Super Smash Bros director Masahiro Sakurai has talked in depth about the importance of balance in his feature column in this week’s edition of Famitsu. Sakurai has reiterated that he is extremely careful about finding the right balance between the characters and delivering a game that ultimately lives up to the fans expectations.
“Now that Sunday’s day off is past, I’m currently working on the character adjustment for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.At the moment, Bowser is very strong. He’s really strong. Fans of Smash Bros. probably never saw him as too much of a strong character, but this time, his ability to knock others out is very strong!”
“Doing things like simply ‘lowering the performance’ can make games lose its fun. Additionally, making a strong attack weaker can take away from the ‘good feeling’. By making adjustments that get rid of all advantages and disadvantages, it can turn a game into a mediocre one without any challenge.”
“Rather than directly weakening an attack’s advantageous parts, we’re putting effort into keeping them strong, while adding other weaknesses to them. Like giving the attacks punishable openings, or weakening the character’s mobility or recovery rate. We’re making comprehensive adjustments to characters, even for parts that might seem completely irrelevant.”
“The game balance of Super Smash Bros. Brawl started six years before its release, and it most likely goes back even further during its time of development, and it’s never been reformed even through the updates afterwards. We’re at a stage where we’d like to release the new title as soon as possible, and offer something more enjoyable than ever.”
Thanks, Zebrahiim
interesting.
Hopefully this game ends up more balanced than the last two at least. By the time everyone figured them out, they were both pretty bad in their own ways as far as character superiority goes. Brawl had it a bit worse it seemed due to Meta Knight and chain grabs mainly, but that’s just my opinion.
Agreed, and its a fact that meta knight was the best character and was unbalanced and broken in all areas. Also chain grabs made the game unbalanced as well. The list goes on too
There were quite a few character match-ups that that were extremely one-sided. This was due to there being a handful of characters that just couldn’t hang, a handful of characters that could chain grab and get tons of free damage, and Meta Knight himself being strong against everyone and devastating against many. I just don’t understand how he got away with having such a stupid good move-set. He literally has the best attack in a myriad of categories, and can do some incredibly cheap stuff. Then to top it all off, he has incredible recovery. Skilled MK users would almost never lose to even the best players of about 1/3 of the roster.
Exactly, matchups like falcon vs meta knight were like 100:0 meta knight meaning meta knight has 100% chance to win. Meta knight has like 70:30 be everybody in the roster except falco, iceclimber, meta knight and like 1 other person. When played correctly he has no lag time and can punish everything with D-smash lol
…NO
Fix Meta Knight and king dededee, leave the others has they are or make the like they where in melee. Don’t touch Luigi he is perfection!
Luigi needs his up b move fixed. In Brawl it just goes straight up, whereas previously you could go forward a little. And the green missile sucks in every aspect. Not useful as an attack, and getting back to the stage is very difficult with it. These two things combined make getting back to the stage even harder, causing many deaths when you dont even have a lot of damage.
I disagree, his up special is crazy high so in Brawl it made a lot sense to make him go higher but gimp it slightly, besides why would you only use the rocket and the super jump? The main thing your supposed to do is do the luigi tornado, it lifts you up and can get you clearly back on the stage without leaving you falling like you did your up special, the rocket is risk move in any game
Wii u outsold xbox one last week yes!
where is the sales chart? send it to Sickr so we can all see if its legit
also that is a rather weird comment too, we were talking about Smash, if you reply please try to keep with the subject please
its been outselling ps4 too its also owning japan
get over yourself those systems will implode after the hype wiius 2014 is strong as fuck
I didn’t say only use thos two. And I would rather the up B be more like Melee. I’ll take forward action over height. And the rocket is a risk move. It shouldn’t even be a move it’s so lame.
Its not lame, it awesome, idk what your talking about. If you like horizontal movement then why are you playing as luigi? He is a literally a horizontally based character. His combos lead to aerials that are more horizontaly, its not very often his combo lead to chasing like Fox or Falco
You have your opinion, I have mine. To me it is lame. In the original, I destroyed with Luigi. Then everyone got an extra move in Melee/Brawl, and Luigi got shafted. I don’t play horizontal vs vertical, I just play and fight however I need to.
