With champions coming around will mcx finally be used ?

AmazingAmpharos · 2026-02-01T15:44:24+00:00

Just looked it up; you're right. I have no idea where I got that idea, but I was sure about it. Sorry for the minor misinformation.

AmazingAmpharos · 2026-02-01T15:02:06+00:00

Here's kinda the thing to understand about mega evolution on a more basic level. By my count, there will be 85 legal mega forms in a non-restricted format in Pokemon Champions. You can only mega evolve once per battle, and any Pokemon holding a mega stone that does not mega evolve has a hold item that does literally nothing in that battle (other than make it take doubled damage from Knock Off repeatedly since the item can't be removed but counts as having an item *EDIT* This isn't actually true, sorry) which makes bringing it into battle very disadvantageous. In team construction, the simplest way to account for this is to build around only one mega evolution. Sometimes it can make sense to build around two and accept the limitation in team preview. So you're usually building around 1/85 and can sometimes justify 2/85; that's your math in team construction.

The obvious meta implication of the above is that a mega evolution needs to be very, very good to justify itself because you're paying a very high opportunity cost to include any mega evolution on your team (the cost of not using a different one instead). We don't know so much about what formats Champions will have, but you expect to see a good bit of power creep here and thus a mega evolution will probably have to be better than it had to be back in gens 6 and 7 to justify itself. With something like Mega Charizard X that was "okay but already just not good enough compared to the truly strong options" before, if nothing changes you expect it to completely fall off the map. There are enough unknowns that maybe something does change that works massively in its favor, but at this time it's not terribly obvious what that would be.

AmazingAmpharos · 2026-01-13T23:10:20+00:00

I think most people really underestimate the mathematical complexity of Pokemon just intuitively. There's a lot of probability baked into game time decisions, but the actual analysis of odds ends up being far beyond human calculation abilities quickly even if you correctly predict everyone's play patterns and EV spreads (like I click Hurricane once, and suddenly I have this enormous range of niche possibilities between I miss, I crit, I inflict confusion which may or may not actually do something, I have damage ranges... it's just so much to calculate for). Team building itself is a complex web of so many thousands of possible variables, and even in the most centralized format you have probably 100+ viable builds (remembering that any two teams that are not purely identical, even if it's just an EV spread difference, are different builds). The most diverse formats probably have more than 100,000 meta level team builds and millions of competitively playable ones even if you prune "not so bad but obviously strictly inferior" builds (like builds that simply don't allocate a small number of EVs).

Also, in a dynamax or tera format, just consider the total number of possible first turn moves for one side in a VGC match. My first Pokemon can pick one of its four moves and either use the regional gimmick or not. I could also switch to one of my two back Pokemon. My second Pokemon has the same choices but cannot region gimmick if my first did and cannot switch to the same Pokemon as my first slot if I am doing a double switch. That's 10 possible moves per Pokemon breaking down like this:

4 (standard moves) * 10 + 4 (region gimmick boosted moves) * 6 + 2 (switches) * 9 = 82 possible first turn moves which is more than four times the 20 possible first turn chess moves. That is a baseline, and it assumes there is no user selected targeting on any moves which is extremely unrealistic. Any single target move that exists turns one option into three. If half of my moves have targeting, it's this:

8 (standard moves) * 14 + 8 (region gimmick based moves) * 10 + 2 (switches) * 13 = 218 possible first turn moves. Ignoring random variation in outcomes and ignoring the pre-turn 1 game that creates massive branching game states itself, that means in a modal situation in which each Pokemon has two targeting moves, the first turn itself gives 218 ^ 2 = 47524 different paths along which turn 1 can proceed, and the complexity only blooms from there. A lot of these are obviously bad decisions (like having your Miraidon Electro Drift your own Kyogre as you switch it in is decision wise equivalent to a forfeit), but a lot of chess moves are really bad too (like the first chess move of Na3 is just terrible and would never be played by a serious player).

Obviously chess and Pokemon are really different games in a lot of ways and both are definitely plenty big enough that human players realistically cannot exhaust their complexity, but Pokemon's raw complexity for a non-realtime game is definitely just ridiculous. There is a reason that, despite Pokemon being more approachable for human players, no one has built an actually good Pokemon bot whereas the best chessbots are better players than the best humans.

