For smash 4 to succeed, we need to change

[popsofctown]

That wasn't even correct at the time. Zelda, Pit, and Wolf never had the tournament performances fully backing up those assertions.

 

[Ulevo]

This reminds me of 2008. Right now I'm reading through an old thread in my efforts to learn about the history of the community. Here's some stuff people were saying about Brawl about a week after it was released

@ Mew2King : Blind predictions are the perfect way to describe the game.
@Scar: Was talking about how Din's Fire was really OP and how it was almost impossible to get through Pit's arrows.
@Wife: [collapse= His quote, it's BIG]Ok, are you chowder heads ready for the truth? The truth is, Brawl is a child's game, plain and simple. It was made for, and with the sole purpose of satisfying, small children or those who have no intention of putting out more effort than you would to play Jak and Daxter.

The writing is on the wall, and I'm so disappointed that we are as a community planning on moving forward with this game. I could really write a book on the endless shortcomings of Brawl, such as how it has about as much depth as a sandbox, but let me make my point: Brawl was made to ease the pain of persons who suffered in the face of complicated Melee gameplay. I mean, the dude even said it himself he doesnt want to the game to be so competitive. I've had the game since it's Japanese release and it seems abundently clear what the benefits of this game are . . .

Like to roll a lot? NO PROBLEM!! No big deal friend, you might get hit once, twice at worst. Roll away!

Can't space your upB on the ledge? NO WORRIES!! Feel free to check your cell phone while you play, you won't be punished. The auto-suck on ensures that EVERYONE can get back on the ledge, not just those with talent.

Can't train your fingers to WD, L-Cancel, or meteor cancel? DONT' SWEAT IT!! Now no one can, so the division of skill will be much more fair. Finally, thank god!!

There's some kid down the street who always whoops your *** and then makes fun of you in 7th grade science class? HELP IS HERE!! Because now with Brawl, you can basically mash your palm against the controller and make great things happen.
**** guy, for that matter, he'll be so busy tripping randomly you can just get him then.
Or **** man, after you hit him you'll have a good 12 seconds before he comes back down again so you have plenty of time to plan your next attack. This way there will be no pressure whatsoever during the match.

That's because in Melee you were forced to make bsplit second decisions, supported by split frame timing and precise finger movements. ON TOP of the mind games which people are flaunting as the upside of Brawl.
If Melee was Fight Club, then Brawl is like, you know when you would wrestle in those ball pits? You could pretend you were Edward Norton, but everything is padded anyway and besides you know your mom is watching from outside anyway just in case.

Melee still has years left on it. We were just figuring it out. M2k was discovering new things up to the end, and some random kid won the last tournament. There's no reason we can't keep playing Melee.

My final argument and then I'll finish:
How on earth are you going to convince a girl that playing smash for a living isn't so stupid? In Melee you could explain the complex mechanics, the sophisticated mental battles, and high level of competition.
How are you going to get any *** at all if you have to explain why you spend your weekends playing Brawl? Just look at it. It's ****ing embarrassing. [/collapse]

These are three people who looking back now might think what they said was silly now that it isn't 2008, (seriously guys if you see this know I don't hold you to these things and this next bit isn't all only about you) but guess what they STILL SAID IT. People the community respected and listened to. If the people you respect say things, you are more likely to listen, even if they are really uniformed or just plain wrong. Heck, I'm seeing stuff in this thread and others discussing Brawl where people STILL DO NOT HAVE THE REAL INFORMATION and believe lies to this very day because someone they respect told them or they just heard it somewhere. DO you know the hazards on Norfair are on a pattern? Do you know items DO NOT actually spawn next to the losing player? Do you know that the klap trap on Japes is on a timer? Do you know that Game and Watch's hammer is not effected by the clock in any way? Guess what, several times this month I had to tell people these things because they didn't know and were told by someone this was the truth.

In this case, yes Melee haters DID gimp Brawl. Yes, Brawl SHOULD have overcome it true, and yes a lot of people did whine a lot about just being hated by Melee when they should have toughened up and shown love for their game, but why do this again? It's already happening with the Wii U and the 3DS.

ALREADY!!! ​

Why? What is the point? Why wont people understand you can enjoy your game, not like the other person's game, express that the game isn't for you, and just go on and play the game you want to INSTEAD OF GOING OUT OF THE WAY TO HATE ON THE OTHER GAME AND TELL PEOPLE WHO PLAY IT THEY ARE STUPID!?!?!?!

There's the issue, because even to this day people can't just have an opinion while not trying to force it on someone else. And if this happens again we're going to do to the young community that will come in for smash 4 EXACTLY what we did to the young community that came in for Brawl gimping their and our own development of the game and the meta.

Side note, the young community also is a bit of a reason why Brawl is on such a decline today as well, and part of it was we didn't help set them up for success and sometimes even tried to just make them fail. It's sad really.

lol

Melee 'haters' didn't gimp Brawl. If a game is good, it will stand on its own proverbial two feet. If it isn't, it's going to be surrounded in controversy.

Do you ever stop to actually think for a second about this? Why? Why Brawl? Why is Brawl getting all of this flack. Did it ever occur to you that there is a rational root cause behind this besides these nonsensical, idiotic, branded notions of "brawl haters" that just spawned out of the wood work, intent on spewing their venom and hatred towards your beloved Smash game?

Let's look at some competitive examples, shall we.

Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. BlazBlue, up until recently, was the successor of Guilty Gear. In a sense, it took the place of Guilty Gear and its future. And in a lot of ways, Guilty Gear was a lot more complex, a lot more technical, and a lot faster. Just like Melee is to Brawl. But did you see volumes of controversial arguments and dividing debates in the Dustloop community over it? No, you didn't. You had the occasional person who gave their 2 cents, but all in all people were okay with it and let it go because for all intents and purposes, BlazBlue is actually a good game, even if arguably watered down. It was handled with quality.

