True, and I think this shines a light on why dash dancing is so good in Melee. The main problem with idling is that your threat range remains completely static-you don't take any risk, but you can't possibly win. Even though dash dancing objectively reduces your options, it allows you to control new space quickly (allowing you to enter a range that is good for you but bad for your opponent). Additionally, I think the slight weakness of dash dancing is actually another positive: it creates new ranges that you are weak in, thus the opponent might want to take advantage, and this is the heart of neutral game mixups
Smash 4 GnW UpSmash was like 80% of his Neutral for a reason. Unpunishable, fuckin 20+ Frames of Head/arm invincibility (so challenging it is basically impossible), kills you at 70-90, does like 18% damage and also starts combos at low %
The clip at :20 gave me PTSD flashbacks from trying to land in Brawl teams as Falco vs THREE simultaneously tornadoing metaknights (Yes my partner was also tornadoing and I don't know why)
One of my favorite moves in melee is definitely pika up air, feel like it has great utility with multiple angles, and quick decently ranged hit boxes, while it has one obvious downside that it's weak as hell 😅
I would say as the recipient getting hit with it feels awful but if its not a gimp it struggles to get the best value beyond moving your opponent to where you need to get a real juicy set up
The first tornado clip cracked me up Also, I main G&W and I think his smashes are poor design. I like how powerful they are, but "kill move with no endlag" is not a fun design for either character. Ultimate has a lot of those, actually, compared with other smash titles. I would much rather have a move that comes out fast and has lag (Fox up-smash) than one that's a little slow but lagless (G&W up-smash). Both are useful anti-airs, but one is "I reacted skillfully" and the other is "I hope you run into this!"
Bro so true. Do you know how many times someone has thrown out a kill move and I instinctively go for a punish when they miss and then just die because I thought they had end lag only to be reminded "oh I forgot, moves don't have end lag here"
Now, I have been using Ganondorf against my brother lately, and he cannot seem to beat me. We think we know why, and we think it puts Ganon at the top of the tiers. I will be brief. Ganondorf has his air forward. We call it 'The Punch.' It has that special hitbox like a sword, hence it goes right through anything except an attack with that same type of hitbox. It does 17% max, is relatively fast executing, has basically instant recovery on a barrier cancel, and is quite massive, killing at rather low percentages.
That move is a good example of balance - Gannon is too slow to make the move anywhere near OP, and his large hitbox justifies the range of the move. It's a great noob killer though because of how much it lets you punish overcommitment, especially jumping in.
Binged all the essays today. Excited to see this. My take is just if everything is busted, nothing is, but that opens a whole can of worms. I dont think melee, or any platform fighter can succeed if its perfectly balanced, as its just fun to land the busted stuff, and as you said, it leads to meta development. I would like to see discussion of the opposite though, on what we do when a move is too bad to be useful.
Yeah there's definitely been smash games where busted is unhealthy or kinda the thing (Brawl-), and the meta ends up being who can be the most degenerate with their 1 player strategy haha. A discussion on how and when to change bad moves would be interesting, I'll look into that as a future vid topic
Perhaps one thing that makes a move really good but not too good is that emphasizes the desired skills of the community to use repeatedly rather than just being able to use it as filler, or as the singular win condition of the character. Shine is a very nuanced option that requires a lot of skill to use. Maybe it should be nerfed, maybe it shouldn't, but it's a creative and rewarding ability that doesn't end up being too overcentralizing. Shine Spiking might be a bit OP, however. But at the very least, certain recoveries are good at avoiding it. Wobbling does require some set-up to use, but it does not emphasize the desired skills of most of the community. Once you get a grab in the right circumstances, there's only a small execution check you can perform to rob your opponent of all counterplay, and it overcentralizes their kit because it doesn't come with a lot of risk compared to their other options. The fact that the 300% rule had to be implemented is a little tacky and a definite sign the move is too good. Such out-of-game rules would be better off avoided, so their grab is poor design. Rest is a move I think is really tough to balance. Frame 1 start up and massive ending lag is lopsided in a way that makes the move a near binary as to whether it's too good or too bad, as evidenced by its history in each of the smash games.
