Scar on the Melee vs Brawl debate: What does competitive really mean?

yea, i have been holding that in for a while, because most of the other topics did not have enough logic in them for me to bother arguing it.

personally, if ppl knew the way i play, melee is really easy. im handicapped so i cant reach L, R, or Z buttons. now w/o shielding, you would think that i have no shot at placing high in tournies right? well, in a tourny of 72 where the best of texas players were, i got 4th. i even beat Rob$(not trash talking). n howd i do it? Marth+crouch cancel+some edge guard= victory. thats it. no wavedash, l-cancel, basically anything w/ the buttons on top i cant do. In brawl, however, few things changed. 1.Marth isnt too broken that i can actually win with that easily. 2. crouch cancel gone. no more easy set-up tippers just by holding down. BUT, the ability to change shield to a button i can use makes it whole lot better. now i can play at a level with no restrain and do it with any character i want(Lucas). My issue is that i did little with Marth in melee to earn my wins. In Brawl, the ability to have actual challenges is quite the sight to behold. Just give brawl a full year, then make this thread again.

behemoth said:

There are people in this thread on both sides of the argument who are posting and responding intelligently, and that is why this thread has actually (kinda) gotten somewhere.

Please follow suit.

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QFT. This goes to everyone.

There are plenty of threads in Brawl General Discussion where you can go and rant and rave and make no sense and everyone will join you. This thread is for INTELLIGENT discussion. If you want to whine, please go do so somewhere else.

If you want to say "rofl u guyz r arguin im just gon play brawl," or "This argument is irrelevant" or whatever it is that clearly will not benefit the conversation, you are not alone, people agree with you, but this is the wrong thread. Please post it somewhere else!

lulz brwl is like ttyl a nub game ok no skillz ne decent player knows that

All I have to say at the moment(and I think almost everyone will agree)Putting RANDOM tripping in the game was a foolish idea on the developers behalf.That alone seems to be p******g alot of people off.When I think of something intelligent to say with regards to both sides of the arguement ill check back.

Wiseguy said:

I think that's EXACTLY the problem that people have. In Melee, if you had Robo-cop reflexes and understood how the game worked you could get by on a very simple strategy (ie: attack, attack, attack!!!) Brawl demands strategic thinking, and therefore rewards a very different skill set.

I kinda feel sorry for the people who incorrectly believe that Brawl is lacking in depth and competitiveness. The Smash community is evolving without them.

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So i guess the "smart" thing to do when im doing a fox ditto is for the two players to keep blastering away until time runs out, right? because that is clearly the best "thought" out thing they could do.

You cant say that competitive melee players can't think just because we get frustrated. We get frustrated because of the lack of mobility/options that brawl provides so you cant bait your opponent into attacking, etc..

Its not only that, brawl has also made it broken to do some things. Ex. shield camp and shield grab all day.

"This thread is for INTELLIGENT discussion. "

You lost me.

don't worry, if you don't know what intelligent means, it probably doesn't apply to you

JesiahTEG said:

Anyways, I also agree that Brawl is less competitive than Melee. I no longer find myself 4 stocking my friends, even though I'm much "better" than them at Brawl. I understand spacing better, I know how to attack out of shield, and how not to get attacked out of shield. I understand ledge invincibility in this game, and abuse it. (the best it can be abused anyways.) I still can't beat my friends as bad as I could beat them in Melee.

I haven't gone out of town yet for Brawl, but I don't see myself losing nearly as horribly as I used to in Melee. I remember the first time I played M2K, I couldn't touch him. 4 stocked every match. Although he is better than me at Brawl now, I just don't see myself losing as horribly to him, due to the fact that there are not as many things in this game to learn and abuse. I don't have that many things to watch out for, there's not hundreds of different ways he can kill me anymore.

In Melee, if I got grabbed by M2K near the ledge, it was over, since he is amazing at edgeguarding. He knew of every possible way to kill me, the safest options for edgeguarding, the different ways to attack from not only on the stage, but the ledge also. He mastered ledge invincibility, and timed his attacks perfectly so he could hit me through my Up B, using ledge invincibility. He KNEW how to trap my recovery, limiting my options down to just one choice, in which he would punish horribly.

Now, I don't care if you're some random noob or M2K. The game mechanics just don't allow for anyone to be that good at edgeguarding. If M2K throws me off the edge backwards...I'll just...Grab the ledge. And there's not a **** thing he can do about it, since auto sweetspot allows me to grab the ledge from a mile away. The best choice you have in Brawl to edgeguard is A.) jump out and attack your opponent, or B.) let them grab the ledge, and do as much damage to them as they recover from the ledge as possible.

I just used edgeguarding as an example, but there are plenty more examples that show how Melee is more competitive than Brawl.

Now, I like Brawl, I really do. I don't even like it because it's fun, I like it because I like discovering new things. Fact is, I don't really discover that much, even though I'm working my *** off to find new techniques/strategies. I WANT to argue that Brawl is going to be competitive, I WANT to see myself in the near future struggling to keep up with professionals, I WANT to debate for Brawl...But all too often, I find myself struggling to find reasons why Brawl is going to be as competitive as Melee...But deep down inside, I know these reasons are just...Not practical. Here are some reasons that give me hope that Brawl will be as competitive as Melee:

1. The attack depreciation system hasn't been looked into enough, and could prove to be a HUGE part of the game, as it will allow for combos, and will make players think more during the matches...It will make them remember how depreciated a certain attack is, and when to recharge it using other attacks.

