Brawl - More balanced than Melee? Lie or truth?

[Zankoku]

A little post that I hope people will see.

Brawl is not completely balanced. All characters are not created equal. Advanced techniques that have been discovered so far have largely been character-specific. Snake gets Grenade Stripping, Boost Up-Smashing, Dash Hit-Canceled Up-Smashing, and what does Ganondorf get? ...Not much. Arguing for one extreme of balance or the other extreme of imbalance is not a good idea, because you're very likely to be completely wrong.

That said, in Melee, these characters:
Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, Peach, Captain Falcon, Ice Climbers
would rarely, if ever, lose to these characters:
Yoshi, Zelda, Mr. Game and Watch, Ness, Bowser, Kirby, Pichu, Mewtwo

I don't want to hear stupid examples of Taj's God Mewtwo or Simna's amazing placement in, I believe, SCC going all Ness. They are exceptions to the rule, examples of players so dedicated to doing well with a character that they've achieved an impressive level of skill with a bottom-tier character. (Also, Taj plays Marth when it comes to playing against high-level players in major tournaments.)

By the same token, these characters:
Snake, Meta Knight, Marth, Mr. Game & Watch, Wario, ROB, Pikachu, Wolf, Falco
will rarely, if ever, lose to these characters:
Mario, Jigglypuff, Captain Falcon, Ganondorf, Link, Samus, Pokémon Trainer, Yoshi

You cannot look at a bottom-tier character and only see his merits without his faults, then compare them to a top or high tier characters faults without even bothering to enumerate his strengths. The simple fact of the matter is, there are characters who are better than others, and there are characters who are significantly worse than the rest.

Brawl is not completely balanced. Don't even bother trying to lie to yourself about that. It's not horridly unbalanced to the point that only two characters win (though they do tend to be dominating most tournaments), either. Since I spent all this time typing this post up, I will not bother responding to any of you who claim that Brawl is either completely balanced or completely unbalanced any more. There's simply no proof to either claim yet.

 

[Nigerian Star Storm]

Of course there are some characters that are better than others! There are just less completely horrible characters in brawl than in melee. Also what facts do you have against brawl being more balanced?

Oh I don't know, maybe the fact that 1 character (At least judging from recorded tournaments in Ankoku's topic) has won just about a third of the Tournaments played and the other is for the most part either right behind him or winning? Not to mention the likes of Falcon, Ganon, Samus, Jiggs, Link and maybe others failing hard and require outclassing you opponent to stand a chance?


Edit:Ankoku, I thought Taj played Sheik in serious Tournaments? Altough I admit I'm probably wrong.

 

[Byronman]

A little post that I hope people will see.

Brawl is not completely balanced. All characters are not created equal. Advanced techniques that have been discovered so far have largely been character-specific. Snake gets Grenade Stripping, Boost Up-Smashing, Dash Hit-Canceled Up-Smashing, and what does Ganondorf get? ...Not much. Arguing for one extreme of balance or the other extreme of imbalance is not a good idea, because you're very likely to be completely wrong.

That said, in Melee, these characters:
Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, Peach, Captain Falcon, Ice Climbers
would rarely, if ever, lose to these characters:
Yoshi, Zelda, Mr. Game and Watch, Ness, Bowser, Kirby, Pichu, Mewtwo

I don't want to hear stupid examples of Taj's God Mewtwo or Simna's amazing placement in, I believe, SCC going all Ness. They are exceptions to the rule, examples of players so dedicated to doing well with a character that they've achieved an impressive level of skill with a bottom-tier character. (Also, Taj plays Marth when it comes to playing against high-level players in major tournaments.)

By the same token, these characters:
Snake, Meta Knight, Marth, Mr. Game & Watch, Wario, ROB, Pikachu, Wolf, Falco
will rarely, if ever, lose to these characters:
Mario, Jigglypuff, Captain Falcon, Ganondorf, Link, Samus, Pokémon Trainer, Yoshi

You cannot look at a bottom-tier character and only see his merits without his faults, then compare them to a top or high tier characters faults without even bothering to enumerate his strengths. The simple fact of the matter is, there are characters who are better than others, and there are characters who are significantly worse than the rest.

Brawl is not completely balanced. Don't even bother trying to lie to yourself about that. It's not horridly unbalanced to the point that only two characters win (though they do tend to be dominating most tournaments), either. Since I spent all this time typing this post up, I will not bother responding to any of you who claim that Brawl is either completely balanced or completely unbalanced any more. There's simply no proof to either claim yet.

I actually agree with you. Brawl is not COMPLETELY balanced, neither is melee . No fighting game really is. I am just saying that brawl is a little more balanced than melee.

Oh I don't know, maybe the fact that 1 character (At least judging from recorded tournaments in Ankoku's topic) has won just about a third of the Tournaments played and the other is for the most part either right behind him or winning? Not to mention the likes of Falcon, Ganon, Samus, Jiggs, Link and maybe others failing hard and require outclassing you opponent to stand a chance?


