Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[Radical Dreamer]

I love how ******** you are? His argument sucks *** and he posted falsehoods that reflect that fact that he doesn't know a thing about Melee.

 

[Byronman]

I love how ******** you are? His argument sucks *** and he posted falsehoods that reflect that fact that he doesn't know a thing about Melee.

1. Why did you make the first sentence a question?
2. How does his argument suck? You are just typing random accusations without providing actual facts.

 

[Thinkaman]

Doesn't know a thing about Melee? Such hilarious claims.

Look, I know exactly how bad the bottom tier was in Melee. I got beat by Iori's Mewtwo, so I know how good they can be if used properly. However, that isn't very good at all. Iori had to work his tail off to beat me in that match, when he could have been rolling over me with a mid-tier, much less a high tier. Mewtwo was downright terrible, and anyone who thinks he had a reasonable chance at winning matches with any consistency among similarly skilled players is fooling themselves majorly.

Pichu, Kirby, Bowser? "I don't know a thing about Melee" apparently, but I do know that every tourney I went to did not involve these characters. They were hopeless gimmicks, used only by the eccentric who could only find temporary success due to obscurity.

Meanwhile, I can beat other players on my skill level with Ganondorf in Brawl. He has many bad matchups, but to even remotely compare them to Marth/Mewtwo or Shiek/Bowser is hilarious. Those were like, instant 4-stocks. As Ganondorf, most my losing matches end on the last stock. G-Reg and Sliq are doing things more impressive and competitive with Ganondorf than anyone did with the bottom Melee characters, as much as they tried.

Maybe instead of throwing random insults, you should try arguing a point.

 

[Radical Dreamer]

My accusations aren't random. They're directed toward particularly stupid people who are not only ignorant about Smash Bros in general and especially about Melee, but who insist on perpetuating the myth that Brawl is a significantly more balanced game. Statements like "everyone is capable of winning" reflect this idiocy. Captain Falcon vs. virtually any Brawl high tier is a harder matchup than Pichu or Mewtwo vs. anyone. Sometimes I'd like to point out that people are ignoring the facts that Mewtwo can death combo space animals and Pichu can gimp them -- but chances are that these people just aren't ****ing aware of it in the first place because they don't know much of anything about Melee aside from reading the tier list on smashwiki.com. Captain Falcon pretty much can't do anything to Snake, certainly nothing on par with what Mewtwo and Pichu are capable of, and that's not to say that they aren't outclassed by the rest of the characters in Melee. Bowser in Melee, for all his deficiencies, is more usable and well rounded than many of the weaker characters in Brawl.

Nothing has really changed. Marth, Toon Link, Olimar, MK and Snake are all really freaking good characters and it would take a huge, gamebreaking discovery to change that. IC's are good because their chaingrabs was a gamebreaking discovery. But aside from these rare monumental discoveries, there's no way to get around the enormous difference between characters like Snake and Captain Falcon, other than just being on a level entirely above your opponent.

Thinkaman's "argument" is particularly crappy because the so called hard fact that we cannot disagree with is an anomaly that is not representative of the general trend and flies in the face of overwhelming statistical evidence. The statistics show that Metaknight and Snake are overwhelmingly dominating tournaments and that Captain Falcon and Ganondorf are clearly not. Darkrain's tournament is the outlier that statistics accounts for.

G-Reg and Sliq are doing things more impressive and competitive with Ganondorf than anyone did with the bottom Melee characters, as much as they tried.

Taj, KoreanDJ, Gimpyfish, Neo and Chudat say LOL. Also Snap, but mainly since he's a personal friend although he's not as well known.

Maybe instead of being ********, you should like, shut up.

 

[Thinkaman]

There we go, that was much better.

I just can't agree that Falcon/Ganondorf have that much worse matchups. I even played some Falcon tonight against some Snake and Falco; not the best players in the world, but not random clowns. The disadvantage was obvious (I particularly hate Ganondorf against Falco) but it was always managed and there hasn't been a matchup yet that I have always lost. (Against good players, obviously.) Take a look at the Ganondorf sub-forums, especially Sliq's stuff, and you will find a metagame that is far mroe competitive than any of the bottom tier in Melee.

