Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[Pink Reaper]

You mean Fast and Heavy, fast and light doesn't work.

Fox was fast and heavy, which was a contributing factor to his god-tier characteristic.

Actually, fox is one of the lighter characters in the game. And Peach isn't exactly a fast character, but she's still high tier.

 

[Samochan]

Actually, fox is one of the lighter characters in the game. And Peach isn't exactly a fast character, but she's still high tier.

Yea. To add to this, Fox's fast falling properties make it a lot harder to ko him upwards, which results in good survival skills if you can DI well upwards. Horizonally he can get KO'ed quite easily.

 

[Zankoku]

Okay, so people are starting to throw out the word "opinion" as a defense to say that their argument is infallible again, so I'm going to dispute their "opinions" with facts.

Below is a list of characters organized by how well they did in tournaments and how often they showed up. Apparently, Meta Knight and Snake are quite a bit more commonly top placing than the rest of the cast. There's possibly more characters taking wins and top4s than in Melee, but then you've got the huge list of characters barely placing top8 and the entire 9 characters not even making it that far.

Top
Meta Knight (9 top8, 8 top4, 1 win, 28 pts)
Snake (7 top8, 4 top4, 4 wins, 27 pts)
High
Marth (5 top8, 4 top4, 4 wins, 19 pts)
Mr. Game & Watch (6 top8, 2 top4, 2 wins, 16 pts)
ROB (2 top8, 6 top4, 14 pts)
Pikachu (1 top8, 3 top4, 2 win, 13 pts)
King Dedede (3 top4, 2 wins, 12 pts)
Wolf (3 top8, 4 top4, 11 pts)
Mid
Lucario (2 top4, 1 win, 7 pts)
Ice Climbers (1 top8, 3 top4, 7 pts)
Olimar (7 top8, 7 pts)
Fox (3 top8, 1 win, 6 pts)
Falco (2 top8, 2 top4, 6 pts)
Low
Peach (1 top4, 1 win, 5 pts)
Ike (1 top8, 2 top4, 5 pts)
Wario (2 top4, 4 pts)
Sonic (1 win, 3 pts)
Toon Link (1 win, 3 pts)
Pit (1 top8, 1 top4, 3 pts)
Zero Suit Samus (1 top8, 1 top4, 3 pts)
Ness (1 top8, 1 top4, 3 pts)
Luigi (1 top4, 2 pts)
Sheik (1 top4, 2 pts)
Bowser (1 top4, 2 pts)
Donkey Kong (2 top8, 2 pts)
Jigglypuff (2 top8, 2 pt)
Lucas (1 top8, 1 pt)
Mario (1 top8, 1 pt)
Diddy Kong (1 top8, 1 pt)
Unranked
Captain Falcon
Ganondorf
Kirby
Link
Luigi
Pokémon Trainer
Samus
Yoshi
Zelda

 

[superglucose]

I think as of RIGHT NOW Brawl is a much more balanced game than Melee. Does that mean this will be true in a month? How about five years? How long did it take before wavedashing was discovered? Go look at the old tiers for melee, how the game was originally considered. For the longest time people thought Marth was the single greatest character in a super smash game ever. Now people think Fox dominates. The game will probably not change from what it is right now, but once people start figuring it out... who knows? Maybe there's some secret tech on Ganondorf that's an instant kill, and it'll be discovered by some button-smashing newbie who picked up their first ssb game and decided to just smash buttons. All of a sudden, if you press jump jump attack shield and down on the Cstick twice while using Pit's angel ring causes the game to hemmorange and declare you the winner!

Right now, we don't know what Brawl will end up being, but we do know what Brawl is RIGHT NOW. Right now, as of now, I think Brawl is considerably more balanced than Melee.

 

[Zankoku]

I think as of RIGHT NOW Brawl is a much more balanced game than Melee. Does that mean this will be true in a month? How about five years? How long did it take before wavedashing was discovered? Go look at the old tiers for melee, how the game was originally considered. For the longest time people thought Marth was the single greatest character in a super smash game ever. Now people think Fox dominates. The game will probably not change from what it is right now, but once people start figuring it out... who knows? Maybe there's some secret tech on Ganondorf that's an instant kill, and it'll be discovered by some button-smashing newbie who picked up their first ssb game and decided to just smash buttons. All of a sudden, if you press jump jump attack shield and down on the Cstick twice while using Pit's angel ring causes the game to hemmorange and declare you the winner!