Edit:Ankoku, I thought Taj played Sheik in serious Tournaments? Altough I admit I'm probably wrong.

Those are not arguments against brawl being less balanced than melee, just arguments against brawl being unbalanced. There are very similar instances in melee. Try to stay on topic here.

 

[Miller]

Of course there are some characters that are better than others! There are just less completely horrible characters in brawl than in melee. Also what facts do you have against brawl being more balanced?

You have no idea how broken brawl is, stop being a nub

 

[Byronman]

You have no idea how broken brawl is, stop being a nub

Ok I'll bite. How broken is brawl?

 

[RDK]

I actually agree with you. Brawl is not COMPLETELY balanced, neither is melee . No fighting game really is. I am just saying that brawl is a little more balanced than melee.

But it's not.

How did you come to this conclusion? Brawl is more balanced than Melee "because you say so"? You're making claims without posting anything that would give us reason to believe what you're saying.

 

[St. Viers]

well, if you READ THIS THREAD, you'd see ...

In melee, lower tier chars had suprisingly good matchups against higher-placed chars. In brawl, there is pretty much a linear worsening as you go from good to bad chars. Withing each tier it's even, and you can have pretty good games against the tier directly above/below you, but besides that, lower chars will lose unless they are played by someone much better than the high tiered char.

Also, thanks to the removal of lag-cancelling, certain chars with less laggy moves, or ones that autocancel have an unfair advantage over cahrs without it. In melee, L cancelling turned almost all lag into 5-11 frames, where as in brawl the disparity is between 0-alot, where the exact amount of alot doesn't matter because the other moves have NO LAG--meaning MK will always have an advantage against chars with laggy moves >_>

^^just one example

 

[W-man]

That would be great if people stopped steadily asserting "some characters ar better than the others". We all now most frays appears to put Faclo on a higher tier than Ganondorf. The matter is that it is now possible for a Ganondorf to scare a Falco, if he understands the way Special moves must be used to play an agressive game. I personnaly think Brawl's Ganondorf is WAY better, strategically speaking, than Melee's (and I have been playing Melee for years, while not in a competition). We can discuss that point, as an example to show a laggy and awkward character can beat a fast and nimble one, despite I am not trying to convince you all, but rather to widen your opinions on that point.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

That would be great if people stopped steadily asserting "some characters ar better than the others". We all now most frays appears to put Faclo on a higher tier than Ganondorf. The matter is that it is now possible for a Ganondorf to scare a Falco, if he understands the way Special moves must be used to play an agressive game. I personnaly think Brawl's Ganondorf is WAY better, strategically speaking, than Melee's (and I have been playing Melee for years, while not in a competition). We can discuss that point, as an example to show a laggy and awkward character can beat a fast and nimble one, despite I am not trying to convince you all, but rather to widen your opinions on that point.

Any good Brawl Falco worth his salt would know to spam his lasers and then throw his reflector at Ganondorf's approach, simply because the Brawl incarnation of Ganondorf can't approach very well. All of his moves have a ridiculous amount of lag and there's no possible way in which to get him from point A to point B quick enough (unless you down B lol). In Melee, Ganondorf actually had some pretty viable options to approach because of things like L-canceling, wavedashing, and (most importantly IMO, at least for Ganon) wavelanding.

There may be exceptions to the rule, W-Man, but that's simply the gist.

Smooth Criminal

 

[RDK]

That would be great if people stopped steadily asserting "some characters ar better than the others". We all now most frays appears to put Faclo on a higher tier than Ganondorf. The matter is that it is now possible for a Ganondorf to scare a Falco, if he understands the way Special moves must be used to play an agressive game. I personnaly think Brawl's Ganondorf is WAY better, strategically speaking, than Melee's (and I have been playing Melee for years, while not in a competition). We can discuss that point, as an example to show a laggy and awkward character can beat a fast and nimble one, despite I am not trying to convince you all, but rather to widen your opinions on that point.

The fact that you haven't played Ganon in actual competitions makes your credibility a tad underwhelming. Don't come in here and expect people to listen to you when your experience comes from playing level 9 Foxes.

The fact is that some characeters ARE inherently better than others. It's a fact of life. Tiers DO exist.

 

[St. Viers]

also, fast and nimble don't describe falco....though ganon still has np chance

 

[Bud]

Can you actually say with a straight face that Captain Falcon is good?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Reubh68wwIc

Dude that falcon sucks, bad. Don't try to act like a character sucks because some dude playing him sucks. He is completely different from melee, and requires a much different playstyle.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Dude that falcon sucks, bad. Don't try to act like a character sucks because some dude playing him sucks. He is completely different from melee, and requires a much different playstyle.

