There is Fake Balance with Little Mac in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii-U, past what is acceptable. This needs to be fixed.

Disclaimer: I do not own the original pic. It is from the Kotaku link below, sans the obvious censoring of a word emphasizing the involved trait.

It has been a few weeks since Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS has been released overseas. Since then, Little Mac has continually been a hot topic for Smashers, especially those who play on the For Glory Mode.

Here are some complaints about Little Mac (some may contain language):

http://www.twinfinite.net/2014/10/04/super-smash-bros-characters-overpowered/

http://kotaku.com/smash-bros-might-have-a-little-mac-problem-for-now-1643379258

https://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/little-mac-is-ruining-super-smash-bros--for-3ds-181455776.html

http://smashboards.com/threads/little-mac-may-actually-be-god-tier.375054/

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAAYUKlsn-RBhg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x070QuGEw8I (3:43)
http://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/2l3agj/an_argument_for_rebalancing_little_mac/

The summary is, Little Mac is overly dominant in the ground game, no thanks to high mobility, absurd attack speed giving him overwhelming chaining ability, attack power on par with Bowser, superarmor on given moves, and a Counter move that also keeps people from juggling him or outright shut out anybody who is already forced to be predictable by his ridiculous stats; and it has proven constant. Players have found ways to get Little Mac into the air or off the stage where Little Mac is vastly more vulnerable, but they're character dependent in addition to being possible for a Little Mac player to learn about and circumvent, quite possibly in multiple ways. Add to it that his excessive vulnerability in air and off-stage also can create stage dependency and this falls under a trope we like to call Fake Balance:

http://allthetropes.wikia.com/wiki/Fake_Balance

It's a particularly bad case as the For Glory stages ultimately favor Little Mac, because they are nothing but flat terrain, with nary a platform to escpe his wrath. Certain FG stages such as Boxing Ring Omega also have a wall for him to jump off of, making his recovery less susceptible as well, although still not reliable.

This becomes hypocritical when one remembers why Meta Knight was nerfed. While Meta Knight in Brawl wasn't indisputably broken and he involves a surprisingly sound concept that would make him seem otherwise, there is no denying he got attack reach nerfs to fix issues with matchups that weren't rendered irrelevant by too many other problems in general, and more importantly to make him actually skill-based--although I the petition maker think the now removed portion of his reach, including the disjoint in his favor that turns out to be Fridge Brilliance when you see his Brawl codec convo, should have been given added hitboxes that have no launch power (in the same vein as Fox's Blaster) to cover the aforementioned Fridge Brilliance as well as get rid of the Hitbox Dissonance going against him.

Little Mac, by contrast, acts like King Hippo in his own game: he hits ridiculously hard with each attack, he refuses to go down, he's hard to react to in a way that allows for catching him properly, and the counterbalance with this is that if he hits the mat ONCE he's done. The first and last one make much more sense with King Hippo than they do with Little Mac, and even then the latter of those two was a counterbalance to King Hippo's insane amount of health. And this becomes particularly noteworthy when people think that Little Mac must have had some attack power to put a dent in King Hippo. Except Little Mac had to resort to exploiting weak spots to do that and King Hippo still took punishment like nobody's business, right to the point of even needing the weakness where if he was knocked down once it was an automatic victory. These luxuries are even WEAKER with Smash 4 Little Mac.

There's also the matter that Little Mac's build, as it is, as in "favor the ground, forego the air" is both common and shallow. There is even a character suitable for comparison in this regard: Pac-Man, a character who handles the concept in a much better balanced manner, as despite being only moderately fast he lacks the power and priority to overwhelm smart enough players by mere attrition on the ground, but his aerial combat is able to work well enough to even try to edgeguard, although don't expect results on low percentage opponents especially if their character's name is something like Bowser. Pac-Man proves the concept can work, and he doesn't even focus on it--he focuses on a different one.

The biggest issue is the punishment to Little Mac's opponent for trying to contest the center. Not only is this bad game design by preventing healthy combat, but it ends up helping Little Mac as any attempts to send him off the stage from the edge become exceedingly predictable, and attacks strong enough to launch him a considerable distance like to send the victim forward, in this case toward the stage where any efforts to edgeguard are immediately invalid. The KO Punch becomes more dangerous against people camping at the edge as well, because the edge doesn't provide retreat room to work with.

I the petition maker will provide suggestions on how to fix these problems. It is ultimately the discretion of the developers on how to handle them and they could have more creative solutions than I do (I will admit that with Kid Icarus Uprising, Super Armor being a power was enough to sate my initial interest in it for a reason), but the following suggestions are recommended by myself, at the very least for note comparison, primary suggestions in Bold and sub-suggestions in Italics:


Reduce Little Mac's ground attack power vastly. This one goes without saying. Little Mac is able to hit literally as hard as Bowser can for no penalty to his overly fast attack speed and mobility. Other characters with that sort of attack power generally have a counterbalancing weakness such as lower speed, or reach problems. Little Mac's? Well, his aerials are less usable, but this is not a good weakness, as Little Mac doesn't have to use his aerials. Intelligent Systems may be familiar with a character of their own from the Advance Wars series going by the name of Max, who in the first game has blatantly overpowered direct-fire units in trade for range-fire unit ability, but Max could only need to build direct-fire units because of how easily he destroys enemy meatwalls, especially in a surgical strike.

