Event - E3 Invitational 2014 Am I the only one truly disapointed?

[FSLMJM]

OP must be impossible to satisfy if literally a day's worth of gameplay of a game still in development months away from release is enough to make him "truly disappointed" in it.

 

[BioZelink]

First before entering the post. I like the inclusions of the Mii (awesome types with cool movesets), and Pac-Man. I'm even ok with Smash 4 being a faster/more refined Brawl.

With what i'm not ok is with Sakurai being a Nintendotard even when the rest of the company has been doing an AWESOME E3 show with their new ideas for broadcasting news and awesome ideas for new titles. Let me explain.

Treehouse was REALLY AWESOME, constant live streaming of upcoming games. What other company has that? And with more and new anounces every day.

The digital event was brilliant, comical, and a bright idea. It looked like it was made by the fans, the stop motion mini films between anouncements were funny and everything was great.

Every Nintendo rep has gone down and talked with people, presented stuff, tried new stuff and tried to be with the crowd. Treehouse was a great aid for this.

The game featured more weakish rewarding play than in the tutorials. General feel being a new brawl. But even so i think it was good and they were fixing brawl issues. It might be a great game. In another good point, it would keep the melee scene/PM scene alive by still being 3 really diferent games.

Hell even the invitational idea was greatly done, and I hope they keep doing them in the future (but i don't have any hopes that these will be 1 v 1s or something like that, sadly. You can see the Pokemon tourneys with their odd ruleset (who has a standalone metagame on his own totally diferent from normal pokemon)). The show was refreshing, fun (although these final smashes, wow) and even the finals were great. There was a lot, and i mean a LOT of defensive playstyle, who got greatly rewarded. This is the bad news of being a Brawl like game again. And this is the first bad news, but there could be tweaking so i had hope. It was my most hyped event and it was not as expected, but ok. Really good objectively.

The problem i have is with sakurai handling of the situation. Not showing the new characters in the tourney when EVERYONE EXPECTED IT. Not making the game more bounds to combos when EVERYONE EXPECTED IT (even the trailers featuring chars have a few, cool, true combos in them). Not fixing Brawl /smash problems (char balance based in 1v1/FFA/items is varied, biased betatester power rankings, BAD ONLINE WHO IS NOT FIXED). Answering badly to people in the roundtable (omg, You are not a game designer? Your opinion means nothing -> THIS IS A FALACY COME ON) and still considering Smash a Party Game (what, seriously? after this?, he must be the kind who thinks that the one who plays better must win is bad cause the bad player can cry about they being bad... which idea is really stupid).

All in all i capted his message as: I'm the game creator, i'm the one who knows everything and i don't care about any of you at all. I know i am right and i'm not gonna do things like fans expect, EVEN WHEN THE REST OF NINTENDO DOES. Wtf.

Adding insult to injury, he is leaving tomorrow cause "he is busy". Seriously? Everyone is there at E3 attending people and working hard and you go cause "you are busy"?

I liked the Miis. I loved the figurines (yay pseudo pokemon for smash bro/assist system/team battles with NFC, lots of ideas). I loved everything, until half way the tourney. From there they just shatered my dreams and hopes. And it was almost all Sakurai's fault (and my own wishful inocence in false expectations).

You could say i'm almost depressed only from this. I have a big headache right now lol.

Is any one feeling like me?

Are you serious? Ok i will do it one by one.
1-The playable roster was announced months ago, why would people expect others? Plus the game is a work in progress, the others are probably not fully developed and balanced, the game just crashed on Nintendo treehouse, It's still not done!!! About combos, how do u even know? The players have been playing the game for a short time, plus all the matches were 4 players, and GF's was a single match, hence defensive play.
2-...HOW THE HECK do you know if the online will work good? Have you played it? Is it finished? Why make stupid assumptions?
3-Bad answers? Are you kidding? A guy comes out and says "yeah i can balance your game better than you guys, even though i have no experience at all". Do you even realize how disrespectful that is? Plus he said i will think about it afterwards.
4-Smash is a party game, what do you think it is? It's a party brawler, it is still really deep, and a good player will never loose to a bad one.

Lastly, he is the creator, HE and his team work their asses of to make this game. And what do you think he will do in Japan? WORK ON THE GAME? Why is that bad? I think you haven't slept, because your post doesn't seem thought out at all.

 

[BioZelink]

First before entering the post. I like the inclusions of the Mii (awesome types with cool movesets), and Pac-Man. I'm even ok with Smash 4 being a faster/more refined Brawl.

With what i'm not ok is with Sakurai being a Nintendotard even when the rest of the company has been doing an AWESOME E3 show with their new ideas for broadcasting news and awesome ideas for new titles. Let me explain.

Treehouse was REALLY AWESOME, constant live streaming of upcoming games. What other company has that? And with more and new anounces every day.

The digital event was brilliant, comical, and a bright idea. It looked like it was made by the fans, the stop motion mini films between anouncements were funny and everything was great.

Every Nintendo rep has gone down and talked with people, presented stuff, tried new stuff and tried to be with the crowd. Treehouse was a great aid for this.