>.>;

Brawl Ganondorf has more priority on his attacks than Brawl Falcon. Plus, Ganon can actually kill.

C'mon, man.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Takeshi245]

>.>;

Brawl Ganondorf has more priority on his attacks than Brawl Falcon. Plus, Ganon can actually kill.

C'mon, man.

Smooth Criminal

True that. Captain Falcon is just terrible in Brawl. Has a lot more bad match-ups than he did in Melee that's for sure.

 

[Neverender]

C.falcon in brawl compared to melee's C. Falcon is just dumb. Of course melee's is better.

 

[W-man]

Writing in red and questioning my playing experience won't change my vision of life, I'm afraid. I prefer being contested with arguments, not by anyone who supposes I'm just a noob (playing against level 9 Foxes...)

Anyway, thanks for your reply.

 

[Amarkov]

In melee, lower tier chars had suprisingly good matchups against higher-placed chars. In brawl, there is pretty much a linear worsening as you go from good to bad chars. Withing each tier it's even, and you can have pretty good games against the tier directly above/below you, but besides that, lower chars will lose unless they are played by someone much better than the high tiered char.

Of course lower tier characters will lose unless they are played by someone better. That's why they're lower tier. And I don't know where you got these "surprisingly good matchups" from; I don't see any more surprising matchups in Melee than in Brawl.

Also, thanks to the removal of lag-cancelling, certain chars with less laggy moves, or ones that autocancel have an unfair advantage over cahrs without it. In melee, L cancelling turned almost all lag into 5-11 frames, where as in brawl the disparity is between 0-alot, where the exact amount of alot doesn't matter because the other moves have NO LAG--meaning MK will always have an advantage against chars with laggy moves >_>

Not really. Snake's lag isn't all that wonderful, and he's doing just fine. There are ways to make up for some characters having increased lag on their attacks; other fighting games do just fine without L-cancelling.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Writing in red and questioning my playing experience won't change my vision of life, I'm afraid. I prefer being contested with arguments, not by anyone who supposes I'm just a noob (playing against level 9 Foxes...)

Anyway, thanks for your reply.

Um...

We're not trying to change your life. We're just...giving you our opinion.

And if you wanted an argument, why don't you respond to what I just said about Ganondorf versus Falco? Give me a good counterpoint so we can get a debate up in here. If you can't, then RDK's statement holds some water. My tournament experience has been pretty limited over the course of a year and a half, but I have a GENERAL idea of what's going on. So show us that you know what you're talking about, competitively speaking for Melee AND Brawl, so that we can form the arguments that you love so **** much.

Until then, you are the quintessential newbie with no tourney experience.

And wtf does typing in red have to do with anything?

Smooth Criminal

 

[Zankoku]

RDK frequently attends bi-weeklies up in there in the ghettos of Michigan, playing with the likes of scotu and Ankoku when he does.

No he doesn't. Apparently he didn't have the time to attend a single one of our biweeklies.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

No he doesn't. Apparently he didn't have the time to attend a single one of our biweeklies.

o.o;

WHAT THE HELL?

I'mma talk to him about that.

Maybe I read his glaring red text wrong and he said that there WERE bi-weeklies with you and Scotu.

I feel stoopid now.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Dexter Morgan]

The red text makes RDK look vain.

Now, I love Melee and I played it for six good years. But amidst all the posts by Melee purists claiming that Brawl ruined their favorite game, I feel there are some important things that need to be stated.

1.) Brawl is not Melee ~ I'm baffled at how many people wanted the veterans to keep their exact same move sets, damage percentages, and physics. Did people really expect Sakurai to simply throw in a dozen Newcomers into Melee and call it a day? For some narrow-minded folks, any change to Melee is automatically seen as negative: Fox's forward smash has less knock back? THAT SUCKS. Peach's Bomber has more knock back? THAT SUCKS. Game & Watch is better in every way? THAT SUCKS. It's no secret that Melee is fairly unbalanced when players learn to exploit certain characters for years to where only a handful of the cast has a decent chance. Brawl is not Melee--it mended several of Melee's balancing problems. Every character is good, every character has obvious strengths and weaknesses. All six of the heavyweights are fun to use, potent in combat, and can easily hold their own against the lighter, quicker characters.

2.) Exploits do not make good game play ~ Yeah, this is directed towards you wave dashers. It was never meant to be in the game--deal with it. Proof? Sakurai cut it out of Brawl. The main reason for this is because the game was never meant to be played with constant jumping+air-dodging. If that's your bag, you're free to continue enjoying Melee, but for the rest of the world that feels that tapping shield hundreds of times a match is about as fun as mashing the D-pad in Mario Kart DS, the removal of repetitive exploits like this is only a good thing. I don't like moves that completely nullify other moves (why walk/run when you can wave dash?)...that's the core definition of imbalance.