Yes, Mewtwo, Pichu, Kirby, Game and Watch, they all have their little gimmicks that let them sneak in a KO here and there. However, obscurity is not a good strategy. When I first got into Melee, a guy in a friendly at a tourney killed me with Kirby with some trick. I can't even recall now what it was, but the thing was, I never let it happen again. If you aren't ignorant, Mewtwo is no less a threat to space animals than something like Jiggly's u-throw to rest: Yes, it's extremely good and gives them a chance, but only if the person playign the high tier is either ignorant or "********".

Falcon and Ganondorf aren't going to set the meta-game on fire any time soon, but they have more of a core game than the low tiers in Melee did. They have great uairs still, and are decent tech chasers. If would take Falcon on Snake, probably the worst matchup in Brawl at the moment, ANY DAY over Mewtwo against Marth or Bowser against Shiek. (Heck... most characters against Shiek...)

 

[Fletch]

You are ********. Ganondorf is actually worse than Pichu, Kirby, Mewtwo and Bowser in Melee.

I was definitely going to write that, that really bothered me.

 

[St. Viers]

well, dan mained sheik, so he can't lol wo hard (his other chars all owned too though)

 

[Mr.Victory07]

Captain Falcon is certainly capable of doing well vs. Snake than slow, dead at 80% Mewtwo vs. shine you to death Fox. I think you should fight a really good Ganon or Capt. then speak again

 

[Thinkaman]

Taj, KoreanDJ, Gimpyfish, Neo and Chudat say LOL. Also Snap, but mainly since he's a personal friend although he's not as well known.

This is actually my point. These guys had to work incredibly hard to accomplish even what relatively small amounts they did with those characters. We've all seen what they can do, what they had to work around. The obstacles were much greater than with Ganondorf in Brawl, who I picked up with minimal effort. Look at the backroom thread discussing him: The consensus is that Ganondorf is a viable character. "Certainly not top tier", but viable. To think otherwise puts one in the minority.

Maybe instead of being ********, you should like, shut up.

Great, more personal attacks.

 

[betterthanbonds9]

You know what the big problem here is? We keep looking at this with our guts and not with the numbers.

We need a way to measure the balance of this game and end the constant bickerings (sp?) about "M2 can kill fox and falco" or "marth/snake/olimar are WAY too powerful." The way we keep arguing implies (at least to me) that tier lists are what show the balance of the game.

some basic statistics to show the balance of the game.

number of characters per melee tier
top: 2= 7.69%
high: 3= 11.538%
mid: 7= 26.92%
low: 6= 23.077%
bottom: 8 30.769%

now to be AS balanced as melee brawl would need.....(counting PT as 1 character)
3 characters in the top tier
5 in the high tier
10 in the mid tier
9 in the low tier
10 in the bottom tier

percentages are 8.1%, 13.5%, 27%, 24.3%, and 27% respectively

if PT is counted as 3 characters(which is easier for the math).....the number in each tier are: 3, 5, 10, 9, and 12
-percentages are: 7.69%, 12.82%, 25.64%, 23.77%, and 30.769%

^ the only difference in that is because 3 and 7 dont work properly with a 3/2 ratio...so the high and mid tiers are each off by the same amount.

--Now the ever present question, how could brawl be more balanced? Would having more top/high characters make it more balanced because there are more "good" characters? Does having a bigger middle tier make it more balanced showing that the mean value of "goodness" is higher? Or is it just better if we argue without framework for another 30some pages and keep changing the "worst matchups" and say that it was worse that "x vs y" in melee?

the way i see it, people are arguing that more top/high characters means it's more balanced because then people will stop arguing that only a few "good" characters get the entire representation at tournies.
^btw, brawl would just need 8 characters in the top and high tiers combined by that definition

if middle tier is what you care about, then all brawl needs is 11

Just dont argue that there shold be less in the lower tiers. If there are fewer in the lower tiers, then there's more in the higher tiers, which takes away many distinctions that are to be observed by a tier list. There's a reason melee's second tier list only had 4 categories and then had 6, there needed to be more classifications, but apparently 6 was too many and it resulted in 5.

