Well, I was asked to make such a thread, and so here I go... This is going to be very long as I just spill everything, for my own organization as much as anything.
Table of Contents
I. Thinkaman's situation [THINK00]
II. General planned changes [GEN00]
III. Things that would be nice but would require coder attention [CODE00]
IV. Character specific stuff that is boring and not well thought out no one here probably cares about [CHARA00]
I. Thinkaman's situation [THINK00]
Since this is a backroom, I suppose I need to start with the most important factor for the state of Bbrawl right now. Namely the state of Thinkaman. I haven't talked to him in nearly a month. He just vanished from the internet. He was on for a while about a week ago, but he didn't respond when I poked at him. I honestly have absolutely no idea what's going on; obviously something personal came up for him that has caused him to suddenly have to de-prioritize all things online and all things smash. I'm planning on going to a St. Louis tournament at the end of the month where I'll probably catch him if I don't catch him otherwise before then. I'm basically doing some work on my own and publicly stalling while I try to figure out what's going on. I should probably just call him (I have his number), but that would be awkward and if he really does have personal issues it would probably be inappropriate.
To be clear, while I've always posted a ton more on the boards, we really were equal partners. We agreed on a lot of stuff, and that all turned out great. We disagreed on some stuff, and generally the more vocal the one disagreeing was the better results we had (the biggest problems we had were when one of us felt bad about something but let the other have his way). I can't stress enough how valuable Thinkaman has been to this project even if from a third party perspective it might not seem that way; internally he probably did a tiny big more than I did for the first release even. I'm saying this back here with the assumption of the utmost confidentiality; I want to control this information hitting the public in such a way so that I make sure things go smoothly when I find out what's going on and what it means for the future. I really don't want to be in this alone so I'm hoping whatever issues there are are just temporary.
That being said, I'm working on continuing development alone, albeit at a deliberately slow pace until I figure out what's going on. I have already ported the project mostly to .pac format; I do need to do a few stage boundary tweaks that should be easy but I've been lazy about them. Otherwise, here are the project priorities, planned changes, and whatnot.
II. General planned changes [GEN00]
-Find a way to port the few remaining frame speed changes away from using the frame speed engine. All that remains are the grab release related changes and the jab lock fix. Removing these fixes all critical errors in Bbrawl during gameplay and is considered an absolute necessity for the next version (well, all it specifically introduces; Sheik can still lock the game with her chain glitch).
-Find a way to port the few conditional modifiers remaining to some other format. There are literally only two which make using the whole engine feel silly, especially since they're both universal. One is the change that removes banana locks, and the other is the change that prevents footstool abuse. I don't have a good plan for these; telling when specific action transitions occur even with PSA logic doesn't seem like it would be easy. Like for action 8d (on the ground tripped, maybe I have the number wrong), I would need to have it send to a different action if "inflicted" with action 8a than action 8a, probably pretty tricky. This is non-critical, but it would be nice just to remove this bulky engine from the code (though I don't know of any bugs it causes).
-Figure out why Bbrawl currently locks up in tournament mode. This mode is essentially worthless (no one has even publicly posted about this issue to my knowledge), but I don't like critical errors at all no matter how they are caused.
-General mechanics changes that I think would benefit every project need to be figured out one way or another. I intended to see if the WBR could be useful for this sort of thing actually. In specific, the following sub-issues are important to Bbrawl...
III. Things that would be nice but would require coder attention [CODE00]
*Ledgegrabs and water entries. Ideally running off the same counter that only resets on being hit or dying (not on just touching the ground, acceptable to reset when transforming into another character), both would have some sort of limit to them. When that limit was exceeded for ledgegrabs, ideally the ledgegrabs would just stop being invincible. When that limit was exceeded for water entries, ideally the water would just no longer "catch" the user and allow itself to be fallen through as though it were air (double ideal if it acts just like melee water a la Jungle Japes and can still push with current and splashes when entered but not be swum in). Much compromise is acceptable here in terms of what mechanics are good enough, but changes are important.
