On the topic of Sonic, I would agree that he doesn't really have any surprise moves. I used to play as Peach in Melee, and one thing I really loved was her Downsmash. It functioned as sort of panic button. Now, in Brawl, I find Sonic has only a slight bit of physical range, but a large threat area.
We all know his moves are surprisingly slow for someone whose claim to fame is speed. At first, I loved the new meteor spring, and my friends groaned every time I killed them with it. It just felt right that this is how the move was supposed to work (and it made people quiver in fear of Sonic). Unfortunately, I came to overuse the move, and my smashing bags... friends... learned to avoid it. I found myself having to resort back to my old Sonic tactics, and I realized "oh hey. This is exactly why it's a good balance! Yeah, the move works, but it's only supposed to compliment what I already DO with Sonic. D'oh."
One thing I do with Sonic (and, to a greater degree, Pokemon Trainer) is use the Spring defensively. Incoming attack? Instead of dodging or shielding, why not Spring? Often, it catches people by surprise, and you still have quite a few options in air. I'm wondering what it would be like for Sonic's invincibility frames to cover the very start of the move, rather than a strange few frames after the launch. If this were the case, Sonic could take the attack and continue upwards. This would make the Spring not only defensive, but allow for an interesting setup, or even just a "get me outta here" panic button.
Another idea is his downsmash. It's a fun, but somewhat unweildy attack that unfortunately seems to telegraph itself. What if it were more like Peach's or Bowser's current downsmash, where it sort of traps them, but does relatively little damage/knockback? I've always felt Squirtle's downsmash should function this way. I mean, it's essentially his Whirlpool move.
Oh, and Hanenbow. Come on, it's not nearly as bad as New Pork City. XD
Thank you for your input; that is indeed the job we were focusing on for Spring.
New Pork City and Hanenbow are both completely unplayable in any serious capacity, but Hanenbow doesn't have a My Music entry which makes it a GUI-thinking less awkward stage to replace... if we have to replace one. I would really like to be able to replace no stages with the next version for sure.
I like to think we didn't "ruin" any stages; this isn't some silly thing where we freeze interactive stages and strip the soul out of them. The idea behind the stage changes is to keep them unique and interesting while shifting certain undesirable attributes to be less undesirable. It should be a win-win; it doesn't matter how serious of a player you are, someone running a loop against you is zero fun.
I've played Brawl +, but I mean that Samus shouldn't lag behind these other characters JUST because of the suit. It's ridiculous that that's the reason she isn't speedy. Ever played SM with the speed boost? You go INSANELY fast. And Samus is quite fast even without it. In ZM, Zero Suit Samus and Samus go about as fast as each other.
@A2ZOMG-READ ABOVE and what exactly do you mean by overpowered? She should do that much damage and probably more.
@Linkshot-Plasma beam would be EPIC, but it won't happen. And yes, I was trying to use plasma beam to no avail. Then Peppy said "DO A BARREL ROLL!"
Samus actually does have somewhat of an up-close speedy game if you're bold. Dair can lead into stuff pretty easily if you hit people off the ground with it, and uair to Screw Attack is an easy follow-up. Given that tether attack is lagless, you can use it as an approach just as much as a camping tool depending on situation. I didn't play classic Metroid, but this Samus feels pretty accurate to the speed of Metroid Prime Samus to me. She's really floaty and generally not very mobile (this Samus does not have the Boost Ball... or any of the really broken powerups really) but can take a huge beating. Her attack speed is not really that slow, but she generally can't keep up offensive pressure for very long because the "bosses" (other enemy characters) are generally more mobile than she is.
Of course, that's largely irrelevant, and we did focus on making all characters, including Samus, follow their design as fighting game characters moreso than their design from their original games. I mean, Ness and Lucas's biggest jobs in their own games were as healers; do you want to see that represented in Brawl? Pk Lifeup would be a quick ticket to the "banned" tier (other than Pk Flash which originally inflicted random status effects, literally all of the PSI Ness and Lucas use for special moves actually belongs to Paula and Kumatora)... In Metroid games, Samus primarily avoids enemies while shooting at them a lot, being especially happy if she can sneak in a full Charge Shot or a Super Missile; she's actually decently faithful. I think some of the liberties Sakurai's development team took with her design are pretty understandable. As per Zero Suit Samus, my understanding is that she was designed to be pretty much worthless in the one game she has been in so her being given things that are useful for Brawl shouldn't bother you ("worthless" is not a character archtype compatible with Balanced Brawl).
im having problems getting textures which file do i download to get them
We don't provide any textures ourselves. The "alternate download" simply has the code for textures active so if you have your own textures set up on your SD card, they'll work.
Pit has one valid buff; his +1 to fair. Nair is a terrible move that you'll very rarely see and even less rarely hit with the final frame, so the +2 is worthless. His f-throw buff means that he can kill with it at extremely high percentages (150 at the edge), but Pit used to have a f-throw to stutter-step f-smash combo that could hit the just about the entire cast if they were at 0% and a CG against the heavier characters. Neither of these works anymore, so that throw lost more than it gained.
