Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[Gea]

I'm just not sure what the problem is. Be concise.

Are you arguing that the current project is on the right path? That chaingrabs could never exist in a balanced game? What?

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I feel that chaingrabs do have a major part to consider about how you play against a character. Against the IC's it's not really dangerous any more to get grabbed. So I think instead, you should make them have either really good throws or really good set-up out of throws.

 

[Gea]

Why even take them out? When's the last time ICs were prominent or even dominating? It's a fair trade off for having to put up with Nana's retardo ***. Shouldn't the focus be bringing up the crappy characters who stood no chance (say, Ganon durr) and then seeing how they fair against the chaingrabs and then make the judgment call?

 

[Linkshot]

Chaingrabs in Melee: You have to predict DI and respond appropriately.
Chaingrabs in Brawl: Set up a Macro and go get something to eat.

 

[Gea]

I think that's a pretty poor argument. Chaingrabs in Melee were often 0-death for many characters and the DI followups were pretty dang easy to follow. Only a few characters really had tough CGs.

Plus I'd even argue that Wobbling/Chu's CGs are easier than Brawl's. Sheik CGed and ***** most of the low tiers. Even without her low tiers still sucked.

Chaingrabs are of secondary importance towards balancing the game when the "metagame" is in no way dominated by them.

Edit: I'd also like to draw the comparison here that just about everything was more difficult to do than in Melee. Such as recovering. In Melee you had to be very thoughtful about your spacing and edgeguarding was a really important aspect of the game. Besides a few minor excepts, Brawl is "set up a macro and go get something to eat." Yet that is not discussed as a goal of the project to change, is it? I think it's pretty lame to be playing as Peach and floating below the edge and do a nair as someone up + Bs. Instead of them getting hit they teleport through me to the edge. But changing that isn't going to do anything other than create more for me to attempt and balance as well as alienate the audience I originally sought after.

If it isn't broken, don't fix it. I already said I think DDD needs to be looked at because of how severe his case is, but it's of secondary importance. DDD isn't magically making all of these characters unviable. In Melee, Sheik didn't either. Bad characters have more flaws than "gets chaingrabbed."

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I'd also like to say that CG's also change the stage control for certain characters such as DDD and changes the way a certain percent of a stock should be played.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

WALL OF TEXT REGARDING IKE

Most of thew changes you've proposed are giberish to me as I don't know quite what they mean, however I agree with you that Ike is lacking even with some of the buffs he's gotten.

here's a bbrawl trick for PT: taunting restores like 15 seconds of stamina.

Better BB trick, taunting RESETS stamina. Or you know... just remove stamina completely. :D

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Or how about; the the more damage you take, the more stamina you get.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Or how about; the the more damage you take, the more stamina you get.

That'd also be handy I'd think. Sure puts you closer to dying but puts your character further from being nearly worthless.

 

[Big O]

I already said I think DDD needs to be looked at because of how severe his case is, but it's of secondary importance. DDD isn't magically making all of these characters unviable.

I agree with you that a lot of the existing CG's, jab locks, and grab release followups didn't really need to be taken out for balance, but some things like D3's infinite (and grab release CG's/infinites on Mother boys) needed to go. D3's infinite does magically render DK unviable and there is no way to address that without significant tweaking. Adding lag to his throw or making it have more knockback means his CG won't work on everyone it used to. Making DK and Bowser lighter than Snake just to fix it is also pretty significant. Making them so powerful that even with the infinite they go 40:60 with D3 means they steamroll through everyone else. Nerfing his standing grab range would probably be hated even more than keeping the current Dthrow. The fact that a lot of stages become instantly more viable is just a nice bonus for tweaking his Dthrow. His Dthrow is still pretty good and you just need a different mindset to use it effectively.

As far as your stance on IC's goes, I think you have a good point. It would be several orders of magnitude harder to balance them with the infinites, but ultimately it keep them closer to their orginal selves. I'm not really familiar with who IC's really beat aside from Ganon, so I don't know if it is possible to make their MU's no better than 65:35 while still keeping their death grabs. I'd imagine the IC infinites were taken out because the changes needed for everyone they own are too much just like D3's infinite.

 

[xxpikalexxx]

Well, now I've tried Balanced Brawl out, and I am very satisfied, except for two stages; Hyrule Temple and Spear Pillar. I love these stages, but not like this. With the death zones raised, it makes dying on these stages that much easier, making these stages nonviable. and if i do recall, isn't one of the goals of this project to "Increase Stage Viability"? In fact, when i was playing on Spear Pillar, trying to get used to the stage, Dialga removed the ground on the right side of the stage just as i was fast falling onto it. And while if this stage had remained the same, this would have been a mere inconvenience, but with the modified version of this stage this caused me to lose a life, putting me behind my opponent, and ultimately causing me to lose the match. Is there any way to fix this? Or am I just going to have to not use two of my favorite stages? If anybody out there could please create a solution to this problem that would be greatly appreciated.