*Investigation into the current models of the very long time based stuff. The two things of concern to me are Wario Waft and Pokemon Trainer stamina. Wario is given incentive to run away and camp in an extreme way just because of the mechanics of Wario Waft, and anyone fighting against the Pokemon Trainer has similar incentive (PT isn't quite as big of a deal as Wario, especially if ledgestalling is weakened). Some tweak to these mechanics to make just running away not such a great idea would probably be good though both mechanics existing as unique mechanics at all does add some flair to the game so just stripping them out is not okay. I don't think R.O.B. laser is a problem in any way.
*Brawl has a few bugs that are rather nasty and could really be done without. The three main ones are Meta Knight's IDC, Sheik's chain glitch, and Ice Climbers fusion. Meta Knight's IDC is so bad it has to be tournament banned everywhere. Sheik's chain glitch is often forgotten, but it can crash the game (!!!) and is generally very non-intuitive and really just a bad bug to exist. Ice Climbers fusion just looks so buggy and can be really broken in some circumstances (like footstooling the opponent to teleport them under the stage!).
*Brawl has a minor bug regarding certain electric hits that causes them to inflict no hitstun. This is only really a problem for Ganon up special which can be fixed by making the last hit an element other than electric, but this bug being fixed for real would do nothing but good really.
*The possibly biggest issue for last is Brawl's messed up system of port priority. Snake vs Snake is 55-45 anyone? I haven't heard of anyone looking into this; if someone has and I missed it let me know. I know Brawl tracks which port the controller is plugged into/the visual port (as in your color of shield) and the "real" port used for port priority situations separately (easy to tell online where everyone seems themselves as p1 but Snake vs Snake still causes no desynchs as one guy is treated like p2). Ideally explosions hitting characters involved in a grab would send both flying, simultaneous transformations would always end simultaneously (even if it forces one guy to wait a while), and sudden death in general would be given a +- one frame leniency to trigger on simultaneous deaths (I think that would fix all port issues on suicides as well as make all suicide moves always trigger sudden death).
[the last few points here kinda fit under II and III together; I doubt coders care about them but they could definitely help if they did]
-Monitor stage hacking developments intently. My ability to develop new code resources basically doesn't exist (sadly), but if there were a better way to handle stage speed changes (to fix a bug on Rumble Falls and Halberd) or to edit stage hazards, breakables HP, the behavior of a few very unusual stage objects, or "events", it would really open things up. I consider this really important, but unless one of the real programmers is interested in looking more into some of this stuff, I can't really do much of anything.
-Investigate the most interesting SSE stages. I honestly am not too keen on adding SSE stages as they stand and think the ability to tweak stages more heavily is needed to really realize SSE stage potential. By this I mean the ability to make moving and transforming stages mostly; SSE stages won't fit into the stage balance of the game well unless they can be dynamic in the ways the current stages are.
IV. Character specific stuff that is boring and not well thought out no one here probably cares about [CHARA00]
Mario: Usmash, dsmash, and bthrow are getting nerfed, but I don't want to nerf them much (Thinkaman agrees on this plan). Personally, I want to look to improving the dtilt buff a bit to make it more generally useful. Overall, Mario is probably nerfed in the next version, but it shouldn't be that bad.
Luigi: I don't have any plans to change him. I don't think he needs changing. It is important to make sure the exact behavior of the current banana lock fix remains for the sake of his dash attack.
Peach: She needs buffed, but I'm not quite sure how yet. Extreme care needs to be taken with her in light of her potential to run over Olimar and Ice Climbers if overbuffed.
Bowser: Most people seem to want to buff him, still think he's slept on a bit. Continuing to follow the current model of a lot of small buffs probably is going to apply in any case.
Donkey Kong: He's fine, though he does require some specific attention with his grab release situations (grab escapes being unsafe in general is fine, but DK's cargo carry needs careful balance to be safe against everyone on break while not leading to a cg against Ness and Lucas). If Ganon gets a "fixed" fair, DK probably should too as a form of parity (though it barely matters for DK).
