but the recent Joker nerfs more heavily reward playing aggro against Arsene Joker because it makes him go away sooner. One character you praised that I do not understand why people defend is Wolf. Wolf is unarguably the most overrated characters in terms of coolness. Wolf is a stupid and lame character. Extremely generous hitboxes, ridiculously oppressive moves, some of the jankiest Smash attacks in the entire series, and, if that weren’t enough, give him one of the best projectiles in the game to force approaches better than most characters designed to be zoners and his recovery, which seems to be designed to be his weakness, being risky as hell to edgeguard. Wolf is by far my least favorite top tier in terms of design and people give him way too much credit for some reason. Easy to play and lame as hell to watch. Also burying moves are stupid and should be removed outright. I have believed for the longest time that Ultimate is 85% of the way to being the perfect Smash game. I think once the modding community gets a little more advanced and we can go back into the game, remove some of the technical flaws, and rebalance the roster a little. The end result truly could be the best Smash ever
Unfortunately just modding the game isn’t a good solution. Not that playing a modded version wouldn’t be fun or cool or better, it’s just that like, idk maybe 1-5% of players would play/even be able to play a modded version. It’s a lot more effort for the average person to mod smash than it is for someone to mod a PC game. It’s really just up to Sakurai/the balancing team to improve things for the benefit of the game overall.
The cstick in the game is retarded I don't know why anyone would WANT to do a stationary buffered nair when you go out of your way to input a direction on a cstick
The stylistic differences argument is pretty bad and I don't agree with it. Tweek played Joker way differently than Leo and Zackray, Zackray plays ROB way differently than WaDi or other ROBs, Light plays Fox completely different to Paseriman, Tea plays Pac-Man different to Sinji etc. Not every player plays every top tier the same way. Shuton is much more aggressive than Dabuz with Olimar even. There's similarities but mostly everyone plays each other differently. Edit: Forgot to mention how Leo lost to Prodigy's Mario, but 3-0'd Dark Wizzy's Mario much later because he's more used to that one rather than Prodigy's because they play neutral way differently. Prodigy is more focused on combos on platforms that'll kill the opponent at 60% but have higher risk.
I remember when the playstyle argument was used in the melee vs smash 4 debates, people used to say that smash 4 had a lack of playstyle diversity compared to melee
@@michaelflores2246 As someone who very much prefers Melee, this is very, very, almost objectively true imo. For examples, look at the videos on this channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCJm8r3p5IzhtKUAGiehMppQ . Despite the many players featured, many people in the comments are easily able to tell who the player is. Even though around 25% of players play Fox, it is easy to tell between Mango, Lucky, iBDW, Hax$, M2K, Leffen, Plup, Syrox, Crush, despite all of them having the same options and in some matchups the exact same optimal gameplan available to them.
@@madmoxxi7397 I mean, I agree as a stats major. Sadly in most smash arguments you can really only argue out of your own ass because its so hard to get data on anything.
Yes and Tweek's Joker did significantly worse than Leo and Zackray. Dabuz and Shuton are both spot dodge smash attack spammers, and every rob just spams d tilt gyro and Nair until one of them hits. If you actually watch smash ultimate at high level then you'll realize that players don't play that differently while using the same character.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one, the smash community defends this game and it’s flaws (especially when it comes to the characters themselves & people’s constant spammy plays styles) but you were honest about what’s wrong with it. I really think this game isn’t meant for competitive especially since Sakurai never wanted Smash to be competitive in the first place. But by trying to appease to competitive scene and keep its fun party game vision alive he created Ultimate. A game where there’s a very fine line between either loving it or hating it.
This is honestly one of the best smash videos I've seen in years, extremely well done. The ONLY thing I would say adds to this game's downfall in my eyes is the lack of lag on a lot of characters moves. People again seem to think that speed = hype, but when a link throws a boomerang pointblank in my face and I shield it I should be able to punish it with SOMETHING. A ROB nairing my shield and being -4 shouldn't exist, I've had a Mario back air my shield and it's safe on PARRY. I parried the move, and he was able to act faster. Moves being safer in general and shields being worse in general doesn't make the game more aggressive, it makes it campier. It's, again, all just made worse by the awful buffer system in addition to poor options out of shield for a lot of characters, and downright problematic options oos for others.
One of Ultimates greatest instep in my eyes is they gave aerials ridiculously low endlag coming from Sm4sh, but didn't compensate OoS options in return. I also can't get over just how bad most grounded moves are compared to aerials. It means most neutral interactions are jump around and space nair/fair/bair on shield. It isn't very interesting when you think about it.
Cattlehoop tbh people don’t think that speed=hype. Sonic existed and everyone calls him lame,boring and spammy. And really most people say that speed=technical. Since we need to react faster and understand the game better than just playing a simple character like Bayo (smash 4)and Ice climbers (brawl) and winning.
I couldn't agree more with this comment. Ultimate, imo, did a lot of great things for the series like fixing air dodge and roll spam but the one thing I CANT STAND in Ultimate is how little commitment there is to a lot of moves in the game. Almost every match I'm in feels like both players are just mashing aerials and hoping that the other player just... runs into something instead of baiting out moves and punishing accordingly. To me, the window to punish a lot of moves is just waay to small for the type of game that smash is. I shouldn't be able to punish your jabs, but if a link down airs and whiffs, the result should be him getting hit, not me getting neutral air'd or up special'd trying to punish it.
There's no way you can't punish a move that's minus 5 on shield after parrying it. There's no way you're playing a character that has no moves that have a hitbox before frame 10. :/
I feel like what you’ve talked about here is everything that I’ve felt in this game. Really starting my competitive career in smash 4 opened my eyes to different tech such as perfect pivoting and all the footstool combos. And slowly I noticed in tournament sets everyone’s personal style flowing from their character. Me personally my favorite players to watch were fatality and nairo. Because they were risk takers and you could tell through there gameplay. Ever since ultimate came out I always found my self not as interested in tournaments or tournaments sets in RUclips. And when I did play friendly it always felt like any character had at least 1 or 2 things that were absolutely broken that made the matchup just unfun to play. I used to really be able to sit down and play smash with my group of friends for hours, without ever getting tired of it. But I usually find ultimate to get stale much quicker. I honestly love this game for so many reasons, but the faults that are present really take a lot of enjoyment out for me.
I was saying similar after a few months playing it. The “balance” patches are overall letdowns for not making the game more aggressive by not rewarding safe neutral and retreating play. It’s just not an interesting meta.
I don't own a switch, but I always wondered why Ultimate felt so weird to play whenever I was with someone who did. The forked up buffer system makes total sense.
As a melee fan, I had trouble finding a reason why ultimate feels so "off" since the developers cranked up the speed of everything and lowered the ending lag of nearly all aerials. Your video was a good summation of the problems that ult has with general game feel. I don't necessarily agree that smash 4 was the golden rule as far as movement and expression goes, but it did definitely feel much more responsive. It is upsetting to have such a large collection of characters from my such great series such as K Rool, Simon, Terry and even Byleth (FE is one of my fav franchises and his representation actually does the series justice) representing their respective franchises so well with move sets that just don't feel good to control. I don't understand why the devs are so vehemently against allowing for options that can be employed to gain a competitive advantage, but in the end it really is just a party game unfortunately. The fact that it has sold incredibly well makes me believe there is no reason for the devs to change the game at this point.
If the game just had in depth dash dancing I don't think I'd find it so slow to play. Not being able to run through really does make the game 2 rams bashing at each other, the dash through mix up adds so many dimensions. Also, how free it is for people to get on ledge and not be punished is ridiculous.
I found Ultimate to feel way better than any other Smash game. And the moves can very well give you a competitive advantage. You are implying that they are useless which they definitivly are not. Smash is definitivly not just a party game.
@@Parpeing Did I say responsive? No, I did not. Stop with such scummy things only because you are too ignorant to understand opposing opinions or arguments and badly want to force your limited view through.
Coming from traditional fighting games and knowing nothing but the very basic about smash this was a really interesting watch and was well produced. 3 things to consider. 1. Buffer systems are always controvercial. They present massive benefits and massive issues, and even games with EXTREMELY consistent rules can be frustrating to players on edge cases, they are extremely difficult to balance and increasingly so with move variables to consider. It sounds like to me Smash U added one or 2 too many options into the buffer system. 2. You should look into the issues with netcode for traditional fighting games, and the recent fight for "rollback netcode" and why it needs to be implemented into games, specifically something like Smash ultimate which is literally on a mobile device technically. Smash uses delay-based lock-step netcode, that causes any connection issues to translate to dropped inputs and game freezing. While it's difficult because of the potential for more than 2 sets of inputs in non-tournament modes. 3. Nintendo really needs to consider what they want Smash to be, a tournament game or a party game. The attempt to implement more competitive gameplay characteristics while ignoring things like netplay and buffer costs clearly means they are trying to cover too many bases in my observation.
I went from ultimate to melee, and I still struggle with my neutral habits from ult. It’s still holding my play back, in spite of the fact that I’ve now played melee for almost 6 months. I just throw out my best option and hold shield.
I don't play melee. Wish i did but like I don't like playing games on my own :") But but melee is the best!! Even i can tell you that, i watch all the smash tournaments (yes even 64 haha) cuz i really love smash but watching some good melee is always the most fun! Anyhow GL to you! Melee definitely had a way higher ceiling than ultimate, and im sure it feels that much more satisfying to get better!
You hit the nail on the head with everything I feel about Ultimate, and even opened my eyes a little. Honestly? That line about wanting to love Ultimate but failing is too real. I WANT to love this game so badly, but the more I play it, the more stupid shit I notice within it. I have never played a game that felt as out of control in my hands as Ultimate, and I've been a Smasher since the 90s with 64. It really took this video to take what I felt and actually put words to it. I always felt very jarred in the transition from Smash 4 to Ultimate and I never recovered honestly. I felt like the game punished you for trying to play skillfully, and rewarded mashing and low IQ playstyles. It tries so hard to hold your hand that it actually interferes with gameplay, and makes me afraid to actually PLAY THE GAME since it constantly misinterprets inputs every other minute. I've never played a game that felt like it was actively fighting me as much as this one, and it messes with my confidence and head since I have to stress about both what my opponent is doing and hoping my system interprets my inputs correctly. I actually did notice something was off with the buffering system when I first picked up the game, but I never knew it was as fucked up as it is until now. The shortop aerial shortcut buffer literally explains that 'off-ness', and so does the shitty hold buffer. I have gotten fucked over by the buffer system so much in this game it's unbelievable. I find that I really hate fighting over half the cast since so much of the character design and over-emphasis on gimmicks made a ton of characters 2-dimensional one-trick ponies, especially top tiers. It's become a game of gimmicks and cheesing, and I hate it. I have fought thousands of battles on both Smash 4 and Ultimate, and I can say that I have seen more playstyle variety in 4 easily since it relied more on fundamentals and good decision making over gimmicks (not to say that there weren't dumb gimmicks in 4). In Ultimate, I could fight twenty different Palutenas and Jokers and they all have the the exact same playstyle, because there's no need for variety when your character's gimmick does the work for you. The one thing I kinda wish you had mentioned is the low hitstun and lack of 'risk' when executing moves. Whiff punishing essentially does not exist in Ultimate because nearly every move is risk free, and it's a huge reason why I'm finding competitive scene less and less fun to watch, much less play. It encourages a lot of campy playstyles, especially when combined with low hitstun on top of that. You can get punished in this game for successfully landing a move! WTF kind of game design is that? I really, really want to love this game as much as I did Smash 4, but it's current mechanics, shitty online, and overall metagame are toxic and frustrating as fuck. There's a lot of fanboys both here and on Reddit, but you're not the only one who feels the way you do. Thank you for addressing the issues the way you did in a mature and informative manner.
Luceloupgarou Maybe it is just me but I never really feel like my inputs come out wrong for some reason. Well except maybe online if I get on a laggy match. And the gimmicks to me are part of what makes this game so fun but yeah I guess I am the weird one, at least that is what most competitive people tell me even though I play competitive as well.
A really easy example of safeness on shield is mario. You can do 3 up airs on shield and not get punished, because shield grab sucks and the up airs do way to much shield stun, not to mention how lagless mario is
Absolutely amazing video - opinionated, eloquent, and accurate. Besides that, I just want to do my part in attracting more viewers by commenting. You have, by this, addressed a topic that hardly ANY top players are willing to talk about a year into Ultimate: Why are we pretending to forget about Smash 4? Why are we acting like the competitive life of Smash 4 was worse than Brawl? Also, no game attracted more new players to the competitive scene more than Smash 4. I think many people would argue against Smash 4, but behind closed doors, they would admit to it being more fun to compete in. I played in several tournaments throughout smash 4's lifespan, and until Bayonetta entered and ended the meta, it was genuinely more supported by the community. Most smash players do not like Smash Ultimate, so how exactly is it a better game? 2015-2016 Smash 4 may be one of the greatest smash eras ever.
Firstly, I wanna say this video was great. You made very good arguments and presented them concisely. And you were as objective as you COULD be. I say could because a few of your points about Ultimate's flaw and some of your praises of 4 sorta felt very one sided. For example, Dashing. Its is MUCH better in Ult than it was in 4. In sm4sh you had 2 options really out of a dash. Sheild and jump (3 if you count foxtroting) it was a huge commitment and many characters had no really pay offs for doing so, leading into really basic and safe neutral. Approaching was deincentivised. And while foxtroting and perfect pivot were honestly super cool, its was more an abuse of how the game handles movement as opposed to intentional tech. That's actually something I feel not enough people address: the difference between a mechanic and an oversight. It feels like if an oversight or abuse of the game's coding is cool or useful, its tech. If it isnt, then it's a flaw. Perfect pivot and pivot cancel are both just using game inputs in a way that makes the game act in a useful manner, but still unconventionally, and maybe even unintentionally. I played a lot of both 4 and ultimate, and while both had control issue ino, I think you give smash 4 waaaaay too much credit. 4 felt incredibly unresponsive (to me) and I love how much quicker Ultimate handles things. There are moments it feel a bit too fast even (like with the ending lag of moves that should be unsafe, and how sheild stun is way too high as of right now) but I honestly never feel like I fight the controls! And I play about the same amount of local and online. Also, and I could be wrong, but I distinctly remember a patch coming out that fixed roll buffering, or at least tweaked it so it wasnt so bad? Again, could be wrong, but I'm like 75% sure on that. As far as characters, I agree that a lot of people are gimmicky as fuck, but I also feel like people actually like seeing that and just dont want to admit it. Like, they pick characters that they like the gimmick of as opposed to who they feel more expressive with. It still sucks, but I just feel like that's why it's so prevalent. Last thing I wanna mention is parrying, and how you say it's not worth it. Frankly.....no. Not to sound too rude here but that is just not true. It is one of the only ways to get reliable punishes AND starters out of sheild, and while it doesnt give you advantage against projectiles, it removes disadvantage entirely. There is literally no reason to NOT parry Other than that, I think this was a fantastic video. I just overall think you arent giving Ultimate enough credit competitively, and give 4 too much. Cheers
Im someone who played an absolute shitton of Smash 4 and went to alot of locals and I was really hyped for ultimate. But when the game came out I had alot of trouble to get back into it competitively. Interesting video
Saw ESAM talking about your video. I came here to see it before I see his reaction to it. I've got to say : I TO regularly for a weekly in Paris, and I love Ult, never want to go back to Smash 4... yet I agree with practically everything you said.
Three thingS I want that Nintendo won’t add. 1. Turn off buffer system or at least be able to manage it with a slider in controls to give you the ability to decide for more or less. Buffer frames. 2. Allow me to run through characters. Bro I miss mixups like that. 3. Hazard toggle on stage list.
It's funny cause I agree with most of this but I can also see my preference for smash 4 is honestly blind nostalgia and I think ultimate is overall the better scene and I've had so much more fun with it.
I liked the competitiveness of smash as a whole (Mainly Sm4sh and Ultimate). I've been in a love/ hate relationship of this game because of the flaws it has and I'm glad someone had the guts to say it. Good work :)
rt rt yeah, that’s the correct thing to do in this game, but in my (low level) opinion you shouldn’t have to read spotdodges. How about just punishing the move? Why is everything so safe? But an even bigger problem for me is that not just the moves themselves are safe, spot dodging is so safe due to spot dodge cancelling. You have to shield their attack, read the spotdodge, and then punish it really quickly before they cancel it and attack. I don’t like that personally
@@moosemeep3694 exactly. Spotdodging has no lag or down time after doing it. So why NOT spam it? Its unreactable, hard to punish and has waaaaayyy too much reward.
@LemonDoski you're implying i dont know how to read spotdodge. And i do, i just dont like having to do it, its tedious and lame and everyone spams it. Including me but thats just because winning is more fun than losing. Btw dont assume how good someone is by mere online statements.
I was an Ike main in Smash 4. I just find myself fighting this game's buffer system all the time. The lack of control I feel when playing urges me to play a more restricted playstyle than in Smash 4, which isn't how I played in Smash 4. I played an aggressive Ike, I relied on tomahawks and the occasional backflip f-airs. Now, it's just n-air and drift back. So to see a game that was expected to be more aggressive offensively being announced, I felt I would thrive. I see this game as a disappointment, in competitive form. Online is a mess. "You want three stocks, no items, and seven minutes?" "Nah, take a Smash Ball, items, and HP". It's frustrating to deal with losing GSP, because you weren't near the Smash Ball or because the stage you were on has a death laser and your opponent is enjoying showering you with projectiles with no room of escape. A good concept in mind, terrible in execution. Elite Smash should be its own separate mode, not an extension of Quickplay. Just like how For Fun and For Glory worked. Back to Anther's we go. There needs to be more control options, like the ability to change macros and a more advanced control setting scheme. The concept of GSP should be like other fighting games, give us some rank titles, and allow us to counterpick. I don't want to be stuck playing just one character for a session, and when I meet that one guy who I can ditto with, I can't. This game could have been so much more. Maybe next installment?
I really enjoyed this video even though I disagree with some points. I think the results of the game sort of speak for themselves. The fact that the top players consistently take tournaments and the fact that we see a lot of character diversity at top 16 or even lower really says a lot. It says that buffer and control issues causing inconsistencies doesn't play a large roll at a high level and that the way you play matters so much more than the character you pick. Leo dominates with Joker but I don't see very many Joker mains near the top. That being said, it's not a perfect game and I completely agree that more control options would be great. And even though we can overcome some unexpected behaviors with the buffer system with practice, it would be better if we didn't have to do that in the first place. The lack of control does feel limiting and I do think some top characters have very obnoxious moves that do everything and hit everywhere and are encouraged to be used all the time. Options for buffering would be appreciated as well. Thanks for the awesome video. Top quality content.
