Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[Lokee]

Some questions.

Will there be any more stage modifications or additions?

Can I expect another EPIC showcase video?

Are you guys considering any other changes to characters?

Will they be any Easter eggs/ visual additions like the coin effect on bite?

 

[dansal]

Hey Thinkaman / AA, what would y'all say to automatic jab-cancelling? i.e. removing the need to press down first.

Would it be possible or likely to happen?

 

[Thinkaman]

Some questions.

Will there be any more stage modifications or additions?

Can I expect another EPIC showcase video?

Are you guys considering any other changes to characters?

Will they be any Easter eggs/ visual additions like the coin effect on bite?

I am kinda swamped with GDC coming up--most everything will get delayed until I get back.

Instead of a big showcase video, expect one core video and several smaller specific ones. I might do some sort of informal contest for the coolest video made by someone else.

 

[Steeler]

lol super armoring something with ganon and just kicking them is ****ing tasty

ganon is legit now. i still think the up b uppercut needs to be nerfed though.

falcon kick is fun

i'd like to see something else buffed on charizard, the glide thing is neat but it isn't very practical.

ivy's dair takes some getting used to but it's cool. i'm not sure on whether the tether buff needs to come back or not.

mystery gift is hilarious, although it doesn't do anything for jiggs.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Okay so I was bored and had some time to kill, details on Mario:

Mario can now do an understage recovery under BF! Keep in mind that the purple glowing thing under BF counts as a wall to jump off of, so if Mario Up-Bs into that, he's able to make it back to the other side of the stage.

Up-B -> Walljump -> Breversal Fireball is RIDICULOUSLY AMAZING for recovery especially if you do this in a way that saves Mario's midair jump. Requires good tech skill to pull off consistently however.

I appreciate the effort put into D-tilt, although it's still really not as useful as it was in vBrawl. It has slightly less knockback than D-throw, which I guess is okay, just the move is really laggy, and it doesn't set up into KO moves the same way it did before.

Some KO percents for Mario:

Mario on FD
Up-smash 115
D-smash 122
B-throw 134ish from center

Mario on Wifi room
Up-smash 116
D-smash 130
Up-angled F-smash 107
B-throw 147ish from center

DDD on FD
Up-smash 137
D-smash 130
B-throw 141ish from center

I think Mario's KO power at this point is appropriate. And if it wasn't clear earlier, the wifi waiting room has big blastzones, which is worth knowing if you're a character with momentum braking.

Link's Up-B buff is honestly pretty lame, and I think is too big of a change and might need a tonedown, but at any rate, it's very helpful. One thing that might be worth considering is exploiting this technique for the purpose of edgeguarding.

idk what else to say at the moment, I'm kinda waiting until I can actually play people. Ganon's F-air buff I guess is awesome for edgeguarding and anti-airing, on BF you can also ledgejump -> autocanceled F-air on platforms.

ALSO, I still think Ike should have his N-air aerial ending lag reduced since it causes him to suicide if he's pushed off the ledge.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Fox's Illusion cancel is a great flashy move is amazing, versatile, and non-broken, but it's just weird... it's fine, imo... just to clarify: at any time you push jump during illusion's startup or the attack itself, Fox does jump slightly backwards when it reaches its max lenght with aboslute control, like the normal second jump.

I wonder if we can make anyone (or at least, several guys) cancel freefall with walljumping as Mario does now, to prevent some silly edgehogs, but not by removing them.