The game featured more weakish rewarding play than in the tutorials. General feel being a new brawl. But even so i think it was good and they were fixing brawl issues. It might be a great game. In another good point, it would keep the melee scene/PM scene alive by still being 3 really diferent games.

Hell even the invitational idea was greatly done, and I hope they keep doing them in the future (but i don't have any hopes that these will be 1 v 1s or something like that, sadly. You can see the Pokemon tourneys with their odd ruleset (who has a standalone metagame on his own totally diferent from normal pokemon)). The show was refreshing, fun (although these final smashes, wow) and even the finals were great. There was a lot, and i mean a LOT of defensive playstyle, who got greatly rewarded. This is the bad news of being a Brawl like game again. And this is the first bad news, but there could be tweaking so i had hope. It was my most hyped event and it was not as expected, but ok. Really good objectively.

The problem i have is with sakurai handling of the situation. Not showing the new characters in the tourney when EVERYONE EXPECTED IT. Not making the game more bounds to combos when EVERYONE EXPECTED IT (even the trailers featuring chars have a few, cool, true combos in them). Not fixing Brawl /smash problems (char balance based in 1v1/FFA/items is varied, biased betatester power rankings, BAD ONLINE WHO IS NOT FIXED). Answering badly to people in the roundtable (omg, You are not a game designer? Your opinion means nothing -> THIS IS A FALACY COME ON) and still considering Smash a Party Game (what, seriously? after this?, he must be the kind who thinks that the one who plays better must win is bad cause the bad player can cry about they being bad... which idea is really stupid).

All in all i capted his message as: I'm the game creator, i'm the one who knows everything and i don't care about any of you at all. I know i am right and i'm not gonna do things like fans expect, EVEN WHEN THE REST OF NINTENDO DOES. Wtf.

Adding insult to injury, he is leaving tomorrow cause "he is busy". Seriously? Everyone is there at E3 attending people and working hard and you go cause "you are busy"?

I liked the Miis. I loved the figurines (yay pseudo pokemon for smash bro/assist system/team battles with NFC, lots of ideas). I loved everything, until half way the tourney. From there they just shatered my dreams and hopes. And it was almost all Sakurai's fault (and my own wishful inocence in false expectations).

You could say i'm almost depressed only from this. I have a big headache right now lol.

Is any one feeling like me?

Are you serious? Ok i will do it one by one.
1-The playable roster was announced months ago, why would people expect others? Plus the game is a work in progress, the others are probably not fully developed and balanced, the game just crashed on Nintendo treehouse, It's still not done!!! About combos, how do u even know? The players have been playing the game for a short time, plus all the matches were 4 players, and GF's was a single match, hence defensive play.
2-...HOW THE HECK do you know if the online will work good? Have you played it? Is it finished? Why make stupid assumptions?
3-Bad answers? Are you kidding? A guy comes out and says "yeah i can balance your game better than you guys, even though i have no experience at all". Do you even realize how disrespectful that is? Plus he said i will think about it afterwards.
4-Smash is a party game, what do you think it is? It's a party brawler, it is still really deep, and a good player will never loose to a bad one.

Lastly, he is the creator, HE and his team work their asses of to make this game. And what do you think he will do in Japan? WORK ON THE GAME? Why is that bad? I think you haven't slept, because your post doesn't seem thought out at all.

 

[Hydde]

The problem is that we know how Sakurai works. He is as stubborn as he can be.

What we are seeing right now, is like 90% of the game. They will try to fix some bugs and balance certain skills.-- but thats it.

Im not getting my hopes high about them heavily tweaking lags and crappy follow ups just because peeps at the E3 asked for it.

But well we can hope. At least this time they are asking.... but i would really like to know how sakurai will react when those "testers" tell him that Pros say this and that. He will just say something like "competitive players want what? yeh right."

 

[hariooo]

2 months before the 3DS version goes gold but don't worry guys the game is still extremely early in development lol.

 

[BioZelink]

2 months before the 3DS version goes gold but don't worry guys the game is still extremely early in development lol.

Dude, octomber is 4 months away. September is 3...

 

[Braggins]

My suggestion to people who are disappointed by what they saw is to not buy the game. I'm certainly not giving Nintendo my money for this. I figured it would be bad and after seeing the invitational it actually looks worse than I anticipated. Complaining on here isn't going to result in any improvement in the gameplay. The only thing you can do is cast your vote of disapproval by not buying it. Even that probably won't do any good as long as Sakurai is in control because the guy really seems to be delusional about his own game. Oh well.

 

[hariooo]

Dude, octomber is 4 months away. September is 3...

Japan.

 

[Son Rolo]

I can't call myself a "competitive" player because I don't feel it's necessary to learn glorified development screw-ups to get the most out of a Smash game.

This is where people are fundamentally wrong.
L-Cancelling and SmashDI were 100% intentional since Smash64. They were even explained in-depth in the japanese official website for SSB64.

From this it's not so crazy to assume the AT's we found in Melee weren't so unintended after all.

My theory is Sakurai at first intended smash to be a party game but with potential for advanced play for those who cared. Now he wants a party game ONLY and so to remove any advanced gameplay at all costs.