Completely disagree with buffer and controller issues not being a problem in higher play. Pro players will always push through mechanical boundaries no matter the severity. Posing the issue of bad buffer and controls being something you can "shake off" is not a proactive mindset for improving something. It only helps in very minor ways while it negatively effects the game in much more drastic ways. It has no reason to exist and if it were removed the game would not only be better but more accessible, which what the buffer was initially added into to begin with.
Yeah the buffer doesn't affect top level play, but it still in general makes the game feel worse even for top players. Tweek has mentioned that the game doesn't feel as good for him as smash 4 did.
@@matter3669 My guess is that he was implying that it did not hurt top level play as much as it was implied in the video. While I do think that every game has issues, your right in some regards because every game having a flaw, does not mean it can't be fixed or addressed. I agree with the video in some regards, that the option to turn off buffer and/or short hop attack commands would be better than simply removing it, and it does have a purpose, to help new players. Just because something is in the game is targeted to a different audience, doesn't mean that it "Has no reason to exist."
character diversity doesn't matter when the game fundamentally plays the same for each character, a whole top 8 with only fox in melee would be more diverse due to how melee's mechanics let you play however you want with any character you want
I was prepared to dislike this until I watched the whole thing and realized how well thought out and communicated your problems with the game and why you have said problems are. And I commend you for that Also if we are to bring up design flaws... Can we talk about Falcon's dash😫
@@mehgamer467 this might sound stupid but I thought it was just gonna be him comparing it to melee for half an hour. The actual video was alot better than I anticipated
A lot of people including me agree with this video and I think people really enjoyed this. It was a breath of fresh air hearing someone else bring up issues that I also feel are current in the game. Now that the game has finished ALL it's patches. Would you ever consider making a follow up video on this??
Totally agree with most of your points in this video. I was an Ike main in Sm4sh but in this game I hate playing because I feel like I am just cheesing my opponents out by NAiring all the bloody time. As Ike in Sm4sh because of your short hop animation you could weave in an out of attacks and feint pretty easily. In this game is just going for tomahawks / Nair and then dash Dtilt and that sums up most of his Neutral. Also Online in how it is formatted doesn't work either. The fact that Rivals of Aether, an indie game, does online so much better then Smash Ultimate and Sm4sh is crazy. For Glory in concept was simple but work very well. The GSP system just encourages toxic behavior from everyone, and when you do find someone that is good and fun to play, you can't switch your character to see if you can counter pick as them. Ultimate is Very Disappointing to many people, but it is not often spoken. Thanks for the great video!
Jarkey Bacon I also was an Ike main in 4. He felt so stale and boring in this game I dropped him even though he was so much better. He had so much more variety and options available to him, even if those options were worse I enjoyed it more
Melee, a Gamecube game that came out in 2001 and requires much more preciseness, and such requires a higher minimum standard to have "good" or "great" netplay, has through Dolphin emulation and the work of unpaid community modders a 1000x better netplay system than a game that came out in 2018 that requires you to pay for the *privilege* of using the shitty fucking garbage online.
@@AbatedToast77 True melee is pretty sick. Though I will say, I prefer RoA because its generally much more balanced and less buggy, but both games are fantastic and nothing quite rivals (heh) Melee from a spectators point of view. Its incredible!
@@JarkeyBacon RoA nuetral is pretty one dimensional, and the characters punish games and movement are really cool, but also one dimensional. It's the perfect side bracket game and TONS of fun to pick up from time to time, but definitely not one that you can play for 15 years
Finally, someone brave enough to come out of the "Ultimate closet" and say the big competitive flaws that this Smash game has. Props to you man, you are not alone in this.
@@armae1497 hahaha get out of here, hater. I didn't even mention sm4sh and yet you couldn't help thinking of it, maybe because deep down even you know it was more fun.
@@Ragnell_9 You didn't mention it, but the video did. Since the guy is more than willing to overlook really bad design in Smash 4, hell he even went out of his way to criticize the patches for being "bad," and buffing things that are already strong on some characters so they're just going to become overcentralized on one tool, but then went on to praise the Bowser and DK Up Throw buffs (which are some of the worst examples on how to buff a character ever,) because they "shook up the meta," (even though a patch not jumbling the meta into a mess for the sake of it is considered a positive.) And let's not kid ourselves, Bayonetta was a problem, but Smash 4 had no shortage of jank problems. For every instance of "jank" you can point out in Ultimate, there's at least three or more that you can point to in Smash 4, and it's not like there weren't other overbearing top tiers in that game either. I love Smash 4, but it's been made pretty redundant because of Ultimate just being a better attempt at the same thing. Ultimate isn't clean of flaws mind you, even if it has less than Smash 4 did, but there's a reason people act like perfect pivoting is this godlike technique that makes this massive galaxy of a difference, because they need to overrate the things Smash 4 did to try and make it sound like a better game.
This is a really well made analysis of Smash Ultimate! It explains everything well and while I still love ultimate, it brings up a lot of issues with the game that I wasn’t able to detect since I’m more of a novice.
It's been a couple days since I first watched your video and I want to comment on it myself. First of all, I believe your comment is really helpful to put things in perspective, since this video does address more issues regarding Ultimate competitively than it does fortes. Therefore, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to disregard what you said, just discuss about/argue against it. I'm nowhere near as good as you were in Smash 4, nor can I boast of a competitive Smash career as long as yours (I started with Smash 4, so there's more than likely bias towards it on account of it being my first competitive Smash game). Last thing before starting, I really didn't like your aggressive tone throughout the comment, and that's probably what sparked this response to it, but that's besides the point. Let's start with the first subject you talked about: controls. I agree with the main point you're trying to convey, that being that one can work around these controls, terrible as they may be, with enough effort and get used to them to without too much trouble, and I don't believe that's something that should be held against Ultimate as a competitive game. Your second point was about the movement options in both Ultimate and Smash 4, starting with Ultimate's Dash Dancing deserving more recognition. Sure, Ultimate's Dash Dancing was a welcome change, but you could still do Extended Dash Dancing/Fox-trotting (excuse my lack of precision) in Smash 4 to achieve similar (yet usually slower) results. Furthermore, Ultmamte's Dash Dancing is rather stiff and lacks the free-form control Extended Dash Dancing gave you over your movement (then again, this was character dependent and usually slower, so each one brings with them their own set of pros and cons). Moving on to Perfect Pivots, which is the matter you expanded upon the most, and thus I feel that it's deserving of me elaborating on it too. To start off, yes, it would suit a faster game better than it suits Smash 4 (Smash 4 isn't that much slower than Ultimate, but there's a reason why Wavedashing, another Smash microspacing option, is so revered in Melee). As you correctly pointed out, Perfect Pivotting was a technique most people didn't implement in their gameplan for how much it's praised as a movement option. However, it's worth bringing up that Smash 4 was the Smash game with the least time on the spotlight (fall 2014 to fall 2018, and that's counting the 3DS days, without them it'd be around 3 and a half years of competitive scene), so it's easy to see why such a late metagame development would not be put into practice by many people. Nevertheless, the number of players who made use (and good use) of Perfect Pivots by the end of Smash 4's lifespan should not be scoffed at, which leads me to believe that (the following is a hypothetical statement), had the game be given one more year in the spotlight. This hypothesis of mine ties incredibly well with the next topic you brought up. Balance. This is the point in which I believe we disagree most even if we do agree on something: Ultimate's balance is miles better than Smash 4's. Even pre-DLC Smash 4 had countless evildoers (pre-patch Diddy Kong, pre-patch Luigi, pre-patch Sheik which would have probably killed the game if everyone started playing her like ZeRo did, and more), but two names rise above the rest and those are Cloud (which I personally believe wasn't top 2, but that's a whole different conversation) and Bayonetta. It's irrefutable: Smash 4's balance by the end of its lifespan sucked and the game would have collapse under its own weight had it been given another year (hell, maybe another couple months would have sufficed for Bayonetta to put the final nail in its coffin), whereas Ultimate's balance is praiseworthy, moreso when taking into account its massive roster. It's after this that the disagreements start, and where I think you missed the point. Balance is without a doubt crucial from a macro metagame level standpoint, but if a game is not - and please excuse this totally subjective word - gratifying to play (player-game relationship), then balance (game-game relationship) is of little importance. I've been a competitive Pokémon player for a while now, and while I may be far from a notorious player, I believe I have garnered enough experience and skill (in a competitive Pokémon player sense, quite different from the kind of skill you would refer to when talking about Smash) to give some weight to my opinions. Let me use the infamous Landorus-T as an example. Landorus-T has exerted its dominance over the OU tier throughout the gens it's been available in (most notably gens 6 and 7), even without being inherently broken. Thing is, it was so versatile you'd find it hard not to have him make it into your teams, since he was bound to be capable of filling out one of the open roles in your team, and it was likely he fulfilled that role better than any other Pokémon. This lead to Landorus-T on Landorus-T action being a common circumstance (most prominently in gen 7 OU), and "I've got my Lando in against the opponent's Lando again, time to flip a coin to decide whether I should U-turn or HP Ice" becoming sort of a meme. This is not the best example but I hope it gets across my point reasonably well, and goes back to the "goats clashing heads" observation Fudj made in the video. Last but most definitely not least, expresiveness. Expressiveness is in more than one way related to movement, but I'll treat it separately the same way you did. Both Smash 4 and Ultimate characters generally lack in room for expresiveness. There's exceptions in both games (Sheik in Smash 4 and ZSS in Ultimate are both very good examples), but most characters follow a very straightforward gameplan. Where the games differ is in the expresiveness they allow the players to show. Yes, Smash 4 Mario will punish you with very similar BS combos, but against other good characters the Mario player would have to find the way to win neutral in order to successfully get in and deliver those combos. Yes, low tier Smash 4 Palutena's only grounded options are Jab and Grab, but those two moves, along with the general ground game mechanics of Smash 4, were enough to make her ground game dynamic. The gameplan might be formulaic, but it's the execution of said gameplan which allows the player to express themselves. Like I said, expresiveness is tied to a grander scheme of things, and just like I think movement options being more skill expressive (less "goat clashy") in Smash 4 allow for more expressive gameplay, I believe the balance of the game takes away from it. Some characters were so universally oppressive they enforced a certain gameplan upon the opposing character, which usually lead to more uninteresting and inhibited gameplay, something you are much less likely to see in Ultimate as a result of its better overall balance. On a sidenote, I wanted to point out that I agree with you on Falco feeling more expressive in Ultimate than he did in Smash 4, which is funny since he's one of the primary examples people give of characters whose gameplan boils down to landing their one big gimmick you were scorning. I believe online should be left out of the conversation when talking about a game's competitive failings. It might stand in the way of easier access to high level practice, but I'm only considering offline play when making all of my other points. Finally, just like you told Fudj, you, just like me, are entitled to feel the way you do about Smash 4 and Ultimate competitively, by no means do I want to put your opinions down. Moreover, if you are the Osiris who I think you are, I respect and acknowledge your Smash achievements too. I merely wanted to debate (mostly argue against) the points put forth in your comment and give my two cents regarding the whole topic at hand. I sincerely hope you enjoy Ultimate competitively on behalf of the players who find it really hard to do so like myself.
Great video. Although, regarding parrying being useless against projectiles, you don't want to make projectiles useless either. I think Sakurai stated (but I'll have to find a source on that), that parrying isn't so strong against projectiles because of how in Street Fighter 3, parrying made projectiles straight up useless because of how good it was.
theboy 2 The Cstick also inputs movement so you can't use it to control exactly where you want to space. The reason why this is an issue is Melee's Cstick didn't move your character. Nintendo had it right before but they made it worse like dash dancing
@theboy 2 from what i've gathered, it was an issue that was discussed about what controller was more optimal during dash dancing. A gamecube controller in comparison to the BOXX would lead to a few losses in frame due to melee's input system where BOXX apparently didn't have this problem.
@theboy 2 no, the dash dancing arguement was stemmed from the "should b0xx be legal?" arguement and that it was likely thats what you specifically came across the melee dash dance problem
The game to me seems it put heavy focus on the appearance of the graphics/designs by declining roll-back because it didn’t look good, to the hit boxes of the game to the buffer system which is an absolute mess it’s like playing a shell of game I once knew. Trying to hit the opponent and connect combos are un fun due to launch rate and lack of hit stun, mixed with DI is incredibly aggravating to play through. This game is painful if played competive you will surely only upset yourself with the disappointment and dissatisfaction. Odd how consumers buy the game and play for a couple hours forever in their life compared to the dedicated players who will play more hours than your fingers can count.
You have no idea how much me and my friends have been trying to like this game, probably as much as you did, we kept feeling frustrated at its online, controls, mostly everything, I really hope they fix this game, it has the characters i like the most, greninja, ridley, incineroar, but the movement and buffering ruins the experience, it gives this tilting feeling every time i ever play it..
I've been in a different boat, I'm the only one of my friends who thinks this game is unbearable competitively. I've been saying for the longest time that the game lacks an interesting neutral game and almost unpunishable moves that results into an almost camping fighting game where nobody knows how good a move will actually be because shields are horrific and parrying does nothing.
We should all go to smash flash 2 on the computer until sakurai fixes the buffer system and actually gives us buffs that matter XD. The only buffs that did matter in this game were charizard, diddy, shiek, and the shotos. Note that shiek (maybe)and the shotos didn’t really even need buffs
PumpOfWallStreet This is the same with me, I was criticizing this game at a point where everyone was still sucking it off and criticism was not allowed
@@salj.5459 It's still not allowed for me. I think the game would be so much better if they slightly tweak the hit stun too. It would allow for for better combinations and make the neutral feel less stand off-ish
Smash 4 Falcon's movement was a sight to behold if a player was able to wield it properly. Then theres Smash Ultimate Falcon movement.... LOL Lots of things felt off to me about Ultimate but I couldn't specifically figure out why exactly. Lots of the things mentioned in this video help with figuring out that "why".
I like Ultimate Falcon more than Smash 4 Falcon, I like how Raptor Boost now is part of his neutral, the new first and second hit nair uses and stomp knee true combos and Falcon dive as a real kill option
the worst part about the short hop aerial mechanic is that we have like 5 different button dedicated to jumping on the controller, it would've been way easier to simply dedicate one of those 36 buttons to just short up
Hey everyone, firstly I just wanna say I super appreciate how civil and polite MOST people are being about this video. Seems like a lot of people agree with the general sentiment of the video and those who don't are *mostly* voicing their disagreements in a rational manner. A couple have been needlessly antagonistic but they'll likely slink back to their caves on Reddit in due course.
I just wanna use this comment to address a couple of disagreements/criticisms people are voicing in the comments section because I have earnestly been paying attention to what you guys are saying AND because - thankfully, it seems like I've made surprisingly few errors in the video in need of correcting. So;
#1: People take issue with me calling Joker a "below average character" until he summons Arsene, and to some extent I can see why. Perhaps I misspoke a little bit in the video and it would have been better to say that the power balance between base Joker and Joker with Arsene is (in my opinion) just totally out of whack. I maintain that Arsene needs to be scaled back a bit but I want to see very few characters get outright nerfed so I think it'd be reasonable that you buff base Joker in other areas to compensate, right? Regardless, on second thought - yeah, maybe Joker is at the very least an "average" character without Arsene, I don't think much more than that though.
#2: People also disagree with me saying that the game is much less expressive and more specifically with me saying that you can rarely see tangible differences between two top/high level players playing the same top/high tier character. Sadly, I still just don't really see it, I'm sorry, I just don't. Maybe that frustrates you and you think I'm totally wrong - and that's fine! I'm not an unreasonable person and if and when people disagree with me, more often that I'm not I'm happy to discuss our differences of opinion as long as they bring their disagreements to me in a reasonable manner instead of being passive aggressive or insulting my intelligence like a couple people have in the comments, lmao.
#3: I'm aware that roll buffering was patched in 5.0, was it *fixed* is a totally different question. From my testing I've found a minor difference in the buffering of rolls, but I'll stress minor, and that spotdodge buffering basically seems to be exactly the same. I know other people who say they've felt the same but also some very reputable people who say that the difference is major. As always with Smash, concrete and reliable info is very hard to come by. I'll update this post in the future if/when I ever can tell what's really happened with it for sure.
I watch the game at a high level a lot, I'm still a Smash fan. And based on these comments I've seen people both here and on Reddit assuming a lot of things about me, that I'm "biased", "just an Ultimate hater" or that I don't know what I'm talking about. To those people I'd say, I don't mean to stroke my own ego but you can very clearly see footage of me in the video in Top 8 of a big regional event with Smash 4 Falco, widely regarded as a very bad character. I know my stuff, I did pretty well in my own region. If any of the Reddit brainiacs out there making false assumptions about me because they don't like my opinions wanna show me how their success/experience in the game outweighs my own, I'd love to see it!
In Smash 4 I'd cite Ally/Anti/Zenyou as a perfect trifecta of how expressive the game was. All 3 Mario players, all with very distinct styles. Ally was known for his strong fundamental play, which was super interesting when you compared him to Zenyou who had combos and tech down more than any other Mario player but lacked that "X Factor" that let Ally clutch games out against the world's best so consistently. Anti was somehow kinda in-between both these players with a super read-based and unconventional style of his own. People speculated so much that if any of these guys gained the strength of the other to make up for what they lack, they'd be unbeatable. It was a super interesting dynamic. This is without mentioning the Mr. R/VoiD, Larry Lurr/Light comparisons I make in the video although; granted, maybe I don't explain well enough HOW I think they differentiated themselves, I just didn't want the video to go on for 40+ minutes! :)
Sadly, despite people telling me to watch sets of a bunch of different Snake players or how much different Zackray's Joker was to MKLeo's, I still just don't see it. A lot of people are just kinda shouting at me that my opinion is wrong and that theirs is right and not really doing much to actually try and convince me, rofl. Someone said that because MKLeo lost to one Mario player 3-0 at Frostbite and then beat another one 3-0, that's proof of how playstyles can differ? That's proof of how the EFFECTIVENESS of said "playstyle" can differ, not how two players are actually allowed to express themselves through a game's mechanics. That's just "who deals with this situation better?", not "who deals with this situation differently?"