I really didn't tested many things, I was trying to make tests with my new capture card (I'll help with vids when I can set things up here! ;D), so, that's all the feedback I can provide right now =\


btw, I still don't like the Mystery Gift at all... it's unpractical and makes the battle somehow tedious, mainly because it fills the stage with colorful smoke... that's just TOO random.
Are you sure that wasn't a Thinkaman's Easter Egg on his main thing? lol

 

[dansal]

But It takes a long time for jigglypuff to produce the item, and most of the time it's a useless item... it seems pretty non-threatening right now.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

After a 3 hour long session with Linkshot, the main thing of note is that I think Wolf could very well be top tier in this test build. I'm going to withhold judgment of this claim, but at this point it seems likely. Way to mobile x___x

Bowser's fsmash is awesome; nothing better than trading hits with Lucas's usmash and winning.
Mystery gift is actually useful. Just hope for a spring!
Link's upB buff is awesome, frankly.
Ness' Fair is even more potent, Lucas period is potent.
Yoshi felt weak, but I blow with him so who knows.
PT is awesome.
Peach's change is also solid.

 

[Hyrus]

I played some CPU to try and get a feel for Bowser.

Giga Fsmash is pretty cool. Even with the buffs, it feels like the move isn't very heavily exploitable. I was consistantly KOing CPU's trying to recover (the hitbox felt lower), but I don't know that it'd work on a real player. The armor makes the move, though; being able to throw out a wild Fsmash and get through an enemy attack makes the move viable. It's still pretty easy to just shield or jump over Fsmash, anyway.

Bowser the Relentless was pretty underwhelming (note, he also has Giga Fsmash in that pac). Bowser has to be at, about, 110% to be able to take a 3 damage hit. 127% to take a 6-7 damage hit. In a few rounds with the computer, I noticed the armor isn't really reliable since there are various player states in which it doesn't work.

A bug I noticed was that if I reset Bowser's health in training, he retained the armor at any lower percent.

I don't think the armor helps at all. Because it's consistant with percentage, a player can't consciously capitalize on the armor to beat out an opponent - it's just going to happen by accident. Further, protection from jabs or multi-hit damage rackers isn't something desirable at higher percents anyway. Giga Fsmash armor is under the player's conscious control, by contrast. And while both are drastically changing the game in a contradictory way to your original goals, Giga Fsmash feels like that's how the move should have been and it is definately going to be more consistant over various matchups.

I don't have anyone to play with over here, so someone should experiment with Giga Fsmash on recoveries a bit. Other than that, I think that's probably the way to go.

P.S.: Trying to design a "trick" for everyone, especially when tricks for Wario are "not being infinited" seems pretty bretraying if Wario happened to be my main. Some people are going to feel suckered, I think. I think that some of these abilities (wall jumps out of specials, Link hookshoting out of upB) seem really foreign to the basic design of abilities and how most of them don't work like that at all. I dunno... It's late over here.

P.S.S.: I messed with Ganon a bit; F-Tilt is awesome. Fair doesn't really change much for me. Does invincibility apply on the aerial wizkick?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Jigglypuff also has the weakest item throws out of the cast and no glide toss. Putting random smoke balls around and gifting someone like Donkey Kong with his amazing glide toss is probably a bad strategy.

I appreciate all tested and have already gotten some good feedback both in this topic and from external sources. By tomorrow, I should be ready to join in some of the WiFi Bbrawl friendlies myself!

I guarantee there is no bias toward our mains in this project. If anything, I have been too hard on G&W since I main him, and Thinkaman had been mostly timid with Jigglypuff because he didn't want to seem overly favorable toward her. I actually had to just confront him with statements like "Jigglypuff at her core sucks in Brawl" to force him into a greater willingness to give her powerful things. Like I said in that write-up, we do not accept a permanent class of mediocre characters, and that includes Jigglypuff.


---

Bowser's fsmash actually hits over the exact same area. The explosion is just a graphic with a few sound effects! The hitbox itself only does a little more base knockback and is now fire element.

 

[Thinkaman]

Sorry, I just wrote a post about Mystery Gift and accidently hit F5 when I got done, erasing it when it refreshed the page. I've been coding all day, and F5 is what you hit to test new parts of code when you finish them...

So, we'll have to make do with a recap: Mystery Gift's items let Jigglypuff get an push an alternate style of advantage against characters who out-range her, fundamentally countering her to a degree. The only reason Smoke Balls are there at all is to balance out the good items.

