Hey everyone, firstly I just wanna say I super appreciate how civil and polite MOST people are being about this video. Seems like a lot of people agree with the general sentiment of the video and those who don't are *mostly* voicing their disagreements in a rational manner. A couple have been needlessly antagonistic but they'll likely slink back to their caves on Reddit in due course. I just wanna use this comment to address a couple of disagreements/criticisms people are voicing in the comments section because I have earnestly been paying attention to what you guys are saying AND because - thankfully, it seems like I've made surprisingly few errors in the video in need of correcting. So; #1: People take issue with me calling Joker a "below average character" until he summons Arsene, and to some extent I can see why. Perhaps I misspoke a little bit in the video and it would have been better to say that the power balance between base Joker and Joker with Arsene is (in my opinion) just totally out of whack. I maintain that Arsene needs to be scaled back a bit but I want to see very few characters get outright nerfed so I think it'd be reasonable that you buff base Joker in other areas to compensate, right? Regardless, on second thought - yeah, maybe Joker is at the very least an "average" character without Arsene, I don't think much more than that though. #2: People also disagree with me saying that the game is much less expressive and more specifically with me saying that you can rarely see tangible differences between two top/high level players playing the same top/high tier character. Sadly, I still just don't really see it, I'm sorry, I just don't. Maybe that frustrates you and you think I'm totally wrong - and that's fine! I'm not an unreasonable person and if and when people disagree with me, more often that I'm not I'm happy to discuss our differences of opinion as long as they bring their disagreements to me in a reasonable manner instead of being passive aggressive or insulting my intelligence like a couple people have in the comments, lmao. #3: I'm aware that roll buffering was patched in 5.0, was it *fixed* is a totally different question. From my testing I've found a minor difference in the buffering of rolls, but I'll stress minor, and that spotdodge buffering basically seems to be exactly the same. I know other people who say they've felt the same but also some very reputable people who say that the difference is major. As always with Smash, concrete and reliable info is very hard to come by. I'll update this post in the future if/when I ever can tell what's really happened with it for sure. I watch the game at a high level a lot, I'm still a Smash fan. And based on these comments I've seen people both here and on Reddit assuming a lot of things about me, that I'm "biased", "just an Ultimate hater" or that I don't know what I'm talking about. To those people I'd say, I don't mean to stroke my own ego but you can very clearly see footage of me in the video in Top 8 of a big regional event with Smash 4 Falco, widely regarded as a very bad character. I know my stuff, I did pretty well in my own region. If any of the Reddit brainiacs out there making false assumptions about me because they don't like my opinions wanna show me how their success/experience in the game outweighs my own, I'd love to see it! In Smash 4 I'd cite Ally/Anti/Zenyou as a perfect trifecta of how expressive the game was. All 3 Mario players, all with very distinct styles. Ally was known for his strong fundamental play, which was super interesting when you compared him to Zenyou who had combos and tech down more than any other Mario player but lacked that "X Factor" that let Ally clutch games out against the world's best so consistently. Anti was somehow kinda in-between both these players with a super read-based and unconventional style of his own. People speculated so much that if any of these guys gained the strength of the other to make up for what they lack, they'd be unbeatable. It was a super interesting dynamic. This is without mentioning the Mr. R/VoiD, Larry Lurr/Light comparisons I make in the video although; granted, maybe I don't explain well enough HOW I think they differentiated themselves, I just didn't want the video to go on for 40+ minutes! :) Sadly, despite people telling me to watch sets of a bunch of different Snake players or how much different Zackray's Joker was to MKLeo's, I still just don't see it. A lot of people are just kinda shouting at me that my opinion is wrong and that theirs is right and not really doing much to actually try and convince me, rofl. Someone said that because MKLeo lost to one Mario player 3-0 at Frostbite and then beat another one 3-0, that's proof of how playstyles can differ? That's proof of how the EFFECTIVENESS of said "playstyle" can differ, not how two players are actually allowed to express themselves through a game's mechanics. That's just "who deals with this situation better?", not "who deals with this situation differently?" Again, if you disagree, that's fine! I'm gonna continue responding to people who provide INTERESTING and DISCUSSION-PROVOKING comments and ignoring those who just wanna be big dumbos. Thanks again to those who have supported! Hopefully you feel like checking out the channel and seeing what else I've got on offer? If you liked this one, I think you'll like a lot of my stuff :) EDIT: ALSO final final thing I wanna address is people saying it takes too long to get into the meat of the video and that I don't need 5 minutes of disclaimers etc. The thing is that it's intentional. There's a lot of people on KZfaq who just kinda wanna be objective and straight-faced and give you the "facts" and as a result they sacrifice any kind of expression or personality. I am very conscious of not doing that, I like having fun with my videos, making jokes and giving the viewer an idea of who I am, I don't wanna just be some nameless faceless voice droning on at you the whole time. I'm aware that some people may find the "slow burn" frustrating but this is just my style, it's what makes making videos fun for me. After all, it is only 5 or so minutes out of a 37 and a half minute video in which I provide some important background on myself, context on my experience with the game and give necessary credit to those who deserve it. I think the first 5 minutes are important and if they bothered you then sorry; but they are just a microcosm of me as a creator, I want to have some fun and show some personality. My stance is that if you have no idea who I am; I don't see why you should care about my opinion. Basically tl;dr it just be like that

Agree 100% with the unnecessary difficulty of falling through platforms in this game. Incredibly frustrating.

At first i thought “what control issues” then agreed with every point

The longer I play fighting games, the more I realize that MOVEMENT is what separates the great from the good. If the movement is expressive, the rest of the game tends to fall in place.

gsmVoid just watched this video with his chat live on stream for the past hour. Void didn't agree with every point you made - obviously, since you made too many points for anybody to agree with everything lol - but this spawned a GREAT discussion about the valid problems in Ultimate, as well as how we as fans should best articulate our criticisms of the game. Mad props, dude.

Good criticisms, I hope nintendo listens to at least some of these grievances

Since brawl everyone has been asking for less landing lag on aerials. Well they got it, and now the entire metagame revolves around it.

Literally just called my friend who I played ultimate with everyday after being huge melee fans to say "hey remember how our aerials kept getting messed up? here's why" felt so nice to have an answer to my confusion. One of the few youtube videos that is over 10 mins and packed with information back to front with no bullshit or filler. I love it. Thank you.