Diddy Kong: He's a non-issue of a character.
Yoshi: The unpopular grounding element is going from his fair, but he needs something else. His shield isn't changing period; this is going to be tricky and ideally something that won't be a part of just encouraging Yoshi to continue to camp his heart out. I think I'm going to test a few things on this route... Also, Yoshi has a stalling technique in Bbrawl with Egg Roll against walls that would ideally be fixed, but I consider it low priority.
Wario: Wario Waft being changed would make him perfect IMO. He has a change to make his dthrow less useless than in the current release though still not a cg (can't believe no one complained about it). I know Thinkaman wants to nerf him more; I'm sure that will be a fun dialogue.
Link: Link is a decent paragon of balance really. Maybe his arrows could be a bit more constant in terms of knockback; I intend to look into that.
Zelda & Sheik: The pair works mostly fine now; I know Thinkaman regards them very highly in Bbrawl and doesn't really want to change them. The file replacement model of transformations is probably all the buff they need. Sheik is one of the characters who has linking problems in jabs, but it's only internal to her stupidly damaging rapid jab so I think it's not changing.
Ganondorf: Everyone who cares about this character doesn't actually like what's unique about him and loves to whine. Figuring out PR on this guy would be a great thing. In terms of real gameplay changes, he's a really delicate case who probably needs some buffing. Speed changes are mostly out of the question, though I would like to see how "fixing" his fair would work out.
Toon Link: I have a new and slightly improved grounded Spin Attack that I'm rather happy about. I don't think Toon Link needs much.
Samus: She is very polarizing right now, and it's not trivial to fix. I think her keep-away game, even though it's her specialty, does need nerfed a bit. I'm not quite sure how yet though; her zair is the biggest problem but is one of those moves that is just so dangerous to change in any way. To compensate, I'm almost definitely making her jab link which is a buff that should make her a bit more well rounded.
Zero Suit Samus: I cleaned up the implementation on her fsmash, but I know this character so poorly I can't do much with her. The one thing I know for sure is that her jab linking is out of the question, but making her jab3 somehow better while it still doesn't link could be interesting.
Pit: He needs buffs in a serious way. The original model of buffing his less camp-oriented moves probably still applies; I'll probably be looking into his tilts and aerials mostly here.
Ice Climbers: I hate them and everything they do for balancing. They're nearly impossible to assess as they stand, and they are certain to be the last character handled in any case.
R.O.B.: dthrow definitely needs changing, but otherwise we got him about right. Making dthrow work kinda like it currently does but not quite as well will probably make R.O.B. perfect.
Kirby: I need to spend some serious time looking into his powers and probably changing more of them; that could take 100 years like porting the current changes did (Kirby's .pac is super poorly documented when it comes to "which power is which", and I don't know how well Open SA 2 can find hitbox data for Kirby power projectiles [haven't checked yet]). Kirby's rapid jab should link from the rest of his jab combo, but rapid jab needs to be less stupid (easier to SDI).
Meta Knight: I really like the current MK; he feels well balanced. A few little things mentioned previously probably make him perfect.
King Dedede: He has laughable jab linking issues, but I'm not sure if fixing them is a good idea. He's mostly fine now and probably one of the best characters.
Olimar: Jab linking issues that definitely aren't changing exist on him, and he's a general problem character in terms of polarization that I think is actually on a good path. Making his usmash not chain so well on Luigi's Mansion and Skyworld is a big point here, and more work on trying to even out his matchups with the slow guys would be nice though maybe too difficult.
Fox: Fox is almost certainly low right now in Bbrawl though I always wonder about him... In any case, my current buff plan is fixing his jab linking issues; for a character like Fox, that could be a big deal.
Falco: Falco is nearly perfect right now IMO. If there were a way to prevent the alleged run-away tactic on Japes, it would be nice.
Wolf: He needs buffing, but I don't have a solid plan right now. I think a Bowserish style of buffing where a few of his smaller moves receive a little help would be a good plan.