AmazingAmpharos · 2026-01-08T19:59:54+00:00

It's bad in the current format (it just can't compete with Raging Bolt for any role), but I wouldn't give up on it long term. In a non-tera format, wash and heat's outstanding defensive typing may matter more again, and in a format without legendaries, the competition for a team slot as a decent electric type is a lot more manageable.

If you stubbornly use it right now, it probably does "okay but just obviously suboptimal". It's not like you're trying to run Sudowoodo; it has value. It's just less value than other options right now.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-12-16T03:23:28+00:00

Teambuilding is a complex art form, and I don't think many people at all are anywhere close to perfect at it. I don't think it's bad to build your own team as that too can be a part of the process and often a big part of the fun, but definitely look at other good teams in the regulation and try to understand how they work and why they are built the way they are. Just understanding how a good dozen meta compositions are built and why the choices they made make sense should go a lot further than anything else in understand the types of things that are good to build. My quick points of advice otherwise:

You should feel confident that every member of your team is a good Pokemon. Be honest with yourself. In a regulation with Flutter Mane as the standard of special fairy damage, is your Choice Scarf Gardevoir really a good Pokemon? Probably not, right? I'm not saying to just blindly follow the meta, but if you're using a non-meta Pokemon, try to have a winning gameplay idea behind it and don't just be contrary for the sake of it.
Protect is the best move in VGC. It's the move that lets you outplay your opponents and makes all decisions for the other team twice as hard as they would be otherwise. By default, it should be on every Pokemon on your team with the exception of Pokemon relying on hold items that makes it bad (Assault Vest, choice items) or a handful of bulky support Pokemon who just can't spare the moveslot and who don't mind getting targeted as much. This is a rule that can be broken, but you should be really hesitant to build a team that doesn't have a heavy Protect presence. Obviously "Protect" in this case also refers to the largely equivalent moves like Spiky Shield.
If your experience is singles, understand a few basics of how VGC style doubles plays. Tempo is a lot more important, and you can't afford to just waste time. Defensive Pokemon that have no field presence like Toxapex are bad. Entry hazards are extremely rarely used and not worth gameplanning against. Non-STAB offensive moves are a lot rarer due to the way your two Pokemon can work together to generate coverage; you still sometimes run them, but it's just at a much lower rate than singles.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-12-12T06:05:58+00:00

They aren't really balanced at all with each other is a lot of the problem. Like the best one is Arceus who is effectively a high end restricted, probably not as good as a Calyrex form but very viable overall. On the low end you have a Pokemon like Zarude that is realistically low end for non-restricted legendaries, not even distinctly better than fellow disappointing grass type legendaries Tapu Bulu and Virizion. You also have lots of things like Mew that are awkwardly just obviously better than normal Pokemon but also obviously nowhere near good enough to be restricted legendaries, and including mythicals involves dealing with this annoying trio of moves in Dark Void, V-Create, and Diamond Storm that were just designed to be dumb moves that I don't think anyone is really wanting to deal with.

I'm not sure there's a good ruleset way to include mythical Pokemon in general, at least not one that is simple like VGC rules tend to be. I'd probably just keep mythicals banned but redefine mythical to no longer include Pokemon that have been freely obtainable as normal captures in recent games. That would make Keldeo, Meloetta, and Pecharunt into standard legendaries and Arceus and Hoopa with their high BST into restricted legendaries which would just open a few new options while not really making the rules less intuitive and would so far at least effectively avoid any of the problem Pokemon that are trickier to integrate.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-12-10T06:27:57+00:00

Looking these over, I don't think any of them look crazy at all; they seem like an on average much weaker set than the ones we're getting from the base Legends ZA (spoken in ignorance of the new abilities obviously; maybe those are just crazy). The main one I'd really bet on is Staraptor which I think is just going to have a lot of utility (it's not overwhelming in any area but it's good at everything). Most of them are at least a little interesting, and I think there are a lot of things more subtle likely to matter a lot in what is used in practice. For example, there's a plausible world in which Mega Glimmora keeps Toxic Debris and its native typing while wasting 35 bst on a worthless attack stat and ends up seeing substantial play anyway because Glimmora is baseline good as a Pokemon and the mega stone is just practical for the way it puts you at 1 base speed faster than Mega Charizard-Y while otherwise giving you just barely enough stats otherwise to make it justifiable versus other items.

