A smoother change for Minus

[Gold_TSG]

I've been debating for a while now to come back, but each time has been met with frustrations because of how slow and janky Minus feels compared to Smash 4. As such, I have a couple ideas in which to improve the Minus experience in such a way to make it smooth and greatly more enjoyable.

The idea in question is to add a better system similar to Smash 4 to allow actions to be taken more consistently without dropping inputs and risking going back into your stand before being able to act again. Reducing landing lag is all fine and good, but the transitions between actions feel clunky and slow, and sometimes unresponsive, so I would personally like too see those transitions smoothed out to make everything flow more naturally. Anyone who has played Smash 4 should know what I'm talking about, in how the fighting in general is just smoother and more fluid.

I feel that a change like this would also be a good reason to lower the hitstun slightly again, because you will be acting sooner and moving around quicker overall, allowing much better combo options, and reducing the need for characters to remain stunned for long periods of time just to be able to reach them.

 

[Thor]

I miss the old gravity and hitstun...

"You will be acting sooner"

Maybe you will, but if you actually grind out acting ASAP, no, you won't be moving sooner. How do you think the best Captain Falcon mains in the world can dthrow knee Peach in Melee consistently? It ain't cuz of buffering, I'll tell ya that.

Furthermore, if there's more buffering, there's more chances for online lag [a non-trivial aspect of Minus at this point in time, it seems] to buffer things you didn't intend to input [or input because it didn't come out from some oddities with lag and then the buffer causes it to happen more than once], which can lead to SDs and general frustration with being online and the game.

I'm against increasing the buffer in Brawl Minus, especially if it's anywhere near 10 frames. A 3 frame buffer [or something along those lines] may be passable, but I'm not in favor of movement buffering.

[Mostly unrelated, but if the devs could implement c-stick buffering OoS options (as in Melee/PM), that would actually be incredibly useful and an important addition for dealing with shield pressure and people attempting to use blockstrings into grabs, given that our shields are closer to those games than they are to Brawl/Smash 4.]

 

[Gold_TSG]

Thor, nobody cares about the best Falcon players in a game that isn't Minus. I don't play for the grind and tedium to do those things, I play for fun and accessibility, and I have reason to believe others do as well. If such issues don't happen online in Smash 4, why would they happen here? I'm talking about fluidity most of all, whether it be buffers or something else. Brawl is clunky, and that's the engine Minus runs on. If they can alter the engine a bit to make everything more smooth, that would be an enormous help. I spent a good couple hours trying to get back into Minus, but it feels so wrong because of the clunkiness. I can't act as fluidly as I can in Smash 4, such as something as simple as doing a pivot side special, or trying to act after a roll, or after aerials. I don't enjoy Melee for the frame perfect nature of everything, and I don't care for it in Minus either. I just wanna see it run better.

 

[Mawootad]

They'd happen more in Brawl online because Brawl WiFi code is shit. Anyway, tweaking the base game engine is generally pretty difficult and time consuming. Brawl already uses the same buffer as Smash 4, but there are probably differences in buffer clears and the like, do you have specific list of things you thin should buffer but don't?

 

[Gold_TSG]

I'd have to go through and test everything specifically, but it's generally transitions between actions that feel sluggish and unresponsive at times. Maybe it has to do with IASA frames?

EDIT: Just did some quick testing, and I think I can isolate it to the transition from air to ground, as I am unable to buffer a dash unless I'm on point, regardless of how low the landing lag is (further testing shows this to be the case with ground attacks as well). If there was a slight buffer to this, I feel things can run much smoother, cause having a small buffer for that shouldn't ruin wifi. The lack of it destroys me on wifi because everything with the lag is varied, so being on point in the first place isn't exactly easy.

 

[Mawootad]

There's a couple of things that could trigger that. Can you buffer out of landing lag (ie land in a long recovery animation like Luigi special fall and attempt to bigger something after of landing) or is it just you can't buffer and then land (eg buffering a special when landing during Peach fair)?

 

[Gold_TSG]

The way I buffer is during the landing lag, or after a move has finished. Example, I use Dorf's fair, land, and try to buffer a dash to give chase. Unless I buffer that dash within like 1 or 2 frames before I go back to idle, it fails to dash and I instead start walking. Same deal with a bunch of ground-based attacks as well. It feels a bit restricting, and it greatly affects how online is played due to varied lag.

 

[Mawootad]

Oh, okay. Can you buffer attacks and specials out of landing lag though?

 

[Gold_TSG]

The window of opportunity feels different, so I'm a bit more consistent with that, yeah. Still not 100% tho.

 

[Mawootad]

Hm, getting the buffer to match exactly will probably be impossible without direct frame data comparison and the like, but buffered runs should definitely be possible.

 

[Gold_TSG]

That alone would help things run much more smoothly.

 

[Neville]

The buffer in Brawl for everything is 10 frames isn't it? I don't know why some things would be different from that.

 

[Mawootad]

The issue is that run has a non-standard input and thus isn't caught in the buffer properly.

 

[Thor]

The issue is that run has a non-standard input and thus isn't caught in the buffer properly.

And here I thought there was already a buffer on running.

Ignore my previous input if the goal of Minus is to have a global 10-frame buffer. I thought that was being expanded to a larger value [15 or something], not just encompassing things that it didn't before.

 

[Gold_TSG]

I knew I wasn't crazy

 

[Mawootad]

You can buffer a run but the window seems to be way smaller.

 

[Gold_TSG]

That is why I complained~

 

[Mawootad]

So, after many hours of looking into this, the issue with buffering runs in Brawl upon landing is that for some reason Brawl does not check aerial inputs when determining if a walk should be superceeded by a dash (one of the weirdest conscious design choice in Brawl). As a result dashes would be overwritten by walks. In 4.0 this will be fixed (and it does feel a lot better).

 

[Gold_TSG]

Excellent to hear.

 

[Thor]

I'm hoping it's something I hardly notice, mainly because if I notice it it'll either A) annoy me or B) cause me to use it a lot and potentially mess up my gameplay in other games [lol]. But it's interesting that this will be changed in any case...

 

[Neville]

I'm hoping it's something I hardly notice, mainly because if I notice it it'll either A) annoy me or B) cause me to use it a lot and potentially mess up my gameplay in other games [lol]. But it's interesting that this will be changed in any case...

This is basically how I feel. No other fighting game has as much buffer as Brawl and Smash 4.

 

[Mawootad]

I'm hoping it's something I hardly notice, mainly because if I notice it it'll either A) annoy me or B) cause me to use it a lot and potentially mess up my gameplay in other games [lol]. But it's interesting that this will be changed in any case...

Basically you can already buffer dashes, just not when landing because... reasons? Honestly I'm not entirely sure why that's the case.