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Fun Club Sakurai does not care about Smash Balance, and should stop acting like it's our fault.

Megafan96

Megafan96

Born to be Wild~
Pronouns
They/Her
https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2024/may/25/masahiro-sakurai-tiers-ssbu-balance/

"The internet can tend to be an echo chamber of sorts, so if people start saying something is strong or weak, that assessment will gain momentum and make people think it's truer than it is," stated Sakurai. "Still, those differences in values lead to different choices and a richer experience. If people want to prove their point, they're best off settling it in an actual match, I'd say."
I'm going to start off saying I have slightly better than average FGC experience. With smash specifically, and speaking only of my personal highlights, I was placed 7th of my local scene back in brawl, 3rd with Smash 4, and though I don't play ultimate with anyone beside my inner circle, I've been able to meet with people who have taken 1st at local tournaments and consistently win. I'm not trying to insist I'm the best in any capacity, and I'm thoroughly certain there's more than a few in Fami Alone who can Def run me for my quarters, but I'm no slouch. I've taken time to seriously analyze frame data, REALLY familiarize myself with tier lists, and learn the ins and outs of any viable stage within reason. Fuck Lylat Cruise.
I'm really not expecting Sakurai to ever, EVER make a balanced smash. He wants to make a wacky woohoo party game. I get that. I really do. I picked up ultimate knowing, even with his apparent retooling of the balance system that clearly didn't work in brawl or in smash 4, it would be like that.
Now, what I won't really accept, is his Smash Ultimatum.
Tier upsets happen all the time. Even in games with a stricter sense of Game Balance, like Tekken 7, low tier characters rise up enough to take consistent wins against better characters. Jack-7 is a great example of a character with a comparatively low skill ceiling and execution that saw a lot of play towards the end of the games lifespan- My own take is that with all of the fancy mixups and pressure options of high tier tekken, someone straight forward and honest simply looking to find an in on their opponent is still going to see results since most of the tools in the game are identical in frame data. Especially with someone who's whole game plan is poke and punish.
I say all this because What the fuck is Little Mac supposed to do?
Sakurai himself seems pleased enough in interviews with the balance. I'll get into how specifically I disagree with some of them, but the general recurring one is here:
https://nintendoeverything.com/saku...line-mode-victory-rates-character-usage-more/

"These records are unique in that they’re completely free of bias; from time to time you may see a player-created estimation of each character’s strength, but in reality, those differ pretty greatly from our records."
"According to Sakurai, the character with the highest win rate in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a win rate of 51.43%. On the other hand, the supposed weakest fighter has a win rate of 47.18%."
First of all, we have no genuine metrics into the data. We don't know if it's for actual 1v1s, the smash ult online tournaments, nothing. Second, and this is a major one, the net code does not work. This is a vague comment, but the characters strong online are not representative of the ones strong offline. Characters with more advantage with 0 Latency are going to struggle against those that have more consistent results, or have moves that allow them to sit still and remain safe while charging up any sort of guard crushing move. This is universal in any fighting game. Some characters just have an advantage with Lag.
Third, and this is the huge one, Player Created Estimations are better than the data you collect, Sakurai.
I agree with him on not specifically using the collected digital data of smash ultimate to impact decisions to balance, most of it is taken from matches with, make no mistake here, Unforgivable amounts of frame delay, and where the vast majority of the people playing are children. I was a child playing smash, once. I thought mewtwo was broken and Pikachu was the worst. Even if my data and the data of smash bros on the whole reflected that, I don't think actions should be taken because of how isolated the data is.
However, PEOPLE WHO PLAY YOUR GAME FOR MONEY ARE NOT THE BIAS I AM WORRIED ABOUT.
I do not get this supposed gotcha moment from Sakurai. Yes, there will be a bias- A bias of people who play the game as an occupation, and who's job it is to figure out what is good and what is not. And, if he ignored this group too, and didn't touch the numbers of anything at all, id be fine.
However, the problem is, that wasn't the case.
I have conflicting reports in the interviews I'm reading, probably a situation of things getting translated wrong. From what I can gather, Sakurai isn't in direct balance. He can't wake up and decide pichu should be trash. There's an entire separate internal group that plays each other a lot to form ideas of where the balance should be.
So, you'll have professionals who's job it is to play and understand video games to the frame, who get paid for understanding smash ultimate-
Yeah obviously you're not gonna hire smash players. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting Hungrybox or Armada to suddenly move and be a part of smash balance team. But what the actual fuck are they balancing? Sakurai himself stated "I don’t want to shake things up by trying to balance things – so I think I’d like to take a careful look at things as they are."
But he/his team didn't.
I'm sure I don't have to tell people, characters DID get changed, presumably based on this internal data he keeps mentioning he won't share. He's big on that. I get it. You don't want me to know how bad pichu actually is after you nerfed him in 3.1 and his model is occasionally LARGER AND EASIER TO PUNISH THAN PIKACHU'S.
There's just too many moving pieces for me to genuinely think Sakurai believes it's as balanced as he says it is. From the ambiguous "hard data" that conveniently contradicts popular meta whenever he wants to vaguely allude to it, to the "I don't want to tune down power and tune down weaknesses" to "No you don't get it though, the overpowered characters lose to Mac sometimes", I'm sick of it.
Any time this absolute fraud opens up his liars maw to discuss how the game isn't actually a haha wacky party game and the numbers he will only vaguely allude to back him up, I'm gonna go honk a clowns nose so I can at least have some fun, too.
In truth, I believe Harada-San put the path to healing this deep, bloodied wound down a few years ago.
https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2022/dec/10/evo-smash-bros-sakurai-harada/
 
