Brawl+ 5.0 RC1 Tactical Discussion Thread

[Myst007_teh_newb]

Don't we still have the striking system implemented in tourneys so that both players end up on a stage that both feel is fair? If that's the case still, then the distinction between neutrals and counterpicks is arbitrary.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Yes, but this way we don't have to go through the entire stage list when we strike stages. Brawl+ tourneys take long enough as is.

 

[leafgreen386]

smk, im curious about your sig...

/offtopic

You'll just have to stay curious then =p

So...how about stages? Do we want/need a revamp of the system?

No, not really.

But what about getting rid of the distinction between neutral and counterpick, and having all legal stages (bar the struck ones) available for a random select for the first stage choice? Stages will always have characters that have advantages or disadvantages on them, what makes Smashville more neutral than Pictochat? Why should the flat stages be enshrined, even when some characters absolutely destroy other characters on these so-called fair stages?

The random button is great for friendlies, but the stage strike system is really the best method for determining the first stage of a tourney match. Clearly the "neutral" stages aren't really that neutral, otherwise we wouldn't have some "neutrals" greatly favoring certain characters. When you have stages as vastly different as FD and WW both on random select, you can't really guarantee that the first stage is going to be "neutral" for your character. However, you have a much greater degree of control over what stage gets selected when you're using a stage strike system, ensuring you get rid of at least your worst couple of stages.

Then there's just the whole logistics of it all. Having 20something stages to pick from, where each player gets 3-5 strikes, and the remaining stages are then placed on random select... you don't see the potential problems with this? Random select is a method used for its speed in getting a match started (you both declare your stage bans and then hit random... done), whereas stage striking is a method used for its fairness in getting a match started. You're combining the two methods to get the worst of both worlds.

Although I could see the number of stages each player is allowed to ban rising as more stages are made legal, there is no reason to combine the counterpick and first stage select systems like this.

 

[Machiavelli.CF]

are the onett changes that ppl talked about...do-able atm?
speed up and the boundry mods?

 

[Perfect Chaos]

Altering stage speed and death boundaries have been possible for quite some time.

 

[GHNeko]

I already did it. My Onett has 175% speed with increased bounderies.

I cant wall lock with Marth more than 6-8 seconds before another a car comes. lmao

I cant blastzone camp because of the increased frequency of the cars as well.

Stage is totally CP worthy imo. Might need a slow down to 166%, but I think its okay as is.

 

[Mattnumbers]

You guys should patch it in; I don't see any real reason to delay changes to stages to make them CP's, it doesn't really change the metagame.

 

[Machiavelli.CF]

You guys should patch it in; I don't see any real reason to delay changes to stages to make them CP's, it doesn't really change the metagame.

it should help it, with a completely new unique stage in

ghnecko, download? :o (or text or w/e)
i want!


ive known its been possible for a hwile but didnt know if its been done yet

 

[GHNeko]

I also pushed Mario Circuit to 175%.

Holy **** that stage is hectic, but organized. And you cant blast zone camp very well due to there being two levels to stand on near the blast zone, but one of them is constantly being fludded by cars. @_@

 

[DarkDragoon]

I also pushed Mario Circuit to 175%.

Holy **** that stage is hectic, but organized. And you cant blast zone camp very well due to there being two levels to stand on near the blast zone, but one of them is constantly being fludded by cars. @_@

Dude. Imagine the stage at like, 10000%. Cars constantly flooding both tracks. Lololol.

These speed increases sound cool...but I can see how they could cause problems too...

When stages are bad they tend to be bad even after our first problem disappears.
-DD

 

[GHNeko]

leaf doesnt think a speed up is the way to go. I think otherwise. Only way is to get opinions. :V

 

[DarkDragoon]

leaf doesnt think a speed up is the way to go. I think otherwise. Only way is to get opinions. :V

Well until we can model hack and make it so people can fall off the stages...then speed-up really seems the only viable way to limit the problems we currently have with the stage.

I see how it fixes Onett, but the Mario Kart stage's dual campsites kinda aren't effected by the speedup...they're just limited to a single campsite on both sides...which is no different than Onett, or worse because people are forces to be on the same level with constantly flooding cars and the forced onto one side or another by the other road.

Thus Mario Kart is another example of a stage that has more problems the more you try to fix it.
-DD

 

[Mattnumbers]

I like the idea of Onett, but does the Car come at set intervals or randomly? It would be much better if it only appeared at a set interval.