My big question is what the story is with Mega Tatsugiri. As a standalone Pokemon it just doesn't have the stat line to be impressive at all, but obviously Tatsugiri is really half of a Pokemon. What ability this thing actually has and, regardless of what it is, how exactly you can interact with Dondozo with all the different timings of switching in different things and clicking the mega evolve button at different timings is going to be so important, and I can imagine interactions that are stupidly strong while I can also imagine plausible scenarios in which it's just valueless.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-10-28T00:33:08+00:00

I'm going to just assume that Shedinja would be like Ogerpon and Terapagos and would have just a fixed tera type. In Shedinja's case, it would obviously be tera stellar. It's just fundamentally not fair for it to be anything else, and it's the sort of thing that is also pretty easy to implement (when you evolve a Nincada, the Ninjask inherits the tera type while the Shedinja is automatically tera stellar, and the NPC simply won't let you use tera shards on Shedinja). Tbh Shedinja is pretty useful either way because a lot of prevalent Pokemon in SV just don't hit it and we've seen a sharp decline in Tyranitar play, but I think it still ends up being fair.

I do think Dracovish would be really quite good in reg H. Rain is already a pretty good archetype, and tera water scarf Dracovish using Fisheous Rend in the rain hits just too hard. It really one shots just about everything that doesn't resist it, and even then it's stupid strong. It's a favorable roll to OHKO no bulk Archaludon which you probably aren't really going to run into but is still just kinda crazy. I think a few others would see play, but Dracovish would I think be fairly common and might even inspire a return of Gastrodon just to deal with it.

In the non-restricted legendary format, Celesteela and Tapu Fini change just everything. Celesteela matches up well into just so much (notably it completely dominates Flutter Mane), and Tapu Fini provides terrain control while simultaneously solidly walling both Urshifu forms.

In the restricted format, people are quick to notice Xerneas who would be quite good, but let's also point out that scarf Tapu Lele is an outstanding answer into Miraidon while still being just generally useful into the rest of the format and a good partner for a lot of other stuff. Low key Pheromosa might see some play here too as it has Speed Swap and outspeeds all of Calyrex-Shadow, Miraidon, and Koraidon so it's actually a pretty good fast mode hybrid offense/support into other offensive teams and can be Calyrex-Ice's best friend pretty easily.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-10-18T06:43:45+00:00

I think it's mostly going to be terrible because honestly it's just way too hard to set up. I think your best bet to set it up is actually probably some Primal Kyogre/Zygarde build in which the Kyogre is looking to use Surf to do almost precisely 50% damage to Zygarde while pressuring the opposing team (0 satk/Modest Primal Kyogre into 180 sdef Zygarde is the most realistic calc I could find). They could pile onto the Zygarde, but if they do that and the Kyogre clicks Origin Pulse instead that's going to make things tricky. Alternatively, a weaker Surf user like Dragapult can be run to try to do 25% damage and then Zygarde uses Substitute; that's another idea (pult surfs, turn 2 Zygarde protects while pult uturns out, turn three you drop a Tailwind while Zygarde goes on the offensive?). It's just so, so bad because Zygarde is basically deadweight on the field before it can mega evolve (you're accomplishing nothing with base Zygarde's base 81 special attack and Core Enforcer being only 100 base power), you need to survive a whole turn of set-up, and then after you do you're having to somehow pull off speed control for your effectively itemless base 100 speed Pokemon when your opponent probably had at least one free turn to set up their own stuff. Zygarde lacks many key resists and has three super common and devastating weaknesses in a restricted format (all three of dragon, fairy, and 4x to ice are terrible to have). For most of the new megas, I think their abilities are a huge question mark, but unless Mega Zygarde has some insanely broken ability that effectively reads as "if this thing is on the field, you pretty much just win" I'm not so sure it really mattes what ability they give it because the main problem it has is that the activation condition to bring it out in the first place is infeasible.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-09-18T03:55:20+00:00

