Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[blakinola]

Are there any codes to change *priority*?

 

[JOE!]

Buffing CF's moves doesn't change the fact that he lacks priority and range; that applies to pretty much all the low tiers who failed because they had trouble getting in. If you're not going to mod at least a few hitboxes, some characters are just doomed to stay low tier.

That being said, I love sheik <3.

CF did NOT lack range, and he had no problem "getting in", his problem was that he was often punished for doing so.

Now with damage and angle changes, he's fine

 

[A2ZOMG]

Buffing CF's moves doesn't change the fact that he lacks priority and range; that applies to pretty much all the low tiers who failed because they had trouble getting in. If you're not going to mod at least a few hitboxes, some characters are just doomed to stay low tier.

That being said, I love sheik <3.

CF had decent range on some moves, and even though his priority was beyond terrible, this could very very feasibly be compensated for under a good player who knows how to use his mobility to space and zone.

The problem with Captain Falcon was the stuff he could do safely had virtually no reward (whereas almost everything Ganondorf did had a substantial reward, including the retreating Thunderstorm which in most situations particularly vs a character like Captain Falcon, is a safe tactic). The point is Captain Falcon DOES have stuff that is safe in high level play. The only thing he actually needed was a better reason to use it. Look at all his damage and knockback buffs on virtually everything he has. Captain Falcon is easily one of the most improved characters in BBrawl when you start considering what a high level player can do with CF's options.

Particularly the buff on the pummel and Up-B. Those two buffs are preeeeety darn significant.

 

[Dark Sonic]

Are there any codes to change *priority*?

if you mean "changing hitbox to hurtbox ratios so that a move is less likely to be beat by another move by increasing the chance that your hitbox will hit their hurtbox first instead of vice versa," then yes.

 

[NO-IDea]

I honestly see no point in changing hitbox/hurtboxes. Not only does that completely change the game, but there is no reason for it in the first place. If you've ever played against low tier mains such as CF, they would complain that there is no reward for landing their hits, with priority being the second issue.

What got me into BBrawl was the showcase, particularly the first few moments where Mario's d-tilt was actually rewarded, whereas in vBrawl, he would have gotten countered by MK's d-air. Rather than change the hitbox/hurtbox (which changes the utility and the purpose of a move entirely,) changing the knockback makes certain moves more safe and "rewarding." And by safe, I refer to safe upon landing. Case in point, all of CF's buffs.

They're not changing the game like Brawl +. They're balancing it.

AND SHEIK AND SAMUS DO NOT HAVE TROUBLE "GETTING IN!" I use both extensively and can say without a doubt that getting in was not the problem.

If anything, I dislike BBrawl Sheik. I wished they could have fixed the F-tilt lock on Fox without changing the move completely. I'm glad they fixed f-smash and gave her needles a small buff, as well as the opportunity for air chasing on her throws at all percentages. But I'd trade them all for f-tilt back. lol

As far as Samus goes, she just needed some decent knockback on certain tilts and smashes. I need the opponent to fear me when they get past my camp game, not think "let's get this combo started 'cause her OoS options are below average."

 

[prOAPC]

10neverminds

 

[The Milk Monster]

I understand what u say but i think 6 month is not much, maybe a year. Because then people will rely on buffs and not skill, take for instance Turbo, Melee. I dont think that in 6 months we'll see a breakthrough of the metagame if people are going to be like"well in 6 months my character will get either buffed of nerfed more so why bother" But who knows maybe im wrong. What u people need to do is to try to do tournaments and if possible one on a bigger scale to see new results. now will 6 months be enough?

We're doing a big scale one in November.

And "relying on buffs" is just another silly statement. The buffs will help the players think of new ways to approach match ups, in turn, increasing their skill with not only their character, but as players in general.

6 months will be plenty. 6 months gives us time to approach match ups, figure out where chars are at a disadvantage, so on and so forth.

 

[ぱみゅ]

@ Fox Hater

Balance is still in process, in order to get it is needed the matchup data (not buffs/nerfs' data), it will only be get with feedback gained by playing it.
6 months aren't a random amount of time to launch the next one, is just the time they're giving us to collect feedback and think of what the game would need.

