Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[metalmonstar]

I wonder if there is a character limit here. Sorry for the wall of text.

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

TL;DR, I CHOOSE YOU!

It is metalmonstar

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 don’t see how ease of use has anything to do with balance? Obviously the difficulties in playing fox didn’t stop a large amount of people from playing him. Difficulty didn’t keep him from being top tier.

For example, say a broken character is difficult to use. Does it make the character any less broken? Good players will learn the character, and the difficulty required won’t keep the character from being banned.

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 am glad you cleared up the whole mewtwo thing.

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

Olimar, Zelda, Pikachu, Falco, and ROB just to name a few. I believe I have heard the Kirby beats him and the rest of the space animals give him trouble. Dededee is good no doubt but it seems agreed upon that he does have quite the bad matchups. I believe even the SBR mention this in his character review.
Despite this Dededee overcomes this and has a vastly better tournament result then those that beat him. Tournament rankings don’t tell me matchups they just tell me which character is winning.

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.

It doesn’t really seem that way. A lot of the estimated mid tier have a counterpick here and there against the upper tiers. Kirby doesn’t do half bad against Metaknight. Now it isn’t a favorable matchup but it is perfectly winnable. Snake on the other hand gives Kirby real problems.

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.

I don’t know about that. They may be a cut above everyone else, but I think what you are saying is a bit exaggerated. Anyway does banning a broken character make a game more balanced?

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.

Imbalanced but they balance each other. So if you took out the other 48 characters you would have a balanced game? So why are those 6 characters balanced? You give the reason in your little paragraph. If you go by the large sense that all characters must be equally viable then you limit the amount of games that are balanced. You also miss the inherent balance that some games actually have. If you go by how well the viable characters balance each other out then you open a lot of different games and you can see the cycles and branches. You only need three characters to have a balanced and competitive game. Having more is just extra. In theory you should have A beat B, B beat C, and C beat A, thus creating a cycle. However I am not sure that is entirely necessary, just as long as each of them have relatively equal viable options provided to them.

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.

If I made a game with two characters it would be even more balanced than 64. It may even be the most balanced game. 64 had only 12 characters if all were viable then that is 100% viability. Melee had 12-14 characters viable that is only about 48%. So 64 is more balanced than melee? A percentage seems almost silly really but if you want to go by them that is fine by me. Also I hardly ever see anyone below Fox being played. If this is true then 64 has roughly 50% viability. As I estimated earlier Brawl has about 54%. By this logic Brawl would be the most balanced. This is actually what I wanted to point out and avoid.

Luigi is above Link, though. So if you're willing to include Link, then he's the furthest down.

Last I checked Luigi is just below link on the tier list.

Obvious stuff is obvious.

I was merely pointing out how you're not automatically a High Tier character just because you might have one or two good or even matchups against the Tops if you have catastrophic ones against a lot of other characters, as in your example of if someone from Low randomly had a good matchup against Snake, they'd automatically be tourney viable. Oh no, Yoshi main, your main gets countered by 6 of my mains, secondaries, tertiaries and quarternaries while you can only muster up a 5-5 against Snake. So, no, no tourney viability for you (hypothetically speaking)!

Most of the tournament scene is made up of snakes though so just countering Snake would really help a low tier appear more often in tournaments. Possibly making them viable since really a person could just use their secondary for everyone but Snake. They would still be playing about 50% with Yoshi.

Umm... "Lucario generally gets, at most, 5th in the hands of some of the best players in the nation"... umm... OK. Now imagine all of those people playing Snake, Meta-Knight, Zelda, Pit, Mr. Game & Watch, Marth, Pikmin & Olimar or Toon Link instead. What would they place then, pray tell? A few people managing to place 5th sometimes prove bupkis.

Azen has been placing Top 3 with Low Tiers for years. Lucario isn't even that low. It's not random proof of superior balance if some of the nation's very best players can place well with Low Tiers, especially when they were doing that in Melee as well.

The people I listed met the requirements you asked for. You wanted to know which Lucario’s have placed top 3. All five of them have been top three or better. I asked to extend it to fifth place because at that point we see not so big names doing well with Lucario. Of course playing high tier would probably increase your chances of winning but we are looking at viability of a character. We can’t look at how viable a character is if everyone drops their main to play a top tier secondary.

Lucario has placed well decently even in the hands of people other than the best. Lucario is generally ranked somewhere in mid or low. Through speculation of many Lucario is destined to be around the 20th best character in the game. A character in such a spot just placing as well as Lucario does whereas those just a couple spots below him barely make top 8s and top 4s, tells me that Lucario must be in some way viable.

Exactly. Do not bring up Azen placing high with a Low Tier as evidence of how that Low Tier must not be Low Tier or how the game must be more balanced than Melee.

OK, so maybe you can argue that Low Tier isn't really a Low Tier. But saying "Azen just placed high using a Low Tier, thus Brawl is more balanced than Melee!" is a catastrofically flawed argument because Azen did that for years in Melee as well.

I don’t remember ever stating that at all. I believe I stated the opposite quite frankly. It is pretty common knowledge that Azen can’t be sited as proof that ike is good, or anyone else he decides to main.

Azen placed 3rd or something using Luigi once in Melee... above many of the nation's top players using Top Tiers. Also, number of total participants is irrelevant if only 3 or so of them are any good. I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm saying "69 people participated!" tells me nothing about the skill level involved. There have been 64+ people tournaments where none of them could even DI (no really, there have!).

But brawl is easier to play so there should be no bad people in Brawl. In fact the average joe is supposed to be able to win. Everyone has an equal chance of winning. (Sarcasm)

Sarcasm aside, it just seems more likely that a large tournament would have some good people. Who can resist taking a couple of hundred bucks when you know you are the best player. It just seems highly unlikely to me that in a large tournament like that, there were no good people except timotee. Even if you had only 3 good people that would say something about timotee and how he won with Ness.

So the tourney had DSF and Forward. I'm assume they took Top 3. So who else of note were there and were beaten specifically by Timotee? There are people who'd managed to make Top 8 on luck alone since they didn't have to face really good people in the brackets.

Also, maybe Timotee is actually quite a good Brawl player (though maining a pretty bad-ish character)... and everyone below him were worse than him.

I looked him up on youtube. It seems he is actually quite good. Also from the video it seems that his opponent was pretty decent also.

Aren’t brackets created by skill? Wouldn’t that mean at some point if you are of lesser skill you will be facing someone of greater skill?

Players of lower skill usually aren't worth mentioning in discussions such as these as they aren't skilled enough for us to point at and go "Hey, a Yoshi made Top 5!". Guess what, everyone else just sucked too much to destroy that Yoshi halfway through.

Yet we also can’t use really good players because they skew results.

This is why we should not stare blindly at tournament results and look for elusive exceptions where blatant Low Tiers place well. Guess what, player skill trumphs Tier lists and individual matchups.

There is no skill involved in brawl. Better players don’t always win in Brawl (Sarcasm)

Of course player skill trumps individual matchups and tier list.

"Not really that bad" (though not bolded in my original reply). It's not a 7-2. It's just a matchup in which he has the disadvantage. He can still win it.

I am pretty sure it was bad to begin with certainly not a 10-0 but I could see a 6-3 or a bit higher. If players of equal skill faced off I am sure Marth would win a significant majority of the time. Probably like 70% or so.

Then why did you even bring up some people doing well with Lucario at all, when you acknowledge that a limited few people doing well with Low Tiers mean nothing?

This was pretty much explained above, but I will state it again. At about 5th place we start seeing a decent amount of Lucario players that are not your regular big names.

Inconsequential. Fox has more favourable matchups than Mario... and? If the Mario is any good, he's got even matchups against everyone. Statistically, he's got an even chance against everyone, even the Top Tiers.

He's, therefore, quite viable and capable of winning tournaments (on paper).

It is more than that though. It is that they also go even with just about the same people and also have favorable matchups against the people Mario only goes even with. I can add Mario to Brawl’s viability if you would like? That would make it 21-24(being optimistic with the 24) viable characters.

99% of the things you talk about apply to both games.

99% of everything said in this discussion applys to both games it is just both parties fail to realize this.

"All I can say is the neutrals". I took this to mean that you were only certain of which matchups are neutral.


Ness vs. Marth should be a 10-0 or close to 10-0.

Well until a good, preferably best, Ness and Marth make a thread about the number value of this matchup and what each character has to offer in the matchup, we really can’t say for sure. Yes it is most likely, almost certain that it is either 5-1 or 5-0, but it hasn’t been specifically stated by the people that would know.

How can I know that without having looked at it?

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=157979

Let the hilarity ensue.

Decent people do post there from time to time but the thread is so clogged up with bad players and bad players who main bad characters debating their little hearts out just to see their character get one more favorable matchup, that they hardly get noticed.

No. We can still discuss it. But you need to back up your argument with more than "I have this chart with highly unverified matchup data compiled through the opinions of mostly random people who aren't even that good" (or quite possibly just one or two good people, in which case the chart is probably flawed as well).

When did I even state that I was using that chart. In fact later on I tell you where I get my information from.

