what do you think fg players get wrong about fighting games? definitely want to do the reverse, maybe with someone? (also pls subscribe)

@ADxTygon

7 ай бұрын

did u mean what fg players get wrong about smash or am i having a stroke

@ElasticLove12

7 ай бұрын

Get apologyman! Love these videos btw!

@normancraytor6749

7 ай бұрын

Can you give your opinion on the design issue (or lackthereof) of most melee characters gaining an invincible move when you put them in the corner? I'm talking about ledge dashing. Fox gets invincible up-tilt/upsmash etc, Peach gets nothing, some characters don't get fully invincible moves but do get partial invincibility. I can't think of any fighting games with such a weird mechanic so would like your thoughts on it.

@DonPitoteDeLaMancha

7 ай бұрын

Imo fg players tend to exaggerate how good or bad a character is and usually have some kind of bias towards a specific archetypes (especially zoners) cause of different reason but mainly its because they are good at exploiting a specific weakness they have, I think this applies mainly to the low-mid level players although it definetly happens on the high levels of play

@Trekiros

7 ай бұрын

One thing I think might trip up fighting game players trying Smash out is the concept of killmoves. In SF, I can end the round with chip damage, with a fireball from half a screen away, or with a sneaky low kick. In Smash, you kinda have to realize that your character only has 2-4 killmoves, and those moves are usually slow and don't have a lot of setups, especially in the games since Brawl. So that changes the dynamic of the neutral completely: if your best pokes don't set up killmoves, then... At some point you've gotta stop using those good pokes and fish for some harder reads, otherwise your opponent's going to survive until 200%. And your opponent knows exactly what your 2-4 killmoves are, so they're going to adapt their counterplay, and specifically try to avoid being in a situation where you get to use those 2-4 moves. It's not just combos that change when you're at low vs high %, it's the neutral too. This is especially the case in Brawl; if your character had poor killmoves, it was a low tier. Even if the rest of your kit was great. Fox and Sheik were good examples of this.

Re stage choice: It definitely matters in modern tekken because there are some stages with walls, some without. Some stages have breakable walls or floors that take you into a new area (and give you a chance for more damage on transition)

@johnny2501

7 ай бұрын

Doesn't he talk about this in the video? If not thats pretty braindead

@manuelito1233

7 ай бұрын

​@johnny2501 he doesn't play 3d fighters, he does say "afaik"

@abirneji

7 ай бұрын

@@manuelito1233 that makes sense there's only like 1 franchise left that isn't dead or dying

@chsi5420

6 ай бұрын

@@abirneji :( Don't remind me

Melee players try not to tell everyone how hard the game is constantly challenge: impossible

@mallow2902

6 ай бұрын

I don't play Melee anymore, I just play fighting games, but I would say that Melee's difficulty is somewhere in the middle of the difficulty spectrum. Games like Tekken, Guilty Gear XXACR, Third Strike, and maybe USF4 are a good deal harder than Melee in my opinion, but Guilty Gear Xrd Rev2 and BlazBlue CF feel a little easier, though they're still difficult. Games like Strive and Granblue are much easier than Melee. My perspective might be a little skewed though because I started playing fighting games and Smash casually around the same time, and at this point I've dropped Smash and am still playing fighting games, so I have a lot of built in experience and muscle memory.

@X0v3r

6 ай бұрын

fr ts mad fuckin annoying

@c0diz

6 ай бұрын

it is the most frame tight fighting game i know of but tekken is prob harder lol

@tuipulotulavaka1757

6 ай бұрын

I been a fan of Tekken since Tekken 2, and I gotta say I think KOF is the toughest fighting game I've ever touched lol. KOF 02 UM is probably peak difficulty, but even KOF 15 which dumbes things down a little bit is still massively complicated.

@echospace7347

5 ай бұрын

@@mallow2902you’ve never expierened the game at a high level I think

Since a lot of people in the FGC don't even consider Melee, or Smash games in general as fighting games, Melee players try waaay too hard to convince everyone that their game is the hardest shit ever. Why can't people just play and enjoy their own game. And that goes too for the FGC that always talk a lot of shit about Smash.

@doomslayer8985

7 ай бұрын

All communities will try to justify everything and at the end seek validation

@Smitteys86

7 ай бұрын

I think that sentiment has fortunately mostly faded away, at least from my experience. Most people consider Smash/Platform Fighters fighting games, they're just a unique subgenre. The real problems are that 1) smash's audience (primarily Smash Ultimate's) skews way younger, and they hate feeling like the little brother to the FGC. Which, fair I guess, being the little brother sucks.... and 2) That this idea that smash "isn't a fighting game" USED to be really common before the FGC grew to what it is now, and there's a lingering feeling of having to prove itself that the smash community has.

@wazzledog1007

7 ай бұрын

I actually have the opposite experience. Smash players trying to tell me how good and accessable it is, and how restrictive and bad motion commands are. But in my experience, no motion commans is nearly as frusterating or hard on my hands as even intermediate tech is in smash. Not in a vacuum, but once I started going for consecutive tech in game, the inputs per second skyrocketed beyond what I can handle.

@thedevilyoyo

7 ай бұрын

⁠@@wazzledog1007I tried my first fighting game (Granblue) recently and was shocked I could do all the practice combos using technical inputs after a couple days. But in Melee I still fuck up the basic shit after 3-4 year grinding the game. The game is too fast and our controllers suck LOL

@weilzudope

7 ай бұрын

because it has the hardest movement of any game, and there is no buffer except for some things.

Something that I heard a lot from smashers/smash commentators prior to playing FGC games myself is that "the skills transfer" between the genres (smash -> FGC games). On a high-level, broad-strokes strategy level, they do... but honestly platform fighters are a whole different world from 2D and 3D fighting games. How they control/feel, the way you move, how you control space, the way neutral works, how combos work, what the advantage states even are... its like learning a different language with the same distant roots as the one you're used to. Even with a lifetime of experience in platform fighters, you're gonna be starting from scratch in traditional fighting games. At least, this was my experience, and I assume it's most people's experience unless you're like, a competition-level player. It kinda feels like most of the people who say "the skills transfer" are more often making an assumption than speaking from experience. They see Leffen and go "see? the skills transfer, he's good at both" when in reality he's like the only top melee player to have widespread success in an FGC game, and he's been playing 2D fighters for a long time. And of course i'm not saying that smash players are worse than FGC players, or that smash isn't a fighting game- that's stupid and people who say it are trolling. Melee especially is *incredibly* difficult, and any good player in any smash game can become good at any fighting game. But there's this lingering feeling in the smash community that they want to be taken seriously as a 'real' fighting game/part of the FGC, even though the overlap between communities in terms of players is small. This is significantly less true now than it was 10 years ago, especially with how Fighting Games have become more popular. But generally speaking, the FGC and the Smash Community are two different communities, and that's fine. In short- if you try to compare your game to another game without actually knowing how they're different, you're probably gonna say something stupid.

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

I can speak on this as a Competitive level Smash and Traditional FG player. The skills do indeed transfer, both ways, actually. What is often omitted, and therefore misjudged is *WHAT* skills ultimately are transferrable between games. Smash games require a significant mental stack as compared to most game in general, with 50 APM being on the LOW end of things, so the cereberal aspect of playing a TFG actually tends to feel much more friendly and welcoming than the other way around. I feel like I can relax and outright turn my brain off when I play Strive, compared to the mental load I fell when playing Smash. Smash also is an extremely interactive game, in that all players are able to interact with more aspects of the gameplay than is possible in most games in general. You're not usually ACTIVELY playing the game in real time *while you're being combo'd*. At best, you're just lying in wait for the combo to drop, your chance to tech, or deciding to burst (if applicable), but in Smash, combos don't necessarily just "end", you the player have to *work* to end their combo, actively, in real time. As a result, that makes Smash both a neutral heavy game, and a game that forces the "Neutral" mindset in both Advantaged states AND Disadvantaged states. As a result, the biggest skill that gets transferred from Smash to a TFG is your aptitude for Neutral, Mixups, Resets, Frame Trapping, Setplay, Player Adaptation, and General mindgames. Conversely, because TFGs are usually akin to a coreographed dance between two opposing gymnasts (weird metaphor, I know), it requires consistency, patience, decisiveness, and deliberate execution, to play competently. TFGs usually encourage the player to maximize and optimize the return on any investment they give to any given win of the neutral. Players who acquire this skill will usually pick of a sense of how hit-confirming, conversion-trees, and recognizing situations can work in their favor, and constantly pumping your your BnB Combos will work that execution muscle. This transfers into smash be being better able to recognize the overall game condition, having better situational awareness, and an easier acquisition of execution heavy techniques, combos, and skills. When I play a round of Smash after having played GG for a while, I feel like my combos are crispier, and I'm more on the ball about the overall game state and tend to be much more decisive in my capitalisations. I feel like I just notice things better. When I play a round of GG after having played Smash for a while, I feel like my neutral becomes disgusting, I'm constantly winning interactions and taking advantage more frequently, I'm consistently hitting nasty mixups, and am able to recognize and better react to my opponent's mixups (and they often feel more primitive to me). I also notice that my adaptation to an opponent who started bodying me 6~7 games into a FT10 is on point, as I end up reverse 10-0'ing them, often genuinely confused how I was able to beat them despite them clearly being a higher ranked opponent than me. It's very nuanced, but I hope this help you understand what less articulate players mean when they talk about "skill transferring".

