Balanced Brawl Version 2 Release

[ぱみゅ]

Despite I know many characters, how to play them, and that I disagree with many things said before, I can only comment about MetaKnight and Zelda (my only two real mains).

The first one has well-known amazing range and speed. His matchups are easy to explain: Outrange with tilts. If you can't it's because your opponent is bigger, so avoiding Tornado is hard for them. Spam tornado until their shields poke, and you can build loads of damage with it. Most of the caracters that aren't beaten by those use to have bad recoveries, so gimping them is the ultimate solution.
His direct combat options are pretty limited, and that's why, despite being the only character with no bad MUs, most of them are evenish.
So, no tornado means he's actually unable to combat against characters that outranges him, and most of them will also survive to really high damages. You once stated that tornado was still great due to its shield pressure alone, but that's not useful with it becomes unsafe ON HIT.
Other great option he has is juggling due to the speed of his Uair and the fact he can jump 5 times (he can do over 20 Uairs without touching ground!). So I was wondering if small buffs on his throws could be useful (a +1 on his Uthrow could mean both killing a bit easier, and juggling more at lower damages). Just an idea.

As for Zelda.... I can't really say too much about the Z/S, since I don't use Sheik too much, but isn't surprising they being considered as very good, since they cover both damage and kills really well.
About solo Zelda I was just worried that solo Sheik was pretty viable, but Zelda only got in play for few seconds, hit and goes away. That was silly.
Zelda is still pretty bad, but she's at least fun to use.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Firebreath with high base knockback (enough to cause tumble, set knockback angle to like 35-40) I think is a good option to consider giving to Bowser and Charizard. They still can't throw it out mindlessly due to the high startup and commitment, but the idea is that it should always be safe on hit and this also makes the move less gimmicky in general.

And if you're having trouble getting good use of Tornado, face backwards before doing it. That makes the hits link better.

 

[rm88]

Generic praise post: I just tried Balanced Brawl for the first time - it's depressing that regular Brawl is not like this. I'm especially happy as a Peach main, but so many other characters got great too. Snake's tilts being weaker also makes me happy. I don't want to play a lot of it because there'll never be a BBrawl community here in Mexico, but it's still fantastic. I'm in love with Peach's Nair and Peach Bomber cancel.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Generic praise post: I just tried Balanced Brawl for the first time - it's depressing that regular Brawl is not like this. I'm especially happy as a Peach main, but so many other characters got great too. Snake's tilts being weaker also makes me happy. I don't want to play a lot of it because there'll never be a BBrawl community here in Mexico, but it's still fantastic. I'm in love with Peach's Nair and Peach Bomber cancel.

Generic mindset: Mexicans wannot to play BBrawl because the National Tournament (Smash-mex) does not include it, and there's almost no other tournament that gathers many people.
Here in my city (San Luis Potosí) it was pretty well recieved, tho. =P

 

[rm88]

I live in Toluca, near Mexico City. Everyone around here completely neglects Balanced and Plus (and Minus for that matter). It would be awesome if that suddenly changed, but it's not happening

 

[ぱみゅ]

That (plus few stage acceptance) is the overall Mexican Smash mindset....
Really, really sad to hear...

 

[PKNintendo]

****, that looks like it a took a long time to do A2. (and an equally long response from AA)

As for the tiers themselves, I more or less agree with everything. My only disagreement is Wario. I find that you are heavily underrating the characters. He's fantastic aerial game, coupled with his heavy weight make him a definete contender for A tier. Sure, he had his power nerf but he's still a very strong character (his half-charge waft is still insanely powerful)

Edit: Didn't notice Zelda there. Is she really that good?

