One of the weirdest things when transitioning from Smash to traditional fighting games is being able to blockstring people. You’re telling me it’s not just the end of my turn when I they block my attack
block strings are kinda just replaced with shield pressure in smash. not everyone has block strings although some characters do, but everyone has shield pressure
The definition of "neutral" in Smash, as I've heard it explained, is instead of defensive, neutral, and offensive. It's disadvantage, neutral, and advantage. By that definition, a "neutral skip" is having an advantaged state when characters are in "neutral". That would explain things like Pikachu N.Special or Cloud B.Air being "neutral skips."
@@Sh1v3rIZAE I think the idea is that it immediately puts you in an advantageous state and forces the opponent to respond before the percent lead grows too high, which is difficult since Pikachu is fast and small, meaning he can avoid hits better.
T-Jolt is seen as a “neutral skip” because it’s basically a fireball you can approach behind, which is both rarer and more dangerous in Smash than in something like Street Fighter. It also has a billion other uses, but that’s one of the more deadly/annoying ones
as someone who has a ton of smash friends, it's really funny watching them constantly back dash whenever we try a new Fighting game (from my vast steam library) even when they shouldn't because it's engraved in their mind to be defensive, even on the offensive
When I picked up my first traditional fighter and was learning it with guys who had been playing traditional fighters for years, one thing that always blew their minds was that wake up DP almost never worked on me, and I punished it almost everytime. They expected it to be a huge noob killer against me, but I was just so used to the idea that even when I get in and Im on offense, its good to be weary of what aggressive options your opponents have to get themselves out of that spot, and let them act first to give you an opening. Not saying that isnt a fundie in traditional fighters, but its how you play out a lot of "oki" or pressure situations in Smash. Dont attack them directly, put them in a spot where they have to do something, then try to cover their options. Thats why youll a lot of times see Smash players attacking the air around their opponents or even just standing/waiting in a threatening proximity when they have them cornered or in a bad spot. Theyre trying to call out/react to the next action they will make rather than going directly for them, cuz although blocking a move is strong in Smash, unlike traditional fighters you cant block forever, so if I dont commit to something on their shield that they can reversal, eventually theyll have to make an action out of shield/the corner to get away. In a more intricate game like Melee, sometimes the best thing to do on offense is to intentionally let your opponent hit you cuz although they have good aggressive options on defense, a mechanic called Crouch Cancelling can make your opponents move unsafe on hit and give you a huge opening at the cost of just a little damage, and if you put them in a certain spot the ONLY moves they can use will be unsafe on hit. Its really fun to look at the differences in how people figured out the best ways to beat each other's ass in these games. What makes them different, but still so fun in their own ways.
@@Yvs8962 Fantastic comment. Shielding on platform in Melee is such a strong defensive option because getting hit allows you to shield-drop aerial and punish your opponent.
@@nathanelwood5312 Meanwhile shilelding on a platform in ult is more risky bc the platforms are harder to get off of and your OOS options just might not hit
Yeah, the idea of neutral is totally different in platform fighters. Now that I've watched more, there's some really significant differences and some surprising similarities.
@Dream Absolutely. Also, some platform fighters - like Rivals of Aether and Brawhalla - don't even have a block button. "Ultimate" is correct, but "platform fighters" is not.
nothing to be thankful for dude, it’s not cause a few greasy nerds with a gatekeeping overlord complex say Smash is not a fighting game that it actually means it isn’t.. anyone with a brain can love these games and still categorize them as fighting games despite how different they are 😊
@@acidrazor66 I mean idk why Smash players are so pressed about it when, as talked about in the video, we can't even talk about "neutral" with each other and mean the same thing. Every fighting game has their own wacky mechanics, but they all share mostly the same fundamentals, so I can sit with pretty much any fighting game and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. But none of that applies when I play Smash. Saying they're the same "kind" of game is like saying chess and Warhammer are the same kind of game because you play them both on a board.
@vmp pvm I mean, they're both tabletop war games. They can be vastly different table top games, but both fit that genre perfectly well. Same for Smash and traditional FGCs.
As someone who's pretty solid at traditional fighting games, and TERRIBLE at Smash, I've really wanted someone to break down stuff like this for a long time. I would love to see more of this comparing and contrasting of ideas between traditional games and platform games, because I think it would help a LOT of people who are trying to get into one subgenre vs the other.
Yeah, I have no idea where to start with traditional fighting games. I can almost pull off a Joker raindrop combo but uh… I can spam Rambo’s booby trap?
I can't do either, so, rip me lmao Could also be because you cannot pay me to sit down and pratice inputs. I find inputs as i play by accident; my main in Blaz, funny clone knoife boi, i only learned about something i could do in the air a year into owning the game and i'd never have it any other way On that same level, you cannot pay me to find moves that combo into eachother in smash
I think the disconnect stems from a difference in what neutral means as well, in smash someone doesn’t need to be up close or even hitting the opponent to have their turn. It’s less about turns and more about stage positioning and “advantage” in the clip where fox spot doges and runs back you might think that because he reset to neutral but that isn’t the case. Fox is still in advantage state because he is holding center stage and is putting pressure on cloud by keeping cloud in the corner via not doing anything and trying to react to whatever the cloud would do. So in smash I guess “neutral skip moves” are less about moves that immediately get you in to start running your pressure and more so moves that dive you advantage state, which means pretty much every good move in smash would be considered a neutral skip
Advantage state is still a thing in traditional fighters from what I understand, due to characters different preferred ranges and the ends of the screen, but it’s much less important than in smash.
@@noahwoods9871 It's equally as important, but "Advantage State" isn't really a term in traditional fighting games and we describe similar situations in different ways.
@@djerk2138 that’s really not what I’m trying to get at at all. The guy who made this definitely spent more time in traditional fighters compared to smash and as someone who’s spent a good amount of time in both I thought I should put my take out there. Still a great video with great explications between the perspectives of fgc people and smash people. Also, relatively to traditional fighters shielding in smash is broken as fuck
I guess a great way to look at it is that in traditional fighters a move that "skips neutral" brings you to an immediate advantage, while moves that "skip neutral" in smash are just moves that play the neutral game for you, which is why so many of the posts by smashers are just moves that are incredibly safe.
I think this is exacerbated by the fact that so many moves intended to be approach options to close the distance for whiffs/extend combos are actually really bad in Smash outside of a casual level, and the ones that are good rarely convert into a combo/string after (aside from Sonic spindash with 1-2 followups after or Steve Cart which is usually 50/50s). Closest thing in Ult to being a usable gap closer input is Falco sideB at certain distances, and it's extremely punishable in a neutral scenario especially on block so it can't really put you in advantage on its own. Closest thing to what most traditional FGs are looking to do with neutral skips is probably dash -> shield on fast characters in previous smash titles that favored shield like Brawl and 4, and even that isn't going to often result in a combo tree or blockstring. Half jokingly, I think Ult Kazuya is kind of a neutral skip with the big caveat of if you can get in range. If it connects, you immediately "get in" and are set up for aggression, and your "mixup game" is how you follow your opponent's DI/platform tech options. Worst case if they block, you rarely get punished so you just reset to neutral, it's really only punishable on whiff.
Note about crossups in Smash: So Smash crossups are very different than in traditional fighters. Since theres no directional blocking a crossup isnt a mixup in the same way. However, also unlike traditional fighters, your character doesnt turn around to face the opponent automatically, and in fact, while in shield you cant turn around at all without an option that stops shielding. Because out of shield options are so strong as the video says, using a move that ambigiously crosses up can bait an out of shield option that only hits in front that can be punished, or can at least force the opponent to use a reversal option that hits both sides but is less rewarding. There are out of shield options that you can instantly do out of shield in both directions (most up specials) but even then, the opponent has to guess whether you crossed up or not to punish a lot of the time. Its interesting to me how completely different mechanics can converge into similar concepts.
There is a mechanic in all smash games (since 64 I believe) called shield tilting where if you lightly hold a direction you can reduce shield damage at the risk of being shield poked
@@samg131 not rlly, the only character that really applies to is G&W, since his shield is a skittle, but shields still cover all sides in melee, therefore shields are not directional.
Shield tilting just helps when your shield is about to break, because some parts of your hitbox become vulnerable so yhea, most of the time you'll avoid shielding when you're low on it
@@frogqueen1587 i meeeeeeeeeeean Consider a peach shielding on platform above a marth or a fox: a well spaced up air or uptilt (respectively) can shieldpoke a non shieldtilting peach even at full shield because her bubble doesn't cover her feet. The same applies to jigglypuff's left ear at full shield, and a lot of other characters in circumstantial situations. In that way, we could consider shieldpoking to be analogous to a 360-degree crossup system.
Great video! I think there's some nuance to Ultimate's neutral that could use further elaboration. I don't think Ultimate's shields are nearly as powerful as you present them to be for most characters. Some characters can definitely get strong punishes oos but more often than not, these options are simple get off me tools that may or may not lead to a meaningful advantage state for the defending character. Another massively impactful factor to Ultimate's neutral is the general unreactability of neutral pacing making shielding a necessary evil in many cases. Shields being weaker would make neutral feel suffocating in my opinion, with characters swinging their low lag buttons while you have no options to deal with their pressure. Universal frame 3 jumpsquats, dash into shield taking longer to come out than most dash attacks take to connect in their burst range, and moves that are almost all minus on shield translates to a neutral comprised of preemptive measures and informed mixups. Throwing out buttons in unreactable ranges forces your opponent to consider shield, leading to the shield pressure mixup. Opposed to traditional fighters, Ult's pressure is ambiguous (meaning there aren't many examples of blockstrings/advantage state that aren't a combo, juggle, ledgetrap, or edgeguard), necessitating good movement to get your opponent out of their shield and moving in a way you can punish. The strength of these instantenous defensive options (shield, jump, spotdodge, etc.) leads players into developing habits revolving around them, which you as the aggressor are tasked with recognizing and punishing. This is much less clearly defined as traditional fighting game advantage but establishing certainty in your opponents options is what, in my eyes, makes neutral wins uniquely rewarding. Opening your opponent up can happen in all kinds of ways and it makes them consider when and how to use their options out of shield.
notably this also means that shield IS a part of neutral, and your interactions during shield and shield pressure are what lead to advantage or disadvantage, not instant advantage as it is framed in the video. shield seems like advantage to newer players because they don't have mastery over all of their options. and interestingly, i've heard that MBTL also had an extremely strong defense before and was similarly disliked by other fighting game fans, so it's not even that traditional fighters universally have weak defense - that's just the GG bias lol
Wow you expressed all of that really well, felt similarly about the shield while watching the video but couldn’t find the words to explain it. Great vid by Bambo and great comment by you haha
that was a really nice comment, while watching that bit of the video I just had to disagree about shields being too strong, sometimes I feel like they are not strong enough tbh (especially if you’ve ever played online against a masher). The best part about smash for me is how interactive the game is, everything is very human, and very ambiguous. To the point where a lot of top players aren’t actually that knowledgable in terms of technicalities about the game, it’s all about understanding the opponents and how they play.
learning about blockstring frametraps actually confused me at first cuz I was used to the smash bros kind where corrin is guaranteed to hit you with upair no matter your airdodge timing. While I haven't been able to make particularly good use of them offensively, atleast I'm not trying to mash out when I physically cannot. Most of the time. The cool part is that they never expect the frame one safejump immune reversal with massive damage and a hard knockdown that resets to fullscreen.
I've heard the neutral play of Mango (in Melee) referred to as 'camping in your face' where he plays extremely non-committal, but in such a close and aggressive way that you feel pressured to swing or choose a committal defensive option. I think it's a perfect way of summing up most smash neutral. Comparing platform and traditional fighters is a topic that needs more coverage and has a lot of video essay potential, so keep up the good work. Also, thank God you didn't play smash 4
And there's difference in my opinion. Because playing against a player like Mang0 there's almost never a neutrel in the fgc sense of the word be cause Mang0 is almost always on offence Only against the very top players and against certain matchups like against Hungrybox's Jigglypuff will Mang0 slow down and play more defence.
@@kneo12 the reason why being because mang0 knows how to win neutral right away against most other players, or is at least confident in the fact that they aren't aware of how to stop him as well as top players might be. similar things happen across all games
@@Lilliathi No, it's entirely like all martial arts. You don't want someone to actually touch you because even someone touching your shield (arms up) means you're on the defensive and being heavily defensve in inherently bad, so evasion is much more common, so you're never giving 100% while squaring up unless you know exactly what your opponent is going to do.
While a great video, I think the ending statement has some flaws. Mainly because even if shield is really good, your OOS options aren’t special unless they are moves like G&W. They are just moves that the opponent can guess and stuff out with their moves. Shield is very strong, but it also has a lot of it’s own weaknesses beyond grab, such as you can only shield for a certain amount of time before you die.
I was going to say, complaining about how strong shield is then also talking about how hard whiff punishes are says a lot about how much shield limits your options in terms of movement in ult (and melee/rivals to a lesser extent).
Completely agree, he didn't really mention the negatives of holding shield for too long, like getting your shield break or shield poked, most of the good characters have ways to pressure your shield enough to lead to that, at top level they can't always just wait for them to mess up
@@geramoreno8458 FRRRR like shields having HP instead of there being chip damage is a way bigger difference between the genres than anything about having a dedicated block button or some moves having less lag out of a block than others
@@ktoolsssb7080 disagree it is more limiting to your movement to be in shield in melee than ultimate; melee is so free that it still feels pretty free tho
I think the main issue with the “skip neutral” posts is that platform fighters have a much more intricate way of measuring neutral, advantage, and disadvantage. It usually just comes down to stage control, which is why a lot of people posted safe, long range pokes that they can use as string starters. Each of those moves puts you into advantage, but it’s not really a traditional fighters advantage.
Great video but I honestly think you kind of shot yourself in the foot in the end with the whole "everything is so safe" bit, cause in Ult there are so many things that a lot of characters just CANNOT true punish on block, regardless if they're minus or not, instantly making a scramble situation of "do I press something out of shield or not?" since so many moves used out of shield commonly are HIDEOUSLY unsafe, you risk your own oos option being blocked, dodged, or even interrupted by a jab or other quick option. this plus a plethora of basic techniques aid in beating classic defensive maneuvers (tomahawk grab/jab to deal with blocking and soptdodging on reaction to an approach respectively, also boost grab for instance) unless your out of shield options are crazy good (like mr game and watch for instance whose gameplan partially revolves around stuffing approaches via blocking/dash shielding) being "stuck in shield" is a common state where you're being pressured but don't know what to press and when to press it yet, effectively rendering you stuck, it's even worse if you have no stage to work with too. Not to mention a plethora of moves designed to put fear into any opponent even daring to block, to name just a few, EWGF, every command grab in the game with even modest reward, phantom, splattershot, and basically any -2/-3 aerial in the game, aerials so safe not even the best possible out of shield options can beat them, such safe pressure being readily available along with shield being nerfed from the previous game makes it not really as game defining of a thing as it seems, it's basically just another move people throw out, just as a guard, and not a move, if that makes sense.
Was waiting for the first comment to reference tomahawk grabs, yeah idk I see shielding as more of a lesser disadvantage state. The fact you can condition this “super safe option” just wouldn’t make sense. + kill throws exist
As mostly a Smash guy, hopefully I can give some context about how Smash neutral works for those less familiar with it. As said in the video, a lot of it stems from playing around the shield, but the moves you can use out of shield in Smash aren't universal - there's actually only a few you can do and it all stems from jumping. Basically, there's really only three options that ACTUALLY cancel the shield in Smash - grabbing, dodging, and jumping. Grabbing and dodging are self-explanatory, and jumping itself obviously means you can go into aerial moves as well. But jumping also has the odd quirk where you can cancel the jumpsquat animation frames into either of the "Up + button" inputs, those being Up Smash or Up Special. So you can only get two of your grounded moves to function as out of shield options by effectively doing two cancels at once. Altogether this means you only have 5 options you can use when someone hits your shield: Grab, Dodge, Jump, Up Smash, Up Special. Since you can't (usually) just "open up" the opponent through their shield like you can with a crossup in a traditional fighter, a lot of what Smash becomes is conditioning and baiting defensive options. Each of those 5 options can be punished in their own way, so the gameplan becomes using safe aerials (via crossups, spacing, and/or having moves with good frame data) to bait their out of shield options, then you learn their patterns and punish the options they like to go for instead. The clip used in the video where the Fox lands a hit on Cloud by hitting Cloud's shield, then jumping and doing an attack in the air before Cloud's even there followed by Cloud jumping into the attack is actually a great example. The Fox jumping up and throwing out an aerial attack wasn't random. They'd observed that the Cloud player liked to jump out of shield as their escape option when having their shield pressured. So the Fox player hit their shield with a safe move to bait the opponent's shield option, and then since they knew it was most likely going to be a jump they punished the jump immediately after - before the Cloud had even done it in fact.
The jump thing for Up Smash and Up Special is not true for Ultimate. You don't need to input jump to do those out of shield anymore, you just press the input to them and it cancels shield
@@tastyfalcon1788 That's true in terms of output, Ultimate does make it easier to Up Special or Up Smash out of shield. On a technical level, it recognizes an up input as a jump even if you have tap jump turned off, which is why other options don't work the same way. The grab button is similar, where it reads it as a shield and an A input at the same time, which is why in some rare occasions one of those inputs can get dropped.
I think the fact that sitting in shield is an effective tactic shows that neutral is more patient and sometimes defense oriented. There are many players that abuse the opponents shield and are rarely seen shielding themselves. At top level play, smash ultimate comes down to how effectively you can move and space your moves just a little better than your opponents. It requires micro movements and you rarely spend any time in shield at top level play (depending on the character, some characters gameplan rely heavily on out of shield options). I am an ultimate fanboy so I’m bias but I appreciate its intricacy and variability in play style. Non of the characters have the same style, each character is played differently and played differently by different players. It never gets old for me
the thing is,mashing shield is not the only option. Short hopping lows,spot dodging,rolling(even though in ultimate they nerfed it because of sm4sh Bayo and how much players abused her broken roll into witch time stuff),and they included a discount 3s parry as well. Mashing shield is just the basic option for basic players,which says a lot
"Microspacing" in Ult is just a matter of not overextending jumps since the game has such limited movement. Players at the top level of previous entries, _especially_ Melee, are microspacing. Ult players are just mixing up attack timings and using more empty hops than normal, that's it. It's not completely their fault, the game literally forces you to play like a shadowboxing masher. It's sad that the game that finally solved the problem with heavies being almost universally bad in Smash made just about everything else about the game worse.
traditional fighters make you play around an opponent's defense by making you try to pierce through an opponent's guard, meanwhile smash makes you play around whether or not your opponent is choosing to guard. smash doesn't really have a system for high/low mixups unless you're absolutely terrible at managing your shield health, but that recovers so unbelievably fast that it wont matter past a few seconds. shielding is just inherently less risky since it covers literally every opponent's attack that isnt a grab also, ultimate's spacing is one of the worst aspects of the game if you ask me. dashing forces you to go for a set amount of distance before you can act, which is horrible for microspacing. its not a horrible idea to make running risky, if the point is to incentivize walking as the lower risk option. but that has such dogshit acceleration that trying to avoid an attack that you're in the range of by walking out of the way is actually so much riskier than just dashing. the game doesnt control in a very freeing way. melee and the other games at the very least have alternative movement options: but would wavedashing be as necessary if the normal movement had that freedom?
yeah that's for ultimate though. Melee has actual shield pressure strings that can break your shields, and movement whiff punishing is so much more important in melee. Melee also has a movement system that is way deeper than ultimate's by far. I urge you to watch any second of Jmook vs Cody and tell me how fox, the rushdown character, plays that much differently when he actually benefits from the opponent shielding.