 

[Zankoku]

Balance will be determined by how overwhelming the top characters are, and how viable the bottom characters are. For example, 64's balance was far better than Melee's because the top characters were dominant but the rest of the cast was still represented quite a bit. And Isai ***** everyone with every character.

 

[Fawriel]

I think the reason that so many people argue that Brawl is more balanced is because Brawl was designed with the illusion of balance in mind.

In Melee, sure, you could get combo'd from 0 to death in a few seconds by Fox. Nothing in Brawl is going to kill you in a few seconds, that's for sure. Even if you're facing the best Snake in the world, he'll take a while to **** you to hell and back.
However, that doesn't mean it's more balanced, it just means it takes longer for this to happen, giving you the feeling that you are more in control of the match. Sure, if I faced DSF's Snake, I could survive for a while by shielding and dodging everything, but what does that mean at the end of the day? I will have to attack at some point, in which case he'll outspeed, outrange and enormously overpower me immediately. I often watch videos, and sometimes I see, "hey, that low-tier character and that high-tier character have even damage at the moment, maybe the game is more balanced after all". But that's only an instinct I got from watching Melee videos. You can get Metaknight up to 200%, you're still never going to actually get one of your slow KO moves in if the player knows what he's doing, while Metaknight has the unique freedom of actually being capable of edgeguarding and having powerful AND fast KO moves along with the ability to build up damage at lightning speed...
I'm veering off track here.
In Melee, one half of the match is approaching, the other half is using the advantage of your approach after it succeeded.
In Brawl, this is the same, except that the approaching happens a few hundred times per match, so if there are imbalances in the characters' overall abilities, they will be more pronounced.
For instance, Mewtwo vs. Fox. Mewtwo clearly has the disadvantage; his only chance to win the match is to surprise Fox, combo him, and then land a KO move, if possible in the same combo. Fox has a lot more options. However, it is possible. Mewtwo can wavedash well and he has a good combo starter in his dthrow or dtilt. He has to outplay Fox a few times and then do well with his combos, but in either case it's possible for him to outmaneuver Fox and combo him a few times if he plays fast and smart.
In Brawl, Metaknight never leaves himself open and Ganondorf only has slow moves. It can happen that Ganondorf can outplay Metaknight a few times, but he'll have to do it hundreds upon hundreds of times because he has no combos, and even if he does manage to pick at Metaknight with a few moves here and there, all his KO moves are too slow to hit, so he'll have to build up damage to a point where a mediocre attack does the job...
As someone said earlier, in Melee, you have to outplay your opponent a few times to be successful in a low-tier-high-tier match-up. In Brawl, you have to outplay them every single time you want to attack.

I remember an argument someone made that the absurd defensive abilities in Brawl are what makes it unbalanced. It makes slow moves in Brawl perfectly unviable. Your opponent is only ever going to be open to a slow move if they use a slow move, and if they want to win, they aren't going to, because winning in Brawl means that you throw projectiles and poke at your opponent with your fastest move while keeping your finger on the shield button at all times.
Because everyone always shields and dodges immediately, certain slow characters just don't work.
As soon as Ganondorf's dair approach is shielded, he's open. On the ground as well, he has no options because his jab isn't fast enough. And anything else is just not a possibility at all.
In Melee, apart from the ability to combo and gimp high-tier characters, they all at least had some tricks. Bowser is usable because of his 'Fortress and fair. Ness has a fair with great range and priority and little lag that can be combo'd into another move. Mewtwo has great wavedashing and his dtilt.

If you're in a pickle in Brawl, you have your jab. And if you're Ganondorf, your jab is too slow and isn't even a three-hit high-damage combo, and if you're Captain Falcon, it has no range.

