Topic: After more than half a year, how is Smash 4 competitively?

Now that both versions of the game has been out for a while, what is the general consensus on Smash 4's competitive play. I heard mixed opinions, some say it's a big improvement over Brawl, some claim it's Brawl 2.0. Also, let's try to judge the game on it's own merrits, I don't want to see any Melee or Project M bias here.

I'd pick a different place to ask this kind of question honestly, you'd get a more in depth response. Another problem is that people define "competitive" differently and also there aren't to my knowledge many tournament players here..

I would say the competitive scene for Smash 4 is still growing and learning.

The metagame is still in its infancy. Diddy was a perceived problem for a while, but he isn't really that bad. You may want to postpone this question until after EVO.

DISCLAIMER: These are based on my experiences with Smash43DS. I've spent nowhere near as long in Sm4sh as any of the others. I've played Smash semi-competitively in Melee and P:M, and casually in all the games.

It's definitely leagues better than Brawl competitively. Then again, Brawl was pretty much the least competitive fighter in existence, so that's not saying too much by itself.
It's much faster, which means you can actually hit people and that people aren't reading your moves hours before you do them. However, it still has a lot of of the problems competitive Brawl had. Recoveries are insanely good for a lot of characters. If you don't get knocked in the blast zones, you're most likely surviving. This combined with blast zone sizes being increased makes fights seem to last longer than they should. Hilariously, shielding is even better than in Brawl. Shields are very strong and come up near instantly. Run-up-shield is one of the safest approaches. Smash DI is also nerfed significantly. Opinions on this are mixed, but it definitely buffs characters like Pikachu who have tons of fast, low-damage attacks.
IIRC, it used to have some butchered version of DI. "Vectoring", I think it was. It wasn't as strategic, and basically was "point your stick towards the stage to live longer!" It also completely wrecked several character's combo potential, as you could just hold away and move really far. They reverted it back in the first or second patch.

The game, competitively, is still in its infancy. The metagame has evolved a lot in a few months as is to be expected, but will likely not settle down for a while due to updates and balancing. In face another balancing patch is due soon. These have drastic effects, such as nerfing powerful characters (Shiek, for example) and can create a more balanced game.

But as for competitiveness, you see a lot of Diddy Kong and Sheik still. There's a lot of others but these are the top two, with Rosalina and Luma coming in behind with maybe a few others. Hopefully Sakurai leaves them be in the next patch, and instead rasies characters up to be able to fight evenly with them, but you can never tell with him.

The metagame since launch has been mostly defensive rewarding. You wait for them to mess up and punish accordingly, plain and simple. This is unique to Sm4sh especially because of shields lasting for so long and regenerating so quickly. This ultimately leads to longer matches and makes it easier to stall over time, as well as do better recoveries. As such, this game has a lower stock number than other smash games in order to keep the matches moving, and aggressiveness is definitely something that needs to improve over time for it to grow.

Essentially, you have a game which rewards defensive playing, has some really good (not OP) characters mixed in with some lower level ones, continued updates, characters and patches and unique features such as shield regeneration. Without the patches, I would wonder if Sm4sh would start to die down in a few years, but with them I feel it will continue to grow for many years. Unfortunately it will never reach the level of Melee in terms of competitive play, due to the lact of room for techniques such as wavedashing and numerous true combos to be discovered. While it won't reach the same level as Melee, it is a fun fighter in its own right and will have a place in competitive gaming for years- but unlike Melee, this game will probably be dropped if another smash game releases due to lack of room to grow.

Agreed. At the moment, I'd say its doing well, and it's definitely better than Brawl, but it takes quite a long time for the game to be better understood, to my knowledge. Evo should be a good example for how things are going.

Still very young and with Customs now allowed it's going to be an even longer wait until it's fully developed.

I dont know TOO much about competitive play, but there's definitely room to grow. It has some advanced techniques and powerful roster, there's so many good characters! I think part of why this game is so good is because it's so different from Melee, i.e. it's its own unique experience. I know some poeple criticise the ledge mechanics because recoveries are a lot better and ledge hogging is nonexistent, but it has the adverse effect of giving the edgeguarding player more options to edgeguard. I can't wait to see how the ever-evolving Sm4sh metagame and community turn out, hopefully with little Melee (and anything different) bashing! For anyone interested I main Luigi and plan on maining Lucas.