 

[Hyrus]

I honestly see no point in changing hitbox/hurtboxes. Not only does that completely change the game, but there is no reason for it in the first place.

Ganon's Dtilt now induces tripping/chasing instead of being a KO move, utterly changing how Ganon and his opponent react to the move. You can't tell me that a hitbox change is more significant than move changes like that ...making you totally relearn how to use/react to Dtilt.

I think it's a smart decision to try to stay away from frame speed or hitbox modifications to preserve the game as much as possible. But, they are tools that create potentially desirable effects that KB or trajectory can't. If a matchup demands better spacing options to even things out for a character, modifying a hitbox should be on the table if it gets the job done. "Because it changes the game", in consideration to what's already been changed drastically... seems without merit.

 

[TP]

Ganon's Dtilt now induces tripping/chasing instead of being a KO move, utterly changing how Ganon and his opponent react to the move. You can't tell me that a hitbox change is more significant than move changes like that ...making you totally relearn how to use/react to Dtilt.

Using Ganon as an example is a little unfair. Ganon is the ONE character who truly requires hard work to relearn in BBrawl (by hard work, I mean several hours of studying stuff). He is also the only character who needed such a large change. Hitbox changes are a much bigger deal, because they are not limited to only the worst character.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Ganon's Dtilt now induces tripping/chasing instead of being a KO move, utterly changing how Ganon and his opponent react to the move. You can't tell me that a hitbox change is more significant than move changes like that ...making you totally relearn how to use/react to Dtilt.

I think it's a smart decision to try to stay away from frame speed or hitbox modifications to preserve the game as much as possible. But, they are tools that create potentially desirable effects that KB or trajectory can't. If a matchup demands better spacing options to even things out for a character, modifying a hitbox should be on the table if it gets the job done. "Because it changes the game", in consideration to what's already been changed drastically... seems without merit.

They were considered but in all individual cases deemed not worth it. We already demonstrated in several circumstances that if interests are compelling enough we will employ more fundamental changes, but this type of change ends up never being a good idea. Instead of tripping, we had an internal test of Ganondorf dtilt with something like 1.5x range (with the idea of giving him a better poking option); it was... goofy, and most testers really hated it (spamming dtilt became a solid Ganon strategy). Do remember that animations don't change alongside hitbox changes, and it's obviously very far beyond the scope of any reasonable hacking project to reanimate the characters. People already have to deal with some nonsense hitboxes on Snake (to his credit, his up tilt actually just makes no sense in any way so where the hitboxes fall isn't any more surprising); do you want even more characters to be like that? Also, general changes to those sort of things are exactly what cause conversion difficulty, and it's very, very hard to keep straight two sets of "what beats what" and to learn two sets of subtle spacing.

There is actually a single range increase in Bbrawl, and it's on Samus's pummel. It's trivial since you can't exactly space a pummel, but that increase (and it's a small one) allows her pummel to hit Bowser (it couldn't before). In 1v1, the only other matchup this change could even possibly matter in is Ice Climbers (ignoring the possibility of hitting stage features or items!), and it's small enough that it's really insignificant.

I would caution against a style of absolutism that's easy to settle into. It's easy to say a character with poor priority will "always" be low tier. It's easy to say a character who has generally unsafe moves will "always" be bad. That's just wrongheaded. What if we reverted every change on Ganondorf and made his jab so powerful that it always killed every character at 0% on every stage (well, to the extent that's possible, 255 damage, base knockback, and knockback growth)? Ganondorf would be the best character in the game by a huge margin; nothing else would even matter because that jab would be so good. It would also be terrible design, but that's aside the point. What really matters on a character is risk-reward-cost. Risk is the danger you expose yourself to by taking any given action. Reward is what you stand to gain if the action is successful. Cost is a measure of the resources you consume to take that action (free time, good position, charged moves, staleness, double jumps, etc.). Having low priority or a general lack of safety causes most of your actions to have an above average risk. This is obviously a bad thing, but your character can be just fine so long as they have appropriate reward (high risk, high reward is every bit as good as low risk, low reward), and cost is usually difficult to factor in, but things that make your character good at procuring "resources" are effective ways of lowering the cost of everything. Captain Falcon's new Falcon Kick puts opponents above him giving him the "resource" of good position; that makes the cost of going for, say, Falcon Dive to catch opponents coming down much lower (you aren't wasting something quite as precious if you fail).

