Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[Redson]

Ahh, Intelligent people. How I've missed thee over the years.

I believe you took my noticing Brawl showing more evident imperfections ad me being hypocritical towards my statement that Brawl was more balanced. Allow me to elaborate.

Back in Melee, I didn't focus on the problems of the characters so much as the areas they excelled in. I realized that a few characters excelled in VERY many things, while others excelled in very FEW things. This meant some characters were going to be naturally easy to control over another. This is evident with the TIER lists, which I have already stated I do not agree with, and you have stated is not relavant. So lets ignore that topic.
ANYWHO, with Brawl, I see everyone with the same amount of progressive traits (Or at least a VERY minimal difference) and around the same recessive traits as well. Not only that, the recessive traits are a lot easier to see for me back than they were in Melee.
But you're right. Perhaps FLAW is not the best word to use in this situation.
Sorry for not going into further detail with that post.

ANYWHO AGAIN.

Your stab at my Wolf Comment: I never was talking about Wolf being a huge contender. A lot of people use him, though. And his advancements are rendered moot a lot of the time due to his horrible recovery system.
Your stab at my Toon Link comment: A powerful smash attack can take him down at percentages as low as 45%, if not lower.
Your stab at my Snake comment: Okay, you're right. No one has definitive flaws (Unless you can count that ****ED CYPHER. God**** gimp deaths!) but they do all have their own little quirks and gimmicks.

Ow, those kinda hurt, you know?

 

[metalmonstar]

Actually, he isn't. He's just the cutoff point because of characters represented at tournaments. The fact that Doctor Mario or Mario were rarely reprented (if ever) at tournaments didn't make them bad characters. In fact, they were pretty good characters and stood a decent chance of doing very well at tournaments. People just didn't play them... despite the fact that they could chaingrab (among others) Fox, Falco and Sheik and throw-combo Peach (and probably Marth) into death with a follow-up aerials or Smash and were otherwise just pretty good against the Tops and Highs. Heck, except for facing infinites from Fox (which Peach also did) and forced adaptation against Falco (which, uh, everyone, did), Link was pretty viable too. He had some really good combos on Fox and Falco, he could edgeguard really well, Up B semi-spiked in NTSC and he wasn't all that bad. He was as tourney viable as at least Lucario.

I don't really understand the first part. Weren't Mario and Doctor Mario above Ganondorf on the tier list? So that wouldn't really change the numbers at all. I could possibly see Link. From what I have heard around most people considered Ganondorf to be the cutoff point that could be because he was the last of middle tier.

But how well can Lucario the Bottom 5 out of those 23 characters do against the Top 5 vs. the Bottom 5 of the "tourney viable" in Melee vs. the Top 5 of the same game?

Lucario does actually suprisingly well considering his supposed placing on tier list. He represents 3.3% of the top 8 placers. Yet has a 7.8 points per top 8. That is more than a good bit of those higher up then he is. So it seems that down the line those 20 characters have the potential to do will in tournaments and stand a chance against the top.

Ness has a pretty high score per top 8 appearance himself. Timotee won a 40 person tournament with Ness. Now I am sure you have been around the last couple of months, so you know that Ness mains have been complaining about banning infinites and how Ness is tournament unviable because of it. So it seems odd that a character that isn't supposed even be able to compete in tournaments to actually win one. According to Ness mains all one would have had to do is counterpick Marth and it would have been all over for Timotee.

Regardless of the hard matchup, Ness is still predicted to be at the lower end of a tier list, and not even included in the viable 20 that I mentioned.

Also Mario goes about even with almost all of the cast and he isn't included in the 20.

How many even to pretty-even matchups did the Tops and Highs have against the Low Tiers, though? That's also balance when the lower downs stand a chance againt the higher ups generally.

I think you have me here and in more than one way. Anyway though, Sheik seems to have 8 neutral to almost neutral matchups, Fox has about 10, and Falco has about 10 also. That is going off the slight disadvantage and slight advantage as well as clear neutral.

Brawl is still young so all the numbers really haven't been worked out. All I can say is the neutrals. Snake has 10, Metaknight and Game and watch have 5. After those though it gets much better.

Did I mention that Phanna's matchup chart is unreliable since it's not like it was voted through by the SBR and I don't think he filtered the opinions of those who submitted their matchup-findings to it? Like, if Random #212891 were to say "Ganondorf destroys Peach, it's a 7-3 matchup,", he wouldn't go "Wait, whaddya say?" but just include it or whatever.

At first I was going to try to rip into this and mention how Phanna wouldn't let n00bish opinions alter the matchup. However after reading a bit more he did take under consideration what people mentioned and bumped a few matchups here and there.

To his defense though, He made his in late 2006 and the last update was in late 2007. Which means Melee had developed and most knew the matchups quite well. It was edited for over a year which means that it has had plenty of time to work out the kinks. Not to mention several respectable players put in their input which counterbalances the randon1332's opinion. Also it was made by a respectable and credible source.

I will admit now that it may have accuracies but nothing that major.

Why did you even bring this up when not bringing up the Bottom Tier of Brawl in the same breath?

Cause I was discussing melee and its aspects first and then Brawls. That is how I decided to organize it.

Wow, there's "speculation". You know what, there was speculation Wario sucked as well. I was smart enough to see that this was complete BS the first time I saw him, though because of what he could do. People can "speculate" however they want. There were and still are people who "speculate" that Ganondorf, Jigglypuff, Yoshi and Captain Falcon are really good (and not joking)!

Who was dumb enough to think Wario was bad?

Of course Ganon, Jiggly, Yoshi, and Falcon mains are going to try to make their character look good. I have stated before that the best and hardest debates will be fought between those mains in hopes of keeping their character out of the worst spot.

Haven't you heard Yoshi is a snake counter (sarcasm)

There is a lot of speculation mostly due to Brawl's infancy. It will clear up in time, hopefully.

Now, also, is that really balance if Snake has a 6-3 against every single other character other than those 4? Balance is the whole ball of wax, not just random aspects plucked out of context.

You do realize that up until now your whole arguement was on Top compared to bottom of viability? You probably should have mention this earlier.

Anyway. I can't really help how good Snake is. However I think that having just one bad matchup would contribute to a game's balance. If Snake is beat by one Character who is then beat by many characters then those characters become viable just because of the fact that they hold a counterpick against the character who counter picks Snake.

Now that I look at it this arguement more goes for Metaknight. Metaknight beats almost all of the cast. However has a hard matchup versus Snake. Snake has hard matchups of his own which opens up even more characters.

What happens is a character counterpick cycle.

Yes, but that's not the sum of tier placing. What's important is not only the number of characters one has "bad matchups" against, and 4-5 isn't even a bad matchup! 4-5 is just an even matchup where one has a slight advantage! A bad matchup is at least 6-3 or 6-4 or something.

What's important besides how many "matchups in which one does not have the advantage" is also how big/small these advantages/disadvantages are. If Meta-Knight has 4-5's against Toon Link and Marth, it doesn't really matter that much if he then has 6-4's and 6-3s against everyone else below those while Marth and Toon Link does not (and instead have 5-5s, 5-4s and some 6-4s)(hypothetically).

So because Sheik, Fox, and Falco had no real hard matchups that give the game balance. They balance each other out because they destroy everyone else? In a way I can see where you are coming from but I think Game and Watch, Metaknight, and Snake are in similiar positions.

Your definition of "good" is pretty poor. Pray tell, are these 4-5 matchups as well?

Honestly I can't tell you. Number values for matchups don't seem to exist just the general idea of Heavy advantage, small advantage, neutral, small disadvantage, and heavy disadvantage. Within each could be a wide variety of number values. Knowing these characters though, I guess you have a point there. Though Falcon, Jigglypuff, and Ganondorf may have their shining moments somewhere in the matchups.

Ganondorf is ranked higher because maybe Jigglypuff and Captain Falcon get curbstomped much more than he does. Let's say Jiggz has three "good", i.e. 4-5 matchups. Well, whoopity doo. Doesn't really mean much when every other matchup for her is at least a 6-4. Meanwhile, Ganondorf enjoys no 4-5 matchup in his favour but he's got far more 4-5s than Jigglypuff and far less "at least 6-4s" (and far less 10-0-ish ones). This is why he ends up higher than Jigglypuff.

I could see that as a possibility. It could be that Ganondorf even in bad matchups makes his hits count and can get earlier kills than most which means even bad matchups can swing his way when played right.

It's the same for Fox in Melee. Why is Fox higher than Falco despite having 2 "bad" matchups whilst Falco only has one (and even that is disputed)? Character bias and bad voting aside, he just had a lot of much better matchups against everyone else in the game compared to Falco.

I am not sure why Fox is above Falco. Falco has a higher point value across the board with plenty of wiggle room even if there were inaccuracies. Sheik has it even better than both of them yet she is third. With the exception of Kirby Sheik beats the entire low and bottom tier character. With the exception of Doc, Jigglypuff, and Kirby, Sheik has a good advantage against everyone after Samus.

