Will People Stop Playing Melee When Sm4sh comes out?

[famous hair]

To put it simply: no.

Competitive Melee players, for the most part, do not really care for this game. It is neat and better than Brawl, but let's be honest: most Melee players are only getting this game because they can put it in their pocket. It's not because of how "the speed sits in between Melee and Brawl", because the majority of Melee players don't want that. This game is far too different from Melee to satisfy us in the way that Melee does with its plethora of movement options, fast-paced gameplay, and high technical ceiling. Those are things you won't find in any other smash game (except of course Project M.) You simply have less options in this game in almost every scenario than you would in Melee and that's going to drive people who want the deepest (rather than the newest or easiest) competitive Smash game to Melee or Project M.

Many of the people who get into the competitive scene but don't take it very far or don't want to have to learn a lot of tech skill will be getting into Smash 4 because it is going to be much easier to play and learn (similar to Project M), as well as it being popular (what with good Wi-Fi and the most marketing Smash has ever had). I personally think the demo is fun to mess around with but when I tried to show other competitive players at my fests, they mostly dismissed it and told me I should not run it as a serious event.

Some common complaints I heard at my fests when I showed the demo:
(AKA why many Melee players probably won't want to pick up this game seriously)
- Vectoring kills too many combos and especially kills your options after you throw. You can even option select multiple throws' follow-ups with the same control stick input and possibly an airdodge.
- Vectoring is allowing people to live to ridiculous percents. This could be a side-effect of no GC controllers.
- The game feels slow (of course it will to Melee players, because tbh it is. Not completely a bad thing but it definitely doesn't make Melee players want to play it)
- Comboing the same move into itself (Such as Sheik's F-TIlt, Mario/Pikachu's U-Tilt) feels lame/boring to both sides compared to combos in 64, Melee or PM where you often have to make the most of your character's moveset to combo. I acknowledge that these same combos exist in the other games, but not to the extent that they do in this game, and they're certainly not as efficient or necessary as they are in this game (especially when you consider the presence of DI).
- Having drastically reduced options makes interactions sometimes feel more like RPS than strategic plays. This might just be because none of us played Brawl very much, although many of us have a good amount of 64 experience.
- Very common interactions like DI have been completely changed, requiring new muscle memory. For those who were bad at DI / did not know about DI before, vectoring is a seemingly intuitive system. To the people who have already drilled DI into their heads via repetition and practice, this is going to take a lot of adjustment. The same goes for learning how to effectively use options like Shield Dashing and ledge trumping. This is a new game and players of every Smash game will have to learn nearly from the ground up.
- You will need access to a Wii U setup or a 3DS LL to properly practice for this game. The LLs aren't available in the U.S. yet (not to mention most people already have a standard 3DS or XL and would have to replace theirs) and Wii Us are pretty expensive per unit right now, and most smashers I've discussed this with have told me they wouldn't buy a Wii U because Smash is the only game that it has that appeals to them.

There were more small reasons but I don't think they really matter because of the Wii U version. (controls, stagelist, etc.)

The Melee players that take this game really seriously will either be in it for the money, the internet fame, or they'll be the types that love all Smash games. I won't say that many, if any, will make the switch on game mechanics and newness alone though. It's more of giving the game a fair shot than anything else. The soon-to-be Smash 4 community will likely consist of Brawl vets and very new players more than Melee / PM vets. Don't expect Melee or PM to die or go away or for the entry numbers at tournaments to significantly drop. If anything, Smash 4 will be what introduces a lot of people to competitive Melee and PM, and I'm willing to bet a sizable chunk of those people will decide to play those games over Smash 4 competitively in the long run, or pick up one of them for fun along the way.

To be clear - I like Smash 4 (except vectoring). I do think it is the most basic incarnation of Smash aside from 64 however, which makes it very approachable for newer players, and not very exciting to veterans of the more technical games. I also think it is silly to compare such a technical game as Melee to something as barebones and fundamental-based as Smash 4. They play very differently and both have their merits and downfalls. All of this being said, I think we're all grown up enough to quit hating each other for the version of the game we choose to play. Smashers are smashers, we shouldn't care if you play 64 or Melee or Brawl or PM or Smash 4 or SSF2 or Super Smash Bronies or whatever.

 

[PeterJude]

Thats not even a thought, the game doesn' t have to compete with brawl in the least. If anything it would be competing against PM and Melee. Brawl is done, over , in the ground and replaced. No one is going to stick around with brawl.

There really is some Brawl hate isn't there.

I also like the part where you completely missed the whole point, which was that for the majority, Melee has been over since pre Brawl, even if the competitive minority still play it. There was no debate there about what the competitive community plays.

Again, Brawl was, regardless of your feelings towards it, the most success game in the franchise so far. Success of the new game will be measured against Brawl, and for that reason, the question is, and will remain how Smash 4 does against Brawl.

 

[famous hair]

There really is some Brawl hate isn't there.

I also like the part where you completely missed the whole point, which was that for the majority, Melee has been over since pre Brawl, even if the competitive minority still play it. There was no debate there about what the competitive community plays.

