Balance

[the green baron]

What nerfs or buffs could be given to the characters to make the game more balanced (aka lower tiers more viable), i.e. pal changes, giving g&w a better shield + all aerials Lcancel, giving bowser a less laggy jump, yoshi being able to jump out of shield, giving roy's aerials more hitsun, etc.?

 

[mesa23]

do you mean like the stuff that the project m badasses are trying to do?

 

[SSBMLahti]

A perfect game is a game without perfectly balanced characters...just sayin'.

 

[Doser]

A perfect game is a game without perfectly balanced characters...just sayin'.

This.

Spoiler

Unless every character is essentially a re-skin ala Quake III or Counterstrike

 

[Fly_Amanita]

Balance is strictly a good thing. Having characters horribly wipe out others only limits the game.

Melee is good because of its general gameplay, not because Sheik wrecks half the cast and whatnot. I'm not advocating completely perfect balance, as that simply isn't practical, but acting as if balance is an undesirable trait is absurd.

 

[Strong Badam]

a wide range of character viability increases competitive depth. there's only so much to the match-ups between the top 8 chars. game stays fresh longer when more characters can do well.

 

[KirbyKaze]

 

[Wretched]

Aw, C'mon KK.
Honestly, I've never seen people give supergood answers to this kind of question, so why not take the opportunity to do it?

First off, the fact that it isn't balanced is why we love it. I'd go bat**** if I played someone at my level who used Pichu and beat me.

Next, the only way we'd know if something were balanced is if we made changes and then played it for 10 years again. Who knows if Yoshi having a jump/WD OOS would break the game and Yoshi would be top tier, and some player named generic fruit would come and wreck everyone.

 

[N64]

KK, the correct answer was:

make everyone fox.

 

[Wretched]

Jigglypuff with shine?
Marth with shine+his ridiculous grab range? Shine into perfectly spaced tippers?
ICE CLIMBERS WITH TWO SHINES?
This sounds like an interesting version of melee.

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

Falco with Knee of Justice. SSS tier.

 

[Mokumo]

falcon's side B should go through all other moves, instead of all other moves going through his side b

 

[N64]

I took the liberty of making a balanced melee:

 

[the green baron]

i dont want perfect balance because that would be boring, i just want there to be no match ups worse than 55-45 and maybe 60-40. (btw ice climbers with a shine= desync shield pressure O.o). I think to make kirby better you could give him aerial mobility close to jiggz and a better nair

 

[Fly_Amanita]

I fail to see how more balance could possibly make the game more dull, provided that you're not sacrificing variety for the sake of balance, which is something I should have mentioned in my last post.

For example, if you could magically make all the Melee characters on par with the top/high tiers without drastically altering their playstyles, you'd still have all the awesome match-ups between the really good characters that you already did, but suddenly a bunch of other characters can legitimately join the fray without getting wrecked by anybody who is decently competent.

 

[Walt]

i dont want perfect balance because that would be boring

You're ********. Like, no lie. Not even worth explaining to you why you're ********.

 

[the green baron]

jeez, i mean that sometimes i like playing a disadvantageous match up because if i win its a better feeling than winning an even match up. (plus i like having my match up johns if i lose )

 

[Biglard]

I took the liberty of making a balanced melee:

I wanted to do the same thing with the stages and FD, but then I realized the thumbnails were not all of the same size, and I gave up.

 

[Veetaak]

I fail to see how more balance could possibly make the game more dull, provided that you're not sacrificing variety for the sake of balance, which is something I should have mentioned in my last post.

For example, if you could magically make all the Melee characters on par with the top/high tiers without drastically altering their playstyles, you'd still have all the awesome match-ups between the really good characters that you already did, but suddenly a bunch of other characters can legitimately join the fray without getting wrecked by anybody who is decently competent.

This x1000000000

I don't think that balance makes it boring as he said. It's the variety of the characters that makes it fun to play/watch.

Also: I would prefer if the low/mid tiers got buffed instead of high tiers getting nerfed

 

[Wake]

Yeah people are talking about slightly different things when it comes to the game being dull if it were balanced.