One of the things I hate the most is that you can't sheild in your initial dash. Combined with how comitial dashing is and the nerfs to sheilding, it makes degenerate zoning more viable than it should especially online. And the issue with platforms was already solved with sheild dropping but they decided to take it out for the first time in the series. Really makes no sense and would have been a great, intuitive skill check.

I came into this video thinking "I really like ultimate, I wonder what he thinks is wrong about it" but as the video went on I realized how many of your points are true, especially with the buffering system. I think i've experienced every one of the problems you pointed out but I just thought it was my error. I love smash ultimate, so this was a huge eye opener to me and I now look at the game with a more critical eye.

15:23 So that's why I've had trouble with dropping down platforms in Ultimate, but not with the other games. It makes me dread Battlefield layouts so much.

Yup. The c-stick vs the control stick thing really killed it for me...I could not tell wtf i was doing wrong in some combos

It feels like Ultimate's controls were almost designed to make players as salty as humanly possible.

I'm a Melee player and I've been playing Ultimate seriously since release. I enjoyed the game at the beginning and I think it's so close to being great. But there's some design choices that just don't make sense. For me it's the pitiful grab ranges and how safe aerials are in general. I'm so sick of blocking an aerial and trying to punish only for the opponent to be able to buffer spot dodge before my move even comes out. I agree 100% with your take on how players play neutral and how the game doesn't allow you to play expressively. I feel like the game still rewards the player that plays safe more than the player that takes risks, and that leads to boring, defensive gameplay. Still a fun game in many regards, but I don't think I would have fun trying to optimize my play, since optimizing would just mean trying to figure out how to play as safe as possible. I'm glad we've reached a point where the game can be criticized.

I’m honestly sick of the whole “git gud” mentality in general. It’s only used to try and demean your complaints and criticisms and make you feel like it’s only your fault no matter how flawed the system actually is. And if they are wrong or seem to be frustrated about something, then offer to actually help them out and more easily realize why they’re wrong. The only thing you accomplish by saying “git gud” is showing that you’re a tryhard that only serves to make people quit and worsen a community because of it.

Smash Ultimate, the game we hate playing, but not as much as we hate not playing.

25:38 holy shit I did not expect to randomly see footage from one of my videos on here, what an honor!

it’s really frustrating that the control issues still aren’t fixed and never will be :(

Watched the whole thing. Cool video and i def agree to some of these points. The controls frustrate me so much sometimes (enough that we made our own video on them (which you know)) and dont even get me started on wifi... never played online, never will -.- Thx for discussing this stuff in a cool and rational manner, and who knows what the future holds, there are still a few (prolly 6) more patches to come. Im still slightly hopeful that Nintendo fixes at least the control problems, maybe even buff parrying :P - cFive PS: HOW DARE YOU PRAISE THE TRASH MENU IN THIS GAME... IT BEEING BETTER THAN IN SM4SH IS HARDLY AN ACHIEVEMENT >:| Also, congrats on the success of this vid :)

Thanks. Something about Ult's gameplay always felt clunky despite the increased speed but I could never explain why.

The second you started explaining how the input buffer works, it was like everything suddenly clicked at once. I've had so many issues with the controls in this game since day 1, but couldn't put my finger on exactly what my problem was. At least now I know I wasn't going crazy.

Here's a fun fact on Ultimate's inherent lag: Every Smash game has some amount of inherent offline lag. Ultimate has an average offline lag of 98ms. Compared to 64 and Melee, it's a drastic jump from their average of 58ms, and even when compared to the previously laggiest game in the series, Brawl at 84ms, there's still a pretty significant jump of 14ms. If that doesn't make too much sense or you don't understand how significant it actually is, it means that with the advancements Dolphin has made (which reduce Melee's inherent lag from 58ms to about 38ms) you could play Melee Netplay with a ping of 110ms (lag is half the ping, so you'd have 55ms of lag) and you'd have less lag than offline Ultimate. You can only then imagine how laggy WiFi Ultimate is.

When the melee net play system works better than ultimate you know there might be a problem.

While I haven't experienced as many issues as you have, I respect that you made a criticism video on such a popular game. You laid out your opinions in a respectful manner with strong justification and evidence. All in all I don't have to agree to say this is a great video!

Great video

When you summarized Ultimate's neutral with goats clashing headfirst, I almost cried at how accurate it was.

It seems to me that a lot of the grievances that you have with this game comes down to the lack of options (either through movement or through attack diversity) and the confusingly inconsistent interactions with the buffer system. The slower WiFi would be much less annoying with a consistent buffer system. Accidental dodging and the near-fatal endlag of off-stage directional air dodging would be more acceptable if they weren't so high on the buffer system. The top tiers wouldn't be so annoying if their prowess was due to the options that their attacks grant them (such Pikachu, Wolf, and Inkling like you mentioned in the video) rather than just one move/combo or gimmick keeping them relevant. Having a FEW gimmick characters would be fine (in my opinion), but the fact that so many of them essentially rely on the gimmicks do make them feel so much staler than previous games. I completely agree with you there. There are so many characters that are expressive but are overshadowed simply because these one-trick top tiers are simply better overall. Joker and Wario are very close to being amazing, but Arsen and Waft (respectively) make fighting them a bit of a chore, especially since both gimmicks grow with time. Likewise with Lucario, whose gimmick grows with damage sustained (which means characters who struggle to kill are literally digging themselves into bigger holes). As you mentioned in this video, Smash 4 had some of the same problems: Bowser and DK relying on grab kill confirms, Cloud having the single most busted gimmick in the game, Bayonetta simply not being balanced in the slightest, et cetera. But if Smash 4 was often seen as "UTilt-UAir combo" game, Ultimate seems to be the "NAir-train" game, considering just how many characters rely on NAir so heavily. (The Ridley Discord server literally says that NAir is the best move that Ridley has; that's disappointing to me.) Despite all of this, though, I've found myself loving Smash Ultimate's competitive scene so much more than both Brawl and Smash 4. Maybe it's because how much more viable the general cast is. Maybe it's because all of the love and dedication that the animations have. Maybe it's because of all of the different people sides of the Smash community finally coming together more easily after the schism that happened between the Melee and Brawl/4 communities way back when. There's just something awesome about this game that keeps me coming back to play it, even if I don't have anyone offline to play it with. For me, Brawl was too much of a slog for me to enjoy competitively, and Smash 4 didn't have enough to keep me occupied due to my not having any interest in mastering all of the tech (as cool Wavebouncing is as a term, I just didn't care to learn how to do it). Ultimate, though, has more for me, and it's probably the closest I've ever gotten to actually wanting to learn stuff. In fact, if it wasn't for Rivals of Aether, I'd probably be training for Smash Ultimate more readily despite all of these legitimate grievances that you've brought up. I think that a fix to the buffer system, a fix to the online infrastructure, a better distribution of power within movesets, and actual meaningful buffs to the lower tiered characters would be enough to make the game almost ideal for competitive play. Ultimate is so full of "almost" in its execution. Some characters just need one or two key buffs to make them incredible. Some characters (or gimmicks) need one or two key nerfs to make them nowhere near as overbearing. The buffer system just needs a few tweeks to be as accessible as it was initially designed to be. I think Ultimate is a great game. It could be an outstanding competitive game too. Thank you for making this video! I know that not many people will agree with you. If I hadn't been exposed to what a truly competitive game could be like (that being Rivals of Aether), then I most likely wouldn't have agreed with you either. I still don't agree with your assessment on character playstyles being exactly the same due to being optimal (at least not on all characters; there are quite a few characters-even high/top tier-that still have diverse methods of play, such as Snake, Peach, and Pac-Man). I also don't agree that Mr. Game & Watch qualifies to be in your "one attack overshadows everything else" category (though I do believe that he does have a few overtuned moves). But you've presented your thoughts in a way that I rarely get to see in about this franchise, and I appreciate your diligence and passion. Thank you for opening this conversation. I hope you have a wonderful day, Fudj,

