Balanced Brawl Standard Release

[HailCrest]

It's the worst F-smash in the game.

You're forgetting zamus's

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

ZSS's got buffed; I'm assuming it's actually pretty good seeing as it comes out fast and has a stupid range.

 

[JOE!]

regarding Bowser, A2, i think he may be the iffiest one to tweak when it comes to speed now that i think of it.

Looking strictly at MU's, in vBrawl he held his own against the entire cast, and only got pwned by CG'ers and diddy (nanner locks)

for the most part those threats are gone...so he may well be within the 40-60 range in almost all his MU's (granted he also lost grab release). He may need to be re-evaluated within the MU's that relied on his grab release shenannigans to do well in.

Anyone else vote we discuss him next?

 

[HailCrest]

Zamus' fsmash comes out in 20 frames, that's really slow. Range is stupid, priority also stupid, but it's slow and has low knockback so yeah

approximately when will the next version of bbrawl be released? mid-january? end-february?

 

[Asimio]

Um, where do you put your custom textures?

 

[Ehic]

Um, where do you put your custom textures?

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=225642
Just make sure you have the file replacement code version of BBrawl (see OP).

 

[rPSIvysaur]

The problem with this is that:
1. It's not as powerful as Lucas's upsmash.
2. It's harder to hit strongly with (it's a sweetspotting move) than Lucas's Upsmash.

1) Lucas U-smash does twenty-three if you get the first and second hit in which is less than the twenty-seven if you tipper Ness F-smash
2) That is true, but Marth's sword is harder to hit strongly with, but does that make him crappy?

I generally agree on a buff to close up f-smash on damage.

Also Lucas' up-smash gets progressively weaker as the moves go on. Lucas also has a thousand frames of lag on the move. His ending lag is >50

 

[A2ZOMG]

Zamus' fsmash comes out in 20 frames, that's really slow. Range is stupid, priority also stupid, but it's slow and has low knockback so yeah

approximately when will the next version of bbrawl be released? mid-january? end-february?

Ness's F-smash is even slower, and has less range. Furthermore, ZSS has practical uses in comboing into her F-smash for damage purposes, while Ness really doesn't have anything like that.

 

[PKNintendo]

Given the other qualities of Ness's design in Brawl, him having an amazing fsmash like he had in melee would probably be overpowered and would detract from his design (did you know: Ness's fsmash in melee outranged Marth's entire moveset on top of being fast and powerful).

Also, as an aside, if you think that about Mr. Game & Watch's fsmash, what do you think about his usmash? Mr. Game & Watch and Ness are pretty different characters anyway; a big part of Mr. Game & Watch is having those over the top on power smashes since he doesn't have something like Ness's bthrow that is so reliable.

Lol really? Nice.

 

[Salocin Katze]

So are there any BBrawl Tourney's or is it more of a casual community?

 

[Laos Oman]

Also, just to stir the pot a bit, I think the most reliable killer (not necessarily effective but reliable) is Zelda. On that note, what do people think of Zelda & Sheik; any interesting experiences? Please try to remain calm about our insistence on designing them as a team, but experience information about any style of use is of use regardless.

PAL user here, so no experience yet, but judging from videos, Zelda's jab is now pretty much useless... But well, I've not experienced it first-hand, so here's asking to the people who have: how do the changes make it better?

 

[Linkshot]

Zelda's jab now deals almost the same damage with the added benefit of comboing better from:

1) Harder to SDI
2) Less Knockback, meaning you can chain into fTilt and then uSmash.

 

[CarVac]

@RocketPSIence:

I didn't mean damage. I meant knockback. Opponent's avoid Lucas's upsmash because of the ridiculous knockback that kills early. Ness's bat isn't so deadly, so it's not as good of a threat.

 

[A2ZOMG]

So are there any BBrawl Tourney's or is it more of a casual community?

Seems casual currently. Unless we can convince more TOs to host this as a side event.

Last tournament I went to, I really tried to introduce BBrawl. I think I got a Snake main interested in it actually, but otherwise, not many were all that interested.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

My tournament this saturday went great, and I asked them if they wanted to do BBrawl at the next one. They didn't. Which was weird, seeing as they liked it when I had it set up before singles on a tv.

 

[ぱみゅ]

I actually just convinced the most important mexican TO (Lugia-corp) to host it lol
He said he may can use it as side event or on free tourneys, so more people here know about it. =P

 

[JOE!]

i think people dont like it because it drives away tier-whores....who pad alot of tourneys thus get more money involved

 

[ぱみゅ]

those are people who don't undersatand the concept of "competition"

Spoiler

(nor "fun" =S)

They're pretty annoying because they just won't change their minds, and won't hear pretty nothing.