@@tastyfalcon1788 is it? Fox, falco and peach all have very good and fast aerials they can chain on shield, plus peach has dsmash and her grab game is good. Sheik and falcon are terrifying to shield against given their amazing punish off of grab on the entire cast, on top of their safe aerials. Sheik also has fast tilts to call out oos options. Mid tiers like samus or luigi get use their weird tech to seriously threaten shields with some setup. Puff and marth kinda play the same way as in ult, doing a grab vs oos callout mixup that has potential stock ending outcome.
I mean, I'd argue shine OOS actually means it's WORSE in Melee in some regards, but it depends on what parts of the cast you're talking about. Fox/Falco are the only two characters that SUPER change the distinction here, as they can both 1) break shields with multi-shine, 2) escape shield pressure within 4-7 frames, putting out a move with intangibility that leads into combo, tech chase, or neutral reset. As you've mentioned, some characters get more situational free passes on shield (Peach nair -> dsmash), and otherwise it's mostly the same (spacing). And yes, Fox vs Sheik (or really most of the cast) you do indeed get a free pass to nair shine a shield into a mix up. I think the increased pace and speed of aerial drifts mean that the entire cast has an easier time picking their spots and hits though. You have more freedom to space aerials on shield, albeit with a higher execution barrier to do so.
@@claye_l463 I don't really play against Peach often, but when playing against anyone other than Fox and especially Falco, their shield pressure is not nearly as oppressive. Against spacies there's really nothing you can do once caught in shield
@@claye_l463 shield pressure strings that truly lock you in shield completely are extremely rare. Not even Fox can do it with multishines, you can always drop shield or roll out. Yeah some characters have really good options for shield pressure but true blockstrings are exceedingly rare. Melee shield pressure tends to be a tradeoff between "am I safe right now" and "will I be safe after my next move", the variation being the crux of Melee's depth regarding shield pressure Peach's dsmash is one move that locks someone in shield and also eats shields, but being a single move it doesn't really count as a string haha
Being harder to hit opponents in smash is definitely important for it's mechanics to work properly, this being because "getting a hit" has vastly different outcomes in Platform Fighters and Traditional Fighters. Traditional Fighters hits are consistent. Each move will deal determined amount of damage and can be followed up with other consistent moves. In platform fighters, not only are combos situational (depending on opponents %, DI, etc) but each hit, even if just a poke, can have massive gains on advantage state. Hitting your opponent means sending them flying and thus, giving you more stage control and potentially set up edge-guards/ledge traps Yes, hits are way harder to get thanks to the shielding system, but whenever you get any hit, you're now in control of the entire game and can potentially transform it into a kill no matter if the opponent's at 100% or 0%...
Actually very true, which brings me to a point where, Smash is not a consistent game, it has too many variables to make everything happen the way you want 100% of the time. Top level Smash is practically making consistent scenarios out of inconsistent neutral exchanges.
@@ryanhuot4926 Yes exactly I think that’s the most important mechanic in any smash game really, like Imagine trying to shield a move like Shiek nair perfectly everytime you see it, even if you can react to the move itself you could never reliably have the same positioning everytime in a real match setting leading to an endless amount of slightly different variations of the same situation.
@@ryanhuot4926 i mean, i don't think it's that inconsistent in that regard, just a lot more specific. As someone who plays both, i feel like smash is a game with way more variables you have to take into account at any given time, so it gets a bit easier in some areas to compensate. Combos are consistent, but you need multiple of them to cover for each stage of the game, and slight variations depending on %s (the enemies and your's thanks to Rage), enemy DI and sometimes even the stale of you're moves (moves get slightly weaker when used multiple times in a row). That's why combos are easier to input than most of FGs, they NEED to be as a balancing factor for you having to be aware of that much stuff. The inconsistency of Smash sure exists tho, but is not about having "too many variables" but just the primary thing that differentiate it, the idea that you can, at any moment, die if you're not careful. Compared to the consistency of HP bars, where you always knows how much damage you can take, stocks are very flimsy, you can not only die by getting edgeguarded at any time. Compared to FGs block strings and combo-oriented advantage state, smash advantage state is about positioning, you keep in disadvantage even whenever you're on full control of you're character if you're opponent has stage control, so as soon as you lose neutral once, you might be headed for a minute of disadvantage that finished with you losing your stock anyway. Personally, i only truly consider myself "winning" a game of smash whenever im with an extra stock, compared to FGs that a HP difference goes a long way. TLDR; Smash inconsistency isn't unpredictability or having too much stuff to be aware of, but it's about the line between life and death being volatile.
@IHateAnimeButOnlyWhenItIsOppositeDayOrTheAkameGaKillAnimeCauseitwasTerribleComparedTotheManga Which is why reactions are so important in Smash Bros. It seems unintuitive when you break down just how much possible variation is possible in a game like Smash and how you can possibly get a handle on it all in an effective way. But humans in general are very good at getting a "feel" for things with great complexity to where it feels intuitive beyond articulation. I mean that's how anything skillful in the real world works. There are insane amount of variables to account for in how objects move in our physical world, and yet athletes are able to hone an intuitive understanding of the underlying mechanics nonetheless. Skill in general in competition by no means needs to be confined to super static states to function. Hell, if that was the case, then you would just argue for something like chess over any fg where things can't get much more discrete and controlled. That's the beauty of fighting games in general, intuitive calculated control over a wildly unstable environment.
Very good video. You didn’t touch on actually hitting someone with kill moves in smash ultimate though. Ive always felt like the hardest thing about smash is you can’t just rely on your best neutral buttons to close out the game.
I’d say melee is better about this A lot of the time you need to confirm into kills in ultimate. For melee you kinda naturally kill. Sure you can get some annoying high percent stocks, but usually you can just hit a clean aerial in neutral and kill
@@eliastew9636 Maybe. I’m not super experienced in melee but what I see when I watch basically a lot of stocks end in edgeguards as opposed to just hitting a raw kill move. Like every top tier combos you off stage then has a chance to kill you. Not to mention how much worse being in disadvantage is in melee with no airdodge out of tumble and airdodges being so bad. However, I don’t play that game so fuck do i know.
@@eliastew9636 I think in Ultimate that depends a lot in the character you're playing, while some like Pit and fox have some guaranteed kill confirms, others like Cloud or Palu, you have to either edgeguard or get a raw hit
@@striker3190 being caught off stage as anyone but Puff and to a lesser degree Peach in Melee is the same as losing your stock, so it doesn't really matter whether the move outright kills.
Its very character dependent. Most of the best characters have a good options to kill confirm off a safe move(usually a title or aired) and either kill confirm off a combo throw at a mid-high percent or straight up kill them at high percent. You'll also see a lot of raw kill options though, some of which tend to be safe(many a back air),
I really enjoyed this video, but I would like to say that shield pressure is still important even in ultimate. Swordies like byleth rely on it to keep their opponent out with safe range, and characters like fox and sheik have safe aerials that they can use to keep you scared and locked in your shield. Even other characters like k-rool can keep you stuck in shield with projectiles, and then use the threat of grabs (or on k-rool’s case, grabs and shield breakers) to capitalize on their conditioning you to stay in shield. While it’s not as big a thing as I’m traditional fighters, shield pressure is still very important in smash and though it may not look like it for a new viewer, being stuck in shield at top level is still very much a disadvantageous place to be.
Cross-up does get used in the traditional sense of the term in Smash. OOS options usually hit on the front, so a cross-up saves you from your opponent's OOS option. Another thing you neglect to mention is that shield depletes, eventually leading to it breaking. While broken shields aren't that common, your shield taking damage lets you become susceptible to shield pokes. This all means you can't hold shield forever.
3:40 You misunderstood. The distinction he's pointing out is that Cross-ups in Smash don't require to change how you're blocking to avoid getting hit. So the UNIST move he shows would be called a cross-up in Smash (ends on the other side), but not in UNIST. You wouldn't call that a cross-up because you don't block it cross-ups (you block same side).
A correction to note block strings do exist in smash. It’s just that most characters don’t have true block strings. But a handful of characters do. Especially the FGC characters like Ken, Ryu, Terry, Kazuya… which is in part why at a time the community called these characters by the same archetype name that was incorrect because in smash they do things that other characters don’t really have.
@@dj_koen1265 auto turn around combo cancelling normals character with motion inputs or…shoto lol one is much easier to say and for that reason we used the term differently. Kaz isn’t a shoto but he does fall into the same category as all the others in smash so let’s just make our life’s easier
This topic of how shields work vs blocking is such an interesting one. I got one of my Smash friends into BB and when we were talking about it, he noticed how the way you approach can sometimes be a bit simpler, but then when you're in, there's way more of a push-pull dynamic between offense vs defense which you just don't see in smash. Also he noticed how whiff punishing is an actual real thing in fighters; in Smash (Ult especially), it just doesn't happen. You usually "whiff punish" by taking space up. Smash's shields are what bog the games down so much for me, and its why games which do interesting things with their shields appeal to me more. Rivals with its parry system (I think its flawed but I respect them for trying something different), or Rushdown Revolt or Fraymakers with their one-sided shields, allowing for ACTUAL cross-ups in platform fighters.
It's a shame because I do really enjoy the free movement of Smash and that was part of what got me to try it out, but when I actually learned it, all the gameplay around shield really put me off. It's not exactly for me, but other platform fighters may be!
The idea of corss-ups is mostly the same in Smash. Mechanically a bit different, but there is a good reason for it to be called the same. The implications are quite similar and it's indeed pretty important to cross up your options, even in Smash.
@@erigor11 Exactly. I think the way I'd describe it is that in a traditional fighter a crossup is a technique used to make your opponent vulnerable while in Smash it's a technique to make your aggression safer. In addition to all of the "blocking vs shielding" differences covered by the video, a big part of Smash is that your character's facing (usually) isn't automatic, and whether a character has their back to you or not can really change up what options are available to them. While there are plenty of powerful out of shield options in Smash, oftentimes the fastest and/or strongest ones work best when the opponent is in front of you. Being behind your opponent can really limit which options they can actually use effectively.
@@dripfoe_3307 this guy is a traditional fighting game player talking about general trends in ultimate and overall it's a good assumption. You can't talk about smash in general (in particular ultimate) and address every character's specifics because there's no fighting game with this many characters specific gimmicks and tricks
@DripFoe gaming Most of what he said is true. The whole point of the video is that smash has a very different structure to pressure and neutral. Blockstring pressure is fluid in 99% of the cases with most block strings being about 2 or 3 moves at max. Hes arguing the structure not every instance lol. Saying he doesn't know anything is simply not true lol. He has a lot he doesnt fully understand in the game I'll agree but the main points he's made a pretty true
@@Hack--rz1io I disagree, most of what he said isn't true. You can most definitely address all characters when it comes to the components of neutral like footsies, punishment, combos and stage control. It's not that hard if you are actually knowledgeable on the game and fighting games in general.
11:00 As someone who has played Smash for years and is recently starting to get into other games, this moment instead made me realize "That's not normal? That's probably why I'm probably getting hit so much."
dude sameeeee. when i play traditional fighters. im either always blocking or just walking into an attack no inbetween. smash really fucks u up when u start playing more traditional fighters lmao
while ultimate does have very safe moves there is definitely plenty of whiff punishing buttons on majority of the cast, and there are genuine reasons to not always shield due to how much shield damage some moves can do and given stuff is relatively safe this can put you in bad situations, not to mention common out of shield options can be baited due to said moves being safer than in most games which adds layers to it, its definitely not ideal but given how strong ultimate buttons are i dont think its really fair to say its a bad thing you have to work more for your pressure
If you haven't already, I think you might find pokken interesting with how it handles neutral, the role of blocking/defense, and adaptational combo expression (to tie into the video before this): While as a Pokken player, I think people often overstate how different it is from other traditional fighting games (characters still have unique movelists/inputs,, there's cancels, just-frames, height states, meter, walls, there are meaties, oki, footsies, etc) 2 of the 3 major differences it DOES have with other traditional fighting games, the Phase Shift System and that it uses attack heights for moves to bypass/punish EACH OTHER rather then blocks based on height; both emphasize and change the importance of neutral and changing up one's combos and move choices over the course of the round. Firstly, as I alluded to before, I think Pokken is best viewed as a traditional 2d fighter, where the phase shift system is a mechanic on top of that 2d base: There, it effectively acts as an anti-infinite system for the 2d phase (since 2d>3d shifts occur when the hidden PSP guage is filled) that also forces a return to neutral on shift, with the 3d phase acting as a second buffer layer of neutral on top of the neutral that exists in the 2d phase (since 3d>2d shifts happen on any single heavy or most special hits). This alone means there's many more breaks back to neutral and time spent in neutral per round. But at a high level of play, the Phase shift mechanic also acts as a tool to discourage flowcharting and add an additional skillgap with resource management, risk vs reward, and mid-round adaptation with combo composition and move choices: Since different moves on hit add different amounts of PSP to the PSP guage, you're ideally wanting to change up your move choices and combo composition up based on the current PSP. Even If all you care about is optimized damage, you'll want to change your combos so they end right when the PSP guage is filled: if you don't, then depending on where the PSP guage is at when you started your combo (or even used an individual move), you'll max the guage out and cause a shift mid combo/mid move, dealing less damage then if you changed the combo up so the shift occurs on the ender or did a non-multi hit move. But even more important then that is forgoing damage or safer moves in exchange for shifting faster or slower: Maybe you intentionally go with a combo or use moves that add less PSP on hit, that way you're keeping the enemy player in the current 2d phase longer to keep them under pressure, or to use it as a combo reset so if you can win a second interaction, you'll get more damage then if you did an optimal, 1-hit-to-shift combo off your first interaction. Or on the flip side, maybe you'd rather go with a combo or moves that add MORE PSP, to cause a shift faster: Maybe yoiu really want the extra meter and health regen causing a shift gives you, or maybe you're on the defensive and manage to land a reversal and want to cause a shift right away to get out of the corner/pressure easier. Some moves and tech also reduces or resets the PSP guage, which further adds resource management aspects. Speaking of reversals, this is where the height states stuff come in: Since height states in pokken don't exist to bypass and punish blocks of a specific heights, but rather to allow moves to bypass and punish each other based on height state; heights are generally more a tool for a defensive player to get a reversal rather then a tool for an offensive player to open up a turtling enemy: this means that even within a given 2d phase, even without shifts, there's more time spent where both players can act and more breaks back to neutral from players landing height based reversals (of course, there's also actual counters, armored moves,, focus attacks, etc for reversals that way too). Though this isn't to say there's not offensive height based mixups at all: If you're doing a meaty or a blockstring, and the other player expects that meaty or a move in the blockstring to hit on X height, they may use a move of Y height instead of blocking it to i-frame through and reversal/punish you, but then you can use a move/change the combo that hits on Z height instead to mix them up, etc. Again, I don't think these fundamentally change the entire way the game is played: It's still very much a traditional 2d fighter, but both of these mechanics I think lead to players (at a high level, anyways) to switch up their move choices and combo routes more often, as well as for there to be more time spent in neutral, then in other fighhting games. Of course, the flip side of this is that combos also don't tend to be as long (since the PSP guage forces a limit on combo length and that limit lasts across multiple combos, not just per combo, at least within the duration of that phase till the shift resets the SPS guage) and blocking is also proportionally more powerful (since you can't get around it with heights). I'm not a Smash player, so i'm not sure how much time spent blocking in Pokken compares to blocking in Smash ultimate, to your point at the end of the video, but I'd say the relative advantage/disadvantage state blocking puts you in in Pokken is maybe between what it is in most traditional fights and something like Smash: You do not want to be blocking a move or stuck in a blockstring in pokken if possible, since it puts you on the defensive and under pressure, especially as you get closer to the wall, but it's also not as bad a position to be in as it is in some other fighting games since there's also more tools to get reversals (since a significant % of moves in the game can be i-framed and punished by other moves based on their height) and since the phase shift system means you'll eventually break back to the 3d phase. Hope you found this interesting, and if you have further questions or anything or want resources, i'd be down to answer/send stuff!
As an exclusively smash player i got really confused when you showed clips of people dashing in and getting blocks and calling it neutral lmao. I never realized that OOS options were a smash bros thing.
As a person whom both plays traditional fighters and platform fighters, and used to participate in smaller tournaments, I think I can shed some light. In regards to Smash, "neutral" is just stage advantage. If you're in the middle, you're in advantage and you fight to claim center stage. There's a ton of nuance to that but that's basic terms. Skipping neutral would be moves that can basically claim center stage. Like Cloud's back air. A move that is safe on block, safe on whiff, excellent range, disjointed and usually has pretty high priority against other moves. When a Cloud spams this, it's tough to even combat it, forcing you to either get in his face and parry or not interact. That's basically "skipping neutral." Moves that basically force your opponent to not interact. Or moves that allow you to run away. Such as Sonic's spindash or Steve's blocks. Or a move so broken an entire meta revolves around it, Electric Wing God Fist. Also, keep in mind, Smash games usually have input lag. Ultimate has 6 frames, meaning you have to actively predict your opponent all the time. There's few things you can react to. Hence why you see people back up all the time or use a move randomly. They're trying to catch an option.
