Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[Amazing Ampharos]

Well, maybe this project wouldn't exist, but it's not for the reasons you're thinking. It's possible the code authors would have done less work if the game were more "competitively focused", but Thinkaman and I made this project out of a love for the game, not a disdain. Honestly, if this game weren't well designed as a serious competitive game, I don't think Bbrawl would be nearly as good as it is. We had to fix an honestly pretty short list of chaingrabs and such, and beyond that we just had to tweak the overall value of the characters but never really had to redefine the characters. Captain Falcon still plays just like he does in standard Brawl but suddenly he can win; it's quite novel how close to functional even the very worst characters in Brawl really were.

Also, FYI, when I first got melee, a friend and I were working on unlocking everything without consulting the internet, and we both got 23/25 characters and were just missing Mewtwo and Mr. Game & Watch (but we didn't know those were the two missing characters; we just knew there were two more characters). I was absolutely dead convinced one of them was Diddy Kong; the Donkey Kong games were just too big for him to be overlooked (I also thought Banjo-Kazooie was a strong possibility). Let's just say I was baffled and quite disappointed at the actual final two characters mostly because Diddy Kong wasn't one of them. I was soon to be baffled even more by Nintendo selling their shares of Rare even though Rare was amazing, but that's aside the point. Of course, when Diddy Kong did get his chance in Brawl, I discovered he wasn't anything like the sort of fighting game character I wanted to use, but he did have people who were really wanting him in.

I should point out that descriptive feedback is infinitely more helpful than suggestive feedback. Going into, say, Sonic's bad matchups is way more helpful than suggesting what we should do with Sonic. The age-old adage in game design is that you listen to the complaints of players but not to their solutions to the problems they describe. Our project is a little different from usual game design given how approachable we are in general, and we're pretty likely to find at least some things in suggestions we like, but it's definitely the case that clear-cut identification of problems (with strong evidence that issues are actually problems with the game and not personal problems) is just so much more helpful.

 

[K.Mac]

I guess I should apologise for sounding like I'm just trying to troll here, but I'm not. I don't like Diddy but I do admit (see post last page) that he is a good character - I've used him a few times, he has crazy combos.

I was surprised Banjo wasn't in Melee either. I'm still disappointed Rare got bought by Microsoft - it's ruined them. They made every good game on the N64 - BK, Goldeneye, DKR but to name a few.

I should point out that descriptive feedback is infinitely more helpful than suggestive feedback. Going into, say, Sonic's bad matchups is way more helpful than suggesting what we should do with Sonic.

I do agree but unfortunately I don't use Sonic, so I can't say how good/bad he actually is or how to improve him. All I've noted is that he lacks any reasonable kill moves, but as such I can't detail his matchups.

That may have been geared towards other people too, but that's just my reply to it. :< I was actually quite annoyed at how my favourite characters were all low-tier, so to see them get buffed in those subtle ways is good.

I always found Ganon to be the 2nd most fun character to use in the game (behind Yoshi, of course). Now that he can (apparently) brawl it with the best of them, I will think those Ganon Challenges will be a bit more comical. Combo'd D-air grounding? lol.

Nintendo failed us, I say that what you guys are doing is what Nintendo should have done - design the characters, and then change them based on the metagame developed by actual professional and dedicated players to bring the characters to a close, single tier. I hope that Ninty have an open beta for smash bros 4 to make sure stuff like Meta Knight doesn't happen again. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing - it's all incredible. It's the reason I'm still running Wii firmware 3.3.

My three cents.

edit - I just realised I turned this post into a freaking essay. sorry. xD.

 

[The_Altrox]

crap, do I need winRAR to unzip these?

 

[Big O]

Yeah you should definitely get it to unzip stuff. Most stuff you download nowadays is zipped anyways so you might as well get it now.

 

[The_Altrox]

Yeah you should definitely get it to unzip stuff. Most stuff you download nowadays is zipped anyways so you might as well get it now.

Unfortunately, I got it awhile ago to get Sims 2 stuff, but my free trial is over, sand I REALLY don't want to buy it. It isn't possible to email the program is it? or is that illegal?

 

[Stealth Raptor]

the thing about winrar is that you can use it even when the trial is over. idk if it was intended to be like that or not but there you go. just right click and extract, unless you have a moral problem with using it.

 

[The_Altrox]

the thing about winrar is that you can use it even when the trial is over. idk if it was intended to be like that or not but there you go. just right click and extract, unless you have a moral problem with using it.