Of course, each action has a different value in every matchup. Mr. Game & Watch's well-spaced turtle approach is extremely low risk (and very low cost) in most matchups with a high enough reward to make it a character definingly good tactic in most matchups, but the risk is far higher against Marth who can Dolphin Slash right through it (notice what is probably Mr. Game & Watch's worst matchup in Bbrawl!). We have a pretty good idea of what generic good play for the whole cast looks like (though we're far from beyond seeing new tricks and tactics; the game is too deep to ever exhaust that pool), but it's simply beyond us to be sure of exactly how the nuances of every matchup affect this. Remember that we're also balancing the game around a minimum of 25 stages (we don't consider the C/B stages completely insignificant but definitely a lower priority; we take every C and S stage as of equal importance to us, from Onett to Final Destination, Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1 to Battlefield), each which introduce their own nuances into play and effectively change us from having 666 character-character matchups to consider to having 16650 character-character-stage matchups to consider. That's before you even factor in teams... This should hopefully make it obvious why we keep hammering away for people discussing matchups.

As per how much work Ganon requires to relearn for standard Brawl, I do admit it's the highest of any character by far, but then again, Ganondorf really is the most fundamentally flawed character in standard Brawl by quite a bit (it's arguably whether Captain Falcon is worse, but he's definitely less fundamentally flawed). On some level, the raw increase of the ability to do things that make you win does add up (even though we tried our best to make each one individually as non-intrusive as possible while being significant), and we couldn't avoid that total effect being significant with Ganondorf. I hope being able to win more often isn't too inconvenient...

 

[KillerJawz]

Hey, any news on getting this to work on PAL Wiis without the use of the homebrew/hacks?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Hey, any news on getting this to work on PAL Wiis without the use of the homebrew/hacks?

That could take quite a while, and generally when that will happen is quite unpredictable and our of our hands.

 

[BG3]

Are you guys trying to increase the playablility of all stages? I know that you fixed some like Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1, but how about increasing the viablility of all of them? For example, Port Town Aero Dive's F-Zero vehicles should deal as much knockback as the vehicles in Mute City(Melee) did. It would be hard, but it would make for a more balanced experience in the end.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Are you guys trying to increase the playablility of all stages? I know that you fixed some like Mushroomy Kingdom 1-1, but how about increasing the viablility of all of them? For example, Port Town Aero Dive's F-Zero vehicles should deal as much knockback as the vehicles in Mute City(Melee) did. It would be hard, but it would make for a more balanced experience in the end.

they said they wanted to, but code limitation make it hard/near imposible...

 

[Linkshot]

The next release will have those changes if the resources become available. As of yet, no codes exist to change them.

 

[deepseadiva]

Port Town would be fantastic if only the cars didn't kill at 60%.

 

[Linkshot]

Especially since I have "Like a Snake" on it now!

And I WILL have a decent-sounding version of Tenth Zone East on it, eventually. Love that song.

WarioWare would benefit the most.

Would people stop johning about Rumble Falls if the death spike healed 10%? :V

75m is a 100% lost cause.

New Pork City at least has a viable top left...until Ultimate Chimera comes in and omnoms.

 

[Hyrus]

(Hitbox changes) They were considered but in all individual cases deemed not worth it...

I appreciate the insightful post! Always a joy to read in-depth perspectives.

You mentioned that a hitbox change never saw good results, using Ganon's 1.5x Dtilt test as an example. Yet in another hack project, Ganon's Fair and Bair have been increased in size 1.25x without any awkwardness to the visual range of those attacks. Bowser, I believe, has seen the same size increase to his Utilt and Usmash, without inconsistency to their visual range either. I'm not advocating any of these changes, only showing they can be made to select moves without having Snake or Marth Usmash like inconsistencies. Hitboxes don't necessarily have to be increased in size for a change, either.

But i'm not advocating any changes here, nor am I concerned that you haven't given these matters thought. I picked the Ganon Dtilt example at random. I was under the impression no hitbox changes were being made out of some stubbornness, and that's been thoroughly dispelled.

