The Problem(s) with Counters in Super Smash Bros.

if you've played Super Smash Brothers in any capacity the odds are that you've had your strongest move sent right back at you with a counter at some point these attacks occupy interesting design space in the Smash series and their roles have changed significantly as the series has progressed let's dive in and take a look at their history as well as some of the yes problems that they've created over time [Music] you [Music] super smash brothers melee was released in North America on December 3rd 2001 with Europe and Australia receiving the title the following May along with the familiar cast of Nintendo icons and returning veterans audiences were also surprised with the ability to unlock to largely unknown swordsmen to join the fight these of course being Marth and his clone Roy while obscure deep cuts to these audiences the Fire Emblem series was no such thing in Japan smashes country of origin having received Fire Emblem shadow dragon and the blade of light Mars origin game back in 1990 and for sequels since none of which had seen official international release nowadays of course the video game landscape is considerably different and most Nintendo enthusiasts will be at least somewhat familiar with the Fire Emblem formula turn-based navigation of distinct characters across a map with combat initiated through turn-based attack and counter-attack phases altered by character statistics weapons abilities etc when developing the melee roster back in the early 2000s however the game's creator masa Hiro Sakurai knew that this would be much of the world's first introduction to even the name of Fire Emblem and wanted to impart some of that combat system into the lightning-fast real-time combat of the melee engine the result of this as you might expect is the down special for Marth and Roy counter the premise for these attacks is relatively straightforward for a short period the character enters the stands which can either move or take any damage and if a damaging move connects with them while they're in this state it will trigger a counter-attack of the swordsmen zone the animation is also longer than the actual period when the character has their guard up which leaves them vulnerable if they fail to successfully counter an attack and introduces a risk/reward aspect if they do pull it off however the strike they're rewarded with varies considerably among the two characters with Marth's doing a flat 7% no matter what he counters and Roy doing 1.5 times the original damage because the launch distance of an attack scales with how much damage it does Roy's counter can be an effective kill move against powerful attacks not to mention the automatic cool factor due to the flame effects but is also slower and less active to balance this out in addition to possessing a sour spot these two swordsmen were joined by an unlikely combatant toad assigned to peaches neutral be instead of down the end retaliating was somewhat spores if he absorbs an attack for her while ROI was designed to encourage reckless play and was given a fairly potent counter as a result the other options available in melee were frankly a bit pathetic but to the designers credit it was the first time this kind of move have been explored in the series so let's move on and see how they developed to the idea in Brawl Mars counter saw a small increase in damage now slightly scaling with the power of the attackee cantered and doing a minimum of 8% rather than a flat 7 a modest but to welcome boost to reward but largely offset by an equally modest increase to the risk of using the move with this new counter coming out slower being less active and having additional ending leg it's somewhat arguable whether the attack was made better or worse overall but in any case it wasn't enough to see regular use by any means Roy didn't return for brawl but the Fire Emblem series did receive a new representative in Ike who was somewhat intended to be Roy's spiritual successor and came equipped with a similarly stronger but slower counter although the scaling was considerably less than Roy's in most scenarios 1.2 times the original attacks damage instead of 1.5 and brought an impressive kill power to the table considering its role as the heavy counter peach was handled more similarly to Mars gaining slightly more knocked back at the cost of a small increase to the moves startup this title also introduced Lucario's double team a new counter attack that significantly broke the mold compared to earlier entries in line with his unique aura mechanic this attack scaled with the damage Lucario himself had taken rather than the power of his opponent's attack and activated a phase into a dashing strike rather than the typical static action visually it was very interesting but practicality wise not the most it would frequently whiff against fast attacks and wasn't terribly rewarding even in most scenarios where it did connect and it's worth noting that damage high enough to make it somewhat rewarding would also be the high damage that would get you killed for missing it while Lucario's design has always basically been risk/reward the character this proved to be a bit too much most of the time although it did lay some groundwork that we would see expanded on in future titles overall though it's fair to say that counters were probably worse on average in brawl compared to melee which wasn't exactly a high benchmark to begin with it appears the developers were aware of and unhappy about this as moving into smash four we began to see a good portion of the restraint previously shown towards this type of attack lifted significantly all previous counters returned with the more traditional brawl attacks finally gaining significant ko power at the cost of becoming marginally slower and less active yet another modest increase in risk but unlike last time accompanied by dramatically higher reward Roy's counter actually received the opposite treatment becoming more active at the cost of a bit of power scaling in order to more closely align with smash for his overall design philosophy although it still remained one of the more potent among them fitting his origins in opposition to melee Marth Lucario in the meantime had the power distance and duration of double-team increased still unreasonably slow against many close quarters attacks but noticeably more rewarding when it did connect as well as safer when it didn't smash far was also the game where counters moved from being an anomaly into a standard part of moveset design with eight of the 21 newcomers utilizing some variant of the move and Ryu carrying over the focus attack from Street Fighter 4 which had a very similar functionality Lucina and me sword fighters counters were almost indistinguishable from existing sword characters with shulk and a little knack deviating very little apart from an accompanying forward - which little mac in particular greatly appreciated as a recovery aid palutena also had access to a typical counter attack although it was inexplicably weak compared to the rest of the cast to such a degree that I wonder if it was intended to discourage players from using it considering the palutena was the character intended to show off smash fourth custom move mechanic the final canter to talk about among the base roster was greninja substitute a more mobile take on Lucario's double team that shared it's unfortunate proneness to whiffing but nevertheless was a welcomed exploration of new design space this brings us to the game's newcomer DLC beginning with corns counter surge at first glance this looks similar to existing Fire Emblem counters with a bit of extra visual flair and a larger hitbox but unlike those attacks counter surge launches at an upwards trajectory rather than horizontal while this made the attack less effective