As a Smash player I think when we say a move "plays" or "bypasses" neutral for us, we mean one of two things 1. The move is so low commitment with a (probably) skewed reward that you kinda just get to do it whenever you feel like it... Cuz like, “What are you gonna do? Punish me for it? LOL”… and you can even use it in spots where it makes no sense, just cuz its safe and its like "Hey... What it they just run into it tho???"... To put it simply… a 0 think, just do button. Or 2. A (usually high rewarding) move with hitboxes that cover all around the character and extensively linger, therefore bypassing the need to time or space it well. Palutena's Nair kinda fits both these descriptions, thats probably why you saw it mentioned a lot. The other examples seem a bit hyperbolic, but are still somewhat fitting of this criteria.
Or like EWGF, since it's pretty safe to throw out and not get whiff pubished, goes through attacks since Kazuya becomes invulnerable, safe on shield since it knocks the opponent out of shield and away from Kazuya, and has ridiculous reward since it starts his 0 to death combos. Just a move that you don't have to think about throwing out besides the opponent having a counter.
As some have already mentioned, most of these points only apply to Ultimate. The cross-up part is just wrong. Crossing up in smash just means going from one side of the opponent to the other, and it's often done with a jump (or in Melee, you can just run/wavedash/attack through the enemy). The reason the small clip mentioned that the dash attack can cross up is because in ultimate they made it almost impossible to cross-up the enemy while grounded, and some dash attacks are the only exception. I'd argue that crossing up is the same in traditional fighters, but "cross-up" has just become shorthand for "cross-up attack." If you go behind an enemy and grab them because they were too busy trying to block the other direction, you haven't attacked them from the other direction, but you've still benefited from crossing to the other side of them... I'm surprised the video didn't mention why crossing up is important in smash: without auto turnaround, you need to turn around manually before you can do certain actions - like grab, jab, d-tilt, etc - and those options have to come after the full shield drop animation. Shield-grab is one of the most basic counter attack options when an enemy hits your shield, and it's unavailable if someone hits your shield from *behind*. I've seen others already mentioned how much weaker shielding is in Melee, and how strong shield pressure is. In Melee, good shield pressure will have a player "stuck in their shield," desperate for a way out (like a roll, jump, or attack), which often ends up getting hit by the shield pressure or punished. Neutral wins in Melee can easily lead to a kill, which may be why people say it's so important. Players like amsa or jmook will sometimes have an opener:kill ratio of like 3.0 in a match. Also, I'm not familiar with the "neutral skipping moves" from the traditional fighters in the video, but if they can be parried or countered, then I'd argue they are just part of neutral.
Yeah, not mentioning the auto turn was a big miss. It was such a big deal when "certain" characters in smash had moves that helped you do that... Neutral skipping moves in traditional fighters _usually_ cannot be countered or parried on reaction, either because they are too fast or too safe. There is also the situation where they can be reacted but you have other options that you can punish the opponent for attempting to react. It is a somewhat derrogatory term, but it is a fact that they are part of the neutral as you say. It's just that instead of taking several steps, you make a single step and you get to the favorable position of running your offense. In high level, the prefered way to fight these moves is to dance around the limit of their range if possible, or discorage the opponent from using them by preemptively putting out safe attacks or moving at angles where the move doesn't go.
One way that I see sheild is either the attack is safe or unsafe. If an attack is thrown out at the wrong time or your able to seek out the attack, it’s unsafe and you can attack back. If the attack lets down your guard then you can pressure your opponent with other attacks to potentially get the hit.
This is a really good video, i will say that most of the comparisons you're making very much are specific to ultimate, not melee or other smash Shielding in melee is generally way worse. Out-of-shield is a lot weaker outside a couple characters like spacies or samus, and many characters have true frametraps and shieldpressure on block.
The entire time I was just thinking that this dude never played project plus, melee, or rivals of aether, which is only neutral and combos due to the lack of a shield.
For me, the lack of 'skip neutral' and blockstrings in Smash has always been something that sets it levels above traditional fighters in how rewarding it feels to play. I'm a defensive out-boxer/fencer type of player. Playing Marth fits my natural strengths and is a highly viable rewarding way to play, due to the intricate spacing required to take advantage of his sword tip sweetspot and how that spacing interacts with how the Neutral is played in that game. Think 3rd Strike Chun-Li (another character who naturally suits me), but more agile and flexible in his mobility. I've always struggled to find any traditional fighting games that feel as good as that ever since games of 2002-2012. Nowadays, traditional fighters penalize blocking and defensive playstyles too harshly for me to have any fun once the 'new game shininess' of the first month has worn off. Leaving me to feel like I wasted my money on a game that is penalizing me for playing MY playstyle or how I want. And a game that won't let me play how I want holds no value for me anymore. Which is why I've almost completely stopped playing fighting game, after my 20+ years of passion for the genre. SamSho 2019, once it gets rollback, is pretty much my last hope of funding a modern title to reinvigorate my passion for the genre. Especially since the gameplay design focus of Tekken 8 is on aggressive play and SF6 allows no meterless reversals while making the defensive Drive mechanics notably weaker than the offensive ones and having the Drive gauge act as a Guard Break meter (a mechanic I always hate).
one of the other major differences is what kind of hits you look for in each type of game. In a traditional fighting game, you can win with just very safe low risk low reward pokes. However, in smash you need to go for a kill move that usually is more risky than simple pokes. Thus in smash a "meaningful hit" changes depending on the % of the character. while in traditional fighters, any hit is a meaningful hit.
There are a lot of flaws when it comes to the discussion around shields in this video, it didn’t bring up shield heath, shield pokes, how grabbing someones shield is instant advantage state, what advantage state is and how it relates to risk reward situations in Shields. It definitely feels like it was an outside looking in kind of perspective. As far as you “getting hits” things go it could be summarized like this, rather than having a more straight forward yet volatile cycle for landing hits, smash focuses less on getting to land hits and more about positioning yourself to take advantage of you’re opponents more favored habits. When dealing with something so different you have to keep yourself come applying the logic of a different system to this new subject. If you’ve only played BOTW and suddenly tried to play another open world like Skyrim, you are going to be disappointed if you keep trying to find BOTW in it. It’s a different game and you have to look at it for what it is not for what another game is. Even if in the same category.
@@Enoby_Darknessright as someone whose spent a lot of time in melee and ultimate and SF6, there’s definitely missing parts to the smash side of the argument.
There is one particular traditional fighting game that has a similar situation: Third Strike. And hey, look at that, the Parry system has a similar but less intense effect on how people approach landing hits.
@@StateOfTheMind11225 From a pure input standpoint sure, but there are so many ways to pressure a shield. If you just hold the shield button at the first sign of danger every time, you will lose against a competent player every time. Plus shield tilting, shield DI, and shield dropping all require technical skill and provide ways to use the shield button to mixup your defense in shield.
@@StateOfTheMind11225 Didn't say they weren't. They're also arguably way more explosive due to the way one punish in 3S can end up chunking the opponent's health.
Great video. I'm a dbfz player primarily and I literally had no idea about shield cancel moves in smash, maybe now I can have a better idea of what's going on when I see smash clips lol
in prior smash games you had to cancel shield with jump then cancel jump with up smash, but in ultimate, like grab, up smash can directly cancel shield. you can also jump, as mentioned, and do an aerial.
@@ILiekFishes it's worth noting, though, that the complexity that comes from jump-canceling only really arises when not using the control stick for either half of the equation that's basically why it's a mechanic to begin with, actually - since the default control scheme has you pressing up then a to use an up smash, but also makes pressing up the way you jump, smash lets you cancel your jumpsquat into an up smash so your a press doesn't have to be frame perfect. and since you can jump out of shield and thus go into jumpsquat without the shield drop animation, then you can naturally up smash out of shield during the jumpsquat window, too really, formalizing up smash out of shield instead of keeping it a consequence of jumpsquat forgiveness just makes it less jank for c-stick users
The entire out-of-shield discussion seems equivalent to DP'ing in blockstrings, where the player on offense can choose to bait the escape option or continue with pressure. IMO Smash works just like any other game: you try to force your opponent into making mistakes and then capitalize on those mistakes.
I never thought of out-of-shield options as guard cancels - I mostly thought of them more like reversals. But you're absolutely right. The funny thing is that Smash 4 is the game that's thought of as having this kind of gameplay. Defense was much stronger in that game, especially considering how easy it was to perfect shield. Ultimate is actually more aggressive by comparison, even if it's not as aggressive as Melee. I'd check out how Rivals of Aether is, because shields don't exist in that game. They only have a parry. Well, they did... but Rivals 2 is adding a shield system. I wonder how that will change offense.
The more I hear about Rivals of Aether, the more I believe it is definitely my kind of platform fighter. However, I just reallyyyy don't like the art style. Maybe I'll be able to get into the 2nd game
@@DazIsBambo I feel you lol. It's great for furries aaaand... that's it. I recently quit my job to work on game dev full time, so hopefully my game fills that gap. (I'll probably be commenting under another username once I get rolling.) It's been a year and a half but our systems are getting fleshed out and our second character is in progress. Keep an eye out!
I think the only true neutral skipping move in Smash is Steve's neutral b. Whenever you're supposedly in "neutral" against Steve, even at round start, he's probably mining, which means he's gathering resources and becoming even more scary to deal with, so guess what? He's not in neutral, he's in advantage because he can just keep mining and you're the one who has to approach *him* to stop that Edit: upon finishing the video, I realize smash's definitions of neutral, advantage, and disadvantage are also very different from traditional fighters, where in smash "advantage" can mean anything from getting a hit to having more favorable positioning on the stage, and in traditional fighters, you usually need to have a move connect either on hit or block to be considered to be in advantage
For fighting games that's specifically if they're talking about "frame advantage." Just "advantage" as a more general term is still used to refer to the overall state of the match also relative to resources, positioning, etc.
@@KugutsuYushiro I understand this, it's the same in Smash, stage positioning & resources play a large part in determining whose in advantage state, but I feel like the way it was explained in the video was that they were equating pressure with advantage state. I feel like Steve's neutral b is similar in function to Chun Li's back HP in third strike, where if you give her any amount of space she can just start gaining meter very quickly (which is her win condition because she has the best super in the game), Steve's neutral b gives him his win condition of gaining gold & diamond to make his moves stronger, and gaining iron and gold for anvils and powered minecarts, essentially turning any "neutral" interaction into one where Steve can be gaining resources and building to his win condition, therefore putting him into advantage
Great video but I disagree with alot. Out of shield is just another way of saying "block punish". I'll admit, block punishes are strong in smash but they're not the end all be all in all match ups. Pressure in smash is alot more condensed, no insane block strings and I honestly find that to be better. It's not really all that skillful to mash a block string with different variations hoping your opponent messes up. Any chimp, can do that. Also you said there's not much whiff punishing in smash.....this is how I can tell you don't know what you're talking about. Throwing out well spaced attacks on your opponent shield, baiting out the OOS then WHIFF punishing, should be pretty telling. There's just alot of wrong in this video from someone who thought they was knowledgeable enough but sadly not really. I'll give it E for effort though.
I love watching videos like this comparing and contrasting Smash and FGCs. It gives me a lot more insight on how FGCs work and shows how close or how distant FGCs are to Smash. Thanks for the video, very well made!
im glad we're getting interesting discussion about the differences between smash and trad fgs. It feels like they're only thought about in isolation when comparing them can bring interesting things to light. Shields kind of have to be strong in smash. The idea of being able to pressure them like you do in a fighting game would be way too oppressive in smash, seeing as how they can be poked and broken in only a few hits. Without oos they'd be totally useless. To me the distinction in neutral is that trad fighting games are like endlessly precise but limited compared to smash in their options. You both inch back and forth til one person catches the other overstepping, its one less complex thing that the players are far better at. Smash neutral is based on more heavy conditioning, where very few things are a sure thing, players are less precise but have more freedom. In addition the ability to drift in the air opens up a second dimension of footsies. Trad fg players hone the skill of frame perfect pixel perfect reactions, smash players develop complex player + character specific feints to open an opponent up. Not to say trad fgs don't have conditioning and feints, but as I see it, it's a lot less central and certainly a smaller part of neutral. Just looking at defensive options, I know burst is a real lauded defensive mechanic in the fgc. But it's v simple compared to what smash has going on, I think of it like playing rps every actionable frame of a combo. To me smash has more interactive and complex defensive mechanics. DI and SDI means every hit gives the opponent whos hit an inch of mix, and the player who hits something to react to or read. Smash's defensive options (airdodge, directional airdodge, spotdodge, roll, counters) are all available all the time and things that can be read or occasionally reacted to. These defensive mechanics are also a part of your neutral, its all hollistic ofc. I think thats way cool. For the record I love both traditional fighting games and smash, they are both endlessly cool expressions of execution and strategy. I might have said things clumsily, I said mostly scattered word-vom, its hard to collect thoughts. So I'll talk and clarify more if people disagree.
the fact that you seem to suggest that every character in ult has good oos game makes the point at the end of this video moot. not every situation calls for shield.not every character benefits from their shield being hit. there are a lot of different stats and playstyles at play that influence if a player will be more dependent on their movement or their shield.
Great video, this is one of the very few I've seen that actually tries to bridge the gap between smash and traditional FGs. Casual traditional FG/Smash player here with more experience in Ultimate than the other games. Some people probably already mentioned this stuff but eh. The reason Cloud's Bair and other moves are considered to "skip neutral" in smash is because it can be continuously used with very little to no threat of punishment by most of the cast because of the extreme movement control that can make frame advantage irrelevant, especially on shield. In traditional FGs it would be something more akin to zoning as you get free pressure without having to actually interact with your opponent and force them to approach you, which essentially puts the victim of said "neutral skips" in constant disadvantage. Neutral in smash is more considered to be like the fox examples you showed where they were using defensive options to land a hit. Disadvantage is usually initiated after the first hit as it either leads to a true combo or a state where the player in disadvantage has very limited escape options, which can even include shielding as the shielding player will have to read the attacker to get a good punish. How you punish in disadvantage is heavily matchup dependent and factors in things like a character's weight, aerial drift, and fastest attack option to stuff follow-ups. To give an example some else mentioned, throws can be considered "kill options" in smash as they often pick between power, knockback, speed, and tethering to balance them out. Fox's throws for example tend not to launch very far but when coupled with his high speed can often keep his opponents in disadvantage whereas Ness's back throw is one of his most powerful kill options but allows very little follow-up. Traditional FG zoners find it much harder to escape pressure than ones in smash as their options are much more limited by stage size and movement, lack of "universal" buttons, and purposely designed holes in attack flexibility (not to mention movement mechanics). As others mentioned, shields do not last forever. Shield in smash is a very important resource, so even if the shield Chipp damage is gradual, it will break eventually. Defenders are always on a timer even if they don't get immediately punished for blocking. Shield breaking almost always results in a stock loss. Also you can get hit if your shield gets small enough to not cover your character's hurtbox and necessitates tech like shield DI which is very important in melee. Obviously shielders can get grabbed as well which makes things even harder and is even further exacerbated by the large number of command grabs in smash. The effects of these "neutral skip" moves/character types is much more felt in lower level play where interactions are often considered to be more like rock paper scissors, but still has repercussions on higher level players. It can be really strange in smash as rushdown characters can often be great zoners as well (think z broly in DBFZ). One of the most common examples is Fox in melee. While Shine is the best move in the game, his laser is one of the most important parts of his kit because it allows you to get free damage on your opponent and forces them to get in range of Fox's insane offensive options. Sonic in Ultimate works somewhat similarly as because he's so fast that he can take engagements literally whenever he wants. A good Sonic will approach and disengage until an opponent whiffs, which allows Sonic to get a free punish which makes him very unpopular in the community. Spacing is extremely important because the distance you need to close to get to your opponent makes the difference between making your movement linear and reactable or flexible and dangerous. It's all about controlling engagements as there will be far more of them in a game of smash than traditional FGs. Anyway if a better smash player is in the comments, feel free to correct me.
17:56 with the whole throwing out garbage thing. It’s not about trying to hit the opponent it’s more about controlling that space and if they move into it they get hit. Roy fair is an amazing example, because it has low endlag and auto cancels you can swing it make your approach safe or threaten space or run away it’s about how the attacks apply to movement, when you throw out a “garbage” move it is about more than getting a hit it’s about taking space and stage control. Because of how much you can influence your moves with your movement by air drift it make your opponent have to run away and lose stage control. This video provides a great analysis but lacks information on the more advanced aspects of smash’s movement
And remember that smash games are vastly different among themselves. I'd say the most aggressive smash games are smash 64 and melee simply due to the fact that the aggressive options some times outweigh the defensive options. In smash 64 shields can easily be melted down by almost all character and in melee shields aren't even equal for all characters and there are still ways to just delete your opponent's shield even if it requires more effort than in smash 64
It's not really a neutral skip though. It's very whiff punishable and loses out to other moves regularly. I understand why you say it's a neutral skip though. It being -5 on shield burst option with the option to mixup into a grab is dumb as hell, but's it's nothing compared to Bardock Lariat which catapults him across the screen instantly and allows him to start mashing buttons on you blocking or even start a combo.
Now lets talk about DI, why does that make smash the ultimate knoesge check FG (even before xrd), and how your oponent can influence your combos routes.
He clearly thinks DI is overrated as he alluded to early in the video. I would love him to make a video on that because I can’t comprehend how someone could like not value the depth that that brings to a fighting game.
@@SminkingDoctor worst thing abou it is just how its overcomplicating the echanic behind it and the angles you need to learn are just stupid. but past that the mind game and decision making is awsome.
As a long time smash player, since 64 its been interesting to see how smash has addressed shielding. If you ask most players that been with the series for a while, they will usually agree that shields have progressively gotten worse to use in the last 3 games. Which is incredible considering how good of an option it still is. But if you watch pro melee or 64, you almost never see shields except on platforms because of the shield drop mechanic, i think if you give ultimate a 20 year run time, youll see far less shielding, but it wont ever disappear like in melee
Crouch canceling does basically nothing in Ult, so that would never happen. But if you gave Ult 20 years it would turn into endless Steve dittos where the first person to get a stray hit wins the game instantly because everyone has mastered a thousand training mode combos. That character actually plays a 2D fighting game: you get a hit, you win.
