What can you tell me about Balanced Brawl?

[QuickRat]

I just saw this:

Is it a good mod? Did it reach its goals? Why isn't it played as much as Melee or Project M?

 

[Thor]

It's too much like Brawl for people who like Melee/Project M. If I'm not mistaken it still has hitstun cancelling which is the major gripe of those groups (that and slower fallspeeds/no wavedash).

I've heard it's good though, but it's up to you if you like it.

There are other Brawl mods as well, like Brawl-, which is also a pretty good mod. Brawl+ is also supposed to be good, though I've never played it [and it was discontinued].

 

[QuickRat]

It's too much like Brawl for people who like Melee/Project M. If I'm not mistaken it still has hitstun cancelling which is the major gripe of those groups (that and slower fallspeeds/no wavedash).

I've heard it's good though, but it's up to you if you like it.

There are other Brawl mods as well, like Brawl-, which is also a pretty good mod. Brawl+ is also supposed to be good, though I've never played it [and it was discontinued].

Hm, yeah but... It solved two of Brawl's biggest problems: random tripping and broken characters. I can understan Melee fanbase ignored it while loving Project M... but why did Brawl fanbase ignore it?

 

[DeLux]

@ Amazing Ampharos

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Thanks for the tag lux.

You can download it here and find ridiculously thorough documentation of the changes as well:

http://balancedbrawl.net

The basic design philosophy behind Balanced Brawl is that it aims to play fundamentally like Brawl while fixing the various balance problems within Brawl. This involves balance changes across the cast as well as several systemic changes to fix some basic gameplay issues (like an anti-planking code, a few small shifted mechanics to get rid of all known infinites, and some stage changes), but it doesn't aim to change the basics of how Brawl works so it leaves the basic dynamics and physics of Brawl in-tact. Even on a per-character level, we endeavored to maintain as much of any given character's fundamental playstyle while moving that character to a well balanced place; we had to get creative on a few characters like Captain Falcon and Ice Climbers, but by and large, we feel like most if not all of the cast plays very much like they did in Brawl except more balanced. Note that balanced to us means the characters must retain unique and diverse gameplay, be equally viable, and be non-polarized with each other (that last point means all individual match-ups should be as fair as possible; it's not okay if Samus destroys Bowser and loses badly to Fox as her avenue to "balance", for instance).

Thinkaman and I develoepd it as a pair without significant outside assistance (we used coding resources others had made but did 100% of the design and particular implementation ourselves). In all of our testing and the feedback we've received, we got the balance pretty close to right (and we did balance pretty high on the balance curve, approximately to where Marth was in Brawl). Unfortunately, we focused all of our efforts on development and very few on marketing, and we ended up bungling the marketing side of it really badly and never caught on. We ended up reaching a point where we had the game as balanced as we could get it without substantial Balanced Brawl touranment data, and that never came so we declared the game done.

I do remain very proud of the work we did there and firmly feel it is the ultimate version of Brawl, and if you have any particular questions about specific things in Balanced Brawl, I'd be more than happy to answer.

 

[QuickRat]

Well, that's a shame! I saw that website and I said... man it's amazing! Why never heard of it before? I would love to see this installment in official tournaments such as Project M is doing now. I think it would've been perfect for the community.

Thank you very much for your answers. And thanks a lot for this mod, it looks awesome.

I'd like to know @kyokoro_pamuyo opinion too, as I see his/her sign is a BalancedBrawl banner.

 

[AbbiDood]

Tbh, if anything the Brawl community should've started playing this instead of regular Brawl. This is literally like a "patch" that other fighting games get, so I don't see why most people don't want to play this over regular Brawl.

Becouse they can't get carried by MK? Becouse they enjoy how ICs are in Brawl? No idea.

 

[QuickRat]

Tbh, if anything the Brawl community should've started playing this instead of regular Brawl. This is literally like a "patch" that other fighting games get, so I don't see why most people don't want to play this over regular Brawl.

Becouse they can't get carried by MK? Becouse they enjoy how ICs are in Brawl? No idea.

Yes, that's kind of wierd. I love Brawl concept if you remove some of its problems... and Balanced Brawl seem to solve them. Why then it's that ignored? I think Brawl competitive scene would have been pretty more interesting if the played with these changes.

 

[josh bones]

So, the only reason this isn't played is because of bad advertising?

 

[QuickRat]

So, the only reason this isn't played is because of bad advertising?