@akkorokamui8319

7 ай бұрын

I think you guys are very right. Having tried it myself. Broadly skills transfer, like game sense and the ability to read and adapt to your opponent, but on a practical level you are still learning and entirely new skill, learning an entirely new control scheme or sometimes controller (like fightstick to gc controller). It's like saying because you can drive a car you can also sail a ship or fly a plane. I'm sure having driving experience can make the transition faster, but at the end of the day there is still a lot of learning that needs to be done, and there's really no shortcutting that.

@XenonAgenT01

7 ай бұрын

Only melee does. Because it actually takes skill and talent unlike every other smash game

@Smitteys86

7 ай бұрын

@@XenonAgenT01 oh man you're so cooool

@drumnbasssakuga9352

7 ай бұрын

i don’t know how people can say that smash has more skill transfer when the extremely fundamental fg elements of hold-back-to-block, motion special inputs, and high/low mixup just don’t exist in smash. not to mention how dashing/running inputs work in tfg’s. i struggle to think of any fundamental movement/mixup/attack technique smash has which tfgs don’t.

I think FGs have some mechanics that are tangentially similar to DI. The direction you tech in older anime fighters can be the difference between returning to neutral or staying trapped in pressure. Killer Instinct's combo breaker mind games are an example of interaction during combos as well.

@sheikneedles9250

7 ай бұрын

But Melee has directionally teching AND DI

@nivrap_

7 ай бұрын

@@sheikneedles9250 In this case they're referring to air teching like in Blazblue or previous Guilty Gear games

@liptherapypirate

7 ай бұрын

I thought that combo breaker is kind of like DI, not as complex but a similar idea

@alex-dh8zy

7 ай бұрын

soul caliber

@loopseeker

7 ай бұрын

they look similar on the surface, but DI is too deep and nuanced.. no fighting game has anything like DI

Really surprised at no mention of kof. Sakurai speaks very highly of that series and you can see just how much of Smash was inspired by the systems in kof. Short hops, short hop aerial pressure, dodge rolls, amd just the overall speed of the game are some of the fundamental mechanics that make up the backbone of both Smash and KoF before it. Point is, smash fans wanting to get into (or at least get insight into) traditional FGs are really sleeping on kof.

@Komatik_

6 ай бұрын

Exactly. Preach it.

Hey! I'm a platform fighter specialist (I've done national commentary for nearly a decade with Melee, PM, Rivals, NASB, MVS, and more), but I've been learning traditional fighters with Strive and SF6 for about two years now. I'm actually working on a video about the learning process switching genres so I've been thinking about this exact thing a ton. I'd love to talk about the crossover/overlap stuff if you're up for it!

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

I'd like to join this discussion. I'm also both a competitive Smash Player and competitive TFG player. I'm currently unranked in ultimate right now, but that's because I'm in the NY scene with Tweek, Dabuz, and John Numbers, etc XD, but I used to be top 15 in Missouri. I currently play Strive as my main TFG, but I've played many others, and have gone competitive with multiple, so I think I'd be able to provide a pretty good perspective on this matter.

@benjaminnoble-kuchera1876

7 ай бұрын

Wisely vouch, this guys stuff is great

@peterpansie5

7 ай бұрын

Bald, request discarded

@Willow1662

7 ай бұрын

although i don’t always agree with your takes, i find you have generally thought through most of your ideas in a way that at the very least challenges my assumptions:)

@SoldierLuka

7 ай бұрын

Vouch! Wisely is awesome. S/o PM

Adding to the first topic, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive also have Weight system in all their games and that affects a lot in combos, even in some of the most simple and casual juggles. DOA (outside 1 and 6) also has slopes and that makes you have to change your combo using the weight logic, if you are going down on the slope you can treat your opponent like a lightweight, and you can treat him as a super heavy if you are going upwards .

@bt_11

7 ай бұрын

Oh yeah, I forget about Virtua Fighter sometimes. Weight matters a ton in that game. IDK so much about Dead or Alive

I played smash all my life, then started playing 3S in like 2010 and man it was NOT easy for me. I was like "they're invincible while waking up? how do you push advantage? You cant grab during hitstun? How do grapplers combo? Hitstun is so short. How is anything supposed to combo? My mobility is so limited. How do you press an advantage?" Unfortunately my friend who grew up with FGs didn't explain anything to me because he just played since childhood and didn't intellectually know the answers to any of my questions. He didn't even know how he was actually making DPs come out. So I had a very frustrating first exposure to non-platform fighters. Just throwing my two cents in as a smasher whose experience learning other FGs via 3S is NOT a hypothetical lol

@rapidretrovenue563

7 ай бұрын

Think of them getting knocked down as them grabbing the ledge. They will have an opportunity to do something but every option they can choose has a counter, so you pressure them with your pressence. Movement varies by game, some fighters are really sluggish I will agree. Others like UMK3 & MVC2 are quite expressive, definitely should checkout those games. They're old though lolmany modern traditional fighters are too slow for my taste, so I sympathize with your speed argument. Think of grabs as like... uhhh, fuck idk like a combo starter ONLY kinda move in most situations. Many fighting games in general have moves that don't come out after certain hits because they function through "flags" that lock them when conditions are met. Think of like diddy bananas or some shit where you can start things up with it but if you already have it out you cant whip another banana out. Hope this helps!

@GlowingOrangeOoze

7 ай бұрын

@@rapidretrovenue563 I appreciate that but I'm afraid your efforts are about 10 years late for me. I'd have killed for some guidance back THEN, though.

@palatonian9618

4 ай бұрын

Sick burn there at the end of the comment haha. Good old Dunning Kruger

@GlowingOrangeOoze

4 ай бұрын

@@palatonian9618 Do you mean in my original comment or my reply?

Honestly, I think it’s really more of a matter of most people who play traditional FGs having less interest in playing platform fighters. That is, there isn’t some inherent advantage switching from one type of game to the other. I’d say that most of Leffen’s success is due to him having a lot of talent, and not and inherent advantage that he had coming from Melee. I’d wager that Punk could have been a great smash player if he had pursued that instead because he has a lot of the same talents.

@Syrup4prez

7 ай бұрын

I agree, smash only interest me when I’m drunk at a party. But it is very fun in those scenarios!

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

I think you're correct as well. SonicFox picked up Smash for a hot second and nearly took a set off of a top player not even 2 months into playing Smash. While I do believe that there is a steeper learning curve for TFG players to cross to be competitive in Smash, I don't think they aren't capable of just as easily becoming a top Smash player if the *really tried*.

@LordKnightfgc

7 ай бұрын

Think I said it in the vid, but I'm of the opinion of a truly legit player of the genre is a legit player of the genre, and they will succeed wherever they put effort in. Def agree with you on this

@musacajelly2941

7 ай бұрын

​@@LordKnightfgc in general champions are people who rise to the occasion, in an alternate timeline where JWong played Starcraft Brood War and Flash played MVC2 I bet you'd find them to still be the best player in their respective games as mindset and dedication is a bigger difference maker then talent or "skill", those only determine how good you are when you start playing.

@solbradguy7628

7 ай бұрын

This is probably true. For the most part I just don't really like the roster of characters in pretty much any platform fighter. Smash's roster has grown a lot better over the years with some characters I like but it was too little too late I guess. There's really not a single character in Melee that appeals to me aesthetically. I wouldn't call a single character on that roster truly "cool" and that's important for me to want to learn the character. Even if I played Ultimate and could play a character I like such as Cloud or Sephiroth, I'd have to play against characters like Duck Hunt and Game and Watch and Wii Fit and the list goes on...I don't even want those characters to be in the same game lol. It seems like every platform fighter has the same goofy cartoon aesthetic, I mean you've got literal Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network platform fighters. Meanwhile in anime fighters like Blazblue and Guilty Gear I love almost every character on the roster. It's not even close. Plus the ring out thing is weird. I don't like that being the only win condition, it feels corny af. If I hit somebody with a big combo, I want the combo to kill them, not to have to launch them off the stage. I liked the mode in smash where you have health instead of %, but nobody seems to ever play or talk about that. And speaking of combos, they're my favorite part of FGs. Cool combos are sick. And smash's combos are weird and feel janky. Every character having different weight and falling out of combos is jarring and just feels bad. I know GG has character weight but it's a lot different, most combos will still work on most characters in GG. It feels like there are hardly any "true" combos in smash. I've played mostly anime fighters and been in the fgc over a decade and I might be decent at smash if I applied myself but for a lot of reasons it just doesn't appeal to me even a little bit.

I agree that Smash players, from my experience, are terrible at explaining things. I fought one of the top seeds at a tournament one time, lost but was eager to learn. So I asked for advice. I got told to "react more" to moves that are less than 10 frames. I learned then that good players dont always make good teachers lol.