I'm nice to those who deserve it. Apparently, a lot of people left Smashboards for "that other site" (AllIsBrawl) because I was less than 100% friendly towards some of the less intelligent former members here on SWF.

Good riddance, I say.

Never been to Allisbrawl.

Only, I haven't brought up "Mewtwo is a soft counter to Fox" as an argument, now have I? I've merely, in passing, mentioned how Mewtwo vs. Fox wasn't anywhere near as hard as Snake vs. Ganondorf, Captain Falcon, Yoshi or Jigglypuff (quite possibly all 4 at the same time).

As I stated in my original post, this was put up on Gamefaqs originally. They are having the same debate and using points like the above to prove Melee is more balanced or Brawl is more balanced. I figured that since the debate is identical I would just post what I said there here also since I am almost 100% positive that someone has brought up similar points here. In fact I am almost positive that more than 5 people have made the “Mewtwo soft counter, bottom counters top” argument here.

Yes, it's harder. And?

The thread is not about how hard it is to balance a game (and we know it's possible to balance a game because, hello, Guilty Gear). It's about which game is more balanced. I don't care if Sakurai had to work harder to balance Brawl. The only thing that matters is how well he managed to balance it (at least in this thread).

As I've already said, there are different levels of viability. The bottom half of "The Viable ones" have quite hard matchups against the Tops and Highs, making them mostly viable against each other but not the Tops and Highs,

Which game, Brawl, melee or both? It really seems like both, though one could say that in Brawl some of the mid to lower viable characters actually have decent matchups against those above them, or it could be stated that brawl has better viability due to the larger amount of viable characters regardless of degree.

If you have some awful matchups, you cannot be Top Tier, especially if those awful matchups are numerous. Tell me, are the people who speculate that he's got awful matchups the same as the people who speculate he'll be Top Tier? Not all SBR users know everything about Smash and not all SBR-uses agree.

They're not one single hive mind and also they can be wrong about Smash.

Most people state that although he has bad matchups he has quite a few things going for him and that his tournament ranking is just below Snake and Metaknights thus he must be doing something right. I have seen that statement from players of low to players of high skill.

Do not use the term "counter" lightly. A counter is a matchup where one character has a huge advantage. A 4-5 advantage against a Top Tier =/= Counter. The Tier List is decided mostly, almost entirely, on the sum of one's options, i.e. the sum of, among other things, one's matchups.

Other people seem to use it even lighter than I do. Thus we get the Mewtwo soft counter argument or Roy beats fox argument. Anyway though, I guess a better word is advantaged matchups. Considering that even in Melee Fox, Falco, and Sheik really didn’t have any counter matches, the fact that top in Brawl does have their share of disadvantage matchups is actually quite good. In essence really they are even in this regard, if not better for brawl.

I was doing a little work on a matchup cycle for the two games. Melee’s makes a nice little circle depending how you organize the top 6 characters. Doing the same with Brawl is bit difficult especially since the top 6 seem to go neutral with each other with an advantage matchup here and there between them. In order to get an accurate depiction one would have to extend it slightly. I may have to get back to you with the full details of the web of matchups.

Or maybe the best of the best just play Snake instead of Metaknight. For years Ken won almost every single tournament he attended despite there being numerous Sheiks in the same tournaments. The Tier List and individual matchup chart are not the be-all and end-all of tournament results.

It seems a few big names play metaknight as well. In fact some snake players seem to second metaknight.

I did not bring up "There's counterpicking!" as proof of either game's superior balance. I merely pointed out counterpickings exists in Melee as well, thus, the point is moot unless you can prove counter-picking is hugely more important in Brawl in such a way it proves superior balance, otherwise, this discussion point needs to be dropped (at least at the moment as it's irrelevant to the discussion at hand).

Didn’t you or someone else say earlier that the character selection is largely important in Brawl comparatively?

I'm sick and tired of "Brawl is too young!". If that's the case, then no discussion is possible on the depth of Brawl... at all. Because it's too young, everything might change tomorrow. We can discuss Brawl with everything we know insofar. In everything changes tomorrow, so be it.

6 months into the game, I believe there's been enough time to at least see some of the balance in the game, even if we might be inaccurate.

Yes we can discuss Brawl “current” depth and such. However we can’t discuss matchups in terms of numbers or a definite tier list. Which makes my position a bit more difficult.

Only you're wrong because he cannot combo. There are characters who hit hard, KO early (in fact, earlier than Ganondorf) who can also combo well, most notably into KO moves. And they do not suffer from the same disadvantages as Ganondorf.

Ganondorf is huge, thus, a huge hitbox. Combos that wouldn't work on others work on him because he's just so big it's hard to miss him. He is also not super floaty, making it easier to combo him than "True Floaties". One huge disadvantage is his super-bad recovery. Besides 2nd jumping onto the ledge, he's only got one option: Up B. And it's mightily bad. Sure, it's a Command Throw, but outrange it and it won't be very good. It's also slow and predictable. And most of all: It makes him a sitting (or rather Up B:ing) duck.

He's slow and therefore largely unsafe on a lot of things. He hits hard, yes. But he has to actually hit. Because he is so slow, he has a hard time hitting fast characters who can hit him before he can do anything but maybe a jab. Let's not even begin to talk about projectile camping and hit-and-running him.

Even when sweetspotting the ledge from below, he has to go slightly above the ledge, allowing everyone and their mother to easily edgeguard him with various aerials and smashes. Peach vs. Ganny? Ground-float at the edge and do a Dair to a Nair. Marth? D-tilt or Fsmash tipper. Sheik? D-tilt into Fair. And the list goes on.

He lags tremendously when he lands on solid ground after Up B so those who prefer can just edgehog him to force him to recover onto the stage, get up and then Smash/aerial him into infinity. Fox edgehog into Upsmash anyone?

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?

No, Ganondorf does not have equal opportunities in all matchups nor is he equally viable in all matchups nor is he a "good, solid character" vs. everyone. He's got major flaws easily exploited.

His up B takes away his opponents second jump. He has a tech chase and a suicide move. I can’t verify this but I have heard that Ganon has a two hit combo that does about 40%. Ganon has his thunderstorming also. You get hit three or four times and Ganon has a good bit of KO potential on a large variety of his moves now. Also I believe his jab and Sparta kick cancel several projectiles.

And it speaks volumes about Brawl's balance when it's so easy to already at this stage mark out where each character is going to end up.

The big picture is that she has a harder time winning against the characters who count, the ones who are among the best in the game. Who cares if she can beat Bowser into a pulp easier than Fox can? They both statistically beat him. But against the Tops, Highs and Mids, Sheik's got a harder time winning, thus ensuring her a harder time to victory.

Overall dominance among the worst characters in the game does not make you a better character than one who also dominates the Low Tiers, though to a lesser degree, but who dominates the High Tiers more.

Ah I see, but because Sheik dominates such a large amount of the cast it is unwise to play any of those characters through tournament play because just one good sheik could knock you out.

A lot of the information floating around the character discussion boards is still flawed. I'm just saying, don't blindly trust anything you read on Smashboards. Try it out and research it first before presenting it as evidence/fact.

Maybe so, but I think it is safe to say that some of the top level players who make comments on their character boards are pretty reliable when it comes to their character.

Ummm... yes? This is one of my main points why Brawl is less balanced than Melee.

I don’t see how this proves anything. It is just a thought process being written out. The top beats the bottom pretty soundly in both games, and neither has a real single dominating character.

Why is this important? Why must they mention "It was a Double Blind Pick"? Double Blind Picking has been a staple in Smash tournaments. You talked as if it's rarely ever used or even obscure. I pointed out that every single tournament of note employs it. The fact that players might choose not to use it is inconsequential.

I like to see even hear of it being utilized of course lots of tournaments had it. What I am referring to is trying to outsmart your opponent at the character selection screen.

For example a player has gone through the whole tournament as Pika but over the last couple of months he has developed a pretty mean Metaknight. His opponent plays both Snake and Olimar. However throughout the tournament he has been mostly using Olimar. He decides for a double blind in hopes of catching his opponent of guard with his Metaknight, but his opponent instead decides to play Snake.

Something like that maybe not quite as elaborate.

Next is me versus the evil Darkside Phill (DSP). DSP won the mindgame of our initial double-blind character selection by choosing Blanka versus my Vega (claw).”

Something along those lines.

No. Illogical. Tier Lists have never and will never be popularity contests.

Tier Lists are not decided by how many people play each character and only partially decided by how many people place well with said characters. How many Marios and Doctor Marios are there, at all? Now how many of them place well? Yet they're above Ganondorf, despite Eddie, among others, consistently placing high as him. Logic?

If people randomly stopped playing Snake, he'd just be less common at tournaments. It's still be quite obvious to anyone who analyzed the game that Snake has a distinct advantage against virtually everyone in the game. Thus, his place in the Tier List would remain.

Tournament placings give us an indication of the Tier List. They give us something to start with. "Why are X and Y characters consistently placing well? Let's take a deeper look!". We don't go "Meta-Knight places well consistently. He's 2nd on the Tier list, no more discussion necessary!".