MK I'm not sure about, I think it would need more changes in order to be legal.

 

[Machiavelli.CF]

tehre should be pretty much no warning for the car.. ppl on the boundry will eat it bad lmao. XD
but thats not possible i think... unless ya made the /\ invisable
________________________________________/ ! \

 

[RyokoYaksa]

Ideally there should not be any counters in the final version of Brawl+.

It's not competitive as there is no way to know for sure what characters you will be facing at the tournaments in your future. If there are counters, it comes down to if you are unlucky enough run into one of them, which is a luck factor and thus bad for competitive play.

Additionally, you should be able to pick any character and still do well, a character having a bunch of counters doesn't matter if you don't happen to main any of them. It's not a good balancing point to have counters balanced by them being countered themselves.

EXCEPT, in some cases, where everyone has the same chance of getting any given result, which IS fair, but in itself removes skill from the game.

You should be mentioning the luck factor being the double-blind pick at the start of a set because, ideally, one should be familiar with as many characters and matchups as possible to avoid being countered themselves. This doesn't work at the initial CSS session if you're also fighting someone who as great with all characters as you are.

I just find it odd that you would ignore that mastery of multiple characters so that you would not be unprepared for unfavorable matches to not be a skill based factor that you can mitigate.

 

[Mattnumbers]

The way I see it, time spent practicing should be a factor of skill, and if you spend your time practicing a character that happens to have someone counter them in a tourney in your future, that means that you just spent all that time for nothing. Because of this, people will go with the characters that don't have any counters to be safe and make sure they do not lose practice time spent.

Additionally, having an disadvantage in a match because a character counters you is just as bad as having a disadvantage due to an item spawning next to them.

In the end, the goal of competitive play is to have an even match where the outcome is determined by pure skill. Having a character with a large natural advantage over you means that it isn't a completely fair match.

Also, I would argue that the game should make you seek to perfect one character rather than become decent with them all, but that's largely subjective.

 

[thesage]

Nearly every character in every good fighting game has some sort of counter.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Actually no, most high tier characters do not have anything more than soft counters, which aren't what I'm talking about.

Some do, but really, most don't have anything worse than 40:60, and they very rarely have worse than 35:65.

I will go get data for you if I really need to, I'm kinda tired though.

 

[RyokoYaksa]

The way I see it, time spent practicing should be a factor of skill, and if you spend your time practicing a character that happens to have someone counter them in a tourney in your future, that means that you just spent all that time for nothing. Because of this, people will go with the characters that don't have any counters to be safe and make sure they do not lose practice time spent.

Additionally, having an disadvantage in a match because a character counters you is just as bad as having a disadvantage due to an item spawning next to them.

In the end, the goal of competitive play is to have an even match where the outcome is determined by pure skill. Having a character with a large natural advantage over you means that it isn't a completely fair match.

Also, I would argue that the game should make you seek to perfect one character rather than become decent with them all, but that's largely subjective.

Learning characters in this game is really not hard at all if you've ever spent time playing other competitive fighters where learning curves were high and any particular action or combo required highly specific input strings. B+ is ridiculously easy by comparison and time spent practicing whatever skill ceiling your character easily reaches is just as well or better spent familiarizing yourself with other characters so you become aware of what they can do in general so as not to be surprised by their strengths. You would also be able to use that knowledge against those who don't play as them or fight against them. No amount of practice on your own will help you "play smarter" overall and relinquish the character fanboy mindset.

Having a disadvantage because a character counters you can easily be attributed to bad decision making skills long before being attributed to luck. Even in the jack-of-all-trades scenario I mentioned, you would go with a character who has as few skewed match ups as possible to send out first. A character that is least likely to ever get countered hard, but also has a lack of counter ability themselves. This is the same concept behind a starter pokemon in your pokemon team. This is unavoidable. There's also a difference between an item popping up next to your opponent and the same item popping up next to your opponent when you have advance timing, preparation, and your own "items" to pull.

If the goal of a competitive play is to be won by pure skill, then you don't play video games with a high number of variables. You play one-on-one sports, or board games like chess. It's fundamentally impossible to make 39+ odd characters even with one another yet unique, and there's absolutely no reason to assume we're any more capable at breaking this mold even if we were a paid, fully resourced development team.