This is my main argument. I REALLY hope that this will change the game in a huge way, making it more competitive than even Melee...But, deep down inside, I know that while this is a possibility, it probably won't happen. Stun time in Brawl just doesn't allow for combos, no matter how small the knockback. You can airdodge out of anything. I'm still going to work my *** off to try and make this work, but the reality is, it probably won't.

Ok, so that's just one reason. I'm too lazy to type more reasons.

Something else I thought I might add: I used to watch Melee videos and try to copy my opponent's strategies. When I was semi-noobish, I remember the main thing I tried to copy was chaingrabbing fox with Marth. I practiced all the time. First, it was the timing that threw me off. After I got the timing down, I had to worry about what percent Fox was at. After that, I practiced knowing when to pivot grab, utilt, regrab...Which moves to use depending on the percent. Lastly, I practiced uair comboing, to finish off the combo. With Uair comboing, I had to worry about spacing my uairs, knowing when to tip and when not to tip; Following my opponent's DI, so I could end with an Fsmash or Reverse Up B, then spacing my killing move. There is just so much to worry about while just doing one of the many combos Melee has to offer.

Now, I decided to try the same thing with Brawl. I wanted to look into Metaknight, even though I main Snake. (<3 Snake) I looked at Forte's MK, and decided to copy some of his strategies. The main strategy I saw that impressed me the most was his "combos."I decided to try his main way of killing people...This is how it went.

1. Choose Metaknight at character select screen
2. Uair my opponent
3. Press Up B

It's just not that hard. It's just not. I can copy anyone's video, and replicate anything they do. Now, I may be overexaggerating this just a little bit, but you get my point.

IMO, Brawl just isn't as competitive in Melee, due to most of the technical aspects being taken out, which limits one's options, which in turn makes the game more narrow, less deep, and overall less competitive.

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Hello guys, wanted to get back into this thread so I will be quickly replying to the most recent notable post (I'm at work lolz).

First of all there is a big issue that I'd like to address in the previous post: It is very WRONG to try to measure the skill gap between two opponents in Brawl the same way as trying to measure it between two opponents in Melee... which is, in percentage and stock difference at the end of the fight.

It doesn't apply at all, because the damage output is totally different in both games... it has already been agreed that the punishment aspect of the game is much more developped in melee, therefore it is only logical that you see a bigger gap in stocks and percentages between two Melee players than two Brawl players.

If you wanna make a comparison of skill gap between two players in two different games, you gotta be more fair, and evaluate something like the win %. If in Melee you win 95% 3-stocking your opponents while in Brawl you win 95% of the time, 1-stocking your opponents the games are still equally competitive in their own regards because they test a different set of skills (comboing, sadly not being one of them).

EDIT: Melee to Brawl is kinda like SF2 to SF3... while SF2 was about the careful implementation of a gameplan and pushing the advantage, that aspect of the game was destroyed in SF3 with the addition of parries (and other factors), that always gave a strong option to the defensive character to turn the tables and return everything to a neutral situation, constantly forcing the attacker to mixup mixup and mixup his attacks in order to squeeze in more damage. Many hated SF3 for this and called the game ''too random'' and ''less competitive'' but in a sense, the same players dominate all the time and theres a big gap between top skilled and the bottom

BigRick said:

It doesn't apply at all, because the damage output is totally different in both games... it has already been agreed that the punishment aspect of the game is much more developped in melee, therefore it is only logical that you see a bigger gap in stocks and percentages between two Melee players than two Brawl players.

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Doesn't this point alone go a LONG way to prove mine? How is a person supposed to develop a strategy that allows him to reliably win if the game engine in Brawl does its absolute best to keep stock differences small?

This is the direct consequence of the assumptions we're making with Brawl not having a punishment game. This is the leap of logic I'm trying to get everyone to make, and apparently everyone is making it but not making this connection that Brawl lessens competitiveness. The people who should be rewarded with huge leads don't get them.

I never thought I'd be posting here as I made the account just to use advanced search functions. Oh well.

almightypancake said:

(About 0-Death combos being the focus of other fighting games)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gh2MAa91L-U
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9Z-LP-6yGvg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ft6lcEsyb9c

Have fun.

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almightypancake said:

And yet it's still one of the most competitive. Balance=/=competitive. MvC tournaments are some of the biggest in the world, and it's one of the defining competitive fighters. Also, the second street fighter video was actually on real opponents.

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I hate to go back 30 pages (even if it's only 2 days), but god ****, I can't believe someone let you get away with this. The second video was on a real opponents? It was on a training mode dummy set to jump for most of those. It's easy to tell just by the fact everyone has max meter. In fact, it was made with the "System Direction" set to allow crazy juggles, which is an unlockable option used just for fun. The entire video is invalidated.

I can't speak for 3d games, but good no 2d fighter revolves around 0-Death combos. I can say this with confidence because I'm in the community and I play these games and, more practically, I watch tournament matches. Most don't even have practical 0-Death combos.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 is the closest to the 0-death mentality. Assists can be infinited to death under some situations and practical situations exist where a character can be brought from zero (or close to that) to death.. And still, games occur where neither happens quite commonly... and even if they do, it's only 1/3rd of your character resources... And this is the game known for being the most over the top and 'broken' in the fighting game community.

