Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[GHNeko]

@CountKaiser: Well, isn't very popular since B+ already existed

Brawl- would like to have a worth with you.

 

[Linkshot]

I'm pretty sure bBrawl has it tough because Brawl+ talks it down pretty harshly for not changing the hitstun multipliers.

READ: Brawl+'s players. Not saying the higher-ups bash this.

 

[ぱみゅ]

After seeing crazy changes to the metagame in order to make Brawl into faster and combo-happy (almost broken) game, not many people got attracted by "The same Brawl experience, but more balanced".
By the other hand, the idea behind Brawl- is "extreme brokenness", and that sounds extremely fun (and, won't lie, it is).

But, we only need more appealing words, because BBrawl is really a lot better than vBrawl, even with overall small changes.

 

[Linkshot]

Right now, the most praise bBrawl has gotten from other hacks is "****, how do we top that showcase?"

Brawl- and bBrawl combined have spoiled me away from vBrawl.

And, just saying, if we merged Brawl Minus and Balanced Brawl...it'd be an unstoppable force of a hack. XDDD

(Think of the Shining Force weapon: Chaos Breaker; forged with magic combining the darkest and most heroic swords)

 

[Stealth Raptor]

i dont think its because of brawl+ like that. its more like the percentage of players that like how bbrawl changes the game are far smaller then the amount that like what brawl + is doing. project M will gather its own following pretty quickly, and brawl- to me seems more like a temporary **** LOOK AT THOSE BROKEN CHARS then the others.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

We have just not been very successful at marketing ourselves. We saw how most of the community really disliked the Brawl+ people so we tried very hard to avoid being as obnoxious as they are known to be, but it resulted in us being mostly unknown. I think Bbrawl has more long term potential than Brawl+, I think when people actually get to play BBrawl they tend to like it much unlike Brawl+ (which is very hit or miss with people), and I think we will start to see some change in our standing after this upcoming release.

 

[Linkshot]

I've found bBrawl to be hit or miss, too.

Generally, the people that are still playing vBrawl simply don't want to hack their Wii nor care for hacks. (Which is the case with Ottawa)

Yes, the majority of "the community" (in terms of who mains who) is getting buffed in bBrawl without changing playstyle, but they refuse to take it seriously because it's "an unofficial hack" and "will still ruin their vBrawl game"

I've inadvertantly disproven the latter by still playing a consistent Lucario, regardless of the lack of vBrawl I play, and the mass amounts of Minus and Balanced I play.

Though, I will say PNDMike loves bBrawl. ^^

 

[ぱみゅ]

May we need a big tournament advertisement...

 

[Linkshot]

Maybe we should get MLG to pick us up XDD

Spoiler

I honestly thought that would be this year's April Fools

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Linkshot, you're talking about rejecting it for non-gameplay reasons though. That's kinda different, and I think a lot of these people would come around if they saw the game as having more potential for success since they don't seem to have a real objection to the gameplay itself.

 

[ぱみゅ]

So, isn't "hit or miss" if people isn't even in the *mod* playfield?
I consider it is a kind "miss"...

 

[Linkshot]

I don't think I could get anyone in Ottawa to take hacks seriously...Montreal is 2.5 hours away and we go there frequently, and they've picked up Brawl+ as nearly a replacement...Ottawa laughed when I told them that.

Only a couple individuals use Homebrew regularly.

 

[Mit]

Man, I would love to participate in a BBrawl tournament.

The only way I could see BBrawl getting popular is if TO's paid money out of pocket to get it off the ground.

High level players couldn't give two ****s about BBrawl, but if there was a mini-tournament held as a side-event at a big time tournament (say, the day before the main tourney or something), with a cheap entrance fee, and a $50 pot or something donated by the TO's (so, it's cheap to give it a try, and you can win more money than usual), that'd get all of those players to participate. Believe me, they love winning money.

However, no one is ever going to do that ever. Never ever.

 

[Steeler]

i'm going to help run a tourney here at the end of may and i'm considering having a bbrawl side tournament but i highly doubt we'd have the time for it.

 

[Fledgling]

So, I'm looking to play around with the latest BBrawl Test Build, but the download came with .pcs and .pac files for the characters that have been changed since the last build. Do I need these on my SD Card for the changes to be implemented?

(Yeah yeah, I'm a texture user.)

 

[Linkshot]

You don't need to replace any of your own textures.

They're just there for the sake of quick loading.