Well you have a character that recovers in a way opposite to the way you want to. He plays similar to his melee counter-part
Are you retarded? His side B and up B suck balls.
Fix Luigi’s “running A” attack to something with more knock-back and I am happy. I hate how he punches like 3 or 4 times, but when you hit someone it does no damage and no knock-back. Plus it leads you wide open for attack.
^This. His dash attack alone practically makes him unusable for me.
Bowser was pretty weak in Brawl also. He had a good few moves that lacked KO power. This and other things actually baffled me, it seemed odd that they made it through to the final version because it appeared obvious that they weren’t balanced to me.
Oh well, play Project M everyone and you can use an actual good Bowser against Mewtwo or Roy on Brawl.
Yup lol same for link in project M alot of the project M characters got buffed from brawl and the overpowered ones got nurfed to a balanced state. Snake, DDD etc
Link is amazing in Project M. So is Mario.
We’re talking about SSB4, not projectM. Btw, I really like projectM’s Roy.
Hopefully alot of the low tier chars get buffed, like sonic, Zelda, ganondorf, captain falcon (just a few out of the many) but if the game becomes unbalanced like brawl was he can always give some updates to fix the brokenness so balance will be fine over time
That’s true! Something the Wii version (Brawl) did not have! I really hope Sakurai applies updates IF necessary.
I always thought Brawl would get updates and possibly DLC, but that was before I knew of the limitations the Wii had. Now, there is no doubt that the game can and will get updated. I’m want to feel confident that it will continue to get balanced after it comes out, promising the perfect smash bros game for the casuals and those of us who fight with great skill.
Same here, I hope he sees that dlc is going to be KEY with this game. Dlc characters, stages, costumes and balance patches will be too good for the game
DK’s punch needs to be fixed, as I was deadly with it in the first two, but in Brawl it feels like his reach is too short. And Fox needs to be fixed too. Why in the hell does he sink, like he has extra gravity pulling him in? But I don’t make the game, so these are just things I would like.
That was the melee speed dood, he had the almost exact same speed from melee unlike the rest of the cast
I don’t remember him sinking though. It leaves no time for error in Brawl. If Melee had the sink effect then go back to the original.
The reason you don’t seem like it cause Brawl’s speed doesn’t work with melee physics. Fox and Falco are clear showings of that..
Probably why I prefer Melee over Brawl.
I prefer Brawl mainly cause of its cast, even the clones are differentiated enough to be interesting instead of copy and paste with just different effects
I like Brawl’s cast better too (aside from Roy and Mewtwo being replaced).
I felt Lucario was cooler than Mewtwo, yeah he is OG but still Lucario is Boss, I don’t know much about Fire Emblem but I liked Ike
I’m not a pokemon person, but I liked Mewtwo.bAnd xi’m not a Fire Emblem person either, but Roy’s our boy!
Marth is our boy, from what I hear, he wasn’t the most likeable character in Fire Emblem
Mewtwo was just the epic guy that started it all, Lucario is just a monster dood
DK’s punch was definitely nerfed in Brawl. It should blow people away like Samus’ plasma blast. Oh and Dedede’s hammer needs to have a bigger hit box. It is way too easy to dodge Dedede’s attacks. Maybe make him a little more mobile as well.
Seriously though, I don’t know how balanced Project M really is, but it sure is a lot more balanced than Brawl! When I’m playing it, I can pretty much be anyone and do just as good with anybody else.
As someone who stands out as being able to play many different characters with a respectable level of skill, I feel I can safely say that Project M is certainly more balanced. You can tell more attention was given to the lower half of the tier list in Brawl. Also, I absolutely love playing as just Charizard and the new Ivysaur. I think Ivysaur is the best character in the game now. =3
Take your time Sakurai, would much rather have a awesome game then some rushed out piece of rubbish.
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Cool and all but just don’t fuck with the plumbers or Seamus, I like them the way they are….
Samus has already been proven to be faster and more agile. Sakurai has said it himself.
I just hope that Samus doesn’t ended up floaty again like in Brawl. Hugs! Sincerely, the newly crowned Nintendo Prince.
Samus needs to mooooveee faasssteeer. She was sooooo slooooow in Brawl. Also, she should be as heavy as Fox is (for some reason Fox falls the fastest).