 

[uhmuzing]

Well, now I've tried Balanced Brawl out, and I am very satisfied, except for two stages; Hyrule Temple and Spear Pillar. I love these stages, but not like this. With the death zones raised, it makes dying on these stages that much easier, making these stages nonviable. and if i do recall, isn't one of the goals of this project to "Increase Stage Viability"? In fact, when i was playing on Spear Pillar, trying to get used to the stage, Dialga removed the ground on the right side of the stage just as i was fast falling onto it. And while if this stage had remained the same, this would have been a mere inconvenience, but with the modified version of this stage this caused me to lose a life, putting me behind my opponent, and ultimately causing me to lose the match. Is there any way to fix this? Or am I just going to have to not use two of my favorite stages? If anybody out there could please create a solution to this problem that would be greatly appreciated.

Are you playing with the Stnadard Release of BBrawl, or the new test build? Having issues with the Standard Release makes sense, that's why they fixed it and lowered the DZ in the test build.

This brings up the subect I was fixing to mention - I noticed when I was playing the test build again today that Spear Pillar wasn't working like it was supposed to; it was back like it's vBrawl self.
Everything else works like it's supposed to (characters, title screen, stage selection screen), except Spear Pillar. I don't know if there were any other stages worked on for the build, but I assume they'd be their vBrawl selves too.

Any explanation why this might be? I thought I had the files set up correctly....

 

[Nakihito]

I think Ike mainly needs extra shield damage on Jabs so that his efforts Jabbing people who time shieldgrabs aren't completely wasted.

I don't think that would really help Ike in the long run. Sure, it'd be nice to do more shield damage on jabs, but it doesn't solve any problems:
1). Ike is still easily shield grabbed in between jabs (This means pummel as long as possible and then put Ike in a juggle situation which leads to a reset and refreshed shield).
2). People will take a hit or two, SDI out of the rest of the jab and then punish or reset.
3). Projectiles will still be Ike's bane.

Most of thew changes you've proposed are giberish to me as I don't know quite what they mean, however I agree with you that Ike is lacking even with some of the buffs he's gotten.

Basically, I took a lot of the points that A2Z and Ryko made about Ike, added a few of my own, and proposed changes that either made Ike faster, stronger, and/or gave him a better OoS game. Unfortunately, its a little hard to read because I wrote it in MS Word and then copied it over to here. For example, my proposed jab changes said:

Jab 1
Hit on: 3-4 2
Earliest Jab 2: 11 8
Earliest Jab Loop: 15 12
IASA: 17 13

The name of the attack is the first line and the frame data follows it. The first number is the original frame data and the second number if the proposed new frame data. Some attacks I proposed changes to properties like Aether and nair which is a lot easier to understand.

Chaingrabs are of secondary importance towards balancing the game when the "metagame" is in no way dominated by them.

Playing against something like IC's 0-death chain grab is just not fun. From a Marth/Lucario perspective, it really just devolves the game into getting a damage or stock lead and then platform camping for as long as possible.

Generally, if you make one mistake or try to punish and miss either Nana or Popo, you loose a stock. Now add in their desynched blizzard wall (which is already relatively hard to get through for anyone without a projectile) and their ice blocks (which actually beat/cancel out a lot of projectiles) and you have one very frustrating match up. Not only that, but the fear of being grabbed (and thus loosing a stock) completely changes the risk:reward ratio for a lot of characters.

Most characters would need to be completely revamped in order to deal with infinites, chain grabs that set up for low damage kills, or 0-deaths. Take Shiek for example. This is a character that relies on pressuring the opponent using her speed. However, she has a nearly impossible match up against IC because she just doesn't have the tools to get into and pressure the two climbers while in their sour range (this is actually naturally hard to do for most characters because it can change depending on the position of the second climber) which effectively means Shiek has to try to use her pressure tools for camping or hit-and-run tactics. Really, its much easier (and much more inline with the project's goals) to remove the chain grab from two or three characters (which even you admit is not central to the "metagame") than to completely revamp the other thirty or so.

Now obviously these characters need something to make up for the loss. Falco was a character that didn't really need his chain grab. It just served to polarize already polarized match-ups. What he needed was a decent way to set up for a kill. D3's chain grab was a large part of his game than Falco's, but only because he was a lot more likely to get the grab and because his was not damage dependent. As such, he got a tech-chase which actually requires the chaser and chased to be mentally present. ICs needed their 0-death removed, but they also need something to compensate for that.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Playing against something like IC's 0-death chain grab is just not fun. From a Marth/Lucario perspective, it really just devolves the game into getting a damage or stock lead and then platform camping for as long as possible.

