I'm saying that Ganon does fine in close quarters combat against Olimar and Samus and such. His close quarters combat game in general is actually really good.
I'm confused.
If Ganon does good in close quarters combat, what quality do you think gives Ganon a great close range game, in general? Is it the super massive endlag on all his ground moves? The fact that he has no multihit attacks to pressure shields or punish dodges? Perhaps it's his narrow range and absent mobility. No! It's gotta be that not one move is safe on block... not even jab, not even thunderstorming.
You know who sounds like what you describe? Donkey Kong. I play him from time to time. His Dtilt is fast and spammable, forcing an opponent to shield through it and punishing dodges. DK can punish like it's no one's business, with his fast and safe Fsmash, or faster still and not so safe Dsmash. Hell, almost all of DK's moves are viable KO moves. An upward angled Ftilt or reversed Utilt leaves no blind spot unchecked, not to mention Bair's incredible versatility as an approach, damage racker and KO move.
ALL on a heavy weight who has excellent ground speed and good jump/air mobility. He can approach his opponents and even has great survivability tools at his disposal.
Yeah, you must have been talking about Donkey Kong. Because DK has better close quarters moves that Ganon, more landable and diverse KO moves and has numerous positive qualities that overwrite the strengths of Ganon.
It doesn't need explaining that one Ganon hit is powerful. It might need explaining, however, that one Ganon hit is hard to land, and once it does land, it decays sharply in KO strength. In a game between two, evenly skilled opponents who know thier characters, both players are going to be screwing up less, which comes down to speed and saftey before any other attack attribute.
But let's keep going.
(Playing Against Ganondorf) And let's say you get in and hit with the jab. Let's ignore shielding and just assume you hit outright. You do less than 10% damage and get no follow up at all. Good job.
That's the joke! Hit the shield with it! Jab cancel! Ganon has bad out of shield options. But to 1up that, Ganon's sourspot (a jab with a sourspot?!) clunks for 7%, only catching up to the rest of the cast with a sweetspotted 9%. Followups? It's weak KO properties dont' even afford a setup.
We could make his (Ganon) jab unblockable (that's +infinity on block!), and it still would be relatively least helpful against someone like Olimar. Now against someone like G&W who has to shield Ganon's stuff regularly, it would be great.
Olimar camps on the ground at close ranges, heavily relying on his grab out of shield. If you speed up Ganon's jab, particularly the end lag, you create a move that more effectively punishes spot dodges (all of the cast) and gives Ganon more time to react before an opponent can simply punish him out of shield (particularly characters with good OOS options, see Olimar).
And G&W has the freaking turtle spam with air mobility; why exactly in your theorycraft is G&W not in a short hop ready to bounce away, attack or dodge on reaction? It's not like Ganon can approach.
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I'm saying erasing the extreme weaknesses is not a solution...
...It's more of a "it would be nice if we could further depolarize Ganon and in the process help him a bit" situation.
You say that fixing the weaknesses of a character is not a solution, then state that you're looking into a way to depolarize Ganon. This is what's called a contradiction, similar to how you stated that Ganon has great closed quarters combat against Olimar and then state that the jab buff would affect that matchup least. I guess I can look past that to deliver a more direct point.
Having 12 characters in a fighting game is absurdly difficult to balance, because for every strength a character has, another character needs a way to counter that unique strength in one attribute or a few. Brawl has 35 characters, and I haven't read elsewhere what game's you've built or modded prior to this to credit you the experience to challenge such a feat. It's idealistic and not realistic (on a professional level) to edit every character down to the last bit of data and expect balanced results, especially within a project with as many limitations as you've set. Extremes create imbalances for the sake of character variety - it's not a design challenge any more than building a gun out of gold because it's pretty "but challenging to make usable".
Maybe it's been a bad night or something and you goofed your post. If that's the case, I apologize for my tone. But everything you say about Ganondorf couldn't possibly be more wrong (or seemingly biased). From the post way back where you stated Ganon was threatinging because of his "shield damage" to claiming that buffing Ganon's jab, which most directly affects dodges/shielding (the most universal mechanics across the cast) are polarizing, could not be more absurd.
In a gamecon confrence, reps from Blizzard Entertainment stated that, what they often try to do when balancing stuff, is to intentionally overpower something. It gets people to try out that move/spell/ability and find it's exploits, as well as granting insight as to what a good middle ground is when they nerf the move back down. If buffing Ganon's jab is so "polarizing" in your mind, why not release another update preview and just see the results on a large scale? Having a real gtfo move doesn't seem to be the pivot point of balance for any cast member besides him, as it's just a universal concept.
But, whatever. I really shouldn't care. PS, great job Lokee.