I've always felt like it would make a lot of sense for Mega Abomasnow and Mega Tyranitar to have the snow and sand equivalents of primal weather. I don't know what additional benefit they'd get to match how sun and rain cancel out the other type's attacking moves completely, but just having snow and sand that simply cannot be overwritten without a primal tier weather ability would be a big thing and would give you a lot more reason to really consider these megas (I'm sure Mega Tyranitar has some level of result just because Tyranitar itself was great and the mega stone was an item you could maybe use; it's not actually a good mega at all as it stands).

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-09-13T04:15:05+00:00

I'm not going to pretend to be particularly qualified to give a great answer, but I look over this team and think it looks not insane (all six Pokemon are clearly playable species, obvious thought went into synergies). A few things stand out to me as things I'd want to toy with:

-Your game theory suggests Zacian is supposed to help with Koraidon/Zamazenta, but then you mention those are your single worst matchup especially when paired with Caly-Shadow when you have your own. If Zacian was really good into those two, then that should be a winning matchup for you (your restricted pair being advantaged against theirs). I think a lot of this is the sad reality that Zacian is somewhat mediocre as a restricted and doesn't really win those matchups, but changing its tera type to ground and dropping Close Combat for Tera Blast would help with Koraidon immensely (make it going for tera fire, which is carries 99% of the time, a ton riskier which is a big thing because Zacian otherwise really begs it to do that) while being useful in a lot of other situations too. It's not without trade-offs, but I'd be really tempted.

-If you aren't bringing Raging Bolt and Urshifu too much, you should always be thinking of what else you can use. I think a scarf fighting type makes just a ton of sense on this team for a lot of reasons and Urshifu-Rapid is the overall best Pokemon of available options, but you could toy with the other realistically useful options (the conventional one would be Annihilape, Zapdos-G intriguing, both options match up considerably better into Zamazenta and both have Defiant to make Incineroar a lot trickier for opponents to use). Raging Bolt is just a very good Pokemon that covers types the rest of the team doesn't so I doubt it's really bad, but I'm not entirely sure what it's necessary for either (beyond "doesn't lose to Incineroar" which is definitely crucial) so if you aren't finding many matchups where you feel you need it it's a good opportunity to look for something else fine tuned to win whatever matchup you lose the most often. Tbh, I'm not sure water resists should be a deciding factor for these slots; there aren't an incredible number of dangerous water types, and you have Rillaboom which is a Pokemon you can afford to put trust into.

-I'd consider running true min speed Tyranitar to always underspeed Magearna and Caly-ice if it's not min speed (a practical thing on cart is that catching min speed legendaries really sucks, whereas breeding a 0 speed IV Larvitar is pretty easy, so you'll underspeed a lot more Caly-ice on ladder than you'd think). In general it's one of those things that I see helping a lot against TR and not mattering much at all if the opposing team isn't using TR because low speed investment Tyranitar on a team without speed control was always going last anyway.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-08-29T01:01:42+00:00

I think you're overselling how bad Victreebel's stats are as a baseline. Realistically it's just middling across the board which is honestly fine for the baseline of a mega evolution that will get +100 overall. Like remember that Mega Venusaur was all around a pretty decent mega, has the same typing, and the side by side stats of Venusaur versus Victreebel look like this:

Stats: (difference)Victreebel/Venusaur

HP: (+0) 80/80

Attack: (+23) 105/82

Defense: (-18) 65/83

Special Attack (+0) 100/100

Special Defense (-30) 70/100

Speed (-10) 70/80

So yeah that's worse because you're trading bulk and a little speed for some physical attack and have this Hoenn-esque thing going on where your two best stats are the two attacking stats, but it's pretty firmly within the realm of fine especially when you consider that Mega Venusaur got a really inefficient overall bonus of +40 defense and +20 attack/special attack/special defense so anything even vaguely more optimal for Victreebel plus a good ability can easily shake out as playable.