Wobbling, though not really a move per-se, is a great example of an over-centralizing technique that makes the game less fun. So glad this strategy eventually got the blanket ban - simply keeping it around so ICs stayed top tier was never a good reason. Rest in melee is so interesting because of how precipitously balanced it is! And so many factors go into that balance - Puff's overall matchup spread, what moves combo into it, rest's power, rest's recovery time, rest's startup, and what tools the opponent has to punish missed rest. Any of these dials wrong, and puff becomes the most OP character in the game - just look at Puff's matchup with Shiek, made so favorable in part because she can't revenge kill missed rest well.
Replying to your old comment here, I just wanna say I think you've got it right. You talk about the "desired skills of the community" and I think that's what it comes down to. Technically everything has counterplay in all symmetrical two-player games, even if that means picking the same character as your opponent (two Meta Knights in Brawl, or two Bayonettas in Smash 4 -- neither player has a character advantage). But the question is, is the most optimal way to play also fun? Does it force players to use skills that we want to use? I think this is why Melee is such an unbelievable game. Players have pushed it to its limits over and over and over, with all sorts of detailed counterplay, and the game just won't break! It won't stop rewarding fun skills, and it won't reveal a single overpowered character or strategy, and it won't stop letting players be expressive. It's hard to explain why, but Ultimate does not reward my desired skills enough. It's pretty good, and it's the best Smash since Melee; and it moderate skill levels it is very fun. But as you push the game to its limits, I don't like what it becomes and what I am forced to do in order to win. For instance, edgeguarding is totally lame (most characters can recover with their up-b, even if you got their double jump, and you will probably just get hit and/or give up stage control if you try to edgeguard -- this is true even of top players). And too many characters have lazy moves with huge hitboxes that they can kind of just throw out there and put the onus on the opponent to make a careful approach, rather than Melee which gives the approaching player many more tools and forces the defensive player to be creative too. Well I sort of rambled here but anyway. Basically any game can have a meta where the best player wins; and being able to pick the same character ensures that every move is always fair and balanced. The question is, does every game's meta emphasize the desired skills of the community?
Big fan of using fox forward tilt. I think it's really fun to just slowly walk into my unranked opponent and kick them several times. Bonus points if I'm reading falco's side b onto stage. Slowly walking back towards center to turn around and kick them back off is a real pleasure that might convince me to swap my main from C.Falcon
tbh I've grown to hate both shine and falco laser (in melee). it's hard to have fun playing against that. I feel like you need to have a PhD in optimal laser counterplay to not get completely run over by basic unga bunga falco spam, and shine just makes it so if either of them do a half-decent aerial on shield you're basically already fucked.
I used to get annoyed by this, but even good lasers, a big part of it is really just not letting them tilt you. Getting tilted by falco lasted imo just exaggerates how effective the lasers are
To me Falco is more balanced than fox because his worse recovery makes him more of the glass cannon the spacies should be. I can stomach the tough neutral because I know it only takes me a small opening to get a good chance at killing. Fox, on the otherhand, seems to never die when you're playing someone better than you. His firefox is too long; they even shortened in PAL. RE lasers, IDK if you've tried it, but I like taking laser more than going for powershield, unless I'm really far away. It's not nearly as hard to learn as powershielding IMO, just takes some practice to act out of the stun without your input getting eaten. RE shine: the spacies' whole thing is close quarters advantage, so it makes sense that they have powerful options if they get in on you. It's also balanced by the execution difficulty. Even shine spike is balanced by the fact that they have to literally get right on top of you and risk getting reversaled to pull it off.