I wonder why he changed his mind. Maybe he went to a Melee tournament and had his bottom handed to himself?

 

[Braggins]

I don't know why people are acting like it is stupid for that guy in the Q&A to act like he could do a better job balancing the game than Sakurai and his team... Project M was made completely by fans in the competitive community who aren't developers and it is far more balanced than any other smash game. The competitive smash community clearly has a far better understanding of competitive balance than the developers who view this as nothing more than a party game. Come on, there is really no question on this one. The balance in Brawl was horrible and this looks like Brawl 2.0. I don't know why anyone thinks Sakurai is some kind of infallible genius when it comes balancing. It isn't even in the scope of what he is trying to do with this game.

 

[Mechonis]

This just makes me think about players on League of Legends that talk about certain things.

I'm relatively certain that even if you're very vocal about your disappointments, you are going to be in the minority. Whether you call them "casuals" or "hardcore" players, the game will probably be focused around the majority that simply like it.

 

[Erimir]

"Mastering" the wavedash takes like 30 minutes of practice, and then just implementing it into your natural gameplay over time. Some characters don't even really use it much. This is coming from someone who literally just started using ATs 3 weeks ago. It's simple: If you want to be competitive, then yes, you care about ATs and put the time in to learn them. I really don't understand the excuses people are making here.

You're free to disagree. I'm just pointing out that it's not the case that literally nobody would care about the existence of ATs, which is an argument I see over and over. Like nobody but people who play tournament-level Melee would ever care about their existence. That's simply not true.

And you can call those people whiners who don't want to put in the time to practice, or whatever, but the fact that Sakurai isn't trying to please just Melee fans by putting in certain ATs doesn't mean that he's simply disregarding Melee tourney players for no reason.

It's a straw man to argue that it literally matters to nobody but the competitive tourney players who whine for them to be in.

 

[BioZelink]

Japan.

What about Japan? It comes out in september, that is still 3 months away. :D

 

[Beatness]

and still considering Smash a Party Game

Friendly reminder that the competetive smash community is just a small percentage of smash bros players. Most people do indeed view smash bros as a party game. Sakurai is actually being really nice to put in all these features for competitive players. This game is not made specifically to be competitive, it's made for everyone.

But other than that I mostly agree with the OP. While I love smash bros, Sakurai seems like he has a bit of an arrogant attitude with things like not having story cutscenes because they get leaked online, or not responding withh to dev questions.

 

[hariooo]

What about Japan? It comes out in september, that is still 3 months away. :D

Games go gold at least a month before release. Hence, 2 months. Any more questions?

 

[Zone]

The level of b!+(# on this forum is palpable. This is a freaking embarrassment to the community.

We get 3 new characters including Palutena, a character a ton of people wanted and we all expected to be in, the Miis, Nintendo's new second mascot who look WAAAY better in Smash than any of us ever thought they would, and Pac-Man, the mascot of the company making the game and the single most iconic third party character of all time who actually looks really good in a fighter which is more than I can say for his Street Fighter X Tekken appearance. And what do people do? Cry about how "underwhelming" it was because they didn't get whatever one specific more obscure character they wanted who still might be in the game later by the way. Oh yeah, and they showed Game & Watch in the Pac-Man trailer, so throw a vet in there too.

Then a bunch of people used to playing competitively are forced to play on new stages in new physics with new items in FFA matches (you know, the way Smash Bros has meant to be played since nineteenfreakingninetynine) and everyone says the game doesn't play "the way it's supposed to play." Are you completely insane? Not only is no one here making the game and therefore has absolutely no say in whatever the heck Smash is supposed to be, but we haven't actually seen people who are used to the game play it, which by the way makes the "Brawl 2.0" comments completely idiotic because they would have actually been used to it if that were the case.

Sakurai said it's a party game? Boohoo, it IS TOTALLY A PARTY GAME AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN. Yes, a strong community exists around playing competitively, but that's our choice, not the intention. For crying out loud, half the competitive stuff people praise in Melee is just broken physics due to a rushed development cycle. "Sakurai isn't paying attention to the competitive scene?" I'm sorry, I must have missed the removal of tripping, larger balancing team, faster-than-Brawl physics, competitive-only online mode, and the tournament of 16 competitive players with 3 competitive announcers in a stadium of 3000 fans at the biggest event in gaming livestreamed to the entire world. Get the heck over yourselves.

Look, do you NEED to be happy about the character announcements? No. Do you NEED to be happy about the new physics? No. But the sheer overwhelming amount of people claiming Nintendo "doesn't care" or that the series somehow belongs to us is mind numbing. This is why people hate this community almost as much as LoL..

Relax bro, it's a game.

If I think Smash 4 looks like garbage because it doesn't have what I want. Then I'm allowed to speak as such. Staying silent about my wants and desires, and my distastes only hurt me and other like minded people like me.

So what if it was meant to be a Party game? why can't it do both? It clearly did BOTH in SB64 and melee. Melee even had "tournament mode" So it WAS catered to BOTH groups. Suddenly having your side that you loved about the game ripped out will leave a void in your chest as you get slapped by reality you will never get a new version of the game you love the absolute MOST.