3.) Slightly slower game play = more control ~ Brawl is a fairly quick game, but Melee felt completely out-of-control at times. When a Fox or Falco could shine a player off a ledge for four lives in twenty seconds, that's just ridiculous. Brawl tweaks the feel of the game to where advanced techniques like short hop aerials are much more fluid and intuitive to pull off and players generally feel more in-control of everything. You can even turn off "up-tap to jump", making up-tilts and short hop u-airs a grand possibility once more!

4.) The air-game and edge-guarding ~ Every character's recovery is quite good now, despite the lack of the "third jump" air-dodge. While some have complained that the edge is too easy to grab, I find this makes for a much more in-depth edge-guarding game. Since most characters will return to the ledge, players are now encouraged to give chase off the platform and attempt to meteor smash or slam them back again. That, with the increased floatiness and multiple air-dodges/item catching, makes for some magnificent aerial combat. Now more than ever, smash attack spamming won't work when the opponent keeps dropping in from above with their d-air, juggling you upward, then comboing you off the top of the screen.

Brawl's mechanics simply feel way better all-around. I feel in complete control of the match, the roster seems extremely balanced, and the removal of (in my opinion, lame) mechanics like wave dashing and L-canceling make the matches more than L/R click fests.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

>.>;

*facepalm.*

Man, Dex, that was a good (albeit rehashed) argument.

It's a shame I gotta go to work.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Zankoku]

1.) Brawl is not Melee ~ I'm baffled at how many people wanted the veterans to keep their exact same move sets, damage percentages, and physics. Did people really expect Sakurai to simply throw in a dozen Newcomers into Melee and call it a day? For some narrow-minded folks, any change to Melee is automatically seen as negative: Fox's forward smash has less knock back? THAT SUCKS. Peach's Bomber has more knock back? THAT SUCKS. Game & Watch is better in every way? THAT SUCKS. It's no secret that Melee is fairly unbalanced when players learn to exploit certain characters for years to where only a handful of the cast has a decent chance. Brawl is not Melee--it mended several of Melee's balancing problems. Every character is good, every character has obvious strengths and weaknesses. All six of the heavyweights are fun to use, potent in combat, and can easily hold their own against the lighter, quicker characters.

I somehow don't think rebalancing was at the top of their list. Why would previously good characters receive only minor losses (Marth, Fox), other good characters receive major nerfs (Captain Falcon, Peach, Sheik), one or two bad characters receive buffs (G&W, Pikachu), other mediocre characters get weakened (Ganondorf, Samus), and so on and so forth? It feels less like they were trying to "fix the balance" and more like they were trying to change the veteran characters for the sake of changing them.

2.) Exploits do not make good game play ~ Yeah, this is directed towards you wave dashers. It was never meant to be in the game--deal with it. Proof? Sakurai cut it out of Brawl. The main reason for this is because the game was never meant to be played with constant jumping+air-dodging. If that's your bag, you're free to continue enjoying Melee, but for the rest of the world that feels that tapping shield hundreds of times a match is about as fun as mashing the D-pad in Mario Kart DS, the removal of repetitive exploits like this is only a good thing. I don't like moves that completely nullify other moves (why walk/run when you can wave dash?)...that's the core definition of imbalance.

The main reason it's not in Brawl is because of the new air-dodge mechanic. It's difficult to claim that they would completely rewrite a new way for the air-dodge to work just to remove wavedashing instead of, I dunno, just removing wavedashing.

3.) Slightly slower game play = more control ~ Brawl is a fairly quick game, but Melee felt completely out-of-control at times. When a Fox or Falco could shine a player off a ledge for four lives in twenty seconds, that's just ridiculous. Brawl tweaks the feel of the game to where advanced techniques like short hop aerials are much more fluid and intuitive to pull off and players generally feel more in-control of everything. You can even turn off "up-tap to jump", making up-tilts and short hop u-airs a grand possibility once more!

Uptilts are more difficult, actually, because they made the control stick sensitivity really odd... Shorthop uairs? You mean like the ones that LOTS OF FOX PLAYERS DID IN MELEE? OMG WHAT A NEW POSSIBILITY THAT IS.

4.) The air-game and edge-guarding ~ Every character's recovery is quite good now, despite the lack of the "third jump" air-dodge. While some have complained that the edge is too easy to grab, I find this makes for a much more in-depth edge-guarding game. Since most characters will return to the ledge, players are now encouraged to give chase off the platform and attempt to meteor smash or slam them back again. That, with the increased floatiness and multiple air-dodges/item catching, makes for some magnificent aerial combat. Now more than ever, smash attack spamming won't work when the opponent keeps dropping in from above with their d-air, juggling you upward, then comboing you off the top of the screen.

Smash attack spamming against someone above you is stupid. I really hope you didn't beat people in Melee that way. The edgeguarding game is not deeper - rather, it's just simpler to recover now. This and the previous two points you made have nothing to do with balance.

