What Sakurai is Doing: An Essay Regarding the Possibilty of Multi-Dimensional Tiers

[Kittah4]

You people saying that he should just learn to tolerate idiots on the internet are being hypocrites.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you implying that the topic creator is an idiot and that by speaking against him and since we're not giving him tolerance we're treading on our own suggestion? Because if so that's quite funny.

Anyway, to add to the conversation somewhat, I hope that no matter how imbalanced the tier list gets, that Brawl will hopefully have a bevy of challengers like Gimpyfish (I can't believe I just said that) who are willing to pick up a "low tier" character and become impressive with them.

The Tier List helps people become stale in their thinking and wanting to choose what character to main. It's players with a dedication to be good with whatever character they wish that will make Brawl more interesting.

 

[UltimateShinigami]

Um... this is all pointless because tires don exist

5150, please ignore him. people are already at your throat and it's obvious he's joking and/or trying to get a rise out of you

 

[Destiny Smasher]

but sakurai realizes that it would be much too hard for him to do as he'd have to keep track of tournaments and actually attend if he wanted to see the game evolve and try to balance it with tournaments in mind.

And that's because this time, Sakurai doesn't really care as much as the tourney scene as the uber hardcore want him to. Mainly it's really a tiny slice of the pie of people who play Smash. Expecting him to intentionally make the game more difficult to master goes against the grain of Nintendo as a whole AND it makes things a lot more difficult to balance.

I think you've got some really good ideas here, though, and as a middle-core Smash player, I definitely understand what you're thinking and think you're right -- the game will be balanced better this time around.

Brawl is meant to bring Smash fans back and welcome in a whole new legion of Smash players. Furthermore, it's looking to smooth out all of those rough glitchy bits in Melee -- these technical aspects tourney players thrive on. The way I see it, tourney players will either have to accept that Brawl is designed for EVERYONE, not just them, and adapt, or stay stuck in Melee's more technical gameplay.
Either way, it already is going to fix a lot of things that bugged me about Melee and give me tons of stuff extra that I know I'll love.

FUN is the entire point of video games, and Brawl looks to encompass that.

 

[Digital Angel]

Um... this is all pointless because tires don exist

Yeah, dude unless you want to be on people's ignore lists I'd cut that **** out. Tires don exist isn't funny and never was, the people who use that are usually ****ing ******** and have no sense of humor. This also includes inb4, over 9000, and similar idiotic fads.

Just giving you a heads up

 

[Ebonyks]

like i said before

#1 it is less technical. there is no way around this.

#2 even if brawl has advanced techs, that is not hte point. the point is what sakurai is TRYING to do. read the title of the essay plz.

You've done a pretty poor job describing what technical entails, please do elaborate for the benefit of smashboards

 

[HuskytheGeek]

Very interesting analysis. I mostly agree with you. Brawl like it will be much better balanced while sacrificing the techs of Melee. I, for one, like this idea. Counterpicking may become a problem, but it won't matter much to me. I never was big on techs in Melee (L-canceling is as complicated as I got). I'm just happy to have more characters that are actually playable.

 

[DraginHikari]

Hm... good points but as usual your attitude makes it diffcult to take you seriously...

More then anythinga tier list can only suggest or create a guideline... particularly in Smash there seem to be ways around the tier list anyway.

 

[Coselm]

Well we can't really say all of that about Brawl until it comes out now can we?

For all we know there could be even more ridiculous advanced techniques we have to use to survive.

 

[jdub03]

I agree with you for the most part. Im not so sure brawl will be less technical then melee. Its far too early to tell. You cant claim brawl is less technical then melee based on a beta/demo of the game. I suggest bringing this topic back up in another year or so. Regardless of sakurais intentions the pro smash community will find different ways to play the game. That includes discovering new techs as well as integrating old ones.

 

[Thi0s]

This was an interesting read. I believe in tiers and I think every fighting game has them, but I want the difference between top tier and bottom tier to marginal, maybe even opinion based. We don't need characters to be labeled as good or bad this early as it might provoke certain people to think that some characters aren't worth using. I mean, one year from now we might be able to talk, but I think without any unintended techniques Brawl will be balanced.