Right now, we don't know what Brawl will end up being, but we do know what Brawl is RIGHT NOW. Right now, as of now, I think Brawl is considerably more balanced than Melee.

To answer your question on tiers, I'll cite the top 5 starting with October 2002's tierlist.

October 8, 2002
Sheik
Falco
Fox
Marth
Mario

December 19, 2002
Sheik
Falco
Fox
Peach
Marth

June 23, 2003
Sheik
Fox
Falco
Marth
Peach

July 1, 2003
Sheik
Fox
Marth
Peach
Falco

September 29, 2003
Sheik
Marth
Fox
Peach
Falco

April 2, 2004
Sheik
Fox
Marth
Falco
Peach

March 19, 2005
Sheik
Fox
Marth
Peach
Falco

July 8, 2006
Fox
Falco
Sheik
Marth
Peach

So uh... where's the drastic changes in metagame here? Looks like the top5 remained the top5 from 2002 through 2006.

 

[Pink Reaper]

**** YOU ANKOKU!

I wanted to do that

 

[Grunt]

Unranked

Zelda

WELL!
im going to have to change that.

 

[superglucose]

Well if you noticed, Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, Mario, and Peach were all in there, and the orders changed several times. All I was pointing out is that things have changed since the beginning of Melee. Thanks for posting data that proves me right. And wasn't Mario top tier in the beginning switched to mid tier later? That's a fair jump. And Ness moved from bottom to mid, if I recall correctly... the metagame has changed, and face it: Melee is not played the same today as it was when it was first released.

All I'm saying is that right now, Brawl is balanced, but things change, and fast.

 

[Grunt]

All I'm saying is that right now, Brawl is balanced, but things change, and fast.

Everything fits into one tier? i love the sound of it on paper, but when it tries to become a reality it always fails. kind of like communism.

 

[Zankoku]

Ness is still in bottom; I'm not sure where you got that.

The metagame changed so slowly mainly because there weren't a good deal of competitive players finding all the nuances of the game. From SmashWiki:

In 2002 and 2003, the first tournaments began appearing on Smashboards. Many of these tournaments were held in a member's basement, and open invitations were placed on the website. Early on, some people would drive 5-6 hours to get to a location where there might only be 10 players.

Currently we've got tournaments with populations of over 40, held nearly every week, in several different parts of the country. The development of the metagame is, to say the least, far faster than what you'd've seen for Melee's early years.

You can see the shifting around of top 5 as AMAZING CHANGES TO METAGAME, but all I see it as is people discovering the best five characters in the game as early as 2002, and people continuing to view those characters as the best for the remaining lifetime of Melee.

 

[Patsie]

Maybe it's just me, but from only looking at a few posts, I really, really can't stand Yuna. I couldn't imagine the hell it would be to read through those 5000+ posts.

 

[Xiivi]

Well if you noticed, Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, Mario, and Peach were all in there, and the orders changed several times. All I was pointing out is that things have changed since the beginning of Melee. Thanks for posting data that proves me right. And wasn't Mario top tier in the beginning switched to mid tier later? That's a fair jump. And Ness moved from bottom to mid, if I recall correctly... the metagame has changed, and face it: Melee is not played the same today as it was when it was first released.

All I'm saying is that right now, Brawl is balanced, but things change, and fast.

Wow, you don't even know what you're talking about do you?
Mario was #5 for the very first update, then NEVER again. He was in the top 5 for 2, yes 2, months. After that he dropped off the radar and Peach jumped into the scene.
From that point on, these 5 characters undoubtedly rules the metagame with only a select few other characters showing promise here and there (such as falcon, ICs, jiggs, etc...).
The fact that the order between the 5 changed slightly every now and then doesn't mean that "times have changes since the beginning of melee". These fluctuations only occurred due to how the characters were winning. And the 5 of them were winning a lot.
The point is, we see who's winning in Brawl's metagame a lot, and it isn't likely that there will be any drastic changes between now and 5 years from now in who the top characters are. Snake and Metaknight have been scoring tournament wins like crazy. I doubt 5 years from now it'll be SO different that these characters won't be up there scoring wins all the time.

