This is a critique of game design elements I have observed in Smash 4 as a competitor, spectator, and researcher. If you're looking for a talk about character balance, you're not gonna find it in this wall of text. It is not intended to compliment or disparage the game or its players. Ideally, this will help players understand the metagame better, and could be used to determine what direction should be taken for similar future games. (Hire me, Sakurai!)

1. Rage is a good, healthy mechanic that is implemented poorly

In traditional fighting games, similar mechanics exist to facilitate potential comebacks, usually in the form of damage reduction or a special attack becoming available when a character is at low health. This is generally good from a spectator’s perspective; watching a game is less enjoyable if you already know who’s going to win halfway through, so a comeback mechanic creates hope and potential hype. However, how good such mechanics are for competitive play is often argued about, and Smash 4's Rage allows for extremely low-percent KOs while preventing some moves from connecting at all, partly because it scales so sharply with Base Knockback. It is a source of great frustration and variance in results among competitors at all skill levels. However, knockback increasing a bit with the attacker's percent adds depth in a unique way that is worth preserving: It rewards game knowledge without deep study being necessary to win at a high level.

In all other Smash games, guaranteed combo windows and KO percents are largely set in stone. "When you're over 90%, Fox's Up-Smash will kill you." "Jab will combo into Down-Smash after 40%." In Smash 4, similar numbers will almost always apply no matter how much Rage your character has, but you can also apply those combos earlier if you're experienced enough to know how much more knockback you get when you have different amount of Rage. It creates an amount of uncertainty that can be reduced with experience and brought down to zero with enough testing. Rewarding players for putting in work without that knowledge being necessary to function is a win-win for observers and players alike.

2. The strong universal invincibility options make the game much more defensive, for better or worse

One thing that separates Smash 4 from the other titles is how much of a focus there is on the neutral game. Compared to pretty much every other Smash game, pressure is much more difficult to apply, and in most matchups, it doesn’t last for very long before you’re back in neutral again. The biggest culprit is just how effective rolls, airdodges, and ledge options are compared to the attacks they are used to avoid. Compared to previous games, many of these options were improved to a point where most counterplay tends to be passive or very unreliable.

Smash 4 airdodges last for an average of 32 frames before you can use another option. Most characters do not have an aerial even close to that animation speed; actually, most attacks in the game aren’t that quick. It is comparable to the animation speed of many first Jabs). There are a few characters who get around this with low landing lag or attack hitboxes that outlast the airdodge invincibility, but if you don’t have one of those, your options are to attack, which gives the opponent a guaranteed punish if they airdodge, or to passively follow them and react to a potential airdodge afterward. Getting punished and losing a positioning advantage roughly half the time is not how you reliably win games, so the reliable choice slows down the pace of the game and makes that advantageous situation less valuable.

This concept plays out in similar ways for rolls and the ledge options. Unless you are one of fastest characters in the game, an enemy rolling backward simply cannot be punished on reaction. This is mostly because of the animation speed and the distance covered; there are characters who move faster by rolling repeatedly than they do by running. Because of this, the person rolling backward sacrifices a bit of space at very little risk, and if the opponent chooses certain normal approach tools, such as a Dash Grab, they can be punished on reaction, due to the roll finishing much more quickly. Again, unless the attacker has significantly greater rewards than risks, this effectively forces good players to forego certain approach tools in order to continue reliably winning games. For ledge options, the amount of invincibility on Ledge Jump, Ledge Roll and Ledge Climb, as well as the great variation of where they leave your character, makes it very difficult for most characters to pressure without being at risk if they guess incorrectly. These powerful invincible options stifle offensive potential, making it so that the best characters tend to be ones that can safely get around it with no trouble, such as Diddy with Banana, Sheik with Needles, Cloud with Limit and low landing lag, etc. Even then, these characters are still walking on eggshells when they aren’t in the right position, which is what causes high-level play to often revolve around using a select few options while prioritizing bait-and-punish play, as they are not significantly rewarded for aggressive offense.

3. The reduction of certain defensive options removes a great deal of variety on both offense and defense

One of the Smash series’ greatest selling points as a competitive game is how much control a player has even when they are being hit. There have historically been exceptions, such as with multiple chaingrabs, but Directional Influence (DI) and Smash Directional Influence (SDI, also referred to as “hitstun shuffling” in Smash 4) are staples of the series that could significantly help or hinder a victim. Being able to change the direction you are sent could change how difficult it would be for the attacker to follow up with more attacks, or it could allow you to survive a strong attack for much longer than normal. The user must have good awareness to apply DI or SDI in helpful ways, and those ways varied greatly depending on the attack used. As a result, it is significantly more engaging than just having to sit through getting hit multiple times with no control over the situation, and it rewards players with good game knowledge and reactions.

Smash 4 does a lot to mitigate what an attacked character can do compared to the previous games. DI’s functional replacement, often referred to as Vectoring, makes correct usage much simpler and reduces the effectiveness of its usage. This means that there is a small skill curve to use it well, and there is only a small benefit compared to Directional Influence. Meanwhile, Smash DI/hitstun shuffling’s effect has been reduced to a third of its Brawl effectiveness, making it virtually useless except against a few specific moves, which generally have higher SDI multipliers than normal, such as Bayonetta’s Up-B and Forward-B. A post-release update removed vertical vectoring, further reducing its usefulness. As a result, simple vertical combos are often inescapable, and there is more potential for low-percent vertical KOs. This is part of the reason “elevator” combos with repeated Up-Aerials are as reliable as they are in the current metagame. Most Combos in Smash 4 are 100% reliable with no defensive counterplay once they get started, with single hits and a heavy focus on the neutral game covering the rest. There’s very little in between, so finding out what’s guaranteed and optimal takes a lot less time than the other games, while removing much of what makes the combo game so interesting in Melee and Brawl.

4. Too much time is spent without any real interaction between players

Because the game rewards defensive play much more reliably than offensive play, and the main exceptions are unnaturally safe or powerful tools, a great deal of time is spent...waiting. The best tools, both offensive and defensive, are virtually unpunishable in many situations, and even when you put the opponent in a bad situation, the risks associated with challenging invincible options or especially safe tools make it so smart players do a lot of waiting for “their turn” in order to respond. This is one of the main reasons that characters like Sonic, Diddy Kong and Bayonetta are often unenjoyable to play against. Even characters known for more aggressive tactics, such as Sheik and Zero Suit Samus tend to have similar traits that separate them from the majority of the cast; watch them Down-B out of situations that would be bad for most characters at little risk to themselves. When you know exactly what your opponent is going to do but there’s nothing you can do about it until their move ends, it starts to feel less engaging, and the downtime between moments when both players are able to significantly change the outcome of a match makes gameplay less exciting on average.

I don't really know the best way to wrap this up, as the main aim I had when making this was to lay out some thoughts I've had on the game for a good while now. I'm always interested to talk about what makes these games fun to each individual player, so feel free to leave a comment telling me what you think. With info on the next Smash game coming much sooner than we could have expected, I hope the developers have learned similar lessons and that it is reflected in the upcoming demo.

Thanks for listening.