A Brawl Gameplay Critique

[Koga]

Yes they're there, but they have lost a lot of their use, short hopping advantages were mostly connected with canceling the lag of the move, and di as the op said just makes the game feel like kills just happen.

I'd love if some techniques appeared that would give me more things that I CAN do, but right now I don't see it.

try Short hop air dodging out of a shield dash or Dashing shield cancel into an Usmash or any of the number of things the new mechanics allow for. Think momentum, because its always carried over from action to action now. Also, the frame perfectness required to stop the lag from certain moves can be aided by airdodging right befor you hit the ground, like if you finish the airial and still fall for a little bit so you don't land right after its finished, you can airdodge right before you hit the ground and you take the airdodge landing lag rather than the airal's landing lag, which is substantially less than most airials

 

[TheMagicalKuja]

The OP... is largely correct. I've seen it. I've played Brawl for about a month now. And yeah, Brawl's technical level is reduced. And tripping sucks balls. YOU KNOW there's something wrong when even the most casual of brawlers complain of it's inclusion!

But I don't like it.

Misto is correct in the fact that keeping some sort of narrow idea about things is a great way to set yourself up for fail and disappointment. The "Sakurai is catering to noobs" stance reeks of (unintentional) arrogance, and while I sympathize with that nasty drop of technical wonder it's absolutely no reason to whine about the developers attempting to screw you over. You're not the only audience for Smash. Get over it.

As a matter of fact, ASIDE from a competitive standpoint, Brawl is superior to Melee in every way. Then again that isn't for this topic, is it?

 

[Koga]

The Big problem with this debate is that the pro melee crowd insists that brawl has to be competative by "traditional Fighters" standards. I understand that depth and competativeness comes from options, brawl has loads of those. Its just it doesn't have tradtional combo's or mixups or whatever they're asking for, its just not the traditional way. Smash by design isn't traditional any way.

It can be competative and deep without adhering to teken and Street fighters definitions of competative fighters

 

[Wilfio]

to all of you who are disagreeing with the original post you have to bear in mind that the poster is talking about COMPETITIVE PLAY ONLY. yes brawl is a great game for the casual player but that isn't what this thread is about, it's about its flaws in competitive play. and you CAN compare it to melee, these aren't completely different games, they are very similar in many many ways. the competitiveness of a game is usually defined by how difficult it is to master, the more hours someone puts into the game the better they get at it. when they took away things like L canceling (which new players would never be able to do) they took away another level of play. this 'dumbing down' of the game makes it a whole lot less competitive, yes is makes it great for the casual gamers and im sure brawl will be a great commercial success but it will never have that longevity that the greatest games of all time all have (counterstike 1.x, SSBM, halo etc.). don't get me wrong i am sure it will still be fairly competitive, mainly because of the massive competitive phenomenon that melee was but it probably wont scale the same heights as its predecessor. like was said in the original post, it will be how the developers wanted it to be, but not how it should have been. and thats a massive shame.

 

[greenblob]

THANK YOU. You've just destroyed ANY argument AGAINST this guy's post.

Sakurai has essentially catered to a crowd where "pick up and play and have fun all the time" is king; where people will always feel good about losing because they knew that they had some kind of chance even when they hadn't worked hard at being good. If we were to go to an analogy here...

One guy climbs to the top of mount Everest, and he's worked his entire life to get there. So he decides to climb from the OTHER side of the mountain. Even though there is a mountain is made from the same material, and still has a **** load of snow, the man cannot help but feel disappointed. Why? Because they put elevators reaching to the top, where people can marvel at passing through the most difficult parts...in a matter of 20 minutes. Despite having not worked for it, or not done anything to help themselves claim victory over the mountain, the tourists have made it to the top.

(don't say it's flawed; the top =/= the top of the competition...the mountain represents the battle, the summit represents victory, and the elevator represents the ******** system that brawl has implemented to go against the grain of Smash)

I dunno, I think that's an inaccurate analogy. A better analogy is you climbed to the top of Everest and a few years later someone blows up the mountain so there is no longer anything to climb.

 

[Papapaint]

This game is still competitive.

Smash has been--and always will be--a thinking man's game. I agree that we've lost several significant ground games from wavedashing and Dash Dancing. I agree that throws are harder to combo off of--indeed, that it's harder to combo entirely. I agree that the edgehogging and edgeguarding games aren't nearly what they used to be.

But when it comes down to it, I can still play 1v1 with one of my casual friends, and rip clean through em. I can still have an exciting 1v1 back and forth match--yes, even against a chain-throwing D3 or a camping pit.

Combos are no longer about landing hits before hitstun wears off, but more about mindgames and prediction. That, to me, is an increased competitive edge. The game is a little slower---but man, play Street Fighter. That game is right around the same pace, and it was competitive for years.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither was melee. It was a few years before wavedashing was truly implemented into play. Hell, it was over a year before tourneys stopped using items. Waveshining, the tech that broke the game, wasn't until 2004. Advanced techs will become evident in brawl as well. It'll take time, it'll take accidents, but most importantly, it'll take players like us trying to break the game. When we do, we'll find more ways to break it based off of that, and we'll forge a whole new game out of it just like we did melee.

Brawl may be Smash 3.0 for you, but it's brand new to me. Even if you've been playing competitively for a month, that's not nearly enough time to acheive what we need to acheive.

 

[rougeleader2]

A Brawl Gameplay Critique: A competitive standpoint



So, Super Smash Brothers Brawl comes out tomorrow
and before it does and we get millions of people claiming how great it
is, I’d like to put out my own critique in hopes to quell the hype
enough to get people to take a solid look at the game.
We’ve had reviews from nearly all the gaming sites and magazines by
now, each of them giving high scores to the game. Let’s face it
though, these reviews are not coming from the viewpoint of competitive
players and the competitive tournament scene community that has been
formed through smashboards. I’ve had the game since the
Japanese release and don’t get me wrong, it’s a great game
overall. However, I’m not going to be critiquing the whole game,
simply the gameplay in relation to a competitive environment, the
environment that will in the end, determine the games success outside
of a the financial area.

Before starting, I want to first say that I will be
comparing Brawl to Melee, and before anyone says that Brawl is not
Melee 2.0, well you’re wrong. Games, like everything else in
life, are judged by those around it, even more so games of a
series. Melee was Smash Brothers 2.0, Brawl is Smash 3.0.
It is how judging things work, by comparison.



*Note, everything in here is of my opinion and observations. Don't like it, feel free to disagree, just don't flame.



Movement

Tripping

First and foremost, to get it out of the way, is
tripping. There is no possible way to justify this being
implemented into the game. Your character will randomly fall down
at the start of a run. There’s no rhyme or reason to this, so
that someone may possibly find a use for it. It’s completely
random. There have been countless times where I’ve tried to
position myself for a killing blow only to fail at it because my
character decided he wanted to fall on his butt instead. What’s
worse is when this happens next to the opponent, and then they get to
smash you for free. If Brawl were a RTS, it’d be the equivalent
of one of your units randomly exploding for no reason. I could
rant on how detrimental and stupid tripping is to competitive play for
hours. Tripping in and of itself could completely ruin the
competitive nature of any game. While somewhat ignorable, its
just frustrating.

