would pm be a better game if inputs were less lenient then they are now?

[666blaziken]

I love pm, but whenever I try and have a discussion with melee players about it, the one thing that always comes up is how easy the game is. I honestly can't come up with a counter argument, because without looking at matchups, number of technical tricks, or characters; mechanics that have come from melee are easier in pm, and a lot of melee players use that as a reason not to respect pm players. As someone who's getting into sf4, I can see why street fighter players look down on smash bros; smash bros (even melee) has easier inputs than sf games do in which you have to be frame perfect. With that being said, I think if pm were harder than melee, it wouldn't be too far fetched of an idea, and if melee players complained about the game being too hard, it wouldn't sound as insulting to the players or the game. I know pm players like to say that melee players just don't like change, but I have yet to hear one complain about 64, which plays completely differently. So for those that agree with me that pm should be harder than melee, here's my ideas:
1. tap jump timings should be brought back to melee standards.
2. everyone should have enough landing lag on their aerials up to where it's crucial to L cancel in order to follow up.
3. less hitstun on meteors and spikes when they hit the ground; making followups such as stomp to knee, or any other combo like that to be much stricter.
4. crouch cancelling could be weaker.
5. auto combos are reduced overall, relying more on SDI and DI reads to combo better.
6. make more characters fall faster so that there aren't just 4 fast fallers; turn semi fast fallers such as mk, lucas, and diddy into fast fallers; there should only be very few floaties in the game; only those that make sense such as samus, peach, jigglypuff, luigi, and wario.
I will probably get some hate for this, but I like a good challenge, and I want the melee and pm fanbase to be more united rather than seperated considering that the pmdt originally intended this game to be a sequel to melee, and making things easier just seems contradictory to implementing L-canceling.

 

[InfinityCollision]

No. Arbitrarily difficult inputs is terrible game design.

 

[Binary Clone]

There's no reason to.

Why should it be harder? It's an arbitrary addition of a technical skill barrier to raise the skill floor and make the game less accessible to players entering the scene. There isn't a good reason to do it, so why would we bother?

 

[666blaziken]

There's no reason to.

Why should it be harder? It's an arbitrary addition of a technical skill barrier to raise the skill floor and make the game less accessible to players entering the scene. There isn't a good reason to do it, so why would we bother?

because melee players who almost never play pm beat pm players who play almost all the time; and say it's easy without even knowing the match-ups; it's dissapointing how little respect melee players give to pm players. I'd say it makes the game seem fraudulent. It would make more sense for the game meant to be competitive to be more frame precise than the game that was meant to be a party game in the first place, not the reverse.

 

[Binary Clone]

because melee players who almost never play pm beat pm players who play almost all the time; and say it's easy without even knowing the match-ups; it's dissapointing how little respect melee players give to pm players. I'd say it makes the game seem fraudulent. It would make more sense for the game meant to be competitive to be more frame precise than the game that was meant to be a party game in the first place, not the reverse.

...So what?

Who cares about the respect of a playerbase that doesn't play the game? That's no reason to make the design of the game itself markedly worse.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Making the skill floor higher alienates new players for no good reason.

That's all you achieve by making inputs harder.

The skill ceiling is probably already higher in PM. With the matchups knowledge needed, the extra techs to know, and generally more options.

The complaint I hear from melee players is "my opponent has too many options, and that means the game is easy". This is ridiculous, if they have too many options the problem is that the complainer wants to be able to cover more of their opponents options with a single choice of their own. Basically they want an easier game.