Captain Falcon: I still don't think he's that great, but there are limits to what I can do. Making his jabs link better would definitely help him out in a positive way, and there are smart sounding suggestions to look into refining his dtilt a bit more.
Pikachu: Pikachu really got the short end of the stick in the first release; I'd like to fix that. Pikachu's dtilt getitng a bit of a buff as an anti-Marth measure would make some sense; I have it on very good information that Pikachu's worst matchup in Bbrawl is Marth who is a balance problem himself. Pikachu might even justify a little bit more after that, but he's not a bad character so there's a careful balance here.
Pokemon Trainer: Currently Ivysaur sees improved mechanics on Bullet Seed (old damage on first hit but first hit inflicts no hitlag) and the lag added to Vine Whip only applying in the air (the way it applied on the ground was awkward and made it mostly useless that way). The new transformation stuff helps him. Charaizard needs some jab linking attention. All that put together probably makes PT gold.
Lucario: Buffing him more is really out of the question; we were really generous to Lucario perhaps inappropriately. I'm thinking of leaving him alone.
Jigglypuff: Currently I've revoked the ultimately overthought and underuseful pummel buff and the (according to Thinkaman) polarizing nair buff. That leaves the WIP Jigglypuff just obviously the worst character or close to it. Personally, I want to look into adding some shield damage to dair and seeing what we can make happen there, but I know that scares Thinkaman. This is his character so I'm slowplaying looking into this one.
Marth: It's no secret he's top tier in the current release, and it would probably be ridiculous to just leave him alone. That being said, he's such a well-designed character that nerfs feel almost wrong. Slightly nerfing the damage on Dancing Blade would make sense as a starting place, but I feel a bit of a distaste messing with Marth and real care needs to be taken.
Ike: I think the current Ike is great. His dsmash is currently needing looked into (the original tweak to it was poorly done and had inaccurate documentation). Changing either of his f/b throws causes wall infinite issues (even if just bthrow is "restored", it gives him general wall infinites on just Bowser).
Ness: I want to give him a little something more since I get a feeling he's low, but I'm sure Thinkaman will have some objection. We'll have to see. The changes I envision would be small tweaks to pinpoint whatever his worst matchups are. Adding some shield damage to dash attack could be fun too; I always liked shieldstabbing with that in melee, and I think it would fit Brawl Ness's style well.
Lucas: I swear people don't get this character... Anyway, I'm thinking of making his dtilt trip with every part of the hitbox and not just the tip of the foot; that would make it a bit more practical in real-match situations. Otherwise Lucas is currently pretty good though his AAA recovery being so ridiculously technical is kinda silly though outside of the scope of this project to fix.
Mr. Game & Watch: My character and patent favorite, the idea of nerfing him pains me, but I feel like it's probably inevitable. He's a very delicate case; so much of his general quality rides on that turtle... it would be too easy to ruin him by changing it for the worse. His jab has linking issues, but fixing that is probably going the wrong way on him. I really don't know what to do with him; I think he's close to where he needs to be but just somehow needs to be tweaked so the very low range guys don't struggle so much.
Snake: This guy could use some smoothing out. On the minus side, his ftilt needs more nerfing, what people are saying about dthrow needing nerfed really makes a lot of sense (though they overblow the problems, they are not completely wrong about things), and his psychic grenade glitch should probably be fixed if possible (no idea if reasonably possible). On the plus side, his jab should probably fully link so jab cancel to ftilt doesn't dominate his jab game so much and to not just make him a case of throwing the nerf stick at him. He probably needs some other little pluses if I go so far as to nerf all that too; he's a difficult case due to how extreme of a character he is (no one understands how delicate Snake is because he's good).
Sonic: I have a killer new dtilt set up for him that should really do a lot to address his problems. After thorough testing, if he needs more, such will be looked at.
As per this topic, anyone who has basically anything to add is welcome, though I don't expect much feedback here, mostly made this topic so I can keep everything together and anyone who takes interest can know what's going on. Anyone who takes a coding interest in anything I've mentioned is very welcome; I think some of this stuff would be helpful for Brawl+ and other projects too not just Bbrawl.
