Please do why no one plays Lucas. It’s been a year since you talked about making why no one plays for him lol and he’s probably literally the most underrated character in the game
@@drbiohazmati mean the balance between power and recovery is good, but his moves are just ripped of from falcon with no actual love to the source material besides his smash attacks
Sephiroth's biggest issue is mostly how lightweight he is... If he wasn't so easy to kill (despite literally being a final boss) then his design choices wouldn't be a big deal.
I wonder why they Did not patch his weight up by litterally 10 straight units. He has a weight of 79, wich is as light as Pikachu, Olimar. These are really Hard to hit Characters, because of their small Posture and Pikachu is very slippery while Olimar is effectivly a Sworty in disguise. Mewtwo has the same weight and the Tail Hitbox makes his weight to Size ratio Worse, but he is a Speedy, Semi Ranged High Damage Mashine. So Buffing Seph´s weight to 89 like Marth makes him not as Fragile as poor Glasscannons, but makes up for his Specific Hitboxes and Frame Data. If people Argue, that One Wing would be Broken after this. It wouldnt. Wing is the only Buff that just Vanishes after you get the Upperhand. (Ragedrive is a passive, wich can be used Up as a Super Move, so it doesnt count)
@@anigodzapex9384adding to your point, awful frame data + light weight is such an ASS combo, pair that with his tall stature like you legit can die at 60 for whiffing a move
@@mohammadalhusaini810 So funny that he has the most logical Lore Based Powerup, but also got balanced around the fact, that he dies before it activates more times the he does not. Making a Final Boss of a famous Franchise so light is a war crime, because it makes him so unnecessary punishing to play. He looks like a Heavy weight, has the poor Frame Data and specific Hit boxes to balance, and they still reduced his weight by 30 Units. He wouldnt even be top 15 with a weight of 109. XD
@@anigodzapex9384 hes my main and I’ve been playing him less and less and its actually sad, when i play him i just feel incredibly handicapped that it doesn’t become fun anymore, the characters i play against shut me down so easily for simply whiffing i go into a combo that puts me at 80 and die the next hit or just simply die instantly💀 I’ve been playing more cloud/wolf/sora and it feels very refreshing to actually DO something.
@@mohammadalhusaini810 I would want to play him way more also, but he just is not as Rewarding as some other Edgy Character with a Strong Power Up, that is also demanding to play. Jep Joker is technically not the same Archetype, neither is he a comfort Cahracter. But man is he satisfying to play. And if I want to play a restricted Spacing Character, then my most anticipated Character Ridley got me covered also. Lackluster Competitive, but much fun to play and less stressfull for some reason. Yep Third Edgelord Character, and yes I also play Dark Pit and Wolf xD
You forgot mentioning how Sephiroth has a broken comeback mechanic that is the only reason why he's not mid tier but sometimes he can't take advantage of it because he's so absurdly light with no justifiable reason.
I am main sephiroth, and yes, he is super light, and I hate that, the armor is not consistent, the wing mechanics are not consistent either, he is super tall, and on top of that he does not have good options to defend himself in melee, unlike min min, who has a whole kit with what she needs to fight, and the icing on the cake, she weighs 104... she should weigh much less for the things she can do, in conclusion, it is stupid and absurd.
@@benross9174 Dk side b breaks shields easily and has absurdly strong super armor that can tank giga flare, and dk’s range is extremely slept on by the way that character has insane range, as for kazuya why would you need range when you can delete a stock off one interaction.
You forgot to mention that Min Min for some reason is allowed to hold on to an item as long as she wants. As long as she presses her b tilt/smash attack first. The following items she can hold on to: metal blade, banana, gyro, and K rool's crown. Edit: oh, and Pac-Man's fruit
At high level this isn't nearly as big a deal, since you can z-drop and recatch with aerials to effectively play normally without ever dropping it. You do lose your ground moves, I guess, but most characters hop all over the place anyway...
@@-obamium5320 lets nuke his ass for having a longer sword, but snake, the guy who controls the entire stage with explosives nah lets make him a heavyweight, kazuya? The guy that can kill off one interaction? SUPER heavyweight. The balance team probably.
My issue is older characters show their age toolkit wise. Where newer characters come off as fresher iterations. For examples Hero comes off as the Link we wanted with all his items available and Terry has supers whereas Ryu and Ken got no updates to compare
@@paulakroy2635 Not too hot of a take tbh. I know I would definitely prefer pre-Smash 4 movesets for characters over them being stuffed to the gills with gimmicks and references just for the sake of being references. I really feel like Brawl really struck a perfect balance with how they went about designing it's newcomers and decloning characters. Smash 4 and Ult leaned wayyy too far into the gimmicky territory for my taste. ( Megaman being a perfect example. He's 1:1 with megaman 2...but SPECIFICALLY megaman 2 which makes him so twitchy and awkward to swap to.) I feel like these kinds of design decisions only got worse when DLC got introduced and they had to be gimmicky to justify the price.
I think its the exact opposite, most of the older characters have more versatile and grounded movesets like for example Marth swings a sword and has tippers. These characters are usually easier to balance and easy for a new player to understand the mechanics. Alot of the poorly designed characters come from the post brawl era Smash games where characters needed gimmicks to make their gameplans unique. These characters tend to have a unique game mechanic just to themselves meaning they can’t completley gut the special mechanic from the character and the entire game just got more complex and thus more difficult to balance. Like Hero is a COOL character, but in terms of being a character in a fighting game Link’s moveset makes way more sense intuitively and provides various ways of player expression. Hero on the other hand just has a ton of unique mechanics shoved onto his character which makes him not as a fully realized as a character like Link.
Some character designs are straight up terrible like the Touch of Death characters forcing non interactive gameplay. Min Min in particular while her design in concept works it fails in execution because her gameplan is not meant to be in smash after all.
She would have been fine if you could whiff punish her by hitting her arms, which is an actual mechanic in the game she is from. She is essentially Dhalsim from Street Fighter without the main drawback that keeps him from being abhorrently broken.
I feel like her arms should take damage but not give her any knock back. At least when returning. And at least if you KLANK with them. (klanking her arms bine modified to have a max of 20 percent so that mega wat doesn't go through smash) This would already make her much more fun to play against while not being horrible for th min min player. Letting you rack some damage even when getting spaced. Before you finally break in and bank on the damage you stacked on her.
@@RobbertRobbert12345agreed with that honestly though the Min Min’s aren’t actually farming as hard as Steve players and the disadvantage state of Min Min can result in losing your stock which makes it not the worst design cuz if Min Min is hit offstage they get edgeguarded and top players will take advantage of this even good players will often
@@captainphoton1693 As long as your patient, min min can be kinda predictable. Her air speed is somehow worse than Banjo Kazooie and thats saying alot.
@@MoebiusX9 Did you knew Darkest Lariat ignores defense and evasion changes? Does that mean the move should ignore Shield and dodges? If you said yes, congratulations, you are officially a moron. References should NEVER take precedent over gameplay, they should only be implemented if they create something cohesive and enjoyable FOR BOTH SIDES, like giving Mario a dive bomb over F.L.U.D.D, making so Ganondorf can float and reflect projectiles or giving Sonic rush in down B over a second Side B.
I know at some point if this series continues, Steve, like Min Min, is gonna be another elephant in the room. You just can't make block work in a platform, it tips the balance far too greatly in Steve's favor, and that's block alone, that's not even mentions his other countless stuff, like Minecart, down tilt, moving tilts, etc.
Rivals of Aether made him work. He's actually balanced, not cancerous to play against and is more fun to play as since his combos require creativity instead of being barely above button mashing. He has 3 blocks he can place directly below him as his Up-B and they act as platforms, rather than solid terrain.
@@100organicfreshmemes5 Major differences though: Rivals is balanced around crazy combos and 0 to deaths being the norm, so balance is inherently easier because everyone can just kill everyone else off of anything for the most part. Rivals also has way stronger defensive mechanics like Melee level DI, automatic smash DI, and drift DI which is entirely unique to Rivals. Ult actually has a lot less options, the only reason there aren't a ton more combos is because of lack of hitstun, a more floaty roster, and balloon knockback. Finally, Steve is also substantially nerfed in multiple ways when it comes to basically all of his specials like the blocks being platforms as you mentioned. His normals/aerials are also nerfed because of the previously mentioned combos mechanics making it so defense against him is much better and his being able to kill you off of only a couple interactions isn't anything special, compared to Ult where it's one of the major things that create the tier gaps between those who can and can't consistently kill the opponent in only a few neutral wins per stock, with rare exception. And honestly even with all that I would still argue he isn't a great design or very fun to fight like most of the base roster and several workshop created characters, he's just not super degen the way Ult Steve is.
Imo one of the worst designed characters in Ultimate is Little Mac. He’s got everything to make him horribly designed: - No air game at all, as in, he basically misses half his moveset, with arguably the worst aerials in the game. Only nair is “good” because it’s insanely quick and used in combos (but it’s also very weak and has a horrible hitbox) - He also by extension has a pretty awful recovery. Not the worst in the game but very punishable and predictable. - As someone who absolutely hates the existence of super armor, mac having it on his extremely fast Smash Attacks is straight up illegal. - Speaking about his Smash Attacks, down directioned f-smash being that fast while basically one shotting shields is stupid. - KO punch going through shield makes playing against mac with punch a game of zoning and running away. In general, all of this leads to a scenario where little mac either gets edgeguarded and dying at 30%, or he gets zoned for 5 minutes. But if he gets in, you’re getting exploded. He just makes the matches inherently unfun for both players
This. If he's still in the next game they had better rework him and give him Stars to power up his Up-B and turn it into the Star Uppercut/Star Punch. Make it a mechanic that rewards you for playing well instead of a comeback mechanic and make it an actual fair move instead of a final smash built into his core move set.
@@100organicfreshmemes5 the fact that ko punch is actually stronger than most final smashes while also being stupidly easy to remove if played around is literally pushing an already extreme character even further. And he's essentially been like this for a decade since smash 4 it really feels like they dont care about going past an initial concept for him 💀
I think we're mixing up 'bad design' and 'poor balance'. Sakurai has stated that if we make every character good at everything, the game gets boring. Mac takes the polarized groundgame very seriously and what we get is a bad but remarkably unique character, but him being annoying is a different issue It's okay for bad characters to exist. Ganondorf sucks but he's still one of the most picked for casual play because he's fun, and he's a bad character that is fun to smoke and be smoked by. So 'bad design' I dont agree with
... Then his design is great? The only issue is that it's attached to a user of magic and a defined fighting style, not a brute force fighter like Snorlax or DDD.
Yeah with this massive roster you can feel the cracks in the wall at time and sure I am not saying is the most balanced fighting game ever but I can feel like if it got a more proper balance post DLC it could have been feel better in design
I think that's definitely true, tho many of the characters don't have bad designs, they just have lame strategies, like luigi isn't bad apart from 2 moves but his gameplan is absolutely shit, same with villager
@mranxiety9995 Yeah, but i think that only comes about from people realize that's its most effective tactic with them. if players never found out how broken spamming spindash is, then he'd be a relatively fine character, just like how if we never found out you can do a zero to death with Luigi he would be too or say diddy with spamming banana . it's not that there core design is bad, it's that one part of the character is so powerful that it becomes the central point of there kit
If you asl me who is also badly designed in smash bros defenitley lucario, like 65% just to have acceptable damage is just ludicrous, sluggish frame data for a brawler and even have power to kill is just argue with a lot of thing to make him consistent to play
I think pikachu is badly designed, but for a completely different reason. I think pikachu is just too complicated a character for being such a recognizable mascot. I think pikachu should have the kirby treatment, where he is designed more for the casual and new players. A lot of kids probably want to main pikachu since pokemon is so big, but struggle since his recovery is weirdly complex, among other things.
See also: Pac-Man. You mean that your mum and dad who recognise the funny pizza slice from playing in arcades in the 80s but haven't picked up a video game in 30 years suddenly have to master *seven* different kinds of fruit?
Wii Fit Trainer would be easy to fix just by treating their hitboxes like every other character and giving them disjoints instead of being "realistic."
i like the idea that wii fit trainer has bad hitboxes because theyre basically just a really in shape person... in a cast of fantasy video game characters
Wdym "every other character"? Aside from special cases like a lot of up-smashes having intangibility/invulnerability since they're intended as anti-airs pretty much all fist fighters in Smash have basically no disjoints. The only exceptions I can think of are Terry and Kazuya having DLC privilege.