The more I play Smash Ultimate, the more I dislike it as a game. It's easily the most-polished Smash to-date, and it has the best balance of what the competitive community wants versus what the casual community wants. That said, its inconsistencies really bother me as a player, and its movement and neutral play aren't what they should be. Input buffering is a big deal, there's WAY too much input lag for a modern fighter (SFV has this problem too, so it's not like Smash is the only game that suffers here), the behavior of projectiles is super-inconsistent, and literally everything is safe on shield, creating a non-existent punish game until you get hit once. I still really like Smash Ultimate as a game, but it's hard to justify how inconsistent it feels and how horrible it is to work around that. If a game doesn't feel natural, the response shouldn't be "get better until it feels natural". The response should be "we should make this feel more natural and consistent so players make less mistakes."

Just glad the honeymoon period is over. Year and a half everything this game did got praised

I want my neutral to feel like breakdancing not a 5yd sprint Also imagine melee with a score system like tony hawk pro skater +500 for that sick micro spacing

If the second fighter of DLC pass 2 isn’t the “TURN OFF BUFFER” button I swear to god

Dude, thank you. *THANK YOU* for bringing all of this up, you have literally put all of my thoughts into words about this game that it makes me want to tear my hair out. I cannot stand Smash Ultimate. I tried so hard to like this game, but I just simply cannot. The inputs, the character balancing, *the effing controls*, my friends have told me that I should accept these flaws and adjust, but it just makes the game so unfun to play, and tournament games have already gotten so stale because it's the same linear gameplay every single time. I told my friends that unless they intend to overhaul all of these mechanics, there is no way that I'll continue to play this game. And the best way that I could describe it before seeing this video is that Ultimate *really* encourages you to play how it wants you too, and not the other way around. So again, thank you for finally putting this into words for me.

The good: this video holds up in 2021 :) The bad: this video holds up in 2021 :(

It is "DJ - THED" by the way. You were right the first time. Anywho, I'm someone who used to play Smash 4 at a midhigh-level in the Oregon/SW Washington region in the states. But I've never been able to transition to Ultimate properly because I get too frustrated with its control, even though I do think Ultimate is the better game overall. I've given up on the game very early on before the meta really started to develop, and I honestly don't know how problematic the other issues you stated is, because my perspective on things like how neutral plays out is mostly based on what I've spectated (which I haven't done a whole lot of either too). It's why I made that video about the buffer system. Hoping to shine some light on the situation, even though both of my channels haven't really focused on Smash that much. I'm glad you showed some bits of that video I made here, and talked about the Buffer some more in your own words. I still think the discussion on this is pretty light, and needs to be talked about more, because from a game design perspective, there's a lot about it that's just unintuitive control that the other games didn't have and should really warrant change, but it needs to be talked about if we ever want the Developers to have a better chance noticing. Having them notice and make improvements like adding "Auto Short Hop Toggles" in the control settings, or fixing C-Stick buffering, or removing the Dodge hold buffer, would be such a nice improvement to a more intuitive control system than what we have now.

I disagree with the whole difference of playstyle. You can't tell me mvd or Ally played the same. Or zackary and leo.

I hate how well this holds up

Semi-platforms are so annoying now. Being able to turn every stage into Battlefield was supposed to be a huge buff, as many competitive players would argue that it's an even more well-rounded stage than Final Destination. But now I'm always not falling through when I want to fall through and vice versa and I get screwed.

Broke: Passive aggressively tweeting after losing a match Woke: Making a video criticizing the whole game

I didn't think that I was going to enjoy this as much as I did. I'm immediately subbing because seeing a fellow smash fan just want the best and have legitimate critiques instead of it being seen as hate is nice and just like having a conversation about what we could do to have the best game we can.

You can make all the right reads on a person and still lose. That tells me all I need

After playing tons of Hollow Knight, a game where learning patterns, reading and punishing enemies is nessecary to survive and then coming back to smash ultimate I realised everyone plays like a Hollow Knight boss. I'm not amazing at ultimate but, somehow I'm in elite smash with Kirby, Pichu, Zelda, Daddydorf, Mewtwo, Lucario, Palentina and Banjo and that shouldn't be possible (for me). Fire Emblem players with the expection of Robin (purely because there are not many online) seem to have only one play style which makes them incredably easy to read and boring to play against. Joker players aren't actually very good but as soon as Arsene pops out the best strat is to just camp them and it usually frustrates them into acciently killing themselves because they're trying to back air you whilst I'm off stage. Either that or the meter runs out after a minute of camping. Cloud, Ness, Lukas, Mario I could go on but the lack of player expression is an issue. That and the shitty online. God it's bad.

