Balanced Brawl Public Preview *GENESIS UPDATE*

[SaltyKracka]

Hm...I have doubts about Snake being balanced, just the same as with MK, but I'm willing to let it go for now...

 

[Linkshot]

There needs more Genesis Update videos of MK against somebody that used to stand no chance against him.

 

[BG3]

There needs more Genesis Update videos of MK against somebody that used to stand no chance against him.

This. If there is a video of Link defeating a good MK, then I'll say this is balanced. Right now, I kind of have doubts.

 

[SaltyKracka]

This. If there is a video of Link defeating a good MK, then I'll say this is balanced. Right now, I kind of have doubts.

I'd much rather see one of Ganondorf beating an MK. Tricks are not what he needs to be good. What he needs is to have all the glitches and nerfs they gave him revised upwards.

 

[Linkshot]

Sadly, Ganondorf's lack of disjoint will always put him at a distinct disadvantage against MK.

But at least he'll be able to counter MK's counters.

 

[SaltyKracka]

It's not even that that I'm talking about. Half of the "tricks" they gave Ganondorf are next to useless!

 

[ぱみゅ]

Sadly, Ganondorf's lack of disjoint will always put him at a distinct disadvantage against MK.

But at least he'll be able to counter MK's counters.

BBrawl is still on testing phase, and as I see, Ganondorf being actually able to make something more on MK, is just a step forwards on this project's goals.

may within some time, a patient ganon player can practice and make us notice how ganon's tricks should work (or not =/)

 

[Mit]

It's really hard to say how good Ganon could be this early, and how well you could use some of his new tricks. They really require you to rethink your entire play method as Ganon to include your new options, and it takes a long time to do something like that.

As far as Ganon vs. MK, I think the matchup would be a lot closer than before. Why? Ganon is incredibly powerful, and MK is incredibly light, and dies early. It really wouldn't take but 3-5 hits from an array of Ganondorf's moves to put him into death range of his kill moves. Good Ganons are good at avoiding their enemy and moving in to punish when possible, and even better Ganons are good at racking damage on stuff like tech-chasing side-b.

I'd imagine a typical Ganon vs. MK match would involve MK landing about 5x more hits than Ganon, but Ganon would still be able to KO MK at around the same time throughout stocks.


Also, someone give Izaw BBrawl Link. I'm sure he would decimate with all of that increased strength, and especially those arrows.

 

[SaltyKracka]

It's really hard to say how good Ganon could be this early, and how well you could use some of his new tricks. They really require you to rethink your entire play method as Ganon to include your new options, and it takes a long time to do something like that.

As far as Ganon vs. MK, I think the matchup would be a lot closer than before. Why? Ganon is incredibly powerful, and MK is incredibly light, and dies early. It really wouldn't take but 3-5 hits from an array of Ganondorf's moves to put him into death range of his kill moves. Good Ganons are good at avoiding their enemy and moving in to punish when possible, and even better Ganons are good at racking damage on stuff like tech-chasing side-b.

I'd imagine a typical Ganon vs. MK match would involve MK landing about 5x more hits than Ganon, but Ganon would still be able to KO MK at around the same time throughout stocks.

This would be funny if it weren't for the fact that it's so untrue.

Yes, Ganon kills early and MK dies early. However, the part where this all falls apart is the fact that Ganon's moves are ****ING SLOW.

Everything he has is dodgeable or shieldable on reaction, he can't pressure due to the fact that if he so much as touches a shield with any, ANY of his moves besides SideB, he's getting punished, and the fact that he can't punish well OoS either. His grab range is absolutely abysmal, and the fact of the matter is that none of his throws actually lead into anything.

As for his aerial game, it took the discovery of thunderstorming to remove the fact that his dair lags like nothing else, and he can't even jump high enough with his double jump to escape the enormous lag they tacked onto his fair. Bair can't hit opponents for anything, not even having the decency to extend somewhat close to the ground. And did I mention the part where his jump height absolutely blows? The only good thing about his air game is uair and thunderstorming. And the fact of the matter is, everything else he has sucks so much that those are practically half of Ganon's game.

His recovery is the epitome of suck, and Ganondorf is likely the second or third easiest character in the game to gimp. Yes, that includes Link, Olimar, and Ivysaur. What's more, thanks to that lame-*** glitch, even recovering successfully hurts Ganondorf.