A lot of characters, especially brawlers and those with exaggerated proportions, have attacks and animations that cause their limbs to stretch and shrink heavily (think Mario's jab, Kirby and Lucas's forward tilts, K. Rool and Sonic's forward smashes, Fox's forward tilt, Jigglypuff's back air, Pikachu's back air and landing animation), which puts the character briefly off-model for a frame or two at a time, but this works because Smash's art style is generally fairly cartoony. Wii Fit Trainer is a brawler, but they notably do NOT really have this trait; their limbs retain realistic proportions during most or all attacks, so I imagine the devs avoided giving them disjointed attack hitboxes because those disjoints would look out of place, like Wii Fit was launching invisible ki attacks instead of just making stretchy punches and kicks. Though I can see why the devs hesitated to give them disjoints, they probably should have gone back to their character concept and made choices that didn't shackle them to using only realistic proportions.
Eh I think Sephiroth is pretty well designed, the only thing that doesn't work out is balance. It's a good design for a character to excess in walling out, and then getting severely punished by not keeping out the opponent, as he will die faster with his low weight stat. I think he could afford some new tools. I recommend checking out HDR Sephiroth, he's basically Ult Sephiroth, but scintilla is more of a setplay move, it lingers (with no hitbox) and upgrades his other specials if they pass through it.
@@OddRick3113sephiroth is not well designed because sometimes it looks like his sword is supposed to hit his opponents even though it just goes right through them. Also, he's way too lightweight for his size. He should've been heavier as opposed to being lighter than Sora.
@@LIGHTANGEL_EXthat's not even a design thing that's just visual things looking weird because of Z axis. Also the lightweight thing is weird but it works out really well for overall balance of the design.
I loved the video. For me, the issue with Min-Min is that she doesn't have the sense of commitment vs payoff that most characters have. If the opponent is offstage, she can spam arm attacks that would be fatal while incurring zero risk herself. And her attacks carry opponents offstage a little too well. I actually really like the Ice Climbers, though I understand your point about their matchups being particularly polarized. I just enjoy watching the creativity of the complex combos they can pull off, and there are plenty of balancing factors with how Nana works.
One thing that you kind of allude to but I think warrants elaboration is that this video's definitions of "well-designed" and "badly designed" are focused on competitive play. An important difference between Smash Bros and something like League of Legends is that Smash Bros isn't exclusively - or even, I'd argue, primarily - designed as a competitive game. It has other goals and priorities that the designers have to take into account. Steve is, I think, a good case study. From a competitive perspective, he's a nightmare, an absolutely unfair character who breaks the rules of the game in ways that allow a skilled player to completely dominate the field. But for a casual player, Steve provides a completely unique moveset that allows and rewards creative play, while adding to a new element to the chaos that makes multi-player items-on games fun. I also think his moveset does a really good job of translating the spirit of his game of origin into Smash Bros (speaking, admittedly, as someone who hasn't played Minecraft in years), which is an important design goal for a series that is, first and foremost, a big crossover. Which isn't to say that Steve being broken in competitive isn't a failure of design - Smash Bros is still a competitive game, even while also being a wacky, chaotic party game and a dorky, indulgent crossover. It's just worth remembering that, even more-so than most games, this is really hard to get 100% right, and the fact that Ultimate hits more often than it misses, on all fronts, is a laudable achievement on the part of the devs.
But even from a casual standpoint, some of these characters are going to collect dust. Min min for example is almost never used. Most people have her because it’s slightly cheaper to purchase the full fighters pass than to individually purchase everyone else. Also, you need to own min min to practice against min min and cannot avoid matching into people playing min min online, even if you don’t own the dlc. Also she’s 0 fun and invalidates most of the character I find fun, so most of my vitriol is incredibly biased. If you like min min, good for you, glad you found something you like, but her design to me is indefensible, even with the idea of faithful adaptation.
Ultimate's poorly designed bad characters become infinitely more poorly designed when you compare them to similarly designed characters that are actually good. The balance decisions were completely arbitrary and like everything in this game feel designed by amateurs rather than a team of professionals. Sephiroth compared directly to Min Min is the perfect example of this - they are functionally the same character but Min Min is infinitely better because they decided she needs to have excellent frame data on her boxing tools/something to do out of shield and Sephiroth for some reason doesn't deserve the same? He is the very peak of bad character design to the point it feels personal. Like they knew that thousands of people would pop off for this character being added to the game so they made him as shitty as possible just to spite all those people.
However, looking at examples of this in other games, the difference between characters of the same archetype isn't that bad relatively. Consider in 3rd strike, Necro and Chun-Li. Both of them play a game of neutral until they get meter, and then use their superior neutral tools to get in and do high damage. However, Chun-Li is so much better than Necro that they can barely be considered near each other. That's not even mentioning Twelve, who is supposed to fit the same idea of "controls neutral but is frail" but Chun just does so much more damage and has better tools than Twelve despite Twelve having a literal air dash in street fighter, that the two are barely playing the same game. Meanwhile Sephiroth to Min Min is just that Sephiroth is balanced, but why choose the balanced option when the unbalanced one exists? Sephiroth to Min Min is like Necro to Chun-Li, but that's not thinking of Twelve. Remember, the design can always get worse and can always get more obvious.
Let’s compare the two for a a sec Better range:min min Better coverage:min min Better frame data:min min Better oos:min min Better weight:min min More consistent:min min Legit the only thing he has over her is mobility so why pick sephiroth at this point.
@@theimpersonator7086 Sakurai makes some baffling decisions with characters from the home games. Why doesn't Steve lose resources on death? Y'know? Like *Minecraft?*
To me. Sephiroth is one of the best designed fighter in the roaster. For the exact reasons you said it was bad. The things is that. I don't hold his tierlist placement against him. Because the character has found a fairly large and stable player base. Has many tools. Some janky. And a proper goal and play style. And has one of the best designed comeback mechanic. If the character is badly designed, how come it has so many players despite his ranking? His moves are précises to land. But not in a way that mess him up if he miss his sweet spot. Zelda on the other hand. Cover less area, and is never rewarded in anyway by sour spots. Hitting a move witsephiroty place the oponent in the perfect spot to try have time to hit another one. And the weet spots are great. As for the slow moves. This didn't stoped clouds forward air to be a fantastic move. Same for byleth aerials. Or even Belmont aerials and forward tilt. Thoses attacks are all extremely important to their character. And yet they are very slow. The thing with sephiroth that let him work despite that weakness. Is that he is really potent at breaking shields. And preventing défensives options. In addition to being able to stuff approaches with his exelent counter and his super armor on his one wing mode. Being able to break shields like it's nothing let him hit people tat don't shield even with slower moves. It also let him space we'll when the shield it. And allows him to force enemies to not over vomit since they can't use shield that much, wich naturally keep them at his preferred range. His projectiles arnt the best. But it's not the point. He can force options with them. And again, break shields. Punish rolls with his excellent reach. Force a certain get up timing. And many other things. As for his side B it's really just a delayed projectile. Nothing different from snake C4. Bowser Jr me ha troop a. Hitting side b and breaking shields are his main goals. The later can seem ridiculous since it rarely happen even for him. But the point is not that he will break shields. Is that he can break shields. Every play you make need to go toward breaking their shields. So that you limit their answers. Getting shield breaker against sephiroth is certain death. And in that regard it's basicly the only smash fighter that work like that. And that may be the only part I don't like his design. It can be frustrating playing his game. Especialy because no one else apart from some graplers like Luigi play like this. But where as Luigi kill you from 0 regardless of if you used shield or not. Being blocked in shields for 11 frames against his grab is just worst that moving around. Sephiroth at least require you to use your shile first to 0to death you. But it doesn't stop at this degenerate play style. Since all the tools he was given to break shields are under balanced. Always avoidable. But are really potent, consistent, and has more than enouth. You won't gt cheesed out of a stock. It's always your fault to fail to avoid thoses tools. But evading thoses tools give you less option than most characters. And sephiroth try to predict wich one you Sill take out of thoses fewer options. And has ways to stuff multiple at once. Even better. Thoses tools may never land, but are amazing in every other aspect. The reason they never land is because they require preparation. People have time to see it. And sephiroth need to earn the right to use them. This Chara ter is just way too good in my opinion. And is, but that's completely subjective. One of the few character that really don't need changes in ultimate deluxe. Obviously in a very different game they would have some. And ultimate deluxe isn't confirmed to happen. But in the scenario we could get updates to some fighters like dk and Ganon. Sephiroth is on of my last candidate to touch. With byleth, and Rosalina and Luma. I'm much more encline to rework stupid tools from top tiers. Even if it mean buffing them. So that they at least play a fun game if they're bound to be broken. Or give new tools to bad character. Or rework character that clearly need a update despite good or bad results. Sephiroth just stand in that spot of not a top tier. But not the best high tier either. Good player base but not over represented. Unique playstyle. Defined goals. But still room for expression. Don't really on cheese to work. But try to honestly cheese you to force you into bad situation. And somewhat faithfully to its Canon. I forgot to talk about one wing. Most honest come back mechanic ever. Without being a pass off like kazuya's. It only increase movement. And add armor to smashes. His movement only get one small additional jump. Wich only help his already good recovery. So it doesn't break one of his weakness. And help his already slow smash to land. This paliat on of his weakness. But as you said sometimes things are too slow. So you rarely got hit out of the blue with his smash atta KS. And super armor only help in thoses instances. When you are careless around him.
@@Magic_Ice i won't be too bias. Because sephiroth has stupid shield breaks. Luma can ignore disadvantages. And byleth has some crazy far reaching kill power. But flco has cut scene combos. Krool projectiles are serviceable at best while he could really work as a projectile heavy weight. So that's fine. I like all of them. But snake tho? You really gotta explain this one to me. But in any case I would put minimin fairly high if it wasn't for a few issue. But they can easily be fixed in my opinion and the rest is just amazing if it was less opresive. So I'm kinda guilty myself.
@@captainphoton1693 i love how sephiroth focuses so hard on shield breaks. He feels very scary to defend against because if he breaks your shield, you are dead. It feels very villainous in that way. And for the record I meant the characters I have above him are King K Rool, Captain Falcon, and Snake. Not Falco. If you want a good Snake explanation, I highly recommend going to the UA-cam channel “Designing For” and watching their video on Snake. They do a really good job explaining why Snake works so well in Smash.
@@Magic_Ice ho OK. I guess Falco is up there too. Cut scene combos yeah. But still feel unique compared to fox that start to feel the test of time in regarde to uniqueness. (even if really fun). Captain falcon. I guess just lack spice compared to melee and has an awful back dash. I would honestly love falcon punch mix up in the next smash games. Tho. Where connecting the full punch would still be hype since it would come so often but rarely held. (kinda like byleth arrow). And OK Ima gonna look at this video. But damn snake has some really janky, but like, straithly janky stuff. Plus is opresive and is a zoner that has really good panic motion at close range. Maybe a tad bit too over the top in my opinion. Guess the slow aerials work really well with his grenades. But don't let him approach too easily so they arnt used for this purpose. And can't really defend itself with it. But that dash attack, up smash, and f til really blow this aspect out since they are really good on defence. And he don't Wan to approach anyway. Idk gotta see it first
@@Magic_Ice just watched it. And I guess. Yeah. But if being faithful to how your game play alone is a good design. Then steeve, minmin, olimar, smash 4 bayo, kazuya, even Luigi that technicaly beat he shit of regulars phantoms in 2 grabs max. Would be good design. Wich you can agree at least a few arnt good designed. But snake is definitely high tier for me. And now that I think about it, it's really faithful to it's game.
I'd luv to see more of these. and i think video about the best design characters as well as a way to show what smash character designs should strive to be
it’s not like edguarding or even ledge trapping sepiroth is easy considering his multiple recovery mixups and how he can ledge hang or reverse his up-b….if they made him weigh anymore than he does now or made his hitboxes anymore lenient + the addition of wing he’d be an insufferable character to fight especially if you’re a brawler without range or disjoints that reach him. A badly designed character is someone like min min for sure who has boxing tools that make no sense considering who much stage control she possesses by simply existing.
My answer is like 80% of the roster. To explain what I mean, almost every character is fun to play, and almost every character isn't fun to play against.
Stuff like this is why I don’t play ssbu in any serious and/or competitive way anymore. Feels like the entire roster is just gimmicks and shitty design instead of proper balance AND fun
I dont think the majority of characters are well designed. Some have too many opressive advantages (ex GnW), while others are bad characters with insanely cheesy game plans (ex: Lucario). The only characters that I would say are well designed are Lucina, Palu, Joker and Peach (and maybe a few others I'm forgetting). Luci and Palu for being solid without feeling unfair. Joker and Peach for being broken but made up for being hard to play and master.