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, it's a weird paradox. I was in the 'good-teacher' category of the Smash scene myself. Top players would body me consistently, but when I gave them advice on sets I watch them play against their rivals, they've explicitly told me that my advice helped them beat their demons.

@theomnigamer9177

7 ай бұрын

The person who told you to react to moves that are less than 10 frames can’t be human. The person who told you that is probably part of the crowd that says Z Broly command grab is reactable. And that grab is 17 frames. The grab is unreactable no matter what due to input delay.

@taytertot9382

7 ай бұрын

I will say that that might be a person to person thing. I’ve had top players in smash who are excellent at talking about the game and top players who are terrible at it. Maybe it’s just the difference between intuitive players and knowledge based players

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

Yeah, I'm a knowledge based player. If you are used playing Smash like I am, 17 frames sounds outright slow to me. To a smash player, anything less than 8 frames is considered "Unreactable". You may question how this is possible, but it really is, speaking from lived experience. I react to 10 frame moves all the time. Part of that ability to react comes from game-state recognition, understanding your opponents possible options, and knowing your own play/counterplay options. If you're familiar with Dragon Ball, think of it like Ultra Instinct, if you have to THINK about what's happening, you're probably not able to react to anything slower than 18~20 frames, but if your body *"already knows"* what to do, the human body is capable of MUCH faster reaction.

@123christianac

7 ай бұрын

@@zantetsu75 It sounds like you are describing a prediction... not a reaction.

a few things worth mentioning!! killer instinct's combo breaker system has the same level of nuance of mixing up people during your combos as smash's di system, and skullgirls's emphasis on resets similarly has you focused on mix-ups during combos. and stages do matter in some games! beyond 3d fighters, which you didn't mention, injustice had stage hazards that made stage selection matter a ton for match-ups. also, beyond soul calibur, iirc bloody roar also has a similar system of air di/teching. great vid, lk!

@undeniablySomeGuy

6 ай бұрын

as a sweaty-casual smash player who's dippped their toes into skullgirls, it's funny to hear smash players saying outright that fighting games don't have weight classes or players can simply "memorize combos" (as though most characters in smash don't have universal combos) sure, some combos and mixup routines can be memorized, but there's a lot to dynamically choosing resets and setups to catch your opponent off-guard. you condition your oponent to expect a reset in one situation, but then you reset slightly earlier or later. you condition them to expect a reset there, then you hold block on their mash and keep going. just because your fighting game doesn't have DI it doesn't mean that the combo system isn't defensively interactive.

"Smash is the only game with its own weight system" Kliff players trying to figure out how to combo to 6[H] against every character's unique weight and hurtbox: Sol fans trying to clean hit sidewinder: Robo Ky enjoyers trying to stun people with missile loops off of grab: Literally any character who gets an air to air: Edit: To be fair, in Smash, gravity changes with damage taken, so every combo is is slightly different, even a little more than Guilty Gear anti airs and air to airs.

@yugimumoto1

7 ай бұрын

Oh god kliff 6[H].

@AllBladesCut

6 ай бұрын

I see what ur saying but I’ll explain it better for the Fgc players. Technically gravity itself never changes in smash but ur moves do more knock back (and have more hitstun) based on the percent u were at before the move landed. Also almost every move gets increases to its knock back with increases in percent, except moves with set knock back. This values know as kbg (knock back growth) also different moves have different kbg values.

I started playing Smash 4 competitively in 2018, continued with Ultimate, then picked up fighting games in 2020 when the pandemic hit, and since then I've been in the rabbit hole. Playing other fighting games (particularly Blazblue CF, which was the first game I _really_ latched onto) made me realize how skewed and simplistic my idea of fighting games was back when I had _only_ played Smash. Like the first guy whose comment you talked about, I had thought that combos were THE thing about fighting games, and it took a while for me to learn that combos don't mean shit if you aren't able to create the opportunities to land them, which means diving into the infinitely deep theory behind neutral, oki, RPS, the real meat and potatoes of the genre. And like the _second_ commenter, I thought fighting games would be "simple" because they don't have the physics quirks of Smash as they relate to movement/combos, only to realize that both Smash and other fighters are infinitely deep, because even the simplest FGs derive a massive amount of depth from the fact that you're fighting another human being, which forces you to think about multiple layers of decision-making. Ultimately the biggest thing I learned from fighting games was to change my outlook on competition, which has actually changed my life in general for the better. I don't play to win and get upset when I lose, I play to learn, and that has made so much of the quote-unquote "bullshit" in fighting games so much easier to manage, including Steven Minecraft who to me just feels like a tame high tier from any other fighting game.

DOA is another game where, like Smash, you can't just go for the same combo all the time. If you always go for the same setup/combo, you can get blown up by a Hold. There's also things like Slow Escape too. One of the best parts of DOA was always that, like Smash, you had things you could do while being hit to keep your opponent on their toes and not auto-pilot.

@drumnbasssakuga9352

7 ай бұрын

for the vast majority of fighting games, doing the same combo every time isn’t anywhere close to optimal. I love how smash elitists conveniently forget that meter exists in fighting games and how heavily it affects the combo and oki options available.

An important point about smash in particular is that Nintendo is incredibly hostile towards people trying to call their game seriously. As a result, fighting game players have to learn much of the new systems and mechanics all on their own before they can begin to be successful competitively.

In terms of stage choice mattering, I think Tekken's stages tend to change things up a ton. Even ignoring stage shape, there are also vertical stages and infinite stages that benefit some characters over others.

As someone who has played both Smash and Fighting games, I think its important to make the distinction between Melee and all other future smash games. The barrier to entry on Smash as a whole is lower then any fighting game, since all the characters control the exact same, no motion inputs, etc. New Melee players are gatekept just because the amount of tech within the game is baffling to newcommers, which is a good thing because it allows the game to have such depth. To be a contrarian, with the advent of Steve, there have been a ton of new players topping many events in Smash Ultimate, players who came out of nowhere to have impressive results. While in SF6, it would takes years in my opinion for someone new to come to the scene and be able to take sets off of players such as Daigo, Mena, etc. The same with Melee and their top players.

@kylespevak6781

6 ай бұрын

"No motion inputs, etc" Ryu and Ken 😂

As mainly a Smash player, my hardest thing to get used to in traditional fighters is hit confirms. In Smash, you can just be in neutral and get a meaty hit and react to the hitstun. In Street Fighter, for example, if I react that same way the follow-up window is already over.

@chsi5420

6 ай бұрын

Instead of having the ability to perceive the time between hits, you are more reacting to things like sound. It becomes more just muscle memory than anything.

@cashbag

6 ай бұрын

Single-hit confirms are really difficult even for pros. You're better off doing two attacks that combo on-hit and confirming into a special from that second move. Sf6 makes it easier because you can drive rush and be safe. You can also do safe buffers that combo on hit and are safe on block.

@IppoX90

6 ай бұрын

Maybe change to a game that has more gatlings or reverse beats (In other words most 2D fighters) instead of links?

Man I love analysis videos comparing Smash and traditional fighters, I think it's such an interesting and deep topic, but sadly there's too little content for this specific niche. Please keep doing these, they're fun as hell!

Former Melee player here. Melee players don't know what they're talking about most of the time. They can't wrap their heads around simplistic fighting game concepts and think just because they have mechanical skill means that they can do well in any fighting game, ignoring the fact that they get bodied universally in any other FG, and most of the time in Melee as well. There's a reason why the 5 best players in Melee stayed the same for nearly a decade and a half, because it takes more than mechanical skill to be good.

think an important part to add on about learning an established game is just how much the age of the smash scene affects the skill floor, mainly for melee. a modern players basic movement looks absolute insane compared to what the top level was like when the game was half as old, and movement is so incredibly important for platform fighters. and in terms of transferring skills between platform and traditional fighters, going from smash to traditional covers a lot of the skill floor (spacing, neutral, etc), while going from traditional to smash covers those same things but lacks movement (and unique stuff like L-canceling), which is a pretty high skill floor to have to catch up to if you want to be remotely competitive. not to say melee is inherently harder or the players are better, just that the parts that dont overlap with traditional fighters are super important to reach the skill floor

I have a pretty unique standpoint on this I think, because I actually started playing traditional fighters with Soul Cal 2 and Sonic the Fighters for traditional fighters, and Smash Brawl for platform fighters, both at single digit age. So I understand both pretty well. I think a lot of people don't understand that the broader *concepts* used in the fundamentals are basically the same. The major difference is in the capabilities you have to interact with those concepts. Keeping someone in the corner in traditionals is very similar fundamentally to keeping someone at the edge of the stage in platform fighters. Poking with safe moves, punishing, unsafe moves, etcetera etcetera, it's there. The game system just functions differently.

In my opinion one of the biggest reasons for people that don't migrate to Smash is that there are no good tutorials. The game itself does nothing to teach you about how to properly play, and even when learning about advanced techniques there are hundreds of youtube videos that you have to watch. Fighting games also have bad tutorials but it's so, sooooo much worse for Smash.