Did you know that about six characters have better matchups across the board then Snake does? Ughh, I wish brawl had matchup values it would make my position a bit firmer to stand on.

That is why the Tierlist is not the end-all of Competitive statistics as individual matchups are far more important.

I read an SF article that said counterpicking was overestimated and that a good player would do better with just perfecting one character. Now I don't believe this but I found it to be interesting along with the points they brought forth.

I would surely enjoy if the character selection and blind picking became an integral part of Smash.

Pure speculation and nothing I can refute because it's, hey, pure speculation.

Not that it mattered much but had I some researched statistical data in that paragraph along with speculation.

That's not what balance is about, though.

A game can be balanced despite all of that. In fact, there are games like that that are. One usually thrown around example is the Guilty Gear XX-series (XX, #Reload, Isuka (not balanced and wholly hated), Slash and Accent Core).

* Every character has 2 jumps and one air dash. If they use up both jumps, they cannot airdash... except Millia Rage. She has 2 jumps and 2 air dashes. If she jumps only once, she can airdash twice. If she jumps twice, she can air dash only one.
* Jam has the ability to dizzy people much easier than anyone else because of the amount of dizzy-meter-addition her moves have, especially if charged via an ability only she has where she can perform moves that charge up one of four different Charges. Each charge would affect different aspects of her metagame, making certain move stronger/better/different. Why is dizzying important? Because not only can she dizzy people easily, she also has one of the game's fastest Destroys. Destroy is a One-Hit KO move each character possesses, only they aren't equally good. Jam's is one of the game's best. If you get dizzified against Jam, you just lost the round.
* Some characters (far from the majority) have air grabs... in other words, they can grab you while you're both in the air as opposed to just on the ground. Chip has an "airgrab" where he teleports to you and grabs you where you stand.
* Only certain characters could gatling combo from their grabs... some of these combos were very good.
* A.B.A. has a Special Dash where she dashes forward during which she is completely invulnerably and enjoys either frame advantage or frame neutrality upon completion. Her Force Break version gives her guaranteed frame advantage (as in I'm 100% certain it's an advantage) and has her dash forward a greater length (thus able to entirely outdash certain Overdrives, like Venom's Ball of Doom, for instance).
* With the introduction of Force Breaks, not every character has an Aerial (and thus secondary) Force Break, like, say, A.B.A.
* Millia enjoys two Special Rolls which let her enjoy some invincibility, as well. They also allow her to go through the opponent (I'm not sure if A.B.A. can do the same but she probably can). One is on the ground where she rolls straight forward. One is in the air where she rolls diagionally downwards.
* Some characters can make certain moves that aren't naturally unblockable unblockable through BS pressure combos that combine two diffferent moves, one of which is low and the other an overhead, making it impossible to block both at the same time, like, for instance, Eddie's combined creature-thingie with an overhead or whatever (I think) and Anji Moto's old butterfly in #Reload where the 2nd hit (if the 1st is blocked) was an overhead (he was still able to move, thus enabling him to perform a low, guaranteeing a hit).
* May's various Dolphin approaches.

And more. There are one jillion different character specific T's and AT's in the Guilty Gear XX-series, yet it's among one of the world's most balance game franchises. I haven't kept up but at least during the #Reload area, the Bottom Tiers each managed to win at least one of Japan's major tournaments! Anji Moto, May and Chip, who were all unviersally considered Bottom Tier, each won an SBO each, IIRC.

Heck, the game series is so balanced, the Tier list frequently changes and is disputed. Anji, May and Chip switched positions regularly during #Reload's lifespan because people just weren't sure of how much they "sucked" (but they could still win super-major tournaments!).

In fact, the GGXX-series does not in any way suffer the "Only Tops and Maybe Some Highs Winning Tournaments"-syndrome, despite being a franchise with so many character-specific... things.

I think most competitive games have this syndrome. Soul Calibur 2 seems to have a fluctating tier list and I constantly see the supposedly low tier characters played while the top don't seem to see that much action.

Interesting that you bring up Guilty Gear. I can't say I have played it but I did read some stuff on its game balance.

Which is somewhat were I got my idea that Balance is based off the Skeleton that the game provides rather than percentage of usable characters.

* Double Jump
* Ground and Air Dash
* Sweep Attack
* Overhead Attack that Launches
* Ground Throw and Air Throw
* Air Recovery (aka "tech recovery")
* A silly Instant Kill mode

It is just the top compared to the bottom doesn't explain how Marvel vs. Capcon 2 is even remotely balanced. It is considered broken but also balanced. How is that when only 4 characters were really even usable. I guess being optimistic you could say that a couple more than God tier were usable. Pretty much though anything after God tier was practically unusable and hardly ever saw representation.


Anyway most competitive games have this syndrome there really isn't a way around it. You won't see Falcon win a major tournament in Brawl just like you won't see Pichu win a major tournament.

 

[Yuna]

Ahh, Intelligent people. How I've missed thee over the years.

I believe you took my noticing Brawl showing more evident imperfections ad me being hypocritical towards my statement that Brawl was more balanced. Allow me to elaborate.

Back in Melee, I didn't focus on the problems of the characters so much as the areas they excelled in. I realized that a few characters excelled in VERY many things, while others excelled in very FEW things.

In other words, you don't have the necessary knowledge to deem which game is more balanced as you didn't really pay much attention to the innate flaws of the characters in Melee? And there are plenty of character in Brawl that excel at very few things as well. It's nothing Melee-exclusive.

This meant some characters were going to be naturally easy to control over another. This is evident with the TIER lists, which I have already stated I do not agree with, and you have stated is not relavant. So lets ignore that topic.

Umm... (technical) ease of use is inconsequential. If you some characters just have an easier time winning at high levels of play, why, yes, Sherlock. That's what tier lists are all about. And it is, indeed, still the same in Brawl. Why is Snake considered a contender for Top Tier? Because he's just got such a goshdarn easy time winning!

ANYWHO, with Brawl, I see everyone with the same amount of progressive traits (Or at least a VERY minimal difference) and around the same recessive traits as well. Not only that, the recessive traits are a lot easier to see for me back than they were in Melee.

All that means is that you're either delusional or just ignorant or not really looking deep enough. Everyone does not have the same potential, not by a long shot. The Bottom Tiers have almost no potential. The very lage Mid Tier all have potential. The High tier has tons of potential and the Top Tier just has oodles of tons of forests of oceans or cookie jars of it. In other words, no, everyone does not have the same or even roughly the same potential.

If it's so much easier for you to see than in Melee, maybe you didn't look hard enough in Melee? It'd kinda understand if you claimed you didn't see it in Melee. But to say it's easier to see in Brawl, that's just admitting to having very superficial knowledge of Melee, at least when compared to your knowledge of Brawl.

Your stab at my Wolf Comment: I never was talking about Wolf being a huge contender. A lot of people use him, though. And his advancements are rendered moot a lot of the time due to his horrible recovery system.

Then why mention him in the same breath as Top Tier contenders? And why is he even relevant? So what if he's got one gigantic flaw? Falco was a Top Tier in Melee, yet his recovery had gigantic flaws as well! So what if Wolf's recovery sucks? It's a part of why he's Mid Tier. And Mid Tiers are usually Mid Tier because they have many flaws or at least more flaws than the Highs and Tops.

It's the same in Melee as in Brawl as in all other fighting games in existence. The fact that Wolf has a flawed recovery is in no way proof of balance.

Your stab at my Toon Link comment: A powerful smash attack can take him down at percentages as low as 45%, if not lower.

Name those attacks and I'll name at least 12 or 15 other characters who die either earlier, at the exact same percentage or at least very close to it.

Such strong attacks are very few and they kill everyone at roughly 35-50%-ish. It's not a Toon Link specific-weakness. To make up for his lightness, he's also floatier and has a great recovery, making it harder to edgeguard him. So it's not like it makes him super-vulnerable as opposed to, say, Link, who's heavier, yet less floaty and with a suckier recovery. And would you know it, it was like this in Melee as well, where certain characters fell faster/weighed more whilst having worse recoveries and vice versa!

Your stab at my Snake comment: Okay, you're right. No one has definitive flaws (Unless you can count that ****ED CYPHER. God**** gimp deaths!) but they do all have their own little quirks and gimmicks.

How the hell do you gimp his Cypher? He gets it back instantly and he's got tons of Super Armor frames during his Cyhper. Lots of characters have flaws, some of them fatal. Snake? Not so much.

Ow, those kinda hurt, you know?

I apologize if you're hurting right now. I don't feel any pain at all.

 

[Yuna]

I don't really understand the first part. Weren't Mario and Doctor Mario above Ganondorf on the tier list? So that wouldn't really change the numbers at all. I could possibly see Link. From what I have heard around most people considered Ganondorf to be the cutoff point that could be because he was the last of middle tier.