Little Mac's ground favoritism is not unique either. Characters like Link, Olimar, and Pac-Man can attest to this, and none of them garner much complaint, although Link can be an understandable irritant for his own concept. The difference is that with all 3 of them, ground combat never gets out of hand because they still have weaknesses in it. (Olimar's, I feel, are excessive and I'm not alone in that sentiment but that's primarily the Pikmin's AI being bad at fault, though if well-balanced Pikmin maturity stages can be added without problems with the 3DS's capabilities, that would be quite welcome.) Little Mac, by contrast, doesn't have any significant weaknesses here and thus the Counter Play is not around.

The speed and superarmor are understandable given that boxing is primarily an American sport. The problem is the attack power. It's simply excessive. Not only does the damage add up fast, the shieldstun is simply too high. With this in mind, two sub-suggestions:

Little Mac's ground damage power should be about 0.7 times what it is now. This refers to how much damage and shieldstun Little Mac's attacks deals. It would prevent Little Mac from overwhelming opponents with mere attrition, allowing characters who shouldn't suffer that problem to be able to adapt and fight back.

Little Mac's kill ability with ground moves should require getting the opponent to about 160% to burst KO with the smashes. Increasing the required percentages for burst KOing will force Little Mac to care more actively about endurance. This becomes good when it better reflects on the ideals of boxing: energetic combat that tests will and stamina. This would also promote KO Punch usage by keeping Little Mac from KOing nearly as early without it. He wants the TKO rather than the 10 count, he would have to work for it now.

The summary is: Little Mac needs to deal considerably less damage than he currently does or he gets stronger advantages than he should.

Change the KO Punch's charging from (3A + 10D) to (8A + 4D), A = damage given (Attack), while D = damage taken (Defense). For those who don't understand, Little Mac fills the meter with 1000 HPs compared to the given formula(s).

If you're not following the Algebra, right now, Little Mac needs only take 100% to have KO Punch charged if he doesn't deal so much as a scratch himself--which if he does he only needs to take less. With the high difficulty keeping him off-balance, this makes having to deal with it an inevitability, and though KO Punch isn't a one hit kill, it's still powerful enough to kill at low percents, let alone for a startup attack.

KO Punch can be dealt with by overcharging through dealing enough knockback to Mac, but it's not reliable as KO Punch itself is psychological pressure toward Mac's opponent. This is not something that should reward Mac for taking only moderate damage. Reduing the defensive charging highly would force Mac to have to put up with his bothersome recovery if he could want to make use of it through simply surviving.

The flip side is the offensive charging, which is currently too slow to matter in general. In fact, it makes me suspect that the developers though to balance only the KO meter with LM's stats in mind. I need only point to the first Advance Wars again, where Sturm and Eagle become able to use their powerful CO Powers just for losing only 2 or 3 planes. It goes without saying that both aforementioned CO Powers come to aggravate players to no end even to this day, even turning how the game's Advance Campaign is approached by the player into a case of picking your poison that earned itself a video named "Worst Levels Ever #9" by a Youtube user named whoisthisgit. Little Mac causes similar problems: either he beats you around with natural momentum, or he gets a free KO Punch.

Offensive charging should be useful by rewarding the player for performance. But it should also be strong enough to even matter. Nearly tripling it should help Little Mac out, but he'd still have to work for it. Under the proposed new formula, Little Mac being able to fill the meter against an opponet at 80% or below would require him to be at a higher percentage than them, not the most welcome situation for a lightweight. In fact, him KOing dealing only 50% would require him to survive to 150%, which would force him to be skilled at survival to try it. Thus Little Mac would have to be going even with the opponent, outright overwhelming them, or simply doing something right with his inept durability, just to have a chance to get a KO Punch off.

Widen the weight gaps a bit. This is actually a global problem, but it's one that is to Little Mac's benefit. Of course, with the issues involved, this may as well be mentioned anyway.

The biggest issue with lightweights is that they are able to survive powerful attacks at triple digit percentages. This innately goes against one of the game's ideals: testing the player's accuracy ability. It is okay and in fact should be happening with heavyweight characters, but with lightweight characters, this is arbitrary survival. It makes other characters need to deal unnecessary damage to guys who shouldn't be getting hit in the first place. There is one such case at 2:54 of this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPa1nhOqXnA

Namely, Sheik is hit above 100% by a Forward Smash from the opposing Sheik and lives. That's not right.

That's the bottom line: these characters who are supposed to focus on evasion even against the more accurate attacks should be held accountable for being hit by less accurate attacks. Instead they get to survive attacks they shouldn't. This particularly benefits Little Mac as he ends up with an easier time recovering due to difficulty in even throwing him around.

Reducing his weight a little should make it easier to KO him in general, making him less able to win by mere attrition as an opponent who can get through his superarmor (which prevents knockback but NOT damage) will be able to keep him from beating them alone. This would even prevent him from getting benefit from the rage mechanic, as he'd be less able to live to higher percents, reducing his knockback at realistic percentages.