 

[SinisterLizard]

I don't know how people can possibly believe that Brawl is less technical than Melee...especially when you see a character like Olimar in the mix. His character specials update alone should prove that Sakurai cares about advanced techs. Get over it, people.

 

[IvanEva]

read the title of the essay plz.

You know, there's something funny about how rude you're being in this (your!) thread. I mean, if this was a Street Fighter thread or a thread on the war in Iraq or something it'd be slightly more understandable but this is Smash Bros. Being all up in arms over a game featuring such badass characters as Pikachu, Kirby, Jigglypuff... it just isn't right, you know? It's not too hard to just scroll past posts you don't like...

Now to the topic (as this seems to be the pattern ): What Sakurai tried to do is what every fighting game designer tries to do. Otherwise you're stuck with basically the same character. Archetypes have always come out. There's always a Zangief and a Chun-Li in every fighting game.

What this topic has lead me to wonder about is more which comes first between character types and character choices? What I mean is something along the lines of 'was Dedede/Bowser/Donkey Kong chosen to be in the games because they'd be the big, strong brutes or do we have big strong brutes because polls deemed those characters popular enough to be in the game? Was Pokémon Trainer/Olimar included so that we can have irregular characters or just because they're awesome character choices?

I feel that all too often, especially in fighting games, characters are chosen/created just to have those archetypes put in, not because the actual character design is good or popular. I don't want a fighting game consisting only of one type of character but I also hope that characters are overly forced into a Speed, Control, Projectile, Power, Defensive, etc. class.

 

[thesage]

Isn't range an important factor of a character as well? Look at Marth and Pikachu

 

[DarkPhoenix87]

This is a useful analysis, but only if you think Sakurai is developing this game for hardcore players only. The thing is, the development team has to take into account balance over a wide range of play modes; ffa, single player, events, team matches, item matches, 1-on-1 matches, coin matches, etc.. I'm sure that a tier/depth driven analysis would be useful for a purely 1-on-1 competitive game, but once you realize that this game was designed with a million different playstyles in mind, this topic comes off more as a conspiracy theory than anything useful.

 

[TiersAreReal]

How are you defining what a "control" character is? That can be interpreted in many different ways, so your original post ends up being vague in many aspects. I'm guessing by control you mean controlling the pace of a fight or the dominance of playfield space, thus restricting the moves an opponent can use at any given time (or forcing them into reacting a certain way due to manipulating the flow of the fight). At any rate, you admit that the characters have an assortment of movesets that are an antithesis to their character "type," so rigid categories don't matter much.

Ranking characters in terms of these three categories (even on a 3-dimensional list) doesn't seem more productive than a standard tier list. Your 3D list seems to be based primarily around innate character traits and moveset types rather than a metagame. Sure, Samus has great options for controlling space, but a chart showing her character strengths and weaknesses tells absolutely nothing about how effective she'll be in terms of the metagame. Similarly, a chart showing Bowser as a power character with bad speed doesn't say much about his effectiveness in a 1 on 1. I would go as far to say that it would almost useless considering the fact that what categories characters excel in would be common knowledge and the characters who excel at one thing in a specific category will be obvious to those who are less efficient.

A standard tier list would in itself factor in this data anyway and measure it against both the current metagame AND every other aspect of the character not taken into account by a 3-dimensional list. What you propose is akin to those individual lists of which character is good or bad against every character, except they seem infinitely more useful in comparison.

 

[cccck]

Hmmm... you make a lot of points in this essay,,,, I see what you mean, They could very well be trying to do this. Save it and what for a year after brawl comes out. then we well know.

 

[Hitzel]

IMO, depth > balance.

If the game's skill cap is out of all players' reach, players can always strive that extra distance above and beyond his opponent to win. If that depth is sacrificed in order to achieve "balance" (true balance doesn't exist, FYI), players are more likely to stalemate each other, the game is more likely to slow down, and the game is more likely to go from a mix of wits and skill to a test of patience. It makes things more lame in general.

I mean, look at Halo. Halo 1 had depth. No **** the Pistol wasn't balanced. No **** the glitches used weren't intended. No **** players abused the "behind the scenes" gameplay functions... But look:

Virtually everything that happened in Halo 1 was a result of what a player did, there was no "randomness" interfering. This created a stable mental game.