Table of Contents
I. Thinkaman's situation [THINK00]
II. General planned changes [GEN00]
III. Things that would be nice but would require coder attention [CODE00]
IV. Character specific stuff that is boring and not well thought out no one here probably cares about [CHARA00]
I. Thinkaman's situation [THINK00]
Since this is a backroom, I suppose I need to start with the most important factor for the state of Bbrawl right now. Namely the state of Thinkaman. I haven't talked to him in nearly a month. He just vanished from the internet. He was on for a while about a week ago, but he didn't respond when I poked at him. I honestly have absolutely no idea what's going on; obviously something personal came up for him that has caused him to suddenly have to de-prioritize all things online and all things smash. I'm planning on going to a St. Louis tournament at the end of the month where I'll probably catch him if I don't catch him otherwise before then. I'm basically doing some work on my own and publicly stalling while I try to figure out what's going on. I should probably just call him (I have his number), but that would be awkward and if he really does have personal issues it would probably be inappropriate.
To be clear, while I've always posted a ton more on the boards, we really were equal partners. We agreed on a lot of stuff, and that all turned out great. We disagreed on some stuff, and generally the more vocal the one disagreeing was the better results we had (the biggest problems we had were when one of us felt bad about something but let the other have his way). I can't stress enough how valuable Thinkaman has been to this project even if from a third party perspective it might not seem that way; internally he probably did a tiny big more than I did for the first release even. I'm saying this back here with the assumption of the utmost confidentiality; I want to control this information hitting the public in such a way so that I make sure things go smoothly when I find out what's going on and what it means for the future. I really don't want to be in this alone so I'm hoping whatever issues there are are just temporary.
That being said, I'm working on continuing development alone, albeit at a deliberately slow pace until I figure out what's going on. I have already ported the project mostly to .pac format; I do need to do a few stage boundary tweaks that should be easy but I've been lazy about them. Otherwise, here are the project priorities, planned changes, and whatnot.
II. General planned changes [GEN00]
-Find a way to port the few remaining frame speed changes away from using the frame speed engine. All that remains are the grab release related changes and the jab lock fix. Removing these fixes all critical errors in Bbrawl during gameplay and is considered an absolute necessity for the next version (well, all it specifically introduces; Sheik can still lock the game with her chain glitch).
-Find a way to port the few conditional modifiers remaining to some other format. There are literally only two which make using the whole engine feel silly, especially since they're both universal. One is the change that removes banana locks, and the other is the change that prevents footstool abuse. I don't have a good plan for these; telling when specific action transitions occur even with PSA logic doesn't seem like it would be easy. Like for action 8d (on the ground tripped, maybe I have the number wrong), I would need to have it send to a different action if "inflicted" with action 8a than action 8a, probably pretty tricky. This is non-critical, but it would be nice just to remove this bulky engine from the code (though I don't know of any bugs it causes).
-Figure out why Bbrawl currently locks up in tournament mode. This mode is essentially worthless (no one has even publicly posted about this issue to my knowledge), but I don't like critical errors at all no matter how they are caused.
-General mechanics changes that I think would benefit every project need to be figured out one way or another. I intended to see if the WBR could be useful for this sort of thing actually. In specific, the following sub-issues are important to Bbrawl...
III. Things that would be nice but would require coder attention [CODE00]
*Ledgegrabs and water entries. Ideally running off the same counter that only resets on being hit or dying (not on just touching the ground, acceptable to reset when transforming into another character), both would have some sort of limit to them. When that limit was exceeded for ledgegrabs, ideally the ledgegrabs would just stop being invincible. When that limit was exceeded for water entries, ideally the water would just no longer "catch" the user and allow itself to be fallen through as though it were air (double ideal if it acts just like melee water a la Jungle Japes and can still push with current and splashes when entered but not be swum in). Much compromise is acceptable here in terms of what mechanics are good enough, but changes are important.