I am praying for you like you asked on twitter

former ultimate player here, ultimate did try and make movement more accessible with changes like auto short hop aerials or easy dash dancing. But this counter intuitively made other movements harder like doing full hops. Combined with the awkward buffer system means learning to move at higher levels of play often requires getting over the awkward quirks of the game’s system. Its not as technically demanding as something like melee but its still a hurdle to get over.

@FerousFolly

7 ай бұрын

the better you get at ultimate, the more it feels like a 2v1 with the game teaming up with ur opponent against you

As somebody who also started with Smash before eventually gravitating to mainly playing Gear, I notice the weird fixation on combos from Smash players locally *all* the time, even going back as far as Xrd. Trying to get some folks in locals to play some Xrd or some Strive, and I'd always have at *least* one dude saying "those 2D games are boring because you just learn one combo and you do one thing all the time and it's boring", which I feel like is the easiest thing to disprove (what range are you at for your starter, what are your resources, do they have a defensive mechanic like a burst that might alter your decision making mid-combo etc etc). But, I also feel like it's the hardest thing to get some Smash people to bother considering.

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

As someone playing GGXX and Strive, you are correct in that starting conditions do affect the progression of your combos, but also as a high level smash player, I see where they're coming from and somewhat aggree. As someone who can consistently play in Celestial in Strive, I understand many intracies and permetations of combos and move gatlings for my characters, but here's the thing: they all just amount to slight adjustments that serve to help reposition / set myself up to be able to enter my bread-n-butter progressions. If I play Ky, the start of my combo, whether it be 6P, 2K2D, CS, FS, or 5H all have very different conversion routes, but they all *end* roughly the same way, usually into Stun Dipper->RRC -> BnB or Dire Eclat->RRC->BnB. I feel like I'm repeating the same moves A LOT when I'm playing these games, and that DOES get boring when compared to Smash, where you're typically forced to do *everything* differently, *every* time. In most situations, **NO 2 combos** will ever be exactly the same, and even your BnBs in Smash are extemely Volatile, despite what Top player VODs might lead you to believe. The only thing that shakes things up from my usual offensive comboing and pressure in GG is when I have to watch out for DPs, ISSs, or Bursts, which is usually just a slight deviation as opposed to an outright game changer.

@kjam1389

7 ай бұрын

​@@zantetsu75 this is really dependent on who you play. Characters like Potemkin at a higher level have extremely unique routing (kBMF, [FDB], JFkBMF, HFBkGK extension) that depends on a ridiculous amount of factors while characters like Johnny have very different routes for crouching and standing opponents (before the Elphelt patch, his BnB was even character-specific and had special versions for Ky, Chaos, Zato, etc). The character you play as well as your priorities as a player (i.e., whether you go for harder tech like TK HVV > 5K links on Sol) can lead to needing at least 10 or so unique variations on your BnBs to account for stuff

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

@@kjam1389 Fair enough. I don't play those characters, so it might be different for them. I've been thinking about picking up a new character because my current ones were feeling stale as I basically get to Celestial more or less executing the same 3~4 combo routes over and over again. As far as more advanced stuff, I think there is some validity there, but if you're playing to win, even LK will tell you in one of his previous videos, it's best to stick to what is simple and can be done *consistently* instead of trying to "get fancy" for something thay may only give you marginally better return. That said, I do think advanced combos are HYPE, so I am personally interested in being able to do them. That being said, while it is a lot to know, and it is by NO MEANS easy to do, once you've "got it", that's it. Once you *have* your routes figured out, even those become 'rinse-and-repeat', albeit more situational. I think being able to have the situational awareness to know that this route applies is quite difficult, and that form of engagement is actually fun in my opinion, the fun is coming from the discovery and revelations, rather than the execution..but that's just me.

@kjam1389

7 ай бұрын

@@zantetsu75 I can agree with the discovery part, which is again why I like Potemkin so much. His combo routing gets super open-ended at the high end (look at DSBroTV'S S2 optimal combo guide, its mostly unchanged in S3), Pot has some wild stuff and he's still actively being explored

@MarkoLomovic

7 ай бұрын

@@zantetsu75 While I understand what you are trying to say, I find it wrong on so many levels. You are comparing two different genres for situations where there is very little overlap. You are missing the point of OP, he is saying that people who never played fighting games diss them on something as superficial as combos are boring. it is as if someone said platform fighters are boring all they do is running around and laming each other, then I come in and say " I see where they are coming from and somewhat agree", like fuck I would never give any credence to that type of shit.

I think one of the reasons smash players struggle to explain mixups is that although the mixup might seem to be which move you use, it's more often the movement mixup into that move that actually makes the difference, and movement mixups are, for the most part (to my knowledge), a very in-the-moment type of vibe-based decision. really hard to explain why your movement mixup worked when you were just doing what felt right in the context of the set. also important to note that we can tell you about mixups when talking about movesets and certain situations, but actually getting into that situation is often a whole series of mixups in itself and those can feel more important to us while also being ambiguous in their nature and context.

@oneb3low

6 ай бұрын

Yeah like imagine Hungrybox trying to explain how every aerial drift is actually a mixup. Impossible. The truth is that mixups in the traditional sense are very small part of melee. Yes there's always the threat of a shine grab or a 50/50 DI situation, but most of what matters is what LK called "footsies". I don't think that term accurately describes it though. In melee there's a very large heatmap of where a fast character can put a hitbox that's unreactable (say 20f). All of the bobbing and weaving might look like footsies to a trad fighter player, but it's much closer to the platform fighter version of mixups, i.e. navigating reponses to unreactable situations.

@FerousFolly

6 ай бұрын

@@oneb3low yeah I've heard people describe smash and melee footsies as closer to jousting/fencing than footsies. like the footsies are there but there's a whole 'nother level to it that is really hard to explain to people who don't play

One thing to add is not only do you need to factor in weight, fall speed and DI, you also need to consider percentages that’s like GG having combos that only work when your opponent is at certain health values throughout the match. And in the later games rage (your own character’s percentage) can also affect which strings or combos work

@onkarlally

7 ай бұрын

Guilty Gear does have combos that change depending on health. Guts kicks in super hard at the end of a life bar so you see pros change their combos in xrd to a lot of low damage hits.

@mikelelola86

7 ай бұрын

Oh so with high guts doing more small hits is more damaging than fewer strong hits? I didn't know that, I thought those combos I see on Twitter that end with like a million jPs were like that because hitstun scaling prevents anything else from working that late into the combo. Pretty interesting.

@solarsloan

7 ай бұрын

@@onkarlallythe optimal damage combos change, but there aren’t combos that will just drop because the opponent’s health was a certain value.

@ElasticLove12

7 ай бұрын

@@onkarlally this is also something to consider but like someone else mentioned the combos don’t just drop when Guts starts to kick in your route just becomes less optimal if you don’t adjust much different but good note

@Jardonius

7 ай бұрын

@@mikelelola86 They call em "Guts Breaker" combos and I just love the term lol

So air control in SC is a bit like DI in that when you're being juggled you can influence where you're going to go, it's naturally a lot simpler though in that in most cases you use it to drift farther so combos drop due to distance or drift in to prevent ring outs, an important distinction is that AC is just a direct influence whereas DI directions depend on knockback angle i.e. if you're launched straight left and DI straight left or straight right then there's effectively no change and the optimal form of survival DI is generally the tangent line upwards meaning if I'm getting launched to the top-left corner I want to DI to the top-right corner and vice-versa

@thisuserpwnsnoobs

7 ай бұрын

To get a bit more technical about how air control works in calibur, the rule is that if you're in a special airborne animation like a pancake flip, you can't air control. That is how true combos are able to be performed consistently, and air control on a basic level is used to steer yourself out of combos that aren't "real." HOWEVER at the very highest level, there are setups that can exist in combos as knowledge checks, granting some combos much better damage if the opponent doesn't know the correct way to air control. But in 99% of cases at all levels, players just stick to true combos, and air traps exist as a niche layer of depth and knowledge checking you can try on your opponent.

@leaffinite2001

7 ай бұрын

DI optimal lines actually change a bit from melee to ultimate, as ultimate made di effect how fast you move after being launched. Also i think your example is flawed, since in general survival DI is usually DI-ing in such a way as to be launched towards the top corners of the screen; if youre being launched straight at the top left corner, thats ideal.

this video is perfect cause I love having these conversations as someone who plays smash and other fighters. Regardless of what people think about either type of fighter I just want both to have the respect they deserve. They have differences, they have similarities just like anything else does, but ultimately they are all uniquely difficult and fun. Fighting games are sick af

I think the major point of difficult in SSBU is the amount of knowledge thats required to play at a competitive level. I dont think anybody would argue that Melee has a much higher skill floor and ceiling in terms of execution and tech skill, but aside from the occasional reinvention of a mid-tier (i.e. aMSa and Yoshi), the actual knowledge base is very slowly growing. You see the same 5-6 characters in brackets for the most part, with occasional mid-tier heroes pulling out some shit that very few people know how to deal with. Conversely, SSBU’s extremely large character pool requires far more knowledge to truly understand a majority of matchups. Offensive strategies like setups, mixups, and Gimmicks are seemingly infinite; the same can be said for defensive strategies like DI, SDI, spacing and punishing, etc. I’ve been playing Melee since I was a kid, and have semi-competitively played every Smash release since. Ultimate is the only game to consistently make me go “Wait, that character can do THAT?” nearly every time I play the game. Picking randoms with your friends and experimenting with niche matchups is some of the most fun you can have in Ultimate.