Oh right. I keep forgetting about Ganondorf's lower placing in the latest Tier List as I don't care that much about him, anyway, to remember exactly where on the Tier List he is. But Luigi is pretty darn tourney viable (with good to medium good matchups against the Tops and Highs) and so is Link (to a lesser degree than Luigi), too.

Lucario does actually suprisingly well considering his supposed placing on tier list. He represents 3.3% of the top 8 placers. Yet has a 7.8 points per top 8. That is more than a good bit of those higher up then he is. So it seems that down the line those 20 characters have the potential to do will in tournaments and stand a chance against the top.

You can be Low Tier yet not have catastrophic or even that bad or even even matchups against the Top Tiers. Zelda didn't really do that bad against the Tops and Highs. But she was 5th worse (I think) because the Low Tiers just ***** her.

Also, a few good Lucario players can really screw up the representation. If Azen goes Lucario at every tourney (if) and places 2nd or wins most, then Lucario will average a lot of Top 8 finishers, only, he'll still be pretty Lowish. Name 5 good Lucario players who've placed Top 3.

Meanwhile, Snake places Top 3 at almsot every single tournament. And it's not the same 3 Snakes, it's a multitude of Snakes. This is much clearer proof of how Snake is obviously a great character for Competitive play than Azen and maybe 1 or 2 other Lucarios doing well in tournaments.

After all, Azen regularly places well with Low Tiers all the time. But they still remain Low Tiers.

Ness has a pretty high score per top 8 appearance himself. Timotee won a 40 person tournament with Ness.

The question is who else was there? Also, Ness, not that low. He's only "bad" because of the infinite against him.

Now I am sure you have been around the last couple of months, so you know that Ness mains have been complaining about banning infinites and how Ness is tournament unviable because of it. So it seems odd that a character that isn't supposed even be able to compete in tournaments to actually win one. According to Ness mains all one would have had to do is counterpick Marth and it would have been all over for Timotee.

Did he go Ness all the way? Did he go up against any Marths? Did any of said Marths know how to infinite Ness properly? Did any of them manage to infinite him properly without messing up? And did Timotee allow himself to be grabbed a lot or did he just manage to avoid getting grabbed and, thus, getting infinited?

Yes is only bad for Competitive play if he goes up against a Marth who knows how to infinite him because without the infinite, that matchup isn't really that bad. The fact that Timotee managed to win a tournament doesn't really mean much, because, you know what, I've won 64-man tournaments with Peach because I didn't have to face a single Fox, Marth or Sheik that knew what they were doing or at least that were good enough to beat me in those tournaments. I've managed to actually do an entire 32-man+ tournament going Zelda all the way (Melee) and I managed to win a 26-man Brawl tournament where I, as Zelda, had to face three consecutive Meta-Knights.

Does that mean Zelda > Meta-Knight and Peach = Top Tier in Melee? Umm... no. It just means that maybe there just weren't better players than me at those tournaments regardless of who they played.

For comparison, GimpyFish managed to beat Sheiks all the time as Bowser in NTSC Melee despite Sheik having a great chaingrab on Bowser (the matchup was 10-0 in Sheik's favour).

Regardless of the hard matchup, Ness is still predicted to be at the lower end of a tier list, and not even included in the viable 20 that I mentioned.

See above.

Also Mario goes about even with almost all of the cast and he isn't included in the 20.

Why not? If he goes even with almost everyone and has almost no bad matchups and those aren't even that bad, then he's a viable character. Now, it might be easier to win as Snake but if Mario's matchups against Snake, Meta-Knight, Pit, Zelda, Toon Link, Marth, Game & Watch and Pikmin & Olimar are even, then he's still viable. It's just easier to win as Snake, but Snake vs. Mario is even, anyway (hypothetically).

I think you have me here and in more than one way. Anyway though, Sheik seems to have 8 neutral to almost neutral matchups, Fox has about 10, and Falco has about 10 also. That is going off the slight disadvantage and slight advantage as well as clear neutral.

But that's not all that balance is about. How do you determine who's better if both characters have an equal amount of even matchups, good matchups and bad matchups? By going by how good or bad said matchups are. This is how someone with only 3 good matchups might end up higher than someone with 5 good matchups if that 2nd someone only has 4-5s while the 1st someone has 3 6-3s. But it's rare when it all comes down to that... and it's not really a sign of balance either as, as I'm forced to yet again repeat: It was like that in Melee, too.

Brawl is still young so all the numbers really haven't been worked out. All I can say is the neutrals. Snake has 10, Metaknight and Game and watch have 5. After those though it gets much better.

How can you for sure say what matchups are neutral if you cannot determine what matchups are good or bad? If it's too early for you to determine either, then it's too earlier for you to determine any. And I don't trust your judgment on those neutrals.

At first I was going to try to rip into this and mention how Phanna wouldn't let n00bish opinions alter the matchup. However after reading a bit more he did take under consideration what people mentioned and bumped a few matchups here and there.

Yah. I actually read that thread a few months back.

To his defense though, He made his in late 2006 and the last update was in late 2007. Which means Melee had developed and most knew the matchups quite well. It was edited for over a year which means that it has had plenty of time to work out the kinks. Not to mention several respectable players put in their input which counterbalances the randon1332's opinion. Also it was made by a respectable and credible source.

I'm just saying, don't use it as a 100% fool-proof source. Also, since no such definite chart exists for Brawl yet, you cannot go "Look at these matchups!" as if they're established fact.

Who was dumb enough to think Wario was bad?

Really stupid people.

You do realize that up until now your whole arguement was on Top compared to bottom of viability? You probably should have mention this earlier.

It was never about that. It's other people who bring up how "balanced" Brawl is and how every character has a chance now and how the bottom can do well against the top. It is at this point that I step in and say "O RLY?". I never randomly go "Jiggz can never win against Snake! There, where's your balance now?!".

Anyway. I can't really help how good Snake is. However I think that having just one bad matchup would contribute to a game's balance. If Snake is beat by one Character who is then beat by many characters then those characters become viable just because of the fact that they hold a counterpick against the character who counter picks Snake.

Only not. You're not viable just because you can beat a Top Tier by a slim margin (or even a pretty large one) as long as tons of characters destroy you. It'd make your character a Counterpick character vs. a single character whilst you can be counterpicked by tons of characters. Also, it's all relative. Just one bad matchup for Snake would make the game more balanced than it is at this current moment (with the currently known metagame)... but it wouldn't automatically make it more balanced than Melee.

Also, such characters exist... even in Melee. Ice Climbers vs. Sheik. And then Ice Climbers vs. everyone else above them. Not a pretty sight against some of them.

Now that I look at it this arguement more goes for Metaknight. Metaknight beats almost all of the cast. However has a hard matchup versus Snake. Snake has hard matchups of his own which opens up even more characters.

4-5 =/= Hard matchups. Name these "hard" matchups and their odds.

What happens is a character counterpick cycle.

This happens in a lot of fighting game franchises. It even happened in Melee. The fact that a lot of people chose to only main one character didn't change this fact!

So because Sheik, Fox, and Falco had no real hard matchups that give the game balance. They balance each other out because they destroy everyone else? In a way I can see where you are coming from but I think Game and Watch, Metaknight, and Snake are in similiar positions.

Sheik had a bad matchup against Ice Climbers (how bad, I do not know). Fox and Falco had good matchups again ICs. Fox had a bad matchup against Falco who had an even to 4-5 matchup against Sheik, who had a bad matchup against Fox. Marth had a bad matchup against Sheik, but good matchups against Fox and Falco. Peach had bad matchups against every single one of the aforementioned four except maybe against Falco.

See, it was like this in Melee too. The fact that a lot of players decided to stick with a single character all the way, anyway, didn't change this. A lot of players still stick with only one character in Brawl.

Honestly I can't tell you. Number values for matchups don't seem to exist just the general idea of Heavy advantage, small advantage, neutral, small disadvantage, and heavy disadvantage. Within each could be a wide variety of number values. Knowing these characters though, I guess you have a point there. Though Falcon, Jigglypuff, and Ganondorf may have their shining moments somewhere in the matchups.

Might, maybe, I think, possibly... words often thrown around in this thread.

I could see that as a possibility. It could be that Ganondorf even in bad matchups makes his hits count and can get earlier kills than most which means even bad matchups can swing his way when played right.

"When played right" is not a valid argument. If matchup charts are only accurate when you "play it wrong", then why have them at all? Matchup charts and tier lists assume the people playing "play the game 'right'". Ganondorf's bad matchups are bad matchups even when he "plays it right".

I am not sure why Fox is above Falco. Falco has a higher point value across the board with plenty of wiggle room even if there were inaccuracies. Sheik has it even better than both of them yet she is third. With the exception of Kirby Sheik beats the entire low and bottom tier character. With the exception of Doc, Jigglypuff, and Kirby, Sheik has a good advantage against everyone after Samus.