I personally supported BBrawl from the start because I'm sick of seeing a tournament of 32 people, on 20 are MK's and 15 will make just the same Tornado, UpB, Dsmash spam. And what is worse, is that one of them usually win....

 

[Linkshot]

My cousin refuses to play bBrawl because MK is nerfed ._.

The sole reason this is getting shut out is because Brawl+ took the spotlight first.

Spoiler

At least I'm pretty sure that's it...

 

[JOE!]

My cousin refuses to play bBrawl because MK is nerfed ._.

The sole reason this is getting shut out is because Brawl+ took the spotlight first.

Spoiler

At least I'm pretty sure that's it...

what Brawl + did was change the game so drasticlally that it has a "wtf?" factor drawing people in.

BBrawl offers nothing truly new outside of leveling the playing field...which while nice, isnt as attractive as having seperate PT pokemon as a feature

 

[Eyada]

People don't want to play/host dedicated BBrawl tournaments yet for a fairly simple reason: the game lacks sufficient network externality. You're all probably tired of hearing me mention "network externality", but the unavoidable truth is that multiplayer games live or die by the network effect. Until BBrawl has reached a critical level of network effect, it has no chance of becoming competitively successful.

In fact, I think we should have some serious discussion on good methods for spreading BBrawl and actually earning some acceptance and support. Discussing how to best balance the game is a moot point if we can't get anyone to play it.

I'll post my take on it to get things going, but be forewarned that I'm hardly an expert salesman:

Before any BBrawl tournaments can really take off, the game needs to draw in as many casual supporters as possible. (I don't mean non-SWF, All-Items-on-High type "casuals", I'm talking tournament players that aren't heavily committed to BBrawl and play it for fun only.) They don't need to be die-hard people who ardently support BBrawl, we just need people who will say "Meh, sure, why not?" when the TO calls for a vote on BBrawl as a side-event.

How do you get people from "No" to "Whatever, why not"? Constantly pestering your local TO to host a full-blown BBrawl tournament out of the blue or trying to force everyone into it by making it the official game for local events where you're the TO will not work. People won't like being forced into it; what's more, the event will probably fail due to low turn-out. No one is going to come to a tournament for an unfamiliar game. The reasoning of potential attendees will go as follows:

1. What is BBrawl? I'm not familiar with that at all.
2. Have I heard anyone around here mention it? Not really. Have I seen anyone playing it? Not really.
3. No one around here really plays this 'BBrawl' game.
4. Other people will probably reach this same conclusion.
5. Thus, No one else is going to go.
6. I shouldn't go either.

The event will flop.

So familiarize them with it. Friendlies at every opportunity, hyping of how awesome the changes are during Friendlies, hyping of Friendlies so that people are aware that BBrawl is being played, BBrawl Money Matches (particularly ones that highlight how much more diversity BBrawl has), and setting up a demo at tournaments --all low-key and voluntary introductions to BBrawl that will get people comfortable with the game. Make it a regular part of local tournaments even though it isn't the main event or even a side-event. People should be aware of BBrawl, even if they haven't tried it yet.

Fortunately, BBrawl is really solid and will basically sell itself once people actually start playing it, so once you get them to the point where they're semi-regularly playing it, your work is basically done.

Once lots of players are into BBrawl casually, you can start working on getting BBrawl side events. Hype the side events and eventually your scene will reach the critical network mass necessary to support a BBrawl main-event tournament. Once enough regions start hosting legitimate BBrawl tournaments, serious discussion of large-scale BBrawl tournaments will become feasible.

 

[A2ZOMG]

what Brawl + did was change the game so drasticlally that it has a "wtf?" factor drawing people in.

BBrawl offers nothing truly new outside of leveling the playing field...which while nice, isnt as attractive as having seperate PT pokemon as a feature

Well, what I think BBrawl is supposed to do is make more Brawl specific gimmicks viable.

That alone can be really attractive if it's done right. I must say...I kinda like the feel of using MK's Down-B as a kill move. It's a horrible kill move at best, but it makes me feel like a bad*** when I land it.

Also...I'm just going to say...Snake's mine actually works really well against recoveries that can get edgehogged....if he has a mine near the edge, and edgehogs as someone like Marth or Mario is Up-Bing...either it's an edgehog, or he eats the mine. I haven't seen this actually done until now against me in that tournament I recently went to. So yeah...the buff is nothing TOO serious...although it does kinda poke at specific matchups in a probably unintended fashion.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

Eyada really nailed it.

One other thing that I personally feel both AmazingAmpharos and Thinkaman need to do for the next release is to help give it a more fresh look/feel. Simple things like having an edited starter screen (the one after the opening movie) to changing hanenbows' portrait to show the wifi stage. Adding SSE stages is a great way to get people interested in play this, I would imagine; it's a new experience when playing without being so drastic that they wouldnt want to bother (drastic like Hyrule's change).