Dash Dancing

Dash Dancing is out. What this means is that
the ground game has lost a significant portion of its options. No
longer can you slowly approach in various intervals of retreat and
charge. No longer can you fake approaches and suddenly accelerate
from a slow press. The ground game has lost mindgames and options
by the loss of dash dancing. Some people may try to claim that it
is still in the game, but its not. Any form of “dash dancing” in
the game is either 1 of two things. The start of a run (meaning
you can only grab, jump, or running A out of it) or so small you are
basically moving in place.

Directional Influence

This is simply my opinion, but Di has become a
little ridiculous. I no longer feel that I know my moves are
going to kill my opponent. In Melee if you if you forward smashed
someone with fox at 100-110%, you knew you were going to kill them if
it was near the ledge, or at least put them into a position to be
edgehogged, regardless of how they DI’ed. In Brawl, hitting
someone with a move that can kill at 80-90% if they don’t DI, can be
survived up until nearly double that at 160-170% if they DI
correctly. It has that big of an affect. It causes
the game to have the feeling that kills are rarely caused, and more
like accidents. If I die under 125% I know it was my fault for
not simply DI’ing correctly. To see a move kill at 80% when
you’ve also seen it survived at 150%, well it makes you feel that kills
just happen, instead of being caused. It’s not so much you know
which moves kills, you know which moves have the potential to kill and
then you find out if they do when they hit. Also, yes I know
about diminishing returns on hits, but this happens even with zeroed
out moves. Some may like it this way. I personally think it
makes survival to easy and killing to hard.

Fast Falling

Not so much of a complaint here, but an
observation. Fast falling isn’t fast, its only less slow and not
easily noticeable until you get used to looking at it. This goes
with the whole game speed slow down.

Speed, Move Recovery, and Gravity

I group these three things together because they are what contribute to
the entire games flow and feeling of play. Gravity has been
normalized, there are no individual gravities. The speed of jumps
(not the distance), the speed of air movement, and the general feeling
of floatiness are all the same or nearly the same for all
characters. This removes a huge point in how characters differed
in Melee. Falling speed of some characters is still different
though, however the differences are minor because of the new speed of
the game. Its not slow (jigglypuff) versus fast (fox/falcon) its
now slow (jigglypuff) versus slightly less slow (fox/faclon).

As most everyone already knows, the overall game
speed has been slowed down. Don’t let people try to convince you
that they can pull off melee speeds or faster during combat. It’s
simply not true. What you may not know though, is that while the
game has slowed down, move recovery, both from attacking and recovery
from getting hit, has sped up, way way up in the case of hit
recovery. A few things happen because of this. One is that
follow up hits are almost if not completely gone. There are no
more double forward air hits with marth, or falling up-airs to up tilts
with fox, or down tilts to forward airs with sheik. Character
recovery is too fast. The only time you get more than a single
hit off, is from spammed moves (ie. lucario’s forward air,
pits/lucarios up-tilt). Combo’s simply don’t exist, or are
spammed moves (more on this later).

Another problem with the speed decline versus move recovery increase is
in taking advantage of an opponent’s mistakes. In Melee you could
run at a marth, jump and get him to forward smash, jump above it, fast
fall behind him and back air or neutral air. This was a
mindgame that takes advantage of causing your opponent to make a
mistake. Try doing the same in brawl, and by the time you fall
fast enough to be in range to hit, your opponent has shielded or moved,
or decided to hit you with another move. Taking advantage of
people’s mistakes is hard or nearly impossible depending on the move.

Positioning is also a lot harder due to the slow
speed versus move recovery time. Because of the game speed, you cannot
surprise your opponent by rushing in or under or past them.
Anything you do is too slow to come as a surprise. They see it
coming a mile away. Take for instance a player in melee, hopping
up and down while his opponent is recovering from a hit that sent him
up more than off the stage. The player is waiting for the
opponent to get in range, but the opponent is unsure exactly when the
player will attack. Out of the hopping, the player double jumps
to back air. In Melee this will work, because the speed at with
the double jump comes out is enough to catch someone off guard, or
before their character can prevent it. In Brawl the speed of the
jumps are not fast enough to catch your opponent off guard.



Attacks

Mismatched Move Sets

For the most part, Brawl move sets feel as thrown
together and mismatched as they come. It feels as the creators
simply made a move for each input, yet made no attempt to actually link
these moves together to form a cohesive character. Nothing links
anymore. In Melee, character’s had a central theme around which
their moves were built. Take Luigi for example. Most of his
moves would send a character upwards. Down smashes lead into
forward airs or back airs, neutral airs into the same. Throws
lead into smashes, or aerials. A correct up-air could lead to a
forward air. Moves were meant to work together. One move
set up another move, some moves where for damage, some for
killing. They had thought and flow. Think Captain
Falcon spike bouncing people off the stage into a knee. There was
fluidity, there was purpose nearly all of a character’s moves. In
Brawl this fluidity doesn’t exist. Moves either send an opponent
too far so that they can’t be hit, or not far enough so that they in
turn hit you back. Moves don’t lead into one another, not even at
different percents. There is no rhyme or reason to why a
character’s moves do what they do. They all simply hit and
nothing more. These mismatched move sets will be a theme in the
next several points.

Diminishing Returns

You may have heard by now that Brawl implements
diminishing returns on attacks. Yes this existed in Melee, but 2
things were different. The move counter was easily reset and even
reset itself upon doing the same move and the diminishing returns only
affected % damage not knockback. Some try to justify this
by saying that someone can no longer spam a single move to both deal
damage and kill. Frankly I think they are wrong. People
will use the moves that have the greatest affect at hitting without
being hit back, just because it does less % or knockback isn’t going to
remove a good move from being spammed, it just means the matches will
take longer. Why use a move that has a 50% chance of hitting and
a 50% chance of getting you hit when you can use one that has a 100%
chance of hitting and 0% chance of getting you hit. This
feature, while neat in theory, is in my opinion, laziness on the parts
of the developers. If they wanted us to use the full range
of moves they should have made every move useful, not try to force
players to use crappy moves.

Throws

Through Smash Brothers and Smash Brothers Melee we
have seen to ways in which throws can be useful. Killing in
Smash Brothers, and pulling off combos in Melee. In Brawl we have
neither of these. Brawl throws rarely lead into any move, and
very few of them can actually kill at desirable %. Throw simply
do what the name implies now, they throw people, almost always a
useless distance, sometimes even resulting in you getting hit because
you threw someone and they went nowhere.

Combos

As stated before, combos are pretty much
non-existent unless they consist of a single move spammed over and over
again. What I consider a combo: A linked set of moves that cannot
be avoided. Examples: Marth- up throw->up
tilt->neutral air, Fox- running A->up tilt->up air,
Jigglypuff- up throw->up air->back air, Donkey Kong forward grab
up throw-> up air-> B. These things are rare to
non-existent dependant on character in Brawl. Almost if not all
“combos” you see in Brawl or people talk about in Brawl are avoidable
if the person getting hit would simply DI correctly and get out of the
way. This is all chalked up to the mismatched move sets. It
leads to a feeling of never having control of a match, more so that you
are simply, trading hits with the opponent.

Crouch Cancelled Down Smashes and Runs

Gone. While Crouch Cancelled Down
Smashes is mainly something to simply get used to than anything else,
its an unnecessary removal from the game. There’s no point to
have removed it. Cancelling runs by Crouch Cancelling
however, is a major reduction of approach options. In Melee you
could run, press down, and forward smash or down smash. It was
another trick to add to the approaching and movement mind games of
Melee. It’s simply been removed and so have the options.