as an edge guarding tool or when used at the very edge of the stage in almost every other scenario upwards knock-back is a very desirable trait to have for kill moves particularly in this case since counter surge scaled extremely well with enemy attacks it became apparent shortly after release that corns counter was capable of some pretty ridiculous feats that resulted in considerable frustration for many players and ended up toned down in a balance patch although not enough to make it ineffective by any means which leaves us with one more attack to talk about to the majority of people watching this video I don't think smash 4 Bayonetta really needs an introduction the strongest character in her debut game by a considerable margin Bayonetta drew the ire of players in a way that few characters have throughout the series not only because of her extreme combo potential and access to extensive mobility mix-ups other fighters could only dream of but also because of the sheer frustration of finally wading through all of that and attacking her only to be met with an intense amount of damage or frequently stock loss courtesy of which time this attack functioned very differently than the rest of the counters slowing time around her opponent for quite a long duration which allowed the Bayonetta player either to wail on them before transitioning into a devastating combo or primed them for a fully charged smash attack the attack was also unusually active protective against grabs Bayonetta was granted additional protection at the tail end from her bat within mechanics and it didn't scale at all with the opponent's attack meaning that a jab or close ranged item toss would be met with the same punishment as a falcon punch while the duration of the time stop effect did decay with repeated use this wasn't a significant mitigating factor as landing just one was typically enough to dominate or end a stock particularly unpleasant in smash force to stock competitive environment this is referring to after she received some of the harshest nerfs ever seen in a balance patch by the way before this both which time itself as well as the combo she was able to execute afterwards were even more devastating it's not exactly controversial to say that Bayonetta was very poorly thought of among many players and spectators and the last counter introduced to smash 4 would proved to be the strongest of this type of move would ever be allowed to get which moves us forward into ultimate where we've seen a considerably different approach take hold which time was predictably weakened quite a bit in both riskiness and to the duration of the effect although it was thrown a bone with a bigger hitbox which made it more useful against projectiles among the majority of other smash 4 veterans the usability of their counters was somewhat standardized with the more traditional versions being slightly toned-down with mildly risky frame data rather than kill potential whereas the unreliability seen in mobility based counters was significantly reduced the broad trend here was more slight refinement or in me brawlers case access to a counter which was less risky but also less lethal than usual the merits of which roughly aligned with the other veterans among the new counters introduced however use was encouraged more through increased utility rather than raw strength the first hint of this came with palutena whose default move set in smash 4 included a reflector in her side special slot along with the previously mentioned embarrassingly weak counter for down special in ultimate these were merged into a single move one which could respectively counter melee attacks as well as reflected projectiles this was a sensible change that allowed palutena to add what was previously one of her custom moves into her basic kit but less expected was the same design being applied to King K rules gut-check as well as Joker's persona form although tetra carne and Makara con were considerably more powerful incarnations as might be expected for a temporary status meanwhile in sinner or continued the trend of Pokemon characters with atypical counters his revenge down special allowing him to absorb any attack sent his way and use it to power up the next blow he landed himself potentially with downright crushing results as the power of both scales with his opponent's attack and can be stacked on top of itself and with that barring some minor functionality tweaks with smash 4s custom move variants that generally boiled down to fast but weak slow but strong or status effect instead of damage we've now taken a reasonably comprehensive look at every single counter seen throughout the Super Smash Brothers series which means we should probably talk about this video's title problem one remember when I said that counters were originally designed to emulate the combat structure of Fire Emblem counters don't emulate the combat structure of Fire Emblem under typical circumstances in this series the unit who initiated combat gets to attack first and if the opponent is using a weapon type effective in the same range then they get to strike back this seems to be the principle that master hero Sakurai is referring to and it functions very differently in Fire Emblem compared to smash for a start counter attacks are performed as a follow-up after being attacked yourself they don't interrupt that initial attack or for that matter protect you in any way it's an action that takes place afterwards now something resembling Smash's interpretation of a counter might occur if the initiator misses their attack but looking at the animations of the smash characters these look like Perry's not dodges so don't seem to be simulating that aspect of fire emblems combat people might also point to an ability in Fire Emblem literally called counter but in addition to being a relatively rare and specialized option it was also added to the series after melee had been released so if there is in fact a direct reference here it's a smash reference in Fire Emblem not the other way around now after having said all this the fact that counters only very loosely evoke the gameplay mechanic they were meant to emulate isn't inherently bad we've already seen plenty of characters have their canonical abilities heavily reworked for the smash environment pull from very vaguely connected source material to fill out their kits or simply have move sets made up in the case of Fire Emblem in particular though the counters seen in smash do what I'd consider a fairly poor job of representing the gameplay of these characters home series while still being considered so integral to their designs that six out of the eight representatives utilized this design space it's true that an unusual amount of the Fire Emblem representatives are clones which will obviously lead to moveset overlap but even among our original characters or ones with reconstructed move sets the decision to give them counters was still made I don't believe that this flimsy reference to a home series mechanic is enough justification for homogenizing these characters move sets this way particularly since the Fire Emblem representatives in Smash have already drawn enormous amounts of criticism for Peterlee pulling from the same design space these shared counters aren't exactly doing anything to dissuade this criticism even for a character like Corrin where there was clearly more effort made to explore new ideas it comes as no surprise that the two most unique Fire Emblem characters Robin and buyeth are also the two that don't utilize a counter attack in their move sets instead taking advantage of a life stealing command grab and crushing armored axe swing these characters come from the same series with the same mechanics as the rest of them so counters clearly aren't an indispensably core part of fire emblems identity in smash