a thought: does every major public release of this game since 3.02 divide the fanbase even more?

[W.A.C.]

It's funny you link that video, because both players were really sick of 3.02 by the time 3.5 had been announced. Luck had come to the conclusion that his character was broken and Infinity had announced on FB that he was quitting until 3.5 came out due to the rampant balance issues present in 3.02. Both continue to play Project M, though Infinity's been busy with real life stuff so he doesn't come to tournaments very often anymore. Luck is at almost every weekly.

3.02 was a really fun game... for a year. I had a great time with it, as did many other players, but it was pretty obvious near the end that it wouldn't have lasted very long. 3.5 and 3.6 are obviously much better, and as a result we can participate a healthy, long-term metagame instead of a short-lived one filled with toxicity.

What I don't understand is why was 3.5 such a drastic change? I can understand nerfing the top tiers and maybe the high tiers, but it seems like at least 80% of the cast got nerfed hardcore, with some characters (like Olimar) getting way overnerfed.

yes

Many Melee loyalists would disagree. I'm personally not a huge fan of Melee, but that's largely because of its extremely high skill ceiling, none of the S tiers resonate with me at all, no control customization options, its stiff controls, finicky ledges, and the horrible recoveries.

I mean, PM 3.02 was basically that but with more broken characters. Melee's legacy and heavily developed meta are honestly the only things keeping it alive because the game has stagnated greatly. You do not watch Melee for a diverse cast of characters and hell, even players. PM on the other hand should be entirely against this and 3.02 crippled that.

I'd argue Melee would've never been as successful if it weren't for how much a lot of people loved playing as the S tier characters in the game. It's currently the most successful competitively out of all the Smash games out there and it's still thriving 14 years after its release. The fact this game continues to nerf characters like Fox will just continue to draw away the Melee players which is the last thing Project M needs.

 

[Kurri ★]

What I don't understand is why was 3.5 such a drastic change? I can understand nerfing the top tiers and maybe the high tiers, but it seems like at least 80% of the cast got nerfed hardcore, with some characters (like Olimar) getting way overnerfed.


Many Melee loyalists would disagree. I'm personally not a huge fan of Melee, but that's largely because of its extremely high skill ceiling, none of the S tiers resonate with me at all, no control customization options, its stiff controls, finicky ledges, and the horrible recoveries.


I'd argue Melee would've never been as successful if it weren't for how much a lot of people loved playing as the S tier characters in the game. It's currently the most successful competitively out of all the Smash games out there and it's still thriving 14 years after its release. The fact this game continues to nerf characters like Fox will just continue to draw away the Melee players which is the last thing Project M needs.

Don't look at it as nerfing, look at it as balancing. Look at how every character interacts with one another, how the interact with the rest of the game. A lot of times these "nerfs" open up a ton of new options and ways to play.

For example, some characters had moves that were so broken that it actually lead to them being very one-dimensional. Balancing the moves may "suck" but generally it leads to players realizing what other things they could do, rather than relying on that one move over and over.

Also, PM does not need Melee players, we need PM players. Players who like PM because it's PM, not because it's another game where Fox can wave-cheat and fun-cancel his way to victory.

 

[W.A.C.]

Don't look at it as nerfing, look at it as balancing. Look at how every character interacts with one another, how the interact with the rest of the game. A lot of times these "nerfs" open up a ton of new options and ways to play.

For example, some characters had moves that were so broken that it actually lead to them being very one-dimensional. Balancing the moves may "suck" but generally it leads to players realizing what other things they could do, rather than relying on that one move over and over.

I was talking to a friend yesterday about balance patches and he told me he has never heard of any other fighting game that changed a game so radically as 3.02 to 3.5. He is much more supportive of balance patches than I am, yet we were both turned off by how Project M 3.5 was so radically different.

Also, PM does not need Melee players, we need PM players. Players who like PM because it's PM, not because it's another game where Fox can wave-cheat and fun-cancel his way to victory.

I felt Project M 3.02 did a much better job of appealing to a broader audience. Melee players playing Project M is good for its competitive scene.

 

[Bleck]

Many Melee loyalists would disagree.

yeah, but, who cares

 

[W.A.C.]

yeah, but, who cares

Considering how those players made up a lot of Project M 3.02's base, I'd say people should care a lot.

