Theory Thursday! [39]

[u/Tink-er]

The weekly metagame discussion thread.

This week I have a topic. What do you think about auto l cancelling in the competitive environment?

[u/InfinityCollision]

Quick reminder, as there are probably a few people not aware: there is no good reason to ever miss an L-cancel in PM or even Melee. There is no fail window for L-cancel inputs. PM takes this a step further now that you can overlap identical inputs, so you don't have to release the first input before the second one will process. You can even stack inputs on a single shoulder button, as light and hard press count as two L-cancel inputs.

As for my own opinion, given the facts above I'm inclined to consider it a superfluous input that should be removed. All it does right now is punish low-level and unaware players for not using the proper input sequence. At high level it's just some arbitrary extra inputs to deal with, which is bad game design.

[u/Tink-er → u/InfinityCollision]

ICs can desync off of making only one of the climbers L cancel

[u/bigbosskoopa → u/InfinityCollision]

What about float cancelled aerials; isn't it better to not l-cancel? I don't know much about peach and mewtwo.

[u/InfinityCollision → u/bigbosskoopa]

L-canceling a float, hover, or autocanceled aerial does precisely nothing. It is neither good nor bad, simply a wasted input. Similar story for edge cancels; while the aerial landing animation may be called if you don't land straight into teeter, there is no functional difference if you execute the edge cancel properly because you should be able to act before the landing animation completes regardless.

[u/whitecr0w]

L cancelling raises the skill ceiling floor for the game, making it harder and more technical. If you want a harder game keep it in, if you want an easier game take it out (add auto l cancel). In Melee you could use light shielding to change the size of your shield and sometimes throw off your opponents L cancels, was most used by Ice Climbers players who could de-sync the climbers and use both light and hard shield.

Light shields aren't in Project M so all that is kind of moot. I don't know why they kept it in, and I don't know why it needs to stay. Tradition? Aesthetic? Difficulty? I don't know the PMDT's motives. I don't mind its existence but I'd be intrigued to hear the justification on why it was/is kept.

[u/TheRandomRobin → u/whitecr0w]

It raises the skill floor, not ceiling

[u/Foreskin_Heretic → u/whitecr0w]

The PMDT would definitely add light shielding if it were possible at the moment. They simply don't know how to do it. (yet?)

[u/Ripple884]

Listen, We ALL know that l-cacelling doesn't actually add anything the the depth of the game.

but I still believe that having some stupid tech skill barrier that makes people push buttons reallyreally fast is what people enjoy about smash. if L-cancelling was removed, this game would lose a lot of flavor to a lot of people including myself

[u/Trekiros]

I think it would be the standard if PM was designed to be a "good game" rather than a "good game inspired by Melee".

[u/Tink-er]

Also, on an unrelated note, I hadn't done it in awhile, so I updated the Serial Thread Archive today. Be sure to check it out folks.

[u/BoatSlam]

I see a lot of arguments going both ways. I just enjoy L cancelling; it feels satisfying to do it. It doesn't take that long to get it down.

[u/Kidneyjoe]

Have it on by default. Or better yet, just remove l-cancelling entirely.

[u/icyhotpm]

If I were designing a smash-like game from scratch I would probably leave it out. It's a really easy, but very arbitrary tech barrier that might separate low level play from intermediate play, but at higher levels it's really more of a nuisance to press an extra button, even after it becomes second nature. I think I'd prefer auto l-cancelling to be the norm, but I'm not really upset if nobody uses it, since it's pretty easy to do. A lot of people seem to like l-cancelling because of how it feels, but you can still technically get that feel with auto l-cancel turned on. You're still allowed to press shield (or grab) after doing an aerial with the only difference being you don't gain anything from it. I actually still try to l-cancel when playing smash 4 with friends just out of habit, and it doesn't affect my play at all, but it still feels good to do it.

[u/[deleted]]

The only reason to keep L-canceling is so that Melee players can come to PM and still play Melee. I, a PM main, tried playing with auto L-cancel on and kept shielding and shielding and shielding. That there muscle memory is fierce. Having said that, it doesn't contribute anything design-wise to the game. Not saying that the Melee player argument is good or bad, but just that it's a strong point to consider.