If you want to exploit the maximum advantage of Mystery Gift, you can try to remember how many times you've done it so you know what item will come up next based on your damage. However, you can simply that a lot if all you care about is non-Smoke Balls: Your first "good item" will be on odds, your second on evens, ect; it doesn't mean you will only be getting Pitfalls, but it lets you know when to try for an item and when not to waste time.

 

[Thinkaman]

Does invincibility apply on the aerial wizkick?

Double post for yes.

 

[dansal]

[Odds are lucky, Evens are unlucky]

 

[A2ZOMG]

Ganon's wizkick buff is honestly not very useful from what I can tell. I'm not saying the invincibility is worthless, it's just that it really doesn't come into play very much.

Most of the time Ganondorf is most likely to land this move for punishing a badly spaced aerial commitment. Against the people who know how to space, landing this move on people before they defend against it is still very unlikely. Plus since there are no invul frames on the startup, you can't exactly spam this to shut down pressure attempts.

Obviously the move still fails if the opponent blocks it and waits for the invincibility to end. I think on a slightly more practical note, beating juggles more consistently is good. Oh yeah and the aerial Falcon kick is a really gdlk move in general. Like because it cancels laglessly into another move, it's just so much retardedly harder for most characters to juggle Falcon.

While Ganon's F-air buff is not exactly something I was necessarily begging for, I will state that it is a very useful buff that legitimately makes Ganon overall a better character. Fullhop F-air beats a lot of other aerial approaches and it HURTS. Also because of the reduced aerial lag, edgeguarding with it is now extremely good. The ability to fairly easily cover both in front and behind Ganon while edgeguarding REALLY helps.

The F-tilt buff is alright, usually requires some prediction to make the most of its SA frames.

All in all I don't think Ganon is going to be dominating a lot. I do think however that he's able to do a lot of what Ike is able to do, but better, in the sense that he has more followup options, more powerful gimps, better damage knockback per single hit. Wizkick at least also can go through Falco's lasers as pointed out earlier.

 

[Thinkaman]

Wizkick buff was mainly for Olimar, kinda Falco. It's not anything huge given how much we already buffed it previously.

 

[Mit]

Oh yeah and the aerial Falcon kick is a really gdlk move in general. Like because it cancels laglessly into another move, it's just so much retardedly harder for most characters to juggle Falcon.

Are we talking about some kind of change for the beta? Because really, aerial falcon kick only cancels or helps if you're like 100 feet in the air. You have to be reeeally high to not suffer the immense landing lag of aerial Falcon kick, so when getting juggled by say, Mario's **** aerials low to the ground, it doesn't help much, unless you hit with it (if you can even pull the move off without getting hit during startup).

Definitely useful high up in the air, but I rarely am ever fighting someone high enough to do that, and am certainly never chased that high. Probably because Falcon falls so fast that there isn't enough time for most characters to even get that high up...


Still good though, yes, and a good high percentage kill move if you find you and your opponent in the air.



EDIT: There must be some changes from the second test build. Need to find x_x hate digging. Maybe the list is on the site...

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=9718372&postcount=4518

 

[Mit]

Yeah I just found it D: You guys should really link that from the first page or include the changelist on your site.

Sounds exciting though I hope the final version will really bring in some new players, although, some of the more radical changes make me think you might lose as many people as you gain D:

Some people may shy away from getting used to such changes as it might throw off their vBrawl game that they take with them to tournaments and whatnot. I mean, ideally, BBrawl would get tournaments of its own, but still. It seems like this will help bring in more people who aren't quite necessarily tourney-level players. I guess more downloads is more downloads though, and it's true, this project needs more attention than its getting D:

You guys are going to have to really pimp this release with videos and features and sigs all over the place and whatnot Videos is a big thing though. Another promo video would be nice, but some really good, high-level match videos would probably be best to try and convince more high-level players to give it a shot.