This is one of the reasons I generally avoid the Tournament scene, too many things people are willing to abuse to win, usually sucking all the fun out of it. Especially seeing as I main Yoshi, who really doesn't have much he can abuse in vBrawl other than Grab-release.

Was quite sad to see Yoshi's grab release removed as I often used the release angle to follow up with either an up smash or a spike. Occasionally a second throw if it was an FFA and I specifically wanted to pick someone off or feel we're headed in a bad direction.

 

[Gea]

Intelligent post about DDD

Here's the thing: DDD's is by far the only one that needs addressing, yes. The current change is too drastic for DDD, especially for how good he is. I understand about the infinite (especially against DK, I used to second DK) and that is where creativity must come into play.

The infinite idea is the big problem, but I still think there should be a workaround for it. For non-infinites, I really think just reducing the dthrow damage to something inane (say, 2% a throw) and buffing DDD in other ways is far superior. He still gets his Dthrow spacing, tricks, etc, but his game would not be hinged on waiting for the dthrow to catch back up in %. I appreciate the well thought out post, though.

As far as your stance on IC's goes, I think you have a good point. It would be several orders of magnitude harder to balance them with the infinites, but ultimately it keep them closer to their orginal selves. I'm not really familiar with who IC's really beat aside from Ganon, so I don't know if it is possible to make their MU's no better than 65:35 while still keeping their death grabs. I'd imagine the IC infinites were taken out because the changes needed for everyone they own are too much just like D3's infinite.

They do really well against pretty much any character that has to come close. Even if their grabs still **** a few characters, in the end it shouldn't matter. Let's face it: ICs have a really hard time in the current metagame. Characters like ROB and Snake laugh at the ICs for the most part, with others like Marth also giving them a hard time. Thus you may have ICs bumping out a falco player, but at what cost? They will have a harder time with popular characters who are really not going to change much. I really think that saying "well no matchup is worse than 60:40 is a bad goal to set yourself towards for the reasons you stated about DK.

If you overbuff for one matchup, that's bad. If you nerf around that matchup, that's also bad. How certain characters work will not always match up with how others work. Olimar has a hard time with Peach. This really isn't going to drastically change unless you make fundamental changes with each character. Does the matchup matter? In the grand scheme, not really. Focus on making every character viable. If there are still "unwinnables," you take those into account after so you avoid the senseless buff/nerf/weird changes that effect the game more than it should.

This is one of the reasons I generally avoid the Tournament scene, too many things people are willing to abuse to win, usually sucking all the fun out of it. Especially seeing as I main Yoshi, who really doesn't have much he can abuse in vBrawl other than Grab-release.

Then you will never like the tournament scene and it isn't for you. Even if all we played was the current build of BBrawl competitively, people would still plank, ledgecamp, and do anything that the current build allows to help them win. Unless the entire game becomes centered around it (or it really does invalidate a character entirely) it is a non-issue. So what, Wario gets grab released. Seems sucky until you realize that same Wario might aircamp you for two minutes to charge a fart. Why not keep Wario the same and bring everyone else up?

Playing against something like IC's 0-death chain grab is just not fun. From a Marth/Lucario perspective, it really just devolves the game into getting a damage or stock lead and then platform camping for as long as possible.

Fun is subjective. Playing against a Marth who grabs and then tippers Nana because she doesn't DI isn't fun for an IC player. Having to deal with 9 frame input delay and have Nana eat a fully powered aurasphere from a camping Lucario isn't fun either.

What is stopping the Lucario or Marth from platform camping the ICs after getting the lead if the ICs don't have a CG? Nothing. Argument invalidated.

Generally, if you make one mistake or try to punish and miss either Nana or Popo, you loose a stock. Now add in their desynched blizzard wall (which is already relatively hard to get through for anyone without a projectile) and their ice blocks (which actually beat/cancel out a lot of projectiles) and you have one very frustrating match up. Not only that, but the fear of being grabbed (and thus loosing a stock) completely changes the risk:reward ratio for a lot of characters.

As it should be. Are ICs ****** the metagame? Oh wait no, there are very few that even attempt to compete because of the intense level of play required. The ICs can't mess up either. One flaw and a dead Nana is basically a stock. The ICs are a high risk, high reward character. Why take that away from them? Because you don't feel it's fun? What about the people who play Ice Climbers? Why do you discount all of the hassle the ICs have to go through to get the grab? ICs can't just desync out of nowhere. All of these things require setting up.