Because of random BS. A lot of people want Falco on top, but there just more Foxes placing high and people just disliked facing Fox more, making the voting procedure, though restricted to the SBR, kinda inaccurate and Fox ended up above Falco. A lot of people disagree to this day.

Sheik does not have it better than Fox and Falco when you look at the big picture.

Did you know that about six characters have better matchups across the board then Snake does? Ughh, I wish brawl had matchup values it would make my position a bit firmer to stand on.

I believe you mean "less 4-5 matchups". Which doesn't mean much if they have more 6-3, 6-4 and worse matchups that aren't in their favour than Snake. Also, game still in infancy. The SBR still haven't revealed what they think, the current statistics are still based only on the words of everyone in General and Tactical (and we know how smart the average General- and Tactical forumgoer is!).

I read an SF article that said counterpicking was overestimated and that a good player would do better with just perfecting one character. Now I don't believe this but I found it to be interesting along with the points they brought forth.

SF? Street Fighter article? Also, counterpicking is not equal in all games. Some games have more importance placed on counterpicking among the Top Tiers where they all counter each other. Other games have Top Tiers with pretty even matchups against each other and thus, there's less need to counterpick each others' Top Tiers.

Also, this does not necessarily mean a game is more or less balanced than another. It's a huge ball of wax. How well each Top Tier counters each other is not the endall of balance.

I would surely enjoy if the character selection and blind picking became an integral part of Smash.

Double Blind Picking is an intergral part of Smash. It's just that a lot of people still only main one character, making it obselete when, for example, I go up against, well, anyone good in Melee because they automatically know I'll go Peach against them.

Not that it mattered much but had I some researched statistical data in that paragraph along with speculation.

Only a lot of your statistics were flawed.

I think most competitive games have this syndrome. Soul Calibur 2 seems to have a fluctating tier list and I constantly see the supposedly low tier characters played while the top don't seem to see that much action.

Tier lists are not popularity contests. People need to get this through their heads. If all good players in the US randomly started playing only Yoshi, a Yoshi would probably win at least a few biggish to major tournaments. It wouldn't automatically make him a Top Tier or even good.

The fact that very few people played Ice Climbers and placed high with them didn't stop them from jumping up several leaps on the Tier List.

Tier lists are about how well the characters can perform when pitted against every single other character in the game. It's about potential when played at the highest level.

So what if here might be few Ivys, Sophitias and Xianghuas in high level SC2 (which is pretty dead nowadays, anyway) vs. the many Kiliks that plague tournaments?

Interesting that you bring up Guilty Gear. I can't say I have played it but I did read some stuff on its game balance.

I've played Competitive Guilty Gear in my days. I was never any good because I never bothered to get good at it. But I know some of Europe's top GG players (in fact, I know some of Sweden's and Europe's top players in almost every single major fighting game franchise out there... heck, my boyfriend is the UK's top rated Smasher and Europe's current top rated Melty Blood player). I hang out with them quite often at tournaments and anime conventions and whatnot and I watch them play all the time. I also discuss the games with them, gaining insight into them even though I might not play them (for instance, I know quite a lot about Tekken despite almost never ever playing any of the Tekken games... even casually).

Which is somewhat were I got my idea that Balance is based off the Skeleton that the game provides rather than percentage of usable characters.

Umm... unless our definitions of the game skeleton are vastly different, the game skeleton provided by the game is what determines how many characters are viable and how viable they are.

It is just the top compared to the bottom doesn't explain how Marvel vs. Capcon 2 is even remotely balanced. It is considered broken but also balanced. How is that when only 4 characters were really even usable. I guess being optimistic you could say that a couple more than God tier were usable. Pretty much though anything after God tier was practically unusable and hardly ever saw representation.

MvC2 is not balanced. It just isn't. It's broken and imbalanced. It's just that the balance between the very top is pretty good. No one would ever claim MvC2 is truly balanced since at least 75% of the cast is useless in Competitive play.

I'm not kidding, those characters have pretty much 10-0 matchups against the viable characters. Heck, the number of viable characters might not even be 25%. I'm not that knowledgable in MvC2 but I do know that it's mostly just M. Capcom's characters stand no chance and it's mostly all about the Marvel ones... and even then only a few of them.

Anyway most competitive games have this syndrome there really isn't a way around it. You won't see Falcon win a major tournament in Brawl just like you won't see Pichu win a major tournament.

Inconsequential. If the game makers (i.e. Sakurai) were any good and knowledgable and put down enough time and effort into it, you could have the Bottom Tier characters stand a serious chance of winning major tournaments (and quite possibly have them actually do it from time to time).

It's not common and it's not easy, but it's quite possible. I only brought it up to show that it can and has been done, that Sakurai is incompetent at balancing Competitive fighting games, no matter how much some people worship him and claim Brawl is a masterpiece or that he did an immaculate job or even that he did a great job at balancing Brawl. No... he didn't.

 

[Speedwobbles223]

I think too many characters were nerfed who didn't need it

 

[IrArby]

Well for one this thread is terribly imbalanced. Yuna, Redson, and metalmonster are now writing posts that are overly long to the point that no one else wants to read it all.

 

[manhunter098]

How the hell do you gimp his Cypher? He gets it back instantly and he's got tons of Super Armor frames during his Cyhper. Lots of characters have flaws, some of them fatal. Snake? Not so much.

Super Armor Frames? I was pretty sure they were Juggernaut frames, or whatever people are calling them at the moment. Basically if you hit him with a strong enough attack (easier to do as he gains damage) he will fall off his cypher. Its nothing like Super Armor, like Olimar's down B, where you could slam him at 500% with Ike's forward smash and he wouldnt budge an inch.

 

[Yuna]

Super Armor Frames? I was pretty sure they were Juggernaut frames, or whatever people are calling them at the moment. Basically if you hit him with a strong enough attack (easier to do as he gains damage) he will fall off his cypher. Its nothing like Super Armor, like Olimar's down B, where you could slam him at 500% with Ike's forward smash and he wouldnt budge an inch.

That explains why I can sometimes hit him out of it and sometimes not.

Still, how does this translate into easily gimped recovery? What about the jillion recoveries without neither Super Armour frames nor Juggernaut frames? Most people don't randomly Up B right in front of their opponents. They try to, you know, be smart about it.

Never mind the fact that if you hit him out of it, he can immediately perform another Up B since his Up B cancels momentum, IIRC. Which means he can never be KO:ed as long as he isn't still in hitstun when he flies off the screen.

His recovery is also quasi-infinite since he can cancel it into a landmine or whatever it's called if it won't carry him far enough to recover. In other words, no, it's not easily gimped. In fact, it's pretty hard to gimp if the Snake knows what he's doing.

Its only real weakness is that it doesn't autosweetspot but that's easily overcome with, you know, skill. Just practice the timing and spacing of when to cancel it to latch onto the ledge.

 

[Redson]

Well for one this thread is terribly imbalanced. Yuna, Redson, and metalmonster are now writing posts that are overly long to the point that no one else wants to read it all.

Hey man, I'm sorry. I helped derail this thread completely. I'm stepping down now, as all my thoughts were merely opinion base. While I like to think that I had good points, all I was really doing was rambling.

Yuna, you have a lot of good points. You really do. You also seemes insistant on making me feel like an idiot throughout all of your posts because my thoughts were "Opininiative", which I actually stressed in an earlier post. But you're right, opinions won't get this thread anywhere. In actuality, I don't know why I'm bothering to argue when I could actually be playing the game and not dwelling on silly things like the differences between them. You like one, or you like the other.

GOOD SHOW, YUNA. GOOD SHOW.

I really need to find a better way to get my thoughts in before I try to debate again. :\

Again, sorry for derailing mate. I'm stepping down from this one.

 

[Yuna]

Hey man, I'm sorry. I helped derail this thread completely. I'm stepping down now, as all my thoughts were merely opinion base. While I like to think that I had good points, all I was really doing was rambling.

Yuna, you have a lot of good points. You really do. You also seemes insistant on making me feel like an idiot throughout all of your posts because my thoughts were "Opininiative", which I actually stressed in an earlier post. But you're right, opinions won't get this thread anywhere. In actuality, I don't know why I'm bothering to argue when I could actually be playing the game and not dwelling on silly things like the differences between them. You like one, or you like the other.

GOOD SHOW, YUNA. GOOD SHOW.

I really need to find a better way to get my thoughts in before I try to debate again. :\

Again, sorry for derailing mate. I'm stepping down from this one.

It's just that your opinions were just that, opinions, not backed up by facts. And the facts you did present were, IMO, quite illogical and some of them even wrong.

I actually held back as you were at least reasonable, just misguided. I merely pointed out that you were wrong and how you were wrong without resorting to insults or flaming.