Also, this game needs to start showing up at tournaments like Hackfest >:X Wherever Brawl+ is, this needs to manage to force its way in as well.


Oh and question on some changes (hopefully they haven't been asked yet). Armor on startup, like say, Ike's down-b. Does that armor last the entire duration of the charge? Is he completely incapable of being interrupted once he starts using the move? Is it also that way for Falcon and Ganondorf? Or is it just some frames on startup?

I don't know, I could see stuff like Ike's being a bit of a stalling problem, and wouldn't it allow him to safely (well, he could take damage) fall to the ground every time?

Oh, and a 100% shield damage increase on Yoshi's aerials?? Does his dair break shields every time now?? X_X Or rather, poke shields every time? It seems like it'd now be impossible to dodge unless you completely avoided it or spotdodged. Shielding would result in you getting hit every time, and I don't think Yoshi is in dire enough need for something like that X_X

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Haha, the way Thinkaman presented that Yoshi shield damage thing is so funny because when he suggested that change that's what I thought he meant to (instant shield break). The word "double" would probably clarify many things; Yoshi's aerials all do twice as much shield damage as they did before (implementation wise, their additional shield damage numbers are all set to their damage values).

Ike's neutral special, not down special, is the armored one (down special is beyond redemption). For one, super armor is interruptable by grabs as well as slip and sleep element moves if you are on the ground. For two, one Ike starts using Eruption, he's committed to the entire move, including the unarmored ending lag (the armor on all moves we added armor to ends when hitboxes disappear). Ike can mix it up a lot, and it is indeed powerful to escape juggles. Eruption also controls a lot of space. However, being a very high commitment move, it has natural answers available to the whole cast; I look forward to seeing how this Eruption plays out.

I don't think anything we've done is truly that radical. Characters have cool new tricks, but in the end, the game really does still play very much like Brawl. This is also a test release so we get to see how these things pan out among a wider playerbase; you can expect the next standard release to have most if not all of these changes in-tact, but they will have received the most rigorous of evaluation possible to ensure they both are well balanced and do not truly alter the character of Brawl. I should hope we don't lose people because we had to change the game to change it. As I said on the site, it was ultimately a choice between accepting a permanent class of mediocre characters or somewhat increasing the scope of largely academic limits. We never abandoned conservative, responsible changes as our basis of development.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Yeah, I did a huge double take when I asked Linkshot you test it and he said "You mean like brawl-?" The crazy alternate Bowser I made is also vaguely similar to what they did I think. In both cases though, what you see here is a drastically more conservative, restrained version of their shenanigans.

Ryko, I think he meant that Falco prefers the air personally. Being in the air lets him make sure your hands aren't on his prey.

Wow, now that I actually read about it...Peach Bomber canceling sounds REALLY REALLY STUPID.

Well that could depend on how early you're allowed to cancel it, but it's a move that can't be powershielded as I recall, soooooo if the idea is that you can cross someone over and get a frame advantage on shield drop that can't be powershielded, that's ridiculous. And nobody in the right mind is going to try to punish Peach Bomber out of shield of course while the move is still going, and her aerials are already gay moves that can be difficult to punish on block.

;_;
STOP STEALING OUR IDEAS.

The peach bomber cancel and the bowser Fsmash SA are both Brawl- components.

 

[shanus]

Heh, we had the link upB to hookshoot in a few builds of PM, but it feels really dirty and weird. Wasn't a huge fan.

 

[A2ZOMG]

In my personal opinion, Captain Falcon is very good on this build. I do think that this change to Falcon is one of the more significant ones by a good margin.

Up-B nerf is eh (although it's still a good rewarding move), but the change given to Falcon Kick where you can cancel the ending lag with another special REALLY makes it harder to juggle this character, especially since the aerial Falcon kick has fairly respectable priority and high speed. I want a frame analysis of this move on shields as well, as I believe the aerial Falcon Kick may in fact be virtually safe on block as long as you pick and choose correctly between Raptor Boost and Up-B to counter shieldgrab or the shield itself.