 

[A2ZOMG]

I'm underrating Metaknight, Marth, Ice Climbers, and Wario I believe. Anyhow I appreciate the feedback and I more or less agree. Wario does have the half waft to kill early, and it's entirely landable. He also doesn't need to edgecamp to attempt a timeout. On the other hand, I think Falco, Marth, and G&W give him a lot of trouble though, and Mario beats him slightly in this game. They're characters that by design are difficult for Wario to approach directly. vs Falco is pretty much the same matchup as in vBrawl which was agreed to be solidly Falco favor. Marth lost grab release on Wario and F-air is less rewarding, but no RCO lag gives him more leeway to get out of edgetraps and weaker U-air hurts Wario's ability to juggle Marth. G&W was pretty close with Wario in vBrawl mainly since Wario had an easier time landing an early kill with F-smash, which is no longer the case in this game. Mario is another character who on paper is pretty decent against Wario but mainly loses due to having to wait longer for his kills (U-smash at 130 minimum in vBrawl while Wario kills with F-smash probably around 100% and does more damage per hit)

Zelda is fine, not gonna make a splash by herself, but the Naryu's love buff which both gives her mobility and the ability to cancel into grab and other normals is one of the biggest buffs in the game. With an existent pressure game, she doesn't have to constantly fall to wait games. However her strength lies mainly in using her with Sheik, who is a great character that lacks in early KOs and recovery (Zelda's recovery is slightly improved in this game).

AA you acted a little surprised that TL had above average KO power. In vBrawl most of his Smashes, his U-air, and his F-air kill at significantly lower percents than Link's actually, although they do less damage. Generally speaking Link does a LOT more damage per hit than Toon Link but actually kills later. Probably the real reason why TL has "trouble" scoring kills is because his kill moves are usually unsafe. But at any rate I think his low damage makes him a little underwhelming, and probably the only thing he and other tether characters want is better throws. He generally does less damage per hit than someone like Mario, who also does really low damage per hit.

Part of the reason why Olimar is REALLY GOOD is because of his insane grab reward, which leads to a lot of combos, high damage, and potential kills. Aside from the fact his tether grab isn't as slow as others in startup and above average in terms of safety. A lot of characters actually can avoid his grab fairly easily if they're playing to avoid it since it's slow enough to be interrupted. For all the other tether characters who have slower, shorter ranged, and otherwise much less safe grabs, I think it would only be fair to give them more destructive force on their throws.

rPSI has also been saying a lot that Lucas suffers from having a 1 frame duration grab, which makes it very hard for him to punish landings and dodges properly. I know that hitbox changes aren't too popular, but I think it's something that eventually will need to be addressed. The two things that I think are worth considering are either extending his grab duration to 4-5ish frames, and/or making his N-air final hit angle 90 degrees with nearly set knockback for starting juggles.

 

[Shade²]

I post my results about what I said some posts above.

I went through the trouble of disecting the PAL gct file, and have seen that there was much more lines than 256, making my Wii freeze! That was only this limitation!

I actually used the double GCT method and made it: the codes work fine, there are things that need to be restored (the pfmenu2 folder for instance) and I got crashes when I try to load some stages (but there were crashes before with only the File replacement, I think the code doesn't load the stages .PAC correctly). Here is what I did:

1/ Put only the Double-gct loader in the first GCT file in the sd0:\codes\ folder
2/ Put all other codes in the other gct and put this gct in the sd0:\private\wii\apps\RSB?\pf\ (? stands for your region letter, E for NTSC, P for PAL)
3/ Rename/Remove the stage folder (if they crash your Wii like mine)
4/ Load your Brawl iso with your favorite USB loader and enable Ocarina.
5/ ...
6/ PROFIT!

The double-gct loader: http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=226447

See ya!

 

[JOE!]

*sees speak of Damage per Hit*

you know, coming from MMO's i know all about DPA and DPS....

would it be worthwhile/interesting to get a list of the DPS/A for all the characters/attacks for comparisons/etc?


for example....Squirtle's Jab1 lasts 1 frame, and does 2%. 2% over 1 frame is 1DPF (Damage per Frames), etc etc...


culd give us a mathematical way of looking at combo/damage potential when balancing?

 

[A2ZOMG]

Setup and mixup potential as well as hitbox utility is more important than damage per hit keep in mind.