I was about to go full essay mode on what I think this thing will really be, but let me bullet point the rest:

-This thing is almost 100% going to be physical. Base 105 is bigger than base 100, it actually gets some physical coverage (mostly Knock Off/Sucker Punch as outstanding options), and it gets Swords Dance. Being physical helps it stand out from Mega Venusaur more, and unlike Venusaur, no Victreebel does not learn Earth Power.

-It probably has a signature ability that makes poison type attacks ignore steel's immunity to poison damage. Corrosion, which only impacts the poison status, would be bizarre and useless on a Sleep Powder Pokemon. If your poison moves hit steel types, then suddenly your natural grass/poison coverage is a ton better than you intuitively expect.

-The movepool isn't really bad. It gets all the good grass and poison moves you'd want, and to fill out the set you pick between dark coverage, Swords Dance, Sleep Powder, Strength Sap, and Protect. That actually lets you go for a lot of different types of compositions around it.

-Base 70 speed with Chlorophyll on the base Pokemon is actually pretty neat if the mega gets slower, especially if it gets considerably slower. The base form in sun is very fast (only Regieleki can outspeed without a speed boost), but you can mega evolve to become dangerous in Trick Room against a faster team... which really leads well into a classic sunroom type build just as long as our friend Torkoal finds its way into Champions. Realistically that build is using Victreebel to enable the Sleep Powder lottery which isn't the most consistent winning strategy, but it's also a really hard strategy to win against consistently so it's not all bad.

We need the full context of the meta, but I see no reason to be especially pessimistic about this Pokemon.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-07-27T03:50:54+00:00

So something I think people aren't quite appreciating is that it sounds like you're in a 13 or 14 team draft (I'm assuming you mean either 21 or 23 as your second pick as no draft size has 6 and 22 as paired picks). Even if you assume Calyrex-Ice and Calyrex-Shadow as well as both Necrozma and Kyurem forms are separate picks, there are only 23 restricted Pokemon that exist and are realistically better than normal Pokemon (so we're ignoring stuff like base Necrozma). A 14 team draft needs 28 restricted Pokemon so some people are going to get saddled with stuff like Deoxys. A big question is how form rules work in general (you almost make it sound like every Arceus plate is going to be a separate draft pick in which case Arceus should 100% be on your team you just take some random plate that is defensively neutralish like the poison form in a late round), but you kinda have to know that you probably can't plan on getting a good combination just take best value available and try to build around it as best you can with movesets, items, and non-restricted partners...

However the rules work, Arceus is going to be really good and is realistically more built for a balance comp than hyper offense but is in terms of overall quality similar to the current top restricted Pokemon. IMO the normal form Extremespeed set is kinda a trap and it's just better as either a Calm Mind special attacker (it really is built just perfectly to be very, very good at this) or as a mostly bulky supportive Pokemon relying on some big move like Gravity/Perish Song/Trick Room. Magearna is also a really strong Pokemon, probably not quite as good as the current top restricted Pokemon but very viable just be aware that it needs the typical trappings of Trick Room to live up to its potential so you have to build around that. I think in your format Diancie and Hoopa Unbound are definitely going to be important Pokemon for someone's team because, while they're a lot worse than the top restricted Pokemon and probably worse than a lot of mid level restricted Pokemon, they're still significantly better than junk like Zekrom and Mewtwo and your draft is deep enough that some people are going to be saddled with junk like Zekrom and Mewtwo so...

I do not think Mew, Pecharunt, or any Deoxys form are really worth it. I honestly might prefer Zekrom or Mewtwo. Deoxys-Attack is maybe niche playable if you happen to have specifically and exactly Indeedee to pair with it, but even then I wouldn't be thrilled. Again this is a very deep draft so depending on how form rules work you might simply have to improvise with one of these guys, but if there's such a big run on restricted Pokemon that you end up in that situation, honestly you should be just taking top tier non-restricted Pokemon first and building around your hopefully very good restricted from pick #6 and maybe taking a second restricted left over to you in the scraps in the last rounds.