Now let's look at Pokemon, specifically from generation IV to generation V. Pokemon Black & White came with a lot of controversy, largely due to the power creep that came with the release of Dream World abilities and Pokemon with over the top stats. The entire metagame turned in to wars over weather conditions and made the entire competitive scene stagnant. Pokemon that were arguably Uber tier quality were sometimes relegated to UU because the distortion of power was so great that the whole meta was upside down for a large majority of it. With this came a lot of controversial bans and clauses, such as Swift Swim + Drizzle clause, and all the subsequent Pokemon that were banned thereafter because Drizzle itself was not suspect tested. A large part of this being due to the fear that if Drizzle were to be banned, there would be a large cascade of subsequent bans involved as Drizzle was holding them in check. I could go on, but the tl;dr if you weren't around on Smogon back then, the Smashboards and Dustloop for competitive Pokemon, is that it was a ****storm. Pokemon Black and White, competitively speaking, were not good games. They were pretty terrible. To the point where Nintendo acknowledged a lot of their mistakes, and made a lot of subsequent changes leading in to X and Y. Chandelure, while never released with its Dream World ability Shadow Tag in Black and White, had its Dream World ability changed going in to X and Y. All weather conditions were nerfed. Special Attack base powers were nerfed across the board. A lot of the new top tier threats in X and Y have much lower base stats and base stat totals than what we've been seeing for the past two generations. Et cetera.

A lot of people left the competitive scene during that time. A lot of people stayed away from Smogon. The community became divided, a lot of arguments happened, and the Black and White metagame is still a mess. Why? Because Gamefreak made some boo boos.

The irony of your entire post is that you miss the point Wife was trying to address. They may have been a tad ignorant to the specific details of the game at the time, like Din's Fire being overpowered. I mean, it was a brand new game. But the same complaints they had THEN, mere weeks after its release, are the same legitimate complaints people have for the game now.

A big part of the reason why there is all this hate is because a lot of respected players back then, Gimpyfish being the big one, gave their honest, professional input on what they thought the game was like. There is no crime in that. And unfortunately, because Melee is a Nintendo franchsie and was very successful competitively and casually, we had a huge influx of newbies come in to take the mantle from the old veterans. And when we had pro players telling a crowdful of new students that "sorry guys, the new game isn't very good", a lot of people didn't want to accept that. Likely due to a lot of reasons. New players were investing their time to become the next Ken or M2K or PC Chris, and of course investing time in to a bad game doesn't sit well with people. I'd know, I was one of those new players. And of course these new players weren't experienced enough to tell what did and didn't make a successful fighter or Smash game competitively, so it's not like having a conversation about it was going to win many of these people over.

Eventually the topics about this went from civilized debates along the lines of 'listen, I know you guys have hope fro this game, and you think a new AT might come along to make it great, but it's really not the case' to 'Guys, you're idiots. Brawl is terrible. Just stop.' because people became tired of hearing the same crap over and over again and repeating themselves to people who were rude, ignorant about Smash in general, and just didn't get it.

Most competitive communities, like our own, don't experience these divides or controversial problems until the game itself starts to have issues. Do you think its a coincidence that communities like League of Legends, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear are free of these problems? We have a game that, up until recently, had a developer specifically tell us that he does not want to see us play Smash Bros. competitively; did not have any frequent updates for any balance problems; would tell major organizations like EVO that we cannot stream our content as a community, even after raising money for breast cancer. These other communities don't have these problems. They get frequent updates for balance patches, their developers listen to the crowd voice and input, they do what they can to cater to their hardcore audience. I mean, the writing is on the damn wall. It should be easy to see if you just peel back the bias and open your eyes for a few.

 

[Ulevo]

Double post.

 

[infomon]

Yes Brawl was bad, but the "brawl sucks" flaming was pretty severe. Many of us liked it despite its flaws, and also many of the things quoted here as "flaws" I think were improvements over Melee. It's personal preference. No need to attack people for their game preference.

I'm optimistic for smash4. But I'll admit, even if it's "bad" I'm probably going to love playing it (competitively) for quite some time after its release. If other people want to keep playing Melee (they will) that's fine, have fun. I just don't want to hear endless whining about "why smash4, smash4 sucks" all over the forums and tournaments.

 

[Ulevo]

Well it's an unfortunate side effect of what happened during Brawls initial infancy as a competitive game, and the never-ending immaturity and stupidity of some people. As much as I don't believe Brawl is a competitively good game, I don't find it right to tell people they can't enjoy it. Because I'd be wrong. Clearly people do. But when you have two sides of the argument having to tolerate the utter disregard for the other persons views so repeatedly, values and manners get thrown out the window and suddenly calling people stupid for liking their given game is their go-to-option.

Also, sometimes calling someone stupid for liking Brawl or Melee become intertwined and ravelled in with some of the arguments made in favor of either game. The latter is still wrong, and something you shouldn't do. That said, it's pretty easy to go from telling someone that their argument that Wavedashing is a glitch or that Brawl is balanced is stupid to telling them that they themselves are stupid when tensions are high.

 

[smashbro29]

People give Brawl **** because let's face it, the only reason anyone even plays Brawl competitively is because Melee was such a good game.

No one would give 2 ****s about smash as a competitive game had it not been for Melee.

If it just went 64-brawl there would be no apex and there would be no brawl at evo.

Brawl is a good game but for competition, let's face it already; they ****ed up.

 

[infomon]

Ulevo, I agree 100%.

Anyway, hoping for the best for smash4!!

 

[Morbi]

People give Brawl **** because let's face it, the only reason anyone even plays Brawl competitively is because Melee was such a good game.

No one would give 2 ****s about smash as a competitive game had it not been for Melee.

If it just went 64-brawl there would be no apex and there would be no brawl at evo.

Brawl is a good game but for competition, let's face it already; they ****ed up.

That is entirely irrelevant as Brawl DOES have a competitive scene. One could make the compelling argument that Melee's competitive scene would not have existed if not for Smash 64. That reasoning is entirely circular, if we discern the situation objectively, we would find that Brawl DOES have a competitive scene. That being said, obviously they (Sora Ltd.) implemented some detrimental aspects to competitive Brawl, I suppose that is immaterial though; because, as I stated, there is a competitive scene.

It was the first sentence that bothered me. I mean, people have a right to criticize Brawl, but it isn't necessarily messed up (it is just different).