 

[Narpas_sword]

I was talking to a friend yesterday about balance patches and he told me he has never heard of any other fighting game that changed a game so radically as 3.02 to 3.5. He is much more supportive of balance patches than I am, yet we were both turned off by how Project M 3.5 was so radically different.

Most games that go through a radical change like that have it happen before it is released to the public.

 

[W.A.C.]

Most games that go through a radical change like that have it happen before it is released to the public.

Project M 3.02 wasn't some private game. It was treated as a major release.

 

[Kurri ★]

I was talking to a friend yesterday about balance patches and he told me he has never heard of any other fighting game that changed a game so radically as 3.02 to 3.5. He is much more supportive of balance patches than I am, yet we were both turned off by how Project M 3.5 was so radically different.

Yeah, and I'm on a forum, full of people who agree that 3.02 to 3.5 was a much needed change... Besides, who cares if another game hasn't done it? Let's be pioneers.

I felt Project M 3.02 did a much better job of appealing to a broader audience. Melee players playing Project M is good for its competitive scene.

Melee players are just there to play FAX and collect money. I see it every time, "The only time I play PM is during tourney" We don't need these players, they're toxic.

 

[Narpas_sword]

Project M 3.02 wasn't some private game. It was treated as a major release.

Yes. and that's obviously the difference between the community made mode we play, and published games.

We get to see the major changes in PM. and to me, that's great.

 

[Kurri ★]

DotA 2 changes all the time. One patch you're playing a support, the next they're a carry or a jungler. Games change, it's not a big deal and generally it's for the better.

 

[OSCA MIKE]

Reposting what I put in the other thread

People are going to have to realize that, as PM continues to develop, everything is and most likely WILL be subject to change, and design goals are modified over time based upon what works and what doesn't.

3.5 had a different design philosophy than what 3.0 and its derivatives did. I like to think of 3.5 as not a giant change list of nerfs, but as a new base to start from, so that collecting information for the new design philosophy is easier for successive versions of PM.

Remember, every version of PM that is released is not intended to be "the" version, but rather an attempt to collect data on all aspects of the game, and to refine what works and fix what doesn't based upon the current design philosophy. Even design goals change over time, as was the case between 3.02 and 3.5.

I can understand why people might be upset about playstyle changes to characters, since videos and explanations of one character advertise the character as is, and do not take into account possible future changes. For example, when the reveal video for Mewtwo came out, it showcased him as having certain abilities that are no longer possible to do in this version of PM. As a result, he was advertised as having a certain toolkit that no longer exists, and so an individual may feel cheated when the reveal video and game do not match up.

This is just an assumed reason, and there exists other reasons why people are upset over balance changes (lab time perceived as wasted, playstlye shifters, etc.), but the one thing that PM has always touted, even at the beginning of its life when Charizard and Bowser were given sneak peaks, is that "Everything is subject to change." This means that nothing is sacred and untouchable, not even Fox and L-canceling. Being that PM is still a beta despite dropping the word "beta" from it's title, people will have to understand and accept the changes that PM will have in its lifetime as the number evolves higher and higher.

If you cannot understand the fact that PM is in beta and drastic changes will happen in every patch, then I am sorry, but perhaps this game isn't for you. I mean no disrespect by this. All it takes is looking at this game in a different light. The PMDT (formerly PMBR) do not make changes out of spite or out of a vendetta, they want to make the game the best damn game it can possibly be, and in order to achieve this goal, they will have to make many controversial and confusing changes to characters, stages, and game mechanics alike.

Remember, behind the PMDT label are people just like you and me who are striving to make this game succeed, out of love and passion for the project they created. PM is their child, and I think they are taking very good care of it.

Perhaps it is not the game causing the community division.

 

[CORY]

to reiterate

the entirety of pm's releases have been betas. this is not a completed game. expect things to change.

especially 3.0->3.5. 3.0 was filled with a bunch of stuff that was badly designed and led to really degenerate gameplay. no, buffing everything else up to that level isn't an answer, you get lucario who can do anything on shield into forcepalm, ike with almost no landing lag against shields, and sonic who doesn't need to commit ever oh you're trying to beat my option i'll just change options now yes right now.

 

[MegaMissingno]

I was talking to a friend yesterday about balance patches and he told me he has never heard of any other fighting game that changed a game so radically as 3.02 to 3.5. He is much more supportive of balance patches than I am, yet we were both turned off by how Project M 3.5 was so radically different.