Of course they aren’t popularity contest but as I said they are indirectly affected by tournament results and thus could be indirectly affected by popularity. If everyone plays Yoshi then Yoshi will probably get higher tournament results. People will begin to wonder why Yoshi is doing so great and thus will revaluate how they view Yoshi as a character. In the process of being popular Yoshi may get an accelerated character growth, because more people would be playing him thus the likelihood of discovering something about him would increase. Yoshi while being popular may in fact become a higher tier character by more than just better tournament results. Yoshi may be the best for a time because at that point Yoshi has a more developed metagame.

On the other end, say everyone dropped Metaknight. Metaknights tournament ranking went down. Thus people would wonder what happened to metaknight. Players would rethink his strengths and weaknesses. Also his metagame would not develop as rapidly due to a decrease in usage.

A lot of theory goes into making a tier list. You need something to at least back up all of your theories. If you say Ice climbers chaingrab is the end all of the game and the because of it the ice climbers are the best, then we should be able to see that on a tournament ranking list. An accurate tier list should reflect the current tournament results and vice versa.

Otherwise what is the reason for AZ updating the Tier discussion topic with a link to the character ranking thread.

6 characters out of 50 =/= Everyone. The game is balanced in a way. But since a vast majority of the cast is completely useless in Competitive play, it's not balanced.


4 characters out of 50.

Game is balanced in a way but not balanced, seems a bit contradictory to me. Again if we took out the other 48 would the game be balanced? Why do we even consider the other 50 if the viable characters balance each other out.

Sakurai's intentions are inconsequential. Nobody cares what he wanted to do. We can only care about and discuss what he did do.

So do I.

I guess that makes two things we agree on.

Snake/MK are very beatable characters. The fact that you cant beat them only means that you are too inexperienced in playing against them. It took awhile, but its evident that they aren't overpowering to the point of being in a tier above everyone else. For example, if you take a look at the midwest, you'll see very few (if any) tournaments have had Snake/MK coming out on top. We usually have Pikachu (Anther), G&W (NoJ), or ROB (Overswarm), among others, who consistently place high and win tournaments. Sometimes we'll only have one Snake or MK present in the top 8, if at all.

Snake and MK are not an excuse for claiming Brawl to be unbalanced. Doing so makes you look bad at the game.

This coming from the guy who got third with Snake. I have noticed that in this last update there seems to be a lot less snakes. In fact I don’t recall seeing a snake even win a tournament last week. I do agree that they are beatable.

You can’t change your characters inherent advantages and disadvantages just by doing an unorthodox tactic.

You can win this way, most likely because your opponent isn’t prepared for your style of play.

Name 5 practical advanced techs that have been discovered since Brawl's release.

[/I].

You didn’t say they couldn’t be character specific nor did you say they had to be game breaking.

In essence even little things like hyphen smashing can be utilized. All those sliding ones can have practical purposes.

Anyway though.
QAC-At this stage it seems to be a staple of any good pikachu’s game.
Shellshifting-I know PT isn’t used much but from what I have seen of the people who do use him this is quite important. There is a lot of applications to it even if usmashing across the stage is the most used one.
Arrow Looping-Makes Pit’s spam that much better. I don’t know how effective wing dashing is though.
Glide tossing-Characters with natural projectiles can use this effectively.
Snake Dashing-Although not used as much as the others I do see good Snakes using this a couple of times a match.

What is sad is it seems that people wouldn’t even like Melee if it didn’t have the techs that it did or that it didn’t have anything game breaking.

Would melee be a good game with only dash dancing, foxtrotting, sheildgrabbing, jump cancelled grabs, moonwalking? Does it really need wavedashing and l canceling?

 

[IrArby]

metalmonster: I only got far enough into your essay/post to see your percentages for Tournament viable Charcters in 64, Melee, and Brawl. If Brawl does have a better average its only because Brawl has the most Characters by far. A more accurate method for ascertaining this information would be to compare the number of say the Top 3 placing characters in a bunch of large tournaments as a percentage against the number of losing, non Top 3 characters at those same tournaments. You'll find the percentage of characters represented in the Top 3 finishing spots (I'm guessing 6-7) will be much less the 54% of the total cast.

 

[Redson]

...Metal, I think you just made my brain esplode.

Then again, it's 1:30 AM here, and I downed three cans of Monster, so my ability to comprehend intelligent thought is hindered strongly.

 

[Dark Sonic]

It doesn’t really seem that way. A lot of the estimated mid tier have a counterpick here and there against the upper tiers. Kirby doesn’t do half bad against Metaknight. Now it isn’t a favorable matchup but it is perfectly winnable. Snake on the other hand gives Kirby real problems.

That's a terrible example. How does this have anything to do with a mid tier having a counterpick against the upper tiers? Being a counterpick character....assumes that the character has a favorable matchup, not on that's "not that bad".

I don’t know about that. They may be a cut above everyone else, but I think what you are saying is a bit exaggerated. Anyway does banning a broken character make a game more balanced?

Just sayin'

And yes. Banning a broken character does make a game more balanced, but only if that character was much, much, much better than the second best character, and you ban the second best if he too was much, much better than the third best, and so on. Unfortunately, Snake and Metaknight do not fit this category.

If I made a game with two characters it would be even more balanced than 64. It may even be the most balanced game. 64 had only 12 characters if all were viable then that is 100% viability. Melee had 12-14 characters viable that is only about 48%. So 64 is more balanced than melee? A percentage seems almost silly really but if you want to go by them that is fine by me. Also I hardly ever see anyone below Fox being played. If this is true then 64 has roughly 50% viability. As I estimated earlier Brawl has about 54%. By this logic Brawl would be the most balanced. This is actually what I wanted to point out and avoid.

He never actually mentioned percentages. He meant that 64 had 12 viable characters

Last I checked Luigi is just below link on the tier list.

Last I checked, the tier list was from 2006.

Most of the tournament scene is made up of snakes though so just countering Snake would really help a low tier appear more often in tournaments.

But...none of the low tiers do this

Lucario has placed well decently even in the hands of people other than the best. Lucario is generally ranked somewhere in mid or low. Through speculation of many Lucario is destined to be around the 20th best character in the game. A character in such a spot just placing as well as Lucario does whereas those just a couple spots below him barely make top 8s and top 4s, tells me that Lucario must be in some way viable.

Or that he's just underrated? 20th best character? Where'd you pull that nonsense?

Aren’t brackets created by skill? Wouldn’t that mean at some point if you are of lesser skill you will be facing someone of greater skill?

Well technically, seeding is determined by either pools, or previous tournament places (mostly pools for larger tournaments), but basically yes.

I am pretty sure it was bad to begin with certainly not a 10-0 but I could see a 6-3 or a bit higher. If players of equal skill faced off I am sure Marth would win a significant majority of the time. Probably like 70% or so.

It is more than that though. It is that they also go even with just about the same people and also have favorable matchups against the people Mario only goes even with.

Technically, that doesn't hurt Mario's viability. Since he still has even matchups against the most commonly used characters, he's still a perfectly viable candidate. The saturation of Foxes...is not making it any harder for Mario to win.

I can add Mario to Brawl’s viability if you would like? That would make it 21-24(being optimistic with the 24) viable characters.

No you can't, because Mario has disadvantages matchups against a lot of the high and top tiers.

99% of everything said in this discussion applys to both games it is just both parties fail to realize this.

True, but as a whole smashboards is also only like 2% of the total smash population. Apparently even these tiny percentages can make a big difference.

Well until a good, preferably best, Ness and Marth make a thread about the number value of this matchup and what each character has to offer in the matchup, we really can’t say for sure. Yes it is most likely, almost certain that it is either 5-1 or 5-0, but it hasn’t been specifically stated by the people that would know.

Emblem Lord listed it as 8-2 in the Marth matchup thread. And that was before the grab release goodness, which conviniently chains Marth's f-smash, d-smash, fair, utilt, d-tilt, DB, Up B, and Jab (but why use anything other than smashes anyway?)

One grab=a stock, much like the Ice climbers infinite. Only, Marth's doesn't require any rediculous setup (desynched Nana right next to you while you land a grab). Marth can get a free grab off a d-tilt or nair (first hit). He's got decent grab range as well, and runs really fast too. And here's the kicker...

It was already largely in Marth's favor to begin with. It's quite honestly much easier than Marth vs Mewtwo in melee...for the Marth that is.

Which game, Brawl, melee or both? It really seems like both, though one could say that in Brawl some of the mid to lower viable characters actually have decent matchups against those above them, or it could be stated that brawl has better viability due to the larger amount of viable characters regardless of degree.

This was in melee<_<
In general Metaknight and Snake have better matchups than Fox and Falco did.

Considering that even in Melee Fox, Falco, and Sheik really didn’t have any counter matches

But that's where you're wrong. Fox was disadvantaged against Marth (a little stage dependant though). Ice Climbers beat Shiek. Peach beat Falco.
So yes, they do have their disadvantaged matchups.

the fact that top in Brawl does have their share of disadvantage matchups is actually quite good. In essence really they are even in this regard, if not better for brawl.

But they also have much larger advantages than Fox and Falco did (though Shiek pretty much ***** the low tiers). Metaknight and Snake have large advantages streaming as high as the mid tiers.

It seems a few big names play metaknight as well. In fact some snake players seem to second metaknight.