I love the references you're making but I would love if you went over sm4sh customs ever so quickly Melee heads need to know about dk custom up 2, I love customs so so much
Aight so the very first thing I think of when I think “well designed, very good, versatile move, that isn’t overcentralizing” is Byleth back air. It’s not very fast, it doesn’t last for super long, but it’s got good range, it’s good in neutral, it’s good in combos, it can kill with good spacing, but it’s very avoidable too. The range isn’t absurd, you can still punish it out of shield. The kill power isn’t insane, you’re not going to be taking stocks at 60 from center stage, and it feels good and fits well into byleth’s overall kit. It’s definitely not the only move like this in terms of overall balance, it’s just the first that comes to mind. Ultimate marth/lucina nair is very similar. It can combo, it can kill, it comes out pretty quick but isn’t super safe, it’s good for edgeguards, but it’s not even their best tool, and I think that’s neat.
I love how the thumbnail is like: Puff’s Back Air, Mach Tornado, Shine, Cloud’s Up Air, and Smash 4 Bayo in General. Like not even a hitbox for her just smash 4 bayo
I wonder why i'm being recommended this vid again, anyway its still good :D I think its really hard for a single move to be too good by itself. Its about how they impact overall kit and play patterns Fox shine is too good, it provides massive defensive counterhit utility, shield pressure, edgeguards, and kill setups. Its always useful and centralises a lot of how you must play as and against fox. If i were to be rebalancing melee I'd probably nerf fox by nerfing his offstage and onstage tech/dodge recovery even though none of those are "too" good. Because frankly, I like that fox has oppressive aggressive tools, and wouldn't want to change that, even though I would want to nerf him down to only slightly the best character, and not far and away best character. I wonder how people would feel about brawl meta knight tornado if meta knight only had 2 jump
I think one thing that interests me about good/bad moves is how good a move is generally vs how good a move is in a kit. Take Dedede's fsmash in ultimate for example. it's commonly agreed upon to be one of the worst fsmashes in the entire game, but it does wonders in dedede's kit when it comes to ledgetrapping when paired with gordo. I'm not saying that this is good game design or bad game design, but why I think why a character has a move and what it opens for their kit is interesting to look at in fighting games. I think it's something to consider when talking about how to change moves, but I don't know that conversation would even begin or how to approach it.
This might not be a video essay, but it’s insanely close to one. When I think of a video meant for the creator to just talk about a subject, I imagine a slushy, awkward, ramble full of misplaced intonation and filler words. But this video was incredibly well spoken and amazingly organized. Awesome stuff, even though I’m an ultimate player and nothing else I enjoyed it thoroughly
thank you man! yeah the rants are very much so scripted, but not as detailed with the scripting as the video essays. i just kind of write em in one go and don't overthink it lol.
A move is too good when the counter play is too weak in comparison to a move that gives reward. So while Fox shine is ridiiculously good, the main counterplay is that only a TAS could perform the truly broken stuff and that the move isnt overly rewarding in and of itself. Shine mainly useful if it comboes, has short range, and has a tech skill barrier.
I think one of the reasons that fox and falco shines are not frowned upon is because as much as they are good they have a "weakness", they just last one frame and they are small. When there is a clear weakness to even a good move people SUBCONSOUSLY know they messed up or they can do something about it. Even in fighting games a DP comes fast but has a lot of cooldown, and you can bait a DP. The "I don't know what to do" felling turns into salt and complaing, and hate for a move.
In smash 4 I always thought Corrin's kit had a lot of incredibly amazing moves. The Bair was an auto spacing move with great range. The Side B was fast and would catch most of the grounded options and short hops. Plus everything other small thing. Idk, I think no matter what character you play it's busted one way or another
For me personally, in smash I like moves that reward skill. For example, a successful waveshine is what, like 10 inputs for one move? So yes while waveshine is VERY strong it requires a good deal of tech skill to truly master and has more points where you can miss an input and fail your move. That’s just my scrublord opinion tho lol...