And Captain Falcon really loves stages with platforms against walls. You can do so much dumb stuff on the Rock transformation of PS1, and he has the most awesome way of sweetspotting an edge on New Pork City where you Falcon Kick into the low wall center stage and then Raptor Boost to sweetspot the edge.

 

[Linkshot]

There's so many mods flying around that simple ideas like that are bound to be taken.

I personally don't mind Brawl- and bBrawl sharing conservative ideas, since I heavily support both projects.

 

[Thinkaman]

and he has the most awesome way of sweetspotting an edge on New Pork City where you Falcon Kick into the low wall center stage and then Raptor Boost to sweetspot the edge.

He can do this on Corneria too.

 

[The_Altrox]

so the public test version... if it pulld through, when will we know if it will be BBrawl 2.0?

 

[Big O]

Anybody want to get some wifi matches going?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I'd be up for that actually. Let me boot up my Wii, and I'll fetch my friend code.

 

[Big O]

Alright I already have mine on. Hopefully it won't be too laggy.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I'm 2191-7368-9411. I'll see you in-game soon, and let's hope it's not too laggy.

I'll make the room.

 

[Linkshot]

Be sure to get replays! Zip them up and send them to MediaFire if you can ^^

 

[Fuujin]

I also need someone to play in this, I was able to get 5 people to try balanced brawl over wifi but that took forever and I don't feel like persuading people again.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I'll play someone tomorrow, but I have to get some sleep right now. Should we make a thread for BBrawl Wifi player finder?

 

[Fuujin]

I'll also try giving my feedback for Zelda one more time, though likely to go disregarded.
There's no time better than now to ask about this than now.
All the stuff you gave her is neat and all but she doesn't really need most of it.
She has D tilt that knocks the enemy above her and now the reappearing hitbox on Farore's wind..
Basically shes a once trick pony now, all the can do is knock opponents above her and U smash or U tilt and (U air now)
The whole freezing affect is nice and being able to cancel it with a jump is helpful.
But the Ice effect along with the flower on jab(which is too small to do more than 1 damage before the enemy shakes it off) aren't really necessary.
A MAJOR buff she could use is making Din's fire a non horrible projectile.
Yes I know she can fill GnW's bucket and heal Ness/Lucas in doubles but those sound like poor excuses just not to give her a buff she really could use.
About the whole low level play thing, if were really trying to balance it out for noobs(aka low level players)
Then get rid of Falco's Blaster and GnW's turtle while you're at it.
With a decent projectile Zelda could actually force an approach and use her defensive options (F smash, old Nayru's Love, D smash) to keep the enemy away.
Sure she would be a campy character and people would complain about it but considering the fact that shes one of the slowest easiest characters to kill it would balance her out.
Look at Pit and Falco, both can camp well and both have a better up close game and MUCH better chance of recovering safely than Zelda does,
Just saying a speed up on dins fire is a lot less radical than giving Jigglypuff items or significantly boosting someones recovery.

Speaking of her horrible recovery Brawl- seems to have fixed here(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr5bDX4Cjxc#t=0m15s) and this model of Zelda wasn't even complete. She doesn't even have to fly upwards out of it just being able to move in a direction after using it would help.
She's clearly much worse than wolf and he got his recovery literally doubled <_<.
That would REALLY help in the several match ups.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Or just give some invincibility (like, 10 frames at much) before she dissapears after the first hit of FW...
The aditional aerial mobility would be like too much of a drastic change... (altough, I think space animals' new recoveries are as well).

Also, DF can be done either faster, stronger(damage), with more shield damage, or cancelable.

In any case, the Nayru's change should be removed...