Blazblue Continuum Shift Extend -> Chronophantasma and Skullgirls -> Encore immediately come to mind. Drastic redesigns do happen in plenty of other games, and usually it's when the game has serious problems running so deep that it's the only way to fix it. Blazblue and Skullgirls both had a reputation for stupidly long combos that don't do nearly enough damage, so they reworked framedata on everything and the very mechanics of comboing (Skullgirls even threw out its original Infinite Prevention System and made a completely different one with different rules) to cut down on combo length but also increase damage, while carefully making sure that didn't lead to even bigger combos hitting way too hard. And then Blazblue threw in all sorts of new mechanics just for the hell of it that completely shook the meta up, at which point it was pretty much a brand new game.

Likewise, PM 3.02 had serious problems of its own. Remember when everyone called it Project Recovery (hell, even after all the nerfs some people still do)? It was enough of an issue to cause tournaments like The Big House to insist on cutting the game down to 3 stocks. Is that what you want? And the fact that characters were so extreme meant that matchups got more and more polarized. What do you do with a character who hard counters half the cast but at the same time gets hard countered by the other half? How do you fix the bad matchups without making the good matchups even more broken? That can't be solved by making a few minor tweaks to just the one character, you have to take a step back, look at what making these matchups so polarized, not just what's overpowered overall, and normalize the extremities throughout the whole cast.

 

[Strong Badam]

What I don't understand is why was 3.5 such a drastic change? I can understand nerfing the top tiers and maybe the high tiers, but it seems like at least 80% of the cast got nerfed hardcore, with some characters (like Olimar) getting way overnerfed.

Did you just not pay attention to the blogposts leading up to 3.5's release?

As previously mentioned with our recovery blogpost, please note that this stems from design, and not necessarily balance. Our overview of the cast is a global one, and characters will receive due consideration regardless of current perceptions of their viability. As such, it is important to consider your character's changes within the scope of our goals for version 3.5, as opposed to viewing their changes in a 3.02 vacuum.

Source

All I keep reading is that you're upset that it "changed a lot," and that 3.02 was "more fun" but I haven't really seen any reasons why you feel the change that took place was bad. In contrast, all the people responding to you write multiple paragraphs explaining 3.02's problems. It's beginning to feel like chore to respond to your posts which don't really add much to the conversation.

 

[W.A.C.]

Likewise, PM 3.02 had serious problems of its own. Remember when everyone called it Project Recovery (hell, even after all the nerfs some people still do)? It was enough of an issue to cause tournaments like The Big House to insist on cutting the game down to 3 stocks. Is that what you want?

I liked the recoveries in Project M 3.02 more than the recoveries in 3.5. If the game's standard became 3 stocks because of the game's past direction, I don't see anything wrong with that. I'd rather have a 3 stock format with superior recoveries over the 4 stock format with inferior recoveries.

And the fact that characters were so extreme meant that matchups got more and more polarized. What do you do with a character who hard counters half the cast but at the same time gets hard countered by the other half? How do you fix the bad matchups without making the good matchups even more broken? That can't be solved by making a few minor tweaks to just the one character, you have to take a step back, look at what making these matchups so polarized, not just what's overpowered overall, and normalize the extremities throughout the whole cast.

I enjoyed the fact the characters were so extreme in their differences. Project M 3.02 felt like a game of counterpicks, which encouraged players to pick up multiple characters. Though if a set few characters dominate the roster, then we have a problem.

Did you just not pay attention to the blogposts leading up to 3.5's release?

Source

All I keep reading is that you're upset that it "changed a lot," and that 3.02 was "more fun" but I haven't really seen any reasons why you feel the change that took place was bad. In contrast, all the people responding to you write multiple paragraphs explaining 3.02's problems. It's beginning to feel like chore to respond to your posts which don't really add much to the conversation.

I preferred the direction of Project M 3.02 because a lot of characters felt amazing in that game. The much better recoveries and better camp game for much of the roster made the game more fun to my personal preferences in what I want out of a Smash Bros. game. Not to mention a lot of characters felt like they had way more versatility, with Diddy Kong and Meta Knight being great examples of that. The added lag to moves, worsened recoveries, and banana count reduction for Diddy Kong made those characters way less fun compared to their Project M 3.02 selves. Meta Knight's Dimensional Cape in 3.02 is easily my favorite version of that move and I found his dive kick down air to be a unique take on what can be done with the character. I don't enjoy using the current version of Meta Knight's down air as much as his Brawl, PM3.02, and Smash 4 down air. The same can also be said of Meta Knight's up special. I don't like that Meta Knight's air game and Diddy's camp game were so nerfed in Project 3.5 since those are some of my favorite aspects to those characters in the Smash series. I understand you guys wanted to cut the "bloat", which significantly reduced character versatility, but I love it when characters feel highly versatile.