Maybe Luigi, like, touch of death characters are not bad on their own, but they have to be balanced around that. Meanwhile green mario can play it straight un til her get tired, grabs you, and you're down a stock
I wouldn't put sephiroth in badly design, it's that he just has one too many weaknesses, if he had a good OOS option or more weight, he'd be perfect, one winged could he a bit much but i think it works because it doesn't remove his core weakness or his suddenly turn things around
I'd personally would say badly designed are characters who in order to be fun or fair needs a full on rework or a page worth of stat changes. Sephiroth just needs one or 2 things changed and he'd be perfectly fine, while for say someone like min-min you'd need to change a dozen or so things
Just because the amount of things that need change is comparatively low doesn't automatically mean it isn't bad design. For a quick counterexample, changing Falcon Punch such that it comes out on frame 1 and has a hitbox double the size of New Pork City is just two changes to the way the move works, and I can't think of a world where that wouldn't be considered terrible design.
@TheTrueBrawler the move would be yes but that's a small part of a whole, and falcon punch is the last move in his kit people use so his gameplay barely changes The reason why one bad move shouldn't be consider u for badly desgin is because by that logic u can say pre patched ike or palu is as bad as say kauya or Sonic because they're gameplay is spamming just nair which is bad design as it gets
I honestly have to agree Sephi in concept is just weird to balance but, it was also weird that he was the only one in fp2 that had a lot of thought put into their balancing lol. If they really wanted to go the Akuma way of balancing him they should have just committed to it. Keep him the same weight and just give him permanent wing stats. If there’s a way to add some kind of comeback factor, probably have octaslash, max sf, gigaflare, and counter take less time to come out? If they really wanted to sell the comeback mechanic like every other dlc than keep everything the same except for his weight (95ish?) so he can actually rely on it as a comeback mechanic instead of a inconsistent snowball mechanic.
I think Sakurai Nintendo and the Developer's didn't want to put Sephiroth in the game but they probably had to because FINAL FANTASY 7 didn't have a lot of content when Cloud got in the game
It is such a whiplash watching you live for WuWa release and make HSR content into smashy bros even though I’ve been watching this channel for like half a year now for both cause I play both lol
i love playing as plant and i think they're on of the most fun characters in the game, but also, they feel like they were supposed to be a shieldbreak character, but all their moves shieldpoke. or maybe that classifies more under weird implementation.
Sephiroth is well-designed. The stronger a character's strengths are should match how strong their weaknesses are. He and probably Sora were the only characters of Fighters Pass Vol. 2 who were properly balanced.
I feel like they over played the slowness of sephiroth as he is slow over all but the range allows him to start the moves before others are even in hitting distance as well totally disregarding his own critera as sephiroth has a good game plan and there is counter play he may not be totally busted but thats good balance
Zelda is a very poorly designed character. She is an amalgamation of a bunch of different conflicting designs. She is tall and slow but a glass canon. She is a floaty with mediocre air physics and poor air to air options. She is a grappler with a slow grab. She is a close range fighter who can't combo, can't get in, and has lots of end lag because she is also a hard hitter. She is a defense fighter thats doesn't want to get hit because she is a lightweight and she is also a sweetspot fighter that requires spacing dispite not typically dictating interactions as a defensive fighter. Half of her moves don't even work properly, were very poorly conceived from the beginning or have unnecessary balancing factors. F-tilt is basically incineroar f-tilt but skinnier, higher off the ground, and with its tipper having lower priority than the sour spot. Down tilt sends at an angle where it's difficult to get any meaningful reward for hitting such a short ranged attack. Up smash is basically mewtwo up smash without a body launcher or the ability to hit platforms. Nair feels like it was designed by the intern being one of the only multi hits in the game that uses actual knock back angles rather than an autolink, it's finisher sends out rather than in a particular direction so your opponent can be launched in the opposite direction of your drift, it's to high to hit a lot of grounded opponents out of a buffered short hop, and is unsafe to land with. Fair and bair aren't particularly safe on shield and can't be auto canceled out of a buffered aerial. Up air at frame 14 is up there with the slowest aerials and has a surprisingly small hitbox. Din's fire is incredibly slow, predictable, not very maneuverable, weak at close to mid range, and has a sour spot. Farore's wind's launcher doesn't use set knock back so it fails at very high and very low percent, has a sweet spot that can be DIed away from, and has a diagonal launcher when used in the air. The phantom is the only trap i can think of that fails if the user is hit and it has some odd blind spots where the phantom can just whiff.
As a Sephiroth main, I completely agree with your analysis. I understand why he is balanced the way he is, but they just turned the screws little too tight. Just a buff to his weight would go a long way, aside from not getting blown up at 40-60%, it would also make wing more reliable and consistent. Then, if he just had better frame data on a couple moves, he'd go from mid to high tier. And if his grab wasn't trash, look out boys!
More of an unorthodox one, but IMO Mii Swordfighter is by far the weakest of the Miis in terms of design (and tiering) and its not even close. Mii gunner is 100% a zoner and Mii brawler is 100% a rushdown brawler. Mii Swordfighter is... partially a swordie partially zoner? Swordfighter was based off of Link who really isn't that much of a swordfighter and I'd say all of the Links have more in common with a character like Samus than they do with someone like Marth. While I don't know precisely how to fix this, Mii Swordfighter just needs way less projectiles for special options and more unique specials and traditional swordie aerials to get proper use. Mii swordfighter isn't particularly bad IMO but his competitive balance is heavily affected by the fact that he already competes in his role in a VERY stacked category of characters. Zoners are extremely powerful in Ultimate and Mii swordfighter doesn't justify much to use instead of a stronger Zoner (Rob, Samus, Pac-man, Min-Min, Snake, etc.) or just his own pure zoner counterpart, Mii Gunner.
I get this, but also I feel the roster doesn't need *another* character whose entire moveset is just different types of sword swing. If you just based Mii Swordie off Marth, how would you avoid making them just another Marth clone?
@@alexpotts6520 Sword characters are quite diverse even with how many there are already, and even if he's just another "boring" swordie like Marth, at least he would then actually be a *Swordfighter* as advertised, currently Mii Swordfighter is not. Meanwhile the other two Miis are imitating the archetypes they're based on extremely well.
a lot of link's attacks being able to hit all around him is something I think is worth mentioning because it does not feel good to get hit by an attack that doesn't care where you are, falls into that lack of counterplay category.
Luigi's game plan is literally fishing for grabs at low% for touch of death cheese. It forces noninteraction or camping at the start of matches, arguably even worse than someone like Little Mac (another character that I think was poorly realized).
I think Sonic is one of the most tragic examples of that, and mainly because I feel like he as a character has some of the most untapped potential in the game, despite being a top 5 character. And that's because it's just *so easy* to play passively and campy with him. Side B is *way* too safe most of the time, his speed is oftentimes used to just run away instead of getting in, homing attack comes out so fast and is such a good spacing tool that giving him a second to breath will make pushing him ill advised... And yet as a rush down character Sonic is hands down my favorite character to play. He has good frame data and mobility to consistently keep the pressure on, and that speed means that a Sonic who understands and isn't afraid of neutral is absolutely relentless and can apply the same pressure as Fox in my experience. His air game might be some of the most insane in the game, allowing you to make some of the riskiest, most aggressive, but satisfying kill confirms in the roster. Sonic absolutely needs a rework, but at bare minimum I'd love to implement some sort of system that *forces* Sonic to play aggressively, because aggressive Sonic is some of the most fun I've ever had playing Smash.
Something I don't is: if Sephiroth gets the wing to simulate the "second phase" of a final boss, why does he lose it after a while? Boss battles don't just revert to the first form after dealing enough damage to you. Feel like he should just keep the wing buff until he dies, which evidently would help his character.
Probly because, with the exception of fighters that failed at conception but still got put in anyways, a lot of moves were likely put in for casuals over competitive, so the focus was on being fun over being fair. That's not to say they even got that 100% right, but at the very least I haven't seen anything that reasonably disproves the notion that their movesets are relatively fine for the super-casual to casual-but-not-quite-competitive but bad once put in a competitive environment. That could be just as much a lack of arguments as it is me not finding any, but still. I'd fully agree that they could've done some touch-ups or changes even after launch that could improve both sides of that spectrum.
In my top 10 of poorly designed characters there it would be 1°: Sonic. He is awful on both representation and gameplay experience, and the few elements who do represent him is also why his gameplay is so obnoxiously slow against, and unlike other speedies he also has top tier vertical speed. He needs a full-on rework because this is just awful for everyone. 2°: Steve. Walls in a platform fighter, keeps diamond after death, has a 0 to almost death, lacks visual clarity on moves, incentives to camp, is slow but not really, is bugged and in general he's just the main reason alongside Sonic that people is abandoning Ultimate. 3°: Min-Min. Did you knew people in japan despises min-min more than we despise Steve? That's because of too much range and all the stuff you already mentioned. 4°: Kazuya. 0-to-death are just unfair design period, and he has way too much intangibility for no reason. 5°: Lucario. You covered him recently and his design is just awful. He loses while winning, has no margin for error, he can basically touch of death you and he's very bad at using his kit due to the whole aura stuff. He's a bottom 10 in popularity for a reason, and that's being generous because I'm sure he's bottom 5. 6°: Little Mac. No air game is bad in a platform fighter, and its ground game isn't even that good due to being so stubby and having bad grabs; as a reminder he struggles to even reach some platforms with a full hop despite such muscular legs. He also has KO punch which makes the game more frustrating for both sides. 7°: Ice Climbers. Similar to Kazuya but less consistent, but still problematic. All the desync you mention applies to both sides though, like how they struggle to shield stuff properly and how their moves are easier to read; that's why they're low-mid tier. 8°: Game & Watch. His problem is the same one as one of Steve's: Poor clarity. You don't really know what he's doing up until it's too late, and also has unblockables due to F-Air. Also the character, while racks a lot of damage is oddly bad at killing, making it so you feel you have lesser agency, because you indeed do have less. 9°: Luigi. Pains me to say it but Luigi is a one-note character currently, being only good at combos but way too good on that aspect, like a proto Kazuya. Has arguably the best frame data in all the roster, but due to poor movility and floatiness he can't outbox their opponents effectively unlike Mario. Also, why does he have awful recovery? Isn't his whole theme being that he jumps higher to reach further? 10°: Mewtwo. Just too much of a glass cannon. is massive, floaty, mediocre frame data but opressive tools in other fighters like F-air, making him too inconsistent in practice and just feel awful to use. Honorable mention to Ganondorf because of the disconnect between the Zelda version and the smash one, but gameplay-wise he's actually fine and I'm sure almost everyone would rather face him than most of the cast, and people who ignores that should NOT be in charge of game development.
luigi's recovery is bad because he's a touch of death character like icies and kazuya. touch of death characters kinda suck in most other aspects because it's unbalanced to have a character with a central zero to death combo also be good at other things. (kazuya was exempt because dlc privilege ig.)
@@lum_berry111 Meaning there's EVEN LESS REASON for him to be touch of death character. Why did they buffed down throw so much? It got nerfed during smash 4 for a reason, being too good of a combo tool.
I feel like Zelda and Ridley are poorly designed since both act like heavyweights without being heavy. Zelda is also a zoner without good zoning tools while Ridley has a linear recovery and a few moves without any reason to use them.
VERY shocked Luigi didn't make it onto this list. It's either you hit him every now and again and hope you get lucky and kill him early or you just get grabbed and most likely die off one combo. I feel if you don't have a projectile against Luigi then you're going to have a terrible time and even if you do have a projectile he's not fun to fight because you're just spamming that projectile in the hopes that he doesn't get a grab. Yes, you can take damage from Luigi's fireballs and other moves on purpose to try and stop the instakill from happening, but that only makes you closer to just dying regularly (Then again there is an entire video about Luigi and other characters like that, so perhaps including him in the video wasn't required).
I'll admit, being an Ice Climbers main, sometimes playing the game does feel like cheating. An extra hitbox and hurtbox makes it so that combo heavy characters can't consistently get combos in because the other Climber can just hit them out of the combo. Nana can act as soon as the throw animation occurs, which means that if you have a throw without a hitbox, you're getting punished by it. Being able to desync and put out two different moves at once is also something that's a bit unfair since it's possible to have an up tilt combo directly into an up air. They do however suffer from a lack of range, though their Ice Shots can help counter some zoners. I mostly enjoy playing as them to see what kind of stuff I can get away with that I can't with other characters.
Gonna go after my main here: I think mewtwo's a badly designed character because I rarely see anyone play them either competitively or casually. In a P v P game characters are there to be played, if you have a character who is not played (a bit of an exaggeration yes) at any level that character is a failed design by default.