Pit had a lot of good match-ups and a few bad match-ups that shut him down. This has changed slightly; he still plays exactly the same (good call on that A2), but people who he was tied with before but who received more valid buffs suddenly have a lot better chance against him (I'm thinking Sonic, PT, Mario and ROB to name a few, but just about everyone can go in here). His worst MUs, MK and Marth, have had nothing changed. Sure MK is weaker now, but it honestly doesn't make much of a difference since MK still out-ranges and out-prioritizes everything Pit does (include Marth in there too, actually). They also both have enough speed that Pit's best asset, his pewpewpew, doesn't matter at all.
I could go into why Pit's kill moves all suck, but I'll just sum it up by saying that a lot of people kill a lot faster now, and Pit is not by any means one of them. I'd suggest buffing his f-throw so that it can kill around 120%, which will balance him out with a lot of people and justify removing the combo options he had when his throw was weaker. I'd also suggest dropping the nair boost for another move that he actually uses: d-tilt, u-tilt, u-air and jab are all prime choices, with dair and f-tilt lesser choices.
As for the Marth/MK match-up, the only thing I can think of is cutting down on lag on Pit's arrows so that he can actually use them against these two. That, however, would be really really really stupid, since it would make Pit completely dominate everyone who wasn't at a Marth/MK/Sheik/Sonic level of speed.
Buffing his kill moves would be another option. The only move with strong knockback Pit possesses that's easy to land and relatively punish-free on a miss is his f-smash, and that move does so much damage it's typically decayed by the time the opponent gets to kill percentages. But once again, on a character Pit can pewpewpew, it's really easy for him to remove stagnation and suddenly he can kill way earlier and rack damage really well. This could go in circles for ages.
That's really the problem, Pit doesn't have anything special he can do against Marth and MK above and beyond what he does to everyone else, and the stuff he does to everyone else is much less effective against those two. Whatever you do to try and fix the problem, I'd recommend paying a lot of attention to Pit so that you can figure out a balance where he's good against Marth and MK, but doesn't dominate everyone else in return.
To sum up, just about all Pit needs is a few more well-placed buffs and he'll be balanced against nearly the entirety of the cast. His harder matches, namely MK and Marth, are a tough spot that'll require a lot of work to balance out.
For one, I find it interesting that you pinpoint Marth and Meta Knight but not Mr. Game & Watch; usually they work as a trio in this sort of situation. The thing I'm seeing you say is that the speedier disjointed characters (that is, not guys like Ike) are good at avoiding arrows and outclass Pit at his own disjointed game. It seems reasonable. However, from seeing Ky in action in standard Brawl, I can say I didn't get the impression Meta Knight was that big of an inhibition to Pit arrow spamming; he has bad air speed, and few of his moves clash with arrows. Ky in general did a good job of showing me that Pit didn't have any super bad matchups, but I would believe these guys as his worst regardless.
I will throw in that there's no reason to remove the nair buff as I see it. We didn't expect it to be all that big; it just makes a poor move slightly less poor. I mean, should we remove it and effectively nerf Pit's nair? Does Pit's nair need nerfing? There isn't a limit to how many (or how few I suppose) changes characters get or anything; there is no "trading". If Pit needs more help (and I think most people are on the point of agreeing he needs some), he will have it... but let's not talk about taking away things that don't need to be taken away.
Regardless, thanks for the detailed input; we'll be considering what to do with Pit in depth for the next release.
Pit:
Yeah, that is true (yet another reason why Marth needs to be nerfed). But if Marth does get nerfed, it would also help Pit out there.
Throws aren't typically supposed to be the means of killing unless your Ness. Throws are more or less supposed to increase the opponets damage from a throw and put them a good position for the character. So, where would Marth be put in a bad postion that Pit can take advantage of it?
(I use a character with a horrible grab, so don't be saying that anyone w/o a tether grab has a bad grab, also appearently grabs go through sheilds.)
You're mostly right, and I agree with most of what you said (though I think you mean "Ness or Olimar") but... Lucas has a bad grab? Since when?
Tether grabs are "secretly" really good in Brawl; a ton of stuff is safe on block against everyone but the tether characters (ask yourself why it is so much easier to pressure a lone Ice Climbers' shield as opposed to Olimar's; the only reason is Olimar's grab range). The huge cooldown on those standing grabs doesn't even matter since the only time you standing grab with most tether characters is out of shield when you know you will hit so the cooldown doesn't matter very much. Some tether characters, including Lucas, do have far less cooldown on their running grab and ridiculously less cooldown on their pivot grab. Lucas isn't quite as far along this path as, say, Yoshi, but Lucas's pivot grab isn't really slower than a normal one... and it has obscene range compared to most grabs.
As someone who mains a character with legitimately poor grabs (Mr. Game & Watch), I can say I'd trade his grab for Lucas's in a heartbeat. I know tether grabs have a poor reputation in the smash community because they were total garbage in smash 64 and quite mediocre in melee, but they're solid in Brawl as a group (Zero Suit Samus is the only character legitimately inhibited by having a tether grab, mostly because hers has Falcon Punch-like lagginess no matter which grab she uses).
This point is fairly important to the design we put into all the tether characters.