I'm fine with 6 more years of Melee. I'm already planning on not even touching Smash 4. I'd rather Play Mortal Kombat X than Smash 4, because atleast they take strides to cater to both Casual and competitive. Mortal Kombat use to be ALL casual in the 3-D era. They had broken gameplay and didn't care because they made single player pretty good. Anyone who liked depth in "game mechanics" wouldn't find it here.

Now in Mortal Kombat 9, when they made a strong attempt to cater to BOTH. They sold the most units they have ever sold in history.

There is absolutely NO REASON to not cater to both. It's just laziness.

 

[Braggins]

All the people who say that people who want Sakurai to throw the competitive community a bone (please don't act like anything about this game is meant to please competitive players because basically NOTHING we want is in this game) are just complaining and should shut up should try to imagine how they would feel if Sakurai did the complete opposite and catered the game 100% to the competitive community and ignored the casual fans. All we want is a game that has competitive and casual value so everyone is happy. People act like we are just petty complainers for not wanting to get completely ignored and left out. The clear intentional lack of any competitive value in Brawl really hurt the game and made it a huge disappointment for many people. Honestly, Smash 4 so far looks like it is going to be even worse and actually be the least competitive game of the series, which is kind of astounding considering how bad Brawl was. They seemed to have just doubled down on all the horrible aspects that turned so many people off from Brawl. Sorry if everyone isn't satisfied with the game because it has better graphics and you can battle as Abraham Lincoln.

 

[Erimir]

They seemed to have just doubled down on all the horrible aspects that turned so many people off from Brawl.

Yeah, but the thing is that that's just not true.

The game is faster than Brawl and the physics aren't as floaty as Brawl. They've removed tripping. They're trying to emphasize character balance more. They've added a ranking system for online play, including rank-based match-making. They added For Glory for online (even if it's not perfect). There are some new mechanics in the game which we can't really evaluate yet, as well.

You might not think it's enough change, and that's valid, but it's definitely not "doubling down on all the horrible aspects" of Brawl.

People like you are getting **** from others because you're exaggerating.

 

[Vigilante]

I'm not disappointed. My expectations were too low for it to even be an option.

Let's be honest, the game is slower than Melee, by a lot. It's closer to brawl in that regard, and honestly... I cannot get past that. Melee was perfect in terms of speed to me and anything less feels sluggish in my opinion. The whole invitational was a mess and a complete insult. Not only did it put serious players in a ruleset where teaming up on one person and going on walk-off stages to spam projectiles was an option, if even had the gall to use some of our bigger names to advertise a game that was not targeted even remotely at us. Sakurai reiterated that he saw Smash as primarily a party game in his Q&A, going as far as to respond rudely to a fan.

Plus, it was observed that the advanced tech we wanted was not added back in.

I feel that competitive smash will forever be tied to CRT televisions. I am not buying this game. I won't berate anyone for enjoying it, but it's not for me.

 

[Crimefridge]

The problem is that we know how Sakurai works. He is as stubborn as he can be.

What we are seeing right now, is like 90% of the game. They will try to fix some bugs and balance certain skills.-- but thats it.

This. If you think the game is going to change since this preview, you are so wrong. If you don't like what you see now, don't expect it to change. I am certainly not on board with this floaty, campy, boring gameplay. It isn't fun to watch. I can only imagine it isn't fun to play. I went on to watch more SSB4 after the E3 invitational and let me tell you... this isn't even an attempt to bring back Melee mechanics or make Brawl more competitive. It's... just slow paced casual gameplay.

I'm looking forward to more Project M, I guess. Hopefully it stays alive long enough before SSB completely loses the interest of competitive players.

 

[Braggins]

Yeah, but the thing is that that's just not true.

The game is faster than Brawl and the physics aren't as floaty as Brawl. They've removed tripping. They're trying to emphasize character balance more. They've added a ranking system for online play, including rank-based match-making. They added For Glory for online (even if it's not perfect). There are some new mechanics in the game which we can't really evaluate yet, as well.

You might not think it's enough change, and that's valid, but it's definitely not "doubling down on all the horrible aspects" of Brawl.

People like you are getting **** from others because you're exaggerating.

It barely looks faster and less floaty if at all. Even if it isn't as slow it is still very slow. They are still doubling down on the slow, floaty style. The game is by no means fast. Removing tripping is good but removing one minor terrible aspect doesn't help much when everything else is still pretty much just as bad. The For Glory mode and online ranking system literally don't matter at all if the gameplay is still terrible. Making an online ranking system for tic-tac-toe doesn't make tic-tac-toe any more competitive or fun. Basically, if you watched the gameplay from E3 and thought "well this is fast and exciting and should satisfy the competitive community" then you really don't have any understanding of what we would like to see out of this game. It literally looks like a slightly different and possibly worse version of Brawl.

 

[freezy]

I don't want to step into this pro and contra discussion, cos I can understand both points of view. I guess both sides can atleast agree, that there is some kind of rift between the fans and the development team about how a Smash Bros. game should be, regarding gameplay mechanics.