 

[T-major]

for my first post in over a year, I want to say that this is epic win, and just plain hardcore that you guys took the time and effort to do this. I will definitely be trying this out. thank you very much!

 

[§leepy God]

♪ I thought you main King Dedede T-major. Then again, I haven't seen you post in a year so it's kind of foggy. ^_^; †

♪ I think I posted here... if not, I'm currently liking this still. †

 

[T-major]

I main Dedede, yeah. I just forgot to change my character icon and whatnot. fixed now.

by the way. who missed me? ;D

also, and this has probably already been asked so excuse me, but this is the "standard" release. is standard just another word for the first version of the release (V1.0, so to speak)?

 

[Mit]

I don't even like vBrawl anymore because of BBrawl. I feel like there's no point in playing vBrawl now unless I play with top tier characters. Otherwise I'd rather be championing BBrawl around and getting more people to support it, and gaining valuable experience with it to provide feedback with.

also, and this has probably already been asked so excuse me, but this is the "standard" release. is standard just another word for the first version of the release (V1.0, so to speak)?

Yeah, it's just standard as opposed to the beta release from before. However, this standard release will stick around for atleast 6 months before any changes are made, to allow lots of data to be compiled, mostly matchup data, and determine if any changes need to be made in 6 months.

Also, if more codes become available to do stuff like further edit stages to make them more viable, further changes like that will be made.

 

[Sph34r]

Any chance of making Spear Pillar's floor not so low? It seems you die if you drop 1cm below it. The map would be a lovely neutral otherwise.

 

[T-major]

this standard release will stick around for atleast 6 months before any changes are made, to allow lots of data to be compiled, mostly matchup data, and determine if any changes need to be made in 6 months.

Also, if more codes become available to do stuff like further edit stages to make them more viable, further changes like that will be made.

sounds like the best plan of action. hopefully a lot of people use this, that way it can develop at a faster rate (unless, you know, it doesn't work that way... I dunno how this works)

I really think I should start playing more competitively. I never have, simply because the balance was so out of whack. (and because I have no one to play against, and to my knowledge WiFi still sucks) but with this!... oh boy!

 

[Mit]

Any chance of making Spear Pillar's floor not so low? It seems you die if you drop 1cm below it. The map would be a lovely neutral otherwise.

It's as low as it can possibly go without allowing you to land on the lower platform. They know about it and would like to lower the floor more, but there would need to be some kind of code that could allow you to pass through the bottom platform (ignores collisions with the bottom platform), and there simply isn't right now.

You guys really should compile an FAQ for stuff like this

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Any chance of making Spear Pillar's floor not so low? It seems you die if you drop 1cm below it. The map would be a lovely neutral otherwise.

Spear Pillar having a floor even a tiny bit lower would add the lower area back into the equation, making it a loop stage again. We did our best; Spear Pillar is as good as it can get with the current code limitation (believe me when I say I want it to be better).

Since people are asking about stages, I'll post my "wish list" for stage related codes; if something is on this list, we can't do it. I'll also list how I would use it.

-Stage hazard hitbox modification. The main stages this would be applied to would be Port Town Aero Dive and Flat Zone 2, but I actually have a huge list of changes I wanted to make. I suppose there's no harm in posting it; consider it what could have been. This is actually a list of every hazard in the game with the ones that would be changed noted.