and I firmly believe that their wide use has done more harm than good moving away from a specific series though let's talk about the second more significant problem with counters and super smash brothers they're redundant design and therefore extremely hard to design the theory behind this attack style is to turn scenarios where you'd ordinarily be getting hit into scenarios where you're instead landing the hit yourself in practice though we're not simply talking about using a move we're talking about selecting one option from the many options available to the player at any given time of course given the choice between this and not this players will tend to lean on it a lot but given the choice between this and a myriad of substitutes vouching for it starts to become more difficult Super Smash Brothers characters throughout the series have consistently had access to a rich suite of defensive options shields spot dodges roles attacking first dashing back jumping power shielding wavedashing parrying air dodging counters are always competing with every other action a player can take and tuning them in a way that places them in a reasonable spot in this hierarchy has proven to be more than a bit problematic as the smash titles have progressed let's just watch a few seconds of this high level match note the way the players rely on high mobility and low commitment in order to try and land a hit while exposing themselves as little as possible also notice the potentially very harsh consequences for failing this defense when one character finally does get through now compared Marth's movement throughout this footage to the movement available when Marth kantors essentially every other option available to him at any one time is less committal than countering greatly increasing the risk involved in this risk reward interaction and on top of that a lot of them offer greater reward as well with the exception of Roy who's a grow design brought its own fair share of problems this was largely how counters were designed throughout the melee and brawl rosters as a result they're largely ignored outside of a few specific scenarios the first of these is during edge guards where the risk reward balance skews massively in the users favor and the second is a desperation play when trying to land particularly in melees environment of high fall speeds and weak air dodges although throughout the agonizing process of combing through competitive melee footage for examples of players actually using counters I found very few examples of this working but plenty where people got hit for attempting it it's still good that there are at least a few vaguely legitimate use cases here but it's hard to argue that they really live up to the battle of whit's spirit that these attacks were designed with of course as with most things this isn't universally true take this segment from the famous male a documentary for example which highlights a match where continuously using Mars counter proved to be the key to victory interesting and somewhat valid but the player who fell victim to it acknowledges that he wasn't properly adapting to the strategy and the Marth player could also potentially have taken more rewarding actions with this type of knowledge about his opponent's attack patterns broadly speaking early smash counters were reminiscent of something like this solid every once in a while but probably not something you're thrilled to be carrying around in a limited inventory move slots are inventory in this analogy and a dangerously small one moving into smash fours base roster we broadly see counters upgraded to more of this kind of roll not the most versatile our coveted option in your toolkit but if you know how to use it you'll get some decent results okay now what happens if you're still not quite happy with the representation you're seeing for an option and want to push the player just a bit more towards choosing it regularly well as it turns out people hate it the thing about counters is that the moment they step outside of being a niche option they immediately start forcing your opponent into a much more cautious play style that pulls from a limited selection of moves in order to avoid triggering it and if they are stuck in a niche role especially one that's no longer particularly fresh or you start to ask questions about whether that's really the best use of a precious special move slot which is typically some of the most expressive design space available to a character one way to reduce the need for that question is to make these attacks more interesting which thankfully has been an increasing design trend which Ultimate helped solidify with the only fully traditional counter among the newcomers being attached to a clone as we've discussed before different standards apply here this gives us some insight into the developers mindsets towards traditional counters as a path they don't necessarily want to keep going down and that's the beautiful thing about any design concept in a video game it can always be done well with the right creative minds behind it are you starting to realize that your attack design is losing his luster and also fails in some scenarios where it could reasonably be expected to work at a directional component did this turn out to be unreliable fixable by programming some stun frames more encouraging than an increase in reliability though is just the fact that it's interesting because here's the thing counters have the potential to be so much more inventive than just take hit hit back look at the trailer which showed off Bayonetta's original incarnation of which time now that's the kind of move that inspires passionate reactions it was absurdly overpowered true but it was also a move that captured players imaginations as well as the spirit of bayonetta whereas its ultimate incarnation is certainly more balanced but also functionally a lot of the time just kind of works like any other counter this ties back into the knife's edge designers have to constantly walk when designing these moves and I don't envy anyone tasked with doing so but it's far from impossible the ultimate incarnations of Pokemon characters have been the biggest highlights for me so far within sinner or in particular inspiring some of that same oh my god feeling as which time while encouraging a lot more skillful navigation of his toolkit as well as counter play from his opponent beyond just refusing to hit him this is a trend that we've seen in other platformer fighters as well with modern genre entries tending towards counters with more interesting rewards such as an anti projectile field for a character who lacks a projectile of her own or even folding counter esque options into their core gameplay mechanics rather than dedicating a valuable special move slot to them the traditional strike a pose hit back design that the smash series has leaned on for so long well it's got some problems but these kinds of innovations both inside smash itself as well as more broadly within the genre leave me feeling optimistic about the future of their designs thanks for watching everyone and hey if you liked it why not leave a like let me know your thoughts on the counters we have as well as where you'd like to see them go in the future but before that be sure to subscribe and hit that notification bell follow me on twitter at to mr. mark rock to see what I'm up to and check me out on patreon for exclusive content early video access discord and other cool rewards later people in a competitive setting there's one objective that matters winning if a character's toolkit rewards a user for playing in a way that a large portion of the player base would find boring or unpleasant temple or hyrule temple as many have called it over the years is one of the most enduring iconic stage entries in the Super Smash Brothers series

