"Balancing Marth" the SBR Project

[Shaya]

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=200495

As it would seem the SBR wishes to create a 'patch' for Brawl which balances characters. This does not indicate Melee 2.0; it shows the progression of the metagame of brawl it is now is not balanced like *cough* it was seen to be before releasement in the beginning of the year.

There is a topic for this for 'opinions' and other things in the General Discussion section. This topic should be about what actually would make Marth balanced.

Okay, let's start.

Marth is for a potentially top tier character, seemingly well 'balanced'. The idea of no hard matchups, while the majority of his good matchups are NOT '****' is obviously some idea for balance. i.e. Most characters go even with eachother or there is an equal spread of equal ability between characters.

So does this mean Marth should stay the same in a Brawl hack? Seemingly not.
If other characters were to be 'balanced up', how would Marth maintain his reasonably equal match up spread?

Of course the idea of equal equality is absurd, you can either make Marth suck so he sucks agaisnt everyone, or good so he ***** everyone; there can't be a Marth that is equal to everybody perfectly, most likely ever.

So, if other characters are to supposibly get boosts in their attack range, speed, power or their other individual traits and abilities, what should Marth have changed? Should Marth get less? Or should he be some staple as some believe?

Marth has weaknesses.
He has weak throws, no spammable killing moves, average or worse recovery, to name a few.
Marth's strengths are his 'tip' hurr, aerial attacks that auto cancel, dancing blade, dolphin slash and reasonably good range and start up on many of his attacks.

What makes Marth ****? Dolphin Slash and Dancing Blade. Perhaps fair too, and on some characters his general good range.
What really brings Marth down? A generally 'useless' counter, lag on dair, lag on DS landstun, huge lag on all of his smash attacks.

So, Marth boards, what in your opinion would a Brawl Patched Marth have changed? Is it actually reasonable for Marth to be the staple (i.e all those above him get weakened, all those below him get up'd?).

Let's think if Meta Knight was the staple, well, that's a lot to think about considering -how- good he is. How could Marth ever compete with the recovery? Yes the lag of attacks could be toned down, and the strength could be moved up multiple times, but at what point is it even?
I think it would be cool to see a 50:50 matchup Marth-Meta. But the Marth would have to have Snake attack power with Snake attack cooldown/time. LULZ.

HOW PEOPLE ARE 'DISCUSSING' MOVES:

• Move Name:
• Start up: Higher/Lower [in frames...]
• Cool Down: Higher/Lower [in frames...]
• Damage: Higher/Lower [as base percentages]
• Power: Higher/Lower [people are saying like '10% less powerful', so if the attack kills at 100% normally it would kill at 90%, but if it kills normally at 110% it would change to 99%].
• Range: Longer/Shorter EH.
• Properties: Auto cancelled? Invincibility frames? etc

 

[feardragon64]

Balanced around what point? You can't "balance" without knowing where every other character is going. It's like having a set of numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. You want to "balance" them all to be the same number by adding or subtracting to all of them. Do you want to bring them all down to 1? That would technically be balanced, but 1's a low and potentially boring number, but it's much easier to balance lower potential than higher potential(the metaphor is falling apart I know, stay with it). Maybe you should middle them all out to 10, it might be more fun to have everyone playing around on a god tier but it becomes ridiculous to try and balance it. Obvious solution is to take the middle path at 5, but problems may still present themselves. Again, the metaphor falls apart because this takes each individual number in the set as an individual, unaffected by the others. Unfortunatly, balancing one character imbalances the others.

Talking about balancing a single character for an entire game cannot be done. Everything needs to be discussed as a whole. The most we can do is talk about how changes would affect Marth, not what changes would balance him.

Companies will hire large teams and test, experiment for years before they get this stuff right. Take Starcraft for example, considered to be the most balanced strategy game made. It took over 7 years to balance it by people whose JOBS were to balance it. It's far from being as easy task.

But interesting, I'm down for discussing how Marth can be affected by changes. I'll post again later when my laptop has more than -1% battery....

But ya, the only time the game will be balanced is if we mod the game to have a different ruleset for controller ports and everyone plays the same characters....

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I like the idea. I already posted my thoughs there.

In my opinion Marth should be the character, who's changed the least, since he's the closest character to "perfect" balance imo....I could be wrong her but whatever.

Marths blade should have no sweetspot anymore. I know this is sacreligious but I really think it's too overpowered and the thing that breaks Marth the most. Instead I'd make the sword more balanced, where all spots have the same knockback...On the other hand I'd raise his weight, which is frankly a joke, the way it is now. Grab range or the power of his throws could be buffed too

 

[Steel]

Gheb? Marth's sword overpowered? Eh?


I agree with better grab range (i miss melee's >_>), however. I'm fine with the knockback of them, provides us with some great setups.

 

[Shaya]

NEARLY every character in the game has at least ONE move with different 'hitboxes' depending on where the opponent was hit with the move.

I don't think Marth having his tip is too broken.

I think however, that Marth has good range on a lot of his moves, how does balancing that out not make Marth pretty generic, or nearly every character generic.

A standard point of aiming towards Balance is always best. Hell Smash has nearly always had Mario as the 'Standard' character. But who'd like to have every character balanced to be on par with Mario? Not I.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

That's why I said, that all character should be on par with Marth.

 

[Zankoku]

Keep in mind that the best way to balance things is to buff the rest of the cast rather than nerf one of it, unless a character is so overwhelmingly strong that he has to be nerfed.

 

[feardragon64]

Keep in mind that the best way to balance things is to buff the rest of the cast rather than nerf one of it, unless a character is so overwhelmingly strong that he has to be nerfed.