 

[Poilu]

There is a whole spectrum of technicity. If players seeks a technical game which requires frame perfect inputs to combo your oponent, they can go play KoF which I heard was one of the most demanding fighting game. PM requires a lot more input than many other fighting games but is more lenient than melee. I think it is better since it allows me to focuse more on my opponent rather than on my hands.
Fighting the opponent rather than the game is way funnier and less frustrating for me. Reading your opponent, mindgaming, elaborating strategies ... This is what bring fighting games their meaning (or you would play a scoring game).
PM is less demanding than melee. True. What did it change ? I can focuse more on my playstyle, on my strategies, on my opponent. I agree that it has its limits and technicity isn't a bad thing though. The perfect example being Brawl. Apart from its balance, the gamedesigners tried to throw away all technicity and the game wasn't near as fun as Melee or PM for me.

TL;DR I prefer fighting my opponent, not the game, or else I would play alone.

 

[666blaziken]

...So what?

Who cares about the respect of a playerbase that doesn't play the game? That's no reason to make the design of the game itself markedly worse.

but that's the thing, melee players do play project m... For the easy money. They play and they win a lot because they don't have to work very hard to beat opponents in pm because the game is as mango has quoted, "melee on training wheels". I just find it ironic that the game meant to be a fighting game isn't as hard as the game that's meant to be a party game.

 

[Binary Clone]

but that's the thing, melee players do play project m... For the easy money. They play and they win a lot because they don't have to work very hard to beat opponents in pm because the game is as mango has quoted, "melee on training wheels". I just find it ironic that the game meant to be a fighting game isn't as hard as the game that's meant to be a party game.

That's because Melee was badly designed in many ways, with 1-frame input windows and artificial difficulty curves and many things that didn't make sense on a frame-data level, like the short hop windows, which were arbitrarily tighter than they should have been.

PM improves on these things, making PM more accessible to newer players without lowering the skill ceiling, or, the difficulty and depth of the highest level of play.

 

[666blaziken]

Making the skill floor higher alienates new players for no good reason.

That's all you achieve by making inputs harder.

The skill ceiling is probably already higher in PM. With the matchups knowledge needed, the extra techs to know, and generally more options.

The complaint I hear from melee players is "my opponent has too many options, and that means the game is easy". This is ridiculous, if they have too many options the problem is that the complainer wants to be able to cover more of their opponents options with a single choice of their own. Basically they want an easier game.

Interesting, most of the time from what I've heard from DP "if a character hits me with a start up move, it won't matter where I di, the next move they do will hit because pm has auto-combos which means they don't have to commit to anything, every move just sort of goes into each other" I figured that while it would be hard to reduce the hitstun withough making the move useless, a better idea would be to just make more characters fall faster so there's less time to react, and DI becomes more important.

 

[666blaziken]

That's because Melee was badly designed in many ways, with 1-frame input windows and artificial difficulty curves and many things that didn't make sense on a frame-data level, like the short hop windows, which were arbitrarily tighter than they should have been.

PM improves on these things, making PM more accessible to newer players without lowering the skill ceiling, or, the difficulty and depth of the highest level of play.

SF3 and 4 have 1 frame input windows and artificial difficulty curves, and both games have recieved a lot of positive reception. Would you consider these games badly designed for fighting games?

 

[Binary Clone]

SF3 and 4 have 1 frame input windows and artificial difficulty curves, and both games have recieved a lot of positive reception. Would you consider these games badly designed for fighting games?

Yep. They're great for high-level play, but the depth that they have is much too inaccessible. It steals focus from fundamentals, spacing, and mindgames, and puts it into mindless execution. The reason that I don't play standard fighting games is because of this - they become less interactive and become an exercise in pressing the right buttons at the right time. If I wanted that, I'd play a rhythm game.

I want my fighting games to be interactive at all times, not Guitar Hero with a neutral game.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Interesting, most of the time from what I've heard from DP "if a character hits me with a start up move, it won't matter where I di, the next move they do will hit because pm has auto-combos which means they don't have to commit to anything, every move just sort of goes into each other" I figured that while it would be hard to reduce the hitstun withough making the move useless, a better idea would be to just make more characters fall faster so there's less time to react, and DI becomes more important.

That would create easier juggling...