@@danih.5675 idk bout that. He doesn’t sound like he’s salty to me. Just speaking facts. I think people just don’t like that the best character in the game is WACK AF
You just scratched the shield interactions. Neutral is really important in smash. Combos are good but the shear amount of situation you can get in is wild. Even in shield you can do more than you probably excpect even knowing you are playing the game. shielding is pretty scary to be in. Its a really stong option but it has really easy ways of being beat. And most importantly you cannot keep your shield u indefinetly. Meaning the reason they can use the shield so much is beause they are also managing how and when to use the shield not as a defence, but as a security to force the enemy to not hit their shield, otherwise they have a fair chace of losiing the interaction. I honestlty belive smash has a more demanding neutral than most fighting games. Even if the shield is the best option you cannot use it in most situations. And the stage alone give more meaning to any pressure. One mechanic doesnt rue them all, its really when you mix them that i gets really complicated. so looking at one mechanic alone dont make for a compeling argument because smash is designed to have really easy mechanics that can be built upon by association and situation. (And smash top players are miles aways skill wise from even good players)
This is a fascinating video, and I loved the analysis! For those interested, I can talk about “landing a hit” in melee because it’s… even stranger. Let’s start with the basics: shielding in melee isn’t the best. There’s few characters who are truly comfortable in shield. This is because OoS (out of shield) options in melee are generally weaker, and if your opponent suspects you might shield, they can do all sorts of things to throw you off. Crossups, safe shield pressure moves, safe disengage tools, etc. If you ever see shield, it’s because someone is -truly- in disadvantage, wants to bait an overextension, or because they’re running forward with it to overcome a spacing option and whiff punish. This doesn’t mean defense is weaker in melee. Oh no, there’s an even more convoluted option: holding down. This refers to two options. The first, is ASDI Down. If you get hit while holding down on the c-stick or analog stick while grounded, your character will Automatically SDI down, meaning they’ll shift downwards into the ground once hitlag is over. If your character is hit in this state, they’ll automatically land. If the move was strong enough that they’d enter tumble, they’ll immediately get put into knockdown on the ground (on their back, a terrible state to be in). BUT if the move was weak enough, your character will simply enter their normal landing animation, which is VERY quick, meaning they can quickly counterattack. The second technique is Crouch Cancelling. Simply, if you’re in crouch, you will take 1/3 of the knockback of any move that hits you. This usually pairs into ASDI Down since you’re already holding down. The popularization of ASDI Down caused controversy in the melee scene, and completely reinvented the game. Suddenly, safe weak hits that would previously keep your character in advantage are now an immediate neutral loss if the opponent whiff punished well. This is actually why many characters lack strong OoS options: many can just be ASDI Down’d. This is what makes neutral in melee so strange. Just because you hit someone doesn’t mean you’re in advantage. Hit them with a poorly spaced, weak enough move at low percents while they’re grounded, and YOU get opened up on. I could go on and on about this. How it affects the game REALLY depends matchup to matchup. In some, it’s actually pretty rare as almost all high tiers have strong anti-ASDI Down options. Either they have powerful moves that break ASDI-Down or can quickly link into other moves that can (peach, fox, falco, kinda falcon), or they have fast poke tools that can chip away at “Crouch Cancel Abusers” (Marth, Sheik, Puff, also kinda Falcon). This might make people believe melee is inherently defensive, despite its fast paced nature. On the contrary, because counterhits are this threatening in melee, players have to use their superior speed and range to expertly place options at incredible speed and precision that defeat the tool. Oh and of course, holding down is just beaten by grabbing. Except against jigglypuff, since her crouch is so low a lot of characters will just miss. And then you immediately die. Like, immediately. Since she’ll the just rest your whiffed grab, which is almost always a 1H/KO.
I largely agree, but a few minor quibbles: it's not so much that out of shield options are good in smash (compared to in traditional fighting games they're very limited, as in trad games you're fully actionable as soon as you leave block stun) it's more that smash has much lower block stun. Melee has more block stun (or shield stun) in general than ult, so you do get block strings and frame traps. A classic is a spacie doing an aerial into shine on shield, then either doing an aerial to catch a lazy shield grab attempt or wave dashing out of shine (or wave shining) in the direction they read the defending will roll. If the spacie read their defensive option incorrectly it returns to neutral, but if they're correct they start a combo. Also, smash kinda-sorta does have the sort of neutral skip moves you described at the start, it's just that they tend to be horrifically unsafe on block, so they're more neutral hail marys than skips. (I'm thinking of moves like Falcon's raptor boost or Bayonetta's heel slide - they zoom across the screen and lead to big combos if they hit, but they are reactable and get you killed if they're blocked.)
In smash, although shielding is still better than blocks, it’s still not a great situation (a slight disadvantage) to be stuck in shield because you have to do something to exit it or else your shield will break. So a move that “skips neutral” is one that provides real pressure for little to no commitment that forces the opponent to enter a disadvantageous situation
I'll also say, I think when smash players say some characters avoid neutral: it means that character and it's move force players to play neutral far more differently than they would if that move didn't exist. Like the fact that mythra can whiff most of her aerials without getting punished means the way to get in on her likely depends on her committing to a bad approach or you spending extra time on good positioning and movement. tldr: some characters skip being put in shield because they can run away or space you out with ease. 2nd edit: you do bring this up lol, so i'm just being redundant
Amazing video I have a few concerns with how you say smash’s nuteral is rewarding when you sit in a shield. This is just incorrect, when you shield you are in disadvantage. You have to GUESS are they going to swing is that swing safe or are they going tk grab or in the case of special characters are they going to gain a resource like blocks or charge shot. MOVEMENT IS KEY IN SMASH if you shield you have lost nutural and now have to guess smashes nuteral is like advanced footsies playing in your range and just outside of the opponent. Blocking vs sheilding is very importing cus sheild is a resource you can run out of sheild you can get when you sheild from attacks that shield poke. Smash’s nuteral is about how you move how you space and how you force your opponent to sheild. What you don’t show in your video is the steps before the sheilding happens that’s where nuturral excels in smash.
One thing that is very important about platform fighters is how much space you have to move. There is far more distance you can travel both horizontally and vertically, and this impacts neutral a lot. Probably the main thing is that retreating is far easier. Being able to turn around and just sprint away from the opponent or just jump a mile in the air over them means that it can be very hard to force someone into a bad situation, and not having a limit on how much space you can retreat means it can be harder to chase down. And because there really isn't much in platform fighters that properly matches running up to someone after knocking them down or being plus on block in a traditional fighting game, getting one hit isn't a concrete way to let you do what you want because there isn't much stopping the opponent from getting away after. Because of this, neutral is very much focused on baits. Simply running up to someone can and will cause a reaction from them, from jumping to running to shielding. And you can use this to create a gameplan. My preferred thing is to pressure opponents into backing up a lot until they reach the ledge. Without being able to retreat, they may get scared and try to attack, or go full turtle. Either way, cutting off escape routes is extremely important in platform fighters. It's why zss down b is so hated for its ability to get past you basically for free, or why passive play is so much more prevalent in platform fighters. I think this is kinda where the concept of "neutral is more important in platform fighters" came from. It isn't necessarily neutral that's important, it's positioning and movement. Two aspects of neutral game, but not the entire thing. Anyways idk how to end this and I don't even know if what I said makes sense but have a good day.
This is a very interesting video! But respectfully, I have to say a lot of the things you said in this video aren't quite right. I want to clarify that crossing-up is not what you said it is in this video. Crossing up in Smash is when you do anything that puts you behind an opponent, but that's not *really* what it is. If you're playing fox and up-b through your opponent and end up behind them, that isn't a cross-up. What you're missing is that crossups are a part of a larger mixup game where you are aiming to ambiguously put yourself in front of or behind your opponent without your opponent being able to tell. If you are obviously putting yourself behind your opponent, that isn't a crossup, its just going behind your opponent. So while Greninja's dash attack is an example of crossing up, that is because it is ambiguous whether or not Greninja will end up behind or in front of the opponent. Consequently, landing with an aerial on top of an opponent is also a crossup in smash. Shield is also not as strong as you're saying it is. Yes out of shield options are great, but they lose to *a lot* of things. The biggest one is spacing your attacks. Making sure you are attacking at maximum range keeps you safe from a lot of out of shield options. There is also grabbing, which would beat any out of shield options by virtue of beating shield. So its rare that sitting in your shield will give you an advantage. Most of the time, you will see neutral in smash literally is just characters dashing and jumping around, shielding only for short spans, and often only because it fully stops your character's movement.
I think the discrepancy between terms between traditional fighters and Smash fighters can also be explained by Smashers (especially historically) generally not being familiar with traditional fighters. I've never played anything beyond Melee but I'm also old enough to remember when "crossing up" was borrowed into Smash lingo, probably around 2004 or 2005. There was always just enough crossing of worlds for words and ideas from other fighters to drift into our community (everything from cross up to wavedash to that old Sirlin "Play to Win" article), but then those words and ideas would take a life of their own among Smashers who didn't play and didn't care about other fighting games.
Good vid is dificult to find a video comparation of both types of fighting games whitout a clear bias from the creator and as someone that enjoy both kind of games is fun to see someting like this
The whole getting punished for wiff punishing in smash is a skill/knowledge issue which is just as present in traditional fgcs, like knowing high low on every move. The factor here is knowing the endlag/shield stun of the opps moves versus the startup of yours, because thats how shield pressure functions opposed to blockstrings
I think you had very good points but then threw it out the window to go with the more controversial ending for the sake of being controversial. Neutral means two very different things within these games. Neither is “harder” or more important than their counterpart. They are both equally important but played completely differently. Which you did address but then decided to trash on smash. Good video overall tho. Also the local scene for smash is huge whereas FGC games is impossible to find a local for your dedicated game so we’re forced to play online. (I play strive and don’t really like platform fighters)
In smash bros melee, offensive shield options are on average a lot worse than in ultimate. Characters like fox and falco can do long block strings without going punished and most characters have very good attacks to pressure shields. Going into shield can be a death sentence for a lot of characters. As for skipping neutral, Fox’s lasers can let him avoid all neutral interactions altogether by running away. It won’t net him a hit or a kill but potentially a lot of damage over a game. The best way to avoid it is to be close to Fox, which is exactly what he wants, so you made his job easier. Alternatively he can run away and shoot more lasers when you get close.
The reason why that fox example is a WTF but common example is because 99% of moves are minus and really minus except aerials which are just safe. So that's why there's always "reset" pressure. Shield is the go to option against everything. OOS is not a mechanic that buffs shield. It's a mechanic that in all Smash games limits the broken shield. It restricts your punish to Up Special, Up Smash, grab, or move out the way with rolls or jumps This is nerf because shielding blocks all directions and most moves are unsafe even are aerials. You can't be in your opponents face, you're always keeping yourself at a distance because block strings don't exist in Ultimate except for few scenarios because plus moves are very hard to come by. If Akuma it's you with sweep you pretty much do any button but in Smash you can only do Up moves or aerials or else you will get hit by a 10-15 frame penalty depending on the game
This is a great video and it's nice to see a traditional fighting game player actually compliment smash players for neutral :) Sadly I do have a couple notes though but I don't inherently disagree with the notion that there's no instant neutral win button in smash and that smash may be less neutral heavy than traditional fighters. I just think there may have been a misinterpretation of how shields work in smash. Now yes out of shield games are busted and will always be good, but the act of shielding has the same risk in ultimate as throwing out a move. In its simplest form smash neutral is a rps game with attack, shield and grabs but then you add platform fighter movement and it gets so much more complicated. If a player is to shield though, they won't be free to punish anything their way, it's an option that if successful can lead to a punish or a combo, which is similar to landing a hit. There's also the fact that unless you're game and watch who has a massive frame 3 invincable up B, shields are actually quite prone to getting spaced on and being unable to get punished. When you showed Eim fair-ing Zackray's shield it wasn't just an unpunishable option from frame data, but also unpunishable because of spacing. If you couldn't tell I'm a smash player and love smash neutral but once again, I'm not saying it's better or worse than traditional fighters, just different :)
Part of what make's Ultimate shields so scary is the modern buffer system. Every Out of Shield Option is frame perfect with little effort, while a short-hop fast-fall aerial scales to player precision and is STILL minus on block with perfect execution. Meanwhile in Melee, shields are abusable because of the lack of buffer and human limitations on precision, and the insane frame data of moves like shine can turn a blocking situation into a nightmare. Players will instead use the extra mobility from wavelanding/dashing for precisely the evasive defense you allude to in other fighters. So uh, you can see why people still play melee lol.
Its weird because at the end there to me you were explaining why neutral in smash in complex. It being hard to simply land a hit is why the neutral seems to be harder. I think its a good thing for people to be punished for approaching idk its just different tho
I love seeing the chip example of how to choose what pokes to use and letting the match play. Just to show the player cams that razzo is fully suited up in a maid outfit absolutely wreaking havoc.
PLEASE make this a series. As a smash player, I learned so much! I had no idea that the way we play nuteral was unorthodox. You're bridging gaps here my guy, keep it up!
That actually helps me understand so much. I had no idea blocking was so strong in smash. I remember messing around with smash 4 and getting absolutely washed cuz I tried to play it like a regular fighter. Anything thing that is hard to wrap my head around is how long the timer is and how it doesn't reset after taking a round (or life I guess?). Winning only through ring out is also kinda wild.
Smash timer is kinda like dbfz, in that you never really play around it, it's just there as a way to make sure the game eventually ends, unlike something like tekken
I don't mean to sound like a jerk but this guy doesn't know much about smash and I'd hate for someone to think he does. He's making shield to be like some crazy mechanic thats massively broken and its not for the most part. Out of shield or OOS is simply a block punish in traditional fighters. It's not that deep. The timer, the ring out win condition, none of this stuff should seem wild.....it's smash, its been around since 1999.
An important thing to remember is as you build percent different moves will begin to kill out right. Generally characters will die around a certain percentage when a common kill move works. So while there are gimps (a quick ring out) and SDs (self destructs) that are somewhat strange from an FGC perspective it's more like a health bar than you might expect.
@@dripfoe_3307 You're right lol. 2D and 3D fighters are just so simple that smash looks wild in comparison. I never really tried it competitively til 4 and like there are a ton of little differences that make the game hard to grasp for me.
this feels like buying a car in a foreign country, getting in an accident because your brakes didn't work, and the car company telling you "brakes are just damage control to soften accidents, idk why we have to tell you this"
this actually made me evaluate some of my problems with smash ultimate, despite being a long time smash and FGC player. I think I'm playing it too much like a traditional fighter
Movement is the main difference between Smash and Trad Fighting game, I guess the neutral debate is like : Is it more skilled to have to break a very strong guard by choosing between a ton of movement and offensives options or is itmore skilled to have to makes sure you never lost neutral because the consequences of this are terrible. I think both takes a lot of work to master anyway
I mean, they pretty much all have the same meaning. It's just they don't function the same. Skipping Neutral in both Smash and fighting games is simply just using your safest or fastest option yo place you in an advantageous state. Cross-up in both Smash and fighting games is just using an attack or working with your spacing to place confusion on an opponent by ending up other side of them, catching them before they can react. Frame Traps in Smash and fighting games is just putting your opponent in a position where you're pretty much guaranteed a hit or another turn based on how they act. Even running up and shielding in Smash is the equivalent of dashing and blocking in a fighting game because that just how you block in Smash. Also, block strings in Smash exist. Because there are shield break set-ups that characters have and catch you with for shielding at certain points. Also, great video.
That one guy's definition of a frame trap in the context of smash isn't correct. A frame trap is essentially any nontrue combo /or/ shield pressure in which the followup attack is faster than the victim's fastest option out of shield/hitstun. Punishing an air dodge against a fast attack is just normal bait and punish gameplay. This is also probably my melee/pm bias talking, but the idea of Smash being more neutral focused feels like a product of those games high level play sculpting the longevity of competitive play in the series. In Melee and PM, out of shield options are generally much weaker if you don't get a powershield, which characters like Fox and Peach having potential full shield-breaker combos against someone that tries to play passively. In those games the best defensive tool is avoiding the enemy altogether with a dash dance or aerial drift or wavedash, or eating the hit with a crouch cancel to convert damage of your own at the cost of taking a hit yourself.
One of the weirdest things when transitioning from Smash to traditional fighting games is being able to blockstring people. You’re telling me it’s not just the end of my turn when I they block my attack
I mean ken and ryu and peach have blockstrings
Correct
You have block strings in melee I’d say
Falco can do some fucked up stuff
So true. When transitioning to ggst I block like two moves and I'll be like aight my turn now I'mma jump out and get hit for it every time.
block strings are kinda just replaced with shield pressure in smash. not everyone has block strings although some characters do, but everyone has shield pressure
The definition of "neutral" in Smash, as I've heard it explained, is instead of defensive, neutral, and offensive. It's disadvantage, neutral, and advantage. By that definition, a "neutral skip" is having an advantaged state when characters are in "neutral".
That would explain things like Pikachu N.Special or Cloud B.Air being "neutral skips."
@@Sh1v3rIZAE yeah but no pika main besides ESAM actually thinks it's a neutral skip, ESAM just loses all reason when it comes to his character.
T-jolt is a bit weird because it sees more use as a edgeguard option than a neutral win button
@@Sh1v3rIZAE It is a neutral skip because you can approach with it forcing your opponent into shield and just grab them.
@@Sh1v3rIZAE I think the idea is that it immediately puts you in an advantageous state and forces the opponent to respond before the percent lead grows too high, which is difficult since Pikachu is fast and small, meaning he can avoid hits better.
T-Jolt is seen as a “neutral skip” because it’s basically a fireball you can approach behind, which is both rarer and more dangerous in Smash than in something like Street Fighter. It also has a billion other uses, but that’s one of the more deadly/annoying ones
as someone who has a ton of smash friends, it's really funny watching them constantly back dash whenever we try a new Fighting game (from my vast steam library) even when they shouldn't because it's engraved in their mind to be defensive, even on the offensive
When I picked up my first traditional fighter and was learning it with guys who had been playing traditional fighters for years, one thing that always blew their minds was that wake up DP almost never worked on me, and I punished it almost everytime. They expected it to be a huge noob killer against me, but I was just so used to the idea that even when I get in and Im on offense, its good to be weary of what aggressive options your opponents have to get themselves out of that spot, and let them act first to give you an opening. Not saying that isnt a fundie in traditional fighters, but its how you play out a lot of "oki" or pressure situations in Smash. Dont attack them directly, put them in a spot where they have to do something, then try to cover their options. Thats why youll a lot of times see Smash players attacking the air around their opponents or even just standing/waiting in a threatening proximity when they have them cornered or in a bad spot. Theyre trying to call out/react to the next action they will make rather than going directly for them, cuz although blocking a move is strong in Smash, unlike traditional fighters you cant block forever, so if I dont commit to something on their shield that they can reversal, eventually theyll have to make an action out of shield/the corner to get away. In a more intricate game like Melee, sometimes the best thing to do on offense is to intentionally let your opponent hit you cuz although they have good aggressive options on defense, a mechanic called Crouch Cancelling can make your opponents move unsafe on hit and give you a huge opening at the cost of just a little damage, and if you put them in a certain spot the ONLY moves they can use will be unsafe on hit. Its really fun to look at the differences in how people figured out the best ways to beat each other's ass in these games. What makes them different, but still so fun in their own ways.