That leads me to one important question: Do all who currently attend E3 really use the opportunity to get into contact with Nintendo and explain the situation to them? I think it is the one and only opportunity we have.
We already know that some booth reps take notes, but do we really know that those don't land in the waste bin?
During the Nintendo Treehouse specials we got to know at least some important Nintendo employees of NoA's treehouse (some invitational participants where playing with them on the stage), so our pro players should really get those guys and talk to them directly about the situation, not to random booth reps. They should explain to them that there is this rift between the fan's expectations and Sakurai's vision, and that NoA's Treehouse plays an important role in that "struggle" of getting the game to appeal to everybody (casuals and pros alike), because the Treehouse guys are apparently the only ones who might have another say in the Smash development. Those guys really have to understand the situation and what is at stake for us fans. I think after all that hype also NoA wants Smash 4 to be the new star in the competitive community, and they have to realize that they must fix certain things so it gets adopted by the competitive community. When they understood this, they should take notes with suggestions from our pros, with all the stuff that should be fixed and rebalanced, but only realistic stuff of course (no wavedashing ). And I guess that they explain to the treehouse guys what that stuff means and why it is important, because I doubt that they are familiar with the terminology.

So instead of wasting time with pointless arguments here, the community should get focused on that goal of steering the development into the right direction and get into contact with Nintendo in a focused, but always friendly way.

If anyone here has contact with our attendees at E3 and especially the Invitiational participants, please instruct them that they shall directly approach the treehouse guys once more and explain that stuff to them. Or they shall ask them for e-mail adresse at which they can send their collected feedback.

Maybe they already gave all the feedback to the right guys, but l lets better be safe.

 

[Zone]

Yeah, but the thing is that that's just not true.

The game is faster than Brawl and the physics aren't as floaty as Brawl. They've removed tripping. They're trying to emphasize character balance more. They've added a ranking system for online play, including rank-based match-making. They added For Glory for online (even if it's not perfect). There are some new mechanics in the game which we can't really evaluate yet, as well.

You might not think it's enough change, and that's valid, but it's definitely not "doubling down on all the horrible aspects" of Brawl.

People like you are getting **** from others because you're exaggerating.

nice job only focusing on the tiniest positives. Did you not see the notes Melee it on me had of exactly what DOES NOT exist anymore? They even removed some Brawl Tech.

See not being mean, but this shows exactly where we don't see eye to eye. If you think a VERY VERY barely notice-able increase in speed, (they are still pretty floaty), Character balance isn't exclusive to competitive games, Rank matching is cool, but it has to be done the right way. Otherwise it serves no purpose. Are we going to be put into tiers of skill and fight similar skilled players? Similar to how Starcraft does their ranking?

Expand on the new mechanics that you know of please, or are you just hoping that's the case?

 

[Divine Fist]

I didn't expect a Melee clone, and I get that wanting advanced techniques is wishful thinking. So I'm not disappointed, just correct.

Hopefully one day Sakurai will realize the benefit of allowing advanced techniques. There is no valid counter-argument for allowing them. I played Melee for 6 years casually despite there being advanced techniques and a strong competitive scene, and I never had any problems.

Including advanced techniques is only beneficial. Melee has the duality of being casual and competitive. Why eliminate half?

Ah well, back to Melee.

 

[sunshinesan]

So I played it at Best Buy, as well as spectated for about 2 hours. I felt a Brawl vibe to it all the way. The Brawl 2.0 might sound like an insult or bash or whatever, but it's really true.

 

[BEES]

I'll resay this again, these may have been pros, but they had no clue what the engine/moves etc. were like til they just picked it up. Combos aren't gonna show up on day 1 to a game people just picked up on the spot.

This was the opinion that I and many others had getting into Brawl. I thought "hey so what if it doesn't have the old system, the old system had flaws like the steep tech curve. I'm sure that a new system will be found and this will prove to be an interesting game".

Of course, later on it turned out the new system of combos was that there wasn't any system, because there were no combos to begin with.

I'm not in the group of melee players that thinks melee's the end-all-be-all and that change isn't a good thing. I'd happily play a game that managed to be fast and have rewarding combos while relying on totally different mechanics to do so and being much easier to pick up and play. And I think there are ways to make such a game. There are many people who feel similarly to me. It's just clear to us now that that's not the kind of game Nintendo's interested in making--otherwise they would've made it. There's no evidence to believe that's what they've done here.

 

[Phan7om]

Omg, this community will ultimately die just because of things like this... calling it.

First off, people feel disappointed because they didnt get what they want, and what they wanted was false hope that Smash 4 was going to be more like Melee than Brawl. Therefore, they cry on the internet in denial saying things like "its still in development" and whatnot, when obviously hes not going to make any BIG changes to this game. It seems a lot of people's logic on this is its either Melee 2.0 or its Brawl 2.0, which is completely flawed and illogical, people who think that should wake up and join reality.