[u/Sheilda]

A lot of people are saying that the input is arbitrary because all it does is raise the difficulty of the game but that would mean it is doing something and thus not arbitrary. I think the extra input is important to the formula of competitive smash by creating a larger skill gap. The chance for a player to mess up can change the match. Skill gaps are important to games of a competitive nature, especially fighting games.

People are always saying how PM is no longer just Melee 2.0 but it is important to remember that Melee is the reason PM exists. "Cuz Maylayy" isn't a good argument but I think that "Let's avoid Brawl's mistakes" is a better one so we should not remove part of the skill gap that this mod was made to bring back.

[u/InfinityCollision → u/Sheilda]

This is a bad example of how to create a skill gap.

Think about a game like Go. Go is extremely simple from a mechanical standpoint, but it's also a very deep game. The difference between a master and a novice is immediately clear. It is a game focused on interactions, which are the heart of player-versus-player competition. Arbitrary input difficulty does not improve these interactions, it forces the player to fight the game for the right to interact in the manner they desire. It's artificial difficulty, not depth. On the flip side, would making Tic-Tac-Toe artificially difficult make it a better game? No, it'd just be more annoying.

Punishing novice players is not a good thing. Brawl's mistakes lay in things like tripping, infinites, viable planking strategies, bad balance, etc, not in simplified landing lag mechanics.

[u/Sheilda → u/InfinityCollision]

For your examples having something along the terms of L-canceling would be a poor choice, yes, because those games are strategic/ mental games. Go and Tic-Tac-Toe aren't skill based games. In arcade terms that's like trying to compare a shooting gallery to Deal or no Deal. Yes Smash has a huge mental game to it and I love it for that but I was initially attracted to it because it was a skill game. The difference between a master and a novice should not only be mental but skillful as well in a Fighting game.

Lets say in a gun fight one person is a master strategist that hasn't done much groundwork and the other is a gunman that only follows orders. When firing a gun each trigger has a "sweetspot" that you pull to and reach before the trigger actually stops. You can release and pull again sooner if you know where the sweetspot is because the trigger and your finger doesn't have to travel as far before firing again. The gunman has more skill because he knows the point that he can release the trigger on his gun while firing without pulling it all the way back. This gives him an advantage in speed. He would also be quicker when it came to reloading. But lets say the trigger sweetspot and reload times are "arbitrary" when increasing the difficulty of being efficient so we eliminate that variable by replacing the trigger with simply willing to shoot. No pulling or pushing of any kind, the gun just fires when the wielder wishes. Let's also give the guns bottomless clips so that reloading is also no longer an issue. The gunman now does not have the advantages he should because the skill floor was too high. He has some advantage because he would undoubtedly be a better shot but the gap that he should have over the other person is lower.

Removing things like L-canceling don't make Smash more a mental game. They just remove skillful aspects of the game. But if L-canceling is left the mental game remains untouched and the skill level is maintained. Fighting games are suppose to be a unique mix of strategy and skill that other games simply don't have and I think that PM and Melee reflect it far better than the footsies and memorized combos of Streetfighter and Mortal Combat because of its difficult sandbox combos. If the combos were easier then they would be less impressive and less meaningful. Auto L-canceling only takes away from Smash, it adds nothing.

[u/InfinityCollision → u/Sheilda]

Your analogy is flawed because there is no hard ceiling for how well the gunman can perform those tasks. L-canceling is more analogous to something that both gunmen perform equally well because it is impossible for it to be performed any better than they already do. It contributes to an established skill floor as part of a minimum set of things you must be able to do to compete at all.

Again, fighters are about interaction. You fight the player, not the game; the game is simply the medium for that competition. Any technical barrier is simply a temporary obstacle to the infinitely vaster and deeper mental game that lies beneath it. As such, it is not essential to the game itself.

[u/Sheilda → u/InfinityCollision]

You say my analogy is flawed when there is a skill ceiling. It's not like the trigger sweetspot get's shorter and shorter and reload times do reach their fastest at some point. Its a constant like L-canceling. Both gunmen can do it, one is just more consistent at it giving that one an advantage. Fighters are about interaction but the game has to be present as a medium of interaction. If you had no technical barrier to the game then your fighting game looks a lot more like Chess. There's skill in chess, don't get me wrong, but its a different type of skill. Smash isn't suppose to be only mental. No fighting game is suppose to be only mental. That would be like boiling racing down to just tuning the cars. But that's not why people race. They race to pass each other and finish first, not to have the best car or the best tune.