Again, Brawl was, regardless of your feelings towards it, the most success game in the franchise so far. Success of the new game will be measured against Brawl, and for that reason, the question is, and will remain how Smash 4 does against Brawl.

Brawl may have been the most successful from a sales standpoint, but is that really how you're going to judge the success of the game? Melee has been around for over a decade and it just hit the height of its competitive popularity. Brawl has been dead competitively for a while now. I don't think DownWitDaWaveDash was trying to hate on Brawl as much as he was saying that Brawl is rarely played in tournaments nowadays and hence Smash 4 will be competing with Melee and PM for the headlining game at tourneys.

 

[Sandfox]

The Melee players that take this game really seriously will either be in it for the money, the internet fame, or they'll be the types that love all Smash games. I won't say that many, if any, will make the switch on game mechanics and newness alone though. It's more of giving the game a fair shot than anything else. The soon-to-be Smash 4 community will likely consist of Brawl vets and very new players more than Melee / PM vets. Don't expect Melee or PM to die or go away or for the entry numbers at tournaments to significantly drop. If anything, Smash 4 will be what introduces a lot of people to competitive Melee and PM, and I'm willing to bet a sizable chunk of those people will decide to play those games over Smash 4 competitively in the long run, or pick up one of them for fun along the way.

To be clear - I like Smash 4 (except vectoring). I do think it is the most basic incarnation of Smash aside from 64 however, which makes it very approachable for newer players, and not very exciting to veterans of the more technical games. I also think it is silly to compare such a technical game as Melee to something as barebones and fundamental-based as Smash 4. They play very differently and both have their merits and downfalls. All of this being said, I think we're all grown up enough to quit hating each other for the version of the game we choose to play. Smashers are smashers, we shouldn't care if you play 64 or Melee or Brawl or PM or Smash 4 or SSF2 or Super Smash Bronies or whatever.

I don't really see too many Smash 4 players switching over when you consider some of the points you made in addition to the fact that Smash 4 will probably be the more popular game with online that will actually work(hopefully lol). I could see some people playing both though if they really end up taking to the scene though.

I agree with you that we don't need to see a repeat of what happened with Melee and Brawl fans. We're all one community so we should all show respect for what games people play because supporting the new games helps the community grow, and people who play the older games shouldn't get hate either because a majority of them obviously have their reasons.

 

[ZombieBran]

It's not hate, it's a fact; Brawl is dead. Competitively and soon to be casually once Smash 4 is out.

The answer to OP's question is an obvious no.

 

[SmashBro99]

No, people seem to like it a lot for some reason. Hopefully they will give Smash 4 a chance, I know too many people who see it running a bit like Brawl and cancelling preorders or just hating on the game before they even play it, I call these people scumbags :D

 

[WrappedInBlack]

I stopped playing Melee when I got Brawl. I stopped playing Brawl when I got Project M for the most part, I still go back for SSE sometimes. I'll stop playing PM when I get SSBU, but will still play when I get SSB3D. And I'll play both SSB4s till SSB5.

 

[AustarusIV]

Ha.

Don't count on it. The Melee competitive scene kept on going way after Brawl's release, and there are still many people here who prefer playing Melee over that game, both competitively and non-competitively.

I think there will even be people here who will rarely play Smash for Wii U over Brawl. And with the continuous updates for the Project M mod, there will still be a thriving community for that version of the game for years to come.

 

[PeterJude]

Brawl may have been the most successful from a sales standpoint, but is that really how you're going to judge the success of the game? Melee has been around for over a decade and it just hit the height of its competitive popularity. Brawl has been dead competitively for a while now. I don't think DownWitDaWaveDash was trying to hate on Brawl as much as he was saying that Brawl is rarely played in tournaments nowadays and hence Smash 4 will be competing with Melee and PM for the headlining game at tourneys.

...and again, the question was if people will stop playing Melee when Smash 4 comes out. The simple point is they stopped a long long time ago, apart from a very small minority. You can say what you will about that small minority, but the point is that the most successful game from Nintendo's stand point was Brawl. It sold better, it was better received by critics and ultimately whilst there are people still playing Melee competitively, there are almost certainly more people still playing Brawl casually in the lead up to Smash 4 coming out, but that's not even the point. The is, and will remain that more people played Brawl than Melee, and only a minority of the community played Melee for that long.

If the question were "will competitive players stop playing Melee when Smash 4 comes out", then that's a whole different story. The funny part about it all though is ultimately it comes largely down to personal taste, and having people cling to the familiar (as will almost certainly continue to happen with Melee, as well as with Brawl and Project M) will only segment the competitive community, watering it down and preventing it from growing the way many would want.

 

[famous hair]

I guess you'd be right if we were discussing casual play, but I don't think that was supposed to be the point of this thread.

 

[PeterJude]

I guess you'd be right if we were discussing casual play, but I don't think that was supposed to be the point of this thread.

Thread: "
Will People Stop Playing Melee When Sm4sh comes out?"

It wasn't "will the competitive community stop playing Melee", it was "will people stop playing Melee".