Brawl's mechanics simply feel way better all-around. I feel in complete control of the match, the roster seems extremely balanced, and the removal of (in my opinion, lame) mechanics like wave dashing and L-canceling make the matches more than L/R click fests.

You're putting a lot of Melee hate into this, so I'm not sure how much I can really debate with you seeing the clear bias. However, in the ONLY part where you addressed balance, I feel you made a really weak point regarding the balance of the character roster.

 

[∫unk]

I'm sorry, but I really don't see this. In Melee, it was probably possible for Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, Peach, Falcon, ICs, Samus, or Jiggles to win a pretty decent sized tournament, and even this early in the game with Brawl (where more characters should be getting more playing time), we are already seeing a scene completely dominated by 2 characters, with very few exceptions. The other characters might be closer to each other in terms of ability, but MK and Snake trump most of them way more than the top tiers in Melee did.

Snake, Meta, Wario, Marth, Falco, Dedede, G&W, ICs have all already won pretty big tournaments. I'm sure I'm missing a few on that list, and in addition I can see at least 5 that are going to take a longer time to master (Diddy, ICs, Lucario come to mind)

Wario just got 1st and 3rd at the biggest brawl tournament so far.

This doesn't mean Snake and Meta aren't top tier. It means exactly what I said in the beginning that a "random" mid/high tier can win a tourney.

Honestly I think this is a result of having more members in the cast than anything to do with Brawl game mechanics, but it's still a truth.

btw, Ankoku is right brawl Falcon sucks big time. And unlike in Melee you can't make up for the bad characters flaws with superior ATs.

 

[St. Viers]

Dexter:

re, point 2.
L-cancelling was meant to be in melee, and they took that out of brawl. The fact that they didn't take WDing out of the PAL version (or even out of verion .1, where they fixed tons of found glitches) shows that there was a clear choice to keep WDing in melee.

Also, in brawl, you'll be pressing shield 100s of times anyways, because of the campy nature of the game+easy powershielding. Argue with logic, not stupid little snipes at melee.

if you are talking about exploits, many have ALREADY BEEN FOUND in brawl.

re: point 3:

I'm guessing you hated c-stickers too right, because you seem not to know that you could short up + cstick to shhop up-airs in melee. Hell, if you didn't suck you could even just use the analog stick.

point 4: except that chasing them off-stage is a waste of effort most of the time, due to the airdodge system. It makes the game simpler, as some characters can bait and airdodge and punish, while some can't. That seems to unbalance the game... Also, how does removing the need to place properly to grab the ledge make anything more in depth? Also, auto-tethering makes it less balanced as well, as it causes some chars (ivysaur, olimar, and sometimes links, shiek) to just die.

So yeah, a lot of hating melee, but not explaining how brawl is balanced >_>

 

[mega tortuse]

lol iv been looking at some of these posts about it not being even its mroe of a click thing like some people click with meta knight and others lucario as far as iv seen waht charactors are good and bad are in your head like i can kill just about anyone with yoshi and most vote him as a usless chareter

but i dont play tourneys i jsut do alot of onlien matchups
and there is a thing as to much insite into a game lol

 

[Byronman]

But it's not.

How did you come to this conclusion? Brawl is more balanced than Melee "because you say so"? You're making claims without posting anything that would give us reason to believe what you're saying.

I meant to say that I think that brawl has more balance. It is just my opinion. Besides I don't see you arguing anything for melee being more balanced.

and there is a thing as to much insite into a game lol

Yea that seems to happen a lot here...

 

[Jiggy37]

1.) Brawl is not Melee ~ I'm baffled at how many people wanted the veterans to keep their exact same move sets, damage percentages, and physics.

I've read about the last 40 pages of this thread and I don't remember seeing anyone say anything along those lines.

For some narrow-minded folks, any change to Melee is automatically seen as negative: Fox's forward smash has less knock back? THAT SUCKS. Peach's Bomber has more knock back? THAT SUCKS. Game & Watch is better in every way? THAT SUCKS.

And I definitely haven't seen anybody complain about bad moves (Peach Bomber) and formerly weak characters (Game & Watch) being buffed--and very few even complained about weakening some of Fox's moves. What people want are more sensible changes along those lines, but that's not what we got. Consider these situations:


Samus - There's no reason that the Charge Beam should now have as little knockback as it does. Absolutely anybody comparing that attack to R.O.B.'s gyro can see which is the superior charged projectile--the gyro has greater knockback, can be picked up again, moves faster, and be left on the ground to block enemy projectiles, and can't be absorbed by Ness or Lucas. And that's just one move. I don't want to cover her full moveset, but it's loaded with many other examples of moves that shouldn't have as little knockback as they do.