I did something wrong then. I downloaded that zip.file and clicked "extract" and even though it gave me load-up, it wouldn't work on my wii. I figured that maybe it didn't extract since the winRAR free trial expired. hm...

 

[Big O]

I believe 7zip is free and should be able to unzip .rars. I could be mistaken though.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Did you place the folder "Balanced Brawl" on the SD card or its contents? You need to put the contents of that folder in the SD card, not the folder itself.

 

[JOE!]

according to vBrawl charts, Sonic's worst Mu's are the following:

(35/65 them)

and his only adventageous ones are:



everyone else he pretty much went 40/60 against, with a few 50/50's and 45's tossed in

Marth and GW still have that rnage and disjointedness to give sonic trouble, and everyone else has gotten buffed, making his 40/60's most likley worse.

he definatly needs a bit of attention

 

[K.Mac]

according to vBrawl charts, Sonic's worst Mu's are the following:

(35/65 them)

and his only adventageous ones are:



everyone else he pretty much went 40/60 against, with a few 50/50's and 45's tossed in

Marth and GW still have that rnage and disjointedness to give sonic trouble, and everyone else has gotten buffed, making his 40/60's most likley worse.

he definatly needs a bit of attention

Is there actually any characters that Ganondorf has an advantage on?

and, n00b question but what is vBrawl? is that forum code for "regular brawl"?

 

[rPSIvysaur]

yep, vBrawl is regular Brawl. It's also undetermined if Ganondorf has any advantous MU's in BBrawl right now.

 

[ShermantheTank]

Their consumer base wants to have chaotic, unpredictable fun.

I feel that I have rightfully earned the title of "gamer" through my many hours of mastering the Mega Man X games, so I have a hard time putting someone who plays nothing but Guitar Hero and the newest Mario Kart game a gamer.

Nintendo used to make games for masochists like us, but now...

Well, maybe this project wouldn't exist, but it's not for the reasons you're thinking. It's possible the code authors would have done less work if the game were more "competitively focused", but Thinkaman and I made this project out of a love for the game, not a disdain. Honestly, if this game weren't well designed as a serious competitive game, I don't think Bbrawl would be nearly as good as it is. We had to fix an honestly pretty short list of chaingrabs and such, and beyond that we just had to tweak the overall value of the characters but never really had to redefine the characters. Captain Falcon still plays just like he does in standard Brawl but suddenly he can win; it's quite novel how close to functional even the very worst characters in Brawl really were.

I could agree with you, if it wasn't for MK/Snake. I think my brain would rather comprehend the fact that the game designers didn't really care than the thought that they actually thought those two were balanced.

With that said, whatever the case for making Balanced Brawl, I'm sure glad you did. I love vBrawl, and with the changes in BBrawl... you could rightly say I'm obsessed.

 

[Linkshot]

Note that I said "consumer base".

Nintendo is geared toward getting as many sales as possible, even if that includes "I bought this game but I'm disappointed with my purchase."

As long as they see sales going up, they think they're doing everything right.

Anyway, I don't have any non-cynical input right now.

 

[K.Mac]

I could agree with you, if it wasn't for MK/Snake. I think my brain would rather comprehend the fact that the game designers didn't really care than the thought that they actually thought those two were balanced.

I have to agree with that. Without those two, the game is a hell of a lot more balanced. I have a hard time (i.e. I can't) in beating MKs and Snakes, but the others I lose solely due to the lack of matchup knowledge or because the other player is simply better than me.

But to think - just what would have happened if Nintendo hadn't been so "careless" on the hacking front, what with allowing people to run things off of SD cards and that silly stage builder exploit? I wouldn't have spent $50 to get my Wii chipped to be able to play a hacked ISO of Brawl+, that's for sure.

Still, I'm glad that Nintendo did make these little mistakes, otherwise the little beaufies that are Brawl+ and BBrawl couldn't exist in the strong sense that they are.

(Hell, I only bought my Wii for Brawl. I have to commend the people who nolifed for weeks to discover and finetune what allowed Brawl hacks to exist. I would've never found any of it.)

 

[The_Altrox]

I finally got my wii to respond to the program, but it didn't work so well. It says that the Gecko was not found and that Boot.Elf wasn't found even though boot is in it's folder, and Gecko is unzipped. I'm not very tech savy, so if anybody can help me here, that would be sweet.

 

[Linkshot]

I find Snake to be an okay character. Sure, he's extremely powerful, but his matchups aren't broken.

I think you mean remove MK and D3. Now the game is balanced XD

Spoiler

But now Dream Land lost support ;-;

 

[Lokee]

According to the Sonic Boards http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=190510 most recent matchup posting.