And so on.

Sorry if any of this is factually inaccurate. I never played these games competitvely, I just read a lot, but I do believe I have decent enough comprehensive abilities to take part in the discussion.


And because this post wasn't snarky enough so far:
The designers either need to start trying to balance the game, or they need to stop, because whatever they are doing is bullcrap.



By the way, how unlikely is it that they'll ever end up banning a character? I mean, after a few more months of playing, there might crop up strategies or characters that can counter the absolutely ridiculous god characters... or it'll just get worse, which I fear will be the case.
If it's just one or two characters, I would be in favor of banning them to make it possible for the massive mid-tier to stand a realistic chance in tournaments...

 

[Mr.C]

This is actually my point. These guys had to work incredibly hard to accomplish even what relatively small amounts they did with those characters. We've all seen what they can do, what they had to work around. The obstacles were much greater than with Ganondorf in Brawl, who I picked up with minimal effort. Look at the backroom thread discussing him: The consensus is that Ganondorf is a viable character. "Certainly not top tier", but viable. To think otherwise puts one in the minority.

You picked up Ganondorf with minimal effort because you can pick up anyone in Brawl with minimal effort. The game takes no where near as much skill to play on a technical level than Melee. Instead of basing your Ganondorf off people who you consider average players why don't you actually play some skilled people and start practicing with the best in your state or well known skilled Melee players who have a understanding of high-level play then you will understand the blatant character flaws he has that will never be fixed . Is Ganon viable? of course. Anyone is viable if you are skilled enough to compete with the best no matter what character you are using. Ganon just has OBVIOUS disadvantages vs the better characters that you can do NOTHING about because of Brawls game engine. Melee its 80% skill 20% character, in Brawl its 20% skill 80% character and thats just how it is.

Now you have to realize Snake/MK are dominating the tournament scene. Of course random characters like PT, Wario etc will be popping up occasionally, we are still in the baby stages of competitive Brawl. Now when I say baby stages its not us lacking the knowledge of what competitive gaming is and I'm not one of those ******* sayings "its too early" what that means is right now the meta-game for Brawl isn't solid. In the early Melee years Links where placing top, its practically the same things that is happening now. In a year or so the dominate characters will dominate, the meta-game will be very tight and the characters with obvious disadvantages will be left in the dust because they can't do anything about their weaknesses in Brawl.

 

[FishkeeperTimmay!]

Balance will be determined by how overwhelming the top characters are, and how viable the bottom characters are. For example, 64's balance was far better than Melee's because the top characters were dominant but the rest of the cast was still represented quite a bit. And Isai ***** everyone with every character.

But wasn't that more about Isai's incredibly awesome skillz rather than the true balance in the game itself? I wasn't into the tournament scene much during SS64, so my understanding of how the other players stacked up to Isai is nil.

All I remember about SS64 was getting spiked helplessly by Kirby and Pikachu every single time I tried to recover. xD

 

[EdreesesPieces]

Do you guys know what the low tier novelty affect is? It's when a good character loses to a bad one and a significant portion of it is due to unfamiliarity with the matchup.

Since Brawl's new that is probably happening more often, so worse characters can beat better ones for now, since nobody knows how to fight the lesser used characters. In three years, things can be a MUCH different story once the weaknesses of certain characters are exposed and well known. For this reason its very very difficult to see if it's balanced or not.

 

[Exia 00]

Balance will be determined by how overwhelming the top characters are, and how viable the bottom characters are. For example, 64's balance was far better than Melee's because the top characters were dominant but the rest of the cast was still represented quite a bit. And Isai ***** everyone with every character.

all very true.
Also i think its very safe to say
that brawl will not be as balanced
as the previous do to a bigger roster
but hopefully im proven wrong

 

[Popertop]

I'm afraid you're right Exia.
It's incredibly hard to balance large roster's, and what happened with MvC2 was nothing short of a miracle.
It's easiest with around twelve to seventeen.
But less is definitely better.
But still we have to look at what the Guilty Gear designers did for balance.