Oh, and don't forget the part where two of his moves are practically useless. Utilt? It can be used, but it's so highly situational that I've seen Falcons use Paunches more often and more successfully than a Ganon using utilt. And it's not like Ganon could use a move that helps against aerial opponents. All he's got is his uair. But then there's the part where we get a move that is THE LEAST USEFUL MOVE IN THE GAME. It's worse than Sing, it's worse than...not going into that now.

And you know what? Half of the "tricks" are related to aerial Wizkick. Something which a competent Ganon player will NEVER use if they can help it. The Quake is still crap, the fact that spiking doesn't really kill is a total nerf, and the grounding? Only an utter idiot would ever try it, and it'd take an even bigger one to get hit by it. And then there's the "improvements" to his recovery. It does more damage. That's it. Still as easily gimpable, still as horribly short-ranged. It just does more damage. How very useful.

I'm still leery of the damaging wind. While I can make use of that, it still doesn't seem to justify the usage of utilt any more. The only things that are actual buffs that a good Ganon would use are tripping dtilt, which actually does enhance techchasing and poking, the pummel, though it doesn't make up for his craptatstic grab range, and the buff on Wizkick, which is actually something I've always wanted, the fact that Dsmash will always work, though it doesn't make it any less laggy and weak.

Just my two cents on the Ganon part.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

A funny fact is that when we were discussing Ganondorf much earlier in development, Thinkaman raised the suggestion that Ganondorf might be a Meta Knight counter. We both laughed a bit, but then stopped laughing as I realized two things.

1. He wasn't joking.
2. He was quite possibly right.

Welcome to Balanced Brawl.

It would have been super cool to end on that note, but that wouldn't be useful so here's why. Meta Knight is small so Ganondorf gets gets tons of amazing follow ups on him out of Flame Choke. Meta Knight is extremely light so Ganondorf will kill him stupidly low. Meta Knight's low air speed versus Ganondorf's amazing up aerial is fun for Ganondorf. Unlike so many other characters, Meta Knight can't attempt to fight back by zoning Ganondorf very effectively (overall worse spacing tools than Mr. Game & Watch and Marth and, more importantly, no projectiles). In general, Meta Knight is already well documented as having problems against (or just winning less against) the heavyweights; Bowser and DK versus Meta Knight in standard Brawl is widely considered very winnable for the first parties, and do remember that Mach Tornado's nerf really helps out the huge characters against Meta Knight already (including Ganondorf!). As I think about it, the only really great thing Meta Knight has in that matchup is that Ganondorf is so gimpable; otherwise, Ganondorf's superpowered moveset seems to be just the thing to send a chill up Meta Knight's spine.

No one will believe that, but I think it could be true. I will say that nothing we gave Ganondorf is useless; some of it is just harder to use than other stuff. Remember, this is a character for which everything is hard to land but super rewarding. That's the type of character Ganondorf is, and we aren't going to change that. Mit is on a point that Ganondorf should expect to eat way more hits than he dishes out, but it doesn't matter because Ganondorf hits twice as hard as most other characters and gets potentially devastating techchases, thunderstomps, groundings, etc. that let him land several of his "hits way too hard" moves in a row. With a light character (such as Meta Knight!), you really can just make three quick mistakes, small ones too, and have just lost a healthy stock. Regardless, Ganondorf isn't really glitchy in standard Brawl (the glitchiest thing about him is the way his suicide works on Brinstar and Norfair which is blatantly in his favor); he's just underbalanced so maybe his play style isn't very obvious on a casual inspection (you could joke that his style in standard Brawl is "losing"). Digging deeper though, I think we found what Sakurai was going for, and it's really a very different sort of characters that, while I can't really say for sure it's good, is definitely not something that can be written off yet. You only have to be on the wrong end of healthy stock -> dead in 3 seconds once before you start thinking twice about Ganondorf...

Unfortunately, videos are a bit short right now though. Ryko's youtube profile has a ton of Ike and some Yoshi (and very small amounts of Link, Mario, and assorted charcters), and they do pretty well. I don't know how convincing you'll find that, but I have personal confidence in it at least.

EDIT: Upon seeing that reply, I think I'm going to have to defer to Ganondorf expert Thinkaman (he's played like a billion Ganondorf matches in Bbrawl) to address the doubtless countless contexts every buff is useful. Really, you have no idea how much care went into Ganondorf...

 

[Linkshot]

If the Aerial Wizfoot grounding isn't easy enough to follow up, might I suggest looking into figuring out how to ground a character with his footstool?