 

[metalmonstar]

Oh right. I keep forgetting about Ganondorf's lower placing in the latest Tier List as I don't care that much about him, anyway, to remember exactly where on the Tier List he is. But Luigi is pretty darn tourney viable (with good to medium good matchups against the Tops and Highs) and so is Link (to a lesser degree than Luigi), too.

Alright, maybe even Luigi but I don't think you can go any farther than that.

You can be Low Tier yet not have catastrophic or even that bad or even even matchups against the Top Tiers. Zelda didn't really do that bad against the Tops and Highs. But she was 5th worse (I think) because the Low Tiers just ***** her.

Maybe not catostrophic matchups but you start thinning down in good matchups the farther you go down. I am pretty sure that is how it works with most games. Roy didn't have too bad of a matchup versus fox (mainly due to chaingrab and edgeguarding). One of the things I have noticed is weighing matchups can be a difficult task at times. Obviously it is more important to have good matchups against the upper crust but you can't ignore bad matchups that the lower ends provide. Maybe something in the future that needs to be looked into more.

Also, a few good Lucario players can really screw up the representation. If Azen goes Lucario at every tourney (if) and places 2nd or wins most, then Lucario will average a lot of Top 8 finishers, only, he'll still be pretty Lowish. Name 5 good Lucario players who've placed Top 3.

I wish you gave me larger room to work.
Anther
Azen
KoreanDJ
Boa
Phoenix

Why do you so many top players have to play lucario? Lucario seems to get 5th or so in a lot of different people's hands though.

Meanwhile, Snake places Top 3 at almsot every single tournament. And it's not the same 3 Snakes, it's a multitude of Snakes. This is much clearer proof of how Snake is obviously a great character for Competitive play than Azen and maybe 1 or 2 other Lucarios doing well in tournaments.

A lot of top level players play snake. Cort, PC, Chillen, DSF, Forward, and tapion to name a few. The people I don't recognize who play snake seem to generally place fourth or below. Snake and Metaknight do make up the majority of the tournament scene. Yes they are the best but I don't think that some of the upper character have really been given their chance to show their greatness.

It is not like Snake and Metaknight are insta win characters though.

After all, Azen regularly places well with Low Tiers all the time. But they still remain Low Tiers.

Yes we all know. Azen is too good, so we see him win with Ike or someone mention how he won with Ike we generally disregard it as Azen just being Azen.

The question is who else was there? Also, Ness, not that low. He's only "bad" because of the infinite against him.

Well the one with 69 people in which he came in 7th had DSF and Forward. The person just above him was a Marth main, go figure.

The 40+ one in which he won I don't really recognize anyone. There was a pretty diverse top 8. Of course much higher tier characters were in the top 8.

One bad matchup doesn't just instantly kill your tier placement. It hurts but it doesn't suddenly drop you to bottom. Ness moved down at most four spots from the respectable tier list I have seen. He wasn't even that high to begin with. I believe before the whole incident he was upper-low to mid-low.

Did he go Ness all the way? Did he go up against any Marths? Did any of said Marths know how to infinite Ness properly? Did any of them manage to infinite him properly without messing up? And did Timotee allow himself to be grabbed a lot or did he just manage to avoid getting grabbed and, thus, getting infinited?

In the one in which he got 7th, I am assuming he lost to a Marth since that is the character above. The one he won he seemed to use Ness all of the way. The other one had him using Wario also. The rest I really can't answer unfortunately.

Yes is only bad for Competitive play if he goes up against a Marth who knows how to infinite him because without the infinite, that matchup isn't really that bad. The fact that Timotee managed to win a tournament doesn't really mean much, because, you know what, I've won 64-man tournaments with Peach because I didn't have to face a single Fox, Marth or Sheik that knew what they were doing or at least that were good enough to beat me in those tournaments. I've managed to actually do an entire 32-man+ tournament going Zelda all the way (Melee) and I managed to win a 26-man Brawl tournament where I, as Zelda, had to face three consecutive Meta-Knights.

I am pretty sure I have heard from a wide variety of people that the matchup was still not good for Ness. You make a valid point about even some large tournaments still having bad players. Ankoku seems to give large tournaments more weight so there must be a reason.

Also Zelda is considered good and metaknight isn't even her worse matchup. I am not entirely sure where Zelda stacks up to Metaknight though. Zelda mains have real trouble agreeing on anything.

Does that mean Zelda > Meta-Knight and Peach = Top Tier in Melee? Umm... no. It just means that maybe there just weren't better players than me at those tournaments regardless of who they played.

Peach was great in Melee. I know there should be more to say for this but I can't really think of anything.

For comparison, GimpyFish managed to beat Sheiks all the time as Bowser in NTSC Melee despite Sheik having a great chaingrab on Bowser (the matchup was 10-0 in Sheik's favour).

I believe Neo beat Ken's Marth with Roy. He beat up and coming Fox and Falco's quite a bit. Anther wiped the floor with the upper tier characters. It is just skilled players doing what they do. It occurs in all games.

Why not? If he goes even with almost everyone and has almost no bad matchups and those aren't even that bad, then he's a viable character. Now, it might be easier to win as Snake but if Mario's matchups against Snake, Meta-Knight, Pit, Zelda, Toon Link, Marth, Game & Watch and Pikmin & Olimar are even, then he's still viable. It's just easier to win as Snake, but Snake vs. Mario is even, anyway (hypothetically).

He suffers from being average in a game of greats. Mario may go even with almost the entire cast but those above him have favorable matchups against the rest of the cast.

But that's not all that balance is about. How do you determine who's better if both characters have an equal amount of even matchups, good matchups and bad matchups? By going by how good or bad said matchups are. This is how someone with only 3 good matchups might end up higher than someone with 5 good matchups if that 2nd someone only has 4-5s while the 1st someone has 3 6-3s. But it's rare when it all comes down to that... and it's not really a sign of balance either as, as I'm forced to yet again repeat: It was like that in Melee, too.

You can determine how good a character is by methods other than just a matchup chart. I do see what you are saying though.

Hmm, more similarities between brawl and melee. Quite interesting.

How can you for sure say what matchups are neutral if you cannot determine what matchups are good or bad? If it's too early for you to determine either, then it's too earlier for you to determine any. And I don't trust your judgment on those neutrals.

I don't remember ever saying I didn't know which matchups were good or bad, or that I couldn't find out which ones were good or bad. I just stated that we don't have number values. I can't say that Snake has a 3-5 versus R.O.B. Pika and Falco and that he has a 4-5 versus olimar now could I? What has been formulating if not establish are that some matchups are bad, some are really bad, some are good, some are really good, and some are neutral. For example it has been well established since the early part of the game that Olimar ***** Falcon hard. I couldn't tell you if Olimar has a 5-3, a 5-2, 5-1, or a 5-0 though.

Same with the Ness thing. I know it is an awful matchup but I am not sure what number value it would be because the number values haven't even started to be worked out yet.

I'm just saying, don't use it as a 100% fool-proof source. Also, since no such definite chart exists for Brawl yet, you cannot go "Look at these matchups!" as if they're established fact.

If I had posted a link to Ivan's chart would it make you laugh?

Does that mean this discussion degenerates into nothing more than speculation, and can only be fully discussed in a year or so?

I think there are some established facts already. It is subject to change if something is discovered, but Melee could change also.

Really stupid people.

Dumb people on Smashborads? NO!!? You are kidding? Really? Ridley for SSb4 and Yoshi is a snake counter.

It was never about that. It's other people who bring up how "balanced" Brawl is and how every character has a chance now and how the bottom can do well against the top. It is at this point that I step in and say "O RLY?". I never randomly go "Jiggz can never win against Snake! There, where's your balance now?!".

You must be nicer than I am. I am on another site trying to explain to them why Falcon has no chance versus Snake.

It is understandable that neither game is balanced and never will. I just get sick and tired of hearing, "Mewtwo is a soft counter to Fox thus more balance," or "More characters were tournamently viable." Which is really the spear head for all of this. So many assumptions that needed to be re analyzed.

From top to bottom, Melee is probably more balanced. However as I attempted to point out both top and bottom in both games have their similarities. Brawl has a larger cast which it makes it even harder to properly balance. 20, give or take a few, viable characters is decent and maybe even respectable. A percentage above 50% to me is also decent.

Only not. You're not viable just because you can beat a Top Tier by a slim margin (or even a pretty large one) as long as tons of characters destroy you. It'd make your character a Counterpick character vs. a single character whilst you can be counterpicked by tons of characters. Also, it's all relative. Just one bad matchup for Snake would make the game more balanced than it is at this current moment (with the currently known metagame)... but it wouldn't automatically make it more balanced than Melee.

I think I mentioned early that things like this need to be addressed when constructing a tier list. Matchups have to be weighted but it has to be done methodically and carefully.