Before any one comments something which simplifies to making him broken, I have two responses: A - that ignores people's reasons for not playing him casually B - I am fully aware the problem is the moveset itself, maybe if I ever make videos I will make one covering a potential redesign.
He is very similar to Sephiroth. Both of them are overtuned in many Aspects, but have a terrible weight to Size Ratio. Both are canonically very Strong Characters and both get restricted, wich would be a fair argument, but Min Min, Kazuya, Steve and Aegis exist, wich are stretching the fundamentals of Archtypes way to much. They also have the literaly same weight of 79, wich is as light as Pikachu and Olimar wich is Laughable. Ridley is meant to be to light for his Size? He at Least is still a Heavy weight. Mewtwo and Sephiroth look like they have a weight similar to Ike and Snake wich is 107 and 106 and they way almost 30 Units less.
I think Mewtwo is a bit underpowered but intrinsically well-designed - a good Mewtwo player (they're few and far between) can really make the character shine. It's a weird moveset with situational tools (well, except forward air which just does everything) but they seem to gel together well to make it seem like he has answer for every scenario.
bayonetta: not badly designed gameplay wise but badly designed in the sense that her least imporant attacks in her games of origin are her mose important and prominent/common attacks in her smash moveset. aswell as weird innacuracies like her wicked weaves being smash attacks when they're earned as a reward at the end of a combo.
I don't know if Ridley is poorly designed, per se, but he's very sadly so frustrating to play. He feels like he should be edgeguard focused, and he has tools to do so, but his air speed is kinda ass and for a huge ass dragon (just like charizard) he has barely any extra jumps. Like, for an edgeguard based character meta knight or puff feel loads better. And otherwise, what is Ridley supposed to do? He's big, but doesn't really have good range to match it, and he's not heavy, and his recovery is linear instead of like the spacies...there are just so many baffling decisions made with him that make me sad.
Olimar is easily my pick for the worst designed character in the game. He just fundamentally does not play the game like other characters, Pikmin create so many weird situations that disproportionately punish zoners, it's just annoying.
The other thing about Olimar is that he has the worst animation in Smash, in the sense that his moves have very different functionality but all look pretty similar visually. And this a real detriment on gameplay - if he throws a Pikmin at me, is that a regular projectile or is it a grab? Am I okay to put up my shield? I have no idea, and I've got like 0.2 seconds to work it out.
Doing Kens shoryuken at the edge of the stage kills him. Yes there is a way around it but it’s the only up B move in the game that kills the user near the edge of the platform .
I main falcon and I feel like icies is a strong winning mu for falcon. Falcons combo game matched with his speed makes it so easy to separate Nana. It almost feels unfair for them lol
okay with sephiroth and wii fit genuinely there game plans are so badly designed because they revolve around a specific character state (sephiroths is basically just wonder wing and then back air and wii fits is deep breathe crazy 20000000% combo) but that means you're not able to play the character like half the time like when you play sephiroth your only goal is to maybe get some extra credit and when playing wii fit your only goal is making distance it just makes you feel like your sysiphus trying to roll the boulder up the hill but then anytime your game plan doesn't work your boulder just gets dropp it's just not fun
As someone who was a Wii Fit main for like 4 years, she finds herself as more of a setup character than anything else. I do agree that her stubbiness leaves her incapable in a lot of close-quarters matchups, but she becomes far more deadly if she can make the opponent play her game: that is, positioning them in the air above her and farther from center-stage than she is. Up-tilt is a really solid and quick anti-air, and f-tilt is a legitimately great kill move with deep-breathing activated, all in combination with her ability to manipulate the opponent's position surprisingly well through throw followups and, of course, the ever-present volleyball, which has the potential for omega-brain plays. Tl;dr, I don't think Wii Fit is badly designed, I just think she's playing a more positional game than almost any other character.
@@OddRick3113 By camping by sticking to the wall with fair, an Up B you cant challenge and rise up fall down counters. If you watch enough Seph gameplay it should show up. Hes really good at it
I never thought Min Min was broken... every time I played as her I felt like there was no way to capital on her range. That she wasn’t properly designed to achieve anything meaningful. Plus, I felt Sephiroth has good sword swings and thrusts. That pair with his magic made him feel power but still fair to play.
Surprised doctor mario didn't show up on this list, I cannot stand his design. I main Mario and I love how intuitive and smooth his kit feels and playing the pharmaceutical echo feels like rubbing your controller with vaseline and playing in 110 degree heat, I hate how slow he is and how pathetic his jumps are. His moves don't really combo well because despite sharing almost identical animations with Mario they send at super weird angles and even if he does hit like a brick it doesn't help that he also moves like a brick. Non gameplay-wise, why the HELL is this even a character?? Builder and wedding Mario are costumes but the lab coat warranted an entire character?? Just feels so wrong to play him.
It isn't a badly designed Smash list if you don't mention Ice Climbers. They have to be one of the hardest characters to balance in fighting game history.
That first comment on 50% win chance is really interesting. Considering that this is their prime metric for Ultimate as well, they are just counting all games this is including casual games. Look up Sakurai's video on it before being factual wrong. Edit Nice video thoo, please do more of the badly designed characters. To really milk the content you should do one of the big 5 you have left per video :)
The thing that makes no sense with seph is that IF he gets wing, why does he need armor? All his smash attacks are so slow and hardly cover his body. More than Half the characters in the game dont even get hit by upsmash on the ground lol
Yea sephiroth is too light. If he was a heavy like around Ike weight I think he'd be solid with everything else being teh same, just his deisgn he's GOING to take some hits and he can't survive them.
Considering this is gonna be the final iteration of Smash for a while, it's a massive bummer that they just completely stopped with updates as soon as DLC was done. lol But it is what it is. Sakurai and co. has done enough.
Whew don’t get me started on Lucas. You can compare him to Ness alone and see how underpowered he is to the rest of the cast. He’s not a zoner, pk fire isn’t the best for camping as opposed to others with it’s linearity, startup and landing lag. Zair is great for zoning but it can only get you so far in most MUs, and djc input is so tight. And there’s pk freeze…. yeah. Overall he’s not the best zoner. As a brawler, he’s got nice “combos” but his stubby limbs don’t get him far as far as oos options. Ftilt is awesome, but that’s about it. Nair doesn’t work, it’s inconsistent with positioning, it’s got mediocre startup, crazy landing lag (punishable but many smash attacks), it’s tiny not being disjointed until the very end, can be punished halfway through by a lot of characters if they dodge the first hit, and can’t even combo reliably due to sdi. Why? Ness can combo and kill easily with his, but Lucas suffers. He’s good off stage but who isn’t? Ness Thunder kills at like 30, Lucas’s goes a bit further for recovery, but kills around 160 and can be sdi’ed. Lucas Up air is minuscule, but combos into itself with a lot of effort in comparison to Ness combing you with up airs to 40 no problem, not to mention killing MUCH earlier. Down throw, completely useless. Up tilt, why is it so small and unrewarding. Magnetic has no utility anymore. The worst offender is upsmash. It used to reach the top platform in brawl, now it tickles someone if they’re slightly above you. There are a good handful of moves that kill too early with minimal risk, Luigi up b, power geyser, Kazuya electric upper or whatever it’s called for example, there is no reason I should manage to hit one of thee slowest moves in the game and they don’t die at 70. Should I miss they have the chance to hit me with nearly anything, idc about the i frames because they’re so situational. Most up good up smashs kill at 90, look at g&w and Bowser, and c Falcon. He’s been questionably nerfed many times though out his appearances but I genuinely have no clue why. He has no game plan now and was a semi grappler in smash 4. In ult, Lucas is a conglomeration on mediocre moves, I’m not sure what they had planned for him.
sheik is imo a terrible design, her fantasy of being the ultimate frame data combo super speed ninja or whatever is so heavily compensated with terrible damage and knockback on all but bouncing fish. this makes her end up feeling like your working 100 times harder for the same thing mario can do.
Ok, Now hear me out here. I think Zelda is badly designed. Simple reason being that phantom exists. Phantom itself is not really a problem. It is a very strong ledge trap tool. The problem is that they made the rest of her move set really bad in neutral / disadvantage. Zelda acts like some sort of heavyweight with the amount of power she has in some moves, but the hit boxes are hard to hit and her overall range / frame data is just not good at all. So for me she kinda falls into that Wii Fit Trainer zone. She has projectiles, but her zoning is not really that good (Phantom is more like a area denial projectile and side-b is bad). And her close range can be very explosive, but the problem is that she is inconsistent and lacks the range and speed to utilize these close range moves. What makes it even stranger is that Zelda has 2 good ‘get-off-me’ tools, suggesting she has good projectiles for long range, but she doesn’t really have those (for long range at least) So she is designed like a zoner, but also not really since she’s also some sort of an inconsistent glass canon at close range. It is just really confusing and it makes her a badly designed character for competitive IMO.
My editor is pepega and forgot to render the final draft of the video at 60fps LOL
That's fine!
Eh who's paying attention to the video anyway?
Can we get a discusion on stages at some point, focused around how to pick, ban and counterpick
Please do why no one plays Lucas. It’s been a year since you talked about making why no one plays for him lol and he’s probably literally the most underrated character in the game
@@electricssbcuz he’s cringe af when played online with pk freeze
I'm surprised that a certain red-haired, big-nosed, Captain Falcon clone didn't make it on the list
That nose comment was out of pocket
@@Hi-fd4cwhe has a big silly nose and you will respect it
I think he's well designed in regards to power vs recovery. If his recovery was improved, he'd possibly be more lethal than Bowser
@drbiohazmat his side B was not designed well, though (because of the free fall after use)
@@drbiohazmati mean the balance between power and recovery is good, but his moves are just ripped of from falcon with no actual love to the source material besides his smash attacks
Sephiroth's biggest issue is mostly how lightweight he is... If he wasn't so easy to kill (despite literally being a final boss) then his design choices wouldn't be a big deal.
I wonder why they Did not patch his weight up by litterally 10 straight units. He has a weight of 79, wich is as light as Pikachu, Olimar. These are really Hard to hit Characters, because of their small Posture and Pikachu is very slippery while Olimar is effectivly a Sworty in disguise. Mewtwo has the same weight and the Tail Hitbox makes his weight to Size ratio Worse, but he is a Speedy, Semi Ranged High Damage Mashine. So Buffing Seph´s weight to 89 like Marth makes him not as Fragile as poor Glasscannons, but makes up for his Specific Hitboxes and Frame Data. If people Argue, that One Wing would be Broken after this. It wouldnt. Wing is the only Buff that just Vanishes after you get the Upperhand. (Ragedrive is a passive, wich can be used Up as a Super Move, so it doesnt count)
@@anigodzapex9384adding to your point, awful frame data + light weight is such an ASS combo, pair that with his tall stature like you legit can die at 60 for whiffing a move
@@mohammadalhusaini810 So funny that he has the most logical Lore Based Powerup, but also got balanced around the fact, that he dies before it activates more times the he does not. Making a Final Boss of a famous Franchise so light is a war crime, because it makes him so unnecessary punishing to play. He looks like a Heavy weight, has the poor Frame Data and specific Hit boxes to balance, and they still reduced his weight by 30 Units. He wouldnt even be top 15 with a weight of 109. XD
@@anigodzapex9384 hes my main and I’ve been playing him less and less and its actually sad, when i play him i just feel incredibly handicapped that it doesn’t become fun anymore, the characters i play against shut me down so easily for simply whiffing i go into a combo that puts me at 80 and die the next hit or just simply die instantly💀 I’ve been playing more cloud/wolf/sora and it feels very refreshing to actually DO something.
@@mohammadalhusaini810 I would want to play him way more also, but he just is not as Rewarding as some other Edgy Character with a Strong Power Up, that is also demanding to play. Jep Joker is technically not the same Archetype, neither is he a comfort Cahracter. But man is he satisfying to play. And if I want to play a restricted Spacing Character, then my most anticipated Character Ridley got me covered also. Lackluster Competitive, but much fun to play and less stressfull for some reason. Yep Third Edgelord Character, and yes I also play Dark Pit and Wolf xD
You forgot mentioning how Sephiroth has a broken comeback mechanic that is the only reason why he's not mid tier but sometimes he can't take advantage of it because he's so absurdly light with no justifiable reason.
That airspeed + super armour is so broken. Carried the character fr
@@benross9174not really, that super armor is EXTREMELY inconsistent compared to Dk or kazuya
I am main sephiroth, and yes, he is super light, and I hate that, the armor is not consistent, the wing mechanics are not consistent either, he is super tall, and on top of that he does not have good options to defend himself in melee, unlike min min, who has a whole kit with what she needs to fight, and the icing on the cake, she weighs 104... she should weigh much less for the things she can do, in conclusion, it is stupid and absurd.
