For one, I don't think it's reasonable how people favor "official" versions of games over what other people made.
Brawl itself is software, and we really have made it very easy to add what software is needed for Balanced Brawl while simultaneously...
With all due respect, I think it's
very reasonable that people favor "official" content. It's the nature of our culture to put more faith in what we see in a movie theater than what we see in fan made YouTube videos. Budget, years of credentials, etc... that gives people faith. And while you're right - judge the product for what it is... there are folks who won't want to go through the hassel to find out.
Brawl is a disc made for the Wii. You jam it in there and it works like every other Wii title that exists. BBrawl requires an SD (something I didn't have on hand). BBrawl requires a modest understanding of how operating systems work (didn't know what a "root" was). Glancing at the bulk of help requests in this thread, I think you have to realize some people are just
brain dead when it comes to computers. People are also afraid of any form of hacking screwing up their Wii, in spite of no records of it happening (that I know of).
I'm not saying this out of hate or disrespect. I love what BBrawl is trying to accomplish. I just think that you think too much of the average human being.
Defense is good in the game of course, but it's not like defense is a fundamental evil.
Hits. Metaknight.
Well, too much offense and you have a game where it comes down to spacing and first strikes. Too much defense and you have two people afraid to move until the other guy does something stupid. The better game design seems apparent in my mind.
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I am not comparing two specific attacks for balance, but only for overall attack design:
The most powerful quality of an attack is speed. Speed catches people off guard and lack of end lag makes a move more difficult to punish. This is fundamental in the Smash Bros franchise.
The second quality is range/disjointedness. Being able to hit your opponent from further away, especially in conjunction with speed, makes a move vastly superior. Sakurai gives all of his sword characters massive disjointed range, giving them the ability to hit through bare-fist attacks, seemingly on the notion of realism (stupid). Persistance or multihit attacks also create a larger reliability in ease of hitting an opponent, especially the disjointed/ranged kind.
Least important is KB/angle. Because if you can't land the attack consistantly, it's KB/angle
will never come into play. This is why Gan-man is still low tier.
Balanced Brawl attempts to shun modifing speed and hitboxes to preserve the vbrawl feel. But I'd wager 90% of imbalances could be solved by creative frame speed mods alone.
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When we look at Bowser and Metaknight's Fair's, you notice some glaringly imbalances by the visual (I had to guess the shape of Bowser's hand hurtbox, though it may be larger). What isn't conveyed in the image is that Bowser's Fair starts around frame 8-10ish while Metaknight's starts on frame 6, produces a second hitbox on 10 and the third on 13. Bowser produces one, shifting hitbox while Meta produces 3 unique, clashable hitboxes that outlast Bowser's. Bowser/Metaknight autocancels on 36/21, further hindered by Bowser's shorter jumps.
ALL of Metaknight's aerials have massive range/width that allow him to use things like Dair on an opponent horizontal to him. Uair comes out on frame 2, Dair on frame 4. F/Bair both hit 3 seperate times, creating unique pressure options. Even on the ground, Metaknight's Dtilt is a frame 3, safe, disjointed poke ending on 15. Ftilt is godly.
If his attacks are ultra safe/fast/disjointed/multihit, his weight only comes into play when his attacks fail by percent ratio. Which needless to say doesn't scale with weight value and is further offset by a great recovery.
If you look at Metaknight's moveset, they're all fast, many moves multihit, and all of them are massively disjointed. The attributes of his attacks simply give him no weakness. When you look at Snake or Diddy or other top tiers, you see a similarity in why they are top tier - their attacks have an overwhelming quality of saftey through speed/range - factors the BBrawl crew have shown no interest in altering.
You can nerf their KB of an overpowered move, which will open up more opportunities for mistakes and counter attacks. It also means more tedium to achieve success, but it doesn't fix the biggest contributor to a move's fault in the first place.
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All that i'm trying to point out, from the visual and the attribute analysis, is that move speed/range are the most potent qualities. You'll need to alter a lot more KB/angle stuff than a simple frame speed adjustment to achieve similar results in the case of top tier characters and their beastly moveset.
And this isn't blasting. I like and prefer BBrawl over the other projects, especially since Brawl+ admits to no longer really being a Brawl mod as much as it's own creation. I just wanted to express some ideas, and have all the respect in the world for the time and efforts of Thinkaman and Amazing Ampharos and wanted to share my angle on things.
Thanks for reading.