I hope many people will be able to watch this with an open mind, because regardless of whether they agree or disagree with what you said I think you articulated this video really nicely and are making super coherent arguments. I really felt it when you said that you want to love this game. Great video overall, I agree with lots of your points (except maybe parries that reflect projectiles) and i feel like although you left out some things that could’ve been mentioned, you covered some of the deep flaws of the game. If i were to add anything to it i’d probably mention the absence of lag on everything. Everything being so lagless has led to players throwing out moves, aerials and neutral airdodges with little consequences. Peing able to mash moves on shield with no repercutions, or smash attacks into buffered spot dodges being a legit strategy also encourage this low risk, safe playstyles you pointed out. Great video, super fun watch:)

I play Melee and PM, and I really appreciate this video. I cannot stand the buffering system, so I'm so pleased to hear a Smash 4 player's opinion criticizing Ultimate. You also helped show me some of the merits of Smash 4 where I kind of threw Ultimate and Smash 4 into the same bucket. Thank you again, I've shared this in several Discord servers!

Honestly the online of Sma5h has never ceased to make me sad. I love the game, and have spent a lot of time doing everything I can in it (don't even get me started on spirits) but I've never been able to play online due to internet. As an intermediate player, not quite competitive, I have never won a game on quickplay. The input lag combined with buffering has led to about 50 games of frustration in multiple sessions, leaving me uninterested and playing against CPUs by myself. I really love this game. I want to play often, and get better. But I can't, and it makes me very sad.

I don't own a switch, but I always wondered why Ultimate felt so weird to play whenever I was with someone who did. The forked up buffer system makes total sense.

One thing I personally can't stand about this game is how lagless everything feels. So many moves have ridiculously low end lag to the point where by the time you can react the opponent is either attacking again on spotdodged. Whiff punishing feels rare and almost character dependent. Obviously weak, quick attacks and well spaced ones are going to be and should be difficult to punish, but it also feels like really strong moves have little to no opportunity to punish (Mario up smash, Pichu ftilt, Wolf down smash just to name a few) My theory as to why so many moves are so spammy and low on endlag is because the dev team wanted players to move faster and go for more combos. In which case, why not just increase the hitstun? If you do that, moves can have more lag and become more risky to use so when they do land it feels more earned and rewarded but if they miss then the opponent has time to punish if they spaced themselves well. I just don't understand why the game has to be every character standing in a general area throwing out big aerials for seven minutes.

It's unfortunate, but the only good implementation of the c-stick in the history of smash is in Melee, where each different c-stick input is treated as an unique input tied to an action, this ensured that the c-stick didn't interfere with anything else in the controls. But when Brawl came out, c-stick functionality was changed to be a macro of the Directional Stick+Button and is still this way and that's why smash stick down airs still fastfall to this day and why it's basically impossible to make this thing bug free.

Considering how controversial and confusing this topic is, you've managed to hit the nail pretty hard with this video. Congrats on 10K subs

Ultimate really is one of those games that just falls apart so much when you start looking deeper into it

Actually loved the vid. I feel like I don't as often see comparisons to S4, mostly comparisons to Melee (admittedly I like those comparisons and wish there was a bit more of that here, but all good). I know it's hard to fit everything, but I had a couple comments: - Firstly, maybe I missed it, but if not, I'm surprised you didn't mention input lag in this game. It's the most in any smash game by far and is horrible. Admittedly, the ridiculous buffer masks this a bit, but it's still inexcusable in a competitive game. SF5 had this problem on release and fixed it over patches. Ult will never fix this, because they don't care about competitive play. - Might have been worth taking a second to also note that the short hop aerial macro is also redundant and unnecessary, because they added the two-button short hop macro. - You say Ultimate handles rage really well. Probably not going into too much detail in this vid, but why? IIRC it took an up to 1.5x knockback multiplier and turned it into an up to 1.0x knockback multiplier. Definitely an improvement, but I still see no reason why it should be in the game at all. It's not even clear that it's a comeback mechanic because of the way stocks work, it can do the opposite. It just feels like an unnecessary pseudo random element. - When talking about running through each other, I wish you'd have taken a second to also point out how poorly implemented it was. There are a ton of issues caused by collisions in this game. Here's one blatant example, but you can find tons, sometimes even with grabs pushing shielding opponents away (yikes): twitter.com/LeBigRussianPig/status/1190705591402008576 - I loved that you touched on this in thee section about buffering full hop aerials with greninja. You said that it was challenging, not in a fun/skill-intensive kind of way, but in a frustrating "why am I just fighting the controls" kind of way. This is a topic I have thought about and haven't heard anyone go into detail about. In Melee, for example, something being nearly frame-perfect feels fair and challenging, because the control and lack of buffer feels fair and understandable. The game does what you tell it to in a very literal way. You fault yourself for missing. In Ult, getting a sh aerial might also mean that you missed a similarly small input window, but it doesn't feel fair or fun. It feels like "this is a poorly made game." You fault the game for missing.

As a smash 4 and melee player primarily, I’ve realized over time just how little I actually have my inputs executed as intended in ultimate. Since I quit melee and competitive 4 years ago due to fear for the health of my hands, and since I started playing ultimate, I’ve come to appreciate melees lack of a buffer system immensely. I agree that I enjoyed smash 4s comp better exclusively because of how individual you could get with your play, and the emphasis on hard reads. I find ultimate far less satisfying overall, but that’s coming from someone who lost her spark in comp smash overall years ago. I really only play ultimate as a party game full time nowadays. I appreciate how customizable all the extras are in ultimate honestly. Regardless of all this, great video, I hope sakurai manages to do something about these problems in the future.

18:16 "I have less than 1K subs" *7K subs 2 weeks later* That's some major growth...

I really hate airdodge in smash 4

I actually loled at the kiss on the forehead with "it's ok you dont have to think "rofl

In my opinion, the biggest problem with ultimate is its input lag. It’s a really jarring transition from Sm4sh to ultimate due to the weird delay and acting by reaction feels much worse. Especially sense this game is focused more on movement than other fighting games

We need "Project U" to fix these controls. Your explanation of pushing a bike on a stone path was spot on.