Mario Circuit cars (15%)
Rumble Falls spike 1 (15%, knockback reduction)
Rumble Falls spike 2 (10%)
Rumble Falls spike 3 (15%)
Bridge of Eldin King Bulbin (15%)
Bridge of Eldin Bomb (30% -> 25%)
Pirate Ship catapult (0%) *slight knockback reduction so light characters don't die if they fail to DI would probably be wise, in hindsight*
Pirate Ship bombs (55% -> 25%, knockback reduction?) *Since making this list, I've realized there are two hitboxes on these bombs. The weak hitbox would be adjusted appropriately (15%?)*
Pirate Ship boat bow in general (20%)
Pirate Ship boat bow beaching on rock (10%)
Norfair lava floor (14%)
Norfair lava walls (14%)
Norfair lava background (18%)
Norfair lava pillars (10%)
Halberd laser (42%, multihit)
Halberd bombs (20%)
Halberd claw (10%, knockback reduction)
Spear Pillar laser (27%, multihit -> ~15%)
Spear Pillar Dialga attack (25% -> 15%, knockback reduction?)
Spear Pillar Cresselia background beams (15% -> 10%, knockback reduction)
Spear Pillar Cresselia spinning beams (20% -> 15%, knockback reduction)
Port Town Aero Dive cars (20% -> 15%?, knockback reduction)
Port Town Aero Dive track (15%)
Port Town Aero Dive wall (10%)
WarioWare speeding car (13%, knockback reduction)
WarioWare acid rain (1% continuous, at most about 15%)
WarioWare raining arrows (30% -> 15%, knockback reduction)
WarioWare stomping foot (20%)
WarioWare background earthquake (20%)
Distant Planet monster (no damage, grab -> death)
New Pork City ultimate chimera (100% or 200%, varies: I seem to recall seeing 300% before even)
Summit icicles (20%)
Summit front of glacier (18%)
Summit fish tail (15%)
Summit fish bite (no damage, grab -> death)
75m fires (10%)
75m Donkey Kong (20%)
75m springs (20%)
Mario Bros. red crabs (13%)
Mario Bros. blue crabs (15%)
Mario Bros. purple crabs (17%)
Mario Bros. green turtles (11%)
Mario Bros. purple turtles (13%)
Mario Bros. red turtles (15%)
Mario Bros. fireballs (20%)
Flat Zone 2 Chef form food (8%)
Flat Zone 2 Oil Panic form people (13%, knockback reduction)
Flat zone 2 Lion form tamers (12%, knockback reduction)
PictoChat arrows (10%, knockback reduction)
PictoChat side spikes (20% -> 15%)
PictoChat fire (1% per hit)
PictoChat bombs (25% -> 20%, knockback reduction)
PictoChat cart (10%, knockback reduction)
PictoChat pirahna plant (10%)
Green Hill Zone checkpoint (10%, knockback reduction)
Jungle Japes klaptrap (30%)
Onett cars (30% -> 20%)
Corneria arwings (12%)
Corneria main cannon (30%? hard to tell)
Corneria main cannon recoil (30%)
Green Greens Bomb Blocks (20% -> 10%, knockback reduction)
Green Greens exploding apples (20% -> 10%, knockback reduction)
Brinstar acid (14%)

So yeah, I really did design for this, but it became clear that the codes just did not exist. If someone makes the codes exist, you will see exactly this in the next version (unless internal testing suggests this plan would somehow be well tweaked to be something different).

-Stage object collision modification. In other words, make solid objects on some stages no longer solid. I'd use this exactly once, and that would be to totally remove the collision on the lower area of Spear Pillar. Then I'd lower the lower blastzone until it just barely concealed the lower area.

-Stage event editing. It's pretty obvious each stage has a series of events it can undergo as time goes on with varying algorithms to determine the sequence of events. Being able to totally prevent certain events would be nice. I would use this exactly three times. The first use would be removing the "Speed Up!" event on Rumble Falls, and the second would be removing the destruction of the left and right ledges on Spear Pillar by Dialga and Palkia (destruction of the center area is fine). The third would be on WarioWare (and might be handled by somewhat different mechanics and hence require its own code); I'd make the prize for winning the games always the small % healing and never a Super Mushroom or Starman (a fourth prize is having an item spawn right in front of you, but this can only happen with items on and would be fine to leave in).

-Destructible terrain health modification. I would definitely use this to reduce the health of the walls on Shadow Moses Island (which would greatly improve the stage), and I'd probably also use it on Skyworld on a platform by platform basis. I'd make the platforms that have ledges have more health, and I'd reduce the health on those two top platforms (that are mostly used for teching). That's a much better solution than the "unbreakable/always broken" solution I've seen floating around since it would maintain the unique character of the stage while increasing fairness. It might also be slightly worth considering to reduce the health of the pillars on Luigi's Mansion, but with the dramatic slowdown the stage already has, that's probably unnecessary.