I also started with Melee, me and a friend got into Central Fiction and we both felt it was harder to get started with than Melee

@Gamesmarts194

6 ай бұрын

tbf your first problem was starting with a BlazBlue game and the last one at that lol

Me going from Ultimate to Melee, teching everything, having mega fundies, doing fast fall lasers and jump cancel shines, knowing all the competitive Smash stuff having gone to locals often with Ultimate "Man... I suck at this game" I can't imagine what it's like for a FRESH fresh player lol

The Dead or Alive series has a weight class system which affects combos a lot, and characters being combos can also still counter during a combo unless you send them to the air

I really appreciated both this and the previous video, thank you for making them. MvC2 has DI, but it's pretty subtle. Justin Wong's video 'TOP 9 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW HAPPENED IN MVC2' covers it. That stated, I don't think any other DI is near as potent or influential as Melee's. So agreed on the importance of stages being vastly greater in Smash, I feel like in slightly older fighting games stages were different lengths so some stages you had more room to retreat as a zoner, but I think that got pretty homogenized in more modern fighters. One additional note, MvC2 is a game like Melee where the tech skill floor before you get to start playing is high and none of the characters that are relevant you can bypass getting to that tech skill floor.

Skullgirls has mixups mid combo cause of how much that game emphasises resets. There are also some defense mixups you can do while blocking cause of pushblock guard cancel as well as standard team game stuff like alpha counters, which is less prevalent than DI of course but still kinda similar in how the defender is able interact. Imo skullgirls is another game that has a high skill floor, but thats probably mostly just because the skill ceiling is high and the average SG player is really good

@holdenchambers3986

7 ай бұрын

Also skullgirls has a weight system, as someone that plays Val/Bella/Double I learned very quickly I had not left that behind in my ssbu days. Skullgirls and smash also are pretty interesting when looking at combo system because of how often in smash you have to piece together a combo on the fly, same thing happens a lot in skullgirls.

What you said about fast vs slow games perfectly described when I tried a Street Fighter V free weekend while new to the genre. The only traditional fighter I had played for over an hour at this point was Xrd Rev 2, so everything I knew about fighting games was based in that. I was new, so I wasn't able to use meter effectively at all, I only really threw out supers in neutral. Even with almost no experience, I could tell the difference. The fact I could not generate any offense with most characters at half screen or farther away outside of throwing a fireball was so weird to me. And when I should have backed off and played footsies in these situations, I didn't because I was so used to my opponents blowing me up from half screen if I gave them a single moment. Part of that was a lack of fundamentals, but the speed made it excruciatingly apparent.

Ive been not only a fan of you, LK, but a high level player in smash and a bunch of traddy fighting game for over a decade now. Im currently competing in ultimate and strive. And im also a general historian of the scene at large so i just love hearing and talking about the intersections between the different communities like this. Would love to contribute somehow

I think the one about transferrable skill levels is interesting because historically most top smash pros dont stay relevant in the metagames of other platform fighters like rivals, nasb, slap city, rushrev, etc. I get that theres a difference in the popularity in these games, but just like any traditional fighting game, some stuff transfers and some doesnt.

@bt_11

7 ай бұрын

I often wonder how different competitive Smash history would look if it had as many new versions as FGs do. I think LK's point about games developing is underrated.

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

Speaking as an insider of the community, that's less of an issue with top players falling off at other platform fighters, and more an issue of interest. Most Smash players stick with Smash not because they prefer the "Platform Fighter" genre, but because they prefer "Smash" specifically. Melee players tend to think Melee is the best game ever made, and even if they dabble in other games, most serious players will always go back. Conversely, top Smash players who do try sticking it out in the scenes of other platform fighters they choose to play are still basically at the top of those games. VoID, a top 10 player in Smash 4, and Top 100 player in Ultimate, has held the #1 spot in Multiversus and Nick All-Star Brawl for a hot minute. NAKAT, a top 50 Smash 4, and unranked Ultimate player is also Top 5 in Multiversus to my recollection.

@killinswagz

7 ай бұрын

@@zantetsu75 i feel like void and nakat are the exceptions and not the rule, and even then, relevancy in early meta is very different from mid to late meta

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

@@killinswagz They are exceptions, in that they actually decided to stick with those games for an extended period. My point was that most players simply *aren't* interested in those other games like that, and therefore fall off, simply because they're not really playing them anymore. I played Brawl for a bit after Melee, and realized that I liked Melee much better, so I went back and as a result my Brawl competitive relevance fell off. I'm saying that *THAT* is the "rule".

@michael13849

7 ай бұрын

I've lived thru the era where ppl were jumping ship to play other platform fighters. As for why they dont last its 1 of 2 things. 1.They miss smash and needed a break. They didnt wanna grind the new game and quit after other ppl caught up in skill.

This is great stuff, echoes a lot of things i was trying to explain to people (as an xrd chipp player, the things smash players were trying to tell me made no sense given that I have to deal with these things constantly already). Its good to hear this sort of thing from people who can accurately point out the whys and whens. Excellent and succinct!

So figured I'd throw my hat in the ring with a small story as someone who has been through the smash scene and has since moved on, I initially played a ton of smash played melee for years, picked up brawl and tried its competitive scene...then immediately dropping it, then finally Ultimate came out and it clicked, I was going to locals consistently and doing my best to improve and trying to win. I didn't end up sticking with it, which was mixed bag for me because I love Smash as a series but the experience left me with the impression that fighting games weren't for new people to engage with. between the people at my locals literally just shrugging at me when I asked for input on what I could improve on/saying "Just get better", getting told that I "Don't play the game right, (my) character isn't fun" (I was playing brawler at the time), and the over all experience being exclusive to anyone who wasn't in some very tight knit group, it was feeling like I shouldn't try. Then Mr. Terry got released and I wasn't excited for him, I had no idea what a "Fatal Fury" was, but then I tried him, now I really struggled to do motion inputs at the time, but he was SO COOL and I fell in love with his play-style, I bounced off of Ryu and Ken, but something about Terry really clicked, I decided to enter one last local with him, I had really improved and man Terry was pushing me to want to shove it to those dicks who effectively kicked me out before, I entered, I lost, but I took a set, and that rush of dopamine was addictive. The Local scene didn't change tho, I asked for input, got a shrug, heard nothing but complaining the entire time and excuses for why someone lost no matter who lost, I realized that this group probably didn't actually wanna improve and more just wanted to play Smash every week and lose a few bucks and give it to would win the local. I went home and decided to look at where Terry came from, look into Fatal fury as a series, I saw that was sooo different from what I was used to, and honestly it was off-putting enough for me to not wanna actually try it, besides the most recent game he was in was like KoF14 (? I think) and I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Fast forward a few years and I hear constant murmurings of this new game called "Guilty Gear Strive" mainly about its music, listened to it, loved it, but it was a fighting game I couldn't enjoy a fighting game, Ive tried with smash and I couldn't click with the funny Terry game, so why I here, I ended up just enjoying the music and eventually...a character came out in a time that was nearly perfectly aligned with me realizing some things about myself, Ms. Bridget Guilty Gear, it was enough to get me in the door...and while I'm still scared to try the game competitively (Probably mostly due to that really shitty Local experience with Smash) GGST has reignited my love for this genre, Bridget has been my companion through every Ramlethal laser and Pot buster, She has stuck with me while I learn of the concept of frame data, and what the hell a "Mix up" is all these things people would talk about in those locals forever ago but never explain, its been a wonderful time, Ive also learned that man....Smash players really subconsciously believe their game is the hardest, is Strive the hardest fighting game Ive ever played? no not really, Ive picked up KoF15 recently, as well as MvC3U on steam and my brain is STILL trying to fold correctly for those games, Smash isn't that hard, Smash players just need you to believe that.

your part about early melee players saying : " just do mindgames " is right. Hugs said on his stream that it used to be the case, but the neutral matured a lot especially since the developpement of the crouch cancelling tech. Loved the vid btw

I think something that a lot of Smash players tend to misunderstand is the differences in how you open people up in different games. Obviously concepts like strike-throw, whiff punishing, crossups and frame traps are common across all games (in Smash crossups often play a role in your out of shield options to punish moves), but from my experience transitioning from newer Smash titles to FGs you often think less about things like frame traps and how to effectively mix up your high low/crossup options. People aren't just gonna throw out onsafe moves on you on block or casually let you whiff punish them in the same way people often throw out moves in neutral in Smash.