Project M 3.02 felt like a great middle ground between Brawl and Melee, and later versions made the game go much further away from its Brawl influences, which I disappointed a lot of players with more of a Brawl background. I'm personally not a huge fan of Brawl or Melee because both games do a lot of things I dislike, but Project M 3.02 took most of the best aspects to both games that I enjoyed (way less floaty, bigger emphasis on combos, great camping tools, great recoveries, etc). The transition from Project M 3.02 to 3.5 just wasn't what I wanted out of a Smash Bros. game. Though at this point, I don't feel the current versions of Smash 4 and Project M are the type of Smash games I want to play competitively...which just leaves me disappointed with the future direction of both games.

 

[Kurri ★]

Project M 3.02 felt like a great middle ground between Brawl and Melee, and later versions made the game go much further away from its Brawl influences, which I disappointed a lot of players with more of a Brawl background.

Considering most PM players come from a Brawl background, or, in cases such as myself, prefer Brawl and a majority of those players prefer 3.5/6 I'm going to have to disagree with you.

I liked the recoveries in Project M 3.02 more than the recoveries in 3.5. If the game's standard became 3 stocks because of the game's past direction, I don't see anything wrong with that. I'd rather have a 3 stock format with superior recoveries over the 4 stock format with inferior recoveries.

I don't think there really is anything wrong with that (I play Smash 4, go figure) but a majority of the community does, and the best way to remedy this is to weaken recoveries.

I enjoyed the fact the characters were so extreme in their differences. Project M 3.02 felt like a game of counterpicks, which encouraged players to pick up multiple characters. Though if a set few characters dominate the roster, then we have a problem.

The problem with this however, is that you become a jack of all trades, master of none. That, and like others have said, it makes matchups polarizing and while that may be fun at first, it simply becomes aggravating.

I preferred the direction of Project M 3.02 because a lot of characters felt amazing in that game. The much better recoveries and better camp game for much of the roster made the game more fun to my personal preferences in what I want out of a Smash Bros. game. Not to mention a lot of characters felt like they had way more versatility, with Diddy Kong and Meta Knight being great examples of that. The added lag to moves, worsened recoveries, and banana count reduction for Diddy Kong made those characters way less fun compared to their Project M 3.02 selves. Meta Knight's Dimensional Cape in 3.02 is easily my favorite version of that move and I found his dive kick down air to be a unique take on what can be done with the character. I don't enjoy using the current version of Meta Knight's down air as much as his Brawl, PM3.02, and Smash 4 down air. The same can also be said of Meta Knight's up special. I don't like that Meta Knight's air game and Diddy's camp game were so nerfed in Project 3.5 since those are some of my favorite aspects to those characters in the Smash series. I understand you guys wanted to cut the "bloat", which significantly reduced character versatility, but I love it when characters feel highly versatile.

You like camping? Eww...

Being highly versatile is cool, but the characters in 3.02 weren't versatile, they were very centralized. You pretty much were going to do flowcharts through and through.

 

[W.A.C.]

Considering most PM players come from a Brawl background, or, in cases such as myself, prefer Brawl and a majority of those players prefer 3.5/6 I'm going to have to disagree with you.

I know a lot of Brawl players who dropped Project M for Smash 4 and some of those players did not like 3.5 as much as 3.02.

I don't think there really is anything wrong with that (I play Smash 4, go figure) but a majority of the community does, and the best way to remedy this is to weaken recoveries.

I don't quite see why a lot of players are so against 3 stocks other than that Melee's standard is 4 stocks because recoveries in that game are really bad.

The problem with this however, is that you become a jack of all trades, master of none. That, and like others have said, it makes matchups polarizing and while that may be fun at first, it simply becomes aggravating.

Fair point.

You like camping? Eww...

Love camping. I'm a very defensive player.