 

[Pink Reaper]

Do you guys know what the low tier novelty affect is? It's when a good character loses to a bad one and a significant portion of it is due to unfamiliarity with the matchup.

Since Brawl's new that is probably happening more often, so worse characters can beat better ones for now, since nobody knows how to fight the lesser used characters. In three years, things can be a MUCH different story once the weaknesses of certain characters are exposed and well known. For this reason its very very difficult to see if it's balanced or not.

Lol, this is so horrendously true, Edrees ftw.

 

[Mr.Victory07]

You can get Metaknight up to 200%, you're still never going to actually get one of your slow KO moves in if the player knows what he's doing, while Metaknight has the unique freedom of actually being capable of edgeguarding and having powerful AND fast KO moves along with the ability to build up damage at lightning speed...

You can easily KO Meta before 200%, you just have to be playing defensively. Thats why he's ****** everyone, because people try to play him offensively, which wont work since he's so fast. You just have to wait out an opportunity

For instance, Mewtwo vs. Fox. Mewtwo clearly has the disadvantage; his only chance to win the match is to surprise Fox, combo him, and then land a KO move, if possible in the same combo. Fox has a lot more options. However, it is possible. Mewtwo can wavedash well and he has a good combo starter in his dthrow or dtilt. He has to outplay Fox a few times and then do well with his combos, but in either case it's possible for him to outmaneuver Fox and combo him a few times if he plays fast and smart.

Mewtwo doesnt really have quick enough strong attacks or spike to possibly lead into a KO combo

In Brawl, Metaknight never leaves himself open and Ganondorf only has slow moves. It can happen that Ganondorf can outplay Metaknight a few times, but he'll have to do it hundreds upon hundreds of times because he has no combos, and even if he does manage to pick at Metaknight with a few moves here and there, all his KO moves are too slow to hit, so he'll have to build up damage to a point where a mediocre attack does the job...

Ganon only has to outplay a few times. 5 hits from Ganon=17 hits from Meta. And he has several quick, auto canceled aerials to KO with

As someone said earlier, in Melee, you have to outplay your opponent a few times to be successful in a low-tier-high-tier match-up. In Brawl, you have to outplay them every single time you want to attack

Thats how Brawl works, even in a high tier vs high tier. You have slowly land attacks to get them up, then floorguard or edgeguard

I remember an argument someone made that the absurd defensive abilities in Brawl are what makes it unbalanced. It makes slow moves in Brawl perfectly unviable. Your opponent is only ever going to be open to a slow move if they use a slow move, and if they want to win, they aren't going to, because winning in Brawl means that you throw projectiles and poke at your opponent with your fastest move while keeping your finger on the shield button at all times.
Because everyone always shields and dodges immediately, certain slow characters just don't work.

The defensive capabilities part is partly true. But slow moves work often with mindgames, spacing and taking advantage of a missed aerial with a sheild grab or counter attack, since there is no L-cancelling. Seriously, if there was L-casncelling in this game, it would be unbeliably broken

As soon as Ganondorf's dair approach is shielded, he's open. On the ground as well, he has no options because his jab isn't fast enough. And anything else is just not a possibility at all.
In Melee, apart from the ability to combo and gimp high-tier characters, they all at least had some tricks. Bowser is usable because of his 'Fortress and fair. Ness has a fair with great range and priority and little lag that can be combo'd into another move. Mewtwo has great wavedashing and his dtilt.

Ganon's dair auto cancels, so theres some room for escape, and it also can push you away a bit. Low tiers now have tricks too ya know.

If you're in a pickle in Brawl, you have your jab. And if you're Ganondorf, your jab is too slow and isn't even a three-hit high-damage combo, and if you're Captain Falcon, it has no range.

There are quicker move, and the ....grab

By the way, how unlikely is it that they'll ever end up banning a character? I mean, after a few more months of playing, there might crop up strategies or characters that can counter the absolutely ridiculous god characters... or it'll just get worse, which I fear will be the case.
If it's just one or two characters, I would be in favor of banning them to make it possible for the massive mid-tier to stand a realistic chance in tournaments...