Another thing is the mention of ATs. Apparently to most people, ATs mean wavedashing and l-cancelling and possibly dash dancing, thats all... ignorant to the ATs, mostly character specific, that were in Brawl. I wouldnt mind if they got into the game, but saying the game sucks if they werent included is pretty stupid lmao. But calling ATs by those simple things needs to change plz. Thats probably why people think Brawl has no tech skill because to them, tech skill is only those 3 things and Fox/Falco being able to jump out of shine.

And yes, this is coming from someone who likes Melee wayy more than any other smash. Oh ok, "combos arent easy and require thought to follow up, bad design..." or "this game looks to easy, im not getting it." People compare this games speed to 13 years of Melee evolved metagame and see that there is a difference... so it must be Brawl, and we dont like Brawl right?... so the game must suck right?... Most of us have played this game, if we have played it, under 24 hours. If we have never heard of Melee before and was only played for a couple of hours, people would be so slow, couldnt follow up on combos, complain that there are no ATs in the game, and so on.

TL;DR. This game just came out, why the hell are you complaining about how it looks, and judging the success of the game off of a couple hours of play?

 

[Dax]

because a bunch of skilled people already had an hand on it, and because I'm confident in my judgement. You don't need to be Holmes to understand that floaty gravity, lots of landing lag on aerials and little hitstun means little combo ability. And yes, that's what I cared the most.
That goes for me, of course.
I'm sorry, but neither DACUS nor any other Brawl AT changed the fact that the game felt too campy and slow for me.

 

[SpeedBoost]

Well I'm not a doctor but it sounds like you have a case of being "Over Hyped". So the only cure is to GET OVER IT!

I have said this time and time again and I will say it again, since 2013 E3 Sakurai has stated that the game is a the Speed of both Melee and Brawl, and he has no interest of bringing back Melee's brokenness/awesomeness/physics. Sakurai does not want to make a game that is overly hardcore and he has been listening to you fools, but you are to blind and head over heels over "OMG WAVE DASHING OR GTFO" to realize there is a good product coming out. In fact here are examples of Sakurai listening to the competitive community.

• For Glory Mode and For Fun Mode
• Final Destination Versions of stages (A fanboys wet dream right there)
• More focus on online
• More Balanced Roster
• No SSE so that means more time to focus on Balancing
• More Hitstun
• Gamecube controller support
• Smash Invitational (100% Fan service)

And etc, be god damn thankful there is even a Smash game. Sure it is kinda expected to see one every Gen at this point but **** how do you think communities like MVC feels knowing they will never see a sequel and their franchise is dead in the water.

I am glad with what Nintendo and Sakurai is doing with this game, and you guys are welcome to join us. We will be waiting for you.

 

[Thales]

You sound entitled, get over yourself.

 

[Neerb]

Okay, I just want to say one more thing on this thread. I've seen a lot of people say this game looks terrible. Awful. Bad.

Not just a bad fighter, and not just a bad Smash, a bad game.

"Like how Brawl was bad."

Um. What? "Bad?" I mean, it's one thing to prefer a more tech-heavy metagame or heavier physics, but... it's a bad game?

Sales via VGChartz:
64 - 5.55 million
Melee - 7.07 million
Brawl - 12.16 million

Metacritic score averages
64 - 79
Melee - 92
Brawl - 93

On Brawl:
10/10 G4 - "Should be snapped up by just about anyone willing to hold a controller."
10/10 GamePro - "From the fighting mechanics to roster of players Brawl is a well-rounded game that I just couldn't put down."
9.5/10 IGN - "Completely engrossing and wholly entertaining from beginning to end..."
9.5/10 GameSpot - "Super Smash Bros. has never been better."
9.5/10 Game Informer - "There’s still nothing like learning the intricacies of every character, discovering possibly the most unlockables in any game yet, and using all of that to beat the crap out of your friends late into the night."
9.5/10 Destructoid - "Nintendo has handily produced one of the most compelling, rich and densely-packed experiences available on any console."
9.4/10 Game Trailers - "As a multiplayer game, it nears perfection."

Can you prefer one playstyle to another? Yes.
Can you be disappointed that things don't go your way? Yes.
Is it upsetting that the competitive community for Smash doesn't get its demands met? Yes.
Did I myself put more time in Melee than Brawl and currently prefer Project M? Yes.

But get your head out of your ass.

 

[GeNo-BreaKer]

Don't get why the sales were mentioned. 12 million units on a system that sold 100 million units isn't very impressive. 7 million on a system that sold 22 million units is by far more of an achievement.

 

[Ryuutakeshi]

I don't know why people are acting like it is stupid for that guy in the Q&A to act like he could do a better job balancing the game than Sakurai and his team... Project M was made completely by fans in the competitive community who aren't developers and it is far more balanced than any other smash game. The competitive smash community clearly has a far better understanding of competitive balance than the developers who view this as nothing more than a party game. Come on, there is really no question on this one. The balance in Brawl was horrible and this looks like Brawl 2.0. I don't know why anyone thinks Sakurai is some kind of infallible genius when it comes balancing. It isn't even in the scope of what he is trying to do with this game.

Yes, but Brawl had a much larger audience, made much more money, and is given official support by Nintendo. The fans can do amazing things but all it would take is one angry Nintendo to get Project M taken down in a heartbeat. Sakurai doesn't want his game to be Project M. That much is obvious.