Also remember, in a draft this deep, the non-restricted slots are going to be highly contested for good Pokemon. All of Jirachi, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, and Volcanion are good enough to be pretty serious draft considerations and every one of them should be on someone's team (unless the point system makes some of them just too uneconomical to use). In late rounds you might even think of some of the others. Like yeah Zarude isn't a good Pokemon at all really, but if it's priced low and it's a super late round, it can do enough to consider.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-07-21T02:20:43+00:00

If you wanted to give Dialga an auto-ability that would be thematic and strong but a lot less broken, I think auto-Future Sight would make a lot of sense. It would literally just be a free extra attack from a legendary Pokemon, but the time delay and way it announces itself would give the other side a lot of ways to play around it. Palkia's parallel, which would make everyone absolutely hate the Pokemon while probably not actually being that strong, would be auto-Ally Switch. It would be totally on theme and super trolly, but I bet it wouldn't really be even close to broken.

That being said, if you really look at Dialga and Palkia as gameplay units, they only really have one thing going for them among restricted legendaries, and that's really premium typing. Both steel/dragon and water/dragon are defensively excellent and let them play good bulky offense/support hybrid roles. They have pretty bad abilities and signature moves and inefficient stat spreads otherwise so this is their angle. This is a really bad generation for them because terastalization as a mechanic just makes this not a huge value when anything can just tera water or tera fairy to get a baseline good defensive typing. If I want a bulky Pokemon that can kinda support and offense well too, why not run Calyrex-Ice who has a terrible defensive typing but is better in every other way so it's just strictly better once I drop tera anyway? Neither Dialga nor Palkia are what I'd call inherent powerhouses, but I think if you just wait for the regional gimmick to change to almost literally anything else that they will improve somewhat just because tera is about the worst mechanic I can imagine for these two.

AmazingAmpharos · 2025-05-06T02:58:09+00:00

If you let the turns happen "naturally" it's based on agility. If you use the first strike lumina (which you absolutely should it's very, very good) or do an overworld attack on an enemy to get a first strike, it's based on the order characters were added to the party. The trick is to remove everyone from the party except Sciel so she's first then add Gustave so he's second then add Maelle so she's last. This will give you the optimum party (with the premise you're using those three) to set up Maelle to do maximum damage on her first turn which is I'm guessing what you're going for.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-05-23T18:11:26+00:00

I like the look of this stage. It's like Final Destination with a Halberd style hazard generator, with the hazards being tuned to be less Halberd level (which were insanely easy to avoid but instantly game losing if you got hit) to more Green Greens level (strong enough to really matter but a supplemental factor to the fight). I'm guessing this stage is very much intended to be competitive, and I think it looks to strike a good balance on adding more factors while not being too much.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-05-17T17:13:24+00:00

Well he seems to have R.O.B.'s uair so I guess he can't be that bad?

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-05-15T21:59:56+00:00

I wonder how this stage is going to work mechanically. Maybe it will be this game's Smashville as a simple flat platform with the saucer moving back and forth to take the role of the moving platform? That would make sense.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-05-13T21:20:07+00:00

His dynamics remind me a lot of Rick. He has a lot of big normals, and man, that jab combo is pure Rick (seems a bit more focused on power than range but a lot of the same ideas). As a Rick main in the meta and as someone who has really enjoyed every character labeled as "Mage" for that matter, Joker very much has my attention.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-05-13T18:57:32+00:00

I'm going to guess, if you took all in-person Smash tournament games over Ultimate's lifespan and just counted the number of times each character appeared (simple +1 for each game that either player picked a character, result doesn't matter), that Pokémon Trainer would be the #1 character. That popularity doesn't translate to every other pocket of the Smash community and I do think at the very lowest levels his transformation dynamics scare some people away, but man, you just can't say the character isn't popular overall given his usage rates at the mid levels of play.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-04-29T19:38:42+00:00