3rd Stike, as shown secondly, does not fit that mentality at all. The games damage is very forgiving in general with 50% damage usually being the upper end of combos. One notable example does exist in the character Makoto who can 0-Death a number of characters... If she has max meter and lands her command grab in a particular position (somewhat toward the corner with her back to it). You rarely see her in top 8s though.

Super Turbo is strange because the game actually has a lot of ways to kill your opponent in one combo... and they're fairly easy. But you rarely see them happen, because players opt for safer tactics, stable stratagies and.. well, their opponents do their best to keep them from getting away with it. Even if a crossup is hit that could lead to O-Death, most players opt for a combo they can hit confirm (such as jabbing a few times to have time to confirm that the crossup did infact hit). They happen, possibly more so then MVC2 -- but the game is in no way centered around them, as positioning, spacing and footsies are incredibly paramount in that game.

The only other game where 0-Death might be considered focal to the game would be Guilty Gear, a game I am a respectable player in and my primary game... But even this crazy *** game, due to balance and damage scaling, mostly sees combos in the 50-80% range.. and with how scaling works, even if you're down the inital 20%, you're not going to die. A few cases exist that come up occasionally and players can certainly die quickly to top tier characters in a series of rapid mistakes, but in general, 0-death is very surprising.

So yeah. You were totally wrong.

----------------------------------

Anyways, to go on to the general topic of the thread. Brawl IS too young for this sort of thing to be going on. Two weeks -- 6 or 7 given the japanese release (though with far less players). To go back to my previously stated fighting game experience, that is simply not enough time. Thousands of people playing for a few weeks will find a lot of things, but it takes people pushing characters and tactics to the limit over months for true tactics and statagies to emerge. The collective minds of thousands of players cannot find these sorts of things as it takes skilled players and experience. For Guilty Gear, when a Japanese console port is released months after release, the game is still evolving at this point. This is for a game that is FAR less of a jump than Melee to Brawl. There are plenty of relatively informed things one can infer at this point and many top players have identified some things that will probably remain true, but at the same time, people haven't really figured out how to actually 'play' the game yet.

Next, advanced techinques are overrated. A game does not need advanced techniques to be deep or interesting. Wave dashing is nothing but an overglorified front and back dash. It's very useful and is key to success, the only thing 'advanced' about it is the execution (which becomes trivial). L-Canceling is just a flat out stupid feature that should of been done automatically instead of adding pointless busy work.

And to go more off L-Canceling, the ability to approach safely in such a manner with a lot of moves is not necessarily a good thing for depth. Interesting game play is naturally born of various degrees of limitation. SSF2T has a LOT of limitation (no dashing, powerful projectiles, no real general 'gimmicks' or general 'advanced techniques' that are essential (though plenty of character specific stuff). The game still stands as incredibly deep due to the nuances and interaction of these limited options. They are forced to occur and things are explored to a deeper level. I can't say whither brawl will or won't be this, but it's a possibility people need to explore. I think a Smash player playing Super Turbo would fight approaching to be extremely risky and in the defenders favor... But knowing ones true options and using them in the right situations changes this.

The 'true' form of Brawl's game play is what needs to be discovered and built upon, not 'advanced techniques' that may or may not exist. Yes, the game isn't as competitive as Melee yet. Theres no way it would be in such a short time unless it was Melee 2.0. It may never be. It might be SF2. It might be SF3 (which is bad and where attacking has more risk and less reward then parrying -- which sort of looks like how the current shield system works). But it should not be seriously compared to melee over it's competitiveness and depth until people really know whats up with the game.

.. I really just think that the Smash community knows how to recieve new games.... Though in it's defense, after years without a game, the capcom community is acting the same way with SF4 coming out.

Anyways, hope this post was coherent and informative.

This thread is still up? Holy freaking crap. Find something better to do than beat a dead horse topic based on pointless opinions.

Thank God for lurking.

...and yet here you are

if the thread doesn't interest you, just don't post in it

Dogenzaka said:

This thread is still up? Holy freaking crap. Find something better to do than beat a dead horse topic based on pointless opinions.

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you are an idiot

Dogenzaka said:

This thread is still up? Holy freaking crap. Find something better to do than beat a dead horse topic based on pointless opinions.

Thank God for lurking.

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*cough*As if you didn't just do the same thing a few days ago (yesterday?) *endcough*

Scar said:

Doesn't this point alone go a LONG way to prove mine? How is a person supposed to develop a strategy that allows him to reliably win if the game engine in Brawl does its absolute best to keep stock differences small?

This is the direct consequence of the assumptions we're making with Brawl not having a punishment game. This is the leap of logic I'm trying to get everyone to make, and apparently everyone is making it but not making this connection that Brawl lessens competitiveness. The people who should be rewarded with huge leads don't get them.

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The situation referenced would happen between two players of near skill. It should be a tight game without a huge stock difference in my opinion. People who are really good, will still have huge leads against those who are really bad.

I've played matches where I've 3 or 4 stocked someone and I've played matches that came down to the wire. Never did I feel in the latter situation, that I was too much of a better player than the other guy. I felt like they were close matches between 2 people of near equal skill.

I feel like you shouldn't need to be rewarded with "huge leads" if you're better, so long as you're rewarded with a win. If you're THAT much better than your oponent, you will still win by a huge margin.

