SamuraiPanda
Smash Hero
- Joined
- May 22, 2006
- Messages
- 6,924
I've thought about this for quite some time now, but I've just now become bored enough to make the actual post. The thing is, I'm nearly certain that the reason Brawl is so different from Melee is because WE, the fans, absolutely demanded online Smash Bros. Yeah, its probably because of us that the game turned out the way it did. Notice that everything revolves around a single main point: Brawl was made from the ground up as an online game due to the enormous demand for the series to go online, and that is what effected it. And here is why I think so, organized into numbers to read easier:
1. Back when the Wii was known as the Revolution, in E3 2005, Iwata (Prez of Nintendo) announced a new Smash Bros game. The only details? That the game is online. And this was announced even before Sakurai heard about it.
2. Iwata told Sakurai that if Sakurai wasn't going to do a new Smash, then Nintendo would have re-released Melee with minimal changes (no changes at all to the roster, either) but with online functionality. As awesome as that sounds to some of you out there; imagine trying to play Melee with the lag we get with Brawl. Melee is 5x faster than Brawl as it is, so it would have been nearly impossible to play smoothly. Which leads me to my next point.
3. Online would have been nearly impossible if Brawl was nearly the same speed as Melee. Sakurai didn't have much of a choice. He was FORCED from day 1 to make Smash into an online game. He said many times in various interviews and blog posts a couple years back that this Smash was being created to be an online game. In Sakurai's situation, with Nintendo's horrible online system and wiii functionality with online, do you honestly believe he could have made Brawl as fast as Melee? Here, I'll answer that for you: Hell no. Brawl is slower because we wanted online, and Nintendo can't handle online.
4. Brawl is so "easy", "n00b-friendly" (neither of which I personally agree with), and less technical than Melee because Sakurai thought millions of people would be playing this online every single day. Sakurai said that he took out wavedashing because it gave an advantage to the advanced player. And this is very true. There were many things that were only possible because of wavedashing, and denying that fact is just silly. Sure, you can beat people who wavedash, and wavedashing doesn't make you a good player nearly as much as your own skills, but there was still an advantage. Sakurai (and more likely, the higher-ups in Nintendo) were forced to take out more technical things like wavedashing, and probably L-canceling, because players like us who are so much better than the people who randomly play online would discourage those other players from every playing again. It would be a disasterous buisness plan for Nintendo to make a game that most of their population would get turned off too. Point-in-case: MKDS became dominated by people who snaked, and now very few people play it online because they simply couldn't win. Now MKWii is the first Mario Kart that doesn't have snaking (I think, but don't quote me on that). Why? To make people enjoy online more. In summary: Sakurai HAD to take out the technical game because we wanted online.
4a. Also, wavedashing/L-canceling would have been extremely difficult to implement smoothly into online due to the extremely small window available to do them in. Too fast for Nintedo's horrible online system to process.
I think I'm going to stop there. I'm sure anybody who has read this far can imagine of the rest of this themselves. Everyone wants to blame Sakurai for everything they don't like in Brawl. Sure, there are some things that you can truly say were stupid on his part for integrating (i.e. tripping) but stop for a second and think in his shoes for a moment. He was approached to make an online Smash game for the Wii. He was told that this is what everyone wanted, and what everyone would do. He probably thought that most people would end up playing the game online rather than IRL. So he had to make this entire game with that in mind. He tried to take a fighting game online (which is VERY difficult to do well due to the speed and precision necessary for most fighters) with a horribly sub-par online system built by a company that probably thinks the internet is like a series of tubes. Sakurai even said he wanted to add in voice chat, but he couldn't do it because the Wii couldn't handle it!
Do you think he didn't care about the competitive player? Ha! Remember those translations I did a long time ago? The very first email Sakurai responded to was a person thanking him for making Melee because he met his wife at a Melee tournament and now has a kid. And the very last email Sakurai responded to was that man's wife. He knew we were out there. He just couldn't do much to help us because the overwhelming majority wanted play Smash online, which could have never lead to the Melee 2.0 that so many people were hoping for. And yes, its ironic in the end that online came out so poorly.