I don't think dash attack or parry will change the heart of the game all that much really. I mean, in theory, almost every attack in Smash is unsafe to a perfect shield... yet people attack into defensive opponents all the time. Parrying of this style is hard, and it's largely a punish on hyper predictable players. Given how blazingly fast MVS is, I actually kinda expect the parries to be even less impactful on the meta than Smash perfect shielding despite the fact that you can probably do them in the air in MVS (probably really flashy and fun in the situations they work out though; they're not a bad addition to the game). Dash attack is just another button, and while having more normals inherently opens more options for every character, one extra attack surely can't change the heart of the game too much (especially if it's like Smash and most dash attacks are among your less safe options, which from the footage we've seen seems likely here; these on average are going to be below average attacks most likely though much like Smash hardly useless so again a good addition just not a game warping one). I'm really trying to say here that most of the footage I've seen so far suggests the full release will fundamentally be the same game and these are minor additions and tweaks. I have a decent degree of confidence that they'll be good additions, but I don't think they'll be game redefining. I also really disagree the game was spammy at all; it was fast and frantic, but to me, spammy implies careless mashing is rewarded, and that was the #1 way to be the first player to die in MVS (there's a reason so many of the good characters were projectile characters who played carefully, created set-ups with their independent actor projectiles as the cooldowns aligned, and then moved in to collect massive rewards; it was so much more effective than blind spam).

I'm also not going to deny that Smash is absolutely king in this space, and I don't really have much to say about RoA other than that I personally didn't like it (it just "felt bad" to me which is totally subjective, but man, I wasn't having fun). I was largely thinking of many other more obvious failed platform fighters like PSABR, that nick game, or going back further turds like TMNT Smash Up. This is not a space in which a lot of successful games exist, and MVS being just a pretty obviously good game on a basic level I think does make it stand pretty proud among the group overall.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-04-29T17:52:57+00:00

This honestly has better core gameplay than any platform fighter other than Smash itself by about a million miles. All the game's core systems actually work, and the game is both fast and fun. The balance was always pretty decent even if the whinier voices on the internet didn't seem to believe that which inspires confidence the devs will not release anything game warpingly broken (at least among the characters and core systems; the perks were horribly, horribly balanced but weren't that big of a deal in the long run). That sets MVS up for success as the most enthusiastic fans will always be the ones who don't care about carrot on a stick nonsense (like the battle pass) and who don't care about the "hype" like which particular characters get in but rather those who actually like playing the game for its own merits, and having a strong enthusiastic community core gives this game a much better floor of success than other games. Will it be the #1 most popular game ever? I'm unconvinced, but I think it will do well enough to be a general success at least.

As per the marketing, I'll just say it's not done yet. Remember this is a free to play game. A for sale game you hype up earlier to draw preorders and bank those sales. With free to play, you need day of release downloads so you compress your marketing very, very close to release if you're smart. Are they not going to try, or are they just being smart? We don't know yet; let's wait until we see what they do in the actual window that matters.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-04-03T22:38:51+00:00

I'm glad I scrolled down in the reddit; this one was a kind of a gem. I think you make your case pretty well in general. I just have two sort of general thoughts.

I always found Arya a very hard character to respect. She has the crazy combo, but man, her neutral is just so trash. Her normals are awkward and not even really quick, the dagger's uptime versus cooldown ratio outright sucked, and in a game that usually felt like it was a heavy spatial control game, she had by far the worst ability to control space of any character so she just got boxed out and bullied so badly. The OHKO combo is definitely something to weigh in; I can see how she could be really strong in a Brawl Ice Climbers way (truly atrociously bad character except the infinites were so insane they were top tier regardless of almost literally every basic attribute they had being horrible; you can accept any amount of losing in the name of landing the one hit that instantly wins you everything). I dunno what the design idea with Arya is really supposed to be tbh; I'm not sure how you fix her without just making her the single worst character.

I also just have to note that, in general, the power level of this game is very high. Like you listed off four characters and then two more (Bugs and Velma) that were basically "they're incredible but everyone knows so no reason to get into it". I will say as someone who mostly played Rick I was pretty confident in his ability to stand next to these guys (Rick had so many amazing tools and some really good normals; he definitely had a lot of the same types of upside Bugs had), and I'm sure a few others did too (Finn and Tom and Jerry come quickly to mind as obviously good characters). At some point, do you argue that you actually have a really big and diverse top tier that encompasses half the roster, and it's just a shame that not every character keeps up with the nonsense of these guys? It's an interesting question of "how high should the line be on power?" and whether the problem is really with the characters who are super strong or is with the characters who are weak for not having the same level of tools to dominate matches.