I can't believe such a small youtube channel would make an insanely high quality video like this. I might have to check out more of your work

First off, love the level of quality in this, let's just get that said and done immediately. This video addresses problems with Ultimate specifically from the competitive perspective and you do a great job showcasing what you are talking about with visuals and simplifying things which is much appreciated as it is difficult to sometimes understand what top players are talking about when they throw out terms or describe things in ways that aren't simplified enough for the people just getting into competitive or for those who casually play competitively (I know that sounds weird, but just roll with it). Now as for the points brought up in the video: -Buffering- Yes this has been an issue since Day 1. Smash 4's buffering system seemed perfect to me. There were maybe 10 total instances in all of my time playing Smash 4 from Day 1 where something got buffered that I did not intend for it to get buffered. In just the first couple of months of playing Ultimate however, the amount of mis-input buffers far exceeded Smash 4's. It doesn't look like they'll be changing the buffering system, but who knows, maybe they will. I've grown more accustomed to the buffer system, but it still results in some serious problems every now and then and if they ever tone the buffer system down, I'll be all the happier. -Characters relying on one (or a few) very specific strong points or a gimmick to be good- As mentioned in the video, this isn't an Ultimate specific issue. The atrocity that was Smash 4 Bowser suddenly becoming somewhat viable only because of one new gimmick as opposed to addressing his weakness and buffing him around those areas is probably the biggest offender of that (that was ever patched in to make a character good) in my opinion. I agree that characters' weaknesses should be looked at more closely and then buffed accordingly to make the character better as a whole rather than giving them only one tool to make the character better. I also agree that buffing characters' strong points or things that don't really matter is useless in pretty much every case EXCEPT in the case where buffing those strengths really does make up for their weaknesses like Ganon's overwhelming strength, but at the cost of his pretty bad recovery (among other things). Even that isn't a perfect example because Ganon still struggles despite having overwhelming strength, so a little better than that I guess. Generally though, buffing a character's weak points will be better overall than buffing their already strong points. -Movement- Were there more tech/skill based movement options in Smash 4 than in Ultimate? Of course, that's undeniable. But overall, I find that Ultimate has much better movement than Smash 4. Maybe it's just a result of Ultimate being faster than Smash 4 and overall more aggressive, but I disliked the movement in Smash 4. It felt too stagnant and stiff. -Player expressiveness in characters- You mentioned that you could view a match between 2 top level Sheiks with the same costume and no name tags in Smash 4 and be able to decipher who's who based on how they play. I agree with that, but not just in that case, but in all cases and not just in Smash 4. People are people and no two people are the same. People can play similarly, but no one plays the exact same way as someone else. Now could it be possible that Smash 4 allowed for more expressiveness because of it's tech/skill based movement? Maybe. But just to point something out, no matter who was playing him, Mario was going to down throw, up-tilt you in Smash 4 and eventually up-air ladder you to the sky. No matter who is playing him, Mario is going to up throw, short hop/full hop (can't remember off the top of my head) down-air you in Ultimate and eventually up-air ladder you to the sky. So it then comes down to how do the players play their characters before, in between, and after doing character specific things and if we're looking at it that way, every player is going to play differently during those moments. Some might fish for an opening, some might play more aggressive, some might play more defensive, some might play in an unorthodox way, or any combination of any of these. This isn't even accounting for the character match ups, the current point during the match, the current point of the set, the current stage they're playing on, etc. My point here is that you can take any 2 people who play the same character in either Ultimate or Smash 4 and both players will have a distinct way of playing and go for different things during the match. -Goats slamming into each other with horns- Nothing much to say about this other than I personally prefer this over the incredibly defensive nature of Smash 4. Just my preference I guess. Last couple of things: Air dodge reading in Smash 4 was definitely sick and it's much harder to do in Ultimate now, but I think predicting an air dodge in this game feels more rewarding for me personally since there was more to account for what with multiple directions now being a factor. I definitely like the way air dodging is handled in Ultimate though over all other smash games. Parries needing to be buffed to be more rewarding is something we can also both agree on. As it sits right now, parries aren't always worth it and I feel that they need to be buffed to something similar to Rivals of Aether but, not to the same degree of severity or functionality. Online sucks? What? No way! Online is the best thing ever and there are never any probl- A communication error occurred. Overall agree with a lot of what you said and disagree with a fair bit, but there's always room for discussion and I appreciate the fact that you aren't blatantly saying "x is better definitively and if you disagree, your opinion is garbage" like a lot of other people tend to do.

the goat alegory is perfect, I needed a way to put a finger on the weird back-and-forth nature of Ultimate's neutral, thanks man

This is honestly one of the best smash videos I've seen in years, extremely well done. The ONLY thing I would say adds to this game's downfall in my eyes is the lack of lag on a lot of characters moves. People again seem to think that speed = hype, but when a link throws a boomerang pointblank in my face and I shield it I should be able to punish it with SOMETHING. A ROB nairing my shield and being -4 shouldn't exist, I've had a Mario back air my shield and it's safe on PARRY. I parried the move, and he was able to act faster. Moves being safer in general and shields being worse in general doesn't make the game more aggressive, it makes it campier. It's, again, all just made worse by the awful buffer system in addition to poor options out of shield for a lot of characters, and downright problematic options oos for others.

The game to me seems it put heavy focus on the appearance of the graphics/designs by declining roll-back because it didn’t look good, to the hit boxes of the game to the buffer system which is an absolute mess it’s like playing a shell of game I once knew. Trying to hit the opponent and connect combos are un fun due to launch rate and lack of hit stun, mixed with DI is incredibly aggravating to play through. This game is painful if played competive you will surely only upset yourself with the disappointment and dissatisfaction. Odd how consumers buy the game and play for a couple hours forever in their life compared to the dedicated players who will play more hours than your fingers can count.

Online is trash. Huge negative for me. HUGE. It’s freaking 2020. Barebone online options and terrible lag. The thing I wanted more than any character before the game released was GOOD online lol

I think that he really did not give joker enough credit he is a great character even without Arsene Edit 1: ok so everyone is saying people live to high percents with base joker but first hit of fair into upsmash kill confirm with both regular joker and persona regular killing at 110 which is not bad for a supposed weak character

Coming from traditional fighting games and knowing nothing but the very basic about smash this was a really interesting watch and was well produced. 3 things to consider. 1. Buffer systems are always controvercial. They present massive benefits and massive issues, and even games with EXTREMELY consistent rules can be frustrating to players on edge cases, they are extremely difficult to balance and increasingly so with move variables to consider. It sounds like to me Smash U added one or 2 too many options into the buffer system. 2. You should look into the issues with netcode for traditional fighting games, and the recent fight for "rollback netcode" and why it needs to be implemented into games, specifically something like Smash ultimate which is literally on a mobile device technically. Smash uses delay-based lock-step netcode, that causes any connection issues to translate to dropped inputs and game freezing. While it's difficult because of the potential for more than 2 sets of inputs in non-tournament modes. 3. Nintendo really needs to consider what they want Smash to be, a tournament game or a party game. The attempt to implement more competitive gameplay characteristics while ignoring things like netplay and buffer costs clearly means they are trying to cover too many bases in my observation.