@dirtydard4870

7 ай бұрын

That's one of the very fundamental differences from Ultimate to Melee that I didn't realize until reading your comment. The shield mechanics are very different

what i always think about as a former smash player, lapsed 09erm and strive returner is how melee guys used to talk about "priority" as an abstractly quantifiable ("more priority" "less priority" "lots of priority") property that moves had. last time i checked the term seems to have been moved to be a descriptor of the system of comparisons that determine whether moves clank or trade or whatever, which is rightfully narrow, definitely excluding a certain amount of what used to be the sense of priority, because it turns out that that part of the sense was really just about hitboxes. i don't know historically when fighting game people really developed awareness of hitbox interactions, and im not into smash enough to know how often those guys are accurately identifying the importance of hitboxes in this or that interaction but i gotta figure they're probably pretty on it now cuz the terms have changed and i know i've seen hitbox viewers. i do wonder if the pseudoscience of "priority" and maybe even "mindgames" could've been avoided if smash and fgc proper were less siloed from each other in technical language and development. not to imply that fgc hasnt done pseudoscience though i just dont know historically comparable examples

@dave9515

7 ай бұрын

No priority is a thing. Nintendo consoles have this thing called port priority and some moves are made to beat other moves out regardless of hitbox size. There are multiple vids talking about port priority out there and the weird hitbox interactions in smash and size while it can be a factor isn't always. Priority on moves is real. The mixup thing is kinda fair but yu gotta remember how smash players have always been treated by the FGC as well so the idea of the two communities mingling seems very unrealistic.

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

There are 3 forms of priority in Smash bros. 1st is Port priority, where if a situation occurs where a collision is between two variables where everything else is equal, the winner goes to the player in the higher port number (e.g. Player 1 and Player 2, both using Mario, simultaneously collide a forward smash against each-other, Port priority dictates that Player 1's Mario wins that interaction. This mechanic was deprecated after Melee). The 2nd form is Hitbox ID priority, since most moves in Smash are made up of multiple hitboxes, each one for specific move may have certain ID flags allocated to them. If a move collides with a hurtbox with multiple hitboxes simultaneously, the box with the lower ID takes precedent. The 3rd type of priority is Damage priority. This one survives even to the new games. If two opposing hitboxes collide simultaneously, either a whiff, clank, or plow will occur, based on the damage parameters/properties of the associated hitboxes. If the damage of one hitbox is 9% or more higher than the other, then a plow occurs, invalidating the other hitbox completely. Whiffs happen if any hitboxes in the interaction are given the "transcendent" property, which usually occurs with certain special moves or projectiles.

@bobboberson8297

7 ай бұрын

The other people replying here made many factual errors and also clearly never played smash when people still used to say "priority" and "mind games." Basically smash players used to have a very rudimentary understanding of frame data and hitboxes, so when they saw a move consistently beat other moves (either because it comes out first due to better frame data or out ranging the other move because of a better hit box) they said that move had better "priority." Now there are websites with the frame data and hitbox data of every move in the game so nobody says these things anymore. (you are aware of this, just making it clear for everyone else). There's also discord servers for most smash bros characters so information is just a lot more accessible now I think competitive smash in general was pretty niche until the last 10 years so the fgc had a pretty big head start on figuring this stuff out. If I'm being objective, even melee was not very popular until around 2013 when it got back into evo (just look at tournament attendance before and after then) and it's not like smash 64 or brawl had large scenes either.

@zantetsu75

7 ай бұрын

@@bobboberson8297 This is mostly correct. In the popular lexicon of modern smash, we don't really use the word priority at all anymore. I know I just described a "priority", but except for the "port priority" in melee (which isn't really a thing anymore in modern competitive melee because the modded version of the game played now patched this out), we don't actually refer to these things as actual "priority" now. Hitbox ID priortity was actually describing what we would describe *now* as the mechanics between determining sweetspot vs sourspot hits of a move, like with Marth's tipper vs Roy's hilt. Also instances of actual port priority occuring in melee was actually so hyper-specific and rare that it practically never really happend in any relevant tournament game that had been recorded. That said, I agree about Melee's popularity mostly being becaue of EVO 2013. It's why I picked it back up for a few years before Smash 4 came out.

@bobboberson8297

7 ай бұрын

@@zantetsu75 port priority is not modded out of melee. i'm not sure where you got that information but there's not even an agreed upon solution for how it could be feasibly removed if the community even wanted that. Also your assessment of port priority is off -- it impacts plenty of common situations. For example every single throw has an extra frame of hitstun if you're the lower port and higher port wins grab ties (more common than you would think in shield pressure situations). The extra frame actually matters a lot in chain grab situations (you can often do 1 more grab if you're the lower port) so this impacts a lot of match ups. I always go lower port in the sheik ditto and sheik vs marth for example. "never really happend in any relevant tournament game that had been recorded. " This is so far from the truth lmao

Can't believe there's so much talk about DI and you don't even mention Street Fighter 6. Drive Impact is one of the base features of the game smh my head (Not a serious comment)

When I think of mix-ups in smash (Ultimate player) I mostly think of conditioning. You choose an option a few times -> the person adapts to that option -> choose different option from what they are expecting. On the other hand you just choose an option the person wouldn't expect from your character.

in my opinion, as someone who started in smash ult and converted to SF, the idea that smash skills transfer better is more of a reflection of the resources available to learn traditional fighters. especially with the general concepts. even the most elusive concept of neutral has things like the footsies handbook with very thoughtful explanations. and this knowledge is very common among players whether they've read it or not. there really is no equivalent to the footsies handbook for smash, and most videos will just tell players "stop doing unsafe moves" or "practice good spacing." combined with the lack of a good training mode without mods, most smash players are illiterate to fighting game concepts and therefore the game is harder to pick up at a high level. making traditional fighters seem easier in comparison.

@richardpeterjohnson5372

7 ай бұрын

also worth noting that smash is a game where punishing bad options is MUCH harder, which I think is why there's not a lot of players who migrate from traditional fighters and stick around. which is a shame cause their understanding of how to dissect a game could really benefit the smash community.

@LordKnightfgc I'm a Smash player and a traditional fg player as well. I played Melee, Smash 4, PM, and Ultimate competitively, and I played MvC3, P4A (vanilla), GGXXAC, GGStrive, and BlazBlue Continuum Shift/Chrono Phantasma competively. I'm still playing GGST and Ultimate as of now. I'm bringing this up because you asked about getting a specific perspective, and I think I may be able to help with that more than most.

I started playing USF4 around 9-10 years ago. I was a solid mid-level Smash player at the time, even power ranked in a small state in Smash 4. It took quite a lot of time and practice to get to even 1000 PP (probably around SFV ultra bronze/silver). Probably close to 300 hours before I got to an average skill level in Street Fighter. It's definitely not easy at all, even for a lot of experienced Smash players. The main thing I took from Smash was learning how to learn. I understood the idea of fundamentals but not how to apply them in traditional fighting games.

12:00 Smash ultimate player here - I believe universal tech skill is important to the game, but only once you get past a mid level. I think that understanding of movement, spacing, and playing disadvantage well is far more important than tech skill, because most of the universal tech skill is easy to execute, but difficult to know when to pull off. If you look at top level play, most characters (excluding characters such as ice climbers, Steve, FGCs, etc.) don't have specific tech that is used throughout the entire game, most character specific tech is niche. It is much more important to notice how players use simple universal movement tech like reverse aerial rush, instant double jump, dash dancing, foxtrotting, or ledge hogging. In my opinion, smash ultimate is a game of mastering movement, and knowing how to use tech skill is infinitely harder than actually learning the tech itself.

This was a cool conversational video - love this kind of stuff from you! I think the observation of Melee as an 'established game' and all the stuff that comes with that is valid - the game having 20 years of 'skill floor' is an interesting observation that I haven't really thought about. Love this kind of discussion though - The Philosophy of Fighting Games™ is so fun to think about and discuss.

it's interesting to hear someone say "there are more skills that are transferrable between smash and traditional fighters than the other way around." kinda by definition, if they transfer one way, they transfer the other way. skills like spacing, mixups/mindgames, whiff punishing, conditioning, screen/stage control are transferrable between both games. if you could learn it in smash and it is a useful skill in a traditional fighter, chances are the people playing that traditional fighter also learned that skill because it was useful. like name a smash skill that transfers only one way and not the other?

Fall Speed and Gravity are actually 2 different things in Smash (maybe also in other games?). Gravity is your downward velocity and fall speed is your maximum speed downward.

@chaoticblitz

7 ай бұрын

Wouldn't fall speed just be terminal velocity then?

@kersingi

7 ай бұрын

Basically, but they're set individually per character so i didnt want to implied they were tied. If there's two characters with similar fall speeds, but one has much higher Gravity, the higher gravity character will be easier to combo.

@bt_11

7 ай бұрын

I think he was comparing fall speed to gravity in (mostly anime) FGs, which is probably different than gravity in Smash. The systems are different, but they both different combo theory for players to learn.

@SuperLemonfish

7 ай бұрын

you meant to say acceleration, not velocity. But otherwise yes. these are in melee as seperate attributes.

@kimor6903

7 ай бұрын

They are in guilty gear as well. At least strive pre-patch had both character weights and combo gravity where characters would all faster depending on various factors.