And some Marth players second Fox in melee. It's to cover each other's bad matchups.

Snake still has a lot more wins than Metaknight.

Didn’t you or someone else say earlier that the character selection is largely important in Brawl comparatively?

Character selection could also mean...maining a character who has a lot of advantageous matchups. I wonder who fits that category.

Yes we can discuss Brawl “current” depth and such. However we can’t discuss matchups in terms of numbers or a definite tier list. Which makes my position a bit more difficult.

Sure we can. The numbers can be based off of the general opinion of the matchup. The tier list can be just a general idea of how good the character is. No one's asking for exact tier placings, or exact matchup numbers (the number itself is just used for effect, not accuracy. 5-5 is even, 6-4 and 7-3 are soft counters, 8-2 and up are hard counters).

His up B takes away his opponents second jump.

Actually it doesn't. If they haven't used their jump yet, they'll still be able to use it. It just doesn't give them their jump back if they've already used it.

He has a tech chase and a suicide move.

It's a pretty bad suicide move in comparison. It's a good tech chase...on some characters.

I can’t verify this but I have heard that Ganon has a two hit combo that does about 40%.

Dair->Up smash. Has to be done at 0%. Dair must be auto canceled and up smash must be buffered. Not exactly practical.

Ganon has his thunderstorming also. You get hit three or four times and Ganon has a good bit of KO potential on a large variety of his moves now. Also I believe his jab and Sparta kick cancel several projectiles.

Thunder storming is quite easy to tech. Most of Ganon's moves are quite easy to avoid as well , since they don't come out that quickly and have short range. Though his dash attack is quite nice.

Ganon's main problem...is that he simply can't approach. And he's not that good on defense either (though it's better than trying to approach). He really is just a terrible character.

If you want, I could list a bunch of cool stuff Mewtwo could do too, but that doesn't mean he isn't terrible in comparison to everybody else.

Ah I see, but because Sheik dominates such a large amount of the cast it is unwise to play any of those characters through tournament play because just one good sheik could knock you out.

But see, with Fox you have an easier time against the more commonly used characters and thus a better chance of winning.

And here's the kicker. Since so many people are now using Fox instead of Shiek, the characters that Shiek dominated now stand a chance (have secondary ready. They will try to counterpick Shiek).

I don’t see how this proves anything. It is just a thought process being written out. The top beats the bottom pretty soundly in both games, and neither has a real single dominating character.

Well, if you want to get nitpicky. Melee had about 5 dominating characters, while brawl only has three.

For example a player has gone through the whole tournament as Pika but over the last couple of months he has developed a pretty mean Metaknight. His opponent plays both Snake and Olimar. However throughout the tournament he has been mostly using Olimar. He decides for a double blind in hopes of catching his opponent of guard with his Metaknight, but his opponent instead decides to play Snake.

People do that all the time. They find out who their opponent mains (either before the match or litterally at the selection screen) and then makes their "counterpick."

Of course they aren’t popularity contest but as I said they are indirectly affected by tournament results and thus could be indirectly affected by popularity. If everyone plays Yoshi then Yoshi will probably get higher tournament results. People will begin to wonder why Yoshi is doing so great and thus will revaluate how they view Yoshi as a character.

And this evaluation would reveal that either A)Yoshi is a terrible character and only winning because so many people are playing him. or B)Yoshi has certain tools that allow him to have advantages against other characters.

In the process of being popular Yoshi may get an accelerated character growth, because more people would be playing him thus the likelihood of discovering something about him would increase.

Increased chances does not mean he will be a better character or develop a better metagame. It means he's more likely to. But that requires a better strategy...to be there. That requires him to have a certain combination of tools. Approach options, defense options, KO ability, longevity, ect. For something to grow it has to be there to start with.

On the other end, say everyone dropped Metaknight. Metaknights tournament ranking went down. Thus people would wonder what happened to metaknight. Players would rethink his strengths and weaknesses. Also his metagame would not develop as rapidly due to a decrease in usage.

What's so hard to figure out? Up B to glide attack certainly didn't take long. Metaknight would still be amazing as a character. His tier ranking really wouldn't change much because when making tiers...you take a close look at every single character.
Even Metaknight's undeveloped metagame is better than some of the developing metagames we have now.

A lot of theory goes into making a tier list. You need something to at least back up all of your theories. If you say Ice climbers chaingrab is the end all of the game and the because of it the ice climbers are the best, then we should be able to see that on a tournament ranking list. An accurate tier list should reflect the current tournament results and vice versa.

A tier list is a ranking of characters from best to worst. This does not have to come from tournament results...at all really. A perfect tier list would actually be based solely on matchups (assuming that all the matchups are 100% accurate). So no, an accurate tier list does not neccesarily have to reflect tournament results. Tournament results can be scewed by character popularity, but that does not change what characters are actually better in comparison with all the other characters.

Would melee be a good game with only dash dancing, foxtrotting, sheildgrabbing, jump cancelled grabs, moonwalking? Does it really need wavedashing and l canceling?

It needs L-canceling. Wavedashing, not so much.
Dash dancing was better in melee, if there was no wavedashing everyone would just learn to pivot, jump cancelled grabs were to good, teching during hitlag was awesome, shield grabbing would be broken with no l-canceling, and really you haven't named even half of melee's techs.

It needed L-canceling simply because the slower characters were simply to slow and couldn't actually compete with the faster characters. Really, this is still the case in brawl, and it's only magnified by how much of a difference in speed there is now. It really did make melee a better game and the slower characters really got the most benefit out of it.

 

[Thingy Person]

Summary of the thread so far?

 

[Corigames]

Summary?

People who support Brawl have no evidence to reach the conclusion that Melee is less balanced than Brawl. The opposite is true, however. That was covered in the first 30-or-so pages. The rest is flaming, complaining, spam, whining, baiting, trolling, and lies. Basically, a waste of time one might say.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Actually, the Metal Monster vs people thing is read worthy.

 

[Rebonack]

I certainly don't have enough Melee experiance to make a comparison of the games but I do have one observation. Shouldn't this be on Brawl General?

I mean, what does a topic about the relative character balance between Brawl and Melee have to do with the Brawl metagame? A tentative link, sure. But really.

*pokes the thread with a stick*

 

[RDK]

I don’t see how ease of use has anything to do with balance? Obviously the difficulties in playing fox didn’t stop a large amount of people from playing him. Difficulty didn’t keep him from being top tier.

I was merely comparing how easy it is to use Brawl Snake to how easy it is to use Melee Fox.

For example, say a broken character is difficult to use. Does it make the character any less broken? Good players will learn the character, and the difficulty required won’t keep the character from being banned.

This is where your argument fails.

Let's say a certain character's combo is REALLY good, but incredibly hard to use. Another character has a combo almost exactly the same as the first character's combo, although it can be initiated by just pressing a few buttons in succession, while the first character's combo requires actual timing, placement, and prediction.

Which is more broken?

Olimar, Zelda, Pikachu, Falco, and ROB just to name a few. I believe I have heard the Kirby beats him and the rest of the space animals give him trouble. Dededee is good no doubt but it seems agreed upon that he does have quite the bad matchups. I believe even the SBR mention this in his character review.
Despite this Dededee overcomes this and has a vastly better tournament result then those that beat him. Tournament rankings don’t tell me matchups they just tell me which character is winning.

Kirby is definetely not a favorable matchup to D3. Maybe a 50-50, but definetely not a counter.

It doesn’t really seem that way. A lot of the estimated mid tier have a counterpick here and there against the upper tiers. Kirby doesn’t do half bad against Metaknight. Now it isn’t a favorable matchup but it is perfectly winnable. Snake on the other hand gives Kirby real problems.

A counterpick against a select few in the upper tiers a great character does not make. A character's place on the tier list depends on ALL matchups by that character.

One counterpick against one high or god-tier character is ONE matchup. Whoopee. It doesn't do you much good against the other 8 or so characters above you.

Also, I find myself having more trouble against MK as Kirby than I do against Snake. Call it an odd playstyle, but that's just my experience. The fact that MK has priority and speed over almost every single one of Kirby's moves doesn't help.

I don’t know about that. They may be a cut above everyone else, but I think what you are saying is a bit exaggerated. Anyway does banning a broken character make a game more balanced?

Uh, duh?

Imbalanced but they balance each other. So if you took out the other 48 characters you would have a balanced game? So why are those 6 characters balanced? You give the reason in your little paragraph. If you go by the large sense that all characters must be equally viable then you limit the amount of games that are balanced. You also miss the inherent balance that some games actually have. If you go by how well the viable characters balance each other out then you open a lot of different games and you can see the cycles and branches. You only need three characters to have a balanced and competitive game. Having more is just extra. In theory you should have A beat B, B beat C, and C beat A, thus creating a cycle. However I am not sure that is entirely necessary, just as long as each of them have relatively equal viable options provided to them.

Taking out 95% of the available roster just so a game will be balanced is ridiculous. So you're in favor of banning every single character except Snake, MK, and ROB (or even just Snake) so that the game will be more balanced? Please.

And to answer your question, yes, if you took out the other 48 characters you would have a MORE balanced game, not a perfectly balanced one.

