Tripping vs Rage

So I set up a poll to gauge which mechanic in Smash people disliked more: Tripping from Brawl or Rage in Smash 4, as fairly recently I had seen people express how they had preferred tripping over rage which I found to be quite interesting, though not too absurd of an idea.  So let's break down what each of these mechanics are, what they offer to the game and why people may prefer one over the other.

I'll start off with rage as it's the mechanic present in the newer, currently more relevant game.  For those of you who don't know, rage is an effect in Smash 4 described by the player base where as a character receives more damage their attacks deal more knockback between the damage range of 35 to 150%.  It serves as a x1.15 multiplier to knockback at its cap, so harder hitting moves (particularly ones with high base knockback) will be killing quite a bit earlier when the attacking character has a lot of damage.  It's worth noting, however, that rage does not have any effect on hitstun, so although characters will be launched further from attacks, they'll be able to act out of them at the same frame.

Due to rage being incremental, this has a rather dynamic effect on how characters are able to secure combos and take stocks.  Combos that normally wouldn't work effectively without rage, will begin to work with it or vice versa.  Percent ranges for certain strings open and close up in various ways, adding an additional layer of awareness required from the player.  They not only need to engage with their opponent's percentage when they begin to mount their offence, but also their own to ensure that their combos and strings will work.

The other key thing to note about rage is how it works as a makeshift balance mechanism for the game.  Characters that rely on their ability to hard punish (e.g. Bowser, DK, Ganon) benefit more from this mechanic than those who play the war of attrition with their powerful neutral games but lacklustre kill potential (e.g. Sheik, Diddy, Sonic).  Due to the nature of Smash (and often fighting games in general) the former type of fighter tends to be the weaker in terms of balance and this is evident just through looking at past history.  Bowser has been a rubbish character in every version of Smash he's been present in up until now, whereas Diddy Kong has always been incredibly good.  There are of course outliers scattered across the board, Smash is an incredibly dynamic game after all, but I'd say there's a relatively consistent trend of the slower, hard hitting characters being worse than the faster, neutral dominant characters.  Even in Smash 4 with rage present the best characters are the ones with the strongest neutral games for the most part (Bayonetta being the most notable exception if just because of how lop-sided her strengths are but that's a discussion for another time).  Rage essentially means the better characters have to play more meticulously.  Their kits intrinsically allow them to make a higher number of minor errors and heavier commitments, but they have to be cautious in terms of making larger errors as it could cost them their stocks earlier.  It's a mechanic that I would argue helps level the playing field a little more, and arguably helps generate excitement for spectators as the chance of a comeback is always present and rage helps towards that.

On the other hand, rage absolutely also serves as a frustration.  I referred to it earlier as a "makeshift" balance mechanism because it definitely feels like a band-aid fix to an overarching problem.  While it's important to create a dynamic and broad set of character archetypes in a game like this, particularly for more casual players so they have a variety of ways to play, some character kits just feel inherently lacking, and rather reliant on rage to compete.  It serves to mask poor design decisions but in doing so, acts as an arguably even poorer one.  The game at times feels inconsistent.  Top players constantly comment on how hard it is to succeed and remain consistent in Smash 4 in part due to rage.  While Melee has, for the most part, a very consistent set of top players, Smash 4's feel vague barring ZeRo, and even he has suffered notable loses to players many would deem significantly worse than him (compare this to Armada by comparison, who hasn't lost to anyone outside of the top 6 Melee players in the world for over half a decade).  There are of course A LOT of other factors to this, but it's hard to ignore rage as a factor.

This brings me on to tripping.  Tripping is a mechanic where upon executing a dash in Brawl, your character would have a random chance to stumble forward (as though they had slipped on Diddy's Banana) and be left completely vulnerable for a brief period.  Whereas rage plays a relatively large part in every competitive Smash set, tripping was actually much less of a factor.  The likelihood of tripping was fairly low, and often it would only happen twice or three times a set in a position where it didn't make too big of a difference to the outcome of the set (unless you're fighting against Ice Climbers and trip in front of their face, but that is in part due to Ice Climbers' incredibly awful design).  Furthermore, Brawl's meta simply shifted to focus more on walking to help avoid tripping entirely (you can't trip if you walk).

However, unlike rage which, in my opinion, has some positives and justification to its presence, tripping has no reason to exist and offers nothing in terms of value to the game at any level of play.  At best it sets up for random goofy moments, which at a casual level is okay, but there are so many other factors at that level that do it so much better and offer a lot more in terms of fun and entertainment.  In addition, being a totally random mechanic, there are of course random instances in competitive play where a player would get completely screwed over, losing entire sets due to something that is out of their control.  A mechanic that exists only to wrench control from the player at complete random for committing to a simple movement option is, in my eyes, unjustifiable from a design standpoint.  Even though its effect in practice is minor, on paper it's absolutely awful.

In the grand scheme of things, while rage is a mechanic that has a more overwhelming effect on the outcome of a set, often in a negative way, it at least offers positives in terms of the overall gameplay dynamic.  Tripping is a relatively minor negative, but offers nothing of value.  It's like comparing that one fellow in the group project that loudly exclaims his ideas and while they're largely bad there are some of value in there vs the fellow who remains silent and doesn't add anything worthwhile to the group.  Which is worse I guess is down to how the player wants to weigh the severity of negatives vs the presence of positives.