New Air Dodge System

It has its ups and downs, though more so its down’s
to this player. Before the air dodge was controllable, able to
fake out people ledge guarding you or useful in dodging aerials, now in
Brawl, air dodging has become more of a preemptive dodge. You
can’t control it, it simply dodges while you continue on your
path. IE if you are falling and dodge, you still fall while
dodging. Yes, you can act after its over, but the dodge
lasts fairly long and since its not really controllable, rarely leaves
you in a position to attack back (assuming the other player hasn’t
already recovered from his attack which is normally the case).
I’d say a fair or near fair trade, though its yet to be fully seen.

Killing and Ledge Guarding

Like I said before, killing doesn’t feel like
killing. You know which moves have the potential to kill
(ranging from few with sonic to almost all with Ike) and when you land
them, simply hope it kills because your opponent messed up the
DI. You don’t kill people, they just die.

Ledge Guarding, 90% of the time and for 90% of the
characters is out. Moves almost always send your opponent up and
out, so that they are way way above the stage as they make their
return. Because of the floating nature of the game, your
opponent will rarely be under the actual stage, even when this happens,
most characters have multiple jumps as well as ridiculous recovery
moves. On the occasion that a character does need to up-b
to grab the ledge, its automatic sweet spot meaning you cannot guard
from on top of the stage. Even rolling from grabbing the ledge is
out for the most part. Ledge hog frames are so small, that by the
time your roll is finished, they haven’t fallen far enough not to grab
the ledge (if they fell any at all), and simply grab the ledge.
Guarding an opponent who is off the ledge, is near impossible.

B-Move Sets That Make no Sense

This also goes back to mismatched move sets.
One would think though that since there are only 4 B moves that their
would be some thought put into them. Its often not the
case. Take Pit, his forward-b and down-b both reflect
projectiles. Don’t know why this was necessary, doesn’t make
sense. Metaknight is another example. All 4 of his
b-moves are recoveries, yes all of them. Why a character with
multiple jumps, and flying needs 4 types of recoveries just beats me.

Power Sheilding

It's very easy to power sheild in Brawl. In
fact more often than not you can easily power sheild attacks and then
instantly attack back. This tends to lead to the defensive game
outweighing the offensive game if pulled off right. That's my
opinion anyways. Power sheidling also no longer reflects
projectiles. A good thing since it's so easy to power sheild, a
bad thing because those without projectiles have no hope of interupting
them other than by attacking head on.



Wrap Up

Issues

# Approaching

- Tripping

- No Dash Dancing

- No Crouch Cancled down smash

- No Cancelling Runs with Down

# Movement

- Slower

- Faster hit recovery

- Normalized gravities

# Fighting

- Mismatched move sets

- Lack of acceleration for attacks

- Lack of ledge game

- Power sheilding

- Defensive buff

- Lack of combos

The Big Picture

What all of this means once you combine it
all. Is that what we get in Brawl, is a decline in options.
The ability to approach the player has been vastly reduced.
Because of this, the general speed of the game, and the eaiser power
sheilding, playing a defensive game has gotten a huge boost.
Coupled with the fact that you can't punish a player for mistakes or
build damage or even death through combos. The game boils down to
a bout of trading hits. Playing the defensive end means you force
your opponent to attack, which are all readable, putting yourself in
the advatage. Retreating attacks, such as Ike's foward air, seem
to be the best at keeping yourself free from harm while hurting your
opponent. As much as I want to view otherwise, Brawl looks
like it may evolve into a camping game. The potential for
offensive ability is limited while the potential for defense has
risen. Removing options that were in Melee has done nothing but
limit possibilities. The more you limit possibilities, the less
competive things can get.

What This Means for Balancing

I fully expect all of these issues to lead to a very
skewed character lineup. Someone is going to find an exploit in a
character or two and that will become the staple top end
character. Already we have King Dedede who can chain throw nearly
anyone nearly infinitely, supposedly. When no other character can
cause 60% damage all at once, this will prove extremely
powerful. When better exploits come out, well then we'll
see the game's true colors.

Offensive camping will, in my mind, become
imbalanced. Pit is a perfect example of it. His arrows
shoot extremely fast, travel faster, are controlable, and do decent
knockback. The fact that lag time behind them is almost
nihl, you can attack almost directly behind an arrow. You force
your opponent to approach and then stop them before they get to near,
rinse and repeat.

Character's have distinct advantages over other
characters. Brawl is rock-paper-scissors complex style. I'm
not talking about 60-40 stuff in brawl, more like 80-20. Certain
characters beat others, easily. This means maining a single
character will probably be obsolete in time, and the sets may simply
come down to who gets the better match up first round, because after
that its charactr counter picking.

In my opinion, I see the game boiling down
completely to character matchups and camp tatics. The top end
character(s) will be just that, top end. Unlike Melee where top
characters have ranged through, Jigglypuff, Marth, Fox, Falco, Sheik,
Peach, Luigi, Samus, Pikachu (don't believe me go watch Chu Dat versus
Cort), Ice Climbers, Brawl top end will be seeing maybe 4 top
characters.

Will Brawl take over for Melee

Most likely, it really depends on how the community
takes to Brawl. Does it deserve it? Honestly no, Melee is
the better game for competition. Brawl is new though and
that is a big thing. Most likely it will win out as the less
serious crowd of Melee who always had the mindset of "I'll get good
when Brawl comes out" takes over simply because Brawl is an easier game.



Items

Items will once again not be used for competitive
play. With the ease of which they are grabbed, the faster
characters have a huge advantage getting them. Not to mention the
fast characters have a hard time killing due to lack of killing moves,
is now remedied with the use of items. Smash Balls are also
imbalanced ranging from the near useless (kirby) to the instant death
nearly unavoidable (marth).



Wrapping Up

Brawl is a fun game and most people will love the
game, but it does not have the competive edge that Melee had. I
just hope that people will not blind themself by hype and the "noob"
crowd and give the game credit where it is not due. Brawl is not
Melee improved, its not even a new game, it is Melee Devolved,
Melee simplified. I do hope to be proven wrong during the course
of the next few months now that the game is being released in
America. However, for now, Brawl is the game the developers
believed Smash was meant to be, too bad they didn't know what it should
have been.



Because master fighters should trip in battle. >.<

I agree, the competitiveness has greatly decreased, but we have to wait to see what will happen it the near future, since brawl is still new.

 

[Protocol9]

The Big problem with this debate is that the pro melee crowd insists that brawl has to be competative by "traditional Fighters" standards. I understand that depth and competativeness comes from options, brawl has loads of those. Its just it doesn't have tradtional combo's or mixups or whatever they're asking for, its just not the traditional way. Smash by design isn't traditional any way.

It can be competative and deep without adhering to teken and Street fighters definitions of competative fighters

Way to completely pull a problem out of nowhere. Pro Melee players want nothing to do with traditional fighters. I for one, won't touch them. They are filled with infinite combos, broken characters, flat linear gameplay, set stamina, huge emphasis on the defensive side of the game, inability to maniuplate the state build, inablity to run around and through the oppoent, etc. Traditional fighters are flat. Every Smash game has had a much higher competive level than any traditional fighter. Smash has more options galore than traditional fighetrs. Brawl is losing options and becoming more like one than even ss64 was. I don't want this.