 

[ぱみゅ]

The only important ones that you musn't replace with your ones are the Fit(Fighter).pac (without the number), in order to have the changes working =P

 

[Linkshot]

You honestly don't need to replace anything, unless you're using custom movesets.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Well, most effects (like swords shlashes) or weapons (skane/Samus/TLink's) with different colors are in the nonumber.pac....

 

[Fledgling]

Well, most effects (like swords shlashes) or weapons (skane/Samus/TLink's) with different colors are in the nonumber.pac....

Aren't those the MotionEtc. files?

 

[CountKaiser]

If you want to start garnering attention, do what brawl+ did. Run side tourneys all over the place. Be ready to answer questions when people ask them about BBrawl. Set up BBrawl sets for friendlies at brawl tourneys.

Since the target audience seems to be brawl players and not melee players, I'd start out offering BBrawl at brawl only tourneys, and not brawl/melee tourneys.

Be tenacious, and continue to hold BBrawl as a side event at tourneys and such.

 

[Fledgling]

One minor gripe: On the BBrawl website, you might want to add the fact that you removed the bottom half of Temple. My brother and I both killed ourselves trying to go down there!

 

[ぱみゅ]

If you want to start garnering attention, do what brawl+ did. Run side tourneys all over the place. Be ready to answer questions when people ask them about BBrawl. Set up BBrawl sets for friendlies at brawl tourneys.

Since the target audience seems to be brawl players and not melee players, I'd start out offering BBrawl at brawl only tourneys, and not brawl/melee tourneys.

Be tenacious, and continue to hold BBrawl as a side event at tourneys and such.

Side events are most likely not happening at all... but looks like a nice hook.
I could try it here, it wouldn't be possible until july, on our national tournament....

One minor gripe: On the BBrawl website, you might want to add the fact that you removed the bottom half of Temple. My brother and I both killed ourselves trying to go down there!

And CPUs kills themselves in a ******** way there. lol-

Since is not even a CP stage, that part may was skipped.
Be careful! the downward boundary is extremely high...
But not enough to prevent camping on the platform at the left, though...

 

[GHNeko]

To be honest, BBrawl should not have it's own discussion forum on a separate website because that pulls away discussion from the website in which all the potential players reside at. :/

 

[The Milk Monster]

If you want to start garnering attention, do what brawl+ did. Run side tourneys all over the place. Be ready to answer questions when people ask them about BBrawl. Set up BBrawl sets for friendlies at brawl tourneys.

Since the target audience seems to be brawl players and not melee players, I'd start out offering BBrawl at brawl only tourneys, and not brawl/melee tourneys.

Be tenacious, and continue to hold BBrawl as a side event at tourneys and such.

It's hard for BBrawl to kick off.

A side event is out of the question. BBrawl is similar enough to regular Brawl that no one will wanna' pay to do it.

If they do it as a main event, only die hard fans will enter it, people will just want to play regular Brawl or whatever.

 

[Fuujin]

I'm not sure if it was nerfed at all in the latest release candidate (I'm one behind), but Zelda's Nayru's Love buff seems a little crazy. It's like a super wavedash from melee. She can just slide across the level and cancel into anything she wants while moving, and can gain great aerial momentum and go into any air move she wants.

I mean I get that she's pretty bad, but it seems like a bit much. Maybe it's not as good as I'm thinking it is because we were mostly playing FFA's tonight (3 people), but it felt a little out of control, and more than a little unprofessional looking (another one of those things that screams "this is a mod!").

I really can't think of any reasonable nerfs for it, short of just getting rid of allowing it to cancel into moves, or getting rid of the slide and keeping the ability to cancel into moves.

Next time she's rushing at you with it try using an aerial, unless she spaces it really good almost any aerial cuts through it, making it similar to Sheik's dacus when on the ground.
It has a really low hit box and is pretty much useless against aerial characters.

Therein lies a balance problem. Most high tier characters can usually beat it out, where as low tier characters (ones she doesn't have trouble with) gets beat by it.

It's not a matter of tiers its a matter if the character has an aerial that can beat it out.
It's going to be pretty useless on Peach, MK, Marth, Ike, GnW and Jigglypuff because they all have competent aerials to stop her from approaching with it.
Zelda only has about 3 positive match ups in vbrawl, Jigglypuff, CF and Ganondorf.
In bbrawl Ganon can plow through it and Jigglypuff being aerial they shouldn't have much trouble with it.
The only match ups I can think it really helping are Snake, Olimar, Pikachu and Bowser, maybe Pit.
You'd assume it would be really nice on Link and Samus until you realize they can Z air through it.
Though it is much better when used with retreating f smashes, but the opponent has to approach for that to be effective.