This is just my perspective on why Brawl came out the way it did (well, at least one of the many reasons) but I'm certainly not complaining. I absolutely love this game the way it is. This is NOT a Melee vs Brawl debate, so don't turn this thread into one. By the way, online sucks. There, I've said it, so no need to bring that argument into this thread.
1. Back when the Wii was known as the Revolution, in E3 2005, Iwata (Prez of Nintendo) announced a new Smash Bros game. The only details? That the game is online. And this was announced even before Sakurai heard about it.
2. Iwata told Sakurai that if Sakurai wasn't going to do a new Smash, then Nintendo would have re-released Melee with minimal changes (no changes at all to the roster, either) but with online functionality. As awesome as that sounds to some of you out there; imagine trying to play Melee with the lag we get with Brawl. Melee is 5x faster than Brawl as it is, so it would have been nearly impossible to play smoothly. Which leads me to my next point.
3. Online would have been nearly impossible if Brawl was nearly the same speed as Melee. Sakurai didn't have much of a choice. He was FORCED from day 1 to make Smash into an online game. He said many times in various interviews and blog posts a couple years back that this Smash was being created to be an online game. In Sakurai's situation, with Nintendo's horrible online system and wiii functionality with online, do you honestly believe he could have made Brawl as fast as Melee? Here, I'll answer that for you: Hell no. Brawl is slower because we wanted online, and Nintendo can't handle online.
4. Brawl is so "easy", "n00b-friendly" (neither of which I personally agree with), and less technical than Melee because Sakurai thought millions of people would be playing this online every single day. Sakurai said that he took out wavedashing because it gave an advantage to the advanced player. And this is very true. There were many things that were only possible because of wavedashing, and denying that fact is just silly. Sure, you can beat people who wavedash, and wavedashing doesn't make you a good player nearly as much as your own skills, but there was still an advantage. Sakurai (and more likely, the higher-ups in Nintendo) were forced to take out more technical things like wavedashing, and probably L-canceling, because players like us who are so much better than the people who randomly play online would discourage those other players from every playing again. It would be a disasterous buisness plan for Nintendo to make a game that most of their population would get turned off too. Point-in-case: MKDS became dominated by people who snaked, and now very few people play it online because they simply couldn't win. Now MKWii is the first Mario Kart that doesn't have snaking (I think, but don't quote me on that). Why? To make people enjoy online more. In summary: Sakurai HAD to take out the technical game because we wanted online.
4a. Also, wavedashing/L-canceling would have been extremely difficult to implement smoothly into online due to the extremely small window available to do them in. Too fast for Nintedo's horrible online system to process.
I think I'm going to stop there. I'm sure anybody who has read this far can imagine of the rest of this themselves. Everyone wants to blame Sakurai for everything they don't like in Brawl. Sure, there are some things that you can truly say were stupid on his part for integrating (i.e. tripping) but stop for a second and think in his shoes for a moment. He was approached to make an online Smash game for the Wii. He was told that this is what everyone wanted, and what everyone would do. He probably thought that most people would end up playing the game online rather than IRL. So he had to make this entire game with that in mind. He tried to take a fighting game online (which is VERY difficult to do well due to the speed and precision necessary for most fighters) with a horribly sub-par online system built by a company that probably thinks the internet is like a series of tubes. Sakurai even said he wanted to add in voice chat, but he couldn't do it because the Wii couldn't handle it!
Do you think he didn't care about the competitive player? Ha! Remember those translations I did a long time ago? The very first email Sakurai responded to was a person thanking him for making Melee because he met his wife at a Melee tournament and now has a kid. And the very last email Sakurai responded to was that man's wife. He knew we were out there. He just couldn't do much to help us because the overwhelming majority wanted play Smash online, which could have never lead to the Melee 2.0 that so many people were hoping for. And yes, its ironic in the end that online came out so poorly.
This is just my perspective on why Brawl came out the way it did (well, at least one of the many reasons) but I'm certainly not complaining. I absolutely love this game the way it is. This is NOT a Melee vs Brawl debate, so don't turn this thread into one. By the way, online sucks. There, I've said it, so no need to bring that argument into this thread.