The question is say fox shine is considered healthy(combo tool, infinite, edgeguarding, out of shield move, invincible, frame 1) (lol) but removing the invul wouldn't really change that much but yet people seem to say that's good, I get that people won't accept patches but I find it interesting that people still think the move is balanced. I personally would think it's too good, but as the community as a "whole" has deemed it okay - it's okay. Fun to think about :)
I’d say there is nothing wrong with spamming a move, as long as they don’t become predictable, but yes great moves are easier to spam and I’d say it is a great thing for a character to have 1 or 2 great move in most situations as it makes the rest of the characters moves better to some degree. If a character have an average tool sets and has one very great one like falco dair for an example, people will need to start being afraid of the move and learn counter play, but if the player starts using other moves that has a different counter play, this move becomes better because of the great move existence. And I like stuff like that because creates mind games even if it doesn’t make every move a bit better, so I think it’s healthy for a character to possess 1 or 2 great moves and the rest compliments those great moves. Just don’t give 4 or 5 great moves like *cough* ultra instinct Goku *cough*
All it takes is one OP move to bust an entire character, and after 20 years of professional play, every character is still legal in Melee. The only thing close was banning some specific Ice Climber techniques, and those weren't individual moves. Fox's shine is just enough of an execution test to keep him from running every tournament. Jigg's rest would bust the game if she was even slightly harder to kill off the top. Marth's f-smash would define every character's game plan with just a few frames less endlag. Incredible balance from a game thrown together in one year.
This Thumbnail. Jigglypuff is Back-Airing a Metaknight into a Shine. Which means the Metaknight is a projectile and it will get reflected by the Shine. But if we look even closer. It's actually Bayonetta I think who is using F-Smash to summon the Jigglypuff which will B-Air the Meta Knight into the shine which means when the MetaKnight is reflected Jigglypuff most likely will disappear and we will end up with Bayonetta getting bodied which with me as a Bayonetta player is quite sad. Although if we look even closer a random Cloud U-Air exists... I don't know if it gets closer than that. I most likely am overthinking just a simple thumbnail.
Tbh I don’t think there is a metric or criteria for a move being “too good”. I think it just comes down to if it’s fun to play against. The same moves can feel completely different depending on the context of the characters or the game itself, and I don’t think that’s something we can quantify.
Two moves that moves to mind are Smash 4 Ganon back air and up smash. Ganon in Smash 4 was, as usual, a dumpster fire garbage baby character. But oh my god those moves were insane. Back air was the neutral button. It's huge. It does like 15%. It kills. You can combo with it. Approach, retreat, whatever as long as you throw it out like every 10 seconds. Up smash was stupid good. It's honestly hard to put into words how absolutely disgusting this move was. It was pretty slow (active 21-23), but I'll take the move being reactable (but barely) to have the move kill midweights at 75, have an obscenely large hitbox, do 20%, have tons of pushback, and be NIGH UNPUNISHABLE. he was so so terrible but if he got in he was gonna make sure to let you know. Sometimes i miss playing the funny trash man he was fun to cheese people with
@@aidan8578 air shine has scaled knockback instead of a set one in melee and has a weaker angle with the intension to not cheese someone at 0%. but now you cant even kill with shine offstage at 80% most of the time. Also shine lost its invincible 1 frame and thats very noticeable in neutral and edge guarding. They should have kept fox the same imo. Would be sick to see more high level fox players.
@@giovannijordens6395 all sounds like stuff that makes shine much more healthy instead of destroying half the cast's recoveries for no reason and polarizing matchups super hard
There's a difference between repeatedly using a powerful move in varying, well thought out ways, and mindlessly spamming it (even though people call it spamming either way). If there's enough counterplay against a move that it forces people to do the former, then it's not too powerful and is (probably) healthy for the game. But if a move is so good that there's little to no counterplay and people can just go crazy with it, then it should be nerfed
I think every character should have something like shine: Ness is such an easy example, what part of his kit is supposed to make you love playing him? Fighting games should have an amazing move that stands out amongst the cast. It's what makes a game relatively balanced. In Garou Mark of the Wolves theres a character that literally has no combos and is the worst guy in the game, and he's not only played in tourneys he's got a winning match up against the best character, because he has the best aerial attack in the game and an amazing command grab that basically kills you in 3 grabs. He's got a lot of non good moves but in spite of his issues he'll always be relevant because he's allowed to have incredible moves.