It's funny though, you take the feedback from the community and get rid of lots of free options with low commitment and easy follow-ups, and the replies are all "What! I didn't mean nerf MY character I mean nerf other people's!"

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

SF3 and 4 have 1 frame input windows and artificial difficulty curves, and both games have recieved a lot of positive reception. Would you consider these games badly designed for fighting games?

Ahem, excuse me. What's funny about this post is that SF3 and SFIV are different in similar ways that Melee and PM are respectively. Even the same arguments are used. Just ignore the naysayers and play the game you enjoy.

 

[Xermo]

You see your mistake was giving a **** about what other people think instead of playing a game you enjoy.
Melee players can beat P:M players because for the most part, all the high tiers are the same. Their tech skill and ability transfers over easily. You counter this by being objectively better than your opponent instead of trying to make the game more difficult to play.

 

[Kurri ★]

SF3 and 4 have 1 frame input windows and artificial difficulty curves, and both games have recieved a lot of positive reception. Would you consider these games badly designed for fighting games?

SF players find 1 Frame inputs dumb. That's why SFV is changing that.

 

[666blaziken]

That would create easier juggling...


It's funny though, you take the feedback from the community and get rid of lots of free options with low commitment and easy follow-ups, and the replies are all "What! I didn't mean nerf MY character I mean nerf other people's!"

lol, I hate when people do that. Mew2king is the worst for that example. I personally think that when people react to nerfs, they are just being selfish. 2 of my friends complained about Ike losing one of his wall jumps out of side b, and when I told him that it was dumb because it made edgeguarding him a guessing game, he was like, "oh, I guess so, but it still sucks". I still wonder if I would behave similarly if I was in his shoes though. I mean, as a pikachu main, I like the QAC nerf, but I'm not sure I would play pm pikachu if they got rid of his qac all together in return for some more buffs.

 

[666blaziken]

Ahem, excuse me. What's funny about this post is that SF3 and SFIV are different in similar ways that Melee and PM are respectively. Even the same arguments are used. Just ignore the naysayers and play the game you enjoy.

hm, the problem is that it's really hard for me to find pm players only, so I am kind of forced to play with melee players who play pm occationally, and I want them to play more with me and help develop the meta, but they don't want to because they find the easiness a turnoff.

 

[AuraMaudeGone]

hm, the problem is that it's really hard for me to find pm players only, so I am kind of forced to play with melee players who play pm occasionally, and I want them to play more with me and help develop the meta, but they don't want to because they find the easiness a turnoff.

They're just being silly. Try and show/teach them some cool stuff when you do end up playing with them.

 

[Flippy Flippersen]

I don't think it's the diffculty curve keeping melee players away from taking the game more serious than melee. If you like a viable melee character in melee, said character moves smoother in melee.
Additionally since pm strives to have a balanced roster they have to either remove options that made said characters fun for melee ers or give other characters tools just as good as shine or marth dtilt etc. In one case they simply remove what makes the character the melee er plays fun factor which means melee is more fun for them to play. In the other case there is a character that may or may not be as good as fox but you don't know how to kill it off 1 hit and you don't know what few misses of said character you can punish. Which makes melee a less likely game to be cheesed in which is still more fun.

The only way melee ers will prefer pm over melee is by pm having a more fun character than said melee ers main. (making them switch)

 

[Bleck]

melee a less likely game to be cheesed

if you can't figure out how to jump over hadokens it doesn't mean street fighter is bad

 

[OSCA MIKE]

fighting games are about fighting your opponent

they are not about fighting the game or your controller

 

[himemiya]

They're just mad that fox got nerfed (again) and they have to learn more then 3 mu's. I can understand the part with option to have stuff like auto-canceling but its just an option and you can enforce scrubs to keep it off! ^.^

 

[Spralwers]

if your melee friends want PM tech skill that isn't lenient, show them wavebouncing lasers with fox/falco.

