If SRK has taught me anything, it's that Brawl is a completely different animal, and camping can be beaten.
Please show me how they have beaten it. Seriously, SRK is nice and all, but they aren't as used to the smash mechanics as say... the melee pros.
Shame I gotta say this in a topic by a mod. You'd think they'd have more sense than this.
It's also a mod that just happens to be a veteran tournament player that is one of the most experience Brawlers currently. Have you tried to think that it within the realm of possibilities that what he is saying could be true, and perhaps knows a lot more about what he is talking about than you do? Your only argument against him is that the game hasn't been out for a very long time, and you compare it to melee. Brawl isn't Melee. We have a huge tournament scene going straight into brawl that melee didn't have. Brawl is also WAY WAY more simple of a game than melee.
Mindgames, what is considered to be the cousin of the combo, in many ways, is usually only necessary up until that first hit is landed
You downplay the heck out of mindgames that it's shameful. Combos and setups are useless if you can't land them on a smart opponent. The core to every fighting game, real fighting, and most competitive anything is mindgames. The ability to play smart and fool/overwhelm/predict your opponents moves and abuse them. Competitive players get to a point where tech skill is at a competitive standard. In traditional fighters this level of tech skill in general is much higher than that of Melee (and INFINITELY higher than Brawl). Tech skill typically isn't the thing that divides the good competitive players from the best. Combos are merely the best way to cause the most damage once you create an opening. Muscle memory is important, but the true division of skill in pretty much every competitive fighter is how smart you play.
You don't understand this Jack. That's why you are trying to argue that combos aren't important. It isn't about the combos at all, it's that an incredibly important portion of every good competitive game is being removed. That portion is known as execution. Yeah, it's great if you are capable of pulling off amazing ****, but that doesn't amount to crap if you buckle under pressure. You make it seem like it's just easy sailing after that first hit. Lemme tell you something, it's not. What if you make a mistake during your combo? You get punished. You get punished for being sloppy. You are SUPPOSED to get punished for making mistakes. In brawl, while you can still punish, it's AMAZINGLY hard to do so. It's also limiting in what you can do to punish. No matter how skilled we get, we won't be able to punish mistakes properly because most characters are literally unable to place a move in the time it takes to get out of stun, bring up a shield, etc. What does this mean? It means that we can get away with stupid *** ****. It means that you can camp an entire match, and if they break through your camping every now and then you will be alright cause they can't punish you very severely and you won't even take much damage. This is a problem.
Then explain why the competitive Melee scene is complaining about a lack of combos so much.
Because Melee had a unique and interesting spin on combos that goes beyond simply muscle memory. It was all about free-form combos in which being able to follow and predict your opponents DI allowed for you to do amazing combos, but you could ONLY pull them off if you were really really skilled. It took A LOT of skill to pull off these crazy combos consistently, and since comboing has pretty much been removed, a HUGE pool of skill has been directly removed from the game.
I'm asking why that skill is the only one that we consider 'skillful'.
You are dense. People have said repeatedly in this thread that everything that is important in Brawl was also in melee. Comboing wasn't the only skill in melee. Brawl no longer has that intricate system that allowed for the skillful use of mechanics as a showcase this form of skill. There is less depth because of it's exclusion.
I'm saying that Melee doesn't reward wit enough for my tastes.
LOL, this is backwards! In melee, if you were smart and your opponent was not you could REALLY punish their mistakes. You could intentionally make them think to DI a certain way and exploit it. If they missed techs, you could land smashes. If they rolled, you had time to techchase. In brawl, the window is so small that you have to be able to predict everything beforehand, as opposed to predicting a few things and reacting to it accordingly. It becomes an incredibly tough venture to accomplish, because it's hard to predict everything like that. The bad thing is that if you go and make an attempt to punish and mess up... you get punished, because going on the offense leaves you open while being defensive doesn't. How does this reward you for being smart? It seemingly just rewards you for being defensive.
Each mini-combo can combo into another mini-combo!
No it doesn't. There aren't many canned combos. There are "set ups" that lead to combos, but after these setups everything is dependent on each player as to if you can combo. You don't know what you are talking about.
Jack, stop talking as if you know what you are talking about, because you don't.
And Azen used Lucario. In a year or two from now we may decide "well, this is boring, Brawl is dead," but for now it is very fresh and competitive.
Azen is amazing at everything that he does. Everyone else in that list are people that are within a general radius of Azen. Other regions have their heroes too, and these regions will progress much faster than those who don't have crazy *** players like that. The thing is once the scene has been around for a while the skill gap between regions closes a bit, and once everything they are doing as well as the skills they are using become the competitive norm, I feel that with all the existing mechanics that the game will quickly hit a wall. This is exactly the reason for Gimpy to post what he did, as he and many others foresee this wall encroaching on us.
No one can handle such a random mindgame.
Except for every good player that is close enough to take immediate advantage over your trip, in which your "mindgame" only makes you vulnerable for even longer. That's like saying not teching and laying on the ground for a bit in a match is an unbeatable "mind game."