@@Yvs8962 Fantastic comment. Shielding on platform in Melee is such a strong defensive option because getting hit allows you to shield-drop aerial and punish your opponent.
@@nathanelwood5312 Meanwhile shilelding on a platform in ult is more risky bc the platforms are harder to get off of and your OOS options just might not hit
What free fighting games do you recommend I have brawlhalla but that's still a platform fighter
@@ink31930 Smash and Rivals of Eather are a good option
Probably the best video I've seen that explains the difference in thought process between traditional FGs and platform fighters, great vid!
💯th like :D
Yeah, the idea of neutral is totally different in platform fighters.
Now that I've watched more, there's some really significant differences and some surprising similarities.
@Dream Absolutely. Also, some platform fighters - like Rivals of Aether and Brawhalla - don't even have a block button. "Ultimate" is correct, but "platform fighters" is not.
It also explains why I despise platform fighters.
As a smash competitor I just want to say thank you for actually including us in a conversation about FGC
nothing to be thankful for dude, it’s not cause a few greasy nerds with a gatekeeping overlord complex say Smash is not a fighting game that it actually means it isn’t.. anyone with a brain can love these games and still categorize them as fighting games despite how different they are 😊
It's just mad FGC players that think smash is easy when Melee is easily more complex than their games
@@acidrazor66 I mean idk why Smash players are so pressed about it when, as talked about in the video, we can't even talk about "neutral" with each other and mean the same thing.
Every fighting game has their own wacky mechanics, but they all share mostly the same fundamentals, so I can sit with pretty much any fighting game and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing. But none of that applies when I play Smash.
Saying they're the same "kind" of game is like saying chess and Warhammer are the same kind of game because you play them both on a board.
@vmp pvm I mean, they're both tabletop war games. They can be vastly different table top games, but both fit that genre perfectly well. Same for Smash and traditional FGCs.
@@wlt3585 baseball and tennis are the same kind of game because they both use a ball and you can play them on grass
As someone who's pretty solid at traditional fighting games, and TERRIBLE at Smash, I've really wanted someone to break down stuff like this for a long time. I would love to see more of this comparing and contrasting of ideas between traditional games and platform games, because I think it would help a LOT of people who are trying to get into one subgenre vs the other.
I'm glad it's not just me who can play a traditional fighter, but smash just doesn't click for me
I’m good at Smash, but I suck at traditional fighters.
Agreed with you.
Yeah, I have no idea where to start with traditional fighting games. I can almost pull off a Joker raindrop combo but uh… I can spam Rambo’s booby trap?
I can't do either, so, rip me lmao
Could also be because you cannot pay me to sit down and pratice inputs. I find inputs as i play by accident; my main in Blaz, funny clone knoife boi, i only learned about something i could do in the air a year into owning the game and i'd never have it any other way
On that same level, you cannot pay me to find moves that combo into eachother in smash
I think the disconnect stems from a difference in what neutral means as well, in smash someone doesn’t need to be up close or even hitting the opponent to have their turn. It’s less about turns and more about stage positioning and “advantage” in the clip where fox spot doges and runs back you might think that because he reset to neutral but that isn’t the case. Fox is still in advantage state because he is holding center stage and is putting pressure on cloud by keeping cloud in the corner via not doing anything and trying to react to whatever the cloud would do. So in smash I guess “neutral skip moves” are less about moves that immediately get you in to start running your pressure and more so moves that dive you advantage state, which means pretty much every good move in smash would be considered a neutral skip
Advantage state is still a thing in traditional fighters from what I understand, due to characters different preferred ranges and the ends of the screen, but it’s much less important than in smash.
@@noahwoods9871 It's equally as important, but "Advantage State" isn't really a term in traditional fighting games and we describe similar situations in different ways.
Yea the dude who made this video rlly doesnt understand how smash works lmao. If he thinks shielding is broken he should play smash 4 💀
@@djerk2138 that’s really not what I’m trying to get at at all. The guy who made this definitely spent more time in traditional fighters compared to smash and as someone who’s spent a good amount of time in both I thought I should put my take out there. Still a great video with great explications between the perspectives of fgc people and smash people. Also, relatively to traditional fighters shielding in smash is broken as fuck
@@djerk2138 did you not hear him say the video was about ultimate?
I guess a great way to look at it is that in traditional fighters a move that "skips neutral" brings you to an immediate advantage, while moves that "skip neutral" in smash are just moves that play the neutral game for you, which is why so many of the posts by smashers are just moves that are incredibly safe.
I think this is exacerbated by the fact that so many moves intended to be approach options to close the distance for whiffs/extend combos are actually really bad in Smash outside of a casual level, and the ones that are good rarely convert into a combo/string after (aside from Sonic spindash with 1-2 followups after or Steve Cart which is usually 50/50s). Closest thing in Ult to being a usable gap closer input is Falco sideB at certain distances, and it's extremely punishable in a neutral scenario especially on block so it can't really put you in advantage on its own.
Closest thing to what most traditional FGs are looking to do with neutral skips is probably dash -> shield on fast characters in previous smash titles that favored shield like Brawl and 4, and even that isn't going to often result in a combo tree or blockstring.
Half jokingly, I think Ult Kazuya is kind of a neutral skip with the big caveat of if you can get in range. If it connects, you immediately "get in" and are set up for aggression, and your "mixup game" is how you follow your opponent's DI/platform tech options. Worst case if they block, you rarely get punished so you just reset to neutral, it's really only punishable on whiff.
Note about crossups in Smash: So Smash crossups are very different than in traditional fighters. Since theres no directional blocking a crossup isnt a mixup in the same way. However, also unlike traditional fighters, your character doesnt turn around to face the opponent automatically, and in fact, while in shield you cant turn around at all without an option that stops shielding.
Because out of shield options are so strong as the video says, using a move that ambigiously crosses up can bait an out of shield option that only hits in front that can be punished, or can at least force the opponent to use a reversal option that hits both sides but is less rewarding. There are out of shield options that you can instantly do out of shield in both directions (most up specials) but even then, the opponent has to guess whether you crossed up or not to punish a lot of the time. Its interesting to me how completely different mechanics can converge into similar concepts.
There is directional blocking in melee btw
There is a mechanic in all smash games (since 64 I believe) called shield tilting where if you lightly hold a direction you can reduce shield damage at the risk of being shield poked
@@samg131 not rlly, the only character that really applies to is G&W, since his shield is a skittle, but shields still cover all sides in melee, therefore shields are not directional.
Shield tilting just helps when your shield is about to break, because some parts of your hitbox become vulnerable so yhea, most of the time you'll avoid shielding when you're low on it
@@frogqueen1587 i meeeeeeeeeeean
Consider a peach shielding on platform above a marth or a fox: a well spaced up air or uptilt (respectively) can shieldpoke a non shieldtilting peach even at full shield because her bubble doesn't cover her feet. The same applies to jigglypuff's left ear at full shield, and a lot of other characters in circumstantial situations. In that way, we could consider shieldpoking to be analogous to a 360-degree crossup system.
Great video! I think there's some nuance to Ultimate's neutral that could use further elaboration. I don't think Ultimate's shields are nearly as powerful as you present them to be for most characters. Some characters can definitely get strong punishes oos but more often than not, these options are simple get off me tools that may or may not lead to a meaningful advantage state for the defending character. Another massively impactful factor to Ultimate's neutral is the general unreactability of neutral pacing making shielding a necessary evil in many cases. Shields being weaker would make neutral feel suffocating in my opinion, with characters swinging their low lag buttons while you have no options to deal with their pressure. Universal frame 3 jumpsquats, dash into shield taking longer to come out than most dash attacks take to connect in their burst range, and moves that are almost all minus on shield translates to a neutral comprised of preemptive measures and informed mixups. Throwing out buttons in unreactable ranges forces your opponent to consider shield, leading to the shield pressure mixup. Opposed to traditional fighters, Ult's pressure is ambiguous (meaning there aren't many examples of blockstrings/advantage state that aren't a combo, juggle, ledgetrap, or edgeguard), necessitating good movement to get your opponent out of their shield and moving in a way you can punish. The strength of these instantenous defensive options (shield, jump, spotdodge, etc.) leads players into developing habits revolving around them, which you as the aggressor are tasked with recognizing and punishing. This is much less clearly defined as traditional fighting game advantage but establishing certainty in your opponents options is what, in my eyes, makes neutral wins uniquely rewarding. Opening your opponent up can happen in all kinds of ways and it makes them consider when and how to use their options out of shield.
notably this also means that shield IS a part of neutral, and your interactions during shield and shield pressure are what lead to advantage or disadvantage, not instant advantage as it is framed in the video. shield seems like advantage to newer players because they don't have mastery over all of their options.
and interestingly, i've heard that MBTL also had an extremely strong defense before and was similarly disliked by other fighting game fans, so it's not even that traditional fighters universally have weak defense - that's just the GG bias lol
Wow you expressed all of that really well, felt similarly about the shield while watching the video but couldn’t find the words to explain it. Great vid by Bambo and great comment by you haha
@@gabisabrina8257 Thanks! I don't know how I was able to articulate this well @ 3 a.m. lol
that was a really nice comment, while watching that bit of the video I just had to disagree about shields being too strong, sometimes I feel like they are not strong enough tbh (especially if you’ve ever played online against a masher). The best part about smash for me is how interactive the game is, everything is very human, and very ambiguous. To the point where a lot of top players aren’t actually that knowledgable in terms of technicalities about the game, it’s all about understanding the opponents and how they play.
Yea this dude just sucks at smash if he thinks shields r op 💀
9:01 showing Razzo in a maid outfit after the tense neutral is peak FGC
When I first picked up Guilty Gear I was so confused. I blocked his attack. That's what I'm supposed to do. WHY DID I GET HIT FOR IT.
Frame data
:]
learning about blockstring frametraps actually confused me at first cuz I was used to the smash bros kind where corrin is guaranteed to hit you with upair no matter your airdodge timing. While I haven't been able to make particularly good use of them offensively, atleast I'm not trying to mash out when I physically cannot. Most of the time. The cool part is that they never expect the frame one safejump immune reversal with massive damage and a hard knockdown that resets to fullscreen.
I've heard the neutral play of Mango (in Melee) referred to as 'camping in your face' where he plays extremely non-committal, but in such a close and aggressive way that you feel pressured to swing or choose a committal defensive option. I think it's a perfect way of summing up most smash neutral. Comparing platform and traditional fighters is a topic that needs more coverage and has a lot of video essay potential, so keep up the good work.
Also, thank God you didn't play smash 4
And there's difference in my opinion. Because playing against a player like Mang0 there's almost never a neutrel in the fgc sense of the word be cause Mang0 is almost always on offence
Only against the very top players and against certain matchups like against Hungrybox's Jigglypuff will Mang0 slow down and play more defence.
@@kneo12 the reason why being because mang0 knows how to win neutral right away against most other players, or is at least confident in the fact that they aren't aware of how to stop him as well as top players might be. similar things happen across all games
Kinda like boxing, you move forward with your guard up. When you punch, they might counter punch.
@@Lilliathi No, it's entirely like all martial arts. You don't want someone to actually touch you because even someone touching your shield (arms up) means you're on the defensive and being heavily defensve in inherently bad, so evasion is much more common, so you're never giving 100% while squaring up unless you know exactly what your opponent is going to do.
@@tumultoustortelliniAlso the fact getting punched fucking hurts
Lmao the nobody skips neutral in this game EXCEPT THIS and it just shows spin dash
Laughs in carried
While a great video, I think the ending statement has some flaws. Mainly because even if shield is really good, your OOS options aren’t special unless they are moves like G&W. They are just moves that the opponent can guess and stuff out with their moves. Shield is very strong, but it also has a lot of it’s own weaknesses beyond grab, such as you can only shield for a certain amount of time before you die.
I was going to say, complaining about how strong shield is then also talking about how hard whiff punishes are says a lot about how much shield limits your options in terms of movement in ult (and melee/rivals to a lesser extent).
Completely agree, he didn't really mention the negatives of holding shield for too long, like getting your shield break or shield poked, most of the good characters have ways to pressure your shield enough to lead to that, at top level they can't always just wait for them to mess up
@@geramoreno8458 FRRRR like shields having HP instead of there being chip damage is a way bigger difference between the genres than anything about having a dedicated block button or some moves having less lag out of a block than others
@@ktoolsssb7080 disagree it is more limiting to your movement to be in shield in melee than ultimate; melee is so free that it still feels pretty free tho
@@ktoolsssb7080 rival doesnt even have a shield lmao
I think the main issue with the “skip neutral” posts is that platform fighters have a much more intricate way of measuring neutral, advantage, and disadvantage. It usually just comes down to stage control, which is why a lot of people posted safe, long range pokes that they can use as string starters. Each of those moves puts you into advantage, but it’s not really a traditional fighters advantage.
Great video but I honestly think you kind of shot yourself in the foot in the end with the whole "everything is so safe" bit, cause in Ult there are so many things that a lot of characters just CANNOT true punish on block, regardless if they're minus or not, instantly making a scramble situation of "do I press something out of shield or not?" since so many moves used out of shield commonly are HIDEOUSLY unsafe, you risk your own oos option being blocked, dodged, or even interrupted by a jab or other quick option. this plus a plethora of basic techniques aid in beating classic defensive maneuvers (tomahawk grab/jab to deal with blocking and soptdodging on reaction to an approach respectively, also boost grab for instance) unless your out of shield options are crazy good (like mr game and watch for instance whose gameplan partially revolves around stuffing approaches via blocking/dash shielding) being "stuck in shield" is a common state where you're being pressured but don't know what to press and when to press it yet, effectively rendering you stuck, it's even worse if you have no stage to work with too. Not to mention a plethora of moves designed to put fear into any opponent even daring to block, to name just a few, EWGF, every command grab in the game with even modest reward, phantom, splattershot, and basically any -2/-3 aerial in the game, aerials so safe not even the best possible out of shield options can beat them, such safe pressure being readily available along with shield being nerfed from the previous game makes it not really as game defining of a thing as it seems, it's basically just another move people throw out, just as a guard, and not a move, if that makes sense.
Was waiting for the first comment to reference tomahawk grabs, yeah idk I see shielding as more of a lesser disadvantage state. The fact you can condition this “super safe option” just wouldn’t make sense. + kill throws exist
As mostly a Smash guy, hopefully I can give some context about how Smash neutral works for those less familiar with it. As said in the video, a lot of it stems from playing around the shield, but the moves you can use out of shield in Smash aren't universal - there's actually only a few you can do and it all stems from jumping.
Basically, there's really only three options that ACTUALLY cancel the shield in Smash - grabbing, dodging, and jumping.
Grabbing and dodging are self-explanatory, and jumping itself obviously means you can go into aerial moves as well. But jumping also has the odd quirk where you can cancel the jumpsquat animation frames into either of the "Up + button" inputs, those being Up Smash or Up Special. So you can only get two of your grounded moves to function as out of shield options by effectively doing two cancels at once. Altogether this means you only have 5 options you can use when someone hits your shield: Grab, Dodge, Jump, Up Smash, Up Special.
Since you can't (usually) just "open up" the opponent through their shield like you can with a crossup in a traditional fighter, a lot of what Smash becomes is conditioning and baiting defensive options. Each of those 5 options can be punished in their own way, so the gameplan becomes using safe aerials (via crossups, spacing, and/or having moves with good frame data) to bait their out of shield options, then you learn their patterns and punish the options they like to go for instead.
The clip used in the video where the Fox lands a hit on Cloud by hitting Cloud's shield, then jumping and doing an attack in the air before Cloud's even there followed by Cloud jumping into the attack is actually a great example. The Fox jumping up and throwing out an aerial attack wasn't random. They'd observed that the Cloud player liked to jump out of shield as their escape option when having their shield pressured. So the Fox player hit their shield with a safe move to bait the opponent's shield option, and then since they knew it was most likely going to be a jump they punished the jump immediately after - before the Cloud had even done it in fact.
The jump thing for Up Smash and Up Special is not true for Ultimate. You don't need to input jump to do those out of shield anymore, you just press the input to them and it cancels shield
Yea the dude who made this video very clearly doesnt understand how smash works lmao
@@tastyfalcon1788 That's true in terms of output, Ultimate does make it easier to Up Special or Up Smash out of shield. On a technical level, it recognizes an up input as a jump even if you have tap jump turned off, which is why other options don't work the same way. The grab button is similar, where it reads it as a shield and an A input at the same time, which is why in some rare occasions one of those inputs can get dropped.
@@AntifrostI love when my grab button becomes a smash attack
I think the fact that sitting in shield is an effective tactic shows that neutral is more patient and sometimes defense oriented. There are many players that abuse the opponents shield and are rarely seen shielding themselves. At top level play, smash ultimate comes down to how effectively you can move and space your moves just a little better than your opponents. It requires micro movements and you rarely spend any time in shield at top level play (depending on the character, some characters gameplan rely heavily on out of shield options). I am an ultimate fanboy so I’m bias but I appreciate its intricacy and variability in play style. Non of the characters have the same style, each character is played differently and played differently by different players. It never gets old for me
the thing is,mashing shield is not the only option. Short hopping lows,spot dodging,rolling(even though in ultimate they nerfed it because of sm4sh Bayo and how much players abused her broken roll into witch time stuff),and they included a discount 3s parry as well. Mashing shield is just the basic option for basic players,which says a lot
every character plays the same in Ult, wdym?
"Microspacing" in Ult is just a matter of not overextending jumps since the game has such limited movement. Players at the top level of previous entries, _especially_ Melee, are microspacing. Ult players are just mixing up attack timings and using more empty hops than normal, that's it. It's not completely their fault, the game literally forces you to play like a shadowboxing masher. It's sad that the game that finally solved the problem with heavies being almost universally bad in Smash made just about everything else about the game worse.
traditional fighters make you play around an opponent's defense by making you try to pierce through an opponent's guard, meanwhile smash makes you play around whether or not your opponent is choosing to guard.
smash doesn't really have a system for high/low mixups unless you're absolutely terrible at managing your shield health, but that recovers so unbelievably fast that it wont matter past a few seconds. shielding is just inherently less risky since it covers literally every opponent's attack that isnt a grab
also, ultimate's spacing is one of the worst aspects of the game if you ask me. dashing forces you to go for a set amount of distance before you can act, which is horrible for microspacing.
its not a horrible idea to make running risky, if the point is to incentivize walking as the lower risk option. but that has such dogshit acceleration that trying to avoid an attack that you're in the range of by walking out of the way is actually so much riskier than just dashing.
the game doesnt control in a very freeing way. melee and the other games at the very least have alternative movement options: but would wavedashing be as necessary if the normal movement had that freedom?
