I'm not one for long wordy posts so I'm just going to try to condense this as much as possible. Super Smash Flash 2 is past the days of just being another simple, fun, fan flash game and is evolving into a full competitive title that rivals official smash games in scope and competitive viability. At this point, I feel the size of the competitive scene is going to determine how successful it will be in general. Now is the perfect time to fine tune the mechanics and design of the game to ensure that high level play of this game is well designed, accessible, rewarding, and entertaining as an update 3 years in the making has caused a surge of interest in the game.

These are a few design decisions that I want to discuss more with the Dev team and top level players (of which I am neither, as a disclaimer) of which I'm either unsure of or disagree with.

Character Design

I'd like to head this section by saying that a game does not have to be perfectly balanced to be well designed. Intentionally having characters that are weaker/stronger than others can improve your game from a player and spectator standpoint. For example, if Jigglypuff, a slow, methodical, zoning character was S-Tier in melee instead of Fox, the character would see a lot more play and the meta (and as a result, tournament matches) would be more centered around slow, caution spacing instead of the fast and dynamic movement/combos which I believe would lead to a decline in viewership and ultimately hurt the playerbase.

Controlling which characters are the best is an important part of making sure your game is spectator friendly and fun for players of all skill levels (I'd be willing to bet newer players would have more fun getting rushed down with flashy combos than slowly poked and spaced to submission). There's also the fact that having low-tier characters makes watching the game more exciting as people love to root for an underdog and player's skill levels are sometimes unknown or debatable. Having an underdog to root for regardless of info known about the player's skill is invaluable. aMSa's Yoshi and Abadango's Pac-Man would be much less exciting to watch if their characters were on par with the rest of the cast.

Most characters have been designed to fit the meta and mechanics present in SSF2 which I feel is the appropriate way to adapt new and old characters into the game. However, some characters have been adapted to closely resemble their main line counterparts which I feel is more hit or miss when paired with SSF2's physics and mechanics.

Kirby's design in main series smash games has always been fun for casual play, yet completely ineffective in a competitive environment. Kirby has always lacked adequate range, speed (grounded and in air), survivability, and approach options which has made camping and zoning him an effortless task . In PM, this was addressed by making Kirby's dash attack faster with more utility, and Kirby's up special given a mixup between a vertical hitbox and projectile and a horizontal hitbox and approach option. SSF2 has made no such accommodations which means Kirby is going to be low tier regardless of how powerful his smash attacks get buffed. This is not inherently a bad thing, but something to keep in mind when porting characters to Flash.

Falco's short hop laser is a great option in melee, but it has counter-play in that wave-dashing out of shield is a good way to close the distance when power-shielding and jumping are not good options. In SSF2, this counter play does not exist and limits the options characters have in neutral to deal with Falco's laser pressure. I feel Falco's lasers should be better adjusted to the options available to the majority of characters, or new mechanics/options should be applied universally to better fit Falco's lasers into the meta. As of now, Falco's lasers are an overpowered option in SSF2, even though they are not in Melee.

Fox's short hop double laser is also a great option in melee, but it seems to have been questionably implemented in SSF2 beta. I'm not sure if it's an oversight or an intentional decision, but from my testing, the height of Fox's first laser will not hit characters as tall as or shorter than Isaac meaning that despite SHDL being a technique present in SSF2, it is only useful in very few match-ups with tall characters such as Marth or Bowser. I feel as though either the first and second lasers should be lower to the ground to catch mid-sized characters such as Mario or Mega Man, or Fox should only be able to laser once in a short hop to maintain consistency.

Samus' charge shot does 37% of damage which is a considerable increase from the 25% damage found in other smash titles. Having a move that is both low risk and high reward (such as a fast moving projectile that can be used in combos and edge guards) tends to over centralize a character's play-style (such as Diddy Kong's up air in Smash 4, Meta Knight's Tornado in Brawl, and Ice Climber's Wobbling in melee). Samus' charge shot is probably not as high reward as most of those moves, but it is something I would keep an eye on in the coming tournaments.