 

[Ulevo]

People give Brawl **** because let's face it, the only reason anyone even plays Brawl competitively is because Melee was such a good game.

No one would give 2 ****s about smash as a competitive game had it not been for Melee.

If it just went 64-brawl there would be no apex and there would be no brawl at evo.

Brawl is a good game but for competition, let's face it already; they ****ed up.

Mm, to be fair, Smash 64 is pretty bad ass. It's kind of like that old grampa of yours that you don't quite appreciate but for some reason can whip your ass in a game of chess, amongst other things.

 

[smashbro29]

That is entirely irrelevant as Brawl DOES have a competitive scene. One could make the compelling argument that Melee's competitive scene would not have existed if not for Smash 64. That reasoning is entirely circular, if we discern the situation objectively, we would find that Brawl DOES have a competitive scene. That being said, obviously they (Sora Ltd.) implemented some detrimental aspects to competitive Brawl, I suppose that is immaterial though; because, as I stated, there is a competitive scene.

It was the first sentence that bothered me. I mean, people have a right to criticize Brawl, but it isn't necessarily messed up (it is just different).

Brawl has one because it was the game following Melee. 64 did not have a very large one. It's not at all circular as I'm positive Melee could have had a scene regardless of 64.

Objectively speaking if you were to look at Brawl as as its own and not as part of the series you would question why people played this competitively.

Mm, to be fair, Smash 64 is pretty bad ***. It's kind of like that old grampa of yours that you don't quite appreciate but for some reason can whip your *** in a game of chess, amongst other things.

Smash 64 is not bad. It's definitely better than Brawl that much is clear.

 

[JV5Chris]

You know, it wasn't uncommon for the indie platform fighter I was working on to receive some nasty remarks. I knew though if I ever embraced the victimized mindset it would be all downhill from there. Believe me, there is no better way to halt progress and turn people away from something you're passionate about than complaining about those who don't appreciate it.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

It's truly amazing how deep the hate runs. Let me spell this out really simply:

Support doesn't mean play and blindly follow. Support means support. If smash 4 doesn't satisfy you as a player, feel free to play whatever you want. However, support those who make a different choice than you. If you know some guys holding a smash 4 tournament, you should be supportive of what they are doing, not dismissive, since that's just being a good "citizen" of the greater smash community. In fact, even if you just selfishly want to promote Melee and couldn't care less about the greater scene, this is a better strategy to grow your playerbase than trashing on smash 4 constantly and being dismissive toward its scene since the same players who are getting into smash 4 might want to play Melee in the future if they stick around whereas the only thing you accomplish by behaving badly is running people off. Anyone who seriously looks at acting out against another smash game as a positive step is either a fool or a troll. I'm opposed to people behaving foolishly (and am trying to advise you guys to do better!), and trolls just have no place in the community.

I don't really think you can just say that the only solution is for the game to be so overwhelmingly good that no one will be inclined to complain. Both Melee and Brawl pass the "depth threshold" by which competitive design can be strictly better or worse so quality assessments of these games and any games in their league are going to be purely matters of opinion, not fact. It's impossible for any game to be made that will make everyone happy; ironically, the only non-controversial possibility would be if smash 4 were truly awful. As was said, if Brawl really did just suck, no one would have played it and the community really would have fully rejected it, not holding any tournaments of substance or even really discussing it beyond the occasional joke. If smash 4 turns out to be a lot worse than Brawl and instead something like Street Fighter x Tekken in which the game has significant enough issues we just don't back the game in any meaningful fashion, fine. It will die early, and no one loses anything. If the game is good enough to actually be picked up by a large chunk of the community, we need to act like adults, recognize our shared interests, behave civilly toward one another, and support each other's endeavors.

For crying out loud, I'm basically just telling everyone to treat each other in a decent fashion. It's not even about the games; it's about the fact that you're dealing with other people, other people who share a passion for Smash Bros. even. How could it possibly be anything but right to treat each other well? I can't even begin to understand the mentality that sees this request as controversial, and I don't really want to hear about the anonymous on the internet thing. We're a community that meets in person to hold tournaments; you're not anonyous username, you're a person with a face who has to look other people on here in the eye down the road. No one here is really anonymous, and we're all just people here. Every one of us needs to take responsibility for how our words and actions affect each other, and while I can understand perhaps having just been thoughtless, I made this topic specifically so you can have in fact thought about it. In all honesty, if you can just accept that it's right and necessary that you care about the people around you and think about how what you say and do affects those people, this topic has done its job.

 

[popsofctown]

Ooh, I'm pretty sure he referenced the pong example, indirectly.

 

[LiteralGrill]

lol

Melee 'haters' didn't gimp Brawl. If a game is good, it will stand on its own proverbial two feet. If it isn't, it's going to be surrounded in controversy.

Do you ever stop to actually think for a second about this? Why? Why Brawl? Why is Brawl getting all of this flack. Did it ever occur to you that there is a rational root cause behind this besides these nonsensical, idiotic, branded notions of "brawl haters" that just spawned out of the wood work, intent on spewing their venom and hatred towards your beloved Smash game?

Gotta quickly interject, "my beloved smash game"? In case I've never made it clear I'm a big 64 fan moreso then the other two, but either way your next example may prove my point.

Let's look at some competitive examples, shall we.

Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. BlazBlue, up until recently, was the successor of Guilty Gear. In a sense, it took the place of Guilty Gear and its future. And in a lot of ways, Guilty Gear was a lot more complex, a lot more technical, and a lot faster. Just like Melee is to Brawl. But did you see volumes of controversial arguments and dividing debates in the Dustloop community over it? No, you didn't. You had the occasional person who gave their 2 cents, but all in all people were okay with it and let it go because for all intents and purposes, BlazBlue is actually a good game, even if arguably watered down. It was handled with quality.

Look at how well that behavior was. I don't care if you hate Brawl, seriously hate it all you want. Hate Melee, hate 64, hate Project M, hate it ALL you want. There's no problem not liking a game it becomes a problem when people who don't like a game go out of their way to try and ruin it for those who did. Not all people who didn't like Brawl did that, some were great about still giving it a shot and playing even. But if you want to say not a single Melee player directly went out of their way to actually attempt to sabotage the Brawl scene you need to hit the history books a bit here on SWF.