@@ytcmbt2505 WRONG! theres TWO playstyles! (masher and zoner)
yeah that's for ultimate though. Melee has actual shield pressure strings that can break your shields, and movement whiff punishing is so much more important in melee. Melee also has a movement system that is way deeper than ultimate's by far. I urge you to watch any second of Jmook vs Cody and tell me how fox, the rushdown character, plays that much differently when he actually benefits from the opponent shielding.
The difference is that in Melee those shield pressure strings are limited to basically one or two characters in practice
@@tastyfalcon1788 is it?
Fox, falco and peach all have very good and fast aerials they can chain on shield, plus peach has dsmash and her grab game is good. Sheik and falcon are terrifying to shield against given their amazing punish off of grab on the entire cast, on top of their safe aerials. Sheik also has fast tilts to call out oos options. Mid tiers like samus or luigi get use their weird tech to seriously threaten shields with some setup. Puff and marth kinda play the same way as in ult, doing a grab vs oos callout mixup that has potential stock ending outcome.
I mean, I'd argue shine OOS actually means it's WORSE in Melee in some regards, but it depends on what parts of the cast you're talking about. Fox/Falco are the only two characters that SUPER change the distinction here, as they can both 1) break shields with multi-shine, 2) escape shield pressure within 4-7 frames, putting out a move with intangibility that leads into combo, tech chase, or neutral reset. As you've mentioned, some characters get more situational free passes on shield (Peach nair -> dsmash), and otherwise it's mostly the same (spacing). And yes, Fox vs Sheik (or really most of the cast) you do indeed get a free pass to nair shine a shield into a mix up.
I think the increased pace and speed of aerial drifts mean that the entire cast has an easier time picking their spots and hits though. You have more freedom to space aerials on shield, albeit with a higher execution barrier to do so.
@@claye_l463 I don't really play against Peach often, but when playing against anyone other than Fox and especially Falco, their shield pressure is not nearly as oppressive. Against spacies there's really nothing you can do once caught in shield
@@claye_l463 shield pressure strings that truly lock you in shield completely are extremely rare. Not even Fox can do it with multishines, you can always drop shield or roll out. Yeah some characters have really good options for shield pressure but true blockstrings are exceedingly rare. Melee shield pressure tends to be a tradeoff between "am I safe right now" and "will I be safe after my next move", the variation being the crux of Melee's depth regarding shield pressure
Peach's dsmash is one move that locks someone in shield and also eats shields, but being a single move it doesn't really count as a string haha
Being harder to hit opponents in smash is definitely important for it's mechanics to work properly, this being because "getting a hit" has vastly different outcomes in Platform Fighters and Traditional Fighters.
Traditional Fighters hits are consistent. Each move will deal determined amount of damage and can be followed up with other consistent moves.
In platform fighters, not only are combos situational (depending on opponents %, DI, etc) but each hit, even if just a poke, can have massive gains on advantage state. Hitting your opponent means sending them flying and thus, giving you more stage control and potentially set up edge-guards/ledge traps
Yes, hits are way harder to get thanks to the shielding system, but whenever you get any hit, you're now in control of the entire game and can potentially transform it into a kill no matter if the opponent's at 100% or 0%...
Actually very true, which brings me to a point where, Smash is not a consistent game, it has too many variables to make everything happen the way you want 100% of the time. Top level Smash is practically making consistent scenarios out of inconsistent neutral exchanges.
@@ryanhuot4926 Yes exactly I think that’s the most important mechanic in any smash game really, like Imagine trying to shield a move like Shiek nair perfectly everytime you see it, even if you can react to the move itself you could never reliably have the same positioning everytime in a real match setting leading to an endless amount of slightly different variations of the same situation.
@@ryanhuot4926 i mean, i don't think it's that inconsistent in that regard, just a lot more specific.
As someone who plays both, i feel like smash is a game with way more variables you have to take into account at any given time, so it gets a bit easier in some areas to compensate. Combos are consistent, but you need multiple of them to cover for each stage of the game, and slight variations depending on %s (the enemies and your's thanks to Rage), enemy DI and sometimes even the stale of you're moves (moves get slightly weaker when used multiple times in a row). That's why combos are easier to input than most of FGs, they NEED to be as a balancing factor for you having to be aware of that much stuff.
The inconsistency of Smash sure exists tho, but is not about having "too many variables" but just the primary thing that differentiate it, the idea that you can, at any moment, die if you're not careful. Compared to the consistency of HP bars, where you always knows how much damage you can take, stocks are very flimsy, you can not only die by getting edgeguarded at any time. Compared to FGs block strings and combo-oriented advantage state, smash advantage state is about positioning, you keep in disadvantage even whenever you're on full control of you're character if you're opponent has stage control, so as soon as you lose neutral once, you might be headed for a minute of disadvantage that finished with you losing your stock anyway. Personally, i only truly consider myself "winning" a game of smash whenever im with an extra stock, compared to FGs that a HP difference goes a long way.
TLDR; Smash inconsistency isn't unpredictability or having too much stuff to be aware of, but it's about the line between life and death being volatile.
@IHateAnimeButOnlyWhenItIsOppositeDayOrTheAkameGaKillAnimeCauseitwasTerribleComparedTotheManga Which is why reactions are so important in Smash Bros.
It seems unintuitive when you break down just how much possible variation is possible in a game like Smash and how you can possibly get a handle on it all in an effective way. But humans in general are very good at getting a "feel" for things with great complexity to where it feels intuitive beyond articulation.
I mean that's how anything skillful in the real world works. There are insane amount of variables to account for in how objects move in our physical world, and yet athletes are able to hone an intuitive understanding of the underlying mechanics nonetheless.
Skill in general in competition by no means needs to be confined to super static states to function. Hell, if that was the case, then you would just argue for something like chess over any fg where things can't get much more discrete and controlled.
That's the beauty of fighting games in general, intuitive calculated control over a wildly unstable environment.
Very good video. You didn’t touch on actually hitting someone with kill moves in smash ultimate though. Ive always felt like the hardest thing about smash is you can’t just rely on your best neutral buttons to close out the game.
I’d say melee is better about this
A lot of the time you need to confirm into kills in ultimate. For melee you kinda naturally kill. Sure you can get some annoying high percent stocks, but usually you can just hit a clean aerial in neutral and kill
@@eliastew9636 Maybe. I’m not super experienced in melee but what I see when I watch basically a lot of stocks end in edgeguards as opposed to just hitting a raw kill move. Like every top tier combos you off stage then has a chance to kill you. Not to mention how much worse being in disadvantage is in melee with no airdodge out of tumble and airdodges being so bad. However, I don’t play that game so fuck do i know.
@@eliastew9636 I think in Ultimate that depends a lot in the character you're playing, while some like Pit and fox have some guaranteed kill confirms, others like Cloud or Palu, you have to either edgeguard or get a raw hit
@@striker3190 being caught off stage as anyone but Puff and to a lesser degree Peach in Melee is the same as losing your stock, so it doesn't really matter whether the move outright kills.
Its very character dependent. Most of the best characters have a good options to kill confirm off a safe move(usually a title or aired) and either kill confirm off a combo throw at a mid-high percent or straight up kill them at high percent. You'll also see a lot of raw kill options though, some of which tend to be safe(many a back air),
I really enjoyed this video, but I would like to say that shield pressure is still important even in ultimate. Swordies like byleth rely on it to keep their opponent out with safe range, and characters like fox and sheik have safe aerials that they can use to keep you scared and locked in your shield. Even other characters like k-rool can keep you stuck in shield with projectiles, and then use the threat of grabs (or on k-rool’s case, grabs and shield breakers) to capitalize on their conditioning you to stay in shield. While it’s not as big a thing as I’m traditional fighters, shield pressure is still very important in smash and though it may not look like it for a new viewer, being stuck in shield at top level is still very much a disadvantageous place to be.
Cross-up does get used in the traditional sense of the term in Smash. OOS options usually hit on the front, so a cross-up saves you from your opponent's OOS option.
Another thing you neglect to mention is that shield depletes, eventually leading to it breaking. While broken shields aren't that common, your shield taking damage lets you become susceptible to shield pokes. This all means you can't hold shield forever.
3:40 You misunderstood. The distinction he's pointing out is that Cross-ups in Smash don't require to change how you're blocking to avoid getting hit. So the UNIST move he shows would be called a cross-up in Smash (ends on the other side), but not in UNIST. You wouldn't call that a cross-up because you don't block it cross-ups (you block same side).
A correction to note block strings do exist in smash. It’s just that most characters don’t have true block strings. But a handful of characters do. Especially the FGC characters like Ken, Ryu, Terry, Kazuya… which is in part why at a time the community called these characters by the same archetype name that was incorrect because in smash they do things that other characters don’t really have.
Terry still qualifies as a shoto imo but kazuya doesn’t
@@dj_koen1265 auto turn around combo cancelling normals character with motion inputs or…shoto lol one is much easier to say and for that reason we used the term differently. Kaz isn’t a shoto but he does fall into the same category as all the others in smash so let’s just make our life’s easier
This topic of how shields work vs blocking is such an interesting one. I got one of my Smash friends into BB and when we were talking about it, he noticed how the way you approach can sometimes be a bit simpler, but then when you're in, there's way more of a push-pull dynamic between offense vs defense which you just don't see in smash. Also he noticed how whiff punishing is an actual real thing in fighters; in Smash (Ult especially), it just doesn't happen. You usually "whiff punish" by taking space up.
Smash's shields are what bog the games down so much for me, and its why games which do interesting things with their shields appeal to me more. Rivals with its parry system (I think its flawed but I respect them for trying something different), or Rushdown Revolt or Fraymakers with their one-sided shields, allowing for ACTUAL cross-ups in platform fighters.
Whiff punishing is definitely a thing in ssbu
It's a shame because I do really enjoy the free movement of Smash and that was part of what got me to try it out, but when I actually learned it, all the gameplay around shield really put me off. It's not exactly for me, but other platform fighters may be!
The idea of corss-ups is mostly the same in Smash. Mechanically a bit different, but there is a good reason for it to be called the same. The implications are quite similar and it's indeed pretty important to cross up your options, even in Smash.
@@DazIsBambo I suggest trying Rivals of Aether. It's often said in rivals that your defense is your movement.
@@erigor11 Exactly. I think the way I'd describe it is that in a traditional fighter a crossup is a technique used to make your opponent vulnerable while in Smash it's a technique to make your aggression safer.
In addition to all of the "blocking vs shielding" differences covered by the video, a big part of Smash is that your character's facing (usually) isn't automatic, and whether a character has their back to you or not can really change up what options are available to them. While there are plenty of powerful out of shield options in Smash, oftentimes the fastest and/or strongest ones work best when the opponent is in front of you. Being behind your opponent can really limit which options they can actually use effectively.
By far the most based part of this video was the public transit appreciation at the end. Public transit is epic.
"Block strings don't exist in Smash." (Laughs in Ken shieldbreak)
Yeah this guys doesn't know what he's talking about.
@@dripfoe_3307 this guy is a traditional fighting game player talking about general trends in ultimate and overall it's a good assumption. You can't talk about smash in general (in particular ultimate) and address every character's specifics because there's no fighting game with this many characters specific gimmicks and tricks
@@dripfoe_3307 “haha you forget this niche case invalid worldview”
@DripFoe gaming Most of what he said is true. The whole point of the video is that smash has a very different structure to pressure and neutral. Blockstring pressure is fluid in 99% of the cases with most block strings being about 2 or 3 moves at max. Hes arguing the structure not every instance lol. Saying he doesn't know anything is simply not true lol.
He has a lot he doesnt fully understand in the game I'll agree but the main points he's made a pretty true
@@Hack--rz1io I disagree, most of what he said isn't true. You can most definitely address all characters when it comes to the components of neutral like footsies, punishment, combos and stage control. It's not that hard if you are actually knowledgeable on the game and fighting games in general.
11:00
As someone who has played Smash for years and is recently starting to get into other games, this moment instead made me realize "That's not normal? That's probably why I'm probably getting hit so much."
dude sameeeee. when i play traditional fighters. im either always blocking or just walking into an attack no inbetween. smash really fucks u up when u start playing more traditional fighters lmao
while ultimate does have very safe moves there is definitely plenty of whiff punishing buttons on majority of the cast, and there are genuine reasons to not always shield due to how much shield damage some moves can do and given stuff is relatively safe this can put you in bad situations, not to mention common out of shield options can be baited due to said moves being safer than in most games which adds layers to it, its definitely not ideal but given how strong ultimate buttons are i dont think its really fair to say its a bad thing you have to work more for your pressure
If you haven't already, I think you might find pokken interesting with how it handles neutral, the role of blocking/defense, and adaptational combo expression (to tie into the video before this): While as a Pokken player, I think people often overstate how different it is from other traditional fighting games (characters still have unique movelists/inputs,, there's cancels, just-frames, height states, meter, walls, there are meaties, oki, footsies, etc) 2 of the 3 major differences it DOES have with other traditional fighting games, the Phase Shift System and that it uses attack heights for moves to bypass/punish EACH OTHER rather then blocks based on height; both emphasize and change the importance of neutral and changing up one's combos and move choices over the course of the round.
Firstly, as I alluded to before, I think Pokken is best viewed as a traditional 2d fighter, where the phase shift system is a mechanic on top of that 2d base: There, it effectively acts as an anti-infinite system for the 2d phase (since 2d>3d shifts occur when the hidden PSP guage is filled) that also forces a return to neutral on shift, with the 3d phase acting as a second buffer layer of neutral on top of the neutral that exists in the 2d phase (since 3d>2d shifts happen on any single heavy or most special hits). This alone means there's many more breaks back to neutral and time spent in neutral per round.
But at a high level of play, the Phase shift mechanic also acts as a tool to discourage flowcharting and add an additional skillgap with resource management, risk vs reward, and mid-round adaptation with combo composition and move choices: Since different moves on hit add different amounts of PSP to the PSP guage, you're ideally wanting to change up your move choices and combo composition up based on the current PSP. Even If all you care about is optimized damage, you'll want to change your combos so they end right when the PSP guage is filled: if you don't, then depending on where the PSP guage is at when you started your combo (or even used an individual move), you'll max the guage out and cause a shift mid combo/mid move, dealing less damage then if you changed the combo up so the shift occurs on the ender or did a non-multi hit move.
But even more important then that is forgoing damage or safer moves in exchange for shifting faster or slower: Maybe you intentionally go with a combo or use moves that add less PSP on hit, that way you're keeping the enemy player in the current 2d phase longer to keep them under pressure, or to use it as a combo reset so if you can win a second interaction, you'll get more damage then if you did an optimal, 1-hit-to-shift combo off your first interaction. Or on the flip side, maybe you'd rather go with a combo or moves that add MORE PSP, to cause a shift faster: Maybe yoiu really want the extra meter and health regen causing a shift gives you, or maybe you're on the defensive and manage to land a reversal and want to cause a shift right away to get out of the corner/pressure easier. Some moves and tech also reduces or resets the PSP guage, which further adds resource management aspects.
Speaking of reversals, this is where the height states stuff come in: Since height states in pokken don't exist to bypass and punish blocks of a specific heights, but rather to allow moves to bypass and punish each other based on height state; heights are generally more a tool for a defensive player to get a reversal rather then a tool for an offensive player to open up a turtling enemy: this means that even within a given 2d phase, even without shifts, there's more time spent where both players can act and more breaks back to neutral from players landing height based reversals (of course, there's also actual counters, armored moves,, focus attacks, etc for reversals that way too). Though this isn't to say there's not offensive height based mixups at all: If you're doing a meaty or a blockstring, and the other player expects that meaty or a move in the blockstring to hit on X height, they may use a move of Y height instead of blocking it to i-frame through and reversal/punish you, but then you can use a move/change the combo that hits on Z height instead to mix them up, etc.
Again, I don't think these fundamentally change the entire way the game is played: It's still very much a traditional 2d fighter, but both of these mechanics I think lead to players (at a high level, anyways) to switch up their move choices and combo routes more often, as well as for there to be more time spent in neutral, then in other fighhting games.
Of course, the flip side of this is that combos also don't tend to be as long (since the PSP guage forces a limit on combo length and that limit lasts across multiple combos, not just per combo, at least within the duration of that phase till the shift resets the SPS guage) and blocking is also proportionally more powerful (since you can't get around it with heights). I'm not a Smash player, so i'm not sure how much time spent blocking in Pokken compares to blocking in Smash ultimate, to your point at the end of the video, but I'd say the relative advantage/disadvantage state blocking puts you in in Pokken is maybe between what it is in most traditional fights and something like Smash: You do not want to be blocking a move or stuck in a blockstring in pokken if possible, since it puts you on the defensive and under pressure, especially as you get closer to the wall, but it's also not as bad a position to be in as it is in some other fighting games since there's also more tools to get reversals (since a significant % of moves in the game can be i-framed and punished by other moves based on their height) and since the phase shift system means you'll eventually break back to the 3d phase.
Hope you found this interesting, and if you have further questions or anything or want resources, i'd be down to answer/send stuff!
I feel like this just opened a third eye
I think you’re looking at smash a little too much through and fgc lens when trying to define what neutral is
💯
As an exclusively smash player i got really confused when you showed clips of people dashing in and getting blocks and calling it neutral lmao. I never realized that OOS options were a smash bros thing.
As a person whom both plays traditional fighters and platform fighters, and used to participate in smaller tournaments, I think I can shed some light.
In regards to Smash, "neutral" is just stage advantage. If you're in the middle, you're in advantage and you fight to claim center stage. There's a ton of nuance to that but that's basic terms. Skipping neutral would be moves that can basically claim center stage.
Like Cloud's back air. A move that is safe on block, safe on whiff, excellent range, disjointed and usually has pretty high priority against other moves. When a Cloud spams this, it's tough to even combat it, forcing you to either get in his face and parry or not interact. That's basically "skipping neutral." Moves that basically force your opponent to not interact.
Or moves that allow you to run away. Such as Sonic's spindash or Steve's blocks. Or a move so broken an entire meta revolves around it, Electric Wing God Fist.
Also, keep in mind, Smash games usually have input lag. Ultimate has 6 frames, meaning you have to actively predict your opponent all the time. There's few things you can react to. Hence why you see people back up all the time or use a move randomly. They're trying to catch an option.