 

[Fletch]

What do you want me to say? "sorry for not being up-to-date with tournaments"? My post was MY opinion. There are always people who know how to play with a certain character, underpowered or not, to an extent that leaves us speechless, yet who are the top names of Melee? Marth, Fox, Falco users (and some others who I don't need to mention). The balance in Brawl is much greater than it was in Melee, there's no point discussing this in my opinion, it's something that me and ALL my friends who are Melee and Brawl players have noticed.

I'm glad that matchups are balanced when you are playing with your friends, but try going to a tournament with some competitive players and see the difference.

 

[AmigoOne]

Can you provide the link?

still requesting for link

 

[Ulevo]

Yuna, I may not fit your credentials for this thread and its purpose. I haven't placed high in any major tournaments, or have an overwhelming amount of posts followed by people who may reference me. But this is my opinion on the matter.

I think to say that Brawl is more balanced than Melee is slightly incorrect. The fact is, in either game, you have a set amount of characters that are statistically better than the rest of the roster in an overall scenario that the metagame revolves around. In most cases, if two players of near equal skill and experience picked up their characters and played, the one with the higher tier placement would be the one more likely to win. If trials were to be conducted with characters such as Sheik and Bowser, for example, Sheik would win most of the time. You may have certain match ups that favour you, such as Link > Fox in Melee, but those are simply exceptions and do not alter the fact that characters such as Marth are superior to most. This is the truth of Melee, and of Brawl.

Even with Tier placements aside, there are still other said imbalances that offset how the game is played, even if they do not effect the Tier list drastically. Ice Climbers is one example. In Melee, they could Wobble someone from 0 to Death. This may have increased their ranking, but it did not make them the top character on the Tier listings. That doesn't change the fact that it was still an obvious offset of balance, and is clearly a broken tactic. In Brawl, we still have that. Ice Climbers can 0 to Death anyone with there multitude of Chain Grabs and Alternating Grabs. King Dedede can 0 to Death 2/3s of the roster just from a wall or walk off being present in a stage. Game altering specifics for different characters like Marths tipper, Zeldas Lightning Kick, and even new ones such as Falcos Laser Lock, are still present. It is ironic really, because despite all the changes Sakurai has made in the transition between the two games to make the experience less one sided, there is still so much that offsets power.

I prefer to say that characters in Brawl are more viable, rather than balanced. The severity of how badly a Fox can beat a Bowser, or how bad a Sheik can beat a Bowser, is not as prominent anymore. It is still obvious that a Bowser vs Sheik is at a disadvantage, but it is no longer to a point where people would say "good game" the moment an opponent chooses Sheik over a Bowser, and put the controller down. Characters do not have an impossible task ahead of them if they are lower in Tier placement. This game is more affected on the discretion of the players at hand, rather than the characters those players are using.

This is my take on the matter, anyway.

 

[Tyr_03]

Starcraft is more balanced than both of them...

 

[Pink Reaper]

Starcraft is more balanced than both of them...

GG=more balanced than Starcraft. Lets all play that.

Spoiler

This was a post to resubscribe to the thread. I accidentally unsubscribed to it.

 

[Taymond]

Of course it is. Starcraft was actively maintained to gain as close a balance as possible, even long after its initial release. Any game that makes continuing effort to balance itself will have a leg up on one that simply does its best before release and never checks back to tweak.

 

[Valdens]

Maybe it's just me, but from only looking at a few posts, I really, really can't stand Yuna. I couldn't imagine the hell it would be to read through those 5000+ posts.

Agreed x 9001.

 

[Corigames]

I'm not sure if anyone right now can say that one game is more balanced than the other because it isn't possible to know who is the best and if the best really do smear the other characters to the curb.

I do, however, assume that by the end of Brawl's life we will still have a large list of low ranked characters while the rest are good.

 

[BEES]

TA was more balanced than Starcraft. Granted, it had two races instead of three.

 

[Pikaville]

As far as noobs vs experienced players i believe its more balanced.Because a lack of really usefull techs that can help to destroy them in seconds.

 

[Zetsuei]

Such gaps are only visible between new players when they are still learning the moves. Some characters are quicker to learn and more powerful when versing other newbs.