Most characters would need to be completely revamped in order to deal with infinites, chain grabs that set up for low damage kills, or 0-deaths. Take Shiek for example. This is a character that relies on pressuring the opponent using her speed. However, she has a nearly impossible match up against IC because she just doesn't have the tools to get into and pressure the two climbers while in their sour range (this is actually naturally hard to do for most characters because it can change depending on the position of the second climber) which effectively means Shiek has to try to use her pressure tools for camping or hit-and-run tactics. Really, its much easier (and much more inline with the project's goals) to remove the chain grab from two or three characters (which even you admit is not central to the "metagame") than to completely revamp the other thirty or so.

You know what is central to the metagame? Metaknight and his B moves/jumps + dair, and Snake and his camping into tilts. Why don't we just change EVERYTHING ELSE? Oh right, because that isn't what this was planning on doing. Once again I bring up the fact that the ICs don't magically have a ticket to the top. They have hard trouble with many matchups and that's okay. If Sheik has a bad matchup against ICs after bringing her as a character up to par with the viable Brawl cast, then it can be addressed. Until then you're playing theory fighter with no data.

Now obviously these characters need something to make up for the loss. Falco was a character that didn't really need his chain grab. It just served to polarize already polarized match-ups. What he needed was a decent way to set up for a kill. D3's chain grab was a large part of his game than Falco's, but only because he was a lot more likely to get the grab and because his was not damage dependent. As such, he got a tech-chase which actually requires the chaser and chased to be mentally present. ICs needed their 0-death removed, but they also need something to compensate for that.

I disagree. There was no reason to remove their 0-death. Falco does need his CG in some matchups to really have a chance at getting a fair lead. If the matchups were already polarized, then why don't you see how they are after buffing the characters instead of nerfing? You have no idea if Falco would need the CG or not if the other characters were suddenly on his level in their own regard.

You're assuming that chaingrabs are automatically a detriment towards the playing field. In reality you don't know. In reality they currently do not let characters like ICs and Falco win big tournaments. In reality those characters are already ****ed. So why alienate your players with drastic changes that you only think will help? You say taking these out are inline with the project when it clearly states that nothing new must be learned, all timings are the same. Yes, I sure can go from VBrawl to BBrawl with ICs or DDD and really feel good about my characters.

Stop trying to shield the player from people playing to win. You can't stop that. Help the characters be decent and then make judgment calls.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

CGs are bad game design because the polarization they cause is pretty drastic. The issue with making a character viable but still have absolute **** matchups is that you have to buff them enough so that they don't get hard countered by someone off the bat, which in turn makes them ridiculous in "normal" matchups. The reason you NEED to make "unwinnable" matchups winnable to start with is because you aren't actually viable if you have an easy abuse on yourself; having a main of one character being able to counterpick someone they dont use for an easy win means your character isn't really viable.

This is BALANCED brawl. It's meant to cause real balance within the characters, which means to remove the obvious extremely polarizing things AND create more diversity within the game. Dedede's infinites destroy like half the stages in Brawl. Why would you argue it to stay?


As for my personal stance for the BBrawl tricks...
they are currently far too blatant, and I'm against a majority of them. While I enjoy having Bowser's new broken Fsmash as a fun factor, it's clearly deviating from vBrawl way too much, and that's something that should be left for Brawl-.

Before this test build, I was okay with all major decisions made up to that point. They were all good design choices. The tricks are tricky (oh ho lame puns) in that you do want a certain appeal for people to even give BBrawl a try, but the line where getting new players causes you to alienate the current base is too close. Tone down the BBrawl tricks. This means things like Mystery Gift, Bowser's Fsmash, and super falcon kick need to either be scrapped or toned down a great deal :/

Sorry, I meant to make a big post earlier, but now that I started I didn't feel up to it. I do think the ideas as to why you introduced BBrawl tricks are good, just that they are too extreme in changing a character's gameplay. Anything more potent than Ike's sideB change or less subtle needs looking into. Though, this is a great thing to produce in a test build; it's good to see how people think about it, and it helps the quality of the next release.

Oh, and this isn't a knee-jerk reaction on my part, much like what seems to be the case for others. I've thought through these changes a good deal, and despite my severe enjoyment from these fun buffs, they are ultimately bad deviations from the project.

so yeah sorry for not jumping in earlier and not having this post do much justice!

 

[Thinkaman]

I'm baaaaaaaaack...

GDC was fun. Rob Pardo was interesting as always. Chris Hecker was really intriguing too. Enjoyed talking to Sirlin at length again. Made some major progress on Witchhunt and got some developer opinions on BBrawl.

Will post specific replies later, after I wake up. In other words, probably in three or four days.

 

[TP]

He's not kidding. Thinkaman can designate all of his eating and sleeping of a week to one period.

Dude you gotta let me know about the Witchhunt changes. We've branched it out on our end too. Let's combine them.

 

[Steeler]

i'd much rather no tricks than any tricks at all...