 

[CarVac]

If it's possible for other brawl hacks to edit what characters appear, and show separate squares for the 3 pokemon, would it be possible to edit the stage selection screen, having both Hanenbow and Wifi selectable, with separate buttons? Or has nobody figured that out yet?

 

[PKNintendo]

Given the other qualities of Ness's design in Brawl, him having an amazing fsmash like he had in melee would probably be overpowered and would detract from his design (did you know: Ness's fsmash in melee outranged Marth's entire moveset on top of being fast and powerful).

Also, as an aside, if you think that about Mr. Game & Watch's fsmash, what do you think about his usmash? Mr. Game & Watch and Ness are pretty different characters anyway; a big part of Mr. Game & Watch is having those over the top on power smashes since he doesn't have something like Ness's bthrow that is so reliable.

I mean't to say this beforehand but yes while GaW lacks that powerful bckthrow his smashes are SOO good on release. He's got plenty of strategic use and has the power to to back up the risk.
Fortunately, Ness Fmash damage buff made it KO earlier... Right?

 

[NovaRyumaru]

BBrawl offers nothing truly new outside of leveling the playing field...which while nice, isnt as attractive as having seperate PT pokemon as a feature

Solo squirtle anyone? Hard to hit the little sucker. xP

 

[ShermantheTank]

I'm trying to build up a BBrawl scene in Omaha, though unfortunately it looks like the work will be slow in coming.

Oh well, if it means I don't have to deal with MK's BS tornado, it's worth it.

 

[JOE!]

we have the hard buffs down (for the most part)

perhaps it is just time to make it more "shiny"?

like put in more fun aesthetic effects like Wario's money pummel on characters just to make it more randomly fun

 

[ぱみゅ]

It's just a random we love Brawl icon.

Most people here just wanted better/more interesting tournaments with no brokenness that ruined the fun we'd want of Brawl...



btw, no more character discussion? what about, say, Luigi?

 

[A2ZOMG]

Well Luigi is obviously good.

Fireball buff is annoying, but still is an easy powershield in most situations. The reduced ending lag makes me think that there are probably some new edgeguarding tricks you can do with this attack now.

Dash attack buff is gay, it ***** dodges extremely well, not to mention people who shield near the edge.

None of his matchups got *drastically* better or worse, all in all, I think he's a success for this project.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Eyada, catching on is indeed a difficult problem for us; we both are having trouble with getting people to really play and give it a shot. The worst is the "I don't want to play because it's not what other people play" though I think a larger group don't really understand the technical side and think it's dangerous or illegal or something (I know at least one person talking about hacking Wiis as though it's even necessary to install permanent software to run this anymore).

Here's the problem with side events. They just don't happen. They're a joke. Tournaments are always late in the first place because of that one pool leader who runs his pool incompetently or a lunch break which inevitably takes way longer than it should because TOs are too antsy about just issuing mass DQs or people just plain not having their matches immediately when called. If a tournament isn't running late, people will start playing friendlies/money matches because they aren't worried about time, and then it will be late (a particularly good TO can overcome all of this, but keeping everyone on task is not easy). The side event is always the first victim. If it does happen, everyone is totally apathetic regardless.

Further, we have to be honest about what this project is. This project is designed to be essentially strictly superior to standard Brawl. It's not like certain other projects that want to make something fundamentally different; this is something fundamentally the same that is supposed to just be better. It can't have any success as a side-gimmick because of the nature of what it's arguing; something like this just can't be stable as a secondary game to standard Brawl. I do feel there's a critical mass at which, if we can get stuff going and going well, it will take off. I retain my conviction that people just need to play to see the quality (I know a few vocal people who disagree, but 99% of the feedback I get over the quality of the game is positive), but the real question is how to get to that critical mass. I don't really have an answer, but I do know it's a very difficult thing. I like to compare our project to Street Fighter 2 HDR, but that project had the benefit of Capcom's marketing and distribution team helping it and lending its voice of credibility to it. The principled person in me wants to say marketing doesn't matter, only quality, but the sensible person in me knows better.

Money matches, particularly if you can get notable, high level players involved and have them recorded and posted, are an interesting approach. I play it a lot in friendlies around here; I think I've gotten most of the (admittedly small) Kansas City scene amenable to the game, though with the obvious reservations that it's not the standard. I definitely very strongly agree that being obnoxious about the game is not the solution; Thinkaman and I discussed how difficult catching on with something like this is, and we are in agreement that being obnoxious is basically the single best way to guarantee failure (since then you just get hated, even if you get more short-term success for getting your name out).