However, every character has a good strategy, and if u can learn this, every character is balanced when fighting people of equal skill levels.

 

[Zankoku]

However, every character has a good strategy, and if u can learn this, every character is balanced when fighting people of equal skill levels.

This is incorrect. The top placers are consistently playing Meta Knight or Snake. If all characters were balanced, we'd see a lot more representation at the top than two characters.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

This is incorrect. The top placers are consistently playing Meta Knight or Snake. If all characters were balanced, we'd see a lot more representation at the top than two characters.

QFT.

There's going to be a gulf in character ability in Brawl. It's just way too early in the metagame to make heads or tails of it. For now, though, it's safe to assume that MK and Snake are gonna be skimming along as two of the best characters in the whole game.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Yuna]

Such gaps are only visible between new players when they are still learning the moves. Some characters are quicker to learn and more powerful when versing other newbs.

However, every character has a good strategy, and if u can learn this, every character is balanced when fighting people of equal skill levels.

You must never have tried playing Yoshi, Samus or Ganondorf.

 

[iMichael]

MK, Snake and Wolf......those are the top placed characters.

 

[Ulevo]

You must never have tried playing Yoshi, Samus or Ganondorf.

Yuna, I know this is off topic (I have already laid in my 2¢ in an earlier post), but I wanted to send you a PM regarding a question I had, but it said your inbox was full. Would you be able to clear up some messages so I could send it to you, by any chance?

 

[ShadowLink84]

Agreed x 9001.

People tend to hate those who prove them wrong yah?

 

[fkacyan]

You must never have tried playing Yoshi, Samus or Ganondorf.

But Yuna, Ganondorf has his uber fair the lags on landing even if you double jump it! That has to count for something! [/sarcasm]

I find this highly ironic considering the amount that people were whining that Brawl was noob friendly and there were no tiers about a month ago. That said, I agree with Yuna, as it's the standpoint that I've taken for quite some time.

I think people are confusing the amount of time you need to spend to be good in the current metagame and character matchups. Obviously the people at the top have spent less time getting good with those characters, but I doubt the best Ganondorf we'll ever see could beat a Meta Knight right now.

 

[Bluebottel]

Wavedashing, for example, is a glitch. It was not an intended mechanic, otherwise it would have been specified by Sakurai itself, such as the other advanced techs were. It was an unintended exploit glitch, and had it not been, it would not have been REMOVED in Brawl.

Can you even define 'Glitch'? You use it as it meant 'bug' so i will assume that you think it is one. Wavedashing is not a bug, its a unintended result of nonbuggy features placed in the game. The IC's freeze glitch is a bug in its true form. Besides, who cares what Sakurai mentions? Hes the definiton of a scrub at its worst.

(quote about Wavedashing/ATs) No it didn't. It made a gap between casual and competitive players, instead of just "players". That's imbalance.

Who cares about those ignorant casuals? To them its just a game, they play it for..."fun"... nothing more.
They dont care if its a good one, a deep one or a game that is perfectly balanced. Their only job is to generate money to the companies so they can continue churning out ****ty games, which generates more money for even more ****ty games thus completing the circle.
If casual players dont feel like learning the things that i know, i will laugh all the way through the ****.

Oh I know about it.
(Most of them) are glitches and unfair exploits. Get that through your thick, ignorant skull.

Unfair? How? Because you cant execute them properly? I wonder who the ignorant one is..

If you don't like that they aren't in Brawl, too bad, because that's what makes it the better game.

So you are saying that making the game simpler and removing depth is a good thing?

It levels the playing field for all players, growing the Smash community, instead of distinguishing and segregating people who can't accept a character's normal speed and have to input a fast wavedash combination to play without going nuts, and players who don't know how to do such a thing.

Again, who cares about Joe Schmoe casual that will never make a difference or even play the game properly. Why do you believe that we are forced to play the game "the way it was meant to be played"? The programmers are not gods, they cant possibly tell what people will end up doing with their game but good games live on no matter how deep you look.

Each character has a specific strength and weakness that has been considered and balanced and their movesets reflect that. The characters have not just been thrown together and given moves that will make fans happy. They are all made to be as functional as possible, while being true to the style of character they play as.