@@mohammadalhusaini810 Yeah but Seph has the range advantage over those two. And their superarmor moves doesnt brake shields like Seph Dsmash
@@benross9174 Dk side b breaks shields easily and has absurdly strong super armor that can tank giga flare, and dk’s range is extremely slept on by the way that character has insane range, as for kazuya why would you need range when you can delete a stock off one interaction.
You forgot to mention that Min Min for some reason is allowed to hold on to an item as long as she wants. As long as she presses her b tilt/smash attack first.
The following items she can hold on to: metal blade, banana, gyro, and K rool's crown.
Edit: oh, and Pac-Man's fruit
And then she has 0 answer to shield
@@MW_FSmashthat long ass grab
At high level this isn't nearly as big a deal, since you can z-drop and recatch with aerials to effectively play normally without ever dropping it. You do lose your ground moves, I guess, but most characters hop all over the place anyway...
Also you can hold link's remote bomb to screw his recovery
Thx for the tip
The way they restricted how oppressive sephiroth’s attacks are but didn’t give that same thought to Min min is ridiculous.
And she has double his range and double his weight and much better frame data 💀
@@mohammadalhusaini810 Im always confused by bizarre decisions and priorities of the smash team
@@-obamium5320 lets nuke his ass for having a longer sword, but snake, the guy who controls the entire stage with explosives nah lets make him a heavyweight, kazuya? The guy that can kill off one interaction? SUPER heavyweight. The balance team probably.
@@mohammadalhusaini810 rob, the other guy who can kill off one interaction AND can camp you out? We should make him heavy too!
And the crazy thing is, Min Min came out first
My issue is older characters show their age toolkit wise. Where newer characters come off as fresher iterations. For examples Hero comes off as the Link we wanted with all his items available and Terry has supers whereas Ryu and Ken got no updates to compare
I mean fox is still considered one of the best and most well designed characters.
Also hot take, a lot of older characters are kinda better designed than dlc characters because they aren’t overstuffed with mechanics
@@paulakroy2635 Not too hot of a take tbh. I know I would definitely prefer pre-Smash 4 movesets for characters over them being stuffed to the gills with gimmicks and references just for the sake of being references. I really feel like Brawl really struck a perfect balance with how they went about designing it's newcomers and decloning characters. Smash 4 and Ult leaned wayyy too far into the gimmicky territory for my taste. ( Megaman being a perfect example. He's 1:1 with megaman 2...but SPECIFICALLY megaman 2 which makes him so twitchy and awkward to swap to.)
I feel like these kinds of design decisions only got worse when DLC got introduced and they had to be gimmicky to justify the price.
I think its the exact opposite, most of the older characters have more versatile and grounded movesets like for example Marth swings a sword and has tippers. These characters are usually easier to balance and easy for a new player to understand the mechanics.
Alot of the poorly designed characters come from the post brawl era Smash games where characters needed gimmicks to make their gameplans unique. These characters tend to have a unique game mechanic just to themselves meaning they can’t completley gut the special mechanic from the character and the entire game just got more complex and thus more difficult to balance.
Like Hero is a COOL character, but in terms of being a character in a fighting game Link’s moveset makes way more sense intuitively and provides various ways of player expression. Hero on the other hand just has a ton of unique mechanics shoved onto his character which makes him not as a fully realized as a character like Link.
@@dragnjames2190Cloud is the most tame in comparison……………..before Limit comes into the conversation
Some character designs are straight up terrible like the Touch of Death characters forcing non interactive gameplay. Min Min in particular while her design in concept works it fails in execution because her gameplan is not meant to be in smash after all.
She would have been fine if you could whiff punish her by hitting her arms, which is an actual mechanic in the game she is from. She is essentially Dhalsim from Street Fighter without the main drawback that keeps him from being abhorrently broken.
I feel like her arms should take damage but not give her any knock back. At least when returning. And at least if you KLANK with them. (klanking her arms bine modified to have a max of 20 percent so that mega wat doesn't go through smash)
This would already make her much more fun to play against while not being horrible for th min min player.
Letting you rack some damage even when getting spaced. Before you finally break in and bank on the damage you stacked on her.
@@RobbertRobbert12345agreed with that honestly though the Min Min’s aren’t actually farming as hard as Steve players and the disadvantage state of Min Min can result in losing your stock which makes it not the worst design cuz if Min Min is hit offstage they get edgeguarded and top players will take advantage of this even good players will often
Nah bruh why does Piranna plant take disjoint damage from his Down b when min min doesn’t with her arms 💀
@@captainphoton1693 As long as your patient, min min can be kinda predictable. Her air speed is somehow worse than Banjo Kazooie and thats saying alot.
Ok, what fucking reason is there to why Min Min’s upsmash needs to reflect projectiles?!
It's apparently a reference to the game which she originated from.
Because her kicks reflect in ARMS too
I don’t care if it’s a reference to the game, that shit’s broken
@@MoebiusX9 Did you knew Darkest Lariat ignores defense and evasion changes? Does that mean the move should ignore Shield and dodges? If you said yes, congratulations, you are officially a moron.
References should NEVER take precedent over gameplay, they should only be implemented if they create something cohesive and enjoyable FOR BOTH SIDES, like giving Mario a dive bomb over F.L.U.D.D, making so Ganondorf can float and reflect projectiles or giving Sonic rush in down B over a second Side B.
C'mon man it makes her unique @@D0rit05
I know at some point if this series continues, Steve, like Min Min, is gonna be another elephant in the room. You just can't make block work in a platform, it tips the balance far too greatly in Steve's favor, and that's block alone, that's not even mentions his other countless stuff, like Minecart, down tilt, moving tilts, etc.
Rivals of Aether made him work. He's actually balanced, not cancerous to play against and is more fun to play as since his combos require creativity instead of being barely above button mashing.
He has 3 blocks he can place directly below him as his Up-B and they act as platforms, rather than solid terrain.
@@100organicfreshmemes5 Major differences though:
Rivals is balanced around crazy combos and 0 to deaths being the norm, so balance is inherently easier because everyone can just kill everyone else off of anything for the most part.
Rivals also has way stronger defensive mechanics like Melee level DI, automatic smash DI, and drift DI which is entirely unique to Rivals. Ult actually has a lot less options, the only reason there aren't a ton more combos is because of lack of hitstun, a more floaty roster, and balloon knockback.
Finally, Steve is also substantially nerfed in multiple ways when it comes to basically all of his specials like the blocks being platforms as you mentioned. His normals/aerials are also nerfed because of the previously mentioned combos mechanics making it so defense against him is much better and his being able to kill you off of only a couple interactions isn't anything special, compared to Ult where it's one of the major things that create the tier gaps between those who can and can't consistently kill the opponent in only a few neutral wins per stock, with rare exception.
And honestly even with all that I would still argue he isn't a great design or very fun to fight like most of the base roster and several workshop created characters, he's just not super degen the way Ult Steve is.
Imo one of the worst designed characters in Ultimate is Little Mac. He’s got everything to make him horribly designed:
- No air game at all, as in, he basically misses half his moveset, with arguably the worst aerials in the game. Only nair is “good” because it’s insanely quick and used in combos (but it’s also very weak and has a horrible hitbox)
- He also by extension has a pretty awful recovery. Not the worst in the game but very punishable and predictable.
- As someone who absolutely hates the existence of super armor, mac having it on his extremely fast Smash Attacks is straight up illegal.
- Speaking about his Smash Attacks, down directioned f-smash being that fast while basically one shotting shields is stupid.
- KO punch going through shield makes playing against mac with punch a game of zoning and running away.
In general, all of this leads to a scenario where little mac either gets edgeguarded and dying at 30%, or he gets zoned for 5 minutes. But if he gets in, you’re getting exploded. He just makes the matches inherently unfun for both players
This. If he's still in the next game they had better rework him and give him Stars to power up his Up-B and turn it into the Star Uppercut/Star Punch. Make it a mechanic that rewards you for playing well instead of a comeback mechanic and make it an actual fair move instead of a final smash built into his core move set.
@@100organicfreshmemes5 the fact that ko punch is actually stronger than most final smashes while also being stupidly easy to remove if played around is literally pushing an already extreme character even further.
And he's essentially been like this for a decade since smash 4 it really feels like they dont care about going past an initial concept for him 💀
Nah Kazyuza is worst. He’s that but viable. And also not really evenly functional at a causal level
Little Mac is at least fun in a mirror.
Why do you hate super armor?
I think we're mixing up 'bad design' and 'poor balance'. Sakurai has stated that if we make every character good at everything, the game gets boring. Mac takes the polarized groundgame very seriously and what we get is a bad but remarkably unique character, but him being annoying is a different issue
It's okay for bad characters to exist. Ganondorf sucks but he's still one of the most picked for casual play because he's fun, and he's a bad character that is fun to smoke and be smoked by. So 'bad design' I dont agree with
And then we have Ganon. That design is quite bad, but it's also one of the most enjoyable characters to play and to watch.
Tbh I think Ganondorf kinda works because he does embody Power and Hype, which I argue are the 2 most iconic parts of Ganondorf as a character.
Because the public LOVES underdogs. Having all odds stacked against them makes it so much more awesome to watch them win matches.
... Then his design is great? The only issue is that it's attached to a user of magic and a defined fighting style, not a brute force fighter like Snorlax or DDD.
People like to watch him because he's a weak character. If he was even just a mid tier, no one would find him interesting imo.
@@legrandliseurtri7495people like him because he’s a brawler.
Min-Min is the reason that if there's another Smash game, the words "Everyone is here!" will not excite me.
This is a super interesting title ngl, I feel like half the roster could be put in the category of “badly designed”
Yeah with this massive roster you can feel the cracks in the wall at time and sure I am not saying is the most balanced fighting game ever but I can feel like if it got a more proper balance post DLC it could have been feel better in design
I think that's definitely true, tho many of the characters don't have bad designs, they just have lame strategies, like luigi isn't bad apart from 2 moves but his gameplan is absolutely shit, same with villager
@@theenderkirby for sure I agree
@@grimsdol4665 I feel like lame strats are a symptom of bad/lame design, look at sonic
@mranxiety9995 Yeah, but i think that only comes about from people realize that's its most effective tactic with them. if players never found out how broken spamming spindash is, then he'd be a relatively fine character, just like how if we never found out you can do a zero to death with Luigi he would be too
or say diddy with spamming banana . it's not that there core design is bad, it's that one part of the character is so powerful that it becomes the central point of there kit
If you asl me who is also badly designed in smash bros defenitley lucario, like 65% just to have acceptable damage is just ludicrous, sluggish frame data for a brawler and even have power to kill is just argue with a lot of thing to make him consistent to play
I think pikachu is badly designed, but for a completely different reason. I think pikachu is just too complicated a character for being such a recognizable mascot. I think pikachu should have the kirby treatment, where he is designed more for the casual and new players. A lot of kids probably want to main pikachu since pokemon is so big, but struggle since his recovery is weirdly complex, among other things.
See also: Pac-Man. You mean that your mum and dad who recognise the funny pizza slice from playing in arcades in the 80s but haven't picked up a video game in 30 years suddenly have to master *seven* different kinds of fruit?
Wii Fit Trainer would be easy to fix just by treating their hitboxes like every other character and giving them disjoints instead of being "realistic."
i like the idea that wii fit trainer has bad hitboxes because theyre basically just a really in shape person... in a cast of fantasy video game characters
@@cuchutrain Who would win, the really fit person or a puffball who makes you eepy?
@@ocarinatales1331Lebron James
Wdym "every other character"? Aside from special cases like a lot of up-smashes having intangibility/invulnerability since they're intended as anti-airs pretty much all fist fighters in Smash have basically no disjoints. The only exceptions I can think of are Terry and Kazuya having DLC privilege.
A lot of characters, especially brawlers and those with exaggerated proportions, have attacks and animations that cause their limbs to stretch and shrink heavily (think Mario's jab, Kirby and Lucas's forward tilts, K. Rool and Sonic's forward smashes, Fox's forward tilt, Jigglypuff's back air, Pikachu's back air and landing animation), which puts the character briefly off-model for a frame or two at a time, but this works because Smash's art style is generally fairly cartoony.
Wii Fit Trainer is a brawler, but they notably do NOT really have this trait; their limbs retain realistic proportions during most or all attacks, so I imagine the devs avoided giving them disjointed attack hitboxes because those disjoints would look out of place, like Wii Fit was launching invisible ki attacks instead of just making stretchy punches and kicks. Though I can see why the devs hesitated to give them disjoints, they probably should have gone back to their character concept and made choices that didn't shackle them to using only realistic proportions.
