The Super Smash Bros. 4 General Thread

Bought it yesterday. Don't know if I'll have any time to play it, but the Law of Nintendo Fandom demanded my download.

So far I'm liking Shulk quite a bit. The ability to change powerups is pretty awesome -- go for speed in the beginning, jump as things start to get more volatile, and finally the defensive posture when I'm near KO.

Toon Link is also good -- his various iterations have always been favorites for me. Mega Man is super fun too.

The feel of this game is also excellent. Much closer to Melee than Brawl, which was in many ways a real disaster, I think. I'm already much happier with this one.

So I edited my post...and now I see none of it saved. Hmmm...

Anyhow, I went on to say that the online has been a real disapointment so far. I had numerous errors downloading the game, and was unable to get online at launch. Had to wait a day to get my first taste of laggy matches.

It's imperative that Nintendo gets online right with this one because it can't be a TV shared experience like past Smash games. This is a multiplayer Smash game that more than ever needs online to work properly. I'll be upset if Nintendo didn't learn from Brawl.

That said launches always come with growing pains, so I'll give Nintendo a few week to work out the kinks before being too hard on them.

( Edited 04.10.2014 19:08 by Jacob4000 )

The game is freaking awesome and so addictive. I have too many characters I want to main and I haven't even properly tried a third or more of the roster. I don't need more practise with Link (and Toon Link, I guess), but I do for all these characters: Marth, Ike, Robin, Pikachu, Lucario, Greninja, Zelda, Sheik, Zero Suit Samus, Lucina, Charizard, Shulk, Pit, Dark Pit. I really want to play as Palutena and Rosalina too, but they're pretty tricky to use. My main problem with Palutena is that her specials are very situational and accidental tilts are very punishing because they come out really slowly (she just spins her staff), and with Rosalina it's getting the most out of Luma since I'm not used to a two character mechanic.

The best match I've had so far was probably a 1vs1/No Items match against Lewis with me as Sheik and him as Zero Suit Samus. Incredibly close and intense match with two of the fastest characters in the game, though we did find out that Zero Suit Samus seems to outclass Sheik with absolutely insane air range because of her jumps. So easy to follow up with up-airs with her because she can catch up to launched fighters pretty much instantly.

( Edited 05.10.2014 11:09 by SirLink )

Jacob4000 said:
Anyhow, I went on to say that the online has been a real disapointment so far. I had numerous errors downloading the game, and was unable to get online at launch. Had to wait a day to get my first taste of laggy matches.

It's imperative that Nintendo gets online right with this one because it can't be a TV shared experience like past Smash games. This is a multiplayer Smash game that more than ever needs online to work properly. I'll be upset if Nintendo didn't learn from Brawl.

That said launches always come with growing pains, so I'll give Nintendo a few week to work out the kinks before being too hard on them.

It seems like Smash 3DS like many console fighting games (usually only Steam does otherwise) uses a netcode based on the host's connection quality. If one person in the match has a bad connection, everyone suffers. Because of this, 4 player online matches with Randoms are not likely to work well, but 1v1 Glory matches and Friend organised matches can work well. It's considerably better than Brawl's and is actually quite good as far as fighting games go, but it's still definitely not perfect. Who knows if it'll be updated down the line.

This is a really good video/review on the SSB4 netcode from a guy with a lot of fighting game knowledge

His overall impressions were pretty much 'not amazing but far better than I expected and hugely better than Brawl'.

( Edited 05.10.2014 15:33 by SuperLink )

Interesting video...I've had four-player matches with Mush, Lewis and Marzy that felt just fine with rare hiccups. What's weird is that Marzy has pretty bad internet speed but playing with him doesn't change much if anything at all. I guess there really are a lot of factors that go into this, so you can't just say the online is either good or bad.

Do you know anything more specific about this, SuperLink? Like, does it always pick the person who opened a friend lobby to host the game or does it pick the best host based on connection?

SirLink said:
Interesting video...I've had four-player matches with Mush, Lewis and Marzy that felt just fine with rare hiccups. What's weird is that Marzy has pretty bad internet speed but playing with him doesn't change much if anything at all. I guess there really are a lot of factors that go into this, so you can't just say the online is either good or bad.

Do you know anything more specific about this, SuperLink? Like, does it always pick the person who opened a friend lobby to host the game or does it pick the best host based on connection?

On the other hand, online randoms choose a random host out of the 4 players I think? Because the game has no dedicated servers as with most console games, so games are hosted on a person's system rather than an external server.

I actually heard all this information recently, it might even be from that very video ^^; if you watched it all the way through it can be quite informative on how things work.