One other point I wanted to make regarding the competitiveness in Brawl. I know this is nothing new, but The reworking of the stale move mechanic is huge. I came to really appreciate how huge of a difference this makes as I was playing online matches last night and I think that its something that people shouldn't ignore as it does offer a new layer of strategy to matches.

I do have about a year or so experience running Smash Brothers tournaments at my store in New England. So far the transition from Melee to Brawl tournaments up here has been really good. From experience and seeing how well certain players do in Brawl as opposed to Melee, there hasn't been that big of a change. More people come to tournaments now that they feel they can do better and veteran gamers still generally do well and usually win with a few trip ups here and there.
Overall, I feel Melee probably was more competitive, however the slight decline in that turned out for the better. Maybe those who focus on the big tournaments where you'd have to fight the best in the state don't agree, but for the small areas and stores where it's the neighboring cities and communities it turned out to be an all-around positive change for the better.

GoggleBoy said:

I do have about a year or so experience running Smash Brothers tournaments at my store in New England. So far the transition from Melee to Brawl tournaments up here has been really good. From experience and seeing how well certain players do in Brawl as opposed to Melee, there hasn't been that big of a change. More people come to tournaments now that they feel they can do better and veteran gamers still generally do well and usually win with a few trip ups here and there.
Overall, I feel Melee probably was more competitive, however the slight decline in that turned out for the better. Maybe those who focus on the big tournaments where you'd have to fight the best in the state don't agree, but for the small areas and stores where it's the neighboring cities and communities it turned out to be an all-around positive change for the better.

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I like this post, it actually goes on someone who isn't being biased, and isn't just using their own freaking opinion to say which one is better. Its got hard facts and a general consensus.

All in all, if you were good at Melee, you'll probably be good at Brawl, but when you think of it from a more fair point of view, Brawl is much more 'noob'-friendly than Melee was, it lowered the competitive aspect of the game a bit, sure, but now when people who just pick up the game for the first time hop online and do a match, they wont get horribly defeated in 10 seconds and be discouraged as much. But if you were good at Melee, or if you put the time into Brawl, you'll still win.

Scar said:

Doesn't this point alone go a LONG way to prove mine? How is a person supposed to develop a strategy that allows him to reliably win if the game engine in Brawl does its absolute best to keep stock differences small?

This is the direct consequence of the assumptions we're making with Brawl not having a punishment game. This is the leap of logic I'm trying to get everyone to make, and apparently everyone is making it but not making this connection that Brawl lessens competitiveness. The people who should be rewarded with huge leads don't get them.

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I'm afraid that we will have to accept that there is no 100% reliable strategy to implement in the first place... now lets all measure our Yomi skills shall we???

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeM0rH_4ung (lol I bet youve seen this vid already)

theres a reason why capcom is remaking ST... might happen in 10 years with melee lol

To Koopa: Do not confuse mixups with mindgames... mixups can be mindgames but they stop being mindgames when you're opponent knows that it's a mixup.

First off, thanks Scar for this thread, I'm glad we have organized discussion about it, and there's some well made points in here I think everyone should read.

I only have one thing to add, about discovery of Advanced Techniques.

almightypancake said:

For example: think about Wavedashing. Let's assume for a second that Melee's launch was in the same situation as Brawl's launch. Even if there were thousands of people trying to abuse Melee's engine, it would be quite a long time before someone really made the connection between airdodging and ground momentum. It would be even longer before someone discovered the significance.

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I disagree here. I'd like to claim that I "figured out" wavedashing the first day I had the game. Why? Because I look into all the details when I approach something, so that I can try and make weird connections that I think others might miss.

So upon reading that we can airdodge (in the instruction manual. Yeah. SSBM. I read those things), and then -directionally- airdodge - well, programmers have to 'bulletproof' their software so that each path has an end. That is, if I were to airdodge into the 'geometry,' either I stop, or I slide. First I tried airdodging into a wall. Didn't help me much. Then I airdodged into the ground... at an angle... ooh I slid a little bit.

Then I stopped caring. I had no one to tell it to (didn't know about smashboards), and none of my friends really cared about the game, so I figured, hey, if I figured it out this easily, I'm sure someone else will too. And I'll find out the applications of it when I see other people using it as well.

***

I have two points. One is that now we have major communication within everyone. Youtube, new threads, character specific - everything is being documented about this game, making sure all of us (if we choose to go read about it) is caught up on the same page.

Second, the only reason I found out about airdodging into the ground was because I looked at the game with no expectations. I'm saying we need to do this, and are already starting to do it for Brawl. Ok ok, we've figured out that everything that made Melee cool is out of the game. As others are saying, let's continue to look at what we have and go from there. One thing I noticed when I first saw Brawl videos was that everyone tried to play it like Melee, and they were ignoring the new things Brawl gave us, like being able to move again out of an airdodge. I know Sonic has little hope right now, but I'm determined to make him formidable using out-of-the-box approaches tied to his speed.



All this said, I have only a small hope that Brawl will have the competitive difference that Melee has, mostly due to the fact that our character control and precision and options are molasses compared to Melee. For example, I doubt Action Replay will ever be needed for Brawl - I'm pretty sure we can do everything that the game has to offer, with our own human bodies - the game isn't beyond our imagination in that sense (yet...). But from what many of us have seen so far... the only way forward is by either really weird thinking, or just really character-specific stuff. (And about combos - I think even if Melee had the combo system that Brawl has right now, the speed and options of Melee would still compensate for it - even though it still wouldn't be "as balanced.")