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

King Dedede was kinda "broken" in standard Brawl. I mean, he wasn't because you could pick characters and plenty of characters do fine against him, but if I mained random, DDD would be scarier than MK for me because of how many characters have just terrible, terrible matchups against DDD. Like DDD vs DK is inane; DK is otherwise a high tier character who is barely usable because his matchup with DDD is completely broken. There is no easy fix to that, it is completely unacceptable in a balanced game, and something major has to change. In general, it's awfully reminiscent of melee Sheik's cg; it's not even like it works on the characters DDD would "need" it against. Notice how all of DDD's bad matchups are against light characters he can't cg, and notice how many characters would do fine against him except the cg just wrecks them. I'm actually really satisfied with how DDD turned out; the change to his dthrow is massively depolarizing. It actually helps him against the lightest 1/3 of the cast (read: his bad matchups) while it fixes all of his broken matchups and makes a ton of stages way better. It's not just 1 or 2 stages either; probably something like 10 stages have increased viability which is definitely worth more than the interest of a single character... with diverse stages being very important to the viability of characters like G&W anyway so you can think of it entirely in terms of characters if you want!

Pikachu's cg is similarly just gamebreaking. It is ridiculously horrible for space animals, Sheik, and Ganondorf. It does not matter very much in any other matchup, maybe in a few it's okay. Yeah... why would we honestly leave something like that in the game? I can say with confidence if Sakurai had seen what it can do in development he would have made a change exactly like the one we made; that's enough for me to feel justified.

Sheik ftilt locks are a big part of her game, but again, they're just inane and gamebreaking in a few matchups. Yoshi grab release chaingrabs, same way! At this point, we're dealing with characters who are not that great, and the main use they have in the metagame is a few gimmicks that still aren't enough to make them really that worthwhile. Yeah, that is bad game design; I don't blame Sakurai for it since balancing a fighter isn't easy, but if he knew about it, I know he would have done things very similar to what we did. Fix the gimmicky abuses, which is I suppose nerfing, and then buff the characters to make them good for real not with gimmicks that only work well in a few matchups.

Then you have Ganondorf who is just worthless in standard Brawl. No offense to Ganon fans, but seriously he's just beyond terrible. Conservatively buffing Ganondorf could never fix him; he's just too bad. I mean, think of a stock low tier like Lucas, and think of the gap between him and Meta Knight. It's pretty big, but the gap between Lucas and Ganondorf is probably bigger! The only solutions are to nerf half the cast so someone as lousy as Ganondorf has any hope, leave Ganondorf terrible, or give Ganondorf stuff sufficiently powerful that it largely redefines him. I do not feel bad about the choice we made.

The relearning thing is something I stand by, and I think it was misunderstood. Something like learning new applications of DDD's dthrow isn't really that much work; I mean, there's a lot of content to take in, but it's easy to go between two DDD dthrows like that. It's a change in thought process on the strategic level. What is hard is going between, say, DDD's standard Brawl fair and one that hits 2 frames faster or has a 10% bigger hitbox or something. That makes landing the move subtly different, and it's very hard to keep it straight since at that point the necessary change in thought process is on the subconscious level. I feel no reservation at all about asking players to rethink their games on a strategic level, but asking them to rethink on a subconscious level beyond silly stuff like "no longer being able to relax when the opponent picks Ganondorf" is a little much. I think with a remarkably small number of exceptions we have done just that.

The idea behind the current flavor of changes in the test build is something I explained far more elegantly in that blog post on the site, but it ultimately comes down to the fact that some lines are blurrier than I might have otherwise represented, the situation is different, and our strategy is different because our goal is different now. Our previous goal was basically novelty; we wanted to make an academically balanced game under a certain set of restrictions. Our first release wasn't perfect, but I feel as though we did an exceptional job. Mission accomplished. Now our goal is to make the game something actually played which basically means we're setting up to challenge standard Brawl itself. The nature of what needs to be done to do that is different. I will be honest that, at this point, this project is a waste of time if I accept that no one is ever going to care or play it beyond the very narrow set of people posting in this topic (I mean, love you guys, but there can't be more than 100 of you). I should also say that the test build is naturally unpolished, a response to suggestions earlier in the thread about allowing the masses to help out with testing. It may have been a mistake; at the point any actual gameplay files spread beyond Thinkaman and I and the narrow set of people we can keep in private contact with and largely control the interactions with, we're in the domain of PR. I had not considered it that way when doing the test build model; my concept of test build is different from something like Brawl+. My idea is "you have no reason whatsoever to expect quality from this; any play on this is for the purpose of gathering data for the release down the road that actually matters". So I suppose this test build is a marketing disaster; I shouldn't have expected people to remove expectations from a test build like that...