Don't go making assumptions, you'll often find out you're completely wrong

Note again, go back and read second post about competetive level of play. No one said Brawl won't be competitive, only it doesn't have the competitive threshold that was in Melee.


Just to point out to Koga, Shield Dashing into a Up-Smash is actually slower than simply running into an up-smash. Running into a foward smash or down smash is exactly the same speed as Shield Dashing is. This isn't an advanced technique, its simply throwing on your shield after starting a run. It changes nothing as to how the timing or run lag issues work.

To point out to those who have missed it. What I have critiqued is not advanced techniques, its game mechanics. Advanced techniques will never be able to change the underlying game mechanics, and the game mechanics are what has given Brawl a lower competitive threshold. Not only that, its mechanics lead to a defensive style of play being the only way to reach the threshold, and that is not condusive to competitive play.


I'll also ask that you stop posting random babble about this tech or that move or this mechanic and just saying its so awesome or good or better. That's just spamming text for no reason. Instead, give me an argument, explain why, how, in what situations, why its more appropriate, and whhy it improves the competive threshold of the game. Then, if you can, show me so many of these that it pushes the threshold above what Melee's was in face of all the threshold losses Brawl has taken.

The only one have a narrow view is the people refusing to acknowledge the games flaws. I want to see what the game can do, I want to see possibilities, but I'm not gonna turn a blind eye to what I can already see. If you think there's more, logically show us.

 

[ShadowLink84]

I agree, the competitiveness has greatly decreased, but we have to wait to see what will happen it the near future, since brawl is still new.

You just quoted the OP without ANY response other than I agree.

Seriously did you come in from GD on gaiaonline.

Don't quote meaninglessly especially when they are that massive.

Movement

Tripping

First and foremost, to get it out of the way, is
tripping. There is no possible way to justify this being
implemented into the game. Your character will randomly fall down
at the start of a run. There’s no rhyme or reason to this, so
that someone may possibly find a use for it. It’s completely
random. There have been countless times where I’ve tried to
position myself for a killing blow only to fail at it because my
character decided he wanted to fall on his butt instead. What’s
worse is when this happens next to the opponent, and then they get to
smash you for free. If Brawl were a RTS, it’d be the equivalent
of one of your units randomly exploding for no reason. I could
rant on how detrimental and stupid tripping is to competitive play for
hours. Tripping in and of itself could completely ruin the
competitive nature of any game. While somewhat ignorable, its
just frustrating.

I agree there is no way to justify the implementation of tripping. I cannot see anyway of this being posititive and is actually detrimental. I do believe thugh that your damage percentage as well as how long and often you dash affect tripping.

Dash Dancing

Dash Dancing is out. What this means is that
the ground game has lost a significant portion of its options. No
longer can you slowly approach in various intervals of retreat and
charge. No longer can you fake approaches and suddenly accelerate
from a slow press. The ground game has lost mindgames and options
by the loss of dash dancing. Some people may try to claim that it
is still in the game, but its not. Any form of “dash dancing” in
the game is either 1 of two things. The start of a run (meaning
you can only grab, jump, or running A out of it) or so small you are
basically moving in place.

I couldn't find too much of a use for dash dancing mainly since I mained link and his dash dancing wasn't anything remarkable. Mainly since his run speed and dash speed were the same and it is a bit of a loss now that he actually has greater speed in this game.
It is also a greater loss because as Yuna pointed out it is a lot more difficult to approach an aenemy essentially making a camping game. Meaning projectile cahracters will be a pain to fight and only a few characters can actually approach safely. i.e. Marth

Directional Influence

This is simply my opinion, but Di has become a
little ridiculous. I no longer feel that I know my moves are
going to kill my opponent. In Melee if you if you forward smashed
someone with fox at 100-110%, you knew you were going to kill them if
it was near the ledge, or at least put them into a position to be
edgehogged, regardless of how they DI’ed. In Brawl, hitting
someone with a move that can kill at 80-90% if they don’t DI, can be
survived up until nearly double that at 160-170% if they DI
correctly. It has that big of an affect. It causes
the game to have the feeling that kills are rarely caused, and more
like accidents. If I die under 125% I know it was my fault for
not simply DI’ing correctly. To see a move kill at 80% when
you’ve also seen it survived at 150%, well it makes you feel that kills
just happen, instead of being caused. It’s not so much you know
which moves kills, you know which moves have the potential to kill and
then you find out if they do when they hit. Also, yes I know
about diminishing returns on hits, but this happens even with zeroed
out moves. Some may like it this way. I personally think it
makes survival to easy and killing to hard.

It also kills many moves such as Zelda's U smash and F smash since they are multihit. You can also see the influence of DI when you use one of those B bombs and DI down. Its ridicolous how long you can last.
however I think this may also have a positive effect. It means you no longer have a smash your opponent they die effect. Mainly for speedy characters such as Fox and Marth who were ridicolously powerful last game. The DI makes it so that only powerful cahracters, i.e. Ganandorf and Ike have the ability to KO people at low percentages for sure, actually making them more useful and less like leftovers low tier material. I think it benefits and it harms but that it does help slightly more if only because it gives heavy characters an actual unique ability.

Fast Falling

Not so much of a complaint here, but an
observation. Fast falling isn’t fast, its only less slow and not
easily noticeable until you get used to looking at it. This goes
with the whole game speed slow down.

It isn't too easily noticed now that characters are more floaty but I believe with people such as Ike and bowser fast falling has more or less remained the same. Granted the main reason for fast falling was so you can SHUFFL and with the removal of L canceling it isn't too great a loss. However it does present an issue since now if you are up agaisnt aerial combatants like Kirby and jiggly puff its more difficult to force them to ground level.

Speed, Move Recovery, and Gravity

I group these three things together because they are what contribute to
the entire games flow and feeling of play. Gravity has been
normalized, there are no individual gravities. The speed of jumps
(not the distance), the speed of air movement, and the general feeling
of floatiness are all the same or nearly the same for all
characters. This removes a huge point in how characters differed
in Melee. Falling speed of some characters is still different
though, however the differences are minor because of the new speed of
the game. Its not slow (jigglypuff) versus fast (fox/falcon) its
now slow (jigglypuff) versus slightly less slow (fox/faclon).

I have to disagree.I think the reason for this was bcause it made little sense to give relatively light looking characters a very fast fall. i.e. Fox in melee.
If you look at Ganandorf, Bowser, Dedede you can see that the rate of their fall is noticable greater than the light characters. Granted this does make the game slower but I think it also makes the behavior of how a character moves and falls to be more realistic.

As most everyone already knows, the overall game
speed has been slowed down. Don’t let people try to convince you
that they can pull off melee speeds or faster during combat. It’s
simply not true. What you may not know though, is that while the
game has slowed down, move recovery, both from attacking and recovery
from getting hit, has sped up, way way up in the case of hit
recovery. A few things happen because of this. One is that
follow up hits are almost if not completely gone. There are no
more double forward air hits with marth, or falling up-airs to up tilts
with fox, or down tilts to forward airs with sheik. Character
recovery is too fast. The only time you get more than a single
hit off, is from spammed moves (ie. lucario’s forward air,
pits/lucarios up-tilt). Combo’s simply don’t exist, or are
spammed moves (more on this later).

