Thoughts on the 3DS Demo?

PowerUp

PowerUp

Well-Known Member
Finally got my hands on the demo today, and I'd be surprised if a few of you haven't as well. What are your thoughts on Smash 4 so far? I'm very pleased with what I see in the build. It's very hard to keep hitboxes out, and combined with no edgehogging, you have to make very deliberate approaches. If the rest of the cast is like the five in the demo, we'll have a very interesting meta game.

Also, Megaman is super underrated. I guess everyone was expecting him to be Toon Link v2 and just spam a shitload of projectiles the whole time, but the new system works hard to prevent that kind of playstyle. Instead, most of his attacks have tons of comittment but also tons of payoff, either in the form of damage, knockback, or coverage options. He's a very skill-based character with big rewards for reads, and there's always something you can be throwing to help you set up your next engagement.
 
NEWB

NEWB

Well-Known Member
If you've been around the smash 4 discussion thread, you'd know that only gold and Thor seem to have gotten the demo. Everyone else is stuck waiting till Friday :/

Or they are just keeping it to themselves.
 
PowerUp

PowerUp

Well-Known Member
Unfortunately I had to accept a donation from a generous fellow smasher. I chose the wrong year to not go platinum!
 
NEWB

NEWB

Well-Known Member
Ah, I see.

It's gonna be a rough wait but the wait will be easier in after a few days.

It also makes the wait for the full game a week less since most of us are waiting for the demo.

They honestly should have let anyone buy a platinum membership to just get it now. They'd make money.
 
Bent 00

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
It may be too early to judge, but I get the feeling that SSB4 isn't going to be nearly as fun as Minus... :/

I hope the Minus Team keeps at it for a LONG time to come. Minus is (IMO) the best form of Smash.

Once you Break the Limits, it's hard to go back. SSB4 just seems like vBrawl 2.0. It's still kinda floaty, slow, and tame.
 
PowerUp

PowerUp

Well-Known Member
I got the opposite impression, Bent. I actually think it feels more like Melee than Brawl. There's just no glitchy movement options (wavedash, l-cancel), so it seems "slower". Characters do float like in Brawl, but it feels good. I don't think slow is the right word...this game is deliberate. At least in the demo, it does everything it can to prevent you from mindlessly spamming [fAir, bAir, etc] and overwhelming your opponent with safe plays. It makes you commit to attacks, which makes engagements much more risky and exciting. There's a big emphasis on engagement...you can no longer push a shielding opponent off a ledge and into a long hitbox, and as everyone knows, edgehogging went the way of the wavedash. It just feels so...right. I hope all the characters are balanced as well as the demo 5.

As for minus, I'm curious to see what the team decides to do. If the full game is this good, I'm gone. If not, I hope minus will take a cue from it and move away from the seemingly endless combos that makes it so hard to enjoy at a high level of play.
 
NEWB

NEWB

Well-Known Member
I got a similar feeling as power did but I played the wii u demo at smash feat. The game does sorta feel like brawl but it felt very natural, very fluid.

This isn't an arguement against minus though. The same way project M and minus aren't comparable, smash 4 is also in a league of its own. Smash 4 just has so much to do! There is the challenges themselves but also the character building! Experimenting with both equipables and altered Movesets times 50! This game is made to be more addicting then all the other smash games.

As for actual differences, minus is much more mobile and most certainly has more combos and better recovery. Minus is very DI dependent while smash 4 is the opposite, relying less on DI. I can't say a lot more about smash 4 though.

I am certainly gonna keep tabs on minus, especially of customizations are banned.
 
Thor

Thor

Well-Known Member
NEWB said:
If you've been around the smash 4 discussion thread, you'd know that only gold and Thor seem to have gotten the demo. Everyone else is stuck waiting till Friday :/

Or they are just keeping it to themselves.
Click to expand...

I don't actually have the demo, my sister did but my 3DS isn't with me so the code was worthless to me (so she gave it away to someone else).

That said, someone around here had the demo and I got to try it out. I really only played Link (Mario and Megaman once each) and I thoroughly enjoy Link.

And I managed to pull off at like 90% (or something) Throw bomb upward -> utilt -> they hit the bomb while I double jump -> up+B for a KO off the top.
 
Tybis

Tybis

Resident Minusaur
Minus Backroom
PowerUp said:
There's just no glitchy movement options (wavedash, l-cancel), so it seems "slower".
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Nitpicking, but neither of those are glitches. L-cancelling (officially termed "smooth landing") is an intentional mechanic that was also featured in SSB64. Wavedashing is just how Smash physics work (momentum carries over from the dairdodge). It was supposedly discovered in testing, but Sakurai's team thought it insignificant.