That's all I have to say for now; I'll have more to say tomorrow after conferring with Thinkaman now that he's returned.

 

[Eldiran]

@AA: excellent wall of text, as per usual.

As for my personal stance for the BBrawl tricks...
they are currently far too blatant, and I'm against a majority of them. While I enjoy having Bowser's new broken Fsmash as a fun factor, it's clearly deviating from vBrawl way too much, and that's something that should be left for Brawl-.

Before this test build, I was okay with all major decisions made up to that point. They were all good design choices. The tricks are tricky (oh ho lame puns) in that you do want a certain appeal for people to even give BBrawl a try, but the line where getting new players causes you to alienate the current base is too close. Tone down the BBrawl tricks. This means things like Mystery Gift, Bowser's Fsmash, and super falcon kick need to either be scrapped or toned down a great deal :/

I have to agree that some of them should be toned down -- the likes of Illusion jump canceling and Falcon Kick in particular. However, I do like the Bowser Fsmash; primarily because Sakurai's team initially had it with Super Armor just like this.

I have a small suggestion for Ike's Eruption... with the current change, the need to time Eruption vBrawl style is pretty much gone. I'd appreciate it if, where vBrawl originally had Super Armor, BBrawl would have something like invincibility or undamageable Super Armor.

Alternately, downgrading the extra Super Armor into some degree of Heavy Armor would also work.

I'm baaaaaaaaack...

Will post specific replies later, after I wake up. In other words, probably in three or four days.

Lookin' forward to it!

 

[A2ZOMG]

Ike's Eruption is only really viable in teams anyway. You still kinda have to screw up badly in order for that to hit you in singles, since the SA frames on the charge come out later than what is supposed to be reaction time as I recall. He really doesn't have any business using this as a combo breaker most of the time, so it can only be used as the much more risky alternative to QDing away from a juggle, which still loses to opponents who just aim to U-throw juggle Ike.

 

[Gea]

If your goal was to make something in the same vein of B+ (as in, different from Standard) then so be it. If you want to make something to appeal to tournament players (aka "patching" Brawl) then your takes on what needed to be done ultimately alienate your playerbase. Most of the excitement from the original project that I saw stemmed from these ideas, not the idea of "hey, another new fun game based off of Brawl."

There's no point in arguing what is "too broken," my entire thought process is the latter, not the former. What's important in the latter is creating a game that has a more playable cast without alienating anyone from VBrawl or nerfing unless the metagame centralizes around the idea.

The only change I even agree with CG wise is DDD, but I don't agree with the end result of changes made. I have no intention of making another massive post that restates this. You have your philosophies and I have mine.

All I will say is that aspiring to be as popular as B+ isn't a good aspiration (to me, anyways) because very few players take it seriously. I thought this project was a bit more sensible. Ah well.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

As it should be. Are ICs ****** the metagame? Oh wait no, there are very few that even attempt to compete because of the intense level of play required. The ICs can't mess up either. One flaw and a dead Nana is basically a stock. The ICs are a high risk, high reward character. Why take that away from them? Because you don't feel it's fun? What about the people who play Ice Climbers? Why do you discount all of the hassle the ICs have to go through to get the grab? ICs can't just desync out of nowhere. All of these things require setting up.

You seem to rather be missing the point. If you're not playing a game for fun, why play the game at all? If all you're goign do do with IC is try to Cg them the death, why not do something almost as effective but easier, and pick MK who can already shut down roughly 30% of the cast with no trouble? (Clearly something's wrong when I can get him first time on random and faceroll my friend who runs even with me most of the time. >_>)

Also, Ice Climbers when they do get it going can pretty much 0-death anyone if the player has excellent timing and coordination. They aren't such absolute crap without CGing but I certainly agree that there needs to be something to make up for Nana's piss poor AI.

 

[Gea]

I think you miss the point: fun is subjective, and many people here play for the competitive aspect even if they don't particularly enjoy Brawl.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

*Deleted* Net kinda flipped out and double posted...

 

[NovaRyumaru]

This means things like Mystery Gift, Bowser's Fsmash, and super falcon kick need to either be scrapped or toned down a great deal

The mystery gift one is kinda fun imo, knock 'em off stage and spam it throwing smoke balls up right on the ledge, it's annoying as hell, I love little tricks that are annoying like that but no where near game breaking.

Bowser's I agree should be back how it was before, however the heavy armor is certainly a nice improvement, makes it much more like Wario's side smash where you can eat a mid hit and kinda bash their face in.

Falcon's kind of feels odd however while I've yet to do anything game breaking with it I could certainly see potential in it to do such, love the super armor on Falcon Punch though

I think you miss the point: fun is subjective, and many people here play for the competitive aspect even if they don't particularly enjoy Brawl.