It's a more favorable way of arguing, but the more power you give to characters the more factors you have to deal with for trying to balance things.

Something that has been bugging me though. Do you guys think having the invincibility frames on ds and dancing blades as the perfect spot dodge punisher and move refresher will make it a bit harder to balance Marth. How can we balance that with other characters?

 

[ZHMT]

I like the idea. I already posted my thoughs there.

In my opinion Marth should be the character, who's changed the least, since he's the closest character to "perfect" balance imo....I could be wrong her but whatever.

Marths blade should have no sweetspot anymore. I know this is sacreligious but I really think it's too overpowered and the thing that breaks Marth the most. Instead I'd make the sword more balanced, where all spots have the same knockback...On the other hand I'd raise his weight, which is frankly a joke, the way it is now. Grab range or the power of his throws could be buffed too

Having a sweetspot is what makes Marth fun imo. Being able to vary your moves depending on your spacing is just amazing. Personally I agree with the weight, grab range/damage tho. A safe ko move would be nice too. ^_^

 

[grandmaster192]

I would really like for Marth to actually have a dash grab worth using. There's no reason it should be that bad.

I'm pretty much happy with Marth the way he is.

 

[∫unk]

I disagree that counter is a weakness or even a bad move at all. In fact it's incredibly useful for conditioning the opponent into certain options.

It's situational, it can't be spammed, but that doesn't stop it from being an amazing move.

If you look at ANY brawl video you will see patterns in the opponents game. Even when you play someone completely new you can start abusing their probable option within the first match. If you've played them before you probably know some of their patterns already.

Obviously they are going to adjust to your counter if they're any good, but now they aren't playing their normal game and you've manipulated them in a certain way to switch up their game.

If you don't counter at least once in a match you are not using Marth's game to the fullest. Counter makes the opponent more wary and less aggressive when you are in a bad position, which makes it easier for you to reset to a neutral position.

As far as the original point of the thread, SBR seems to be wasting time with something that would be incredibly difficult to implement in all Wii's across the world, in addition to being difficult (if not impossible) to find a true balance between all characters.

Banning Metaknight is much easier to implement and execute, and the game will be reasonably balanced (to the point where much more characters are competitively available for tournaments).

 

[HRNUT (Honey Roasted)]

easier tippers and more range on an actual sword not a knife

 

[Freezewish]

More grab range(melee's will do just fine ^_^), and a safer kill move would be benificial. This may be asking a little to much but a higher lift on his dolphin slash would be great thus giving him a slightly better recovery as it would travel farther vertically. Less lag on d-air is also welcomed.

 

[Ulevo]

Keep in mind that the best way to balance things is to buff the rest of the cast rather than nerf one of it, unless a character is so overwhelmingly strong that he has to be nerfed.

I agree with Ankoku. I believe a character like Meta Knight should be the center piece for the balancing patch, where characters should be modified to compete with him, and afterwards if Meta Knight is to be nerfed, it can take place...


Moves that should be altered:

Dolphin Slash: Remove the ground lag upon landing back onto the stage when recovering with Dolphin Slash. Landing upon a floor or platform from DS, I can understand, but otherewise it is poor programming, and really shouldn't exist.

Fair: Return the hitbox functions of Melee. Tippered Fairs keep an opponent stuck in hit stun, but as it stands now, the tips push opponents back to far to follow up with a kill move, such as FSmash. By reveting back to the way it previously worked, enemies will pop up, rather than out, allowing appropriate follow ups.

USmash: Maintain the current tipped hitbox, but return the old lower hitbox around the body from Melee. This allows for follow ups with FSmash, as enemies would tumble to the side if hit by this, and is a great method for setting up KOs or tech chase.

FSmash: Reduce the ending lag, and return it's previous hitbox range.

UTilt: Return it to Melee's hitbox function.

Throws: Increase damage output by about 1 - 2% more.


I'm debating if whether or not returning Marths previous Dair hitbox would be too overpowering for him as a character. Thoughts? If I had my choice, I'd return everything about Melee Marth back excluding maybe Dancing Blade, Dolphin Slash and Counter.

 

[ZHMT]

I'm debating if whether or not returning Marths previous Dair hitbox would be too overpowering for him as a character. Thoughts? If I had my choice, I'd return everything about Melee Marth back excluding maybe Dancing Blade, Dolphin Slash and Counter.

I think that every Marth main wants that. If Melee Marth had Brawl's Dancing blade/Counter/DS and more weight with more damaging throws, he would be more broke then MK. Im not even kidding. His Fsmash was arguably the best in Melee and was safe. Thats I want in Brawl...maybe half the cooldown time (or less) in his fsmash...thats all I want...*cries*

The range of the Fsmash is still good enough that with less cooldown time, youll be able to get a shield up or spot dodge/walk away.

 

[grandmaster192]

LMAO

You can't give Marth his melee **** back, that would be a bit too much. Just think of Marth running off the stage with the melee version of his dair... Broken Marth would be pretty fun though.

 

[Emblem Lord]

Marth is easily one of the most balanced characters in the game.

I don't see any point in changing anything in terms of making him more balanced.

Any changes would just make him significantly weaker or overpowered.

 

[Blaze924]

I don't understand why my C.falcon balance thread was closed and not this one, and why they choose to close a serious thread and not useless joke threads in the falcon boards

 

[SamuraiPanda]

That thread was about a side project that we were considering as a possibility. It is not happening now, nor will it happen any time soon. And we're quite happy with the state of Brawl as it is now; that project had nothing to do with any notion that the game is unbalanced. That is just your assumption, and its wrong.

So stop jumping the gun.