The Pistol in Halo 1 wasn't balanced, and the glitches used changed the game far beyond the way Halo was originally intended to be played. But at the same time, these things all gave players the opportunity to rise above other players. Effort and skill were rewarded.

mental game + individual skill (not even throwing teamwork into the mix)

In Halo 2 and 3, that depth of mental skill and technical skill was removed. Random BS happens all the time in 2 and 3, so you can't depend on many rules to create a stable mental game between players. The new Pistol (the BR) is weak and doesn't take as much skill to use. The outcomes of fights are forced and the skill cap is lower than what most good players are capable of preforming at. Yes, now all of the weapons are good choices in Halo 3, but as a result it's been overbalanced into a lame, random, boring mess of a game. If you try to win you get frustrated and/or bored. The game is just not fun at any competitive level.

This shouldn't happen to Brawl, the Smash series doesn't deserve it. It is definitely possible to over-balance a game. People need to understand this. Hopefully Sakurai is fully aware of this and has been making sure Brawl has great depth. If all he wants to do is make every character equally playable, to eliminate tiers in his game, he will fail and Brawl will turn out to be just another game that you played for a few weeks and never looked back to. Why? Because once you get over the learning curve, it won't be fun to play.

I've seen this happen to games in the past. That's why I'm hesitant to be hyped for Brawl. Sakurai looks like he loves his game and has the best of intentions (he wants to make a good game, not make money), but at the same time I have no way to know that he understands the delicate balance between game balance and game depth. Six years from now, I want to be playing this game just like it's brand new. Here's hoping for the best

 

[I_R_Hungry]

A good estimate of how well-balanced this game will be could be made by looking at how the tier list in Melee would change were the wavedash to be removed. Although Brawl has had more development time so that may not be the case. Just something to think about I suppose

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

5150, do you also believe that said balance is also due to the change in the Games Physics engine? Perhaps the characters were designed to become implementations to said engine.

 

[SirroMinus1]

you put alot of thought into this. i cant wait to see the outcome in a year or 2. for the tiers.
i agree with almost every thing you said.

 

[thesage]

A good estimate of how well-balanced this game will be could be made by looking at how the tier list in Melee would change were the wavedash to be removed. Although Brawl has had more development time so that may not be the case. Just something to think about I suppose

It wouldn't change much...

 

[5150]

IMO, depth > balance.

If the game's skill cap is out of all players' reach, players can always strive that extra distance above and beyond his opponent to win. If that depth is sacrificed in order to achieve "balance" (true balance doesn't exist, FYI), players are more likely to stalemate each other, the game is more likely to slow down, and the game is more likely to go from a mix of wits and skill to a test of patience. It makes things more lame in general.

I mean, look at Halo. Halo 1 had depth. No **** the Pistol wasn't balanced. No **** the glitches used weren't intended. No **** players abused the "behind the scenes" gameplay functions... But look:

Virtually everything that happened in Halo 1 was a result of what a player did, there was no "randomness" interfering. This created a stable mental game.

The Pistol in Halo 1 wasn't balanced, and the glitches used changed the game far beyond the way Halo was originally intended to be played. But at the same time, these things all gave players the opportunity to rise above other players. Effort and skill were rewarded.

mental game + individual skill (not even throwing teamwork into the mix)

In Halo 2 and 3, that depth of mental skill and technical skill was removed. Random BS happens all the time in 2 and 3, so you can't depend on many rules to create a stable mental game between players. The new Pistol (the BR) is weak and doesn't take as much skill to use. The outcomes of fights are forced and the skill cap is lower than what most good players are capable of preforming at. Yes, now all of the weapons are good choices in Halo 3, but as a result it's been overbalanced into a lame, random, boring mess of a game. If you try to win you get frustrated and/or bored. The game is just not fun at any competitive level.

This shouldn't happen to Brawl, the Smash series doesn't deserve it. It is definitely possible to over-balance a game. People need to understand this. Hopefully Sakurai is fully aware of this and has been making sure Brawl has great depth. If all he wants to do is make every character equally playable, to eliminate tiers in his game, he will fail and Brawl will turn out to be just another game that you played for a few weeks and never looked back to. Why? Because once you get over the learning curve, it won't be fun to play.