 

[DownWitDaWaveDash]

I didn't care about any of your other post, nor do I have any brawl hate. Smash4 doesn't have to compete with brawl. It doesn't exist anymore. It started to vanish as soon as Smash4 was announced. Around September 2013 is when it vanished from my state. However, Melee and ProjectM will still be played, and therefore, compete with it.

It doesn't matter how successful brawl was, its success is gone now. If anyone is still playing brawl after this, its not going to be enough to be a minority. Probably a decimal point

 

[Mr.Seven]

Melee won't last much longer, but it won't go out because of SSB4. Face it, Melee was not really balanced good, if at all. It has increasingly outdated graphics and it's very discouraging to see the best players in the game all using the same five characters over and over and over again. ((Also, Melee tournaments are flat-out boring to watch since most of the time, it looks like nothing except characters sliding around like drift cars until someone eventually gets edgehogged.))

 

[InfiniteTripping]

I am selling my copies of Melee. I haven't played in years. But I did play the copies I have before I sold them and I got sucked in to playing for about 3 hours. Even against the computers, you almost forget how crisp that engine was. It was jarring playing it at first since everything was so much more speedy and you really had to follow up and press on to get the kill. It was a TON of fun.

So while I personally will move on, I can definitely see why people who want to take a game a little bit more seriously will not move on. Melee is a masterpiece, and the only reason I sold both of my copies is their value is in how they are still played (hence why having the box and manual doesn't even add to the value, people buy the game to play it not to display it) and I anticipate a Melee VC release a couple months after 4 releases, which will tank the value of Melee hard copies.

Or Nintendo could go the other way, like how Reggie and his uncomfortable speech about Melee during Evo seemed to indicate that he and Nintendo looked at Melee's enduring popularity as a bit of a problem.

Either way, I put my bet that Melee will endure, even as I move on.

 

[ChainArmour712]

From having played the demo, I really am not impressed with the gameplay mechanics of Smash 4 when compared to Melee. Link my main is unquestionably better in Sm4sh, but when I went back to melee I realized how much easier his combos were to pull off and how much more intuitive the controls were. In terms of being a hard competitive fighting game, I really think that melee has more potential and this will be reflected in popularity at tournaments.

My prediction is that Smash 4 will be top dog for a year or two with the influx of casual players and promotion by Nintendo, but once Nintendo moves on to other projects then it will be up to the competitive community to determine which game is most popular. Nintendo is in it for the money and once Smash 4 stops making them money then they won't really care which title is played competitively by the diehards. I think that Smash 4 will be superior in every respect to Melee, aside from being a competitive technical fighter. The thing is, players of technical fighters care most about which game is the superior one in that respect.

Ultimately, I see PM and Melee sharing the bulk of the hardcore playerbase a few years from now with Melee benefitting from a potential VC release and PM gaining ground through a larger roster of viable characters- eventually PM should take the throne from Melee but both will be played widely. Smash 4's future is uncertain; after the corporate machine turns its attention elsewhere, will it have the competitive mechanics and viability necessary to sustain itself? I think yes, but for hardcore gamers at least it will be in third place.

So the answer is yes, Melee will survive and thrive because there hasn't really been anything emerging to replace it besides PM. Again, I'm looking at four to five years down the line here when all that's really left of a game's community are the hardcore players- some will cut their teeth on Smash 4 and never go elsewhere and some will move to Melee/PM, but I don't see Melee players going from a more technical game to one that is less so.

 

[Bearbuddy4]

I think people will still play melee, but its playerbase will weaken. I think smash 4 will actually hold a long lasting competitive presence unlike brawl which did for like 6 months. Smash 4 plus gamecube controllers = heaven

 

[Brian J. Stieve]

depends if the new one's better. i still love it best

 

[Senario]

I am selling my copies of Melee. I haven't played in years. But I did play the copies I have before I sold them and I got sucked in to playing for about 3 hours. Even against the computers, you almost forget how crisp that engine was. It was jarring playing it at first since everything was so much more speedy and you really had to follow up and press on to get the kill. It was a TON of fun.

So while I personally will move on, I can definitely see why people who want to take a game a little bit more seriously will not move on. Melee is a masterpiece, and the only reason I sold both of my copies is their value is in how they are still played (hence why having the box and manual doesn't even add to the value, people buy the game to play it not to display it) and I anticipate a Melee VC release a couple months after 4 releases, which will tank the value of Melee hard copies.

Or Nintendo could go the other way, like how Reggie and his uncomfortable speech about Melee during Evo seemed to indicate that he and Nintendo looked at Melee's enduring popularity as a bit of a problem.

Either way, I put my bet that Melee will endure, even as I move on.

That plug during evo about the new game was odd lol. I mean, I get it, he needs to sell copies of the new game but if he had just wished everybody luck at evo it wouldnt have sounded like a shameless plug lol.

Some of the top players have been discussing if an HD re release of melee would be PAL or NSTC. And honestly PAL is more balanced among the top tier. Questionable nerfs to mid or lower though.