If I made a game with two characters it would be even more balanced than 64. It may even be the most balanced game. 64 had only 12 characters if all were viable then that is 100% viability. Melee had 12-14 characters viable that is only about 48%. So 64 is more balanced than melee?

Yeah.

A percentage seems almost silly really but if you want to go by them that is fine by me. Also I hardly ever see anyone below Fox being played. If this is true then 64 has roughly 50% viability.

Well then you obviously don't know jack about the competitive 64 scene. Pretty much every character is played competitively.

As I estimated earlier Brawl has about 54%. By this logic Brawl would be the most balanced. This is actually what I wanted to point out and avoid.

Lol, Brawl is definetely not 54% viable. If you think Brawl is more balanced than both Melee AND 64, then you'rea bigger loony than I thought. Try again.

Your estimation =/= fact.

You didn’t say they couldn’t be character specific nor did you say they had to be game breaking.

Correct; I said 5 PRACTICAL advanced techs.

Anyway though.
QAC-At this stage it seems to be a staple of any good pikachu’s game.
Shellshifting-I know PT isn’t used much but from what I have seen of the people who do use him this is quite important. There is a lot of applications to it even if usmashing across the stage is the most used one.
Arrow Looping-Makes Pit’s spam that much better. I don’t know how effective wing dashing is though.
Glide tossing-Characters with natural projectiles can use this effectively.
Snake Dashing-Although not used as much as the others I do see good Snakes using this a couple of times a match.

QAC'ing I'll give you.

Shellshifting is iffy. You can basically put that under the same category as Snakedashing, as the same technique is used with both characters, but with different results. It's like wavedashing with 2 different characters.

Arrow looping? Gimme a break, that's not an AT. Try again.

Glide tossing is not an AT. It was explained by the DOJO.

So basically you listed, at best, 2 AT's.

What is sad is it seems that people wouldn’t even like Melee if it didn’t have the techs that it did or that it didn’t have anything game breaking.

If Melee didn't have any utilizable AT's, it'd be just like Brawl. But better.

Would melee be a good game with only dash dancing, foxtrotting, sheildgrabbing, jump cancelled grabs, moonwalking? Does it really need wavedashing and l canceling?

It would still be better than Brawl.

 

[FishkeeperTimmay!]

QAC'ing I'll give you.

Shellshifting is iffy. You can basically put that under the same category as Snakedashing, as the same technique is used with both characters, but with different results. It's like wavedashing with 2 different characters.

Arrow looping? Gimme a break, that's not an AT. Try again.

Glide tossing is not an AT. It was explained by the DOJO.

So basically you listed, at best, 2 AT's.

If Melee didn't have any utilizable AT's, it'd be just like Brawl. But better.

It would still be better than Brawl.

This seemed irrational to me.

Shellshifting is not like Snakedashing. Snakedashing lets you slide while using an upsmash, only in one direction, thats it. Shellshifting lets you shift momentum into different directions while sliding, allowing for a variety of moves to be preformed while still moving. Its timing can also be changed by almost a second, unlike Snakedashing. They are completely different techs.

Why do you not think Arrow Looping is an AT? Because all it requires is movement of the joystick? I guess Dash Dancing didn't count then? Or Pivoting?

Glide Tossing; just because the Dojo explains it, its not an AT? The dojo is a new concept from Nintendo, designed to share info with players. I'm sure if the Dojo had of existed in Melee, L-Cancelling would have been added, considering it was a purposely added to the game. Then, remember that L-Cancelling is an AT that Melee is constantly praised for.

 

[ShadowLink84]

Shellshifting is iffy. You can basically put that under the same category as Snakedashing, as the same technique is used with both characters, but with different results. It's like wavedashing with 2 different characters.

[/quote]
Incorrect RDK.
Snakedashing is simply DACing.
I hate the fact people are attributing it to snake.


For one they used hit cancel to discover the slide.
Falco was capable of doing a cancel after his dasha ttack as well.
it was after they discovered that canceling the dash attack lead to sliding as well.


That and it goes in only one direction while Usmashing.

Shellshifting goes in both direction and can use anymove.

Arrow looping? Gimme a break, that's not an AT. Try again.

Eh I am somewhat skeptical of arrow looping but it is indeed an AT since your capable fo manipulating the arrows so that they are evne more spammable. Nothing Bowser hates more thang etting hit by multiple arrow loops.

Glide tossing is not an AT. It was explained by the DOJO.

Thats a poor reason RDK.
What about Teching?
What about pivot grabbing?
I doubt a casual n00b would care to know and even then if the dojo had been made I bet they would have mentioned L canceling.

Simply because it was mentioned by the dojo doesn't mean it isn't an AT.
What about the parry system created in SF 3rd strike?
Just because the creators acknowledge its existence does not mean its no longer categorized as an AT.

Simply put an AT is simply a technique not involved in basic gameplay.

If Melee didn't have any utilizable AT's, it'd be just like Brawl. But better.

I have to disagree with you somewhat, while it is true it would be somewhat better than Brawl, L canceling was a very large component for Melee and was what halped ot make it balanced.
If L canceling did not exist Bowser, Link many of the other slow characters (which was a good amount) would have no chance at all in the tournament scene.
They simply would be unable to keep up with anyone that was faster than them and would get camped to death.

Its why I mentioned that int his game people often bemoan the loss of L canceling most, since the slowest characters have little means of approaching and so get camped easily.
They were the ones who benefitted most.

Heck L canceling was the main way to avoid getting CG'ed by the Ice Climbers and Sheik.
Its why shield grabbing now is so powerful because you're often stuck on the ground long enough for a grab while in melee, L canceling made the time much shorter so they couldn't grab you as easily.

 

[Thingy Person]

Summary?

People who support Brawl have no evidence to reach the conclusion that Melee is less balanced than Brawl. The opposite is true, however. That was covered in the first 30-or-so pages. The rest is flaming, complaining, spam, whining, baiting, trolling, and lies. Basically, a waste of time one might say.

I understand. In that case, LET US ALL WAVE.

WHY?

IT'S COOL WHEN YOU WAVE!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbgj29Q0yQk

 

[EvolveOrDie]

I think that this thread may have lost it's point.
I can't even tell anymore how were even judging the standard of balance.
Is it by usable characters or techniques or overall game physics.
I think personally that if you've checked out sirlin's article on game balance, which can be found here, that the discussion level of this thread could rise to meaningful.

 

[Corigames]

Or that is just a big write up of some guy's opinions/findings on game balance. I could do the same thing, metalmonster-sized post, and it would still have no affect on the thread.

The reason why this thread goes in circles is because we are arguing about something, then a new person comes in without reading anything and posts all their "facts" to which we all counter point them. They fight back with their lack of knowledge and opinions that they pass of as facts, and the argument continues. That poster goes away and more people come and back up his point. We then have to fight off the legion of people who claim what he claims trying to say that those opinions they said weren't anything more than that. Eventually, it all leads to spam. Then another new person comes in and starts talking about what they don't know.

If people did read that write up, they probably would at least feel more enlightened about game balance, but no one is going to read it that is starting all the arguments.

 

[ArcPoint]

"The first lesson is that "variety" and "balance" are inversely proportional; the more you have of one, the less you're likely to have of the other." Quoted from Sirlin.

Brawl has more variety, thus less balance >_>

Melee has less variety, and thus more balance.

And with a lot of character specific AT's, it makes Brawl characters even more unbalanced.

So, to answer the question asked in the OP: No, Melee is more balanced.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Brawl is obviously less balanced than Melee, although Melee wasn't very balanced either. It's actually rather surprising, though. Brawl has 35 characters after all, yet there are only two, who are able to own MK or Snake (and only one, who can own both of them). Before the game was released it was logical, to assume the game to be more balanced, with such a huge amount of characters to choose from.

However, I still don't think that the differnce is as significant as many ppl complain. Aside from MK/Snake, the game is rather balanced - only G&W has unfairly good match-ups but there are many good characters, who have advantages against other strong fighters

 

[Yuna]

I wonder if there is a character limit here. Sorry for the wall of text.

10,000 characters. I've breached it a few times. In fact, one of my past posts consisted of exactly 10,000 characters.

I don’t see how ease of use has anything to do with balance? Obviously the difficulties in playing fox didn’t stop a large amount of people from playing him. Difficulty didn’t keep him from being top tier.

No, it has nothing to do with character balance. Ease of winning has everything to do with character balance. I suspect RDK meant "ease to use to win", though.

Olimar, Zelda, Pikachu, Falco, and ROB just to name a few. I believe I have heard the Kirby beats him and the rest of the space animals give him trouble. Dededee is good no doubt but it seems agreed upon that he does have quite the bad matchups. I believe even the SBR mention this in his character review.
Despite this Dededee overcomes this and has a vastly better tournament result then those that beat him. Tournament rankings don’t tell me matchups they just tell me which character is winning.

No one ever said he doesn't have bad matchups. They just aren't that numerous or that bad.

It doesn’t really seem that way. A lot of the estimated mid tier have a counterpick here and there against the upper tiers. Kirby doesn’t do half bad against Metaknight. Now it isn’t a favorable matchup but it is perfectly winnable. Snake on the other hand gives Kirby real problems.