Samus’ moves also need stronger knock-back. Every time I use a smash attack on someone they barely move. I can rack up the damage easily with her, but she can’t finish anyone off.
Remember that smash also use elements from their original games and samus float like that on her games.
Good to hear!
as long as it’s not a brawl 2.0. those motherfuckers need to take note from the recent project m.
This ^^^
Ignoring that arbitarily punishing the player isn’t balancing. This is “tripping” all over again.
Ignoring you’re right. Also ignoring its only room for one Mr. Ignoring Man not too. But you rather play dumb and act like it’s ok.
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This is nowhere near the kind of mistake implementing tripping is, if it’s any mistake at all. The only way making moves punishable will be okay is if the moves themselves are very strong, which it sounds like they are. If there are any condition where these moves can be used with less risk, then it could be a respectable boon for the player. However, they will of course have to be balanced by having faster, safer moves for pressure. Basically, including moves that are easy to be punished can be fine as long as it’s done right. It doesn’t sound like he is really arbitrarily implementing things, but if he did of course that would be bad.
Consider this though. In Brawl was a game where overall knockout power was decreased considerably across the board compared to it’s past titles. In this game though, one character stood out above all others, Meta Knight. This is because he had great knockout capabilities mixed with, guess what, a plethora of nearly or entirely nonpunishable attack options. This led to something unbalanced.
Now for Bowser, he has very few safe options to attack in any given situation against an opponent that plays smart. Despite this meaning he will get much less hits in, he also suffered from having terrible KO options all up and down.
It sounds to me like kill moves in general are going to be stronger like in past games, but not as easy to pull off in general. That and Bowser is gonna hit like a truck finally, which is great. They just need to make sure he has a well rounded move-set and not a ton of punishable moves that an opponent can just counter all day.
Fix Ganondorf, King Dedede, Jigglypuff, Link, Zelda and Yoshi. Those are my main concerns. ESPECIALLY Ganondorf….he was my main in Melee, but was rendered unplayable in Brawl. He is priority no.1!!!
Well lets be serious. If a character becomes too powerful, just update the game. There is no possible worst case scenario.
I would like the cat bell from 3D Mario to be added as an item in the game. Let it last for 25 seconds then the characters change back to normal.
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Sakurai, please don’t tell me you took 6 years to balance Brawl. Please, just no. SIX FUCKING YEARS???????????????????????????
Hahaha, yeah, we all know where Smash Bros Wii U is headed, to the casual unbalanced train with tripping and what not?
So sad, since I really wanted this new smash to be more balanced, but considering Sakurai is taking care of the game balance AGAIN BY HIMSELF ONLY, what we will have is a piece of garbage game that will never even get any recognition as a competitive fighting game.
At this rate, Mario Kart 8 is looking more and more better than Smash.
It has to at least be better than Brawl, since he has shown he was aware of critism by already announcing there will be no more tripping.
i wish it was out just now :(
DK’s punch needs fixing!
I also use all characters, you know because I’m good like that. And I really want big characters to be really strong and small characters to be fast and strong. Of course, there will be some tweaking but all I really want is my boyfriend to talk to me! Hugs!
Gotta watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXuFAdO0ERc
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Sakurai…PLEASE will you please have Krystal, Shulk and Lyn in smash. I believe when It comes to character Balance you’ve ALWAYS done a great job, especially in Brawl if you ask me, except for Mario on the otherhand who seemed A LOT weaker than he was in Melee or certainly 64
Now this philosophy I can get behind. The only thing I’m butthurt about is how much he is cutting for this entry in the series. Sakurai has always been known to jam his games with great content and now it seems like he is rushing to make a game that isn’t really fleshed out at all. Honestly, there are not any great surprises or new additions to the series. Just polishing up on the what was great in melee it seems. But his game design philosophy on not weakening an attack move but making a new weakness instead is a great idea. That I can support him in.
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I don’t think he needs to go out of his way to do this, he should focus on each version separately.
Wii U is a much more powerful console, there’s no denying it, so trying to equate he Wii U version to the 3DS version is not helping the 3DS version step up its game but holding back the Wii U one.
I hope sakurai has seen project m as inspiration >.>