It's why Metaknight can be a very top notch damage dealer despite having below average damage per hit.

 

[ぱみゅ]

Zelda is fine, not gonna make a splash by herself, but the Naryu's love buff which both gives her mobility and the ability to cancel into grab and other normals is one of the biggest buffs in the game. With an existent pressure game, she doesn't have to constantly fall to wait games.

Don't forget her Lightning Kicks (a CPU did it to me. It was interesnting, shocking and painful).
Yet, her apporach is still pretty unsafe if the opponent reads her Nayru's movement, and remember she's still forced to perform an attack in order to snap out of it.
As I've said, she's fun to use, but she's not at the top level very other character is.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

I've been really busy playing BBrawl over the summer with a lot of the local guys. It's been very, very well received, especially by all our low tier mains (Sonic/CF/Samus/Bowser/Etc). One of the guys is heading back up to Canada for School and will be showing it to his playgroup over there; I expect it'll see similar praise!

Great job with this, AA and Think. I have some tier list impressions myself, but they take a lot of time to communicate, so I'll just say Ice Climbers have seemed to really shape up despite my worries for them. Not to mention, Ganon and CF are really useful in teams (and viable in singles, of course). Wolf is great, of course, however I'm not sure if he's the single best character; it's a tough call with so many characters floating around his power level.

Oh, and you guys REALLY did a good job salvaging Dedede's Jet Hammer. I've taken up using him more and more, and this thing actually can be awesome.

Just reminding you guys of the great job that was done
(Now all we need are some banned stages to be balanced. Maybe items/final smashes, too, if you guys are up to that task)

 

[rPSIvysaur]

I can still do CG's with IC's... the timing is just a lot stricter. I've literally done b-throw handoff > d-throw handofff > charged up-smash against my friend. My reaction was "how the hell did I get the d-throw hand off?"

IDK how you could plan on fixing the hand-offs. My only idea would be something like grab inviciblity after you get thrown for a couple frames.

 

[ぱみゅ]

@rPSI: Another global change? Sounds good, but how it could affect Team Battles?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

The correct fix is getting rid of Nana's grab.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Not to mention, Ganon and CF are really useful in teams (and viable in singles, of course).

I don't think Ganon is viable in singles. He has like 4ish clearly bad matchups, and at least one of those matchups imo should be fairly common in tournament (Peach). All he needs to make his matchups less stupid is a more consistent approach (Dash attack crossover on block), which I've more or less beaten to death. And I honestly don't know if Ganon will ever do well against the Ice Climbers. I think by design it's just fated to be stupid just since he really doesn't get to be very fancy in that matchup. Actually the one thing that would make that matchup manageable for him is if the invincibility on his wizkick started earlier. At any rate I also think Lucas, Lucario, and Bowser have more problems than Ganon in this game.

Falcon however works in singles, but I think requires a very high learning curve. And his matchups against Pikachu, Marth, and Olimar are harder for him than they are for Ganon, who has slightly more obvious ways to counter some of their strategies for good reward.

And I probably said it before, but the Ice Climbers can still GR -> Nana Squall -> regrab. One of the most important things that you can do to the ICs is to make the Solo Squall Hammer knock people away, which will simultaneously solve that problem and give the ICs a better recovery option.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

@rPSI: Another global change? Sounds good, but how it could affect Team Battles?

It really wouldn't. It would just give invinciblity on the first few frame and then go away. It's really only to prevent hand offs (which occur exactly as the opponent is released).

The problem is, how would you code this?

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Just remove nana's grab. You can do it with the correct offsets in PSA.

 

[Mr. Escalator]

A2ZOMG, I said viable, not up to par with everyone else. Ness in vBrawl is on the cusp of being a viable tournament character (as shown by Shaky/FOW) despite several crippling matchups. ROB/Pit/G&W have bad matchups, but each are certainly viable. I think it's definitely feasible for Ganon to place well in BBrawl tournaments. He could definitely be bumped up a bit (though that would make his teams ability even more scary).