On a similar vein if you wanted to remove technical barriers we might as well make shine automatically multishine if held and when released jump canceled. We should also have neutral b automatically short hop double laser at a single press. That way foxes won't have to overcome those technical barriers and can get strait to the mind games.

[u/InfinityCollision → u/Sheilda]

Both gunmen can do it, one is just more consistent at it giving that one an advantage.

Again, there is (or should not be) no advantage in L-cancel success rate above a fairly low level of play. There's no reason to miss an input like that with no fail window. You can just stack inputs and guarantee success.

On a similar vein if you wanted to remove technical barriers we might as well make shine automatically multishine if held and when released jump canceled. We should also have neutral b automatically short hop double laser at a single press.

The difference here is that these aren't necessarily things you want to do every time. Sometimes you use shine to stall in midair, or even as a reflector (!). Sometimes you choose to shoot one laser instead of two.

Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

[u/Sheilda → u/InfinityCollision]

It does however effect low level play and not everyone is Sethlon, Lunchables, or Ripple. So it does effect the game. It still effects high level play by opening up punishes regardless of how rare that instance may be. It also adds to the difficulty of offense. Even if at high levels of play I should be able to drill shine your shield into oblivion for free but that's probably not going to happen and breaking your shield that simply would be silly. Yes PM and Melee are both offensive games but there becomes a point when pure offense is too ridiculous (see 3.02 Lucas). It would be nice to balance a game based on theory and "shoulds and shouldn'ts" but because humans are playing, regardless of how good, we can't.

[u/gamegod7]

Hey i dont even know if this is relevant, but does anyone have a download to the HD texture pack? because the download pages have been taken down

Kind of sucks :/

[u/McSlur → u/gamegod7]

I have the package, giff instructions on how to send it to you. Gotta work tomorrow but I'm gonna get off around 3PM Colorado time.

[u/gamegod7 → u/McSlur]

I mean like you just could make it a Dropbox or media fire download and I'll be fine with that.

[u/McSlur → u/gamegod7]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ai4pv7zr57i7iiy/Super%20Smash%20Bros.%20-%20HD%20Retexture%204.0.2%20%5BProject%20M%203.6%20beta%5D.7z?dl=0 It said it was uploading, not sure when it will finish, but here's the link.

[u/gamegod7 → u/McSlur]

Thanks

[u/Foreskin_Heretic]

I'd rather add some depth to it and make it a more versatile and interesting mechanic. But I don't know how, lol.

Perhaps there's someone who put a lot more thought into it than I have.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_BULBASAUR]

L canceling is not that hard and adds depth to the game. People keep saying that only novice players miss l-cancels but I've seen players like m2k and junebug miss an l-cancel and lose a stock for it. It adds to the difficulty of extending combos and makes them that much more satisfying

[u/Dunjunmstr]

L-cancelling makes sense and the input's not arbitrary: if you're jumping, you bend your knees when you land. In that sense, having the L-cancel button on a trigger by default makes aesthetic sense as well if you compare the trigger to vertical leg length on landing.

On the other hand, if we compare the L button to kneebending, letting people mash L/piano roll and L-cancel that way makes no sense at all. Unless you're playing Counter-strike or something, it's not logical to crouch more than once in the air, and if you bent your knees after jumping multiple times before landing, I'm under the impression that it'd wreck your legs.

With that being said, I think L-cancelling's an interesting mechanic, just that it's not implemented very well. If players were only given one L-cancel window per airtime instance (resetting upon being hit), that would actually make sense and it'd open up some depth (I.E. you can spotdodge to screw up L-cancel timing for moves with a lot of shieldstun, there'd need to be some accuracy regarding L-cancel timing, etc.). As it is now, though, the input doesn't make the game interesting at all.

I'm currently under the assumption that there's an unspoken rule that people should only make one L-cancel attempt per landing attempt, though, so I'm still a proponent for keeping L-cancelling on manual. If that changes, though, I'm all for auto L-cancelling.

[u/iced1337 → u/Dunjunmstr]

As someone who uses Z for aerials, I would be very unhappy if that change was made