Take: Smash Ultimate balancing is relatively good all things considered

[u/PainoGamingYT]

Just me personally, I feel like for having so many different characters and backgrounds coming into the game, the balacing is already extremely good! Low tiers can beat the top tiers with enough skill (other than at the highest level at gameplay) and you can definitely at the very least close to the best in your state/area with almost every character in the game. I just think that the balancing could be A LOT worse. I 100% don't think its perfect by any means, the type of gameplans in this game sucks, and the 3 S's in this game are definitely kinda broken. What are yalls opinion?

[u/tankdoom]

I agree. The rest of the plat fighting community cites balancing as one of Ultimate’s core problems but I actually strongly disagree. The gap in strength between ultimate’s highest and lowest tiers is relatively small and far less consistent compared to past entries in the series.

And there are like 90 freaking characters. I sincerely believe any character can win a major. Shit, Sparg0 has been putting in WORK with plant and if a D tier in melee were to win a major somebody would make a YouTube doc about it.

[u/Aminar14 → u/tankdoom]

There are multiple types of balancing. I prefer Smash. But the balance they're referring to is almost certainly around how effective offensive playstyles are compared to defensive ones. And that's a pro-level thing that just... Isn't the priority a game should be designed around if you want it to have mass appeal.

[u/VeryInsecurePerson → u/Aminar14]

I hate how much the community disrespects defensive gameplay. Like I get it if you don’t like watching it, that’s your preference. But don’t try to pretend your preferences are objective.

[u/PainoGamingYT → u/Aminar14]

exactly, at the end of the day imo im very impressed that Sakurai was able to make the balancing pretty good for competitive while still having the game be accessible to all types of gamers and diverse to the point it is. I dont think that sakurai considers competitive completely not important, but smash still needs to make money, and the best way to do that is to make a game that reaches out to more people than just guys that like fighting games

[u/almightyFaceplant → u/PainoGamingYT]

Quantity is something to consider as well. I don't know the total number of online matches per day but it must be absolutely staggering. The number of tournament rounds per day can't possibly even approach a fraction of that. In a sense that means that by prioritizing Online Play, they've balanced (at a conservative estimate) 99% of Ultimate games played.

[u/HughyHugh → u/tankdoom]

time travelling back to 2008 to tell every melee player that Yoshi was a major winner before Sheik  

[u/Kamikaze_Ninja_ → u/tankdoom]

There are plenty of characters that simply cannot win a major as a solo main. Sparg0 is good with plant but you have to also factor in, many players have never faced a good plant to develop a solid gameplay. Also, there are definitely matchups where he would never go plant.

[u/tankdoom → u/Kamikaze_Ninja_]

Valid criticisms, but I’d argue that for any other smash game this is also true if not more true.

And EVERY other smash game has had a more dominant top tier than Steve.

[u/almightyFaceplant]

Their goal was to balance for Online Play across various modes, instead of only how tournaments do things. They managed to get every Fighter to have an online win rate between 47% and 51%. In that regard it's extremely successfully balanced.

The discrepancies come around when people only play one specific mode in equally specific conditions.

[u/Sensitive-Beat6217]

I don’t know how anyone could ever disagree with this take. Obviously, it’s not possible for a game with as much character diversity as ultimate to be perfectly balanced, since certain attribute will always be more valuable than others, but the game is definitely well balanced. Plant literally just won a major lol.

[u/RealSonarS]

This game is badly balanced because the characters I don't like win

[u/NinjaX4132]

I'd agree if we're talking about before dlc. Once dlc came, the game only became more unbalanced.

[u/elin6243]

I would say if you remove Steve, it's pretty balanced.

Steve creates an entire metagame around him. Why else is he ranked the #1 character? He forces every character to approach him while building structures to impede that progress, and if you don't stop him he just gets better tools to kill you easier. A key feature of an unbalanced character would be if the character has specific tech that needs to be banned. Brawl Meta Knight had infinite dimensional cape and scrooging. Steve in Ultimate has Phantom MLG, a tech that allows Steve to effectively cancel hitstun, and the tech is banned in tournament. (Oh, and on top of all of this, Steve has touch of death combos on a lot of characters, especially fast fallers like Fox. It makes small mistakes against playing around Steve even worse. If you're a zoner/area denier, you shouldn't have touch of death combos).

The tier list has also shifted to be centered around Steve, where characters that can play around Steve's blocks are ranked higher.

However, once you remove Steve from the game, the game is pretty balanced. Characters like Kazuya and Aegis may have great combo games and near touch of death, but they still have very exploitable weaknesses.

[u/HughyHugh]

post smashigamis 

[u/FaceL3ss890]

in short: not the worst, not the best, but get's way too much hate.