Editing Forum:General proposals/Archive 5

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'''1)''' When reviewing changes, said changes should be of competitive relevance and explain how they affected the character. For example, when Smash 4 Bowser gained Koo-Pah, that revolutionized his game plan. That is what should be in the change overviews, allowing you to sum up how patches have changed the character from a metagame perspective. A move dealing 1% more damage is likely not going to come up in competitive play unless something seriously incredible has happened.

'''2)''' Just listing off changes without explanation in some [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chewbacca_defense Chewbacca Defense] style should just be banned as a whole, that's for the changelog. If a character hasn't been affected much by patches, there is no need to bloat the overview with what's in the changelog; just say nothing relevant has happened, that more could hypothetically happen, and move on. The overview should not be taken as a second changelog, or you defeat its purpose.  

'''3)''' Sensationalism should be just cut out. Talking about how Judge 9 has a 2× SDI multiplier as if it remotely affects the kill power should just not be a thing. Sensationalizing character changes only serves to make the character look worse than they are, and overstates how much patches matter overall. Patches radically changing characters are a rarity, not the norm.

 

:"In addition, while his ground game still remains strong, it has been nerfed in several ways; his neutral attack has less range and is significantly weaker, his forward tilt has less range, deals far less damage, the first hit has been altered removing its ability to trip and the second hit is slower and weaker. His up tilt's infamously deceptive horizontal range has been reduced, and the explosions from his explosion-based attacks can now be absorbed, worsening his matchups against Ness, Lucas, and Mr. Game & Watch."

However, the rest of this just falls apart. Jab, FTilt and UTilt are severely lacking in explanation, unlike what we see for explosion-based attacks. I think this is partly due to the explosion stuff being low-hanging fruit. Jab, in my opinion, was hardly a relevant change for Snake and is better suited for the changelog. FTilt's damage nerf actually made it connect into itself much less often, and less safe on shield, resulting in less in-context kill power; that would be a competitively relevant change that needs citing here. UTilt is still deceptively large, and in terms of how it's noted, it's very sacky and just kind of forced in. Overall, out of all of this, his FTilt and explosion changes were the only relevant parts of this section, which cuts that part in half. See my issue?

:''"Forward tilt's damage was decreased, and the first hit's trip chance was removed, making it connect into itself less consistently. This also removed its trip-centric combos. The second hit was also made slower, further increasing the inconsistency. The lessened damage and increased lag, overall, has also significantly reduced its shield safety."''

Not only does this have a double-parallel written in that makes it read worse than a low-level Falcon player trying to DAir in neutral, this doesn't explain ''what'' hurtbox was increased, thus leaving it with no context to the reader. Pichu's ear hurtboxes were what was increased (making Pichu overall bigger than Pikachu), and the shifts from Pichu's animations to make it slightly more difficult to hit than what's being represented here. This leads to a sensationalized "damage report" that makes the character look worse than they actually are. Why is this in the '''Melee changes''' section, by the way? Shouldn't this be in the Update History from a timeline perspective? I don't get it.

On top of this, the Pichu case doesn't actually explain how big the hurtbox change was. Moves that involve Pichu's ears (eg. USmash, NAir, FAir, Skull Bash) are made far less safe to throw out. It just says "easier to hit", when there are ways for Pichu to work around it. Moves such as DSmash have tons of intangibility, shield is a thing(!), etc. This should all be cited to show how the nerf affected Pichu's game plan. The surface-level analysis seen here is just poor and generally gives misleading information to the reader.  

God, I hate this. A lot of pages have a tendency to bloat the changes section just listing off changes without much attention. It's almost as if people who have never played the characters in their lives wrote them. They just list off the issues as if they were some kind of changelog, when said changelog is usually close by, thus defeating the purpose. It's redundant, uninformative and does nothing to show what the changes meant. All it does is serve to bloat the article.

Notice a problem? Yeah, these sentences don't explain anything after the note on clean NAir. What does the shortened hitbox duration for FAir mean? What does the SHAC DAir removal mean? What setups were removed? What bearing do these have on DH's competitive relevance? '''You can't just list off the nerfs as if they all actually matter'''. You need to go over what these nerfs actually ''did'' to the character, you need context. The changelog is there for listing off this stuff. The part about setups here is almost what I want to see. The setups removed should be more detailed and explained, going over why these don't work as a result of the nerfs. That's what should be talked about, not just the numbers.  

...the hell is this? Typos, weasel words, and what's basically a vague version of the changelog afterwards. Banana Peel is explained decently well, but then sensationalizes the part about it being thrown twice meaning it makes it easier to use against him. You know he has ways to confirm both hits and infinites, right...right? Monkey Flip's lag increase doesn't explain anything about its old movement utility, how it adversely affected his recovery, or anything. Then the writer added UAir, UTilt and DTilt into what should be different sentences entirely. UAir's blindspot citation doesn't go over decreased combo utility or anything. DTilt is talked about well, but UTilt is written in a very forced way, with attention directed away from it, making it out as if it shouldn't be noted at all. It's all extremely messy, which makes it hard for me to even explain why it's bad. There just isn't enough explanation.  

This one toes the line of objective VS subjective, but I think we can easily go over this. Many character change overviews have a severe issue with going over a few minor changes as if they're the end of the world or god's gift to mankind.

I believe we can agree that this is a reach, since this move can still easily kill at what, 15%? Hell, human reaction time is hardly going to let this happen...it's insane. This is in the changelogs for Mr. Game & Watch from Smash 4 to Ultimate. A friend of mine who's basically the authority on this character tried to edit this once, only for it to come back with the text you see now.  

My issue here comes from "hinder him more than any other character". The explanation given is actually alright and provides something that many of these analyses have: '''greater metagame relevance'''. The talk about mechanical changes is great. But, the issue here is it uses the subjective opinion of Little Mac being hindered by all of those removals the most, '''as a definitive'''. I could argue Shulk's loss of perfect pivoting hurt him the most due to how long it was, or that Samus losing perfect pivot Charge Shot was problematic. I could also argue that the universal landing lag and jumpsquat decrease hurt King Dedede the most as it makes his already poor shield game easier to abuse. This, in my opinion, comes off as a sensationalist approach to analyzing Little Mac's changes. It's solid, but exaggerated in a way that reduces the objectivity.  

Now read this, and tell me if you think this is a changelog note on {{SSBU|Joker}}'s page, or in the overview prior.