This is why I think Melee players got gimped when expecting a game that would further their already-learned gameplay. What I found as fun in the first game, I'm not finding in this one; I'm forced to look for new stuff, and I'm having trouble finding it.

I agree Philip. I can't imagine there being any new advanced techs that someone will discover that will really speed this game up and make it more competitive. It seems we are already exhausting all of our options. The only thing I can think of is making weird controller arrangements, which has brought this new B-sticking thing, but I don't see it having much practical use.

I usually hate it when people say this, but it's only been a month (a week for some of us). Maybe we should wait more than forty days before we say we've exhausted all our options lol.

-Philip Coast Philip- said:

First off, thanks Scar for this thread, I'm glad we have organized discussion about it, and there's some well made points in here I think everyone should read.

I only have one thing to add, about discovery of Advanced Techniques.

I disagree here. I'd like to claim that I "figured out" wavedashing the first day I had the game. Why? Because I look into all the details when I approach something, so that I can try and make weird connections that I think others might miss.

So upon reading that we can airdodge (in the instruction manual. Yeah. SSBM. I read those things), and then -directionally- airdodge - well, programmers have to 'bulletproof' their software so that each path has an end. That is, if I were to airdodge into the 'geometry,' either I stop, or I slide. First I tried airdodging into a wall. Didn't help me much. Then I airdodged into the ground... at an angle... ooh I slid a little bit.

Then I stopped caring. I had no one to tell it to (didn't know about smashboards), and none of my friends really cared about the game, so I figured, hey, if I figured it out this easily, I'm sure someone else will too. And I'll find out the applications of it when I see other people using it as well.

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I'm not entirely sure what your point is. So you've provided an anecdote that shows that you wavedashed, but didn't see how it helped the game. You're apparently now godlier at smash than the people who played tournaments for two years before wavedashing was a common technique.

One anecdote does not refute my point; rather, there's quite a lot of evidence that you, if you did "discover" wavedashing on your own way before everyone else, are very very much in the minority. Even with Halo 3, it took 3 MONTHS before people managed to find completely game-breaking glitches (which were patched) simply because everyone was trying too hard to play it like Halo 2. CS: 1.6 players were trying to make Source work just like 1.6.

Even with a highly competitive community (which smash is not, compared to other games) with consistent, incredibly reliable methods of communication (which smash does not have; at least, not to the extent of game like Halo, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, and other games with massive online communities gathered around one information HUB), and dedicated players (fine, we have that), it could still take over a year to develop important metagame tactics, or find the importance in a seemingly insignificant or previously unnoticed game effect.

almightypancake said:

I'm not entirely sure what your point is. So you've provided an anecdote that shows that you wavedashed, but didn't see how it helped the game. You're apparently now godlier at smash than the people who played tournaments for two years before wavedashing was a common technique.

One anecdote does not refute my point; rather, there's quite a lot of evidence that you, if you did "discover" wavedashing on your own way before everyone else, are very very much in the minority. Even with Halo 3, it took 3 MONTHS before people managed to find completely game-breaking glitches (which were patched) simply because everyone was trying too hard to play it like Halo 2. CS: 1.6 players were trying to make Source work just like 1.6.

Even with a highly competitive community (which smash is not, compared to other games) with consistent, incredibly reliable methods of communication (which smash does not have; at least, not to the extent of game like Halo, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, and other games with massive online communities gathered around one information HUB), and dedicated players (fine, we have that), it could still take over a year to develop important metagame tactics, or find the importance in a seemingly insignificant or previously unnoticed game effect.

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Yes but we have something those other communities don't have. Mew2King and Phanna Seriously, if theres something to find in this game, they will have found it.

Also, did you know that in Halo 2, with use of the sputnik skull, me and a buddy of mine found a way around all the barriers in the game allowing us to go anywhere in any level? Through use of an odd type of grenade jumping that would kill one of us, yet propel the other significantly higher than a normal sputnik grenade jump we were able to escape any map, get on top of any building, essentially go anywhere. We didn't read about it, we didn't find it online, we just thought of it ourselves. Now, had we been part of some type of Halo community we probably would have told them(its not very useful, but it was cool) Understand that it doesn't matter how many people that you have in the community its WHO you have in the community. There are players who play for fun, players who play to learn and players who play to discover. The smash community has HUGE amounts of players who are playing simply to discover new depth in the game, numbers of players Melee just didn't have(so STOP COMPARING MELEE'S LAUNCH TO BRAWLS -.-) Understand that if this game is going to be broken, it will have either happened already, or will happen very very soon. If it doesn't then we're stuck with what we have, a game INFERIOR to melee in terms of competitiveness, and we, as a community should strongly consider NOT switching to Brawl but rather keeping Melee as the main focus of the large tournaments and keeping Brawl in the back seat. I don't want to give up on Brawl completely, but I don't think it should be the main focus for tournaments as of right now as we currently have a BETTER game. However I also don't think we do need to have Brawl in those larger tournaments as a sort of side tourney(like Doubles or Crews) as a way to continue fleshing out its metagame. That way, if the game does become much more deep, we can simply switch it into melee's place and if it doesn't we don't really have to change anything. Oh well, im rambling, im gonna go play Pokemon.

i feel you should be gauged EXACTLY by your skill, which melee does and brawl does not

edit - do that halo 2 thing with me, it sounds fun

Pink Reaper said:

Now, had we been part of some type of Halo community we probably would have told them(its not very useful, but it was cool) Understand that it doesn't matter how many people that you have in the community its WHO you have in the community. There are players who play for fun, players who play to learn and players who play to discover. The smash community has HUGE amounts of players who are playing simply to discover new depth in the game, numbers of players Melee just didn't have(so STOP COMPARING MELEE'S LAUNCH TO BRAWLS -.-) Understand that if this game is going to be broken, it will have either happened already, or will happen very very soon.