Peach is probably right outside top tier, around where G&W is; I don't think she would be a really common tournament character, though, with her skill ceiling and niche popularity. She's really pretty good, but in a similar boat with Game & Watch.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Ice Climbers can't force ground breaks in Bbrawl. You can air break to avoid that which prevents it from being infinite though it might lead to a few regrabs. I was aware of the risks of grab release infinites such as that one (but can you SDI out of that? There are other variations either way) so we covered for that. I have never seen anyone do any Ice Climbers infinites in Bbrawl against someone competently trying to escape, but I do acknowledge it is possible with very perfect timing. Removing them via solutions like BPC's would be possible, but it would be really radical to the point that we aren't very okay with it. Single frame invincibility upon being thrown would be an interesting avenue, but it might be tricky to code though I have some ideas about how. It would involve fighter.pac editing and would potentially be kinda nasty, though we could really rework ICs with that kind of approach.

I wasn't "surprised" by Toon Link's KO power; I disagree. He can kill better than Link in standard Brawl? Sure. Now where on the tier list is Link compared to Toon Link? Toon Link has less KO potential than nearly all the other good characters (he's about on the same level as Pit and R.O.B.) and more than several of the mid and low tiers though obviously not more than the mid and low tiers who are all about power (Bowser, Captain Falcon, Ganondorf). It's below par, but he's still a good character so it's not that bad.

Dps isn't a very practical way to think, as has already been alluded to. After all, in terms of raw dps, Lucas is a really good character in standard Brawl... Thinkaman and I used a three point scale of risk, reward, cost in judging relative value of offensive moves and tactics. Risk is what you stand to lose, the danger you put yourself in by going for it. It is double faceted as it is the maximum loss you face (how much damage they do to you or their chance to kill you) and the likelihood of failure (tactics more likely to work are inherently less risky). Reward is what you stand to gain if you succeed, that damage you do or the potential to kill. Cost is what resources you consume, such as losing a charge on a special move that is time consuming to build or staling a valuable move or something like that. Mostly you can neglect cost as it is only really important for a few characters, and simple risk-reward thinking is something we should all be familiar with. With Ness, attacking with Pk Thunder directly is high risk low reward. Poking with a well timed and spaced bair is about low risk medium reward. Which is a better tactic, and which should be valued more in balancing Ness? That was our kind of thinking.

In any case, I'm glad to hear some people are playing and enjoying Balanced Brawl, including internationals. I hope you guys continue to enjoy the game!

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Ice Climbers can't force ground breaks in Bbrawl. You can air break to avoid that which prevents it from being infinite though it might lead to a few regrabs. I was aware of the risks of grab release infinites such as that one (but can you SDI out of that? There are other variations either way) so we covered for that. I have never seen anyone do any Ice Climbers infinites in Bbrawl against someone competently trying to escape, but I do acknowledge it is possible with very perfect timing. Removing them via solutions like BPC's would be possible, but it would be really radical to the point that we aren't very okay with it.

Why would it be radical? The only real use for Nana's grab is CGs; how often do you get the grab with Nana as opposed to Popo?

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

So, Thinkaman and I discussed that, and I actually specifically wanted to do exactly that very early in development (like before we went public in any way). He convinced me otherwise; the idea is that, regardless of whether we like it, throw gimmicks are a huge part of ICs, and some small degree of cging is probably the ideal we should aim for as opposed to none at all. It's also further noted how unnatural it would be if Nana simply could not throw.

ICs are obviously a problem character since "mostly bad but has an infinite that works on the whole cast" is not really an acceptable character design, and it is our job to take that and make it into something balanced while changing its nature as little as possible. What we released was I feel a good improvement and a reasonable balancing of several interests in the ICs, and while hypothetical improvement is possible, it's doubtless along avenues that are very tricky to implement (such as rPSI's suggestion).

 

[rPSIvysaur]

What ever happened to desynch and grabbing during that BPC? It's taking away another aspect.