Didn’t he just say in a video that based on internal metrics, things are more or less totally balanced overall based on real player data? That plus things like For Glory mode and the Omega stages tell me he takes it very seriously.

Overall I prefer when things are not balanced, like Brawl. It makes a character like Meta Knight iconic.
 
Brock Reiher said:
Didn’t he just say in a video that based on internal metrics, things are more or less totally balanced overall based on real player data? That plus things like For Glory mode and the Omega stages tell me he takes it very seriously.
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That would be the "absolute fraud open[ing] up his liars maw" alluded to. The entire gist of the OP is that anecdotal data is more convincing than Sakurai's metrics, which seems like a flimsy premise for a thread.
 
Brock Reiher said:
Didn’t he just say in a video that based on internal metrics, things are more or less totally balanced overall based on real player data? That plus things like For Glory mode and the Omega stages tell me he takes it very seriously.

Overall I prefer when things are not balanced, like Brawl. It makes a character like Meta Knight iconic.
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does this take all modes into consideration or just 1v1?
 
You are right that Sakurai is very clearly not taking data from high level play, and that he is totally wrong about his balance numbers.

However, the game is actually quite well balanced, all things considered. You have to take into account the absurd number of characters there are...look at an old game like MvC3 or 2. In comparison the balance in Ult is amazing. Maybe except for Steve, though...
 
Embers said:
That would be the "absolute fraud open[ing] up his liars maw" alluded to. The entire gist of the OP is that anecdotal data is more convincing than Sakurai's metrics, which seems like a flimsy premise for a thread.
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Trying to argue anecdotal evidence against a game designer with actual hard data at his disposal seems like a fool's errand.
 
This is a vague comment, but the characters strong online are not representative of the ones strong offline
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More likely than not, online is what he balances for
 
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Sakurai's internal metrics to me seem a little suspect. In a vacuum even very casual players can tell in 1v1 Ganondorf is not as good as Pyra+Mythra.

There's a lot of wiggle room depending on mode/player-skill/score etc.

Maybe it accounts includes many modes like 4 players modes, random lobbies/rules, elo/whatever the internal smash ranking score is called, or something. Or maybe they don't trim the bottom 50% of matches or something. I couldn't tell you. But there's a reason tournament is generally considered the best metric, you can get similarish high skill levels.

That said I don't really care all that much. Smash ultimate spent a lot of its time being relatively balanced for Smash, with DLC kinda being the main quibble. Its the only game where like 20+ characters regularly place pretty high and there is a big variety of competent characters if you want consistent results without holding yourself back noticeably. Its not like any prior game in that regard. Perfect isn't the enemy of the good.