To Salty: Ledgeguarding with uTilt is an instant kill, as I've seen. In the sense that no matter what you do from the ledge, you die to Volcano Kick.

 

[Mit]

And all that bad stuff you listed about Ganon? Good Ganons simply avoid it, or have found ways around it. Look up some of the better Ganon players and watch their videos. It's not like they try and use all of the horrendous stuff you brought up. I think if you watch some videos of better Ganons, and then consider all the changes made to him in BBrawl, you'd realize he's a much bigger deal in BBrawl.

 

[Big O]

I think you guys need to realize a lot of Ganon's buffs are very MU dependent like his Dsmash buff and his Utilt buff. Like vs Olimar the Dsmash buff is pretty big considering side b to Dsmash is a combo on Olimar. His Utilt also destroys stray pikmin and gives Ganon an anti planking tool (not that great but still something). His Utilt also discourages Sheik from using chains in certain situations where it was free damage to spam chain. His down b powering through projectiles like Pit's arrows and Luigi's firebalss is pretty huge considering before they could more or less spam it without fear of retaliation. Now you can punish them from almost halfway across FD.

Ganon is also getting more buffs than he currently has in the Genesis beta so I wouldn't worry about him not getting proper attention. You will also love his new up b when you see it.

 

[SaltyKracka]

If the Aerial Wizfoot grounding isn't easy enough to follow up, might I suggest looking into figuring out how to ground a character with his footstool?

To Salty: Ledgeguarding with uTilt is an instant kill, as I've seen. In the sense that no matter what you do from the ledge, you die to Volcano Kick.

1. I'm not complaining about followups. The fact of the matter is that anybody who tries this should be getting their ***** whipped by a nice fast utilt or uair, or just getting ***** when the opponent blocks it. It's not at all useful, and requires a very obvious setup.

2. Anybody who gets his by ledgeguard utilt and DIDN'T miss the ledge when they were recovering fails utterly. It's entirely possible to plank it, or even just get up an interrupt, it's that slow.

And all that bad stuff you listed about Ganon? Good Ganons simply avoid it, or have found ways around it. Look up some of the better Ganon players and watch their videos. It's not like they try and use all of the horrendous stuff you brought up. I think if you watch some videos of better Ganons, and then consider all the changes made to him in BBrawl, you'd realize he's a much bigger deal in BBrawl.

Part of the point of playing Ganon is avoiding that stuff, yes. Of course, a large part of my point comes from the parts where

A: You just can't avoid it. Ganon's recovery sucks, his ground moves are all laggy as hell, anybody with a decent projectile ***** him, and there is nothing you can do about it, good or no.

B: I play a Ganon. I'm fairly well known on the Ganon boards. I know how to play Ganondorf. And the only things I mentioned that help his game are still just not enough to make him good. Sure, dtilt trips, pummels now help rack damage, and Wizkick can actually kill on the stage, but they don't address things like his lag. His recovery. His defensive options. His speed. They're all tricks. There is nothing fundamentally game-changing about ANY of them.

Much the same goes for the rest of the characters in the same category. So you made Luigi's fireballs faster. Does that actually change his gameplay? Does it improve him in any way at all besides one insignificant detail? Do Bowsers even use Dair in the first place? Are you ever going to see a Yoshi approach an opponent on the ground with a SH'd Fair? Is CF's tripping dtilt more important than the part where most of his moves got stronger and were made less punishable? Hell, the best change made in that category was to Ike, and you know what that affected? His recovery.

So if the stated goal is changing Ganondorf's game to make him better, perhaps you'd be better off looking into what actually causes problems for him in the first place, notjust adding things with no actual relevance whatsoever. That's what I'm trying to say.

 

[Linkshot]

The uTilt has damaging wind now and will:

A) Stagespike if you drop your invincibility.
B) Murder you if you get onto the stage.

 

[Thinkaman]

I'm going to cut through all this theory and offer to $5 money match anyone's MK as Ganondorf in Balanced Brawl. This doesn't mean much if no one is in the Midwest and will never see me, but still. My money is where my mouth is.

The person who has tested BBrawl the most against me personally considers Ganon as a top character, better than a majority. I don't agree, but I do not consider him bad at all.

 

[NintenJoe]

I brought this up a long time ago and it was probably adressed, but I'll bring it up again for arguements sake....