I've seen this happen to games in the past. That's why I'm hesitant to be hyped for Brawl. Sakurai looks like he loves his game and has the best of intentions (he wants to make a good game, not make money), but at the same time I have no way to know that he understands the delicate balance between game balance and game depth. Six years from now, I want to be playing this game just like it's brand new. Here's hoping for the best

well that's a valid opinion and im not offering a rebutal to that because we dont know if sakurais balanced game will beat melees depth and in fact i probably lean towards melee if i had to pick now.

How are you defining what a "control" character is? That can be interpreted in many different ways, so your original post ends up being vague in many aspects. I'm guessing by control you mean controlling the pace of a fight or the dominance of playfield space, thus restricting the moves an opponent can use at any given time (or forcing them into reacting a certain way due to manipulating the flow of the fight). At any rate, you admit that the characters have an assortment of movesets that are an antithesis to their character "type," so rigid categories don't matter much.

Ranking characters in terms of these three categories (even on a 3-dimensional list) doesn't seem more productive than a standard tier list. Your 3D list seems to be based primarily around innate character traits and moveset types rather than a metagame. Sure, Samus has great options for controlling space, but a chart showing her character strengths and weaknesses tells absolutely nothing about how effective she'll be in terms of the metagame. Similarly, a chart showing Bowser as a power character with bad speed doesn't say much about his effectiveness in a 1 on 1. I would go as far to say that it would almost useless considering the fact that what categories characters excel in would be common knowledge and the characters who excel at one thing in a specific category will be obvious to those who are less efficient.

A standard tier list would in itself factor in this data anyway and measure it against both the current metagame AND every other aspect of the character not taken into account by a 3-dimensional list. What you propose is akin to those individual lists of which character is good or bad against every character, except they seem infinitely more useful in comparison.

that's what im saying....it isn't sufficient. here's an example of how a tier list changes:

-player picks up character
-player uses a move that EVERYONE has access to but uses it differently and better than -before
-player does better in tournaments
-people notice
-tier list is changed

now the question is, what KIND of move was changed? was it a grab? the fsmash? a wierd b move? all of those moves can be classified to strong, fast, or control. so what we would essentially do is give the character a better ranking IN THE AREA THAT WAS IMPROVED due to someone using a move better.

example:

we figure out a **** use for dedede's downb
we increase his power rating
his overall VOLUME of his graph goes up, and therefore he moves up on the tier list

now the ratings dont have to have a limit, they just have to reflect how MUCH of a distance character x is to character y in that type.

Isn't range an important factor of a character as well? Look at Marth and Pikachu

range = part of "control"

You know, there's something funny about how rude you're being in this (your!) thread. I mean, if this was a Street Fighter thread or a thread on the war in Iraq or something it'd be slightly more understandable but this is Smash Bros. Being all up in arms over a game featuring such badass characters as Pikachu, Kirby, Jigglypuff... it just isn't right, you know? It's not too hard to just scroll past posts you don't like...

Now to the topic (as this seems to be the pattern ): What Sakurai tried to do is what every fighting game designer tries to do. Otherwise you're stuck with basically the same character. Archetypes have always come out. There's always a Zangief and a Chun-Li in every fighting game.

What this topic has lead me to wonder about is more which comes first between character types and character choices? What I mean is something along the lines of 'was Dedede/Bowser/Donkey Kong chosen to be in the games because they'd be the big, strong brutes or do we have big strong brutes because polls deemed those characters popular enough to be in the game? Was Pokémon Trainer/Olimar included so that we can have irregular characters or just because they're awesome character choices?

I feel that all too often, especially in fighting games, characters are chosen/created just to have those archetypes put in, not because the actual character design is good or popular. I don't want a fighting game consisting only of one type of character but I also hope that characters are overly forced into a Speed, Control, Projectile, Power, Defensive, etc. class.

no one's being hardcore. chill out or leave the room.

I don't know how people can possibly believe that Brawl is less technical than Melee...especially when you see a character like Olimar in the mix. His character specials update alone should prove that Sakurai cares about advanced techs. Get over it, people.

nothing is advanced about olimar. the only thing you need to know about him is that you have to do sideb and downb in order for your moves to work.