Plus some durability buffing on some of the heavier characters couldn't hurt to let them live a little longer. It shouldn't be too much or they'd have too many advantages, but it would soften the fact that they flinch from nearly every attack in the game even if it's weak enough. (Bowser not flinching from weak attacks at low percents is handy, but it's character specific.)

Weaken shielding. There is a notable amount of shieldgrab spam prevent anything resembling an approach, because grabs are capable of coming out inbetween a cooldown aerial and a startup ground attack, with less ease than warranted. This means offensive approaching is punished with a universal solution. This is something that shouldn't be as powerful as it should be, especially when shielding keeps momentum from being disrupted as easily. This leads to players on both sides camping and matches ultimately leading to Sudden Death, which is still frowned upon especially on For Glory. (IMO, Sudden Death should give a healthy advantage based on percentage and weight but that's off topic.) Little Mac, for those wondering, abuses overly strong shielding by milking startup attacks and his insane speed for what they're worth since he will typically camp the center. Shield nerfing would also give Little Mac some of his own counter play by giving him a way to bypass shieldgrabs.

Have a fighter whose shield gets hit take (6D - 30) / 5 damage themselves to a minimum of 0, D = damage value before shielding. This should apply even on powershielding. Note that I would not worry about any attack that deals 30 or more damage because those generally have sufficient problems hitting at all. Under the formula, any attack dealing 5 damage or less will deal no damage, but moderate and higher damage attacks such as Link's Neutral Air will still deal workable damage. This would even reward base damage values with less condition, since those attacks have problems landing at all. (Although one has to question why Villager's Forward Smash deals only 15%; its usage is way too uncommon and it doesn't help that it can be reflected. This is especially in comparison to Ness's own Forward Smash, a reflector move to begin with.)

Multiply current shield regen rate by 100 / (100 + P^2 / 160), P = (shown) percentage of fighter. This would allow continued shield pressure to work on anybody at heightened percentages because they would eventually be exposed to attack and ultimately much easier to clean hit.

Both of these changes would result in faster matches, reducing the Sudden Death count, because fighters would take damage faster and clean hits would be easier on heavily damaged fighters.

Have Counter moves deal less knockback and should be very strong superarmor that doesn't prevent damage rather than hyperarmor that does. To clarify on the latter point, superarmor prevents flinching/knockback but only a limited amount, an example would be Yoshi's second jump. Hyperarmor prevents ALL flinching/knockback, Ike's Aether move making use of it.

Another problem that is common, though not entirely global but enough characters have Counter moves--too many IMO, in fact. (To put the developers' ability of being steadfast in even more question, I would have preferred Palutena have Virus instead of Counter as her default Down B and not be able to use Up B and Down B on the same stock as a reference to the idea that certain powers in Kid Icarus Uprising contradict each other beyond mere numbered cost. Try fitting Reflect Barrier in the same set as leveled Energy Charge and Slip Shot as well as Quick Charge and Tirelessness if you don't believe me. The idea would make it easier to balance Virus as a bonus.) It gets commonly complained about as well, as people become annoyed by having to, what else, camp because they can't clean hit Counter spammers to ring them out instead of getting ringed out themselves. Counter moves punishing predictability is fine, but Counter moves punishing the mere point of the game gets in the way of rewarding people for values such as bravery.

Little Mac can, of course, use his Counter move, Slip Counter, to additionally shut down attempts to keep him in the air. Compared with that he has decent horizontal movement compared to his fall speed, this makes juggling folly because he can land anywhere he pleases more easily and give problems once again.

Keeping Counter moves from dealing as much knockback would keep them from being as annoying, and keeping Counter moves from preventing damage or entirely preventing knockback if the move is strong enough--likely more than what is required to burst KO--would keep Counter move spammers from being able to win that way.

Finally, give Little Mac's A button aerial attacks VERY good power. With the above suggestions, a mere power boost to the aerial attacks would stay within the theme that Little Mac wants to stay on the ground, because his air attacks have laughable range, but now he could use them as potential anti-armor moves if he becomes willing to bother with them. It would increase Little Mac's variety a bit and make him able to do less predictable and more versatile stuff. That's the most important factor: that Little Mac is legitimately plausible to fight back against without specific characters or gimmicks, while Little Mac is still both balanced and fun for the players who like him for him.

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Obviously, my suggestions can be extreme, so the developers can go ahead and apply lesser or more creative measures than what I suggest, but make sure they're not half-efforted or they're asking to fail. (I emphasize that remembering what happened with Kid Icarus Uprising and its own severe imbalances.) I do not fully comprehend boxing well enough to be entirely sure what would be appropriate. Of course, I have no doubt that Little Mac absolutely needs to be addressed. More than any other character in the game in fact, including Rosalina, who for balance patching just needs stronger focus on protecting Luma. I do also understand two things: jabs in boxing are meant to be used for probing, and a "conquer yourself" character getting easy victories on multiplayer is a horrible idea.

So please, Masahiro Sakurai: patch Little Mac. Otherwise, that problem in the picture you see before you will persist.