Yeah, that's what it seems...

 

[G.i.R.]

i remember getting this mod, but with noone else to play it with and not knowing what they actually did due to me not researching, i never learned how it was balanced.

it may be too late now, but would it be possible to advertise this among the brawl community and maybe get the scene back up?

 

[Thor]

Tbh, if anything the Brawl community should've started playing this instead of regular Brawl. This is literally like a "patch" that other fighting games get, so I don't see why most people don't want to play this over regular Brawl.

Becouse they can't get carried by MK? Becouse they enjoy how ICs are in Brawl? No idea.

For what's it worth, I enjoy Brawl as is, and I play Pikachu (hence my main icon). If someone enjoys the game playing those characters and you ask to make them play someone else, you may have just shrunk the playgroup. Also some people don't have spare SD cards and don't want to hack their Wii, so those factors + some poorish advertising didn't help Balanced Brawl become more played.

 

[QuickRat]

For what's it worth, I enjoy Brawl as is, and I play Pikachu (hence my main icon). If someone enjoys the game playing those characters and you ask to make them play someone else, you may have just shrunk the playgroup. Also some people don't have spare SD cards and don't want to hack their Wii, so those factors + some poorish advertising didn't help Balanced Brawl become more played.

I don't see why Balanced Brawl is that different. Actually, it looks like an update instead of a huge mod. If Nintendo did this in 2010, would Brawl scene have retained Vanilla Brawl instead of the new version? Sounds wierd for me.

In any case, Brawl is dying. Maybe Balanced Brawl could be a way to keep it alive. It didn't change anything but just some little adjustments on moves (avoiding infinites and unbalanced properties) and general gameplay aspects (such as removing random tripping). I don't see Balanced Brawl as an entire new game. That could fit Project M, but not Balanced Brawl. I think it actually is an unofficial patch. Like many games have. In my opinion, it could save Brawl of being thrown into the hell when Smash 4 is out. Currently, Melee and Project M are growing quickly while Brawl is dying slowly. As a Brawl lover, I would like to see this mod in competitive scene in order to save the scene itself.

But, what is absolutely clear is that Brawl will die in a couple of months if the scene keeps moving to Project M or waiting for Smash 4. And, in the case Smash 4 is more or less balanced, nobody will still play Brawl. That's what I fear and that's why I suggest this little mod in order to keep Brawl scene alive.

 

[pidgezero_one]

Yes, that's kind of wierd. I love Brawl concept if you remove some of its problems... and Balanced Brawl seem to solve them. Why then it's that ignored? I think Brawl competitive scene would have been pretty more interesting if the played with these changes.

Making a patch the standard for a vanilla game is overly insular. It's not like PM where everyone playing it already has done the research and goes in with the expectation that they're playing a mod.

 

[QuickRat]

Making a patch the standard for a vanilla game is overly insular. It's not like PM where everyone playing it already has done the research and goes in with the expectation that they're playing a mod.

Which is the difference between Balanced Brawl and a hipotetical Nintendo patch named Super Smash Bros. Brawl v1.2? Just the officiality?

 

[pidgezero_one]

Which is the difference between Balanced Brawl and a hipotetical Nintendo patch named Super Smash Bros. Brawl v1.2? Just the officiality?

Basically. But that officiality means more than you think it does. Games with official patches are easily accessible by anyone who owns a copy of the game by virtue of update prompts and other official channels. Delegating that to an unofficial system of modifications makes it more community-reliant, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but instead of receiving a patch straight up on your Wii you have to go out of your own way to find guides that hopefully overlap each other well enough to get you where you want to be with the game, and we see that as a big problem already as plenty of popular homebrew guides are plagued with outdated and broken links, instructions limited to outdated firmware, and incomplete instructions editable only by people who might not even be in the community anymore.

This doesn't sound like a big deal to people like us who know all the ins and outs of the game and can mod wiis like it's navigating our own backyard. However it's not the same for people on the outside looking in who got the idea one day that they'd love to play in a Brawl tournament and want to just show up possibly not knowing that they even need their own controller, much less that they should have been practicing with a particular codeset on a particular set of homebrew apps using a particular size of SD card that nobody manufactures anymore. Standardizing a mod of Brawl is great for people who are already in Brawl, but it's just extra unattractive effort for outsiders relying on efforts I don't trust the community to keep up on. I am frequently lauded for my dedication to the Brawl community and even I'm burnt out from upkeep of my wiimfi guide, there's just no guarantee that anyone will be around forever to maintain a vanilla game mod the way it needs to be, and the last thing Brawl needs right now is to ignore outsiders. It's different from PM because everyone going in already knows it's a mod, which the same cannot be said for the millions of people who bought copies of Brawl and are potential tournament entrants.