NEWB said:
I am certainly gonna keep tabs on minus, especially of customizations are banned.
Click to expand...

That'd be a HUGE shame, because Smash 4 has the potential to be something very different, and potentially far more interesting. Until there's adequate reason to ban something, I'd hope they stay legal.
 
NEWB

NEWB

Well-Known Member
Wave dashing is an exploit to be specific. I'm sure power was just speaking generally, as he must know that.

I thought this new thing with smash 4 was what was in ss64, not l canceling.

Thing is, customizations are now known to be hugely variable. Competitive smash so far has been all about keeping things consistent in terms of rule sets and other such conditions of the battle. In smash 4, I'm not sure the opponent would actually know what build you have and what strengths or weaknesses have been tended too. DI is also less of a thing, so tech skill is not the most important thing anymore. People tend to fear what they don't know or understand, so it's really easy to just say ban them and run vanilla, which won't take as long to know compared to the hundreds of configurations you might otherwise have to deal with.

I certainly hope customizations are legal. This way, the meta game will constantly change, which is much more exciting. But yeah, there's the problem there. Customizations probably equals an unstable meta.
 
PowerUp

PowerUp

Well-Known Member
To hell with competitive smash. I will run tournaments where customizations and limited items are legal. Let vanilla tournaments compete against mine with their neutered rulesets, and see what catches on.

And yes, wavedashing is a glitch. A glitch is a temporary fault in a system that corrects itself. Wavedashing is movement resulting from a fault in the game's physics system (it is the exact same reason crouch canceling is a glitch). LRN2PROGRAM, boys.
 
Thor

Thor

Well-Known Member
The tournaments without RNG will be what catch on PowerUp - they had that discussion in like 2004 and the anti-items group won.

Glitches don't correct themselves - they can try but [I couldn't find the original 13 minute loop where they then rage-quit the game because they didn't get the escape.]

Wavedashing was never a glitch - it's not a fault in the system but a corner case of physics - when you dodge downward, there is momentum - that momentum will thus naturally carry you while you are on the ground, hence, a wavedash. It was not foreseen to have any use so it was not removed.
 
Tybis

Tybis

Resident Minusaur
Minus Backroom
PowerUp said:
You're hopeless, Thor.
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Yeah well, you're popeless.

world_pope_wideweb__430x247.jpg


NEWB said:
I certainly hope customizations are legal. This way, the meta game will constantly change, which is much more exciting. But yeah, there's the problem there. Customizations probably equals an unstable meta.
Click to expand...
Most TO's I've heard are supporting customization. There's not really much reason to outright ban them. The issue of not being able to tell what your opponent has is legitimate though. In SmashU, your opponent will know, but unless you tell them on the 3DS version, you keep an element of surprise (but that works both ways). I could see individual customs getting banned if they're extremely exploitable, but I'm suspecting that those issues may get patched if they're prevalent enough.
I'm not sure what you mean by "unstable meta" though. You mean a meta that doesn't stagnate quickly? Isn't that good?
 
NEWB

NEWB

Well-Known Member
Actually, that is what I meant, though I realize an evolving meta is actually good. I kinda got caught up in the hole consistency is ideal thing but that doesn't refer to the meta.

That or I'm just sounding dumb now because I'm talking about meta but I don't know anything about meta :/ beyond what it actually is.
 
Glyph

Glyph

Moderator
Customization is the part of smash4 I'm most excited for, it's going to give us such a deeper meta than ever before. That and just being able to know we can look forward to people doing things that will blow our minds with it even potentially years down the road just gives me chills.

Not as hype for when people start copy pasting successful builds and you have to play them all the time though.
 
Thor

Thor

Well-Known Member
PowerUp said:
You're hopeless, Thor.
Click to expand...

Hopelessness should not be confused with realistic expectations - I'd certainly attend side events with items, and Apex had one at least once, but they're not going to replace the current standard. That debate has been hashed out and a lot of people really don't like adding extra RNG (and people do not like various forms of RNG, including beyond items - as an example, it's one of the top 3 reasons someone who doesn't like Brawl will often name, and the most problematic annoyance named among casual players who don't know/care about competitive smash if they take issue with Brawl.)

Also there's an infinite (ZSS/Robin only though) and a bug that's been found, apparently Nintendo has/is releasing a version 1.2 of the game (I think it might be a patch?). I hope they don't patch for balance but only to avoid broken stuff (i.e., don't nerf a character unless it's clearly unintended/ruins only one character, like the way Robin can be infinited).
 
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