One of the things I have criticized was the general lack of Advanced Techniques. These techniques that often add a new layer of complexity and depth and that take a while to master. We're talking about L-Canceling, Wave Dashing, Dash Dancing, Crouch Canceling, Directional Influence, etc. I am by no means a competitive player, granted I like to play with items offs on neutral stages with platforms and nothing too wacky, hoping that one day I'll start attending tourneys. But, every time, I or anyone else brings this complaint to the table, people start saying the series was never meant for competitive play, only for casual play. True, Sakurai made Smash for beginning players in response to other highly technical fighting games. However, Smash is very much a competitive fighting game. Sure the game is fun at parties but the game is first and foremost a fighting game. The items can be turned off and as such don't remove the fact that it is a fighting game. Even with items on, the goal is still the same, to get the most KOs (Time battle) or to be the last man standing (Stock Matches). If just the items made Smash a party game, then Mario Kart would be a party game and not a Racing game. Then you have 4-player matches. Again, if 4-players multiplayer made it a party game, Mario Kart would be one instead of a Racing game, Golden 007 would be one instead of a First Person Shooter.
Smash has the components you'd find in a fighting game, the mix ups, the combos, the spacing, the footsies, the anti-airs, the tier lists, the balance, etc. All these things are part of the core gameplay of smash, they cannot be turned off unlike items and aren't optional to use like 4-player matches. So Smash being a fighting game means that it is also a competitive game. These very words may come to a surprise to those who feverishly defend Smash as being a party game. Smash is just different layers of competition. At low levels (or casual levels), you don't care much about the mechanics and you pick whatever character you want to use without really caring if they are good based on tiers or not. But you also have intermediate players and competitive players that make ample use of the game's mechanics and where tier lists do matter. This is also true for pretty much any fighting game ever. Street Fighter, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, Guilty Gear, etc. They all can be played casually or competitively. But the absurd thing here is that a lot of people view Smash as being a game that can only be played casually. Indeed, absurd. I believe that what people want to say about Smash isn't so much as the game being casual (Any fighting game can be casual) but rather that Smash is easy to pick up and play. Whilst in other Fighting games, you have a button to punch, kick, strong punch, strong kick (With some variation), quarter circles, half circles, P, K, etc. Smash has a button to use basic attacks and the directions that go with them. You have one button to use specials and the directions to go with them, one button to shield, and simply moving the control stick sideways or down if you want to dodge roll or spot dodge. There's a simplicity to it that everyone understands.
Another aspect of Sakurai's philosophy that greatly annoys me is that to him, everyone should win. Entry-level casuals should somehow have an easy time with players with experience and hours upon hours of practice. To him this is fair. To me this is completely absurd. A player who just picked up the game and is close to the level of someone who put time and effort into the game to get good is anything but fair. Being that Smash is a naturally competitive fighting game, the player with most experience, practice and technical skill should be the one expected to win. But somehow, Sakurai believes this to be unfair and wants to give players with no skill a chance. How? Well, the Rage mechanic in Smash 4 is one of the ways to accomplish this. The more percentage you have, the stronger your attacks are. What bothers me about this mechanic is just how biased it is. When you play a competitive game, the results should be objective. You got destroyed by a guy? Tough shit, but you got destroyed by a guy. But in this case, the loser has the game on its back saying "You can do this! I got your back". Like, somehow it's wrong that we are winning, that it's wrong we put time and effort into becoming better players. It may be harsh way to say it but it does fall in line with something Sakurai previously said. "Mostly I don't incorporate feedback like that. Basically, Smash Bros. is designed to be sort of targeted at the center, intermediate players, and if you think of sort of a skill graph or something where if you're targeting just the peak of that performance level, you're targeting a very small group of people. We wanna avoid a situation where it becomes a game sort of like other competitive fighting games, where it's only apreciated by a very small, passionate group of sort of maniac players. We definitely don't want that sort of situation. It's supposed to be a fun game for a wide variety of people."
But this goes against what Smash is by nature. After all, be it Free For All or 1 Versus 1, there is only one winner. This is why I made the point about Smash being a competitive game by nature, because the game is all about one player winning over the other(s). It's natural. Regarding the point he made in the citation, Sakurai wants to avoid making a game that appeals to a small audience. Nice point and all until you realize that Melee (The most competitive Smash game to date) was an astronomical success, being by far the best selling GameCube game with sales of 7 million copies sold. Does this scream of a game that was successful at pleasing a large group of people? Yes, absolutely yes! So where is the problem? That some players got incredibly good at mastering techniques to a point where they were seen as "gods"? To fix this, Sakurai thought of the genius way of simply removing them. If entry-level players and intermediates can't keep up, no one should have access. So instead of making these techniques easier like how Rivals of Aether does with wavedashing, instead of giving a visual cue of when you successfully L-cancel like Project M is already doing, the genius' way of handling the situation is by removing it entirely. Look, Sakurai, no one is learning how to become better by having these techniques removed. If the mechanics are adapted to casual players sloppiness, surprise, surprise, the players are still sloppy and haven't gotten any better. There is no way for these beginners to get better if you do not tell them in game that there is a technique called L-cancelling and how to perform it.