 

[Fuujin]

Or just give some invincibility (like, 10 frames at much) before she dissapears after the first hit of FW...
The aditional aerial mobility would be like too much of a drastic change... (altough, I think space animals' new recoveries are as well).

Also, DF can be done either faster, stronger(damage), with more shield damage, or cancelable.

In any case, the Nayru's change should be removed...

Not even that, sure its has lots of lag and characters like Jigglypuff have plenty of time to hit her but thats not the main problem.
If someone knows the Zelda match up extremely well they can predict where shes gonna land and punish it, the ending lag is so horrendous Falcon can hop on the edge to make sure she cant sweet spot then jump up and reverse falcon punch it because she cant move for like 3 seconds after using it.
The ZSS match up is horrible due to this.

And Shield damage wouldn't help Din's.
About 80% of the cast has an aerial that cancels it out on impact.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Yeah, I can't play WiFi for too long or else I start to get mad at what isn't working due to lag and play horribly... I also really don't understand why random kept giving me Toon Link.

Regardless, good games; it was some interesting stuff.

 

[Big O]

GG's AA. The first few matches were a little laggy (input delay wise) but the rest were pretty smooth. I suck so much with Ganon now lol. That's what happens when you haven't played in a few months I guess.

On a balance note I think Wolf being able to jump cancel his side b is a little overkill recovery wise. He wasn't as bad as Ike but the new side b easily makes Wolf's recovery better on top of having a better ground game and air game than Ike. D3 can go under FD with his down b boost now which is pretty cool.

 

[Steeler]

the guy below just double post failed

 

[Steeler]

wolf needs to lose jump canceling on up b into the ground and possibly side b cancel...it's just too hard to catch him when they mix it up properly...the up b walljump is very good though.

falcon is so fun.

ganondorf ftilt is amazing, fair is just barely less amazing.

peach's bomber cancel is ridiculously fun but i'm pretty apprehensive about it...i didn't even know what i was doing and i was able to do some pretty amazing stuff with it...

eruption is quite interesting and a quite usable edgeguard. dsmash should be improved somehow...nair could use a speedup on the cooldown where ike just hangs his arm above his head too long. it has very little landing lag and already is a legit setup into jab anyway.

ivy dair does little for ivy's recovery. it's okay on stage, nothing special. i think the vine whip buff needs to come back.

charizard's still pretty weak on stage. below average approach, gets zoned very easily due to a serious blindspot (aka easy to poke at), fairly weak to juggling, lackluster CQC, very mediocre throws... characters like ike (huge range) and peach (just super safe on shield) can poke at him all day, characters like toon link and samus can projectile camp and run away all day, characters like luigi and sheik have a field day up close and stay fairly safe while waiting for an opening...zard is just lackluster. buff dash attack to be like DK's, make uthrow more of a setup, improve flamethrower, improve fair, make ftilt a reliable anti-air, something...i strongly suspect that charizard has at least a 40:60 disadvantage against each of the bbrawl characters i mentioned above and that's a pretty wide spread of character archetypes. rock smash only gets you so far when opponents actually learn the matchup and what to do against that move.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Please remove Wolf's Up-B cancel shenanigans.

I'm sorry but something like that should be reserved for the Brawl minus team. Dead serious.

Anyhow so you can cancel Wolf's Up-B into ground animation with anything. The thing that makes this outrageous is that on the first frame of that animation Wolf's upwards velocity is EXTREMELY high. Basically he gets to do a Flight of Ganon (no, that's an understatement, he goes HIGHER than that) by canceling his Up-B, and I really can't see how most characters are going to punish this feasibly when he can just do it over and over again as long as he has a lead. We don't need another Pikachu clone, let alone one that has GOOD KO power.

Now this wouldn't be a problem if he could only cancel this animation with jumps, since jumping resets his velocity.

Interestingly enough, Up-B canceling into reflector keeps Wolf on the ground. UpB does combo into Reflector in this way, but that isn't a big deal.