To be clear about lines issues, you need to update your gecko OS AND have the gameconfig.txt file. Both are important.
Yes, I'm a liar about that having been my last post for the night...
Allow me to explain the thinking on Bowser. Once his horrible matchup in King Dedede is removed, he has just plain generally poor performance. It's not that he has crippling flaws... He is just plain too unrewarding for the inherent disadvantages he has (slow, huge, projectile spammable, etc.). The Bowser boards actually seem to support this view by representing him as losing a ridiculous number of matchups 45-55 and 40-60. The solution, then, is to just buff how rewarding his basic gameplan is. Like, ftilt is a good poke a good Bowser will use a lot. If he got a little more out of it each time, it would be so much better for Bowser. Generally, across the board, Bowser saw a lot of small damage buffs. At least one person has seemed to fall into the temptation of taking a single one, writing it off as insignificant, and judging the job done incompetent since you can do that for all of them individually. Look at the bigger picture. Bowser is now more REWARDING for his disadvantages. It's a way better solution than removing his weaknesses that made him what he is...
I will throw out to _clinton_ for Ness that the dthrow change is probably the most substantive one other than his natural benefits from grab release. I'd focus mostly on it though Ness being able to be used without the constant counterpick worry alone is a good cause for his re-evaluation (see also: Fox and Donkey Kong).
If ZSS mains refuse to use the fsmash like this, they are refusing to use a quality move. It doesn't have to be fast. It doesn't have to combo into anything. It has obscene range so when it's rewarding to hit with as an independent unit; it's a good move. A statement like that is kinda frustrating for me. Presume we lived in a world wherein standard Brawl King Dedede's forward tilt was unsafe on hit and only did 2% damage. Obviously like that it would be useless. Would you say then that it could only be useful if we made it faster or it comboed into something, or would a version that is the same speed as always that was rewarding enough to be the beastly spacing move we all know and love (or loathe?) be adequate? ZSS's fsmash is in this same boat. It's a spacing move and an independent damage dealing move; I'm not sure why a move that fulfills two useful functions like that wouldn't be used.
With both the ZSS fsmash change and the Bowser dair change, I think any disconnect in understanding how fundamental and useful these changes are is coming from not seeing them in action which may lead to some misinterpretations of the purposes of these moves. I can't stress enough how important playtesting changes is to understanding them. Like, the Bowser dair change... Just think about Yoshi's down aerial except with a bigger hit area. A clean hit does 37%; it's very significant. It frankly does not matter that the move is slow and laggy. It does 37% on a clean hit and is safe on hit. 37% is a huge amount of damage even by Bowser's standards. It's worth it.
As per the issue of us not maining every character and such, it's true, but it's not that big of a deal. Like I've said before, both of us are extremely academic about this game and live in a very character diverse region. We actually understand the whole cast pretty well even if we're not so good at actually playing most of them. In any case, the origin of a work shouldn't be considered when evaluating a work. We feel as though our changes as a whole are of high quality, and if they are of such high quality (which is something that only playtesting can truly reveal), then whether we "should" be able to make them is not important.
In any case, engaging a bunch of outside people on the design level isn't a good idea. With any large scale project, the design needs unity of purpose by designers who are all individually extremely dedicated. Thinkaman and I see eye to eye on almost all significant issues and have a very similar vision for this project that allows us to work effectively as a team, to the point where we could have been one person who is abnormally good at catching his own mistakes and can do twice as much work as a normal perosn. Adding in more people damages that, and in general it's a good way to deal a death blow to such a project.
Of course, that being said, we do take the opinions of everyone who playtests the game very seriously. We understand our natural limits as two people (perhaps moreso as two people who think similarly), and we know the community will find issues we never could have found internally and has a lot of valuable perspectives. It's a subtle distinction, but it's an important one. Suggestions that look at the original Brawl characters and say how any given individual would have gone about rebalancing them are of limited utility, but strong data about how a character as a whole performs and, if it's inadequate, why they are underperforming is really critical to the success of this project.