Going even or at most 4-5 against a Top and High is not a "counterpick". Well, it kinda is, but it's really that good of a counterpick. 4-5 is barely winning. Going even is even ground. Not a counterpick. More of a "This character is quite low on the Tier List but enjoys a surprisingly even matchup against those Tops and Highs".

I don’t know about that. They may be a cut above everyone else, but I think what you are saying is a bit exaggerated. Anyway does banning a broken character make a game more balanced?

Yes, since said broken character is "taken out of the game". He will be disregarded when comparing game balance in the future. This does not change the game, however. The game will remain imbalanced. It will just be less so in Competitive play where the character has been removed and thus does not count.

Imbalanced but they balance each other. So if you took out the other 48 characters you would have a balanced game?

See above. The game itself is not balanced. Also, the Melee Tops and Highs balanced each other out, as well. Does this mean Melee is one of the most balanced games the world has ever seen?

A game is not balanced if 48 characters are useless.

So why are those 6 characters balanced? You give the reason in your little paragraph. If you go by the large sense that all characters must be equally viable then you limit the amount of games that are balanced.

No, all characters must not be equally viable. But this is not a discussion of whether Melee or Brawl is truly balanced, 100% balanced or even "pretty balanced", it's a discussion of which game is more balanced.

A game where almost all characters are roughly equally balanced is a really balanced game, yes. But the term "balanced" is a relative term. Some people might consider a game where 50% of all characters are viable balanced, other a game whre 33% of characters are. But that's a whole other discussion.

MVC2, however, not balanced since a vast majority of the characters are useless. It's not "They have to work harder", it's "They can't win... ever."

You also miss the inherent balance that some games actually have. If you go by how well the viable characters balance each other out then you open a lot of different games and you can see the cycles and branches. You only need three characters to have a balanced and competitive game. Having more is just extra. In theory you should have A beat B, B beat C, and C beat A, thus creating a cycle. However I am not sure that is entirely necessary, just as long as each of them have relatively equal viable options provided to them.

No. 3 characters does not a balanced game make. They do not. Balance is a big ball of wax, not a small one. Why this arbitrary number of three? Since it becomse Rock-Paper-Scissors between those three? How is this balanced if 87 characters are useless?

If I made a game with two characters it would be even more balanced than 64. It may even be the most balanced game. 64 had only 12 characters if all were viable then that is 100% viability. Melee had 12-14 characters viable that is only about 48%. So 64 is more balanced than melee? A percentage seems almost silly really but if you want to go by them that is fine by me. Also I hardly ever see anyone below Fox being played. If this is true then 64 has roughly 50% viability. As I estimated earlier Brawl has about 54%. By this logic Brawl would be the most balanced. This is actually what I wanted to point out and avoid.

Where is this arbitrary number of 54% being viable in Brawl coming from? Because Mid Tier is viable against Mid Tier and then there are a few of them who are viable against the Tops and Highs. But not all of them are. Not all of them can win a Brawl tournament (well, they can, if the others play bad enough).

Game balance is also, once more, not just a small issue of arbitrary numbers and percentages. Yes, a game with only two characters where both had equal chances of winning would be 100% balanced... but that wouldn't really mean much to anyone since there are only 2 characters. A game with 12 characters where 11 are roughly equal with only 1 being much worse, that would matter much more to people.

Last I checked Luigi is just below link on the tier list.

My mistake. Then again, most voters use NTSC, where Link's Up B is a semi-spike (it is not in PAL... Luigi remains the same, though).

Most of the tournament scene is made up of snakes though so just countering Snake would really help a low tier appear more often in tournaments. Possibly making them viable since really a person could just use their secondary for everyone but Snake. They would still be playing about 50% with Yoshi.

A random Low Tier stepping up and beating the **** out of people and winning tournaments could prove that they aren't really Low Tier. It would just prove that we were wrong in our initial judgment. Tier Lists change over the years because they're written by humans, who can wrong. It's not really proof of balance that maybe Yoshi one day might turn out to not be Bottom Tier.

The people I listed met the requirements you asked for. You wanted to know which Lucario’s have placed top 3. All five of them have been top three or better. I asked to extend it to fifth place because at that point we see not so big names doing well with Lucario. Of course playing high tier would probably increase your chances of winning but we are looking at viability of a character. We can’t look at how viable a character is if everyone drops their main to play a top tier secondary.

Now look deeper. Who did those Lucarios beat? How good were they? And what characters were they using?

Lucario has placed well decently even in the hands of people other than the best. Lucario is generally ranked somewhere in mid or low. Through speculation of many Lucario is destined to be around the 20th best character in the game. A character in such a spot just placing as well as Lucario does whereas those just a couple spots below him barely make top 8s and top 4s, tells me that Lucario must be in some way viable.

It's still early in the game's lifespan and, local tournament results =/= IMPORTANT!!!. How big were these tournaments? Did anyone other than, say, people from the same city go? If I look close and hard enough, I can find tournaments won by Zelda. In fact, I have personally won tournaments with Zelda (in Melee). And they had 60 or so participants or at least 40. Doesn't mean much if you look deeper, though.

Also, what about the 18 other characters above Lucario? How come so few of them place high consistently? A few exceptions does not a rule make (despite the proverb). Maybe Lucario enjoys surprisingly good/even/not that bad matchups against the Tops and Highs. It happens.

I don’t remember ever stating that at all. I believe I stated the opposite quite frankly. It is pretty common knowledge that Azen can’t be sited as proof that ike is good, or anyone else he decides to main.

I was merely illustrating the point that individual (and few) exceptions do not matter much.

Sarcasm aside, it just seems more likely that a large tournament would have some good people. Who can resist taking a couple of hundred bucks when you know you are the best player. It just seems highly unlikely to me that in a large tournament like that, there were no good people except timotee. Even if you had only 3 good people that would say something about timotee and how he won with Ness.

The tournament at OtaCon (2nd largest anime convention in the US, I believe), which has 128 participants (whose 2006 iteration I won) had comparatively few good Smashers present. In fact, there were only 3 of us who were good. One was Sheik, one was Peach, one was Link. The Sheik was Sadahara Inui, I was the Peach and I can't remember who the Link was (but Oro said he was "very good"). The Link won the Items-On Tournament (yes, there was an Items On tournament!) against me (who got 2nd) and then I won the No Items tournament (with the Link placing, like, 4th or something, losing out to a random Yoshi player).

There are results for everything if you look hard enough. Did Link's win at Otakon, with 128 participants, mean Link is really, really good and should be Top Tier? Umm... no.

I looked him up on youtube. It seems he is actually quite good. Also from the video it seems that his opponent was pretty decent also.

"Lucario was quite good. His opponent was quite decent."

Personal skill can trumph bad matchups and Tier Lists. If the Lucario was obviously better than his opponent, then it's only logical he would win (unless the matchup is just that bad).

Aren’t brackets created by skill? Wouldn’t that mean at some point if you are of lesser skill you will be facing someone of greater skill?

You cannot seed a bracket 100% fair. You can also not guarantee a bracket turning out the way you want it to since there might be surprise wins and loses, creating a wholy skewed result. No one ever makes a bracket and looks at every single possible path by every single participant to make sure the best always make it to the top, even in Loser's because that'd take hours.

So someone who's not "all that" can actually get an easier path than someone who is. In fact, I've personally received easier paths than those who beat me out of Winner's and those who placed 1st in my pool (with me taking 2nd). It happens all the time. Brackets are not fool-proof because there's just so many variables and people are just too lazy.

They're still pretty, good, though. I'm just saying, Just because someone placed 5th does not mean he was 5th best at the tournament.

I am pretty sure it was bad to begin with certainly not a 10-0 but I could see a 6-3 or a bit higher. If players of equal skill faced off I am sure Marth would win a significant majority of the time. Probably like 70% or so.

It's been so long since you first brought it up, but how is this relevant to anything, really? So Ness' matchup against Marth was already pretty bad to begin with. Umm... and?

This was pretty much explained above, but I will state it again. At about 5th place we start seeing a decent amount of Lucario players that are not your regular big names.

A "decent amount of"? What, 5 Lucarios? In local tournaments? Local tournaments limit the pool of players. If the best player in New York plays Lucario, then there will be an inordinate maount of high Lucario placings in New York. Meanwhile, there are almost no Zelda players consistently placing high... yet people speculate her to be among the Top 8 characters in the game.

Tournament results are not the end-all and be-all of the Tier Lists and game balance or whatever. People merely said "There's comparatively little variances in tournament placings" as proof of imbalance. You can only prove that it's not really "that bad" by showing us that there are some exceptions.

It is more than that though. It is that they also go even with just about the same people and also have favorable matchups against the people Mario only goes even with. I can add Mario to Brawl’s viability if you would like? That would make it 21-24(being optimistic with the 24) viable characters.

For the last time: If Mario has the potential to win against every single character in the game, then h'e sviable. It's that simple.

99% of everything said in this discussion applys to both games it is just both parties fail to realize this.

Nobody cares what random nobodies say.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=157979

Let the hilarity ensue.

