HugS and Lucky from Team Dignitas on EVO, Smash, and What They Think of Smash Ultimate
By Zac Cameron ·
Amidst the hustle and bustle of EVO 2018, we caught up with HugS and Lucky from Team Dignitas to talk about their experience and thoughts on the future.
It isn’t easy preparing for large scale events such as EVO 2018, with so many people travelling to do battle it seems almost impossible to prepare for every situation. We managed to catch some time with HugS and Lucky, two members of Team Dignitas who were at the event for Super Smash Bros. Melee, to get their thoughts on the tournament and their opinions on the upcoming Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
How do you deal with the disappointment of not finishing where you would have liked to and how do you move onto the next event?
Lucky: “For me personally, it is always just taking a loss and just trying to figure out why it happened and then look forward to the next event and make sure that it doesn’t happen again. At the end of the day. There is always a next event. I am always positive and confident in myself to do better and even if I had made top 8, I would have been aiming for first place next time. No matter what happens, I am always going at it from a positive angle. That is just how I am.”
HugS: “I try to study the matches where I lost. It is kind of hard to watch matches that you lose, but I am trying to do that a lot more lately. This game (Super Smash Bros. Melee) is so hard. You are susceptible to losing even when you are having a great day, so I do not really dwell on it too much. I know one day I am going to play amazing and one day it is not going to work out. As long as I am building on my skill in practice then overall everything will be getting better and better every time I go out there.”
In a game like Melee that has a lot of mileage on it and has been around for a few years, is there really anything you can learn from your wins or losses at this point or is literally just finding those reflexes, those small mistakes and not trying to make them?
Lucky: “I think if you were to ask 20 different players in the top 100, they all would probably have a different answer. I think it is going to vary from person to person. For myself, it has always just been having everlasting confidence in yourself just telling yourself ‘You know what? It just wasn’t the day.’ But next time you can do it if you just fix a couple of things. That is just the way I approach it every single time.”
HugS: “A lot of mistakes at this level are small, but you have to see what they are and get rid of them or you have to see what your opponent is doing that is causing them. You can learn a lot, even at this level, on how people are beating you, what strategies they are implementing and things like that.”
What would it take from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in order for it to bring you in and compete in it?
Lucky: “I’d say that mechanics are all that matter to me at the end of the day. To sidetrack really quickly, there is this old game called Super Golden Ghost for the Super Nintendo. I’ve been talking about it and so many kids you can tell are not from the Super Nintendo days. They are just like ‘The mechanics are so bad, yada, yada” and it’s like No the mechanics are so unique, they are so good.
To me it doesn’t matter what it looks like, what the frames are, it just plays so great and all it takes for me to love a game is good mechanics, so if Smash Ultimate comes in and just changes a couple things about the core mechanics they have been displaying with their demos from the Nintendo Invitational to the CEO build to the EVO build. They just need to change a couple of things.
One, maybe make the dash-anti a little tighter. Two, knockback, more hit stuns. Let us have some combos. It seems like the game is all about intricate interactions and neutral and having a single hit and having three seconds to catch your breath. Smash Brothers is all about high pace, quick decisions, and just a beautiful combo game that is unlike any other because of the eye mechanic. Smash Ultimate kind of ignores that because there is so much knockback with attacks and so little hit stun. If they can just add those things to the game, I think I would love it and I know a lot of Melee players would love it.”
HugS: “I think Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is very much like Smash 4 (Super Smash Bros. for Wii U). It is going to have enough differences to change the game, but a lot of players from Smash 4 are going to be to transition over and have a great time with it. At the same time, there is a chance that anyone who wasn’t or currently isn’t interested in Smash 4 could transition over to Melee, so that would also be good.”
Are you going to give competing in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate a try?
HugS: “Honestly, no. I already know the game that it is, and it is not my interest, but I am definitely going to support and watch it. I also watch Smash 4, so I am going to keep up with the scene. I am going to focus on Melee and overall Smash Ultimate is the best thing for both scenes right now because it appeals to Smash 4 enough to where you will not lose that audience and then whoever likes Melee will transition over too.”
In our interview with Armada, he spoke to the idea that he realizes Sakurai is trying to please everyone, but at the same time many of the players who play smash all started as casual and the idea that you can’t build that kind of scene again like Melee had where casuals become pros is silly. What are your thoughts on where Sakurai has gone with the game so far and what would you say to him if you had the chance?
HugS: “I do think it is silly because I think there is an assumption that the capability of high level play and the appeal to casual audiences are mutually exclusive and they are not. Just like Melee, I guarantee that the casual audience that played Melee weren’t thinking “ah this game is too advanced, it is too hard”. They are not thinking on that level. They are just playing and having a good time like any other Smash game, so he can appeal to both. He did it with Melee, and he can do it again. That is to say there isn’t anything particularly wrong with Smash 4 or Ultimate. It is just that you do not have to necessarily go in a direction that makes it easier for casuals.”
Lucky: “You can’t have it all. You either want to make money or you want to make your fans happy. If you can find the middle ground for that, Sakurai, we would be happy with that, but right now it just seems that he is all about the money. He is trying to sell out, make the masses happy for a week and then once they get bored of the game, they are bored of the game. Add a little complexity and the people who buy it are going to love it for years to come.”
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Do you think the future for Smash on all fronts, competitive and casual play, looks bright?
HugS: “Oh yeah, absolutely. I think that this game, Ultimate, coming up on the Switch is really huge for the community just because it is such a good selling console and a lot of people are playing it, unlike the Wii U, so if Smash 4 did this well, I can’t imagine that Ultimate wouldn’t do better. I am really looking forward to seeing how it expands the Smash community overall just because so many people have a switch and so many people are into it, it will introduce a lot of people to both scenes.”
EVO 2018 has now concluded, with some of the highest viewership we’ve seen to date. For more information on Team Dignitas and their roster, check out their official website, here.