Sonic's inability to cancel his spin dash with shield is a confusing design decision. In PM and Smash 4, Sonic's spin dash is used to threaten an approach and bait a response by charging and cancelling the move into shield. It fits very well with Sonic's elusive bait-and-punish/hit-and-run playstyle. In SSF2 beta, this isn't possible as cancelling spin dash is loud and has a considerable amount of start up and end lag which makes the move telegraphed and relatively slow in high levels of play.

Stage Design

For the most part, most of the stages in SSF2 have been faithfully ported from the games they came from and the new stages are well designed, however, the blast zones in most stages (especially past ones) need more thought put into them. FD in Beta has a insanely large ceiling meaning that zoning characters such as Samus and Link, or rush down characters like Sonic and Falcon who normally kill horizontally anyway and already benefit from flat stages have an even greater advantage. I'd go as far as to say that FD's abnormally large ceiling would push it into counter-pick territory in a majority of match-ups. Dreamland's ceiling is also too low, and Yoshi's and Stadium's are a tad too high (Stadium's side blast zones are also too small). Smashville and Battlefield's blast zones feel accurate.

UI Design

This one is a bit more nit picky than anything else I'll mention, but I feel as though having more options that promote competitive play in the UI would be beneficial. Things such as in-game stage striking, in game restarts/run-backs, a "press this to change all the settings to the default competitive ruleset" button, and maybe even a set count and player name overlay at the top similar to the one found in Rivals of Aether would go a long way to promote the competitive scene.

One other feature I'd love implemented is statistics being recorded in each match and easily accessible such as average kill %, average time each stock was held, how many times a move was used/the ledge was grabbed/how many kills off the top/side/bottom etc. This would not only be good for commentators to talk about, but also for analyzing your own play when practicing.

Physics

Friction, Air speed, and momentum have strange properties to me in SSF2 when compared to main series smash games.

Friction is slipperier in SSF2 overall .It seems to be a global design choice that characters are slipperier, but characters like Luigi have an over-exaggerated effect of slipperiness when compared to other titles which affects him even more negatively due to the ability to better control the friction with wavedashing in Melee, and the relative average speed of characters in Smash 4 (which is slower) than SSF2.

I'm not entirely sure if air speed is an independent variable in SSF2 as it is in main series smash games as it appears to be directly tied to run speed and "momentum". This means that characters that rely on dis-proportionally high airspeed (Jigglypuff, Falcon, Yoshi) or are crutched by low air speed (Luigi, Sheik, Samus) are directly affected. Whether this is a good change or a bad one is up for debate but I'd lean more towards bad as it affects the play style and properties of these characters mostly negatively or at best require an adjustment from other titles. Having them as independent variables would allow you to better balance the cast and their move-sets in most cases.

Advanced Techniques

Cancelling dash with crouch is a prominent advanced tech used in SSF2 as a substitute for proper dash dancing/fox trotting. Dash dancing is useful as a tool because it allows you to move backwards while maintaining most of your options (which is present in other fighting games), makes it harder to tell when you will approach, and can be used to bait a response. Most characters in SSF2 have dash dances that are too short in distance to make use of which leads to top players cancelling their dash by crouching and then turning and running the other way. I feel this is a needless execution barrier (especially on controllers which require special configuration) to a tech that is very easy to perform otherwise. It would be much better to remove that tech from the game and give the majority of characters a functional dash dance which would provide the same utility with lowered execution and no need for odd control set ups.

Future intentional advanced techs will require a lot of consideration of the meta, existing techs, and mechanics before being implemented. Every advance tech will also raise the execution requirement and skill ceiling depending on how difficult it is to perform vs how useful it is. The easier and more useful it is, the more likely it is to be essential at high level play, while the more difficult/situation it is the less likely it is. (Samus' super wavedash is only situationally useful and too difficult to perform consistently while Fox's waveshine is only moderately difficult yet extremely useful in certain matchups)

I-Frames

Invincibility in this game is very confusing to me. You lose invincibility as soon as you leave the ledge, regardless of how many I-Frames you have remaining making leaving the ledge dangerous at higher levels of play. The respawn invincibility is also 3 seconds in SSF2 while it is 2 seconds in all existing smash games leading to a greater advantage in positioning following losing a stock.

That's all I have for now. I would appreciate any sort of feedback or criticism, especially from high level players and Devs. If i'm incorrect or misleading in any of my wording please let me know, thanks.