Ganondorf - Here's a character who already wasn't great, but had been salvaged decently enough by L-canceling. He's supposed to be a slow power character, yes? But there's a pathetically obvious difference between him and the other power characters. King Dedede's range blows Ganondorf's out of the water and so does his recovery; in addition to that, he has a projectile and a 16% throw. (I'm not even getting into the chaingrab here since that probably wasn't intentional on the designers' part.) Ike has superior range over Ganondorf, and also superior recovery. Not to the same degree as Dedede, but it's there nonetheless. The disparity in power between the slow-but-strong types is so noticeable that it should never have gotten past the game testers.


Jigglypuff - Superior aerial maneuverability and the existence of hitstun went a long way toward making Jiggs good in Melee. But now? Everybody has excellent aerial freedom due to the new air dodge mechanics. Even if Jigglypuff's moveset worked exactly as it did in Melee, she still wouldn't be as good as before just because of the new game mechanics (to say nothing of how many more characters there are with disjointed hitboxes for their attacks). You can't take a character who's designed to shine in the air, port her over to a game where everybody's air game is significantly buffed in exactly the way that would hinder her old playstyle, and where hitstun is removed to the degree that being maneuverable in the air doesn't provide combo opportunities, and expect the situation to miraculously work out.

And, get this: Jigglypuff's moveset doesn't work exactly as it did in Melee. No, instead it's much worse. Back air has weak knockback now, up air won't KO except at ludicrous percentages, Rest sucks, forward smash is slower...


I could go on about Peach, Sheik, Mario, and Captain Falcon, but the point is really that some of the nerfs and buffs handed out to various characters defy logic to such an extent that, as Ankoku said, it sounds entirely reasonable that maybe they were just making changes to old characters for the sake of saying they made changes, rather than trying to legitimately balance in the game.

Some of the weaker characters from before are better: Luigi, Zelda, Pikachu, Kirby, and Mr. Game & Watch. And Fox and Marth are slightly worse, which they probably deserved to me. These are positive steps. But in the face of what was done to Ganondorf, Samus, Jigglypuff, Peach, Sheik, Mario, and Captain Falcon, it's questionable whether the good or bad aspects of the re-balancing were intentional. To me it seems like not much thought was put into it.

 

[Amarkov]

There certainly were arbitrary changes made. I'm not happy about them any more than you. However, some characters being inexplicably nerfed doesn't necessarily make the game unbalanced.

 

[Hoff]

Amarkov, for someone with 35 posts (I know it doesn't completely matter, but there's a strong correlation to it) you are a pretty good debater and I commend your level-headedness. Somehow I've managed to come accross a lot of your posts and you seem to know your stuff, or at least not seem like a douche who makes stuff up to sound like he knows his stuff when he actually doesn't. Anyways, weirdness over.

What I can say about balance anyways is that Brawl is by no means MORE balanced than Melee. At this point I'd rate it as less balanced but tournament results aren't one-sided enough to coincide with the popular opinion of Snake and MK being ultra-godly. Wario has gotten a lot of tournament wins, for example, and is an extremely underrated character by the general populace (high tier top 10 IMO, upper-mid at worst).

But the way the characters were arbitrarily nerfed and buffed, and the new ones built so completely randomly and, well, absurdly (SNAKES HITBOXES WTF!), tells me this game was certainly NOT created with balance in mind.

 

[Amarkov]

Amarkov, for someone with 35 posts (I know it doesn't completely matter, but there's a strong correlation to it) you are a pretty good debater and I commend your level-headedness. Somehow I've managed to come accross a lot of your posts and you seem to know your stuff, or at least not seem like a douche who makes stuff up to sound like he knows his stuff when he actually doesn't. Anyways, weirdness over.

Thanks for that.

What I can say about balance anyways is that Brawl is by no means MORE balanced than Melee. At this point I'd rate it as less balanced but tournament results aren't one-sided enough to coincide with the popular opinion of Snake and MK being ultra-godly. Wario has gotten a lot of tournament wins, for example, and is an extremely underrated character by the general populace (high tier top 10 IMO, upper-mid at worst).

But the way the characters were arbitrarily nerfed and buffed, and the new ones built so completely randomly and, well, absurdly (SNAKES HITBOXES WTF!), tells me this game was certainly NOT created with balance in mind.

One of those Snake vs. Link pictures is going to become a major meme eventually. "WTF NOW?"

Anyway, I must agree. Brawl may turn out to be balanced in the end (I hope so, and I think that it will). But people are certanly justified in being angry, because it was not designed to be balanced at all for competitive play.

 

[Corigames]

Would anyone have a problem if I typed up pre-made responses so that when the same argument is brought up, I can have a well thought out response that fully counters that argument. Every time I need to use it, I'll just copy and paste. This way, they can understand what I mean, I don't have to type as long, and everyone gets the same treatment from me (until I tack some things onto the end of that posts).