All I'm really calling for is coming up with taking away the frame perfect hand off. =/
Now the only way I can see it happening is put a small timer on the first couple frames of hitstun to make invincibility. I guess you could make it activated by being thrown through variables? This one would be a toughie.

 

[A2ZOMG]

What if you made Nana always U-throw after grab? That way the Ice Climbers can still use her grab as a combo option, but the throw shouldn't lead to a real infinite (adjust the ending lag of Nana's U-throw if it really is an issue since the best way the ICs could potentially do an infinite is with footstool at that point).

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I think the trick would be adding hittable type changes (from "normal" to "intangible") to the thrown states. It would require quite a bit of cleverness, and the impact isn't completely obvious (it may have odd behavior with some unique throws that hit a few times, such as Fox's dthrow). It would indeed be very tricky.

 

[Steeler]

i don't see what's wrong with making a free nana smash attack the most powerful grab reward ICs have. that's still obviously quite good and fits into the general character design of 'don't get grabbed when they are together'.

 

[ぱみゅ]

imo, ICs are underrated other than CGs.
Their damage output is REALLY good, their attack speed is pretty good (but punishable), being their lack of range their only problem.

 

[A2ZOMG]

Range problem? Blizzard says hi.

The ICs more important weaknesses are bad grab range and bad recovery. They have a below average air game as well, which really only matters when they are either separated or in KO range.

 

[JOE!]

AA, what I meant was from just a pure damaging standpoint to see what characters have the potential to excel at getting one to kill %'s stupidly fast, and then weigh the risk/reard in with it


Ex: Ike's eruption does a ****-ton of damage fully charged, but requires it to be fully charged, so as a reliable damager it is actually really bad

 

[A2ZOMG]

Honestly most of the cast is just fine at damage and kills. That is, until they run into a stupid matchup that doesn't let them do their job.

And actually Lucas and Lucario are underwhelming because I believe they actually don't do damage and kills as well as the rest of the cast when doing their job.

Lucas has a lot of trouble punishing an escaping opponent for big damage, and he generally doesn't have very practical combos or followups. His strongest kill options are all fairly difficult to land especially in his worst matchups. His damage output is made even more iffy in that a lot of his fairly high damage moves require him to completely land a multihit, most of which don't have reliable setup potential.

Lucario's closeup game is a little too slow to be really good, and he mostly relies on you running into a predictable wall in order to score big damage or a kill. He does actually have a good combo game as well, but actually starting up his combos safely isn't very easy for him, since usually he has to land a random F-air or U-tilt to get his aerial combo game started, while his Jab cancel game, while decent, is a fair bit less threatening.

In the cases of Kirby, Bowser, and Ganon, by design there's a number of characters that effectively have the tools to stop them from doing their job, even though at first glance their movepools are just fine when it comes to damage and KO options.

Kirby is mostly okay but kinda has low reward on his poke options (buff that F-tilt) and is very easy for a number of characters to edgeguard.

Bowser does fine until he gets juggled and edgeguarded, which unfortunately most of the cast does pretty easily to him, while it's harder for him to limit his opponent's options as severely.

Ganondorf fundamentally doesn't work when you have good and consistent options for staying away from his F-tilt and Wizkick and force him to approach in less safe or powerful ways. Fortunately only a few characters actually avoid both those moves easily.

At least that's kinda the way I see it. The way Kirby, Bowser, and Ganon need to be buffed, they still need a new tool somewhere to work around the weakness that some characters exploit too well. The way Lucario and Lucas need to be buffed however is simpler in that one or more of their existing tools could be made to work better with the rest of their moves.

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

It isn't working for me. When I put the SD card with the BBrawl file in, and go to custom stages, it just shows no stages on my wii or the SD card.

How to I fix this?

 

[A2ZOMG]

From what it sounds like, I've had that same problem for a long time, honestly I don't know what causes the Wii to be unable to read the SD card. At least I think that is your problem.