That could possibly end up happening in certain characters dominate. Or it migh just end up as a game of 10ish characters, like MvC2

 

[DanGR]

Go ahead and play Melee, then Brawl and have you and a friend pick the worst and the best character against each other. Compare the difference. What do you find? This doesn't solve the mystery of life, but it can help explain the answer. In my opinion, as of now, brawl seems less balanced and it will until more techs that can be used by the whole cast are uncovered. B/c Snake and MK are so high above the rest of the cast in the tier list, that's why I think it's more unbalanced so far.

 

[Zankoku]

You can easily KO Meta before 200%, you just have to be playing defensively. Thats why he's ****** everyone, because people try to play him offensively, which wont work since he's so fast. You just have to wait out an opportunity

Yes, you have to find that small window of lag that Meta Knight has and hopefully not miss or he'll punish your much larger window of lag. Good luck. : )

Mewtwo doesnt really have quick enough strong attacks or spike to possibly lead into a KO combo

fair, dair, uthrow, bthrow?

Ganon only has to outplay a few times. 5 hits from Ganon=17 hits from Meta. And he has several quick, auto canceled aerials to KO with

Autocanceling does nothing to negate the startup lag of the attack.

Thats how Brawl works, even in a high tier vs high tier. You have slowly land attacks to get them up, then floorguard or edgeguard

Then obviously the one which can land attacks more quickly and easily and be punished less easily will have the advantage.

The defensive capabilities part is partly true. But slow moves work often with mindgames, spacing and taking advantage of a missed aerial with a sheild grab or counter attack, since there is no L-cancelling. Seriously, if there was L-casncelling in this game, it would be unbeliably broken

OMG MINDGAMES. I hate that word. "Yeah, this move is crappy, but you can MINDGAMES it to make it good!" "Sure, you may think that it's impossible to combo into a Volcano Kick, but you can MINDGAMES the other guy into it!" Realize that you can apply the same amount of "mindgames" to strictly better moves.

Ganon's dair auto cancels, so theres some room for escape, and it also can push you away a bit. Low tiers now have tricks too ya know.

Low tiers always have had tricks. Ever hear of the DJC?

 

[AmigoOne]

I wonder where all the complaints of camping went.
Its been replaced. I wonder what is it now.




I wonder how much longer until the next john comes?

 

[Zodiac]

First of all I haven't read the rest of the 85 friggen pages. But no, brawl is most certainly not more balanced, it is less balanced, way the hell less balanced. Ban snake, Ban meta, maybe you start getting some balance. but I doubt it.

 

[Corner-Trap]

Now that nearly three months have past since Brawl's release I can safely say that it's a less balanced game than Melee. The gap between top tiers like Snake and bottom tiers like Captain Falcon is much worse than the gap between Fox and Mewtwo in Melee. At least in Melee Mewtwo had a fighting chance, in Brawl the only reason for a Snake player to lose to a Captain Falcon player is by a wide skill gap.

 

[Amarkov]

Now that nearly three months have past since Brawl's release I can safely say that it's a less balanced game than Melee. The gap between top tiers like Snake and bottom tiers like Captain Falcon is much worse than the gap between Fox and Mewtwo in Melee. At least in Melee Mewtwo had a fighting chance, in Brawl the only reason for a Snake player to lose to a Captain Falcon player is by a wide skill gap.

What are you talking about? Mewtwo does not have any sort of fighting chance. You can win with him only if you are considerably better than your opponent, and the skill gap required is not much less than that between a Snake and Captain Falcon.

This is what nearly always happens to Mewtwo. How is that a "fighting chance"?

 

[Smooth Criminal]

What are you talking about? Mewtwo does not have any sort of fighting chance. You can win with him only if you are considerably better than your opponent, and the skill gap required is not much less than that between a Snake and Captain Falcon.