*Investigation into the current models of the very long time based stuff. The two things of concern to me are Wario Waft and Pokemon Trainer stamina. Wario is given incentive to run away and camp in an extreme way just because of the mechanics of Wario Waft, and anyone fighting against the Pokemon Trainer has similar incentive (PT isn't quite as big of a deal as Wario, especially if ledgestalling is weakened). Some tweak to these mechanics to make just running away not such a great idea would probably be good though both mechanics existing as unique mechanics at all does add some flair to the game so just stripping them out is not okay. I don't think R.O.B. laser is a problem in any way.
*Brawl has a few bugs that are rather nasty and could really be done without. The three main ones are Meta Knight's IDC, Sheik's chain glitch, and Ice Climbers fusion. Meta Knight's IDC is so bad it has to be tournament banned everywhere. Sheik's chain glitch is often forgotten, but it can crash the game (!!!) and is generally very non-intuitive and really just a bad bug to exist. Ice Climbers fusion just looks so buggy and can be really broken in some circumstances (like footstooling the opponent to teleport them under the stage!).
*Brawl has a minor bug regarding certain electric hits that causes them to inflict no hitstun. This is only really a problem for Ganon up special which can be fixed by making the last hit an element other than electric, but this bug being fixed for real would do nothing but good really.
*The possibly biggest issue for last is Brawl's messed up system of port priority. Snake vs Snake is 55-45 anyone? I haven't heard of anyone looking into this; if someone has and I missed it let me know. I know Brawl tracks which port the controller is plugged into/the visual port (as in your color of shield) and the "real" port used for port priority situations separately (easy to tell online where everyone seems themselves as p1 but Snake vs Snake still causes no desynchs as one guy is treated like p2). Ideally explosions hitting characters involved in a grab would send both flying, simultaneous transformations would always end simultaneously (even if it forces one guy to wait a while), and sudden death in general would be given a +- one frame leniency to trigger on simultaneous deaths (I think that would fix all port issues on suicides as well as make all suicide moves always trigger sudden death).
[the last few points here kinda fit under II and III together; I doubt coders care about them but they could definitely help if they did]
-Monitor stage hacking developments intently. My ability to develop new code resources basically doesn't exist (sadly), but if there were a better way to handle stage speed changes (to fix a bug on Rumble Falls and Halberd) or to edit stage hazards, breakables HP, the behavior of a few very unusual stage objects, or "events", it would really open things up. I consider this really important, but unless one of the real programmers is interested in looking more into some of this stuff, I can't really do much of anything.
-Investigate the most interesting SSE stages. I honestly am not too keen on adding SSE stages as they stand and think the ability to tweak stages more heavily is needed to really realize SSE stage potential. By this I mean the ability to make moving and transforming stages mostly; SSE stages won't fit into the stage balance of the game well unless they can be dynamic in the ways the current stages are.
IV. Character specific stuff that is boring and not well thought out no one here probably cares about [CHARA00]
Mario: Usmash, dsmash, and bthrow are getting nerfed, but I don't want to nerf them much (Thinkaman agrees on this plan). Personally, I want to look to improving the dtilt buff a bit to make it more generally useful. Overall, Mario is probably nerfed in the next version, but it shouldn't be that bad.
Luigi: I don't have any plans to change him. I don't think he needs changing. It is important to make sure the exact behavior of the current banana lock fix remains for the sake of his dash attack.
Peach: She needs buffed, but I'm not quite sure how yet. Extreme care needs to be taken with her in light of her potential to run over Olimar and Ice Climbers if overbuffed.
Bowser: Most people seem to want to buff him, still think he's slept on a bit. Continuing to follow the current model of a lot of small buffs probably is going to apply in any case.
Donkey Kong: He's fine, though he does require some specific attention with his grab release situations (grab escapes being unsafe in general is fine, but DK's cargo carry needs careful balance to be safe against everyone on break while not leading to a cg against Ness and Lucas). If Ganon gets a "fixed" fair, DK probably should too as a form of parity (though it barely matters for DK).
Diddy Kong: He's a non-issue of a character.