Bomberman and his lack of representation entirely.

Tails having the ability to infinitely glide while having the best horizontal recovery because of it, and Sheik being able to use Bouncing Fish multiple times in mid-air is totally balanced design.
Edit: Oh, and Tails's camping ability is very braindead.

Eh, Tails sure have infinite glide, but he still falls when attacking unlike Goku and Peach, Bouncing Fish' ending lag doesn't make it a viable horizontal recovery unless you're high up in the air.
No arguments about Tails' camping ability tho.

Good post. Somethings I agree with like Samus' 37% Charge-Shot, Sonic's lack of Spin-Dash options, Kirby's lack of a good approach and aerial mix-ups on his landing, 3-second respawn (God, please fix this), and needing special configurations for Controllers to keep up with Keyboards in performing competitive necessary techniques.

But I think some other things you are comparing too hard to other Smash games. While SSF2 is looking to balance the best aspects of each official game, it still makes changes a=so those aspects can better fit-in between each other.

Fox for example, is like Melee-Falcon speed in this game. His rushdown is far more potent, so in trade his lasers aren't as good and more to refresh his moves. He can perform many offensive techs as Melee-Fox, but to make him less superiorly well-rounded, his ability to run&gun has been nerfed to buff his offensive abilites even more.

Falco's SH-Lasers are abit to early to tell how they will effect this meta. I do feel he would dictate the DK/Bowser MU with an iron-fist, but on other characters, powershielid to Short-Hop/Roll Out-of-Shield approach hasn't seem to fail that much. Falco still can't SH-Laser in this game at the fast rate he can in Melee, so constant use of it isn't as defining of his playstyle.

Tournament-winner are very good in game being near instant and can be attacked out of immediately. Difficult to punish to, even when you know it's coming. As well as doing ledge-drops > instant mid-jump to mix-up the height, plus more ledge-mix-up and jump-aerials from the ledge being pretty good. No 100%+ ledge-attack either. That is one place SSF2 is can be tough, the ledge options. They are more Rock-Paper-Scissors, but you can get harshing punished for an incorrect choice; which more embodies SSB64 when being on the ledge. Being a beginner not knowing how to mix these up can feel like you'll never get on stage once you grab the ledge.

Stage ceiling height in ratio to characters has never sat very well with me, but it's not high enough to the point where upward kill-moves don't seem to be effective, or out of the reach where they can't be adjusted to compensate for the height ceiling. I don't think it's good overall; when you knock someone high above the stage, it feels like they have to fall an extra 2 seconds before they can safely land on the ground. But I think it's a liveable design choice, it won't become a bother once you start playing more.

I feel like there's more we can talk about, but my personal big issues for me is obviously bad oversights in balances design (Samus, Kirby), and making controllera competitive viable without a secondary-program. Just an extra key in options right now to map that is crouch/fast-fall would be great. It could just work as another 'Down' key for a face-button. That would be one step closer to making Dash-Cancel / Platform-Drop movement as fluent as keyboards. As of right now, there's no point to use direct-connect to the game and I really want controller options for the game's competitive-side to be easily accessible. This is the one part that could help the local-scene easily grow and make fickle players who want to continue using a GCC for Smash-style games try out SSF2, plus setups at locals become easier.

wat

I miss spoke as I wasn't sure how I wanted to leave off the post. More was referring to them as examples and the small, simple things that would take just a change in value to fix, like 37% on Samus' Charge-Shot.

If Falco's lasers became overbearing in how it could control of neutra, why not make it destructable to tilts and up (or even jabs). I feel like every projectile needs to be destructable to a point just for zoning to require a bit extra thought with spacing and timing.

Almost like the Holy V0.9b. That's be great if they did that.

Is it just me, or do Falco lasers have a lot less hitstun than in Melee? I think getting hit is a perfectly viable strategy if you aren't Bowser. That matchup is brutal, but I think most characters with at least one burst option can catch Falco out of most combos. Even something like laser -> SH nair won't hit if you shield. Hell, you can sometimes shield laser-ftilt.