That being said I have nothing against hosting tournaments of modded Brawl. I just don't think it's a good idea to replace vanilla brawl entirely.

 

[κomıc]

I remember Balanced Brawl from a long while back but never played it. I played Brawl+. It is a shame this never caught on since I heard great things about it.

I think the team from Brawl+ moved on to Project M.

 

[deepseadiva]

Oh man, the Breakout video was always so excellent.

Balanced Brawl is/was of enormous quality but was ahead of its time really. Competing as a Brawl "mod", it did have to deal with Brawl+, and that game completely catered to the older Melee scene. Not to mention the ultimate point of being based around the original version of Brawl, a naturally slow, boring boring fighting game. xD

The name itself might have lead to its unpopularity... "Balanced Brawl" aka "Less Awful Brawl". Why play that when "Brawl+", aka "Much Better Brawl", is just as easy to install?

I will always applaud the direction of the mod though. It was very very much an upgrade on the original. My only criticism, now in hindsight, being that the balance standard of Marth might have been too low. If every character were instead elevated to Meta Knight or Snake levels (very strong, high intensity characters), I believe the mod would have garnered a lot more attention. Say, an actually playable Brawl-?

Now that would be a fighter.

 

[Thor]

Say, an actually playable Brawl-?

Brawl- is very playable - but that's a topic for a different thread.

I kinda like balanced brawl, but since I play Pikachu/Falco and don't do the most annoying stuff to the casuals I play with, and don't really have competitive people to play with, I don't use the mod because all it might do is confuse some of the casual players, which doesn't seem worth it. [And they're not interested in getting into Smash any deeper, so it's not like a more balanced version would get them more into Smash.]

 

[QuickRat]

As I see in your messages, it's highly impossible to save Brawl. That's a shame... I suppose the scene will die completely when SSB4 is out in both consoles and PM v4.0 brings new characters. I just see Balanced Brawl as the mod that could have saved the scene... but the scene itself didn't like an unnofficial improvement mad by and for the scene. Quite contradictory.

 

[Quillion]

Thanks for the tag lux.

You can download it here and find ridiculously thorough documentation of the changes as well:

http://balancedbrawl.net

The basic design philosophy behind Balanced Brawl is that it aims to play fundamentally like Brawl while fixing the various balance problems within Brawl. This involves balance changes across the cast as well as several systemic changes to fix some basic gameplay issues (like an anti-planking code, a few small shifted mechanics to get rid of all known infinites, and some stage changes), but it doesn't aim to change the basics of how Brawl works so it leaves the basic dynamics and physics of Brawl in-tact. Even on a per-character level, we endeavored to maintain as much of any given character's fundamental playstyle while moving that character to a well balanced place; we had to get creative on a few characters like Captain Falcon and Ice Climbers, but by and large, we feel like most if not all of the cast plays very much like they did in Brawl except more balanced. Note that balanced to us means the characters must retain unique and diverse gameplay, be equally viable, and be non-polarized with each other (that last point means all individual match-ups should be as fair as possible; it's not okay if Samus destroys Bowser and loses badly to Fox as her avenue to "balance", for instance).

Thinkaman and I develoepd it as a pair without significant outside assistance (we used coding resources others had made but did 100% of the design and particular implementation ourselves). In all of our testing and the feedback we've received, we got the balance pretty close to right (and we did balance pretty high on the balance curve, approximately to where Marth was in Brawl). Unfortunately, we focused all of our efforts on development and very few on marketing, and we ended up bungling the marketing side of it really badly and never caught on. We ended up reaching a point where we had the game as balanced as we could get it without substantial Balanced Brawl touranment data, and that never came so we declared the game done.

I do remain very proud of the work we did there and firmly feel it is the ultimate version of Brawl, and if you have any particular questions about specific things in Balanced Brawl, I'd be more than happy to answer.

Don't feel bad. The only reason PM got as big as it did was because PMDT abused their moderator privileges to push it onto SmashBoards. You didn't have any of that support.