60:40 Advantage Sonic: Ganon,Link.

55:45 Slight Advantage: Ness, Falcon, Ivysaur.

50:50 Even: Sonic(Steakmatch), Samus, Kirby, Zelda, Iceclimbers, Yoshi, Pit, Squirtle, Diddykong, Ike, Jigglypuff, Bowser.

45:55 Slight Distantage: Mario, Pikachu, Luigi, Charizard, Lucas

40:60 Disadvantage Sonic: Donkykong, Fox, ZSSamus, Rob, Snake, Peach, MK, Falco, Shiek, Wario, Olimar, DDD, Tlink, Lucario.

35:65 Frozen Steak Disadvantage: Marth, Game and Watch.

Considering Some Top Chars. got nerfed and the likelyhood G+W, Olimar, and Marth will be nerfed as well it doent seem too bad, and of course Sonic did get buffed.
But then again, man this is hard.

 

[Chis]

Dash attack sweetspot damage (6%) -> (7%)
Dash attack sourspot damage (4%) -> (5%)
Down tilt inner damage (6%) -> (7%), knockback (80/40) -> (20/80), angle (80) -> (90)
Down tilt mid damage (6%) -> (8%), knockback (80/40) -> (10/40), angle (70) -> (55)
Down tilt outer damage (6%) -> (9%), knockback (80/30) -> (15/80), angle (-) -> (70)
Up smash repeated hits knockback (100/0) -> (150/0)
Up aerial final hit damage (6%) -> (7%)
Down aerial early damage (8%) -> (10%)
Down aerial late damage (7%) -> (9%)
Neutral aerial knockback (X/20) -> (X/40)
Down throw angle (20) -> (0)
Spring projectile damage (4%) -> (5%), angle (-) -> (270)

These buffs are nice and everything but don't deal with Sonics real problems like range, approaching and killing. Why not just simply make his Fsmash and Dsmash faster and stronger...?

 

[-Axis-]

My biggest qualm with this project is your ambition to put every character on the same level as Diddy Kong. Diddy Kong is an excellent character who many believe to deserve a much higher spot in the tier list, and I don't think pointless buffs like giving Fox's illusion a 1% increase will make them a character of the same calibur. Sure, chaingrabs are gone which is nice, but it just doesn't seem like enough. For example, you claim that Jigglypuff is now viable with its changes, but a buffed Pound isn't enough to make it win in a metagame wrought with Marths and G&W's. How could you let this happen with a project where the focus is balanced mathcups? Furthermore, some buffs simply will not make some characters move down. For example, you can nerf Snake's tilts as much as you want, but he will always have more options than most characters due to his extremely versatile moveset.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

on the jiggly puff front, one of the makers is THE best jigglypuff, and has said himself that in those matchups the best move is pound, so that buffing that really helps in those matchups

 

[Linkshot]

It was general A Tier.

We could tack on +3 to Sonic fSmash and call it a day.

 

[BSP]

According to the Sonic Boards Considering Some Top Chars. got ner...the same problem, and his smashes got buffed.

 

[Lokee]

Well remeber the goal of this project is the make characters better by means of changing as little as possible. We buff and nerf with the upmost priority of trying to maintain the style, gameplay, strengths and weaknesses of the character in tact.

With character's weakness and bad matchups I think it fiqures like this:

A) buff a specific move(s) that would would help in a particular matchup(s) eg: Luigi's fireballs.

B) buff a chars. strength eg: Link ,better arrows (projectile game) and overall better onstage game to compensate for garbage recovery.

C) Overall give a character more reward for their moves eg: Falcon and generally most of the cast.

D) If a weakness of said character is THAT over polarizing then a gamechanger may be implimented to aid eg: Ike's quickdraw, Ivysaur nonfreefall vinewhip, Yoshi's Egg Roll recovery.

E) Ganondorf

With Sonic I think we either give him a relatively good kill throw that kills maybe below 150-170% fresh, Slightly increase the knockback of his Fsmash or Downsmash. Or focus on his damage racking to quickly get to those all important kill %

@ Axis youd be surprized what a few damage % can do. I think it was AA who said at one point they added just 6% on Falcon's knee and it began killing at 50%.

Generally most people want Marth, Game and Watch, Olimar since many character's in the game still have major problems with them.