The irony of your entire post is that you miss the point Wife was trying to address. They may have been a tad ignorant to the specific details of the game at the time, like Din's Fire being overpowered. I mean, it was a brand new game. But the same complaints they had THEN, mere weeks after its release, are the same legitimate complaints people have for the game now.

A big part of the reason why there is all this hate is because a lot of respected players back then, Gimpyfish being the big one, gave their honest, professional input on what they thought the game was like. There is no crime in that. And unfortunately, because Melee is a Nintendo franchsie and was very successful competitively and casually, we had a huge influx of newbies come in to take the mantle from the old veterans. And when we had pro players telling a crowdful of new students that "sorry guys, the new game isn't very good", a lot of people didn't want to accept that. Likely due to a lot of reasons. New players were investing their time to become the next Ken or M2K or PC Chris, and of course investing time in to a bad game doesn't sit well with people. I'd know, I was one of those new players. And of course these new players weren't experienced enough to tell what did and didn't make a successful fighter or Smash game competitively, so it's not like having a conversation about it was going to win many of these people over.

Eventually the topics about this went from civilized debates along the lines of 'listen, I know you guys have hope fro this game, and you think a new AT might come along to make it great, but it's really not the case' to 'Guys, you're idiots. Brawl is terrible. Just stop.' because people became tired of hearing the same crap over and over again and repeating themselves to people who were rude, ignorant about Smash in general, and just didn't get it.

What if the real answer was they liked Brawl? A lot of people just plain liked Brawl more then Melee. A game being better then another game comes down to opinion, you cannot without any sort of personal bias actually be able to say one Smash is better then the other, you cannot scientifically do so.

Sure, people can give their honest opinions on the game, I have NO issue with that and many people did a really respectful job doing so and were always thoughtful and polite. For every one person like that, maybe 50 or so said "lol u suck play Melee you n00b". Seriously. You have LOADS of new people coming to see what kind of thing this smash scene is, wanting to see if there are cool people and if people are fun to be around and you see that you won't want to join, and if you risk it and do anyways you aren't likely to stay long. Smash 4 is going to bring us this new influx of young and brand new players again and we simply cannot afford to treat them like that again. We DID gimp the scene by doing so, and the people who were doing that were not the usually respectable people, but the average Melee player. I do agree people should have pushed through regardless (and they did Brawl WAS successful and still could be) but that kind of behavior doesn't help.

Most competitive communities, like our own, don't experience these divides or controversial problems until the game itself starts to have issues. Do you think its a coincidence that communities like League of Legends, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear are free of these problems? We have a game that, up until recently, had a developer specifically tell us that he does not want to see us play Smash Bros. competitively; did not have any frequent updates for any balance problems; would tell major organizations like EVO that we cannot stream our content as a community, even after raising money for breast cancer. These other communities don't have these problems. They get frequent updates for balance patches, their developers listen to the crowd voice and input, they do what they can to cater to their hardcore audience. I mean, the writing is on the damn wall. It should be easy to see if you just peel back the bias and open your eyes for a few.

I know we are in a tougher situation, this time around we actually have a good shot at getting possible patches, one good sign. Nintendo has actually been talking with people like MLG, another REALLY good sign. But if they see the community is permeated by the kind of bad people we discussed earlier they WILL bail as supporting things like that puts their name behind those people and makes them look BAD just like MLG bailed when a bunch of Brawl people did stupid crap.

Well it's an unfortunate side effect of what happened during Brawls initial infancy as a competitive game, and the never-ending immaturity and stupidity of some people. As much as I don't believe Brawl is a competitively good game, I don't find it right to tell people they can't enjoy it. Because I'd be wrong. Clearly people do. But when you have two sides of the argument having to tolerate the utter disregard for the other persons views so repeatedly, values and manners get thrown out the window and suddenly calling people stupid for liking their given game is their go-to-option.

Also, sometimes calling someone stupid for liking Brawl or Melee become intertwined and ravelled in with some of the arguments made in favor of either game. The latter is still wrong, and something you shouldn't do. That said, it's pretty easy to go from telling someone that their argument that Wavedashing is a glitch or that Brawl is balanced is stupid to telling them that they themselves are stupid when tensions are high.

In essence you agree with me here. Yeah both sides were stupid, but now that we saw how bad that was and realize people were being stupid is it too much to ask to not be stupid again?

 

[fabulouspants]

melee players have gone out of their way to attend brawl tournaments to boo the game/chant "brawl sucks". yes i have witnessed this actually happening IRL several times.

 

[Ulevo]

Look at how well that behavior was. I don't care if you hate Brawl, seriously hate it all you want. Hate Melee, hate 64, hate Project M, hate it ALL you want. There's no problem not liking a game it becomes a problem when people who don't like a game go out of their way to try and ruin it for those who did. Not all people who didn't like Brawl did that, some were great about still giving it a shot and playing even. But if you want to say not a single Melee player directly went out of their way to actually attempt to sabotage the Brawl scene you need to hit the history books a bit here on SWF.

I hate to pull the whole credentials crap, but really? I joined here in 2007, and have been a lurker here for even longer than that. You joined in 2012, and while I can't start babbling about how long you've lurked here for, I assure you my marks in SWF history are just fine.

And no, I'm not saying not a single melee player has ill intent towards Brawl or Brawl players, however saying they went out of their way to sabotage Brawl's scene is honestly a little more than ridiculous. People are passionate, and sometimes their frustration gets the better of them in heated debates, but people don't halt their dinner plans and offline priorities to make kids who like one game over another feel sorry for themselves 'just cause'. There's motive behind these incidences.

What if the real answer was they liked Brawl?

A lot of people just plain liked Brawl more then Melee. A game being better then another game comes down to opinion, you cannot without any sort of personal bias actually be able to say one Smash is better then the other, you cannot scientifically do so.

And I'm sure many people liked Brawl more than Melee. That's fine. But that's not the point I'm making. I'm saying that out of those people who were passionate about Brawl, there were groups of people that for various reasons contributed to the negative controversy outside mere preference.