 

[ECHOnce]

I have no PM practice partner (I get most of my practice at tournies), and my only smash friends that I'm close with and play often all play Melee. We're still about the same level in PM, but I fall short in Melee, which we play 90% of the time. So when I do do well or go even against them in PM, it gets blamed on jank. And then we went back to Melee and I got 2-3 stocked for the next few hours again.

Or at least it used to. The way I broke out of that situation is to find a Melee top tier secondary, and commit to them. Practice them in PM until you get used to them, and once you start feeling as confident with them as your main (this will help you learn how to space/approach/etc. with them through experience, in your comfort zone), drop playing them in PM. Go cold turkey, and only play them in Melee with 20XX during tech grind sessions. Timings/spacing will feel different, even when they should technically be the same. Then bring them out when you play Melee friendlies once you've adjusted. You'll still get beat, but once your friends realize that your going even or getting closer to it with a Melee character, they'll respect your ideas a bit more. Might not convert them to PM or anything - that's not the objective - but you should be able to prove that PM has just as much depth as a game as Melee; it's just underexplored.

 

[JOE!]

You casual, you didnt go hard enough:

Smash attacks must require a quarter circle input followed by double tapping A
Special attacks are strictly now button combinations (Such as BB, Hold B, Quarter circle back->fwd, B for Falcon's Side B)
Tilts must be Lcanceled else you take triple lag
Shields are made much smaller so you have to angle to match the incoming hitbox perfectly

 

[Journal]

Tbh I really don't think it's true that PM is easier. There's more tech, still frame perfect things, more varied gameplay elements (who even had to deal with something like Diddy nanners?), wave dashing is maybe like one frame easier (which probably isn't even noticeable). Honestly if they think it's easier it's probably just because the graphics and ability to play more characters gives that impression to some people.

 

[LightningDragon]

Adding "high-tier" gimmicks to draw in disrespectful players?
How about no?

And yes, I do see arbitrarily increasing the skill floor for the sake of increasing the skill floor as gimmicky.

 

[Flippy Flippersen]

if you can't figure out how to jump over hadokens it doesn't mean street fighter is bad

I didn't actually call pm bad. I just said it is something melee players prefer less.

That aside learning how to deal with characters/tools in sf games is not hard. Most of the times the options against it are pretty intuative and even outside of that they are consistent. If I take something like foxes shine ideally you sdi in/crouch to get behind him (only if you're in the weight class that doesn't fall over) or you tech it and pick an option you think the fox won't cover unless you're close to the ledge in which case you wanna hold towards the stage to grab ledge. (to not write an essay on shine I'mma leave out platforms and other scenarios where you wanna do other things but there's quite a lot. Then there is also what you have to do to not get hit by said shine which is probably a longer list.

Fireballs are literally empty hop if you can't do something and don't wanna commit or jump towards and punish if you are in range and react or read them. you can block if you don't feel either of this will work. (sometimes you get a game specific mechanis to deal with them too like sfivs focus attack, sfiiis parry or kofs shorthops/rolls)

Base street fighter is a lot simpler mechanically than melee/pm.

 

[Kurri ★]

Fireballs are literally empty hop if you can't do something and don't wanna commit or jump towards and punish if you are in range and react or read them. you can block if you don't feel either of this will work. (sometimes you get a game specific mechanis to deal with them too like sfivs focus attack, sfiiis parry or kofs shorthops/rolls)

Base street fighter is a lot simpler mechanically than melee/pm.

I feel that's a bit too oversimplified.

 

[Flippy Flippersen]

I feel that's a bit too oversimplified.

Not even that much. Finding answers to tools in sf is really simple. The hard part is moreso finding which tools your opponent can/will use rather than what the actual answer for them is.