Again, if you disagree, that's fine! I'm gonna continue responding to people who provide INTERESTING and DISCUSSION-PROVOKING comments and ignoring those who just wanna be big dumbos. Thanks again to those who have supported! Hopefully you feel like checking out the channel and seeing what else I've got on offer? If you liked this one, I think you'll like a lot of my stuff :)
EDIT: ALSO final final thing I wanna address is people saying it takes too long to get into the meat of the video and that I don't need 5 minutes of disclaimers etc. The thing is that it's intentional. There's a lot of people on RUclips who just kinda wanna be objective and straight-faced and give you the "facts" and as a result they sacrifice any kind of expression or personality. I am very conscious of not doing that, I like having fun with my videos, making jokes and giving the viewer an idea of who I am, I don't wanna just be some nameless faceless voice droning on at you the whole time. I'm aware that some people may find the "slow burn" frustrating but this is just my style, it's what makes making videos fun for me. After all, it is only 5 or so minutes out of a 37 and a half minute video in which I provide some important background on myself, context on my experience with the game and give necessary credit to those who deserve it. I think the first 5 minutes are important and if they bothered you then sorry; but they are just a microcosm of me as a creator, I want to have some fun and show some personality. My stance is that if you have no idea who I am; I don't see why you should care about my opinion.
Basically tl;dr it just be like that
Fudj it is Sad that i argee with everything you have said in the video and here in the comments
That's all well and good. I think the expressive thing is probably the biggest hole in your argument, but we can't exactly make you see it our way. It's nice that you care about this game enough to talk about it civilly, and I'm genuinely sorry to hear you don't enjoy it as much as Sm4sh. However, I do feel that if a large part of your viewership is saying they see the expressiveness within Smash ultimate, it'd be fair to concede that there MIGHT be something there, even if you don't personally see it. Great video, great follow-up comment, hopefully you take this into consideration.
Pin?
Fudj I agree all the way
I left a pretty long comment that I have edited to avoid being more passive aggressive than need be cuz at the end of the day I do respect what you have to say, but I have many disagreements with your video, and would love to discuss this stuff if given the chance.
Agree 100% with the unnecessary difficulty of falling through platforms in this game. Incredibly frustrating.
Dude same. That’s honestly why I almost exclusively play on omega stages
They should bring shield dropping into the game like you can do in melee. Then holding shield would interact with the input differently and create a sense of game feel at least in that situation.
I wonder what they'll do. Hope they keep this game intact. I'm a melee guy but I look up to ultimate as a game they strikes a good balance of competitive and casual and I hope they keep that. Melee feels very serious these days and it's hard to get into when you're just starting out unless you're really obsessed or fascinated with the things you're able to do in this game. Which I am but if that's not there, you're just lost in a rabbit hole of techskill and what not and that's a lot to overcome.
What is the 101 of melee is way over the heads of any casual player and would likely take a few months to get down at any reasonable level.
I love melee for that but it's totally ridiculous for the kinda game Nintendo intended on
Especially when playing online. Sometimes I can't pass through the plat form so I just end up accidentally t-bagging and then I lose and my opponent t-bags me and I get incredibly frustrated...
@@doug2555 lol that sounds infuriating
I thought i was the only one dealing with this. Hopefully smash devs do change some of these things
At first i thought “what control issues” then agreed with every point
Mr. Potato yeah but the platform issues are realllly bad
@Mr. Potato it was the opposite for me, I've hated Ultimate for a while and this video comfirmed everything I suspected about the game. In fact this video only scratches the surface of what I dislike about the game
Savin Gark the input lag is the shittiest in the series and it’s honestly too much to enjoy. It feels like a completely different game, especially when you’re playing online. It was just horrible and destroyed the competitive aspect for me.
Rayyan Karim the 6 frame buffer is the worst thing ive encountered in my whole 20 years
Bairhug ikr? It’s even more mind boggling when you simplify just how bad it really is. Since the game runs at 60 FPS, that means there’s a 0.1 second difference between the button press and the command happening on screen. It’s truly devastating. A tenth of a second is just too much for competitive play. This is the number one issue Sakurai needs to patch imo.
The longer I play fighting games, the more I realize that MOVEMENT is what separates the great from the good. If the movement is expressive, the rest of the game tends to fall in place.
Honestly, that's why I enjoy Rivals of Aether a hell of a lot more than Ultimate. The movement in that game is so fucking good.
@@milkywayflea404 as soon as I read the original comment I instantly thought of Rivals too lol
Soul Calibur VI, one of the best buffer systems I've ever seen 🥰
💯
The game’s awful buffer system makes the most basic actions significantly harder to do that were easy in previous smash games such as dashing right after an attack, attacking out of shield, and fast falling consistently. There have been so many times when I got punished in such frustrating ways when I ended up walking instead of dashing out of an attack, and my c stick just completely stopped working for several seconds after I let go of my shield.
Good criticisms, I hope nintendo listens to at least some of these grievances
I have deaf parents. And they hear me better than nintendo or blizzard ever has.
Why would they? Sakurai doesn't care about making Smash competitive, that was not his goal when making Smash
MrEvan1932
Yikes.
@@ArylBarrel it's the truth
They don’t and won’t
Since brawl everyone has been asking for less landing lag on aerials. Well they got it, and now the entire metagame revolves around it.
@Rensi Hitstun? Wtf.
You want Melee combos wheres hit once and you're helplessly in the air for 4 seconds.
Smoke and Mirrors not welcome.
@@rayminishi689 I mean, I would like to be able to follow up If i get a hit, that's why there called combos. I don't wanna get 0 to deathed off of one random nair, but I would like to be rewarded more. It's really boring when you get a really good read on your opponents movement and, as a reward, you only get to hit them like twice.
@@rayminishi689 you sound like a scrub if ur whining about being combo'd for 4 seconds. "Oh no, the better player is beating me and I don't like it" sounding ass
@@blaz1ent786 You sound like you can't even do a 4 second combo lul
@@rayminishi689 you shouldn't be rewarded, or at least absolved of making mistakes. They need to be punished accordingly. In actual fighting games one mistake could mean an entire round lost. There needs to be a healthy balance
I'm a Melee player and I've been playing Ultimate seriously since release. I enjoyed the game at the beginning and I think it's so close to being great. But there's some design choices that just don't make sense. For me it's the pitiful grab ranges and how safe aerials are in general. I'm so sick of blocking an aerial and trying to punish only for the opponent to be able to buffer spot dodge before my move even comes out. I agree 100% with your take on how players play neutral and how the game doesn't allow you to play expressively. I feel like the game still rewards the player that plays safe more than the player that takes risks, and that leads to boring, defensive gameplay. Still a fun game in many regards, but I don't think I would have fun trying to optimize my play, since optimizing would just mean trying to figure out how to play as safe as possible. I'm glad we've reached a point where the game can be criticized.
And the fact that this game rewards brainless button mashing since aerials are so safe and shields are worse.
I play casually online, and the very shitty grab ranges even frustrate me as the Grab Problem has caused me to lose a ton of matches.
SSJ Mura smash ultimate is much more expressive due to smash ultimate characters don’t have a specific meta look at joker Leo and Zackray play totally different or look at teas Pac-Man against most regular packmans also pro players literally say then can tell who they can play against based on their style also look at palutenas grab range and also pivot grabs
@@poobear796 I'm talking about everyone outside of Palutena Grab Wise
Takoda Corliss what about pivot grabs
gsmVoid just watched this video with his chat live on stream for the past hour. Void didn't agree with every point you made - obviously, since you made too many points for anybody to agree with everything lol - but this spawned a GREAT discussion about the valid problems in Ultimate, as well as how we as fans should best articulate our criticisms of the game. Mad props, dude.
someone make a clip
@@cod4148 Far too long for a clip lol
Here's the timestamped link in case anybody's curious
www.twitch.tv/videos/586524939?t=00h50m09s
@Christopher Cruz ...huh? What does the age of any individual point made in the vid have anything to do with my comment?
They should have a casual mode and a competitive mode where comp is just melee. They should bring back wave dashing and L canceling, but wave dashing should trigger a 'dash animation' that's more similar to an exaggerated lunge.
That is all. Ultimate is alright but could be better.
@@zombieslayer095
Oh, I'm sure you'd _love_ playing as Naoto in BlazBlue then
One of the things I hate the most is that you can't sheild in your initial dash. Combined with how comitial dashing is and the nerfs to sheilding, it makes degenerate zoning more viable than it should especially online. And the issue with platforms was already solved with sheild dropping but they decided to take it out for the first time in the series. Really makes no sense and would have been a great, intuitive skill check.
I came into this video thinking "I really like ultimate, I wonder what he thinks is wrong about it" but as the video went on I realized how many of your points are true, especially with the buffering system. I think i've experienced every one of the problems you pointed out but I just thought it was my error. I love smash ultimate, so this was a huge eye opener to me and I now look at the game with a more critical eye.
Could not agree more dude I HATE the buffer system. Personally I play pac man. And sometimes it just rolls, it just keeps rolling. I don’t think those things will never be fixed, the buffer system that is. :(
I now know for sure why my inkling upthrow < neutral air/up air is hard to perform, and why I never picked up greninja in this game.
Sheep
I ask what the point in buffering off stage? Can't even count how many times buffer air dodge has killed me off stage.
@LemonDoski what do you mean? You're just gonna ignore everything else he said? Like for instance the buffer system and the methodology behind character balancing? The video in itself is "subjective", due to the fact that it is an **opinion**, its not wrong because you say it is mate.
Here's a fun fact on Ultimate's inherent lag:
Every Smash game has some amount of inherent offline lag. Ultimate has an average offline lag of 98ms. Compared to 64 and Melee, it's a drastic jump from their average of 58ms, and even when compared to the previously laggiest game in the series, Brawl at 84ms, there's still a pretty significant jump of 14ms. If that doesn't make too much sense or you don't understand how significant it actually is, it means that with the advancements Dolphin has made (which reduce Melee's inherent lag from 58ms to about 38ms) you could play Melee Netplay with a ping of 110ms (lag is half the ping, so you'd have 55ms of lag) and you'd have less lag than offline Ultimate. You can only then imagine how laggy WiFi Ultimate is.
Jesus
What is Smash 4s inherent lag?
@@Kapow59 77ms. Look for "smash games lag" in google images and you'll see a graph with all the Smash games.
I know they do that so online feels smoother but in all honesty they need options to turn stuff off
Just to translate this to frames to make it easier to understand, all of the Smash games runs at 60 FPS. At 60 FPS, one frame takes about 16 milliseconds, so Ultimate's 98 milleseconds convert to 6.125 frames of added lag, as opposed to Melee's 3.625 extra frames of lag on-console and 2.375 on emulator.
As for the wi-fi comparison part of this though, Ulimate's built-in delay is significant and would ideally be a lot lower, but those 6 extra frames are nothing compared to the 15+ that are added even on the best connections on Ultimate wifi.
Watched the whole thing. Cool video and i def agree to some of these points. The controls frustrate me so much sometimes (enough that we made our own video on them (which you know)) and dont even get me started on wifi... never played online, never will -.-
Thx for discussing this stuff in a cool and rational manner, and who knows what the future holds, there are still a few (prolly 6) more patches to come. Im still slightly hopeful that Nintendo fixes at least the control problems, maybe even buff parrying :P
- cFive
PS: HOW DARE YOU PRAISE THE TRASH MENU IN THIS GAME... IT BEEING BETTER THAN IN SM4SH IS HARDLY AN ACHIEVEMENT >:|
Also, congrats on the success of this vid :)
Thank you so much! I super appreciate the support and definitely wouldn't have been able to make this video if you guys hadn't paved the way with some of your own excellent stuff! :)
A verified youtuber not being near top comment? Impossible.
Hey u makes vids there pretty cool I guess
As someone who has nobody to play offline with and no time for locals, smash ultimate's online experience is tragic. I can't even see how my connection is to my opponent in an arena until I've waited in line! Breaks my heart
But its menu better than brawl and smash 4
Literally just called my friend who I played ultimate with everyday after being huge melee fans to say "hey remember how our aerials kept getting messed up? here's why" felt so nice to have an answer to my confusion.
One of the few youtube videos that is over 10 mins and packed with information back to front with no bullshit or filler. I love it. Thank you.
agreed
When you summarized Ultimate's neutral with goats clashing headfirst, I almost cried at how accurate it was.
Yes. I hate the majority of ultimate’s neutral game lol
Not really
Yeah honestly coming from Ultimate and then dropping it for a Melee, I realized just how far I got in Ultimate by drifting forward all the time, and that that’s what it felt like. Melee has been making me be more aware of those things, and probably would make me better at Ultimate if I for some reason decided to pick up Ultimate again
@@LRXC1 just play a defensive character if you don't like agressive play? Top level play looks nothing like this in either game.
@@coolamp I never said I didn't like aggressive play, nor do I think everyone plays like butting rams, but in Ultimate it felt like that is the only way I could play, and Melee opens up so many more options for creativity, expression, and movement, and I just love it.
I’m honestly sick of the whole “git gud” mentality in general. It’s only used to try and demean your complaints and criticisms and make you feel like it’s only your fault no matter how flawed the system actually is. And if they are wrong or seem to be frustrated about something, then offer to actually help them out and more easily realize why they’re wrong. The only thing you accomplish by saying “git gud” is showing that you’re a tryhard that only serves to make people quit and worsen a community because of it.
I mean u have to understand a game to a extent to properly critize but Ik what u mean better players ignoring opinions cus said player isn't great is lame; it's just a excuse to make annoying and lazy arguments.
git gud
if you're coming at this from the competitive standpoint, then you are very much wrong.
stev What because I want actual criticism to help me improve instead of the same 0 IQ drivel regurgitated over and over again lol
@@Shad809 no, just that if you're not accepting that, then you're likely not very good at the game
what i mean is, if you're entering tournaments and still haven't accepted that every time you lose an interaction, you could have done something about it, and instead blame it on the game, then you need to change your mindset and probably get better at the game
It is "DJ - THED" by the way. You were right the first time.
Anywho, I'm someone who used to play Smash 4 at a midhigh-level in the Oregon/SW Washington region in the states. But I've never been able to transition to Ultimate properly because I get too frustrated with its control, even though I do think Ultimate is the better game overall.
I've given up on the game very early on before the meta really started to develop, and I honestly don't know how problematic the other issues you stated is, because my perspective on things like how neutral plays out is mostly based on what I've spectated (which I haven't done a whole lot of either too). It's why I made that video about the buffer system. Hoping to shine some light on the situation, even though both of my channels haven't really focused on Smash that much.
I'm glad you showed some bits of that video I made here, and talked about the Buffer some more in your own words. I still think the discussion on this is pretty light, and needs to be talked about more, because from a game design perspective, there's a lot about it that's just unintuitive control that the other games didn't have and should really warrant change, but it needs to be talked about if we ever want the Developers to have a better chance noticing. Having them notice and make improvements like adding "Auto Short Hop Toggles" in the control settings, or fixing C-Stick buffering, or removing the Dodge hold buffer, would be such a nice improvement to a more intuitive control system than what we have now.
I think it's worth noting that Ultimate's input buffer system is obviously based on the one seen in games from the King of Fighters franchise, as are many of smash's core mechanics. However the reason KoF's buffer system doesn't suffer any of the problems seen here is that in KoF it only applies to the execution of special or super moves, all it's meant to do is make reversal timing easier to hit when inputting certain specific inputs for combos or wakeup/reset situations. It was never meant to affect movement, and it's very unfortunate that this oversight on the part of Sakurai and his team has created such glaring problems as it has.
Hey aren't you the guy who did the Eevee walking animation for pmd and some mlp stuff? How much more respect can you earn from me my dude?
Omg we used to g0 to the same locals when smash 4 was a thing
@@ShinyKelp Yup, also me!
Yup. The c-stick vs the control stick thing really killed it for me...I could not tell wtf i was doing wrong in some combos
15:23 So that's why I've had trouble with dropping down platforms in Ultimate, but not with the other games. It makes me dread Battlefield layouts so much.
Also sucks when you hate battlefield but the one chance to get a low ceiling is a battlefield layout lmao
@@mustard8148 Fucking F
it’s really frustrating that the control issues still aren’t fixed and never will be :(
Hayden the eeeeeeeeeeevil male eukaryotic organism idk about never will be tho, because until now not enough people have been vocal about these issues for nintendo to see them in a meaningful way. there's still a chance :)
Hayden the eeeeeeeeeeevil male eukaryotic organism keep hope my friend! Maybe in the future it’ll get a Project M-esque mod
Reese Scott I certainly hope so. Imagine the control issues being toggleable or an added ground option like wavedashing or perfect pivoting for grounded microspacing. I doubt they’ll be added but it’d be sick if they were.
Hayden the eeeeeeeeeeevil male eukaryotic organism Sadly Nintendo gets to that stuff right away:(
The Internet Is an interesting place yeah, instead we should be excited for when byte & barq come out
25:38 holy shit I did not expect to randomly see footage from one of my videos on here, what an honor!
Thanks. Something about Ult's gameplay always felt clunky despite the increased speed but I could never explain why.
Ultimate feels like trying to control a speeding car.
It seems to me that a lot of the grievances that you have with this game comes down to the lack of options (either through movement or through attack diversity) and the confusingly inconsistent interactions with the buffer system. The slower WiFi would be much less annoying with a consistent buffer system. Accidental dodging and the near-fatal endlag of off-stage directional air dodging would be more acceptable if they weren't so high on the buffer system. The top tiers wouldn't be so annoying if their prowess was due to the options that their attacks grant them (such Pikachu, Wolf, and Inkling like you mentioned in the video) rather than just one move/combo or gimmick keeping them relevant.
Having a FEW gimmick characters would be fine (in my opinion), but the fact that so many of them essentially rely on the gimmicks do make them feel so much staler than previous games. I completely agree with you there. There are so many characters that are expressive but are overshadowed simply because these one-trick top tiers are simply better overall. Joker and Wario are very close to being amazing, but Arsen and Waft (respectively) make fighting them a bit of a chore, especially since both gimmicks grow with time. Likewise with Lucario, whose gimmick grows with damage sustained (which means characters who struggle to kill are literally digging themselves into bigger holes). As you mentioned in this video, Smash 4 had some of the same problems: Bowser and DK relying on grab kill confirms, Cloud having the single most busted gimmick in the game, Bayonetta simply not being balanced in the slightest, et cetera. But if Smash 4 was often seen as "UTilt-UAir combo" game, Ultimate seems to be the "NAir-train" game, considering just how many characters rely on NAir so heavily. (The Ridley Discord server literally says that NAir is the best move that Ridley has; that's disappointing to me.)