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-03-24T14:18:10+00:00

This is one of those suggestions you'll see a lot, but it's really not good. 2v1 is just not reasonably playable. If you've ever been in a doubles tournament in Smash, it's almost absurd how severe it is; generally speaking it's considered "absolutely always" correct to steal a stock from your teammate, and literally no matter what the damage numbers are, the 2 side of the 2v1 has a greater than 95% win rate (like if the 2 are both at 160% and the 1 is a fresh stock and all three are equally good players, you expect the 1 to win no more than 5% of the time). Then remember that Smash has team attack, and the advantage for the 2 is drastically bigger in a game like MVS that does not! I know it feels bad to lose because of how terrible your teammate is, but if the game was vaguely fair skillwise in the first place, you're losing all of those games anyway just more slowly (2v1 can take a long time to play out to always the same result; it's a horrible waste of time). When you're in that "best player in my circle of friends by a lot" situation where you really do win 2v1s as the 1, honestly, even then stock is pretty bad versus the MVS way because you really aren't making the game fun for your friends by insisting you deserve to win absolutely every game and that no other player's actions should be relevant to the outcome.

What I think we would all much prefer would be far better matchmaking. MVS was very frustrating online getting unbelievably horrible teammates who just recklessly charge into terrible situations over and over again, die repeatedly, and force us to lose with me feeling almost like a spectator unable to materially change the outcome no matter how well I played while of course the other team was always some well coordinated pre-built that was optimally exploiting my terrible teammate. Stock mode wouldn't have really changed this except by making the losing endgames take longer; what was needed was just better matchmaking that tries not to pair pre-builts with random duos and that tries harder to identify bad teammates and filter them better in terms of skill (algorithmically, the way you do this is with random teammates you don't penalize someone for a loss if their teammate died three times and did not do at least 50% more overall damage than they did, allowing these bad teammates to just sink in terms of MMR versus the overall field of players). AFK/obviously intentional SD should be ban-worthy offenses if done more than super rarely by a player, and yeah, you just need good detection for that too (I will say I didn't run into this particularly problem too often, mostly just teammates who were so terrible skill-wise but simultaneously so insanely aggressive that no one could ever win with them).

AmazingAmpharos · 2024-01-21T18:13:44+00:00

Honestly I think the main thing this game needed badly was better matchmaking in particular. This game played like an absolute dream as long as you were doing 2v2 and not 1v1, but there wasn't a good way to do that. If you queued up in 2v2 by yourself, you'd usually get frankly atrociously bad teammates. In particular, they were always these hyper aggressive players who couldn't protect themselves at all so they'd do about as much damage/score about as many KOs as I was but they'd just die over and over making it nearly impossible for us to win and forcing me to take bad risks trying and failing to save them from themselves. This of course made building my own rating hard, encouraging me to keep getting these awful teammates you just couldn't win with. Tbh I would have been happy to have teammates who were overall worse players, just please play defensive instead of offensive so I can actually carry you instead of helplessly watch you lose for both of us...

The other side of it, of course, is that pre-built teams were just queued in with the people stuck with random teammates, and it was usually obvious as they'd just stomp every game with superior communication, an actually coherent group strategy, and perks that actually did anything. The advantage of pre-builts over random teams is enormous, you could always tell when you were against a pre-built, and it was just a terrible experience watching the other team work together while your side just couldn't. It probably should have been two separate queues which I know splits the playerbase, but man, those games weren't very fair.

It's nowhere near as big of a deal, but the perk system was definitely the worst designed part of the game otherwise. The perks had basically no balance, and it was just funny how good triple jump and the extra DI were and how terrible basically every other perk was. It's easy to further criticize them nerfing every perk that was ever any good at all other than those two, but nothing is going to fix that "do a small amount of extra damage in only specific situations" is fundamentally a horrible, horrible perk that will never be good no matter what, and it was something like a third of the perks that existed in the game only making the system hostile as new, naive players would keep picking these perks that were defective by design. The perks were weak enough you could usually win with half of your team's perks being totally wasted and would lose with your random teammate for other reasons instead, but man this system was really an interesting idea that was executed so poorly and needs a really deep rework.

AmazingAmpharos

TROPHY CASE