Steve should be way lighter for example.
I thought and forget that Steve is lighter than he actually is
I feel like I'm being called out....I play a TON Wii Fit and Sephiroth.
Eh I think Sephiroth is pretty well designed, the only thing that doesn't work out is balance. It's a good design for a character to excess in walling out, and then getting severely punished by not keeping out the opponent, as he will die faster with his low weight stat. I think he could afford some new tools. I recommend checking out HDR Sephiroth, he's basically Ult Sephiroth, but scintilla is more of a setplay move, it lingers (with no hitbox) and upgrades his other specials if they pass through it.
@@OddRick3113sephiroth is not well designed because sometimes it looks like his sword is supposed to hit his opponents even though it just goes right through them. Also, he's way too lightweight for his size. He should've been heavier as opposed to being lighter than Sora.
@@LIGHTANGEL_EXthat's not even a design thing that's just visual things looking weird because of Z axis.
Also the lightweight thing is weird but it works out really well for overall balance of the design.
Sephiroth literally should be a heavyweight he’s literally tall and muscular making him light as Kirby make no sense at all
@@iloveBingus789 yeah while we're at it lets make Kirby inhale instant kill because it would make more sense because that's how it works in his games.
I loved the video.
For me, the issue with Min-Min is that she doesn't have the sense of commitment vs payoff that most characters have. If the opponent is offstage, she can spam arm attacks that would be fatal while incurring zero risk herself. And her attacks carry opponents offstage a little too well.
I actually really like the Ice Climbers, though I understand your point about their matchups being particularly polarized. I just enjoy watching the creativity of the complex combos they can pull off, and there are plenty of balancing factors with how Nana works.
Honestly they should just made min min arms hit able
One thing that you kind of allude to but I think warrants elaboration is that this video's definitions of "well-designed" and "badly designed" are focused on competitive play. An important difference between Smash Bros and something like League of Legends is that Smash Bros isn't exclusively - or even, I'd argue, primarily - designed as a competitive game. It has other goals and priorities that the designers have to take into account.
Steve is, I think, a good case study. From a competitive perspective, he's a nightmare, an absolutely unfair character who breaks the rules of the game in ways that allow a skilled player to completely dominate the field. But for a casual player, Steve provides a completely unique moveset that allows and rewards creative play, while adding to a new element to the chaos that makes multi-player items-on games fun. I also think his moveset does a really good job of translating the spirit of his game of origin into Smash Bros (speaking, admittedly, as someone who hasn't played Minecraft in years), which is an important design goal for a series that is, first and foremost, a big crossover.
Which isn't to say that Steve being broken in competitive isn't a failure of design - Smash Bros is still a competitive game, even while also being a wacky, chaotic party game and a dorky, indulgent crossover. It's just worth remembering that, even more-so than most games, this is really hard to get 100% right, and the fact that Ultimate hits more often than it misses, on all fronts, is a laudable achievement on the part of the devs.
Steve isn’t a poorly designed character. He’s a character that is broken. But people forget that Steve wasn’t even considered good on release
But even from a casual standpoint, some of these characters are going to collect dust.
Min min for example is almost never used. Most people have her because it’s slightly cheaper to purchase the full fighters pass than to individually purchase everyone else. Also, you need to own min min to practice against min min and cannot avoid matching into people playing min min online, even if you don’t own the dlc.
Also she’s 0 fun and invalidates most of the character I find fun, so most of my vitriol is incredibly biased. If you like min min, good for you, glad you found something you like, but her design to me is indefensible, even with the idea of faithful adaptation.
Ultimate's poorly designed bad characters become infinitely more poorly designed when you compare them to similarly designed characters that are actually good. The balance decisions were completely arbitrary and like everything in this game feel designed by amateurs rather than a team of professionals. Sephiroth compared directly to Min Min is the perfect example of this - they are functionally the same character but Min Min is infinitely better because they decided she needs to have excellent frame data on her boxing tools/something to do out of shield and Sephiroth for some reason doesn't deserve the same?
He is the very peak of bad character design to the point it feels personal. Like they knew that thousands of people would pop off for this character being added to the game so they made him as shitty as possible just to spite all those people.
Steve hits like a truck, has a bullet hell disadvantage, and resource/stat boost camping, and weighs 92! Allowing him to live for so long
However, looking at examples of this in other games, the difference between characters of the same archetype isn't that bad relatively. Consider in 3rd strike, Necro and Chun-Li. Both of them play a game of neutral until they get meter, and then use their superior neutral tools to get in and do high damage. However, Chun-Li is so much better than Necro that they can barely be considered near each other. That's not even mentioning Twelve, who is supposed to fit the same idea of "controls neutral but is frail" but Chun just does so much more damage and has better tools than Twelve despite Twelve having a literal air dash in street fighter, that the two are barely playing the same game.
Meanwhile Sephiroth to Min Min is just that Sephiroth is balanced, but why choose the balanced option when the unbalanced one exists? Sephiroth to Min Min is like Necro to Chun-Li, but that's not thinking of Twelve. Remember, the design can always get worse and can always get more obvious.
This is so true it hurts
Let’s compare the two for a a sec
Better range:min min
Better coverage:min min
Better frame data:min min
Better oos:min min
Better weight:min min
More consistent:min min
Legit the only thing he has over her is mobility so why pick sephiroth at this point.
@@theimpersonator7086 Sakurai makes some baffling decisions with characters from the home games. Why doesn't Steve lose resources on death?
Y'know? Like *Minecraft?*
I dont like how some fighters just basically outclass others. Ike for example is just worse Cloud/Shulk.
To me. Sephiroth is one of the best designed fighter in the roaster. For the exact reasons you said it was bad.
The things is that. I don't hold his tierlist placement against him. Because the character has found a fairly large and stable player base. Has many tools. Some janky. And a proper goal and play style. And has one of the best designed comeback mechanic. If the character is badly designed, how come it has so many players despite his ranking?
His moves are précises to land. But not in a way that mess him up if he miss his sweet spot. Zelda on the other hand. Cover less area, and is never rewarded in anyway by sour spots.
Hitting a move witsephiroty place the oponent in the perfect spot to try have time to hit another one. And the weet spots are great. As for the slow moves. This didn't stoped clouds forward air to be a fantastic move. Same for byleth aerials. Or even Belmont aerials and forward tilt. Thoses attacks are all extremely important to their character. And yet they are very slow.
The thing with sephiroth that let him work despite that weakness. Is that he is really potent at breaking shields. And preventing défensives options. In addition to being able to stuff approaches with his exelent counter and his super armor on his one wing mode.
Being able to break shields like it's nothing let him hit people tat don't shield even with slower moves. It also let him space we'll when the shield it. And allows him to force enemies to not over vomit since they can't use shield that much, wich naturally keep them at his preferred range.
His projectiles arnt the best. But it's not the point. He can force options with them. And again, break shields. Punish rolls with his excellent reach. Force a certain get up timing. And many other things.
As for his side B it's really just a delayed projectile. Nothing different from snake C4. Bowser Jr me ha troop a.
Hitting side b and breaking shields are his main goals. The later can seem ridiculous since it rarely happen even for him. But the point is not that he will break shields. Is that he can break shields. Every play you make need to go toward breaking their shields. So that you limit their answers. Getting shield breaker against sephiroth is certain death. And in that regard it's basicly the only smash fighter that work like that.
And that may be the only part I don't like his design. It can be frustrating playing his game. Especialy because no one else apart from some graplers like Luigi play like this.
But where as Luigi kill you from 0 regardless of if you used shield or not. Being blocked in shields for 11 frames against his grab is just worst that moving around. Sephiroth at least require you to use your shile first to 0to death you. But it doesn't stop at this degenerate play style. Since all the tools he was given to break shields are under balanced. Always avoidable. But are really potent, consistent, and has more than enouth. You won't gt cheesed out of a stock. It's always your fault to fail to avoid thoses tools. But evading thoses tools give you less option than most characters. And sephiroth try to predict wich one you Sill take out of thoses fewer options. And has ways to stuff multiple at once.
Even better. Thoses tools may never land, but are amazing in every other aspect. The reason they never land is because they require preparation. People have time to see it. And sephiroth need to earn the right to use them.
This Chara ter is just way too good in my opinion. And is, but that's completely subjective. One of the few character that really don't need changes in ultimate deluxe. Obviously in a very different game they would have some. And ultimate deluxe isn't confirmed to happen. But in the scenario we could get updates to some fighters like dk and Ganon. Sephiroth is on of my last candidate to touch. With byleth, and Rosalina and Luma.
I'm much more encline to rework stupid tools from top tiers. Even if it mean buffing them. So that they at least play a fun game if they're bound to be broken. Or give new tools to bad character. Or rework character that clearly need a update despite good or bad results.
Sephiroth just stand in that spot of not a top tier. But not the best high tier either. Good player base but not over represented. Unique playstyle. Defined goals. But still room for expression. Don't really on cheese to work. But try to honestly cheese you to force you into bad situation. And somewhat faithfully to its Canon.
I forgot to talk about one wing. Most honest come back mechanic ever. Without being a pass off like kazuya's. It only increase movement. And add armor to smashes. His movement only get one small additional jump. Wich only help his already good recovery. So it doesn't break one of his weakness. And help his already slow smash to land. This paliat on of his weakness. But as you said sometimes things are too slow. So you rarely got hit out of the blue with his smash atta KS. And super armor only help in thoses instances. When you are careless around him.
I totally agree with Sephiroth. Imo he is the 3rd or 4th best designed character in the series behind Falcon and Krool (and maybe Snake).
@@Magic_Ice i won't be too bias. Because sephiroth has stupid shield breaks. Luma can ignore disadvantages. And byleth has some crazy far reaching kill power.
But flco has cut scene combos. Krool projectiles are serviceable at best while he could really work as a projectile heavy weight.
So that's fine. I like all of them.
But snake tho? You really gotta explain this one to me.
But in any case I would put minimin fairly high if it wasn't for a few issue. But they can easily be fixed in my opinion and the rest is just amazing if it was less opresive. So I'm kinda guilty myself.
@@captainphoton1693 i love how sephiroth focuses so hard on shield breaks. He feels very scary to defend against because if he breaks your shield, you are dead. It feels very villainous in that way.
And for the record I meant the characters I have above him are King K Rool, Captain Falcon, and Snake. Not Falco.
If you want a good Snake explanation, I highly recommend going to the UA-cam channel “Designing For” and watching their video on Snake. They do a really good job explaining why Snake works so well in Smash.
@@Magic_Ice ho OK. I guess Falco is up there too. Cut scene combos yeah. But still feel unique compared to fox that start to feel the test of time in regarde to uniqueness. (even if really fun).
Captain falcon. I guess just lack spice compared to melee and has an awful back dash. I would honestly love falcon punch mix up in the next smash games. Tho. Where connecting the full punch would still be hype since it would come so often but rarely held. (kinda like byleth arrow).
And OK Ima gonna look at this video. But damn snake has some really janky, but like, straithly janky stuff. Plus is opresive and is a zoner that has really good panic motion at close range. Maybe a tad bit too over the top in my opinion.
Guess the slow aerials work really well with his grenades. But don't let him approach too easily so they arnt used for this purpose. And can't really defend itself with it. But that dash attack, up smash, and f til really blow this aspect out since they are really good on defence. And he don't Wan to approach anyway.
Idk gotta see it first
@@Magic_Ice just watched it. And I guess. Yeah. But if being faithful to how your game play alone is a good design.
Then steeve, minmin, olimar, smash 4 bayo, kazuya, even Luigi that technicaly beat he shit of regulars phantoms in 2 grabs max. Would be good design. Wich you can agree at least a few arnt good designed.
But snake is definitely high tier for me. And now that I think about it, it's really faithful to it's game.
I'd luv to see more of these.
and i think video about the best design characters as well as a way to show what smash character designs should strive to be
it’s not like edguarding or even ledge trapping sepiroth is easy considering his multiple recovery mixups and how he can ledge hang or reverse his up-b….if they made him weigh anymore than he does now or made his hitboxes anymore lenient + the addition of wing he’d be an insufferable character to fight especially if you’re a brawler without range or disjoints that reach him.
A badly designed character is someone like min min for sure who has boxing tools that make no sense considering who much stage control she possesses by simply existing.
My answer is like 80% of the roster.
To explain what I mean, almost every character is fun to play, and almost every character isn't fun to play against.