Despite all of this, though, I've found myself loving Smash Ultimate's competitive scene so much more than both Brawl and Smash 4. Maybe it's because how much more viable the general cast is. Maybe it's because all of the love and dedication that the animations have. Maybe it's because of all of the different people sides of the Smash community finally coming together more easily after the schism that happened between the Melee and Brawl/4 communities way back when. There's just something awesome about this game that keeps me coming back to play it, even if I don't have anyone offline to play it with. For me, Brawl was too much of a slog for me to enjoy competitively, and Smash 4 didn't have enough to keep me occupied due to my not having any interest in mastering all of the tech (as cool Wavebouncing is as a term, I just didn't care to learn how to do it). Ultimate, though, has more for me, and it's probably the closest I've ever gotten to actually wanting to learn stuff. In fact, if it wasn't for Rivals of Aether, I'd probably be training for Smash Ultimate more readily despite all of these legitimate grievances that you've brought up.
I think that a fix to the buffer system, a fix to the online infrastructure, a better distribution of power within movesets, and actual meaningful buffs to the lower tiered characters would be enough to make the game almost ideal for competitive play. Ultimate is so full of "almost" in its execution. Some characters just need one or two key buffs to make them incredible. Some characters (or gimmicks) need one or two key nerfs to make them nowhere near as overbearing. The buffer system just needs a few tweeks to be as accessible as it was initially designed to be. I think Ultimate is a great game. It could be an outstanding competitive game too.
Thank you for making this video! I know that not many people will agree with you. If I hadn't been exposed to what a truly competitive game could be like (that being Rivals of Aether), then I most likely wouldn't have agreed with you either. I still don't agree with your assessment on character playstyles being exactly the same due to being optimal (at least not on all characters; there are quite a few characters-even high/top tier-that still have diverse methods of play, such as Snake, Peach, and Pac-Man). I also don't agree that Mr. Game & Watch qualifies to be in your "one attack overshadows everything else" category (though I do believe that he does have a few overtuned moves). But you've presented your thoughts in a way that I rarely get to see in about this franchise, and I appreciate your diligence and passion. Thank you for opening this conversation.
I hope you have a wonderful day, Fudj,
I think that there should be a few changes.
1) more hitstun, but not ridiculous melee level.
2) fix online, definitely. You shouldn't be playing in conditions that are literally unplayable and you shouldn't get matched up with people with items on or FS meter.
3) I think that grabs in general should be buffed. Although, maybe not grab combos. Rock paper scissors only works if the three options are equal, right now grab is definitely less than attack and shield.
what i would love, which will most likely never happen but still, is if they give some characters new tech or more potential of characters' movelists. Nothing as much as the fighting game inputs like with Terry and the Shotos, but still:
1. Ganondorf's Warlock Punch, on the animation where the hands glow at the last startup of the move, i want that to be a buff on his next special move, and being able to immediately cancel out of it so the buff isn't just used immediately. Something that is similar to Jin's devil buff from Tekken, (i think specifically Tekken 5 where he does the hand motions to turn it on)
2. I want taunts to actually give benefits to the characters, like with Street Fighter 3's taunts that give like buffs and stuff. For example, when Falcon does the taunt where he burns with flame, i want him to be able to increase damage on any attack that inflicts a burn on the opponent.
3. Instead of throwing them all at once, Sheik's neutral special should instead be that she throws one needle with only a light press of the button, and the longer someone holds down the button, the more needles get released once they let go, with each second adding another needle to throw, with the maximum being 6.
[Etc]
After a few days, I feel like we can agree that quite a few people agree with this video, or at least in parts. ^^
You could try to generalize him by saying all he wants is options but that simply isn't true. He mentioned in the video that there are too many good moves in this game and there is nothing stopping a good player from not spamming their characters best aerials. But it feels like there is no other way to play the game than one button spam and camping until something happens. Cause the controls are horrible, the movement is horrible and the amount of save moves on whiff and shield is insanity.
@@brlvper4 Yes, he does mention that there are moves that are too good. In most contexts, you could say that you have the option to use that move; in high-level play, however, that "option" turns into a mandatory action because anything else would mean actively reducing your chances of winning. When you say "it feels like there is no other way to play the game than one button spam and camping until something happens", that is the very picture of having few options. If spamming aerials is the only thing that will not keep you from being punished, then your "options" of approaching with a grounded move or a tomahawk grab are diminished to the point of not mattering. More MEANINGFUL options comes more varied gameplay, which in turn makes the game overall more appealing to the players and the spectators.
Yes, shielding is not as good an option in this game, and many of the characters who cannot spam aerials are worse specifically for it. Grabs are generally not very good either, meaning everything revolves around spacing safe aerials. If grabs were all around better, then there would be a more balanced interplay between aerials, shields, and grabs. That would, in and of itself, make the gameplay more varied and more fun. Ultimate has some neat movement tech, but it's stunted by how unintuitive the buffering system is. Though top players have learned to work around it, their movement cannot be as expressive as it could be if the buffering system was better implemented. The controls themselves are fine. Most of the buttons are fully customisable, and they do what they're supposed to do when they're not having strange interactions with the buffer system (which Fudj mentioned in many different sections of his video).
Smash 4 had many characters who are known for their DThrow/UThrow->UTilt->UAir->USpec strings (or some permutation of those moves). Brawl and Melee both had so many chain grabs that it seems almost necessary to learn them to succeed in some matchups at high/top level. Ultimate is not free from having a lot of seemingly simplistic and visually monotonous interactions (like safe aerials on shield), no. It could absolutely be better handled. I would love for it to be better handled in future patches. Maybe with enough thoughtful discussion, it could happen, maybe not. But if those past games can find competitive depth despite the shortcomings, there's no reason why Ultimate cannot sustain itself with its own.
I can absolutely be better. Much better. But if the buffer system were better implemented and more characters received buffs to allow for more meaningful options, then the complaints about spamming moves, overcentralized kits, and character balance would nearly vanish. A bit of online latency can be excused if you can trust the game to not eat your inputs twice (once by the connection, then again by the weird buffer system). Gimmick characters would still be gimmick characters, but their presence wouldn't be egregious if they could also play decently well without overly relying on said gimmicks. As I said in my initial post, Ultimate is so full of "almost" in its execution. I think that feeling of "almost" is why people feel the way they do about Ultimate's competitive.
When the melee net play system works better than ultimate you know there might be a problem.
To be fair, melee netplay is pretty good for what it is. When melee netplay regularly works better than Ultimate offline, that's a pretty big problem, lol
Playing Smash 4 through a capture card over someone's Parsec stream feels leagues better than Ultimate ever will
Except Melee's netplay isn't something Nintendo made, even if it's objectively better. This is from a company that more so focuses on it's own demographic (Japan) and with how closely everyone lives in Japan, peer to peer makes sense when everbody is nearby. Not so for the U.S. or other countries. Nintendo just doesn't care.
@@doclouis4236 Melee netplay is also peer to peer. The thing is, Ult online also doesn't work well even if you're in the same area. I played a bunch of melee netplay last night and it honestly felt almost just like offline
@@KurtMage Since we're on this subject, are we talking about emulation? Because if that's the case, then it's no surprise that an old game like Melee is running well on modern PC with netplay much like other arcade games. With Ultimate, you're playing on a console with a newly released game.
I didn't think that I was going to enjoy this as much as I did. I'm immediately subbing because seeing a fellow smash fan just want the best and have legitimate critiques instead of it being seen as hate is nice and just like having a conversation about what we could do to have the best game we can.
Smash Ultimate, the game we hate playing, but not as much as we hate not playing.
Flawless description
@@mrgibbles5427 Personally, I like Smash bros ultimate but I believe that more things from the previous smash titles like wavedashing, shield dropping wave dancing, etc.
Kaka Poopoo don’t get me wrong, I really like Ultimate, but there are times where I’m having a blast and want to constantly keep playing, but it can be SOOOOOO frustrating to the point where I never want to play it again.
@@mrgibbles5427 yeah I agree with you on that. It's so frustrating trying to get your main into Elite Smash without cheesey rulesets but you kind of have to in order to have a larger chance.
this is so accurate is hurts
I want my neutral to feel like breakdancing not a 5yd sprint
Also imagine melee with a score system like tony hawk pro skater
+500 for that sick micro spacing
What's nice about your comment is melee did monitorinputs and such, there was a grade system that gave you achievements once a match was over. And there was an achievement for tapping the directional stick twice as fast as the second faster player. My favorites were "all thumbs" whiffing lots of grabs and "sniper" landing every shot from an item weapon on a foe there was even one for using every attack your character has in a balanced manner during the match. They based a game mode off of this called decision mode which desperately needs to come back. You scored points for every achievement and 500 for every stock taken.
Clovie Pounders “butter fingers” -500 for missing the most grabs
bboy*
There is a score system
I hope many people will be able to watch this with an open mind, because regardless of whether they agree or disagree with what you said I think you articulated this video really nicely and are making super coherent arguments. I really felt it when you said that you want to love this game. Great video overall, I agree with lots of your points (except maybe parries that reflect projectiles) and i feel like although you left out some things that could’ve been mentioned, you covered some of the deep flaws of the game. If i were to add anything to it i’d probably mention the absence of lag on everything. Everything being so lagless has led to players throwing out moves, aerials and neutral airdodges with little consequences. Peing able to mash moves on shield with no repercutions, or smash attacks into buffered spot dodges being a legit strategy also encourage this low risk, safe playstyles you pointed out. Great video, super fun watch:)
I disliked it before watching. Felt good.
I play reckless greed
I party agree with your comment but what I like with how safe moves are is now the game is much more focused on offense rather than smash 4s very defensive play compared to ult. I do agree though that something are just kinda dumb like you said with smash attacks, but I credit these things to add a different layer to the game although most people may not like this opinion.
yooooo your guides are some of the best on youtube.
Spamming on shield is a big exaggeration.
Broke: Passive aggressively tweeting after losing a match
Woke: Making a video criticizing the whole game
@@chiztu you're
@@zero123alpha6 that guy deleted his comment didn't he
@@jbbajangamer yes
@@jbbajangamer what did it say? I didn't see it
@@meowpiplup1741 I didn't see it either I just suspected that since Zero123 seemed to be responding to a dude that isn't there, they deleted the comment
The more I play Smash Ultimate, the more I dislike it as a game. It's easily the most-polished Smash to-date, and it has the best balance of what the competitive community wants versus what the casual community wants. That said, its inconsistencies really bother me as a player, and its movement and neutral play aren't what they should be. Input buffering is a big deal, there's WAY too much input lag for a modern fighter (SFV has this problem too, so it's not like Smash is the only game that suffers here), the behavior of projectiles is super-inconsistent, and literally everything is safe on shield, creating a non-existent punish game until you get hit once. I still really like Smash Ultimate as a game, but it's hard to justify how inconsistent it feels and how horrible it is to work around that. If a game doesn't feel natural, the response shouldn't be "get better until it feels natural". The response should be "we should make this feel more natural and consistent so players make less mistakes."
theboy 2 no
@@theboy2385 I'm going to respond to this chiefly because I think you bring up an important issue in multiplayer game design.
I agree with most of the points you just made, but I have to ask the single question that all game developers need to ask themselves when designing interactions: "why?" Why does the game feel the way it does? Why is a person's natural reaction to do ________. Why should this mechanic challenge the player's reaction? Why should this mechanic NOT challenge the player's reaction? In the case of button mashing, challenging player habits is positive because it makes for more-compelling gameplay. Players build new habits and are able to pull off complex strings of moves that they would not have been able to just slamming random buttons. Something small lost, something major gained. The game becomes more fun. Your example of jumping after being hit is another positive challenge of player habits. If players could just escape that way, the game would lack depth, so they make it more-challenging to escape combos and strings. This makes offense more exciting and encourages players in a disadvantage state to find creative ways out of challenging situations. Again, something small lost, something major gained. The "why" in these situations have very clear answers that benefit high-level play. You force players to make new habits because breaking those habits can lead to more-interesting gameplay.
The issue I see with your philosophy (and ESAM's too) on the issues my original comment brought up is that the trade-off is largely skewed in the negative direction. What positive traits come from Smash Ultimate's buffer system? In my eyes, and in the eyes of its critics, very few. It's a step in the right direction in a lot of cases, especially with short-hop aerials, but its execution is abysmal. In its current state, Ultimate's buffer system is an unnecessary obstacle to high-level play that would improve the game across all demographics with a few tweaks. This video gives a few suggestions for tweaks that it should get. Plenty of other RUclips videos have similar or completely different ideas for how to fix Smash Ultimate's buffer. ESAM's suggestion that practice can alleviate struggles with the buffer system are partially correct (though the clips I've seen of him screwing up with Ultimate's buffer system in tournament play suggest otherwise), but he doesn't ask why that buffer system exists in the first place. Let's apply the question of trade-offs to some of my other complaints. First: inconsistent projectiles. Very rarely in Smash Ultimate do you find two projectiles that behave the same way. What's the benefit to that? More complex gameplay. Okay, that's a good upside. What are the downsides? Unpredictability, necessary memorization, and extreme frustration. Is the upside worth the downsides here? In my opinion, no. Let's try another: A LOT of moves are safe on shield. Upside: more-aggressive gameplay. Downside: very few chances to punish, which can lead to frustration and boredom.
Game design is a lot about balancing positives and negatives to maximize positive experiences. In some instances, Smash Ultimate does better with this than any other Smash game. In others, it could use a lot of work. It's fine to defend something that the gaming community doesn't like based on your own logic. I have plenty of opinions that other people don't like. I prefer Mario Galaxy 1 to Mario Galaxy 2 because atmosphere and music are more-important to me than the design of platforming challenges. I like Dark Souls II more than Dark Souls III because customizing and experimentation are more important to me than razor-sharp gameplay and pretty area design. Would those opinions change based on how positively I view the positive aspects and how negatively I view the negative aspects. Yes. That's how subjective opinions are formed. We take comparative information and make logical decisions based around our own subjective preferences. If you like Smash Ultimate's buffer system, than I think you're entitled to do so, but you've gotta give some good reasons as to why you think it should stay. What does it offer? What does it take away? ESAM fails to do this in his response to this video, not really bothering to look at why the mechanic is there in the first place and just saying that Fudj should get past it by practicing. Regardless of whether you like ESAM or not (because I personally like the guy), I think it's hard to argue that his response didn't just dismiss Fudj's original concerns.
Bottom line: When designing a game, looking at the positives and negatives of each design decision is INCREDIBLY important. If a design choice impacts the game in more negative than positive ways, that decision should be reworked. It's perfectly fine to like a design decision that a lot of people don't, but you've got to back it up with solid reasons to justify its existence. I'd like to throw this back to you by asking what good the systems I have listed as complaints do. Chances are, we either have different opinions on the positives and negatives, or we simply weigh them differently. I'm sorry for the ungodly length of this post, but hopefully it managed to get my point across.
Can you explain what you mean by projectiles being inconsistent because I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Also not sure why everyone has been complaining about safe moves as if they're broken. You could always play game and watch if you're gonna be a baby about it. (Just kidding please don't kill me)
I agree, the game feels a bit fucky with the buffer. Like, I try to work around it, but it usually still pops up a few times in a match, and I get a buffered role when I'm literally not touching any buttons and end up losing a stock for it at least once every few games. Sure, I'm not a competitive player, but I have played every Smash game for hundreds of hours and this is the only one where I've ever felt like something went wrong and it wasn't my fault. I can lose in Melee, Brawl, 4, or 64 all day and still come out feeling like I had fun, but Ultimate's buffer is one of the few game mechanics that really makes me dislike a game and get salty. The only other mechanic I can think of that annoys me that much is when RPGs have revive mechanics and the party leader getting KOed is an instant game over, contradicting mechanics. That's what the buffer feels like for me, cause this is a really fast game but we've got a buffer that lasts for roughly double digit frames. The 2 things just don't belong together. If there's a buffer, games should shorten the buffer in proportion to the increased speed of the gameplay
@@Chronoflation Are you telling me you never played other smash games and felt like meta knight and Bayonetta cheated you out of a win? :/ I have no idea what's being on in this specific comments section complaining about buffering.
If the second fighter of DLC pass 2 isn’t the “TURN OFF BUFFER” button I swear to god
It's gonna be Eliwood
Therrion ' please no more fire emblem. I love fire emblem but please no more.
@@AstridCeleste96 we can finally have Roy fight his dad
I like a bit of it but ultimate has too much, plus the fusion thing is annoying since you cant turn it off
I’d accept waluigi
I disagree with the whole difference of playstyle. You can't tell me mvd or Ally played the same. Or zackary and leo.
Shogun also has a very unique playstyle with Snake
I loved allys agressive play, while mvd is more slow and defensive.
For another example, Sinji "best Pac-man in the U.S." and Tea (Best Pac-man, that's it) while the only thing Sinji does it's camp in a corner eith bonus fruit, Tea just uses every option Pac-man offers. Personally, I think Ultimate it's as expressive as smash 4, but it's understandable why would you say it's isn't.
I agree with you. I can tell the difference between Dark Wizzy and Prodigy’s playstyle and I objectively think other people would be able to as well
Ally plays like an alpha male giga chad, and shogun makes it look like he’s a pm overlord
As a smash 4 and melee player primarily, I’ve realized over time just how little I actually have my inputs executed as intended in ultimate. Since I quit melee and competitive 4 years ago due to fear for the health of my hands, and since I started playing ultimate, I’ve come to appreciate melees lack of a buffer system immensely. I agree that I enjoyed smash 4s comp better exclusively because of how individual you could get with your play, and the emphasis on hard reads. I find ultimate far less satisfying overall, but that’s coming from someone who lost her spark in comp smash overall years ago. I really only play ultimate as a party game full time nowadays. I appreciate how customizable all the extras are in ultimate honestly. Regardless of all this, great video, I hope sakurai manages to do something about these problems in the future.
While I haven't experienced as many issues as you have, I respect that you made a criticism video on such a popular game. You laid out your opinions in a respectful manner with strong justification and evidence. All in all I don't have to agree to say this is a great video!
100% agree
I play Melee and PM, and I really appreciate this video. I cannot stand the buffering system, so I'm so pleased to hear a Smash 4 player's opinion criticizing Ultimate. You also helped show me some of the merits of Smash 4 where I kind of threw Ultimate and Smash 4 into the same bucket. Thank you again, I've shared this in several Discord servers!