Being highly versatile is cool, but the characters in 3.02 weren't versatile, they were very centralized. You pretty much were going to do flowcharts through and through.

Can you give some character examples?

 

[GP&B]

Link - Boomerang, the character
Mario - Everything I do combos into Fair, also a 30 frame endlag projectile that does 8%
Mewtwo - Telehover, the character
Ness - PK Fire (and more if 90% of his mains bothered)
Lucas - Everything I do combos into USmash

 

[W.A.C.]

If some characters are so over centralized with a single move, there's probably situations where it might be best to nerf that specific move. I'm not against nerfs if it's fully warranted for the future health of a game, but I'll always feel Project M 3.5 went overboard because that update made the game feel radically different. It was like playing a different Smash Bros. game instead of just an updated version of an existing game. I hate some of the nerfs that have been made to Smash 4, but the game has always still felt like it was the same game.

 

[GP&B]

I don't know what else to tell you other than try to actually read the 3.5 update posts to understand it more. PMDev gave us tons of information on their intent going into 3.5 so it was never that sudden or drastic for a lot of people.

 

[4tlas]

My personal opinion is that the more tools character's have, the more ways they can soft counter each other, and therefore the fewer polarizing matchups there are. On the other hand, the stronger each character is, the more stupid their options are, and eventually will reach a point where everything they do feels too good.

There is a point inbetween 3.02 and 3.5/3.6. That is nerfing the tools without taking them away. Worsen frame data, make hitboxes smaller, reduce damage, reduce recovery distance, reduce hitstun, change angles on moves without changing the whole point of the move, or at least provide some other tools to replace the ones you took away.

I think 3.5 has been an improvement for PM. Overall, I think the balance changes were positive enough to outweigh the loss in fun from the design direction of the patch. But I also think we can do better.

 

[Dandy_here]

3.5 felt perfectly fine with me. 3.6 is really just ironing the wrinkles

 

[Arcalyth]

Melee players are just there to play FAX and collect money. I see it every time, "The only time I play PM is during tourney" We don't need these players, they're toxic.

Actually we DO need these players. And if it wasn't for those players, we wouldn't have Project M.

Now, I understand the kind of toxicity that you're talking about. There are the players who think (thought) they could pick up their Melee top tier and dominate. When Project M was young, this was true. Once Project M players became competent enough and the playerbase was such that there was actually a large and varying degree of skill, this became less of the case. Now that Project M is in a "stable" state where we understand what each character generally wants to do, we know how to counter the Melee top tiers, and those same players lose because they didn't put in work to learn the matchup. It is now on them to learn the PM matchups if they want to. We can't force them to do that, and you're right, PM players should be here to play PM, not Melee. But there's no reason one can't play and support both, and there's no reason that any Melee player should feel alienated by a game that is inspired by and is designed to emulate Melee.

You can't discount the Melee players who give PM a fair shot, realize that it's a technical game full of depth just like the one they already love, and continue to play and learn about it. Those players are just as abundant, but far less vocal. Trashing their game and hiding behind sarcastic comments and regurgitated memes like so many people seem to love to do these days (not just here but across all Smash games save maybe 64) is only going to kill us. It takes significantly more effort to take time to understand something than it does to destroy it. Food for thought.

Now, as to the topic:
I think that the PMDT should make their decisions on future releases very carefully (not to say that they don't now).
Each future release that changes characters in the way that alienates the people who put time into them is another chunk of players we will lose, and it is much harder to gain players for our mod than it is for an Official Nintendo game.

I'm living this reality as one of Michigan's primary Project M TOs. We got into the game holy wars and now NONE of our games can get the turnouts they need to stay alive. It's sad and I know this will only be reflected in the PM community as a whole as interest for the game dies due to politics and arguments about subjective matters like 'fun'. Nobody seems to have any directed effort toward establishing an objective measure for character development, so we're essentially just circlejerking ourselves to death.

Project M should be Project M on its own. We're all on board with that idea. That doesn't mean it shouldn't borrow from Melee, or even Smash 4, Brawl, or 64. In fact, it has elements from all of the games... isn't that why we love it so much? Yeah, it started with Melee. Yeah, I think it should breathe Melee. But that doesn't mean its blood and guts can't be made out of everything else we love about Smash, and I think the PMDT agrees with that sentiment based on their established design goals.

The community is going to kill itself, honestly. It'd be nice to see a change of pace where we can agree with each other and make real progress toward fixing actual issues, not imaginary ones.

