Super Smash Bros. Director Working to Balance Characters

roseofbattle

News Room Contributor
Apr 18, 2011
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Super Smash Bros. Director Working to Balance Characters

Some Super Smash Bros. characters are equal, and some are more equal than others.

Ever played Super Smash Bros. Brawl as the tournament-banned Meta Knight? Super Smash Bros. has never been perfect in his balancing. With more tweaks in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS, director Masahiro Sakurai plans to make certain moves stronger while adding exploitable weaknesses to them.

"Doing things like simply 'lower the performance' can make games lose its fun," Sakurai said. "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."

At the moment, Sakurai is working on character adjustment to Bowser. Mario's main antagonist is stronger than ever in the upcoming Super Smash Bros., and balancing his strengths with some inherent weaknesses is important.

"Rather than directly weakening an attack's advantageous parts, we're putting effort into keeping them strong, while adding other weaknesses to them," Sakurai said. "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."

Bowser has stronger knockout moves and is more likely than before to send opponents flying through the air. He won't be the only one likely to punch characters out of the map. Sakurai mentioned sending characters out of the ring is a great deal of the fun in playing the game, so his team is putting more care into making attacks stronger without making them impossible for other players to handle.

Sakurai noted that while balancing for Brawl began six years before its release, updates to the game never sought to reform the balancing. He hopes to release the new title "as soon as possible" and to make it "more enjoyable than ever."

Source: Siliconera [http://www.siliconera.com/2013/12/30/sakurai-importance-balancing-next-super-smash-bros/]


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Roxas1359

Burn, Burn it All!
Aug 8, 2009
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Just don't nerf some characters like crazy or some of their moves for that matter. Poor Captain Falcon had so many of his moves nerfed that playing him in Brawl was a pain. Jiggly puff was completely nerfed as well, and was definitely given the most useless Final Smash of all. Really though if one company is good at balancing from what ai've seen, it's Namco when it comes to the Tekken games. Yes there are still broken characters, I'm looking at you Mishima, but generally the games are pretty balanced.
 

Drummodino

Can't Stop the Bop
Jan 2, 2011
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Screw playing Meta Knight, anyone ever try and play Ganondorf? Without a doubt the worst character in Brawl, but so much fun if you actually manage to win with him.

OT: I hope this comes out sooner than later. Should be a good addition to my 3DS.
 

Vaccine

New member
Feb 13, 2010
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Hopefully they make the combat less "floaty" like with Brawl and go back towards more Melee type gameplay, I enjoyed Brawl but it was certainly a step backwards for me in the parts that matter.

I'm pretty excited for this to be coming out for the 3DS.
 

Sould1n

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Jan 23, 2011
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Always glad to see Sakurai talk more about Super Smash Bros. What I find interesting about Sakurai's comments regarding character balance, which isn't in this news post but is in the original article, is how he takes into account not only how the characters play in 1 vs 1 but also free-for-alls. It got me thinking, when others discuss SSB and it's balance do they take into account only how the characters play in 1 vs 1 matches or are free-for-alls, the various stages and items also taken into account and how they can affect gameplay and balance?

Anyway, good to hear things are going well for SSB4. I'm sure to have a blast playing it on both my Wii U and 3DS!
 

Covarr

PS Thanks
May 29, 2009
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Drummodino said:
Screw playing Meta Knight, anyone ever try and play Ganondorf? Without a doubt the worst character in Brawl, but so much fun if you actually manage to win with him.
Heh, Ganondorf is one of my favorites. Honestly, as worthless as he is in tournament play against skilled competitors, he's one of the most useful characters against AI, and against newer players. His entire playstyle revolves around understanding your opponent and predicting their moves, often entire seconds in advance. If you can do that, you can win.

He also tends to do well in matches with items enabled, or teamed up with Jigglypuff. If he can get his hands on a Deku Nut, or if Jigglypuff uses Sing, his warlock punch is nigh-unstoppable.

P.S. Thanks
 

2xDouble

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Mar 15, 2010
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In other words, the game director is currently doing his job. Thanks for the update, Nintendo.

Good to hear that Bowser is finally getting some real muscle, though. I hope they change or tweak his Final Smash. Giga-Bowser was cool and all, but in Brawl, he was so big and his hit-boxes so small that his attacks almost never connect.
 

TheEvilCheese

Cheesey.
Dec 16, 2008
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While balance is never perfect, I'm still regularly playing Melee with the same core group of people as I was a decade ago. Pretty much every character is loved by someone and there are no outstandingly powerful fighters.

Brawl? Nope. Played that for a few months, went back to melee because of the imbalances, floating (WHYYY) and tripping (WHHHHYYYYYY).
 

Pebkio

The Purple Mage
Nov 9, 2009
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Y'know what... no. Don't balance the characters. Let tournaments ban the broken ones because the game needs the broken ones to get you to more advanced stages. There was nothing finer in Melee than beating up someone playing Fox, Marth or Samus as Luigi or the Ice Climbers.

I honestly think they just need to limit the restrictions on ground-based fighters (I'm looking at you, trip mechanics). The game actually punished me for having quick reflexes. I might as well play a character that can fly through the air at the same speed characters run.
 

Roxas1359

Burn, Burn it All!
Aug 8, 2009
33,758
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Drummodino said:
Screw playing Meta Knight, anyone ever try and play Ganondorf? Without a doubt the worst character in Brawl, but so much fun if you actually manage to win with him.

OT: I hope this comes out sooner than later. Should be a good addition to my 3DS.
I always forget how nerfed Ganondorf was in Brawl. Ganondorf is the most powerful character, so he was made the slowest on purpose. While the strongest attack actually in Brawl is Charizard's Rock Smash. Ironic, the once weakest move in Pokemon is the strongest one in Brawl. Heck, with all the weird inclusions in Brawl it's why Brawl is not used in tournaments (see random tripping). Luckily Project M makes Brawl play much more like Melee, which is really good I say.