Then give me one legitimate reason to play the game if you don't enjoy it? You'd compete in something you don't even enjoy playing? Makes little sense to me.

 

[Gea]

Then give me one legitimate reason to play the game if you don't enjoy it? You'd compete in something you don't even enjoy playing? Makes little sense to me.

Money is a pretty good reason for some people, others just like the friends and sense of community this place has. Plenty of people are frustrated with the fact that MK dominates and that tripping is in the game, yet they keep playing despite these things. What's more is the majority keep playing regular ol' Brawl despite there being alternatives to these problems.

Why not remove these things if they are universally hated? Because tournament standard says otherwise. Codeset players are a vast minority. If you want to gain support of the community in making Brawl "better," and not "different," you need to be conservative in nerfs, make the game more "fun" without radically changing how it works, and realize that sometimes you have to make concessions to faulty logic that the community believes.

For instance some stages are currently either rarely seen or banned in standard Brawl simply because people don't like playing on those stages. Trying to push these things is off-putting to people who want that authentic tournament experience without the vast unbalance that is Brawl. Like I said, if the goal of the project is not this, then I have no place here and the supporters can continue to do their thing without me causing interruption.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Money is a pretty good reason for some people, others just like the friends and sense of community this place has. Plenty of people are frustrated with the fact that MK dominates and that tripping is in the game, yet they keep playing despite these things. What's more is the majority keep playing regular ol' Brawl despite there being alternatives to these problems.

Why not remove these things if they are universally hated? Because tournament standard says otherwise. Codeset players are a vast minority. If you want to gain support of the community in making Brawl "better," and not "different," you need to be conservative in nerfs, make the game more "fun" without radically changing how it works, and realize that sometimes you have to make concessions to faulty logic that the community believes.

For instance some stages are currently either rarely seen or banned in standard Brawl simply because people don't like playing on those stages. Trying to push these things is off-putting to people who want that authentic tournament experience without the vast unbalance that is Brawl. Like I said, if the goal of the project is not this, then I have no place here and the supporters can continue to do their thing without me causing interruption.

Or you could earn said money from a job you know, much easier and it's always going to be there(unless you jack around and get fired of course or some other event that basically shuts your work place down) Tournaments for said games, aren't ALWAYS going to be held where it's viable to get to, no to mention you might not win.

And again, if you're only playing for the money, why not just pick MK and save yourself the trouble? Don't really need to learn any fancy tricks or amazing timing, the nearly non existant ending lag on most of his attacks is plenty to make up for timing unless you space poorly.

As for the stage issue, stages like 75m, Mario Bros(just using these two as they are the first to come to mind) 75m for someone like Falco, IC or against people that grab release just wrecks is pretty much a free win when you position right, can walk them off the sides with CGing, or if you get them down in the smaller platforms CG > spike.

Mario Bro.s that stage can literally be unwinnable on some characters unless you walk them off because of the many, many walls to tech off of, same can be applied to part of Hyrule Temple.

 

[Thinkaman]

Alright, I'm awake. Whew!

I'll re-read everything and post some sort of magnum opus in a couple hours.

 

[GunmasterLombardi]

Alright, I'm awake. Whew!

I'll re-read everything and post some sort of magnum opus in a couple hours.

Has anyone made ideas for advertising BBrawl?

W/ it simply being a competitive fighter w/ balanced characters (something I've never seen in a fighter) is a good start.

 

[Steeler]

i agree with a lot of what gea has said. if i did not enjoy my group of smash friends so much, i probably would have quit long ago. i support this project because i believe it to be more fun than normal brawl (even the first ultra-conservative builds) and it creates a more competitive metagame. i think it'd be pretty cool if you legitimately had to learn 38 different matchups in order to win a large tournament...at that point, the truly skilled players shine. even now, some of the best players in the world simply play meta knight or snake because they don't have to do as much work to win.

on stages, however, what is the harm in fixing the bad ones? if people simply don't like the stage then don't play it and leave it off the tourney rule set. hell, they can even turn some CPs into neutrals if they feel like it. it's all at TO's discretion.

about the changes...even with a not so extreme change like ike quick draw, mr. doom refuses to use it to get out of juggles and the like because he's afraid of messing up his normal vbrawl game.

so, i think tricks are okay as long as they don't drastically change how you play against the character unless the character truly needs it to be viable. like the walljumping out of recoveries. that's alright. it doesn't change the fact that those recoveries are subpar-to-awful on stages like smashville and delfino (main platform). it changes a bit how you edgeguard those characters on some stages but only next to the stage...they are still just as gimpable from afar.

i think the best policy is for tricks to say "hey, this is pretty cool. doesn't change all that much but it's still a pretty neat trick to mess around with!"