If you think perfecting one character only is ever a good decision for your competitive fighter career, then you play a top tier character with no bad matchups whatsoever while also having the highest number of practical advantageous matchups. This game isn't supposed to cater to that either, though. I don't see how it's disagreeable that it in fact takes "more skill" to be great with multiple characters, and that players with more skill should be the players that win more often.

 

[iLink]

Sagat from Sf4 and V-13 from Blazblue say hi to thesage

 

[Shadic]

Sagat from Sf4 and V-13 from Blazblue say hi to thesage

Nearly every character in every good fighting game has some sort of counter.

As for counters, I'd prefer to not have any matches at anything worse than 65-35, but it would be acceptable. I think it's unfair when characters are looking at 80-20 counters though, especially when other characters who don't have such hard matchups are viable against all of the cast.

 

[thesage]

Sagat from Sf4 and V-13 from Blazblue say hi to thesage

Old Sagat from SF2 and ssb64 Pikachu also say hi to me.

SSBM Fox is also a contender since some people think Fox vs. Falco and Shiek are even. =/

 

[shanus]

I also pushed Mario Circuit to 175%.

Holy **** that stage is hectic, but organized. And you cant blast zone camp very well due to there being two levels to stand on near the blast zone, but one of them is constantly being fludded by cars. @_@

Sounds pretty terrible.

 

[GuruKid]

A fighting game without counters sounds like a boring game to me.

@ Mario Circuit changes: that stage is just bad. With the possible exception of Onett (due to the cars), stages with permanent walk-offs can't ever be salvaged.

 

[Mattnumbers]

So you only find matches fun when one person has a large advantage over the other?

60:40 matchups serve as an incentive to learn multiple characters without it tilting the balance as much as real counters.

And a match is fun regardless of whether you have a good or bad matchup with that character, and even arguably MORE fun if it's closer to even. If we had a more in-depth counterpick system I could see real strategies evolve but I don't think that's a direction we want to go in.

 

[Jiangjunizzy]

do you guys really believe that capcom and the other gaming companies intentionally created characters to be "countered" by another? Unless we're playing an RTS, there should really be no reason a character should have any sweeping advantage over another. For some reason theres some kind of superstition that whatever the game company does, goes. you guys want to know what a counter really is? It's poor game testing. It means that the people testing the game didn't have enough time/didn't work hard enough to iron out the character to it's fullest potential. It's not because that character is meant to always be beaten by another.

In Brawl's case, it seems as though there was no game testing team.

there's a saying "you don't win on the character select screen", and I can't agree with this statement anymore than I already do; the more skilled player should ALWAYS win.

Leaving counters in Brawl+ is just laziness, an experienced player shouldn't suddenly have to switch characters just to beat a mediocre player. The way I see it, counters are easy mode. They're a coward's way out; instead of learning everything you can about your character, you take the easy route and choose a character that has an advantage. An advantage which can be attributed to poor game testing/balance, an advantage which can be avoided if we stop this stupid tradition of ******** matchups. With Brawl+ we have a great opportunity here.

 

[GHNeko]

Sounds pretty terrible.

@ Mario Circuit changes: that stage is just bad. With the possible exception of Onett (due to the cars), stages with permanent walk-offs can't ever be salvaged.

Then I wont need to bother with the stage anymore. :V

do you guys really believe that capcom and the other gaming companies intentionally created characters to be "countered" by another? Unless we're playing an RTS, there should really be no reason a character should have any sweeping advantage over another. For some reason theres some kind of superstition that whatever the game company does, goes. you guys want to know what a counter really is? It's poor game testing. It means that the people testing the game didn't have enough time/didn't work hard enough to iron out the character to it's fullest potential. It's not because that character is meant to always be beaten by another.

In Brawl's case, it seems as though there was no game testing team.

there's a saying "you don't win on the character select screen", and I can't agree with this statement anymore than I already do; the more skilled player should ALWAYS win.

Leaving counters in Brawl+ is just laziness, an experienced player shouldn't suddenly have to switch characters just to beat a mediocre player. The way I see it, counters are easy mode. They're a coward's way out; instead of learning everything you can about your character, you take the easy route and choose a character that has an advantage. An advantage which can be attributed to poor game testing/balance, an advantage which can be avoided if we stop this stupid tradition of ******** matchups. With Brawl+ we have a great opportunity here.

...uhhh. Ridding the game of counters practically ruins the game. We're trying to minimize the hard counters, but there are nothing wrong with soft counters. Sure capcom and what not may not intentionally create counters (sans Boss characters) but they're not going to patch games specifically to fix counters. They'd just balance the roster at most. Counters are a good thing for competitive play.