And this is all a work in progress so be patient and offer good opinions on the problems that will occur

 

[IrohDW]

My biggest qualm with this project is your ambition to put every character on the same level as Diddy Kong. Diddy Kong is an excellent character who many believe to deserve a much higher spot in the tier list, and I don't think pointless buffs like giving Fox's illusion a 1% increase will make them a character of the same calibur. Sure, chaingrabs are gone which is nice, but it just doesn't seem like enough. For example, you claim that Jigglypuff is now viable with its changes, but a buffed Pound isn't enough to make it win in a metagame wrought with Marths and G&W's. How could you let this happen with a project where the focus is balanced mathcups? Furthermore, some buffs simply will not make some characters move down. For example, you can nerf Snake's tilts as much as you want, but he will always have more options than most characters due to his extremely versatile moveset.

Increasing pounds damage not only increases its knockback, it also increases its already insane priority.

 

[BSP]

btw, i dont see the boot file when i try to download the files...

 

[The_Altrox]

btw, i dont see the boot file when i try to download the files...

Boot file is in gecko folder. unfortunately, the wii can't read gecko or boot. help?

 

[da K.I.D.]

Make sonics sweet spot dair spike.

This is a fair and balenced addition that helps alleviate a lot of sonics problems

also make his up air do at least 12%

 

[-Axis-]

Increasing pounds damage not only increases its knockback, it also increases its already insane priority.

Pound is also ridiculously easy to bait, and has a good amount of ending lag. Using it as a primary offensive move in a serious match is simply unheard of. You'll use it about as much as Samus' up-b.

 

[Astartes]

This might have already been asked by why didnt u get rid of stamina for PT

 

[The_Altrox]

This might have already been asked by why didnt u get rid of stamina for PT

Overall, Pokemon Trainer has been designed as a team. We deliberately decided against changing any of his unique mechanics and instead built him to flourish within that framework. If this makes you feel down, just remember. If you don't believe in yourself and your Pokemon, you'll never be a champ again!

from the intro topic. Truthfully, I would have preferred seperate pokemon, because I don't know if those few changes to Ivysaur are gonna make me better with him. All I want are Squirtle and sometimes Charizard

 

[Eldiran]

Overall, Pokemon Trainer has been designed as a team. We deliberately decided against changing any of his unique mechanics and instead built him to flourish within that framework. If this makes you feel down, just remember. If you don't believe in yourself and your Pokemon, you'll never be a champ again!

from the intro topic. Truthfully, I would have preferred seperate pokemon, because I don't know if those few changes to Ivysaur are gonna make me better with him. All I want are Squirtle and sometimes Charizard

You can also always add in the solo pokemon codes yourself -- it's what I do. I have a lot of fun playing as just Ivysaur.

 

[Lokee]

Plus, the time to switch between Pokemon has been cut in half so yeah!.

 

[TP]

Pound is also ridiculously easy to bait, and has a good amount of ending lag. Using it as a primary offensive move in a serious match is simply unheard of. You'll use it about as much as Samus' up-b.

I'm sorry, but you don't understand Jigglypuff at all. There's no other way to put it. Pound's hitbox LOOKS like it has a good amount of ending lag, but in reality it is basically unpunishable because the hitbox lingers so long.

 

[The_Altrox]

Got it to work... but whenever I select Hanebrow, I get... Hanebrow. Wifi Training room?

 

[Linkshot]

I'm stepping out until the "Put in what I want" dies down.

I'll just say that faster Sonic pummel = yes please. fSmash needs more damage, not direct knockback change. (It does 13% fresh uncharged. wtf?)

 

[JOE!]

on Sonic again, perhaps adding 1% to his Dsmash and Fsmash's sweet spots, along with a more powerful Bthrow could do the trick?

 

[Lokee]

Got it to work... but whenever I select Hanebrow, I get... Hanebrow. Wifi Training room?

They did they intentionally, since Hanabrow is just a bad stage for competitive 1vs1

 

[Chis]

on Sonic again, perhaps adding 1% to his Dsmash and Fsmash's sweet spots, along with a more powerful Bthrow could do the trick?

I doubt that will make a significant difference imo. Sonic has always needed a reliable kill move, which buffing Fsmash/Dsmash in speed and power would provide. It's not like he's broken or anything, he still has problems approaching and a lack of range.

 

[JOE!]

I doubt that will make a significant difference imo. Sonic has always needed a reliable kill move, which buffing Fsmash/Dsmash in speed and power would provide. It's not like he's broken or anything, he still has problems approaching and a lack of range.

hey, taking -2% from Wario's kill moves made them rather suck.

+1% and a kill throw may swing it to be a bit better when it comes to finishing off opponents.

and maybe a faster pummel as Linkshot suggests.