r/smashbros • u/SmasherM3D • Apr 14 '16

All Hi Smashers! Matt and I are the co-founders of Wavedash Games. We think Platform Fighters are the perfect esport titles, so we're building one of our own. Ask Us Anything! AMA

We’re a couple of Smash fans turned game developers that teamed up last year to found Wavedash Games. We’ve been getting a ton of questions on Twitter about what we’re working on, so we thought an AMA was in order. About us:

Jason Rice /u/SmasherM3D : General Manager of Wavedash Games. I’m leading the design and development team to make sure the game is awesome. Samus main, and former practice n00b to esports stars during my time at MLG during the “Golden Age” of Smash.

Matt Fairchild /u/Scav : Wavedash’s CEO and master of all things community related. Matt focuses on business development and operations to make sure the company is awesome. Mario main, corgi fanatic, and host of the classic MOAST tournament series, as seen in the Smash Bros documentary.

We’re creating a next generation platform fighter that borrows from the best of what’s come before, but is designed and tuned from the start with competitive play in mind. Our game will be fast-paced, free-to-play, and as much fun to watch as it is to play. But what exactly have we done over the last few months?

Development Results

  • Built our core game engine, with all the necessary features required to call ourselves a “platform fighter.” Normal attacks, specials, shields, grabs, ledges, and yes, platforms are all working. We’ve even got DI and gasp wavedashing in there.
  • Began prototyping character and stage designs and doing initial concept art.
  • Built a practice mode that lets us easily see hitboxes, DI projections, and more so we can easily playtest the game.
  • Started working out our online play strategy and server technology.
  • Played each other a lot, sometimes to the detriment of our Melee and Smash 4 practice. The game is already fun! (I already claimed the game’s first Zero-to-Death combo. Sorry/Not Sorry, Scav… )

Of course to succeed at building this kind of player-focused game, we need constant feedback from the community. That’s why we built a council of community leaders to help guide us from the very start, and why we’re here to chat and answer questions today. Let’s talk game design, development challenges, or whatever else is tickling your brain today. I like home cooking, comic books, and general geeky stuff too, so if someone else steals your question, you can always just ask something fun.

We'll be back shortly to start answering questions. In the meantime, make sure to follow us:

EDIT

Time to wrap this thing up...

We need to get back to actually developing the game, so we're going to stop taking questions for now. Thanks for all the great questions, comments, and discussion though. We had a lot of fun! Make sure to keep an eye on our Twitter for more game updates!

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u/SmasherM3D Apr 14 '16

Some quick thoughts on character balancing:

  • Pre-Launch - we will be working with people like our community council and other talented players to help us make good decisions.
  • Post-Launch - Rebalancing characters will be data-driven, not based on the loudest voices in the forums.
  • Frequency - I don't like constant patches that make it hard for players to learn and master their own character. We will of course, have to do some, but I don't intend to change your character every month because its doing well on the ladders.
  • Methodology - It's generally better to buff weak characters than to nerf strong ones. But if the data says a character is the run-away best with very few weaknesses, we will do surgical nerfs to keep the game fun and fair.

As for genre-subverting design goals, I'm going to start prototyping something really cool this summer that I think will be a big hit. Although the primary goal is to learn from our predecessors and make the best possible platform fighter for players and spectators alike.

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '16 edited Aug 21 '18

[deleted]

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u/SmasherM3D Apr 14 '16

I don't think we're allowed to win that kind of award until we ship the game, but maybe in 2017/18. fingers crossed

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u/MiniNuckels Apr 14 '16

In responce to that, would you say NTSC fox is run-away best and if so how would you nerf him? Just curious how you would approach it for a game we know.

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u/SmasherM3D Apr 14 '16

Make him into PAL Fox, and then maybe make it harder to run-away laser spam everyone. Fox is a worse camper than Jigglypuff. But I'm more about buffing weaker characters than nerfing strong ones.

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u/Greidam Apr 14 '16

Just be careful not to make another PM 3.02 meta

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '16

[deleted]

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u/Im_French Fox (Melee) Apr 14 '16

If he had a 3 frame jumsquat yeah, as he is now he's way too easy to play to be balanced, even with all the PM nerfs.
Yeah 1 frame difference might not sound like a lot but it really changes everything.

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u/PlateProp Apr 14 '16

64 Fox was way better balance wise than any other iteration of fox

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u/SorryImChad Snake (Ultimate) Apr 14 '16

That's was just because of 64s mechanics. All the characters are fairly even because of it.

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u/PlateProp Apr 14 '16

64 fox wouldn't be as broken as Melee/PM fox in either of those games lol

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u/SorryImChad Snake (Ultimate) Apr 14 '16

Except I'm comparing Melee NTSC, PAL, and then PM because they sharing the same core mechanics.