I do agree that it doesn't fit her play style and I think she's going have to over rely on it as an approach, movement option, recovery and reflector but she's a little better off with it.
It's like GnW's turtle to a much lesser extent, it seems amazing at first until you figure out it has a glaring weakness.

i thought of three things for din's fire

1) Change angle it sends you in. Either away from you to keep the defense going, or towards Zelda to combo into a move. Downwards is a no

2) heavy shield damage + transcend, this would force powershielding or air dodging

3) instead of knockback it puts character in the shieldbreak stun. (dunno how that works for the air)

but din'a fire actually won't help her bad MUs like G&W...... I think Naryus would be more useful....

Din's with transcending priority and much less ending lag would actually help her against Marths, Mks, GnWs Nesss who basically can just jump in front of her at mid range spamming aerials and she has no way to get past them.
Din's would cut through their attacks and be safe enough to block after using it.

 

[Steeler]

To be honest, BBrawl should not have it's own discussion forum on a separate website because that pulls away discussion from the website in which all the potential players reside at. :/

agreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee at least for now. once it picks up a strong following we can do this though (ie, when enough people care to figure out the matchups)

also i prefer this for temple:

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=9400288&postcount=716

lower the ceiling a bit

 

[Linkshot]

I feel that's exactly what Temple should be.

 

[CountKaiser]

It's hard for BBrawl to kick off.

A side event is out of the question. BBrawl is similar enough to regular Brawl that no one will wanna' pay to do it.

If they do it as a main event, only die hard fans will enter it, people will just want to play regular Brawl or whatever.

Well, start out with setups for BBrawl friendlies.

Yes, it's hard to kick this project off, but you need to start somewhere.

 

[shanus]

I think simply put, BBrawls flaw in success is it's lack of target audience and its deviation from simple changes. To put it simply, I was at a rather large fest in MA with a lot of vBrawl players, and I'll let their feedback regarding modding do the talking.

But first, let me highly the segment of the players in this room:

1. Most vBrawl players are not significantly discontent with vbrawl. Those that are discontent solely with balance (minority), but enjoy the simplicity of brawl's execution garnered minor interest in Bbrawl, but were largely turned off by the latest "BBrawl gimmicks."
2. Those that are discontent with the game beyond balance largely enjoyed melee or demanded a larger/greater change beyond that of character changes, i.e. they want a faster engine, etc. These players will naturally default to a game like B+, B-, Melee, or Project M depending on their tastes. They likely will not fall in interest to the least changed project.

So you have a *highly* fragmented market. But, it gets worse. Bbrawl aimed to grab those discontent with brawl's balance, but enjoy its mechanics and aim to have a semi-flawless transition between the two. Now enter BBrawl gimmicks. The very function of these go well beyond the idea behind this project. With changes this large, its remarkable that hitbox size alteratins were not considered and that they were defended as too revolutionary, but thats a separate debate in itself.

So back to the fest feedback. Some more details: There were a bunch of set-ups at this fest, and I know the individuals pretty well who actually want a less demanding technical gameplay (they aren't melee or P:M fans) and actually spent some time checking out B-, B+, and BB.

With the latest changes to BB, they basically characterized BB into the following bucket:

"BBrawl is basically B- without the fun." This is what they think of it. They think of it was Brawl, with some ridiculous changes that don't make it anymore fun. These players who hacked their wii out of minor discontent actually abandoned the concept of Bbrawl entirely to play B- and B+.

Simply put, what is the market for BBrawl? How will you accrue players in such a fragmented market when what is offered has no unique selling point? It deviated from its mission statement of non-obtrusive changes with key examples such as jiggs items shenanigans, to the point that the most "serious" mindset of projects has been largely deemed by vBrawl playerbase as the least attractive.

This isn't meant as an attack or anything, a simple question at best which I haven't been able to at all answer. I'm all for the modding community and don't really care/bias myself on any one mod over the other nowadays (that would be quite hypocritical since i did stop working on B+ for P:M!); but simply put, when thinking about the segments of the modding market, when someone asks a simple question like Kaiser did, "Who plays BBrawl?" and no1 can answer it, it should be a red flag.

 

[A2ZOMG]

And y'know I was really convinced that a few endlag changes, better placed knockback buffs, and shield damage buffs here and there were enough to balance Brawl...