 

[Dandy_here]

Actually we DO need these players. And if it wasn't for those players, we wouldn't have Project M.

Now, I understand the kind of toxicity that you're talking about. There are the players who think (thought) they could pick up their Melee top tier and dominate. When Project M was young, this was true. Once Project M players became competent enough and the playerbase was such that there was actually a large and varying degree of skill, this became less of the case. Now that Project M is in a "stable" state where we understand what each character generally wants to do, we know how to counter the Melee top tiers, and those same players lose because they didn't put in work to learn the matchup. It is now on them to learn the PM matchups if they want to. We can't force them to do that, and you're right, PM players should be here to play PM, not Melee. But there's no reason one can't play and support both, and there's no reason that any Melee player should feel alienated by a game that is inspired by and is designed to emulate Melee.

You can't discount the Melee players who give PM a fair shot, realize that it's a technical game full of depth just like the one they already love, and continue to play and learn about it. Those players are just as abundant, but far less vocal. Trashing their game and hiding behind sarcastic comments and regurgitated memes like so many people seem to love to do these days (not just here but across all Smash games save maybe 64) is only going to kill us. It takes significantly more effort to take time to understand something than it does to destroy it. Food for thought.

Now, as to the topic:
I think that the PMDT should make their decisions on future releases very carefully (not to say that they don't now).
Each future release that changes characters in the way that alienates the people who put time into them is another chunk of players we will lose, and it is much harder to gain players for our mod than it is for an Official Nintendo game.

I'm living this reality as one of Michigan's primary Project M TOs. We got into the game holy wars and now NONE of our games can get the turnouts they need to stay alive. It's sad and I know this will only be reflected in the PM community as a whole as interest for the game dies due to politics and arguments about subjective matters like 'fun'. Nobody seems to have any directed effort toward establishing an objective measure for character development, so we're essentially just circlejerking ourselves to death.

Project M should be Project M on its own. We're all on board with that idea. That doesn't mean it shouldn't borrow from Melee, or even Smash 4, Brawl, or 64. In fact, it has elements from all of the games... isn't that why we love it so much? Yeah, it started with Melee. Yeah, I think it should breathe Melee. But that doesn't mean its blood and guts can't be made out of everything else we love about Smash, and I think the PMDT agrees with that sentiment based on their established design goals.

The community is going to kill itself, honestly. It'd be nice to see a change of pace where we can agree with each other and make real progress toward fixing actual issues, not imaginary ones.

It wouldn't be plausible for everyone to agree, because I bet you that arguments like these get pm more downloads. The more people hate it, the more people want to see why. Not saying we need this many people ranting, but we need some upset people to keep things balanced

 

[Rawkobo]

Actually we DO need these players. And if it wasn't for those players, we wouldn't have Project M.

Now, I understand the kind of toxicity that you're talking about. There are the players who think (thought) they could pick up their Melee top tier and dominate. When Project M was young, this was true. Once Project M players became competent enough and the playerbase was such that there was actually a large and varying degree of skill, this became less of the case. Now that Project M is in a "stable" state where we understand what each character generally wants to do, we know how to counter the Melee top tiers, and those same players lose because they didn't put in work to learn the matchup. It is now on them to learn the PM matchups if they want to. We can't force them to do that, and you're right, PM players should be here to play PM, not Melee. But there's no reason one can't play and support both, and there's no reason that any Melee player should feel alienated by a game that is inspired by and is designed to emulate Melee.

You can't discount the Melee players who give PM a fair shot, realize that it's a technical game full of depth just like the one they already love, and continue to play and learn about it. Those players are just as abundant, but far less vocal. Trashing their game and hiding behind sarcastic comments and regurgitated memes like so many people seem to love to do these days (not just here but across all Smash games save maybe 64) is only going to kill us. It takes significantly more effort to take time to understand something than it does to destroy it. Food for thought.

Now, as to the topic:
I think that the PMDT should make their decisions on future releases very carefully (not to say that they don't now).
Each future release that changes characters in the way that alienates the people who put time into them is another chunk of players we will lose, and it is much harder to gain players for our mod than it is for an Official Nintendo game.

