Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[Tyr_03]

Brawl is dead to me unless they ban the chaingrab on Lucas and Ness. Gamebreaking stupidity.

 

[AlexX]

Brawl is dead to me unless they ban the chaingrab on Lucas and Ness. Gamebreaking stupidity.

If you don't mind me asking, how can they ban it when they can't ban the Ice Climbers' chaingrab on everyone?

 

[Azuro]

If you don't mind me asking, how can they ban it when they can't ban the Ice Climbers' chaingrab on everyone?

My thoughts exactly...

 

[Corigames]

Don't get grabbed. There you go, not broken anymore!

 

[NESSBOUNDER]

Don't get grabbed. There you go, not broken anymore!

Ololololol, how clever!!

It never occurred to me, I could just do the whole match without getting HIT too! wow, why didn't I think of that before?

 

[hoopspr226]

I'm pretty sure coreygames is being sarcastic...

 

[NESSBOUNDER]

I'm pretty sure coreygames is being sarcastic...

so was I.

10sarcasticchaingrabbednesses

 

[goodoldganon]

Brawl is already shaping up to be the least balanced of the three games. We are already finding ways to make characters unplayable. Not 'unplayable' in the sense that Mewtwo was terrible, he could still compete with the best, however had the most serious flaws. However unplayable in the since that Ness/Lucas cannot do anything against a huge portion of the cast of characters. If we are already discovering ways to make characters near-useless then the game is not balanced. Ness/Lucas will never be able to go anywhere in competitive play when their opponent has a wide selection of characters that has an easy infinite on them from a grab that is due to faulty programming of their escape animations. Brawl was not tested properly at all. It was tested to ensure that Player A could beat Player B just easily as Player B could beat Player A rather than testing that Character A could beat Character B just as easily that Character B could beat Character A. This allows for many things to go overlooked and in the end many characters will not have a chance in competitive play. Mewtwo had a chance, TaJ proved that Mewtwo could beat any other character when played to full potential. However, no matter what potential you want to play Ness at, he can never win against a large portion of the cast. Brawl is incredibly more unbalanced than Melee due to this.

I used to feel Brawl had a great balance and everyone was usable. But the more and more I play and read the more apparent it becomes that Brawl is indeed unbalanced. Sure, I guess it can be seen as nice that the technical gap of Melee is nearly completely gone, but I think everyone would agree they'd rather have the technical play style of Melee over to "character breaking" style of Brawl.

 

[AlexX]

I still say we're all making hasty judgements about Brawl's balance. How long did we think Dedede's legendary chaingrab was inescapable by 21 members of the cast?

 

[Burning Lava]

@ OP... Hmm, not sure, but I think it might actually be less balanced than Melee in a way. There are more characters though, so if you shave off some of the best and worst, it might be close to Melee. BTW, I'm starting to get bored with Brawl... it's so sad, but I find myself wanting to play Melee. Toon Link, and a few others are the only things keeping me Brawling.

 

[Looper]

if you took the original cast from brawl and set aside the newcomers, would brawl still be less balanced?

 

[Burning Lava]

^^^Hmm, good question. There's no way I could answer that, but interesting. My guess is no, Melee is just the better game. Sad I know. I don't want to sound like those people who refused to play Melee, and stuck to Smash 64, but in this case, I think I'll stand by Melee for now. Brawl still may come into it's own, but at least we always have Melee.

 

[NESSBOUNDER]

I can't go back to Melee. I can't bear the thought of seeing multi-hit attacks and AAA combos being DIed out of and countered with a Nair...

 

[mezbomber]

Brawl's balance feels weird to me, so far. I find myself thinking that certain moves seem brokenly overpowering, yet the characters don't seem too broken. For example, I would expect the more devastating moves to be harder to pull off, have a longer startup time, require precise spacing and mindgames. Then there's moves like Marth's Fsmash or Wolf's Fsmash, with no startup lag, huge range, and (while technically not as powerful as an Ike or Snake Fsmash) it's not terribly far off, at all.

characters don't seem that unbalanced, it's almost as if the moves are what feels imbalanced to me. This seems to be encouraging people ( not all ) to spam the one or two "broken" moves. I don't really believe it's as broken as it feels right now, though. I'm sure there will be several developments and techniques for countering these measures.

although...spammers, campers, and chain-grabbers sure are frustrating to play against. I don't like seeing players rely on these tactics ( it's also none of my business how you wanna play ), but the following seems like an obvious equation to me:

Player X who can win without chain-grabbing > Player Y who can't win without chain-grabbing

to all the Player X's out there: here's hoping you rise to the top

and to all the Player Y's: I really hope there's not many of you out there. c'mon, most people that are good at CG's are good at other approaches, right? ...RIGHT?