As a Smash player I think when we say a move "plays" or "bypasses" neutral for us, we mean one of two things
1. The move is so low commitment with a (probably) skewed reward that you kinda just get to do it whenever you feel like it... Cuz like, “What are you gonna do? Punish me for it? LOL”… and you can even use it in spots where it makes no sense, just cuz its safe and its like "Hey... What it they just run into it tho???"... To put it simply… a 0 think, just do button.
Or
2. A (usually high rewarding) move with hitboxes that cover all around the character and extensively linger, therefore bypassing the need to time or space it well.
Palutena's Nair kinda fits both these descriptions, thats probably why you saw it mentioned a lot. The other examples seem a bit hyperbolic, but are still somewhat fitting of this criteria.
Or like EWGF, since it's pretty safe to throw out and not get whiff pubished, goes through attacks since Kazuya becomes invulnerable, safe on shield since it knocks the opponent out of shield and away from Kazuya, and has ridiculous reward since it starts his 0 to death combos.
Just a move that you don't have to think about throwing out besides the opponent having a counter.
Gnw up b comes to mind too
As some have already mentioned, most of these points only apply to Ultimate.
The cross-up part is just wrong. Crossing up in smash just means going from one side of the opponent to the other, and it's often done with a jump (or in Melee, you can just run/wavedash/attack through the enemy). The reason the small clip mentioned that the dash attack can cross up is because in ultimate they made it almost impossible to cross-up the enemy while grounded, and some dash attacks are the only exception. I'd argue that crossing up is the same in traditional fighters, but "cross-up" has just become shorthand for "cross-up attack." If you go behind an enemy and grab them because they were too busy trying to block the other direction, you haven't attacked them from the other direction, but you've still benefited from crossing to the other side of them...
I'm surprised the video didn't mention why crossing up is important in smash: without auto turnaround, you need to turn around manually before you can do certain actions - like grab, jab, d-tilt, etc - and those options have to come after the full shield drop animation. Shield-grab is one of the most basic counter attack options when an enemy hits your shield, and it's unavailable if someone hits your shield from *behind*.
I've seen others already mentioned how much weaker shielding is in Melee, and how strong shield pressure is. In Melee, good shield pressure will have a player "stuck in their shield," desperate for a way out (like a roll, jump, or attack), which often ends up getting hit by the shield pressure or punished.
Neutral wins in Melee can easily lead to a kill, which may be why people say it's so important. Players like amsa or jmook will sometimes have an opener:kill ratio of like 3.0 in a match.
Also, I'm not familiar with the "neutral skipping moves" from the traditional fighters in the video, but if they can be parried or countered, then I'd argue they are just part of neutral.
Yeah, not mentioning the auto turn was a big miss. It was such a big deal when "certain" characters in smash had moves that helped you do that...
Neutral skipping moves in traditional fighters _usually_ cannot be countered or parried on reaction, either because they are too fast or too safe. There is also the situation where they can be reacted but you have other options that you can punish the opponent for attempting to react.
It is a somewhat derrogatory term, but it is a fact that they are part of the neutral as you say. It's just that instead of taking several steps, you make a single step and you get to the favorable position of running your offense.
In high level, the prefered way to fight these moves is to dance around the limit of their range if possible, or discorage the opponent from using them by preemptively putting out safe attacks or moving at angles where the move doesn't go.
One way that I see sheild is either the attack is safe or unsafe. If an attack is thrown out at the wrong time or your able to seek out the attack, it’s unsafe and you can attack back. If the attack lets down your guard then you can pressure your opponent with other attacks to potentially get the hit.
This is a really good video, i will say that most of the comparisons you're making very much are specific to ultimate, not melee or other smash
Shielding in melee is generally way worse. Out-of-shield is a lot weaker outside a couple characters like spacies or samus, and many characters have true frametraps and shieldpressure on block.
True, but a lot of the point made can be compared to crouch cancel in melee
Thank you
The entire time I was just thinking that this dude never played project plus, melee, or rivals of aether, which is only neutral and combos due to the lack of a shield.
For me, the lack of 'skip neutral' and blockstrings in Smash has always been something that sets it levels above traditional fighters in how rewarding it feels to play.
I'm a defensive out-boxer/fencer type of player. Playing Marth fits my natural strengths and is a highly viable rewarding way to play, due to the intricate spacing required to take advantage of his sword tip sweetspot and how that spacing interacts with how the Neutral is played in that game.
Think 3rd Strike Chun-Li (another character who naturally suits me), but more agile and flexible in his mobility.
I've always struggled to find any traditional fighting games that feel as good as that ever since games of 2002-2012.
Nowadays, traditional fighters penalize blocking and defensive playstyles too harshly for me to have any fun once the 'new game shininess' of the first month has worn off. Leaving me to feel like I wasted my money on a game that is penalizing me for playing MY playstyle or how I want. And a game that won't let me play how I want holds no value for me anymore. Which is why I've almost completely stopped playing fighting game, after my 20+ years of passion for the genre.
SamSho 2019, once it gets rollback, is pretty much my last hope of funding a modern title to reinvigorate my passion for the genre.
Especially since the gameplay design focus of Tekken 8 is on aggressive play and SF6 allows no meterless reversals while making the defensive Drive mechanics notably weaker than the offensive ones and having the Drive gauge act as a Guard Break meter (a mechanic I always hate).
one of the other major differences is what kind of hits you look for in each type of game. In a traditional fighting game, you can win with just very safe low risk low reward pokes. However, in smash you need to go for a kill move that usually is more risky than simple pokes. Thus in smash a "meaningful hit" changes depending on the % of the character. while in traditional fighters, any hit is a meaningful hit.
There are a lot of flaws when it comes to the discussion around shields in this video, it didn’t bring up shield heath, shield pokes, how grabbing someones shield is instant advantage state, what advantage state is and how it relates to risk reward situations in Shields. It definitely feels like it was an outside looking in kind of perspective.
As far as you “getting hits” things go it could be summarized like this, rather than having a more straight forward yet volatile cycle for landing hits, smash focuses less on getting to land hits and more about positioning yourself to take advantage of you’re opponents more favored habits. When dealing with something so different you have to keep yourself come applying the logic of a different system to this new subject.
If you’ve only played BOTW and suddenly tried to play another open world like Skyrim, you are going to be disappointed if you keep trying to find BOTW in it. It’s a different game and you have to look at it for what it is not for what another game is. Even if in the same category.
yeah it wasn't that informative tbh. Well, to someone that knows nothing about Smash, then sure.
@@Enoby_Darknessright as someone whose spent a lot of time in melee and ultimate and SF6, there’s definitely missing parts to the smash side of the argument.
There is one particular traditional fighting game that has a similar situation: Third Strike.
And hey, look at that, the Parry system has a similar but less intense effect on how people approach landing hits.
parries are way harder to do in third strike especially in the brink of the match, compared throwing out shield in smash however.
@@StateOfTheMind11225 From a pure input standpoint sure, but there are so many ways to pressure a shield. If you just hold the shield button at the first sign of danger every time, you will lose against a competent player every time. Plus shield tilting, shield DI, and shield dropping all require technical skill and provide ways to use the shield button to mixup your defense in shield.
@@StateOfTheMind11225
Didn't say they weren't. They're also arguably way more explosive due to the way one punish in 3S can end up chunking the opponent's health.
Great video. I'm a dbfz player primarily and I literally had no idea about shield cancel moves in smash, maybe now I can have a better idea of what's going on when I see smash clips lol
in prior smash games you had to cancel shield with jump then cancel jump with up smash, but in ultimate, like grab, up smash can directly cancel shield.
you can also jump, as mentioned, and do an aerial.
@@ILiekFishes it's worth noting, though, that the complexity that comes from jump-canceling only really arises when not using the control stick for either half of the equation
that's basically why it's a mechanic to begin with, actually - since the default control scheme has you pressing up then a to use an up smash, but also makes pressing up the way you jump, smash lets you cancel your jumpsquat into an up smash so your a press doesn't have to be frame perfect. and since you can jump out of shield and thus go into jumpsquat without the shield drop animation, then you can naturally up smash out of shield during the jumpsquat window, too
really, formalizing up smash out of shield instead of keeping it a consequence of jumpsquat forgiveness just makes it less jank for c-stick users
The entire out-of-shield discussion seems equivalent to DP'ing in blockstrings, where the player on offense can choose to bait the escape option or continue with pressure. IMO Smash works just like any other game: you try to force your opponent into making mistakes and then capitalize on those mistakes.
I never thought of out-of-shield options as guard cancels - I mostly thought of them more like reversals. But you're absolutely right.
The funny thing is that Smash 4 is the game that's thought of as having this kind of gameplay. Defense was much stronger in that game, especially considering how easy it was to perfect shield. Ultimate is actually more aggressive by comparison, even if it's not as aggressive as Melee.
I'd check out how Rivals of Aether is, because shields don't exist in that game. They only have a parry.
Well, they did... but Rivals 2 is adding a shield system. I wonder how that will change offense.
The more I hear about Rivals of Aether, the more I believe it is definitely my kind of platform fighter. However, I just reallyyyy don't like the art style. Maybe I'll be able to get into the 2nd game
@@DazIsBambo I feel you lol. It's great for furries aaaand... that's it.
I recently quit my job to work on game dev full time, so hopefully my game fills that gap. (I'll probably be commenting under another username once I get rolling.) It's been a year and a half but our systems are getting fleshed out and our second character is in progress. Keep an eye out!
@@lilliangoulston5706 I wish you luck!
@@lilliangoulston5706 you got your game on any social media?
@@DazIsBambomaybe Rushdown Revolt is more your speed? It's free to play... I think Slap City is more fun
this video just suddenly turned into, "I do not understand the inctricacies of shield play in the slightest" lol
I think the only true neutral skipping move in Smash is Steve's neutral b. Whenever you're supposedly in "neutral" against Steve, even at round start, he's probably mining, which means he's gathering resources and becoming even more scary to deal with, so guess what? He's not in neutral, he's in advantage because he can just keep mining and you're the one who has to approach *him* to stop that
Edit: upon finishing the video, I realize smash's definitions of neutral, advantage, and disadvantage are also very different from traditional fighters, where in smash "advantage" can mean anything from getting a hit to having more favorable positioning on the stage, and in traditional fighters, you usually need to have a move connect either on hit or block to be considered to be in advantage
For fighting games that's specifically if they're talking about "frame advantage." Just "advantage" as a more general term is still used to refer to the overall state of the match also relative to resources, positioning, etc.
@@KugutsuYushiro I understand this, it's the same in Smash, stage positioning & resources play a large part in determining whose in advantage state, but I feel like the way it was explained in the video was that they were equating pressure with advantage state.
I feel like Steve's neutral b is similar in function to Chun Li's back HP in third strike, where if you give her any amount of space she can just start gaining meter very quickly (which is her win condition because she has the best super in the game), Steve's neutral b gives him his win condition of gaining gold & diamond to make his moves stronger, and gaining iron and gold for anvils and powered minecarts, essentially turning any "neutral" interaction into one where Steve can be gaining resources and building to his win condition, therefore putting him into advantage
Smash has way more disadvantage skips than it does neutral skips - ways to get back to controlling stage without risking yourself.
Great video but I disagree with alot. Out of shield is just another way of saying "block punish". I'll admit, block punishes are strong in smash but they're not the end all be all in all match ups. Pressure in smash is alot more condensed, no insane block strings and I honestly find that to be better. It's not really all that skillful to mash a block string with different variations hoping your opponent messes up. Any chimp, can do that. Also you said there's not much whiff punishing in smash.....this is how I can tell you don't know what you're talking about. Throwing out well spaced attacks on your opponent shield, baiting out the OOS then WHIFF punishing, should be pretty telling. There's just alot of wrong in this video from someone who thought they was knowledgeable enough but sadly not really. I'll give it E for effort though.
I love watching videos like this comparing and contrasting Smash and FGCs. It gives me a lot more insight on how FGCs work and shows how close or how distant FGCs are to Smash.
Thanks for the video, very well made!
im glad we're getting interesting discussion about the differences between smash and trad fgs. It feels like they're only thought about in isolation when comparing them can bring interesting things to light.
Shields kind of have to be strong in smash. The idea of being able to pressure them like you do in a fighting game would be way too oppressive in smash, seeing as how they can be poked and broken in only a few hits. Without oos they'd be totally useless.
To me the distinction in neutral is that trad fighting games are like endlessly precise but limited compared to smash in their options. You both inch back and forth til one person catches the other overstepping, its one less complex thing that the players are far better at. Smash neutral is based on more heavy conditioning, where very few things are a sure thing, players are less precise but have more freedom. In addition the ability to drift in the air opens up a second dimension of footsies. Trad fg players hone the skill of frame perfect pixel perfect reactions, smash players develop complex player + character specific feints to open an opponent up. Not to say trad fgs don't have conditioning and feints, but as I see it, it's a lot less central and certainly a smaller part of neutral.
Just looking at defensive options, I know burst is a real lauded defensive mechanic in the fgc. But it's v simple compared to what smash has going on, I think of it like playing rps every actionable frame of a combo. To me smash has more interactive and complex defensive mechanics. DI and SDI means every hit gives the opponent whos hit an inch of mix, and the player who hits something to react to or read. Smash's defensive options (airdodge, directional airdodge, spotdodge, roll, counters) are all available all the time and things that can be read or occasionally reacted to. These defensive mechanics are also a part of your neutral, its all hollistic ofc. I think thats way cool.
For the record I love both traditional fighting games and smash, they are both endlessly cool expressions of execution and strategy. I might have said things clumsily, I said mostly scattered word-vom, its hard to collect thoughts. So I'll talk and clarify more if people disagree.
the fact that you seem to suggest that every character in ult has good oos game makes the point at the end of this video moot. not every situation calls for shield.not every character benefits from their shield being hit. there are a lot of different stats and playstyles at play that influence if a player will be more dependent on their movement or their shield.
Great video, this is one of the very few I've seen that actually tries to bridge the gap between smash and traditional FGs.
Casual traditional FG/Smash player here with more experience in Ultimate than the other games. Some people probably already mentioned this stuff but eh. The reason Cloud's Bair and other moves are considered to "skip neutral" in smash is because it can be continuously used with very little to no threat of punishment by most of the cast because of the extreme movement control that can make frame advantage irrelevant, especially on shield. In traditional FGs it would be something more akin to zoning as you get free pressure without having to actually interact with your opponent and force them to approach you, which essentially puts the victim of said "neutral skips" in constant disadvantage.
Neutral in smash is more considered to be like the fox examples you showed where they were using defensive options to land a hit. Disadvantage is usually initiated after the first hit as it either leads to a true combo or a state where the player in disadvantage has very limited escape options, which can even include shielding as the shielding player will have to read the attacker to get a good punish. How you punish in disadvantage is heavily matchup dependent and factors in things like a character's weight, aerial drift, and fastest attack option to stuff follow-ups. To give an example some else mentioned, throws can be considered "kill options" in smash as they often pick between power, knockback, speed, and tethering to balance them out. Fox's throws for example tend not to launch very far but when coupled with his high speed can often keep his opponents in disadvantage whereas Ness's back throw is one of his most powerful kill options but allows very little follow-up.
Traditional FG zoners find it much harder to escape pressure than ones in smash as their options are much more limited by stage size and movement, lack of "universal" buttons, and purposely designed holes in attack flexibility (not to mention movement mechanics). As others mentioned, shields do not last forever. Shield in smash is a very important resource, so even if the shield Chipp damage is gradual, it will break eventually. Defenders are always on a timer even if they don't get immediately punished for blocking. Shield breaking almost always results in a stock loss. Also you can get hit if your shield gets small enough to not cover your character's hurtbox and necessitates tech like shield DI which is very important in melee. Obviously shielders can get grabbed as well which makes things even harder and is even further exacerbated by the large number of command grabs in smash. The effects of these "neutral skip" moves/character types is much more felt in lower level play where interactions are often considered to be more like rock paper scissors, but still has repercussions on higher level players.
It can be really strange in smash as rushdown characters can often be great zoners as well (think z broly in DBFZ). One of the most common examples is Fox in melee. While Shine is the best move in the game, his laser is one of the most important parts of his kit because it allows you to get free damage on your opponent and forces them to get in range of Fox's insane offensive options. Sonic in Ultimate works somewhat similarly as because he's so fast that he can take engagements literally whenever he wants. A good Sonic will approach and disengage until an opponent whiffs, which allows Sonic to get a free punish which makes him very unpopular in the community. Spacing is extremely important because the distance you need to close to get to your opponent makes the difference between making your movement linear and reactable or flexible and dangerous. It's all about controlling engagements as there will be far more of them in a game of smash than traditional FGs.
Anyway if a better smash player is in the comments, feel free to correct me.
At the end he showed me all of England. Now I can cancel my flight.
17:56 with the whole throwing out garbage thing. It’s not about trying to hit the opponent it’s more about controlling that space and if they move into it they get hit. Roy fair is an amazing example, because it has low endlag and auto cancels you can swing it make your approach safe or threaten space or run away it’s about how the attacks apply to movement, when you throw out a “garbage” move it is about more than getting a hit it’s about taking space and stage control. Because of how much you can influence your moves with your movement by air drift it make your opponent have to run away and lose stage control. This video provides a great analysis but lacks information on the more advanced aspects of smash’s movement
That whiff punish portion was so true. It throws me off every time and literally dying for making a minor miscalculation is the worst
And remember that smash games are vastly different among themselves. I'd say the most aggressive smash games are smash 64 and melee simply due to the fact that the aggressive options some times outweigh the defensive options. In smash 64 shields can easily be melted down by almost all character and in melee shields aren't even equal for all characters and there are still ways to just delete your opponent's shield even if it requires more effort than in smash 64
okay but I gotta say, monkey flip still seems like a neutral skip to me, even with all this analysis
It's not really a neutral skip though. It's very whiff punishable and loses out to other moves regularly. I understand why you say it's a neutral skip though. It being -5 on shield burst option with the option to mixup into a grab is dumb as hell, but's it's nothing compared to Bardock Lariat which catapults him across the screen instantly and allows him to start mashing buttons on you blocking or even start a combo.
It often feels like traditional fighters and platform fighters are on a spectrum from more mechanically hard to more mentally hard
>Comes in melee
@@Hack--rz1io Theres always outliers lol
@@OS_Erol yeah lol
Now lets talk about DI, why does that make smash the ultimate knoesge check FG (even before xrd), and how your oponent can influence your combos routes.
He clearly thinks DI is overrated as he alluded to early in the video. I would love him to make a video on that because I can’t comprehend how someone could like not value the depth that that brings to a fighting game.