Yes, I'm a liar about that having been my last post for the night...
Allow me to explain the thinking on Bowser. Once his horrible matchup in King Dedede is removed, he has just plain generally poor performance. It's not that he has crippling flaws... He is just plain too unrewarding for the inherent disadvantages he has (slow, huge, projectile spammable, etc.). The Bowser boards actually seem to support this view by representing him as losing a ridiculous number of matchups 45-55 and 40-60. The solution, then, is to just buff how rewarding his basic gameplan is. Like, ftilt is a good poke a good Bowser will use a lot. If he got a little more out of it each time, it would be so much better for Bowser. Generally, across the board, Bowser saw a lot of small damage buffs. At least one person has seemed to fall into the temptation of taking a single one, writing it off as insignificant, and judging the job done incompetent since you can do that for all of them individually. Look at the bigger picture. Bowser is now more REWARDING for his disadvantages. It's a way better solution than removing his weaknesses that made him what he is...
I will throw out to _clinton_ for Ness that the dthrow change is probably the most substantive one other than his natural benefits from grab release. I'd focus mostly on it though Ness being able to be used without the constant counterpick worry alone is a good cause for his re-evaluation (see also: Fox and Donkey Kong).
If ZSS mains refuse to use the fsmash like this, they are refusing to use a quality move. It doesn't have to be fast. It doesn't have to combo into anything. It has obscene range so when it's rewarding to hit with as an independent unit; it's a good move. A statement like that is kinda frustrating for me. Presume we lived in a world wherein standard Brawl King Dedede's forward tilt was unsafe on hit and only did 2% damage. Obviously like that it would be useless. Would you say then that it could only be useful if we made it faster or it comboed into something, or would a version that is the same speed as always that was rewarding enough to be the beastly spacing move we all know and love (or loathe?) be adequate? ZSS's fsmash is in this same boat. It's a spacing move and an independent damage dealing move; I'm not sure why a move that fulfills two useful functions like that wouldn't be used.
With both the ZSS fsmash change and the Bowser dair change, I think any disconnect in understanding how fundamental and useful these changes are is coming from not seeing them in action which may lead to some misinterpretations of the purposes of these moves. I can't stress enough how important playtesting changes is to understanding them. Like, the Bowser dair change... Just think about Yoshi's down aerial except with a bigger hit area. A clean hit does 37%; it's very significant. It frankly does not matter that the move is slow and laggy. It does 37% on a clean hit and is safe on hit. 37% is a huge amount of damage even by Bowser's standards. It's worth it.
As per the issue of us not maining every character and such, it's true, but it's not that big of a deal. Like I've said before, both of us are extremely academic about this game and live in a very character diverse region. We actually understand the whole cast pretty well even if we're not so good at actually playing most of them. In any case, the origin of a work shouldn't be considered when evaluating a work. We feel as though our changes as a whole are of high quality, and if they are of such high quality (which is something that only playtesting can truly reveal), then whether we "should" be able to make them is not important.
In any case, engaging a bunch of outside people on the design level isn't a good idea. With any large scale project, the design needs unity of purpose by designers who are all individually extremely dedicated. Thinkaman and I see eye to eye on almost all significant issues and have a very similar vision for this project that allows us to work effectively as a team, to the point where we could have been one person who is abnormally good at catching his own mistakes and can do twice as much work as a normal perosn. Adding in more people damages that, and in general it's a good way to deal a death blow to such a project.
Of course, that being said, we do take the opinions of everyone who playtests the game very seriously. We understand our natural limits as two people (perhaps moreso as two people who think similarly), and we know the community will find issues we never could have found internally and has a lot of valuable perspectives. It's a subtle distinction, but it's an important one. Suggestions that look at the original Brawl characters and say how any given individual would have gone about rebalancing them are of limited utility, but strong data about how a character as a whole performs and, if it's inadequate, why they are underperforming is really critical to the success of this project.