It really depends on the game that is talked about. For me, the jump from smash to MK was huge with only a few similarities. Sure there were directional throws, a block button, and a super move for each character. But that doesn’t mean I’ll instantly learn the frame data of every single hit from each combo string. Back when I just started, I was overwhelmed with phrases like “safe on block”, “unsafe on block”, etc. The point is that the jump is huge from smash to any fg dependent on your choice of game.

I feel like a lot of these points are directly countered by the existence of the Marvel series, which predates Smash with unique character weight, highly complex movement, and also adds additional factors like meter management, character defense, team composition, widely varied assist mechanics, and so on. I think the reason why you see a few Smash players cross over to fighting games (but not the other direction) is primarily because there are lots of different competitively-viable fighting games, but on the other side it's basically just Smash and some indie stuff (both Playstation All Stars and Multiversus fell off fast and hard). So if you're already good at (say) MK but you want to play something else, there's a lot more incentive to make the small jump over to Tekken or GG or SF than there is to make the big jump over to Smash; meanwhile, if you play Smash and you want to play something else, you basically HAVE to make that jump because there just isn't much competitive meat on the bone in the platform arena once you leave Smash.

ngl, on skill floors and difficulty I gotta agree with what you said later on, having started with meelee as a literal child (a filthy yellow rat main as well), and having recently picked up MBTL (because I love type-moon stuff and due to my habits prefer faster paced games), good god is SSMB so much easier as a casual, the basics are easier to get down, you pretty much never get stuck in someone else's massive combo, and the ringout style allows for recovering from some absolutely absurd things. the skill transfer is also damn near 0 for me so that's something else. idk who wrote the comments you responded to but it feels like they are talking about a totally different game than what I know, but hey, I'm just a low-skill casual, so that definitely might have a good bit to do with it.

very much appreciate this mini-series kinda thing your doing about the parallels of smash and traditional fgc. i've started with smash and now play it and fgc equally, and i can say you've been spitting nothin but facts. more videos like this would be heat 🙏

As a commentator and very well versed player for Soulcalibur VI, I'll let you know the DI (Air Control) system that exists in SC overall generally is pretty much a non-factor because there are enough routes for every character that do not allow the opponent to DI. I feel the system could absolutely be fleshed out more if the Devs wanted, but it seems mostly to exist as an infinite prevention and full ringout carry prevention system. Good looks for bringing up Soulcalibur though!

@Senketsujin

7 ай бұрын

It only activates when a juggle stops being true from what I've gathered playing all the SC'S

@kenshisanki

7 ай бұрын

@@Senketsujin yeah basically to stop you from completing looping an opponent with some sicko mode combo

Super Smash Bros. Melee,, which is Super Smash Bros. Melee,, is different from other, non-Super Smash Bros. Melee, games because they, not being Super Smash Bros. Melee, are not Super Smash Bros. Melee. This is truly the greatest level of discourse imaginable on this subject.

I'm glad you made the point about simpler not being easier. Simpler movement means that you have to build on a whole load of other skills to counteract some stuff that would have easily been beaten with freeform movement. It can even be seen in changing characters in the same game. A lot of time coming from a more technical game you think it'll be easy to play a slower paced, simpler game. And then you realize everyone in this game is much better at every single of those simple options than you are, because you are used to relying on convoluted or fast options to get around problems. Also, saying you think you can learn any game without having even tried is most of the time a recipe to be wrong. Sure, a marvel 3 player has learned an insanely complex and degenerate game. Doesn't mean they'll have the easiest time learning comparatively much simpler SFV. Both platform and traditional fighters most likely transfer better from one another than people think, but the FGC, especially over internet and especially (at least it seems to me) beginner/mid level players, like to chase the clout of playing the hardest, most complex, nuanced fighter ever. Had a random french smash player once telling us about how you never have to learn as many matchups in any FG as you did in smash. Then we brought up AACC. so he went "yeah but the movement", good thing, AACC also fits for this. I'd say it's no use saying how hard and complex your game is for the sake of it. Like what are you trying to achieve, want people to give you a medal ? Rather, just invite people to take a spin on it, see if they like the game. Play Blazblue, Melty and Samsho btw. Pretty cool games.

5:00 mixing people up during combos is the core tenet of Killer Instinct gameplay, because combo breakers have 3 strengths and the defender has to guess the correct strength to break out so its on the attacker to mix up their attack strength

I’ve played a lot of melee and I’m gonna be 100% honest all the games difficulty comes from the lack of a buffer. If you have played a lot of plat fighters then the entire game would not be hard but the lack of buffer is just such a culture shock

I have played Smash and platform fighters for ages now but decided to finally get into fighting games proper through SF6. My experience as a tourney player in smash informed a LOT of the way I played the game but the mechanical differences made it so it was impossible to apply and I got my ass beat at ranked... so I buckled down and played for like 200 hours. Once I got the hold of the mechanics and pace of the game, my smash fundamentals are *finally* giving me results in fighting games, stuff like spacing, whiff punishing, tech-chasing, keeping someone's options limited, etc all flow naturally now and it feels amazing! Im now decent at SF6 and about to reach S+ in GBVSR! It takes a lot of perseverence, patience and getting your ass beat over and over but once you push through all your fundamentals will transfer nicely!

One type of traditional fighting game where stage choice matters is 3D games basically every 2D game I can think of has no actual difference between stages. It matters quite a lot in Tekken and you see stage counterpick a lot whenever someone loses to Akuma they go straight to infinite for example.

@AmaDominiCanes

7 ай бұрын

As far as 2D games go stages matter in Injustice because of the environment interactables

I think your comment about Melee players underestimating the impact of age on a game is true. I also came from the smash scene to FGs (3s and V) and especially with 3s had a really difficult time, hell I still am. The existing playerbase has had decades to refine their tech skill, they parry most of my attacks on prediction and can consistently hit combos that take me a while to replicate.

we need an anime game with di, its such a sick mechanic that doesnt deserve to just be limited to platform fighters

I definitely feel like fgc skills transfer over to smash way more than they would give it credit for. Once took a long break from smash to play traditional fighters, when i came back to smash locals i was doing way better and using whiff punishes, counterhits, 50-50s/strike-throws, and oki to my advantage unlike before. Definitely doesn't help that smash and fgc have completely separate terminologies for similar concepts, which makes the divide look much bigger

There's one very simple answer. Because smash is one/two games, and everything else is like 50 games. For players from other FGs, smash is one of many options, so it's not fair to compare that to smash bros. players playing ANY fighting game.

Smash is only “harder” due to a lack of resources to replicate scenarios so you have to adapt a lot. With enough training you’ll eventually learn the frame data of what’s safe on hit, and when you can take your “turn”. In smash you can’t really replicate scenarios as consistently so you have to be better at adapting to randomness

Smash bros for the 3DS was one of my earliest gaming experiences, losing to my cousins Ganondorf, and transitioning from that to SFIV to Mahvel was a real rude awakening.

Dead or Alive doesn't have weight, DI, or damage-based knockback, but its countering mechanic forces mixing up your combos without your opponent breaking out and being successful can lead to huge damage. So its similar to Smash in that aspect, despite using different mechanics.

Honestly, I think unique gameplay gimmicks are something a lot of people forget about. One of my favorite fighting games as a kid was a game called Bio Freaks on the N64. It was a 3d fighter with aerial movement AND a dismemberment mechanic.

I like to compare the combo breaker system in KI to DI because you're still interacting after a hit is converted and the difference between getting mixed up and not is the difference between exploding and escaping.

During the execution/Skill Floor/Legacy section, I'm glad you showed Marvel 2. I feel like that game, in terms of scene and reputation, is REALLY similar to Melee.

I remember there was an argument about melee being harder than Tekken. The response to that was the person streaming stated that in Tekken, there's no real movement, over 100 moves to study up, and to do a combo you not only need to find a good whiff punish but also find the execution. This made me realize that even if Melee does have all sorts of things to add depth. It's not the same way Tekken has where you not only need to study the game but also the characters.

DI mixups sound a whole lot like vortex to me, like "I got hit and depending on the RPS decision I make now I could either get my turn back or get hit again".

You dont even have to argue against the weight point by pointing out the exact same thing since there are a bunch of analogous factors like character size in many games that alter the combo routes you have access too (e.g. Tekken, 3S)

If you do another collab video in the "broken moves" style, maybe see if you could get someone familiar with tekken and other 3d fighters! I feel like we would see some unique examples

Been playing Soul Calibur for 2 decades. The air DI is called Ukemi and it does result in mixups. You can DI to the sides but you can also DI backwards or towards the opponent. This exists in every SC game. Some attacks will land if your opponent DI backwards such as long reaching verticals while DI'ing to the sides can often be caught by good tracking verticals, horizontals, or tracking kicks. When we train and practice combos, we actually often set the AI to ukemi randomly so that we can learn what is consistent and what we need to condition for.

@Ikronix007

6 ай бұрын

So can I DI in SC2 ( GC ) I love playing Link.

@KoAkaiTengami

6 ай бұрын

@@Ikronix007 Yes, gravity was just really strong in SC 2 so air ukemi is a lot less obvious. You still see plenty of ukemi on the ground. I only mentioned areal ukemi since it seemed more adjacent to Smash Bros DI. In fact, Astaroth (The closest to a grappler in the game) has an entire grab gameplan revolving around predicting and knowing which grab can get specific types of DI responses from your opponent.