Yea as a smash 4 lover, I hate ultimate and can't stand to play it anymore. Moving to rivals of aether. Now my gamecube controller thumb cap finally wore out from playing a fast pace game lol
@@Firenmage433 Rivals is great! Have you played Melee?
@@davidvkimball not in a competitive sense at all. L canceling makes it pretty hard to get into for me. Plus my sparring partner and I always get into games at the and same time. Getting bopped against someone who knows melee ain't the best way to have a good time haha
@@Firenmage433 I'm sorry you feel that way! If you like Rivals I bet you'd love Melee. Getting bopped in Melee is fun because wins and combos in Melee truly feel earned in a way that's unique from other Smash games. I hope you'll give it a second try! L-canceling really isn't that bad. :)
@@davidvkimball To some people it might seem dumb, but I actually think L-cancelling add this extra layer of difficulty and balance to aerials and shields. It makes combos less brain-dead, and requires you to be aware of what happens during your combo (responding to DI, techchase extensions). So overall i feel it just adds an extra layer of complexity to all your timings, you have to stay on your toes. It might not be for everyone, but I respect it for what it is, since its just another attribute of melee that just perfectly represents it's beauty; its depth, and level of control.
Actually loved the vid. I feel like I don't as often see comparisons to S4, mostly comparisons to Melee (admittedly I like those comparisons and wish there was a bit more of that here, but all good). I know it's hard to fit everything, but I had a couple comments:
- Firstly, maybe I missed it, but if not, I'm surprised you didn't mention input lag in this game. It's the most in any smash game by far and is horrible. Admittedly, the ridiculous buffer masks this a bit, but it's still inexcusable in a competitive game. SF5 had this problem on release and fixed it over patches. Ult will never fix this, because they don't care about competitive play.
- Might have been worth taking a second to also note that the short hop aerial macro is also redundant and unnecessary, because they added the two-button short hop macro.
- You say Ultimate handles rage really well. Probably not going into too much detail in this vid, but why? IIRC it took an up to 1.5x knockback multiplier and turned it into an up to 1.0x knockback multiplier. Definitely an improvement, but I still see no reason why it should be in the game at all. It's not even clear that it's a comeback mechanic because of the way stocks work, it can do the opposite. It just feels like an unnecessary pseudo random element.
- When talking about running through each other, I wish you'd have taken a second to also point out how poorly implemented it was. There are a ton of issues caused by collisions in this game. Here's one blatant example, but you can find tons, sometimes even with grabs pushing shielding opponents away (yikes): twitter.com/LeBigRussianPig/status/1190705591402008576
- I loved that you touched on this in thee section about buffering full hop aerials with greninja. You said that it was challenging, not in a fun/skill-intensive kind of way, but in a frustrating "why am I just fighting the controls" kind of way. This is a topic I have thought about and haven't heard anyone go into detail about. In Melee, for example, something being nearly frame-perfect feels fair and challenging, because the control and lack of buffer feels fair and understandable. The game does what you tell it to in a very literal way. You fault yourself for missing. In Ult, getting a sh aerial might also mean that you missed a similarly small input window, but it doesn't feel fair or fun. It feels like "this is a poorly made game." You fault the game for missing.
Thanks a ton for this comment, I super appreciate it! A lot of the things that I didn't go more in-depth on, i.e. the absence of endlag on most moves and how rage is probably an ultimately unnecessary mechanic (which I lowkey agree with but just wanted to say SOME positive things about the game without a caveat) are simply due to time and limitations. This video already took 3 and a half hours to render as is and I really don't wanna stress my laptop out any further, y'know?
Either way, thanks! :)
You are literally just being a contrarian.
The input lag for Ultimate isn't a problem, as the game has by far the fastest attack animations of the series, and the buffer system does allow for more frame-perfect inputs than would otherwise be possible.
Ultimate is completely on-par with plenty of other modern fighters in terms of input delay, it just happens that previous entries had notably fast inputs.
This change doesn't make Ultimate worse competitively, nor does it make it uncomfortable to play for most people. In fact, literally the ONLY notable difference that this change in input delay makes is that it's particularly uncomfortable for people who are used to Melee, since the timing for complex inputs is different.
The game plays just as smoothly as every other previous entry, due to the faster universal moves and lenient buffer window. It is strictly a matter of getting used to the new timing, and nothing else. That's why this complaint actually cues me in about you just not wanting to adapt. This was a personal problem that everyone else got over within two months of the game's release.
"Ult will never fix this, because they don't care about competitive play"
See, now I know that you're not only a contrarian, but you don't even give enough of a shit to pretend that you ever played the game.
This is the first Smash game EVER where they actually BROUGHT IN competitive players to help balance the game, and adjust patches based on actual complaints.
They have given universal shield buffs, lowered damage of projectiles against shields, increased grab speed out of shield, lowered the amount of downtime on aerials before they can grab ledge, and plenty of other major changes to the whole roster, for the sake of making the game better.
There is a roster of around 25 characters who are regularly notable at tournaments, and the other 50+ are still capable of winning sets. People have taken matches off of top-level players with characters like Ganon, Piranha Plant, the Belmonts, Isabelle, etc. All characters largely considered low-tiers, if not bottom. That would be downright impossible in something like Sm4sh, Brawl, or Melee, because the bad characters didn't have any good tools to compete with the better characters.
That's because this game put a focus on universally good moves, and is BY FAR the most diverse competitive scene we have seen, or probably will ever see.
It's not perfect, and I completely understand preferring the movement of older games that you're more used to, but yes, this is pretty much the best Smash game we have ever had, both competitively and casually, excluding anything like Subspace.
Buffering is a little clunky, but using the excuse of "this game is unplayable, it has slower inputs than melee, and is now only ON PAR with other modern fighters" is excessive, and the claim of "they don't care about competitive" is downright ignorant.
@@Gatchu137 fam calm down.
The higher amount of input lag in ultimate actually is a big deal. IMO it's the single biggest problem with the game. Regardless of if you think it's a problem or not, it affects gameplay in a lot of ways.
By the way, I'm a melee player. So my perspective is coming from years of competitive melee.
I agree with you on several areas. I don't think the buffer system in ultimate is that bad, or necessarily a bad design choice. It's just different from the other smash games. It's pretty cool being able to do frame perfect combos or options consistently. One thing I don't like very much in melee (or any of the previous smash games) is that in some shield pressure situations, you either have to execute the offense or defense frame perfectly, so it's a raw execution test. Ultimate gets rid of this since you can just buffer many of those options. I like in ultimate that you can just buffer short hop aerial follow ups off of throws for instance. I like that change. The buffer system is unintuitive to many new players though, which is probably a general flaw of the system. Ideally a core mechanic shouldn't be unintuitive to new players.
And how initial dash is handled in ultimate, that's another choice that I think while not necessarily bad, does make many people feel the game is unintuitive.
I think a lot of the reasons people say the game feels unwieldy and strange actually comes down to the input lag. Simply put, controls in any video game should feel responsive. I mean, I've literally taken game design courses where responsiveness is called a staple of good engines. Having input lag is fine, it's not like what you input has to happen instantly, but if there is enough of a pause between your input and the action on screen, your brain feels strange, like something went wrong, like you didn't actually do the action. To me in ultimate I feel this the strongest on the CSS. Literally I move the control stick, and THEN the cursor moves. Like there is a moment in time where I can react and see that the cursor HAS NOT MOVED, to something that should intuitively be an instant action. It's only a split second but it's definitely disconcerting. It's like trying to move your arm, and your arm doesn't move right away and then moves. It's just strange.
These are small issues though. The biggest problem in my view of how input lag affects ultimate negatively is how it affects effective reaction time. You could ignore everything I've said previously. This next part is really what I hope you listen to.
Let's say smash advanced frame by frame and you had as much time as you wanted to buffer your next move for the next frame, then you pressed some advance button and the next move came out. Smash would be totally and completely different. Neutral would revolve around either power shielding or parrying, depending on which smash game you choose. The game would be extremely defensive, to the point of never attacking anyone else (because most non frame 1 attacks could be powershielded/parried). The game wouldn't work. It wouldn't be a game. There would be very little prediction or skill involved since you could just react to everything. In melee, there's a bot called smash bot that can beat any human player. It plays fox. Honestly it's not very smart at all- literally all it leverages is a 1 frame reaction time and a 1 frame move. That's all it needs to beat any player. I mean it's internal logic could be as simple as (against any other character besides fox, falco, puff, gnw):
Am I about to get hit? If so, powershield or shine.
If not, move toward the opponent laglessly (walk)
If the opponent is in range, use shine.
If it hits, combo. If they powershield it, shine again.
That's a simplification but you get the idea. The point is that reaction time plays a very critical function in how the smash games work. Without it the game is totally different.
Input lag is important because it determines what you can and cannot react to.
Reaction time is actually super complicated (it depends on if it's audio or visual, if you're just reacting to movement, if you're trying to differentiate different movements or sounds, if you choose different actions depending on different stimuli) but let's just say human reaction time takes 14 frames. In melee input lag is around 4 frames. Effective reaction time is 18 frames (to differentiate different stimuli). So you can just barely tech chase characters on reaction (tech in place takes 26 frames, 18 frames to react, 7 to grab, 1 frame left over).
In ultimate effective reaction time is around 22 frames (because of the increased input lag). And combine this with the lower landing lag of moves in ultimate, and I think there is a fundamental design problem. I think moves with less lag are generally good for the smash series, as long as the risk reward isn't skewed. The problem is that ultimate combines less lag and more input lag. It's a double buff since maybe pokes are safe AND unreactable/unpunishable on reaction.
That right there is one of the biggest problems with the game IMO. That was really long. Hopefully that makes sense why input lag really does affect gameplay though, because it changes what you can and can react to, what you can and can't punish. In a game with already really safe pokes and offense, it makes them even safer.
@@Gatchu137 Also I'm not making any objective claims about which smash game is best competitively and I recommend you to not as well. It's generally not a good look. People can have their favorite games and there's little point arguing about which one is technically the best competitively.
@@mymyscellany I'm not trying to argue that less input lag isn't a good thing. My argument was that Melee had particularly low input delay, and many modern fighters are also around the same as Ultimate's 7-frame delay, not Melee's 4-frame.
If you're capable of realizing that you've made an input, and are able to see the input not be made, then you must be inhumanly fast. Because again, even Ultimate's input delay is much faster than any person's response time. The only reason it's noticeable isn't because you can see it, it's because you can feel it, and it's out of sync with your muscle-memory.
I'm not saying that Ultimate wouldn't be better with less delay, I'm making an argument of Ultimate not being slow compared to other modern fighters, and that Melee players are just out of sync with the new timing.
And no, I don't think pokes being unreactable is a bad thing. That's why they're pokes. Sm4sh had reactable pokes, and guess what? It meant that any character who threw out a reactable move would get punished for it, because the opponent WOULD LITERALLY just wait for the opponent to throw out a move, react to it, and win every exchange. It turned the game into exactly the scenario of "wait for the other person to commit" that people complain about.
Every single character should have at least one unreactable move, because that stops your potential from being limited to whatever frame-data allows. Shiek/Ganon was literally a 10-0 matchup in Sm4sh, because every move that Ganon did was within human reaction times, and so throwing out a poke was too big of a commitment on his part, basically resulting in "if you attack, you lose a stock". I'm sure Melee had some sort of comparison, lingering around in the bottom tiers. Characters who can literally never win against top tiers, just based on human reactions and optimization.
Ultimate doesn't have that. Even the most bottom-of-the-barrel characters CAN win against the best ones, because they have some sort of tool that they can leverage, and not be punished for. Even if the reward for winning an exchange is heavily skewed in favor of one character, the other character is technically capable of winning most interactions.
The only fault in this system arises when players carry over their mentality of "I should get a free hit, because they threw out a move that shouldn't be safe", when no, that's not how it works anymore. Adapting to the opponent's mentality, and properly capitalizing on what you THINK they'll do is a much healthier system than waiting for them to commit to something, and winning an exchange off of it. The game still has high-commitment moves, but characters are no longer losing matches for trying to leverage their fastest move in neutral.
It's unfortunate, but the only good implementation of the c-stick in the history of smash is in Melee, where each different c-stick input is treated as an unique input tied to an action, this ensured that the c-stick didn't interfere with anything else in the controls. But when Brawl came out, c-stick functionality was changed to be a macro of the Directional Stick+Button and is still this way and that's why smash stick down airs still fastfall to this day and why it's basically impossible to make this thing bug free.
Huh, so that's why my ledge-drop dairs always come so close to killing me
Hell in smash 64 the c buttons make you jump not as high as a stick jump LOL.
Well The C-Stick Also does weird thing on Melee, Like Short Hopping When you press up while Shielding
@@rgprosucctions1704 Yeah, but jumps, rolls, spot dodges out of shield with the c-stick are some of the few things in melee that can be buffered, so high chances it's a deliberate choice.
I don't remember which smash game but c stick used to allow directional buffer for attacks i.e. angle up or down for smash attacks by c sticking the attack while holding the control stick up or down. Those were the days of good controls though, not this jumbled up mess.
Dude, thank you. *THANK YOU* for bringing all of this up, you have literally put all of my thoughts into words about this game that it makes me want to tear my hair out. I cannot stand Smash Ultimate. I tried so hard to like this game, but I just simply cannot. The inputs, the character balancing, *the effing controls*, my friends have told me that I should accept these flaws and adjust, but it just makes the game so unfun to play, and tournament games have already gotten so stale because it's the same linear gameplay every single time.
I told my friends that unless they intend to overhaul all of these mechanics, there is no way that I'll continue to play this game. And the best way that I could describe it before seeing this video is that Ultimate *really* encourages you to play how it wants you too, and not the other way around.
So again, thank you for finally putting this into words for me.
Makes me thankful BBTAG is bestgame
Dont @ me
@@lilsoonerfaninmo why not
Can't you remap controls?
First off, love the level of quality in this, let's just get that said and done immediately. This video addresses problems with Ultimate specifically from the competitive perspective and you do a great job showcasing what you are talking about with visuals and simplifying things which is much appreciated as it is difficult to sometimes understand what top players are talking about when they throw out terms or describe things in ways that aren't simplified enough for the people just getting into competitive or for those who casually play competitively (I know that sounds weird, but just roll with it). Now as for the points brought up in the video:
-Buffering- Yes this has been an issue since Day 1. Smash 4's buffering system seemed perfect to me. There were maybe 10 total instances in all of my time playing Smash 4 from Day 1 where something got buffered that I did not intend for it to get buffered. In just the first couple of months of playing Ultimate however, the amount of mis-input buffers far exceeded Smash 4's. It doesn't look like they'll be changing the buffering system, but who knows, maybe they will. I've grown more accustomed to the buffer system, but it still results in some serious problems every now and then and if they ever tone the buffer system down, I'll be all the happier.
-Characters relying on one (or a few) very specific strong points or a gimmick to be good- As mentioned in the video, this isn't an Ultimate specific issue. The atrocity that was Smash 4 Bowser suddenly becoming somewhat viable only because of one new gimmick as opposed to addressing his weakness and buffing him around those areas is probably the biggest offender of that (that was ever patched in to make a character good) in my opinion. I agree that characters' weaknesses should be looked at more closely and then buffed accordingly to make the character better as a whole rather than giving them only one tool to make the character better. I also agree that buffing characters' strong points or things that don't really matter is useless in pretty much every case EXCEPT in the case where buffing those strengths really does make up for their weaknesses like Ganon's overwhelming strength, but at the cost of his pretty bad recovery (among other things). Even that isn't a perfect example because Ganon still struggles despite having overwhelming strength, so a little better than that I guess. Generally though, buffing a character's weak points will be better overall than buffing their already strong points.
-Movement- Were there more tech/skill based movement options in Smash 4 than in Ultimate? Of course, that's undeniable. But overall, I find that Ultimate has much better movement than Smash 4. Maybe it's just a result of Ultimate being faster than Smash 4 and overall more aggressive, but I disliked the movement in Smash 4. It felt too stagnant and stiff.
-Player expressiveness in characters- You mentioned that you could view a match between 2 top level Sheiks with the same costume and no name tags in Smash 4 and be able to decipher who's who based on how they play. I agree with that, but not just in that case, but in all cases and not just in Smash 4. People are people and no two people are the same. People can play similarly, but no one plays the exact same way as someone else. Now could it be possible that Smash 4 allowed for more expressiveness because of it's tech/skill based movement? Maybe. But just to point something out, no matter who was playing him, Mario was going to down throw, up-tilt you in Smash 4 and eventually up-air ladder you to the sky. No matter who is playing him, Mario is going to up throw, short hop/full hop (can't remember off the top of my head) down-air you in Ultimate and eventually up-air ladder you to the sky. So it then comes down to how do the players play their characters before, in between, and after doing character specific things and if we're looking at it that way, every player is going to play differently during those moments. Some might fish for an opening, some might play more aggressive, some might play more defensive, some might play in an unorthodox way, or any combination of any of these. This isn't even accounting for the character match ups, the current point during the match, the current point of the set, the current stage they're playing on, etc. My point here is that you can take any 2 people who play the same character in either Ultimate or Smash 4 and both players will have a distinct way of playing and go for different things during the match.
-Goats slamming into each other with horns- Nothing much to say about this other than I personally prefer this over the incredibly defensive nature of Smash 4. Just my preference I guess.
Last couple of things: Air dodge reading in Smash 4 was definitely sick and it's much harder to do in Ultimate now, but I think predicting an air dodge in this game feels more rewarding for me personally since there was more to account for what with multiple directions now being a factor. I definitely like the way air dodging is handled in Ultimate though over all other smash games. Parries needing to be buffed to be more rewarding is something we can also both agree on. As it sits right now, parries aren't always worth it and I feel that they need to be buffed to something similar to Rivals of Aether but, not to the same degree of severity or functionality. Online sucks? What? No way! Online is the best thing ever and there are never any probl- A communication error occurred.
Overall agree with a lot of what you said and disagree with a fair bit, but there's always room for discussion and I appreciate the fact that you aren't blatantly saying "x is better definitively and if you disagree, your opinion is garbage" like a lot of other people tend to do.
Beautiful comment on a beautiful video ! ;)
You hit it on the fucking NAIL.....I agreed with a ton of his points but also disagreed as well
....buffer system?
Trash in ult but good in 4
Air dodge reads?
(Personally) more satisfying in ultimate. Smash 4 it was difficult because no lag but in ult its difficult bc they can dodge in 8 different directions ....both difficult. Both satisfying.