"Scientifically do so." lol

It's all relative. Within the confines of a specific context, you can always make objective decisions or comparisons. If I tell you that combos are inherently a good, healthy component to fighting games, and we all democratically agree that this is the case, while this may be a subjective opinion, it leads the way to objective observation and argument. Because from there, I can say that based on that premise, then Brawl is inferior to Melee, and that would be considered objectively correct, again within that context.

Just an example, but I want to point out that you can take almost anything 'objective' and refute it through arguments of perception and relativity, and take 'subjective' arguments and turn them in to objective constructs to a debate based on what your values are and the understanding of the norm or status quo.

So yeah. I can't sit here and convince you that Brawl is better than Melee or vice versa so long as you hold a different perception to me in what you believe to be a desirable game. I can however provide evidence to support a claim on which I think is better based on what we mutually agree to be true. And in game design, and competitive communities in general, there are a lot of shared truths.

Sure, people can give their honest opinions on the game, I have NO issue with that and many people did a really respectful job doing so and were always thoughtful and polite. For every one person like that, maybe 50 or so said "lol u suck play Melee you n00b". Seriously. You have LOADS of new people coming to see what kind of thing this smash scene is, wanting to see if there are cool people and if people are fun to be around and you see that you won't want to join, and if you risk it and do anyways you aren't likely to stay long. Smash 4 is going to bring us this new influx of young and brand new players again and we simply cannot afford to treat them like that again. We DID gimp the scene by doing so, and the people who were doing that were not the usually respectable people, but the average Melee player. I do agree people should have pushed through regardless (and they did Brawl WAS successful and still could be) but that kind of behavior doesn't help.

This is a gross exaggeration. Negative experiences are known to be more profoundly remembered and talked about than positive ones, but that doesn't mean its the predominant perception or phenomenon.

What we need for people who come to these forums is proper education. If people are educated in how the game works, how competitive games function, and what makes competitive games and communities engaging and successful, then we can come to a more understanding consensus. But until that happens, headway isn't going to be made, and there will always be arguments between two opposing sides so long as one side isn't properly informed.

I know we are in a tougher situation, this time around we actually have a good shot at getting possible patches, one good sign. Nintendo has actually been talking with people like MLG, another REALLY good sign. But if they see the community is permeated by the kind of bad people we discussed earlier they WILL bail as supporting things like that puts their name behind those people and makes them look BAD just like MLG bailed when a bunch of Brawl people did stupid crap.

There are no good people, or bad people. There are people who make good or bad decisions, and those decisions stem from the right or wrong motivation, and proper and improper understanding. Nintendo isn't going to 'bail' on us because of debate or controversy within ourselves because Nintendo is a business concerned with its own priorities outside of our own. Quite frankly its the other way around. As for the MLG incident, well. It could be argued that was a separate issue entirely, or maybe even that that is just a reflection of the Brawl community itself. Though that would be just my personal view, I can't exactly prove that either way.

In essence you agree with me here. Yeah both sides were stupid, but now that we saw how bad that was and realize people were being stupid is it too much to ask to not be stupid again?

Well, yeah. It kind of is, to be honest. What I'm trying to say here is that if we get Brawl 2.0, or a game that is perceivably worse, the problem is only going to escalate. And if we get a game that has improved on its past flaws, then the issue will get better. There might be a few individuals in the community that can mature, self regulate themselves when they talk about these topics, be polite, but at large the issue on the end with Nintendo and Sakurai. I'm not saying that's how it necessarily should be, just how it is.

 

[Sucumbio]

good read aa

Though it does read a bit like you're blaming the audience for Nintendo's poor game design. Which I can get behind, there is project M... the audience in kind designing a better game... but I could see where they were coming from.

Eh, those that felt, melee is better... I can't blame them, either really... but I agree the argument was dumb. It's like comparing checkers and chess, there is no comparison.

I think Nintendo HAS actually made a good move that'll recapture people's attention, and that's their roster for smash 4...

But yeah, anyway, I guess the real secret to fighting game success at least in the competitive sense is speed, and brawl's just too slow... maybe the new one will be "melee" fast. If not, -I- won't complain, I'm one of the "poison" audience who loves Brawl :D

 

[LiteralGrill]

I hate to pull the whole credentials crap, but really? I joined here in 2007, and have been a lurker here for even longer than that. You joined in 2012, and while I can't start babbling about how long you've lurked here for, I assure you my marks in SWF history are just fine.

I had an account that was MUCH older, but could not for the life of me remember the password and figured since it was so long since I'd posted it'd be nice to start fresh with the fresh game.

And no, I'm not saying not a single melee player has ill intent towards Brawl or Brawl players, however saying they went out of their way to sabotage Brawl's scene is honestly a little more than ridiculous. People are passionate, and sometimes their frustration gets the better of them in heated debates, but people don't halt their dinner plans and offline priorities to make kids who like one game over another feel sorry for themselves 'just cause'. There's motive behind these incidences.

Oh yeah I agree there's motive, and it may have seriously been misguided passion. But things like the chanting of brawl sucks that was mentioned above as well as things much worse were sometimes done on purpose. Some Melee players did go to Brawl tournaments just to try and make sure they went bad.

And I'm sure many people liked Brawl more than Melee. That's fine. But that's not the point I'm making. I'm saying that out of those people who were passionate about Brawl, there were groups of people that for various reasons contributed to the negative controversy outside mere preference.

"Scientifically do so." lol

It's all relative. Within the confines of a specific context, you can always make objective decisions or comparisons. If I tell you that combos are inherently a good, healthy component to fighting games, and we all democratically agree that this is the case, while this may be a subjective opinion, it leads the way to objective observation and argument. Because from there, I can say that based on that premise, then Brawl is inferior to Melee, and that would be considered objectively correct, again within that context.

Just an example, but I want to point out that you can take almost anything 'objective' and refute it through arguments of perception and relativity, and take 'subjective' arguments and turn them in to objective constructs to a debate based on what your values are and the understanding of the norm or status quo.