Yeah so I'm wondering why there is a lot of hype for Super Street Fighter 4, aside from the fact that everyone likes new characters. Then again that alone might do it for some people...but that's not the reason why I am hyped for that game lol...

 

[GHNeko]

And y'know I was really convinced that a few endlag changes, better placed knockback buffs, and shield damage buffs here and there were enough to balance Brawl...

It's possible. You just have to go into the extremes in order for the reward:risk ratio to be as balances as those in the Brawl high/top tiers.

Like Boozer up B doing 35% with no decay or fresh bonus with a kill potential at 120% with good DI or absolutely none of ganon's moves doing less than 15% damage after being decayed and being able to kill fatties like Snake at like 130% with good DI.

It's all about balancing risk:reward and it's possible to do it with a small selection of changes. You just have to give an extreme reward for extreme risks. :V

 

[rPSIvysaur]

It's possible. You just have to go into the extremes in order for the reward:risk ratio to be as balances as those in the Brawl high/top tiers.

Like Boozer up B doing 35% with no decay or fresh bonus with a kill potential at 120% with good DI or absolutely none of ganon's moves doing less than 15% damage after being decayed and being able to kill fatties like Snake at like 130% with good DI.

It's all about balancing risk:reward and it's possible to do it with a small selection of changes. You just have to give an extreme reward for extreme risks. :V

Thiiiiiisss post.

/agree

 

[Mit]

Yeah so I'm wondering why there is a lot of hype for Super Street Fighter 4, aside from the fact that everyone likes new characters. Then again that alone might do it for some people...but that's not the reason why I am hyped for that game lol...

Well, if Balanced Brawl was an official, disc-based release from Nintendo, I'm sure there would be an immense amount of hype behind it.

 

[deepseadiva]

Shanus makes a fantastic point, which I'd like to tie to Balanced Peach. Specifically Peach Bomber canceling.

It's not broken, but it's also incredibly... obvious, as a hack. It's cool, but it has zero transfer value back in vBrawl. Peach Bomber is a move that needs to be used minimally, and so encouragement in Balanced Brawl seems off. I'm not sure how to put it - but the basic point is that I'm conflicted with that bonus.

I'm just worried that when I'll actually get to introduce BBrawl to my local scene, from the get go, my opponents have to deal with this crazy new movement they've never seen before. How can I still justify it as "Just like Brawl" then?

Alternatively, for Peach, I'm infinitely more attracted to a controllable fsmash. It's discrete enough that other players wouldn't even notice, but it's a massive deal to Peach mains. It would also bring her up to the level of the rest of the Balanced cast - in my humble opinion.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I agree with Meno exactly.

These BBrawl Bonuses are really negatively impacting whose playing. In fact, my friend won't even play anymore, because he's worried it will screw up his vBrawl game and I'm likely to give it up too.

 

[GHNeko]

To be straight up honest, there'll be no true way to balance this game well without messing up someone's Brawl game.

At least imo.

In order to achieve "worth while" balance, you have to go further that the original goal of the game, and while you've done that, I believe it's in the wrong direction.

You say hitbox changes are intrusive. Okay. I'll give you that. But they're no less intrusive than gimmicks that are being worked into a character's game due to them being useful.

You would be better off going towards extremes in order to stick as close as possible to your original goals, because at least then, only the potency of success/failure is changed. Not how to obtain said success/failure and how often and this and that.

ex: if you nerf the damage of all of snake's moves by 5-15% with compensated KB, nothing changes except the reward/risk. there is nothing new introduced and the playstyle does not have to be altered to a point where it would hinder how you play in Brawl.

Something along the lines of that.

That's how I personally see it and that's my own opinion on the matter.

 

[ぱみゅ]

About Peach, it's amazing the feeling of an aerial glidetoss. Other than that, is very intrusive on her regular playing, and even looks buggy....
Mystery Gift is just odd, and is also too obvious as a hack.
What I meant is that those changes are surely fun and all, but the original BBrawl idea was precisely for avoiding it.

BBrawl original idea I had was like "just like Brawl, but unnoticeable better"

 

[Thinkaman]

Alright, my computer crashes hardcore and I come back to find a debate on project fundamentals. Man, I love Mondays.

In regards to target audience, we're still the same as ever: this is a Brawl project for Brawl players. We aim to make a strictly superior, conservative iteration on the game. I will come back to this in a moment.