Disagree. I believe if you make use of the decay system you can improve your ability to combo. I also believe this can actually enhance gameplay and remove the tired sameold strategy of attack from characters. For eaxample if Link's best killing moves are his Dair and Fair it is within your priority to save up those attacks for killing potential. Morel ike your final attack to ultimately win the game.
or you can abuse it and make it so weak attacks can have less knockback and make it more easy to combo. Granted the amount of hitstun was lost and makes it more difficult to combo, but I believe that faster characters acn find a way around this.
The gameplay has been slown down which is a loss but if you compare it to SSB64 it isn't as badly a lost. (I miss SHUFFL)

Another problem with the speed decline versus move recovery increase is
in taking advantage of an opponent’s mistakes. In Melee you could
run at a marth, jump and get him to forward smash, jump above it, fast
fall behind him and back air or neutral air. This was a
mindgame that takes advantage of causing your opponent to make a
mistake. Try doing the same in brawl, and by the time you fall
fast enough to be in range to hit, your opponent has shielded or moved,
or decided to hit you with another move. Taking advantage of
people’s mistakes is hard or nearly impossible depending on the move.

Agree camping is a pain in the arse and really makes it a pain to fight an opponent due to hitstun being lowered. I think though that this does enforce more heavy characters doing actual punishing while faster characters are kinda given the idea of picking at their opponent rather than punishing them as well as any heavy character.

Positioning is also a lot harder due to the slow
speed versus move recovery time. Because of the game speed, you cannot
surprise your opponent by rushing in or under or past them.
Anything you do is too slow to come as a surprise. They see it
coming a mile away. Take for instance a player in melee, hopping
up and down while his opponent is recovering from a hit that sent him
up more than off the stage. The player is waiting for the
opponent to get in range, but the opponent is unsure exactly when the
player will attack. Out of the hopping, the player double jumps
to back air. In Melee this will work, because the speed at with
the double jump comes out is enough to catch someone off guard, or
before their character can prevent it. In Brawl the speed of the
jumps are not fast enough to catch your opponent off guard.

Agreed.

Attacks

Mismatched Move Sets

For the most part, Brawl move sets feel as thrown
together and mismatched as they come. It feels as the creators
simply made a move for each input, yet made no attempt to actually link
these moves together to form a cohesive character. Nothing links
anymore. In Melee, character’s had a central theme around which
their moves were built. Take Luigi for example. Most of his
moves would send a character upwards. Down smashes lead into
forward airs or back airs, neutral airs into the same. Throws
lead into smashes, or aerials. A correct up-air could lead to a
forward air. Moves were meant to work together. One move
set up another move, some moves where for damage, some for
killing. They had thought and flow. Think Captain
Falcon spike bouncing people off the stage into a knee. There was
fluidity, there was purpose nearly all of a character’s moves. In
Brawl this fluidity doesn’t exist. Moves either send an opponent
too far so that they can’t be hit, or not far enough so that they in
turn hit you back. Moves don’t lead into one another, not even at
different percents. There is no rhyme or reason to why a
character’s moves do what they do. They all simply hit and
nothing more. These mismatched move sets will be a theme in the
next several points.

If you are looking for ana ctual theme to characters movesets you only look skin deep.
Programmers never intended for the game to be an actual fighter and never look at the competitive ideas of the people. It is silly to think they said hey Luigi should knock his opponents upwards with most of his attacks. Whle the statement could be true it doesn't mean that they intended for a spike from CF to go into TEH KNEE.
Assuming themes to movesets cannot be verified even if we do believe they are there.

Diminishing Returns

You may have heard by now that Brawl implements
diminishing returns on attacks. Yes this existed in Melee, but 2
things were different. The move counter was easily reset and even
reset itself upon doing the same move and the diminishing returns only
affected % damage not knockback. Some try to justify this
by saying that someone can no longer spam a single move to both deal
damage and kill. Frankly I think they are wrong. People
will use the moves that have the greatest affect at hitting without
being hit back, just because it does less % or knockback isn’t going to
remove a good move from being spammed, it just means the matches will
take longer. Why use a move that has a 50% chance of hitting and
a 50% chance of getting you hit when you can use one that has a 100%
chance of hitting and 0% chance of getting you hit. This
feature, while neat in theory, is in my opinion, laziness on the parts
of the developers. If they wanted us to use the full range
of moves they should have made every move useful, not try to force
players to use crappy moves.

I disagree. One of the main complaints about Marth was how ridicoulously powerful his Fsmash was even when it was being spammed. Same with Roy or other characters. By reducing the knockback it force players to use all their moves not just on or two.
yes you can use a move that hits 100% of the time but then you become predictable. Being predictable in melee this was no problem since spamming your strongest move had no negative impact. In this game spamming your strongest move=less knockback.
In brawl by being predictable you are setting yourself up to get knocked out the arena and while you can say i am saving up my strongest move, it makes little sense since that one weak move isn't going to work for all situations.

Through Smash Brothers and Smash Brothers Melee we
have seen to ways in which throws can be useful. Killing in
Smash Brothers, and pulling off combos in Melee. In Brawl we have
neither of these. Brawl throws rarely lead into any move, and
very few of them can actually kill at desirable %. Throw simply
do what the name implies now, they throw people, almost always a
useless distance, sometimes even resulting in you getting hit because
you threw someone and they went nowhere.

If they didn't move and you know this throw will not move them, take advantage and use the natural combo and go into a smash.
Not many characters had actual throws that were obscenely useful.
Heck Link's was only meant so you can pound them and then throw them away or knock them away and follow up with an A attack so you can cancel their next move.
If you know that throw isn't going to move them anywhere then why would you stand there to begin with and not immediately dodge back and prevent being punished? The game isn't about being overly aggressive this time around its more on being tacticalwith the aggressive stance being taken by heavy characters sicne they have the weight, super armor, and killing ability in all their moves to pull it off. Be more tactical less speed and action.

Even so I do agree that it ruins versatility and the fac tthat characters have to play less agressively simply because they aren't a heavy character is disheartening. The programmers wanted us to play THEIR game not create our own. Sad but true.

Combos

As stated before, combos are pretty much
non-existent unless they consist of a single move spammed over and over
again. What I consider a combo: A linked set of moves that cannot
be avoided. Examples: Marth- up throw->up
tilt->neutral air, Fox- running A->up tilt->up air,
Jigglypuff- up throw->up air->back air, Donkey Kong forward grab
up throw-> up air-> B. These things are rare to
non-existent dependant on character in Brawl. Almost if not all
“combos” you see in Brawl or people talk about in Brawl are avoidable
if the person getting hit would simply DI correctly and get out of the
way. This is all chalked up to the mismatched move sets. It
leads to a feeling of never having control of a match, more so that you
are simply, trading hits with the opponent.

Agreed

Crouch Cancelled Down Smashes and Runs

Gone. While Crouch Cancelled Down
Smashes is mainly something to simply get used to than anything else,
its an unnecessary removal from the game. There’s no point to
have removed it. Cancelling runs by Crouch Cancelling
however, is a major reduction of approach options. In Melee you
could run, press down, and forward smash or down smash. It was
another trick to add to the approaching and movement mind games of
Melee. It’s simply been removed and so have the options.

Agreed.