 

[Erimir]

Basically, if you watched the gameplay from E3 and thought "well this is fast and exciting and should satisfy the competitive community" then you really don't have any understanding of what we would like to see out of this game. It literally looks like a slightly different and possibly worse version of Brawl.

I understand that there are lot of people out there who want it to basically import the Melee game engine.

I, for one, actually want something in between Brawl and Melee, but closer to Melee in terms of speed/gravity. I'm not sure they got the balance right, but it doesn't look bad to me. I'll admit that I like Melee's game play engine better than Brawl's. That doesn't mean I hated Brawl's by any means, though.

It didn't look "barely" different from Brawl to me though. It looks noticeably faster. There was even a comparison of Fox's jumps a while back, and when comparing them directly, it looked like it was solidly in between the two. That's why I think you're exaggerating.

And the people who are saying they're not going to buy it over these minor issues... I mean, ok, not putting in the time to try to get into the Smash 4 competitive scene, fine that makes sense (I'd probably at least, you know, actually get some time playing it before saying that, but eh).

But you don't think the game has anything to offer you in enjoyment because it's not exactly what you want in terms of competition? What did you ever like about Smash in the first place then? Did you only ever play Melee because you were interested in competition, and nothing else? Do you even like Nintendo? If you're not interested in celebrating Nintendo's history, playing as your favorite characters, or having fun free-for-all matches, etc. you're a very tiny minority and Sakurai's not going to be bothered that he missed out on sales from a few thousand disgruntled Melee fans. I mean, I totally get being into highly competitive play. I'm a competitive person. I don't put in the time to practice any of the games I play to get to the next level (like Magic, Dominion, Smash), but I do read up on strategy to an extent, and I definitely like to win, and I do feel that I'm an above average player. But I don't HAVE to play that way to have fun. I don't get hit by a blue shell in Mario Kart and then throw my controller and say "This game will never be the pure test of skill I want it to be, so it's a s****y game that's no fun!"

I'm just trying to understand why you would be so upset that it's not going to be perfectly tuned for a hardcore competitive audience to the point where you are basically saying the game has nothing to offer. I understand preferring Melee's game play style, wishing the game was more competitive. Being completely unable to enjoy the game if it's not that, I don't get it. Calling it a bad game rather than a game you're thinking you won't be interested in from a tournament perspective is just butthurt whining. This game will sell millions with or without you, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

 

[DaDavid]

It's incredibly disappointing to see the exact same damn argument from all those years ago already start to crop up before the game is even out.. Guess I shouldn't have expected anything better from the same lot of people though.

 

[Starbound]

Playing this game at Best Buy really just makes it feels weird. Gonna try to make this as un-Brawl vs Melee as I can.

I'm an avid Melee player. In my early teenage years, I'd put in at least 6 hour sessions of Melee in a day just because I loved the game. I think I played it too much because it got really tough adapting to Brawl. Brawl was really slow for my Melee attuned brain, and it felt really strange playing such a slow game. Brawl does have it's merits (I feel it's a lot more user friendly than Melee is because a lot of Melee's techniques are tough for new people to grasp, while Brawl's advanced techniques like Glidetossing and DACUS are simpler to pull off).

Now for Smash 4, it really does feel like that advertised MeleeXBrawl hybrid. It's floaty like Brawl. Not as floaty, but still kinda floaty. But characters move fast. Like really fast. Attacks feel like they have much less starting and ending lag, so in my opinion this feels a lot like something from Melee that came back to the table. If I had to pick just one thing from Melee to bring back, it would be the fast attacks. I believe that despite the gravity being "Brawl 2.0", "Melee 2.0" attack speed will keep the metagame feeling like both Brawl and Melee, but yet distinctly its own product.

And I think Smash 4 being it's own thing is the best course of action for it. It won't need the support of it's older siblings to survive and ultimately thrive.

 

[Braggins]

I understand that there are lot of people out there who want it to basically import the Melee game engine.

I, for one, actually want something in between Brawl and Melee, but closer to Melee in terms of speed/gravity. I'm not sure they got the balance right, but it doesn't look bad to me. I'll admit that I like Melee's game play engine better than Brawl's. That doesn't mean I hated Brawl's by any means, though.

It didn't look "barely" different from Brawl to me though. It looks noticeably faster. There was even a comparison of Fox's jumps a while back, and when comparing them directly, it looked like it was solidly in between the two. That's why I think you're exaggerating.

And the people who are saying they're not going to buy it over these minor issues... I mean, ok, not putting in the time to try to get into the Smash 4 competitive scene, fine that makes sense (I'd probably at least, you know, actually get some time playing it before saying that, but eh).