I’ve been talking with my friends since nearly the game released about how “it sucks,” and we came to the realization that you mentioned in that this game wasn’t designed for competitive players like us. Smash ultimate is perhaps the most frustrating smash game I’ve played, in that there are several changes that imo are great, such as being able to input anything out of a dash, the speed of the game increasing, and universal jump squat being 3 frames. However, there are so many design decisions in this game that are infuriating to deal with, such as the buffer, not being able to act during frames 7-14 of initial dash, and multihits simply not working, that the game feels incredibly unfun to play at times. It’s aggravating because ultimate simultaneously feels like the best smash game since melee and far worse than smash 4 at times, often times during the same match. I didn’t mind unbalanced things as much in smash 4 because I just accepted that there were incredibly jank mechanics like rage and cloud vs a mid tier back then, but with smash ultimate it feels so incredibly close to being amazing that the flaws become so much more painful. It’s subjective of course, but man, there are just so many design decisions in this game that just leave me frustrated just thinking about them.

Honenstly i agree with almost everything in this video, it's great to see someone put all of Ultimate's flawed controls to light like this. I do however think that you're looking back at Smash 4 with rose colored glasses. Aside from the problems you did point out in the video: -For Glory was not a better enviroment to seriously train on, and at the very least Ultimate's system allows for a bit more stage variety, it's still a pretty bad quickplay experience overall though so i won't defend it. That said, the addition of battle arenas makes the online experience way better, even if it has to be aided by external communities like Discords and whatnot. -Smash 4 was criticized at it's time for being the most restrictive smash game when it came to movement and general options, even compared to Brawl. To suddenly act like perfect pivoting was this amazing tech that made it great when it was basically it's only non commital movement option for most characters is just blowing it out of proportion. Ultimate's dash may be resrictive in comparison but the fact that you can do so much out of it makes it a better option than it ever was in 4, which outside of perfect pivoting was basically just run and shield. The issue in Ultimate however is that it has no microspacing options, so i understand why pivoting is still missed. -The point about expresiveness is a rather hard one to make, because a lot of it will ultimately depend on players and the characters they play. Fatality's and Nick C's Falcon play very differently, your previous main Falco now has some sick options opened to him both from up and down throw that makes his combo game quite a sight. It's going to look bad when you're comparing 2 of smash 4's better balanced and free form characters like Fox and Sheik with some of Ultimate's most straight forward like Palutena and Ike, i could do the same if i took Ultimate's Fox and Inkling and compared them to Smash 4's Cloud and DK. Of course Ultimate is still hindered by it's controls and technical issues, which is probably why a lot of top players go for the safer options more frequently. Smash as a whole is just a very complex game that allows for tons of way for players to express themselves, to the point that the 2 games with the least amount of options still allow those subtle differences between players to show.

The stylistic differences argument is pretty bad and I don't agree with it. Tweek played Joker way differently than Leo and Zackray, Zackray plays ROB way differently than WaDi or other ROBs, Light plays Fox completely different to Paseriman, Tea plays Pac-Man different to Sinji etc. Not every player plays every top tier the same way. Shuton is much more aggressive than Dabuz with Olimar even. There's similarities but mostly everyone plays each other differently. Edit: Forgot to mention how Leo lost to Prodigy's Mario, but 3-0'd Dark Wizzy's Mario much later because he's more used to that one rather than Prodigy's because they play neutral way differently. Prodigy is more focused on combos on platforms that'll kill the opponent at 60% but have higher risk.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with this one, the smash community defends this game and it’s flaws (especially when it comes to the characters themselves & people’s constant spammy plays styles) but you were honest about what’s wrong with it. I really think this game isn’t meant for competitive especially since Sakurai never wanted Smash to be competitive in the first place. But by trying to appease to competitive scene and keep its fun party game vision alive he created Ultimate. A game where there’s a very fine line between either loving it or hating it.

For V1 Switch users who hated default Ultimate on a competitive level, I recommend modding it to play HewDraw Remix. It feels a lot better to play in general although it still needs some updates.

i really wish wavedashing was in ultimate, at least to some extent. it was so painful when nintendo revealed that wavedashes would have increased landing lag. i think reducing the landing lag of wavedashes (but not regular d-airdodges) to ~5 frames would make the game much more expressive and free-form

this has explained a lot of my issues with the game i couldn't put my finger on. i still enjoy the game nonetheless, but i definitely understand what frustrated me. the charging at shield, the buffering and the gimmicks definitely arent given enough attention.

Honestly with 89 fighters, only a few are actually good in competitive consistently lol

This game is a ton of frustration for me. Much like everyone, I was incredibly excited for the game when it came out. A gigantic roster inside of a game that looks amazing visually with so much content. Almost 2 years later and I can't play this game without getting incredibly frustrated. I find no enjoyment in playing this game at all. I want to like this game, but it's impossible. While it's understandable that wanting a game that adds in a type of skill gap. Most of the game requires such pinpoint accuracy in your maneuvers and punishes, however the controls are so off the mark and so delayed that it becomes impossible to get rewarded for making reads. Simple things such as taking one step forward, or turning around, is extremely difficult to do. Too many points in the game where you don't know what your character is going to do; like will my character do an attack, and if they do will it be the one I want, or will my character just stand there because the game ate all of my inputs? There's entire matches, win or lose, where I have no idea what I did. I don't feel like I beat my opponent, or I rightfully won the match. Like you said in the video, I feel like I'm trying to fight the controls of this game, and I'm never fighting my opponent. I'm so focused on what I'm trying to do more than what my opponent is doing. No fluidity in the fight, no strategy is being used. It makes other things in this game less intriguing. In Smash 4, I was capable of using half the roster and have good results with some crazy highlights. In Smash Ultimate, with a roster of 72 CHARACTERS, I'm confined to using only 3 or 4 of them; because if I try to branch out and use another character I will get absolutely crushed. I have gone back to Smash 4 every now and then, BUT it's kinda dead. Which is unfortunate.