Pikachu , wario and wolf being more interesting than say joker, palu, and wario?
Sure.... but pikachu or wario not being as good 🤥🥴 yeah ok.... and honestly jokes pretty interesting...maybe not Arsene but joker sure.
Idk ...he hit it home with certain points but others I felt he was wayyyyy of base and it seemed more like nostalgia for smash 4 rather than complete 3rd person criticism 😔
(Edit:) OH and I think you hit it on the fucking nail with the character expressiveness and movement comment 👏👏👏
never really had a huge buffer problem in ult, most things buffer the way they're intended, except sometimes I get an inkling Nair instead of Bair in the edgeguarding process, other than that I've had rare issues, and while I don't think the buffer is that bad I can confidently say the C stick dosen't work lol
@@sirstack59 I've never really utilized a C-stick, can you explain why it sucks so much ? :D
I hear a lot of people saying it's useful for certain characters and techniques, and then others tell the exact opposite
this is the comment i was seeking for.... the exact same poitns i was disagreed on him, the read on the airdodge, the doference style of playing the game, he being a litle to bias on sm4sh nostalgia and preffereing the movement and the goat slamming into each other with horns gameplay over smash 4 incredibly defensive gameplay
I'm somebody who despised the way Smash 4 turned out and will never go back, but you hit damn near everything about the controls on the nail. Ultimate does have very clunky movement and at times it feels like I'm being punished for trying to be precise with my button presses. Shields being nerfed is a good thing, but that combined with the poor buffer system and increased shield stun makes characters feel untouchable and unfair despite being more tame than the top tiers of Smash 4. The amount of times I've tried to buffer an aerial out of a parry and got a nair instead is infuriating at this point. I've used the c-stick for aerials so often that I've literally broken it, due to not wanting to press the jump and attack buttons at the same time. I wish the collision system was more consistent as well; in recent times I find myself asking "how did I end up behind/in front" of my opponent when I land next to them from the air.
I haven't lost complete hope yet, this game is still new, and Nintendo has been patching the game, even if it's slightly. The fact that they fixed a buffered roll problem and nerfed the shield damage of projectiles shows that they're listening, even if it's a little.
Great video, I hope people share this so Nintendo/Smash devs can see this and make some needed improvements.
Just play melee
In my opinion, the biggest problem with ultimate is its input lag. It’s a really jarring transition from Sm4sh to ultimate due to the weird delay and acting by reaction feels much worse. Especially sense this game is focused more on movement than other fighting games
The second you started explaining how the input buffer works, it was like everything suddenly clicked at once. I've had so many issues with the controls in this game since day 1, but couldn't put my finger on exactly what my problem was. At least now I know I wasn't going crazy.
One thing I personally can't stand about this game is how lagless everything feels. So many moves have ridiculously low end lag to the point where by the time you can react the opponent is either attacking again on spotdodged. Whiff punishing feels rare and almost character dependent. Obviously weak, quick attacks and well spaced ones are going to be and should be difficult to punish, but it also feels like really strong moves have little to no opportunity to punish (Mario up smash, Pichu ftilt, Wolf down smash just to name a few) My theory as to why so many moves are so spammy and low on endlag is because the dev team wanted players to move faster and go for more combos. In which case, why not just increase the hitstun? If you do that, moves can have more lag and become more risky to use so when they do land it feels more earned and rewarded but if they miss then the opponent has time to punish if they spaced themselves well. I just don't understand why the game has to be every character standing in a general area throwing out big aerials for seven minutes.
I feel like a perfect example of this is Incineroar's down smash. It hits super hard and hurtbox shifts him out of the way of most non-aerial moves to the point where start up is pretty much ignored, and then endlag is almost non existant. It can be spammed in ledge play super easily and is super frustrating to deal with at times.
I feel the same I end up like “In the time he landed, threw a smash attack, had end lag and then shielded I wasn’t able to drop shield and grab, what?
Play Sm4sh. The reason why 90% of the roster was almost never viable was because any "average" character or worse could throw out literally ANY move, and the opponent playing a better character could capitalize on that one move. Ganon for example, wasn't even a bad character, it's just that heavies were generally the worst archetype. If Ganon played against a Shiek, ZSS, Pika, Rosa, or like anyone in the top 15, and he even ATTEMPTED to poke in neutral, he lost the stock.
You don't want characters to have fast options, but fail to acknowledge that not making most moves universally fast has done absolutely nothing but create obscene power imbalances in previous games, and completely invalidate most moves, if not most characters.
Mario up-smash functioning as an out-of-shield option isn't poor design, it's giving him a tool with which he can fight these "lagless aerials" that you're complaining about in the same comment. And plenty of characters have moves like that. Cloud, Game&Watch, Pac-man, Mario, PT, Yoshi, and plenty of others all have tools capable of punishing any poorly spaced aerials on their shields. If your character doesn't have a tool to punish shielded aerials, then they probably have something else to compensate. Greninja and Shulk are both great, and neither one has anything capable of punishing shielded aerials.
It’s as if piranha plant’s back air took the hit of end lag for every single character, seriously have you seen the amount of end lag it has? If you fast fall it even slightly below the stage of FD or Battle field, you will fall to your death.
Gatchu This guy isn’t complaining that Mario’s up smash is too fast, he’s complaining that it has way too little end lag for how good it is.
Online is trash. Huge negative for me. HUGE. It’s freaking 2020. Barebone online options and terrible lag. The thing I wanted more than any character before the game released was GOOD online lol
cfalcon07 I know right? I just quit this game for melee, and the melee online experience is so good. Apparently it has good netcode compared to ultimate, because connections are always really smooth and not laggy
Cant run doubles with another friend online the game is ass
Me and my friend are just a few blocks away from each other, and when we play online it's so bad. It feels like we're watching a slideshow more than playing a game. Our WiFi isnt even that bad, heck mines actually pretty good.
@@NeutralL12 no u
@Photoshop Flowey no u
Honenstly i agree with almost everything in this video, it's great to see someone put all of Ultimate's flawed controls to light like this.
I do however think that you're looking back at Smash 4 with rose colored glasses.
Aside from the problems you did point out in the video:
-For Glory was not a better enviroment to seriously train on, and at the very least Ultimate's system allows for a bit more stage variety, it's still a pretty bad quickplay experience overall though so i won't defend it. That said, the addition of battle arenas makes the online experience way better, even if it has to be aided by external communities like Discords and whatnot.
-Smash 4 was criticized at it's time for being the most restrictive smash game when it came to movement and general options, even compared to Brawl. To suddenly act like perfect pivoting was this amazing tech that made it great when it was basically it's only non commital movement option for most characters is just blowing it out of proportion. Ultimate's dash may be resrictive in comparison but the fact that you can do so much out of it makes it a better option than it ever was in 4, which outside of perfect pivoting was basically just run and shield. The issue in Ultimate however is that it has no microspacing options, so i understand why pivoting is still missed.
-The point about expresiveness is a rather hard one to make, because a lot of it will ultimately depend on players and the characters they play. Fatality's and Nick C's Falcon play very differently, your previous main Falco now has some sick options opened to him both from up and down throw that makes his combo game quite a sight. It's going to look bad when you're comparing 2 of smash 4's better balanced and free form characters like Fox and Sheik with some of Ultimate's most straight forward like Palutena and Ike, i could do the same if i took Ultimate's Fox and Inkling and compared them to Smash 4's Cloud and DK. Of course Ultimate is still hindered by it's controls and technical issues, which is probably why a lot of top players go for the safer options more frequently.
Smash as a whole is just a very complex game that allows for tons of way for players to express themselves, to the point that the 2 games with the least amount of options still allow those subtle differences between players to show.
i agree
Fully agreed on that.
Completely agree
In Melee the differences between players of the same character are blatant
Falco: dragdown fair, utilt, utilt, up air, up air, up throw to bair.
C.Falcon: Falling Nair, dthrow, up air x15. Dair, to bair or fair.
Perfect pivoting is microspacing like you said...so yes, it was pretty good. I play Marth...so yeah.
Palu: Nair x3, fair to fair. Fair to DA.
Very Expressive Indeed.
Great video
I think that he really did not give joker enough credit he is a great character even without Arsene
Edit 1: ok so everyone is saying people live to high percents with base joker but first hit of fair into upsmash kill confirm with both regular joker and persona regular killing at 110 which is not bad for a supposed weak character
Yeah, compared to many other characters on the roster, Normal Joker is actually well balanced.
@@ElCampeador99 normal people just wait until Arsene to get any kill, but when you see Leo playing Joker it feels that Arsene is there only to loose the Grappling Hook agaisnt Samsora.
Blastoise88 people only wait for Arsene in quickplay and elite smash. People who play joker competitively know how to use him to do great combos without arsene
Joker is good, but Arsene ruins his character. Seriously, on day one of buying joker I immediately beat a friend who was an inkling main. He's a pretty decent inkling and we usually go neck and neck in matches, but as soon as Arsene comes out the game is basically over for any light weight character. When you move as fast as them and hit as hard as ganon. On top of that it's a mechanic that rewards you for losing (which is very unhealthy game design). Which is why it's a further issue for many light weight characters or set up characters that have a very hard time killing at low percent. Arsene also gets probably one of the best counters in the game that's very hard to punish.
@@auroraanshi639 you say that but whenever leo loses which is rare its because without arsene his opponents consistently live to nearly 200%
the goat alegory is perfect, I needed a way to put a finger on the weird back-and-forth nature of Ultimate's neutral, thanks man
O! Witam pana polaka
Isn't really nuetral it's more just mashing
I don't understand how playing footsies, a neutral technique in every fighting game ever, is considered goat fighting or button mashing.
@@Moss_Dude this
@@Moss_Dude because without any microspacing options, it boils down to button mashing. That's the "footsies" in ultimate. Smash 4 and Melee also had footsies, which were much more meaningful because perfect pivoting and wavedashing allowed you to quickly space just outside of your opponents attack ranges.
Semi-platforms are so annoying now. Being able to turn every stage into Battlefield was supposed to be a huge buff, as many competitive players would argue that it's an even more well-rounded stage than Final Destination. But now I'm always not falling through when I want to fall through and vice versa and I get screwed.
Nah, it more than benefits the spammers. The platforms get in the way. I wish nintendo could implement a card game element to the spirit collecting.
@@Joe_334 That and people wanna use platforms to extend their character's combos.
It feels like Ultimate's controls were almost designed to make players as salty as humanly possible.
I know right?
Exactly.
Seriously
That and the extremely linear gameplay.
This video totally puts a lot of words to the feelings I've been having with the game. It's that weird feeling of "I should be loving this...but why aren't I?" Great video :)
Ikr? I tried to talk about it with people, but they all call me salty. Coming from the PM community, i dont feel very welcome.
This game just feels so stiff. And I hate how safe things are on shield. It took a bit to get used to the ‘Smash attack -> spot dodge-> smash attack’ gimmick. Or having someone land on your shield with some fast aerial and then already spot dodge or roll away before you’ve even dropped your shield.
And for how fast and offensive the game was intended, it’s extremely campy. One person gets a stock lead and then plays reactionary on their back foot waiting for the other person to attack and then trying to make a hard punish. Either that or they just spam safe aerials to set up a wall (Link’s Nair)
This is most hand holding smash now button Mashers get rewarded on block or on wiff. What's that u miss time a move or was hitting buttons out of hit stun just hit any 3 frames button cause that's faster then anything they can punish me with even if they started the move before my Panic option unless it's a fast jab that won't kill/gives me 10% & basically just reset neutral. God forbid u trying punish someone & wiff cause they hit the 3 frame Panic option jump/ spot Dodge. risk vs reward is still retarded as smash4 but this game allows bad 1 note habits idk why they had the nerve to add spot Dodge canceling buffing a dumb invincibility option.
That's why having too much characters isn't good at all. A lot of them are so similar and if you're really try to improve you have to learn all the matchups and have matchup experience. Things like they safe attacks or the gimmicks that they have.
WTF YOU MEAN? Stiff? Not at all! Alot of things have always been safe on shield, stop hitting people's shields then. Yes people gonna use safer moves more often, why would someone intentionally use a bad move that wasn't gonna work? Since you know a character with a good Nair is probably gonna Nair alot do what good players do, and ADAPT!
EDEN SSBU completely agree! Just the Tipper are you going to respond???? Most of the complainers are casual players not trying to get better and adapt
@@errrcc True
After playing tons of Hollow Knight, a game where learning patterns, reading and punishing enemies is nessecary to survive and then coming back to smash ultimate I realised everyone plays like a Hollow Knight boss. I'm not amazing at ultimate but, somehow I'm in elite smash with Kirby, Pichu, Zelda, Daddydorf, Mewtwo, Lucario, Palentina and Banjo and that shouldn't be possible (for me). Fire Emblem players with the expection of Robin (purely because there are not many online) seem to have only one play style which makes them incredably easy to read and boring to play against. Joker players aren't actually very good but as soon as Arsene pops out the best strat is to just camp them and it usually frustrates them into acciently killing themselves because they're trying to back air you whilst I'm off stage. Either that or the meter runs out after a minute of camping. Cloud, Ness, Lukas, Mario I could go on but the lack of player expression is an issue. That and the shitty online. God it's bad.
i really wish wavedashing was in ultimate, at least to some extent. it was so painful when nintendo revealed that wavedashes would have increased landing lag. i think reducing the landing lag of wavedashes (but not regular d-airdodges) to ~5 frames would make the game much more expressive and free-form
Shulk actually had it (a recent Most Valuable Gaming video shows it) besides Joker's gun dash but I know you want something universal.
Pretty sure Pikachu can wavedash and Shulk can 100% wavedash using dial storage.
BNZ! Sakurai doesn’t want to make another melee so he’s not going make wavedashing useful
Shun Y all characters can wavedash in ultimate, but it’s very laggy and so a niche option at best. Wavelanding is decent though, and Shulk has a fast wavedash tech. We’ll see if it gets used
Wavedashing actually works pretty well for ice climbers. It really depends on how a characters air dodge is
Just glad the honeymoon period is over. Year and a half everything this game did got praised
No, even a year and a half ago people agreed the online is garbage
If you ask me, Smash Ultimate was only as good as alot of these YTers describe in that honey moon period
Vs other games say BBTAG Or FighterZ stand on their own for good reasons and theyre probably gonna last for a while
Year and a half ago all the melee player were talking about how trash the game is. :/
@@HONEST-xj4rr Name one person
And so? Melee has a shitload of trappings too. Whats your point?
@@lilsoonerfaninmo My point is that not everyone was talking about how amazing ultimate is. Tweek even made a tweet about it on April of 2019. I just thought maybe people didn't know or something so I just put it out there.
Even though I love Ultimate and will continue playing it, I can see why you wouldn’t enjoy it and your points are very valid. I’d also like to point out that there are still some high tiers/viable characters with lots of success that don’t really rely on gimmicks or a single move like Mario and Fox. Plus, while Pac-Man and ROB are indeed much better than they’ve ever been, this is mainly due to the buffs they received in the transition to Ultimate and that many of the zoners in the game(Isabelle, Belmonts, Villager, Zelda) are not nearly as viable right now. Other than that, great, well explained vid!
Not to mention projectile shield damage became almost non existent in a rather early balance patch.
Yeah zoners are not the best and immage that psrry would reflect projectiles. That would kill some characters
ok but have you ever played a mario
Mario's up air is absolutely the single most important move in his set, and he relies on it greatly
Nivek Boats maybe I just play the character wrong, but I find I use back air a lot more in neutral. Sure, up air is great for combos, but it’s not centralizing in my opinion. Mario just has really great aerials, allowing for his combos to just flow. Look at the difference between Zenyou and Dark Wizzy’s playstyle. The character is actually quite expressive. Or.. maybe I’m just biased, because I love playing Mario.😅
Honestly the online of Sma5h has never ceased to make me sad. I love the game, and have spent a lot of time doing everything I can in it (don't even get me started on spirits) but I've never been able to play online due to internet. As an intermediate player, not quite competitive, I have never won a game on quickplay. The input lag combined with buffering has led to about 50 games of frustration in multiple sessions, leaving me uninterested and playing against CPUs by myself.
I really love this game. I want to play often, and get better.
But I can't, and it makes me very sad.
I played world of light twice. The online isn't even worth having when falcon is broken in ultimate and every other character has full stage insta-kill attacks without even a smash ball. New smash is just a wacky unorganized bloodbath like call of duty
Honestly you're better off the online, this online is so bad that you even get punished for your opponent disconnecting, I have been banned for hours because my opponents dropping, before the quarantine I had a few hours to play, I would try to do a few quick matches just to be connected with a player that would disconnect the moment I got one stock ahead, and get banned for the little time I had for playing ruining my time off, you can't complain or appeal to Nintendo, they don't even know who to blame when this happens so they just punish both players, and I end up playing Warframe or Fortnite instead which don't even need the online on the first place making me regret spending those 20 bucks, if there was a third party option for online I would take it in a heartbeat, but sadly Nintendo would probably sue anyone who tries doing so, even when clearly they can't do it properly.
I do think this was a good video. However, while I clearly get that you prefer Smash 4, I feel you give it way too much credit without really addressing its flaws. One thing I think drastically improves Ultimate compared to Smash 4 is the changes to dashing. Dashing in Smash 4 was absolutely terrible because it was so limiting. It was one of the most committal moves you could do because you had so few options out of it. That’s why dash to shield was such a popular option. It was the safest and least committal option. In Ultimate, you have a million options out of a dash, helped further by the fact that aerials have so little landing lag for most of the cast. I played the hell out of Smash 4. Spent way more time with that game than Ultimate and I do truly love the game even if I think it is flawed. However, when I played, I played notoriously campy because dashing at my opponent put me in a bad position and camping gave me way more options. If I camped, I’d have them dash at me, putting them in that awful position. Ultimate actually made dashing a good option again and I think that, to me, makes the game so much more interesting to me. I actually like playing aggro in Ultimate. Running up and doing risky shit because I don’t feel like the game is going to punish me for simply doing the “running up” part.
I will agree that Ultimate’s controls are flawed. The C-Stick is coded so lazily. Why is Melee the only game with an actual well coded C-Stick? The not being able to buffer full hop aerials really hits home. As a Young Link main, one of our go to kill set ups is Down Tilt into Up Air. Full hop up air. And for Young Link, a character who can’t afford to screw up getting a KO, it’s ridiculously frustrating when I execute the aerial too fast and get a short hop instead. However, they did fix the roll buffering issue. I know this is Nintendo but maybe if we make our voices heard, they’ll fix some of these other complaints too.