Stuff like this is why I don’t play ssbu in any serious and/or competitive way anymore. Feels like the entire roster is just gimmicks and shitty design instead of proper balance AND fun
1:25 This is an interesting statement, considering that Sakurai recently said that every character in Ultimate has close to a 50% win rate.
I'd definitely be down for another video like this.
I dont think the majority of characters are well designed.
Some have too many opressive advantages (ex GnW), while others are bad characters with insanely cheesy game plans (ex: Lucario).
The only characters that I would say are well designed are Lucina, Palu, Joker and Peach (and maybe a few others I'm forgetting).
Luci and Palu for being solid without feeling unfair. Joker and Peach for being broken but made up for being hard to play and master.
but then u play against a joker or peach main and its complete BS 😂
That’s cap. Fox at the very least. Sheiek
love this video idea. If you do it again, Mac, Steve, Ganon defo need including
Sonic too obviously, as well as Luigi
Maybe Luigi, like, touch of death characters are not bad on their own, but they have to be balanced around that. Meanwhile green mario can play it straight un til her get tired, grabs you, and you're down a stock
Just camp him
I would be interested in a video talking about fixing all of the characters you consider badly designed.
I wouldn't put sephiroth in badly design, it's that he just has one too many weaknesses, if he had a good OOS option or more weight, he'd be perfect, one winged could he a bit much but i think it works because it doesn't remove his core weakness or his suddenly turn things around
that is badly designed, badly designed can be about being designed with too many flaws or designed with too many advantages
I'd personally would say badly designed are characters who in order to be fun or fair needs a full on rework or a page worth of stat changes.
Sephiroth just needs one or 2 things changed and he'd be perfectly fine, while for say someone like min-min you'd need to change a dozen or so things
Just because the amount of things that need change is comparatively low doesn't automatically mean it isn't bad design. For a quick counterexample, changing Falcon Punch such that it comes out on frame 1 and has a hitbox double the size of New Pork City is just two changes to the way the move works, and I can't think of a world where that wouldn't be considered terrible design.
@TheTrueBrawler the move would be yes but that's a small part of a whole, and falcon punch is the last move in his kit people use so his gameplay barely changes
The reason why one bad move shouldn't be consider u for badly desgin is because by that logic u can say pre patched ike or palu is as bad as say kauya or Sonic because they're gameplay is spamming just nair which is bad design as it gets
I honestly have to agree Sephi in concept is just weird to balance but, it was also weird that he was the only one in fp2 that had a lot of thought put into their balancing lol.
If they really wanted to go the Akuma way of balancing him they should have just committed to it. Keep him the same weight and just give him permanent wing stats. If there’s a way to add some kind of comeback factor, probably have octaslash, max sf, gigaflare, and counter take less time to come out?
If they really wanted to sell the comeback mechanic like every other dlc than keep everything the same except for his weight (95ish?) so he can actually rely on it as a comeback mechanic instead of a inconsistent snowball mechanic.
I think Sakurai Nintendo and the Developer's didn't want to put Sephiroth in the game but they probably had to because FINAL FANTASY 7 didn't have a lot of content when Cloud got in the game
It is such a whiplash watching you live for WuWa release and make HSR content into smashy bros even though I’ve been watching this channel for like half a year now for both cause I play both lol
i love playing as plant and i think they're on of the most fun characters in the game, but also, they feel like they were supposed to be a shieldbreak character, but all their moves shieldpoke. or maybe that classifies more under weird implementation.
Sephiroth is well-designed. The stronger a character's strengths are should match how strong their weaknesses are. He and probably Sora were the only characters of Fighters Pass Vol. 2 who were properly balanced.
I feel like they over played the slowness of sephiroth as he is slow over all but the range allows him to start the moves before others are even in hitting distance as well totally disregarding his own critera as sephiroth has a good game plan and there is counter play he may not be totally busted but thats good balance
Zelda is a very poorly designed character. She is an amalgamation of a bunch of different conflicting designs. She is tall and slow but a glass canon. She is a floaty with mediocre air physics and poor air to air options. She is a grappler with a slow grab. She is a close range fighter who can't combo, can't get in, and has lots of end lag because she is also a hard hitter. She is a defense fighter thats doesn't want to get hit because she is a lightweight and she is also a sweetspot fighter that requires spacing dispite not typically dictating interactions as a defensive fighter.
Half of her moves don't even work properly, were very poorly conceived from the beginning or have unnecessary balancing factors. F-tilt is basically incineroar f-tilt but skinnier, higher off the ground, and with its tipper having lower priority than the sour spot. Down tilt sends at an angle where it's difficult to get any meaningful reward for hitting such a short ranged attack. Up smash is basically mewtwo up smash without a body launcher or the ability to hit platforms. Nair feels like it was designed by the intern being one of the only multi hits in the game that uses actual knock back angles rather than an autolink, it's finisher sends out rather than in a particular direction so your opponent can be launched in the opposite direction of your drift, it's to high to hit a lot of grounded opponents out of a buffered short hop, and is unsafe to land with. Fair and bair aren't particularly safe on shield and can't be auto canceled out of a buffered aerial. Up air at frame 14 is up there with the slowest aerials and has a surprisingly small hitbox. Din's fire is incredibly slow, predictable, not very maneuverable, weak at close to mid range, and has a sour spot. Farore's wind's launcher doesn't use set knock back so it fails at very high and very low percent, has a sweet spot that can be DIed away from, and has a diagonal launcher when used in the air. The phantom is the only trap i can think of that fails if the user is hit and it has some odd blind spots where the phantom can just whiff.
Smash need new patch to fix advenced character specific cheesy tech, like ice climbers Can skip neutral skip on fd.
Min Min would have been perfectly fine if her arms were reflectable and if she only had two inputs for punching instead of seven.
As a Sephiroth main, I completely agree with your analysis. I understand why he is balanced the way he is, but they just turned the screws little too tight. Just a buff to his weight would go a long way, aside from not getting blown up at 40-60%, it would also make wing more reliable and consistent. Then, if he just had better frame data on a couple moves, he'd go from mid to high tier.
And if his grab wasn't trash, look out boys!
More of an unorthodox one, but IMO Mii Swordfighter is by far the weakest of the Miis in terms of design (and tiering) and its not even close. Mii gunner is 100% a zoner and Mii brawler is 100% a rushdown brawler. Mii Swordfighter is... partially a swordie partially zoner?
Swordfighter was based off of Link who really isn't that much of a swordfighter and I'd say all of the Links have more in common with a character like Samus than they do with someone like Marth. While I don't know precisely how to fix this, Mii Swordfighter just needs way less projectiles for special options and more unique specials and traditional swordie aerials to get proper use.
Mii swordfighter isn't particularly bad IMO but his competitive balance is heavily affected by the fact that he already competes in his role in a VERY stacked category of characters. Zoners are extremely powerful in Ultimate and Mii swordfighter doesn't justify much to use instead of a stronger Zoner (Rob, Samus, Pac-man, Min-Min, Snake, etc.) or just his own pure zoner counterpart, Mii Gunner.
I get this, but also I feel the roster doesn't need *another* character whose entire moveset is just different types of sword swing. If you just based Mii Swordie off Marth, how would you avoid making them just another Marth clone?
@@alexpotts6520 Sword characters are quite diverse even with how many there are already, and even if he's just another "boring" swordie like Marth, at least he would then actually be a *Swordfighter* as advertised, currently Mii Swordfighter is not. Meanwhile the other two Miis are imitating the archetypes they're based on extremely well.
I love Kirby but he deserved better
a lot of link's attacks being able to hit all around him is something I think is worth mentioning because it does not feel good to get hit by an attack that doesn't care where you are, falls into that lack of counterplay category.
I think Min Min needs only a few changes to become one of the best designed zoners in Smash
Luigi's game plan is literally fishing for grabs at low% for touch of death cheese. It forces noninteraction or camping at the start of matches, arguably even worse than someone like Little Mac (another character that I think was poorly realized).
I think Sonic is one of the most tragic examples of that, and mainly because I feel like he as a character has some of the most untapped potential in the game, despite being a top 5 character.
And that's because it's just *so easy* to play passively and campy with him. Side B is *way* too safe most of the time, his speed is oftentimes used to just run away instead of getting in, homing attack comes out so fast and is such a good spacing tool that giving him a second to breath will make pushing him ill advised...
And yet as a rush down character Sonic is hands down my favorite character to play. He has good frame data and mobility to consistently keep the pressure on, and that speed means that a Sonic who understands and isn't afraid of neutral is absolutely relentless and can apply the same pressure as Fox in my experience.
His air game might be some of the most insane in the game, allowing you to make some of the riskiest, most aggressive, but satisfying kill confirms in the roster.
Sonic absolutely needs a rework, but at bare minimum I'd love to implement some sort of system that *forces* Sonic to play aggressively, because aggressive Sonic is some of the most fun I've ever had playing Smash.
I honestly thought sakurai wouldve implemented a 2 character tag mechanic for this one.
Kirby
- Unsatisfied, angry Kirby main
1:25 didn't sakurai recently say on his channel that the dev team does aim for the 50% winrate?
Something I don't is: if Sephiroth gets the wing to simulate the "second phase" of a final boss, why does he lose it after a while? Boss battles don't just revert to the first form after dealing enough damage to you. Feel like he should just keep the wing buff until he dies, which evidently would help his character.
Probly because, with the exception of fighters that failed at conception but still got put in anyways, a lot of moves were likely put in for casuals over competitive, so the focus was on being fun over being fair.
That's not to say they even got that 100% right, but at the very least I haven't seen anything that reasonably disproves the notion that their movesets are relatively fine for the super-casual to casual-but-not-quite-competitive but bad once put in a competitive environment. That could be just as much a lack of arguments as it is me not finding any, but still. I'd fully agree that they could've done some touch-ups or changes even after launch that could improve both sides of that spectrum.
I'd like to see the inverse because I prefer more positive videos
In my top 10 of poorly designed characters there it would be
1°: Sonic. He is awful on both representation and gameplay experience, and the few elements who do represent him is also why his gameplay is so obnoxiously slow against, and unlike other speedies he also has top tier vertical speed. He needs a full-on rework because this is just awful for everyone.
2°: Steve. Walls in a platform fighter, keeps diamond after death, has a 0 to almost death, lacks visual clarity on moves, incentives to camp, is slow but not really, is bugged and in general he's just the main reason alongside Sonic that people is abandoning Ultimate.
3°: Min-Min. Did you knew people in japan despises min-min more than we despise Steve? That's because of too much range and all the stuff you already mentioned.
4°: Kazuya. 0-to-death are just unfair design period, and he has way too much intangibility for no reason.
5°: Lucario. You covered him recently and his design is just awful. He loses while winning, has no margin for error, he can basically touch of death you and he's very bad at using his kit due to the whole aura stuff. He's a bottom 10 in popularity for a reason, and that's being generous because I'm sure he's bottom 5.
6°: Little Mac. No air game is bad in a platform fighter, and its ground game isn't even that good due to being so stubby and having bad grabs; as a reminder he struggles to even reach some platforms with a full hop despite such muscular legs. He also has KO punch which makes the game more frustrating for both sides.
7°: Ice Climbers. Similar to Kazuya but less consistent, but still problematic. All the desync you mention applies to both sides though, like how they struggle to shield stuff properly and how their moves are easier to read; that's why they're low-mid tier.
8°: Game & Watch. His problem is the same one as one of Steve's: Poor clarity. You don't really know what he's doing up until it's too late, and also has unblockables due to F-Air. Also the character, while racks a lot of damage is oddly bad at killing, making it so you feel you have lesser agency, because you indeed do have less.
9°: Luigi. Pains me to say it but Luigi is a one-note character currently, being only good at combos but way too good on that aspect, like a proto Kazuya. Has arguably the best frame data in all the roster, but due to poor movility and floatiness he can't outbox their opponents effectively unlike Mario. Also, why does he have awful recovery? Isn't his whole theme being that he jumps higher to reach further?
10°: Mewtwo. Just too much of a glass cannon. is massive, floaty, mediocre frame data but opressive tools in other fighters like F-air, making him too inconsistent in practice and just feel awful to use.
Honorable mention to Ganondorf because of the disconnect between the Zelda version and the smash one, but gameplay-wise he's actually fine and I'm sure almost everyone would rather face him than most of the cast, and people who ignores that should NOT be in charge of game development.
luigi's recovery is bad because he's a touch of death character like icies and kazuya. touch of death characters kinda suck in most other aspects because it's unbalanced to have a character with a central zero to death combo also be good at other things. (kazuya was exempt because dlc privilege ig.)
@@lum_berry111 Meaning there's EVEN LESS REASON for him to be touch of death character. Why did they buffed down throw so much? It got nerfed during smash 4 for a reason, being too good of a combo tool.