And your example about a pro suddenly having to switch characters is an example of a hard counter btw. There is no way to make this game 50-50 for all match ups. There are too many variables that prevent this. The fact of the roster being unique in every which way is a major factor to his.

I doubt its even possible to get all the match ups more even than 60-40 simply because of single character traits.

 

[Seikishidan Soru]

I'm pretty sure jiangjunizzy meant hard counters, if that's indeed the case then I agree with him. Nothing wrong with some match-ups being slightly harder than others since perfect balance is impossible, but if tournaments could be held with the single character rule, and it turned out that a variety of characters end up in the top 8, I think that would say something great about the overall balance of the game...

Ridding the game of counters practically ruins the game.

...so I don't really understand the reasoning behind this statement.

 

[GHNeko]

ridding the game of any counter, hard or soft, effectively makes all characters perform and act the same, ruining what Smash bros is.

 

[MK26]

I think this is just a misunderstanding of semantics. All characters counter some and are countered by others. At this point in time, there really should be no hard counters in B+. That's a given. However, there will always be characters that limit other characters' options. We cannot, and should not, attempt to eradicate this. Not only is it not feasably possible to have 800 matchups all at 50-50, but it also somewhat ruins the character aspect of the counterpick system while in itself being negated by the stage aspect.

 

[XSilvenX]

Hehe on the counters thing... we're having a tournament to see who's good at the game, not who's good with one character. Since the term "game" encompasses every character.....


I think you see where I'm going with this. Counters are unavoidable as others have said, all you can do is make sure every character is viable. Pick up multiple characters or know every matchup with one character...the choice is yours. Both have been done successfully but we all know the best route if you're truly playing to win is using more than one character.

 

[GHNeko]

Agreed.

Everyone should be picking up a secondary, to at least watch over the weaknesses of your main rather than trying to balance everything to the point were you only need one character, because as long as there are differences, there are going to be weaknesses and those weakness can be exploited by a character who has a strength in that area.

 

[jalued]

can i just say after playing samus, i think that she is definitely low tier. She's far too floaty to follow anything up with, her missile cancel doesn't go nearly low enough, and all she can do is camp. Basically, i feel that without her physics being adjusted (at least a faster FF) then samus will never be high tier.

Low tier in this order imo:

(possibly ike here)
bowser
sonic
ivy

big gap


samus

take into account that i feel low and high are pretty close

sure people will argue: "well ive played really good samus's" etc. maybe im wrong and samus is high low tier, or even low mid tier. But its obvious that she will never be DK level tier with these gravity settings

 

[Shadic]

Everyone should be picking up a secondary, to at least watch over the weaknesses of your main rather than trying to balance everything to the point were you only need one character, because as long as there are differences, there are going to be weaknesses and those weakness can be exploited by a character who has a strength in that area.

But characters shouldn't have hard-ish counters (65-35) while others are only have to worry about having a couple of 55-45s.

Sure, they could technically be both balanced, but it's not fair to say "Oh, well yeah. You main ____, you NEED a secondary. But Metaknight? Nah, he's fine. Solo him."

Note: Metaknight was used as a stereotypical overpowered character with no counters because I'm lazy. I haven't played as/against him enough in 5.0+ to say much.

 

[thesage]

Hey guys, remember that this thread is for discussing strategies and stuff and not changes... Save that for a couple of months.

So uh, what does Yoshi do?

 

[jokey665]

So uh, what does Yoshi do?

Gets combo'd into rest.

I mean, uh...

 

[jalued]

Hey guys, remember that this thread is for discussing strategies and stuff and not changes... Save that for a couple of months.

So uh, what does Yoshi do?

make irritating noises constantly that make you want to scream "YOUR NOT EVEN A PROPER CHARACTER! GET OUT OF THE GAME!!!"

 

[Shadic]

Yoshi!

...Did they ever fix it so you can't get footstooled during his double jump?

 

[jalued]

oh and i was really only saying that i think samus is the worst character in the game. was just venting really, i was using the wii numchuck, then a GC controller that doesn't have a cstick (you have no idea how much u depend on the c-stick till you dont have one!)

but yeah, samus sucks

 

[cookieM0Nster]

So uh, what does Yoshi do?

He DJC's you and then beats down heavies like a pimp.
Which he is.
Obviously.


:V