Just keep being persistent, inserting/removing the SD card, and after the SD card starts working, use it more with your Wii.

 

[#HBC | Dark Horse]

No, the wii had read my sd card perfectly when I was moving custom stages.

 

[1338h4x]

What's the extra.pac in Lucas's folder?

 

[ぱみゅ]

IIRC, nothing important. Nothing would happen if you keep/remove it.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I think it's some old file that was supposed to be removed but ended up getting renamed (so it does nothing) and forgotten, some alternate version of Lucas that was tested at some point. Feel free to delete it.

 

[A2ZOMG]

I made a new Ganon build for people to test. Download it from here. http://www.mediafire.com/?00p1bct6jp8k0uz

Comprehensive extra changes:

*Jab duration extended to 7 frames
*8 damage on arm hitboxes of Jab. 10 damage on the furthest hitbox.
*+2 shield damage on Jab weak hitboxes.
*Jab Base from 40 and 30 -> 90, growth from 105 -> 36 and 30 on the weak and strong hitboxes respectively
*Jab Angle from 361 -> 40
*Failed attempt to make Ganon's Dash Attack crossover on block (you can check the PAC on PSA to see what I attempted)
*New normal collision hitboxes identical in location and size to those on the 2nd hit of Ganon's D-smash hit at a 50 degree angle on grounded opponents only
*Special collision hitboxes on the 2nd hit of Ganon's D-smash activate only on aerial opponents
*Damage from 14 -> 15 on close D-smash hitbox
*Ledge attack under 100% now fully invincible to the end of hitbox duration.
*F-throw hitbox base knockback from 30 -> 80, Growth from 100 -> 30


Synopsis:

Ganon's Jab is still a pretty unsafe move, but the knockback change I believe makes it shieldpush a bit better. That's not what the changes are designed to do however. The 7 frame hitbox duration makes Ganon's Jab a much better move at punishing spotdodge on reaction, stopping people from dashing in easily, and serves as a more viable if situational anti-air option. The knockback changes means this move no longer is able to kill at high percents (this Jab is not guaranteed to kill in Super Sudden Death), which serves as a balance function when Ganon is going against lightweights (due to his Flame Choke -> D-tilt -> Jab combo). However this new Jab is MUCH more consistent at creating space and hopefully pushing people offstage for an edgeguard attempt. At 0%, this Jab induces knockdown and if not DIed can push you almost halfway across FD. Generally I believe this is an overall useful improvement that should help Ganon in every matchup.

The change to D-smash is another all round useful buff. The purpose of the change is that it now makes Ganon's D-smash properly push people away on block, giving him a new safer KO and spacing option (the pushback on block is quite good by the way). The unique property of turning around an opponent on hit now only happens when you hit an aerial opponent. However one thing I did not yet get to is the fact Ganon's D-smash actually has trouble linking both hits on a few characters, noteably the Ice Climbers as one example.

I attempted to take the special collision properties of Ganon's D-smash and transfer them to his Dash attack. With no success unfortunately.

The change on F-throw is mainly for use against the Ice Climbers, and to a lesser extent in doubles. The move is generally safer and more consistent at separating the ICs.

And the change on Ganon's ledge attack imo is essential, since one of his weaknesses is being very easy to edgetrap since a well-timed aerial attack beats all of Ganon's getup options at low percents. Even more important when there is a ledge grab rule.

Unfortunately without my envisioned Dash attack buff, I still can't see what Ganon does against the Ice Climbers as an approach. The Jab buff however I believe is good enough to make his matchups against Mario, Peach, and Jiggs more manageable, even if just a little. I personally think that my changes to Jab make the Jab feel more natural. I always think of Ganon's Jab as a move that is meant to keep you away, and the new properties of that move help it do that job much better, and fundamentally should deter people from thinking they can easily get away with spotdodging Ganon and punishing him.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I appreciate the efforts therein, but I'm skeptical of changes. Ganon's jab isn't supposed to be one of his key moves for a few reasons, and stuff like dsmash and dash attack generally would require more... finesse to handle that kind of thing. Fthrow is Ganon's best throw so changing it like that is actually a really huge change in every match-up that seems to have been done far too casually.