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I don't think you read my post. COUNTERSTRIKE, hands down one of the MOST competitive games of all time, with WELL OVER 10 TIMES the number of competitive players smash has, took almost a year to develop playstyle for CS:Source.

I agree, who you have matters. But the fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to be searching for something when you don't know what that something is. We can't find these techniques when we have no idea what they'll be, not even with our community. Whether or not it'll intensify Brawl's nature, I can't say. But precedent shows that most techniques are not discovered within a month, or two months, or three months, but usually around a year or so.

Mew2King said:

i feel you should be gauged EXACTLY by your skill, which melee does and brawl does not

edit - do that halo 2 thing with me, it sounds fun

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I would, but its actually campaign only Which means unless you want to fly here to Cali you should just find someone on your side of the US to do it with XD

Mew2King said:

i feel you should be gauged EXACTLY by your skill, which melee does and brawl does not

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I don't exactly get what you're saying. What you're saying implies that there is some level of luck involved in Brawl's gameplay.

What we're looking at is more of a shift in what is defined as skill. Where a large part of Melee's skill was defined by quick fingers and being able to pull of advanced techniques effectively which involved much time and dedication, Brawl's skill at the time seems to be more of a shift to the ability to lead your opponent,anticipate your opponents actions, and master spacing techniques. Of course that aspect was in Melee, but do to the things that have been removed, that becomes more heavily weighted in Brawl. The point is that what was considered skill in melee is not necessarily the same as skill in Brawl.

Unless there is some luck factor involved, you should be guaged in any game by your level of skill. That holds even more true for this game if you accept the idea (that a lot of people seemingly have) that Brawl has a more "balanced" character selection than Melee did for competitive play.

almightypancake said:

I don't think you read my post. COUNTERSTRIKE, hands down one of the MOST competitive games of all time, with WELL OVER 10 TIMES the number of competitive players smash has, took almost a year to develop playstyle for CS:Source.

I agree, who you have matters. But the fact of the matter is that it's very difficult to be searching for something when you don't know what that something is. We can't find these techniques when we have no idea what they'll be, not even with our community. Whether or not it'll intensify Brawl's nature, I can't say. But precedent shows that most techniques are not discovered within a month, or two months, or three months, but usually around a year or so.

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Ok, normally I would edit this in to my post, but since smashboards doesn't seem to want to let me see what I JUST POSTED, I have to make a separate post.

Ok, on to the actual response. You're under the assumption that we have no idea what we're looking for and that's actually not true. You assume that all advanced techniques can ONLY be glitches that we haven't already found. But you need to understand that most AT's in Melee were just expansions of obvious game mechanics. Air dodge in Melee allowed you to give yourself a fair amount of momentum. Momentum against the ground gives you a slide. Ergo, Air Dodging can let you slide across the ground(this isn't how wavedashing was discovered though, and Im sort of wondering why that is >.>) Ok, now lets look at something else in the game. Fox's down B reflector(the shine) Fox's shine comes out in 1 frame. You can jump out of the shine. You can wavedash from a jump. Ergo, waveshining. Its not that difficult to create AT's if you just think things through a little. Now, the reasons were not finding AT's in Brawl is because of how restrictive the game engine is. You can't jump out of a shine anymore, you can't air dodge with a direction any more, you can't leave the ledge the instant you grab it(ok, thats not really an AT, it just annoys me) Once again, the restrictions on movement and options in Brawl ends up ruining any chance for non-glitch AT's, which is why we, the smash community are essentially attempting to destroy the game, because Nintendo didn't want to give us depth so now we have to force it(**** was NO cash)

Midguy said:

I don't exactly get what you're saying. What you're saying implies that there is some level of luck involved in Brawl's gameplay.

What we're looking at is more of a shift in what is defined as skill. Where a large part of Melee's skill was defined by quick fingers and being able to pull of advanced techniques effectively which involved much time and dedication, Brawl's skill at the time seems to be more of a shift to the ability to lead your opponent,anticipate your opponents actions, and master spacing techniques. Of course that aspect was in Melee, but do to the things that have been removed, that becomes more heavily weighted in Brawl. The point is that what was considered skill in melee is not necessarily the same as skill in Brawl.

Unless there is some luck factor involved, you should be guaged in any game by your level of skill. That holds even more true for this game if you accept the idea (that a lot of people seemingly have) that Brawl has a more "balanced" character selection than Melee did for competitive play.