Decent people do post there from time to time but the thread is so clogged up with bad players and bad players who main bad characters debating their little hearts out just to see their character get one more favorable matchup, that they hardly get noticed.

Which proves my point of "N00bs are ruining the character matchup chart threads".

When did I even state that I was using that chart. In fact later on I tell you where I get my information from.

Did I misread you? Do you get your information from another chart? Or not from any chart at all?

As I stated in my original post, this was put up on Gamefaqs originally. They are having the same debate and using points like the above to prove Melee is more balanced or Brawl is more balanced. I figured that since the debate is identical I would just post what I said there here also since I am almost 100% positive that someone has brought up similar points here. In fact I am almost positive that more than 5 people have made the “Mewtwo soft counter, bottom counters top” argument here.

1) It's GameFAQs.
2) It's GameFAQs.
3) It's GameFAQS.

No, this isn't about some kind of twisted elitist attitude, "It's GameFAQs" is a viable argument because of the stupidity that reigns there. And no, 5 people actually haven't. I have made the comparison of "Mewtwo and Pichu stand a much higher chance of winning against Fox and Falco" than Captain Falcon and Ganondorf do against Snake and Meta-Knight", though. Never once did I mention the word "soft counter".

Which game, Brawl, melee or both? It really seems like both, though one could say that in Brawl some of the mid to lower viable characters actually have decent matchups against those above them, or it could be stated that brawl has better viability due to the larger amount of viable characters regardless of degree.

Brawl. In Melee, the Mids stood a better chance against the Tops and Highs the Mids in Brawl against the Tops and Highs or Brawl (IMO).

Most people state that although he has bad matchups he has quite a few things going for him and that his tournament ranking is just below Snake and Metaknights thus he must be doing something right. I have seen that statement from players of low to players of high skill.

Then you're once more exggerating and those matchups aren't really "awful".

Other people seem to use it even lighter than I do. Thus we get the Mewtwo soft counter argument or Roy beats fox argument. Anyway though, I guess a better word is advantaged matchups. Considering that even in Melee Fox, Falco, and Sheik really didn’t have any counter matches, the fact that top in Brawl does have their share of disadvantage matchups is actually quite good. In essence really they are even in this regard, if not better for brawl.

Fox, Falco and Sheik shared more vulnerabilities than the Tops and Highs of Brawl, though.

The rest of your post is just too **** long and you're stating things are strictly opinion-based. I can't say more than "I disagree" and quite possibly point out reasons for why to the majority of them. I'll leave it to "The Others" to address those points.

 

[Empy]

Brawl is obviously less balanced than Melee, although Melee wasn't very balanced either. It's actually rather surprising, though. Brawl has 35 characters after all, yet there are only two, who are able to own MK or Snake (and only one, who can own both of them). Before the game was released it was logical, to assume the game to be more balanced, with such a huge amount of characters to choose from.

However, I still don't think that the differnce is as significant as many ppl complain. Aside from MK/Snake, the game is rather balanced - only G&W has unfairly good match-ups but there are many good characters, who have advantages against other strong fighters

I'd say having more characters makes it LESS likely the game is balanced. The more characters you make the harder it gets to keep them all at the same level.

Also, the difference is pretty big. There are plenty of extremely bad match-ups besides Snake and Metaknight btw. I think Falco and Pikachu **** Ike so badly I'll only stand a chance by counterpicking.

 

[Yuna]

There are no characters who can "own" Meta-Knight or Snake and especially not both of them at the same time. Who is this character, anyway? The much applauded Donkey Kong?

Having a matchup that's even is not owning them. Having a slight advantage is not owning them. Seeing one or two Donkey Kongs in all of American being able to win against Snake and Meta-Knight is not owning them either.

 

[Vyse]

"The first lesson is that "variety" and "balance" are inversely proportional; the more you have of one, the less you're likely to have of the other." Quoted from Sirlin.

Brawl has more variety, thus less balance >_>

Melee has less variety, and thus more balance.

And with a lot of character specific AT's, it makes Brawl characters even more unbalanced.

So, to answer the question asked in the OP: No, Melee is more balanced.

[/thread]
I've been following this thread quietly for a while, and I think I'm just going to with this

 

[Fawriel]

[/thread]
I've been following this thread quietly for a while, and I think I'm just going to with this

Yeah, that probably seems like a good idea. In the end, every elaborate point you make will be refuted and the arguments drag on like a piece of chewing gum you've been eating for several days straight. So it's best to just boil down your point to a short statement if you don't feel like debating for days on end.
Actually, I think that's a major reason why the argument's still going. If some people here didn't like debating their points, they would probably long ago have written up small essays and linked to them in the OP so they can just direct newcomers there. At least it is like that for me because I actually considered doing just that but then realized that I occasionally like to debate here just to kill some time. ... then again, my arguments function solely on logic and data I've collected from observation and word-of-mouth, so I'm hardly the most qualified to write up an end-all essay anyway.

So I'll also settle on some short and stupid points for the moment.

- L-canceling, for about the same reason you shouldn't be dating 10-year olds when you're 20 but nobody cares if your wife is 30 when you are 40.

- Shielding. Not only do characters with great lag have no way of decreasing it, but they get shield-grabbed. And chain-thrown.

- I can already point out several things that are plain as day that could be changed to massively improve balance. And that's sad.

- And why is that? Because some characters can survive, some can KO, some can do both and some can do neither. Which I assure you wasn't the case in Melee.

- They nerfed frikkin Yoshi. Come on! YOSHI! YO. SHI.
'Nuff said.

 

[Samochan]

- They nerfed frikkin Yoshi. Come on! YOSHI! YO. SHI.
'Nuff said.

I guess Sakurai was getting pwned too much by Fumi? xD

 

[The Halloween Captain]

There are no characters who can "own" Meta-Knight or Snake and especially not both of them at the same time. Who is this character, anyway? The much applauded Donkey Kong?

Having a matchup that's even is not owning them. Having a slight advantage is not owning them. Seeing one or two Donkey Kongs in all of American being able to win against Snake and Meta-Knight is not owning them either.

Not really ownage, I'll give you that, but Lucario seems to have the advantage in both the MK and Snake matchup from my experience with him. He does have some serious issues with the characters just underneath them (GW and R.O.B. are problems), but Lucario appears to be at least a soft counter for both.

Generally speaking, Olimar and GW seem to do a lot more owning than Snake and MK when they appear, although the latter may be better characters. Olimar and GW seem to be extremely strong counterpicks in the correct situations due to their odd properties, probably stronger than Snake and MK when it comes to deciding the most lop-sided matchups.

Of course, that is just my opinion, as is any discussion concerning "who owns who."

 

[Fletch]

Not really ownage, I'll give you that, but Lucario seems to have the advantage in both the MK and Snake matchup from my experience with him. He does have some serious issues with the characters just underneath them (GW and R.O.B. are problems), but Lucario appears to be at least a soft counter for both.

Does anyone else in the world actually agree with that?

 

[Vyse]

Not really ownage, I'll give you that, but Lucario seems to have the advantage in both the MK and Snake matchup from my experience with him. He does have some serious issues with the characters just underneath them (GW and R.O.B. are problems), but Lucario appears to be at least a soft counter for both.

Of course, that is just my opinion, as is any discussion concerning "who owns who."

I'll believe it's his opinion
Disecting posts makes me cool.

- L-canceling, for about the same reason you shouldn't be dating 10-year olds when you're 20 but nobody cares if your wife is 30 when you are 40.

- They nerfed frikkin Yoshi. Come on! YOSHI! YO. SHI.
'Nuff said.

Yoshi's still good
At least he wasn't nerfed as bad as Falcon.

 

[Fletch]

I'll believe it's his opinion

Obviously, I'm just wondering where the hell he would get an idea like that, and if anyone else could possibly share that opinion.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Obviously, I'm just wondering where the hell he would get an idea like that, and if anyone else could possibly share that opinion.

Lucario has range on MK. Azen is a clear example of that. The Snake v. Lucario matchup is a lot like the Snake v. Sonic matchup - its hard to explain why Sonic/Lucario tend to do better against Snake than people they should, but they just do better against Snake than people think they should. Lucario has some good juggling tricks against Snake because of his multi-frame projectile attack which can hit Snake as he lands, which Snake can't dodge because of landing frames. Likewise, Sonic's air attacks come in at angles which Snake has trouble responding to. To truely understand Snake's often odd vurnerabilities, you need to face good players who use the characters that for no single, clear reason, Snake has trouble handling.

 

[ShadowLink84]

Lucario has range on MK.

He has lingering hitboxes, MK's range is roughly the same if not more than Lucario's.

Azen is a clear example of that.

Video please.
Mainly since aerially MK dominates lucario.

The Snake v. Lucario matchup is a lot like the Snake v. Sonic matchup

Wait what?

- its hard to explain why Sonic/Lucario tend to do better against Snake than people they should, but they just do better against Snake than people think they should.

Except Sonic has issues with Snake's Ftilt, Utilt, bair, grenades, land mines, mortar sliding.

Likewise, Sonic's air attacks come in at angles which Snake has trouble responding to. To truely understand Snake's often odd vurnerabilities, you need to face good players who use the characters that for no single, clear reason, Snake has trouble handling.