I will say this: SSF2 has my favorite game design out of all the Smash titles, and that's why I mainly play it over Melee or Sm4sh (shudder). I think it's balanced really well, but unlike PM I think the devs in this game have a much better idea of how to design characters without necessarily just buffing things or adding gimmicks from another incarnation. Chars like Goku and BM are truly original and incredibly fun to play.

I think the worry about game speed that has taken over is a red herring: people are bad at the game right now because it's a month old, it isn't that punishes have gone away. Falco, if anything, seems deadlier than his Melee incarnation (fair is godlike), Fox has even better rushdown as Zalo mentioned, and almost every character primarily known from a different title has changes I like. (The one exception here is Marth: they still haven't quite figured him out in my view.)

I agree with the proposed changes (projectiles need priority, and 37% for a move that comes out of a combo, for a projectile-heavy character, is ridiculous), and I think there's honestly little I'd add to what others have said. The movement feels slick, and the characters that are inspired from other games feel right despite all of the mechanics changes. The game doesn't rely on gimmicks or techs that add complexity without depth in the way that I don't like about PM, along with what is in my view a better power level for the game (every character doesn't need 0-deaths), keeps game speed that Brawl and Sm4sh don't have, and has balance and character diversity in a way that Melee doesn't. The devs seem to respect the prime directive IMO about Smash: defensive input is crucial to making the game fun, and by creating that you create diversity in offense. Every character needs to have different punishes depending on the person being comboed: that way, both players are playing all the time. This game really respects that in a way I admire. Games with a fairly low power-level offensively, like Sm4sh, struggle IMO because the only viable punishes are generic: you have no options because in a second they get the ability to airdodge. This game's combos feel great because almost of all of them depend on the opponent, but because hitstun and falling speed are the way they are most characters can follow up regardless of what their opponent does, in an intricate action-reaction sequence. I really like this game competitively, and I hope it becomes a serious choice for Smashers to play.

The time that you spend in an unactionable state after getting hit by a Falco laser in SSF2 is virtually identical to the time you spend in an unactionable state after getting hit by a Falco laser in Melee. If you converted our hitstun to 60fps and then compared to Melee's hitstun, it might be off by 1 frame depending on staling but is otherwise identical. You'd be surprised how little the hitstun in Melee actually is.

I keep hearing concerns that the game is overall very slow and sluggish now.

...Not unlike complaints about the official games.

A couple of Back Room members have already walked out in disgust over it.

What exactly can we do to remedy that?

Tell 'em to get over it and play more

But in all seriousness, the game needed a slight speed reduction. Or rather, the highest performers in v0.9b needed a speed reduction. The game still feels quite fast and fluid, even playing as Bowser.

I think what people are feeling is a slight loss/change in fluidity.

What I mean is this: throws, recoveries, certain aerials/specials/attacks have longer frames of downtime, and it feels like the game's buffer window is smaller (if it exists/existed at all). So you have a combined result of people being off on combo timing and trying to act even 1/8 second sooner than they can and feeling stuck.

While this is taking some getting used to, the result is more opportunity to punish (which I think is much needed and really good). This also allows slower/lower tier characters climb up against the high tier fasties since the speed disparity has been normalized a bit.

I'm surprised people would complain about game pace/control when aerial movement is EXTREMELY fluid for most of the cast and managing momentum both on ground and in air is responsive. Ground control feels great.

This man has the Melee and smash 4 meta scene so ingrained in his head that he doesn't realize SSF2 is a completely different game with a completely different meta and playstyle. Smh is all I have to do when I read this post. Play the game for maybe more than 3 hours before trying to make such a heavy judgement on it, without even considering that most of us more or less like it the way it is.

"I'm not one for long winded posts"
Proceeds to criticize everything which makes it unique.


Smh.

Unique isn't always a good thing.
Especially since I've pretty much heard nothing but complaints in terms of Beta's competitive viability in the past.

Yeah but the thing about that is this game is still in Beta, the period where it is still going through heavy polishes and bugwork before it gets released. People treat it as a full game when it is still a demo version, that's how well they've done. Have some faith in the project's developers.

I mean, harr, you know as well as anybody that they put up "NOTE: GAME STILL IN DEVELOPMENT" on the front page and commonplace elsewhere. Most of these flaws you see are tentative in terms of the direction they are taking the game. Compare it to .9b for example.