Telling the same people the same stuff over and over again getting the only response,"GB2 Melee," "You haven't given it a chance," "...but everyone is balanced," "Experience means nothing," "It's more fun," "There's more stuff in this," "You were just good because there were glitches," "etc.," is just annoying. If I'm going to be bombarded with the same spam-ish, n00b rambling I might as well Cntrl-V what's been said since that's all that's going on anyway.

If you have a problem with this, PM me. I'll make fun of you through that instead of in public then.

 

[Yuna-Maria]

To be honest, does it really matter which of the two games is more balanced? The argument of 'Melee vs. Brawl' will never end with the victory or supremacy of either game, so why argue at all? To be honest, I think that every game with the words "Super," "Smash," and "Brothers" in the title is a fantastic game in its own right, and all three of them deserve a spot in the competitive scene.
I mean, tourneyfargs for true fighters still hold tournaments for different versions of Street Fighter II. I've seen a single tournament that had events for Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, and Super Turbo being held consecutively. Why not the same for Smash? Is it too much to ask that Melee, Brawl, and yes, even Smash 64 are amazing games, and each has merit? Why can't ALL of them be awesome?

 

[Corigames]

I've seen a single tournament that had events for Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, and Super Turbo being held consecutively. Why not the same for Smash? Is it too much to ask that Melee, Brawl, and yes, even Smash 64 are amazing games, and each has merit? Why can't ALL of them be awesome?

People's influence. When making a tournament, you obviously want a big outcome. Right now, the people, the majority that is, want Brawl. It's the new thing, it's what they've been practicing, new people are playing it, etc. There's almost no reason to run a Melee or 64 tournament because there is probably a minority of people in that local area that would WANT to play Melee or 64 over Brawl. It's the fact right now. People complain if the tournament is Melee instead of Brawl.

My hope: People currently playing Brawl will play it extensively and will, eventually, pick up Melee to play competitively. Brawl will be like the Kiddy pool for them to ease into a more "complicated" game. Just my opinion again.

 

[kupo]

Whee first post. spam! =3

I mean, tourneyfargs for true fighters still hold tournaments for different versions of Street Fighter II. I've seen a single tournament that had events for Champion Edition, Hyper Fighting, and Super Turbo being held consecutively. Why not the same for Smash? Is it too much to ask that Melee, Brawl, and yes, even Smash 64 are amazing games, and each has merit? Why can't ALL of them be awesome?

Adaption to all the smash games? I really don't know what it's like for some people...but the transition really screws up my game for melee as my main focus is on brawl.

TBH, I don't know anything about street fighter, so I won't take big guesses on how the controls are but i'll assume controls are the same but different abilities or somewhat (I really know nothing ._.) . Try from playing Melee for a good 4 years into a new game like brawl. There is nothing really in brawl that is based on technical abilities (like WD, L-Cancelling, etc) that you can rely on to boost your gameplay. Fast fall is the new L-cancel? lol

It's mentioned by a few people and even though Australia's smash scene isn't as big and competitive as America, melee just grabs people's attention. In our recent large tournament, we had more crowd for singles finals than for brawl. It's just more exciting. Faster gameplay, technical abilities and all that stuff separated smash from all the fighting games imo anyways.

I am glad for brawl and hope eventually brawl will be just as exciting as melee. There's still a lot of things to find out. I mean..it took a fair while to figure out WD, DI, etc existed in melee. Let's hope that we'll discover something new to incorperate into our gameplay.

I mean..what did you all think of Melee after playing Smash 64?

/end rambling
/flee!

 

[Empy]

2.) Exploits do not make good game play ~ Yeah, this is directed towards you wave dashers. It was never meant to be in the game--deal with it. Proof? Sakurai cut it out of Brawl. The main reason for this is because the game was never meant to be played with constant jumping+air-dodging. If that's your bag, you're free to continue enjoying Melee, but for the rest of the world that feels that tapping shield hundreds of times a match is about as fun as mashing the D-pad in Mario Kart DS, the removal of repetitive exploits like this is only a good thing. I don't like moves that completely nullify other moves (why walk/run when you can wave dash?)...that's the core definition of imbalance.

That's not proof. You keep going about how this is a different game, but when something is done differently, suddenly it proves it wasn't meant to be that way in the first place. So to cut it short. Brawl is a new game and anything different from Melee, wasn't supposed to be part of Melee at all?

And in Brawl, why walk when you can run, why dash attack when you can usmash?

And that has nothing to do with imbalance. This is about 1 character being imbalanced to another, while each character could wavedash. Are you trying to tell us that Melee is an imbalanced game towards other games in which you had to walk or something? Well.. yeah good point, Melee IS superior.

3.) Slightly slower game play = more control ~ Brawl is a fairly quick game, but Melee felt completely out-of-control at times. When a Fox or Falco could shine a player off a ledge for four lives in twenty seconds, that's just ridiculous. Brawl tweaks the feel of the game to where advanced techniques like short hop aerials are much more fluid and intuitive to pull off and players generally feel more in-control of everything. You can even turn off "up-tap to jump", making up-tilts and short hop u-airs a grand possibility once more!