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Actually, there is a large amount of luck involved in Brawl. Because you lack alot of the options in Melee that allowed you to trip up your opponent your left with only prediction to counter his attacks. This leads to(as Scar would put it) "Rock Paper Scissors" game play where the idea isn't to be better than your opponent, but rather to be better at predicting your opponent. However, since there's really no way to predict what your opponent is going to do without actually asking him and having him tell you beforehand, your left with blind predictions, which is essentially just luck.

Midguy said:

I don't exactly get what you're saying. What you're saying implies that there is some level of luck involved in Brawl's gameplay.

What we're looking at is more of a shift in what is defined as skill. Where a large part of Melee's skill was defined by quick fingers and being able to pull of advanced techniques effectively which involved much time and dedication, Brawl's skill at the time seems to be more of a shift to the ability to lead your opponent,anticipate your opponents actions, and master spacing techniques. Of course that aspect was in Melee, but do to the things that have been removed, that becomes more heavily weighted in Brawl. The point is that what was considered skill in melee is not necessarily the same as skill in Brawl.

Unless there is some luck factor involved, you should be guaged in any game by your level of skill. That holds even more true for this game if you accept the idea (that a lot of people seemingly have) that Brawl has a more "balanced" character selection than Melee did for competitive play.

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Many of the advanced techniques that were present in Melee were used to lead your opponent and space yourself. Removing them simply provides the player with fewer options regarding these aspects of the game.

yes, i am saying just that, that brawl IS highly luck compared to melee

trading hits, random air dodge to the ground with no landing lag, random tripping, which can happen during DDD chain grabs, air tripping as well, there's tons more luck in brawl than there is in melee, and far less guaranteed things. You don't anticipate the moves of noobs, they do random things, in melee you just **** them by being better, but if they are a campy noob, they can still do decent by just being a shield camping ***got. Melee has infinite room for improvement, without even needing to play gay. Brawl, if you play gay and boring, you have a SIGNIFICANTLY bigger advantage, and that's extremely boring and ********. Lack of things you can master makes the game less fun with less replay value, which are things melee offered to a huge extreme.

You can do things randomly and not get punished for it nearly as bad as you would in melee, and that's a downgrade for competitive potential, where the best player isn't as guaranteed to win, especially in 3 stock matches. You suicide once it's over, in melee comebacks were easy cuz of death combos and stuff, brawl is more leveled out for the little kiddies, and that's more unfair for the better players. All the advanced tactics aren't hard to do, like shield cancel, it just takes getting used to, and it's extremely shallow, anyone can do it, and it's also really really really campy and that makes the game not fun. Brawl wasn't designed to be competitive, Sakurai did this on purpose, stop trying to make it competitive. Actually, that's what I'm trying to do, but it's not working, so just go back to melee, everyone's fine with that.

I don't want to argue about this, NOTHING anyone says will change or persuade my opinion at ALL unless I convince myself that with my own observations which hasn't even become semi close to happening. I'll play brawl cuz everyone else is, that's the only reason.

Blind predictions are the perfect way to describe the game.

almightypancake said:

I'm not entirely sure what your point is. So you've provided an anecdote that shows that you wavedashed, but didn't see how it helped the game. You're apparently now godlier at smash than the people who played tournaments for two years before wavedashing was a common technique.

One anecdote does not refute my point; rather, there's quite a lot of evidence that you, if you did "discover" wavedashing on your own way before everyone else, are very very much in the minority. Even with Halo 3, it took 3 MONTHS before people managed to find completely game-breaking glitches (which were patched) simply because everyone was trying too hard to play it like Halo 2. CS: 1.6 players were trying to make Source work just like 1.6.

Even with a highly competitive community (which smash is not, compared to other games) with consistent, incredibly reliable methods of communication (which smash does not have; at least, not to the extent of game like Halo, Counterstrike, Street Fighter, and other games with massive online communities gathered around one information HUB), and dedicated players (fine, we have that), it could still take over a year to develop important metagame tactics, or find the importance in a seemingly insignificant or previously unnoticed game effect.

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Nononono...

I was just trying to say that it's possible to discover things faster by looking at them in different ways. And that communication helped. Perhaps I was thinking that Brawl would be discovered faster than Melee because of our better understanding of how Melee worked, and our eagerness to discover what Brawl has for us.

I'm with what you're saying (the bolded part, for example), and agreed with you over in this thread (should have done it in this one as well I guess):

-Philip Coast Philip- said:

almightypancake said:

1. Establish a limiting situation within the gameplay.
We found that in most every situation, a defensive player would have the advantage on an approaching player. Projectiles would add to this advantage; in the end, the approaching player was very very limited with the options we had.

2. Discuss potential ways around the error.
There are some nifty character-specific strategies for sure. Hydroplaning, snake's superwavedashupsmashthing, etc... but they were strategies which would have been incredibly effective in Melee, not so much in Brawl. We found that even with significantly surprising approaches, the defensive player was STILL at an advantage.

3. Practice our theories in-game.
For the purpose of this situation, we would trade off being offensive and defensive. One of us would spend a whole match trying to gain an advantage on the approach, and the other would simply defend and punish. In each game, the defensive player won... simply by camping and watching. Sometimes the games were close, but the offensive player would simply take a massive beating before having any sort of chance at retaliation, and those chances would be hindered by a well-timed shield grab, OOS attack, or even just a roll+smash. The animations were predictable and obvious.