I don’t agree with Joker being lame at all. It’s not like he’s carried by Arsene. He’s a very good character even without Arsene and I do think he’s well designed in the fact that, unlike things such as Limit and Waft, you have little control over when exactly you get and use Arsene. You can’t charge Arsene up or save him for when you need him. Sure, that’s not to say Arsene isn’t completely free from scrutiny. He can be pretty dumb, but the recent Joker nerfs more heavily reward playing aggro against Arsene Joker because it makes him go away sooner.
One character you praised that I do not understand why people defend is Wolf. Wolf is unarguably the most overrated characters in terms of coolness. Wolf is a stupid and lame character. Extremely generous hitboxes, ridiculously oppressive moves, some of the jankiest Smash attacks in the entire series, and, if that weren’t enough, give him one of the best projectiles in the game to force approaches better than most characters designed to be zoners and his recovery, which seems to be designed to be his weakness, being risky as hell to edgeguard. Wolf is by far my least favorite top tier in terms of design and people give him way too much credit for some reason. Easy to play and lame as hell to watch.
Also burying moves are stupid and should be removed outright.
I have believed for the longest time that Ultimate is 85% of the way to being the perfect Smash game. I think once the modding community gets a little more advanced and we can go back into the game, remove some of the technical flaws, and rebalance the roster a little. The end result truly could be the best Smash ever
I have no problems with this comment, but could please elaborate on what you think of burying moves? I personally love them.
@@HabitsRabbits same, they tend to have a good amount of endlag
@@HabitsRabbits same
Unfortunately just modding the game isn’t a good solution. Not that playing a modded version wouldn’t be fun or cool or better, it’s just that like, idk maybe 1-5% of players would play/even be able to play a modded version. It’s a lot more effort for the average person to mod smash than it is for someone to mod a PC game. It’s really just up to Sakurai/the balancing team to improve things for the benefit of the game overall.
The cstick in the game is retarded
I don't know why anyone would WANT to do a stationary buffered nair when you go out of your way to input a direction on a cstick
I actually loled at the kiss on the forehead with "it's ok you dont have to think "rofl
I only play casually, but thank you so much for illuminating why this game feels so awkward to play sometimes.
Considering how controversial and confusing this topic is, you've managed to hit the nail pretty hard with this video.
Congrats on 10K subs
I can't believe such a small youtube channel would make an insanely high quality video like this. I might have to check out more of your work
The stylistic differences argument is pretty bad and I don't agree with it. Tweek played Joker way differently than Leo and Zackray, Zackray plays ROB way differently than WaDi or other ROBs, Light plays Fox completely different to Paseriman, Tea plays Pac-Man different to Sinji etc. Not every player plays every top tier the same way. Shuton is much more aggressive than Dabuz with Olimar even. There's similarities but mostly everyone plays each other differently.
Edit: Forgot to mention how Leo lost to Prodigy's Mario, but 3-0'd Dark Wizzy's Mario much later because he's more used to that one rather than Prodigy's because they play neutral way differently. Prodigy is more focused on combos on platforms that'll kill the opponent at 60% but have higher risk.
I remember when the playstyle argument was used in the melee vs smash 4 debates, people used to say that smash 4 had a lack of playstyle diversity compared to melee
@@michaelflores2246 As someone who very much prefers Melee, this is very, very, almost objectively true imo. For examples, look at the videos on this channel: ruclips.net/channel/UCJm8r3p5IzhtKUAGiehMppQ . Despite the many players featured, many people in the comments are easily able to tell who the player is. Even though around 25% of players play Fox, it is easy to tell between Mango, Lucky, iBDW, Hax$, M2K, Leffen, Plup, Syrox, Crush, despite all of them having the same options and in some matchups the exact same optimal gameplan available to them.
@@AbatedToast77 1. Your sample size is stupidly small and holds no weight and 2. It does not account for people telling the truth
@@madmoxxi7397 I mean, I agree as a stats major. Sadly in most smash arguments you can really only argue out of your own ass because its so hard to get data on anything.
Yes and Tweek's Joker did significantly worse than Leo and Zackray. Dabuz and Shuton are both spot dodge smash attack spammers, and every rob just spams d tilt gyro and Nair until one of them hits. If you actually watch smash ultimate at high level then you'll realize that players don't play that differently while using the same character.
You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one, the smash community defends this game and it’s flaws (especially when it comes to the characters themselves & people’s constant spammy plays styles) but you were honest about what’s wrong with it. I really think this game isn’t meant for competitive especially since Sakurai never wanted Smash to be competitive in the first place. But by trying to appease to competitive scene and keep its fun party game vision alive he created Ultimate. A game where there’s a very fine line between either loving it or hating it.
This is honestly one of the best smash videos I've seen in years, extremely well done. The ONLY thing I would say adds to this game's downfall in my eyes is the lack of lag on a lot of characters moves. People again seem to think that speed = hype, but when a link throws a boomerang pointblank in my face and I shield it I should be able to punish it with SOMETHING. A ROB nairing my shield and being -4 shouldn't exist, I've had a Mario back air my shield and it's safe on PARRY. I parried the move, and he was able to act faster. Moves being safer in general and shields being worse in general doesn't make the game more aggressive, it makes it campier. It's, again, all just made worse by the awful buffer system in addition to poor options out of shield for a lot of characters, and downright problematic options oos for others.
One of Ultimates greatest instep in my eyes is they gave aerials ridiculously low endlag coming from Sm4sh, but didn't compensate OoS options in return. I also can't get over just how bad most grounded moves are compared to aerials. It means most neutral interactions are jump around and space nair/fair/bair on shield. It isn't very interesting when you think about it.
Cattlehoop tbh people don’t think that speed=hype. Sonic existed and everyone calls him lame,boring and spammy. And really most people say that speed=technical. Since we need to react faster and understand the game better than just playing a simple character like Bayo (smash 4)and Ice climbers (brawl) and winning.
Meanwhile Bayonetta is literally LAG the character. All she does is lag and cant do anything to anyone lol
I couldn't agree more with this comment. Ultimate, imo, did a lot of great things for the series like fixing air dodge and roll spam but the one thing I CANT STAND in Ultimate is how little commitment there is to a lot of moves in the game. Almost every match I'm in feels like both players are just mashing aerials and hoping that the other player just... runs into something instead of baiting out moves and punishing accordingly. To me, the window to punish a lot of moves is just waay to small for the type of game that smash is. I shouldn't be able to punish your jabs, but if a link down airs and whiffs, the result should be him getting hit, not me getting neutral air'd or up special'd trying to punish it.
There's no way you can't punish a move that's minus 5 on shield after parrying it. There's no way you're playing a character that has no moves that have a hitbox before frame 10. :/
I feel like what you’ve talked about here is everything that I’ve felt in this game. Really starting my competitive career in smash 4 opened my eyes to different tech such as perfect pivoting and all the footstool combos. And slowly I noticed in tournament sets everyone’s personal style flowing from their character. Me personally my favorite players to watch were fatality and nairo. Because they were risk takers and you could tell through there gameplay. Ever since ultimate came out I always found my self not as interested in tournaments or tournaments sets in RUclips. And when I did play friendly it always felt like any character had at least 1 or 2 things that were absolutely broken that made the matchup just unfun to play. I used to really be able to sit down and play smash with my group of friends for hours, without ever getting tired of it. But I usually find ultimate to get stale much quicker. I honestly love this game for so many reasons, but the faults that are present really take a lot of enjoyment out for me.
I was saying similar after a few months playing it. The “balance” patches are overall letdowns for not making the game more aggressive by not rewarding safe neutral and retreating play. It’s just not an interesting meta.
@@Hibernial thats subjective
I don't own a switch, but I always wondered why Ultimate felt so weird to play whenever I was with someone who did. The forked up buffer system makes total sense.
As a melee fan, I had trouble finding a reason why ultimate feels so "off" since the developers cranked up the speed of everything and lowered the ending lag of nearly all aerials. Your video was a good summation of the problems that ult has with general game feel. I don't necessarily agree that smash 4 was the golden rule as far as movement and expression goes, but it did definitely feel much more responsive. It is upsetting to have such a large collection of characters from my such great series such as K Rool, Simon, Terry and even Byleth (FE is one of my fav franchises and his representation actually does the series justice) representing their respective franchises so well with move sets that just don't feel good to control. I don't understand why the devs are so vehemently against allowing for options that can be employed to gain a competitive advantage, but in the end it really is just a party game unfortunately. The fact that it has sold incredibly well makes me believe there is no reason for the devs to change the game at this point.
If the game just had in depth dash dancing I don't think I'd find it so slow to play. Not being able to run through really does make the game 2 rams bashing at each other, the dash through mix up adds so many dimensions. Also, how free it is for people to get on ledge and not be punished is ridiculous.
Poor little thing.
I found Ultimate to feel way better than any other Smash game.
And the moves can very well give you a competitive advantage. You are implying that they are useless which they definitivly are not.
Smash is definitivly not just a party game.
@@KalebSDay
Learn edgeguarding.
@@Parpeing
Did I say responsive? No, I did not. Stop with such scummy things only because you are too ignorant to understand opposing opinions or arguments and badly want to force your limited view through.
Coming from traditional fighting games and knowing nothing but the very basic about smash this was a really interesting watch and was well produced.
3 things to consider.
1. Buffer systems are always controvercial. They present massive benefits and massive issues, and even games with EXTREMELY consistent rules can be frustrating to players on edge cases, they are extremely difficult to balance and increasingly so with move variables to consider. It sounds like to me Smash U added one or 2 too many options into the buffer system.
2. You should look into the issues with netcode for traditional fighting games, and the recent fight for "rollback netcode" and why it needs to be implemented into games, specifically something like Smash ultimate which is literally on a mobile device technically. Smash uses delay-based lock-step netcode, that causes any connection issues to translate to dropped inputs and game freezing. While it's difficult because of the potential for more than 2 sets of inputs in non-tournament modes.
3. Nintendo really needs to consider what they want Smash to be, a tournament game or a party game. The attempt to implement more competitive gameplay characteristics while ignoring things like netplay and buffer costs clearly means they are trying to cover too many bases in my observation.
I went from ultimate to melee, and I still struggle with my neutral habits from ult. It’s still holding my play back, in spite of the fact that I’ve now played melee for almost 6 months. I just throw out my best option and hold shield.
@Ben K Lmao enjoy the climb
welcome to real smash bros breh
I'm in the same situation how do I play neutral in Melee it makes zero sense
@@poopheadtwenty-seven540 what character do you play?
I don't play melee. Wish i did but like I don't like playing games on my own :")
But but melee is the best!! Even i can tell you that, i watch all the smash tournaments (yes even 64 haha) cuz i really love smash but watching some good melee is always the most fun! Anyhow GL to you! Melee definitely had a way higher ceiling than ultimate, and im sure it feels that much more satisfying to get better!
You hit the nail on the head with everything I feel about Ultimate, and even opened my eyes a little.
Honestly? That line about wanting to love Ultimate but failing is too real. I WANT to love this game so badly, but the more I play it, the more stupid shit I notice within it. I have never played a game that felt as out of control in my hands as Ultimate, and I've been a Smasher since the 90s with 64. It really took this video to take what I felt and actually put words to it.
I always felt very jarred in the transition from Smash 4 to Ultimate and I never recovered honestly. I felt like the game punished you for trying to play skillfully, and rewarded mashing and low IQ playstyles. It tries so hard to hold your hand that it actually interferes with gameplay, and makes me afraid to actually PLAY THE GAME since it constantly misinterprets inputs every other minute. I've never played a game that felt like it was actively fighting me as much as this one, and it messes with my confidence and head since I have to stress about both what my opponent is doing and hoping my system interprets my inputs correctly.
I actually did notice something was off with the buffering system when I first picked up the game, but I never knew it was as fucked up as it is until now. The shortop aerial shortcut buffer literally explains that 'off-ness', and so does the shitty hold buffer. I have gotten fucked over by the buffer system so much in this game it's unbelievable.
I find that I really hate fighting over half the cast since so much of the character design and over-emphasis on gimmicks made a ton of characters 2-dimensional one-trick ponies, especially top tiers. It's become a game of gimmicks and cheesing, and I hate it. I have fought thousands of battles on both Smash 4 and Ultimate, and I can say that I have seen more playstyle variety in 4 easily since it relied more on fundamentals and good decision making over gimmicks (not to say that there weren't dumb gimmicks in 4). In Ultimate, I could fight twenty different Palutenas and Jokers and they all have the the exact same playstyle, because there's no need for variety when your character's gimmick does the work for you.
The one thing I kinda wish you had mentioned is the low hitstun and lack of 'risk' when executing moves. Whiff punishing essentially does not exist in Ultimate because nearly every move is risk free, and it's a huge reason why I'm finding competitive scene less and less fun to watch, much less play. It encourages a lot of campy playstyles, especially when combined with low hitstun on top of that. You can get punished in this game for successfully landing a move! WTF kind of game design is that?
I really, really want to love this game as much as I did Smash 4, but it's current mechanics, shitty online, and overall metagame are toxic and frustrating as fuck.
There's a lot of fanboys both here and on Reddit, but you're not the only one who feels the way you do. Thank you for addressing the issues the way you did in a mature and informative manner.
Luceloupgarou Maybe it is just me but I never really feel like my inputs come out wrong for some reason. Well except maybe online if I get on a laggy match. And the gimmicks to me are part of what makes this game so fun but yeah I guess I am the weird one, at least that is what most competitive people tell me even though I play competitive as well.
A really easy example of safeness on shield is mario. You can do 3 up airs on shield and not get punished, because shield grab sucks and the up airs do way to much shield stun, not to mention how lagless mario is
Where the hell were you during this game's development? This is what Sakurai needs to read holy shit.
Smash 4’s online was pretty crap as well. But you make a good point with everything else.
Smash 4 character were just as gimmicky
I hate how well this holds up
We need "Project U" to fix these controls. Your explanation of pushing a bike on a stone path was spot on.
Absolutely amazing video - opinionated, eloquent, and accurate. Besides that, I just want to do my part in attracting more viewers by commenting. You have, by this, addressed a topic that hardly ANY top players are willing to talk about a year into Ultimate: Why are we pretending to forget about Smash 4? Why are we acting like the competitive life of Smash 4 was worse than Brawl? Also, no game attracted more new players to the competitive scene more than Smash 4. I think many people would argue against Smash 4, but behind closed doors, they would admit to it being more fun to compete in. I played in several tournaments throughout smash 4's lifespan, and until Bayonetta entered and ended the meta, it was genuinely more supported by the community. Most smash players do not like Smash Ultimate, so how exactly is it a better game? 2015-2016 Smash 4 may be one of the greatest smash eras ever.
Firstly, I wanna say this video was great. You made very good arguments and presented them concisely. And you were as objective as you COULD be. I say could because a few of your points about Ultimate's flaw and some of your praises of 4 sorta felt very one sided.
For example, Dashing. Its is MUCH better in Ult than it was in 4. In sm4sh you had 2 options really out of a dash. Sheild and jump (3 if you count foxtroting) it was a huge commitment and many characters had no really pay offs for doing so, leading into really basic and safe neutral. Approaching was deincentivised. And while foxtroting and perfect pivot were honestly super cool, its was more an abuse of how the game handles movement as opposed to intentional tech.
That's actually something I feel not enough people address: the difference between a mechanic and an oversight. It feels like if an oversight or abuse of the game's coding is cool or useful, its tech. If it isnt, then it's a flaw. Perfect pivot and pivot cancel are both just using game inputs in a way that makes the game act in a useful manner, but still unconventionally, and maybe even unintentionally.
I played a lot of both 4 and ultimate, and while both had control issue ino, I think you give smash 4 waaaaay too much credit. 4 felt incredibly unresponsive (to me) and I love how much quicker Ultimate handles things. There are moments it feel a bit too fast even (like with the ending lag of moves that should be unsafe, and how sheild stun is way too high as of right now) but I honestly never feel like I fight the controls! And I play about the same amount of local and online. Also, and I could be wrong, but I distinctly remember a patch coming out that fixed roll buffering, or at least tweaked it so it wasnt so bad? Again, could be wrong, but I'm like 75% sure on that.
As far as characters, I agree that a lot of people are gimmicky as fuck, but I also feel like people actually like seeing that and just dont want to admit it. Like, they pick characters that they like the gimmick of as opposed to who they feel more expressive with. It still sucks, but I just feel like that's why it's so prevalent.
Last thing I wanna mention is parrying, and how you say it's not worth it. Frankly.....no. Not to sound too rude here but that is just not true. It is one of the only ways to get reliable punishes AND starters out of sheild, and while it doesnt give you advantage against projectiles, it removes disadvantage entirely. There is literally no reason to NOT parry
Other than that, I think this was a fantastic video. I just overall think you arent giving Ultimate enough credit competitively, and give 4 too much. Cheers
Im someone who played an absolute shitton of Smash 4 and went to alot of locals and I was really hyped for ultimate. But when the game came out I had alot of trouble to get back into it competitively. Interesting video
Saw ESAM talking about your video. I came here to see it before I see his reaction to it.
I've got to say : I TO regularly for a weekly in Paris, and I love Ult, never want to go back to Smash 4... yet I agree with practically everything you said.
I'm really on the borderline of absolutely loving this game and not caring.
It just sucks, plain and simple.
Al Dali as a competitive game, yes
as a casual game, no
@@Shadowhero43
Even casual games need to control decently well
Brownie_Takeshi agreed
Three thingS I want that Nintendo won’t add.
1. Turn off buffer system or at least be able to manage it with a slider in controls to give you the ability to decide for more or less. Buffer frames.
2. Allow me to run through characters. Bro I miss mixups like that.
3. Hazard toggle on stage list.
It's funny cause I agree with most of this but I can also see my preference for smash 4 is honestly blind nostalgia and I think ultimate is overall the better scene and I've had so much more fun with it.
I really hate airdodge in smash 4
@@asimhussain8716 Then it wasn't broken
@@asimhussain8716 Bingo.