I'm living this reality as one of Michigan's primary Project M TOs. We got into the game holy wars and now NONE of our games can get the turnouts they need to stay alive. It's sad and I know this will only be reflected in the PM community as a whole as interest for the game dies due to politics and arguments about subjective matters like 'fun'. Nobody seems to have any directed effort toward establishing an objective measure for character development, so we're essentially just circlejerking ourselves to death.

Project M should be Project M on its own. We're all on board with that idea. That doesn't mean it shouldn't borrow from Melee, or even Smash 4, Brawl, or 64. In fact, it has elements from all of the games... isn't that why we love it so much? Yeah, it started with Melee. Yeah, I think it should breathe Melee. But that doesn't mean its blood and guts can't be made out of everything else we love about Smash, and I think the PMDT agrees with that sentiment based on their established design goals.

The community is going to kill itself, honestly. It'd be nice to see a change of pace where we can agree with each other and make real progress toward fixing actual issues, not imaginary ones.

I think something to keep in mind about a game with changes and that is prone to changes though is that you have to be able to be flexible, something that players of Melee haven't really had to do for a long time since the game is, y'know, static. The same could be said of Brawl.

I agree with you that it's important to remember the original stance of PM involved bringing things to Melee quality (that being what managed to be achieved in 3.02 with camera, shields, etc. over the course of many, many patches), but you have to also understand that at the time, people went to 3.02 because Brawl was losing blood every other given day prior to the Smash 4 announcement, and even afterwards because no one was confident in what the gameplay footage showed, and Melee players saw that the physics were finally 1:1 in such a way that made playing the game like Melee easy...albeit until the crazy designs started to shine through and cause problems.

What people have to understand is that 3.02 was popular because people wanted something different to come. So when change came, it caused controversy and drove people away and whatnot because the APEX decision happened, then the major streaming decisions happened, and so on. Thus, from an outside perspective of the scene, one could say PM was dying because all of these things happened, but that would be without looking deeper into things.

As I mentioned above, people need to be flexible, and a lot of our current top players are that flexible, which allows them to love the state of the game as it continues to change towards a final release (where, by the way, we're likely to have those additional characters hinted at). But it has been noted a lot of loud voices that come in from Melee complain that they can't just 1:1 things and that these changes are killing the scene, etc., without really understanding the fundamental path of the PMDT that's existed since they looked at 3.02 and went, "Oh ****, we went too deep." They have a chance to make the game interesting that they've started to crack down on, and tbh, if people sat down and actually went through the roster and do a variety of different matchups, they'd see that this version is incredibly balanced, almost nearly where the game needs to be as a whole. But people don't do that out of mentalities developed from other games.

I think there's a huge community issue every time I see one of these threads, because I worry that people don't see the scene as its own thing ever because of the whole "this game was born from the community" thing. That's true, but stuff like this makes it seem like there wasn't even a community to begin with.

 

[Kurri ★]

Actually we DO need these players. And if it wasn't for those players, we wouldn't have Project M.

Now, I understand the kind of toxicity that you're talking about. There are the players who think (thought) they could pick up their Melee top tier and dominate. When Project M was young, this was true. Once Project M players became competent enough and the playerbase was such that there was actually a large and varying degree of skill, this became less of the case. Now that Project M is in a "stable" state where we understand what each character generally wants to do, we know how to counter the Melee top tiers, and those same players lose because they didn't put in work to learn the matchup. It is now on them to learn the PM matchups if they want to. We can't force them to do that, and you're right, PM players should be here to play PM, not Melee. But there's no reason one can't play and support both, and there's no reason that any Melee player should feel alienated by a game that is inspired by and is designed to emulate Melee.

You can't discount the Melee players who give PM a fair shot, realize that it's a technical game full of depth just like the one they already love, and continue to play and learn about it. Those players are just as abundant, but far less vocal. Trashing their game and hiding behind sarcastic comments and regurgitated memes like so many people seem to love to do these days (not just here but across all Smash games save maybe 64) is only going to kill us. It takes significantly more effort to take time to understand something than it does to destroy it. Food for thought.

Gotta admit, I did use a broad generalization.

My problem isn't so much with Melee players, but rather players who solely play PM for the purpose of collecting money at tourneys, the players that when they lose to Brawl characters and Melee low tiers yell "JANK!" Those are the ones I have a problem with because in my experience, they're not actually supporting the game. If you're a Melee player who actually takes the time to practice PM, understand the matchups, and most importantly enjoys the game, you're a PM player in my book.