Also balance for all the modes and skill levels has its own benefit. That's how a lot of people play. Optimizing the variety of casual modes is of great value. I don't expect competitive to be top priority, just not undermined with weird decisions. Which hasn't really been a thing since brawl.

I imagine it would be easy to make a heavy with big hitbox attacks good in 1v1 competitive with more speed and super armor/range on more moves etc. But they might be disgusting in 4-8 players and casual modes and online wifi lag.
 
grobla123 said:
Sakurai's internal metrics to me seem a little suspect. In a vacuum even very casual players can tell in 1v1 Ganondorf is not as good as Pyra+Mythra.
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I think Ganon is pretty strong in casual play, especially online - I wouldn't be surprised if he was above 50% in Sakurai's data. It's probably the right move on his part to balance more for the 99% rather than the 1% of pros, so I understand his thought process here.
 
I think Smash Ultimate is one of the most balanced game. Steve is not broken despite popular belief, Ganondorf and Little Mac can beat my ass every time and I am in the top 1% online. Even looking at the competitive scene it's pretty balanced, but people think otherwise. Like what other game has all kinds of characters in the top64, 32, etc.
 
Radio Agi said:
This feels like a weird take when Ultimate is the most balanced Smash game by far.
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Not much of a competition, and I'd still argue the gap between like Steve and Ganondorf is much higher than 64's top and bottom tiers, but that game has 12 characters, it better be more balanced.
 
I think some of y'all are taking this more seriously than intended lol. But regardless both sides can be right at the same time if they're looking at different data
 
I am not a big Sakurai fan to begin with.

But "fraud" with a "liar's maw"?

Isn't that a bit much?
 
Smash Ultimate is pretty balance. He just also take into account non competitive play mode. Just imagine how a pro viable Ganondorf would completely wreck friend parties when he's already a pubstomper.
 
Up until DLC I found the balance of the game to be pretty amazing. The unique gameplay from much of the DLC cast is where I’m iffy on balance. I play competitively and there are a few characters im
just not sure how to get around. That’s almost certainly on me but there was a noticeable difficulty spike on my end when Kazuya, Steve, Minmin, Hero and Pyra/Mythra came in.

Bayo got buffed at one point and man my heavy Ridley almost never ever sands a chance. I keep trying to see if I can figure out any weakness Ridley could exploit but holy moly she just combos into oblivion.

Over all though I really like the balance in this game. A few like a very small few characters completely wall out others but over all the balance is good. Would like another balance patch from “absolute fraud” though. Original Poster, you sound like you can put your monkey where your mouth is, do what that one guy did at E3 and straight up ask Sakurai if you can help balance the game.

lol I remember watching Sakurai respond to that thinking “oh boy, that dude will be on Sakurai’s ship list for all eternity.
 
Megafan96 said:
"According to Sakurai, the character with the highest win rate in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has a win rate of 51.43%. On the other hand, the supposed weakest fighter has a win rate of 47.18%."
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I'm not a big FGC guy, but I do follow Magic the Gathering a lot, and when Sultai Food decks with Oko were dominating standard, that dominance showed up as just a 53% winrate. So 47% compared to 51% is actually a very big difference in terms of game balancing.

That being said, I think it's absurd to expect a game with 60+ characters to manage to make every character useful. So long as there are enough Tier 1/2 playable characters for tournaments to have variety that should probably be fine.
 
You're conflating "game balance" with the meta. These are not the same thing. Meta's can never be balanced, by definition. Once a game has a competitive scene - or even a consistent, non-competitive scene - the strategies of players who dominate because of their skill will need to be compensated for. That leads to a second set of strategies which responds to the skills/strategies of dominant players, which itself feeds into the skill set that players have, and are required to perfect, which leads to a second tier of increasingly refined strategies and skills.

These metas are not built into the game. The meta will never ever be balanced, because players aren't balanced. But metas are the player's world, not the game designer's.

A game is balanced if multiple metas are theoretically possible, even if the internet means that one meta spreads over the whole world. A game is balanced if two players of roughly equivalent skill have roughly equivalent win/loss ratios if forced to play with random characters, rather than characters of their own choosing.