@@SminkingDoctor worst thing abou it is just how its overcomplicating the echanic behind it and the angles you need to learn are just stupid. but past that the mind game and decision making is awsome.
As a long time smash player, since 64 its been interesting to see how smash has addressed shielding. If you ask most players that been with the series for a while, they will usually agree that shields have progressively gotten worse to use in the last 3 games. Which is incredible considering how good of an option it still is. But if you watch pro melee or 64, you almost never see shields except on platforms because of the shield drop mechanic, i think if you give ultimate a 20 year run time, youll see far less shielding, but it wont ever disappear like in melee
Crouch canceling does basically nothing in Ult, so that would never happen. But if you gave Ult 20 years it would turn into endless Steve dittos where the first person to get a stray hit wins the game instantly because everyone has mastered a thousand training mode combos. That character actually plays a 2D fighting game: you get a hit, you win.
@@drewbabe sounds like you are salty about losing the steve matchup. Also he is banned as of right now.
No the Steve meta is who can hit minecart more
Especially with PMLG just cancelling hit stun from spikes to multihits
@@danih.5675 idk bout that. He doesn’t sound like he’s salty to me. Just speaking facts. I think people just don’t like that the best character in the game is WACK AF
Esam really knows how to work in the boxing ring!
You just scratched the shield interactions. Neutral is really important in smash. Combos are good but the shear amount of situation you can get in is wild. Even in shield you can do more than you probably excpect even knowing you are playing the game. shielding is pretty scary to be in. Its a really stong option but it has really easy ways of being beat. And most importantly you cannot keep your shield u indefinetly. Meaning the reason they can use the shield so much is beause they are also managing how and when to use the shield not as a defence, but as a security to force the enemy to not hit their shield, otherwise they have a fair chace of losiing the interaction.
I honestlty belive smash has a more demanding neutral than most fighting games. Even if the shield is the best option you cannot use it in most situations. And the stage alone give more meaning to any pressure. One mechanic doesnt rue them all, its really when you mix them that i gets really complicated. so looking at one mechanic alone dont make for a compeling argument because smash is designed to have really easy mechanics that can be built upon by association and situation.
(And smash top players are miles aways skill wise from even good players)
I definitely spend a lot of time just holding shield and thinking “HIT ME HIT ME”!
ultimates aggresion is so radically different from melee i kinda wish youd talk about it.
This is a fascinating video, and I loved the analysis! For those interested, I can talk about “landing a hit” in melee because it’s… even stranger.
Let’s start with the basics: shielding in melee isn’t the best. There’s few characters who are truly comfortable in shield. This is because OoS (out of shield) options in melee are generally weaker, and if your opponent suspects you might shield, they can do all sorts of things to throw you off. Crossups, safe shield pressure moves, safe disengage tools, etc. If you ever see shield, it’s because someone is -truly- in disadvantage, wants to bait an overextension, or because they’re running forward with it to overcome a spacing option and whiff punish.
This doesn’t mean defense is weaker in melee. Oh no, there’s an even more convoluted option: holding down.
This refers to two options. The first, is ASDI Down. If you get hit while holding down on the c-stick or analog stick while grounded, your character will Automatically SDI down, meaning they’ll shift downwards into the ground once hitlag is over. If your character is hit in this state, they’ll automatically land. If the move was strong enough that they’d enter tumble, they’ll immediately get put into knockdown on the ground (on their back, a terrible state to be in). BUT if the move was weak enough, your character will simply enter their normal landing animation, which is VERY quick, meaning they can quickly counterattack.
The second technique is Crouch Cancelling. Simply, if you’re in crouch, you will take 1/3 of the knockback of any move that hits you. This usually pairs into ASDI Down since you’re already holding down.
The popularization of ASDI Down caused controversy in the melee scene, and completely reinvented the game. Suddenly, safe weak hits that would previously keep your character in advantage are now an immediate neutral loss if the opponent whiff punished well. This is actually why many characters lack strong OoS options: many can just be ASDI Down’d.
This is what makes neutral in melee so strange. Just because you hit someone doesn’t mean you’re in advantage. Hit them with a poorly spaced, weak enough move at low percents while they’re grounded, and YOU get opened up on.
I could go on and on about this. How it affects the game REALLY depends matchup to matchup. In some, it’s actually pretty rare as almost all high tiers have strong anti-ASDI Down options. Either they have powerful moves that break ASDI-Down or can quickly link into other moves that can (peach, fox, falco, kinda falcon), or they have fast poke tools that can chip away at “Crouch Cancel Abusers” (Marth, Sheik, Puff, also kinda Falcon).
This might make people believe melee is inherently defensive, despite its fast paced nature. On the contrary, because counterhits are this threatening in melee, players have to use their superior speed and range to expertly place options at incredible speed and precision that defeat the tool.
Oh and of course, holding down is just beaten by grabbing. Except against jigglypuff, since her crouch is so low a lot of characters will just miss. And then you immediately die. Like, immediately. Since she’ll the just rest your whiffed grab, which is almost always a 1H/KO.
I largely agree, but a few minor quibbles: it's not so much that out of shield options are good in smash (compared to in traditional fighting games they're very limited, as in trad games you're fully actionable as soon as you leave block stun) it's more that smash has much lower block stun. Melee has more block stun (or shield stun) in general than ult, so you do get block strings and frame traps. A classic is a spacie doing an aerial into shine on shield, then either doing an aerial to catch a lazy shield grab attempt or wave dashing out of shine (or wave shining) in the direction they read the defending will roll. If the spacie read their defensive option incorrectly it returns to neutral, but if they're correct they start a combo. Also, smash kinda-sorta does have the sort of neutral skip moves you described at the start, it's just that they tend to be horrifically unsafe on block, so they're more neutral hail marys than skips. (I'm thinking of moves like Falcon's raptor boost or Bayonetta's heel slide - they zoom across the screen and lead to big combos if they hit, but they are reactable and get you killed if they're blocked.)
In smash, although shielding is still better than blocks, it’s still not a great situation (a slight disadvantage) to be stuck in shield because you have to do something to exit it or else your shield will break. So a move that “skips neutral” is one that provides real pressure for little to no commitment that forces the opponent to enter a disadvantageous situation
You aren’t necessarily rewarded for sitting in shield: you’re rewarded for people making a mistake on/around your shield
I'll also say, I think when smash players say some characters avoid neutral: it means that character and it's move force players to play neutral far more differently than they would if that move didn't exist. Like the fact that mythra can whiff most of her aerials without getting punished means the way to get in on her likely depends on her committing to a bad approach or you spending extra time on good positioning and movement.
tldr: some characters skip being put in shield because they can run away or space you out with ease.
2nd edit: you do bring this up lol, so i'm just being redundant
Everyone knows the only neutral skip move in Smash is Luigi's grab.
Amazing video I have a few concerns with how you say smash’s nuteral is rewarding when you sit in a shield. This is just incorrect, when you shield you are in disadvantage. You have to GUESS are they going to swing is that swing safe or are they going tk grab or in the case of special characters are they going to gain a resource like blocks or charge shot. MOVEMENT IS KEY IN SMASH if you shield you have lost nutural and now have to guess smashes nuteral is like advanced footsies playing in your range and just outside of the opponent. Blocking vs sheilding is very importing cus sheild is a resource you can run out of sheild you can get when you sheild from attacks that shield poke. Smash’s nuteral is about how you move how you space and how you force your opponent to sheild. What you don’t show in your video is the steps before the sheilding happens that’s where nuturral excels in smash.
One thing that is very important about platform fighters is how much space you have to move. There is far more distance you can travel both horizontally and vertically, and this impacts neutral a lot. Probably the main thing is that retreating is far easier. Being able to turn around and just sprint away from the opponent or just jump a mile in the air over them means that it can be very hard to force someone into a bad situation, and not having a limit on how much space you can retreat means it can be harder to chase down. And because there really isn't much in platform fighters that properly matches running up to someone after knocking them down or being plus on block in a traditional fighting game, getting one hit isn't a concrete way to let you do what you want because there isn't much stopping the opponent from getting away after. Because of this, neutral is very much focused on baits. Simply running up to someone can and will cause a reaction from them, from jumping to running to shielding. And you can use this to create a gameplan. My preferred thing is to pressure opponents into backing up a lot until they reach the ledge. Without being able to retreat, they may get scared and try to attack, or go full turtle. Either way, cutting off escape routes is extremely important in platform fighters. It's why zss down b is so hated for its ability to get past you basically for free, or why passive play is so much more prevalent in platform fighters. I think this is kinda where the concept of "neutral is more important in platform fighters" came from. It isn't necessarily neutral that's important, it's positioning and movement. Two aspects of neutral game, but not the entire thing.
Anyways idk how to end this and I don't even know if what I said makes sense but have a good day.
This is a very interesting video! But respectfully, I have to say a lot of the things you said in this video aren't quite right.
I want to clarify that crossing-up is not what you said it is in this video. Crossing up in Smash is when you do anything that puts you behind an opponent, but that's not *really* what it is. If you're playing fox and up-b through your opponent and end up behind them, that isn't a cross-up. What you're missing is that crossups are a part of a larger mixup game where you are aiming to ambiguously put yourself in front of or behind your opponent without your opponent being able to tell. If you are obviously putting yourself behind your opponent, that isn't a crossup, its just going behind your opponent. So while Greninja's dash attack is an example of crossing up, that is because it is ambiguous whether or not Greninja will end up behind or in front of the opponent. Consequently, landing with an aerial on top of an opponent is also a crossup in smash.
Shield is also not as strong as you're saying it is. Yes out of shield options are great, but they lose to *a lot* of things. The biggest one is spacing your attacks. Making sure you are attacking at maximum range keeps you safe from a lot of out of shield options. There is also grabbing, which would beat any out of shield options by virtue of beating shield. So its rare that sitting in your shield will give you an advantage. Most of the time, you will see neutral in smash literally is just characters dashing and jumping around, shielding only for short spans, and often only because it fully stops your character's movement.
I think the discrepancy between terms between traditional fighters and Smash fighters can also be explained by Smashers (especially historically) generally not being familiar with traditional fighters. I've never played anything beyond Melee but I'm also old enough to remember when "crossing up" was borrowed into Smash lingo, probably around 2004 or 2005. There was always just enough crossing of worlds for words and ideas from other fighters to drift into our community (everything from cross up to wavedash to that old Sirlin "Play to Win" article), but then those words and ideas would take a life of their own among Smashers who didn't play and didn't care about other fighting games.
Good vid is dificult to find a video comparation of both types of fighting games whitout a clear bias from the creator and as someone that enjoy both kind of games is fun to see someting like this
The whole getting punished for wiff punishing in smash is a skill/knowledge issue which is just as present in traditional fgcs, like knowing high low on every move. The factor here is knowing the endlag/shield stun of the opps moves versus the startup of yours, because thats how shield pressure functions opposed to blockstrings
I think you had very good points but then threw it out the window to go with the more controversial ending for the sake of being controversial. Neutral means two very different things within these games. Neither is “harder” or more important than their counterpart. They are both equally important but played completely differently. Which you did address but then decided to trash on smash. Good video overall tho. Also the local scene for smash is huge whereas FGC games is impossible to find a local for your dedicated game so we’re forced to play online. (I play strive and don’t really like platform fighters)
In smash bros melee, offensive shield options are on average a lot worse than in ultimate. Characters like fox and falco can do long block strings without going punished and most characters have very good attacks to pressure shields. Going into shield can be a death sentence for a lot of characters.
As for skipping neutral, Fox’s lasers can let him avoid all neutral interactions altogether by running away. It won’t net him a hit or a kill but potentially a lot of damage over a game. The best way to avoid it is to be close to Fox, which is exactly what he wants, so you made his job easier. Alternatively he can run away and shoot more lasers when you get close.
The reason why that fox example is a WTF but common example is because 99% of moves are minus and really minus except aerials which are just safe. So that's why there's always "reset" pressure. Shield is the go to option against everything.
OOS is not a mechanic that buffs shield. It's a mechanic that in all Smash games limits the broken shield. It restricts your punish to Up Special, Up Smash, grab, or move out the way with rolls or jumps
This is nerf because shielding blocks all directions and most moves are unsafe even are aerials. You can't be in your opponents face, you're always keeping yourself at a distance because block strings don't exist in Ultimate except for few scenarios because plus moves are very hard to come by.
If Akuma it's you with sweep you pretty much do any button but in Smash you can only do Up moves or aerials or else you will get hit by a 10-15 frame penalty depending on the game
Glad this hit my algorithm
Amazing vid that really delves into the difference in fighting game perception and gameplay
This is a great video and it's nice to see a traditional fighting game player actually compliment smash players for neutral :)
Sadly I do have a couple notes though but I don't inherently disagree with the notion that there's no instant neutral win button in smash and that smash may be less neutral heavy than traditional fighters. I just think there may have been a misinterpretation of how shields work in smash.
Now yes out of shield games are busted and will always be good, but the act of shielding has the same risk in ultimate as throwing out a move. In its simplest form smash neutral is a rps game with attack, shield and grabs but then you add platform fighter movement and it gets so much more complicated. If a player is to shield though, they won't be free to punish anything their way, it's an option that if successful can lead to a punish or a combo, which is similar to landing a hit.
There's also the fact that unless you're game and watch who has a massive frame 3 invincable up B, shields are actually quite prone to getting spaced on and being unable to get punished. When you showed Eim fair-ing Zackray's shield it wasn't just an unpunishable option from frame data, but also unpunishable because of spacing.
If you couldn't tell I'm a smash player and love smash neutral but once again, I'm not saying it's better or worse than traditional fighters, just different :)
Part of what make's Ultimate shields so scary is the modern buffer system. Every Out of Shield Option is frame perfect with little effort, while a short-hop fast-fall aerial scales to player precision and is STILL minus on block with perfect execution.
Meanwhile in Melee, shields are abusable because of the lack of buffer and human limitations on precision, and the insane frame data of moves like shine can turn a blocking situation into a nightmare. Players will instead use the extra mobility from wavelanding/dashing for precisely the evasive defense you allude to in other fighters. So uh, you can see why people still play melee lol.
god if you think run-up shield is bad in ultimate, don't ever play sm4sh
As a smash player, I would also say neutral is more important in traditional fighters simply because the disadvantage state is so bad.
Its weird because at the end there to me you were explaining why neutral in smash in complex. It being hard to simply land a hit is why the neutral seems to be harder. I think its a good thing for people to be punished for approaching idk its just different tho
rivals of aether pretty much solves your complaint with smash
Excellent vid broeh
and I'm not only saying that because it showed me blocking once
I love seeing the chip example of how to choose what pokes to use and letting the match play. Just to show the player cams that razzo is fully suited up in a maid outfit absolutely wreaking havoc.
PLEASE make this a series. As a smash player, I learned so much! I had no idea that the way we play nuteral was unorthodox. You're bridging gaps here my guy, keep it up!
As a smash player (Also FGC but mainly smash) why did your friend describe a 50/50 as a frame trap
Also there’s a lot more aggressive playstyles in the previous smash games
yeah i’ve rarely heard anyone call that a frame trap either
I feel like when we say a move plays neutral for you when just mean a move thats super easy to throw out in neutral
That actually helps me understand so much. I had no idea blocking was so strong in smash. I remember messing around with smash 4 and getting absolutely washed cuz I tried to play it like a regular fighter.
Anything thing that is hard to wrap my head around is how long the timer is and how it doesn't reset after taking a round (or life I guess?). Winning only through ring out is also kinda wild.
Smash timer is kinda like dbfz, in that you never really play around it, it's just there as a way to make sure the game eventually ends, unlike something like tekken
I don't mean to sound like a jerk but this guy doesn't know much about smash and I'd hate for someone to think he does. He's making shield to be like some crazy mechanic thats massively broken and its not for the most part. Out of shield or OOS is simply a block punish in traditional fighters. It's not that deep. The timer, the ring out win condition, none of this stuff should seem wild.....it's smash, its been around since 1999.
An important thing to remember is as you build percent different moves will begin to kill out right. Generally characters will die around a certain percentage when a common kill move works. So while there are gimps (a quick ring out) and SDs (self destructs) that are somewhat strange from an FGC perspective it's more like a health bar than you might expect.
@@dripfoe_3307 You're right lol. 2D and 3D fighters are just so simple that smash looks wild in comparison. I never really tried it competitively til 4 and like there are a ton of little differences that make the game hard to grasp for me.
this feels like buying a car in a foreign country, getting in an accident because your brakes didn't work, and the car company telling you "brakes are just damage control to soften accidents, idk why we have to tell you this"
this actually made me evaluate some of my problems with smash ultimate, despite being a long time smash and FGC player. I think I'm playing it too much like a traditional fighter
Movement is the main difference between Smash and Trad Fighting game, I guess the neutral debate is like : Is it more skilled to have to break a very strong guard by choosing between a ton of movement and offensives options or is itmore skilled to have to makes sure you never lost neutral because the consequences of this are terrible. I think both takes a lot of work to master anyway
I mean, they pretty much all have the same meaning. It's just they don't function the same.
Skipping Neutral in both Smash and fighting games is simply just using your safest or fastest option yo place you in an advantageous state.
Cross-up in both Smash and fighting games is just using an attack or working with your spacing to place confusion on an opponent by ending up other side of them, catching them before they can react.
Frame Traps in Smash and fighting games is just putting your opponent in a position where you're pretty much guaranteed a hit or another turn based on how they act.
Even running up and shielding in Smash is the equivalent of dashing and blocking in a fighting game because that just how you block in Smash. Also, block strings in Smash exist. Because there are shield break set-ups that characters have and catch you with for shielding at certain points.
Also, great video.
1:16 bro really said Chrom like it’s a real character
This is actually a banger of a video! Here’s a like 👍🏻 keep up the good work
That one guy's definition of a frame trap in the context of smash isn't correct. A frame trap is essentially any nontrue combo /or/ shield pressure in which the followup attack is faster than the victim's fastest option out of shield/hitstun. Punishing an air dodge against a fast attack is just normal bait and punish gameplay.
This is also probably my melee/pm bias talking, but the idea of Smash being more neutral focused feels like a product of those games high level play sculpting the longevity of competitive play in the series. In Melee and PM, out of shield options are generally much weaker if you don't get a powershield, which characters like Fox and Peach having potential full shield-breaker combos against someone that tries to play passively. In those games the best defensive tool is avoiding the enemy altogether with a dash dance or aerial drift or wavedash, or eating the hit with a crouch cancel to convert damage of your own at the cost of taking a hit yourself.