Snake may have some issues with Sonic but its still an advantage for Snake.
Utilt kills Dairing, Fairing, Bairing, Dairing.
Ftilt really is a pain int he *** with its range.

Sonic can dominate sonic aerially but getting close can be difficult because fo the grenade stripping, the mines, teh C4, Snake's ability to kill Sonic with a Utilt as soon as Sonic hits 90%.

Sonic doesn't have an advantage against Snake nor does Lucario have one with Mk.
Otherwise we would have heard alot more about it and Sonic would be played more often.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Sonic does not have the Snake advantage. You need to actually be a part of the battle to understand how even it is, though. Experience is always better than explaination, as it is one thing to hypothetically propose Snake counter Sonic this way or that, but in truth most of Snake's anti-sonic tricks are much more effective in text than in battle.

For example, grenade drop doesn't work easily on sonic, he'll just run, grab, and throw you before the grenade goes off.

And about the Azen Lucario v. MK thing: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd-0vEfge2M
Please keep in mind that Lucario is stronger the more damage he takes, so his battles often appear more even than battles with other characters.

 

[ShadowLink84]

Sonic does not have the Snake advantage.

I stated this.

You need to actually be a part of the battle to understand how even it is, though.

No cause me being a Sonic main doesn't count.
And I have never played a Snake main my mistake.

No really I don't, I don't face people who use Snake's because they are't going to appear in a tournament. pshaw.

Experience is always better than explaination, as it is one thing to hypothetically propose Snake counter Sonic this way or that, but in truth most of Snake's anti-sonic tricks are much more effective in text than in battle.

They are much more effective in battle actually.
Mortar sliding isn't useful due to spinc's incredible ground speed but his jabs, tilts as well as his overall game does alot to sonic.

For example, grenade drop doesn't work easily on sonic, he'll just run, grab, and throw you before the grenade goes off.

You are joking yes?
You do know grenades can be held and right when Sonic goes to throw him they explode in his face.
Sonic has to take him and do a B throw which he does not want to do. He wants to Uthrow Snake where he can Uair him and juggle him.
Oh but lets forget the mortars, the Ftilt,Utilt. and everything else.

Sonic has a tough time with snake and yes it could be argued to be nuetral, however Sonic has to works very hard to get close to snake and continue working hard if he even wants to be capable of placing Snake ina position he wants.

He can't gimp Snake very easily.
He has to rack up a lot of damage on Snake before he can kill him which in the long run hurts him when Snake can off him at 90%.


mortar sliding while not as effective due to sonic's speed is a good method of maintaining spacing and preventing Sonic from pursuing him.

Utilt breaks all of Sonic's aerials and Uair is extremely strong and very fast.

Thisis similar to Olimar vs Sonic where it is nuetral.
however unlike Olimar vs Sonic,
Sonic does not have much over him while Snake has more over Sonic.
He can prevent an aerial assault, slow down his ground work.

And about the Azen Lucario v. MK thing: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bd-0vEfge2M
Please keep in mind that Lucario is stronger the more damage he takes, so his battles often appear more even than battles with other characters.

Not really There were several times that Forte should have been capable of killing of Azen's Lucario before Lucario could take advantage of his rage system. not only that Forte's usage of the tornado wasn't too good.
If you also noticed many of MK's aerials beat out Lucario's.

I prefer M2K's Meta Knight, it pressures more and is more accurate with the kill moves.
But thats my opinion.

 

[Bomber7]

I have come up to the conclusion(until someone convinces me other wise) that neither Brawl nor Meele is balanced or unbalanced. What happens in a match, tourny or not, happens. You can blame as many factors as you want that realisticly apply to a match. What a player does in a match against their opponent is what they do, we are all human, we aren't perfect. So far right now I see no balance or unbalance in either games, more or less of what is done and the outcome.

 

[Zankoku]

If it's neither balanced nor unbalanced, then it does not exist.

 

[Bomber7]

If it's neither balanced nor unbalanced, then it does not exist.

hmmm.... Well, I just believe that how a match is played is not bound to a predestined win or loss, like a character mathc up. Anything could happen. I guess saying both games are neither balance or unbalanced was a bad choice of words. What I'm trying to get by is that I see where there is no unfairness in the games. Like I said, I am looking for how the game is played and the outcome, reguardless of character match-up. Though if you manage to convince me otherwise then I will be open to your words.

 

[Yuna]

I have come up to the conclusion(until someone convinces me other wise) that neither Brawl nor Meele is balanced or unbalanced. What happens in a match, tourny or not, happens. You can blame as many factors as you want that realisticly apply to a match. What a player does in a match against their opponent is what they do, we are all human, we aren't perfect. So far right now I see no balance or unbalance in either games, more or less of what is done and the outcome.

No. (10shotalinks)

(No, seriously, I feel this post doesn't deserve more of a reply than this. If you still think this, then you clearly haven't been paying any attention to the discussion at hand).

 

[Zankoku]

In theory, in Melee, it will be very easy to guess the outcome of the match between a Sheik and a Bowser of equal skill - the Sheik should never lose a single game.

In practice, there will not be a Sheik and Bowser of equal skill, but generally the Bowser will win ONLY if the Bowser player is significantly more skilled than the Sheik. And by significantly, I mean... significantly.

 

[Bomber7]

In theory, in Melee, it will be very easy to guess the outcome of the match between a Sheik and a Bowser of equal skill - the Sheik should never lose a single game.

In practice, there will not be a Sheik and Bowser of equal skill, but generally the Bowser will win ONLY if the Bowser player is significantly more skilled than the Sheik. And by significantly, I mean... significantly.

:/ Point is well taken. I find it funny how crazy this thread had become. Excellent subject I will admit. It is a good thread. Though I think I will just leave this thread alone and let you, Yuna and who ever else has stayed in this thing, handle this matter. Though it has gotten a little out of hand. People will have their opinions about each game, that much is true. I don't know if we are supposed to convice those who read this thread: "Which is more blanced? Brawl or Meele?" and give a straight and definate answer that when people read it, it will make since and will convince the body of readers that _____ is the more balanced game. Yuna, I'm sure will tell me that somewhere in this 150 page thread, someone or her has typed it all and it will be more than I could handle, too much for my intention span like metal-monster-long. Even if someone hasn't, still, this was a good thread to begin with. Though I do remeber corygames saying that new people should stay out. well, I remeber from civics class, new evidence/ideas could change the whole outcome of the trial. I would say a new mind to the forum could apply the same way. But I do agree with him that most of this has come out to flamming and spamming and other uneeded things. As my final words I will say that I can agree that some characters have the advantage over others, meele was a living example, Brawl, due to the 35 characters has has created a gap for that, so the character match-ups isn't as big as it was in meele.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I'd say having more characters makes it LESS likely the game is balanced. The more characters you make the harder it gets to keep them all at the same level.

Also, the difference is pretty big. There are plenty of extremely bad match-ups besides Snake and Metaknight btw. I think Falco and Pikachu **** Ike so badly I'll only stand a chance by counterpicking.

You don't necessarily have to keep all at the same level, simply b/c it's not possible. But it seems logical to me, that more chars = more balance. The more characters the less likely is one single character owning them all

 

[Garquille14]

In 1-2 months I will have a presentable tier list that can also relate their placement to a number system of some sort (which hasn't been finalized - far too many factors to easily develop such a method). It will only be the first version, but it will have a safe margin of error. I've seen the commonly accepted tier list for melee, but I'm not familar with the transparent gaps between tiers. I will make no attempts in challenging or opposing Melee's tiers, but I am very interested in helping decode this 'rumor'.

Surely I am not going to read the 100 pages here so I'm not fully aware of the evolution of the discussion (doesn't sound well from a recent post), but hopefully my endeavors can benefit this as well.

 

[Pieisthebest]

In 1-2 months I will have a presentable tier list that can also relate their placement to a number system of some sort (which hasn't been finalized - far too many factors to easily develop such a method). It will only be the first version, but it will have a safe margin of error. I've seen the commonly accepted tier list for melee, but I'm not familar with the transparent gaps between tiers. I will make no attempts in challenging or opposing Melee's tiers, but I am very interested in helping decode this 'rumor'.

Surely I am not going to read the 100 pages here so I'm not fully aware of the evolution of the discussion (doesn't sound well from a recent post), but hopefully my endeavors can benefit this as well.

Your tier list sounds like a really good idea, I cant wait to see it when your done with it

 

[metaXzero]

You don't necessarily have to keep all at the same level, simply b/c it's not possible. But it seems logical to me, that more chars = more balance. The more characters the less likely is one single character owning them all

No. Adding more characters LESSENS the chances of the game being more balanced. Street Fighter 2 only has 8 characters (I think) and every single 1 stands a chance against each other. Marvel vs Capcom 2 has 60 characters, yet only about 6 characters actually go to tourneys because they **** everyone else in the roster (thats over 50 useless characters).

On-topic: I'd say Brawl is more balanced then Melee when you only compare Mid-tiers to Bottom tiers. But add in the High/Top tiers, and you have several characters becoming near useless, making Brawl less balanced then Melee.