I much prefer it because you were able to punish them hard
I liked the competitiveness of smash as a whole (Mainly Sm4sh and Ultimate). I've been in a love/ hate relationship of this game because of the flaws it has and I'm glad someone had the guts to say it. Good work :)
I wish you talked a bit longer about how safe spotdodging makes everything
Mr. McKlockwork you can charge a smash or jab if your opponent is likely to spotdodge
rt rt yeah, that’s the correct thing to do in this game, but in my (low level) opinion you shouldn’t have to read spotdodges. How about just punishing the move? Why is everything so safe? But an even bigger problem for me is that not just the moves themselves are safe, spot dodging is so safe due to spot dodge cancelling. You have to shield their attack, read the spotdodge, and then punish it really quickly before they cancel it and attack. I don’t like that personally
@@moosemeep3694 exactly. Spotdodging has no lag or down time after doing it. So why NOT spam it? Its unreactable, hard to punish and has waaaaayyy too much reward.
@LemonDoski you're implying i dont know how to read spotdodge. And i do, i just dont like having to do it, its tedious and lame and everyone spams it. Including me but thats just because winning is more fun than losing. Btw dont assume how good someone is by mere online statements.
I was an Ike main in Smash 4. I just find myself fighting this game's buffer system all the time. The lack of control I feel when playing urges me to play a more restricted playstyle than in Smash 4, which isn't how I played in Smash 4. I played an aggressive Ike, I relied on tomahawks and the occasional backflip f-airs. Now, it's just n-air and drift back. So to see a game that was expected to be more aggressive offensively being announced, I felt I would thrive. I see this game as a disappointment, in competitive form.
Online is a mess. "You want three stocks, no items, and seven minutes?" "Nah, take a Smash Ball, items, and HP". It's frustrating to deal with losing GSP, because you weren't near the Smash Ball or because the stage you were on has a death laser and your opponent is enjoying showering you with projectiles with no room of escape. A good concept in mind, terrible in execution. Elite Smash should be its own separate mode, not an extension of Quickplay. Just like how For Fun and For Glory worked. Back to Anther's we go.
There needs to be more control options, like the ability to change macros and a more advanced control setting scheme. The concept of GSP should be like other fighting games, give us some rank titles, and allow us to counterpick. I don't want to be stuck playing just one character for a session, and when I meet that one guy who I can ditto with, I can't.
This game could have been so much more. Maybe next installment?
18:16 "I have less than 1K subs" *7K subs 2 weeks later* That's some major growth...
I really enjoyed this video even though I disagree with some points. I think the results of the game sort of speak for themselves. The fact that the top players consistently take tournaments and the fact that we see a lot of character diversity at top 16 or even lower really says a lot. It says that buffer and control issues causing inconsistencies doesn't play a large roll at a high level and that the way you play matters so much more than the character you pick. Leo dominates with Joker but I don't see very many Joker mains near the top.
That being said, it's not a perfect game and I completely agree that more control options would be great. And even though we can overcome some unexpected behaviors with the buffer system with practice, it would be better if we didn't have to do that in the first place. The lack of control does feel limiting and I do think some top characters have very obnoxious moves that do everything and hit everywhere and are encouraged to be used all the time. Options for buffering would be appreciated as well.
Thanks for the awesome video. Top quality content.
Completely disagree with buffer and controller issues not being a problem in higher play. Pro players will always push through mechanical boundaries no matter the severity. Posing the issue of bad buffer and controls being something you can "shake off" is not a proactive mindset for improving something. It only helps in very minor ways while it negatively effects the game in much more drastic ways. It has no reason to exist and if it were removed the game would not only be better but more accessible, which what the buffer was initially added into to begin with.
Yeah the buffer doesn't affect top level play, but it still in general makes the game feel worse even for top players. Tweek has mentioned that the game doesn't feel as good for him as smash 4 did.
@@matter3669 My guess is that he was implying that it did not hurt top level play as much as it was implied in the video. While I do think that every game has issues, your right in some regards because every game having a flaw, does not mean it can't be fixed or addressed. I agree with the video in some regards, that the option to turn off buffer and/or short hop attack commands would be better than simply removing it, and it does have a purpose, to help new players. Just because something is in the game is targeted to a different audience, doesn't mean that it "Has no reason to exist."
character diversity doesn't matter when the game fundamentally plays the same for each character, a whole top 8 with only fox in melee would be more diverse due to how melee's mechanics let you play however you want with any character you want
@@neo-vl5vt so
I was prepared to dislike this until I watched the whole thing and realized how well thought out and communicated your problems with the game and why you have said problems are. And I commend you for that
Also if we are to bring up design flaws...
Can we talk about Falcon's dash😫
Why would you dislike before watching?
@@mehgamer467 this might sound stupid but I thought it was just gonna be him comparing it to melee for half an hour. The actual video was alot better than I anticipated
Also Falcon’s turnaround
smh i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/585/137/44b.jpg
Same for me. There were a few things I disagreed with, mainly a lot of opinions tho, but almost all the factual information here was correct
A lot of people including me agree with this video and I think people really enjoyed this.
It was a breath of fresh air hearing someone else bring up issues that I also feel are current in the game. Now that the game has finished ALL it's patches.
Would you ever consider making a follow up video on this??
I have! It's over an hour long lmao
You can make all the right reads on a person and still lose. That tells me all I need
Soooooooo
Luck based?
Totally agree with most of your points in this video. I was an Ike main in Sm4sh but in this game I hate playing because I feel like I am just cheesing my opponents out by NAiring all the bloody time. As Ike in Sm4sh because of your short hop animation you could weave in an out of attacks and feint pretty easily. In this game is just going for tomahawks / Nair and then dash Dtilt and that sums up most of his Neutral.
Also Online in how it is formatted doesn't work either. The fact that Rivals of Aether, an indie game, does online so much better then Smash Ultimate and Sm4sh is crazy. For Glory in concept was simple but work very well. The GSP system just encourages toxic behavior from everyone, and when you do find someone that is good and fun to play, you can't switch your character to see if you can counter pick as them.
Ultimate is Very Disappointing to many people, but it is not often spoken. Thanks for the great video!
Jarkey Bacon I also was an Ike main in 4. He felt so stale and boring in this game I dropped him even though he was so much better. He had so much more variety and options available to him, even if those options were worse I enjoyed it more
Melee, a Gamecube game that came out in 2001 and requires much more preciseness, and such requires a higher minimum standard to have "good" or "great" netplay, has through Dolphin emulation and the work of unpaid community modders a 1000x better netplay system than a game that came out in 2018 that requires you to pay for the *privilege* of using the shitty fucking garbage online.
@@AbatedToast77 True melee is pretty sick. Though I will say, I prefer RoA because its generally much more balanced and less buggy, but both games are fantastic and nothing quite rivals (heh) Melee from a spectators point of view. Its incredible!
@@yoyoguy1st Couldn't agree more!
@@JarkeyBacon RoA nuetral is pretty one dimensional, and the characters punish games and movement are really cool, but also one dimensional. It's the perfect side bracket game and TONS of fun to pick up from time to time, but definitely not one that you can play for 15 years
Finally, someone brave enough to come out of the "Ultimate closet" and say the big competitive flaws that this Smash game has. Props to you man, you are not alone in this.
Smash 4 is still the worst in the series.
Also there is nothing brave about this video.
@@armae1497 hahaha get out of here, hater. I didn't even mention sm4sh and yet you couldn't help thinking of it, maybe because deep down even you know it was more fun.
@@armae1497 Nah.
Hold that L
@@Ragnell_9 You didn't mention it, but the video did. Since the guy is more than willing to overlook really bad design in Smash 4, hell he even went out of his way to criticize the patches for being "bad," and buffing things that are already strong on some characters so they're just going to become overcentralized on one tool, but then went on to praise the Bowser and DK Up Throw buffs (which are some of the worst examples on how to buff a character ever,) because they "shook up the meta," (even though a patch not jumbling the meta into a mess for the sake of it is considered a positive.)
And let's not kid ourselves, Bayonetta was a problem, but Smash 4 had no shortage of jank problems. For every instance of "jank" you can point out in Ultimate, there's at least three or more that you can point to in Smash 4, and it's not like there weren't other overbearing top tiers in that game either. I love Smash 4, but it's been made pretty redundant because of Ultimate just being a better attempt at the same thing. Ultimate isn't clean of flaws mind you, even if it has less than Smash 4 did, but there's a reason people act like perfect pivoting is this godlike technique that makes this massive galaxy of a difference, because they need to overrate the things Smash 4 did to try and make it sound like a better game.
@@armae1497 3ds is worse
This is a really well made analysis of Smash Ultimate! It explains everything well and while I still love ultimate, it brings up a lot of issues with the game that I wasn’t able to detect since I’m more of a novice.
It's been a couple days since I first watched your video and I want to comment on it myself. First of all, I believe your comment is really helpful to put things in perspective, since this video does address more issues regarding Ultimate competitively than it does fortes. Therefore, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to disregard what you said, just discuss about/argue against it. I'm nowhere near as good as you were in Smash 4, nor can I boast of a competitive Smash career as long as yours (I started with Smash 4, so there's more than likely bias towards it on account of it being my first competitive Smash game). Last thing before starting, I really didn't like your aggressive tone throughout the comment, and that's probably what sparked this response to it, but that's besides the point.
Let's start with the first subject you talked about: controls. I agree with the main point you're trying to convey, that being that one can work around these controls, terrible as they may be, with enough effort and get used to them to without too much trouble, and I don't believe that's something that should be held against Ultimate as a competitive game.
Your second point was about the movement options in both Ultimate and Smash 4, starting with Ultimate's Dash Dancing deserving more recognition. Sure, Ultimate's Dash Dancing was a welcome change, but you could still do Extended Dash Dancing/Fox-trotting (excuse my lack of precision) in Smash 4 to achieve similar (yet usually slower) results. Furthermore, Ultmamte's Dash Dancing is rather stiff and lacks the free-form control Extended Dash Dancing gave you over your movement (then again, this was character dependent and usually slower, so each one brings with them their own set of pros and cons). Moving on to Perfect Pivots, which is the matter you expanded upon the most, and thus I feel that it's deserving of me elaborating on it too. To start off, yes, it would suit a faster game better than it suits Smash 4 (Smash 4 isn't that much slower than Ultimate, but there's a reason why Wavedashing, another Smash microspacing option, is so revered in Melee). As you correctly pointed out, Perfect Pivotting was a technique most people didn't implement in their gameplan for how much it's praised as a movement option. However, it's worth bringing up that Smash 4 was the Smash game with the least time on the spotlight (fall 2014 to fall 2018, and that's counting the 3DS days, without them it'd be around 3 and a half years of competitive scene), so it's easy to see why such a late metagame development would not be put into practice by many people. Nevertheless, the number of players who made use (and good use) of Perfect Pivots by the end of Smash 4's lifespan should not be scoffed at, which leads me to believe that (the following is a hypothetical statement), had the game be given one more year in the spotlight. This hypothesis of mine ties incredibly well with the next topic you brought up.
Balance. This is the point in which I believe we disagree most even if we do agree on something: Ultimate's balance is miles better than Smash 4's. Even pre-DLC Smash 4 had countless evildoers (pre-patch Diddy Kong, pre-patch Luigi, pre-patch Sheik which would have probably killed the game if everyone started playing her like ZeRo did, and more), but two names rise above the rest and those are Cloud (which I personally believe wasn't top 2, but that's a whole different conversation) and Bayonetta. It's irrefutable: Smash 4's balance by the end of its lifespan sucked and the game would have collapse under its own weight had it been given another year (hell, maybe another couple months would have sufficed for Bayonetta to put the final nail in its coffin), whereas Ultimate's balance is praiseworthy, moreso when taking into account its massive roster. It's after this that the disagreements start, and where I think you missed the point. Balance is without a doubt crucial from a macro metagame level standpoint, but if a game is not - and please excuse this totally subjective word - gratifying to play (player-game relationship), then balance (game-game relationship) is of little importance. I've been a competitive Pokémon player for a while now, and while I may be far from a notorious player, I believe I have garnered enough experience and skill (in a competitive Pokémon player sense, quite different from the kind of skill you would refer to when talking about Smash) to give some weight to my opinions. Let me use the infamous Landorus-T as an example. Landorus-T has exerted its dominance over the OU tier throughout the gens it's been available in (most notably gens 6 and 7), even without being inherently broken. Thing is, it was so versatile you'd find it hard not to have him make it into your teams, since he was bound to be capable of filling out one of the open roles in your team, and it was likely he fulfilled that role better than any other Pokémon. This lead to Landorus-T on Landorus-T action being a common circumstance (most prominently in gen 7 OU), and "I've got my Lando in against the opponent's Lando again, time to flip a coin to decide whether I should U-turn or HP Ice" becoming sort of a meme. This is not the best example but I hope it gets across my point reasonably well, and goes back to the "goats clashing heads" observation Fudj made in the video.
Last but most definitely not least, expresiveness. Expressiveness is in more than one way related to movement, but I'll treat it separately the same way you did. Both Smash 4 and Ultimate characters generally lack in room for expresiveness. There's exceptions in both games (Sheik in Smash 4 and ZSS in Ultimate are both very good examples), but most characters follow a very straightforward gameplan. Where the games differ is in the expresiveness they allow the players to show. Yes, Smash 4 Mario will punish you with very similar BS combos, but against other good characters the Mario player would have to find the way to win neutral in order to successfully get in and deliver those combos. Yes, low tier Smash 4 Palutena's only grounded options are Jab and Grab, but those two moves, along with the general ground game mechanics of Smash 4, were enough to make her ground game dynamic. The gameplan might be formulaic, but it's the execution of said gameplan which allows the player to express themselves. Like I said, expresiveness is tied to a grander scheme of things, and just like I think movement options being more skill expressive (less "goat clashy") in Smash 4 allow for more expressive gameplay, I believe the balance of the game takes away from it. Some characters were so universally oppressive they enforced a certain gameplan upon the opposing character, which usually lead to more uninteresting and inhibited gameplay, something you are much less likely to see in Ultimate as a result of its better overall balance. On a sidenote, I wanted to point out that I agree with you on Falco feeling more expressive in Ultimate than he did in Smash 4, which is funny since he's one of the primary examples people give of characters whose gameplan boils down to landing their one big gimmick you were scorning.
I believe online should be left out of the conversation when talking about a game's competitive failings. It might stand in the way of easier access to high level practice, but I'm only considering offline play when making all of my other points.
Finally, just like you told Fudj, you, just like me, are entitled to feel the way you do about Smash 4 and Ultimate competitively, by no means do I want to put your opinions down. Moreover, if you are the Osiris who I think you are, I respect and acknowledge your Smash achievements too. I merely wanted to debate (mostly argue against) the points put forth in your comment and give my two cents regarding the whole topic at hand. I sincerely hope you enjoy Ultimate competitively on behalf of the players who find it really hard to do so like myself.
Underrated comment
@@avibi Underrated reply
Great video. Although, regarding parrying being useless against projectiles, you don't want to make projectiles useless either. I think Sakurai stated (but I'll have to find a source on that), that parrying isn't so strong against projectiles because of how in Street Fighter 3, parrying made projectiles straight up useless because of how good it was.
the buffer system and useless C stick are Ultimate's equivalent to the trip mechanic
theboy 2 The Cstick also inputs movement so you can't use it to control exactly where you want to space.
The reason why this is an issue is Melee's Cstick didn't move your character. Nintendo had it right before but they made it worse like dash dancing
@theboy 2 so you literally made an arguement with little to no credibility?
@theboy 2 from what i've gathered, it was an issue that was discussed about what controller was more optimal during dash dancing. A gamecube controller in comparison to the BOXX would lead to a few losses in frame due to melee's input system where BOXX apparently didn't have this problem.
Also, it was part of an arguememt whether or not b0xx should be banned from melee.
@theboy 2 no, the dash dancing arguement was stemmed from the "should b0xx be legal?" arguement and that it was likely thats what you specifically came across the melee dash dance problem
The game to me seems it put heavy focus on the appearance of the graphics/designs by declining roll-back because it didn’t look good, to the hit boxes of the game to the buffer system which is an absolute mess it’s like playing a shell of game I once knew. Trying to hit the opponent and connect combos are un fun due to launch rate and lack of hit stun, mixed with DI is incredibly aggravating to play through. This game is painful if played competive you will surely only upset yourself with the disappointment and dissatisfaction. Odd how consumers buy the game and play for a couple hours forever in their life compared to the dedicated players who will play more hours than your fingers can count.
I can tell that you don't handle d-i very well.
Not to mention no more hard punishing air dodges in this game
You have no idea how much me and my friends have been trying to like this game, probably as much as you did, we kept feeling frustrated at its online, controls, mostly everything, I really hope they fix this game, it has the characters i like the most, greninja, ridley, incineroar, but the movement and buffering ruins the experience, it gives this tilting feeling every time i ever play it..
I've been in a different boat, I'm the only one of my friends who thinks this game is unbearable competitively. I've been saying for the longest time that the game lacks an interesting neutral game and almost unpunishable moves that results into an almost camping fighting game where nobody knows how good a move will actually be because shields are horrific and parrying does nothing.
We should all go to smash flash 2 on the computer until sakurai fixes the buffer system and actually gives us buffs that matter XD. The only buffs that did matter in this game were charizard, diddy, shiek, and the shotos.
Note that shiek (maybe)and the shotos didn’t really even need buffs
PumpOfWallStreet This is the same with me, I was criticizing this game at a point where everyone was still sucking it off and criticism was not allowed
@@salj.5459 It's still not allowed for me. I think the game would be so much better if they slightly tweak the hit stun too. It would allow for for better combinations and make the neutral feel less stand off-ish
@PumpOfWallStreet I’m on the same boat as u
Commenting just to help the algorithm.
same
I didn’t know that works but if it does I’ll do it too
How does exactly work?
I need the code lol
Smash 4 Falcon's movement was a sight to behold if a player was able to wield it properly. Then theres Smash Ultimate Falcon movement.... LOL Lots of things felt off to me about Ultimate but I couldn't specifically figure out why exactly. Lots of the things mentioned in this video help with figuring out that "why".
On god bro captain falcon in ultimate feels like all his fluidity was completely neutered in comparison to smash 4
Jesus Christ I miss Smash 4 Falcon soooo much. I never mained him but it actually broke my heart when I truly realized what he is now.
I like Ultimate Falcon more than Smash 4 Falcon, I like how Raptor Boost now is part of his neutral, the new first and second hit nair uses and stomp knee true combos and Falcon dive as a real kill option
the worst part about the short hop aerial mechanic is that we have like 5 different button dedicated to jumping on the controller, it would've been way easier to simply dedicate one of those 36 buttons to just short up
The good: this video holds up in 2021 :)
The bad: this video holds up in 2021 :(
Glass is half full or half empty type of thing hmm? Well all that matters to some is that there is water in the glass.