I was wondering when I would get to mention D3. Did you know many people consider Dededee to have awful matchups? I think even the SBR mention this. I also believe someone mentioned that M2k stated Dededee wasn't that great just some had some exploitable perks. From what I have seen, Dededee doesn't really stack up against many if any of the upper tier characters. That doesn't stop him from being speculated to be around the level of Metaknight and Snake even by the SBR. He tears up in tournaments though. So obviously something more than matchups decide a tier list. Otherwise Dededee would be looking at mid tier.

In fact scattered throughout high and Mid tier are characters that counter higher tier characters. Anyway for the most part those that can handle the uppers don't do to bad with those around them and those below them.

Also, such characters exist... even in Melee. Ice Climbers vs. Sheik. And then Ice Climbers vs. everyone else above them. Not a pretty sight against some of them.

I never liked fighting the ice climbers.

4-5 =/= Hard matchups. Name these "hard" matchups and their odds.

I am pretty sure Snake vs. Metaknight is more than 5-4 otherwise Metaknights would have a lot more tournament wins and a lot more points. Snake I believe almost double Metaknight in wins. Also Metaknight I believe makes up as much if not more of the tournament seen than Snake. I have seen several people state that you should have your main and then Snake to deal with Metaknight.

This happens in a lot of fighting game franchises. It even happened in Melee. The fact that a lot of people chose to only main one character didn't change this fact!

So as we have established both games have counterpick cycles. We could get nitpicky and discuss the stems that each one has.

Might, maybe, I think, possibly... words often thrown around in this thread.

They have to be considering that Brawl is still young. We can only definitively make points about melee. This does us little good since we are comparing the two.

"When played right" is not a valid argument. If matchup charts are only accurate when you "play it wrong", then why have them at all? Matchup charts and tier lists assume the people playing "play the game 'right'". Ganondorf's bad matchups are bad matchups even when he "plays it right".

I just want to clear up that I am not talking about a player but rather Ganondorf's properties as a character. His advantage is his hard his and early KO's. I am almost positive that this carries with him for every matchup regardless of how bad. This advantage holds decent weight, because in Brawl it takes longer to KO and Ganondorf can tank it out longer than many opponents. When played right is really Ganondorf just using what he does best to win. Also matchs between two equally skilled opponents cannont be played perfectly which will mean that the Ganondorf player has to win even just once and a while. Exploiting a mistake or getting lucky is still around and can affect a match. I am sure as a Peach main you knew this. Did not getting a bob-bomb, beam sword, or the grandfather turnip have the ability to turn a match around or seal the deal?

Because of random BS. A lot of people want Falco on top, but there just more Foxes placing high and people just disliked facing Fox more, making the voting procedure, though restricted to the SBR, kinda inaccurate and Fox ended up above Falco. A lot of people disagree to this day.

A perfect tier list is beyond what anyone person or group is capable of especially when two contenders are so close.

Sheik does not have it better than Fox and Falco when you look at the big picture.

Pray tell what is the big picture? She seems to have the most 5-2, 5-1's, and 5-0's out of all of them.

I believe you mean "less 4-5 matchups". Which doesn't mean much if they have more 6-3, 6-4 and worse matchups that aren't in their favour than Snake. Also, game still in infancy. The SBR still haven't revealed what they think, the current statistics are still based only on the words of everyone in General and Tactical (and we know how smart the average General- and Tactical forumgoer is!).

I get my information from character discussion boards. With the exception of a handful most of them have much better info than what is on the tactical and general.

You have a point, then again some actually do have those big advantage matchups. We will just have to wait and see.

SF? Street Fighter article? Also, counterpicking is not equal in all games. Some games have more importance placed on counterpicking among the Top Tiers where they all counter each other. Other games have Top Tiers with pretty even matchups against each other and thus, there's less need to counterpick each others' Top Tiers.

Also, this does not necessarily mean a game is more or less balanced than another. It's a huge ball of wax. How well each Top Tier counters each other is not the endall of balance.

I think you mentioned earlier that it is contributing factor. How can you have a balanced game if only one character can win and has no bad matchups and few even ones. At some point someone needs to be able to contend with the best to really even consider balance. It doesn't matter if the rest of the cast are extremely balanced if one character trumps them all hands down.

Double Blind Picking is an intergral part of Smash. It's just that a lot of people still only main one character, making it obselete when, for example, I go up against, well, anyone good in Melee because they automatically know I'll go Peach against them.

You just don't really see videos where players comment on how they lost the double blind pick. I think I saw a video of Sirlin playing where he mentions that he lost the double blind. I think it would be quite interesting if more people played...well...the Azen way.

Only a lot of your statistics were flawed.

Taken right from other sources, just simple math from there.

Tier lists are not popularity contests. People need to get this through their heads. If all good players in the US randomly started playing only Yoshi, a Yoshi would probably win at least a few biggish to major tournaments. It wouldn't automatically make him a Top Tier or even good.

The fact that very few people played Ice Climbers and placed high with them didn't stop them from jumping up several leaps on the Tier List.

Tier lists are about how well the characters can perform when pitted against every single other character in the game. It's about potential when played at the highest level.

So what if here might be few Ivys, Sophitias and Xianghuas in high level SC2 (which is pretty dead nowadays, anyway) vs. the many Kiliks that plague tournaments?

The thing is though that even amongst top level players their opinion on who was good differed fairly vastly. I found a tier list that was stated to be agreed on most then when I watched some matches the pro player would talk about how so and so was so much better than the others. Of course tiers aren't popularity contest. A lot of research and data collection goes into any good tier list. However if people stopped playing as Snake, what would happen? His tournament ranking would go down and tier list constructors would quote this as reason to knock snake down a bit. So although tier list aren't popularity contest they can indirectly affect aspects of the game.

I've played Competitive Guilty Gear in my days. I was never any good because I never bothered to get good at it. But I know some of Europe's top GG players (in fact, I know some of Sweden's and Europe's top players in almost every single major fighting game franchise out there... heck, my boyfriend is the UK's top rated Smasher and Europe's current top rated Melty Blood player). I hang out with them quite often at tournaments and anime conventions and whatnot and I watch them play all the time. I also discuss the games with them, gaining insight into them even though I might not play them (for instance, I know quite a lot about Tekken despite almost never ever playing any of the Tekken games... even casually).

Even non tournament players can know stuff about a game?

Umm... unless our definitions of the game skeleton are vastly different, the game skeleton provided by the game is what determines how many characters are viable and how viable they are.

It is probably quite similar if not the same.

MvC2 is not balanced. It just isn't. It's broken and imbalanced. It's just that the balance between the very top is pretty good. No one would ever claim MvC2 is truly balanced since at least 75% of the cast is useless in Competitive play.

I'm not kidding, those characters have pretty much 10-0 matchups against the viable characters. Heck, the number of viable characters might not even be 25%. I'm not that knowledgable in MvC2 but I do know that it's mostly just M. Capcom's characters stand no chance and it's mostly all about the Marvel ones... and even then only a few of them.

I have seen so many times that MvC2 is balanced because everyone is broken to a degree and that there is so much variety that proving its inbalance becomes impossible. So broken it is fair.

Magnetto, Sentinel, Storm, and someone else that I just can't remember where the four God characters. Almost every match had some infinite executed in it.

Inconsequential. If the game makers (i.e. Sakurai) were any good and knowledgable and put down enough time and effort into it, you could have the Bottom Tier characters stand a serious chance of winning major tournaments (and quite possibly have them actually do it from time to time).

It's not common and it's not easy, but it's quite possible. I only brought it up to show that it can and has been done, that Sakurai is incompetent at balancing Competitive fighting games, no matter how much some people worship him and claim Brawl is a masterpiece or that he did an immaculate job or even that he did a great job at balancing Brawl. No... he didn't.

If you look at any of the Smash games hard enough you can really see that the games were put together almost haphazardly. Mewtwo as a slow character when he is the fastest pokemon. Roy having no advantage over Marth. Clone characters with almost no variation.

In Brawl you have Ganondorf with his sword but he doesn't use it even though fans have been asking about it for years. He finally decides to give a heavy character some speed. The fastest characters in the game have laggy attacks. Snake can hit people with his tilts without touching them.

In SSB64, you have invisible hitboxes and crazy combos.

I really think a better designer needs to be put on the Smash project.

 

[RDK]

Holy ****. Wall of text battle between Yuna and Metalmonster.

TL;DR, I CHOOSE YOU!

A lot of top level players play snake. Cort, PC, Chillen, DSF, Forward, and tapion to name a few. The people I don't recognize who play snake seem to generally place fourth or below. Snake and Metaknight do make up the majority of the tournament scene. Yes they are the best but I don't think that some of the upper character have really been given their chance to show their greatness.

It is not like Snake and Metaknight are insta win characters though.

They're definetely more insta-win than Fox, Falco, and Sheik were in Melee. You have to look at it from a competitive standpoint--how easy the characters are to use compared to the roster in Melee, and how good the top tiers are compared to the rest of the cast.