 

[Atmapalazzo]

I can't go back to Melee. I can't bear the thought of seeing multi-hit attacks and AAA combos being DIed out of and countered with a Nair...

amen to that

 

[chubas]

I am going to speak as a casual player. In my opinion, the starting learning curve in brawl is way lower than was in Melee. That's why you see lots of people who has played Brawl just a couple of times and say stubbornly that Brawl is more balanced. In fact, the basic gameplay in Brawl takes not-as-long-as-in-Melee to get used to it, and one feels at least comfortable playing with just the basic techniques.

But...

as Yuna said earlier in the thread, there is a difference between casual and competitive. Advance individual techniques are necessary, and mindgames play an important role as well. When one compare Brawl to Melee (I was also a casual player on Melee, so my point of view is rather limited), we can argue that Brawl style is less offensive in general, but that doesn't mean necessarily the game is balanced. Spamming, camping, CGing, etc..., as discussed, are just advanced techniques that make some characters better than others.

In short, I think Brawl is more balanced than Melee after all, but there is still a large gap between tiers. The learning curve in Brawl starts at a higher point, yet the use of ATs is the real difference. Agreed with the point that there are less (IMO, none) "Pichu" tier characters. That is my opinion, as a casual-but-practicing-to-become-good player.

 

[Flayl]

Can we do a comparison using statistics?

Okay keep in mind that the following does not account for the gap between tiers, just the top contenders.

According to the tournament results in http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=165954, there are 9 prime candidates for winning a tournament.

According to the latest Melee tier list, 5 fighters correspond to these S and A ranks.

Now for some crude and basic statistics: 9/37 = 24% of the cast in Brawl is expected to place highly in tournaments. 5/26 = 19% of the cast in Melee was expected to place highly in tournaments. By this we can infer that Brawl is expected to have a greater variety of tournament winners.

I feel that the list in the url is pretty accurate, but we can check this again once SBR does its own brawl list.

 

[Zankoku]

I have a feeling you were attempting to link to my Character Rankings List, in which case you accidentally added a 7 to the end of the URL.

http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=165954

The way I built my Rankings List is not the same way the SBR built the tier list. Not only that, but in my list, there are gigantic gaps in tournament performance between ranks. I somehow doubt there was such a wide gap on the SBR tier list, especially considering the tournament performance of characters like Captain Falcon and Ice Climbers, compared to, say, the performance of Kirby or Fox in Brawl.

 

[Flayl]

Like I said in the second line of my post, the comparison doesn't account for the gaps, just the top cream of the crop

 

[BEES]

More balanced... no. It seems like character matchups result in many situations where one character is extremely unbalanced against another. It just averages out to make characters numerically more closely matched, but many more of these oddball matchups seem to be occurring.

On any given 1-1 fight, you're more likely to have an unbalanced one with a character that has a significant advantage over the other.

 

[Pizzaguylol]

I am by no means a "big shot" around here, whatever that means, but I've been playing Melee since it came out, and Brawl as well. From what I can tell, the game is pretty well balanced. Why? The ease of use of all the characters and the easy learning curve. The ATs this year don't seem to be that effective from what I've seen/done, and it feels like a more basic fighter. Smash Bros is by no means perfect, but I think Brawl is quite well balanced. I think its just that people became so used to Melee that switching to Brawl is a big change. Trust me, I mained Ganondorf in Melee, and it took me over 2 months to get used to him in Brawl, but I did it.

Oh and... have fun.

 

[Dark Sonic]

Like I said in the second line of my post, the comparison doesn't account for the gaps, just the top cream of the crop

The top cream of the crop is 2 years outdated for the melee tier list, and you're forgetting that even characters in mid tier placed well in tournaments. Iceclimbers, Captain Falcon, Samus, and even Jigglypuff (at the most recent *Pound 3*) have placed fairly high in melee tournaments. When including them you have 9/26 vs 9/37.

In case you didn't notice, melee has been getting more character variety in tournaments. Heck I even see some Gannondorfs in tournaments every now and then.

 

[Deadandlivin]

Can we get some examples of really terrible match-ups in Brawl? I've watched a whole bunch of competitive vids, and I haven't seen anything nearly as bad as, say Marth v Kirby in Melee





yet

Pikachu vs Fox -___-

 

[rathy Aro]

The top cream of the crop is 2 years outdated for the melee tier list, and you're forgetting that even characters in mid tier placed well in tournaments. Iceclimbers, Captain Falcon, Samus, and even Jigglypuff (at the most recent *Pound 3*) have placed fairly high in melee tournaments. When including them you have 9/26 vs 9/37.