@Ikronix007

6 ай бұрын

@@KoAkaiTengami Understood. Love SC but def bad at it.

Im not sure where this fits in the overall conversation, so imma just throw it out there. Casually competitive player here, but as someone who has spent more time with traditional FGCs and has (relatively) recently gotten into Smash ultimate, one of the largest hurdles was translating my fighting game mentality/strategy to smash. I would argue that in fighting games, you exist within 1 of 3 states: neutral, defense, and offense. Neutral is the same, but the latter two are more concrete and easier to identify, as well as strategize around immediately because of knockdowns. It’s easier to identify your exact options, and choose how you sequence your pressure to mix up your opponent and vice versa on defense in these knockdown interactions. I would argue that in smash, outside of neutral you primarily exist on a spectrum between disadvantage and advantage state, and as a result you rarely run into set in stone “knockdown”-like situations. As a result, i had difficulty making decisions and even knowing when i should be thinking about selecting from a number of options, and relied on just landing hits in neutral. It wasn’t until I started treating tech chasing and ledge trapping like typical “knockdown” scenarios that I was able to think of the aforementioned spectrum and create more opportunities for “mixups” outside of the “knockdowns”.

btw, as another person who went from playing a lot of melee to mostly playing "traditional" 2d fighters, i'm very glad you're making these vids. there are so few people with real experience in both, at least compared to all the loud people who primarily know one or the other.

I routinely play Smash ultimate, guilty gear strive and xxac+r. Smash is easier to get into, but the high level is way harder to get into compared to GG. There are just way too many nuances there and the techs that are still getting discovered make it insane. Pros move their characters in completely different ways than people on elite smash.

Mixing up your combo within a combo sounds like KI's Breaker System to me. I don't know if that's exactly analogous tho lol

@TFGamer95

7 ай бұрын

Again, not sure how analagous this is but I feel like Tekken has that level of decision making when it comes to combo routes, positioning, and knowledge of what the other player's options is. It's all connected *Mind Blown meme*

12:30 "You gotta mind game" Is the most melee thing I've heard in a while lol

Virtua Fighter and DOA also have varying weight and fall speeds.

I want to add that 'mixing up my opponent during my combos' IS an incredibly rare thing trad fighting games with a notable exception. The best fighting game nobody plays: Killer Instinct. In KI, this strategic concept is essentially one half of the 'pressure game' in which a combo can be best thought of as roughly equivalent to a blockstring until your opponent locks out in one way or another, only then are they truly stuck in a combo.

"What game has variable weight and fall speed?" I've never felt the answer to a question more in my life, shoutouts to all my +R Johnnybros

I'm new to Strive, been playing smash a while... I think in the smash community I hear the term "50/50" a lot more than "mix up" in the example given in the video. Maybe they're different, but I feel like, in smash, a mix up happens more with timing or NOT doing an option that you've done before to catch an air dodge or something. Different than a "read" because a "read" would be abusing an opponent's habit of DI, jumps or mash attack out of hitstun, etc.

@ZephyrK.

7 ай бұрын

50/50’s and mixups are different concepts that arise in similar situations. 50/50’s essentially mean you have to guess between ONLY two options correctly in order to defend while a mixup refers to several things the attacker can do with several options the defender can take. 50/50’s are a guessing game and mixups are hard reads basically. In a way 50/50’s are baby or simple mixups since it’s a similar concept but on a much smaller scale.

@alexmuir7505

7 ай бұрын

I agree, I think one of the main reasons why mixups are so much harder to talk about in Smash compared to traditional fighters is that the mixups are often not 50/50s. DI/SDI provides a very analog method of defense with more options to consider compared to the digital and often binary choices of traditional fighters like high/low, left/right/ and strike/throw mixups (obviously at a base level: with reversals, delay teching, shimmying, parrying, FD, etc, it's rarely this simple). Even with a more limited situation like tech chases, Smash players still have the options of tech in place, tech roll in, tech roll out, and no tech. In juggling schenarios you can choose between airdodging in any of 8 directions, jumping in multiple directions, as well as all of your normals and specials, all able to be chosen at any point during a window of time. On top of this, Smash has to deal with loads of other situational factors such as your opponent's percentage (which varies how far attacks will send / how much hitstun they put the opponent in), your own percent with rage in Sm4sh and Smash Ultimate which makes your attacks send further as well, stage positioning and platform layout, and your opponent's character's size, weight, fall speed, gravity, air speed air acceleration and fast fall speed (for juggling schenarios), tech roll speed, invincibility and distance (for tech chases). Even things such as how fast a character's jab is is highly variable, being anywhere from frame 1 to frame 9. In SF6 or GGST, you'd be hard pressed to find a character's fastest move being something other than frame 4 or 5. All of this is to say that it's hard to talk about mixups because things are rarely universally constant: you may think you're doing a mixup correctly but your opponent had slightly too low percentage and was able to act a couple frames earlier and jump away, or you think you'll be able to hit your opponent before they touch the ground but they fell faster than you thought and were able to tech away. I would honestly argue that combos and mixups in Smash have so many factors to take into account that they are often just constructed on the fly by making your best guess in the moment; there are too many factors to consider to be able to always choose the most correct option in the limited time available to react. It's why I like platform fighters so much, as well as things like the Drive system in SF6. When there are too many options to consider and the best play isn't clear, players tend to mess up more and fall back on more instinctual, emotional, human decision making, which can then be exploited. I'd rather get hit by a mixup where I feel like "damn, I panicked and DI'd in because I was too scared of being down air'd off the side of the stage" rather than "well I saw I got knocked down and knew the high/low mixup was coming from a mile away, but I still guessed wrong and lost the coin flip". Don't get me wrong, I love a good flow chart, but after looping the same Bridget high/low rolling movement mix into the same repeatable knock down set up for the hundredth time, it starts to feel like it's the game that's beating my opponent rather than me behind my controller.

Glaring omission to not mention Killer Instinct in regards to the whole DI thing, mixups during combos, etc. Not exactly equatable, but in terms of examples of something similar in trad fighters, the Combo Breaker and the counterplay surrounding it is like, THE prime example lol

Could be a hot take, but I think a big reason that fgc players have a hard time getting into smash is the fact that smash has a lot of cheese that can kill you at 0 percent. Ofc fighting games have cheese, infinites, and the like. But what they don’t (generally) have is a ledge of instant death that you have to contend with while actively avoiding your opponent’s options. In traditional fg’s you don’t have to learn recovery in the same way you have to in platform fighters, you either fend off your opponent’s pressure or you don’t, but regardless you have to lose all of your health to die. Whereas in smash your stock in constantly under threat every second of the game. That and depending on where you are on the screen (on a platform, at ledge, etc.) could cause you to die sooner, while once again in a traditional fg you can’t die until your health reaches 0.

It's so funny to me that people talk about the skill floor of Melee being unreasonably high when like, to be a solid mid level player in melee is SO much more accessible than most traditional fighters. The design of smash is specifically made for the purpose of accessibility. Advanced tech is hard as hell, but like, you get to do things at Borp Levels basically for free. Yeah, the skill floor for winning or making it out of pools is very high, but that's because (like you said) it's an established game with an incredibly high skill CEILING. But conflating that with the genuine floor for play is just silly.

@no_nameyouknow

7 ай бұрын

It might also be because you have to use a Melee controller to be competitive. Sure, you CAN learn to play on hitbox or keyboard but we are going beyond "so much more accessible" at that point I think. That said, I am not sure what you mean by mid level player. Are you talking about mid level for just casual players, or do you mean mid level among tournament players?

This was an interesting watch as someone who's played smash all the way up till ultimate but I don't personally consider it the start of my journey of fighting games which in my head was with BBCS2 when I was 11, smash was just so natural to me that i couldnt even recall the adversity of learning how to play anymore (I was also like 1 when melee came out but I digress) but I always saw the beef between traditional fighters and smash as like something akin to GG vs BB debates where I have no stance and am wholly uninterested bc unlike the ppl who engage in that crap I have a fondness and appreciation for both

YOMI hustle has DI as well

loved the video (as a fg player who started playing smash a few years ago). and btw, you voice is distorted, you can fix that by moving the mic about 3 centimetres (an inch and a half) away from you.

A lot of people mistake skill gate(point of entry for competitive play) from skill floor(point of entry for general play). The skill floor doesn't change, the skill gate constantly change. When a game is more developed, has less new player, the skill gate gets higher. Design wise, Smash just automatically has a larger gap between skill floor and skill gate. However, the term "skill gate" is not a popular term so I'm not gonna blame people for having a hard time finding words.

JUMPING BEHIND SOMEONE DOES NOT MAKE YOU SAFER!!! If this isn't number 1, you're wrong.

I’m convinced smashers don’t know what they’re talking about sometimes.

street fighter 6 has DI too Also as a melee player i can say streetfighter is the hardest fighting game for melee players to learn cuz we have 0 patience