This was an interesting read. I believe in tiers and I think every fighting game has them, but I want the difference between top tier and bottom tier to marginal, maybe even opinion based. We don't need characters to be labeled as good or bad this early as it might provoke certain people to think that some characters aren't worth using. I mean, one year from now we might be able to talk, but I think without any unintended techniques Brawl will be balanced.

we are just going of demo data, characters will change when game is released AND maybe if they have patches. so this is def not a final ranking.

 

[thesage]

Does m2 fit into any of those categories? He only has combos, that's it...

And does this mean that peach is a power/speed character? She doesn't really have combos, and ok range.

 

[5150]

sry for double post but i got another idea.

what if these 3d tier graphs could be plotted when you and your partner select your characters for teams. The objective MIGHT be for the perect team to try and cover the most free space with your character object. this means that characters who were really good at control and decent on speed would work perfectly with a character that was terrible at control but has decent speed and is very strong. those characters would fit perfectly together both on the graph and in the actual game because the control character would help set up for heavy hits. if you think about it this idea of 3d tier graphs could REVOLUTIONIZE how we predict matchup wins down to a science.

 

[5150]

Does m2 fit into any of those categories? He only has combos, that's it...

And does this mean that peach is a power/speed character? She doesn't really have combos, and ok range.

m2 is a control character if he had to be classified, due to his grabs and his decent range. the problem is he was so poorly balanced that he became one of those worthless characters.

peach is a mix, but only due to poor balancing. but if she was properly balanced she would fit into a control type character, due to her decent range and grabs. she also has float cancelling to make her dsmash excellent control.

 

[sultanofsurreal]

5150 beat a baby to death on the steps of a church.

This is FACT

There is no way around this.

 

[5150]

5150 beat a baby to death on the steps of a church.

This is FACT

There is no way around this.

sry but your qq'ing will not improve your condition of being ignorant.

 

[Replacement100]

I personally think you chose the wrong approach for the initial post (God knows you chose a horrific approach to your posts after that...).
You chose to express everything as a fact, as opposed to choosing a more hypothetical point of view, which would have explained many more possible situations, and lead to your speculations being more flexible and believable. It would also have made the post less weak to a flaw.

For example, you posted "Sakurai thought" and the like as if they were fact. Bad idea.
Because if you make a mistake, it seems that you don't know what you're talking about.
By speaking in certainties, you made examples and evidence the weight bearers of your post. If they're hard to believe, your whole post becomes extremely difficult to believe. Note that due to the fact that you didn't include any evidence that Sakurai actually thought these things (etc.), eyebrows are immediately raised. Due to this lack of evidence, your whole post relies on your examples. Which have problems, sadly.

For example, your example that Sakurai thought that Fox would be lacking in power, so he gave him a powerful USmash and Uair seems flawed. Note that both of these have U(p) in them (this is what immediately made me ponder your examples). Then think of Fox's other moves. His DTilt, UTilt and Over+B (for example) send his opponents to the sky. Combine these with your examples, and you find that it is much more likely that Sakurai intended this character to be good at Juggling, as opposed to 'a fast character who needs some power'.

Shiek, rather than being a "Control" character, was likely made as she was to contrast Zelda (Zelda is slow, with high knockback, Shiek is fast with spammable moves) and given her moves to suit this, rather than because Sakurai felt sorry for her.

So now that your examples seem to be debunked, or at least in my opinion, your post seems weak and unbelievable. Your behaviour after the post also points to the fact that you're not a very credible person.

For my last bullet of critique against your post, you don't explain some terms (a.k.a "Control") at all. I doubt that there is any person in this topic who understands what "Control" is besides you. Are they the ones that aren't too powerful, but aren't too fast? I guess so, but that's all I know.

Thanks for your time, and I hope you don't take this personally, but more of an attempt to help you make your future points more credible. I'd also watch your arguing.

~Zanda ^_^

 

[sultanofsurreal]

sry but your qq'ing will not improve your condition of being ignorant.

Come on man, this is not a discussion on DOES 5013 EXITS it's about how badly 5150 beat that baby to death. Trying to talk to people like you is like trying to prove creationism to an evolutionist!