Also, I hope we can get some real stuff done this winter break when Thinkaman is ideally far less busy than he is now (he hasn't been on messengers for a week; I might presume end of semester schoolwork is killing him right now). Smoothing the game is an agreed focus of the next update (Thinkaman's way of expressing it was that he wants non-observant players to not even understand how things are different except for "feeling" that suddenly it is more balanced as often as possible). I would also like to see what can be done about fixing some of the unfortunate issues standard Brawl has. Our ability to code is pretty limited, but with the screwed up system of port priority as the holy grail (Snake vs Snake is still 55-45, right?), fixing issues like Meta Knight's IDC, Sheik's chain glitch, or Ice Climbers' fusion would definitely make our game more refined and more marketable in my eyes. Of course, cleaned up ledge and water mechanics would be nice too. Of course, this is hard stuff for us, but one can dream, right?

 

[Laos Oman]

Balanced Brawl might catch on better if you released some more demonstrations. Checking on Youtube, there's the showcase, a few WiFi matches, and some channel with ugly textures. Not exactly a lot of publicity: some characters aren't even featured (Pokémon Trainer is one example, and I have trouble finding Ice Climber videos as well).

You should make it more clear that this project doesn't just benefit Ike and Ganondorf mains =p

 

[Dismojoe]

Balanced Brawl might catch on better if you released some more demonstrations. Checking on Youtube, there's the showcase, a few WiFi matches, and some channel with ugly textures. Not exactly a lot of publicity: some characters aren't even featured (Pokémon Trainer is one example, and I have trouble finding Ice Climber videos as well).

You should make it more clear that this project doesn't just benefit Ike and Ganondorf mains =p

Yeah, there needs to be tons of videos out for BBrawl. I just downloaded this thing two days ago to try it....and it was really good. However, there are like 2 good videos on Youtube for BBrawl, and that won't convince lazy people to download it and try it.

I think you guys should also really market the point that there is absolutely nothing you need to do to your Wii beside insert an SD card into it. I tried getting Brawl+ to work yesterday, and I gave up because I had to do some stupid thing to my Wii to get it to work. People will be much more willing to try BBrawl than Brawl+ at a casual level because nobody wants to follow some annoying tutorial on the internet to just play a good game.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I'm trying to get BBrawl footage up...I just haven't had the time nor the opportunity to play against good players enough.

You'll have to put up with my comp's mediocre webcam though.

 

[GHNeko]

People will be much more willing to try BBrawl than Brawl+ at a casual level because nobody wants to follow some annoying tutorial on the internet to just play a good game.

Uhhh. Brawl+ and BBrawl are at the same level of ease of installation.

Actually. Scratch that.

Brawl+ is EASIER to install because we have an auto-installer/updater program for PC and a Brawl+ updater/installer application for Homebrew Channel.

So you can play B+ with or without homebrew with no more than a download, a double click, and like...3 inputs from the keyboard or a few button presses on your controller.

If you're following a tutorial to install Brawl+ manually with no prior experience, then you're doing it wrong.

Thanks for the compliment though. :V

 

[Mit]

I also suggest prettying up BBrawl a bit. Custom title screen, custom stage portrait, and a couple added stages would be awesome. Brawl+ already adapted a well-edited version of the Jungle SSE stage (with reasonable blast zone sizes), and it looks like a blast to play on. I wouldn't recommend adding too many stages, but there are a couple more SSE stages out there that could fit in great as well. If you can manage to fully take advantage of Phantom Wings' newer codes for new stages, you can even add entries to the Stage Select screen that represent these new stages, giving them a more polished feel.

Otherwise, yes, it probably would help if there were more videos out there for this. Brawl+ has a lot of dedicated communities that do tournaments and often upload videos, which undoubtedly helps their exposure. I'd try to get something like that going but don't know enough experienced players. Perhaps if I started attending some of the Ann Arbor Smash events (yeah, I live in Southeast Michigan, and there are a LOT of good players in the area... oh, and M2K attends the events too) I could maybe convince them to give BBrawl a shot. I have a feeling they all already have a firm stance on hacks though, and I don't think it's a positive one.

 

[TP]

Money matches, particularly if you can get notable, high level players involved and have them recorded and posted, are an interesting approach.

That's a great idea!

*Runs to the thread of my next tourney*

 

[GHNeko]

I offered to host a website to AA, and I never got a response. lmao.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I offered to host a website to AA, and I never got a response. lmao.

I'm pretty busy with a bunch of stuff. We were actually working on a website ourselves (and have hosting and such lined up), but it never got done.

 

[Zero_Saber]

This looks totally amazing and I would love to give it a try, but to be brutally honest I seem to be too stupid to figure out how to put it correctly on my SD card.

If someone would be willing to make a video tutorial of how to set this up I would love you forever.