Messing with ledge attacks is dangerous business in general. I can't say I've studied them deeply and they may be interesting areas to explore in the future, but that kind of change is a really big deal.

This and an independent conversation I had with rPSI tonight remind me though. What's the level of interest in a Bbrawl 3, and how much data do people have on the real balance of Bbrawl 2? I got some stuff out of MrEsc who had been playing friendlies on Bbrawl all summer and remember Ren holding a single tournament, but in general, I'm not sure how much play it's even seeing which really hampers our ability to balance further.

So basically, bigger issue that maybe warrants discussing. How much are you guys really playing this, and do you have any real stuff to show for it? Thinkaman and I can easily put any replays on youtube if you have stored replays of this so please do make those if you are playing and don't have capture equipment (if you do have capture equipment, obviously you can just do that yourself). If a Bbrawl 3 is going to happen, which such discussions as changes imply, we need to have some real evidence of tiering in Bbrawl 2. Thinkaman and I can't make a fair internal list, and please don't take this the wrong way, but we can't really trust your opinion if you are forming it from reading changes and judging or messing around in training mode since, honestly, we're much better at that kind of analysis than just about anyone else but do know it has real limits. If you have an opinion formed on the basis of real match experience and even better if you have some good replays of Bbrawl 2 being played, it would help tremendously.

Something else that should be understood is that we both really poured an absolute ton of work into Bbrawl 1 and Bbrawl 2, like hundreds of man hours individually each for each release. If we could have done better marketing, I hope you guys understand on that front. I'm really proud of this game and really did enjoy working on it so I'd love to keep going, but at some point, it can't be justified or even done right if people aren't playing, and there's really nothing the two of us can do to foster other people playing the game beyond what we've already done. So, I personally would love to make a Bbrawl 3, and if we did such a thing, you could expect it out sometime near the end of the year as per our usual release schedule. However, it just can't happen if the game isn't being played and even if we could do it well without people playing it grows increasingly hard to justify the hundreds of man hours at that point, and if it's not going to happen, suggestions for changes have fairly limited value.

I do want to keep going, but this should perhaps serve as a necessary reframing of the discussion. Who is playing this game? How often? What have they found in terms of the balance from real play? What's our potential for growth? Sadly Thinkaman and I are really at our limit in terms of pushing this game into more hands and had kinda hoped that, if indeed we found a decent number of people who thought our game was good, they would help it spread (if no one thinks it's good, our game has no reason to spread and we'd be failures, but I don't think that's true).

Another way to read this post is "given the current state of affairs, if you are in support of Bbrawl, I'd suggest focusing on the game as it is".

 

[A2ZOMG]

I did really thorough testing on what I worked on.

The duration change to Ganon's Jab is pretty discreet and mostly should only come up when he needs to punish a spotdodge (something he's fairly inconsistent at), while getting a few extra trades with some aerials helps, since one of his weaknesses is anti-airs.

And Ganon's F-throw buff ONLY comes into play against the Ice Climbers. It's the hitbox that occurs before he actually throws. That hitbox happens to have a 80 degree angle against an opponent not in his grab. In singles, this can only be observed against the Ice Climbers. Against anyone else, his F-throw is not changed at all.

And as for the D-smash, well I explained why I think it works better.

Ganon's ledge attack still isn't exactly good. If you throw out a grounded lingering hitbox, chances are you will clash with it, and be in a more favorable position to get out a move before he can. That's something he definitely doesn't like very much, but I believe this is more fair. Now his ledge attack would be a little too good if it was transcendent, but that isn't the case.

And yeah, I do agree that more people should get onto this. That's partly why I've been trying to keep this thread alive, posting my opinions of whatever comes up to me.

I'll do what I can when I get back to college to spread more interest in this.