I don't have time for these comments. Your presence fouls my thread and I must ask you to leave immediately.

 

[5150]

I personally think you chose the wrong approach for the initial post (God knows you chose a horrific approach to your posts after that...).
You chose to express everything as a fact, as opposed to choosing a more hypothetical point of view, which would have explained many more possible situations, and lead to your speculations being more flexible and believable. It would also have made the post less weak to a flaw.

For example, you posted "Sakurai thought" and the like as if they were fact. Bad idea.
Because if you make a mistake, it seems that you don't know what you're talking about.
By speaking in certainties, you made examples and evidence the weight bearers of your post. If they're hard to believe, your whole post becomes extremely difficult to believe. Note that due to the fact that you didn't include any evidence that Sakurai actually thought these things (etc.), eyebrows are immediately raised. Due to this lack of evidence, your whole post relies on your examples. Which have problems, sadly.

the problem is, the whole essay is a viewpoint on what i think sakurai is doing. if you cant accept the fact that it's an idea, and that most ideas are based on assumed truths not facts, then you shouldn't be critiquing this.

For example, your example that Sakurai thought that Fox would be lacking in power, so he gave him a powerful USmash and Uair seems flawed. Note that both of these have U(p) in them (this is what immediately made me ponder your examples). Then think of Fox's other moves. His DTilt, UTilt and Over+B (for example) send his opponents to the sky. Combine these with your examples, and you find that it is much more likely that Sakurai intended this character to be good at Juggling, as opposed to 'a fast character who needs some power'.

juggling would be control. his uair is a straight up kill move. it is a pure power move. if he wanted fox to be a juggler he would not have given him that uair.

Shiek, rather than being a "Control" character, was likely made as she was to contrast Zelda (Zelda is slow, with high knockback, Shiek is fast with spammable moves) and given her moves to suit this, rather than because Sakurai felt sorry for her.

see this is the problem. you simply disagree with my classifications. you dont think shiek was made for control but i do. this ends up boiling down to what we "think" sakurai is doing. it's very subjective and cant be quantified. but we CAN quantify what happened, and make 2d tiers.

So now that your examples seem to be debunked, or at least in my opinion, your post seems weak and unbelievable. Your behaviour after the post also points to the fact that you're not a very credible person.

lol nice assumption, but no. you are taking assumptions to be fact, rather than truth. truth can be whatever you want to believe. im sure that gimpyfish's truth is that i am a complete d-bag. but ask a mw veteran and they will tell you the opposite. so it's not fact.

For my last bullet of critique against your post, you don't explain some terms (a.k.a "Control") at all. I doubt that there is any person in this topic who understands what "Control" is besides you. Are they the ones that aren't too powerful, but aren't too fast? I guess so, but that's all I know.

Thanks for your time, and I hope you don't take this personally, but more of an attempt to help you make your future points more credible. I'd also watch your arguing.

~Zanda ^_^

first off, i dont watch anything. i do as i please and let teh cards fall as they may.

lastly, and to finish this post, i didnt spell out control because this post i assumed, and i dont know why i did, but i assumed people who "got it" would be reading this. apparently brawl disc needs things spelled out in big red letters for it to click.

 

[5150]

btw sultanofsurreal is prob a mod alt acct trying to look witty

 

[Kittah4]

the problem is, the whole essay is a viewpoint on what i think sakurai is doing. if you cant accept the fact that it's an idea, and that most ideas are based on assumed truths not facts, then you shouldn't be critiquing this.

see this is the problem. you simply disagree with my classifications. you dont think shiek was made for control but i do. this ends up boiling down to what we "think" sakurai is doing. it's very subjective and cant be quantified. but we CAN quantify what happened, and make 2d tiers.

lol nice assumption, but no. you are taking assumptions to be fact, rather than truth. truth can be whatever you want to believe. im sure that gimpyfish's truth is that i am a complete d-bag. but ask a mw veteran and they will tell you the opposite. so it's not fact.

lastly, and to finish this post, i didnt spell out control because this post i assumed, and i dont know why i did, but i assumed people who "got it" would be reading this. apparently brawl disc needs things spelled out in big red letters for it to click.