In relation to other projects, this is quite definitely a non-conflicting design space. Anyone who compares BBrawl to Brawl- is really stretching, as they have almost nothing in common in terms of goals or change mechanics. I similarly can't imagine anyone confusing BBrawl and Brawl+ or perceiving them as overlapping.

Let's go back to project goals. A concern being voiced is that the big changes are "gimmicks" that go against this project's philosophy. I take issue with the g-word, as I'm going to insist that these changes do not fit that defintion.

In marketing language, a gimmick is a quirky feature that distinguishes a product or service without adding any obvious function or value. Thus, a gimmick sells solely on the basis of distinctiveness and may not appeal to the more savvy or shrewd customer.

Referring to any change as a gimmick implies that it is change for the sake of change, without merit. In this project, everything in the final version exists for a very specific reason; nothing exists for the primary purpose of calling attention to itself. Even the most "quirky" case (Jigglypuff's "Mystery Gift") exists to provide an alternate high-knockback followup option in matchups against ranged characters that is agnostic to stale moves.

We don't do gimmicks. This project is very trim, and we continue to be interesting in removing changes if and where needed! It was a mistake to call changes "tricks", and I'm starting to think "bonuses" isn't a proper enough word either. Presentation is an on-going concern for this project.

On the topic of the way changes are made, I thought this was well-trodden ground... Buffing Ganondorf's moves to all do over 20% or Meta Knights to 4% is NOT an acceptable solution. Fair? Potentially. Balanced? No.

Balance encompasses many aspects beyond fairness, which Brawl generally does exceptionally well in.

*Role Existence- What is the role of the move?
*Role Uniqueness- Do any other moves have the same role?
*Cadence- What is the rhythm of the move? How does the timing fit into the character's movement and playstyle, and how does it respond to input?
*Verisimilitude- Is the existence of the action apparent? Does it match the player input action?
*Spectacle- Is the aesthetic response that the move creates appropriate?
*Causality- Is the effect of the move clearly tied to the move itself?
*Affordance- Is the function of the action apparent?
*Depth- Does the function of the move result in degenerate gameplay?

Brawl's visual feedback mechanisms are so good that we really don't have to worry about say Causality or Versimilitude much. However, extreme damage changes, high knockback changes, non-trivial timing changes, and even small hitbox size changes threaten these elements. (Which again, are quite well-engineered as it stands in Brawl.)

This should not be news to anyone here: We already accidentally passed the limit of how much characters can be improved with Falcon in the initial release, in addition to possibly Mario, Link, Ganondorf, and a few others. For the vast majority of moves, large damage or KB changes *will* rewrite a move's functionality, possibly redefining its role and ruining its affordance and depth.

The word you guys referred to this experience as was "jarring".

The "bigger" changes follow a philosophy of "Facilitate, Not Mutate". To outsiders they might first appear as crazy ideas, but in reality they are quite surgical... selected and precisely implemented with specific, isolated purposes. Of my experiments that even made it to implementation, less than a tenth are in the final version. (Not a tenth turned out to be good or beneficial, a tenth were selected to be used--we aren't interested in "good", we only want the single most cohesive solutions.)

This is merely a natural outcome of everything I just said, but I'm going to state it plainly so we're clear: Increasing the density of moves that have extreme risk/rewards (both ways, whether it's a Ganon Up-B grab that does 50% or a Meta Knight dair that does 4%) will result in a more campy game that tests consistency above other skills--that is the nature of that kind of gameplay element.

I will be happy to continue discussing specific changes, including Peach Bomber and Mystery Gift. However, I wanted to cover all this philosophical game design stuff first. Now I'm going to go back to fixing my computer for the moment being. :/

 

[shanus]

It doesn't matter how "surgical" or "calculated" a change is. Guess what, adding HAD to fox in B- was "calculated," time-consuming, etc. Guess what, it's still incredibly foreign (fine in a game like B-), and also *will* rewrite a move's functionality, possibly redefining its role . Guess what, it works great! However, thats B-, a game thriving on the concept of foreign. This is Bbrawl, a game meant to stay true to brawl where one can transfer seamlessy. If something is jarring, guess what, you didn't achieve that concept.

Now tell me, how is peaches bomber cancel, fox/falco's illusion cancels, ike side B no freefall, jiggs sideB mystery gift (which is as wtf as it gets) are non-intrusive, or less intrusive than say shrinking snake's utilt by 1 unit.

These changes, no matter how you define them, "jarring" or "gimmicks" still conflict with your non-intrusive mantra. Individuals feedback from even your fans might be somewhat concerning and not so quickly dismissed.