With all that, I should reveal that my original aspiration for stages, if we had the codes (which we don't, I should remind everyone) was to have the following stages banned:

Mushroomy Kingdom 1-2
New Pork City
Summit
75m
Mario Bros.
Hanenbow

At that, everything else would be legal (maybe Temple being C/B still). That would be 11 starters, 24 counterpicks, 1 C/B, and 6 banned. I was really even trying to figure some way Summit could be legal, but the loop is just so ingrained in the stage that it's probably beyond fixing (a shame, Summit is really cool). Like I said several times though, the codes for stage editing are way behind character editing, and this part of the project had to take a place on the back burner.

So now you guys know everything there is to know about stages. If code resources expand in the next 4-6 months, you can very likely expect to see some of this in the next version.

 

[Linkshot]

New Pork City can be saved by severely tightening the blastzones to either the top left or top right.

Mushroomy Kingdom 1-2 can be saved by removing the ceiling blocks.

Theoretically, of course.

As of now, lowering the blast zone on Spear Pillar would bring the circle back, but camping in the bottom would give continuous damage. (Bubble-Blast)

Rumble Falls might need a tightening, too...it's quite large.

I think there's a brief 2-second 1% hitbox on the ship's bow when beached.

Also, it's not just the bow that spikes. The entire underside does, too.

Bomb Direct Hits do 55% and instant kill/break shields. Bomb Explosions do 30% and no knockback.

May I suggest removing all damage and knockback from the Lion Tamers and leaving Slip element? The Oil Panic salesman are very fair, I find. The woman is delayed, and the man is instant. They are merely stage-based counterattacks. Very strategic. Also, give the Chef more health. He dies FAR too soon.

WarioWare: Remove Earthquake ground flag and replace with Slip?

Tighten 75m to be the bottom middle, with the multiple "stairlike" platforms, and the one level above it? I dunno...

Speed up Summit, maybe? The gravity will appear sooner and go away faster.
Maybe you can place an Iceberg-like hazard on top to discourage Circling? (1% multiple times, freezes eventually)

 

[BentoBox]

Bridge of Eldin & NPC are camp fests (Spear Pillar too, to some extent). Somebody with superior mobility can play simply outrun his opponent and never get caught. (Melee Temple anyone?) If you are to allow so many stages, you might as well consider increasing the amount of stages one can strike/ban.

 

[Big O]

That actually sounds like a good idea with so many more stages to pick from.

 

[Xzax Kasrani]

Now I loaded it through and gecko 1.9 popped up after I loaded it through the Stage Builder and its not working >.>

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

New Pork City is definitely very much like melee Temple (and standard Brawl Temple!) and pretty much nothing but running away. Bridge of Eldin is really not like that at all though. If people run, you can corner them by just chasing them in a straight line (after all, that's the entire stage!). Running may be too good mostly for Olimar since, even as you catch him, it's really just making approaching him that much more of a chore (fighting super run-away/campy Olimar on Bridge of Eldin is about as fun as pulling teeth, though it's winnable for the other side regardless). Bridge of Eldin is doubtless not seeing further serious improvement, and the main reason it's in C/B now is because it needs more exploration before either of us are willing to stand behind it (unlike with Onett and Mario Circuit which I happily stand behind as "definitely fair"). Green Hill Zone and Big Blue are in the same boat of "possibly fair, but neither of us are really willing to stand behind them yet".

Regardless, the ability to use a personal ban on two stages is always something that needs explored with deeper stage lists. Even with the 25 we are confident in standing behind, it's worth considering, and with the crazy 35+ list we can for now only dream about, it would be all but mandatory for two or even three personal bans.

I felt it was good to explain all of the internal thinking about stages and what could have been since people wanted to know about it, but I'd prefer not to dwell on it. It's useless to discuss how the game could be, and for now, we only have how it is. Stage discussion is definitely welcome, but there's little need or use in discussing possible future changes. Discussing the state of stages as they stand now is really more useful to us. Of course, character based matchup discussion remains useful as always.

 

[LordshadowRagnarok]

Bridge of Eldin is really not like that at all though. If people run, you can corner them by just chasing them in a straight line (after all, that's the entire stage!).

Except for R.O.B. who can just fly over you unless you're a puffball, and if you aren't, you'll have to Up B to hit him.

 

[blakinola]

Some BBrawl matchup info with DK. There is no particular order.