Key words "i think" "assumed truths" "assumption". The title of this essay is "What Sakurai Is Doing". That's pretty presumptuous. Your entire tone of the essay is one of fact and not of "assumed truths". You claim to know how Sakurai thinks and how he planned to create each of the characters into one of three groups.

I have a feeling thats why the others find your essay hard to digest. The tone you wrote it in was one of arrogance and absolution, then you go about attacking anyone who isn't completely agreeing with you.

Your whole response to that post took a more defensive stance, bringing in those words I quoted when they were nowhere to be found in the original post (that I can remember).

 

[sultanofsurreal]

btw sultanofsurreal is prob a mod alt acct trying to look witty

Look out, 5150. I'm not so nice, and I don't take a snotty attitude very well!

 

[SSJ4Kazuki]

For reference: Power beats speed, speed beats control, and control beats power. It's rock, paper, scissors.

Sadly, you're wrong. Speed is generally inclined to win against everything, because power is slow, and fast characters can induce flinch frames in slow characters' slow attacks. It's a very unbalanced system, I was hoping super armor would solve this problem but it seems to be barely utilized. Not impressed, Sakurai.

This is two dimensional. Triangles have three SIDES, not DIMENSIONS.

Balance is not as simple as 1, 2, 3. You cannot balance a game with numbers, there are so many other things you need to factor in, such as whether the lag comes BEFORE or AFTER an attack, the range of a move, the maneuverability of the character during the attack (why Sheik and Marth's dash attacks are so valuable), whether the attack is a projectile, how BIG (and therefore how easily dodged, Sheik's needles count as "big" when grouped together) the projectile is, how MANY projectiles a character has, the effectiveness of recovery (which can also be broken down into how far it goes horizontally, vertically, how fast, and overall usefulness can be generated from knowledge of how much time the character will have to fall towards the stage before being in a workable recovery position, meaning how vulnerable to edge guarding they are during this time, invincibility frames, whether it is an attack or defensive, how hard it is to hit through [priority]) and then you have to factor in priority on projectiles...

The list goes on and on and on and on, and you cannot expect to fully understand the complexity of balancing a fighting game if you can simply sum it up as a triangle. Trust me, as a game designer, I know this. There are WAY more units that need to be considered than just power, speed and "control".

That said, an interesting theory. Oversimplified maybe, but interesting.

EDIT: I forgot weight. Not all power characters are heavier, for example Captain Falcon is actually the heaviest character in SSB: Melee, requiring 102% to kill off the top of Final Destination.

 

[Replacement100]

the problem is, the whole essay is a viewpoint on what i think sakurai is doing. if you cant accept the fact that it's an idea, and that most ideas are based on assumed truths not facts, then you shouldn't be critiquing this.

*sigh*
*was trying to help with the structure of your arguments in that particular piece of the post...*

juggling would be control. his uair is a straight up kill move. it is a pure power move. if he wanted fox to be a juggler he would not have given him that uair.

*uairs a Marth*
He survived, but went into the air! I'll give it another shot! Surely he'll die as you say.
Let's put metagame aside. Fox's moveset heavily implies that he was at least partially meant to juggle.

see this is the problem. you simply disagree with my classifications. you dont think shiek was made for control but i do. this ends up boiling down to what we "think" sakurai is doing. it's very subjective and cant be quantified. but we CAN quantify what happened, and make 2d tiers.

While the reason for Shiek is definitely subjective, so is the colour of the sky.
You can say that it's green all you want, but general conjecture speaks otherwise.
You can ask ANYONE as to why Shiek was made a transformation of Zelda, even Sakurai, and I can't imagine anyone but you explaining that she is there to be a "control character."

Oh, and by the way, what Sakurai is doing can be quantified very easily. Ask Sakurai.

lol nice assumption, but no. you are taking assumptions to be fact, rather than truth. truth can be whatever you want to believe. im sure that gimpyfish's truth is that i am a complete d-bag. but ask a mw veteran and they will tell you the opposite. so it's not fact.