 

[NTG]

With all due respect, you sound like someone who doesn't actually play the game at any sort of serious level and just hear popular Melee players dissing on it, but you don't want to play a game other people think is worse. Heads up, a lot of the FGC thinks Smash is a joke, you're already screwed. To your two big points:

1) Melee players constantly beat dedicated PM players...because they're using characters they've had for several years, sometimes a decade or more, whereas PM seriously changes year to year and month to month and PM players do NOT know their characters inside and out at the same level.

2) Maylay players don't want to learn new matchups as much as they want to read up on how a matchup is played and copy what they see. These "auto-combos" aren't a thing and people just aren't used to the DI required to escape combos.

Play what you want and quit worrying so much about other peoples opinions yknow

 

[Flippy Flippersen]

With all due respect, you sound like someone who doesn't actually play the game at any sort of serious level and just hear popular Melee players dissing on it, but you don't want to play a game other people think is worse. Heads up, a lot of the FGC thinks Smash is a joke, you're already screwed. To your two big points:

1) Melee players constantly beat dedicated PM players...because they're using characters they've had for several years, sometimes a decade or more, whereas PM seriously changes year to year and month to month and PM players do NOT know their characters inside and out at the same level.

2) Maylay players don't want to learn new matchups as much as they want to read up on how a matchup is played and copy what they see. These "auto-combos" aren't a thing and people just aren't used to the DI required to escape combos.

Play what you want and quit worrying so much about other peoples opinions yknow

These were not my points. I never had skill as an argument for playing/not playing the game. My arguments were the characters (potentially) not being as fun as the melee main of a melee player (for them personally) and the problem of having characters as good as fox without knowing to deal with them. (or alternatively a game where fox just techspams and wins on fox merits)

I also don't think that what I said about sf is something sf players would disagree with. The answers to tools in sf are easy to find. That is not where the challenge comes from. I'm not calling sf easy or a joke I'm saying it's difficulty comes from something else.

 

[Kurri ★]

These were not my points. I never had skill as an argument for playing/not playing the game. My arguments were the characters (potentially) not being as fun as the melee main of a melee player (for them personally) and the problem of having characters as good as fox without knowing to deal with them. (or alternatively a game where fox just techspams and wins on fox merits)

I also don't think that what I said about sf is something sf players would disagree with. The answers to tools in sf are easy to find. That is not where the challenge comes from. I'm not calling sf easy or a joke I'm saying it's difficulty comes from something else.

I don't think that was referred to you... I could be wrong though.

 

[Bleck]

the idea of auto-combos is literally the punchline to the joke that is competitive smash; people complained about brawl not having true combos, and then people complained about pm having true combos

peeps literally just don't know what they're talking about; one charismatic ****head (let's say mew2king or something) convinces everyone that a game he doesn't like is bad, and every other follower-type ****head decides to think the same thing 'cause then maybe senpai will notice them

 

[Chevy]

Melee top tiers have more auto-combos than the rest of the PM cast combined, the PM auto-combo accusation is baseless and insane.

 

[Kurri ★]

Melee top tiers have more auto-combos than the rest of the PM cast combined, the PM auto-combo accusation is baseless and insane.

Can anyone explain to me why auto-combos are bad? How is one move easily comboing into another degenerate.

 

[Manaconda]

Can anyone explain to me why auto-combos are bad? How is one move easily comboing into another degenerate.

I suppose people think it takes less skill if you don't have to account for percent, DI, weight, and so forth in cases where autocombos work. I guess PM autocombos get more flack because they're perceived to be easier to perform, but there are definitely people who think Fox's waveshines or Falco's shine > aerial or Falcon's 30 uairs > knee on floaties are dumb.

After the hate cools off people start calling them 'bread and butter' combos.

 

[wiiztec]

because melee players who almost never play pm beat pm players who play almost all the time

Who besides the very best melee players does this?

 

[666blaziken]

Who besides the very best melee players does this?

Can't name them all at the moment, but fat goku is ranked in his reigon; laudandous, DP, Catnip, are ranked in nor cal/sac yet they play melee way more than project m.