I've never played a lick of Smash in my life, I don't know nothing about how the game is balanced - maybe the balance is terrible. But you're not talking about it in your post. To illustrate how you are not talking about the same thing as Sakurai, he claim that internet tier lists are inaccurate. You disagree and claim the source of your expertise is checks OP heavy consumption of tier lists.

No amount of domination by a single character is sufficient to indicate a lack of balance. I'm also not sure what the data collection method for Smash is, but it's pretty standard for games to collect data on all your local games and send them to servers for analysis when you connect, even if you never play the game online. So I'm not sure Sakurai's data is skewed by the netcode.
 
Brock Reiher said:
Didn’t he just say in a video that based on internal metrics, things are more or less totally balanced overall based on real player data? That plus things like For Glory mode and the Omega stages tell me he takes it very seriously.

Overall I prefer when things are not balanced, like Brawl. It makes a character like Meta Knight iconic.
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Just looking at online data is kind of the entire problem though. Looking at what Nintendo counts as their ranked mode, called Elite Smash ranked is EXTREMELY generous, they might as well not balance the game at all... Which is what it feels like they're doing.

Before I get into this, I will mention I haven't seen their data. But this is going to be generous and assume they look at Elite Smash, since it's Smash's "top players" online, rather than all of online (which is even less balanced than Elite Smash).

The 2 biggest problem with the data will be that there's no set ruleset for Elite Smash and the skill range is far too broad. You can literally use items or time games instead of 3 stock, with 7 minutes. Obviously Nintendo tries to push you towards Omega stages in a 1v1, 3 stock, no items, etc. However, you can literally change those rules. Back when I did play the game online there were a ton of people who cheesed games by just playing annoying rulesets I didn't realize I had agreed to.

Then there's the fact skill range is so wide. The range of skill that can be seen in Elite Smash is extremely wide because it's darn easy to get into. Literally I can hop onto my game right now, and lose with a character and I'll still get into Elite Smash. I literally tested this awhile back by SDing 3 times with characters I'd never played before and I'd get in! This wasn't a 1 off fluke - my entire top row of the character select screen is in Elite Smash because I spent 45 minutes throwing games! There's a serious problem with how their rank system (GSP) is calculated and it lets just about anyone in if they play enough.

This in itself isn't the problem, but it's the fact that there's not really any SBMM in Smash. GSP is practically random and doesn't mean anything, so you can get Little Timmy vs whatever pro smash streamer is destroying noobs for content. In this scenario, and many others which aren't extreme, Little Timmy is gonna lose no matter how good his character actually is. The worst Elite Smash player can be against the best Elite Smash player, which means you can have Little Timmy play a top tier and just get demolished by an actually good player playing a bottom tier. This is what leads to everyone having a 50% win rate - the matchmaking is essentially random and in a 1v1 game, characters will win 50% of the time.

This is coming from someone who took the game more seriously so if this sounds biased, well I'd love for Smash to be competitive... But I've given up hope and moved onto greener pastures. If anyone here wants a plat fighter that doesn't suck to play competitively and whose creator doesn't punish its fans for playing it competively, please looks into a game like Rivals of Aether. I'd recommend the PC version since the console ports are pretty much dead and no longer supported, plus there's a sequel coming soon which is basically just Project M! Rivals 2 had a Kickstarter last year and it's got monthly betas you can still donate to get access to, so I'd suggest looking into it if anyone here likes comp Smash. Also both of these games have ROLLBACK NETCODE AND HAVE REAL ONLINE PLAY.
 
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Megafan96 said:
no it sounds like the premise for a fun thread
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I was going to post something very silly in this thread because I really don't think it's that big of a deal, but you know what? Seeing this post, I'm in your corner. It DOES sound like the premise for a fun thread!

Buff Byleth and Corrin! Nerf, uh... Crom, or something. That'll do it.
 
I think it's more like he doesn't care about the competitive scene since it's such a minuscule part of Smash's identity.

Also buff Banjo & Kazooie so that Wonderwing doesn't cost a resource anymore.
 