If it were practical for every character to be balanced with respect to one another without changing their variety (like all characters having the same moveset), then it could only lead to more interesting MUs not dulled ones.

But some people are talking about trying to balance 26 characters practically, which would probably result in the characters being similar and therefore a more dull (in my opinion) game.

 

[the green baron]

i agree that more variety would be a good thing, that was the point of wanting more balance. slight unbalance isnt a bad thing. playing bad matchups helps make us better players. i guess ill withdraw the perfect balance= boring statement, i realize it wouldnt be boring but i would prefer slight unbalance.

 

[Rubyiris]

Want balance? Just play Falco.

 

[the green baron]

tempting...falco dittos are pretty fun too

 

[N64]

I'm being a negative nancy.

I've just seen this thread I don't know how many times and fail to see the point of it. Say people contribute a number of balancing ideas, then what happens? We all say "yeah that'd be pretty cool." Then the thread falls off the 1st page, never gets touched again, and a month later another "Hey guys how would you balance melee?" thread comes up.

 

[Twinkles]

I know but

what else are you going to do on this forum

it's something to do when you're not actually playing the game

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

It's fun to theorize about stuff that will never happen.

Like, the concept of Ness being top tier in Melee is so ridiculous, but it's fun to imagine just what he would need to climb that far. I think it would be fun to take all low tier characters and "fix" them to make them viable for high/top tier.

 

[Strong Badam]

without actually implementing those changes and playtesting you really have no idea how well you've balanced though :/

 

[Mr Wizzrobe]

True, but that doesn't take away the fun of thinking about it.

Mad respect to the guys working on Project:M who make it work.

 

[DerfMidWest]

I was thinking about this earlier while playing today. Pichu should be invincible while doing his upB like sheik is. Then he'd be like... much higher on the tier list :3

just be invincible all the way across the stage. i'd think he'd be at least d tier with that...

 

[The Star King]

Lol @ the people who say they love it because it's unbalanced. You probably only think that way because you're used to it.

If you were used to a balanced game, and somebody said "Hey let's make half the cast unviable", would you support it? Haha, yeah right >_>

 

[Kal]

I don't really care that it's unbalanced. I tend to view games as "balanced roster + unviable characters." The bigger the "balanced roster" part is, the better. But if the game had 20 additional Pichu-esque joke characters who clearly sucked, it would not be any worse.

 

[The Star King]

I agree, but adding to the viable roster would only help the game

 

[Anth0ny]

I don't think 50-50 matchups across the board is very fun, or possible. However, there are definitely some easy changes that could be made to some characters movesets that would make them viable. Mewtwo being heavier, Pichu not damaging himself, Dr. Mario and Mario fusing together to have one great moveset instead of one good and one okay moveset... just off the top of my head.

Project M is on top of this =P

 

[DerfMidWest]

Pichu not damaging himself would make very little difference in his matchups...
Pichu players only deal like 5-15% to themselves per stock anyways (depending on their playstyle)

it honestly doesn't make a difference, I usually don't even pay attention to the self damage.

The way they could make pichu better is to give him a bit more range and priority. or make him invincible whilst using upB :3

The only thing that removing self damage would change is his ability to camp with jolts and he would live like... 1 hit longer.

and yes, the only way that a game can be totally balanced is if there is only 1 character.

 

[Shadow Huan]

mewtwo should've been the best character in melee.

bowser's jump animation should not be slower than fox's friggen up smash.

kirby shouldn't suck so much, he's got 5 jumps but no air mobility? -_-

no character should have a move that spikes for 30 frames *glares at falco*

even tho i like sheik and she's one of my strongest characters, no character should have a move that negates half the cast *coughdthrowcough* the pal sheik dthrow is fine by me

zelda could've been better ect ect ect you can go on and on, from what i heard about the 4th installment... i just thank god that people who know how to balance characters are going to be doing it in smash 4.

ehhhhhhh \rant