I think Captain Falcon's aerial raptor boost should have much less ending lag on it so it can be combo'd into other moves on stage. For example, aerial raptor boost->Uair/Nair would tremendously help Falcon's damage racking. Falcon still doesn't have many reliable approaches, so I don't think this addition is too much to ask for. Thoughts?

 

[Thinkaman]

Aerial Raptor Boost is unique for sure, in that it is the only move I know of that has MORE lag on hit.

However, I'm not sure it needs to be changed. You might be really surprised how useful it is even with the lag. Did you know you can Raptor Boost to Raptor Boost (even against shields) without losing almost any height? Since Ampharos told me about it, me and JGALT call it "Kansas City Tactics". (Me and JGALT play 7-10 or so Falcon dittos every couple days.)

 

[Mit]

Part of the point of playing Ganon is avoiding that stuff, yes. Of course, a large part of my point comes from the parts where

A: You just can't avoid it. Ganon's recovery sucks, his ground moves are all laggy as hell, anybody with a decent projectile ***** him, and there is nothing you can do about it, good or no.

B: I play a Ganon. I'm fairly well known on the Ganon boards. I know how to play Ganondorf. And the only things I mentioned that help his game are still just not enough to make him good. Sure, dtilt trips, pummels now help rack damage, and Wizkick can actually kill on the stage, but they don't address things like his lag. His recovery. His defensive options. His speed. They're all tricks. There is nothing fundamentally game-changing about ANY of them.

Much the same goes for the rest of the characters in the same category. So you made Luigi's fireballs faster. Does that actually change his gameplay? Does it improve him in any way at all besides one insignificant detail? Do Bowsers even use Dair in the first place? Are you ever going to see a Yoshi approach an opponent on the ground with a SH'd Fair? Is CF's tripping dtilt more important than the part where most of his moves got stronger and were made less punishable? Hell, the best change made in that category was to Ike, and you know what that affected? His recovery.

So if the stated goal is changing Ganondorf's game to make him better, perhaps you'd be better off looking into what actually causes problems for him in the first place, notjust adding things with no actual relevance whatsoever. That's what I'm trying to say.

Yes his recovery sucks, although, not much anyone can do about it. They buffed the top hit of it to Heaven, otherwise, like Link, you just have to focus on staying on stage or going offstage as high as possible as opposed to low. I think the idea behind balancing out his poor recovery is making him so powerful onstage.

On laggy ground moves, yes they're laggy, but don't they all offer proper reward for landing? Hell, every single one of his ground moves can be a kill move except dtilt and jab. And you can atleast down-b through projectiles. As a Falcon player, we still have to hop around to avoid things, and can at best clash with projectiles with our down-b. I would love to be able to plow through projectiles.

If you're a Ganon player I think you should atleast be able to recognize that a lot of the changes can be beneficial. Certain matchups still might be bad, but many of his matchups, combined with the removal of a lot of glitchy top-tier tricks, are much better now. I would, however, like to hear about some of the changes you would like to be made.

As far as the rest of the cast: now that Luigi can't be caught in infinites by other characters, he's already around a balanced range. Same for Bowser I believe. I play a Yoshi main often, and there are safe ways to use SH fair, although yes, they aren't going to use it nearly as often as something like SH bair, but if they do, and they land it, they're rewarded generously. Just another small option that Yoshi's might be able to fit into their game. And Falcon's dtilt trip wasn't the game changer they expected, and is out already in the next update. And yes, Ike's recovery was changed, because it was actually able to be changed (unlike characters like Ganon and Link).


But yeah, if you have any proposed changes for Ganon I'm actually curious to hear them.

 

[B3Brawler]

I wanted to see what's up in BBrawl so i read the last page and figured out that it was powerbuffganon brawl. back to brawl+ where CF matters lol

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I wanted to see what's up in BBrawl so i read the last page and figured out that it was powerbuffganon brawl. back to brawl+ where CF matters lol

Let me get this straight. You see we buffed Ganon a lot, which seems like something just plain obvious to do if you want to balance the game, so you assume that we just screwed over Captain Falcon. Because, you know, it's impossible to buff both of them in different ways.

Granted Captain Falcon (along with Samus) was quite the problem character in the sense that he kinda refused to be anything but low (though he's not really awful in the Genesis update, no one is, I feel confident in saying he didn't quite work out to the level of power we wanted him at). He sees quite the upgrade in the final version though with throw mods; I can't help that we have to operate on a fairly slow release cycle with our two person development team that's constrained by certain outside factors that I really can't discuss.