Weiss said:
I think it's more like he doesn't care about the competitive scene since it's such a minuscule part of Smash's identity.

Also buff Banjo & Kazooie so that Wonderwing doesn't cost a resource anymore.
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Make Wonderwing cost twice as much!
 
Weiss said:
You should automatically lose if you pick Corrin.
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AHHHHH

images
 
I was going to make a genuine reply to the premise of this thread, when OP lost all credibility calling the game director and designer a fraud and a liar. Masahiro Sakurai no less, one of the most important figures of this industry.

Yeah, sorry.. gonna side with the one actually working on the game for this one.
 
TomNookYankees said:
I'm not a big FGC guy, but I do follow Magic the Gathering a lot, and when Sultai Food decks with Oko were dominating standard, that dominance showed up as just a 53% winrate. So 47% compared to 51% is actually a very big difference in terms of game balancing.
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In card games, decks can add tech cards specifically to counter other meta decks, and the more dominant a deck is, the more other decks are warped as a means to adapt around it. In fighting games, players can only adapt their playstyle to the extent that the character's moveset allows them to.

The other thing that happens is if something is very dominant to the point of being used a majority of players, its win rate decreases as more matches become mirror matches in which that thing both wins and loses. I don't know how much of anything about Magic, but SSBU does not have anything close to that.
 
Ultimate's game balance was excellent until:

1) Steve showed up with a ridiculously overtuned kit, it's like they were afraid of making him bad because he's so unorthodox, so like every single move he has is fucking ridiculous to the point of absurdity (Kazuya is also a bit like this, but to a lesser extent)

2) it became apparent that playing Sonic as campy and degenerate as possible is obnoxiously hard to counter, making any high level match with Sonic an awful exercise in tedium

The next Smash just needs a longer window of receiving updates once the final DLC character drops and the meta begins to really settle. They do respond to player feedback, Ultimate's last update nerfed Min Min because Japanese players had been complaining about her. It's difficult, though because there were some Steve players that deliberately hid Steve tech they had discovered until after the last patch so that they wouldn't have to worry about their busted character being properly balanced
 
If I was in charge of a series selling 30 million plus copies, I wouldn't be primarily balancing it around the opinions of the tiny fraction of a percent who play it in tournaments rather than my deliberately tracked data over the entire playerbase either.
 
What do you think is a fighting game with good balance? I think Ultimate did a good job, specially when you consider that the game is balanced considering all modes and all stages....like yeah there are some characters above the rest and some that are never gonna make it, but that feels true for a lot of games.

Meta Knight was a disaster, but with Ultimate i feel all the whining about x character being broken was just that, whining.
 
The real problem with this game is that the movement is really bad. Sticky platforms, short hop being a pain to pull off, the fucking buffering system, the laggy online. Why is the movement in a platform-fighting game so bad?
 
RochHoch said:
Ultimate's game balance was excellent until:

1) Steve showed up with a ridiculously overtuned kit, it's like they were afraid of making him bad because he's so unorthodox, so like every single move he has is fucking ridiculous to the point of absurdity (Kazuya is also a bit like this, but to a lesser extent)

2) it became apparent that playing Sonic as campy and degenerate as possible is obnoxiously hard to counter, making any high level match with Sonic an awful exercise in tedium

The next Smash just needs a longer window of receiving updates once the final DLC character drops and the meta begins to really settle. They do respond to player feedback, Ultimate's last update nerfed Min Min because Japanese players had been complaining about her. It's difficult, though because there were some Steve players that deliberately hid Steve tech they had discovered until after the last patch so that they wouldn't have to worry about their busted character being properly balanced
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If I recall correctly, the steve community kept him under wraps until balance patches were done specifically so he wouldn't get nerfed
 
Light just got 3-0'd by Chunkykong.
For those who don't follow the competive scene: the top 10 player with a top tier main just got brutally folded by a low tier specialist.

The game has 80+ characters, and imo there's 2 undertuned characters (Ganon and Little Mac) and 2 overtuned characters (Steve and Sonic).
The only actual problem is that they stopped balancing the game to account for meta shifts, the game's balance is actually good since low tiers can and will win top level matches against the top tiers.
 
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