So yeah. I can't sit here and convince you that Brawl is better than Melee or vice versa so long as you hold a different perception to me in what you believe to be a desirable game. I can however provide evidence to support a claim on which I think is better based on what we mutually agree to be true. And in game design, and competitive communities in general, there are a lot of shared truths.

True, but you just explained why telling people who honestly liked their game it was bad caused issues. To them and their preference it WAS good. Honestly I can agree tha gameplay wise as it is now Melee is supereor to Brawl. Brawl with some serious rules changes could maybe have a better shot, but that's different. However, if my favorite game was Brawl, and you said it sucked and presented reasons I didn't agree with (or in some cases people presented reasons that were the reason why people liked the game) it wont be a problem until you tried to force them onto me like some people did. (Making sure that's really clear, I don't want to hate on ALL Melee folks, many are awesome people, bad apples spoiled the bunch sometimes.

This is a gross exaggeration. Negative experiences are known to be more profoundly remembered and talked about than positive ones, but that doesn't mean its the predominant perception or phenomenon.

Maybe the numbers are, but honestly back then especially (not really so much today) there really were a ton of people who behaved that way and spoke that way. All it takes is literally a few to cause problems, the larger numbers made it suck. Not to mention the lack of maturity on BOTH side when it came to arguing, we had young players some KIDS even talking about things they had no clue about, adults sometimes doing the same, and the biggest problem was it was rare when people were civil with each other.

What we need for people who come to these forums is proper education. If people are educated in how the game works, how competitive games function, and what makes competitive games and communities engaging and successful, then we can come to a more understanding consensus. But until that happens, headway isn't going to be made, and there will always be arguments between two opposing sides so long as one side isn't properly informed.

This has a lot of truth I agree. While I doubt we'll ever have a full consensus and preference must still be honored, this would be a great thing.

There are no good people, or bad people. There are people who make good or bad decisions, and those decisions stem from the right or wrong motivation, and proper and improper understanding. Nintendo isn't going to 'bail' on us because of debate or controversy within ourselves because Nintendo is a business concerned with its own priorities outside of our own. Quite frankly its the other way around. As for the MLG incident, well. It could be argued that was a separate issue entirely, or maybe even that that is just a reflection of the Brawl community itself. Though that would be just my personal view, I can't exactly prove that either way.

I meant more along the lines of what people think of our community. If people get this perception that we're a bunch of jerks with nother better to do then be jerks to people who like a game all day long Nintendo wont want to support that. And unfortunately as you mentioned the bad is remembered more then the good, so these things will stick with us forever. And MLG had a few incidents, you mean the Dorritos thing, the money splitting thing, or the other random small incidents that have minor notoriety? Yeah they made us look bad, and if we look bad Nintendo wont want to touch us with a ten foot pole. They already have been incredibly wary of anything with competitive smash, we can't give them any more reasons.

Well, yeah. It kind of is, to be honest. What I'm trying to say here is that if we get Brawl 2.0, or a game that is perceivably worse, the problem is only going to escalate. And if we get a game that has improved on its past flaws, then the issue will get better. There might be a few individuals in the community that can mature, self regulate themselves when they talk about these topics, be polite, but at large the issue on the end with Nintendo and Sakurai. I'm not saying that's how it necessarily should be, just how it is.

You are fair and honest. It sucks that we can't expect more out of the community though :/ Hopefully this time we have enough people here who have grown a bit and experienced the previous era and can try to mitigate the people who still decide to act poorly. Hopefully the numbers of people who are good and polite outweigh the morons so much that we don't have the problem again either way. I can dream...

 

[Ulevo]

True, but you just explained why telling people who honestly liked their game it was bad caused issues. To them and their preference it WAS good. Honestly I can agree tha gameplay wise as it is now Melee is supereor to Brawl. Brawl with some serious rules changes could maybe have a better shot, but that's different. However, if my favorite game was Brawl, and you said it sucked and presented reasons I didn't agree with (or in some cases people presented reasons that were the reason why people liked the game) it wont be a problem until you tried to force them onto me like some people did. (Making sure that's really clear, I don't want to hate on ALL Melee folks, many are awesome people, bad apples spoiled the bunch sometimes.

I don't believe there is an issue in explaining criticisms to people about something that they like. There's a distinct difference between telling people Brawl isn't a good game, or Brawl has problems, and telling people that like Brawl that they're stupid explicitly for liking Brawl. Those things are not one in the same.

I meant more along the lines of what people think of our community. If people get this perception that we're a bunch of jerks with nother better to do then be jerks to people who like a game all day long Nintendo wont want to support that. And unfortunately as you mentioned the bad is remembered more then the good, so these things will stick with us forever. And MLG had a few incidents, you mean the Dorritos thing, the money splitting thing, or the other random small incidents that have minor notoriety? Yeah they made us look bad, and if we look bad Nintendo wont want to touch us with a ten foot pole. They already have been incredibly wary of anything with competitive smash, we can't give them any more reasons.

I was referring to all of those things, really. I mean at best that kind of behaviour won't do us any favors, and at worst what your saying is true. I don't think we really need Nintendo support so much as we need support from major tournament organizers like MLG and EVO, and for Nintendo to be 'okay' with us being a competitive scene with our own autonomy.

 

[popsofctown]

@ Ulevo : I've pointed out the motive for sabotaging the Brawl scene, and it doesn't take much creativity to see it, the goal of it was to maintain the size of the melee scene. It actually hurt growth rate, especially long term, but it did improve retention.

Brawl sabotage was real, though rarely is it as overt as fabulouspants example.

 

[fabulouspants]

the fact that melee players literally went out of their way to a brawl tournament to chant "brawl sucks" at a brawl bi weekly(this wasn't even a big event) is still stupid.

 

[JV5Chris]

Dwelling on all these past grievances sure will be encouraging to new players when the game drops.

 

[PikaJew]

get ready for Smash 4 vs PM

 

[LiteralGrill]

get ready for Smash 4 vs PM

It's already 3DS vs Wii U, add in PM... Great...