Both Ganondorf and Captain Falcon overall draw more attention than two characters are worth probably (there are 36 characters, and Ganondorf and Captain Falcon aren't more important than any other two characters), but they are easily the two most flawed characters in standard Brawl, especially Ganondorf who, while quite arguably better than Captain Falcon in standard Brawl, is definitely designed around far weaker concepts (horrible mobility + horrible attack start-up + horrible attack recovery is super tough to balance). We gave both the extra attention that their "difficult to balance" nature demanded; I'm not sure what else can be expected from us. It's possible he's going to turn out low again, but that's fine because I don't think it's more likely than anyone else at this point, and it's not like he "deserves" to be better than Bowser and Ganondorf or anything. I definitely feel we did right by both of them, and everyone by this point really.

 

[BombKirby]

So....how the heck do I install it? I have code manager and homebrew and I already hack. I just wanna know where to put all the files! ^_^

 

[codfish92]

put the .gct you download in the codes folder at the root of ur sd card

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

In addition to what codfish said, be sure to have the gameconfig.txt file in the root of the SD card.

 

[BombKirby]

Alright then. Thanks guys. So if use another GCT file will there be NO balanced brawl left until I reactive the file? Cuz I wanna play normal brawl with different hax sometimes.

 

[Linkshot]

The Wii loads straight from the SD Card into temporary memory. It's not permanent at all.

 

[codfish92]

yeah, you can only have one .gct active at a time. unless you use a snapshot method, then you can have the one .gct in ur codes folder and then ADD(it adds, not replaces) the codes on the snapshot to the .gct when you view it.

 

[BombKirby]

yeah, you can only have one .gct active at a time. unless you use a snapshot method, then you can have the one .gct in ur codes folder and then ADD(it adds, not replaces) the codes on the snapshot to the .gct when you view it.

Well I know that. Its just I wanna know if I have to move these files OFF the SD card in order to use other GCT files. Or can I just use code manager and export the one I chose. Because I heard somewhere if there is two GCT files for the same game on an SD card neither one will work.

Sounds silly so I'm guessing I dont have to move em off the SD card.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Yeah, you have to move files to change codesets.

 

[codfish92]

or rename them. gecko won't read them unless they're named right.

 

[BombKirby]

Hmm I see. Well thanks again u guys! Looks like I'll have to get used to movin' or renamin' files.

 

[BombKirby]

I have a small suggestion! ^_^ Sonic's D-Smash hits 3 times. When use people usually spot dodge the first hit then take 2-4 pathetic damage from the 2nd hit and almost no knockback.

Could you consider buffing this 2nd hit or maybe just make the 1st hit/Fsmash faster?

 

[Linkshot]

Maybe the 2nd/3rd hit should be the most devastating? High BKB, moderate KBG?

Also, editing your post is far less frowned upon than double-posting, even though double does bump it.

 

[BombKirby]

Maybe the 2nd/3rd hit should be the most devastating? High BKB, moderate KBG?

Also, editing your post is far less frowned upon than double-posting, even though double does bump it.

Yeah something like that.

And I really don't think out of all the things in the world/universe that double posting should really matter too much.

 

[Linkshot]

I know. Not the place to discuss it though

Since the third is the hardest to hit with, it should have the most knockback. I'm thinking the backward hit should have a low angle.

 

[BombKirby]

Hey I have a problem. When I start BB up in Gecko OS it says "applying codes" and just stays like that forever. Does it just take a long time or is something wrong?

 

[Eldiran]

Oy! I have a question about BBrawl. You know that glitch with the Timer? Is it known what code causes it? I'd like to eliminate it from my codeset, because it not only affects the timer, but all Time Manipulation effects. Thanks!

 

[Linkshot]

Balanced Brawl is 'strictly' for competitive play, so I don't think that will be actively looked into :/

As for you, Bomb, I don't know how I can help you.

 

[BombKirby]

Balanced Brawl is 'strictly' for competitive play, so I don't think that will be actively looked into :/

As for you, Bomb, I don't know how I can help you.

aww...too bad

And technically in some competitive matches you may see players going to Spear Pillar as a CP if the opponent approves so it kinda ruins that stage. (If Dialga is there!)

 

[codfish92]

Hey I have a problem. When I start BB up in Gecko OS it says "applying codes" and just stays like that forever. Does it just take a long time or is something wrong?

do you have gameconfig.txt file at the root of ur sd card?