***

We encourage other members to do the same. Find an aspect of Brawl that seems "broken" to you... whether it's a superwavedash or Olimar's pikmin throw, whether it's Ike's FSmash or the lack of float cancelling, and find a way to work around it. Develop new strategies.

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Agreed.

/withyouthereandeveryoneelseshouldbetoo

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So sorry for the misunderstanding.

However, I also see what you're saying about the other competitive communities, and how long it's taken them to find out stuff about their games. Yeah, sucks don't it. My only response: People still like aspects of Halo 1 more than Halo 2, and they still like aspects of Halo 2 more than Halo 3. So it may take time to figure out how to play it still - doesn't mean the game will be better than the previous.

Anyway, my post was just to help show how we can go about finding things faster... and you've layed out the description than I did in your own thread...

(And I still agree, like what M2K said, that you should be gauged exactly by your skill.)



And I was never claiming to be better than anyone, sheesh...

What more do you brawl haters want we have good graphics a stage builder and a lot of new characters so stop whining and play brawl

Above poster, find a flameshield...QUICK

There seems to pretty much be a consensus among the competitive smashers.

Yes brawl is fun, but its game design limits competitive play when compared to melee and leaves melee as a better game to gauge skill.

No matter how many times the dissenters say mind games it isn't going to change this.
Sure there is a possibility that new advanced techniques that will come out that will change all of this.
It doesn't seem like this is likely to happen though. The melee players are trying to make Brawl work. They aren't dismissing brawl because they are bad at it or can't adapt. They just see the difference in how accurate skill gauged.

If a player were to go from chess to tic-tac-toe they would be able to tell the difference in skill required. No amount of dedicated playing of tic-tac-toe to discover new better strategies would ever make it surpass chess in skill required.

Brawl & Melee aren't separated as much as chess and tic-tac-toe are, but I'm just using it as an extreme example to demonstrate my point.






I'd also like to just add in a personal anecdote from my playing of brawl over the past few days.
Everyone I play with have come to a similar conclusion on Brawl. It isn't as "competitive" or "skillful" as brawl.
This group consists of tournament goers and pretty much casual noobs.
We all find the game to be fun. The more casual players like having more of a chance, not being beating as badly and not having to play as often to continue to compete. They also are learning to be campy spamming *******s...

The more competitive players are seeing the limitations of play when compared to melee. They see how edge guarding and comboing have lost their efficiency. They see how they have fewer options to attack, fewer options to punish and they see how easy power shielding and shield grabbing has become.


Yes I know personal anecdotes really don't mean much, but it really seems to fit together with the viewpoint that seems to be coming into a common consensus among the competitive players here.

-Philip Coast Philip- said:

Nononono...

I was just trying to say that it's possible to discover things faster by looking at them in different ways. And that communication helped. Perhaps I was thinking that Brawl would be discovered faster than Melee because of our better understanding of how Melee worked, and our eagerness to discover what Brawl has for us.

I'm with what you're saying (the bolded part, for example), and agreed with you over in this thread (should have done it in this one as well I guess):

So sorry for the misunderstanding.

However, I also see what you're saying about the other competitive communities, and how long it's taken them to find out stuff about their games. Yeah, sucks don't it. My only response: People still like aspects of Halo 1 more than Halo 2, and they still like aspects of Halo 2 more than Halo 3. So it may take time to figure out how to play it still - doesn't mean the game will be better than the previous.

Anyway, my post was just to help show how we can go about finding things faster... and you've layed out the description than I did in your own thread...

(And I still agree, like what M2K said, that you should be gauged exactly by your skill.)



And I was never claiming to be better than anyone, sheesh...

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Sorry, I've just been getting really frustrated this thread. My bad.

And pinkreaper, what you don't seem to understand is that we don't know what we're looking for. We know what we want to be there, and it's not. Therefore, we should start looking at it completely differently.

For example, let's go ahead and use the CS:1.6-Source analogy again. In CS, you could crouch, aim at a head, and all of your shots from a burst shot would hit the head before the recoil would pull you off of your target. As a result, many guns would be close to one hit-kills (AK-47, I'm looking at you). Even if it wasn't a one-hit kill, the red dot system and impaired movement imposed on your character prevented you from moving away or retaliating before they finished you off.

In Source, the gun's recoil took you farther faster, and had a random trajectory--sometimes it would just go straight up, sometimes slightly to the side, etc. As a result, the other person was able to retaliate much more effectively. Sounds awesome, if it weren't for the fact that now, as an agressor, you were at a disadvantage. It took 4 MONTHS, in a highly-competitive online community, for someone to realize the solution.

In Source, the damage input had changed somewhat. Rather than saying X damage for body and Y damage for head, it was actually on a slightly more scaled system depending on how far away you were and whether or not they had armor/kevlar/what have you. As a result, you simply had to get closer and start firing at the middle of their body, and simply worry about the left/right recoil. All of a sudden, the attacker/defender positions were truly balanced; the attacker had to get close enough to actually have the jump on the defender, but when he did, it was generally a kill.

Perhaps this seems simple, but if you played CS 1.6, particularly competitively, then you probably dedicated most of your time to trying to outsmart the recoil, figure out patterns, try out different mouse speed movements, etc. The idea that you should shoot at someone's body was just... wrong. That wasn't how the game worked.

That's what I mean by thinking outside the box. We KNOW smash. And as a result, it's very difficult for us to look at it completely fresh.