No, Melee wasn't balanced. But Brawl is by no means even equal with Melee. It's even worse than MvC2 in some respects. At least that game is so ridiculously broken that it balances itself out.

I believe Neo beat Ken's Marth with Roy. He beat up and coming Fox and Falco's quite a bit. Anther wiped the floor with the upper tier characters. It is just skilled players doing what they do. It occurs in all games.

The only problem is that these are one-time things. They aren't recurring. It doesn't change the fact that Ken (and Marths) still won tournaments, and placements lists were consistently riddled with up-and-coming space animals.

It is understandable that neither game is balanced and never will. I just get sick and tired of hearing, "Mewtwo is a soft counter to Fox thus more balance," or "More characters were tournamently viable." Which is really the spear head for all of this. So many assumptions that needed to be re analyzed.

From top to bottom, Melee is probably more balanced. However as I attempted to point out both top and bottom in both games have their similarities. Brawl has a larger cast which it makes it even harder to properly balance. 20, give or take a few, viable characters is decent and maybe even respectable. A percentage above 50% to me is also decent.

The fact that M2 is a soft counter to Fox (but still gets ***** in most situations) and that more characters are tournament viable in Melee are only a few pieces of why it's a more balanced game. Those are just examples. Yes, they have their similarities, but there's no doubting that Brawl has horrible balance, and it'll become more and more evident as the tournament results pour in.

But we don't even need tournament results to see that the game's imba. That's how bad it really is.

I think I mentioned early that things like this need to be addressed when constructing a tier list. Matchups have to be weighted but it has to be done methodically and carefully.

I was wondering when I would get to mention D3. Did you know many people consider Dededee to have awful matchups? I think even the SBR mention this. I also believe someone mentioned that M2k stated Dededee wasn't that great just some had some exploitable perks. From what I have seen, Dededee doesn't really stack up against many if any of the upper tier characters. That doesn't stop him from being speculated to be around the level of Metaknight and Snake even by the SBR. He tears up in tournaments though. So obviously something more than matchups decide a tier list. Otherwise Dededee would be looking at mid tier.

In fact scattered throughout high and Mid tier are characters that counter higher tier characters. Anyway for the most part those that can handle the uppers don't do to bad with those around them and those below them.

D3 has good matchups against quite a few good characters. If you don't share that opinion, just look at tournament results.

So as we have established both games have counterpick cycles. We could get nitpicky and discuss the stems that each one has.

Brawl is much more heavily dependant on counterpicks than Melee. The whole mid tier section are only really good against each other--favorable matchups for the mids tend to stay exclusively in the mid tier. Once you get to fighting the high or top tiers with a mid or low tier character, then you're basically screwed. Not much fun if you're a Kirby main and you're up against Snakes or MK's for 85% of your tournament matches.

I think you mentioned earlier that it is contributing factor. How can you have a balanced game if only one character can win and has no bad matchups and few even ones. At some point someone needs to be able to contend with the best to really even consider balance. It doesn't matter if the rest of the cast are extremely balanced if one character trumps them all hands down.

Which is why if that ever happened, the character would most likely get an Akuma-esque ban. The problem is that Brawl is tantalizingly close to reaching this point, but it falls short on several accounts. The god tiers are extremely good, but sadly not good enough to warrant a character ban.

Magnetto, Sentinel, Storm, and someone else that I just can't remember where the four God characters. Almost every match had some infinite executed in it.

It's Magneto, Storm, Sentinal, sometimes Cable, and the occasional Rogue and Psylocke.

However, what Yuna said about game balance is true. The fact that it's so ridiculously broken means that the notion that it's balanced only applies to the 25% that's even remotely playable, although once you get down to the same 6 or so characters, it's basically balanced. Each of the Power 6 have some type of infinite, lock combo, or other broken technique, so much to the point that they virtually balance each other out.

If you look at any of the Smash games hard enough you can really see that the games were put together almost haphazardly. Mewtwo as a slow character when he is the fastest pokemon. Roy having no advantage over Marth. Clone characters with almost no variation.

In Brawl you have Ganondorf with his sword but he doesn't use it even though fans have been asking about it for years. He finally decides to give a heavy character some speed. The fastest characters in the game have laggy attacks. Snake can hit people with his tilts without touching them.

In SSB64, you have invisible hitboxes and crazy combos.

I really think a better designer needs to be put on the Smash project.

Despite the 0-death combos in 64, it was still worlds more balanced than Brawl. Every character in that game had a fair chance at beating every other character, and even the ridiculously cheap ones (Kirby, Pikachu, etc.) had their exploitable flaws.

 

[Corigames]

Too many multi quotes. You guys are killing my scrolling finger >_>

 

[Fawriel]

I really wonder if there's any way you can predict how the game's going to develop...

Some say the game starts out balanced because we're still learning and the characters with the obvious advantages dominate for now, but soon people will learn to counter them with other characters.

I, on the other hand, assume that nothing is stopping people from developing the top of the tiers to such an extent that all the weaknesses they have left are covered perfectly and thus further increase the gap. What I mean is that Metaknight for instance has such an absurd relation of speed to range and own size that I wouldn't be surprised at all if people developed strategies that never leave them open at all to anything that doesn't outrange MK, which would mean that a character like Captain Falcon has absolutely no chance to do anything because nothing he does can get inside the range, and even if there is a tiny window in which MK leaves himself open, there would never be enough room for Falcon to get in any of his slow killers.
It would be the first time in the history of Smash that a match-up is practically impossible for one of the characters.

That's what I think will happen. But is there any possible way to find proof for this theory or the opposing one?

Quoted for repetition.

Also...

Dumb people on Smashborads? NO!!? You are kidding? Really? Ridley for SSb4 and Yoshi is a snake counter.

what.

 

[Yuna]

Full reply posted soon.

 

[The Real Inferno]

It's Magneto, Storm, Sentinal, sometimes Cable, and the occasional Rogue and Psylocke.

At the risk of being offtopic: You forgot the older early "OMFG ****" team of Calbe/Jugger/Psylocke I think it was. Ah MvC2 how I miss thee.

 

[JigglyZelda003]

Too many multi quotes. You guys are killing my scrolling finger >_>

while my scrolling finger doesn't hurt it is alot of Multi quoting lol. but at least this keeps the discussion going.

 

[Redson]

It's....It's like you two argue for a living.

Sujes Trichs its like watching the gods battle it out.

No items.
Fox only.
Final Destination.

 

[brg]

I still wonder how could it be that, in the final stages of development, they didnt realize how good metaknight and snake were, and how bad ganondorf and samus was.

I mean, sakurai has the game tested and all, the people play, metaknight and snake and tearing **** up left and right, and he goes ''Perfect!!! This is just what I wanted!! Lets release this''

 

[manhunter098]

That explains why I can sometimes hit him out of it and sometimes not.

Still, how does this translate into easily gimped recovery? What about the jillion recoveries without neither Super Armour frames nor Juggernaut frames? Most people don't randomly Up B right in front of their opponents. They try to, you know, be smart about it.

Never mind the fact that if you hit him out of it, he can immediately perform another Up B since his Up B cancels momentum, IIRC. Which means he can never be KO:ed as long as he isn't still in hitstun when he flies off the screen.

His recovery is also quasi-infinite since he can cancel it into a landmine or whatever it's called if it won't carry him far enough to recover. In other words, no, it's not easily gimped. In fact, it's pretty hard to gimp if the Snake knows what he's doing.

Its only real weakness is that it doesn't autosweetspot but that's easily overcome with, you know, skill. Just practice the timing and spacing of when to cancel it to latch onto the ledge.

Its still not even as great as that. You cant do another one instantly simply because anything strong enough to knock him off will have enough hitstun to keep him from doing anything for a moment, it wont kill him sure, but youll have enough time to try again, and again, and again, and since Snake has one recovery option, he is going to have to do almost the same thing every time and hope you make a mistake, which is pretty tough to do. Also if your character has an attack with a semispike, or an actual spike, you can just spike him off his cypher, which isnt really fast and leaves him very open to being attacked, you just have to make sure the attack you hit with is strong enough. Other recoveries are much better mostly because such a large number have great priority or move the character very fast, or the character has several options for recovery, or has multiple jumps. I wont say Snakes recovery sucks, because its decent, but I would only go so far as to say that. The only thing a Snake needs to know about his recovery though, is to use it as high up as he possibly can (within reason of course) , so that he can approach the stage from above with it. Otherwise there isnt really anything the best of snakes will be able to do about getting gimped. Using the C4 to help recover is free damage for your opponent to take advantage of, and makes knocking you off the Cypher even easier, it also takes some time to use, and its interruptible as well since all your opponent has to do is jump right next to you after a failed cypher, and you will just end up sticking them with the C4 only to have them go back
and grab the edge before you can explode it.