New Air Dodge System

It has its ups and downs, though more so its down’s
to this player. Before the air dodge was controllable, able to
fake out people ledge guarding you or useful in dodging aerials, now in
Brawl, air dodging has become more of a preemptive dodge. You
can’t control it, it simply dodges while you continue on your
path. IE if you are falling and dodge, you still fall while
dodging. Yes, you can act after its over, but the dodge
lasts fairly long and since its not really controllable, rarely leaves
you in a position to attack back (assuming the other player hasn’t
already recovered from his attack which is normally the case).
I’d say a fair or near fair trade, though its yet to be fully seen.

Fake an opponent out? I am sorry but I rarely saw any of the vets of Smash using the airdodge in order to fake an opponent that was edge guarding them.
Heck airdodging when trying to get to the edge was only useful for Link and Samus because of their hook was usable right afterwards. If you tried air dodging it usually resulted in one being punished especially since you could not do ANYTHING after dodging.

the new air dodge system while not controllable no loner leave you vulnerable. How often did I get smashed and tried to tech and miss and promptly air dodge to my death?
This one at least lets you recover and can be used multiple times when you have multiple jumps left.
Meaning Kirby has an even better recovery and can actually implement it in his recovering strategy.
When you feint someone you can actually attack them immediately afterwards and make it back to the edge more easily. Since there dodge is momentum based you should use it right when you are moving forward or moving up that way you won't be falling during a dodge and possibly kill yourself. And since characters fall more slowly its not as much of a loss even if you do dodge while falling.

Killing and Ledge Guarding

Like I said before, killing doesn’t feel like
killing. You know which moves have the potential to kill
(ranging from few with sonic to almost all with Ike) and when you land
them, simply hope it kills because your opponent messed up the
DI. You don’t kill people, they just die.

Ledge Guarding, 90% of the time and for 90% of the
characters is out. Moves almost always send your opponent up and
out, so that they are way way above the stage as they make their
return. Because of the floating nature of the game, your
opponent will rarely be under the actual stage, even when this happens,
most characters have multiple jumps as well as ridiculous recovery
moves. On the occasion that a character does need to up-b
to grab the ledge, its automatic sweet spot meaning you cannot guard
from on top of the stage. Even rolling from grabbing the ledge is
out for the most part. Ledge hog frames are so small, that by the
time your roll is finished, they haven’t fallen far enough not to grab
the ledge (if they fell any at all), and simply grab the ledge.
Guarding an opponent who is off the ledge, is near impossible.

Simple don't edge guard. Take advantage of your opponent's vulnerability and go out there and kill them.
Sonic isn't even MEANT to kill. You are supposed to play risky and gimp your opponents recovery with your killing moves being used to emphasize your air guarding.
If you know the opponent recovers especially well take advantage of the lower ceiling and knock them up into the air.
If they end up lower than the edge go and air guard them. They have more to lose than you do and since MOST characters have better recoveries it isn't as if air guarding is difficult.
If I knock marth of stage with Sonic I run out, spring gimp his recovery and let him fall to his doom.
If I am marth I edgehog and drop down to Dair my opponent then quickly jump and recover. yes edge guarding is more difficult but it means you'll have to air guard. Something that isn't difficult due to the floatiness of all characters and not a select few.

B-Move Sets That Make no Sense

This also goes back to mismatched move sets.
One would think though that since there are only 4 B moves that their
would be some thought put into them. Its often not the
case. Take Pit, his forward-b and down-b both reflect
projectiles. Don’t know why this was necessary, doesn’t make
sense. Metaknight is another example. All 4 of his
b-moves are recoveries, yes all of them. Why a character with
multiple jumps, and flying needs 4 types of recoveries just beats me.

Metaknight=recovery master?
Like I said don't bother looking for themes since you will surely find none. Programmers ar just that way and you don't honestly believe that there was a set theme in melee.
Falco and Fox had two recover abilities and Link had three (bomb, Spin attack, hookshot)
Its just the luck of the draw. It isn't a surprise when characters have multiple recoveries.

Power Sheilding

It's very easy to power sheild in Brawl. In
fact more often than not you can easily power sheild attacks and then
instantly attack back. This tends to lead to the defensive game
outweighing the offensive game if pulled off right. That's my
opinion anyways. Power sheidling also no longer reflects
projectiles. A good thing since it's so easy to power sheild, a
bad thing because those without projectiles have no hope of interupting
them other than by attacking head on.

Agreed.

Items

Items will once again not be used for competitive
play. With the ease of which they are grabbed, the faster
characters have a huge advantage getting them. Not to mention the
fast characters have a hard time killing due to lack of killing moves,
is now remedied with the use of items. Smash Balls are also
imbalanced ranging from the near useless (kirby) to the instant death
nearly unavoidable (marth).[/quote[
Eh nothing new.
FS was just another way of making the game cool and don't honestly say you don't think its sweet when Link use the Triforce slash ^_^


Otherwise I agree with you on other points.

 

[Smo]

well written. thanks for this informative post.

 

[arrowhead]

I have to disagree.I think the reason for this was bcause it made little sense to give relatively light looking characters a very fast fall. i.e. Fox in melee.
If you look at Ganandorf, Bowser, Dedede you can see that the rate of their fall is noticable greater than the light characters. Granted this does make the game slower but I think it also makes the behavior of how a character moves and falls to be more realistic.

why not? weight doesn't affect one's acceleration due to gravity. having heavier people fall faster is just as unrealistic as having lighter characters fall faster.

Being predictable in melee this was no problem since spamming your strongest move had no negative impact.

being predictable in itself is a big problem. you should know why.

your other stuff i more or less agree with

 

[Randomg]

try Short hop air dodging out of a shield dash or Dashing shield cancel into an Usmash or any of the number of things the new mechanics allow for. Think momentum, because its always carried over from action to action now. Also, the frame perfectness required to stop the lag from certain moves can be aided by airdodging right befor you hit the ground, like if you finish the airial and still fall for a little bit so you don't land right after its finished, you can airdodge right before you hit the ground and you take the airdodge landing lag rather than the airal's landing lag, which is substantially less than most airials

I'm not totally familiar with all the terms yet, but short hopping into an air dodge, explain to me why that's useful? And dash shield cancel into an upsmash, you can upsmash out of a run as well as up smash out of a shield in melee, so you're saying they didn't remove that? I was thinking of checking to see if I could up smash out of a shield so that I could actually punish a compulsive dash attacker (since throws are basically useless).

Canceling lag would be nice, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it doesn't even matter. As I was playing 1 v 1 snake vs fox, I'd short hop drill kick him, and then try to up tilt or neutral punch, since these are the only combos I've found for fox, only to realize that he had already figured out that the hit stun was so small that even with the almost non existent lag on fox's aerials, the opposing player can immediately hit you back. The worst example was when we actually tinked (my name for the metal sound that happens when two ground moves cancel) 6 times in a row, him trying to neutral, me trying to u-tilt. **** it, the more I think about it, the more the game saddens me, or rather that people won't want to play melee anymore because of brawl.

 

[yoshi_fan]

In b4 this thread is flooded with n00bs saying "Brawl isn't Melee 2.0" and "It's too soon to tell".
I hope someone actually tries to refute the logical arguments presented in this thread instead of discrediting the poster (ie. engaging in an ad hominem attack).