LoL, you can't control Melee? I hope you never have to drive a car or something. Also, the fact that you can't utilt in Melee doesn't make it impossible, it just gives some more understanding to why you can't control Melee. (Have you tried practicing to get better?)

Also, most people here enjoy playing Brawl. I enjoy it a lot myself. I had really great matches just yesterday. However, I also enjoyed Melee for 6-7 years or so. And I still do if I play it. So I'm not saying Brawl is bad, I'm just saying that doesn't make Melee a terrible game all of a sudden.

 

[RolandBeoulve]

My hope: People currently playing Brawl will play it extensively and will, eventually, pick up Melee to play competitively. Brawl will be like the Kiddy pool for them to ease into a more "complicated" game. Just my opinion again.

I'm hoping that Brawl evolves into something more and lucky for me my hope is hard to bring down. But I can agree with most of this statement, Brawl would be a nice primer for new people wanting to get into melee.

 

[Amarkov]

I don't understand why this debate is being framed how it is. It's perfectly possible that Melee and Brawl are both good competitive games in their own right; this doesn't have to be a debate about which is a terrible evil game that nobody should play.

 

[FrostByte]

I'm not even going to bother making a proper reply to this. Everything in bold proves that you have a scrubby nature or just don't know what you're talking about.

The red text makes RDK look vain.

Now, I love Melee and I played it for six good years. But amidst all the posts by Melee purists claiming that Brawl ruined their favorite game, I feel there are some important things that need to be stated.

1.) Brawl is not Melee ~ I'm baffled at how many people wanted the veterans to keep their exact same move sets, damage percentages, and physics. Did people really expect Sakurai to simply throw in a dozen Newcomers into Melee and call it a day? For some narrow-minded folks, any change to Melee is automatically seen as negative: Fox's forward smash has less knock back? THAT SUCKS. Peach's Bomber has more knock back? THAT SUCKS. Game & Watch is better in every way? THAT SUCKS. It's no secret that Melee is fairly unbalanced when players learn to exploit certain characters for years to where only a handful of the cast has a decent chance. Brawl is not Melee--it mended several of Melee's balancing problems. Every character is good, every character has obvious strengths and weaknesses. All six of the heavyweights are fun to use, potent in combat, and can easily hold their own against the lighter, quicker characters.

2.) Exploits do not make good game play ~ Yeah, this is directed towards you wave dashers. It was never meant to be in the game--deal with it. Proof? Sakurai cut it out of Brawl. The main reason for this is because the game was never meant to be played with constant jumping+air-dodging. If that's your bag, you're free to continue enjoying Melee, but for the rest of the world that feels that tapping shield hundreds of times a match is about as fun as mashing the D-pad in Mario Kart DS, the removal of repetitive exploits like this is only a good thing. I don't like moves that completely nullify other moves (why walk/run when you can wave dash?)...that's the core definition of imbalance.

3.) Slightly slower game play = more control ~ Brawl is a fairly quick game, but Melee felt completely out-of-control at times. When a Fox or Falco could shine a player off a ledge for four lives in twenty seconds, that's just ridiculous. Brawl tweaks the feel of the game to where advanced techniques like short hop aerials are much more fluid and intuitive to pull off and players generally feel more in-control of everything. You can even turn off "up-tap to jump", making up-tilts and short hop u-airs a grand possibility once more!

4.) The air-game and edge-guarding ~ Every character's recovery is quite good now, despite the lack of the "third jump" air-dodge. While some have complained that the edge is too easy to grab, I find this makes for a much more in-depth edge-guarding game. Since most characters will return to the ledge, players are now encouraged to give chase off the platform and attempt to meteor smash or slam them back again. That, with the increased floatiness and multiple air-dodges/item catching, makes for some magnificent aerial combat. Now more than ever, smash attack spamming won't work when the opponent keeps dropping in from above with their d-air, juggling you upward, then comboing you off the top of the screen.

Brawl's mechanics simply feel way better all-around. I feel in complete control of the match, the roster seems extremely balanced, and the removal of (in my opinion, lame) mechanics like wave dashing and L-canceling make the matches more than L/R click fests.

 

[Samochan]

Rofl, thanks Frost for bringing out the information that Falco now has a shinespike.

But anyways, seemingly Dexter Morgan sees melee as too hard of a game simply because he himself doesn't seem to have any degree of control over his characters, so he prefers the easy way of buffering system on brawl and other stuff. The fact that he gets waveshined off stage by foxes (and falcos too lolz) 4 times in a row in 20 seconds tells a lot about lacking in control. Also uptilts and short hopped uairs being too hard on melee? One of the most basic moves in smash is out of control, too good.

Let's not forget that Sakurai himself said on an interview that they intentionally left wavedash in, lol.