But you don't think the game has anything to offer you in enjoyment because it's not exactly what you want in terms of competition? What did you ever like about Smash in the first place then? Did you only ever play Melee because you were interested in competition, and nothing else? Do you even like Nintendo? If you're not interested in celebrating Nintendo's history, playing as your favorite characters, or having fun free-for-all matches, etc. you're a very tiny minority and Sakurai's not going to be bothered that he missed out on sales from a few thousand disgruntled Melee fans. I mean, I totally get being into highly competitive play. I'm a competitive person. I don't put in the time to practice any of the games I play to get to the next level (like Magic, Dominion, Smash), but I do read up on strategy to an extent, and I definitely like to win, and I do feel that I'm an above average player. But I don't HAVE to play that way to have fun. I don't get hit by a blue shell in Mario Kart and then throw my controller and say "This game will never be the pure test of skill I want it to be, so it's a s****y game that's no fun!"

I'm just trying to understand why you would be so upset that it's not going to be perfectly tuned for a hardcore competitive audience to the point where you are basically saying the game has nothing to offer. I understand preferring Melee's game play style, wishing the game was more competitive. Being completely unable to enjoy the game if it's not that, I don't get it. Calling it a bad game rather than a game you're thinking you won't be interested in from a tournament perspective is just butthurt whining. This game will sell millions with or without you, and it's going to be a lot of fun.

I may not be explaining myself well but that isn't what I am saying. It doesn't have to be just like Melee to be good. If you are going to say it is a mix between Brawl and Melee I would say it is like 95% Brawl and 5% Melee. Many of us just dont want a super slow and floaty game. The only thing that makes it more like Melee is that it is slightly faster, but it is still much closer to Brawl in terms of physics and basically no other elements of Melee are present. If the game was just fast and had something about it that made it deep and exciting it could be good without being like Melee. It just doesn't seem like that is going to be the case at all.

I didn't start playing Melee to get into competition but I did always play it and view it as a fighting game. After Melee they have been very successful at stressing the party game aspects and stripping the fighting game elements to the point where I just get no enjoyment out of Brawl when playing it as a fighting game. If I wanted to play a party game I would play Mario Kart or Mario Party or whatever. It is great that many people play Brawl and will play Smash 4 as a party game and enjoy it but that isn't what many people in the community play Smash for. Us in that boat just keep continually being neglected by Nintendo and it makes it almost impossible for me to support their new games. I can't enjoy Brawl at all and based off what I've seen of Smash 4 I don't see myself being able to enjoy it all either. It is just disappointing.

 

[Erimir]

If you are going to say it is a mix between Brawl and Melee I would say it is like 95% Brawl and 5% Melee.

It just doesn't look that way to me.

(I also would say it's not 100% Brawl + Melee... there are some elements added that weren't in either previous game.)

I can't enjoy Brawl at all and based off what I've seen of Smash 4 I don't see myself being able to enjoy it all either. It is just disappointing.

That's sad, but I don't blame Sakurai for not catering to people who can't enjoy Brawl at all. He must think you're impossible to please and therefore not worth the effort. It's one thing to prefer Melee to Brawl, but if I were him I would think "If he doesn't like playing Brawl at all, what could I do that would make him like Smash 4 other than just repeating Melee?"

 

[Neerb]

Don't get why the sales were mentioned. 12 million units on a system that sold 100 million units isn't very impressive. 7 million on a system that sold 22 million units is by far more of an achievement.

Percentage doesn't matter considering I'm comparing only games of a single series. Regardless of whoever bought consoles for non-Smash reasons, there were 7 million people who bought Melee and 12 million people who bought Brawl.

 

[beanwolf]

Again, I just don't see why Sakurai doesn't just make the engine more similar to Melee since it is more liked than Brawl's by BOTH casual and competitive players. The solution to all this is so f**king simple a dog could figure it out, and I feel that is what is most angering about this whole situation.

Furthermore, casuals do not care how the actually game works so long as they can still play with 4 players and the character roster is good. Game mechanics mean nothing to them unless it is intrusive and overwhelmingly negative, such as tripping. This is something about Smash as a franchise that is unique to it, and in my opinion Sakurai is nothing more than a stubborn harda** to not take advantage of it.

Competitive players might be a vocal minority (maybe 10% of the fanbase being generous), but when they are continuing to support (and even profit from) a product you developed 13 years ago, you have to realize that you did something right in that instance and try your best to replicate it WHEN THE OTHER 90% OF THE FANBASE COULD CARE LESS. Smash4 is going to sell software and hardware faster and harder than even Pokemon X & Y did for the 3DS regardless of how the game actually turns out in a competitive sense, so why not go for more money and make it competitive as per the suggestions we have been trying to give Sakurai from the beginning, especially when your company's previous fiscal year was INSANELY negative?

Not building your game towards being competitive when the other portion of the fanbase doesn't care one way or the other doesn't make any sort of business sense, especially after Nintendo saw how much money could be gained from having events such as the Smash Invitational.

In the end, all of this talk is useless because Sakurai is a complete and total harda** who will do everything his way and he doesn't really care one way or the other. He is oblivious to how his franchise works in the gaming market, and even if he is, he doesn't seem to give two f**ks one way or the other.

And do you know what the worst part is? Even after all this talk, even after all this disappointment, I CAN GUARANTEE THAT EVERYONE, even myself, will go out and buy Smash4 on BOTH the 3DS and WiiU on release night and even purchase the console to play it. We are competitive players BECAUSE we love the series, so of course we're going to buy it regardless of it turns out.