PROTIP: No one wants Brawl not to be as competitive as Melee, but it just doesn't seem like it will be.

I think is too soon to tell.

But i'm not noob

>_>

I agree tripping is idiot.

 

[garbage]

That was the most insightful thing regarding Brawl that I have ever read, and I am eager to prove you wrong. Not in the sense that I literally want to prove you wrong, but in the same way you want to be proven wrong. I agree completely with everything you said, and it was all well-said. I don't know how to close this paragraph.

 

[shiva39]

OP, I think you've addressed many, sounds like all of the standard problems thus far. This kind of thing needs to be rounded out and stickied, IMO.

I truly am looking forward to playing melee again.

 

[garbage]

I'm so sad...I wasted a large portion of my life simply THINKING about Brawl...now it seems like nothing.

 

[M.K]

Combos are in Brawl, they are just VERY hard to get into. It's like trying to fit a cow through a door, you have to push real hard, but with a few breaking walls, you can get it through.

 

[Dash_Fox]

I read this on GAMEFAQs

"Rated M for manure.... this game is crap". Blahahahaha

Seriously though I was thinking the EXACT same **** right before I opened this thread. I played atleast 20 hours worth of brawl in the first day and I was like "I can't be THAT BAD at this game... I can't combo worth anything... it feels like nothing leads into eachother, I wonder if anyone at smash boards has similar views." So I come here and I find this thread, beautiful thread.

If they put back the CANCELING into this game and more HIT STUN it'd probably be perfect. They need to patch this game so bad it's not even funny any more, infact it's pissing me off. I was patient for almost 2 years man, TWO YEARS I patiently waited for this game and they give me a load of BS. I'm angry.

 

[Jacksor]

Like going from chess to checkers... and maybe hitting yourself a few times so the checkers game is really slow...


Edit: I'm reminded of the transition from halo 1 to halo 2... except this doesn't look like it'll end as well...

 

[Op WON]

sooo

only read the OP but.. yeah yeah the game isn't as good as it was before even though it was only that good by accident..

i had to deal with this when i went from halo 1 to halo 2 which i hated but toward the end i admit competitive play had evolved and was much better than the beginning.. now halo 3 is out i like it! but that is another story..
as i see it you can either
A: embrace the new game and adapt or
B: keep playing melee (i kept playing halo 1 till 3 came out)

im SURE that brawl will evolve similarly, it is only a matter of time.
this happens EVERYTIME a new game comes out waah waaaaah it's not as good as before jesus all of these forums sound like a broken record.

really making posts about how bad brawl is isn't going to accomplish anything.

 

[krlos F.]

Elements such as?
@ Fustin

Most of those "combo videos" don't contain true combos.
In fighting games, "combo" refers to a string of attacks that is inescapable once the first hit lands.
Thanks to the greatly reduced hit stun in Brawl, it is almost impossible to combo anything.

YOU'RE totally RIGHT! I have had the game since the Jp release as well, and the utube combo videos of SSBB don't contain true combos, your totally right! why? because if u guard in the air u can avoid the next attack! obviosly there are few, but I mean very few attacks that can combo but in low percents like Fox and Mario's Utilt, the famous Marth's combos, come on, just try it at your home and u can figure out... and abouth this thread I'm totally agree...

I like Brawl! I'm only playing Brawl... Brawl is funny, amazing, colourful, entertainment.... is like a party game! u can do a tournament, but its not too competitive like melee was, and (if u don't trust me, just try it!) if you use defensive moves and u wait until your opponent attacks u, you have the advantage!, don't listen to me, just try it! If u have an oppnent as PIT, Wolf, Fox, Zelda, Snake or any charcater who has projectiles, if they just use their projectiles ther force u to attack him, and than they have the advantage.

Anyway, Brawl is an amazing game, but IS NOT the best game that I wanted. This is only my opinion...

Edit: I almost forgot.... TRIPPING IS THE WORST THING THAT SSBB HAS! I DON'T KNOW WHY IS IN THE GAME!!! MAYBE.... OOHH GEEZZ... YEAH! MAYBE THE GREAT SAKURAI THOUGHT: "LET'S GIVE MORE CHANCES TO THE NOOBS", u know many times in the day in the game i had been close to kill any character and suddenly... TRIP! OMFG!

 

[Uck]

Masahiro Sakurai turned into a sensitive freakin carebear.He ruined the game and you all are in denial.Anyone over 12 who takes Brawl serious should get a life and a clue..

Masahiro Sakurai himself said he left out a ranking system to preety much not hurt anyones feelings.This gives you a clue to his mindset when he created Brawl.

 

[Tlatoani]

Yep, I think that Sakurai actually acknowledges us, he knows about the competitive scene and all about the advanced techs, that's why he made a huge effort to cut them out, it seems logical by the fact that he wants the new nintendo market (little girls and grannys) to not feel bad about themselves when playing online, knowing that a skill system would not be implemented in Wii he decided to dumb down the game to the extreme, so that pro players can't 4 stock their new market online and that everyone can feel good about themselves (except competitive players of course). I even dare to think that tripping was put there on purpose so that even when competitive players have discovered a few glitches to spam, there's would always be something unavoidable that can screw their play.

 

[Big Burn]

lots of good points... i pretty much agree with everything sadly...

 

[Eight 52]

I agree with the tripping, however there is way too much crying in this thread. Many people complain the physics are different, but in reality, its like playing as Samus in Melee in terms of physics. No combos? Try not fast falling in the middle of your attack animation, you can get combos going through that. Complaining about canceling? Less clackity clackity for one and two, its much harder to break someone through cancels. Complain about Pit spam? Dodge it and watch for his obvious push away attack or get at an angle where he can't shoot his bow. And people complaining about how you can't tell the skill level to a noob? It's still obvious if a person is better than another person. The reason why you suck, is because you needed clackity clackity to be better than someone instead of playing smart. The game has turned more into playing smart and less L button. Hurrah.

 

[Snakeyes]

I think the direction Sakurai was taking with Brawl was clear since the "real men use items" pic on the Dojo.

 

[Metaphist]

I agree with the tripping, however there is way too much crying in this thread. Many people complain the physics are different, but in reality, its like playing as Samus in Melee in terms of physics. No combos? Try not fast falling in the middle of your attack animation, you can get combos going through that. Complaining about canceling? Less clackity clackity for one and two, its much harder to break someone through cancels. Complain about Pit spam? Dodge it and watch for his obvious push away attack or get at an angle where he can't shoot his bow. And people complaining about how you can't tell the skill level to a noob? It's still obvious if a person is better than another person. The reason why you suck, is because you needed clackity clackity to be better than someone instead of playing smart. The game has turned more into playing smart and less L button. Hurrah.

I agree with this. Most people seem to think the competitive attributes of a fighter depend on the amount of techniques you can regurgitate on auto pilot (combos being the prime example). In games such as this, it takes hours and hours of rote memorization and practice before the strategy of your gameplay can finally evolve from execution to wits. I'm not calling this type of gameplay bad, but it should not be the deciding factor of a games competitive worth. If that is the type of game you like, then your in the wrong place with Brawl and even Melee to a degree.