I'm somebody who despised the way Smash 4 turned out and will never go back, but you hit damn near everything about the controls on the nail. Ultimate does have very clunky movement and at times it feels like I'm being punished for trying to be precise with my button presses. Shields being nerfed is a good thing, but that combined with the poor buffer system and increased shield stun makes characters feel untouchable and unfair despite being more tame than the top tiers of Smash 4. The amount of times I've tried to buffer an aerial out of a parry and got a nair instead is infuriating at this point. I've used the c-stick for aerials so often that I've literally broken it, due to not wanting to press the jump and attack buttons at the same time. I wish the collision system was more consistent as well; in recent times I find myself asking "how did I end up behind/in front" of my opponent when I land next to them from the air. I haven't lost complete hope yet, this game is still new, and Nintendo has been patching the game, even if it's slightly. The fact that they fixed a buffered roll problem and nerfed the shield damage of projectiles shows that they're listening, even if it's a little. Great video, I hope people share this so Nintendo/Smash devs can see this and make some needed improvements.

This game just feels so stiff. And I hate how safe things are on shield. It took a bit to get used to the ‘Smash attack -> spot dodge-> smash attack’ gimmick. Or having someone land on your shield with some fast aerial and then already spot dodge or roll away before you’ve even dropped your shield. And for how fast and offensive the game was intended, it’s extremely campy. One person gets a stock lead and then plays reactionary on their back foot waiting for the other person to attack and then trying to make a hard punish. Either that or they just spam safe aerials to set up a wall (Link’s Nair)

The best way I can describe the buffer system in this game is how the Tails AI works in Sonic 2, you do an input and then it comes out like 2 seconds later when it isn’t useful anymore and will instead put you in a disadvantage state

This game feels way too watered down the input makes it even worse you gotta mash way too hard to get combos to connect and confirm sucks they ruined a game with such potential

I only play casually, but thank you so much for illuminating why this game feels so awkward to play sometimes.

I went from ultimate to melee, and I still struggle with my neutral habits from ult. It’s still holding my play back, in spite of the fact that I’ve now played melee for almost 6 months. I just throw out my best option and hold shield.

Flicking the C-stick helps moves come out faster than normal? I’ll remember that next time I play.

A lot of people including me agree with this video and I think people really enjoyed this. It was a breath of fresh air hearing someone else bring up issues that I also feel are current in the game. Now that the game has finished ALL it's patches. Would you ever consider making a follow up video on this??

I do think this was a good video. However, while I clearly get that you prefer Smash 4, I feel you give it way too much credit without really addressing its flaws. One thing I think drastically improves Ultimate compared to Smash 4 is the changes to dashing. Dashing in Smash 4 was absolutely terrible because it was so limiting. It was one of the most committal moves you could do because you had so few options out of it. That’s why dash to shield was such a popular option. It was the safest and least committal option. In Ultimate, you have a million options out of a dash, helped further by the fact that aerials have so little landing lag for most of the cast. I played the hell out of Smash 4. Spent way more time with that game than Ultimate and I do truly love the game even if I think it is flawed. However, when I played, I played notoriously campy because dashing at my opponent put me in a bad position and camping gave me way more options. If I camped, I’d have them dash at me, putting them in that awful position. Ultimate actually made dashing a good option again and I think that, to me, makes the game so much more interesting to me. I actually like playing aggro in Ultimate. Running up and doing risky shit because I don’t feel like the game is going to punish me for simply doing the “running up” part. I will agree that Ultimate’s controls are flawed. The C-Stick is coded so lazily. Why is Melee the only game with an actual well coded C-Stick? The not being able to buffer full hop aerials really hits home. As a Young Link main, one of our go to kill set ups is Down Tilt into Up Air. Full hop up air. And for Young Link, a character who can’t afford to screw up getting a KO, it’s ridiculously frustrating when I execute the aerial too fast and get a short hop instead. However, they did fix the roll buffering issue. I know this is Nintendo but maybe if we make our voices heard, they’ll fix some of these other complaints too. I don’t agree with Joker being lame at all. It’s not like he’s carried by Arsene. He’s a very good character even without Arsene and I do think he’s well designed in the fact that, unlike things such as Limit and Waft, you have little control over when exactly you get and use Arsene. You can’t charge Arsene up or save him for when you need him. Sure, that’s not to say Arsene isn’t completely free from scrutiny. He can be pretty dumb, but the recent Joker nerfs more heavily reward playing aggro against Arsene Joker because it makes him go away sooner. One character you praised that I do not understand why people defend is Wolf. Wolf is unarguably the most overrated characters in terms of coolness. Wolf is a stupid and lame character. Extremely generous hitboxes, ridiculously oppressive moves, some of the jankiest Smash attacks in the entire series, and, if that weren’t enough, give him one of the best projectiles in the game to force approaches better than most characters designed to be zoners and his recovery, which seems to be designed to be his weakness, being risky as hell to edgeguard. Wolf is by far my least favorite top tier in terms of design and people give him way too much credit for some reason. Easy to play and lame as hell to watch. Also burying moves are stupid and should be removed outright. I have believed for the longest time that Ultimate is 85% of the way to being the perfect Smash game. I think once the modding community gets a little more advanced and we can go back into the game, remove some of the technical flaws, and rebalance the roster a little. The end result truly could be the best Smash ever

This video totally puts a lot of words to the feelings I've been having with the game. It's that weird feeling of "I should be loving this...but why aren't I?" Great video :)

When you end up in a match against the belmonts with a stage with platforms...

The real problem with ultimate is that it has no depth. The cast is gimped as fuck, no blockstrings, no mixups, no combos, ledge guarding sucks, no advanced movement options, no intelligence required. Its all spamming safe aerials until you win. The amount of defensive options also really hurt the gameplay defense is so much stronger than your offensive potential leading the game to be all about neutral. Being offensive is too risky especially when there are no rewards like giant combos for being on the offensive.

Even though I love Ultimate and will continue playing it, I can see why you wouldn’t enjoy it and your points are very valid. I’d also like to point out that there are still some high tiers/viable characters with lots of success that don’t really rely on gimmicks or a single move like Mario and Fox. Plus, while Pac-Man and ROB are indeed much better than they’ve ever been, this is mainly due to the buffs they received in the transition to Ultimate and that many of the zoners in the game(Isabelle, Belmonts, Villager, Zelda) are not nearly as viable right now. Other than that, great, well explained vid!

the buffer system and useless C stick are Ultimate's equivalent to the trip mechanic

Smash 4's Wi-Fi was better because at least it was free

Saw ESAM talking about your video. I came here to see it before I see his reaction to it. I've got to say : I TO regularly for a weekly in Paris, and I love Ult, never want to go back to Smash 4... yet I agree with practically everything you said.