 

[Fuqua]

So you pretty much want the entire smash community to forcefully stand behind the new game. You say that the main reason Brawl wasn’t well received competitively was the community. I have no way to proof this (neither do you) but I highly doubt that the community was to blame for anything. Let’s just face it, from a competitive standpoint most people agree that brawl was the worse game. It was less fun to play, it was less fun to watch. So the reason why this community divided/died was simply brawl, we aren’t to blame for anything. It was a 100% natural turn of events and guess what, if smash 4 isn’t competitively interesting either, the exact same thing is going to happen. A competitive community builds around a game, not the other way around.

I have no intention to attack smash 4, FFS I want this game to be bloody amazing, better than any smash game before it. Having said that, if I don’t enjoy it, I’m not going to force myself to play it just to keep a community alive which would naturally die.

 

[TimeSmash]

While I'm sure the modicum of this community can agree that Brawl was less technically demanding, but as stated numerous times before in this thread it has a competitive scene that should be respected in its own right. No one is asking you to play brawl or Smash 4, but rather to respect people who play it versus the other titles. That being said, if there is a Smash 4 tourney, people in the community shouldn't encourage people not to go because they like game X better. The reverse shouldn't happen either. I think AA was trying to say "let people play the games they want, and don't be a jagoff to people who play different ones." Like if you play Brawl, okay good for you, but I like Project M. That's how it should be, without people saying what game sucks and why the people who play it suck etc.

 

[Muster]

While I'm sure the modicum of this community can agree that Brawl was less technically demanding, but as stated numerous times before in this thread it has a competitive scene that should be respected in its own right. No one is asking you to play brawl or Smash 4, but rather to respect people who play it versus the other titles. That being said, if there is a Smash 4 tourney, people in the community shouldn't encourage people not to go because they like game X better. The reverse shouldn't happen either. I think AA was trying to say "let people play the games they want, and don't be a jagoff to people who play different ones." Like if you play Brawl, okay good for you, but I like Project M. That's how it should be, without people saying what game sucks and why the people who play it suck etc.

Of course, it goes both ways.
Most posts i see is about melee players bagging on brawl etc etc, but I have seen more recently a lot of resentful future sm4sh and brawl players go on tirades about how melee is "too old" and how the melee people should grow up and "move on". (I say this, but that doesn't mean i'm in any way encouraging how melee players act in regards to brawl, either. Just saying it goes both ways.) This shouldn't be advocated in either direction, it only poisons the community as a whole.

Btw we have the same post count

 

[TimeSmash]

Of course, it goes both ways.
Most posts i see is about melee players bagging on brawl etc etc, but I have seen more recently a lot of resentful future sm4sh and brawl players go on tirades about how melee is "too old" and how the melee people should grow up and "move on". (I say this, but that doesn't mean i'm in any way encouraging how melee players act in regards to brawl, either. Just saying it goes both ways.) This shouldn't be advocated in either direction, it only poisons the community as a whole.

Exactly. If you have such opinions, you can be polite about them or not say them at all if you think it's going to start a flame war. I think there are many newer gamers on the scene like you described, thinking Melee is dated when it actually aged pretty well. Just respect what people choose to play, it isn't hard haha

 

[Mew2King]

I will be streaming smash starting in 2 weeks (melee/pm) and I will have smash 4 before anybody and streaming that then. www.twitch.tv/mew2king

just thought u should all know

 

[TimeSmash]

How are you getting it before everyone? You've piqued my interest

 

[Mew2King]

nothing is set in stone yet, but it is much more likely than not

i wont say anything else sorry lol

don't be surprised if they announce mewtwo in smash 4 though

i already knew about little mac

what do i know maybe im talking out my ass

 

[Muster]

Mew2king with the inside info here
The fact that Nintendo has even made effort to contact a pro smash player is something to be beyond hyped about in my book, oooh i can't wait!

 

[TimeSmash]

Muster you keep disequalizing our post counts!

God there's hope for the scene yet if they really did contact you, M2K

 

[Mew2King]

ur all just assuming things

follow/sub/etc to my twitch and links in my sig if u wanna be a part of the early info before anyone else

 

[TheMagicalKuja]

Welp, I know what I'll be doing over some weekends!

 

[Mew2King]

I'll be streaming Mon-Thurs, a lot each day.

Weekends are for tourneys, Fridays are for whatever i want.

 

[Cold Fusion]

I'll be streaming Mon-Thurs, a lot each day.

Weekends are for tourneys, Fridays are for whatever i want.

Wait will you practice on your own? Or will you play against other players?

 

[DaDavid]

As interested as I am in Mew2King's Twitch situation, (I already went ahead and followed him over there) lemme try to bring us back on topic by giving my 2 cents as a person who only joined Smash Boards this year and who did so with the intent to be involved enough in the community to enjoy Smash 4 competitively...

I understand that people may not like the idea of supporting a game that they don't like, so if Smash 4 ends up as a Brawl 2.0 (which I don't think we have ground to fear) I fully anticipate some level of "hate." I mean even if it ends up generally better than Brawl, I'm sure we'll get a few people who are just upset it isn't Melee 2.0 and hell I can even imagine people who actually DID want Brawl 2.0.

However, I think the only thing Amazing Ampharos is trying to communicate is that all of those opinions are a matter of preference, and your preference for a certain game shouldn't result in outspoken criticism of another when no amount of criticism will change what the game is. So say a Smash 4 tourney is going down and you are not a fan of Smash 4. Is your best course of action, for the community, to promote the tourney and help people be made aware of it even if you've no interest in playing there? Or is it to just bash the game, the tourney, and the fans; adding on that Smash 4 will never be as good as 64/Melee/Brawl/PM?

Helping the popularity of Smash as a series to grow will allow all of the versions of Smash to find a fanbase eventually, and taking advantage of the momentum that a new game brings is going to be crucial for helping in that objective.

 

[Sucumbio]

I will be streaming smash starting in 2 weeks (melee/pm) and I will have smash 4 before anybody and streaming that then. www.twitch.tv/mew2king

just thought u should all know

So bookmarked this link. Right next to my favorite porn.