Yoshi: The unpopular grounding element is going from his fair, but he needs something else. His shield isn't changing period; this is going to be tricky and ideally something that won't be a part of just encouraging Yoshi to continue to camp his heart out. I think I'm going to test a few things on this route... Also, Yoshi has a stalling technique in Bbrawl with Egg Roll against walls that would ideally be fixed, but I consider it low priority.
Wario: Wario Waft being changed would make him perfect IMO. He has a change to make his dthrow less useless than in the current release though still not a cg (can't believe no one complained about it). I know Thinkaman wants to nerf him more; I'm sure that will be a fun dialogue.
Link: Link is a decent paragon of balance really. Maybe his arrows could be a bit more constant in terms of knockback; I intend to look into that.
Zelda & Sheik: The pair works mostly fine now; I know Thinkaman regards them very highly in Bbrawl and doesn't really want to change them. The file replacement model of transformations is probably all the buff they need. Sheik is one of the characters who has linking problems in jabs, but it's only internal to her stupidly damaging rapid jab so I think it's not changing.
Ganondorf: Everyone who cares about this character doesn't actually like what's unique about him and loves to whine. Figuring out PR on this guy would be a great thing. In terms of real gameplay changes, he's a really delicate case who probably needs some buffing. Speed changes are mostly out of the question, though I would like to see how "fixing" his fair would work out.
Toon Link: I have a new and slightly improved grounded Spin Attack that I'm rather happy about. I don't think Toon Link needs much.
Samus: She is very polarizing right now, and it's not trivial to fix. I think her keep-away game, even though it's her specialty, does need nerfed a bit. I'm not quite sure how yet though; her zair is the biggest problem but is one of those moves that is just so dangerous to change in any way. To compensate, I'm almost definitely making her jab link which is a buff that should make her a bit more well rounded.
Zero Suit Samus: I cleaned up the implementation on her fsmash, but I know this character so poorly I can't do much with her. The one thing I know for sure is that her jab linking is out of the question, but making her jab3 somehow better while it still doesn't link could be interesting.
Pit: He needs buffs in a serious way. The original model of buffing his less camp-oriented moves probably still applies; I'll probably be looking into his tilts and aerials mostly here.
Ice Climbers: I hate them and everything they do for balancing. They're nearly impossible to assess as they stand, and they are certain to be the last character handled in any case.
R.O.B.: dthrow definitely needs changing, but otherwise we got him about right. Making dthrow work kinda like it currently does but not quite as well will probably make R.O.B. perfect.
Kirby: I need to spend some serious time looking into his powers and probably changing more of them; that could take 100 years like porting the current changes did (Kirby's .pac is super poorly documented when it comes to "which power is which", and I don't know how well Open SA 2 can find hitbox data for Kirby power projectiles [haven't checked yet]). Kirby's rapid jab should link from the rest of his jab combo, but rapid jab needs to be less stupid (easier to SDI).
Meta Knight: I really like the current MK; he feels well balanced. A few little things mentioned previously probably make him perfect.
King Dedede: He has laughable jab linking issues, but I'm not sure if fixing them is a good idea. He's mostly fine now and probably one of the best characters.
Olimar: Jab linking issues that definitely aren't changing exist on him, and he's a general problem character in terms of polarization that I think is actually on a good path. Making his usmash not chain so well on Luigi's Mansion and Skyworld is a big point here, and more work on trying to even out his matchups with the slow guys would be nice though maybe too difficult.
Fox: Fox is almost certainly low right now in Bbrawl though I always wonder about him... In any case, my current buff plan is fixing his jab linking issues; for a character like Fox, that could be a big deal.
Falco: Falco is nearly perfect right now IMO. If there were a way to prevent the alleged run-away tactic on Japes, it would be nice.
Wolf: He needs buffing, but I don't have a solid plan right now. I think a Bowserish style of buffing where a few of his smaller moves receive a little help would be a good plan.
Captain Falcon: I still don't think he's that great, but there are limits to what I can do. Making his jabs link better would definitely help him out in a positive way, and there are smart sounding suggestions to look into refining his dtilt a bit more.