As a melee fan, I had trouble finding a reason why ultimate feels so "off" since the developers cranked up the speed of everything and lowered the ending lag of nearly all aerials. Your video was a good summation of the problems that ult has with general game feel. I don't necessarily agree that smash 4 was the golden rule as far as movement and expression goes, but it did definitely feel much more responsive. It is upsetting to have such a large collection of characters from my such great series such as K Rool, Simon, Terry and even Byleth (FE is one of my fav franchises and his representation actually does the series justice) representing their respective franchises so well with move sets that just don't feel good to control. I don't understand why the devs are so vehemently against allowing for options that can be employed to gain a competitive advantage, but in the end it really is just a party game unfortunately. The fact that it has sold incredibly well makes me believe there is no reason for the devs to change the game at this point.

I feel like what you’ve talked about here is everything that I’ve felt in this game. Really starting my competitive career in smash 4 opened my eyes to different tech such as perfect pivoting and all the footstool combos. And slowly I noticed in tournament sets everyone’s personal style flowing from their character. Me personally my favorite players to watch were fatality and nairo. Because they were risk takers and you could tell through there gameplay. Ever since ultimate came out I always found my self not as interested in tournaments or tournaments sets in KZfaq. And when I did play friendly it always felt like any character had at least 1 or 2 things that were absolutely broken that made the matchup just unfun to play. I used to really be able to sit down and play smash with my group of friends for hours, without ever getting tired of it. But I usually find ultimate to get stale much quicker. I honestly love this game for so many reasons, but the faults that are present really take a lot of enjoyment out for me.

Finally, someone brave enough to come out of the "Ultimate closet" and say the big competitive flaws that this Smash game has. Props to you man, you are not alone in this.

This game’s input system is TRASH. I should be able to control exactly what my character does but I’m proved wrong time and time again.

Three thingS I want that Nintendo won’t add. 1. Turn off buffer system or at least be able to manage it with a slider in controls to give you the ability to decide for more or less. Buffer frames. 2. Allow me to run through characters. Bro I miss mixups like that. 3. Hazard toggle on stage list.

The neutral really does feel like a guessing game,

1000+ Hours on ultimate and i still cant control this shit Now if i want a competitive platformer fighter experience, i'll play Rivals of Aether, Smash is staying casual for me

I get that the online is the least important aspect for competitive players but the fact that it ruins the experience for EVERY CASUAL PLAYER deserves massive critique too. I like playing 3-stock 7-minute matches on Kalos and Pokemon Stadium 2... and sometimes some Battlefield and FD stages (but never the originals). When the game first came out, I constantly got automatically put into four-player matches and item matches and hazard stages, and Smash Balls would come out of nowhere during otherwise normal matches. They "fixed" this so that you only ever play with the correct number of people. However, that doesn't mean the opponents won't get their awful walkoff stages, or Game & Watch won't be completely invisble on Balloon Fight, or Smash Meters won't be on, or items won't be off, or the rules won't be 3-STOCK 3-MINUTE SO THE ENEMY CAN JUST FORCE SUDDEN DEATH OR TIME YOU OUT AFTER GETTING A LEAD. Not to mention, even if your ruleset is the same as the opponent's, whoever's ruleset is chosen, the game uses THEIR MYMUSIC SETTINGS TO CHOOSE THE STAGE MUSIC. WHYYYYYYYY I went to Arenas because of the horrible lying mess that is Quickplay. And arenas are awful. They're slow, no one uses them, it's stupid that you have to leave your spot in the queue for a match to change a character or stage selection, and you have to miss spectating the match because of it. It's tedious and awful. Also, EVERY SPECTATOR ADDS TO THE LATENCY IN THE MATCH, so a 2-person match can be far laggier than a 4-player match due to how many connections are affecting it. So basically the entirety of Smash Ultimate's online is trash and For Glory was at least consistent, if nothing else.

I wish you talked a bit longer about how safe spotdodging makes everything

Already watched this about a week ago i think it was, I just wanted to mention that izaw also talked about his opinion on stream. He didnt agree with alot of stuff, but he was also tired at the time. He does see the clear issues and sees why you would perfer smash 4 though. Seriously though, thanks for putting so much effort into this video, the community often doesnt want to admit issues or when they do, its usually done so without any support to back it up. This vid actually got people talking more about the core gameplay rather than just the usual character complaints. I hope more people discuss issues like this as its simply more interesting.

Your balance critique clearly came from a player and not a developer. When dealing with a character pool this wide, primarily buffing characters is going to add to a level of power creep. Because of how closely balanced the game is right now, nerfs are a much safer way to get new characters to get to that top tier. The two nerfs you mentioned you also praised. Olimar and Pichu were nerfed and that allowed other characters to rise to the top, yet you still see some dedicated players still make these characters work. If some of those aerials were nerfed a bit, I am certain that players would have to change up which moves they use or try different characters. You are correct that Donkey Kong has a weakness in being unsafe in disadvantage, and just buffing a move or two is only going to make those moves spammed. Unfortunately, the best solution to fixing DK (or improving King K's up air) would probably involve actually changing some attack animations entirely. This is a much more difficult type of tweek than something as easy as increasing/decreasing damage or knockback. Since the dev team is also working on creating and balancing new DLC characters, I don't know how many people they still have on staff who are available to make a few characters slightly better. Additionally, this kind of patching to make characters stronger is a never ending pursuit. Once you start buffing the bottom, there will be more and more cries for a specific move on a slightly sub-optimal characters to be improved. From a new content perspective (the place where Nintendo will continue to make more money from) this is a better use of dev time than buffing random characters already in the game. As for the buffering stuff, I think a lot of your complaints come down to "it changed from a place I was familiar." I'm not saying that it is perfect, but if you weren't as used to the old system, you wouldn't be as upset about this one. Although it would probably be a pain in the butt to implement, your best complaint would be the benefits of for including the ability to turn off "fusion" attacks like they have the option for "A + B = SMASH." That would certainly go a long way for some people. Of course, from a company perspective, how many people did not buy SSBU because of this change? Not many people, I would imagine. How many DLC characters will they not sell in the future because of this change? Perhaps several. If their desire was to have the people that bounced off of the game come back with small tweaks like this, then I think they would bother to make that change. Current competitive players have learned to deal with it, so changing it would be nice, but totally unneccessary from a business perspective.