@thread it's funny but this community is the only one that I know of that gives hugs... I mean, yeah there's been some bad trash talk and whatever, but if you look at other FGCs they're a lot worse, like violent even... I dunno, here it's all about "respect" and yada yada it's kinda nice, despite the occasional backlash of intellectuality. I couldn't have made a home anywhere else *awwwww* shutup. :D

Melee will never be too old, just like Tekken 3 will never be too old, or MK3 even lol people fall in love with games and play them forever, it's just the mark of a good game... if S4 > Brawl then I will stop playing brawl, cause that's what I do in FGS especially ones with hype competitive scenes like this one (and let's be fair some of the Brawls that we have seen are just absolutely amazing).

But if the online sucks this time I will be blowing up Nintendo headquarters.

 

[Cassio]

lol

Melee 'haters' didn't gimp Brawl. If a game is good, it will stand on its own proverbial two feet. If it isn't, it's going to be surrounded in controversy.

Do you ever stop to actually think for a second about this? Why? Why Brawl? Why is Brawl getting all of this flack. Did it ever occur to you that there is a rational root cause behind this besides these nonsensical, idiotic, branded notions of "brawl haters" that just spawned out of the wood work, intent on spewing their venom and hatred towards your beloved Smash game?

Let's look at some competitive examples, shall we.

Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. BlazBlue, up until recently, was the successor of Guilty Gear. In a sense, it took the place of Guilty Gear and its future. And in a lot of ways, Guilty Gear was a lot more complex, a lot more technical, and a lot faster. Just like Melee is to Brawl. But did you see volumes of controversial arguments and dividing debates in the Dustloop community over it? No, you didn't. You had the occasional person who gave their 2 cents, but all in all people were okay with it and let it go because for all intents and purposes, BlazBlue is actually a good game, even if arguably watered down. It was handled with quality.

Now let's look at Pokemon, specifically from generation IV to generation V. Pokemon Black & White came with a lot of controversy, largely due to the power creep that came with the release of Dream World abilities and Pokemon with over the top stats. The entire metagame turned in to wars over weather conditions and made the entire competitive scene stagnant. Pokemon that were arguably Uber tier quality were sometimes relegated to UU because the distortion of power was so great that the whole meta was upside down for a large majority of it. With this came a lot of controversial bans and clauses, such as Swift Swim + Drizzle clause, and all the subsequent Pokemon that were banned thereafter because Drizzle itself was not suspect tested. A large part of this being due to the fear that if Drizzle were to be banned, there would be a large cascade of subsequent bans involved as Drizzle was holding them in check. I could go on, but the tl;dr if you weren't around on Smogon back then, the Smashboards and Dustloop for competitive Pokemon, is that it was a ****storm. Pokemon Black and White, competitively speaking, were not good games. They were pretty terrible. To the point where Nintendo acknowledged a lot of their mistakes, and made a lot of subsequent changes leading in to X and Y. Chandelure, while never released with its Dream World ability Shadow Tag in Black and White, had its Dream World ability changed going in to X and Y. All weather conditions were nerfed. Special Attack base powers were nerfed across the board. A lot of the new top tier threats in X and Y have much lower base stats and base stat totals than what we've been seeing for the past two generations. Et cetera.

A lot of people left the competitive scene during that time. A lot of people stayed away from Smogon. The community became divided, a lot of arguments happened, and the Black and White metagame is still a mess. Why? Because Gamefreak made some boo boos.

The irony of your entire post is that you miss the point Wife was trying to address. They may have been a tad ignorant to the specific details of the game at the time, like Din's Fire being overpowered. I mean, it was a brand new game. But the same complaints they had THEN, mere weeks after its release, are the same legitimate complaints people have for the game now.

A big part of the reason why there is all this hate is because a lot of respected players back then, Gimpyfish being the big one, gave their honest, professional input on what they thought the game was like. There is no crime in that. And unfortunately, because Melee is a Nintendo franchsie and was very successful competitively and casually, we had a huge influx of newbies come in to take the mantle from the old veterans. And when we had pro players telling a crowdful of new students that "sorry guys, the new game isn't very good", a lot of people didn't want to accept that. Likely due to a lot of reasons. New players were investing their time to become the next Ken or M2K or PC Chris, and of course investing time in to a bad game doesn't sit well with people. I'd know, I was one of those new players. And of course these new players weren't experienced enough to tell what did and didn't make a successful fighter or Smash game competitively, so it's not like having a conversation about it was going to win many of these people over.

Eventually the topics about this went from civilized debates along the lines of 'listen, I know you guys have hope fro this game, and you think a new AT might come along to make it great, but it's really not the case' to 'Guys, you're idiots. Brawl is terrible. Just stop.' because people became tired of hearing the same crap over and over again and repeating themselves to people who were rude, ignorant about Smash in general, and just didn't get it.

Most competitive communities, like our own, don't experience these divides or controversial problems until the game itself starts to have issues. Do you think its a coincidence that communities like League of Legends, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear are free of these problems? We have a game that, up until recently, had a developer specifically tell us that he does not want to see us play Smash Bros. competitively; did not have any frequent updates for any balance problems; would tell major organizations like EVO that we cannot stream our content as a community, even after raising money for breast cancer. These other communities don't have these problems. They get frequent updates for balance patches, their developers listen to the crowd voice and input, they do what they can to cater to their hardcore audience. I mean, the writing is on the damn wall. It should be easy to see if you just peel back the bias and open your eyes for a few.

Youre completely wrong here. The ire of the melee scene wasnt the only headwind Brawl had to face but it was a significant in stunting its growth.

You want to try and attribute this to Brawl's poor design, but in reality it's ignorance of the game theyre hating on. The truth is the old melee vets were wrong, pure and simple, and your agreement with Wife's post and the perspective that Brawl is a poor competitive game is a testament to the harm done out of ignorance.

One player may look at this as a shining example of the game's technical depth. Of course a deeper observation would also note an opponent who pressed up-b then died.

Less technical, but we see here an opponent has multiple opportunities to escape, yet still dies because of difficult decisions made based on the opponent's actions.

Different strokes for different folks.

Melee vets and others have a difficult time enjoying the game because it is mentally difficult and defensive oriented. These attributes make the game much harder to jump into. Or maybe they just want more buttons to press . I could go into much more detail about this, but I'm more concerned with correcting the misconception and not sure you're still following the thread.