In case you didn't notice, melee has been getting more character variety in tournaments. Heck I even see some Gannondorfs in tournaments every now and then.

After years of melee being out the variety of characters keeps growing? Maybe if we give Brawl that same amount of time the same will happen? Could be, right?

CGs and camping are both pretty gay, but, so long as people still desire to be good at this game, the metagame will get more and more complex without a doubt, because you have to keep getting better. I don't think a chain grab will make every single good ness player just put down his controller, he/she may just fight against Marth again and again until they find some type of flaw in the cg or find a broken combo against Marth. When it comes down to it, Brawl isn't that well built, and can probably be exploited to death with time so until we fully exploit the game, you CAN NOT THROW OUT A CHARACTER. Would you give up a match cuz you saw ICs? Should DK, Bowser, Mario, Luigi, Samus, and (funny enough) DDD not appear in tournaments cuz DDD may 0-death them? That's just stupid....

Edit: I don't think its the right thing to do, but my friend recently went to a tourney where DDD's infinite was banned. I assume they will ban all infinites and if all tourneys do that then suddenly the games a lot more balanced.

 

[Trapt497]

I really did think this game was very well balenced and really well developed first month or so I played it. Predicting tiers are probably much harder to do than it was in melee...so yeah I thought it was pretty well balenced.

...Until, of course, I was informed by several threads of the infinite grabbing people can cheaply pull off on Ness and Lucas, making them useless in tournaments against almost half of the characters in the roster. Just this small factor makes me come to the conclusion that no, it is not more balenced than melee.

 

[Dark Sonic]

Marth vs Ganondorf. Marth vs. Ness infinite chaingrab plus already being a Ness counter without it. This matchup is actually worse than Shiek vs Bowser in Melee. Shiek vs Ike is also a very hard matchup in brawl. There aren't many character matchup charts in the character specific boards, and the one here doesn't show how large advantages are. But you could still find really bad matchups just by matching the "good" characters against the "bad" ones. Falcon vs Pikachu is not a pretty sight in this game.

BTW you guys need to get up to date. Only Marth, Squirtle, and Charizard can actually infinite chaingrab Ness. And on Lucas Marth gets a chaingrab (not infinite) and that's it for him.

 

[rathy Aro]

Are you suggesting pikachu is a bad character?

Edit: I thought that said Falco not Falcon. XD In that case I totally agree. Pikachu would have his way with Falcon.

 

[Rapid_Assassin]

Can we get some examples of really terrible match-ups in Brawl? I've watched a whole bunch of competitive vids, and I haven't seen anything nearly as bad as, say Marth v Kirby in Melee





yet

Marth vs. Ness. That's the worst matchup I can think of, and it seems about as bad as Ice climbers vs. Pichu in Melee.

Anyway, the game is more balanced in the sense that there is a much larger mid tier, and we can say that anyone mid tier and up is tournament viable. It's about equal (unbalanced) in the sense that there's still a top tier which is winning most tournaments. I've yet to see a truly balanced fighting game because it's impossible without making every character exactly the same.

 

[Flayl]

The top cream of the crop is 2 years outdated for the melee tier list, and you're forgetting that even characters in mid tier placed well in tournaments. Iceclimbers, Captain Falcon, Samus, and even Jigglypuff (at the most recent *Pound 3*) have placed fairly high in melee tournaments. When including them you have 9/26 vs 9/37.

In case you didn't notice, melee has been getting more character variety in tournaments. Heck I even see some Gannondorfs in tournaments every now and then.

I'm not talking about placing well, I'm talking about winning tournaments.

 

[chubas]

Anyway, the game is more balanced in the sense that there is a much larger mid tier, and we can say that anyone mid tier and up is tournament viable. It's about equal (unbalanced) in the sense that there's still a top tier which is winning most tournaments.

Compared with Melee (and I don't like very much doing it), I think characters are a little more balanced in the sense that the gap between tiers has reduced. Still, there is still a top cream tier as you said, but there is a larger number of competitive characters that can take up on them.

I've yet to see a truly balanced fighting game because it's impossible without making every character exactly the same.

That would suck.

And I'm with the idea of people should main more than one character in Brawl, so they can counterpick well a troublesome character for one in particular. Just my opinion.

 

[Dark Sonic]

I'm not talking about placing well, I'm talking about winning tournaments.

Mango won the last big melee tournament. As Jigglypuff.

 

[Zankoku]

I'm not talking about placing well, I'm talking about winning tournaments.