Nintendo are not good at balancing stuff. And thats funny because its true. Blizzard, Capcom and their peers are because they recognises the competitive nature of their games which is something that Nintendo does not. Sakurai is a huge scrub that hates most things that keeps competition going.
Lets brake it down.
Nintendo is a company. Companies need to make money. Making money is done by delievering something that their costumers want, in this case its games.
If the target audience are people that are not good at games (which, quite frankly, most people are not.
Especially true among the younger audience) then the goal is to make games that are simple, flashy and ..."fun".
Why spend time and money making games balanced and deep when it wont be explored and sell just as well as a games that are not? Besides, if the games released are shallow even scrubs/casuals will get bored of them rather quickly resulting in them wanting new games. That means more sales and more money for even more games! Profit!

TA was more balanced than Starcraft. Granted, it had two races instead of three.

Are you talking about Total Annihilation? Its imbalanced to the point where tournies actually gave you more points by not playing as Arm, the dominant rase.


As for the topic, i agree with Yuna. In my personal opinion is that people kind of mis-intepret the result of games. A good player in Melee will **** a bad player with 4 stocks. In Brawl the chasm isnt that wide yet resulting in closer games and not as memorable or must-analyze'able as before. That and the fact that we arent that good at it, imo, is what holds the current illusion of balance together.

 

[Taymond]

Uh, @Dogenzaga, I guess. I don't really know where those quotes the above poster have are from, they must be a couple pages back, since I don't remember reading them.

Anyway, when people try to balance a game, they do not strive to make every player equal, they strive only to give every player equal options to succeed. The fact that there are gaps in player skill does not indicate an imbalance, it indicates the nature of humanity, of uniqueness. They do not strive to eliminate distances between player skill, no one could possibly do that.

When balancing a game, all you're trying to do is give every player the same chances to succeed. In this case, a player's character choice, ideally, should not impact their chances for success before a match even begins. Obviously, this is impossible, but developers try to create as close a balance as possible so that each character has as much potential as all the others.

The fact that ATs created rifts between competitive and casual players means NOTHING in regard to balance. You cannot balance player skill, and absolutely no one tries to. You can only balance character potential. Certain ATs created rifts in character potentials, THAT is what creates imbalance. Players do NOT matter when speaking of balance.

Also, as the above poster mentioned, you misunderstand what a glitch is. Things that conform perfectly to the mechanics of the game, but were merely unforeseen uses by the developers are not glitches. They might, at worst, be called physics exploits. Glitches are unintended results, programming oversights. Glitches occur when a player tries to do something that the physics engine does not understand what it "should" do, when developers failed to cover a contingency.

When Jigglypuff uses here FS while the Bridge of Eldin is rebuilding and remains large afterwards? That's a glitch. It's a developer oversight. The programmers did not adequately inform the physics engine how to react in this situation, and it produces a result that it plainly should not. Things that conform perfectly to the physics engine, however, are not glitches. Developers in Melee considered the possibility that a player might airdodge into the ground, and they came up with a way for the physics engine to handle this contingency. They decided that they would land immediately in a standing position without losing momentum, instead of simply maintaining the airdodge until the end, like what occurs when you airdodge into a wall. The results of this decision may not have been suspected at the time, but it is not, strictly speaking, a glitch. It's at best, an oversight. Programmers voluntarily and deliberately chose how the game should handle an airdodge into the ground. They had to specifically create the result that allows for wavedashing, or airdodging into the ground would be the same as airdodging into a wall. No mistake was made by the developers.

 

[PeteBeast]

I'm glad that matchups are balanced when you are playing with your friends, but try going to a tournament with some competitive players and see the difference.

Actually, my friend's are more competitive than what I've seen at tournaments and vids, so yeah. EddE actually got second place in a Brawl tournament here in Venezuela using Toon Link, over 50 people attended, which is alot considering the game isn't that much popular here as you may think.

Characters are more balanced, I really see no way of how Melee is more balanced.

 

[Exousia]

I'll only go as far as saying the the gap that separated the Joes from The Pros has decreased for the moment.

Until we see more ground breaking and a meta-game develop, we can't discuss the balance of Brawl compared to Melee in a clear light.

And by the looks of this, it can take a while.