This is what nearly always happens to Mewtwo. How is that a "fighting chance"?

Answer: That Mewtwo wasn't very good.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6F2sGE7-pQ

Iori versus Dope. Iori is the Midsouth's best Mewtwo and arguably one of the best Mewtwo players in the nation. Dope is a **** good Falco player.

May not have been a landslide victory, but Iori came out on top. Comprehensive knowledge of the character and a combination of techniques intrinsic to the game engine made this sort of thing possible.

This is the sort of example some of the Melee players are trying to get at.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Amarkov]

I don't deny that Mewtwo can win. But Captain Falcon can win as well. Neither of these happen very often, because the person who plays the low tier must be significantly better to win.

It's possible that Captain Falcon requires a larger skill gap, I suppose. But unless you have some way to quantify general skill, that line of argument is pointless.

 

[Fawriel]

I don't deny that Mewtwo can win. But Captain Falcon can win as well.

For now, that's probably true. People are still learning and all. There used to be a time when Ike was considered broken by many who kept walking into his fsmash. Now people got down the timing on that attack, the timing on their own attacks, and now Ike is considered a subpar character in the competitive scene.

In Brawl, the only things you can learn is timing and spacing along with the couple of techs that a bunch of characters have, and that's all. The metagame will quickly solidify, and soon the human factor will be largely eliminated. Once people get even more time to train with Metaknight, they will find the moves that will leave them open for practically no time at all while allowing them to combo and kill. Any and all Metaknight who gets this timing and spacing down will only be touched by either extremely fast and surprising attacks or fast attacks with a ton of range.
Captain Falcon has only slow attacks with little range, with few exceptions that will require him to hit MK hundreds of times to damage and knock back MK sufficiently to win the match...

Shortly put: I believe that once we really get the timing and spacing down on the good characters, it will for the first time in the series happen that a low tier character has practically no chance at all to defeat a sufficiently good god-tier character, no matter the skill gap.


Also, if someone wants to push the point that it's impossible to balance fighting games and that we shouldn't be so hard on Brawl because of that: I've already prepared a rant about that.

 

[AlexX]

First of all I haven't read the rest of the 85 friggen pages. But no, brawl is most certainly not more balanced, it is less balanced, way the hell less balanced. Ban snake, Ban meta, maybe you start getting some balance. but I doubt it.

Is there something I keep missing that proves Metaknight and Snake are truly as unbeatable as people keep claiming? They have good and bad matchups like everyone else, they just happen to have more good matchups than bad (which is why they're upper-tier characters in the first place, so it only makes sense they'd do well in competitions).

 

[Popertop]

About Mewtwo....

Taj.

And about balancing fighting games....

It would have worked if that's what the developers were trying to do. But they weren't.

I'm going to go on a rant here about personality types.

Sakurai is what we'll call a type "Amiable."
This means he is mainly concerned with pleasing people, and keeping them happy and having no stress or conflict. Not the type of person for a competitive environment. I once read a quote of him concerning competition and he said something akin to, "If they put their heart into it, I say both teams did a good job." Also, what he envisioned smash to be is not anything remotely close to anything we desire.
He thinks we should play the game, die randomly and, as he so aptly put it, "Have a hearty laugh" and go about our business.

The type of person we would need to develop and balance a fighting game is what we'll call a type "Driver."

Drivers like to get stuff done, make progress get to the point. They're movers and shakers, and always on the go. They don't like to bother with niceties or details. This is the kind of person who would get down to the nitty gritty and say, "What do we need to do to create a quality fighting game?" and then take a look at the competitive following the game has, and see what they could do to please them, gear the game toward them since that's who would be playing the game the most and the longest.
Or at least I'd hope he would.... >.>
Of course Drivers and Amiables are almost complete opposites.

What needs to happen for the next installment of Smash Bros. is the right development for balance.
Get the game on the right track to be a respectably competitive and amazing.
"We can rebuild him, we have the technology."

chargin' mah lazor....