Mango won *pound* 3 with Jigglypuff. Just sayin'.

 

[goodoldganon]

Time will tell if Brawl is more balanced and if we will see more diversity in the tournament scene. In my opinion, it won't be more balanced. For years we will see mostly Snakes, Meta Knights, Marths, Falcos and MAYBE Toon Links.

In reality, I don't think it matters either way. Unless there are some major breakthroughs, Brawl is a relatively boring 1v1 game to watch and part of what makes a good tournament game is that is exciting to watch. It is not exciting to watch camping, projectile spamming, and chaingrabs. I don't think infinites are exciting to watch either.

As I said, I'm taking the wait and see approach. But, I don't have a lot of faith in Brawls metagame.

 

[Flayl]

Mango won *pound* 3 with Jigglypuff. Just sayin'.

I'm aware.

edit: You're both taking the expected value to be always the truth. That's a big nono in statistics

 

[Dark Sonic]

You were also taking the expected value to be the truth when you made that comparison. You thought that only the top and High tiers were viable in melee tournaments, but you were wrong. That's a big nono in statistics.

 

[Flayl]

haha no need to get feisty

and no i didn't claim chars under the high tier were nonviable, I said they aren't expected to win tournaments as much as those higher up

 

[Dark Sonic]

Well, according to the tournament results only Metaknights and Snakes should be expected to win tournaments, with that 64 point gap between S tier and A tier. Likewise in melee Marth, Shiek, and Fox are considered the top contenders.

So technically (going by tournament results) melee had 3/26 while brawl only has 2/37. That's pretty bad.

 

[Tyr_03]

The idea that Brawl could be more balanced than Melee is a detestable lie.

 

[PredictablyStubborn]

Brawl:
Higher tier characters are more easily beaten by lower tier characters.
The gap between the tiers in Brawl (I know tiers don't exist yet, but Snake for instance, who's been ranking top consistently in tournaments) vs the old Melee Fox/Falco vs. Bowser or Mewtwo matchup is a lot smaller.

Therefore, it's more balanced in that sense.



However, Brawl is more unbalanced vs. Melee in one of its own areas as well: character weaknesses, such as"slowness", can not be overcome.

In Melee, slow characters can still play well due to fast pivoting, wave dashing, and L-canceling. In Brawl, it's not possible anymore. If your character is slow, and has many unsafe moves, you will never be able to overcome the weakness.

Only Snake in Brawl is able to overcome his slowness due to his amazing boost smash. (which is probably why he is consistently ranked top in tournaments, he became a heavy/strong/fast character) .

How does this unbalance the game? Basically, no matter how good you play, your Ganondorf will always be as limited in its fighting options as before. Melee allowed characters to break free from their character weaknesses and limitations. Brawl, so far, makes it so that limitations stick.

That is why slow characters without anti-projectile options have more problems with campers. Their inability to break from their limitations allows camping to work better on them.

 

[fallenangemon0]

How many of those can do all the below:
* KO well
* Combo into KO moves well
* Combo well at all
* Rack up damage well (either with single moves or broken combos)
* Approach well

How many of those can do 4 or 3 of the above? How many can do 2? Just 1? You see, the balance is significantly less when you consider these facts. Edgeguarding has been gimped and recovering has received a major buff, so all of the above are vital now.

No longer can you easily knock someone off the stage and gimp them to death with edgeguarding.

Now I see EXACTLY what you mean!

So Metaknight is super good at:

KOing: I know some may argue this but even though MK is superior at racking up damage, you gotta admit that his Dsmash, Glide Attack, and Shuttle Loop have WAY too much knockback for a character that you would expect to have little KO moves because of how well he can rack up damage

Comboing into KOs.- You can practically Dsmash out of his AAA combo, and theres too many other examples

Racking up damage- I think this one speaks for itself.

Approach well- he has an insane dash attack, dash grab, glide attack, Side B, Foward B, and dont even get me started on the Gaynado.

While DK on the other hand can KO well and has his awesome "fthrow into the ledge KO"... thing...but he cannot combo well, or combo into KO moves, and doesnt really have a good approach at all.


I could make an example like this for just about ANY match up, and now that I think about it, the fact that all characters have "roles" (as in one is only good at combos and one cannot combo but has great KO moves) really makes me see just how unbalancing it all really is, AND the fact that some characters can do character specific combos ( DDDs standing infinite, some IC combos, Ness and Lucas getting screwed over by infinte grabs to grab attacks, etc ) only further unbalances everything.

AND!!! MARTH CAN DO ALL OF THE ABOVE