 

[TriforceCore]

As far as Im concerned its more balanced

 

[Corigames]

Characters are more balanced, I really see no way of how Melee is more balanced.

Here you go then. I never really play the game that often. I play melee. So, when a bunch of people at school are playing it, I don't mind to jump in for a while. Now, these are the people that play everyday, go home a play, get online and play, and stay up late at each-others houses playing. I never play that much. Understand? good.

Now, when I sat down and played them, I used Pit. I won every match. Should that happen? Should someone that never plays everyday get beaten by someone who doesn't?

That's not balanced. That's not right. That's not fair.

IE, why I don't like Brawl,

 

[Pink Reaper]

Here you go then. I never really play the game that often. I play melee. So, when a bunch of people at school are playing it, I don't mind to jump in for a while. Now, these are the people that play everyday, go home a play, get online and play, and stay up late at each-others houses playing. I never play that much. Understand? good.

Now, when I sat down and played them, I used Pit. I won every match. Should that happen? Should someone that never plays everyday get beaten by someone who doesn't?

That's not balanced. That's not right. That's not fair.

IE, why I don't like Brawl,

Do it with T.Link, its even easier >_>

 

[keeper]

I did read the original post, and ignoring the rest of the topic, here is my opinion.

SSBB is more balanced throughout. The characters that are within the same dubbed tier by the user (not the official ones) are more balanced when moving from character to character. While you could say it is because there are more characters, I still feel that it is more balanced when going down the actual line of characters.

As for the pressing matter, I feel that the creator of the topic (forgot his username, ITP right?) is right. If you were to go from the upper extreme to the lower, I think you'd find that the space in the characters abilities, overall, are far less than the best one. While I'm not going to list who I think is the best and the worst to avoid that debate, it just shows so much extremity. Whether it be speed, the speed that the attack comes out, or the landing lag; characters like Ganondorf simply can't compete with the speed of some that is say Meta Knight. No those aren't my extremes in characters tiers (in my mind). The only way a Ganon could compete is to get those lucky few hits in and be an amazing tech chaser with things like his forward-b, grabs, and smashes.

Then there are those characters that just have awful recoveries when compared to multiple others, no I don't mean ones that are easily gimped either, but that can factor in. There is no way for CF to compete with a ROB when off the stage unless that ROB user messes up and just straight up saves the CF. However, that CF could easily compete with a Bowser or DK or maybe even a Diddy off-stage. Just as a Meta Knight could compete with the ROB.

To sum up my feelings, no brawl is not more balanced as a whole, but when looking at it down the line, I feel that the characters that are in the same categories are more equal than in Melee.

 

[Zankoku]

Before I start talking about the wrong thing, are you saying characters within the same tier as each other are more equal?

 

[Pink Reaper]

I did read the original post, and ignoring the rest of the topic, here is my opinion.

SSBB is more balanced throughout. The characters that are within the same dubbed tier by the user (not the official ones) are more balanced when moving from character to character. While you could say it is because there are more characters, I still feel that it is more balanced when going down the actual line of characters.

As for the pressing matter, I feel that the creator of the topic (forgot his username, ITP right?) is right. If you were to go from the upper extreme to the lower, I think you'd find that the space in the characters abilities, overall, are far less than the best one. While I'm not going to list who I think is the best and the worst to avoid that debate, it just shows so much extremity. Whether it be speed, the speed that the attack comes out, or the landing lag; characters like Ganondorf simply can't compete with the speed of some that is say Meta Knight. No those aren't my extremes in characters tiers (in my mind). The only way a Ganon could compete is to get those lucky few hits in and be an amazing tech chaser with things like his forward-b, grabs, and smashes.

Then there are those characters that just have awful recoveries when compared to multiple others, no I don't mean ones that are easily gimped either, but that can factor in. There is no way for CF to compete with a ROB when off the stage unless that ROB user messes up and just straight up saves the CF. However, that CF could easily compete with a Bowser or DK or maybe even a Diddy off-stage. Just as a Meta Knight could compete with the ROB.

To sum up my feelings, no brawl is not more balanced as a whole, but when looking at it down the line, I feel that the characters that are in the same categories are more equal than in Melee.

Wild Keeper Appears
Wild Keeper used Confuse Ray
Pink Reaper is Confused.