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Why Ultimate isn’t nearly as degenerate compared to other Smash games as people think, a thread:
There’s a lot of talk about how Ultimate rewards mashing and I don’t think it’s exactly a secret that a lot of people act as if a player worse than them beat them despite getting
There’s a lot of talk about how Ultimate rewards mashing and I don’t think it’s exactly a secret that a lot of people act as if a player worse than them beat them despite getting
outplayed. I won’t lie and say this never happens, but there are a lot of times where people are clearly just making excuses, and there’s a reason for that. When Smash 4 first came out, there hadn’t been a Smash game in 8 years, and even when that game DID have a scene, it was
fairly small compared to what we have now. As a result, Smash 4 attracted a lot of new players, myself included. That said, learning resources still weren’t nearly as common as they are now, so you essentially had a huge scene of players who took a long time to figure out what
they were doing. Hell, there were definitely people like me who weren’t starting to figure things out until Ultimate got teased.
Skipping to Ultimate, conditions were different. It had only been 4 years since the previous game (and felt similar to it), and that game’s scene was
Skipping to Ultimate, conditions were different. It had only been 4 years since the previous game (and felt similar to it), and that game’s scene was
still active. Combined with the fact that the Switch is MUCH more successful than the Wii U and the fact that learning resources for new players are arguably more accessible with things like ProGuides and more top players making guides on YT, and there were a lot of new players,
and these players had the capacity to learn much faster than those who started with Smash 4.
Going back to when Ult was first revealed, y’know how “See me in Ultimate” became a meme in prerelease? There’s a reason for that. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of Smash 4 players
Going back to when Ult was first revealed, y’know how “See me in Ultimate” became a meme in prerelease? There’s a reason for that. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of Smash 4 players
didn’t have the tools to learn until late into the game, and at that point a lot of them were stuck with their bad habits from Smash 4, so they saw Ultimate as a sort of reset. “I actually know what I’m doing this time around, so surely I’m going to dominate people in Ultimate”
was a mentality that I both saw and had during prerelease. Thing is, Ultimate’s gameplay feels similar to Smash 4 to the point where a lot of people didn’t feel like they had to relearn anything, and their bad habits were just replaced by other bad habits. Airdodge out of hitstun
was replaced with aerial out of hitstun, roll out of endlag became spotdodge cancel out of endlag, etc. Essentially, this led to Smash 4 players thinking they’d improve fast, but their fundamentals hadn’t improved much and so not much changed. Thing is though, this mentality of
feeling entitled to better results didn’t go away, which let to people being bitter when their results didn’t improve. This becomes more important when you consider the fact that you have fast-learning, new players getting the same or better results than the old players because
they aren’t stuck with their bad habits, they’re just able to learn good habits to begin with. Having said all this, it’s important to acknowledge that the game DOES still have really safe aerials, so theoretically a player who’s mashing is able to get away with stuff they really
shouldn’t. Thing is though, it’s also important to acknowledge that in general, this game also has extremely fast OoS options. I don’t have the stats on hand, but the vast majority of characters have an OoS option that’s frame 9 or faster, and many have frame 7 or faster. That
said, many Smash 4 players have a shieldgrab habit because it used to be so good, and shieldgrab is frame 10 at best, so it’s easier for them to acknowledge that aerials are safe, but harder to acknowledge that OoS options are fast. People who started with Ultimate, on the other
hand, were less likely to develop a shieldgrab habit since they never knew what a broken shieldgrab was like, so when an old player tries to mash on their shield, a new player will be better about punishing it than if the roles were reversed. This creates even more salt for the
old player, who can’t understand why mashing seems to only work when the new player does it, so they rationalize it as “this game overly rewards bad players (the new guy I lost to) and doesn’t reward veterans who are good at the game (me)”, and call Ultimate degenerate when
really they just feel entitled to a win without having to change their habits.
Tl;dr: It’s easier for new Ultimate players to learn good habits than it was for Smash 4 players to learn good habits, the two games were close enough in both gameplay and release date to where old
Tl;dr: It’s easier for new Ultimate players to learn good habits than it was for Smash 4 players to learn good habits, the two games were close enough in both gameplay and release date to where old
players didn’t feel obligated to change their bad habits, and the new players were taught both how to mash and how to punish mashing while the old players don’t think mashing at all is good design and don’t know how to punish it, but they still feel entitled to a win.
Alright I’m done, now you can yell at me about how wrong I am