Mewtwo is poorly balanced probably but poorly designed nah
I feel like Zelda and Ridley are poorly designed since both act like heavyweights without being heavy. Zelda is also a zoner without good zoning tools while Ridley has a linear recovery and a few moves without any reason to use them.
VERY shocked Luigi didn't make it onto this list. It's either you hit him every now and again and hope you get lucky and kill him early or you just get grabbed and most likely die off one combo. I feel if you don't have a projectile against Luigi then you're going to have a terrible time and even if you do have a projectile he's not fun to fight because you're just spamming that projectile in the hopes that he doesn't get a grab. Yes, you can take damage from Luigi's fireballs and other moves on purpose to try and stop the instakill from happening, but that only makes you closer to just dying regularly (Then again there is an entire video about Luigi and other characters like that, so perhaps including him in the video wasn't required).
I'll admit, being an Ice Climbers main, sometimes playing the game does feel like cheating. An extra hitbox and hurtbox makes it so that combo heavy characters can't consistently get combos in because the other Climber can just hit them out of the combo. Nana can act as soon as the throw animation occurs, which means that if you have a throw without a hitbox, you're getting punished by it. Being able to desync and put out two different moves at once is also something that's a bit unfair since it's possible to have an up tilt combo directly into an up air. They do however suffer from a lack of range, though their Ice Shots can help counter some zoners. I mostly enjoy playing as them to see what kind of stuff I can get away with that I can't with other characters.
I think Isabelle should have a better up b since she’s more of a rush down version of villager. A game and watch or Mario up b would be great
Gonna go after my main here: I think mewtwo's a badly designed character because I rarely see anyone play them either competitively or casually. In a P v P game characters are there to be played, if you have a character who is not played (a bit of an exaggeration yes) at any level that character is a failed design by default.
Before any one comments something which simplifies to making him broken, I have two responses:
A - that ignores people's reasons for not playing him casually
B - I am fully aware the problem is the moveset itself, maybe if I ever make videos I will make one covering a potential redesign.
Id say mewtwo is mostly not played competitively because of his hurtboxes and weight, not particularly his moveset
He is very similar to Sephiroth. Both of them are overtuned in many Aspects, but have a terrible weight to Size Ratio. Both are canonically very Strong Characters and both get restricted, wich would be a fair argument, but Min Min, Kazuya, Steve and Aegis exist, wich are stretching the fundamentals of Archtypes way to much. They also have the literaly same weight of 79, wich is as light as Pikachu and Olimar wich is Laughable. Ridley is meant to be to light for his Size? He at Least is still a Heavy weight. Mewtwo and Sephiroth look like they have a weight similar to Ike and Snake wich is 107 and 106 and they way almost 30 Units less.
I think Mewtwo is a bit underpowered but intrinsically well-designed - a good Mewtwo player (they're few and far between) can really make the character shine. It's a weird moveset with situational tools (well, except forward air which just does everything) but they seem to gel together well to make it seem like he has answer for every scenario.
It’s an 89 character game
bayonetta: not badly designed gameplay wise but badly designed in the sense that her least imporant attacks in her games of origin are her mose important and prominent/common attacks in her smash moveset. aswell as weird innacuracies like her wicked weaves being smash attacks when they're earned as a reward at the end of a combo.
Imagine update fighters in features.
It could be same.
I don't know if Ridley is poorly designed, per se, but he's very sadly so frustrating to play. He feels like he should be edgeguard focused, and he has tools to do so, but his air speed is kinda ass and for a huge ass dragon (just like charizard) he has barely any extra jumps. Like, for an edgeguard based character meta knight or puff feel loads better. And otherwise, what is Ridley supposed to do? He's big, but doesn't really have good range to match it, and he's not heavy, and his recovery is linear instead of like the spacies...there are just so many baffling decisions made with him that make me sad.
Ice climbers do not have + 3 matchups
The only ones I can see is against heavy’s (and even those I wouldn’t call +3)
@@squidyboi1193 The only winning mu that we have vs a heavy is ganon and incin, but they are barely above even. We lose every other one
0:00 This isn't the main channel???
Pirahna plant is pretty badly designed.
Sephiroth being as light as he is makes so sense whatsoever. Should've been a middleweight
Olimar is easily my pick for the worst designed character in the game. He just fundamentally does not play the game like other characters, Pikmin create so many weird situations that disproportionately punish zoners, it's just annoying.
The other thing about Olimar is that he has the worst animation in Smash, in the sense that his moves have very different functionality but all look pretty similar visually. And this a real detriment on gameplay - if he throws a Pikmin at me, is that a regular projectile or is it a grab? Am I okay to put up my shield? I have no idea, and I've got like 0.2 seconds to work it out.
Doing Kens shoryuken at the edge of the stage kills him. Yes there is a way around it but it’s the only up B move in the game that kills the user near the edge of the platform .
only saw the thumbnail and have the urge to say i love sephs design
I main falcon and I feel like icies is a strong winning mu for falcon. Falcons combo game matched with his speed makes it so easy to separate Nana. It almost feels unfair for them lol
okay with sephiroth and wii fit genuinely there game plans are so badly designed because they revolve around a specific character state (sephiroths is basically just wonder wing and then back air and wii fits is deep breathe crazy 20000000% combo) but that means you're not able to play the character like half the time like when you play sephiroth your only goal is to maybe get some extra credit and when playing wii fit your only goal is making distance it just makes you feel like your sysiphus trying to roll the boulder up the hill but then anytime your game plan doesn't work your boulder just gets dropp it's just not fun
As someone who was a Wii Fit main for like 4 years, she finds herself as more of a setup character than anything else. I do agree that her stubbiness leaves her incapable in a lot of close-quarters matchups, but she becomes far more deadly if she can make the opponent play her game: that is, positioning them in the air above her and farther from center-stage than she is. Up-tilt is a really solid and quick anti-air, and f-tilt is a legitimately great kill move with deep-breathing activated, all in combination with her ability to manipulate the opponent's position surprisingly well through throw followups and, of course, the ever-present volleyball, which has the potential for omega-brain plays.
Tl;dr, I don't think Wii Fit is badly designed, I just think she's playing a more positional game than almost any other character.
Hoping for a Goodly designed characters video.
Do why no one plays Lucas! You promised it a year ago lol! Plus, he’s got so much broken stuff we gotta know why!
Both Wii Fit and Seph are also the top 2 ledge campers. Which is annoying and not healthy
How does Seph ledge camp. Not like a joke a genuine question, Wii Fit I can sort of see but not really Seph.
@@OddRick3113 By camping by sticking to the wall with fair, an Up B you cant challenge and rise up fall down counters. If you watch enough Seph gameplay it should show up. Hes really good at it
You forgot about Ridley on da ledge
Idk if Ice Climbers properly fit in that category but interesting video nonetheless
I never thought Min Min was broken... every time I played as her I felt like there was no way to capital on her range. That she wasn’t properly designed to achieve anything meaningful.
Plus, I felt Sephiroth has good sword swings and thrusts. That pair with his magic made him feel power but still fair to play.
Surprised doctor mario didn't show up on this list, I cannot stand his design. I main Mario and I love how intuitive and smooth his kit feels and playing the pharmaceutical echo feels like rubbing your controller with vaseline and playing in 110 degree heat, I hate how slow he is and how pathetic his jumps are. His moves don't really combo well because despite sharing almost identical animations with Mario they send at super weird angles and even if he does hit like a brick it doesn't help that he also moves like a brick. Non gameplay-wise, why the HELL is this even a character?? Builder and wedding Mario are costumes but the lab coat warranted an entire character?? Just feels so wrong to play him.
Can you talk about piranha plant next video
It isn't a badly designed Smash list if you don't mention Ice Climbers. They have to be one of the hardest characters to balance in fighting game history.
I talk about this because to the frame data. And this is an exemple.
Didn't catch up with smash ultimate meta for a while. Is fox still a meta character?
he's top 10
yes
Yes he is. The reason being that he's still an amazing whiff punisher so it was able to adapt to the meta.
11:01 So why does no one play Mega Man?
Badly Designed Characters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Underrated comment tbh
yes
Althought I don't agree with your points, I appreciate the well put together thoughts in the video.
That first comment on 50% win chance is really interesting. Considering that this is their prime metric for Ultimate as well, they are just counting all games this is including casual games. Look up Sakurai's video on it before being factual wrong.
Edit Nice video thoo, please do more of the badly designed characters. To really milk the content you should do one of the big 5 you have left per video :)
Are you implying you are better than Daddy Sakurai?
Hear me out...... let's give Min Min the Dalshim treatment and make her arms punishable
The thing that makes no sense with seph is that IF he gets wing, why does he need armor? All his smash attacks are so slow and hardly cover his body. More than Half the characters in the game dont even get hit by upsmash on the ground lol
Yea sephiroth is too light. If he was a heavy like around Ike weight I think he'd be solid with everything else being teh same, just his deisgn he's GOING to take some hits and he can't survive them.
Considering this is gonna be the final iteration of Smash for a while, it's a massive bummer that they just completely stopped with updates as soon as DLC was done. lol
But it is what it is. Sakurai and co. has done enough.
Whew don’t get me started on Lucas. You can compare him to Ness alone and see how underpowered he is to the rest of the cast.
He’s not a zoner, pk fire isn’t the best for camping as opposed to others with it’s linearity, startup and landing lag. Zair is great for zoning but it can only get you so far in most MUs, and djc input is so tight. And there’s pk freeze…. yeah. Overall he’s not the best zoner.
As a brawler, he’s got nice “combos” but his stubby limbs don’t get him far as far as oos options. Ftilt is awesome, but that’s about it. Nair doesn’t work, it’s inconsistent with positioning, it’s got mediocre startup, crazy landing lag (punishable but many smash attacks), it’s tiny not being disjointed until the very end, can be punished halfway through by a lot of characters if they dodge the first hit, and can’t even combo reliably due to sdi. Why? Ness can combo and kill easily with his, but Lucas suffers. He’s good off stage but who isn’t?
Ness Thunder kills at like 30, Lucas’s goes a bit further for recovery, but kills around 160 and can be sdi’ed. Lucas Up air is minuscule, but combos into itself with a lot of effort in comparison to Ness combing you with up airs to 40 no problem, not to mention killing MUCH earlier. Down throw, completely useless. Up tilt, why is it so small and unrewarding. Magnetic has no utility anymore.
The worst offender is upsmash. It used to reach the top platform in brawl, now it tickles someone if they’re slightly above you. There are a good handful of moves that kill too early with minimal risk, Luigi up b, power geyser, Kazuya electric upper or whatever it’s called for example, there is no reason I should manage to hit one of thee slowest moves in the game and they don’t die at 70. Should I miss they have the chance to hit me with nearly anything, idc about the i frames because they’re so situational. Most up good up smashs kill at 90, look at g&w and Bowser, and c Falcon.
He’s been questionably nerfed many times though out his appearances but I genuinely have no clue why. He has no game plan now and was a semi grappler in smash 4. In ult, Lucas is a conglomeration on mediocre moves, I’m not sure what they had planned for him.
disliked, there are at least 80% of the roster that should be in this video. Cant wait for the next smash
sheik is imo a terrible design, her fantasy of being the ultimate frame data combo super speed ninja or whatever is so heavily compensated with terrible damage and knockback on all but bouncing fish. this makes her end up feeling like your working 100 times harder for the same thing mario can do.
They gave ROB a clear gameplan as far as I'm concerned and he's not even FROM a videogame, they could definitely do Wii Fit better than what they did.
the best designed characters are the one i play and the worst is FUCKING ROB
Ok, Now hear me out here. I think Zelda is badly designed.
Simple reason being that phantom exists. Phantom itself is not really a problem. It is a very strong ledge trap tool. The problem is that they made the rest of her move set really bad in neutral / disadvantage.
Zelda acts like some sort of heavyweight with the amount of power she has in some moves, but the hit boxes are hard to hit and her overall range / frame data is just not good at all.
So for me she kinda falls into that Wii Fit Trainer zone. She has projectiles, but her zoning is not really that good (Phantom is more like a area denial projectile and side-b is bad). And her close range can be very explosive, but the problem is that she is inconsistent and lacks the range and speed to utilize these close range moves.
What makes it even stranger is that Zelda has 2 good ‘get-off-me’ tools, suggesting she has good projectiles for long range, but she doesn’t really have those (for long range at least)
So she is designed like a zoner, but also not really since she’s also some sort of an inconsistent glass canon at close range.
It is just really confusing and it makes her a badly designed character for competitive IMO.