Channel: MockRock

Views: 973,810

Keywords: Smash Ultimate, Review, alpharad, Nintendo, little z, super smash bros ultimate, smash bros ultimate, tier list, nintendo direct, arlo, esam, hungrybox, fall guys, age of calamity, among us, ssbu, kirby fighters 2, alpharad deluxe, Nintendo Switch, PS5, IGN, Super Mario 3D All Stars, Gameplay, Speedrun, Lets Play, Fire Emblem Heroes, Pokemon, Pokemon Sword and Shield, 2020, Animal Crossing New Horizons, Meme, Memes, T1, kirby, minecraft, minecraft steve, minecraft smash, minecraft steve smash

Id: qUJQ5wcOyv8

Length: 20min 55sec (1255 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Xechwill]

Btw this guy is not the same as RockCrock, the guy who has allegations against him. Apparently MockRock has been getting comments about it, which is kind of concerning

[u/IllithidActivity]

Probably not the place to ask this but I can't find a better one: In MockRock's intro, who's the third silhouette we see? We see Ganon's up tilt, Falco's side b, and then someone I can't identify doing like a whiplash thing. Who is that?

[u/jordanthejq12]

MockRock also has some good shit to say about current events. He's a blessing to this community, both as a content creator and a person.

[u/Razputin7]

Not sure of the extent to which I agree with the large digression about Fire Emblem not having counters.

For starters, while “Counter” as a skill first appeared in Path of Radiance, the Vantage skill (which makes you attack first below a certain HP threshold, making it good on enemy turns) has been in the game since Genealogy on the SNES, so if MockRock’s argument is “it’s not similar enough to FE”, well, there you go.

I think it’s also a little unfair to say, “well FE has so many Counters in Ultimate, it’s ridiculous”. Think about it from the perspective of, like, returning movesets. 65 characters returned to Smash Ultimate. Of those characters, off the top of my head, just 8 received a significant change to their moveset (Link’s changes to be BotW, Luigi’s new grab, Ganondorf’s sword, Mr. Game & Watch’s new fair, Snake’s new down smash, Toon Link’s new forward smash, Palutena’s moves being standardised, and new specials for the Miis). There’s a noticeable emphasis on preserving old movesets in Ultimate, and I think that spinning the game’s preservation of old movesets as “too many counters” is a bit of a weird take.

I wouldn’t even be talking about this point so much, but MockRock makes it like a three-minute discussion and it’s weird.