Pikachu: Pikachu really got the short end of the stick in the first release; I'd like to fix that. Pikachu's dtilt getitng a bit of a buff as an anti-Marth measure would make some sense; I have it on very good information that Pikachu's worst matchup in Bbrawl is Marth who is a balance problem himself. Pikachu might even justify a little bit more after that, but he's not a bad character so there's a careful balance here.
Pokemon Trainer: Currently Ivysaur sees improved mechanics on Bullet Seed (old damage on first hit but first hit inflicts no hitlag) and the lag added to Vine Whip only applying in the air (the way it applied on the ground was awkward and made it mostly useless that way). The new transformation stuff helps him. Charaizard needs some jab linking attention. All that put together probably makes PT gold.
Lucario: Buffing him more is really out of the question; we were really generous to Lucario perhaps inappropriately. I'm thinking of leaving him alone.
Jigglypuff: Currently I've revoked the ultimately overthought and underuseful pummel buff and the (according to Thinkaman) polarizing nair buff. That leaves the WIP Jigglypuff just obviously the worst character or close to it. Personally, I want to look into adding some shield damage to dair and seeing what we can make happen there, but I know that scares Thinkaman. This is his character so I'm slowplaying looking into this one.
Marth: It's no secret he's top tier in the current release, and it would probably be ridiculous to just leave him alone. That being said, he's such a well-designed character that nerfs feel almost wrong. Slightly nerfing the damage on Dancing Blade would make sense as a starting place, but I feel a bit of a distaste messing with Marth and real care needs to be taken.
Ike: I think the current Ike is great. His dsmash is currently needing looked into (the original tweak to it was poorly done and had inaccurate documentation). Changing either of his f/b throws causes wall infinite issues (even if just bthrow is "restored", it gives him general wall infinites on just Bowser).
Ness: I want to give him a little something more since I get a feeling he's low, but I'm sure Thinkaman will have some objection. We'll have to see. The changes I envision would be small tweaks to pinpoint whatever his worst matchups are. Adding some shield damage to dash attack could be fun too; I always liked shieldstabbing with that in melee, and I think it would fit Brawl Ness's style well.
Lucas: I swear people don't get this character... Anyway, I'm thinking of making his dtilt trip with every part of the hitbox and not just the tip of the foot; that would make it a bit more practical in real-match situations. Otherwise Lucas is currently pretty good though his AAA recovery being so ridiculously technical is kinda silly though outside of the scope of this project to fix.
Mr. Game & Watch: My character and patent favorite, the idea of nerfing him pains me, but I feel like it's probably inevitable. He's a very delicate case; so much of his general quality rides on that turtle... it would be too easy to ruin him by changing it for the worse. His jab has linking issues, but fixing that is probably going the wrong way on him. I really don't know what to do with him; I think he's close to where he needs to be but just somehow needs to be tweaked so the very low range guys don't struggle so much.
Snake: This guy could use some smoothing out. On the minus side, his ftilt needs more nerfing, what people are saying about dthrow needing nerfed really makes a lot of sense (though they overblow the problems, they are not completely wrong about things), and his psychic grenade glitch should probably be fixed if possible (no idea if reasonably possible). On the plus side, his jab should probably fully link so jab cancel to ftilt doesn't dominate his jab game so much and to not just make him a case of throwing the nerf stick at him. He probably needs some other little pluses if I go so far as to nerf all that too; he's a difficult case due to how extreme of a character he is (no one understands how delicate Snake is because he's good).
Sonic: I have a killer new dtilt set up for him that should really do a lot to address his problems. After thorough testing, if he needs more, such will be looked at.
As per this topic, anyone who has basically anything to add is welcome, though I don't expect much feedback here, mostly made this topic so I can keep everything together and anyone who takes interest can know what's going on. Anyone who takes a coding interest in anything I've mentioned is very welcome; I think some of this stuff would be helpful for Brawl+ and other projects too not just Bbrawl.