EDIT: Wow, that rant was completely unrelated to the subject. O.o'

 

[Fawriel]

That was pretty much true, but I also get the feeling that Sakurai did not just want to please everyone. If that was the case, I'd pat him hard on the shoulder and say "better luck with that next time, sport".

The characters most people seem to consider the most broken are Snake and Metaknight.
Snake got into the game because Kojima is Sakurai's good old rabu-rabu-friend-friend. That's pretty much common knowledge. The only other 3rd party character who was allowed in was Sonic, and he was pretty much mandatory. According to what I know, he didn't even attempt to contact other firms about their characters.

And Metaknight is, if I may say so, a Mary Sue.
We all know the Kirby franchise is Sakurai's own. It suddenly jumped from one to three characters. Fair enough, they're good characters after all. Many also consider them to be the main focus of the SSE plot. Ho-hum.
Metaknight is also the only character who doesn't share the same victory theme as the other members of his franchise. His was turned into a rock version. And Sakurai is apparently the kind of guy who likes both rock music and cute stuff ( surprisingly common, trust me on that one ).
Point is, I believe Metaknight is Sakurai's favourite character and was pimped thusly.
Same goes for G&W and ROB, who are right down his alley, and maybe the Spacies, Pit and Wario, though I have no definite proof that he loved these.

Kind of irrelevant to the discussion and kind of sounds conspiracy-theory-ish, but that's what I think.

 

[Popertop]

I don't think it sounds conspiracy theory ish but then I guess you might as well call me a conspiracy theorist I guess. >.>'

I always end up on some random tangent anyways. Whatever. Conversations that are just a straight line are boring sometimes.

That seems to ring very true, to me at least. He seems like the kind of person that would do that.

I also forgot to point out the piece of evidence pointing toward the fact that he was trying to screw over the competitive community: tripping.

But, it was obvious.

 

[mugwhump]

Now that nearly three months have past since Brawl's release I can safely say that it's a less balanced game than Melee. The gap between top tiers like Snake and bottom tiers like Captain Falcon is much worse than the gap between Fox and Mewtwo in Melee. At least in Melee Mewtwo had a fighting chance, in Brawl the only reason for a Snake player to lose to a Captain Falcon player is by a wide skill gap.

Actually Falcon's not bad against Snake.

Or at least not as bad as he is against metaknight

 

[Zankoku]

I don't deny that Mewtwo can win. But Captain Falcon can win as well. Neither of these happen very often, because the person who plays the low tier must be significantly better to win.

It's possible that Captain Falcon requires a larger skill gap, I suppose. But unless you have some way to quantify general skill, that line of argument is pointless.

The Mewtwo and Falco player typically place about equally in major tournaments. Mewtwo's matchup against the space animals isn't that bad compared to Mewtwo's matchup against Marth. The fastfalling property means that Mewtwo has some pretty mean combos.

 

[RDK]

The point he's failing to see is that some characters in Brawl are just horribly inadequate in every way when put against higher-end characters that are sure to comprise half of the roster at any major tournament. C. Falcon vs. MK or Snake is a considerably wider gap match than, say, a Falco vs. a Mewtwo (given that all characters in said situations play to their absolute fullest).

 

[L1M3]

Melee>brawl, also in balance.

 

[Samochan]

Melee>brawl, also in balance.

You know Lim3, even if you're finnish and awesome as such, in big debate topics like this you're supposed to bring arguments from your side than simply state something without proof. <_> It does not leave a good impression from a newb smashboard user if your posts don't hold any weight in anything. Just a friendly advice.

But if you don't care, then ignore this lol.

 

[thumbswayup]

So, how about brawl ice climber's infinite grab on every member of the cast for balance?

 

[M.K]

So, how about brawl ice climber's infinite grab on every member of the cast for balance?

It's your fault if you get grabbed by them. My Lucario just got destroyed by IC's infinite grab but I guess it could be easy to get around through careful positioning.

 

[St. Viers]

um, and that's negated by IC having wobbling in melee, your point?