mZuzek said:
torok said:
I believe that you're spoiled because Smash doesn't have it. It also doesn't not share most mechanics of other fighting games. Specially specials, that are terribly implemented (it's ridiculous that a game must have part of its gameplay forbidden on championships). Landing those "super duper" specials takes skill and has its risks, that's why they are important.
Let's use KOF XIV as an example and see how a pretty good player would act. You can have up to 5 bars (depending on the round). A Neo Max special uses 3 entire bars for a roughly 40% damage. A regular super uses 1 bar for around 15% while a beefed up super uses 2 for 20 to 25%. If, like you said, you just input the combination and do one of these, most likely you won't hit your target. Specially with Neo Max, they are easy to block or dodge and you would just throw away several bars.
What a good player does is using cancels. If you skillfuly and quick input a sequence after another attack hits, you can cancel the animation (while keeping the damage performed) and land a secons strike as part of a combo. In KOF, you can use command normals to assemble combos with regular attacks. Regular special attacks can be canceled in supers and super can be cancelled in a Neo Max. That way, you can remove the risk of the supers by only using them when you're sure to hit. You define skill as doing combos (which is actually ridiculously easy in a lot of games, like SF), but the real skill is on doing combos with these high level moves and deal a big damage at once.
Other games use other mechanics. MK X, per instance, uses 3 bars where 3 do a X-ray, 2 allow to break a combo and 1 can be used to increase the damage of a single move. So it's a balance between risk and reward, using the X-ray will leave you in a situation where you can't escape a big combo (you need 2 bars). Sometimes it's better to just use 1 bar to soup up a move instead of risking losing everything in a X-ray.
If you play against someone minimally capable on one of these games with that mentality of simple combos and trying to use specials to do the work, you probably won't do well.
As for the "cutscenes", the minimum I expect when I'm able to (with KOF's Terry) hit a flying kick, cancel it in a command normal, hit a high punch, cancel it on a Power Wave, cancel it on a Buster Wolf and finally turn it all on a freaking Neo Max after inputing almost 20 buttons with perfect timing is to see my character beat the crap of the other guy while taking off 75% of its health.
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Smash is not primarily meant to be a competitive-only fighting game, so it's only natural it would have elements forbidden in competitive play - it has things that are there for casual players, things there for competitive players, and gives you the options to mess around and play the game however way you want. Yes, the specials are terribly implemented, but I'm thankful for that, because I do think they take away from the experience, competitive-wise.
I never played KOF so I'm not judging that, but I never said these specials broke the game or could be easily spammed to win a match. I know most of the time the 15-second cutscene special will only land in specific situations on combos (on a skilled player), but my point is that the 15-second cutscene is still boring. If I perform an insane combo to destroy my opponent, I'm already satisfied by that on its own, I don't need a long cutscene telling me "whoa you're awesome" everytime I do it.
For example, in Smash I play Meta Knight. Meta Knight has a ridiculous (and arguably broken) ladder combo that can kill pretty much any character extremely early off the top, but it is a combo that is hard to land and execute - I had to train a considerable amount of time before I could start getting it, and even today there will still be a lot of occasions where maybe one or two things are a little out of place and it won't land. Everytime I win a match with this combo (and it happens often), it's satisfying for me and frustrating for my opponent who sees a whole game ending on a single mistake... what if, at the end of this combo, there was an unskippable 15-second long cutscene showing Meta Knight killing the other character? Even if it is a hard to land combo, wouldn't that be extremely annoying for everyone involved? I sure think it is, because it's pointless. All it does is waste everyone's time with a cutscene that will inevitably get old after a couple times.
I feel like a lot of these fighting games too often take control out of the players in specific situations that will keep happening over and over and that just makes it so repetitive. It's the reason I gave up on Pokkén, for example - that whole game revolved around this. "X move cancels into Y move that leads into Z combo", so you're always doing that same sequence of moves in the same way knowing it'll work every single time... "this move cancels into a command grab" great, so everytime I land that one move I know there will be a cutscene for the grab meaning no one gets to do anything for a while... and then there are the Burst Specials, which are just the absolute worst because of what I already said - they're just a one input move that, if it lands, prompts a ridiculously long and ridiculously over-the-top cutscene which is always the same. It gets old, and it gets boring.
I like Smash because it is a game that always keeps control in both players hands and has different outcomes for each move every time because of all the different situations and circumstances that might arise. For example, no combo is ever the same because there are countless factors involved that will change how the opposing character will get knocked back (their weight, their %, rage effect, and the DI by your opponent), and because the same range of actions is always allowed regardless of your character's condition, people can get out of combos with their own moves, making it a complete reversal. Most other fighting games don't allow this: for example, if your character gets knocked in the air, you usually can't perform an aerial move because you're being hit - meanwhile in Smash, if you're in the air you can always perform any aerial action as long as you're not in hitstun, and of course you can even influence hitstun itself with DI.
tl;dr most fighting games today (I'd blame at least Pokkén and SFV) are too repetitive, Smash is awesome because every interaction is always different. Edit: oh and also Tekken 7. I played it last weekend and was disgusted by how stupid the special cutscene moves were, given how great everything else was.
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This is the best model imo. It's one of the main reasons why games like Call of Duty and Pokémon are hits.