Your light needs to be moved up. I can't even see your eyes because of the reflection. I would recommend looking up a few lighting tutorials. Super easy and free upgrade to your production quality
I'd also recommend trying to stop saying pronouns unless it's super clear what you're talking about. Around 4:30 I completely lost what you were speaking about because you said it for a minute and I thought you were still talking about fox up tilt. You were talking about meta night tornado
So smash attacks can't be moves that are supposed to be punished on startup or by understanding which move you can use to safely attempt to punish the endlag...because?
Because it's fundamentally different than other smashes? Because there's very little endlag to punish? Because I think it manifests in weird gameplay and counterplay? because I don't like spammable low risk-high reward options in my competitive fighting game? Any and all of the above? Even if the purpose of the move is to be punished on startup, attempting to interact with a disjointed lowlag killmove (in the case of G&W) is not only hard, it's very not worth it imo. You just have to reset or mixup what they do after it (which could very well be another smash attack)
@@arJunebugSmash Different, strong, or weird doesn't mean bad. Saying it has qualities doesn't really answer the question. Some moves are hard to deal with. So what? It's just got a frame data dynamic that isn't common for smash attacks. For GnW, considering that upsmash is barely disjointed, and the other two have 20+ frames of endlag I'm not so sure you're familiar enough to say he's alone in that. Regardless, people's refusal to learn how the moves work is not a design problem. Looking at things in isolation can also be misleading. All characters have some great stuff along with flaws. E.g bigger range, lower mobility.
@@nathanlevesque7812 What would you define as bad? Asking for a formal definition of bad doesn't mean anything as my opinion, by it's nature, is subjective. You stating that "some moves as strong, so what?" does nothing, because my opinion is that they can heavily define a character's meta, greater metagame and manifest in gameplay that I don't enjoy at times. You are stating the counterplay argument which I try to talk about in this video. That the meta will progress as people learn how to deal with the move. But I disagree that learning how a move work should invalidate any criticism of it's design, and while I think that can help develop counterplay, it doesn't mean the counterplay is good or healthy. Ex: I know the counterplay to Peach Dsmash in Melee, and I still don't like how it works. I am well aware that a characters kit is important. There are however definitely tools that I think are a bit too strong regardless of character (ex: Metaknight Tornado). Do we have to examine all of them to critique elements of the kit? Not all the time. Are all elements of a character's kit cohesive and well designed? Not all the time.
@@arJunebugSmash I just mean there's an incomplete thought here. 'X makes it bad because [blank]' is what I keep seeing. If I were to explain why Sonic's spindashes are bad, I'd say firstly that it completely centralizes his playstyle around two moves that are extremely similar but require different responses. The moves are also built around disengaging and then not interacting until Sonic wants to. It creates a guessing game. Most MUs can then revolve around Sonic charging them in the corner while the opponent has to wait in the center for something to happen. This issue is severe because Sonic's mobility and kit allow him to indefinitely runaway from anyone. As long as he gets a lead he can run out the clock safely, with many opportunities to snowball the lead as people get desperate. Spindash from corner then stall is a viable strategy for an entire game. It can be beaten, mostly before the lead, and there are better things to do as Sonic. The issue is that spindash can shutdown most aspects of gameplay for entire games because of what Sonic can do with it. Players stop interacting. They just wait and guess, or there's circle camping to turn Smash into a hopeless game of tag. It isn't just some 2d spammer doing smash attacks in place.
I don't play other smash games, but in Melee, I break it down like this: a square chart of moves from weak to strong and healthy to unhealthy. Falco shine = strong and healthy Sheik ftilt = strong and unhealthy Raptor boost = weak and unhealthy 95% of weak moves = weak and healthy. If too many moves are like falco shine then nothing stands out. If too many are like sheik ftilt them the game is infuriating and gimmicky. If too many are like raptor boost the game is trash, if everything is weak and boring then the game is boring. So you need a good variety of both healthy kinds and a tiny amount of the unhealthy moves (at a controlled power level) just to inspire counterplay and make weak characters less bad.