The fact that I don't believe you, and that I was increasingly skeptical of you as I read your posts, shows at least SOME lack of credibility in your blood. That is a fact.

first off, i dont watch anything. i do as i please and let teh cards fall as they may.

lastly, and to finish this post, i didnt spell out control because this post i assumed, and i dont know why i did, but i assumed people who "got it" would be reading this. apparently brawl disc needs things spelled out in big red letters for it to click.

I have a grip on the design of video games, and their mechanics. You could say that I "get them". You just made up a term and expected people to understand it. I reckon Shiek is a Vague character. If you don't get it, I think I'll need to spell out my next post in red for you.

~ Zanda

 

[The_Corax_King]

This is actually really really interesting and a great way to look at tiers...

but I do agree with SSJ4Kazuki in that you have oversimplified the game...

your rock paper scissors analogy seems more fitting to just that... a game like Fire Emblem where you don't control every movement of your character, and are forced to rely on a rock paper scissors relationship between yours and your enemy's weapon...

Smash deviates from that because of the amount of control you have over your character... and there are several other factors that play into a character... like HOW their attacks work (the drastic difference between fox and falco for example)


It is a great look at tiers, but it only covers the very basic dimensions of smash...


Good explanation and once again great idea

 

[Wrath`]

plz do not post in here again. your ignorance fouls this thread.

ok then, so me agreeing with you is ingnorant? wowz what next, geeze, i didin't think you were an azzhat

 

[Booshnig]

Lol @ 2d triangle.
You shouldn't write video game "essays" during math class.

 

[SSJ4Kazuki]

While reading through the whole thread (the concept interests me),
I've come to the conclusion:

plz do not post in here again. your ignorance fouls this thread.

dont have time for these kind of posts. this is an example of what NOT to post plz, thx.

You = ***-hole.

thats why you are a scrub.
FACT = there was a heavy removal of technical aspects of this game.
FACT = you should qq more about internet posting style

this is why i said i didnt want to hear from people like this. ignorance doesnt help discussion it destroys it.

Your facts need straightening.

Wavedashing is not "a heavy removal of technical aspects of the game". You can still tech, and fastfall cancel, and even shine cancel, but these techniques do not make up the advanced player's Smash Bros. metagame. Smash is deeper than that, it's about mindgaming your opponent and getting attacks in during their lag, and then predicting their DI to implement combos. This core aspect was not removed from Brawl, according to players of the demo. Peach can still wavedash using DJC anyway, as a new momentum system requiring aerials to be performed can achieve similar effects to wavelanding.

wavedashing was not intentional in that he didnt expect it to be used like this but he did code it into the game and l-cancelling was purely intentional. many of the other cancels and character specific cancels were intentional as well.

Again, straighten your facts. Wavedash is an unintentional reaction of the game's engine, Sakurai did NOT program "if land while airdodging (wavedash);", he programmed an equivalent of "if land with _x momentum (apply friction //i.e. _xmomentum *= 0.5 or --)". You can prove this with the performing of "whiffed" and "perfect" wavedashing. Wavedashing IS a glitch. That being said, I am rather saddened by its removal.

like i said before

#1 it is less technical. there is no way around this.

#2 even if brawl has advanced techs, that is not hte point. the point is what sakurai is TRYING to do. read the title of the essay plz.

Less technical like what exactly?

range = part of "control"

Since ****ing when!? You're really starting to irritate me now. B grade for English at best.
I'd define "control" as "Pikachu's upB > Ike's upB" or "Link's upB > Mario's upB". Your character's range has got NOTHING to do with how well they "control". Ganondorf "controls" badly in melee, because it's hard to get around the stage with him when you aren't attacking and can't stop moving during his faster attacks, yet he has FAR from the worst "range". Again with this blatant oversimplification.

Then again, "control" can ALSO be linked to speed. Yet "speed" to n00bs, can also equal frequent self destructs, leading to a reduced "control" value.

Therefore your "control" value means nothing, and is a poorly argued use of a variable.
It's much too vague, and also very dependent on the skill of the player. While speed and power can be expressed as numbers, I do not condone the expression of "control" as a number. "X amount of 'control points' LULULUL"

 

[Valdens]

Well its not like I'm some king of Smash. I'm not as smart as most of you in here Smash wise. I wanted to tell you to did a good job with all of this and then what do I get?

-Onyx

Their comments weren't directed towards you.