Despite all the things said, Sakurai truly does not believe in a competitive scene for Smash. To him it's better if these people go elsewhere to play their games competitively because Smash isn't it. In his opinion, Smash as a competitive game has no future. This is where I facepalm. For one, people want to play Smash competitively. No, they don't want to play Street Fighter, no they don't want to play Mortal Kombat, no they don't want to play Blazblue or Guilty Gear, they want to play Smash. Smash is Smash and that's what they want. So stop telling people to go elsewhere when all they want is Smash because Smash is its own thing and Street Fighter is its own thing. After that, he says that Smash as a competitive game has no future. There are a few things wrong with this statement. First, competitive players aren't asking you to turn Smash into a competitive only game, they want you to make it competitively viable. As much as you don't want to believe that it's possible to make a Smash game that appeals to casuals and competitive, Melee is a permanent reminder that this notion is wrong and baseless. Second, how come you say that competitive Smash has no future when you have done no efforts in helping it grow? Throughout the years, you've mostly hampered the competitive scene and yet you act like its fair to say such statements when you have done nothing to help it progress. You blatantly don't listen to them and yet you criticize competitive Brawl for being campy, as if it's the player's fault. The metagame develops around game mechanics not personal preference.
Even if players have good reason to hate and criticize the newer games but especially Brawl, because of the fact that they are games that are purposefully, consciously and willingly developed to NOT be what the competitive players wanted, these people receive hatred from those who defend Sakurai's decisions, being called "self-entitled", "toxic" and "tourney fags". The question is "why?" Because they are truly self-entitled and should just accept what they are given? No. Because these people making these claims have never been affected by these changes. Come the day that some director removes items and Free-for-alls from the game, how would you feel? Will you stay true to your words and simply accept what you are given? No, you will be the first to go on the Internet and rant about it. The same is for the competitive scene. They loved the aggressive nature of Melee, the speed, the combos, the movement options and the control the player had over the game. With most of these things gone, it's all but understandable that they express frustration like they did. However, not all casuals lack empathy towards their competitive brothers and some also get frustrated along with them.
Mmm.
Personally, I feel that if you want to play a fighting game seriously,
there are other competitive fighting games that are more suited to that,
and people like that could have fun playing those. If you play Smash
Brothers seriously as a competitive game, the game itself has no future.
- See more at:
http://www.gamnesia.com/news/sakurai-explains-why-he-doesnt-want-smash-to-be-a-competitive-game#sthash.IcmdmA0f.dpuf
Mmm.
Personally, I feel that if you want to play a fighting game seriously,
there are other competitive fighting games that are more suited to that,
and people like that could have fun playing those. If you play Smash
Brothers seriously as a competitive game, the game itself has no future.
- See more at:
http://www.gamnesia.com/news/sakurai-explains-why-he-doesnt-want-smash-to-be-a-competitive-game#sthash.IcmdmA0f.dpuf
Mmm.
Personally, I feel that if you want to play a fighting game seriously,
there are other competitive fighting games that are more suited to that,
and people like that could have fun playing those. If you play Smash
Brothers seriously as a competitive game, the game itself has no future.
- See more at:
http://www.gamnesia.com/news/sakurai-explains-why-he-doesnt-want-smash-to-be-a-competitive-game#sthash.IcmdmA0f.dpuf
Mmm.
Personally, I feel that if you want to play a fighting game seriously,
there are other competitive fighting games that are more suited to that,
and people like that could have fun playing those. If you play Smash
Brothers seriously as a competitive game, the game itself has no future.
- See more at:
http://www.gamnesia.com/news/sakurai-explains-why-he-doesnt-want-smash-to-be-a-competitive-game#sthash.IcmdmA0f.dpuf
Mmm.
Personally, I feel that if you want to play a fighting game seriously,
there are other competitive fighting games that are more suited to that,
and people like that could have fun playing those. If you play Smash
Brothers seriously as a competitive game, the game itself has no future.
- See more at:
http://www.gamnesia.com/news/sakurai-explains-why-he-doesnt-want-smash-to-be-a-competitive-game#sthash.IcmdmA0f.dpuf
All of that happened because one man just can't accept something that Smash was since the beginning: A competitive Fighting game. One that is easy to pick and play but one nonetheless. With each new installment. the nature of the game always battled to show itself as it's being crushed under the vision of someone who does not want to acknowledge it. But eventually, it's something you must accept because the competitive scene is growing and so is the Platform Fighter genre, as its growing to become a more competition oriented genre with Project M, Rivals of Aether and whatever Wavedash Games is cooking. Hopefully, one day, Smash becomes something bigger than it is already.