Basically if Snake is at any time a decent distance from the stage and roughly horizontal or below the platform, he is screwed against a competent opponent, depending somewhat on their character (that their character has a relatively strong aerial, which most characters do).

 

[handsockpuppet]

I agree that it's to quick to tell. However, I certainly feel like Brawl characters are more different. Whether this is good or bad, i cannot say. there's no clones like Roy and Marth, so there's really no character that is completely superior compared to it's clone (or vice versa). That said, it also means that some characters may become extremely broken. but right now, there's no fox, falco, or sheik-like juggernauts, so i'd say it's more balanced.

 

[Zankoku]

but right now, there's no fox, falco, or sheik-like juggernauts, so i'd say it's more balanced.

Um, Snake and Meta Knight seem to have a pretty strong foothold in the top placements.

 

[Redson]

I still wonder how could it be that, in the final stages of development, they didnt realize how good metaknight and snake were, and how bad ganondorf and samus was.

I mean, sakurai has the game tested and all, the people play, metaknight and snake and tearing **** up left and right, and he goes ''Perfect!!! This is just what I wanted!! Lets release this''

I dunno. Maybe he went up against someone that was just really good as Ganondof or Samus and could assume that if they could do it, anyone could. :\

 

[brg]

I dunno. Maybe he went up against someone that was just really good as Ganondof or Samus and could assume that if they could do it, anyone could. :\

in all probability he didnt even play the game himself :S


Id like to be optimistic and say: most low tier characters have untapped potential, which I truely believe is true for some characters, but in reality, it probably isnt.

I think the brawl scene needs 2 things.

One unbeatable dominating champion (a la ken) and several mid/low tier rogues who place surpringsly well in tournaments.

What would this accomplish? The champion would spark REAL competition (dethrone the king) and the rogues would give hope to low tier chars and inspire others to play them...

 

[handsockpuppet]

Um, Snake and Meta Knight seem to have a pretty strong foothold in the top placements.

Of course there will be stronger characters. but so far, those characters can't infinite grab, shine, and combo like fox or falco or sheik could. snake is not fast, and metaknight has not projectiles. Snake has little range up close, and his cypher can be grabbed or bitten, thus gimpimg his recovery. Metaknight has good recovery, gut still dies at early percentages.

 

[TehBo49]

I still wonder how could it be that, in the final stages of development, they didnt realize how good metaknight and snake were, and how bad ganondorf and samus was.

I mean, sakurai has the game tested and all, the people play, metaknight and snake and tearing **** up left and right, and he goes ''Perfect!!! This is just what I wanted!! Lets release this''

Because he was lazy & didn't beta-test the game properly.

 

[Samochan]

Of course there will be stronger characters. but so far, those characters can't infinite grab, shine, and combo like fox or falco or sheik could. snake is not fast, and metaknight has not projectiles. Snake has little range up close, and his cypher can be grabbed or bitten, thus gimpimg his recovery. Metaknight has good recovery, gut still dies at early percentages.

I'm sorry what, infinite grab? On Melee? Are you sure you don't mean Brawl? <_< Like, that infinite dedede has on DK or what Marth has on Ness? Or that new infinite grab Snake can do at the ledge?

And snake prolly has the most range up close, coupled with his invisible disjointed hitboxes without any kind of sword. Where are those awesome pictures with snake's awesome range when I need them.

 

[FrostByte]

Of course there will be stronger characters. but so far, those characters can't infinite grab, shine, and combo like fox or falco or sheik could.

Nothing can combo like it did in Melee.

Snake has little range up close

What?

Snake has little range up close

What?

Snake has little range up close

What?

 

[Fawriel]

there's no clones like Roy and Marth, so there's really no character that is completely superior compared to it's clone (or vice versa).

Awww, now look at what you did! You made Link cry!

There, there, boy. It'll be alright. Maybe next game, yes?

 

[brg]

I'm sorry what, infinite grab? On Melee? Are you sure you don't mean Brawl? <_< Like, that infinite dedede has on DK or what Marth has on Ness? Or that new infinite grab Snake can do at the ledge?

And snake prolly has the most range up close, coupled with his invisible disjointed hitboxes without any kind of sword. Where are those awesome pictures with snake's awesome range when I need them.

yes, how come EVERY character have very precise hitboxes for their jabs/tilts (precise meaning their bodyparts are the actualy hitbox) but snake does not.
Why is that?

 

[Samochan]

yes, how come EVERY character have very precise hitboxes for their jabs/tilts (precise meaning their bodyparts are the actualy hitbox) but snake does not.
Why is that?

Cause snake has invisible weapons D:

He hides them on his huge butt when he doesn't need them.

 

[Lovage 805]

Snake has little range up close

ROFL

best thing i've heard all day

btw the tournament dominance snake and MK are showing this early into brawl's release COMPLETELY out casts the early melee winners

 

[LavisFiend]

This game is not going to be balanced the higher the roster number climbs.

I don't care how "good" the developers are. I don't care how much "experience" they have. I don't care how much "time" they have.

The more characters you add, the more work it takes in trial and error. Certain characters who were balanced before, may be looking at a buff or a nerf to hang with the new guy. You can't have 40 "perfectly balanced" characters. You would be lucky to get half of them to be balanced to one another, 10 to be moderately balanced, 5 who are only good against some people, and 5 who are utter balls.

We are humans after all. We are incapable of analyzing each and every thing and EACH and EVERY possible outcome to a move. The number is just far too massive.

If the game had 10 characters, then it would be possible. Why? The low number makes it so that analyzing each and every move and tweaking it to be fair and strong against everyone else is much more possible due to the physical labor of coding that to be less of a mountain to climb. Sure it would still take a while, but nowhere near as long as say 40 characters. I would even be surprised to see 20 balanced characters, but it would only get harder.

The thing it boils down to is the higher the roster, the bigger the problem. Unless you had a 3000 person team, then it might have a chance of working...

But with a mere 100-200 person team given only about 3 years of developing time, half of which was probably coding the other single player content and the other for the multiplayer?

It just does not WORK that way.

However, it was a nice try. The game for the most part is about 65% balanced. It's a decent job, but it is not much more balanced than melee. Hell, melee wasn't even that balanced to begin with.

The only real example of a balanced fighter done right is the Guilty Gear/Street Fighter series.

Smash still has not quite got it.

 

[Nigerian Star Storm]

Good lord at the epic Wall of Text battle going on >_>.

 

[Boxob]

Tiers don't exists, you're all dumb.

Tourney results are fake, only noobs believe in tiers cause they just follow some post about results.

Just look at Gimpyfish!

/joke

 

[MaxThunder]

at this point i think brawl is more balanced cause... well... it seems more balanced... and i'm able to play ... aomewhat good whith most characters... i'm not really that good yet so i dont know all the techsand stuff so my oppinion on this will maybe change later.

 

[Bomber7]

well first of all. it sounds like you are expectin a big shot to give you an answer. then why bother with arguing with everyone about your point that you are trying to get by? but since you did start this debate i will make use of it and say that yes i do think that brawl is more balanced. yes i have played all super smash brothers games. yes i was good in the two previus games and i have adapted to brawl and i am good now. the changes made to the characters is what makes it balanced. the styles i have found with the characters i use have been tweaked some. also the flaws that have changed throughout the series makes it balanced. and i have friends who are good as well at SSB i would beat them alot in meele. that doesnt mean they arent good. i used marth occasionally and then link sometimes. marth was an almost imposible character to defeat when i was holding the controler. i still play as him some, he is different. he isnt as strong, slower, and his reaction time i have found is slightly different than that off meele marth. just tell me what you think Yuna. this is what i have to say for now.

 

[Nigerian Star Storm]

at this point i think brawl is more balanced cause... well... it seems more balanced... and i'm able to play ... aomewhat good whith most characters... i'm not really that good yet so i dont know all the techsand stuff so my oppinion on this will maybe change later.

This is pure ****ing gold, but I'm glad you acknowledged that you don't know all that much. I'd rank you higher than the countless noobs that have ravaged this topic in terms of intelligence.


Edit:No, scrathch that, if MaxThunder's was gold, then Bomber7's is ****ing Platinum.

 

[IrArby]

Low tier characters played by skilled Melee smashers had the ability to employ mindgames which is a huge part of (Melee) smash that goes hand in hand with outthinking your opponent. Thats why Ka Master can beat Silent Wolf as Luigi and why Neo as Roy could beat Ken. Also, Ken taught Neo early on so that kinda throws off the skew here.

Mindgames in Brawl are a joke (OMG should I float towards him and attack or not) So the current low tier mains don't have means to make their opponent second guess an approach or w/e. Its already been said that high and god tier chars can severely limit what the middle and low tiers have as viable options.

 

[Bomber7]

so whats your point? what are you trying to tell me? and what the heck do you mean by mind games? in battle you do have alot of situations. yeah you over think stuff abd you will make mistakes. but what does that have to do with balance. so please do clarify what it is exactly you are trying to get by.