EDIT: Bloody hell I made a huge edit and it all disappeared D:

( Edited 05.10.2014 16:23 by SuperLink )

I did watch the video but I don't think he clarified that it picks the person that opened the friends room. It does make sense, though. I might want to try to have Mush host then. I've hosted most of our friend games so far and I only have 12Mbit/1Mbit but he has like 40-60Mbit/3Mbit. No idea how much of that bandwith our 3DS' even get but it should still be quite a bit better...and it was already quite good with me hosting!

Yeah, it's waaaaaay better than Brawl. Brawl was so bad for me, it was unplayable. I've been playing friend matches on Smash Bros 3DS and overall it's been pretty decent. Most of the time it's actually really good and lag free and that's coming from someone who doesn''t have that good internet either. Even when I've played randoms (although more laggy than friend matches in general) it's been okay.

Dammit I made a huge explanation to my post in an Edit and it all disappeared ^^;

Basically I explained that the average player doesn't have a fantastic connection as most gamers are passive (or "casual" for want of a better word), coupled with the fact that WiFi in the western world is still not amazing, tons of States and parts of Europe have either very expensive good WiFi or their WiFi otherwise isn't so great in their area yet, as opposed to Japan where WiFi is and has been impressive for a while. Even people who imported Smash from Japan were able to play many great lag-free games with Japanese players because most Japanese players have a good connection as the average quality of WiFi there is far higher.

It's also to do with the kind of game Smash Bros. is. Unlike the grand majority of games, Smash Bros. needs to send essential information both uploading and downloading at every single opportunity because Smash is a game in which the player's moves and attacks can change quickly on both the X and Y axis. Most games and even most fighting games don't require inputs to be sent as quickly, a traditional fighting game has a very limited Y Axis with most characters either having the same jump height or set jump heights depending on what button combination is done, whereas Smash has free and fast analogue movement in the air that can lead to any combination of attacks. Racing games on the other hand can fill in information gaps with AI to make sure a player gets from where they were a bit ago to where they are now. This is why when a racing game lags out, the player appears to jerk all over the place and teleport around, the game is using an AI to fill in the information but can't get their placement right. With Smash Bros. precision is essential for the game to even work, so the whole game slows down instead.

If that made sense, it should hopefully explain why Smash needs better connection to work well than most games. Other modern fighting games also have troubles on consoles, to the point where some fighting games even have options for practising with button lag settings on.

Basically if you want to have great matches on Smash, it has nothing to do with the hardware power or the CPU limit or anything, it's all about the players' connections. If you want to have good solid matches, all participating players need a good connection. Chances are that anything short of making dedicated servers for the game (which isn't common on consoles outside of games with 16+ players) isn't going to make the online considerably better. Tinkering could help make things smoother and I hope it gets patches for stability and such, but connection is always going to be the main factor for a game like Smash. The Wii U version will likely be largely the same.

( Edited 05.10.2014 19:09 by SuperLink )

Hey guys this might be a bit off topic, but has anyone got a spare 2DS/3DS Club Nintendo code ??? 

How's the speed/combo ability in this compared to melee?

Dragon0085 said:
How's the speed/combo ability in this compared to melee?

Ground speed is way up over Brawl, and hitstun + good tilts and throws mean combo-ing is way more viable than it ever was in Brawl. However it's still a bit floaty in the air rather than momentum based like Melee was.

So it's not at Melee's level of speed or combo potential.

Loving this game by the way, if any of you fancy getting your arsed kicked then PM me!

Just being a bit nosey but I was wondering what everyone's global smash power (GSP) was for various modes? I think I'm doing fairly ok but wouldn't mind seeing how others are doing;

Home run contest: 1,170,927
Target Blast: 1,659236
All star mode: 1,835,655
Classic: 1,906,674
Smash Run: 1,890,142

I'm presuming that Smash has probably sold around 3 million units by now and assuming that most send data via the net, so I feel like I'm doing pretty good? 

To honest i only just found out what GSP was tonight as I was flicking (swiping...) through the manual. 

share your stats people! 

Has anyone received their Bonus CD for registering two copies yet? It's been over a month since I registered both copies of the game on club Nintendo and nothing has come through the post...

Didn't they say it wouldn't be out until March?

Edit: Yeah, U.S. site anyway says March: http://club2.nintendo.com/smash-promo/

( Edited 22.02.2015 19:16 by crackedthesky )

Oh ok, as long as I don't get shafted and not get it! Mewtwo is coming soon as well!

Just got my soundtrack today.