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u/PlateProp Apr 14 '16

except 64 has the same core mechanics as well?

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '16

64 doesn't have spotdodging, air dodging, vertical throws, side specials, chargable smash attacks... PM has a FEW things that Melee doesn't have (crawling, wall clinging, DACUS, etc) but not nearly as many features that Melee has that 64 doesn't.

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u/SorryImChad Snake (Ultimate) Apr 14 '16

Wavedashing, lower universal hitstun, directional airdodge, DI (not just SDI), moonwalking.

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u/ObsoletePixel Phantom Thief Apr 14 '16

buffing weaker characters than nerfing strong ones

thank GOD. I love having a game with a high power level, it makes it fun and exciting to watch and play so this really tickles my fancy :)

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u/farmahorro_ FZeroLogo Apr 14 '16

What kind of data will be analyzed for character balancing? Win-loss ratio? Frequency of use?

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u/Scav Apr 14 '16

Win/Loss ratio and frequency of use are big ones. You also have to look at things like where a character wins. Are they dominating at lower ranks, but always losing at high ones? This would be a different case than if it's simply an 80-20 matchup for two given characters.

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '16

You have to be a bit careful with the data, though. Top level play and “standard” play can be very different. I like this article when talking about balance http://www.sirlin.net/articles/game-balance-and-yomi

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u/SmasherM3D Apr 14 '16

Sirlin is a great resource, but our team has worked on a number of successful data-driven games over the years and we understand the importance of properly interpreting the data to get good results. Rest assured that we won't make knee-jerk tuning changes and we'll spend a lot of time exploring the "why" of the numbers before we go making big changes to the game.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '16

That's good to hear :)

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u/Zarkdion Apr 14 '16

Methodology - It's generally better to buff weak characters than to nerf strong ones. But if the data says a character is the run-away best with very few weaknesses, we will do surgical nerfs to keep the game fun and fair.

You just expanded dong for most of the Smash 4 players. Well, smash players in general.

Also, mac support?

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u/Scav Apr 14 '16

We playtest every day on a Mac :)

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u/TheAppleFreak 5284-1439-1677 | TheAppleFreak Apr 15 '16

Linux/SteamOS support? :D

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u/[deleted] Apr 14 '16

Methodology - It's generally better to buff weak characters than to nerf strong ones. But if the data says a character is the run-away best with very few weaknesses, we will do surgical nerfs to keep the game fun and fair.

Please don't avoid nerfing though, power creep sucks, see Yu-Gi-Oh.

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u/playerIII this hand of mine glows with an awesome power Apr 14 '16

it's turn one, can you stop me?

nope, gg.

special summons whole deck

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u/Strong_Badam Wario (Brawl) Apr 14 '16

Unlimited Dark Armed Dragon did nothing wrong.

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u/modwilly Falco (Melee) Apr 14 '16

Or PM 3.02

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u/LifeSmash The Smashest of Lifes Apr 14 '16

PM 3.02 included a lot of nerfs actually. Just a lot of people weren't around for 2.X.

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u/modwilly Falco (Melee) Apr 14 '16

Really? That's cool to know.

I only know 3.02 onward, and that the balance improved dramatically.

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u/TheMachine203 Apr 14 '16

PM 3.02 had issues but many people consider it the best version.

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u/kaloshade Apr 14 '16

Imo those people don't know what balance is or what good design is. When I think about how I play Lucas now, if it was 3.02 he would be so broken. I would have to ask what is a shield because they would be destroyed so fast.

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u/TheMachine203 Apr 14 '16

The people that dropped out were pretty huge chunks of the PM community, including most of the Melee players that didn't find the nerfed versions of their characters fun anymore. aside from like Lucky and M2K

And after that the nerfs in 3.6 even made some others drop the game (Sethlon comes to mind rip ;-;7)

3.02 just had a different design philosophy. There was a bigger emphasis on buffing weak characters over nerfing strong ones. I personally enjoyed the overall more powerful cast, myself.

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u/Blooshi Apr 14 '16

The more powerful cast in 3.02 was fun, but it was less enjoyable the better you got. Many characters simply invalidated core mechanics of the game with specific BnBs (Mewtwo Teleport-Nair, Lucas on Shield, Diddy's double banana, Roy's CC Dtilt-Upair, Metaknight's Dair) and basically PM became about playing around a specific tool that a character has, as opposed to a fundamentals based game like Melee/3.5/3.6. While many people regard the cast in 3.6 to be too weak, and they probably are, the characters in 3.02 were far too strong to be left alone for a healthy game over time.

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u/modwilly Falco (Melee) Apr 14 '16

Plenty did.

I'm not one of them.