i think bowser is a bad enough character to warrant relentless but that's up to extensive playtesting to decide. there's no doubt that it changes a lot, more than any of the other tricks.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Bowser can be saved by making his F-tilt/Firebreath/U-tilt safer and reducing the landing lag on his Up-B. His ground game can feasibly do a lot of work, minus the fact that it's not safe enough for him to get away with all the time, and generally speaking he's too big of a target to consider jumping around as a really good option for dealing with camping. Also his recovery is pretty unnecessarily horrible, and essentially makes the character lower mid weight against people who edgeguard him competently.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Brawl+ is not really that popular; I said standard Brawl not Brawl+. I have no interest in mimicing Brawl+. Challenging the standard means challenging the standard. If we actually succeed, that would suggest that "messing up you standard Brawl game" would become a lot more irrelevant. If we continue like we have been, our game continues to be just a novelty and not really important.

 

[NovaRyumaru]

Bowser can be saved by making his F-tilt/Firebreath/U-tilt safer and reducing the landing lag on his Up-B. His ground game can feasibly do a lot of work, minus the fact that it's not safe enough for him to get away with all the time, and generally speaking he's too big of a target to consider jumping around as a really good option for dealing with camping. Also his recovery is pretty unnecessarily horrible, and essentially makes the character lower mid weight against people who edgeguard him competently.

Jigglypuff b-air(s) and race back to the ledge to edgehog *Cough cough HACK*

Assuming said b-airs aren't good enough yet to finish him off. Really fun with DK's recovery, if he hits you wrong you can SDI into him and rest, sure you're dead but still funny.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Must be said: That test build brought madness here.
While some people loved the idea in order to give popularity to BBrawl, other people sees the changes as unnecessary to keep the BBrawl concept.

I like vBrawl, but at high level competitions, I got sick of seeing a lot of ******** things made with virtually no effort, like CGs, infinites, extreme camping to avoid getting grabbed, abuses, and MK and Snake winning by making pretty much nothing. Yet, I like playing as MK, Snake and most characters (I just don't do any oth those silly things).

When I heard about B+ I didn't liked the idea because of how extreme most changes are, bringing it to a "Melee Evolution"-like concept.
I'd try B- because it's a parody of it, and blantant extreme changes are intended.
But when I heard about BBrawl through Rykoshet's Youtube channel, I wanted to try it, because there was almost no changes to vBrawl playing, but exactly most of those ******** things mentioned before. That's why I tried it, and I loved it.

But well, that's just my impression of it...

 

[Steeler]

Bowser can be saved by making his F-tilt/Firebreath/U-tilt safer and reducing the landing lag on his Up-B.

the question is what you want to change...personally, i think the relentless idea is much more interesting and effective (lol lasers say what?). characters like sheik/zelda (both) and wario might struggle against it though.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

Relentless bowser is a great idea... if you want to alienate more people then you are getting and want to be more like Brawl-.

I'll make a bigger post later maybe. Right now I'm playing HEART GOLD.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Most of the changes that are needed to balanced characters can be pretty small, although timing changes are probably needed for a few characters.

There isn't much else that can be done for Bowser and Ike without speeding them up somewhere else, or you're going to make them start looking really insanely wacky trying to beat around the bush.

Bowser's U-tilt and Firebreath imo REALLY deserve to be less laggy. Firebreath starts up pretty slow and is unsafe when the opponent SDIs it on reaction. Bowser's U-tilt is still worse than Snake's, as iirc it takes longer to hit behind him than it does for Snake's U-tilt to hit in front of him, and it's a lot more laggy.

Ike can't do two aerials in a jump, which pretty much prevents him from using aerials to edgeguard anything except the worst recoveries in the game, which he still can't do much about when they recover low. And generally speaking he's not very hard to avoid when you're above him. Both his B-air and N-air should be sped up (former imo should be double speed after frame 29, the latter should be double speed after the hitbox is over), the latter especially should be considered due to how many times Ike players get killed by suiciding offstage with that move, and the former is pretty badly outclassed by a number of B-airs that are about as powerful, but much less laggy and thus able to control space significantly better and edgeguard viably (which actually lets them gimp better as well). When you consider that Ganondorf himself actually got a timing change (not one that I think solves the right problems, but still helps him significantly), I really don't see why Ike and Bowser should be left out here.

If I recall, DK's F-air got a minor timing change as well, can anyone tell me how that works?

 

[Ussi]

Make Ike's fsmash have shield breaker's properties, (Longer charge has bigger shield damage, fully charged shield break) and can't be powershielded..... or reduce its ending lag to the point its unpunishable except by dodging successfully in front of Ike.

EDIT: I just thought of something, why not remove the diminishing knockback of moves on Ike. Would let Ike kill with bair and fair while using them to rack up damage.