Vs MK:
This matchup is 60-40 in mk's favor in Vbrawl. I would go so far as to say it's 50-50, or at the worst, 55-45 mk. Now that the gayness of the tornado has been neutralized, DK can punish mk more because of the fact that he'll have to do...other moves. Make no mistake, MK still is faster than anything DK could hope to muster, but MK will have to rely on gimps/dair gimps to take out DK. DK lives even longer and kills MK at the same percentages (around 80 with Africa Punch) and DK lives to at least 150.

Vs Dedede:
D3 can still grab DK out of everything, but because of the loss of the infinite and across-the-stage CG, this match is probably 55-45 D3. That techchase towards the end of the stage, into a dthrow spike spells terribad for DK. DK will still have to work to not get grabbed, and the same priority of moves follows: SA punch, down B, well-spaced bairs.

Vs Flaco:
The CG is gone, but the really good jab and lasers are still deadly. At high percents, a bthrow can set up into a nasty bair if it's fresh. DK's approach is otherwise the same. It's still in falco's advantage with the loss of the CG so no free damage, but the tricks and traps of getting footstooled/spiked remain. 55-45 Falco, or 50-50.

Vs Marth: Exact same match up. No playstyle changes.

Vs Snake: I would actually give the matchup adv to DK, 55-45 because of the tilt nerfs. I've never ever ever had to worry about mines. DK is harder to kill as a result--the improvement on DK's Down-B adds +1 damage, but otherwise, the matchup is the same. Snake's grab and camping and nade approach still works and racks up heavy damage. But if Snake gets off stage, it's trouble. I don't think we need to go into anymore--both sides know how this matchup works.

Vs Sonic: The spring owns, but sonic's approaches are still easily shieldgrabbed/dtilted. Dk's bair outranges everything sonic has and DK lives forever. I have been gimped at 10 percent at the start of a match I played. If you get hit with the spring, it's over for DK. But it's easily cancelled-out with a well timed aerial or the sides of the upB.

Love Mario Circuit and mushroomy kingdom. Keeps you on your toes, and it's unsafe to camp there. Win.

I hope this provides some insight, AA and Thinkaman. Will post more later.

 

[Swordplay]

With chaingrabs gone, BoE is one of Balanced Brawls Best stages. (For doubles)

Last friday we had some epic fun on this stage and we will probably have more fun yet.....

 

[DSP]

Any info on how work on the non-HBC PAL version is progressing?
Would be greatly appreciated since I don't really wanna put anything unofficial like the Homebrew Channel on my Wii...

 

[Linkshot]

Stack Smash is an exploit that loads Gecko OS, which is an unofficial code launcher. Homebrew Channel is the "mainstream" gateway to Gecko.

Consider your Wii a computer, and all the applications you can put on Homebrew as flash games or emulators.

The emulators don't hurt your computer, so why would Homebrew? The Wii is a very versatile system.


Anyway, when I held my tournament, I had 7 starters, 13 counterpicks, and 13 "softbans" (CPs that were up to the players on their legality). The banning system was you get to remove 1 starter, 2 CPs, and as many Softbans as you wish; no limit.
With more stages coming into the list, 2 Starter Bans and 3 Counterpick Bans seems the way to go.

 

[TP]

I don't like this stage discussion at all. BBrawl was created in the Midwest, which gives it a strong bias toward making more stages legal. Take PS2 for example. It was not changed in any way, gameplay on it won't be different at all (unlike stages with walkoffs), and yet it is a CP. Not CP/Banned, it's an outright CP. PS2 is NEVER legal on either coasts. I don't see why players from the coasts would expect PS2 to be any more usable than before. Therefore, you can't talk about making 35 stages legal like it will be widely accepted. On the East Coast, there will still only be 12-15 legal stages. They banned JAPES, for god's sake.

I fully support making as many stages viable as possible, but do not act like 25-30 legal stages will ever catch on outside of the Midwest.

(Disclaimer: I think PS2 should be legal. I was just using it as an example.)

 

[Linkshot]

Please do not lump ENTIRE REGIONS as one community.

Ottawa has Japes, Cruise, PS2, PictoChat, Mansion, and other shtuff legal. (though we have a strong bias against Distant Planet and Green Greens)

 

[TP]

I meant US coasts only. I don't know how Canada does things. That's a different region.