I read somewhere up there...someone made the comment that Melee was "good by accident" That's the problem right there. So the more broken the game is, the better? Yes, lets all struggle to find a technique that shouldn't be there, so we can demolish noobs that haven't discovered it and look elite. I'd be much more impressed to see someone demolished in a game like Brawl than in Melee, where I can say "what, you didn't know about wavedashing? Game." There's a vid floating around on Youtube of D3 pwning Snake from 0% to KO with one string of moves. People were saying things like, "wow nice combo at the end," but of course Snake had plenty of chances to escape - he just got read like a book, that's all.

In a slower, less combo-friendly game such as Brawl, things move to pure thought based strategy much quicker. Essentially it becomes a long series of miniature battles for any given situation. On one end of the spectrum you have games where you make ONE mistake and you could very well be dead. Brawl is on the other end, where the victory boils down to who was able, to read the other player CONSISTENTLY enough all while remaining unreadable themselves.

At least, that's the way I see things. I'm no pro, but I've played plenty of fighters and I'm a pretty deep thinker.

 

[chompskyhonk]

This game is still competitive.

Smash has been--and always will be--a thinking man's game. I agree that we've lost several significant ground games from wavedashing and Dash Dancing. I agree that throws are harder to combo off of--indeed, that it's harder to combo entirely. I agree that the edgehogging and edgeguarding games aren't nearly what they used to be.

But when it comes down to it, I can still play 1v1 with one of my casual friends, and rip clean through em. I can still have an exciting 1v1 back and forth match--yes, even against a chain-throwing D3 or a camping pit.

Combos are no longer about landing hits before hitstun wears off, but more about mindgames and prediction. That, to me, is an increased competitive edge. The game is a little slower---but man, play Street Fighter. That game is right around the same pace, and it was competitive for years.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither was melee. It was a few years before wavedashing was truly implemented into play. Hell, it was over a year before tourneys stopped using items. Waveshining, the tech that broke the game, wasn't until 2004. Advanced techs will become evident in brawl as well. It'll take time, it'll take accidents, but most importantly, it'll take players like us trying to break the game. When we do, we'll find more ways to break it based off of that, and we'll forge a whole new game out of it just like we did melee.

Brawl may be Smash 3.0 for you, but it's brand new to me. Even if you've been playing competitively for a month, that's not nearly enough time to acheive what we need to acheive.

TRIPPLE BOOYA!!

 

[Squadallah]

Great post and great analysis (from what it initially appears). I give you 5 stars for effort.

Now I will ask you to stop whining and get over it. It's obvious Melee has spoiled you.

 

[red stone]

while the points are completely valid, i still think that maybe we will be able to break the game wide open one day with some crazy 5 button glitch that none of us have even come close to touching yet.

 

[arrowhead]

I agree with the tripping, however there is way too much crying in this thread. Many people complain the physics are different, but in reality, its like playing as Samus in Melee in terms of physics. No combos? Try not fast falling in the middle of your attack animation, you can get combos going through that. Complaining about canceling? Less clackity clackity for one and two, its much harder to break someone through cancels. Complain about Pit spam? Dodge it and watch for his obvious push away attack or get at an angle where he can't shoot his bow. And people complaining about how you can't tell the skill level to a noob? It's still obvious if a person is better than another person. The reason why you suck, is because you needed clackity clackity to be better than someone instead of playing smart. The game has turned more into playing smart and less L button. Hurrah.

that IS the problem. why would you want all the characters to be as floaty as samus? samus wasn't a great comboer for a reason, and because of the decrease in hitstun, it makes it even harder to combo. they are almost nonexistant in this game. sure, it takes away dependency in tech skill, but when has that been a good thing? more techs and quicker-paced games just add variety to your mindgames. otherwise people would just play rock, paper, scissors. speaking of which, it's like melee is paper and ranged characters are like scissors made of sharp rock.

 

[FaceLoran]

OP is my effing hero. I salute you. He summarized everything I hated from the minute I played this game...

The other day me and 3 friends played Brawl for a few hours. First we played with items off. After awhile we said F this let's just treat this like the Mario Party it is...we turned items on and had a lot better time. Pretty sad...

 

[sesshomaru]

while it is encouraging to hear the rambo like cries of "lets break this game!!" i still just feel like, i wanna break my game. i also shouldnt be admiring a topic whose sole purpose is to slash melees sequel, but it is all true, and bak to the techs i swear sakurai tried his hardest to stop us. i cant figure out why, why take our options away? why does it seem like he covered everyone of his bases so that we have to play sloppy? cced run into smash and dd made the ground game but now we resort to full charges into each other and 30 second lapses of rolls and missed fairs.

 

[MaximoSmasher]

while it is encouraging to hear the rambo like cries of "lets break this game!!" i still just feel like, i wanna break my game. i also shouldnt be admiring a topic whose sole purpose is to slash melees sequel, but it is all true, and bak to the techs i swear sakurai tried his hardest to stop us. i cant figure out why, why take our options away?

Because you guys are annoying.

 

[E P I C]

I agree. This game is horrible . . . But fun .
Melee > Brawl 4ever.

 

[DraginHikari]

I don't know anymore... I've tried my best to be neutral but my patience with the whole subject but it's getting thin... now it's to the point where this same issue is getting reharashed the same way Melee 2.0 has been for the casual group.

 

[Gelton]

Just face it, all the people in this forum who say "stop whining" we're never competive nor any good at smash to begin with. It's PAINFULLY obvious that people are more impressed with graphics then a well-built game.

Brawl is a good game, better than most wii games (period), but this isn't the future of competition for people who actually played melee on a competitive level. Let us put in randomness for skill and call it a day. I love the people who say "You melee nuts are spoiled. get over it." Um, yeah we're spoiled. Melee was an awesome game and you wanna put this on our table?

ANYONE who could L-cancel, WD, juggle, combo etc. effectively and consistently won't agree with you new scrubs who are impressed with shiny graphics. You rip the elements from a game and that's all you have left.

-Take L-cancelling. That was in 64 and melee. You took it out, GG. Instead an arial move has lag or it doesnt. wow ok, no thought involved.
-Wavedashing. Yeah, I always thought properly spacing your moves was mindless and involved no thought-proccess. Now tripping, that's a real show stopper right there. ****ing random whatever.

Come on people. the creator of this game wasn't looking to improve this for competition. He took no general input from people who really appreciated smash bros brawl (even 64) and just threw it to the ever so frequent noobs who troll this board in search of people as painfully bad at melee as they were. Yay! I'm good at smash now.

Give me a new 'technique' that I can master in brawl that wasn't already imagined back when melee came out. I like how some guys accidentally made a better competitive game than this dude. I don't think melee was ever meant to be the way it was, but it's one of the better fighting games out there when it comes to know-how and mindgames. This is just a *******ization (is that a word? lol) of a sweet game. all they had to do was balance it and slap on some new chars. Instead they rip the graphics/animations into a whole new game engine of crap.

Just look for someone in this thread who actually knows what he/she's talking about (was actually good at the game) and see what they had to say about it. scrubs

 

[TheMagicalKuja]

^It's this very arrogance that I hate.

GET OUT. You make actual pros look bad, vile troll.

 

[Duker]

http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=151309
http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=151061

All I have to say.

(Sorry if they've already been posted.)

 

[Clever]

I've been playing a lot of brawl with friends and online. It may be slower than melee , but you still have the mind games and strategies in there. If it were "less" skill or w/e I wouldn't be consistently beating my friends and online peeps.

It's a different game, play it for what it is and stop trying to play it like melee.